I'd bet a quarter that both Paris and Britney are Obama supporters.

It would sure help out if they made an ad.

Here's the script.  

After reading this invigorating diary about how Hillary will be out campaigning for Obama in August, the diarist ended with a poll: should Hillary be Vice President?

Anyone who is excited about Democratic victories in the fall should immediately recognize: what a waste that would be.    The only person the Vice President has as a constituency is one: the President.  

So while thinking about this for a bit, and searching through my old papers and writings for ideas I came across this document -- apparently it's called "The Constitution".  I forgot we had one!  And what was interesting about it is, in there, it makes a remarkable assertion:

It states that we have three equal branches of government.

So, wouldn't it be great if Obama were in charge of one, and Hillary were in charge of the other?

Top of the Rec List right now is the bombshell that McCain made the following factually wrong statement to Katie Couric, and it edited it out of her interview:

Colonel McFarlane (phonetic) was contacted by one of the major Sunni sheiks. Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening.

There were a lot of statements of fact in that diary, but what I really needed was a readable timeline, so that I could understand the claim.  I made one, which I give below.

NYTimes:

The Consumer Price Index, the government’s key measure of inflation, advanced 1.1 percent during the month, the biggest monthly rise since June 1982, the Labor Department said. That was well above the 0.7 percent increase economists polled ahead of the report were expecting.

Prices were up 5 percent from a year ago, the biggest year-on-year rise since 1991 the department said. That gain was also considerably higher than the 4.5 percent rise Wall Street economists were expecting.

Excluding volatile food and energy prices, the so-called core C.P.I. rose by a more tame 0.3 percent, but that rise was still higher than the 0.2 percent gain expected.

This is bad news, for everyone.  A 1.1% CPI increase in a single month: multiply that by 12 -- as if that rate were to continue --  and you've got annualized double-digit inflation.

Wednesday, the Supreme Court stuck down a ban on handguns in Washington DC.
The basis for the 5-4 decision -- in which Kennedy sided with the conservative four Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito -- was that the Second Amendment, as intended by the Founders, secures an individual's right to owning arms.

Fine.  Nonetheless, below I propose a formulation which will satisfy protecting an individual's right to bear arms; while at the same time permitting handguns to be banned in a Constitutionally protected way in the Washington DC area.

Today, the WaPost quotes a leaked, draft report due out this week, by David Albright, an American and "former top UN Weapons Inspector".    The leaked draft report  claims that countries like Iran, North Korea and Libya may have acquired designs for an "advanced nuclear weapon", which could fit on their missles.

The problem with this "evidence" is that the Swiss government destroyed the "designs" (at the direction of the IAEA), so that it cannot be further analyzed with skeptical eyes.   In other words, the claims are based on evidence which no longer exists.

This is baseless propaganda, by a Washington think-tank.

**UPDATE 9:41am EDT** The NYTimes now has the same story at the top of their front page, but with sourcing from "US Intelligence sources", and significantly more reporting.

A few days ago, I diaried about McCain's music troubles -- switching campaign theme again, again, again.  

Today: The McCain Girls come out with a brand new --um....  hit.

"McCainiac".

Seems that John McCain is having still more music troubles, with another pulled anthem. Herein, I propose an anthem that would get even me dancing in the aisles.  

This is the second of a series of tracking Polls of the Kos community, asking a single simple question: should Barack Obama offer Hillary Clinton the Vice Presidential spot on the Democratic Party ticket?

This is the first of a series of tracking Polls of the Kos community, asking a single simple question: should Barack Obama offer Hillary Clinton the Vice Presidential spot on the Democratic Party ticket?

NPR and the Associated Press is reporting that Republican former Representative Bob Barr -- who oversaw the impeachment case against Bill Clinton -- has declared his intention to seek the Presidency as the candidate of the Libertarian party.

This will hit McCain from the Right, stripping any conservatives who might show up to vote on November 4th.

Developing...

This isn't an interesting diary: but, www.washingtonpost.com is returning "site not found" by http://wwz.websearch.verizon.net/ .

Specifically, it says  

Sorry, 'www.washingtonpost.com' does not exist or is not available.

