Britney Spears. Paris Hilton. Barack Obama. Is McCain's new ad effective or is the explicit comparison so far fetched it's fall under its own weight?

UPDATE: The Obama campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor fires back with a nice riposte on Spears:

"On a day when major news organizations across the country are taking Senator McCain to task for a steady stream of false, negative attacks, his campaign has launched yet another. Or, as some might say, 'Oops! He did it again.'

Our dependence on foreign oil is one of the greatest challenges we face. In this election the American people have a real choice -- between Obama's plan to provide tax rebates to American families while creating a renewable energy economy in America that frees us from our dependence on foreign oil, and Senator McCain's plan to continue the same failed energy policies by handing out nearly $4 billion in tax breaks to oil companies while investing almost nothing in the new energy sources that represent our future."

Nine minutes of O'Reilly taking Scott McClellan to the woodshed:

(via Johnny Dollar)

Nine minutes of O'Reilly taking Scott McClellan to the woodshed:

(via Johnny Dollar)

The Wash Post's Jonathan Weisman reported on a closed-door meeting between Obama and the Democratic caucus last night and what the nominee said was the buzz of the morning news shows:

The 200,000 souls who thronged to his speech in Berlin came not just for him, he told the enthralled audience of congressional representatives. "I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions," he said, according to the source.

Weisman has updated his original post with this:

On Wednesday morning, House leadership aides pushed back against interpretations of this comment as self-aggrandizing, saying that when the presumptive Democratic nominee said, "I have become a symbol of the possibility of America," he was actually trying to deflect attention from himself.

No tape of the event exists and no one is denying the quote.

But one leadership aide said the full quote put it into a different context. According to that aide, Obama said, "It has become increasingly clear in my travel, the campaign -- that the crowds, the enthusiasm, 200,000 people in Berlin, is not about me at all. It's about America. I have just become a symbol."

Let's be fair to Obama. What he said could be taken as simply acknowledging a fact. But even if it was meant that way -- and not a proud declaration -- he still shouldn't be the one saying it. The campaign needs to walk a fine line between maintaining the magic and enthusiasm of the primaries and degenerating into self-parody. Things like the faux presidential seal step into the latter, as can talking about oneself as a "symbol" of anything.

It's kind of ironic, really. The McCain campaign can't stop complaining about Barack Obama getting all the attention--and, in the process, they give Barack Obama even more attention than he already had. As ABC's Political Radar notes, the obsession has even leaked over into the GOP contender's TV ads:

It may only be July and Americans may be more tuned into summer vacation plans than the presidential election, but that hasn't stopped the two presidential campaigns from filling the airwaves in key battleground states with television ads hammering home their best selling points...

The Wisconsin Advertising Project rates each ad as positive or negative and found that over 90 percent of the ads aired by Obama are positive in nature and do not mention Senator McCain. Approximately a third of the McCain campaign's ads are negative, contrasting the two presidential candidates.

Does the media harbor an irrational love for Barry? Absolutely. Are many members of the press completely in the tank for Obama? Sure. But does it help the McCain campaign to complain about that fact? Probably not. As the New York Observer notes:

The McCain campaign's response to the quantifiable imbalance in volume-of-coverage--a function, depending on whom you ask, of the fact that the press loves the Barack Obama story or that John McCain is the Republican nominee for president - has been a petulant cry of foul for the kind of infraction gentlemen are supposed to ignore.

Key word: petulant. The tone they should be after is "presidential," which doesn't exclude attacking the press's love affair with Obama, but it does exclude whining about it.

I'm afraid I'm a bit skeptical about the prospects of this new strategy to combat illegal immigration:

Rather than risk getting caught, turn yourselves in.

That's the latest government strategy in its ongoing effort to dramatically reduce the nation's ballooning population of illegal immigrants.

Scheduled to be unveiled next week, it was announced Sunday by Julie Myers, director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, in an interview with a Spanish-language television network.

Myers told the network that "Operation Scheduled Departure" will allow illegal immigrants without criminal records a chance to literally "self-deport" by turning themselves in to her agents.

She said the idea derived from a common complaint voiced by immigrant detainees: If given the opportunity, they'd rather just go home than be holed up in immigration prisons.

Under the new program, those still walking free will have the chance to walk into ICE offices, be processed and get a few weeks to arrange their affairs, pack their belongings and ship out of the country without being detained.

"The program basically gives an opportunity to those seeking an organized way to self-deport," Myers told Univisión anchor Jorge Ramos.

Former Newark Mayor Sharpe James gets 27 months in prison - which seems like a pretty good deal for him given that the prosecutors were seeking 20 years.

John Kerry swarmed by a pack of Nantucket Girls Gone Wild. Declares: I Did Not Have Party Relations With Those Women.

In an interview with The Nation, Speaker Nancy Pelosi made it known that she counts something other than sheep when she goes to sleep and that the amount of sexism she faces has declined greatly since January 2007.

Asked about sexism she has experienced, Pelosi delivered a line that only she could: "Once you have the gavel that diminishes it greatly. If they're smart! And mostly they are smart. It's amazing what a difference a gavel makes!"

On whether sexism cost Hillary Clinton the Democratic nomination: "I don't think so. I think that may have been an element but there were other campaign decisions that were not a furtherance of her winning the nomination. Did she advance women? Magnificently."

Pelosi also said something that political junkies can probably relate to: "Every night before I went to sleep [during the 2006 elections] I would count the races that we had to win. I don't know who counts sheep, but I count Congressional districts..."

In the Headlines

"Sen. Stevens Indicted On 7 Corruption Counts" (Carrie Johnson and Paul Kane, Washington Post) - Alaska's Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican senator in U.S. history, was indicted yesterday on seven charges of making false statements about more than $250,000 that corporate executives doled out to overhaul his Anchorage area house.

"McCain tries to show independence and conservatism" (Beth Fouhy, AP) - Republican presidential candidate John McCain tried to strike a balance at a town hall meeting Tuesday between the independence he boasts of and his avowed conservatism.

"Obama extends reach with TV ads" (Martha Moore, USA Today) - More Americans will see presidential campaign ads before Election Day because of Democrat Barack Obama's deep pockets and his quest to expand the number of competitive states in his race against Republican John McCain.

"Obama, Bernanke Talk Economy" (Amy Chozick and Laura Meckler, Wall Street Journal) - Keeping the presidential campaign focused on economic issues, Barack Obama met with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, while John McCain criticized his rival's proposals to raise taxes.

From Late Night

Leno: