In a dramatic turnaround from statements that he made a few months ago, former Senator John Edwards has now decided to accept public funding for his Presidential campaign.

John Edwards' decision to accept public matching funds to finance his campaign is a political blow but it's probably also the only lifeline he has to stay in the race. The simple fact is that Edwards was never going to keep pace with the Democratic front-runner, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, or the upstart campaign of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.

This represents the end for Edwards' campaign for the Presidency, since Edwards won't be able to match the media spending by Clinton or Obama next year. But it does enable him to stay in the race through the primaries, something that the other non-front running Democratic Presidential aspirants might not be able to do.

I'm not sure what Edwards goal is. I don't think he's a viable Vice-Presidential candidate for either Hillary or Obama. Post 2004 election analysis was pretty definitive in showing that Edwards didn't really bring much to the Kerry campaign. The Kerry-Edwards ticket even lost Edwards' home state of North Carolina in 2004, 56% - 44%.

Edwards for President 2012, anyone?

The 2008 Defense Budget is an integral part of the wars we are now fighting, in addition to being essential for preparing for conflicts to come. It's the base funding for the entire Defense Department - our military. This bill in particular takes care of some issues that have been in the news recently - increased military pay, increased benefits and care for soldiers that have been wounded fighting our wars, and more armored vehicles - to name just a few. These are all things that the Democrats have been screaming about for months. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid once promised that the bill would go through clean, with no unrelated extraneous amendments added to muddy it up.

So why are the Democrats now jeopardizing the passage of the bill by adding, at the last minute, a Ted Kennedy authored homosexual hate crimes amendment, having nothing to do with the Defense Department, to the spending measure? The Army Times reminds us that the House passed the 2008 Defense Budget in May. Since then, the Senate has spent alot of time attempting to attach anti-Iraq War amendments to their version of the bill, but each one failed. So they throw one last minute unrelated liberal social agenda amendment onto the bill, in effect challenging Bush to veto the entire measure. It's almost as if the Dems did this out of spite.

The Kennedy amendment is a transparent attempt to get back into the good graces of the Left after the Democrats failed to do what they had promised (actually guaranteed) their base that they would do - get the US out of Iraq. The amendment passed, gaining 60 votes, but that's not enough to override a Presidential veto. Let's say the 2008 Defense Budget passes, and gets to conference committee with the House. There's a good chance that this amendment won't be in the final version sent to the President. But let's say it survives.

The chances of soon-to-be former Senator Larry Craig overturning his conviction are slim to none, unless the ruling judge is a closet Democrat who is really enjoying this. Craig's decision to plead guilty was not coerced in the 15 minutes he had between the time he was arrested and his court hearing -- he had more than eight weeks to review his options, including hiring an attorney to represent him and choosing to fight the charges. He chose not to -- and chose to plead guilty. In fact, Craig seemed quite happy with his guilty plea, until the story became public. The judge hearing the Senator's attempt to throw out his plea said he will rule on this sometime next week, so Craig has decided not to resign on Sunday, as he had 'promised':

After arguments were heard in court today in Minneapolis, in which lawyers for Senator Larry Craig sought to undo his guilty plea in the airport restroom case, Mr. Craig issued a brief statement that was posted on his Senate Web site: "Today was a major step in the legal effort to clear my name. The court has not issued a ruling on my motion to withdraw my guilty plea. For now, I will continue my work in the United States Senate for Idaho." Mr. Craig, a longtime Republican senator from Idaho, had earlier announced that he would resign his Senate seat on Sept. 30 - just four days from now. But he also later emphasized, through aides and a bizarrely misrouted voicemail that became public, that he was only announcing his "intention" to resign. And that he wanted to fight to reverse the misdemeanor conviction.

I don't know if Craig has any other recourse, such as taking this to a higher court, if the judge rules against him. If the Senator does, I'm sure he'll take advantage of that and try to stay in office until those are heard as well.

There is only one certainty in this whole affair. Every day this is prolonged, Larry Craig is becoming a bigger and bigger national laughingstock.

There's a good column by Gail Collins in The New York Times this morning titled The Democratic Dark Side. She's commenting on the recent pledge that the top Democratic Presidential candidates made to not campaign in Florida. That's because Florida defied the DNC and scheduled their primary before they were supposed to, which was a big DNC no-no. The decision by Florida Democrats to defy Howard Dean has resulted in Florida 'losing' all of it's delegates to the Democratic Convention next year, and the Dem candidates pledging not to campaign in Florida

Collins points out something that I haven't seen anywhere else. The Democrats promised not to campaign - but they didn't promise not to visit Florida to raise money!

Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama have all vowed to honor the Democratic National Committee rule that only New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina and Nevada can hold primaries before Feb. 5. At the urging of the Democratic chairs of the four firsties, they signed a pact promising not to campaign in any state that tries to break into the front of the line. There is, however, an exception for "activities specifically related to raising campaign resources."

Exactly what are they supposed to do when they visit Florida to raise money, not talk about politics or their campaigns for the Presidency? How will that be policed. The Florida primary will go forward as scheduled. The Democratic convention as a whole can, when meeting in Denver in August 2008 to define their platform and convention rules, over-rule the DNC and vote to accept the Florida delegates. So what does the ban actually do? Is Howard Dean really that impotent within the Democratic Party?

A few hours before last night's Democratic Presidential Debate in New Hampshire, the Senate overwhelmingly passed Joe Biden's non-binding resolution declaring that Iraq should be divided into three separate regions. The Hill newspaper is calling it a major boost to Joe Biden's campaign for the Vice-Presidency (oops, Presidency), but it's only a boost to those who don't understand: 1) that being non-binding it's meaningless; 2) it can't be implemented, so it's meaningless; and 3) if it ever were to happen it would plunge the region into a more serious war, so it's dangerous in addition to being meaningless.

There is an argument to be made that not only Iraq, but the entire nation structure of the Middle East, was botched when it was originally set up by the Allies after World War I. (For an excellent accounting of how the modern Middle East was created, I encourage anyone who is interested to read David Fromkin's A Peace to End All Peace - it will astound you.) But we have to deal with the countries as they exist today, imperfect as they are. If we were to separate Iraq into more autonomous regions, the time to have done it would have been when we were occupiers. Now we're not - the Iraqi Government (another imperfect entity) is in control. So Biden's about four years too late for this suggestion to be meaningful.

But it raises a good point. Why didn't we do this in the first place, as people like Rich Lowry of National Review was suggesting at the time? I believe that it's because it would have created, almost immediately, a larger regional war. Turkey would have tried to claim the Kurdish north, at the same time the Turkish Kurds would attempt to secede from Turkey to create an independent Kurdistan. Iran would have moved to claim the Shiite south. And the Sunni middle would have been ripe pickings - they'd control Baghdad and Tikrit, but would have little natural resource wealth. Eventually, the Shia/Iran south would attack the Sunni middle to enact revenge for what the Sunnis did to the Shia during Saddam's reign. We'd be in the middle of all of it.

Thankfully, that is not going to happen. The article in The Hill does have a good quote from a Republican aide which shows just how empty Biden's victory was:

One GOP aide went further, saying that most Republicans decided against opposing Biden's plan after revisions made clear that it would not force any decisions on Baghdad. "What is the Iraqi government going to do [in response]? Say, 'thanks for the input, but we're fine'?" the aide said. The aide described Republicans' perspective as: "This doesn't really do anything, and why not let [Democrats] have it, for practical reasons."

I was one of those who had hoped that President Bush would have vetoed the ethics bill that was sent to him by Congress several weeks ago. Not because I was against earmark reform, but because i though that the bill was a sham compared to what had originally been proposed by the new Democratic Congress when they took office. The problem was that President Bush would have gotten killed in the media had he vetoed it - it would have been played up as "Bush Against Ethics Reform".

My fears about the ethics bill having been a toothless sham have been realized, according to CQPolitics.com. Basically, it boils down to legalistic parsing. According to the fine print in the new regulations, earmarks attached to an appropriation bill after conference can be challenged and must be transparent, but authorization bills can be secretly earmarked and no-one can challenge them. In addition, if a member of Congress decides for some reason that he or she wants to attach a secret earmark to the appropriations bill, all they have to do is add it in conference, and the transparency aspects of the new ethics bill does not apply.

Less than two weeks after the Senate's new earmark rules took effect, critics are accusing Democrats of providing less openness than promised. Only appropriations earmarks will be subject to challenge via points of order, not the abundant special provisions scattered through authorization bills. And a reading of the fine print shows that the public disclosure of earmark information, one of the big changes of the lobbying and ethics law (PL 110-81), doesn't have to happen until a late stage in the legislative process. "This is one of the most bald-faced bait and switches I've seen in Washington," Steve Ellis, vice president for programs at Taxpayers for Common Sense, said Monday. "We have to have some shame," said Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., who has been a thorn in the side of leadership in both parties on earmarking and federal spending issues. "We have to have some honor in this body."

