It didn't take long for the Washington Post to weigh in on the wrong side of the Second Amendment issue, did it? The Post's Colbert I. King could not contain the disgust he feels for at least one part of the Constitution more in his response to the Supreme Court's Second Amendment ruling today. He flipped his top and went so far off the deep end that he seemed to imagine that Justice Scalia just gave the nod for citizens to get "machine guns" to indulge their newly affirmed ability to indiscriminately fire their loaded guns "at will" in D.C. In fact in this op ed, King was so unhinged that he seemed to utterly dispense with logic as he penned his newest ode to the wild-eyed phobia that is his inordinate fear of guns (yet, curiously, not of criminals).

King's very first few paragraphs seem to be written without the slightest bit of reflection of how illogical his position on the concept of gun laws is because it looks as though he imagines that criminals might obey a draconian anti-gun law, or any gun law for that matter if only it is enforced. One wonders why Mr. King thinks criminals are called criminals if laws would prevent them from doing anything? Worse, King can't seem to tell the difference between a law abiding citizen using a gun in self-defense and a criminal using it for evil. It seems as if to King criminals and citizens are indistinguishable.

On Wednesday’s CBS "Evening News," political analyst Jeff Greenfield suggested that Barack Obama was becoming more moderate: "...a relentless march to the center. He's determined not to be defined as Dukakis was and as John Kerry was, as outside the mainstream." Greenfield cited examples of Obama’s move to the middle by describing how: "His compromise on warrant -- on how you can wiretap foreign nationals with the FISA compromise, I think, was one example. He's saying maybe his anti-free trade rhetoric was a little overblown."

Greenfield even went so far as to bizarrely claim that Obama’s flip-flop on public financing was somehow evidence of his more moderate positions: "And by abandoning public financing, which he pledged to, he's saying ‘If I got more money than the other guy, I'm going to use it. I want to win.’"

The segment began by anchor Katie Couric declaring: "...the polls of summer. For now the heat is on the Republicans...Barack Obama's getting quite a bounce in the polls." Greenfield continued to tout Obama’s "bounce in the polls" by proclaiming: "It's an early summer blizzard, of polls that is, most of them gladdening Democratic hearts and furrowing Republican brows. Senator Barack Obama is up by 6 points in a USA Today/Gallup Poll, 12 in an LA Times/Bloomberg survey. Newsweek has the spread at 15 points nationally." However, it has been clearly demonstrated that the L.A. Times and Newsweek polls were outliers.

McClatchy Newspapers won the MRC’s 2008 Dan Rather Award for the Stupidest Analysis for its article spinning the success of the troop surge in Iraq as bad news for Iraqi gravediggers. Apparently the editors are aiming for a repeat performance at next year’s program.

In his June 26 article, writer Stephen Thomma, on the recently released debate proposal by the Commission on Presidential Debates, found a stature problem for the Illinois senator should he agree to sit-down townhall debates.

Here’s the relevant excerpt from "Under Debate Plan, Obama Loses Height Advantage":

There are over 180,000 U.S. troops serving bravely in Iraq and Afghanistan and each of them are owed a great deal of gratitude for their service and sacrifice. In a first of its kind Web-A-Thon to raise funds to send the largest shipment of care packages in history to our troops abroad, Move America Forward will Web-cast "From the Front Lines" via streaming video at www.ustream.tv on Thursday, June 26 from 4 p.m. to midnight EDT (3 PM to 11 p.m. CDT, 1 PM to 9 p.m. PDT).

The Media Research Center is sponsoring the 5 to 6 p.m. EDT hour and MRC Founder and President Brent Bozell will be interviewed at the top of the hour, around 5:05 p.m.

Radio host Rush Limbaugh should briefly join the live Web cast around 4:20p.m. EDT and other conservative luminaries like Ann Coulter, Mark Levin, and Sean Hannity are also scheduled to participate in the Web cast.

You can find the Web cast here on Ustream.tv or embedded on this post below the page break.

If an elected official in the United States, at any level, promises to "rip apart" six year old rape victims, then describe in vivid detail how their lives would be ruined, one would assume such a statement would lead the news. But it did not.

