K.C. Johnson runs down the latest reaction to the ethics investigation against Durham DA Mike Nifong, including a link to this cartoon by Kevin Siers in today's Charlotte Observer:

Duncan Hunter's '08 Presidential juggernaut picked up a key endorsement yesterday: Arizona Rep. Trent Franks:

One of Arizona's most conservative U.S. House members is endorsing a California congressman over Sen. John McCain for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination, saying it is "what's right for America." [snip]

Franks said he knows that his early backing of the lesser-known Hunter will raise eyebrows, given that his own state's senior senator is considering a run for the White House.

But without criticizing McCain directly, Franks described Hunter as a candidate who "is an unequivocal social conservative and fiscal conservative and has a consistent conservative voting record." [snip]

Franks described Hunter as "a bold, Valley Forge, Ronald Reagan Republican who holds the temperament and philosophical foundations to lead this country to its greatest heights yet."

A Valley Forge Republican? That's a new one. I"m afraid Franks has a long way to go to get people to buy into the comparison of Duncan Hunter to Ronald Reagan. Franks says his 'dis of McCain is "nothing personal." I'm sure McCain will say the same thing to Franks when the time comes...

What do Rosie O'Donnell and George W. Bush have in common? They're both stupid, according to Donald Trump.

Trump on Rosie to the Associated Press: "I've exposed Rosie for what she is: a very dumb human being. She's got no intelligence, but I've known that for a long time."

Trump on Bush to Maureen Dowd: "Bush will go down as the worst and by far the dumbest president in history."

Gerald Ford was a good and gracious man.

He was a dedicated and honest public servant--well liked by all who knew him personally. And I think his controversial pardon of Richard Nixon was a good idea--good in the sense that it got it off the table so the country could move on.

However, President Ford was one of a long line of American executives who presided over the decline of the U.S. in both national security and economic terms. This began under LBJ and stretched out through Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter.

In national security terms, Mr. Ford was a détentist who accommodated the Soviet Union in a number of ways, including unverifiable arms control deals that Ronald Reagan put an end to when the Gipper assumed the presidency in the 1980's.

The U.S.'s Vietnam retreat from the rooftop of our embassy in Saigon was one of the low points in the history of American foreign policy--a disgraceful action. Reagan, of course, changed all this in the 1980's with his many actions to overturn and defeat Soviet communism.

In economic policy, Mr. Ford was a traditional Republican budget balancer who had no pro-growth policies. Arthur Laffer tried to persuade Ford of the merits of supply side economics to reduce marginal tax rates and grow the American economy--but Ford, acting on advice of top economic advisor Alan Greenspan, rejected this.

Jude Wanniski called this root canal economics and Newt Gingrich described Ford's futile obsession with the budget deficit as simply the tax collector for the welfare state.

The combination of high inflation interacting with high marginal tax rates led to stagflation and the continued decline of the American economy. And the infamous "whip inflation now" program was nothing more than price controls and state planning.

Again, it took Ronald Reagan to reverse all this by adopting the incentive-minded growth model which slashed tax rates and reignited the U.S. economy in the 1980's - an economy whose fire still burns brightly a quarter of a century later.

At the end of the day, Ford was defeated by Jimmy Carter, who was just as baffled about stagflation and Soviet hegemony as Ford was.

Mr. Ford attempted one last play on the national political stage at the 1980 Republican National Convention in Detroit. Reagan had soundly trounced Papa Bush in the primaries to capture the nomination. But the Papa Bush forces--led by James Baker--attempted a bizarre co-presidency that would have made Ford the vice president and divided up all the executive branch responsibilities.

Reagan himself squashed this, chose Papa Bush instead, crushed Carter in the election, and went on to become one of the greatest presidents in United States history.

Thank God for Ronald Reagan.

On the heels of the new poll in Iowa earlier this week showing Barack Obama tied with John Edwards atop the Dem field and Hillary plummeting to fourth place with 10%, Research 2000 has another 2008 poll out this morning for New Hampshire, conducted for the Concord Monitor from December 18 through December 20, 2006.

