Breaking from Huffington Post....

Senator Hillary Clinton, D-NY, announced today that she will forgo CBS News' upcoming presidential debate unless the network can reach a resolution with its striking employees.

"The workers at CBS News have been without a contract for close to two and a half years," the Senator said. "It is my hope that both sides will reach an agreement that results in a secure contract for the workers at CBS News but let me be clear: I will honor the picket line if the workers at CBS News decide to strike."

I hope the other candidates follow her lead on this.

Today President Bush reaffirmed his support for Pakistani President Musharraf:

President Bush yesterday offered his strongest support of embattled Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, saying the general "hasn't crossed the line" and "truly is somebody who believes in democracy."

But of course. Anyway, remember this?

mentioned Dr. Shazia briefly in June when I wrote about General Musharraf's quasi-kidnapping and house arrest of Mukhtaran Bibi - the Pakistani rape victim who used compensation money to open schools and start a women's aid group.

And another of our major allies:

A Saudi court on Tuesday more than doubled the number of lashes that a female rape victim was sentenced to last year after her lawyer appealed the original sentence. . . . Her case has been widely debated since the court sentenced her to 90 lashes a year ago for being in the same car as an unrelated man, even after it ruled that she had subsequently been raped. For a woman to be in seclusion with a man who is not her husband or a relative is a crime in Saudi Arabia, whose legal code is based on a strict Wahhabi interpretation of Islamic law.

They hate us for our freedoms.

He keeps bringing up this "issue":

The former president's intervention . . . raised the second, and largely unspoken, issue identified by my friend from the Clinton administration: the two-headed campaign and the prospect of a dual presidency. In his view, which I share, this is a prospect that will test the tolerance of the American people far more severely than the possibility of the first female president -- or, for that matter, the first black president. As my friend says, "there is nothing in American constitutional or political theory to account for the role of a former president, still energetic and active and full of ideas, occupying the White House with the current president."

As I understand Broder's theory, the prospect of former President Bill Clinton being again in the White House and likely being Hillary Clinton's chief advisor is a political problem for clinton and the Dems. Is the man insane? Have whatever opinion of the actual Bill Clinton Presidency, but you have to deal with the fact that Bill Clinton remains extremely popular and his Presidency remembered fondly. Broder is either a fool or a shill on this.

Via Atrios. An interesting phenomenon has emerged - taking on Krugman is not a smart thing for a public pundit to do. First, Krugman is usually right. Second, Krugman does a great job of defending his positions, usually making his critic look foolish (see Brooks, David.) And now a new reason, Krugman's views gets defended by a lot of smart people. Today, Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post discovers this:

Ruth Marcus shows two things in her commentary today, "Krugman vs. Krugman". First, she hasn't a clue about Social Security financing. Second, she has no problem at all presenting a distorted picture to rationalize her clueless position.

. . . [H]ad Ruth Marcus included this quote from Paul Krugman's 2005 piece in her editorial (or quotes from other pieces of the vast amount Krugman has written about Social Security after 2001), it would have changed the interpretation of the quotes she includes in her article. Here, Paul Krugman explains why the future of Social Security was at issue at that time:

Four years ago, I and many other economists urged policymakers to think about the future cost of Social Security benefits, not because we thought there was anything wrong with Social Security itself, but because we regarded the future costs as a compelling reason not to cut taxes even if the overall budget was in surplus.

Keep that quote in mind, i.e. that the worry was that the Bush tax cuts would eat away at the accumulated Social Security surplus, as they did, as you read Ruth Marcus' desperate attempt to justify her doom and gloom about the future of Social Security . . .

MORE.

Glenn Greenwald explains:

For the sake of its own credibility, Time Magazine needs immediately to prohibit Joe Klein from uttering another word about the eavesdropping and FISA controversy. He simply doesn't know what he's talking about and he publishes demonstrably false statements.

And he has for quite a while on this issue:

Joe Klein has been getting a lot of attention of late for his rip of Dems’ criticism of Bush’s NSA domestic surveillance program. It makes you wonder if Klein understands how untruthfully and how shamelessly the Bush Administration will do anything it can get away with. He certainly seems to know nothing about the Constitution, or to value it in any event. But his contempt for the Constitution and the law did not start with the FISA Scandal. And apparently he assumes we are as lazy and clueless as he is. But we are not. . . .

