Cross posted on my personal blog

UPDATE: antirove looked at the timestamp on the pdf that was posted by TPM - "File Create and Modify Dates=4/29/2008 9:17:20 PM"  

That's Tuesday.  Meaning Page Gardner was LYING when she said they had sent a press release out to North Carolina media in advance of their mailing.  How can the board put up with this?  [UPDATE 2.5: As has been pointed out, it's possible that the PDF was created on the 29th even though the press release - which nobody in the media has been able to produce - went out on the 28th.]

UPDATE x2: Scroll down for the screen capture of the undated press release.  It really does look weird - I look at press releases all the time for my work and they ALWAYS have a date.

Synopsis: In an effort to cover their asses after the North Carolina robocall scandal erupted, Women's Voices Women Vote (WVWV) planted an article in a small-town Colorado newspaper solely for the purpose of reposting it on the WVWV website.  Their intent was to mislead people into thinking WVWV had a multi-state press strategy aimed at voters to correspond with voter registration mailings.  In fact, their "press strategy" was aimed not at voters, but rather was part of a desperate PR strategy to quell the controversy exploding around them among the progressive blogosphere.

WVWV wanted to make it look like the NC catastrophe was in fact well planned out, so they created a press release after the fact (that conveniently addressed concerns about the timing of their mailings and calls in relation to the upcoming primary) and false implied that it had already been sent to the NC press.  Then, the next day, they planted an article in a Colorado newspaper to make it look like their press campaign was actually national.

Last night I posted a diary discussing various ways in which Women's Voices. Women Vote was engaging in a cover up about its voter suppression/confusion activities in North Carolina.  I pointed specifically to salon.com's piece that swallowed hook, line, and sinker many half truths being spread by WVWV.

The Salon piece (which is so good for WVWV that they're linking to it on their home page now) also contradicted Sarah Johnson's answers to Adam B's questions on Daily Kos on Thursday.  

It is clear now that WVWV is engaging in a disinformation campaign to try to steer concerned people away from the idea that they're engaging in voter suppression among African Americans in North Carolina.  They have been using surrogates such as pro-Obama board members Mike Lux and William McNary, not to mention independent voter registration activists like James Rucker of ColorOfChange.org and Becky Bond of Credo Mobile/Active Matters to vouch for their character and steer us away from suspecting WVWV of anything untoward.

Today, their latest victim is Salon.com's Alex Koppelman.  

Details below the fold.

Here are the list of guests from recent editions of Fox News Sunday:

April 27: Barack Obama
April 20: Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin
April 13: Mayor Nutter and Tom Daschle
April 6: John Kerry
March 30: Lindsay Graham, Jack Reed
March 23: Bill Richardson, Ed Rendell
March 16: Chris Dodd (didn't bash Fox) and Chuck Schumer; spent most of the time talking about Rev. Wright, both said it wasn't a big deal

February 3: Hillary Clinton

October 7, 2007: Nancy Pelosi

July 29, 2007: Russ Feingold

Okay, so this is spooky.

I was reading Ezra Klein's excellent thumbs-down review of Mark Penn's Microtrends, to better understand why this man ever has a job.  And Ezra quotes an amazing passage that could explain where Hillary Clinton got the idea for Snipergate (not to mention impressively ... perhaps too impressively ... predicting Wright-gate).

Here's the quote:

Ask anyone in politics and they will agree—they face "snipers" every day who are trying to find one flinch, one out-of-place word to put on Drudge or YouTube.

More below the break.

According to Democratic Convention Watch, Obama had a great weekend in terms of narrowing Clinton's lead among superdelegates.

He picked up add-on delegates in Delaware, North Dakota, DC, and Missouri.  One Clinton-supporting superdelegate in Utah was moved to the "uncommitted" category (listen to the great piece on her on NPR), while another in Louisiana was replaced by an uncommitted superdelegate.  And while the Dems in DC did seem to mess up by making a Clinton supporter one of their add-ons, what's amazing is that the other named add-ons, from states Clinton won handily (Oklahoma, Arkansas, and two from Tennessee, plus one from Missouri), have yet to officially declare their support for her.  So Obama is leading the add-on race 6-1 at this point, and trails the superdelegate race by a mere 25 now.  It was 34 a week ago.

