On the same day a new poll showed that 59% of Americans found her unqualified for the second highest office in the land, Republican Sarah Palin offered yet more confirmations of their wisdom. Palin, who on at least three occasions displayed a total ignorance of the constitutional role of the vice president, on Friday revealed that the First Amendment is alien to her as well.

Palin's latest unfortunate run-in with the United States Constitution came during an interview with conservative WMAL radio. Regurgitating her usual talking points against the "elitism" and "filter" of the "mainstream media," Palin coughed up this nugget:

"If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations," Palin told host Chris Plante, "then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media."

Sadly for the would-be vice president, the First Amendment protects the free speech rights of the American people - and their press - from infringement by the Government:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Palin's mangling of the document notwithstanding, nowhere in the text does the Constitution shield politicians from objective criticism of their myriad failings.

Every school child knows that. And in many cases, they have a much clearer picture than the Governor of Alaska just what it is the vice president does.

That was evident when Palin was that very question by a Colorado third grader during an interview with NBC affiliate KUSA:

Q: Brandon Garcia wants to know, "What does the Vice President do?"

PALIN: That's something that Piper would ask me!...[T]hey're in charge of the U.S. Senate so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom.

As Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid noted, the Constitution gives the Veep no such power:

"The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided."

As it turns out, concerns over Sarah Palin's lack of readiness are not limited to the Democratic side of the aisle. Last month, GOP Senator Chuck Hagel of Iowa called it "a stretch" to claim "she's got the experience to be president of the United States." Endorsing Barack Obama for President, former Bush Secretary of State Colin Powell questioned John McCain's judgment in selecting her. And just today, Nevada Senator John Ensign, former Reagan Chief of Staff Ken Duberstein and former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger all pronounced Palin unqualified to take over for John McCain. (Not doubt facing a backlash from his right-wing fellow travelers, Eagleburger walked back his criticism this afternoon.)

With voters set to go to the polls in just four days, a clear consensus has emerged that John McCain's running mate is unfit for the second highest office in the land as described by the Constitution.

As her jaw-dropping comments today again showed, Sarah Palin would have done well to actually read the document.

Following in the footsteps of his running mate Sarah Palin, Republican John McCain will appear on NBC's Saturday Night Live this weekend. Coming just three days before Americans head to the polls, McCain is hoping a little levity might help reverse his long slump in the polls.

Sadly for the supposed maverick, his defining moment on SNL already came four years ago.

McCain's most important performance by far on SNL came neither this May nor during his 2002 rendition of a Barbara Streisand medley. Instead, McCain was most animated - literally - during a fall 2004 episode of the NBC comedy which ran just prior to the reelection of George W. Bush.

In October 2004, Saturday Night Live animator Robert Smigel created "John McCain's Speech," a TV Funhouse cartoon that comically depicted McCain's anguish in stumping for President Bush after all the slurs he had endured at Bush's hands back in 2000 (click the image below or here for the video):

As it turns out, the only thing John McCain hates more than George W. Bush is the thought of not becoming president himself in 2008.

Of course, we'll see how he feels about Barack Obama after Tuesday night.

After two weeks in which his campaign has tried to brand Barack Obama a "socialist" and worse, John McCain took one small step back from the specter of the red menace. Appearing on the Larry King show Wednesday, McCain admitted that his Democratic opponent is no socialist. But as Election Day nears, don't expect John McCain to repeat his 2005 assessment of Obama, "he's centrist."

The Republican smearing of Obama has included comical charges that the man backed by Warren Buffett and Colin Powell is "anti-American" (Rep. Michele Bachman), a "socialist" (Sarah Palin), a "communist" (Senator Mel Martinez) and a "marxist" (Tom Delay). Last night, McCain dropped the "red" label while still regurgitating discredited right-wing talking points:

KING: You don't believe Barack Obama is a socialist do you?

MCCAIN: No, but I do believe that he has been in the far left of American politics and stated time after time that he believes in spreading the wealth around. He has talked about courts that redistribute the wealth. He has a record of voting against tax cuts. And for tax increases.

Of course, John McCain knows better. And in December 2005, McCain said as much.

As the St. Louis Post Dispatch reported, Mr. Straight Talk put Barack Obama squarely in what it deemed the "sensible center":

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. and a frequent maverick within the GOP, said: "He's very impressive, he's thoughtful, he's centrist."

In that same article ("Obama shuns limelight, builds record"), conservative Republican Senators Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Mel Martinez sang Obama's similarly praised Obama. Senator Obama had worked with the arch social conservative Coburn on oversight of FEMA reconstruction in the Katrina-devastated Gulf Coast. Obama also reached across the aisle to work with Martinez and Dick Lugar (R-IN) to secure nuclear materials from the former Soviet Union. Their feedback echoed McCain's plaudits:

Obama's approach has mostly earned him rave reviews - from Republicans and Democrats alike - who say he is an open-minded, deliberative lawmaker.

Coburn called him a "phenomenal young man who will go to great heights," while Martinez said he hasn't seemed "dogmatic" or "ideologically driven" on any issue.

That would be the same Mel Martinez who just 10 days ago likened Obama's policies to those of Castro's Cuba (video here):

"Where I come from, where I was born, they tried that wealth redistribution business. It didn't work so good down there. That's socialism, that's communism, that's not what Americanism is about."

McCain's seeming retreat on Larry King came just one day after he refused to repudiate Martinez' communist smear during an interview with a Miami CBS affiliate:

Q: Florida Senator Mel Martinez talked about Barack Obama's "spread the wealth" policies and he described them as "communism." Is that fair?

MCCAIN: Hmmm, I don't know what label you put on it but clearly it's not the way to economic prosperity.

As it turns out, bastions of capitalism like The Economist and the Financial Times - each of which endorsed Barack Obama for President - have concluded otherwise. Of course, back in 2005, before he was looking up at Obama in the polls, John McCain understood why.

That the McCains are fabulously well off - as the $100 million beer distribution fortune, the 11 homes, 13 cars and a private jet attest - goes without saying. And as she reported in her two-page IRS summaries, Cindy McCain earned $6.1 million in 2006 and another $4.2 million in 2007. (Most came courtesy of her late father's Hensley & Company, Arizona's leading distributor of Anheuser-Busch products including Budweiser.)

But while as many as 100 million Americans would receive no benefit from President McCain's tax proposals, his wife would be awash in new-found cash. As the Center for American Progress detailed in June, the McCains would reap a $373,000 bonanza should he win the White House:

McCain favors making the Bush tax laws permanent, and also plans to repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax, double the dependent exemption and offer tax breaks on business income...Had McCain's tax proposal been in place in 2006, [they] would have done incredibly well - saving even more than they did under the existing Bush plan. John and Cindy McCain would have walked away with $373,429 in their pocket.

