FRIDAY'S MINI-REPORT.... Today's edition of quick hits:

* Yesterday, U.S. troops faced minimal resistance in Afghanistan. Today was far more difficult: "Taliban insurgents stepped up attacks Friday against U.S. Marines in southern Afghanistan's Helmand River valley, forcing troops in some areas to spend the day fighting instead of carrying out plans to meet with residents and local leaders."

* Don't count on fair trials: "A top Iranian cleric said Friday that some of the detained Iranian staffers of the British Embassy in Tehran will be put on trial, and he accused Britain of a role in instigating widespread protests that erupted over the country's disputed presidential election."

* New round of U.S. attacks along the Afghan border: "U.S. missiles struck a training facility allegedly operated by Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud and a militant hide-out Friday, killing 15 people and wounding 27 others, intelligence officials said."

* Russia has approved a plan to allow American troops to fly over Russian territory as part of military operations in Afghanistan. The agreement is scheduled to be formally announced early next week, when President Obama visits Moscow.

* U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is in Burma today, meeting with the ruling generals about the release of political prisoners. No word on whether there is, or will be, progress on this front.

* World Health Organization head Margaret Chan believes the international spread of the H1N1 virus is now unstoppable, but nevertheless mild.

* Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) has been released from a Los Angeles hospital.

* Is the Obama administration nearing a deal with the hospital industry? Maybe.

* Dick Cheney had a hand, behind the scenes, in responding to the Plame scandal? You don't say.

* Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) offered some odd advice to a constituent who wants the same kind of health care options he has: "Just go work for the federal government."

* If a credible news network publicizes the results of an incomplete CBO analysis, it should also let the public know about the more reliable and accurate CBO analysis.

* Paul Krugman ponders exactly what's wrong with the Wall Street Journal.

* And just in time for tomorrow, the case against fireworks displays.

Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.

PALIN TO RESIGN.... Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) decided to shake up an otherwise slow news day with an astounding announcement: not only has she decided to skip a re-election campaign next year, she's also resigning from office altogether later this month.

"Gov. Sarah Palin will resign her office in a few weeks, she said during a news conference at her Wasilla home Friday morning.

Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell will be inaugurated at the Governor's Picnic at Pioneer Park in Fairbanks on Saturday, July 25, Palin said.

There was no immediate word as to why she will resign, though speculation has been rampant that the former vice presidential candidate is gearing up for a run at the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

Palin is making a terrible mistake. The lure of the national spotlight is strong, and the day-to-day challenges associated with running the executive branch of a state are no doubt difficult. There are probably plenty of far-right activists and donors whispering in Palin's ear, telling her to ignore the naysayers and realize she's ready to lead the nation, but she's listening to the wrong people. Walking away from the governor's office after one term is incredibly foolish -- but walking away from the governor's office after two and a half years in office is stupefying.

Just yesterday, Charles Krauthammer, an unquestionably conservative observer, explained on Fox News, "[Palin] is not a serious candidate for the presidency. She had to go home and study and spend a lot of time on issues in which she was not adept last year, and she hasn't."

Indeed, she's done the opposite. Reihan Salam, a prominent conservative blogger and Republican strategist, defended Palin repeatedly over the last several months, making excuses for her shortcomings, and arguing valiantly that Palin is a credible national figure. Then, in April, Salam reluctantly gave up.

Palin's campaign antics can be forgiven. What can't be forgiven is the ham-handed way she's tried to build her national profile since she returned to Alaska. She's abandoned the bold right-left populism that won over Alaska voters -- and me -- in the first place in favor of an increasingly defensive and harsh partisanship.... One can't help but get the impression that Palin is a clownish, vindictive amateur.... What I'm wondering is: Has Sarah Palin undergone some kind of secret lobotomy?

