Fortunately, The New York Times is doing the vetting of Sarah Palin that John McCain didn't bother to do. The conclusion:

Throughout her political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials. ...

Interviews show that Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy. The governor and her top officials sometimes use personal e-mail accounts for state business; dozens of e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that her staff members studied whether that could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records.

Once she became governor, Palin hired at least five high school classmates for government positions. She installed one of them as the director of Alaska's Agriculture Department. The former classmate cited a "childhood love of cows" as a job qualification. [more ...]

Florida deserves credit for liberalizing its voting laws to restore voting rights to ex-felons who have finished their sentences. Florida deserves criticism for failing to take the new law seriously.

Fred Schuknecht, the director of administration for the Florida Clemency Board, acknowledged in an interview that there was a backlog of 60,000 former felons who could potentially have their rights restored, but must first be reviewed by the agency. Despite the fact that 3,500 newly released prisoners are added to the caseload every month, the Legislature cut 20 percent of the staff devoted to felony voter restoration cases, Mr. Schuknecht said.

With a presidential election on the horizon, what a perfect time to cut the staff needed to restore voting rights. Way to go, Florida.

Yet another reason why I believe Cass Sunstein is unfit to serve in an Obama Administration, his "defense" of Roe:

Those who seek to preserve the right to choose ought to be prepared to make some distinctions. As it was written in 1973, Roe v. Wade was far from a model of legal reasoning, and conservatives have been correct to criticize it. The court failed to root the abortion right in either the text of the Constitution or its own precedents.

This is nonsense in my opinion, particularly Sunstein's statement that Roe was not rooted in the text of the Constitution and the Supreme Court's precedents (Roe particularly followed Griswold to its logical conclusion.) Sunstein is entitled to his opinion, but he is not entitled to serve in a Democratic Administration or to be a Supreme Court appointee of a Democratic President. More . .

Ras (9/11-13) has McCain up 50-47 (yesterday it was 49-46.) I'll be adding the other results as they become available this morning and afternoon. I will add an overall take when all results are in. So far, no change - a slight McCain lead.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

I am switching between Meet the Press and ABC's This Week, Charles Schumer is on MTP and Claire McCaskill is on ABC's This Week.

In the first few minutes, we can see the difference between a good surrogate and a bad surrogate. Schumer is talking about how McCain/Palin is running for Bush's Third Term and ticks off the issues, the economy, foreign policy, energy policy, etc. Schumer's line "McCain/Palin is NOT change from George Bush." Pitch perfect.

McCaskill (going against Carly Fiorina) spent the top of the show attacking Sarah Palin. She is awful. Just awful. She has to be taken off the surrogate circuit.

This is an Open Thread.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

Kind of funny:

It's outrageous that school districts would import teachers from the Philippines rather than paying a sufficient salary to attract American teachers.

[Baldwin County, Alabama] district officials went around the world last year, with expenses paid by a teacher recruiting firm, and brought back Michel Olalo of Manila and 11 other Filipinos to teach along the shores of the Gulf Coast and Mobile Bay and in the communities in between.

The minimum starting salary for an inexperienced teacher in Alabama is $36,144. That's ten times better than a teacher is paid in the Philippines. That's good for Filipinos who may well become excellent teachers, but shouldn't our schools pay enough to make teaching an attractive job for Americans?

Activist, candidate, and Green Party leader Peter Camejo died today at the age of 68.

Camejo ran for [California's] top office in 2002, 2003 and 2006, supporting abortion rights, universal health care and a moratorium on the death penalty. Before joining the Green Party, he also ran for president as the Socialist Workers Party nominee in 1976. In 2004, Camejo was independent Nader's vice presidential pick.

Camejo, a first-generation Venezuelan-American, was also active against the Vietnam War and a vocal advocate for migrant worker rights. He marched in Selma, Ala. with Martin Luther King, Jr.

RIP, Peter Camejo.

If anyone had any doubt, today's college football results prove that the Big Ten stinks.

This is an Open Thread.

Al Giordano discussing an Obama Tier 2 ad (which means it is NOT from Obama):

Obsession with Palin has more often than not, in the past 14 days, said more about the misogynist and sexist culture we live in than about Governor Palin. It doesn't matter if, on the merits, the critique is right or wrong: it's the kind of Palin-hate that drowns out the more necessary fair-game critiques of her, and inoculates her from them. In a way, the obsessions over Palin from parts of the left mirror the act of aerial hunting being described in the ad. (And it's a very eerie coincidence that the McCain campaign's own pre-existing Internet ad that purports to be against "sexism" also uses the image of invading wolves, albeit making the opposite point.)

I wonder if that post makes Giordano a "concern troll?"

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

Who'da thunk it, Frank Rich gets one right:

How do you run against that flashy flimflam? You don’t. Karl Rove for once gave the Democrats a real tip rather than a bum steer when he wrote last week that if Obama wants to win, “he needs to remember he’s running against John McCain for president,” not Palin for vice president. Obama should keep stepping up the blitz on McCain’s flip-flops, confusion, ignorance and blurriness on major issues (from education to an exit date from Iraq), rather than her gaffes and résumé. If he focuses voters on the 2008 McCain, the Palin question will take care of itself.

He gets it wrong on invoking Bush (he counsels against it), but Rich getting it half right is a miracle these days.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

Paul Rosenberg posts this video:

The idea of linking McCain to Bush is, of course, sound. The execution of this video is poor. This is serious business. Trying to make it funny is not the right approach. Cut out all the attempted humor, stick to the fact that McCain is in fact running for Bush's Third Term, and you have some effective video here.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only