Barack Obama At Truman Library
On a spring morning in April of 1775, a simple band of colonists – farmers and merchants, blacksmiths and printers, men and boys – left their homes and families in Lexington and Concord to take up arms against the tyranny of an Empire. The odds against them were long and the risks enormous – for even if they survived the battle, any ultimate failure would bring charges of treason, and death by hanging.
And yet they took that chance. They did so not on behalf of a particular tribe or lineage, but on behalf of a larger idea. The idea of liberty. The idea of God-given, inalienable rights. And with the first shot of that fateful day – a shot heard round the world – the American Revolution, and America’s experiment with democracy, began.
Those men of Lexington and Concord were among our first patriots. And at the beginning of a week when we celebrate the birth of our nation, I think it is fitting to pause for a moment and reflect on the meaning of patriotism – theirs, and ours.
We do so in part because we are in the midst of war – more than one and a half million of our finest young men and women have now fought in Iraq and Afghanistan; over 60,000 have been wounded, and over 4,600 have been laid to rest. The costs of war have been great, and the debate surrounding our mission in Iraq has been fierce. It is natural, in light of such sacrifice by so many, to think more deeply about the commitments that bind us to our nation, and to each other.
We reflect on these questions as well because we are in the midst of a presidential election, perhaps the most consequential in generations; a contest that will determine the course of this nation for years, perhaps decades, to come. Not only is it a debate about big issues – health care, jobs, energy, education, and retirement security – but it is also a debate about values. How do we keep ourselves safe and secure while preserving our liberties? How do we restore trust in a government that seems increasingly removed from its people and dominated by special interests? How do we ensure that in an increasingly global economy, the winners maintain allegiance to the less fortunate? And how do we resolve our differences at a time of increasing diversity?
Finally, it is worth considering the meaning of patriotism because the question of who is – or is not – a patriot all too often poisons our political debates, in ways that divide us rather than bringing us together. I have come to know this from my own experience on the campaign trail. Throughout my life, I have always taken my deep and abiding love for this country as a given. It was how I was raised; it is what propelled me into public service; it is why I am running for President. And yet, at certain times over the last sixteen months, I have found, for the first time, my patriotism challenged – at times as a result of my own carelessness, more often as a result of the desire by some to score political points and raise fears about who I am and what I stand for.
So let me say at this at outset of my remarks. I will never question the patriotism of others in this campaign. And I will not stand idly by when I hear others question mine.
My concerns here aren’t simply personal, however. After all, throughout our history, men and women of far greater stature and significance than me have had their patriotism questioned in the midst of momentous debates. Thomas Jefferson was accused by the Federalists of selling out to the French. The anti-Federalists were just as convinced that John Adams was in cahoots with the British and intent on restoring monarchal rule. Likewise, even our wisest Presidents have sought to justify questionable policies on the basis of patriotism. Adams’ Alien and Sedition Act, Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus, Roosevelt’s internment of Japanese Americans – all were defended as expressions of patriotism, and those who disagreed with their policies were sometimes labeled as unpatriotic.
In other words, the use of patriotism as a political sword or a political shield is as old as the Republic. Still, what is striking about today’s patriotism debate is the degree to which it remains rooted in the culture wars of the 1960s – in arguments that go back forty years or more. In the early years of the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War, defenders of the status quo often accused anybody who questioned the wisdom of government policies of being unpatriotic. Meanwhile, some of those in the so-called counter-culture of the Sixties reacted not merely by criticizing particular government policies, but by attacking the symbols, and in extreme cases, the very idea, of America itself – by burning flags; by blaming America for all that was wrong with the world; and perhaps most tragically, by failing to honor those veterans coming home from Vietnam, something that remains a national shame to this day.Most Americans never bought into these simplistic world-views – these caricatures of left and right. Most Americans understood that dissent does not make one unpatriotic, and that there is nothing smart or sophisticated about a cynical disregard for America’s traditions and institutions. And yet the anger and turmoil of that period never entirely drained away. All too often our politics still seems trapped in these old, threadbare arguments – a fact most evident during our recent debates about the war in Iraq, when those who opposed administration policy were tagged by some as unpatriotic, and a general providing his best counsel on how to move forward in Iraq was accused of betrayal.
Given the enormous challenges that lie before us, we can no longer afford these sorts of divisions. None of us expect that arguments about patriotism will, or should, vanish entirely; after all, when we argue about patriotism, we are arguing about who we are as a country, and more importantly, who we should be. But surely we can agree that no party or political philosophy has a monopoly on patriotism. And surely we can arrive at a definition of patriotism that, however rough and imperfect, captures the best of America’s common spirit.
What would such a definition look like? For me, as for most Americans, patriotism starts as a gut instinct, a loyalty and love for country rooted in my earliest memories. I’m not just talking about the recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance or the Thanksgiving pageants at school or the fireworks on the Fourth of July, as wonderful as those things may be. Rather, I’m referring to the way the American ideal wove its way throughout the lessons my family taught me as a child.
One of my earliest memories is of sitting on my grandfather’s shoulders and watching the astronauts come to shore in Hawaii. I remember the cheers and small flags that people waved, and my grandfather explaining how we Americans could do anything we set our minds to do. That’s my idea of America.
I remember listening to my grandmother telling stories about her work on a bomber assembly-line during World War II. I remember my grandfather handing me his dog-tags from his time in Patton’s Army, and understanding that his defense of this country marked one of his greatest sources of pride. That’s my idea of America.
I remember, when living for four years in Indonesia as a child, listening to my mother reading me the first lines of the Declaration of Independence – “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” I remember her explaining how this declaration applied to every American, black and white and brown alike; how those words, and words of the United States Constitution, protected us from the injustices that we witnessed other people suffering during those years abroad. That’s my idea of America.
As I got older, that gut instinct – that America is the greatest country on earth – would survive my growing awareness of our nation’s imperfections: it’s ongoing racial strife; the perversion of our political system laid bare during the Watergate hearings; the wrenching poverty of the Mississippi Delta and the hills of Appalachia. Not only because, in my mind, the joys of American life and culture, its vitality, its variety and its freedom, always outweighed its imperfections, but because I learned that what makes America great has never been its perfection but the belief that it can be made better. I came to understand that our revolution was waged for the sake of that belief – that we could be governed by laws, not men; that we could be equal in the eyes of those laws; that we could be free to say what we want and assemble with whomever we want and worship as we please; that we could have the right to pursue our individual dreams but the obligation to help our fellow citizens pursue theirs.
For a young man of mixed race, without firm anchor in any particular community, without even a father’s steadying hand, it is this essential American idea – that we are not constrained by the accident of birth but can make of our lives what we will – that has defined my life, just as it has defined the life of so many other Americans.
That is why, for me, patriotism is always more than just loyalty to a place on a map or a certain kind of people. Instead, it is also loyalty to America’s ideals – ideals for which anyone can sacrifice, or defend, or give their last full measure of devotion. I believe it is this loyalty that allows a country teeming with different races and ethnicities, religions and customs, to come together as one. It is the application of these ideals that separate us from Zimbabwe, where the opposition party and their supporters have been silently hunted, tortured or killed; or Burma, where tens of thousands continue to struggle for basic food and shelter in the wake of a monstrous storm because a military junta fears opening up the country to outsiders; or Iraq, where despite the heroic efforts of our military, and the courage of many ordinary Iraqis, even limited cooperation between various factions remains far too elusive.
I believe those who attack America’s flaws without acknowledging the singular greatness of our ideals, and their proven capacity to inspire a better world, do not truly understand America.
Of course, precisely because America isn’t perfect, precisely because our ideals constantly demand more from us, patriotism can never be defined as loyalty to any particular leader or government or policy. As Mark Twain, that greatest of American satirists and proud son of Missouri, once wrote, “Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.” We may hope that our leaders and our government stand up for our ideals, and there are many times in our history when that’s occurred. But when our laws, our leaders or our government are out of alignment with our ideals, then the dissent of ordinary Americans may prove to be one of the truest expression of patriotism.
The young preacher from Georgia, Martin Luther King, Jr., who led a movement to help America confront our tragic history of racial injustice and live up to the meaning of our creed – he was a patriot. The young soldier who first spoke about the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib – he is a patriot. Recognizing a wrong being committed in this country’s name; insisting that we deliver on the promise of our Constitution – these are the acts of patriots, men and women who are defending that which is best in America. And we should never forget that – especially when we disagree with them; especially when they make us uncomfortable with their words.
Beyond a loyalty to America’s ideals, beyond a willingness to dissent on behalf of those ideals, I also believe that patriotism must, if it is to mean anything, involve the willingness to sacrifice – to give up something we value on behalf of a larger cause. For those who have fought under the flag of this nation – for the young veterans I meet when I visit Walter Reed; for those like John McCain who have endured physical torment in service to our country – no further proof of such sacrifice is necessary. And let me also add that no one should ever devalue that service, especially for the sake of a political campaign, and that goes for supporters on both sides.We must always express our profound gratitude for the service of our men and women in uniform. Period. Indeed, one of the good things to emerge from the current conflict in Iraq has been the widespread recognition that whether you support this war or oppose it, the sacrifice of our troops is always worthy of honor.
For the rest of us – for those of us not in uniform or without loved ones in the military – the call to sacrifice for the country’s greater good remains an imperative of citizenship. Sadly, in recent years, in the midst of war on two fronts, this call to service never came. After 9/11, we were asked to shop. The wealthiest among us saw their tax obligations decline, even as the costs of war continued to mount. Rather than work together to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and thereby lessen our vulnerability to a volatile region, our energy policy remained unchanged, and our oil dependence only grew.
In spite of this absence of leadership from Washington, I have seen a new generation of Americans begin to take up the call. I meet them everywhere I go, young people involved in the project of American renewal; not only those who have signed up to fight for our country in distant lands, but those who are fighting for a better America here at home, by teaching in underserved schools, or caring for the sick in understaffed hospitals, or promoting more sustainable energy policies in their local communities.
I believe one of the tasks of the next Administration is to ensure that this movement towards service grows and sustains itself in the years to come. We should expand AmeriCorps and grow the Peace Corps. We should encourage national service by making it part of the requirement for a new college assistance program, even as we strengthen the benefits for those whose sense of duty has already led them to serve in our military.
We must remember, though, that true patriotism cannot be forced or legislated with a mere set of government programs. Instead, it must reside in the hearts of our people, and cultivated in the heart of our culture, and nurtured in the hearts of our children.
As we begin our fourth century as a nation, it is easy to take the extraordinary nature of America for granted. But it is our responsibility as Americans and as parents to instill that history in our children, both at home and at school. The loss of quality civic education from so many of our classrooms has left too many young Americans without the most basic knowledge of who our forefathers are, or what they did, or the significance of the founding documents that bear their names. Too many children are ignorant of the sheer effort, the risks and sacrifices made by previous generations, to ensure that this country survived war and depression; through the great struggles for civil, and social, and worker’s rights.
It is up to us, then, to teach them. It is up to us to teach them that even though we have faced great challenges and made our share of mistakes, we have always been able to come together and make this nation stronger, and more prosperous, and more united, and more just. It is up to us to teach them that America has been a force for good in the world, and that other nations and other people have looked to us as the last, best hope of Earth. It is up to us to teach them that it is good to give back to one’s community; that it is honorable to serve in the military; that it is vital to participate in our democracy and make our voices heard.
And it is up to us to teach our children a lesson that those of us in politics too often forget: that patriotism involves not only defending this country against external threat, but also working constantly to make America a better place for future generations.
When we pile up mountains of debt for the next generation to absorb, or put off changes to our energy policies, knowing full well the potential consequences of inaction, we are placing our short-term interests ahead of the nation’s long-term well-being. When we fail to educate effectively millions of our children so that they might compete in a global economy, or we fail to invest in the basic scientific research that has driven innovation in this country, we risk leaving behind an America that has fallen in the ranks of the world. Just as patriotism involves each of us making a commitment to this nation that extends beyond our own immediate self-interest, so must that commitment extends beyond our own time here on earth.
Our greatest leaders have always understood this. They’ve defined patriotism with an eye toward posterity. George Washington is rightly revered for his leadership of the Continental Army, but one of his greatest acts of patriotism was his insistence on stepping down after two terms, thereby setting a pattern for those that would follow, reminding future presidents that this is a government of and by and for the people.
Abraham Lincoln did not simply win a war or hold the Union together. In his unwillingness to demonize those against whom he fought; in his refusal to succumb to either the hatred or self-righteousness that war can unleash; in his ultimate insistence that in the aftermath of war the nation would no longer remain half slave and half free; and his trust in the better angels of our nature – he displayed the wisdom and courage that sets a standard for patriotism.
And it was the most famous son of Independence, Harry S Truman, who sat in the White House during his final days in office and said in his Farewell Address: “When Franklin Roosevelt died, I felt there must be a million men better qualified than I, to take up the Presidential task…But through all of it, through all the years I have worked here in this room, I have been well aware than I did not really work alone – that you were working with me. No President could ever hope to lead our country, or to sustain the burdens of this office, save the people helped with their support.”
In the end, it may be this quality that best describes patriotism in my mind – not just a love of America in the abstract, but a very particular love for, and faith in, the American people. That is why our heart swells with pride at the sight of our flag; why we shed a tear as the lonely notes of Taps sound. For we know that the greatness of this country – its victories in war, its enormous wealth, its scientific and cultural achievements – all result from the energy and imagination of the American people; their toil, drive, struggle, restlessness, humor and quiet heroism.
That is the liberty we defend – the liberty of each of us to pursue our own dreams. That is the equality we seek – not an equality of results, but the chance of every single one of us to make it if we try. That is the community we strive to build – one in which we trust in this sometimes messy democracy of ours, one in which we continue to insist that there is nothing we cannot do when we put our mind to it, one in which we see ourselves as part of a larger story, our own fates wrapped up in the fates of those who share allegiance to America’s happy and singular creed.
Thank you, God Bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.

