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In an article full of smears by Karl Rove, this one stands out for its egregiousness:

[Barack Obama] won’t break with trial lawyers, even when they demand the ability to sue telecom companies that make it possible for intelligence agencies to intercept communications between terrorists abroad.

It’s classic Rove. Those commonly referred to as “trial lawyers” aren’t pushing to hold telecom companies responsible for breaking the law – civil libertarians are. But technically, any lawyer who goes to trial is a trial lawyer – even though the term generally refers to personal injury attorneys when used in a political context. So, by definition, anyone seeking to hold the telecom industry responsible for breaking the law – because no law enforcement agency is pursuing the matter – must be a trial lawyer.

Yet Mr. Rove manages to insinuate, in a manner difficult to entangle, that the only reason Democrats are opposing telecom immunity is that their supporters – the “trial lawyers” are just after more ridiculous verdicts.  At the same time, Mr. Roveis sowing discord among two important groups that make up the Democratic coalition if Mr. Obama tries to make the distinction between what the telecom companies want and what the civil libertarians want.  It’s win-win for Mr. Rove.

Last week in the New York Times Magazine, Kate Zernike analyzed “The Charisma Mandate”:

The “cult of personality” is used in the pejorative. But recast as a different name — call it charisma — and, as Roosevelt and other examples show, it can be a critical element of politics and its practical cousin, governance. It just can’t be the only element.

“Today, attacks on the cult of personality seem really to mean attacks on the ability to make speeches that inspire,” Mr. Caro said in an interview. “But you only have to look at crucial moments in the history of our time to see how crucial it was to have a leader who could inspire, who could rally a nation to a standard, who could infuse a country with confidence, to remind people of the justice of a cause…”

By any definition, the charismatic leader emerges at a time of crisis or national yearning, and perhaps a vacuum in that nation’s institutions. Mr. Schlesinger wrote in 1960 of a “new mood in politics,” with people feeling “that the mood which has dominated the nation for a decade is beginning to seem thin and irrelevant.” There was, he wrote, “a mounting dissatisfaction with the official priorities, a deepening concern with our character and objectives as a nation.”

Instead of the hype, Grassroots Mom decided to parse Mr. Obama’s and Ms. Clinton’s Senate records.

Some people say that Mr. Obama is too naive and unwilling to play the dirty game of politics.  But for those paying attention, it’s clear he can play – as evidenced by the timing of his speech last Tuesday after his win in Wisconsin.

I have the feeling this is a hoax. It’s just too perfect – too funny to be true. But the story is: a local reporter is hitting on some girl in Georgia and Senator Obama ruins this guy’s day by mistaking him for a kid and saying so at the conference. The reporter writes a story about it.

Mr. Obama decides to call the kid up to apologize for “messing up [his] game.”

Like I said – it’s gotta be a hoax. But supposedly this happened back in 2006.