So it was noteworthy on Aug. 19, 2007, when seven active enlistees of the U.S. Army published a letter from Iraq in the pages of the New York Times. Over the course of 1,414 words, they offered America a military critique from the field -- about the intractable war, about the current military strategy, about the hollowness of the political debate in Washington. In passages thick with nuance, they did what soldiers, even noncommissioned officers, rarely do. In an unmistakable act of patriotism, they went outside the chain of command.

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These rules are brutally enforced by the media. If one of the Bush twins gets drunk in college, falling over and straddling a girlfriend's leg, the camera snaps rock the tabloids, prompting a national dialog about underage drinking. If Chelsea Clinton goes to work for a hedge fund, she calls her mom's commitment to the poor into question. And nothing more needs to be said about Alexandra Kerry's see-through mishap on the Cannes red carpet, or Mary Cheney's attraction to women, or that time Ashley Biden was arrested for obstructing a police officer outside a North Side bar in Chicago.

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Then today, there comes another press release from the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. "Real Minutemen Do Not Endorse Huckabee," it blared. It continued, with a run-on sentence:

Jim Gilchrist here speaks only for Jim Gilchrist, he does not speak for the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, nor is he nationally representative of most patriots in the "Minuteman movement" – who under no circumstances could ignore the failed record nor endorse the duplicitous “plan” recently rolled out by candidate Mike Huckabee.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/12/12/huckabee_minuteman/feed/ 5 http://www.salon.com/2007/12/12/iowa_caucus_stuffing/ http://www.salon.com/2007/12/12/iowa_caucus_stuffing/#comments Wed, 12 Dec 2007 17:41:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//roadies/2007/12/12/iowa_caucus_stuffing The clock is ticking on the Iowa caucuses, with just 22 days before zero hour, which means it's time to address the ever-present specter of electoral fraud. For decades, the Iowa caucuses have been relatively clean affairs, unlike in South Carolina, where muck rules. In part, this has to do with the process itself, which is so Byzantine that for Democrats it looks more like musical chairs than voting. (For those who want to understand how it works, see here and here.)

But there is a bad moon rising. For several weeks now, David Yepsen, the reigning dean of the Iowa political press, has been writing columns that portend evil on the horizon. At the end of November, he wrote a column titled "The Illinois Caucus," which led with these ominous words:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/12/12/iowa_caucus_stuffing/feed/ 11 http://www.salon.com/2007/12/10/huckabee_on_aids/ http://www.salon.com/2007/12/10/huckabee_on_aids/#comments Mon, 10 Dec 2007 17:41:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//roadies/2007/12/10/huckabee_on_aids The first thing you tend to hear about former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is that he is a new kind of evangelical political leader -- he's not mad, he lacks the fire and brimstone of damnation, and he tends to speak more about alleviating suffering than identifying sin. Furthermore, he is able to pull off this new attitude without abandoning the core values of his conservative faith. He remains adamantly against abortion, he favors teaching creationism alongside evolution, and he supports a federal amendment to ban gay marriage.

How does he pull this off? Mostly with sympathetic, inclusive rhetoric. At the Values Voter debate in September, for example, Huckabee took time in an answer about gay marriage to express his tolerance for gay people. "I want us to be very careful that we don't come across as having some animosity or hatred toward people, even [those] whose lifestyles are inexplicable to us," he said.

But there are now sufficient reasons to question whether Huckabee meets his own benchmarks of tolerance when it comes to gay and lesbian issues. Over the weekend, the Associated Press disclosed a questionnaire Huckabee had filled out as part of a failed 1992 campaign for the U.S. Senate. Here's what he had to say then about the subjects of gay rights and the AIDS epidemic:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/12/10/huckabee_on_aids/feed/ 49 http://www.salon.com/2007/12/09/giuliani_meets_the_press/ http://www.salon.com/2007/12/09/giuliani_meets_the_press/#comments Sun, 09 Dec 2007 17:05:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//roadies/2007/12/09/giuliani_meets_the_press On paper, Rudy Giuliani is the candidate most likely to create major fireworks in a "Meet The Press" grilling. His public and private record is so checkered with personal and professional misdeeds that one could easily imagine NBC's Tim Russert tearing him apart. But Giuliani, a veteran of the New York press corps, also knows how to handle tough questions. He doesn't get flustered. He can takes control of the facts. And so on Sunday, with some help from a restrained Russert, Giuliani mostly skated through his big Sunday test.

