“As president, I set the mission,” says Barack Obama. “The mission that I will set for the generals is to bring this war to a close.” Sounds simple enough. But for some reason, no one in Washington, especially in the political press, is treating it simply. Why? Well for starters, Obama has been very careful [...]

Drat that darn protective pool! Now they’ve spoiled the surprise: After your poolers pulled away from Montana Technical College, home of the Diggers, at around 5:20, the bus made its way up toward old, historic Butte and pulled up to the Clark Chateau Museum, a mansion from Butte’s glory days. The pool was told repeatedly [...]

Our Troops Need You I’m taking a week off, maybe two, so I probably won’t be blogging much. Unless, of course… Have a terrific 4th of July weekend.

Maybe this is the new message discipline they have been promising with Steve Schmidt at the helm. The McCain campaign has issued a statement on Obama’s comments today that–unlike the RNC’s–is somewhat consistent with what they were saying yesterday: ARLINGTON, VA — U.S. Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign today released the following statement from McCain [...]

Just yesterday, the McCain campaign was criticizing Barack Obama for not changing his troop withdrawal plan for Iraq: Representative Eric Cantor: “My concern has to do with Barack Obama’s National Co-Chair Claire McCaskill’s statements on the news shows this week, responding to a question about whether Barack Obama was going to be changing his Iraq [...]

John McCain and Barack Obama are both spending the 4th in the western part of the States (Phoenix and Montana). I’m sure it means nothing. Meanwhile, on this sort of fake work day, I leave you for the long weekend with some thoughts from a fake worker: First, you wake up and immediately eat an [...]

Michael Weisskopf and I have a story in the next newsstand issue of TIME about John McCain’s multi-thousand dollar dice hobby and Barack Obama’s formative poker playing game in Illinois. Incidentally, here is the only public picture I have found that shows McCain at the tables, the work of an anonymous SMS blogger with a [...]

More flip-flopping? Another move to the center? There was much clucking in the media today over the significance of Barack Obama’s reported refusal to fist-bump a little boy yesterday in Ohio yesterday. The brouhaha (which was quickly picked up in a mass e-mail by the Republican National Committee) started with this excerpt from a pool [...]

I suppose it can’t be an “underplayed” story if it was on A1, but I’m still a little surprised this didn’t stir up more discussion today: More than 900 cases alleging that government contractors and drugmakers have defrauded taxpayers out of billions of dollars are languishing in a backlog that has built up over the [...]