"These photos would provide visual proof that prisoner abuse by U.S. personnel was not aberrational but widespread, reaching far beyond the walls of Abu Ghraib. As disturbing as the photos may be, it is critical that the American people know the full truth about the abuse that occurred in their name," said an ACLU attorney in a statement e-mailed to reporters. Obama, who once agreed, has reversed himself on this issue too.

I have heard this on every news station and out of every pundit's maw so I want to know from those visiting Newsvine: Is Barack Obama's honeymoon over?

In perusing Newsvine since the sham election in Iran, I have noticed that there is a small but growing number of people harshly criticizing the administration for its handling of the Iran affair. The complaint goes that he is not giving Ahmadinejad a proper verbal dressing down, not decrying the violence in Iran and not going to bat for democracy in Iran. Taking a stronger line on the situation in Iran right now would be a serious mistake on our part that could substantially repair any damage that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has done to himself through his horrendous decisionmaking processes starting with allowing Moussavi to stay in the election through not exerting tighter control and further restraint on the pro-Ahmadinejad militias. Anything stronger than what America is currently doing is a foolish idea.

Our government has intervened with the American company Twitter successfully, asking it to take all available steps to ensure that dissident Iranians can continue using Twitter to transmit news and intelligence out of Iran to the rest of the world with as small amount of danger from retaliation by Ahmadinejad's government as possible. Our government has said that it regrets the violence that is taking place. The coup against Iranian Premier Mohammed Mossadeq in 1953 that toppled his government is still very fresh in the Iranian collective memory and, thus, America and Britain are considered unwelcome interlopers. Yes, many Iranians admire the form of government that our country practices, but we should not mistake the admiration of how we conduct our government for a desire by Iranians for us to interfere in their domestic politics.

If we were to insert ourselves into this familial fight among the pro-reform Iranians and the hardliner Iranians, we would do far more damage to the side that we want to win. There are many moderates who support Moussavi that would likely become disgusted with Moussavi and stop supporting him if he were perceived to be heavily favored by America. Moussavi ran on better relations with America, he did not run on being allies with us. If we get involved, the majority of the Iranian population will coalesce against American influence and support the recognized virulent anti-American candidate: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. If that happens, we will have ruined any chance to see Iran move forward likely for the next decade if not for the next generation.

Republican senator John McCain gave an interview recently castigating the Obama administration for not supporting democracy and throwing its full support behind new elections. McCain and those who feel the way he does do not understand the dynamics of the situation. Moussavi is doing well right now, we should not interfere and perhaps hamstring his momentum by inadvertently associating his faction with being "pro-American." Should that happen, Ahmadinejad will have a political club to destroy Moussavi and Moussavi's demands for a new election with that is the equivalent of the knee-jerk race issue in America: the appearance that Moussavi is a collaborator in Western imperialism. If we give Ahmadinejad enough rope to brand Moussavi an American imperial lackey, the Green Revolution in Iran will be smothered in its crib.

I cannot stress how important it is that the United States continue to play the role that it has thus far: the guarantor of media coverage of the atrocities committed by forces allied with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It is absolutely vital that our government continue to work with American companies like Twitter to keep the independent voices of pro-reform Iranians relaying accurate news reports to the outside world and continue to try to protect their identities. Today and tomorrow will be critical turning points in the unrest in Iran. Mass protests are planned today and the Basiji (a pro-Ahmadinejad militia) have stated that they will be out in force to "maintain law and order." In reality, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has taken control of security in the capital of Tehran and are giving orders to the Basiji. Even more significant is that the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has publicly said he will be leading Friday prayers with the Basiji providing "security." After tomorrow, it is very possible that Khamenei will be seen by his fellow Iranians as having been present and personally blessing the murders of non-violent pro-reform Iranian protesters at the hands of the vicious Basiji. If Khamenei comes to be seen as no better than a common murderer, such a view by the public could open the way for Ayatollah Ali Rafsanjani to use the Assembly of Experts to depose Khamenei as Supreme Leader and replace him with someone acceptable to the Iranian people.

This is not the time for America to start rocking the boat and move out of acting in a quiet assistance role. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are attempting to capsize the boat by rocking it. We should stand by and react accordingly, not make a preemptive move.

We here at places like Newsvine have been getting fairly accurate lines of intelligence out of Iran. We have been getting this information courtesy of social networking sites, mostly. The Twitter, the Facebook and the various other social networking sites out there. In fact, this is such good intelligence that the State Department has contacted Twitter and strongly urged them to do whatever is necessary to keep these independent voices functioning. That leads me to believe that we should be doing our part to help our friendly Iranian patriots and that means stop identifying them. If I give you information through this column, I appreciate you attributing it to me because it enhances my reputation for good information. But I also am not subject to a government that will send me to a re-education camp or a gallows for telling the unvarnished truth about it. When we spread around the good intelligence that we are getting from our friends in Iran and tell where we got it, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government gets hold of that information and uses it to track down those independent voices and silence them with intimidation or outright violence. We must keep in mind that our Iranian friends do not want to be attributed for the information they make available to those of us in free societies: they want the truth to be known. I urge everyone for the duration of the instability in Iran to change their Twitter settings so that they appear to be from Tehran, Iran and that their GMT time zone is +3:30. That will make it much more difficult for these independent Iranian voices to be found because they will be swimming in a sea of decoys. Oh, and for the sake of all that is holy and sacred please stop mentioning anyone's screen name or identifying information that is providing information from inside Iran. Not only are we helping the Iranian government persecute these people, we are poisoning the intelligence well because when they catch up with these activists they seize their Twitter account, hand it over to the MOIS (Ministry of Intelligence & Security) and MOIS proceeds to set up a false-flag operation to feed information to Western operatives (you & I, our intelligence agencies, etc.) under the guise of being a pro-reform Iranian. So, everyone, please observe strict identity discipline from now on.

Moving onto the most important recent events, these independent Iranian voices on the web are becoming more important by the day if we in the West hope to pierce the veil of secrecy that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hopes to draw across the country so that his allies can utilize the darkness to eliminate Khamenei's opponents swiftly and violently. Showing how vital it is that the world be blinded to the internal happenings in Iran, all media that is not owned and operated by the Iranian state has been put on a 24 hour curfew and are being told that their safety cannot be guaranteed if they leave their headquarters. In other words, it's the heavy hint that Ahmadinejad's thugs are going to act as hitters on anyone and everyone they can find in public in Iran trying to confront the government about its lies. In conjunction with this push against foreign media, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has announced it is commencing a major push against all social networking media in the country such as Twitter and Facebook to prevent any more information detrimental to the government from getting beyond Iran's borders.

This increased pressure is understandable because Khamenei is now under potentially catastrophic indictment from Ali Rafsanjani. Rafsanjani is the head of the Assembly of Experts in Iran which, according to the Constitution, has the power to remove the Supreme Leader. This power is not practically proven because it has never been successfully utilized. However, because of the highly-ritualized nature of Iranian society with regards to Islam and how it intersects with the rule of law, that makes continued anger from the public over the sham presidential election a major threat to Khamenei. If the public remains angry at Khamenei, believing him to have improperly discharged his duties as Supreme Leader, Rafsanjani could legally make a move (with the support of the Assembly of Experts) to depose Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as the Supreme Leader and the public would support the decision so overwhelmingly that the only option left for Khamenei to retain power would be to use significant military force. Khamenei retaining power at that point would be an extremely dicey situation at that juncture.

At any rate, this little dust up between Rafsanjani and Khamenei illustrates how not to get along with your neighbor. You cannot expect your pit bull (Khamenei allowed Ahmadinejad) to bite your neighbor's child (Ahmadinejad used a debate to accuse Rafsanjani's son of corruption on national television) and not then have your neighbor call a Homeowner's Association meeting demanding that your pit bull be put to sleep and you be run out of town on a rail. Welcome to the Assembly of Experts, Khamenei.

Theoretically, if Rafsanjani successfully used the Assembly of Experts to depose Khamenei legally another Supreme Leader could be appointed who would then order the military to defend the new order and the issue would likely be decided very quickly: the military would be forced to fight the public and new regime or abandon Khamenei and Ahmadinejad & the old regime in favor of loyalty to the new. Khamenei has to be doing the political calculus in his head and one has to wonder at what point Ahmadinejad is dead weight that Khamenei will trade to Moussavi for his own political survival. One thing is nearly certain: if Iranian civil society continues on in an uproar against the election fraud and street violence does not inhibit it (the recent violence seems to have strengthened the movement if anything) then Ahmadinejad will be swept away or Ahmadinejad and Khamenei both will be swept from the scene.

The supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has made a miscalculation in how he handled the Iranian presidential election. The next few days will determine if it was just an embarrassing mistake or if it will threaten the very existence of the theocratic regime that he runs.

It all started with Khamenei demurring when it came to disqualifying Ahmedinejad's chief opponent, the reformist Mir Hossein Moussavi. The world was watching and turnout of registered voters was expected to be extremely large. The reformist movement became attached to this wartime Prime Minister (Moussavi had been the PM for nearly all of the Iran-Iraq War which ran from 1980-88) as its icon symbolizing change and moderates had looked to Moussavi's organization of a bond-based economy during the war which enabled the country to fund its military with hope as Iran's economy is mired in 25% inflation (the real number is likely more, this is the number that Ahmadinejad admitted to during the campaign) and a lack of available housing that is driving rents in the capital of Tehran to dizzyingly painful heights.

It has been suggested to me by an astute friend here on the Vine that Khamenei left Moussavi in to avoid the appearance of impropriety, so that Khamenei could later say that Ahmadinejad won fair and square and not have that look to be a complete lie. This is a no-no in volatile countries like Iran. You cannot give the people hope and then take it away from them in such a way that they realize you have boned them. Khamenei, whose government officially claimed that Ahmadinejad won two-thirds of the vote, committed that mistake by leaving Moussavi in and then issuing such a bald-faced lie that even the least-perceptive Iranian could see was not true. Allowing Moussavi to stay in and then confirming that he was indeed chosen by the electorate by issuing such an unconvincing lie assured some sort of protest and the reality is that it has resulted in violence between Iranian police and paramilitary forces and reformist supporters of Moussavi and/or opponents of Ahmadinejad.

Another mistake made by Khamenei was to take down the SMS (text messaging) systems throughout the entire country on Wednesday night (the Iranian government runs the only mobile phone company in the nation) and not restoring it. Were he trying to torpedo the election against Moussavi he should have had the SMS system go off mysteriously late Thursday as Moussavi's campaign was shifting into its highest gear to finish the race by shuffling their resources to press their advantage on Election Day. Instead, Khamenei allowed the SMS system to be "broken" on Wednesday night. Had he been thinking about good strategy, Khamenei would have had the system "break" on Thursday evening and remain broken through Election Day. He would allow it to flicker to life a few times after the voting was completed and then it would encounter more troubles the day after the election. Then, when the official result was announced, if violence broke out he could keep it off line citing security measures since he believed the violent protesters to be using text messaging to organize their anti-government campaign. Instead, Khamenei foolishly allowed it to be broken on Wednesday night which gave Moussavi supporters all of Thursday (which in Iran is a day of rest for a political campaign because campaigning is forbidden by law on the day before the election) to get angrier and angrier which motivated them to go out and work even harder for Moussavi on Election Day and, ultimately, build up a large reserve of anger that they are currently turning to with the intent of dethroning Ahmadinejad and running roughshod over any obstacle blocking their accomplishment of that which includes the government.

Khamenei also made a mistake when it came to the counting of the votes. Past elections have featured votes trickling in a few hours after the polls close and subsequently the amount of votes coming in grows. This election featured a higher turnout percentage than the most recent elections (voter turnout was pegged at around 85% of all registered voters in Iran) and yet this did not make the system less efficient. According to the official vote tallies, all the extra votes made it more efficient. Millions upon millions of votes came in almost immediately after the close of the polls and boosting the appearance of impropriety, the busiest election in recent Iranian history was quickly officiated by the government as a 62.6%-33.75% landslide victory for Ahmadinejad. That means that the government took in and assessed 39,270,000 votes, analyzed them and established a very specific percentage by which the reformist candidate lost. There is a certain amount of indignant outrage in election scandals that can be negated by those doing the vote-rigging making it appear as though the results were not predetermined. Khamenei simply skipped over good drama and had the government issue less than half a day after the polls closed what it had concluded the results would be before a single vote was cast. Part of the anger that is currently creating tension in Iran is anger fueled by many Iranians knowing that their government thinks them so stupid that there is no need to have a pause between a hard-fought election in which the pro-reform side shed blood, sweat and tears campaigning for and their government does not have enough respect for them to attempt to conceal that it rigged the election in Ahmadinejad's favor.

Khamenei made his most recent mistake with regards to the election just hours ago. Khamenei obviously has the power to intervene in the election as the country's Supreme Leader. He could have had the government float its preposterous little story of an Ahmadinejad landslide victory powered by populism and then decided what side to take after these clashes between the government and pro-reform citizens. Instead, Khamenei urged all Iranians to unite behind President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and called the election results a "divine assessment." It was clearly divine because to accurately count the votes in the timespan the government did, they would need Allah's direct intervention. Khamenei has now blessed the election results and said that this election in which the government willfully and boldly cheated the reformists out of a win without any concern for concealing their cheating is consistent with the best practices of Islam, a religion that forbids Muslims (and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad presents himself as a very pious Muslim man) from cheating and stealing against other Muslims. To Iranians that are observant Muslims who supported Moussavi, Khamenei has committed blasphemy in their eyes because they know that the government rigged the election. Khamenei derives his power from status that is conferred upon him by religion and for him to directly tie this election fraud to Allah that will undercut his prestige as a religious figure in some Iranians' eyes. It remains to be seen how many will lose respect for him because of this decision, but if many lose respect for him because of this stance on the election it could hasten some sort of political change in the country.