Mostly, he survived by frankly admitting some of his mistakes, and then arguing others. When asked why he had not been better briefed as New York mayor on the al-Qaida threat, he said bluntly, "I didn't see the enormity of it, neither did the administration at the time." When asked about abandoning the 9/11 commission to give speeches, he said he should never have joined the panel, since he had other concerns at the time, including his own possible presidential run. "It was a mistake for me to be on the panel," he said. When asked about Bernard Kerik, his now-indicted friend and former police commissioner, Giuliani said, "The reality is I made a mistake."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/12/09/giuliani_meets_the_press/feed/ 19 http://www.salon.com/2007/12/06/romney_gets_emotional/ http://www.salon.com/2007/12/06/romney_gets_emotional/#comments Thu, 06 Dec 2007 17:08:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//roadies/2007/12/06/romney_gets_emotional Mitt Romney almost never gets emotional. He doesn't like to lose control. He is, in all the good ways as well as some of the bad, a political machine, a campaigning robot. He will raise his voice or act indignant, but it almost always seems calculated and preplanned. His smiles and chuckles can come off as just another PowerPoint slide.

But on Thursday something happened that Romney could not control. At the end of his speech in Texas on his Mormon faith and his view of religion in public life, he got emotional. He lost it in the tiniest way.

He was recalling the early days of the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, on the brink of the Revolutionary War, when the early Americans from various faiths were gathered together. They wanted to pray, Romney said, but they did not know whose prayer to use.

"Then Sam Adams rose, and said he would hear a prayer from anyone of piety and good character, as long as they were a patriot," Romney said, reading off the teleprompter. "And so together they prayed, and together they fought, and together, by the grace of God, they founded this great nation."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/12/06/romney_gets_emotional/feed/ 51 http://www.salon.com/2007/12/06/romney_speech_preview/ http://www.salon.com/2007/12/06/romney_speech_preview/#comments Thu, 06 Dec 2007 14:34:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//roadies/2007/12/06/romney_speech_preview The campaign of Mitt Romney has sent out preview text of his religion speech, which is set to begin in Texas at 10:30 a.m. EST. The text shows, as expected, that Romney will dance a tightrope, arguing that John F. Kennedy was at once right and wrong. Romney will argue that there should be no religious test in public life, and that there should be more religion in public life.

In the spirit of JFK, Romney will say:

When I place my hand on the Bible and take the oath of office, that oath becomes my highest promise to God. If I am fortunate to become your president, I will serve no one religion, no one group, no one cause, and no one interest. A President must serve only the common cause of the people of the United States ... There are some who would have a presidential candidate describe and explain his church's distinctive doctrines. To do so would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the constitution. No candidate should become the spokesman for his faith. For if he becomes President he will need the prayers of the people of all faiths.

Unlike JFK, Romney will say:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/12/06/romney_speech_preview/feed/ 4 http://www.salon.com/2007/12/05/rudy_tough_guy/ http://www.salon.com/2007/12/05/rudy_tough_guy/#comments Wed, 05 Dec 2007 20:20:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//roadies/2007/12/05/rudy_tough_guy Former New York tough-guy Mayor Rudy Giuliani has a new tough-guy ad out today. Against grainy black-and-white images of the American hostages in Iran, he spins a macho fable.

Once upon a time, there was a wimpy Democratic president named Jimmy Carter, the story goes. He tried and tried but just could not free the hostages in Iran. Then along came a tough-guy Republican president named Ronald Reagan. One hour later the hostages were freed. The Moral: You need a president with big balls. Here's the ad:

For those who don't like watching video online, here's the script Giuliani reads: "I remember back to the 1970s and the early 1980s. Iranian mullahs took American hostages and they held the American hostages for 444 days. And they released the American hostages in one hour, and that should tell us a lot about these Islamic terrorists that we're facing. The one hour in which they released them was the one hour in which Ronald Reagan was taking the Oath of Office as President of the United States. The best way you deal with dictators, the best way you deal with tyrants and terrorists, you stand up to them. You don't back down."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/12/05/rudy_tough_guy/feed/ 15 http://www.salon.com/2007/12/04/mtv_mccain/ http://www.salon.com/2007/12/04/mtv_mccain/#comments Tue, 04 Dec 2007 02:22:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//roadies/2007/12/03/mtv_mccain For at least Monday night, John McCain was the hippest old guy in presidential politics. He bucked the traditional Republican aversion to that basic cable network that invented reality television, lionized the crotch grab and created the first major bisexual dating show. He became the only Republican candidate this cycle to accept an invitation for a town hall meeting with young voters on MTV.

