MSNBC: What do you think the political landscape will look like in 2008?

Russert: I think we’re going to have two open primaries. I believe Hillary Clinton will run for president. I think John Edwards will run. I think Howard Dean will run. I think Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico, will run.

On the Republican side, I think John McCain will run at age 72. Rudy Giuliani will run. Bill Frist, the Majority leader of the Senate, will see Giuliani and McCain — two moderate Republicans — and he’ll run to the right. I think there will be Republican governors who will run. If Arnold Schwarzenegger can change the constitution, he’ll run.

Dobson noted he'd been interviewed by U.S. News and World Report after the 2004 elections and warned if Republicans squandered their opportunity, they would pay a price at the polls in either 2008 or 2006.

Dobson's predictions about values and the Republican Party go back even further than that, too.

In 1998 he told a reporter that the GOP was in danger of losing its ability to "claim to speak for those of us with deep moral convictions."

He said at that time the party has "ignored the moral issues year after year, term after term" and said at that time it was "time to fish or cut bait."

And while Obama may not identify as a Muslim, that's not how the Arab and Muslim Streets see it. In Arab culture and under Islamic law, if your father is a Muslim, so are you. And once a Muslim, always a Muslim. You cannot go back. In Islamic eyes, Obama is certainly a Muslim. He may think he's a Christian, but they do not.

Looks like Hillary Clinton's camp agrees with me and has dug up more info that confirms my suspicions about Obama and his Muslim background, including his attendance at a Wahabbi (ie., extremist Sunni) Madrassa (Islamic religious academy).

In Islam, it is forbidden to convert to different faiths. The idea is that God slowly provided the world with his divine words progressively through the Bible, the Torah and lastly the Koran. Islam is the faith which EVERYBODY should follow because it is God’s final words. Thus, it is completely blasphemous to revert back to the ‘old’ and ‘outdated’ faiths – in essence one should keep with the trend and if it isn’t fashion then it should certainly be their spiritual connection to God.

As much as this could be a source of mockery and tongue-in-cheek sarcasm, this is truly the situation. It is very rare for Muslims to revert to other faiths and if that is the case, it is usually kept under wraps. In Egypt, the most common situations revolve around Christian women converting to Islam for purposes of marriage. However the opposite is rarely heard about.

"It's an obvious right-wing hit job by a Moonie publication that was designed to attack Senator Clinton and Senator Obama at the same time," says Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson. Insight, like the Washington Times, is owned by a company controlled by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

But reporting by CNN in Jakarta, Indonesia and Washington, D.C., shows the allegations that Obama attended a madrassa to be false. CNN dispatched Senior International Correspondent John Vause to Jakarta to investigate.

He visited the Basuki school, which Obama attended from 1969 to 1971.

"This is a public school. We don't focus on religion," Hardi Priyono, deputy headmaster of the Basuki school, told Vause. "In our daily lives, we try to respect religion, but we don't give preferential treatment."

Vause reported he saw boys and girls dressed in neat school uniforms playing outside the school, while teachers were dressed in Western-style clothes.

"I came here to Barack Obama's elementary school in Jakarta looking for what some are calling an Islamic madrassa ... like the ones that teach hate and violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan," Vause said on the "Situation Room" Monday. "I've been to those madrassas in Pakistan ... this school is nothing like that."

Vause also interviewed one of Obama's Basuki classmates, Bandug Winadijanto, who claims that not a lot has changed at the school since the two men were pupils. Insight reported that Obama's political opponents believed the school promoted Wahhabism, a fundamentalist form of Islam, "and are seeking to prove it."

"It's not (an) Islamic school. It's general," Winadijanto said. "There is a lot of Christians, Buddhists, also Confucian. ... So that's a mixed school."

We at Insight commend CNN for at least showing the initiative to follow-up on the story and send a correspondent to check it out. But, contrary to their claims, CNN didn’t debunk anything about our story. For the record, Insight never—not once—in its article claims that Obama went to a Madrassa. We didn’t claim it; Hillary’s people did. We reported—and we fully stand by our story—that the Hillary Clinton camp had conducted their own opposition research on Obama’s Muslim past, and that the Clinton investigators had concluded Obama had attended a Madrassa. This is what Hillary’s camp was saying and desperately trying to prove—not Insight. Our sources also confirmed to us that the Clinton camp had come to the conclusion that not only had Obama been raised and educated as a Muslim, but that he had been deliberately concealing it. Moreover, our sources also said that Clinton’s people were seeking to find out about the possible radical Wahhabi angle, and then peddle their information to their media allies later this year—prior to the January 2008 primaries.

