Who is doing the negative campaigning? Peter Daou, Hillary's internet communications director, points out in an e-mail to bloggers, it's Obama, not Hillary:

Senator Obama and his senior campaign officials have engaged in a systematic effort to question Hillary's integrity, credibility, and character. They have portrayed her as someone who would put her personal gain ahead of the lives of our troops, someone who would say or do anything to win an election, someone who is dishonest, divisive and disingenuous. They have adopted shop-worn anti-Clinton talking points, dusted them off and unleashed a torrent of unfounded character attacks against her.

Peter provides these illustrative examples:

• "Disingenuous"
• "Too polarizing to win"
  
• 'Divisive'
• "Untruthful"
• "Dishonest"
• 'Calculating'
• "Saying and doing whatever it takes to win"
• "Attempting to deceive the American people"
• "One of the most secretive politicians in America"
• "Literally willing to do anything to win"

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By Big Tent Democrat

Speaking for me only

NOTE - Comments closed.

In a very long article, Evan Thomas examines the life and background of Eliot Spitzer, trying to understand why he engaged in such reckless conduct. Shorter version: He was trying to please Daddy.

He describes Spitzer's family:

Brought up in a cold-water flat in a New York slum, Eliot's father, Bernard, the son of Jewish immigrants, made a half-billion dollars in the cutthroat world of New York real estate. He and his wife, Anne, a former college literature teacher, are regarded as refined and cultivated, not domineering. But expectations in the Spitzer household in Fieldston, a wealthy enclave of the Bronx, were extremely high.

A series of Eliot's childhood and college friends have reported the intimidation they felt just sitting at the Spitzer dinner table. Each of the three Spitzer children was required to hold forth and debate on worthy topics (social chitchat was frowned upon). Jason Brown, who went to Horace Mann School, Princeton and Harvard Law with Eliot, compares the dinners to "a college class where the professor grills you." Afterward came games of Monopoly that qualified as play only in the loosest sense. "I play to kill," Bernard liked to joke.

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By Big Tent Democrat

Speaking for me only

Via Ambinder, the Trinity UCC (the Wright church in Chicago) issues this statement:

[T]he Reverend Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.’s character is being assassinated in the public sphere because he has preached a social gospel on behalf of oppressed women, children, and men in America and around the globe.”

(Emphasis supplied.) In my view, this is the wrong approach for the church to take, as it is false and fails to condemn Wright's offensive remarks. I defer to Barack Obama:

By Big Tent Democrat

While we are being told by the usual suspects that Obama is a shoo in for the nomination, this article tells a different story:

Sen. Barack Obama is trying to air his dirty laundry -- even some items that might appear just a little wrinkled -- as he prepares a full assault on Sen. Hillary Clinton over ethics and transparency.

Hardly the approach of someone who has wrapped up the nomination. Perhaps this explains it?

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the D.C. Handgun ban case, District of Columbia v. Heller, this week.

A decision isn't expected until the end of the Court's term in June. Will we get a definitive statement on the meaning of the Second Amendment?

Via Instapundit, here's a recent poll from USA Today on where Americans stand on the issue:

Nearly three out of four Americans — 73% — believe the Second Amendment spells out an individual right to own a firearm, according to a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll of 1,016 adults taken Feb. 8-10. Yet for decades, federal judges have seen the Constitution differently, allowing a range of gun-control measures imposed by governments seeking to curb gun violence."

TalkLeft is a strong supporter of the belief that the Second Amendment conveys an individual right to bear arms.

For the past week, I've refused to allow comments about Rev. Jeremiah Wright because the comments section became filled with accusations about racism and this site doesn't allow such accusations, name-calling or personal attacks. I just didn't want to spend the time monitoring comments when I could be spending that time blogging or on other activities. I still don't.

But, I'm hoping the emotionalism has died down and I'm now willing to give readers a chance to express their views, so long as they don't call people racists or engage in personal attacks on each other or public figures.

This is an experiment. It's an open thread where all topics are welcome. Let's see what happens. I hope it stays civil.

Update: Comments well over 200, our usual limit. Time to close the thread. Thanks everyone.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey was in London speaking to a group at the London School of Economics. After his speech, and speaking for himself only, he said he he personally opposed the death penalty for the 9/11 detainees at Guantanamo. He gave an analogy.

"I kind of hope they don't get it," Mukasey said after a speech at the London School of Economics. "Because many of them want to be martyrs, and it's kind of like the conversation … between the sadist and the masochist."

"The masochist says hit me and the sadist says no, so I am kind of hoping they don't get it," he said.

Mukasey noted that the military commission trials at Gitmo are being conducted by the Defense Department, not the Justice Department, although DOJ is cooperating with them.

Law professor Doug Berman at Sentencing Law and Policy is outraged at Mukasey's comments. I'm not. [More...]

By Big Tent Democrat

About mail in primaries, David Axelrod said:

[O]bviously there are concerns about a mail-in vote. I mean, there are concerns about eligibility, ballot security[.]

(Emphasis mine.) Never mind that Barack Obama is a proponent of mail in balloting. It gets funny when Hillary Clinton is concerned about voter eligibility and signature verification. This top rated DKos diary claims attempted disenfranchisement by Clinton. Citing the Dallas Morning News:

By Big Tent Democrat

Speaking for me only.

Nancy Pelosi argues for thwarting the will of the people:

Political prognosticators give Clinton more of a chance of catching, or even surpassing, Obama in the national popular vote but Pelosi argued that super delegates should follow the pledged-delegate, not the popular-vote, leader.

"But what if one candidate has won the popular vote and the other candidate has won the delegates?" asked Stephanopoulos. "But it's a delegate race," Pelosi replied. "The way the system works is that the delegates choose the nominee."

(Emphasis supplied.) It is a delegate race. Neither candidate will have won enough selected delegates to secure the nomination. The super delegates will decide this nomination. Pelosi argues that considering the will of the people is illegitimate. In my opinion, Nancy Pelosi has declared herself illegitimate as an honest broker in this race. She clearly is an Obama supporter. Everyone knows this. And her arguments go beyond anything I have heard from Obama or any of his surrogates. She has been awful. She is no elder statesman. She is a hack. And not a particularly good one.

An astonishing 9 million people voted in California's Feb. 5 primary.

Late Saturday, the state Democratic Party announced the final votes had been tabulated. Results:

Hillary Rodham Clinton won 204 delegates and Barack Obama won 166 delegates.

In the popular vote, Clinton beat Obama by 8 points. She received 51.5 percent to his 43.2 percent.

9 million total voters, 4.7 or more million of them Dems , 8% more of whom voted for Hillary ...that's a lot of votes.

Today's Iowa county assembly results side by side with caucus results are here (pdf).

Since the MSM seems only to report how Obama did, I'll take a look at how Hillary did.

In the January caucus results, Hillary had 29.47% of the vote. Today she got 32.08%

Out of 99 counties, Hillary gained in almost all of them. She lost more than one delegate in only these 4 counties:

• Woodbury (lost 4)
• Scott (lost 8)
• Marshall (lost 1.5)
• Cerro Gordo (lost 2)

Hillary gained more than 4 delegates over her January numbers in these counties (there are too many counties to list where she won between a fraction of 1 and 3 more delegates):

• Dubuque (won 11)
• Polk (won 6 1/2)
• Webster (won 4 1/2)

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