What with calling Hillary Rudy and promising leadership starting a year from now, Obama has been pretty busy. It turns out the politics of his moment on Kyl Lieberman required he skip the vote to go to New Hampshire. Via Alegre, CNN reported that:

I have an important point to make on that Iran vote... Obama claimed "he did not get enough notice to return to dc to make that vote but 2 Democratic Senate sources tell CNN that all senators were advised the night before that the vote would come up the next day and Senator Obama should have known that vote was coming."

If this is true, Obama has some explaining to do. Apparently Obama did not think leading on opposing Kyl Lieberman mattered at the time.

As Atrios remarked a week or so ago, for candidates who hold office now, the best way to demonstrate leadership is to LEAD in the office they hold now. On Iraq, FISA, Mukasey and other issues, one candidate has taken the lead consistently - Chris Dodd. The frontrunners who sit in the Senate, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, have been incredibly cautious, and sometimes counterproductive (remember Obama on playing chicken with the troops on Iraq). Today, Obama pretends he has been presenting bold leadership, when his has been a crass, empty and conventional campaign. But he thinks we have not noticed:

Much has been said about the exchanges between Senator Clinton and myself this week. Now, understand that Hillary Clinton is a colleague and a friend. She’s also a skilled politician, and she’s run what Washington would call a “textbook” campaign. But the problem is the textbook itself. It’s a textbook that’s all about winning elections, but says nothing about how to bring the country together to solve problems. As we saw in the debate last week, it encourages vague, calculated answers to suit the politics of the moment, instead of clear, consistent principles about how you would lead America. . . .

Who is Obama kidding here? We have seen your performance in the Senate, Senator Obama. To call it vague and calculating is an understatement.

More...

CNN is reporting Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has declared a state of emergency and suspended the Constitution and imposed martial law.

• Emergency rule declared, constitution suspended, Chief Justice expelled
• Troops enter Supreme Court, court declares emergency illegal
• Ex-PM Benazir Bhutto said to be returning to Pakistan from Dubai
• Most media channels off the air due to an apparent media blackout

I haven't been following Pakistan much, what's going on?

Does this candidate sound like Rudy?

There is no doubt that Iran poses a threat. It has armed terrorists beyond its borders, maintains an illicit nuclear program, and its leaders have issued belligerent threats that are a concern to us all. . . . We do need to tighten sanctions on the Iranian regime, particularly on Iran's Revolutionary Guard, which sponsors terrorism far beyond Iran's borders.

This guy?

U.S. Senate candidate Barack Obama suggested Friday that the United States one day might have to launch surgical missile strikes into Iran and Pakistan to keep extremists from getting control of nuclear bombs.

And so on. It so happens that I agree with a lot of what I am quoting from Obama. I strongly disagree with any calls for resolutions of any type from the Senate on Iran. Kyl-Lieberman was a horrible mistake.

But when Obama said Hillary was like Rudy on Iran, that was a lie. It would be a lie to say Obama is like Rudy. Here's my new request from our Presidential canidates - I am setting the bar low - no more bald faced lying. Be more nuanced in your misstatements.

The New York Times has a new, five page article article on Rudy Giuliani's Bernie Kerik problem, explaining how it casts doubt on his credibility, his leadership potential and his judgment.

I've written about this so many times, most recently here, but there are some new tidbits in the article, so let's review. For a theme, think, "The Red Flags Rudy Didn't See."

The principal flag, while not being the first one, dates to 2000, before Rudy made Bernie police commissioner. It concerns Kerik's lobbying activities for Interstate, a construction company with reputed mob-ties and millions in city contracts that employed both Kerik's brother and Larry Ray, his good friend and best man at his wedding.

Initially, Rudy said he didn't know about Kerik's ties to Interstate or Ray at the time.

“I was not informed of it,” Mr. Giuliani said then, when asked if he had been warned about Mr. Kerik’s relationship with Interstate before appointing him to the police post in 2000.

In 2006, Rudy got called to the grand jury investigating Kerik. He acknowledged that Ed Kuriansky, then the city's investigations commissioner, had told him he briefed Rudy on the matter. But, Rudy told the grand jury, he didn't recall that Kuriansky had told him specifically about Kerik's ties to Interstate or Larry Ray.

