In spite of the late posting, all of this will be on tomorrow's quiz:

From The New York Times, "The Choice They Made" by William Kristol. The Founding Fathrs are not only still relevant today - we need them more than ever.

From the Wall Street Journal, "The Tragic End of Bush's North Korea Policy" by John Bolton. Read it and weep.

From NRO's The Corner, "Obama Zigzags on Iraq" by Pete Hegseth. At least Obama's about to flip-flop in the right direction. Probably.

From the Wall Street Journal, "Obama's Dry Hole" by the editors. Trying to introduce facts into the energy debate. Silly Journal. (What does Obama need with oil since in his view the gas-less car is only a few years away?)

From the New York Times, "Anxious in America" by Tom Friedman. Sample quote: "We need nation-building at home, and we cannot wait another year to get started. Vote for the candidate who you think will do that best. Nothing else matters." Nothing else matters? Does that mean I can now use my priceless collection of Tom Friedman books on the Middle East as doorjambs? Finally!

Bonus: From the This Ain't Hell blog, "Guantanamo Protest in DC." Behold! The lamest protest in the history of protesting!

Ben Smith reports that Medal of Honor recipient Col. Bud Day, one of the veterans defending McCain's service, was a member of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Smith notes the apparent irony that "The Arizona Republican was among the first to condemn the Swift Boat ads, calling one 'dishonest and dishonorable.'"

But Smith fails to mention is that McCain also told CBS in 2004 that "what John Kerry did after the war is very legitimate, political discussion and controversy."

And if any reporter took the time to watch the actual ads put out by the Swift Vets, he would see that the ads primarily focused on John Kerry's 1971 congressional testimony that American troops tortured, raped, and murdered Vietnamese civilians "on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command."

As Vietnam veteran Mackubin Thomas Owens wrote in January of 2004:

If [John Kerry] believes his 1971 indictment of his country and his fellow veterans was true, then he couldn't possibly be proud of his Vietnam service. Who can be proud of committing war crimes of the sort that Kerry recounted in his 1971 testimony? But if he is proud of his service today, perhaps it is because he always knew that his indictment in 1971 was a piece of political theater that he, an aspiring politician, exploited merely as a "good issue." If the latter is true, he should apologize to every veteran of that war for slandering them to advance his political fortunes.

Barack Obama is going to solve the economic problems of hardworking Americans, according to his new ad "Dignity":

The ad claims that Obama "helped lift neighborhoods stung by job loss." By "lift" does Obama mean consigned to hell on earth?

The squat brick buildings of Grove Parc Plaza, in a dense neighborhood that Barack Obama represented for eight years as a state senator, hold 504 apartments subsidized by the federal government for people who can't afford to live anywhere else.

But it's not safe to live here.

About 99 of the units are vacant, many rendered uninhabitable by unfixed problems, such as collapsed roofs and fire damage. Mice scamper through the halls. Battered mailboxes hang open. Sewage backs up into kitchen sinks. In 2006, federal inspectors graded the condition of the complex an 11 on a 100-point scale - a score so bad the buildings now face demolition.

Grove Parc has become a symbol for some in Chicago of the broader failures of giving public subsidies to private companies to build and manage affordable housing - an approach strongly backed by Obama as the best replacement for public housing.

As a state senator, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee coauthored an Illinois law creating a new pool of tax credits for developers. As a US senator, he pressed for increased federal subsidies. And as a presidential candidate, he has campaigned on a promise to create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund that could give developers an estimated $500 million a year.

But a Globe review found that thousands of apartments across Chicago that had been built with local, state, and federal subsidies - including several hundred in Obama's former district - deteriorated so completely that they were no longer habitable.

Grove Parc and several other prominent failures were developed and managed by Obama's close friends and political supporters. Those people profited from the subsidies even as many of Obama's constituents suffered. Tenants lost their homes; surrounding neighborhoods were blighted....

The campaign did not respond to questions about whether Obama was aware of the problems with buildings in his district during his time as a state senator, nor did it comment on the roles played by people connected to the senator.

Not exactly a chicken in every pot and a Prius in every garage, now is it?

This marks the eighth Democrat to denigrate McCain's military service:

a former Obama adviser and top Democratic voice on foreign policy argued Monday that the former POW's isolation during the Vietnam War has hobbled the Arizona senator's capacity as a war-time leader.

“Sadly, Sen. McCain was not available during those times, and I say that with all due respect to him," said Rand Beers. "I think that the notion that the members of the Senate who were in the ground forces or who were ashore in Vietnam have a very different view of Vietnam and the cost that you described than John McCain does because he was in isolation essentially for many of those years and did not experience the turmoil here or the challenges that were involved for those of us who served in Vietnam during the Vietnam war."

"So I think," he continued, "to some extent his national security experience in that regard is sadly limited and I think it is reflected in some of the ways that he thinks about how U.S. forces might be committed to conflicts around the world."

This morning, the McCain campaign held a conference call to rebut Wesley Clark's statement that John McCain's getting "getting shot down" isn't a qualification to become president. Sen. John Warner said that Obama displayed an "exercise of poor judgment to allow an individual like Clark ... to come in and do this attack." Col. Bud Day pointed out that when McCain was shot down, Hanoi was "most heavily defended city in the world."

At an event in Pennsylvania, McCain responded to the attack:

“I think that that kind of thing is unnecessary,” Mr. McCain said. “I’m proud of my record of service and I have plenty of friends and leaders who will attest to that. If that’s the kind of campaign that Senator Obama and his surrogates and supporters want to engage in, I understand that. But it doesn’t reduce the price of a gallon of gas by a penny, it doesn’t bring us any closer to energy independence, doesn’t keep anyone in their home or address the challenges Americans have in keeping their homes, their jobs and supporting their families.”

Asked if he wanted an apology from Mr. Obama, Mr. McCain said, “That’s certainly up to Senator Obama.”

Obama's spokesman says that Obama "rejects yesterday's statement by General Clark." During a speech today in Independence, Missouri, Obama said:

for those like John McCain who have endured physical torment in service to our country – no further proof of such sacrifice is necessary. And let me also add that no one should ever devalue that service, especially for the sake of a political campaign, and that goes for supporters on both sides. We must always express our profound gratitude for the service of our men and women in uniform. Period. Full stop.

But Clark didn't challenge McCain's patriotism--Clark said that McCain's experience "getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president."

Andy McCarthy perfectly captured the absurdity of Obama's statement on McCain's patriotism: "He's not gonna question McCain's patriotism? What a tremendous concession! Tune in tomorrow when Obama announces he will never question whether Shaquille O'Neal is really tall."

Jim Geraghty notes that Clark is the seventh Democrat to challenge McCain's service. Doesn't Obama need to personally disavow Clark's statement? Or maybe this is the kind of attack Obama had in mind when he pledged: "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”

The words "children's rights" and "discrimination" take on new meaning:

An eight-year-old boy has sparked an unlikely outcry in Sweden after failing to invite two of his classmates to his birthday party. The boy's school says he has violated the children's rights and has complained to the Swedish Parliament. The school, in Lund, southern Sweden, argues that if invitations are handed out on school premises then it must ensure there is no discrimination.

The boy's father has lodged a complaint with the parliamentary ombudsman. He says the two children were left out because one did not invite his son to his own party and he had fallen out with the other one.

Doesn't the Swedish Parliament have better things to do than forcing a couple eight-year-olds to make up? Maybe the answer is no now that I think about it. So perhaps the take away is, as well-adjusted Americans, it never took an act of Congress to secure our invitation to a classmate's party.

Gallup posts new data this morning on the congressional generic ballot that deserves a look. If anything, I’m a little surprised the numbers aren’t worse for the Republicans, given shifts in party identification in the past several years toward Democrats and President Bush’s approval level.

A few points of perspective: First, this spread will likely close as the election approaches--particularly if the presidential contest remains highly competitive. Gallup notes:

Voter turnout typically helps the Republicans narrow any Democratic advantage seen in pre-election polls based on all registered voters. That was the case in 2004, when the Republicans trailed the Democrats by four percentage points among registered voters in Gallup's final pre-election survey, 45% to 49%, but the Republicans went on to win 47% of the national popular vote, and a 30-seat majority in Congress.

Second, the generic ballot is a good, but not perfect, predictor of House seats gained/lost. The question is highly correlated with the average total number of votes each party wins in the aggregate. But due to other variables--like the way congressional district lines are drawn--a party’s average share of the national vote doesn’t always neatly translate to seats gained/lost at the district level. Third, research shows the generic question is more highly correlated with House seats gained/lost in midterm elections than in presidential years.

Still, any party would rather lead than lag when it comes to this generic question. And since 1950, when Gallup first started reporting this data, Republicans have only held an advantage twice (1994 and 2002)--both years saw the GOP win more votes nationally and more House seats than did Democrats.

Using grown-up words on standardized tests in Britain get kids extra-credit, not detention.

Peter Buckroyd, chief examiner of English for the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA), an examination board, said swear words should gain positive marks if the spelling and punctuation is correct.

In one case a pupil who wrote a two-word obscenity in answer to the question "Describe the room you're sitting in", on a 2006 GCSE paper was given two marks out a possible 27 for the expletive, 7.5 per cent, by Mr Buckroyd.

Had he punctuated it with an exclamation mark this would have risen to 11 per cent.

And if he had used three exclamation points, one imagines the AQA would have awarded the boy a passing mark. On math tests, do graders give partial credit to students, asked to find x, who circle it in the equation and write, "there it is"? How many points for YGTBFKM?

In place of a comprehensive energy plan, Barack Obama blames the oil companies for rising prices, alleging that they have the means to increase our supply of oil if only they would drill on the federal lands they've already leased.

"I want you to think about this," Barack Obama said in Las Vegas last week. "The oil companies have already been given 68 million acres of federal land, both onshore and offshore, to drill. They're allowed to
drill it, and yet they haven't touched it -- 68 million acres that have the potential to nearly double America's total oil production."

Today the Wall Street Journal takes on the allegation:

[Obama's claim] assume[s] that every acre of every lease holds the same amount of oil and gas. [T]he existence of a lease does not guarantee that the geology holds recoverable resources. Brian Kennedy of the Institute for Energy Research quips that, using the same extrapolation, the 9.4 billion acres of the currently nonproducing moon should yield 654 million barrels of oil per day.

Seymour Hersh's latest opus focuses on the threat posed by Iran. He cites no reason to doubt that Iran's nuclear enrichment program is strictly for civilian use, and he fails to ask what conceivable reason a country with Iran's oil reserves could have for nuclear power other than to build a weapon. If the Iranian government were peaceful-minded, for example, wouldn't it instead invest in increasing its refining capacity? And perhaps stop saying it wanted to destroy the United States and Israel?

In Hersh's head, the notion that Iran is openly hostile to the U.S., killing our soldiers in Iraq, is something of a mass delusion on the part of the Bush administration. Consider the following paragraph:

[T]he Administration also revived charges that the Iranian leadership has been involved in the killing of American soldiers in Iraq: both directly, by dispatching commando units into Iraq, and indirectly, by supplying materials used for roadside bombs and other lethal goods. (There have been questions about the accuracy of the claims; the Times, among others, has reported that “significant uncertainties remain about the extent of that involvement.”)

The Times article, however, makes plain several points Hersh implies are in dispute. First, the piece confirms, "Iran's Quds Force had developed a formal and sophisticated training program that included five courses on tactics, leadership, training, commando operations and weapons and explosives." Second, it cites interviews with "two dozen military, intelligence and administration officials" in reporting that Iran's "shipments of arms had continued in recent months despite an official Iranian pledge to stop the weapons flow." So what are "significant uncertainties" to which Hersh refers? Well, the article does say the shipments of arms had "not necessarily increased." In other words, uncertainty exists not over whether weapons are being shipped, but whether the rate of the shipments have accelerated.

Setting aside whether this constitutes a "significant" uncertainty, there is also reason to question Hersh's use of the word "uncertain." After all, there seems to be general agreement in the Times account that Iran is involved in shipping weapons to terrorists and training them to go fight U.S. forces, consistently so and despite its promise to desist.

Last week Chinese authorities released Zha Jianguo, vice chairman of the Beijing-Tianjin branch of the outlawed China Democracy Party (CDP). Zha had served out a nine-year prison sentence for "subverting state power." Last week also marked the 10th anniversary of the founding of Zha's party.

During a period of political thaw known as the "new Beijing Spring," the CDP attempted to officially register with the Chinese government. In March 1998, China announced its intention to sign the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, giving hope to the country's political activists. Grossly overestimating the government's tolerance for dissent, on June 25, 1998--as then-president Clinton began his nine-day state visit to China--CDP members in the eastern province of Zhejiang signed and posted on the Internet a declaration announcing the establishment of the party's local preparatory committee. It stated:

All political power can come only from the public and can only be [used] in the service of the public; a government can only come into being according to the wishes of the public and [can only] act according to the wishes of the public; a government is the servant of the public and not the one which controls it.

The crackdown on the CDP began shortly after Clinton's visit ended. Undeterred, CDP members, including Zha Jianguo, continued their efforts to form what would have been the first opposition party in China since the founding of the People's Republic in 1949. By December 1998, when three key figures of the movement--Xu Wenli, Wang Youcai, and Qin Yongmin--were tried and sentenced to lengthy prison terms, CDP branches or preparatory committees had been set up in more than 20 provinces throughout the country.

The arrest and jailing of CDP supporters continued well into 2000. More than 30 current or former CDP members remain in prison or in reeducation-through-labor camps, their names fading from the pages of international media as more attention-grabbing headlines dominate the landscape. Zha Jianguo, for instance, had disappeared from the list of Chinese political prisoners published annually by human rights groups. As Zha's sister lamented in a moving tribute to him published in The New Yorker last year, "the world has moved on."

But Zha Jianguo had long ago recognized that his conduct was placing him at great personal risk. In an interview with foreign media six months before his arrest in July 1999, Zha had this to say:

Democracy is a process, and in that process a small number of people will be sacrificed. We want to use our sacrifice to arouse the people, and we believe that sacrifice is worthwhile.

Last week, German defense minister Franz-Josef Jung announced that Berlin plans to send 1,000 more troops to Afghanistan this fall to support the NATO-led military effort there. This deployment will bring the number of Bundeswehr ISAF soldiers to 4,500, bolstering Germany’s position as the third-largest troop contributor to the Afghanistan mission after the United States and the UK. At the same time, defense minister Jung also said that Germany would cut the maximum number of troops deployed under the separate OEF mandate--which allows Bundeswehr soldiers and several German navy vessels to participate in U.S.-led anti-terror operations in Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, etc.--from 1,400 to 800 this fall. Unlike ISAF, the OEF mission is not specifically covered by a UN Security Council resolution. Furthermore, on July 1, Germany is taking over the NATO Quick Reaction Force from Norway. This is a potentially dangerous, “highly kinetic” rapid-response mission designed to protect ISAF troops against Taliban ambushes.

As required by the German constitution, the strengthened ISAF mandate must be approved by parliament in October. The new mandate will have a 14-month term--rather than the usual one-year duration--in a calculated move to keep the Bundeswehr’s politically controversial Afghanistan mission out of Germany’s next hotly contested general election on September 27, 2009. Last week, the German Bundestag’s budget committee also approved about $750 million in additional military procurement, including 98 state-of-the-art armored “Dingo 2” vehicles that are used by Bundeswehr troops in Afghanistan.

For Chancellor Merkel and her conservative CDU/CSU allies, the beefed-up Afghanistan deployment carries significant political risks. After all, more than two-thirds of the German population are in favor of a swift Bundeswehr withdrawal from Afghanistan. So far, Angela Merkel’s left-wing SPD “grand coalition” partner remains largely supportive of her Afghanistan policy; the same goes for the Greens--even though both parties would prefer to put more emphasis on the reconstruction component rather than the anti-terrorist component of the NATO deployment. For the SPD and the Greens, of course, a sudden populist volte-face is not easy to pull off politically; after all, it was the previous left-wing Red-Green coalition government under Chancellor Schroeder that first decided to deploy German Bundeswehr troops to Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

So far, only the populist Left Party is running on a clear “Out of Afghanistan Now!” platform. For them, this issue provides a golden opportunity to attract far-left SPD supporters as well as pacifist voters from other parties to their ranks. And indeed, the Left Party is surging in national opinion polls (now standing at 15 percent) while the SPD is hovering around an all-time low of about 22 percent.

Joseph Lieberman was on Face the Nation, and the one-time Democrat explained just why he is so disillusioned with his former party and their presidential nominee. “My problem is with the party overall, for sure. In other words, this is a separation that has occurred mostly on matters of foreign and defense policy, where I feel very strongly that the party that I joined when President John F. Kennedy was its leader, a party that believed in progressive government at home and a principled, strong internationalist foreign policy, economic policy, pro-trade; that party is not represented by the leaders today. And that's why I decided to endorse Senator McCain. I did it last December, when all the candidates in both parties were there, and I did it for two main reasons. One is that John McCain is ready to be commander in chief on day one. He knows the world, he's been tested, he's ready to protect the security of the American people.”

Flip flopping is becoming a key part of the election cycle. On Fox News Sunday, Bill Kristol tried to guess the next evolution in Obama’s beliefs. “The next big flip for Obama, and this will make Brit [Hume] even more astonished, will be on Iraq. He’s going to go to Iraq, meet with General Petraeus, decide the surge is working, and walk back from his immediate, unconditional withdrawal. And all of the sudden it’s going to be very careful, gradual, honorable withdrawal.”

Hugh Hewitt, meanwhile, wondered what impact Obama’s lack of consistency will have on a key group of voters. “The Nation and the Huffington Post readers are very comfortable with Obama; it doesn’t matter what he says, they’re going to turn out in huge numbers. What’s important is that middle. And what John McCain did in Lordstown … John McCain said, as he has always said, I’m a free trader. The way to persevere in the economic renewal of America is with free trade. He doesn’t change, he doesn’t shift.”

Meet the Press featured an interview with California governor and McCain supporter, Arnold Schwarzenegger. McCain, the governator said, “is terrific with the environment. He has been there four years ago and stood by my side when I talked about the environment, when I talked about the--fighting global warming and putting together a good energy policy and starting with the green building initiative or start building the hydrogen highway in California and the million solar roof initiative. He was there and he supported me on every step of the way, so he's the real deal when it comes to the environment.”

On CBS's Face the Nation this morning, Obama surrogate Gen. Wesley Clark said of John McCain: "I don’t think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president."

The McCain campaign responded with a statement from Admiral Leighton "Snuffy" Smith:

If Barack Obama wants to question John McCain's service to his country, he should have the guts to do it himself and not hide behind his campaign surrogates. If he expects the American people to believe his pledges about a new kind of politics, Barack Obama has a responsibility to condemn these attacks.

Clark's attack is a bit like saying that JFK's boat getting sunk wasn't a qualification to become president in 1960. Can you imagine the outrage if someone said that Clark's getting shot four times in Vietnam didn't count as a qualification for the presidency?

When choosing a commander-in-chief, most voters do take into account the courage and heroism that candidates displayed while serving their country.

McCain's citation for the Distinguished Flying Cross states: "Although his aircraft was severely damaged, he continued his bomb delivery pass and released his bombs on the target. When the aircraft would not recover from the dive, Commander McCain was forced to eject over the target." Does Clark know this?

Is Clark unaware that McCain won a Silver Star for resisting "extreme mental and physical cruelties" inflicted upon him by his North Vietnamese captors? Or that McCain won the Navy Commendation Medal for declining early release?

The man that Clark supports, Sen.Obama, routinely refers to McCain's heroism.

Shouldn’t Clark apologize personally to McCain? Shouldn’t Obama disavow Clark’s comments?

A Quinnipiac poll shows that majorities in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, and Colorado oppose withdrawing all troops within 18 months. Obama plans to withdraw all combat troops in 16 months.

Earlier this week, an AP poll found that voters think McCain would handle the war better than Obama. The McCain Report predicts the mother of all flip-flops from Obama on Iraq within the next month.

If Representative William Delahunt from Massachusetts had to choose sides in that fight, it seems he would choose al Qaeda over Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. At the end of a televised House Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday, where Addington appeared under subpoena, Delahunt said that he was glad the world's most lethal terrorist organization finally got a glimpse of the low-profile official.

"I'm sure they [al Qaeda] are watching, and I'm glad they finally have a chance to see you, Mr. Addington, given your penchant for being unobtrusive."

You might think that whatever the state of partisan Washington it would be unacceptable for a sitting Member of Congress to hope that al Qaeda gets a chance to see a senior executive branch official, not-so-subtly wishing him ill. Apparently it's okay. Dana Milbank, the Washington Post's resident snarkist who included the exchange in his column, was more outraged that Addington's "unbridled hostility" toward committee Democrats than he was with Delahunt's odious comment.

Delahunt tried to walk his comment back yesterday. His explanation makes no sense. Powerline has more.

An apology -- at least -- would seem appropriate. I'm not holding my breath.

UPDATE: It's nice to see someone else who thinks it's outrageous.

Those who are crammed in under the Obama campaign bus better make room for one more guest. Philadelphia's subtly named The Bulletin (I've never heard of it either) reports:

Gen. Merrill A. McPeak, the most senior retired general advisor the Obama campaign, raised a few eyebrows when he suggested John McCain, the former POW and presumptive nominee, is, shall we say, pleasantly plump.

"He was fresh out of jail, you know," Gen. McPeak told the Washington Times. Both he and Mr. McCain sat in the same National War College class in 1973-74.

"Skinny kid. All beat up of course, physically. But quite thin. They weren't feeding him very well in Hanoi. He's done very well at the dinner table in Washington," the general added.

It's a good thing Obama is so repulsed by even the thought of personal insults inveighing on his upliftingly pristine campaign. If he weren't, can you imagine how ugly his supporters' comments would be?

Yesterday, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff David Addington refused to discuss particular interrogation techniques during a meeting on Capitol Hill because al Qaeda could benefit from such communications being broadcast on television. Democratic Congressman Delahunt replied: “I’m sure they are watching. I’m glad they finally have a chance to see you, Mr. Addington, given your penchant for being unobtrusive."

Delahunt claims he was trying to say "I have a chance to see you," rather than "they." It sure doesn't seem that way when you watch the video.

This wouldn't have been the first time Delahunt expressed a friendly attitude toward our enemies. In the past, he expressed gratitude to Hugo Chavez for impoverishing the people of Venezuela to help the people of Massachusetts.

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Democratic National Convention issued the following mandates:

No fried food. And, on the theory that nutritious food is more vibrant, each meal should include "at least three of the following colors: red, green, yellow, blue/purple, and white." (Garnishes don't count.) At least 70% of ingredients should be organic or grown locally, to minimize emissions from fuel burned during transportation.

The DNC has also ordered baseball caps made of organic cotton by unionized labor and will use "biofuel made from beer waste to power the convention's fleet of flex-fuel vehicles," according to the Journal.

Denver's mayor John Hickenlooper says that the Democrats' green convention is a display of "the new patriotism".

One wonders what Mayor Hickenlooper must think about the patriotism of Republicans gathering in Minnesota. The St. Paul city council has voted in favor permitting bars to close at 4 a.m. during the Republican National Convention, and the RNC spokemsan says Republicans will be "drinking our beer, not burning it."

And what will the Democratic food police think of all the Republicans heading to Minnesota State Fair, where gluttons will be chowing down a few deep fried Twinkies, or, for those preferring lighter fare, deep fried cheese curds and a pork chop on a stick?

Why does the UN need to blame Israel for supposedly violating a truce?

As Ace noted a couple days ago, MSNBC had effectively declared Israel Violates Hamas Ceasefire By Allowing Itself to Be Attacked By Rockets.

Isn't it a bit redundant for the UN to speak out after House of Olbermann has already declared an international consensus?

A new Pew Research study on trends in online political news consumption shows that only 40 percent of all adults report getting news or information about the election via the Internet. Forty percent?

Imagine that. Some Americans aren’t hunched over a computer screen waiting for the next polling update on Real Clear Politics or cursing their Blackberry browser because it’s too slow pulling up THE WEEKLY STANDARD Blog.

But the report also suggests it won’t be long before even more Americans get their political news online. Consider this trend.

At this point in the 2004 election cycle, 31% of Americans had used the internet to get political news and information. The jump to 40% who say this now is even more striking because the population of online political users already exceeds the number of Americans who had used the internet for politics in the entire 2004 campaign. Moreover, the proportion of Americans getting political news and information on any given day in the spring of 2008 has more than doubled, compared with a similar period in 2004. In May and June of 2004, about 8% of adults were using the internet on a typical day to stay in touch with political developments. In April and May of this year, 17% of adults are getting political news online on a typical day.

Pew also notes the growth of two other online political modes--10 percent report using social networking sites for election activities and 35 percent watch online videos (such as on YouTube) about politics. Each of these figures has grown phenomenally.

So even if a majority of Americans don’t do what you’re doing right now, they will be in the next few years--or maybe even months.

