At some point during tonight's presidential debate in Nashville, an audience member will ask Barack Obama some sort of question concerning his "character." Obama's answer should include the following:

Well, yes, I've even heard I've been "palling around with terrorists." But you know, sometimes in political campaigns people are...

Lots of reasons to be in a funk on Iraq.

Funk: Even on days when the Dow doesn't drop 500 points, the war moves farther and farther off the front page until the only place you'll find the word "Baghdad" is in a review of a book by Bob Woodward...

Barack Obama brought us a wonderful speech. Obama's speech produced "a bump" that polls alone couldn't possibly measure. I got choked up and a jump in my diaphragm that is, for me, a completely unfamiliar physical response to any event - except the speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. and...

I keep hearing that Democratic senators have to hold back on blasting John McCain because "they have to work with him." I even hear it from some Democratic nattering-nabobs. What? Let John McCain worry about that. Which is preferable? Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama -- among others -- walk...

Small details, exact costs, specifics, particulars - all are fatal to a convention speech. Just ask Bill Clinton as he walked off the podium after delivering his keynote address at the 1988 Democratic Convention. And yet, when the themes for the next couple of nights - "Renewing America's Promise," "Securing...

The 110th Congress didn't bring the troops home. John McCain isn't interested in bringing the troops home. Barack Obama wants to redeploy the troops to another unnecessary, likely quagmire in Afghanistan. And, now President Bush wants to bring the troops home by 2011. It would be funny if it's weren't...

$500 million for Faith-Based Initiatives? Wow. Got to say, even after the last week, I didn't see that one coming. Too many Sister Souljah moments to count. What I want to see now are some more Sister Souljah moments -- ones moving back to the left.

Barack Obama dealt...

I'm thinking of tapping Barack Obama's phone. Yeah, why not? I want to find out why he's been sharing milkshakes with Antonin Scalia.

While I'm waiting for him to come on the line, let me run this by you: Remember Mark Penn? Former chief strategist for Hillary Clinton. He...

Barack Obama has gone back on his word, Barack Obama is a hypocrite ... I couldn't be happier. With Obama turning down public financing, idealist can be heard saying, "Obama promised 'a new kind of politics.'" Well, let him get to that once he's in office.

As for myself,...

"Why is it that the more Hillary loses, the better I like her?" This was the opening line of Susan Cheever's radio commentary last week on NPR. You'd have thought, or at least hoped, that after seventeen months of Senator Clinton running for the White House, the disconnect between men...

I am white and I am a racist.

It's not on an academic level. On that level I would challenge any white person I know to be more aware and outraged by both the history of racial injustice in our nation and it's current manifestations.

It's on a...

On Thursday, John Eichinger will not be executed by the state of Pennsylvania. He will join a growing group of men and women on death row whose executions have been stayed pending the Supreme Court decision in the case of Baze v. Rees. As these lives are, at least temporarily,...

It's happened again. You couldn't miss it. John Edwards appears before a small crowd back in New Orleans where he began his presidential campaign and withdraws from the race. And, as if released from a puppeteer's string, his right hand is no longer jabbing the air. In addition, his fingers...

It must be something in the water. Two men from Hope, Arkansas, and each man bedeviled by one, if not more, of the seven deadly sins.

With Mike Huckabee, it's greed, but voters haven't shown much interest in having Huckabee pay for his sin. The bulk of the stories about...

Welcome to Debating for Dummies, the fun and easy guide to everything you need to know to win a presidential debate, including tonight's Democratic debate from Nevada!

GETTING STARTED

• Although the presidential debates are now sponsored by the two major political parties, major media and other large corporations -...

Every pundit has missed half of the Hillary crying story. For five days I have watched, listened and read as every pundit this side of Simon Cowell has offered their analysis on Senator Clinton's "breakdown" this past Sunday in New Hampshire. Where's the rest of her?

Yes, she was exhausted,...