Finally. After almost 70 years, the Supreme Court has agreed to decide a case that may decide, once and for all, whether the Second Amendment confers an individual right to bear arms.

I believe it does. The Second Amendment provides:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

There are three principal views: The individual view, collective view and an intermediate one.

Under the individual view, a person has a personal right to bear weapons or arms regardless of whether they are members of any militia or engaged in military service or training. We therefore may bring claims or defend claims based on that right, just as we can with other provisions of the Bill of Rights, such as the right to free speech or right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures.

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Former Press Secretary Scott McClellan's forthcoming book contains these paragraphs about the leak of Valerie Plame's identity:

The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

"There was one problem. It was not true.

"I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration "were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President's chief of staff, and the president himself."

Valerie Plame Wilson responds: [More...]

Speaking for me only.

This is not only disappointing and shameful, it is stupid:

I believe I have the right kind of experience to be the next President. With a war and a tough economy, we need a President ready on Day One to bring our troops home from Iraq and to handle all of our other tough challenges. Now voters will judge whether living in a foreign country at the age of 10 prepares one to face the big, complex international challenges the next President will face.

Hillary supporters will defend this by saying it was a response to this statement from Obama:

Probably the strongest experience I have in foreign relations is the fact that I spent four years living overseas when I was a child in southeast Asia."

That does not wash for me. Now it is a supremely stupid statement from Obama but that does not excuse Hillary's use of it to attack Obama personally. Never more comofrtable than in the mud, John Edwards jumps in:

Now we know what Senator Clinton meant when she talked about ‘throwing mud’ in the last debate. Like so many other things, when it comes to mud, Hillary Clinton says one thing and throws another.

The Edwards campaign is pathetic AND shameful. But this entire campaign is now one of the worst in history. Dems cover themselves in shame. Again.

Well, you knew this was coming.

Obama made the disclosure while working a crowd at Central High School here, after delivering an education policy speech. A man, Ralph Hoagland, asked Obama—who was mingling and shaking hands-- if Oprah was going to stump for Obama in New Hampshire.

“First she’s coming to Iowa,” Obama told Hoagland, who in 1963 was a co-founder of what is now the giant CVS pharmacy chain. “But we’ll talk about it. We’ll get her up here.”

Was it a planted question? Hoagland is "a member of Obama’s Northeast Steering Group, which is heavily involved in fund-raising. He hopes to bundle together $100,000 for Obama..."

Here's Hoagland's reasoning, or is it Obama's?

Oprah Winfrey can help, Hoagland said, “because I think that Oprah can say to women ‘you do not have to vote for the first woman president. Vote for what you need.”

So, is Obama now resorting to the gender card?

So here they come again, spouting nonsense about race, intelligence (definition please?) and IQ (the measurement you can improve, prvoing just how innate it is.)

My preferred response echoes Atrios.

A more learned response from Brad DeLong.

Good for Obama. He's not running from his early experimentation with drugs, including cocaine, and alcohol. He also says he was a "goof-off."

We've come a long way from the "But I didn't inhale" days.

It's official. The DNCC has announced the hotels the various state delegations will be staying at for the Democrats' convention in August. Here's the list (no link yet, received by e-mail):

STATE/TERRITORY HOTEL
Alabama - Doubletree Denver Stapleton
Alaska - Four Points Sheraton Denver Southeast
American Samoa - Radisson Southeast
Arizona - Hyatt Regency Denver Tech Center
Arkansas - Marriott Denver South at Park Meadows
California - Adam's Mark
Colorado - Grand Hyatt Downtown
Connecticut - Marriott Denver Tech Center
Delaware - Marriott South at Park Meadows
Democrats Abroad - Red Lion Denver Central
District of Columbia - Crowne Plaza, Downtown
Georgia - Doubletree Denver Stapleton
Guam - Sheraton Denver Tech Center
Hawaii - Marriott Denver South at Park Meadows
Idaho - Sheraton Denver Tech Center
Illinois - Marriott City Center, Downtown
Indiana - Sheraton Denver Tech Center
Iowa - Courtyard by Marriott, Downtown
Kansas - Doubletree Denver Tech Center
Kentucky - Hilton Garden Inn, Downtown
Louisiana - Radisson Stapleton Plaza

More...