Coming Up on Sunday Kos ...

• brownsox will share his thoughts on Netroots Nation, as a first-time attendee.
• Netroots Nation has MissLaura thinking about community.
• Devilstower looks at at the mythology of energy in "Thoroughly Modern Mastodons."
• BarbinMD will look at John McCain's idea of running a respectful campaign.
• SusanG will review Barbara Ehrenreich's This Land Is Their Land.
• DarkSyde will review Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming by two leading lights in climate research, Michael Mann and Lee R. Kump.

Research 2000 for Daily Kos. 7/22-23. Likely voters. MoE 4.5% (No trend lines)

Obama is getting only 15 percent of the white vote. Kerry, for his part, got 22 percent of the white vote in 2004. This poll closely tracks black turnout with the 2004 election (31 percent versus 30 percent in 2004), and we can assume those numbers will be greatly boosted thanks to Obama's presence in the field. However, those white numbers make it extremely difficult to make a go of this state. Perhaps that's why the Obama campaign talks more about Georgia than they do about South Carolina.

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...

I am a citizen of the United States. I am a citizen of the world. And I am a citizen of late night snark:

"Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is calling the Bush presidency a total failure. Total failure. I don't know, I think he's done okay. I think he's done okay if you don't count Iraq, the economy, the environment, Afghanistan, the mortgage crisis. I think he's done all right... The deficit. Gas prices. Hurricane Katrina. Illegal wire tapping..."
---David Letterman
-
"In Berlin, Barack Obama spoke to a crowd of over 200,000 people. In fact, he was so eager to please the Germans, he promised to name David Hasselhoff as his vice president.

Have you heard John McCain’s new campaign slogan? 'Hey guys, I’m over here!'"
---Jay Leno
-
"So far the only gaffe of the trip belongs to Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki. When speaking to a German magazine, Maliki said that he supported Obama's plan to draw down troops over the next 16 months. Saying, quote, 'we think it would be the right time-frame for a withdrawal.' God, Maliki is so naive about Iraq. One presumably stern phone call later, U.S. Centcom released a statement from the Iraqis claiming that al-Maliki had been mistranslated by the German magazine. Because, as you know, there is one thing Germans are known for: sloppiness and lack of precision"
---Jon Stewart
-
"Folks, Senator Barack Obama left his church in May, but questions still linger about his religion. According to a new Pew Research Poll, since March, the number of people who believe Obama is Muslim has increased by two percent. And strangely, the number who believe he's Jewish has gone from none to one percent. Wow, you play Tevye in one Congressional production of Fiddler on the Roof and you're typecast for life."
---Stephen Colbert
-
""The economy here in the United States is in very bad shape, but President Bush isn't sweating it. Partly because he believes the bad news is being exaggerated and partly because he has the intellect of a Golden Retriever."
---Jimmy Kimmel

And our favorite:

"Ok, now [Wes Clark] shows up on Saturday at the most hateful, there is not---and I’m including the Nazis and the Klan in here---there is not a more hateful group in the country than these Daily Kos people."
---O'Reilly the Clown

Tag, you're it. Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]

Having created their "drill more" catchphrase, dictating that the only solution is to continue beating our heads against the same wall that's already given us an economic and national security concussion, Republicans used a technical maneuver to defeat the release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.  Democrats had a plan to release 10% of the reserve's light sweet crude over a six month period, helping moderate prices on the market.  Republicans moved quickly to protect their talking point, and got what they wanted -- higher prices.

Oil prices reversed course and moved higher Thursday in U.S. trading after a move in Congress to tap into the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve was defeated. ... At a press conference before the vote, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, pointed out that previous releases from the oil reserve had knocked down prices, sometimes significantly: 33 percent in 1991, 19 percent in 2000 and nine percent in 2005.

Is releasing oil from the strategic reserve a long term solution?  No, but unlike anything the Republicans have suggested, it actually would help relieve prices at the pump today and give the market a chance to moderate.  And there's a record amount of oil in the SPR, so a minor adjustment in the reserve's composition (the plan required that this oil be replaced by heavier crude) would represent no problem for US security.

Of course, selling that 10% would both reduce ExxonMobil's bottom line and damage the GOP talking point.  And their leverage was already being eroded by the damage they've done to the economy, which was putting demand in doubt.  That had to be stopped!

Republican plan from now until November?  Continue talking about drilling that won't help prices so they can avoid talking about anything that will.  Oil prices were edging down on more economic worries on Friday.  That has to have them worried.