Of course, given that McCain's tax plan is radically more regressive than even that of President Bush - it delivers 58% of its benefits to the wealthiest 1% of American taxpayers - it's no surprise Cindy the Beer Queen can expect a jaw-dropping payout.

But Cindy's winnings don't end there. As both the financial crisis and his slump in the polls deepened, John McCain two weeks ago proposed slashing capital gains taxes (a halving from from 15% to 7.5%). Again, the gains from his scheme go overwhelmingly to the richest Americans (almost 60% of its benefits to families earning over $1 million a year), including his wife:

The McCains made $746,395 in capitals gains last year. A new analysis by Michael Ettlinger, Vice President for Economic Policy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, reveals that McCain's capital gains cut would have reduced the McCains' taxes by $55,980 in 2007.

And those dollars pale in comparison to what Cindy McCain would bank for tax year 2008. That's when Cindy McCain is set to earn a staggering multi-million dollar pay-day from the acquisition of Anheuser-Busch by the Belgian beverage giant, In Bev.

As the Wall Street Journal reported in July, Mrs. McCain runs the third largest Anheuser-Busch distributorship in the nation, and owns between $2.5 and $5 million in the company's stock. Amazingly, while Missouri's politicians of both parties lined up to try to block the sale, John McCain held a fundraiser in the Show Me State even as the In Bev deal was being finalized.

Two weeks ago, Joe the Plumber acknowledged his tax bill would drop under a President Obama:

So today, Joe, who said he makes much less than $250,000, reluctantly admitted Obama would lower his taxes.

"I would, if you believe him, I would be receiving his tax cuts," Wurzelbacher said.

And so it goes. As it turns out, John McCain doesn't have Joe the Plumber's economic interests at heart. Cindy the Beer Heiress is another matter. Apparently, charity really does begin at home.

McCain's U-turn on Social Security has already begun. Already trying to conceal his support President Bush's failed attempt the privatize the program, McCain on Tuesday told Fox News' Sean Hannity that he stood behind today's Social Security safety net:

"Now, of course we have an obligation to take care of citizens in our society who can't care for themselves. That's why we have those programs, those Safety Net Programs. But you know, the Safety Net Program, a lot of Americans pay in to Social Security, they pay in to a number of those programs. So the point is, yes, a society and government takes care of citizens who need our help. That's what America is all about."

Sadly for McCain, that's a far cry from the wisdom of Joe the Plumber when it comes to Social Security. In an October 16 interview, Wurzelbacher raged against Social Security.

"Social Security is a joke. I have parents. I don't need another set of parents called the government...Social Security, I never believed in, don't like it."

If that sounds a lot like John McCain from just a few months ago, it should. After all, back in July McCain said pretty much the same thing.

"Americans have got to understand that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers in America today. And that's a disgrace. It's an absolute disgrace, and it's got to be fixed."

Appearing on CNN later, McCain only compounded his error. Sounding like a rabid laissez-faire ideologue, an ignorant hack or more likely both, McCain told John Roberts:

"They pay their taxes and right now their taxes are going to pay the retirement of present-day retirees. That's why it's broken, that's why we can fix it."

As an amazed Jared Bernstein of the Economics Policy Institute put it, "It's like he's saying, 'I just found out that taxes come from people...that's a disgrace.'" MoJo's Nick Baumann summed it up nicely, "McCain is saying, again, that the problem with Social Security is that Social Security is Social Security."

All of which explains why John McCain is now a staunch, if sometimes bashful, proponent of Social Security privatization. In June, Mr. Straight Talk proclaimed at a New Hampshire event, "I'm not for, quote, privatizing Social Security. I never have been. I never will be." Sadly, McCain and his advisers like ousted HP CEO Carly Fiorina are on record declaring fidelity to the idea of diverting Social Security dollars into private accounts. On November 18, 2004, for example, McCain announced, "Without privatization, I don't see how you can possibly, over time, make sure that young Americans are able to receive Social Security benefits." (Video here.) And in March 2003, McCain backed his President, declaring, "As part of Social Security reform, I believe that private savings accounts are a part of it - along the lines that President Bush proposed."

On the same day Joe the Plumber echoed McCain's disdain for Social Security, a new analysis by the Center for American Progress found that a hypothetical retiree "with a private Social Security account invested in stocks - along the lines of the plan envisioned by President Bush and supported by John McCain in 2005 - would have lost approximately $26,000 if he or she had retired on Oct. 1, 2008, after 35 years of contributions to such an account." And in other news that same day, the Social Security program labeled a "disgrace" by McCain announced that benefits will rise by 5.8% this year.

Given John McCain's hostility to Social Security, America's retirees current and future will do much better under Barack Obama. But that should come as no surprise. After all, so will Joe the Plumber.

Savage, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his 2006 expose of Bush's unprecedented use of signing statements, revealed last Friday that the President is at again. The White House informed Congress that it is bypassing a law passed as part of the package of recommendation from the 9/11 Commission. Designed to prevent political interference with the Department of Homeland Security:

The August 2007 law requires the agency's chief privacy officer to report each year about Homeland Security activities that affect privacy, and requires that the reports be submitted directly to Congress "without any prior comment or amendment" by superiors at the department or the White House.

But in a move ranking the Republican on Senate Judiciary Committee Arlen Specter (R-PA) deemed "unconstitutional" and "dictatorial," DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff told Congress the administration would not "apply this provision strictly" because it infringed on the president's powers. And as Savage detailed, President Bush used a signing statement to thwart the will of Congress - and the law of the land:

The Bush administration defended the decision not to obey the statute. Erik Ablin, a Justice Department spokesman, said its legal view was consistent with what presidents of both parties had long maintained.

Mr. Ablin also said the administration had told Congress that the provision would be unconstitutional, but Congress passed the legislation - which enacted recommendations of the 9/11 Commission - without making the requested change. So the administration decided to sign the bill and fix what Mr. Ablin called its "defects" later.

In condoning illegal discrimination in hiring by religious charities receiving funds from American taxpayers, President Bush turned to his Office of Legal Counsel. Once led by John Yoo (whose infamous memo defined torture as "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death"), the OLC in 2007 produced a memorandum claiming "the Bush administration says it can bypass laws that forbid giving taxpayer money to religious groups that hire only staff members who share their faith."

