• A new round of Quinnipiac University swing state polls show Obama ahead in Florida, 46-44, Ohio, 46-44, and Pennsylvania, 49-42. Nate Silver observes that "This is a weaker performance for Obama than in June, but a better performance for him than in any month but June. Our model weights those two factors, and concludes that the status quo has more or less been preserved."
• Voteboth.com, a group dedicated to getting Hillary Clinton on the Obama ticket, has officially shut down. In related news, it seems likely that she will likely be the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention in the Tuesday night slot, which seems to me not only appropriate but an excellent way to foster party unity.
• Barack Obama responded to John McCain's "celebrity" ads from yesterday with a new ad, "Low Road," and a corresponding fact-checking web site. Obama also asked McCain, "Is that the best you can come up with?"
  
• Politico reports on the sometimes contradictory "cacophonous cabinet" McCain has assembled for his campaign advisory team.
• Writing in Business Week, David Kiley reports that "What the McCain campaign doesn’t want people to know, according to one GOP strategist I spoke with over the weekend, is that they had an ad script ready to go if Obama had visited the wounded troops saying that Obama was ... wait for it ... using wounded troops as campaign props. So, no matter which way Obama turned, McCain had an Obama bashing ad ready to launch. I guess that’s political hardball. But another word for it is the one word that most politicians are loathe to use about their opponents -- a lie." Quite an honorable campaign indeed.
• The Columbia Journalism Review notes that a group of ten Ohio newspapers who rate campaign ads on a scale of one to ten (from "misleading" to "truthful") have given McCain's ads a zero.
• Clearly McCain is trying to gain some traction by accusing Obama of being an elitist. But as Jake Tapper, Chris Hayes and Andrew Romano point out, McCain is much wealthier, has much less connection to the middle class, and promotes economic policies that benefit wealthy elites at the expense of the middle class. I would add that the type of elitism the left is pointing to -- a material elitism -- is quite different from the type of elitism McCain is charging Obama with, which is cultural elitism.
• Kathleen Hennessey argues in Time that Ron Paul might prove to be a more effective candidate than John McCain in the Mountain West. No argument here.
• And finally, Patrick Ruffini gets all excited at the Next Right over McCain's "celebrity" ad, saying it "hits a triple," and reacts to news that Bobby Jindal will likely get the GOP convention keynote speech by remarking that "Who better to counterprogram Obama than someone who's like Obama in many ways, except with accomplishments?"

--Mori Dinauer

Rachel Stern speaks with Gal Luft, an alternative energy activist who argues that flex fuel vehicles are the solution to our oil woes:

RS: What do you think about the bad rap that ethanol has been getting lately? Is it all media hype, or is there any truth to it?

GL: Ethanol is now all of the sudden threatening gasoline at the pump. [Because of this] the oil lobby is coming up with all kinds of stories that ethanol is starving the poor, that ethanol creates food problems. There's a whole propaganda machine there that is trying to get people to believe in this.

How do you explain the fact that rice prices are going up? We don't use ethanol for rice. Nobody does. Clearly there are other factors. I think the main reason food prices are going up is because oil prices are going up. Think about transportation or food packing. On average, our food travels 15,000 miles from food to plate. Think about how much petroleum it takes just to transport food. Think about how much money it costs to fly our asparagus from Chile. That's because they're increasing the price of oil, not because of ethanol. On the contrary, ethanol actually keeps oil prices from being much higher than they are today. Oil prices would be about 15 percent higher today if not for ethanol.

The latest projections show a deficit of $490 billion. By the absolutely meaningless measure of dollars unadjusted for inflation, this is a record. But if anyone thinks this is giving information to readers, then they have no business writing news. The relevant measure is the deficit as a share of gross domestic product. The 2009 deficit will be equal to about 3.3 percent of GDP. Even if you add in 1.3 percent of GDP for the money borrowed from Social Security this only gets you to 4.6 percent, well below the 6 percent the deficit hit in 1983.

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--The Editors

For all his analytical failings, David Broder is a great reporter. Today's column highlights one of the best parts of the recent housing bill, a trust fund to develop more low-income housing by siphoning money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Sheila Crowley, an affordable housing advocate, notes that this is the first expansion of affordable housing Congress has passed since 1990 and the first targeting low-income people since 1974. I pointed out yesterday that affordable housing need has reached its highest level since 1990, so this is a great time for Congress to put what looks like a steady, long-term stream of funding towards the problem.

Two caveats: $300 million a year is a lot of money to you and me, but it is a drop in the bucket in terms of the development and subsidization needed on a national scale. Second, one oft-overlooked problem with public and affordable housing is maintenance funding, which often times results in large housing projects with numerous uninhabitable units. One expert I spoke to said that $30 billion was the amount needed to completely renovate and recapitalize the nation's affordable and subsidized housing stock.

--Tim Fernholz

Mother Jones has a new project called "SLAMMED: The Coming Prison Meldown," that deals with our ever-expanding prison system. Justine Sharrock writes about how, in Kansas, previously skeptical corrections professionals were pleasantly surprised about how effective transitional services could be, properly supported.

The problem is that political debates about crime often degenerate into demagoguery, with politicians describing social investments that are effective in reducing recidivism as "giveaways" to felons who don't deserve them. Others describe crime as resulting from "cultural problems" that can't be fixed, so all you can do is lock people up forever.

To a certain extent, it's true that there's a cultural component; regardless of who you were before you went to prison, the skills for surviving a bid are all about self-preservation in a dangerous environment, they don't help you keep a job or take care of a family. But that's part of the appeal of these programs, they create an environment of positive peer pressure where former felons are all working toward keeping out of trouble, rather than getting into it.

And having a sympathetic PO helps too Jeanette Brown, one of the parolees participating in the transitional program, found herself in some pretty dire straits after release.

It's not been a smooth road for Brown since then: Nine months after her release, she was hospitalized for surgery. Her 17-year-old son was in a car crash. Her manager at the bakery committed suicide. She turned in a coworker for using drugs. Her car broke down.

But with each hurdle, she turned to Obregon for support. The reentry folks paid for medication and car repairs and helped with her Section 8 application. Her community mentor visited her in the hospital. Now, when she sees the local cop around, they chat. Instead of dreading her parole meetings, Brown stops by Obregon's office after work to say hello. "Parole officers used to try to put me back in prison; now I feel like they are trying to keep me out," she explains.

--A.Serwer

If you're like me, you scratched your head upon reading the news that a new HUD report shows homelessness in the United States decreased by 30 percent between 2005 and 2007. The Bush administration is chalking the improvement up to Housing First, an innovative homelessness-fighting strategy adopted from the U.K., where it was called the Rough Sleeper Initiative and succeeded in reducing homelessness by two-thirds. We'll have to await more analysis on whether HUD's numbers are correct; such studies are infamous for under-counting the homeless. But initial evidence suggests there has been a substantive absolute decrease in homelessness, even in the midst of an economic downturn and a housing crisis.

To get some perspective on what can arguably be called one of the Bush administration's only progressive policy successes, I spoke to Douglas McGray, a San Francisco-based journalist and fellow at the New America Foundation. McGray has done some in great in-depth reporting on Housing First, including an Atlantic profile of the program's czar, Bush appointee Philip Mangano.

DG: What is Housing First? How is it different from more traditional programs to alleviate homelessness?

DM: For a long time the way that government and the social service world worked to help homeless people was through a range of services and interventions that tried to help people on the street, tried to get them into shelters, tried to provide them with substance abuse or job counseling. This whole idea became known as the "continuum of care" -- a continuum of services.

Housing First is a really different idea. The idea is that you want to get people into housing as quickly as possible, especially people who would be considered chronically homeless. You have a small population of people who are persistently homeless and may not be able to get out of homelessness without serious, ongoing help. These people use an enormous amount of resources. They take up an enormous number of shelter beds. The idea is that you find a permanent solution for these people, it immediately reduces the number of homeless people on the street, it helps the people who are most in need, and then in theory, it frees up the resources that might be wasted on them for people for whom sort of a quick bit of intervention, a little bit of counseling, a leg up, might get them back on their feet and independent.

One of the critiques of Housing First is that by going for the most desperate, disabled people, the program misses out on helping families with children who may be in tenuous economic and housing situations, and who make up about a third of homeless people.

It's a mistake by policy makers and it's a mistake by critics to view it as an either/or situation -- that either you help only the chronically homeless or you help children and families. The reason I would find fault with that critique is just that I think the economics of Housing First are probably going to work out a little bit better. If all of your shelter beds are being used for people who are essentially living in shelters, it's not really a temporary shelter anymore. It's just a really bad place to live.

If you take that chronic population out of the picture and stabilize them, then the shelter can go back to being what it was meant to be, which is a place for someone to crash for a few weeks while they're going through a hard time, and get some services, and get back on their feet. I think Housing First applied properly frees up resources to help children and families.

It's surprising that the Bush administration has been so successful around an issue traditionally embraced mostly by liberal activists and grassroots community groups, such as churches. What do you think informs Bush's leadership on this issue?

Here's what's fascinating to me about Bush's work on homelessness: His main guy, Philip Mangano, doesn't really fit the mold of the Bush appointee. He hasn't known Bush for 20 years. He's not an ideological warrior. He's not a political warrior. I've often wondered if he's been able to do what he's able to do because homelessness is a marginal issue. Maybe someone like Mangano doesn't get appointed to a higher profile position. I don't know how this issue ranks on Bush's list of priorities; I don't know why he would be more or less interested in it. All I know is that I think he made a really smart appointment.

--Dana Goldstein

John Dickerson, whose analysis of the candidates' positions on Iraq I've critiqued before, has a short piece up on Slate making the argument that "McCain and Obama don't think that differently on Iraq." All hail the false bipartisan consensus, I suppose.

The clever formula Dickerson and his co-author Chris Wilson use has a couple of errors, but is in fact an excellent tool to prove why the two candidates are so far apart on the issue. I'm going to try to do a shoddy reproduction here, but for full effect go look at it at Slate. X stands for conditions on the ground, Y for the size of a residual force, and T for the number of troops. As they point out, to figure out how many soldiers will be left simply multiply the number of troops withdrawn per month, times the number of months and subtract that from the number of troops currently there:

CANDIDATE NAME: NUMBER OF TROOPS - TROOPS WITHDRAWN PER MO. x No. of Months = RESIDUAL FORCE

Obama: 140,000 - {2,500-5,000}x * 16 = Y(x)

McCain: 140,000 - T(x) * ? = Y(x)

Of course, my equation is a little different than Dickerson's. Since McCain has denied he even used the word "timeline" on MSNBC and his surrogates reject the idea, I'm taking out the more specific number of months Dickerson used (see Adam's post for more on the myth of the secret McCain timetable). In Obama's equation, the only variable is the the conditions on the ground, but Dickerson ignores the fact that Obama is committed to withdrawing troops. If the conditions are good, and the number is larger than one, then of course there will be withdrawal. But for Obama, if conditions are not as good, there is still a commitment and rationale for pulling troops out -- the number approaches zero but never gets there (anyone remember asmyptotes from high school?).

On the other hand, McCain's equation has a lot of variables that his campaign hasn't defined, and no clear commitment to withdrawal. And his most important variable, X, has different parameters than Obama's. McCain's x leans towards being less than zero, since he sees both bad conditions and good conditions as reasons for staying. Now, it is clear both candidates have made ambiguous statements about Iraq (residual force?) and in fact all policy issues, as that is what presidential candidates do. Conditions are going to change by January 2009 and there will be a reaction to them. But in terms of judgment, priorities and strategic inclination, there is a big difference between Obama and McCain on Iraq policy. Pretending otherwise is wrong.

--Tim Fernholz

This article in The Washington Post, which actually does a good job of chronicling McCain's wildly fluctuating positions, still shows how strong the resistance is to deviating from the established campaign narrative about John McCain. What's most disconcerting is the way it suggests that McCain has secretly been for a conditional withdrawal from Iraq all along.

--A. Serwer

"Who do you think would make a good VP?" It's a common question for me these days. With four posts bashing potential picks under my belt (Chet Edwards, Nunn, Bayh, Kaine), it's reasonable to assume I'm just a nattering nabob of negativism, all too willing to dismiss suggestions while offering none of my own.

But it's not true! I think there are plenty of great Democratic politicians out there who would be excellent additions to the ticket. It's just that the current discussion - focused as it is around DC insiders like Bayh, Clinton, Biden, and Dodd and conservative Democrats like Edwards, Nunn, and Kaine - leaves better options out of the discussion. Here are three potential running-mates who I haven't heard a peep about from The Great Mentioner, but who I'd love to see on an Obama ticket:

To push the persuasive opposition of Matt even further, and to mildly disagree with our colleague Ezra,  I have to say that libertarians are right about regulations banning further fast food restaurants in South Los Angeles. First of all, I object to the ends of the legislation, because I don't think for the most part it's the job of government to make basic health/pleasure tradeoffs involving food for its citizens.

This isn't to say that I'm a strict libertarian. I have no objection at all to NYC-type regulations requiring restaurants to inform customers about the nutritional content of their food: allowing customers to make informed choices is a necessary and desirable function of the state (and I would think that even a sophisticated libertarian should see these regulations as acceptable.)

I also support the recent bans on trans fat bans in New York and L.A. because they represent a substantial benefit for public health while having a trivial effect on consumer choice (indeed, in most cases using alternative fats will make food not only healthier but better.) But these goals are going to far; I don't think suppressing the market for fast food like this makes much sense.

But even if I thought that the end was a legitimate function of government, as Ezra says there's the additional problem that it's not clear if the policy has any chance of accomplishing its ends. It would be nice if a lot of Burger Kings and Carl's Jrs. got replaced by cheap, high-quality, low-margin grocery stores, and it would also be nice if I had points on The Dark Knight's gross, and the policy in question is equally as likely to accomplish both.

And there's no magical health or even taste advantages that derive from having sitdown service; I'd rather have a Wendy's near me than an Applebee's or Denny's. Suppressing one type of business in the hope that a better one will spring up in its place is not a plan, and the food policies that encourage fast food chains over good independent restaurants and good food stores need to be addressed at the federal level.

--Scott Lemieux

Barack Obama's campaign issued a denunciation of this Ludacris song in which he refers to Hillary Clinton as "a bitch".

Simultaneously, Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton released a statement saying:

"As Barack Obama has said many, many times in the past, rap lyrics today too often perpetuate misogyny, materialism, and degrading images that he doesn't want his daughters or any children exposed to. This song is not only outrageously offensive to Senator Clinton, Reverend Jackson, Senator McCain, and President Bush, it is offensive to all of us who are trying to raise our children with the values we hold dear. While Ludacris is a talented individual he should be ashamed of these lyrics."

Ta-Nehisi Coates titles a post "Ludacris attempts to make Hip-hop more irrelevant" but it's hard to see how it's ever been more relevant. Nas is protesting FOX News on behalf of MoveOn, Ludacris gets a personal chin check from Bill Burton and when and where Obama chooses to listen to Jay-Z's Black Album is an issue of "serious" political importance.

So while we're here ... did any other random black people who like Barack Obama say something that offended you today? If so, you should call Bill Burton so he can issue a denunciation. I hear that one of the goals of the transition team is plans for a new federal agency that will deal exclusively with issuing apologies on behalf of Barack Obama for anything black people do that offends you.

--A.Serwer

• At a fundraiser dinner last night in Colorado, John McCain raised $3.2 million for his presidential campaign, apparently setting a "Colorado record" according to one participant. Meanwhile, Barack Obama held an atypically low-key event in Missouri, netting $250,000.
• Crooked Timber notes the language of the Phoenix Initiative, a Democratic foreign policy shop comprised of some members of Barack Obama's foreign policy team, that de-emphasizes the United States as the "indispensable" nation: "Even liberal internationalists used to talk a few years ago about how the US needed to create the institutions for a global system that would ensure US soft hegemony. Now, this group at least, isn't talking in these terms, but implicitly suggesting that the US is just one large power among several."
• Harry Reid, fully intending to keep the Senate in pro forma session over the August recess, challenges the Republican minority to come to D.C. to do business instead of campaigning back home: "So if they want to stay here and work during the August recess, it’s fine with us. I'm not sure it's fine with the Republican senators who have these challengers with them. But we're here. I have no problem. If they -- if they think that it's going to hurt us in any way, I'm not concerned at all, because it won’t hurt us one bit."
• The Washington Post has a piece on Patti Solis Doyle's role in the Obama campaign, and her falling out with Hillary Clinton.
• Campaigning in Missouri, Barack Obama brought up an odd "family legend:" that he is distantly related to Wild Bill Hickok, using the gunslinger as a challenge to John McCain:

  "I'm serious. I'm serious. I don't know if it's true ... We're gonna research that. Because I'm ready to duel John McCain on taxes."

  He pantomimed a quick draw.

  "A quick draw...." he said.

  And yes, that would be the second Deadwood reference in as many days here on the Lightning Round.

• The Washington Post has a front page story that directly challenges the accuracy of McCain's "Obama went to the gym instead of visiting the troops" ad and the Wall Street Journal has decisively come out against McCain's tax plan.
• A University of Wisconsin study [PDF] finds that John McCain and Barack Obama spent a combined $50 million on advertisements since June, CNN discovers that more than two thirds of Americans are in favor of off-shore drilling, but only 49 percent believe it will lower gas prices, and Public Policy Polling [PDF] reports a narrow three point lead for Obama over McCain in Michigan, 46-43.
  
• And finally, Chris Hayes plays "If I Were a Right-Wing Blogger" with the irrelevance of McCain's $520 designer shoes.

--Mori Dinauer

There's a lot to say about John McCain's new advertisement, but I think his former adviser John Weaver says it best: The ad is "childish" and "diminishes John McCain ... There is legitimate mockery of a political campaign now, and it isn't at Obama's. For McCain's sake, this tomfoolery needs to stop."

I'm one of those liberals who used to admire John McCain, and frankly expected him to prosecute a very honorable, issue based campaign. But this latest campaign model, with false personal attacks about troop visits and gas prices combining with adolescent stunts isn't just unpleasant, it may also be ineffective. I'm mainly referring here not to the false negative advertising on television, a proven vote getter, but rather the smaller-run or web only videos, like the one today, designed to stir up media attention.

Jon Chait has gotten at this as well. These ads are designed to create cultural resentment of Obama as "the Other," the kind of identity politics Mark Schmitt wrote about in the magazine a few months back. But when these videos are designed to create earned media attention, and filtered through the press, there is a danger that the negative narrative will boomerang, which is what seems to have happened in the last week. Obama's traveling spokesperson noted that McCain's campaign "released another false ad on a day when he's being attacked for running false ads."

Until the polls give us more information about how these ads affect public sentiment, if at all, my hypothesis is that McCain, who is now facing criticism from the right for his tactics and wavering on tax orthodoxy, will be forced to either once again shake-up his campaign and try to be the ebullient maverick of old or consign himself to the fate of another old GOP curmudgeon, Bob Dole.

--Tim Fernholz

The collapse of WTO talks has some observers despairing that further trade negotiations will move forward in the coming years. Unfortunately, it seems like we're seeing China and India acting out an eerie parody of our own doesn't-play-well with others approach to the world. One expert quoted in the piece points out that this may be because "China and India might find it more advantageous to negotiate bilateral agreements in which they can apply more pressure on a single trading partner."

Between U.S. ambitions and those of China and India, the WTO couldn't compromise on ways to protect farmers in developing countries from deeply subsidized agriculture in the developed world. I wonder if part of the reason some people see international neo-liberal institutions like the WTO, IMF and World Bank as predators who wreak havoc with poor countries' economies is the fact that U.S. policy doesn't allow them to act in favor of the greater good that would come from a fair international trading community.

That said, obviously other countries need to come to the table prepared to compromise as well. But the U.S. attitude, summed up by our lead negotiator as “U.S. commitments remain on the table, awaiting reciprocal responses,” isn't moving us forward.

--Tim Fernholz

Tim Fernholz explores what a liberal housing policy would look like:

Affordable housing programs have fallen lower and lower on Congress' priorities list over the last decade. But the sub-prime mortgage crisis offers a silver lining: the potential for the less well-known problem of affordable housing to piggy-back on the attention given to its more glamorous cousin. For example, a measure of the recent housing bill allows local housing authorities to purchase foreclosed homes to provide affordable housing. It's a start, but real improvement will require broader efforts. What is needed for more affordable housing -- attention and funding -- will come only when its challenges are linked with policy challenges like climate change, crime, education and economic development.

Greg Anrig and Harold Pollack debunk Hannah Rosin's recent article in The Atlantic claiming that closing down housing projects and replacing them with vouchers increases:

Rosin places far too much responsibility on housing policy for the increase in crime. Other factors related to the local economy were almost certainly more significant. Even within the realm of housing policy, the problem is not Section 8, but an outgrowth of conservative indifference to supporting low-income renters rather than a liberal desire to give poor families a better chance.

Section 8 housing vouchers were first created back in the Nixon administration with the goal of reducing rental costs for poor people without building more public housing projects. Scholars have studied their impact extensively over the years, and have generally viewed these vouchers as successful in that limited mission, and unconnected to any changes in crime levels.

And Sarah Posner has the latest on the religious right:

The AFA reaches a rural audience through its radio stations -- it owns over a hundred of them, making it the sixth-largest radio-station owner in the country -- and its daily AFA Report show presents a "Christian worldview" on the news of the day. On Friday, the day after Obama's Berlin speech, the AFA Report's host, Fred Jackson, made note of the "messianic tone" of the speech, then quickly denied that he believes Obama is messianic. Ed Vitagliano, one of the program's roundtable guests, chimed in, "I don't think he's the Antichrist, but there is a spirit of Antichrist at work in the West in a very strong and open way that is leading people to want to solve their problems and have a desire to have their lives improved without Christ. That's what the spirit of Antichrist does, it denies Christ." In other words, Obama's not the Antichrist. He's just like the Antichrist.

