Barack camp: Beware of 'recycled bromides'

Barack Obama’s critics often say the Illinois senator is all talk and no action but, in a bit of role reversal, the wordsmith’s own campaign adopted that sort of attack language today.

In a statement responding to Sen. John McCain’s education remarks before the NAACP, the Obama camp lectured the Arizona Republican that "making education the national priority will require more than campaign speeches, or recycled bromides. It will require a genuine and sustained commitment to policies that will strengthen and not undermine our public schools."

The statement went on to promise that Obama would "fix and fund No Child Left Behind, expand access to early childhood education, and make an affordable college education a reality for every student."

McCain, for his part, took a moment to make nice toward his Democratic rival. (You think maybe he sensed that it wouldn’t be too smart to launch a sally against Obama before an NAACP audience?)

As the Times’ Robin Abcarian reported from the Cincinnati gathering, McCain drew his loudest cheers when he said of Obama: "Don't tell him I said this, but he is an impressive fellow in many ways."

McCain added, "Of  course, I would prefer his success not continue quite as long as he hopes. But it makes me proud to know the country I've loved and served all my life is still a work in progress, and always improving."

On education, Abcarian reported, McCain advocated better pay for good teachers and new teacher recruitment programs, and he vowed to fully fund No Child Left Behind, the Bush Adminstration’s  program for improving school performance. McCain also promoted a cause dear to conservatives’ hearts, school vouchers, noting the distinction between his position on that score and Obama’s.

-– Stuart Silverstein

Hillary Clinton campaigns in her hometown -- and Obama's

Sen. Hillary Clinton celebrated a double-homecoming of sorts in Chicago today, visiting the city where she was born and paying homage to the American Federation of Teachers, which endorsed her unsuccessful run for the Democratic presidential nomination way back in October of last year.

Was it only 2007?

"I'm here to say thank you for the privilege of working with you in this presidential campaign," she told an enthusiastic crowd of more than 3,000 delegates at the union's convention on Chicago's waterfront Navy Pier.

"It was a remarkable journey, one that I would not have wanted to make without you, and I feel very privileged that you went with me as we crisscrossed America."

But more than just offering her appreciation, Clinton received a standing ovation as she played the role of campaign surrogate for the man who defeated her for the presidential nomination, presumptive nominee Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, more specifically now of the city's South Side.

"I bear such a sense of debt to those who gave me so much," Clinton told the crowd, discussing the teachers she had while growing up in suburban Park Ridge. Our blogging colleague David Pearson has the rest of the story on the New York senator's campaign day in Illinois.

--Andrew Malcolm

Photo credit: Newsday

In his own words: John McCain on taxes, earmarks, the economy

This is another in The Ticket's continuing series of items called In His/Her Own Words, in which we dedicate the entire story to the full text of someone's remarks in politics.

Recent Ticket Word items have included Hillary Clinton speaking about Barack Obama, Obama explaining his view of lapel flag pins and Clinton, Obama and John McCain talking about one another at the end of the primary season.

This one is the complete text of Sen. McCain's first weekly radio address today, intended as a regular feature of his general election campaign to become president -- and to get the chance to give his own weekly presidential radio addresses that not that many people actually listen to but that have become a regular PR tool for White House residents for putting out a particular message they want to be seen/heard talking about.

Here's the text of today's McCain radio remarks:

"Good morning. I'm John McCain, and this week I've been on the road in Colorado, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. I've been holding town hall meetings to talk over the subject on most everyone's minds these days -- our slowing economy.

"More than 400,000 Americans have lost their jobs since December, and the rate of new job creation has fallen sharply. Americans are worried about the security of their current job, and they're worried that they, their kids and their neighbors may not find good jobs and new opportunities in the future.

"It's a big problem when gasoline, food and other necessities of life carry the price tag of luxury goods, and that's what it feels like to millions of Americans.

"I have a plan to grow this economy, and it starts with getting a handle on the cost of gasoline and regaining America's energy ...

New GOP group to target Barack Obama in ad campaign

The Republican National Committee has spun off its own independent expenditure committee and plans an initial $3 million ad buy targeting Barack Obama in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Politico reports.

Why the separate group?

Brad Todd, who will run the effort, blamed Obama in a statement to Politico:

"Following Barack Obama's decision to become the only major party presidential candidate in history to not adhere to campaign spending caps, the Republican National Committee has begun an independent expenditure campaign in accordance with FEC regulations."

Under federal law there are no limits on how much the group can spend, though it cannot coordinate efforts with John McCain's campaign or the RNC. Still, both have helped to raise some of the funds that will launch the new effort.

So now we know where the RNC will be funneling some of its cash advantage over the Democratic National Committee to try to compensate for the record-breaking fundraising Obama has enjoyed. And the decision to target those Rust-Belt states underscores the GOP view that Obama is vulnerable in that part of the nation. Three of the four -- Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin -- went Democratic in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections.

