The Washington McClatchy bureau is reporting that Republican 527 groups are oddly lacking in number during this general election season as compared to 2004:

Obama cited the threat of unregulated attack groups — called “527s” because they’re authorized to raise unlimited cash under that section of the Internal Revenue Service code — to justify dropping his pledge to take public financing — along with its spending limits — for the general election campaign.| MORE ›

Re. the controversy of the day (Clark on McCain’s military record): Andrew Sullivan – a passionate supporter of Barack Obama indeed – disagrees with Claudia. He beliefs that what Wesley Clark is doing is ‘Clintonesque’ (a tremendous insult for Sullivan) and “repulsive.”

It is, of course.

What’s even more repulsive is that so many bloggers take this stuff serious enough to write about it.

A good op-ed about the idiocy of trying to control the price of oil appeared in today’s Washington Post. It’s written by Sebastian Mallaby and it is truly a must read; he perfectly explains why both Barack Obama and John McCain are wrong about this issue.

Perhaps it is time for politicians to learn from mistakes made in the past. There’s no reason to repeat them… time and again. Nixon tried to do this, the result was chaos. If America’s president would try to artificially control the price today, it would not be less destructive.

Well, it’s not bad news that is: ‘Stocks were winding down the second quarter in muted fashion on Monday, marking some modest gains but remaining not far from bear-market levels. Oil futures flattened after an overnight rally.’ (more…)

According to the Politico, Mitt Romney tops McCain’s Veep list. A good choice indeed. (more…)

Via reader Lucrece comes the following news; ‘A U.K. committee report Friday cautioned against suspending Turkey’s talks with the European Union, despite acknowledging that the current crisis sparked by the ongoing case questioning the legitimacy of the Turkish ruling party may have extremely serious consequences.’ (more…)

Although the race for the Republican nomination was quite passionate, it seems that former Mitt Romney supporters and donors flocked to Senator John McCain shortly after Romney dropped out. This was obviously an important development for McCain, because Romney was the number one Republican fundraiser and more popular among the conservative base than he, McCain, was. (more…)

All too often, people – albeit especially progressives – assume that conservatives were strongly opposed to the civil rights movement, back in the early second part of the 20th century. Conservatives, most progressives believe, were opposed to equal rights and equal treatment because they were either racist or because they, well, opposed any change because they preferred the status quo out of fear that change may produce unwanted results and chaos. (more…)

It’s about time that Pakistan is finally acting against the Taliban. It took the new Pakistani government several months, but it finally seems to realize that you can’t talk to the Taliban forever. Sometimes reality is truly quite simple; the Taliban are extremists, bend on taking over entire countries, not just Afghanistan. The pose a threat to the Afghani and the Pakistani governments. (more…)

Israel’s cabinet approved ‘a rare prisoner swap with the Shiite militia Hezbollah, agreeing to free a convicted murderer and others in exchange for two Israeli soldiers who are believed to be dead.’ Yes, you read that correctly; Israel is willing to give up terrorists and will, in exchange, receive the bodies of two murdered soldiers. (more…)