As Savage detailed on October 17th, the jaw-dropping Justice Department document makes patently illegal hiring practices the policy of the Bush administration:

The document signed off on a $1.5 million grant to World Vision, a group that hires only Christians, for salaries of staff members running a program that helps "at-risk youth" avoid gangs. The grant was from a Justice Department program created by a statute that forbids discriminatory hiring for the positions it is financing.

But the memorandum said the government could bypass those provisions because of the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It sometimes permits exceptions to a federal law if obeying it would impose a "substantial burden" on people's ability to freely exercise their religion. The opinion concluded that requiring World Vision to hire non-Christians as a condition of the grant would create such a burden.

Citing the plain language of the text and Supreme Court precedent, legal scholars like George Washington University's Ira C. Lupu deemed the DOJ's policy "a very big stretch." The ACLU's Christopher Anders aptly summed up President Bush's green light for religious discrimination, "It's really the church-state equivalent of the torture memos."

As George W. Bush prepares to leave the White House to "replenish the ol' coffers," that statement will be just another grim chapter in his dark legacy of law-breaking.

(This piece originally appeared on Crooks and Liars.)

Back in January, John McCain helped doom his chances in the Michigan primary with his declaration that he didn't want to "false hopes that somehow we can bring back lost jobs." Now on the eve of the election, McCain's renegade surrogate Carly Fiorina only magnified his problems in the Rust Belt states with her insistence "the auto industry cannot be saved from its own bad bets."

Even as the Bush White House was scambling to find new measures to help resuscitate the failing American car companies, Fiorina went to Detroit to pour cold water on the industry. While her man John McCain previously stated, "'Let's get the $25 billion to them to start with and see how that goes," Fiorina departed from the script:

"I don't think the government can rescue the industry," Carly Fiorina, former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard Corp, told Reuters at an event in suburban Detroit.

"Whatever the government does, it should not take away the fundamentals of risk-taking. Sometimes it leads to rewards and sometimes consequences, downside," she said. "In other words, the auto industry cannot be saved from its own bad bets."

This is far from the first time Carly Fiorina has emerged as a one-woman wrecking machine for Team McCain. The former head of HP, Fiorina for a time was the face of John McCain's outreach to disappointed supporters of Hillary Clinton. By consistently misrepresenting McCain's radical views on abortion, contraception, equal pay and other women's issues, Fiorina produced a smokescreen on McCain's behalf. But when her repeated departures from campaign talking points - and her $42 million golden parachute from HP - became problematic, Fiorina was consigned to surrogate purgatory.

(In today's Los Angeles Times, reporter Maeve Reston points to her question to McCain regarding Fiorina's statement of his position on insurance coverage for contraception and Viagra as ending the media's easy access to Mr. Straight Talk.)

For his part, John McCain sought to undo his job-killing comments that helped win Michigan for Mitt Romney. Reversing his January jaw-dropper that it "wasn't government's job to protect buggy factories and haberdashers when cars replaced carriages and men stopped wearing hats," McCain in June acknowledged "Americans are hurting" and told the good people of Michigan, "new jobs are coming."

Alas, McCain's change of heart came too late. Auto industry capital Michigan now looks to be firmly in Barack Obama's column next week. And with friends like Carly Fiorina, latest, John McCain doesn't need enemies.

The feebleness of McCain's effort to distance himself from Bush was revealed in its brevity. Despite the AP's headline that "McCain says Bush policy on economy is wrong," McCain's critique was limited to a single sentence. And in those nine words and the attack on Barack Obama that followed, John McCain wasn't telling the truth:

"This is the fundamental difference between Senator Obama and me. We both disagree with President Bush on economic policy. The difference is that he thinks taxes have been too low, and I think that spending has been too high."

Leaving aside for the moment his dissembling on the Obama tax plan (which the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center concluded would offer larger tax cuts to Americans at every income level below $112,000), McCain simply lied about parting company with George W. Bush.

A quick glance at their shared approach to tax cuts, the deficit and health care confirms that George W. Bush and John McCain are joined at the hip.

The Bush Tax Cuts. After having once criticized President Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, John McCain reversed course for his presidential run and now supports making them permanent. As the Center for American Progress concluded, "McCain's tax plan will increase after-tax income of the richest 3.4 percent by more than twice the average for all households -- and offer no benefit to the poorest taxpayers and minimal savings for the middle class." By "doubling down" on the Bush program, John McCain is offering an even more regressive policy than his predecessor:

"The McCain plan would predominantly benefit the most fortunate taxpayers, offering two new massive tax cuts for corporations and delivering 58 percent of its benefits to the top 1 percent of taxpayers. The Bush tax cuts provide 31 percent of their benefits to the top 1 percent of taxpayers."

The Bush Budget Deficit. In March, McCain's top economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin acknowledged the campaign's proposals "will make deficits expand up front." But despite his promises of spending restraint, a war on earmarks and a rapidly thawing budget freeze, John McCain has been silent on how he'll stem the unending flow of red ink his tax cuts will produce. In March, ThinkProgress estimated these "costing more than $2 trillion over the next decade and essentially doubling the Bush tax cuts." By extending the Bush tax cuts, the Tax Policy Center concluded in September, by 2018 John McCain "would add $5 trillion to the debt." It's no wonder the McCain campaign keeps vacillating on its comical first-term balanced budget pledge.

A Taxing Health Care Plan. On health care, too, John McCain and George W. Bush are essentially interchangeable. In June, McCain unveiled what is in essence a warmed over version of the Bush health care plan, one which was dead on arrival in Congress. As the Miami Herald noted, both put health insurance tax credits at the center, "Bush proposed tax credits of up to $3,000, but they were never enacted. McCain has upped the ante to $5,000." Like Bush, McCain would end the employer health care deduction and, for the first time, tax Americans' health care benefits. And like President Bush, John McCain would leave most of America's 47 million uninsured without coverage and those with pre-existing conditions in jeopardy. It's no wonder McCain's prescription got a chilly reception from the New England Journal of Medicine and reliably Republican business groups alike.

Opposing SCHIP Expansion. Like President Bush, John McCain strongly opposed the expansion of the very successful - and wildly popular - State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). When Bush vetoed the extending the program to 3.3 million more uninsured children last year, John McCain stood by his side. Denying coverage to more kids, McCain insisted last fall, was a "right call by the President."

With his chances of filling George W. Bush's seat rapidly diminishing, John McCain has been frantically trying to distance himself from the man he would replace. Last week, a frustrated McCain used a Washington Times interview to vent against the Bush record with which he is inextricably linked. As McCain's water carrier Lindsey Graham put it in May, "Good luck making him George Bush."