Khamenei seems to have forgotten the simple truths of the Iranian system of governance. The people of Iran believe their government to be a government that is based on the tenets of Islam where almost unlimited power is bequeathed to Khamenei because of his religious standing and in which they are entitled to choose some of their government representatives such as the President of the country. It matters not who the president of Iran is because Ayatollah Ali Khamenei metaphorically has his hand stuffed up the president's backside. The president is the puppet of the Ayatollah Khamenei and it matters not who acts as the puppet. Khamenei could have wisely put Moussavi on his lap and the show would have gone along without a hitch. Instead, he has endeavored for unknown reasons to hang on for dear life to a very unpopular president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, while making many in the public angry and resentful of Khamenei's choice. His choices from the very beginning have been strategically unsound from not disqualifying Moussavi to begin with, allowing televised debates in which Ahmadinejad broke Iranian political taboos & offended many Iranian citizens, interrupting the tools of the Moussavi campaign even though he knew that the election would be fixed, and insulting Moussavi supporters by saying that the government violating their rights by openly ignoring their votes & making up its own numbers was blessed by Allah. Khamenei has created an opening in the minds of the Iranian people, making many more than before seriously question whether the Khamenei government is truly tolerable. It is this opening that America should utilize to offer strong but subtle (read: invisible) support to the pro-Moussavi partisans to take their fight to the Khamenei government and to reason with their fellow Iranians that Ahmadinejad is not only a thief and liar but that he is also not a pious Muslim and that Khamenei's choice to side with him means that Khamenei must be convinced to side with Moussavi or he must be replaced. What passes for moderates in Iran need our help right now to continue on in the face of government opposition and I believe we must absolutely give it. President Obama needs to sign a highly classified presidential finding that regime change is our top priority in Iran starting with helping Moussavi partisans to dismount Ahmadinejad from the presidency and extending to ousting the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the long term. Moussavi and his supporters are the best chance in ten years to improve Iran and American relations with the country: we must take it because I may not see an opportunity as good as this again in my lifetime. If we have success in overturning Ahmadinejad's false victory, Moussavi's supporters can provide a foundation upon which Iran can build a more secular democracy that gives more credence to the rule of law.

Or so Todd Palin would have you believe. His snide little comment about how it would be safest to keep Willow away from Letterman will come back to bite him and more importantly his wife. This dust up with Letterman shows exactly why Sarah Palin is not cut out to be the President of the United States.

First off, she cannot follow simple common sense. There's an old adage that goes "Never get into a running feud with someone that buys ink by the barrel." Apparently Sarah has never heard this little witticism or she thought it was printed in a book and, hence, ignored it on principle. The problem with this is no matter how snide or cruel a commentator is to you, it is to your detriment to respond more than once (if at all) because you get down in the gutter with them and they have far more time to talk about it because, well, they comment for a living.

Second, Sarah doesn't know when to stop and refuses to listen to anyone that heeds caution. It was a slick political move to get offended that David Letterman made a joke about a great big baseball player raping her little pumpkin Willow while the crowd sang "Take Me Out To The Ballgame." It skipped the obvious reference of being knocked up since, you know, her oldest daughter got pregnant out of wedlock. Clearly Letterman was tossing that at Bristol Palin, who has taken the abstinence education campaign on the road to educate kids about how screwing can turn out bad... but still good because the Palins are pro-life. Anyway, past Bristol, the second problem is that Palin doesn't know when to stop. The last few days have no doubt earned her free media coverage and lots of money for her PAC from sympathetic supporters. It was time to drop it yesterday. Today, she demanded an apology to all womanhood from David Letterman. I guarantee you that the American public is already starting to think "If this woman can't cope with a late-night comedian, how is she going to match wits with Osama bin Laden?" To be the President, you cannot be a big baby. She's being a big baby.

The third problem with Sarah Palin is she is throwing away her image because she cannot build an organization. All the serious Republicans that have come around and discussed helping her build an organization have said that they aren't going to break their back for her unless she cracks the books and doesn't look like a clueless ditz the next time a journalist asks her a moderately difficult question. Sarah being Sarah, she's stubborn as a pit bull wearing lipstick! She tells them to shove the books and take a walk. As a result, fervent fan letters by the box and phone calls to Sarah Palin are piling up and essentially being ignored because no one wants to work with this woman that thinks she knows enough to be President but was somehow also intellectually ambushed by Katie Couric on a question about the Bush doctrine. Which, let's be honest, wasn't too hard of a question since it was obvious to everyone that doesn't live under a rock that The Decider wanted to spread democracy everywhere with our military like DDT to kill our enemies. I'm sorry, but if you know so little about the current situation you shouldn't be allowed to be President or anyone in line to be President.

I read a comment from a Viner that said that liberals are scared (until they vacate their colon) of Sarah Palin because she is a young, vibrant conservative that can kick (butt) and take names on that worthless spindly-legged socialist wretch we call a President, Obama. After I'd finished toweling the keyboard off (I spit my drink on it when I read that) I realized he was serious. Then I realized something else. We Obama supporters are called Obamatons as though we are robots and are told we drink the Kool Aid of Obama like Jim Jones' followers at Jonestown. The bottom line is that if you think Sarah Palin is perfect just the way she is, you're the next Mr. Rogers or you've drank massive amounts of Kool Aid and spiked it with a powerful hallucinogen. God help you because we know you don't want Obama to.

Iranians are, as I write this, flooding to polling stations to decide whether the chief of the "Barefoot Revolution" and all-around whack job Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will get to keep his job or not. It appears from all visible signs that the Mean Green Reform Machine is going to savage him like a bear. That probably explains why the government-controlled Iranian cell carrier's SMS system for cell phone texting is "broken" on Election Day. As we did in the Obama campaign, Mousavi (the reform candidate) supporters have used it throughout the entire campaign to communicate and organize with one another. 'Tis alright, though... these type of populist movements are difficult to derail without using, say, the Revolutionary Guard. That comes later when Ahmadinejad actually loses the election, assuming the clerics really give a damn who acts as their mouthpiece.

This election from the Mousavi side has actually been similar to Barack Obama's landmark electoral victory. The Internet was harnessed completely for the first time in Iranian electoral politics with Mousavi followers using it to coordinate as well and to drum up support for their candidate. In another similarity, Mousavi's electoral hopes are pinned to and powered by the younger voters in the Iranian society. The voters that declined to vote in the 2005 election that brought Ahmadinejad to power because all legitimate reform contenders were barred from said elections. They appear to be angry and motivated while the true boss, the Ayatollah, has not lifted a finger to assist Ahmadinejad by disqualifying all candidates that appeal to the youth vote.

Another interesting crisis has come to the fore to threaten Ahmadinejad's hopes of retaining his position. The so-called "marriage crisis" is powering much antipathy against Ahmadinejad. He chose to use a good deal of Iran's funds to distribute to the poor of Iran in a move hailed as the "Barefoot Revolution." It turns out that the primary point of convergence with Ahmadinejad's program with bare feet was that he simply created more people too poor for shoes. His alms giveaway has driven a 25% inflation rate within the country (Ahmadinejad admits 25%, the truth is much less flattering to his fiduciary management abilities) and caused young professionals to get extremely angry. Ahmadinejad's building programs in the poor areas of Iran have also depleted the stores of building supplies available to the country which has rammed the cost of Tehran housing through the roof with no apparent stopping point. Even two young people with good jobs cannot afford to buy into the housing market anywhere in the vicinity of the capital. Ahmadinejad's solution? He promoted marriage while the spouses lived at their respective parents' houses. His religious followers promptly lost their mind, the women decrying that the program was essentially a method by which men could get free, moral sex while the women got nothing of security from the marriage. The program was quickly withdrawn, not being replaced with anything that remotely resembled working. This has fanned the flames of young people's anger as they cannot start family units without this housing. If we Americans know anything, we know that pissed off young men with too much testosterone swimming in their cranium are dangerous to the incumbent.

For a moment, let us indulge in some fantasy. Let us say that Ahmadinejad survives this electoral dogfight somehow. I doubt it, but we need a contingency plan for dealing with him going forward. Ahmadinejad has repeatedly pushed for a debate between himself and Obama. I say we give it to him. He calls for this debate with Obama because he firmly believes that it would never be granted. He remembers the days when we didn't even want to talk to him, much less have our President debate him. We should encourage the President to put aside a week or two for preparation and then take the stage. Even the President's conservative political opponents admit that he has a silver tongue and gives a deceptively good speech. Let's bring the Obama media savvy to the Iranian people directly through the airwaves. The best case scenario is that the Ayatollah forces Ahmadinejad to decline Obama's acceptance of his challenge to a debate which will make Ahmadinejad look embarrassingly impotent. The other best case scenario is that Obama smacks him around like a recalcitrant prostitute withholding a C-note. If Obama doesn't do well, what have we lost? It wasn't going well with Iran anyway.

In a strong presidency, the President himself is the heavy artillery. He is the big gun you bring in when your foes dig in and refuse to negotiate on your terms. Congress is starting to dig in and withdraw to their respective corners vis-a-vis protecting themselves for their next re-election. If healthcare is going to move forward, it will have to be Obama's shoulder ramming into Congress' back that forces them forward. Or, if you prefer, a cattle prod. Either way, Obama has to get involved to move the ball forward on this issue.

Many are absolutely loathe to admit it, but Barack Obama is eerily similar to Ronald Reagan. Many on the right do not want to because that is associating one of their idols with a bitter political enemy. Many on the left do not want to because, well, the same reason. Obama is their idol right now and they do not want him included with the likes of someone such as Reagan. The comparison is just too apt to be passed up.

Both were considered political lightweights and jokes by their opponents. That is, until they knocked down their opponents' house in an election and set fire to the rest of the town on the way out. Even after these victories, Reagan and Obama were considered to be an easy touch. Then their opponents tried to go to battle with them in the political arena. It turns out they both found out the difficult way that Reagan and Obama were masters at making their opponents' disagreement with their major policy initiatives to look like their opponents were the ones being unceremoniously bastardous in doing do. To use a ribald analogy, Reagan and Obama were both very skilled at smiling, shaking their opponents' hands over the negotiating table and deftly using their free hand to grab that opponent by the testicles and yank them like a slot machine arm until they got what they wanted;

How did these two politicians of similar styles with different ideas manage to wield their influence on their opponents so efficiently as to force their opponent into the strategic nightmare: every option left to them was was bad for them and good for the President and they were left to choose what had been subtly communicated as the "easy way"? Two simple options.

The first is that they were both incredibly popular at the time they were doing the pushing. The last thing that any Congress member wanted to appear to be was the obstacle to a charismatic president with plans that he had convinced the public were not radical but were rather common sense. Who wants to be that guy? Who wants to be the one holdout on the jury from Twelve Angry Men? Nobody.

Secondly, they both utilized a trick that was managed with skill and cunning by the Ethiopian ruler Haile Selassie. Both allowed their opponents to think they were extremely weak until it was far too late for those opponents to thwart their plans. For Selassie, it was dealing with a warlord that wanted nothing to do with pledging fealty to the emperor. He invited this warlord to a banquet upon such time as he agreed that this warlord's personal security soldiers could be present at the banquet. The warlord expected the textbook move: lure your enemy into your layer and then wipe him out. After the warlord had eaten and drank his fill, he went on his way back to his encamped army of thousands of soldiers. He had perceived that Selassie was weak and had decided if he could take the capital of Addis Ababa that he could end Selassie's reign and start his own. Except, when he came within sight of the encampment, he saw no smoke nor any other indicators of a human presence there. It turns out that it was totally deserted and Selassie had sent a force to follow the warlord and offer him the opportunity to surrender to Selassie on unconditional terms. Having a few hundred men and being surrounded by thousands from Selassie's army, the warlord made the least painful choice in front of him: he joined a monastery. What else could he do?

Selassie had cunningly hatched a plan to eliminate the enemy army encamped just outside of the city. Knowing a battle would be so noisy that it would raise the warlord's hackles, he used a different tactic. He sent his soldiers with gold and simply paid them to go away. They happily accepted and scurried away. Reagan and Obama were similar smiley faced killers.

Reagan was the kindly old man that gave a good speech but did not have much in the attic. Obama is the charismatic black politician that can read a teleprompter but not much more. He keeps his cool in all situations, ostensibly because he does not realize what issues of import he is dealing with. Indulging in these fantasies allowed men like Mikhail Gorbachev and Tip O'Neill to underestimate Reagan until he had ground them into dust under him. Ronnie always ended the day smiling. While Reagan played the dumb, vapid B-list actor. Obama plays the cool cucumber, so undisturbed that his opponents do not realize he has made his move until he has checkmated them. They look down at the board and then up at a genial Obama in shock. Expect similar success from Obama.