Lot of white working-class men and women in those states, which account for 68 electoral votes.

-- Scott Martelle

Top of the Ticket, the start of Year Two

On this, the first anniversary of our Top of the Ticket blog, we are reminded of the mercurial, unpredictable nature of U.S. politics -- part of what makes what we do so fascinating.

Our goal -- one of us on the East Coast and the other on the far more important or at least less humid West Coast -- was to write about Campaign '08 virtually around the clock.

Our second-ever posting, 12 months ago today, previewed an upcoming L.A. Times/Bloomberg Poll; later in the day, we detailed the results of the nationwide survey. The findings were in line with other polls of the time.

In the Republican presidential race, which then seemed the most likely to last deep into the primary season, Rudy Giuliani was perched in first place. His lead wasn't overwhelming, but it was strong enough that he appeared certain to remain a major contender.

His liberal record on social issues loomed as an obvious liability within his party, but his tough-on-terrorism message was attracting substantial support from moderates and GOP-leaning independents.

His major headache among rivals last June was an as-yet-undeclared candidate who was riding a wave as the great conservative hope -- Fred Thompson. He ran a strong second in the poll.

Lagging far behind were John McCain and Mitt Romney, each barely with double-digit support. In our preview posting, we were especially scornful of McCain, noting sarcastically (and foolishly, as it turned out) that in the poll, he found himself "in heated competition with the 'Don't Know' category."

Meriting no mention from us was Mike Huckabee, one of several back-of-the-pack candidates barely earning any support across the country.

The Democratic race, at that point, seemed so much more cut-and-dried.

Hillary Clinton was the clear front-runner; Barack Obama was just as clearly ...

How Barry Obama decided to become Barack Obama

Last month we had the flap over whether members of the public could use the actual middle name of Barack Hussein Obama openly because the Arabic-sounding, maybe-he-really-is-a-Muslim name his parents gave him can now be used by a malevolent few to impugn the Democratic candidate's patriotism and Americanness in an era of terror over terrorism.

Obama's travails in recent days over his 20-year association with a Chicago Christian church and racial rants of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright there may have pretty well erased the Muslim concern, though creating their own black nationalist worries in the minds of some.

But this morning, as part of the ongoing lengthy discovery process about the vital narratives of our remaining presidential candidates, out comes Newsweek with an intriguing article about the 1980-81 era in Obama's life when he was a California college student at Occidental known as Barry Obama. (With a tip of the hat to the Politico's Mike Allen.)

The magazine cover story describes a gradual personality change in the young man when he actually reversed the assimilation process his Kenyan immigrant father had made upon arriving in 1959 and wanting to fit into the American melting pot. So the father's name of Barack became Barry.

In the early 1980s, with his father long absent and returned to Africa, the would-be politician re-chose Barack, to the consternation of some family members. "It was when I made a conscious decision: I want to grow up," Obama told the magazine.

According to Newsweek's account by Richard Wolffe, Jessica Ramirez and Jeffrey Bartholet, the name change -- or reversal -- became part of the biracial young man's personal discovery that he occupied a potentially unique political position in modern America, as someone who knew intimately both life as a white and an African American.

It's a revealing magazine story and one of the better arguments for what have become 22-month presidential campaigns; they give us more time to learn more about the inner lives of the surviving White House contenders.

-- Andrew Malcolm

Could Arnold Schwarzenegger win California for John McCain?

Half the fun of politics-watching is politics-speculating, and John Mercurio at the National Journal mused yesterday on what John McCain might gain by making an early play for Arnold Schwarzenegger as a member of his cabinet. It's a subscriber-only site, but we'll summarize Mercurio's thinking.

In a word, California.

Republican presidential contenders have won California before, and with the right play -- to the middle, primarily -- they could win it again. How do you make that play? You start by signing up the guv, who has won the state twice. Imagine the "Terminator" as secretary of Homeland Security. Or the  "Kindergarten Cop" in charge of education.

And if McCain does win California, the 55 electoral votes the Democrats usually count on would suddenly be in the "red" column -- a potentially watershed change in the electoral map (though one suspects Hollywood would start a secessionist movement with Rob Reiner holding the flag).

While winning California would be tough, Mercurio says McCain adding Schwarzenegger to his cabinet  isn't that big a leap. Schwarzenegger endorsed McCain, and Mercurio points out that although they have some big policy difference they share some staff -- including Adam Mendelsohn, the governor's former communications director, and Steve Schmidt, who led Schwarzenegger's reelection campaign. Both men know how to play in the state.