With C-SPAN still on in the background after the non-impeachment hearing, I just heard Barack Obama say in response to a question about his schedule and his short stay in France:

As far as me spending time in Paris? I don't know anybody who doesn't want to spend more time in Paris.

So, how long before he's attacked as "elitist?"

Every once in a while, it's important to go back to basics. Now, this is a lesson the talking heads need to learn, but it is helpful for us to learn the same things.

1. Polls are a snapshot in time.

They are not predictive. They are not definitive. They are, however, representative. To insist the data shows a lead today is not to insist that the lead translates into a win tomorrow, next week or next month.

2. Polls depend on good technique, good interpretation, and a representative sample

The art of the pollster is in getting this part right. It's not easy, and some pollsters have a track record of doing this better than others. Party ID is a variable, for example, so decisions about weighting affect the results of the poll. However, huge fluctuations generally raise red flags, particularly when no event to match the fluctuations occurs. Gary Langer (ABC):

"Trend is your friend," pollsters say. Look at repeat polls from the same organization to gauge movement over time. And, again, look beyond the horse race to other measures: the levels of commitment and enthusiasm from a candidate's supporters, the groups that are more or less fired up, the factors motivating their support. It takes willpower to trudge off to an hours-long Iowa caucus on a dark winter's night. Who's inspired? How? Why?

3. With some exceptions (Field in CA, Selzer in IA), state polling is much more difficult and less reliable than national polling.

It's actually more important since we elect via the electoral college, but it's harder to do. But there is nothing more infuriating than having a blowhard like Chris Matthews insist, as he did today that this election is a dead heat. Take a look at the electoral estimate from fivethirtyeight.com to the right. Or take a look at the electoral estimate from pollster.com. Does that look like a dead heat? See the tracking poll data below for more.

4. Understand the difference between adults, registered voters and likely voters.

It is difficult to know, in a change election, who the likely voters are. Right now, LV based on past elections favor older voters, who skew McCain. Before the convention, it's best to rely on registered voters, but always make sure you are comparing apples to apples.

5. Get help.

Compared to 2004, there are many more polling resources available on the internet. Invaluable sites like pollster.com, www.fivethirtyeight.com, and www.realclearpolitics.com as well as Mark Blumenthal's Thursday series in National Journal should be consulted regularly (and there are others who specialize in electoral college estimaters). Other terrific resources include News University's online course in how to read polls (partnered with American Association for Public Opinion Research) and 20 Questions A Journalist Should Ask About Poll Results from the National Council on Public Polls.

There are also pollsters who write regular columns about their findings, and the art of polling. Not to be exclusionary, but Scott Rasmussen, Frank Newport at Gallup, Kathy Francovic at CBS and Gary Langer at ABC come to mind as frequewnt posters.

Some sites, like pollster.com or fivethirtyeight.com (personal favorites) allow comments. Read the comments. Ask questions. It's the best way to learn.

6. Media polls drive narrative, and often the narrative excludes other polls.

Look at them all. If the NBC/WSJ poll has Obama up by 6, and the average of polls has him up by three, then a new Gallup tracker that is tied doesn't 'change everything' - nor does the WSJ/NBC poll, for that matter.

None of that predicts who wins in the fall, but data will enhance your commentary. And the use of data would be a useful habit to get into. But don't be assuming a Bradley effect exists, for example, when that may or may not be the case.

Remember, when  polls don't fit the news or the feel you have for the campaign, something is off. It may be the polls, and it may be you.

But if you missed what's going on, and the polls pick up something happening, don't blame the polls and don't blame the pollster. Just use them to expand your world view. And, of course, wait for the next poll to tell you if it's a trend. And, for God's sake, don't compare a 14 point lead in Zogby (internet) to a new Q-poll that shows a 4 point lead in MI and claim this is a remarkable change. The previous month's Q-poll had Obama up by 6, so that's just noise. And as per First Read:

Regarding those Quinnipiac polls, don’t miss this: "Clay Richards, the assistant director of the Connecticut university's polling institute, said the Obama slide [in Minnesota] probably isn't as dramatic as the raw numbers reflect. Still, Richards said McCain is clearly stronger in the state than he was in June."

Rasmussen, meanwhile, says Obama got a bounce from the overseas trip, and the speech was well received by voters. Gallup today has Obama up by 6.

Previous election year polling shows that the conventions have a high (but not 100%) probability of shaking up the race. The impact of events prior to the conventions is certainly more difficult to pin down. As noted, the structure of the race this year appears to have snapped into place in early June after Hillary Clinton dropped out of the race for the Democratic Party's nomination, and it simply has not changed much since. Whether or not it will change at this juncture remains to be seen.

Take deep breaths and stop hyperventilating over those, too. And go back and review what happened in 1980. Ronald Reagan was the risky unknown. Reagan's move in the polls was very late, but it was decisive.

In the meantime, ask yourselves if the networks are cherry-picking polls they want to use to sell their narrative of a close race (particularly the usually ignored Q-polls) and ignoring the Rasmussen and Gallup polls today. The real picture requires looking at all the polls, not just the ones you like.

• The Swing State Project rolls out its Cash Power Rankings for the House and the Senate. Click through to see how your favorite challengers stack up against incumbents in terms of cash-on-hand.
• As an example of the networks working hard to level the field even if it means tilting right to do it:

  "This has got to be very frustrating for John McCain . . . that he wants to make his points, he wants to get coverage, and yet everything seems to swarm around Barack Obama," Gibson told viewers."

  Cry me a river, Charlie. It’s even more frustrating for voters who don’t want artificial balance so much as unbiased news. - DemFromCT

• As is so often the case, what Digby said.
• I thought John McCain said there were no votes to be had in Europe:

  Barack Obama's campaign has received roughly 10 times more money from declared U.S. donors living in Germany, France and Britain than his Republican rival, reflecting his popularity in Europe as he makes his first tour of the continent as the presumed Democratic nominee.

• Could it be? Is Barack Obama really Amish? See the proof and judge for yourself.
• Words fail...

  There seems to me no question that the Batman film "The Dark Knight," currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.

• Kate Sheppard at Grist has summarized Van Jones's July 20 speech at Netroots Nation. He spoke of a "Green New Deal" and how Barack Obama will face tough sailing on energy issues against a conservative backlash if he is elected.

  Jones emphasized the pursuit of a new, green economy as the solution to all these problems - weaning the country of fossil fuels, giving consumers other options, creating new jobs, and including historically disadvantaged communities into the conversation.

  "We have to change the terms of the debate," said Jones. "We've been getting our butts whooped by the 'drill, drill, drill' mantra."

  - Meteor Blades

• There's nothing like an election year to get Congress off their ass.

  The Senate cleared the last hurdle Friday to passing a housing rescue aimed at sparing hundreds of thousands of homeowners from foreclosure and bolstering troubled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

  The 80-13 test vote showed broad support for the election-year package and put it on track to pass the Senate by Saturday. The White House says President Bush will sign it, having earlier dropped a threat to veto it over $3.9 billion in neighborhood grants.

• If you're planning to buy tickets for the Olympics, you may want to avoid the first-day-on-sale rush.
• Did you miss the Netroots Nation Pub Quiz?  Recap and video here.  --Adam B

Earlier I wrote about the startling Pew poll showing Latinos breaking for Obama at a 66-23 clip. Jonathan Singer over at MyDD crunched some state-level numbers, and the results are also startling.

And in case you don't think these numbers matter, think again. Just look at McCain's home state of Arizona -- where McCain has been forced to campaign. If McCain were only able to manage 22 percent of the Hispanic vote in Arizona, just doing the math he'd have to pull in about 63 percent of the White, Asian-American and "other" vote in the state to reach the 50 percent marker (Jon Kyl received about 55 percent of the White vote in his 10-point reelection victory in 2006, for reference).

Bush managed 59 percent of the Arizona white vote in 2004, per the exit polls. He also got 43 percent of the Latino vote in the state.

This is just one state, Arizona, a state that McCain should win. Now extrapolate these numbers across the country, particularly in other states with large Hispanic voting blocs, and you see McCain's immense problem. If the 22 percent mark were to hold in a state like Texas, and Obama were to receive a respectable though not shockingly high 90 percent of the African-American vote, McCain would need to pull in close to 60 percent of the remaining vote to earn a majority of the overall vote.

Go down the list of swing states with large Hispanic populations -- Florida, New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada, and you see that right off the bat, McCain faces some serious structural disadvantages in losing this vote by so much. Throw in states with large African American plus Latino populations -- Georgia (59 percent non-Hispanic white), North Carolina (68 percent non-Hispanic white), Virginia (68 percent non-Hispanic white), and Mississippi (59 percent non-Hispanic white) -- and suddenly you have a whole swath of states, with a great deal of electoral votes, in reach by Democrats because of McCain's inability to garner the brown vote.

And that's just this year. Long term, of course, the situation is even more dire for the Republican Party.

Used to be an ironclad rule of American politics that partisanship ended at our shores. Even in the depths of the Cold War, few of Washington's commie-baiters dared to trash the political opposition while abroad. But for Republicans, 9/11 changed everything. This year we're getting used to seeing Bush, McCain & Co. taking partisan pot shots at Barack Obama before foreign audiences. Addressing the Israeli Knesset in May, Bush likened Obama's policies to Nazi appeasement. Several weeks ago McCain used a trip to Colombia and Mexico as an occasion to attack Obama's trade policies. All that came immediately after McCain had promised to forego partisan sniping while abroad; classic McCain double-talk, that.

Now real bottom-feeding surrogates are getting into the act. Yesterday while Obama visited Germany the country's newspaper of record, Die Welt, published a crude op-ed by GOP Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (MI) deriding him. It caused enough of a stir that the AP report quoted it. McCotter hasn't had the guts to put the English version up on his Congressional website, but he did post it at The Hill blog and Redstate. Here's a taste of what a Republican member of Congress thinks is the appropriate use of partisanship overseas.

Senator Obama has yet to show any understanding of the fundamental truths that have linked the Transatlantic Alliance through time and tribulations...

Maybe, while listening to JFK’s "Ich Bin Ein Berliner" speech on his I-pod beneath his safety helmet as he pedals past the Reichstag, Senator Obama will recall how, throughout the Cold War, the leaders of the Transatlantic Alliance resisted the siren song of popular pragmatism...

It explains why so many Americans, Europeans, other free peoples, and those yet to be free, are so dismayed at the prospect of Senator Obama’s potential elevation to the Leader of the Free World during a trans-national war against terrorism.

Thus in Berlin no one knows which Obama will show. Will it be the ideological left-wing Democratic primary candidate who vowed to "end" the war rather than win it, or the Democratic nominee who dismisses the progressing coalition victory as a "distraction"? Will it be the American populist who has told supporters in the United States that he will demand more from our allies in Europe and get it, or the liberal internationalist hell-bent on being liked in Europe’s salons?

You get the idea: a semi-coherent rant dripping with sarcasm, the kind favored by wingnuts. Bad enough that Americans should be exposed to this offal. But why do Republicans believe that foreigners need to be drafted as extras into their partisan spectacles?

Yesterday, during a campaign stop at "Schmidt's Sausage Haus und Restaurant", John McCain criticized Barack Obama's speech before 200,000 people at Berlin's Victory Column, saying:

Well, I’d love to give a speech in Germany, a political speech, or a speech that maybe the German people would be interested in, but I’d much prefer to do it as president of the United States rather than as a candidate for the office of presidency.

Does John McCain have a valid point? Or, could it be argued that while there aren't any electoral votes to be won in Germany, we do have many shared interests that need our attention? And given that Germany is a friend to our country, wasn't Obama's speech both necessary and appropriate?

Let's check with noted foreign policy expert, Senator John McCain:

There aren't any electoral votes to be won up here in the middle of a presidential election. But there are many shared interests that require our attention today, and many Canadians here I am proud to call friends.

Uh oh. Does that mean John McCain isn't proud to call Germans his friends? Or was he just having some whine with his sausage?

Back in February, the Republicans knew they had a losing issue on their hands.

Even some Republicans admit that it may be hard to sell voters on the idea of continuing to provide tax incentives to oil companies earning record profits.

"It's not as sexy and easy a sound bite," said Sen. David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican who opposes the measure

What to do?  What to do?  After years of pushing multi-billion dollars tax breaks into the overflowing coffers of oil companies -- all in the name of encouraging exploration -- the Republicans had only managed to fatten company bottom lines while emptying American pockets.  

But wait!  They could just turn it around.  Blame Democrats for blocking the very thing the GOP had been funding year, after year, after year and pretend it never happened.  "Find more, use Less" became the new GOP talking point.  And boy, this idea's a three'fer.  You get to blame Democrats for a problem you caused, keep the tax breaks you've been feeding your oil buddies, and tear down the restrictions around the last protected places.  If that's not making barrels of light sweet Texas lemonade out of sour lemons, I don't know what it.