President Obama at the Correspondents' Dinner Part 1

President Obama at the Correspondents' Dinner Part 2

Using witty, insightful, self-denigrating and subversive humor, President Obama managed to make the 2009 Correspondents' Dinner the single funniest one that I have seen. Even funnier than Stephen Colbert's. Watch the videos and then vote and comment: did Obama slay the audience or did he fall flat?

Barack Obama has been President of the United States for 100 days now. Are you still happy with the vote you cast on Election Day 2008? Feel free to discuss after you answer the poll question.

This article is not going to discuss the morality of torture. Why? Because most of the people that support the use of torture in extracting humint (human intelligence) that even suspect someone of opposing torture on moral grounds reacts thusly:

Obviously it's [torture] horrible. But if you would rather see American cities bombed and thousands of Americans killed, then there is something wrong with you[me, the suspected morality geek]. If you care more about the enemy [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, though I doubt the poster knew his name or identity at the time of posting their comment] than the safety of your own country, then why don't you go move to the Middle East and see what it's like[Salute the flag or beat it, fag]. Those terrorists that you are defending are the same people who would cut your head off without hesitation. [As if I did not know that Islamists treat everyone that writes negatively about them the same, whether it is a lowly blogger like me or Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl]

Bracketed comments added by the author for clarity.

First, let's identify who I am because the hardcore "enhanced interrogation" crowd always makes it to the part where they ask "How do you know anything about national security? Are you in the military?" or the inevitable "Stop blaming America and/or the troops first!" I am Scott Isaacs. My great-grandfather six steps back was Colonel Elijah Isaacs of the southern half of the Continental Army that harassed, slowed and ultimately forced Lord Corwallis' surrender at Yorktown, Virginia. Colonel Isaacs had a widespread reputation for burning Loyalist towns that aided and abetted the British. My great-grandfather five steps back was Samuel Isaacs. Samuel Isaacs, whose rank I have not been able to verify, fought several 3-month hitches in the North and South Carolina militias alike which includes the Battle of Cowpens (in South Carolina) where he fought under Brigadier General Daniel Morgan who won a significant victory against the British. Records indicate further that Samuel Isaacs served as a spy for two years against both the British and the Native Americans for the equivalent at that point of the United States government. From that point to World War I, information on direct relatives is hard to come by because of several court house fires and floods that ruined property, birth and death records. WWI picks back up at the oral record that is still in the living memory of my grandpa. My great-grandfather, Charles Edward "Edd" Isaacs, fought in World War I. My great-uncle, Dorman Isaacs, fought in WWII with George Patton's Third Army. My grandpa, Rev. Bill Isaacs, fought in Korea. My uncle, Jack Isaacs (recently passed away), spent approximately two decades in the Army at different posts but spent significant time training recruits in the mechanics of close-quarters combat. One of his particular specialties was a method of silencing enemy sentries that he learned from the Apache Indians. My dad was too young for Vietnam and had already been hired in at General Electric working in the defense industry for thirteen years by the time that the next large conflict, Operation Desert Storm, got under way. My cousin Butch, however, was a Green Beret during Vietnam. My intention growing up, even though I am the last heir of my line, was always to join the military. At 16, I was experiencing severe pain that was similar to having my right side from the waist up doused in gasoline, set on fire and beaten with a sledgehammer. A neurosurgeon discovered that I had a congenital spinal problem called a Chiari I malformation and decompressed my spinal cord. I still live with chronic pain every day and I can no longer play contact sports (I had loved playing tackle football) and cannot take a job where hard hits are likely and that obviously precludes the military starting at boot camp. I did spend two semesters studying as a civilian with the Marines' ROTC at Miami University which I enjoyed very much. I still feel a kinship with the Marines and a fondness for their intellectual acceptance of me even though I couldn't take the physical rigors. My family has earned the right through its fighting to have a say in how this country runs and I intend to use that right to try to correct what I am convinced was a major setback to our war against the radical Islamists and I refuse to be dismissed as unpatriotic. If there be a flaw to find, find it in my argument because my forefathers took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic and I consider that to be a sacred oath that is passed down through my bloodline and not just swearing it out. It is one of the highest honors and traditions of the Isaacs family and it is one that I will continue until the end of my time.

Moving from my qualifications to make this argument to the argument itself, I submit that in far too many cases torture elicits information that is neither genuine nor useful. In some cases in which the interrogator's resources are abundant and the information sought is expected to result in casting a wide net of arrests that leads to more torture and, thus, more arrests, torture can be of use. Consider the Third Reich's use of torture on suspected members of the French underground. The Third Reich almost always collected a majority of prisoners that were not active members, indeed some were not members at all, of the French underground. Instead, if they were lucky, they would obtain perhaps a few and sometimes as little as one captive that was a member of the underground that had useful information to give them. They would torture their entire stable of captives and nearly all would admit to being members of the French underground. Occasionally the Nazis ended up killing some captives through the stress of interrogation and others kept their silence so long that their infuriated captors lost the cat-and-mouse game over information by giving the prisoner what he or she wanted: death. Those still alive that had admitted to being underground members would then start naming names and continue naming as many names as they felt was required by their interrogator to prevent further torture. Sometimes the Nazis obtained an intelligence bonanza, snagging a high leader in the French underground in the act and then, knowing who they had, they would torture mercilessly to wring absolutely every name possible out of the subject before sending him or her to a concentration camp or a summary execution. The cycle would repeat itself. However, much more often, the Nazis would round up another bunch of "spies" that were anything but and spend precious time using torture to extract information out of them that would turn out to be so many dead ends. After a while the Nazis' interrogations had a similar effect on French society that the Salem witch trials had on its own society: French citizens in fear of being named as underground spies would voluntarily go to the Gestapo, confess to being a member of the French underground and then proceed to indict other Frenchmen. Some would go as far to name anyone and everyone they knew, including family, with no regard for the consequences so long as they were not the focus of an interrogation by someone like Klaus Barbie, affectionately known by his alter ego "The Butcher of Lyon." So, while the Gestapo's raison d'etre was to apprehend and execute spies, torturing their prisoners to extract useful intelligence was successful in only the most convoluted manner. By inducing nearly everyone to turn on nearly everyone else they had laid out for themselves a massive suspect pool by which they had to navigate using torture. In reality, it is a near certainty that far more Allied spies and members of the French underground were caught by the Gestapo using different techniques along the lines of investigation rather than torture. The Gestapo operated radio cars that would prowl the area of operations looking for outbound radio signals that indicated an Allied spy or FUM (French underground member) was transmitting his or her intelligence back to London to be sorted out and used by MI-5 and, when it came along later in the war, the Office of Strategic Services. (the OSS, the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency that would be created by Harry Truman after the war in 1947) Yet another obstacle that the Gestapo would use to smoke out a non-local (and, hence, a FUM or Allied spy come from another part of France or outside the country altogether) would be to decree that anyone seen riding a bike on Monday, Wednesday and Friday would be picked up for questioning and that beer was not available on Tuesday, Thursday and the weekend. Anyone ordering a beer or riding their bicycle on the respective days would summarily be identified as an outsider, reported to the Gestapo by a French collaborator and that was the end of the spy capers. Even more advanced techniques had the Gestapo identifying an enemy agent, keeping surveillance on him and when he went to meet up with one of the Lysander aircraft that the British sent to drop off and retrieve agents the Gestapo would be able to hook themselves the two agents, the Lysander pilot and any FUM's that had to be on-hand to facilitate the plane's landing in the dark, abandoned pasture.

The same fundamental problem with intel extracted by torture is clearly on display as well in John McCain's time as a POW and victim of torture at the hands of his North Vietnamese captors in the Hanoi Hilton. From a purely objective standpoint, you simply cannot get around the fact that it is the person that you are interrogating that decides whether they will give you useful information or not. An interrogator that uses torture has no option but to treat each confession from the prisoner as a possible truth to be vetted unless the interrogator already knows that what has been said is wrong. Thus, the interrogator's team spends hours (sometimes days or months) running down leads that don't pan out because the torture elicited something different than the truth from the prisoner. It provoked a malicious intent to lie to the interrogator and abuse the only advantage that the detainee has: only he knows what the truth is. Therefore, the prisoner can lie with impunity to his captor and the captor is faced with three choices: 1) end the torture 2) continue spending time torturing the prisoner in the hopes that the torture will wear him down and he will eventually tell you the truth 3) kill the prisoner with torture. McCain began reciting the Green Bay Packers' offensive line as the names of his squadron mates and naming cities that had already been bombed as new targets in upcoming bombing runs. The further into the five and a half years of torture that McCain lived, the more outlandish the stories that he made up to satisfy his captors. As McCain learned his captors' prejudices, he would incorporate them into his increasingly embellished information. At one point he drew a swimming pool on the fantail of an aircraft carrier. On the whole, if the North Vietnamese truly acted on the information they obtained from McCain, they frantically hunted for professional football players among the downed pilots they collected and shifted anti-aircraft defenses to quiet sectors that had already been bombed and were not likely to be hit again for some time.

The Knights Templar are the third example that I will use to illustrate that torture is not conducive to the collection of accurate and desired information. Philip Le Bel (Philip The Fair, in French, ironically enough) targeted the Knights Templar, the monastic organization whose whole reason for being was to conduct war against the Muslims in the Levant who controlled Jerusalem and the surrounding areas. By the time that Philip targeted the Templars, the last outpost of Outremer, Acre, had been lost to the Muslims. The Templars were now left with accumulated property willed to them over more than 200 years to conduct war in the Holy Land that made a tidy annual profit. They were also left as the first international banking cartel, having collected vast sums of money and then acted as the first banker to Europe's kings. King Philip, it turned out, owed them a great deal of money and was currently (and for the foreseeable future) broke to compound his problems. Everyone knew that the Templars had the mother lode, the greatest accumulation of wealth by any non-royal entity in Europe. Thus, Philip decided to seize the wealth for himself and net a double profit: he would wipe out his debt to the Templars by wiping out the Templars as an organization and he would snatch their riches for himself to spend as he liked. Clement V was the Pope at the time and was a childhood friend of Philip's. However, Clement tried to offer opposition to Philip in his plan to eliminate the Templars. He had little leverage to work with, however, after the Papacy was moved to Avignon, France and he was under the thumb of the French king 24/7. Philip used the only card in his deck that was available against the Templars: heresy. Because they were under the Pope's sole dominion the only crime that could force the Pope to discontinue his attempts to protect them from Philip was to convince the public that the Templars were not the upstanding and chivalric Christian knights that they were believed to be but, rather, heretics and enemies of the Church. On Friday, October 13, 1307 (hence the "unlucky" reputation of Friday the 13th to this day) Philip struck, sending his royal forces to every Templar stronghold in France and arresting and charging every Templar they found on their raids. They were hauled off to prisons where they would be consistently tortured, most notably the prison at Chinon. With only the confessions of the Templars under the duress of torture, Philip muddied their public image and then happily obliged when the French public demanded that the Order be punished. Interestingly, 56 Templars (including the Grand Master Jacques de Molay) recanted their confessions and swore on pain of death that the confessions they gave were under torture. They all were executed for maintaining that they did nothing wrong but get tortured by the French king's allies. But what happened to all that money? This is the part where torture failed to produce reliable information for Philip. Though he was absolutely desperate to get his hands on the Templar treasure (especially the treasure from the Paris priory which he had first observed when the Templars had to protect him from a mob of Parisians that wanted to kill him for melting down all the currency, selling that metal and minting practically worthless replacement coinage) torture never managed to reveal to Philip where every Templar possession in France that wasn't nailed down disappeared to. On Thursday, October 12, 1307, the day before the raids, the Templar fleet at La Rochelle, France showed 18 Templar ships in port. The next day, nearly everything of value the Templars owned in France and those 18 ships were gone and no record ever surfaced of where they sailed for nor where they ended up. Philip was left jilted and apparently no matter how much torture he ordered his Templar prisoners to undergo (including thumbscrews and having their feet smeared with fat and roasted over a fire until they literally disintegrated and the bones fell out) he was never able to find the independent information he wanted: the location of Templar monies. All he ever got from them was confirmation (later discredited) of his false accusations against them, which was worthless since all he wanted was their riches in the first place.

In addition to these historical examples of torture not yielding results worthy of practicing it, there are inherent problems in the risk-benefit analysis for a prisoner that is undergoing torture. In our situation, the first problem is that when we tortured members of Al Qaeda our first question would invariably be "Is there another attack coming?" or "When is the next attack coming?". The reality is that even if the true answer is that there is not another attack coming, the prisoner has absolutely no incentive whatsoever to give this answer. First and foremost, if they tell the interrogator there's not an attack coming they are going to get waterboarded (or whatever method is being used) again and that is a standing rule. The interrogator's assumption is that there is another attack and until that is confirmed he will continue to use torture to force his prisoner to confirm that. So, right off the bat, a lie will gain relief from harsh interrogation. The second problem is that a dedicated member of Al Qaeda will want to steer us away from any operations they truly know about. If they are a gifted story teller they will spend their time in their cells spinning a false yarn about an attack nowhere near the true target. They then give over this information during interrogation and what has been accomplished? We are now diverting intelligence resources from intercepting actual intelligence to gathering information and verifying a threat that never existed in the first place. A few "high-value" prisoners lying to us can open the kind of hole in our defenses that allowed the 9/11 attack to proceed to fruition with practically no interference from law enforcement whatsoever. Then, what is the solution to dealing with a detainee that has lied to us? Threatening him with more torture or worse torture if he lies again? At that point he will tell us an even more elaborate lie that may be impossible to actually verify and will leave us chasing our tail. Even if that is proven false, he has no incentive to do anything but tell us lies that will buy him time because the gaps between interrogation sessions are going to be longer if we have to verify information after each one. Furthermore, he has good reason to suspect if he actually tells us everything that he knows and thus renders himself useless as a font of information we will throw him into a dark hole, feed the key into a shredder and he will rot for decades until he dies. There is literally no incentive for them to tell us much, if any, legitimate information.

