To Arianna Huffington.

“Hillary Clinton and her advisors apparently don’t want people to know her real story,” Carl Bernstein told me. “That is particularly sad because the authentic picture of her life is so much more compelling than the tired, airbrushed, and sanitized version they keep serving up and refining. The campaign’s official response to A Woman in Charge — even before they had seen the book — is the kind of thing I would have expected from the Nixon White House or the Bush White House, not a Clinton presidential campaign committed to a new openness and transparency.”

The Politico has a story on fmr. Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee’s weight loss, running, and eating right on the campaign trail.

According to Politicalwire:

“A new Iowa poll done for Gov. Bill Richardson of “likeliest caucus goers” shows John Edwards leading with 31%, followed by Sen. Hillary Clinton at 23%, Richardson at 18% and Sen. Barack Obama at 16%.

Likeliest caucus-goers are defined as voters who attended the 2004 caucuses, voted in the 2006 primary, and say they are definite to attend next year’s caucus.”

If this poll is accurate, Richardson has gained 10 points since March.

Fred Thompson, preparing to formally announce his candidacy, leads the pack in the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey with 27% support. That gives him a four-point advantage over former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani who is currently preferred by 23% of Likely Primary Voters. A week ago, it was Thompson 28% and Giuliani 27%. Two weeks ago, they were tied at 24%. Prior to that time, Giuliani had been on top in every weekly Rasmussen Reports poll for five months.

Fmr. Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is at 12% and Arizona Senator John McCain is at 11%.  Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is at 3%.   17% are not sure.

To cut off funding for Vice President Dick Cheney’s office.  The vote was called by Democratic Caucus Chair and architect of the Democratic victories in 2006 Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) in the wake of Cheney arguing that he’s not part of the Executive branch of government.

It now appears that Cheney is backing down.  According to the Politico, “Cheney’s office is abandoning a justification for keeping the Vice-President’s secret papers out of the hands of the National Archives.”

From Political Insider:

“The Wesley Clark phenomenon of late 2003 puzzled me. His military career was exceptional and the value of his service unquestionable, but he simply did not compare to past generals who became president without holding intermediary office, who tended to do things like win national independence, preserve the union, and save the world from Nazis. Beyond his military resume, Clark had the benefit of being very handsome and telegenic, but there was not much else to recommend him.

Of course, at that time, the Democrats were looking for their own Fred Thompson — their frontrunner was collapsing and no clear alternative was emerging. Clark made a game run of it in 2004 — winning one primary, in Oklahoma, by 1,216 votes (if he’d received 9,500 fewer, he would have actually finished third), and then making a polite exit. Four years on, though, Clark still has a lot of fans, and he continues to say he may again be a candidate in 2008.

It’s a bluff. Clark got in late and started off sluggish in ‘04, and he never gained any footing. This time he had four years to prepare and did little. And unlike the GOP side, surveys show Democrats are happy with their options. A mid-June Harris poll and an April ARG poll both showed that if Clark entered the race, he’d draw just 1% of national Democratic support.

Still, in wartime, Clark’s backing could mean a lot more than one percent to a candidate for the nomination. The Democrats’ frontrunners have been cultivating Clark. If he backs Sen. Hillary Clinton, it would bolster her national security credentials and aura of inevitability. If he opted for Sen. Barack Obama, it could start a movement of Democratic bigwigs to that campaign, and would increase the candidate’s stature. If Clark went elsewhere, he could get a current also-ran some needed exposure.

So for Clark, the question is, what does he want? The Pentagon? Foggy Bottom? Or perhaps a warm bucket of spit?”

Young Americans are more likely than the general public to favor a government-run universal health care insurance system, an open-door policy on immigration and the legalization of gay marriage, according to a New York Times/CBS News/MTV poll. The poll also found that they are more likely to say the war in Iraq is heading to a successful conclusion.

