• Hey, look, the Republicans are the ones cannibalizing their party this time!
• Before Rudy was answering calls from Judith, Mike Huckabee was taking calls from The Big Man in the Sky.
• Across the pond, the Economist thinks Obama might finally be fulfilling his initial promise.
• Joe Biden thinks one of the frontrunners is going to be knocked out of the top three in Iowa. I'd wager he's not pushing for Richardson to take the three spot.
• Ron Paul's fundraising has exceeded Fred Thompson's in the fourth quarter.
• Obama attended a fundraiser at Harlem's Apollo Theater Thursday night, where Chris Rock joked that African Americans should be embarrassed if they vote for "that white lady." Before heading down to the DNC meeting this morning, Obama grabbed breakfast with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, prompting rumors about what the two could have been discussing. It probably wasn't the weather.
• Paul Krugman wades into the health care mandate discussion. The Clinton campaign held a conference call on the subject today as well, in which her campaign manager demanded that the Obama campaign take down a TV ad running in New Hampshire that claims his health care plan would cover everyone.
• One recent poll found that Huckabee's support has grown since Wednesday's debate. At what point do we declare the horse race officially out of hand?

--Kate Sheppard

I actually think it makes a lot of sense that John Edwards highlighted the differences between Democratic and Republican leadership at the DNC fall meeting today, as Kate reported. Edwards said, "If you want to (go to war with Iran, stay in Iraq, live without health care) .... then you should vote for the Republicans. If you want (universal health care, troops of out Iraq, a living wage) ... then you vote for us."

Sure, Democrats understand their party's platform. But this kind of rhetoric strikes me as a smart way for the third place candidate to convince primary voters that he can unite his party and best articulate its strengths during the general election. Edwards is trying to prove he can rise above swiping at Clinton and Obama.

--Dana Goldstein

An announcement was just made at the DNC meeting that there is a hostage situation at Hillary Clinton's campaign office in Rochester, New Hampshire. Here's the latest I can find on the internet. The senator is going to miss her speaking engagement here this afternoon to deal with the situation up there.

UPDATE: MSNBC is reporting that the hostage taker is demanding to speak to Sen. Clinton, and CNN is reporting the Rochester offices of Barack Obama and John Edwards have also been evacuated. WMUR in New Hampshire is streaming live from the site.

--Kate Sheppard

Barack Obama's speech actually started to do something he should be doing much more often: Pushing hard on the "I was always against the war" line. Without naming Clinton, his speech emphasized that as his advantage if he gets to the general election. "I'm running for president because I'm tired of Democrats who think they can win by acting like George Bush," he said. "My opponents can never say I supported the war in Iraq."

As others have argued, Obama really should be driving home this point. It emphasizes good judgment over experience, and brings home the point that experience in Washington doesn't always make for the right decisions. Good leadership is about making the right decision the first time.

--Kate Sheppard

Out in the lobby, Hillary Clinton fans, predominantly women, were lined up in hopes of getting a seat in the overflow room, where all the speeches are being live broadcast. As they marched into the room, Clinton campaign staff hollered encouragement: "Come on guys, get those signs up!" "Guys?" muttered one 70-something woman. "There are no guys here."

--Kate Sheppard

Despite what I said about the Obama campaign's growing confidence, there was an interesting moment after Obama's speech when he poked briefly into the overflow room to greet and thank throngs of his supporters, who had packed that room because the main ballroom was full. In fact, they were so loud that sound from the second room, which was adjacent to the main hall, could be heard for several moments after Obama's introduction, and he couldn't start his remarks until things calmed down. (And, smartly, he smiled and paused so that the extra boostering would be noticed by the audience and the media.)

Anyway, in the overflow room Obama began with the usual thank-you-for-all-you-do rally stuff, and exhorted them to "finish strong." But then he told them during the final 30 days not to "read the newspapers and pay any attention to who is up and who is down in the polls." The comment reminded me of four years ago, when the host of this event, now-DNC Chair Howard Dean, was riding a late-fall surge and perhaps too many Deaniacs were so comforted by the polls they took things for granted.

--Tom Schaller

The MSM is up in arms over CNN allowing individuals with Democratic ties -- including some with ties to specific campaigns -- to question the Republican candidates at Wednesday night's debate. I definitely got the sense while I was watching that a few confirmed liberals were among the questioners; the gay general, for sure, but also the bespectacled college student asking if women should be penalized for accessing abortion. Turns out the vet is a Hillary Clinton volunteer and the college student is a pro-choice Edwards gal.

Sure, it's a little bit crafty that CNN and YouTube chose to allow an involved Clinton supporter to confront the Republicans on live national television without revealing the guy's true motivations. But with greater openness, I have no problem at all with cross-party questioning during primary debates -- in fact, I think it's a great idea. The whole point of the primary process is to choose a candidate from each party who has a good chance of convincing all voters, not just committed partisans, to choose him or her in the general election. So Republicans should have to answer to those Americans who believe it's a travesty that qualified men and women are being driven out of our military during a time of war simply because of their sexual orientation. And Democrats should have to face up to the 30 percent of Americans who still support that war.

It's good preparation for the candidates to learn to respond to the worries of voters typically affiliated with the other party. Those exchanges were some of the most revealing of the GOP debate.

--Dana Goldstein

The Clinton campaign is raising the issue of Barack Obama's incomplete health care plan and misleading statements about what it does and does not do. Clinton camp internet director Peter Daou published this at HuffPo calling on Obama campaign chair David Axelrod to correct the record.

At the DNC fall meeting here in Leesburg, Virginia, Axelrod was asked about the flap, and he was dismissive, even a bit cheered by it. "Our plan has been out there for months, and now [the Clinton people] are coming out with this?...That tells me they are either slow on the uptake or [campaign] circumstances have changed. And I don't think they're slow on the uptake."

Translation: The Obama campaign now feels comfortable enough to commence a "Hillary is grasping" meme. In fact, Axelrod went on to compare the Clinton campaign to a plane that has hit turbulence and the folks piloting it as scrambling around to regain control. Suffice to say, with a month to go, things are heating up.

Correction: I meant David Axelrod not Plouffe. I've corrected the post above.

--Tom Schaller

Frustration with the complicated nature of the tax code is a reason to simplify the tax code, not to enact some crazy regressive tax scheme that would have the side effect of creating a massive informal market in untaxed goods. You could have an income tax that computed your tax liability based on a seventh degree polynomial that you could fill out on a post card, so long as the only input is "How much money did you make last year?". Instead, our tax code asks you how much you made from working, which is treated differently from money earned from interest and dividends, which is treated differently from capital gains. And then we start asking how much you gave to charity, how much you spent on health care, how many kids you have, whether any of them are in college or require child care, whether you bought a hybrid car, etc. ad nauseum. In addition, all these nickel-and-dime deductions and credits end up forcing the government to increase its overall tax rate on the income that is taxable. It makes you have a lot of sympathy for the "broad base, low rates" position that used to be the mainstream position in the Republican party.

--Scott Lemieux

During the presentation of the flags earlier this morning, the dead silence was broken by a low, football-game like chorus of "Let's go Edwards, Let's go!" coming from the lobby. When Edwards got up to speak a bit later, it almost made you wish he'd brought the pom-squad in with him. It was a strong speech, one that emphasized his "son of a millworker" populism and his "One America" slogan. It also built an analogy about the barriers between Americans and Washington, barriers built up by big business and special interest groups: "America needs a fire. There's a wall around Washington, and the American people need to bring that wall down," he said. "That wall around Washington, it protects a system that's rigged." But for some reason, his speech quickly devolved (and went well past the 10-minutes each candidate was alloted) into a comparison of the Democrats as a whole to the Republican candidates. "If you want to (go to war with Iran, stay in Iraq, live without health care) .... then you should vote for the Republicans. If you want (universal health care, troops of out Iraq, a living wage) ... the you vote for us." It's an odd message here at the DNC meeting; who does he think he's selling on those points?

--Kate Sheppard

Walter Pincus, via Defense Tech:

The State Department, departing from traditional public diplomacy techniques, has what it calls a three-person, "digital outreach team" posting entries in Arabic on "influential" Arabic blogs to challenge misrepresentations of the United States and promote moderate views among Islamic youths in the hopes of steering them from terrorism.

The department's bloggers "speak the language and idiom of the region, know the culture reference points and are often able to converse informally and frankly, rather than adopt the usually more formal persona of a U.S. government spokesperson," Duncan MacInnes, of State's Bureau of International Information Programs, told the House Armed Services subcommittee on terrorism and unconventional threats on Thursday.

Huh. I wonder if Al Qaeda deploys teams of trolls onto "influential" American blogs; could we tell the difference between an Al Qaeda troll and a more typical wingnutty troll? On issues of gay rights or abortion, probably not. But then, these ruminations serve only to emphasize how important it is not to allow a "troll gap"; I would hate to think that the future of the Republic is threatened by a troll shortage.

--Robert Farley

Bill Richardson focuses his speech on a good question: Why aren't we talking more about jobs? At the last Democratic debate, the word "jobs" was only used five times. At the one before that, only three times. "We are the New Deal," said Richardson. "If we stand for anything, we stand for jobs. We stand for the rights of workers." Of course, he touted his own record as governor, where the state saw the creation of 80,000 jobs, lowest unemployment rate in 30 years. But he also emphasized the importance of the issue for all Dems: "Proving we know how to create jobs is how we win this country."

We know jobs are a winning issue. We know people want answers about the future of the American economy, and we know the Republican candidates don't have any plans in that realm. So why don't we talk about jobs?

--Kate Sheppard

I'm at the Democratic National Committee's fall meeting over in some far-flung corner of Northern Virgina today (come on, Dems, can't you do this in a more central location?) listening to the morning's first address, from Chairman Howard Dean.

Dean's speech emphasizes what all the Democratic candidates have in common: they're not Republicans, and no matter how you feel about each individual candidate, they all have plans to lead America way from the Bush years. And unlike the Republicans, they actually represent America, with a woman, an African American, and a Latino among their ranks. "America is going to look like the state of California does today. There is no majority, " said Dean. "When the [Republican] candidates get up, they look like the 1950s ... When they talk they sound like they're from the 1850s."

But he cautioned the party about presuming that the Democratic candidate will win: "The worst thing we can do is get overconfident. The Republicans know how to win elections ... We had better work harder than they do."

This is why Dean is a phenomenal DNC chair: he's good at the rallying, great at the message, and pragmatic in his approach. It will be interesting to see what message each of the candidate go with during their 10 minute speeches. Most of the people here have already chosen their candidate, so they're not winning people over. But today they'll have to put aside the recent campaign bickering and talk to their fellow Democrats about what the party as a whole is going to deliver.

--Kate Sheppard

There's been some more activity by pirates off the coast of Somalia. Keith Winstanley, a Commander in the Royal Navy, suspects a terrorism connection:

While vast sums of money are involved — ransoms can exceed £500,000 — Cdre Winstanley said that official concern had been expressed over intelligence reports that little of the money filtered down to the Somali regions.

“Piracy and terrorism is a difficult picture to build,” he said. “The extent of money diverted to terrorism is not known, but I don’t see evidence that the money is going into houses, schools and jobs onshore.”

This is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, it's my understanding that piracy off Somalia declined during the tenure of the Islamic Courts Union... which we helped Ethiopia displace on the grounds that it might support terrorists. Second, despite a lot of concern about the piracy terrorism nexus, it's never really gone anywhere; there have been a few attacks in which piracy appears connected to terrorism, but only a few, and none particularly destructive.

In any case, the hunt is now on for "mother ships," vessels that serve as platforms for small pirate boats on the high seas. We know that these ships exist because the small boats are operating outside of the range of coastal areas, but the mother ships have been elusive. One reason that they've been hard to catch up with, apparently, is that the current Somali government refuses to grant pursuit rights for foreign naval vessels into its waters. And this, of course, makes me wonder why we're suddenly bothering to take seriously the fiction of Somali sovereignty, among other things.

On a similar topic, check out Michela Wrong on an interesting find from John Bolton's book. Apparently, the administration's decision to make Ethiopia a bulwark against Islamofascism has resulted in the undermining of efforts to mediate the Eritrea-Ethiopia border dispute. Even Bolton recognized that this was a bad idea, which is saying a lot.

--Robert Farley

Two thousand, five hundred and forty-one days -- that's my back-of-napkin calculation of the number of days that transpired from the night Al Gore conceded the 2000 election (December 13, 2000) to Wednesday night's Republican debate. Two weeks shy of seven full years, thus ends the "Democrats don't know what they stand for" era. While it is true that national Democrats -- who are meeting today and tomorrow in northern Virginia -- haven't quite developed an affirmative message beyond "we're not those Republicans who ruined the country," as of Wednesday the GOP is officially the party that owns the "doesn't know what it stands for" label.

I won't recapitulate the disputes and disagreements on every issue from Wednesday night's fracas; plenty of good stuff has already been said here on TAPPED by Addie, Dana, and Paul. And I recognize that the current pool of GOP presidential candidates does not map the Republican electorate perfectly. But they are fair enough sampling to conclude that there is an utter lack of consistency in the party once one strips away convenient and increasing empty platitudes like "being for a strong defense" or "supporting fiscal responsibility." And the dissensus was not only revealed by "gotcha" questions on Biblical literalism or What-Would-Jesus-Do about capital punishment. No: On education, abortion, health care, immigration, Iraq and even taxes, this is a party in ideological and identity turmoil.

Lo these past seven years, countless articles and books included some version of "The Democrats are in disarray" line; that sentence, verbatim, is in fact the very first of my own book, which I began writing in early 2005 at the height of that era. If any doubt remained as recently as twilight Wednesday, that period has passed and today is Day Three of a new era of partisan disarray.

--Tom Schaller

Wednesday night's GOP debate on CNN was sponsored in part by the "clean coal" industry, just like the last Democratic debate, also on CNN. It was fairly hard to tell they were sponsoring, what with their multiple advertisements during every commercial break. Among the ads were some from the innocuous-sounding "Americans for Balanced Energy Choices," an astroturf organization that promotes the interests of mining and other coal-related companies. By "balanced," they mean "the people who profit off coal want to make sure it's not left behind in the future of energy." Their website is registered to the coal industry trade organization Center for Energy and Economic Development, and though you might not be able to tell it from the smiling, happy people frolicking under blue skies in the images on their homepage, they and the rest of the "clean coal" proselytizers are working to make sure America stays wedded to the dirtiest fuel available.

Sure, the preface it with "clean," but even if we do perfect the carbon capture and storage technology and bring it up to scale somewhere down the line (which we're still pretty far from achieving) or make IGCC coal plants environmentally sound, coal will still be a dirty, nasty, tragic energy source that we should do our best to avoid. Think trapped miners. Think leveled mountain tops in West Virginia. Think black lung and cancer.

Big surprise the GOP debate, though it featured multiple questions about guns, Mexicans, and gays, didn't include a single question about either how we're going to power our country in the future, or how we're going to address climate change. The Democratic debate barely touched those subjects either, and there was definitely nothing explicitly related to coal. But these are fair, impartial debates about the issues that matter in this country today, right?

--Kate Sheppard

Justin Elliott's interview with Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi over at Campus Progress proves, once again, that although Taibbi is a talented writer, he's also, um, pathological. I won't delve into all the crazy things he says ("I was calling Arthur Sulzberger and pretending to be [Thomas] Friedman and demanding a new parking space. I was like totally obsessed with Friedman for a while there. There was a period when I was doing all these drugs and I had this thing about Friedman..."], but I will respond to his assertion that every reporter on the presidential campaign trail is compromised by big money. This is a myth that discourages young people from entering the profession and believing they can make a difference.

Campus Progress: You said somewhere that the perfect symbol for the press corps of the 2004 presidential campaign was Candy Crowley from CNN sitting on the bus with cookie crumbs spilling out of her mouth, talking about how ugly Dennis Kucinich was. Is there any reason to hope for a better media performance this cycle round?

Taibbi: No, it’s all the same. And, you know, it’s not that a lot of these people are bad people. It’s a mistake to go into it saying that these people are all elitist snobs like David Brooks really is. A lot of them are Ivy Leaguers, they all come from a certain class. And you can’t be on the campaign trail unless you work for a massively funded organization. It costs like 3,000 or 4,000 bucks a day to cover the presidential election, just to be on the plane. Some big money has to be behind you. The group of people who end up being on the bus are a group of upper-class people who are all from the same general background, and they’re familiar and comfortable with each other and they’re comfortable with the candidates culturally. They’re living the high life when they’re on the trail, they’re mostly staying in five-star hotels. They get these delicious catered meals served to them four or five times a day. You get chocolates on your pillow, you get the best musicians in the city coming out to play for you everywhere you go. It’s like a big summer camp, like a big field trip.

Let's ignore the mean-spirited dig at Crowley and get to the meat. It's true that many campaign reporters hail from a similar socioeconomic background as the candidates. But here at The American Prospect, we're busy planning our election 2008 coverage on a very tight budget. I assure you, we will be reporting on the ground, and we won't be staying at 5-star hotels, getting chocolates on our pillows, or eating delicious catered meals. The good news is, thanks to online journalism, our voices will be amplified louder than ever. In short, if alternative campaign coverage is what you're looking for, 2007-2008 is a pretty damn good time to be alive.

--Dana Goldstein

I just got back from a CMEP-sponsored panel on Annapolis and what it all means, and though there were differing views on where things would go from here, all the panelists were unanimous in their relief and enthusiasm for renewed U.S. engagement in the process.

Daniel Levy, who was one of today's panelists, wrote this last Tuesday:

"The Bush administration continues to view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the lens of a global war on terrorism and as part of the momentous struggle of good against evil. The great irony of the Annapolis conference is that the framing narrative of its convener is the one thing that most undermines its chances of success. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is grievance-driven and its resolution is all about ending the occupation. Israel needs and deserves security and peace but those things don't coexist cozily with occupation. Violent al-Qaidists and their copycat crews use the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to rally and mobilise support, to vilify America and to undermine America's allies in the region.

That does not change the basic equation that for the vast number of Palestinians, Hamas included, this is about addressing a real grievance and not about destroying Israel or America. An America that accurately connects the dots in the region will likely pursue a more inclusive and comprehensive process and do so with the conviction that this is a vital American interest."

It's hard to overstate how irresponsible and counterproductive George W. Bush's laissez fair attitude toward the peace process has been. It's obviously a good thing that his administration is more engaged now, and here's hoping they can lay some groundwork for a new, more competent administration to build on.

I should mention a notable anniversary: On November 29, 1947, the United Nations resolved to partition Palestine, giving 55% to its Jewish inhabitants, who made up about a third of the population, and 45% to its non-Jewish population, who made up the other two thirds. Lots of people weren't happy about this, war war war. As Levy noted today, this week we saw representatives from throughout the Arab world, including the Palestinians, at the table with Israel, prepared to recognize an Israel which would encompass almost 75% of Mandate Palestine. While there's clearly a long way to go before a final accommodation is reached and Israel's relations with its neighbors resemble anything that could be called normal, we should acknowledge this as an important moment.

--Matthew Duss

As reported at the Washington Post's The Trail, the group Republican Majority for Choice has spent $100,000 in Iowa and New Hampshire telling voters that Mitt Romney was pro-choice before he was anti-choice, and asking him to "flip-flop just one more time -- and stay there!" Who does this benefit? Pro-choice Republicans probably hope Romney voters will jump to Rudy Giuliani. But in fact, no one in the GOP field has sent more mixed messages on abortion than he, identifying himself as "pro-choice," yet repeatedly swearing to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe. If reproductive rights are important to you and you're a Republican, you might want to reconsider your party affiliation.

When plans for this ad were forged, Giuliani looked like serious competition for Mitt in Iowa. But with Huckabee's surge there, I see this ad backfiring and mostly benefiting the former Baptist minister, who stands for just about everything the Republican Majority for Choice loathes.

--Dana Goldstein

• Mike Huckabee says he's glad he's got God's vote, even if it doesn't help his political life here on earth: "I'll never get voted out of heaven." Too bad God doesn't reside in Iowa.
• The Hillary Clinton v. Barack Obama battle continues, this time with Clinton saying Obama's health care plan "betrays" Democratic principles. So do all Democratic health care plans, past and present, that differ from her current plan amount to "betrayal"?
• The Clemson University Palmetto Poll in South Carolina released yesterday found that Mitt Romney leads the Republican field there with 17 percent, followed by Fred Thompson with 15 percent. Among the Democrats, Hillary Clinton is polling 19 percent, Barack Obama is at 17 percent, and John Edwards is at 12 percent). Far more interesting: a whopping 49 percent of Democrats surveyed said they are still undecided. On the Republican side, 28 percent were undecided.

• The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Iowans found Huckabee polling at 28 percent, Romney with 25 percent, and Giuliani way back at 12 percent. Thompson came in just behind him at 11 percent.
• In Florida, though, Giuliani is blowing the others out of the water, polling a full 21 points ahead of his closest contender, Mitt Romney, according to the most recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll. Giuliani is at 38 percent there, with Romney at 17 percent and McCain and Thompson tied at 11 percent.
• That conservative magazine everyone always seems to confuse us with thinks that Huckabee's proselytizing is a problem.
• The Washington Post has created a fascinating series of videos about the nation's conflicting views on the Iraq War, focusing on the stories of voters in New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina.
  