Saying the British are wussy is like calling the Italians romantic, the Germans belligerent, the French arrogant. Still, this seems particularly wussy even for them:

Children under the age of eight have been banned from playing in football leagues and cups amid fears they are under too much pressure from competitive parents.

Youngsters can still play matches but results must be kept private and no league tables can be compiled, according to the ruling from the Football Association. And they should not compete in knockout tournaments where trophies or medals are at stake as FA officials fear the pressure could be too great.

The move -- due to be enforced when the new season starts in September -- is aimed at protecting children from pushy parents and aggressive coaches on the touchline, and from peer pressure and bullying.

He added: 'We are trying to create an environment where children can develop their skills and enjoy the game without the pressure of having to get a result week in, week out. Children told us they were giving up football because they were getting hollered at if they made a mistake.

I'm sure David Beckham's parents never "hollered" at him. No doubt it was all hugs and kisses on the field, in front of his mates, that made him the soccer player/underwear model he is today. Goes to show Britain's dystopian future has less in common with V for Vendatta than Walden II.

If only the Taliban had respect for evolving community standards:

Militants in Pakistan have carried out what officials have called a "public execution" of two Afghans before thousands of cheering supporters.

The pair were alleged to have helped an American missile strike that killed 14 people in a border village last month.

Correspondents say that the brazen nature of the killings -- one man was decapitated and another shot -- show the Taliban's growing power.

Never mind those pesky missiles being fired into Israel. Never mind that Hamas refuses to do anything to stop Fatah from firing them. The UN says Israel has violated the truce:

UN records 7 incidents of IDF soldiers attempting to drive Palestinian farmers away from border fence by shooting at them. Only one offence marked against Palestinians for firing on Sderot; report does not include most recent rocket fire.

Since it went into effect last week, at least eight violations of the new ceasefire agreement with Hamas and the Palestinian factions have been recorded, a UN source told Ynet on Thursday. According to the source, seven violations were committed by the IDF, while the Palestinians are responsible for just one.

However the UN report does not include the Qassam fire launched towards the Negev during the day.

Terrorists in Al Qaeda's "last urban stronghold" in Iraq are without a leader:

The US military in Iraq says a militant killed on Tuesday has been positively identified as the leader of al-Qaeda in the city of Mosul. It said the man - identified by a pseudonym, Abu Khalaf -- had co-ordinated and ordered many attacks. He was shot dead by American troops during a raid on a building in Mosul.

Via HotAir, a new Time poll shows Obama leading McCain by five points--which is almost exactly where an average of polls at Pollster.com and Real Clear Politics show the race. Obama's bounce is real, and he may not be done bouncing, but the Newsweek and LA Times polls showing Obama up 15 points and 12 points, respectively, certainly appear to have been off.

When it comes to endorsing pols, Will Smith is very particular. "Nelson Mandela is kind of the one person I've said yes to," says Smith. "And Barack Obama was probably only the second person that I've really to this level said yes to." Note that world leaders come to Smith—not the other way around. And why shouldn't they? As Smith tells it, "I think I'm a pretty good judge if someone's a good person. So I just lend my support to people that I believe are good people."

Fear not, there are more than three righteous men in the world. Counting Smith's buddies, Earth has its minion. Consider Slick Rick, who Smith sent a letter of support in 2002 when a little misunderstanding resulted in Rick's arrest for illegally trying to reenter the United States. Ever the shrewd judge of character, why wouldn't Smith stand up for this British rapper's right to visit our fair land? After all, it's not as though Slick Rick killed somebody. No, blessed Rick had only pled guilty to and served time in jail for attempted murder.

Lest we forget, Smith also counts Tom Cruise among his dearest friends. I certainly can think of no more upstanding a man in all of Los Angeles. Oh, did I mention Smith is a scientologist?

Umm, no. In a post yesterday, I declined to weigh in on Joe Klein's regrettable smear about the supposed "divided loyalties" of Jewish neoconservatives in order to challenge his claim that Iran is not a threat to the U.S. I wrote, in passing, "Klein is usually more sensible than most of the liberal pundit crowd."

This is not one of those times. Sheesh.

Classy:

The Washington state Democratic Party says it will change a video ad that pictures Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi accompanied by the theme song from "The Sopranos," after a Seattle group said the ad was offensive to Italian-Americans.

The Italian Club of Seattle sent a letter Wednesday to Democratic Gov. Chris Gregoire, calling for removal of the video and asking for state Democratic Party Chairman Dwight Pelz to step down.

The video played the theme song from the hit series about Italian-American mobsters, while criticizing Rossi's ties to the Building Industry Association of Washington, a powerful lobby group in the state. A black-and-white photo of Rossi, who is of Italian descent, is on-screen the entire time.

Here's the ad:

In a year where Democrats see racist appeals everywhere, it's stunning that they would introduce an ad that plays on ethnic stereotypes in such an obvious way. Can you imagine the reaction if Republicans produced an anti-Obama ad with rap music playing in the background?

Polls show incumbent Christine Gregoire (D) with a narrow lead).

Today's handgun ruling from the Supreme Court is good news for women. As Megan McArdle says, the gun issue is a feminist issue because “guns are the only weapon that equalizes strength between attacker and attacked. It's the only time when men's greater speed, strength, and longer reach make no difference; if you pull the trigger first, you win.” She argues that feminists should "push for widespread gun ownership."

I agree with Megan completely. With a gun, a woman has a fighting chance to defend herself in her home, or, if permitted to carry a concealed weapon, on the street. As 126 female state legislators and academics wrote in an amicus curiae brief to the Supreme Court in support of overturning the handgun ban (H/T Volokh Conspiracy), the

prohibition against handguns and immediately serviceable firearms in the home effectively eliminates a woman’s ability to defend her very life and those of her children against violent attack. Women are simply less likely to be able to thwart violence using means currently permitted under D.C. law. Women are generally less physically strong, making it less likely that most physical confrontations will end favorably for women. Women with access to immediately disabling means, however, have been proven to benefit from the equalization of strength differential a handgun provides.

Now that D.C. women have all of their constitutional rights, they can protect themselves rather than relying solely on others. Feminists should be proud. Child rapists may not get their due justice, but perhaps some rapists of adult females in D.C. will now get theirs.

In his response to a letter from ADL's Abe Foxman, Joe Klein doubles down on his claim that "Jewish neoconservatives" are pushing for a "a pre-emptive attack on Iran's nuclear program. Their gleeful, intellectual warmongering ... is nauseating."

Foxman responds here.

On June 20, Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) released a video promoting its attacks throughout the country. In one segment, AQI promotes attacks by two Kuwaitis, one of whom was a former detainee at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The former Guantanamo detainee was responsible for a devastating suicide attack at Combat Outpost Inman in Mosul on March 23, 2008 that killed 13 Iraqi soldiers and wounded more than 40.

I was embedded in Mosul with the U.S. Military Transition Teams that work with mentoring the Iraqi army during this time frame. I was on the scene within an hour of the attack at Combat Outpost Inman, and took photographs and wrote an article on the horrific bombing. Al Qaeda found my images, and incorporated four of the photos in their propaganda video to document the aftermath of the attacks. I took a look at the tape here and discuss the usage of my images in enemy propaganda with Covert Radio’s Brett Winterble.

From the Rosett Report: Condi Rice Wants Us to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love Kim Jong-Il, by Claudia Rosett.

From the Chicago Sun Times: Reporters banned from Obama-Clinton meeting with Clinton backers on Thursday., by Lynn Sweet.

From Confederate Yankee: Obama: The Bus List.

From Middle East Strategy at Harvard: Assign Iran to Israel?, by Josef Joffe (with responses from Mark T. Clark, Mark N. Katz, and Stephen Peter Rosen).

From First Things: The Myth of the 'Evangelical Crackup', by J. Daryl Charles.

John Steele Gordon on Walter Nugent's Habits of Empire: "In all, 'Habits of Empire' is an excellent book as long as one ignores the historical claptrap of the postscript, which is an embarrassment to the author and publisher and an insult to the reader."

Despite reports that the necktie is dead, French President Nicolas Sarkozy is doing his part to ensure the survival of those "lovely silken things" that hang around men's necks. In fact, some female MPs say he is taking his one-man mission to an extreme.

Nicolas Sarkozy's office sent a sleek black case to all MPs, male and female, including a pale grey tie. Socialist MP Aurelie Filippetti proclaimed it "yet more proof of male chauvinism in the political class". Others took it more lightly, gamely adding the ties to their outfits or even wearing them as headbands.

Junior minister Nadine Morano -- one of Mr Sarkozy's most loyal staffers -- defended her boss's blunder by saying that "even for a woman, wearing a tie can be nice," the Guardian reports.

Instead of wearing them as headbands, I have a more lucrative proposal for gender-sensitive French MPs. Auction your pale gray ties on ebay, and donate the proceeds to charity. And perhaps next year, Sarkozy can make amends by distributing handbags or heels.

Amy Winehouse

Nelson Mandela is going to have one hell of a 90th b-day party. Thanks to Will Smith, who is hosting the bash, Mandela will not just have one musical performance to entertain him. Rather, he'll play guest of honor to an entire rock concert. Featured stars include Annie Lennox, Leona Lewis, the Soweto Gospel Choir, and Shirley Bassey. Alas, it appears there will be at least one cancellation. The crack-smoking, headbutting Amy Winehouse has been diagnosed, at the ripe ol' age of 24, with emphysema and is not expected to show.

McCain hits Obama hard:

I applaud this decision as well as the overturning of the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns and limitations on the ability to use firearms for self-defense.

Unlike Senator Obama, who refused to join me in signing a bipartisan amicus brief, I was pleased to express my support and call for the ruling issued today. Today’s ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller makes clear that other municipalities like Chicago that have banned handguns have infringed on the constitutional rights of Americans. Unlike the elitist view that believes Americans cling to guns out of bitterness, today’s ruling recognizes that gun ownership is a fundamental right -- sacred, just as the right to free speech and assembly.

Obama says he supports the decision, and doesn't mention McCain:

"I have always believed that the Second Amendment protects the right of individuals to bear arms, but I also identify with the need for crime-ravaged communities to save their children from the violence that plagues our streets through common-sense, effective safety measures," Obama said in a paper statement. "The Supreme Court has now endorsed that view, and while it ruled that the D.C. gun ban went too far, Justice Scalia himself acknowledged that this right is not absolute and subject to reasonable regulations enacted by local communities to keep their streets safe.

In 1996, Barack Obama supported legislation to "ban the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns," according to two campaign questionnaires, but the Obama presidential campaign has blamed his campaign staff for incorrectly stating his position.

During an April debate in Philadelphia with Hillary Clinton, moderator Charlie Gibson pointed out Obama's handwriting was on one of those questionnaires, and Obama retorted: "No, my writing wasn't on that particular questionnaire, Charlie. As I said, I have never favored an all-out ban on handguns."

This statement contradicted what an Obama aide told Politico weeks earlier. As far as I can tell, Obama has never been asked how his handwriting got on a questionnaire that falsely stated his position on guns. Today would seem a perfect opportunity for some intrepid reporter to ask.

The Supreme Court made a good, constitutional decision today, say bloggers, but yesterday's Kennedy v. Louisiana was a different matter. The Court ruled that convicted child rapists cannot be executed. The case was brought by Patrick Kennedy, who brutally raped his 8-year-old stepdaughter and was sentenced to death in Louisiana. Kennedy appealed, and the Supreme Court struck down Louisiana's 1995 law authorizing the death penalty for child rapists.

At the SCOTUS Blog, Lyle Dennison writes, "As part of the Louisiana decision, the Court made it definite that no death sentence would be upheld for a crime against an individual, when the victim is not killed." Power Line's Scott Johnson concludes, "What punishment is, to use the Court's test, 'proportionate' to the offense. Putting questions of constitutional jurisprudence to one side, it would take an oaf to conclude that incarceration is punishment 'proportionate,' or death disproportionate, to the offense committed by Mr. Kennedy." The Corner's Andy McCarthy adds that the punishment is not proportional "only because we do lethal injection. If we went back to drawing-and-quartering, that might inch toward proportional."

In the opinion, Justice Kennedy concluded that rape does not compare to murder "in terms of moral depravity." At NRO's Bench Memos, Ed Whelan says that in the dissent "Alito makes mincemeat of Kennedy’s claim that rape of a child cannot be compared to murder in its moral depravity and in the severity of injury to the victim and the public. Among his observations: 'I have very little doubt that, in the eyes of ordinary Americans, the very worst child rapists--predators who seek out and inflict serious physical and emotional injury on defenseless young children--are the epitome of moral depravity.'"

Whelan also notes that "when Kennedy declaims that '[e]volving standards of decency must embrace and express respect for the dignity of the person,' the only person whose dignity is the object of his concern is the rapist, not the victim and not other future victims." The Corner's Jonah Goldberg asks, "Are we more decent because we don't consider that a capital offense? I don't really see it."

The McCain campaign should be careful how they handle the Court's decision on handguns. While the Second Amendment in general is a winning GOP issue, the handgun aspects of it are more problematic with swing voters. In the end, this election will be decided by white females and ticket-splitting independents. The handgun issue is no huge winner among this group. McCain should applaud the decision, but tread carefully.

With that, the Cardinal is going celebrate the decision by cleaning his trusty CZ 75 P-01.

Lots of discussion today on what, exactly, Barack Obama's thoughts were on the Heller case and DC gun ban. Back in November, a staffer told the Chicago Tribune that Obama thought the ban was constitutional. The Obama campaign has backed away from that language as "inartful." This past spring, in an interview with Leon Harris, Obama seemed once again to agree -- at least by failing to object to the premise of the question -- that the DC gun ban was constitutional.

But last winter, Obama had a different view. He suggested that the Supreme Court would rule as it did today and indicated that such a ruling would be "a fair reading of the text of the Constitution."

On December 5, 2007, about one month before the Iowa caucuses, Obama took a question on gun control at an event at Cornel College. He brought up the DC case without prompting. Here is the exchange:

What would be your administration’s stance toward the 2nd amendment and gun control.?

As many of you know, there’s a Supreme Court case that’s going to be decided soon about what the Second Amendment means. I taught Constitutional Law for ten years. So I’ve got an opinion. And my opinion is that the second amendment is probably, is an individual right, not just the right of a militia. That’s what I expect the Supreme Court to rule. I think that’s a fair reading of the text of the Constitution. So I respect the right of lawful gun owners to hunt, fish, protect their families. I respect that. Like all rights, they are constrained and bound by the needs of the community. So I have a right to free speech but I can’t just yell fire in this auditorium. I could be prosecuted for that because we’ve got a larger community interest in preventing mayhem. So when I look at Chicago and 34 Chicago public school students gunned down in a single school year, then I don’t think that the second amendment prohibits us from taking action to ensure that, for example, that ATF can share tracing information about illegal handguns that are used on the streets and track them to the gun dealers to find out: What are you doing? And are you just selling them to anybody and filling our hands full of handguns that wind up on the streets and are killing kids? The point being that there’s a tradition of gun ownership in this country that can be respected that is not mutually exclusive with making sure that we are shutting down gun trafficking that is killing kids on our streets. And part of the problem that I have with the NRA is not whether or not people have the right to bear arms but they believe and constraint or regulation whatsoever is something that they have to beat back. And I don’t think that’s how most lawful firearms owners think. I think most of them think: ‘If I’m doing what’s right, if I’m keeping my gun locked down in my home, I understand the safety, I’ve been trained. My rights are not being encroached if we make sure that we don’t have children or criminals or others purchasing handguns causing death and destruction on the streets of urban communities all across the country.’

While consumer confidence continues to plummet, a new report from Pew Research shows that baby boomers appear most affected by the gathering economic gloom.

America's baby boomers are in a collective funk. Members of the large generation born from 1946 to 1964 are more downbeat about their lives than are adults who are younger or older, according to a new Pew Research Center Social and Demographic Trends survey.

Not only do boomers give their overall quality of life a lower rating than adults in other generations, they also are more likely to worry that their incomes won't keep up with inflation -- this despite the fact that boomers enjoy the highest incomes of any age group.

This finding from Pew is consistent with other polling I’ve seen and conducted myself. Those in the 50-64 age cohort have a lot uncertainty about the future--will I have enough money for retirement or to pay college bills, lose my job, etc.--without a high level of confidence about the answers to those questions. Surveys suggest reaching retirement age--and realizing many of those fears were resolved, unfounded or overblown--ameliorates a lot of anxiety and depression. This leaves older Americans a little more optimistic.

So, a message to depressed boomers? Hang in there folks, a better mood lies ahead. And if all else fails, remember, Medicare now covers Prozac.

Looking at this chart of swing states, it becomes clear who John McCain's choice for VP should be. McCain should select Mitt Romney as his running mate. This move would put Nevada in the Republican category and, at the very least, make Michigan a "toss up" if not "leans Republican." To the extent Romney supporters are willing to travel to nearby Colorado and New Mexico, it could also ensure that McCain has a much needed, fairly active get out the vote effort in the southwest.

I never liked Romney. It wasn't the Mormon thing—every Mormon I've ever met has been an upstanding citizen. It also wasn't the slick way he managed to slam McCain for positions he had taken in the months before announcing his candidacy. My problem with Romney was that he embodied the ever-increasing banality of politicians, which I feel duty-bound to resist.

So I am rallying around him why? Not least because John McCain's election will postpone the death of personality for four to eight years. After all, McCain, as a boy, used to hold his breath until he got his way. There is every indication he would sucker punch a recalcitrant congressman once in the Oval Office. For his own part, Romney might even be willing to cut a big check, because McCain's selection will secure Romney the Republican nomination in the future.

The only downside? If McCain/Romney pull this off, National Review's post-election cruise will be short one VIP.

The Supreme Court just ruled in favor of striking down Washington D.C.'s gun ban.

The Court has released the opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller (07-290), on whether the District’s firearms regulations – which bar the possession of handguns and require shotguns and rifles to be kept disassembled or under trigger lock – violate the Second Amendment. The ruling below, which struck down the provisions in question, is affirmed.

Justice Scalia wrote the opinion. Justice Breyer dissented, joined by Justices Stevens, Souter and Ginsburg.

Before the ruling was issued this morning, the Obama campaign disavowed its "inartful" statement last year that "Obama believes the D.C. handgun law is constitutional."

Earlier in the week, Russ Feingold said he wouldn't filibuster the FISA bill--but that was apparently before he got his marching orders from the netroots. His attempt to kill the bill last night failed on a vote to begin debate, 80 to 15. The Huffington/Kos crowd might not approve of the majority of Democrats who acted reasonably, but the rest of America thanks them.

Most of the letters responding to William Kristol’s New York Times column are sent directly to the Times, but occasionally correspondence ends up at THE WEEKLY STANDARD. Here’s a letter about Monday’s column "Someone Else's Alex" that we thought would be of interest to our readers.

When I first saw that MoveOn.org ad, I felt a little manipulated, then frustrated, then sad.

It made me sad because in 1986, someone's baby, we will call him “baby John,” joined the Navy. Did John's Mommy want him to join the Navy? Not particularly. But, John had made up his mind and he was joining the Navy--period, end of discussion.

Fast forward twenty years to June of 2006, at a wonderful retirement ceremony with all of the flags flying, salutes, piping (that's a Naval tradition), and tears. John's Mommy and John's sons and family and friends were all present to acknowledge his twenty years of service to his country.

Tears were shed in joy for the appreciation and gratitude to have had the opportunity to devote half of his life defending freedom and democracy around the world. Yes, you guessed it, I am that John. That day in June 2006 and those tears were the culmination of a life defending a nation that afforded me the opportunity to go to sea and see the world, get a wonderful education, meet some wonderful people, make some lifelong friendships, and do it all in uniform while upholding some of the highest honors and traditions known to all of mankind. This was not a punishment, this was the ultimate privilege.

You see, I am proud of the Flag of the United States of America, and I am proud of the men and women who serve our country.

Thank God that that flag always waved over my head, day in and day out. It was always there and it always reminded me of who I am, what I've done. Sometimes, solemnly, it reminds me of those who have gone before me that are not with us today--but their memories, their contribution to society will always be remembered by their loved ones, friends, and fellow soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines.

You see, service to your country isn't something that fits into every heart very easily because it involves sacrifice, and unfortunately, to so many people today, sacrifice is just a word, but to the men and women in uniform, it means honor, courage, and commitment. Those are words that can't just be thrown around because to live up to them requires genuine integrity and honesty, and all of these things I just mentioned are the values associated with wearing the uniform of any branch of service and they are not something taken lightly. When you commit to the uniform, you commit to the country. So, please, forgive me if I sound a little proud of my service to our country.

Just as I am proud of my son, my baby Alex if you will, who in January entered the service of his own free will. So, like so many others that have gone before him, his journey has begun, and as a mature young man, I feel the decision he has made is that of a patriot--to serve, to love, to defend. He is in very good hands now.

I see the same values and appreciation and gratitude in the faces of the men and women who journey to our nation’s capital everyday to witness the monuments that have been erected in honor of their service--I've seen them cry, sob tears of joy, relief, and sorrow as they recount days gone by, memories of a time they spent proudly serving America.

Their mothers, wives, girlfriends, and family didn't want them to go either, but America called and they responded, because that is what Americans do.

I'm sorry Alex's Mommy won't let him join the military. He may have been the one young Lieutenant who could have saved the lives of his platoon. Or he could have been the commanding officer of a U.S. Navy ship that was the only source of humanitarian relief in a country half way around the world--a country where his actions would be what people would remember of America. Or, he might have served as an Air Force pilot and earned a seat as space shuttle mission commander someday--but, I guess we will never know because Alex's Mommy won't let him join the military.

You see, it's easy to discount the service of the men and women in uniform who provide safety and freedom to our country everyday. It’s easy to diminish the importance of their contributions, because while they are busy defending freedom and democracy, we have the luxury to mock and criticize their service as being unworthy of baby Alex's time.

You see, it really doesn't bother me if MoveoOn.org doesn't want baby Alex to join the military. I'm sure Alex will most certainly find another alternative to fulfilling is his service/commitment to his country.

But don't worry because little Johnny, Tommy, Amy, Sally, and Timmy will always take his place. That is what we do: Men and women from across the country proudly serve their nation with the full faith and support of their families and friends. So if baby Alex will not join the military someday, then someone else will protect his Mommy for him. God Bless America always!

--John E. Boyce

Thomas Friedman writes in the New York Times on the progress of the Iraqi army and government:

What seems to have happened in Iraq in the last few months is that the Iraqi mainstream has finally done some liberating of itself. With the help of the troop surge ordered by President Bush, the mainstream Sunni tribes have liberated themselves from the grip of Al Qaeda in their provinces. And the Shiite mainstream — represented by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and the Iraqi Army — liberated Basra, Amara and Sadr City in Baghdad from both Mahdi Army militiamen and pro-Iranian death squads.

Friedman deserves credit for accurately reporting that the Iraqis are standing up for themselves, but then he writes: "We may one day look back on this as Iraq’s real war of liberation. The one we led five years ago didn’t count."

Really? The U.S.-led war that deposed Saddam Hussein "didn't count" as "Iraq's real war of liberation"? Was it a fake war of liberation?

Apparently Friedman thinks it didn't count because the Iraqis didn't liberate themselves and therefore felt humiliated. And humiliation, according to Friedman, is "the single-most underestimated force in international relations, especially in the Middle East." But do we really know that most Iraqis view the sacrifice of Coalition troops with a sense of humiliation rather than a sense of gratitude?

Moreover, why does Friedman think the Iraqis' feelings determine whether the war was a war of liberation?

The Beltway conventional wisdom holds that to the extent that for Republicans to do well this year, they need to present themselves in the way John McCain always has: as a 'different kind of Republican.' To a large degree, that means associating yourself with McCain and boosting his campaign. But how do you do that on an issue like energy, where McCain is out of step with many Republicans on the issue of drilling in ANWR? Senate Republicans seem to be turning to expanding domestic production generally, without getting hung up on the question of ANWR drilling:

“Republicans will do BOTH — find more oil, use less — Democrats won’t,” according to a presentation, obtained by The Hill, that Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) gave at a closed-door lunch on Tuesday...

The Republican proposal also calls for moving away from the party’s bedrock position of emphasizing oil drilling in the Alaskan wilderness and instead promoting oil-shale extraction and offshore exploration...

About 30 Senate Republicans huddled behind closed doors Tuesday afternoon to craft an energy package they plan to unveil later this week. Items under consideration included the drilling and conservation measures, as well as authorized funding on carbon sequestration technologies, market-driven incentives for renewable energy and an expansion of nuclear power — all part of McCain’s campaign platform.

This approach allows the GOP to stand for expanded supply, without necessarily speaking to the question of ANWR. That still puts many candidates in the difficult position of disagreeing with their nominee on a high-profile issue, which is probably unavoidable.

As for Democrats, they are forced to defend an extreme position, and one which goes against their own rhetoric. While they say they favor a balanced and long-term approach, balance for them means all conservation and no new production. And they reject expanded supply as being too long-term to do any good.