That's hardly a challenge; John McCain has already made himself George W. Bush' natural heir.

(This piece originally appeared at Crooks and Liars.)

Among the enduring myths of the 2008 election have been the purported struggles of Barack Obama in securing the support of Hispanic and Jewish voters. But as new polls suggest, Obama will not only dominate John McCain among these groups, he may outperform Al Gore and John Kerry as well.

A recent survey from Gallup revealed a 50 point edge for Obama among Jewish voters. Starting from a two-to-one lead in June, Obama now enjoys triple the support of John McCain:

Jewish voters nationwide have grown increasingly comfortable with voting for Barack Obama for president since the Illinois senator secured the Democratic nomination in June. They now favor Obama over John McCain by more than 3 to 1, 74% to 22%.

With those numbers, Senator Obama is earning the backing of Jewish voters at roughly the same levels Democrats have historically enjoyed. In 2000, Al Gore crushed George W. Bush 80% to 17% among Jews; in 2004, John Kerry pummeled Bush by 74% to 25%.

Despite the best efforts of the Republican Party to falsely brand Obama a Muslim, a terrorist, weak on Israel and even the harbinger of a second Holocaust, the Democrat continues to enjoy solid support among one his party's most faithful constituencies. And while John McCain's dutiful Joe Lieberman has had little impact with Jewish voters, his extremist running mate Sarah Palin apparently has succeeded in scaring them away. (As Gallup noted, the economic crisis has had the same effect among Jewish voters as everyone else - driving support to Obama.)

So, too, with the Hispanic electorate. The xenophobic rhetoric of the GOP and John McCain's serial flip-flops on immigration reform are turning the Hispanic vote into a blue wave for Barack Obama.

Many commentators saw Obama's struggles among Latinos during the primary campaign against Hillary Clinton as a window of opportunity for John McCain. As the data show, that simply has not come to pass.

In a poll released on October 21st, Gallup showed Obama enjoying a 62% to 30% margin among the nation's 43 million Hispanic voters. Among Catholic Hispanics, the delta grows to 39%. Those numbers are consistent with a Pew Research study in July, which found a 43 percentage point gap (66-23).

If Obama's standing among Hispanics persists on November 4th, he will beat the Democratic performance over the past two presidential election cycles. Eight years ago, Al Gore topped George Bush among Hispanic voters by 27 points, 62% to 35%. In 2004, Bush narrowed the gap substantially, losing to Kerry by only 53% to 44%. But by the 2006 mid-terms, Republican anti-immgrant hysteria was already costing McCain's party, as Democrats captured 69% of the Hispanic vote. While McCain himself is not a standard bearer of the anti-immigrant message, his association with his Republican Party's hard line position virtually ensures Barack Obama will significantly outpoll John Kerry among Latino voters.

Back in June, MSNBC's Chuck Todd punctured the myth of Barack Obama's supposed Hispanic problem:

It's no longer fair to say that Obama has a problem with Latino voters; McCain does. This was a case of conventional wisdom that was never based on fact, just semi-informed speculation based on primary exit polling and bad stereotypes of Latinos.

What Chuck Todd said then is also now true of Jewish voters. It is John McCain who has a problem.

UPDATE: MSNBC's Todd today concluded "Obama's dominance among Hispanics in the West is proving to be the difference maker in Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico" and that "it's Hispanics that could be putting him over the top on Nov. 4."

The Republican Party may no longer be able to manufacture votes, but it can still produce its fair share of ironies. On the stump in Iowa, Sarah Palin warned supporters of the party of Mark Foley, Ted Haggard and Larry Craig to beware "Uncle Barney Frank." And in Pennsylvania, the McCain campaign official responsible for helping perpetrate the Ashley Todd hoax defended an email claiming an Obama presidency would augur a second Holocaust.

For her part, Governor Palin went for a two-fer in smearing the openly gay Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank. Palin, who staunchly supports the Republican Party platform's call for a constitutional ban on abortion even in cases of rape and incest, stoked fears of an all intrusive federal government she claimed would come with Democratic control of the White House and Capitol Hill. And in one fell swoop, she turned to the disgusting old stereotypes of the "red menace" and gay-baiting:

"Now they do this in other countries where the people are not free -- government as part of the family, taking care of us, making decisions for us. I don't know what to think of having in my family Uncle Barney Frank or others to make decisions for me."

Meanwhile in Pennsylvania, the dirty deeds of the McCain campaign reached a new low. On Saturday, the AP reported that an email to "fellow Jewish voters" paid for by the Republican Federal Committee of PA - Victory 2008 warned that a victory for Barack Obama would usher in a second Holocaust:

"Jewish Americans cannot afford to make the wrong decision on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008," the e-mail reads. "Many of our ancestors ignored the warning signs in the 1930s and 1940s and made a tragic mistake. Let's not make a similar one this year!"

For its part, the Republican Party in the Keystone State did not dispute that one of its committees produced the smear email sent to 75,000 people. Instead, it argues, the consultant responsible for it, the GOP claimed, did not have authorization to do so. As TPM reports, the consultant in question, Bryan Rudnick, claims otherwise.

Even more interesting is the identity of the Republican spokesperson doing the work to distance John McCain and the GOP from the hateful email bearing its name:

The McCain campaign also repudiated the e-mail. Spokesman Peter Feldman said Saturday night that McCain "rejects politics that degrade our civics."

That would be the same Peter Feldman at the center of the Ashley Todd fraud. As Greg Sargent detailed Friday, it was Feldman, McCain's communications director in Pennsylvania, who contacted Pittsburgh media to spread the bogus story that the young, white female McCain volunteer was targeted by a large African-American assailant. Despite non-sensical denials from McCain spokesman Brian Rogers blaming the Pittsburgh police and "sloppy reporting" for perpetuating the Todd slander against the Obama campagn, the campaign has not refuted Feldman's role in the affair.

And so it goes. As Election Day nears, the McCain campaign and its desperate Republican allies play on fear and hate - of African-Americans, of gay Americans, of immigrants and, above all, Muslims. Facing a potential electoral calamity on November 4th, "politics that degrade our civics " is all that's left for the Party of Hate.

While the outcome of the presidential election may still be in doubt, that John McCain's selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was a disaster is certain. Eye-popping poll numbers, an avalanche of newspaper endorsements and a growing list of turncoat conservatives all cite Palin's staggering lack of qualifications as a critical factor in backing Barack Obama. And adding insult to injury, Joe Lieberman and Palin's home state paper are just the latest to voice their doubts about McCain's running mate - and his judgment.