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--The Editors

Sure, Tim Kaine has a number of objectionable policy positions that should make liberals oppose his selection as Barack Obama's VP but, on the other hand, ponies (via Jonathan Martin)!

Kaine, who took a leave-of-absence from Harvard Law School to work as a Catholic missionary in Honduras, made his comments about the media-created Obama VP list while visiting the carnival grounds on Chincoteague Island.

The Virginia governor is on the island with daughter Annella for the annual Chincoteague pony swim. [...]

The conversation took place on the Chincoteague carnival grounds near the Tilt-a-Whirl. The governor did not get on the amusement ride but the governor's daughter and Mason's grandchildren did, according to Derrickson. [...]

On Saturday, he is slated to go to a beach house at the Camp Pendleton military base in Virginia for a family vacation.

"It's kind of like gubernatorial equivalent of Camp David," said Skinner when asked to describe Kaine's vacation destination.

--Sam Boyd

“Is Anything Sacred?” was the title of a post a couple of days ago on The New Republic’s blog, The Plank. The subject: Publication of the note that Barack Obama placed in the Western Wall when he visited last week. The daily Ma’ariv ran that “scoop,” and immediately found itself under intense criticism -- from rabbis, talk-show hosts, and a lawyer who began organizing a consumer boycott of the paper -- for violating Obama’s privacy and Jewish religious sensibilities.

But the Plank’s Zvika Krieger wasn’t aiming his question at Ma’ariv. He was asking if Obama considered anything sacred. For in responding to the firestorm, a Ma’ariv spokesman had told various Israeli papers (English here, Hebrew here): “Barack Obama’s note was approved for publication in the international media even before he put [it] in the Kotel…” Krieger accepted that statement. A fairly early version of his post (via Google’s cache) said:

Obama may be above politicizing our troops, but if his campaign did approve the note for publication before he placed it, then I guess he isn’t above politicizing religion.

Clever: A snarky reference to Obama’s canceled visit to wounded U.S. soldiers, casting doubts on his reasons for canceling, as prelude to a statement that the candidate was willing to trash Jewish sensitivities for politics’ sakes. Truly, Obama had hit the trifecta: apostate Muslim with radical Christian preacher desecrates Jewish holy sites. But by writing the story this way, Krieger actually doubled down on Ma’ariv’s failed journalistic judgment. At least he has been doing a somewhat better job of backtracking.

Start here: Ma’ariv’s story from last Friday on the note is still available on line (in Hebrew). It explains how the paper got the note:

As soon as [Obama] left the wall, a yeshivah student hurried to the stones where the note had been inserted and searched between them until he found the hoped-for note… which has reached Ma’ariv’s hands.

The picture of the note showed it folded and crumpled. Yediot Aharonot, Israel’s largest-circulation paper, was reportedly offered the note and turned it down. Apparently, the yeshivah student was shopping his find around. Yediot is also a tabloid with screaming headlines, not known for its tact, but even its editors knew where to draw the line.

So virtually every paper in Israel was soon publishing that statement from Ma’ariv about how Obama had really handed out the note itself. The statement’s last sentence (take anti-nausea pill before reading) said:

In any case, since Obama is not a Jew, publishing the note does not constitute an infringement on his right to privacy.

Now let’s say I’m a journalist, and I read Ma’ariv’s second version. How should I relate to it?

Well, if Obama really had offered the note to everyone, everyone would have published it, and no one would have been upset. That’s exactly what happened when Pope John Paul II visited the Wall in March, 2000, during his historic journey of reconciliation, and publicized the prayer he inserted between the stones. He made a point of writing it in English. You can find it on the website of the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land, a Church body. No one thought the pope had violated religious custom. The pope’s prayer was meant to be public, so there was nothing untoward in publishing it. It was like printing words of a sermon. Publishing Obama’s words was the equivalent of using a secret mike to capture a whispered prayer.

Ma’ariv didn’t get that. That’s not terribly surprising. In the early 90s, I called Israeli author David Grossman to ask him to write for an op-ed for the Jerusalem Report, where I then worked. He said he couldn’t write on what I wanted, because he’d just done that piece for Ma’ariv. I apologized for missing it. He kindly told me not to worry about it, adding, “You know what they say: When I don’t have a book, I read a newspaper. When I don’t have a newspaper, I read Ma’ariv.”

(Full disclosure: I wrote for Ma’ariv’s op-ed page for a couple of years. I had to pay the bills, I like writing in Hebrew, and there aren’t many papers here. Some good journalists work there now. And I’ve quoted Ma’ariv stories that I have reason to regard as solid. A newspaper isn’t monolithic.)

Given the choice of believing Obama, who’s campaign denied releasing the note, or Ma’ariv, which was retreating under fire, Krieger chose Ma’ariv. Much as I believe that the press should have an adversary relationship with politicians, I don’t think that means that a newspaper, any newspaper, should always be trusted over a pol.

Eventually, Krieger got a Ma’ariv spokesman on the phone himself and asked about the accusation that Obama had set up the whole story himself. The guy on the other end of the line said

…that the accusation is “completely false,” and that he has no idea who these papers were quoting from Ma’ariv. “No official spokesman for Ma’ariv told this to any of the papers.”

Stage II of the walk-back: Spokesman No. 2 denies all knowledge of Spokesman No. 1. And Krieger’s new item on the Plank is entitled, “Obama Vindicated.”

You know, maybe he isn’t a closet Muslim, either.

--Gershom Gorenberg

Also on South Jerusalem.

I just wanted to follow up on Dana's point below about the tenure offer the University of Chicago Law School made to Obama. Paul Campos objected to someone with "only" a bachelor's and a JD getting tenure. This struck me as odd, as I was under the impression that a JD was a sufficient credential for law teaching. So I decided to scour through the UChicago law school's website. Of 34 full-time faculty members:

• 24 have tenure.
  

• Of those with tenure, half (12) have only a bachelor's and a JD.
  

• 6 have a bachelor's, a JD, and a PhD.
  

• 2 have a bachelor's, a master's, and a JD.
  

• 2 have a bachelor's, a PhD, but no JD.
  

• One (Omri Ben-Shahar) managed to earn a bachelor's, an LLB (a JD equivalent), a PhD, and an SJD (a legal doctoral degree).
  

So while Obama wasn't as credentialed as all of the University's tenured law faculty, he was easily credentialed enough to receive tenure. Indeed, he had the same combination of degrees as the plurality of the tenured faculty. Even if Obama didn't have the extra-academic qualifications that Dana rightly touts, Campos is on seriously thin ground here.

--Dylan Matthews

For those of you who months ago read AP Washington Bureau Chief Ron Fournier's terribly offended screed on how this uppity arrogant black guy named Barack Obama thought he might actually be president and started wondering what Fournier's problem was after that piece basically set the tone for the AP's election coverage, Politico's Michael Calderone might have some answers.

Before Ron Fournier returned to The Associated Press in March 2007, the veteran political reporter had another professional suitor: John McCain’s presidential campaign.

In October 2006, the McCain team approached Fournier about joining the fledgling operation, according to a source with knowledge of the talks. In the months that followed, said a source, Fournier spoke about the job possibility with members of McCain’s inner circle, including political aides Mark Salter, John Weaver and Rick Davis.

Salter covers for Fournier later in the article, stating he "could never tell [Fournier's] politics." Right. Because the GOP doesn't ever consider political sympathies when hiring campaign staff. Gee, I wonder what those email exchanges look like. I suppose the point is--none of this should have mattered. Having political beliefs or sympathies shouldn't affect the way a journalist does their job, and this article wouldn't even have been written if the AP didn't have reporters writing stuff like this.

Some might see this as just another example of why "objectivity" in journalism is a myth, but for some reason, that's an argument I find a great deal more compelling with a network or a newspaper. There's something disconcerting about bias in wire services, since many papers may rely on them entirely for their national affairs or international coverage. There's also something bizarre about Fournier's brand of "accountability journalism," which aims to be opinionated but essentially relies on the credibility of the AP's past, non-opinionated work for any sense of authority, the reputation of wire reporters as "straight-shooters". In other words, the appeal of AP reporters giving their opinions is premised on the myth that wire reporters can't possibly have strong ideological opinions.

Also, Calderone confirms that McCain may have been aware of the internet as early as 2006.

Fournier also met privately with McCain in his Senate office in late 2006, a discussion that Salter maintains was related to that “Internet thing.”

Cool...

--A. Serwer

Over at Lawyers, Guns, & Money, Paul Campos is vaguely miffed that Barack Obama, despite having no academic credentials beyond his JD degree, was offered tenure at the University of Chicago Law School in 2000. Now, I know academic jobs are scarce, and I understand the hackles stories like these raise for Ph.Ds. I'm also not at all a reflexive academia-hater; professors have the training and time to complete research projects I can only dream about. Their work makes my job as a public policy writer easier every single day.

Ultimately, though, I think it's a good thing when professional schools offer jobs to folks like Obama -- people with deep engagement in the worlds of politics and business. Even at the undergraduate level, I'd like to see more of this, not least so that college students can learn about diverse, realistic career paths. I recently spoke to a newsweekly editor with decades of both professional and teaching experience. He was having trouble finding a tenure-track job at a journalism school because he didn't have a Ph.D in journalism, probably the most useless degree ever conceived of. When it comes to teaching a profession, academic experience shouldn't always be the be-all-end-all in hiring decisions. A faculty with a good mix of academic and professional expertise would, I think, be ideal for students.

--Dana Goldstein

• The indictment of Republican Senator Ted Stevens today certainly makes the job for challenger Mark Begich easier (although I would dismiss talk that it "virtually guarantees" a Democratic pickup) although the timely entry of Republican primary challenger Vic Vickers and his anti-corruption message complicates things. Meanwhile, Baron Young Smith smartly observes that Stevens' departure from the political scene is like losing Al Swearingen, a "dying breed of primordial American, laid low by the encroachment of ethics, rules, and civilization."
• Politico reports on the GOP's plans to tie Barack Obama to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid but I'm skeptical much will come of this. It's safe to assume that the same voters who are familiar with Reid and Pelosi are not undecided voters -- presumably the minds the GOP thinks it can change with the association to Obama. Or perhaps they are trying to capitalize on Democratic disapproval of Congress. Even then, is it reasonable to expect Democrats are going to vote for John McCain because of their disappointment in the Democratic majority in Congress? The strategy does not appear to have been very well-thought out.
• Obama's presidential campaign is unleashing a massive $20 million GOTV drive for Latinos (who prefer him to John McCain 3-1).
• The AFL-CIO has launched a campaign to correct the viral myths about Barack Obama that have circled his presidential campaign from the beginning. The canvassing will target union members in key swing states.
• John McCain "reminds us" that he said "we would have an easy victory [in Iraq]. We did." Does that mean we can leave now? In other news, a "top Russian diplomat" opines that "We’re not interested in what McCain has to say. Let him become president first, then we’ll listen to him." Good advice.
• Sam Stein reports that Barack Obama's organizing efforts in Florida are "months ahead organizationally of Gore/Kerry."
• Josh Patashnik takes a critical look at "most liberal senator" rankings and concludes that voteview.com is probably the most accurate, ranking Obama at number 11. What I want to know is why no one is concerned -- or even brings up as worrisome -- the fact that John McCain is the ninth most conservative member of the Senate, just behind the likes of Wayne Allard, James Inhofe and Tom Coburn.
• Public Policy Polling [PDF] gives John McCain a three point lead in North Carolina, 47-44, with Bob Barr getting 3 percent. And Strategic Vision has Obama up by nine points in Pennsylvania, 49-40
• Do yourself a favor: avoid reading Mark Penn and Richard Cohen's columns today and read instead Jonathan Cohn's "The Political Virtues of Mitt Romney's Shamelessness." It's intentionally amusing, and won't make you want to punch the screen.

--Mori Dinauer

Supporters of California's Proposition 8, the amendment to ban gay marriage, have said they will file suit to challenge the Attorney General, former Governor, and possible 2010 gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown's recent change in the measure's language. It now states that it would "eliminate the right of same sex couples to marry," rather than the opponents' preferred wording that it would "provide that" marriage is only between a man and a woman. If California were, say, Ohio (or one of the 48 states that does not recognize gay marriage), the second wording would be more appropriate, as the measure wouldn't be taking anything away. But it is, and some people mentioned in the article don't seem to recognize the importance of being honest in ballot language:

Political analysts on both sides suggest that the language change will make passage of the initiative more difficult, noting that voters might be more reluctant to pass a measure that makes clear it is taking away existing rights.

When it comes down to it, the measure would be taking away an existing right, one that was clearly established by the Supreme Court in June. There's no language that can describe it more accurately that that, and it would represent an act of political interference to phrase it otherwise. If voters feel strongly enough against gay marriage, they will be okay with eliminating the current right, no matter how it is phrased.

--Rachel Stern

Given my role as TAPPED's resident VP Hater (witness my posts hating on Chet Edwards, Sam Nunn, and Evan Bayh), I feel obliged to pour cold water on the flavor of the day: Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine.

As with most potential VPs, Kaine has a great resumé. He's a successful Democratic governor of a traditionally red state that has the potential to go blue this year. He was elected in 2005, weirdly enough, by opposing the death penalty; when the Republican nominee, then-Attorney General Jerry Kilgore, ran an ad saying Kaine wouldn't execute Hitler, Kaine responded by drawing on his Catholic faith.

But as Melissa McEwan points out, Kaine's social views and his stance on Iraq are pretty problematic. Just as his Catholic views led him to oppose the death penalty, so too do they lead him to oppose abortion rights. In a piece for TAP Online from 2005, Rob Graver wrote that Kaine's "views on abortion are roughly in line with those of George W. Bush." Indeed, NARAL declined to endorse his run in 2005 due to his support for parental notification and consent laws and bans on "partial-birth" abortion.

His record on gay rights isn't much better. He opposes civil unions, and while he claimed to oppose the state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage that passed last year, he declined to veto legislation placing it on the ballot. Perhaps worst of all, in the 2005 governor's race his campaign mocked Kilgore's effeminate voice, and even ran an ad titled "Weak", calling Kilgore "too weak to lead Virginia" and adding "Jerry Kilgore is not being straight." It'd be one thing for Obama to choose an anti-choice running mate; picking an anti-choice gay-baiter is even worse.

Even Kaine's Iraq position is questionable. While he was not in Congress in 2002, and thus not on the record about the war, he went out of his way during gubernatorial run to say that it would send "a horrible message" to "cut and run", and used his inaugural address to compare the war in Iraq to the American revolution, saying that Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson "stood here at a time, just as today, when Virginians serving freedom's cause sacrificed their lives so that democracy could prevail over tyranny."

Tim Kaine is a great governor. Perhaps there’s a cabinet post he’d be well-suited for. If Jim Webb gets appointed secretary of defense, he’d be a natural choice for the Senate. But not the vice presidency.

--Dylan Matthews

Ted Stevens' indictment is certainly good news for those of us who love honest government. Isaac Chotiner thinks this is bad for the GOP, and it does tarnish their national brand even more. However, it may be problematic for the Democratic Party, as well.

Alaska represented a critical opportunity to switch a Senate seat and increase the Democratic majority in the upper house. But now that Stevens has been indicted, he may not make it into the general election, either because he drops out of the race/is forced out by the party, or because he loses Alaska's Republican primary election at the end of August to back-bench GOP candidate Dave Cuddy. On the Democratic side, Mark Begich, the popular Mayor of Anchorage, is running a strong campaign and could still win a race against Cuddy. But given the GOP tilt of Alaskan politics, Begich would much rather run against Stevens and his corruption baggage than a reform-minded Republican. The scenario is similar to the 2006 results in California's 51st District, where ubercorrupt Rep. Duke Cunningham dropped out, allowing former GOP Rep. Brian Bilbray beat out the Democratic challenger. It will be interesting to track the public statements of Stevens and the rest of this group in the coming weeks.

Update: Vic Vickers has jumped in the race for the GOP nomination. While having lots of money and an anti-corruption message could help him, just moving back to the state recently and being somewhat nuts could hurt. Does it split the primary ticket and let Ted Stevens win the nomination  (assuming he doesn't step down)? I doubt it, but it's too soon to tell.

--Tim Fernholz

For a long time now, McCain has been arguing that a "timetable" would lead to "defeat" in Iraq and "a victory for Al Qaeda." Then on Friday, he told Wolf Blitzer that 16 months sounded like "a pretty good timetable," seemingly taking Obama's position on the subject. Then he told George Stephanopoulos that he never used the word "timetable," when in fact he had.

When he isn't arguing that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki doesn't know what he's talking about, McCain is trying to reframe the argument over withdrawal in Iraq by stating that Obama's timetable is somehow inflexible and not based on conditions in Iraq, and as far as CNN is concerned, it seems to be working.

Sen. John McCain could support a 16-month timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, he told CNN's Larry King Monday night.

But the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said he would only do that if military chiefs deemed the "conditions on the ground" safe enough.

Speaking from Bakersfield, California, the Arizona senator said he would not stick to a "hard and firm date" suggested by Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

So despite months of statements like "What happens is dictated by conditions on the ground and what the commanders say," McCain wants you to believe that his support for a timetable is prudent because it takes into account "conditions on the ground," while Obama's doesn't. This is all the more ironic given the fact that McCain has spent the couple of weeks accusing Obama of taking positions on Iraq based on "political expediency". (What then, is McCain's sudden embrace of a policy he once described as "defeat"?) Of course, give the fact that nothing that comes out of McCain's mouth can be interpreted as official policy, it's not really clear where McCain stands.

What is clear is that despite depicting Obama as naive and irresponsible on foreign policy, he has now been forced by political and empirical realities to adopt Obama's positions, at least nominally, on the two most pressing foreign policy issues of the day. That's not "good fortune," that's a matter of superior judgment. McCain shouldn't be allowed to avoid these facts by dishonestly reframing the debate.

--A. Serwer

Via TPM Muckraker, word is burbling through the tubes that Sen. Ted Stevens has been indicted:

The U.S. Justice Department has scheduled a news conference for 1:20 p.m. to make an announcement "regarding a significant criminal matter." The official said the news conference would announce the criminal charges against Stevens that have been returned by a federal grand jury in Washington, D.C.

So far the charges are seven counts of making false statements, according to The Washington Post. TPMM has more background here. Last August Terrence Samuel wrote in TAP Online that Stevens' case showed that Rudy couldn't win.

So, Sen. Stevens, is this good news for your career or your reelection chances?

--Sam Boyd

It doesn't contain much that's new, but Alan Ehrenhalt's New Republic cover story on the increasing affluence of American cities and poverty of inner-ring suburbs makes for interesting reading, and is a useful introduction to the topic. I'd only add that the quality of city schools -- a subject Ehrenhalt doesn't broach -- cannot be overstated as a factor in whether or not middle and upper middle class families choose an urban lifestyle. While the truly affluent can pick among private schools, with tuition approaching that of private universities, most parents simply can't consider them. "Gifted and talented" programs, public charters, and magnet schools are beginning to provide more choice in cities such as New York and Washington, D.C., but in some cases, these options simply segregate more privileged students from their peers within otherwise failing districts.

I've argued before for greater partnerships between suburban and urban school districts -- where geographically feasible -- in order to expand high quality options for all parents and students. Along those lines, check out this Times op-ed advocating for the federal government to dismantle the department of Housing and Urban Development in favor of a new agency devoted to regional planning and cooperation between cities and suburbs.

--Dana Goldstein

Continuing his long tradition of "not doing personal attacks," last night Bill O'Reilly called Scott McClellan "an idiot" for saying O'Reilly and others at FOX took talking points from the White House and denied ever doing any such thing. In fairness, even Scotty would have to admit that he's not exactly the most trustworthy fellow, but what's most interesting is not his claim that the White House fed talking points to pundits, but his defense of it (Transcript of Hardball via Nexis):

MATTHEWS: Did people say, call Sean, call Bill, call whoever? Did you do that as a regular thing?

(CROSSTALK)

MCCLELLAN: Certainly. Certainly. It wasn`t necessarily something I was doing, but it was something that we at the White House, yes, were doing and getting them talking points and making sure they knew where we were coming from.

MATTHEWS: So, you were giving them talking points...

(CROSSTALK)

MCCLELLAN: But I would separate the journalists.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: No, no, this is important.

MCCLELLAN: Yes.

MATTHEWS: You were using these commentators as your spokespeople?

MCCLELLAN: Well, certainly. I mean, certainly. I think that happens to both ways, when people go on other networks, as well, that are -- that are favorable towards Democrats and so forth.

MATTHEWS: Well, nobody has ever fed me any crap like that, so I don`t know what you`re talking about.

The relevant part of the exchange here is the fact that McClellan didn't actually think there was anything wrong with what the White House was doing. He is simply unaware of how embarrassing this might be to O'Reilly and others, so it's hard to suggest he was simply making it up to make them look bad, since not only does he think of it as perfectly normal, he assumes that the other side does the same thing.

--A. Serwer

Paul Waldman marvels at Obama's ability to reverse a decades-long Democratic deficit in media strategy:

While Barack Obama was photographed standing on mountaintops and being mobbed by adoring troops, John McCain was filmed tooling around in a golf cart with George H. W. Bush, a figure from the political past. Then, while Obama spoke in front of a crowd of 200,000 Germans waving American flags, McCain answered questions in the dairy aisle of a supermarket.

