From NEWSWEEK's May 7, 2007 issue - Henry Waxman looks like your accountant, but he acts more like a dog with a bone—the hard bone of truth. This short, bald, mustached California congressman is digging up what really happened inside the U.S. government during the early years of the new century. Last week, for instance, Waxman's House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform heard startling testimony about how the Army lied repeatedly to protect its image, covered up those lies, then lied again. Instead of depressing me, the hearings left me strangely exhilarated. Historians will likely see the 2006 midterm election returns as indispensable to their work. Without a change in party control, we would never have a chance to get to the bottom of what has happened to this country.

Remember Cpl. Pat Tillman, the patriotic former Arizona Cardinals defensive back who walked away from a fat NFL contract to join the Army Rangers in Afghanistan? After Tillman was killed in action in 2004, the Army told his family and the country that he had died in a heroic struggle with the enemy. In fact, Tillman was accidentally killed by friendly fire from American forces. Within hours of his death, the Army went into damage-control overdrive, posting guards to keep eyewitnesses from talking, cutting off phone and Internet service to the base and even burning Tillman's uniform before awarding him the Silver Star. His brother Kevin, who was serving as a soldier in the same unit, was kept in the dark. One fellow Ranger testified he was directly ordered to lie to Kevin about what occurred. At Waxman's hearing, Kevin accused the military of "intentional falsehoods" and "fraud." An internal Army probe showed that when Lt. Gen. Philip Kensinger (now retired) said at a public memorial service that Pat was killed by Taliban forces, he knew otherwise.

Kevin Tillman attributes the pack of lies to a desperate need within the Army to avoid more bad publicity after the Abu Ghraib Prison scandal. But that implies this was an isolated case. It wasn't. I did a story last year about a California mother named Nadia McCaffrey who was told that her son, a California National Guardsman, had died in an enemy ambush. It took the Army two years to admit that in fact he was shot in the back by the very Iraqi troops he was training. Such stories have not caused more outrage because of widespread reluctance to denigrate the Army. But the instinct to "support the troops" and avoid Vietnam-era disrespect for the military has left us blind to many abuses.

Read the rest of the column here

For nearly two weeks, John Edwards has been struggling to move beyond the controversy over that pair of $400 haircuts he paid for with campaign cash. But the issue cropped up again last night in the debate at South Carolina State University. Moderator Brian Williams asked Edwards to square his eloquent discussion of the plight of working families with his extravagant expenditure on his coif. Edwards responded that the use of campaign money was "simply a mistake" and that if the question was "whether I live a privileged and blessed lifestyle now, the answer to that is yes. A lot of us do. But it's not where I come from, and I've not forgotten where I come from." After recounting how, as a child, his family once had to leave a restaurant because his father couldn't afford the prices, he concluded, "The reason I'm running for president of the United States is so that everybody in this country can have the same kind of chances I've had."

Edwards had been anticipating a question on the "hypocrisy charge," says a campaign adviser who requested anonymity discussing internal matters. "John showed last night exactly how he's going to handle it" going forward, says this adviser. Namely: to acknowledge his material success and to cast his campaign as an effort to ensure that all Americans are afforded the opportunity to lift themselves up.

That's the tactic Edwards has used to combat another criticism: that his new 28,000-square-foot mansion in North Carolina doesn't exactly jibe with the populist persona he's cultivated. Audience members and reporters bring up the subject from time to time on the campaign trail. Early this month, at a town hall at the University of New Hampshire, a local reporter asked if there wasn't a discrepancy between his house and his message. Edwards grew testy. "I came from nothing," he replied. And because of his upbringing, "I've seen very clearly the struggles people face." Audiences have often appeared to accept Edwards's responses and to give him a pass. But they may not always be so generous. The hullabaloo over the haircuts was damaging. A couple more snafus like that, and voters may start to feel like the "son of a millworker" is ringing a little false.

New Hampshire Sen. John E. Sununu is the “fastest man in the Senate,” an honor he achieved after finishing ahead of his colleagues in a three-mile race last fall. It was a comeback of sorts. He had won the crown in 2004, only to lose it in 2005 after going out too fast and realizing at the mile mark that if he didn’t slow down, he might have a heart attack. The 42-year-old Sununu is younger than most of his Senate colleagues. He told a public policy forum founded by tennis coach Kathy Kemper that he quickly came to the realization that “being the fastest man in the Senate is like being the best surfer in Kansas. It doesn’t carry a lot of weight.”

