The lastest from the Global War on Terror Overseas Contingency Operation:

Pakistan's top Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, is buying children as young as 7 to serve as suicide bombers in the growing spate of attacks against Pakistani, Afghan and U.S. targets, U.S. Defense Department and Pakistani officials say.

The depravity our enemies appears to know no bounds.

I don't know what possessed Governor Mark Sanford to spend four hours sitting on the couch unburdening himself to the Associated Press as if their reporters were therapists, but it seems that decision pretty much sealed his fate.

After all, when people start referring to you as the "blubbering love gov" and writing headlines like "Sanford sob fest fuels speculation he's gone nuts," I think it's safe to conclude your time in elective office is almost done.

New Quinnipiac University poll (June 23-29, 3,063 RV, MoE +/- 1.8%) shows President Obama's job approval rating at 57% (down two points from June) and his disapproval rating at 33% (up two points from June). While these numbers remain healthy, Assistant poll director Peter Brown says they also contain some worrying signs for Obama:

"Those who liked President Obama the most from the start - African-Americans, Democrats, women - still like him by the same margins, but a chunk of voters who were undecided have decided he's not their cup of tea," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. "Among independents, men, white Catholics, white evangelical Christians and Republicans, his numbers have fallen. He still has a ways to go before his coalition becomes politically unstable, but there are some groups and issues - especially the economy - where he needs to make sure this trend does not continue."

Overall, Obama's job approval rating in the updated RCP Average stands at 59.3%.

Other notables from the poll: 32% say the country is better off since Obama was election, 30% say the country is worse off, and 27% say it remains the same. 18% say Obama is performing "better than expected" as President, 14% say "worse than expected" and a clear majority 64% say he is doing "about as expected."

Obama's approval rating on handling the economy is at 52%, on foreign policy 55%, and on health care only 46%.  Lastly, 54% approve of the President's nominatin of Sonio Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.

Yesterday's New York Times editorializes on the Ricci v. DeStefano decision.  They point out, correctly, that the 5-4 ruling in favor of the plaintiffs is hardly a stinging rebuke to Supreme Court nominee Sonya Sotomayor, who ruled against them earlier as a federal circuit court judge.  The dissenting view is not an opinion of some radical crackpots.

However, the Times also says this:

Cases like this, even the dissenters concede, pose difficult questions of fairness. New Haven's decision to reject a test on which one group did poorly hurt other firefighters, who studied hard and were not to blame for the test's flaws. But in the end, as Justice Ginsburg noted, New Haven was within its rights not to use a flawed, possibly illegal, test to make its promotions.

Of course, the test's only "flaw" is that not enough black and Hispanic test-takers passed it with high enough scores.  As the majority carefully explains, the test was devised with painstaking attention to fairness, with black and Hispanic reviewers involved in the process.  The view that the racial disparity alone makes it flawed and even illegal may not be "racist" (I think we need to draw a moral distinction between race-conscious policies intended to subordinate and stigmatize a group of people, and race-conscious policies intended to remedy past wrongs), but elevating race-consciousness over standards to this degree seems to me deeply polarizing, counterproductive, and yes, discriminatory.  The bare fact is that Frank Ricci and the other plaintiffs would have gotten their promotions if it were not for the fact of their race.

The Ricci ruling is definitely worth reading in its entirety, particularly for the political atmosphere in New Haven that surrounded the decision to throw out the exam (described in detail in Justice Alito's concurring opinion).

For antoher take on Ricci and the future of race preferences, see this excellent piece by John McWhorter on TNR.com.

Cross-posted to The Y-Files.

With more details about South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) leaking out every day, the state Democratic Party is now calling for his resignation.

"Every day that members of the General Assembly spend talking about Sanford's state-funded romance is another day these Republican leaders aren't tackling the rising unemployment numbers or the plight of our public schools," party chair Carol Fowler said in a press release. "South Carolina can't afford to be at a standstill for the next 18 months with a governor who ignores his job responsibilities while pursuing personal interests. Any other worker in South Carolina would be fired for not showing up at work with no notice."

The St. Pete Times dropped a scathing editorial today on Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R) for signing a bill that transfers management authority of water pumping and wetlands destruction away from the five governing boards that allowed for public comment.

Here's a sample:

Gov. Charlie Crist's sellout to developers is now complete. He signed into law Tuesday a bill that neuters the governing boards of the state's five water management districts, which grant permits for large-scale water pumping and wetlands destruction. Now that authority will rest solely in the hands of the districts' executive directors. Developers and big industry will be able to more easily drain Florida and pave over what's left.

Piece by piece, this governor has systematically dismantled what little protections there are for Floridians fed up with traffic and overdevelopment.
...
In Tallahassee, state legislators usually can be expected to do the bidding of the powerful and well-financed. This governor was not expected to let them get away with it. But Crist is running for the U.S. Senate and raising campaign cash from special interests that will benefit from the dismantling of growth management and the water management districts. Perhaps it is best that he has his sights on Washington. He has done more than enough damage in Tallahassee.

Not a presidential race, but actually running.

In a long interview with Runner's World, former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin said she would beat President Obama in a long distance race.

"I betcha I'd have more endurance," Palin said, when asked if she could beat him. "So if [it] were a long race that required a lot of endurance I'd win."

Asked if she would ever go for a run with the president, Palin said: "I would, absolutely. I would and people have asked if I'd ever challenge him to one-on-one because we both love basketball. But look, he towers over me and I wouldn't be complaining about an unfair advantage there, but maybe I'd do better playing H-O-R-S-E with him than one-on-one."

A new FDU/PublicMind poll shows former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie (R) with a narrower edge over Gov. Jon Corzine (D) in this year's gubernatorial race than other polls. But the governor still has ground to make -- up even among Democrats -- if he hopes to be re-elected, as a strong majority say the state is headed in the wrong direction.

General Election Matchup
Christie 45 (+3 from April)
Corzine 39 (+6)
Undecided 15 (-10)

Only 31 percent have a favorable opinion of the governor, compared to 54 unfavorable. Christie was unfamiliar to 13 percent of voters, and another 28 percent hadn't made up their mind.

Asked about the direction of the state, 21 percent of voters think it's moving in the right direction -- the lowest number in three years -- while 66 percent say it's on the wrong track. Corzine's job approval rating is also the lowest in more than two years of recent polling.

Job Approval
Corzine 36/49
Obama 61/29

Pollster Peter Woolley points out that Corzine is showing some weakness in his own base, one-in-five Democrats backing Christie; his approval rating among Democrats is just 48 percent, compared to 86 percent for Obama. And 27 percent of voters who approve of Obama also back Christie.

Still, when asked who they think will win the election, 46 percent say Corzine, while 38 percent say Christie. That's at least the second such poll to show voters preferring one candidate but expecting the other to win.