The Republican attacks on Barack Obama just keep coming. Speaking at a National Rifle Association convention today in Kentucky, Karl Rove laid into Obama for what he called the candidate's "dismissive" opinion of gun rights and owners. Rove referred over and over again to Obama's now infamous comment about guns and faith. Addressing the audience, Rove said, "You know in the age of Barack Obama I don't know exactly what to call you, because after all, as he said, because we're bitter and economically anxious, we 'cling to our guns and we cling to our faith.' Does that make us clingers or cling-ons?"

Actually, you might wonder if it makes Rove anything at all -- several sources, including Christopher Hitchens and "Bush's Brain" author Wayne Slater, have said that Rove does not believe in god.

Then, as if to make sure he didn't miss a single talking point, Rove described Obama as an intellectual, elitist liberal. "We believe in the wisdom of the founders even more than the wisdom of a liberal senator from the south side of Chicago," Rove said.

As The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder points out, Rove also used Obama's anticipated counterattack against the candidate. Rove said of Obama, "We know what he's going to say -- it's divisive, distractive, keeps us from coming together. After all, he says, we are the change we have been waiting for. What the heck does that mean?"

In the conclusion to his speech, Rove urged voters to "do all you can to shape the outcome of this election to stand for our values and against those who would belittle them."

Let's hope, for his sake, that former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee won't be crushed if he doesn't get his party's vice-presidential nomination, because a crack he made while speaking at the National Rifle Association's convention today certainly won't help his cause.

At one point during Huckabee's speech, there was a noise from offstage. This prompted him to begin to joke, "That was Barack Obama. He just tripped off a chair." This got some good laughs, and Huckabee kept speaking, going on to say, "He's getting ready to speak and somebody aimed a gun at him and he -- he dove for the floor."

CNN has video of that section of Huckabee's speech -- the relevant portion begins at about 0:49.

If John McCain's campaign makes California competitive this fall, it won't be because of the landmark ruling on gay marriage its State Supreme Court handed down yesterday.

Some strategists have speculated that the ruling could spark the kind of backlash among conservatives that would help energize the Republican base. Senior McCain advisor Charlie Black told Salon the campaign thinks a ballot initiative over gay marriage might bring out social conservatives to vote -- but it might bring out just as many supporters of the ruling on the other side, making it a wash politically. (McCain has been friendlier to the notion of gay civil unions than many Republicans, so he might not be in the best position to exploit the issue anyway.)

Still, the state could be a long-shot target for the GOP ticket. Black said McCain will be visiting California on and off over the next few months to see whether he can "get traction" there. "We are going to spend some time there and invest some resources," he said. "You don't have to make a final targeting decision and spend real money until the fall." McCain aides believe Latinos, Asian Americans and independents -- especially those who backed Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a close McCain ally -- could be open to voting Republican this fall.

If McCain did seriously put California in play, it would be a very bad sign for Barack Obama, the likely Democratic nominee (for strategic purposes, McCain's team has been focusing on Obama for months). The state is usually reliably blue; if McCain can get traction there, he can probably get it wherever he wants. For now, very early polling shows McCain will have a lot of work to do to make that happen.

Barack Obama responded today to comments President Bush and John McCain made Thursday that criticized Obama's foreign policy approach. Speaking at a rally in South Dakota, Obama issued a challenge: "If George Bush and John McCain want to have a debate about protecting the United States of America, that is a debate that I'm happy to have any time, any place, and that is a debate that I will win because George Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for."

Obama went on to bluntly cite what he views as the foreign policy failures of Bush and McCain -- the Iraq War, the burgeoning power of Iran in the Middle East, that Osama Bin Laden is still sending out video tapes, and that "Hamas now controls Gaza." He also denounced Bush's statement as "fear-mongering." You can watch a long excerpt of Obama's speech at the bottom of this post.

Thursday, during a speech before Israel's parliament, the Knesset, Bush compared those willing to negotiate with "terrorists and radicals" to those nations that practiced appeasement with the Nazis. Bush did not mention Obama by name in the speech but the implication seemed apparent. Later in the day, McCain concurred with Bush, saying "the president is exactly right."

Not surprisingly, today the McCain campaign touted the experience card in a response to Obama's speech. McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds characterized Obama's foreign policy challenge as the "hysterical diatribe" of a diplomatic naif. Courtesy of Ben Smith's blog over at Politico.com, here are Bounds' full remarks about Obama's speech:

It was remarkable to see Barack Obama's hysterical diatribe in response to a speech in which his name wasn't even mentioned.

These are serious issues that deserve a serious debate, not the same tired partisan rants we heard today from Senator Obama. Senator Obama has pledged to unconditionally meet with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- who pledges to wipe Israel off the map, denies the Holocaust, sponsors terrorists, arms America's enemies in Iraq and pursues nuclear weapons. What would Senator Obama talk about with such a man? It would be a wonderful thing if we lived in a world where we don't have enemies.

But that is not the world we live in, and until Senator Obama understands that, the American people have every reason to doubt whether he has the strength, judgment and determination to keep us safe.

Bounds' insinuation that Obama overreacted to Bush's speech because Bush never mentioned Obama by name and could have been referring solely to former President Jimmy Carter seems strained. Though the Bush Administration has claimed they were only aiming at Carter, the Atlantic's Marc Ambinder contradicts such a notion with quotes from two well-respected Washington reporters, both of whom cited anonymous Administration officials who admitted Bush's comments were a jab at Obama.

Why is it that the neocons always assume that when Barack Obama says he wants to talk to the leadership in Iran, he's talking about the clown Ahmedinejad, who has no power over foreign policy or the nuclear program?

Isn't it possible that Obama is talking about meeting with Iran's actual leader--indeed, it's there in his title: Supreme Leader--Ali Khamenei?

Could it be that the neocons want to associate Obama with the relatively powerless, Israel-hating Ahmadinejad for other reasons? ...

[W]hom do we think Hamas and Hezbollah and Ahmadinejad are really supporting in the 2008 election -- the candidate who increases their street cred by demonizing them, or the candidate who increases our street cred by proposing talks?

Finally, are talks capitulation? Didn't Churchill say something about preferring jaw-jaw to war-war? And did Obama say anything to indicate he wouldn't use force where necessary--as in Afghanistan? Didn't McCain criticize Obama for proposing that we go after the Al Qaeda infrastructure in "our ally" Pakistan?

That's from a post Joe Klein wrote Friday at Time Magazine's Swampland blog.

For a man who's supposedly the bane of Washington lobbyists and special interests, John McCain sure has had a lot of people with those ties working for his campaign. His campaign manager, Rick Davis, is on leave from his lobbying firm, and one of his senior advisors even did lobbying work from the Straight Talk Express. And now, within just the past week, his campaign has had to fire three staffers who were also lobbyists. On Thursday, they cut ties with an unpaid advisor who had a conflict of interest because he was also consulting for an outside 527 group that is working against the Democratic candidates.

The McCain camp is now instituting measures designed to avoid future embarrassments. Davis has reportedly sent the entire staff a memo that includes a new conflict-of-interest policy and a questionnaire designed to help the campaign re-vet everyone working for it. The policy reads:

Part-time volunteers for the Campaign must disclose to the Campaign any status as registered lobbyists or foreign agents. Such persons are prohibited from involvement in any Campaign policy-making on the subjects on which they are registered, including service on policy task forces or participation in policy discussions on those subjects. Such persons are also prohibited from lobbying Senator McCain or his Senate personal office or committee staffs during the period they are volunteering for the campaign.

According to the Atlantic's Marc Ambinder, the questionnaire asks staffers whether they've ever been a registered lobbyist and also to list all previous lobbying and foreign government clients. The final question is, "Please list any other potential conflict of interest (whether lobbying related or not) that you think the Campaign should be aware of. It is important for the Campaign to know at the outset of any controversial clients you or your former employers have represented to avoid future embarrassment to you or the Campaign."

Because of his reputation, revelations about his continuing association with lobbyists could be real trouble for McCain. He'd certainly like it if voters didn't equate him with lobbyists at all -- in fact, when he gave a press conference about the New York Times story that seemed to allege he'd had a romantic relationship with one lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, earlier this year McCain wouldn't even say the word "lobbyist."

So I've now rewatched (and rewatched, and rewatched -- what can I say, it's fun) the video that's circulating quite quickly around the Web that features MSNBC host Chris Matthews delivering a pretty righteous smackdown to conservative radio host Kevin James. (For your convenience, the video is below -- and you can read the earlier War Room post on the exchange that Andrew Leonard wrote, at my urging, here.)

And, yes, even after several viewings the video remains pretty entertaining. It's nice -- and so rare these days -- to see James get his comeuppance, and nice to see Matthews deftly take down the logically faulty argument that Democrats are akin to those who, like the infamous Neville Chamberlain, helped enable Adolf Hitler. But at some point, right around the time Matthews says to James, "Your problem, Kevin, is you don't know what you're talking about," I started thinking, "So then why did you have him on?"

Seriously. Even if you disagree with the argument James was making, and think there's no way anyone could ever prove the case, there still has to be someone who could at least make a knowledgeable defense for it. (I don't know -- a historian, maybe?) James, on the other hand, quite literally tried to scream his way out of admitting his ignorance. And with all due respect to Mark Green, New York City's former public advocate and the other guest on at the time, what reason was there to have Green on discussing this, either? Green's at least a step up from James, obviously, and certainly he has plenty of qualifications of his own -- he's currently the president of Air America Radio -- but those qualifications are not really related to knowledge of the Munich agreement.

I understand this is how the cable shout shows function. In a previous job, I went on a couple occasionally. Sometimes, I'd get a call three hours before they wanted me to be on and a producer would ask me if I had time to read a quick briefing about a subject I'd never heard of before and then come on. The answer, I'm now ashamed to say, was almost always yes. I was on one show where I sat and watched in astonishment as the other two guests (who were clearly friendly off-camera and who clearly had no relation to or real interest in the subject we were discussing) went from zero to screaming bloody murder at each other in just seconds. That's the way these shows work. But if Matthews wanted to have a real discussion of the history here -- and God knows he should, he clearly knows something about it and he made some really sharp points -- then he should have had guests qualified to be valuable participants. Maybe Matthews' takedown of James ultimately enlightened some people; it probably did, in fact, and he deserves some credit for that. But it was still cheap, and ultimately it said more about Matthews, his show and the whole universe of similar programming than it ever could have about James.

Correction: It seems an apology for this post is in order. We've heard from representatives for MoveOn.org, and apparently Salon fell victim to a hoax. On Thursday, someone forwarded Salon reporters an e-mail that was purportedly sent by MoveOn's leadership to its members apologizing about an ad submitted for the group's "Obama in 30 Seconds" contest. But according to MoveOn, the ad was never submitted -- so, contrary to what I reported in the post below, it was never rejected either, and the e-mail was a fake. A rejection letter supposedly sent by MoveOn to the ad's makers was faked as well. We've pulled the ad from the post. We regret the error.

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Earlier this week, liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org announced the winner of a contest it had sponsored. Called "Obama in 30 Seconds," the competition sought an ad that the organization could run in support of Barack Obama. Considering MoveOn's history with controversial ads and ad contests, this go-round was actually quite tame. The winning spot looked like it could have been made by any campaign, and there appeared to be no controversy about the contest.

It turns out that all was not as harmonious as it initially appeared. On Tuesday, MoveOn leaders e-mailed their membership with an apology. It seems that out of the 1,486 ads that were submitted for the contest, only one was rejected. The group apparently hoped the rejected video would never see the light of day -- the e-mail says they attempted to destroy it and complains, "While we refused to post it on our site, unfortunately the 'filmmakers' took it upon themselves to post the video directly on their website, violating very clear rules of the competition." The e-mail also calls the ad "racist, ignorant, and downright wrong," and says, "We truly apologize for any offense this has caused. It certainly was not our intention to have something like this hit the web."

The ad is indeed racist, ignorant and downright wrong -- it's positively baffling, in fact, that anyone would be stupid enough to think it should run on television. But from the filmmakers' Web site, it appears that the team behind the ad -- as media gossip blog Gawker pointed out earlier this year when it picked up on a similar spot created for Hillary Clinton that was entitled "Experience C(o)unts" -- is really an over-the-top parody of an advertising agency that makes deliberately tasteless, offensive videos. The site's founders are named as Danny Sunday and Tripp Knight, and Knight is supposed to live in Los Angeles, California, but a quick public records search showed no record of any such person ever existing anywhere in the state. Plus, the site gives two addresses for the company. One is a group of upscale stores on Los Angeles' famed Rodeo Drive. The other is the original entrance to Chumley's, a legendary speakeasy in New York City once patronized by famous writers like E.E. Cummings, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Willa Cather, Alan Ginsberg, William Burroughs, William Faulkner and others.

According to a rejection letter the ad's makers received -- and posted to their site -- MoveOn didn't seem to get the joke. "We received over 1,400 submissions and yours is the only one we are unable to post on our site," the letter says. "It is tasteless and downright offensive. At one point you compare Senator Obama to a Dalmatian."

Obviously, MoveOn MoveOn meant well, but by using the language of a high school hall monitor, and doing the outfit the favor of singling it out for rejection, the group only played into the prank.

How much you enjoy watching Chris Matthews sadistically twist the knife into the body of an unprepared political operative probably depends on whether it's your ox that is getting gored or not. But the performance on Thursday's edition of MSNBC's "Hardball" in which Matthews made right wing radio host Kevin James drown in a puddle of his own babbling ignorance was something special.