Sununu is up for re-election in ’08 and is on the Democrats’ target list. He won his seat with less than 55 percent of the vote, and John Kerry won New Hampshire in ’04, which puts his seat in play for the Democrats. During the April congressional recess, Sununu skipped four town meetings, sending staff instead and fueling speculation that he was ducking hard questions on the Iraq War, which he supports.

With the vice president’s health acting up again and his approval rating below even the president’s, the Cheney for President movement is hardly catching fire. But it would seem the embattled Veep has at least one admirer in the top ranks of the Republican 2008 contenders: former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Tuesday night, Giuliani grabbed headlines by suggesting that electing a Democratic president in 2008 could mean another 9/11. “If one of them gets elected, we are going on defense,” Giuliani said. “We will wave the white flag on Iraq. We will cut back on the Patriot Act, electronic surveillance, interrogation and we will be back to our pre-Sept. 11 attitude of defense. The jab was straight out of the Cheney playbook. Recall the vice president’s strikingly similar warning about the Democrats in the 2004 campaign: “If we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again, we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind-set.”

Giuliani’s presidential campaign is already filled with Cheney-esque echoes. Like the vice president, the former mayor often speaks in low tones and offers few applause lines, focusing instead on grim facts and scary hypotheticals. Like Cheney, Giuliani seems to relish tussles with civil liberties advocates over questions of government powers in time of war. “Giuliani’s messaging is ‘9/11 can happen again,'” says one unaffiliated Republican strategist who does not want to be named characterizing Giuliani’s campaign. “Bush did that some but Cheney was the guy who drove the message home. Giuliani cuts out the middle man: He's his own doomsday guy."

The Giuliani camp's response: "For Rudy, how to fight and win the terrorists war on us is not about politics," says Giuliani communications director Katie Levinson. "It is about the stark reality of people wanting to come here and kill us and his long held beliefs about the best way to confront terrorism. Democrats have a different approach and ultimately voters will decide which candidate is best equipped to lead the country."

It may be the most stunning and creative attack ad yet for a 2008 presidential candidate -- one experts say could represent a watershed moment in 21st century media and political advertising.

In January, President Bush sounded almost sympathetic to war critics. In an interview with National Public Radio, he was asked how he felt about the nonresponse from Democrats about his offer to create a bipartisan panel to advise on the war on terror.

“A lot of these folks aren’t happy we’re in Iraq to begin with, and I understand that,” Bush said. “They don’t believe we are going to succeed in Iraq, and I understand that, too. I think what some may be afraid of is, I’m trying to get them into an Iraq-type situation where they are forced to say something they don’t want to say. I don’t know.”

That was then. In the last four months, Bush has moved from understanding the criticism to seeing it as unforgivable.

“People want our troops to come home, and so do I,” he said outside the White House on Tuesday. “But no matter how frustrating the fight can be and no matter how much we wish the war was over, the security of our country depends directly on the outcome in Iraq. The price of giving up there would be paid in American lives for years to come. It would be an unforgivable mistake for leaders in Washington to allow politics and impatience to stand in the way of protecting the American people.”

Why the change?

Is Robert Gates becoming the Paul O'Neill of President Bush's second term? Someone, in other words, who not only can't stay on the same page as the White House, but who may have lost his songbook altogether -as often seemed the case with the former Treasury secretary? Twice now in the past week, Defense Secretary Gates has raised hackles at the White House with headline-making comments on Iraq that sounded a different note from the official line. First, at a time when Bush was hammering away at Democrat-sponsored spending bills that would set a withdrawal deadline, Gates suggested on a trip to Jordan last week that the debate on Capitol Hill over an Iraq withdrawal deadline was "helpful in demonstrating to the Iraqis that American patience is limited." Then, during a stop in Iraq a few days later, Gates said "the clock is ticking" and that U.S. troops would not be patrolling Iraqi streets "open-endedly."

That also seemed to give aid and comfort to Democrats who argue for a deadline. ''Unlike some in your administration who have been playing politics by criticizing the debate in Congress over responsible timelines, Secretary Gates recognizes that debating the timelines is constructive because it exerts pressure on Iraq's leaders to forge political compromises,'' House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other House Democratic leaders wrote in a letter to Bush.