Watching the week's events, I was reminded of the 1990 U.S. Open, when John McEnroe, clearly past his prime and five years removed from his last Grand Slam final, made an improbable run to the semifinals. There he met 18-year-old Pete Sampras, whose cannon serve and freakishly precise ground strokes were so overwhelming that it seemed as though he were some kind of tennis-playing cyborg sent by an advanced race of aliens to humiliate human athletes. By the end of the match, it was clear McEnroe's career would soon be over.

And, in an article from our last print issue, Clyde Prestowitz writes that American CEOs often have greater incentives to concern themselves with needs of foreign leaders than American ones:

In December 2004, IBM announced the sale of its personal computer division to China's Lenovo. The announcement came as a surprise in Washington but was old news in Beijing. As IBM Chairman Sam Palmisano later told The New York Times, the deal had originated during his July 2003 trip to Beijing to meet not with Lenovo but with top-level Chinese government officials from whom he sought permission to sell to a Chinese company. IBM wanted to support China's industrial strategy (including the upgrading of its technological capacities and know-how), Palmisano told the Times, partly because "if you become ingrained in their agenda and become truly local and help them advance, then your opportunities are enlarged. ... You become part of their strategy." After Beijing approved the proposal, Palmisano proceeded to Lenovo to negotiate the deal that wound up not only with Lenovo taking over IBM's PC division but also with IBM and the Chinese government as co-investors in China's fifth largest company.

Subscribe to our RSS feed to receive our articles as soon as they’re published.

--The Editors

The latest in wonkish activities from the policy front. It's just not a good morning unless you get your daily dose of employment research.

• A Mixed Bag for Boomers. According to the Urban Institute, as many as 68 percent of baby boomers may be willing to work past their retirement age, due factors including improved health, a decline in physically demanding jobs, and reductions in health care and pension funding. However, employers view these workers as insufficiently trained and more costly to employ than their younger counterparts. The report recommends that policymakers pass clearer phased retirement legislation and expanded government training and employment services to make the most of this vast human resource.
• Forgetful even in recession. No one can say for sure whether the economic stimulus payments had any positive impact on the economy. But that may be because millions of Americans never claimed theirs. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities has compiled data to show which states have the most "non-filers" and state-by-state data on the value of these unclaimed payments.
• Contraception: It works! Here's a sobering fact: 30 percent of teenage girls in the U.S. become pregnant. But Brookings researchers report that providing contraception through Medicaid is a cost-effective policy option that reduces unplanned pregnancies. While this might seem like a no-brainer, the report notes that there was concern that women were insufficiently committed to family planning and might not take advantage of available contraception options. Apparently, that isn't the case: providing this option reduces unplanned pregnancies by 15 percent.
• Prosecuting Mugabe. Center for American Progress has released a report on the various mechanisms for bringing Robert Mugabe and his allies in Zimbabwe to justice, assuming they leave power. While the International Criminal Court has no jurisdiction over the crimes Mugabe committed prior to July 2002, an international or domestic court based in Harare would be capable of holding him and his associates accountable for crimes throughout their tenure. However, the report emphasizes that any court action will only be taken as a result of political and diplomatic efforts by actors in the region and in the international community.

--TAP Staff

I took a field trip yesterday to a really well-done piece of political theater, the only press conference I've been to that had a go-go band opener and involved a D.J. asking, "Where my single ladies at?" to a crowd a few hundred strong, turned out by celebrity and good old-fashioned D.C. machine politics.

All for a good cause, of course, as the Hip Hop Caucus launched its voter registration/get-out-the-vote drive, to be led by "street teams" in seventeen cities across the country. The best part of the program is that it targets 18 to 29 year-olds who are not enrolled in college, a constituency that doesn't receive a lot of attention -- or vote much (only one in 14 voted on Super Tuesday, for instance). Rapper T.I. turned out as chief spokesman. Interestingly, T.I. can't vote, as he's pled guilty to felony gun charges, giving the rapper, and Rev. Lennox Yearwood, the head of the Hip Hop Caucus, an opportunity to make a double point about the importance of allowing felons who have served their time to vote.

Unfortunately, I have my doubts about the potential efficacy of the Caucus' efforts; without information on funding and training and the number of field operatives, the concern is that this could turn into another "Vote or Die" campaign that's more about promoting artists and corporate sponsors than civic education. Worryingly, all of the co-sponsors are corporations, not voting rights groups. But at least there is some promise, and a media spectacle built around young celebrities like T.I. and Yung Berg endorsing voting in the media.

--Tim Fernholz

Governing is serious work! The Earth itself is at stake! (I’m glad Nancy Pelosi isn’t too self-conscious to talk bluntly about it.) From a Politico profile of the speaker:

With fewer than 20 legislative days before the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1, the entire appropriations process has largely ground to a halt because of the ham-handed fighting that followed Republican attempts to lift the moratorium on offshore oil and gas exploration. And after promising fairness and open debate, Pelosi has resorted to hard-nosed parliamentary devices that effectively bar any chance for Republicans to offer policy alternatives. “I’m trying to save the planet; I’m trying to save the planet,” she says impatiently when questioned. “I will not have this debate trivialized by their excuse for their failed policy.”

And more good stuff…

“Listen,” she laughs, “I go on the floor of the House every day and deal with people who don’t want to give health care to poor little children in America. We’re trying to get a job done. This is a giant kaleidoscope. One day you and I are on the same side. The next day it’s the two of us against you.”

—Dana Goldstein

Howard Witt of the Chicago Tribune is reporting that 21-year old Police Officer Scott Nugent, of Winn Parish in Louisiana, has been indicted in the death of Baron "Scooter" Pikes. Pikes died after being shocked nine times with a Taser, and according to the local coroner, at least twice while he was unconscious. The incident has inflamed racial tensions in the area; Nugent is white, Pikes was black.

In his own written report of the Pikes' incident, Nugent acknowledged that he had subdued and handcuffed Pikes after a foot chase and that Pikes had not struggled or resisted arrest. Instead, Nugent wrote, he began Tasering Pikes after the suspect did not respond quickly enough to Nugent's order to stand up and walk to a waiting police car.

Witnesses reported that Pikes had pleaded with Nugent and two other arresting officers to stop Tasering him.

Nugent's attorney has said the former officer acted according to police procedures. But the Winnfield Police Department's written Taser policy states that the device should only be used "where it is deemed reasonably necessary to control a dangerous or violent subject."

I also feel obligated to share the political history of the Parish, as outlined by Witt:

Nevils' predecessor as district attorney committed suicide after he came under suspicion for skimming $200,000 from his office accounts and extorting bribes from criminal suspects. The former police chief, who was Nugent's father, also killed himself, after losing a bitterly-contested election campaign marred by fraud allegations. The current police chief is a convicted drug offender who was pardoned by former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards, who is currently serving a federal prison sentence for corruption while in office.

Sounds like the plot of a Coen Brothers movie.

--A.Serwer

• Over the weekend the McCain campaign issued a new ad claiming that Barack Obama "made time to go to the gym, but canceled a visit with wounded troops" ostensibly because he wouldn't get a good photo op, a false accusation. (MSNBC appears to be the only big news outlet willing to point this out.) Oddly, the footage of Obama at the gym featured him playing basketball with U.S. soldiers, and, as Greg Sargent observes, the ad's weak buy probably means it was aimed at journalists -- rather than the general population -- to get them chattering about it.
• McCain has essentially adopted Obama's sixteen-month plan for withdrawal from Iraq, claiming that the "surge has worked." But as James Vega, Brian Katulis and Robert Dreyfuss point out in separate pieces, the current stability in Iraq is largely illusory and at Iran's whim. Also see the Prospect's roundup of expert opinions on the efficacy of the surge.
  
• Capping a week of foreign policy ignorance and incoherence, John McCain told George Stephanopolous on This Week that U.S. soldiers were "greeted as liberators" in April 2003.
• The Chicago Tribune has an interesting profile of Valerie Jarrett, the "other side of Barack Obama's brain."
• Hillary Clinton has confirmed that she will campaign for Barack Obama beginning in August.
• Obama's overseas trip appears to have produced a spike in national polls, with Gallup posting a 49-40 high on Sunday (48-40 today) and Research 2000 reporting a 51-39 lead. A USA Today/Gallup poll, however, shows McCain ahead of Obama amongst likely voters, 49-45, and trailing Obama among registered voters by only three points, 47-44.
• Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain's chief economic policy adviser, on the candidates' tax plans: "I used to say that Barack Obama raises taxes and John McCain cuts them, and I was convinced. I stand corrected." Now that's some good Straight Talk.
• Robert Novak believes Mitt Romney could help John McCain carry Michigan as VP. Nate Silver, however, remains skeptical.
• Thomas Edsall writes in The Huffington Post on the lack of consensus in the political science community about the accuracy of polling in the presidential race and concludes the race will either be an Obama blowout or a narrow McCain win.
• And finally, over 6,000 tickets to the alternative Ron Paul convention have already been snatched up -- in about six hours.

--Mori Dinauer

Via Matthew Yglesias, an AP reporter asks this important question in a write-up of Obama's speech at the recent UNITY conference: "Can minority journalists resist applauding Obama?" Well, no, because they simply lack the same ability to make decisions based on factors other than race, which, history has shown, is a quality only white people are born with.

It would be really frustrating if the journalists of color gathering at UNITY would show any positive reaction whatsoever to Obama's speech, because it would show that they are incapable of doing their job as professionals, much the same way McCain's standing ovation and complimentary coffee and donuts at an Associated Press event forced others in the mainstream media to question their objectivity and professionalism.

In all seriousness, it would be a great improvement if people recognized that white journalists have as much of a particular cultural and racial perspective as journalists who aren't white. (See Ann's take here).

--A. Serwer

Rikyrah at Jack and Jill Politics points to a Gallup poll titled "Whites May Exaggerate Black-Hispanic Tensions" which may explain why the conventional wisdom about black-Latino tensions affecting Obama was so completely wrong.

The generally positive review of black-Hispanic relations in Gallup polling among members of the two leading U.S. minority groups contrasts with considerable media speculation about the impact of Hispanic animosity toward blacks in this year's primary elections.[...]

While black-Hispanic animosity may exist and could even have been a factor in some state caucuses or primaries, the Gallup data indicates it is not overwhelmingly obvious to members of either group. Whites are much more likely to believe the two are in conflict.

But why was pundit class was so quick to wrongly assume the state of black-brown relations was poor? The poll suggests this misconception widely held among white folks, not just TV talking heads. Of course, that may be because people were listening to said talking heads, who were all inferring that Latinos just don't like black people based on their enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton.

Part of it probably has to do with a genuine lack of familiarity about the diversity of Latinos, whose cultural and ethnic differences are often obscured by the fact that they share a common language. The perception that blacks and Latinos are often competing for the same jobs probably also contributes, but the idea that said competition translates directly into heated animosity is obviously a stereotype. It's also likely that in a country where people are often more concerned with being perceived as racist than actually being racist, it's easy to project racial one's racial anxieties onto someone else.

--A. Serwer

To join in with excellent new colleague Adam Serwer on the media's weird approach to Iraq coverage, let me offer Exhibit A: John Dickerson's article in Slate today, which suggests that Obama is throwing up some Nixonian shield of secrecy over his Iraq policy. The piece has all the best tropes of the genre:

• Impossible to know anything without having been to Iraq. Dickerson is mad because Obama's Iraq trip hasn't changed his mind about his strategy. To Dickerson, this means Obama could be a Bush-like ignorer of facts, but on the other hand it is possible to assess the strategic situation in Iraq without going there. Intelligence reports, journalism, numerous experts, testimony from key policy-implementers, etc. are all available to U.S. Senators who need to make strategic judgments.
  
• A decrease in violence means a change in policy. Obama recognizes that conditions have improved in Iraq (though, as we learn today, not necessarily because of the Surge) but he hasn't changed his strategy. But doesn't a decrease in violence give U.S. forces all the more reason to leave -- especially when top Iraqi officials support a withdrawal time line?
• Opposing the surge is opposing COIN. Dickerson suggests that Obama's opposition to the surge included opposition to counter-insurgency doctrine. This is just false.

But there's another problem with this article's basic assumption: Obama has done a lot of work, from major policy speeches to op-eds to making his advisers available to the public, to make clear his Iraq policy. Dickerson is unhappy because Obama has not, in the few days he has been back from Iraq, revealed any new details of his policy, and that Obama adviser Susan Rice didn't provide him with examples of questions Obama had asked his staff about Iraq. These are all certainly things that, for a journalist, are worth teasing out. But compared to his opponent, who has revealed no specifics of his Iraq policy while making wildly contradictory statements about it, should Dickerson really be criticizing Obama for being ... the most transparent of the two candidates? I suppose it wouldn't be Slate if he didn't ...

--Tim Fernholz

As much as I enjoy seeing one of the more enduring black media institutions getting coverage in the New York Times, the comparison to Rush Limbaugh is an inappropriate one, and you'd think that the phenomenon itself would be worth a story without it. Radio hosts like Michael Baisden and Tom Joyner, whatever their affinity for Obama, aren't hardcore Democratic partisans.

While they may talk about politics, often what dominates their programming is lifestyle, relationship and parenting issues. Black radio also lacks the Limbaugh's history of smears, distortions, and racially inflammatory material. When Baisden made inaccurate comments regarding the fundraising the online civil rights group Color of Change did on behalf of the Jena Six, he apologized. When was the last time you heard Limbaugh do that?

It's also a little misleading to say that Steve Harvey, Michael Baisden and Tom Joyner combined have a bigger audience than Rush Limbaugh, as if he were the only arm of the Republican media machine. The top 5 talk shows combined have an audience of more than 60 million listeners a week, and they're all conservative. The only real similarity here is that most of their audiences have probably already made up their minds about who they're going to vote for.

--A. Serwer

On Friday, The Washington Post led their article noting the change with McCain attacking Obama, relegating McCain's statement to paragraph seven (McCain's "audacity of hopelessness" takedown was in paragraph two). Weeks ago, the Post was one of the many papers that led with the non-news that Obama would tailor his policy to conditions on the ground. Other news outlets failed to even note McCain's statement as particularly significant, despite the attention given weeks ago to a shift in Obama's policy that didn't even happen.

Then, this weekend, McCain then went on This Week and told George Stephanopoulos he never even used the word "timetable," continuing a curious habit of flatly denying ever having said things that he's been recorded saying. At what point do these inconsistencies become a more significant story than a daily write-up of whatever poll tested quip McCain is using to describe his opponent?

--A. Serwer

We've only got one article today, but it's a big and important one:

There's no doubt that the past year or two have seen a dramatic drop in Iraqi violence, and real gains in stability. In the American press, much of this stability has been chalked up to the "surge" of 30,000 or so extra troops, centered around Baghdad.

But was the surge the only, or even the main, factor creating this stability? To find out, TAP Online asked a dozen-or-so Iraq experts, from all sides of the political spectrum, to explain the forces and developments they believed had resulted in Iraq's relative stability, and evaluate the centrality of the surge. As you'll see in the following responses, it's not a question that's easily answered.

Our panel of experts:

Stephen Biddle
Shawn Brimley
Juan Cole
Matthew Duss
Colin Kahl
Lawrence Korb
John Nagl
Michael O'Hanlon
Marina Ottaway
Thomas E. Ricks

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--The Editors

Emily Bazelon and Hanna Rosin discuss the news value of the National Enquirer story about John Edwards' alleged affair. Both score some points. I guess that in a world where Maureen Dowd can win a Pulizter Prize it's hard to dispute that under existing standards it "is news, absolutely clearly and by any definition I can think of." From Edwards' standpoint, if he did it he had to know the risks he was taking and can't be shocked that he was exposed. Modern politics, for better or worse, means that you can't expect discretion about your private affairs. After all, in this campaign we've seen the paper of record engage in innuendos about John McCain with less basis than this.

Having said that, on a normative level -- if we ask whether this should be considered news by the serious press -- Rosin is right. It is unlikely that Edwards will be a candidate for vice president, and as for the possibility that he could be Attorney General, I don't recall extensive discussions about Michael Mukasey's sex life during his confirmation hearings -- it's almost as if they were completely irrelevant to his performance in office. The analogies with Craig and Vitter are null, and not only because there's no contradiction with any policy being advocated by Edwards -- Edwards wasn't testifying in open court.

The mainstream media didn't discuss Craig's sexual proclivities until he wasn't arrested and his colleagues demanded he resign, both of which are actual news (although the coverage was, I think, greatly overblown and calls on him to resign ridiculous). In the midst of this gruesome thigh-rubbing, Roger L. Simon cries crocodile tears about how "playing this game while his wife had cancer makes it contemptible beyond words." Leaving aside that if I were his wife I would (as Rosin says) prefer to be left alone, what would Simon say about an actual current candidate for President who cheated on and then unceremoniously dumped his wife after she was in a horrible accident? Why, he would support him, of course. Because when you get down to cases almost nobody really thinks that this kind of thing matters in evaluating candidates for higher office; it's a way of trashing people you already dislike for independent political reasons. And this is entirely appropriate.

So, basically, the current confinement of the story to the National Enquirer seems exactly right, and I hope it both continues and (while we're dreaming) is applied more consistently.

--Scott Lemieux

Ward Connerly's anti-affirmative action ballot initiatives -- deceptively called "civil rights initiatives" -- are likely to be on the ballot in Arizona and Nebraska this November. And as Jonathan Martin writes at Politico, John McCain is now saying he supports the Arizona initiative, despite opposing the conservative Arizona state legislature's attempt to rollback affirmative action ten years ago.

Martin chalks this flip-flop up to McCain's characteristic distaste for "penny ante cultural stuff." The Republican candidate, after all, prefers to focus on "big boy" issues. But there's actually some real meat behind McCain's former support for affirmative action -- it's not like he accidentally took that position. McCain is a veteran who is enamored of the military's way of doing things. And the U.S. military is one of the country's most prominent supporters and practitioners of affirmative action, filing many amicus briefs in support of the practice and joining the state-level grassroots coalitions that have fought Connerly in many states. Just three months ago, McCain made a statement supporting affirmative action as it is used by the military and as it has been conceived of by the Supreme Court:

If you’re talking about assuring equal and fair opportunity for all Americans and making sure that the practices of the US military are emulated, the greatest equal opportunity employer in America, then I am all for it. ... If you are talking about quotas, I am not for it. So all of us are for affirmative action to try to give assistance to those who need it, whether it be African-American or other groups of Americans that need it.

In other words, this is a very recent change of opinion for McCain, and one that leaves some unanswered questions about how exactly he believes affirmative action can be applied, and by what institutions. The armed services believe they can't successfully implement affirmative action under laws like Connerly's. Is McCain really siding with Connerly over the U.S. military?

--Dana Goldstein

Thomas Schweich has a long and detailed article in this week's New York Times Magazine on the drug war in Afghanistan. Schweich points out that the Karzai government has been less than forthcoming with assistance in fighting poppy production because many of its supporters are in fact poppy producers; he also argues that since aerial spraying of crops has worked in Egypt and Colombia, it can also work in Afghanistan. Schweich makes the case from a counter-insurgency rather than counter-narcotics point of view: The Taliban, he argues, derives most of its revenue (and consequently its fighting ability) from the heroin trade.

Unfortunately, when he gets to solutions, his case falls utterly to pieces:

1. Inform President Karzai that he must stop protecting drug lords and narco-farmers or he will lose U.S. support. Karzai should issue a new decree of zero tolerance for poppy cultivation during the coming growing season. He should order farmers to plant wheat, and guarantee today’s high wheat prices. Karzai must simultaneously authorize aggressive force-protected manual and aerial eradication of poppies in Helmand and Kandahar Provinces for those farmers who do not plant legal crops.

2. Order the Pentagon to support this strategy. Position allied and Afghan troops in places that create security pockets so that Afghan counternarcotics police can arrest powerful drug lords. Enable force-protected eradication with the Afghan-set goal of eradicating 50,000 hectares as the benchmark.

3. Increase the number of D.E.A. agents in Kabul and assist the Afghan attorney general in prosecuting key traffickers and corrupt government officials from all ethnic groups, including southern Pashtuns.

4. Get new development projects quickly to the provinces that become poppy-free or stay poppy free. The north should see significant rewards for its successful anticultivation efforts. Do not, however, provide cash to farmers for eradication.

5. Ask the allies either to help in this effort or stand down and let us do the job.

1. For threats to work, they have to be credible, and Karzai knows that we won't pull support. Moreover, as Schweich helpfully pointed out earlier in the article, much of Karzai's support comes from drug traffickers; cracking down means attacking his own base. This is not something that a low capacity quasi-state is capable, much less willing, to do.

2. It's right to adopt a campaign strategy aimed at undermining the Taliban's revenue stream, but of course, the Taliban still exists in the field as a military force; ordering the Pentagon (and the Afghan Army) to concentrate on stopping the drug traffic will result in much more freedom of action for Taliban forces.

3. Again, after making the point that much of the Karzai government is connected to the drug trade, the idea of having the DEA go after the bulk of what amounts to the Afghan civil service seems, well, silly.

4. After making the point that the Afghan government is hopelessly corrupt, the idea of using it as a conduit for agricultural relief funds seems, well, silly.

5. US forces cannot currently manage either the Taliban or the narcotics traffic; telling our allies to get out would reduce our capability to do either, much less both.

Barnett Rubin tears Schweich completely to shreds here, here, and here. The key, Rubin points out, is that Schweich assumes that Afghanistan has a functioning state, like Colombia or Egypt. The problem is that it doesn't; the idea of "prosecuting corrupt officials" is absurd in the context of a government that isn't much more than a collection of warlords.

