Hillary Rosen at HuffPo writes that Obama is no threat to Hillary Clinton in a 2008 Presidential run.

Yet Hillary's detractors see her as too liberal, too fresh, too ambitious --- too unelectable. Next to Obama you can't help but think she looks a downright conventional choice.

I see Obama as a centrist, not a liberal. I see Hillary Clinton as a centrist.

Wouldn't that be a close to perfect pairing for 2008, the two centrists, a female and an African-American?

One of the questions I have with a Hillary Clinton candidacy is which male contender would agree to run with her in the VP slot? For John Edwards, John Kerry, and most of the other names we know, they might perceive it as a step down to accept the VP slot after campaigning so hard for the Presidential nomination. But for Obama, who has limited experience in the national forum, it would be a step up. He'd probably jump at the chance.

So maybe that's where all this "Obama may run for President in '08" talk is coming from.

I still don't see who anointed him and why, but the media is biting and he's bound to become a household word before too long.

In the course of a long editorial on Iraq, the NYTimes says:

While the strategy described above seems the best bet to us, the odds are still very much against it working. At this point, all plans to avoid disaster involve the equivalent of a Hail Mary pass. In America, almost no one — even the administration’s harshest critics — wants to tell people the bitter truth about how few options remain on the table, and about the mayhem that will almost certainly follow an American withdrawal unless more is done.

Truth will only take us so far, but it is the right way to begin. Americans will probably spend the next generation debating whether the Iraq invasion would have worked under a competent administration. Right now, the best place to express bitterness about what may become the worst foreign policy debacle in American history is at the polls. But anger at a president is not a plan for what happens next.

I don't know. Read the Times plan, if you have faith in their Hail Mary, then by all means embrace it. But frankly, WITHOUT anger at this incompetent President, the worst in history, that pass won't even be thrown.

Fifth Circuit Judge Carolyn Dineen King addressed an audience attending a Red Mass in Corpus Christi. After taking care to disavow the influence of her religious beliefs upon her judicial decision-making, Judge King chided the Catholic Church for its belated recognition that capital punishment is morally wrong:

When I asked one of my friends, who is a professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, about [the church's silence in the death penalty debate prior to 1995], he said that in view of the Church's rather speckled history, one could understand why the Church might not be out front on this issue. Well, I can't understand it. Redemption is possible, even for the Catholic Church.

Judge King used the occasion to criticize the Supreme Court's death penalty jurisprudence:

So says President Bush.

The Latest Cook Political Report/RT Strategies Poll (among most likely voters, October 19-22):

· Presidential job approval- 37% approve, 57% disapprove

· 2006 Generic Congressional Ballot Test- Democrats 57%, Republicans 35%

The wave continues.

Froomkin, commenting on a Time Magazine puffball interview with the vice president that included seemingly serious encouragment to run for the presidency:

Here is a vice president who has repeatedly misled the public about Iraq, arguably exercises all the power of the presidency in almost complete secrecy, quite possibly stage-managed the leaking of a CIA agent's identity for political purposes, holds inexplicable sway over Congress, appears to be in a state of denial that transcends even that of the president, and has basically no credibility left with the American people -- and Time plays footsie with him.

The Republican Party is running this ad in Tennessee against Democratic candidate Harold Ford.

The REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE in Tennessee says:

Corker today repeated a demand that the Republican National Committee stop running a television ad that Corker called "tacky." It features a purported Playboy model who tells viewers, "I met Harold at the Playboy party!" One RNC source indicated the committee is likely to continue running the ad.

Tacky is a nice word for what this ad is. Republican values on display.

Because I believe it is truly sincere, I try not to laugh too much at Andrew Sullivan's period of hairshirt attire as he now tries to figure out how in the holy heck he ever supported the Bush Administration. But in the wake of David Brooks' review of Sully's book, Sully's "eloquence" and earnestness does make me smile with amusement. Here is an example:

To paraphrase Oakeshott, I am a conservative in politics so I - and anyone else - can be a radical in every other activity, if we so choose. And I know no place on earth that allows that more fully than America. Which is why I love it so; and why I am so passionate in defending the system some people seem not to understand or have forgotten. Yes: I am passionate about doubt. And I am passionate about the protections in this Constitution so casually junked by this reckless, arrogant president. And I am passionate about saving the idea of America from those who have not fully understood - and now therefore threaten - its paradoxical strength.

If we accept this as Sullivan's guiding philosophy, how can he explain ever supporting the modern Republican Party? For who, even putting aside Iraq and the War on terror, and habeas corpus and torture, has least understood the idea of civil liberty, which Sullivan deems his central tenet, than the modern day Republican Party? Think Scalia, Thomas, Alito and likely Roberts. What does Sullivan expect from them?

Let's hope this report isn't true.

A U.S. soldier in Baghdad was reported missing late Monday, and residents said American forces sealed the central Karadah district and were conducting door-to-door searches. Other reports claimed he was an Army translator of Iraqi descent and was abducted.

A military official in Washington said the missing service member was a translator and that the initial report was he may have been abducted. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was not cleared for release.

Even Chris Matthews gets it:

OK. Just let me say this to Connecticut, if we have a war that keeps going after this election, don't sit back and say, "I did my best." Because the best thing you can do is vote against the war, right? . . . If you're against the war, vote against it. You only get one vote. Shouldn't you vote against it, if you care about it?

Will the Lamont campaign get it?

Oh BTW, the election is a referendum on the Iraq Debacle everywhere, except, it seems, Connecticut:

It's two weeks away, and the 2006 midterm elections look like a referendum on Iraq, a war in which President Bush and his party have lost not just the political center but significant chunks of their base. . . . [w]ar remains the prime issue driving congressional voter preference. And the war's critics include not just eight in 10 Democrats but 64 percent of independents, 40 percent of conservatives, 35 percent of evangelical white Protestants and a quarter of Republicans.

Bump and Update: It's 24 years for Skilling who went down fighting, proclaiming his innocence to the court. His guidelines were 24 to 30 years.

In a Houston courtroom today, former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling will learn his fate.

With the untimely death of his co-defendant, former Enron CEO Ken Lay, Skilling now stands alone atop the smoldering ruins of a company that once claimed revenues of $111 billion and was named "America's Most Innovative Company" for six consecutive years.

I expect Skilling will get a hefty sentence, but I don't buy the theory that it will be heavier because Lay's death leaves him the only one to be held accountable. I think the Judge will give Skilling the same number of years in prison he would have imposed if he were sentencing both Skilling and Lay today.

At TAPPED, Scott Lemeiux catches Justice Scalia fibbing again:

One student asked whether Scalia believed the 2000 decision in Bush v. Gore was an example of judicial activism . . . "My first response to that question always is, it's six years ago. Get over it!" Scalia said. He then explained that "It surely is not activist to apply the text of the Constitution, which is what the court did."

Six years? Get over it? Heck, Roe was 33 years ago. When you gonna get over that Justice Scalia? But the more serious point is the claim of textualism for Bush v. Gore. Let's discuss it on the other side.