• Hillary Clinton gained the endorsements of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the 180,000-member Amalgamated Transit Union.
• Time has an interview with Obama that really could use some better questions, but is probably worth a read nonetheless.

--Kate Sheppard

Harold Meyerson writes,

On Monday, Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki signed a declaration pledging that their governments would put in place a long-term political and security pact sometime next year. "The shape and size of any long-term, or longer than 2008, U.S. presence in Iraq will be a key matter for negotiation between the two parties, Iraq and the United States," Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, the White House official in charge of Iraq war matters, said at the briefing unveiling the agreement.

What Bush will almost surely be pushing for is permanent U.S. bases in Iraq, enshrined in a pact he can sign a few months before he leaves office. And here, as they used to say, is the beauty part: As far as Bush is concerned, he doesn't have to seek congressional ratification for such an enduring commitment of American force, treasure and lives.

Read the rest (and comment) here.

--The Editors

• John Edwards put out a statement on health care on Wednesday, emphasizing the need for "true universal health care reform that covers every single man, woman, and child in America" and criticizing the Clinton and Obama plans. Ezra gave us some more on it yesterday.
• Chris Dodd released his plan for bankruptcy reform, which includes measures like ensuring medical and student loan debts are dischargeable, restructure mortgage debt, and modifying the "means test" used to calculate debtors' ability to pay off their debt.
• Joe Biden released his climate and energy plan shortly before Thanksgiving, which is much like the plans the other Democratic candidates have already released, except this one includes Iran policy as its No. 1 plank.

--Kate Sheppard

Immigrants and asylum seekers have never felt comfortable in the European Union. But, Sarah Wildman reports, when Kosovar teenager Arigona Zogaj recently recorded YouTube plea to let her family stay in Austria, Europeans began to rethink some of their immigration policies.

"Arigona changed things," [reporter Gunther] Mueller said in Café Prueckel, which sits on a square named for a famously anti-Semitic and anti-immigration late-19th /early-20th century Viennese mayor, Dr. Karl Lueger. "A lot of politicians said, 'Oh it's so inhuman! And we should make a change, and make a new law saying that all asylum seekers here in Austria for more than five years should have the right to stay anyway.' The public opinion was very, very pro Arigona. Even Kronen Zeitung [the large right-wing daily paper], which is normally against asylum seekers, said, 'We have to show pity.' And the political parties really made a wicked game," Mueller said, taking a drag on his cigarette. Austria's ruling coalition, he said, the Conservatives and the Social Democrats, strengthened the migration law three or four years ago to ensure all asylum seekers -- whether they were in the country one year or 15 years -- would face deportation. "The prime minister said, 'Oh Arigona can't stay? It's inhuman! It's cruel! But he was the one who decided the law, so [he] is a kind of hypocrite."

Yet Arigona, as much as she has become a symbol for the faceless deported, actually represents the more humane side of asylum seekers' nightmares in Austria. Her family remained in detention only a few evenings. And while they are currently forcibly separated, they are technically "free." Her fate is, as yet, undecided. Mueller is convinced politicians' hands are tied and the goodwill soon run out. If they let her stay, they will face a barrage of similar requests from much less attractive migrants.

Read the rest (and comment) here.

--The Editors

To hear the press tell it, the best moment of last night's debate was when Mike Huckabee answered a question about whether Jesus would support the death penalty by saying, "Jesus was too smart to ever run for public office." Reporters were in awe. The Washington Post called it "the best line of the night.The Chicago Tribune said Huckabee hit the question "over the fence." It was the only quote from the debate Mara Liasson included in her NPR report.

But what reporters didn't note is that Huckabee was dodging a direct question on the very area -- the intersection of religion and policy -- on which he is building his campaign. The man whose ads call him a "Christian Leader" and who says his faith "defines me" wouldn't answer a pretty simple question on how his faith affects his opinion on a policy issue.

But the press stood up an applauded. So witty! So clever! Ah, that Mike Huckabee, what a lovable guy!

And here's something else: is it possible Mike Huckabee isn't really so nice, but that he's just really, really good at seeming nice? Let's take his answer to a question about NASA sending humans to Mars; in his answer, he said, "Now, whether we need to send somebody to Mars, I don't know. But I'll tell you what: If we do, I've got a few suggestions, and maybe Hillary could be on the first rocket to Mars." Everyone laughed. But the best word to describe that crack is is probably "bitchy." It was just a cheap shot, both ugly and shamelessly pandering. It came from a place of hate within Mike Huckabee's heart and those of the audience whose favor he was seeking. But he said it with a smile, so I guess that means it's OK.

There's no doubt Huckabee is smooth. But it's no accident that Zig Ziglar, grand old man of the con game of inspirational self-help speaking, has endorsed Huckabee.

-- Paul Waldman

Ramesh Ponnuru objects to my post about Ron Paul and abortion, but fails to address most of the points. To respond to each of his arguments in turn:

• Ponnuru calls my argument that bans on "partial birth" objection do not protect fetal life -- and hence (unlike a general ban on the procedure, at least in the abstract) cannot be defended in libertarian terms -- "absurd," but doesn't explain why. On the question of whether such bans may result to injury to women, don't take my word for it; believe Focus on the Family's VP, who correctly points out that in some cases being forced to perform the D&E "means there is greater...danger of internal bleeding from a perforated uterus." (Being a pro-choice radical, I do dissent from his belief that more uteral perforation is a good thing.) Unless you believe implausibly that women will just stop getting D&Es, though, the bans also do essentially nothing to protect fetal life. Again, don't take my word for it; Solicitor General Clement conceded at oral argument that "no woman would be prevented from terminating her pregnancy," which is just self-evidently true; a woman prohibited from getting a D&X can always get a D&E. I have no idea what the libertarian justification for such an irrational federal statute could be, and Ponnuru doesn't provide any assistance on the point.

• On the question of whether Paul's record is consistent with the assertion that abortion is a state issue, this seems pretty straightforward. When you say that abortion is a state issue and then vote for a federal abortion regulation...I think the contradiction is fairly ironclad. Admittedly, Paul's inconsistency is lesser than most other "overturning Roe will send the issue back to the states" types; he has, for example, consistently voted against legislation making it a crime to transport a minor across state lines to obtain an abortion. This is in contrast to Ponnuru's favorite candidate John McCain, who while arguing that abortion should be sent back to the states has not only voted for pretty much every federal abortion regulation to come down the pike but also supports a constitutional amendment that would ban abortion in all 50 states. I don't think elaborate argument is required to demonstrate the inconsistency of such policy positions. While in some cases the federalism dodge may involve a simple error in judgment, when you simultaneously claim that abortion should be a state issue and favor federal abortion regulation I don't think claims of dishonesty are particularly unfair. Ponnuru also claims that "there are good reasons to expect stalemate at the federal level." This is probably true insofar as a flat-out ban on abortion is concerned, but 1)there are plenty of abortion regulations short of a ban which may have a chance of being passed (and some of which already have), and 2)such claims often involve the assumption that the abortion debate will displaced to the state level, which given that most opponents of Roe also favor (and logically should favor) federal abortion legislation is quite clearly false.

UPDATE: I was probably too generous to Paul above. As Tom points out, Paul has also sponsored legislation that would define the fetus as a "person" from the moment of conception. In other words, as long as the 14th Amendment remains in force Paul would make abortion first degree murder in all 50 states, and federal agents would also presumably have to routinely investigate miscarriages, etc. It remains unclear to me how this is consistent with the position that abortion should be left to the states.

--Scott Lemieux

Ah, the wonders of the internets, giving us the ability to take every little campaign gaffe and make sure everyone knows about it. The Democratic National Committee has a new project underway, FlipperTV, where operatives film pretty much every minute of the campaign and post the video on the internet for the rest of the world to dissect. They are currently posting from Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and other places the candidates happen to show up.

Said DNC research director Mike Gehrke in an email announcing the project: "Nobody has ever done anything quite like this before, but with the Internet giving ordinary Americans like you access to the tools you need to change an election with the click of a mouse, we need to make sure you have everything you need to do just that. The video is yours -- you can just let us know what you find, or you can take it, re-mix it, add music, and make your very own ad out of it. It's up to you."

It makes for some pretty fascinating viewing at points, but there's a lot of raw video to go through in the hopes of finding one "Macaca moment." Also, they've been tracking Giuliani, McCain, Romney, and Thompson, but not Huckabee. Seems they haven't been too worried about him either, but perhaps that's changing.

--Kate Sheppard

1. Note to Barack Obama: These guys fight dirty, and they don't give even a nod toward compromise. Rising above it will mean letting their attacks stand, so prepare to beat them at their own game with quick, precise, straightforward prose.

2. Republicans are terrified of the words "George W. Bush." A smart Democrat would force her or his Republican opponent to face up, as often as possible, to the legacy of his party's leader.

3. Republicans attempt to speak for the troops. McCain claimed every single soldier in Iraq supports the surge and a continuous U.S. presence there. Duncan Hunter said most troops are "conservatives" and uncomfortable serving with gays. Democrats can't let Republicans own this debate -- force them to respect our soldiers by acknowledging the diversity of opinions that exists among them.

4. Unless McCain or Huckabee miraculously wins the nomination, the Democrat will be facing an opponent unafraid of appearing ungenerously, rabidly anti-immigrant. Study McCain for clues about how to sound sensible on the issue, and even prepare to name drop him as a guy you agree with on immigration: Nod toward border security, but emphasize the humanity of immigrants and realistic solutions for dealing with 12 million undocumented people within our borders.

--Dana Goldstein

Paul's column got me to thinking about how certain match-ups would play in Kentucky. A bit of history: Bill Clinton won the state both times (probably with an assist from Ross Perot in both cases), Gore lost by 15 points in 2000, and Kerry lost by 20 points in 2004. The last is a pretty interesting map; Kerry took Louisville and a few counties in the most Appalachian parts of Appalachia, and Bush took everything else. Although Kerry won the 2004 Kentucky Democratic primary, he didn't perform particularly well here.

While a lot of the change in voting patterns can be laid at the feet of ideological change, I still think that regionalism matters. It's true that Clinton substantially outperformed Gore, but despite his Tennessee roots Gore was never viewed as a regional candidate in the way Clinton was. Now, this doesn't mean that someone outside the South can't win Kentucky in 2008, but I do think that regional perception will substantially affect the outcome. To be specific, I think that Hillary Clinton has a very good shot of beating Giuliani or Romney here, and considerably less chance of beating Huckabee. McCain, I'm not sure; he seems to have a lot of support among Republicans I've spoken with, so he also might be pretty strong. Similarly, I think Edwards does well here against anybody, but especially destroys Giuliani or Romney. Obama's kind of interesting; he doesn't seem to have a specific regional identity, and might play very well here. On the Republican side the converse is true, as it will be preferable for any of the candidates to run against Clinton or Obama instead of Edwards.

But then again that may all be nonsense. The invigoration of the netroots in Kentucky has been, well, invigorating, and has thus far played out to the benefit of establishment-type Democrats, a trend that will apparently continue into 2008 and that will help Clinton. I also can't shake the feeling that Clinton is just a better warrior than Edwards, which could either a) make up for the regional problem, or b) turn it to her advantage.

--Robert Farley

Last week, Chris Hayes had a great story in the Nation about the phenomenon of the right wing email forward, and how this new form of "folk media" serves to keep various rumors and urban legends alive. One of the most notorious of these is the notion that Barack Obama is secretly a Muslim extremist who plans to throw a burkha over the Statue of Liberty and institute shari'a law after taking his oath of office on the Qur'an while munching on falafel, or something. Today, the Washington Post demonstrates how "respectable" news outlets keep these rumors moving in the media bloodstream:

"Since declaring his candidacy for president in February, Obama, a member of a congregation of the United Church of Christ in Chicago, has had to address assertions that he is a Muslim or that he had received training in Islam in Indonesia, where he lived from ages 6 to 10. While his father was an atheist and his mother did not practice religion, Obama's stepfather did occasionally attend services at a mosque there.

Despite his denials, rumors and e-mails circulating on the Internet continue to allege that Obama (D-Ill.) is a Muslim, a "Muslim plant" in a conspiracy against America, and that, if elected president, he would take the oath of office using a Koran, rather than a Bible, as did Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the only Muslim in Congress, when he was sworn in earlier this year."

We are then treated to a clown parade of right-wing operatives, pseudo-scholars, Limbaughs, and Savages, who continue to float these stories like so much stale gas. At no point in the article is there any indication that these rumors, which are nothing more than lies designed to stoke base cultural prejudices, have been exhaustively investigated and disproven. Astonishingly, the article even references an email rumor featured on Snopes.com without bothering to mention that Snopes then debunks the rumor.

Of course, we also get the requisite denials from Obama's defenders, all of which creates (and is designed to create) the impression that there is "controversy" where there is only gossip, "questions" where there is only innuendo.

Stay classy, Post.

--Matthew Duss

I agree with Addie that Mike Huckabee was the winner of last night's debate. Huck was well-spoken and confident. He threw a few bones to his anti-choice extremist supporters while still managing to sound super-reasonable when it came to religion: Of course parts of the Bible are allegorical, he said, and anyone claiming that their interpretation of the Book is absolute has a "small God." Huckabee's positions on taxes and immigration remain outside the mainstream of the Republican party, and he isn't much of a voice at all in the foreign policy debate. The moneyed establishment won't be getting behind him anytime soon, but he proved that he can perform when the pressure is highest.

Mitt Romney was the loser, as every candidate in the race jumped on the opportunity to portray him as a flip-flopper and a hypocrite. Thompson's YouTube video featured an old clip of Romney saying he supported a woman's right to choose. Giuliani started the night off with a bang when he accused Romney of employing illegal immigrants in his home.

And about that Thompson video: Anderson Cooper followed it up by asking Thompson to elaborate on his attacks against Mitt and Huck. Thompson shrugged and said he had nothing more to add. Come on! That was a free 30 seconds to bash your opponents and sell yourself as the better choice for traditional conservatives. And you passed up the opportunity? Every time the camera settled on Thompson, he was looking down, seemingly lost in his own world. He's a bust.

As for McCain, yep, he came off as principled and sad. It was pretty depressing to see what a huge round of applause he received for blaming "American public opinion" for the loss in Vietnam. If McCain were the nominee, Barack Obama would be uniquely situated to neutralize such nonsense. But McCain seems, like Thompson, just exhausted. I don't see a surge heading his way.

--Dana Goldstein

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee emerged strong from this debate, coming across as reasonable, compassionate, humble and humorous. If G.O.P. leaders knew what they were doing, they'd throw in with this guy and get him some dough. (See my colleagues at TAPPED writing on this phenomenon earlier in the day.) Thankfully, their own elitism will likely prevent party leaders from giving the former preacher the nod. After all, Mike ain't no fortunate son.

Rudy Giuliani might have gotten away with throwing abortion law back into the states and endorsing gun control had he not come out swinging at former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney over the hiring of undocumented workers as groundskeepers at the governor's mansion. Even though the base is likely to consider Romney suspect on this issue, as with abortion and his religion, Giuliani cast more doubt on his own character than Romney's when he played so rough right out of the gate, especially considering his own claim to fame is as mayor of a city of immigrants.

Actor and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson blew it by submitting an attack ad as his campaign video. Romney would have been perceived to have done fine had Huckabee not been so appealing. Sen. John McCain came off as super-principled, especially on the subject of torture. Too bad the G.O.P. base is pro-torture. Rep. Ron Paul played Jeremiah, spending most of his time telling the audience what we couldn't afford to do anymore. Rep. Tom Tancredo did what he came to do, care of his patrons, the Buchanans: keep the rest of 'em in line on immigration. And Rep. Duncan Hunter -- can anybody tell me why he's in the race?

--Adele M. Stan

Giuliani and Romney behaved like petulant, bickering children, for a good portion of the debate. Thompson reminds me of that farmer in Men in Black who has his skin stolen and reinhabited by an alien. Huckabee came off pretty strong, demonstrating why he's doing so well of late. And McCain did well, but he just seems so sad about the state of affairs, making me fell more inclined to give him a hug than vote for him.

--Kate Sheppard

Last question of the night concerns the most crucial issue of the election: baseball. Rudy revisits his greatest betrayal: His disgraceful, humiliating lie about his sudden postseason affection for the Boston Red Sox. Joe Torre's own Benedict Arnold insists that he's an "American League fan," which is a species completely unrecognized by any baseball ornithologist. The egregiousness of Rudy's transparent pander is only eclipsed by the ignorance of Mitt Romney, who flubs his own New Hampshire kiss-up by cheering that, under his governorship, the Red Sox ended their "87 years"-long World Championship drought. Citizens of RSN may be misguided, but they know that 86 years elapsed between 1918 and 2004.

Your choice for the GOP nomination in 2008: Deceit contends with cluelessness.

-- Spencer Ackerman, who's had too much to drink

An African American questioner asks the candidates, "Why don't we vote for you?"

Instead of answering the question directly, Giuliani talks about school choice and cutting welfare programs. "There are many issues on which we can reach out," he said. "I moved people out of the welfare program ... and made it a job program." He also said he thinks that's the reason for the decline in crime in New York City: "I think the reason that crime declined ... is that many of those people who were hopeless 10, 12 years ago, have hope."

Huckabee says, as a matter of fact, black people did vote for me in Arkansas, because, "I asked for their vote, and I didn't wait till October of election year to do it."

This is an interesting point, since most of the GOP candidates have blown off every single debate and forum targeted at voters of color. Seems like they're waiting till October to think about this one.

--Kate Sheppard

"That flag, frankly, is divisive and shouldn't be shown." - Romney

"I'm glad people have made the decisions not to display it as a symbolic flag in a state capital. ... As a nation, we don't need to go out of our way to be bringing up things to certain people in our country that's bad for them." - Thompson

--Dana Goldstein

The homophobia was really coming out there for a bit during the gays in the military question, etc. But by far the best quote was when Huckabee was asked whether he'd accept the support of Log Cabin Republicans. "I need all the support I can get," he replied.

--Kate Sheppard

In a breathtaking moment for us queer folk, a question submitted by an openly gay retired brigadier general was aired by Anderson Cooper, who is rumored to be gay. The general not only challenged the "Don't ask, don't tell" military policy; he did so by turning the tables. Why, he wanted to know, did the candidates not trust the professionalism of American soldiers to work with gay men and lesbians?

As it turns out, the good general was in the audience, and when Cooper gave the elderly gentleman -- who served more than 40 years in the military -- the microphone, Brig. Gen. Keith Kerr (ret.) was booed by an audience of Republicans. There's your patriotism for you.

--Adele M. Stan

An elderly military vet, who says he's gay, asks the candidates why they support preventing homosexuals from serving in the military. Duncan Hunter's answer is truly odd. Gays shouldn't serve, he says, because most young Americans in the military are "conservatives" who aren't comfortable around LGBTQ people.

The questioner, who's in the audience, stands up for himself. "With all due respect, I did not get an answer from the candidates. American men and women in the military are professional enough to serve with gays and lesbians. For 42 years I wore the uniform...I revealed I was a gay man after I retired. Today, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is destructive to our military policy. Everyday the Department of Defense discharges two people not because of misconduct, not because of unit cohesian, but simply because they happen to be gay. We're talking about doctors, nurses, pilots, and the surgeons who sew somebody up."

--Dana Goldstein

The topic shifts to torture, and Romney refuses to say whether or not waterboarding is torture. McCain says it absolutely is torture and should not be used by the United States. "Life is not "24" and Jack Bauer," he continues. "My friends, this is what America is all about. This is a defining issue...We should never allow torture."

--Dana Goldstein

In a question about the image of America in the Muslim world, Giuliani managed to say both that "We shouldn't blame an entire group of people" and chastise the Democratic candidates for not using the term "Islamic terrorism."

Too bad Romney didn't answer this one.

UPDATE: Adele notes that that Giuliani actually said "the word Islamic terrorism," which, curiously enough, sounds like two words.

--Kate Sheppard

The first of three abortion-related questions asks what, if any, should be the punishment for those who seek or provide abortions if it becomes illegal. It's actually a decent question, and hard for most of these guys to answer.

Ron Paul says in all his years as an obstetrician, he "never saw a time when a medically necessary abortion had to be done." He also says that the person who pays a penalty for illegal abortions "should be the person who commits the crime, which is the abortion doctor." And the penalty should be up to the states."

Thompson deflects the question and talks about appointing Supreme Court justices, overturning Roe v. Wade, and sending the question back to the states.

The second question asks whether, if Congress passes a ban on abortion, would they sign it. Giuliani says he would not sign it, but would hope that "Roe against Wade" (as he refers to it) would be overturned, returning the question to the states. He also said he "doesn't think it should be criminialized, except partial birth and late term abortions." Yeah, so much for "pro-choice" Giuliani.

--Kate Sheppard

Mike Huckabee says he's the only person on stage who's ever dealt with this question. "I believe there is a place for a death penalty. Some crimes are so heinous, so horrible..." You can guess the rest. But wait for it! Huckabee then says abortion is worse than the death penalty, because there's been no trial to convict the fetus of a crime.

This is turning into a holier-than-thou fight about Christianity, as a YouTube questioner holds up the Bible and says "Do you believe in this book?" Giuliani responds that he does, but doesn't interpret the book literally. Huckabee cracks, "Do you need help with that question, Mayor?"