On the Dem side, Obama has leapt into a statistical dead heat with Hillary. For the GOP, Giuliani and McCain are neck and neck:

Democrats
Hillary Clinton 22%
Barack Obama 21%
John Edwards 16%
Al Gore 10%
John Kerry 7%
Wesley Clark 4%
Dennis Kucinich 4%
Joe Biden 2%
Tom Vilsack 2%
Evan Bayh2%
Bill Richardson 2%
Undecided 8%

Republicans
Rudy Giuliani 26%
John McCain 25%
Mitt Romney 10%
Newt Gingrich 8%
Condi Rice 6%
George Pataki 3%
Jeb Bush 1%
George Allen 1%
Sam Brownback 1%
Rick Santorum 1%
Duncan Hunter 0%
Undecided 18%

At first blush the horserace numbers don't look too terrible for Hillary - and certainly much better than they did in Iowa. I suppose Hillary's numbers could have been worse, especially if you remember the Boston Herald story from early August reporting on the animosity New Hampshire Dems had toward Hillary,calling her names like a "shrew" and an "evil, power-mad witch."

But, as in Iowa, the real problem for Clinton in the New Hampshire poll is in the hypothetical head to head matchups. Here they are:

Obama 47, McCain 43
Obama 46, Giuliani 39
Obama 48, Romney 29

Edwards 44, McCain 44
Edwards 41, Giuliani 40
Edwards 46, Romney 30

Giuliani 42, Clinton 38
Giuliani 39, Kerry 37
Giuliani 40, Gore 37

McCain 46, Clinton 43
McCain 45, Kerry 40
McCain 46, Gore 39

Clinton 45, Romney 31
Kerry 40, Romney 32
Gore 38, Romney 32

Just like in Iowa, Hillary loses to Rudy and McCain but beats Romney. And just like in Iowa, Obama beats them all. Edwards doesn't run as strong in New Hampshire as in Iowa - no surprise there - but he still manages a dead heat against McCain and Giuliani and handily beats Romney. So even though Hillary is clinging to a lead at the top of the field, she's once again giving off the "unelectable" vibe in comparison to her two most serious primary challengers.

After the Chicago Tribune broke the story about Barack Obama's curious land deal with indicted political bagman Tony Rezko, Obama told the Tribune editorial board in a subsequent meeting it was a "boneheaded" move on his part but that he'd never done "done favors for [Rezko] of any sort."

Today, the Tribune runs what purports to be a "gotcha" story on Obama's claim, though the fare is pretty darn weak:

Obama intern had ties to Rezko
Senator's spokesman denies any favoritism
By David Jackson and Ray Gibson
Tribune staff reporters
Published December 24, 2006

Political fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko made a modest pitch to Sen. Barack Obama last year.

Rezko recommended a 20-year-old student from Glenview for one of the coveted summer internships in Obama's Capitol Hill office.

The student got the job and spent five weeks in Washington, answering Obama's front office phone and logging constituent mail. The student was paid an $804 stipend--about $160 a week--for a position valued mostly for the experience it provides.

But now that otherwise unremarkable internship--one of nearly 100 Obama's office awarded in 2005--raises new questions for the senator, who says he has never done any favors for Rezko.

Please. If we went and made a federal case over every Congressional internship that's been doled out over the years to the child of a friend or political contributor we'd run out of trees and ink by next Thursday.

The full context of Obama's remark about doing "favors" for Rezko - which the Trib, to its credit, included later in the article - was this:

Most of the time, I've never been in a position to do favors for him. I don't control jobs. I don't control contracts. There were no bills that he was pushing when I was in the state legislature that I know of or that he talked to me about. And there were no bills in federal legislation that he was concerned about, so there was no sense of the betrayal of the public trust here."

Parsing that statement over one of 98 five-week internships given out by Obama's office borders on being a joke. On Wednesday, Conor Clarke wrote in The New Republic that Obama's real-estate deal with Rezko was a "non-scandal" and that the new Senator was being held to a different standard than the rest.

I had planned on slamming Clarke for the simple reason that Obama's association with a shady dealer like Rezko is a reflection of Obama's judgment and character and is totally fair game, in the same way that Rudy Giuliani's association with Bernie Kerik will undoubtedly be used against him - as it was the other day by Charlie Rangel .

I still believe that, and if more serious details about Obama's direct dealings with Rezko emerge, they should be given fair scrutiny. But the Trib's over the top treatment of this internship has me wondering if there isn't more to Clarke's argument than I originally thought.