So what's their answer? Attack "Big Oil." But if prices stay above $4.00 per gallon, voters will almost certainly be willing to entertain new ideas--even from the party of "Big Oil."

In this week's cover story, Matt Labash spends some time with Dave "Mudcat" Saunders, who argues that the Democrats' path to victory runs through the Appalachian Mountains:

I decide to fly Mudcat's Webb Coalition idea by some skeptics. One afternoon at lunch, we are joined by his Republican friend and committed McCain voter Tommy Anderton, who calls himself "Mudcat's haberdasher." Tommy owns the downtown Roanoke store--featuring an oversized Rush Limbaugh banner on its wall--where Mudcat buys all his Carhartt shirts and pants. Sipping our iced teas, with Tommy in seersucker slacks and a navy blazer, Mudcat goes to work on him.

What would happen, he asks Tommy, if Obama sat down before ten white Appalachian males and properly explained the problems their communities share, paying respect to the culture, talking of building coalitions and floating similar policies to transform rural and urban America? Says Tommy, "And what magic drug are you going to give Obama to make him say that?"

Mudcat tells Tommy to put that aside and asks if he thinks Obama could turn two of the ten. "No," says Tommy. "Could he turn one of them?" asks Mudcat. "Yes," says Tommy.

"If he turns one of them," says Mudcat, satisfied, "he wins the election." It's Mudcat Math: Turn one out of ten Appalachian male voters into an Obama supporter, and you've not only added 10 percent of the white male vote to the Democratic column but slashed the Republicans' share of it by 10 percent. "It's all about twofers, Brotha." Mudcat admits it probably won't happen, but asks, What if it did? "Y'know Mudcat," says Tommy, "If. If the Pilgrims would've shot a cat, what would we be eating for Thanksgiving?"

For those skeptical that Obama could win with this strategy, consider that in 2004, only 27 percent of white male Virginians voted for John Kerry, as he lost the state to George Bush by 10 percentage points. In 2006, Jim Webb won his Senate race with only 38 percent of white male voters. As Mudcat says, it's all about twofers.

As McCormack notes below, American Prospect wunderkind Ezra Klein made an astonishing assertion regarding the surge yesterday:

The argument over the surge was never an argument positing that more troops couldn't lead to less violence. Folks forget this, but the surge was actually part of Howard Dean's 2004 candidacy, when he was running as an anti-war candidate. In June 2003, on Meet the Press, he said, "I can tell you one thing, though. We need more troops in Afghanistan. We need more troops in Iraq now." I disagreed with him, but that was the plan: More troops, leading to less violence, leading to withdrawal. It was a plan that Democrats, even liberal Democrats, supported. Would Brooks like to credit Dean as a military visionary?

Before charging forward, I should mention that a while ago I swore to ignore Klein’s commentary, regardless of how counterfactual or juvenile it was. I made this commitment at roughly the same time I vowed to stop knocking the walkers out from under enfeebled old ladies as they crossed the street in front of my house. I had come to the realization that picking on the lame and defenseless was wrong.

But Klein’s commentary here requires a response. The Democrats, all of them except Joe Lieberman, spent the months leading up to the surge and initial months of the surge pronouncing it a hopeless failure. On April 18, 2007, months before the surge had even been fully implemented, no less a military authority than Harry Reid declared, “This war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything.”

When Klein is saying the Democrats supported the introduction of more troops to Iraq, he is grossly distorting what actually happened. When Democrats and war opponents referred to more troops, they did so in only one context – they insisted that it would take roughly a half million more troops to make a dent in Iraq. If you don’t believe me, scroll through the archives of Andrew Sullivan, who was a reliable warehouse of anti-surge talking points back in the day.

Because adding half a million troops to the theatre was undoable, the next logical step for Democrats was to insist on retreat and surrender. It’s particularly ironic (and likely disingenuous) that Klein cites Howard Dean as a far-seeing lefty hawk. The whole thrust of Dean’s insurgent 2004 campaign was that he alone among the Democratic candidates wanted to withdraw from Iraq immediately.

Have American Prospect staffers really forgotten all that “I’m from the Democratic wing of the Democratic party” stuff? Have they forgotten the halcyon days when lefties, in an unfortunate act of Lakoffian framing, tirelessly endeavored to rebrand the surge as “the escalation?” Contra Klein, It was never Howard Dean’s “plan” to put more troops in Iraq. Rather, it was his intellectual construct that we needed a lot more troops and since we didn’t have them available, the war had been lost.

Of course, Klein probably hasn’t entered this thicket to rehabilitate Howard Dean’s reputation as a military strategist. After all, there’s another Democrat whose military strategist bona fides are far more in need of buffing.

Barack Obama, again as McCormack points out below, went on record saying the surge wouldn’t work. His rationale? The number of new troops was barely significant. Since Obama has based so much of his campaign on his purportedly magnificent judgment, blowing this major call stabs at the heart of his candidacy. After all, if Obama wins, he will be a wartime president whether he likes it or not. In the event of an Obama victory, we can only hope his future judgment on military issues proves better informed than his past judgment.

Of course, while belittling the surge’s prospects, Obama did what he nearly always does – he repeated trite liberal talking points as if they were hard and solid facts. Whether he actually paused to understand the nuances of the surge before dismissing it is doubtful. In his defense, what would have been the sense of mastering the details himself since renowned military experts like Harry Reid and the New York Times editorial board had already rendered their judgment?

During the early months of 2006, I spent a great deal of time blogging about a book called “Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife” by Lt. Col. John Nagl. It was a how-to guide to counterinsurgency. When Lt. Pete Hegseth, who now heads the outstanding organization Vets for Freedom, went to fight in Iraq in early 2006, he brought a copy of “Learning to Eat Soup With a Knife” (which he had discovered on his own) with him. My point isn’t that I was super-bright or that Pete was super-bright, although Pete is, having overcome his Princeton education rather nicely. My point is that the way forward in Iraq was out there long before the surge began. And the heart of the surge wasn’t the additional troops but a change in tactics to focus on counterinsurgency and away from force protection. Intellectually curious Democrats could have found this doctrine just as the Bush administration eventually (and belatedly) did.

And yet the Democrats whined, “We need more troops” in mantra like fashion, meaning not that the surge would be a success but that the additional "surge" troops in Iraq would be insignificant. Barack Obama’s comment at the time captured the prevailing lefty sentiment rather well: “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

Wow! What judgment!

ADDENDUM: It wasn't so long ago when Democrats referred to the surge as "the McCain Surge." This was not done out of bipartisanship, and neither was it a show of respect for the single membr of congress who did the most to make the surge a reality. It was yet another way the Democrats expressed their supreme confidence that the surge would fail.

Nevertheless, I guess we're all surge proponents now.

The Washington Post’s Shailagh Murray reports that actress Scarlett Johansson’s email relationship with Senator Barack Obama might not be a relationship at all:

“But speaking to reporters aboard his campaign plane, Obama said the actress doesn't have his personal email address. ‘She sent one email to Reggie, who forwarded it to me,’ Obama said, referring to his 26-year-old personal assistant, Reggie Love. ‘I write saying, 'thank you Scarlett for doing what you do,’ and suddenly we have this email relationship.”

Well said, Senator. Scarlett Johansson should be thanked for doing what she does best. Which is act.

Gary Hart in today's New York Times: "The Republican coalition -- composed of the religious right on social issues, the radical tax cutters or 'supply-siders' on economic issues, and the neoconservatives on foreign policy -- has produced only superficial religiosity, a failed war and record deficits."

This entire statement is arguable, to say the least. First, as Thomas L. Friedman acknowledges on the same page, the war in Iraq is not lost. In fact, right now we are winning it. As for deficits, the federal budget has been in surplus four times since 1969, from 1998 to 2001. The surplus occurred while there was a Democratic president and a Republican Congress (and a huge economic bubble). Congress passes a budget; the president signs it. The Republican Congress was just as responsible as Clinton for the surplus. Conservatism does not result in "only" deficits. Plenty of deficit spending has occurred, and will occur, under Democratic presidents and congresses. Barack Obama downplays a balanced budget and suggests his top priorities are making the American economy more equitable and providing health insurance to everyone. Both goals will require deficit spending.

What caught my eye, though, was Hart's assertion that the conservative coalition has produced "superficial religiosity." This makes no sense. What does it mean? How does Gary Hart know which expressions of faith are superficial and which are not? Does he somehow have access to peoples' souls? Has he taken confession? Does partisan affiliation determine whether one's religion is "real" or "superficial"?

Hart should go back to minding his own monkey business.

They're no longer biding their time. The peacock revolution has begun:

A group of peacocks which began attacking scores of cars after years of peaceful coexistence are to be rounded up to stop them damaging the vehicles any further.

"It's like having a crowd of locusts descend. As soon as the first colour began to show through on my begonias the peacocks came and ate the lot. I also planted a bed of parsley, but when my wife went out to pick some to go with fish for tea there were only a couple of battered sprigs left."

Hadley Tudor, who runs the local B&B, said: "The birds wake us up with a terrible din at 4.30am and have eaten all our runner beans and pansies. They would be better off in a stately home."

Jackie Collins, who works in the village shop, added: "They are really noisy, especially in the breeding season, and cause an awful lot of damage to vegetation. They also wander around in the road and are a hazard to themselves and drivers."

Ezra Klein writes: "the argument over the surge was never an argument positing that more troops couldn't lead to less violence."

Not true.

On January 10, 2007, Barack Obama argued: "I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse."

From Pajamas Media: Supreme Court Flexes Its Muscles in Boumediene, by Kenneth Anderson.

From the Rocky Mountain News: Nader: Obama 'Talking White', by M.E. Sprengelmeyer.

From the Chicago Sun Times: Obama Hollywood fund-raiser. Pool reports, HT: Lynn Sweet. (The hors d'oeuvres: "endive spears of brie, toasted almonds and truffle oil; tuna tartare with passion fruit ponzu and macadamia nut on wonton crisp; beef short rib skewers with Asian flavors.")

From the New Republic: Mao Crazy, by Jed Perl. (A taste: "I have studied the catalogue of this collection, The Revolution Continues: New Art from China, and I am pretty confident that it is the most hateful art book published in my lifetime.)

From Just One Minute: Do NOT Mock Obama!, by Tom Maguire.

Ed Whelan on the Supreme Court's outrageous decision that the death penalty is an unconstitutional punishment for those who rape children:

Justice Kennedy’s opinion in Kennedy v. Louisiana was entirely predictable, but that doesn’t make it any less appalling as a matter of supposed constitutional law.

Kennedy’s 36 pages of insufferable blather amount to little more than a declaration that the majority doesn’t think that capital punishment is ever a fair penalty for the rape of a child—“no matter,” as Justice Alito puts it in his dissent, “how young the child, no matter how many times the child is raped, no matter how many children the perpetrator rapes, no matter how sadistic the crime, no matter how much physical or psychological trauma is inflicted, and no matter how heinous the perpetrator’s prior criminal record may be.”

For Obama, it's still a question of debate whether Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon. His web site observes only that "Iran has sought nuclear weapons." Obama isn't even willing to go out a limb and say there is no peaceful reason the country with the second or third largest oil reserve in the world would want nuclear power.

While Obama continues to call for "economic pressure," what kind of pressure can possibly be exerted in light of Iran's recent move to transfer all of its funds to non-European bank accounts where they won't be frozen? Sanctions were the right decision five years ago, but the time for them to work has long since passed. The same is true of diplomacy. For several years, the Bush administration has taken part in a multilateral effort to engage Iran with Britain, France, Germany, and several other countries including Libya. Only one condition has ever been proposed: Iran had to suspend its enrichment program for the duration of negotiations. Now Obama would eliminate even this condition, putting him to the left of Libya and sparking reservations among girly-boy European diplomats.

Mohamed El Baradei, head of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency, said yesterday Iran is six months away from having a nuclear weapon. The choice increasingly looks like one between military action and resigning ourselves to nuclear blackmail. What do you think the candidate who isn't willing to say Iran has an active nuclear weapons program is going to do?

American declinists, who believe that the United States's ability to coerce or persuade other states is on the wane, often point to China's so-called "charm offensive" -- its financial and political support of developing countries regardless of ideology or political repression -- as an example of how a rising power effectively leverages "soft power" over other, smaller powers.

Here's how a recent report on grand strategy from the center-left Center for a New American Security puts it: "In Asia, a rising China's charm offensive is wooing many countries into a tighter embrace while the United States sees its influence on the decline."

Interesting theory. It's also bunk. The strategic situation in Asia is far more complex than a rising China and a declining United States. A host of small, medium, and large powers are constantly re-evaluating their status and their relationships with each other. The United States maintains steadfast alliances with major powers like Japan, South Korea, and Australia. The smaller powers consistently hedge against Chinese ambitions by seeking closer ties to America. Daniel Twining:

Asian leaders broadly seek closer relations with Washington, scold their U.S. counterparts for neglecting the region, are deeply insecure about any hint of an American pullback, and increasingly identify democratic political values as the basis for closer cooperation with America and each other. Popular majorities in countries as diverse as Japan, India, South Korea, Australia, and Vietnam hold the United States in high regard. Even China cultivates America as its most important external partner, while North Korea's totalitarian ruler covets a special relationship with Washington and has developed nuclear weapons in a perverse effort to secure it.

Today brings more evidence that China's "charm offensive" may offend more than it charms. A new report from the Chicago Council on Global Affairs concludes: "In terms of soft power in Asia -- the ability to wield influence by indirect, nonmilitary means, whether by persuasion or attraction -- China ranks well below the United States in the estimation of most of the Asians surveyed."

Boris Johnson

The always colorful and controversial Boris Johnson is embroiled in controversy. Earlier this week, he had to sack an aide who said immigrants unhappy with Johnson's political ascension could go home. (The irony, of course, being that the aide is himself from Australia.) Now we learn Johnson is the subject of a police investigation for possession of a red leather cigar case belonging to Iraq's former Deputy Prime Minister Tareq Aziz.

Johnson took the case when visiting the war-torn country back in 2003 as a journalist. He alleges that he stumbled upon it in the rubble that was Aziz's estate. Perhaps the oddest aspect of news reports is that Aziz has rushed to Johnson's defense:

The lawyer for Tareq Aziz on Wednesday offered to support London Mayor Boris Johnson who is being probed for possession of a cigar case belonging to Iraq's former deputy prime minister.

"I am ready to contact Johnson, stand by him and provide all necessary support in this ridiculous investigation," Badie Izzat Aref told AFP from the Jordanian capital Amman.

"Johnson did not steal or commit any crime, he simply took a souvenir. He has always respected Tareq Aziz, who wishes Johnson had taken other valuable things, like his notebook, which have been seized by the invaders."

For his own part, Johnson has written a hysterical op-ed, calling Tony Blair a war criminal, saying he should be the one investigated and arrested. Perhaps a more effective argument would be to discuss the fact that President Bush has Saddam Hussein's pistol mounted in the West Wing. In fact, it's on the wall of a certain room, adjacent to the Oval Office, made famous by Bush's predecessor. And I think if this certain predecessor were still president, it would be the red cigar case, not the gun, on the wall.

In a close election, even small changes in turnout compared to 2004 could tip the balance in several battleground states and determine the next occupant of the White House. The Los Angeles Times featured an insightful piece by Peter Walsten reporting how the Obama campaign and its outside allies plan to set records in securing a historic African-American vote this November.

Walsten argues the Obama campaign will use its money and technology to boost turnout among African Americans to unprecedented levels:

Obama strategists believe they have identified a gold mine of new and potentially decisive Democratic voters in at least five battleground states -- voters who failed to turn out in the past but can be mobilized this time because Obama's candidacy is historic and his cash-rich campaign can afford the costly task of identifying and motivating such supporters.

He goes on to explain that boosting African-American turnout in five battleground states in 2000 and 2004 would have meant Democratic wins.

In Florida alone, more than half a million black registered voters stayed home in 2004. Hundreds of thousands more African Americans are eligible to vote but not registered. And campaign analysts have identified similar potential in North Carolina, Virginia, Missouri and Ohio.

The strategy makes sense and is unsurprising given the Illinois senator’s performance among black voters in the primaries. But his campaign’s resources and systematic use of technology to accomplish this goal should make Republican strategists take particular note:

What makes the idea of bringing in so many new voters more than just political fantasy is the Obama campaign's deep pockets and the sophisticated apparatus it has begun building to achieve its goals -- using techniques to ferret out and mobilize potential supporters that only a few years ago were the secret weapons of Republican strategists and their ideological allies.

Four years ago, it was President Bush's campaign that used microtargeting to scope out sympathetic African Americans, helping Bush win 16% of that vote in Ohio, up from 9% in 2000. Republican strategists believe the black vote in Ohio provided Bush the cushion he needed to avoid a 2000-style recount battle there. This time, not only are more African Americans expected to turn out, but Obama aides believe he will win more than 90% of those who do.

"Why the rush now to bomb Iran, a country that poses some threat to Israel but none--for the moment--to the United States...unless we go ahead, attack it, and the mullahs unleash Hezbollah terrorists against us?"

So writes Joe Klein over at Time's blog. (We'll leave unaddressed his intellectual flailing on Jews, Commentary magazine, the Iraqi government, 100 years, etc.)

Iran is not a threat to the United States, he assures us. I wonder if Klein thought Iran was a threat on July 24, 1996. The next day Iran sponsored the attack at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. The Clinton Justice Department later concluded: "the Iranian government inspired, supported, and supervised members of the Saudi Hizballah. In particular, … [Hezbollah] defendants reported their surveillance activities to Iranian officials and were supported and directed in those activities by Iranian officials."

As Andy McCarthy has pointed out, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005 declared that his nation was leading a "war" against the "World of Arrogance."

He said: "We are in the process of an historical war between the World of Arrogance and the Islamic world, and this war has been going on for hundreds of years."

He continued: "In this very grave war, many people are trying to scatter grains of desperation and hopelessness regarding the struggle between the Islamic world and the front of the infidels, and in their hearts they want to empty the Islamic world. ... They [ask]: “Is it possible for us to witness a world without America and Zionism?” But you had best know that this slogan and this goal are attainable, and surely can be achieved."

McCarthy also reminds us that Yahya Safavi, head of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, has spoken openly of his strategy for fighting the "enemy" -- American forces -- in Iraq. And that Ayatollah Khomeni recently embraced Iran's "Death to America" slogan. And that Hassan Abbassi, a Revolutionary Guard intelligence adviser said this in 2004.

"We have a strategy drawn up for the destruction of Anglo-Saxon civilization...[W]e must make use of everything we have at hand to strike at this front by means of our suicide operations or by means of our missiles. There are 29 sensitive sites in the U.S. and in the West. We have already spied on these sites, and we know how we are going to attack them."

Since the early 1990s, the Iranian regime (and it's terrorist arm) has had an alliance with al Qaeda that has included training in bombmaking, logistical assistance, and safe haven for al Qaeda leaders. And, as the 9/11 Commission noted: "[T]here is strong evidence that Iran facilitated the transit of al Qaeda members into and out of Afghanistan before 9/11, and that some of these were future 9/11 hijackers. There also is circumstantial evidence that senior Hezbollah operatives were closely tracking the travel of some of these future muscle hijackers into Iran in November 2000."

(For much more evidence of the threat Iran presents, see Tom Joscelyn's excellent study for the Claremont Institute.)

Despite two decades of Iranian aggression, Klein worries about a "rush" to war with Iran. I certainly haven't seen much evidence of this. And nobody I know is "gleeful" about the prospect of using force on Iran. A war there shouldn't be anything but a last resort. But Klein is usually more sensible than most of the liberal pundit crowd, in part because his opinions are often informed by his own reporting. It would be interesting to know whether his military sources -- who have been targeted for the past five years by Iranian-supplied EFPs -- believe that such an application of force would be best understood as the U.S. starting a war or just starting to fight in the one we're already in.

The Obama campaign released a statement this week commemorating the 36th anniversary of Title IX.

Goodness knows the 36th anniversary is a big one. Custom holds that people normally mark that important milestone by exchanging gifts made of heavy water. But the Obama campaign had something even better: Nonsense.

Obama explains that,

When Title IX was passed, many schools had formal or informal policies that suggested no young women need apply. High school girls were routinely barred from vocational education classes. Girls who wanted to play sports were told it was too dangerous, too unfeminine. But thanks to Title IX, we have made much progress. Women now make up more than half of the students in our nation's colleges and universities.

In Obama's reading of history, Title IX seems to have forced the remaining single-sex colleges to go co-ed and to now make women more than half of their students. He doesn't say it, but women also get better grades and more bachelor's degrees than men, too. Why not give Title IX credit for that?

It seems like an oversight, except that Obama then goes on to paint a dark picture of the trials young women still must endure:

But even as these facts speak to the progress that we've made, we know that too many of America's daughters grow up facing barriers to their dreams. Women's sports still often get short shrift in high school and college. High school vocational courses still tend to guide women toward lower-paying occupations. And when Americans need new skills to compete in this 21st century economy, women still make up fewer than one in five of our engineering graduates, and the number entering computer and information sciences programs is on the decline.

Obama doesn't dwell on who's crushing the little gals's dreams, but he does propose a fix:

When I'm President, I'll fight to make sure our female students have equal opportunities from pre-kindergarten all the way through graduate school. I will strengthen Title IX enforcement at the Department of Education. I will support the High School Sports Information Collection Act, which directs schools to make information on equality in athletic programs publicly available, as it is at the collegiate level. And I will direct my Department of Education to help schools take proactive steps to fulfill their Title IX obligations in both the sports and academic arenas.

That's right: A High School Sports Information Collection Act. Now if only the senator would do something about the terrible discrimination which sees boys being shortchanged by college admissions and grades . . .

Here:

The fact that a great many Jewish neoconservatives--people like Joe Lieberman and the crowd over at Commentary--plumped for this war, and now for an even more foolish assault on Iran, raised the question of divided loyalties: using U.S. military power, U.S. lives and money, to make the world safe for Israel.

Yup. It was Joe Lieberman and Commentary--not Pat Buchanan and, now, Joe Klein--who "raised the question of divided loyalties".

Jennifer Rubin and Max Boot respond to Klein over at Contentions.

The international community's "responsibility to protect" populations from failed or predatory states is set to become the most hotly debated concept in foreign policy, no matter who becomes president on January 20, 2009. Bret Stephens explains why:

A solution for Zimbabwe's crisis isn't hard to come by: Someone – ideally the British – must remove Mr. Mugabe by force, install Mr. Tsvangirai as president, arm his supporters, prevent any rampages, and leave. "Saving Darfur" is a somewhat different story, but it also involves applying Western military force to whatever degree is necessary to get Khartoum to come to terms with an independent or autonomous Darfur. Burma? Same deal. ...

So let's by all means end the hand-wringing and embrace the responsibility to protect, wherever necessary and feasible. Let's spare the thousands of innocents, punish the wicked, oppose tyrants, and support democrats – both in places where it is now fashionable to do so (Burma) and in places where it is not (Iraq). If that turns out to be Mr. Obama's foreign policy, it will be a worthy one. It does come oddly close to the Bush Doctrine.

Indeed, Obama's statement on Zimbabwe is arguably more interventionist than McCain's. Both Obama and McCain agree that Robert Mugabe's government is no longer legitimate. They both call for increased sanctions against the Mugabe gang. But Obama writes: "If fresh elections prove impossible, regional leaders backed by the international community should pursue an enforceable, negotiated political transition in Zimbabwe that would end repressive rule and enable genuine democracy to take root."

That door to intervention is absent from McCain's statement, which suggests the administration "consider expelling Mugabe’s diplomats from Washington and explore options with our friends in Africa and beyond, including suspending Zimbabwe’s participation in regional organizations as long a Mugabe clings to power."

Obama is already moving to the center on a host of issues. How will the Angry Left react when - not if - President Obama participates in the long and noble tradition of American humanitarian intervention?

David Axelrod tells Howard Kurtz what makes Barack Obama so extraordinarily normal:

"The most extraordinary thing about him, maybe the most surprising, is how normal he is. ... He'll read Foreign Policy magazine, a treatise on economic policy and Sports Illustrated."

Now, I'm pretty sure only one of those publications counts as "normal" reading material. And it isn't the "economic treatise." Also: How can someone be "extraordinary" and "normal" at the same time?

Then again, when you are the one we have been waiting for, anything's possible. ...

The effort by Democrats to crack down on oil "speculators" took a hit from an unlikely source today: Paul Krugman.

The only way speculation can have a persistent effect on oil prices, then, is if it leads to physical hoarding — an increase in private inventories of black gunk. This actually happened in the late 1970s, when the effects of disrupted Iranian supply were amplified by widespread panic stockpiling.

But it hasn’t happened this time: all through the period of the alleged bubble, inventories have remained at more or less normal levels. This tells us that the rise in oil prices isn’t the result of runaway speculation; it’s the result of fundamental factors, mainly the growing difficulty of finding oil and the rapid growth of emerging economies like China. The rise in oil prices these past few years had to happen to keep demand growth from exceeding supply growth.

