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Former Texas Rep. Charlie Wilson -- yes, that Charlie Wilson -- was speaking at an anti-war rally when he, um, flubbed a line: "We should be led by Osama bin Laden," he said, then quickly corrected himself. "I mean Obama and Biden." How does that Southwest commercial go? Want to get away?

Now, with Joe Biden at my side, I am confident that we can take this country in a new direction; that we are ready to overcome the adversity of the last eight years; that we won't just win this election in November, we'll restore that fair shot at your dreams that is at the core of who Joe Biden and I are as people, and what America is as a nation. So let me introduce you to the next Vice President of the United States of America...

So Barack Obama's man with the plan is jabbering Joe Biden. But before we get to him, I want to talk about the 2002 New Jersey Senate race. One of my all time favorite campaign ads was run during that race. The contest started out as one between Republican Doug Forrester and Democratic incumbent Robert Torricelli. Trailing his Republican challenger and plagued by corruption charges, Torricelli withdrew from the race just five weeks before Election Day. The Democrats somehow were able to put popular former New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg on the ballot even though state law seemed to prohibit...

Barack Obama: Losing what was a significant lead in the polls, next week's Democratic National Convention is now of monumental importance.     Le Figaro, France Barack Obama is 'In Trouble'   "Despite the extreme unpopularity of George W. Bush and the poor state of the economy, John McCain, who will celebrate his 72nd year next week, is a Republican candidate that will be very hard to beat."   EDITORIAL By Pierre Rousselin                                                            Translated By Philippe Guittard   August 22, 2008   France - French - Original Article (French) Senator Joe Biden: According to the gamblers and...

With less than six months to go before he would be sworn in as the nation’s 44th president, Sen. Barack Obama has directed his aides to begin planning for the transition. "Barack is well aware of the complexity and the organizational challenge involved in the transition process and he has tasked s small group to begin thinking through the process,” a senior campaign adviser said. “Barack has made his expectations clear about what he wants from such a process, how he wants it to move forward, and the establishment and execution of his timeline is proceeding apace.” Last month, the...

Some interesting testimony from an FBI interrogator in the trial of Osama bin Laden’s driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan. GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba, July 23 — Osama bin Laden’s driver witnessed the al-Qaeda leader being briefed on the day of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and overheard him express satisfaction that the death toll had exceeded expectations, an FBI interrogator testified Wednesday. Salim Ahmed Hamdan, now held at the U.S. military prison here, had said under questioning six years ago that bin Laden was “happy about the results” of the terrorist strikes because he had expected “only” 1,000 to 1,500 people to...

He told CNN's Wolf Blitzer, "We have various options. The Nuremberg Trials are certainly an example of the kind of tribunal that we could move forward with. I don't think we'd have any difficulty in devising an international -- internationally supported mechanism that would mete out justice. There's no problem there." McCain said it would be a "good thing to reveal to the world the enormity of this guy's crimes, and his intentions, which are still there."

In an astonishing stroke of irony, the New York Times has outed the name of the CIA operative who interrogated 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, over the objections of CIA Director Michael V. Hayden and a lawyer representing the operative. Agency officials and legal counsel told the Times that publishing the agent's name would "invade his privacy and put him at risk of retaliation from terrorists or harassment from critics of the agency." In an Editor's Note linked from the story on KSM's interrogation, the Times defended its decision by stating that "other government employees" had been "named publicly in...

Obama calls for oil crackdown By: Mike Allen June 22, 2008 12:39 PM EST With the cost of gas a top issue in the presidential campaign, Barack Obama on Sunday will announce a plan to crack down on oil speculation by tightening regulations on energy traders. The announcement is further evidence that an Obama administration would take an activist, populist approach to regulating business. Obama wants to close a loophole in federal law that exempts some energy traders from regulations that govern other exchange-traded commodities. Democrats call this “the Enron loophole” because it benefited the Houston energy-speculation firm that collapsed...

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (AHN)-- Six years after hundreds of suspected terrorists were detained at Guantanamo Bay trials are to begin. However, The New York Times reports that Yemeni Salim Ahmed Hamden, who could be one of the first tried, is seemingly unfit to stand trial due to insanity. Hamden is accused of being a driver of Obama Bin Laden and of transporting weapons for Al Qaeda, as well as helping Bin Laden elude capture after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

As the Democratic presidential candidates gather in Washington to make their pitch to party activists this week, "liberal" is suddenly no longer a dirty word. In recent months, virtually the entire Democratic field has tacked left -- not just on the Iraq War, but on health care, taxes, energy issues and gay rights. In each of those areas, much of the field is standing to the left of where Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., stood in 2004, when President Bush lampooned Kerry as a "Massachusetts liberal." "They're responding to the reality of the primaries, where the center of gravity is far...

Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who has eluded a U.S. manhunt, is plotting against the United States but has been isolated and driven into hiding, President George W. Bush said on Thursday. "He's not out there traipsing around. He's not leading many parades," Bush told a news conference after being asked why bin Laden had not been caught. "He's not out feeding the hungry. He's isolated, trying to kill people to achieve his objective." Bush, who declared after the September 11 2001 attacks that he wanted bin Laden captured dead or alive, pledged that the hunt would go on....

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has joined with Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) to reintroduce a law that hedge funds could find taxing. The Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act intends to crack down on the use and abuse of offshore tax havens and tax shelters, and that would mean hedge funds would have to disclose the name of their foreign investors to the U.S. Department of Treasury

As she watched a stream of A-list Hollywood actors and movie moguls crowd into the elegant ballroom of the Beverly Hilton Hotel to mingle with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama this week, powerhouse blogger and author Arianna Huffington noted that many in the room were uneasy about being there. "It's like being married, and suddenly you fall in love. You're a good person, and a loyal person ... you have a history with the Clintons,'' she said. "And you feel like you're cheating.'' If some Democrats have cheating on their minds, it coincides with the rise of Obama, the junior...

PRIME Minister John Howard has blasted US presidential candidate Barack Obama, saying his policy of withdrawing troops from Iraq will destabilise the entire Middle East. Senator Obama, who is aiming to be the first black American president, has vowed to withdraw US forces if elected. But first, he must secure the Democratic nomination by overcoming his chief rival, Hillary Clinton. Senator Obama has introduced a bill to remove US combat forces from Iraq by March 31 next year - but the legislation has virtually no chance of becoming law while George W Bush is president, and the presidential election is...

The Barack Obama for president bandwagon has hit Illinois, but voters are split on when the freshman U.S. senator should get in the driver's seat. A quarter of voters want the South Side Democrat to seek the White House in 2008, and another 38 percent think he should wait until a later presidential year, according to a Chicago Sun-Times/NBC5 Poll. That means a combined three out of five voters see him as presidential timber.