According to Ben Smith over at Politico:

Mike Huckabee comes out hard against the Sonia Sotomayor appointment, with a bit of a misfire as concerns her name:
    The appointment of Maria Sotomayor for the Supreme Court is the clearest indication yet that President Obama's campaign promises to be a centrist and think in a bipartisan way were mere rhetoric. Sotomayor comes from the far left and will likely leave us with something akin to the "Extreme Court" that could mark a major shift. The notion that appellate court decisions are to be interpreted by the "feelings" of the judge is a direct affront of the basic premise of our judicial system that is supposed to apply the law without personal emotion. If she is confirmed, then we need to take the blindfold off Lady Justice.--

Way to go Huckster. Yup all Latinas are Maria's.

Didn't see this posted anywhere, and I think it's a pretty important newspaper endorsement, for those who pay attention to global financial markets and opinion.

Entitled Obama is the better choice The Financial Times offered a qualified endorsement  of Barack Obama today.

US presidential elections involve a fabulous expense of time, effort and money. Doubtless it is all too much - but, by the end, nobody can complain that the candidates have been too little scrutinised. We have learnt a lot about Barack Obama and John McCain during this campaign. In our view, it is enough to be confident that Mr Obama is the right choice.

I rarely read conservative columnists.  Not enough hours in the day to read writers I agree with.  For some reason this morning
I decided to read David Brooks column:

The Class War Before Palin

in which he laments about the current bent of the Republican Party.

Kudos to blogger Andrew Halcro and to the power of the blogosphere. We stand as sentinels of information gathering and dissemination and he is a fine example of one such netcitizen.

His diary, The blogger on the grassy knoll recounts the history of the Troopergate investigation, and the role he played in it.

The NYT is covering the unveiling of a series of ads - focused on John McCain and other Republicans, and their stands on health care. The ads are produced by Health Care for America Now

In an article entitled Ads Criticize McCain, Republicans on Health Care the Times reports:

An independent group is spending more than $4 million to go on the air with a series of television advertisements aimed at Senator John McCain and seven Congressional candidates on the issue of health care.

The commercials, which were paid for by the group Health Care for America Now, assert that Mr. McCain and his fellow Republicans support "health care plans and policies that would leave millions of Americans on their own to fight the insurance industry."

Watching John McCain stagger and stumble through last night's debate was hard to do.  I found it curious that he seemed stuck on stupid with an "earmarks" rant about Senator Obama having approved money for a "$3 million dollar projector".

When I hear the word "projector" it brings to mind the AV projectors that aides wheel into my classroom weekly.  I had no idea what McCain was talking about, and promptly forgot about it as the debate moved on towards the conclusion.

This morning, while reading through the roundups of articles on the debate, and other commentary on the campaign, I headed over to the NYT to read their editorial Politics of Attack and afterwards,
I decided to read and recommend comments, and post one of my own.

A group of independent filmmakers has launched The Wasilla Project

The purpose of the project is to produce a series of short (2-3 minute), video portraits of Sarah Palin and her hometown of Wasilla that can be a valuable addition to the prevailing impressions of her. As time and resources allow, we may do a longer edit as well, one which goes into depth on broader topics raised by Palin and her political career.

The audience for these videos are not the already decided on the right or the left, it's a much as possible people who are undecided, people who want to believe in an inspiring narrative, while voting in the best interests of themselves and the country.

Since the topic of the Keating 5 is no longer off-limits in the TM, and the Obama campaign has launched a counter-attack to deal with the absurd Ayers smears launched by the McCain campaign, perhaps it is time to revisit not just John McCain's culpability and lack of judgment back in the time of Keating, but also the intimate involvement of his wife.