Krugman is not concerned that prices are high, so he's not calling for increased supply. If Congress wants to do something more than pretend to be concerned about prices, they'll have to do something to increase supply.

Novelist Ian McEwan has rushed to the defense of his friend, Martin Amis, and offered his own critique of Islamism for its persecution of women and homosexuals. McEwan goes on to assail the intellectual environment in Britain and across Europe for allowing chilling accusations of racism to be leveled against anyone who has the temerity to speak up for human rights.

McEwan, 60, said it was "logically absurd and morally unacceptable" that writers who speak out against militant Islam are immediately branded racist.

"As soon as a writer expresses an opinion against Islamism, immediately someone on the left leaps to his feet and claims that because the majority of Muslims are dark-skinned, he who criticises it is racist," he said in an interview in Corriere della Sera.

"This is logically absurd and morally unacceptable. Martin is not a racist. And I myself despise Islamism, because it wants to create a society that I detest, based on religious belief, on a text, on lack of freedom for women, intolerance towards homosexuality and so on -- we know it well."

If Muslim special interest groups criticizing the likes of Amis spent half as much time identifying and rebuking radical clerics in Europe who inspire Islamic youth to betray their own countries, then we'd be a lot better off.

From City Journal: Gloucester Girls Gone Wild, by Kay S. Hymowitz.

From the New York Times Book Review: Neuro-Liberalism, by William Saletan.

From National Review Online: The Obama Code, by John J. Pitney Jr.

From Encounter Books: Encounter Bids the New York Times Farewell, by Roger Kimball.

From Politico: Senator's Mortgages Under Microscope, by Eamon Javers & Markin Kady II.

Everyone who has seen question time since Tony Blair stepped down knows Gordon Brown is a cold fish, but he may also be a lame-duck. Brown foolishly confessed to friends he wouldn't remain Prime Minister even if Labor, by some miracle, managed to hold onto a majority in upcoming national elections.

The Prime Minister has pledged that he will step down at "some point" during the next parliament should he beat the Conservatives in two years.

Mr Brown has let a few senior Cabinet colleagues know that he intends to quit in time to allow his successor at least a year to fight the election after next, a move designed to stop speculation about his leadership.

Telling people you don't intend to stay in charge is not exactly a winning message. I mean, why would anyone vote for Labor if Brown isn't even confident of his leadership, if he thinks his party is better off without him? Brown did have a victory recently, winning Parliamentary approval for detaining suspected terrorists for up to 42-days without charge. Just a week later, however, he is under fire again from members of his own party for plans to build additional nuclear power plants and other infrastructure.

At a breakfast meeting sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor this morning, Nancy Pelosi said that a Senate filibuster of the FISA bill would be "healthy and wholesome" for public debate, but she's "not encouraging" it. "I don’t think [the FISA bill] dishonors the Constitution," she said, arguing that "exclusivity was more important than retroactive immunity" for telecom companies. Telecoms should not "take this as a compliment," she said. "They have come out of this tainted."

Did Hillary Clinton lose the nomination because of sexism? "Being a woman has a positive upside in the campaign, probably offset by more sexism, I don’t know,” Pelosi said. “I’m a victim of sexism myself all the time, but I just think it goes with the territory.”

Will Pelosi hold a vote on Mike Pence’s bill to ban the Fairness Doctrine? “I won’t…. The interest in my caucus is the reverse,” she said. “I support the Fairness Doctrine.” (Look out Rush Limbaugh, and other radio-talkers!)

Pelosi was also asked about public financing—which she supports “across the board”—and how House Democrats’ campaigns are coordinating with Barack Obama. Answer: He’s been asked to raise money.

Pelosi came ready to talk about energy policy. Upon arrival, her staffers passed out a press release on energy, which included proposed "Use It Or Lose It" legislation that would compel "the oil industry to start drilling or lose permits on the 68 million acres of undeveloped federal oil reserves which they are currently warehousing, keeping domestic supply lower and prices higher." But apparently this was just too tedious for the reporters.

By the time the breakfast had ended she had not fielded a single question about energy policy. Or about the war in Iraq, for that matter. Pelosi cited these two issues as the primary reasons for public disapproval of Congress. Too bad she didn’t get a chance to talk about them.

Photo: Alex Brandon/Associated Press.

Barack Obama isn't president yet, but that didn't stop his campaign from Photo-shopping the official presidential seal. Obama's seal said "Obama for America" and "Vero Possumus," Latin for "Yes we can." The blogosphere was in an uproar, so Obama threw his seal under the bus, as they say:

Barack Obama’s communications director said Monday that the presidential seal the campaign unveiled last week at a meeting with Democratic governors won’t be seen again.

“That was a one time thing for a one time event," Robert Gibbs told CNN.

Marc Ambinder was told "that Obama recognizes that it was a silly mistake, that the universal reaction at Wacker and Michigan was, 'Boy, was that dumb,' and that they don't think the seal staging will matter to actual voters." Even lefty bloggers like The Democratic Daily's Pamela Leavey think that the seal "was a lame brain idea."

Hot Air's Allahpundit says, "so under the bus it goes, assuming there’s any room left under there with Wright, Pfleger, Rezko and who knows who else crowded in." At Michelle Malkin's blog, see-dubya adds, "He’s learned to skip the step where he says 'I could no more renounce that seal than I could renounce my (insert family member)' and cut straight to the renouncing." And Ace remarks, "Yes we won't, I guess."

CNN's Political Ticker notes, "Many wondered whether a seal--with Latin phrasing no less--was the best idea for a candidate fighting for the working class vote and trying to fend off allegations of elitism." As Jennifer Rubin says at Contentions, "Somewhere between the reneging on campaign finance reform and the Great Seal of Barack the mainstream media may have caught on. Do you think he might be arrogant, they ask?"

Can Obama move beyond the seal? Well, The McCain Report tells us that "the McCain campaign has made copies and will bring them to all future town hall events. We hope that Senator Obama will feel more comfortable attending if we place the seal on his podium--that he will feel more presidential, and important."

In the Wall Street Journal, an article on Planned Parenthood's push for upscale abortion clinics reports that the organization turned a profit of $115 million last year while holding nearly $1 billion in net assets:

Experts in nonprofit management said it’s fiscally responsible to end the year with a surplus, and Planned Parenthood’s numbers are within a reasonable range.

“There is no excess," Cecile Richards, the organization’s president said. “Any money we have, we put back into services.”

During the 2004-2005 fiscal year, Gloria Feldt raked in over $900,000 as the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, which received about $270 million in state and federal subsidies. That same year, Feldt earned about $24,000 as the president of Planned Parenthood’s political arm, Planned Parenthood Action Fund.

So, taxpayers subsidize Planned Parenthood’s abortion-providing arm, which in turn subsidizes Planned Parenthood’s political operation, which will spend $10 million this year to defeat pro-life candidates like John McCain. I’m sure there are “experts” who think that's “reasonable” as well.

Here's Sam Anderson in New York magazine on Obama's speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention:

"In ten minutes, America watched him rip off the rumpled suit of anonymous, mild-mannered state-senatorhood and squeeze into the gaudy cape and tights of our national oratorical superhero -- a honey-tongued Frankenfusion of Lincoln, Gandhi, Cicero, Jesus, and all our most cherished national acronyms (MLK, JFK, RFK, FDR)."

Jon Stewart on Obama: "You're allowed to laugh at him."

Which is what you will do during this video:

The Barack Obama presidential seal now belongs to history. But fret not – Team Obama has not lost any of its grandiose ambitions. Below is their mark-up for a potential overhaul of an American landmark. I think you’ll agree it’s a tremendous improvement.

On the heels of a successful mission in Kandahar, which cleared the area of hundreds of Taliban fighters, U.S. and Afghan forces dealt a second major blow to insurgents in the past week:

U.S.-led forces rained fire for two days on militants near Afghanistan's border with Pakistan, officials said Monday, killing about 55 insurgents and underscoring how fighting with Taliban insurgents is escalating.

The battle in eastern Paktika province was the second in the past week to reportedly inflict major casualties on militants, whom Afghan officials insist are swarming in from strongholds in Pakistan.

Pakistan's government on Monday reiterated an offer to fence the craggy, 1,500-mile frontier--a project begun but abandoned last year amid criticism that it would only enrage the tribes who straddle the frontier and among whom the Taliban find many recruits.

Yes, why would anyone risk upsetting the terrorists by building a wall to keep them away? Until President Karzai dismisses such frivolous concerns, successful battles will not translate into long-term stability.

Alaska governor Sarah Palin has sent a letter to Harry Reid demanding that the government open up ANWR for drilling. As Allahpundit notes, "if you’re a charismatic young governor looking to use a hot button to raise your profile, there are worse moves you can make than this."

In no uncertain terms, McCain should reject the endorsement of Tran Trong Duyet, the one time manager of the Hanoi Hilton and now an amateur ballroom dancer. Although twinkle-toes tells reporters, "If I was American, I would vote for him," he makes a number of despicable assertions that McCain should speak out on. Duyet says, "McCain is my friend," and denies ever torturing American prisoners. There is little reason to believe McCain considers Duyet his buddy whether or not he has forgiven him. And if Duyet didn't resort to torture, then perhaps he can explain why McCain can't raise his arms above his head. Are we to believe some accident just so happened to coincide with his five and a half years in solitary confinement? Does Duyet contend, McCain cut himself shaving or something?

Duyet also says of McCain, "He had a very interesting accent and sometimes he taught me words in English and corrected my accent." That in the midst being tortured, McCain felt compelled to correct the accent of the torturer-in-chief says a lot about the nature of their relationship. Just not what Duyet thinks it does.

The Obama campaign has done away with the Great Seal of Barack. Marc Ambinder offers an insightful analysis of how the Great Seal came in to being:

Some Obama aides are enraptured by the idea of an Obama brand that transcends politics; others, including most of those who are actually close to the candidate, are much, much more concerned with the type of hubris that all the talk of an Obama brand actually encourages. All of which is to say that if you were to exchange brains with your typical Obama staffer, you can kind of see how designing a new seal seems cool and presidential...

Could the Obama campaign possibly be too cool for school? As one reader stationed in Iraq opined last week: Obama's "proposals for Iraq sound like something a college student who has no background in military matters would write in a term paper and think they've said something profound. 'Dude, you know what would be totally cool? A "counterterrorism" force!'"

One has to wonder if the same staffer who thought up Obama's counterterrorism force designed his super-patriotic seal.

Not only are the Obamas fashionable, but they actually inspire fashion.

Last week, many high-end fashion designers attended a fundraiser in honor of Michelle Obama. New York magazine reports that tickets for the event cost as much as $10,000, and even designers-to-the-stars like Zac Posen, Isaac Mizrahi, and Nicole Miller had to cough up the cash for face time with the “fabulous” Mrs. Obama.

But it’s not just the missus who causes the fashion designers to gush. As WWD notes, Posen--a favorite of starlets like Rachel Bilson and Natalie Portman--was wearing a T-shirt “emblazoned with Barack Obama’s face.” And the AP reports that “Donatella Versace dedicated her Spring-Summer 2009 collection presented Saturday evening to Obama, creating a style she said was designed for ‘a relaxed man who doesn't need to flex muscles to show he has power’” (H/T The McCain Report).

The illustrious Versace suit was truly inspired by Barack, as some designs had “no lapel at all”--perfect for the man who has no need to wear a lapel pin.

Lapel-free 2009 Versace suit, for the man with no lapel pin (ZUMA)

Julia Latynina’s acid commentary on the reign of President (and now prime minister) Vladimir Putin has been one of the glories of the Russian press in recent years. She finally got a piece in the Washington Post on Sunday and it is a blistering indictment of how Russia has become a criminal state.

Under Putin, the Russian businessman has been transformed into game being hunted by people in epaulets. Who was the first victim of this hunt? Oil company executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was sentenced to eight years in prison for tax evasion in 2005, and his company, Yukos, which the government dismantled and sold off after his arrest. Who was the hunter? Then-president Putin.

In the 1990s (the era that the crowd supporting Putin claim was so unruly and unlawful) I used to sit around the kitchen table of a Moscow apartment with friends, and when we heard gunfire outside--a common occurrence back then--someone would joke “oh well, one less banker.” Yes, there was murder and criminality then, but it was largely unorganized and often a savage mechanism in which two unsavory parties tried to solve a business dispute.

Today murder and criminality in Russia are once again a state-sponsored monopoly. If you are one of the inner circle you can--literally--get away with murder. It is a brutal and repressive regime that gets uglier with each passing day. Latynina's take is worth a close read.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is one eccentric terrorist. First, he objects to a court-artist's rendition of his schnoz. Now we learn he wrote poetry for his CIA interrogator's wife.

Mr. Martinez came in after the rough stuff, the ultimate good cop with the classic skills: an unimposing presence, inexhaustible patience and a willingness to listen to the gripes and musings of a pitiless killer in rambling, imperfect English. He achieved a rapport with Mr. Mohammed that astonished his fellow C.I.A. officers.

A canny opponent, Mr. Mohammed mixed disinformation and braggadocio with details of plots, past and planned. Eventually, he grew loquacious. “They’d have long talks about religion,” comparing notes on Islam and Mr. Martinez’s Catholicism, one C.I.A. officer recalled. And, the officer added, there was one other detail no one could have predicted: “He wrote poems to Deuce’s wife.”

I personally believe Mohammed is a committed author of Haiku, but perhaps he instead composed limericks of the Nantucket variety. A free WEEKLY STANDARD t-shirt will be awarded to our first reader who sends us the actual poems.

Lest anyone forget, Saddam Hussein also dabbled with poetry while in American custody, i.e. "[O]ur Baath Party blossoms like a branch turns green." Is forcing detainees to draft poems now an official CIA interrogation technique? Perhaps instead of waterboarding terrorists, the CIA can just start sponsoring spoken word night at Gitmo or poetry contests at Abu Ghraib?

The photo of ANWR published here Friday looked familiar, and then it dawned upon me: the Alaskan nature preserve is about as beautiful as Mars. Can you tell which is which?

Over the weekend, bloggers were buzzing about yet another flip flop from Barack Obama: He now will support the House FISA compromise bill, even though he didn't back in February.

Obama said he will support the FISA compromise, which Politico's Ben Smith explains "offers retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies who helped the government listen in on American citizens--which Obama says he'll fight to remove from the legislation--and expands legal wiretapping powers. Obama praises it for restoring a legal framework and judicial oversight to the process." He claims that he will "try" to strip telecom immunity from the bill.

The Washington Post's Paul Kane notes that "Obama sought to walk the fine political line between GOP accusations that he is weak on foreign policy--Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called passing the legislation a 'vital national security matter'--and alienating his base." But bloggers on both sides of the aisle just think that Obama is a typical opportunist politician.

On the right, Power Line's Paul Mirengoff says, "Obama is a default hard-leftist with a streak of opportunism as big as all outdoors." Hot Air's Ed Morrissey asks, "Does Obama support this FISA reform bill or not? Will he try filibustering a bill that won a large majority in the House and which is even more of a compromise than the bill that won 68 votes in the Senate in February? Will Obama try to do yet another flip-flop and still convince people that he has any principles at all?"

And on the left, Glenn Greenwald seems to agree: "Obama has obviously calculated that sacrificing the rule of law and the Fourth Amendment is a worthwhile price to pay to bolster his standing a tiny bit in a couple of swing states." And so does Talk Left's Big Tent Democrat: "I always knew Obama was just a pol." Meanwhile, Daily Kos blogger Hunter is insulted.

Redstate's Moe Lane has some advice for these scorned bloggers: "I want progressives to email the Senator and demand that he filibuster: he'll either not do so, and thus betray them further; or he'll cave to them, which will embarrass the Democratic Party at the very moment that they need to show Unity. And either way, the FISA bill still passes."

Many have already expressed appropriate outrage at the New York Times for printing the name of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad's CIA interrogator, Deuce Martinez. Surely Martinez--who interrogated leaders of an organization with a penchant for sawing off heads--was put in much greater danger than, say, Valerie Plame, who was working a desk job at the CIA when her identity became public knowledge, to the horror of a whole host of people who had never before lost any sleep over CIA assets.

But what was lost in the discussion over the Times's reckless decision is the story's revealing reporting on the efficacy of waterboarding. According to the Times, senior FBI "agents got Abu Zubaydah talking without the use of force, and he revealed the central role of Mr. Mohammed in the 9/11 plot," but two paragraphs later we learn this:

John C. Kiriakou, a former C.I.A. counterterrorism officer who was the first to question Abu Zubaydah, [...] was not present for the waterboarding but read the resulting intelligence reports, said he had been told that Abu Zubaydah became compliant after 35 seconds of the water treatment.

“It was like flipping a switch,” Mr. Kiriakou said of the shift from resistance to cooperation. He said he thought such “desperate measures” were justified in the “desperate time” in 2002 when another attack seemed imminent. But on reflection, he said, he had concluded that waterboarding was torture and should not be permitted. “We Americans are better than that,” he said.

So for critics who say that there is no "proof" waterboarding worked: Now we have a statement from a CIA agent who thinks waterboarding is immoral but admits that it's what actually got Zubaydah talking.

That won't be surprising to most honest observers. Both presidential candidates oppose waterboarding and would ban it as unethical. But let's not delude ourselves into thinking that it doesn't actually work--there never would have been any debate if that were the case.

This new Rasmussen poll underscores the public’s skepticism and ambivalence about free trade in the context of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The Rasmussen report on free trade also includes numbers from another recent poll that tell the same story:

Voters--in a separate Rasmussen Reports survey taken last week--seem to share Obama’s ambivalence. Thirty-four percent (34%) say free trade is good for the U.S. economy, but 36% say it is not. Thirteen percent (13%) say neither is true, and 18% are undecided. Republicans narrowly believe free trade is good (41% to 33%), Democrats narrowly believe it is bad, and unaffiliated voters are evenly divided.

At the same time, over half (54%) believe free trade agreements take jobs away from Americans, while only 23% believe U.S. jobs are created. Ten percent (10%) say neither, and 13% aren’t sure.

When it comes to free trade, many seem to think most of the benefits go into CEOs’ pockets, not into Americans’ bank accounts. That perception--while unfair--is held by many. It’s up to the American business community to change that view--and they certainly have a lot of work to do.

Last month, after House Democrats scuttled the Columbia Free Trade Agreement, I wrote:

Opponents of open markets have been gaining ground for the past decade, but their efforts fully blossomed in 2006 when union and environmental activists invested heavily in congressional campaigns of Democrats. Free-trade advocates failed to match these efforts, and Mrs. Pelosi's bold procedural step reminds us that elections matter. Killing this free-trade agreement is a consequence flowing directly from the new Democratic majority. Unions and environmental interests did not hedge their bets. They unabashedly supported Democrats--and now enjoy the spoils of political victory.

While the opponents of free trade invest heavily in media and politics, open-market advocates lack the kind of collective effort that can move the needle of public perception. As I observed in that same piece:

Supporters of free trade need to make a massive effort to reshape public attitudes. "Companies don't think twice about investing millions of dollars to promote their brand or sell a product," a communications specialist told me. "But when it comes to investing in shaping the public opinion environment in a meaningful way they somehow think it's a waste of money or someone else's job."

For my day job, I live and breathe China. When it comes to my annual vacation, however, I need to get away. Last year, I thought Ireland would be a good escape--only to discover after getting there that Mandarin is the second most spoken language in Dublin. Buying a Chinese-made stuffed leprechaun from a Mandarin-speaking shopkeeper, even on O’Connell Street, wasn’t exactly my idea of an Irish vacation.

This year I thought Machu Picchu would be a safe bet. As our tour bus pulled into Cuzco, the gateway to the ancient Inca ruins, our Peruvian guide pointed to a road-improvement project and informed us, “As you can see, the city of Cuzco is sprucing up to usher in the coming Free Trade Agreement with China.” China? There’s that word again. I knew I shouldn’t have had that third cup of coca tea at breakfast. The magical brew was supposed to ease high-altitude discomforts, but I was obviously having hallucinations.

It turned out that I was not hearing things. China and Peru are indeed set to sign a free-trade agreement (FTA) this November, and it's a big deal in South America. In fact, China is currently conducting FTA negotiations with a number of countries, including Costa Rica, Iceland, Singapore, South Africa, and Australia. This past April, Australia’s neighbor New Zealand signed an FTA with Beijing, the first such accord between China and a developed country. These bilateral pacts help shield China from anti-dumping complaints, many of which have been filed by Washington through the multilateral mechanism provided by the World Trade Organization.

Peru is the second Latin American country to sign an FTA with China, after Chile. Meanwhile, Chinese investment in the region has witnessed a significant increase with the launch of the “go abroad” policy. In 2004, the year the policy was instituted, 32 percent of Beijing’s direct foreign investment went to Latin America. But Beijing had its eyes set on Peru long before then. In 1992, state-owned Capital Steel purchased a Peruvian iron company for a whopping $312 million, making China the second biggest investor in the Andean country.

Beijing’s inroads into Peru reflect a larger Latin initiative. While its investment in the region is taking place largely in sectors that help meet a seemingly unquenchable appetite for energy and commodities, China has also maintained a long-running satellite program with Brazil and a more recent one with Venezuela.

In my conversations with Peruvians about Chinese investments, I noticed how they would usually start a sentence with “China is helping us do…” or “we are getting help from China with…”

Washington should take heed.

"Appeasement that ends in war is a familiar theme of history." A sobering editorial in the Wall Street Journal.

From the New York Post: Anti-Terror Oops, by Scott W. Johnson.

From the New York Times: Someone Else's Alex, by William Kristol.

From Pajamas Media: Help the Zimbabwe Opposition Now!, by Bridget Johnson.

From Der Spiegel: Assad's Risky Nuclear Game.

From the Spectator: EU Leaders Will Never Consult Us Again, by Daniel Hannan.

First up on This Week was the issue most pressing for the average American: the skyrocketing price of energy. After some idiotic comments from Massachusetts Rep. Ed Markey about Republicans' attempts to stymie energy production, Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson explained just why gas costs $4 a gallon. “I would say that the Democrats have thwarted every effort we have made to increase our supply. This is a supply and demand issue: demand has skyrocketed, mostly because of global increases, and we have not done anything about supply because we are thwarted on nuclear power, we’re thwarted in using our own natural resources (drilling off shore on a state by state option is something that I think we could do very environmentally safely). And yet anything that says production is killed by the Democrats.”

Obama’s rejection of public campaign finance was the most talked about issue of the week. McCain surrogate Lindsey Graham took issue with Obama’s flip flopping on public financing while on Meet the Press. “Senator McCain supported campaign finance reform at his detriment with Senator Feingold on our side. It did not go over well, but John did it anyway. He took a beating to try to change the campaign finance system. Senator Obama looked in cameras all over the country, literally signed his name, ‘I will accept public financing,’ and now, for whatever reason, he has broken his word. And is it 1.4 million donors that allows you to break your word? This is reinforcing everything that's wrong with politics. This is a game changer in terms of the general election.”

On Face the Nation, Carly Fiorina took on the ridiculous claim by the Obama camp that their candidate is rejecting public financing because he’s a reformer of the system. “It's been well documented just in the last week that there are far more 527s gearing up and already announcing, for example, they're going to spend $53 million to attack John McCain. Moveon.org is the one I reference. The reality is that Barack Obama made this decision because he's raised a lot of money from all kinds of sources and he wants the opportunity to spend all that money. That's fine, that's his right to do so. But I really--I'll go back to my original point. I think it's disingenuous to say that he's doing so in the spirit of reform. No one has invested more in reforming public finance than John McCain.”

On Fox News Sunday, meanwhile, Brit Hume picked up on the silver lining of Obama’s decision: the crippling of public finance. “I say, by and large: good for him. For a couple reasons. One is that Obama really has proved that the limits necessary because of public financing, if you take it, do not merely screen out the evil influences of all the rich people in America, but they also make it impossible for a great many individual donors to make their voices heard through their contributions. Obama really has created a different form of financing, and it shows how unnecessary this whole public financing idea is. If you’re a popular candidate and you make a grassroots effort and you use the technology you can raise all the money you need. And you don’t even have to go to big oil!” Not that there’s anything wrong with big oil.

This week the GAO decided to sustain Boeing’s protest of the Pentagon’s recent award of a $35 billion refueling tanker contract to a transatlantic consortium led by Northrop Grumman. This decision has caused much surprise and unease among European political observers and aerospace and defense industry insiders. In essence, the independent investigative arm of Congress tasked with evaluating the award process (to build 179 next-generation KC-X aerial refueling tankers) came to the conclusion “that the Air Force had made a number of significant errors that could have affected the outcome of what was a close competition between Boeing and Northrop Grumman.” As a result, the GAO recommended that the “Air Force reopen discussion with the offerers, obtain revised proposals, re-evaluate the revised proposals, and make a new source selection decision, consistent with the GAO’s decision.” While the 69-page classified decision is non-binding, the Pentagon is widely expected to follow the GAO’s recommendations.