But it is a state that is overwhelmingly Democratic, and their past intense dislike of George Bush could be enough to kill any Republican's chances here. And one argument against Schwarzenegger heading to Washington: It's a worse commute than Sacramento.

-- Scott Martelle

After a tame start, Obama and Clinton spar over words

The overall tenor of the first half of tonight's much-anticipated Democratic debate was summed up by Barack Obama's first comment as he followed Hillary Clinton in answering a question on immigration policy: "Well, this is an area where Sen. Clinton and I almost entirely agree."

Obama also became more spirited in his responses as the immigration issue was hashed over, getting in a well-received dig at the No Child Left Behind education program.

As the debate's second half began, questioner John King launched an effort to change that, asking Clinton about her increasing effort to depict Obama as more style than substance. And the effort succeeded as the issue of plagiarism -- i.e., Obama's recent use of speech lines first used by one of his staunch supporters, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick -- was raised.

Obama dismissed the flap as part of the campaign's "silly season."

But Clinton wanted to engage on the dispute, using a line that obviously had been cooked up in advance.

Lifting "whole passages" from someone else's speech, she said, isn't "change you can believe in" (one of Obama's patented lines) but "change you can Xerox."

The barb didn't play well, at least with those in the debate hall -- it sparked some boos and hisses.

-- Don Frederick

Parsing Bush's State of the Union words over 7 years

Here's something you can't do with your newspaper.

The Times' Ben Welsh has deconstructed online the most common words from every one of President Bush's seven State of the Union speeches and one Budget Address. They total 40,655 words and it took Bush six hours and 57 minutes to deliver them all over his entire term. (Although last night's address, the longest by 174 words, was likely Bush's last State of the Union, some presidents like Ford and Johnson have chosen to speak to joint sessions one last time just days before they leave office.)

Now, don't ask someone who blogs with two fingers how Welsh did this, but he's imaginatively created what's called a word cloud. You can find it here on this website. Using the president's own words and the frequency in which he uses them, it's an amazing and creative tool for even non-historians to measure right before their very eyes how national times and presidential priorities change over the years.

Notice how the words in Welsh's word cloud are different sizes; the more often they're used, the larger the type. Now put your cursor on the little thingy with the arrows that runs across the top of the type and drag it to the left. The dates of the speeches change.

You are literally moving back through time and all eight speeches. See how the words change in size. "America" and "Americans" are usually large as are words like "Congress," "health" and "must" because they're used so often, perennially. So was "Saddam" and "Hussein" and "weapons" back before 2003. Now, not at all.

"Al Qaeda" doesn't appear until 2002. "Security" appears more often as time passes. "Children" are there along with "health" and then "retirement."

You can detect your own patterns over the years. Feel free to offer your observations in the comments below.

--Andrew Malcolm

Correction: An earlier version of this post included a comparison of exact word counts between years that was mistakenly drawn from an incomplete draft analysis. It has been removed.

Mitt Romney, a Republican who actually likes granola!

Would-be-president  Mitt Romney starts every morning with a bowl of granola with oats, honey, sesame seeds and almonds. Every other morning he jogs three miles. "And then at the end of the day," Romney tells Jay Leno on tonight's "Tonight Show" on NBC, "just to really relax, I take off a dark suit like this and put on a light one."

(Laughter)

Fresh off his Michigan GOP primary victory and on the eve of the South Carolina Republican primary and the Nevada caucuses, Romney was making fun of his own stiff image. The other day on the stump Romney asked his wife Ann to muss up his famously-perfect hair. But she wouldn't.

As usual, Leno asks a wide range of topical questions. Romney said his confrontation with an AP reporter Thursday was "a normal thing. These guys have a responsibility to be adversarial, and, you know, we don't treat them real well.  The guys that follow us in the presidential race come in a whole group.  We put them ...

'Ding, dong, Clintons calling!'

Manchester, N.H. -- The Clinton campaign had a couple of extra volunteers today for last-minute canvassing: Hillary Clinton herself, and her daughter Chelsea. The mother-daughter tag team went door-to-door on Ash Street, making the New York senator's case directly to voters. And in a direct reflection of the overall campaign here, she met with mixed success, as our colleague Peter Nicholas reported.

It's a nice day here, in the low 40s and overcast but the snow pack is melting, so let's walk part of the the street with the Clintons, as related by Nicholas.

At the end of the visit to first home, the woman who answered the door told her: "Keep Gov. Richardson in mind." Clinton sang the praises of the New Mexico governor -- and one of her low-polling rivals who served as United Nations ambassador and energy secretary in the Bill Clinton administration. "I like him a lot," Clinton said. "He's been a friend of mine for a long time. Of course, my husband gave him two good jobs.''

After leaving another house, Clinton was asked by a TV reporter how she felt about the Democratic debate Saturday night. "Really good,'' Clinton said. "We're starting to draw a contrast for New Hampshire voters between talkers and doers.''