---

As for CNN’s investigation into Obama’s Muslim school, we are not yet convinced. To simply take the word of a deputy headmaster about what was the religious curriculum of a school 35 years ago does not satisfy our standards for aggressive investigative reporting. The State Department portrays Indonesia as a hot bed of radical Islamist activity. Christians and non-Muslims face persecution on a daily basis. CNN’s claim that Obama attended a multi-confessional, secular public school needs verification by other news outlets—such as FOX News—who will look the facts straight on, without a vested ideological interest in downplaying Obama’s Muslim heritage.

Are the American people ready for an elected president who was educated in a Madrassa as a young boy and has not been forthcoming about his Muslim heritage?

Faced with what he always knew would be a tough race against Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination and now the challenge of convincing his party that he is also a better alternative than Senator Barack Obama, Mr. Edwards is trying to muscle his way past them and the rest of the field, in part by staking out early and provocative positions on the big issues.

On the war in Iraq, Mr. Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina, not only came out for a complete withdrawal within 12 to 18 months, but he also challenged his Democratic rivals who are still in government to confront President Bush more directly. And on Monday, Mr. Edwards will set out a plan to provide health insurance to the 46.6 million Americans who do not have it, stealing a march on Mrs. Clinton and other Democrats on what is shaping up to be one of the biggest domestic issues of the presidential race.

Appearing on “Meet the Press” on NBC on Sunday, Mr. Edwards said he would raise taxes on people making more than $200,000 a year to help pay for the plan, which he estimated could cost up to $120 billion a year.

Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

¡ö ENVIRONMENT
Al Gore visit postponed
Former US vice president Al Gore will not be able to make it to Taiwan this September to address the issue of global warming, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tien Chiu-chin (ÌïÇïÝÀ) said yesterday. Tien, who invited Gore to visit Taiwan to promote awareness on global warming, told reporters yesterday that she received an e-mail from the Harry Walker Agency, which has the exclusive right to arrange Gore's speeches, saying that Gore had canceled all his scheduled events in the next six months. The visit to Taiwan had been postponed to next year, she added. Tien said the reason for the cancelation was that Gore was considering a presidential bid.

There are many reasons to support John McCain, but as we approach this quarter's fundraising deadline Saturday at midnight, let me remind you of just one of them...

In 1985, a 31-year-old North Carolina lawyer named John Edwards stood before a jury and channeled the words of an unborn baby girl.

Referring to an hour-by-hour record of a fetal heartbeat monitor, Mr. Edwards told the jury: "She said at 3, 'I'm fine.' She said at 4, 'I'm having a little trouble, but I'm doing O.K.' Five, she said, 'I'm having problems.' At 5:30, she said, 'I need out.' "

But the obstetrician, he argued in an artful blend of science and passion, failed to heed the call. By waiting 90 more minutes to perform a breech delivery, rather than immediately performing a Caesarean section, Mr. Edwards said, the doctor permanently damaged the girl's brain.

"She speaks to you through me," the lawyer went on in his closing argument. "And I have to tell you right now -- I didn't plan to talk about this -- right now I feel her. I feel her presence. She's inside me, and she's talking to you."

...

On the other side, insurance companies, business groups that support what they call tort reform and conservative commentators have accused Mr. Edwards of relying on questionable science in his trial work. Indeed, there is a growing medical debate over whether the changes have done more harm than good. Studies have found that the electronic fetal monitors now widely used during delivery often incorrectly signal distress, prompting many needless Caesarean deliveries, which carry the risks of major surgery.

The rise in such deliveries, to about 26 percent today from 6 percent in 1970, has failed to decrease the rate of cerebral palsy, scientists say. Studies indicate that in most cases, the disorder is caused by fetal brain injury long before labor begins.

An examination of Mr. Edwards's legal career also opens a window onto the world of personal injury litigation. In building his career, Mr. Edwards underbid other lawyers to win promising clients, sifted through several dozen expert witnesses to find one who would attest to his claims, and opposed state legislation that would have helped all families with brain-damaged children and not just those few who win big malpractice awards.

In an interview on yesterday, Mr. Edwards did not dispute the contention that the use of fetal heart rate monitors leads to many unneeded Caesarean deliveries or that few cases of cerebral palsy are caused by mishandled deliveries. But he said his cases, selected from hundreds of potential clients with the disorder, were exceptions.

...

Times Square was bursting with investment and renewal not because of the building project, since it had built nothing, nor even because the nation had entered into its present economic boom—42nd Street kept rotting away through the economic upswings of the 1960s and 1980s—but because government was at last starting to behave the way government should behave if it wants to nourish prosperity. Government began to do three things—two of them with the plan's help, though the city could have done them more effectively on its own—that ignited Times Square's revitalization: it started to fight crime, it kicked out the sex industry, and it lowered taxes selectively for big businesses willing to locate in the area.

...

