On Friday afternoon, with George Bush in Texas for his daughter's wedding, the White House finally released its new Executive Branch rules for designating and disseminating what used to be known as "sensitive" information. The most common term in the past for such material has been "Sensitive But Unclassified" (SBU), though there was an alphabet soup of competing classifications in various agencies. In part, the new rules create a uniform standard across the Executive by replacing SBU etc. with a new classification, "Controlled Unclassified Information" (CUI).

The Friday memo states that its purpose "is to standardize practices and thereby improve the sharing of information, not to classify or declassify new or additional information." The initial impetus for change came in a December 2005 memo in which Bush called for a new policy for information sharing between agencies. The alphabet soup of "sensitive" designations too often played into the hands of officials who sought to hoard information rather than to share it.

Furthermore, after passage of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 federal agencies had been encouraged to apply the SBU designation to just about anything they didn't feel like releasing to the public. Hyper-classification was out of control.

Initially, SBU was used to denote unclassified national security information that might nonetheless be “useful to an adversary.”  Interestingly, when the National Security Agency expanded that usage to encompass “other government interests” back in 1986, Congress objected and the NSA backed off.

The Homeland Security Act authorized DHS to identify and safeguard “sensitive unclassified information” but didn’t define the term...DHS issued an internal directive on May 11, 2004 which it titled “Safeguarding Sensitive but Unclassified Information.”   The directive said employees should mark as “For Official Use Only” any “sensitive but unclassified information” the department generated or that was received by DHS from other government and non-governmental sources.   The directive was itself labeled For Official Use Only and became public only after the Federation of American Scientists filed an FOIA request.

It defines SBU as information whose “unauthorized disclosure could adversely impact a person's privacy or welfare, the conduct of Federal programs, or other programs or operations essential to the national interest.”   The definition allows maximum individual discretion...

DHS provides for no internal or external oversight to its document-marking decisions. In contrast, the classification system provides for oversight by an Information Security Oversight Office, which is sometimes quite critical of the process.

There is no time limit on the withholding of this “sensitive” information.  By contrast, classification laws provide for declassification, in most cases automatically after 10 years.

So in theory reform in the area of classifying "sensitive" information might be welcome. Indeed some reformers like Steve Aftergood initially held out some hope that in cutting through red tape the new rules, when eventually published, would also make more government information available to the public.

But this is the Bush administration. It excluded public input into the rule-making process and was bound to sacrifice transparency on the altar of secrecy, as POGO predicted in January.

We are even more concerned that the final word on this policy will come from a White House that has hitherto shown no aptitude or inclination for sharing public information with the public, that has rather than decreasing secrecy, steadily increased it throughout its term.

In fact, Friday's memo doesn't even pretend to rein in secrecy. Quite the opposite, it looks like the Bush administration used the crafting of new rules as an opportunity to expand the range of government secrecy.

As the semantic shift in the name change indicates (SBU to CUI), the new rules have policy implications that go beyond mere information-sharing. The new term ('controlled') indicates the intended outcome (i.e. secrecy), whereas the old term ('sensitive') had provided a justification for keeping 'Unclassified' material secret. That suggests immediately that the Bush administration wants the CUI classification to justify itself - to cut off by definition any appeal for publication of a document.

The timing of the rules' publication is the second clue that something more may be at issue than the mere tidying up of terminology. There was a long delay between the time the WH received the draft rules and when they were made public. Already in late December the DoD said it anticipated WH approval of the rules "shortly", and indeed it created a task force to implement the rules. A draft of the rules had been finalized in 2007 by "an interagency panel chaired by Ambassador Thomas McNamara, program manager of the Information Sharing Environment, an office under the Director of National Intelligence." McNamara has always  emphasized in testimony to Congress that his goal was to simplify categories of "sensitive" classification so as to permit "the great majority of the information which is now controlled" to be left wholly unrestricted: "that is the system that we are trying to put together, a rational limited set of categories that…can be applied to controllable information, but leave most of it as fully unclassified.”

That may have been McNamara's goal, but it does not really describe the new rules as published on Friday. Instead, the memo rather strikingly creates open-ended grounds for classifying information as "Controlled". Here is its definition of the term CUI (all emphases are mine):

"Controlled Unclassified Information" is a categorical designation that refers to unclassified information that does not meet the standards for National Security Classification under Executive Order 12958, as amended, but is (i) pertinent to the national interests of the United States or to the important interests of entities outside the Federal Government, and (ii) under law or policy requires protection from unauthorized disclosure, special handling safeguards, or prescribed limits on exchange or dissemination. Henceforth, the designation CUI replaces "Sensitive But Unclassified" (SBU).

"Pertinent" is about as vague as a limitation can get. In any case, Bush declares here that the CUI designation is to be used when his policies "require protection from unauthorized disclosure". It's a big rubber stamp for anything the President wants to keep from anybody, including the public. I can think of any number of obnoxious "policies" that this administration would have reason to believe required protection from disclosure. Later on the memo adds the normal clause stating that classification cannot be used to conceal illegal acts and embarrassing information. Its effect however, as regards the Bush administration, is slight since so many top officials appear to have no sense of shame and anyhow they're quite determined that everything the President orders is legal ipso facto.

The same open-endedness is apparent in the memo's description of when to designate something "Controlled":

(25) Information shall be designated as CUI and carry an authorized CUI marking if:

a. a statute requires or authorizes such a designation; or

b. the head of the originating department or agency, through regulations, directives, or other specific guidance to the agency, determines that the information is CUI. Such determination should be based on mission requirements, business prudence, legal privilege, the protection of personal or commercial rights, safety, or security. Such department or agency directives, regulations, or guidance shall be provided to the Executive Agent [i.e. the National Archives] for review.

Again, "mission requirements", "safety" and "security" are sufficiently vague as to invite all manner of abuses in classifying information. The memo is open-ended not to restrict how much information can be kept secret - there are few limitations placed upon CUI classification, all of them pro forma - but instead to make it easier to keep more information secret. It looks to me as if one of the goals of the new rules is to encourage agencies to classify as CUI as much material as possible. Indeed, the memo appears to acknowledge that.

(28) The CUI Framework shall be used for such information to the maximum extent possible, but shall not affect or interfere with specific regulatory requirements for marking, safeguarding, and disseminating.

And as before with SBU classification, there is no external oversight of the classification process nor limits placed upon it - neither in quantity of documents that may be classified CUI, nor in the length of time they remain so designated. Agency heads are in charge of making the classification decisions, and it's far from clear whether those can be reversed or checked by any regular means. The National Archives is given vague powers to publish CUI standards and monitor their use, but the goal appears to be to reconcile agencies to each other rather than to restrain the use of CUI designations.

Though the material to be regulated is nominally "unclassified", this new system is in fact a much more sweeping program for keeping information secret than the ostensibly higher grades of secrecy for "classified" material. And at the same time, the system for designating "unclassified" information is in significant ways far less regulated than for "classified" information. This new memo represents the opposite of reform.