The debate performance may have helped her in a couple of houses. Clinton sat down at a table with first-grade teacher Maura Labrie, her 4-year-old son Nathan ...

Rudy Giuliani takes a ride

Manchester, N.H. -- While visiting the Segway factory in Bedford, N.H., several days ago, Republican Rudy Giuliani passed on riding the famed scooter the company manufactures -- spooked, perhaps, by President Bush's rocky experience in 2003 when he lost his balance. But Saturday, Giuliani decided to throw caution to the wind (after he got a quick lesson from the Segway's inventor, Dean Kamen).

"Fascinating ... I think I'm going to keep it," Giuliani said as he stepped off the two-wheeled personal transporter in a gym at Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester. "It would make campaigning much easier. I could shake three times as many hands."

Giuliani, who needs a good showing in Tuesday's New Hampshire primary to regain momentum that has ebbed away from his presidential campaign, was giving a speech kicking off a national competition for Kamen's organization FIRST ("For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology"). The Times' Maeve Reston was there, and she reports that the candidate, straying from message, couldn't stop gushing over the Segway.

And while he may have been trying to spotlight his knowledge of other countries, he began to sound ...

Thompson targets the leading teachers group

Restrained and constrained.

If this campaign season's YouTube debates -- and a few others -- often provoked free-wheeling and unpredictable exchanges, today's forum in Iowa among the Republican presidential candidates was about as buttoned-down as they come.

Want Mike Huckabee to better explain his 1992 comment that AIDS sufferers should be quarantined? Want to hear more about what he meant by recently wondering aloud, ''Don't Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?''

We did, but the producers and questioner for today's debate decided not to go there. Presumably, those and other controversial topics will get a full airing in the coming days, but that won't happen in face-to-face encounters (the forum was the last for the GOP candidates before the Jan. 3 caucuses).

The Times' Mark Z. Barabak and Michael Finnegan covered the debate, and their story can now be found here (as well as in Thursday's print editions).

We do have to give moderator Carolyn Washburn credit for asking a good question about education -- not only because the subject is often ignored on the campaign trail, but because ...

Mike Bloomberg Watch: Now he's meeting with Obama

You know the New Yorker who's mixed up in all that presidential talk?

Not the Democratic one who always cheered for the Cubs before she always cheered for the Yankees. And not the Republican one who always cheers for the Yankees unless they lose in the playoffs when he always cheers for any other American League team still playing.

No, not that pair. But the New Yorker who used to be both a Democrat and then a Republican, now calls himself an independent and has enough money to buy his own baseball league. Mike Bloomberg, the current mayor. He's the one who keeps saying he has no intention of running for president and then goes on to talk about what kind of president America needs and the terrible gridlock he sees in Washington but not in New York where he often takes the subway, which he could also buy his own of.

Let's be honest. The businessman loves to be seen toying with the idea of an independent run for the White House. He knows how to play the media: the more he denies interest, the more they ask him about it in case there's a nuanced change. It's their job to look for a story. And Mike is just playing and holding the spotlight while he does.

Still, an independent candidacy would save all the expense and hassle and talk of....

Money: McCain needs more, Clinton's handing it out

Funny how so often in politics it comes down to money.

John McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, sent out an almost plaintive post-debate e-mail to supporters a few hours ago. Eight men stood on that debate stage, he said, "but only one man was a president. On issue after issue, John McCain rose above the bickering and gave voters straight answers with a winning message, raising the level of discourse."

He rattled off how close the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary dates are. "The only thing that is holding us back right now is money. We have the best candidate, the best message and the best organization in the states. But we are competing with well-funded and self-funded candidates." And he asked for immediate donations. "The time is now," he said.

In another part of the political and financial spectrum, Hillary Clinton visited Bennettsville, S.C., the other day. She toured the 50-year-old middle school there, decried its dilapidated condition, and said improving education was an important part of her presidential platform.

Then, as cameras recorded the event for the evening news and newspaper, the Democratic presidential candidate presented a check for $100,000 to the new $6.4-million Marian Wright Edelman Public Library fund there. Edelman, of course, is the founder of the Children's Defense Fund, which once employed a much younger law school graduate named Hillary Rodham.

The $100,000 check came from the Clinton Foundation, which is run by Hillary and Bill Clinton. But we don't actually know where any of the foundation's money really comes from because the Clintons do not release the names of their donors, one of many things about their lives and doings they've decided not to release to the public.

That secret part, however, didn't make the Bennettsville evening news or the newspaper. But the money and the smiles in the photographs looked really good for the Clinton campaign.

