First, the tough new internet ad from McCain. I stress "internet," because I'd really like to see some real ads.
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Posted by: Ace at 07:00 AM | Comments (119)
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Last night I linked this rumor.

Supposedly some radio hosts say it's true, but if you read the comments, it appears all they're doing is actually repeating the details of the rumor.

So that still appears very unconfirmed. Just a rumor.

Update: Though it appears to be true that the feds are eyeing ACORN in ten different investigations.

Nevertheless, there does seem to be a press on. John Thune is calling for an end of taxpayer funding of ACORN, and the story seems to be attracting some attention.

And of course Obama is now downplaying his extensive ties to ACORN.

For starters, Obama paid ACORN, which has endorsed him for president, $800,000 to register new voters, payments his campaign failed to accurately report. (They were disguised in his FEC disclosure as payments to a front group called Citizen Services Inc. for “advance work.”)

WhatÂ’s more, Obama worked as executive director of ACORNÂ’s voter-registration arm, Project Vote, in 1992. Joined by two other community organizers on ChicagoÂ’s South Side, Obama conducted the voter-registration drive that helped elect Carol Moseley-Braun to the Senate that year.

The next year, 1993, Obama joined the civil-rights law firm Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland, where he sued the state of Illinois on behalf of ACORN to implement the federal “Motor Voter” law, which the GOP governor at the time refused to do. Then-Gov. Jim Edgar argued, presciently, that the Clinton law would invite voter fraud.

Obama downplays his ties to ACORN, and his campaign denies coordinating with ACORN to register voters.

I don't think any of this establishes the truth of the rumor. But there does seem to be some kind of a push on.

I deemed this story to be like one about glaciers a couple of days ago -- a "so what?" kind of story, because ACORN does this every two years, and apparently has some special secret dispensation in the law to commit voter fraud. But maybe that special secret dispensation is being revisited.

Posted by: Ace at 06:48 AM | Comments (51)
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Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:40 AM | Comments (23)
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Whoa. Didn't see this coming.

Is it just me, or is Kim like a kid at the godawful pizza crap joint standing on the skee-ball thing yelling "LOOKITME! LOOKITME!"?

Probably just me.

Ronery autumn leaves

Kim you are so short
might be a few near you who
move wheelchair past switch

UPDATE: from JAKIAC. heh. below the fold... more...

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 05:39 AM | Comments (9)
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Before hiring a ghostwriter to write Dreams of My Father, Barack Hussein Obama's contribution to English literature was one short law school note and the following poem from college.

No, really. He wrote this.

Under water grottos, caverns

Filled with apes

That eat figs.

Stepping on the figs

That the apes

Eat, they crunch.

The apes howl, bare

Their fangs, dance . . .

David Ross began parodizing the mindthoughts and soulpatterns of Obama:

see the monkeys

they howl

and throw poo

oo oo oo

poo poo poo

fling, splat

reagan's fault

and

figs are tasty

i also like plums

and apples

but peaches and papayas

remind me of pooter

which is scary

Not sure how far Obamapoetry can be taken, but it's worth a shot as someone suggests.

Posted by: Ace at 11:51 PM | Comments (175)
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The horror. The horror.

My intense fear of Brown Persons precludes me from watching this nightmare, but I'm assured it's every bit as terrifying as the rivers of blood flowing through the Hotel Overlook, and the naked old lady with the exposed ancient she-pud.
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Posted by: Ace at 10:02 AM | Comments (48)
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I've been meaning to write about this because the short version sounds pretty shocking:

A U.S. district court has ordered seventeen Guantanamo Bay detainees to be released into the United States.

The slightly longer version is also pretty shocking:

The military decided in 2003 that ten Guantanamo Bay detainees are not enemy combatants in the War on Terror, but held them for five years nevertheless. Five more were cleared in 2005, but held nevertheless. Another was cleared in 2006, but held. And another this year, but held nevertheless. Now a U.S. district court has ordered the military to release all seventeen into the United States.

The government held onto the detainees and insists that it should be allowed to continue to do so because it couldn't find a country willing to accept them (over 100 have been asked). The detainees are Chinese nationals and Afghanistan, where they were captured, doesn't want them back.

China has actually demanded their return. But there's a problem. The U.S. government won't repatriate the detainees because it believes there is a very good chance they will be tortured if they are returned. Muslim Uighurs are subject to particularly horrendous treatment by the Chinese government owing to their religious and political beliefs.

And there's another problem. Following the district court's decision, the White House announced that the Uighurs would be a security risk if released into the United States. The nature of the specific risk hasn't been disclosed.

