Lanny Davis insists that he is not affiliated with Hillary's campaign, yet he is one of the most prominent advocates of ever-more-convoluted schemes to prop up her numbers.  Who benefits from Davis's efforts, and who is Davis really supporting for President? The answer to both questions is: John McCain.

Long after her chance of winning the nomination has vanished, HRC slogs on. Increasingly, she promotes the meme that she "leads" in the "popular vote." See Hillary's website.

The "popular vote" argument has been thoroughly debunked.  It would be a mistake to dismiss it, however, because it can only be explained as part of a larger strategy to undermine the legitimacy of Obama's nomination.  

It sets up an association between Obama in 2008 and Bush in 2000 (never mind that Bush lost both the electoral and the popular vote in 2000) and sows the seeds of resentment against the nominee of the party. Why would any Democratic campaign do that?

There is a solution to the Florida and Michigan dilemma that preserves the rules, keeps down costs, and is fair both to the people who voted in January and to those who didn't.  

That is to use the January "results" to choose 50 percent of the delegates, and to choose the other fifty percent in less-expensive caucuses.  No one will be "disenfranchised," the rules will get their due, and (most important) the issue will be defused.

No matter who wins the election, the draft will be proposed in 2005.  The time to start talking about it, and organizing against it, is now.

[Expanded from a post to the bottom of kos' thread on the draft and the Iraq war]

There has been a surprising amount of gloom and doom about the FMA about these parts.  The problem, I think, has to do with the framing of the issue.

The debate about the FMA does not need to be about "gay marriage"; it should be framed as a discussion about these core values:

Federalism; Equality; Liberty and Autonomy; Fairness; Separation of Church and State; and Constitutional Restraint.  Opponents of the FMA should also emphasize that the FMA threatens both Civil Unions and the institution of Marriage itself.

Properly understood, the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment would tread on so many core principles . . .

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court today rejected as unconstitutional a bill that would have created a new status, "civil union," which purported to provide same-sex couples with the rights and benefits of marriage but not the title of "marriage."  While purporting to give equal rights to civilly united and married couples, the statute would emphasize and entrench an invidious distinction.  

In language that explicitly invoked the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, the Massachusetts court rejected "separate but equal" status for same-sex couples:

Lord Hutton has finally produced his report.  It served its purpose: an inquiry tangentially related to the war has been conducted, and the Blair government is exonerated. The only problem is that the whole thing was set up as a distraction from the start.

U.S. practices at Guantanamo amount to "utter lawlessness," according to one of Great Britain's most senior Law Lords.

One of Britain's most senior judges has condemned the US over the detention of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay.

Lord Steyn said conditions at Camp Delta were of "utter lawlessness", in a speech seen by Channel 4 News.

The Law Lord said the US was guilty of a "monstrous failure of justice" and challenged UK ministers to condemn the decision to hold any prisoners there.

He said detainees were "beyond the rule of law, beyond the protection of any courts and at the mercy of victors".

[snip]

"The procedural rules do not prohibit the use of force to coerce the prisoners to confess," he said.

Lord Steyn quoted officials as saying: "It's not quite torture but at close as you can get."

He said the quality of justice did not comply with international standards for fair trials.

"It may be appropriate to pose a question - ought our government to make plain publicly and unambiguously our condemnation of the utter lawlessness at Guantanamo Bay?"  

This story was carried on BBC's Radio 4, among other foreign outlets, but (according to my search engine) it has been ignored by The New York Times and the Washington Post.

Apparently it is big news when the President makes a ceremonial, if unceremonious, visit to our one remaining ally, but it is not news that the United States is flouting the legal and moral traditions that the two countries once shared.