Earlier this year, we launched our “Facing the Music Project” – an effort to objectively profile the major party candidates vis-à-vis their positions on five broad policy questions. Those questions were suggested by TMV readers and intentionally focus on core governance issues rather than social/cultural issues. Pete Abel published Congressman Ron Paul’s profile a while ago already, I contacted – among others – the Huckabee campaign and he (and his staff)...

Bob Englehart, The Hartford Courant

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A round up of recent posts by a few centrist, moderate, and independent bloggers. The impeachment thunder continues to rumble: Libby Spencer joins the chorus … with reservations. (By way of contrast, Chuck Butcher, who happens to be a die-hard Democrat, non-centrist and non-moderate, suggests there is a more productive alternative.) This Jeff Jarvis post has nothing to do with politics or anything of any substance, really, but it prompted a smirk this morning, as I thought about my own disdain...

Over the past few days there have been a host of fascinating news articles suggesting that a major White House re-evalution of the feasibility and efficacy of Iraq war policy was underway in light of various factors — including several major Republican lawmakers publicly turning against the war. Stories suggested some big change was afoot. An ABC News story announced:’Crack in the Dike’: White House in ‘Panic Mode’ Over GOP Revolt on Iraq” and detailed how the...

NOTE: The Moderate Voice runs Guest Voice posts from time to time by readers who don’t have their own websites, or people who have websites but would like to post something for TMV’s diverse and thoughtful readership. Guest Voice posts do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Moderate Voice or its writers. This Guest Voice post is by Jazz Shaw. Empire is a Fleeting Thing by Jazz Shaw “Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his expectation,...

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow seems to think Senator Dick Lugar said something different that Senator Lugar seems to think he was saying. Get it? Then watch this:

Mike Lane, Cagle Cartoons

In my lifetime of observing 12 American Presidents, none has been as politically incompetent–or to be more accurate, uninvolved in the process–as George W. Bush. He is highly partisan, but not political. So it comes as no surprise that insiders are admitting the White House “is in panic mode” over defections of Senate Republicans from their four years of unwavering support for the President’s Iraq policy. On CNN last night David Gergen, who worked in several Administrations,...

We know we may get an invitation to go out hunting with Vice President Dick Cheney for noting this but: Cheney has now apparently morphed into the new Vice President Dan Quayle: Vice President Dick Cheney’s popularity has hit an all-time low, with recent polling by The New York Times and CBS News suggesting that he has replaced Dan Quayle as the most unpopular vice president in recent history. Two polls taken in May and June reveal an erosion of Mr. Cheney’s base of support —...

Overcoming colorphobia. Lead me from the fear And I won’t leave you here There’s a way out There’s a way out There’s a way from here… believe Trust Company, “The Fear” (The Lonely Position of Neutral, 2002).

Yaakov Kirschen, The Jerusalem Post, Dry Bones

It seems that Governor Mike Huckabee would consider sending more troops to Iraq (if he were president): This morning on NBC’s Today Show, host Matt Lauer asked Huckabee, if Bush delivers a more pessimistic assessment of the surge this week, “would you feel we owe it to the 150,000 or so Americans serving in Iraq to start pulling them out sooner than later?” “We have to make a decision — do we either pull them out or do we put whatever is necessary to make sure we don’t...

(As opposed to those weird Presidential candidates.) He must have been looking for a branch bank. What a sap.. You can just image what would have happened if the police dogs had found him…

“America is still suffering the horrible consequences of hippies who thought utopia could be found in joints and intentional disconnect.” — Ted Nugent It has been 40 years since the Summer of Love and those unlovable right-wingnut Republicans, led by their knuckle-dragging shoot ‘em up poster boy, are waging class welfare anew against a favorite target. But is it possible that Ted Nugent has a point? Please click here to read more at Kiko’s House.

Vince O’Farrell, The Illawarra Mercury, Australia

Like the last person in the room to get a really bad joke, President Bush becomes more isolated by the day as the scales fall from the eyes of the small and shrinking number of people who share his belief that his war in Iraq can be won. There would seem to be an element of pathos to this: The lonely commander in chief walking the halls of the White House late at night, framed portraits of his predecessors looking down on him in mute abjection as he ponders what went wrong. But we know this man...

The New York Times has a new Public Editor — and he wasted no time zeroing in on a flaw he sees in his new organization: it has begun blindly accepting what some pointed to in recent weeks as a notable shift in the White House and military descriptions of Iraq where insurgent attacks are increasingly being attributed to Al Qaeda. The Public Editor is Clark Hoyt, who had an extensive and a highly distinguished editing and reporting career with the great, late Knight-Ridder Newspaper chain which...

NOTE: The Moderate Voice runs Guest Voice posts from time to time by readers who don’t have their own websites, or people who have websites but would like to post something for TMV’s diverse and thoughtful readership. Guest Voice posts do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Moderate Voice or its writers. This is another Guest Voice by Alex Hammer. The Scooter Libby Affair by Alex Hammer Four wrongs don’t make a right. Libby was wrong to engage in the behavior for which...

….from our politicians (of both parties). So how about seeing a song and dance from two legendary vaudevillians (before my time). Here’s Jimmy Durante (who lived here in San Diego County) and his partner Eddie Jackson recreating their super-high-energy vaudeville act on early TV: (The song and dance from our politicians is more elaborate.)

Deng Coy Miel, Singapore

For the first time ever, the Arab League has announced it is going to visit the state of Israel, to discuss peace, the creation of a Palestinian state, and recognition of Israel. It’s not the last step. But it’s a big one.

To those of you who roll your eyes and groan when you hear people go on and on about the biased news media that injects its personal opinions into news stories and peppers them with assumptions that the writer more than “critics say” seems to hold, roll your eyes no longer. The New York Times has a piece that makes you conclude: somewhere at that (once stellar) newspaper, an editor was asleep at the switch: AS the election of 2008 approaches with its cast of contenders who bring unprecedented...

Desert One: The Aftermath Although the mission had originally been viewed as preposterous, it gradually had come to seem feasible. It included a nighttime rendezvous of helicopters and planes at a desert landing strip south of Tehran, where the choppers would refuel before carrying raiding parties to hiding places just outside the city. There they would stage an assault on the U.S. embassy, spirit the American hostages to a nearby soccer stadium and then ferry them to a seized airstrip where transport...

Really: