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WASHINGTON -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has awesome self-confidence. Chosen by fellow Republicans to be Sen. John McCain’s running mate, she told an interviewer: “I’m ready.” That confidence reflects her naïveté about her role that puts her one heartbeat away from the presidency. In accepting the Republican nomination as vice-president, she invoked the greatness of President Truman, based on their small-town origins. But anyone who was around during Truman’s era knows there is a world of difference between Palin and Truman. Take, for example, humility. Truman was vice president for only a short time when on April 12, 1945, he...

Joe Biden will deliver a high-profile first attack in a sustained anti-McCain offensive in a speech called "Bush 44" Monday in the key battleground state of Michigan. While the lines of attack have long been drawn, Biden will assert — as the title indicates — that a McCain presidency would amount to a third Bush term and will focus, in a detailed, comprehensive and aggressive way, on John McCain's domestic policies and harsh campaign tactics, a campaign aide told Politico. Biden will deliver the speech in St. Clair Shores, Mich., in Macomb County, the area whose voters inspired Democratic pollster...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was not happy with Sen. Joe Lieberman’s speech before the Republican National Convention Tuesday night.

We ran into actor Matthew Modine (remember "Full Metal Jacket"?!?) at Denver's La Rumba restaurant and, while the Obama supporter had plenty to say about John McCain's policies, he also had plenty of critiques of McCain's military service -- a topic that almost no one dares denounce. "I mean, he got shot down three times!" said Modine, taking on one of McCain's most lauded personal accomplishments. "That's not success!" While on a bombing mission over North Vietnam, McCain was shot down and held as a prisoner of war. When McCain's father was named commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, the...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., defended Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman on Wednesday after the former Democratic vice presidential nominee accepted a speaking slot at next month's Republican convention in Minnesota. "He has a close personal relationship with John McCain. I don't fully understand why he does," said Reid, who said Lieberman called Tuesday from the Republic of Georgia to alert him to the move. "I told him last night, 'You know, Joe, I can't stand John McCain.' He said, 'I know you feel that way,' " Reid said. But Reid said he would continue to resist calls from the...

Last week raised important questions about whether Barack Obama is strong enough to be president. On the domestic political front, he showed incredible weakness in dealing with the Clintons, while on foreign and defense questions, he betrayed a lack of strength and resolve in standing up to Russia’s invasion of Georgia. This two-dimensional portrait of weakness underscores fears that Obama might, indeed, be a latter-day Jimmy Carter. Consider first the domestic and political. Bill and Hillary Clinton have no leverage over Obama. Hillary can’t win the nomination. She doesn’t control any committees. If she or her supporters tried to disrupt...

"Everybody is starting to whisper that if Obama has any prayer of winning, he has to choose Hillary. And if he chooses Hillary, he's going to have to have somebody taste his food and start his car for him every day."

Academy award winning actor George Clooney is set to host a fundraiser for Barack Obama in Switzerland next month. The event, taking place on the evening of September 2 in Geneva, Switzerland will be split into two parts: a reception and a dinner. According to Obama’s National Finance Committee, tickets for the reception where Clooney will speak are going for $1,000, followed by a dinner at the home of NFC member Charles Adams for $10,000 a plate. Space for the dinner is limited to 75 guests.

Presidential nominee Barack Obama joins the list of several other high-profile Democratic Party members who received highly favorable home loans. Obama, D-Ill., reportedly purchased a $1.65 million mansion in Chicago through a “super, super jumbo” loan he received from Northern Trust Bank in Illinois, the Washington Post reports. The portion of the money financed through the lender ($1.32 million) was offered to the Obamas at an unusually low discount interest rate locked in at 5.625 percent over the life of the 30-year fixed-rate loan, which was below the average of what a typical Chicagoan pursuing a similar low loan rate...

Put the fireworks in storage. Cancel the parade. Tuck the soaring speeches in a drawer for another time. This year, America doesn't deserve to celebrate its birthday. This Fourth of July should be a day of quiet and atonement. For we have sinned. We have failed to pay attention. We've settled for lame excuses. We've spit on the memory of those who did that brave, brave thing in Philadelphia 232 years ago. The America those men founded should never torture a prisoner. The America they founded should never imprison people for years without charge or hearing. The America they founded...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Now, one of the things that -- we talk about the Drive-By Media here quite a bit, and we analyze them a lot, and there have been periods of time in this program I've frankly gotten tired of it because everybody knows that they have a bias and everybody knows that they have an agenda, and what's news about it? I try to ignore 'em, and just can't. They are such a destructive force. They are so heavily aligned with the Democrats. But perhaps the thing of which they are the most responsible and guilty is a...

