How many pinheads can stand on the head of a pin?

We analyze this question in our run-down of Doug Feith's book tour ...

Lanny Davis, we salute you too ....

As both campaigns prepare to make their case for what to do about Florida and Michigan before the Rules and Bylaws Committee (RBC), I wanted to focus your attention on an issue that has gotten too little attention.

The Clinton campaign argues that if the delegates from these non-sanctioned primaries are not seated hundreds of thousand of voters in Florida and Michigan will be disenfranchised.

The other side argues that it is wrong to change the rules of the nomination process after the fact in order to advantage one candidate over another. The latter is an argument I agree with -- but there's no question it lacks the emotive impact of the disenfranchisement argument.

What doesn't get mentioned, however, is this: it was widely reported and understood in both Florida and Michigan that the results of these primaries would not be counted. And based on that knowledge, large numbers of voters in both states simply didn't participate.

If the DNC were now to turn around and decide to make these contests count after all, these non-participating voters would be disenfranchised no less than the people who did turn out would be if the DNC sticks to the rules and doesn't seat any of the delegates. The simple fact is that large numbers of people, acting on accurate knowledge and in good faith, decided that there wasn't a real primary being held in their state on the day in question and on that basis decided not to participate.

Now, the question is, How can we really know how many people didn't show up because they were told it wasn't a real election? There is of course no way to arrive at a direct answer, at least no practical one. But this post by Eric Kleefeld, which builds on a statistical analysis by Gregory P. Nini and Glenn Hurowitz, makes a very strong case that as many as one million voters in Florida and probably more than a half million voters in Michigan did not vote who otherwise would have if they had not believed that the results would not be counted. Take a look.

Just to update your general election scorecards, be sure to note that the administration will be trying to have military tribunals for al Qaeda conspirators timed to run during the final weeks before the November election.

It's looking more and more like Gov. (but for how long) Gibbons (R) of Nevada may be in for a lot of trouble.

Gibbons, you'll remember, gave up his House seat in 2006 just ahead of a federal investigation into whether he "accepted unreported gifts or payments" from a defense contractor who got secret contracts with Gibbons assistance. He gave up his seat to run for governor. But just to up the scandal ante at home, not long before election day, he followed a cocktail waitress, Chrissy Mazzeo, back to a parking garage where, she alleged, he attempted to sexually assault her.

The whole subject became drawn out and messy and picked up several plot twists right out of an Elmore Leonard novel. To make a long story short, Gibbons and Co. eventually made the whole thing go away -- but not without plenty of signs and not a little evidence that local pols, law enforcement and wealthy pals went to heroic and goonish efforts to help their friend beat the rap. For some of the gory and clownish details see Justin Rood's coverage of the story from late 2006 in our TPMmuckraker Gibbons' file.

But now it looks like Gibbons' chickens, and more importantly his philandering, might be coming home to roost. Gibbons is now involved in a nasty and protracted divorce battle with his wife -- one that escalated dramatically after he took the bold step of trying to have his estranged wife evicted from governor's mansion. Dawn Gibbons has hired attorney Charles Dunlap, who seems to have a reputation for liking to fight his cases in the press. And Dunlap is pushing to unseal the court documents relating to the divorce.

But the real news comes in a post today from Justin Rood (now of ABCNews.com's The Blotter). Dawn Gibbons is now more or less openly threatening to air Gibbons' dirty laundry on all his sundry scandals. According to Rood, in a recent filing Dawn Gibbons claimed the public was "misled" about the Mazzeo incident by Gibbons' "handlers, spinmeisters and staff." And her lawyer, Dunlap, is hinting that she might have stories to tell about the earmarks and bribery investigation too.

It's looking like a lot of muck is going to be coming down the pike in Nevada. And luckily, as of Monday we'll again be fully staffed at TPMmuckraker. So we'll be ready.

Two weeks ago, in my farewell post to TPMmuckraker alum Paul Kiel, I noted his critical and too-little-credited role in our coverage of the US Attorney firing scandal. But while that is entirely accurate, I failed to note an important part of the story.

By the time the story really broke open it was just me and Paul working the story at TPM since Justin Rood had already moved on to his current job at ABC's The Blotter. But key work on the story happened before a lot of the public and the rest of the news media really began to take notice -- particularly the initial work of compiling the initial list of seven US Attorneys who we then believed (and now know) had been fired. This was in some ways the Rosetta Stone from which the rest of the story unfolded over the spring and summer of 2007. And Justin was every bit a part of that reporting.

This is of course sort of inside baseball. It doesn't change the merits or implications of the story. But it's one that we're proud of here at TPM and one that's gotten a lot of attention. So I wanted to clarify this point and set the record straight.

