Let's set aside for the moment political differences and disapproval of Robert Novak's conduct, in order to wish him a speedy recovery from a brain tumor that caused his admission to intensive care last night.

[Novak's assistant Kathleeen] Connolly added that Mr. Novak is alert and talking ... and that he will undergo a biopsy at some time in the next few days to determine the kind of tumor he has.

In this thread, at least, please keep your comments respectful.

99 Days to the election. To me nothing has changed. Obama is a shoo in. Tell me why I am wrong about this and other things in this Open Thread.

Amy Sullivan is at it again, urging, and in this case, cheering on, Obama's "reachout" to "values" voters. She thinks Obama has hit a home run. Strangely enough, an American Spectator writer agrees with her. But the funny thing is the data the Spectator writer relies upon simply does not support his assertions. For example, the Spectator writer states:

Polls still show that conservative Christians favor McCain, but Obama is faring better than Kerry did in 2004.

But the linked Pew poll does not say that at all. Indeed, Obama is faring worse with white evangelical and white non-hispanic Catholics than even John Kerry. More . .

Glenn Greenwald has a great post that highlights how the Bush Administration, and its Establishment enablers, Democrats, Republicans and the Media, have severely tarnished the idea of American Exceptionalism. Glenn comments on a WaPo piece by its Deputy Opinion Page Editor Jackson Diehl criticizing, in completely unironic tones, the failure of "the rule of law" in Russia:

How can a member of an Editorial Page which has endorsed some of the most grotesque abuses and violations of law within their own country -- and which continues to believe that those responsible should be protected and immunized -- possibly continue to parade around as some sort of crusaders for those principles when it comes to others? Who is the target audience that they think they are successfully fooling with that charade? What mental process allows a person like Jackson Diehl or Fred Hiatt to declare that their own Government is exempt from the rule of law and the most basic international norms yet still believe they are in a position to condemn other governments for insufficient regard for the rule of law and human rights?

Glenn is right of course, but this holds true for the entire Beltway Establishment and beyond, from Fred Hiatt to Cass Sunstein to Nancy Pelosi and yes, to Barack Obama. The abdication of any moral standing by the American Establishment in the past 8 years has been nothing short of shameful. No one in the Establishment has the standing to lecture anyone about anything. All the lawlessness, all the outrages and abuses, all in our name - the Establishment has gone along every step of the way. This is what American Exceptionalism means now. And all done in our names.

Speaking for me only

What's John McCain's answer to this? Surge II: The Sequel?

Female bombers struck Kurdish political protesters in Kirkuk and Shiite pilgrims in Baghdad on Monday morning, leaving at least 48 people dead and 249 wounded in one of the bloodiest sequences of attacks in Iraq this year.... In the attacks in Baghdad, three women used suicide vests and a bomb in a bag to make strikes just minutes apart, killing 24 people, all apparently Shiite pilgrims marching in a festival, according to an official at the Interior Ministry.

The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility and Office of the Inspector General released this report (pdf) today concerning the hiring process at DOJ. Unsurprisingly, the report concludes that Monica "I didn't mean to" Goodling, Kyle Sampson, and others violated federal law by taking the personal political viewpoints of job applicants into account when filling DOJ career positions.

The report marks the culmination of a yearlong investigation by Justice's Office of Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility into whether Republican politics were driving hiring polices at the nation's premier law enforcement agency that is expected to be above partisan politics.

The report points to White House involvement in the hiring process:

Continuing his pronounced move to the extreme right, John McCain announced his support for an Arizona initiative to ban affirmative action:

Presidential candidate John McCain on Sunday endorsed a proposal to ban affirmative action programs in his home state, a policy that Democratic rival Barack Obama called a disappointing embrace of divisive tactics. In the past, McCain has criticized such ballot initiatives.

Barack Obama rightly notes that this is yet another reversal of McCain's position and a move to the extreme right:

"I think in the past he had been opposed to these kinds of Ward Connerly referenda or initiatives as divisive. And I think he's right," Obama said, referring to a leading critic of affirmative action.

John McCain continues to makes himself one of the most extreme Presidential candidates we have seen run for office. That he has reversed himself on so much to make this rightward move shows there is not an ounce of maverick in him. He is a prototypical extreme right wing Republican candidate.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

The TL kid and I finally got our new iPhones today. It's just like the iPod touch only it has a phone. Since I spent the better part of last week learning how to use the iPod touch, I'm hoping the phone will be an easy learning curve.

Not everyone loves it. This Washington Post reporter just returned his iPhone.

More...

We know that in a recent speech Attorney General Mukasey "demanded that Congress swiftly pass measures that would sharply reduce the possibility that any Guantánamo prisoner could have a fair hearing." Could it be that Mukasey is worried that a full and fair hearing would expose the administration's detention of individuals on flimsy -- or perhaps nonexistent -- evidence?

That might explain why the administration quietly released Jaralla Saleh Kahla al-Marri, a Quatari citizen who had been detained without charges or trial since 2001. If the Guantanamo detainees are really "the worst of the worst," as the administration has assured us, why was Jaralla al-Marri detained for seven years only to be released with no showing of wrongdoing whatsoever?

The immigration raid on Agriprocessors, the Postville, Iowa meatpacking plant is having greater repurcussions. Abhorrent labor conditions by the employer are coming to light.

in the aftermath of the arrests, labor investigators have reaped a bounty of new evidence from the testimony of illegal immigrants, teenagers and adults, who were caught in the raid. In formal declarations, immigrants have described pervasive labor violations at the plant, testimony that could result in criminal charges for Agriprocessors executives, labor law experts said.

Out of work and facing deportation proceedings, many of the immigrants say they now have nothing to lose in speaking up about the conditions in the plant.

More...

The Dalai Lama gave a keynote speech yesterday in Aspen, a day after John McCain visited him there.

In Saturday's speech, he didn't mention McCain. Anita Thompson was there, and writing in HuffPo today, recaps the Dalai Lama's talk.

She begins:

My late husband, Hunter S. Thompson, said that he was a teenage girl trapped in the body of an elderly dope fiend. I realized something as I watched the highest ranking monk of Tibetan Buddhism: His Holiness is a teenage girl trapped in the body of a Dalai Lama! It was all very familiar, indeed spectacular, as I observed his demeanor during the keynote address he gave at the Aspen Institute Saturday. I have studied the Dalai Lama's teachings, practiced another form of Buddhism, and am even more curious now because Hunter was so often compared to him.

Here's what the Dalai Lama had to say on war in the 21st century: [More...]

The California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice is trying to understand why California's prosecutors seek the death penalty in some cases but not in others. More particularly, the Commission wants to know if the race of the victim or of the defendant influences that decision.

Since capital punishment was reinstated in California in 1977, death sentences against black defendants, but not Latinos, have been disproportionately enormous by almost every measure: population, homicide rates, victim data and the sentencing patterns of other states. California's 5-to-1 ratio of blacks on death row to blacks in the state population, measured in percentages, is much higher than the ratios in Texas, Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina. The national average is 3 to 1. ...

Twenty-four percent of the people arrested for homicide are black, but blacks make up 36% of the current death row population. Latinos are 46% of homicide arrestees but 20% of death row inmates.... In death sentences against all ethnic groups, 59% have involved a white victim. Yet whites are only about 22% of homicide victims.

Prosecutors have not been forthcoming in answering the Commission's questions. [more ...]