I thought McCain did better than Obama in the twin interviews conducted by Rev. Rick Warren in California Saturday. McCain's answers were crisper, more decisive. I recall saying to my wife that McCain seemed ... better prepared.

Rick Warren assured viewers, twice, that McCain had been kept in "a cone of silence" during Obama's portion of the interview. McCain quipped that he had had his ear to the wall, trying to listen. Since the essence of the two interviews was that they contained the same questions - thus allowing an "apples to apples" comparison, as Rev. Warren noted - McCain's not hearing anything of Obama's interview was somewhat crucial.

Today the New York Times reported that McCain's ear was not against any wall, because McCain was not in a room at all. He was in his motorcade for at least half of Obama's interview. It would have been trivially easy for McCain to have gotten word of any or even many of the Reverend's questions.

People often ask me how I would describe myself politically - actually, not so much people these days, as places such as Facebook, etc. I don't like labels. But I've recently begun to list myself, when I can write in rather than a choose from a group of options, as a "progressive libertarian".

Here, for the blogospheric record, is why:

1. I'm a libertarian. I agree completely with Thomas Jefferson that the greatest threats to our freedom and well being come from government, democratically elected or not. Certainly Hitler and Stalin tragically proved that. I think the Constitution in general, and the Bill of Rights in particular, must be strictly adhered to. Of course, not all the Amendments are exactly the same in what their wording prohibits. The First Amendment's provision that "Congress shall make no law" abridging freedom of speech and press means just that - "no law," period - in contrast to the Second Amendment's provision that the right to bear arms "shall not be infringed," which I take as meaning laws regulating weapons are constitutional, as long as they do not "infringe" on lawful citizens who bear arms. The Fourteenth Amendment, and its provision that all limitations on the Federal government in the Constitution apply to the states, municipalities, etc., is also crucial.

You've no doubt heard about the Obama campaign's announcement that everyone in Obama's online community will be "first" to know about his choice for VP running mate, which will be communicated via email and texting to everyone on Obama's online mailing list, before being sent out to the usual mass media channels.

It's no big deal, but I have several problems with this.

1. How many seconds does anyone think will elapse between the emails going out, and mainstream and indeed all other media finding out about it? The offer to the online community of being "first," in other words, in meaningless.

Some responses to the criticism of Barack Obama that has followed his speech in Berlin last week. Summary: I think the criticisms all show a poor understanding of history, and the nature of politics, rhetoric, and fame.

1. Charles Krauthammer has been widely quoted as saying Obama didn't "earn" the right to speak in Berlin, as did JFK and Reagan.

My response: Speakers - whether Presidents or Presidential candidates, or anyone - don't "earn" the right to speak by their credentials beforehand. Rather, they are invited, if the host sees fit. And they may or may not attract a large audience. Obama attracted a huge audience of 200,000. By that measure, not to mention the audience's reaction, Obama eminently earned his right to speak in Berlin.

(From the diaries -- Susan)

Conservative columnists have been trying to make a big deal about a paper that Barack Obama wrote when he was a student at Columbia University - they seem to think the fact that no one has a copy is a sign that Obama has something to hide. MSNBC's First Read has the whole story.

Here's the reality - which I happen to know as a Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University:

1. Colleges and universities do not usually keep or formally retain copies of undergraduate papers. If we do not return them to students at the end of the term, we might hold on to them in our offices for a few months into the next term, in case a student wants to come by and pick up the paper. That's it - they're gone after that (even in my messy office).

2. PhD dissertations and sometimes Masters theses are indeed kept on file both by universities, and by central repositories (such as University Microfilms - UMI). But Obama's paper was neither a doctoral dissertation or a masters thesis.

3. In fact, it would be a violation of a student's privacy for a professor to provide any journalist with a copy of a student paper.

4. Students are of course free to do with their papers as they please. But how many of you still have copies of your college papers? I don't (though for some reason I did keep a high school paper I wrote about Charles De Gaulle way back when. Go figure.) But there's no reason to think that Obama kept any of his college papers.

Hey, this whole subject is a good topic for a paper - maybe I'll assign it to my students at Fordham this Fall.

Score a big one for the First Amendment today.