This has occurred to me too. In his statement today John McCain said that "we have drawn down to pre-surge levels." But of course that that's not remotely accurate. We won't even be fully down to pre-surge levels this summer. And now in response to criticism on this point, the McCain camp is now attacking the Obama campaign and any press outlet that picks this up for "nit-pick[ing] the tense of the verb."

Now, I think it's true that gotchas over verb tense can often be a bit much. I know from experience that you can say all sorts of funny stuff while speaking extemporaneously. But, c'mon. This is McCain's signature issue. It's almost the totality of his campaign -- Iraq and the purported success of the surge.

This is hardly nit-picking.

Bob Dole pronounces McClellan "miserable creature."

From Roll Call (sub.req.): Hastert to Join Dickstein Shapiro.

(ed.note: In case, you're wondering, it's a law/lobbying firm.)

Folks, I think we've got a live one on the line out in Colorado.

You've already met GOP senate candidate, and former representative, Bob Schaffer. His main claim to fame in this cycle has been stumbling into fulsome praise for the Mariana Islands sweatshop program that revealed his ties to Jack Abramoff, Jack's island sweatshop junkets and generally carrying Jack's clients' water up on Capitol Hill.

Now Schaffer's got another great story cooking that's sure to help his flagging senate campaign.

The nuts and bolts of it basically go like this. A Denver businessman named Bill Orr lobbies Congress and gets a $3.6 million earmark to help develop some new kind of non-polluting fuel. And he sets up the National Alternative Fuels Foundation to get your tax dollars for the earmark. The only problem was that "science" Orr used to get the EPA to fork over $2 million of the $3.6 million of earmarked money was apparently bogus. And as will happen in such cases, it's gotten him indicted by the Feds for multiple counts of defrauding the government.

Now, Schaffer was still in the House when Orr got his prized earmark. And then not long after he gave up his House seat, he signed on as a "director" at Orr's highly-credible-sounding National Alternative Fuels Foundation. In other words, Schaffer was a board member of Orr's outfit/racket during at least part of the time Orr was allegedly bilking the government out of its money.

Part of Schaffer's explanation for this awkward confluence of events, as relayed by his campaign manager Dick Wadhams, is that he got involved with Orr on the recommendation of one of Schaffer's Colorado associates-cum-handlers Scott Shires. But that may not be a great association either since back in 2006 Shires copped a plea over his role in the scam and agreed to testify against Orr.

The jury in the case had been deliberating. But just this afternoon they returned their verdict: guilty on 22 counts. So the outlook is not looking good for Orr. But what about Schaffer?

Schaffer has been accused of no crime, though he may be called to testify at Orr's sentencing. But what about those earmarks? Democrats in Colorado are asking whether Schaffer was the one who got Orr the $3.6 million earmark. And while the case that he did is highly circumstantial and fairly thin at that, no one's stepping forward to say who got Orr the money and Schaffer's campaign is rather conspicuously not answering any questions about the earmarks origins.

One way or another, Schaffer is now at best unwittingly tied to an organization that was based in large part on criminal acts. So that can't be any more helpful than Schaffer's ties to Jack Abramoff.

If you want to see my talk this evening in Palo Alto, the details are here. Free and open to the public.

TPM Media is announcing a job opening for a news editor working in our New York City office. The news editor has primary responsibility for running and updating the news section on the front page of Talking Points Memo (TPM), working closely with the site's managing editor. Key responsibilities include staying on top of breaking news, finding current news items, working with our reporters to find which TPM stories to feature, writing headlines and story descriptions, as well as selecting news photos and video to complement our front page news coverage. Applicants must be inveterate news and politics junkies and be able to work in a fast paced news environment every day. Their job is to make sure our front page is always on top of everything and putting everything in front of our readers' eyes from a witty, TPM perspective.

If you're interested please send a resume, two clips and a letter describing your interest and qualifications for the job to talk (at) talkingpointsmemo.com with the subject line "TPM News Editor Job".

This is a full-time, entry-level position, with health care. Salary is negotiable.

On the McCain/Gramm/UBS front (noted in yesterday evenings posts), it seems that not only is Sen. McCain's top economics advisor, fmr Sen. Gramm, lobby and work for UBS, but according to today's Financial Times the company is advising members of its private banking team not to step foot in the United States in order to avoid indictment.

(ed.note: In cases like this, I want to make a distinction between the particulars of the legal troubles UBS may or may not be in and the political implications for Sen. McCain. Anything tied to a big international banking concern is necessarily highly complex. And we're digging in to try to find you more on that. But as a political matter, for McCain, having your top economics advisor be the vice chairman and (until recently) lobbyist for a company telling a class of its employees to get out of the country for fear of being indicted is simply not a good thing. As I said, we're digging in on this story. But for the moment, I would caution readers to keep this distinction in mind.)

Below I noted MSNBC's story tonight about how fmr. Sen. Phil Gramm (McCain's economics advisor) was advising him on his subprime mortgage bailout policy while Gramm was also a registered lobbyist for the Swiss bank UBS.