There are further complications as well. Double agents, which were used extensively during WWII and the Cold War, have a real propensity to refuse your offer to work against their government or group when they are having simulated drowning conducted on them, are left mostly naked in a room to lower their core temperature just above what will kill them from hypothermia or when they're forced to stay in the same stress position for 24 hours. In fact, they tend to turn down offers from people that torture them. Even if they do agree to be a double agent for you after you've interrogated them, you have scrambled their mind to the point that their former comrades are likely to detect something is wrong with them and then they have the choice of using them to feed you bad intel or they just execute them and you lose your source.

The final problem with torture is that it erects the deadly "Chinese wall" between the FBI and CIA that bears so much blame for this nation's inability to detect and foil the original 9/11. FBI agents are not allowed to torture nor are they allowed to witness torture without reporting it to the Justice Department. Therefore, if the CIA is going to torture they have to do their interrogations by excluding FBI agents. Also, there is a push by some to torture every detainee that is a possible significant source of information. At that point, the FBI is being shut off from all humint because torture is de rigeur and they cannot participate in such interrogations. At that point you are facing the benching of FBI agents that have years of experience studying and investigating our enemies (sometimes the prisoners that we have in particular) and when they cannot be present at the interrogation nor watch a tape of it that means something our most experienced intelligence agents might pick up will go by unnoticed to the agents interrogating the prisoner.

The simple fact of the matter is that torture is not effective enough to become standard practice (or even anything more than an occasional resort in a tight situation) and it creates problems that are, by nature, almost exclusive to torture and can open the way for another successful attack on this country. I understand that there are a number of people who truly think that torture can make this country safer, but this is one of those situations where the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

President Barack Obama wants to cut federal spending and he is asking for the suggestions of citizens for how the federal government can cut the record federal spending. What would you tell the President to cut?

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Baghdad on Saturday, a day after suicide bombings killed dozens in the Iraqi capital.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is due to meet the U.S.'s top commander in Iraq during her Baghdad visit.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is due to meet the U.S.'s top commander in Iraq during her Baghdad visit.

The one-day visit to Baghdad was not previously announced because of security concerns.

Clinton, who spoke with reporters after she landed in Kuwait on Friday evening, said she planned to meet with the United State's top commander in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, to get his assessment on the recent bombings in Iraq.

"I want his evaluation of what these kinds of rejectionist efforts mean," Clinton said. "And what can be done to prevent them by both the Iraqi government and the U.S. forces."

Clinton added that she did not see signs of rekindled sectarian violence.

"I think that the suicide bombings, that are lethal and terrible in the loss of life and the injuries they inflict, are in an unfortunately tragic way the signal that the rejectionists fear that Iraq is going in the right direction."

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- How does President Obama compare with his predecessors after nearly 100 days in office?

A new CNN poll of polls shows 64 percent job approval for President Obama.

On his job rating, Obama comes out just a little better. But he really stands out on personal qualities.

CNN's recent poll of polls, taken April 14-21, shows an average of 64 percent job approval for Obama.

According to Gallup polling examining past presidents' job approval, that's similar to where the last six elected presidents stood after 100 days.

Only Ronald Reagan got a slightly higher rating (67 percent). Bill Clinton and the first President Bush were both below 60.

The average for the six recent presidents after 100 days: 61 percent approval. All were in the same general range -- between 55 and 67 percent.

They were all elected after the late 1960s, when the great division in American politics emerged. Conservative versus liberal. Red versus blue. Each has taken office with a hard core of supporters and opponents.

New presidents used to come in with a greater reserve of good will. Ratings for John F. Kennedy and Dwight Eisenhower were markedly higher after 100 days -- Kennedy 83 percent, Eisenhower 72 percent.

Obama really stands out on personal qualities.

(CNN) – One of America's largest labor unions is teaming up with a prominent liberal interest group to target congressional Republicans' economic polices, calling the GOP the "party of no" in a new national ad buy coming only days before President Obama's first 100 days comes to a close.

In the new television commercial called "Timeline," the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and Americans United portray target Republicans over opposition to Obama's stimulus package, the expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, and legislation seeking to allow women to sue for equal pay for equal work.

"There have always been those who said NO to progress. But in times of crisis, Americans have never taken NO for an answer," an announcer says in the 30 second spot.

The groups say the ad, described as a "mid five-figure buy," will begin airing Friday nationally for five days on MSBC and on all the cable news stations in the Washington, DC area.

The TV spot comes the same day the Democratic National Committee is launching a Web ad that declares, "After 100 days, the Republican approach is 'just say no.'"

This new DNC web video is the latest in a series that portray Republicans in Congress as a party devoid of new ideas.

Republicans disagree, and state that in saying no to President Obama and the Democrats in Congress, they are trying to save American taxpayers money and are attempting to rein in what they consider out of control government spending.

So what do Americans think?

Fifty-eight percent of those questioned in a recent CNN/Opinion Research Coporation national poll said that President Obama had a clear plan for solving the country's economic problems. That was more than double the 24 percent who felt Republicans had a clear prescription for fixing the country's economic mess. Three out of four polled said the GOP didn't have a clear plan.

The same survey also suggests that 62 percent felt President Obama is doing enough to cooperate with the other party, while only 37 percent thought Republicans were doing enough to reach out to the other side.

WASHINGTON — A newly declassified narrative of the Bush administration's advice to the CIA on harsh interrogations shows that the small group of Justice Department lawyers who wrote memos authorizing controversial interrogation techniques were operating not on their own but with direction from top administration officials, including then-Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

At the same time, the narrative suggests that then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and then-Secretary of State Colin Powell were largely left out of the decision-making process.

The narrative, posted Wednesday on the Senate Intelligence Committee's Web site and released by its former chairman, Sen. Jay Rockefeller , D- W.Va. , came as Attorney General Eric Holder told reporters that he'd "follow the evidence wherever it takes us" in deciding whether to prosecute any Bush administration officials who authorized harsh techniques that are widely considered torture.

In a statement accompanying the narrative's release, Rockefeller said the task of declassifying interrogation and detention opinions "is not complete" and urged prompt declassification of other opinions from 2006 and 2007 that he said would show how Bush Justice Department officials interpreted laws governing torture and war crimes.

These developments come days after the Obama administration declassified four Justice Department memos from 2002 and 2005 that revealed in detail authorized interrogation methods, such as waterboarding, which simulates drowning, sleep deprivation and putting detainees in containers with insects.

The drafting of the narrative began last summer, at the prompting of Rockefeller. The Senate Intelligence Committee staff drafted the document, with heavy input from the Bush administration, in a multi-department effort largely coordinated through the Director of National Intelligence's office.

Bush's National Security Council , however, refused to declassify it.

Obama's National Security Adviser, James L. Jones , signed off on its release last week and the Senate panel cleared it Tuesday.

Among other details, the narrative shows that:

— The CIA thought al Qaida operative Abu Zubaydah was withholding information about an imminent threat as of April 2002 , but didn't get authorization to use various interrogation techniques on him until more than three months later.

— Key Senate Intelligence Committee members were briefed on the techniques used on Zubaydah and Khalid Sheik Mohammed in 2002 and 2003.

— The Director of Central Intelligence in the spring of 2003 sought a reaffirmation of the legality of the interrogation methods. Cheney, Rice, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and White House counsel Alberto Gonzales were among those at a meeting where it was decided that the policies would continue. Rumsfeld and Powell weren't.

— The CIA briefed the Rumsfeld and Powell on interrogation techniques in September 2003 .

— Administration officials had ongoing concerns about the legality of waterboarding as they continued to justify its legitimacy.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A key Democrat who reportedly was overheard on a National Security Agency wiretap discussing a deal with a suspected Israeli agent has called the wiretap an "abuse of power."

Rep. Jane Harman called on the Obama administration to release transcripts of the alleged conversations.
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Rep. Jane Harman, D-California, called on the Obama administration to release transcripts of the alleged conversations to her, saying she would make them public.

"I never had any idea that my government was wiretapping me at all," Harman said on CNN's "The Situation Room." "Three anonymous sources have told various media that this happened. And they are quoting snippets of allegedly taped conversations. So I don't know what these snippets mean. I don't know whether these intercepts were legal. And that's why I asked [Attorney General] Eric Holder to put it all out there in public."

Harman denied any wrongdoing and said she was outraged by news the National Security Agency had intercepted one of her conversations in 2005 or 2006.

"Many members of Congress talk to advocacy groups," she said. "My phone is ringing off the hook from worried members who think it could have happened to them. I think this is an abuse of power."

Allegations that Harman had made an inappropriate deal with a lobbyist for the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, first surfaced several years ago, but they were given fresh currency Sunday night when the Congressional Quarterly published new details on its Web site.

Sources told CNN this week the National Security Agency intercepted a conversation that Harman was participating in, but said Harman was not the intended target of the wiretap. The wiretap was lawful, the sources said.

It is pretty straightforward... President Bush, Vice President Cheney, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales were all intimately involved in the decisionmaking process to go ahead with what amounts to torture. Should they be prosecuted for their role in making it happen?

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Obama is launching an effort "to achieve a comprehensive peace in the Middle East," his spokesman said Tuesday.

President Obama speaks to the media during a meeting Tuesday with Jordan's King Abdullah II.

Obama has invited key regional leaders to Washington in the coming weeks for consultations on the peace process, Robert Gibbs said.

Obama wants to meet separately with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Gibbs told reporters.

Dates for the visits are still being worked out, he said.

Obama met Tuesday with Jordan's King Abdullah II.

"With each of them, the president will discuss ways the United States can strengthen and deepen our partnerships with them, as well as the steps all parties must take to help achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians and between Israel and the Arab states," Gibbs said.

The leadership of Hamas, considered by the United States and Israel to be a terrorist organization, is not being invited. The group, which also provides social services, won elections in the Palestinian territories in 2006, prompting stringent sanctions from the West.

After the election, skirmishes between Abbas' Fatah and Hamas escalated, ending with Hamas in charge in Gaza and the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in charge in the West Bank.

A six-month cease-fire between Hamas and Israel ended late last year and was followed by Israel's three-week incursion into Gaza. Israel said that operation was aimed at halting rocket and mortar fire on its southern towns and communities.

Despite a cease-fire called in January at the end of that fight, both Hamas rocket fire and Israeli airstrikes have continued.

Obama appointed a special Middle East envoy on his second full day in office -- former Sen. George Mitchell -- and dispatched him to the region within weeks.

Last week, during his third trip to the region s

President Barack Obama acknowledged in a major economic speech Tuesday that "times are still tough" and warned that a culture of "instant gratification" had produced neglect of major national problems that wound up undermining the economy.
"By no means are we out of the woods just yet," the president said in remarks at Georgetown University. "But from where we stand, for the very first time, we are beginning to see glimmers of hope. And beyond that, way off in the distance, we can see a vision of an America's future that is far different than our troubled economic past.
Obama contended that the nation's "day of reckoning" on the economy was caused partly by "a fundamental weakness in our political system."
"For too long, too many in Washington put off hard decisions for some other time on some other day," he said. "There's been a tendency to score political points instead of rolling up sleeves to solve real problems. There is also an impatience that characterizes this town — an attention span that has only grown shorter with the 24 news cycle and insists on instant gratification in the form of instant results or higher poll numbers. When a crisis hits, there's all too often a lurch from shock to trance, with everyone responding to the tempest of the moment until the furor has died away and the media coverage has moved on, instead of confronting the major challenges that will shape our future in a sustained and focused way."
Obama's speech, titled "A New Foundation," invoked a biblical parable by saying the nation "cannot rebuild this economy on the same pile of sand."
"We must build our house upon a rock," he said. "We must lay a new foundation for growth and prosperity — a foundation that will move us from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest; where we consume less at home and send more exports abroad."
Here are excerpts of the president's prepared remarks released by the White House: 

Psyche, Obama actually is a natural born citizen. I finally found my Black's Law Dictionary yesterday while seaching my bookshelves for a different tome. Black's Law Dictionary is the definitive law dictionary in American jurisprudence, used to write judicial decisions nationwide and as authoritative as it gets when defining a legal term. It says the following:

natural-born citizen - A person born within the jurisdiction of a national government (P. 98)

Now, that is a very simple definition that is easily fulfilled. Hawaii's government says that Obama was born there and it was a state in 1961 which means that Barack Obama was born within the jurisdiction of the United States government. Black's Law Dictionary has the following to say about the Full Faith And Credit Clause of the Constitution:

Full Faith And Credit Clause - U.S. Const. art IV, sec. 1, which requires states to recognize and enforce the legislative acts, public records, and judicial decisions of other states. (P. 271)

Hawaii's public records insist that Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961. It does not matter who his parents were or where they had been or how long his mother had been in or out of the country. All that matters is that the state of Hawaii's public records say that Obama was born there which makes him a natural born citizen and eligible to be the President of the United States. It is time for everyone to drop this ridiculous claim that he is not a natural born citizen.

There have been calls from the most strident opponents of the Bush administration since 2003 for certain members of that administration to be charged with and tried for war crimes. From that point to the present, the calls have gotten louder and come from more people. The calls still come from a place on the political spectrum that ranges from a bit left of left-of-center to the farthest fringe of the left. These people are angry, many of them voted for Obama and they want action on the issue yesterday. While clumsier politicians would try to talk to the issue in a press conference, take direct action through the Justice Department or take no action no action at all (remaining silent about it would be messy and trying to explain why you are not taking action would be messier), Obama has deftly sidestepped the problem while also setting the wheels in motion towards a conclusion with few people realizing he has done so.

Obama's political fighting style is like jujutsu. The soft method uses the indirect application of force to defeat an opponent. Moreover, it adheres to the principle of using an opponent's strength against him and adapting well to changing circumstances. Kano, the founder of jujutsu, sought a single principle to use as a common thread that would unite the fighting style, which he found in the notion of "maximum efficiency". Jujutsu techniques that relied on superior strength alone were jettisoned or changed to favor those that involved redirecting the opponent's force, driving the opponent off-balance, or making use of superior leverage. (Source) He uses these three principles to turn his opponent into their own worst enemy. This subdues his opponents before most are aware of what is happening and gives Obama the advantage going into nearly every fight. This is because the majority of politicians are offensive by nature. They have to be ambitious, outgoing and, at times, ruthless to get where they are and the higher the level of politics the more you find these traits in greater abundance. Obama can be, and is, all of these things at times himself. He is very good at concealing them, though. His political opponents from the time he won his Illinois state senate seat to the present look him up and down and immediately judge him as a lightweight. Obama does nothing to upset this initial conclusion by his opponent because it is the key to his success. It is his opponent's power and their overexuberance to use it that is Obama's weapon. Because his opponent thinks him to be a lightweight, they want to make an example of him and drop him like a ton of bricks with one shot. They load up, come in for the kill and, BOOM, Obama breaks them down like a shotgun and they are on their backs looking at the ceiling before they can figure out what's happened. Obama is now doing this to the Bush administration officials that were involved in legally legitimizing, authorizing and monitoring "enhanced interrogation techniques."

President Obama has begun to release previously classified memos and other documents that the Bush administration had kept under lock and key pertaining to what they called "enhanced interrogation techniques" and what others called "torture." This is the sly move that has caused Bush administration officials to start lashing out like two cats with their tails tied together that got tossed over a clothesline. The fear of transparency from the coming Obama administration (or her conscience?) drove Susan J. Crawford, the military official that is charged with trying Guantanamo Bay detainees, to say in January the rules the Bush administration levied for "enhanced interrogation" permitted a Saudi detainee to be tortured in 2002 which torpedoed Crawford's prosecution of him. A second Bush administration legal official, Vijay Padmanabhan, called the "enhanced interrogation" torture on March 27, 2009. Padmanabhan, the State Department's chief counsel on Guantanamo litigation, labeled the techniques torture at a time when it would seem that the release of the Bush administration memos was driving him to come out on the record that what was done was, in his opinion, illegal. It is Crawford's defection and the fear of more like her's (A fear that manifested itself in Vijay Padmanabhan recently) that has pushed former Vice President Dick Cheney onto the offensive. Cheney knows what is in most, if not all, of the memos that the Obama administration has at its disposal to declassify and release in pursuance of the Freedom of Information Act and in the name of transparency in the federal government. Cheney surely knows which lawyers shared doubts about the techniques along with Crawford and now Padmanabhan. It seems like a logical conclusion that Cheney expects more documents to come out and more lawyers to turn on the administration.

Obama forced Cheney's hand by releasing those memos. He knew that Cheney would have no choice but to go on a media blitz to try to convince the public that the "enhanced interrogation techniques" that the Bush administration used were vital to avoiding another 9/11 and that America is less safe now that Obama has dropped techniques like waterboarding, naked male cheerleader pyramids and the like from our intelligence agencies' bag of interrogation tricks. Cheney knows that the Bush administration has to have one of two things on its side to avoid legal jam-ups pursuant to their enhanced rules for extracting information from prisoners: the law or the public. Once Obama started to endanger the ethical profiles of former Bush administration legal advisers by declassifying the memos and they came out to call what was done torture, Cheney is well aware that he has to win the P.R. battle on this because the legal framework that the lawyers of the Bush administration built to uphold the interrogations in an American court of law is starting to weaken not only because of what former Bush attorneys are saying but, more importantly, what legal scholars and other VIPs in the legal community are concluding after reading the memos. It is this changing of opinion that is endangering the administration's immunity from prosecution for doing what they thought was right because the legal community is coming to see how the decision was made.

That now leaves former Vice President Cheney with the public as the last bulwark of defense against legal troubles over the "enhanced interrogation techniques." Very few people want to get involved with bringing legal action against former members of the executive branch because not only can it lead to a Constitutional crisis, but it would also establish a precedent for hauling former presidents into court for acts committed while in office and it would be one hell of a mess from start to finish. We saw a smaller-type mess when Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, went on trial. Now multiply that 20 times and that is someone like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, etc. going on trial for knowingly allowing interrogators to break the law and, it is alleged, encouraging them to break the law. 90% of the public will not want to do that. The only way they will change their mind is if the narrative that the declassified memos tell is so disturbing that the level of scandal over a president of the United States having blatant disregard for the law approaches or exceeds Nixon's behavior during Watergate. Obama, smartly, is simply releasing the information to allow the public to make its own decisions. If the public wants to forget the whole sordid affair collectively, Obama will be pleased not to pursue it. If a majority of the public is extremely angry whenever they arrive at the point where they are more or less fully informed about what went on and demand the government use the courts to rectify it, Obama will have no choice but to act. Obama surely appreciates that discussion of the memos takes the heat off of him for a few days whenever they come out, but he is doing this because he would be crucified by a significant minority in his party if he did nothing whatsoever about the Bush administration's legality scenarios regarding torture and this is the safest way for him to confront it: indirectly at first and only to confront it head on if the American people demand it. Plus, Obama is likely to feel he has acted properly if, at the end of this declassification process, history has documented in detail and generally in full what the situation confronting the Bush administration in a post-9/11 world was and accurately depicts the lengths that they went to in the pursuit of safety of the American people. Now that the Bush administration has officially ended, it is a good case study with regard to how far democracies should go and do go to achieve security and whether the journey defeats the purpose of security by removing too much liberty.

I want to first start by stating that not all Republicans are doing this. There is a minority that are fair to President Obama, even if they do disagree with him fundamentally. However, there are enough opponents of President Obama's doing this that it would not be inaccurate to say there are "many" taking this approach. Having stated that I am not describing all Republicans, I want to outline their stance towards President Obama and its amazing fluidity. It reminds me of an old trick my cousin used to pull on people that was called "Heads I win, tails you lose!"

My cousin used to use a witty little sleight of hand trick on people to get what he wanted outof them in a disagreement. He would pull out a quarter and then say "Okay, fine, let's flip for it. Heads I win, tails you lose." This worked a lot because usually the person was so distracted that they would agree. Then my cousin would flip the coin and declare himself the winner. When his opponent was dismayed if the coin showed tails up my cousin would remind them that they had agreed to abide by the "Heads I win, tails you lose," rule. By the simple act of flipping the coin after they had agreed to this rule he had won. The same is true of the Republicans that repeat the same tactic against President Obama, just modifying it to fit the situation. Just like my cousin always won under his rules, Obama is always wrong under these Republicans' rules.

A good example occurred yesterday regarding General Motors. GM had spent the money the government had loaned the company to turn its direction around and start remaking the company so that it would be competitive with the Asian car manufacturers like Toyota and Honda. That meant cutting car brands like Hummer that created vehicles that are the antithesis of conserving gasoline since gasoline cost an arm and a leg not too long ago and, although many people seem to have forgotten, it could cost an arm, a leg and a more sensitive body part in the future the next time that conditions conspire to start driving the price up again. GM was having serious problems winnowing down its stable of brands. The next thing that GM needed to do was to design a fleet of fuel efficient vehicles which are pleasant to drive (like the Chevy Malibu which I drove when my Ford Ranger was in the shop and found to be quite a nice little car) that would comprise about 50% of their models to offset the luxury and SUV/pickup & larger truck vehicles that the company is already quite proficient in building seeing as they have built so many that they cannot even get rid of some of them by getting as close to giving them away as financially possible without their dealers going insolvent. That was happening, but not fast enough. President Obama acted decisively yesterday and requested that Rick Wagoner step down and allow a new leader to step up and try to lead GM to greener pastures. Wagoner agreed. Obama also gave Chrysler 30 days to work out a merger with Italian automaker Fiat that would give Fiat a 35% stake in the company without kicking in any capital. Obama's action to safeguard $17.4 billion worth of government aid (in case anyone forgot, those are also the tax dollars you, me and every other American that pays taxes send to Washington) provoked quite a negative response from many Republicans. They said that they mourned for America because the time had arrived when foreign newspapers could print the headline "Obama Fires CEO Of GM" and that signaled the beginning of the end. Obama was Adolf Hitler exerting his power over Alfried Krupp. He was Joseph Stalin taking his baby steps in the collectivization of everything private in the country. He was Mao, making decisions for private firms that would single-handedly destroy America's industry and result in the starving death of millions through pure idiocy. He was Hugo Chavez exerting nationalization over that first oil refinery, salivating for more businesses the government could plunder and run into the ground. He was a fascist for extending public control over private enterprise and a socialist for trying to prevent Fiat from holding back until Chrysler goes bankrupt and then buying what they want at a firesale. Quite a criticism as he seems to be everything to everyone amongst the group that has chosen to deliver a scathing indictment of his behavior as steward of the government's bailout money. Can you imagine how these people would be treating him if taxpayers hadn't bought the government a seat (the seat at the head of the table as the biggest investor, rather) at the table?

So that was the coin falling heads up. Here's the "tails you lose," part. If Obama had not asked Wagoner to resign, had not ordered Chrysler to merge with Fiat and had handed over the billions in further loans that the two companies wanted the very same people would be criticizing him. Except it would be for doing nothing but shoveling money to companies that were lighting cigars with it, flushing it down the toilet and giving $25,000 rebates on $20,000 vehicles. They would be saying that this was proof of what they had saidduring the election season: he had no executive experience and we were going to pay for it and now he had messed up by giving these companies everything that they wanted compliantly. It was clear he had never run a business, they'd say, because he was subsidizng the definition of insanity: repeating the same action again and again while expecting a different result each time.

With those that do not like Obama, there are no steps backwards where they recognize something he has done well. He is a man for all seasons, offering them something to criticize harshly in each action. They are no different than the people they clinically labeled as having "Bush Derangement Syndrome." If they prove as utterly impotent at changing the President's behavior or halting it altogether as Bush's roughest critics were, it is going to be a long four years or an eternity of 8 years for them.

Should Notre Dame remove Barack Obama as speaker at its commencement address because Obama does not represent all the Church's beliefs? All are free to vote in the poll but if you are Catholic please note that in the comments and tell whether you think that Obama should stay or go as the commencement speaker. Thank you!

Vote in the poll and then discuss as you like.

President Obama is set to take on an issue that fiscal conservatives have been complaining about in a long and loud manner: no-bid contracts and major cost overruns on government projects that are contracted out. It is a serious problem that has been estimated to have cost the United States government hundreds of billions of dollars recently.

Defense contractors seem to have one of the most serious problems when it comes to overrunning the budget constraints of their government contracts. Projects for national defense frequently come in over the cost allotted to the contractor and the contractor has no incentive to complete projects in an economical and timely manner. Because the products they manufacture for the government are the products that the country relies on for its national defense, the companies know that the government has little choice but to green light their excessive spending because the products are needed as soon as possible for national defense and scrapping the project in favor of contracting it out to another company would not only waste all the time that the project had been in development but it would also put the government out millions or billions of dollars for work that had already been done. The defense contractors, in essence, had the government over a barrel with no choice but to subsidize their cost overruns. The one retaliatory measure that the government retained was to steer the next contract to a different contractor to punishment the original company for its cost overruns and time delays. However, defense contractors managed to get around this and create virtual fiefdoms in specific fields by utilizing the senators and House representatives of the constituents in states where they employed large numbers of workers and make use of lobbyists offering campaign contributions to members of Congress to whom it did not matter one way or the other. By using those tactics, the companies that failed to provide the goods reliably would avoid being punished on the next contract by pressuring or buying support in Congress so that the various committees would exert their influence to make sure that the contract went to the offending company.

President Obama may be in for a much rougher fight than he envisions when it comes to reforming the government contracting process so that it runs more efficiently. He will be running up against large, entrenched companies like the parent company of Newsvine, General Electric, three companies that are associated with America's advances in aircraft design in Boeing, Lockheed-Martin and Northrup-Grumman as well as other major companies that produce munitions like cruise missiles, Raytheon, and companies that have been growing in power with the rise of Improvised Explosive Devices which necessitate troop transports and mechanized infantry vehicles that can withstand even the most blistering explosions up close and personal, Armor Holdings. These companies have gotten used to making extra profit by using cost overruns and they will be hell bent against giving up that extra cash. They will likely use every tool at their disposal to frustrate the reform process and, failing that, try to tank other initiatives from President Obama's administration.

The President will also be pushing to end any operations or services currently outsourced to private companies that employees already on the government's payroll can accomplish for no extra cost. This is going to incur the wrath of companies like Halliburton (and its subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root) that sign on with the government to perform support services for our military's combat forces that used to be conducted by members of the military which we were already paying at a substantially lower cost than the price of outsourcing the jobs. Given government inspectors' scathing reports of incompetent staff and substandard equipment in Iraq (for one example there are currently 18 deaths of American military members under investigation as possible electrocutions due to electrical and plumbing work that was not up to universal safety standards in the industry, one instance in which a Green Beret was electrocuted while showering in his barracks that the Army Criminal Investigative Division has ruled a negligent homicide on the part of Kellogg Brown & Root and two of its supervisors because the company did not have qualified electricians and plumbers doing the work - Source) it will not take the government long to conclude that it can obtain shoddy workmanship (which private contractors are supposed to eliminate as part of their increased cost) for a much lower price by assigning members of the military to do such work. A much larger sticking point is going to be with contractors that refer to themselves as Private Military Companies or PMCs. The largest and most prominent of the PMCs is Blackwater, based in Moyock, North Carolina. There are other companies that vie for government contracts such as DynCorp, Triple Canopy, etc. Blackwater in particular has been a flagrant offender when it comes to cost overruns and it will be rather difficult to part ways with because the last contract that the Bush administration signed with Blackwater was jammed full of financial penalties for the government if it wanted to cancel the 5-year deal. Blackwater is also getting a $15 billion contract with four other PMCs to conduct the War on Drugs for the United States government. (Source) These contracts will all expire during Barack Obama's presidency if he is elected for a second term. One has to wonder how these companies will keep generating a profit if the United States government ceases to sponsor them and what they will do with their political power that they have accrued through contributions to members of Congress.

One would hope that with President Obama being willing to take on the conservative issue of enforcing efficiency upon outside contractors or replacing them wholesale with government employees that he will garner the support of fiscally conservative Americans, if not some fiscally conservative members of Congress. One fact, however, is inescapable: he will need to have serious political capital to alter the government's relationship with the many private companies that do work for the government and if average Americans want to see our tax dollars saved and put to better use we will have to go to bat for Obama on this specific issue with our two senators and one House representative and let all three know that the issue is important to us and will absolutely affect our votes and the votes of all our friends and family members in 2010. We are, after all, competing with entities that write large campaign contribution checks so our votes will have to speak louder than their cash reserves.

Rush Limbaugh has been unable to resist taking advantage of the power vacuum at the top of the Republican Party since it got its clock cleaned in the last two elections, the 2008 election obliterating any semblance of a national leader that the Republicans had. Rush has taken a major step forward by ascending to the chief firebreather of the Republican Party, parleying his large, conservative audience into a cudgel he wields against any other Republican figures that try to challenge him. A Republican politician that criticized Limbaugh had to go hat in hand to the demagogue and apologize, which should settle who is in charge of who since elected politicians should theoretically command the most power in the party. Rush has reversed the natural order of things, making Republican politicians pledge fealty to him. Little do most Republicans realize that inpledging fealty to Limbaugh they are enlisting in a losing mathematical fight with demographics. Conservative whites are, at most, 25% of the population and with the last eight years as a screen test of what Anglo-Saxon Republicanism is all about our country would have to be taking psychotropic drugs to re-elect these people following Rush Limbaugh who speaks for them all and proudly says that they are not sorry and were not wrong for the last eight years.

The biggest gamble of all that Limbaugh is taking is a gamble he should know better than to take. Keith Olbermann, Al Franken, Air America and all the other liberal media outlets that tried to criticize President Bush in a time of war and crisis were labeled, and rather effectively at that, as purveyors of high treason that deserved inglorious disrespect and, some would argue, a long dance on the end of a short rope to boot. Rush Limbaugh just days ago took the rostrum as the keynote speaker at the CPAC (the meeting place for American political conservatives) and proceeded to make the same mistake that Limbaugh capitalized upon day after day during the Bush administration: he overtly opposed the current president in a time of war and crisis in even greater terms than any liberal on television or radio ever did. None of these liberals ever wished complete and utter failure upon President Bush, they just criticized him to no end. Limbaugh has made no bones about it, saying specifically that he wants President Obama to fail at all costs. At a time when the White House is fighting a largely obstructionist Republican Party on the Hill that could be accurately labeled as the "Party of No," Limbaugh has done the Obama White House an incalculable favor by volunteering to be the anti-American bogeyman that wishes for the failure and destruction of American civilization and many average Americans will now view Limbaugh and his followers as a veritable fifth column of saboteurs in our midst. So thanks Rush, you've made our argument much more attractive to people that don't listen to you and that group numbers over 200 million people.

I was on the fence until Tuesday, but I am now convinced that Chief Justice John Roberts needs a pocket Constitution.

First, he was party to the majority decision on this horrible ruling that essentially nullifies the fourth amendment. The fourth amendment protects from unreasonable searches and seizures and what is more unreasonable than your vehicle being searched because you were arrested on a warrant that was resolved and not removed from the computer system because of police IT assistant laziness?

I was convinced that Chief Justice John Roberts needs to carry a pocket Constitution when then-President-elect Barack Obama knew the Constitution better than Roberts did, proving so by pausing after saying "I, Barack Obama," because Roberts had put the word "faithfully" far too early in the sentence fragment instead of at the end of the sentence fragment abutting the comma, where it belongs. Why does Chief Justice John Roberts need a pocket Constitution in this case? Because the Presidential oath of office in its entirety is contained in Article II, Section I, Clause 8 of the document and goes like this: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Imagine what Harriet Miers could have done for the Supreme Court. ;-)

Did Obama give an historic inaugural address or is it just another speech in a line give by 43 other presidents? Discuss your answer below.

Presidents have differed greatly on the question of which passage the Bible should be opened to during the swearing-in ceremony.

What -- if any -- biblical passage will Obama emphasize?

A priest at a South Carolina Roman Catholic church says his parishioners shouldn't take Holy Communion if they voted for Barack Obama because of the Democrat's stance on abortion.

(Video) McCain Aides Spill the Dirt: Irked Over Unauthorized Palin Shopping Spree

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With great power comes great re sponsibility.

The Democratic Party certainly attained the former on Tuesday: Barack Obama's decisive presidential victory, coupled with gains in Congress, puts the party in control of an undivided government for the first time since 1994.

As to the latter . . . let's just say there's going to be a steep learning curve.

One of the great tragedies of the past eight years has been the way the left's visceral hatred for President Bush leeched proportionality and responsibility from its opposition to administration policies.

Careful what you wish you may regret it,
Careful what you wish you just might get it!

- Metallica, King Nothing

This is, for all practical purposes, my lone article for the general election (post-Convention, of course). The main reason for that is because writing articles in the final weeks of a presidential contest is like whispering into a vacuum cleaner - it just adds to the noise.

But it's important to bundle some of the election together into one neat ball of understanding: the two most damaging words in American history will be "President Obama" (seemingly conventional wisdom indicates that Wall Street is going to take a belly flop at the news). And why is that?

It mostly stems from the fact that Obama is a polished, nice looking used car salesman. Buy this car and I'll throw in free rust protection and a free car washes for a year. But what's under the hood? Oh, good stuff, my man! If you buy a car from that other guy it won't be as good - he's not offering the same give-aways. Buy my car and I promise that someone will chauffer you around in it. But, um...what's under the hood? What about it's previous owners? I heard that Bill Ayers used to own this car. I'm not too keen on that. You weren't even born yet when Ayers got his groove on. Who wouldn't want to be affiliated with someone so respected in academia? Go ahead - look at the tire. Just don't kick it (like that Joe guy did). And so on...and so forth...

Yes, Obama is a master salesperson. He is a professional campaigner and has boldly embraced every left-wing initiative to grow the federal government. He wants to buy this election.

How does he do that?

Remember that so-called "amnesty bill" that President Bush and Senator McCain and dozens of other conservative Republicans supported? The one that was brought down by the hard-right hot air machine? The same one where I said that if we don't do this now, we may very well have a President Hillary or Obama do it for us, with eager support from the Pelosi-Reid union in Congress. And when this happens we will never again be allowed to abuse the term "amnesty" because real amnesty will be a reality in the next year or two (after we see government entitlements extended to illegals). This all-or-nothing mentality on this issue has gotten us just that - nothing. Not only nothing, but a long-term change to the how we handle the gates at the nations edge. Change We Can Believe In!

And here's the sale: kaching!! Obama and the Democrats have just rewarded millions of new voters with the gift of being beholden to their new welcomers and their new president, both in votes and contributions. This kind of sale will also be applied to felons serving time and millions of young people lining up to be indoctrinated by the Obama theme.

Obama and the Democrats stand to buy themselves electoral security for years to come. Change We Can Believe In!

Obama and the Democrats will weaken our support for our democratic allies like Georgia and Israel. Change We Can Believe In!

Obama and the Democrats will deal with our friends and enemies in the ways that have led to Cold War global expansion of Soviet Communism, the Killing Fields and the Peoples Republic of Vietnam, the Iranian Revolution, the Second Intifada, a nuclear-armed North Korea and ultimately, a nuclear-armed Iran (Obama can finish the job started some thirty years earlier by Jimmy Carter). Change We Can Believe In!

Conservatives who have behaved in ways that suggested they had no where to go will suddenly find themselves with no where to go. We can brace for it but the reality is that the Obama/Pelosi/Reid trifecta will push through the biggest expansion of government spending, power and leftist politics this nation has ever seen. And Obama will use this opportunity to secure his own ideological philosophy through the appointment of two to four SCOTUS justices (the court of which will soon be named, The Dancing Ginsburgs). Change We Can Believe In!

As we've been told how both General Petraeus and Osama bin Laden considered Iraq to be the ultimate battlefield in the war on terror, tomorrow's election will be the ultimate battleground in the US war of politics and culture. Abortion will find a permanent home in America - Change We Can Believe In!; marriage will become obsolete - Change We Can Believe In!; national interests will take second place to international concerns - Change We Can Believe In!; our enemies will most certainly (per Joe Biden) test a President Obama - in ways they would never test a President McCain - Change We Can Believe In!; Big Government will find itself a permanent and lasting mandate to help fund every conceivable challenge and setback in life through spending and programs that once initiated, will never go away - in other words, your tax dollars are going to go to pre-school for three year olds, college for spoiled brats, health care for people regardless of economic circumstances or citizenship, doubling funding for the UN, increased foreign aid, an "army" of teachers, expansion of the Peace Corp, mandatory government service to achieve a high school diploma, higher salaries for teachers with no merit-based mechanism in place, federally funded abortions, unions doing away with secret ballots, energy programs that punish people, a welfare check for every working American who doesn't pay federal income taxes - Change We Can Pay For!

And conservatives who like their Limbaugh or Savage or Hannity or Beck...rest assure there will be drastic restrictions if not outright destruction of your favorite conservative talkers. The resurfacing 'Fairness Doctrine' may well be the first step toward silencing the opposition. - Change We Can Fall In Line With!

In my prophetic way, I pleaded with conservatives months ago to understand that they share a symbiotic relationship with the GOP - the crippling of the Republican Party will render conservatism impotent. Conservatives and Republicans will have to embrace each other again in order to at least hope for a midterm shift, in the face of all of the odds stacked against them, courtesy of the Democratic Party and the politics or purchasing elections and silencing conservative voices.

There is no Ronald Reagan waiting in the wings to fix everything. There is no fix. Even if circumstances lead conservatives back to a position of influence or power, instead of fighting for the America we have today, we will instead be fighting for the America the New Left Democrats will hand back to us. The status quo will be sharply different.

These are the thoughts I have late at night. Every generation is, in the face of aggressive progressivism, concerned about transformations that move us farther from the ideals of strength, sacrifice, family, faith, hard work and individualism. For the first time in my adult life, I am concerned. I sadly envision my children raising their kids in an America that is unrecognizable to us, one that shifts us farther away from lessons of the founding fathers, one that doesn't celebrate the family as we see it today. Today's America is an answer to the leftist shifts of much of the rest of western civilization; tomorrow's America may very well be leading the charge.

So to those honestly purport to be conservatives or Republicans, yet still think the answer is in a third party, or in staying home on election day or in making absurd comments questioning who the real conservative in the race is or prematurely writing off this election as in the bag for Obama (it is not) - it's time to put up or shut up. You can make your meaningless statement with your vote and throw the country under the bus or you can take the sure course in keeping conservatism alive and relevant and vote for John McCain.

There is no 'redo' or 'cleanup' function in tomorrows election. Come January, America will either continue to be the great country it has always been or it will "change" as promised...and those changes will be long lasting and damaging.

Believe It.

Social liberals in the country's "blue states" tend to support sex education and are not particularly troubled by the idea that many teen-agers have sex before marriage, but would regard a teen-age daughter's pregnancy as devastating news. And the social conservatives in "red states" generally advocate abstinence-only education and denounce sex before marriage, but are relatively unruffled if a teen-ager becomes pregnant, as long as she doesn't choose to have an abortion.

When John McCain and Barack Obama started running for president in 2007, they were two of the most universally liked and respected politicians in America — men who even members of the opposite party saw as decent, unifying characters — and neither of them inspired much loathing.

With less than a week to go before voters are expected to head to the polls in record numbers, a bogus flyer directing Republicans to vote Nov. 4 and Democrats to vote Nov. 5 has surfaced in Virginia. The state's Board of Elections said the fake has been distributed in Hampton, Newport News, Virginia Beach and Norfolk, sounding louder alarms of voter fraud and intimidation across the nation.

"These tactics tend to escalate in the days before the election," said Wendy Weiser of the Brennan Center for Justice, adding there is concern that "we'll see more attempts like this."

Click here to see the flyer.

She said these types of misleading flyers appear each election year in an effort to suppress votes....

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The GOP vice presidential candidate addresses attacks made on the senator. Watch

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Former Sen. Larry Pressler (R-S.D.), who was the first Vietnam veteran to serve in the United States Senate, is the latest Republican to back Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign...

Pressler, who said that in addition to casting an absentee ballot for Obama he'd donated $500 to the Illinois senator's campaign, cited... "I just got the feeling that Obama will be able to handle this financial crisis better, and I like his financial team of [former Treasury Secretary Robert] Rubin and [former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul] Volcker better," he said. By contrast, John McCain's "handling of the financial crisis made me feel nervous."

Pressler, who said that he had never voted for a Democrat for president before, added, "I feel really badly. I just hate to go against someone I served with in the Senate...

The audio recording of Barack Obama espousing his socialist philosophy of "redistribution of wealth" is all over the Internet and Fox News today (although most other media outlets are ignoring it), but there's another disturbing section on that tape that has so far escaped notice.

Aides to George W.Bush, former Reagan White House staff and friends of John McCain have all told The Sunday Telegraph that they not only expect to lose on November 4, but also believe that Mr Obama is poised to win a crushing mandate.

The blogosphere is buzzing about this video posted on YouTube Sunday night. It's Barack Obama musing about how best to redistribute wealth in America in a Chicago Public Radio interview in 2001.

Not whether, but how: Through the courts or through legislation?

Sen. Barack Obama is returning to his promise of "a new politics" as he delivers what his campaign calls his "Closing Argument Speech On The Change We Need" in Canton, Ohio, a lunchtime on Monday.

"In one week, you can put an end to the politics that would divide a nation just to win an election; that tries to pit region against region, city against town, Republican against Democrat; that asks us to fear at a time when we need hope," he says.

With a comfortable lead in state and national polls, Obama is kicking off the final full week of his grueling two-year campaign by shelving the slam and poke of the daily grind for a reminder of the reasons he initially captured the imagination of national Democrats as a promising young unknown...

"[W]hat we have lost in these last eight years cannot be measured by lost wages or bigger trade deficits alone,"...

Here are excerpts of the speech, released Monday morning by the campaign:

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The most troublesome tax increases in Barack Obama's plan are not those we can already see but those sure to be announced later, after the election is over and budget realities rear their ugly head.

Senator Barack Obama's fund-raising juggernaut appears to have slowed dramatically from its record-shattering pace in September, raising $36 million in the first half of October, according to new filings with the Federal Election Commission.

McCain has cut into Obama's lead for a second day and is now just 1.1 points behind. The spread was 3.7 Wednesday and 6.0 Tuesday. The Republican is making headway with middle- and working- class voters, and has surged 10 points in two days among those earning between $30,000 and $75,000. He has also gone from an 11-point deficit to a 9-point lead among Catholics.

Yes, I mentioned this myself. I now realize it's idiotic.

'We just let things get completely out of hand'

It's been almost 72 hours since Barack Obama announced he was leaving the campaign trail to be with his ailing white grandmother and from all accounts he's yet to leave for Hawaii. Hate to be harsh here, but for a guy who's lamenting not being there with his mother when she was ill, he appears to be taking his time getting to Hawaii to visit grandma.

People who don't understand the blockquote tag and/or can't be bothered the read the article itself, the text above is a direct excerpt from the first paragraph of the blog post in question. It does not reflect my personal feelings.

...With less than two weeks before the November 4 election, Obama leads McCain 52 percent to 40 percent among likely voters in the latest three-day tracking poll, which had a margin of error of 2.9 points.

Obama has made steady gains over the last four days and has tripled his lead on McCain in the past week of polling.

"Obama's expansion is really across the board," pollster John Zogby said. "It seems to be among almost every demographic group."

The Illinois senator saw his lead among women -- who are expected to play a decisive role in this election -- increase to 18 points from 16 points on Wednesday.

And independent voters, who have been the target of intense campaign efforts by both sides, have now swung behind Obama by a 30-point margin, 59 percent to 29 percent...

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Two weeks before an election that could install the first black U.S. president, scattered ugly incidents have reflected a deep residue of racism among some segments of white America.

A cardboard likeness of Barack Obama was found strung from fishing wire at a university, the Democratic presidential nominee's face was depicted on mock food stamps, the body of a black bear was left at another university with Obama posters attached to it.

Though the incidents are sporadic and apparently isolated, they stirred up memories of the violent racial past of a country where segregation and lynchings only ended within the last 50 years.

And some feared that Obama could be a target for people who reject him on racial grounds alone. The Illinois senator leads Republican rival John McCain in polls ahead of the November 4 election and has a big following in many sections of Americans, from liberals to conservatives, black and white, poor and wealthy.

"Many whites feel they are losing their country right before their eyes," said Mark Potok, who directs the Southern Poverty Law Center that monitors hate groups. "What we are seeing at this moment is the beginning of a real backlash."...

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"Donors just weren't willing to give the money," explains LaCivita. "They were hurt badly in the market crash and they were always concerned about how McCain would react."

When Lehman Brothers went under on September 15, McCain was tied or in the margin of error in national polls. But when his poll numbers fell along with the stock market, wealthy conservatives saw little reason to invest their shrunken holdings on what was far from a sure thing.

"Republican donors at the end of day aren't stupid," said another Republican familiar with third-party activities this cycle. "They're not going to throw good money after bad."

And it wasn't just the economic bad news – McCain did little to help his own cause.

Two Republican sources involved in third-party groups said the Arizona senator's second debate performance in early October, a pivotal moment in the campaign when he and running mate Sarah Palin had begun to ratchet up their attacks, was deflating to some donors.

These sources said that after McCain didn't use the Nashville debate to aggressively go after Obama, one prominent conservative financier remarked: "I'm not going to bother investing anymore."

"McCain never gave a real wink and said, 'Go ahead boys,' " explained one operative close to a third-party group this year.

Another GOP strategist lamented that McCain lacked a core group of rich friends who were willing to part with their money. Harold Simmons, a Dallas billionaire, underwrote the entire cost of the initial Ayers ad for AIP – but his investment wasn't matched by other wealthy Republicans.....

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In the rural Teoc community of Carroll County, Miss., where the ancestors of Sen. John McCain owned enslaved Africans on a plantation, black, white and mixed-race family members unite every two years for their Coming Home Reunion, on the land where the plantation operated.

Some of McCain's black family members say they are not sure exactly where they fall on the family tree, but they do know this: They are either descendants of the McCain family slaves, or of children the McCains fathered with their slaves.

White and black members of the McCain family have met on the plantation several times over the last 15 years, but one invited guest has been conspicuously absent: Sen. John Sidney McCain.

"Why he hasn't come... read more...

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But we also believe that his philosophy of "spreading the wealth around" is an ill-disguised form of socialism that undermines everything America holds dear.

Allow us to put our cards on the table at the outset: We are two young conservative journalists—both in our 20s. Unlike many of our peers, we are not swept up in Obamamania and would prefer John McCain to win the election.

A poll by the Military Times newspaper group suggests that there is overwhelming support for John McCain among U.S. troops in every branch of the armed forces by a nearly 3-1 margin.

He accuses McCain of proposing to cut benefits. Not true.

Daniel Zubairi, a Muslim McCain grassroots organizer who told racist rally attendees in Woodbridge, Virginia that the campaign didn't "endorse that behavior," was for some reason not allowed to talk to CNN about the incident.

Anchor Rick Sanchez said Zubairi was "ready and willing" to talk, but "the McCain camp won't let him do so." ...

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Early voters in North Carolina, most of whom were black, were heckled and mocked by McCain supporters as they their cast their ballots Sunday. According to Washington Times reporter Christina Bellatoni primarily white McCain supporters shouted "terrorist" and complained that "Sundays are for church not voting" ...

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In the midst of Barack Obama's continuing insistence that William Ayers was just some guy in the neighborhood (and just some guy on two non-profit boards with whom Obama worked for almost a decade), people asked why Obama then gave Ayers a promotional blurb for his book, A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court. Team Obama spokesmen Bill Burton and Robert Gibbs categorically denied it.

Barack Obama, who has consistently downplayed his relationship with William Ayers during his presidential campaign, once gave a glowing endorsement of a book by the former domestic terrorist and was mentioned by name in the book itself.

It was less than two weeks ago when Sarah Palin astonished her traveling press corps by lifting the curtain (literally) and journeying to the back of her campaign plane to answer reporters' questions for the first time after 40 days on the campaign trail. But the candidate who has been criticized for having a bunker mentality when it came to the national media can now lay legitimate claim to being more accessible than either Joe Biden or Barack Obama.

With two weeks and one day until election day, a new national poll of likely voters suggests the race for the White House may be tightening up.

We learned at this morning's Stop Obama Rally here that the McCain/Palin Straight Talk Express came through town yesterday. It arrived with a window shattered by a .22 caliber weapon. It had also been hit by an unknown number of paint balls from a paint ball gun or guns. There were reportedly no injuries and neither candidate was on board.

The best evidence that Barack Obama launched his political career from Bill Ayers's living room has disappeared . . . down the memory hole.

Well, not quite. The Wayback Machine and I have both saved copies.

The network maps are bathed in blue, the pundits contemplating a landslide, the conservative columnists preparing for the indignities of an Obama administration.

Colin Powell will have a role as a top presidential adviser in an Obama administration, the Democratic White House hopeful said Monday.

"He will have a role as one of my advisers," Barack Obama said on NBC's "Today" in an interview aired Monday, a day after Powell, a four-star general and President Bush's former secretary of state, endorsed him.

"Whether he wants to take a formal role, whether that's a good fit for him, is something we'd have to discuss," Obama said.

Powell's endorsement came just hours after Obama's campaign disclosed that it raised $150 million in September — obliterating the old record of $66 million it had set only one month earlier.

At a boisterous rally Sunday, Obama said McCain was "out of ideas and almost out of time."...

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...In Florida, Democratic lawyer Charles H. Lichtman has assembled almost 5,000 lawyers to monitor precincts, assist voters turned away at the polls and litigate any disputes that can't be resolved out of court.

``On Election Day, I will be managing the largest law firm in the country, albeit for one day,'' said Lichtman, 53, a Fort Lauderdale corporate lawyer and veteran of the five-week recount after the 2000 election when Florida eventually delivered the presidency to George W. Bush.

Obama's lawyers also have pressed allegations that Michigan Republicans planned to use mortgage-foreclosure lists to challenge voters. Indiana labor unions allied with Democratic presidential nominee Obama, an Illinois senator, are battling a Republican chairman over early voting in the state's second- largest county...

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John McCain now says it's socialism, but Barack Obama insists, "When you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

Fifteen days before the election, serious gaps remain in the public's knowledge about the health of the presidential and vice-presidential nominees. The limited information provided by the candidates is a striking departure from recent campaigns, in which many candidates and their doctors were more forthcoming.

A new round of NBC/Mason-Dixon polls shows Obama leading in the battleground state of Wisconsin, McCain ahead in West Virginia, and the two candidates essentially tied in the swing state of Ohio.

Republican John McCain continued a slow advance on Democrat Barack Obama in the race for President, moving back within three percentage points as the race begins to head down the stretch run, the latest Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby daily tracking poll shows.

Approximately 60 million people watched the third and final debate between John McCain and Barack Obama on Wednesday night, marking what is likely the last time this election season that an audience of such proportions will be assembled to observe either of the candidates. Obama may draw comparable numbers with his October 29 nationwide half-hour commercial, but McCain will encounter serious difficulties in trying to amass such an audience again before Election Day. That being said, this is what that audience saw..

Among the things that struck me the most from the debate, this hit me like a ton of bricks: as Obama recounts that Colombian labor leaders had been assassinated John McCain rolled his eyes as if he couldn't be bothered to listen any longer. This simply capped off a problem that plagued McCain throughout all three debates and that was acting even more ill-mannered than Al Gore did during presidential debates. McCain would write while his opponent was talking, talk while he was talking, etc. which was simple disrespectful debate behavior. McCain took it to another level, however, when during the second debate he rose and wandered the stage actively while it was Obama's turn to answer. He then took it to the ultimate level when, during the third debate, as Obama referenced the murders of activists in Colombia McCain rolled his eyes. Whoever was tasked to brief McCain on polite behavior during debates should be fired.

McCain also thinks that he was tarring Obama with the "spread the wealth" line. McCain should remember that Huey Long was a serious contender with FDR for the presidential nomination until he was assassinated. Acting like Obama wants to "share the wealth" is probably going to make him look more palatable to undecided voters and not do so much to paint Obama as a socialist.

McCain made another mistake during the debate which was to say his campaign is all about fixing the economic mess. With his campaign eyeballs deep in portraying Obama as a potential terrorist sympathizer, this makes McCain look dishonest because what he's saying and what his campaign are doing are not matching up.

