Just in case you thought Barack Obama was the candidate to knock some sense into White House and Congressional drug warriors, think again. Stop the Drug War quotes Obama's comments as printed in the New York Times:

If elected, Mr. Obama said he would establish a Drug Enforcement Agency office in New Orleans that would be dedicated to stopping drug gangs across the region.

New Orleans already has a DEA office. As Stop the Drug War says:

Obama's drug war revitalization plan for New Orleans is the latest step in his successful bid to be the worst on drug policy among the democratic presidential contenders. He's lamented the "political capital" required to repair the despicable crack/powder sentencing disparity, a no-brainer racial justice issue that even drug war hall-of-famer Joe Biden wants to fix. At Howard University's Democratic Debate on minority issues, he stood there like an idiot while every other candidate managed to address some type of criminal justice reform. He was also the last democratic candidate to pledge an end to federal medical marijuana raids, and not because they're heartless and evil, but because they're "not a good use of resources."

In other news . . . the United Transportation Union (UTU) endorses Senator Hillary Clinton:

The United Transportation Union on Tuesday endorsed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination for president, the first national union endorsement of the 2008 campaign. "The UTU has a long history of picking winners early. Hillary will be a president that America's working families can count on. Time and again, as a United States senator, she has stood with us," UTU President Paul Thompson said in a statement.

Senator Clinton is a fine candidate for President and has run the best campaign of all the candidates . . . so far.

While the Media and some others want to call the race for the Dem nomination 5 months before a vote is cast, the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) is having none of it, endorsing the best candidate for President in this race, Senator Chris Dodd. Matt of the Dodd blog has the details:

The International Association of Fire Fighters has announced that Chris Dodd will recieve their endorsement. IAFF President Harold Schaitberger says Dodd is "the man we trust to keep our country safe and families secure." The Fire Fighters don’t know what challenges we will face in the future, but regardless of the situation, we know what kind of leadership Chris Dodd will offer.

Fire fighters bring more than just an endorsement in name … there are tangible benefits that come with this endorsement that build on our already strong grass roots organization - boots on the ground, organizational and volunteer strength.

. . . Dodd and Schaitberger will be visiting Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada over the next four days and meeting with local firefighters along the way. . . .

The voters will decide this race. Not the moneymen. Not the Media. And not the "buzz."

I urge everyone to really look at the candidates and decide who you think would be the best President. I think the choice is clear - Chris Dodd.

[Added by TL: As always, Big Tent Democrat speaks for himself only.]

So Craig says today in his press conference. Personally, I do not care. But I think Glenn Greenwald exposes the problem Republicans face on this matter - they hate gay persons.

The evidence seems pretty clear that Craig is in fact gay. And now Republicans have to deal with this reality, even in the face of Craig's denials.

It's time for the Tuesday open thread. You're on your own here this afternoon.

Some things I'm following:

• The only officer to be charged in the Abu Ghraib scandal has been acquitted of all charges except failing to comply with a directive not to talk about the matter.

• ABC News reports Sen. Larry Craig will hold a presser this afternoon. My prediction: He won't run for re-election.

• MSNBC names some replacements for Gonzales, quoting a source close to the White House source as saying George J. Terwilliger III is looking good.

• Texas plans to execute Kenneth Foster Thursday even though he didn't kill anyone. The Dallas Morning News explains. Visit FreeKenneth and the NCADP action alert page and try to stop this wrongful execution.

The Wall St. Journal has me seriously rethinking my subscription. Check out this article by Brody Mullins and its baseless attempt to smear Hillary Clinton's Asian contributors.

Shorter version: An American family of Chinese descent in San Francisco, the Paws, contributed to Hillary around the same time as one of her big contributors, Norman Hsu, who now lives in New York.

Not only is there nothing wrong with that as big fund-raisers often ask people to make contributions around the same time they are contributing, but the Journal admits:

There is no public record or indication Mr. Hsu reimbursed the Paw family for their political contributions. (my emphasis.)

Not only that, but The Journal acknowledges the Paw family and Norman Hsu gave to other candidates as well. If you check campaign records, you will see Mr. Hsu has donated to Barack Obama, John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, and that the Paw family has contributed thousands to an Obama's PAC.

Plus, the Journal insisted on running the piece in the face of factual denials from all involved.

This is a hurtful, non-story with a smear factor and the Journal should be taken to task for publishing it.

But enough of my interpretation. Here is the statement from well-respected, prominent lawyer Lawrence Barcella,who is representing Norman Hsu.

