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Tonight in his address via satellite to the Republican National Convention, President Bush blasted Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) critics. Invoking McCain’s time as a POW in a North Vietnamese prison, Bush compared these torturers to members of the “angry Left”:

If the Hanoi Hilton could not break John McCain’s resolve to do what is best for his country, you can be sure the angry Left never will.

Bush received a loud, standing ovation. Watch it:

In recent weeks, several conservatives have inflated the record of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, in particular her record on fighting the rampant corruption that has plagued her state for years.

In an interview with ThinkProgress yesterday at the Republican National Convention, Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA) joined the long line of conservatives pushing this talking point, claiming Palin had fully “defeated” the corruption in Alaska:

They play their politics tough. It was somewhat of an old boy’s club that developed over the years. … She did challenge it. She challenged it as an underdog, as an outsider. She succeeded There is obviously some corruption up there. She dared to challenge it. She defeated it.

It’s hard to see how Palin “dared to challenge” the corruption in her state, in particular, the case of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), who was recently indicted by a federal grand jury with seven counts of making false statements for failing to disclose $250,000 in gifts from VECO oil company. Ironically, VECO has ties to Palin, contributing 10 percent of her campaign funds when she ran for lieutenant governor in 2002.

In July, Palin refused to call for Stevens’ resignation. The Washington Post reported today that she previously served as the director of the 527 group Ted Stevens Excellence in Public Service.” Despite her claim that she refused Stevens’ “Bridge to Nowhere,” Palin has repeatedly stated her desire to renew federal funding for the bridge.

In the interview, Lungren scoffed at Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) background:

I checked her background and the only thing I can find that she doesn’t have in her background is she wasn’t a community organizer. And yet we have a person unning for president for whom that seems to be the major reason to elect him as President. All I know is Alaska that is a very tough state.

Lungren also launched a false attack on Obama, claiming he has not had a “major piece of legislation” and “hasn’t contributed significantly to any major debate we’ve had” in Congress. Apparently, legislation on nuclear non-proliferation, government transparency, and ethics reform don’t count.

The Washington Post reported today that, as mayor of Wasilla, Sarah Palin hired a lobbyist to secure nearly $27 million in federal funds for the town, and that the lobbyist, Steven Silver, had “close ties” to Rep. Don Young (R-AK) and Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK). TMPMuckraker has found that Silver also listed convicted felon Jack Abramoff’s firm, Greenberg Traurig, as a client:

On Greenberg’s behalf, Silver lobbied the federal government on “issues relating to Indian/Native American policy,” “exploration for oil and gas” and “legislation relating to gaming issues” — the very issues that Abramoff headed up for Greenberg at the time. In other words, Silver appears to have been a part of “Team Abramoff.”

E-mails released during the Abramoff investigation showed a scheduled meeting between between Silver and Abramoff in 2001.

A new Department of Justice inspector general report released today found that former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales improperly handled secret information regarding the government’s most sensitive national security programs. DOJ officials have reportedly looked at the report “but did not find a case to prosecute.”

But Gonzales may have done more than just “improperly handle” classified national security documents. CQ’s Spy Talk blog reports that there is “strong evidence” in the report “that the former attorney general lied to federal investigators probing his careless handling of highly classified documents.”

According to the IG the report, Gonzales told investigators that he did not know that documents he handled relating to the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program were classified:

Gonzales said that he was unaware of the classification level and compartmented nature of the NSA program he referenced in the notes. Gonzales also stated he did not recall thinking that the notes themselves were classified.

Yet the report also says that an envelope containing the documents were marked “top secret” by Alberto Gonzales himself:

The envelope containing documents related to the NSA surveillance program bore the handwritten markings, “TOP SECRET - EYES ONLY - ARG” [the attorney general’s initials] followed by an abbreviation for the SCI codeword for the program.

House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers (D-MI) said it is “shocking” that Gonzales mishandled the documents, adding that the “department ought to explain clearly why it declined to pursue charges against Mr. Gonzales and what actions it intends to take in response to the report.”

In an interview with ThinkProgress earlier today in St. Paul, progressive radio (and soon-to-be-TV) host Rachel Maddow called the decision-making process for John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin “shocking.” “Nobody can quite believe that John McCain picked her,” she said, adding, “I think the question right now is whether or not the choice is going to be withdrawn.” The decision to replace her needs to happen “very quickly,” Maddow said, “before it gets very complicated with the rules of the RNC“:

And I think that that’s actually what people are thinking about, rather than what will Sarah Palin mean for the country. I don’t get the sense that anybody is totally committed to the idea that she is going to be vice president, or even the vice presidential nominee.