From The Sunday Times
June 29, 2008
Confident Obama maps out his landslide
Andrew Sullivan
Is Barack Obama getting cocky – or just ambitious? In the latest attempt at an anti-Obama message that might stick, the arch Republican strategist Karl Rove wrote last week: “Many candidates have measured the Oval Office drapes prematurely. But Barack Obama is the first to redesign the presidential seal before the election . . . Such arrogance – even self-centredness – has featured often in the Obama campaign.”
Arrogance – or the kind of realigning ambition Rove once admired in the young George W Bush? On the negative side, the Obama campaign has been increasingly remote from the press and it did indeed recently unveil a cringe-inducing version of the presidential seal for a campaign speech.
Obama, moreover, damaged his saintly image by renouncing public campaign financing – which no general election candidate has done since the 1970s – because he is (foolishly?) confident he can raise more money from his own base of supporters. However, his fundraising has dropped somewhat in the postClinton lull. And disappointment on the civil liberties left – after Obama backed a compromise bill for phone-tapping – has sapped enthusiasm in the liberal base.
The ambition is real, though. Obama’s campaign last week revealed a battle plan for contesting 14 states that George Bush won in 2004. Yes, 14. Previous Democratic strategists have focused on one or two – such as Ohio – to tip the race. That was John Kerry’s gamble, and part of the cautious, defensive crouch that Democrats have been used to since Ronald Reagan. Not this time. Obama has sig-nalled that he wants to run hard in conservative New Hampshire, and Bush-won Iowa, New Mexico and Nevada. Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin are next on the list. The Obama-ites are even hoping to pick up one electoral vote in Nebraska.
Ambitiously they also intend to assign 15 paid professionals to organise up to 10,000 volunteers in Texas – yes, Texas – for the general election.
“Texas is a great example where we might not be able to win the state, but we want to pay a lot of attention to it,” Obama strategist Steve Hildebrand told Politico.com last week. Congress, it turns out, is key to Obama’s expansive hopes. If he can help Democrats win races for the House and Senate, even if he does not win the state himself, he can be assured of a big congressional majority that would allow him, if elected, to become the transfor-mational president he wants to be.
A “new president alone isn’t enough”, Obama e-mailed to the Democrats’ Senate reelection committee last week. “I’ve served long enough in the US Senate to know that Washing-ton must change, and I also know that big changes don’t happen without big Senate majorities – and right now, Democrats occupy only 49 seats . . . This November, we have a chance to create a Democratic Senate majority like we haven’t seen in decades – but it won’t happen on its own.”
Some of this is what the pros know as a “head-fake”: forcing John McCain to spend money and resources in states he would like to take for granted but will now have to win the hard way. Perhaps the two most surprising ones are Georgia – where a heavy black turnout and a conservative split between McCain and Georgia Libertarian party candidate Bob Barr could make it much closer than it has been in years – and Alaska, where independent voters are leaning towards Obama. Colorado, Virginia and North Carolina are also close for similar reasons.
“We’re going in to win [these states],” Hildebrand insisted. And this may not be a total delusion. Two polls have just put Obama a hefty 15 points ahead of McCain (although Gallup shows a resiliently close contest). Plus a raft of new polls in key swing states show big Obama gains in recent weeks. In Minnesota his lead is now an impressive 17 points; in Wisconsin 13 points; in Michigan six points; and in Colorado five.
Moreover, Obama’s safe states appear much safer at this point in the election cycle than McCain’s – and if you factor in recent trends, all of which show steady movement towards Obama, you begin to hit landslide potential. One very reputable polling analyst, Nate Silver of the polling blog FiveThirtyEight, is now inferring a potential Obama win, on current trending data, of 358 electoral college votes to McCain’s 180. That’s a huge win.
Several big demographic factors help to explain this. One is the growing divide among evangelicals between younger, more liberal types and the traditional fire-and-brimstone set. Obama is the first Democrat since 1996 to be more comfortable talking about faith in public than the Republican – and that’s appealing to younger evangelicals who are disenchanted with too much proximity to the Republicans. And the growing Latino vote – which might be critical in the Mountain West – has moved behind Obama in unexpectedly strong fashion. Obama is winning Hispanics by a ratio of more than two to one. Not many expected that a few weeks ago.
Then there’s the self-reinforcing nature of the Obama phenomenon. If he can maintain the enthusiasm of his core support among blacks and the young it could snowball. One analysis shows that just a 10% increase in black or youth turnout, compared with 2004, could put Ohio, Florida, Colorado and Nevada easily within reach.
Currently Obama is ahead in Pennsylvania and Ohio, the two states that the Clintons insisted he could never win. To make matters worse for McCain, only 34% of Republicans have a “very favourable” view of him, compared with 56% of Democrats for Obama. That enthusiasm gap could prove critical in November.
It’s worth noting that no Democrat has shown this big a lead over his Republican rival in most polls in June since Michael Dukakis. At this point in 2004 Kerry was beating Bush by six, not 15, and Gore was even with Bush in 2000. The dose of cold water is of course the memory of Dukakis, who was beating the first George Bush by 18 points at this stage in 1988, but lost badly in the autumn.
However, Dukakis was up against an incumbent vice-president effectively running for Reagan’s third term. Obama is up against a Republican brand that is toxic and an incumbent president who has a 23% approval rating. Add the flattening economy to the mix and you can see why Obama is thinking big.
Maybe it is hubris. One of Obama’s weak spots is his considerable self-regard. A little too much confidence on his part also plays to McCain’s natural strength: as a scrappy, underappreciated, authentic underdog.
But the underdog may need a little more bite than McCain currently has. Sometimes candidates are cocky for a reason. And behind Obama’s cockiness is a steely ambition that has already upended the formidable Clintons. I wouldn’t bet against him.

