I’m just going to quote Mark Kleiman:

I had hoped that Hillary Clinton’s use of two African-American surrogates to make the borderline-racist “We can’t nominate a black man” case against Barack Obama would backfire, as it deserved to. Looks as if Obama has figure out a way to make that happen.

I have to say that I wonder whether the Clinton campaign really wants to go there. The polls indicate that being a woman is a smaller electoral handicap than being a Mormon (Romey), 72 years-old (McCain), or on a third marriage (Giuliani), but a larger one than being an African-American. It would be unfortunate for the party to get bogged down in an ugly dispute over this, and I hope the issue will drop, but it makes a lot more sense as something for John Edwards’ camp to raise.

President Bush is “struggling for relevancy in the same way many other second-term presidents have,” Newsweek observed recently. “But Bush’s burden seems much harder than other presidents in recent memory.” 71 percent of Americans see Bush as a “lame duck” president, and 58 percent “wish the Bush presidency were simply over.”

U.S. News reports that conservatives have seen the writing on the wall and are now advising Bush to “jump start” his final two years by pushing through as much as he can by executive fiat:

With President Bush unable to get much traction so far in moving his agenda through Congress or in improving his job-approval ratings with the public, White House advisers are casting about for ways to jump-start his final two years, including issuing executive orders to get things done without having to ask for support from the Democratic-controlled Congress.

“He should get a list of the executive orders for the last 200 years, as a guide, and choose what he wants to do,” says an informal Bush adviser. One proposal that fiscal conservatives are pushing is to halve all capital-gains taxes, as a way to encourage investment and job creation.

Some conservatives argue that even if Bush somehow regains his political footing, whatever he might work out with the Democratic majority in Congress wouldn’t be very good legislation, so he should go the executive-order route and bypass Congress altogether.

Bush has already begun to implement the strategy. Last month, Bush signed Executive Order 12866 to put political appointees — rather than experienced civil servants — in charge of regulatory agencies. The order would “give the White House much greater control over the rules and policy statements that the government develops to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy.” Columbia Law School professor Peter L. Strauss said the move “achieves a major increase in White House control over domestic government. … Having lost control of Congress, the president is doing what he can to increase his control of the executive branch.”

AP reports: “The Senate gridlocked on the Iraq war in a sharply worded showdown on Saturday as Republicans foiled a Democratic attempt to rebuke President Bush over his deployment of 21,500 additional combat troops. The vote was 56-34.” That was four short of the 60 needed to advance the measure, which is identical to a nonbinding resolution that passed the House on Friday.

UPDATE: “The vote marked the second time this winter that Senate Republicans have blocked action on nonbinding measures critical of the president’s war policies. This time, however, there were signs of restlessness within the GOP. Seven Republicans broke with their leadership, compared with only two on the previous test vote.”

UPDATE II: Full roll call vote here.

No one but Romney can know how his beliefs might affect his judgment. Instead of focusing on his faith,” writes Stephen Stromberg in The Washington Post, “it would be much more worthwhile for voters to judge Mitt Romney on his evolving political agenda — as Republicans did when George Romney ran in 1967.” Well, to be sure, people should judge Romney primarily on his “evolving” political agenda. Part of his “evolving” political agenda, however, regards his late-in-life conversion to a certain set of views about, in his press secretary’s words, “the sanctity of life.” Romney, at the time a pro-choice Mormon, first garnered attention from traditionalist Christians when he took a stand in defense of what many Christian traditionalists, including the president of the United States, defined as “the sanctity of marriage”.

It’s difficult to erect a sharp dichotomy between an “evolving” political agenda and matters of religious faith, when so much of Romney’s political “evolution” regards his views on the sanctity of this or that. Obviously, one shouldn’t neglect Romney’s health care agenda or whatever he may have to say about world affairs, but he’s clearly trying to reconnect with orthodox Mormon political views in an effort to increase his appeal to traditionalist Christian voters, so it’s hardly crazy to think this has some relevance. Stromberg asks us to “Consider the divergent examples of other well-known Mormons — those of Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), say.” But while Hatch and Reid certainly do have divergent views on a variety of political topics, their views on the sanctity of life — against legal abortion, for federal funding of stem cell research — are very similar and seemingly based in part on Mormon theology so, again, it’s perfectly reasonable for traditionalist Christian voters concerned about these issues to interest themselves in Romney’s Mormonism.

Laura Sessions Stepp, The Washington Post‘s most annoying lifestyle reporter, has a new book out about the evils of hooking up. “Your body is your property,” she warns girls, “Think about the first home you hope to own. You wouldn’t want someone to throw a rock through the front window, would you?” Hilarity ensues.

But of course we get this kind of thing rather frequently in our public policy, thanks to pro-abstinence politicians like John McCain. I understand that it’s difficult for politicians to stand up against this kind of thing even though it’s stupid — nobody wants to run as the candidate telling voters’ teenage kids they should have sex. But Atrios is right that politicians who want to foist this kind of thing on the public ought to get asked the question: Did McCain save it for his first marriage?