Salam was arguably understating the case. Indeed, since that item was published, Palin's on-the-job performance has become an even bigger train wreck, with a bizarre fight with the state legislature over economic stimulus, a failed effort to appoint a ridiculous state attorney general, a striking number of public and private feuds, and a series of media interviews in which she's humiliated herself over and over and over and over again. And this doesn't even factor in the allegations of ethics violations.

What's especially curious about all of this is that Palin had a more obvious and productive route, which she's inexplicably chosen to ignore. As Chris Orr recently noted, "Perhaps the most mystifying element of Palin's recent forays into nuttery is that, politically speaking, it would be difficult to come up with stupider way to position herself in the wake of her v.p. run. The base already loves her -- the diehard pro-lifers, the hands-off-mine individualists, the anti-elitist brigades, you name 'em. Where she has (deepening) trouble is with everyone else: moderates, socially liberal libertarians, DC-establishment types, and anyone who places a premium on basic competence."

Palin had an opportunity to prove her critics wrong. She could have returned to Alaska after last year's campaign, studied up on public policy, and built up some kind of record in office, preferably with some achievements. Instead, Palin has become an even more rigid ideologue. Given a chance to prove herself as leader, Palin has decided she'd prefer to walk away, blinded by a combination of ambition and misplaced arrogance.

QUOTE OF THE DAY.... Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) of Nevada.

Reid says he expects the tactic of gentle persuasion to work best, given the size of his Senate Democratic flock and the political divergences within it. "I don't dictate how people vote," he said in an interview this month. "If it's an important vote, I try to tell them how important it is to the Senate, the country, the president ... But I'm not very good at twisting arms. I try to be more verbal and non-threatening. So there are going to be -- I'm sure -- a number of opportunities for people who have different opinions not to vote the way that I think they should. But that's the way it is. I hold no grudges."

I don't doubt Reid is widely liked and admired within the caucus. But "gentle persuasion" is rarely a recipe for party discipline.

There have been plenty of Senate Majority Leaders in history who members feared and wouldn't dare cross. Reid isn't one of them.

PONDERING RATINGS SUCCESS.... Reader D.R. posed a question via email the other day, and I promised him I'd respond online. He asked:

I detest Fox News (except Shepard Smith) but why are their ratings zooming so high? They are on track to have the best year ever in 2009. For the first time Olbermann has even been knocked out of top 10 prime time shows. Hell, O'Reilly's repeat beats Olbermann's 8pm audience by a wide margin. What can explain this?

D.R. is right that the Republican network's ratings have soared, but I don't think there's too big a mystery about what happened.

Let's consider some recent historical context. In the first quarter of 2008, Fox News, after six years of cable-news ratings dominance, saw itself slip into second place behind CNN in the so-called "money demo" -- viewers in their mid-20s through mid-50s, who advertisers care about most. One year ago this week, the New York Times reported, "The most dominant cable news channel for nearly a decade and a political force in its own right, Fox has seen its once formidable advantage over CNN erode in this presidential election year, as both CNN and MSNBC have added viewers at far more dramatic rates."

In March 2008, Time's James Poniewozik argued the GOP network that saw its ratings plateau as Republican officials in D.C. faltered, was in big trouble in the future. At the time, I argued the opposite. Here's a post I wrote 16 months ago, talking about the road to Fox News' recovery:

[W]ho watches Fox News? Angry, conservative partisans who want a nationalistic network that tells them what they want to hear.... Yes, FNC's ratings have slipped, but consider the landscape -- Bush isn't governing (he's a lame-duck with no policy agenda), Congress isn't up to much (thanks to GOP filibusters and White House vetoes), the war in Iraq continues to be a disaster (Republicans haven't yet found a liberal scapegoat to blame this on), and the economy has come to a halt. There's just not much for Fox News to tell Republican activists. Even the GOP nomination fight turned out to be rather dull.

But then imagine how thrilled they'll be if Dems control the House, Senate, and White House. Fox News and its audience are their most content when they have a target for their rage. These guys want someone to be mad at, and come January 2009, they'll have no shortage of options.

