Joe Klein

This, from the Obama campaign:

Chicago, IL- The Obama for America campaign today announced that it will report raising at least $25 million from more than 100,000 people in the first quarter of 2007, with at least $23.5 million eligible to be spent in the Democratic primary.

“This overwhelming response, in only a few short weeks,

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I don’t often agree with Harold Meyerson on trade matters, but he’s dead right here. I’ve always believed that the growing Chinese middle class would demand, and eventually receive, basic human rights–the rule of law, a strong social safety net and, yes, the right to organize. That American businesses are lobbying against a modest …

Beginning a series: the senile confessions of baby boomers.
Episode 1: Keith Richards snorted his father.

Crooked Talk Express: I’m just boggled by McCain’s recent behavior. I mean, you might disagree with him on an issue, but he’s usually been honorable and intellectually honest about his position. No longer. This is the sort of flagrant, Bushian baloney-slicing that he ran against in 2000. Is it his faltering campaign? Is it age? It’s sad …

This is fabulous news from the Supreme Court. Let’s hope it lifts some of the remaining diffidence in DC regarding actual solutions–as in, carbon taxes or cap-and-trade programs, or a bit of both.

Lots of speculation in the ether about my disagreement with Andrea Mitchell over what David Petraeus told the Republican Caucus about the surge. She claimed that Petraeus told Republican Senators the surge would show results by September. I said that couldn’t possibly be true…and was about to say more, but stopped when I realized that …

The New York Times piece today about the new generation of Al Qaeda leaders has this quote from Rob Richer, formerly of the CIA:

“The jihadis returning from Iraq are far more capable than the mujahedeen who fought the Soviets ever were,” said Robert Richer, who was associate director of operations in 2004 and 2005 for the C.I.A.

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This excellent piece by Edward Wong, the story of the casual assasination of a Sunni woman, is heartbreaking. It speaks to the difficulties in stopping the ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods, even though the Shiite militias have gone to ground. Note that the Iraqi troops involved are Kurds, not Arabs. Kurds are not native Arab-speakers, …

Direct from the Judean Hills, a discussion middle east peace prospects. Is it possible that the United States is actually discouraging the Israelis from talking to the Syrians? (Of course it is.)

Also from the Judean Hills, an exclusive interview with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Update: They don’t want American politicians …

Today’s story in the Hill about John McCain’s flirtation with joining the Democratic Party certainly is astonishing, and yet no so. If I remember correctly, John Weaver was in a totally disgusted, party-switching mood himself around that time, and did some work for the DLC. (The presence of Bull Moose Marshall Wittman–who pointedly …

The violence in Tal Afar is all the more depressing because that city was the site of the most recent, pre-Baghdad experiment in counter-insurgency tactics. The estimable scholar-warrior Col H.R. McMaster led the effort, and Bush praised it at the time…and it fell apart as soon as the Americans left.

The point is, as I’ve said before: …

Even over here in the middle east, you can feel the zeitgeist gently shifting–Obama ebbing, for the moment, at least in medialand. First, there was the Senator’s lightweight performance at the Las Vegas Health forum, recounted by the Magisterial Moderator Tumulty. Then there was the Ron Brownstein column that I linked to yesterday. And …

Ron Brownstein’s excellent column about Barack Obama’s blue-collar deficit has been raising a fair amount of dust in the blogosphere–and rightly so. This is a particularly nice insight:

It’s not much of an oversimplification to say that the blue-collar Democrats tend to see elections as an arena for defending their interests, and the

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