The context was Thursday's political furor du jour. While speaking to Israel's Knesset on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel, President Bush made an implicit comparison between Barack Obama's willingness to meet with the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and British Prime Minister's Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Adolf Hitler.

Them's fightin' words, and Democrats have been on the warpath all day. But during "Hardball," Matthews asked James a simple question: What exactly did Chamberlain do that was so wrong? (The following is a close paraphrase of the ensuing exchange.)

Well, he was an appeaser, James exclaimed.

Yeah, but what did he do?

He was an appeaser!

Kevin, what exactly did Chamberlain do?

He appeased!

It gradually became clear, as the two men shouted at each other, that not only did James not have a clue as to what Neville Chamberlain may or may not have done, but it's not all that obvious that he even knew what the word "appeaser" means.

Finally, Matthews declared: "You don't know what you're talking about, Kevin," and after a little more back and forth, James conceded that he doesn't actually know what Chamberlain did, upon which Matthews gave him a little history lesson.

What Chamberlain did wrong, most people agree, Matthews said, is stand by and let Hitler gobble up half of Czechoslovakia without lifting a hand to stop him. But there's a difference, said Matthews, between talking with someone as opposed to doing nothing while they invade another country.

That's a key distinction, and credit goes to Matthews for drawing it out. As for President Bush, who dared liken a political opponent of his party to a Nazi "appeaser" while speaking in Israel, well, it's hard to conceive of how much lower he can go.

Think Progress has the video.

Given that the California State Supreme Court's decision to overturn the state's ban on gay marriage comes in the middle of a presidential election year, the ruling could potentially have major implications for the campaign. But for the moment, the political world is fairly quiet, and statements from the three presidential campaigns -- as well as additional comment to Salon provided by Barack Obama's campaign -- seem to indicate that, for the moment at least, the major players in the upcoming presidential race would like to stay away from the issue.

Republicans have, in the recent past, used court decisions like this one -- and subsequent initiatives and referendums at the ballot box -- to motivate their party's base to come out and vote. They'll most likely try the same thing in California. A coalition opposed to gay marriage had, even before the decision, already submitted more than 1.1 million signatures in favor of putting an initiative on California's ballot this November that, if passed, would amend the state's constitution and override this decision. But the actual value Republicans could gain from doing this in a state like California, which is dependably blue when it comes to voting for a president, seems small. And there'll be little chance to use the California decision effectively elsewhere: There are only so many times you can have voters decide these sorts of questions, and most of the key swing states have had similar measures on their ballots during one important national election or another this decade.

Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain could use some support with his party's social and religious conservatives, and could conceivably make a play on this issue in hopes of bringing them more firmly into his campaign. But, as of right now, there's no indication he will end up doing so. On Wednesday, previewing the likely political effects of the then-impending ruling, the Atlantic's Marc Ambinder wrote, "McCain, as you'll recall, opposes the Federal Marriage Amendment on federalism grounds but has hinted that he might change his mind if state courts start overturning people-initiated decisions on gay rights." Thursday's decision did in fact overturn a law voted on directly by the people of California, offering the McCain campaign its opening, but its response was tepid. In a statement, McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said, "John McCain supports the right of the people of California to recognize marriage as a unique institution sanctioning the union between a man and a woman, just as he did in his home state of Arizona. John McCain doesn't believe judges should be making these decisions."

Ultimately, the major political effect might be that it paints Democrats -- and especially Barack Obama, who's looking more and more like the party's eventual presidential nominee with every passing day -- into a very tight corner. Public opinion is shifting fairly quickly on the issue, but supporting same-sex marriage is still seen as deadly to a candidate's political aspirations. In a March 2007 Newsweek poll, 38 percent of respondents said that, by itself, a presidential candidate's strong support for same-sex marriage would cause them to vote against that candidate. Civil unions, however, are relatively popular -- or at least not dramatically unpopular -- and have come to be the preferred alternative for many politicians, including Obama and Hillary Clinton.

The problem is in the way some Democrats (and on this issue, especially Obama) have justified their support for civil unions but not for same-sex marriage. The "gay debate" that LGBT advocacy group Human Rights Campaign sponsored in August 2007 exposed the rhetorical and logical holes in some of those justifications, and Thursday's ruling only opened those holes further by saying that civil unions do not really provide equality under the law. Though he referred specifically to conservatives, in a post he wrote Thursday, at right-wing blog Hot Air the blogger "Allahpundit" did a good job of summing up the problems inherent in arguing for civil unions instead of same-sex marriage:

[I]t leaves you with no substantive reason for drawing any distinction in the first place. Yes, (some) conservatives seem to be saying, gays can go ahead and have civil unions that grant them all the benefits married couples have -- but for god's sake, don't let them call themselves "married." To which a court can only reply, "Why not?"