More....

The Hollywood Writers Strike will start Monday.

There will be a "last ditch" effort to avoid the strike Sunday when both sides meet with a federal mediator.

On one side: "CBS Corp.; NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric Co.; and The Walt Disney Co., owner of the ABC network." On the other: Writers Guild of America.

First casualties, probably Monday night: the late-night talk shows, from Leno and Letterman to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. All are expected to go to repeats.

After that: Day time talk shows and the soaps.

What the writers are fighting for: a fair share of the profits from dvd sales and internet programming.

What to do instead of watching tv? Read more blogs. Support the writers.

More here.

Update: More on juvenile Tate in the news today here and more thoughts below the fold.

******

At 4:00 am this morning, hours before he was to face U.S. District Court Judge Richard Matsch for sentencing in a fraud case, banker Edward P. Mattar, III took a sledge hammer and knocked out a window in his 27th floor apartment, two blocks from Denver’s federal courthouse, and jumped to his death.

A few hours later, 20 miles away in Golden, Colorado, 19-year-old Nathan Quinn Tate faced a state court judge for sentencing following a jury verdict of guilty of first degree murder. His defense to the killing of his friends’ father, who had surprised the pair during a burglary of the father’s residence, was insanity, but the jury didn’t accept that. Nathan Tate was 16 at the time of the murder. The Judge imposed the sentence required by law in Colorado for first degree murder: Life without the possibility of parole.

Two lives lost to the criminal justice system, one to suicide, one to a sentence of life in prison. Surely there must be a better way.

(cross-posted at 5280.com)

Right now, HBO -- Bill Maher, has Markos of Daily Kos and Joe and Valerie Wilson on.

Markos: Hillary didn't do bad in the debate, she just wasn't perfect as she had been in earlier ones. The media just wants a horse race.

Maher: The Republicans are making immigration the "bogeyman" of the election.

Martin Short and Allison Stewart are on too. The Wilsons' segment is over. Did anyone see it?

Some seem to like this type of campaigning. I think it is abhorrent:

While Rudy Giuliani may embrace Hillary Clinton's policy of not talking and saber rattling towards Iran, Barack Obama knows that policy is not working.

What can one say now. The Obama campaign is simply telling falsehoods now. I'll say this, Obama has certainly seen the light, he won't be ushering in a New Era of Politics after all.

This is gutter stuff. h/t Adam B.

The Edwards ad ripping Hillary has wowed some folks in the blogosphere. I thought it was weak, because it seemed to lack any real substance to it. Matt Yglesias agrees with me:

Substantively, though, I'm not in love with this particular critique of Clinton precisely because it's not a substantive critique.

And it seems Team Edwards agrees:

Edwards campaign sources want to emphasize that Edwards did make a policy argument during the debate . . . but that the MSM isn't interested in policy arguments.

Apparently, neither is a good deal of the Netroots.

An inflammatory title you say? Well, I would like to know whether Schumer and Feinstein believe it is ok to have an AG who does not know that waterboarding is torture? Cuz Mukasey, who they support for AG, does not know that.

I never want to hear Schumer pontificate about anything again. Indeed, with this move, it seems to me that he really has disqualified himself as an observer to listen to on the judiciary committee. Spare us your phony outrage in the future Senator. Your act is over.

Say what you will, give the Clinton campaign professionalism props. After a few days of her campaign, imo, insinuating that gender DID have something to do with the criticisms levelled at her, she now turns a nice phrase denying that:

Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday that her status as the Democratic presidential front-runner _ not her gender _ has led her male primary rivals to intensify their criticism of her. "I don't think they're piling on because I'm a woman. I think they're piling on because I'm winning," Clinton told reporters after filing paperwork to appear on the New Hampshire primary ballot.

So Obama, erm, piles on today on this, a mistake imo, and walks into this one. This line also is a winner for Clinton:

"I anticipate it's going to get even hotter, and if you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen. I'm very much at home in the kitchen," she said.

Not baking cookies one assumes.