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With the news that the McCain campaign is launching a full assault on Obama's associates, preparedness, and judgment in a TV ad campaign to start Wednesday -- as detailed in this morning's Washington Post -- the Obama campaign is planning a pre-emptive assault on the TV airwaves to start Monday. Gov. Sarah Palin got the ball rolling this morning, going after Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., for his association with Professor William Ayers, a former member of the radical group the Weather Underground, saying Obama "is someone who sees America it seems as being so imperfect, imperfect enough that he’s palling...

UPDATE at end of post: the can has already been opened!Without question, ABC's Jake Tapper is one of the few members of the mainstream media who's actually willing to publish less than favorable reports about Barack Obama.In a "Political Punch" blog posting Saturday about new revelations involving indicted fundraiser Tony Rezko, Tapper deliciously summed up a Washington Post piece as claiming that "Sen. John McCain's campaign...is about to open up a can of whoop-ass on Obama with a focus on his personal associations." I kid you not (emphasis added, photo courtesy ABC): Story Continues Below Ad ↓ The Chicago Sun-Times...

The Senate Finance Committee has published a summary of some of the additions to the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act. There are many provisions in the bill that will directly benefit millions of Americans -- what's called the "AMT patch," for instance, which will protect 20 million middle class Americans from seeing a tax increase in 2009. Or tax deductions for tuition, and for teacher expenses. Corporations will see extensions of popular tax cuts -- for research and development, or renewable energies. But there's also some other stuff. My colleague Z. Bryon Wolf points out that it bears mentioning that all...

Saturday afternoon so as to prevent leaks, as members of Congress and the Bush administration rolled up their sleeves to try to hammer out a compromise bill. The BlackBerries, with Post-It notes identifying their owners, vibrated away in a small trash can, and later were spread out on a table for later retrieval, as their owners tried to help their bosses resolve the legislative logjam in one of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's offices on the second floor of the U.S. Capitol building. House Republicans, who had not been meaningfully involved in the process until Thursday, when they announced they would...

President Bush and Republican presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain pleaded with GOP members of the House to end their party rebellion and quickly approve a Wall Street bailout plan.

ABC News has learned that President Bush called Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., this evening and invited him to participate in a meeting about the Wall Street bailout bill tomorrow afternoon in Washington, DC, with other congressional leaders, including Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. Obama accepted the president's invitation, a source tells ABC News. The invitation comes at an interesting time. The President has not been in the middle of negotiations with Congress, leaving that task to his Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. McCain earlier today announced he was suspending his campaign -- and his participation in the first presidential debate Friday night...

Sen. Barack Obama better not mess with his running mate Joe Biden's guns...or else. In an out-of-nowhere attempt to re-assure a southwestern Virginia labor crowd about gun owners' rights, Biden -- who regularly scores "F" ratings from the National Rifle Association -- warned Obama that if "he tries to fool with my Beretta, he’s got a problem."

Earlier this week, the campaign of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., seized upon a column in the New York Post that described Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., as having urged Iraqi leaders in a private meeting to delay coming to an agreement with the Bush administration on the status of U.S. troops. "Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a drawdown of the American military presence," Post columnist Amir Taheri wrote, quoting Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, who told the Post that Obama, during his meeting with Iraqi leaders in July, "asked why we were...

"Two years ago, I warned that the oversight of Fannie and Freddie was terrible, that we were facing a crisis because of it, or certainly serious problems," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told CBS this morning. "The influence that Fannie and Freddie had in the inside the Beltway, old boy network, which led to this kind of corruption is unacceptable and I warned about it a couple of years ago.” How does this claim of foresight square with this interview that McCain gave to the Keene (NH) Sentinel, discussing the subprime mortgage crisis, in December 2007? Q: “Well the dimension of...

Jake Tapper catches up with Obama's gun problem, and correctly notes that Obama's bizarre, rambling answer on guns to a friendly Pennsylvania audience on Friday September 5th has "ricocheted around the country," but Jake doesn't tell you why. In a nutshell: Obama concluded his curiously defensive answer that day with a hypothetical: ---------------- "The bottom line is this. If you’ve got a rifle, you’ve got a shotgun, you’ve got a gun in your house, I’m not taking it away. Alright? So they can keep on talking about it but this is just not true. And by the way, here’s another...