Poniewozik added: "News on Fox looks like a video game, full of bluster, blondes and blaring graphics. Ideology aside, Fox makes the news urgent, even when nothing's going on."

True, but an Obama/Pelosi/Reid triumvirate [in 2009] practically guarantees that plenty will be going on, and Fox News and its loyal Republican audience will be pissed about it.

It might be the best thing to ever happen to the network.

I've had plenty of predictions that didn't pan out, but this one stands up pretty well 16 months later.

The presidential election was a boon to CNN and MSNBC, but that's faded. Now, mainstream news consumers are spread out among a variety of cable and broadcast networks, not to mention print and online outlets. Angry and suddenly-motivated Republican partisans, meanwhile, want one easily-accessible network to tell them how awful the governing party is. Sure, enough, they have a reinvigorated propaganda outlet to turn to, and they're tuning in in large numbers.

RELEVANT FACTS AREN'T 'SMEARS'.... The far-right's obsession with Alan Carlin continues. Today, the Wall Street Journal ran this wildly unpersuasive piece from Kimberley Strassel on the subject.

[Carlin is] a senior analyst in the EPA's National Center for Environmental Economics and a 35-year veteran of the agency.... [Earlier this year], Mr. Carlin and a colleague presented a 98-page analysis arguing the agency should take another look, as the science behind man-made global warming is inconclusive at best. The analysis noted that global temperatures were on a downward trend.

Now, for the relevant details. When Strassel describes Carlin as a "senior analyst," she neglects to mention that he's an economist, not a scientist. When Strassel describes Carlin's work as "a 98-page analysis," she neglects to mention that Carlin's work was actually a hobbyist memo, which wasn't requested by anyone at the EPA. The "analysis" has accurately been described as "a hodgepodge of widely discredited pseudoscience," and "a ragbag collection of un-peer reviewed web pages, an unhealthy dose of sunstroke, a dash of astrology and more cherries than you can poke a cocktail stick at."

Better yet, Strassel insists that Carlin is now being subjected to a "smear campaign."

Unable to defend the EPA's actions, the climate-change crew -- led by anonymous EPA officials -- is doing what it does best: trashing Mr. Carlin as a "denier." He is, we are told, "only" an economist (he in fact holds a degree in physics from CalTech). It wasn't his "job" to look at this issue (he in fact works in an office tasked with "informing important policy decisions with sound economics and other sciences.") His study was full of sham science. (The majority of it in fact references peer-reviewed studies.)

Strassel doesn't have any evidence to bolster the argument that EPA officials are "smearing" Carlin, but she says it anyway. Given her rejection of scientific evidence on global warming, evidence probably doesn't matter much to her anyway.

More important, though, notice that what Strassel calls "smears" might also be described as "facts." Carlin really is an economist. Carlin's undergraduate degree in physics really doesn't have any relevance to his anti-climate change hobby. Carlin's memo really was looked over by scientists. The EPA's actions really are easy to defend. It really wasn't Carlin's job to attack the available scientific evidence on global warming. Carlin really did put his memo together in his free time. His hobby really is full of discredited pseudoscience.

Strassel seems to believe putting scare quotes around words she doesn't like somehow makes her argument more compelling. It doesn't change the reality that relevant facts aren't smears, and Strassel's argument doesn't make any sense at all.

FRIDAY'S CAMPAIGN ROUND-UP....Today's installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn't generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers.

* In a bit of a surprise, former President Bill Clinton will headline a fundraiser for Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) later this month. Maloney is planning a primary challenge to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), and it's the incumbent who enjoys the support of the party establishment, including many of Hillary Clinton's former advisers. A spokesperson said the fundraiser was arranged "some time ago" and isn't an endorsement of Maloney's Senate campaign.

* On Tuesday, Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) said he will run against Sen. Arlen Specter in a Democratic primary. On Wednesday, his spokesperson said no official decision had been made. On Thursday, Sestak once again said, "I am going to get in this race."

