McCain's new strategist draws on Barack Obama's supposed smear of Bill Clinton as a racist to attack Barack Obama's supposed smear of John McCain (The Original Maverick!) as a racist (seeing as it's not as though the McCain campaign actually created an ad warning that Barack Obama would put a scary picture of himself on the dollar bill or anything):

"Say whatever you want about Bill Clinton," Schmidt said, "but it's deeply unfair to suggest his criticism of Obama was race-based. President Clinton was a force for unity in this country on this subject. Every American should be proud of his record as both a governor and president. But we knew it was coming in our direction because they did it against a President of the United State of their own party."

This reminds me of one of the fun angles of a McCain-Romney ticket: The chance to make John McCain eat his words about Mitt Romney being a feckless French surrender monkey for using the word "timetable" once regarding Iraq.

Reading Michael Crowley's Mark Salter profile in TNR, you wonder how real McCainiacs can really keep a straight face while arguing that the Obama campaign is the one driven by a cult of personality built around a narcissist who feels he's owed the presidency.  Salter is apparently livid that Obama has stolen McCain's themes of having matured out of a colorful childhood and been bettered by patriotism and commitment to public service.  Did Mark Salter make it through his top perch in John McCain's 2000 campaign without ever listening to a George W. Bush speech?  Salter even jokes

"I often regret that we didn't copyright 'serving a cause greater than your self-interest,'" he cracks.

So Chuck Hagel is saying his ideas are closer to Obama's, but he doesn't plan to endorse either candidate.  Could mean he's still trying to negotiate himself a spot on the ticket (seems unlikely), or he doesn't want to offend his friend John McCain or hurt himself further within the GOP, or he wants to burnish his non-partisan credentials by being not even partisan enough to support a presidential candidate.

Who knows?  But it occurs to me that Hagel could draw some more of the attention he seems to relish, and earn some good will from congressional leadership, if he stays neutral but pipes up every now and then to slap back some of Joe Lieberman's ridiculous attacks on Barack Obama.

Picture it:

This article from the Paper of Record is just silly:

As Mr. Obama stands poised to claim the crown of presumptive Democratic nominee, he is, gingerly, fitting himself with the cloth of a partisan Democrat despite having long proclaimed himself above such politics. That his shift in tone was inevitable and necessary, particularly as Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, slashes at Mr. Obama as weak on Iran and terrorism, does not entirely diminish the cognitive dissonance.

As is unfortunately common with denunciations of partisanship in Washington, you get the sense reading Michael Powell's Times news piece that not only does he see no need to tell you what he means by partisanship, he may not be so sure of it himself.  

Kay Steiger, guest-blogging at Matt Yglesias' site, considers sexism in "trade professions" and after pointing out that jobs like hair dressing aren't counted as such precisely because women do them, suggests that

What would help is first what these truck mechanics Harding points to are already doing, mentoring young women in non-traditional fields. Secondly, unions that represent those industries need to not only be free of sexism themselves, but aggressively pursue lawsuits that would discourage sexual harassment. This is happening with some larger trade unions already, but it's not as wide as it should be.

I think this really sells short the potential for trade unions to take on discrimination.  Any kind of organization with the resources can file a lawsuit - or individuals or groups can do it with no organization at all.

Jimmy Carter has apparently issued another non-endorsement endorsement of Barack Obama, this time saying that while he "has not yet announced publicly," after June 3 "a lot of the superdelegates will make a decision...announced quite rapidly," and then "it will be time for her to give it up."  In other words: I haven't made up my mind, but "my friend" is planning to endorse Obama soon, and when he does Hillary Clinton should concede...Of course the main difference when Carter ends the suspense and makes a "public" endorsement is that that'll be a plum opportunity for John Hagee's friends to call Obama an antisemite.

Media-appointed populist Mike Huckabee reassures CEOs everywhere that raking in the cash while laying off the workers who made it possible isn't the kind of "criminal" activity that the government should do something about:

In one memorable riff at the Reagan Library early this year, Mr. Huckabee called it "criminal" for corporate CEOs to take fat bonuses while shipping the jobs of ordinary workers overseas, adding "If Republicans don’t stop it, we don’t deserve to win in 2008."  In a Christmas eve interview on CNBC, I asked Mr. Huckabee what he intended to do about it. His answer: nothing soon in the way of new laws or regulations. He said he would use the bully pulpit to shine a spotlight on the practices and seek increased responsibility from corporate boards of directors.

So breathe easy, rich guys: under a Huckabee administration, the only CEOs who get locked up will be the ones with HIV.

Reading the latest New York Times John McCain puff piece makes you wonder whether the Times and company only started pulling the guy down with McCain deathwatch stories so that they could have the pleasure of building him up all over again:

Why isn't John McCain on the stump telling Americans to have more babies?

Kate Sheppard notes the passage of Russia's "Day of Conception:"

Everyone who gives birth is a winner in the "Give Birth to a Patriot on Russia's Independence Day" contest, but the grand prize winner -- judged on qualities like "respectability" and "commendable parenting" -- gets to take home a UAZ-Patriot, a Russian-made SUV.

This seems like a good opportunity to ask why the kinds of natalist appeals and policy justifications that are so widespread in Europe are all but non-existent in the United States.  Sure, American politicians seem to be expected to have gobs of kids to demonstrate their family values.  But why is it much more common for politicians in Europe to push policies explicitly designed to make people have more kids?

I think the best answer is race.