--Robert Farley

This article about Senator Tom Coburn captures a truly antidemocratic moment in the U.S. Senate, as party leaders bring to the floor a "Tomnibus" bill of some 35 pieces of legislation that the good Senator from Oklahoma is personally holding up. Senate customs that allow small groups of senators to hold up legislation have been used much more successfully by Republicans than than Democrats in recent years, but getting into a procedural battle about eliminating them wouldn't be a good use of time with so little legislative time left before campaign season.

On the other hand, it may be that the only way to force these bills through is to make Coburn actually filibuster them -- and I'm confident that the Oklahoman would relish getting a good ten hours of floor time to talk about whatever he pleases. It'll be interesting to see how Harry Reid handles this one (the Times seems pessimistic about his chances for success) since it will be a preview of his ability to handle obstructionist Senators in 2009.

--Tim Fernholz

U.N. Dispatch and the Washington Note have convened a bunch of experts for a "salon" on counterterrorism, and the results are worth reading. Greg Djerejian makes some good points in this post about the dangers of our strategy in Afghanistan. Peter Bergen replies in two posts. The first has a good discussion of the bigger strategic picture while the second is more specific to Afghanistan and cites the polling numbers I mentioned here, which indicate that Afghans favor U.S. efforts in their country and dislike the Taliban.

At the risk of being contrarian, I do worry (as does Dejerejian) that these numbers could change very quickly if we send more troops and increase combat operations in the country, especially without very dedicated development efforts -- something a President Obama is more likely to do than a President McCain. But Bergen also highlighted a key material difference between U.S. intervention and the Soviet experience: "The Soviets killed at least 1.5 million Afghans and they turned a third of the population into refugees; some 6 million fled to Iran and Pakistan."

I'm having trouble finding accurate tallies of similar casualty figures since the 2001 invasion, but the consensus is on the order of tens of thousands, not millions -- an uneasy difference to throw around, but a positive one. Overall, the conventional wisdom redeployment strategy still sounds tenable, but to paraphrase, the unexamined military escalation isn't worth doing.

--Tim Fernholz

• James Kirchick has a bizarre op-ed in the Politico that attempts to argue that John McCain's foreign policy judgment makes him a better choice for president than Barack Obama. But Kirchick doesn't explain why McCain's judgment is better right now; he simply asserts that McCain was right to endorse the surge and spends the rest of the piece explaining away Obama's opposition to the Iraq War. Yet at the same time he argues that "on Iraq, now is when judgment matters" (emphasis mine). So let me get this straight: We have to be skeptical of the motivations behind past judgments (except in McCain's case) and we must evaluate foreign policy judgment in the present without actually discussing it. Do I have that right?
• Ari Berman wonders whether Obama's well-executed overseas trip will raise the ba -- that it will generate expectations that he dominate John McCain in the poll. This seems right to me. After all, as Berman points out, "Obama partisans should take a deep breath: he's black (or, if you prefer, multiracial), his middle name is Hussein, people think he's a Muslim, he's a one-term Senator, his opponent remains one of the most popular Republicans in the country, some Clinton supporters are still bitter over Hillary's defeat, Republicans have won the last two presidential elections, etc, etc."
• The McCain campaign releases a memo on the three "myths" in Barack Obama's foreign policy, all of which are an attempt to distract from McCain and Bush's movement towards Obama's policy concerning Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan.
• Apparently the scoop of the century is digging up Barack Obama's long-lost senior thesis from Columbia, even though Obama's thesis adviser recalls it being uncontroversial. Matt Yglesias shrugs that "an old college paper is just an old college paper." See also Ezra's thoughts.
• I think people might be thinking a little too hard about the political relevance of The Dark Knight. It's a movie, after all, about vigilantism's (i.e. Batman's) delicate relationship with legitimate power (the Gotham City Police) and how that delicate relationship is shattered when a wild card (The Joker) is thrown into the shuffle. Since we write about politics, I suppose this analysis was inevitable, but I'm afraid Andrew Klavan has pulled the ultimate reductio ad absurdum today in this childish WSJ op-ed comparing Batman to .... George W. Bush.
• Marc Ambinder gives us the highlights from a survey of 900 independent voters conducted by two Republican consultants. The results point to "several million voters over the next few years" going Democratic.
• TPM Election Central has a useful timeline of McCain's position on the Iraq War dating back to 2003.
• The Gallup Daily continues to fluctuate, with yesterday's 2-point Obama lead jumping to 6 points today.
• And finally, National Journal reports that "Nine of 12 targeted Republicans running in the most competitive Senate races this fall are either skipping the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minn., or have not decided whether to attend."

--Mori Dinauer

The indispensable Kathy G had a great post yesterday on John McCain's awful record on women's issues. But just one quibble: Kathy writes, "[T]he sorry truth of it is that John McCain started out as a far-right, Barry Goldwater-type conservative, and he's never strayed far from those origins." But actually, Barry Goldwater, unlike any iteration of McCain, was consistently pro-choice.

His first wife, Peggy, was a founder of Arizona Planned Parenthood. Their daughter had an abortion at age 20, with the full support of her dad. And Goldwater strongly supported Sandra Day O'Connor's bid for the Supreme Court, defending her against Republicans who believed she was too pro-choice for the position. At a press conference toward the end of his life, Goldwater said he would like to give the religious right a swift kick "below the hip." And unlike McCain, who rues the day he called Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson "agents of intolerance," Goldwater never retreated from that critique.

In other words, by the time of his death, Goldwater truly was a "maverick" within his own party when it came to reproductive freedom. With his 0 percent NARAL rating, John McCain isn't now, and never has been.

--Dana Goldstein

A favorite tactic of conservatives is to craft public policy not in response to the world as it is, but the world as they'd like it to be. Case in point: abstinence-only sex education. Close to 100 percent of Americans have pre-marital sex -- and research shows it's been that way since our grandparents were young! In 2003, 62 percent of high school seniors had lost their virginity.

But we should ignore all this and tell kids they'll ruin their lives forever if they have sex out of wedlock, right?

Via Violet Blue's San Francisco Chronicle Open Source Sex column, I've been alerted to a much smarter way for sex-ed curricula to be built. It's happening in Australia, where researchers went out and actually asked adolescents and young adults what they were looking for from sex-ed. The answers show young people are a lot smarter than they're usually given credit for -- they said they want to learn how to communicate about sexuality, how to say "no," and how to interpret messages of rejection and consent.

The Australian program was manufactured with an eye toward avoiding date rape situations in bars and clubs, but the approach -- asking teen students about their sexual experiences and then giving them information that helps them navigate their real lives -- is one that makes absolute, perfect sense. The Australian Parliament is considering nationalizing the program. But I'm not holding my breath waiting for our Congress to seriously take up sex-ed. After all, even under the Democratic leadership, the House continues to funnel millions of dollars annually to abstinence-only.

--Dana Goldstein

Gershom Gorenberg has some interesting thoughts on Obama's recent trip to Israel:

On Wednesday morning, Israel Radio reported responses to Obama's arrival, including this one: "A Hamas spokesman said, 'The American senator is trying to reach the White House via Tel Aviv, at the expense of the Palestinians.'"

The immediate meaning of that comment is that John McCain best stop arguing that Hamas has endorsed Obama. In April, McCain leapt on a report that Hamas political adviser Ahmed Yousef had said "actually we like Mr. Obama, and we hope that he will win." McCain's campaign also used the quote in a fundraising appeal. Even if the initial report was accurate, Obama has since succeeded in changing Hamas's mind.

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--The Editors

Dylan flagged an interesting op-ed in the Times today by economist  sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh (recall him from Freakonomics, he was the guy who hung out with gangsters!). His argument that the Department of Housing and Urban Development is outmoded and unresponsive to the housing crisis is a pretty accurate one, but he's got a few things wrong. The piece offers a lot of criticism of HOPE VI, the program that demolished segregated housing projects and replaced them with mixed-income developments and vouchers.

Though the program has come under fire recently (see this Hannah Rosin article in the Atlantic), almost all housing experts think it's a good program. It's main problem is that it has been underfunded the point of nonexistence in recent years. But Venkatesh is right that we need to consider Urban and Housing problems in a more holistic way, realizing that the cities -- urbanized regions, really -- of today are different from the cities of the fifties and sixties. That may require demolishing HUD and replacing it with a department with a different focus, but we shouldn't throw out programs that can be successful, like HOPE VI, in the process.

--Tim Fernholz

Just in time for Ilan Goldberg's article explaining why imperialism is not a sound strategy for dealing with Iraq, Matt is correct to note that Charles Krauthammer "wants an imperial relationship with Iraq, Bush wants an imperial relationship with Iraq, and McCain wants an imperial relationship with Iraq, but Iraqis don't and thus Maliki prefers Obama." The key graf:

McCain, like George Bush, envisions the United States seizing the fruits of victory from a bloody and costly war by establishing an extensive strategic relationship that would not only make the new Iraq a strong ally in the war on terror but would also provide the U.S. with the infrastructure and freedom of action to project American power regionally, as do U.S. forces in Germany, Japan and South Korea.

See also Ackerman.

--Scott Lemieux

At Beliefnet's God-o-Meter blog, Dan Gilgoff misapprehends the connection between evangelical leader endorsements and Christian Right voter mobilization. He notes that at Christians United for Israel's (CUFI) "Night to Honor Israel," at the Washington Convention Center Tuesday night, John Hagee, to great applause, pledged to never again endorse a presidential candidate, and wonders whether that will squelch voter turnout:

So a ballroom full of some of the nation's most politically inclined evangelicals (this event was in Washington, sponsored by Hagee's Christians United for Israel, and featured Senator Joe Lieberman) applaud a major evangelical figure's vow to forego endorsing anymore presidential candidates? Isn't this the Christian Right's worst nightmare? After fighting for decades to get evangelicals to shed their political inhibitions, are folks like James Dobson going to abide a fellow leader urging them to take a few steps back from presidential politics? Hagee's message encapsulates one of McCain's greatest dangers: evangelicals getting the message that they might want to sit this election out.

I think Dan's got this wrong on a couple of counts. First, Hagee has never said that his followers should sit the election out. In fact, I'm sure they're terrified of an Obama presidency and will be motivated to do everything they can to prevent it. And Hagee's comment -- which his publisher and political ally Stephen Strang called a "humorous moment" in a post that hyperbolically called Hagee a "statesman" -- was in no way a call for political disengagement.

Second -- and I think Dan should know this given his expertise on the Dobson empire -- Hagee's political machine springs from a very different evangelical subculture than the Christian Right political apparatus as found in groups like Dobson's Focus on the Family, the American Family Association, the Family Research Council, and the Alliance Defense Fund. They may agree on a lot of political issues, and may share many of the same political goals, but not all conservative evangelicals take take their cues from the Pentecostal Hagee.

To expand the reach of their movement, the religious right political leadership, including Dobson himself, has strived to bring more Pentecostal/charismatic figures into the religious right political infrastructure -- someone like Bishop Harry Jackson, who works closely with both the Family Research Council and CUFI, comes to mind, or Strang himself, who is a bridge of sorts between both cultures -- but they emerge from two different fundamentalist subcultures. It's true that the religious right generally was angry when McCain dumped Hagee and his pal Rod Parsley, but only because it fueled their resentments that politicians use evangelicals (wherever did they get that idea?). But Hagee's comments are hardly a cue to Dobson or to conservative evangelicals generally to start hating on McCain, or to sit out the election.

--Sarah Posner

Oops.

Three ballistic missile crew members fell asleep while holding classified missile launch codes two weeks ago in North Dakota, the Air Force said Thursday.

The error triggered a military investigation, which found the codes were not compromised.

But the July 12 incident comes on the heels of a series of missteps by the Air Force that already had put the service under intense scrutiny.

In this case, officials said the crew members reported themselves for the violation of procedure. The crew members apparently were leaving the control center at the end of their shift and took a set of old codes, which are typically replaced after every shift, to a rest area in the facility. Rather than proceeding back to Minot Air Force Base to dispose of the codes, they fell asleep.

--Robert Farley

Reuters reports that a coalition of pro-choice Catholic groups has published an open letter to the Pope, calling on him to lift the ban on Catholic use of contraception. (Letter here). Nearly all sexually active Catholics use birth control and 75 percent of Catholics already think that it's possible to be a good Catholic and disobey Church teachings on the matter, which were created over the objections of many high officials forty years ago.

If you're not Catholic or just a committed secularist, you may not care, but you ought to: Lifting the ban would have great positive consequences for HIV/AIDS prevention, ending poverty and empowering women not just in the U.S. but especially in developing countries. While liberals typically make our milieu the government and policy world, it's important to remember that older cultural institutions often have just as much effect on the same challenges. The organizations that had that letter published deserve credit for being a liberal voice for social justice in an institution that doesn't welcome them, instead of simply using their option for exit, especially because so many people -- especially women -- don't have that option.

--Tim Fernholz

Some eminently predictable buyer's remorse:

When President Bush tapped Michael B. Mukasey to lead the scandal-plagued Justice Department nine months ago, Senator Charles E. Schumer could not say enough good things about his fellow New Yorker. Mr. Schumer ran out of time in ticking off Mr. Mukasey’s accomplishments at his Senate hearing, and the senator’s vote of support ensured his confirmation as attorney general.

Yet at a hearing this month, face to face with his pick for attorney general, Mr. Schumer, a Democrat, did not hide his disappointment in what he saw as Mr. Mukasey’s reluctance to move more aggressively in investigating accusations that the Justice Department had brought politically inspired prosecutions against Democratic politicians.

Mr. Schumer was still fuming a short time later as he went to the Senate floor for a vote. “That was terrible,” Mr. Schumer told a colleague privately in assessing Mr. Mukasey’s performance, an official privy to the conversation said.

--Scott Lemieux

• In addition to giving a presidential-sounding speech in Berlin today, Barack Obama has put together a presidential transition team, something usually done by a president-elect, rather than a candidate three months before the election has taken place. Of course, not everyone is excited about Obama's confidence (see Corner, The). In the words of John Derbyshire "Is it just me, or have presidential candidates been getting worse and worse these past few decades? These two are appalling. I shall not vote for either. Fact, I wouldn't trust either of them to mail a letter."
• I know we've all been thinking it would be entertaining if Bobby Jindal were McCain's VP pick, but the Louisiana governor is adamant: "Let me be clear: I have said in every private and public conversation, I’ve got the job that I want. And I’ll say again on air: I’m not going to be the vice presidential nominee or vice president. I’m going to help Senator McCain get elected, as governor of Louisiana." Meanwhile CNN notes in an aside that Jindal is far more likely to get the keynote slot at the Republican National Convention, which, frankly, is a far more appropriate role for him.
• John McCain has proven himself not only a worthy news cycle grabber, responding to Obama's Berlin speech by watching it in a German restaurant in Ohio, but also a savvy adman, as in this new campaign video associating Obama with Fidel Castro (saith Castro, "[Obama] is the most advanced candidate." Ouch!)
• Chris Bowers has a compelling post on the role of third party candidates in this year's presidential election. The bottom line: Ralph Nader actually helps Barack Obama by over two percentage points.
• A new NBC/WSJ poll gives Obama a 6-point national lead over John McCain, although voters consider Obama to be the "riskier" choice. Gallup's daily tracking poll, meanwhile, has Obama going from a 6-point lead four days ago to just a 2-point lead today. Politico reports on Obama's large edge amongst Latino voters, and a new flurry of Quinnipac polls show McCain gaining in four swing states, including a 2-point lead in Colorado, 46-44. John Sides cautions, however, that "In 2 of these 4 key states, there has been no meaningful change, given the inherent sampling error in polls. In both Michigan and Wisconsin, McCain’s share is unchanged; Obama’s is down 2 points" and "Only in Colorado does this poll’s numbers appear to conform to a trend."
• The Arizona Republic reports that Obama has been quietly raising big money in Arizona, even more than Sen. McCain has for his presidential campaign.
• The Democratic Strategist makes the "case against McCain -- for women," citing recent polling and an In These Times cover story by Prospect alum Kate Sheppard.
• The GOP might be losing the new media war, as this Politico story reports, but it sure isn't losing its need to deify Ronald Reagan. Grover Norquist, clearly having way too much time on his hands, resurrects a decade-old quest: getting the Gip on the ten dollar bill. Take that, Alexander Hamilton!

--Mori Dinauer

Yesterday Rich Byrne explained the politics of the arrest of Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic:

Even the choice of Karadzic as the first to be arrested has the feeling of a test balloon. Karadzic's main constituency was in the Serbian portion of Bosnia. He was not a military officer, like his fellow indictee, Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic.

Sarah Posner had the latest on the religious right:

While it's no surprise that McCain, with his medieval record on women's health issues, would not address the issue, the "abortion reduction" wing of the Democratic Party could seize this opportunity to prove its mettle on contraception.

And Simon Lazarus reported on Congress' clash with the Supreme Court over consumers' rights:

The fractious finish of the Supreme Court's 2007-2008 term, coupled with new rumblings on Capitol Hill and the prospect of expanded Democratic gains in November, suggest that we could be at the brink of an epochal clash between the Court and the elective branches of government.

Today, Ilan Goldenberg explains why Maliki's endorsement of Obama's withdrawal plan is a good thing according to general Petraeus' counterinsurgency manual:

McCain is right that this is ultimately about Iraqi domestic politics. But insurgencies and counterinsurgency strategies are, at their very core, all about domestic politics. A close study of the Army's own Counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine suggests that the Maliki government's position should be recognized as an important and positive development.

Abby Rapoport talks with campaign-finance guru Thomas Mann about what's next now that Obama and McCain have shattered the current system:

My inclination is not to go back in and say what can we regulate now? Mine is to say, let's acknowledge two big things happening. One, the courts have made it absolutely clear that parties, political parties, can spend as much as they want as long as they do it independently, on behalf of their candidates. Which means there's no way now that you can control spending. That's an important point to keep in mind. The second one is that we've seen just the first evidence of the possibility of a very different source of funding for campaigns -- namely small donors.

And Dean Baker has the latest economic news:

Even though McCain's drilling agenda actually has nothing to do with the price of gas, he likely bet that the media would never be so rude as to point this fact out to the public. Thus far, McCain is winning that bet.

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--The Editors

Over in Klein-land, Ezra points out that small-donor fundraising must be even more effective than we thought since the Obama campaign seems to have enough cash to bribe God to bathe today's speech in Berlin in a golden glow you normally don't see outside of a bowl of melted butter. I think he's neglecting to realize that, as the messiah, Obama is eligible for a generous friends-and-family discount.

--Sam Boyd

Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner have named a group dominated by ex-representatives (including Abner "nobody that nobody sent" Mikva) to run the new Office of Congressional Ethics including Republican former CIA Director Porter Goss who will co-chair the office with democratic ex-Rep. David Skaggs. Recall that Goss was one of the main backers of the USA PATRIOT act which sadly didn't seem to keep him in Bush's good graces as the president replaced Goss with Gen. Michael Haydon soon after. Goss was also against a public 9-11 commission. He finally got the boot from Bush after the FBI raided subordnate Dusty Foggo's office and home and connected Foggo to the Brent Wilkes/Duke Cunningham scandal. He sounds like the perfect guy to lead an ethics oversight office.

--Daniel Strauss

One thing I noticed about Obama's speech in Berlin was how good he is at bringing up the topics his hosts would rather were left unsaid. He did it was his Father's Day speech, and at various education unions. But to bring up, in Germany, where anti-Muslim sentiment and xenophobia are prevalent, how "the walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand" is impressive. Even better was when the senator observed "that just as American bases built in the last century still help to defend the security of this continent, so does our country still sacrifice greatly for freedom around the globe." As the crowd applauded that sentiment, Ezra Klein observed in real-time that he "just got them to clap for the Iraq war." That, my friends, is public diplomacy.

--Tim Fernholz

It’s pretty rare to go to an edu-wonk event here in Washington, D.C. and talk openly about the right of poor children to sit in classrooms alongside middle class ones. So kudos to Columbia University Teacher College’s Richard Colvin. Moderating an event on education and the next president at the New America Foundation today, Colvin asked Lisa Graham Keegan, McCain’s top education adviser, and Jon Schnur, an Obama adviser, whether their respective candidates support intra-district transfers between failing urban schools and high-quality suburban ones.

No Child Left Behind does have a transfer provision that, technically, makes such moves possible. But due to underfunding and lack of publicity, only 2 percent of eligible students have taken advantage of the policy. Would Obama or McCain change that? “I don’t know,” said Schnur, the Obama rep. Keegan replied with a simple, “Yes.” But chatting with Matt Yglesias after the event, Keegan said that in fact, McCain doesn’t support anything more drastic that what is already included in NCLB.

In other words, neither of these candidates is embracing the socioeconomic integration of American schools. Kevin Drum suggests today that such a goal is hopeless, due to the geographic patterns of poverty within cities. In actuality, mid-size cities such as Washington, D.C., with contiguous, affluent suburbs, would lend themselves quite nicely to intra-district transfers, and even the creation of more regionalized school districts. In Hartford, Conn., a comparable city, there’s a popular, over-subscribed program that allows suburban kids to transfer into high-quality, diverse urban magnet schools, and city kids to transfer into traditional suburban high schools. The barrier to enacting such programs isn’t just geography or the concentration of poverty, but also resistance from many suburban parents who, frankly, don’t want poor, sometimes troubled kids in their own children’s schools.

--Dana Goldstein

A key part of each Presidential candidate's foreign policy is recommitting to the conflict in Afghanistan. That's good at first glance because of the area's key strategic importance and the humanitarian problems there. But the conflict Afghanistan is worryingly reminiscent of Iraq, and we shouldn't forget about the terrible quagmire the Soviets found there in the late seventies and early eighties -- see Juan Cole via Andrew, or this piece.

