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The latest development in the Obama "birther" conspiracy is the emergence of a "Kenyan birth certificate" for the president, put online by movement maven Orly Taitz.

Oddly, the same people who are so skeptical of Obama's Hawaii birth certificate are willing to accept this new document despite many flaws, documented by the Washington Independent's Dave Weigel and Markos Moulitsas.

Here are just some of the flaws:
In an interview with Time, Obama lays out a two-year agenda that's both staggeringly ambitious and refreshingly modest. Modest, because many of the benchmarks bespeak new beginnings, tangible and positive changes of approach, rather than completely transformed institutions...The goals are huge, but the approach is incremental.
Jacob S. Hacker, the economist who best described the erosion of economic security for the middle class over the past thirty years in The Great Risk Shift, makes a tightly argued case (in tnr.com) that an all-out push toward universal health insurance is at once the best short-term stimulus and the best long-term investment Obama can make right now.
The Wall Street Journal notes that "many of the Republicans emerging as potential members of the Obama administration have professional and ideological ties to Brent Scowcroft" -- Bush Sr.'s national security adviser. And it's widely reported that Obama will keep on Robert Gates as defense secretary. Gates was deputy national security adviser under Scowcroft.

The Journal article stresses policy affinities between Scowcroft and Obama -- most notably that both opposed going to war in Iraq.
Kudos to the ACLU for working from Day 1 to hold Obama to his always rather briefly expressed promises to end torture, close Guantanamo, and revisit FISA. Since November 5, when they took out full-page ads quoting those promises (the first two, anyway), they've been in congratulations-we're-waiting-for-action mode. Yesterday they sent an email to supporters linking to a segment of Obama's recent 60 Minutes interview in which he reiterates those promises (again, without elaboration), filling
In his first weekly address as President elect, Obama echoed Paul Krugman, signaling in no uncertain terms that he's going going full-speed ahead with his economic agenda, deficits be damned:

Even as we dig ourselves out of this recession, we must also recognize that out of this economic crisis comes an opportunity to create new jobs, strengthen our middle class, and keep our economy competitive in the 21st century.
Vaclav Havel, addressing the newly self-liberated Czechoslovaks at his inaugural on Jan. 1, 1990, might also have been speaking to Americans today:

Where did the young people who never knew another system get their desire for truth, their love of free thought, their political ideas, their civic courage and civic prudence? How did it happen that their parents -- the very generation that had been considered lost -- joined them?
When challenged on his relatively slight record, Obama has often said, "look at my campaign." He's meant mainly that the campaign is proof of his executive ability. But looking at his campaign speaks also to the role of rhetoric in getting things done. Part of Obama's platform is to change the conduct of our politics, and in large measure he's already done that. For some twenty months, he has educated and elevated the nation. He's made us believe again that we can have a meaningful debate
The polling evidence is overwhelming that Sarah Palin is dragging McCain down. And the reason is simple. While Democratic news junkies may be convinced that she's a Putinesque thug (see the Troopergate report), a quasi-fascist demagogue (whipping up mobs to violent fantasy) and a Christianist kook (accepting a laying on of hands from an avowed anti-semite to protect her from witchcraft), most Americans view her simply as likeable but unqualified.
A thousand years ago, on August 29, 2008, James Fallows had this to say about Sarah Palin's campaigning prospects: "...The smartest person in the world could not prepare quickly enough to know the pitfalls, and to sound confident while doing so, on all the issues she will be forced to address." Compare now the bitter complaints of McCain aides reported by CNN...
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