* Economic difficulties are taking their toll on Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland's approval rating, which has slipped to 46% in a new Quinnipiac poll. Strickland is seeking a second term next year.

* If New Hampshire Attorney General Kelly Ayotte (R) enters the Senate race against Rep. Paul Hodes (D) next year, she'll apparently enter as the likely favorite. A poll released yesterday showed Ayotte leading Hodes by four, 39% to 35%, including a seven-point lead among New Hampshire independents.

* In related news, Hodes' fundraising is off to a good start, with the House Democrat raising $725,000 in the second quarter.

* The DNC has begun airing ads in Kentucky going after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) for his obstruction of the Obama agenda. McConnell, however, isn't seeking re-election until 2014. A DNC spokesperson explained, "He should still care about what his constituents think -- and hopefully it'll send a message to others."

* Will North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven (R) take on Sen. Byron Dorgan (D) next year? The North Dakota Republican Party certainly hopes so.

* And Les Otten, a Republican gubernatorial candidate in Maine, is catching flack for using a campaign logo that looks very similar to that of the Obama presidential campaign. The Otten Exploratory Campaign denies having copied the Democratic president's logo.

FRC CONTINUES TO CONFOUND.... The Family Research Council, arguably D.C.'s most influential religious right organization on social and cultural issues, picks its battles carefully -- and applies its principles selectively.

For example, the FRC had closely allied itself with South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R), right up until his sex scandal, at which point the group no longer had anything to say about the governor. The FRC has apparently been saving up its outrage for Kevin Jennings, an Obama appointee to the Department of Education who (cue scary music) happens to be gay.

The Family Research Council has embarked on a new public relations effort against a particular Obama Administration appointee, Kevin Jennings, saying he should not be in his new position at the Department of Education because of his previous position in private activism -- as executive director of GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network.

Jennings is set to begin his new job on Monday, as Assistant Deputy Secretary of Education for the Department's Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools, after his appointment was announced about a month ago. And this week, FRC launched a last-minute Web petition to oppose him. It asks a pointed question: Would you choose this teacher to guide your children?

The far-right group has gone through a book Jennings wrote a few years ago about his life experiences, including his belief that the religious right movement should "drop dead," to try to create a controversy where none exists.

The Family Research Council, which insists Jennings supports "indoctrinating even elementary-age children in pro-homosexual ideology," even put together talking points (pdf) on why Jennings should be excluded from employment in the Department of Education. Amanda Terkel had the patience to fact-check the whole thing, and not surprisingly, the right-wing arguments don't stand up well to scrutiny.

The bottom line, though, remains the same: the Family Research Council is virulently anti-gay, is angry that Obama appointed a high-profile supporter of gay rights to a key government post, and wants to engage in some ridiculous demagoguery about gays and kids.

GLSEN has worked for years to make public schools safe environments for students, and the FRC's attacks notwithstanding, I'm delighted to see the administration bring Jennings on board.

MOJO SERVER TROUBLE.... Many of you may have noticed that Kevin Drum's Mother Jones blog is inaccessible this morning. I talked to Kevin and it seems there was a fire in the building where the magazine's servers are located.

It's not clear yet exactly when the issue will be resolved, but everyone's hoping the site will be back online later this afternoon.

Since today is Friday, they better act quickly. I know I'm not the only one waiting to see this week's pictures of Domino and Inkblot.

A JESSE HELMS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY.... Sen. Jim DeMint (R) of South Carolina yesterday became the first U.S. senator to endorse the military-backed coup in Honduras. He issued a statement denouncing the democratically-elected president and heralding those responsible for the coup as "guarantee[ing] freedom."

The statement comes about a week after DeMint unveiled his own health care plan, which amounted to little more than hundreds of billions of dollars for the insurance companies.

