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One was forwarded to me from a Clinton county chair. The other was from a person who claimed to be a former Obama supporter, but a little work with Google revealed she had been posting pro-Clinton comments for several months on websites covering the campaign.

They both repeat the Obama/Osama crap, and the "madrassa" charges. And there is the conclusion that Obama is a mole whose intention is to make a Muslim revolution in the U.S.

There is no place in our campaign, or any campaign, for this kind of politics. A volunteer county coordinator made the mistake of forwarding an outrageous and offensive chain e-mail. This was wholly unauthorized and we were totally unaware of it. Let me be clear: No one should be engaging in this. We are asking this volunteer county coordinator to step down and are making it clear to every person involved in our campaign that this will not be tolerated.

A county chair for Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign has been caught sending an e-mail casting aspersions on Sen. Barack Obama's religion, and today, the Clinton campaign asked the person, a volunteer, to leave the campaign.

Congressional Democrats have consistently argued that their higher spending level--$21 billion in FY 2008—is a small fraction of the overall federal budget.  But when you spread this out over 10 years, the difference amounts to $450 billion….hardly a small sum of money. 

To put this into perspective, this $450 billion could amount to: 

• A six-year repeal of the AMT,
• Twice the “cost” of extending the child tax credit for another 10 years,
• 91% of the “cost” of making the death tax permanent,
• 53% of the “cost” of making the individual income tax rates permanent,
• 11 times the amount of money needed to make marriage penalty relief permanent,
• Twice the amount needed to make the capital gains and dividend tax relief permanent, or
• Nearly the same amount as the non-interest portion of the Social Security surplus over 5 years.

"Bloggers can give you 24-hour coverage of the convention, of the delegate meetings, of the caucuses, of the parties,” Mr. Rosenberg said. “Everything that goes on, the bloggers can be there to cover.” This includes speeches not delivered in prime time or too late for East Coast print deadlines.

“Bloggers have shown that they have access and they have reach, and their words can be just as influential as those of traditional media,” he added. “They have a very strong connection with their readers. They can sway elections and move message and that’s something we want to take advantage of.”

"Just what kind of girl do you think I am?"

"Mr. Clinton was seated next to the Queen of Spain, on her right, and Mr. Oscar de la Renta was on her left. To the left of Mr. de la Renta was Ms. Cruz, and to the right of Mr. Clinton was Anna Wintour . . . The real highlight of the evening was watching the former president eventually forsake the editor of Vogue as a dinner partner and switch his seat with Mr. de la R so that he could be seated next to the movie star."

After being presented with a medallion from Queen Sofia, Clinton told the audience, "I was trying to figure out exactly why I would receive this award tonight. It may be because, even though I'm not of Spanish descent, I've seen every one of Penelope Cruz's movies - and I liked them all."

Kuhn: I don’t know to what extent you have been briefed or been able to take a look at the NIE report that came out yesterday ...
 
Huckabee: I’m sorry?

Kuhn: The NIE report, the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. Have you been briefed or been able to take a look at it —

Huckabee: No.

Kuhn: Have you heard of the finding?

Huckabee: No.

Huckabee — who raised his hand at a debate last May when asked which candidates disbelieved the theory of evolution — asked this time why there is such a fascination with his beliefs.

"I believe God created the heavens and the Earth," he said at a news conference with Iowa pastors who murmured, "Amen."

"I wasn't there when he did it, so how he did it, I don't know," Huckabee said.

But he expressed frustration that he is asked about it so often, arguing with the questioner that it ultimately doesn't matter what his personal views are.

“When confronted with a serious question about his lack of foreign policy experience, Mike Huckabee makes a joke. The security of Americans and our allies is no laughing matter. What Americans are looking for in their next president is a commander in chief, not a Court Jester,” added Bob Haus, Executive Director of Iowa Friends of Fred Thompson.

I spoke to Rasmussen about Huckabee's rapid rise yesterday, and our chat can be found here. Key quote: "Had anybody else resonated with GOP primary voters, this would have been impossible. What Mike Huckabee is doing is validating the dream of Thompson’s supporters -  that there was a vacuum or void in the race, but Thompson didn’t grab it for whatever reason."

His campaign headquarters in downtown Des Moines is expanding into another office in the same building. The new space is three times bigger to accommodate the surging crew of volunteers.

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, a one-time Southern Baptist preacher who's seen his standing in Iowa surge with Christian evangelicals' support, wouldn't say Tuesday whether he thought Mormonism — rival Mitt Romney's religion — was a cult.

"I'm just not going to go off into evaluating other people's doctrines and faiths. I think that is absolutely not a role for a president," the former Arkansas governor said during a week in which religion has become an important issue in the Republican presidential race, particularly in Iowa.

A significant paradigm shift has taken place in the U.S. economy over the last quarter century. During that time, the U.S. economy has been in prosperity 95 percent of the time and in recession only 5 percent. That is, the United States has had a grand total of only five negative GDP quarters in the past 25 years. In the prior two decades, the U.S. economy was mired in recession about a third of the time.

The brutal truth about the holiday of Hanukah, which begins this year on December 5^th, is that it is intensely and incurably politically incorrect. The heroes of the Hanukah story—the Maccabees—were uncompromising zealots and fundamentalists, vigorous representatives of the Judean “religious right” of the Second Century B.C.  

There was nothing tolerant or relativistic about them: they risked their lives to take back the Holy Temple in Jerusalem from the Hellenistic multi-culturalists who had installed a variety of idols and pagan gods to provide worship alternatives. The very name Hanukah comes from the Hebrew for “dedication” or “consecration”: it’s about purification and re-commitment on a national and personal level, and standing up to misguided alien cultures, no matter how popular, seductive and powerful.

This year, when the Jewish holiday arrives nearly three weeks before Christmas, there’s a good chance to keep its bracing and challenging themes appropriately distinct from the generalized seasonal cheer.