It seems to me that there’s no real point in arguing about the significance of the rather large +/- 7 points margin of error on this Newsweek poll showing Barack Obama in the lead for the Iowa caucuses. For something like this, uncertainty about the likely voter screen are probably going to be a bigger problem than sampling error anyway.

But even more to the point, in a close, multi-candidate race the actual method used by the caucuses to allocate delegates starts to make a big different. This method is, especially on the Democratic side, very complicated and tactical voting can start to make a big difference. This is an issue I haven’t seem much coverage of, probably because preparations for it on the ground won’t start happening until much closer to election day, but one key factor in Iowa is going to be where Edwards and Obama supporters go in caucus sites where they aren’t strong enough to win delegates for their guy. Part of what made Howard Dean’s task in Iowa so difficult was that almost everyone who wasn’t firmly in his camp was firmly against him. In DC, at least, people tend to have Hillary as their first choice or else as a third or lower choice. If that pattern exists in Iowa as well (and I’m not sure that it does) that can be a big problem for her.

Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, “acknowledged today that violence had increased since Sunni Arab militants declared an offensive during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. ‘Certainly Al Qaeda has had its Ramadan surge,’ Petraeus said.”

On Fox News Sunday this morning, NPR’s Mara Liasson said that President Bush’s expected veto of an expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which passed both the House and Senate on a strong bipartisan basis, will be seen as “a heartless blow against children.”

Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, who supports Bush’s veto, laughingly joked:

First of all, whenever I hear anything described as a heartless assault on our children, I tend to think it’s a good idea. I’m happy that the President’s willing to do something bad for the kids.

Kristol then disparaged yesterday’s Democratic Radio Address, delivered by a 12-year-old boy named Graeme Frost who had received care under the SCHIP program, calling it “pathetic.” “You really wonder how stupid they think the American people are,” concluded Kristol. Watch it:

NPR’s Juan Williams rebutted Kristol’s callous approach to children’s health care. “When you have 3.7 million uninsured children in America, you know you have a crisis,” said Williams. He then ripped Kristol’s disparagement of the Democratic Radio Address as hypocritical because conservatives “use soldiers and everything else to bolster their arguments”:

WILLIAMS: I’m surprised to hear you say, “Oh, how dare you use a child.” What do Republicans do except use soldiers and everything else to bolster their arguments.

KRISTOL: Soldiers aren’t children.

WILLIAMS: Oh come on. Yeah, use uniforms and everything else. And in fact, put on — politicians get in uniforms and get on ships to talk about “missions accomplished.” C’mon.

The expansion of SCHIP that Bush is threatening to veto would extend coverage to 4 million children who would otherwise be uninsured.

“I admire the Islam. There’s a lot of good principles in it,” Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said. “But I just have to say in all candor that since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles, personally, I prefer someone who I know who has a solid grounding in my faith.” He added, “I think the number one issue people should make [in the] selection of the President of the United States is, ‘Will this person carry on in the Judeo Christian principled tradition that has made this nation the greatest experiment in the history of mankind?’” The U.S. Constitution disagrees.

UPDATE: McCain attempts to clarify his remarks: “McCain contacted Beliefnet after the interview to clarify his remarks: ‘I would vote for a Muslim if he or she was the candidate best able to lead the country and defend our political values.’” Former Bush White House aide David Kuo, now a BeliefNet contributor, said McCain was “pandering to what he thinks the Christian conservative community wants to hear” and predicted he “will have a lot of explaining to do about this interview.”

In his new book, My Grandfather’s Son, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas writes that “he had grown up fearing the Ku Klux Klan’s lynch mobs but ‘my worst fears had come to pass not in Georgia, but in Washington, D.C., where I was being pursued not by bigots in white robes but by left-wing zealots draped in flowing sanctimony.’”