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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