Ann Althouse and I did a Bloggingheads TV diavlog yesterday. It's almost an hour long -- we covered a lot of topics, and they break it down by segments. If any of them interest you, feel free to check it out.

• The Loneliness of the Pro-Hillary Blogger
• Why Hillary should stay in (until June July anyway)
• Is Hillary a wounded wife, or does she just play one on TV?
• Ann defends making fun of Hillary and her gender
• Jeralyn says rape is about violence, not sex; Ann begs to differ
• Lethal Injection Drugs, Dogs and Euthanasia
• Child-porn case raises questions about the role of juries
• An appreciation of Charlton Heston, actor and activist

Bump and Update: President Bush signed the Second Chance Act into law today. Here are his remarks.

The country was built on the belief that each human being has limitless potential and worth. Everybody matters. We believe that even those who have struggled with a dark past can find brighter days ahead. One way we act on that belief is by helping former prisoners who've paid for their crimes -- we help them build new lives as productive members of our society.

Our government has a responsibility to help prisoners to return as contributing members of their community. But this does not mean that the government has all the answers. Some of the most important work to help ex-convicts is done outside of Washington, D.C., in faith-based communities and community-based groups. It's done on streets and small town community centers. It's done in churches and synagogues and temples and mosques.

...The bill I'm signing today, the Second Chance Act of 2007, will build on work to help prisoners reclaim their lives. In other words, it basically says: We're standing with you, not against you.

Pittsburgh's mayor, Luke Ravenstahl, is 28 years old. He's the youngest mayor of a big city in the country. The Washington Post has an interesting profile of him, including his unwavering support for Hillary Clinton.

At 28, the youngest big-city mayor in modern U.S. history has become one of Clinton's key backers in Pennsylvania, her top surrogate in its second-largest city and an effective rejoinder to the idea that Sen. Barack Obama, her rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, has a lock on young voters in the state.

He's very popular:

During his 18 months in office, Ravenstahl has persuaded Pittsburgh's professional hockey team not to leave town, balanced the budget, cut city spending and helped promote new housing developments downtown. He was elected to retain office by 63 percent of voters in 2007. He recently announced an ambitious plan to make Pittsburgh more efficient by combining city and county governments -- an agenda that, if executed, would ultimately eliminate his job.

Pittsburgh has been hit by hard times. Hillary has a plan for it. [More..]

By Big Tent Democrat

Speaking for me only

In one of the more revealing moments of this campaign regarding how simply awful the Media is, NPR's Michelle Norris asked Hillary Clinton this question:

"Senator, I want you to react to something that I keep hearing among voters, and increasingly among people who cover the campaign -- both those who are reporters and those who speak about the campaign on television, on radio -- the statement that the only way that Hillary Clinton can win is if she’s willing to win ugly[.]"

(Emphasis supplied.) What is really amazing is not the classic "some people say" formulation, but that Norris including a "some REPORTERS say" formulation. My, it is good to know they can be objective after saying that. Hillary's reaction was predictable and right: "I understand that there has been, throughout this campaign, something of a double standard. I accept it; I live with it." but after asking that incredible question, Michelle Norris proves how biased she really is - she is so biased she does not even know when she is being obviously biased:

The New York Times reports kids are pestering their parents to vote for Obama, and it's working.

Here's one example:

Megan Simpson, a Penn State senior, had not been able to budge her father, a Republican. But the day before the deadline for registering for the coming Democratic primary in Pennsylvania, she handed him the forms and threw in a deal-sweetener as well. “I said, ‘Dad, if you change your party affiliation in time to vote for Obama,’ ” recalled Ms. Simpson, 22, an Obama campus volunteer, “ ‘I will get you the paperwork the day after the primary if you want to switch back to being a Republican.’ ”

Thus did Ralph E. Simpson Jr., 50, construction company owner, become a newly minted Democrat. “I probably will switch my affiliation back,” Mr. Simpson said, “but I haven’t decided who I will vote for in the general election. If Meg keeps working on me, who knows?”

More...

Clifton White will not be executed. The Ohio Supreme Court today ruled a judge erred in substituting his opinion for that of experts as to whether White was mentally retarded. Case synopis here and the full opinion is here. (pdf).