For the second time since her nomination, Lieberman, the ersatz Democrat and a former #2 himself, offered a less than stellar endorsement of Sarah Palin. Asked Friday about McCain's health and Palin's readiness, the Republican ticket's normally reliable water carrier simply couldn't do it this time:

"Thank God, she's not gonna have to be president from day one, because McCain's going to be alive and well. If, God forbid, an accident occurs or something of that kind, she'll be ready. She's had executive experience. She's smart and she will have had on-the-job training."

Joe Lieberman's obvious fear of a Palin presidency on Day Two was also on display in an interview with NBC's Andrea Mitchell during the Republican convention in St. Paul:

MITCHELL: Do you feel Sarah Palin is qualified to be commander-in-chief if, God forbid, something should happen to John McCain?

LIEBERMAN: Well, you know...let's assume the best. John's in great shape, he's gonna be the president and let's assume that nothing bad will happen. Why should we? But if it does...yes, she'll be ready.

Apparently Lieberman, who has a history of whispering answers into John McCain's ear, stayed silent this time. Like McCain himself, he did not put country first.

On Sunday, the Anchorage Daily News reached the same conclusion. In its endorsement describing Barack Obama as the "clear choice" for President, the Alaska paper had some tough words both for the state's governor and John McCain for selecting her:

"Yet despite her formidable gifts, few who have worked closely with the governor would argue she is truly ready to assume command of the most important, powerful nation on earth. To step in and juggle the demands of an economic meltdown, two deadly wars and a deteriorating climate crisis would stretch the governor beyond her range. Like picking Sen. McCain for president, putting her one 72-year-old heartbeat from the leadership of the free world is just too risky at this time."

With his cynical pick of Palin, John McCain gambled that the Alaska Governor would transform the race by attracting women voters and galvanizing his party's social conservative base. While the outcome of November 4th is still to be determined, it's clear that McCain has lost his bet. And with friends like Joe Lieberman, who needs enemies?

UPDATE 1: On Meet the Press today, McCain feebly stood up for his running mate:

"I don't defend her. I praise her. She needs no defense."

UPDATE 2: On Sunday, Joe Lieberman again undermined Palin by comically reassuring Americans that "I talked to doctors and insurance actuaries. And they tell me based on McCain's age, his health, including skin cancer, he'll live till at least 85. And probably longer."

Back in 1994, South Carolina mother Susan Smith earned the revulsion of the nation when she blamed a mysterious black assailant for the abduction of her two sons, children she ultimately admitted having murdered herself. With today's revelations that it helped foster a hoax about the supposed assault of one of its volunteers by an African-American backer of Barack Obama, John McCain's presidential campaign has joined Smith as a race-baiting fraud.

The fabricated assault on Ashley Todd, the young white woman helping McCain in Pennsylvania, quickly drew the sympathies of both campaigns. But almost immediately, her suspicious story raised eyebrows even in the conservative blogosphere. By early Friday, Todd was exposed as a fraud. And as Talking Points Memo reported, the McCain campaign in the Keystone State apparently played a vital role in perpetuating it:

John Verrilli, the news director for KDKA in Pittsburgh, told TPM Election Central that McCain's Pennsylvania campaign communications director gave one of his reporters a detailed version of the attack that included a claim that the alleged attacker said, "You're with the McCain campaign? I'm going to teach you a lesson."

Verrilli also told TPM that the McCain spokesperson had claimed that the "B" stood for Barack. According to Verrilli, the spokesperson also told KDKA that Sarah Palin had called the victim of the alleged attack, who has since admitted the story was a hoax.

If this scenario sounds familiar, it should. Exactly 14 years ago, it was Susan Smith who drew Americans' initial sympathy - and subsequent scorn - for her invention of a black bogeyman to conceal her heinous crime.

On October 24th, 1994, as the New York Times recalled, Smith killed her sons, killings for which she was eventually sentenced to life in prison:

That night, investigators say, Mrs. Smith pulled her car to the edge of a deep lake, stepped out, put the gearshift in drive and let it roll down the boat ramp into the black water. Her two little boys, buckled snugly in their safety seats, died under the lake...

..."I believed her, right up to the end," said Juliaette Kerhulas, of Mrs. Smith's story that a young black man had ordered her out of her burgundy 1990 Mazda on the night of Oct. 25, then driven away with 3-year-old Michael and 14-month-old Alexander in the back seat.

Ms. Kerhulas wasn't the only one who believed in her. None other than House Speaker Newt Gingrich rushed to the defense of Smith, whose step-father ironically happened to be a prominent Republican fundraiser and member of the Christian coalition. The case, Gingrich insisted, showed the decay of American society under Democratic Party rule:

Enter Newt Gingrich, who rushed into action on election eve with another reliable generic culprit: society. He said the double murder "vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting and how much we need to change things," expediently adding that "the only way you get change is to vote Republican."

While American public opinion clearly showed its residual ugly racist history with its unquestioning acceptance of Smith's initial story of a Willie Hortonesque African American assailant, the subsequent realization and broad-based societal outrage indicated both how far we've come and how far we've got to go. Ultimately, justice was done.

Fast forward 14 years to the Todd episode in western Pennsylvania. Will justice be done this time as well?

John Moody, executive vice president at Fox News, thinks so. Early Friday before the revelation of Ashley Todd's sham, Moody concluded:

"If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain's quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting."

That would be a fitting legacy - and justice served - for the scurrilous, gutter dwelling McCain campaign.

Karl Marx famously said that historical events occur twice, first as tragedy and the second time as farce. Of the McCain campaign's Susan Smith moment, truer words were never spoken.

UPDATE: Perpetuating stereotypes and helping perpetrate race-based fraud isn't solely the province of the right. As I've noted before, Al Sharpton's role in the 1989 Tawana Brawley hoax should have long since ended his association the Democratic Party.

Just one week after John McCain stunned Americans with his sneering contempt for the "health of the mother" needing an abortion, his running mate Sarah Palin refused to condemn anti-abortion terrorists as terrorists. By giving a pass to convicted killers like Eric Rudolph and James Kopp, Palin is just the latest in a long line of leading conservatives to provide the kindling for far right domestic terrorism. As recent history shows, when it comes to abortion, gay Americans, immigration or judicial appointments, the line connecting the rhetoric of the Republican Party and the mainstream conservative movement to right-wing terror is a very short one.

