You may recall the above town hall video of Kansas Republican Lynn Jenkins laughing at a young, uninsured mother and telling her to grow up and get health insurance. Jenkins may be best known for her stunning gaffe in which she talked of the GOP searching for their "great white hope."

Seeing a major opportunity for victory in 2010, Democratic State Senator Laura Kelly has decided to throw her hat in the ring and has announced she will take on Lynn Jenkins:

Kansas State Sen. Laura Kelly, a Topeka Democrat, said Friday she'll run to unseat Republican U.S. Rep. Lynn Jenkins next year.

Democrats like their chances. It's a district that's gone both ways in the past few election cycles, and Jenkins, in her first-term, has had a gaffe or two. (Remember Jenkins' "great white hope" comment from two months ago?)

"Kansas families in the 2nd district deserve a representative who will energetically stand up for their most important concerns - their pocketbooks, their jobs, and their health care - not sit back and block progress in Washington," Kelly said in her campaign announcement.

"In the last few months people from all across the district have been urging me to run for Congress. They are tired of leaders tied to a do-or-die narrow partisan agenda that has failed our country for the last eight years. Saying NO is not enough in these challenging times. People deserve common sense answers and real solutions," she said. Read on...

Lynn Jenkins has been nothing short of an embarrassment to her state and our country and is extremely vulnerable. Click here to visit Laura Kelly's website, and if you like what you see and want to show her some love, donate if you can. Jenkins ranks near the top of the right wing nutjob heap -- let's send her packing.

Texas Republican Pete Olson probably figured he could get away with using a young child as a propaganda tool at a recent town hall meeting -- but he was in for a big surprise.

Republican Congressman Olson (R-TX) tells the townhall about a mother who was turned away by the free market doctors for her unborn child's heart defect. She was denied by the free market doctors but persisted and was able to find a specialized doctor and got a very delicate operation and a heart transplant 17 days after he was born. Olson then claims that the public option would have denied him the needed health care and he would have died! After being challenged he abruptly ended the discussion. Watch as he is challenged, and clueless as to what to say.

As Olson spews out his talking points, people in the crowd repeatedly point out to him that it wasn't the government who turned this poor child away, it was the insurance companies. Olson was absolutely gobsmacked when people started calling him out on his obvious gaffe as he stood there looking like a deer caught in the headlights. It’s so encouraging to see some town hall video from health care reform supporters giving these GOP shills a taste of their own medicine!

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It's obvious that the marching orders have been given for Bushies to come forward and justify torture ever since we saw Dick Cheney do just that. This time it was Condi's turn, and she sounds just as wacky. Every time she opens her mouth she digs herself deeper in the muck. Here's her latest incoherent explanation over her remarks about the president's power to make waterboarding legal or not:

Rice: I said at one point that it was ahhh, given, right that if the president authorized it, it was legal. This was not a "Nixon/Frost" moment. What I ontended to say or what I meant to say about this is: The president said I won't authorize anything that is illegal. It's not that because he authorized it, it was legal...

And she has to even justify her position to a fourth-grader:

Days after telling students at Stanford University that waterboarding was legal "by definition if it was authorized by the president," former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice was pressed again on the subject yesterday by a fourth-grader at a Washington school.

... Then Misha Lerner, a student from Bethesda, asked: What did Rice think about the things President Obama's administration was saying about the methods the Bush administration had used to get information from detainees?

"Let me just say that President Bush was very clear that he wanted to do everything he could to protect the country. After September 11, we wanted to protect the country," she said. "But he was also very clear that we would do nothing, nothing, that was against the law or against our obligations internationally. So the president was only willing to authorize policies that were legal in order to protect the country."

Waterboarding is and always has been torture, so it was not legal. The above clip includes video of her talk at Stanford, which started this whole incident:

“[President Bush] was also very clear that we would do nothing – nothing – that was against the law or against our obligations internationally,” Rice said May 3rd at a Washington school.

And ended with her saying, again, that she didn't make a "Nixon/Frost" type gaffe.

Well, what should we call it then?

