Addressing the NAACP last night, Sen. Barack Obama said he will continue to stress his theme that black voters must take accountability for bettering their own lives.

Obama got a standing ovation at the annual NAACP convention here, presenting himself as a symbol of the political power that earlier black leaders had won. Touting the sacrifice of these activists, Obama said their courage had allowed him to "stand before you tonight as the Democratic nominee for president of the United States of America."

But Obama, in diagnosing conditions in the black community, made it clear that he was prepared to break with the generation of black leadership represented by Jackson. He said that government and business alone couldn't be blamed for the pain suffusing some black neighborhoods, but that black parents needed to show more maturity and demand more from their children.

Obama's advice to parents: [More...]

The Washington Post has a new poll, but they are holding the topline numbers for release tomorrow I assume. Which makes for an interesting experiment. Today, WaPo released other results from the poll. On the commander in chief question (which is faulty imo for the reasons expressed in this dkos diary) produced the following results:

[72%] said McCain would make a good commander in chief. . . . Obama's [at] 48 percent[.]

The problematic question notwithstanding, it will be interesting to compare the topline presidential preference result with the C-i-C question results. If Obama holds a comfortable lead with that sizable a gap, it will be a bad sign for McCain having any chance of winning this election. More . . .

I've been out the past several hours. Did anything newsworthy happen?

This is an open thread.

When Ana Marie Cox is slapping you around effectively, you may want to rethink your position. In response to Hendrick Hertzberg's attack on people who care about civil liberties, Cox writes:

In other words: Don't you want to win, you dirty freaking hippie? Except if you're a member of the MSM, in which case, Don't you want to be one of the "better newspapers"? Oh, and John McCain is worse. I'm fine with people defending Obama's flip-flops, but I don't like pretending they don't matter. Especially if it's not just a simple change of some random position, but -- as with FISA -- a real rejection of a significant campaign promise. I'm probably going to vote for Obama, okay; I do not have to like it. I do not have believe that his awesomeness creates amnesia.

(Emphasis supplied.) Speaking for me only

Via Yglesias, the ACLU reports that the Bush Administration has added the one millionth person to its terrorist watch list:

The nation's terrorist watch list has hit one million names, according to a tally maintained by the American Civil Liberties Union based upon the government's own reported numbers for the size of the list. "Members of Congress, nuns, war heroes and other 'suspicious characters,' with names like Robert Johnson and Gary Smith, have become trapped in the Kafkaesque clutches of this list, with little hope of escape," said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "Congress needs to fix it, the Terrorist Screening Center needs to fix it, or the next president needs to fix it, but it has to be done soon."

Hmm. Do you doubt they are all being surveilled under the FISA Capitulation Act?

Heritage Foundation has a new report on the ever increasing number of federal crimes enacted by Congress.

This study reviews the crimes newly enacted by Congress in order to: (1) update the number of fed­eral crimes; (2) measure whether Congress contin­ues to pass federal criminal laws at the same pace found by the ABA report; and (3) determine whether the new crimes contain a mens rea require­ment, a key protection of the common law that pro­tects those who did not intend to commit wrongful acts from unwarranted prosecution and conviction.

Bottom line: An average of 56.5 new crimes are enacted yearly.

The growth of federal crimes continues unabated. The increase of 452 over the eight-year period between 2000 and 2007 averages 56.5 crimes per year—roughly the same rate at which Congress cre­ated new crimes in the 1980s and 1990s. So for the past twenty-five years, a period over which the growth of the federal criminal law has come under increasing scrutiny, Congress has been creating over 500 new crimes per decade. That pace is not steady from year to year, however; the data indicate that Congress creates more criminal offenses in election years.

[Hat tip to Ed Still of VoteLaw.]

Example 1:

Single mothers gathered at the laundromat are all talking about one thing: FISA. Don't believe it? Then - unlike many left-wing bloggers and activists, known as the "net roots" - you're in touch with reality. . . . They claim to want to win, yet they're determined to malign the Democratic nominee for doing what he always said he would do: make compromises and find the middle ground.

Example 2:

[P]rogressives and Democrats are up to the same old internal sniping: single issue people bashing Obama for moving to the middle or voting a certain way on FISA. . . .

Example 1? Fox Democrat Kristen Powers. Example 2? Faux Progressive and Talking Points Memo Clinton Hater Theda Skopcol. More . . .

Via Scott at Lawyers, Guns and Money who has some thoughts of his own, Kathy G at the G Spot gives a rundown and her rankings of possible vice-presidential candidates for Sen. Barack Obama. Her longer post with her reasoning is here.

Kathy's top three: Sherrod Brown, John Edwards and Kathleen Sebelius.

Scott likes Sebelius and Edwards.

My thoughts right now: The only ones that create any sense of enthusiasm are Hillary and John Edwards. My past thinking on Sebelius is here.

Sen. Barack Obama is headed to Israel and the West Bank next week:

U.S. Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama will visit Israel and the occupied West Bank next week, Israeli and Palestinian officials said on Monday. Obama will be in Israel on July 22 and 23 and hold talks with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Defence Minister Ehud Barak, President Shimon Peres and opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, an Israeli official said.

Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb Erekat said Obama would also meet President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah next Wednesday.

More...

President Bush will be back in the Rose Garden today, this time to issue an executive order that lifts the ban on off-shore drilling.

The ban, in place since his father was President, will need Congressional approval to take effect.

Democrats say they are for drilling, but argue that oil companies aren't going after the oil where they already have leases. So why open new, protected areas? they ask. Democrats say there are 68 million acres of federal land and waters where oil and gas companies hold leases, but aren't producing oil.

....Democrats support more drilling," [Democratic Rep. Chris Van Hollen] said. "In fact, what the president hasn't told you is that the oil companies are already sitting on 68 million acres of federal lands with the potential to nearly double U.S. oil production. That is why in the coming days congressional Democrats will vote on 'Use It or Lose It' legislation requiring the big oil companies to develop these resources or lose their leases to someone else who will."

More...

In a New York Times op-ed piece entitled My Plan for Iraq, Barack Obama repeats his commitment to a specific but flexible plan to withdraw most troops from Iraq over a 16 month period. John McCain, of course, has no such plan, but here's the key difference between the two candidates on Iraq policy:

I would not hold our military, our resources and our foreign policy hostage to a misguided desire to maintain permanent bases in Iraq.

In this campaign, there are honest differences over Iraq, and we should discuss them with the thoroughness they deserve. Unlike Senator McCain, I would make it absolutely clear that we seek no presence in Iraq similar to our permanent bases in South Korea, and would redeploy our troops out of Iraq and focus on the broader security challenges that we face. But for far too long, those responsible for the greatest strategic blunder in the recent history of American foreign policy have ignored useful debate in favor of making false charges about flip-flops and surrender.

It’s not going to work this time. It’s time to end this war.

(emphasis added)

Digby points out that Linda Greenhouse, the NYTimes Supreme Court reporter for many many years, is hanging up her pen. Her last column recalls the importance of defeating Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court:

It has made a substantial difference during these last 21 years that Anthony Kennedy got the seat intended for Robert Bork. The invective aimed at Justice Kennedy from the right this year alone, for his majority opinions upholding the rights of the Guantánamo detainees and overturning the death penalty for child rapists — 5-to-4 decisions that would surely have found Judge Bork on the opposite side — is a measure of the lasting significance of what happened during that long-ago summer and fall.

Very true. It reminds us that the Senate should not be a rubber stamp for ANY President. While I really enjoyed Jeff Toobin's book on the Supreme Court, titled "The Nine," I was annoyed by his acceptance that the Senate has no actual say in who is seated on the Court: