Rudy Giuliani said:

The truth? This:

. . . [A]n exhaustively detailed account from his mayoral archive, revised after the events to account for last-minute changes on scheduled stops, does exist for the period of Sept. 17 to Dec. 16, 2001. It shows he was there for a total of 29 hours in those three months, often for short periods or to visit locations adjacent to the rubble. In that same period, many rescue and recovery workers put in daily 12-hour shifts.

Rudy Giuliani has trouble with the truth. When will the Media notice? As for James Lee Witt, remember this?

I never expected to be supporting any of our fine Democratic candidates for President at this point, much less Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT). I was not shopping for candidates. Indeed, I insisted (insist?) that the Netroots has spent 2007 too focused on the 2008 horserace instead of being focused on the pressing issues of today, especially the Iraq issue.

But that actually explains how Chris Dodd won my support. Chris Dodd is leading on the issues of today as well as discussing his vision for the issues of tomorrow. Take Iraq for instance. While Dodd thoroughly explains his views on what he will do about Iraq as President, he has spent just as much time explaining and stressing the critical importance of Democrats doing all they can now to end the Iraq Debacle. This is not an issue that can wait 18 months. Thus Dodd argues that we must:

End the War in Iraq Decisively. Chris Dodd understands that ending the war in Iraq makes America safer. He strongly supports the Feingold-Reid proposal - the only responsible measure in Congress that sets a timetable to end the war in Iraq by March 31, 2008 - and he has urged all the candidates in the presidential race to join him. It is time to stand up to the President's misguided Iraq policy.

(Emphasis supplied.) More than anything else, this position won my support. Instead of introducing a "Dodd plan" for getting us out of Iraq, to buttress a stump speech, Chris Dodd put the issue first, he put the nation first, and he argued for what Democrats (and any Republicans with wisdom and courage) should be doing NOW, not in January 2009, to end the Iraq Debacle. With this one act, Chris Dodd demonstrated the type of leadership, political courage, selflessness and wisdom that we need from our future President.

More.

Responding to Max Sawicky's point about Obama's conceit that he will transform politics, Paul Waldman writes a piece that is all confusion and fantasy. Sawicky wrote:

Today in the Post we find Obama claiming an advantage over Clinton by virtue of his capacity to unify the country. The last thing we need, at a point where the Democrats can establish a decisive margin of political power, is somebody out to unify the country. I fear that Senator Obama is turning into the DLC candidate, in all but name.

I think Sawicky is wrong in thinking of Obama as the DLC candidate. There is no DLC candidate. Not even Biden. The DLC is basically irrelevant to Democratic politcs, but still willing to be a weapon for Republican politics by their incessant bashing of Democrats as too far Left.

No, Obama's problem, as I have argued ad nauseum, is the notion that he will be the first politican in history who can lead his political party to success while not engaging in partisanship. It is pure foolishness. But what is especially galling is Obama's willingess to be divisive among Democrats while promising to not be divisive with Republicans. It is simply political madness. A madness that apparently infected Paul Waldman:

Via Kevin Drum, conservative James Joyner has woken up to Rudy:

Otherwise, I must concur in Matt Yglesias‘ judgment: “this man is bats[**]t insane.” . . . [T]he more I learn about Giuliani, the less I like him. . . . The more I hear and read, . . ., the more I think Giuliani is either a charlatan or a simpleton. Either he’s lying to us and we therefore have no idea what his foreign policy will be or, worse, this is what he really thinks. Either way, it’s not good.

Rudy is the most dangerous person running for President by far. An insane, lying charlatan, in the words of Joyner. Good to see people are waking up to this fact.

Derrick Z. Jackson's Boston Globe column today tracks Barack Obama's record on drug sentencing, including his stance on the disparate and racially discriminatory federal crack-powder cocaine sentencing ratios and the death penalty.

Shorter version: He used to be against the harsh crack cocaine penalties but now won't commit to doing anything to fix them. It may not be worth the "political capital" it would take.

On the death penalty, while he's voted against it in some cases, he's also voted to strengthen it in others.

Details below:

It's so typical. When candidates are pandering for votes and struggling to keep their candidacies alive, they resort to fear mongering and proclaiming themselves to be the candidate that will be the toughest on crime. In today's world, that means being the toughest on undocumented residents and sex offenders.

Rudy Giuliani has unveiled his new plan for war on the undocumented.

Giuliani said he would require a uniform identification card for foreign workers and students and create a central database to track the legal status of visitors to the country....Giuliani wants a tamperproof ID card that includes fingerprinting for everyone entering the country and a central database to track when they leave.

For an immigrant to get a chance to stay here, he wants a confession and then the undocumented resident will "go to the back of the line." That sounds racistly reminiscent to me of "go to the back of the bus."

What's next, a Giuliani-Tancredo ticket?

Mitt Romney is going with the tried and true: declare war on sex offenders. Never mind that penalties for sex offenders are already astronomically high, Romney will raise them even higher:

[T]he Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts governor has proposed increased punishment for those who prey on children online -- stringent mandatory prison sentences, followed by lifetime tracking by Global Positioning System for first-time offenders who "use the Internet to sexually assault children." He calls it "One Strike, You're Ours."

