At midnight last night, Twitter launched a new sub-site called Election2008. VentureBeat: [The new site] will feature an interface that regular Twitter users will instantly recognize. There will be one major difference however. Gone is the famously outdated question “What are you doing?” (Twitter was initially just about people saying what they were doing), it has been replaced with “What do you think?” The...

John Cole, The Scranton Times-Tribune

As conservative columnists go, you won’t find one much more reliable than Kathleen Parker. During a successful career in punditry, Ms. Parker has never met a Democrat who didn’t have her immediately reaching for a stiff switch and glancing toward the woodshed. This background makes it all the more interesting that the recent interview between Sarah Palin and Katie Couric seems to have been a bridge...

I’m a historian of 19th century America and I specialize in the Civil War era. The political crisis that led to war did not begin with the election of Abraham Lincoln in November 1860, but had its roots decades earlier. Nevertheless, a series of horrible miscalculations by political leaders in all parties, particularly after the Compromise of 1850, led the nation on a path toward secession and war. It’s...

The coverage of McCain’s desperate stunt earlier tonight on Anderson Cooper was just atrocious. Although the word “stunt” was used, the overall tone was positive. McCain is risking everything, it seems, to suspend his campaign, a huge “gamble” that is well worth taking. There was no mention of what he actually contributed to the proceedings, if anything, and much of the segment...

Deal or no deal? Though using that TV show name has now become trite when referring to emergency bailout talks in Washington between the White House, Congressional leaders, and presidential candidates Republican Sen. John McCain and Barack Obama, it’s the best description of news reports about the day of high political drama. Or would the real TV title of the day be “Lost” — as in lost...

The skepticism of fellow The Moderate Voice blogger Polimom is understandable. All the pieces are in place for John McCain to, sometime tomorrow, be portrayed as the hero who brokered a resolution to the financial crisis acceptable to The White House, Congressional Democrats, and recalcitrant conservative Congressional Republicans. It seems so pat, so obvious, and it just might be true. But I don’t think...

Some liberal bloggers have been floating the idea that McCain’s “suspend the campaign” stunt was really basically an elaborate attempt to distract people from Sarah Palin’s interview with Katie Couric that began running last night. Now, I initially dismissed this as paranoia and still don’t think it is even close to the primary reason for McCain’s actions. But the more I...

RJ Matson, Roll Call

We are now getting word that there will be something happening in Mississippi tomorrow night, even if it’s only a town hall hosted by Barack Obama rather than the long-awaited first debate. Allow me to take a step back from the ongoing battles and crisis scenarios to simply say the following: both of these campaigns are (sadly) taking the current economic panic and trying their level best to twist it to...

The thing about a political stunt, I told my son last night, is that if you get away with it, it’s no longer a stunt. It’s bold leadership…keeping in mind that the first mark of a leader is that she or he has followers. John McCain suspended his campaign yesterday, attempting to at least project an image of leadership, if not enacting its substance. Is anybody following? Before giving the obvious...

That’s the title of a useful post written by Asbury Theological Seminary professor, Ben Witherington, on his blog. It may surprise those fed on a regular diet of wrong impressions created by some who claim to speak for all evangelicals or disinformation spooned out by some in the media regarding evangelicals, other Christians, and all theists. Witherington’s advice breaks stereotypes and is non-partisan....

Just hours before President Bush was to host Obama and McCain at the White House for a how-to on clearing obstacles, Barney says an agreement has been reached: “There really isn’t much of a deadlock to break,” said Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. Meantime, Media Matters reports that after Meredith Vieira claimed “political advertising suspended”...

She’s growing bolder: Sarah Palin took questions from her traveling press corps Thursday for the first time since being tapped as John McCain’s running mate. Speaking to a small pool of reporters following a visit to Ground Zero in lower Manhattan, Palin made a statement and then answered four questions, addressing the war on terror, the re-election bids of Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young,...

The two most recent occupants of the Oval Office were in prime time last night, while aspirants to succeed them prepared to go to the White House today in a bizarre interactive TV reality show that will affect the financial survival of millions of Americans. George W. Bush, who was voted off the island two years ago but refused to leave, looked voters in the eye and talked about panic and recession with a straight...

Panic. It is something that happens to the best of us for different reasons. I have a fear of heights and small places. Put those two fears together, in an airplane for example, I have experienced panic attacks that are intense and thankfully brief. Several times in this campaign, John McCain has made decisions one could explain as motivated by panic. The decision to name Sarah Palin as his running mate...

First 5 minutes of a 13 minute, 42 second speech delivered on March 12, 1933. History Matters has the full transcript: When President Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in 1933, one in four Americans was out of work nationally, but in some cities and some industries unemployment was well over 50 percent. Equally troubling were the bank panics. Between 1929 and 1931, 4,000 banks closed for good; by 1933 the number...

You know, after spending $700 billion to help the American economy not sink into Depression 2.0 … $25 billion for the Big Three is like the change you find under the couch: With Congress preoccupied with the massive, $700 billion bailout plan for the financial industry, General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler have finally secured Part One of their own federal rescue plan. A bill set to be passed by Congress...

Did he basically play the 911 card with a different design all over again? The Washington Note’s Steve Clemons has some thoughts. What are yours?

So now GOP Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, pointing to the Wall Street meltdown and the chance that Congress will balk at the Bush administration’s crucial bailout solution, has suspended his campaign — and reportedly won’t show up at Friday’s debate even if Democratic Sen. Barack Obama does. In terms of the impact on Campaign 2008, the next few days will be critical as a new...