Senator Biden's official entrance into the 2008 contest is not getting off to an auspicious start. Matt Drudge smacked him hard with this brickbat:

SEN. BIDEN SHOCK INTERVIEW: 'I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy'...

But of more concern to Biden's hopes for success in the Democratic field are these comments from some of the most powerful bloggers on the left.

Josh Marshall:

At this point you have to say that Biden suffers from what one might with real generosity call chronic racial grandpaism. That is to say, the penchant for making comments that are not only racially offensive but also extremely silly and the sort of things that are sometimes excused or at least passed over from men, say, over 80 on the reasoning that they're from a different era and why get into it. Actually, the clock has probably even run out on that excuse when you figure that a man who is 80 today was forty in 1966. But however that may be, excuses that fly in the retirement community or family reunions just doesn't cut it in a man who aspires to the presidency......

Biden's mouth presents a clear and present danger to Democratic electoral prospects no matter what he meant. Ending his candidacy wouldn't be preemption, just legitimate self-defense.

Markos Moulitsas:

Really, if we live in a just world, this will be the end of Joe Biden's political career. On Barack Obama:

"I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy," he said. "I mean, that's a storybook, man."

"Articulate". "Mainstream". "Bright and clean".

It's clear his career has dragged on one election cycle too many.

Duncan Black (Atrios):

Buh-Biden

Volumes could be written about all that was wrong with what Biden said about Obama, but I believe we've just witnessed the shortest presidential run in history.

With Obama, Clinton and Edwards light years ahead of him Biden was an extremely long-shot at best. This will only hasten his campaign's demise.

Chris Dodd's even longer-shot bid just got a little boost.

On Sunday the Los Angeles Times ran a piece by John Hopkins professor and New Republic contributing editor David Bell. It has generated a fair amount of controversy these past few days:

Has the American reaction to the attacks in fact been a massive overreaction? Is the widespread belief that 9/11 plunged us into one of the deadliest struggles of our time simply wrong? If we did overreact, why did we do so? Does history provide any insight?

Certainly, if we look at nothing but our enemies' objectives, it is hard to see any indication of an overreaction. The people who attacked us in 2001 are indeed hate-filled fanatics who would like nothing better than to destroy this country. But desire is not the same thing as capacity, and although Islamist extremists can certainly do huge amounts of harm around the world, it is quite different to suggest that they can threaten the existence of the United States.

Yet a great many Americans, particularly on the right, have failed to make this distinction. For them, the "Islamo-fascist" enemy has inherited not just Adolf Hitler's implacable hatreds but his capacity to destroy.

Last night's roundtable on Brit Hume's Special Report discussed the article. Here are some excerpts:

HUME: This is from two days ago, on Sunday, when one, David Bell, a history professor from Johns Hopkins University wrote a piece, basically asking the question: was 9/11 really was that bad? Meaning, yes it was a terribly hideous terrorist attack, an atrocity, to be sure, but did it really and does any likely future attack from the same type of people really threaten the existence of the United States? Is it indeed an existential threat? He argues that judged in historical terms against past wars and past threats it doesn't measure up. It's a serious argument.

MORT KONDRACKE, ROLL CALL: David Bell acknowledges that these people are hate filled fanatic to would like nothing better than to destroy our country, but he says that they lack the capacity. Well one, if they got a hold of Iraq or Saudi Arabia they would have oil wealth and they could buy any weapon that they chose. Secondly, if they -- Pakistan is about one bullet away from supplying as Islamic fundamentalists with a fully blown nuclear arsenal, Pakistan has, and Iran is working on that.

HUME: You say "one bullet away," you mean the murder of...

KONDRACKE: Murder of Musharraf, yeah.

Who delivered Pakistan into the hands of extremists, who would...

KONDRACKE: Could -- he could, and then we have an existential threat and our allies...

HUME: But the argument is made -- that argument suggests that they could become an existential threat, but they're not now.

KONDRACKE: Well, but you want to fight threats in advance, you know, you don't want to wait until they develop.

LIASSON: I think what he's suggesting is that there might have been different ways to fight this threat than -- it's implied in his article that there might have been different ways...

HUME: But the core of the argument is we may be overreacting to the threat because it's not as serious as we've made it out to be...

LIASSON: I think that's the rhetoric -- some of the rhetoric -- to say it's an existential conflict, maybe the American people aren't buying that form the distraction, maybe that's one of the...

HUME: I know, but I'm talking about what he's saying. I mean, we can speculate all we want about what the American people may think about this. That argument has gone largely unchallenged, by the way, I mean, you don't here anybody saying...

LIASSON: No, but when he lays out the proportion of people killed versus the proportion of people killed in conflicts that were existential, he makes a valid point.

FRED BARNES, WEEKLY STANDARD: That's irrelevant, though. I mean, one nuclear weapon and you kill a lot more people than were killed in all those wars.

Look, this is an example of the polio fallacy. And that is that people don't get the vaccine anymore because, or a lot of people don't, because they say "well gee, nobody gets polio anymore. What do I need it for?" Well here we haven't had another serious terrorist attack, so people start saying, "well gee, maybe the threat's not that great. We don't have to do all these things like the Patriot Act and have eavesdropping and so on through wiretapping and things like that." I think this is an example of that.

But, both Mort and Mara are correct. There -- I mean, weapons of mass destruction, they exist, they're easily accessible. Saddam Hussein -- one reason we attacked Iraq and opposed him was because he had -- had them and might give them to terrorists.

LIASSON: Or so we thought.

BARNES: And he did...

HUME: Well we had had them.

BARNES: We know he had them, he used them in the past. So, I don't think it's been an overreaction. It's been a successful reaction and that's why people start to think, well maybe the threat's not that great.

The full transcript can be found here.

Here's video of Senator Barack Obama on the Senate floor yesterday introducing the "Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007" which proposes to begin a "redeployment" of American troops out of Iraq starting in May and finishing by March of next year:

Meanwhile, Democratic Senator Russ Feingold is going even further, calling for a cut-off of funding for the war and a withdrawal of US troops from Iraq in six months. Feingold said:

Congress has the power to stop a war if it wants... If Congress doesn't stop the war, it's not because it doesn't have the power. It's because it doesn't have the will.

At least one of these guys has read the Constitution. Remember the old saying, "no guts, no glory?" Obama wants the glory of opposing Iraq without having the guts. Congress's war-making powers are clear under the Constitution, as is the President's role as Commander in Chief.

There is, as Feingold notes, only one way to legislate an end to the war. If Obama is seriously interested in getting America out of Iraq, as opposed to just posturing with unconstitutional pieces of legislation to score political points, he should drop his bill and sign on with Feingold. Better yet, he could propose a bill to amend the Constitution.

UPDATE: Lynn Sweet notes the "evolution" of Obama's position on setting a specific timetable for withdrawal - sorry, "phased redeployment" - from Iraq.

Here's video of Senator Barack Obama on the Senate floor yesterday introducing the "Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007" which proposes to begin a "redeployment" of American troops out of Iraq starting in May and finishing by March of next year:

Meanwhile, Democratic Senator Russ Feingold is going even further, calling for a cut-off of funding for the war and a withdrawal of US troops from Iraq in six months. Feingold said:

Congress has the power to stop a war if it wants... If Congress doesn't stop the war, it's not because it doesn't have the power. It's because it doesn't have the will.

At least one of these guys has read the Constitution. Remember the old saying, "no guts, no glory?" Obama wants the glory of opposing Iraq without having the guts. Congress's war-making powers are clear under the Constitution, as is the President's role as Commander in Chief.

There is, as Feingold notes, only one way to legislate an end to the war. If Obama is seriously interested in getting America out of Iraq, as opposed to just posturing with unconstitutional pieces of legislation to score political points, he should drop his bill and sign on with Feingold. Better yet, he could propose a bill to amend the Constitution.

UPDATE: Lynn Sweet notes the "evolution" of Obama's position on setting a specific timetable for withdrawal - sorry, "phased redeployment" - from Iraq.

Joe Biden will make his run for President official today. If you haven't read Biden's snarky take down of his major Presidential rivals over their plans for Iraq in the New York Observer, it's well worth the time. Though Biden is prone to shooting off his mouth, this wasn't some spontaneous or accidental piece of infighting. Biden has to make news, and belittling his colleagues' plans for dealing with Iraq also helps serve the purpose of trying to lift himself up as the only experienced adult in the room (contra Edwards and Obama) who also has a chance of winning (contra Hillary).

In an interview with Thomas Fitzgerald of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Biden discusses the race and lessons learned from his 1987 crash and burn (which he sums up very Confucian-like by saying "words matter" and "to lose one's temper is not a good thing.")

If you listen to the raw audio of Fitzgerald's phone interview with Biden, the Senator also discusses whether governors have the edge in the race this time around or whether the "curse of the Senate" will finally be broken. Biden says Vilsack and Richardson (and Romney on the Republican side) are all decent fellows, but:

The drawback that they have, and it's almost not fair to them, is that the likelihood of the American voters deciding to turn to a one-term governor again while the world is in turmoil, without any demonstrable experience as to a clearly thought out foreign policy and dealing with issues of war and peace. It may happen, but let me put it this way: I think this is the one race probably in the last 75 years where you'd rather be a well-respected Senator than a well-respected governor.

Vilsack and Richardson would be quick to point out that they're both two term Governors (Romney is a one-termer) - but then again so was George W. Bush. Nevertheless, I think Biden might have a point about voters gravitating less toward a state executive than in the past because the country is so deeply fixated on external affairs, despite the fact that Senators are going to carry the burden of some very tough votes into the primary. But, ironically enough, if the 2008 race does come down to leadership and competence in conducting foreign affairs and the War on Terror, the person who might be most well positioned of all is neither a state executive or a vote-casting Senator: Rudolf Giuliani.

Finally, in what is either a stroke of bad luck or a terrible omen, on the same day Senator Biden is launching his bid for the White House, Bloomberg is reporting that his Washington-lobbyist son, R. Hunter Biden, has been slapped with a lawsuit by a former partner who says he was squeezed out of the purchase of a hedge-fund.

The Miami Herald is reporting that Hugo Chavez popped in for an unannounced visit with his good buddy, ailing octogenarian tyrant Fidel Castro. Cuban state television released video of the two men greeting each other, which the Herald described this way:

He [Castro] stood in most of the images, but at one point he seemed to be reclining on a high chair. He mumbled some of his words and seemed to gasp for air between sentences, and overall appeared frail and still ailing.

Looks like the party is going to have to wait.

(Photo: AFP/Getty Images)

From the Daily Telegraph:

Eight people were arrested in dawn raids across Birmingham this morning by police investigating an alleged kidnap plot.

The Home Office said the raids were part of a "major" nationwide operation, and security sources said an imminent terror attack had been thwarted.

The alleged plotters were planning to kidnap a member of the public in an "Iraq-style" abduction, according to security sources. The attack, said to be in the later stages of planning, would have mirrored the kidnappings of British hostages Ken Bigley and Margaret Hassan by Iraqi insurgents, the sources said.

The issue of voting rights in the House of Representatives for delegates from Guam, American Samoa, the Virgin Islands and the Distinct of Columbia may seem like a small, unimportant issue -- and substantively it is -- but politically it is a sizable, unforced error on the part of the new Democratic majority in the House.

George Will eviscerated House Democrats in his Sunday column:

"The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several states ...'' -- Constitution of the United States, Article I, Section 2.