OUTLOOK The state of morale in the Republican Party is such that the expected bump by Sen. Barack Obama in the polls after he clinched the Democratic presidential nomination has collapsed all GOP optimism. Talking to Republicans outside Sen. John McCain's organization, the presidential campaign looks like "mission impossible." The mood is: How can we possibly win the presidency for a third straight election considering the state of the party? This is unrealistically pessimistic, considering the true state of the election, which we still consider close. But it contributes to the negative feeling about McCain from elements of the conservative...

It’s been a rough two weeks for Barack Obama, but his poll numbers remain strong and unchanged. Is he a Teflon candidate? Consider what’s happened since he clinched the Democratic nomination and Hillary “suspended” her campaign: Obama flip-flopped on his pledge to spurn private contributions and finance his campaign publicly, as long as his opponent did likewise. McCain said he’s willing and Obama flipped and said he’s not. The Democratic candidate was caught flat footed by the sudden spike in oil prices and even defended their high level, lamenting only that we had not been given a period of time...

Bill Clinton's selection of Al Gore changed forever the calculus presidential candidates need to use in choosing their running mates. Previously, presidential candidates usually used their VP pick to help them to carry a pivotal state or region, as JFK did in choosing Lyndon Johnson in 1960. But the single state theory doesn't work anymore. Voters can tell the difference between the first and second place on the ticket and don't let the tail wag the dog in determining their votes. After all, John Kerry couldn't carry North Carolina even after putting John Edwards on his 2004 ticket. Instead, presidential...

John McCain is America's favorite kind of candidate. With his record of extraordinary patriotism and his distinctive Senate tenure, McCain is a nominee whom voters from both parties — and independents, too — could easily support. But he has been dealt a terrible hand: a tanking economy, an unpopular war, a Republican incumbent whose approval ratings are at their all-time low and a gloomy national mood, with 82 percent of Americans saying in a Washington Post-ABC News poll last week that the country is on the wrong track. Political scientists add all that up and predict that the Democrats are...

Former Gov. Jesse Ventura said he "may" file the necessary papers to run for the U.S. Senate in the November election. If he doesn't, his former campaign manager will. Both are hinting at a run against Republican incumbent Norm Coleman and likely Democratic candidate Al Franken this fall. The only question seems to be: Will it be Ventura, or the man who helped him become governor? Ventura's former campaign manager, Dean Barkley, now works as a bus driver and gardens as a hobby. "Ear to the dirt, listening to the pulse of the people," he joked Thursday. But Barkley, who...

Sioux Falls, S.D. (AP) -- Former Sen. George McGovern, who backed Hillary Rodham Clinton, is urging her to drop out of the Democratic presidential race. McGovern said Wednesday he has decided to endorse Barack Obama. After watching the returns from the North Carolina and Indiana primaries Tuesday night, McGovern says it's virtually impossible for Clinton . . .

Barack Obama made an impassioned appeal to voters last night to end Hillary Clinton's dreams of another comeback in the race for the White House. The Illinois senator told Democrat voters heading to the polls today in Indiana and North Carolina: "I need help." With less than a month to go before the state-by-state vote ends, the Obama camp is desperate to finish off Mrs Clinton's campaign to become the Democrat's presidential nominee. Barack Obama is desperate to beat Hillary Clinton, so much so that he is counting on support from celebrities including Tom Hanks. Mr Obama, 46, also broke...

The American people have heard President George W. Bush and his spokespersons say many times that the U.S. government does not engage in torture. Whether Bush was believed or not is another story -- especially in light of the photographic evidence of the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, the prison near Baghdad. It’s understood that many of the photos are too sadistically graphic to be made public. Still, the official U.S. denials of torture continued until earlier this month when Bush acknowledged in an interview with ABC-TV that he knew about and approved “enhanced interrogation” of detainees, including “waterboarding”...

RUSH: A TV station in Indianapolis thinks they caused the operational pause in Operation Chaos. WISH-TV, the anchor Eric Halvorson and his report last night on Operation Chaos. HALVORSON: Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh called for a pause in what he calls Operation Chaos. It's a call to conservatives to vote in Democratic primaries to extend the nomination battle. Yesterday, 24 Hour News 8 Jim Shella reported on official reactions to Operation Chaos here, a story Limbaugh referenced on the air today. RUSH: So they're implying, ladies and gentlemen, that Operation Chaos, the operational pause was due to their...