In essence, all a member of Congress has to do now to continue to abuse the practice of earmarks (secrecy in the ownership of the earmark, inability for the floor to challenge the earmark) is attach them to a different bill. Read the article, including the clarification remarks by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Taking advantage of this loophole is obviously something that leadership had planned on doing for quite a while now, even as they were publicly claiming that they had cleaned up the earmark process.

Surprising many, the UAW voted to strike General Motors yesterday, in the first national autoworkers walkout against GM since 1970. With Democratic Presidential aspirants Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards scheduled to speak today before a forum in Illinois sponsored by a union umbrella organization, Change to Win, I thought it would be interesting to see what those campaigns had to say about the UAW strike. I found a collection of quotes on this page and found the responses interesting.

Obama seems to think that the strike is over wages and benefits - but it's not. Hillary avoids the factual missteps and claims that all would be better if the UAW and the automakers had met in the Oval Office - although that meeting couldn't have possibly settled the issue that the UAW went out on strike over. (But it's nice that she indicated that her Presidency would jump right in the middle of union-management contract negotiations.) Edwards just spewed union boilerplate, also neglecting to mention the primary strike reason. He's much better when his wife Elizabeth speaks for him.

It takes an Associated Press article from last night and a columnist from the Detroit News to tell us what this is all about, and why the strike is a dangerous idea for the union and an equally dangerous idea for the Democrat candidates to embrace. The union walked out on GM, a company that is now one fifth of its size in 1990, because GM wouldn't promise the current employees permanent job security. GM, for its part, is also worried about setting up a $55 billion trust fund to administer its retiree programs.

Gallup has a new poll out this morning that shows that the Democratic Party has a 15 point lead nationally over the GOP in overall approval. The Democrats also hold leads over the Republicans on the formally GOP-safe questions of which party would best maintain the nation's economic prosperity and which party would keep us safer from terrorism. The methodology revealed in the analysis accompanying the poll has no party identification figures for the respondents, so we don't know if one party was oversampled over another. But that's meaningless for my purposes -- the GOP should have such commanding leads in the national security and economic prosperity categories that sampling games would be inconsequential to the ultimate polling results.

The Republican party has handed the Democrats the advantage on what has previously been seen as central GOP strengths for decades. And this is not a one-time aberration. These dropping poll numbers started in the second half of 2005. If that isn't a clarion call directed at the Republicans to clean out their house and get back to basics, I don't know what is.

Is there hope for the GOP? Sure, but only if they start acting now. Why? Because Gallup also tells us that the advantage that the Democrats now have has nothing to do with themselves:

The recent gain in the Democratic Party's image advantage is due primarily to a sharp decline in Americans' favorable perceptions of the Republican Party more than an improvement in the public's perception of the Democrats.

The Republicans should feel happy about stopping the Democrats from surrendering our national security interests in Iraq and intentionally losing the war. But that's just one victory, and it will be meaningless if they lose more Congressional seats in 2008, let alone the presidency. If the GOP is serious about not only reforming its image but its message as well, they should start now. Next year will be too late.

Don't look now, but if Congress doesn't reach some sort of an agreement for the next fiscal year's budget, the federal government will run out of money on Oct 1. Although political rhetoric is high, there is little chance of the Democrats going down the Newt Gingrich 1995 path and shutting down the government - primarily because they recognize that Newt's battle with President Bill Clinton was largely seen as a victory for Clinton, making Newt even more demonizable (is that a word?) until his exit from Congress in 1998. So, Democrat leaders are going to propose an interim budget to give them more time to "negotiate" with the White House on spending issues.

The draft resolution, which is still being finalized, is intended to buy as many as six additional weeks for negotiations, though Democrats are pessimistic about their chances of making much progress with Mr. Bush. With the exception of veterans' health care and border-security funds, the White House has signaled little flexibility, and neither House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) nor Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) appears to have much appetite for a protracted fight. "I don't want a headache. I want to try to work this out," Mr. Reid said last week after meeting with White House Budget Director Jim Nussle. At the same time as the standoff over domestic spending, Congress is being asked by Mr. Bush to provide more money to implement his Iraq policy, which the top leaders adamantly oppose.

With President Bush emboldened after his victories in Congress last week, his threats of vetoes are being taken more seriously by the Democrats. The Dems simply don't have enough votes to override any Presidential veto right now, be it on the war or general spending. That's not likely to change over the next six weeks, so look for the Democrats to capitulate on many of the White House's demands in the final budget, especially in matters regarding defense spending and funding the War in Iraq. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi believe, rightly so, that giving in on war spending at this precise moment, having lost all anti-war votes so far this fall session, would be the final straw for much of their far-left base. Hence the postponement of the final budget.