The fear now on the other side of the Atlantic is that the GAO report could pave the way for a Boeing-induced, politically-motivated effort on Capitol Hill to unravel a landmark procurement contract that is viewed as crucially important for fostering closer defense industrial cooperation between the United States and several of its key European NATO allies, including France and Germany. So far, after all, transatlantic aerospace and defense trade (the success of Airbus in commercial aviation notwithstanding) has essentially been a “one-way street” leading from the United States to Europe. In this context, the Pentagon’s recent award of the tanker contract to Northrop Grumman and EADS was judged by Europe as the most visible sign yet that the protectionist “Fortress America” mentality that was so prevalent in Washington for so long was finally coming to an end. EADS, for its part, has urged European governments to remain calm about the the GAO decision to prevent “pouring oil into the fire”; a piece of advice largely heeded by the political leaders in France, Germany, Spain, and the UK.

The GAO report did not say that the Boeing tanker was better than the Airbus tanker. In fact, virtually all of the American and European aerospace folks that I talked to in Washington said exactly the opposite: that the Airbus tanker offers more “bang for the buck” to the U.S. armed forces and American taxpayers. Whatever the eventual outcome of the Pentagon’s re-opened procurement decision process, this week’s GAO report has further transformed the multi-billion dollar tanker deal into a high-stakes political battlefield which will probably be characterized by even more congressional lobbying and advertisement efforts waged by Boeing and Northrop Grumman. Matters are of course made more complicated by the fact that the tanker deal controversy comes in the middle of a U.S. presidential election and will probably be decided by a future McCain or Obama administration (both candidates have previously called for a reopening of the Pentagon bidding process).

Finally, many European industry insiders believe that the real reason Boeing is fighting the Northrop Grumman/EADS tanker award so aggressively is that it could ultimately provide Airbus with its first-ever assembly and manufacturing presence in the United States--a strategically important move that would significantly boost the European aircraft manufacturers long-term international competitiveness by providing a natural hedge against the massive fluctuations in the Euro-Dollar exchange rate. At the moment, for example, the weak dollar provides Boeing with significant cost advantages in its export markets while the strong Euro, in turn, eats into Airbus’s dollar-denominated international sales.

Obama warns of the Republican race-baiting to come:

"It is going to be very difficult for Republicans to run on their stewardship of the economy or their outstanding foreign policy," Obama told a fundraiser in Jacksonville, Florida. "We know what kind of campaign they're going to run. They're going to try to make you afraid.

"They're going to try to make you afraid of me. He's young and inexperienced and he's got a funny name. And did I mention he's black?"

Audio via HotAir:

Not many polls bring good news to Republicans, but a new survey by John Zogby certainly has. Zogby found that 74 percent of likely voters favor drilling for oil and gas offshore in coastal waters. Here’s the breakdown of those who support drilling: 90 percent of Republicans, 58 percent of Democrats, and 75 percent of independents. Not bad, and it gets better. A quarter of the likely voters said they’d be more likely to vote for John McCain if they knew he backed offshore drilling for oil and gas, which he does.

So it looks like Republicans are getting their drill, drill, drill message across after all. House Republicans especially have pushed the argument with real vigor lately. Roy Blunt, the House Republican whip, has urged them to push it even more relentlessly, even if they’re bored or embarrassed or tired with saying the same thing over and over again. This is a smart tactic. Repetition is required to reach most voters, whose attention to politics and what’s going on in Washington is fleeting. Repetition also works.

With gasoline at more than $4 a gallon, Democrats are in a highly vulnerable position. They oppose offshore drilling. In fact, they oppose any increased use of fossil fuels (oil, coal) for energy. This, of course, is the position of the special interest whose wishes are treated by Democrats as commands--the environmental lobby. It’s Barack Obama’s position, too. The Democratic talking points on gasoline and energy are ludicrous. They claim oil companies, which they insist are greedy, are purposely not drilling in areas leased at great cost at a time when gasoline prices are at a record high. That charge makes no sense. Democrats also take credit for raising miles-per-gallon standards on cars, standards that go into effect years from now. But the market is already doing this. Car buyers are now looking for high mileage vehicles and avoiding SUVs.

Maybe, just maybe, all is not lost in the 2008 election for Republicans. Because we’re winning, the war in Iraq is no longer the issue it was in 2006. Sure, Republicans aren’t popular, but at least they have an issue to exploit. Voters aren’t blaming Democrats yet for the surge in gasoline prices. But they may if Republicans keep up the attack and Democrats continue to offer lame excuses.

Did Obama break the law?

18 USC Sec. 713 ...
(a) Whoever knowingly displays any printed or other likeness of the great seal of the United States, or of the seals of the President or the Vice President of the United States, or the seal of the United States Senate, or the seal of the United States House of Representatives, or the seal of the United States Congress, or any facsimile thereof, in, or in connection with, any advertisement, poster, circular, book, pamphlet, or other publication, public meeting, play, motion picture, telecast, or other production, or on any building, monument, or stationery, for the purpose of conveying, or in a manner reasonably calculated to convey, a false impression of sponsorship or approval by the Government of the United States or by any department, agency, or instrumentality thereof, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.

(b) Whoever, except as authorized under regulations promulgated by the President and published in the Federal Register, knowingly manufactures, reproduces, sells, or purchases for resale, either separately or appended to any article manufactured or sold, any likeness of the seals of the President or Vice President, or any substantial part thereof, except for manufacture or sale of the article for the official use of the Government of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.

Bummer. The Great Seal of Barack would have made for a, like, totally fierce and rad lapel pin.

Via John M. Broder of the Times Caucus blog, behold the Great Seal of the United States of Obamaland:

Broder reports that this seal was on display while Obama spoke to Democratic governors in Chicago this morning.

It is emblazoned with a fierce-looking eagle clutching an olive branch in one claw and arrows in the other and is deliberately reminiscent of the official seal of the president of the United States. Around the top border are the words “Obama for America;” across the bottom is the campaign’s Web address. It also contains the logo of the Obama campaign, variously interpreted as a sunrise or a view down an open road.

Just above the eagle’s head are the words “Vero Possumus,” roughly translated “Yes we can.” Not exactly E Pluribus Unum (Out of Many, One), the motto on the presidential seal and the dollar bill.

The Congressional leadership is working hard to convince Americans that drilling in the pristine national treasure known as the Coastal Plain of AWNR (pictured above) is a waste of time because the impact on gas prices won't be seen for decades. At the same time, they insist that we must keep our vision focused on the long-term as we address our energy needs. Can we get clarification on why a solution implemented over decades conflicts with 'a long-term plan?' Perhaps if the American people better understood the plans of Democrats, we could avoid tampering with the surface of the moon the beauty of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (average July temperature: 41 degrees).

And while we're on the topic of long-term planning, the Teamsters estimate that drilling in ANWR will create 750,000 jobs. I know that the Teamsters aren't to be trusted -- they're clearly bought and paid for by Big Oil and the Bush White House -- but 750,000 good-paying union jobs ought to be appealing to Democrats who insist that the economy is in a shambles.

Further developments on the counting your chickens front:

Director Spike Lee, whose movies often cast a sharp eye on U.S. racial politics, predicted a presidential victory for black Democrat Barack Obama that would mark a "new day" for the United States.

"It's going to be before Obama, 'B.B.,' and after Obama -- 'A.B.' -- and some folks need to get used to this," Lee said. "And I'm going to be at the inauguration -- getting my hotel reservation now."

Despite yesterday's successful mission in Southern Afghanistan, which resulted in the deaths of several hundred terrorists, the New York Times continues to assert that Afghanistan is an utter disaster and the U.S. lacks a coherent strategy. In an editorial today, the Times claims most of the 50,000 NATO troops deployed there are American. Not true. A majority of NATO soldiers are from other countries as this handy chart courtesy of Reuters details. The United States contributes a majority of soldiers only if one counts non-NATO forces and excludes the 140,000 Afghan troopers.

The Times also undersells the contributions of Afghan soldiers in the protection of their own communities, writing that only two army units are "fully capable." This stat is of little consequence as Afghan troops play key roles in nearly all military missions--including yesterday's battle in Kandahar.

Perhaps the editorial's biggest mistake is in claiming, without evidence, that the Taliban is stronger than it was two years ago. Reports on the ground give rise to contradictory conclusions. A December 2007 poll of Afghans found "More than 40 percent said the Taliban had increased in strength in their area." The same poll, however, concluded, "There's been no meaningful change . . . in the number of Afghans who report clashes between Taliban and government or foreign forces in their area."

Moreover, support for the Taliban among the general population has not increased between 2006 and 2007, and "70 percent [of Afghans] rate their overall living conditions positively, and 66 percent rate their own local security positively." Many problems for sure. Utter disaster, I think not.

Writing at the Atlantic.com, Matthew Yglesias draws a fine distinction:

French television asked Ahmadenijad what he meant about how Israel should be wiped from the map, and he replied: "Why are you worried? Where is the Soviet Union? It has disappeared, has it not?"

Now I think it's actually clear enough why one might worry about this, and I have no objection to anyone worrying, but it really is different from threatening to kill all the inhabitants.

Ready for some irony to kick off your weekend? The name of he book that Yglesias recently authored is "Heads in the Sand."

Andy McCarthy praises the FISA compromise that Congress has worked out:

Here is the bottom line: Our intelligence agencies will once again have authority to conduct aggressive monitoring of foreign powers, including terrorist organizations, which threaten the United States. In particular, this will be the case overseas — that is, when foreigners located outside our borders communicate with each other. The Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency will essentially be able to collect foreign intelligence without interference from the courts, the status quo ante that was U.S. law for decades before being upset by a secret court ruling last year.

Moreover, the telecommunications companies which patriotically complied with administration requests for assistance in the emergency conditions that obtained after nearly 3,000 Americans were mass-murdered in the 9/11 attacks will receive retroactive immunity. That is, they will be relieved of the potential billions in liability they (and their shareholders and customers) faced in scores of lawsuits.

McCarthy notes the compromise isn't perfect: It requires a standard of "probable cause," which "has no place in national-security surveillance against foreign threats." Also, the compromise usurps executive authority by purporting "to make congressional statutes — i.e., the laws that impose judicial oversight — the 'exclusive means' by which electronic surveillance may be conducted."

But if Russ Feingold says the bill "is not a compromise; it is a capitulation," that's good enough for government work. Right?

UPDATE: In the House, the bill passes 293 to 129.

David Brooks has a provocative piece today in which he suggests that Barack Obama perfectly combines egghead idealism with Machiavellianism:

But as recent weeks have made clear, Barack Obama is the most split-personality politician in the country today. On the one hand, there is Dr. Barack, the high-minded, Niebuhr-quoting speechifier who spent this past winter thrilling the Scarlett Johansson set and feeling the fierce urgency of now. But then on the other side, there’s Fast Eddie Obama, the promise-breaking, tough-minded Chicago pol who’d throw you under the truck for votes.
This guy is the whole Chicago package: an idealistic, lakefront liberal fronting a sharp-elbowed machine operator. He’s the only politician of our lifetime who is underestimated because he’s too intelligent. He speaks so calmly and polysyllabically that people fail to appreciate the Machiavellian ambition inside.

Predictably, Andrew Sullivan seconds the emotion, gushing, “I never doubted his cunning or his charisma. It's the combo that's so lethal. Are the Republicans awake yet? The Clintons weren't.” And thus a new narrative is born! Obama is not only the high-minded agent of change, but he has the gutter instincts necessary to operate in a dangerous world populated with your Kim Jong Il types.

The jumping off point for this theory was Obama’s “cunning” rejection of public financing. I’ll agree with this much – it would have been political malpractice for Obama to agree to public funding. You don’t give away hundreds of millions of dollars in asset advantages in a competitive presidential race if you’re in it to win it.

But the public funding wouldn’t be an issue, and it wouldn’t be disillusioning such Obama champions as the editorial boards at the Boston Globe and the New York Times, if Obama hadn’t previously pledged to participate in public funding. You know what would have been cunning? If Obama, instead of pledging to take public funding, had said something like, “I am a strong proponent of public funding for elections. But our current public funding system, one that was designed by John McCain, is deeply flawed. I will not participate in the system if I determine doing so would be to the detriment to my party, my campaign and my country.” He could even have worn his flag pin lapel on the day he made the announcement to hype the patriotism of the whole shebang. Such a comment would have preserved his options and the moral high ground, things he pissed away when he recklessly pledged to “aggressively” pursue public financing.

I’m sorry, but to my eyes this episode doesn’t seem like an adventure in shrewdness. It’s yet another example of a rookie candidate spouting off while having no idea what he’s talking about.

You may have noticed, Obama makes a habit of issuing sweeping statements that he later has to back down from. While addressing AIPAC ten days ago, Obama asserted, “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.” The guys at AIPAC were nuts for the pronouncement – the Palestinians less so. Mahmoud Abbas somberly declared, “He has closed all doors to peace.”

Since every presidential wannabe, regardless of party, dreams of being the guy who convinces the Palestinians to beat their swords into ploughshares, Obama had to back down from the comment and have an aide lamely claim that he was merely talking about “a picture in his mind of Jerusalem before 1967 with barbed wires and minefields and demilitarized zones. So he used a word to represent what he did not want to see again, and then realized afterwards that that word is a code word in the Middle East.” And thus, he began appeasing even before winning election!

So was that another sterling example of “cunning” or instead an illustration of a candidate who doesn’t know what he’s talking about?

Or how about this one: In addressing a town hall meeting in Fort Wayne this past weekend, Obama went for 70 minutes without a teleprompter. Needless to say, several moments of knee-slapping misstatements ensued. My favorite came when he mused about the spectacular results we would have had if we had used the money spent on the Iraq war for other purposes:

We will have spent by the time this thing is over well over a trillion dollars, one trillion dollars. Think about what we could have done with a trillion dollars. Think about, think about what we could have done if we had invested even half of that even a quarter of that into research into clean energy, developing new ways of transporting people, if we had tried to look at how are we going to create a new engine that doesn't run on fossil fuels. Imagine that. Over the last five years, we could be in a position now where we could have perhaps sliced our energy consumption by a third, and if we had done that gas prices would be low because people wouldn't be using gas.

Cars that don’t run on fossil fuels? Energy consumption cut by a third? All this within five years and $250 billion? Who knew?

To me this sounds ludicrous and evidence of a candidate who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Others probably find it evidence of magnificent cunning.

From the Ashbrook Center: Haditha Again, by Mackubin T. Owens.

From the Washington Post: Iran on Its Heels, by Vali Nasr.

From The American Scene: The Secret Muslim Smear, by Reihan Salam.

From National Review Online: A Good Deal on Surveillance Reform, by Andrew C. McCarthy.

From Gawker: Al Jazeera Buys German Clown to Entertain Arab Children, by Michael Weiss.

So Obama's new ad, the first of the general election, "cites Public Law 110-181 when he talks about his efforts to extend 'health care for wounded troops who'd been neglected.'" The problem? Obama never showed up to the vote. He was actually too busy campaigning to make it back to Washington to vote for the bill, but wants the American people to think he deserves the credit. Sounds a lot like the 2005 Energy Bill, which Obama has the gall to attack John McCain on even though the junior senator from Illinois voted for it and McCain voted against it.

Many pundits believe that Barack Obama could get a much needed boost with working class white voters by selecting Jim Webb as his running mate. But American University political scientist Brian Schaffner produces an interesting graph comparing how the Virginia Senator performed compared to other Senate candidates among various key demographic groups in 2006. His analysis reveals Webb did well in rural areas, but it also finds some weakness among women. Moreover, by winning the same share of white men as other Democratic Senate candidates, Webb does not seem particularly well positioned for the VP choice--at least using these metrics. Schaffner explains it this way:

First, Webb did under-perform among women when compared to other Democratic Senate candidates in 2006. He won just 46% of the vote among this group compared to other Democrats who won 51% of white women in 2006. He also did not make this disadvantage up with a stronger performance among white men, as he won the same share of the vote from white men as other Democratic Senate candidates did in 2006. Webb's problems among white women could be decisive in leading Obama toward another choice, because Obama cannot afford to alienate women who are already disappointed with the way the Democratic primary turned out.

Whether Webb could help Obama move Virginia into his column, though, may be the most important question of all (Virginia has not gone to the Democrats in over 40 years, since Lyndon Johnson won in 1964). Both of these Virginia polls put the presidential race at a dead heat in the state. So if Obama concludes Webb can deliver his home state--that may be the potential VP’s only homework assignment. Winning a Senate seat in Virginia, however, is one thing. Carrying Obama over the finish line in a race for the White House may be a tougher task.

Just one week has passed since the Maoist controlled Parliament deposed King Gyanendra, the Etonian head-of-state, and Nepal is already in the crapper. Thousands of local government workers have gone on strike in protest of a Maoist minister, who "locked up an 'errant official' in a toilet" for an hour and a half.

The official had incurred the minister's wrath for allegedly running an illegal stone mine. Striking workers said that his incarceration inside a toilet was an "inhumane and objectionable act". But the minister responded by saying that the official now knows what it is like to live in a "foul environment".

As an aside, the standoff over who would get the feathered crown concluded with poor King Gyanendra handing it over to the Commies. Perhaps Gyanendra will take some solace in that his people consider him a deity--or at least they used to.

Above is Barack Obama’s first television ad of the general election season. Even by the lenient standards by which such things are judged, it’s a real snooze. It also seems like an odd sort of retreat. The sum total of the message is that Obama is a humble son of the heartland, imbued with the good old-fashioned Kansas values that his mother and grandparents had. They didn’t have much money, by the way.

I guess this spot represents something of a tactical retreat from the Hope/Change stuff. Obama wants you to know that he’s just like you and shares your values.

One comment struck me as odd in the spot. Obama referred to what guided him while “work(ing) my way up.” Hmmm. This is an area where things get kind of dicey in the Obama biography. Obama graduated law school in 1991 and spent the next dozen years stuck in professional mud. He started as a community organizer, a job whose details he famously can’t explain, and showed no discernible career progress. Given his obvious intelligence and even obviouser ambition, you would think that the community Obama organized would have been the most organized damn community in America. And yet, tangible accomplishments in this regard are difficult to pin down.

Before he launched his 2004 senate campaign, Obama had settled in to three part time jobs – one in a law firm, one as a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School (although his campaign retroactively promoted him to “professor” there) and the other in the Illinois state legislature. Whatever material comforts he and his family enjoyed prior to becoming a national celebrity resulted from his wife’s far more gainful employment. Usually one refers to “working my way up” to identify career progress. But where’s the progress?

I point this out not merely to be the turd in Obama’s getting-to-know-you punchbowl. There’s a serious point here. When Al Gore endorsed Obama the other day, he blusteringly recalled all the insulting things John F. Kennedy’s opponents said about him and his lack of experience when JFK sought the presidency. But compared to Barack Obama, Kennedy looks like a letter-day Cicero.

In addition to being a war hero, Kennedy had been in congress for 14 years prior to the 1960 presidential election. He had also settled on a solid and discernible political philosophy. Kennedy could do more than express beautiful sentiments regarding hope and change because he had immersed himself in serious stuff before running for president. There’s no evidence, flimsy or solid, that Obama has done the same. Kennedy also wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning book on topical matters, or at least he had an aide write a Pulitzer Prize winning book on topical matters which is the next best thing.

Obama’s lack of heft and accomplishment in his adult life isn’t necessarily a political Achilles Heel. After all, the guy who won the last two presidential elections hadn’t exactly spent the previous decades setting the world on fire. But usually in politics, accomplishments are a shorthand that communicate where a candidate stands. John McCain, to take one obvious example, has shepherded numerous bills to law and led a previous life of valor that give some indication of how he would govern.

As is ever the case with Obama, all we have to go on to predict what kind of president he’ll be is some dashing yet extremely vague rhetoric.

Remember when Barack Obama claimed he would “aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election?” Once again, never mind. The Politico reports:

Obama said he'd pursue public financing "aggressively." He committed to it in a written questionnaire. He even said, repeatedly, that he would meet personally with Senator John McCain to discuss a deal.

Instead, his campaign never even asked the Republican's aides for a meeting on the subject. And Obama, both campaigns said, never asked for a face-to-face meeting with McCain.

"It was clear that there was no point," said Obama spokesman Bill Burton.

Goodness. I’m disillusioned. What ever happened to the “We should never be afraid to negotiate” mantra that Obama so regularly trotted out to defend his aggressive summiting plans with the world’s despots?

Elsewhere on the admittedly tedious campaign finance front, even the Boston Globe senses some of the Hope/Change magic dissipating. In an editorial on Obama’s public financing reversal, the Globe comments, “His decision deals a body blow both to the system of campaign finance and to his own reputation as a reform candidate.”

The New York Times editorial board is also wandering around in a state of stunned disillusionment:

The excitement underpinning Senator Barack Obama’s campaign rests considerably on his evocative vows to depart from self-interested politics. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama has come up short of that standard with his decision to reject public spending limitations and opt instead for unlimited private financing in the general election.

Of course, the swooningest of Obamaphiles can process neither their hero’s feet of clay nor his forked tongue. The American Prospect’s Ezra Klein commented yesterday, “Well played, Obama campaign. Well played.” Indeed. It was a real stroke of genius the way Barack Obama either made a highly public promise whose repercussions he didn’t understand or that he never intended to keep.

John McCain's campaign sent out this statement from the candidate this afternoon. "Senator Obama is obviously confused about what the United States Supreme Court decided and what he is calling for. After enthusiastically embracing the Supreme Court decision granting habeas in U.S. civilian courts to dangerous terrorist detainees, he is now running away from the consequences of that decision and what it would mean if Osama bin Laden were captured. Senator Obama refuses to clarify whether he believes habeas should be granted to Osama bin Laden, and instead cites the precedent of the Nuremburg war trials. Unfortunately, it is clear Senator Obama does not understand what happened at the Nuremburg trials and what procedures were followed. There was no habeas at Nuremburg and there should be no habeas for Osama bin Laden. Senator Obama cannot have it both ways. In one breath he endorses habeas for terrorists like 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and in the next he denies its logical conclusion of habeas for Osama bin Laden. By citing a historical precedent that does not include habeas, he sends a signal of confusion and indecision to our allies and adversaries and the American people.

"Let me be clear, under my administration Osama bin Laden will either be killed on the battlefield or executed. Senator Obama's failure to comprehend the implication of the Supreme Court decision he embraced and the historical precedent of Nuremberg raise serious questions about judgment and experience and whether Senator Obama is ready to assume the awesome responsibilities of commander in chief."

A new biography of Boris Johnson reveals how David Cameron stifled Johnson's rise in Parliament, and might have inadvertently created a challenger to head the Conservative Party of Britain. Many assume the two are friends, because they attended both Eton and Oxford together.

At the party conference in the autumn of 2006 he had stolen the show from Cameron and, although Boris had tried to behave himself since, the Tory leader knew his unruly colleague would be unable to resist stealing the show again if given half a chance. It would be madness to select such an unreliable figure as a champion of the new conservatism.

So various implausible people, such as Lord Coe and Lord Stevens, were approached to ask if they would consider becoming the Conservative candidate. But, after a prolonged search, the best the Tories could come up with was Greg Dyke, former director-general of the BBC and best known for having introduced Roland Rat, a glove puppet, to viewers of breakfast television.

Would a true friend nominate a puppeteer to run for office in your place? I don't think so.

What spurred him was growing doubt about whether he was going to get anywhere under Cameron. That doubt was confirmed in the clearest way on July 2, 2007 when the party leader reshuffled his team.

Cameron chose Michael Gove, who had only arrived at the Commons in 2005, and during their time at Oxford had been happy to act as Boris's stooge. Boris, who had been in the Commons since 2001, was left with his old job. Having looked for love from Cameron, he found himself kept at a chilly distance.

That's the claim of an email I just received from the misnamed Institute for Public Accuracy. The email attacks many of Barack Obama's foreign policy advisers for their alleged militarism and service in the Clinton administration. It's mostly worth ignoring, but a couple of the entries stood out.

One of the key talking points to emerge from the Obama campaign in the recent skirmishing on national security concerns John McCain's support for the Iraq War. "The case for war in Iraq was so thin that George Bush and John McCain had to hype the threat of Saddam Hussein, and make false promises that we’d be greeted as liberators," Obama said yesterday. "They misled the American people, and took us into a misguided war."

Obama wants voters to believe that such deception and poor judgment means John McCain should not be president. But he doesn't seem to mind that several of his top advisers said the same things and were every bit as unequivocal in their claims about Saddam Hussein as McCain or George W. Bush. The IPA release highlights comments from Susan Rice and Tim Roemer.

Rice: "I think he [then Secretary of State Colin Powell] has proved that Iraq has these weapons and is hiding them, and I don't think many informed people doubted that." (NPR, Feb. 6, 2003) And: "It's clear that Iraq poses a major threat. It's clear that its weapons of mass destruction need to be dealt with forcefully, and that's the path we're on. I think the question becomes whether we can keep the diplomatic balls in the air and not drop any, even as we move forward, as we must, on the military side." (NPR, Dec. 20, 2002) And: "I think the United States government has been clear since the first Bush administration about the threat that Iraq and Saddam Hussein poses. The United States policy has been regime change for many, many years, going well back into the Clinton administration. So it's a question of timing and tactics. ... We do not necessarily need a further Council resolution before we can enforce this and previous resolutions. (NPR, Nov. 11, 2002)

In October 2002, Roemer, according the release, called the threat from Saddam Hussein "grave and growing" and declared that it was a threat that had to be met in "the not-too-distant-future."

