Whodathunkit?

A jury on Friday returned guilty verdicts against four people who attempted to arrest former White House adviser Karl Rove during a fundraising appearance earlier this year in Iowa. Found guilty of trespassing are retired Methodist minister Chet Guinn, two members of the social welfare group Des Moines Catholic Worker Community, Edward Bloomer and Mona Shaw, and former group member Kirk Brown. The four were cited after attempting a citizen’s arrest of Rove on July 25 at t... more

The four Iowans arrested while attempting to perform a citizen’s arrest of Karl Rove during a visit to Des Moines in July were found guilty of trespassing today in Iowa District Court in Polk County. Mona Shaw, Kirk Brown, Ed Bloomer and Chet Guinn outside the Polk County Courthouse. Methodist minister Chet Guinn, 80, as well as three Des Moines Catholic Workers, Edward Bloomer, 61, Kirk Brown, 25, and Mona Shaw, 57, were arrested at the Wakonda Country Club where Rove was schedu... more

A popular political party that rose to tremendous power in the 20th century, the Republican party redefined the nation’s political agenda and dramatically reshaped the role of government in the private lives of its citizens. The resilience of the party was observed throughout such morally testing times as the Nixon resignation and the Iran-Contra affair hearings. The party was symbolized by an elephant and possessed the animal-like quality of stubbornness that was often imitated but ne... more

Howard Wolfson, in his new New Republic blog, writes : "...ultimately voters will make their assessments based on the strength and weaknesses of the top of the tickets. So Democrats hope!  Usually, voters do. But there’s no fundamental reason why, in every instance, they will. The attention lavished on Gov. Palin is unprecedented; perhaps her pull on voters will be, too. Given the relatively low ratings for John McCain’s speech (in the Gallup poll, not the Nielsen ratings)... more

What to make of the new USA Today / Gallup poll showing John McCain with leads among registered and likely voters?  Calling it a convention "bounce" is a little off, as bounces go up and then come down. It’s probably best to wait for a week to see how the competing narratives of the past two week settle before concluding that the electorate has shifted fundamentally. And yet, there are reasons to think that it might have: McCain and Sarah Palin are running a different campaign with dif... more

You can sort of see, from this new McCain-Palin advertisement, why it’s so crucial for Barack Obama to link John McCain to the Republican Party.  BTW: the ad claims that Palin "stopped the Bridge to Nowhere," which is technically true but functionally false. No blowback, though: the electorate doesn’t seem to penalize campaigns for deliberately distorting the record of their candidate and their opponent. It’s probably an artifact of twenty years’ worth of campaign adverti... more

How should the Obama campaign respond to the Palin phenom? ... more