Visit this site to see where you land on the "political compass".


My score is here.

More from TED here.

From the LA Times:

Susan Maguire tells jury she paid the private eye nearly $1 million to locate her estranged husband's assets.

The ex-wife of prominent Los Angeles developer Robert Maguire testified Thursday that she paid former private eye Anthony Pellicano nearly $1 million to locate her estranged husband's assets during a divorce and heard numerous wiretapped recordings of Maguire's conversations with his psychiatrist, onetime mistress, world-famous architect Frank Gehry and others.

The account by Susan Maguire represented the first time in the two-week-old trial that a former Pellicano client had acknowledged listening to the alleged wiretaps, which federal authorities contend were a key part of the private detective's lucrative business.

Maguire's testimony overshadowed the long-anticipated appearance of Paramount Pictures Chairman Brad Grey, who was among Pellicano's most famous former clients. Grey said he had no knowledge of any illegal activity by the onetime investigator.

From TPM's Election Central:

A McCain campaign aide actively pushed an incendiary, racially-charged video that uses the controversial words of Barack Obama's pastor to tar Obama as unpatriotic -- despite the fact that McCain himself has suggested that Obama shouldn't be held accountable for Wright's views.

The aide, Soren Dayton, who works in McCain's political department, has been suspended from the campaign, a McCain spokesperson, Jill Hazelbaker, confimed to me.

The move by McCain's aide could create controversy for the McCain camp, because the video itself is thoroughly reprehensible -- it interweaves footage of Obama explaining why he won't wear the American flag pin, Wright saying "God damn America," Malcolm X, and Obama's wife saying that his candidacy has made her proud of America for the "first time."

More here.

Gov. Bill Richardson, declaring that Sen. Barack Obama is an "extraordinary American," endorsed Obama for the Democratic nominee for president on Friday.

Richardson -- who sought this year's Democratic nomination for president himself -- joined Obama at a rally in Portland, Oregon, where the senator from Illinois is campaigning.

"Barack Obama will make a great and historic president," Richardson said, Obama standing at his side. "[It] is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for our nation and you are a once-in-a-lifetime leader."

Obama said, "I am extraordinarily grateful to have the support of one of the great public servants of these United States."

More from TED here.

Via Bill Blogins @ Wicked Theory (via TED)

For those of you who haven't seen it yet, John Adams, the new miniseries from HBO is a must see for those of you who enjoy great television. It has all the hallmark of a great television series: political intrigue, drama, and romance.

Besides, you might actually learn a thing or two from this show.

I urge you now to seek it out and add it to your season pass.

Visit the John Adams site on HBO.

You might recall that last month an American businesswoman in the great, freedom-loving nation of Saudi Arabia was arrested, strip-searched, finger-printed, and detained for having the audacity of hanging out in a Starbucks with a man who wasn't a relative.

Spurred in part by the infamy of this incident, a brave female journalist with Arab News is now posing some tough questions for the famously brutal Saudi religious police (Known as the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice).

Among the questions she's seeking answers for: "Why is having coffee in a public place with an unrelated man considered 'illegal seclusion'?"; "Is a strip search really necessary for women arrested for khulwa (illegal seclusion)?"; and finally, "Is brutally beating a suspect to death a form of promoting virtue or preventing vice?"

We here at the Professor Politico Show commend this woman for her courage in trying to put a cruel and corrupt system on trial.

From Politico.com:

One big fact has largely been lost in the recent coverage of the Democratic presidential race: Hillary Rodham Clinton has virtually no chance of winning.

Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates. That means the only way she wins is if Democratic superdelegates are ready to risk a backlash of historic proportions from the party’s most reliable constituency.

Unless Clinton is able to at least win the primary popular vote — which also would take nothing less than an electoral miracle — and use that achievement to pressure superdelegates, she has only one scenario for victory. An African-American opponent and his backers would be told that, even though he won the contest with voters, the prize is going to someone else.

People who think that scenario is even remotely likely are living on another planet.

As it happens, many people inside Clinton’s campaign live right here on Earth. One important Clinton adviser estimated to Politico privately that she has no more than a 10 percent chance of winning her race against Barack Obama, an appraisal that was echoed by other operatives.

In other words: The notion of the Democratic contest being a dramatic cliffhanger is a game of make-believe.

The real question is why so many people are playing. The answer has more to do with media psychology than with practical politics.

Journalists have become partners with the Clinton campaign in pretending that the contest is closer than it really is. Most coverage breathlessly portrays the race as a down-to-the-wire sprint between two well-matched candidates, one only slightly better situated than the other to win in August at the national convention in Denver.

One reason is fear of embarrassment. In its zeal to avoid predictive reporting of the sort that embarrassed journalists in New Hampshire, the media — including Politico — have tended to avoid zeroing in on the tough math Clinton faces.