Who Wilson Would Sue and Why

Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:

Retired General and FOX News senior military analyst Paul Vallely is calling on former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson to apologize for calling him a liar after Vallely said Wilson told him his wife worked for the CIA long before her CIA work was mentioned in a Robert Novak column.

Wilson's lawyers have demanded a retraction from Vallely and apparently accidentally sent him an e-mail from Wilson to his attorneys, in which Wilson called the general's claim "a bald faced lie," and asked, "Can we sue?"

General Vallely, by the way, isn't the first to call Valerie Plame's job at the CIA an open secret. In 2003, NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell said Plame's CIA job had been "widely known among those of us who cover the intelligence community."

Bad News?

The president's job approval has fallen to record lows and the latest Pew poll may help explain why. It asks Americans to name the first story that comes to mind when thinking about what's been in the news. The largest number, 19 percent of respondents cited stories about Iraq and military casualties. Fourteen percent listed recent hurricanes and the government's response to them. And 11 percent, including 19 percent who turn to the Internet for their news, named the CIA leak investigation and Scooter Libby's indictment.

Samuel Alito's Supreme Court nomination seems to be doing well, with 40 percent saying he should be confirmed against 23 percent who disagree. But only five percent cited that as a top news story.

Lifted Language

Ohio Democratic Congressman Sherrod Brown, who plans to run against Republican Senator Mike DeWine in 2006, has mailed a scathing letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee member ripping Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito's labor record. Trouble is, the letter was plagiarized. The Cleveland Plain Dealer says that, when confronted with evidence, Brown's office admitted to lifting a post by blogger Nathan Newman almost verbatim.

A spokeswoman for the Brown says, "The Republicans were rushing to confirm Alito, and we wanted to collect as much accurate information as quickly as possible." But, she says, "we should have cited it, and we didn't."

Liberal Loot

And speaking of the Buckeye State, "Reform Ohio Now" was created to support a slew of ballot initiatives aimed at election reform in the state and calls itself a coalition "committed to improving Ohio's electoral process." But the group's primary financial backers are a network of out of state liberal organizations that blamed "irregularities" in Ohio for costing John Kerry the presidency.

The Toledo Blade reports that 92 percent of the group's funding came from special interest groups outside the state. That includes more than $600,000 from the liberal group, People for the American Way, which spoke out against "troubling election incidents" in Ohio in 2004. Liberal activists at MoveOn.org also solicited donations. Meanwhile, just 4 percent of donations to the Republican "Ohio First," which opposes the measures, came from outside Ohio.

— FOX News' Aaron Bruns contributed to this report