"My friends, I'm not the youngest candidate in this race. You know that. But I am the most experienced," the 72-year-old said upon taking the stage, which was surrounded by red, white and blue lights, like the inside of a patriotic microwave oven.

Then he tried to make a funny. "I'm older than Frankenstein and I've got a few scars," he said, before realizing that didn't make any sense. "I'm older than dirt and I've got more scars than Frankenstein," he tried again. "Screwed up that line." The audience of students of Southern New Hampshire University laughed. The old guy was trying to please. They appreciated it.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/12/04/mtv_mccain/feed/ 2 http://www.salon.com/2007/12/03/more_mormon_speech/ http://www.salon.com/2007/12/03/more_mormon_speech/#comments Mon, 03 Dec 2007 21:19:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//roadies/2007/12/03/more_mormon_speech Mitt Romney's official schedule called for a noontime address Monday to a group of Rotarians about the U.S. economy. Ever the organization man, Romney kept to his schedule, clicking through a couple dozen PowerPoint slides, with bar and line graphs galore, before a lunchtime crowd of about 50. (Key quote: "The squiggly line on top is the percentage of our national economy that goes to federal taxes.")

After he was done, the real event began. As the Rotarians filed out, Romney stepped before an unusually animated scrum of eager reporters, wanting to know more about his plans to speak in Texas Thursday about his own religious beliefs. "The Speech" as it has become known, will be Romney's first major attempt of the campaign season to explain how his Mormon faith "would inform his presidency if he were elected," according to the campaign.

Once he got before the cameras, Romney made some surprising admissions. First of all, he said he has no plans to repeat John Kennedy's famous 1960 address, in which Kennedy announced that he was "not the Catholic candidate for president." Said Romney:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/12/03/more_mormon_speech/feed/ 7 http://www.salon.com/2007/12/03/ron_paul/ http://www.salon.com/2007/12/03/ron_paul/#comments Mon, 03 Dec 2007 12:05:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/12/03/ron_paul It's about 8 o'clock on Saturday night, and Murphy's Taproom is going nuts with flash bulbs and cheering. The guy dressed as Santa Claus, a Staten Island limo driver named Lou Barrett, is trying to tell me about his new Meetup group, "Reindeer for Ron Paul," but the din of about a hundred soused Paul fans traps the words in his fake white beard. "Santa is Ron Paul's elf," he finally manages to tell me. "We want to give the gift of freedom this year."

About 10 minutes earlier, Texas Rep. Paul, a lithe 72-year-old obstetrician running a quixotic Republican campaign for president, arrived at the bar with a wide-eyed state policeman in tow. You would have thought Bono had come to Murphy's. Young and old crushed to the door, waved their arms and stood on chairs to get a glimpse of the man. A 21-year-old from Brooklyn, N.Y., Violet Zharov, presented the candidate with a layer cake she had purchased with her own money, inscribed in frosting: "You're our hero. We love you Ron Paul." A former door-to-door frozen meat salesman, Curtis Fenimore, 26, from Wilmington, N.C., began shouting out cheers. "Who you gonna call?" The crowd responded: "Ron Paul!"

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/12/03/ron_paul/feed/ 138 http://www.salon.com/2007/12/03/paul_interview/ http://www.salon.com/2007/12/03/paul_interview/#comments Mon, 03 Dec 2007 12:00:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/12/03/paul_interview Texas congressman and Republican presidential contender Ron Paul took some time out of a busy campaign schedule Saturday to speak with Salon. As a blistering winter wind swirled outside, we spoke about Howard Dean, Guy Fawkes, his thoughts on a third-party run, and the legacy he hopes to leave behind.

What has changed in terms of the reception you have gotten online and in fundraising since the summer?

Well, it keeps growing, and it's growing exponentially. It's still impressive. It's hard to tell exactly where it will end, but certainly there is a lot of room for optimism.

Optimism for what?

If we have enough time to get the message out, [we] could win. If we run out of time, of course, hopefully we have a big impact on addressing the real problems of this country and what the solutions ought to be.

