The Center for International Policy, a group whose mission is "promoting a U.S. foreign policy based on international cooperation, demilitarization and respect for basic human rights," has released two reports in the past month comparing the positions of the Republican and Democratic candidates on immigration, using their own words, statements on their websites and their votes in Congress. On the Republican side, McCain and Huckabee are included; for the Democrats, it's Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards.

The presidential candidates of the Democratic Party share a common conviction that the country badly needs comprehensive immigration reform that offers a path to legalization for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States. The policy positions of the Democratic Party candidates—Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama—stand in sharp contrast to those offered by the Republican Party candidates, with the partial exception of John McCain.

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TalkLeft is now part of Newsweek's blog coverage, with all of our election posts appearing simultaneously as we post them here on Newsweek's group blog page, The Ruckus. Here is their press release announcing it.

Newsweek and the Media Bloggers Association (MBA) have invited three new blogs to join 'The Ruckus,' a group blog about politics published by Newsweek.com. Joining 'The Ruckus' are Brian Leubitz of Calitics, Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft and David Oatney of The World According to Oatney.

"The newest contributors to 'The Ruckus' represent key states in the 2008 presidential race -- California, Colorado and Tennessee," said Deidre Depke, editor of Newsweek.com. "As the campaign progresses, we'll periodically introduce new blogs to reflect the changing political landscape."

Big Tent Democrat's election posts are included as well -- his posts appear with his byline to differentiate them from mine. [More...]

Great casting, in my opinion. Via Huffington Post:

Nearly a year after Warner Brothers announced their intention to make a biopic of outed CIA agent Valerie Plame, the identity of the actress who will play her has finally been leaked to the media - and you can only find it on MTV News. "Nicole Kidman," director Doug Liman revealed. "She's perfect if you've ever met Valerie.

It will be a while before the movie starts filming, as Nicole is currently pregnant.

It's not often that the Rocky Mountain News editorial board takes President Bush to task.

Today it does just that, over his complaints about the House of Representatives' balking at the extension of his warrantless wiretapping program and his threat to veto any bill that does not include retroactive immunity for telecoms who cooperated with the National Security Agency.

The Rocky does not mince words:

Earlier this week, President Bush actually suggested that al-Qaida operatives are watching the calendar, poised to plot new attacks freely with Congress absent - and U.S. intelligence officials will be largely powerless to stop them.

Don't insult the American public, Mr. President. You'll still have the ability to wiretap suspected terrorists - and the warrantless surveillance powers in the bill are valid until August.

It also opines that we need the lawsuits against the telecoms to go forward so the public can see whether privacy rights were trampled. [More...]

By Big Tent Democrat

So sayeth Rassmussen:

The latest Rasmussen Reports polling in Texas also shows the former First Lady on top in the Lone Star State. Clinton attracts 54% of the vote in Texas while Obama earns 38% with nearly three weeks to go until Election Day.

h/t andgarden. Polling shows Clinton with large leads in Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania. This ain't over.

By Big Tent Democrat

Markos writes another post attacking the Clinton campaign, nothing new there, but I found this part deeply ironic:

So the Clinton campaign has graduated from saying that certain states don't matter, to saying certain voters don't matter, to now saying that the Democratic Party electorate doesn't matter.

I am curious if Markos would agree with me that the popular vote totals should be the most important criteria for super delegates? Do you think he would agree that ALL voters matter (including the voters of Florida and Michigan, the ones Howard Dean and Donna Brazile decided don't matter?) Or do you think he will follow the Obama mantra that only the pledged delegate count matters?

By Big Tent Democrat

If the Clinton campaign thought NBC was going to do anything to rein in the pattern of behavior of its on air personalities, Tweety quickly removed any such expectation this morning:

Chris Matthews fired a salvo at the Clinton campaign this morning after both he and his MSNBC colleague were privately and publicly rebuked for recent comments deemed misogynistic or inappropriate.

Appearing on MSNBC's Morning Joe, the Hardball host went off on the Clinton press shop, calling them "knee cappers" who were "lousy" and delve in the business of "intimidation."

Got it? NBC will do NOTHING to change the pattern of behavior of its network. It remains proudly the anti-Hillary network, sexist and misogynistic to its core. See also Bob Somerby on Tweety's continuing patttern of sexism, stuff you won't read about at the A-list blogs.

The 124,000 members of the American College of Physicians, the largest organization of internal medicine physicians in the country, are calling on the feds to ease the ban on medical marijuana by reclassifying it and also to engage in more research to prove its benefits.

The American College of Physicians, the nation's largest organization of doctors of internal medicine, with 124,000 members, contends that the long and rancorous debate over marijuana legalization has obscured good science that has demonstrated the benefits and medicinal promise of cannabis.

In a 13-page position paper approved by the college's governing board of regents and posted today on the group's website, the group calls on the government to drop marijuana from Schedule I, a classification it shares with illegal drugs such as heroin and LSD that are considered to have no medicinal value and a high likelihood of abuse.

Pot is now a Schedule I controlled substance, same as heroin.

The American College of Physicians' position paper calls for protection of both doctors and patients from criminal and civil penalties in states that have adopted medical-marijuana laws.

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By Big Tent Democrat

Open Thread. Please note that all comments violative of our comments policy will be deleted.

By Big Tent Democrat

This will undoubtedly be a very controversial post. But I always speak my mind. And I am speaking for me only here.

Jeralyn highlighted in a previous post that the great John Lewis is switching his endorsement from Clinton to Obama. Not surprising in that Obama has had great momentum. Easily justifiable for Lewis in that his district voted overwhelmingly for Obama and he is indeed a fine candidate. But the reasons given for switching are not helpful. Indeed, in my view, they are divisive:

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Via Corrente Wire:: Symantec warns of virus in Hillary spam posing as video link.

The Hillary Clinton election campaign is being exploited in a spam message that tries to trick users into downloading a Trojan to their desktops by pretending to offer a link to a video of a Hillary Clinton campaign speech. "It's the first time we've seen spam like this targeting Hillary Clinton," says Doug Bowers, Symantec's senior director of anti-abuse engineering, who says the spam message, still not seen in large volumes, was first spotted today.

The spam, which has the subject line "Hillary Clinton Video!!" offers users a link promising a video of the presidential candidate giving a speech. In reality, clicking on it would cause a Trojan to be downloaded to compromise the victim's machine for the purpose of sending more spam.

Symantec says the only other candidate being abused this way is Ron Paul.

With SEIU endorsing Obama, and Rep. John Lewis withdrawing his superdelegate vote from Hillary, her day is going to end on a less positive note than it began on -- her great showing in the OH and PA polls and her New Mexico win.

Mr. Lewis said he and other prominent African American party leaders had been moved by Mr. Obama’s recent victories and his ability to transcend racial and geographic lines. Though Mr. Lewis had praise for Mrs. Clinton and for her historic candidacy, he said he would decide within days whether to formally endorse Mr. Obama.

He also said he and other lawmakers would meet in the coming days to decide how they intended to weigh into the nominating fight.

...The comments by Mr. Lewis underscored a growing sentiment among some of the party’s black leaders that they should not stand in the way of Mr. Obama’s historic quest for the nomination and should not go against the will of their constituents.

So this ends up being about race? [More..]