"The First Amendment precludes the FCC from sanctioning CBS for the indecent expressive conduct" of Janet Jackson's nine-sixteenths-of-a-second exposed breast, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today, and in striking down the FCC's obscene $550,000 fine, the Federal appeals court not only saved CBS lots of money, but struck a blow for freedom of expression on television, and media in general.

It's good to remember that this current reign of FCC terror, in which fines of millions of dollars have been levied by the FCC against offending media, was ignited by that split second of Janet Jackson's breast in the Super Bowl Halftime show on CBS in 2004. The FCC said it received more than a million complaints from outraged Americans about indecent broadcasts that year, and even though it was later revealed that at least half were instigated by Brent Bozell's Parents Television Council (see my debate with Bozell below), the race to trample the First Amendment was on.

I just got back from seeing The Dark Knight, and it is eons better than any previous Batman movie, or, for that matter, any Superman or other movie made of a comic book character. In fact, The Dark Knight is as far away from comic book tropes and exaggerations as The Grapes of Wrath is to a nursery rhyme.  Not only that, it had a powerfully Democratic theme.  I'll get to that after a non-spoiler review...

Heath Ledger as The Joker was stunning and unforgettable - more like Brad Pitt in 12 Monkeys than Jack Nicholson's Joker in a previous Batman movie, and Nicholson was pretty good. A fitting last bow for Ledger indeed, and all the more tragedy that he won't be with us for more.

But Ledger's was not the only brilliant performance. Gary Oldman is truly in a class of his own in acting, playing radically different characters in different movies with the same ease and also unforgettable perfection. This time Oldman was James Gordon - and Gordon and the audience never had it so good.

Not your behind, necessarily, unless you wear saggy pants, below the buttocks, in Paterson, New Jersey. If you do, Councilman Anthony Davisapparently has had his eye on you - or, at least, your backside - and is sick and tired of seeing it. So much so, that he's pushing for fines for indecent exposure for anyone parading around with such low cuts.

To be clear, I don't think anyone is actually showing a complete, naked rear. It's big baggy underwear, with maybe a little of the top of the bottom line.

But to tell you the truth, I'm not really the best person to testify about this, because, the few times that someone wearing such an outfit has crossed my path, I didn't particular look. So maybe because I'm not particularly interested in seeing those behinds, and therefore haven't seen that many for all that long, I'm not tired of seeing them.

I've always loved trains, especially in the Northeast corridor. You can get to the heart of just about any big city from Boston to Washington, DC with less aggravation and often faster than a plane. And, unlike a car if you're the driver, you can sleep, get lots of work done, grab a bite to eat whenever you like, and the scenery isn't half-bad, either.

All of that was before the insanely high prices of gas, which have made not only autos more expensive to drive, but air travel, too. Trains of course also use energy, but the electricity that moves the trains draws less oil than cars or planes. An article a few weeks ago in The New York Times gives the details, along with the unsettling news that growing train use in our age of soaring gas prices may not be able to keep track with the aging equipment. Amtrak clearly needs help - or, more help than it's been getting from the Federal government. The article concludes with a brief mention of McCain opposing subsidies for Amtrak, versus Obama, who co-sponsored a bill that would increase them.

I decided to look into this a bit more. A DCist article from early June has the amazing rundown.

I can't see the inane New Yorker Obama cover having any adverse effect on the campaign. Who of Obama's supporters would change their vote because of this? Who of those who don't like Obama will be energized by this? I'd say no one. Those against Obama would have been, and will continue to be, whatever the New Yorker put on its cover.

But that doesn't mean that we should excuse let approve this ridiculous cartoon. Yes, The New Yorker has every right under the First Amendment to put whatever it pleases on its cover. But we the world have every right to object.

And more than anything, this lame attempt at satire shows how out of it, how behind the times, The New Yorker was with this cartoon. Hyperbole has a role in satire, but putting together a kitchen sink of canards about Obama goes beyond humor - there's too much wrong in this cartoon to find it funny or sage in its attempted criticism of Obama's nutcase critics.

Well, I've glowingly blogged and podcast about my Prius a few times in the past two years, but I was reminded again today just why I can't say enough good things about it.

I was sitting in my Prius at an intersection in Westchester County, NY. A big truck got stuck trying to make a turn. I missed about 4 lights before the truck was able to move again. For most of that time, my Prius wasn't costing me a cent of gas, because the internal combustion engine ("ICE") had automatically shut off, and the electrical engine had taken over.

Now, sure, I could have turned any car off, easily. But how many times have you ever really done that, sitting at a light for a long minute? Never, is my answer.

I'm really surprised about the flack Obama has been catching about the recent interview of him and his family - Michelle, and daughters Malia (age 10) and Sasha (age 7) - by Maria Menounos on Access Hollywood.

I found the interview heartwarming and delightful. It was a pleasure to see a family joking, quipping, even complaining about Obama leaving his suitcase on the floor. Maybe I'm not objective, but this reminded me of my wife and our kids, when they were younger, and seemed refreshingly normal in a candidate for President.

So why the uproar?

You've all likely read about this, and/or seen the video:

A 60-year old librarian in Denver was carrying a sign with the message, McCain=Bush, as she waited to attend a McCain town hall meeting at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts (a public venue). Some guy in a beige jacket asks her to remove the sign. She refuses. An onlooker asks him why she's been asked to remove the sign. The beige jacket responds that he was "asked" to do this, "by representatives of the Secret Service." Soon after, a Denver policeman starts talking, and informs the librarian that she has two choices: keep the sign, and be issued a ticket for "trespass," or get rid of the sign, in which case she can continue to stand in line to attend the McCain town hall event. Carol Kreck, the brave librarian, takes the ticket. She's escorted off the public premises, and tells the camera that she's been told that, if she returns, she'll be arrested.

This is one of the most outrageous violations of the First Amendment I've seen in a long time. Not a case of allegedly indecent broadcasting, in which there is at least a confused (and unconstitutional) Federal Communications Act to back it up. Not a shield law issue, which, although profound in its threat to the First Amendment, is not a direct assault upon it.

Good for Barack Obama for deciding to accept the Democratic Party nomination for President this August in a huge outdoor football stadium in Denver.

Stadiums are usually thought of nowadays as platforms for sports and celebrity concerts. But they have a history that hearkens back to the very roots of democracy.

In ancient Athens, the birthplace of democracy as far as we know, the ideal size for a democratic state was thought to be the number of citizens who could sit in a public arena or stadium and debate the issues.

My wife and I saw "Pete Seeger: The Power of Song" last night. Part of PBS's superb American Masters series, "The Power of Song" may well win an Emmy this year, and it would be eminently deserved. One of the best portraits of a singer - someone far more than a singer - I've ever seen.

Pete Seeger is 89, and has been a major player for good and peace throughout most of the 20th, and now the 21st, century. He had some number one records with the Weavers in the 1950s, was blacklisted in the McCarthy era, worked tirelessly for civil rights, and inspired the cleanup of the Hudson River in the 1990s - our kids actually helped a little with that when they were in summer camp. But what stands out most about Pete Seeger is his voice with banjo singing out against war.

My wife and I were inspired by him many times in the 1960s, when we were first dating, especially when we were marching in Washington in October, 1969 to stop that decade's unconstitutional, immoral war, and Pete Seeger, singing out John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance," across the street from the White House, shouted "Are ya listenin' Nixon?" And, it took a few painful years, but eventually Nixon had to, because the American people roused by heroes like Pete Seeger gave Nixon no choice.

Barack Obama has received considerable criticism for changing his positions on public financing (will now not use it in his campaign), and on FISA (supports the bill passed by the House). A few disappointed supporters have said he's therefore no different from John McCain, who changed his position on Bush's tax cuts (McCain now supports them), etc.

I think this misses the point, which is: what counts most is not whether a candidate changes positions, but whether the change is for the better or the worse. Let's look at the candidates and the issues:

Obama on public financing: I frankly never liked public financing of Presidential campaigns in the first place. Designed to prevent wealthy donors from dominating an election, public financing laws also get in the way of all Americans contributing to campaigns. Further, in the Bush/Kerry election of 2004, loopholes allowed millions of dollars to be spent on ads that swiftboated Kerry. And, worst of all, public financing gives the government too much power. It is illogical and dangerous to democracy to have the government that is up for election also determine who gets public financing for the election, and how much.