From Reuters:

Jakarta's busy international airport introduced an iris scanner system aimed at business travellers willing to pay around $US200 ($A255) per year to avoid long immigration lines.

Under the ''Saphire'' program, frequent flyers register with the immigration authorities, pay the annual fee, and submit to scans of their left and right eyes, which authorities say are as individual as prints of the fingers or palm.

On arrival, users scan one eye and are cleared for entry, a process expected to take about 10 seconds.

Check out the results of the new Iowa poll, conducted by Research 2000 for KCCI-TV from December 18 through December 20:

Democrats
John Edwards 22%
Barack Obama 22%
Tom Vilsack 12%
Hillary Clinton 10%
Al Gore 7%
John Kerry 5%
Wesley Clark 4%
Dennis Kucinich 4%
Joe Biden 1%
Evan Bayh 1%
Bill Richardson 1%
Undecided 11%

Republicans
John McCain 27%
Rudy Giuliani 26%
Mitt Romney 9%
Newt Gingrich 7%
Condi Rice 4%
George Pataki 1%
Jeb Bush 1%
George Allen 1%
Sam Brownback 1%
Rick Santorum 1%
Duncan Hunter 0%
Undecided 22%

Hypothetical matchups among all survey respondents are as follows:

Obama 42, McCain 39
Obama 43, Giuliani 38
Obama 43, Romney 28

Edwards 42, McCain 39
Edwards 42, Giuliani 38
Edwards 41, Romney 29

McCain 43, Clinton 37
McCain 43, Kerry 38
McCain 41, Gore 39

Giuliani 39, Clinton 35
Giuliani 38, Kerry 34
Giuliani 36, Gore 34

Vilsack 41, McCain 35
Vilsack 42, Giuliani 35
Vilsack 45, Romney 28

Clinton 40, Romney 30
Kerry 33, Romney 30
Gore 34, Romney 28

Summarizing these results: Obama, Edwards and Vilsack beat every Republican. Hillary loses to every Republican but Romney. Romney loses to every Democrat. McCain runs slightly better than Giuliani matching up against most of the Dem field.

This poll looks like Hillary Clinton's worst nightmare in that it clearly reinforces the biggest knock against her which is that she can't win the general election.

Ralph Z. Hallow of the Washington Times on Rudy:

Social conservatives -- contrary to conventional wisdom -- will seriously consider supporting the Republican presidential aspirations of Rudolph W. Giuliani even though he's a pro-choice, anti-gun New Yorker, political analysts and operatives say.

That sounds vaguely familiar.

Hallow includes quotes from a number of GOP activists, including an utterly predictable slam from conservative Richard Viguerie:

"If Rudy Giuliani -- who is wrong on all of the social issues as well as the Second Amendment and is a blank slate on most other important issues such as judges, taxes and size of government -- is the Republican presidential nominee, I would expect a mass exit of most conservatives from the Republican Party in 2008," warns Richard A. Viguerie, a prominent conservative-movement fundraiser and author.

Viguerie is whistling past the graveyard. The only way Rudy can win the nomination is by convincing enough conservatives that he's acceptable, and if he'is able to do that, then by definition there won't be a "mass exodus" of conservatives in 2008.

Moreover, any support Rudy might lose from conservatives in the general election will be more than offset by his appeal among Independents, moderates, and even some Democrats (depending on who their nominee is). So while Viguerie is trying to bully and exert influence over the process, what he's really doing is threatening to marginalize himself and other hardcore conservatives.

Again, I want to make clear I'm not saying Rudy is going to win the nomination, or even that it's probable at this point. But it is possible - as even Michael Barone agrees.

You'll want to read Rich Miller's column in the Sun-Times this morning. Miller takes on critics of the blogosphere (Rago, et al) and concludes:

This phenomenon is not going away, no matter how much it is dismissed or chastised. The Internet has been seized on as a democratizing tool by millions of perpetually democracy-hungry Americans. Bloggers should definitely be open to criticism by the mainstream media. That's America. But lumping everyone together with the crackpots is neither fair nor honest. And the fact that so many reporters and pundits can't seem to get the story right just proves the bloggers' point that too many of them don't know what they're talking about on everything else.