Andrea Mitchell said that she may have been bitten by an insect playing golf and was having a allergic reaction in her eye, so that's why her face looks swollen. But her words are just gibberish, and you can't help wondering if those words and their strangled reasoning are causing Condi's discomfort. Is their endgame to just try and move polling a few more points in their favor against torture investigations?

I was looking at that awful video of Sarah Palin babbling cluelessly while that turkey geeker lops off bloody heads in the background, and I realized... I've seen that guy before. So I looked through my photo archives and sure enough, he's ruined several other Republican photo-ops:

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John Murtha stuck his foot in his mouth last week when he told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

"There is no question that western Pennsylvania is a racist area."

Looking to take advantage of the gaffe and impute Murtha's comments onto Obama, McCain brought it up during an event in Western Pennsylvania Tuesday. Unfortunately for him, he couldn't have botched it any worse.

"You know, I think you may have noticed that Senator Obama's supporters have been saying some pretty nasty things about Western Pennsylvania lately," McCain told the audience in the town of Moon Township. "And you know, I couldn't agree with them more." I couldn't disagree with you. I couldn't agree with you more than the fact that Western Pennsylvania is the most patriotic, most god-loving, most, most patriotic part of America, and this is a great part of the country."

Oops. The look on the faces of the people behind him is classic.

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Oops. At least The Todd was there to set her straight.

Things took a turn toward the hypothetically ugly Monday when Sarah Palin reacted to what she thought was a protest during a rally at the Richmond International Raceway in Virginia.

Supporters at the far reaches of the audience apparently couldn’t hear what Palin was saying, and began chanting “Louder, louder!” the Associated Press reports; the chant spread from there.

Perhaps too used to seeing protests at this point — and, in her defense, it’s not often that supporters interrupt the candidate they’ve come to see in this fashion — Palin responded, “I hope those protesters have the courage and honor to give veterans thanks for their right to protest.”

...or: McCain digs his hole deeper.

During a presser in the cheese aisle of a supermarket, John McCain denied messing up the Anbar Awakening time line and argued that the "surge" really doesn't mean what everyone (including himself) used to think it meant.

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Transcript via hilzoy:

McCain: "First of all, a surge is really a counterinsurgency strategy, and it's made up of a number of components. And this counterinsurgency was initiated to some degree by Colonel McFarland in Anbar province relatively on his own. When I visited with him in December of 2006, he had already initiated that strategy in Ramadi by going in and clearing and holding in certain places. That is a counterinsurgency. And he told me at that time that he believed that that strategy, which is, quote, the surge, part of the surge, would be successful. So then, of course, it was very clear that we needed additional troops in order to carry out this counterinsurgency."

So now McCain is redefining what the word "surge" actually means -- the one thing I thought liberals and conservatives agreed on.

That the McCain campaign feels the need to fight back so hard (and laughably) against this is quite telling. They tried to issue a flippant clarification Monday night when the initial gaffe occurred, but that obviously proved insufficient. I think they realize that this one cut especially deep.

Think about it: By screwing up the time line, McCain not only undermined his foreign policy "expertise," making himself look foolish and confused in the process, he completely undermined the rationale for the surge in the first place. For years war opponents have argued that the United States' only role should be to help the Iraqis fight for their own country. The Anbar Awakening was that fight. The Sunni sheiks rose up and, with the help of US forces, started routing al Qaeda -- all before the surge was even announced.

In other words, this gaffe is especially damaging because it proves quite poignantly that the surge is not the success McCain and Republicans are tying to make it out to be. Do you hear that? It's the sound of McCain's only hopes of winning the presidency swirling down the drain.

Hilzoy adds:

McCain is arguing as follows: find some X, of which what we normally think of as the surge is a part. Define all of X as "the surge". Argue that since X is responsible for some development Y, a development which preceded what we normally think of as the surge, "the surge", understood to mean X, is responsible for Y. This is a delightful argument, and it yields all kinds of fun results.

See what fun scenarios you can come up with!

* Typo corrected.

As C&L and many others have reported last night, CBS news had a huge scoop Tuesday night on John McCain, because he falsely claimed that the surge was responsible for the "Sunni Awakening in Anbar." That is FALSE. The Sunnis changed positions before the surge was ever discussed so---McCain once again makes a major mistake on the one issue his campaign is running on---The Iraq war.

However, CBS probably violated its own rules (Standards and Practice) by altering the video of Katie Couric's interview with McCain that left out his major blunder on this issue and then broadcast it on our airwaves. CBS should not paste together separate answers from different questions to make it appear like an answer was fluid. It was completely taken out of context. I understand that a fair amount of editing has to be done, but what they did failed to meet the legitimacy test.

Here's what happened. ON CBS Nightly News, Katie Couric started off the segment with question #3 of her interview from their website version of the McCain interview:

Couric QUESTION #3: Senator McCain, Sen. Obama says, while the increased number of U.S. troops contributed to increased security in Iraq, he also credits the Sunni awakening and the Shiite government going after militias. And says that there might have been improved security even without the surge. What's your response to that?

They then edited out his major gaffe on "the surge" and inserted his partial answer to question #1 and then spliced in a partial answer to question # 3 to make it appear to be a consistent response.

Q1 Sen. Obama has indicated that by his failure to acknowledge the success of the surge, that he would rather lose a war than lose a campaign.

Q3 Thanks to General Petraeus, our leadership, and the sacrifice of brave young Americans. I mean, to deny that their sacrifice didn't make possible the success of the surge in Iraq, I think, does a great disservice to young men and women who are serving and have sacrificed.

There will still be attacks. Al Qaeda's not defeated. But the progress has been immense. And to not recognize that, and why it happened, and how it happened, I think is really quite a commentary.

Here's part of his answer from question # 3 that they left on the cutting room floor and which exposes John McCain as not knowing what he's talking about once again about the war in Iraq.

I don't know how you respond to something that is such a false depiction of what actually happened. Colonel McFarlane (phonetic) was contacted by one of the major Sunni sheiks. Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening. I mean, that's just a matter of history. Thanks to General Petraeus, our leadership, and the sacrifice of brave young Americans. I mean, to deny that their sacrifice didn't make possible the success of the surge in Iraq, I think, does a great disservice to young men and women who are serving and have sacrificed. They were out there. They were protecting these sheiks. We had the Anbar awakening. We now have a government that's effective...

It completely changes what he meant and actually said to Couric.

Here's the full transcript.

The story on their website is still solid, but the presentation on air was not and is outrageous. There must be some repercussions against this gaffe no matter who is involved and what happened. They need to come out and apologize for their ethical lapse.

Here's CBS's contact info:

TV Show CBS Evening News with Katie Couric

Producer (212) 975-3019 (212) 975-1893

evening@cbsnews.com

http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/eveningnews/main3420.shtml

Arensberg Chloe Producer, (212) 975-3691, (212) 975-1893

Contct CBS and demand they a) explain themselves on this egregious action. b) to hold those accountable.

evening@cbsnews.com http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/eveningnews/main3420.shtml

(corrected--the draft published when it wasn't finished earlier)

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The speculation before Senator Obama left for Iraq that he would possibly commit a presidential-bid-ending gaffe was deafening. So naturally the media was caught off guard when John McCain managed to beat Obama to the punch.

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Stewart: Come on! This guy is a newbie! You can't snag one faux pas, one misstep, a blunder, a boo boo, a brainfart? Something small...a geography mix-up?

McCain: It’s a very hard struggle, particularly given the situation on the Iraq-Pakistan border.

Stewart: The Iraq-Pakistan border, otherwise known as... IRAN.

Cindy's not gonna be too happy about that.

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CNN:

"I will use the veto as needed. I will veto every single beer — bill with earmarks," he said, as rumblings from the crowd could be heard. "And every single bill that we have come across my desk I will make them famous. I will veto them, you will know their names."

Nicole: MSNBC reported that protesters interrupted McCain's speech:

McCain, who was introduced by eBay Inc. CEO Meg Whitman, was briefly interrupted by three protesters who yelled that war is bad for small business. The protesters were booed and escorted from the room, and McCain used the interruptions to call for civil debate in the campaign.

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