They have continued a long-term drift away from the Republican Party. And although they are just as worried as the general population about the outlook for the country and think their generation is likely to be worse off than that of their parents, they retain a belief that their votes can make a difference, the poll found.

More than half of Americans ages 17 to 29 — 54 percent — say they intend to vote for a Democrat for president in 2008. They share with the public at large a negative view of President Bush, who has a 28 percent approval rating with this group, and of the Republican Party. They hold a markedly more positive view of Democrats than they do of Republicans.  Here’s more.

Senator Clinton had a fundraiser last night, in midtown Manhattan, that “featured Warren Buffett, the businessman and philanthropist, as the headliner. He has not endorsed a candidate in the race, and he did not hint at any endorsement for Mrs. Clinton during an hour-long public conversation in which she read questions from the audience and he answered, sometimes at great length.

According to Clinton fundraiser Fred Hochberg (who took notes at the private event), that “Hillary Clinton has the same goals as I do;” “Hillary Clinton is the person to run this country;” “she’s a real bargain and I’m a bargain hunter;” and, referring to the future stocks and bonds markets if Mrs. Clinton is elected, “10 years out they will be far more up than with any of the Republicans who are running now,”" according to The Caucus.  

Today, British Prime Minister Tony Blair relinquished control of government to Gordon Brown.  His final appearance before Parliament ended today with “legislators from both government and opposition rising to give Mr. Blair a highly unusual standing ovation. As he wound up his speech in parliament, Mr. Blair, seen often as something of a showman, declared: “I wish everyone, friend and foe, well and that is that: the end,”” reports The New York Times.

“The phone is so sleek and thin, it makes Treos and BlackBerrys look obese. The glass gets smudgy — a sleeve wipes it clean — but it doesn’t scratch easily. I’ve walked around with an iPhone in my pocket for two weeks, naked and unprotected (the iPhone, that is, not me), and there’s not a mark on it.

But the bigger achievement is the software. It’s fast, beautiful, menu-free, and dead simple to operate. You can’t get lost, because the solitary physical button below the screen always opens the Home page, arrayed with icons for the iPhone’s 16 functions.

You’ve probably seen Apple’s ads, showing how things on the screen have a physics all their own. Lists scroll with a flick of your finger, CD covers flip over as you flick them, e-mail messages collapse down into a trash can. Sure, it’s eye candy. But it makes the phone fun to use, which is not something you can say about most cellphones,” reports The New York Times.

AT&T (formerly Cingular) is the exclusive carrier.  One interesting feature: “On the iPhone, you don’t check your voice mail; it checks you. One button press reveals your waiting messages, listed like e-mail. There’s no dialing in, no password — and no sleepy robot intoning, “You…have…twenty…one…messages.”

Here’s more:

Making a call, though, can take as many as six steps: wake the phone, unlock its buttons, summon the Home screen, open the Phone program, view the Recent Calls or speed-dial list, and select a name. Call quality is only average, and depends on the strength of your AT&T signal.

E-mail is fantastic. Incoming messages are fully formatted, complete with graphics; you can even open (but not edit) Word, Excel and PDF documents.

The Web browser, though, is the real dazzler. This isn’t some stripped-down, claustrophobic My First Cellphone Browser; you get full Web layouts, fonts and all, shrunk to fit the screen. You scroll with a fingertip — much faster than scroll bars. You can double-tap to enlarge a block of text for reading, or rotate the screen 90 degrees, which rotates and magnifies the image to fill the wider view.

Finally, you can enlarge a Web page — or an e-mail message, or a photo — by spreading your thumb and forefinger on the glass. The image grows as though it’s on a sheet of latex.

The iPhone is also an iPod. When in its U.S.B. charging cradle, the iPhone slurps in music, videos and photos from your Mac or Windows PC. Photos, movies and even YouTube videos look spectacular on the bright 3.5-inch very-high-resolution screen.

