He’s going to appeal his 7-year conviction, and it looks like the 60 Minutes piece embedded here could be part of the reason.

Here’s the update from Birmingham Times:
MONTGOMERY — A federal appellate court today ordered former Gov. Don Siegelman released from prison while he appeals his 2006 conviction, but denied co-defendant Richard Scrushy’s request to [...]

TPM has done a good job with the following video, detailing what was said, when it was said and how it compares to the facts.

And there it is in a nutshell.

Insider Advantage has the poll, that supports another recent poll that showed Obama up by 21 in the Tar Heel State.
From Southern Political Report:
“If you are voting in the Democratic primary and the election were held today, who would you vote for?”
Barack Obama (49%)
Hillary Clinton (34%)
Undecided (17%)
The poll was conducted by InsiderAdvantage/Majority Opinion on March [...]

Looks like they’re offering $4M in grants to therapies like yoga, Reiki, Qi gong, spiritual ministry and transcendental meditation.
Groovy…
From Wired:
As many as 17 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have some form of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, one congressional study estimates. Nearly 3,300 troops have suffered traumatic brain injury, or TBI, according to statistics [...]

I’m glad to see they stopped this before they wasted any more money, but this just goes to show you how much money can be wasted on weapons systems that we honestly don’t even need. It makes the lack of focus on domestic issues that much harder to swallow.
From Reuters:
The Navy says it has spent [...]

For all of you who thought yesterday’s WSJ poll was wrong, here are two more polls to support the trend.
First, Pew Research:
The videos of Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s controversial sermons and Barack Obama’s subsequent speech on race and politics have attracted more public attention than any events thus far in the 2008 presidential campaign. A majority [...]

Could he be following the Reagan mold? Looks like that’s the trend, and you can be sure that his reputation as a “straight talker” is the reason why. But as I’ll talk about later, that won’t be enough.
From Politico:
A new analysis of March polling data suggests that John McCain’s cross-party support surpasses that of either [...]

Barack Obama is characterizing John McCain’s economic crisis response as “sit back and watch.” This is a willful misstatement of what McCain said in his speech on the matter.
Here’s how he began:
I will not play election year politics with the housing crisis. I will evaluate everything in terms of whether it might be harmful or [...]

We already knew Bill Clinton enjoys a good scrum. Now he’s telling other Dems to put the pads on or stop playing the game. At a campaign rally in West Virginia, Bill Clinton said:
“If a politician doesn’t wanna get beat up, he shouldn’t run for office. If a football player doesn’t want to get tackled [...]

But the biggest “aha” moment comes when he talks about the latest Wall Street bank bail out…
From AP:
To fix the economy, Obama proposed relief for homeowners and an additional $30 billion stimulus package to address the nation’s economic woes.
“If we can extend a hand to banks on Wall Street, we can extend a hand to [...]

They say what the Pentagon wants them to say?

Think he was supposed to say that?
Me thinks not…

Here’s why…
The gun battles between soldiers and militiamen, who are all Shia Muslims, show that Iraq’s majority Shia community – which replaced Saddam Hussein’s Sunni regime – is splitting apart for the first time.
Mr Sadr’s followers believe the government is trying to eliminate them before elections in southern Iraq later this year, which they are [...]

This is bad news for Hillary because what it may signal is many Dems are ready to just wrap this thing up.
From WSJ:
The latest survey has the Democratic rivals in a dead heat, each with 45% support from registered Democratic voters. That is a slight improvement for Sen. Obama, though a statistically insignificant one, from [...]

The Pentagon throws some interesting logic on the table about the recent problems in Iraq.
From AFP:
WASHINGTON (AFP) — The Pentagon on Wednesday said an eruption of violence in southern Iraq, where US-backed government forces were battling Shiite militias, was a “by-product of the success of the surge.”
Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said it showed that [...]

John McCain on our responsibilities in Iraq:
”It would be an unconscionable act of betrayal, a stain on our character as a great nation, if we were to walk away from the Iraqi people and consign them to the horrendous violence, ethnic cleansing and possibly genocide that would follow a reckless, irresponsible and premature withdrawal.”
And about [...]

After reading many Iraq anniversary posts and watching the truly excellent but really depressing Frontline documentary “Bush’s War” (highly recommended), I decided to post a personal retrospective tracking my own evolving views on the war over the last five years. It was also time to update my post of a year ago “It’s the war, [...]

Basically, they have 72 hours to put down their weapons or they’ll face the consequences. What those are is not yet clear, but it’s a safe bet it won’t be good for either side.
From NY Times:
BAGHDAD — A day after launching a huge operation that ignited heavy fighting in two of Iraq’s largest cities, Prime [...]

Big thanks to Jimmy for this.

| View | Upload your own

The text may be hard to read, so I’d suggest just going full screen with it. It’s very easy to read at that size.

“Only a fool or a fraud sentimentalizes the merciless reality of war.”
- A phrase from John McCain’s foreign policy speech today, which some say is a direct response to Bush’s recent statements romanticizing war.
Here’s more from the speech…
“Our great power does not mean we can do whatever we want whenever we want, nor should we [...]

The New England Historic Genealogical Society has released information on the distant family relations of all three presidential candidates. I don’t know how they research this sort of thing, but the society is well-respected and spent three years on this project. The results are superfluous to the campaign but interesting nonetheless. Here are the (distant) [...]