First, happy birthday to TD-Mother-in-Law. And then… let’s talk about our Democratic nominee-designate, Sen. Barack Obama (he wasn’t at the class reunion dinner last night– surprise, surprise– though he was mentioned numerous times during speeches, particularly by one Prof. Emeritus Karl-Ludwig Selig). Today, Obama has taken two major leaps forward yesterday toward securing the Presidency. As to thing the first, the Rules & By-Laws Committee’s deliberations are now behind us, the Committee having decided to “go half-sies” on FL and MI, giving Sen. Clinton a net pick-up of 24 delegates in contests she once agreed didn’t count, and naturally, since...

Those of course, being years when Democratic also-ran candidates “took it to the Convention” and as conventional (as it were!) wisdom holds, cost their party the Presidency in each of those years. And so it seems, it’s the Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting today in Washington, amidst protests organized by Team Clinton (and supplemented by Team McCain), in deciding the fate of the Florida and Michigan delegations, that will help determine whether Sen. Obama joins Humphrey, McGovern, Carter and Mondale as Dems done in by spoil-sport fellow Dems, or whether some actual resolution is possible here. The Unseen Editor reminds...

Actor and comedian Harvey Korman has passed away at age 81. He was simply one of the greats.

Thus began a letter written to his college classmates from some guy who might have shown up at his 25th college reunion, but for some woman who is forgotten but not gone insisting on continuing her quixotic quest to destroy her own party by trying to keep racism cool and otherwise trying to minimize her own party’s nominee’s chances in ’08 so she can give Bill Clinton that third term he has always coveted… in ’12. Our classmate Dan Loeb read a note at the Columbia ’83 reunion class cocktail party from his friend and classmate Sen. Barack Obama (I...

The legal denizens of the Democratic National Committee have rendered public their legal advice to the Rules Committee, set to meet on Saturday to finalize the seating arrangements at the Democratic Convention in Denver in August for Michigan and Florida; their advice, unsurprisingly, is to seat half the delegations, and in roughly the proportions won by the respective candidates in their respective beauty contests. While the Clinton campaign may cry foul (and continue their candidate’s ongoing efforts to despoil Democratic chances in November so that the Clintons can assume their rightful restoration in ’12), this is the penalty actually called...

Thus sayeth SecDef Robert Gates with respect to America’s excellent hospitality facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, because as he sees it, in the case of 60 or 70 people who have been arbitrarily held for the last six and a half years, their home countries either won’t take them, or worse, might actually not arbitrarily jail them themselves, and they might end up like, you know, that guy who was released and like became a suicide bomber and sh*t; Andy has more on that particular bit of Pentagon propaganda. [Gates and Joint Chiefs Chair Adm. Mullen also noted many of...

From Al Giordano, our newest side-bar denizen, we give you this story of a flood of Biblical proportions… well, a political earthquake of 40 delegates and/or super-delegates (epicentered on California Congressman Cardoza) now committed to back Clinton will soon be announcing their support of Obama. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t, but right now… that’s probably how you bet. I noted that after Obama held serve on North Carolina/Indiana night, the last big distribution of pledged delegates in primary season, the super-delegates would start breaking for Obama. And indeed they have; right now, 23 May 2008 at around 2100 EDT,...

Is that super-secret NSA program we’re not supposed to know about a government database of around 8,000,000 names and counting of who to round up in the event of martial law? Emptywheel and Digby tell us more about “Main Core”… an absurd name for an absurd program, but then, who knows? Sometimes, the issue isn’t whether you’re paranoid… but whether you’re paranoid… enough.

The Grey Lady tells us of yet another report from the Justice Dept. Inspector General, concerning extensive “disagreements” between the FBI and the CIA concerning the latter’s blatantly illegal, unAmerican, morally reprehensible, so-bad-they-helped-al-Qaeda-recruit terrorists, counterproductive and absolutely evil troublesome practices with respect to “harsh” interrogation of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere. Among the revelations include assisting Chinese interrogators in tormenting Uighur prisoners (prisoners later found to constitute absolutely no threat to this country, and indeed, some of which prisoners we found new homes for in Albania) and a female detainee bending back a detainee’s thumb and grabbing his testicles....

Being a member of the Kennedy family has always seemed to simultaneously wed political triumph with personal tragedy; today, the tragedy part seems to be back, with the announcement that Sen. Edward M. “Teddy” Kennedy (D-MA), the last survivor of his brothers, was diagnosed with a likely terminal form of brain cancer following his recent seizure. We wish the best to Sen. Kennedy and his family, and regardless of how one regards the political merits of his career or the mistakes he may have made in the course of his life, he has served the nation honorably for decades, and...