Now, it's clear from the report that UBS had some exposure on the subprime front. But I wasn't aware of the true extent of it. TPM Reader KB sends in articles Businessweek and Forbes that show just how big a player UBS was. Forbes says that UBS is among the banks worst hit by the global credit crisis, particularly in their direct exposure to the US subprime market. According to Forbes, UBS has some $37 billion in write-downs on assets tied to bad US mortgages. In other words, the bank's very life appears to be on the line in how the US government chooses to handle the matter.

As MSNBC reported, UBS deregistered Gramm as a lobbyist for the company on April 18th, though he continues to serve as a vice chairman of the bank. But that was fully a month after McCain's speech outlining his own approach to the crisis.

Many of the lobbying connections the press has dug up on McCain have been embarassing. But I'm not sure any have really had teeth until this one. After all, how much does the average voter care that Charlie Black represented a lot of foreign dictators? A stench, yes? But finding out that McCain had a major subprime lender bank lobbyist whispering in his ear when McCain told the public that it was basically tough luck if they lost their houses?

(ed.note: Let me clarify one point. UBS was not a bank lending people money for home loans. Their very high level of exposure came from buying paper instruments backed by iffy mortgages. The way this works is that lender company X lends a bunch of people money to buy homes. Then company X packages all that together and sells it to a company like UBS -- which bought quite a lot. There are many more levels of complexity, as I'm sure our banking industry readers will point out. But this is the basic point -- they are heavily exposed to the fallout from the subprime crisis without having been a first order lender themselves.)

For months, John McCain has been bragging on the fact that he's got fmr. Sen. Phil Gramm as his key economics advisor. That's scary enough as it is, if you're familiar with Gramm's policy predilections and legislative history. But now it turns out that Gramm, who advised McCain on his mortgage relief policy and speech, was also a registered lobbyist for the Swiss bank UBS, which is obviously heavily concerned with the mortgage crisis. According to MSNBC, which has just broken the story, UBS only deregistered Gramm on April 18th of this year, which I'm pretty certain was after McCain rolled out the policy that Gramm had a hand in crafting.

If John Hagee is too big a whacko for John McCain, why is Joe Lieberman headlining Hagee's annual shindig in July?

We had so much fun with Scott McClellan. And to think now he's turned around and written a scathing, tell-all Bush White House memoir.

Didn't see that coming.

As we take the day, whatever else we're doing, to honor those who've died in our country's service, let's also remember the tens of thousands of Americans now serving -- right this moment -- in Iraq and Afghanistan -- people who are at once at the center of our national debate and yet, increasingly, as people, invisible.

Yesterday, we flagged the comments of Liz Trotta, a Fox News contributor, joking about wanting to off both Osama bin Laden and Barack Obama. A laugh a minute, you might say. Today she gave what I guess is called an 'apology.' Says Trotta, it was a "lame attempt at humor."

On a slow news weekend, the Sunday show pundits look at Sen. Clinton's comments from every angle ...

High-res version at Veracifier.com.

I speak from time to time in the New York Metro area. But seldom outside of it. But I know we have a lot of readers in the San Francisco Bay area. So I wanted to let you know that I'm going to be giving a Knight Lecture on the Stanford campus on Wednesday of this week (details here). It's free and open to the public. So if you'd like to come by, please do. Or if you have any questions, you can drop me a line here at the comments address on the upper right.

One caveat: I'll be speaking primarily about the state of journalism and the effect the internet is having on it, not politics. So I hope you'll find what I have to say interesting. But if you want to hear how the electoral college results are shaping up you may be disappointed.

This clip is courtesy of diarist Lauren S at Daily Kos. Whatever you think of Sen. Clinton's comment on Friday, set that aside.

Here's Liz Trotta, a Fox News contributor, discussing the incident, first mixing up Osama and Obama, then offhandedly suggesting that "knocking off" both would be great "if we could".

Can you believe it was only six months ago when this joker was the sure-thing 2008 Republican nominee?

On This Week this morning George Stephanopoulos asked Karl Rove if he denied contacting the Justice Department prosecuting former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman. He responded with a textbook non-denial denial. Here's the video ...

(ed.note: Special thanks to TPM Reader GB for the catch.)

There's never been any doubt in my mind that Siegelman was the victim of selective prosecution. Even the government's theory of the main case against him amounted to something that is standard in contemporary American politics and actually much less worse than lots of other stuff that no one thinks twice about. Cracking the nut of White House involvement has always been more difficult; but the evidence for it is substantial.

If Siegelman's and Alabama GOP lawyer Jill Simpson's stories are true, that would make this case the centerpiece example of the corruption of the DOJ revealed by the US Attorney firing scandal. In fact, it would make most of what we know now seem minor by comparison.

Mitt Romney buys a home in La Jolla, California.