Ah, the evil internets. What's next, a Mitt Romney - John Walsh ticket?

Civil libertarians provide this response to Romney's plan:

More...

I'd like to say Bill Richardson is refreshing for his willingness to admit when he screws up. First, at the Yearly Kos debate, he admitted he "screwed up" in saying we need more Supreme Court Justices like Byron White.

Today, he says he "screwed up" in saying at the GLBT debate that gays choose their sexual orientation.

I made a mistake. I screwed up," he said, acknowledging that the gay blogosphere is upset with him. "[The blogs] went nuts saying, you know, that I literally was a moron and that I didn't understand their struggle," he said.

But, his screw-ups are on big issues. What would happen if he were President and had the opportunity to act before someone pointed out his screw-ups to him?

Richardson says he's not running for VP but won't say he won't accept the nomination.

I also wonder whether Richardson is ready for prime-time. From today's article:

Richardson, who supports civil unions, was asked if he would veto a gay marriage bill because he believed in his heart that same-sex marriage is wrong. He replied, "I don't want to get into that. I thought you guys were going to ask me about other stuff. Don't you care about other stuff?"

He needs some media training, and fast.

Peter Boyer, exposed here as clueless by mcjoan, misses the significance of one of the bigger pieces of news in his New Yorker story (see Jeralyn's post on the article):

Among those smiling appreciatively at Giuliani’s remarks was retired Rear Admiral William L. Schachte, seated several rows back. Schachte gained notoriety in 2004 as a key figure in the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against John Kerry. Schachte had been Kerry’s commanding officer in Vietnam and, in August, 2004, declared that he was on Kerry’s boat the night Kerry saw combat action that brought him his first Purple Heart. Schachte asserted that Kerry had not encountered enemy fire that night. (Kerry and two of the men who served with him have said that Schachte wasn’t on the boat.)

Rudy has eagerly accepted the support of lying skunk SwiftBoater Schachte. Before I asked, how low will Rudy go? The bottom has not been found yet.

This piece of news DOES make this, via Sargent, Newsweek article very ironic.

There's a 16 page article on Rudy Giuliani in the new issue of the New Yorker. Too much of a puff-piece for my taste, but this quote shows the Rudy I remember:

In 1983, Giuliani was appointed U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, where his ambitions and his talents fully merged.... He was one of the first prosecutors to use the perp walk as a public-relations weapon against white-collar criminals, who traditionally had been allowed to present themselves before the court for arraignment. In February of 1987, he brought charges of insider trading against two Kidder, Peabody executives. As a Wall Street Journal editorial later put it:

Giuliani had his agents burst into Kidder, Peabody, throw Richard Wigton up against the wall and handcuff him. He arranged to bust Timothy Tabor so late in the day that he had to spend a night in jail before he could post bond. Mr. Giuliani didn’t think Mr. Wigton was going to pull a knife or Mr. Tabor would flee the country. He lusted after the headlines, and hoped strong-arm tactics would coerce settlements. This is not the kind of prosecutorial zeal we need when the underlying law is far from clear.

The charges against Wigton and Tabor were subsequently dropped.

Here's another of Rudy's excesses:

Results:

Mitt Romney 32%
Mike Huckabee 18%
Sam Brownback 15%
Tom Tancredo 14%
Ron Paul 9%
Tommy Thompson 7%
Fred Thompson
Rudy Giuliani
Duncan Hunter
John McCain
Jon Cox

They expected 30,000. 14,000 showed up. The GOP is in trouble in 2008. As for this silly exercise, Romney lost the expectations game so he lost. Huckabee won. Watch for Huckabee talk now.

The latest low mark for the Rudy campaign - sending out reps to say that the first responders do not know who attacked us on 9/11:

A former deputy mayor, Joe Lhota, said the critics are politically motivated and wrong. "They're taking their anger out in the wrong direction," Lhota said. "He was literally there four and five times a day; he did anything but run away. "They're losing sight of the fact that this country, and this city, was attacked on that day by terrorists; it's their fault."

Rudy failed the first responders and New York City with his incompetence on terrorism. If he is going to campaign on the murder by the evil bin Laden of 3000 Americans, then his incompetence must be discussed. As a commenter at TPM shrewdly notes, conservative Jay Cost has said that Rudy's is a bloody shirt campaign:

I am reminded of the politics of the post-bellum era - in which average-to-below-average Republicans in the North could be elected by "waving the bloody shirt," i.e. referencing their (seemingly) prominent roles in the Civil War to win the support of Northerners. . . . He is, in a certain sense, waving the bloody shirt of 9/11. Can the Republican Party refuse it?

Rudy Giuliani campaigned in Colorado Springs Friday.

As he drew a picture of a fence on a paper coffee coaster, he said he has plans to create an identification system for everyone in the country.

“We should know who’s here,” Giuliani said. “Every other country has a system, we’re just catching up.”

A national ID system is a nightmare. The Senate rejected funding for Real ID in July. If you've forgotten what the Real ID Act requires, see below: