That settles it: Newt's made up his mind to run for president, or he wouldn't be spreading this little story of his soul's redemption around the national media, would he? (Kind of traditional for Republican candidates to take a quick run through the All-Purpose Drive-Thru Jesus-Lovin' Sin Washer!)

Setting the stage for his entry into the presidential race, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., gave a radio interview to be broadcast today with Focus on the Family's James Dobson, in which Gingrich for the first time publicly acknowledged cheating on his first and second wives.

"There were times when I was praying and when I felt I was doing things that were wrong. But I was still doing them," Gingrich said during the interview. "I look back on those as periods of weakness and periods that I'm not only not proud of, but I would deeply urge my children and grandchildren not to follow in my footsteps."

What, you mean asking for a divorce while your wife's recovering from cancer surgery, Newt? You mean there was something wrong with that?

Gingrich argued that the Clinton case was different from his personal transgressions.

"The president of the United States got in trouble for committing a felony in front of a sitting federal judge," he said, arguing that Clinton had "deliberately committed perjury."

Because he had been through a divorce, Gingrich said, he knew the importance of telling the truth during a deposition.

"The standard is: In a court of law should somebody who's popular get away with perjury?" Gingrich said. "And I drew a line in my mind that said, 'Even though I run the risk of being deeply embarrassed, and even though at a purely personal level I am not rendering judgment on another human being, as a leader of the government trying to uphold the rule of law, I have no choice except to move forward and say that you cannot accept felonies and you cannot accept perjury in your highest officials."

Even though Bill Clinton did not commit perjury, and Gingrich knows it.

It's worth noting that Gingrich did not limit his comments about Clinton and the Democrats to legalistic allegations of perjury.

Constantly espousing family values even while he carried on an affair, Gingrich linked his party to wholesome family values and Democrats to, well, something else.

During the 1992 Democratic National Convention, Gingrich said, "Woody Allen having nonincest with a nondaughter to whom he was a nonfather because they were a nonfamily fits the Democratic platform perfectly."

In 1994, Gingrich linked Democrats to Susan Smith, a woman who had murdered her two children in 1991.

Even though it turned out she'd been molested by her stepfather, a South Carolina state GOP executive, of course.

"I think that the mother killing the two children in South Carolina vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting and how much we need to change things," he said. "The only way you get change is to vote Republican."

I really hope Gingrich does run. Because there's a question I've wanted to ask him for years (Hill staffers are such gossips!): "Can you confirm or deny the allegations that, during the same period you were attacking Bill Clinton for adultery, you were serviced by your employee/mistress (soon to be Wife No. 3) in the front seat of your car while waiting in the parking lot of your kids's school?"

Because I've heard that story for years and inquiring minds want to know. I mean, that's some real family values, right there. Maybe we should call Ken Starr to look into it.

Are the Obama people really that dumb? They were "surprised," "caught off guard" by the massive dirtstorm unleashed on healthcare reform?

These are the geniuses of 11-dimensional chess? Puhleeze. I think they've started to believe their own press. Obama the Healer, Obama the Post-Racial Lincoln. What a bunch of damned dopes.

Dick Polman, the Philadelphia Inquirer political reporter, is also astounded at just how unprepared Team Obama was for the attacks on healthcare reform:

During the 1993-4 health care reform battle, the Clinton White House was outmaneuvered by the Republican right and their corporate allies, who swayed the electorate with all kinds of devious hyperbole. And, more recently, in the 2004 presidential race, John Kerry and his advisers sat back and did nothing for three crucial summer weeks, absolutely convinced that voters would never believe the Swift Boat attacks on his Vietnam record. That strategy worked out pretty well.

And now we have the Obama people, waking up to the idea that maybe it's not politically wise to sit mute and allow themselves to be tarred as fascists who would euthanize granny, ration health care, and slash Medicare benefits. (It's priceless to hear the Republicans portraying themselves as the defenders of Medicare, given the fact that, if they had been in charge back in 1965, they never would have enacted Medicare in the first place. But I digress.)

The Republican right understands the power of the visceral; it knows how to stoke emotions at the expense of civility. This is not exactly a fresh observation, yet it's amazing how flat-footed Democrats seem always to discover it anew. They seem forever convinced that the power of high ideals should be sufficient for victory - that, in the present case, Americans should simply be convinced, on the merits, that health care reform is preferable to the dysfunctional status quo. As Howard Paster, Clinton's health care guy in 1993, told The Times this morning, "The expectation (among the Obama people) was that things have gotten so bad in the last 16 years that there would be a consensus on the need to act this time."

But that's not how the other team plays the game. Indeed, numerous Democratic strategists and commentators have been trying to make this point for a long time. A couple years ago, for instance, radio host and ex-California Democratic chairman Bill Press offered this advise to his brethren: "In politics, if somebody slaps you on the cheek, you punch him in the nose. Then you punch him in the gut. Then you kick him in the groin. Then you crack a chair over his head. Then, just to make sure, you jump up and down on top of him with both feet...The only way to win is to fight back. Hard and tough. If they don't, they don't deserve to win."

Press was characteristically a tad over the top, but his basic point was that Democrats should stop being surprised to learn that politics ain't beanbag. This is not to suggest that Obama should retaliate by retailing lies equal in virulence to those being spewed by his opponents; if he was to conduct himself as his opponents are doing, he would be promptly attacked for failing to change the tone in Washington.

His best option is to do what he probably should have done months ago: find an attractively repeatable health reform pitch that can fit on a bumper sticker, something that can appeal to positive emotions. (Perhaps if Obama had done that during the spring, he could have at least partially preempted the nabobs of negativity.) Indeed, there are reports today that Obama will now pitch his plan as a vehicle for ending unfair insurance practices, for protecting the millions of Americans who have pre-existing health conditions.

Maybe a positive emotional pitch can still work - unless it is too little, too late, and insufficient weaponry for an alley fight.

While talking about RNC Chairman Mike Duncan's promise to go negative on Barack Obama Thursday night on "Verdict," conservative dinosaur Pat Buchanan made the astute observation that the GOP's only shot at winning this year is to trash Obama for his "associations" with controversial figures, and raise doubts among the electorate about choosing an "exotic" (code word for black) guy. Luckily, Tanya Acker was there to call him out on it right away and make him look like the racist "exotic" fool that he is. Buchanan's stammering definition of exotic is equally as absurd.

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Buchanan: The only way the Republicans can win this -- when everyone wants to throw the Republicans out -- is to raise questions, raise doubts about the alternative. They're gonna use his associations, and they're gonna use his statements, his elitism, they're gonna use the fact that hes exotic. That's what's gonna happen.

Acker: Exotic? What does exotic mean? Is exotic code for black? I dont understand what exotic means.

It's pretty fascinating to watch someone like Pat Buchanan opine on the 2008 Presidential race with Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee. It's almost seems at times like Pat is living in a different country, in a different era. One which doesn't resemble 21st century America, and one in which he undoubtedly would feel more comfortable.

Because the media over the last six months or so has made the primary races the be all and end all of the news, creating narratives to make the horse race seem closer than it was or piling on the cream to encourage the pie fight (if you'll excuse the mixed metaphors), it's easy to not realize that the country is, as a whole, swinging back to the left side of the political spectrum as a response to how far right we've gone in the last decade or so.

David Sirota has documented this swing in his new book The Uprising and he sat down with Stephen Colbert to discuss it:

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DS: The Uprising is not about any candidate. The Uprising is about seeing candidates and politicians as vehicles for a movement. People want…

SC: Okay, what candidate is the vehicle for the movement? Let’s…okay, it’s the people, the people swell up underneath the candidate and they inflate him like a political power balloon. Who’s inflating faster?

DS: It’s your state legislators; it’s your city council people; it’s your governor…

SC: I wouldn’t want those people as President. I’ve met those people…

DS: That’s the whole point. We’re led to believe, by people like you, that the President is the only place…the presidential campaign is the only place where change really happens. And the point is that change happens all over the place. When I went out and reported this book, again, I met with people who are unionizing workers in Seattle. I met with people who are forming a third party in New York. I met with people again on the border. These are people who say change is happening far away from the presidential race.

SC: The New York Times—and I’m seeing why—even the NY Times has called you “a populist rabble-rouser”, okay? Are you a Che Guevara? Are you a Che Guevara for our age? Do you look forward to a day where college students wear your face on their shirt and don’t know what you did?

Hillary Clinton's speech transcript

Reuters:

Hillary Clinton won the Democratic nominating contest in Puerto Rico on Sunday, but still badly trails front-runner Barack Obama as he draws closer to clinching the party's presidential nomination.
Clinton's win in Puerto Rico, a territory where residents are not allowed to vote in the November election, gave her more fuel for her argument that she has won more popular votes and is the best Democrat to face Republican John McCain.

But the results pushed Obama closer to the magic number of 2,118 delegates needed to become the nominee, and the Illinois senator already has turned his attention to a general election fight with McCain.

Two contests on Tuesday in Montana and South Dakota, with 31 pledged delegates to the August nominating convention at stake, conclude the voting in the Democratic presidential race.

According to CNN, the delegate count is 38 for Clinton; 17 for Obama.

Rep. Rush Holt’s (D-N.J.) Emergency Assistance for Secure Elections Act seemed like the kind of bill that should sail through Congress. The legislation would help local governments pay for paper trails and audits for electronic voting machines, adding safeguards to potential recounts and a layer of integrity to the election process.

Indeed, Holt’s bill was so obviously worthwhile, when it came for a vote in the House Administration Committee a few weeks ago, even House Republicans voted for it — unanimously.

It was a very encouraging development. Five years ago, Holt nearly passed a similar bill, before it was blocked by far-right lawmakers. That the bill cleared committee unanimously suggested the elections in 2008 would not be marred by some of the problems we’ve seen in recent cycles. Finally, something everyone could agree on.

Or not.

[T]wo weeks later, those same Republican members voted against moving the bill to the House floor. It would have taken a two-thirds vote to push the bill to the floor; with most House Republicans opposed, the bill didn’t make it that far. [...]

The result: The elections in November will likely be marred by the same accusations of fraud and error involving voting machines that arose in the aftermath of the 2004 presidential race.

And we'll know who tried to help -- and who got in the way.

Attytood's Will Bunch asks Senator Obama the question that's on everyone's mind:

Tonight I had an opportunity to ask Barack Obama a question that is on the minds of many Americans, yet rarely rises to the surface in the great ruckus of the 2008 presidential race -- and that is whether an Obama administration would seek to prosecute officials of a former Bush administration on the revelations that they greenlighted torture, or for other potential crimes that took place in the White House.

Obama said that as president he would indeed ask his new Attorney General and his deputies to "immediately review the information that's already there" and determine if an inquiry is warranted -- but he also tread carefully on the issue, in line with his reputation for seeking to bridge the partisan divide. He worried that such a probe could be spun as "a partisan witch hunt." However, he said that equation changes if there was willful criminality, because "nobody is above the law."

Back in October, shortly after he endorsed Hillary Clinton, General Wesley Clark told Matt Stoller that Senator Clinton would pursue investigations as well:

Matt Stoller: So you think Senator Clinton as President will do those investigations?

Wes Clark: Yes.

Matt Stoller: And you think Congress should continue those investigations once Bush is out of office?

Wes Clark: Absolutely.

Words are nice, but I want some firm commitments. Who's with me?

Just to ensure it doesn't get overlooked, Bunch's question was framed in terms of the recent revelation that President Bush personally approved the meeting of his principals in which they discussed the intimate details of how we would torture suspected terrorists. If you haven't already, please follow John's action alert from yesterday and make your voice heard. Because this is what inevitably happens when our country is flippant about torture.

HorsesAss: French aerospace enthusiast, John McCain.

Daily Howler: During the 2004 Republican convention in New York, a certain saint threw himself a birthday bash. Check out the guest list.

Beat the Press: Can't the media find any economists who don't think that handing hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to the big banks and the incredibly rich people who own and manage them is a good idea?

Lance Mannion: The war that will never be lost as long as we stay there until the sun dies.

HOLY CRAP: Bad Moon Rising: A true story of Washington gone mad...Unless he's going to actually govern, Jesus is not relevant to the presidential race, but religious pandering has always worked...Souled Out...Theocracy Rejected...Southern Baptist Ethics...Interfaith Alliance Media Roundup...Randy Forbes and Military Chaplains...Seven sensationalist sins...Sam Harris on religion and modernity...Pot pourri

Roger Ailes: Obammunists

Intel Dump: 3 to 5 round bursts

agitprop: Conservapedia page of the day

Common Cause Blog: On public financing in the presidential race

The Pump Handle: The wrong approach to meat

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: Top 100 Economics Blogs, No Capital, PurpleMinded, Unspam Technologies

Leftopia: Reality Bites (Back)

The Newshoggers: Nuke policy blog tank - Getting the word out

SeaBird Chronicles: Interesting, amusing, and frightening quotes on current events and the presidential race

Listening Post: With a dissatisfied electorate clamoring for less of the same, the candidates are stumbling over each other in a frantic race to determine who will become known as the changiest of them all.

Talking Points Memo: What, exactly, is Bill Clinton supposed to have said that is so 'venomous?'

'Just World News' with Helena Cobban: Gaza scenarios