--Dana Goldstein

Now we've moved into the gun portion of the evening -- three in a row. The first questioner prefaces his question with, "As in every small town, we like our big guns." Funny, I'm from a very tiny town, and not so much into the guns. Another questioner asks the candidates to talk about their gun collections.

This seems to be another area where Giuliani isn't quite lined up with the Republican base. He says that "the govermnet can impose reasonable regulations" on gun ownership, and cities criminal background and mental instability as good reasons to regulate gun ownership. "States can have leeway" in making their own rules, he continued. Here's where the former mayor of the biggest city in the country may never be able to see eye-to-eye with small-town gun-lovers.

--Kate Sheppard

As Dana blogged, an African-American father and son asked the candidates how they would end the "war at home," which they named as "black-on-black" crime. This gave Mitt Romney the opportunity to display a breathtaking combination of stupidity and condescension, when he spoke of how lucky the son was to have a dad standing with him (presumably, seeing as he is black and everything). Then he said he would win the war by "giving moms and dads". (See update below.) What?!

BTW, if Mitt is elected, I'd like him to send me a puppy -- 'cause the world would be a much better if all single people had puppies.

UPDATE (11/29/07): What Romney actually said, according to the CNN transcript: "And it's time in this country that we go back to the kind of values that allow kid to have moms and dads." Still pretty dumb.

--Adele M. Stan

What are you going to do about "black on black" crime, an African American father and son from Atlanta ask the Republicans. The teenage son says, "It feels like the Taliban is right outside." Mitt Romney responds that the young man in the video is lucky because he has a father who "by all appearances loves him." He continues, "The civil rights issue of our time is the failure of inner city schools to prepare kids for the jobs of tomorrow."

--Dana Goldstein

Is nothing but attack. It shows old clips of Huckabee supporting raising taxes and Romney supporting abortion rights.

One hour into this debate, I have to say, the Republicans just play much harder ball than the Dems.

--Dana Goldstein

The candidates got to submit 30-second, YouTube-style videos about themselves. Tancredo's is up first. Surprise! It's about immigration ... just immigration.

--Kate Sheppard

Or at least a Hitler appeaser. Because Paul wants to end the Iraq war.

I guess you might as well call me Hitler!

--Dana Goldstein

A half-hour into the Republican YouTube debate, every question has dealt with paranoia over the delusion of a disintegration of American sovereignty, whether by a perceived invasion of people "with funny accents," to paraphrase Mitt Romney, or by an alleged conspiracy to create a North American Union on the order of the European Union, as Republican candidate Ron Paul has suggested.

--Adele M. Stan

Hmmm...a sanctuary mansion sounds to me like a good thing...like, maybe, what Jesus was talking about when he said, "In my Father's house are many mansions: If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you." Sounds like a sanctuary mansion to me.

--Adele M. Stan

Here's an interesting question, which I wish all the candidates had gotten a chance to answer: As president, what federal programs would you cut?

Fred Thompson says reform he'd reform Social Security and Medicare, but doesn't say he'd cut them.

On to Ron Paul, which should be easy, since he wants to cut the entire federal government. He says Dept. of Energy and Dept. of Homeland Security.

Huckabee says he'd eliminate the IRS and revamp Homeland Security.

--Kate Sheppard

Now on the fourth immigration question, accounting for all those posed so far. Guess the YouTube questioners are really, really concerned about the Mexicans. Now it's on Huckabee allowing the children of undocumented immigrants to attend college at in-state tuition rates."If I didn't get an education, I might be picking lettuce," said Huckabee. "We're a better country than to punish children for what their parents did."

Romney says he respects those who have to pull themselves up by their bootstraps (which is funny ... since he definitely never had to do that), but doesn't think the children of immigrants should get any support in that from the state.

--Kate Sheppard

Tom Tancredo says the bellicose immigration debate shows that all the Republicans are trying to "out-Tancredo Tancredo." Except for McCain, of course, who just reminded the audience that immigrants are "God's children" who "deserve the protection of the law."

A young woman from Texas, Ashley, who stands beneath a Ronald Reagan portrait in her YouTube video, asks Mike Huckabee why he supported cheap college tuition for the children of illegal immigrants. Huckabee says, "We're a better country than to punish children for what their parents did."

Romney responds that Huckabee sounds like "Massachusetts liberal." He intones, "That's not your money, it's the taxpayers' money."

--Dana Goldstein

Romney and Giuliani are going head to head on immigration. Giuiliani made some reasonable statements about his policies as mayor, which including allowing the children of undocumented immigrants to attend schools, get emergency care in hospitals, and not penalizing those who reported crimes. Somehow, it devolved into bickering about whether Romney employed illegal immigrants at his mansion in Massachusetts.

McCain is now talking about immigration, and he sound unbelievably sad about what the other candidates have said. Speaking of his proposals for solving immigration, he says, "We need to sit down as Americans and realize they are God's children as well. "

Tancredo, on the the other hand, is pleased that most of the candidates are adopting some of his anti-immigrant rhetoric. He's impressed that they're "trying to out-Tancredo Tancredo," he said.

--Kate Sheppard

The first question is from a New Yorker who challenges Giuliani on New York City's "sanctuary city" status during his term as mayor. Giuliani responds that "sanctuary" is a mischaracterization of New York's policy, and Romney jumps in, correctly stating that Giuliani's administration went to court to maintain New York's right to give illegal immigrants some public benefits.

Here's where it gets far dirtier than any Democratic debate has been thus far. Giuliani says, "Mitt generally criticizes people in cases when he's had far the worse record." He then accuses Romney of employing undocumented domestic workers in his Massachusetts home. "In his home home, illegal immigrants were being imported. .. He had a sanctuary mansion, not just a sanctuary city."

Romney denies and the crowd seems to be with him.

--Dana Goldstein

Tonight's CNN/YouTube Republican debate is taking place in Florida, where Gov. Charlie Crist begins by announcing that what America is all about is "integrity, honesty, duty, and loyalty." Hm. What about freedom, opportunity, and democracy?

While the Democrats begin their debates already up on the stage, each candidate tonight is being announced individually and comes out on stage to cheers. It's like a boxing match.

--Dana Goldstein

I'm with Scott on the reasons Huckabee is the least-ideal candidate to go up against any of the Dems – relatively moderate on immigration, espousing economic ideas that seem almost populist, and gee, what a nice guy, at least according to the current line the press seems to be running with. And on Paul's original piece, I'd only beg to differ on Giuliani's ideal opponent. I think he'd be quite happy to have Hillary Clinton as an opponent, and Obama would be a much bigger concern for him. We tend to underestimate the Hillary hate on the right – and not only the far right. Chances are, a lot of them dislike her more than they dislike Giuliani's seemingly moderate stances on abortion and gays. Obama, on the other hand, is much more likely to pluck off some of the would-be Republican voters. As others have said before me, Clinton very much embodies every right-wing caricature of a powerful female (which I'm not saying is a bad thing, from my perspective at least), while Obama lives up to none of their stereotypes about black men in America. For a candidate as polarizing as Giuliani to win, he'd have to face an opponent the right sees as equally polarizing.

--Kate Sheppard

Reading the Paul Waldman piece that Dana discusses below, one interesting thing is that Paul doesn't consider Huckabee to be an ideal matchup for any of the major Dems.   I think this is right; he strikes me as easily the toughest of the major Republicans to beat in '08.   If he were to somehow to win the nomination business groups would ultimately fall into line, and his (slightly) more moderate economic record and rhetoric would play better among swing voters than orthodox GOP fetishization of upper-class tax cuts.  He would also mobilize the most social conservative support, and can do so while seeming moderate.   I'm certainly not saying he's unbeatable -- under the structural conditions likely to be in place in '08 any Dem capable of winning the primary should be favored over any Republican -- but to the marginal extent that candidates matter Huckabee seems easily the toughest.  

--Scott Lemieux

There's a lot of great commentary on the blog today about Mike Huckabee. There are two things, though, that I think we have to deal with which we haven't fully addressed. First, Huckabee could easily be the nominee (at least one poll has now shown him leading in Iowa and another shows him within striking distance in South Carolina). He stands to inherit pretty much all of Thompson's support and possibly a good deal of Romney's. Some people have suggested he doesn't have enough of an organization to go beyond the January votes, but he's gotten this far with almost no money and he'll presumably raise a decent amount if he starts winning primaries. It could be that, as Kevin Drum says, hating unions is more important than hating gays, but, while that may be true in general, I think the specific dynamics of this race make Huckabee very viable.

Second, he's potentially the strongest Republican candidate because he's just so gosh darn nice. The public now tends to see Republicans as dishonest, angry, and violent and I think that, as the more they get to know Giuliani(the other potentially strong Republican candidate) the more he'll fit into that image. Huckabee is the anti-Giuliani in almost every respect. His foreign policy views seem pretty moderate--he's still peddling a we-broke-it-so-we-have-to-fix-it argument on Iraq, but he doesn't seem keen to invade anyone else--and the club for growth hates him. Also he hasn't, to my knowledge, used any government agencies to finance any affairs. Moreover, Huckabee is just nice. I mean I like the guy even though he stands for all the things I'm against and so I can only imagine what most Americans would think. Of course I'd much rather have Huckabee as president than Giuliani, but we should still be afraid of him because of the revitalizing effect he could have on the Republican party.

--Sam Boyd

• The Los Angeles Times did some digging on Obama and PAC money, and threw in a little on Hillary Clinton and PACs for good measure.
• On the climate change front, San Jose's Mercury News has a helpful breakdown of all the candidates' stances, Republican and Democrat. USA Today and the Seattle Times both have opinion pieces on the subject as well.
• The mainstream media are beginning to wonder whether Huckabee really is such a nice guy after all.
• Peter Beinart says Obama would win on Iraq if he'd just focus on 2002 and his opposition to the war from the beginning, rather than his opposition to it today, since Clinton's current stance today is pretty close to that of most Dems.
• The Edwards campaign launched a new site today asking voters to pledge not to vote for Hillary Clinton any candidate who takes money from lobbyists or Political Action Committees
• CBS is still stuck on the "Is Obama black enough?" question.
• Fred Thompson put out two new ads, one of which trumpets him as a "courageous reformer, fighting corruption in both parties" and lauds his work to "expose the truth during Watergate." The commercial leaves out that part where he leaked information about the investigation to the Nixon administration, however.
• Kevin Drum says Huckabee can't win with just the social conservatives: "hating unions is more important than hating gays." On a related note, the candidate sealed the endorsement of the Falwell family today (minus recently deceased Jerry Sr., of course), as well as that of Florida State Senate Majority Leader Daniel Webster.
• Joe Biden says the Iraq surge success is a "fantasy."
• Barbra Streisand prefers Hillary Clinton, but will take whatever Dem she can get.
• The GOP is learning the meaning of primary season opposition research.
• The New York Times looks at the race that almost was (but may yet be again) between Hillary and Rudy Giuliani.
• Ron Paul opened a third office in South Carolina this week, apparently readying for a showdown in the Palmetto State.

--Kate Sheppard

Can Mike Huckabee overcome flavor-of-the-month status and look really presidential? Will Rudy and Mitt fight dirty? Which candidate is most in favor of shredding the U.S. Constitution?

We'll be tuning in to the CNN/YouTube Republican debate at 8 p.m. EST tonight to find out. And we'll see how conservatives handle those wacky Internet questioners.

--Dana Goldstein

I really recommend Paul Waldman's column on "The Ideal Opponent" today, in which he outlines which competitor each party's top-three candidates would wish for in the general election. It's great fun, and Paul predicts quite accurately, I think, how these candidates' narratives would bump up against one another. But I do take issue with Paul's assertion that Mitt Romney would be John Edwards' dream opponent. Think two words: health care.

While it's true that Romney has spent the primary season running away from his legacy of being the first American governor to pass comprehensive health care reform with an individual mandate, I think he'll likely modify this tune if he makes it to the general election. There, he'll respond to Democratic calls for universal coverage with the mantra, "Hey, I did it in Massachusetts. It wasn't perfect, but working together, we provided more Massachusetts residents than ever with health coverage. And it didn't require socialized medicine!" I think the media has been way too complicit in advancing the line that Romney is, as Paul writes, a "technocratic businessman committed to obtaining and evaluating relevant data before pursuing appropriate action." This is, after all, the same guy who didn't know United Nations weapons inspectors were inside Iraq prior to President Bush beginning the war there. But voters might buy into Romney's MBA resume, and he might seem quite the pragmatic compromiser next to Edwards and his grand calls for systemic change.

--Dana Goldstein

Jonathan Hafetz of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law argues that Mukasey's confirmation marks a low point in America's policy on torture:

Torture is only one of many abuses of the post-September 11 era. The creation of lawless enclaves like Guantánamo, extraordinary rendition, and the warrantless surveillance of American citizens have also expanded executive power at the expense of constitutional liberties.

But the prohibition against torture has an absolute quality that stands apart, transforming the battle over Mukasey’s nomination into something much greater than a fight about a single interrogation technique. Torture has tremendous symbolic importance. It forces a country to look into its soul and ask whether there are any norms it will not transgress in the name of security. If a county will commit torture, nothing is sacred. That the United States would confirm an attorney general who refuses to say unequivocally that waterboarding is illegal suggests there are no limits to the exercise of executive power. For this reason, Mukasey’s confirmation marks a profound crisis of faith.

Read the rest (and comment) here.

--The Editors

The past few days have seen a lot of mud slinging between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on the subject of health care mandates. The short version of the argument is that Obama's plan has no mandate at all, meaning it has no mechanism through which to achieve universal coverage, and Hillary Clinton's plan has an undefined mandate, meaning we don't know how it will achieve universal coverage. Clinton's position is better, but it's still a bit vague.

Later today, John Edwards will announce the specifics of how his mandate works. And they're quite good. Whenever you come into contact with the health care system, or whenever you pay your taxes, you will be asked to provide proof of insurance, presumably a policy number or some similar identifier. If you cannot, you will automatically be enrolled in either a public plan that you qualify for (like Medicaid or S-CHIP) or the cheapest plan offered by his Health Insurance Market. Bills will then get sent out, and if they're not paid, will be collected just like the government collects on student loan debts, or taxes, or anything else, using tools up to and including collection agencies and wage garnishment. (It's notable, here, that Edwards doesn't shy away from saying what his stick will be.)

In this way, Edwards' plan is much less an individual mandate and much closer to a government mandate. The burden is less on the individual to seek new insurance and more on the government to simply enroll them in it. From there, they can opt in to a different insurer if they so choose, or simply stay with their default plan. It's a smart and efficient way to move towards universality, and, for now, it puts Edwards ahead of both Obama and Clinton on the substance of the policy, and the speed with which he presented it to the public.

--Ezra Klein

Given Mitt Romney's recent remark that the United States' small Muslim population doesn't "justify" having a Muslim in the presidential cabinet, I thought I'd pull out this chart showing the diversity -- or lack thereof -- on each campaign's staff. Surprise, surprise! Romney is an old hand at surrounding himself with white people.

Why, there are no black people at all on Romney's campaign staff! I guess black people just don't make up a significant portion of the U.S. population (12 percent). I mean, black people certainly aren't necessary for winning the war on terror (they make up almost one-fifth of the U.S. armed forces). But all kidding aside, why would a black person want to work for the campaign of someone who subscribes to a religion that, until the 1970s, believed African Americans were cursed by Lucifer and unworthy of church membership?

--Dana Goldstein

Perhaps an endorsement from Lynchburg is not far behind?

Jerry Falwell, Jr. endorsed Huckabee this morning.

Also, for the first time, Huckabee is ahead in Iowa, according to a Rasmussen poll, three points up on Romney, 16 points up on Giuliani, and 17 points up on Thompson.

--Sarah Posner

Chris Cillizza gives us a breakdown of the candidates' positioning in the Super Tuesday states, noting that Barack Obama has 19 offices in 13 states that have primaries on Feb. 5 while Hillary Clinton only has five offices in those states. His locations include places like Montgomery, Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, Ala., in addition to Los Angeles, Phoenix, New York City, St. Paul, and Salt Lake City. Clinton just has two offices in California, and one each in New York, Arkansas and New Jersey.

He's also been organizing "Women for Obama Leadership Committees" in those states, an effort to draw female votes away from Clinton. All this shows that Obama anticipates the primary season being a knock-down, drag-out fight beyond January, while Clinton doesn't. Polls currently show Clinton with large leads in those states, but the on-the-ground efforts of the Obama campaign are sure to affect that over the next two months. While that doesn't matter if he tanks in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, it's evidence of the very different strategizing going on in the two camps, and could burn Clinton if January doesn't go as planned.

--Kate Sheppard

Anthony Cordesman takes a realistic look at claims of the surge's success:

"US and Iraqi forces are scoring important, if regional, tactical victories. However, these cover only western and central Iraq and may well be temporary. For all the claims that the “surge” worked, it is clear that it did not work purely on its own.

[...]

While the US and Iraqi forces have scored gains in Baghdad, and west and central Iraq, these are fragile and need to be consolidated by bringing Arab Sunnis fully back into Iraq as a nation. The need for decisive political action goes beyond the uprising in Anbar. Unlike US estimates, Iraqi statistics do not show a drop in the level of violence in the Baghdad area. The United Nations estimates that the number of displaced refugees continues to grow. Moreover, Baghdad is kept secure only by US force. The Shia militias are largely intact. Without political progress and a US military presence, the result could be a forced Shia takeover of the capital." (emphasis added)

About western Iran southern Iraq, Cordesman writes:

"The coalition security effort has virtually collapsed in the south. Southern Iraq is now under the control of rival Shia factions and the British-led forces have withdrawn. The US lacks the force strength to intervene in the south if it wanted to, and a Shia-dominated central government will never let US forces take on this mission. Iranian gangs and religious extremist influence are growing in every province in the south."

Don't hold your breath waiting for Bill Kristol and the other surgeniks at the Weekly Standard to address these issues, as they've consistently shown less interest in how realities in Iraq affect U.S. goals, more in how American public perception of those realities affects Republican political fortunes.

Recall that Cordesman published a similar corrective in the wake of O'Hanlon and Pollack's now-infamous "A War We Just Might Win," the op-ed which, probably more than any other single piece of writing, served to move the Iraq debate onto more advantageous ground for President Bush and the surge's advocates, shifting the argument from whether the surge was actually serving U.S. strategic goals in Iraq (no) to whether it was achieving any tactical success (yes).

Cordesman wrote then:

"So far, Iraq’s national government has failed to act at the rate necessary to move the country forward or give American military action political meaning."

In regard Iraq’s national government, this still holds true. But the surge has had political meaning in the one place where it really matters for those who devised it: The American media. As I wrote last week, the president and his enablers have treated the war in Iraq first and foremost as a message problem, something to be defended with clever arguments, not to be won with better policies. Sadly, I suspect that Cordesman's current sober, fact-based assessment will have about as much effect as the last, and will be lost amid the locker room din of conservatives dousing each other with victory champagne and snapping towels at anyone who won't join in.

--Matthew Duss

John Edwards and Barack Obama have used their spouses' liberal cred to dodge questions on gay marriage, while for Hillary Clinton, the challenge during this primary has often been to appear more progressive than her husband. But now Bill Clinton, too, has stepped into the spouse wars, trying to strengthen Hillary's lefty appeal to grassroots Democrats. As his wife finds herself locked in a caucus dead heat with antiwar-from-the-start Obama, Bill Clinton told a crowd in Iowa yesterday, "Even though I approved of Afghanistan and opposed Iraq from the beginning, I still resent that I was not asked or given the opportunity to support those soldiers."

The comment was made in the context of Clinton opposing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. It's a line I've heard him use in two other speeches, first at Brown University in 2005, and then at the Center for American Progress' Common Good conference last year. Each time it was in reference to how much money we've spent fighting a losing war in Iraq, but never before has Clinton called himself antiwar "from the beginning."

The Times states that a "rival Democratic campaign" circulated the remarks and implied Clinton was being less than truthful. In fact, the former president said in 2003 that he wouldn't have gone to war without giving Hans Blix and the United Nations a chance to complete their weapons inspections. But Clinton has also frequently voiced support for the Senate resolution that authorized Bush to go to war, and which Hillary has come under fire for refusing to apologize for supporting.

--Dana Goldstein

Mitt Romney's remarks about Muslims not meriting a spot in his hypothetical cabinet (which he's attempting to cast as a misrepresentation, despite the fact that multiple parties have confirmed the account and even noted that his remarks on the subject have been even more inflammatory at other points), are of course particularly salient in light of the fact that he himself is a member of a relatively small religious group in the United States, one that many consider to be somewhat bizarre and a good reason to write off his presidential run. For the most part though, reporters have shied away from questions about Romney's religion and anything relating to it. But as Christopher Hitchens points out this week, perhaps we should be asking him more about that, especially when it comes to religion, race, intolerance, and what exactly he believes:

It is not just legitimate that he be asked about the beliefs that he has not just held, but has caused to be spread and caused to be inculcated into children. It is essential. Here is the most salient reason: Until 1978, the so-called Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was an officially racist organization. Mitt Romney was an adult in 1978. We need to know how he justified this to himself, and we need to hear his self-criticism, if he should chance to have one.

Romney is both a member of a religion that has very recently espoused racism and intolerance … and now he's on the campaign trail, espousing religious intolerance. So why shouldn't we be asking him about his religion? Seems like there are some perfectly reasonable questions there.