From NEWSWEEK's April 30, 2007 issue: Rahm Emanuel was once a fierce gun-control advocate. As a top aide to Bill Clinton, he helped push the president's assault-weapons ban. At the time, Emanuel argued there was little reason for anyone to have a military-style weapon designed to kill as many people as possible in the shortest time.

Restricting guns is the last thing Emanuel wants to talk about now. An Illinois congressman, he helped Democrats take back the Capitol last year in part by recruiting pro-gun candidates. The effort was part of a larger push to reach out to gun owners who'd shunned the party.

That may help explain the noticeable hush from Democrats in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings. Some Democrats have begun to sound a lot like Republicans on the issue. Emanuel, asked about the party's position on gun violence, borrows a line from the National Rifle Association. "There are successful laws on the books," he says. "They have to be enforced."

Emanuel hasn't gone soft on guns (he earned an F on the NRA's report card). But in a country where a third to a half of homes have at least one firearm, Democrats could no longer afford to let the GOP own the issue. Emanuel says Washington should tackle the problem of gun crime by reaching back to another effort from his White House days—Clinton's program to put more cops on the streets, which President George W. Bush axed.

Read the rest of the column here

Barack Obama announced today that he raised $25 million during the first three months of the year; of that, $23.5 million was raised for the primary. This puts him just $1 million short of the first-quarter fund-raising total Hillary Clinton announced over the weekend. She has so far declined to say how much she raised for the primary vs. the general election (candidates can solicit $2,300 apiece for both). Meanwhile, we'll apparently have to wait until the April 15th filing deadline at the Federal Election Commission to find out how much money Clinton and Obama have in the bank.

To get an idea of how important that second number is, look no further than Mitt Romney's campaign. The former Massachusetts governor outpaced his GOP opponents in fund-raising during the first three months of the year, but he admitted today that he's spent a lot of that money, too. After initially declining to disclose the amount of money his campaign had on hand as of Mar. 31--the first fund-raising deadline of the campaign--Romney told reporters in Iowa on Wednesday that he's got about $11.3 million in the bank. If you're doing that math, that means Romney has spent more than half of the $23 million he raised. By comparison, Rudy Giuliani raised $14 million in primary election funds ($15 million, if you count the money he's raised for the general election) and ended the quarter with $11 million in the bank. (John McCain has raised $12.5 million, but has so far declined to release his total cash on hand.) So, in short, Mitt raised a heck of lot of money, but ended the quarter financially on par with Rudy, who is running about 15 to 20 points ahead of the former Massachusetts governor in the polls in spite of spending very little on his campaign. Suddenly, $23 million doesn't seem all that--though Romney's aides spin it very differently.

Let the bragging begin. Candidates for the White House didn't have to tell reporters how much campaign cash they'd raised until the April 15th filing deadline at Federal Election Commission. But many of the presidential hopefuls just couldn't wait. Within hours of the March 31 cutoff for first-quarter fund-raising, Hillary Clinton announced that she had raised $26 million during the first three months of the year. Add that to the $10 million Hillary already had in the bank, and she reports $36 million in receipts. Her announcement prompted just about everybody else to spill the beans, except for her top competition: Sen. Barack Obama, who is expected to release his numbers later in the week.

How did everybody do? In spite of sagging poll numbers, Mitt Romney topped his GOP opponents, raising $23 million--including a $2.35 million personal loan that his aides say Romney used as seed money to kick off his campaign. Rudy Giuliani, who tops most GOP polls, raised $17 million. As for John McCain, it turns out he was talking a little straight talk last weekend when he told reporters he wouldn't meet fund-raising goals. According to his campaign, McCain raised just $12.5 million during the first quarter, a number his campaign called disappointing. Official numbers from the rest of the pack "including Sam Brownback and Mike Huckabee "are TBA. On the Democrat side, John Edwards, who began the year with about $20,000 in the bank, raised $14 million. Sen. Chris Dodd reported $9 million in receipts "including $5 million transferred from his Senate fund-raising account. Meanwhile, Sen. Joe Biden's campaign has reportedly raised $3 million since the beginning of the year.