-- Andrew Malcolm

Obama pushes his $26-billion middle-class plan

Our colleague Janet Hook is on the road in Iowa with Barack Obama, and was on hand this morning in Bettendorf, near Davenport, as he outlined his economic plan to improve the lives of the nation's middle class. 

Hook reports that Obama's plan doesn't differ that much from one Hillary Clinton unveiled a month ago, and that he tried to argue that the key difference was in who would be best suited to push the agenda.

"We're not going to reclaim that (American) dream unless we put an end to the politics of polarization and division that is holding this country back," Obama said, "unless we stand up to the corporate lobbyists that have stood in the way of progress; unless we have leadership that doesn't just tell people what they want to hear -- but tells everyone what they need to know.''

Hook reports that the Obama plan "includes college tuition tax credits, liberalized family leave for working parents, and new employer mandates to help workers save for retirement." Obama said the agenda was designed to "put some wind at the backs of working people, to lower the cost of getting ahead and to protect and extend opportunity for the middle class."

Obama's speech on economic policy "comes at a time when polls indicate his political strength remains among more affluent voters, not the middle- and working-class families that would benefit most from the plans he unveiled Wednesday -- a package that also included many elements, such as his healthcare and middle-class tax cuts," Hook writes.

Obama's staff said the initiative would cost about $26 billion a year and would:

-- Require employers who do not offer pensions to automatically enroll employees in a direct-deposit retirement savings account. Employees may opt out of the plan, but Obama argues that participation rates will be higher than giving employees the option to participate but leave the initiative to them.

-- Provide a $4,000 annual tax credit for college expenses -- an amount Obama's staff estimates would cover two-thirds of the cost of the average public university.  The credit would be refundable, meaning it would come in the form of cash to low-income people who do not owe taxes.

-- Require employers to provide seven paid sick days a year.  He also would expand the federal Family and Medical Leave Act to allow workers to take time off for school conferences, doctors appointments and other purposes beyond the medical caretaking now allowed.  He also would set up a $1.5-billion fund to encourage states to require family leave to be paid, not unpaid, as is now the case under federal law.

-- Overhaul federal bankruptcy laws to lighten the strain on families in financial hardship due to medical problems, and establish other consumer protections.  He underscored his opposition to a bankruptcy reform bill that critics denounced as too favorable to credit card companies and banks.

During the speech, Obama hit one of his pay-off lines -- "I'll be a president who stands up for working parents'' -- and a 1-year-old girl in the back of the room jumped up on her mother's lap and squealed in delight.

But Hook reports the girl's mother, Brooke Bribriesco, in her 20s, was less impressed.  Joe Biden is her candidate because, she said, he is more "substantive'' than Obama, whom she dismissed as "more idealistic than realistic.''

Ouch.

-- Scott Martelle

Introducing Jenna Bush, the blond one

Before they became the First Family, few things could cause as dark a cloud to come over the faces of George W. and Laura Bush as media questions about their twin daughters, Jenna and Barbara. It was actually then-Gov. Bush's fond dream that the pair would campaign with him the way he had with his father over the years.

But the teenage girls, named for their grandmothers, wanted their privacy and nothing to do with campaigning. Although they were frequently at campaign events, they mingled with friends off to the side and rarely took the stage. The idea of a reporter interviewing one or both of them never got past the first few words.

How much things change, especially when one of them has a new book coming out.

We are suddenly about to learn a lot at least about Jenna, the blond one. She's the younger twin, by one minute. And in the new issue of People magazine and tonight with Diane Sawyer on ABC News' "20/20," the 25-year-old elementary school teacher talks about her new book, "Ana's Story," the true story of a 17-year-old mother living with HIV.

It grew out of her job teaching for UNICEF in four Latin American and Caribbean countries, where Bush documented the lives of children living in extreme poverty, typically with HIV/AIDS and often in abusive households. "This book," the young Bush wrote, "does not have a tidy ending because it is a work of nonfiction based on a life in progress.... This book must end, but Ana's story is still being written, this time by her."

We learn a little in the ABC piece and People about her fiance, Henry Hager, the 29-year-old son of a prominent Virginia Republican family, and how he dragged her up a mountain in Maine in the predawn darkness of Aug. 15 to propose marriage as the sun rose. We learn that her sister Barbara and mother conspired with Hager to size the custom-made reset ring, originally his great-grandmother's.

Asked if it's hard to watch her father so vilified on television, Jenna says the family doesn't watch much television anymore. "He's a different person to me than what they portray him as," she says.

She declines to talk about the Iraq war. Sawyer presses the issue, saying some people like Matt Damon say the Bush daughters should be fighting in Iraq. "I think," says Jenna, "there are many ways to serve your country...I think if people really thought about it, they know that we would put many people in danger. But I understand the point of it. I hope that I serve by being a teacher."

