I've been thinking about campaign ads again, largely due to the book I am currently reading, "The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation," by Drew Westen. This morning, I read an International Herald Tribune article about how President Bush is going to continue to allow "mountaintop removal" mining in Appalachia, and it fit so well with what I had just read that I wanted to highlight it here.

From "The Political Brain," an ad for Democrats to run:

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Last week, I wrote an article which detailed why General Petraeus' upcoming report to Congress may not be as trustworthy as it's been built up to be. This week, I would like to look at the other side of the coin -- American Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker's companion report to Congress.

Now, initially everyone though these were going to be two separate reports, but the White House has announced in the meantime that there will only be one report to Congress, and that -- by the way -- Petraeus and Crocker will have input to this report, but the White House will be actually writing this report. Unfortunately for Congress, they had written this into the law -- the text actually said:

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Time for another three-dot column, to clear up some odds and ends. [As always, genuflect to the late, great Herb Caen before reading.]

. . . More good news for the ACLU was reported this week. Seems the Pentagon will be scrapping its TALON database. This is the one that the U.S. military was using to keep track of anti-war protesters in the guise of "fighting terrorism." But the bad news is that the data's not going to just get thrown out. From the AP article:

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About the Cartoonist  |  Reprint Policy

Watching the Karl Rove blitzkrieg on the Sunday morning news shows this week was a little hard to take. Three shows I regularly watch all had Rove as their star interview for the week. That's a lot of Karl to take, early on a Sunday.

Others have pointed out how he defended his remarks about Hillary Clinton being "flawed" as a candidate, and how the right wing has been focusing on Clinton (possibly because she's the one they really, really want to run against next year), but what struck me was Karl's attacks on Hillary on the subject of health care. These attacks will likely not be used just against Hillary, but their broader argument is going to be the GOP's list of talking points against any of the Democratic candidates' health care plans. So even if you're not a Hillary supporter, it is interesting to see this preview of the campaign attack ads which will be run next fall by the "Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy" (VRWC).

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About the Cartoonist  |  Reprint Policy

The following is an interview with Jonathan Miller, who is a William J. Brennan Fellow with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Mr. Miller is also an ACLU lawyer who was involved with the case of Jeff and Nicole Rank, who were arrested for trespassing while wearing anti-Bush shirts at a 2004 West Virginia event with an appearance by President Bush. The White House and the Justice Department just settled this case yesterday, by paying the Ranks $80,000.

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I don't get no respect. I played hide-and-seek, and they wouldn't even look for me.
-- Rodney Dangerfield

Wyoming Republicans must know how Rodney feels. They attempted to get some media attention (and some attention from the candidates) by passing an impossibility into law, but nobody noticed. No respect indeed.

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While America anxiously waits for General Petraeus to report in mid-September on the military situation in Iraq, Democratic and Republican politicians are honing the verbal knives they'll use in the upcoming congressional debate over the future of America's involvement with the war. But there are grim signs that regardless of the American political debate, Iraq may be headed for an extremely lethal short-term future. While many have already called the current situation in Iraq a "civil war," this future may soon be more accurately be described as "warlordism." And the debate in Washington may ultimately prove to be about nothing more than whether the warlords take over sooner, rather than later.

This is not exactly "rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic," but rather debating endlessly whether the lifeboats should actually be lowered or not, and when to begin lowering them. While the ship sinks below the waves.

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When President Bush announced that General David Petraeus was going to become the point man for the "surge" in Iraq, and that he was going to give Congress a progress report in September, most of the media were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

After all (so the story went) this was Bush's attempt to put someone with proven competence into the situation (Petraeus literally wrote the Army book on how to fight an insurgency); someone who could be trusted to speak the truth to power since he was non-partisan and trustworthy. The public image of Petraeus was very carefully spun to the media as someone who was not just a George Bush cheerleader, not just a cheerleader for success in Iraq; but rather someone who would take off the rosy-tinted glasses and tell Congress the truth about the situation on the ground.

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