Obama Is Moving to Down-to-Earth Oratory  —  STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — The Speech is his finely polished sword, a transcendent weapon.  Seen and heard on a thousand YouTube postings, Senator Barack Obama's speeches have made a happening of that hoariest of campaign forms, the stump speech.

The Tall Tale of Tuzla  —  HILLARY CLINTON'S BOSNIAN MISADVENTURE SHOULD DISQUALIFY HER FROM THE PRESIDENCY, BUT THE AIRPORT LANDING IS THE LEAST OF IT.  —  The punishment visited on Sen. Hillary Clinton for her flagrant, hysterical, repetitive, pathological lying about her visit to Bosnia …

The Basrah Gambit - Defining Moment for Iraq or the Jaysh al-Mahdi?  —  Engaging the Mahdi Militia in Basrah and labeling them as equal to Al-Qaeda in Iraq is a deadly gamble that may leave Iran the winner.  —  On 19 March, 2008 CNN's Iraq war correspondent, Kyra Phillips gave a live interview …

USA 2008: The Great Depression  —  Food stamps are the symbol of poverty in the US.  In the era of the credit crunch, a record 28 million Americans are now relying on them to survive - a sure sign the world's richest country faces economic crisis  —  Disadvantaged Americans queue for aid in New York

Report: Bob Barr Weighing Presidential Run  —  Former Republican Georgia Rep. Bob Barr is considering a run for president on the Libertarian Party ticket, according to FITNews.  —  Barr, who joined the Libertarian Party after leaving Congress in 2003, is looking to attract conservatives …

Clinton's convention strategy in doubt  —  If the fight over whether to count the results in Florida and Michigan makes it to the Democratic National Convention, Hillary Clinton will not have enough pledged votes on the 169-member Credentials Committee to deliver a majority decision in her favor …

CIA enlists Google's help for spy work  —  US intelligence agencies are using Google's technology to help its agents share information about their suspects  —  Google has been recruited by US intelligence agencies to help them better process and share information they gather about suspects.

Subpoenas issued for IBM, employees over EPA probe  —  IBM and several of its employees have been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury on interactions between Environmental Protection Agency and IBM employees, a company spokesman said today.  —  The subpoenas, which were issued March 28 …

Celebrating Women: A Note from Dr. Maya Angelou  —  This entry is part of a series in celebration of Women's History Month.  —  You may write me down in history  —  With your bitter, twisted lies,  —  You may trod me in the very dirt  —  But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Obama is our Mandela  —  Only one candidate offers the radical departure for the 21st century the US needs, for its own sake and the rest of the world's  —  I have come home from a long stay in Mexico to find - because of the presidential campaign, and especially because of the Obama-Clinton race …

Pelosi calls on Bush to boycott Olympic opening ceremonies  —  (CNN) — U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says President Bush should consider boycotting the opening ceremony of the Olympics Games in Beijing this summer to protest China's human rights record.  —  “I think boycotting the opening ceremony …

Mugabe told not to declare his victory  —  A crisis meeting of Robert Mugabe's security cabinet decided to block the opposition from taking power after what appears to have been a comprehensive victory in Zimbabwe's elections but was divided between using a military takeover to annul the vote and falsifying the results.

Military Report: Secretly ‘Recruit or Hire Bloggers’  —  A study, written for U.S. Special Operations Command, suggested “clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers.”  —  Since the start of the Iraq war, there's been a raucous debate in military circles over how to handle blogs …

Poll: You Can Fool Some of the People All of the Time  —  A new survey I commissioned demonstrates how McCain's malarkey about supporting enforcement has succeeded in duping a significant number of voters.  The poll (complete results are here) found that only 34 percent of people who voted …

DAY-OF-WEEK EFFECT IN GALLUP DAILY?  —  I received some interesting charts this afternoon from Harrison Hickman and Ben Margolis, both of the Democratic firm Global Strategy Group that polled for John Edwards until he withdrew from the race (full disclosure: Hickman was my employer longer ago than either of us wants to admit).