With Giuliani's election as mayor in 1993, the war on crime dramatically intensified. Together with his police commissioner William Bratton, the mayor completely transformed New York City's approach to policing: Compstat soon allowed the NYPD to deploy personnel and resources efficiently, and quality-of-life policing became the norm throughout the city. Thanks to the new techniques—a quantum improvement over Mayronne's early innovations—Times Square's crime rate dropped to an infinitesimal level. Felonies committed on 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth—the "worst block in the city"—fell from 2,300 in 1984 to a mere 60 in 1995, prompting a city official to enthuse that "crime has reached such a low level on that block that we don't keep statistics anymore." In the entire Midtown South precinct, felony complaints fell 50 percent, from 20,000 in 1992 to 10,000 in 1997. Giuliani and Bratton also sent a powerful message through their public rhetoric that the city would no longer tolerate crime and disorder, heightening New Yorkers' and tourists' expectations about safety and soothing the jangling nerves of the business community.

Encouraged by dwindling crime, tourists began crowding back into Times Square—always potentially one of New York's biggest draws—bringing much needed revenue into the city. Giuliani had grasped the connection between cutting crime and reviving Times Square's tourism even before his mayoralty began. The mayor recently told me about how, during the 1970s, he watched Martin Scorsese's film Taxi Driver, which depicted Times Square as a hellish nightmare, and wondered how adversely it might affect tourism. During his 1993 mayoral campaign, Giuliani got a firsthand insight into the answer. Driving down Broadway in his campaign car, he saw a tourist frantically chasing a thief who had snatched his wife's purse, bruising her hand in the process. Giuliani, jumping from the car, joined the chase, but only caught up with the tourist, not the purse snatcher. No cops were around, and none arrived until 30 minutes had passed, assuring the crook's clean getaway. Again, Giuliani thought: what would these tourists think about visiting Times Square in the future?

...

Even some of his detractors admit that he helped transform New Yorkers' attitudes on crime and proved that the city wasn't ungovernable.

,,,

Mr. Giuliani’s chairman for the southern region, Louisiana Senator David Vitter, name is on the roster of the woman known as the ” D.C. Madam,”. Mr. Vitter issued a statement, said that his name was on the list, offered an apology, but no details. Mr. Vitter, who styled himself as a defender of traditional conservative family values, had been a key advocate of Mr. Giuliani’s in conservative circles both in the Senate and key southern states.

He rose to power during the turmoil surrounding former President Clinton’s sexual improprieties, stepping in to replace Representative Bob Livingston.

Mr. Livingston was poised to become Speaker of the House after Newt Gingrich stepped down, facing possible scrutiny about his own affair while still married. The House of Representatives was poised to impeach Mr. Clinton when Mr. Livingston acknowledged his own sexual indiscretion, and he then resigned.

Mr. Vitter stepped in.

In 2000, his wife, Wendy, was asked if she would stand by her man like Hillary Clinton if she faced a similar situation.

“I’m a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary,” Mrs. Vitter told Newhouse News. “If he does something like that, I’m walking away with one thing, and it’s not alimony, trust me.”

The latest Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that nearly a quarter of Republicans are unwilling to back top-tier hopefuls Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, John McCain or Mitt Romney, and no one candidate has emerged as the clear front-runner among Christian evangelicals. Such dissatisfaction underscores the volatility of the 2008 GOP nomination fight.

Clinton kept her strong advantage over Obama; her backers accounted for 36 percent of Democrats to his 20 percent, while support for Edwards remained essentially unchanged at 11 percent. Nationally, the combined sample found Clinton has the edge among black Democrats, with 46 percent of their support to Obama's 33 percent. Her advantage is even wider among Hispanics; she has the support of 45 percent to Obama's 17 percent.

Thin to the point of gauntness, polite to the point of daintiness, Ron Paul is a 71-year-old great-grandfather, a small-town doctor, a self-educated policy intellectual and a formidable stander on constitutional principle. In normal times, Paul might be — indeed, has been — the kind of person who is summoned onto cable television around April 15 to ventilate about whether the federal income tax violates the Constitution. [Building 7 just passed out from ecstasy] But Paul has in recent weeks become a sensation in magazines he doesn’t read, on Web sites he has never visited and on television shows he has never watched.

Alone among Republican candidates for the presidency, Paul has always opposed the Iraq war. He blames “a dozen or two neocons who got control of our foreign policy,” chief among them Vice President Dick Cheney and the former Bush advisers Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, for the debacle. On the assumption that a bad situation could get worse if the war spreads into Iran, he has a simple plan. It is: “Just leave.” [HELL YEAH!]During a May debate in South Carolina, he suggested the 9/11 attacks could be attributed to United States policy. “Have you ever read about the reasons they attacked us?” he asked, referring to one of Osama bin Laden’s communiqués. “They attack us because we’ve been over there. We’ve been bombing Iraq for 10 years.” Rudolph Giuliani reacted by demanding a retraction, drawing gales of applause from the audience. But the incident helped Paul too. Overnight, he became the country’s most conspicuous antiwar Republican.