So, really, as far as the U.S. government is concerned, these detainees have nowhere to go. The district court disagreed and specifically (and correctly, I believe) noted that the military has no authority to detain individuals who are not enemy combatants. The court gives the military some lee-way for "winding up" detentions and looks prepared to allow anywhere from six months to a couple of years. Five years, however, is too long.

The recent Supreme Court case, Boumediene v. Bush, which gave Guantanamo Bay detainees constitutional habeas rights, is taking a lot of the blame for this district court decision. It's true that the district court judge cites to Boumediene. But as flawed as that decision was, this same result would have occurred regardless. The blame lies with a few Supreme Court justices who consistently and persistently misread, misquote, and misapply U.S. and international law in order to reach politically-motivated results.

Justice O'Connor laid the foundation for this order in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004), when she wrote that the AUMF 2001 only authorized detentions for individuals determined to have planned, authorized, committed, or aided the 9/11 attacks or harbored those who did. (I believe this part of her decision wasn't wrong.) However, Justice Stevens made it possible in Rasul v. Bush (2004) for non-citizen Guantanamo Bay detainees to seek relief in federal courts. And with that unprecedented (really) reading of the law, this case was inevitable.

At the moment, the district court order has been stayed so that an appellate court can consider the situation. It'll be interesting to see where they go with it. As far as I can tell, the court cannot force the government to alter its determination that China would torture the repatriated detainees. Nor can it force the military to consider them enemy combatants.

Instead, the court will have to reconcile two competing provisions of the Constitution. First, Congress' power over immigration, as it has been delegated to DHS and DOJ, would seem to forbid the detainees' admission into the U.S. Second, the detainees' habeas rights seem to require that they be released from military custody. Those rights are meant to curtail the power of the federal government, so unless the military manages to come up with an alternative to holding them at Guantanamo Bay, I expect we'll be seeing Uighurs in D.C. soon.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:51 PM | Comments (81)
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Speculate away.

The McCain camp, it's been noted, has a win-the-newscycle mentality which often works, as far as it goes -- they win the newscycle -- but doesn't actually translate into gains.

So, there is that.

There are interesting possibilities -- fleshing out his mortgage bailout idea, announcing Mitt Romney has agreed to serve as Secretary of the Treasury and Rudy Giuliani as AG -- which will be "something to talk about," and yet won't translate to increases in poll position.

Via Hot Air, thanks to Cromagnum.

Murtaugh? That would be interesting.

ACORN? Makes sense. Not sure what they'd have that would be newsworthy about it, except some kind of challenge to Obama (which he'd ignore, natch).

Hmmm.... Someone sold off a lot of Obama bets at around 8:30 tonight.

Thanks to Liberrocky.

Just "Airing Questions"... Who ghostwrote Dreams of My Father? Bill Ayers, maybe?

Posted by: Ace at 09:11 PM | Comments (236)
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Posted by: Ace at 08:27 PM | Comments (42)
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The internal polling for both candidates must be showing some movement up here, because the airwaves have suddenly become inundated with political advertisements.

Just tonight, I've seen ads by the RNC, DNC and both presidential campaigns. One Obama ad in particular caught my eye. The ad focuses on McCain's healthcare plan and criticizes it. As the charges flashed across the screen, on the corner was the typical media source text. This ad featured just one source: Time/Klein: 9/11/08. This post in particular.

Joe Klein? Really, Obama?

The Joe Klein that called McCain's campaign "stupidly aggressive, but unprofessional in the extreme?"

The Joe Klein that criticized McCain's "mercurial temperament" while praising Obama's "utterly confident and unflappable" performance during the debate?

The Joe Klein that wrote the following? "John McCain has raised serious questions about whether he has the character to lead the nation. He has defaced his beloved military code of honor. He has run a dirty campaign."

The Joe Klein that said he's "given up any hope of McCain running an honest campaign?"

The Joe Klein that called Sarah Palin "Embarracuda" and accused the McCain campaign of being a "desperate empty embarrassment?"

The Joe Klein that called the GOP convention an "extremely effective bilge festival?"

And the Joe Klein that in the post quoted in the ad, who also said he would no longer spend time "wasting space on Senator Honor's daily lies and bilge (He really likes that word - ed.)" or "the sewage that Steve Schmidt is shoveling?"

Maybe it's just me, but the writings of Joe Klein do not exactly seem a credible or rational source upon which to base an advertisement. Just try to imagine the howls from the media and the left that would ensue if McCain were to use the writings of Rush Limbaugh or Bill Kristol to attack an Obama policy.

Posted by: Slublog at 08:13 PM | Comments (21)
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