This election season has already seen Barack Obama repudiate his pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, for his controversial views. Sarah Palin, John McCain’s newly-minted running mate, may soon be considering doing the same.

Palin's pastor, Larry Kroon, invited the founder of Jews for Jesus, David Brickner, to speak at her church on August 17th, Politico's Ben Smith reported. According to its mission statement, Jews for Jesus is an organization that tries: "to make the messiahship of Jesus an unavoidable issue to our Jewish people worldwide."

Palin and her family were present in the church for Brickner's sermon, the full text of which can be found here. In the sermon, he made a number of inflammatory claims, most particularly about terrorist attacks in Israel. "Judgment is very real and we see it played out on the pages of the newspapers and on the television. It’s very real," he opined. Speaking of his son, who had recently been in Jerusalem, he said: "When Isaac was in Jerusalem he was there to witness some of that judgment, some of that conflict, when a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment -- you can't miss it."

The McCain campaign has denied that Sarah Palin or her family support Brickner’s views. Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic's Daily Dish quoted one of the campaign's spokesmen, Michael Goldfarb, saying that: "Governor Palin does not share the views he expressed, and she and her family would not have been sitting in the pews of this church for the last seven years if his remarks were even remotely typical." But according to Larry Kroon's introduction to the sermon, Brickner, who also spoke at the church four years ago, was influential in his decision to become a pastor.

John McCain has long been perceived by voters as friend to Israel, in no small part because he enjoys the support of Senator Joseph Lieberman, one of Israel's more vocal champions on the national scene. Palin's pastor problem could weaken that perception.

Jews for Jesus now has a statement on its homepage claiming Brickner's "statements regarding God's judgment have been published out of context in a way that we feel is misleading. David holds the traditional evangelical belief that God judges all people for sin, and that Jesus is the solution for the sins of everyone who will repent and receive God's gracious forgiveness."

There are no images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton in this ad, but a new McCain campaign attack ad once again accuses of Barack Obama of being more celebrity than statesman.

The ad, called "Temple," mocks Obama's speech at the Democratic convention before the throngs at Invesco Field, as a female voice-over intones: "Take away the celebrity. The thrilling words. What's left? Old ideas masquerading as change."

The spot then goes on to accuse Obama of planning to raise taxes on everything from your income to your electric bill.

Watch the ad here:

Is another big story about Sarah Palin's family life imminent? It's certainly starting to look possible.

Earlier this week, the National Enquirer reported:

Another incredible allegation emerging from the family war is that Palin, a mother of five, had an affair with a former business associate of her fisherman husband, Todd.

"Todd discovered the affair and quickly dissolved his friendship and his business associations with the guy," charges an enemy. "Many people in Alaska are talking about the rumor and say Todd swept it under the rug."

(The article isn't online, so no link, sorry -- the Enquirer sent me a PDF copy.)

Now, obviously, this is the National Enquirer saying this. But, to quote myself, from a July post about the paper's reporting on John Edwards:

I know what you're thinking: Why even bother with anything printed by the Enquirer, a supermarket tabloid you probably think of as the kind of "newspaper" that focuses on rumors that Elvis Presley is alive -- and leading a band of rampaging space aliens? ... That's not really the Enquirer's niche, though. It gets confused with publications like the defunct Weekly World News, but in fact the Enquirer is surprisingly good at reporting on these kinds of stories, and it has a decent track record with them. It was the Enquirer that published the photo of Donna Rice sitting on Gary Hart's lap. It was the Enquirer that broke the story of Rush Limbaugh's addiction to painkillers.

And we all know how the Edwards story turned out.

Plus, a new bit of information is adding some fuel to the fire: Todd Palin's former business partner has reportedly moved to have the court records from his divorce sealed. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean there's anything juicy in there -- he could just be trying to prevent nosy reporters from digging around, and who could blame him? But it is interesting.

At a campaign stop in Cedarburg, Wis., Friday, Sarah Palin skewered Barack Obama for not supporting the 2007 troop surge in Iraq: "I guess when you turn out to be profoundly wrong on a vital national security issue, maybe it's comforting to pretend that everyone else was wrong too," Palin zinged.

Maybe. Or, maybe the vaunted surge, in which President Bush sent nearly 30,000 additional troops to Iraq, isn't all it's been cracked up to be.

Today, the Washington Post reports that in Bob Woodward's new book, "The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008," which will be released on Monday, the investigative journalist contends that the surge wasn't the primary reason that violence decreased in Iraq over the past 16 months. "Rather, Woodword reports 'groundbreaking' new covert techniques enabled U.S. military and intelligence officers to locate, target, and kill insurgent leaders and key individuals in extremist groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq," the Post reports.

It was these covert operations, along with militant cleric Muqtada al-Sadr reining in his Mahdi Army and tens of thousands of Sunnis turning against al-Qaida in Iraq and allying with U.S. forces, in addition to the surge, that lessened the violence in the country, according to "The War Within."

Maybe the Obama campaign should send Sarah Palin a copy.

"I agree that Sarah Palin would be a fantastic interview, and I would love to have her on after the campaign is over."

-- Talk show host Oprah Winfrey in a statement, denying a Drudge Report story, which claims Oprah's staff is divided about whether GOP veep candidate Sarah Palin should appear on the show before the election.

Winfrey, who has campaigned for Barack Obama, said that she will not use her show as a platform for any of the candidates before the election. In the past, Obama has appeared on Winfrey's show, both times before he was running for president, according to TMZ.