The release neglects to mention John Kerry, who has been on Obama campaign conference calls each of the past two weeks and is reportedly under consideration as Obama's runningmate. (UPDATE: Kerry will be on another conference call this afternoon.) Was he, too, hyping the threat from Saddam Hussein? Did he mislead the American people when he said, in October 2002:

It would be naive to the point of grave danger not to believe that, left to his own devices, Saddam Hussein will provoke, misjudge, or stumble into a future, more dangerous confrontation with the civilized world. He has as much as promised it.

Or:

In 1991, the world collectively made a judgment that this man should not have weapons of mass destruction. And we are here today in the year 2002 with an uninspected 4-year interval during which time we know through intelligence he not only has kept them, but he continues to grow them.

Or:

I believe the record of Saddam Hussein's ruthless, reckless breach of international values and standards of behavior which is at the core of the cease-fire agreement, with no reach, no stretch, is cause enough for the world community to hold him accountable by use of force, if necessary. The threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but as I said, it is not new. It has been with us since the end of that war, and particularly in the last 4 years we know after Operation Desert Fox failed to force him to reaccept them, that he has continued to build those weapons.

Or:

I have said publicly for years that weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein pose a real and grave threat to our security and that of our allies in the Persian Gulf region. Saddam Hussein's record bears this out...It is clear that in the 4 years since the UNSCOM inspectors were forced out, Saddam Hussein has continued his quest for weapons of mass destruction. According to intelligence, Iraq has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of the 150 kilometer restriction imposed by the United Nations in the ceasefire resolution. Although Iraq's chemical weapons capability was reduced during the UNSCOM inspections, Iraq has maintained its chemical weapons effort over the last 4 years. Evidence suggests that it has begun renewed production of chemical warfare agents, probably including mustard gas, sarin, cyclosarin, and VX. Intelligence reports show that Iraq has invested more heavily in its biological weapons programs over the 4 years, with the result that all key aspects of this program--R&D, production and weaponization--are active. Most elements of the program are larger and more advanced than they were before the gulf war. Iraq has some lethal and incapacitating agents and is capable of quickly producing and weaponizing a variety of such agents, including anthrax, for delivery on a range of vehicles such as bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers, and covert operatives which could bring them to the United States homeland. Since inspectors left, the Iraqi regime has energized its missile program, probably now consisting of a few dozen Scud-type missiles with ranges of 650 to 900 kilometers that could hit Israel, Saudi Arabia and other U.S. allies in the region. In addition, Iraq is developing unmanned aerial vehicles UAVs, capable of delivering chemical and biological warfare agents, which could threaten Iraq's neighbors as well as American forces in the Persian Gulf.

Or, my favorite, his apparent reference to the NIE:

According to the CIA's report, all U.S. intelligence experts agree that Iraq is seeking nuclear weapons. There is little question that Saddam Hussein wants to develop nuclear weapons. The more difficult question to answer is when Iraq could actually achieve this goal. That depends on is its ability to acquire weapons-grade fissile material. If Iraq could acquire this material from abroad, the CIA estimates that it could have a nuclear weapon within 1 year.

I know that bringing these quotes up causes eye-rolling among my colleagues in the Washington press corps. But in this instance I agree with the lefties from IPA. How can Obama trust Susan Rice to serve as one of his top foreign policy advisers when she "hyped" the threat from Saddam Hussein? And shouldn't somebody ask the Obama campaign why John McCain's claims about the Iraqi threat disqualify him from higher office and John Kerry's don't?

From Political Punch: Obama to Break Promise, Opt Out of Public Financing for General Election, by Jake Tapper.

From National Review Online: Hothouse Flower, by Jim Geraghty.

From the New York Post: Subpoena Blitz Puts Heat on Al Sharpton, by Chuck Bennett.

From Roger's Rules: A passing thought about Jacob Heilbrunn, or how Autolycus lost his charm, by Roger Kimball.

From Silicon Alley Insider: The AP's Real Problem Isn't Bloggers: It's Its Own Newspapers, by Dorian Benkoil (HT: Arts & Letters Daily).

Coming to the United States?

As the calls for domestic drilling grow louder, some Democrats have another idea: nationalize the oil refineries! During a House briefing yesterday, Democratic Rep. Maurice Hinchey said, "We (the government) should own the refineries. Then we can control how much gets out into the market."

Many bloggers echo the Club for Growth's Andrew Roth, who says, "Explicit, in-your-face socialism. Hugo Chavez couldn't have said it any better." Michelle Malkin adds, "It’s a short trip from railing about 'obscene profits' to cheerleading Hugo Chavez-style takeovers of private industry."

At The Moderate Voice, Jazz Shaw asks Hinchey, "Is your Democratic Party so fearful of winning two elections in a row and having to take the reins of power that you’ve simply decided to throw yourselves on your swords? Or have you perhaps spent too long in cozy chats with Hugo Chavez that some of his thinking is creeping into the cloak rooms of Congress?" And Wizbang's Kim Priestap says that advocates of nationalization "are packaging this nationalization scheme in the same way all communists do: let 'the American people' own the oil companies. It's a complete sham, a lie, and an unbelievably manipulative and condescending one."

Hinchey's remarks remind bloggers of Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters's similar call to "socialization" a few weeks ago. How many more Democrats agree? Hot Air's Allahpundit says, "This makes two congressional Democrats on record within the past month as supporting an overtly socialist 'solution' to gas prices." As The Gateway Pundit says, "Viva la revolucion!"

More historical illiteracy from the Democrats:

Barack Obama said yesterday he would bring Osama bin Laden to justice in a way that wouldn't allow the Sept. 11 mastermind to become a martyr. At a Washington news conference after huddling for the first time with a newly formed group of national security advisers, he acknowledged that bin Laden might not be taken alive, but suggested that if he is, the Nazi war crime trials at Nuremberg after World War II would be a good model.

Uhhh . . . Sen. Obama . . . ummm . . . the main Nuremberg defendants were hanged. Goering and Ley committed suicide, Bormann was tried in absentia, Krupp was too sick to appear, Funk and Hess got life sentences, Donitz, Raeder, Speer, von Neurath and von Schirach got shorter prison terms, Fritszche, subbing for Goebbels, was acquitted, along with von Papen and Schacht.

But the big fish--Frank, Frick, Jodl, Kaltenbrunner, Keitel, Ribbentrop, Rosenberg, Sauckel, Seyss-Inquart, and Streicher--were executed. That is, the main generals, administrators of the Holocaust, and ideologists.

Maybe Obama thinks Osama is just a construction engineer like Osama's father or Speer.

And the seven main defendants in the Tokyo war crimes trial were also hanged.

Does anybody in the Obama camp know any history? Do any of them realize that Osama would paint himself as a martyr even if all he got was a life sentence?

Glibness, thy name is Barack Obama.

Above is footage of Barack Obama rejecting public financing for the general election. It has to be watched to be believed – please check it out. Note the angry sense of victimization he uses to justify his flip/flop.

Now courtesy of the wayback machine, here’s Obama’s position on the same matter just four short months ago. Jim Geraghty calls our attention to the February 16 Washington Post:

AS RECENTLY as November, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) was unequivocal about whether he would agree to take public financing for the general election if his Republican opponent pledged to do the same. "If you are nominated for president in 2008 and your major opponents agree to forgo private funding in the general election campaign, will you participate in the presidential public financing system?" the Midwest Democracy Network asked in a questionnaire. Mr. Obama's answer was clear. "Yes," he wrote. "If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election."

Of course, John McCain is taking public financing.

So here’s the question worth pondering: Given that as of February 16 Obama looked to have an enormous fundraising advantage over any potential rival, was his agreement to take public financing ill-advised or, you know, a lie? Personally, I opt for the former. Taking strong positions without understanding their implications has become something of an Obama signature. Recall the fierceness with which he clung to his promise to conduct face-to-face diplomacy with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without “preconditions.” He later abandoned this promise when he discovered the magic of “preparations” and the loads of differences between “preparations” and “preconditions.”

But regardless of whether Obama’s promise to partake in public financing was a fib or a mistake, operationally the implications remain the same. A pattern has emerged: Barack Obama implicitly has reserved the right to revisit his promises when it turns out they’ve been stupid or are no longer convenient.

Personally, this doesn’t concern me as a conservative since virtually all of his rhetoric aside from the hope/change stuff has struck my ears as stupid. For instance, his fondness for $4/gallon gas betrays an extraordinary ignorance of how ordinary Americans who don’t reside in big cities live their lives. I’m happy that if he’s ever president he’ll revisit such idiocies.

But if I were a liberal, I’d feel differently. Obama obviously feels as unconstrained by his words as the typical Clinton. And since all his promises to date have been made in order to please liberals, I’d find that cause for concern.

Exit question: How long until the swooning Obama-philes appraise this latest pile of manure he clumsily stepped in and praise his fancy footwork?

A wonderful editorial in today's Dallas Morning News urges Obama to reconsider his girlish retreat on town halls:

Our excitement grew this month when Mr. McCain challenged his fellow senator to 10 town-hall-style appearances, with the candidates effectively shedding their protective wrapping and squaring off armed only with a microphone. Let regular voters, instead of network anchors, ask the questions.

So imagine our disappointment to learn that the candidate who made "change" a platform plank, who wants to move American politics to a post-partisan phase, instead appears so rooted in the ways of the past.

No, Mr. Obama's campaign said, one town hall should be enough. His schedule won't allow much more audience participation. ...

Perhaps Team Obama should consider whether it's wise to pass on a chance to charm Hillary Clinton supporters, Reagan Democrats and undecided Republicans. These voters are the middle-dwellers who could well decide this election.

If Mr. Obama's goal is to address "the concerns of the American people," shouldn't he stand side by side with his opponent and take their questions?

According to the RNC clock, it's been more than two weeks since Obama received the invitation--even longer since he said he'd debate McCain "any time, any place."

On the Wall Street Journal editorial page this morning, Michael Oren, whose analysis of the Middle East is unfailingly superior, argues that the Israeli truce with Hamas is a dangerous delusion. Weakness, he argues, begets weakness.

The roots of this tragedy go back to the summer of 2005 and the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. The evacuation, intended to free Israel of Gaza's political and strategic burden, was hailed as a victory by Palestinian terrorist groups, above all Hamas.

Hamas proceeded to fire some 1,000 rocket and mortar shells into Israel. Six months later Hamas gunmen, taking advantage of an earlier cease-fire, infiltrated into Israel, killed two soldiers, and captured Cpl. Gilad Shalit.

Hamas's audacity spurred Hezbollah to mount a similar ambush against Israelis patrolling the Lebanese border, triggering a war in which Israel was once again humbled. Hamas now felt sufficiently emboldened to overthrow Gaza's Fatah-led government, and to declare itself regnant in the Strip. Subsequently, Hamas launched thousands more rocket and mortar salvos against Israel, rendering parts of the country nearly uninhabitable.

The Israeli Defense Forces response was relatively restrained but nonetheless met with international condemnation. The terrorists were emboldened once more.

Tellingly, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who once declared Hamas illegal, will soon travel to Gaza for reconciliation talks. Mr. Abbas's move signifies the degree to which Hamas, with Israel's help, now dominates Palestinian politics. It testifies, moreover, to another Iranian triumph.

As the primary sponsor of Hamas, Iran is the cease-fire's ultimate beneficiary. Having already surrounded Israel on three of its borders -- Gaza, Lebanon, Syria -- Iran is poised to penetrate the West Bank. By activating these fronts, Tehran can divert attention from its nuclear program and block any diplomatic effort.

The advocates of peace between Israelis and Palestinians should recognize that fact when applauding quiet at any price. The cost of this truce may well be war.

What's interesting about Oren's analysis is just how much things have changed in a very short period of time. In late March, I spoke to a senior Bush administration deeply involved in Israeli-Palestinian issues. When I asked about the likelihood of an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities in the near term, he said: I think it's much more likely that we'll see military action in Gaza.

Like a lot of Celtics fans of a certain vintage, I’m stuck in permanent Larry Bird nostalgia mode. That means I tend to bore younger Celtic fans with my tedious memories. As is the case with many wizened Celtics fans, this reflex is involuntary. What I experienced as a young Celtic fan can’t be improved on. I was in the Garden when the Celtics and Larry beat the Lakers and Magic in Game 7 of the 1984 Finals. For a Celtics fan, it can’t get better than that.

But the 2007-2008 Boston Celtics were a remarkable team, a team that accomplished several things even the Bird Era Celtics never approached. This year’s Celtics went the entire season without getting blown out. Did you know that? Even when they were playing their fourth road game in five nights, the Celtics showed up, played hard and won. Even the best Bird teams submitted their share of stinkers. They had nights when they clearly had little interest being on a basketball court. This year’s Celtics elevated basketball professionalism in this town to a new level.

Allow me a brief digression - About a decade ago, I had a close friend who played for the Boston Bruins. One afternoon, the Bruins were losing a playoff series 3-1 and hosting Game 5 on their home ice. The Bruins won that game, and I walked out of the stadium with my friend and one of his teammates. As we passed the security guard, the guard said “Thursday!” in reference to the night the Bruins would host Game 7 if they could manage to win Game 6 on the road. After we were out of earshot, my friend and his teammate said to each other, “Yeah right. Thursday. Sure.”

They couldn’t wait for their season to be over. Their wives were a bit annoyed that they had won that afternoon’s game. On the day of Game 6, I had a dentist appointment and my dentist, a huge Bruins fan, expressed his optimism for that night’s game. I broke it to him gently that the Bruins not only wouldn’t win, but wouldn’t even show up. If had been paying for my tickets, I would have found the whole experience really irritating.

The men who play the games are human beings. Just like you have pouty guys at your office, professional sports teams have pouty players. And just like you may work for an organization that’s unfocused and indifferent to the quality of its work product, there are pro sports teams that are the same way. Professional athletes aren’t inherently more likely to live and die with their professional commitments than everyone at your office is.

And that’s what made this year’s Celtics team so amazing. They took every game with the complete seriousness. They showed up mentally every night. Playing a season that stretches over eight endless months, this was a remarkable achievement. These Celtics got the most out of their considerable talent - not just on some nights, but every night.

Until the playoffs, anyway. Once the postseason began, the Celtics inexplicably lost their confidence on the road. The team that had swept the Texas three-step, something that hadn’t been done in seven years, suddenly couldn’t win in Atlanta. Or Cleveland. Many of us feared that the Celtics were paper tigers. I actually wrote an ill-advised piece in these virtual pages suggesting that the Celtics just weren’t that good.

Yes, I’d like a mulligan on that one. The Celtics early playoff woes are traceable to the fact that they entered the postseason with a core that had little playoff success. Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen and Doc Rivers all had enormous question marks hanging over their careers as the playoffs began. For all of them, either a championship or at the very least a strong playoff run was necessary for their reputations. The pressure must have been suffocating, especially given how much this particular team wanted to win.

By the time The Finals had rolled around, the Celtics had rediscovered what had made them so special. When they fell behind by 24 in Game 4 against the Lakers, I told my brother, “It will be close – this team doesn’t get blown out.” Earlier in the series, it had become apparent that the Celtics were the much better team. In addition to having more talent, the Celtics worked much harder than the Lakers.

A friend emailed me yesterday asking why Phil Jackson seemed so indifferent to the proceedings. Even in the early 90’s when he had the best team in basketball by a country mile, Jackson always had a bit of that Zen detachment thing going for him. But in this series, he really seemed not to care. He knew by the time the series headed back to Los Angeles that he just didn’t have the horses. The Lakers didn’t have quite enough talent and not nearly enough heart.

Los Angeles was fortunate to stretch things out to six games. In Boston, we were frustrated that what should have been a sweep or at most a five game series went on so long. But it worked out perfectly. The Celtics got their reward in Game 6 where they played their best 48 minutes of the entire season. Everything came together – the energy, the desire, the skill.

For young Celtics fans, I imagine Tuesday’s clincher will assume the place in their hearts that 1986’s final game has in mine. On both nights, great teams played a perfect game when it mattered most. Tuesday night’s game was the signature of a great a champion.

In the past week, several disturbing stories out of Afghanistan suggested the Taliban was gaining traction, especially in Kandahar, where an elaborate jail-break freed hundreds of terrorists. Afghan and NATO troops though have already taken action to curb this disturbing trend, and it sounds like they're succeeding.

After a day of airstrikes and ground operations against a surge by Taliban fighters, provincial authorities here said Thursday that hundreds of militants had been killed or wounded in the valleys and villages of the strategic Arghandab region on the approaches to Kandahar.

Afghan and NATO forces poured reinforcements, armored vehicles and helicopter gunships into the area Wednesday after the insurgents infiltrated 18 villages. The influx of fighters came less than a week after a jailbreak in Kandahar freed hundreds of Taliban prisoners.

Asadullah Khaled, the governor of Kandahar Province, told a news conference in the Arghandab district compound on Thursday: “Hundreds of militants have been killed and wounded, their dead bodies have been left on the ground, with numbers of light and heavy weapons.”

While he said that the Arghandab district was “completely cleared of insurgents” operations were continuing to root out any “insurgents who are hiding.”

Mr. Khaled said most of the insurgents were from Pakistan’s Waziristan area, commanded by a man called Baitullah Masood. “He sent the men to destroy the lives of innocent Afghans,” Mr. Khaled said. He said there had been no civilian casualties and no new Afghan or NATO casualties on Thursday.

Yesterday’s Washington Post polling article included some comparisons between Washington Post surveys on the Bush/Kerry race in June 2004 and the paper’s most recent survey on the McCain/Obama contest. For example, the 2004 survey found Democratic Senator John Kerry leading President Bush in June by six points (48 percent to 42 percent). The June 2008 numbers show Barack Obama leading John McCain by exactly the same six-point margin (48 percent to 42 percent).

The June 2008 survey also reports the results of several critical candidate characteristics, such as who would be a strong leader, who better represents your values, and who is more trustworthy on domestic and foreign policy questions.

I have compared these 2008 results to the Bush/Kerry results of four years ago. As the Post and others have noted, these numbers are probably more important at this stage of the election than the head-to-head horserace results.

Senator McCain also does better than President Bush on a couple of measures. For example, in June 2004, Bush and Kerry were essentially tied on the issue of fighting terrorism (Bush 48 percent/Kerry 47 percent). Today, McCain leads Obama by 14 points (53 percent to 39 percent). Bush also trailed Kerry on the question of taxes by 12 points. In June 2008, McCain closes that gap to eight. The spread between McCain and Obama on issues such as Iraq (McCain by 1 point) and healthcare (Obama by 20 points) are the same as between Bush and Kerry in 2004 (Bush by 2 points on Iraq; Kerry by 18 points on healthcare).

It's important to note that Bush closed the gap between himself and Senator Kerry on many issues, including terrorism, health care, taxes, and education, between the June and July 2004 Washington Post polls.

Not surprisingly, the presumptive Republican nominee in 2008 trails his opponent more on the economy than President Bush did in 2004. Senator Kerry held a five-point edge when it came to trust on the economy. Senator Obama leads his Republican rival by 16 points (52 percent to 36 percent). McCain also slumps on the question of who "represents your own personal values." In 2004, Kerry and Bush were essentially tied on this question (Kerry led by 2 points). Today Senator Obama leads by 13 points (51 percent to 38 percent).

The most troubling numbers, however, for McCain at this point in the campaign could be the gap in "enthusiasm." Yesterday’s Post story notes the current differences. I looked at a July 2004 Washington Post poll and constructed this table:

Source: June 2004, 2008 Washington Post Polls

Part of this gap results from lingering Republican-base indifference toward Senator McCain. He was not the “first choice” of many in this group, but he now has solid support among self-identified GOP voters. McCain needs to excite his supporters a little more to ensure GOP turnout competes with a potential Obama wave. My hunch is that McCain enthusiasm will build following the conventions. Nothing drives Republican enthusiasm like the prospect of electing the most liberal president in a generation.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said today that North Korea would be taken off of the U.S. list of state sponsors of terror and will no longer be sanctioned under the Trading with Enemies Act. And what does North Korea have to do to get these long-sought rewards? Basically, do what it had promised to do months ago -- provide an exhaustive declaration of its nuclear activities. The new concessions follow the disclosure last fall of intelligence demonstrating that North Korea was helping Syria with its nuclear program.

The lesson: Break promises and proliferate and the State Department will reward you.

If John McCain is looking for places to break with the Bush administration, its Clinton-lite approach to North Korea would be a good place to start.

Congressional Democrats are attacking McCain for flip-flopping on offshore drilling:

“This week’s flip-flop on offshore oil drilling by President Bush and Senator John McCain is nothing more than a cynical campaign ploy that will do nothing to lower energy prices and represents another big giveaway to oil companies already making billions in profits,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

That might be an effective attack--if so many voters hadn't flip-flopped on the issue themselves. As Jonathan Martin reports:

A veteran of Florida politics who is not tied to Crist says the gas price-driven poll numbers justify the drilling flip-flop (justify in the political sense, that is):

"[After many years working in the state], I would have told you that it was the single issue that would never, ever, ever change. Ev-uh," says the source.

But "somewhere between $3.00 and $4.00, the [poll] number literally flipped upside down."

John Feehery, a GOP consultant and former communications director for Speaker Dennis Hastert, says that the sleeper issue of 2008 may be violent crime. More precisely, it may be a sleeper issue in GOP-leaning districts. Feehery points out that while crime is down nationwide, it's up in smaller cities--and sentiments about illegal immigration may be tied in with worries about crime:

I have had a working theory for quite a while that the anger towards illegal immigration is only partially explained by job security. The biggest reason that many Americans dislike illegal immigration is a fear of crime.

The Democrats now sense this and are outbidding the White House on spending for immigration enforcement, with a special emphasis on deporting people convicted of major drug offenses and violent crimes. 
According to one news report, “A Homeland Security budget bill now moving through the House Appropriations Committee specifies that at least $800 million be spent after Oct. 1 to identify and remove the most violent and dangerous criminals from the U.S.”

Politico has more about the move by moderate Democrats--i.e., Democrats in Republican-leaning districts--to move to the right on immigration. How real is the anxiety about crime overall? Polls of Americans' top priorities generally no longer even list crime as a possible response. But in one recent poll where it did appear as an option--Gallup's poll in March--49 percent of Americans said crime and violence is something that they personally worry about "a great deal," putting it behind only Iraq and health care as a priority.

The most taxed, regulated product in the country is about to become even more regulated. Congress is weighing a ban on flavored cigarettes that are popular among today's youth. The tobacco companies are even supporting the legislation, and with good reason. It contains one big exception--it exempts menthol from the ban.

The reason? Menthol is preferred by 75 percent of black smokers. Although this type of pandering is business as usual on the Hill, it is appalling that the American Medical Association would be so spineless as to refuse to take a stand. Some doctors with integrity are publicly opposing the exemption, noting it hurts the black community. They are right: A recent study concluded, "smokers who favor menthol cigarettes are twice as likely to fall off the wagon after quitting than people who smoke other cigarettes." Either menthol should be included in the law, or the whole law should be abandoned.

Democrats love to push tobacco legislation in election years, but it might backfire this time. Only one of this year's presidential candidates is a smoker, and it's not John McCain. So how will Obama, a rumored Marlboro man, vote on this legislation? Will he take a stand against menthol?

Another mag in the tank for Obama:

This kind of fawning cover photo is to be expected from from Newsweek, but US Weekly?

HT: Marc Ambinder

Domestic drilling has been the buzz all week. Most Americans (67 percent per Rasmussen) support offshore drilling. And now John McCain, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, and President Bush are calling for an end to the moratorium on offshore drilling, while Barack Obama is taking the 33 percent side of the issue.

Yesterday McCain said, "We have proven oil reserves of at least 21 billion barrels in the United States. But a broad federal moratorium stands in the way of energy exploration and production. And I believe it is time for the federal government to lift these restrictions and to put our own reserves to use." Hot Air's Ed Morrissey notes, "This news comes as a relief to consumers who have waited for some promise of action at any level of the government."

Bloggers think drilling is a winning issue. At The Next Right, Matt Hurley explains why "campaigning against the Pelosi Premium is a winner": because "95% of the American people are very concerned or somewhat concerned about the the price of gasoline. That Speaker Pelosi and House Democrats continue to turn a deaf ear to this issue is amazing." Power Line's John Hinderaker says that while it is a good start, McCain needs to do more: "McCain needs to emerge as an aggressive, enthusiastic advocate of affordable energy and economic growth. If he can do that, he, and the Republican Party, will sweep to victory in November."