"What's the Constitution between friends?'' -- Rep. Timothy Campbell, a Tammany Democrat, to Democratic President Grover Cleveland after Cleveland said that a bill Campbell favored was unconstitutional.

WASHINGTON -- There they go again. House Democrats should at least provide variety in their venality. Last Wednesday, fresh from legislating new ethics regarding relations with lobbyists, they demonstrated that there are worse forms of corruption than those involving martinis and money.....

What part of the words "several states'' do House Democrats not understand? Their cynical assumption is that "the people of the several states'' will not notice this dilution of their representation in the House.....

The 58,000 Samoans pay no federal income taxes, but their delegate will be able to participate in raising the taxes of, say, Montanans. Samoa's delegate will have virtually the same power as Rep. Denny Rehberg, who represents all 944,000 Montanans. Obviously the Democrats' reverence for the principle "one person, one vote'' is, well, situational.

January 1993 was the last time Democrats engaged in this cynical political alchemy, transmuting delegates from four island jurisdictions, and one from the seat of the federal government, into the functional equivalents of representatives selected by people of "the several states.'' In January 1993, two months after they lost 10 House seats, they counterfeited half that many votes -- even though they had an 82-seat majority. One year later, such arrogance contributed to the Democrats' loss of their House majority.

This is simply political malpractice on the part of House Democrats. The 2006 campaign demonstrated extraordinary discipline on the part of Democrats, and their 12 years in the political wilderness led many to suspect, including myself, that they would be extremely cautious and measured with their new power. But this decision - which was utterly unnecessary and will be effectively demagogued by Republicans - might be an early sign that the new Democratic majority, now in control and with Bush's poll numbers in the cellar, may be hard pressed to maintain the same political discipline that proved so successful in acquiring power in 2006.

Quinnipiac has new 2008 numbers out in Ohio. On balance they are good news for Senator Clinton.

Democratic Field
Clinton 38%
Obama 13%
Edwards 11%
Gore 6%
Biden 2%
Kucinich 2%
Richardson 1%
Dodd 0%

Republican Field
Giuliani 30%
McCain 22%
Gingrich 11%
Romney 4%
6 Candidates at 1% (Brownback, Thompson, Hagel, Huckabee, Pataki, Tancredo)

General Election
Clinton 46%
Giuliani 43%

Clinton 46%
McCain 42%

Clinton 52%
Romney 31%

Edwards 44%
McCain 41%

McCain 41%
Obama 38%

Ohio is very likely to be the critical swing state again in 2008 and given the relative stasis in the electoral map it is hard to see how Democrats get 270 electoral votes without carrying Ohio.

Clinton's 25-point lead in the Democratic field is impressive as well as her leads on both McCain and Giuliani in the head-to-head numbers. A silver lining for Republicans is I suspect the GOP "brand" is still in the toilet in Ohio after the '06 debacles in the Governor and Senate races. As we get further away from 2006 that should begin to improve and help the Republican nominee's polling numbers.

I spoke with Quinnipiac's Peter Brown yesterday who pointed out that Hillary is drawing 35% and 38% of the "White Born Again Evangelicals" against Giuliani and McCain. On the surface that seems high and probably speaks to the disillusionment with the Republican party in Ohio, but it may be a small warning sign for Republicans that perhaps the party's nominee can't rely on overwhelming evangelical support in the same way George W. Bush has, especially if the GOP nominee is McCain or Giuliani.

New SurveyUSA poll on New Hampshire for WBZ-TV Boston:

Republicans
Giuliani 33
McCain 32
Romney 21
Other 11
Undecided 3

Democrats
Clinton 40
Obama 25
Edwards 23
Other 9
Undecided 3

At first glance, it's a good showing for Hillary in the wake of her announcement. But the bigger news is the surprisingly strong showing by Mitt Romney. He does significantly better in this poll than either the Research 2000 or the ARG polls we saw in December.