At the start of his campaign, Obama ran in counterpoint to the previous candidacies of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Here was a black man running for president on issues that had nothing to do with race as he rose above the victimization rhetoric that characterizes so many speeches of African-American political figures. Now, in attacking the Rev. Wright as he did Tuesday, Obama can further define himself in contrast to Wright, just as he did earlier vis-à-vis Jackson and Sharpton. So if, as the Chinese ideogram suggests, crisis is a synthesis of danger and opportunity, the controversy surrounding Wright...

The Massachusetts Democratic primary, along with nearly two dozen other primaries and caucuses, was held on Feb. 5. Hillary Clinton won it by 15 points, one of her best showings anywhere this year, and Michael Dukakis voted in it—but he won’t say for whom. [SNIP] Mr. Dukakis has maintained an adamantly neutral public stance throughout the campaign, hoping instead to sell both candidates and their campaigns on the need for assembling a massive grassroots organizing effort—a captain and six block leaders in all 200,000 precincts in the country—for the fall. But he also said that Barack Obama will probably be...

Republicans are howling over what appears to be Nancy Pelosi’s plan to bypass the House Appropriations Committee on the upcoming Iraq war supplemental, complaining that the move will be the beginning of the end of the usual appropriations process and will further consolidate power in the hands of a speaker who already has a lot of it. Democrats will meet throughout the week to hash out their strategy, and they insist that Pelosi and other Democratic leaders have not yet made any final decisions about how to handle what’s likely to be the last Iraq funding debate of the Bush...

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright couldn't have done more damage to Barack Obama's campaign if he had tried. And you have to wonder if that's just what one friend of Wright wanted. Shortly before he rose to deliver his rambling, angry, sarcastic remarks at the National Press Club Monday, Wright sat next to, and chatted with, Barbara Reynolds. A former editorial board member at USA Today, she runs something called Reynolds News Services and teaches ministry at the Howard University School of Divinity. (She is an ordained minister). It also turns out that Reynolds - introduced Monday as a member of...

<p>The Democratic National Committee has sparked outrage among veterans and others across the internet by running an anti-John McCain ad that shows U.S. soldiers being blown up.</p> <p>After the new ad’s voice-over castigated McCain for suggesting that the United States may stay in Iraq for “maybe 100” years, the footage becomes shocking.</p>

Barack Obama's impetuous minister says the U.S. government lies about virtually everything. He refers to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as "Uncle Clarence," claims he sexually abused Anita Hill and calls the Supreme Court a "closet Klan court" that he says was "stacked" by "Daddy Bush," Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford." He says the U.S. lied about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the CIA jailed Nelson Mandela and that the U.S. government created AIDS to commit genocide against Blacks.

If history repeats, the loser of this year’s presidential election will blame the news media. Richard Nixon, in the wake of his loss in the 1962 California gubernatorial race, bitterly taunted reporters, telling them, “You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.” (Turned out he was wrong on that point.) Barbara Bush also had some choice words about the press when her husband, President George H.W. Bush, lost his reelection bid in 1992. The media could be even a larger target this year because of the influence of blogs and talking heads...

LOS ANGELES — I hate pundits who remind you when they were right, and conveniently forget all the times we’re wrong. Half the fun of being a pundit is that it really doesn’t matter; that unlike the situation when you’re running a campaign, our mistakes don’t count for anything but amusement. Even so, when I turned my computer on at 5 p.m. EDT on Tuesday and saw, on my favorite such source, the Primary Day Drudge report, the report that the exits were closer than expected, I couldn’t help but start laughing. My students thought, probably not for the first...

In last week's Philadelphia debate, Hillary Clinton said she would commit the United States to a retaliatory attack against Iran, presumably with nuclear weapons, if it dropped the bomb on Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, or Kuwait. Asked if "it should be U.S. policy now to treat an Iranian attack on Israel as if it were an attack against the United States," Clinton astonishingly responded that she'd use American nukes not just to defend Israel, our traditional strategic ally, but also other neighboring states such as the U.A.E., Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait from an Iranian nuclear attack. Barack Obama's...

New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton continued to pull away from rival Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois as the campaigning in Pennsylvania ended and voters prepared to cast ballots Tuesday, the latest Newsmax/Zogby daily telephone tracking poll shows. Clinton now leads Obama, 51% to 41%, having gained three points over the past 24 hours as Obama lost one point, pushing her beyond the poll’s margin of error to create a statistically significant lead for the first time in the Pennsylvania daily tracking poll. Meanwhile, 6% remained undecided and another 3% said they preferred someone else in the two-day tracking poll....

