EVENING UPDATE,  MARCH 5,  2008

VERMONT STRIKES

This is clearly the most important news of the day.  Forget everything else.  If you think something else is more important, you have no sense of national priority and are unfit to be a citizen of this great republic.  The news:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Voters in two Vermont towns on Tuesday approved a measure that would instruct police to arrest President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for "crimes against our Constitution," local media reported.

The nonbinding, symbolic measure, passed in Brattleboro and Marlboro in a state known for taking liberal positions on national issues, instructs town police to "extradite them to other authorities that may reasonably contend to prosecute them."

Vermont, home to maple syrup and picture-postcard views, is known for its liberal politics.

State lawmakers have passed nonbinding resolutions to end the war in Iraq and impeach Bush and Cheney, and several towns have also passed resolutions of impeachment. None of them have caught on in Washington.

I wonder why none of them have caught on in Washington? 

Well, I guess that does it for Bush and Cheney.  To be fugitives in the eyes of Brattleboro and Marlboro is pretty much the end. 

I can't wait for tomorrow's developments.  Maybe someone in Brattleboro will propose giving the key to the city to the president of Iran.  It's so Ivy League, you know.

OH CANADA!

This is curious, and disturbing.  You all know about the recent memo, leaked by a Canadian diplomat, claiming that an Obama adviser, Austan Goolsbee, had told him that Obama's speeches on NAFTA were bogus, and simply meant for campaign consumption.  The Canadian government later defended Obama, but the incident remained strange.

Now Canada is claiming that the diplomat's leak was blatantly unfair to Obama:

OTTAWA (Reuters) - The leak of information about Barack Obama's position on the North American Free Trade Agreement was "blatantly unfair" to his campaign, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Wednesday.

Harper said the government was mounting an "internal security investigation" to find out who leaked the information, which suggested Obama's campaign had said not to pay too much attention to his protectionist rhetoric on NAFTA.

"This kind of leaking of information is completely unacceptable and in fact ... it may well be illegal," the prime minister told Parliament.

"It is not useful, it is not in the interests of the government of Canada, and the way the leak was executed, Mr. Speaker, was blatantly unfair to Sen. Obama and his campaign."

The story includes the essence of the leaked Canadian memo:

"He (Goolsbee) was frank in saying that the primary campaign has been necessarily domestically focused, particularly in the Midwest, and that much of the rhetoric that may be perceived to be protectionist is more reflective of political maneuvering than policy," the memo read.

For you ancients, remember the German soldier on the sixties show, "Laugh-In"?  Whenever something happened, he'd say, with thick accent, "Very interesting."

That's what I thought when reading this story.  You'll notice that the Canadians never say the memo was wrong.  Hmm, I wonder why.  Clearly, they're sucking up to a man who may be president, and who represents the trendy multiculturalism that Canada loves.

This cries out for hard reporting by American reporters.  If Goolsbee said it to the Canadian diplomat, and if it's accurate, Obama should be required to explain himself on national television, the way Nixon had to explain his "slush fund" on TV in 1952 in his famous "Checkers" speech.

Come on, media.  Let's see if you've got the guts.

REZKO - REMEMBER THE NAME

If Obama has to do Checkers II, he might first make a list of other things to explain. The Rezko business would top it. Tony Rezko is a long-time Obama ally, and he went on trial this week in Chicago:

He has pleaded not guilty to charges he solicited campaign cash, including $10,000 for Obama’s 2004 Senate campaign, and bribes in exchange for help doing business with the state of Illinois. Though the trial likely will get more coverage if Obama’s name is invoked as expected, few following the case dispute that, so far at least, the media spotlight on Rezko’s case — and his relationship with Obama — has been less than white hot.

In some respects, though, the case is becoming something of a proxy for the intense media-bias battle being waged behind the scenes in Obama’s struggle with Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The trial comes as the national media are increasingly grappling with the question — raised by everyone from Clinton to media critics and “Saturday Night Live” comedians — of whether Obama has gotten less press scrutiny.