I e-mailed Caroline Wadhams, an Afghanistan expert, and asked her why escalation in Afghanistan would be different from Iraq or the Soviet experience. One factor that jumped out at me is the polling [PDF] -- 65 percent of Afghans still view the U.S. favorably, even as the increase in Taliban strength has led to a decline in our popularity there. Wadhams also points out that this is a much more international effort and is perceived as such. Further, many programs are Afghan driven, from the National Solidarity Program to the Afghanistan National Development Strategy, a five-year plan developed by the Afghan government in consultation with the Afghan people. And finally there has been some development success there in terms of getting children in schools, increasing health care and improving infrastructure.

Wadhams also writes this: "We know what happened when the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 1996. All of the same forces are at play in the region in 2008. Why wouldn’t another September 11th happen again?" Hopefully we have better security in place now to prevent a similar terrorist attack from around the world, but it doesn't seem wise to let Afghanistan revert into a failed state-terrorist nest.

--Tim Fernholz

Barack Obama just gave his speech in Berlin, watched by a massive crowd that stretched beyond the reach of CNN's cameras. The address was called "A World that Stands as One" and it showed: In his second paragraph he proclaimed himself a "citizen of the world" and he continued throughout the speech to emphasize themes of global unity and interdependence. Strikingly, he tied the freedom of "the dissident in Burma, the blogger in Iran, or the voter in Zimbabwe" to the freedom of all, and emphasized the importance of "common" and "shared security". 

It's not quite world federalism, but it's a very strong version of liberal internationalism, and the most expansive, bold view of the international system's importance I've ever seen an American politician express. It's of a piece with the focus on interconnectedness found in Spencer Ackerman's April Prospect cover story, "The Obama Doctrine."

The Washington Post has the full text, which I've posted after the jump.

--Dylan Matthews

"A World that Stands as One"

July 24th, 2008

Berlin, Germany

Thank you to the citizens of Berlin and to the people of Germany. Let me thank Chancellor Merkel and Foreign Minister Steinmeier for welcoming me earlier today. Thank you Mayor Wowereit, the Berlin Senate, the police, and most of all thank you for this welcome.

I come to Berlin as so many of my countrymen have come before. Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen - a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world.

I know that I don't look like the Americans who've previously spoken in this great city. The journey that led me here is improbable. My mother was born in the heartland of America, but my father grew up herding goats in Kenya. His father - my grandfather - was a cook, a domestic servant to the British.

At the height of the Cold War, my father decided, like so many others in the forgotten corners of the world, that his yearning - his dream - required the freedom and opportunity promised by the West. And so he wrote letter after letter to universities all across America until somebody, somewhere answered his prayer for a better life.

That is why I'm here. And you are here because you too know that yearning. This city, of all cities, knows the dream of freedom. And you know that the only reason we stand here tonight is because men and women from both of our nations came together to work, and struggle, and sacrifice for that better life.

Ours is a partnership that truly began sixty years ago this summer, on the day when the first American plane touched down at Templehof.

On that day, much of this continent still lay in ruin. The rubble of this city had yet to be built into a wall. The Soviet shadow had swept across Eastern Europe, while in the West, America, Britain, and France took stock of their losses, and pondered how the world might be remade.

This is where the two sides met. And on the twenty-fourth of June, 1948, the Communists chose to blockade the western part of the city. They cut off food and supplies to more than two million Germans in an effort to extinguish the last flame of freedom in Berlin.

The size of our forces was no match for the much larger Soviet Army. And yet retreat would have allowed Communism to march across Europe. Where the last war had ended, another World War could have easily begun. All that stood in the way was Berlin.

And that's when the airlift began - when the largest and most unlikely rescue in history brought food and hope to the people of this city.

The odds were stacked against success. In the winter, a heavy fog filled the sky above, and many planes were forced to turn back without dropping off the needed supplies. The streets where we stand were filled with hungry families who had no comfort from the cold.

But in the darkest hours, the people of Berlin kept the flame of hope burning. The people of Berlin refused to give up. And on one fall day, hundreds of thousands of Berliners came here, to the Tiergarten, and heard the city's mayor implore the world not to give up on freedom. "There is only one possibility," he said. "For us to stand together united until this battle is won...The people of Berlin have spoken. We have done our duty, and we will keep on doing our duty. People of the world: now do your duty...People of the world, look at Berlin!"

People of the world - look at Berlin!

Look at Berlin, where Germans and Americans learned to work together and trust each other less than three years after facing each other on the field of battle.

Look at Berlin, where the determination of a people met the generosity of the Marshall Plan and created a German miracle; where a victory over tyranny gave rise to NATO, the greatest alliance ever formed to defend our common security.

Look at Berlin, where the bullet holes in the buildings and the somber stones and pillars near the Brandenburg Gate insist that we never forget our common humanity.

People of the world - look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.

Sixty years after the airlift, we are called upon again. History has led us to a new crossroad, with new promise and new peril. When you, the German people, tore down that wall - a wall that divided East and West; freedom and tyranny; fear and hope - walls came tumbling down around the world. From Kiev to Cape Town, prison camps were closed, and the doors of democracy were opened. Markets opened too, and the spread of information and technology reduced barriers to opportunity and prosperity. While the 20th century taught us that we share a common destiny, the 21st has revealed a world more intertwined than at any time in human history.

The fall of the Berlin Wall brought new hope. But that very closeness has given rise to new dangers - dangers that cannot be contained within the borders of a country or by the distance of an ocean.

The terrorists of September 11th plotted in Hamburg and trained in Kandahar and Karachi before killing thousands from all over the globe on American soil.

As we speak, cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the ice caps in the Arctic, shrinking coastlines in the Atlantic, and bringing drought to farms from Kansas to Kenya.

Poorly secured nuclear material in the former Soviet Union, or secrets from a scientist in Pakistan could help build a bomb that detonates in Paris. The poppies in Afghanistan become the heroin in Berlin. The poverty and violence in Somalia breeds the terror of tomorrow. The genocide in Darfur shames the conscience of us all.

In this new world, such dangerous currents have swept along faster than our efforts to contain them. That is why we cannot afford to be divided. No one nation, no matter how large or powerful, can defeat such challenges alone. None of us can deny these threats, or escape responsibility in meeting them. Yet, in the absence of Soviet tanks and a terrible wall, it has become easy to forget this truth. And if we're honest with each other, we know that sometimes, on both sides of the Atlantic, we have drifted apart, and forgotten our shared destiny.

In Europe, the view that America is part of what has gone wrong in our world, rather than a force to help make it right, has become all too common. In America, there are voices that deride and deny the importance of Europe's role in our security and our future. Both views miss the truth - that Europeans today are bearing new burdens and taking more responsibility in critical parts of the world; and that just as American bases built in the last century still help to defend the security of this continent, so does our country still sacrifice greatly for freedom around the globe.

Yes, there have been differences between America and Europe. No doubt, there will be differences in the future. But the burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together. A change of leadership in Washington will not lift this burden. In this new century, Americans and Europeans alike will be required to do more - not less. Partnership and cooperation among nations is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity.

That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another. The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.

We know they have fallen before. After centuries of strife, the people of Europe have formed a Union of promise and prosperity. Here, at the base of a column built to mark victory in war, we meet in the center of a Europe at peace. Not only have walls come down in Berlin, but they have come down in Belfast, where Protestant and Catholic found a way to live together; in the Balkans, where our Atlantic alliance ended wars and brought savage war criminals to justice; and in South Africa, where the struggle of a courageous people defeated apartheid.

So history reminds us that walls can be torn down. But the task is never easy. True partnership and true progress requires constant work and sustained sacrifice. They require sharing the burdens of development and diplomacy; of progress and peace. They require allies who will listen to each other, learn from each other and, most of all, trust each other.

That is why America cannot turn inward. That is why Europe cannot turn inward. America has no better partner than Europe. Now is the time to build new bridges across the globe as strong as the one that bound us across the Atlantic. Now is the time to join together, through constant cooperation, strong institutions, shared sacrifice, and a global commitment to progress, to meet the challenges of the 21st century. It was this spirit that led airlift planes to appear in the sky above our heads, and people to assemble where we stand today. And this is the moment when our nations - and all nations - must summon that spirit anew.

This is the moment when we must defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it. This threat is real and we cannot shrink from our responsibility to combat it. If we could create NATO to face down the Soviet Union, we can join in a new and global partnership to dismantle the networks that have struck in Madrid and Amman; in London and Bali; in Washington and New York. If we could win a battle of ideas against the communists, we can stand with the vast majority of Muslims who reject the extremism that leads to hate instead of hope.

This is the moment when we must renew our resolve to rout the terrorists who threaten our security in Afghanistan, and the traffickers who sell drugs on your streets. No one welcomes war. I recognize the enormous difficulties in Afghanistan. But my country and yours have a stake in seeing that NATO's first mission beyond Europe's borders is a success. For the people of Afghanistan, and for our shared security, the work must be done. America cannot do this alone. The Afghan people need our troops and your troops; our support and your support to defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda, to develop their economy, and to help them rebuild their nation. We have too much at stake to turn back now.

This is the moment when we must renew the goal of a world without nuclear weapons. The two superpowers that faced each other across the wall of this city came too close too often to destroying all we have built and all that we love. With that wall gone, we need not stand idly by and watch the further spread of the deadly atom. It is time to secure all loose nuclear materials; to stop the spread of nuclear weapons; and to reduce the arsenals from another era. This is the moment to begin the work of seeking the peace of a world without nuclear weapons.

This is the moment when every nation in Europe must have the chance to choose its own tomorrow free from the shadows of yesterday. In this century, we need a strong European Union that deepens the security and prosperity of this continent, while extending a hand abroad. In this century - in this city of all cities - we must reject the Cold War mind-set of the past, and resolve to work with Russia when we can, to stand up for our values when we must, and to seek a partnership that extends across this entire continent.

This is the moment when we must build on the wealth that open markets have created, and share its benefits more equitably. Trade has been a cornerstone of our growth and global development. But we will not be able to sustain this growth if it favors the few, and not the many. Together, we must forge trade that truly rewards the work that creates wealth, with meaningful protections for our people and our planet. This is the moment for trade that is free and fair for all.

This is the moment we must help answer the call for a new dawn in the Middle East. My country must stand with yours and with Europe in sending a direct message to Iran that it must abandon its nuclear ambitions. We must support the Lebanese who have marched and bled for democracy, and the Israelis and Palestinians who seek a secure and lasting peace. And despite past differences, this is the moment when the world should support the millions of Iraqis who seek to rebuild their lives, even as we pass responsibility to the Iraqi government and finally bring this war to a close.

This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands. Let us resolve that all nations - including my own - will act with the same seriousness of purpose as has your nation, and reduce the carbon we send into our atmosphere. This is the moment to give our children back their future. This is the moment to stand as one.

And this is the moment when we must give hope to those left behind in a globalized world. We must remember that the Cold War born in this city was not a battle for land or treasure. Sixty years ago, the planes that flew over Berlin did not drop bombs; instead they delivered food, and coal, and candy to grateful children. And in that show of solidarity, those pilots won more than a military victory. They won hearts and minds; love and loyalty and trust - not just from the people in this city, but from all those who heard the story of what they did here.

Now the world will watch and remember what we do here - what we do with this moment. Will we extend our hand to the people in the forgotten corners of this world who yearn for lives marked by dignity and opportunity; by security and justice? Will we lift the child in Bangladesh from poverty, shelter the refugee in Chad, and banish the scourge of AIDS in our time?

Will we stand for the human rights of the dissident in Burma, the blogger in Iran, or the voter in Zimbabwe? Will we give meaning to the words "never again" in Darfur?

Will we acknowledge that there is no more powerful example than the one each of our nations projects to the world? Will we reject torture and stand for the rule of law? Will we welcome immigrants from different lands, and shun discrimination against those who don't look like us or worship like we do, and keep the promise of equality and opportunity for all of our people?

People of Berlin - people of the world - this is our moment. This is our time.

I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we've struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We've made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions.

But I also know how much I love America. I know that for more than two centuries, we have strived - at great cost and great sacrifice - to form a more perfect union; to seek, with other nations, a more hopeful world. Our allegiance has never been to any particular tribe or kingdom - indeed, every language is spoken in our country; every culture has left its imprint on ours; every point of view is expressed in our public squares. What has always united us - what has always driven our people; what drew my father to America's shores - is a set of ideals that speak to aspirations shared by all people: that we can live free from fear and free from want; that we can speak our minds and assemble with whomever we choose and worship as we please.

These are the aspirations that joined the fates of all nations in this city. These aspirations are bigger than anything that drives us apart. It is because of these aspirations that the airlift began. It is because of these aspirations that all free people - everywhere - became citizens of Berlin. It is in pursuit of these aspirations that a new generation - our generation - must make our mark on the world.

People of Berlin - and people of the world - the scale of our challenge is great. The road ahead will be long. But I come before you to say that we are heirs to a struggle for freedom. We are a people of improbable hope. With an eye toward the future, with resolve in our hearts, let us remember this history, and answer our destiny, and remake the world once again.

It's easy enough to criticize the diversion of $230 million earmarked for Pakistani counter-terrorism efforts to the upgrade of Pakistan's F-16 force, but I'm not sure that it really leads anywhere. To be sure, the F-16s will be of minimal use in a counter-insurgency role (although it's fair to say that improved targeting systems are a good thing for this kind of warfare), but Pakistan has been extremely reluctant to use the money we've sent since 9/11 for anything of actual value to the fight against insurgents.

The problem, in the end, is political; the Pakistani state has good political reasons for not trying to exercise control over portions of its territory, and giving it money and telling it to fight insurgents isn't going to resolve that issue. This is true no matter who runs Islamabad. At the same time, we need Pakistani cooperation for a number of other reasons, so we can't just cut them off. Indeed, the closer we grow to India the more we're going to have to reassure Pakistan that we're not taking sides against it. This is, by nature, a frustrating, unsatisfactory, and complicated relationship.

--Robert Farley

Few phrases promise as much concentrated hilarity as “John McCain poster contest.” Indeed, the results are as, ahem, brilliant as one would expect. The first submission, with its “God-in-the-Heavens” imagery and “Peace Is Born of Wisdom” mantra, has already been roundly mocked, but let’s not forget the other gems here.

This one looks like the poster for the inevitable Oliver Stone biopic of McCain, and this copies a style with proven effectiveness -- Obama’s. This one portrays McCain watching himself just as attentively as he’ll have the NSA watch you, while this one promises “Integrity We Can Trust” as opposed to “Integrity That’s Filled With Lies”.

But my favorite has to be this one, which encapsulates both McCain’s almost instinctual belligerence and his total cluelessness about religion:

The reference, of course, is to “raising Cain”. Given that Cain is the progenitor of evil in Abrahamic tradition, this promises to be a somewhat controversial campaign pledge.

--Dylan Matthews

Yesterday John McCain took the whole vocabulary people use to talk about the War on Iraq and threw it out the window, all in order to explain away his claim that the Anbar Awakening was a consequence of the Surge even though it actually predated President Bush's announcement of the escalation. Read Ilan (and watch the amazing video) for the details: McCain is now claiming that 'surge' means 'counterinsurgency,' even though the entire country knows differently. It's long past time for any idea that McCain has more or better knowledge about Iraq to be discarded. It's even worse that McCain is subverting the national discourse on the most important foreign policy issue for this election -- this, from the candidate who "believes it is essential to be honest with the American people about the opportunities and risks that lie ahead."

--Tim Fernholz

Rumours of the DDG-1000's demise appear not to have been exaggerated; Defense News is now reporting that the Navy will ask that procurement of the remarkably expensive stealth destroyer be limited to two (down from initial plans for 32). Instead, the Navy will pursue the construction of additional DDG-51 (Arleigh Burke) class destroyers. DDG-51s have the advantage of being relatively inexpensive, practice tested (and thus unlikely to roll over in heavy seas), and capable of supporting a ballistic missile defense system, which the DDG-1000 is not.

Galrahn at Information Dissemination has a very detailed discussion of the debate between the DDG-1000 and the DDG-51. He also makes the point that the DDG-1000 has some powerful friends in Congress:

The DDG-1000 is such a massively expensive and complicated system that it is a fair bet some portion of the system development is taking place in Hawaii. Indeed virtually every state likely has an economic interest in the DDG-1000, and with many of the subcontractors of the DDG-51 no longer with a personal interest, politicians find themselves in a difficult position. They can either support a sea change in the Navy's current course, a decision absent the support of any specific constituency, or support the current course which has the side effect of supporting some specific local voting constituency.

--Robert Farley

The president has decided not to veto the Housing Bill that passed the House yesterday. So is it a good bill or not? Speaking to a few experts around town has led me to conclude it is an okay bill -- it will help allay the problems of the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the short term, but it doesn't offer long-term solutions to the problem of affordable housing or go as far as progressives might want it to go in the near term.

I'll leave an explanation of the details of the bill to David Abromowitz, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress:

Given the mortgage meltdown and plunging housing market, this is basically a good bill. In particular, it puts $4 billion into communities hard hit by foreclosures for buying up vacant properties and getting them back into affordable ownership or rental, which is essential to keeping hundreds of neighborhoods from sinking towards long term blight. …[t]he bill also offers consumer-friendly fixed rate mortgage refinancing options, to replace the high cost mortgages often with springing interest rates, that are dragging millions of families towards foreclosure.

Still, this bill, while addressing the immediate crisis, does not address a bigger question: What will make an apartment or house more affordable to the vast middle tier of families, straining to pay for shelter? We have close to 100 million Americans living in housing where the families are paying more of their income than is affordable to keep a roof over their heads.

I also spoke with Barbara Sard at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, who noted some problems with the bill. First off, only about 400,000 households will be able to refinance their mortgages under the legislation, out of 2.2 million expected foreclosures next year (though 20 to 40 percent of those are rentals which aren’t targeted by the legislation). Sard noted that the refinancing portion of the legislation is not a corporate giveaway: lenders can't access government subsidies unless they refinance mortgages at current, lower rates, eating some of the loss. But there's no guarantee that they'll do this because House Dems were unable to insert coercive measures to enforce refinancing at current rates. At this point, it's hard to say whether the bill will halt enough foreclosures to have a significant economic effect.

Our own Dean Baker strongly dislikes this bill because of the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac stockholder bailout, among other reasons. But we’re still not sure how likely it is that the government will need to bail out F&F -- the CBO puts the chances at even, and their stock prices rose yesterday.

But most on the left are disappointed because Democrats didn't get more out of the bill in exchange for the bailout. There are too few restrictions attached to the various corporate bailout and refinancing portions of the bill, and the affordable housing fund isn’t as large as it could be -- Maxine Waters originally proposed $15 billion which was bargained down to $4 billion. But the price of holding out for a better bill against a potential veto even as foreclosures continue might not have been worth the final result. A key problem is that the public good of homeownership is tied up in a lot of private interests, which makes it difficult to use policy tools to help one without helping the other. It would have been smarter to simply keep F&F as federal entities that were entirely dedicated to homeownership. But, as Abromowitz wrote me, “longer term we need to sort out the right balance of public benefit and private gain, but right now the stability in the market is the overriding goal.”

--Tim Fernholz

Yesterday, on the 60th anniversary of the integration of the military, the House Armed Services Committee held a the first hearing to review President Bill Clinton's "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

One of the opponents to gays serving in the military that testified was Elaine Donnelly, the president of the Center for Military Readiness. Donnelly seemed more than obsessed with the "sex" part of "homosexuals," as she always made sure to say. She claimed that by allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military, there would be an increase of "inappropriate passive aggressive sexual behavior common in the homosexual community."

Her definition of "passive aggressive" behavior is sexual conduct that "stops short" of sexual assault. She kept referring to the "close living quarters" military lived in and the "power of sexuality." In other words, Donnelly seems to think that gays and lesbians are unable to control their sexual conduct. She also seemed to think that by placing gays and straights in the same unit was some kind of undue hardship.

Congressman Chris Shays, a Republican from Connecticut who has called for the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" the acceptance of openly gay men and women in the military, sharply responded to Donnelly. He pointed out that there are already codes in place to penalize sexual misconduct in the military, so those who simply identify with a different orientation shouldn't be discharged. "Their conduct is what matters in the service," Shays said at the hearing.

Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) had introduced legislation that would repeal the "don't ask, don't tell" policy in the military. She compared the integration of openly gay men and women in the military to the integration of blacks into the military 60 years ago. It seems clear this legislation won't go anywhere before Bush leaves office, but perhaps the next administration will stop penalizing gays and lesbians for their identity.