She says her partying days, once the subject of tabloid fodder, are over. "I've grown in the past five years," she says. "I've become really disciplined."

She says she's eagerly anticipating the end of her father's second term. "It will be fun to have some of him back," she says.

-- Andrew Malcolm

The 'Jena Six' and Democratic politics

The story of the "Jena Six," which our colleague Miguel Bustillo wrote about over the weekend, is one of those nuance-filled tales of old prejudices and modern responses that bedevil politicians.

If you're unfamiliar with the details, the short version (and you really should read Bustillo's article linked above) is that the story began last year when a black high school student in Jena, La., wanted to sit under a tree traditionally used by white students (separate but equal trees?).  The next day, nooses were found hung from the tree, an act that escalated racial tensions.

A series of racial confrontations and altercations ensued, including an attack with a beer bottle and the brandishing of a shotgun, and culminated in a beating in December in which six black youths ganged up on a white student.  None of the white students involved in the earlier fracases were hit with any serious charges.  But the official response to the last beating was to treat the black teens as adults and charge them with attempted murder -- their sneakers were deadly weapons, was the theory -- which critics argue was an overzealous response born of racism.

Last Friday, a Louisiana appeals court overturned the aggravated second-degree battery conviction of one of the teens on the grounds that he had been improperly charged as an adult, seeming to validate the critics' complaints.

Hillary Clinton addressed the case directly Monday in a speech before the Charleston, S.C., NAACP, calling for a federal investigation into the legal treatment of the Jena Six.  Barack Obama also criticized the legal proceedings, but apparently not strongly enough for the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who, although he has endorsed Obama, reportedly described him as "acting like he's white."  John Edwards spoke out on the case this morning.  It's unclear whether Bill Richardson has made any statements about the case.

But with Clinton and Obama vying for the support of African American voters -- a key party demographic -- this is a story that could well resonate deep into the primary calendar.  Not to mention the legal calendar.

-- Scott Martelle

Clinton, here for cash, stops by a school too

Not exactly a hardball policy question for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton at King/Drew Magnet High School in Willowbrook today. But perhaps appropriate in the la-la land of Botox and nips-and-tucks.

A man stepped to the meeting room microphone and identified himself as a community college adjunct professor. "By the way," he said, "you're extremely attractive." 

"And your question is?" replied emcee Rep. Laura Richardson, as the candidate appeared to blush.

The moment soon dissolved into substance, with a question about the relative funding levels of prisons and education, which Clinton handled with a well-practiced laundry list of programmatic solutions like smaller classes, more funding, better teachers. "It takes a village to make sure every child gets an education," she said, riffing on the title of her long-ago book.

Like so many such outings in political years, the event was an excuse to get the candidate (Clinton) together in public with a celebrity (Earvin Magic Johnson). King/Drew was merely a stage and the crowd was there as props for the cameras to film listening and applauding as the basketball star effusively endorsed the wife of the man he endorsed for president in 1992.

Southern California is a long way for a candidate, even a longtime frontrunner, to travel in a ...

Talking heads

And no, this isn't about music and the rock band David Byrne fronted.  It's about the online Democratic presidential debate put together by Huffington Post, Slate and Yahoo!, which went live today.  After being billed this spring as the first online debate and promising to make it interactive with viewers, the planners turned in a different direction and opted for the "mash-up" approach, according to Mario Ruiz, spokesman for Huffington Post.  And with the candidates being asked questions separately by PBS' Charlie Rose, there was no debate involved.

For Web-savvy folks, this seems more like a missed opportunity than anything groundbreaking.  The best that can be said for it is that users can narrow the presentation to the candidates they like, but it's still static.  There's a mechanism for voting for your favorite candidate, and some message boards, but as of mid-morning the boards were mostly silent, even after moderators salted them with questions to try to start a dialogue.

And the one potentially interesting element -- letting users grab raw video from the answers and creating their own Q&A mashups -- died on the vine.  Too bad.  It could have been entertaining (though not very informative) to find alternative answers to the "wild card" question Bill Maher asked John Edwards on whether he would extend his criticism of SUVs to cows, since methane (and clear-cutting for grazing lands) also contributes to global warming.  Imagine cutting and splicing answers to that question from Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's responses to a question about Gen. David Petraeus' report to Congress this week.

-- Scott Martelle

That other civic political duty

A lot of attention is focused on voting during the gradually increasing heat of presidential election campaigns. What would elections be without voting?  It's considered a fundamental right and properly celebrated, although, alas, not universally exercised in this country where so many benefits are taken for granted.

But what often gets overlooked in these intensely political campaigns is that other civic duty that so many try to ignore in a democracy: jury duty.

