'Going Rogue' by the numbers: Sarah Palin's missing index has been found!

We salute Slate and the New Republic, whose quick-thinking staffers decided to produce an index for Sarah Palin’s bestselling book, “Going Rogue: An American Life.”  Some had speculated that Palin decided not to put an index in the back of her book to thwart the traditional "Washington read," which involves standing in a bookstore searching the index of a newly published tome for your name or the names of friends, enemies and/or frenemies.
   After reading the independent indices, we conclude that authors and publishers must be careful what they stint on. An independent index, it turns out, is more than a simple alphabetical listing of content. It’s a powerful analytical tool, as you will see from our excerpts of both versions:

Baby shower at shooting range 76
Bridge to Nowhere 237
“Captive” of McCain campaign 261
Caribou lasagna 218
“Change,” on originating campaign slogan before Obama 114, 225
Clinton, Hillary, Palin’s non-accusations about whining of 287
Couric, Katie Lack of knowledge about energy issues 207, 273; Low self-esteem of 256; As “lowest rated news anchor in network television 270; Unfair editing of interview with 272-275, 279; Lack of national pride 279

Secret Republican weapon for 2010 -- attack Pelosi

The House Republicans' campaign committee issued the first salvo last week, suggesting that Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal should approach House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and "put her in her place" on Afghan policy. Pelosi responded the next day, calling the statement a throwback to sexist rhetoric.

"I'm in my place. I'm speaker of the House, the first woman speaker of the House. And I'm in my place because the House of Representatives voted me there," she said. "That language is something I haven't even heard in decades."

But it's becoming clear that running against Pelosi -- describing her as an out-of-touch liberal representing a fringe San Francisco constituency -- is on the first page of the Republican playbook for the 2010 elections.

Republicans have used this playbook before, without success, running against Pelosi in 2006 and 2008. But this year, with Democrat Barack Obama in the White House and the midterm elections widely viewed as a referendum on his leadership, the GOP hopes Pelosi will prove a wedge issue among independent voters who swung a number of congressional districts from red to blue in last year's elections.

In August, the National Republican Congressional Committee rolled out an ad against a number of Blue Dog Democrats, including Illinois' Bill Foster.

The Republicans have been running the playbook all year. Back in April, when talk of omnibus spending was providing the heat of the moment, the NRCC launched this ad against Ohio Democrat Zack Space.

Will the ploy work this year?

Democrats are dismissive. "When Republicans have no ideas and no solutions, they resort to ineffective personal attacks,” said Jennifer Crider of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “Republicans’ Karl Rove-style attacks didn’t work in 2006, didn’t work in 2008, and they won’t work in 2010.”

But Republicans are salivating over Pelosi's low ratings, Obama's slipping popularity and a stubborn recession, convinced the mid-term elections give the anti-Pelosi campaign new promise. “Nancy Pelosi is a very polarizing figure, and she is clearly much more well-known today then she was four years ago,” Republican consultant Carl Forti told Politico.com. “She can definitely be used to help indict or impeach Democratic candidates on the issue.”

-- Johanna Neuman

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Sotomayor's first words in first Supreme Court argument

The case involved Hillary Clinton (the movie), the future of campaign finance reform and the sanctity of the 1st Amendment guarantee of free speech. Just the usual fodder for a Supreme Court tasked with being the last appeal for all causes, from all corners.

There were a few firsts.

Elena Kagan made her first argument at the high court as solicitor general, presenting the government's case that the movie was a campaign ad and therefore subject to regulation by the nation's campaign finance laws.

She was facing off against a former solicitor general, Theodore Olson, who was arguing that those laws violate the 1st Amendment rights of corporations and unions by banning them from political speech. "Why is it easier to dance naked, burn a flag or wear a T-shirt profanely opposing the draft," Olson said in July at the conservative Federalist Society, "than it is to advocate the election or defeat of a president? That cannot be right."

The case is so pivotal -- and so potentially tumultuous to decades of campaign finance law -- that the justices returned from their summer recess three weeks early to hear arguments.

And the case could be decided by two justices appointed by George W. Bush -- Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. -- who may have to choose between personal views and court precedents.

But no matter all of that.

Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina justice and the first high court appointment by President Obama, spoke her first words. And the world took note.

