We Were, Like, Dying for Your Opinion

"Are the Obamas, at bottom, snobs?" asks one of the great snobs of American political punditry.

Are We Happy To See You, Or What?

The Obama campaign drops by North Carolina. Can field operatives be far behind?

Qualifiers

One of his biggest defenders said of Sen. John McCain, "He is essentially an honorable person, but he can be imprudent.” The placement of that word essentially is essentially disqualifying. (Who was it said of Catherine the Great, "She is essentially chaste"? Probably the same wag who said of Dracula, "He is essentially a vegan.")

The quote above comes from William P. Cheshire, a friend of Senator McCain who as editorial page editor of The Arizona Republic defended McCain during the Keating Five scandal. The quote is included in the lengthy article in today's NYTimes that everyone's buzzing about.

Mr. Cheshire added, "That imprudence or recklessness may be part of why [McCain] was not more astute about the risks he was running with this shady operator," Charles Keating.

"Sanctimonious" is what George W. Bush's people called McCain in 2000:

At one point, his campaign invited scores of lobbyists to a fund-raiser at the Willard Hotel in Washington. While Bush supporters stood mocking outside, the McCain team tried to defend his integrity by handing the lobbyists buttons reading "McCain voted against my bill." Mr. McCain himself skipped the event, an act he later called "cowardly."

So may we conflate the qualities assigned him by those who know him best? Sen. John McCain is "essentially santimonious." Which ought to make him ideal for the nomination.

A Time-Line for the Roger Clemens Train Wreck

A column by sports reporter Derick Moss in The Gaston Gazette last Friday nailed the hypocrisy of House Republicans generally, and of Reps. Patrick McHenry and Virginia Foxx specifically, in the whole Roger-Clemens-on-steroids hearing controversy. (Praise be to Drama Queen for bringing Moss's article to everyone's attention.)

Moss focuses on the whole history of how this little piece of theater unfolded, and how the last act did not quite play out as Republicans had planned.

1. Republican House members were all over the steroids investigation in 2005, when they were in charge of running the place. Congressman Patrick McHenry, particularly, was avid in his grilling of Mark McGuire for alleged steroid use and basked in the media attention.

2. Two things happened to change Republican attitude: (a) the Republicans lost control of the House in the elections of 2006, and (b) George Mitchell, a prominent Democrat, issued his investigation of steroid use in baseball, implicating (among others) Roger Clemens.

3. With Democrats now in charge of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Roger Clemens himself requested a hearing -- in fact, insisted on it, even with the committee's Democratic chair and ranking Republican member trying to talk him out of it. Then Clemens went and met with committee member Rep. Virginia Foxx and others on the committee so that everyone was well coached on how to help Clemens look "clean" and to make the other guy look "dirty," and to make sure Rep. Foxx had her visual aids in order and understood the points she was supposed to make in displaying them. One curious talking point everyone clearly agreed on: the Republican members would say that it was all the Democrats' fault that the hearing was happening, even though Roger Clemens had demanded it.

4. Committee member Rep. Patrick McHenry decided (with amazing prescience, as it turned out) to duck out of the hearing and not take part.

5. Rep. Virginia Foxx made a spectacle of herself, first denouncing (according to the script) the Democrats for holding the hearing in the first place and then trying to practice diagnosis via glossy blowup to prove Clemens innocent.

6. With the fall-out from the hearing turning very negative for Clemens and his Republican cheerleaders, McHenry tried to distance himself by saying that steroid use by professional athletes shouldn't even be a subject for Congress to examine, hoping that no one will remember # 1 above.

7. With the negative press particularly bad for Rep. Foxx, she tried to distance herself by saying she was never on Roger Clemens' side in all this, hoping that no one will remember the last 48 hours of her public life.

Moss has a theory on why Foxx, McHenry, and other Republicans climbed on the Clemens trolley just as it was going over that cliff, a theory that involves the druthers of the ever-lovin' Bush family, and we'll leave it to you to weigh and evaluate that theory. As loath as we are to believe in conspiracies, the unlikely tawdriness of Madam Foxx's toady act on behalf of Roger Clemens might also make use expect to see beacons of shining truth fly out of her alimentary canal in the very near future.