GOLDEN, COLO. -- "We're going to make everything more open," Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said here yesterday, "and more accountable, and more attractive to those who want to serve." Good government groups have told me that in general, when it comes to transparency issues, they're very happy with both candidates on the top of the ticket. Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., are both seen as "reformers" by these groups. Sure, there have been glitches here and there (Obama's broken promises on public financing comes to mind) but in general they see both men as allies. Enter Gov...

Assuredly McCain isn't comfortable talking about this -- and the McCain campaign discouraged me from writing about this -- but the reason the aged Arizonan doesn't use a computer or send email is because of his war wounds. I realize some of the nastier liberals in the blogosphere will see this as McCain once again "playing the POW card," but it's simply a fact: typing on a regular keyboard for any sustained period of time bothers McCain physically. He can type, he occasionally does type, but in general the injuries he sustained as a POW -- ones that make it...

Well, who is it? I am surprised that the brave, independent-thinking members of the Fourth Estate haven’t given full rein to the terrier instinct on this question. Obviously, someone inside the Obama campaign is out to sabotage The Chosen One’s credibility and, just as obviously, the journalistic profession speaks with a single voice when it comes to favoring The Obama over every other candidate. So where are the investigative reporters when we–or, rather, when they–need ‘em? Wouldn’t the cause of electing Obama come hell or high water be better served by suspending inquiries in to Todd Palin’s 1986 DUI citations...

In his best-selling autobiography, "Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance," presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., writes movingly about his high school best friend, whom he calls "Ray." Ray's real name is Keith Kakugawa. And Kakugawa's life could not have veered more starkly from that of his old friend, the presidential candidate. Kakugawa is currently homeless in Los Angeles, sleeping in the beat-up Mazda of his friend Jason Myles. He has been in and out of prison for the past few decades, mostly on charges related to cocaine possession and dealing. "To be honest with you,...

Fighting a Different Alaska Republican, Alaska Dems Credit Palin with Killing Bridge to Nowhere September 08, 2008 4:38 PM Conservative bloggers point out that in their campaign against Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, Alaska Democrats gave credit to Gov. Palin for helping to kill the Bridge to Nowhere. “Gov. Sarah Palin said the $398 million bridge was $329 million short of full funding, and only $36 million in federal funds were set aside for it," the Democrats say. "She said it was clear Congress had little interest in spending any more money for it and that the state had higher priorities."...

Says Diddy: "Attention John McCain, attention John McCain, my name is Diddy…I had to check in with you to tell you that you are bugging the f--- out. I don't even understand what planet you're on right now.! This is the job to be the leader of the free world. "Ok," Diddy continues, "No disrespect. I love you. I want you to live to be 110, but things happen. What if, God forbid, you got a running mate, you become president -- Alaska? Alaska? Alaska? Alaska? Come on, man. I don’t know if there's any black people in Alaska. "John,...

A meme is developing out there among liberals that Gov. Sarah Palin was a supporter of Pat Buchanan in the 1990s, a charge that the McCain-Palin campaign strongly denies. The evidence is the following, as first noticed by "The Nation": in an Associated Press story from July 17, 1999, titled, "Buchanan takes conservative message to Fairbanks." "Pat Buchanan brought his conservative message of a smaller government and an America First foreign policy to Fairbanks and Wasilla on Friday as he continued a campaign swing through Alaska….In Wasilla, Buchanan took some shots at the "Republican establishment," saying it was willing to...

As he watched the first night of his Democratic National Convention from the cozy living room of local supporters Jim and Alicia Girardeau, Sen. Barack Obama undoubtedly wanted his wife, Michelle Obama, the headline speaker Monday, to be the news-making highlight of the day. But vocal protestors, the media and a few complicated egos directed the public's attention earlier in the day to his primary rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. As frustrated Democrats converged on Denver yesterday, some began chanting "caucus fraud," while others shouted the word "sweetie," a reference to the time Obama called a female reporter by the...

As frustrated Democrats converged on Denver yesterday, some began chanting "caucus fraud," while others shouted the word "sweetie," a reference to the time Obama called a female reporter by the same name. One Clinton supporter who spoke to ABC News said Obama couldn't be trusted. Another said, "He's shifty and untrustworthy." It was assuredly not the kind of message Obama and his diligently image-conscious team were counting on at the Democratic National Convention. "I'm thoroughly disgusted with the Democratic Party. I believe the magic of Barack Obama was his ability to turn lifelong Democrats like us into McCain supporters overnight,"...