+++

See also this diary on the memo by philipmerrill

On Monday, as BarbinMD noted, John McCain denigrated Barack Obama's experience in foreign affairs.

"Senator Obama obviously has no national security experience, and therefore that's reflected in his judgment on a number of those issues."

It's untrue of course; Obama serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But this is a larger issue than simply another falsehood from John McCain. It's also about McCain's hypocrisy, and indeed his own judgment.

The touchstone for the charge that Obama is too "inexperienced" to be president is this: Where did the speaker stand on George W. Bush's candidacy - both in 2000 and in 2004?

In 2000, Bush had no experience whatever in national security or foreign policy, nor indeed any experience in Washington. Bush was both naive and ignorant in the extreme about world affairs. The contrast with Al Gore could not have been sharper. And yet, most Republicans backed Bush over Gore. John McCain himself endorsed Bush in 2000, and in fact worked hard to put in the White House the grossly inexperienced Texan (video here).

"I look forward to enthusiastically campaigning for Gov. Bush over the next six months."

So McCain is concerned about experience only in so far as it helps or hinders electing Republicans. The same is true, I suspect, of the vast majority of critics of Obama's level of experience.

In any case, Bush in 2004 demonstrates why the "experience" argument fails. No candidate in 2004 could rival Bush in experience because he'd already served as president. If experience was your yardstick then Bush was your man in 2004, hands down. And what a disaster Bush's second term has turned out to be, for all his experience! In living memory we have several examples of other disastrous presidents who brought abundant experience to the White House - Richard Nixon and Herbert Hoover spring to mind - but George W. Bush in 2004 is perhaps the clearest proof that experience is a pretty poor predictor of presidential success.

And yes, having learned nothing from Bush's disastrous first term, the "maverick" John McCain campaigned hard for the Republican candidate in 2004. In fact in his speech at the 2004 Republican National Convention, McCain praised Bush as "tested".

Thus whether it's Bush in 2000 or Bush in 2004, the man who is arguably the worst president in American history is the perfect test of whether to take seriously the argument from "experience". And in both elections, wouldn't you know, McCain is hoist by his own petard.

McCain is nothing if not consistently inconsistent. On Monday, he was exploring every possible way to put down Barack Obama.

McCain, who also questioned Obama's credentials on the economy, was asked if he thought Obama had experience in any areas. Probably, McCain said, "I think on many issues, (but) certainly not on the level of mine."

Contrast what McCain said in 2004 about why candidates shouldn't promote their own credentials.

Kerry, who McCain called a friend, has used his tour of duty in Vietnam as a contrast to his opponents who didn't serve. McCain said it's inappropriate politically for candidates to "compare their credentials," because voters will do that. Later, he said he wasn't criticizing Kerry, only making a political observation.

McCain is nothing if not consistently inconsistent.

This week the White House remained resolutely silent about the fifth anniversary of George Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech. For this administration, it was an especially appropriate way to commemorate the infamous event.

After all, five years ago the White House had remained resolutely silent about the actual situation in Iraq for a period of 50 days after the "Mission Accomplished" speech. During May and most of June 2003, there wasn't a word from Bush about the mayhem in Iraq. In fact the administration focused on everything but Iraq - pretending that all was well until the scale of the unfolding disaster finally forced Bush to abandon his silence and acknowledge publicly that our troops were indeed facing "deadly attacks" there.

That fifty days of silence was fatal in more ways than one. It reflected the determination of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld to ignore the unfolding fiasco in Iraq, to remain wedded to their own triumphalist propaganda. It's well known that this triumvirate was addicted to propaganda during the rush to war. And the danger of believing your own propaganda could hardly be more obvious, particularly when you've gone to great trouble to spread misinformation on a global scale. But George Bush evidently is pathologically incapable of moving beyond wishful thinking, of facing up to unwelcome facts or re-examining flaws in his thinking, no matter how urgently introspection is needed. It's why Bush never acknowledges mistakes; he can't see them.

"Bush is Johnson squared, because he thinks he can win. Bush is the one true believer, a man essentially cut off from all information except the official line.”

So the fifty days of silence was both a destructive period of paralysis in the American occupation, in itself, as well as a harbinger of many more years of policies toward Iraq based on wishful thinking. Bush's failure to address the burgeoning violence in Iraq following his "Mission Accomplished" speech was not accidental. It was characteristic of his refusal to live outside his own propaganda.

Last week WH Spokeswoman Dana Perino, when asked whether the president planned to recognize the milestone, complained that "the media is going to play this up again" even though Bush had learned the appropriate lesson from the debacle. And the lesson evidently is that ship-board banners need to be more specific:

That's the anniversary of when that banner flew on that ship. President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific and said "mission accomplished for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission." And we have certainly paid a price for not being more specific on that banner.

Let's set aside the absurdity of the excuse that the "mission" referred only to the USS Abraham Lincoln's crew - an excuse invented only in July of 2003 after reporters started asking embarrassing questions. More to the point, there was not a peep from Perino or the White House about the President's claim in that May 1, 2003 speech that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended." That is what the Bush administration rightfully ought to be made to answer for.

It simply wasn't true that Iraq had been pacified when Bush delivered his speech.

When Mr. Bremer landed in Baghdad on May 12, 2003, a month after the city fell, government offices were still burning and looting had not stopped.

But Bush had just rendered his judgment on the end of the war, and few administration officials were willing to contradict him - except anonymously.

Mr. Bremer was due to arrive in Iraq on Monday, and had sent an advance team that was in Baghdad today.

Officials said the impetus for the overhaul stems in part from urgent warnings that the escalating violence and a breakdown of civil order are already paralyzing the effort to rebuild Iraq.

''Unless we do something in the near future, it is likely to blow up in our face,'' one official said...

Since the onset of the war in March, security has been the chief obstacle to General Garner's mission, officials said. His teams of administrators have had to live in isolation behind razor wire and machine-gun positions at Mr. Hussein's Republican Palace.

The occupation of Iraq was already on the brink of disaster at the start of May 2003, but Bush didn't want to know anything about it.

[When Jay Garner was] recalled from Iraq, in May, 2003, he was taken by Rumsfeld to the White House for a farewell meeting with the President. The conversation lasted forty-five minutes, he told me, with Vice-President Dick Cheney and Rice sitting in for the second half, and yet the President did not take the chance to ask Garner what it was really like in Iraq, to find out what problems lay ahead.

Bush kept his head firmly in the sand for more than a month. On June 5, speaking to troops in Qatar, Bush hinted ever so gingerly that there was the occasional problem in Iraq.

Our forces are taking aggressive steps to increase order throughout the country. We are moving those Baathist officials that are trying to hang on to power. There are still pockets of criminality. Remember, the former leader of Iraq emptied the jail cells of common criminals right before the action took place. And they haven't changed their habits and their ways. They like to rob and like to loot. We'll find them.