Following up on D.S. Hubes post on the local media coverage, Massachusetts State Representative James Fagan (D) voiced his opposition to Jessica’s law requiring stiff mandatory sentences to child rapists. As a defense attorney, Fagan promised if such a law were in place and victims assume the stand "I’m gonna rip them apart." Fagan continued "I’m going to make sure that the rest of their life is ruined, that when they’re 8 years old, they throw up; when they’re 12 years old, they won’t sleep; when they’re 19 years old, they’ll have nightmares and they’ll never have a relationship with anybody."

It should prove interesting to see how many other reporters pick up on this.

Barack Obama is scooting to the right on gun rights, notes ABC's Jake Tapper, in a June 26 blog post at his Political Punch blog.

The ABC correspondent picked up on an exchange between the Illinois senator and a reporter from Pennsylvania, the land of bitter gun-clingers:

Craig Layne, a reporter from WJET-TV in Erie, Penn., today asked Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, a question on the DC gun ban.

Here's how the exchange went down.

"In November you mentioned that the DC handgun law was constitutional," Layne said. "Now you're embracing the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision striking down that law-

"That's not what I said," Obama interrupted, per ABC News' Jennifer Duck.

Remember back in 2000 when actor Alec Baldwin allegedly promised to leave the country if George W. Bush was elected president?

Well, his brother Stephen was on Fox News's "Just In with Laura Ingraham" Wednesday evening, and apart from skewering celebrities for supporting Barack Obama "just because quote unquote they want change, whatever, without ever really fully recognizing who the best person for the job is," he also deliciously mocked his brother for still being in America despite his 2000 pledge.

What follows is his full discussion with Ingraham (video embedded right, h/t NBer LilyPearl):

In anticipation of the Supreme Court’s decision on the constitutionality of DC handgun ban on Thursday, CNN’s "Newsroom" program ran a report on both the sides of the gun case, in which the pro-gun control advocate was given twice the amount of air time as the gun rights advocate. The report, by CNN justice correspondent Kelli Arena, ran twice within 20 minutes; first, at the top of the 10 am hour of "Newsroom," minutes before the decision was released, and then immediately after the news of the decision broke.

In addition to this, when the 5-4 decision upholding the lower court’s finding that the ban was unconstitutional, the "Newsroom" program initially ran a graphic that read, "Supreme Ct. Kills Handgun Ban: Overrules DC Law." The graphic ran for just under a minute until being replaced by another that read, "Supreme Ct. Overrules Gun Ban: Overrules DC Law Forbidding Handguns."

Just over an hour after the Supreme Court’s ruling came down, near the bottom half of the 11 am Eastern hour of "Newsroom," CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, when asked about the local impact of the decision, snarked that "the communities that care about safety and communities that don't want the bad effects of guns will try to rewrite their regulations in line with what they think the Court decided."

I'm still trying to figure out who died and made Joe "Anonymous" Klein Time magazine's foreign policy expert-in-residence. The sometime presidential primary fiction writer apparently thinks John McCain's statement on the Bush administration's nuclear deal with North Korea is too "grudging":

...Congratulations to George W. Bush for finally making the correct choice--diplomatic engagement, regional talks that enabled quiet unofficial contacts with the North Koreans, which then led to direct negotiations--in resolving this dispute. Wonder what John Bolton is thinking this morning?

Update: John McCain has just released this statement, which is a bit too grudging for my taste, but does raise the appropriate questions going forward

So let's see: Klein praises Bush but takes a mild swipe at Sen. McCain for having the gall to suggest that North Korea might not live up to its word, which it clearly has a history of doing.

"Good Morning America" co-host Robin Roberts treated Father Michael Pfleger to a fawning interview on Thursday in which she mostly ignored his radical comments and lauded the "maverick priest," describing him as "not someone to be silenced."

Although, a previous segment featured a single clip of Pfleger's sermon at the former church of Barack Obama where he viciously attacked Senator Hillary Clinton, Roberts ignored other, more inflammatory remarks by the priest, such as his assertion, made during the same sermon as the Clinton attack, that "America has been raping people of color and America has to pay the price for the rape!" Of course, Roberts didn't mention this quote. Instead, she spun Pfleger as someone who is "passionate about the Word" and cheered the anti-crime and poverty work he's done.

You people all seem pretty sharp.  Is there anybody here who has much experience dealing with taxes?  Specifically when it involves my 401K plan at work. 

