Via Greg Sargent:

In South Carolina, Rudy Giuliani runs into another Ravenel problem.

A commenter to my earlier post points to an odd admission from one of the reporters on the Dick Cheney series:

The Washington Post changed its headline in today's hard copy from "The Unseen Path to Cruelty" to "Pushing the Envelope on Presidential Power" in the electronic version. One of the article's authors was just asked in a live chat why he omitted [a report of torture being approved of prior to January of 2002]. The Post's Gellman said: "Oh, we've omitted a lot more than that."

I'm not sure how to interpret Gellman's statement. As a writer, one is loathe to let go of almost ANYTHING you've hunted down for a story, and every cut hurts -- and that could be all there is to it. In the current atmosphere of mistrust for MSM output, however, it's strange to be so cavalier about something that could be interpreted in a much more sinister way... (WHAT DOES CHENEY HAVE ON YOU, GELLMAN? WHAT?)

As for changing the name, well, if they bowed to conservative critics, that's just chicken. Headlines change for all sorts of reasons (and, again, there could be some reason of space or style it changed), but the argument that there's anything biased about a headline that uses the Veep's own description of the practice is just silly.

Speaking of silly: I'm a little surprised that so many of you, especially for a crowd that appears to love Colbert and Stewart, would be offended by a response to the Cheney situation that attempted to find a bit of gallows humor in the whole affair. Just because it's horrifying doesn't mean it's not also hilarious. I did an interview today about the series and the anchor said something about "why do you think Cheney takes so much 'ribbing'?" I had to point out that we joke about Cheney because otherwise, the idea that this man at the highest levels of government considers himself unaccountable to anyone is too frightening to bear.

Maybe you all have stronger constitutions than I. Ba-dum-bump.

UPDATE: The old stomping grounds provides some further (somewhat wry, at the very least) insight:

Dick Cheney also didn't care about black people. A particuarly fun subplot of the first Bush term is the way NSA adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell never had any clue what the hell Cheney was doing, as he took complete control over policies supposedly under the purviews of their agencies. All documents prepared for Rice were secretly funneled to Cheney, and she and Powell seemed to learn what their administration was up to primarily by watching CNN.

I guess sometimes it really is just best to face your fears:

The revelation of another check from Romney came as a surprise, as Romney had declared at a similar fund-raising event in Boston in January that it would be "akin to a nightmare" if he were forced to self-fund his campaign. His campaign later revealed that at the time Romney said that, he had already loaned himself the $2.4 million.

More Romney nightmares: fluffy beds, sunbeams, changing his mind, bunny rabbits and other assorted small varmints.

To be far, this is a man who has already conquered the nightmare of skiing past the sandbar:

You know, I don't remember when it was exactly when I went beyond the sandbar... For the first 40 feet or so, the lake is shallow, warm, and protected from the big waves by a sandbar...One day, my brother...drove the boat – and me – straight out into the deep.. I screamed the whole terrifying ride.

So giving money to himself, you know, that's cake.

Just ahead of the 6/30 deadline for fundraising reports, FORTUNE Washington Bureau Chief Nina Easton gives us this behind-the-scenes look at the scramble for endorsements and contributions from business executives. "What's different this time," she writes, "is that CEOs are up for grabs on both sides." The reason: "long-held alliances shifting under the weight of an unpopular President, an unpopular war and no obvious White House heir on either side." All of the candidates are working the corporate chieftains hard, of course, but Easton finds:

Even at this early stage of the primary race, the business endorsements of Clinton alone rival - in size, scope, and prestige the list of CEOs publicly supporting the Kerry - Edwards ticket in the 2004 general election. The more than 150 top executives who have raised money for Clinton represent such brand names as Anheuser-Busch, Comcast, Estée Lauder, Palm, Sun Microsystems, and Qualcomm. Venture capitalist James D. Robinson III, the former CEO of American Express and a longtime Republican, told Fortune he now supports Clinton for President, citing her "breadth of experience, especially on the international level, which is critical for going forward."

Karen ably highlighted the newsy scoops of the Washington Post's Cheney piece yesterday, but I, of course, was struck by the many moments of not-quite-intentional hilarity.

There's the Dirty Harry moment with Dan Quayle:

"I said, 'Dick, you know, you're going to be doing a lot of this international traveling, you're going to be doing all this political fundraising . . . you'll be going to the funerals,' " Quayle said in an interview earlier this year. "I mean, this is what vice presidents do. I said, 'We've all done it.' "

Cheney "got that little smile," Quayle said, and replied, "I have a different understanding with the president."

Dick the diva with Bolten:

Bolten joined Libby, his counterpart in Cheney's office, to compile a list of "portfolios we thought might be appropriate." Their models, Bolten said, were Quayle's Council on Competitiveness and Al Gore's National Partnership for Reinventing Government.

"The vice president didn't particularly warm to that," Bolten recalled dryly.

And the ultimate Fredo joke, a nice little back-handed slap from Yoo, amplified by the Post:

Gonzales, a former Texas judge, had the seniority and the relationship with Bush. But Addington -- a man of imposing demeanor, intellect and experience -- dominated the group. Gonzales "was not a law-of-war expert and didn't have very developed views," Yoo recalled, echoing blunter observations by the Texan's White House colleagues.

This is going to be fun.

Depressing and a reminder that our Constitution is in tatters, but kind of fun. In that grim, our-framers-would-rip-their-own-hair-out-if-they-knew way.

CQ has an interesting bit of news on how certain presidentially-aspiring Senators are behaving behind closed doors. It's not as exciting as it sounds, but it gives some more context to why it is that Congress is having such a hard time earning the respect of the American voter -- and how the Dems' takeover hasn't really changed much. (Related issues, no doubt.)

When the Senate Armed Services Committee held its customary closed-door markup of the annual defense authorization bill at the end of last month, just before the Capitol emptied out for Memorial Day, Arizona's John McCain , who remains in the top tier of aspirants for the 2008 Republican nomination, teamed up with freshman Democrat Claire McCaskill , a former state auditor from Missouri, on a proposal to require that the bill's earmarks, plus their intended recipients and sponsors, be made public.

The vote on their amendment, like everything else about the session, was kept secret by the committee. But a memo circulated among Senate offices revealed that their provision was adopted 15-10 — and over the opposition of nearly all the Democrats on the panel. The most prominent opponents were Chairman Carl Levin of Michigan and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York — who is of course the presumed front-runner for her party's presidential nomination. Levin and Clinton also happened to be the No. 1 and No. 2 sponsors of earmarks in this year's bill, respectively.

Obama recently revealed all 113 of his earmarks.

UPDATE: McCain has not revealed his earmark requests because McCain has no earmark requests.