Palin's alarming position surfaced during her joint appearance with McCain in an interview with NBC's Brian Williams. Training her fire on Bill Ayers, Palin refused to similarly brand violent right-wing radicals as the terrorists:

WILLIAMS: Is an abortion clinic bomber a terrorist, under this definition, governor?

PALIN: (Sigh). There's no question that Bill Ayers via his own admittance was one who sought to destroy our U.S. Capitol and our Pentagon. That is a domestic terrorist. There's no question there. Now, others who would want to engage in harming innocent Americans or facilities that uh, it would be unacceptable. I don't know if you're going to use the word terrorist there.

Palin's casual disregard for the safety of Americans is sadly the natural extension of both Republican policies and her own personal story. The McCain-Palin ticket, after all, is running on a GOP platform which calls for a constitutional amendment banning abortion even in cases of rape and incest. John McCain himself has not only opposed legislation to protect family planning clinics, but in 1993 addressed the radical anti-abortion group Oregon Citizens Alliance. (One of its members, Shelley Shannon was convicted for shooting and wounding a doctor, an act for which the judge branded her "a terrorist.") And back in the 1990's, Sarah Palin herself was among those protesting outside women's health clinics.

The logical leap from Sarah Palin to the legions of anti-abortion extremists is a short one. No doubt, Palin's unrepentant terrorists including Shannon, Atlanta Olympics and family planning clinic bomber Eric Rudolph and James Kopp, killer of doctor Bernard Slepien, would applaud these Republican leaders. To paraphrase Tony Perkins, "It is hard not to draw a line between the hostility" the conservative movement foments towards reproductive rights advocates and the violence of 2007 would-be Austin, Texas clinic terrorist Paul Ross Evans.

For its part, the Justice Department made clear just how seriously it took these terror threats. In 1999, Army of God member James Kopp joined Osama Bin Laden on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List. And when Rudolph was arrested in 2003, Attorney General John Ashcroft used the "T" word:

"This sends a clear message that we will never cease in our efforts to hunt down all terrorists, foreign or domestic, and stop them from harming the innocent."

(Unsurprisingly, by 2005 the Bush Department of Homeland Security only considered leftist radicals to be domestic terror threats.)

But curtailing reproductive rights for American women isn't the only case where now mainstream Republican rhetoric fans the flames of right-wing terror.

The not-too-thinly veiled threats to American judges offer a particularly telling example. In June 2007, Judge Reggie Walton was only the latest to receive threatening calls and letters, just days after he handed down his sentence in the Scooter Libby case.

Sadly, many of the leading lights in the Republican Party have it made clear that judicial intimidation is now an acceptable part of conservative discourse and political strategy. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), himself a former Texas Supreme Court Justice, has been at the forefront of GOP advocacy of violence towards members of the bench whose rulings part ways with conservative orthodoxy.

Back in 2005, Cornyn was one of the GOP standard bearers in the conservative fight against so-called "judicial activism" in the wake of the Republicans' disastrous intervention in the Terri Schiavo affair. On April 4th, Cornyn took to the Senate floor to issue a not-too-thinly veiled threat to judges opposing his reactionary agenda. Just days after the murders of judges in Chicago and Atlanta, Cornyn offered his endorsement of judicial intimidation:

"I don't know if there is a cause-and-effect connection, but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country...And I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters, on some occasions, where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in, engage in violence."

As it turns out, Cornyn was merely echoing the words of the soon-to-be indicted House Majority Leader Tom Delay. On March 31st, Delay issued a statement regarding the consistent rulings in favor of Michael Schiavo by all federal and state court judges involved:

"The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior, but not today."

The impact of tacit conservative endorsement of violence against judges cannot be dismissed. After all, it extends to members of the Supreme Court of the United States. In March 2006, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg revealed that she and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor were the targets of death threats. On February 28th, 2005, the marshal of the Court informed O'Connor and Ginsburg of an Internet posting citing their references to international law in Court decisions (a frequent whipping boy of the right) as requiring their assassination:

"This is a huge threat to our Republic and Constitutional freedom...If you are what you say you are, and NOT armchair patriots, then those two justices will not live another week."

Neither O'Connor nor Ginsburg are shy about making the connection between Republican rhetoric of judicial intimidation and the upswing in threats and actual violence against judges. Ginsburg noted that they "fuel the irrational fringe" O'Connor blamed Cornyn and his fellow travelers for "creating a culture" in which violence towards judges is merely another political tactic:

"It gets worse. It doesn't help when a high-profile senator suggests a 'cause-and-effect connection' [between controversial rulings and subsequent acts of violence.]"

When anthrax spores were mailed to the Supreme Court in 2001, it did not require a leap of imagination to speculate on the ideological persuasion of the culprit. Aided by best-selling conservative author and media personality Ann Coulter, who joked in January 2006, "We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens' creme brulee," the right-wing endorsement of retribution against judges increasingly permeates the culture.

Judges, of course, aren't the only target of conservative venom. [The GOP crusade against gay Americans is a strategic centerpiece of 21st century Republican political strategy. Despite the seemingly endless parade of Mark Foley, Jim West, Ted Haggard, Ed Shrock, Larry Craig and a host of other once-closeted conservatives, the demonization of gay Americans and their supposed "homosexual agenda" by the Republican leadership and its radical right allies like Tony Perkins remains the reddest of red meat for so called "values voters."

The tactics and rhetoric of the gay-bashing are right are tied at the hip. In 2004, same-sex marriage ban ballot measures in key battleground states helped bring Karl Rove's four million new evangelical voters to the polls, ensuring President Bush's reelection. (Ironically, the same tactic failed the GOP during the 2006 mid-terms in the wake of the Mark Foley scandal.) Congressional Republicans uniformly opposed the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which last month passed the House 235-184 despite GOP maneuvers to bury the bill. President Bush, of course, has vowed to veto the bill protecting the workplace rights of gay Americans, on the spurious grounds that it threatens "the sanctity of marriage."

Then, of course, there are the words of the Republican leadership and its echo chamber. Ex-Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) and his one-time Texas colleague John Cornyn equate same-sex marriage to polygamy and bestiality, with "man-on-dog" and "man-on-box turtle" analogies. Columnist Ann Coulter, a Mitt Romney supporter and fixture on right-wing media, calls John Edwards a "faggot" and Al Gore a "total fag."

There is a continuum of hate that runs from the fringe of the conservative movement directly to the Republican leadership; the distance from Fred Phelps to the Republican National Committee is also a short one. As you'll recall, Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, organizes virulent anti-gay protests at U.S. military funerals, complete with signs such as "God Hates Fags" and "Thank God for IEDs," deaths it deems divine punishment for America's tolerance of gay lifestyles. Though Phelps later lost an $11 million lawsuit brought by a grieving father, the GOP's amen corner shares responsibility for giving the likes of Phelps aid and comfort.