Obama then called McCain's support for offshore drilling "another example of short-term political posturing from Washington" and argued for a windfall profits tax. At Contentions, Jennifer Rubin argues that "opposing drilling for domestic oil production seems like a loser politically for Obama. How long and hard he argues that we should continue our present offshore oil ban will tell us for certain if it is." Redstate's Pejman Yousefzadeh adds that "it is impossible to take seriously the Obama campaign's argument that a removal of the ban on offshore drilling only serves to benefit oil companies." And the Political Machine's Dave sums up Obama's refusal to support offshore drilling: "Wow, that's a lot of words to say, 'yeah were still not drilling offshore, sorry about the $4 gallon gas, not much I can do.'"

The Obama campaign has released the roster of its National Security Working Group. You’ll want to take your No-Doz before reading the full list:

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
Senator David Boren, former Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
Secretary of State Warren Christopher
Greg Craig, former director of the State Department Office of Policy Planning
Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig
Representative Lee Hamilton, former Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee
Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder
Dr. Tony Lake, former National Security Advisor
Senator Sam Nunn, former Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Secretary of Defense William Perry
Dr. Susan Rice, former Assistant Secretary of State
Representative Tim Roemer, 9/11 Commissioner
Jim Steinberg, former Deputy National Security Advisor

Okay, one obvious quibble--what the hell does Eric Holder know about National Security? I know he did the high profile prosecution of Dan Rostenkowski and was instrumental in getting Marc Rich his presidential pardon, but even so, Holder’s national security bona fides aren’t immediately apparent. Since his name keeps coming up in regards to Obama-related activities, he’s probably your next Attorney General if Obama wins. While Holder wouldn’t be an inspiring pick, we could do worse. (Hint: rhymes with “Schmeval Schmatrick.”)

But I digress. What really leaps out about the list is what a thoroughly conventional crew of advisors Obama has cobbled together. Does anyone really think Warren Christopher will devise a revolutionary national security plan? Or Madeline Albright? Or Tony Lake?

This goes back to what I was saying about Obama a couple of weeks ago. Rhetorical skills aside, Obama is a decidedly inside-the-box thinker. If he were really going to take America’s national security in a new direction, he wouldn’t be seeking counsel from these fossils.

Obama’s penchant for conventional--nay, clichéd--thinking provides equal measures of hope and fear. Those who fear that Obama might just turn over our national security checkerboard can probably breathe easier. That’s not how this particular politician rolls.

But the reliance on such a conventional cast of advisors suggests that Obama hasn’t really given much thought to national security. Instead, he has opted for the George H.W. Bush route of prudence. Everyone on the list of advisors (with the exception of Holder) has establishment credentials. If Obama has a national security vision, it remains impossible to discern.

A few weeks back, I wrote a longer article on why presidents don't use email. A not entirely unrelated issue is email retention under the Presidential Records Act, which requires all email to be archived and eventually disclosed years after the president has left office. Democratic congressmen are crying foul that certain messages were lost, and a lawsuit was filed to uncover the details about how this happened.

The White House does not have to make public internal documents examining the potential disappearance of e-mails sent during some of the Bush administration's biggest controversies, a U.S. district judge ruled yesterday.

In a 39-page opinion, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said that the White House's Office of Administration is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), even though its top officials had complied with the public records law for more than two decades.

The Office of Administration, which performs a variety of services for the Executive Office of the President, announced it would no longer comply with the FOIA last August, three months after an independent watchdog group filed a lawsuit seeking to discover what happened to the e-mails, which may have vanished from White House computer archives.

The White House has been criticized by congressional Democrats, historians and watchdog groups over alleged sloppy retention of e-mails between 2001 and 2005, a period that included the Iraq war.

For historians, this certainly could impair their ability to recreate the internal workings of the staff. I'm nevertheless confident a more formidable obstacle will be sorting through the gazillions of messages to find the information that is truly of value. And to those who suspect foul play, bear in mind the Clinton White House had a similar problem. A year's messages disappeared including many related to a criminal investigation.

The Hotline reports that the DNC continues to slam John McCain for his fundraiser Clayton Williams' 1990 rape joke:

"On Day Five of the back-to-the-future Clayton Williams controversy," the DNC "held a conference call" with TX state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte and ex-TX Dem chair Molly Beth Malcolm. The goal: "to keep the story alive and to embarrass McCain" during his TX campaign swing. The point: "Women should blame McCain for not personally disavowing [Williams] or returning all campaign cash Williams helped to raise" (Dunham, Houston Chronicle, 6/18).

On Monday, CNN's Wolf Blitzer and Dana Bash pushed the story. Unlike CNN, ABC's Jake Tapper pointed out the Obama campaign's hypocrisy in faulting McCain for Williams's 18-year-old joke: "So…does that mean the Obama campaign won't have anything to do with former comedy writer Al Franken, the Democratic Senate nominee in Minnesota, who is currently under fire for a rape joke he made in 1995?"

Good question--too bad Tapper didn't pose it to Obama during his interview Monday evening. Obviously Tapper didn't have time to ask every question he wanted, but it would be good if he or someone else in the mainstream media got a response from the Obama campaign on this. I called and emailed the campaign on Monday to ask if Obama would refuse to campaign with Franken and call on Democrats to return Franken's contributions. They still have not responded.

From Politico: Muslims Barred from Picture at Obama Event, by Ben Smith.

From the Wall Street Journal: Governor Backs Florida Drilling, by Stephen Power, Laura Meckler and Russell Gold.

From The Hill: Downturn Hits House, by Alexander Bolton.

From New York: Hillary Clinton: Patron Saint of Lowbrow Sinners, by Thomas Mallon.

From European Affairs: Washington: City and Symbol - Or Neither?, by Kenneth Ringle (HT: Arts & Letters Daily).

There are only five months before the election, and Obama is only now convening the inaugural meeting of his Senior Working Group on National Security and disclosing (at least partially) who he solicits advice from when it comes to foreign affairs. Obama apparently runs his campaign like he does the Senate Subcommittee on European Affairs, which has not held a single policy hearing since he took over the chairmanship.

Hillary Clinton is hosting her first fundraiser for Obama, and it will be next week at the Mayflower Hotel. Has anyone yet forgotten the Mayflower was Eliot Spitzer's hooker hang-out? If Democratic big-wigs go through with this affair, I encourage them to consult my handy drink guide. Alas, the Mayflower was once known for its epic martini menu--not the hypocrisy of New York's former governor.

Tom Wolfe brands television news reporters a gang of intellectually handicapped misfits.

"As newspapers are declining rapidly . . . I would just point out, all news today comes from newspapers. All of it. Television has never initiated a successful story in its life. When they have a big story, it's always wrong." He cited as an example Dan Rather's bogus story about George W. Bush's National Guard service and declared, "Idiots!"

White suits don't look good on the tube either.

It's generally agreed that the political climate for Republicans will be toxic this year, so it's not surprising that there are painfully few Democrats who seem to face uphill climbs for re-election. It looks there may be one, however, Pennsylvania's Paul Kanjorski, who's being challenged again by Hazleton mayor Lou Barletta:

Kanjorski’s district leans Democratic, with 53 percent voting for Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) for president in 2004, but Republicans see an opportunity in the blue-collar district. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) performed poorly in the district in the April presidential primary, losing by 42 points to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).

In a polling memo released Monday by Barletta’s campaign, Barletta led Kanjorski in a ballot test, 47 percent to 42 percent. The Susquehanna Polling and Research survey took the opinion of 400 likely general election voters March 27-29. The poll had a margin of error of 4.9 points...

But it’s clear that national Democrats are nervous about the district: The DCCC made $26,000 in independent expenditures in the district to pay for polling.

Kanjorski has made the news several times already this cycle. He's gained plenty of unwanted attention for admitting at a town hall meeting that the Democrats overpromised on their ability to end the war in Iraq. He's also had to answer questions about steering earmarks to family members. And we've previously covered his plan to 'dust off' the New Deal and give it to voters again once Democrats regain the White House.

Kanjorski has far more cash on hand than his challenger. However, Barletta has high name recognition and as Reid Wilson notes, HIllary Clinton gained 75 percent of the vote in Kanjorski's district in the recent primary.

While the approval ratings for Republicans are awfully low, those for Congress are worse. That means there ought to be opportunities for challengers of both parties to take down long-entrenched incumbents who are symbolic of what's wrong with Washington. Can the GOP find more Paul Kanjorskis?

Which is more obscene, this or that, I don't know.

Barack Obama spoke earlier this past week with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari. Their accounts of the conversation differ in politically convenient ways for the junior senator. Obama's version:

At a press availability in Michigan, I asked Obama if Zebari had expressed any concern to him that his plans to withdrawal U.S. troops as president would undo any security advances.

"No, he did not express that," Obama said. "He did emphasize his belief that we've made real progress and I think was eager to see political accommodations between the factions follow up in the wake of this progress.

Iraqi Foreign Minister's version:

"The foreign minister said ‘my message’ to Mr. Obama ‘was very clear... Really, we are making progress. I hope any actions you will take will not endanger this progress."

John McCain has set things up brilliantly: He proposed a gas tax holiday and now supports offshore drilling, both very popular ideas with the American public and bound to lower gas prices at least temporarily. Compare that with Obama, who says he is favor of higher gas prices. Sure, Democrats can accuse McCain of flip-flopping. But that's not going to resonate for a few reasons. First, McCain's change is analogous to Bush's foreign policy shift after 9/11. It's a response to a paradigm shift, and the public is going to understand a guy who says prices are so high that he's reconsidered his position on offshore drilling. Second, Obama is now attacking McCain for an energy bill Obama voted for and McCain voted against. Every time Obama says McCain is changing his position, McCain can remind voters Obama has flip-flopped on the Cheney energy bill that he now claims is responsible for rising prices. And what happened to being the change candidate, McCain can say. After all, if change is about being a dynamic person who can adapt, even perhaps admitting that a prior position is no longer the best public policy, then Obama fails when it comes to the energy crisis (not to mention Iraq). He sticks to careless positions and remains completely inflexible. I said it before and I'll say it again, in this respect, Obama very much is like Bush.

I noted earlier that John Kerry seemed to say that Osama bin Laden has the constitutional right of habeas corpus. ABC News reports (something that I missed) that Richard Clarke directly said that bin Laden would have habeas rights:

While Clarke said that the U.S. has authority to kill Bin Laden, the former counter-terrorism czar suggested that the al Qaeda leader would have a right to go to federal court and ask the government to release him or show through due process why he should be held in U.S. custody.

"[I]f he were to be brought back" to Guantanamo, said Clarke, "the Supreme Court ruling holds on the right of Habeas Corpus."

Tomorrow the House Appropriations Committee will consider an amendment that lets states decide whether to allow energy exploration off their coasts. Some states would allow drilling if given the option, others might not. But if this measure became law, it could reduce gasoline prices and boost domestic supplies. Democrats, however, will likely vote to keep Washington in charge, and protect their friends in the environmental lobby.

Right now a federal moratorium prohibits such offshore drilling. Last week Rep. John Peterson (R-Pa.) offered an amendment to let individual states decide this question. The measure went down on a party-line vote, with all Democrats opposing it.

The Peterson Amendment mirrors the position announced yesterday by Senator John McCain. McCain argued that this measure doesn’t “force” states to allow drilling; it only gives them the option.

The Peterson/McCain position on offshore drilling receives strong public backing, according to a new Rasmussen poll. It finds 67 percent of Americans support offshore drilling, and 64 percent believe it will lower prices.

Democrats--no doubt--will continue to protect environmental special interest groups and keep gasoline prices high by voting against the amendment tomorrow. Remind me again, who’s for change?

In a post titled "The 'White' House," Andrew Sullivan links to a photo of a racist anti-Obama pin sold by a vendor at the Texas GOP convention and writes: "The Texas GOP goes there."

Is it fair to attribute this racism to the Texas GOP? Hardly. Is the Obama campaign sexist because this playing card was sold at an Obama rally on June 5?

I have quietly observed the joy with which giant swaths of the media have greeted the Supreme Court’s discovery of habeas corpus rights for enemy combatants. “The system works!” they brayed as they celebrated the restoration of the rule of law.

In fact, just the opposite has occurred. The issue of granting habeas corpus rights to enemy combatants was something that the Constitution failed to draw a bright line on. Indeed, it failed to draw any line at all. So for the Supreme Court to divine an array of constitutional rights for enemy combatants, it had to engage in wholesale legislating from the bench. It doesn’t get more extra-legal than that.

There was a time when such antics bothered conservative constructionists like George F. Will. Yet Will, apparently delighted by the decision’s policy implications, penned a column yesterday saluting the wisdom of the court and snidely suggesting that John McCain hadn’t read the decision but instead relied on the analysis of a “clever ignoramus (who) convinced him that this decision could make the Supreme Court -- meaning, which candidate would select the best judicial nominees -- a campaign issue.” Just as there was a time when Will rejected judicial activism, there was a time when he put sufficient thought into his columns that he didn’t have to rely on puerile insults. I guess the door has closed on both eras.

What makes the joy over the Boumediene decision particularly ironic is that the system was working before the Supreme Court pulled the plug on the political process. With no clear constitutional guidelines on the matter, what legal protections we afford foreign combatants belongs in the realm of politics. What’s more, those who wanted Gitmo closed had all the momentum. Barack Obama is the favorite in the presidential election and he had pledged to shutter the facility. (So has John McCain, for that matter.) The intelligentsia had certainly made its voice on the matter heard.

Most non-lawyers read Supreme Court decisions with one paramount thought: Do I like the result? Hence, atrociously reasoned decisions like Roe v. Wade have the potential for achieving wild popularity. Of course, you’d expect better from George F. Will who has spent decades earning a reputation as one of Washington’s serious men. And yet nowhere in his article on Boumediene does Will acknowledge, let alone grapple with, the fact that the extension of habeas corpus in this situation goes to foreign enemy combatants, not “we the people.”

Writing for the majority, Justice Kennedy describes the writ this way:

“The Framers viewed freedom from unlawful restraint as a fundamental precept of liberty, and they understood the writ of habeas corpus as a vital instrument to secure that freedom.”

It’s fair to ask, Freedom for whom? Khalid Sheikh Muhammad? If such questions entered George F. Will’s mind, space considerations meant he had to leave them out in favor of childish insults directed at John McCain.

One can make a decent policy case that Gitmo should be shuttered, including all that mumbo jumbo about how the increased security isn’t worth the sacrifice of our national soul that comes along with operating such a detention center. As you may have inferred from the preceding, I don’t think much of such arguments, but I can acknowledge their strengths and relevance.

For years now, the administration has dealt with the political fallout of Gitmo. That’s as it should be – the public has every right to appraise how the administration is fighting the war on terror and whether it approves of the administration’s tactics. Similarly, those who propose granting the rights of American criminal defendants to enemy combatants seized on the battle field should have to defend their policies in the political arena.

If the next Mohammed Atta should be a graduate of Gitmo, the authors of his freedom should be held to account. Because of the latest foray into judicial hyper-arrogance, the five unelected lifetime servants who penned Boumediene will have no such accounting.

Contra George F. Will, there is no more serious political issue than a Supreme Court that feels free to substitute its judgment for the electorate’s when the whim strikes. It would not only be smart politics for John McCain to make this an issue, it would be serious and substantive politics as well.

The British Ministry of Justice just released known terrorist Abu Qatada from prison even though he is suspected of being involved with the September 11 attacks and has already been convicted for several bombings in Jordan. No, today isn't opposite day; the British are just that stupid. The Special Immigration and Appeals Commission, which has ordered Qatada's release, describes Qatada "in official documents as a 'truly dangerous individual … at the center of terrorist activities associated with Al-Qaeda.'"

Law enforcement officials insist they have taken precautions.

He is will be electronically tagged and put under a 22-hour curfew at his family home in Acton, West London. He will not be allowed a mobile phone or access to the internet and the bail conditions include a long list of Islamic radicals with whom he is banned from communicating, including Osama bin Laden.

No pen pals, in other words. That should do the trick.

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's Craig Gilbert reports that MoveOn and AFSCME have teamed up to attack John McCain for supporting a long-term troop presence in Iraq. The ad, which features an actress portraying a mother telling McCain that he "can't have" her son Alex for Iraq, is also airing in Michigan and Ohio.

During the fight over withdrawal from Iraq, MoveOn.org accused General David Petraeus of "cooking the books" for the White House and asked whether he was "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?" The group's leaders were angry with Petraeus for claiming that violence in Iraq was on the wane when, according to the group, "the surge strategy has failed."

On a conference call with John Kerry and Richard Clarke, Bill Sammon of the Washington Examiner asked: "They've said if UBL were captured and detained at Gitmo, Obama would want to give him habeas corpus rights. They [the McCain campaign] said that this morning. Would he? In other words should UBL have the same rights that were granted, you know, by the Supreme Court last week to other terrorists?"

Sen. Kerry replied:

Let me answer that on several levels. This is John Kerry. First of all the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that they have those rights. This is not Barack Obama. This is the Supreme Court of the United States. If John McCain were president, he would have to give them those rights. This is a phony argument. And it is typical of what the Republican playbook is, which is say anything no matter what the other side has said. Just say it. And enough people may believe it unless you folks write the truth and write it boldly and clearly.

When Kerry says that the Supreme Court has "ruled that they have those rights," is Osama bin Laden included in the word "they"? It sure sounded like it to me. Though it would be a lot easier to "write the truth and write it boldly and clearly" if Kerry's grammar were a little clearer.

Obama's National Security Council?

Will Obama's White House be Pooh Corner? Apparently, our potential president and his foreign policy advisers will implement the Winnie the Pooh Doctrine:

Richard Danzig, who served as Navy Secretary under President Clinton and is tipped to become National Security Adviser in an Obama White House, told a major foreign policy conference in Washington that the future of US strategy in the war on terrorism should follow a lesson from the pages of Winnie the Pooh, which can be shortened to: if it is causing you too much pain, try something else...

Danzig spelt out the need to change by reading a paragraph from chapter one of the children’s classic, which says: “Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump on the back of his head behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming down stairs. But sometimes he thinks there really is another way if only he could stop bumping a minute and think about it.”

Hot Air's Allahpundit asks, "Exit question: If it stops causing you much pain, is it safe to stick with it?"

No, it's not. Blogger Jon at Exurban League says, "We live in a world of medieval fascists who promise to rain destruction upon us and our allies. Rogue regimes rapidly acquiring nuclear weaponry. Unstable governments who could turn against us overnight. And the Democratic administration in waiting is talking about Hunny Pots and Heffalumps?" And Townhall's Carol Platt Liebau adds, "Well, let's just hope that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is as charmed by the philosophy of the 'little cuddly all stuffed with fluffies' as the Obama team is."

NRO's Jim Geraghty says that Obama "would be wise to articulate a national security policy that relied more on personal meetings with Gen. David Petraeus and less on reading Winnie the Pooh." And at Contentions, Jennifer Rubin adds that he should "get rid of advisors who make people wonder if he is really ready to sit at the grown-up’s table." But I, for one, will sleep more soundly knowing that the Obama administration would base security decisions on a children's story about stuffed animals.

Abu Qatada, a top al Qaeda operative in Europe, is set to be released tomorrow. Among his other offenses, he was convicted in absentia in Jordan for his role in the Millenium bombing plot in Amman, where his co-conspirators were Aby Zubaydah, al Qaeda's #3, and Abu Musab Zarqawi, the longtime leader of al Qaeda in Iraq.

From the Guardian: Bush Made the World a Safer Place, by Oliver Kamm.

From Bench Memos: Will-ful Disregard, by Ed Whelan.

From Politico: Are Dems Talking About McCain's Age in 'Code', by Carrie Budoff Brown.

From National Review Online: Redefinition Revolution, by Maggie Gallagher.

From the Wall Street Journal: We Can See Clearly Now, by Glenn Harlan Reynolds.

Gordon Brown wasn't the only recipient of recent presidential radness. One bold Air Force Academy cadet, during the USAFA's commencement ceremonies, decided that he'd join his Command-in-Chief in a celebratory gesture normally reserved for the end zone. Behold the mighty chest bump.

So who's got the worse case of senioritis?

An astute reader notes that President Bush used the "urban" handshake in meeting with Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi at an earlier date in his European tour. Bush buddy Berlusconi does not appear fazed.

It’s a tradition nearly as old as modern politics itself – disaster strikes, and a politician rushes in to “help” with the relief effort while a bunch of cameras conveniently roll nearby to record the politician’s noble efforts. Above, you can see footage of Barack Obama continuing this noble custom as he filled sandbags for needy Iowans over the weekend. Please take special note of Obama’s shirt, a dapper Oxford type that one would normally wear with a suit. Maybe I’m being unfair. Perhaps this particular shirt is Obama’s special shoveling garment.

The only thing remarkable about this photo-op is the reaction of the left. “Scout Finch” at the Daily Kos burbled about Obama’s disaster response, “Obama answered the call this weekend, touring the hard hit areas, rolling up his sleeves to fill sandbags, and taking action with local leaders.” Scout contrasted Obama’s selfless relief efforts with John McCain’s activities over the weekend which included such gaucheries as raising money and giving speeches.

Is there anything Obama can do that will fail to dazzle his acolytes?

Rasmussen reports that 67 percent of Americans favor offshore drilling, while 18 percent oppose.

McCain is now calling for an end to the federal ban on offshore drilling, but he still thinks the decision to drill should be up to coastal states. Fred Barnes writes that McCain's position doesn't make much sense:

A federalist on what he regards as a grave national security threat? That's an odd stance. It seems more like a dodge--a very un-McCain-like tactic--than a logical position. Nor does he take into account the new technology that allows drilling for oil and gas in deep waters far offshore with little risk of spillage or pollution of beaches.

Barnes concludes:

House Republican leaders John Boehner and Roy Blunt have done an extremely effective job of connecting limits on domestic production with high gasoline prices. In the Senate, minority leader Mitch McConnell has jumped on the bandwagon. But congressional Republicans can attract only so much attention.

They have, in effect, teed up the issue for McCain. They're willing to forgive him his apostasy on ANWR. According to Blunt, "ANWR is part of the solution, but it's not the only part. There's plenty of evidence [of other oil reserves] for him to move toward more production even if he doesn't on ANWR." The offshore oil reserves and the untapped oil shale in the west have even more potential and wouldn't require a McCain flip-flop.

On this issue, Republicans need McCain, and he needs them. With gasoline at four bucks a gallon and more and money flowing to America's adversaries, McCain has a legitimate excuse for becoming a strong promoter of greater energy production at home. In fact, he's laid out the national security rationale for it and persuaded nearly everyone but himself.

Above is footage of Al Gore belatedly throwing his weight behind Barack Obama’s campaign. Talk about your profiles in political courage! Then again, maybe the erstwhile veep was worried that he would do to Obama what he did to Howard Dean in 2004.

I know you’re not going to watch the whole thing unless you have a surfeit of time on your hands and/or you’re being fitted for a strait-jacket this afternoon, so I’ll give you the one part of the speech I found interesting. Near the end, Gore repeatedly referred to Obama as a “young leader.” This struck me as oddly condescending and strangely passive aggressive.

Given that Obama’s biggest hurdle will be convincing the American public that he’s got the gravitas and experience to handle the presidency, verbally emphasizing his youth seems like the kind of thing his enemies should be doing. From the Obama campaign’s perspective, his vigor (or “vigah” as we call it here in Kennedy country) is something that must come across in non-verbal ways. When Bryant Gumbel does a 15 minute report on Obama’s basketball game, most viewers will instantly understand that he’s not exactly the Chris Dodd/Sam Nunn type.

What was Gore thinking? “Young leader” doesn’t sound like something a potential president would call himself or something he’d want his purported supporters calling him. It sounds like the kind of praise you’d lavish on a child, e.g. “Jimmy really distinguished himself as a young leader when his Cub Scout troop went camping and encountered that stray kitten.”

During his endorsement, Gore made several references to his own electoral misfortunes. Could he possibly still think he’s the rightful ruler of our nation?

In a conference call this morning, John McCain's presidential campaign denounced Barack Obama as "naive" and suggested his election would mean an America far more vulnerable to terrorist attacks after comments the Democratic nominee made yesterday to ABC News. Obama said the response to the 1993 World Trade Center attacks demonstrated an effective law enforcement approach to terrorism. On the call, former CIA Director Jim Woolsey and Former Navy Secretary John Lehman, a member of the 9/11 Commission, offered the most pointed criticism.

Lehman suggested that Obama's current position is so naive it's untenable. "I can't believe Senator Obama won't change his position on this because it is a totally unsupportable position. It would provide such an opening for terrorism. No matter how naive he is he would not go forward with it. If he did, it would certainly make it far more dangerous in the United States."

More Lehman: "The investigations of the 9/11 bombing certainly made clear that the way the criminal justice system as applied to the perpetrators of the 1993 bombing, the way it operated it was a material cause of the greater tragedy of 9/11 because it was treated as a law enforcement issue. Evidence gathered and intelligence used was put under a grand jury seal and kept specifically from the Director of Central Intelligence, who personally told me -- Jim's successor -- personally told me -- Director Tenet -- that he did not get to see the evidence which would have linked some of the perpetrators of the '93 bombing to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. In fact they were relatives. And would have enabled many of the dots to have been connected well before 9/11 and, in my belief, would have given a good chance to have prevented 9/11...What Senator Obama said, this this was the right approach, that they way went about it in the '93 bombing was the correct approach, shows a very deep ignorance of the facts and a very, very dangerous policy."