This morning, Google stock hit an all-time high of $532 per share, up 15% since the beginning of 2007.  Wow.  For those that bought Google stock at its initial public offering in August, 2004 have seen a 525% increase in that investment.  CNN reports that William Morrison, an analyst with JMP Securities, raised his price target on Google’s stock Monday from $580 to $625.

“Morrison wrote in a report Monday that he thinks Wall Street is actually underestimating Google’s growth potential. He currently expects Google to generate revenues, excluding ad sales it shares with affiliates, of $11.8 billion this year, compared to an average forecast of $11.4 billion. What’s more, he is predicting that Google’s sales will hit $16.1 billion in 2008 while the consensus of his fellow Street analysts is just $15.4 billion.   “The general thinking here is that Google’s already large size will likely pose a significant impediment to future growth. A converse perspective, which we hold, is that Google possesses significant competitive advantages that are directly attributable to its size, in particular its computing infrastructure, and that these advantages are likely to drive a higher growth rate for a longer period of time than most investors currently anticipate,” Morrison wrote.”

The stock, despite it’s lofty price tag, still seems like a reasonable investment.  According to the article, “Google trades at the lowest price-to-earnings growth (PEG) ratio, which is often used to measure rapidly growing companies, among the big five Internet stocks. Google’s PEG is 0.9. Only eBay is as reasonably valued on this basis, trading at a PEG of 1 on the nose. IAC has a PEG of 1.5 while the troubled Yahoo trades at a PEG of 1.7. And Amazon trades at 2.2 times its projected growth rate.”

Roland S. Martin of CNN.com has this opinion piece and concludes, “At the end of the day, Michael Bloomberg is simply a rich guy looking to spend what it takes to move into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And that simply won’t cut it with the American people.”

I happen to think Martin’s wrong. With the approval rating of Congress lower than President Bush (who sits at 27% according to the latest polls), Americans may give a third party candidates (especially those with far more presidential credentials than Ross Perot) a look.

Based on these polls, there are plenty of voters who will look for a non-traditional solution. Will Bloomberg be able to generate the same buzz as Perot? I think he already has. He was on the cover of TIME last week, and every major media outlet covered the mere (and many would say rather minor) fact that he left the Republican Party. I think the buzz is already there.

And here’s a thought about the money: so what if he spends $500 million or even $1 billion. He earned it, he pays taxes on it, and he can spend it how he wants. The Democrat and Republican nominees were going to pass on matching funds before Bloomberg even sniffed a run, so that they could raise unlimited amounts of cash. Sure, they’re raising it from other people, but someone please explain to me the difference.

Money’s a plague of American politics, yes. But it’s the system we have, and candidates who want to win have to raise a lot of money. It’s no more Bloomberg’s fault than it was Ross Perot, Steve Forbes, Jon Corzine or any number of the wealthy candidates who have personally financed their own political campaigns.

From Think Progress:

[Former EPA Administrator Christine Todd] Whitman disclosed for the first time that when anthrax letters were sent to NBC headquarters, Giuliani and then-New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik would not allow EPA inspectors to be seen entering the building in their hazmat suits. Instead, a tent had to be set up where they first could change into their gear, “hidden from public view.” Whitman said:

There was concern by the city that EPA workers not be seen in their hazmat suits going in because [the city was] still recovering from 9/11. They didn’t want this image of a city falling apart. I said, “Well, that’s not acceptable, and this is the way we’re going to have to do it.”

From Political Insider:

“My expectation was that [Kansas Senator Sam] Brownback would successfully be able to convince religious conservatives that he had always been what Mitt Romney now purports to be. Brownback is the most vocal and most visible representative of religious conservatism in the Senate, and while he is not well-known nationally, he is among those voters he seeks. But perhaps even Brownback’s admirers fear he could not win a general election.

Romney has managed to persuade religious conservatives that he can be their man; those who are skeptical of Romney are opting not for Brownback but for Mike Huckabee, who has had a string of strong debate performances. It seems Huckabee has won the fight for the conservative-alternative mantle, and Brownback is just being squeezed out.”