Obama's had a difficult time explaining his answer to that question. At the debate, he said, "[I]t is my strong belief that the government has to treat all citizens equally. I come from that in part out of personal experience. When you're a black guy named Barack Obama, you know what it's like to be on the outside. And so my concern is continually to make sure that the rights that are conferred by the state are equal for all people... my view is that we should try to disentangle what has historically been the issue of the word 'marriage,' which has religious connotations to some people, from the civil rights that are given to couples."

That provoked a question from HRC president Joe Solomonese, who -- referencing the landmark Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson -- asked Obama, "On the grounds of civil marriage, can you see to our community where that comes across as sounding like 'separate but equal'?" The senator responded:

Well, look, you know, when my parents got married in 1960, '61, you know, it would have been illegal for them to be married in a number of states in the South.

So obviously, this is something that I understand intimately, it's something that I care about.

But I would also say this, that if I were advising the civil rights movement back in 1961 about its approach to civil rights, I would have probably said it's less important that we focus on an anti-miscegenation law than we focus on ... all the legal rights that are conferred by the state...

[A]s I've proposed it, [civil unions] wouldn't be a lesser thing, from my perspective. And look, you know, semantics may be important to some. From my perspective, what I'm interested is making sure that those legal rights are available to people

The California Supreme Court's opinion specifically rejected this sort of argument. Chief Justice Ronald George wrote:

Whether or not the name 'marriage,' in the abstract, is considered a core element of the state constitutional right to marry, one of the core elements of this fundamental right is the right of same-sex couples to have their official family relationship accorded the same dignity, respect, and stature as that accorded to all other officially recognized family relationships. The current statutes -- by drawing a distinction between the name assigned to the family relationship available to opposite-sex couples and the name assigned to the family relationship available to same-sex couples, and by reserving the historic and highly respected designation of marriage exclusively to opposite-sex couples while offering same-sex couples only the new and unfamiliar designation of domestic partnership -- pose a serious risk of denying the official family relationship of same-sex couples the equal dignity and respect that is a core element of the constitutional right to marry. As observed... at oral argument, this court's conclusion in [a previous case] that the statutory provision barring interracial marriage was unconstitutional undoubtedly would have been the same even if alternative nomenclature, such as "transracial union," had been made available to interracial couples...

[B]ecause of the long and celebrated history of the term 'marriage' and the widespread understanding that this term describes a union unreservedly approved and favored by the community, there clearly is a considerable and undeniable symbolic importance to this designation. Thus, it is apparent that affording access to this designation exclusively to opposite-sex couples, while providing same-sex couples access to only a novel alternative designation, realistically must be viewed as constituting significantly unequal treatment to same-sex couples....

Second, particularly in light of the historic disparagement of and discrimination against gay persons, there is a very significant risk that retaining a distinction in nomenclature with regard to this most fundamental of relationships whereby the term "marriage" is denied only to same-sex couples inevitably will cause the new parallel institution that has been made available to those couples to be viewed as of a lesser stature than marriage and, in effect, as a mark of secondclass citizenship.

The Obama campaign has released a statement on the decision. It reads, "Barack Obama has always believed that same-sex couples should enjoy equal rights under the law, and he will continue to fight for civil unions as President. He respects the decision of the California Supreme Court, and continues to believe that states should make their own decisions when it comes to the issue of marriage." Salon asked an Obama spokesman for additional comment regarding the contradiction between the sentiment expressed in the first sentence of that statement and the court's decision; via e-mail, the spokesman said only "[Obama] continues to believe that states should make their own decisions when it comes to the issue of marriage."

As for Clinton's position on the issue, this is one situation in which her reputation for being calculating and nakedly political could actually make her campaign's job easier. In some ways, her logic on the question is as confused as Obama's. But at that debate, she was at least honest about the situation, essentially admitting that one reason she supports civil unions, and not marriage, is because the former is politically feasible. (It's hardly a wonderful position, but it's an easier one for the campaign to defend, as it avoids the logical twists and turns Obama might have to make if faced with this issue on the trail.) Asked for reaction to the California decision, the Clinton campaign provided Salon with a statement that reads:

Hillary Clinton believes that gay and lesbian couples in committed relationships should have the same rights and responsibilities as all Americans and believes that civil unions are the best way to achieve this goal. As President, Hillary Clinton will work to ensure that same sex couples have access to these rights and responsibilities at the federal level. She has said and continues to believe that the issue of marriage should be left to the states.