It seems worth mentioning that Bush chose to invade Iraq, got to pick his timing, and had as much time as he wanted to plan. FDR and Lincoln had their wars foisted on them by the other side. Lincoln especially didn't get to start planning until after he had to start fighting. I'd give Bush a pass on Afghanistan for the same reason, except the reason he screwed up was he removed resources from Afghanistan before it was done so he could start on his optional war.

Sorry Norman, but your boy Bush the Unelected started a second war without finishing the first, started a war he didn't have to, and started a war necessarily requiring an occupation without planning for the occupation: three massive errors. Even if he makes some right decisions now, after all this time, it's like wanting a pat on the back for helping sweep up the china shop after being the one who smashed the merchandise.

I followed the Politico link to see who could say something that ignorant, and the reporter is Jonathan Martin. I clicked his bio link, and he came to Politico from National Review. And he doesn't think the campaign is particularly dirty. Sometimes there are no coincidences.

It seems unlikely the DC bubble people have any clue how concerned people are outside the beltway. Contact your senators and ask not just that they vote against it, but that they support the filibuster.

I wasn't surprised to read about Obama's January fundraising after hearing yesterday's news. It took less than a day for all 20,000 tickets to Obama's rally on Saturday to be claimed. He's filling Target Center in Minneapolis. I guarantee that's a first. Considering this is a caucus state where enthusiasm counts, that bodes well for him. I know of no Minnesota-only polls however.

I always thought the penalty against Michigan and Florida was too harsh, but they did jump the line and some penalty is fair. It also seems wrong to seat them as Clinton delegates when it really wasn't an election. Two solutions I haven't heard mentioned elsewhere: seat the delegates, but they must be uncommitted, not pledged to a candidate, which means they can't be picked from Clinton or Obama's delegate pool; alternatively, they can have their full slate's of delegates, but no presidential vote. They can vote on everything else, just not president.

I realize both ideas have problems, but there's no perfect solution.

The other night I heard a conservative pundit observe the oddity that McCain became the nominee despite conservatives opposing him. Then I recollected how the Democratic primaries and caucuses drew about twice the Republican turnout when both races were in doubt. This means that even though the Republicans are heavily reduced in number, conservatives are too few to win even among that small number. Wow. They really are a fringe. Bizarre how they get about half the media attention.

Speaking as someone who follows election fraud closely, almost every believable allegation of fraud has one of two things occurring: either voters are wrongly denied their chance to vote, or the machines are unauditable. I don't know how these lever machines work, but if they can go back and figure out the right count, then they must be auditable and it sounds like that's how the errors were caught. Election judges are basically volunteers even if they get minimal pay, and sometimes the training is pretty minimal too, not to mention that even those who've done this for years have really just a few days of experience. Compare it to instances where fraud looks much more likely, like caging schemes and statistically improbable results from touchscreens. I'm guessing Bloomberg knows nothing about this stuff.

Really how much influence does Limbaugh and his ilk still have? The Republicans are drastically reduced in size judging by the way Democrats so badly best them in turnout so far in the primaries and caucuses, yet even in this reduced GOP, conservatives can't pick the candidate. Maybe referring to the "conservative fringe" is a redundancy.

In the only instance I know of where Kiefer Sutherland commented on the methods Jack Bauer uses, he said they have negative consequences:

"There hasn't been a torture sequence that my character has been involved with that there isn't some kind of a negative repercussion, whether it's emotional. It's very simplistic to try and take what we are doing in this fantasy, in this '24,' which is a television show and try and say that this is a referendum for torture or we are justifying the absolution [he probably meant 'abolition'] of due process or anything like that."

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0701/20/lkl.01.html

McCain hasn't exactly reached a Delay/Abramoff level of corruption based on what we know. However, if there's nothing wrong with a senator bothering the FCC about a case involving one company employing a lobbyist with unusual access to that senator, well, there SHOULD be something wrong with that. It's not like any of us could have had so much of a senator's attention to our business deals.

Also, again admitting McCain isn't exactly Ted Stevens, ethics is one of his strong issues, so he has less margin for error. Strictly speaking, while I'm guessing he didn't break any laws or rules, I don't know what the rules are regarding interfering with the FCC, and doing so for a private party rather than your constituents or the general public can look bad. If it turns out these letters or other favors for the lobbyist's clients can be connected to campaign donations or personal favors to McCain, then it looks really bad.