This has been greeted with such shock — and with every salacious detail about stuff that wasn’t vetted coming to the floor seemingly with each hour of the news cycle — it is becoming less likely by the hour that Palin will still be John McCain’s nominee even by the end of the week.

Watch it:

I promised to post the SunSpider benchmarks for Google Chrome, and boy, V8 surely blew away other browsers in many aspects! For the visual learners, here's a pretty chart to show just how monstrous Chrome is when it comes to JS perfs (as Intchanter noted, smaller is better):

Here are some nicely formatted raw numbers:

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Today, Focus on the Family founder and chairman James Dobson vigorously promoted Gov. Sarah Palin on Laura Ingraham’s radio show. Responding to critics who say Palin as a mother of five — including an infant with Down Syndrome — might be too busy to be Vice President, Dobson declared it “a personal matter,” and lauded the fact that Palin still cooks for her children:

DOBSON: I think that is her choice. That’s a personal matter that’s in her own family. And she seems to be doing it well. She loves her kids, she loves her family. … When she was elected governor, she eliminated the position of chef at the mansion because she wanted to do the cooking for her own family. I mean, this is a very unique, special lady.

Listen here:

Of course, Dobson and his group haven’t always embraced career moms. In his book, “The New Dare to Discipline,” Dobson “blames the supposed crumbling of ‘moral values’ and [the] ‘anarchy that is now rumbling through the midsection of democracy’ on working mothers and ‘permissiveness.’” Jim Daly, president and CEO of Focus on the Family, cheered the fact that fewer women aim to be working moms, “a reflection,” he says, “of a renewed realization that nothing is more important than being there for your kids.”

Dobson has gone even further, painting a dire portrait of an exhausted working mom — whose 9-5 job pales in comparison to the 24-hour job of Vice President — who could “go over the edge” at any moment:

DR. DOBSON: Some women are able to maintain a busy career and a bustling family at the same time, and they do it beautifully. I admire them for their discipline and dedication. It has been my observation, however, that this dual responsibility is a formula for exhaustion and frustration for many others. It can be a never-ending struggle for survival. … Consider what it is like to be a mother of young children who must arise early in the morning, get her kids dressed, fed and located for the day, then drive to work, labour from nine to five, go by the grocery store and pick up some stuff for dinner, retrieve the kids at the child-care centre and then drive home. She is dog-tired by that point and needs to put her feet up for a few minutes. But she can’t rest. The kids are hungry, and they’ve been waiting to see her all day. […]

On weekends, there’s housecleaning to do, clothes to be ironed and pants to be mended. … A little push in any direction and she could go over the edge.

Dobson does say that a mother “has that right” to choose to work, and that “it is nobody’s business but her’s and her husband’s,” but his dire warning paints a far different picture than his enthusiastic support of Chef Palin today.

In a book he co-authored in 2006, Time Magazine’s Mark Halperin — speaking for traditional media — wrote that the Drudge Report “rules our world.” During a media panel hosted by the Politico this afternoon in St. Paul, a questioner asked the reporters what websites they turned to first every morning to get their news. Nearly all the reporters said Drudge still rules their world. Fox News contributor and Fortune Magazine journalist Nina Easton had lavish praise for Drudge:

NINA EASTON: I use Drudge. I think Drudge is really, really useful on keeping up on things. If I have to go on-air in 10 minutes, and I need to make sure I’m not missing something, something didn’t break. I just click on Drudge. I think Drudge has gotten less partisan, or you know, whatever it was at the beginning. I think it really is, if you want to know what’s in the water table of the news, you gotta click on it several times a day.

Watch it:

Only Politico’s Jim Vandehei mentioned a liberal site. “Almost every day, I start by going to Drudge and then Huffington,” he said, to get an idea of “what people are popping on both the left and the right.”

In recent days, conservatives have tried to justify the choice of Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) as Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) running mate by arguing that she has foreign policy experience for no other reason than that her state is close to Russia. In fact, Washington Times columnist Frank Gaffney today argued that Palin knows foreign policy “by osmosis“:

Speaking of geography, Alaskan territory is also along the trajectory of ballistic missiles launched eastward out of Stalinist North Korea. For that reason, among others, Alaska’s Fort Greely was selected as the site for the principal U.S. ground-based defense against such missiles.

As that state’s governor, Sarah Palin would know more by osmosis – if nothing else – about the necessity for U.S. anti-missile systems than either Messrs. Obama or Biden.

Yesterday on Fox’s Hannity and Colmes, Karl Rove took this argument a step further, claiming that President Bush was qualified to be commander-in-chief for a similar reason: because Texas was close to Mexico:

COLMES: And Obama has more foreign policy experience than George Bush had when Bush…

ROVE: Alan, no, no, no. George Bush — George Bush was Governor and he dealt with the Mexican border.

COLMES: He didn’t know the general — general of Pakistan.

Watch it:

Rove didn’t go any further, leaving in the air the question of how dealing with the Mexican border prepared him to launch an invasion in Iraq.

Colmes also tried to press Rove on his earlier criticisms of Gov. Tim Kaine (D-VA), in light of McCain’s pick of Palin. In August, Rove said that Kaine was unqualified to be vice president because before being governor, he had only been the governor of Richmond, which is “not a big town.” Rove dodged the question, replying, “No, I was critical of Obama making a political decision.” (HT: News Hounds)

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Transcript: (more…)

A year ago we were about to set out on our family version of Travels with Charlie. At the time our thinking was that we would be looking to move out of Southern Nevada in a couple of years. On our return to Southern Nevada we talked and chewed on the options. Finding no great reason to wait we packed up and moved north. Along with the move came a change in my focus. I made a great move from the world of running an information technology department to running a small Drupal shop. Along the way I've had many great experiences. From traveling to Drupal camps to having visited Boston for the first time for Drupalcon last spring.

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Yesterday, Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds appeared on CNN for an interview with Campbell Brown. Brown was tough on Bounds, refusing to let him spout typical campaign talking points. She repeatedly pressed him on Palin’s foreign policy experience and qualifications, asking him to name one decision that she made as commander-in-chief of the Alaskan National Guard. Bounds was unable to do so.

Today, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer revealed that because of that tough interview, the McCain campaign has canceled the senator’s appearance on Larry King Live tonight:

The McCain campaign said it believed that exchange was over the line and as a result the interview scheduled for Larry King Live with Sen. McCain was pulled. CNN does not believe that Campbell’s interview was over the line. We are committed to fair coverage of both sides of this historic election.

CNN also replayed the interview between Brown and Bounds. Watch Blitzer’s announcement and the interview:

The McCain campaign has repeatedly tried to intimidate the press. It is now angry about media coverage of Bristol Palin’s pregnancy, calling NBC’s reporting on it “irresponsible journalism.” Campaign staffers “even considered pulling out of one of the three presidential debates because it would be moderated by Tom Brokaw, a former NBC News anchorman.” When Newsweek wrote a cover story in May examining the hardball tactics conservatives might use in the general election, the McCain campaign “threatened to throw the magazine’s reporters off the campaign bus and airplane.”

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During a Politico panel discussion today on “Women and the Republican Party,” Matthew Yglesias noted that the panelists were ignoring this weekend’s revelations that Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) — among other things — campaigned for the Bridge to Nowhere and led Sen. Ted Stevens’s 527. Panelist Mike Murphey responded by dismissing Palin’s record and baselessly claiming that the “liberal blog world” was responsible for the rumors surrounding Bristol Palin’s pregnancy. Watch it:

In fact, the Anchorage Daily News reported that the rumors were “long simmering” in Alaska’s political discourse. Yglesias has more on the Politico event.

Huffington Post reports that on June 8, Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) addressed the graduating class of commission students at the Wasilla Assembly of God church. During that address, Palin portrayed the Iraq was as a quest decreed by God, and said that U.S. soldiers were carrying out “God’s plan”:

Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God. That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God’s plan.

During that speech, Palin also promoted a $30-billion natural gas pipeline project, stating, “God’s will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built.”

Last week, Politico’s Ben Smith asked the McCain campaign if Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) — who was first issued a U.S. passport in 2007 — had ever traveled abroad. A spokeswoman for Palin said the Alaska governor had been to Germany and Kuwait in 2007 and had visited one other country, Ireland. It turns out that the Ireland trip was just a refueling stopover on the way to Europe and the Middle East. But she has been to Canada, another campaign spokesman noted. (HT: AmericaBlog)

Lenz just posted pointers to a great presentation of his about MySQL HA and Drupal,

Seems like a small part of me did go to Szeged afterall :)