A group “dedicated to ending discrimination against and harassment of military personnel affected by ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’” reports that Darren Manzella has been discharged under said policy. Decorated Army Sergeant Darren Manzella has been discharged under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law banning lesbian, gay and bisexual Americans from military service, effective June 10. [...]

Drew Carey asks, “How are we supposed to compete against something that doesn’t get paid, doesn’t get health insurance, and never goes on breaks?” No, not illegal aliens, silly. They get paid (a little) and take the occasional break. No, he’s talking about robots. Today, we don’t need human workers to book our travel, do [...]

Thinking ahead to November, I was trying to imagine how the Democrats, particularly Obama’s most ardent supporters, might react if he lost. As bad as they were at accepting Kerry’s loss, Obama’s loss would be far worse. To begin with, his supporters will try to poison the well by claiming that some sort of cheating [...]

In the comments to my latest post on domestic oil production, in which I continue my skepticism over the benefits to more domestic oil production, a number of claims were made in the comments that raised some interesting issues. So I thought it might be worthwhile if I went ahead and investigated some of these [...]

Barack Obama’s latest ad spot has him explaining that, no, really, he’s an American. And, despite what you might have heard, he likes it here. And he’s not a Muslim, either. Here’s the video: The transcript: I’m Barack Obama. America is a country of strong families and strong values. My life’s been blessed by both. [...]

Quite a few commenters are accusing John McCain of flip-flopping because he favored privatization of Social security in 2004 and now adamantly rejects the insinuation that he supports it now: This is a clumsy rhetorical game rather than a policy shift. Then and now, McCain’s position is that Social Security would remain as a government [...]

P.Z. Myers posts a video immodestly entitled “I Know More Than God” that’s been on YouTube since at least March but that I’d never seen before: Myers notes that the video puts “the actual creation story as revealed by modern physics into the same kind of portentous, simple language that even a Mesopotamian goat-herder could [...]

Hotline reports that the McCain campaign will launch this ad, titled simply “Safe,” today in “unnamed battleground states.” (Although I’m pretty sure that the states have names, since I know of no states without names.) JOHN MCCAIN: Only a fool or a fraud talks tough or romantically about war. When I was five years old, [...]

Legendary comic actor Harvey Korman has died. He was 81. Comic actor Harvey Korman has died at 81, according to the UCLA Medical Center. Korman died at the center four months after suffering complications from the rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm. “It was a miracle in itself that he survived the incident at all. [...]

Tim Lee, guesting at Megan McArdle’s place, dismisses the romanticism of such things as Howie Kurtz’ lament about the dying of the newspaper industry. The “wholesale abandonment of newspapers” is simply a reflection of the fact that the web now provides a wealth of new technologies for delivering news and information. Websites are more comprehensive, [...]

Everyone’s abuzz over Hillary Clinton saying she is staying in the race just in case Barack Obama gets assassinated. Or, something like that: “My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June [...]

Matt Yglesias and Charles Krauthammer don’t agree about much but they are in convergence over the origin of Barack Obama’s foreign policy: a gaffe at last August’s YouTube debates wherein he avowed that, if elected president, he would indeed meet, “without precondition … with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea.” In [...]

Mike Huckabee proves once again that he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer: During a speech before the National Rifle Association convention Friday afternoon in Louisville, Kentucky, former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee — who has endorsed presumptive GOP nominee John McCain — joked that an unexpected offstage noise was Democrat Barack Obama looking [...]

Barack Obama has a “bad habit” of addressing “all kinds of people” as “Sweetie” in casual conversation, although he’s trying to quit. Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama has apologized to WXYZ reporter Peggy Agar for calling her “sweetie” during a campaign stop Wednesday in Sterling Heights. Obama apologized in a voicemail he left on [...]

An amusing gaffe from Barack Obama: “Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go. Alaska and Hawaii, I was not allowed to go to even though I really wanted to visit, but my staff would not justify [...]

John McCain goes Español in his latest ad campaign. Matt Yglesias calls the ad “shrewd,” noting that Latinos tend to vote based on their interests rather than as a bloc, that McCain needs to distance himself from the “I hate immigrants” wing of the party, and that “given the tendency of small business owners everywhere [...]

Barack Obama moved to within 200 delegates of securing the Democratic presidential nomination yesterday, scoring a 56-42 blowout in North Carolina while narrowly losing, 49-51, in Indiana. Barring revelations that would make the Wright affair look insignificant in comparison, the race is all over but the shouting. Obama Wins the Night AP’s Calvin Woodward: On [...]

