The New York Times reports:

White House officials fear that the last pillars of political support among Senate Republicans for President Bush’s Iraq strategy are collapsing around them, according to several administration officials and outsiders they are consulting. They say that inside the administration, debate is intensifying over whether Mr. Bush should try to prevent more defections by announcing his intention to begin a gradual withdrawal of American troops from the high-casualty neighborhoods of Baghdad and other cities.

Mr. Bush and his aides once thought they could wait to begin those discussions until after Sept. 15, when the top field commander and the new American ambassador to Baghdad are scheduled to report on the effectiveness of the troop increase that the president announced in January. But suddenly, some of Mr. Bush’s aides acknowledge, it appears that forces are combining against him just as the Senate prepares this week to begin what promises to be a contentious debate on the war’s future and financing.

Four more Republican senators have recently declared that they can no longer support Mr. Bush’s strategy, including senior lawmakers who until now had expressed their doubts only privately. As a result, some aides are now telling Mr. Bush that if he wants to forestall more defections, it would be wiser to announce plans for a far more narrowly defined mission for American troops that would allow for a staged pullback, a strategy that he rejected in December as a prescription for defeat when it was proposed by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group.

“When you count up the votes that we’ve lost and the votes we’re likely to lose over the next few weeks, it looks pretty grim,” said one senior official, who, like others involved in the discussions, would not speak on the record about internal White House deliberations. … “Sept. 15 now looks like an end point for the debate, not a starting point,” the official said. “Lots of people are concluding that the president has got to get out ahead of this train.” …

[However,] [t]he calendar may be working in Mr. Bush’s favor. If he can get through the next three weeks without more defections, Congress will recess until September, returning just as the report from Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker arrives in Washington.

Also, the Republican defectors have not agreed on what different strategy they would prescribe, giving the president some negotiating room. But Senator Lugar said yesterday on CNN that he would support a significant withdrawal that left “residual forces” in Iraq to ensure that “the whole area does not blow up.”

That approach would mean abandoning the current mission of using those forces to patrol Baghdad and try to reimpose order, which was Mr. Bush’s stated goal in January.

On a tangentially related note, antiwar demagogue Cindy Sheehan — whose retreat into private life lasted barely a month before she came “out of retirement” to “gather a people’s movement for humanity” in protest of “yet another Bush flagrant abuse of power” (the Libby commutation) — is now threatening to challenge Nancy Pelosi for her congressional seat “if Pelosi does not seek by July 23 to impeach Bush.” Sheehan would run as an independent. She told the AP: “Democrats and Americans feel betrayed by the Democratic leadership. We hired them to bring an end to the war. I’m not too far from San Francisco, so [moving to Pelosi’s district] wouldn’t be too big of a move for me. I would give her a run for her money.”

(Regular readers will recall that Cindy Sheehan bothers me.)

P.S. Seeing as how Sheehan has apparently joined the “post-partisanship” crowd with her conversion to being an independent: how does Bloomberg-Sheehan ‘08 sound? ;) Or better yet: Lieberman-Sheehan ‘08! Heh!

UPDATE: Here’s a helpful summary of the various Democratic proposals to push for an end to the war.

Transformers will set the record for the biggest 7-day opening by a non-sequel with an estimated $152.5 million, beating out the first Spider-Man ($151.6M) and Harry Potter ($129M) movies and The Passion of the Christ ($145M), and settling into seventh on the all-time list behind Pirates 2 ($196M), Spider-Man 2 ($192M), Star Wars Episode III ($191M), Spider-Man 3 ($182M), Pirates 3 ($160M) and Matrix 2 ($153M).

I regard this as very good news, because it means there will almost certainly be a sequel, which in turn means there will presumably be more Megan Fox.

The bed sheets are in the wash, so naturally, Sasha sees this as an ideal opportunity to get as much cat hair as possible on the mattress pad:

Heh. Aww.

Becky’s lingering question about Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: “how bad will Daniel Radcliffe’s acting be?”

As noted in my previous post about early reviews of the film, the Times of London says he’s improved, but “not enough to truly flesh out the character[] and provide the narrative depth that this transitional, plot-advancing film needs.” The reviewer laments that one key Radcliffe scene is “jarringly awful” (which is how Becky and I felt about his performances in several of Goblet of Fire’s climactic scenes). Newsweek, meanwhile, says “Radcliffe is clearly willing and able to take Harry to deeper, darker places, but the screenplay doesn’t give him enough to play off of.”

However, the Rolling Stone review is much kinder: “One of the joys of this film is watching Daniel Radcliffe, 17, grow so impressively into the role of Harry. He digs deep into the character and into Harry’s nightmares. It’s a sensational performance, touching all the bases from tender (Harry’s kiss with Cho Chang, played by the lovely Katie Leung) to fearful (the dreams of death that wake him up in a cold sweat). This is the film where the actors we’ve watched through five films seem to blossom and mature before our eyes.” Time is pretty effusive as well: “Radcliffe measures up to his character; his bold shadings reveal Harry as both a tortured adolescent and an epic hero ready to do battle. All of which makes Potter 5 not just a ripping yarn but a powerful, poignant coming-of-age story.”

Who’s right? I guess we’ll find out in the wee hours of Wednesday morning.

As an aside, I was thinking yesterday about the timing of the fifth movie with regard to the seventh book, and it occurs to me: nobody is going to see Order of the Phoenix on the second Saturday it’s out (the 21st), because they’ll all be reading Deathly Hallows instead. I predict some sort of a record for audience drop-off from first Saturday of release to second Saturday of release.

An interesting column by George F. Will. Michael Dukakis is quoted, somewhat favorably!

An Andrew Sullivan reader responds eloquently to one of the charges that gets frequently thrown around in comments here on this blog: “Bush Derangement Syndrome.”

One of the more frustrating aspects of dealing with Bush apologists is highlighted by the reader accusing you of “Bush Derangement Syndrome“, which is just one of their more desperate methods of avoiding debate on substance. These people are afraid to acknowledge that it is possible, even most likely, that citizens develop animosity towards political figures because of things they actually say and do, not because of who they ‘are’ or which tribe they’re from. But as the last six years have shown, once a person is accepted as part of their tribe, it becomes ‘derangement’ to point out any flaw in that person’s conduct, however insignificant.

You have documented this as an authoritarian impulse in your book, but for many Bush followers it isn’t that sinister. They just like their world clean and simple – My Guys vs. Their Guys. The imperative is to quickly diagnose into which camp the political figure falls, and everything beyond that point is a matter of propaganda and name-calling. It goes without saying that there are numerous examples of this mindset on the Left as well.

Like millions of Americans, I was not a pre-9/11 Bush supporter, but gave his administration the benefit of the doubt to proceed responsibly in the War on Terror. When you swallow your pride like that in the name of comity and love for your country only to see it tossed into the Rove/Cheney bag of dirty tricks, yeah, you can get a little upset.

My opinion is that “Bush Derangement Syndrome” is a real phenomenon, but its prevalence is vastly overstated by some of Bush’s defenders. President Bush has always inspired a uniquely visceral sort of hatred in certain folks; some people really do hate him because of who he is, and irrationally oppose him at every turn, no matter what he says or does. But the “BDS” crowd is a mere vocal minority, whereas the larger group of people who oppose Bush is now a sizable majority, so it’s absurd to pretend that all or most anti-Bush rhetoric can be explained away as “BDS.” Moreover, even irrational Bush-haters sometimes present valid substantive arguments, and it’s a cop-out to scream “BDS” instead of addressing their points on the merits, especially in a public forum like the blogosphere. If Bush’s actions are defensible, why not actually defend them? The BDS crowd will never be convinced, but others might be. On the other hand, if his actions are indefensible, the logical course is to admit that fact, rather than sacrificing one’s credibility by lashing out against those who would dare criticize the indefensible.

Becky blogs some more about her pregnancy and, er, me.

Newington High School junior Amber Polo is one of five finalists in a nationwide competition to have MTV throw her a “Super Sweet 16″ party. The winner will be announced tomorrow. More here.

Margie Kieper is giving up her blog “to more thoroughly immerse [her]self in the tropical meteorological community.” I’m totally bummed — with the demise of Charles Fenwick’s blog (and, before him, Steve Gregory), Margie had become one of my top two go-to hurricane bloggers, along with Dr. Jeff Masters. She was a great source of information and analysis, and her rhetorical flair made her blog consistently fun to read. But I certainly understand how life and blogging can sometimes conflict. Anyway, you’ll be missed, Margie.