--Kay Steiger

• Scott rounds up the relevant links pertinent to McCain's apparent ignorance of the basic chronology of the surge's effects. I think Ilan Goldenberg said it best: "As far as I'm concerned [this] disqualifies him from being President ... I have no choice but to conclude that John McCain has simply no idea what is actually happened and happening in Iraq." Even more disturbing, however, is the fact that CBS News deliberately edited the remarks out of the official interview. They have absolutely no business covering up McCain's obvious ignorance on a matter he has repeatedly claimed to be an expert on.
• With all the talk of Barack Obama's hubris/narcissism/etc., it's worth noting that McCain apparently suffers from the same affliction.
• Dave Weigel has been assiduously following the "Obama is foreign-born" conspiracy theory over in right-wing fantasyland, and doesn't disappoint with today's nugget.
• Patrick Ruffini, writing at the Next Right, takes Barack Obama to task for issuing fliers in German that advertise a speech he's giving...in Germany. Matt Yglesias' comments are worth reading on this matter, but I have to wonder what young conservative bloggers like Ruffini are trying to accomplish. The Next Right is supposed to be a first crack at organizing a formidable conservative Netroots, and while they do an admirable job of big picture strategy and analyzing politics at the district level, the best rallying cry they can come up with is to pander to the xenophobic? Seems to me that's the sort of sentiment you'd want to move away from in order to rebuild your shattered political coalition.
• John Sides at the Monkey Cage gives us a quick tour of an academic paper that concludes the so-called Wilder Effect -- when voters tell pollsters they'll vote for the black candidate, but don't at the polls -- has declined to irrelevance and that Obama is typically exceeding polling.
• Ron Paul's alternative convention in St. Paul appears to have the makings of a large distraction from the Republican National Convention, the NY Times Caucus reports.
• Gallup reports that Obama has increased his lead over McCain in purple states since clinching the nomination, and has extended his lead in blue states while closing the gap in red states. Meanwhile, Rasmussen has Obama up over McCain by 2 points in Florida, 49-47 (leaners included), and has him up 50-47 (with leaners) in Colorado. Public Policy Polling [PDF] has Obama up by two points in Virginia, 46-44. In New Hampshire, a Granite State Poll [PDF] has Democratic challenger Jeanne Shaheen beating incumbent Republican Senator John Sununu by 4 points, 46-42.
• George W. Bush will be a speaker at the Republican National Convention on September 1, Marc Ambinder confirms.
• And finally, The American Conservative asks, "Is California Keyes country?" And yes, that would be Alan Keyes.

--Mori Dinauer

The MSM likes to depict twenty-somethings as an elite, college-educated bunch worried about, well, nothing. But a new survey from Greenberg Quinlan Rosner finds that 18 to 34-year old Americans -- only about a third of whom hold a college degree -- are more worried about the daily costs of gas and food than just about anything else. On a scale ranging from 'freaked out' to 'slightly worried,' the 18 to 34 age group rank their anxieties as gas prices (43% are concerned), ability to pay bills (29%), finding a job (23%), and loans and debts (22%).

Roughly 21 percent of young adults are students. They have young families: 52 percent are married or living with a partner, and 45 percent have kids. Of course, like generations that came before them, most have likely not achieved their peak income. At the same time, they are entering their adult lives saddled with debilitating debt and a changing economy that offers fewer stable, good paying jobs, especially for young people without a college education. They simply do not know how they are going to make it all work out.

--Daniel Strauss

Jeff Lewis has a good article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists on minimal vs. robust deterrence. The latter, advocated by folks like Albert Wohlstetter, asserts that nuclear deterrence is a delicate flower that will collapse if not nourished properly by thousands of warheads in multiple launch configurations. The former suggests that states that can be deterred from launching a nuclear attack will be so deterred by even a minimal chance of second strike response. Jeff Lewis is squarely in the latter category, as am I. The cost of absorbing a nuclear response from even a small nuclear power is so high, even for continent-spanning states, that a nuclear offensive will appear virtually suicidal. France, for example, could easily have destroyed the industrial heart of the Soviet Union if the Soviets (who had presumptive superiority) had launched an attack, even excluding the likely response of the other nuclear powers.

The question continues to have some policy relevance. For example, the irritatingly stupid arguments about how we need the RRW (Reliable Replacement Warhead) program in order to make our deterrent capacity credible vanish if minimal deterrence is taken seriously. Similarly, if minimal deterrence holds then there's no need for the United Kingdom to pursue ridiculously expensive replacements for its Vanguard class nuclear ballistic missile submarines; the need to hide from Soviet attack submarines has vanished, and no conceivable aggressor will be more deterred by the submarines than by some other, much cheaper delivery system.

--Robert Farley

Why, asks Mike Riggs at Reason, should people not be allowed to carry nooses around on public property when we let KKK members and flag burners do their thing in public?

I'll tell you why. Because people shouldn't have to live in fear for their lives. A rally is a political statement,  a noose is a threat -- just the same as a brandished gun or a burning cross. What other meaning could it possibly have? Riggs claims that the laws that ban nooses when used for "intimidation" are ambiguous, but I don't see how they possibly could be. Outside of a museum or a play, a noose in public is an explicit and clear suggestion of the possibility of racist violence.

--Sam Boyd

The increasingly Christian right-dominated Iowa Republican Party has banned Sen. Charles Grassley from being a voting delegate at the Republican National Convention. The speculation -- first fueled by the  Washington Times -- is that they're freezing him out because of his investigation of televangelists. Grassley later denied that his own party retaliated against him, and pointed out that other members of Congress won't be voting delegates either, including Rep. Steve King, long a favorite of the religious right.

Meanwhile, Mike Huckabee, whose own victory in the Iowa caucus was due to the Christian right political machine in the state, spoke at the state party's convention this month. Kenneth Copeland, the most defiant of the televangelists under Grassley's microscope, hosted Huckabee on his television program and helped raise money for Huckabee's campaign. Curious.

--Sarah Posner

Calling EPI today, I learned that the federal minimum wage is going up tomorrow, all the way to $6.55, but it's not going up that much: 23 states and the District of Columbia already have higher mandated pay rates. The raise only affects about 40 percent of the workforce.

This is not a living wage. Especially given rising costs, the trend in the past years[PDF] has been for wages not to meet productivity increases, much less inflation -- both important indicators of income inequality. A person working full-time at minimum wage cannot afford a non-government subsidized two-bedroom apartment anywhere in the United States -- and most low-income people live in non-subsidized housing. While any raise in minimum wage is a good idea in the current economic climate, it's important to keep in mind that this number is not pegged to inflation and still leaves a family of two below the poverty line.

"Congress should definitely review what workers really need to get by," Mary Gable, an EPI policy analyst, told me.

-- Tim Fernholz

This sad story just couldn't get any more D.C. Robert Novak is driving a black corvette on K Street. He hits a pedestrian crossing the street in a crosswalk with a "walk" sign. And then he speeds away...until a vigilante cyclist, who also happens to be a partner at lobbying/law firm Harkins Cunningham, uses his bike to block Novak from evading the police!

Politico recalls that this isn't Novak's first -- um -- run-in with the consequences of aggressive driving:

In 2001, he cursed at a pedestrian on the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 13th Street N.W., for allegedly jaywalking.

“’Learn to read the signs, [bodily orifice]!’ Novak snapped before speeding away,” according to an item in The Washington Post’s Reliable Source column.

Novak explained to the paper: "He was crossing on the red light. I really hate jaywalkers. I despise them. Since I don't run the country, all I can do is yell at 'em. The other option is to run 'em over, but as a compassionate conservative, I would never do that."

Two years later, the same column reported that Novak had gone to a racing school in Florida.

"I've wanted to be a race car driver all my life, and anyone who has watched me drive can tell you that,” Novak said.

Wow. Somebody has a complex.

--Dana Goldstein

The news that John McCain doesn't understand even basic facts about the strategy around which he's conducting most of his campaign is obviously extremely important. First, CBS's judicious editing demonstrates the extent to which the media is still willing to cover for Maverick McStraightTalk. But more importantly, is also reminds us that Wes Clark was right. McCain's war heroism is admirable, and can even be seen as some sort of qualification for the presidency, but it most certainly does not constitute foreign policy expertise. In fact, McCain has both awful substantive views on foreign affairs and frequently has no idea what he's talking about. Given that he can barely even bother to pretend to know anything about domestic policy, this makes his case to be president exceedingly weak.

--Scott Lemieux

A WaPo editorial today characterizes Barack Obama's Iraq policy as "eccentric" -- not sure I've ever seen that word employed in political discourse before, so points for that -- but bases that judgment on two unusual criteria. One, that General Petraeus opposes a timetable; however, it's up to the Commander-in-Chief to set strategic goals. Two, and much less credibly, that "neither [do] Iraq's principal political leaders actually support his strategy."

Huh? Despite the Bush Administration's attempts to walk back Prime Minister Maliki's statement on withdrawal (the clarifying statement the Post refers to came from U.S. Central Command), it's clear that Maliki is sticking by his position. Reporters have listened to the tape of the interview to confirm the translation, and Maliki's office received a transcript to approve before the article went to press. It's clear that the Iraqi government supports Obama's strategic withdrawal along a very similar timeline. One wonders what word the Post will use to categorize McCain's policy when someone asks him whether he'll stick by his pledge to leave when Iraqi leaders request it. Peculiar?

-- Tim Fernholz

FEMA initially wasted tens of millions of dollars when it tried to aid Katrina victims. But now we find out that that one unknown federal offical's second-grade math skills aren't good enough to get people the aid they need. What was supposed to be $85 million in aid turned out to only $18.5 million due to a mathematical error which counted a single item as being worth as much as multiple items contained in a package of goods. For instance, in a package of sporks, each spork was counted as its own package, which inflated the value from $36,000 to $36 million. Many of the items were being stored in warehouses, rather than being distributed. A joint Congressional hearing on Thursday will examine the details of the give-away. Mistakes happen. But this is the second time in just a few weeks that FEMA officials embarrassed themselves. Basic competence, and learning from mistakes, doesn’t seem like much to ask for.

--Abby Rapoport

This has to be a joke:

Russian bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons could be deployed to Cuba in response to U.S. plans to install a missile defense system in Eastern Europe, a Russian newspaper reported Monday, citing an unnamed senior Russian air force official.

The report in Izvestia, which could not be confirmed, prompted memories of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when the United States and the Soviet Union came to the brink of nuclear war after Nikita Khrushchev put nuclear missiles on the Caribbean island. The weapons were eventually withdrawn in an apparent Soviet climb-down, but President John F. Kennedy also secretly agreed to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey.

A spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry declined to comment on the report Monday, but did not deny it. Izvestia is often a forum for strategic leaks by Kremlin and other officials.

Via AG.

--Robert Farley

Some interesting stats, via Peggy Orenstein's Times Magazine essay on the normalization of assisted reproductive technologies over the last three decades:

The American Society for Reproductive Medicine has issued voluntary guidelines on the number of embryos doctors should transfer to help reduce the likelihood of multiples with their scary complications: prematurity, lung impairments, cerebral palsy. And death: twins are 6 times more likely and triplets 17 times more likely than singletons to die in infancy. Most reputable clinics observe the guidelines, but there’s always temptation to fudge. What if a couple has only enough money for one round of treatment and wants to be sure — really, really sure — that it works? Or a clinic’s success rates, which are posted on the Web site of the Centers for Disease Control, begin to founder and need a boost to stay competitive? Such pressures may contribute to the high rate of I.V.F. multiples produced in this country. Only 1 percent to 2 percent of naturally conceived children are twins. Among I.V.F. babies, it’s 32 percent.

Fascinatingly, though, in Europe, where universal health coverage pays for the cost of fertility treatments, the rate of multiples born from IVF is just 5 percent -- a staggering difference. Opponents of government guaranteed health care like to argue that when the public sector is footing the bill, consumers overspend, paying for treatments they don't really need. This is a counterexample: Because Europeans know they will be covered if they seek a second or third implantation procedure, they don't take the risk of implanting 5 or 6 fertilized eggs during one procedure, which leads to those risky (and expensive) twin and triplet pregnancies.

--Dana Goldstein

• The Politico reports on the mounting number of gaffes John McCain has made on the campaign trail, observing, "Ironically, the errors have been concentrated in what should be his area of expertise: foreign affairs."
• The Trail reports that Bush bundlers have raised nearly $26 million for the McCain's presidential campaign, even while the presumptive Republican nominee has kept his distance from the unpopular president.
• Adding another level of uncertainty on the precise status of Phil Gramm in the McCain campaign, Steve Forbes, another McCain surrogate, admits to Larry Kudlow that Gramm's advice remains "critical" to the campaign.
• Latest McCain line on Barack Obama: "It seems to me that Senator Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign." Marc Ambinder discovers a second instance of this new campaign meme on board the Straight Talk Express.
• Citizens United, a conservative non-profit group, is producing a documentary on Barack Obama set to air in October. Based on the previews, one doubts it will be flattering.
• The Boston Globe reports that Mitt Romney has written off the $45 million he loaned himself during his failed presidential run, and that by reclassifying the loans as contributions, it frees him to join a presidential ticket without the burden of settling personal debt. Hmm.
  
• Rasmussen has Barack Obama down 10 points (leaners included) in Ohio, 52-42, which is nearly the opposite of yesterday's PPP poll of the Buckeye State.
• David Plouffe is set to meet with the Democratic Congressional Caucus, according to the WSJ Washington Wire blog.
• And finally, J.P. Green has some thoughts on the impact of radio advertising to boost the Democrat's November GOTV drive.

--Mori Dinauer

Sarah Wildman has an excellent piece on the consequences of Bush's domestic and international commitment to abstinence-only ideology. It's worth remembering that restoring the "Global Gag Rule" was the first major action Bush took as president, underscoring the high priority the modern Republican Party puts on reactionary conceptions of gender and sexuality, with bad consequences for women both inside and outside of the United States. Wildman details these consequences, which are particularly dire for women in the worst circumstances:

By 2002 USAID had ended shipments of contraceptives to 16 developing nations in Africa and Asia as a direct consequence of the gag rule.

Instead of ending abortions, the global gag rule pushed women into back alleys and undermined, even closed, organisations that would have counselled women on how not to get pregnant in the first place. By diminishing access to contraception, it was actually laying the groundwork for unsafe abortions. The global gag rule didn't just gag healthcare providers about abortion. It gagged them on contraception and education. Since 2002, the Bush administration has also withheld funding - to the tune of $39.7m - from the United Nations Population Fund, claiming - despite evidence to the contrary - that UNFPA is connected to forced abortions in China. The shortfall from the US has also helped undermine the spread of contraception and education around the world, particularly in Africa.

And everything about his record suggests that John McCain would continue Bush's awful policies.

--Scott Lemieux

Ah, here it is -- one of the first attempts to charge that the infamous New Yorker cover actually depicts the truth about Barack Obama.

Conservative media darling Brigitte Gabriel, author of the book Why They Hate and founder of anti-Muslim organization The American Congress for Truth, tells the Christian right American Family Association's (AFA) news service that in the Muslim world, the cover is seen as an accurate portrayal of Obama, because the Muslim world views Obama as one of its own. I've seen Gabriel a couple of times at John Hagee's Christians United for Israel events, and she's carved out quite a niche for herself peddling the idea that her experience as a Lebanese Christian surviving that country's bloody civil war qualifies her to declare Islam a violent religion bent on destroying Western Civilization.

The AFA has Gabriel, the "expert" on Islam, connecting Obama to al Qaeda as well, although it's difficult to tell whether she is saying that the Muslim world links him to al Qaeda or that she believes it herself. No matter. The AFA has managed to put the phrase "Obama has been sponsored by al Qaida" in print:

As for the picture of Osama bin Laden on the wall, she continues, Obama has been sponsored by al Qaida. "Al Qaida wants Obama to be president. The terrorist organizations around the world want Obama to be president," Gabriel notes. Gabriel also contends that in the Muslim realm Obama is portrayed as someone who has no loyalty to the U.S., and someone who will defend the right to burn the American flag. She says she finds it ironic that so many people in America are offended by the magazine cover when it is actually how the Islamic world views the Democratic presidential candidate.

--Sarah Posner

Ezra is right to call out Jason Zengerle on this:

There's no denying that liberals who once derided Maliki as a Bush administration stooge are now touting him as the authentic and sovereign voice of the Iraqi people; but conservatives are doing their own flip-flop as well.

The McCain campaign just sent me a statement in which Barack Obama acknowledges that "there's no doubt that General Petraeus does not want a timetable," as though that recognition of the obvious means the jig is up. But it raises this important question: If John McCain knows nothing about the economy and most domestic issues but wants to be elected based on his foreign policy, which is apparently 'do whatever David Petraeus says,' why not have McCain do a surprise endorsement of Petraeus and drop out? It would certainly be easier than crafting a coherent foreign policy. It sounds like a campaign tactic that would be about as effective as the ideas laid out here.

--Tim Fernholz

Because blond-haired, blue-eyed, white males might lose out on a job to a Finnish dude. So says Ed in '08, the Bill Gates and Eli Broad-funded drive to make education a top priority in the presidential election, with a particular focus on how math and science education could bolster the economy. Here is the group's new commercial:

It should be crystal clear to most thinking people that the American children most in need of school reform aren't white kids standing on docks (like the boy in this commercial), but rather the rural and inner-city children whose schools have the fewest resources and who tend to be taught by the least qualified teachers. Putting that obvious point aside, does it make much sense to link school reform to the broader success of the American economy, as opposed to the abilities of individuals to get better-paying jobs and climb the socioeconomic ladder? Consider Larry Mishel and Richard Rothstein's "Schools as Scapegoats," an essay from last October's Prospect print edition. They demonstrate that past periods of strong American economic growth (such as the Internet boom of the 1990s) were largely divorced from changes in the skill-level of the workforce, writing:

Rising workforce skills can indeed make American firms more competitive. But better skills, while essential, are not the only source of productivity growth. The honesty of our capital markets, the accountability of our corporations, our fiscal-policy and currency management, our national investment in R&D and infrastructure, and the fair-play of the trading system (or its absence), also influence whether the U.S. economy reaps the gains of Americans' diligence and ingenuity. The singular obsession with schools deflects political attention from policy failures in those other realms.

But while adequate skills are an essential component of productivity growth, workforce skills cannot determine how the wealth created by national productivity is distributed.

That doesn't mean there isn't a moral imperative to fix public education now. Every day in a failing school is a day a child can't live up to his or her potential. But above all else, school reform should be about enriching kids -- not enriching our financial markets.

--Dana Goldstein

Conservatives are in a lather about The New York Times' decision not to print an op-ed by John McCain that attacks Barack Obama's Iraq policy. (Apparently the paper would have considered a different draft). Putting aside the quality of the op-ed, which in typical style attacks Obama without putting forth any definite policy, there's some irony in seeing conservatives complain about being kept out of the media after years of bashing the FCC's old Fairness Doctrine, which requires "broadcasters to present opposing viewpoints on controversial issues of public importance"

Conservatives argue (often with comparisons to communist states) that the doctrine, which hasn't been in effect since 1987, forced the state to mandate speech. It really just provides for reasonable discussion of views, but the Right demagogues the issue to raise money and keep Rush Limbaugh on the air unopposed.

But now that McCain can't get his stuff in the Times, it's a terrible moment for American media! The FCC's regulation wouldn't affect a print newspaper, obviously, but it's rank hypocrisy for McCain to complain that he's not getting a fair shot, especially when he is co-sponsoring legislation to permanently ban the Fairness Doctrine. Apparently, equal time is only a bad idea when liberal views are being silenced.

--Tim Fernholz

Free movie tickets for the homeless, as well as passes to local zoos and museums and a voter registration drive? C-SPAN playing on big screen TVs at homeless shelters? Sounds like part of a progressive fantasy about how cities should respond to homelessness -- short of actually providing housing, that is.

But the city we're talking about is Denver, and the outreach to the homeless will take place only during the week of the Democratic National Convention, when the city will experience record media attention and an influx of high-profile visitors. Some homeless people and their advocates believe the extra effort to provide activities for the homeless during the convention amounts to little more than an attempt to shunt unsightly signs of poverty out of the spotlight. The Rocky Mountain News reports:

"It just sounds like another way to get rid of them," said Kayne Coy, 17, who volunteers feeding the homeless twice a week at Civic Center Park through the Food Not Bombs organization.

As for the convention, Coy said: "I've heard rumors that all the homeless people are going to be sent away to Aurora or somewhere else."

[Colorado Coalition for the Homeless President John] Parvensky vigorously denied that there will any attempt to hide the homeless during convention, which runs Aug. 25-28.

Tight security around the Pepsi Center means some homeless people will get booted out of their regular camps along the South Platte River. Then, there's the protests and parades.

"A person who typically sits under a tree in a park that is now occupied by 1,000 protesters won't have the peace and quiet they're desiring," Parvensky said. "Particularly those with mental illness can't cope with crowds."

Parvensky is confident Denver police won't target homeless people unless a law is being broken. Aggressive panhandling and begging for money in front of an ATM machine are both banned.

--Dana Goldstein

Once again, a foray into the white papers that make our world go round.

• Better than First Class. In addition to tax breaks, the super-rich are getting discounts when the take private jets, according to a report by the Institute for Policy Studies. While a commercial flight pays $2,014 in taxes to fly from New York to Miami, a private jet only pays $236, despite incurring the same cost to air traffic control. The number of private jets has grown slowly but steadily over the past 30 years and according to this report will double in the next ten years. 
• Terror and charity. OMB Watch has a comprehensive paper detailing how counter-terror policies have led to civil rights violations in the charitable sphere: "Lack of basic due process rights and use of secret evidence mean there is no protection against unsubstantiated evidence, mistake, or abuse. Organizations are unable to present evidence to an independent review body or hire defense counsel with seized funds. Challenging a designation in federal court is also problematic because the courts do not rule on the merits of Treasury’s evidence." While this issue got a good deal of attention following Treasury's initial crackdown after 9/11, the problems continue to drag on.
• Economic growth for Africa. Last week we heard that the Cato Institute wanted to help Africa by withdrawing all G-8 fiscal aid. This week, the Heritage Foundation outlines a plan for the U.S. government to support African nations by expanding policies favorable to private foreign investment on the continent. The memo lauds the results of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) implemented in 2000. Recognizing Africa's continuing struggle with poverty, the report calls for more U.S. involvement and a possible free trade agreement when AGOA expires in 2015.
• New American Heartland? Brookings issues a fascinating report on the economic growth and transition of "Mountain Megas" in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. Urban centers in these states are growing into huge super-regions conducive to job growth and sustainability, as well as the development of new infrastructure. The report suggests its time for a "new federal-state-mega partnership" to help these growing population centers address climate change, immigration, transportation and other regional and national challenges.

