President Obama, of late, has been doing quite a bit of soul-searching over his first two years in office. It is odd for this to be made public just before an election, instead of just after one, but it does show, at the very least, that Obama is starting to learn some important lessons from his performance so far. Of course, it can be argued that it may be too late for Obama to have learned these lessons, but then he still does have over half of his term to serve -- so I say better late than never, personally. And (without a shred of evidence to make such a claim) I would also say that the fact that Obama's realization that he has room for improvement comes almost immediately after Rahm Emanuel left the White House is, indeed, no coincidence.

President Obama gave his navel-gazing interview to the New York Times Magazine, where he looks both forward and back. He has also spoken elsewhere this week on a similar theme. And one of the biggest areas for improvement he identifies is on his ability to communicate better why he thinks his agenda is the best one for America to the public.

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Since we seem to be smack in the middle of "debate season," it's worth taking another look at the state of the Senate midterm races. Also, because it has been three weeks since we last took a look at the Senate's political landscape. Since that time, both Republicans and Democrats have seen some movement in their direction, but a large number of states remain simply too close to call, with less than two weeks to go before the election.

Over in the House, it is looking more and more like the Republicans are going to be in control next year. It is still possible for the Democrats to squeak out an upset here, but to do so they'd pretty much have to run the tables of all the races in which they even have a chance. And, if you believe the mainstream media, the momentum is not exactly headed in this direction. But there are so many individual House races that it is almost impossible to keep track of them all, so I leave that sort of thing for the professional poll-watchers.

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Just to be clear, that is "settles" as in "settles an outstanding court case," and not the colonial sense of the word. Native American farmers today agreed to a settlement of their claims of discrimination against the Department of Agriculture (U.S.D.A.) for three-quarters of a billion dollars.

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The folks in the Tea Parties across America should be prepared to be disappointed after this year's election returns are in. That sounds like a sweeping and Democratically-optimistic election prediction, but it's not. I'm actually assuming here that many Tea Party candidates will indeed win at the polls. Instead, what I'm talking about is what happens afterwards. Because while it's a whole lot of fun to wave signs at a rally, actually governing is a whole different story.

The media has already decided this is "The Year Of The Tea Party," no matter what happens at the polls. Something like 130 candidates have been identified (or identified themselves) as Tea Partiers this year. And, as I said, some of them are going to win their races. Not all of them are named Christine O'Donnell, in other words. And they're going to arrive in Washington next January with the wind at their backs, and raring to go. But that's when things are going to get a little tricky.

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[OK, that was rather a fun title to write, but I have to at least begin with a warning that, while today's column is almost completely Obama-centric in focus, that only about the first third of it is going to deal with the gays-in-the-military issue -- the remaining two-thirds will examine the foreclosure mess and what it means politically. Just didn't want to mislead anyone by my title today, that's all.]

The White House has announced (as pretty much everyone expected them to) that they will be asking for a "stay" of the federal judge's order this week which demanded that the United States military immediately cease all enforcement of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) policy of forbidding openly gay people from serving their country. This was a blow to many who support overturning the policy, since President Obama himself has long advocated (even fiercely, at times) getting rid of it. But now the White House is caught on a tightrope, or (to be less charitable) caught in an extraordinary display of doublethink. What Obama is saying, in essence, is: "We're fighting to get rid of DADT, while at the same time we're fighting to keep it." But, to be more charitable towards the White House, there is a valid constitutional reason for this awkward position, and also a valid political reason.

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[Note: This column originally ran on 11/25/09. Today was likely going to be either a quick column or a re-run anyway, due to an automotive-related appointment; so this column immediately sprang to mind due to the term being in the news again in a political setting.

The back story: Democrat Jerry Brown was just asked (in his final debate with Republican Meg Whitman in the current governor's race in California) about the use by a Brown campaign person of the word "whore" to describe Whitman. Brown and the aide quite obviously didn't know there was a live microphone recording them, and it came in the context of how Whitman had sold out to public unions for endorsements. As far as I'm concerned, this was fair usage of the term, especially in what the participants thought was a private conversation, for reasons outlined in the article below.

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[UPDATE #3 -- 10/19/10, 1:00 A.M. (Pacific)]

I also gave the woman quoted in the article (quoted in the press release) a chance to respond. I was emailed the following from Argentina Dávila-Luévano, which will have to be the final update on this matter, now that all sides have had a chance to weigh in on the dispute:

"We stand by our press release and endorsement on Proposition 19. Our California board met on September 25, 2010 and heard the propositions and voted to support the measure. Regarding National and Mr. Wilke's comments, note that they have been a suspended corporation, are not affiliated with the state and their actions are in question."

