The Washington Post reports that the Senate has managed to pass a bill limiting the amount of influence lobbyists possess on Capitol Hill.  While the bill does not go as far as was promised by Democrats during the election, it is definitely a positive and much-needed step in the right direction.  When lobbyists use money to influence Congressional votes, the word that comes to my mind is “bribery.”

There are two downsides, though.  First, in order to get a vote on this bill, Senate Democrats made it more difficult to pass the minimum-wage hike that is coming from the House.  Republicans in the Senate had attempted to kill the lobbying measure by attaching an amendment to the bill that would give the president a line-item veto on spending bills – this would never have passed through the Congress (or the judiciary, but that’s another story).  The line-item veto amendment will now be considered in conjunction with the minimum-wage increase, casting a shadow over that bill’s fate.

Second, the House also must pass the anti-lobbying bill for it to become law.  There is speculation that the House will not agree to all of the reforms it proposes.  What we can expect is a more watered-down version to finally become law.  Even that would be a step in the right direction, but definitely less than this voter expected to see.

Dan doesn’t get much into international politics on this site (other than Iraq, of course), but this bears mentioning.

The Chinese military has secretly targeted American satellites with lasers to disable their surveillance capabilities. I often wonder why more attention isn’t paid to the growing threat that the Chinese pose to U.S. security and economic interests. Iraq, Iran, North Korea… combined they are nothing next to the potential foe that exists in the land of 1.4 billion people. If there is any world power capable of mounting a serious challenge to the United States in the next 20 years, it is China. As to whether China is willing to do so, there a bit of circumstantial evidence that says yes.

It is reported that the Bush administration has known that this was occurring for a few years. It was kept secret, however, in the hopes that China could be persuaded to join us the wars of the Middle East. Keeping this activity a secret can only embolden the Chinese government.

President Bush told us that the declassified NIE report would cure us of our naivete and set the record straight on Iraq’s role in global jihadism. Survey says…

The Iraq conflict has become the “cause celebre” for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement. BBC

So we’ve got that going for us. Which is nice.

The report does go on to suggest that victory in Iraq would seriously harm the jihadist movement. Bush will point this out as support for his policies. If we don’t “stay the course” we will only make matters worse. What he will forget to mention is that this all would have been a moot point if we’d never gone into Iraq in the first place. We wouldn’t be stuck in this catch-22 if the Bush administration hadn’t waged an all-out war of lies to “persuade” the people to accept its war.

In other news:

Congresswoman Jane Harman said there was a second NIE focused purely on Iraq.

“I hear it paints a grim picture,” she said. “And because it does, I am told it is being held until after the November elections.” BBC

Can’t wait to see just how naive Ms. Harman is, believing that Iraq could ever be described as grim.