Frankly, this is a very bizarre reaction from Obama:

About 6:40 pm today, the Obama campaign issued a written statement from the candidate saying that he "strongly disagree(s)" with McClurkin's views. Still, a spokesman said McClurkin would remain part of the concert line-up.

(Emphasis supplied.) This was a baby that could not be divided. Obama's reaction simply does not work.

All year I have stated that Obama's political team is awful. This is confirmation of my judgment.

Via atrios, Glenn Beck:

"I think there is a handful of people who hate America. Unfortunately for them, a lot of them are losing their homes in a forest fire today." . . . Beck's comment came as forest fires ravaged parts of Southern California, leaving one person dead, four firefighters wounded, and forcing about 1,500 people from their homes.

Funny guy. Nice host you have there CNN. Delivers "big" ratings too.

is the reality that Democrats can end the Debacle by not funding it. The power of doing nothing is lost on them. Instead, we see the Republican Party responding to its base (h/t Josh Marshall):

Despite months of pressure, no more than eight Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate have backed any measure that mandates a troop withdrawal. And GOP strategists predict that is unlikely to change. "Republicans have to be cognizant of where their base is," said pollster Bob Wickers, whose company has worked with Republican candidates in a dozen states in recent years.

Here's my question, why don't Democrats have to be cognizant of where THE COUNTRY is? Josh's post is really missing this point - that Democrats won in 2006 on Iraq. That THEIR base and the country want out of Iraq. And that they have the power to stop the war. By doing nothing. It is the central insight and is missing from much of the Iraq coverage, Media and blogs alike.

I'll be honest. I never heard of Donny McClurkin before reading this:

From the NYT:

As religious conservatives gather in Washington this weekend for the “Values Voters Summit,” Senator Barack Obama’s campaign announced its latest effort to attract people of faith to the campaign: a gospel concert tour.

All three of the dates of the “Embrace the Change” tour are in South Carolina, where Mr. Obama is locked in battle with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton for black voters.

Gospel acts including Mary Mary, Donnie McClurkin and Hezekiah Walker, Byron Cage and the Mighty Clouds of Joy are scheduled to appear.

“This is another example of how Barack Obama is defying conventional wisdom about how politics is done and giving new meaning to meeting people at the grassroots level,” Joshua DuBois, the campaign’s religious affairs director, said in a release.

Yes, sucking up to anti-gay bigots and joining them on stage - no, giving them a stage - is certainly defying conventional wisdom as to how a Democrat becomes president. Oh, and McClurkin also believes that gays can, and need to, be "cured."

It seems unlikely to me that the Obama campaign was aware of this:

Valerie Plame Wilson's book on her career with the CIA and PlameGate, "Fair Game" is officially released today and available for purchase. From Amazon:

Valerie Plame Wilson's cover as a top CIA agent was blown when Bush Administration officials leaked her name to the media; the ensuing investigation resulted in Vice-President Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby, being convicted of a felony. But it almost destroyed Valerie Wilson's life, too. Now, for the first time, she tells her story of a life as a spy, the career of a undercover agent and mother of twins and the sudden object of the White House's wrath. It is a remarkable woman's story, a political story, a tale of betrayal and courage.

Valerie has a new blog post on Huffington Post, Finally Telling My Story. She writes: [More...]

The Colorado Rockies will face the Boston Red Sox in the World series, beginning Wednesday in Boston.

The Red Sox "earned the right" to compete against them with their win against Cleveland Sunday night.

The Rockies have nothing to be afraid of, since they have a record of beating the Red Sox:

The Rockies have recent success on their side. During Interleague Play, the Rockies won two of three games at Fenway on June 12-14, as they outscored the Red Sox, 20-5, in the series. Additionally, the Rockies were one of just two teams to beat the Red Sox's top two pitchers, Josh Beckett and Curt Schilling. They lost the opener, 2-1, as Tim Wakefield outdueled Aaron Cook.

