Obama could pick Jimmy Carter, but not Bill Clinton.

He can't pick Jennifer Granholm, but he could pick Luis Gutierrez.

And Dick Cheney didn't really have to change his registration to Wyoming in 2000 to be on the ticket, but only because Al Gore probably wouldn't have stopped him from being inaugurated.

While the speculation rages on unabated in these final days of uncertainty, let's take a moment below the fold to look at the requirements for a Vice-President under the Constitution.  (And a bonus: how Bob Barr or Nancy Pelosi could become President if there's a 269-269 tie)

He won.

And now the bar is set for John McCain when he shares a stage with Obama, who will be more than willing (unlike Rick Warren) to call McCain out when he lies, obfuscates, misleads, or backpedals.  Any debate crowd that isn't as fawning as tonight's band of evangelicals hearing a string of panders was will be seen as "unreceptive."

But he won.

And now Independent voters know he wants to stack the Supreme Court with right-wing ideologues, and women voters know that he's committed to destroying their freedoms, and civil libertarians know that he's dead-set against protecting individual liberty against the encroachment of state power.

But he won.

For the first time in history, a state is reviewing whether it executed an innocent man.

A Texas panel will investigate whether a man executed for setting a fire that killed his three daughters actually started the blaze.

The Texas Forensic Science Commission agreed Friday to review conclusions that Cameron Todd Willingham set the fire in 1991. He was executed in 2004.
...
The Innocence Project, a legal group that works to overturn wrongful convictions, says experts in a report it commissioned concluded the fire was not intentionally set.

You can read an extensive account I wrote of the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, convicted and executed for arson and murder based on junk science, here.  But a brief synopsis of the case, and a discussion of today's events, lay below the fold.

Seems as though WMC-TV Memphis has called it for Cohen:

US House of Representatives Dist 9 Tennessee State and Federal Primary
31% OF PRECINCTS REPORTING
Steve Cohen* (D / Inc.) 26,313 80%
Nikki Tinker (D) 6,024 18%
Joe Towns, Jr. (D) 482 1%
Isaac Richmond (D) 111 0%
James Gregory (D) 106 0%

A brief thought as we enter the last 90 days of the campaign season, and look forward (pleasepleaseohsweetlordwecanttakeanymorepleaseplease) to a political situation wherein much of the Netroots will likely be more focused on pushing our guys towards us than on pushing back against the right wing:

We've got to clean up our Meta.

Over on MyDD, they're going through another round of meta posts about the nature of the site vis a vis moderation and rec list thresholds.  Every community site does this from time to time (anyone want some pie?).  But such conversations are invariably site-specific: sure, they might reference how [whatever topic] is handled on [whatever other site], but it's all aimed at changing site functionality in that specific corner of Blogania.

On the other side, we have the sort of meta posts that I once did during my tantrum-cum-protest over the primary war here--what I like to style "Netroots theory"--focusing more on how online political activism may transform over time and how we should approach such transitions.

Are these really such closely related topics as to both fall under the same header of "Meta"?

"The Adventures of Unit Y"
Episode I: "America's Secret Weapon"

Ah, to flourish!  Real evil doesn’t seek to accomplish any particular goal beyond self-promotion, and with the assistance of dedicated servants of darkness, evil was poised to continue a near decade-long flourishing.

And who would seek to help evil flourish?  Not those with wicked hearts—no!  The wicked are the beneficiaries of evil’s success, not its cause.

No, evil flourishes because of the self-righteous who know not what they do: those who seek to advance what they perceive to be a noble cause, through ignoble means.  And in this age, the self-righteous who have fostered a resurgence of true evil are known as

P.U.M.A.

Cross-posted at OpenLeft

After Dennis Kucinich introduced his impeachment resolution in the House earlier this month, the Huffington Post featured an analysis by occasional contributor Elizabeth Holtzman, whose biography there is given as:

Elizabeth Holtzman served for eight years as a U.S. Congresswoman and won national attention for her role on the House Judiciary committee during Watergate. She was subsequently elected District Attorney of Kings County (Brooklyn), the only woman ever elected DA in NYC, serving for eight years. Holtzman was also the only woman ever elected Comptroller of New York City. She currently works with Herrick Feinstein, LLP, and lives in New York City.

Omitted from that brief encapsulation of a 30+ year career of public service is the fact that her most important role in the Watergate hearings may simply have been getting elected in the first place.

Read on...

News outlets are now reporting that police in Zimbabwe have detained opposition presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangirai (CHAHN-gear-EYE) for allegedly planning to attend an "illegal meeting" (i.e. a campaign stop).

This comes on the heels of a large-scale campaign to harass and intimidate opposition leaders and activists in advance of the run-off election next month.  Voice of America reports that

The prominent Zimbabwean opposition figure Arthur Mutambara, arrested on Sunday in connection with an article he published in April criticizing President Robert Mugabe, was arraigned before a magistrate on Tuesday and freed on bail.

Meanwhile, sources said Zimbabwe’s jails are filling up with political prisoners who are being held in deplorable conditions.

Once our party has a nominee, anyone campaigning against that nominee is fair game.

So what should we make of this?