It's safe to say that the National Republican Congressional Committee is in a bit of chaos this morning. The NRCC is losing the money battle with its Democratic counterpart - by about $9 million in the latest campaign fund-raising cycle. And they're getting killed in the all important cash-on-hand battle - $22 million for the Democrats to $1.6 million for the Republicans. I believe that much of this has to do with the fact that the Republican base is fed up with the party, and won't start to give money to the cause as they have done in the past until the GOP cleans itself up. But if the party as a whole hasn't learned its lesson from 2006, it looks like it's starting to. The best way to get someone's attention is through money - or the lack of it.

Roll Call has an article up, Cole Pressured on NRCC Staff (sub. req.), that shows that House Minority Leader John Boehner has noticed the problems with fund-raising, and is starting to call people at the NRCC to account for it. The Politico also has a good article on the subject this morning, telling us that if Boehner forces the issue and cans the two people on the NRCC staff that he feels is most culpable for the NRCC's lack of success, its chairman Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma would resign in protest.

That might be the best outcome for all concerned. It appears as if Boehner is starting to realize that the Republican Party's problems are mostly internal, rather than external. GOP Congressional leadership should be looking at its membership and start pressuring problem incumbents to announce their intention now not to seek re-election, or face opposition in the primaries from the national party. That's probably not going to happen with Cole in charge of the NRCC.

The GOP needs to get new conservative candidates involved in about 40 to 50 Congressional races next year. That's the only way for the party to take advantage of the current extraordinarily high disapproval ratings for the Democratic led House. Only new candidates, without the old-boy network ties of many current GOP representatives, can make the argument that a vote for them is a vote for change - not more of the same. Perhaps this move by Boehner shows that he, indeed, is starting to "get" it.

There was an article in yesterday's Providence Journal that I'm surprised hasn't gotten more attention -- a reprint of a story Saturday in the Washington Post -- In Swing Districts, Democratic Enthusiasm Is Harder to Come By. It reports on an internal poll taken by Democratic pollsters in August that, until the article by Chris Cillizza and Shailagh Murray, had remained secret:

Conventional wisdom dictates that Democratic voters are thrilled with their choices for president, bursting at the seams to rally behind Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) or whoever gets the party's nod next year. A recent survey by Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, however, showed Clinton and Obama trailing former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani (R) in the 31 Democratic-held House districts regarded as most imperiled in 2008, and even potentially serving as a drag on those lawmakers' reelection chances. A poll found that if Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton tops the ticket in 2008, some vulnerable Democratic House incumbents will have reason to worry. The poll was conducted in August but has not been previously reported. It paints a "sobering picture" for Democrats, according to a memo by Lake and Daniel Gotoff that accompanies the poll report.

In those Democratic districts polled, voters were asked to choose between Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani, followed by the same question on Barack Obama and Rudy Giuliani. Rudy beats Clinton 49 to 39, and he beats Obama by a surprisingly small 41 to 40. This poll was taken before the losses suffered by the Democrats during the past two weeks on the Iraq War. With the above Presidential poll results, I'm gathering that the districts in question are more conservative than the usual Democrat held district. I'm wondering if the events in Congress over the past two weeks would make the Democrats' problems in those districts even greater.

This is getting very interesting. There were two more articles today about some questionable fund-raising practices by Democrats, specifically Hillary Clinton. The first is from the Wall Street Journal, Donors Stir 'Bundling' Questions:

BRISTOW, Va. -- When Hillary Rodham Clinton held an intimate fund-raising event at her Washington home in late March, Pamela Layton donated $4,600, the maximum allowed by law, to Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign. But the 37-year-old Ms. Layton says she and her husband were reimbursed by her husband's boss for the donations. "It wasn't personal money. It was all corporate money," Mrs. Layton said outside her home here. "I don't even like Hillary. I'm a Republican."

Read it all. It gives a good summary of the practice known as "bundling". The second article is from this morning's Washington Post, Past Clouds Candidates' Donor Lists, which starts off with this gem:

A list of the donors who have "bundled" large sums from dozens of individuals to give to Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign includes several figures who were involved in the 1990s Democratic Party fundraising scandal that tarnished her husband's record. Among them is an Oklahoma oilman who testified in the mid-1990s that the firm he worked for, owned by Democratic fundraisers, sought to curry favor with Bill Clinton's administration by providing payments and a golf club membership to a Cabinet secretary's son.

To give the appearance of fairness, the Washington Post does note that one of Mitt Romney's national finance co-chair was indicted. That man, Alan Fabian, immediately resigned and his contributions were returned, which the Post doesn't tell you.