The real problem that has run throughout McCain and Obama's interactions is that Obama is deferential to McCain and McCain is not so to Obama. Obama has a Zen-like quality to him that David Brooks has written about that FDR and Reagan had too: they are unflappable. No matter what you say to them, they decline the bait and thus drive their opponent crazy. The third debate was just a continuation of the same problems inherent on this campaign for John McCain.

Perhaps. But in this case the entire picture was not presented. What was the inflation rate under each of these presidents? How was the standard of living affected under their terms?

Some news audiences are more politically savvy than others, according to a new poll, with readers of The New Yorker and similar high-brow magazines being the most knowledgeable.

The survey, conducted between April 30 and June 1 by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, measured the political knowledge of 3,612 U.S. adults. Participants were asked to name the controlling party of the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. secretary of state and Great Britain's prime minister.

Overall, just 18 percent of participants answered all three questions correctly...

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Florida's governor says his fellow Republicans may be exaggerating claims of voter fraud in the state.

Gov. Charlie Crist said Wednesday that he has confidence in Secretary of State Kurt Browning, who says there's only been a scattering of isolated incidents.

Crist said in the closing days of any campaign "there are some who sort of enjoy chaos." There may be more of that going on than fraud...

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Iraq and the United States have finally agreed on a security pact which would mean that US forces would withdraw from Iraq by 2011, American and Iraqi officials said yesterday.

Iraqi politicians have always assumed that Washington's insistence on signing a new accord before the presidential election was motivated by the White House's hope that the accord would be seen as a sign that its Iraq policy had at last produced a success. The Republican contender, Senator John McCain, started off his campaign by saying that US troops might stay for 100 years and there should be no date for their withdrawal. The Democratic candidate, Senator Barack Obama, wants combat troops home by the middle of 2010, which was also the date originally proposed by Mr Maliki....

James T. Harris, the African American Republican who begged GOP candidate John McCain during a rally to "take it to Obama," stormed off the set of a CNN interview yesterday during a debate with another black conservative.

The Milwaukee radio host appeared via satellite to face off against fellow radio host Shelley Wynter, who says he is voting for Democratic candidate Barack Obama because McCain is not a true conservative.

Harris, who said he has been called "sambo," "Uncle Tom" and "sellout" since his comments at the McCain rally, tried to argue that McCain is still a better choice for Republicans because he's more likely than Obama to be pulled to the far conservative end of the spectrum....

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You don't think they're considering it?

Funny flash pic. Imagine what Palin would be like in the Oval Office.
PalinAsPresident.com, click on the various office objects.

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At the recent Emmy Awards, historian Laura Linney averred that America's Founders had been "community organizers" -- like Barack Obama. Too bad they aren't like that any more. Mr. Obama's kind of organizers work at Acorn, the militant advocacy group that is turning up in reports about voter fraud across the country.

The chairman of the Virginia Republican Party has compared Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama to Osama bin Laden because of the Illinois senator's past association with Bill Ayers, who has confessed to domestic bombings as a member of the Vietnam War-era Weather Underground.

With just over three weeks until Election Day, the two presidential nominees appear to be on opposite trajectories, with Sen. Barack Obama gaining momentum and Sen. John McCain stalled or losing ground on a range of issues and personal traits, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

If there's one rule in election-year politics, it's this: Don't mess with the science crowd. OK, labor unions and the NRA matter too, but John McCain may want to brush up on his stars and planets after Tuesday night's debate.

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....We have enough political convicts, no need to import a notorious felon to be spokesman for opening ANWR. According to Governor Sarah Palin's former staff member Larry Persily, the Governor thought it was a good idea and planned to make an appearance on G.Gordon Liddy's program. When suggested that a Watergate operative may not be a smart choice, Arctic Power co-chair, Mike Navarre, suggested most people didn't know of Liddy's background and his role in President Nixon's administration and demise.

Letters to newspapers came pouring in, as did phone calls to the Governor's office. "I think it's terrible. If Alaska wants to put the best face on things it's probably best to not hire felons," Senator Kim Elton said....

... There are obvious controversies around the activist career of Bill Ayers, but the connections to Obama are peripheral. Bill Ayers has never been arrested, he turned himself into authorities and he never went to jail. He is professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and has fought hard for education reform in his community. According to Palin's qualifications of "pallin' around", John McCain and G. Gordon Liddy are practically blood brothers. McCain and Liddy have been longtime friends and McCain has publicly stated "I'm proud of you, I'm proud of your family." He went on to say, "It's always a pleasure for me to come on your program, Gordon, and congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great." After the last eight years, I don't hold the same regard for presidential operatives covering up crimes of the administration they work for. Liddy has contributed money to McCain's campaign and held several fund raisers in his home.

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Speaking at an outdoor rally on a rainy and dreary day, Obama warned that the economy will continue to decline if new economic policies are not implemented. Borrowing Ronald Reagan's legendary campaign line – "are you better off than you were four years ago" – Obama said, "At the pace things are going right now you're going to have ask whether you're better off than you were four weeks ago."

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Co-host Whoopi Goldberg immediately checked her on the "hatemonger" label, saying in Wright's defense, "this person did not like America. As a black person, we are very, very lucky. You don't see where that's relevant?"

After more back-and-forth, Hasselbeck said of Obama in general, "Are you a liar or do you have poor judgment?"

At this, Shepherd whipped around toward her Republican co-host and snapped: "Can we talk about poor judgment? What about the woman that McCain left that didn't even want him to know that she had been in a horrible, horrible accident, and then he came back, met another woman named Cindy McCain and left the woman that waited for him. Can we talk about that?"

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ABC News' George Stephanopoulos reports: One thing we didn't hear in last night's debate was John McCain launch the kind of personal attacks against Barack Obama that his campaign has been telegraphing would come.

On the campaign trail in recent days Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has sought to tie Obama to 1960s radical William Ayers.

Both campaigns were prepared for a personal attack during the debate from McCain, who is trailing Obama is most national and battleground polls with 27 days to go before Election Day.

But then -- nothing. The worst McCain gave was to reference Obama as "that one" during an exchange over Obama's vote on an energy bill -- not a compelling attack.

This tells us that McCain is worried that if he goes to hard against Obama in the last days before the election, he thinks it might backfire.

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At rallies this week where Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin made sinister insinuations about Obama, attendees yelled out "Treason!" "Terrorist'" and "Kill him!" in reference to Obama. At a Florida rally for Palin, a supporter used a racial epithet to attack an African-American member of the media.

In Tampa, Florida, this morning, Biden said "to have a vice-presidential candidate raise the most outrageous inferences, the ones that John McCain's campaign is condoning, is simply wrong.....This is beyond disappointing. This is wrong."

Paraphrasing a pledge McCain once made of something he would not do, Biden said of the Republican ticket, "they're gonna try and take the low road to the highest office in the land and that's exactly what they're doing."

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Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama and his Republican rival John McCain Tuesday agreed that one of the world's richest men, Warren Buffett, would make a good treasury secretary.

The two were asked at the beginning of their second presidential debate who would be a good replacement for current Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson who is standing down at the end of the current administration.

"I think the first criteria, would have to be somebody who immediately Americans identify with. Immediately say we can trust that individual," said McCain.

Buffett, chief of the Berkshire Hathaway holding company, has supported Obama in the race for the White House.

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Dube Egwuatu was buying a mobile telephone top-up card in an off-licence when the gunman confronted him and glared at the top, which carries an image of the Democrat US presidential candidate underneath the legend 'Believe'.

The man then launched into a tirade of racist slurs, shouting 'I f***ing hate n*****s' and urging 36-year-old Mr Egwuatu to leave the shop with him.

The man then left the shop but when Mr Egwuatu re-emerged, the attacker was waiting for him in broad daylight with a threatening-looking dog and holding a gun behind his back.

Realising what had sparked the increasingly violent assault, the terrified Mr Egwuatu zipped up his jacket to cover the image of Mr Obama and walked to his car.

But the shaven-headed man, who was white, followed Mr Egwuatu and after pulling open the passenger door pointed the gun at him....

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A heated exchange Monday morning took place after co-host Barbara Walters, asked Hasselbeck if it was wise for both sides to engage in "smears."

Hasselbeck snapped, "No," and went on to criticize what she called "Obama's radical connections." She also said Obama should be held accountable for the actions of Ayers, who participated in protest bombings of the Pentagon and Capitol when Obama was 8-years-old.

Co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Sherri Shepherd (Joy Behar was absent) responded with raised voices in defense of Obama – culminating in Whoopi shouting to Elisabeth, "That is such bullsh**." The Oscar winner caught herself before saying the entire word.

View the entire segment below.

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Mystery has surrounded the precise circumstances of the three earlier incidents, and particularly an accident on March 12, 1960, while McCain was still in flight school at Corpus Christi in Texas. The McCain campaign has either ignored or failed to respond to requests by The Washington Post and other news organizations for the release of the candidate's full military records, which could shed light on the accidents and the pilot's personal involvement.

The official Navy report into the Corpus Christi accident on March 12, 1960, concludes that the AD-6 Skyraider trainer crashed because McCain failed to "maintain an airspeed above the stall speed." It attributed the accident to "the preoccupation of the pilot coupled with a power setting too low to maintain level flight."

... It recorded pilot error as "the sole contributing factor" to the accident...

In his autobiography, McCain recalls another mishap around December 1961 when "I knocked down some power lines while flying too low over southern Spain. My daredevil clowning had cut off electricity to a great many Spanish homes and created a small international incident."....

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When Cecil E. Roberts, president of the coal miners union that shapes politics in much of this mountain region, talks to voters, he tells them that their choice is to have "a black friend in the White House or a white enemy." When Charlie Cox, an Obama supporter, hears friends fretting about Obama's race, he reminds them that they pull for the nearby University of Tennessee football team, "and they're black."

Union organizer Jerry Stallard asks fellow coal workers what's more important: improving their work conditions or holding onto their skepticism of Obama's race, culture or religion. "We're all black in the mines," he tells them.

The presidential campaign, in the almost all-white counties of southwestern Virginia, has produced an outcome that few people expected: a frank discussion of race. Voters sometimes sound as if they are reasoning with themselves and working through their own complex views as they talk through the choice they face this November.

"I've never been prejudiced in my life," said Sharon Fleming, 69, the wife of a retired coal miner, who spends hours at the union hall calling voters on behalf of Obama. "My niece married a black, and I don't have a problem with it. Now, I wouldn't want a mixed marriage for my daughter, but I'm voting for Obama."...

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John McCain is pulling out of Michigan, according to two Republicans, a stunning move a month away from Election Day that indicates the difficulty Republicans are having in finding blue states to put in play.

McCain will go off TV in Michigan, stop dropping mail there and send most of his staff to more competitive states, including Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida. Wisconsin went for Kerry in 2004, Ohio and Florida for Bush....

Sarah Silverman & Leonardo DiCaprio: "Don't Vote"

..Sarah Silverman and Jonah Hill can make even a voting PSA funny...

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Third, opinions about Sarah Palin have become increasingly negative, with a majority of the public (51%) now saying that the Alaska governor is not qualified to become president if necessary; just 37% say she is qualified to serve as president. That represents a reversal of opinion since early September, shortly after the GOP convention. At that time, 52% said Palin was qualified to step in as president, if necessary.

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My First Ever Campaign Ad

Well, the short story is that I found out my National Rifle Association dues were used to pay for a massive swiftboating ad campaign against Barack Obama regarding guns and shortly thereafter decided that I was not going to take it. Out of that spirit came this approximately minute long YouTube campaign ad. In it I, an Ohio gun owner and Concealed Carry Permit holder, try to allay gun owners' fears about Barack Obama and set the record straight.

I look forward to your comments, good or bad since this was the first time I've done something like this. LOL

Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert did not appreciate the nonverbal behavior of Sen. John McCain during Friday's first presidential debate with Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama.

The longtime movie reviewer took personal offense at McCain's body language, particularly the GOP senator's failure to even look at Obama.

The following is Ebert's blog in its entirety:

Guess who's not coming to dinner - by Roger Ebert

I do not like you, John McCain. My feeling has nothing to do with issues. It has to do with common courtesy. During the debate, you refused to look Barack Obama in the eye. Indeed, you refused to look at him at all. Even when the two of you shook hands at the start, you used your eyes only to locate his hand, and then gazed past him as you shook it....

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Another sobering start to an exceedingly sobering week - but one which points to the need for a political leader who is steady in the face of crisis, mature in judgment and able to reach across the aisle to break the gridlock that has for too long gripped Washington.

That man is Sen. John McCain and at this critical moment in history, this paper is pleased to endorse his candidacy for president of the United States.

There is only the future and it is impossible to envision the future of this great nation being put in the hands of an articulate but inexperienced first-term senator from Illinois.

Being commander in chief isn't the place for on-the-job training; it's a job for someone who has already proven his leadership skills - in battle, as a prisoner of war and during more than two decades on the floor of the Senate.

More than 200 former U.S. diplomats have signed a statement announcing their support for Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.

The former diplomats and ambassadors signed the statement before the Friday debate between Obama and Republican nominee John McCain.

"We are supporting Senator Barack Obama because of his judgment, experience, and ability to inspire people to come together around a common purpose," the letter said. "Senator Obama's talents offer an historic opportunity; for the sake of America's security and standing in the world, we must seize it."

The letter, signed by officials from both major political parties, said the foreign policies of the Bush administration have diminished America's alliances abroad.

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