A flurry of new ads have come out over the last couple of days. They show stark differences in personality and position. In “Ignite,” John McCain promises to “take the best ideas from both parties to spur innovation, invest in people and create jobs.” In an ad simply called, “Pennsylvania,” Hillary Clinton continues to bang [...]

French lawmakers have passed a bill that would outlaw inciting thin behavior, thus obviating the old rule that one can’t be too rich or too thin. The French parliament’s lower house adopted a groundbreaking bill Tuesday that would make it illegal for anyone — including fashion magazines, advertisers and Web sites — to publicly incite [...]

Barack Obama’s foray into pop psychology, trying to explain why rural Pennsylvanians aren’t warming to him and are asking him to talk more about patriotism, is causing quite the stir in the blogosphere. “You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs [...]

Joe Biden is getting plaudits from the Leftosphere for asking Ryan Crocker a really dumb question in yesterday’s hearings. Here’s the video: The transcript: BIDEN: Mr. Ambassador, is Al Qaeda a greater threat to US interests in Iraq, or in the Afghan-Pakistan border region? CROCKER: Mr. Chairman, al Qaeda is a strategic threat to the [...]

The bitterness of the Democratic presidential race kicked up another notch yesterday, with the discovery that popular Air America radio host Randi Rhodes recently performed a profanity-laced standup routine in which both Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary Clinton were repeatedly referred to as “big f-ing whores” (minus the sanitization, naturally). (She also called Richard Nixon, Ronald [...]

John McCain is running a slightly altered version of Hillary Clinton’s “3 a.m.” ad, Laura Meckler reports for the WSJ. Here’s the video: Meckler says this “may be the earliest attack ad ever aired by a candidate for president who has already secured his party’s nomination and is aiming at the other party.” I don’t [...]

“Independent Democrat” Joe Lieberman says he hasn’t left the Democratic Party — they’ve left him. Speaking on ABC’s “This Week,” Lieberman, Independent of Connecticut, said it is not the same party that made him its vice presidential candidate in 2000. “It’s not the Bill Clinton-Al Gore party, which was strong internationalists, strong on defense, pro-trade, [...]

Here’s the latest John McCain ad, which has the tagline, “The American President Americans Have Been Waiting For.” Roger L. Simon, who knows a little something about film making, pronounces it “quite well done,” which acknowledging “though of course I am not the audience.” I’d agree on both counts but with a strong caveat that [...]

Kevin Drum cites several instances of John McCain acting in ways inconsistent with his maverick image and yet surviving with the image more-or-less intact, a situation he ascribes to a fawning press corps. He asks, “And what window do Democrats go to to get the same treatment the press gives McCain?” In reality, all of [...]

Steve Clemons offers an inspired solution: “I just saw No Country for Old Men. Perhaps Hillary and Obama should flip a coin?” For those who haven’t seen it, this video will provide some context:

Andrew Sullivan has declared that the “Swift-Boating” of Barack Obama has begun, noting that both Republican operatives and Clinton supporters are piling on over the Jeremiah Wright scandal. He cites a report by The Politico‘s Jonathan Martin that, “A YouTube video mash-up that attacks Barack Obama on issues relating to his patriotism that has rocketed [...]

Barack Obama gave his big race speech today. I haven’t heard it, just read the transcripts of the pre-release text and the as-delivered version. My colleague Dave Schuler observes, “I’ll wait for the overnight polls. Otherwise my remarks would just be a Rorschach test which is what the commentaries I’ve heard so far have been.” [...]

John Cole offers example of bottom-up* YouTube videos for the Clinton and Obama campaigns that have gone viral and quips, “Someone is lucky elections don’t work like American Idol.” He’s got an open thread on the subject but my initial response was, They don’t? Turns out that there are two posts in the OTB archives, [...]

The Obama campaign came up with a pretty good response to Hillary!’s 3 AM ad. But, really, just slapping “I’m Barack Obama and I approve this message” on the end of this would have been more effective: Presented with my compliments.

Susan Rice, Barack Obama’s chief foreign policy adviser, agrees her candidate isn’t ready to answer that 3 a.m. phone call — but says Hillary Clinton isn’t, either: “Clinton hasn’t had to answer the phone at three o’clock in the morning and yet she attacked Barack Obama for not being ready,’’ Ms. Rice said. “They’re both [...]

Hillary Clinton is running a new ad in Texas arguing that the world’s too safe to trust to Barack Obama. “It’s 3 a.m., and your children are safe and asleep,” the announcer says. “But there’s a phone in the White House, and it’s ringing — something’s happening in the world. Your vote will decide who [...]

