I know it's a lot more interesting to talk about two shoes getting thrown at President Bush in Iraq, but two more important stories are getting ignored as a result. These are two metaphorical "shoes" thrown at Bush, by the Senate and by Bush's own Inspector General in Iraq. And they're going to have a much more lasting impact on how history sees our Iraq adventure than one video clip of a guy hucking his footwear at President Bush. Because they deal with torture, and the failure of the Iraq reconstruction effort.

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As I see it, the issue breaks down in a number of ways. The first question is anonymity — do Americans have an absolute right to anonymity in political messages? The second question is technological — is anonymity a right, no matter what the medium? And the third question seems to be political, and deal with campaign and election law — what kinds of rules on speech are constitutionally allowable in politics?

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One of the more scurrilous 2008 campaign tactics (in a campaign seemingly full of them) had to have been those insidious "Have you heard… Barack Obama is a secret Muslim?!?" emails. These bounced hither and yon on the internet almost from the beginning of the campaign itself (or at the very least, since when it looked like Obama had a chance at the nomination). This sort of activity would likely fall into most people's "there ought to be a law" list — a list of things worth changing in our election process. Unfortunately, the state Supreme Court of Virginia handed down a ruling in the midst of the campaign which may ultimately make any sort of limits on this sort of anonymous political (and technological) mudslinging actually unconstitutional. Meaning it would be impossible to pass any sort of laws against the practice at all.

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Things are getting pretty nasty out on the McCain campaign trail, it seems. Not much talk of "reaching across the aisle" these days. Now, while anyone with a halfway-decent brain saw this coming, this obviously doesn't include most of the mainstream media. Of course the end of the campaign was going to be nasty. Of course McCain and his minions were going to throw everything they could at Obama. Barack Obama himself knew this was coming. Democrats should have known it was coming. It's the old story of the scorpion and the frog — McCain is getting nasty because he's a Republican candidate for president. "I'm a Republican, it's my nature," in other words.

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Two stories from the "power corrupts" department appeared this week, one on the state level and one on the federal level. Both just go to show, once again, that whenever sweeping surveillance powers are granted to those in authority the end result is almost always the same — widespread abuse of such power to go after anyone the government takes a dislike to, rather than the "terrorists" who are the supposed targets of the law.

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Back in Volume 36 of this Friday Talking Points column, I pointed out what seemed to me to be an obvious observation — that the media was going a lot lighter on John McCain than they were on Barack Obama. This earned me a fair amount of ridicule at the time (and also some support, I should say). Now, however, I can definitively say that this situation has been rectified. Whether it was McCain's campaign cutting off virtually all access to McCain (and literally any access to Palin), whether it was McCain's mudslinging and lies in his ads, or perhaps whether it was McCain manipulating the media after his running mate choice, and then savagely attacking them — for whatever reason, the mainstream media are now closely examining everything McCain says.

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As a public service, today I am running a full transcript of Craig Ferguson, host of The Late Late Show on CBS, from last night, 8/10/08.

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Now, from the White House website itself, the picture worth 10,000 words which puts this entire "we feel your pain" lie to the ultimate test. Here are George W. Bush and John McCain — on the exact same day Katrina hit New Orleans — celebrating what looks to me like the "festive occasion" of John McCain's birthday. Again, this was the day that Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.

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While plenty has happened in the past two weeks which bears close and careful analysis, I'd like to begin by focusing on one event. Barack Obama announced a masterstroke of political tactics last week, and I don't think everyone has appreciated fully what it is going to mean. I say this not as an "Obamamaniac," or as some starry-eyed follower who has been caught up in his "personality cult," but rather as a political observer (with an admitted left-wing bias) applauding a Democratic candidate on a monumentally brilliant decision.

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This column was born out of my frustration with the seeming inability of many Democrats to perform well in the Sunday morning interview shows on television. It's often been said that Democrats have an inherent "herding cats" problem, so I set out to do my tiny part to help.

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