In 2002, the Supreme Court in Atkins v. Virginia banned execution for the mentally retarded as cruel and unusual punishment. White was pursuing post-conviction relief at the time.

Later that year, the Supreme Court of Ohio in State v. Lott established criteria and procedures to be applied ....a petitioner is required to show by a preponderance of the evidence:

• “(1) significantly subaverage intellectual functioning,

• (2) significant limitations in two or more adaptive skills, such as communication, self-care, and self-direction, and

• (3) onset (of the intellectual and adaptive limitations) before the age of 18.”

The trial court in White's case appointed experts and held a hearing. Both the state's expert and the defense expert determined he met the criteria. [More...]

By Big Tent Democrat

Speaking for me only

Discussing the seemingly NOT departed Mark Penn (did the Clinton campaign get rid of him or not? Apparently it was a demotion, not a firing. Bad move by the Clinton camp.), Ezra Klein wrote:

[quoting Mark Schmitt] "[T]he ambitions of the early Clinton years were abandoned for safe, symbolic gestures appealing to the middle-class swing voters -- 'soccer moms' -- in a few swing states." An argument can be made that that was the only viable strategy in 1996. I'm not adept enough with counterfactuals to really know. But there's no argument that that's all that can be hoped for in 2008. Penn might have once been necessary, but he's never been desirable. Now, however, he's neither.

Indeed, 1990s style triangulation is not desirable, necessary or effective now. But someone needs to tell that to Senator Barack Obama, whose campaign has been a case study in the fine art of Bill Clinton-like 1990s triangulaton. Has no one noticed this? Ezra Klein is a foremost health care blogger, who endorsed the Edwards health care plan. The one most like Hillary's. That Obama has ATTACKED that plan with "Harry and Louise" ads seems to not have entered Klein's thinking in that post.

We've seen the candidates appeal to old voters, young voters, female voters in general, Hispanic and African American voters, rural voters, and just about every other demographic there is. Have they overlooked anyone? Apparently, yes. Unmarried Women.

A new poll will be released next week. Shorter version: Candidates Need to Reach Across the Marriage Gap. I just received this e-mailed press release:

Unmarried Women Expected to Vote in Record Numbers in ’08; Rank the Economy as #1 Concern But Don’t Hear Their Needs Reflected in Candidates’ Plans

More...

President Bush recently granted two of his infrequent pardons to brothers in Colorado Springs. Their transgressions? Misdeanor sales of mounted owls.

Jerry and Thomas Moldenhauer sold migratory birds to an undercover Colorado Department of Wildlife officer in 1992 and 1993, court documents show, violating the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, which prohibits the possession or sale of migratory birds, dead or alive, as well as their feathers, eggs or nests. Each man received three years of probation and a $1,000 fine.

I'm reading this article, shaking my head, thinking, well it must have been a one-time occurrence. Not quite.

[More...]

I'm on the Hillary Clinton press call. It's being led by Mark Nevins, communications director for Hillary's PA campaign, Howard Wolfson and TJ Rooney of the PA House of Representatives.

Theme: Obama's words vs. actions, in context of his discredited oil ads in PA. Obama's ad says:

I'm Barack Obama. I don't take money from oil companies or Washington lobbyists, and I won't let them block change anymore. They'll pay a penalty on windfall profits. We'll invest in alternative energy, create jobs and free ourselves from foreign oil.

Rooney: Obama says in his ad that he's never taken any money from oil companies. No one does, because it's illegal. Yet he has taken $213k from employees of oil companies. Two of his bundlers are top execs at oil companies. (See Newsweek on this or my earlier post.)

Obama sided with Dick Cheney in voting for Dick Cheney's energy bill -- the best bill that oil companies could buy. Hillary voted against the bill.

CNN says Obama's ad spending is not just record breaking, but record shattering:

Barack Obama has spent a record breaking $60 million to run more than 100,000 political television ads in pursuit of the Democratic presidential nomination, a new analysis conducted for CNN shows.

In contrast, John Kerry ran a little more than 19,000 TV ads four years ago in his successful bid for the Democratic nomination, according to TNS Media Intelligence/CMAG, CNN’s consultant on political television advertising spending.

Clinton, who trails Obama in fundraising by about $60 million, has run just over 60,000 TV ads in her bid for the White House.

In Pennsylvania, NC and Indiana...[More...]

By Big Tent Democrat