--Kate Sheppard

Mike Huckabee announced the formation of a Faith and Values Coalition last night, with a former Southern Baptist Convention president and radio show host and activist Janet Folger at the helm. The coalition's members will be both cheerleaders and advisers, and the list represents considerable reach into different constituencies on the Christian right.

For anyone waiting for the Rapture, there's Jerry Jenkins, co-author of the enormously popular apocalyptic Left Behind book series. For activists whose memories go back to the 1980 Washington for Jesus rally on the National Mall, which supported Ronald Reagan for president, there's rally organizers Anne and John Gimenez of Virginia Beach. Last spring, the Gimenezes hosted a three-day conference devoted to commemorating the 400th anniversary of the settlement of Jamestown as evidence of America's heritage as a "Christian nation." Among their featured speakers were two targets of Sen. Charles Grassley's (R-Iowa) investigation into alleged misuse of church donations for lavish personal lifestyles, Kenneth Copeland and Paula White. Harry Jackson was also there, and the Harvard MBA shared a story of how the Washington for Jesus rally convinced him to forego a Wall Street job for a life in ministry. Christians United for Israel's John Hagee was also on hand, and afterwards Anne Gimenez agreed to become the Virginia state director for CUFI.

The Gimenezes represent a long-term link between conservative charismatics/Pentecostals and the largely white evangelical leadership of Christian right organizations like Campus Crusade for Christ. At his conference last spring, John Gimenez paid homage to late CCC founder Bill Bright, whom he credited for helping to organize the Washington for Jesus rally, and for embracing the tongue-talking, hand-raising, and dancing charismatics into the political fold.

Publisher Stephen Strang, one of the earliest evangelical supporters of Huckabee, is also in Huckabee's coalition, and he, too, has long been a player in Republican outreach to evangelicals and particularly his charismatic audience. Likewise Copeland protege, Detroit preacher, and former Republican Senate candidate Keith Butler, long cultivated for his potential star quality among African-American Republicans. Butler also serves on CUFI's executive board.

To counteract Mitt Romney's support from Christian right legal powerhouses Jay Sekulow (of Pat Robertson's American Center for Law and Justice), David French (of James Dobson's Alliance Defense Fund), and James Bopp (a long-time lawyer for anti-abortion causes), Huckabee announced support from Matthew Staver of Jerry Falwell's Liberty Council and Kelly Shackelford of Texas's Liberty Legal Institute.

Not surprisingly, there's a big group of Southern Baptists on the list, and today Huckabee is appearing with Liberty University president Jerry Falwell, Jr. at the university's convocation ceremony. Perhaps an endorsement from Lynchburg is not far behind?

--Sarah Posner

CLARIFICATION: Just to be clear, the Alliance Defense Fund was founded by a number of religious right leaders, among them James Dobson, but is a separate organization from Focus on the Family and all of the other founders' organizations.

Mike Huckabee is appearing all this week on televangelist Kenneth Copeland's Believers' Voice of Victory program, and in the first two episodes, there was a lot of discussion about "character," "integrity," and "excellence." All that talk didn't move Copeland to mention either Sen. Chuck Grassley's probe of his ministry or the Oral Roberts University scandal, but he did display a keen understanding that he shouldn't be using his non-profit television ministry to bolster his friend Huckabee's candidacy. He began each program with the meaningless disclaimer that Huckabee was appearing as an ordained minister, but not a candidate. Oh, and by the way, he's running for president.

Copeland echoed other Huckabee supporters' praise, talking about "God's anointing and calling on this man." He then launched into a discussion of how America's universities have been "dumbed down," but that the standards are higher at Christian schools, including at ORU, which Copeland said demands "excellence."

Throughout the campaign, Huckabee has made clear his views on evolution, abortion, and marriage, all rooted in his fundamentalist reading of the Bible, which apparently -- who knew? -- lays out God's plan for governing America. But appearing with Copeland, Huckabee felt even more free to talk about how at age 15, he first understood "that [God] owns me, that my life doesn't belong to me... And we have to look at our lives as a matter of what does He want me to do because after all, he's the master, I'm the servant. I'm not here to please me, I'm here to please Him."

As Arkansas governor, Huckabee added, "I had to come to the conclusion that I only had one client... when I laid my head on the pillow, I'd say, 'Lord, are you pleased?' ... even if I get voted out of office, I'll never get voted out of heaven."

Copeland chuckled, "the devil doesn't have a prayer."

Read more in this week's FundamentaLIST.

--Sarah Posner

• On Tuesday, Hillary Clinton released her plan to address HIV and AIDS at home and abroad. The plan calls for spending $50 billion by 2013 on global initiatives to combat HIV/AIDS. She also wants to double the annual research budget at the National Institutes of Health to $5.2 billion, and calls for expanding Medicaid eligibility to low-income Americans living with HIV, investing more in education and prevention programs, and unifying all the federal programs on HIV/AIDS on one central strategy. Both Edwards and Obama released their plans earlier this year, which feature many similar initiatives.
• Clinton also released her plan to cut minority drop-out rates in half, invest $1 billion in programs to identify and help at-risk youth, and provide universal pre-kindergarten.
• Obama held a foreign policy forum featuring notables like Richard Danzig (secretary of the Navy under Bill Clinton), Tony Lake (national security adviser under Clinton), and Susan Rice (former assistant secretary of state for African affairs), among others. The forum was intended to bolster the candidate against charges of inexperience in foreign policy, and to demonstrate that he has some of the sharpest minds in the field on his team. Clinton's camp swiftly rebutted the entire event.
• John Edwards laid out portions of his economic plan intended to help the middle class, which include addressing the mortgage crisis through measures like a ban on predatory lending practices, raising the capital gains rate, cutting tax benefits to hedge funds and private equity firms, and regulating the credit card industry.

--Kate Sheppard

• Hillary Clinton dined with New Hampshirites yesterday, and the Post says it's part of her plan to build up a "firewall" in the state should Iowa go wrong.
• Tom Tancredo says boot the Mexicans, but keep their enchiladas.
• Ron Paul has won the endorsement of a Nevada brothel owner. Dennis Hof owns Moonlite BunnyRanch, outside of Carson City, and said he will be putting a box outside his establishment where prostitutes (and presumably their patrons) can deposit donations to Paul's campaign. But by far the most amusing aspect of this tale is the mental image of Tucker Carlson, on the road with Paul for an assignment, emerging from a limousine with Paul, Hof, and two prostitutes en route to a news conference. Carlson described Hof as a "good friend" of his.
• Chris Dodd became the fourth candidate to qualify for public funds, joining McCain, Tancredo, and John Edwards.
• The Economist evaluates Mike Huckabee's folksy charm. Notable line: "There are no perfect candidates. We had one 2,000 years ago, but we crucified him."
• Barbra Streisand announced today that she is endorsing Hillary Clinton.
• A few days old now, but Political Punch has an interesting post on a remarkably reasonable 1996 speech by Rudy Giuliani about why government services should be provided to undocumented immigrants: "It's not only to protect them, but to protect rest of society, as well."
• Bill Richardson has been busy trotting all over Iowa, hitting 95 of the state's 99 counties.
• McCain has a new ad touting his maverick cred.
• Huckabee's campaign is pushing his second-place finish in a recent poll in Florida. He drew 17 percent, while Giuliani pulled 26 percent. Another 18 percent said they were still undecided.
• Mitt Romney attempted to clarify his remarks about whether he would appoint a Muslim to his cabinet.
• More than 5,000 video submissions were in by the Sunday night deadline for tomorrow's Republican CNN/YouTube debate, which is 2,000 more than the Democratic incantation of the debate garnered back in July. The candidates will answer approximately 40 of them in the two-hour debate, which is slated to begin at 8 p.m. EST on Wednesday.
• And finally: Tired of all the horserace coverage? Vent your aggressions by downloading this free cell phone game in which you can be and punch out the candidate of your choosing.

--Kate Sheppard

Generally speaking, I find Obama's constant harping on "the new politics" annoying. What, pray tell, are the old politics?

Well, question asked, question answered. Hillary Clinton is bringing the Co-mentum and hinting that she'll appoint Colin Powell to help restore our standing in the world.

Sigh. I know we're all supposed to like Powell because, without ever saying so, he hinted, that maybe, just maybe, when he was helping to sell the world on the Iraq War and fool Hillary Clinton about those weapons that didn't exist, he had some qualms about what he was doing, and much later, concluded that he'd played a critical role in engineering one of the greatest foreign policy disasters of all time. He's never said so, but occasionally he blinks twice when you bring this up, and so you can sort of tell that he's regretful, unless he just had something in his eye and was trying to get it out.

But you know what? Bringing back key members of the Bush foreign policy team probably won't restore our standing in the world. It's the sort of thing the Washington Post editorial board likes, but little more. And it is, definitionally, the old politics. Powell is an old politician, and all of his fine theories and international triumphs date to the Cold War era. This isn't the sort of thinking that will push us forward, not in the least.

--Ezra Klein

Sudhir Muralidhar has the answer.

--The Editors

Via Rob, Frank Gaffney establishes the new standard by which all future spittle-flecked neoconservative hyperbole will be judged:

"It is fitting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice chose the U.S. Naval Academy for the venue of today's so-called Mideast peace conference. The reputation of that extraordinary institution in Annapolis has been sullied in recent years by a succession of rapes of young women.

Despite official efforts to low-ball its significance, Miss Rice's conclave is shaping up to be a gang-rape of a nation on a scale not seen since Munich in 1938, when the British and French allowed Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini to have their violent way with Czechoslovakia.

This time, the intended victim is Israel. As with the effort to appease the Nazis and Fascists nearly 70 years ago, however, the damage will not be confined to the rapee. The interests of the Free World in general and the United States in particular will suffer from what the Saudis and most of the other attendees have in mind for the Jewish State — namely, its dismemberment and ultimate destruction."

Earlier we had Ralph Peters comparing the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians from their homes to "a shiftless, violent family that... was evicted." Now we have Frank Gaffney comparing a bunch of government officials sitting around writing on notepads and munching crudite to "gang rape." This is what conservatives refer to as "moral clarity."

Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, it's pretty amazing how, despite any genuine threat to Israel's existence having long evaporated, the very idea of Israel sitting down and negotiating with Arab governments has completely unhinged some people. As noted, we had Ralph Peters using Annapolis as an excuse to get in touch with his inner Kurtz. NRO's Andy McCarthy labels the negotiations a "farce," disregarding every bit of available poll data to insist that, despite what any lying Arab ever says, ever! the Palestinians are still committed to the destruction of Israel. And Little Podhoretz and the gang over at Commentary are wringing their tiny hands over the outrageous possibility of Israel actually being forced to conform to international law and end its relentless colonization of the West Bank.

Personally, I'm inclined toward the view that anything that's got a bunch of neocons this upset all at once has just got to be a positive thing.

--Matthew Duss

The Virginia Republican Party is serving voters that precious combination of desperation and authoritarian impulse for which the national GOP is becoming known:

The Republican Party of Virginia wants voters in the Feb. 12 GOP presidential primary to sign a pledge that they will support the party's nominee.

The state Board of Elections approved the request yesterday.

Those who wish to cast a ballot in the Republican presidential primary will have to sign a statement that says, "I, the undersigned, pledge that I intend to support the nominee of the Republican Party for president."

Here's another plan: the week before the election, we kidnap every child in the state, and tell voters that unless the Republicans win, they don't get their kids back!

-- Paul Waldman

I couldn't get Obama's foreign policy panel to stream on my computer today, but I did get Hillary Clinton's press release in response:

“With the critical foreign policy challenges America faces in the world today, voters will decide whether Senator Obama, who served in the Illinois State Senate just three years ago and would have less experience than any President since World War II, has the strength and experience to be the next president. Senator Clinton, who has travelled to 82 countries as a representative of the United States and has been on the Armed Services Committee for close to seven years, is ready to lead starting on Day One.”

Of course, that would be for naught if Obama himself didn't have a clearly defined set of principles, and so would waffle from adviser to adviser. But he's got that, too. What separates Obama from Clinton is approach. Clinton is, at least in public statements, harder line than Obama. She's more enamored with our ability to solve problems militarily, less skittish about the costs of bombing Iran, totally unwilling to concede that the theory underpinning the invasion of Iraq was a mistake (her regret is that the weapons didn't exist, not that she was conceptually wrong). But let's be honest here: We'd all tune in to a forum that simply pitted Obama against Hillary on foreign policy. Let's let them talk it out for an hour. No moderator interruptions, no 60 second time limits. If Hillary's campaign is so certain that her experience and command of the issues will allow her to crush him, they should propose it. Either he accepts, and they win, or he declines, and they can call him a coward. And the rest of us end up far more informed.

So: How about it?

--Ezra Klein

Mark Halperin is skeptical of the influence of Oprah's tour dates with Barack Obama, positing that they'll be attention-getters, but not vote-getters:

So yes, expect loud, rousing rallies in all three early voting states when Oprah Winfrey comes to town with her friend Barack Obama in early December, with gobs of media attention, raucous crowds, emotion and great pictures. But don't expect those events to do anything productive to allow Obama to get over the biggest hurdle standing between him and the White House. American voters are not looking for a celebrity or talk show sidekick to lead them. Obama is an intelligent and thoughtful potential President, but Winfrey's imprimatur is unlikely to convey those traits to many undecided voters.

In that respect, Winfrey's events might even be -- dare it be said -- counterproductive.

Far more important, he writes, will be events like today's foreign policy forum in which he brought out some heavyweights to back his policy proposals and experience, including folks like Bill Clinton's former national security adviser, Tony Lake. It's true that the backing of leading foreign policy thinks is more important -- for the voters who pay close (or any) attention to the candidates' foreign policy plans. But I'm guessing the overlap between those voters and the Oprah crowd is pretty small. So the idea that Oprah's endorsement -- which is less likely to drive away the foreign policy fans than the minute details of his foreign policy proposals are to draw in the Oprah lovers -- is a bad thing is at best wishful thinking. Sure, we don't want to live in a country where a talk show host has more sway than the former national security adviser, but that doesn't make it so.

--Kate Sheppard

Ramesh Ponnuru makes an interesting point about Ron Paul: "What strikes me is what a throwback Paul is among libertarians. Hard money and anti-interventionism move him, but he seems utterly uninterested in the lifestyle questions that have taken up so much of Reason for the past decade." Indeed, he's not merely indifferent to all such questions but in fact is a proponent of using state coercion to force women to carry pregnancies of term. Gillespie and Welch try to get around this by using the classic federalism dodge, asserting that Paul "nonetheless believes that federal bans violate the more basic principle of delegating powers to the states."

As Ponnuru also notes, however, this won't wash because Paul voted for the federal "partial birth" abortion ban. Moreover, from a libertarian perspective the "partial birth" ban is, if anything, less defensible than voting for a total ban. Libertarians could in theory justify a ban because most would see the protection of human life as a legitimate use of state power (although in practice criminalization does very little to actually protect fetal life, and Paul's libertarian positions on other issues would almost certainly increase abortion rates by a massive extent.) The ban Paul voted for, conversely, does nothing to protect fetal life, but simply tries to force doctors to perform abortions using less safe methods in some cases. Even on its face, therefore, such legislation is about regulating female sexuality and punishing women for making choices the state doesn't approve of, which is as inconsistent with any coherent set of libertarian principles as it is with "states' rights." Paul is more consistent than most Republican-affiliated "libertarians" -- he's not willing to make up ridiculous arguments in favor of the Iraq War, for example -- but his libertarianism doesn't seem to apply to these kinds of issues of individual freedom.

The lesson here is the obvious one: like libertarians, people willing to forego strongly-held substantive preferences in the name of federalism "are as rare as pieces of the True Cross." And when almost anybody tells you that by advocating the overturn of Roe they want to "send the issue back to the states," they're almost certainly lying.

--Scott Lemieux

Chris Hayes' fabulous piece on email smear campaigns gave a lot of attention to how the "Barack Obama is a secret Muslim schooled in a madrassa" meme got started, but it appears the same theme is metastasizing into more right-wing smears. What might be the latest tripe being fed into the machine came up in a reader question during the Post's Politics Hour yesterday: "There is a photo going around showing Obama during the Pledge of Allegiance with his hands cuffed closed and not on his heart. I also heard that he said he would not raise his hand and put it on the Bible if he was elected president -- he wanted the Koran there. If it is true, voters need to know, and if not, what is his side of the story?" The Post aptly pointed him to their own Fact Checker column on the first smear, and writes off the second as "nonsense." But it appears the swearing-in on the Koran story has been around for a while, too, turning up in the comment sections on Hotline, Yahoo, and Huffington Post, just to name a few, over the past year. Whether this smear is the product of an email campaign, confusion with Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison, or simple ignorance, one may never know.

--Kate Sheppard

Partly because I think you should stick by your predictions as long as they're still plausible, I still think that Mitt Romney has to be considered the favorite to win the GOP nomination. Matt, however, makes an interesting point about the biggest impediment Romney faces: the possibility that Huckabee will win in Iowa. Assuming (and I think this is right) that Huckabee has enough support to win Iowa but lacks the resources to be competitive in the front-loaded primaries even if he wins, the irony is that the most social conservative major candidate could hand the Republican nomination to the candidate least congenial to social conservatives. Although it's conceivable that Romney could survive a loss in Iowa, it would be hard to argue that he should be favored over Giuliani if it happens.

Of course, this kind of strange scenario is the result of the fact that there is a prominent hawkish social conservative in the race -- who's uncompetitive largely because of his personal conflicts with social conservative leaders. Between McCain being DOA and the late-entering plain vanilla southern conservative seemingly emulating Wesley Clark's 2004 campaign we have the current situation in which nobody seems logically capable of winning the Republican nomination. In that context, I still think Romney is the least illogical possibility.

--Scott Lemieux

Womens eNews has the rundown on where the presidential hopefuls stand on the issue of sex education.

All of the Democratic candidates say they support comprehensive sex ed, but I'm pretty certain all have voted to fund abstinence-only -- understandably so, because the funding is always bundled with other programs that Democrats support. (Hell, even Kucinich recently voted to extend abstinence-only funding through the end of the fiscal year.) Still, I'd like to see some pledges that, as president, they would do everything in their power to ensure federal funds only go to comprehensive, medically accurate sex education.

Things aren't quite as clear-cut on the Republican side. Giuliani was OK with making condoms available to public school students in New York, and hasn't explicitly come out in favor of abstinence-only. McCain and Romney have mixed records, but both say they would back abstinence-only. And Huckabee, Tancredo, Paul, and Hunter are all unequivocally for teaching misinformation and gender stereotypes about sex to our nation's youth.

--Ann Friedman

SEIU is still putting on the heat as private equity firm The Carlyle Group attempts to finalize the buyout of HCR ManorCare, but in recent weeks, they've been joined by state regulators who are growing increasingly concerned about the effects the buyout might have on care in their 552 facilities around the country. The concerns about staffing, quality of care, and the effects of having a profit-minded private entity heading up facilities designed to care for the elderly have led lawmakers in Illinois, Wisconsin, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Florida to hold hearings on the potential impacts of the buyouts. These concerns have delayed the transfers of licenses needed to complete the deal.

The $6.3 billion deal was supposed to close three weeks ago, but concerns about the buyout have caused delays, and are starting to worry investors. Last week, shares in the company were trading at around 9 percent below the $67 price listed in the deal. Analysts are concerned that the longer the sale is delayed, the more time there will be for critics to air concerns and turn public opinion against the deal. For now, the target date for finishing the deal has been pushed back to Friday. Seems like SEIU's campaign has been pretty successful in thwarting the buyouts from going through without assurances about what they will mean for residents and employees.

--Kate Sheppard

Demonstrating the aluminum bat-like subtlety which, combined with an enthusiasm for rehabilitating the paradigms of 19th century colonial discourse, has made him a foreign policy guru for wingnut racists everywhere, Ralph Peters offers his version of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in today's New York Post:

"In the end, the problem's difficulty can be put in New York City terms: A shiftless, violent family that turned an apartment into a slum was evicted. The new tenants cleaned up the place and made the apartment a showcase. Now the former tenants hate them for it - and want the apartment back."

--Matthew Duss

Spencer Ackerman discusses the Bush administration's newest plans for the war on terror:

Here's what's up for discussion. While General Musharraf suppresses any possible moderate, civilian threat to his continued rule, the tribal areas in the west of his country, bordering Afghanistan, remain mostly outside his control. Autonomy for what the U.S. calls the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA, has been part of the Pakistani social compact since there's been a Pakistan. Invading -- or supporting a Pakistani Army conquest -- isn't an option, unless new waves of instability are to befall a nuclear-armed country. Yet within the FATA is, as a National Intelligence Estimate recently concluded, a "safehaven" for an increasingly powerful cohort of the original al-Qaeda's senior leadership, or "AQSL" in intelligence community parlance. So, the Pentagon figures, the best course of action is to buy off tribal figures in the FATA to shift their allegiances from AQSL and its Taliban partners; organize its young men into an anti-AQSL militia supported by the Pakistani Interior Ministry; and witness the extirpation of al-Qaeda in its most important redoubt. It'll require raising U.S. military profile in one of the least stable portions of the globe, but, hey, it worked in Anbar Province, right?

Read the rest (and comment) here.

--The Editors

Conservatives have long downplayed the benefits of diversity in public institutions, calling race, ethnicity, and gender conscious hiring a misguided "quota" policy. That's why it's no surprise that while campaigning in Las Vegas earlier this month, Mitt Romney told Pakistani American businessman Mansoor Ijaz that he didn't see having Muslims in the presidential cabinet as a benefit in the fight against Islamic terrorism. "Based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration," Romney said. Ijaz responds to the exchange in a Christian Science Monitor op-ed called "A Muslim Belongs in the Cabinet."

What Romney doesn't seem to understand is that having close Muslim advisors wouldn't be about reflecting the population of the United States in the cabinet -- although that would be a beautiful thing. Rather, it's about giving culturally competent, bilingual Middle East experts a chance to have their voices heard in the formulation of U.S. foreign policy. Who's better equipped than they to revitalize America's image in the Muslim world? Karen Hughes?

--Dana Goldstein

Parents of children with disabilities are increasingly facing off against disability rights organizations when it comes to education, The Wall Street Journal reports. While advocacy organizations for the disabled continue to push "mainstreaming," or having disabled kids spend most of their school day in integrated classrooms, parents of kids with autism, Down syndrome, and other learning disabilities say their children are happier, more social, and learn more when they attend special classes and schools. In New Jersey, where only 41 percent of disabled kids are fully integrated, an unlikely alliance has developed between disability rights groups and tax cutters, who see mainstreaming as a cheaper way to educate high-need kids. On the other side are parents like Mary Kaplowitz, whose son Zachary is autistic:

She says his preschool classmates rarely played with him and he came home from summer camp asking why the nondisabled children laughed at him. On a visit, she saw them drawing away from her son.

"They shunned him and it broke my heart," says Ms. Kaplowitz. Earlier this year, she and other parents fought successfully to preserve separate special-education classes in Kingston like the one Zachary, now 9 years old, attends at a local elementary school.

The Journal article contains more powerful personal stories like this one, but it doesn't distinguish between physical disabilities and learning disabilities. Integration remains a good option for some physically disabled kids who are just as able to learn and socialize as their "mainstream" peers. The bottom line is that special programs for the disabled shouldn't be cut because of budget concerns: Families and educators should have many options when it comes to educating children with special needs.

UPDATE: This Public Agenda poll on special education finds that most parents of children with disabilities (56 percent) believe mainstreaming helps their kids, and 24 percent prefer a more segregated atmosphere. This is regardless of the severity of the child's disability. So the New Jersey parents described in the Journal piece are actually in the minority.

--Dana Goldstein

A week and a half ago, David Axe of War is Boring decided to find out what was going on in Somalia. Since then he's lost his job, started a riot at a local cinema, and learned a lot about what seems to be one of the most dangerous cities in the world. It doesn't look like things are going to calm down anytime soon; the African Union peacekeepers still suffer constant attacks, and political progress has been slow:

The secular transitional government (headquartered in the northern city of Baidoa), which late last year aided an Ethiopian invasion that unseated the hardline Islamic Courts regime, failed to capitalize on the clans’ brief harmony. Bureaucratic sloth and parliamentary infighting had paralyzed the Baidoa government at perhaps its most critical hour. The disarray delayed the standing up of government forces that could fill the security vacuum. “The government was not reliable and had no public support on the ground. Security matters were a complete disaster,” says Dr. Abdirizak Osman Hassan, a veteran member of parliament. In the absence of a strong federal presence, Islamic Courts fighters organized an insurgency that has turned Mogadishu into the new Baghdad.

Right; without a central government capable of acting or effecting political reconciliation, violence and chaos continue. What I'm really afraid of is that Somalia is Iraq's future, rather than Iraq's past. Anyway, read the whole thing.

--Robert Farley

The Bush administration has asked a federal judge to delay hearings in a lawsuit challenging the legality of their plan to crackdown on immigration via their "no-match" rule (see this piece for some background) that would require employers to fire employees within 90 days if they can't produce a valid Social Security number, or else face fines and criminal prosecution. The Department of Homeland Security Department has agreed to make as yet unspecified changes to its plan, which was prevented from going into effect in October when the federal judge handling the case issued an injunction, citing the arguments of the labor, business, and agricultural organizations who had filed the lawsuit that claimed that the Social Security Administration's database contains too many errors and would cause disruptions at workplaces and unlawfully discriminate against thousands of legal workers. DHS has asked the judge to delay the case until they can come up with a new program, or until March 24 (whichever comes first).

Pretty much any incantation of the "no-match" rule would have a hard time holding up in court, short of overhauling all the problems with the Social Security database. And that doesn't even begin to get into the problems this would cause in the workforce, for the immigrant workers, employers, and the economy in general. I was watching a segment on "Lou Dobbs Tonight" last night in which they accused DHS of caving to "special interests" on this one. Meaning, I guess, special interests like all of the elements of the American economy that rely on immigrant labor -- agriculture, construction, restaurants, and hotels, just to get started. So it will be interesting to see what DHS will propose as an alternative plan.

All of this -- decent ideas like licenses and bad ideas like the "no-match" rule -- are born of desperation and frustration at all levels of government. So I'd like to know from the candidates in both parties what their immediate steps for addressing immigration concerns in the United States would be, in addition to the big-picture plans for comprehensive immigration reform. Unlike the licenses question that keeps coming up in debates, this would be a question on an immigration issue that would actually be important for the candidates to weigh in on, since the president actually gets some say in what DHS does.

--Kate Sheppard

Our own Gershom Gorenberg taped a Bloggingheads.tv segment with Khaled Dawoud of Al Jazeera about the possibilities for Mideast peace. Check out the New York Times clip here, or watch the full diavlog here.

And click here for all of Gershom's columns for TAP Online.

--The Editors

Over the past months, Hillary Clinton has shared, again and again, the anecdote of the elderly woman who tells her, "I was born before women could vote, and I want to live long enough to see a woman in the White House." Now The New York Times' Patrick Healy has tracked down the actual lady featured in the stump speech, 87-year old Ruth Smith of Iowa. A lot of attention gets paid to Barack Obama's challenge in mobilizing his young supporters to actually attend Iowa caucuses. But Clinton is also looking to get first time caucus-goers out on Jan. 3, many of them women in their 70s, 80s, and 90s. Healy's reporting confirms some stereotypes about female voters -- that they pay more attention to personality than to policy. But he also shows that although Clinton's gender might be a liability among some voters, her campaign has the potential of turning some female Republicans into Democratic voters:

In interviews with 20 women in their late 70s and 80s, most said they supported Mrs. Clinton based on qualities they saw in her -- intelligence, confidence and capability -- rather than her positions on issues. Many also said that her qualities would help her cope with challenges.

"I think a woman, as head of the military, would be more apt to keep our boys at home than a man," said Dorothy Weddell, 85, who attended a Clinton event Saturday in Sac City, Iowa. "I'm a Republican, but I vote for the person. And she seems more willing to work things out and compromise."

--Dana Goldstein

Kevin Drum beat me to the most obvious problem with Andrew Sullivan's latest attack on Social Security: to call benefits of $12,000 a year "gold plated" is worthy of one of the rich guys in Ruben Bolling's "Lucky Ducky" cartoons. Adding to the comedy is Sullivan generously noting that "I'd rather settle for a lower sum because we planned for it than because we let the system collapse into insolvency." Well, of course he would, given that he'll almost certainly have a private pension that will be rather more "gold-plated" than Social Security, but his situation is hardly typical. Moreover, the idea that Social Security is in serious danger of "collapse into insolvency" because in several decades current payroll taxes may not cover 100% of Social Security expenditures is ridiculous.

Meanwhile, the silly Amity Shales op-ed he links to of course repeats the beloved-by-privatizers factoid that "As long as a decade ago, a much-publicized poll suggested that more members of Generation X believed they would see a UFO than believed that Social Security would help them when they retired." I dunno, maybe this is because people like Sales and Sullivan keep waxing hysterical about a program that's in perfectly good shape, and don't hear enough from people understand that as the economy expands we can afford to (and should) adjust benefits accordingly. 

--Scott Lemieux

Sure, most of them are relatively worthless, but everyone wants them -- especially those of the famous and/or powerful variety.

• Mike Huckabee, having already received the possibly-somewhat-coveted Chuck Norris endorsement, has now shored up Ric Flair's backing as well, which is sure to bring in the Nature Boy voting bloc. He's also locked up the Rapture-ready vote with the support of Tim LaHaye, co-author of the Left Behind series, which was soon followed by the support of Jerry Jenkins, the books' other author.
• Barack Obama got the Oprah endorsement months ago, and now she's touring with him in Iowa and New Hampshire.
• New Hampshire First Lady Dr. Susan Lynch has endorsed Hillary Clinton. Marc Ambinder gives us some perspective on this endorsement.
• Fred Thompson took a stroll through a South Carolina gun show and declared it "paradise," affectionately fondling an M-1 Garand rifle and Winchester shotgun as he courted the NRA, which has yet to make an endorsement.

--Kate Sheppard

• John Edwards released his plan to help Americans with the rising cost of heating their homes this winter. His proposal calls for the government to release the 700 million barrels of crude oil and 2 million barrels of home heating oil that we keep in reserve to protect consumers, increase funding for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, create federal programs that work with non-profits and states to administer low- or no-interest emergency loans to families, and double the budget of the federal home weatherization program to $500 million a year. On the regulatory side, it calls for strengthening anti-trust laws, reversing the deregulation trends of the past seven years, repealing subsidies and tax breaks that benefit oil companies, and greater enforcement of the environmental standards already in place on carbon-intensive industries. It also calls for investment in clean, cheap renewable energy, as well as improved CAFE standards, increased appliance and building efficiency, and wider use of biofuels.
• Mitt Romney went on the radio show of slavery denialist and recently named Discovery Institute senior fellow Michael Medved to talk about "the need for fiscal restraint." He called for cutting and consolidating economic development and teenage pregnancy prevention programs.
• Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were busy sparring on health care policy over the weekend in Iowa.
• Chris Dodd (who authored the Family and Medical Leave Act back in 1993) came out with his proposal for expanding that plan and addressing gender disparities in the workplace and in other areas of society. His plan includes measures like instituting paid family and medical leave, working with the Department of Labor to address income disparities between men and women of equitable education and experience, increasing access to high-quality and affordable child care, expanding the Child and Earned Income Tax Credit, and investing additional research dollars into diseases that disproportionately affect women.
• Fred Thompson unveiled his plan for a voluntary flat tax. The plan would allow taxpayers to choose to pay a flat income tax, charged at 10 percent for joint filers with income up to $100,000 or $50,000 for individuals and 25 percent on incomes higher than that. It would also permanently extend the Bush tax cuts, repeal the inheritance tax, and reduce the corporate tax from 35 percent to 27 percent. The plan doesn't include figures on how much this would cost the government in lost revenue, or how he intends to pay for programs like Medicare and Social Security, which we hear are popular with the seniors these days.

--Kate Sheppard

Today we saw an article in The New York Times explaining that Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney are squabbling about, among other things, Romney's record on fightin' crime in Massachusetts:

“I think that Governor Romney is trying to distract attention from what is clearly a mistake that he made, but the other big mistake that he made was crime went up,” Mr. Giuliani said. “Violent crime and murder went up while he was governor, and I think that that is something that talks about not just an isolated mistake, it talks about a series of mistakes.” The Romney campaign responded that federal crime statistics show that the violent crime rate in Massachusetts, which includes not only murder but also crimes like assault, dropped 7 percent during his tenure.

But his toughest comments were reserved for Romney. "Nobody thought of him as a fiscal conservative," Giuliani said. "People did think of me as a fiscal conservative. Romney says he tried to lower taxes. I give him credit for that. But he never accomplished it. I did accomplish it. . . . He wasn't particularly good at reducing crime. I was the most effective in the country at reducing crime. Murder went up when he was governor. Robbery went up. Violent crimes went up."

Romney accused Giuliani of mangling his facts. "He's got a real problem checking facts," Romney said during a Sunday afternoon interview, arguing that violent crime in Massachusetts declined 7 percent while he was governor. Giuliani aides immediately challenged that assertion.

Can you tell what's missing?

If I were an editor at one of these fine papers, and my reporters turned in one of these stories, I'd tell them to figure out whether Romney or Giuliani is telling the truth. You won't find it in either story. So which is it?

My curiosity piqued, I did something crazy: I typed "Massachusetts crime statistics" into Google. And you know what I found? This! A page on the state's web site with their crime reports!

So what's the answer? Statistics aren't yet available (at least not there) for 2006, so what we have are data from 2002, the year Romney got elected (which should serve as the baseline), plus 2003 through 2005. And what do we find? In 2003, total crime declined 3.1% from the previous year, and violent crime declined 1.7%. In 2004, total crime declined by 4.5%, and violent crime declined by 3.2%. In 2005, total crime declined by 2.9%, but violent crime increased by 4.75%.

As for the murders Giuliani mentioned, in 2002, before Romney took office, there were 171 murders in Massachusetts. Then there were 139 in 2003, back up to 167 in 2004, and 175 in 2005. Without knowing what happened in 2006, it appears, then, that on the whole we can say that Mitt Romney's tenure saw some decreases in overall crime, but the murder rate was about the same when he left as when he came in.

Was that so hard?

Here's the thing: Politicians lie. The only thing that will keep them from lying is if they know they'll pay a price. And the only ones who can make them pay that price are the reporters whose job it is to tell us what's going on. Unless reporters are willing to step in when candidates are arguing over "facts" and tell you which side is being honest, there is absolutely no incentive for the politicians to tell the truth. Rudy may well now be saying, "Hell, how about next time we just say crime increased on Romney's watch by a thousand percent? Who's going to stop us?"

UPDATE: Succumbing to the awesome power of TAPPED, the Washington Post included in this morning's paper a fact-check of Guiliani and Romney's claims.

--Paul Waldman

Responding to Chris Hedges' declaration that Hedges will refuse to pay his taxes if the U.S. goes to war with Iran, James Kirchick demonstrates one of the big features of the Marty Peretz clone software application suite, which enables the user to rebut any argument by asserting that The Nation was soft on Communism, and Arabs are stupid.

(Also, note to Kirchick: Refusing to pay taxes as a form of protest goes back a bit farther than Grover Norquist. I guess History needs to be installed separately, as an upgrade?)

--Matthew Duss

Dana previews a wave of anti-affirmative action ballot initiatives we can expect to see in 2008:

Connerly's organization, the American Civil Rights Institute, is calling his five-state 2008 push "Super Tuesday for Equal Rights." His movement is practiced at appropriating the language of equality from liberals. In 2006, Connerly's organizers in Michigan successfully put a "Civil Rights Initiative" on the ballot that rolled back race-consciousness in school admissions and public hiring, even though such programs have been protected by the Supreme Court.

Affirmative action supporters say voters were confused by the language of "Proposal 2," or the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative. It said state universities, colleges, and public employers should not "discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting." That's the same language Connerly is pushing in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, and Oklahoma.

Read the rest (and comment) here.

--The Editors

There's a lot of bad news in Washington, D.C.'s new report on the state of HIV/AIDS in the city: Not only does the data confirm earlier estimates that 1 in 20 District residents are infected -- the highest rate in the nation -- but it also reveals that two-thirds of HIV-positive patients in D.C. learn of their diagnosis so late that they develop AIDS within one year. Looks like the city's "Know Your Status" public awareness campaign isn't quite getting the job done.

Even sadder, all 36 of the D.C. children infected with HIV during the past five years contracted the disease prenatally, a tragedy that is medically preventable. If an HIV-positive expectant mother is treated with anti-retrovirals, delivers via C-section, and cuts out breast feeding, the rate of transmission between mother and baby can be reduced to 2 percent. Of course, that requires pregnant women know their status, and mandatory testing has been controversial. Five states currently require HIV tests for pregnant women, unless the patient specifically opts out. Since it's impossible to fight an epidemic without knowing who's infected -- and preventing a new generation from being born with the disease should be a priority -- D.C. should require doctors to routinely give HIV tests to pregnant women, while informing patients that they have the right to opt-out.

--Dana Goldstein

More surgenik propaganda from Noemie Emery:

"Eagerly anticipating the defeat in Iraq to which they are so much attached, some on the left have also been preparing for another contingency: the assault that they think they see coming, a drive to pin the whole wretched failure on them. Apparently, this will be "stab in the back" redux, a new iteration of the theme deployed so successfully in interwar Germany by a resourceful, ambitious Austrian corporal, who managed to propel his rise to power with the claim that World War I would have been won by his country, if not for sinister forces at home. Then, it was subversion by Jews and other disloyal elements. This time, in the left's imagining, the blame will fall on the press and the Democrats who, by pulling the plug at just the wrong moment, caused the loss of Iraq."

One has to be impressed at how Emery can mock Democrats for being wary of the "stab in the back" charge in a piece entirely built around the offensive assertion that Democrats long for an American defeat in Iraq. Silly leftists, such imaginations!

Emery describes Democratic resistance to the "surge success!" narrative this way:

"A pattern was emerging in which goalposts were moved steadily backward with each new accomplishment."

If brazen dishonesty were early '80s cult film, that sentence would be Repo Man. As I wrote last week, it is the Bush administration who defined the goal of the surge as national political reconciliation. It is the Bush administration who, recognizing that that Iraqi national political reconciliation would not be forthcoming, changed the rules so that the surge would receive a passing grade. It is the Bush administration and their defenders who moved the goalposts all the way up to the line of scrimmage, and who now condemn anyone who does not recognize a touchdown.

I count three historically awkward and politically poisonous analogies in Emery's piece: 1) the title, "The Stab That Failed," a reference to Communism, because everybody who reads The Weekly Standard, or rather has it read to them by their valet while they dine on the last of a species, knows that Democrats are a bunch of Commies; 2) the "stab in the back" accusation, of course; and 3) in the last paragraph, a reference to Democratic resistance to the "success!" narrative as "the Pickett's Charge of the Great War on Terror." People can make up their own minds about which of the major parties more closely hews to the values of the American Confederacy, but I think think this analogy is actually more telling than Emery would like it to be about how she and other conservatives view the war on terror, and who they view as the enemy in that war.

UPDATE: From yesterday's New York Times:

"With American military successes outpacing political gains in Iraq, the Bush administration has lowered its expectation of quickly achieving major steps toward unifying the country, including passage of a long-stymied plan to share oil revenues and holding regional elections.

Instead, administration officials say they are focusing their immediate efforts on several more limited but achievable goals in the hope of convincing Iraqis, foreign governments and Americans that progress is being made toward the political breakthroughs that the military campaign of the past 10 months was supposed to promote."

--Matthew Duss

Newsweek seems to think that Rudy Giuliani's seamy past (and present) is a positive attribute:

The proximity of good and bad, even in Giuliani's own family, seems to have given rise to his inflexible public code but more relaxed personal one—a bifurcation that will only become more important in the next 10 weeks or so, as generally conservative Republican primary voters decide whether to trust this unconventional figure with their nomination.

Some might think the moral ambiguity and thug appeal are "bad," or perhaps even "frightening" in politician, but the piece casts Giuliani's understanding of that "blurry line between saint and sinner" as the groundwork for his "moral code." It breezes past his problems with race, history of appointing criminals to powerful positions, and vindictiveness in both personal and political dealings, and ends with what one might consider a threat rather than your more customary conclusion:

Giuliani's upbringing has also given him an appreciation for the darker elements of the soul, and the strength required to keep them in check. He can be tolerant, particularly of his own failings or of those who are loyal to him. But don't cross him. In Rudy's world, that is one sin that cannot be forgiven.

--Kate Sheppard

In this edition, Mike Huckabee tosses out the artifice and simply says, yes, he should be president because he's the most Christian, and yes, he will be guided by the Bible, not the Constitution. Amazingly, he still comes off as a nice seeming guy, but just because he's the friendliest theocrat doesn't make him any less of a theocrat.

We've come a long way from John F. Kennedy, who said, "Whatever one's religion in his private life may be, for the officeholder, nothing takes precedence over his oath to uphold the Constitution and all its parts -- including the First Amendment and the strict separation of church and state." Meanwhile, Huckabee's promise to never let politics overwhelm his principles is interesting, given the context of the ad. As Marc Ambinder points out, Huckabee is battling Mitt Romney in Iowa, and this ad, somewhat subtly, tries to make his Christian faith the central issue of their race. That will, naturally, bring up Romney's Mormonism, and Huckabee is already on record trying to push that subject. "My faith," he's said, "is a pretty mainstream view of the world and of the Bible....You know what? I don't know what [Romney] believes. Even if I knew what his church believes, I don't know that I can say what he believes until he expresses it."

Yep. All principles, no politics That's Mike Huckabee.

----Ezra Klein

According to a couple of recent Washington Post items, it seems that perpetual war isn't the only policy of George W. Bush's that Rudy Giuliani wants to give us more of. Apparently, Rudy shares Dubya's habit of installing people with questionable qualifications but unquestioning loyalty in key administration positions:

"While some of his original appointments to high-level city jobs were well regarded, these critics describe a pattern in which capable appointees either quit or were pushed out, leaving the top levels of the Giuliani administration increasingly populated by friends and close associates. Some of the later appointees became shrouded in scandal, including Bernard B. Kerik, the former police commissioner indicted this month on 16 counts of corruption, mail and tax fraud, obstruction of justice, and lying to the government.

[...]