The obscure phrase "right before the action..." refers to two massacres of demonstrators in Falluja in late April, which greatly inflamed the Iraqi resistance. That's as close to acknowledging the chaos in Iraq as Bush would permit himself to go, a month after his "mission accomplished" speech.

It wasn't until June 21, 2003 that the President finally broke his silence to the American public about continued violence in Iraq. By June 21st, the news was full of reports of the daily grind of guerilla war, as well as the need to postpone elections in Iraq. And yet, even then, Bush wasn't particulary forthcoming about the nature and scale of violence in Iraq.

The men and women of our military face a continuing risk of danger and sacrifice in Iraq. Dangerous pockets of the old regime remain loyal to it and they, along with their terrorist allies, are behind deadly attacks designed to kill and intimidate coalition forces and innocent Iraqis...

For the first time in over a decade, Iraq will soon be open to the world. And the influence of progress in Iraq will be felt throughout the Middle East.

That is the great breakthrough for George W. Bush, his long-delayed admission that things were less than perfect in Iraq. It's no coincidence by the way that the expression "progress in Iraq" first appears in that very same address as a justification for Bush's policies. "Progress" would be trotted out again and again in subsequent weeks as other administration officials sought to blunt the admission by Bush that the US was still mired in war. In other words, Bush & Co. leapt directly from "mission accomplished" to the equally absurd propaganda of "progress", that leitmotif of quagmire.

Within days of Bush's breakthrough speech we were told by Donald Rumsfeld that the insurgents were "dead-enders" from the regime of Saddam Hussein; we learned that the insurgency represented the last desperate acts of a dying regime. The full weight of propaganda bore down again upon us, and upon the Bush administration as well.

I dwell upon this history because we are still living it. The refusal of the White House to address the fifth anniversary of the "Mission Accomplished" speech is scarcely to be differentiated from the White House refusal to acknowledge in the immediate aftermath of the speech that chaos persisted. The administration's prescription for Iraq in May/June 2003 was to stall, to deny reality, to evade responsibility, to avoid doing what was necessary but politically embarrassing. To hope for a miracle.

And that continues to be the basis for Bush administration's policy in Iraq.

The NYT highlights yet more lies emanating from the mendacious 71 year old John McCain, this time about the health care reform proposals of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. McCain often states or implies that Obama and Clinton are advocating for a single-payer system or a nationalized health care system such as are common in Europe. Regrettably, they are doing no such thing.

The suggestion is incorrect. While both Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York are calling for universal health care and an expanded role for government, they stop well short of calling for a single-payer plan.

Mr. McCain has made the assertion several times in recent days, even as he and the Republicans have made repeated calls for accuracy on the campaign trail.

McCain has really been laying it on thick this week, "using language that evokes the specter of socialized medicine" as the Times puts it.

"There are those that want a massive government takeover of the health care system in America," Mr. McCain warned Thursday in Des Moines, as he made the case for his more market-based approach...

"But before you decide to sign on to that kind of a program, go to Canada, or go to European countries that have government-run health care systems," he continued. "My friends, they don’t work, they’re inefficient, and they end up in a two-tiered system where the wealthiest can afford to pay for their own health care and those with low income sometimes wait six or eight months for a routine kind of treatment. And that’s what I’m not going to let happen to the United States of America."

As a matter of fact, and unlike McCain, I have lived in Britain. I found the health care system there to be much better and more rational than the crazy health-care mess that Americans tolerate.

In any case, that has to be some of the most laughable fear-mongering that any Republican candidate has engaged in. A two-tier health-care system in which the rich get better coverage than the poor? Horrors! How could such an unfair imbalance ever be allowed to arise in the USA, a nation with no more than about 50 million uninsured, give or take a few million poor children? Never mind having to wait "sometimes" for months for "routine" (i.e. non-emergency) medical procedures, the uninsured in America tend to get no health care whatever, unless that is the government picks up the tab (to the tune of $45 billion per year).

If I were to editorialize, I'd want to make two points here: (1) John McCain is not my friend; (2) McCain's demagoguery on the health care crisis reveals what a hollow, shrivelled soul he has.

Instead, I'll leave the editorializing to the Des Moines Register, which had a rather pointed reaction to the latest health care proposal being flogged by McCain himself. The Senator, who gets his own health coverage through Congress, wants to encourage businesses to stop providing employees with health coverage. You'd have thought that American businesses don't need any further encouragement to leave their employees without health care. But McCain's goal, as ridiculous as it seems, is to force individuals to negotiate their own health insurance deals. He proposes to do that by eliminating business tax breaks for medical coverage, and giving tax breaks to individuals who buy their own coverage.

It's fair to say that Senator McCain's swing through Iowa this week left the Des Moines paper's editors just a tad underwhelmed.

The proposal [by McCain] should scare the heck out of the millions of Americans who rely on employer-based coverage...Buying individual policies means having your health history reviewed. It means not having the bargaining power and protections that come with being part of a plan offered by an employer. And it's expensive...

The senator is correct that the employer-based system of health insurance in this country isn't working. Businesses are saddled with the high costs of coverage, putting them at a competitive disadvantage in the global marketplace. Insurance shouldn't be tied to jobs.

But the more reasonable solution is to offer everyone what Medicare already offers: health coverage financed by a combination of tax dollars and participant contributions, thus allowing the huge bargaining power of millions of Americans to leverage down costs.

That idea is nowhere near as radical as forcing millions of Americans to shop for their own coverage in a profit-driven, private-insurance sector.

Medicare for all. That doesn't seem like such a difficult concept to me, somehow or other. At times the rightward tilt of political debate in the US leaves me puzzled. If Americans think that universal health care is a "radical" idea, goodness gracious - how would they react to something truly radical like universal old-age pensions? Oh, wait, never mind...we already have those. They're called "Social Security".

On the fifth anniversary of George Bush's aircraft-carrier extravaganza, John McCain claimed that in spring of 2003 he rejected the administration's "mission accomplished" boasts as mere propaganda. He now says he thought those boasts were contradicted by the facts and "wrong".

"To state the obvious, I thought it was wrong at the time. I thought phrases like ‘a few dead-enders,’ ‘last throes,’ all of those comments contributed over time to the frustration and sorrow of Americans because those statements and comments did not comport with the facts on the ground...and I think that history will judge me that I thought it was wrong and I knew what was right."

Asked if Bush bore responsibility for the placement of the "Mission Accomplished" banner posted above him at the speech, McCain took a big picture approach.

"Do I blame him for that specific banner? I have no knowledge of that. I can’t blame him for that. But I do, do say statements were made-’a few dead-enders,’ ‘last throes’...(that) were contradicted by the facts on the ground."

Here is the video of McCain's comments.

McCain has a penchant for rewriting history in such a way that he turns out to have been the hero of every story, though usually unrecognized as such "at the time". So what was McCain really saying in the spring of 2003 about "mission accomplished"?