RUSH: Do you remember the genesis of MoveOn.org? The whole point of MoveOn.org, it was a Clinton front group. "Move on," meant, "Can't we move on from the impeachment? Can't we move on from all of these scandals? Can't we move on from all of these little Chihuahuas yapping at the heels of the Clintons? Can't we just move on?" With that in mind, in February 2008 in a closed door fundraiser (phone quality here), this is Mrs. Clinton talking about MoveOn.org. HILLARY: We have been less successful in caucuses because it brings out the activist base of the Democratic...

It was one of those typical questions from a reporter gaggle on Capitol Hill: Does Harry Reid think the protracted nomination fight between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will harm the party? Reid didn't miss a beat. "It makes me bitter," he deadpanned. Reid has such a dry humor that you actually have to pause and look at him to make sure he's not being serious when he's attempting comedy. But his usual grimace in front of reporters quickly turned to a grin as he capitalized on the now infamous "bitter" comment made by Obama at a San Francisco area...

Former President Carter and Al Gore have discussed plans to tell Hillary Rodham Clinton that she must abandon her presidential bid, for the sake of the Democratic Party. "They're in discussions," a source close to Carter told the Scotland on Sunday newspaper. "Carter has been talking to Gore. They will act, possibly together, or in sequence." The newspaper said the message will be delivered — it's just a matter of when. Barack Obama leads Clinton in the race for pledged delegates, and political experts say its nearly impossible for her to catch. But she retains a lead among superdelegates, and...

A bitter Sir Elton John thinks America's sexism may be sinking his friend Hillary Rodham Clinton. John, a knighted British subject, said that gender discrimination is behind Clinton's problems in the polls as he addressed 5,000 Clinton supporters at Radio City Musical Hall last night in an event that raised $2.5 million for the cash-strapped campaign. "I never cease to be amazed by the misogynistic attitudes of some people in this country," said John, wearing a spangled black evening coat over a vermilion silk shirt. "I say to hell with them. ... I love you, Hillary, I'll always be there...

Surprise, surprise. Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, wants to put a halt to any more troop withdrawals for the foreseeable future. The highly politicized Petraeus seemed to be dutifully following his White House marching orders when he testified before congressional committees earlier this week. Under his scenario, there will be no drawdown of U.S. forces in that strife-ridden country until President Bush leaves office. That’s fine with Bush, who obviously has no intention of ending this futile war on his watch. Apparently feeling no responsibility for starting the war, Bush is planning to pass the Iraqi...

To: NATIONAL EDITORS Contact: Luis Miranda of Democratic National Committee, +1-202-863-8148 WASHINGTON, April 6, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean highlighted the reasons John McCain is not a strong candidate in interviews with George Stephanopolous on ABC's This Week and Bob Schieffer on CBS's Face the Nation this morning. Dean also discussed the Democratic Party's "extraordinary candidates" and delegate selection process. On John McCain "I don't think Senator McCain would be a good president either in terms of defense or certainly in terms of national policy where he's deeply out of touch with almost everything that Americans...

Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean has a plan that will produce a nominee before his party's convention in August, avoiding what he fears could be a "really ugly and nasty" fiasco. Democratic leaders have begun complaining he has bungled the party's nominating process and alienated voters because of his failure to engineer a political compromise in the DNC's ill-advised decision to strip Florida and Michigan of all its delegates. But Mr. Dean, whose polls show the party's internecine warfare is hurting its chances in November, has been talking to party bigwigs about a deal and now says the delegations will...

Some Democratic Party leaders are growing more concerned that the protracted, caustic fight for the presidential nomination will cripple the eventual nominee, and there are new signs they have reason to worry. More party leaders are saying that the increasingly personal crossfire between the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama campaigns serves only to write the script for Republican ads in the fall and to give John McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee, a head start in framing his candidacy. While the Democrats have been arguing almost daily the past two weeks about each other's electability and integrity, McCain has visited Iraq...

Are Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Elton John breaking U.S. laws by allowing the British pop singer, a foreign national, to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign by performing a concert on her behalf? That's the question Inside the Beltway put to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) yesterday, which does not rule out the possibility. First, some background supplied by the FEC: The goal of the 1966 Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) was to "minimize foreign intervention" in U.S. elections by establishing a series of limitations on foreign nationals. In 1974, the prohibition was incorporated...

Unlike Barack Obama, Bill Clinton does not believe in "the fierce urgency of now." The former President has an exquisitely languid sense of how political time unfurls. He understands that those moments the political community, especially the media, considers urgent usually aren't. He has seen his own election and re-election—and completing his second term—pronounced "impossible" and lived to tell the tale. He remembers that in spring 1992 he had pretty much won the Democratic nomination but was considered a dead man walking, running third behind Bush the Elder and Ross Perot. He knows that April is the silly season in...

