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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...

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., launches a biography tour next week, which looks to tell the American people about his days as a POW in Vietnam, at least based on his new TV ad (watch HERE) introduced today in New Mexico. In response, Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean issued a statement, saying, “John McCain can try to reintroduce himself to the country, but he can’t change the fact that he cast aside his principles to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with President Bush the last seven years. While we honor McCain’s military service, the fact is Americans want a real leader who offers...

Until recently the most popular metaphor to describe the Hillary Clinton campaign was Scorched Earth. This metaphor implies that Hillary is willing to destroy the entire Democrat party in an effort to win the nomination. However, there is a new metaphor on the block which is a bit more precise in its description: the Tonya Harding Option. This new metaphor was supposedly introduced yesterday by Jake Tapper in his ABC News 'Political Punch' posting, Democratic Party Official: Clinton Pursuing 'The Tonya Harding Option': l just spoke with a Democratic Party official, who asked for anonymity so as to speak candidly,...

Time to lace up the skates and cut some rhetorical figure-eights. GMA has quoted a Dem official as saying that in her desperate quest for the nomination, Hillary Clinton is down to "the Tonya Harding option." ABC senior political correspondent Jake Tapper cited the skating simile in his Good Morning America segment this morning. JAKE TAPPER: It is mathematically possible, improbable yes, but possible for Senator Hillary Clinton to win the Democratic nomination. What concerns Democratic officials in Washington is what Clinton will have to do to Senator Barack Obama in order for that to happen. One Democratic official told...