Joseph Wilson, an unabashed supporter of (and surrogate for) Senator Hillary Clinton, posted an article today on Huffington Post in which he calls Senator Barack Obama's national security credentials into question.  In doing so, he brings in Willie Horton Rev. Jeremiah Wright to attack Sen. Obama's "judgment".

I find the use of Rev. Wright as a cudgel against Sen. Obama to be absolutely shameless.  Sen. Clinton should be taking a strong stand, not just against the exploitation of this controversy, but against the fact that there is even a controversy at all.  She's playing into the same smear campaign that went after her and her husband for eight years, and that went after John Kerry four years ago.  It needs to stop.

According to this article, both the Obama campaign and the Clinton campaign have superdelegates on their payrolls.

Bickford officially endorsed Clinton on Nov. 1, the same day he began consulting for her campaign in preparation for the New Hampshire primary, according to interviews with Bickford, the Clinton campaign and an endorsement pledge form obtained by The Sun.

Now, I'm not here to cast aspersions on Clinton's or Obama's campaigns for doing something completely within the rules.  However, it does raise some considerable concerns about the nature of the superdelegate system, and what it means to "woo" these party stalwarts.

I think we can all agree with the Clinton campaign that there are some states that Obama won that the Democrats just won't win in November.  Idaho.  Alaska.  Wyoming.  Etc.  Not that they shouldn't campaign, but that they have no chance of winning.

I would hope, however, that we could also agree that there are some states that Clinton won that the Democrats are virtually guaranteed to win this November.  California.  New York.  Massachusetts.  Etc.

Because November's election will yet again be one about electoral votes, Clinton and Rendell's argument about "big states" has little to do with the actual numbers that matter this fall.  Instead, we should be looking at (shudder) "swing states".

Much has been said about the good old superdelegates, and how they could "break" one way or the other.  Not much has been said about what we can do about it.

It turns out, a majority of superdelegates (beyond each state's "add-on" delegates) have specific constituencies.  According to my calculations, based in part on information on the New York Times' site, if the superdelegates with constituencies that have already voted, vote their districts, it will benefit Obama by a margin of 62-44, narrowing Clinton's advantage significantly and making the race even more out of reach.  I think it's time for these superdelegates to hear from us.

Details below the break...

I've become deeply concerned about folks like Kos, Jonathan Alter, and others who are talking about Obama's lead in the so-called "National popular vote."

This is a FALSE METRIC that has nothing to do with anything.  It compares apples and oranges.  It severely undercounts Obama's support in key states.  And it needs to stop.

There was a diary on this issue yesterday by bbrown8370, and on her/his advice, I'm elaborating on it below the break.

Many of you have followed the action-packed race in the Illinois Sixth District Democratic primary.  From Christine Cegelis' remarkable 2004 race against Henry Hyde, to the DCCC's efforts to find someone a little less independent (and having to go outside of the district to do so -- to someone who hasn't ever voted in a Democratic primary in Illinois!), to the involvement of national political figures, it's been quite a whirlwind.

And Tuesday is D-Day.  And you can help -- no matter WHERE you live.

What can you do?  Check below the break!

Judith Miller's entire justification for going to jail is that if a reporter ever reveals a source, then no future source would ever be able to trust her again. It's the one strike & you're out rule.

Which makes the following tale so incredibly damning:

Al Jazeera is reporting that "an official at Iraq's health ministry" gave a press conference today in the health ministry building in Baghdad at which he claimed that "U.S. occupation forces used internationally prohibited substances, including mustard gas, nerve gas, and other burning chemicals" during the most recent attacks on Fallujah.

In other words, we have found the weapons of mass destruction, and they are ours.

It's hard to put too much faith in the accuracy of the article, as it's uncorroborated by any source I can find in a quick look around the Web.  But isn't it worth investigating?

In Friday's Editor & Publisher article Gannon made a lot of claims in an effort to put the entire story to bed.  I know he's been all over the airwaves, but this seems to be the most complete airing of his post-quitting, pre-Americablog position I've seen in print.

We know he was being less than forthright about the extent of his involvement with the so-called "sex sites."  However, everything else does flow into a kind of narrative that could almost work.

Two of his key assertions contradict what kossacks thought we knew:

• That he had been subpoenaed and appeared before a grand jury. (Intsead he claims to have been interviewed by two FBI agents last year.)

• That Talon News existed well before he joined on.