My listserv usually lets me get away with about 2,000 words in the Rightsided Newsletter, and today’s went to about 2,130 (even leaving out the Davis material which I’ll put in here later). My first attempt was sent back to me with an admonition about sending excessively lengthy material, so I excised the short paragraph from the “THE REST…” potpourri section.

On Fox News Sunday, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Dick Lugar (R-Illinois) expressed some additional interesting sentiments. On the House of Saud’s enigmatic relationship with Osama bin Laden, the chairman offered: “The Saudis, in their own pragmatic way, have dealt with it.” Asked if he thought the House of Saud had knowledge of al Qaeda’s ongoing operations, Lugar said: “I believe they do.” On North Korea, he thinks supreme dictator Kim Chong-il might take this to war, but he did qualify: “I don’t think that he will, but I think that he’ll continue his nuclear program.” Later on FNS, former Clinton U.N. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke was confident that Kim would not dare move to war. He knows we have too many forces and too much force in on the peninsula and in the region to try anything so stupid. The Bush Administration seems to think the same thing, given the difference in the U.N. treatment of Saddam versus that of North Korea. The North Koreans have a different agenda.

I’ll post from my notes regarding Steph’s chat with Joe Davis later this afternoon.