By all accounts, she jumped right into questioning. She appeared skeptical of arguments by Citizens United that the conservative group's 90-minute campaign-era movie about Clinton ("Not a musical comedy," observed Justice Stephen Breyer) was protected speech. And she questioned Olson about why he had abandoned a former argument -- that Citizens United was not really a corporation -- for a more sweeping one, that campaign funding restrictions discriminate against corporations.

Upbraided by several Republican senators during her confirmation hearings about the importance of respecting court precedents, she asked Olson why he seemed so intent on toppling it in this case. Her first words:

Mr. Olson, are you giving up on your earlier arguments that there are ways to avoid the constitutional question to resolve this case? I know that we asked for further briefing on this particular issue of overturning two of our Court's precedents. But are you giving up on your earlier arguments that there are statutory interpretations that would avoid the constitutional question?

His answer: No.

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Getty Images

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Man bites off man's finger at Obama healthcare rally

Here's a weird little piece of late-breaking news about the nation's healthcare reform debate:

A 65-year-old man at a Wednesday night California rally supporting President Obama's embattled reform ideas had a finger bitten off during a scuffle with anti-reform protesters.

Ventura County sheriff's deputies were called to  Lynn Road and Hillcrest Drive in Thousand Oaks near Los Angeles, according to TV station KTLA.

There, an estimated 100 supporters of healthcare reform affiliated with MoveOn.org had gathered as part of a nationwide array of pre-Labor Day rallies to attract attention in support of Obama's reform plans currently before Congress.

Instead, the rally attracted the attention of a group of anti-healthcare-reform protesters across the street.

Initial police reports say that one pro-protester moved into the group of anti-protesters.

Some angry words were exchanged.

One protester punched another, a witness told KTLA.

A scuffle ensued. And the pro-protester had a finger bitten off. (Updated at 8:18 a.m.: Conflicting later reports indicate the biter was a healthcare proponent and the now nine-fingered man an opponent.)

The injured man walked to Los Robles Hospital with his finger for, well, healthcare.

Sheriff's investigators were, well, investigating. Neither the biter nor the bitee were identified by midnight Pacific time.

(Updated at 12:52 a.m.: Karoli over at DrumsnWhistles has an eyewitness account that differs from the KTLA version, involving two men behaving "quite badly.")

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: A healthy little finger similar to one bitten off at a healthcare rally near Los Angeles on Wednesday night. Credit: Reuters

Politicos beware: Nevada jury says campaign mudslinging was libel

Nevada politics are not for the squeamish. Last fall, this reporter’s mailbox was overrun with attacks of questionable veracity: a county commission candidate was painted as a shady telemarketer whose buddies ripped off senior citizens; a state lawmaker, who is also a physician, was accused of casting votes that harmed cervical cancer patients.

By comparison, the insults exchanged between state Sen. Mike Schneider, a Democrat, and Danny Tarkanian in 2004 seem like child’s play. Ads suggested Tarkanian – the son of Jerry Tarkanian, the infamous University of Nevada, Las Vegas, basketball coach – was involved with companies that victimized the elderly and had socialized with illegal bookmakers.

Tarkanian, who lost in a district so Democratic that, according to Schneider, “Ronald Reagan could not get elected,” took the matter to court. As a public figure, Tarkanian had to prove his opponent made false allegations maliciously.

Last week, jurors – possibly fed up with political campaigns as clean as mud wrestling – sided with Tarkanian in his libel and defamation suit. In turn, Schneider agreed to a $150,000 settlement and said he had no plans to appeal. Political bigwigs here were understandably stunned at the verdict and its possible implications.

Schneider told the Las Vegas Review-Journal: “I believe this decision will have devastating ramifications on future campaigns and a chilling effect on free speech in general.”

We’ll soon find out. In 2010, Nevadans can expect warfare over the governor’s office and the seat of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. And, perhaps, mailboxes less packed with campaign vile.

-- Ashley Powers

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Photo: No, those aren't politicians. They're concert-goers at the All Points West music festival in Jersey City, N.J., on Sunday. Credit: Associated Press

More questions about Barack Obama's birth certificate, still

Well, here we go again on the Barack Obama birth certificate controversy that just won't die because it's one of those zombie issues like who really killed JFK.

