Why Would the FBI Break Into a Senator's Home After He Offered Agents a Key?

Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:

Key Point

Republican Senator Ted Stevens has told a colleague that he offered to give the FBI a key before agents raided his Alaska home Monday — but that they apparently preferred to break in.

Idaho Republican Larry Craig says Stevens told him an FBI official refused Stevens' offer of the key — saying the Bureau had ways of getting in. Agents showed up Monday with a locksmith and used that method of entry — in front of the assembled media.

Craig says it is appropriate to question the FBI's motives — "They appeared to stage an event for the sake of publicity ... It would be very intimidating to me."

When Blogs Attack

Liberal blogs have reacted with special outrage to Monday's New York Times op-ed piece by liberal war critics Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution that said the Iraq war surge is working.

Glenn Greenwald writes on salon.com — "For sheer deceit and propaganda, it is difficult to remember something quite this audacious and transparently false."

Logan Murphy writes on crooksandliars.com that the op-ed "uses cherry picked data to give the false impression that there is real progress being made militarily."

And from Duncan Black at the Eschaton blog — "What's amazing how simple it is, how willing our media - universally - are willing to catapult George Bush's propaganda. I do not believe they are all that stupid, so they are willing accomplices in this disgusting game which perpetuates misery, death, and destruction. If our grand poobahs in the mainstream media want to know why us dirty (expletive) hippie bloggers hate them, this is why."

Fenced In

Mexico is urging the U.S. to change its plans for expanded border fences because it feels they will damage the environment.

Mexico's environment secretary says the barrier will place shared ecosystems at risk and threaten migratory species accustomed to roaming freely across the border. A Mexican government report says the use of lights and sonar could affect nocturnal species.

Mexico suggests establishing what it calls "green corridors" without roads — and the use of "live" fences made of cactuses or permeable barriers to allow water, insects and pollen to cross the border. Mexico is threatening to file a complaint with the U.N.'s International Court of Justice if the U.S. does not respond.

Timing Issue

A Hezbollah officer says if Israel would have kept up the pressure on the terror group a little longer last summer — it would have won their month-long war instead of settling for a cease-fire.

The unnamed officer spoke to an Israeli TV station — and said Hezbollah was running low on food and water and facing dwindling arms supplies — and would have surrendered in another 10 days. He says top commanders were told to hide — and foot soldiers were forced to fire rockets from inside heavily populated areas — even though they knew innocent civilians would be hurt.

—FOX News Channel's Martin Hill contributed to this report.