I see a lot of parallels between the reception you are getting, especially the online motivation, and what was happening to Howard Dean in 2003. Of course you could still win, but he was able to build out of that response a sustained movement. There are organizations like Democracy for America that are still around. He was able to continue as a national leader, even though he lost. Do you see that possibility?

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/12/03/paul_interview/feed/ 24 http://www.salon.com/2007/12/03/mormon_speech/ http://www.salon.com/2007/12/03/mormon_speech/#comments Mon, 03 Dec 2007 00:26:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//roadies/2007/12/02/mormon_speech At Kirkland Community College in Cedar Rapids Friday, Mitt Romney was bluntly asked by an elderly man, "Governor, your religion concerns many people, I would like to get your response."

Romney is not the first religious Mormon to make a race for president. His father George Romney was a serious contender for the 1968 GOP nomination until he admitted to being "brainwashed" about Vietnam. Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch also briefly attempted a vanity-inspired 2000 bid. But he is the first Mormon to run into political problems because of his religion.

On Friday, Romney gave his standard answer: "First of all, I am proud of my faith, as you can imagine, and the faith of my fathers. And it informs a lot of how I live my life. But I am also an individual who believes that in this country you are not going to see people choosing their candidates by what church they go to."

He continued, "[Lincoln] said that America should subscribe to defending the Constitution, abiding by the rule of law, abiding by the Declaration of Independence and all of its principles. And he called it by an unusual term, 'America's political religion.' And I want to assure you that when I become president of the United States and I place my hand on the Bible, I believe that I am subscribing to America's political religion."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/12/03/mormon_speech/feed/ 27 http://www.salon.com/2007/12/01/press_conference/ http://www.salon.com/2007/12/01/press_conference/#comments Sat, 01 Dec 2007 01:15:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2007/11/30/press_conference ROCHESTER, N.H.--Strapped with road flares and duct tape, the man said he had a bomb. Over the next five hours, he listed off his demands: cigarettes, Pepsi, alcohol and a chance to speak with Hillary Clinton.

At a wide-ranging press conference Friday in an abandoned church, state and local authorities detailed the standoff that focused national attention on this quiet New England town known as the "Lilac City." They named the alleged perpetrator who had barged into Clinton's local headquarters Friday, shortly before 12:40 p.m. "threatening to use explosives." He is Leeland Eisenberg, a resident of nearby Somersworth, who was born in 1961, police said.

Police described how he immediately let one of his four adult hostages free, because she was with a child not yet one year old. They told how another Clinton staffer later fled the office on her own accord. They told of how Eisenberg began making phone calls from inside the office, and initially refused offers to speak with police. Eventually a state negotiator arranged the release of the final two staffers, a man and a woman who were not named. At some point in the afternoon, Eisenberg was given cigarettes. Finally, after about 30 minutes alone in the office, Eisenberg came out on his own accord and was arrested. After a tense afternoon that shut down the city center, no one was injured. Domino's Pizza delivered a stack of pies for the famished police.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/12/01/press_conference/feed/ 7 http://www.salon.com/2007/11/30/over/ http://www.salon.com/2007/11/30/over/#comments Fri, 30 Nov 2007 23:18:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2007/11/30/over ROCHESTER, N.H. -- The hostage situation at Hillary Clinton's campaign office here has ended peacefully with the release of a final hostage and the arrest of the man who walked into the office earlier today and claimed to have a bomb.

As police took the man into custody, a law enforcement explosives van pulled out of the Ben Franklin Crafts store parking lot, where it had been staged, and moved toward the presumably empty campaign office. A stack of Domino's pizzas arrived for police.

CNN is reporting that the gunman spoke to CNN employees by telephone several times during the afternoon, complaining that he was suffering from mental health problems. CNN passed along the information to law enforcement but did not report it on the air until after the man was taken into custody.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/11/30/over/feed/ 7 http://www.salon.com/2007/11/30/hostages/ http://www.salon.com/2007/11/30/hostages/#comments Fri, 30 Nov 2007 22:43:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2007/11/30/hostages ROCHESTER, N.H. -- As of 5 p.m., the downtown here remains in lockdown, hours after a lone man entered the local headquarters of the Hillary Clinton campaign and took several hostages. A maze of police tape and flashing cruiser lights lines the streets, while police remain tight-lipped, saying only that the "hostage" situation is ongoing, the situation remains "fluid," and the area is "stabilized." One Rochester police officer could be overheard discussing the need for a search warrant via a cellphone.