That's the kind of thing I could imagine popping up when a site forgot to pay its bills, or its servers went down.

But I would think the Washington Post would be immune to either problem.  So, the loss is notable.

Here's hoping their back later today.

Unbelievable claim, attributed to news organization, but unsubstantiated by an actual link!

More below the fold!

Final Update:Read the updates below. Donna Brazile gave the rule wrong on "This Week."  The majority of Credential Committee membership is still up for grabs.  However, her last quote is relevant -- why would 48 states who followed the rules change them for two states who did not?

<hr>

Donna Brazile made a great argument that Hillary Clinton's threat to take the contest all the way to the Credentials Committee in Colorado in August, isn't going to happen. This contest will be over by July 4th.

Today in the WaPost, Hillary Clinton said:

I have no intention of stopping until we finish what we started and until we see what happens in the next 10 contests and until we resolve Florida and Michigan. And if we don't resolve it, we'll resolve it at the convention -- that's what credentials committees are for.

Donna Brazile answered that threat, right quick, on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos".  Quote, and numbers, below the fold.

James Carville comes back from the dead in an OpEd in the Washington Post to repeat his slam against Richardson, calling him deeply disloyal.

You see, Carville ---  just like George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld --- believes "loyalty is a cardinal virture", taking precedence over all other considerations.  Even when your boss is wrong, and it hurts America.  

Here's what loyalty to a Single Monolithic Leader (SML), like the Clintons are Demanding,  has brought Americans: an endless war, a collapsing economy, a city in ruins, and nobody responsible.  

Fine.  Hillary wants to be a Single Monolithic Leader, and cast Richardson as the man who Brought Her Down.  I'm good with that.

As long as she does her part, now, and hop up on that cross, take the nails, and let your candidacy die already.  We have a principled nominee, not another Bush-type loyalist,  we'd like to see win in November.

The McCain Campaign LIES in the Washington Post -- directly to the American people:

"It's a shame that the New York Times has chosen to smear John McCain like this," said Charles R. Black Jr., a top adviser to McCain's current presidential campaign and the head of a Washington lobbying firm called BKSH & Associates. "Neither Senator McCain nor the campaign will dignify false rumors and gossip by responding to them. John McCain has never done favors for anyone, not lobbyists or any special interest. That's a clear 24-year record."

LIES!  John McCain was at the center of the Savings and Loan Scandals of the 1980s, pushing favors for John Keating as one of the infamously corrupt "Keating Five".  

Why must John McCain lie to defend his record?  Because his record of corruption and cronyism, going back decades, is too big to be ignored.

Kossacks are readers. But more than this, they are critical readers and this is what powers dailykos.  Kossacks read articles from a variety of sources, find the best pieces.  They aggregate from several sources, masticate, summarize.  And then they write a diary which presents a point of view.

I can remember years ago, it the Rec list was simply filled all the time with NYTimes/WaPost/(blah)WSJ, all day, all the time.

That's become trite.  We still see the odd "Frank Rich is booooring" diary (which then starts a controversy, since 1% of Kossacks think Rich is boooring. The "Frank Rich is Amazing" diaries pass in a flurry every Sunday, unnoticed for their usualness), but there's little NYTimes/WaPost repetition.

We see blog-repeats.  These can valuable, as news breaks on HuffPost, TPM and RawStory all the time, often well before the MSM gets it; often the MSM doesn't get it at all.

But, for the strength of our growing DNA, what is valuable about dKos is the diversity of what we read, how we bring it together, and discuss it.

Raw Story broke this story yesterday.

Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Rep. Sylvestre Reyes (D-TX) sent an open letter to Bush, in which he blasts Bush on immunity for telecoms, and Presidential power-grabbing. My favorite line:

I, for one, do not intend to back down – not to the terrorists and not to anyone, including a President, who wants Americans to cower in fear.

 It's relevant today.  As Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell reminds us in in this WaPost OpEd this morning -- today (Feb 15) is the day that the FISA bill finally expires.  

Below are a few choice paragraphs, on what the Chair of the House Intel Committee has to say about that.

Updated: The warrantless wiretapping ("WW") will lapse, today.