Alice Park and I have a story up on this topic here. It’s also coming soon to a newsstand near you. (Come on, admit it, there is something nice about reading stories from an actual magazine, right?)

Later today, John McCain will deliver a notable speech in the Greater Columbus Convention Center. Here is his conceit: “It is important that the candidates who seek to lead the country after the Bush Administration define their objectives and what they plan to achieve not with vague language but with clarity. So, what I want to do today …

Bush, to Politico:

“I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal,” he said in an interview for Yahoo! News and Politico magazine.

“I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander-in-chief playing golf,” he said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with

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The Edwards endorsement is going to get most of the ink this evening, but that’s not the one that the HRC people are upset about. It’s the decision of NARAL’s PAC to endorse Obama as well. Their pique was expressed in this urgent press release put out just now:

Clinton National Campaign Co-Chair Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones and

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• “Military analysts named in Times exposé appeared or were quoted more than 4,500 times on broadcast nets, cables, NPR” [MM]

• “College democrat representatives Lauren Wolfe and Awais Khaleel endorsed Barack Obama on Tuesday, using YouTube to unveil their preference.” [Threat Level]

• “Cole said that comparing Democratic

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The New Yorker’s Malcolm Gladwell has a very Gladwell-esque piece out about “simultaneous discovery”–the idea that lots of big thoughts are initially thought at roughly the same time by multiple people in different places. In 1611, for instance, four different people discovered sunspots in four different countries. Two Frenchmen created …

Maybe this whole “matinee idol” treatment has gone to Obama’s head:

To be totally honest, I did not get as worked up about this as, say, the Clinton campaign would like me to be. So I’ve been trying to imagine if — as the HRC folks might argue — it’s equivalent to Hillary calling a black reporter “boy.” Or if McCain saying the same

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Another update from Paul du Quenoy in Beirut — sent last night:

Hints of normal life are appearing. Yesterday and today more – I would even say most — shops were open. I walked down Joan of Arc Street toward the university. People were walking with real purpose instead of the nervous curiosity that possessed them for the previous

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On a conference call just now, Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, who runs the NRCC, was asked to diagnose the grim situation of the Republican Party in the wake of a third special election loss, this time in the 1st District of Mississippi. His answer:

You have to get beyond campaign tactics and take a long hard look: Is there something wrong

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