And so it goes. As the 2008 election winds down, Republican leaders including John McCain, Sarah Palin, Mel Martinez, Virgil Goode, Robin Hayes, Michele Bachmann, Randy Kuhl, Nancy Pfotenhauer and a host of others extol supposed "real Americans." The Party of Hate's sinister speech spurs hatred and division, and in some cases violence. But as would-be Vice President Sarah Palin insists, just don't call them terrorists.

None of which deterred McCain from pretending otherwise in an interview Wednesday with the CBS affiliate in Washington, DC. Asked, "where is the John McCain from 2000?" and "has something changed," Mr. Straight Talk responded:

"You'll have to tell me what's changed. I love it when they say, 'Oh McCain has changed.' And I say, 'What have I changed on?' They can't name a single issue or they'll name an issue and it's false. I'm the same guy. I'm proud of our campaign."

Last month, McCain threw down the same gauntlet during his disastrous appearance on ABC's The View. When host Joy Behar lamented, "I don't see the old John McCain...I understand why - you want to get elected," McCain instinctively went to battle stations:

"I've been through this litany before, where I say, 'ok, what specific area have I quote changed?' Nobody can name it...I am the same person and I have the same principles."

As it turns out, not so much. At almost every turn, John McCain in his eternal quest for the White House reversed long-held positions, compromised core principles and swallowed his pride in order to curry favor with both the leading lights of the conservative movement and right-wing Republican primary voters. With the nomination sewn up, McCain then retreated in a desperate about-face back to the political center.

The numbers tell the tale. By this March, McCain had flip-flopped on the religious right, the Bush tax cuts, immigration reform, a first-term balanced budget pledge, overturning Roe v. Wade, detainee torture and even his relationship with President Bush. In June, McCain set a new record with 10 more reversals in the span of just two weeks.

All in all, ThinkProgress now puts the McCain Flip-Flop count at 44 across the gamut of issues foreign and domestic. The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen tabulated 76 changes of tune for "Jukebox John". Another online McCain flip-flop tracker insists the mythical maverick's U-turns now top 100.

Unashamed, undeterred and apparently unencumbered by reality, John McCain went on the offensive against Barack Obama again today. Obama, he told supporters, would "say anything" to get elected.

(This piece originally appeared at Crooks and Liars.)

In a 21st century update to the Republican war on "welfare queens," John McCain and running mate Sarah Palin have tried to brand Barack Obama's tax-cutting policies as "welfare" and "socialism." But as it turns out, it is Palin who has emerged as the welfare queen of the 2008 campaign. From her family's taxpayer-funded travel and gubernatorial perks in Alaska to her toney $150,000 wardrobe courtesy of the Republican National Committee, Sarah Palin is living the high life by depending on the kindness of strangers.

In the latest revelation giving lie to her claim to be a humble hockey mom, Palin received an elegant new closet full of clothes thanks to GOP donors. (The Daily Show fittingly labeled Palin's My Fair Lady episode, "Extremist Makeover.") Her tabs of $75,000 and $49,000 at Niemann Marcus and Sak's Fifth Avenue respectively provoked outrage from "real Americans" and Republican contributors alike. (One exception is Palin personal shopper and GOP operative Jeff Larson, whose firm FLS Connect also happens to be the villain behind John McCain's robo-calling smears of Obama across the nation.)

The Palin clan was also the beneficiary of $21,000 in travel for the family, with the bill footed this time by Alaska's taxpayers. Governor Palin at the public's expense took her children to events across the state and the country, including an October 2007 junket to New York with daughter Bristol. Palin even went so far as to modify her expense reports after her selection as John McCain's running mate to create retroactive justifications for toting her kids to public events:

For example, the girls flew to Anchorage from Juneau for the weekend on Feb. 9, 2007, with Palin charging the state $1,556.40 for their flights. Palin listed the girls' attendance as "official starter" of the Iron Dog snowmobile race, which their father has competed in for 14 years.

As it turns out, Sarah Palin dined at the public trough even when dining at home. As was revealed last month, Palin pocketed $17,000 in per diems last year from the residents of Alaska for the 300-plus nights she stayed at her own home in Wasilla. (Unsurprisingly, that windfall did not appear on her 2007 tax return.)

Palin's belief that charity begins at home dates back to her days as mayor of Wasilla. During her years in office, Palin received gifts and zoning assistance to aid the sale of her home. That excludes potentially tens of thousands of dollars in gratis contracting work allegedly involved in the building of her family's 3,450 square foot lakeside home.

Of course, much of the largesse Palin received was not in cash, but in kind. The Troopergate scandal, in which Palin was found to have violated state ethics rules by pressuring the Commissioner of Public Safety to fire her former brother-in-law, is just one symptom of her appropriation of the public machinery of government for her own personal use. And facilitating Palin's frequent journeys around the state was her de facto commandeering of a state aircraft for the purpose.

In all, Palin's pattern of parasitism upon the body politic undermines her self-portrait as Jolene Six-Pack, the mythical maverick and working mom struggling like Americans everywhere just to get by. In a further irony, Palin's perks render comical the right-wing talking point that Barack Obama's tax credits to working families who pay no income taxes constitute "welfare." The Palin camp claims she owes no taxes on her benefits as governor and vice presidential nominee.

Accountants and IRS experts beg to differ when it comes to her clothes, her travel and her per diems. But whether or not Sarah Palin ultimately pays taxes on her ill-gotten gains, she may still pay a price on Election Day– a one-way ticket back to Juneau.

UPDATE: McCain defended Palin's shopping spree today, telling reporters, "She needed clothes at the time."

For the second time in 48 hours, Sarah Palin praised the ultra hardline Republican platform which ignores John McCain's past stands on abortion, same-sex marriage and stem cell research. One day after a CBN interview in which she extolled the constitutional amendment banning gay marriage it calls for, Palin told James Dobson that her running mate supports the extremist platform planks he in fact long opposed. As it turns out, McCain's acquiescence in the writing of the Republican platform revealed both his weakness - and disinterest.

Literally speaking to the converted, Governor Palin reassured Focus on the Family's Dobson "from the bottom of my heart" that John McCain was with them on the culture war issues they about most:

DOBSON: In your private conversations with Senator McCain, it is your impression that he also strongly supports those views? I know that he did not oppose that platform when it was written. Do you think he will implement it?