Martian soil appears able to support life
By Jill Serjeant
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - "Flabbergasted" NASA scientists said on Thursday that Martian soil appeared to contain the requirements to support life, although more work would be needed to prove it.
Scientists working on the Phoenix Mars Lander mission, which has already found ice on the planet, said preliminary analysis by the lander's instruments on a sample of soil scooped up by the spacecraft's robotic arm had shown it to be much more alkaline than expected.
"We basically have found what appears to be the requirements, the nutrients, to support life whether past present or future," Sam Kounaves, the lead investigator for the wet chemistry laboratory on Phoenix, told journalists.
"It is the type of soil you would probably have in your back yard, you know, alkaline. You might be able to grow asparagus in it really well. ... It is very exciting for us."
The 1 cubic meter (35 cubic feet) of soil was taken from about 1 inch below the surface of Mars and had a pH, or alkaline, level of 8 or 9. "We were all flabbergasted at the data we got back," Kounaves said.
Pressed on whether there was still any doubt that life existed on Mars in some form, Kounaves said the results were "very preliminary" and more analysis was needed.
But he added: "There is nothing about the soil that would preclude life. In fact, it seems very friendly ... there is nothing about it that is toxic."
The $420 million Phoenix lander touched down in the north pole region of Mars on May 25 after a 10-month journey from Earth. It is the latest NASA bid to determine whether water -- a crucial ingredient for life -- ever flowed on the planet and whether life, even in the form of mere microbes, exists or ever existed there.
Scientists said last week they had definitive proof that ice was on the planet after eight dice-sized chunks were seen melting away in a series of photographs.
Analysis in the past 24 hours of soil placed in the spacecraft's wet chemistry laboratory showed it to be less acidic than many scientists expected. It also contained traces of magnesium, sodium, potassium and other elements, they said.
When told the pH levels, one colleague "jumped up and down as if he had the winning lottery ticket," mission soil analysis specialist Michael Hecht told a telephone news conference.
"It is a huge step forward," Hecht said, adding the "wet chemistry" technique, which involves mixing Martian soil with water brought from Earth, was aimed at discovering what native Martian microbes might be able to live, survive and grow in the soil.
The mission scientists said levels of salt were reasonable and the calcium levels appeared to be low but they warned that the composition of the soil could change at deeper levels below the surface.
They also would not be drawn on what form of life the Martian soil might have supported.
(Editing by Peter Cooney)
© Thomson Reuters 2008. All rights reserved.