No less an authority on politics, history and government archives than the Pat Boone is now raising serious questions about the legitimacy of the entire Obama administration and everything it has done since those 21 guns went off shortly after noon on Jan. 20.

This is because a lot of people, including firebrand conservative Alan Keyes (as The Ticket described here in February) and now Boone, insist or suggest or imply that Obama cannot be president of these United States because they insist, suggest or imply he wasn't really born in Hawaii but was actually born in Kenya, his father's homeland.

(See below for the certificate of live birth provided by the Obama staff a year ago, even though technically that's not a birth certificate.)

(Helpful Ticket Political Reminder: Obama thoroughly thumped Keyes, a last-minute hopeless fill-in GOP candidate, in his initial 2004 U.S. Senate run in Illinois. So there may be a lingering issue there in the mind of Keyes, wherever that is.)

Now, none of this should actually matter because Obama's mother was an American, if you consider Kansas America. So she could have been on Mars when wee Barry emerged and he'd still be American. All the courts have consistently thrown out challenges to the first African American president's legality. And Obama's spending, golfing and official POTUS Air Force One jacket sure don't indicate he's got any doubts about his legitimacy.

But maybe the courts are all part of a vast Kenyan socialist conspiracy or something. As they do daily, Wonkette has a lot of fun with its own theory about this conspiracy theory.

Anyway, the latest development is that Pat Boone, in an article headlined "Mr Obama, Show Us Your Birth Certificate," goes on a long while about the hassle of non-terrorists trying to board commercial American flights nowadays. Which is so true, isn't it?

It's gotten so bad, Pat reports, that he's actually turned down some gigs just to avoid the airport hassle. Which must be a nice position to be in, even with the hassle.

Pat -- we call him that because we've never met -- questions the validity of the certificate of live birth published on The Ticket. He raises dramatic fears about what will happen if years down the road Obama is actually proven to be legally barred from holding the Oval Office as is, say, California's Austrian-born Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

But then PB gets to his main point:

If I have to produce my passport, my driver’s license, my birth certificate, for things like leaving the country and returning, buying and selling and leasing and renting — all the things ordinary citizens are required to do all the time — why then, in the name of decency and equality, and, in the “open” and “transparent” approach to government Obama promised, should our elected leader not do the same?

Now, some might say, who is this Pat Boone to question the legitimacy of the president of the United States? Well, he's a lifelong conservative who had a very nice voice and made so many popular hits for your parents that for many years he was second only to a singer who died of drug issues (that would be Elvis).

Pat's qualifications also include popularizing the wearing of white suede shoes about a century or so ago, even though such foot gear is impossible to keep unscuffed for more than 27 seconds..

Pat says Obama is dismantling America’s free markets, taxing the higher-earning middle class into despondency, spending and taxing the nation into bankruptcy, imposing socialistic, government-run healthcare, seriously weakening our military and encouraging our enemies and enacting crippling and fraudulent “global warming” laws, among other nefarious things.

And, he asks, what if "he wasn’t even legally entitled to be president at all. Yes, it is important, crucially and everlastingly important. America’s very future depends on the defense of, and obedience to, our basic constitutional laws."

So while it seems unlikely Pat will be invited to perform at the next White House lesbian gay pride celebration, this birth certificate thing doesn't seem to be going away as quickly as white suede shoes.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Newt Gingrich on the Republican National Committee: Tiny group of 'precious' people

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who led the historic Republican Revolution of 1994 that gave his party control of both houses of Congress and might well be a 2012 presidential candidate, has a few typically pithy -- and critical -- words for his own Republican National Committee.

The national committees of both parties are charged with fund-raising and developing national election strategies, plus helping to recruit and train candidates.

The committees tend to play a more important role when they do not hold the White House, which controls political strategy.

After losing the White House in November and both houses of Congress, RNC Chairman Michael Steele faces a major rebuilding -- and rebranding and reunifying -- job for his 155-year-old party.

Appearing on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal" today (see video below), Gingrich was asked about reports of internal RNC feuding and efforts by the party's 168-member RNC to put spending controls on its new chairman, the former lieutenant governor of Maryland and the first African American to head the party of Lincoln.

Steele has had a rocky few initial weeks, as has his party adapting to the popular new Obama administration.

Asked if he thought the curbing attempts on Steele were leftover resentments from January's six-ballot struggle to elect a new chair, Gingrich agreed.

Then, with the usual shyness that has made him a very popular party speaker even 11 years after he stepped down, Gingrich added:

The Republican National Committee is this tiny group of people, some of whom have been there 20 years or more. And they all think they're precious. And they all think they should be taken care of. And they all think that the job of the chairman first of all is to make the RNC members happy.

Chances are few of those tiny people -- or was it a tiny group of people? -- will be feeling too happy watching this video. Gingrich has more to say on it. Worth watching.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: Associated Press

DNC to Norm Coleman: 'Enough is enough'

It's been 24 weeks since the Senate election in Minnesota between incumbent Republican Norm Coleman and comedian-turned-Democrat Al Franken.

And still the wrangling continues.

The latest news was Tuesday's development. A three-judge panel in the state ruled that Franken "received the highest number of votes legally cast." At last count, the former "Saturday Night Live" performer  was ahead by 312 votes out of nearly 3 million coast.

But Coleman has vowed to take his case to the state Supreme Court, arguing that more than 4,400 absentee ballots have yet to be counted. And both Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, a Democrat, seem content to let him take one last appeal to the state Supreme Court before this movie comes to a conclusion.

But Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said it was time for Coleman to concede, accusing him of putting his own ambition ahead of voter interests.

And just in case he didn't hear the message from Kaine, the DNC started running ads on news stations in the Twin Cities today, accusing Coleman and Republicans of wanting “to thwart the will of the voters” and delay the outcome.

“Enough is enough,” says an announcer, noting that Franken won the original election, the recount and a legal challenge. “America is in an economic crisis -- and Minnesota faces unique challenges of its own. Minnesota deserves two senators and voters deserve to have their verdict stand without delay.”

-- Johanna Neuman

Two ex-agents collect the secret stories of the Secret Service

Some of them are obvious at every presidential event -- the little curly wires running from their ear down inside the shirt and coat where the weapons are. There are, however, always more of them around than anyone sees.

The Secret Service guys and gals, who don't respond to anyone's comments but always have their eyes epoxyed on the hands of everyone in the excited crowd shoving to get near the commander-in-chief.
Barack Obamaand others have at times poked public fun at the stony faces of these government agents.

They're extra busy these days as Obama makes his first foreign foray overseas this week.

But you really don't hear much about these agents; hence, the name "secret." Few of them have revealed the fascinating private things they see and hear in the vehicles,the corridors or the freight elevators from the underground garages.

Presidents have taken that grungy route to their ballroom speeches ever since that September day in 1975 when the now-paroled Sara Jane Moore took a wild .38 pistol shot at President Gerald Ford as....

The wondrous ways Obama's Washington works--and doesn't get it

The night in 1865 that John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Lincoln in downtown Washington not far off the recent inaugural parade route for the man who used the same red Bible for his 2009 presidential oath, Booth's co-conspirators fanned out across town to murder other Cabinet members. The Union targets included William Seward, later of Alaska Purchase fame.

Turns out the assassins couldn't find their victims because they weren't at home. To be more accurate, Seward and others weren't in their rooms. Their rented rooms. In a boarding house.

That's the way Washington used to be, a place where representatives of the people went to work temporarily before they returned back home to the states, districts and, most important, the people they represented. Somewhere along the way, things got turned around.

Once elected, the representatives moved to the Washington area (Republicans generally to Virginia, Democrats to Maryland), got home mortgages there and, most likely, sold their home back home. Unless they had so many they couldn't keep track.

They lived in Washington and became part of a bipartisan, permanent political aristocracy because they knew, even if they ever got unelected, they'd be staying on to work in the lucrative legal-lobby-association complex that permeates that onetime swamp that Maryland gave away as worthless for the federal capital. (See video report on Obama's TV interviews about the Daschle withdrawal below.)

Pretty soon, even well-meaning elected folks began to represent Washington during their home district visits, instead of the original way. It takes a very strong personality to resist the self-import that comes from living and working and socializing in the national seat of power.

The same applies to the media, whose elites thrive on the access and exposure there. And it is a heady experience to address the president and others as unelected representatives of their audiences. Once assigned there, you may notice, few rotate back out into the field where most Americans live.

And so the District of Columbia becomes a club, mainly a fraternity still, with all the rights and privileges assigned to membership thereto. This club has its own culture, protocol and....