Hiring political allies for top jobs has a long history in city government, and Giuliani was hardly the first mayor of New York to bring along loyalists to be his advisers inside City Hall. What set him apart, observers say, was the extent to which he also emphasized loyalty in looking for people beyond those City Hall aides to run city agencies.

[...]

Giuliani "had a blind spot when it came to people he knew well" and "very little respect for the vetting process," [former head of the office of emergency management Jerome] Hauer said. "The competent people in the administration all tended to leave because they got tired of the borderline-incompetent people who got in. He ran off the professionals because they were difficult to work with. If they didn't do things the way he wanted or overshadowed him, he got furious."

Wonderful.

--Matthew Duss

Let's say you want to renovate your house, but you don't have the quarter million dollars it's going to cost lying around. What do you do? Get a home equity loan? Pshaw - that's for little people. Me, I get an Israeli billionaire defense contractor to give the money to a Brooklyn marble salesman, who then cuts me a check. That's what I do.

Or at least that's what you do if you're Bernie Kerik. Lots of people probably missed this latest revelation in the saga of Kerik, Rudy Giuliani's erstwhile right hand man, coming as it did over the holiday. But as the New York Times reported on Saturday, the money started with one Eitan Wertheimer, an Israeli industrialist "whose family’s vast holdings include companies with United States Defense Department contracts." Wertheimer gave the money to Shimon Cohen, described by the Times as "a marble and stone merchant who has been a friend of Mr. Kerik’s for several years."

This all happened in 2003. Then two years ago, city investigators looking into Kerik's finances find out about the money and interview Cohen, who tells them "that in handing the money over, he had not discussed any interest with Mr. Kerik nor set any timetable for repayment." What's a quarter mil between friends? You pay it back, you don't pay it back, whatever. Then nine days after the investigators interview Cohen, by an amazing coincidence, Kerik gives him back the money, with interest.

I've noticed that when he's questioned about Kerik, Giuliani tends to wax philosophical. How much do you really know people, he'll say. Everyone has some good and some bad in them, and Bernie did a lot of good. And so on. It's a very clever technique to shift the discussion away from the specifics, as in, exactly what about Kerik made you think that he would be a good pick to run the Department of Homeland Security?

Let me make a bold prediction: this won't be the last bit of Kerik's corruption we hear about.

--Paul Waldman

The British and the Germans are in a spat about helicopter air support in Afghanistan. According to the British, German helicopters refused to continue supporting a combined British and Afghan formation in combat against the Taliban because... it was getting dark.

"For us ze war is over by teatime, ja," ran the headline in the Nov. 18 edition of the (London) Sunday Times. The British weekly accused the Germans of having abandoned their NATO allies in an offensive against the Taliban. Apparently, Bundeswehr medical evacuation helicopters pulled out in the middle of the battle because they needed to be back on home base by sundown. The other NATO forces were thus forced to retreat as well, the newspaper said.

"We were attacking the bad guys, then at three or four o'clock the helicopters are leaving," a Norwegian officer told the Sunday Times. "We had to go back to base. We should have had Norwegian helicopters. At least they can fly at night."

Abandoned by their Western allies, some 600 Afghan soldiers were also forced to retreat until a convoy of U.S. Humvees arrived the next day to reinforce them.

There are some interesting things going on here. Public opposition to the war runs pretty high in Germany, which is in part a consequence of U.S. policy, both in terms of the generally inadequate support given to the Afghanistan operations and because of the invasion of Iraq. So, the German government is in a bit of a difficult position regarding the entire deployment; significant losses might make it hard for Germany to continue. At the same time I don't have too much sympathy for the Germans; as part of NATO they agreed to participate in this operation, they have significant excess military capacity, and they're letting other countries (like Norway, the UK, and Canada) bear the brunt of the war.

It's fair to say that this kind of conflict is endemic to coalition warfare. Coalitions are great in terms of aggregating capability (more is better) and for creating political legitimacy, but they often lead to burden-shedding and efforts to avoid responsibility. In this case it's probably better to have the Germans there (even if there performance is lacking), but friction does make a coalition less than the sum of its parts.

Via Danger Room.

--Robert Farley

This article on Bill Clinton campaigning for Hillary Clinton in Iowa (via Andrew Sullivan) highlights this quote from the current Clinton candidate last week: "As someone said the other day, there seems to be a pattern: It takes a Clinton to clean up after a Bush."

Sure, it's supposed to be funny. But I like it better when we at least pretend America isn't dynastic.

I say this completely aside from anything about Hillary Clinton's politics or policies, but this should really clear things up for anyone who wonders why my generation tends toward cynicism about politics. A Bush or a Clinton has been on the ballot in every presidential election since well before I was even conceived, and we're supposed to find it endearing. Since 1980. We don't know what it's like not to have a system that's dominated not only by two parties, but dominated by two families. It has to do something to the political psyche.

--Kate Sheppard

The latest from the War On (Some Classes of People Who Use Some) Drugs, a/k/a where the Constitution goes to die. Marcy Wheeler does a very good job of explaining the illogic behind claims that the government doesn't need probable cause to get access to tracking data; if taken seriously, it would eviscerate large parts of the Bill of Rights. It would also make hash of existing Fourth Amendment doctrine; one doesn't surrender their constitutional rights by using new private technologies to communicate with other people. As Justice Stewart correctly observed, "the Fourth Amendment protects people -- and not simply 'areas.'" People should be entitled to the reasonable expectation that the state will not have access to private tracking data, email, etc. without some independent reason to suspect wrongdoing.

Turns out that suggesting women shouldn't be allowed to vote if they're motivated by feminism, and that they have "real things to do" instead of politics isn't so good for a guy's career: As Zach Roth writes at the New York Observer, MSNBC Senior V.P. Phil Griffin told NPR last week that Tucker Carlson was less part of the MSNBC "brand" than Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann. The New York Times reported earlier this month that Carlson's 6 p.m. show, the only explicitly conservative offering in the network's evening line-up, is at serious risk of being canceled.

--Dana Goldstein

After a brief redemption as minority whip, Sen. Trent Lott -- of the Strom Thurmond for President campaign -- will announce today that he will leave the Senate before the year's end, in the middle of his term. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a Republican, will appoint Lott's replacement.

--Dana Goldstein

• As I've mentioned a few times now, Edwards has been all over the Thanksgiving hook this week to talk about his policies on poverty and hunger. Today he released his plan to fight hunger in America, which includes some of the obvious ideas – raise the minimum wage, cut taxes for low-income workers, improve public schools, increase affordable housing offerings, provide universal health care, and improve unemployment. It also includes some of the less obvious ideas, like passing a farm bill with strong nutrition programs, improving school meals (and providing more of them for children from low-income families free of charge), improving meal plans for seniors, improving the food security of poor neighborhoods, and providing energy assistance so families don't have to choose between buying food or paying the heating bill.
• Obama put out a statement on food shortage today as well, though not the same sort of comprehensive plan. In it, he made several legislative requests: "To help address this, we need to stand up to the special interests, bring Republicans and Democrats together, and pass the Farm Bill immediately. And while we're at it, let's strengthen the Emergency Food Assistance Program, the Food Stamp Program and the Commodity Supplemental Food Programs and launch additional anti-hunger initiatives to help ensure that no American goes hungry." The statement didn't mention specifics about what that Farm Bill should look like, however.
• Clinton's campaign offices are accepting donations of nonperishable foods to be delivered to local food programs.
• The front-running Republicans also came out with holiday-themed statements. Giuliani's focused on pilgrims and tyranny. Romney's focused on the military (sorry, doesn't appear to be on his website). And Thompson talked about Ronald Reagan, whose legacy as an actor-cum-politician is probably the thing Thompson should be most thankful for this year in the absence of an actual campaign.

--Kate Sheppard

• Mike Huckabee has pulled statistically even with Mitt Romney in Iowa, and into third place in a Reuters/Zogby national poll -- ahead of Romney.

• New Hampshire does not look as good for him, but at least the state has finally set its primary date, January 8.

• Bill Richardson is touting a surge there.

• The neglected John Edwards gets a big New York Times story and -- while it can't be what he'd hoped for -- it's a must-read for historians of '04. It also raises the intriguing question of whether what Edwards learned from the 2004 general election race is that it's better to be in the Bush role than the Kerry-Edwards one. Certainly Edwards' attacks on Clinton's straightforwardness are more reminiscent of the campaign Bush waged against Kerry than the one Edwards waged against Dick Cheney in 2004.

• Michael Currie Schaffer deftly takes on "[t]he generational fallacy" at the heart of Andrew Sullivan's argument for Barack Obama.

• And Obama decides that what his possible general election campaign really needs is more video of him talking about having done drugs and chased girls in high school. Rudy Giuliani responds with perplexing forgiveness and says he values Obama's honesty.

Perhaps it's the spirit of the holidays. Have a happy one.

--Garance Franke-Ruta

Michelle Obama has announced that she's going to delay her appearance on The View, originally scheduled for Dec. 5, until after the end of the Writers Guild of America strike. "Michelle Obama will not cross a picket to line to appear on 'the View.' When the strike ends she looks forward to appearing," says Obama spokesman Bill Burton.

That could take a while -- under the worst case scenario, the strike may last until June 2008 (the last such strike lasted 22 weeks). This actually raises a pretty significant question for the Democratic field.

If the Democratic presidential candidates forgo their Dec. 10 CBS debate on account of a different though related strike, as they have said they will, and also commit to forgoing appearances on chats shows like The View until the WGA strike is over, as Michelle Obama now has, what happens if the WGA strike continues into early- to mid-next year? Hewing to commitments to avoid crossing picket lines seems likely to have some impact on the candidates' abilities to get their messages out, especially in the Feb. 5 states, or, at the very least, to target them as they had planned.

--Garance Franke-Ruta

The Saudi 19-year old who was sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in jail after being the victim of a violent gang rape is fighting back. She plans to appeal the decision, and her family and lawyers are ignoring the court's warning that she not speak to the media about her plight.

Here's what happened: The young woman -- who is a minority Shiite Muslim -- was riding in a car with a male friend last year when two men climbed into the vehicle, took control of it, and drove to a secluded location. There the woman was raped by 7 men and her friend was attacked.

The rapists, who are Sunni, were sentenced to between two and nine years in jail. The woman was convicted for riding in a car with a man to whom she is not related, which is against Saudi law. It's a barbaric legal code and a barbaric sentence, not only because of the tragedy of this one woman's story, but because it sends the message to every Saudi woman that she will be punished if she dares to report a rape.

The Canadian government has strongly condemned the ruling and will lodge complaints with international organizations. Bush administration...are you listening?

--Dana Goldstein

As Michelle Obama prepares to co-host ABC ladyfest "The View" next month, John and Elizabeth Edwards have decided to cancel a planned interview on the show in order to stand in solidarity with striking Writer's Guild workers. Edwards says that he will also sit out CBS' Dec. 10 presidential debate if writers are still picketing the network.

Here's the statement from the campaign:

“Elizabeth and I will honor the members of the Writers Guild of America who are on strike at ‘The View’ by canceling our appearance on the show next week. I call on all of my fellow candidates and their campaigns to do the same.

“In addition, we will also honor any picket lines at CBS News, up to and including the CBS presidential debate on December 10th. As I said when I walked the WGA picket line in California last Friday, these workers are making a simple request for their fair share of the huge profits being made by multinational media corporations.

“I am a strong believer in collective bargaining, and I hope that in each of these disputes, management and the union are able to agree on a just settlement. But until those settlements are reached, I will stand firmly with these workers in their fight for a better life.”

--Dana Goldstein

Here's one of my favorite recipes:

Wild Turkey Apricot Stuffing

Bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon
1/2 cup dried apricots, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup golden raisins
medium onion, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
loaf of white bread, cubed
7 tablespoons butter
1 1/2 cup vegetable stock

Soak apricots and raisins in 1/3 cup bourbon overnight. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Heat veggie stock in sauce pot, melt in 5 tablespoons butter. Pour two fingers of bourbon into a lowball glass, add a squirt of water. Melt 2 tablespoons butter in a large skillet, add onion, celery, garlic, occasionally tossing artfully while sipping drink until onion is slightly carmelized. Add all ingredients in large mixing bowl, mix well but don't pulverize. Spoon mixture into casserole pan or pot, tamp down gently, bake for 35-45 minutes or until top browns slightly. Chase with water, if desired.

--Matthew Duss

I'm with Dana, this whole generational analysis of politics is nuts. Andrew Sullivan may be very excited to see Barack Obama take us past the tawdry psychodramas of the Clinton years, but Andrew Sullivan was a happy and enthusiastic participant in the tawdry psychodramas of the Clinton years! And Sullivan isn't, so far as I know, a baby boomer! So clearly this isn't an issue of birthdays. Indeed, you can't evaluate individuals by way of their generations, or membership in large, varied groups. Broad trends do not predict individual outcomes (there's your stats lesson for the day). If you think an Obama presidency will be less contentious, you can ground that belief in Obama's rhetoric, his policy positions, his method of resolving political conflict, the relative contentiousness of the issue areas he wishes to focus on, or an analysis of the various forces that polarize politics and why they will give Obama a pass. The fact that Obama is 46, rather than 52, is really neither here nor there.

--Ezra Klein

Two more Barack Obama data points worth noting:

• The Los Angeles Times' Seema Mehta reports that Iowa City college students are organizing to disperse themselves across the state for Obama in an effort to turn the problem of the early caucus date into a campaign boon:

  "Hawkeyes for Obama" has named "hometown caucus captains" across the state.

  These volunteers are assigned a group of students who are originally from their hometowns, and meet with them on campus during the school year.

  Over winter break, "we'll keep in touch with them, make sure they know where their precinct caucus location is, and make sure they go out to the caucus," said Andrew Wiese, co-chairman of the campus group and a senior from Cedar Rapids. "We're planning on doing whatever we can to make sure supporters go out and go to the caucus over the break."...

  More than 5,000 University of Iowa students are Illinois residents, a pool of potential Obama supporters who must return to campus to vote. Hawkeyes for Obama is setting up carpools between Illinois and Iowa City, and trying to find couches for students to crash on after the caucus.

• And Dan Balz looks at Hillary Clinton's position in Iowa in light of the events of 2004 and her less than stellar level of support as potential caucus-goers' second choice candidate:

  Even in the depths of Kerry's problems, when his campaign was sliding downward, his advisers took heart from that fact that he seemed acceptable across the entire spectrum of the party in Iowa. When Howard Dean began to slip, it was easy for many Iowa Democrats to shift to Kerry. It's not clear that will happen for Clinton.

  On the other hand:

  When Dean imploded, Iowa Democrats turned to Kerry not because they found him the most likable candidate but because they thought he would be their strongest general election candidate and because they believed he had the right experience to be president.

  On those attributes, Clinton continues to dominate the Democratic race.

  Indeed. The "experience" question was critical in Kerry's 2004 Iowa victory, according to the ABC News caucus entrance poll analysis:

  Kerry whaled among caucus goers looking for a candidate with the "right experience"; while it ranked only fourth on the attributes list, cited by 15 percent, he won the initial support of a huge 71 percent of those who cited it.

  Clinton is doubtless trying to repeat that success with the experience-minded fraction of caucus-goers, which is why it is so important for her and Obama to call each other's experience credentials into question.

--Garance Franke-Ruta

Paul Waldman writes that young voters are particularly important in this election, not because they alone will pick the next president, but because of what their increasingly progressive attitudes suggest about the evolution of politics.

In short, it isn't just that young people take the progressive side in the culture war; for them the war is over. And because of demographic shifts and the enormous effects of the Internet, today's young people have an outlook on the world that is more open and cosmopolitan than it was even a decade or two ago. As Rick Perlstein recently wrote in the New York Times Magazine, "You used to have to go to college to discover your first independent film, read your first forbidden book, find freaks like yourself who shared, say, a passion for Lenny Bruce. Now for even the most provincial students, the Internet, a radically more democratic and diverse culture -- and those hip baby-boomer parents -- take care of the problem."

Though it may not be reflected yet in national polls, the candidate generating the most enthusiasm among the young is unsurprisingly Barack Obama. As others have noted recently, if Obama were to become president, the symbolic value of him taking the oath of office -- a multi-racial man who was partly raised overseas in a Muslim country -- would provide such an extraordinary contrast with his predecessor, the very embodiment of what many see as the worst of America in all his ignorance, arrogance, and parochialism, that it would instantly suck the life out of a good portion of the anti-Americanism that has presented such an obstacle in recent years.

Read the rest (and comment) here.

--The Editors

The Times has a piece today about the Kerry/Edwards campaign, a reluctant partnership that seems to have been part of the reason they didn't succeed in '04. Edwards still wanted to be president. The two couldn't agree on a campaign slogan. Edwards wouldn't play attack dog. The list goes on; the two just didn't fit as running mates, and the campaign couldn't deliver a unified, clear message about what a Kerry/Edwards White House would look like.

It's an interesting tale for today's race. At last week's debate, Wolf Blitzer asked the candidates if they would support any of the potential eventual nominees. All said yes (well, Kucinich qualified his response with "Only if they oppose war as an instrument of policy"). But would (and should) they want to share a ticket?

On the running mate front, of course there was Tom Friedman's asinine suggestion earlier this week that an Obama-Cheney ticket would make for good Iran policy. But in seriousness, who the candidates pick -- whether it's among each other, or outside the ranks of the current presidential field, will have a major impact on how they fare in the general election. Earlier in the season, there were musings about the efficacy of a Clinton-Obama ticket (or an Obama-Clinton ticket), but as the campaign becomes more and more of a spitting contest between the two, that possibility seems less likely, and possibly even a bad idea, as it's uncertain that any of the three frontrunners would be able to put up a unified front as running mates. And it's already pretty clear that Edwards doesn't really want to be vice-president.

On the GOP side, the bickering has been less extreme, lending to the possibility that we could very well see a Giuliani-Huckabee ticket or some other combination among the top four. The possibilities for balancing the ticket between a hawkish foreign policy candidate and a socially conservative candidate, with both having spent the past nearly two years getting face time with voters, is a lot richer there -- and somewhat troubling.

--Kate Sheppard

That's the rallying cry behind Hot Tub Tom's new venture, the Coalition for a Conservative Majority (CCM), a political advocacy group designed to unite all those fractured conservatives around the cause of out-mobilizing Democrats. "For six years now," reads CCM's opening salvo, "former leaders of the Clinton administration have studied and surpassed the conservative grassroots network, creating a liberal coalition unprecedented in its size, scope, and funding." And who better to lead conservatives out of the wilderness than Ken Blackwell, the former Ohio Secretary of State who presided over the controversial election of 2004, was routed in his bid to become Ohio's governor last year, and who now works at the Family Research Council.

Wasn't it the conventional wisdom just a short time ago that conservatives were a mighty bunch united around making America an unregulated Christian nation with no taxes? Surveying the landscape from a minority position, DeLay now believes it's the liberals who are unified, largely because of what he calls "the liberal Shadow Party," by which he apparently refers to the vast Soros conspiracy. "The liberal Shadow Party," according to CCM's website, "has been built for one reason: to elect Hillary Clinton President of the United States in 2008." (In 2008, the Christian right is spelling unity H-I-L-L-A-R-Y.) "They have the money, the organization, and the coordination to do it," CCM goes on, "and there is no conservative network capable of standing in its path. Until now."

The venture is classic DeLay. He wasn't beaten by his own dirty dealings, self-aggrandizement, or hubris. Instead, it was all the enemy's fault. They out-maneuvered us, DeLay is saying, but we won't let it happen again because God's on our side.

CCM appears to be operated out of DeLay's political consulting company, First Principles LLC. And if you expect to find out who's funding CCM, don't hold your breath. It is organized as a 501(c)(4) political advocacy organization, which, unlike 527s, do not have to disclose their donors.

Read more in today's FundamentaList.

--Sarah Posner

I actually agree with two points that Ross Douthat makes here. First, I think that there's a tendency to assume that Roe's popular support made its upholding inevitable, but this really isn't the case. If Reagan had appointed Bork and Scalia in reverse order, for example, Roe would have been overturned. Although most sophisticated observers understand that the Supreme Court is better understood as an adjunct to national governing coalitions than a stalwart protector of unpopular minorities, it's easy to push this too far; the Court wouldn't have been prevented from overturning Roe any more than the Warren Court was prevented from issuing Everson and Miranda. (Indeed, as all three examples suggest it's entirely possible for positions to be broadly consistent with current elite governing coalitions and be unpopular among the public at large.) Second, he is of course right that Alito and Roberts are doctrinaire conservatives who will never find an abortion regulation unconstitutional, although their fake "minimalism" may mean that even with a fifth vote we'll see the complete gutting rather than the explicit overturning of Roe. (Of course, at this late date nobody but Ann Althouse could think otherwise.)