Though Obama has not been implicated in any wrongdoing in the Rezko case, the trial could yield new details about his ties to the Chicago businessman and political fundraiser who also helped him buy a home. Fresh information about their relationship could trip up Obama in what has been a remarkably rapid ascent in national politics. Or Obama could hurdle it, as he has other controversies.

Okay, it's the Canadian flap, it's Rezko, it's the strange church with the anti-American minister, it's Hillary's new aggressiveness.  Did you hear someone say, "long campaign"?

Yes.  Very interesting.

BUT THERE'S NO WARRANTY

That's the problem once you vote.  You can't take it back, there's no warranty, and there's no try-out period.  CBS news analyst Vaughn Ververs wonders if there's some buyer's hesitation now in the Democratic Party:

The recent sharpening of the argument Clinton has pressed, along with outside events, may have helped her stem the tide. Her campaign in Texas launched a much-discussed ad raising questions about Obama's readiness to handle a crisis as president. Obama's campaign got caught up in a series of revised statements about what one of his economic advisers said to a Canadian official about NAFTA. Meanwhile, the trial of Chicago developer Tony Rezko, a former Obama supporter, thrust that issue back into the headlines.

Whether any of these developments mattered to voters in Texas and Ohio is unclear, but they marked the first time Obama had entered such an important contest while facing tough questions. Having won a variety of states with large margins since Super Tuesday, it's fair to say Democrats last night may have cumulatively expressed some buyer's hesitation.

You know, maybe there's something to be said for our long political campaigns.  Eventually, the truth starts to come out.

IN THE REAL WORLD

There's other stuff going on, and Iran is at the center. We forget that, as we fight a political campaign, the centrifuges in Iran are spinning.   At least Washington is trying to sound tough, if nothing else:

The United States on Wednesday challenged Iran to end its state of nuclear denial and explain why it had diagrams showing how to shape fissile uranium into the shape of warheads and other experiments linked to atomic arms research.

European nations struck a similar tone, urging Teheran at a 35-nation board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency to heed UN Security Council demands to curtail its nuclear program and cooperate with agency efforts to probe its alleged atomic arms experiments.

The calls appeared to fall on deaf ears however, with Iranian officials insisting they would not suspend uranium enrichment - the key Security Council Demand - and dismissing US and other intelligence on their purported weapons program as fabricated.

Okay.  If the demands fall on deaf ears, what do we do next?  And how about posing that question to both Clinton and Obama, and we'll see if either can come up with an answer.  By the way, "Yes we can" is not an answer.

FOR ALL POLITICAL MOMS

Finally, Hillary Clinton now has a built-in excuse if she has trouble remembering some of the more awkward aspects of the Clinton family legacy.  It's momnesia!  And it's now official:

"At first I thought it was about being really tired," says Massingill, 36, whose son, Mace, is now 7 months old. "I can't even remember the things I've forgotten. I really think motherhood does something to your brain."

Scientists agree. While researchers say they can't explain all the ways motherhood affects a woman's memory, they agree there's a pattern.

Like Massingill, many moms feel mentally foggy in the days after delivery. And they notice that the details of labor and delivery, which are scenes one might expect to be seared into a woman's consciousness, began to slowly slip away.

Sadly, Massingill says, her son's first few weeks of life have become a blur.

Few parents enjoy feeling so scatterbrained, says neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine, author of The Female Brain. And momnesia can be dangerous, such as when moms forget to fasten the straps in an infant's car seat. Yet momnesia may give modern mothers an evolutionary advantage, Brizendine says.

Okay, okay.  Momnesia only applies to the time right after birth.  But Hillary can claim that hers was delayed.  And at the rate Obama is going, popnesia can't be far behind.  Rezko?  Do I know him?  My church?  What church?  What Canada? 

Let's always be grateful for the miracle of medical discovery.

And I'll be back tomorrow.  No popnesia here.

Posted on March 5, 2008.