UPDATE: ABC News' Ron Claiborne, traveling with the McCain campaign, reports that McCain senior adviser Charlie Black would not say whether people around McCain while he was en route to Rick Warren's forum had access to blackberries and cell phones from which they could have tipped off Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., about the questions. "There's no reason we would do that," was all Black would say, though quite obviously there is a reason.

“At what point does a baby get human rights in your view?” Obama said that “whether you are looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade. “

Don’t get me wrong – I half expected to see anti-Obama author Jerome Corsi at today’s Bigfoot press conference. But not everything in the Obama campaign’s 40-page refutation of Corsi’s shoddy and dishonest book “Obama Nation” is fair. Much of what Corsi writes in his book is demonstrably false, irresponsible, and feverishly conjured. The book is indefensible, as are Corsi’s many bigoted remarks about Arabs, the Pope and others. But the Obama campaign got a little greedy in their refutations. First of all, on the front of the response, is a labeled stamped “Brought to you by Bush/Cheney Attack Machine.”...

  Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine who is under consideration as a possible running mate for Barack Obama gave the Senator credit for the Russian ceasefire in Georgia.From ABC News' Jake Tapper."The Senator's goal was to be tough and smart," Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine said of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, "and so when the action (in Georgia) happened on Thursday, he immediately called for a ceasefire, condemned the unwarranted use of force by Russia.  It was a bad crisis for the world.  It required tough words, but also a smart approach to call on the international community to step in --...

How many young white women professing adoration for Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, can you count in this anti-Obama web video that the campaign of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz, was sending out yesterday? One...two...three...four...sure are a lot of young white women in this thing.... Why do you think they put so many young white women professing their love for Obama in what is clearly an anti-Obama video? What would possibly be negative about young white women liking Sen. Obama?

As we close up a week wherein Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, on the stump and in a TV ad accused rival Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., of being "in the pocket of big oil," and doing the industry's bidding -- not to mention a week during which the Democratic National Committee launched an Exxon-McCain '08 website to drive home this Democratic talking point -- the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics points out that the issue is a bit more complicated than it first would appear. McCain has received three times more money from the oil industry in general -- $1.3 million...

"So I told them something simple," Obama said. "I said, 'You know what? You can inflate your tires to the proper levels and that if everybody in America inflated their tires to the proper level, we would actually probably save more oil than all the oil we'd get from John McCain drilling right below his feet there, or wherever he was going to drill.'" (Note: that's not accurate, as we fact-checked last week. But the larger point about energy savings is correct.) "So now the Republicans are going around - this is the kind of thing they do. I don't...

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, met with House Democrats yesterday, talking about his trip abroad and his observations. Obama told the caucus, according to an attendee, "Nobody said this to me directly but I get the feeling from my talks that if the sanctions don’t work Israel is going to strike Iran." The notion that Israel is preparing for such an action against Iran's myriad nuclear facilities is not new, with conjecture heating up in May after an Israeli military exercise featuring 150 aircraft flying almost a thousand miles over the Mediterranean Sea in what was seen as a dress rehearsal...

After meeting with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown today, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, came before the microphones... SNIP But the Pentagon said that wasn't true, that Obama was more than welcome to come, it was just that he couldn't bring the media or campaign staff. So here's what Obama said about it all: "The staff was working this so I don’t know each and every detail but here is what I understand happened," Obama said. "We had scheduled to go, we had no problem at all in leaving, we always leave press and staff off -- that is why we...

I think America may soon learn that "the Emperor has no clothes." The protective press veil around Barack Obama may be about to be torn away. This is video (see video) of ABC News' Jake Tapper reporting from Berlin yesterday on Good Morning America. In his report, Tapper reveals the truth about Barack Obama's excessive ego by showing that Obama has replaced the U.S. Flag that was on the tail of his airplane "with an enormous Obama "O". He also describes how Obama has redesigned the airplane to separate Obama and his staff "from us lowly reporters," and he shows...

Not every reporter covering Barack Obama's world tour is entranced by the words and imagery of the Democratic candidate. On Thursday's "Good Morning America," political correspondent Jake Tapper jabbed at Obama's overconfidence, describing the senator's July 24 speech in Berlin as "one the Obama campaign is billing at almost presidential. Even though he is not the president." Regarding the Obama plane, the ABC journalist also pointed out: "The American flag on the tail wing has been replaced by an enormous Obama O."