Bad news for American workers: The jobless rate jumped to 6.1 percent in August, its highest rate in five years, according to the New York Times. American employers cut 84,000 jobs last month. Bonus: The Labor Department said that more jobs were lost in June and July than previously thought.

What do the presidential candidates have to say about this sorry state of affairs?

In a statement, Barack Obama argued that President John McCain would continue Bush's economic policies, which, he contended, have cost the U.S. economy 605,000 jobs just this year. "John McCain may believe that the fundamentals of our economy are 'strong,' but the working men and women I meet every day are working harder for less, the typical working age family's income is down $2,000 since George Bush took office, and their purchasing power is as low as it's been in a decade," he said. Obama went on to pledge to cut taxes for 95 percent of working families if elected president.

Meanwhile, John McCain took the unfortunate economic news as an opportunity to suggest that an Obama administration would mean higher taxes. "Sadly there are those who believe that to grow this economy we must raise taxes, impose costly new mandates and isolate America from the global economy. When our economy is hurting, the last thing we should do is raise taxes as Barack Obama plans to do and has done," McCain said in a statement.

A new poll out from ABC News shows that Americans haven't yet fully bought in to the arguments about Sarah Palin's experience that Republicans have been making this week.

Pollsters found that a majority of respondents think Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden has the experience necessary to be an effective president; 66 percent said he does, while 21 percent said he doesn't and 13 percent had no opinion. Only 42 percent said Palin has the requisite experience, while 50 percent said she doesn't and 7 percent had no opinion.

Come on, people -- don't you realize she's from a really big state?

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- John McCain started off slow. And for a moment, when antiwar protesters broke in and heckled him, distracting his crowd's attention, it seemed that all might be lost and that he might fall completely flat on a night in which he needed to shine.

But the Republican nominee and his speechwriter had saved the best -- in this case, the story of McCain's time as a prisoner of war -- for last. It was a moving section, one that seemed to make the entire Xcel Center go silent. And it made for a good transition into his closing argument, a call for Americans to join with him to fight for their country. Now the McCain campaign just has to hope that voters at home kept watching long enough to see the big finish.

So far, the reviews aren't good. CNN's Jeffrey Toobin calling this " the worst speech by a nominee that I’ve heard since Jimmy Carter in 1980" is one thing. But the harsh critique that former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson delivered on MSNBC (which Barack Obama's campaign was quick to blast out to reporters) was something else entirely.

"Pretty disappointing," Gerson said. "I think that was a missed opportunity. Many Americans needed to hear from this speech something they have never heard from Republicans before. And in reality, a lot of the policy they’ve heard from Republicans before."

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- When it came time for Democrats to officially respond to John McCain's speech at the Republican convention Thursday night, the task didn't fall to Barack Obama or even Joe Biden, who'll likely get called upon often to fill the attack dog role for his ticket. Instead, they turned to a figure from the recent past: Hillary Clinton. Her full statement is below.

The two party conventions showcased vastly different directions for our country. Senator Obama and Senator Biden offered the new ideas and positive change America needs and deserves after eight years of failed Republican leadership. Senator McCain and Governor Palin did not.

After listening to all of the speeches this week, I heard nothing that suggests the Republicans are ready to fix the economy for middle class families, provide quality affordable health care for all Americans, guarantee equal pay for equal work for women, restore our nation's leadership in a complex world or tackle the myriad of challenges our country faces.

So, to slightly amend my comments from Denver: NO WAY, NO HOW, NO McCAIN-PALIN.

Update: The Obama campaign has now put out a statement of its own. Attributed to spokesman Bill Burton, it reads:

Tonight, John McCain said that his party was elected to change Washington, but that they let Washington change them. He's right. He admonished the 'old, do-nothing crowd' in Washington, but ignored the fact that he's been part of that crowd for twenty-six years, opposing solutions on health care, energy, and education. He talked about bipartisanship, but didn't mention that he's been a Bush partisan 90% of the time, that he's run a Karl Rove campaign, and that he wants to continue this President's disastrous economic and foreign policies for another four years. With John McCain, it's more of the same.

That's not the change Americans need. Barack Obama has taken on the special interests and the lobbyists in Illinois and in Washington, and he's won. As President, he'll cut taxes for 95% of all working families, provide affordable health care to every American, end the tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas, and eliminate the oil we import from the Middle East in ten years.

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- The speech was flat, the backdrop went from lime green to electric blue, and the Xcel Energy Center ain't exactly Mile High Stadium, but there is something nice about a traditional balloon drop at the end of a convention, and John McCain knows it.

The Republican convention came to a close Thursday night amid a sea of confetti, balloons and streamers, and you sort of had to wonder whether a Barack Obama victory this fall would mean an end to one of the oldest tableaus in American politics. (If the guy can pack football stadiums, he may not need gigantic balloons to rev the crowd up.) Yeah, the scene looked like it could have been straight out of 1980, and that doesn't do much to give the impression that McCain is the candidate of the future. (Or to counter the Democratic message, which was that McCain didn't spell out how he would change the direction the country's going.) Still, the whole crowd looked like it was having fun in the flood of red, white and blue falling from the ceiling. Maybe getting rid of balloon drops is one change America doesn't need yet.

The music, however, betrayed a certain literal-mindedness. "Barracuda" by Heart -- a nod to Sarah Palin's nickname. "Dancing in September" by Earth, Wind & Fire -- the perfect song to dance to, on Sept. 4! (Though it's hard to call what Republican delegates do to music dancing.) "Celebration" by Kool & the Gang, "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey, "Everyday People" by Sly & the Family Stone ... every song had a message, and they weren't very subtle. But then again, neither was the convention, so maybe that was apt.