Sen. John McCain, struggling to connect with conservative evangelical voters, paid a visit on two of the most influential and respected religious leaders in the Christian community today. He met with Rev. Billy Graham and the heir to his evangelical association, Rev. Franklin Graham, at the Grahams' family compound in North Carolina today. McCain needs to hold on to evangelicals, traditionally Republican voters, to win the White House. But he has not been fully embraced by them, and has even seen some resistance to his campaign from powerful Christian conservatives like Dr. James Dobson, the head of the evangelical group Focus on the Family.

The meeting did not produce an endorsement for McCain, but it is unclear whether the Arizona Senator was seeking one. Franklin Graham issued a statement praising McCain and saying that he was, "impressed by [McCain's] personal faith and his moral clarity on important social issues facing America today." Billy Graham publicly thanked McCain for his, "long and brave service" to the country. McCain had words of adulation for the Grahams as well, calling Billy Graham, "a man whose family is respected, incredibly respected," and noting that the Graham family, "transcends politics in America. McCain sought to downplay the possibility of an endorsement before meeting the Grahams, saying, "there certainly is no political aspect to the meeting that I will have."

Evangelical Christians have been a staple of Republican electoral victories since at least 1980, when President Ronald Reagan won his first of two terms. With Governor Mike Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister, running in the Republican primary, evangelicals have not really had a chance to connect with McCain or his campaign. Many also remember the speech McCain gave at the end of his failed bid for the Republican nomination in 2000. In that speech, McCain called out conservative Christian leaders like the late Rev. Jerry Falwell and Rev. Pat Robertson and accused them of undermining his campaign. McCain has since moved to patch up those old wounds, meeting with Falwell before his death and speaking at his Liberty University. The meeting with the Grahams is certainly designed to place McCain in the company of well-respected religious leaders in the hopes of putting any remaining animosity between the candidate and a potentially decisive block of voters to rest.

The New York Times chronicles a web-based phenomenon surrounding Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama. A growing number of his supporters are taking his middle name as their own in their online identities. It is cropping up on networking sites and discussion boards as a rash of new "Husseins" take their man's Arabic middle name. Sen. Obama has been trying to run down the rumor that he is a Muslim. He is not, but due to his father's Muslim heritage, Obama's youth spent in Indonesia, and that middle name of his, the rumor persists. Now, a rash of new Husseins are appearing online, taking on the controversial name as a way of showing just how inconsequential a middle name is.

Some of the new name takers say that they are doing so out of anger at perceived Republican attacks on Obama using his middle name as a slur. "I am tired of Republicans pronouncing Barack Obama's name as if it's some sort of cuss word," said Jeff Strabone of Brooklyn, NY. In fact, the issue of Sen. Obama's middle name was placed before the public not by Republicans, but by the Hillary Clinton campaign. Prominent former Senator and Clinton supporter Bob Kerrey first used Sen. Obama's full name during an interview with the Washington Post.

"It's probably not something that appeals to him, but I like the fact that his name is Barack Hussein Obama, and that his father was a Muslim and that his paternal grandmother is a Muslim. There's a billion people on the planet that are Muslims and I think that experience is a big deal."

Few people have a better track record at picking winners on Wall Street than Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett. So when he says that he expects a, "long, deep recession," it is noteworthy. Buffett made those comments in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel published yesterday. While the economy actually grew in the first quarter of the year, albeit at the anemically small rate of 0.6%, Buffet said that the economy is "already in recession." Failing to demonstrate the textbook definition of two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth, Buffet employed the Democrats' new favorite definition of recession.

"Perhaps not in the sense that economists would define it. But the people are already feeling the effects. It will be deeper and last longer than many think."

The emphasis on feelings rather than statistics in both the media and among elected officials and denizens of the left seems awfully convenient with an election coming up in six months. Still, Buffet was not entirely sour on the economy. Asked if he would curtail his own investing habits as a result of his diagnosis of the state of the U.S. economy, Buffet said, "If the world were falling apart I'd still invest in companies."

The furor over remarks made by President Bush in front of Israel's parliament hit a fever pitch today, as the self-identified victim of the president's comments, Sen. Barack Obama, traded barbs with Sen. John McCain over the alleged insult to Obama's judgment and ability to protect the country as president. The Political Machine covered Obama's response to the White House and McCain here.

The McCain campaign released a statement late in the day accusing Sky News interviewer, and former Assistant Secretary of State in the Clinton Administration, Jamie Rubin, of lying about McCain's position with respect to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in an op-ed he penned for the Washington Post. McCain has been referencing comments made by a Hamas spokesman that the Iranian-backed terror group is rooting for an Obama victory in the presidential race. Titled "Hypocrisy on Hamas," Rubin's op-ed accuses McCain of changing his position on Hamas, based on one question and answer from an interview Rubin conducted with McCain in 2006.

[Rubin]: "Do you think that American diplomats should be operating the way they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government if Hamas is now in charge?"

McCain: "They're the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it's a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that."

Rubin says the exchange proves that McCain once espoused Obama's more nuanced position with respect to meeting with America's enemies. But, as the McCain campaign pointed out in its response, the impression readers would have gotten of McCain's position would have been radically different if Rubin had reported McCain's answer to his very next question.