Guess where you can read the following political history:

You know, it is a word that originally meant that you were for freedom, that you were for the freedom to achieve, that you were willing to stand against big power and on behalf of the individual.  Unfortunately, in the last 30, 40 years, it has been turned up on its head and it's been made to seem as though it is a word that describes big government, totally contrary to what its meaning was in the 19th and early 20th century.

Is it the pages of Reason Magazine?  The declaration of some self-described "classicaly liberal" professor?  Nope.  Those words were spoken at last night's Democratic Debate by the party's frontrunner.

Andrew Sullivan approvingly cites a reader's nasty argument against Hillary Clinton:

If everyone is admitting that a Hillary Clinton's potential nomination to the Democrat Presidential ticket is only fuel for the religious right, then what do you think Senator Clinton's view is on that? Why is it that this either doesn't concern her, or she thinks she can overcome it?  If I were in the same position, I would realize that winning the nomination, only to further create a dichotomy between the American politic, would be disastrous for the country.

Of all the tropes trotted out in the wake of the murders at Virginia Tech, perhaps the most grating is the one about how tragedy shouldn't be politicized.  The tragedy is already political.  It results from the murderous choice of one man.  But only some murderous plans are realized.  And only some murderous potentials flourish.  To honor the dead by eschewing public policy discussions about how to reduce the likelihood of a disturbed student getting a gun and killing dozens of classmates and faculty is a cruel joke.

Liberals and others make a mistake when they excoriate the right-wingers proposing sex-segregated housing or mandatory monotheism or concealed weapons for everyone as solutions to this tragedy for "politicizing" the deaths.  Instead, let's excoriate them for offering really, really bad ideas, and for blaming the wrong people for something terrible that transpired.

Why shouldn't people contending to run the country tell us - as they did with this week's Supreme Court outrage - what it has to do with their plans for our country?  We can mourn together with people we disagree with without pretending that those disagreements have no consequences.

Josh

David Brody, blogger for Pat Robertson's CBN, weighs in on Barack Obama's legitimacy:

He talks about Jesus and how Christ changed his life. But religious conservatives aren't convinced at all and think he's way too liberal to be considered legitimate with his faith talk. I expect the faith discussion about Obama's Christianity to increase as time goes on. Is he genuine or not? If he is, then he'll need to figure out a way to defend certain positions (abortion and marriage) that don't jive with the Bible.

It takes a particular sort of arrogance to take every expression of personal faith by a political candidate as an audition for you and Pat Robertson.  

I think several generations of Yale activists have had the chance to gather in protest or at least reflect on the outrageousness of the university's top decision-making body gathering beneath a portrait of the university's namesake with a slave.  Looks like the next generation will have to come up with a new rite of passage.

Yale is finally taking the goddamn thing down.  But god forbid you should think that Yale's leaders feel regret about leaving it hanging there the past few decades:

Since the portrait is confusing without the explanation [that Elihu Yale did not own slaves], I have decided it would be prudent to exchange that portrait of Elihu to another one in the University’s collection," Lorimer said.

Much like a lot of people who opine for reasonably-sized audiences, Cass Sunstein deems Barack Obama and John McCain both more admirable than most US Senators.  His reason:

Politicians who show respect--Senator McCain is a good example--tend not to attack the competence, the motivations, or the defining commitments of those who disagree with him. Politicians who show charity as well as respect--Senator Obama is a rare example--tend to put opposing arguments in the best possible form, to praise the motivations of those who offer such arguments, and to seek proposals that specifically accept the defining commitments of all sides.

In other words, McCain shows respect by criticizing just the reasoning and not the character of his opponents; Obama shows the greater virtue of charity by affirming the character of his opponents and stating their arguments in the most generous terms possible.

They do?

Check out this graph from the NYT review of 24:

But “24” also jukes to the far side of political correctness and even left-wing paranoia. In two different seasons, the villains seeking to harm the United States are not Middle Eastern terrorists but conspirators directed by wealthy, privileged white Americans: in the second season, oil business tycoons tried to set off a Middle East war, and last year, Russian rebels turned out to be working in cahoots with a cabal of far-right government officials.

Then riddle me this: In how many places in America are you likely to avoid criticism/ seem more enlightened/ charm those hated liberal professors/ earn a glowing profile from those hated liberal journalists/ make friends by suggesting that what look like terrorist attacks by foreign enemies are really engineered by big business and/or the GOP?

This Times piece features a silly and all-too common turn of phrase (emphasis mine):

Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, who joined the Senate in 2005 and thus escaped the Iraq vote that has come to haunt Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Edwards and Mr. Kerry, used the platform of Senate hearings to lacerate the Bush Iraq policy and affirm his own opposition to the war.

Sure, one of the annoying things about being an elected legislator is that along with your deliciously nuanced views on the issues of the day, you need to vote for or against bills you didn't write yourself to say just what you wanted them to.  But is there anyone who knew who Barack Obama was in 2002 who didn't know his position on invading Iraq?

The man spoke at an anti-war rally and called the proposed invasion "dumb" and an "attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us."  Do Adam Nagourney and Patrick Healy really believe that he was hedging on whether or not the bill for the war should pass?

One of the Times' blogs highlights this post from a member of the FireDogLake crew on the posthumous revelation that Ford had his doubts about the Bush Iraq strategy:

But when a reporter is in possession of information that is vital to the country, that might change whether we go to war or whom we elect for president, and the only reason for withholding the information is to protect the person interviewed from embarrassing his own party — well, there must be some other principle that applies, don'tcha think?

This argument is less than persuasive for a couple reasons.