Letting the Prince of Peace Be a Beacon Unto Them

A Baptist pastor in California used church letterhead and an affiliated church radio program to endorse Mike Huckabee for president. After Americans United for the Separation of Church and State filed a complaint that the pastor was illegally endorsing a candidate in violation of tax-exemption laws, the pastor invoked Psalm 109 in asking his church to pray for death and destruction on Americans United, principally on Rev. Barry Lynn, the executive director of the watchdog group:

...For wicked and deceitful mouths are opened against me, speaking against me with lying tongues .... May his days be few; may another seize his goods! May his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow! May his children wander about and beg; may they be driven out of the ruins they inhabit....

Gosh, the Old Testament is handy when you need to really hate someone!

For its part in reporting the story, Christianity Today seemed more amused than outraged by this display of (self) righteous anger.

But then, some notable Christians today seem quite willing to countenance a whole bunch of preemptive smiting, all over the place.

Snoop Dogs

We've been disturbed and disgusted at the number of Democratic Senators who voted for retroactive immunity from prosecution for the telephone companies that toadied up with the Bush admin and illegally aided the spying on American citizens without legal warrants. (You can check out the Democrats who voted "yea" on this, including Jim Webb of Virginia.)

Only a vote in the U.S. House has (so far) stopped this additional subversion of the rule of law. Our own 11th Dist. Congressman Heath Shuler voted WITH El Presidente on that bill, for which he's been properly (but inadequately) castigated. (And here.)

Now the front-runner for the Democratic nomination to challenge Sen. Liddy Dole has said she's okay with telecom immunity. Kay Hagan, we hardly knew ye!

Looking for some radical liberal Democrat to talk sense about governmental power and official spying, we found this:

Why does the Constitution have an enumerated powers clause, if the government can do things wildly beyond those powers -- such as establish a domestic spying program? Why have a 4th Amendment, if it does not prohibit government from eavesdropping on phone calls without telling anyone?

We're told that September 11th changed everything, that new government powers like the Patriot Act are necessary to thwart terrorism. But these are not the most dangerous times in American history, despite the self-flattery of our politicians and media. This is a nation that expelled the British, saw the White House burned to the ground in 1814, fought two world wars, and faced down the Soviet Union. September 11th does not justify ignoring the Constitution by creating broad new federal police powers. The rule of law is worthless if we ignore it whenever crises occur.

Who wrote that? Ron Paul, Republican candidate for president, that's who.

Yet we are now being told by Fox News that Democrats want the terrorists to win because they refuse to endorse illegal snooping.

Obama in Chapel Hill Yesterday

Barak Obama reportedly slipped away from his trailing press hounds in Chicago, and before anyone knew it he was landing at Raleigh-Durham International Airport about 11:30 yesterday morning. ABC-11 in Raleigh-Durham has picts.

He was soon sipping coffee at the John & Elizabeth Edwards compound near Chapel Hill.

Wonder what they talked about.

The Madam Defends Her Clemens' Licking

Today in the Winston-Salem Journal, Madam Virginia Foxx avers that she was not harder on Brian McNamee than she was on Roger Clemens during last Wednesday's House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing on the use of steroids in professional sports. As though we had not all seen her fawning over Clemens.

She really does think we're all deaf, blind, and stupid.

But which is worse: Foxx's partisan performance in front of the whole nation, or her new attempt in the W-S Journal to deny that we had actually seen her do any such of a thing?

Hmmm

Over 60,000 new North Carolina voters registered to vote in January alone. These registrations lean decidedly to the Democratic Party. But some 20,000 of them chose the Unaffiliated designation, revealing the second significant factoid ... these newly registered are heavily in the 18-40 age category, where party identification is weakest.

There's going to be a surge of young voters in this state (and most others), and it isn't going to benefit John McCain nor Virginia Foxx.

They're getting psyched for the May 6th primary, for Obama mainly. Big open question: how will that surge in May affect other primary races, down-ballot? Candidates better be thinking about that.