The Dish

There was a touch of the veep-stakes in the endorsement. Bainbridge picked up on it too. Hewitt’s already running with it. God I hope not. If there’s one thing we’ve learned in this campaign it’s that Rudy is a nut-job and unfit to be president. And it helps McCain not one jot in the electoral math.

Ambers puts his blog on the line.

Marty Lederman infers that the attorney-general does not believe that the Khmer Rouge technique is torture.

For all Obama’s inclusive words, some members of some churches are not exactly following through:

"I will be leaving the choir at the top of the year because 80 percent of the tenors are homosexuals and act more like a female in choir rehearsal than I do," the church choir member said in one of her e-mails to Bishop Alfred Owens Jr., the church pastor.

The e-mail, sent in December, identifies about 45 fellow church members as gay. She sent a second e-mail to Owens on Jan. 2 identifying another 62 church members as gay.

"The following people I am asking you to monitor very closely and my prayer is that you will sit them down from their ministries," she told Owens in the December e-mail. "Because they are ushering in the presence of sin, lies, a spirit of homosexuality and sexual spirits."

If all gay choir-members were removed, a great silence would fill Sunday morning in America.

A video game smack-down.

The second cut in two weeks. Uh-oh. Bridget Magnus worries:

Wall Street thinks that this is a Good Thing. They see this as meaning that the Fed is on top of things and will do whatever it takes to avoid recession. I see the fact that they had to take this cut — after last week’s large cut — as a sign that things are not very good at all. It means the economy is in bad enough shape that they did not feel comfortable letting that cut work its way through the system. It means they are nervous about the fact that GDP growth — a shorthand way of looking at our economic output — slowed to 0.6% last quarter.

Margaret, the 10-day-old Giraffe, is bottle fed by Chester Zoo keeper Tim Rowlands on January 30, 2008, in Chester, England. Margaret is the first Rothschild giraffe born at the zoo and is being hand reared after having difficulty suckling from her mother. By Christopher Furlong/Getty Images.

In the latest twist to this ever-changing race, it seems to me that McCain’s emergence as the GOP front-runner, even presumptive nominee, should clearly help Obama. If the Republicans are prepared to embrace a candidate who is not the establishment pick, why wouldn’t the Democrats in a change election? And McCain’s powerful appeal to moderate Democrats and Independents makes it all the more important for the Democrats to pick someone who can appeal to moderate Republicans and Independents. The Clintons simply don’t do that – especially after the ugly spectacle of their tactics in the last few weeks. That’s surely behind Obama’s latest rhetorical emphasis.

Even with the war hobbling him, even with the massive advantage of the opposition party in this year of recession and occupation, I’d say McCain could beat the Clintons. With Obama, it’s a whole different dynamic – and the narrative of the man in his 40s against the man in his 70s surely helps Obama. The Democrats aren’t stupid, are they? The logic of their heads as well as their hearts now favors the senator from Illinois.

The New York Post un-endorses.

Obama ratchets it up a notch:

"It is time for new leadership that understands the way to win a debate with John McCain or any Republican who is nominated is not by nominating someone who agreed with him on voting for the war in Iraq or who agreed with him in voting to give George Bush the benefit of the doubt on Iran, who agrees with him in embracing the Bush-Cheney policy of not talking to leaders we don’t like, who actually differed with him by arguing for exceptions for torture before changing positions when the politics of the moment changed."