David Hochman (Huffington Post)
What George Carlin Told Me About the Afterlife and What He'd Like on His Tombstone
Somewhere in heaven, George Carlin is probably watching Lou Dobbs right about now. At the end of the Playboy Interview I did with him a few years ago, he was full of thoughts about the meaning of life, his legacy and what was next -- if anything -- after this life was done, and that's when he started musing about cable news.
Carlin was a big thinker. While conducting the interview, I spent three days with him in Las Vegas, a city he loved and hated and where he was still doing stand-up a week before his death yesterday at age 71. At each session, some of which lasted five hours, Carlin held forth on every imaginable topic -- from the color of farts to the solutions to global warming (unrelated topics, incidentally). His mind was so expansive, he kept stacks of Post-it notes around his Vegas condo so he could write down random musings that might find their way into a routine or book or letter to his daughter. Then he would record those thoughts onto various iPods and later transfer the files to his computer. Even as he approached 70, his mind was so loaded with data it needed its own zip drive.
Although he was one of the most successful comedians of his generation and a bestselling author, Carlin didn't have an easy life. He struggled for years with drugs and then heart problems and his fortunes came and went. At one point he owed four million in back taxes. Another time, on a trip to Hawaii, his daughter, Brenda, then 11, made him sign a contract so he wouldn't snort cocaine for the rest of the vacation. But by the end, Carlin had found something that looked like peace -- sobriety, financial stability and love with Sally Wade, a woman he called "the sweetheart of my life." Even growing old was interesting for him. It gave him more material.
"The older you are, the more noises you make," he told me. "Standing up, sitting down, it's like you need a fuckin' lubricant. I agree with Bette Davis who said, "Getting old is not for sissies." But it's just aging, so I say, fuck it. There were handicaps to being 10, there were handicaps to being 40, but the richness of memory, the richness of acquired and accumulated experience and wisdom, I won't trade that. At 67, I'm every age I ever was. I always think of that. I'm not just 67. I'm also 55 and 21 and three. Oh, especially three."
At the end of days of interviews, I asked Carlin what he imagined heaven would look like, and he gave an answer that was appropriate considering his TV had been turned on the entire weekend to Headline News. To the end, Carlin loved being in touch with the big world around him.
"The best afterlife for me would be to be able to sit comfortably and watch the world on a kind of heavenly CNN," he said. "To be able to have my remote and say, 'Okay, there's an uprising in Spain. Let's watch that. Or to watch China finally take over the fucking world. Because there's a billion of those motherfuckers and they're going to eat our lunch. I would love to get the thousand-year view on the decline of the European birthrate or the "Muslimization" of Europe that's talking place; the explosion of Latin American culture in the western part of the United States.' Just sit back and watch. India and Pakistan, both, have nuclear weapons and they fuckin' hate each other. I'm telling you, somebody is going to fuck somebody's sister and an atom bomb is going to fly. And I say fine. You know? I just like the show. This world is a big theater in the round, as far as I'm concerned, and I'd just love watching it spin itself into oblivion. Tune in and watch the human adventure. It's a cursed, doomed species but it's just interesting as hell. That's what I want heaven to be. And if it's not like that, then fuck it. I'll just kill myself."
Since we were on the subject, I thought I'd ask what he'd like his tombstone to say. Carlin didn't miss a beat.
"I'm thinking something along the lines of, "Jeez, he was just here a minute ago."

From The Sunday Times
June 22, 2008
The more John McCain is right on Iraq, the more he loses
Andrew Sullivan
Mesopotamia has proved treacherous for many western politicians, but few have as much right to be frustrated as John McCain. McCain has supported ousting Saddam Hussein since the first Gulf war; he strongly supported the 2003 Iraq war and lent important weight in the Senate to the plans of the man who defeated him in the 2000 primaries, George W Bush.
McCain supported Bush’s war despite bitterness at the gutter tactics that Bush had used against him in the Republican primaries and long-standing friction with the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and despite having little say over how the war was conducted.
McCain learnt his lesson soon enough, as many of us did. When Rumsfeld’s lack of planning and insouciance towards order in occupied Iraq emerged in the autumn of 2003, McCain was both furious at the incompetence and mortified by the fact that he knew, as a good Republican, he’d nonetheless have to back Bush unreservedly in the 2004 election. Even when Bush slimed the Democrat candidate John Kerry, McCain’s Vietnam war buddy, McCain grinned and bore it. The photo of the old warhorse thrusting his craggy face into Bush’s bosom in the 2004 campaign will haunt him – and the rest of us – for a good while yet.
Then there was the torture issue. The revelations of prisoner abuse at Guantanamo, Bagram, Camp Cropper, Abu Ghraib and the secret CIA sites in eastern Europe shook McCain to his core. He’d been tortured for five years by the Vietnamese four decades ago. One of the things that enabled him to survive the Hanoi Hilton was the knowledge that America, the country he had fought for and loved, would never do the same to any prisoners in its own custody. And yet President Bush – the man he championed – authorised some of the very stress positions against terror suspects that to this day prevent McCain from being able to lift his arms much above his shoulders.
By 2006 McCain was ready to break completely with the Bush administration, but in keeping with his character, he could not countenance withdrawal from the battlefield. He’s an instinctual military man, a person utterly opposed to anything that could even look like American retreat, and haunted by the Vietnam experience, which he saw as a political failure, not a military one.
And unlike Rumsfeld, and other light-footprint hawks, McCain had no qualms about flooding a foreign country with as many American troops as would be required to restore order. When General David Petraeus emerged with “the surge”, a counter-insurgency plan that promised some kind of reversal of Rumsfeldism, McCain leapt at it. It’s fair to say that no American politician pioneered the surge as passionately or as presciently as McCain. Many of us felt it was too late – and that Petraeus still didn’t have sufficient troops to pull it off. McCain demurred.
And McCain was right. And lucky. I know very few experts who predicted that violence would ebb in Iraq as swiftly as it has – and some of it (such as the Sunni switch against Al-Qaeda and the Sadr militia’s quiescence) coincided with the increase in US troops, rather than being created by it.
Nonetheless, it’s unarguable that the prospects for a noncatastrophe in Iraq have vastly improved over the past 12 months. The Maliki government’s unexpected success in using the Iraqi army to suppress Sadrite militias in Basra and Sadr City has both given new life to the Baghdad government and encouraged some Sunnis to rejoin it. Then there’s oil. As the price has skyrocketed, Baghdad has just announced a no-bid contract with several leading western oil companies for development. The money should be rolling in soon enough.
So McCain is basking in success, right? Vindicated by events, he can present himself as the man who rescued the Iraq occupation and is best positioned to take it forward. Easy as pie, no? Alas for McCain, not at all.
The overwhelming response among Americans to good news from Iraq is a simple question: can we come home now? With a hefty majority still believing the war was a mistake in the first place, the “success” of the surge is less a vindication of the entire enterprise than an opportunity to get the hell out with less blowback than previously feared. Moreover, the less chaotic the situation in Iraq, the easier it is for the Democrats to persuade Americans that the relatively inexperienced Barack Obama is not that big a risk as commander-in-chief.
Withdrawal the right way, moreover, plays to Obama’s strengths, not McCain’s. McCain is a superb fighter and underdog, a man who likes his conflicts clear and his wars epic. He takes strong moral stands and sticks with them. But what is now required is a deft and subtle assessment of future military needs, a hefty dose of canny diplomacy with Iran and Syria and an ability to retain the trust of Americans that an exit is both feasible and imminent. On all these, Obama is obviously a more pragmatic choice.
You can see this in McCain’s biggest gaffe of the primary campaign. He was asked how long American troops would be in Iraq. He said he didn’t care if it were a hundred years or even a thousand years. He meant in a noncombat role, not in active warfare, but his answer revealed a core assumption: that the US will have permanent military bases in Iraq for the indefinite future, and that this is the equivalent of the long-term presence in Germany and South Korea. A pliant Arab state, fortified with US bases for the next century, and a staging post to contain Iran: these are McCain’s obvious best-case scenarios. And as the Bush administration’s plans for up to 60 permanent bases in Iraq are rejected by many Iraqi politicians, McCain’s stance begins, once again, to morph into Bush’s.
For most Americans, this is not a good thing. They have no desire to keep young Americans policing the Sunni-Shi’ite fault line halfway across the globe indefinitely; most want the massive resources now being drained by Iraq to be directed homeward. And there’s enough distrust of politicians who backed this war in the first place to be suspicious of anyone who did so and who is still eager to keep troops there indefinitely.
It’s hard to see how McCain escapes this trap. If Iraq gets worse, the domestic desire to leave will grow. If Iraq improves, the domestic desire to leave will grow. Either way, McCain’s posture – stay in until the job is done and preferably, in smaller numbers, for ever – is too close to Bush’s to avoid electoral danger. It is a cruel paradox: the more he is proved right about the immediate past, the less he seems suited to run the immediate future.
McCain’s time was eight years ago – and who knows how the world would now look if he had defeated Bush. Maybe an unforeseen crisis – perhaps with Iran – will change the terrain sufficiently for this underdog to come back one more time. But the odds are against him. And in so many ways, it isn’t his fault.

This is important, history in the making!
Spielberg, Ambani May Form Movie Venture,

From WSJ
By Subramaniam Sharma and Joseph Galante
June 18 (Bloomberg) -- Steven Spielberg and Indian billionaire Anil Ambani are close to forming a venture that may help the movie director's DreamWorks SKG team exit from Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group will invest as much as $600 million in the studio, the Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter. The venture may borrow another $500 million to finance about six films a year, the Journal said. Reliance and Viacom declined to comment on the report, and spokesmen at DreamWorks weren't available.
Spielberg and DreamWorks co-founders David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg sold the studio to Paramount in 2006 and have since produced ``Transformers'' and the latest ``Indiana Jones'' movie. They have rights to retain the DreamWorks name. In February, Viacom Chief Executive Officer Philippe Dauman said the studio is willing to negotiate a new agreement when Spielberg's contract expires at the end of this year.
``Spielberg leaving might not immediately get recognized on the bottom line, but it certainly would be a squandered asset that could result in less profit over the long term,'' said Fred Moran, an analyst at Stanford Financial Group in Boca Raton, Florida. He recommends Viacom shares and doesn't own them.
Class B shares of New York-based Viacom fell 43 cents, or 1.3 percent, to $32.42 at 11:10 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. Before today, the stock had dropped 25 percent this year.
Film Expansion
Anil Ambani, 49, ranked by Forbes as the world's sixth- richest man, has built his entertainment business through acquisitions, partnerships and setting up radio stations after parting with his elder brother Mukesh Ambani in 2006.
Reliance, based in Mumbai, purchased Adlabs Films Ltd., a producer and distributor of Hindi-language Bollywood movies, in June 2005. The group also operates 41 radio stations across India, according to the company's Web site. It operates Internet Web sites, social-networking and game Web sites and an online movie rental business.
Reliance Big Entertainment announced at the Cannes Film Festival last month that it would consider financing films for eight Hollywood-based production companies promoted by actors and directors, including George Clooney, Nicolas Cage, Tom Hanks, Brad Pitt, Chris Columbus, Jim Carrey and Jay Roach.
Movie Company
``We see Reliance Big Entertainment as a global entertainment company, and Hollywood certainly presents a bigger and wider basket of opportunities,'' President Rajesh Sawhney said today in an e-mailed statement. He declined to comment on whether the company is in talks with Spielberg.
The development deals are part of Reliance Entertainment's strategy to build an integrated movie company that includes production, distribution and exhibition, the company said in a news release on May 18. The deal also secures Indian rights for resulting movies which Reliance co-finances, it said.
Reliance also expects to attract Hollywood productions to India where it owns physical studios and other facilities, the company had said.
Anil Ambani also operates India's second-biggest wireless company Reliance Communications Ltd., the nation's third-biggest utility by market value, Reliance Infrastructure Ltd., and financial-services provider Reliance Capital Ltd.
Voice and e-mailed messages left by Bloomberg News for DreamWorks spokesmen Chip Sullivan and Marvin Levy weren't immediately returned.
Viacom spokeswoman Kelly McAndrew referred questions to Paramount spokeswoman Patti Rockenwagner, who declined to comment when contacted by Bloomberg News.
Geffen and Spielberg are negotiating to move to NBC Universal, General Electric Co.'s media unit, the New York Times reported last November, citing people close to the talks.
NBC CEO Jeffrey Zucker said in December his company would be interested in DreamWorks if the studio became available.

Tim Russert, ‘Meet the Press’ Host, Is Dead at 58
By JACQUES STEINBERG
Tim Russert, a fixture in American homes on Sunday mornings and election nights since becoming moderator of “Meet the Press” nearly 17 years ago, died Friday after collapsing at the Washington bureau of NBC News. He was 58 and lived in Northwest Washington.
His death was announced by Tom Brokaw, former anchor of “NBC Nightly News,” who broke into the network’s programming just after 3:30 p.m.
An NBC spokeswoman, Allison Gollust, said in an e-mail message Friday night that Mr. Russert had died of a “sudden heart attack.” His internist, Dr. Michael A. Newman, said on MSNBC that an autopsy had found that Mr. Russert had an enlarged heart and significant coronary artery disease.
When stricken, Mr. Russert had been recording voice-overs for this Sunday’s program. Mr. Russert, who was also the Washington bureau chief and a senior vice president of NBC News, had returned in the last couple of days from a trip to Italy to celebrate the recent graduation of his son, Luke, from Boston College.
With his plain-spoken explanations and hard-hitting questions, Mr. Russert played an increasingly outsize role in the news media’s coverage of politics. The elegantly simple white memo board he used on election night in 2000 to explain the deadlock in the race between George W. Bush and Al Gore — “Florida, Florida, Florida,” he had scribbled, in red marker — became an enduring image in the history of American television coverage of the road to the White House.
More recently, he drew criticism for his sharp — some said disproportionately sharp — questioning of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in her pursuit of the Democratic presidential nomination, most notably in a debate between her and Senator Barack Obama in Cleveland in February. But he asked tough questions of Senator Obama, too, as well as any number of Republicans.
But he leavened his prosecutorial style with an exuberance for politics — and politicians, on both sides of the aisle. And the easy way he spoke on camera belied his fierce preparation, often to the detriment of his social life. He rarely ventured out on Saturday nights.
“He really was the best political journalist in America, not just the best television journalist in America,” said Al Hunt, the Washington executive editor of Bloomberg News and former Washington bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Russert’s political analysis was born of experience: he worked as a counselor to Gov. Mario M. Cuomo of New York in 1983-84 and for five years before that was special counsel to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York. He had been chosen to run Mr. Moynihan’s New York City office before he turned 30.
“He absolutely set the standard for moving from politics to journalism,” said Mr. Hunt, a close friend who first met Mr. Russert in his days working for Mr. Moynihan. “He proved it could be done. He proved it could be done with extraordinary skill and integrity.”
Or, as Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Robert F. Kennedy, told NBC on Friday: "He had done his homework, so we didn’t have to do ours. We longed to hear what his take on world events was."
“Meet the Press,” the top-rated public affairs program on television, is viewed by nearly four million people each Sunday, according to Nielsen Media Research. As word of Mr. Russert’s death spread across BlackBerry and computer screens, tributes poured into NBC from the highest elected officials and competitors on other networks. Dozens of loyal viewers also posted tributes on media Web sites.
Mr. Brokaw is to host a special edition of “Meet the Press” on Sunday, which will pay tribute to Mr. Russert’s life and career. With Mr. Russert’s unexpected passing, NBC will soon be forced to confront a question with no immediately easy answer: how to replace its lead political analyst with the presidential election less than five months away.
In a statement, President Bush described Mr. Russert as “an institution in both news and politics for more than two decades.”
“He was always well-informed and thorough in his interviews,” Mr. Bush said. “And he was as gregarious off the set as he was prepared on it.”
Former President Bill Clinton and Senator Clinton issued a statement saying: “Tim had a love of public service and a dedication to journalism that rightfully earned him the respect and admiration of not only his colleagues but also those of us who had the privilege to go toe to toe with him.”
With his bulky frame, thick face and devilishly arched eyebrows, Timothy John Russert Jr. was an unlikely television star. And it was not just that he was the son of a onetime garbage collector in his native Buffalo, or a graduate, with honors, of the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. When he joined NBC in 1984, it was as an executive working on special news projects. Among his earliest “gets”: arranging an appearance a year later by Pope John Paul II on the “Today” program, broadcasting from Rome.
Behind the scenes and off camera, Mr. Russert’s colleagues at NBC News soon learned that he had a gift for making the most complex political machinations understanding and compelling.
“He had a better political insight than anyone else in the room, period,” said Jeff Zucker, the chief executive of NBC Universal, who was then an up-and-coming producer.
As Mr. Zucker told it Friday, Michael Gartner, then president of NBC News, went to Mr. Russert at some point in the late 1980s to ask him to be the Washington bureau chief.
“Michael came back from the meeting,” Mr. Zucker said, “and said he had also decided to name him the new moderator of ‘Meet the Press.’ ”
“This was a guy who had no on-camera experience,” Mr. Zucker said. “Forget that he had never hosted a program. He had never appeared on television.”
He made his debut as moderator in December 1991. Eight years later, Bill Carter wrote in The New York Times that Mr. Russert had reinvented “Meet the Press,” which first appeared on television in 1948, “changing it from a sleepy encounter between reporters and Washington newsmakers into an issue-dense program, with Mr. Russert taking on the week’s newsmaker.”
Among those who submitted to Mr. Russert’s prosecutorial questions (which he often set up with evidence, often from the subject’s own mouth, cued on videotape) were Bill Clinton and Al Gore, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, John Kerry and John McCain.
During the perjury trial of I. Lewis Libby Jr., Mr. Cheney’s former chief of staff, Mr. Russert was put in the unfamiliar position of answering questions himself, from the witness stand. Mr. Libby had said that he first learned of the identity of a C.I.A. operative, Valerie Wilson, from Mr. Russert in a July 2003 conversation. Mr. Russert denied the claim, and prosecutors have asserted that Mr. Libby concocted that account to avoid acknowledging that he had learned about her from fellow officials.
Those reporters who covered the television beat saw many sides of Mr. Russert, whether it was in a direct phone call or voice mail message sternly questioning the accuracy of a particular reference to him, or the way he would seem to melt when being asked about one of his heroes, Bruce Springsteen, who was known to receive Mr. Russert backstage at his concerts.
Off camera and away from the office, Mr. Russert was a gregarious man with a rolling laugh and a roster of friends who were in his life for decades. Those who were in the presence of him and his son were long struck by the closeness of the relationship. Mr. Russert was known to steal away from the NBC Washington bureau during the day to greet his son upon his return from school, or to surprise him while he was caddying at a golf course in Nantucket, Mass., where the family had a home.
Four years ago, when the younger Mr. Russert was preparing to depart Washington for Boston College, several friends wondered aloud to the father how he would survive being so far away from his son.
In addition to his son, Mr. Russert is survived by his wife, Maureen Orth, a writer for Vanity Fair magazine; his father, Tim Russert and three sisters. The elder Mr. Russert is the subject of the son’s best-selling book, “Big Russ & Me.”
Mr. Hunt, of Bloomberg News, said that in one of the last of their nearly weekly conversations, early this month, he and Mr. Russert were relishing the opportunity to cover this year’s presidential campaign. As his old friend recalled through tears Friday, Mr. Russert marveled, “Can you believe we get paid for this year?”
Katharine Q. Seelye contributed reporting.