On the heels of John McCain's strong statement to Israel and the Jews that he would "not allow a second Holocaust" to happen, Barack Hussein Obama was asked whether he'd prevent a second Holocaust by reporters during his trip to Israel. The setting for the question is notable. It was just before he made a photo op visit to "Yad VaShem," the Holocaust museum in Israel. What is also notable was Obama's "response" and how it was "covered" by the Mainstream media. While the Wall Street Journal's Jay Solomon and Cam Simpson noted the question, they did not note the...

"Let me be absolutely clear," Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, said today at a press conference in Amman, Jordan. "Israel is a strong friend of Israel's. It will be a strong friend of Israel's under a McCain...administration. It will be a strong friend of Israel's under an Obama administration. So that policy is not going to change."

Though a majority of the American people support ending the war in Iraq and think the invasion was a mistake, Republicans have tried to put Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, into a box as he prepares for his first trip to Iraq since securing his party's presidential nomination. Weeks ago, after Obama said he would be willing to listen to commanders in the ground to "refine" his policy, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Republicans said Obama was flip-flopping. Then after Obama clarified that he is sticking by his plans to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq within 16 months, McCain and Republicans...

The sophisticates at The New Yorker have come up with a cover that is sure to get the magazine a lot of attention. Negative attention. From their friends. An illustration by Barry Blitt depicts Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and his wife Michelle in the Oval Office, revealing their "true" selves: Michelle is in full revolutionary garb, an enormous afro making her look like a millennial Angela Davis, holding an automatic weapon and wearing military pants. In the cartoon Michelle is giving dap, or fist-bumping, with her husband who is wearing a turban and is dressed in garb perhaps more appropriate...

For those voters who think Ralph Nader and Bob Barr are too conventional, the Green Party this weekend named former Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Georgia, its 2008 presidential nominee. At the Green Party's nominating convention Saturday in at the Chicago Symphony Center, McKinney received 313 out of 532 votes cast in the first round of balloting. "I am asking you to vote your conscience, vote your dreams, vote your future, vote Green," McKinney told the convention's 800 or so attendees. "A vote for the Green Party is a vote for the movement that will turn this country right-side-up again." McKinney, a...

In Pennsylvania, McCain Tells a New Version of Heroic P.O.W. Story -- Subbing the Pittsburgh Steelers for the Green Bay Packers July 10, 2008 5:37 PMYesterday in Pittsburgh, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., professed his love for the Steelers to KDKA-TV. Watch HERE. Asked what first comes to his mind when he thinks of Pittsburgh, McCain chuckled, "the Steelers.  I was a mediocre high school athlete but I loved and adored the sports but the Steelers really made a huge impression on me particularly in my early years." And then McCain told a rather moving story about his time as a...

"To be clear," Sen. Barack Obama. D-Illinois, spox Bill Burton told Talking Points Memo last October about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, "Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies." Reaffirmed Obama's Senate office in December: “Senator Obama unequivocally opposes giving retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies and has cosponsored Senator Dodd's efforts to remove that provision from the FISA bill. Granting such immunity undermines the constitutional protections Americans trust the Congress to protect. Senator Obama supports a filibuster of this bill, and strongly urges others to do the same...Senator Obama will...

Sen. Barack Obama has emerged from his bruising battle for the Democratic presidential nomination with only a six point lead over Sen. John McCain and claiming his Republican rival has been getting a "pass" from the media. An ABC News/Washington Post poll shows Obama, D-Ill., leading McCain, R-Ariz., by a margin of 48 percent to 42 percent. It is a surprisingly small lead considering that the incumbent Republican president George Bush is at record lows and public opinion overwhelmingly feels the country is on the "wrong track". No Bounce, Resistance from Clinton Supporters The poll indicates that Obama did not...

The campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain are engaging in an angry exchange today over Obama's remarks to Jake Tapper yesterday in which he talked about the role of law enforcement in combating terrorism. In the interview, Obama said, "[I]t is my firm belief that we can track terrorists, we can crack down on threats against the United States, but we can do so within the constraints of our Constitution. And there has been no evidence on their part that we can't. "And, you know, let's take the example of Guantanamo. What we know is that, in previous terrorist...

Rev. Pfleger: "America is the Greatest Sin Against God" June 01, 2008 10:46 PMIn another excerpt from Rev. Michael Pfleger's sermon last Sunday, May 25, from the pulpit of Sen. Barack Obama's now former church, Trinity United Church of Christ on the South side of Chicago, the longtime Obama associate condemns America for racism in fairly harsh terms. Watch HERE. "Racism is still America's greatest addiction," Pfleger says. "I also believe that America is the greatest sin against God." There seems to be a mixed reaction to that from the pews. But Pfleger explains: "If the greatest command is to...