-- TAP Staff

Previous Round-Ups: 7/14/2008

During the most awkwardly conceived exercise of Washington Post self-promotion in recent memory, ace national security reporter Dana Priest responded to a question on Iraq's importance in the 2008 elections:

Obama started out more radical and, as we have seen, is moving to the center. My bet would be that McCain drops his surge idea--too difficult to pull off right now--and both candidate will end up with positions that are even more similar. Iraq will become less and less of a major election issue as this happens (except the left will disown Obama as they have begun to do. But they have no where else to go (exception Nader, like I said) so it won't matter.

Priest has broken some huge stories as a reporter, but this kind of analysis is ridiculous. Almost nothing in that paragraph is right. This Broderian fantasy that Iraq will lose its importance as these two candidates end up with similar positions, flying in the face of all fact, is of a kind with most pundits' refusal to admit that Hillary Clinton's position on the Iraq war had a lot to do with her loss in the primaries. Unfortunately, it's really driving the narrative. Thank goodness for this.

--Tim Fernholz

• John McCain threw everything but the kitchen sink at Barack Obama and Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki in response to the latter's endorsement of Obama's timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, including the claim that the original Maliki statement was poorly translated. And in a new campaign ad, McCain blamed Obama for high gas prices, which is pretty incredible given that Obama has never had any control over such matters.
• The New York Times has a piece on McCain's transformation from marginal player to key dealmaker in the U.S. Senate.
• The Virginian Pilot reports that 18-25 years olds, a key Obama demographic, are registering at twice the rate of all other Virginians in 2008.
• Matt Drudge calls media bias, uncovering a McCain op-ed rejected by The New York Times for being little more than a thinly-veiled attack on Barack Obama.
• As Dana noted earlier, John McCain spent more in June than he took in. Politico discovers that $25 million of Obama's $52 million haul was raised in a single day.
• The Boston Globe reports on McCain's meeting with George H.W. Bush in Maine, and quotes McCain on Obama: "He's been completely wrong on the issue [the Iraq war]. ... I have been steadfast in my position."
• Public Policy Polling has Obama up over McCain by 8 points in Ohio [PDF], 48-40, the University of New Hampshire [PDF] has Obama ahead of McCain by three points in the Granite State, 46-43, and Democratic challenger Mark Begich is beating incumbent U.S. Senator Ted Stevens in Alaska by 9 points, 50-41, according to Rasmussen
• And finally, McCain warns of the "very hard struggle" along the very non-existent Iraq-Pakistan border.

--Mori Dinauer

Adam Liptak has an interesting article about the exclusionary rule and how the American use of the rule differs from other countries. He begins with a comparison to Canada, which requires that evidence obtained in an illegal search be excluded only if admitting the evidence would cause greater harm to the integrity of the justice system then excluding it would. On its face, this seems unexceptionable, but of course this kind of balancing test is only as good as the judge applying it. Interestingly, the case Liptak cites -- which involved the admission of cocaine found in a search the trial judge conceded was unconstitutional -- is not a very attractive one.

I could accept the Canadian rule if it developed in a way that gave deference to the state when it comes to violent offenses but almost always excluded evidence in cases such as The War On (Some Classes of People Who Use Some) Drugs, which have both a strong tendency toward promoting unconstitutional police behavior and whose social benefits are much less clear. It will be interesting to see how the Supreme Court of Canada rules.

One puzzle I have with the article is that I'm not sure how meaningful it is to claim that Canada has "balancing" with respect to the exclusionary rule but the United States does not. As Liptak mentions towards the end, the Supreme Court has developed various exceptions to the exclusionary rule: inevitable discovery, "good faith," 2006's "no knock" exception. Perhaps the balancing in the United States is more tilted towards defendants, but I don't think that it makes much sense to discuss a "mandatory" American exclusionary rule; judges have plenty of tools to admit evidence they feel should be admitted. It's also highly unlikely that a judge's perception of whether excluding the evidence would affect the integrity of the justice system is irrelevant to her considerations about whether evidence should be excluded (or, for that matter, about whether a search is "reasonable"); it's just more explicit in the Canadian case.

I've discussed the question of whether a strong exclusionary rule makes sense before -- in the actually existing political circumstances of the United States, I favor it. One thing to add, though, is that American exceptionalism in terms of formal civil liberties has to be considered alongside American exceptionalism in terms of the harshness of punishment (both in terms of the time people convicted of various crimes spend in jail, how often they're convicted, and the economic and social consequences of having been in prison). It's hard to argue that the overall balance in the United States is excessively tilted in favor of the individual against the state.

--Scott Lemieux

Remember how last week, documents leaked to The New York Times showed that the Bush administration was attempting to redefine many contraceptive methods as abortion, thus making contraception much more difficult to access? Today Hillary Clinton steps out as the most outspoken elected opponent of the plan to date, publishing a statement at RH Reality Check. Clinton writes:

The regulations could even invalidate state laws that currently ensure access to contraception for many Americans. In fact, they describe New York and California's laws requiring prescription drug insurance plans to provide coverage for contraceptives as part of "the problem." These rules would even interfere with New York State law that ensures survivors of sexual assault and rape receive emergency contraception in hospital emergency rooms.

We've seen this kind of ideologically driven move from the Bush Administration before. Senator Patty Murray and I went toe to toe with the Bush Administration to demand a decision on Plan B by the FDA. We won that fight and we need to win this one too.

When I learned about these proposed rules, I immediately joined with Senator Murray to call on the Bush Administration to stop these dangerous plans. I am joining with New York family planning and healthcare advocates to spread the word. Now is the time to raise our voices.

Where is Obama on this issue? He hasn't yet responded to this lame duck lameness.

--Dana Goldstein

I appreciate that Jesse Singal took the time to respond to Courtney Martin's TAP Online piece about marriage today, but his response seems weak -- and privileged to boot. Let's take this one piece at a time.

Today Courtney Martin writes about how her gay friends’ enthusiasm for marriage has caused her to rethink her own aversion to the institution.

What am I to make of my commitment to not participate in a sexist, historically racist institution when my own gay friends are flocking to the coasts so they can join in the gift registry and the white-dress hoopla? Of course they deserve all the legal protections and economic benefits of a legalized marriage; according to the Gay & Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, there are over 1,400 state and federal rights guaranteed by marriage, while there are only 300 state benefits and no federal protection for civil unions. But do these rights really trump the woman-as-property history and discriminatory present (on a state by state basis, of course)? Why do so many of my gay friends have such faith that they can transform the institution when I’m still so unsure?

And Matthew Yglesias examines Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s endorsement of Barack Obama’s plan to withdraw troops from Iraq:

Politically, Maliki’s statement is devastating for John McCain, who has endorsed an American presence in Iraq for 100 years or more. And, further, McCain has repeatedly argued that any fixed timeline (or, indeed, any policy based on the idea of leaving Iraq to the Iraqis) would constitute a form of surrender.

But there is a larger problem for Obama’s critics — the Iraqi embrace of something like Obama’s schedule highlights the foolishness of condemning a 16-month timetable as arbitrary. The 16 month figure, of course, is somewhat arbitrary. But that is simply in the nature of any schedule — shift things around a month or a week or a day or an hour in one direction or another and it probably wouldn’t make much of a difference.

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--The Editors

Andrew McCarthy answers my question:

As I've mentioned before, Maliki, of the Shiite Dawa Party which opposed the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq in the first place, has long-standing ties to Iran and Syria -- and has expressed support for Hezbollah. The only thing that surprises me about this story is that anyone is surprised.

--Robert Farley

Remember when the McCain campaign almost went bankrupt last summer? Well, it turns out McCain is now in even worse financial trouble than he was then. According to an analysis of the campaign's FEC filings conducted by the DNC, in June the campaign spent $4.8 million more than it took in. And hey, McCain's claim to be more "American" than Barack Obama is true in at least one sense -- like most American families, McCain's campaign is deep in credit card debt. It owes American Express $1.37 million.

--Dana Goldstein

The veepstakes gossip machine is a fickle creature, and this weekend it turned its eyes to Indiana Senator Evan Bayh. Bayh is "almost certainly being vetted", according to Marc Ambinder, and, despite having endorsed Hillary Clinton in the primaries, he told the National Journal that he and Obama,

"know each other, we're friends, we're about the same age, we both have young kids, we both like sports, we made that trip to Iraq [in 2006]. ... We're the same generation, so we have a comfort level, but I don't want to overstate any of that. I like him, I hope he likes me."

But much like another red-state veep prospect with a pun-friendly last name, Bayh is well to the right of both Obama and the party at large. He not only voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq in 2002, he was an honorary co-chairman of the Committee to Liberate Iraq, along with Joe Lieberman and John McCain. If those associates weren't bad enough, the group's non-Senatorial members included Bill Kristol, James Woolsey, and McCain foreign policy guru Randy Scheunemann. Even in this Congress, Bayh voted for the relatively weak Levin amendment calling for redeployment but against the more hard-hitting Feingold amendment, which Obama and Clinton both supported.

Going through the rest of his voting record, it's clear that Bayh sticks out like a sore thumb in the Democratic caucus. He has a 50% NARAL rating, he voted for a flag-burning amendment and bankruptcy reform, he's "undecided" on a school prayer amendment, he supports John McCain's proposal to boot Russia from the G8, and he supported the Kyl-Lieberman amendment that Obama made a key part of his critique of Clinton.

If Obama wants to alienate progressives while reinforcing the media narratives that he's "flip-flopping" and "moving toward the center", then Bayh is a good pick. If he wants to win and work toward liberal policy goals while in office, I suggest he look elsewhere.

--Dylan Matthews

The conservative media and Right Blogistan have been undertaken to steadfastly ignore any hint that Prime Minister Maliki might and his political allies might have connections with Iran, preferring instead to assert that Iran influences events in Iraq through Sadrist militia and Sunni tribes (!). Given Maliki's statements on withdrawal, I wonder this: How long it will take for an anti-Maliki trope to develop on the American right that concentrates on his Iranian connections?

--Robert Farley

For those who've been reading my stuff about the benefits of school integration and remain unconvinced -- yes, I've read your comments and emails -- you should really check out Emily Bazelon's Times Magazine feature about the shift from racial to socioeconomic integration across the country. Bazelon cites the same research I've relied upon -- Amy Stuart Wells' findings (PDF) that low-income black children who grow up attending schools with significant numbers of middle class white kids are more likely to land higher-paying jobs after high school than their segregated peers -- in part because of increased exposure to the "white" social and professional mores employers are looking for. Bazelon writes:

There are, of course, determined urban educators who have proved that select schools filled with poor and minority students can thrive -- in the right circumstances, with the right teachers and programs. But consistently good education at schools with such student bodies remains the rare exception. The powerful effect of the socioeconomic makeup of a student body on academic achievement has become “one of the most consistent findings in research on education,” Gary Orfield, a U.C.L.A. education professor, and Susan Eaton, a research director at Harvard Law, wrote in their 1996 book, “Dismantling Desegregation.”

It's important not to overstate our case, though. In my hometown of Ossining, NY, whose almost-textbook racial and socioeconomic integration I've written about, the numbers show that while integration has many tangible social benefits for children, academic benefits are more difficult to come by. In Ossining, about half of all black and Latino boys drop out of high school. (Those numbers are typical across the country.) Meanwhile, the parents of upper-middle class "gifted and talented" kids worry their children aren't being challenged unless they are in tracked classes, which reduce significantly the benefits of a school being integrated in the first place.

Shifting from racial to socioeconomic integration plans won't erase these tensions, which are, in large part, class-based. And of course there's the difficulty of urban school districts that are too geographically large and socioeconomically homogeneous to truly integrate unless, as Bazelon writes, they either attract more middle class, white parents to the public system or regionalize with surrounding suburbs. Once again, it's pretty satisfying to see one's own "radical" public policy solutions seriously considered by the paper of record. There are no easy answers here, but it's very much worth it, as the legal consensus around integration shifts, to consider these issues.

--Dana Goldstein

Because some people, who don't have kids in public schools and who aren't particularly civic-minded, will inevitably resent paying them and do everything they can to avoid doing so. Case in point: Sun belt retirees living in "adult" communities that not only ban children, but also incorporate outside of existing cities and towns in order to achieve full tax revolt status. Andrew Blechman, author of Leisureville - Adventures in America's Retirement Utopias, has an op-ed in today's Arizona Republic decrying this half-century old trend. "[A] complex and functioning society demands cooperation between the generations," he writes, adding:

After defeating 17 school-bond measures in 12 years, de-annexing from the local school system, and all the energy spent evicting "contraband children," Sun Citians can likely forget relying on the goodwill of their neighbors who often share a reciprocal bounty of distrust, anger and apathy. Shown in this light, Sun City's claim to fame - community service - rings rather hollow.

Life in the Villages is similarly premised: Seniors have taken control of their county's political machinery and have already begun closing parks for young families who live outside the gated community. As one Villager proudly told me without a trace of irony, "In the Villages we spend our tax dollars on ourselves."

If the Villages and Sun City cannot be accountable to their neighbors, then why should their neighbors be accountable to them, even when it comes to funding Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security?

Visiting Florida over the years and seeing gated community after gated community along wide highways, I always wondered why so many senior citizens wanted to isolate themselves from young families. I think this may be a lifestyle with far less appeal to younger generations less steeped in the post-World War II pro-suburban ideology. One can hope that by the time Gen X and Gen Y-ers are retiring, the trend toward leaving vibrant, diverse communities in one's old age in favor of homogeneous pseudo-towns will have run its course.

--Dana Goldstein

• The New York Times writes about the 300 foreign policy experts advising Barack Obama on the eve of his overseas trip and Marc Ambinder identifies a 301st adviser. Obama's "foreign policy voice"  is speechwriter Ben Rhodes, one of the authors of the 9/11 commission report and a participant in the Iraq Study Group.
• John McCain surrogate and 2004 swiftboater Bud Day on the threat from Islamic extremism: "The Muslims have said either we kneel or they're going to kill us." How sophisticated! And McCain, calling to extend the gas tax holiday, noted that Obama has "the most extreme" record in the Senate, "more to the left than the announced socialist in the United States Senate, Bernie Sanders of Vermont.” Asked whether this made Obama a socialist, McCain replied that he "didn't know." Straight Talk!
• The Markham Group, a company associated with the Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, has purchased the domain name HRC2012.com, although it is unclear whether this is for a second presidential run or the second defense of her New York Senate seat. Clinton used the more familiar hillaryclinton.com domain during her 2006 Senate reelection campaign.
• Robert Novak reports that Phil "mental-recession-in-a-nation-of-whiners" Gramm and John McCain are BFFs again and that Gramm has resumed advising the campaign on the economy.
• Rocky Mountain News reports on the wide variety of protesters who will descend on Denver next month for the Democratic National Convention.
• The Wall Street Journal confirms how far conservatives are lagging behind the progressive netroots, who are holding a conference in Austin, Texas this week.
• Rasmussen has Barack Obama behind John McCain by a single point in Virginia, 48-47, in a new poll.
• Josh Marshall summarizes the Bush White House/John McCain campaign's slow embrace of Barack Obama's positions on Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran. Supposedly this is to take Middle East foreign policy "off the table" as a campaign topic. But I'm confused. Isn't foreign policy supposed to be McCain greatest -- if not his sole -- advantage? Doesn't taking these issues off the table mean voters will focus, even more than they are now, on the economy and domestic issues, where Democrats in general and Obama in particular have a distinct advantage? I realize McCain and Bush are trying to force Obama into contradicting himself by saying the surge worked, for instance, but this seems to me to have the makings of a colossal error in tactical judgment.

--Mori Dinauer

Hysterical predictions aside, Kevin Drum notes that the initiative to overturn the pro-gay-marriage ruling of the California Courts is trailing by nine points (see Harold's take here). I don't want to be complacent -- things can change -- but it is very likely that Prop 8 will fail, and California's same-sex marriages will be entrenched. Alas, I fear that Kevin is excessively optimistic when he says that "gay marriage will have been approved by the courts, the governor, the legislature, and the public. There's no way anyone will be able to complain that it's anything but completely legitimate." As far is I can tell, many of the people obsessed with "backlash" have no coherent democratic theory except that any social change that makes them or any significant number of people uncomfortable is ipso facto illegitimate.

In other backlash news, Massachusetts state legislators, who last year were were so outraged about judicial usurpation that almost 25% of them voted to throw the question of gay marriage to a referendum, voted this week to repeal "a 1913 law that prevents Massachusetts from marrying out-of-state couples if their marriages would not be legal in their home states." Fittingly enough, the law had its roots in white supremacy and was exhumed in pursuit of similarly bigoted purposes by Mitt Romney. It richly deserves its place in the dustbin of history.

--Scott Lemieux

Mark the date: the air wars of the 2008 presidential election began on Friday, July 18th:

Most of these are tried-and-true McCain talking points, packaged into a patriotic theme, but the first slam, namely the claim that Obama hasn’t held a single hearing during his time as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Europe (which handles oversight over NATO relations and thus the mission in Afghanistan) deserves more comment. This fact was, weirdly enough, first dug up by progressive foreign policy expert Steve Clemons and, while true, it doesn’t do justice to Obama’s Senate record.

Obama’s tenure as chairman began with the Democratic takeover of Congress in January 2007, around the same time he began running for president. Suffice it to say, he was a little preoccupied. More importantly, though, Obama has been defended on this issue by the chairman of the full Senate Foreign Relations committee, Joe Biden. Biden pointed out, in a letter to the subcommittee’s ranking member, Jim DeMint, that he has dealt with Afghanistan at the full committee level, holding three hearings . He also noted that Obama ran the confirmation hearing for the ambassador to NATO, a hearing of critical importance to the Afghanistan mission. So while McCain’s allegation is technically true, Obama has been far from absent on this issue, and it’s misleading for McCain to imply that he has.

—Dylan Matthews

California’s venerable Field Poll this week has come out with some new survey results which make clear that the Obama campaign would be well advised to open more headquarters in Montana than in the Golden State. According to Field, Obama leads John McCain by a cozy 24-point margin, 54 percent to 30 percent. When Field last polled in May, Obama’s margin was a mere 17 points -- the same as in the May polling by the Public Policy Institute of California.

And today, the Field Poll has more numbers to gladden a liberal’s heart. According to Field, Proposition 8 on the November ballot -- the proposed constitutional amendment that would overturn the state Supreme Court’s legalization of same-sex marriage -- is trailing by 9 points, with 42 percent of likely voters backing the measure and 51 percent opposing it. As a general rule in California politics, once a ballot measure falls behind, it stays behind.

These two surveys underscore two other general rules of California politics. The first is that in California independents tend to vote like Democrats, and that on social and cultural issues, they are, if anything, as or more liberal than Democrats. In Field’s presidential polling, Democrats favor Obama over McCain by a 78-to-9 margin, but independents are not far behind, backing Obama over McCain by a 64-to-18 margin. (Republicans are going for McCain by a 65 to 16 margin.) And in Field’s polling on the proposed gay marriage ban, independents’ opposition to the measure actually exceeds the Democrats’. Indys oppose by ban by a 66 to 27 margin, while Democrats oppose it by 63 to 30. (Republicans support it, 68 to 27.)

How is this possible? When Field breaks down the polling by race, it’s clear that the answer is Latino voters. Whites oppose the measure by a 54 to 41 margin, and a category that Field designates as “African-American/Asian” (one of the least helpful sub-group designations I’ve ever encountered) opposes it by the identical 54 to 51 margin. But Latinos, who constitute 17 percent of the state’s likely voters and who cluster disproportionately within the Democratic Party, back the measure by 49 to 38.

Now, one theory beloved of Republicans is that Latinos, because they are culturally conservative, will end up in the Republican column. Not so, says Field. While backing the gay marriage ban, Latinos also support Obama over McCain by 64 percent to 21 percent. Which brings us to the second general rule of California politics: Latinos tend to be culturally traditionalist, as most new immigrant groups to the U.S. have tended to be -- but this cultural traditionalism doesn’t affect their support for Democratic candidates and progressive economic positions.

In election after election in California, Latinos have voted for measures providing more funding for schools and according more rights to workers at the highest rate of any race or ethnic group, exceeding the rate of support for such measures even by African-Americans. Latinos’ support for Democratic candidates has also been constant. And surveys have shown that they consider economic issues far more important than social and cultural ones in their deliberations on candidates for office.

Combine the Independent Rule with the Latino Rule, and you get a pretty clear sense of why America’s mega-state is also one of its most liberal.

--Harold Meyerson

Harold Meyerson reviews a new book that uses science (science!) to determine what strategies for increasing voter turnout actually work:

The late Alan Baron, sometime political consultant and full-time political wag, used to tell a story about a campaign kibitzer in Des Moines in the autumn of 1964. Every day as the election drew closer, the kibitzer would turn up at Democratic Party headquarters and implore the directors of the get-out-the-vote (GOTV) operation to use sound trucks. Such trucks, he insisted, if properly used--touring the streets of Des Moines while amplified voices urged the folks on the sidewalks to vote Democratic--were guaranteed to tilt the election in the Democrats' favor. And on Election Day, in no small part just to shut the guy up, the field directors did dispatch a couple of sound trucks to ride around town.

And Sasha Abramsky writes about how our brains' imperfect design compromises our decisions:

The human mind, we like to think, is an embodiment of perfection. For those with a religious inclination, our ability to think through issues logically, to construct narratives about our surroundings, and to recall events that happened decades earlier is proof positive of a divine hand at work. For the nonreligious, the mind is a secular miracle, an indication that, left to its own devices, evolution produces something akin to a Panglossian vision of the best outcomes in the best of all possible worlds.