The DNC has posted a Fox "News" interview from June 11, 2003 in which McCain invoked the "Mission Accomplished" banner as proof that the war in Iraq was indeed over, despite public skepticism of the claim. In fact, McCain went on to argue that it was "very appropriate" for the Senate Armed Services Committee to hold post-conflict hearings.

NEIL CAVUTO (host): Senator -- after a conflict means after the conflict, and many argue the conflict isn't over.

McCAIN: Well, then why was there a banner that said mission accomplished on the aircraft carrier?

Look, the -- I have said a long time that reconstruction of Iraq would be a long, long, difficult process, but the conflict -- the major conflict is over, the regime change has been accomplished, and it's very appropriate. In two weeks, General Franks is going to come before the Senate Armed Services Committee, and we're going to have his overall assessment of the conflict. I think that's entirely appropriate because we'll be -- we'll be taking up the needs of the Defense Department and the men and women in the military on the Armed Services Committee.

But I'm looking for an overall review of the conflict, what we did right, what we did wrong, and what the needs are, including the issue of weapons of mass destruction. I remain confident that we will find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

And as Media Matters points out, on the same evening in an interview with Jake Tapper at Salon McCain again endorsed the propaganda:

"Now, I think it's entirely appropriate now that regime change has been orchestrated -- and though the danger is certainly not over, the mission is 'accomplished' -- it's appropriate to have a hearing."

So five years ago John McCain was endorsing propaganda about victory in Iraq that he now claims he knew to be false at the time.

As for the prospects of ever being able to say "mission accomplished" in Iraq, on Thursday McCain seemed to admit that it would impossible if he's elected president.

Though when he was asked if he foresees a day when he would declare the mission in Iraq "accomplished," he said he would try to be more careful with his words.

"I would hate to use that kind of language, because I think it’s going to be one of these situations which is the classic counterinsurgency, that we’ve seen in conflicts around the world in the past, that there is slow, gradual progress and there is two steps forward and one step back," McCain said. "I don’t know if you could ever say quote ‘mission accomplished’ as much as you could say ‘Americans are out of harms way.’

The way to get American troops out of harm's way in Iraq is to withdraw them from Iraq, the one thing McCain insists he won't do. It looks to me as if McCain prefers to run for the presidency under this new banner:

"Mission Impossible"

Barack Obama missed an opportunity yesterday when he was interviewed on Fox News Sunday. Whether or not it's advisable to agree to appear on Fox, it's certainly a mistake and a disfavor to Democrats to treat the network as if it's a normal, that is legitimate, news venue. Fox is a Republican propaganda outlet that aspires to be granted a respectability it refuses to earn. More to the point, Fox has been down in the dirt spreading malicious and false rumors about Obama for well over a year...for example, the ridiculous and anyway irrelevant "information" that the presidential candidate is a Muslim.

The right approach to an interview on Fox, if Obama really thought it acceptable to reward rumor-mongerers, would have been to use the appearance to denounce the network's lack of integrity, enumerate the lies it has propagated, and demand that Chris Wallace acknowledge that they're false. That's how one deals with bullying, by publicly humiliating the perpetrators - and Murdoch's network is nothing if not a Republican bully-boy.

Trying to persuade a Fox "News" personality that he's reasonable and moderate is just about the last thing Barack Obama should have been doing on that of all networks. Aside from Republican fanatics, who will always insist that the Democratic nominee shares every malign view and every reprehensible trait of every friend, associate, and neighbor, the rest of America has already figured out that Obama is fairly temperate, thoughtful, and likeable personally.

So why in the world, when Chris Wallace raised the topic of Reverend Wright over and over again, did Obama feel the need to assure him that it's a "legitimate political issue"? Even Wallace latered admitted that it's a distraction "from the real issues"! It's nonsense to link the two men's views; it has nothing to do with the future of the US; American voters don't seem to think Obama needs to justify Wright's comments; and in any case questions about his Christian church directly contradict the Muslim myth that Fox has been spreading with abandon. This is where the candidate, if he'd had his wits about him, should have picked up the club and whacked such a hole in the great wall of stupidity erected by Fox "News" that the sun shone on through. Instead, Obama conversed in the sweet voice of reason, portraying himself as a centrist who is passionate about nothing so much as political compromise.

That in a nutshell also is Obama's Clinton-problem. Unlike many commentators, I don't fear that the prolonged primary battle and the shrillness of the attacks leveled by the Clinton camp are doing lasting damage to Obama's reputation. Voters tend to discount desperate political charges, if they even are paying attention at this stage. Vague and silly attacks have a half life of a few days during a spring primary. Nor does it matter in the end that more and more pundits, ignoring the delegate math, are speculating that Clinton can retrieve her lost chances or take the nomination-battle as far as the convention. There are only three kinds of pundits: Those who can count, and those who can't.

No, Obama's Clinton-problem stems from the fact that he is well and pretty safely ahead in this contest and has been for a long time. His strategy for a few months has been to avoid stumbling and to run an unobjectionable, unifying campaign. He recognizes that he needs to avoid antagonizing the substantial minority of Democrats who've backed Hillary Clinton, in order to bring the party together as quickly as possible once the nomination is clinched. That means that he's chosen to pull many of his own punches while allowing himself to be used as a punching bag by the Clinton camp. It takes stomach to rise above the fray like that, especially in the kind of scrap this has become the longer Obama remains in the lead.

The sort of voter who admires moderation and quiet determination will be drawn to that kind of campaign. But many voters are looking for something else, or more, than purposefulness. They're looking for backbone in a president. And Obama's campaign, no doubt unintentionally, is sending the wrong signals to such voters now. I'm not suggesting that Obama lacks backbone. I've seen no evidence that he does; if anything there are hints that the opposite is the case. But at the moment there appear to be many voters who misread him in that way.

The point was brought home to me forcefully this week while I talked about the candidates with voters in the politcally moderate Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania. I was looking to gauge emotional reactions toward the candidates so I asked people to tell me what they thought their greatest strengths and weaknesses would be as potential presidents.

Few had any clear or coherent ideas about John McCain, but the opposite was true of their impressions of Hillary Clinton. Her backers and even most of her critics kept offering the same word to describe her most positive attribute: "strong". I believe that idea was underlined by the attacking strategy she's employed against Obama; Clinton has given voters the impression, whether they like her or hate her, that she has backbone.

The people I spoke to used other adjectives to describe Obama's positive qualities: "calm", "determined", "moderate", "intelligent". None of that was very surprising, except nobody offered "strong" or any synonym. One dyed-in-the-wool Democrat working at a feed store told me that Clinton had "pushed around" Obama at the Philadelphia debate. Several other Democrats expressed similar ideas about Clinton's "toughness" and her refusal to let others push her around, while expressing various degrees of skepticism whether Obama has what it takes.

In any case, by far the most common negative attribute used to describe Obama is "inexperienced". It's rather an anodyne term that, whatever its descriptive value, never really attached in the past to other genuinely inexperienced candidates: not to George W. Bush in 2000 (though he was vastly less experienced than Obama in both national and international matters) nor to Bill Clinton in 1992, nor Reagan in 1980, nor... "Inexperience" has a purchase for now on Obama's public image at least in part, I'd say, because of public uncertainty about whether he has a forceful personality (something that those other outsider/change candidates clearly did project).

