1800 Pennsylvania Ave.

I’m surprised David Schuster actually gets the address of the White House right; but then he receives some help on that from MSNBC, since it is the name of his show.

And yes, I got the address wrong. Kudos to David Schuster.

Yesterday he was blathering on about the insult to our president when an Iraqi newsman threw shoes at him, as if our news media has never insulted that office or its occupant at all, and reported a related incident where crowds threw rocks at our passing troops. He repeated that maybe that was going to become a new trend, where Iraqis threw rocks at our troops.

Juan Cole at Informed Comment, whose blog seems to be well-named in this case at least, got it right. Iraqis threw shoes at our troops.

Schuster is as determined as the RNC to make something out of Obama’s connection to the present Illinois governor. He keeps droning on about how the media would not continue to harp on this if Obama would simply admit that he spoke to Blagojevich and divulge what he said, and then the press could move on to more important things.

Actually, the press can move on to more important things.

It makes perfectly good sense for Obama to decide not to release anything until he has everything, which is precisely what he said from the very start is what he intended to do. If he released a partial list of “who shot John” David Schuster would be on him like white on rice demanding, “Why did you leave this conversation out?”

Having accumulated the information, Obama is holding it at the request of the prosecutor and Schuster thinks he should not do that. Of course, if he released it Schuster would explode in righteous indignation over Obama having jeopardized the investigation.

Schuster also said at one point a few days ago that there is no problem with someone simply going to the press and telling them what went on in the Grand Jury room, that the prosecutor could not tell them not to do that. He should tell that to the people who are presently in jail for going to the press and telling them what went on in the Grand Jury room which is, in fact, illegal.

I was at home and not wearing shoes as I watched, so…

As a side note, Cole reports in that same post that, "Iraqis are deeply suspicious that the US military will not honor its obligations under the Status of Forces Agreement." General Odierno may have contributed to that when he actually said that we would not do so, stating that we would almost certainly maintain troops in their cities past the July 2009 deadline despite the agreement. When asked about the agreement, he repeated that decisions would be made by American military commanders based upon "conditions on the ground."

Barack Obama has so far not commented on Odierno's statement.