Best of all, the American people are behind it.  The GOP drank the shake and stuck Democrats with the tab.

Only... maybe not.  A poll conducted by the Wilderness Society delivers very different results from the Faster, Democrats! Drill! Drill! line that's being pushed on the 24 hour talking head-a-thons.

The American public is not buying the arguments of President Bush and the oil industry that new drilling will lower gas prices, a new poll finds. Despite a well-funded campaign to convince lawmakers to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska and the offshore waters of the Outer Continental Shelf to drilling, and to allow new oil shale projects in the Rocky Mountain West, a majority (54%) of Americans do not see more drilling as a solution to high gas prices.

George Bush, John McCain, and the Republican Chorus think that the way to turn attention from their disastrous oil policy is repeat the same thing, only more so.  But somehow, people aren't buying.

A significant majority of Americans (63%) said that the President's proposal to open up public lands to oil and gas drilling is "more likely to enrich oil companies than to lower gas prices for American consumers." A substantial majority (66%) said that "the small percentage of public lands still protected from oil drilling should remain off limits because they are valuable natural resources that cannot be replaced."

Republicans think they have a winner here.  But then, when's the last time the Republicans were right about anything?

Oh, and someone might want to talk to George Voinovich about the "use less" part of "find more, use less" motto.

Voinovich: Let's go after every single drop of oil that's available to us.

Uh, yeah.  That seems to sum up the Republican plan for our future.  No doubt after we've burned that last drop, we will use less.

Pew Hispanic Center. 7/9-13. Registered Hispanic voters. MoE 4.4% (

Remember, exit polls gave Bush 44 percent of the Latino vote in 2004, with Kerry getting just 53 percent. These Pew numbers represent the utter collapse of GOP support amongst Latinos which started in 2006, when xenophobic anti-immigrant rantings scared Latinos away from the GOP. Only 30 percent of Latinos voted Republican that year. I'm guessing today that Democrats earn as much as 75 percent of the Latino vote this year.

That will be significant, as the rest of Pew's report (PDF) makes clear.

[S]ome 78% of Latino registered voters say they are following the election very closely or somewhat closely this year, up from the 72% who said the same thing at this stage of the 2004 campaign. These poll findings, coming on the heels of a spirited Obama-Clinton nomination fight that led to rises in the Latino share of the vote in many Democratic primaries, suggest that the Hispanic community is politically energized heading into the fall election campaign.

More than three-quarters (76%) of Hispanic registered voters have a favorable opinion of Obama, and 73% have a favorable opinion of Hillary Rodham Clinton. In contrast, 44% of Hispanics have a favorable opinion of McCain and 27% have a favorable opinion of George W. Bush.

More than three-in-four Hispanics who voted for Clinton in a Democratic primary or caucus this year say they would vote for Obama or lean toward voting for him, while 8% of Clinton voters say they would vote for McCain or lean toward voting for him.

Latino registered voters are almost three times as likely to say that being black will help Obama (32%) with Hispanic voters than hurt him (11%); the majority (53%) say his race will make no difference.

More than half of Latino voters (55%) say that the Democratic Party is better for Latinos while just 6% say the Republican Party is better for Latinos.

By 2010, the Census Bureau expects the Latino population to be at 47.8 million, or 15.5 percent of the total population. By 2050, they project 102.6 million of us, or 24.4 of the country's total. With Republicans assiduously alienating this key and rapidly growing block, to the point that just 6 percent think Republicans are better for them, it has put a serious strain on their future ability to win.

So yes, this is all great news for Obama this year, but it portends huge things for the future of American politics, quite possibly the death of the modern Republican Party.

As for Obama, we've been mocking the whole "Latinos won't vote for a black guy" thing for months, ever since the Clinton campaign first used that ridiculous (and insulting) line of attack. The numbers since then have been quite clear. Latinos are more than happy enough (and excited) about voting for Obama as anyone else, and likely more so. I'm glad we're finally moving on from that ridiculousness.

Oh, apparently the wingnutosphere is in a tizzy because the traditional media won't cover the latest tripe from the National Enquirer. On that front, Richard Blair makes a good point:

if the legacy media heathers decide that they must titter and squeal about the veracity of the claims of in the Enquirer, then they are also duty bound to get to the bottom of the following tabloid stories:

Bush Booze Crisis, National Enquirer, 2/21/2005

Claw Marks, Globe Magazine, 1/8/2008:

Google Bush divorce tabloid and see what you come up with (hint: more than 175,000 hits)

Yeah! Why won't the "MSM" cover these stories? Coverup!