fighting words (Slate)
The Lion Who Didn't Roar
Why hasn't Nelson Mandela spoken out against Robert Mugabe?By Christopher HitchensPosted Monday, June 9, 2008, at 12:27 PM ET
The scale of state-sponsored crime and terror in Zimbabwe has now escalated to the point where we are compelled to watch not just the systematic demolition of democracy and human rights in that country but something not very far removed from slow-motion mass murder a la Burma. The order from the Mugabe regime that closes down all international aid groups and humanitarian nongovernmental organizations is significant in two ways. It expresses the ambition for total control by the state, and it represents a direct threat—"vote for us or starve"—to the already desperate civilian population. The organization CARE, for example, which reaches half a million impoverished Zimbabweans, has been ordered to suspend operations. And here's a little paragraph, almost buried in a larger report of more comprehensive atrocities but somehow speaking volumes:
The United Nations Children's Fund said Monday that 10,000 children had been displaced by the violence, scores had been beaten and some schools had been taken over by pro-government forces and turned into centers of torture.
While this politicization of the food situation in "his" country was being completed, President Robert Mugabe benefited from two things: the indulgence of the government of South Africa and the lenience of the authorities in Rome, who allowed him to attend a U.N. conference on the world food crisis—of all things—despite a five-year-old ban on his travel to any member of the European Union. This, in turn, seems to me to implicate two of the supposed sources of moral authority on the planet: Nelson Mandela and the Vatican.
By his silence about what is happening in Zimbabwe, Mandela is making himself complicit in the pillage and murder of an entire nation, as well as the strangulation of an important African democracy. I recently had the chance to speak to George Bizos, the heroic South African attorney who was Mandela's lawyer in the bad old days and who more recently has also represented Morgan Tsvangirai, the much-persecuted leader of the Zimbabwean opposition. Why, I asked him, was his old comrade apparently toeing the scandalous line taken by President Thabo Mbeki and the African National Congress? Bizos gave me one answer that made me wince—that Mandela is now a very old man—and another that made me wince again: that his doctors have advised him to avoid anything stressful. One has a bit more respect for the old lion than to imagine that he doesn't know what's happening in next-door Zimbabwe or to believe that he doesn't understand what a huge difference the smallest word from him would make. It will be something of a tragedy if he ends his career on a note of such squalid compromise.
As for the revolting spectacle of Mugabe flying in to a Food and Agricultural Organization conference in Rome last week, there were quibbling FAO officials who claimed that the ban on his travel to the European Union did not cover meeting places of U.N. organizations. This would not cover the luxury hotel on the Via Veneto where Mugabe and his wife stayed. And it seems he bears a charmed life in Rome. He was there only recently as a guest at the funeral of Pope John Paul II and was able to claim that he was on Vatican soil rather than Italian territory. Which in turn raises an interesting question: What is it going to take before the Roman Catholic Church has anything to say about the conduct of this member of its flock? Mugabe has been a devout Catholic ever since his days in a mission school in what was then colonial Rhodesia, and one is forced to wonder what he tells his priest when he is asked if he has anything he'd like to confess.
By way of contrast, look what happened to Archbishop Pius Ncube of Bulawayo. This Catholic churchman in Zimbabwe's second city was a pillar of opposition to the regime and a great defender of its numberless victims. After a long campaign of defiance, and after surviving many threats to his life, the archbishop was caught on video last year having some fairly vigorous sex with a woman not his wife. Indeed, she was someone else's wife, which made it adultery as well as fornication. You might think the church would have been glad of a bit of heterosexual transgression for a change, but a dim view was taken of the whole thing, in spite of the fact that it bore all the marks of a setup and was immediately given wide publicity by the police agencies of the Mugabe state. Ncube is no longer the Roman Catholic archbishop of Bulawayo.
Very well, I do understand that he broke his vows and that the rules are the rules. But he didn't starve or torture any children, he didn't send death squads to silence his critics, he didn't force millions of his fellow countrymen into penury and/or exile, and he didn't openly try to steal an election. Mugabe has done and is doing all these things, and I haven't heard a squeak from the papacy. A man of his age is perhaps unlikely to be caught using a condom, but one still has to hope that Mugabe will be found red-handed in this way because it seems that nothing less is going to bring the condemnation of the church down upon his sinful head.
It is the silence of Mandela, much more than anything else, that bruises the soul. It appears to make a mockery of all the brave talk about international standards for human rights, about the need for internationalist solidarity and the brotherhood of man, and all that. There is perhaps only one person in the world who symbolizes that spirit, and he has chosen to betray it. Or is it possible, before the grisly travesty of the runoff of June 27, that the old lion will summon one last powerful growl?Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair.
Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

The Future has begun.
The United States took a proud step forward today. We overcame rustic culture, embraced international norms and have become the leader of nations, culture, and the promise of humanities future. We have begun the hard task of passing the torch of leadership to a new and exciting generation!
The brilliance of America shines so fully so completely it staggers the imagination and exhilarates the mind. We have every reason to believe in ourselves and to celebrate our success. We are every bit of what we claim and even our most committed critics must in some fashion acknowledge the truth or be dismissed as fools.
It is our destiny that the United States will take humanity to the stars and will establish a fabulous empire not of conquest but of commercial enterprise. Our devotion to genuine justice and absolute integrity of personal worth will define us to the Galaxy.

The United States marches forward in a purposeful and intelligent way. The American dream is proof positive of human beings capacity to create and sustain civilization that promotes individual accomplishment and community tradition across generations by embracing private talent and encouraging public service. There are no aristocrats autocrats nor plutocrats or elites in America. It is here that every person has a credible opportunity and every mind is given a true chance at illumination and positive construction. No personal success will ever be limited by envy or humiliated by political or religious or social torment; every American has access to unlimited possibilities. In America opportunity is not a ruse but a fact and success is not a sham, but genuine and has the full authority of the state as it’s protector and ally. No one, no faction, no ideology, no theology and no politick can defeat Americas fundamental belief in the value of every person.

Barack Obama’s securing the Democratic nomination is a true moment of history and a step forward for all of us. We should be proud and we should be encouraged.

We witness here the promise fulfilled that every person can if they choose, to rise up and seize the day and define tomorrow. Obama stands at the ramparts of history; his intelligence is his shield and his gentleness is his sword and his decency is his creed. The world calls his name.

We are the ones we have waited for!

After a dark season; a time of terrible distress and national alarm, we now turn away from despair and walk confidently into the light of the future, unbounded by fear or remorse, but inspired by that which is good, that which is just, and that which we value most; a nation united in common cause to defeat extremism, irrationalism, and hysteria, not by vengeance or terror, but by responsible action and the rule of law.

Barack Obama offers us a chance to make anew the ancient American devotion to liberty justice and enlightened progress. Not just for ourselves but for humanity. Our happiness is incomplete until all the nations are free and happiness is everywhere.

We recognize that Barack Obama's success is ours and his victory is proof of our worth and his presidency will announce a new era and commence a new season of progress, and accomplishment!

Obama gives full measure to the power of democracy and the magnificence of commercial invention and social cooperation. Obama gives energy to ambition and inspires creativity because his life is the direct consequence of those things. The very breath he takes, the light in his eyes and the compassion in his heart define him and reflects onto us what we are and what we have become.

Now Barack Obamas journey to the White House begins! The future has come alive and it belongs to us.

We need not be afraid we need not hesitate we need not reconsider, we have the strength and we have the right ideas and the proper tools to get there and construct a future that will light up the galaxy for a very long time.

Yes, we can, and we will.

