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:

Update: Robyn Blumer in the St. Petersberg Times has more on how the meatpacking plant abused the workers.

A New York Times editorial today takes on the meatpacking plant raids in Postville Iowa. It quotes from the essay of a professor and court interpreter at the subsequent criminal proceedings:

Dr. Camayd-Freixas’s essay describes “the saddest procession I have ever witnessed, which the public would never see” — because cameras were forbidden.

“Driven single-file in groups of 10, shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles, chains dragging as they shuffled through, the slaughterhouse workers were brought in for arraignment, sat and listened through headsets to the interpreted initial appearance, before marching out again to be bused to different county jails, only to make room for the next row of 10.”

[More...]

Nine U.S. soldiers were killed in Afghanistan today, more than any number since 2005. As Big Tent Democrat noted earlier, President Bush is now suggesting some troops may begin pulling out of Iraq in the coming months.

Pulling out for where? Home? Not so fast. We may just be trading one war for another.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned during a visit to Kabul last week that there are more foreign fighters, including al-Qaeda members, in Pakistan's tribal areas, militants who cross the border and launch attacks against U.S. and Afghan troops.

Mullen has said he hopes improved security in Iraq will allow troops to be shifted this year from Iraq to Afghanistan, where violence is rising.

One of the things that concerns me about Sen. Barack Obama is his many references to the need to step up the fight in Afghanistan. [More...]

The latest New Yorker cover has sparked a lot of justifiable outrage. Obama spokesman Bill Burton said:

“The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree."

What Obama Needs To Learn:

Politics is not a battle for the middle. It is a battle for defining the terms of the political debate. It is a battle to be able to say what is the middle.

Via Digby, according to the LATimes, I am Centrist because I support stem cell research, immigration, addressing global warming and nuclear nonproliferation. As Digby writes:

It's good for us when positions that have been considered left wing ideas are characterized as centrist. It signals that the public . . . have decided that on some issues, anyway, what was once considered left wing heresy is now mainstream.

That is called defining what the middle is. Obama and progressives need to keep pushing the middle in our direction. On Iraq, warrantless wiretapping and a whole range of issues. Obama still has not learned the lesson.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

One ramification of prosecutions that are tainted by politics, like that of Don Siegelman, is that every Justice Department investigation of a Democratic politician is now viewed with suspicion. It doesn't help when federal law enforcement authorities use tactics like this:

Sue Schmitz, [an Alabama] state representative, was arrested in the bathroom of her home while she was taking an early morning shower.... She is awaiting trial on charges that she accepted more than $175,000 in college salary for work she didn't perform.

Not the kind of accusation that creates a great risk of flight. They couldn't call and make an appointment for her to turn herself in? No wonder Alabama state senator Pat Lindsey says: "There's some bitterness there toward the U.S. attorney's office and the Department of Justice."

A lengthy article in today's Press-Register asks: Are Prosecutors Out Of Control? [more ...]

Ryan Lizza has a long article in the New Yorker on How Chicago shaped Obama. I haven't read it yet, but will update later this afternoon after I've had a chance to go through it.

Update: SusanG at Daily Kos has a review of Arianna Huffington's new book, Right is Wrong.

This is an open thread. Have a great Sunday.