Seriously, I can't believe this is even subject to debate, but for the crazies, no source is too disreputable if it validates their warped world view. Although in a perverse sense, the more energy they spend on b.s. like this (and Obama's supposedly forged birth certificate), the less energy they're spending on smearing Obama.

The House is not in session today, but the big goings-on will be in the House Judiciary Committee.

• Watch online
• Listen online

Today's the day House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers has set aside for a hearing granted in response to the demands of Dennis Kucinich for hearings on the impeachment resolutions he's introduced over the course of the past few months: H. Res. 333 and H. Res. 799, impeaching Dick Cheney, and H. Res. 1258 and H. Res. 1345, impeaching George W. Bush.

The hearing, scheduled for 10:00 A.M. in Room 2141 in the Rayburn House Office Building, is not styled as an impeachment hearing. That's something Conyers and his staff have studiously avoided. It is instead titled a hearing on, "Executive Power and Its Constitutional Limitations." As we'll see later, this designation could impose some real substantive limitations on the ability of Members and witnesses alike to discuss such critical matters as what constitutional provisions actually set the boundaries of executive power, and what Bush may have done to warrant their invocation. But other than that...

Chairman Conyers wasn't originally inclined to hold any kind of hearing related to Kucinich's resolutions, but a combination of factors eventually made that an untenable position -- though unfortunately none of those factors likely reflect any newfound interest among most Members of Congress in actually impeaching either Cheney or Bush. But with three of Kucinich's four resolutions all referred to Conyers' committee by actual roll call votes on the floor rather than by the usual process of designation by the Speaker in consultation with the parliamentarian, treating those referrals as mere pro forma designations and letting the bills die of neglect (as is the chairman's prerogative) became more difficult to do.

In addition, the cosponsorship of some of those resolutions by members of the Judiciary Committee (Tammy Baldwin, Robert Wexler, Luis Gutierrez, Steve Cohen, Keith Ellison, Shiela Jackson-Lee, Maxine Waters), and especially the explicit pressure for hearings by Wexler, Baldwin and Gutierrez, made it impossible to maintain the position that there was no interest among the membership in having those hearings.

Finally, there was the tactic eventually employed to greater effect by Kucinich, taking advantage of the rules permitting any Member of the House to bring a resolution directly proposing impeachment to the floor at any time as a highly privileged motion, and forcing the Speaker to designate a time within two days after the motion is noticed for its consideration. That gave Kucinich the ability to threaten, after his Cheney resolutions were ignored by the Judiciary Committee, to follow up his first Bush resolution with a second one if the Committee didn't act within 30 days. In theory, he could have threatened an even shorter timeline for the second one, or indeed to bring one every single day until he got what he was looking for. But with that being clear to everyone, granting the hearing (but refusing to call it an impeachment hearing) must certainly have seemed the simplest solution. Especially if you can schedule them for a Friday when there are no votes in the House, so that fewer people will want to stick around to participate or follow along.

So who are the witnesses at this non-impeachment hearing?

Witness List

Panel I:

Hon. Dennis Kucinich
U.S. House of Representatives
10th District, OH

Hon. Maurice Hinchey
U.S. House of Representatives
22nd District, NY

Hon. Walter Jones
U.S. House of Representatives
3rd District, NC

Hon. Brad Miller
U.S. House of Representatives
13th District, NC

Panel II:

Hon. Elizabeth Holtzman
Former U.S. House of Representatives
16th District, NY
Department of Justice

Hon. Bob Barr
Former U.S. House of Representatives
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
7th District, GA

Hon. Ross C. "Rocky" Anderson
Founder and President
High Roads for Human Rights

Stephen Presser
Raoul Berer Professor of Legal History
Northwestern University School of Law

Bruce Fein
Associate Deputy Attorney General, 1981-82
Chairman, American Freedom Agenda

Vincent Bugliosi
Author and Former Los Angeles County Prosecutor

Jeremy A. Rabkin
Professor of Law
George Mason University School of Law

Elliott Adams
President of the Board
Veterans for Peace

Frederick A. O. Schwarz, Jr.
Senior Counsel
Brennan Center for Jutice at NYU School of Law

Interesting. Jeremy A. Rabkin is a Constitutional Law professor who doesn't appear to have a law degree. It's by no means impossible to teach ConLaw without one. But I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. GMU Law. Gee, I wonder who suggested him?