Looks like campaign finance abuses are once again going to be a big story during this election cycle.

Republican Senator John Cornyn offered a Sense of the Senate Resolution this afternoon, requiring a three fifths majority, decrying the personal attacks that we've witnessed over the past two weeks on General Petraeus and his troops' integrity. As General Petraeus was confirmed to his position as head of Multinational Forces in Iraq unanimously by this same august body, one would assume that this resolution would also be unanimous, or close to it. Especially when you read the entire text:

To express the sense of the Senate that General David H. Petraeus, Commanding General, Multi-National Force-Iraq, deserves the full support of the Senate and strongly condemn personal attacks on the honor and integrity of General Petraeus and all members of the United States Armed Forces.

That's it. No hidden language, nobody specifically mentioned. Just 47 words. A good time for the Senate to unite in a bipartisan way in support for the commanding General currently in combat in Iraq. It passed, 72 to 25, with three Not Voting. The "Nays" consisted of 24 Democrats and 1 Independent. The 3 "Not Voting" were all Democrats.

NAYs ---25 Akaka (D-HI) Bingaman (D-NM) Boxer (D-CA) Brown (D-OH) Byrd (D-WV) Clinton (D-NY) Dodd (D-CT) Durbin (D-IL) Feingold (D-WI) Harkin (D-IA) Inouye (D-HI) Kennedy (D-MA) Kerry (D-MA) Lautenberg (D-NJ) Levin (D-MI) Menendez (D-NJ) Murray (D-WA) Reed (D-RI) Reid (D-NV) Rockefeller (D-WV) Sanders (I-VT) Schumer (D-NY) Stabenow (D-MI) Whitehouse (D-RI) Wyden (D-OR)

Not Voting - 3 Biden (D-DE) Cantwell (D-WA) Obama (D-IL)

Ah, true profiles in courage. Well, at least the troops know who their friends are - who has their back up on the Hill. And al Qaida knows who their friends are, as well.

Former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack may have dropped his long shot bid for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency, but that doesn't mean that he's stopped running for the Vice-Presidency. The New York Daily News has a quick blurb up quoting Vilsack, a Hillary supporter, on Rudy Giuliani from last night:

Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack went off on Rudy Giuliani's family foibles in a televised interview, saying Giuliani has "lots of issues" voters may not know about - yet. "I can't even get into the number of marriages, [and] the relationship he has with his children," Vilsack said on New York 1, describing the ex-mayor's past as "interesting."

Last I checked, Rudy wasn't running on a family values platform. And with Hillary being the presumptive Democratic nominee for President, I don't think that any Democrat wants to focus on marriages, real or sham. And infidelity? Now that the ex-Governor brings it up, I wonder what Vilsack's views are on the home life of Bill and Hillary?

The day after the demonstrably Democratic CREW lists him as one of the most corrupt members of Congress, Roll Call is reporting (Mr. Murtha's Money) that all of the recipients of Democrat Representative Jack Murtha's earmarks in this year's Defense Authorization bill donated money to the Representative. Not some of them, not most of them - but all of them. Pay to play, perhaps?

Every private entity that Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) favored with an earmark in this year's defense bill recently has given political money to the lawmaker, according to an analysis of House Appropriations and federal elections records by Roll Call and Taxpayers for Common Sense. PACs and employees of those 26 groups together have contributed $413,250 to Murtha since the beginning of 2005. He collected nearly a quarter of the sum--$100,750--in the two weeks leading up to March 16, the original deadline for lawmakers to file their earmark requests.

Murtha's brazenness is pretty remarkable. Check out this somewhat dated (earlier this year) summary over at the website for the Taxpayers for Common Sense, which includes links to Excel files with updated information on donations to Murtha. Even Murtha's hometown newspaper, The Tribune-Democrat of Jonestown PA, is publishing some pretty extensive articles on Murtha's questionable dealings. And the paper is reporting that former Democratic Senator Max Cleland has resigned from one of Murtha's charities:

Cleland acknowledged his change of heart came during an investigation by the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call. The paper was looking into PAID's limited achievements and close ties to Murtha, local defense contractors and others benefiting from congressional earmarks. "I don't really know much about it," Cleland said. "Once I learned more about the organization, I just decided it was not for me. And I really don't have time to do that." Roll Call found that PAID received Murtha-backed government contracts as recently as 2003 and works with other companies Murtha has funded.

Eventually the national media will get around to investigating Murtha with the same zeal that they investigate Republicans with, right?