If John McCain were a Democrat, his campaign would have effectively ended today. His entire “national security” credentials would be dust when, as cited on the front page, he stated that Al Qaida wanted to tip the election against him and that “I know they pay attention because of the intercepts we have of their communications” (emphasis added)

With this statement, John McCain crossed a line and left only two possibilities: first, he is willing to flat out lie about the war on terror or that we should take him at his word and that he is willing to leak highly classified information in order to impact the election.

"Right now is a good time to be in the Military"

These were the words of a Naval Captain whose job includes training Navy SEALs (and is a former SEAL himself) to whom I was speaking yesterday. While at first I had a temptation to raise an eyebrow, thinking of stop-loss orders and multiple deployments or wonder if I was being recruited, instead we had a conversation and I quickly realized how much we agreed.

Considering how close the 'Flag Burning' amendment is, and how way too many Democratic Senators are on board, I decided to send Senator Feinstein a note.

Dear Senator,

In the mid to late 1970s, the heavily Jewish town of Skokie, Illinois was subject to controversy when American Nazis attempted to march through the town. After much litigation, it was determined that, in fact the Nazis did, in fact, have the right to their hateful speech. Nowadays, hate groups, including those same Nazis, Stormfront and the Ku Klux Klan continue that tradition with gatherings and marches where they show their vile and hateful presence to the rest of the country. Quite a few people arguing for the protection of the US flag argue just as loudly for their right to carry the Flag of the Confederacy in celebration of an  attempt to leave the US Flag behind.

And I'm glad that they do.

It is hard to discuss same-sex marriage with a social conservative without it eventually working around to the phrase: `slippery slope.' The idea being that even if one were to be convinced on the advisability of allowing adults of the same sex to marry, what might it lead to next? And the fact is, same-sex marriage is rightly put into the category of a slippery slope phenomenon; but it is much nearer to the end than the beginning of the long slide.

One of the most oft discussed changes to the institute of marriage was the outlawing of miscegenation laws in 1967, with the result that in the United States, marriage was no longer defined as being between a man and a woman of the same race. Likewise, historically, many religions have required both individuals getting married to be of the same religion (with conversion for one of the participants if necessary.)

My work has sent me to spend this week in DC. I've been here quite a few times but have never managed to make it down to the Mall. This time, however, I had a bit more inspiration than the normal opportunity to view fake roman architecture. Tonight, I had a couple of Senators' offices to visit.

One of my coworkers is a one issue voter, and we all which issue that means: choice/abortion. When I was discussing the last election with him, he immediately, but calmly, explained that he just couldn't abide the "murder of millions of babies" every year. `Privacy' as an issue just wasn't going to convince him of anything... ever. However, at the end of our discussion, he had a troubled look on his face and his last words were "I'm going to have to think about that." The reason was that I was able to change the discussion from something that he could interpret as "Pro-abortion vs Anti-abortion" (which was how he really wanted to interpret the issue) to "Pro-Choice vs anti-choice"

Inspired by the administration's brilliant "Unitary Executive" legal strategy, the Republican congress needs to take a serious look at my `Mind Your Own F---ing Business Legislative theory. MYOFBL legal theory states that because Article I of the US Constitution gives ALL legislative power to the Legislative Branch, any law seeking to diminish or alter this legislative process is no more constitutional than laws that diminish the powers of the Executive to act as Commander-In-Chief.

For example, suppose that a congressman wishes to make laws based upon a votes-go-to-the-highest-bidder process. Some may argue that the laws against bribery would make this illegal. However, this argument would be in error.