That's the opportunity to sit around all day in a sterile public room with hard wooden or plastic chairs on the off chance that some lawyers making considerably more than $15 a day will agree that you should sit in honest human judgment of their client or the prosecution and then, if the accused is sufficiently famous or infamous, both you and your family will be subjected to relentless media harassment and scrutiny until you agree to talk in public about what it was like to meet in secret with 11 strangers and come up with a verdict that so many other citizens disagree with, even though they did not hear any of the testimony.

So in order to recognize this thrilling part of democracy in action, the U.S. Postal Service yesterday issued a new stamp. It costs 41 cents. It shows the profiles of 12 representative jurors only in silhouette to protect their identity. Their names were not released either.

At a New York City ceremony marking Juror Appreciation Day (to show their appreciation, officials called no jurors to the ceremony), New York State Chief Judge Judith Kaye said the new stamp "celebrates the important role of our citizenry in the delivery of justice." Presumably the stamp also plays an important role in the delivery of mail.

One problem, however, has already showed up with the new stamps.  You have to lick them by 8 a.m. and then they must be left sitting around in a sterile room all day drying until at least 4 p.m..

-- Andrew Malcolm 

Rudy's record as mayor

One of the major points that Rudy Giuliani frequently makes about why he should become the Republican nominee for president is that, unlike any of the Democrats and some of his Republican opponents, he's been a chief executive, run a very large government as mayor of America's largest city and brought about numerous reforms.

In his campaign for office in the 1990s, Giuliani promised to cut crime, boost the city's economy and fix the seriously troubled schools. A detailed examination by The Times Ralph Vartabedian into his management style and methods, possible windows into how he would govern as president, finds that Giuliani accomplished two of those goals.

But when it came to education, his bare-knuckle tactics and refusal to compromise on issues both big and small produced a controversial record with some serious defeats.

Vartabedian's full report is available here on this website and in Thursday's print editions.

--Andrew Malcolm

Academics moving into political giving

Those folks with the pointy-heads, the beards and the leather patches on the elbows of their sport coats are getting into the political money game big-time.

A new study by the Center for Responsive Politics finds that political donations by academics totaled $8.8 million 11 years ago to rank education 34th in terms of giving occupations. By 2000, that amount nearly doubled to $16.5 million and more than doubled again by 2004 to $37 million. That ranks education eighth in giving among all industries. (So that's where all those tuition increases are going!)

Using the Center's data, an article in today's Boston Globe by Marcella Bombardieri notes that so far this year professors and others in education have given more money to federal candidates than workers in the fields of pharmaceuticals, computers and oil. Education ranks 14th for 2007, behind law, medicine, Wall Street and real estate.

Of the more than $7 million donated in the first six months of 2007, 75% went to--now, who do you really think?--Democrats. More than $4.1 million of it went to presidential candidates with Barack Obama receiving the most ($1.5 million) and Hillary Clinton coming in second ($940,000). But Mitt Romney still got $448,000 for third place.

Experts say academics have become more aware of the influence of money in politics in recent years (where exactly have they been the last 30 years?) and while some instructors are modestly paid, many tenured faculty now rake in income well into six figures, providing room for political donations.

The heavily-liberal tilt to academic giving could contribute to the continuing controversy over teaching politics in the classroom. "Academia today," says Stephen Balch of the conservative National Association of Scholars, "is much more like a church with a creed than an open marketplace of ideas."

Theda Skocpol, a Harvard political scientist, counters, "To make a political judgment and a choice is not bias. It is citizenship."

--Andrew Malcolm

L.A. teen to dine with Obama

Given who we work for, we were naturally interested when Barack Obama's presidential camp today identified Brittany Washington, a college student from Los Angeles, as one of the lucky small donors picked to have dinner with the candidate she supports.  The meal, to take place at a yet-to-be-named site in September, will be the second orchestrated by Obama's campaign to, in its words, give him a chance to sit down "with four regular people from across the country" and hear their views.

Washington, who has a particular interest in education issues, might serve another purpose: suggesting to Obama that his staff brush up on its grammar.

One of the releases we received announcing Washington's selection referred to her as a "student from Los Angeles that attends Howard University in Washington."  The word we italicized, of course, should be "who."

We tracked the 19-year-old on her cellphone, and she was forgiving of the miscue.  The political science major said she was "excited" about the opportunity to break bread with Obama, and that among the topics she intended to talk about was his "vision for education in America and his vision for healthcare."

The latter subject is especially meaningful for Washington -- her mother recently passed away, and the family's experience with the healthcare system was hardly a positive one.

First Lady adds a new title

When Laura Bush was a little girl, she used to set her dolls up in rows and teach them like a class. She did, in fact, go on to become an inner-city schoolteacher and a librarian. Colleagues and former students recall she always had a book to suggest they read each time they saw her.

