Barack Obama will be away from the campaign on Thursday and Friday. His grandmother's poor health has taken a serious turn. Obama plans to fly to Hawaii on Thursday to be with her. Send her, and the candidate, your positive thoughts.

Georgia 10 has a must read piece at Daily Kos that describes how it is done. Republicans have always concentrated on suppressing votes (causing long voter lines is also a classic technique), not on doing the virtually impossible - cheating on the vote count.

Some well meaning folks want to follow the red herring - crying "fraud!" in the vote count. The problem is not in the vote count - it is in denying the vote. Keeping eyes on the ball of voter suppression is the real battle for clean and fair elections - not silly Diebold conspiracy theories.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

Barack Obama maintains a significant lead over John McCain in the latest WaPo poll:

The new survey shows Obama leading McCain by 53 percent to 44 percent among likely voters, little changed from a separate Post-ABC News poll released last Monday. Among all registered voters, Obama's lead is 10 percentage points, 52 percent to 42 percent.

Still Obama's election.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

Good thing people are not paying much attention to Joe Biden. What a stupid thing he said yesterday:

Mark my words," the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

WTF? Did Biden take his extra stupid pills yesterday? Sheesh.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

It should be noted that for whatever reason, McCain has so far refused to go places that Hillary went in the primary (Wright, explicit comments about "hard-working, white" Americans supporting her, distributing emails with pictures of Obama in Muslim garb, etc.).

It should be noted that everyone of those charges is pure nonsense and Marshall should be ashamed for repeating them yet again. Hillary Clinton's campaign NEVER used Rev. Wright ever. When asked, she said she would not have him as her pastor. That was it. No ads. Nothing on Wright ever. The "hard working white Americans" line was the question she was asked by the AP reporter. It was another phony scandal, now a Josh Marshall specialty. But the one that takes the cake is the "Obama in Muslim garb" lie that DRUDGE sold and Marshall bought and still buys. What a disgraceful performance Josh Marshall has put in this campaign season. I'll be honest, I do not believe his site when it writes something about McCain. I have to see it somewhere else before I believe it now. I just do not trust his site anymore.

By Big Tent Democrat, definitely speaking only for me

Speaking to a gathering of the Federalist Society (where he was preaching to the choir), Judge Dennis Jacobs, chief judge of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, told the crowd that pro bono work is an anti-social activity. He particularly dislikes pro bono work for environmental causes, which he considers "legal activism."

"No public good is good for everybody," Jacobs said.

Perhaps Judge Jacobs meant to distinguish the helping hands that lawyers lend to the indigent in divorce and domestic abuse cases, landlord-tenant disputes, social security disability and veterans benefits cases, and all the other kinds of legal work that help individuals rather than the broader public. Even if that's so, it's shocking to think that a federal judge would disparage pro bono representation in lawsuits against the government. Making the government obey the law isn't an invitation to judicial "activism."

Helping society for free, rather than corporate clients for a healthy hourly rate, isn't anti-social. It's in the finest tradition of the bar to use the judicial system to help improve lives. Lawyers who do so should be praised, not scolded.

As Gov. Sarah Palin makes the round of Republican strongholds in Colorado today, the Aspen Daily News issues its endorsement of Barack Obama. On John McCain, the paper says:

McCain's own behavior has been cause for concern. He has clearly abandoned the 'maverick' platform that made him popular in 2000, and has shamelessly catered to the religious right, which has its party in a headlock.

It's hard to say what McCain's true colors are, but they were clearly evident in his selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate. While it was a tactical success in energizing the Republican Party, it was a reckless move that would put our country in danger should she ever become commander-in-chief. Not only is she inexperienced and unworldly, Palin just doesn't seem that bright. She dodges too many questions and fumbles too many answers to lead the free world.

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The Bush administration's recent "get tough" philosophy with regard to undocumented workers (as opposed to its more lenient attitude toward the employers who hire them) might soon require revision. In the past, undocumented workers were deported but usually were not aggressively prosecuted, at least if they had not reentered the country after an earlier deportation. The most recent approach is to charge or threaten to charge identity theft if the worker obtained employment by using another person's name and social security number.

The workers who acquire false documents do not necessarily know whether they are using a real or a fictitious identity. The government insists that it need not prove the worker's knowledge that he or she has misappropriated a real identity. Some courts have agreed with the government while others have held that identity theft requires proof that the worker knew the fraudulent documents contained a real person's information.

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In addition to the national polls cited here by Big Tent Democrat, there's a Suffolk Ohio and Missouri poll out today.

Barack Obama leads John McCain by 9 in Ohio and McCain's ahead by 1 in Missouri.

I think Ohio is critical. If McCain loses there, I think he loses the election.

"If Ohio goes for Obama, it may be lights out for McCain,” said David Paleologos, director of the Political Research Center at Suffolk University in Boston. "At least today, the probability of an Ohio win is supported by the high-single-digit lead in the statewide poll coupled with the Perry County bellwether, which showed Obama leading by 4 percent.”

Joe the Plumber didn't help McCain in Ohio, his home state.

I give Gallup major props - they keep giving the RV totals with their LV models in their polling results. Their latest polling shows Obama leading among registered voters by 11 and by 9 among likely voters (expanded model). DKos/R2000 has Obama up 8, 50-42 among LVs (no RV number made available.) Hotline, IBD/TIPP and CNN have Obama by 5. Ras has Obama by 4 as does Battleground. All of these are LV numbers.

Still Obama's election.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

Yesterday, I wrote about Jon Meacham's article about our Center Right country. In particular, I scoffed at Meacham's suggestion that FDR's Presidency provided an example of his thesis - that somehow FDR failed to win the ideological battle for Progressivism. Such talk is generally centered on FDR's failure to win primary battles in his own party in 1938. But it seems incredibly wrongheaded to me to judge FDR solely on that basis.

It would be ignoring everything that came before - when FDR revolutionized national government. Similarly, Matt Yglesias underestimates the power of the Presidency:

There’s a tendency to attribute FDR’s and LBJ’s achievements to something inherent to their character or their approach to governing, but the truth is simply that in 1933-34 and 1965-66 you had a lot of liberals in congress so a lot of liberal legislation passed.

This is simply not correct in my view. FDR had a lot of DEMOCRATS in his Congress, but they were not particularly liberal, even for the time. What there was was this new FDR creation, and in some ways, a very bad one, an Imperial Presidency:

photo from L.A. Times

After weeks of jury selection, the Fort Dix Six terror trial begins today, with five of the original defendants, four of whom are pictured above. (One pleasded guilty to lesser charges.) They are charged with "conspiring to gun down military personnel at the sprawling South Jersey base in a jihad-inspired attack last year."

Keep your eye on the snitch testimony. The FBI is using two "cold insert" informants, Mahmoud Omar and Besnik Bakalli, to make the case.

A Justice Department official admits the two men are 'not squeaky-clean.' The trial, which starts Monday, will test the FBI's controversial tactic of using 'cold inserts' to infiltrate groups. [More...]