Go Rockies! Tickets go on sale at 10:00 this morning on the Rockies website. The game schedule is here. Who do you think will win the first game? Take the poll below.

How do news agencies get things so wrong? Every media outlet reporting on the search warrants executed at David Copperfield's warehouse and the theater he performs in said that the feds had seized $2 million in cash from a safe at the warehouse.

The F.B.I. says it never happened. No currency was seized.

Since TalkLeft repeated the media report (and speculated as to why the feds might seize so much money from him) I'm giving equal space to the F.B.I.'s denial.

Apologies to David Copperfield, and shame on the Las Vegas television station (KLAS, a CNN affiliate)that first falsely reported the seizure. In their hurry to get a scoop, someone got very sloppy. As of this writing, they still haven't made the correction.

The New York Times reports in the Sunday Magazine on Lt. Commander Matthew Diaz, a Guantanamo Bay deputy legal advisor who leaked the names of the detainees to the Center for Constitutional Rights. After spending months alone in his office compiling the list, he reduced them to large index cards and stuck them inside a Valentine's Day card he bought at the base and put them in the mail.

It wasn't hard to track him once the F.B.I. picked up the card and contents from the Center, which it was ordered to do by a federal judge.

On March 15, 2005, a federal agent in a black overcoat flew to New York from Washington. He took a cab to the center’s offices in downtown Manhattan and kept it waiting while he went to retrieve the card and its contents. Once the F.B.I. began to investigate, it had little difficulty narrowing the list of possible suspects. Diaz had printed the document from his own computer, bought the valentine at the base exchange and left his fingerprints on the list.

This past May, Matthew Diaz became the only United States serviceman to be convicted and imprisoned for an act of insubordination directed at the Bush administration’s detention policies.

This is a seven page article, but well worth the read.

Fired Seattle U.S. Attorney John McKay spoke at a bar association meeting Friday and said he thinks it's quite possible the Inspector General conducting the probe of the U.S. attorney firings will refer Alberto Gonzales and others for criminal prosecution, possibly as early as next month.

McKay said he was summoned to Washington, D.C., in June and questioned for eight hours about possible reasons for his firing by investigators with the Office of Inspector General, who will forward their final report to Congress.

“My best guess is it will be released sometime next month,’’ and likely will include recommendations for criminal prosecutions of Gonzales and maybe others, McKay said.

McKay believes the principal reason he was fired was for not opening a voter fraud investigation into Gov. Chris Gregoire’s marginal victory over Republican Dino Rossi in 2004.

He noted the White House was unhappy with San Diego U.S. Attorney Carol Lam's conduct regarding Randy "Duke" Cunningham and with New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Yglesia's refusal to indict a Democratic candidate right before the November election.

McKay says Gonazles lied to Congress about the reasons for the firings.

More...

Whenever folks try to rehabilitate Andrew Sullivan, he is quick to remind us why he is so detestable.

As for the "science" of the Bell Curve, see this:

Via Greenwald, Scott Horton demonstrates that the corrupt logrolling practices of our Media are now a part of the blogs as well:

I stumbled across something pretty strange. I found Rachel Sklar’s “Ringside at the Reality Show” over at the Huffington Post. Sklar’s piece is a drooling, fawning blurb-like emission. In fact, had it been authored by Kurtz’s own PR agent, I can’t imagine he’d have changed a comma. Of course, Sklar hasn’t really read Kurtz’s book (other than the first 7500 words, she says), but her praise couldn’t be stronger . . .

He debunks it here. Read the whole thing. But this part was really a terrific aside:

Well, I’ve gotten a dismissive review in the NYT. It’s sort of a tradition. After all, The Great Unraveling received an equally dismissive review from Peter Beinart, in which he portrayed my conclusion that the Bush administration deliberately misled us into war as a crazy conspiracy theory, and contained this immortal pronouncement:

But most Americans do not consider the Bush administration corrupt, and Paul Krugman cannot convincingly prove it is.

I think David Kennedy’s review will hold up about as well as Peter Beinart’s.

Heh.