Panel I looks interesting too. Walter Jones is a name I wouldn't have expected to see there, though I know he's been both rather remorseful about the Iraq war and outspoken about it, since his long ago "freedom fries" days. Hinchey has been very vocal in the past with questions about the process by which DOJ claims to have "authorized" the NSA's illegal domestic spying program. Kucinich, of course, is Kucinich. And Brad Miller will be there to discuss two pieces of legislation he's introducing to address the Bush "administration" power grabs: one to authorize the Congress to ask the courts to appoint a special prosecutor in cases when the DOJ refuses to press contempt of Congress charges, and one to require notice to Congress when the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) issues an opinion advising the executive that it may ignore statutory law (though I suppose we might wonder why they wouldn't ignore that law, too).

Finally, a note on what not to expect: the "L word." Many people watching the hearings will wonder at some point why no one is just coming out and saying Bush lied. There's extensive precedent in the House against "personal abuse, innuendo, or ridicule of the President."

Personal abuse, innuendo, or ridicule of the President, is not permitted. Under this standard it is not in order to call the President, or a presumptive major-party nominee for President, a "liar" or accuse him of "lying". Indeed, any suggestion of mendacity is out of order. For example, the following remarks have been held out of order: (1) suggesting that the President misrepresented the truth, attempted to obstruct justice, and encouraged others to perjure themselves; (2) accusing him of dishonesty, accusing him of making a "dishonest argument", charging him with intent to be intellectually dishonest, or stating that many were convinced he had "not been honest"; (3) accusing him of "raping" the truth, not telling the truth, or distorting the truth; (4) stating that he was not being "straight with us"; (5) accusing him of being deceptive, fabricating an issue, or intending to mislead the public; (6) accusing him of intentional mischaracterization, although mischaracterization without intent to deceive is not necessarily out of order. [Notes omitted]

And here's something that may cause a bit of trouble:

Although wide latitude is permitted in debate on a proposition to impeach the President, Members must abstain from language personally offensive; and Members must abstain from comparisons to the personal conduct of sitting Members of the House or Senate. Furthermore, Members may not refer to evidence of alleged impeachable offenses by the President contained in a communication from an independent counsel pending before a House committee, although they may refer to the communication, itself, within the confines of proper decorum in debate. [Notes omitted]

I'm not sure what kind of latitude is permitted in a hearing that's convened solely because of a pending proposition to impeach the president, but which purports not to be on that subject, but even the above rule doesn't appear to leave a lot of room for, you know, actually discussing what it is that people will be there to discuss.

All of these precedents, though intended to govern debate on the House floor, will likely be applied similarly to questioning and testimony in the Judiciary Committee. So you may have to get your fix of the "L word" from the press conferences afterward. And depending on what kind of stink, if any, Republicans raise and how Conyers deals with it, most of the other words you want to hear, too. Fair warning.

The hearings will be available via streaming video at the House Judiciary Committee website, and Pacifica Radio's coverage begins at 9:00 am EDT, and will be streamed live at pacifica.org and kpfa.org and on the air at KPFA (Berkeley), KPFK (Los Angeles), KPFT (Houston), WBAI (New York), and others TBD.

In the Senate, courtesy of the Office of the Majority Leader:

Convenes: 9:15am

9:15 am Immediately following the prayer and pledge, the Senate will proceed to up to 2 Roll Call Votes in relation to the following:

• Motion to invoke cloture on S.3268
• If cloture is not invoked on S.3268, motion to invoke cloture on the House message with respect to H.R.3221, the Housing legislation.

10:00am Filing deadline for all 2nd degree amendments [see this discussion of the different types of amendments] to S.3268, the Energy Speculation bill.

The Senate will likely stay in session over the weekend to finish any post-cloture debate on the above bills, and perhaps begin the process of getting the "Coburn Omnibus" (S. 3297) to the floor for next week.

Did you know Obama was in Europe?

EJ Dionne:

The conventional wisdom on certain subjects is so deeply rooted that no amount of evidence disturbs its hold. That's how it is with those dreary predictions that young Americans just won't vote.

If and when they do, of course, they rewrite history.

David Brooks: Eh, I'm not impressed about that Obama speech. Where were the unicorns? Compared to Shakespeare, this was merely Faulkner.