PALIN: I do, from the bottom of my heart. I am such a strong believer that McCain believes in those strong planks and we do have good conversations about some of the details of the different planks and what they represent. I'm very heartened that John McCain...he doesn't want a Vice President who will check the opinions...of me at the door and we talk about some of these and they're very important. It's most important though, as you're suggesting, that Americans know that John McCain is solidly there on those solid planks in our platform that build the right agenda for America.

Dobson has it exactly right. Wary of a backlash from social conservatives, McCain did not oppose their harsh platform planks during the Republican National Convention. And the result, as I've documented previously, is that the 2008 GOP Platform reflects the views of the Party's vice presidential nominee and not its presidential candidate.

At every turn, McCain deferred to positions contradicting his own, starting with abortion.

Back in April, John McCain taunted Barack Obama as the choice of Hamas in the wake of remarks by a spokesman for that organization. Now with the news that Al Qaeda web sites are seemingly backing McCain for President, the Republican might want to reconsider that line of attack. And to be sure, John McCain should steer clear of touting "Osama the Terrorist" at his rallies.

As the Washington Post detailed Wednesday, Al Qaeda cadres see a McCain as the best bet to perpetuate the policies of President Bush they see bankrupting the United States and the West:

"Al-Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election," said a commentary posted Monday on the extremist Web site al-Hesbah, which is closely linked to the terrorist group. It said the Arizona Republican would continue the "failing march of his predecessor," President Bush...

...It further suggested that a terrorist strike might swing the election to McCain and guarantee an expansion of U.S. military commitments in the Islamic world.

"It will push the Americans deliberately to vote for McCain so that he takes revenge for them against al-Qaeda," said the posting, attributed to Muhammad Haafid, a longtime contributor to the password-protected site. "Al-Qaeda then will succeed in exhausting America."

As Adam Raisman, a senior analyst for the Site Intelligence Group, which monitors Islamist Web pages, put it, "The idea in the jihadist forums is that McCain would be a faithful 'son of Bush' -- someone they see as a jingoist and a war hawk." He added, "They think that, to succeed in a war of attrition, they need a leader in Washington like McCain."

Of course, the notion that John McCain somehow enjoys the backing of Al Qaeda is a slander that deserves no place in American politics. (That said, the ironies abound for the man who said "I know how" to get Osama Bin Laden and would follow him to "the gates of hell.") But as the recent history shows, slanders have become the centerpiece of the McCain campaign.

"Actually, we like Mr. Obama. We hope he will [win] the election and I do believe he is like John Kennedy, great man with great principle.

We like Mr. Obama and we hope he will win the election. He has a vision to change America."

Almost instantaneously, the McCain campaign sent a fundraising email titled "Hamas Weighs In On U.S. Presidential Election." Then on April 25, McCain himself blasted Obama:

"I think it is very clear who Hamas wants to be the next president of the United States...I think that the people should understand that I will be Hamas' worst nightmare.

"I never expect for the leader of Hamas...to say that he wants me as president of the United States. I think it is very clear...why they would not want me to be president of the United States, so if Senator Obama is favored by Hamas, I think people can make judgments accordingly."

Now with America's mortal enemy announcing its support for the McCain-Palin ticket, Mr. Straight Talk might want to reconsider that invitation. Judge not, the saying goes, lest ye be judged.

UPDATE: The McCain camp held a conference call to declare, amng other things, that Al Qaeda's statements of support for McCain constitute reverse psychology intended to damage his prospects.

As ThinkProgress recounted, Palin's hot potatoe came during an interview with NBC affiliate KUSA:

Q: Brandon Garcia wants to know, "What does the Vice President do?"

PALIN: That's something that Piper would ask me!...[T]hey're in charge of the U.S. Senate so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom.

As Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid noted, the Constitution gives the Veep no such power:

"The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided."

In Sarah Palin's defense, she may well be able to spell "Constitution," if not grasp it. In June 1992, the unfortunate Dan Quayle had no such luck.

Then the word potato came up. Mr. Quayle instructed William to go to the board. The bespectacled lad quickly printed P-O-T-A-T-O.

"That's fine phonetically," the Vice President said, "but you're missing just a little bit."

With Mr. Quayle's coaxing, William warily added an E.

That set off rumbling from the dozens of reporters crammed into the classroom. Several of them near the back of the room sought the nearest reference, "The Rainbow Dictionary," to confirm that the standard spelling of potato is without an E.

Questioned about it later at a news conference, Mr. Quayle said he was unaware of his error.

For his part, the now 28 year old William Figueroa is more than willing to cut Quayle some slack:

"Me, personally, I think it was an innocent mistake. It was blown out of proportion by the media," he said. "They already had an image of who he was, and what I did was just another stepping stone adding to that."

As we fast forward to 2008 and Quayle's natural heir Sarah Palin, history is repeating itself. But her mistake isn't so innocent. Having herself asked in August what the vice president does and offering a frightening first response during her debate with Joe Biden, Palin's latest failed attempt to define her job description can't be overemphasized.

Just three weeks after booting New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd from the campaign plane, Team McCain grounded Time magazine's Joe Klein as well. Apparently, when the going gets tough, John McCain tells the tough to get going.

Unable to withstand Klein's documentation of the McCain campaign's descent into the gutter, the Straight Talk Express banished him instead:

Campaign spokesperson Michael Goldfarb responded that "we don't allow Daily Kos diarists on board either."

Once upon time, Joe Klein lauded John McCain the mythical maverick. In a July 2007 column titled, "McCain is Back," Klein praised the "funny, free-range McCain reincarnated" on the campaign trail. "It is wonderful to have McCain," he said, "back roiling the waters."

Alas, that was then and this is now. As McCain's dark and dirty campaign has spiraled downwards, Klein in recent weeks blasted McCain's slanderous ads, his ridiculous "socialist" smear of Obama and his branding Obama as, in essence, a traitor. One year after welcoming back the old McCain, Klein expressed disgust at the new one:

"I can't remember a more scurrilous statement by a major party candidate. It smacks of desperation. It renews questions about whether McCain has the right temperament for the presidency. How sad."

Days later, Klein lamented:

"A few months ago, I wrote that John McCain was an honorable man and he would run an honorable campaign. I was wrong."

Maureen Dowd learned that same lesson in September. After years of covering McCain, Dowd was just one casualty in the McCain campaign's war on the New York Times.

Ironically, Dowd's most revealing work about the sinister side of John McCain came a decade earlier. As it turns out, it was her 1998 interview of McCain in the wake of his infamous Chelsea Clinton joke which provided a disturbing window into his soul.

As David Corn