Go Paris! Here's the video TChris mentioned earlier.

Paris responds to John McCain's using her in a celebrity ad. Shorter version: She's got her own energy plan and she'll see us in the White House.

Update: The video has been removed from You Tube and substituted with the above censored version that blanks out the word "b*tches.

I like Paris Hilton. I defended her plenty on TalkLeft during her last brush with the law. (Scroll down for the almost daily posts on the raw deal she got. I even live-blogged her court hearings. Graphic here. )

This is an open thread.

At the Republican Convention, President Bush will speak on Labor Day, with the hope that backyard barbequers will be too busy to notice he was there. Dick Cheney might skip the event entirely, for equally obvious reasons. Also absent will the indicted Ted Stevens and the toe-tapping Larry Craig.

"Gordon Smith of Oregon, Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina and Susan Collins of Maine all face tough re-election campaigns" so they'll also take a pass. They may be hoping that voters don't realize they're Republicans.

In other Republican news:

A newspaper is asking John McCain's campaign why a black reporter assigned to cover a rally was singled out by security and told to leave a backstage area.

[more ...]

Only six representatives co-sponsored Barney Franks' sensible bill to end the federal prosecution of marijuana possession for personal use. One of them, Lacy Clay, mistakenly thought it was a medical marijuana bill. Is there now egg on Clay's face? Not at all.

Clay was worried about the reaction. Supporting the liberalization of marijuana laws is not often seen as a political winner, especially in Midwestern cities like St. Louis. But instead of stoner jokes, derision and righteous indignation, Clay was surprised to start getting praise from complete strangers. ...

So far, he said, his calls, mail and contacts are running 80-20 in favor of the bill. He was impressed enough that he decided to go ahead and step before the cameras last week with Frank and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) at a news conference touting the bill.

The prison and law enforcement industries, both of which see marijuana busts as job security, support the war against pot smokers. Many others realize, as Clay has come to believe, that it's a waste of federal resources. [more ...]

Author Ron Suskind has a new book out that's getting a lot of attention today. It's called “The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism.”

President Bush committed an impeachable offense by ordering the CIA to to manufacture a false pretense for the Iraq war in the form of a backdated, handwritten document linking Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, an explosive new book claims.

....Suskind says he spoke on the record with U.S. intelligence officials who stated that Bush was informed unequivocally in January 2003 that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction. Nonetheless, his book relates, Bush decided to invade Iraq three months later — with the forged letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam bolstering the U.S. rationale to go into war.

As to the fake letter: [More...]

The schedule for the fall presidential debates has been announced:

• 9/26 in Oxford (Miss.), Jim Lehrer moderating.
• 10/2 in St. Louis, Gwen Ifill moderating.
• 10/7 in Nashville, Tom Brokaw moderating.
• 10/15 in Hempstead (N.Y.), Bob Schieffer moderating.

As I was driving and listening to CNN on Sirius earlier this afternoon, they replayed segments of John McCain and Barack Obama's latest energy speeches.

McCain said members of Congress should interrupt their vacations and recess and return to Washington to pass an energy bill.

"Congress should come back into session, and I'm willing to come off the campaign trail. I call on Senator Obama to call on Congress to... Come off their vacation and address this energy challenge to America and don't leave until we do, Republican and Democrat joining together," the four-term senator said.

Other Republicans are joining the call. Is this just a ploy for the Republicans to reconvene Congress during Obama's scheduled vacation to Hawaii? He leaves Friday. Vacations before a convention can be hazardous to a campaign, remember John Kerry's winsurfing fiasco?

Who will campaign for Obama in his absence? You guessed it -- Hillary Clinton.

I'm gone for the rest of the afternoon. Here's an open thread for you to take over the discussion. All topics welcome, please be civil.

Update: No bail for Gotti.

Looks like I'll be wearing my "Free John Gotti" t-shirt to bed tonight. The Government just can't get enough bites at the apple when it comes to the son of the notorius, deceased mobster.

John A. Gotti has been charged with conspiracy for his role in a sprawling cocaine trafficking operation and in three mob-related killings in 1980s and ’90s, the United States attorney’s office in Tampa, Fla., announced on Tuesday....Mr. Gotti has been prosecuted four times before on charges related to organized crime; he pleaded guilty in the first case but contested the later charges, resulting in three mistrials.

More...

John McCain made the rounds at the annual Sturgis, South Dakota motorcycle rally yesterday.

Standing on the main stage at a world famous motorcycle rally in rural South Dakota on Monday, John McCain looked out on a sea of denim-wearing bikers and told them he enjoyed their company much more than that of the 200,000 Germans who turned out to see Barack Obama last month.

“As you may know,” he told the tens of thousands gathered at the 68th annual Sturgis Rally at Buffalo Chip campground, “not long ago, a couple of hundred thousand Berliners made a lot of noise for my opponent. I’ll take the roar of fifty thousand Harleys any day.”

The bikers roared their approval by revving their engines. [More...]

Chris Bowers discusses Obama new ad against McCain:

Chris writes:

If used with the proper level of rhetoric, the "McCain has been in D.C." for too long, could change the narrative, and start directing the balance of attacks toward McCain. . . .It is better than the "McCain is a flip-flopper" attack, which doesn't make any sense if you want to tie McCain to Bush.

Chris' critique makes sense but does not go far enough imo. McCain's 26 years in Congress is not the issue - Bush's 7 years as President and McCain's embrace of it is. In short, I think every Obama ad or discussion of McCain should be about George Bush and McCain's ties to him - that McCain will be Bush's third term.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

Digby highlighted Bob Somerby's piece about how the race issue is cutting against Obama. I was struck by Somerby's quote of Bob Herbert:

HERBERT (8/2/08): Whatever you think about Barack Obama, he does not want the race issue to be front and center in this campaign. Every day that the campaign is about race is a good day for John McCain. So I guess we understand Mr. McCain’s motivation [in saying Obama “played the race card.”]

We’ll stay away from definitive judgments about McCain’s motivation. But we agree, whole-heartedly, that race is dangerous for Candidate Obama . . .

It is obvious of course but Somerby and Digby and frankly, all commenters have decided to forget what happened in January 2008 in the Democratic Party, when "everyday the campaign was about race" was GOOD for Obama. As we know, Bill Clinton has not forgotten. On February 14, 2008, I wrote a post titled Turning Obama Into The Black Candidate:

Digby writes about poblano's piece in the LATimes and questions one of his premises. Poblano wrote:

The GOP will nominate a candidate who is widely perceived as being to the left of the party's conservative base, whereas the Democratic Party will again pick a standard-bearer more authentically liberal than centrist.

Digby responds:

I agree that McCain was chosen because he wasn't perceived as a doctrinaire Republican, but is it true that Obama was chosen because he's more authentically liberal than centrist? I thought he was running as someone who was beyond labels --- a post-partisan whose vision was to transcend partisanship altogether. The problem is that these Independent voters still see McCain as a moderate while they see Obama as a raging liberal. The post-partisanship hasn't sold to them the way it was supposed to, at least not yet.

More . . .