Jim Woolsey: "I want to stress that the approach that Senator Obama is suggesting -- that we do everything through the law enforcement system -- is precisely what failed in the 1990s...The totally criminal justice approach to dealing with international terrorists, particularly when they are suicidal and are able to pull off plots like 9/11 has not worked. It was tried for essentially eight years from the first year of the first Clinton administration up until 9/11 during the first year of the first Bush administration. It was a miserable failure."

McCain Foreign Policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann: "If Senator Obama did receive that 3am call that was so often talked about in the primaries, I guess his response would be to call the lawyers in the Justice Department."

No timetables, no nothing. Democrats are in full retreat.

Democrats in the U.S. Congress, who came to power last year on a call to end the combat in Iraq, will soon give President George W. Bush the last war-funding bill of his presidency without any of the conditions they sought for withdrawing U.S. troops, congressional aides said on Monday.

Lawmakers are arranging to send Bush $165 billion in new money for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, enough to last for about a year and well beyond when Bush leaves office on Jan. 20. ...

Since January, 2007, when Democrats took majority control of the House and Senate, they have tried to force Bush to change course in Iraq, mostly through troop withdrawal timetables and requirements that U.S. soldiers be more thoroughly trained, equipped and rested before returning to combat.

And while various versions have passed each chamber since then, there have not been enough votes in Congress to enact the war conditions over Bush's objections.

It was an extraordinary weekend for Tiger Woods as he won his 14th major championship at Torrey Pines. A few random thoughts for the tiny subset of Standard readers who have been dying for some golf-blogging:

1) Tiger is the best golfer ever. Period. Jack Nicklaus, the previous holder of that title, won 18 major championships. Tiger is now within four of that mark, and you get the sense he’s not even halfway done. By the time he’s through, Tiger will shatter every record in the book. But even if he quit golf tomorrow to pursue peace in a Tibetian lamasery, Tiger would go down as the best ever. No one has ever dominated golf the way Tiger has the past decade. Really, the only issue is whether Tiger’s the most dominant athlete ever to play any sport. If you’re a golf fan and you appreciate greatness, then you’re fortunate to be living in the Tiger Woods era.

2) All of that said, Tiger can be a bit of a baby when things aren’t going his way. Of his 14 major championship victories, none of them have come when he didn’t enter the final round with the lead. Given how much better he is than his competitors, this is a shocking statistic. This weekend, Tiger was testing his surgically repaired knee. The announcers kept saluting his courage, but I kept thinking, “You know, he’s not exactly the first professional athlete to play injured.” And as injuries go, Tiger’s golfed-on scoped knee didn’t quite rank up there with Bobby Orr playing NHL hockey with a left knee that essentially had no cartilage.

Still, the fact that he was injured and wasn’t capable of being the normal Tiger Woods is the reason why this was such a defining weekend for Tiger. In an ordinary championship, Tiger is the most gifted player by a mile. His injury brought him back to the pack in that regard. And yet he still found a way to win.

3) (WARNING – GOLF ARCHITECTURE WONKISHNESS FOLLOWS. FEEL FREE TO SKIP DOWN TO #4) The venue for the championship, Torrey Pines in San Diego, is not a great golf course. Indeed, it’s downright mediocre. You have to marvel at the dearth of architectural imagination that designed an ocean-side golf course and yet featured an unbelievably dinky man-made water hazard on the 18th hole. Anyway, that’s how they built courses in the mid-20th century.

Still, Torrey Pines hosted a great championship, primarily because the course allowed for birdies. The 18th hole, a short par 5, yielded birdie and eagle opportunities. The same was true of 14, a 277 yard par 4 that the pros could reach with their tee shots. Many modern courses are built with the specific intention of being a non-stop grind that will pound the golfer into submission. The weekend at Torrey Pines showed that fun also has a place in golf course design.

4) Jack Nicklaus has frequently lamented over the years that no one ever plays well when they face off against Tiger. Nicklaus, of course, had no such luck – champions like Tom Watson and Lee Trevino not only played well against Nicklaus but routinely beat him.

If Nicklaus wants to be fair (which I doubt), he could acknowledge that Tiger deserves much of the credit for turning his opponents into jelly. It’s a pretty tall order when you’re playing someone who can not only hit the ball like no one else in history but is also the best putter the game has ever seen. If Nicklaus took the time to become the putter that Tiger is, Tiger would have to wait another decade to assault his records.

Anyway, Jack must have been moderately happy yesterday because the unheralded Rocco Mediate played great golf facing Tiger. (I kept telling my wife over the weekend that Rocco was a really fine player in the early 90’s before his back went blooey.) Rocco seems like the archetype of the kind of guy who does well against Tiger. Regardless of who he’s playing against, Rocco plays his own game. He stays within himself, and doesn’t get rattled because the other guy is hitting the ball farther.

It’s interesting that none of the young guns like Adam Scott or Sergio Garcia have been able to properly function against Tiger, but a series of grinders who are much more self-made talents – Bob May, Rich Beem, Chris DeMarco, now Rocco – have acquitted themselves rather well. There’s a life lesson in there somewhere.

A characteristically strong column from Andy McCarthy, author of Willful Blindness, on Barack Obama's comments yesterday.

This is June 2008. That means it marks the ten-year anniversary of Osama bin Laden's indictment.

He was first charged by my old office, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, in June 1998. That was before the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania (hundreds killed), before the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole (17 U.S. members of the U.S. Navy killed), and before 9/11 (nearly 3000 Americans killed). So it’s fair to ask: How is that strategy of prosecuting him in the criminal-justice system working out?

That's a question Sen. John McCain ought to be putting to Sen. Barack Obama every day.

Sen. Obama, the Democrat’s presumptive nominee, made some astounding statements yesterday which provided his views on confronting the most urgent challenge facing the American people — that of radical Islam.

McCarthy continues:

In point of fact, while the government managed to prosecute many people responsible for the 1993 WTC bombing, many also escaped prosecution because of the limits on civilian criminal prosecution. Some who contributed to the attack, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, continued to operate freely because they were beyond the system’s capacity to apprehend. Abdul Rahman Yasin was released prematurely because there was not sufficient evidence to hold him — he fled to Iraq, where he was harbored for a decade (and has never been apprehended).

He concludes:

A successful counterterrorism strategy makes criminal prosecution a subordinate part of a much broader governmental response. Most of what is needed never happens in a courtroom. It happens in military operations against terrorist strongholds; intelligence operations in which jihadists get assassinated — without trial; intelligence collections in which we cozy up to despicable informants since only they can tell us what we need to know; and aggressive treasury actions to trace terror funds.

That is how you stop the homeland from being attacked, which is what we have done for the last seven years. And it is that from which Obama wants to move away.

Obama would bring us back to September 10th America. And September 10th is sure to be followed by September 11th .

President Sarkozy is ushering in a new era of military policy in France.

In its first new national defense policy in 14 years, France has decided that its security lies within Europe and NATO, establishing a significant shift from the country’s longstanding notions of moral and military self-sufficiency.

Is this really a big change? Haven't French notions of military self-sufficiency always been, shall we say, illusory?

A smart reader writes about Barack Obama's comments on terrorism yesterday.

The worst thing about Obama's comment is that he misses the point that even though we put the mastermind of WTC '93 in jail, his uncle was able to pull off a second attack. That's what's wrong with an approach that focuses on punishing the guilty after the fact rather than preventing attacks in the first place.

That's part of what holding people in Guantanamo is all about. It's also the point of questioning them aggressively (without torture) as opposed to reading them their Miranda rights.
In fact, Obama can only make the claim he does about 1993 because the plot basically failed. If they had succeeded as planned to drop one tower on the other, no one would be saying what a wonderful thing it is that Ramzi Yusef is now in jail.

That last point is particularly important. There is a natural -- and dangerous -- tendency to minimize the potential of failed attacks and to write off the plotters as bumblers. (Even though sometimes they are -- as in the 1993 attacks, when Mohamed Salameh was arrested trying to return the rental used in the bombing.) The attackers only look incompetent when the attacks fail to do what the plotters had intended. It is not a good strategy to hope that attacks will fail.

I suspect that the McCain campaign is not going to pound on Obama for this so as to avoid stepping on the message of the day -- energy. The announcement about drilling is important and it's too bad for McCain that the two strong issues happened to come to public attention at the same time. But it would be a mistake to let Obama's comments on terrorism slide. The two men have very different views on terrorism and it will be to McCain's advantage to highlight such differences at every turn.

Not to mention Obama's evident "confusion" on the basic facts surrounding the 1993 attacks. The terrorists were not all incarcerated. Abdul Rahman Yasin fled to Iraq with the assistance of Saddam Hussein's regime and for all we know remains a free man today. Given his party's talking points on Iraq's support for terror -- in essence that there was none -- this oversight is understandable.

UPDATE: The McCain campaign is holding a conference call about Obama's comment at 10AM. Maybe they're taking the issue more seriously than I'd expected. One big question: Will McCain say something about the comments before his speech on energy this afternoon? He should.

Winking at the Queen of England may not comport with proper etiquette, but President Bush deserves the support of his countrymen in employing the hip-hop style handshake in greeting Gordon Brown this past week.

For his part, the Prime Minister seemed startled and confused—a look I have come to know well from Brown's weekly appearances on Prime Minister's Questions. Something tells me Bush used this modified grip when greeting Tony Blair, and that he was trying to revive the magic of their years working together. Alas, Brown should just be grateful our dear President didn't opt for a terrorist fist jab.

John McCain's spokesman, Tucker Bounds, had this to say after Al Gore's endorsement of Barack Obama today.

“At an event meant to show unity, Barack Obama couldn’t unify his lofty rhetoric with the inconvenient truth that he voted for the Bush-Cheney energy bill he condemns, has proposed punishing tax increases on small businesses, and has even admitted that his economic agenda may harm the economy.”

That strikes me as terribly unfair. I traveled with McCain extensively throughout the primaries and I never once saw him unify his rhetoric, lofty or otherwise.

Barack Obama said this today about prosecuting terrorists in an interview with ABC News. "And, you know, let's take the example of Guantanamo. What we know is that, in previous terrorist attacks -- for example, the first attack against the World Trade Center, we were able to arrest those responsible, put them on trial. They are currently in U.S. prisons, incapacitated."

No, not all of them. Abdul Rahman Yasin, an Iraqi native, was twice interrogated by the FBI and then allowed to walk away a free man. He fled the United States in the days after that attack and returned, with the assistance of officials at the Iraqi embassy in Amman, Jordan, to Baghdad. He lived openly in Baghdad with his father and a neighbor interviewed in 1994 by an ABC News/Newsweek investigative team told the reporters that he was working for the Iraqi regime.

There are conflicting reports about how Saddam Hussein treated Yasin after these reports were made public, with some documentation suggesting the Iraqis were holding him under some form of house arrest and other documents that seem to indicate he was being actively harbored -- given housing and living allowances -- by Saddam Hussein's regime.

What is not in dispute, however, is that Saddam Hussein's intelligence services helped Yasin return to Iraq mere days after he helped orchestrate the 1993 World Trade Center attack. According to the 2004 Senate Intelligence Committee report on Prewar Intelligence (signed by all of the panel's Democrats): "Abdul Rahman Yasin, a fugitive from the attack, is of Iraqi descent, and in 1993, he fled to Iraq with Iraqi assistance."

Beyond the fact that Obama seems to have been unaware of Yasin's flight and the role Saddam Hussein's regime played in it is his odd embrace of law enforcement as the proper way to treat terrorists. It's as if he wasn't paying attention in the 1990s.

John McCain's foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann has this to say: "Barack Obama's belief that we should treat terrorists as nothing more than common criminals demonstrates a stunning and alarming misunderstanding of the threat we face from radical Islamic extremism. Obama holds up the prosecution of the terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 as a model for his administration, when in fact this failed approach of treating terrorism simply as a matter of law enforcement rather than a clear and present danger to the United States contributed to the tragedy of September 11th. This is change that will take us back to the failed policies of the past and every American should find this mindset troubling."

Barack Obama has been insistent that a central part of his economic plan is a middle class tax cut. According to Obama's website, his plan for tax relief includes a tax cut for working families, the 'American opportunity' tax credit, an expansion of the dependent care tax credit, and the elimination of income taxes for seniors earning under $50,000. Nevertheless, the McCain campaign has asserted that Senator Obama plans the largest tax increase in American history.

The liberal media has gone out of its way to defend Obama against the charge. Just the other day, the New York Times asserted that 'some [economists] question whether Mr. Obama’s tax plan can even be characterized as an increase.' Well, today the Times' own Paul Krugman comes to the rescue:

Barack Obama’s tax plan is more responsible than Mr. McCain’s: relative to current policy, the Tax Policy Center estimates, the Obama plan would raise revenue by $700 billion over the next decade, compared with a $600 billion loss for Mr. McCain.

It turns out that not only is Obama proposing a tax increase, he's proposing a huge tax increase.

According to Politico, Senator Barack Obama will mention “Google” three times in a speech in Michigan today. Why? Writes Jonathan Martin, “Last week, discussing how easy it is to find information on people these days, [Senator John] McCain said, ‘You know, basically it's a Google.’ He meant to say that much can be found via ‘a Google search,’ but left out that key last word.”

I am certain Senator McCain knows what Google is. But on the slight chance he doesn’t, he need not despair.

This morning, Barack Obama's spokesman Bill Burton attacked John McCain for not returning campaign contributions from Clayton Williams, a man who once joked about rape during his 1990 Texas gubernatorial race against Ann Richards.

Was Burton aware that Obama's buddy Al Franken, the Democratic Senate candidate in Minnesota, has cracked a rape joke or two when he wasn't writing porn?

Al Franken and his "Midwest Values PAC" have made contributions to numerous Democrats, including senators Dick Durbin, Jim Webb, and Hillary Clinton. Will Obama call on Democrats to return Franken's filthy lucre? Will Obama refuse to campaign with Franken or call on Franken to end his bid for U.S. Senate?

I asked Bill Burton these questions in an email this morning. He has not yet responded.

On Saturday, Barack Obama said he's itching for a fight on the Boumediene case. "I think we should make it an issue," said Obama. "John McCain thinks the Supreme Court was wrong ... I think the Supreme Court was right."

ABC's Jake Tapper reported that Obama went on to incorrectly imply that the Supreme Court merely granted the detainees the same rights as the Nazis tried at Nuremburg:

Obama, a former senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, cited "that principle of habeas corpus, that a state can't just hold you for any reason without charging you and without giving you any kind of due process -- that’s the essence of who we are. I mean, you remember during the Nuremberg trials, part of what made us different was even after these Nazis had performed atrocities that no one had ever seen before, we still gave them a day in court and that taught the entire world about who we are but also the basic principles of rule of law. Now the Supreme Court upheld that principle yesterday."

(Though Obama was clearly referring to the principle of giving criminals a day in court, it's worth pointing out the distinction here, that the Nuremberg trials did not give Nazi war criminals access to U.S. courts, but to a special international military tribunal created by the U.S., USSR, France and the U.K. Though Nuremberg currently is considered a model for international law, it's not as if Rudolph Hess had access to challenge his detention in U.S. federal court.)

Last week's fighting between the U.S. military and the Taliban, which spilled over from Afghanistan's Kunar province into Pakistan's Mohmand tribal agency, has sparked a diplomatic mess. Pakistan maintains the United States targeted an outpost of the paramilitary Frontier Corps, killing 11. The government called the strike "cowardly." The U.S. military released UAV footage from the fighting that showed engagements with Taliban fighters in the open.

Days later, General Dan McNeill, the outgoing U.S. commander in Afghanistan, questioned the effectiveness and loyalty of Pakistani troops. McNeill said attacks in Afghanistan's eastern regions have increased 50 percent since the peace agreements were initiated by the Pakistani government with the Taliban in April.

Then, Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai threatened to attack Baitullah Mehsud inside Pakistan. "When they cross the territory from Pakistan to come and kill Afghans and kill coalition troops, it exactly gives us the right to go back and do the same," Karzai said.

Pakistan Prime Minister Gilani warned Afghanistan not to interfere inside the tribal areas. The Pakistani Taliban weighed in, and threatened to boost attacks inside Afghanistan.

The past week merely serves to highlight the deteriorating situation in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province. The Pakistani government, unwilling to fight the needed counterinsurgency operation in the tribal areas, believes it can negotiate with the Taliban. The U.S. military and the Afghan government, increasingly frustrated by the Taliban havens in Pakistan, are pursuing the Taliban across the border and ratcheting up the rhetoric. Meanwhile, the Taliban benefits by creating fissures between the United States, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

Democratic senator James Webb of Virginia pursued an undeniably distinguished military career. But a fine record of service in arms doesn't preclude becoming a demagogue as a politician.

Last Thursday, Webb assailed Republican Sen. John McCain for comments on the Today Show, namely, McCain's declaration that “What’s important is the casualties in Iraq. . . . Americans are in South Korea, Americans are in Japan, American troops are in Germany. That’s all fine.”

Webb told the Washington Post, “It’s pretty clear their intentions are that we put in a basing system in Iraq that parallels the Korea-Japan history. . . . The difference is, Iraq is not Korea or Japan. . . . The history of every single outside occupation of Iraq over the last thousand years argues against that logic.”

To suggest that a foreign presence in Iraq is more difficult to establish than such a presence in Japan shows breathtaking historical illiteracy. Baghdad was ruled by Persians and by the Seljuq Turks beginning in the 10th century, then fell to the Mongols in 1258--the latter is considered the most traumatic event in Arab history and was believed by Muslims of the time to be the end of the world. The soon-to-be-Islamized Mongols, who undermined the authority of narrow sharia, ruled until an invasion by the Persianized Central Asian conqueror Tamerlane, at the beginning of the 15th century. This was followed by the domination in Baghdad of more Mongols, then two sets of Turkic tribes (of which the Turkmens in Iraq today are a remnant), and once more by Iranians. The Ottomans took over in the middle of the 16th century and ruled until the first World War. Iraq did not gain anything resembling independence until the end of the post-WW1 British mandate in 1932.

Indeed, for almost the entire past 1,000 years the only proponents of Iraqi independence have been the 20th century British and Americans, even as Nazi and Communist agents latterly and unsuccessfully attempted to impose their influence in the country. And so it is today as the U.S.-led Coalition defends a new Iraq from Wahhabi and Iranian terrorists. Perhaps Sen. Webb thinks the lesson of “outside occupation of Iraq over the last thousand years” is that we should encourage an Iranian reconquest?

Webb’s pseudo-history is especially ridiculous in that he intimates that Iraqis have a long tradition of resistance to foreign domination, lacking in Japan, and that this explains the success of the American occupation of Japan. Japan, unlike Iraq, was never invaded or conquered by foreigners of any kind until 1945. The lessons of the past 1,000 years of Iraqi and Japanese history support U.S. intervention, not abdication. The primary rule of historical analysis, as well as of politics and even war is to make distinctions, not confuse them. Loose lips sink reputations.

At a Philadelphia fundraiser on Friday, Obama explained his new tactic for dealing with Republicans' attacks. "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun," he told the audience. And bloggers, of course, are all over this latest Obama line.

At Pajamas Media, Bob Owens explains that this is "ironic--because the fact of the matter is that the Obama campaign recognizes no constitutional right to own firearms for personal or community defense." At Michelle Malkin's blog, see-dubya adds, "Obama was infamously quoted as wanting to roll back concealed carry laws. Apparently he sees some utility in them after all, at least when you’re under knife attack." And Hot Air's Ed Morrissey asks, "Is he endorsing concealed-carry and the right of people to defend themselves with firearms? Or are people only allowed to 'bring a gun' to defend themselves in debates, rather than in life-and-death situations?"

What does this latest line tell us about Obama's politics? The Los Angeles Times's Andrew Malcolm says, "Is this the new kind of politician full of hope who wants to change Washington's ways? He anticipates some kind of close-in fighting with his 71-year-old opponent, John McCain, and his gang of GOP suits with their own secret signs?" The Political Machine's Dave thinks that "Obama is reassuring supporters that despite his lofty rhetoric about a new kind of politics, he is willing to go into the gutter if he needs to, heck he will go deeper into the gutter!" And at Contentions, Jennifer Rubin adds that this line is "a schoolyard taunt, not the language of a presidential nominee."

Should McCain be worried? Probably not, but as the McCain Report says, "we're having second thoughts about our proposed series of town halls."

Since the Huffington Post premiered, it has been home to plenty of ludicrous speculation. Today Steven Rosenbaum earns a place in the Huffington Hall of Fame for claiming John McCain will drop out at the convention as part of a September Surprise by the Republicans. The creator of MTV UNfiltered, which is kind of like journalism, tells readers, "I think there is every reason to believe John McCain won't be the nominee." Yet he doesn't cite a single reason. So idiosyncratic is Rosenbaum's thesis that his so-called September Surprise will allegedly take place in mid-August, when McCain will abruptly announce his withdrawal from the race.

None of the substitute-candidates Rosenbaum names are more media-savvy and electable than the maverick moderate. Perhaps Rosenbaum is just projecting his own insecurities about his party's nominee, the utter chaos of the Democratic primary, and the disarray of planning for the Denver convention.

From National Review Online: A Quick Way Forward After 'Boumediene', by Andrew C. McCarthy.

From the Wall Street Journal: Democracies Can't Compromise on Core Values, by Natan Sharansky.

From the Daily Mail: The Curious Case of the Waterloo Files, by Melanie Phillips.

From the New York Times: Big Tim, by William Kristol.

Both the McCain and Obama camps know Hispanic voters represent a key swing constituency in 2008. And the two presidential campaigns will pull out all the stops to persuade these voters. R. Michael Alvarez and Jonathan Nagler recently offered a thoughtful analysis--from the Democratic perspective--focusing on how the Obama campaign can and must do better with this group than John Kerry did in 2004.

These two analysts observe George W. Bush overperformed among Hispanic voters in the last presidential election:

But in the 2004 presidential election, Hispanic support for John Kerry was lower than the historic norm. While there has been much debate over the exact percentage of support that Kerry received from Hispanic voters in 2004, a consensus has emerged that at best Kerry might have received 60% of the Hispanic vote. But no matter what we think the exact percentage was, Hispanic voters were attracted to Bush in greater percentages in 2004 than to any previous Republican presidential candidate in recent history.

Among Hispanics, national security issues and moral values trumped traditional bread and butter concerns like education and health care in 2004, according to Alvarez and Nagler. This provided an opening for George W. Bush to widen his appeal with these Americans.

Democrats have to perform better among Hispanics in order to win the White House this November. Here is the bottom line when it comes to votes:

We think that for Democrats to retake the White House in 2008, they must work to get strong Hispanic support--and keep Republican Hispanic support at or below the 35% threshold.

What does the landscape look like in 2008? Alvarez and Nagler don’t think Democrats will have much traction on the immigration issue. They write this:

But now that the context of the presidential race is becoming clearer, it is no longer the case that the immigration issue will necessarily be important in the 2008 general election, nor an issue that the Obama can easily use to win Hispanic votes. There is one reason for this--the presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain.

So if immigration won’t work, what will? This is where, I believe, Alvarez and Nagler miss the mark. It sounds like they propose a traditional, liberal message as a strategy. That may work with some Hispanics, but I don’t believe emphasizing these themes will garner more than 60 percent of this constituency’s vote (which is their goal). Here’s their advice:

Thus, there is a basic narrative that Democrats can – and must – develop in order to have a strong Hispanic strategy in 2008. That narrative needs to focus on the core strengths that the Democratic candidate will bring to the table: a progressive message that articulates how the federal government will bring the nation economic growth, how it will provide affordable housing and credit to middle and lower income families, how it will deal with skyrocketing costs for food and energy, how it will make health care available and affordable, how it will make quality education a priority, how it can bring high-quality jobs to all those who want them, and how they will end the war in Iraq.

This story--as they say--is developing.

Gore Vidal is a bitter, washed up has-been of American letters. His increasingly loopy commentary on current events would invite sympathy for a senile old man if he weren't such a loathsome figure. Just consider his take on the presidential race:

[W]hat about Mr. McCain? Disaster. Who started this rumor that he was a war hero? Where does that come from, aside from himself? About his suffering in the prison war camp?

Everyone knows he was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. That’s what he tells us.

Why would you doubt him? He’s a graduate of Annapolis. I know a lot of the Annapolis breed. Remember, I’m West Point, where I was born. My father went there.

So what does that have to do with the U.S. Naval Academy down in Annapolis? The service universities keep track of each other, that’s all. They have views about each other. And they are very aware of social class and eventually money, since they usually marry it.

Did I mention Vidal is a big Obama supporter? A couple weeks back he said Obama was a better leader than JFK.