[UPDATE #2 -- 10/16/10, 5:15 P.M. (Pacific)]

I gave the national office of the League of United Latin American Citizens (L.U.L.A.C.) a chance to respond to this article as well (since they were the ones to point out the error in the comments in the first place), and was emailed the following official statement by Brent Wilkes, the National Executive Director of L.U.L.A.C.:

"Contrary to prior reports, the League of United Latin American Citizens has not taken an official position on California Proposition 19 either at the national or state level. Unfortunately, our former State Director of California, Argentina Dávila-Luévano, led Proposition 19 supporters to believe that she had the authority to make an endorsement on behalf of LULAC when she did not. We apologize for the confusion Ms. Dávila-Luévano has caused and we ask any media outlet that reported the invalid endorsement to run a correction at the earliest opportunity."

[UPDATE #1 -- 10/15/10, 6:31 P.M. (Pacific)]

After posting this column, a comment was posted on the Huffington Post version of this article which indicated that the endorsement of Proposition 19 by the League of United Latin American Citizens (L.U.L.A.C.) of California was not correct, or in question. When contacted for comment, Tom Angell (who initially provided me with the "Yes on Proposition 19" press release and link), issued the following statement:

"We accepted L.U.L.A.C. California's written endorsement of our measure in good faith. However, we subsequently learned that there is internal debate at L.U.L.A.C. at an organizational level regarding who has authority to endorse. Out of respect, we took down the L.U.L.A.C. endorsement to give them time to resolve their discussion."

[END UPDATES]

Last week's column on the possibility that California voters are about to legalize recreational marijuana usage -- and what the Obama administration might do in response -- certainly generated a lot of interest, so I thought it'd be worth revisiting the issue to update the news on Proposition 19, and to clear up a few points commenters raised last week. This will be somewhat of a "Part 2" to last week's article ("If California Legalizes Marijuana, How Will Obama React?"), which I encourage everyone to read to provide some context.

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Democrats, and President Obama in particular, have two opportunities to show some leadership right now, which come conveniently right before an election. The first of these opportunities is on the growing foreclosure crisis. The second is on the recent federal judge's ruling that will end the military's ability to enforce the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) policy of excluding openly gay people from serving in the military. Democrats should use both of these opportunities as a chance to show some real leadership, and President Obama should be out in front leading this effort.

But I have to admit that the chances of this actually happening are questionable, at best. Which is a shame, really.

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The Nobel Prize committee does not hand out a prize for obstructionism in government. But if they did, Republican Senator Richard Shelby would certainly be the odds-on favorite to win it this year. Shelby is currently continuing to block Peter Diamond, President Obama's nominee to the Federal Reserve, from getting that "up or down vote" Republicans held so sacred not so long ago. According to Shelby, Diamond is not sufficiently qualified to serve on the Fed's board. Today, it was announced that Diamond had won this year's Nobel Prize for economics.

That's right -- according to Republicans, the winner of the Nobel in economics is somehow not qualified to hold a government job helping to run the economy. Maybe it's all tied to their hatred of "elitism," but at this point it's hard to tell what Republicans are thinking, I have to admit.

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We're going to start off with a warning this week: this preamble section is going to be mostly shameless self-promotion and one cheap inside joke. If that sort of egotism bores the pants off you, then you really shouldn't read it at work because walking around with no pants on is likely to get you fired (well, depending on where you work, of course). Ahem. In any case, you have been warned. Skip ahead to the awards sections if you'd like, I won't mind.

We'll start out with the cheap joke, to get it out of the way. I wrote on Wednesday about a question that is becoming more pronounced, if the current polling is to be believed: "If California Legalizes Marijuana, How Will Obama React?"  What I didn't include in the article, because I was trying for at least "semi-serious," was the totally-unrelated story which came out the same day. I even refrained from mentioning it when a commenter made a joke about what "joint" sessions of Congress would be like if Proposition 19 passes, I'll have you know. But it's Friday, so our seriousness bar is (as always) quite a bit lower. So here you go: in what has to be a completely unrelated item, the House announced that it has now passed a total of 420 bills that the Senate has failed to act upon. For those who just got the joke, you're welcome.

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