Eugene Robinson: Obama's not lucky, he's good. But don't tell Brooks.

Charles Krauthammer: Obama will probably win. That snake in the grass Maliki just threw the election Obama's way. And he doesn't even wear an American flag lapel pin.

Ilan Goldenberg: If McCain wants to pretend to be a counterinsurgency expert, he'd better start listening to Maliki. That's Counterinsurgency 101.

Joe Scarborough (MSNBC, vlog): McCain wins the image contrast by campaigning at Sausage Haus. No kidding, I really said that.

Kathleen Parker: It's all about pride and arrogance. And presumption. How dare he not buy into right wing frames and admit The Surge Is Working®? He must be a left wing commie pinko that hates America. Just like Chuck Hagel and Jack Reed.

What does it mean to be arrogant?

ar·ro·gant  (r-gnt) adj.

1. Having or displaying a sense of overbearing self-worth or self-importance.

2. Marked by or arising from a feeling or assumption of one's superiority toward others: an arrogant contempt for the weak.

How about presumptuous?

presumptuous  (pr-zmpch-s) adj.

Going beyond what is right or proper; excessively forward.

Do we think we can be a little more accurate when we throw the terms around? I ask after hearing the talking heads on cable TV blather about while everything about the Obama trip was successful, it 'borders' on being arrogant and presumptuous to be doing as well as he is doing abroad. Not that these were ever terms used by these folks for an event that really deserved the terms. Had they been free with the terms when George Bush landed on the aircraft carrier, or when John McCain said in 2003, referring to Iraq, "Overall, I Believe Our Goals Have Been Met", they might have a point. But they didn't say that about Bush and McCain then and they won't say it about them now. It's not the narrative they are trying to set. They want to reserve the terms for the new guy, Obama, who hasn't paid his dues with them (at least in their own minds).

These same folks are still rather annoyed that Obama doesn't seem to be a supplicant to the talking heads and pundits for their blessing and approval for him to look like a President. He seems to be doing it without them, and not all of them like it.

Some are willing to give Obama a passing grade. David Broder is willing to argue that Obama took no risks with this trip, but nonetheless, the lad did okay. You may recall this famous quote about Bill Clinton:

"He came in here and he trashed the place," says Washington Post columnist David Broder, "and it's not his place."

to get a sense of how important it is to the gatekeepers to establish exactly whose place Washington is, and who belongs and who does not.

Still, the media coverage for the most part has been very good and very positive, and with those visuals, how could it not be? And even those who bring up the arrogant and presumptuous descriptions allow that Obama looked Presidential, and held his own with the generals and the statesman. Everyone who brings it up is careful to say 'almost' or that 'there's no line that's been crossed'. It's just part of the narrative that's developing, in parallel with Obama holding his own with the generals, or his thinking and expressing that he might be dealing with these world leaders for some years to come.

The fun thing is watching someone who is composed, sure-footed and, yes, intelligent, represent America abroad. How great is it that we have a potential President that can put two sentences together without sounding like an inarticulate drunk?

Our friends from overseas are honest enough to say so. This is from the Times (UK):

And there is much more to him. He can sound high-minded yet rooted, idealistic yet grounded, exhilarated yet calm, warmly American and yet a bit of a European too. And, yes, presidential — it is there in his confidence and in his willingness to think and talk big with measured inspiration and an attractive humility. He didn’t go so far as to say "Ich bin ein Berliner", like John F. Kennedy all those years ago, but to judge by the excitement with which they greeted him, the Berliners clearly thought that he was that — and more.

Meanwhile, while Obama looks Presidential, McCain looks petulant. He's ignored his own trips to Canada (with speeches) and Central and South America to suggest that Obama shouldn't be giving speeches abroad. This, after bitterly complaining that Obama hadn't gone to Iraq and Afghanistan, and now complaining that he has.

McCain has had a terrible week, and Obama has had a great one. So, the only way to equal it out a little is to call Obama arrogant and presumptuous, especially for refusing to accept The Surge Is Working® frame. But times have changed, and we don't need them to tell us what to think. We can watch and see for ourselves. The funny thing is that, just between you and me, I think the terms fit some of the pundits this week better than they fit Barack Obama. But, of course, it would be presumptuous of me to say so.

^{Bush picture credit: AP/Applewhite
Obama picture credit: Reuters/Tobias Schwarz}