That is Obama's real Clinton-problem. In wanting to be seen to take the higher ground, in turning aside attacks (some of them quite outlandish) rather than responding in kind, Obama risks giving a certain part of the electorate the impression that he won't ever fight back. That's why his appearance on Fox "News" was a great opportunity missed. He needs a political fight. No, not a fight with a Democratic blog for goodness sakes. Obama needs to humble one of his political tormenters very visibly. Many good Democrats are still uncertain whether the candidate of compromise and bipartisanship has the backbone to fight for them if they send him to the White House. Obama needs to make clear to such voters once and for all that if push comes to shove he won't take guff from anybody.

And I won't pretend for a moment that demonstrating backbone is anything other than a foolish rite of passage for presidential candidates.

Yesterday I asked dozens of voters around the Lehigh Valley to talk about what they did and did not admire in the presidential candidates. I sought out areas where I thought I'd hear some of the harsher judgments on them.

What I didn't hear endorsed by even a single voter, Democrat or Republican, were any of those scandals that the traditional media has obsessed over during the last few months. Nobody mentioned "bittergate". Obama's relation to Ayers came up only once; an older couple in Allentown thought the Ayers allegations were confusing and irrelevant. The words "Bosnia" and "sniper" never came up at all.

It's not that I didn't evoke some negative opinions. One middle-aged voter in an up-scale Allentown neighborhood declared that Hillary will bring in socialism, and she said with what appeared to be pride that she couldn't think of a single positive thing to say about Obama. But even so, nobody cared to mention the bizarre "scandals" that have loomed so large in media coverage. In fact only a single voter thought the Philadelphia debate was anything but a waste of time.

Most of the people I spoke to want the traditional media to drop the trivial nonsense and start informing voters about the issues they do care about: the economy, Iraq, healthcare, the mortgage crisis, outsourcing jobs. Nearly everybody agrees that the country is in crisis, and they want to know what the plan is to fix the mess. They have the quaint notion that the traditional media ought to take an interest in that as well.

Well, I need to correct one statement I just made. An activist I met outside a polling place did say he'll never vote for Obama because of Rev. Wright. But he's a Redstate blogger, a self-described neocon whose main complaint about the Iraq war is that Bush did not "bomb Iraq into a parking lot". Otherwise a jovial enough Republican, but hardly typical of the other voters I met - none of whom approve of the war or occupation of Iraq. In fact, one woman who'd like to vote for McCain in November said she really hopes he'll change his mind about staying in Iraq because McCain's position is untenable. So I think the right-wing bloggers have a corner on the Wright "scandal" for now. The public as a whole doesn't seem to realize that it's supposed to care.

Many Lehigh Valley voters I talked to today spoke in short hand about their perspectives on the candidates. They were repeating the distilled collective wisdom of family, friends and co-workers. Sometimes it was difficult to get them to apply their own personal insights and experiences to that received wisdom.

Some others, however, and the most interesting voters, spoke in very personal terms. One of the most remarkable of these voters was Tara Schaffer, a young working mother in rural Heidelberg Heights. Working, and then some. She confessed that she didn't follow politics as closely as she'd like to because she works 60 hour weeks in 12 hour shifts. And she does so gladly because for nearly a year she was unemployed, facing bankruptcy and the loss of her house because her adjustable rate mortgage payments went through the roof. Her family desperately needed healthcare coverage, so this exhausting job is a lifeline.

She voted today for the first time in her life. She registered a few years ago at the DMV, but never received her voter registration information and so she assumed that she wasn't registered. Tara says she decided to vote only because an Obama canvasser came to her door and convinced her that she could and should vote.

She said that was the only canvasser she had ever seen, and it doesn't suprise me. In 2004 I canvassed this entire town and had to do it on my own because the local Kerry headquarters (with canvassers available by the hundreds) didn't want to invest any effort in going after rural voters. I was convinced that was a mistake, and Tara's story shows exactly why. Many of these voters are in need of basic information or simple advice about how to vote, having been neglected by the parties for decades, and many can be persuaded to vote Democratic.

Tara's young son, too, urged her to vote for Obama. He's a news junkie, and at school the kids are excited about Obama's candidacy.

Tara admits that in the past she didn't feel any urgency to vote, but this year is different. This year, she says, is critical because of the Iraq fiasco. The Iraq war "turned me into a Democrat," she told me. And she has really had quite enough of Bush family members in the White House. That made a vote for McCain this year unthinkable for her. She regards McCain as a continuation of Bush's policies.

In the end she opted for Obama because she likes his quiet determination and calmness. She's looking for change in the future, and she thinks a candidate who keeps lobbyists at arms length might achieve something.

Tara had nothing against Hillary Clinton, and will vote for her in a heartbeat if she's the Democratic nominee. But she resented the negativity and triviality of some of her ads. Tara pointed out that she's been struggling for years just to keep her family fed, clothed, and housed. And here you have a campaign lavishing millions of dollars on TV ads that aren't about anything that matters to the country. If they've got a million dollars to waste, she said, they should just give the money to her. "I could really use it."

I spent much of the day talking to voters around the Lehigh Valley trying to gauge their attitudes toward the presidential candidates; their level of knowledge and interest in them; their sources of information; their willingness to consider alternative candidates; the issues they care about and those they've already heard enough about; and what they want to see and hear from candidates this year. I was also trying to gauge how the level of turnout relates to enthusiasm for the candidates.

The turnout clearly is huge, as any number of sources are reporting. By mid afternoon, the rural Lehigh County polling places I was visiting had already seen turnout well above 60% of the normal general election turnout. My quick calculations put that turnout somewhat above 40% of the electorate - by mid-afternoon. It's good news, possibly great news, for the Democratic party in Pennsylvania.

I concentrated on more conservative areas of the Valley, and working class and middle class voters. We know, or think we know, a good deal about how liberals and affluent voters are reacting to the candidates. But the conservative end of the middle class is less predictable.

For example, I spoke to a middle-aged mother in rural Heidelberg Township (a moderately conservative area of LV) who was struggling to make ends meet. Her views about what mattered marked her out as a classic Democratic voter. Over and over, she emphasized the need for healthcare reform. Second, she talked about the disappearance of the middle class in the economic squeeze; she wants a president who will preserve a middle class in America. She complained that Iraq is an utter disaster, and resents the abuses committed openly by energy companies, lavishing money on executive bonuses while hiking rates on the rest of us.

To my amazement, it turned out that she's a registered Republican and supports McCain as the best chance for improvement on those issues - issues that McCain has downplayed, rejected, or ignored. How does a voter reach such a paradoxical position? She's the most extreme example of the disconnect that several voters displayed between the issues and policies they care about, and their continued loyalty to a Republican party that doesn't actually serve them well.

