Posted by Frank James at 11:58 am CDT

Larry Flynt, the famous pornographer known for his Hustler magazine, is at it again, taking out a full-page ad in the Sunday Washington Post in which he offers up to $1 million for anyone who can document having had a sexual relationship with "a current member of the U.S. Congress or a high-ranking government official."

"Can you provide documented evidence of illicit sexual or intimate relations with a Congressperson, Senator or other prominent officeholder? Larry Flynt and HUSTLER Magazine will pay you up to $1 million if we choose to publish your verified story and use your material. CALL OUR HOTLINE 1-800-251-2714 OR E-MAIL US AT HUSTLER@LFP.COM"

Flynt has made such offers in the same way at least twice before, in 1999 then back in the 1970s.

Flynt claims credit for the resignation of Robert Livingston from the House in 1999. Near the end of the impeachment proceedings against then-President Bill Clinton, Livingston, who had been just become speaker-elect, revealed that he had marital indiscretions and resigned before Flynt could publish an article that would have disclosed that the former lawmaker had affairs with at least four women.

Flynt is obviously hoping for another high-profile trophy, particularly if it allows him to accuse an especially self-righteous politician or policymaker of hypocrisy.

Posted at 7:36 am CDT

Posted by Frank James at 9:11 am CDT

Paul Wolfowitz said something in his BBC interview broadcast yesterday that virtually everyone in the Washington press corps would agree with.

"You don't solve problems unless you expose them." The soon-to-be former World Bank president said this, with no apparent sense of irony, in an interview in which he seemed to blame the media for his unhorsing as the institution's president.

Wolfowitz was talking about exposing the problems of corruption in Third World countries, particularly Africa, where money for important public projects has a habit of disappearing into the private accounts of corrupt leaders.

(From the official Arlington National Cemetery website. "Sgt. Edward Taylor, Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion 3rd Infantry Regiment placing a flag in the ground during Arlington National Cemetery's annual 'Flags In.' Photo by Sgt Parker, US Army, The Old Guard.")

Posted by Frank James at 8:45 am CDT

When President Abraham Lincoln, in delivering his Gettysburg Address in November of 1863, described the dead Union troops who lay in the graves nearby as having given "the last full measure of devotion," he used timeless words that will forever apply to all those in all the patriot graves here and abroad, having fallen for their nation in its wars.

We remember them today. We are grateful to them. And we marvel at their courage.

Posted by Mark Silva at 1:25 pm CDT

Another eight American soldiers died in Iraq today, the military announced, raising the American military's death toll to 101 in May and nearly 1,000 since the last Memorial Day.

In honor of Americans still unaccounted for in this war and in wars past, hundreds of thousands of people assembled outside the Pentagon today, on a hot, sunny and hazy Sunday of the Memorial Day weekend, for the launch of the 20th annual Rolling Thunder, a parade of motorcyle-mounted veterans of the Vietnam War and other conflicts that takes several hours to rumble out and circle the National Mall in Washington, passing the Vietnam Memorial, the White House and the Capitol.

Ray Smith, a Navy veteran of the Vietnam War, came from Chattanooga, Tenn., to make a statement about "the MIAs and the POWs that could still be out there, not just from Vietnam but all wars.'' It's a matter of "not abandoning our warriors, our fighting people. The military, our fighting branch, is what gives us our freedom,'' said Smith, a maintenance man who donned his Rolling Thunder vest and rode to Washington to remind the powers that be that he and his comrades will not be ignored.

"It seems that all your little special interests groups... their issues get pushed to the front,'' Smith said, "and the populace, what they want, gets pushed over... There's a lot of people out here."

They did not pass unnoticed. President Bush, returning from Camp David, made a low circle over the Pentagon lot in Marine One before arriving at the White House to greet the leaders of Rolling Thunder.

With the Pentagon as a backdrop, hundreds of thousands of people queued up in a hot lot this morning for the noon launch of the Rolling Thunder. This and all other photos by Mark Silva

(Also note: The Chicago Tribune offers profiles of the more than 3,800 members of the U.S. armed services who have fallen in Iraq and Afghanistan at chicagotribune.com/soldiers)

Posted by Mark Silva at 10:05 am, updated 12:10 pm CDT

A $100-billion war-bill is bound for President Bush’s desk, ready for certain signing.

And thousands of war veterans, celebrating the 20th anniversary of “Rolling Thunder,’’ will roll into Washington this weekend in commemoration of those who have died, and those still missing.

The president will receive the leaders of the Rolling Thunder brigade of motorcyle- mounted war veterans at the South Portico of the White House on Sunday. The riders of some of the biggest bikes in America will have assembled Sunday morning at the Pentagon, just across the Potomac River, and thundered into Washington.

As the veterans honor the casualties of conflicts past, the president will be equally happy to receive a supplemental war-spending bill for the military missions in Iran and Afghanistan – laden as it is with some other special deliveries: Including a two-year increase in the federal minimum wage, to $7.25 per hour, long sought by Democrats. The White House expects to receive that bill today, and says the president will sign it promptly -- a signing that could come at Camp David, where he will retreat overnight.

Bush has fought for this war money for months, he vetoed the Democrats’ first attempt at attaching timelines for troop withdrawals to a spending plan and ultimately held out for a measure that demands some political "benchmarks’’ of the Iraqi government but carries no restrictions on the U.S. military as it completes a buildup of forces in Iraq.

In Washington, the political fallout is just beginning: Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican seeking his party’s 2008 presidential nomination, and rival Mitt Romney, chiding Democratic senators seeking their party’s nomination – Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois -- for voting against the moneyl. McCain is playing for keeps: Accusing the Democrats of waving "a white flag to al Qaeda.''

Posted by Mark Silva at 6:10 am CDT

A new baby boy stirs in Washington this morning.

And, only in Washington could this birth be construed as political.

Samuel David Cheney was born yesterday at eight pounds and six ounces. He is the sixth grandchild of Vice President Dick Cheney. And he is the firstborn son of Mary Cheney, an AOL executive, who plans to raise the boy with her longtime partner, Heather Poe.

The vice president and wife Lynne briefly mugged for photos with the boy born at Washington's Sibley Hospital nearly 24 hours ago. And that's about as much as they will have to say publicly for now, it appears, about the birth of a child whose impending arrival spurred a political controversy when mother Mary, 38, first publicly discussed her pregnancy in December.

The vice president, his wife and new grandson.

Posted by Frank James at 10:50 am CDT

Al Gore is getting a lot of attention because his new book "The Assault on Reason," is officially out today.

I haven't had a chance to read the book yet but this is how it's hyped, er, described by his publisher, Penguin Press, on a web site that could use some proofreading:

A visionary analysis of how the politics of fear, secrecy, cronyism, and blind faith has combined with the degration (sic. Let's hope the book is better edited than this press release) of the public sphere to create an environment dangerously hostile to reason (sic.)

At the time George W. Bush ordered American forces to invade Iraq, 70 percent of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was linked to 9/11. Voters in Ohio, when asked by pollsters to list what stuck in their minds about the campaign, (which campaign? The 2004 campaign?) most frequently named two Bush television ads that played to fears of terrorism.

We live in an age when the thirty-second television spot is the most powerful force shaping the electorate's thinking, and America is in the hands of an administration less interested than any previous administration in sharing the truth with the citizenry. Related to this and of even greater concern is this administration's disinterest in the process by which the truth is ascertained, the tenets of fact-based reasoning-first among them an embrace of open inquiry in which unexpected and even inconvenient facts can lead to unexpected conclusions.