On the other hand, we have the tired claim about of a "shameful-but-effective Democratic smear campaign against Robert Bork." Obviously, the Senate being a political body, criticisms of Bork were not expressed in the tones of an academic seminar. But the core of the case against Bork was that he 1)entirely rejected any implicit right of privacy, meaning that the state not only had the authority to pass arbitrarily enforced laws requiring a woman to carry her pregnancy to term but also to pass arbitrarily enforced laws preventing people from using contraception, 2)he had a consistently awful record on civil rights including public claims that the Civil Rights Act was unconstitutional and hostility to claims of gender equality, and 3)took an exceptionally narrow view of free speech rights. This campaign was effective because it was accurate -- there were at the time enough moderate Republicans to oppose his views on privacy and no Southern Democratic Senator (given that they required near unanimous black support to be competitive) could have supported someone with Bork's record on civil rights. Some of these issues have become less important over time -- conservatives have largely adopted libertarian positions on issue #3, and many reactionary nominees are now young enough not to have contemporaneously opposed the Civil Rights Act. On issue #1, however, justices like Roberts and Alito are easier to confirm than Bork not because their positions are more popular but because the lesson they learned from Bork is to simply refuse to state their position explicitly. Hence the high comedy of Republicans who had admired Alito for being a doctrinaire conservative suddenly reacting with outrage against those pointing out the obvious fact that he held very conservative positions on legal issues as soon as he was nominated. This silliness, of course, could stop as soon as he was safely on the Court. This kabuki does, however, make "Borking" more difficult (or, as the case with Thomas, be reflected through discussions of marginally relevant personal issues.) This is not, however, a good thing.

--Scott Lemieux

The Commission on Presidential Debates announced today that they have picked Oxford, Miss.; St. Louis; Mo. Nashville, Tenn.; and Hempstead, N.Y., as sites for the presidential and vice-presidential debates next year. Leaders in New Orleans, one of the 16 finalists, have said they feel slighted by the selection, and that holding a debate there would have stood as a rebuke of the Bush administrations failures during and after Hurricane Katrina. But the Democratic co-chair of the commission told the Associated Press that "New Orleans did not measure up." Both Clinton and Edwards have already come out with statements criticizing the decision, noting that hosting the event there would both bring attention to the continued recovery efforts there and up the pressure to make sure those efforts continue.

While the bipartisan debate commission selecting the sites for the debate is not exactly comparable to how each party selects the host city for their national convention, if the Democrats are so concerned about New Orleans, perhaps they should have lobbied harder to hold the DNC there. In 2004, the Republicans selected New York to host their national convention, hoping to highlight the strength and character of the city and its efforts to revive the city after September 11. It was a publicity stunt, a rallying cry for conservatives, a plug for patriotism. For the Democrats, that could have been New Orleans next year -- a chance to draw attention to the site and use that to build upon the candidate's hopes for the future. But for the Republicans, the selection would probably raise some touchy subjects about race, class, and the Bush administration's blunders. I'm guessing the that made some on the commission uncomfortable, so on some level, it makes sense that they wouldn't select the New Orleans. But not so for the Dems.

But here's something even more interesting about the debates in '08:

This is the first time the bipartisan commission, which has overseen the debates since 1988, plans a format allowing the candidates to question each other. Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr., the commission’s Republican co-chairman, said that contrary to past experience, the candidates would not be allowed to change the format. "The candidates aren’t going to dictate to us anymore," Mr. Fahrenkopf said.

I'm curious to see what that will look like. Last week's calamitous CNN debate in which the Democratic candidates were supposed to self-moderate got out of hand at several points. Despite the inanity we've seen at most of the debates this primary season, I still tend to prefer the debates where journalist and pundit types ask the questions, or, even more, when the audience gets to ask them (and preferably without the interference of the organizers).

--Kate Sheppard

Way before Andrew Sullivan canonized the theme, Barack Obama was presenting himself as the only presidential candidate who could pull the country out of its baby boomer "culture wars" mentality. I heard him make this argument explicitly at the Planned Parenthood forum in July. Now, in a thoughtful piece, The Nation's Lakshmi Chaudhry goes a step further, identifying Obama not only as anti-baby boom, but as a typical Gen X-er. Although the generation that came of age in the 1980s and early 1990s is widely understood as politically apathetic, Chaudhry convincingly argues that some of the most exciting people in progressive organizing today hail from Gen-X: Markos, the Drum Major Institute's Andrea Batista Schlesinger, and Sustainable South Bronx's Majora Carter.

But here's the problem with lumping Barack Obama into that group: He's technically a baby boomer. Born in 1961, the Senator from Illinois predates the end of the baby boom (1946-1964) by three years. Of course, it's true that Obama's political rhetoric and life experiences set him apart from candidates like Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush, who seem so defined by what they were doing (or not doing) during the late sixties and early seventies, when Obama was just a kid.

I point out that Obama is a card-carrying member of the baby boom mostly to call attention to how silly these distinctions are. Sure, the experience of living through Vietnam and the student protest movement indelibly shaped politicians like Clinton and Mitt Romney. But every generation has its liberals and its conservatives, its hopeful optimists and its hard-nosed power brokers, its intellectuals and its businesspeople. Furthermore, a "generation" is almost impossible to define in any self-contained way.

That's why Bill Richardson's accusation in the last debate that Obama wants to set off a "generational war" was particularly lame. Obama cares very much about the youth vote. That might prove to be a political folly, but his kind of youth outreach is incredibly important to the future of Democratic politics, and it's hardly a "generational" war cry.

--Dana Goldstein

Special Return of Obamamania edition:

• Yesterday's ABC News/Washington Post poll showed a slight shift up for Barack Obama in Iowa, and a slight downward shift for John Edwards. A key graph to think about:

  despite widespread impressions that Obama is banking on unreliable first-time voters, Clinton depends on them heavily as well: About half of her supporters said they have never attended a caucus. Forty-three percent of Obama's backers and 24 percent of Edwards's would be first-time caucus-goers. Previous attendance is one of the strongest indicators of who will vote.

  This has been widely intepreted as a sign of Clinton's weakness in the state, but worth recalling here is that in recent elections the Iowa caucuses have been 40 to 60 percent first-time caucusers, and that John Kerry's success in the state in 2004 was predicated in part on the choices of these newbies. According to the ABC News entrance survey of caucus-goers (PDF):

  Kerry won the initial preference of first-time caucus-goers, while Edwards and Dean roughly tied for second in this group. (First-timers made up 55 percent of participants, up from 46 percent in 2000.)...Kerry and Edwards had strong appeal among late deciders: Forty-one percent of caucus goers “finally decided” in the last week; of them 39 percent gave their initial preference to Kerry, 35 percent to Edwards, just 14 percent to Dean and six percent to Gephardt.

  The campaigns are working with internal turnout estimates that are much higher than the 2004 final numbers on the theory that the percent of first-timers could be even higher than in the last cycle. Certainly the crowds at the other major events on the Democratic calendar have all been of the biggest ever variety. What this says to me is that both Clinton and Obama could be well-positioned to win if they can also secure a base of experienced caucus-goers, and have any kind of momentum in the week after Christmas. (Obama is doing better than Clinton on both these counts at present.) John Edwards, on the other hand, will have trouble winning if the caucus-attendee universe expands because of his apparent inability to expand his pool of supporters beyond those who've come out in the past.

• Obama narrows the gap with Clinton in New Hampshire, as well -- mainly because she's fallen, rather than because he has gained new support.

• Obama and Clinton go at it over the question of their respective foreign policy experience.

• President Bush predicts that Clinton will nonetheless win the Democratic nod -- then lose the general election.

• Via Ben Smith, who was making a different point, this Obama CV reminds (as has a commenter and former Obama student on this site) that Obama was never a law professor, only a non-tenured law senior lecturer, no matter how professorial he may on occasion seem.

• Jeff Zeleny reports that Obama is smartly wooing the small-circulation local Iowa papers: "There is, perhaps, no better way to give an hourlong presidential visit far greater staying power than appearing on the pages of the weekly newspaper, particularly in an edition that is likely to be sitting on coffee tables at Thanksgiving time."

• And Obama's new Iowa ad this week launched the long-awaited "Chapter Two" of his campaign with a non-biographical focus on economic issues affecting working and middle-class voters:

--Garance Franke-Ruta

I read Courtney Martin's piece yesterday on the state of youth activism, and while it was good, I think she gets it wrong. Martin argues that institutions hold all the power and are killing radical individualism, but I think she forgets that not all institutions are bad. In fact, they can make youth more organized, better funded, and more effective. I'm an associate editor at Campus Progress, one of the largest and best funded progressive youth organizations in the country and I've been really impressed with some of the young people we've encountered. Martin's argument is that youth today are just too safe. They're resume-builders, not radicals, she says. But what's wrong with building your resume? Then you're better equipped to go on to make those big changes.

Martin uses anecdotal evidence at a Catholic college about a girl concerned about the aesthetics of her antiwar ribbon as evidence that the youth today are silly, frivolous, and disengaged. To be fair, this is hardly a new argument. Our friend Rick Perlstein has argued that youth today just ain't as good as the baby boomers. It's true that data shows disengagement among the majority of youth when it comes to politics, but I tend to think that the differences between this generation and previous ones is pretty minor. Does Martin really think, for instance, that there weren't hippies that were worried about how their beads might look? The danger is in nostalgia. Activism in the 1960s was radical, but it wasn't perfect. Today, if we go around specifying methods for change, we limit the outcomes.

Additionally, the kinds of radical alternatives that Martin proposes: computer viruses, mock draft cards, and activism dance parties seem rather ineffective ways of making change. Her argument that working within the system is bad doesn't really ring true to me. After all, in the end, that's how change is made. We have some of the brightest people under 30 in high level positions on campaigns, running activist organizations, providing elite commentary, and even running for office. I'd hardly call that disengagement.

--Kay Steiger

The Supreme Court has decided to hear an appeal to the D.C. Circuit decision striking down D.C.'s handguns ban. I'll have more discussion about this later, but to stimulate discussion in the interim I'll say that 1) the most plausible interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, I think, confers an individual right to bear arms, although this is certainly not the only reasonable interpretation; 2) given this, D.C.'s draconian ban is (for better or worse) clearly unconstitutional, but 3) more reasonable gun control measures may be constitutional even if the right to bear arms is considered an individual right.

--Scott Lemieux

When conservatives draw parallels to the fall of the Roman Empire and America's future, they invariably invoke moral decline as the key commonality. Here, for example, is conservative columnist LaShawn Barber running down the list of depravities (growing tolerance for adultery; abounding feminism!) in which she finds Roman precursors to our decaying nation today.

I confess that I have not yet read Cullen Murphy's new book, Are We Rome?, which examines the parallels between the two empires. But I was struck by something I heard historian and best-selling author Thomas Cahill -- who has a much deeper grip on Roman history than Barber -- tell Bill Moyers recently: "I think, for instance, why did Rome fall? Because of things interior and exterior. The interior part was less and less just taxation. More and more it was the poor and the middle class that bore the burden of taxation. And the wealthy and very wealthy pretended to pay but didn't. And I think we're in a very similar situation with regard to that." (The exterior part, said Cahill, was Rome's xenophobic fear of people trying to get into their city, to which he drew parallels to some American's current reaction to Hispanic immigration.)

So yes, conservatives, there are imperial parallels. But the moral outrage crowd so eager to decry America's declining values -- and which uses that complaint as a Thomas Frankian ploy to exacerbate economic equality -- happen to be the same folks whose policy values lead to the very economic circumstances that actually contributed led to Rome's fall. Talk about irony.

--Tom Schaller

The writers' strike is now in the middle of its third week, and the writers have been busy proving to studio executives that they don't need them to get their work out there. They're also using new media to prove how bunk the studios' claims that there's no money in digital media really are. Case in point, via Matt:

The writers have set up a blog, UnitedHollywood, and a YouTube page, which in no small way verifies who needs who around here.

--Kate Sheppard

At The Plank, Mike Crowley points to Karl Rove's first Newsweek column, called "How to Beat Hillary." (That's an overt reference to the "How do we beat the bitch?" comment at a John McCain rally. Don't ever say Karl's not a gentleman!) Rove led with the following anecdote:

[Hillary Clinton] tends to be, well, hard and brittle. I inherited her West Wing office. Shortly after the 2001 Inauguration, I made a little talk saying I appreciated having the office because it had the only full-length vanity mirror in the West Wing, which gave me a chance to improve my rumpled appearance. The senator from New York confronted me shortly after and pointedly said she hadn't put the mirror there. I hadn't said she did, just that the mirror was there. So a few weeks later, in another talk, I repeated the story about the mirror. And shortly thereafter, the junior senator saw me and, again, without a hint of humor or light in her voice, icily said she'd heard I'd repeated the story of the mirror and she … did … not … put … that mirror in the office.

It is a small but telling story: she is tough, persistent and forgets nothing. Those are some of the reasons she is so formidable as a contender, and why Republicans who think she would be easy to beat are wrong.

Crowley interprets the story as a pre-cursor to Clinton's current media strategy, "a more personalized version of what Hillary's press operation does all the time: Aggressively stamp out any misstatement about HRC before it can take on a life of its own in the popular mythology." That might be true, but I also see something else: A female politician wanting to make sure she doesn't come across as less-than-serious, as the kind of woman so obsessed with her looks that she has a full-length mirror installed at work.

--Dana Goldstein

• Obama officially released his education plan today in Manchester, N.H. The plan promises to reform No Child Left Behind, invest $10 billion in early childhood education programs for birth-through-five-years-old (shameless self-promotion: subscribers can read more on funding for early childhood programs here, in our December issue), invest in teachers, target at-risk children, expand the child and dependent care tax credit, and close the achievement gap. And the senator did talk about his plan for a $4,000 tax credit for college education and increased financial aid yesterday after all, though it's not included as part of the formal education policy statement. On a side note, how's this for an awkward accompanying photo?
• Over the weekend, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Dennis Kucinich participated in a forum on climate and energy hosted by Grist and Living on Earth. It was the first forum dedicated specifically to these topics, and all the candidates (both Dems and Republicans) were invited. Only these three showed, so the forum gave the three a chance to reiterate their stances on how to deal with climate change and energy concerns. It also gave Kucinich a chance to talk about being a vegan, and Clinton a chance to deflect questions about Lieberman-Warner. For some reflections on the event, I defer to Grist writer David Roberts, who was one of the questioners at the Saturday event. Read tons more on it here, and the entire video should be posted at Grist soon.
• Mitt Romney unveiled his health care reform plan in Florida, which he says is "a comprehensive solution to America's health care ills that expands access to affordable, portable, quality, private health insurance" via … you guessed it: tax cuts. It also calls for ending free, federally funded services to the uninsured and redirecting those funds to "resources to help the low-income uninsured purchase their own private health insurance," and it promises to expand and deregulate the private health insurance market. Oh, look, this one comes with a Powerpoint, too.

--Kate Sheppard

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is expected to offer a halt in construction at West Bank settlements before the Annapolis conference. But, Gershom Gorenberg asks, will Condoleezza Rice hold him to his promise?

Still, there's another, more public sign that settlement is back on the American agenda: The Ha'aretz daily reported last week that under U.S. pressure, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert would declare a freeze on settlement construction before the upcoming Annapolis peace parley, aimed at reviving the Israeli-Palestinian diplomatic process. Since Olmert doesn't want to discuss the core issues -- Jerusalem, refugees, borders -- at the conference, Washington wants him to signal to Palestinians and the Arab world that Israel really intends to give up occupied territory, or so anonymous Israeli government sources told Ha'aretz.

If Olmert comes through, the consulate's settlement staffer will have a stunning career opportunity: making sure that settlement really freezes over. Let me suggest some guidelines for the diplomat in the field, and for his superiors in Washington. First: Ask where the freeze actually applies, and from what stage in construction it takes effect.

Read the rest (and comment) here.

--The Editors

(Via Publius) Glenn Reynolds:

"If, as seems likely, Iraq succeeds, Republicans will be able to say it was in spite of the Democrats' efforts. If, as remains possible, it fails, Republicans will be able to say it was because of the Democrats' efforts."

Usually, people attempting to advance staggeringly disingenuous political arguments don't broadcast it like this, but, unfortunately, whatever points Reynolds may have gotten for candor are entirely canceled out by his only being candid about his intention to be dishonest.

Eric Martin unpacks Reynolds' nonsense:

"What remarkable analysis. Without definining, or even hinting at the definition of "success," Reynolds breezily sweeps aside myriad factors that have contributed to the failure of the Iraq endeavor to leave the blame solely at the feet of the Democrats. Not satisfied to leave the Dems on the hook for failure, Reynolds suggests that even if Iraq does succeed, we could still blame the Democrats for its near-failure. The troops have been stabbed in the back and that much is sure, says Reynolds, but the patient might yet pull through.

[...]

In Reynolds' world...Bush and his GOP compatriots have not been the cause of failures in Iraq even though they have been in control of every decision - large and small - every step of the way. Nor do the Iraqi people or regional rivals have any agency, apparently. No, an impotent, out of power Democratic Party that has made a total of zero decisions, and passed not a single piece of legislation against Bush's wishes, will be the cause of failure in Iraq, or the chief obstacle to a success that comes only through perseverence in the face of such obstructionism."

Read the whole thing.

--Matthew Duss

Tom Stoppard talks about how Syd Barrett partly inspired his new play, Rock 'n' Roll, which deals with young Czechoslovaks in the late 60's, turned on by Western culture and music, negotiating their identities under a suffocating Communist dictatorship.

Fred Kaplan uses Stoppard's play to ask whether this phenomenon could repeat itself in America's relationship with Arab publics.

"What inspired many of the Eastern bloc dissidents during the Cold War—what they found so alluring about the West—was not so much our market capitalism or parliamentary democracy; still less was it our government's policies. It was the insouciant freedom of our culture. It was our rock 'n' roll.

[...]

What does America have going for it now? What could we send out to the world that might have the same impact on, say, Arabs and Muslims today that rock, jazz, and B-movies had on Russians and Europeans during the Cold War?"

Kaplan notes an important difference between then and now:

"Since the world was divided into two blocs (the American-led West and the Soviet-led East), those who hated the East were predisposed to like the West. But today, in a world of dispersed power, people have many models from which to choose; Saudis or Egyptians who despise their autocratic regimes are more likely to find solace in Islamic fundamentalism than in any Western beacon."

I think this is right, but I also think that Kaplan gives too little credit to the debate taking place within the category of "Islamic fundamentalism." Marc Lynch has a long piece on the role that a new, tech savvy generation of reformers is playing in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, and how many young MB bloggers are using online debate fora to contest identities and develop new, multiple understandings of what it is to be modern, Arab, Egyptian, and Muslim. Though the MB rank and file is still dominated by a salafist orientation which looks suspiciously on attempts to accomodate Western ideas into Islamic cultures, these young activists are using their online pulpits to reframe the debate and wield influence disproportionate to their numbers.

Importantly, the fact that these discussions are happening online also enables women to participate in a way which would not be conceivable were they taking place down at the local mosque.

So while we can't really say that these activists are embracing U.S. popular culture in the same sense that the Charter 77 activists did, they are embracing U.S.-developed technologies in order to participate in the processes which are central to democracy: open and vigorous debate over the direction of their party and their nation. Needless to say, this is a positive development, and I think the best thing the U.S. could do at this point is say nothing, as any perceived U.S. support for these activists would severely undermine their credibility, while doing whatever we can to prevent President Mubarak from moving against them and replaying the too-common scenario of the regime crushing the moderates and strengthening the extremists in order to neccessitate continued authoritarian rule.

--Matthew Duss

My knowledge of genetic science is limited, but for the sake of conversation, I'd like to point to a series of Slate columns by William Saletan that buy into the theory that black people, on the whole, are less intelligent than whites, who are in turn less intelligent than Asians. Saletan says he's been mostly convinced by race-matters IQ studies, no matter their small correlation values. He points to the smaller brain size of sub-Saharan Africans, and to studies showing that African children develop earlier and grow into more dexterous adults, while whites and Asians are late bloomers with bigger brains.

But after laying out an argument that confirms centuries of racist ideology, Saletan reassures his readers that yes, he's still an egalitarian! After all, many individuals within each race buck the IQ trends. Hey, there are lots of stupid white people! And there's always Barack Obama! (Saletan's example, not mine.) So, despite everything Saletan has just written, he chides readers who might assume it's now okay to judge people based on the color of their skin.

The argument is schizophrenic, not least because while IQ may be a good predictor of an individual's academic and career success, Saletan doesn't grapple fully with the fact that while we know both genetics and environment affect a person's IQ, there's little evidence that genetics are the more important factor. Indeed, as Saletan points out himself in an aside:

Hereditarians admit that by their own reading of the data, non-genetic factors account for 20 to 50 percent of IQ variation. They think malnutrition, disease, and educational deprivation account for a big portion of the 30-point IQ gap between whites and black Africans. They think alleviation of these factors in the U.S. has helped us halve the deficit. Trans-racial adoption studies validate this. Korean adoption studies suggest a malnutrition effect of perhaps 10 IQ points. And everyone agrees that the black-white IQ gap closed significantly during the 20th century, which can't have been due to genes.

Does discussion about possible links between race and intelligence belong in our public discourse? Only if we exercise great caution. Deciding to believe that historically discriminated against Americans are dumber than whites, and then patting yourself on the back for remaining a political "egalitarian?" That doesn't cut it. We should never talk about how American children of different races perform on IQ tests without noting the vast inequalities in access to health care, nutrition, early childhood education, safe schools, and good teachers that still exist -- not in some theoretical society, but right here in the United States. Black children are much more likely to have been born preterm, to be uninsured, and to live in extreme poverty. About two-thirds of black kids attend racially and economically isolated schools, and those who don't are much more likely to be as proficient in math and reading as their white peers, even when they come from poor families.