She told me, when I asked about her perception of candidates' weaknesses, that she doesn't believe "it's a good time for a female president". Other conservatives said something similar, that the country isn't ready for a woman president. It's not much of a rationale for not casting a vote for Clinton, nor really a personal weakness of hers. I suspect that the argument has taken hold among many conservatives as a justification for not considering a vote for the Democratic candidate when, it's abundantly clear, that it's the Democrats who are taking seriously the issues they care very deeply about.

Will that turn around by November? It will be one of the key benchmarks of the Democratic nominee's campaign this summer, whether it focuses the national debate on the major issues and away from the garbage that has littered the field for the last few months.

As ttujoe remarked yesterday, crosstabs can reveal major differences in polling samples. For example, the latest PA poll from Rasmussen (subscription) has Clinton winning 21% of the Black vote, which as I'll discuss is about 10% too high. Thus the 5 point gap (C 49, O 44) in the poll might be too large.

Similarly, the latest poll from Mason Dixon (PDF) shows that Catholics make up 41% of the survey sample (though only 29% of the population), whereas Protestants are just 31% of the sample (but fully 50% of the state). Even if Catholics are disproportionately Democratic in PA, the MD sample with its huge Catholic shift appears to be out of whack. The crosstabs show that Clinton wins twice as many Catholic votes as Obama, and the reverse is true of Protestants. I notice also that unlike most recent polls, MD gives Obama a much higher unfavorability rating than Clinton. So it could be that the sample needs correcting, in which case Obama might trail Clinton by less than the 5% difference MD shows (C 48, O 43).

One of the most interesting points of comparison among competing polls are the crosstabs for race. Mason Dixon has fairly typical numbers for Black voters (C 10, O 83, undecided 7). SUSA presses undecideds hard, and its numbers are revealing: C 11, O 87, undecided 2. In other words, it looks as if nearly all undecideds break for Obama and he will pick up fully 89% of the Black vote.

That suggests Obama will get the large margins in Philly and suburbs that he needs to be competetive statewide. As  BooMan points out, the largest increases in Democratic registration in the Philadelphia metro area are in heavily Black neighborhoods. In fact, throughout the state it seems to me that the big increases in Dem numbers came primarily from Obama supporters, particularly in areas where he's more competitive. So for example in western PA, such as Clinton stronghold Westmoreland County, registration generally was pretty flat. In the west it was only Pittsburgh, where Obama is more popular, that saw major increases comparable to those in the southeast. There were over 316,000 newly registered Democrats in the state (7% of Democrats are newlyl registered), and from the patterns of new registrations I surmise that Obama will get a 4 to 5% bump from that; his net gain will be about 100,000 votes (mainly in Philly and suburbs, which have 43 of the 103 delegates awarded by Congressional district).

Incidentally, pollsters appear to be undersampling the newly registered voters. For example, in this Franklin & Marshall poll new voters constitute only 4% of the sample. It's another indication that polls may be slightly underassessing Obama's support. [Correction: I misread the F&M poll. Newly registered voters comprise fully 10% of the sample, not 4%.]

And what do crosstabs indicate about White voters (82% of the population)? Rasmussen has C 55%, O 37%, undecided 8%. Mason Dixon has C 58, O 33, undecided 8, "other" 1. Most other polls put Clinton's share of the White vote in the mid to high 50s, and that tracks pretty closely her level of support in western PA and the "T" which are heavily white regions. SUSA presses the undecideds and comes up with: C 58, O 36, undecided 2, "other" 5. In other words, the undecided are not undecided about Clinton; she gains almost nothing, whereas a few move to Obama and the rest prefer "other". That suggests to me that Clinton's support in her strongholds will top out just about 59-60%, not enough perhaps to give her the overwhelming victory that she needs in PA.

The math for delegates awarded by Congressional district is unfavorable to Clinton to begin with. Only 6 out of 12 of her stronghold districts have an odd number of delegates. If Clinton does not win more than 60% of the vote there, she won't gain more than 6 delegates against Obama outside of southeast PA. That gives Obama a very good chance of winning a slight majority of those 103 delegates awarded by Congressional district, even if as expected he loses the popular vote. The final tally of delegates will include another 55 at-large delegates awarded in proportion to the statewide popular vote.

And for what it's worth, I'm guessing that Obama will finish within 4% of Clinton in Pennsylvania.

The Pennsylvania primary results very likely will be much closer than the double-digit lead Clinton once enjoyed in polls. Some of the reasons for thinking that have already been laid out here in the last day by kos and others, and if time permits I'll discuss some further evidence later on today.

However it's worth drawing special attention to the Lehigh Valley - for decades a bellwether of PA politics.

Since 1952, Lehigh Valley voters have diverged from the nation's choice of president only four times. That includes the 2000 race, when voters in the two counties picked popular-vote winner Al Gore.

And only once in that same period have Valley voters not mirrored the choice of their fellow Pennsylvanians...

One of the most diverse regions of Pennsylvania, the Lehigh Valley (PDF) presents in miniature a good likeness of the state's demographics. The Valley (Lehigh and Northampton counties) is dominated by the rust-belt cities of Allentown and Bethlehem, with many white working and middle-class voters but also significant minority populations. LV has some of the bedroom communities that have spread throughout much of southern and eastern PA, as well as dozens of small towns and a slowly shrinking periphery of (frankly gorgeous) farmland. The two counties, slightly Democratic leaning, comprise Congressional District 15. There are five convention delegates up for grabs in the primary.

Since it's both my home and a pretty good yardstick for measuring what's going on around the state, I'll be travelling around the region today to gauge how the primary is shaping up.

During the last six weeks there has been surprisingly little activity in the Valley. The consensus was that Hillary Clinton had a solid advantage here because of the many blue-collar voters, and both candidates probably concluded that she would pick up 3 of the 5 delegates. Thus until a few days ago Clinton hadn't visited the Valley and Barack Obama had made only a single swing through the region.

But the new Morning Call poll of Lehigh Valley voters seems to show a race that is now very tight (Clinton 47%, Obama 46%). In fact, Obama's favorable/unfavorable ratings are significantly better than Clinton's here. Some and maybe much of Obama's rise probably stems from the fact that the Valley is within the Philadelphia media market, which Obama's ads have saturated. As McClatchy reported over the weekend, Clinton's supporters suddenly are "worried by the mood" of voters in LV.

A Clinton spokesman said the senator could visit Lehigh this week. But her double-digit lead in the state has eroded, and her local backers are worried.

"My sense is now it's probably a toss-up," said Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski. "She really needs to get here. I've told them that many times."

Both Pawlowski and Bethlehem mayor John Callahan have endorsed Clinton, though they had to wait until yesterday before she finally showed up in the region. The fact that Obama also made a surprise visit to Bethlehem on Sunday suggests that both campaigns see the Valley in play. If the Lehigh Valley is in play, then so is the state of Pennsylvania...perhaps.

