I kid you not. Just now Howard Fineman said that Bill Clinton was to blame "because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were securitizing mortgages." What stunning ignorance.

Hell Howard, let's blame FDR while you are at it:

Fannie Mae was created in 1938 as part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. The collapse of the national housing market in the wake of the Great Depression discouraged private lenders from investing in home loans. Fannie Mae was established in order to provide local banks with federal money to finance home mortgages in an attempt to raise levels of home ownership and the availability of affordable housing.

Or maybe LBJ:

Treasury Secretary Hank Paulsen just announced that the federal government will bail out Wall Street:

. . . The underlying weakness in our financial system today is the illiquid mortgage assets that have lost value as the housing correction has proceeded. These illiquid assets are choking off the flow of credit that is so vitally important to our economy. . . . These illiquid assets are clogging up our financial system, and undermining the strength of our otherwise sound financial institutions. As a result, Americans' personal savings are threatened, and the ability of consumers and businesses to borrow and finance spending, investment, and job creation has been disrupted.

More.

I have been pitching the notion that John McCain's statement on Monday that "the fundamental of our economy are strong" could well become the defining moment of this election - akin to John Kerry's "I was for it before I was against it" moment in 2004. This USA Today editorial buttresses my view:

As Wall Street's roller-coaster week unfolded, John McCain's views on the economy went through about as many gyrations as the Dow Jones industrial average. Brace your neck for a quick recap.

[More . . .

We now have 5 organizations I know of doing daily tracking polls of the Presidential race - Gallup, Rasmussen, DKos/R2000, Hotline/Diageo and the Battleground poll. The trend this week in all 5 has been clearly and decisively in Obama's favor.

Gallup has gone from a 2 point McCain lead in polling in the 9/12-14 period to a 4 point Obama lead in the 9/15-17 period - and Obama now leads in the tracker, 48-44. More . . .

The LA Times on Gov. Sarah Palin and the Road to Nowhere:

While seeking votes, she told Ketchikan residents she backed the 'bridge to nowhere.' As governor, she spent the money elsewhere and moved ahead with a $26-million road to the nonexistent bridge.

You can't make this stuff up.

This is an open thread. See you all tomorrow.

In Idaho, the feds are charging a woman with a crime that carries up to 6 months in jail for spilling a soda.

U.S. Attorney Tom Moss plans to bring two charges against Natalie Walters, 39, stemming from an Aug. 20 incident at the Boise Veterans Affairs Medical Center, the Idaho Statesman reports. If convicted, she could face up to six months in federal prison on each count.

Walters, who routinely takes her father to the Boise hospital for treatment, said there is no posted price for soda refills at the center's cafeteria, and she's typically charged between $1 and $1.50 for filling her mug, according to the paper. On Aug. 20, she was charged $3.80, which lead to the dispute and Walters dumping the soda on the cafeteria counter.

Walters is charged with three misdemanors: [More...]

The only way for Bob Barr to win a state is to remove John McCain and Barack Obama from the ballot. Barr is giving that strategy a try in Texas.

Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party's nominee for president, has filed a lawsuit in Texas demanding Senators John McCain and Barack Obama be removed from the ballot after they missed the official filing deadline. "The seriousness of this issue is self-evident," the lawsuit states. "The hubris of the major parties has risen to such a level that they do not believe that the election laws of the State of Texas apply to them."

Barr thinks the two major party candidates missed state-imposed deadlines to be certified as their party's candidate and should therefore be removed from the Texas ballot. Neither candidate was nominated in time to be certified as the party's nominee. The likelihood that a court will allow Barr to tamper with a federal election because candidates failed to satisfy an impossible requirement of state law is not high.

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

-Article VI, Clause 2 of the US Constitution

Of all the articles, clauses and sections of the Constitution, it can be argued that the Supremacy Clause is the most direct and unambiguous. "Shall be the Supreme Law of the Land" is pretty conclusive. And yet one of the most confusing and disputed areas of the law is the preemption doctrine - particularly the concept of implied preemption. Today, Adam Liptak writes about an important case on preemption to be heard in the Supreme Court:

It's official. Alaska "First Dude" Todd Palin, husband of Gov. Sarah Palin, will refuse to comply with the subpoena issued last week to testify before the Alaska Senate Judiciary Committee on TrooperGate.

Instead of taking the 5th, something we could respect as his constitutional right, he's claiming he can't get a fair hearing. Republican politics as usual.

A state Senate committee is scheduled to meet Friday to take statements from the 12 people they subpoenaed last week, including Todd Palin. But McCain-Palin spokeswoman Maria Comella said Todd Palin would not face a "fair hearing" before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

More...

A couple of months ago, TalkLeft asked whether the government is tracking your cell phone's movement. We know the government asks cell phone service providers to turn over location records that show the coverage area in which a subscriber's cell phone was transmitting on specified days. The question is whether the police need to show probable cause to obtain a court order for production of those records.

[A recent] ruling (.pdf) from Judge Terrence McVerry of the Western Pennsylvania U.S. District Court deals a blow to investigators who have been getting cellphone location data on in the past simply by proving to a judge that the information would be relevant to an investigation. That's the same standard used to force a telephone company to reveal the name and address of a subscriber.

Judge McVerry affirmed a well reasoned decision (.pdf) by Magistrate Judge Lisa Pupo Lenihan. The decision recognizes that "the ex parte nature of the proceedings, the comparatively low cost to the Government of the information requested, and the undetectable nature of a CSP’s electronic transfer of such information, render these requests particularly vulnerable to abuse." [more...]

Since this announcement in May that Dallas County had set a record with 17 exonerations of innocent prisoners due to new DNA testing, Dallas has broken its own record twice. TalkLeft reported exoneration 18 here. The next record-breaker could come tomorrow.

After nearly 26 years [in prison], the Dallas man [Johnnie Earl Lindsey] is one step closer to freedom this week after DNA test results showed that he was not the man who sexually assaulted the woman, said his attorney, Michelle Moore. ... "Hopefully he'll be released," said Ms. Moore, an assistant Dallas County public defender and a board member of the Innocence Project, a legal group that seeks to get wrongful convictions overturned.

Lindsey was convicted on the basis of a bad witness ID that probably resulted from showing the victim a suggestive photo array. [more...]

Retired Oregon Supreme Court Justice Betty Roberts recounts a career filled with obstacles and achievement in her memoir, “With Grit and By Grace.” Karen McCowan reviews the book.

“I stacked up in my mind the many times a man had told me, ‘You can’t,’ ” she writes. “Just in the previous seven years: I’d been told by a male registrar that I couldn’t major in physical education; by my husband that I couldn’t teach; by a male minister that I should never have gone to college; and by a male academic adviser that I should be happy being a housewife. Twice I’d been forced to shift jobs to another school district — once to be able to teach rather than be a dean according to a superintendent’s decree. Once I’d been fired when I ran for public office, just because another male superintendent had disliked the idea.”

But Roberts, then 39, refused to be defeated.

[more ...]