To get a better sense of what this guy all about, consider DeMint's interview with Human Events, a right-wing magazine, to talk about his worldview, which included his belief that "most members of Congress lean socialist."

"I regret to say that there are two Americas but not the kind John Edwards was talking about. It's not so much the haves and the have-nots. It's those who are paying for government and those who are getting government. At this point, the data I've seen is 52% of Americans get their income directly or indirectly from a government source. And if you think about how that works in a democracy, why would the voters be concerned about the growth of government if they weren't paying and they were getting something from it.

"Democracy cannot work when you have a majority of people dependent on the government. And this is not just the poor. The way we've set up Social Security and Medicare, everyone who retires are dependent, parents are dependent on the government for education of their children and now, if you look at the folks who come through my office -- business people, farmers, bankers -- everybody is coming to Washington to get their piece of the government because we're running all this money through here now."

Just so we're clear, an elected Republican senator believes Social Security, Medicare, and the existence of a public school system are necessarily threats to our functioning democracy.

Ed Kilgore added yesterday:

It's not often that you hear a politician come right out and say that making parents "dependent on the government for education of their children" -- i.e. public schools -- is a form of socialistic welfare-statism. As for Social Security and Medicare, most conservatives have learned to frame their privatization proposals in terms of "solvency" or "entitlement reform" or "letting people control their benefits." Not since Barry Goldwater's disastrous 1964 campaign have I heard a major Republican politician attack the wildly popular retirement programs as fundamentally illegitimate, or their beneficiaries as parasitical wards of the state.

DeMint's "two Americas" rap is also interesting since it exhibits the underpinnings of the kind of rhetoric that even the McCain campaign deployed last year in attacking progressive taxation. Poor people or old people who don't pay their "fair share" of taxes aren't just getting off lightly; they are a threat to democracy.

Ed concludes that DeMint is "seriously scary." He sure is.

HAGAN HERO?.... Just last week, freshman Sen. Kay Hagan (D) of North Carolina stood as a possible obstacle to meaningful health care reform. Hagan publicly expressed reservations about a public option, and given the current makeup of the Senate HELP Committee, that was a real problem.

Brian Beutler explained last week, "[W]ith a narrow Democratic majority on the committee and its chairman, Ted Kennedy, in poor health, [Hagan's] vote is crucial to moving the bill forward -- something the panel's been working toward for days now without success."

A few days ago, though, the HELP Committee unveiled a strong proposal, which included a public option, and which enjoys the support of the committee's Democrats -- including Hagan.

On Thursday, Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) offered her support for the health care overhaul proposal put forth by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, of which she is a member. In the process, she issued a statement that removed any doubt about where she stands on a publicly run insurance option.

"My colleagues and I on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee have been working on a plan to reform the health care system in this country," Hagan's statement read. "We have crafted a plan that will stabilize health care costs and includes a Community Health Insurance Option, which I support. It is a backstop option for people without access to affordable coverage. Health care providers will not be required to participate, payment rates will be set in a competitive fashion, and the community health insurance option will compete on a level playing field with private health insurance plans in the gateway."

The public plan portion of the proposal, known as the Community Health Insurance Option, would be overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services, but follow the rules set forth by the private market. At the same time, it would lower the costs of health care by pooling the purchasing powers of its participants and it would drastically lower the administrative costs customary to private providers. In short, one source on the committee said, it is the robust proposal that progressive wanted. And now Hagan, as her office confirmed to the Huffington Post, supports it.

It's possible Hagan was swayed by public pressure -- MoveOn.org ran ads in North Carolina, urging the senator to support a public option -- or perhaps she was persuaded by her colleagues to do the right thing.

Either way, it's an encouraging development to have one more Democratic centrist in the Senate on board with a public plan.

A ROUNDTABLE YOU'LL WANT TO MISS.... ABC News' George Stephanopoulos posted an item yesterday, letting viewers know what to expect on Sunday's episode of "This Week." In addition to an exclusive interview with Vice President Biden in Iraq....