Democratic voters here sound pretty happy to be in a position to choose between two strong candidates this year.

"I've been weighing which candidate might be better rather than which one might be the least bad," said Ed Erwell, 63, an engineer in Allentown. "I think this is best thing that's happened to the Democratic Party in a long time."

That's pretty characteristic of attitudes around here. Overheated rhetoric gets discounted to some degree, and it's not surprising that so few voters seem to have been distracted in recent weeks by hyperbolic charges or even less by the tawdry televised debate. It's perfectly credible to me that voters in the Lehigh Valley are giving both candidates a fair go. How it will come out is anybody's guess now.

Just how badly did ABC trivialize the presidential debate in Philadelphia yesterday? Here is a thumbnail sketch of the questions that Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos believed the American public urgently needed to have answered before Pennsylvanians cast their votes. Here is what the elitists at ABC imagine Americans care about.

1. Process (VP running mate)

2. Bitter

3. Bitter/Process (can Obama win?)

4. Process (can Obama win?)

5. Process (can Clinton win?)

6. Wright

7. Wright

8. Wright/patriotism

9. Wright

10. Wright/patriotism

11. Bosnia/Clinton's honesty

12. Clinton’s honesty

13. Flag pin/patriotism

14. Ayers/patriotism

15. Iraq (would you ignore commanders?)

16. Iraq (do you know better than commanders?)

17. Iraq (would you ignore commanders?)

18. Iran/Israel (Iran will threaten to use nukes)

19. Pledge no tax increases (with McCain attack)

20. Capital gains tax rates

21. Gun registration

22. Guns/ D.C. law

23. Affirmative action

24. Gas prices

25. Foreign oil

26. Process (how would you use GWB?)

27. Process (superdelegates)

~ categories courtesy of georgia10, with slight modification

There you are, America. Those are the "issues" you ought to be paying attention to, according to the serious people at ABC. Those are "tough but appropriate questions", according to Stephanopoulos - adopted just as they've been framed by Republicans.

Six questions about process; five questions about Pastor Wright; four questions about patriotism; three questions about whether Gen. Petraeus should get to decide US policy on Iraq; two questions about a poorly worded comment that few voters realize they ought to care about.

What is missing from this list is virtually everything that voters in Pennsylvania (PDF) and throughout the country say actually matter to them.

This is not a blog post. There's really nothing to debate or analyze. This is just a marker I'm setting down for the American news media in case I should ever decide to run for elective office. I know, you'll probably object that it's a waste of your time, and trivializing. And it is. But I'm not going to apologize for what I'm about to say. We may not like it, but we do have to talk about it because Republicans might bring it up later. So the sooner I make an issue of it, the better.

Yes, it is true that I'm on friendly terms with my neighbor. We've talked about a great many things over the years. I've attended several parties at his house. I did this when I'd already learned of some of his controversial opinions. We've even worked together on projects to help out a semi-invalid neighbor of ours - yes, even after 9/11 when he began expressing his controversial political views with greater vehemence.

Let me state for the record that I do not share all of his views about everything - not even the things where you might suppose neighbors normally are in total agreement with each other, such as his views about politics, society, and religion. I also want to make it clear in advance that I find some of his statements utterly repugnant, and I don't think they reflect what most Americans believe either. So, for example, though he has talked approvingly of nuking a south Asian country that we are not in fact at war with, I reject that idea in the strongest possible terms. I have never advocated nuclear first strikes, and people who know me well will confirm that I am no friend of nuclear war.

My neighbor also has peculiar views about what kinds of trees make good firewood, which I have never endorsed and do not now endorse.

I've tried to maintain friendly relations because he is my neighbor, not because I share his beliefs or approve of his heating practices. I would also say that when he leaves for work in the morning, he is never wearing a flag lapel pin. I've duly noted that fact.

As for other your other critical concerns: He has never expressed an opinion about either affirmative action or flag burning in my hearing; he does not appear to know who Willie Horton is; I can't follow his argument about the teaching of evolution; he knows the Pledge of Allegiance by heart; and he admits he once wore a Hawaiian shirt when vacationing in Maui.

He has also expressed many thoughts about the mortgage crisis, the economy, the outsourcing of jobs, immigration, deregulation, health care, torture, war in the Middle East, NATO, foreign policy, China, the environment, government surveillance, global warming, lobbyists, veterans, gridlock in government, the Patriot Act, oil prices, energy policy, the budget deficit. Oh, and the Constitution as well. But none of that appears to matter very much, so I'll pass over it in silence.

I feel fortunate to be able to clear all this up well in advance of any potential candidacy for political office.

Let's tote up the colossal, the major, and also the very, very big issues that ABC's Gibson and Stephanopoulos have not deigned to bring up: Health care; the recession; Afghanistan; the mortgage crisis; deregulation; veterans' care; torture; restoring America's image abroad; the surveillance state; the environment.

The Constitution.

Oooohhh, but there's still one more question to come before they wrap this one up. Maybe that will tie all these questions up in one nice package. You think?

Suddenly, only fifty minutes into this 90 minute debate, a question is posed about an actual thing. Not just a thing, but a big thing. Iraq. Just goes to show that when candidates (here, Obama) smack journalists down for talking nonsense, they get all prickly and start doing real journalism.

Clinton states unequivocally that she would withdraw troops from Iraq, even if the commanders in Iraq pleed for more time. Major props to Hillary for taking a firm stance on an issue that will give Republicans an opening to bash her if she's the candidate. And props to Obama for doing the same, and expanding on the Clinton position. There's not a lot of room between Clinton and Obama on this issue, and that's welcome.

Hillary Clinton: Yes, ok, Barack Obama can defeat John McCain. He's not an elistist loser, but his words are. Besides, I'll beat McCain too, only more so.

Barack Obama: Huh?

Update:

Hillary Clinton: You can pick your pastor, you can pick your nose. You just can't pick your family.

Barack Obama: Now hold on, we know there are going to be crazy attacks from the right-wingers during this election no matter what. Look at what she just said.

Hillary: I'm proud of going to a war zone, I'm just not proud of that sniper jazz.

Barack Obama: Flag lapel pins are like those crappy magnetic yellow ribbons you see on the bumpers of gas guzzlers.

Time's Michael Scherer asks: Has McCain flip-flopped on torture? Simple answer to a simple question: Yes.

In 2005 he sponsored the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA) that prohibited military interrogators from inflicting "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment" upon prisoners by limiting interrogation techniques to those approved in the US Army Field Manual. However McCain was nearly silent as the grave when George Bush attached a signing-statement to the law that neutered it. Since then, he has not joined others in Congress who are pushing for the DTA to be tightened and expanded. In particular, while campaigning in Ohio on Feb. 10 McCain urged Bush to veto a Democratic bill that would have extended the coverage of the DTA to CIA personnel - who frequently interrogate prisoners held by the military at Guantanamo as well as at secret prisons around the world. Bush did veto the bill on March 8.

So it's abundantly clear that McCain has flip-flopped on torture. For all his preening on the issue, he has backed down shamefully in the face of Bush's intransigence. Last month DemFromCT highlighted McCain's flip-flops on torture:

Maybe McCain's barbecue buddies in the press will pin straight talkin' John down and highlight the doubletalk. My take is that McCain is confident he won't be pressed on it.

Oddly, Michael Scherer manages to reach the opposite conclusion from the truth. When it comes to McCain scandals, Scherer has staked out that territory before.

Referring to the Democratic bill that McCain rejects, Scherer states (my emphasis):

But on this latest piece of legislation, which arose during the heat of the primary campaign and may surface again later this month, McCain sided with Bush in opposing a further restriction of CIA techniques. Despite the claims of some partisans, McCain's decision was not a flip-flop, but rather the continuation of a position he took in 2005 when he first championed a bill to restrict the Bush Administration's ability to mistreat detainees.

"Further restriction..." Interesting phrase; we know of no legal restrictions on CIA interrogation techniques - at least, none that the CIA accepts as binding on it. The Bush administration long ago tossed aside federal anti-torture statute and international treaties banning torture and abuse. Scherer is pretending that the CIA's claim that it is not now using waterboarding, constitutes a "restriction". Even if he's gullible enough to take the CIA's word without proof, the term he's looking for is "pause". It's a pause in waterboarding, since the White House has stated it does not rule out a resumption of that torture technique.

So how in the world can McCain's opposition to the Democratic bill be described as a "continuation of a position he took in 2005" when he introduced the DTA? This is where Scherer's argument jumps several levels on the absurdity scale and enters the rarified realm of sheer perversity:

In the spring of 2005, McCain began the process of formulating legislation to prevent a use of such extreme techniques and some of the sanctioned abuses at Abu Ghraib. Initially, McCain's staff proposed and circulated a bill remarkably similar to the Democratic language McCain now opposes. In a draft proposal, dated May 17, 2005, and obtained by TIME, McCain's staff specifically outlined a plan to make the Army Field Manual "the basis for a uniform standard adhered to by all elements of the United States Government." Another section said that no person under U.S. control could be treated or interrogated with techniques "not authorized by or listed in" the manual. But in the end, after consultation with fellow senators and others, McCain and his staff did not adopt this draft language...

When McCain publicly introduced his bill, which was later called the Detainee Treatment Act, he had narrowed the scope to require the field manual's use only for the military interrogations or interrogations on military property.

Yes, Time has identified damning evidence. McCain's original draft of the DTA tried to extend its applicability to the CIA and all other government officials, but he backed down in the face of opposition and restricted the bill to the military. The Democratic bill vetoed in March by Bush would have instituted the across-the-board restrictions that McCain originally sought. But now McCain doesn't want them.

And Scherer tells us that is not a flip-flop.

Chiz. What would McCain have to do to get the traditional media to acknowledge his hard-earned reputation for flip-flopping? This article is a start, but its candor is remarkable only because of its rarity.

Update: By some technological quirk, the original post was an older draft rather than the final one. I've now posted the version that should have appeared, which differs only by adding a few further phrases and links in the second and last paragraphs.

Already last Tuesday, when the Pennsylvania Dept. of State released preliminary numbers, it was clear that Democrats had made huge gains in voter registration drives before the March 24 deadline. County elections officials are still recording forms sent in by mail, though, and we have a new update (spreadsheet). The numbers keep looking better for Democrats. In just the last week, another 44,053 new voters registered as Dems, while a further 28,064 voters changed their registration to the Democratic Party. Just over 50% of registered voters in the state are now Democrats (4.19 million out of 8.32 million voters). Republicans have dropped to 38%.

Perhaps the most remarkable news is that Democrats now hold a majority in two suburban Philadelphia counties that have been predominantly Republican for many years, Montgomery and Bucks. Last November, Republicans outnumbered Dems in Montgomery by 247,828 to 217,036. As of this week, the numbers are 238,208 to 245,209, meaning that Democrats have added some 28,000 voters in this one county this year. In Bucks County, 20,000 new Democrats were added to create a razor thin majority over the Republican Party.

And nearby in both Chester and Delaware, where four months ago Republicans had about 65,000 more registered voters per county, the deficit has been cut to 35,000. Chester added nearly 20,000 Democrats, Delaware about 22,000. In these four counties combined, total Republican registration dropped by about 25,000. It's a transformational election for these counties as they loosen a Republican grip on power that goes back generations.

Chester County Democratic Committee member Bill Scott recalled that "when I started in politics, the odds were 3-1" in favor of the Republicans. "This is good for everybody," said Scott, former president of the West Chester Borough Council. "We don't have a one-party system anymore."

All in all, there have been massive Democratic gains this winter in suburban Philly. Democrats also picked up another 50,000 registrations in Philadelphia.

Elsewhere the gains were more modest. In the Lehigh Valley (Lehigh and Northampton counties), Dems gained about 16,000 voters while Republicans lost about 4,000. Farther north, Luzerne and Lackawanna (Scranton, Wilkes-Barre) added 12,000. In south central PA, York and Lancaster combined added 23,000. And out west in Allegheny (Pittsburgh), there are 25,000 more Democrats. But for the most part, the noteworthy additions to the party rolls are concentrated in the southeast of the state.

What does it mean for the April 22 primary? Philadelphia and suburbs have added about 140,000 new Democrats this year, the rest of the state another 167,000. With his huge ad budget, Obama is set to pick up the great majority of the former in the expensive Philadelphia market. I suspect he'll do no worse than a split with Clinton of all the rest. An advantage to Obama, then, of some 100,000 new primary voters. If turnout is under 2 million, that will constitute a substantial boost. For what it's worth, however, others think neither candidate will benefit.

Analysts have said new registrants tended to be young people, who tended to support Mr. Obama. But they also say the suburbs are home to many professional women who care deeply about abortion rights and want to vote for a woman.

"It’s hard to say who benefits," [Bucks County Chairman John] Cordisco said. "It seems pretty equal. I have friends who have switched parties, and half are voting for Senator Clinton and half are voting for Senator Obama."

And, no, these new voters are not Republican mischief makers:

Democratic leaders pooh-poohed claims that loyal Republicans switched parties to vote for the Democrat they'd like to see go up against McCain.

"I don't think that's the case at all," Cordisco said. "That's the Republican leadership's spin on this."

Republicans are worried enough to be planning a registration drive to win back voters beginning immediately after the primary. They may even be willing to spend good money on it.

[Republican] party officials believe they can get as much as 40 percent of those who left this year back into the Republican fold after they’ve voted in the primary...

In addition to handing out registration cards at polling sites on April 22, the party plans to send new registration forms to those who have switched parties and to launch a media campaign. Officials would not suggest a cost, saying volunteers would do most of the work...

"I’m not embarrassed by it," [State GOP Chair Robert Gleason] said. "I don’t like it, but I’m not embarrassed by it."

Nah, nothing embarrassing about PA voters leaving your party in droves.