The campaign of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) is seeking to play down news that the former first lady gave an incorrect account of landing in Bosnia in 1996 under sniper fire, and refused to answer additional questions about a flap that could hurt her chances of catching Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) in the race for the Democratic nomination. “We’ve said all we’re going to say on that,” said Deputy Communications Director Phil Singer on a Tuesday morning conference call with reporters. A video from CBS News had shown that Clinton’s version of having come under sniper fire was not...

U.S. Rep. Tim Mahoney, whose district includes much of Martin and St. Lucie counties, is hoping he won’t have to attend the Democratic Party national convention in Denver in August. If he does go, that will mean the Democrats still haven’t decided a nominee for the presidential election. And if neither Sen. Hillary Clinton nor Sen. Barack Obama has clinched the nomination by August, Mahoney says we may see a brokered convention, meaning the nominee could emerge from a negotiated settlement. “If it (the nomination process) goes into the convention, don’t be surprised if someone different is at the top...

A salute is due Adm. William Fallon, who tried to prevent a wider war with Iran. After serving one year as commander of U.S. Central Command, Fallon has resigned, saying he was quitting because his differences with official U.S. policy had become a “distraction.” But there is a widespread perception that he was pushed out by the neo-conservatives among President George W. Bush’s aides, especially Vice President Dick Cheney, because of Fallon’s reluctance to go along with the administration’s hawkish moves toward Iran. Cheney, who took five consecutive draft deferments to stay out of the Vietnam war, does not mind...

The Clintons are trying to steal the nomination from Barack Obama — and he can't let them. The Clintons' campaign attacks put Obama in a bind. If he doesn't answer in kind, he's toast. But if he does, they'll have forced him off his winning message of hope and change from the bitter politics of the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush eras. If they pull him off his game and onto theirs, they can wrest away the Democratic convention victory that he's earned. The solution for Obama is clear: Reply in kind, but do it through surrogates. Obama must...

Reid Won’t Back Ban on Earmarks House Democrats, GOP Eye Moratorium By John Stanton Roll Call Staff March 10, 2008 Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will not back a moratorium on Congressional earmarks despite growing interest among House and Senate Republicans — as well as the House Democratic leadership — in a one-year freeze on the practice, aides said last week.

Sen. Barack Obama is already plotting the makeup of his Cabinet, and it includes two prominent Republicans. According to the Sunday Times of London, Obama has his sights set on Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Richard Lugar of Indiana. Hagel has been an outspoken opponent of the Iraq war, and Lugar is the ranking GOP member on the Senate foreign relations committee. Senior advisers told the Times that Hagel is being considered for the secretary of defense post, and Lugar as secretary of state. Obama would only say to the Times: “Chuck Hagel is a great friend of mine...

The best evidence of Obama’s readiness to lead the nation is displayed through his ability to run for president. After all, what is more difficult, complicated, or challenging than getting elected president? What other life experience better illustrates one’s qualification to hold the office than a manifest skill in seeking it? For anyone who has ever been elected president, the race that sent them to the White House was the single most important event in their lives and dwarfs any other experience they might have had before running. As we have watched Obama surmount the hurdles that lay in his...

If Americans want to continue the Iraq war, then Sen. John McCain -- the apparent Republican presidential candidate and relentless hawk -- is their man. It seems McCain was not kidding when he said the U.S. might have to remain in Iraq for 100 years. At a town meeting in New Hampshire, McCain was told that President Bush had indicated the possibility of U.S. forces staying in Iraq for 50 years. “Make it a hundred,’’ McCain responded. Presumably McCain means that would still be with a volunteer U.S. army because even the “straight talking” senator would not dare to suggest...

Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign intends to go after delegates whom Barack Obama has already won in the caucuses and primaries if she needs them to win the nomination. This strategy was confirmed to me by a high-ranking Clinton official on Monday. And I am not talking about superdelegates, those 795 party big shots who are not pledged to anybody. I am talking about getting pledged delegates to switch sides. What? Isn’t that impossible? A pledged delegate is pledged to a particular candidate and cannot switch, right? Wrong. Pledged delegates are not really pledged at all, not even on the first...

Even longtime Clinton ally James Carville is acknowledging that Hillary is in trouble, saying that if she loses the March 4 primary in either Texas or Ohio, her campaign is doomed. Speaking at the International Builders Show in Florida on Wednesday, Carville — a top adviser to Bill Clinton in the 1990s — declared: “She’s behind. Make no mistake. If she loses either Texas or Ohio, this thing is done.” After his recent resounding wins in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C., Barack Obama holds a narrow lead over Clinton in total delegates, 1,272 to 1,231, although Hillary leads in superdelegates,...