Comment by David A Fairbanks 6308 9PM SFCA

NY Times Editorial
Mr. Rove Talks, but Doesn’t Answer
In a recent appearance on “This Week With George Stephanopoulos,” Karl Rove was asked if he had a role in the Justice Department’s decision to prosecute Don Siegelman. The former Democratic governor of Alabama was convicted and sentenced to more than seven years, quite possibly for political reasons, and there is evidence that Mr. Rove may have been pulling the strings.
Mr. Rove, who has traded in his White House job for that of talking head, talked a lot but didn’t answer the question. He also did not directly deny being involved. The House Judiciary Committee has subpoenaed him to testify. It should do everything in its power to see that he does and that he answers all of its questions.
Mr. Siegelman — who began serving his sentence before being freed on appeal — was convicted on corruption charges that appear to be flimsy, and his supporters have long insisted that he was prosecuted for partisan reasons. Until his indictment, he was the Democrats’ best chance of taking back the Alabama governorship.
After Mr. Siegelman’s conviction, Dana Jill Simpson, a Republican lawyer, swore in an affidavit that she had heard another G.O.P. political operative, Bill Canary, boast in a phone call that his wife would “take care” of Mr. Siegelman and that Mr. Rove was involved in the planning. Mr. Canary’s wife is Leura Canary, the United States attorney for Montgomery, and her office prosecuted Mr. Siegelman.
The House Judiciary Committee has prepared a report on the Siegelman case, and several other questionable prosecutions. Ms. Simpson told the committee staff under oath that Rob Riley — the son of Alabama’s Republican governor, Bob Riley — told her that his father and Mr. Canary discussed the Siegelman case with Mr. Rove. She said the younger Mr. Riley also told her that Mr. Rove had spoken to the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section about getting Mr. Siegelman indicted.
If these charges are true, they suggest that the justice system was turned into a partisan tool, and that Mr. Siegelman’s freedom may have been taken away because of his political allegiances.
Mr. Rove has already defied a Senate subpoena on the issue of politicized prosecutions, claiming executive privilege, and he seems intent on defying the House’s subpoena. His claim of executive privilege is not only weak; it is shamefully cynical.
If he was drumming up political prosecutions in the Justice Department, and talking about it with operatives in Alabama, those conversations are not privileged. And if there is any privilege to be protected — such as a conversation with the president that did not involve illegality — he would still need to show up in Congress and plead the privilege to specific questions.
It is time for Michael Mukasey, the attorney general, to stand up for justice by enforcing Congress’s subpoenas. If he will not do that, Congress must ensure that its investigative authority is not thwarted.
Mr. Rove seems willing to talk about this case everywhere except where he is required to: in Congress, in public, under oath. The American people, and Mr. Siegelman, are counting on Congress to find out the truth.

Would the Clintons kindly leave the building
Andrew Sullivan (London Times)

So this is how the Clintons end – not with a bang but with a whimper? By this time next week Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee. Yes, I’ve thrown a little salt over my shoulder, crossed myself a few times and said 10 decades of the rosary, but the laws of mathematics have to be worth something.
There remains the unknown quantity of the Clintons’ miraculous ability to produce high drama from delegate calculus – “You can’t tell how far a frog will jump until you punch him,” Hillary Clinton mystifyingly warned last week – but the overwhelming probability is that by the end of the week she will have to decide either to fight on, pointlessly, until the Democratic convention in August or make a nice concession speech and wait a few months, if Obama loses the presidency, before saying “told you so”.
By Wednesday all the votes from the primaries in Montana, South Dakota and Puerto Rico will have been counted and many of the disputed Michigan and Florida delegates ceded to Clinton, but still she won’t have enough to win. Obama will still need the support of the super-delegates – party officials who have a vote at the convention – to make him the undisputed winner. But there are many signs that the numbers he needs will begin to declare themselves in a wave after the final primary votes come in.
We still don’t know fully how the Clintons intend to respond to this extremely inconvenient truth. So far as I can tell, very few people have yet approached Her Majesty to ask what she actually intends to do. If you want to have a good idea of how dysfunctional and Bush-like a Clinton administration would be, that’s a good place to start: a leader whose closest aides are often afraid to talk to her.
Her departure – drama-laden or not – will transform the electoral scene. American presidential elections are somewhat different from British elections because they focus on two people alone. And with Obama and John McCain it would be very hard to imagine a more arresting or fascinating contrast.
You have in one corner an iconic figure of the late 20th century: a naval man, famous prisoner of war, torture victim and youthful lothario and trouble-maker. McCain is a product of the west, Arizona and the military. And yet he is also extremely comfortable in elite circles, loves gabbing with journalists, enjoys the company of Hollywood moguls and stars and feels uncomfortable with religious fanatics.
Despised by many hardcore conservatives, he would be the oldest first-term president and closer to the Democrats than the Republicans on issues such as climate change, campaign finance and immigration. Alternately charming and volcanic, conciliatory and dogmatic, he remains an enigma as a potential president, a job that he wanted (and deserved) eight years ago.
Against him we see a walking symbol of 21st-century America. A mixed-race son of a divorced mother, reared in Indonesia and Hawaii, Obama is an American whose father was a member of the Kenyan elite and whose great-uncle liberated Buchen-wald concentration camp in 1945 as part of the US army. He is the first unashamed liberal to run for president since George McGovern, but a man whose capacity for reason and inclusion and civility has won him many conservative friends and admirers.
A bi-racial man who does not condone but will equally not disown the angrier segments of black America, Obama glides through public life like a visible incarnation of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. He is as cool as McCain is hot.
As the Clintons fade ungraciously away, the emergence of these two from the dust of an astonishingly vivid and endless primary campaign comes to me, at least, as a massive relief. These two men are easily the best each party has to offer, the two most capable of talking to the other side: serious, decent, principled figures with, of course, their fair share of political shading. And in a war against Islamist terror, which for me remains the most important issue, they offer a choice as stark as it is difficult.
The biggest worry about Obama is whether he will be too reflexively diplomatic. Does he believe that some of America’s enemies are reasonable in a good way rather than rational in a malign way? How will he respond if our enemies attack? His defenders point to his diffident but tough composure in this campaign as a sign of his steeliness. He has supported military strikes in Pakistan, they say. He was trained in urban Chicago politics, they remind. We’ll see.
A more telling question for me will be how he adjusts to new realities and possibilities in Iraq. Recent successes for the Maliki government and Iraqi army in Basra and Sadr City and the lowest level of civilian deaths in four years suggest that Iraq has altered for the better. Can Obama adjust his strategy – so we withdraw in the best way possible for our interests?
With McCain there’s a reverse worry. Has he become more neocon than Bush? In the past McCain has been known as a pragmatist and realist, able to see when American interests have to come before American rhetoric or sentiment. But in the past few years, as the Iraq debate has polarised so many, he has become shriller and more demagogic on the war in the Middle East, more prone to Bush-style declarations about good and evil than subtler assessments of how best to mix force, diplomacy and multi-lateralism to the West’s advantage.
And so one worries: has his admirable sense of the danger of our foes blinded him to ways in which a defter diplomacy and shrewder deployment of force can help to advance our inter-ests? Does he understand the need to appeal beyond Muslim leaders to Muslim populations? Is he temperamentally suited to the delicate chess game of the new global politics?
Let’s say both broad worries about both men are salient. The question then becomes: is Obama more capable of adjusting to toughness or is McCain more capable of adjusting to nuance? Neither is perfect. The job that Americans will soon face is to figure out who is more perfectable in office. My sense at this point is that Obama is more capable of strength than McCain is of subtlety. And that McCain’s domestic weakness with his own base may force him into cruder measures than are appropriate to the threat we face.
But these are, perforce, preliminary judgments. We need a longer, deeper campaign between these two to see where the contours of the next presidency will fall. And for that to happen the Clintons still have to leave the building. They have to grasp at this stage in their lives that it isn’t always, everywhere, about them.
We’re waiting. Until the last frog is punched.