Issue 1 is the presidential race, including "e-mailgate" and McCain's return to the Senate. Issue 2 is the Russian elections. Issue 3 is Catholic politics, including the pope's visit to Israel and the appointment of a Catholic chaplain in the House of Representatives.

The pundits reflect on John McCain's return to the Senate. McCain now has a national following, they note, which is unusual for a senator. (Paul Gigot [PBS's NewsHour With Jim Lehrer] contrasts McCain with Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who is a big shot inside the Beltway but who fizzled as a presidential candidate.) Gigot and Mark Shields (NH) note that senators and representatives with unsafe seats want McCain--and not the Republican leadership--to campaign for them this fall. Several talking heads call Bush's post-victory McCain diplomacy inept. Shields and Al Hunt (CNN's Capital Gang) remark that Michigan Gov. John Engler is trying to deny McCain delegates to the GOP convention even though McCain won the state.

A few pundits touch on Indiana Rep. Dan Burton's House hearings on missing White House e-mails (which were subpoenad years ago). Fox News Sunday's Mara Liasson and Brit Hume say that this affair, as minor as it is, will only keep Al Gore's scandals in the news. But DNC Chairman Ed Rendell (CG) argues that the e-mail "scandal" will turn out to be another "Filegate," in which years of investigation concluded with no indictments. And Al Hunt (CG) remarks that hearings by Dan Burton only tend to make the Democrats more popular.

With Russian presidential elections occuring Sunday, the commentariat makes predictions on the direction of Vladimir Putin. Michael Barone ( McLaughlin Group) and Rep. Christopher Cox (NBC's Meet the Press) remark that Putin's crackdown on opposition media in Russia has not been an auspicious sign. (Asked about this on CNN's Late Edition, a Putin aide says, in so many words, that you have to break eggs to make an omelet.) Lawrence Kudlow (MG) predicts that Putin will become a champion of free markets after the election. Tony Blankley (MG) predicts that Russia will become mildly authoritarian, with occasional market reforms added to the mix. Interviewed on LE, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev says that the Western press is hypocritical to criticize the current Chechen war when it never seemed to care about the first one (1994-96)--which, Gorby notes, Boris Yeltsin prosecuted on a flimsier pretext and with less domestic support.

Everybody praises Pope John Paul II's visit to Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial. Lawrence Kudlow (MG) adds that the pontiff's championing of the Palestinian cause will likely help the peace process. John McLaughlin argues that although charges that Pope Pius XII looked the other way during World War II are overblown, the Catholic Church as an institution does have a lot to apologize for.

Both Mark Shields (NH & CG) and John McLaughlin praise House Speaker Dennis Hastert's belated appointment of a Catholic chaplain--with McLaughlin calling it "a most unexpected lapse into wisdom and leadership" by the speaker. (Shields and McLaughlin have pressed this issue for months.) Dissenters include Paul Gigot (NH) and Kate O'Beirne (CG), who accuse House Democrats of demagoguing the issue, and Bob Novak (CG), who says that the first Catholic chaplain candidate was a liberal.

Russert Drops the Ball (Gasp!)

Last week Pundit Central excerpted  Tim Russert's relentless interrogation of NRA Vice President Wayne LaPierre on MTP. This week Russert is tenacious as usual, but he misses two opportunities to ask follow-up questions in his interview with Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss. When Lott advocates a nine-month holiday on the 18-cents-a-gallon gas tax, Russert asks him, appropriately, how he would pay for the lost revenues. But Russert fails to ask him a more basic question--how the tax holiday would benefit consumers in the first place. (As any economist will tell you, cutting gas taxes will not lower gas prices--the short-run supply of gas is limited, so consumers will simply bid the price back to its original level. Cutting gas taxes will, however, transfer millions of federal highway revenues to domestic oil refiners. [For more detail, read Paul Krugman's "Gas Tax Follies" in the New York Times.]) Later in the interview, Lott inveighs against "taxes that you pay when you die, when children have to pay 50 percent of the value of their estate because their parents worked hard and saved it." What Lott neglects to mention--and what Russert should have pointed out--is that the "death" tax only affects estates larger than half a million dollars.

Last Word

"Missiles are only a delivery vehicle. They have to carry something militarily useful. We know that what Iraq had sought to make--and, indeed, succeeded in making in the past--was chemical and biological substances for carrying in missile warheads. They were well under way, too, to building a nuclear explosive device. Now, I think it would be utter folly, complete folly not to assume that in our absence, in the absence of inspection, with unaccounted for chemical weapons, with the biological know-how, that they are not back on track doing it again. And you put these pieces together, the logic is indisputable. Here they are trying to break out on missiles, on the delivery vehicle. Those have to carry something."

--Richard Butler, former U.N. weapons inspector (MTP)