Despite many distractions--or perhaps because of many distractions--her love of books never faded, and even during her husband's hectic political campaigns, she would consume two or three new books a week.

Now, she gets to write one. And her coauthor is daughter, Jenna, a 25-year-old public charter school teacher in Washington.

According to USA Today, the pair have signed with HarperCollins to write a children's book, as yet untitled, about a mischievous second-grade boy who professes to dislike books. It will be illustrated by Denise Brunkus, whose drawings appeared in the Junie B. Jones series. "It's loosely based on students we both had in our classrooms," says Mrs. Bush.

It'll be published next spring, with proceeds going to national teaching programs Teach for America and the New Teacher Project.

Writing such a book is a real challenge, the first lady says, because "in a picture book there are so few words, so each word has to be perfect."

Jenna Bush has already written a nonfiction book aimed at teenagers, "Ana's Story." It's about a 19-year-old single mother living in Panama with HIV and is based on Jenna's experiences as a UNICEF intern in Central America. It comes out next month, also from HarperCollins.

Now, what about a blockbuster memoir from the president's wife? "Not now," she says. "Maybe after we go home."

--Andrew Malcolm

Poverty on their minds

As John Edwards stopped in Kentucky Wednesday to wrap up a three-day tour aimed at focusing attention on poverty in America, Barack Obama --- perhaps not coincidentially --- tackled the same issue just a few miles away from where he works as a U.S. senator.

Obama delivered a lengthy speech in Anacostia, a long-blighted District of Columbia community almost literally in the shadow of the Capitol. Some of what Obama had to say echoed what Edwards has been stressing in his bid to elevate poverty as a major topic in the Democratic presidential campaign. Indeed, for both men, Robert F. Kennedy is serving as a point of departure.

Edwards ended his trip in Prestonsburg, Ky., where Kennedy concluded a visit to impoverished parts of Appalachia during his 1968 presidential campaign. Obama invoked Kennedy and the question he posed about intense pockets of poverty in America --- “How can a country like this allow it?” --- at the very start of his speech.

Obama, no doubt cognizant of criticisms that he was light on specifics in the initial stage of his campaign, went beyond mere rhetoric as his remarks progressed, zeroing in on how he would combat urban poverty. He spotlighted the Harlem Children’s Zone, which he termed "an all-encompassing, all-hands-on-deck anti-poverty effort that is literally saving a generation of children in a neighborhood where they were never supposed to have a chance" (the program was profiled in a "60 Minutes" report about a year ago).

He pledged that as president, he would "replicate the Harlem Children’s Zone in 20 cities across the country. We’ll train staff, we’ll have them draw up detailed plans with attainable goals, and the federal government will provide half of the funding for each city, with the rest coming from philanthropies and businesses."

He addressed the next obvious question: cost. "I’ll be honest --– it can’t be done on the cheap. It will cost a few billion dollars a year." But he shied away from the logical follow-up, where will those funds come from? He said simply: "We will find the money to do this because we can’t afford not to."

He offered several other concrete proposals, including a program for inner cities comparable to the World Bank, which aims to stimulate economic development in other counties. You can read Obama's speech here.

Edwards, for his part, has been consistently detailing his plans for attacking poverty. Proposals he unveiled Wednesday included increasing federal funding for family literacy programs. You can read the campaign's re-cap of his remarks here.

For the latest website story on the two campaigns' approaches to fighting poverty, click here. The same story is in Thursday's print edition of The Times.

-- Don Frederick

The name game, Part II

While Bill Clinton contemplates what he would be called (officially, at least) if Hillary Clinton makes history by becoming America's first female president, we've got some bad news for her and other White House contenders. Even if they achieve their dream job, the odds are dramatically declining that they'll be rewarded with what once was the most basic of honors: having a school named for them someday.

That's the conclusion of a new study by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, which found that it is "increasingly rare for public schools to be named after presidents -- or people, in general -- and increasingly common to name schools after natural features."

The study makes a persuasive case that the trend may not be good for the body politic (setting aside the matter of bruised egos for our prominent citizens).

The report focused on seven states -- Arizona, Florida, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Ohio and Wisconsin -- and came up with statistics with which you can amaze your friends. For instance:

* Of almost 3,000 public schools in Florida, five are named for George Washington, 11 for manatees.

* Over the last 20 years, a public school built in Arizona was almost 50 times more likely to be named after a mesa, a cactus or some such than after a president.

* In New Jersey, 16% of schools built before 1948 were named after presidents; over the last two decades, that figure has dropped to 6%.

Extrapolating, study authors Jay P. Greene, Brian Kisida and Jonathan Butcher say that "the same story is playing out all over the country" (and given their exhaustive research, we are not about to quibble with that analysis).

"Why should we care?" no doubt some (make that most) might ask. Well, here's where the report becomes provocative.