Last night’s Democratic debate featured seven minutes of discussion of Louis Farrakhan’s endorsement of Barack Obama. Despite Obama forthrightly rejecting, denouncing, and otherwise disassociating himself from Farrakhan within the first paragraph of his answer, moderator Tim Russert continued to hammer him with Farrakhan quotes and then allowed Hillary Clinton a couple of minutes to bash [...]

Much has been made the last couple of days over Chris Matthews embarrassing Texas state senator Kirk Watson by asking him to name one of Barack Obama’s legislative accomplishments and then letting him hem and haw in ignorance. Watson has already issued a self-deprecating “what I wish I’d said” essay indicating that the problem is [...]

Google continues its quest to take over the world with a new program to store health records online. Google Inc. will begin storing the medical records of a few thousand people as it tests a long-awaited health service that’s likely to raise more concerns about the volume of sensitive information entrusted to the Internet search [...]

Andy Towle (shared by Chris Abraham via Google Reader) thinks Barack Obama has a Joe Biden situation: Barack Obama has been lauded over the course of this campaign for his beautiful speeches. On Saturday, in Wisconsin, Obama made a speech with uncanny similarities to a speech given by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick when he was [...]

This passage from an otherwise mundane piece by Jim Hoagland on the attempts by presidential campaigns at branding jumped out: I marveled at the sea of white faces nodding approvingly or cheering wildly behind Obama. Then I realized that only a sprinkling of the black voters and volunteers who helped power the candidate’s victory in [...]

Silliness in Congress has morphed into ugliness, including a disruption of the memorial service for recently passed colleague Tom Lantos, NBC’s Mike Viqueira reports. Republicans are outraged. Democrats are putting forward a resolution holding White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers in contempt of Congress. House GOP rank-and-file [...]

This parody commercial, putting John McCain’s speeches about the war in Iraq into a song a’la the Barack Obama “Yes We Can” video, is pretty funny. It’s already going viral, with quite a number of bloggers in my Google Reader list posting it today. Josh Marshall terms it “Genuinely Hilarious.” Hilzoy and Matt Yglesias merely [...]

The humorist Roy Zimmerman asks and answers the question, “What If the Beatles Were Irish?” Via Michael via Jim Henley

MSNBC’s David Shuster has been suspended for his on-air musing, “Chelsea is sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?” I saw the news yesterday evening and didn’t find it particularly interesting but apparently I’m alone, in that it’s getting the mega treatment at Memeorandum. Howie Kurtz, the media critics’ media critic, [...]

Judging by the enemies he’s making, I’m liking John McCain more with each passing day. Ann Coulter says she’d “campaign for” Hillary Clinton, who she thinks “is more conservative.” Meanwhile, Glenn Beck is railing against “Juan McCain” for his outreach to Hispanics. Thankfully, this over-the-top stuff is being rejected by most conservatives. AllahPundit calls Coulter’s [...]

Ron Paul assesses the year that he’s been campaigning for president, which has apparently exceeded his wildest expectations. via Josh Levy

Keith Olbermann has named Mary Katharine Ham the “Worst Person in the World” for expressing the view on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” that Bill Clinton has to be a bit stunned by the backlash over his negative campaigning on behalf of his wife because he was used to soft treatment from the press. I think he’s [...]

John McCain wants Florida voters to know that national security policy, not the economy, is the most important issue in this presidential election because we’re in a war and will inevitably be in others. Sam Stein is worried: Sen. John McCain told a crowd of supporters on Sunday, “It’s a tough war we’re in. It’s [...]

Good news for some of Michael Vick’s dogs. Ten of the dogs have been taken in by a dog rescue group in San Francisco called Bad Rap. All ten dogs on well on their way to transitioning from a short brutal lives as warriors under a brutal and sadistic man to lives as happy family [...]

As Chris Lawrence posted last night, Barack Obama handily won the South Carolina Democratic primary and native son John Edwards came in third. The results, with a record turnout, were stunning: Obama has long been projected to win, of course, but the RealClearPolitics average of the recent polls had it much closer: 38.4 to 26.8 [...]

During last night’s Republican debate, Tim Russert quoted John McCain back to himself: “I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated.” McCain responded: “I don’t know where you got that quote from, I’m very well versed in economics.” One of Josh [...]

The McCain Campaign has put out an amusing new ad called “Trust Huckabee,” which takes excerpts of Mike Huckabee saying nice things about McCain, many presumably out of context. CHYRON: Supporters of Mike Huckabee are attacking John McCain. CHYRON: What does Mike Huckabee say about John McCain? GOVERNOR MIKE HUCKABEE: Senator McCain, no matter what [...]