I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions,"

Anyway, when the political shows came on I realized my anger has not dissipated one iota.  I can't even look at Maddow without an angry sense of betrayal.  Shuster makes me want to puke...along with Gregory and Barnicle (guess I should be happy Pig Matthews is on vacation.).

And listening to them talk, it still stuns me how they got away with their mean, sexist crap for so long.  It shouldn't have mattered but I think it did. I think the democratic party used the media to get rid of the woman.  Seriously, I feel that way so please don't tell me not to. If I could I would take back any support I ever gave to Dean; I would take back the vote I gave to Kerry.  These two men have betrayed millions of democratic women who supported them and their party for years

Today was the essay portion, and there was a question about a girl named Christine who was being prosecuted for her involvement with an escort service, and you had to figure out if certain testimony was admissible regarding a certain Governor Spitfire who allegedly spent tens of thousands of dollars for sex with the defendant.  I swear to God they asked this as an actual bar exam question.  You gotta love New Jersey sometimes.

On the multiple-choice section, the question I spent the most time on had to do with a subject near and dear to TL hearts, criminal procedure.  It went something like this:

A police officer pulls over a car after running a computerized check on the license plate and finding an outstanding arrest warrant on the owner.  After the driver confirms that he does, in fact, own the vehicle, the officer places him under arrest.  He then proceeds to search the car and finds a quantity of marijuana in the glove compartment and cocaine in the trunk.  Unbeknownst to the officer, however, the arrest warrant had actually been vacated by a judge and only remained in the computer system because of a clerk's error.

After the defendant is charged with drug crimes, his attorney moves to exclude the drugs seized from the vehicle.  The only argument offered by the prosecutor is that the search was incident to the arrest.

Based on the prosecutor's arguments, should the marijuana and/or cocaine be excluded from evidence?

What's everyone's take?

It's an interesting preemptive race baiting strategy: on three separate occasions BO put it out that Republicans will try to paint him as... i.e. someone they've never seen before on dollar  bills. (see below)
If Obama was reacting to the ad, than he's off mark. The ad attacked him for his celebrity, it didn't attack him because of his race. Here's the text and link:

"At three stops in the battleground state of Missouri, Obama told audiences that his opponent is trying to make voters "scared" of him because he doesn't look like past presidents -- an apparent reference to being black -- and has a "funny name."

"Nobody really thinks that Bush or McCain have a real answer for the challenges we face," Obama said Wednesday in Springfield, Missouri. "So what they're going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, he's not patriotic enough. He's got a funny name. You know, he doesn't look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills, you know. He's risky."

This is not the first time Obama has delivered this line. He made similar comments dating back to the Democratic presidential primary. But a McCain adviser said Davis reacted strongly because the McCain campaign said Obama was directly responding to a new McCain campaign ad.

The political ad, which the McCain campaign released Wednesday, features starlets Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. The ad calls Obama the "biggest celebrity in the world" and asks, "But is he ready to lead?"

Coming from the same people who ran an Op-Ed saying that Hillary's 3 am ad was a remake of Birth of a Nation, and pillaged her for her LBJ comments, this maybe shouldn't be a surprise. But the thought of another three months of incessant claims of racism makes me retch.

Recently, Obama also claimed that McCain's strategy would be to point out that Obama doesn't look like the other presidents on the currency. McCain responded by saying that Obama is playing the race card from the "bottom of the deck." The NYT editorial board isn't so fond of that either, apparently because 12 years ago or so one of OJ's lawyers said used the same phrase.

And I don't like it one little bit.

What I really don't get is how his supporters can continue to claim every last thing the GOP does contains a secret racist undercurrent because, if you so much as show a picture of Obama, you're "reminding people he's black."  I never understood how it's supposed to matter if you remind people he's black when every last person on the planet knows it, but you certainly can't claim that the merest reference is racist when Obama himself talks about it again and again and again.

catfish --

As we face the fundraising deadline at midnight tonight, I want you to know what we are up against.

Less than 24 hours ago, the McCain campaign launched the latest and lowest in a series of misleading attack ads.

This Karl Rove-style ploy misleads people about Barack's energy plan and even mocks his ability to inspire voters and bring Americans back into the political process.

Watchdogs in the media are calling McCain's accusations "bogus," "desperate," "wrong," "misleading," "ugly," "offensive," "reckless," and "a nasty turn into the gutter."

Some of McCain's own supporters agree. One senior Republican strategist quoted by the Washington Post called the latest ad a "wild swing at Obama" that reflects his campaign's "increasing bitterness" and the lack of "any coherent strategy to elect McCain."

A second email arrived this afternoon. Subject line: "The Low Road":

Alison --

A few hours ago John McCain, the same man who just months ago promised to run a "respectful campaign," said he is "proud" of his latest attack ad.

That's the one attacking your enthusiasm, comparing me to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, and making false claims about my energy plan.

Now, we're facing some serious challenges in this country -- our economy is struggling, energy costs are skyrocketing, and families don't have health care.

Given the seriousness of these issues, you'd think we'd be having a serious debate. But instead, John McCain is running an expensive, negative campaign against us. Each day brings a desperate new set of attacks.

And they're not just attacking me. They're attacking you.

But, it didn't cause much of a stir in the media that time.  Maybe this shows that the media is going to finally stop giving Obama a pass.

And, don't you think it is arrogant to create your own little "presidential" seal at the end of the primary?  How about all the recent comments he made in the mid east and europe where he "misspoke" and  said things like he looked forward to working with so and so in the future acting like he had already been elected?  That's pretty arrogant.  People who know Obama from his law school days have been quoted in the media as saying he has always been arrogant.

Arrogant is not racist.

Obama is sometimes arrogant.

I could give a cr@p if the president is arrogant if they do the job they are supposed to do.

CNN's other pundits didn't even respond. The discussion was about Obama's polling and the fact that he doesn't know how to attack back. But, Gergen said, both Clintons do.

what is that, the "mommy, mommy, he did it too" defense?

instead of providing something obama's about that might make someone interested in voting for him, I am attacked as a racist.