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--The Editors

When we announced the hiring of our new fearless leader, Mark Schmitt, we noted that he’s a dedicated reader of Crappy Hour. Thankfully, we can now confirm that the writers behind Crappy Hour are dedicated readers of the Prospect. In today’s dialogue, TAP senior correspondent Spencer Ackerman brings up our deputy editor, Ann Friedman’s piece from the March issue, “Solidarity Politics”, and his interlocutor, Megan Carpentier, approves:

MEGAN: I have to say, please introduce me to Ann sometime and I promise not to fan girl out. I almost always really love her stuff — thoughtful, well-written, etc.

We think so too, Megan.

--The Editors (but not Ann)

Ever since I wrote a Prospect column on becoming a bike commuter, friends have been sending along articles about cycling. This one, about members of the Baltimore Orioles biking to the stadium, is pretty great. But I've also heard some chilling news about cyclists killed in accidents, most notably Alice Swanson, a 22-year old D.C. resident who lived two blocks from my house and and worked around the corner from my office. Our commuting paths were almost identical.

Today MSNBC reports that as gas prices spike, accidents involving bikes are up as well -- in large part because American drivers aren't accustomed to sharing the roads. (Ezra has a great post detailing how the situation is different in Europe.) In New Jersey, for example, 12 cyclists were killed in 2007, while in just the first half of 2008, 11 cyclists have died in traffic accidents. Still, we shouldn't overstate this trend -- there are no national data available. In D.C., only one or two cyclists are killed in the typical year, and Swanson's death was the first of 2008. And not all cyclists are giving up car commutes -- many are using bikes as a more health-conscious, faster, and more fun alternative to overcrowded public transportation.

Still, there's a lot that towns and cities can do to make biking safer and more popular, beginning with creating more bike trails, bike lines, and bike racks. D.C. has a nice billboard campaign right now advertising the health and financial benefits of biking; it should be accompanied by highly visible signage reminding drivers that bikes have all the same rights as cars on the road. And biking and public transportation should work seamlessly together. D.C. prohibits bikes on Metro during the rush hour; another option is to follow the lead of cities such as Salt Like City and outfit train cars with bike straps that keep cycles out from underfoot. D.C. already has racks that can hold up to two bikes on every bus.

--Dana Goldstein

Who else but Stuart Taylor? His argument seems to be that the best remedy for illegal acts of torture is to assure that (apart from some isolated low-level "bad apple" scapegoats) nobody is held responsible for them:

President George W. Bush ought to pardon any official from cabinet secretary on down who might plausibly face prosecution for interrogation methods approved by administration lawyers. (It would be unseemly for Bush to pardon Vice President Dick Cheney or himself, but the next president wouldn't allow them to be prosecuted anyway -- galling as that may be to critics.) The reason for pardons is simple: what this country needs most is a full and true accounting of what took place. The incoming president should convene a truth commission, with subpoena power, to explore every possible misdeed and derive lessons from it. But this should not be a criminal investigation, which would only force officials to hire lawyers and batten down the hatches.[...]

Pardons would not be favors to criminals. One can argue that officials could have or should have resigned rather than implement questionable legal judgments, but there is no evidence that any high-level official acted with criminal intent.

There's an obvious contradiction here: If there's a great deal we don't know, how can we be sure that nobody aced with "criminal intent?" Wouldn't individual immunity deals, which don't require that assumption, be preferable to blanket pardons? But more importantly, if a legal opinion from DOJ lawyers (with the collaboration of their superiors) asserting that illegal and arbitrary actions are in fact legal is all that's necessary to avoid legal accountability for any administration member, any subsequent attempt to prevent similar abuses is a waste of time.

The key here is what Taylor identifies as the key goals of the "Truth Commission" he envisions:

Pardons would further a truth commission's most important goals: to uncover all important facts, identify innocent victims to be compensated, foster a serious conversation about what U.S. interrogation rules should be, recommend legal reforms, pave the way for appropriate apologies and restore America's good name. The goals should not include wrecking the lives of men and women who made grievous mistakes while doing dirty work—work they had been advised by administration lawyers was legal, and which they believed was necessary to prevent terrorist mass murder.

A criminal investigation would only hinder efforts to determine the truth, and preclude any apologies.

I have to concede that if you consider it an important priority that people responsible for arbitrary torture policies "apologize" and that we have a Very Serious "conversation" about torture, then pardons are a good strategy. If you take my view that preventing future arbitrary torture is an infinitely higher priority than people saying they're sorry, you're likely to think that justice and accountability are more important. All the best-conceived "legal reforms" in the world will mean absolutely nothing if a DOJ opinion can be expected to immunize virtually any action approved by an executive branch official as long as it can somehow be linked to the "dirty work" of the War on Terror.

--Scott Lemieux

Here's what I learned about masculinity from Lou Aguilar, author of a column entitled "Why Real Men Vote for McCain."

1. Marrying an intellectual partner who can't bankroll your Senate campaigns proves you're a girly-man. You know, because true manly-men should always leave their first wives for younger, blonder, richer versions.

Obama is married to a bitter, angry lawyer who became “proud” of her country for the first time this year. McCain’s wife is a beer heiress who founded an organization to provide MASH-style units to disaster-torn world regions. Did I mention that she’s a beer heiress?

2. John McCain has a "hero" name. (Because it sounds white and Anglo and yeah!!! Hero!!!) Barack Obama has an "elitist," "villain" name. (Read: Un-American! Un-American!)

The name John McCain sounds like “John McClain,” the action hero played by Bruce Willis in the manly Die Hard series. “Barack Obama” sounds like the kind of elitist villain John McClain has to outwit and defeat.

Those are some compelling arguments! Did you know that if you vote for John McCain, you will immediately grow two inches taller and receive a patented shot of heterosexuality in the arm? Cool!

--Dana Goldstein

Did you know John McCain was for doing something about fair pay before he was for doing nothing? Check out this video from People for the American Way.

Hat tip: Feministing.

--Dana Goldstein

Sorry folks, we forgot to put one of these up yesterday and that's a shame 'cause we had some great articles. First up, Gershom Gorenberg has five questions Israel should answer before bombing Iran (see this follow up post on his blog for more):

Destroying some Iranian facilities but not others, Litvak suggests, would only slow down Tehran's nuclear program. Even a solid military success might delay it by no more than a few years. In the meantime, the political effect would probably be to "unify the public in support of the regime." Dror lists as a "real possibility" that "Iran's determination to secretly develop nuclear weapons" would be redoubled, "with a thirst for revenge."

Dylan Matthews talks with J Street founder Jeremy Ben-Ami:

DM: Okay, about one of the other candidates you endorsed, Darcy Burner, in Washington. Matt Stoller had a report a couple weeks ago saying that Burner had told him that she had gotten a phone call from some people with affiliations with AIPAC, who told her, in explicit terms, to move away from J Street -- that you guys are extreme leftists who want to leave Israel for dead. How much do things like that worry you, both in that case and in going forward with J Street?

JB-A: It actually doesn't worry me at all, because, first of all, when people circulate lies and complete distortions of truth, it's not going to work. In the end, the types of things that they're saying are simply provable as wrong. If you go to our advisory council, people on our finance committee, people who signed up to support J Street in Israel, people who ran the Israel Defense Forces, the commander in chief of the Israel Defense Forces, the man who ran the occupation of the West Bank, and the former foreign minister of the state of Israel. If people are going to go around telling congressional candidates that people like that are anti-Israel or trying to undo the state and are anti-Semitic, it's just so ludicrous that I don't anticipate it would have any impact.

And Dean Baker has the latest economic news, including analysis of the recent surge in inflation and the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac:

However, the big question is how will the Fed respond to the news that rising import prices are pushing inflation higher? The correct response is to grin and bear it. We set ourselves up for this hit when the Clinton administration consciously pursued a high-dollar policy in the late 1990s. This policy produced short-term gains in the form of cheap imports but was clearly unsustainable over the long term. The Clinton crew rightly bet that it would be gone when it was time to pay the bill.

Subscribe to our RSS feed to receive our articles as soon as they’re published.

—The Editors

The term "Chair Farce" is typically used in a derogatory way by non-Air Force members of the uniformed military. It appears, however, that Air Force brass is trying to give the term some more substance:

The Air Force's top leadership sought for three years to spend counterterrorism funds on "comfort capsules" to be installed on military planes that ferry senior officers and civilian leaders around the world, with at least four top generals involved in design details such as the color of the capsules' carpet and leather chairs, according to internal e-mails and budget documents...

Air Force officials say the government needs the new capsules to ensure that leaders can talk, work and rest comfortably in the air. But the top brass's preoccupation with creating new luxury in wartime has alienated lower-ranking Air Force officers familiar with the effort, as well as congressional staff members and a nonprofit group that calls the program a waste of money.

Although the program's estimated $20 million cost is nearly equivalent to what the Pentagon spends in about 20 minutes, the e-mails show that small details have so far received the attention of many high-ranking officers, including [Gen. Robert H.] McMahon; Gen. Arthur J. Lichte, the current Air Mobility commander; and Brig. Gen. Kenneth D. Merchant, the mobility command's logistics director.

--Robert Farley

If you enjoy being beaten over the head with patriotism (and awkwardness), take a look at this web video produced by the Washington GOP. It "welcomes" Michelle Obama to the state on the occasion of an Obama campaign stop there and harps on her statement that the enthusiasm around the Democratic primary had made her proud of her country "for the first time in my adult life." Laura Bush later defended Michelle's controversial comments, saying, "I think she probably meant ‘I’m more proud.’ That’s what she really meant." But some folks haven't gotten the message:

As Ben Smith points out, the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in the video might be an allusion to the false Internet-driven rumors that Barack Obama refuses to say the pledge. Just another reminder that the conservative plan for beating Obama back is to tell voters, again and again, that he is un-American. Indeed, as our fearless editor Mark Schmitt has argued, flag-waving may be all the GOP has left.

--Dana Goldstein

• The big news today is that Barack Obama pulled in $52 million in June -- his second largest monthly haul since the campaign began. Only $2 million is for the general election, although after the convention primary money can be rolled over into his general election account. The DNC raised $22 million in June, giving it and Obama a combined $92 million cash-on-hand compared to McCain and the RNC's $95 million war chest.

• Domenico Montanaro observes that because the the Republicans believe the only shot they have at political survival is winning the White House, the GOP's resources are going to disappear for down-ticket candidates as they concentrate on beating Barack Obama.
• James Carney has a story in Time on the turbulent relationship between George W. Bush and John McCain. The most chilling segment relates a moment in 2002 when McCain glimpsed the megalomania and ignorance of Bush as the White House geared up for war with Iraq.
• Contrary to reports that state Democrats are getting the cold shoulder from Obama, Roll Call reports that the Obama campaign is automatically funneling a portion of checks written to his campaign to the local parties of the 18 Obama-defined battleground states.
• Marc Ambinder asks "when was the last time a Democratic candidate for president opened six campaign offices in Montana?" before noting that Obama has done just that with offices in Billings, Bozeman, Butte, Great Falls, Helena and Missoula.
• The Raleigh News and Observer reports that Democrats are pumping millions into Kay Hagan's challenge to Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina. And Rasmussen has Barack Obama down by only three points in the Tar Heel state, 45-42.
• The New Yorker and  The Wall Street Journal each have profiles of Freedom's Watch backer and right-wing casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.
• Speaking to supporters in Nebraska, John McCain admitted that he is playing defensive against Barack Obama in the Cornhusker state. Bush beat John Kerry there in 2004 by 35 points.
• Katha Pollitt expresses her anger about the fact that the MSM isn't paying more attention to the fact that John McCain opposes contraception, an observation Dana has made in the past.
• Pew reports on efforts by pollsters to track the effect on polling results of voters who only own cellphones (as opposed to landines).

--Mori Dinauer

Hamas derives much of its popularity from it civilian infrastructure: It runs schools, orphanages, and other quasi-governmental services that aren't supplied by the Palestinian Authority. The IDF has apparently decided that the way to solve the problem of Hamas' popularity is to destroy those services:

"Last week, troops focused their efforts in Nablus, raiding the city hall and confiscating computers. They also stormed into a shopping mall and posted closure notices on the shop windows. A girls' school and a medical centre were shut down in the city, and a charitable association had its computers impounded and documents seized.

"This policy, officials say, is meant to deny the Islamic group, which is committed to Israel's destruction, the ability to use these institutions as a pipeline by which money is channelled to finance attacks on the Jewish state. But the main goal of this campaign is to stem Hamas's growing popularity in the West Bank. ...

"In recent months, the army has also closed down an orphanage, a bakery and other institutions in Hebron, which Israel believes are associated with Hamas. In Gaza, meanwhile, Israel and the Islamic group are observing a truce, but this does not pertain to the West Bank where the Israeli military operates freely."

The motivating concept behind strategic bombing in World War II was that enemy morale would be crushed by the destruction of the infrastructure of civilian life; the Japanese, it was thought, would stop supporting their government when the United States Army Air Force destroyed the ability of that government to supply civilian services. Essentially, the point is to make the people blame their own government for their hardships.

In somewhat modified form, this concept still motivates strategic bombing attacks -- blow up a bridge in Serbia, and the Serbs will stop supporting Milosevic, for example. Of course, the entire concept is built on the odd idea that people will blame their government for the absence of a bridge rather than the enemy force that blew up the bridge in the first place. As such, this kind of bombing almost invariably makes a target government <i>more</i> popular amongst its people.

The Israelis aren't actually blowing anything up, but the concept seems to be the same -- close an orphanage, and hope that the Palestinians blame Hamas instead of Israel. Good luck with that...

Also see Ulrich and Martin.

--Robert Farley

I'll admit it: Arguing against awful American foreign policy proposals can get tiresome after a while. A person can only explain how awful an idea bombing Iran is so many times without it getting old. Which is why I'm glad that Charli Carpenter has brought a new, equally horrendous proposition: assassinating Robert Mugabe.

Carpenter references a general ethical argument in favor of international assassination (I love the academy sometimes), which posits that the norm against such actions protects the guiltiest civilians while leading to wars that tend to kill more innocent ones. True enough, but, as Carpenter notes, the assassination of an African head of state in 1994 didn't end too well. Given the state Zimbabwe is in right now, the prospect of a Mugabe assassination leading to a Morgan Tsvangiri-led model state seems decidedly less likely than an exacerbation of the current mayhem.

But even if killing Mugabe did result in a relatively stable Tsvangiri administration it would set a highly undesirable precedent in the process. While I don't think anyone would mourn Mugabe's passing, the history of American-assisted regime change -- from the toppling of Arbenz in Guatemala, to Mosaddeq in Iran, to Allende in Chile -- is far from praiseworthy. Potentially disastrous future assassination attempts could be justified on the premise that if such a policy was effective in Zimbabwe, it should be tried in country X.

An assassination would also harm future efforts to press for human rights in Africa. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, for example, could portray attempts to stop the genocide in Darfur as yet another American attempt to meddle in African affairs, just like their assassination of Mugabe. After Iraq, I wouldn't blame the African public for not giving American protestations of benevolence the benefit of the doubt.

I definitely understand the impulse to "do something," given how awful the situation in Zimbabwe is getting. But killing Mugabe isn't the right "something".

--Dylan Matthews

Jesse and David say most of what needs to be said about Bruce Bartlett's op-ed, but it's worth saying more about one specific point. The central problem with Bartlett's argument is its triviality and irrelevance: It's indisputable that in the immediate wake of the Civil War and for several decades afterward the Republican Party was better on civil rights, but since this this is widely known and says nothing about contemporary politics, who cares? Presumably recognizing that persuading African-Americans to vote for people who have been dead for decades and wouldn't be Republicans if they were alive is not a viable approach for the GOP, Bartlett tries a more recent example and the tendentiousness becomes embarrassing:

Richard Nixon is said to have developed a "Southern strategy" of using racial code words like "law and order" to gain votes in the South. Yet he did more to desegregate southern schools than any president in history.

As Rick Perlstein notes in Nixonland, the Nixon administration broke with previous administrations and started filing briefs against desegregation plans. Nixon's reaction to the Swann decision (p. 604) lays out the basic strategy: talk about how the Courts have tied your hands in public, peel off Southern Democrats, and then appoint reactionary judges who will stop applying Brown aggressively.

And, of course, when Nixon got his appointments on the Supreme Court, this is what happened. In two landmark decisions with Nixon's appointees providing 4 of the 5 votes, the Supreme Court effectively held that school systems could be separate and unequal as long as this was accomplished through tax policy and and the arbitrary drawing of district boundaries rather than through direct pupil assignment. To give Nixon credit for the desegregation policies he opposed is grossly ahistorical nonsense.

--Scott Lemieux

A really excellent reported piece in the Times today taps into a broad swathe of Iraqi public opinion on withdrawal. Most seem to support it with some reservations about the timing and a few worry that the Iraqi Army will be unable to provide security without the backing of American troops. But presumably the first troop withdrawals won't begin for another six months -- a Friedman unit! -- giving the Iraqi troops more time to solidify their training and clear areas of insurgents. It's also clear that Iraq's governing officials are starting to assert themselves and reject American attempts to impose a "colonial relationship" on the country.

Some Iraqi citizens quoted in the piece echo a personal worry of mine that I suspect John McCain shares: that American troops' departure will lead to chaos in the country and a failure to live up to our moral, you-break-it-you-bought-it obligation to correct our mistakes there. But the U.S. has reached the limit of what it can achieve militarily in Iraq. Then there's this heart-rending observation: "Many Iraqis hate American forces because soldiers have killed their relatives and friends, and they say they want the troops out."

-- Tim Fernholz

The current federal poverty line -- $20,444 for a family of two adults and two children -- is hopelessly, ridiculously outdated. Based on consumption patterns from the mid-1950s, the formula for determining who is impoverished does not deal with the significant rise in single-parent homes, the expanding share of income now devoted to real estate costs, or the decrease in available low-skills jobs complete with health insurance and other benefits.

Today the House Ways and Means Committee is considering a proposal from Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) that would modernize how we "calculate" poverty, updating the formula to reflect contemporary consumption patterns and consider regional differences in the cost-of-living. But as Margy Waller writes at the indispensable DMI Blog, the changes would amount to, well, small change. McDermott's proposal would lift the poverty line from $20,444 to just $21,818 -- still an impossibly tiny income for a family of four to live on, especially in an urban area. It's useful to remember that most low-income people live in rental housing without any kind of subsidy. Nine percent of all American families are living in rentals that are unaffordable -- meaning housing costs exceed 30 percent of household income.

If your annual salary is $21,818, that would mean "affordable housing" would cost you just $545.45 per month. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to find adaquate, safe housing for a family of four at that price -- certainly in cities. And if $545.45 is what you can afford to pay on housing, you will likely be in a neighborhood with failing schools and a lack of other public services. So, as Waller writes, we really need a whole new way of "counting" poverty, one that considers regional inequality alongside income, and one that actively seeks to equally fund and improve the public services, including schools, that poor families rely upon.

--Dana Goldstein

The evidence is mounting: John Hagee is not a very popular person among American Jews.

A new poll commissioned by J Street, the pro-Israel lobby that advocates for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and diplomacy rather than military intervention with Iran (see TAP's interview with founder Jeremy Ben-Ami here), found that 51 percent of respondents had a negative impression of Christians United for Israel (CUFI) -- and that's of the 70 percent  who had heard of it. While 65 percent of respondents had name recognition of Hagee personally, only 7 percent gave him a favorable rating. Fully 80 percent of respondents said that Jewish organizations and leadership should not form alliances with CUFI or Hagee, all demonstrating, as pollster Jim Gerstein put it, that Hagee "is very well known, and very disliked."

--Sarah Posner

Obama’s nearly-record-breaking June fundraising haul -- $52 million! -- ought to change the media narrative for the next few days. The campaign claims an average donation of $68. Assuming those numbers hold up when we get the full FEC reports, they support Obama's justification of his decision to back out of public financing -- that he won’t be beholden to wealthy interests if most of his money is coming in small chunks from regular folks.

We’ll see if that turns out to be true. But most impressive is the fact that this was done in June; fundraisers will tell you that the summer months are the most difficult time to raise money (primary’s over, the general hasn’t started to really heat up, people are going on vacation, etc.) although, given the amount of media coverage of this, er, amazing race has generated, perhaps that dynamic doesn’t apply.

John McCain and the RNC still have a good $28 million $1 million more cash-on-hand, but that’s in part because Obama has been up on TV more and has been opening field offices and hiring workers everywhere he can -- 20 offices in Virginia, 150 paid organizers in Missouri. Some political operatives I’ve spoken to who aren’t involved in the campaign were worried that this was a bit of an overreach (especially given his lower fundraising in the last few months) but early investment can’t be beat if you can keep up this kind of fundraising pace.

UPDATE: As StevenAttewell points out, the difference in funds between the two candidates and their respective parties is relatively small. Unfortunately, I wrote this post before the DNC announced its fundraising results.

—Tim Fernholz

• The New York Times ran a front-page story today with the misleading headline, "Poll Finds Obama Isn’t Closing Divide on Race," despite the fact that the poll's own numbers paint a far more varied picture. The Obama campaign briskly provided the evidence, and, in an email response, the story's lead writer Adam Nagourney said that he is "comfortable" with the story (if not the headline, which wouldn't have been his decision anyway).
• A new MoveOn ad criticizes John McCain for opposing Iraq withdrawal timetables, Vets for Freedom has a spot arguing the McCain talking point that Democrats were wrong on the surge, and the Obama campaign is running his second national security-themed ad in as many days.
• Three new national polls show a stable Obama lead: Zogby has Obama over McCain 47-40, CBS/NY Times has him up 48-42, and