How can we possibly draw conclusions about race, genetics, and intelligence in America until we significantly close these environmental disparities? Until then, any claim that black Americans are genetically inferior to white Americans is counterintuitive guesswork at best, and nefarious at worst.

--Dana Goldstein

Matt Duss on how the neocons have moved the goalposts on Iraq, and have taken to calling anyone who doubts the efficacy of the surge "defeatist" and "dishonorable."

Pointing this out is not meant to dishonor the sweat and sacrifices of American troops (or the sacrifice of the families who desperately want them home), only to make the broader point that Bush and his water-carriers in the right-wing media are clutching at anything which can conceivably help them keep the high ground in a losing ideological battle, even stand upon the already-overburdened shoulders of our troops.

By next week, there will be 175, 000 American troops on Iraq -- the most since the invasion. Ironically, this comes at a time when American public disapproval of the war is at its highest. A full 68 percent of the American public disapproves of the Iraq War, so it's understandable why we're seeing this big propaganda push. To a great extent, the President and his enablers have treated the war in Iraq first and foremost as a message problem, something to be defended with clever arguments, not to be won with better policies. For them, the central front in the war on terror has always been the American media, and the near enemy has always been domestic political opposition. Neoconservatives have constructed a deeply divisive and disingenuous political narrative in which the return to merely unacceptable levels of violence in Iraq is evidence of victory, and disagreement is evidence of "not supporting the troops."

But don't be fooled: This isn't victory. It's not even close.

Read the rest (and comment) here.

--The Editors

Following up on his article last Saturday about the federal raid on the National Organization for the Repeal of the Federal Reserve and Internal Revenue Code (Norfed), a "sound money" organization which has been marketing "Ron Paul Dollars," the Washington Post's Alec MacGillis notes an interesting defense against the government's assertion that Norfed's goal was "undermin[ing] the United States government's financial systems by the issuance of a non-governmental competing currency":

"This argument met with ridicule over the weekend from the prolific on-line network of Ron Paul supporters and sound money advocates, some of whom sarcastically predicted that the feds would next be going after Disneyworld for selling "Disney Dollars" for use inside the amusement park. "Here is a Mickey Mouse coin issued by that criminal, separatist organization, the Walt Disney Corporation. Did someone fail Common Sense 101?" wrote one commenter on the Post's Web site, offering a link to an image of the offending Mickey dubloon. Wrote another, "With commemorative coins advertised in every Sunday newspaper, and given the Donald Duck silver coins sold at Disney Land, this is an obvious attack on Ron Paul, a legitimate Presidential candidate, by the Federal Government. I am going to respond by going to Ron Paul's web site, easily found with Google, and giving $100 today."

Personally, I think it's more than a little cheeky to have one's picture on currency before even getting the party's nomination. In my understanding, it's traditional to wait until after you've dissolved the Senate and crowned yourself emperor before applying your visage to coinage.

--Matthew Duss

The LA Times has a good (not quite great) story on how the major Republican candidates' plans to help the uninsured don't... you know... help the uninsured. The piece focuses on preexisting conditions and, despite an odd peg to the Republican candidates' own histories of cancer, it does a good job of explaining the issue. It won't exactly be news to most readers of this blog, but reporters don't talk about this kind of stuff and should be commended when they do (in this case, credit goes to Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar and his editors).

Also, I love this criticism, from the left of the Republicans' plans by a Heritage Foundation wonk:

"When you give a [tax credit] to somebody, that can be a help," said Stuart Butler of the conservative Heritage Foundation. "But if they have a history of severe medical problems, giving them $5,000 doesn't really help them to afford insurance. Unless you build in some kind of risk-spreading mechanism to the equation, a subsidy doesn't cut it."

Ya think?

--Sam Boyd

A thought-provoking piece in the Post by a former food bank director on the politics of food donation:

And here we are, putting on the same play again this year. But come Friday, as most of us stuff more leftovers into our bulging refrigerators, 35 million Americans will take their place in line again at soup kitchens, food banks and food stamp offices nationwide. The good souls who staff America's tens of thousands of emergency food sites will renew their pleas to donors fatigued by their burst of holiday philanthropy. Food stamp workers will return to their desks and try to convince mothers that they can feed their families on the $3 per person per day that the government allots them. The cycle of need -- always present, rarely sated, never resolved -- will continue.

Unless we rethink our devotion to food donation.

America's far-flung network of emergency food programs -- from Second Harvest to tens of thousands of neighborhood food pantries -- constitutes one of the largest charitable institutions in the nation. Its vast base of volunteers and donors and its ever-expanding distribution infrastructure have made it a powerful force in shaping popular perceptions of domestic hunger and other forms of need. But in the end, one of its most lasting effects has been to sidetrack efforts to eradicate hunger and its root cause, poverty.

He posits that increases in handouts through food banks and similar programs has only proven to increase the number of people who come for those handouts. And with donors, volunteers, and the food industry so enmeshed in what is now a multibillion-dollar system of food banking, it's become harder and harder to step away an analyze what might be more effective ways of addressing the hunger crisis. Charity has risen in the absence of real government programs that address the roots of hunger and poverty -- programs which have declined precipitously since Reagan. But what if all those volunteers instead came out to lobby the state legislature, or all those donors invested in solutions to the root problems, or everyone came out and supported politicians who put the issues of poverty, hunger, disparity and justice at the top of their agenda?

The Edwards campaign is running a Thanksgiving gimmick in which you get Edwards family holiday recipes in exchange for a donation to the candidate. As much as I'd love to hear about their sweet potato pie recipe, I found it a cheesy campaign tactic, especially in light of the statement Edwards issued yesterday about donations and government funding drying up at food banks around the country. But it makes sense: if you have money to throw around this holiday season, instead of (or perhaps in addition to, since the short-term problems are still very real) giving it to charitable, guilt-absolving programs, investing in a campaign (whatever campaign you support) would go a lot further. Charity can't replace good government concerned with solving real problems.

--Kate Sheppard

Wonkism all over the boards today:

• Barack Obama was supposed to announce a plan in Fort Dodge, Iowa, today to provide a $4,000 refundable tax credit to graduating high school seniors. The tax credit would make most community colleges completely free for students, and the plan also proposes making it easier to apply for financial aid to attend other institutions of higher ed. Instead, his speech focused on the economy and the differences between his policies and those of Hillary Clinton, who also spent a lot of time today talking about him without ever mentioning his name (see below). Obama is now expected to release his college plan tomorrow, according to his campaign staff.
• Hillary Clinton focused on economic policy in her speech today as well, noting that the next president will have to deal with "eight years of neglect and mismanagement" of the economy, and said that "we can’t afford on-the-job training" for the next president. She also implied that Social Security is not under imminent threat, and criticized her opponents for using "Republican scare tactics about a 'Social Security crisis,'" challenging the idea that the government would need to raise taxes in order to save it, as Obama has suggested. Her speech mostly recapped previous policy statements, but also called for doubling the amount of federal housing aid for Americans facing foreclosures and increasing emergency energy assistance for families who can't afford heating bills.
• Mitt Romney gave a speech in Washington State in which he outlined his ideas about how to open up international markets for American goods through expanded free trade. The speech mostly focused on Washington, which has the highest exports per capita of all states, but the speech included this charming Powerpoint, which reaffirms my belief that all graphic designers are liberals.

• John Edwards put out a statement on hunger today, in response to an Associated Press report that food banks across America are facing an increased demand for services, while both donations and federal government assistance have decreased. Says Edwards: "Over this president’s term, we have seen the costs of fuel, housing and health care skyrocket, so it should be no surprise that 35.5 million people in America went hungry – up from 33.2 million in 2000 […] We must stand up to the corrupt insiders and corporate interests that control Washington so we can pass universal health care, raise the minimum wage, strengthen unions and take other steps to make the everyday lives of hard-working Americans better."

--Kate Sheppard

There's not a lot to work with, as I think Hillary Clinton's foreign policy has been surprisingly substance-free even for a presidential campaign, but two things immediately jump out at me. The first, obviously, is her attempt to position herself as a "serious" i.e. centrist national security Democrat, not like that Obama guy, who clearly has not yet perfected the art of squinting and nodding sagely about national security, but not as crazy as George W. Bush, who has irresponsibly screwed everything up with his irresponsible screw-ups. While I'm not among those who believe that sack cloth and ashes are required gear for every legislator who supported the Iraq war, I tend to think her explanations of her vote and her criticisms of Bush for his conduct (but not necessarily his conception, of the war and the ideological predispositions that led to it) amount to an incompetence dodge. Hillary talks a lot about internationalism and rebuilding alliances, but haven't seen any indication that she believes that multilateral institutions are valuable in and of themselves as much as just being a more effective way of implementing American will and enforcing American global hegemony.

Her use of the rhetoric of "the war on terror" is also troubling. Like Bush and many conservatives (and, to be fair, some other Democrats), Hillary tends to talk about "the terrorists" a lot, as if the various Islamic extremist movements in the Middle East were all part of one big Islamofascist Voltron. This doesn't speak well of her ability to suss out differences between these groups, their grievances, goals, constituencies, and, most importantly, differences that can be exploited. She's also made comments about Israel being on the "front lines of this struggle," something which comes straight out of Ariel Sharon's rhetorical playbook, and indicates an approach that subsumes the legitimate aims of Palestinian nationalism within the category "Islamic extremism" while exonerating Israel for its own provocative actions in the occupied territories. This should be deeply disquieting to anyone who holds out hope for a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in our lifetimes.

So it seems to me that Hillary's just offering us the Bush Doctrine with the crusts cut off. Or, if you prefer, a kinder, gentler machine gun hand.

--Matthew Duss

With all three Democratic front-runners describing themselves as "progressives," the Center for American Progress (full disclosure: I used to work there) is testing four television advertisements introducing voters to the term. I have a love-hate relationship with the word myself -- for one thing, I feel that feminism can be understood better when it is situated within (and as a response to) the long historical tradition of political liberalism, with its emphasis on individual rights and self-actualization. And Progressivism, as in the early-twentieth century movement, had a white populist tone on race, ethnicity, and immigration with which today's American center-left just shouldn't be comfortable.

But in any case, these ads are, I think, pretty compelling. My favorite one is posted below, and you can see all four here. The one thing that's glaringly missing is an articulation of progressive foreign policy. Perhaps something along the lines of: "Progressives believe in strong diplomacy, and that human rights and national security go hand in hand. Progressives respect the American military, and take care of our veterans when they return home." What do you all think?

--Dana Goldstein

The Kagan and O'Hanlon silliness aside, the United States obviously has to do something to ensure that Pakistani nuclear weapons (and nuclear material) is secured in the event that the situation in Pakistan goes way far south. To that extent, thinking about lending some U.S. personnel to Pakistan for the specific task of maintaining the security of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal makes sense. It makes even more sense to think about lending advice and material assistance to Pakistan (which is pretty much what this article is about).

It's also understandable why the Pakistanis may have withheld full cooperation with the United States. It simply makes no sense to place your entire nuclear arsenal at the disposal of a foreign power. The other problem of security involves deterrence. Deterrence theory tells us that the safest nuclear arsenal is one that is divided up between a number of different secure locations, such that no surprise attack can destroy the entire arsenal on the ground. Unfortunately, when the threat isn't nuclear attack so much as nuclear theft, the prescription is the exact opposite; having the arsenal divided across many locations is a recipe for disaster. As I understand it, the Pakistani arsenal leans towards the latter (secured in few places) rather than towards the former, which is a good thing.

As for the Kagan/O'Hanlon nonsense, the idea of an occupation of a country of 160 million people is obviously silly, and their apparently intentional obtuseness regarding the political impact of a large American ground force in Pakistan is staggering. Such an operation would be neither wise nor possible even in the absence of Iraq, but it's worth noting that Iraq has foreclosed the option of pretty much any major ground initiative for the foreseeable (30 year, maybe) future. This maybe should have been a consideration back when O'Hanlon and Kagan thought this war would be a good idea, and when they decided that escalating it would be an even better one.

--Robert Farley

Matt's anxiety about Hillary Clinton's foreign policy program is well-put, and widely-shared. She has not sought to convince anyone that statements like "We cannot, we should not, we must not, permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons, and in dealing with this threat, as I have said for a very long time, no option can be taken off the table," are general election posturing, or should be taken to mean something other than "if diplomacy fails, I will bomb Iran in order to disrupt their nuclear program."

One reason, I think, that some Democrats are relatively sanguine abut her presidency is that they forget that the Democratic Party is not, in fact, an anti-war party, that its recent turn against the war in Iraq was a wrenching shift that came only after overwhelming evidence had accumulated showing this war a lie and a failure, and only after opposition grew into a popular cause. But such skepticism is not laced into the party's DNA, and it could easily change were a Democrat in office. Indeed, a Democrat might even want it to change, in order to demonstrate toughness and command in a way that only militarism allows, and to show that Democrats are not afraid of force, and can be trusted to wield American might with confidence and ease.

Whether Clinton is that sort of Democrat is impossible for me to say, because she has continually sought to imply that she is, while simultaneously having supporters quietly explain that politics being what they are, this is what she has to say for the general election. On the one hand, Richard Holbrooke boasts that [Clinton] is probably more assertive and willing to use force than her husband. Hillary Clinton is a classic national-security Democrat," which certainly sounds like a campaign that sees both policy and political value in a resolute willingness to go to war -- add that to her Iran statements, and it's hard to believe it's all posture. On the other hand, this is something her backers, if asked off the record, will vehemently dispute, attributing it all to electoral demands.

So, in sum, I'm confused. But I want to open this up to the other Tapped contributors, many of whom have been watching Clinton's campaign closer than me. What's your sense of her core foreign policy commitments and aversions? What's your sense of her bottom line with Iran? And why?

--Ezra Klein

The recent hysteria about a few peripheral citations of legal norms in other liberal democracies in Supreme Court opinions has reached some kind of apex with a speaker at a Federalist Society convention proposing a constitutional amendment banning the practice. What's strange is the amount of energy being expended over what it quite obviously a trivial issue -- it's not clear why anyone thinks such dicta have any actual causal effects on the outcome of cases. Such citations are likely to come up almost exclusively in cases where the text of the Constitution can plausibly support a wide range of outcomes, and hence are overwhelmingly likely to be used only to back up conclusions judges have reached for independent reasons. This is certainly true of the cruel and unusual punishment clause, at issue in Roper v. Simmons, the case that has generated the greatest outrage about the supposedly pernicious effects of citing foreign law. Does anybody seriously think that a single vote in the case would have changed had the Constitution forbidden the citation of law of other democracies? Scalia noted in his dissent that Kennedy would be unlikely to cite foreign law when its conclusions were less favorable to his position, but that's the point: the cites are window dressing. It may be true that Kennedy's experience teaching abroad has had a moderating effect, but this would remain true whether his opinion cited the laws of other countries or not.

Crucial to making this triviality into a major issue is a strawman. According to Adler, the advocate of the amendment laid out the "basic case against relying upon foreign or international law in constitutional interpretation." [my emphasis] But, of course, nobody says (as the word "rely" would seem to imply) that American judges are bound by the laws of similar countries; rather, at most it's simply one of many sources that a judge might consult when trying to construe the meaning of an ambiguous constitutional clause. I don't recall any conservatives complaining about, say, Clarence Thomas's (implausible) paean to the emancipatory effects of vouchers, although strictly speaking such policy effects are irrelevant to the question of whether state funding that goes almost entirely to parochial schools violates the First Amendment. I'd also be interested to know how many people furious about Roper have railed against the Rehnquist Court's "sovereign immunity" doctrine, which seems to "rely" heavily on centuries-old British common law being binding in American federal courts...

--Scott Lemieux

Courtney Martin thinks the institutionalization of activism on college campuses is a key culprit:

As great as it might seem that colleges and universities are supporting student causes, I actually believe that it has tamed the critical energy necessary to be young, outraged, and active. When you're being funded by a team of white-haired academics in suits, taking real risks -- acts of civil disobedience like sit-ins, hunger strikes, boycotts -- don't seem like such a smart idea. Students rightly wonder whether they will "ruin it" for the next class if they cross the line and lose the school leadership's support. Plus, it's so much easier to just eat the free pizza and cut the three-inch ribbons than to mastermind a rebellious and potentially dangerous student uprising.

The academy, in general, encourages specialization, intellectualization, civility -- not exactly the key ingredients for effective social action. Students are surrounded by professors reminiscing about the glory days of youth activism, when groups like Students for a Democratic Society, the Weather Underground, and the Black Panther Party really ignited social change. But the professors don't seem to make the connection that none of these were school-sanctioned organizations.

Read the rest (and comment) here.

--The Editors

Two wealthy Wesleyan donors, including Jonathan Soros, created scholarships for up to 10 veterans to attend the elite school. The school admitted that right now they only have about two students that would qualify for the scholarships.

While it's admirable that the donors want to see that vets can afford to go to a school which costs roughly $47,000 a year, they might have better spent their resources lobbying for an expansion of the GI Bill. Many veterans benefits are having trouble keeping up with the demand -- an influx of new veterans puts a strain on a system that was intended to pay the way for a vet to go to pretty much any school he wanted. Instead, even with GI benefits, vets have to work jobs or take out loans to make up the difference. Additionally, most vets don't dream of going to schools like Wesleyan. They want to attend a nearby state school or community college.

I admire the desire to welcome veterans into the folds of the elite, the reality is that veterans want the GI benefits to get a better job to pay the bills. We should focus on making that happen, instead of offering up tidbits to just a few soldiers.

--Kay Steiger

Hartford, Conn. is one of the most racially segregated cities in the nation, embedded in the state with the worst economic inequality. So it was a major progressive victory when, in the 1996 case Sheff v. O'Neill, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that Hartford's children, because of their racial and economic isolation, were being denied their state constitutional right to equal educational opportunities. A 2003 agreement between the plaintiffs and the state tried to remedy the problem through a program of busing city children to schools in the suburbs and attracting suburban kids to high quality magnet schools in downtown Hartford. But only a small fraction of poor Hartford children benefited from the new programs, which were oversubscribed and underfunded.

Integration advocates have longed floated the idea of regionalizing education across the 29 towns of the Hartford region. In many cases, lines between city and suburb were drawn with the explicit goal of keeping neighborhoods and schools exclusively white or middle class. Zoning laws re-enforced these barriers, as did the placement of federally-subsidized housing in already downtrodden, non-white neighborhoods. This is an old story, of course, one that has played out across the nation. But in Connecticut, the Sheff court order has forced policy-makers to grapple with undoing this legacy of discrimination and segregation. Sadly, the state has failed to live up to the charge. But for an idea of how it might be done, look toward Hartford mayor Eddie Perez, who argued for regionalization in the Courant yesterday:

We should create a Hartford County School District that includes all 29 towns in the county. ...

For this new school system to succeed, the municipal cost of school operations and capital expenditures must be funded fully by the state. Hartford County towns annually spend more than $1.5 billion operating public schools — a cost of about $11,000 per student. Towns participating in this new school district would be relieved from funding schools through the local property tax.

For many towns this would mean cutting the average homeowner's property tax bill by as much 50 percent.

Additionally, tens of millions of dollars would be saved by the streamlining of dozens of redundant school district bureaucracies, the elimination of duplicate buildings and the efficient use of excess capacity. ...

...every school would have a local governance committee. Parents would be urged to participate and become fully invested in the success of their child's school. District schools that are already successful would have the autonomy to continue their success.

Centralizing funding and mandating integration within counties would reduce educational inequality caused by geographic isolation. But in almost every part of the country, this strikes affluent and middle class parents as a radical solution that puts their own kids at risk. Social science tells us racial and socioeconomic integration benefits all children in myriad ways. But that's a message that hasn't penetrated into either our politics or our culture.

--Dana Goldstein

As the likelihood of passing strong (if any) energy and climate legislation this year grows dimmer and dimmer, Nature writer Jeff Tollefson looks at what the next president could -- and should -- be planning to do:

In the end, many experts expect that whatever the next president achieves domestically will set the standard for a post-Kyoto agreement. Many international delegates hope to achieve an agreement on the post-Kyoto framework by 2009, an aggressive goal that leaves the new president less than a year to get everything done. "It's more realistic to look at early-to-mid 2010," says [Dan] Esty [director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy in New Haven, Connecticut]. "Three or four months for the administration to get its feet on the ground, a year to get the negotiations done. It's a fast pace, but a doable one."

The next president will be charged with ushering through a comprehensive energy plan as well as solid plan to address climate change at home that will allow us to engage internationally on the subject. It's a major task -- one that will by necessity be at the top of the agenda, an agenda that will be crowded with Iraq, Iran, health care, immigration, and other issues that might seem more pressing.

--Kate Sheppard

Neocon Fred Kagan and "Brookings Institution liberal" Michael O'Hanlon (author of the infamous "Skeptic's Case for the Surge") took to the New York Times yesterday to caution, "We need to think -- now -- about our feasible military options in Pakistan, should it really come to that."

Because any credible attempt to stabilize a collapsed Pakistan would take at least half a million troops, Kagan and O'Hanlon float the idea of sending American Special Ops forces to the country now -- diplomacy, shmiplomacy -- to secure nuclear weapons and prop up the Pakistani government. There's no mention of what or who that government would or should be, of course, or how the disgruntled Pakistani people would view such an intervention. Because what really matters is our "next big test" militarily -- nevermind learning the lessons of the exam we've already failed in Iraq.

--Dana Goldstein