Statement Below:

In The American Prospect, Ron Brownstein reviews Matt Bai's book on the Democratic Party and the battles ongoing within it - battles on policies and political strategy. Brownstein is a very good reporter and observer, but it seems to me he accepts some conclusions that are faulty. In particular, he often mixes what was (at least I thought it WAS) a good understanding in the Democratic base and the Netroots that policy is beholden to politics. You can't enact a progressive agenda unless you can elect progressive representatives. Brownstein reserves that understanding to the "savvy" like himself:

Bai's plea for a more ambitious, transformative Democratic agenda, also seems disconnected in another key respect. Visionary ideas detached from a strategy to move them into law are like balloons without strings. (As John F. Kennedy once put it when an aide urged him to promote a policy he knew he could not pass through Congress, "That's vanity … not politics.")

I can't imagine there are many thinking persons who care about politics that do not understand this. The Argument, as it were, in the Democratic Party, has been two fold - whether a substantively progressive agenda can be enacted in the United States; and how to get such an agenda enacted. Most in the Netroots (me included) believe that it can but that it must occur through the Democratic Party. That means transforming the Democratic Party - most particularly in its political strategy and style. More.

McJoan at Daily Kos has the backstory to the Idaho Statesman investigation of Sen. Larry Craig.

The Statesman published the report of its five month investigation today.

In an interview on May 14, Craig told the Idaho Statesman he'd never engaged in sex with a man or solicited sex with a man. The Craig interview was the culmination of a Statesman investigation that began after a blogger accused Craig of homosexual sex in October. Over five months, the Statesman examined rumors about Craig dating to his college days and his 1982 pre-emptive denial that he had sex with underage congressional pages.

More....

The U.N. Annual Opium Poppy Survey, a report on the Afghan Opium Trade, has been released (available here, pdf.) Opium production is up.

The report is the work of a combination of international anti-drug agencies. From the executive summary:

In 2007, Afghanistan cultivated 193,000 hectares of opium poppies, an increase of 17% over last year. The amount of Afghan land used for opium is now larger than the corresponding total for coca cultivation in Latin America (Colombia, Peru and Bolivia combined).

Favourable weather conditions produced opium yields (42.5 kg per hectare)higher than last year (37.0 kg/ha). As a result, in 2007 Afghanistan produced an extraordinary 8,200 tons of opium (34% more than in 2006), becoming practically the exclusive supplier of the world’s deadliest drug (93% of the global opiates market).

More....

ABC News has the plea disposition document from the Minnesota Court in Sen. Larry Craig's bathroom arrest. He pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct (Section 609.72.1) and a second charge of invasion of privacy was dismissed. Here's the statute (via Lexis):

609.72 DISORDERLY CONDUCT Subdivision 1. Crime.

Whoever does any of the following in a public or private place, including on a school bus, knowing, or having reasonable grounds to know that it will, or will tend to, alarm, anger or disturb others or provoke an assault or breach of the peace, is guilty of disorderly conduct, which is a misdemeanor:

(1) Engages in brawling or fighting; or
(2) Disturbs an assembly or meeting, not unlawful in its character; or
(3) Engages in offensive, obscene, abusive, boisterous, or noisy conduct or in offensive, obscene, or abusive language tending reasonably to arouse alarm, anger, or resentment in others.

A person does not violate this section if the person's disorderly conduct was caused by an epileptic seizure.

Seems like Subsection 3 is the applicable one. Parsing the words, I think you have to forego boisterous or noisy. That leaves the charge that tapping the floor with his foot, putting his hand under the bathroom stall and tapping the foot of the occupant in the next stall is offensive, obscene or abusive.

More...

In its Tuesday editorial, the New York Times does a good job of summing up in two paragraphs what Alberto Gonzales did wrong as Attorney General:

[H]e did not stand up for the Constitution and the rule of law, as an attorney general must. This administration has illegally spied on Americans, detained suspects indefinitely as “enemy combatants,” run roughshod over the Geneva Conventions, violated the Hatch Act prohibitions on injecting politics into government and defied Congressional subpoenas. In each case, Mr. Gonzales gave every indication of being on the side of the lawbreakers, not the law.

Mr. Gonzales signed off on the administration’s repugnant, and disastrous, torture policy when he was the White House counsel. He later helped stampede Congress into passing the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which endorsed illegal C.I.A. prisons where detainees may be tortured and established kangaroo courts in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to keep detained foreigners in custody essentially for life. He helped cover up and perpetuate Mr. Bush’s illegal wiretapping programs, both in the counsel’s job and as attorney general. The F.B.I. under his stewardship abused powers it was given after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the name of enhanced national security.

In other words, Goodbye and good riddance.

I first saw this over at Sideshow. It seems to be becoming a national story. It is quite amazing that the aspiring Ms. Teen South Carolina, Lauren Caitlin, could be so stupid.

If you haven't seen it yet, check it out for a good laugh.

The winner, by the way, was Miss Teen Colorado, Hilary Carol Cruz.

Update 8/28: She answers the question much better on the Today Show today.