I am leaving my current company in the next couple months and I have a thousand questions dealing with what to do with my 401K savings that I currently have.  Before I start rambling off all my questions, I just want to see if there is anybody here who might be able to answer them?

Thanks in advance!

- Tim

Newsweek's Conventional Wisdom today is pulling a Madeleine Albright and toasting North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il on a deal with the United States. The dictator will destroy a nuclear reactor in exchange for the U.S. removing the reclusive, repressive regime from its list of terrorist states.

At right you can see a screen capture of the up arrow. The caption reads, "North Korea: U.S. to take it off the terror list after nuclear declaration. More cognac for the Dear Leader!"

Putting aside for a moment the matter of the wisdom or folly of the deal, since Newsweek CW clearly judges it wise, it's telling that the Bush foreign policy team is not given the thumbs up here instead of Kim Jong-Il. 

Yesterday, the Chicago Sun-Times's Web site carried the story "Obama says he avoided city, state corruption."  The piece begins:

Clout and corruption scandals that have plagued Chicago and Illinois politics in recent years have not laid a glove on Barack Obama, he told reporters here Wednesday.

"You will recall that for my entire political career here, I was not the the endorsed candidate of any political organization here," the Democratic presidential hopeful said at the Westin Hotel downtown.

That isn't accurate and wasn't from the time of his very first political race.  When Obama sought state office in 1996, he completed a questionnaire from the Independent Voters of Illinois-Independent Precinct Organization (IVI-IPO).  Asked what endorsements he'd received so far, Obama listed the 4th, 5th, and 6th Democratic Organizations, Aldermen Preckwinkle and Steele, and the New Party.

The Sun-Times article also reports:

Obama friend Tony Rezko was convicted of corrupting state government, but Obama was never implicated and has returned contributions Rezko made to his Senate campaign.

Since Eisenhower first ran for president in 1952, it has been a common strategy for Democrats and media members -- as if there's much of a difference these days! -- to depict Republican presidential candidates as too stupid to hold the office.

On Thursday, CNN's Jeanne Moos made the case that because John McCain is not computer savvy, he's not qualified to be president. She even disgracefully quipped -- as a video of a stripper appeared on the screen! -- "At least John McCain knows the difference between a laptop and a lap dance."

Not surprisingly, she also took the time to demonstrate just how much of a techie Barack Obama is while adding a dash of Bush-bash. Pretty good for a two and a half minute segment, dontcha think?

Sick-making transcript follows, video available here, h/t NBer Jeff Eldred:

Update 2: Stay tuned for a forthcoming piece by NB contributor Matthew Balan on CNN's coverage. Shortly after the decision came down the network aired a videotaped report that skewed in favor of a gun control advocate who survived last years Virginia Tech shootings.

Update: Goldstein notes there is just one majority opinion, no concurring opinions, but that there are two dissents.

The Supreme Court has overturned the D.C. handgun ban. The ruling is 5-4 with Justice Antonin Scalia writing the majority opinion. The Court finds that individuals have the right to keep and bear arms.

Writes Tom Goldstein at SCOTUSBlog:

It is striking that the decision is not clouded by ambiguity created by separate opinions. One opinion on each side.

Consider this an open thread on media coverage of gun rights.

MRC President Brent Bozell appeared on the June 24 "Hannity & Colmes" to comment on a trend in Iraq reporting that conservatives have known for a while and the New York Times is only now catching on to: the media love to report negative developments from Iraq, while downplaying or ignoring positive developments such as the succeess of the surge or the exonerations of the Haditha "massacre" Marines.

Here's an excerpt of Bozell from the segment:

BRENT BOZELL, MRC President: There's a terrible adage in journalism: good news is no news, bad news is great news. And that's the coverage that we've seen in Iraq. Countless studies have been done, we've done studies on this, showing that as things got worse and worse, you had more and more coverage. But suddenly the surge came around and as the surge took off and was successful, the coverage went down. You see just the other day where the military announced that violence is down 89 percent, and yet NBC and CBS didn't think that was news. Now, they didn't need to send a reporter to Iraq to report that one, they could have done that from their bureaus.

For general discussion and debate. Possible talking point: Cindy McCain as the new Lady Di?

The woman who wants to be the next Republican First Lady pledged today to expand her humanitarian work if she makes it into the White House, tak