With moderate confidence.

Via Eli Lake, who had a separate timely piece this morning quoting experts who think the world should be taking this latest NorK tantrum more seriously than it is. Fast-forward to this afternoon’s House Armed Services Committee hearing with Hagel and Joint Chiefs Chair Martin Dempsey. Lake: According to the [Defense Intelligence Agency] report, “DIA [...]

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"We are not looking for war."

Via CNS News, while Shotgun Joe was busy yammering here about all options still being on the table, Iran was busy announcing that they’re building 3,000 new uranium centrifuges. Uranium enrichment is, of course, the keystone of their nuclear program — but maybe not their only option. Read this interview with UN nuclear inspector Olli [...]

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Awesome.

He’s not random, though. A truly random man wouldn’t have earned the sturdy liberal support that Hagel’s Israel-focused Jew-baiting and left-of-Obama foreign policy brought him. In the end, despite weeks of dirt being dug up, not a single Democrat voted against him at any stage of the process. (That’s not including Reid’s no vote last [...]

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Confirmation next.

I told you the yays would be closer to 70 than to 60. Final tally: 71-27. You didn’t seriously think these losers would go to the mat to block a nominee just because he’s manifestly unqualified, did you? Eighteen Republicans voted yes, according to Fox’s Chad Pergram. The roll of glory: R’s voting to end [...]

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Endorsements.

The cloture vote’s tomorrow. Confirmation seems a fait accompli. Is there no man in all the land who, through his sheer odiousness, can stop this train with an anti-endorsement — a sort of demonus ex machina? Perhaps there is, my friends. Perhaps there is. “Now wait,” Farrakhan told the crowd. “He said this to Aaron [...]

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“He’s probably as good as we’re going to get.”

And so, after days of accusations about what Hagel did or didn’t say at Rutgers Israeli control of the State Department, and despite the nominee’s refusal to let reporters pick through his archives, this guy’s actually gaining votes in the Senate rather than losing them. I understand the argument that the president deserves deference in [...]

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Okay.

How can he be sure? Hagel always looks like he’s been crying. To believe that a professional politician needed it explained to him that the term “Jewish lobby” is problematic, you’d have to believe he’s an abject imbecile. So … yeah, this is actually plausible: “He struck me as sincere, and you know, you have [...]

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Friends.

Hard for me to believe that this will pull the Senate back from the brink of confirming him if Hagel’s own mumblings about the “Jewish lobby” and prior opposition to Iran sanctions haven’t done so already. There’s no claim that he took money for his speech from the Rutgers group that sponsored him; the DC [...]

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"Well, the jackals are in the street tonight."

Via Newsbusters, to give you a sense of how seriously you should take this, until now his most famous accusation of McCarthyism was aimed at Rush Limbaugh for using the word “regime” to describe the Obama administration. Naturally, Matthews himself and many of his MSNBC cohorts had used the same word to describe the Bush [...]

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58/40.

He was one vote short. Republicans Cochran, Collins, and Johanns had all already committed to voting yes so the only mystery was whether Reid could find two more GOPers to cross the aisle. He found one: As expected, Murkowski ended up erring on the side of bipartisanship. Orrin Hatch voted present, which may or may [...]

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Yet.

Don’t get too excited. As I’m writing this, CNN is interrupting its round-the-clock coverage of Marco Rubio drinking water to report a sellout compromise in the offing: Sources in both parties tell me compromise in the works to delay vote on Hagel, but make it a 51 vote threshold not 60. Deal not done yet [...]

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Meh.

Remember when Major Garrett said yesterday that he had it on good authority Collins was a yes on Hagel? That would have put Democrats at 57 votes, assuming their caucus holds together, which means the chance of a filibuster was hanging by a thread. Then I saw this tweet and got excited: WASHINGTON (AP) — [...]

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Hope.

I’m skeptical, but if a guy who’s been reporting on foreign affairs for 30 years (with a Pulitzer to his name) is willing to go out on a limb like this, he must have good reason. I don’t think that a Hagel exit would hurt President Obama much. SecDef nominees have blown up on the [...]

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Nope.

If you watched the Hagel hearing, you know why damage control is desperately needed this morning. You also know why Chuck Hagel’s the last guy you want doing it. Panetta and Martin Dempsey will pinch-hit instead on NBC and CNN. I’m curious to see if Dempsey sticks strictly to defense policy questions or if he [...]

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Smart power.

Hagel’s goal Thursday was to consolidate [his Democratic support] by getting at least one Republican on the committee to come out for him. Democrats hold 14 of 26 seats on Senate Armed Services, and none of them have hinted that they oppose Hagel. It made sense for Hagel to be demure—more sense than it made, [...]

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It's come to this.

You’re better off reading the transcript at Newsbusters than watching the clip, which, for some reason, excludes two of Matthews’s references to “flashbacks.” Halfway through it, I thought he was using “flashback” and “nightmare” as some sort of extremely ill-advised metaphor for what McCain was feeling yesterday while interrogating Hagel. Tasteless, yes, but just a [...]

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Trouble?

There is a way to spin it, actually. You could throw a tantrum over how mean Republicans were to poor Chuck, like Chris Matthews did. But evidently, and uncharacteristically, the White House isn’t going that route. Why not? They’ll never admit that Hagel was a terrible choice by yanking the nomination; there’s also no evidence [...]

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"Name one person, in your opinion, who's intimidated by the 'Israeli lobby' in the United States Senate."

You’ve already seen a bunch of video of Hagel today. Get ready to see a bunch more. As I’m writing this, I’m hearing on Twitter that Ted Cruz is destroying him over America supposedly being the “world’s bully.” This isn’t a confirmation hearing, it’s target practice. The beauty of this clip isn’t just the spectacle [...]

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Yep.

Smart Hagel spin from the White House this morning as the pope of “reasonableness,” a.k.a. fellow Democrat-supporting Republican Colin Powell, emerges to bless the nomination as being officially reasonable. Meanwhile, former Hagel ally turned adversary John McCain will hit “Face the Nation” to explain the end of the bromance and how it really, totally isn’t [...]

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Principles.

I knew he served with distinction in Vietnam. I’d forgotten that he also served with distinction in the war on women. When he announced his candidacy for Senate, Hagel said that he opposed abortion except to protect the life of the mother and in cases of rape and incest. Hagel decided he didn’t believe that [...]

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What could go wrong?

Here’s what I was getting at in the last post about O potentially using Hagel more as a fig leaf for his own hawkish policies than letting Hagel help him to unleash the dove within. To the extent the left still cares about the Bush-ier elements of Obama’s counterterror approach, their chief concern is drone [...]

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Nuance.

Yeah, listen. If we’re going to confirm this guy, let’s please confirm him without sugarcoating his record. Chuck Hagel said Monday an accurate assessment of his record will demonstrate “unequivocal, total support for Israel” and endorsement of tough international economic sanctions against Iran… [T]he fact is that there is “not one shred of evidence that [...]

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The pick.

The White House insists no decision has been made but The Cable, NBC, Fox News, and the Daily Beast all have sources whispering that an announcement is likely to come early next week. Trial balloon to see how Senate Democrats react? For what it’s worth, the reason a lot of outside sources are being given [...]

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Trouble.

The Free Beacon, which has been leading the charge online against his appointment, heard from a source on the Hill yesterday that Hagel might no longer be a frontrunner. Now this, from the AP: [O]pposition was growing among Senate Republicans who held their weekly, closed-door meeting on Wednesday. Lawmakers harbor real doubts about whether Hagel [...]

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