The absence of official information has made a star of Chelsea Coull, a 19-year-old employee of the nearby Governor's Inn. She says that at around 3 p.m. a young man walked into the inn to ask for a cup of coffee. According to Coull, the man, who did not give his name, described himself as the stepson of the person who had taken the hostages in the local headquarters of Hillary Clinton's campaign. The young man told Coull that his stepfather was "in the wrong state of mind" and wanted help.

"He had been drinking for 72 hours prior to this," the sober man said of his stepfather, according to Coull. "He had asked where he could purchase roadside flares, and then this morning he said, 'Watch the news for me.'"

Coull continued, "He said that his stepfather is harmless. All he has is roadside flares on him. And he is in the wrong state of mind. He just wants help."

Police have confirmed none of this. But they have said to expect another press conference at around 7 p.m., local time.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/11/30/hostages/feed/ 5 http://www.salon.com/2007/11/29/romney_red_sox/ http://www.salon.com/2007/11/29/romney_red_sox/#comments Thu, 29 Nov 2007 16:50:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//roadies/2007/11/29/romney_red_sox At the end of Wednesday night's debate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney did his darnedest to show that he was a regular-guy sports fan. About the Boston Red Sox epic World Series drought, he said:

Eighty-seven long years. We waited 87 long years. And true suffering Red Sox fans that my family and I are, we could not have been more happy than to see the Red Sox win the World Series.

What's wrong with this answer? Let's act like a Bain Capital consultant, Romney's former career, and audit the numbers. The Red Sox won the World Series in September 1918 and then again in October 2004, with no victories in between. 2004 - 1918 = 86 years. If you count how many seasons came in between without a championship, then you could say the wait was 85 years. But 87?

To make the matter even more embarrassing, the number 86 has become a mythical one in Red Sox Nation. There is a children's book called "86 Years: The Legend of the Boston Red Sox." The Red Sox Web site boasts of the "86-year gap between Boston's World Series championships." Etc. Etc.

No correction has yet emerged from the Romney camp. But I will be sure to post it if it comes.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/11/29/romney_red_sox/feed/ 10 http://www.salon.com/2007/11/29/gopdebate/ http://www.salon.com/2007/11/29/gopdebate/#comments Thu, 29 Nov 2007 13:57:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/11/29/gopdebate 0 minutes. CNN's Anderson Cooper is looking especially dapper tonight. His suit and shirt collar make sharp triangle shapes with his silk tie, which is the color of wet cabernet grapes. His preternaturally white hair parts powerfully to the right, a series of straight lines betrayed by a single strand that falls a centimeter onto his forehead. No one is perfect. But tonight is not about the Coop, his hairdresser or his tailor. Tonight is about You. That's right, this is the Republican YouTube debate. You are the star. "All the questions tonight come from you," says the Coop. "You."

1 minute. But You must wait. A guy named Jim comes onto the stage to introduce a Florida governor named Charlie, who talks for a while, and then asks the candidates to walk out. California Rep. Duncan Hunter looks scared. Arizona Sen. John McCain gives the thumbs up. When former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson comes onstage, McCain shakes his hand. Then McCain shakes the hand of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Then former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney comes out. McCain does not extend his hand.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2007/11/29/gopdebate/feed/ 74 http://www.salon.com/2007/11/28/huckabee_romney_dog_food/ http://www.salon.com/2007/11/28/huckabee_romney_dog_food/#comments Wed, 28 Nov 2007 00:49:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//roadies/2007/11/27/huckabee_romney_dog_food Another poll is out today, showing Mike Huckabee inching up on Mitt Romney among Republicans in an early voting state. This time, it's Florida, the site of Wednesday's GOP debate, which will vote on Jan. 29. It's but a single data point -- Huckabee 17 percent, Romney 12 percent -- but it comes on the heels of consistent Huckabee gains on Romney in the national and Iowa polls. It's not yet a crisis for Romney, who still holds a commanding lead in New Hampshire, but if these trends continue it surely will become one.

On Monday, in a media conference call with reporters, USA Today's Susan Page asked Huckabee what he thought of Romney's relative decline in several polls. The exchange is telling for two reasons: It displays the storytelling talents of Huckabee, the Baptist pastor, and it lays out in vibrant colors the worst fear of the big-spending Romney campaign.

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