ABC News' Eloise Harper Reports: The press traveling with Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign received an email Thursday afternoon informing reporters they could sign up for travel through June 6 on the campaign website.

In continuing my recent meta-fetish, I can't help but notice something odd:

It's 3:30 eastern time.  And I'm on a frakkin' blog.

I've got a really nice bed.  My recently deceased grandmother (we had the memorial earlier today up in Connecticut, buried her on Friday) bought my wife and me a great mattress as a wedding present.  Simmons Beautyrest, queen size.  Adorable wife and pit bull keeping it warm.

Yet here I sit, typing and watching a TiVoed candidate forum of mind-numbing tedium.

So I admit I don't have a good excuse for being awake.  What's yours?

...on ActBlue!

After hearing about the attack on Indiana congressional candidate and longtime kossack Barry Welsh and a reporter by a local GOP official, I decided we should do something to recognize Barry for (literally) fighting for our rights.

So I wrote a quick ActBlue page, and I hope you'll chip in $5 to show your support for a Democrat we can count on to go to the mattresses for us in Washington.

Metapocalypse is an ongoing act of protest against the vituperation and invective that has permeated the Netroots during the Presidential primary.  Until there is a presumptive Democratic nominee, the author refuses to post any non-meta diaries.  See this diary for details.  Only you can end the Metapocalypse—Join the mehvolution!

I’ve previously written that I believe the Netroots in general, and DailyKos in particular, are about to experience a long-term period of transformation as a result of the increased importance of online organizing to the Presidential ticket.

I think today was likely the first step in that transformation--the Schism.

Metapocalypse is an act of protest against the vituperation and invective that has permeated this site during the Presidential primary.  Until there is a presumptive Democratic nominee, the author refuses to post any non-meta diaries.  See this diary for details.  Only you can end the Metapocalypse—Join the mehvolution!

I’ve previously written that I believe the Netroots in general, and DailyKos in particular, are about to experience a period of transformation as a result of the increased importance of online organizing to the Presidential ticket.  In order for us to determine the probable course of this transformation, and possibly to affect its direction and outcome, I have decided to begin a limited series dedicated to flushing out what constitutes "Netroots Theory," and to start a broader discussion about just how we envision this community model.

To recap:

~today will decide nothing,
~the denizens of MyDD and TalkLeft will call anything but an Obama sweep proof that he can't "close the deal,"
~the consensus here and among newshounds will be that Clinton can't possibly make up the delegate deficit (which is exactly the situation currently facing her),
~the pie fights/shit-slinging will continue unabated, and
~I'll still be utterly disgusted with how we've behaved on the blogs over the past months.

So I'm having a glass of wine and hanging with my family.  Then I'm sleeping until eleven.  

Then the mehvolution will probably begin.

Your warning below:

As we saw in 2004 and again in 2006, the Netroots can serve as a rallying point for activists, even those in notably inactive areas of the country long overlooked by the national party.  With the phenomenal successes our candidates have seen in terms of online organizing/fundraising this cycle, there's no reason to believe that 2008 will be any different.

The simple fact is that the internet offers campaigns the best organizational and fundraising bang for their buck, without question.  A mass email to tens of thousands of potential contributors costs a fraction of a direct mail solicitation, and can provide funds within hours instead of  days or weeks.  And providing tools for self-directed organization, such as MyBarackObama.com, make it possible for even massive, well-funded operations to decentralize and benefit from grassroots support in areas that would be otherwise untouchable strategically.

All this leads to the likely conclusion that the Netroots will soon undergo a substantial expansion and reformation.  How we approach this will likely determine our efficacy and influence for the rest of the decade and beyond.

Rob Fournier at the AP reminds us that the Superdelegates are not a monolithic bloc, and many have their own agendas:

Never count the Clintons out. They are brilliant politicians who defied conventional wisdom countless times in Arkansas and Washington. But time is running out.

...

Clinton should find little comfort in the fact that she has secured 242 superdelegates to Obama's 160.

"I would make the assumption that the ... superdelegates she has now are the Clintons' loyal base. A superdelegate who is uncommitted today is clearly going to wait and see how this plays out. She's at her zenith now," [Democratic strategist Jim] Duffy said. "Whatever political capital or IOUs that exist, she's already collected."

Note what Jim Duffy says isn't just that the SDs might swing to Obama, but what influences them:

"Whatever political capital or IOUs that exist, she's already collected."

Let's focus on that for a moment.

Yes, I voted this morning in Virginia.  I walked to the polls, like I do every election, through freezing rain and stood in line.

And nothing that was written by any candidate partisans or detractors on this site, MyDD, OpenLeft, TalkLeft, or any other blog had anything to do with my decision to go vote, or my decision for whom to vote.  

In fact, my vote was cast in spite of a hell of a lot of what I've read in recent weeks on the blogs.

A recent diary, DCDemocrat's "The First Woman To Win The Opening Primary", created a pleasant diversion from the usual bickering among partisans.

Initially, the diary had claimed Clinton was the first woman to win a presidential primary.  YoursTruly noted that, actually, Shirley Chisholm had won the 1972 New Jersey primary.  souvarine responded that, according to an archived NY Times article's abstract, McGovern won the primary.

So, who's right?

Long story short, both of them.