In the Des Moines Register, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said that the worldview of Navy veteran Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who is the son and grandson of Admirals, has been shaped too much by the military. "He has a hard time thinking beyond that," Harkin told reporters. "I think he's trapped in that. Everything is looked at from his life experiences, from always having been in the military, and I think that can be pretty dangerous.""It's one thing to have been drafted and served, but another thing when you come from generations of military people and that's just how you're...

Lost in the uproar over Sen. Hillary Clinton's invoking of the assassination of Robert Kennedy when explaining why her staying in the race won't hurt party unity is an actual examination of her comparison of the 2008 Democratic primary season to the one from 1968. Clinton yesterday before the Argus Leader editorial board also invoked her husband's race in 1992. We've already twice now looked at how her reference to how her husband was still campaigning in June 1992 is a disingenuous claim.

Tragedy struck the first filly in the Kentucky Derby since 1999, as Eight Belles went down on the track after her second-place finish today, broke two ankles, and was euthanized. Showing a sisterhood with the female horse, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., during a trip to Louisville this week had said she was going to bet on Eight Belles to win, place, and show. ABC News' Karen Travers reports that Clinton told supporters in Jeffersonville, Ind., earlier this week, "I hope that everybody will go to the derby on Saturday and place just a little money on the filly for me....

Pressure Mounts on Obama After Reverend's Reappearance -- It's crunch time on the campaign trail, and candidates can't afford any mistakes or for any controversial friends to suddenly reappear. Will the Rev. Jeremiah Wright drag the Illinois senator's campaign down? Some speculate the re-emergence of Sen. Barack Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is turning off white voters. Democratic sources tell ABC News that Wright is unquestionably worrying superdelegates about Obama's electability. On Monday at the National Press Club, Wright was defiant, embracing some of the most controversial items he has said. "Jesus said, You cannot do terrorism on...

"This is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright," said Rev. Jeremiah Wright this morning at the National Press Club, explaining why he was emerging before a national audience, regardless of what harm it might do to the candidacy of one of his parishioners, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois. "This is an attack on the black church." With that justification -- however sincere or self-serving -- in mind, Wright continued his publicity blitz, arguing that he's compelled to speak out because he does not operate in the world of politics. "On November 5 and on January 21, I will still be a...

Obama has twice apologized since implying that U.S. troops had died in vain, telling a rally crowd in Ames, Iowa, on Sunday, "We ended up launching a war that should have never been authorized, and should never been waged, and on which we have now spent $400 billion, and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted."

At a fundraiser in San Francisco, Ca., Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., claimed he had more world experience than his rivals, Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and introduced a new bit of biographical information. "Foreign policy is the area where I am probably most confident that I know more and understand the world better than Senator Clinton or Senator McCain," Obama said, according to the Huffington Post. "It's ironic because this is supposedly the place where experience is most needed to be Commander-in-Chief. Experience in Washington is not knowledge of the world. This I know. When Senator Clinton...

The Huffington Post's Mayhill Fowler reports that, at that same San Francisco fundraiser where Obama revealed his previously unknown college sojourn to Pakistan, the junior senator from Illinois seemed to try to get inside the mind of small towners in Pennsylvania, with a dose of sociology and a dollop of dime-store psychology. "You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," Obama said. "And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration...

In Eugene, Oregon, Saturday. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, attempted to change the measure by which anyone might assess who criticized the Iraq war first, her or Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, by saying those keeping records should start in January 2005, when Obama joined the Senate. (A measure that conveniently avoids her October 2002 vote to authorize use of force against Iraq at a time that Obama was speaking out against the war.) She claimed that using that measure she criticized the war in Iraq before Obama did. But Clinton's claim was false. Clinton on Saturday told Oregonians, "when Senator Obama...

Last August, I ran into Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, outside the Senate chamber in the Capitol. This was before the Obama surge, before he had omnipresent Secret Service agents... Frankly, he reeked of cigarettes. Obama ran off before I could ask him if he'd just snuck a smoke, so I called his campaign. They denied it. He'd quit months before, in February, they insisted. They reported back that he had told them he hadn't had a cigarette since he quit. Except….last night on MSNBC's Hardball, Obama admitted that his attempt to wean himself from the vile tobacco weed had not...