We've also got a terrific Roundtable.

George Will is back. He'll be joined by Liz Cheney, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Cynthia Tucker and former Bush-Cheney strategist and ABC News contributor Matthew Dowd to talk about comedian turned Senator Al Franken and what his addition to the senate means for the Democrats and the latest on Governor Mark Sanford's future in South Carolina.

You don't want to miss this show.

Or, maybe you do.

It's the kind of ideological balance we've come to expect on the Sunday morning shows. Consider the breakdown of the four roundtable guests: one conservative pundit (Will), one liberal pundit (Tucker), and two former employees of the Bush/Cheney team, including yet another appearance for the former vice president's daughter.

Now, I realize that Matt Dowd has been critical of his former boss, and can't be described as a reflexive Republican ideologue. But that hardly improves the "balance" of the panel -- two conservatives, a liberal, and an ABC pundit who was the chief campaign strategist for Bush/Cheney in 2004.

Typical.

POORLY TIMED ATTACKS.... I can't relate to the right's hatred of Sen.-Elect Al Franken (D-Minn.), but it's hard not to notice the conservative vitriol toward the Senate's newest member in the wake of this week's ruling from the Minnesota Supreme Court.

Various Fox News personalities are livid about Franken's win. Limbaugh is enraged. Even one of Franken's Republican colleagues, Sen. James Inhofe (R) of Oklahoma, is going after Franken before he even steps foot on the chamber floor.

With the criticism continuing yesterday, Mori Dinauer raised a good point.

Even stranger than Republican actors-turned-politicians criticizing Al Franken for being an actor-turned-politician is why they're making this argument now. It didn't work during the election. It didn't bear on the recount and court challenges. It's not going to change the fact that Franken's going to be sworn in on Tuesday. Oh, and there's the fact that he's probably wonkier than most members of the Senate in the first place.

Attacking Franken last year -- you know, during the campaign -- made sense. Far-right Republicans didn't want to see Minnesotans vote for him, so it stands to reason they would encourage voters not to.

But therein lies the point. The election's over, and Franken won. Glenn Beck has spent several days this week saying Franken doesn't belong in the Senate. I completely disagree, but either way, isn't that an argument to be raised in the October before the election, not the July after it?

A RARE CONSEQUENCE FOR LYING.... The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) this week launched a new attack ad, going after freshman Rep. Tom Perriello (D-Va.) for his vote to combat global warming last week. Perriello eked out a very narrow win last November in GOP-leaning district, and Republicans hope early attacks like these will weaken him in advance of next year's midterms.

The problem, of course, is that the NRCC's ad is strikingly dishonest. Political advertising, almost as a rule, takes some liberties, but the NRCC ad is almost comical in its mendacity. By any reasonable measure, Republicans decided to lie to the public, in the hopes that voters wouldn't know the difference.

To its credit, a local television station has decided not to air the deceptive ad.

Congressional Republicans were dealt a setback Thursday in their attempt to punish Democrats in swing districts for voting for climate change legislation in the House last week.

WDBJ-TV, a Roanoke television station, will not air a National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) ad attacking freshman Rep. Tom Perriello (D-Va.), citing factual inaccuracies, according to Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee communications director Jen Crider. A source familiar with the station's decision confirmed Crider's account; WDBJ general manager Jeff Marks confirmed that the ad would not run, but declined to say why.

Marks would only say that the station "looked into the complaints" about the ad's obvious lies, and decided to pull it from the air.

Good for WDBJ. I can appreciate why individual stations would be reluctant to start scrutinizing advertising content, but outfits like the NRCC exploit that reluctance. Indeed, the campaign committee counts on this dynamic to get blatantly dishonest ads in front of the public.

There are rarely consequences for lying in political commercials. This is a partial victory for reality -- "partial" because other local stations are still airing the ad -- but under the circumstances, it's nevertheless encouraging.