Fun With Data....Some highlights from the Pew survey I noted below:

• 52 percent of Americans think it is more important to conduct research than protect embryos in stem-cell research, and that includes nearly 40 percent of those who are certain they are voting for Bush. This is a slight change from two years ago, when 43 percent of respondents thought that new research was most important, while 38 percent prioritized the protection of embryos. (For in-depth analysis of recent polling on stem-cell attitudes, see our friend and colleague Chris Mooney’s writing.)

• While the GOP is seen as the more "religion-friendly" party, Americans don't necessarily believe that today's Democratic party is unfriendly to religion. (In fact, 10% think Republicans are faith-unfriendly and 13% consider Democrats the same). 74 percent think Democrats are either friendly or neutral toward religion. When the breakdown is between conservatives and liberals, on the other hand, liberals have a bad reputation: Only 21 percent think that liberals are friendly toward religion.

• For my money, the most interesting results come when voters are asked whether they think it's appropriate for political parties to ask church members to send in membership directories to help build campaign databases. A full 70 percent of Americans thought this kind of campaign strategy was inappropriate, including two-thirds of conservative Republicans. Evangelicals are more likely to think it's okay than Americans from other faith backgrounds, but even in that community, only one-third thought that this was a proper action for political parties.

• And when it comes to maintaining a clear, bright line of separation between church and state, younger Americans are less concerned than older ones. While 33 percent of those under 30 think it's acceptable to ask church members to help out campaigns, only 20 percent of those over 65 agree. In part, that's because public debate about church and state has been so imprecise and muddy over the past few decades that many people have forgotten the original intent was to protect religious institutions from the interference of the state as much as it was to protect the state from any religious influence.

• Oh, and nobody thinks Catholic leaders should be able to deny communion to pro-choice politicians. Well, okay, 22 percent of voters do, but that number is driven up by Protestants who shouldn't count anyway because what do we care if a Catholic takes communion or not? We use Wonder bread and grape juice, for goodness sake.

God the Running Mate....There's a new Pew poll out on Americans' religious and political views. I'm working on a few other things right now and still running some of the numbers, but I'll be back shortly with some of the highlights. In the meantime, check out this animation video sponsored by a coalition of religious groups that is out to remind everyone that God and Religion aren't wholly-owned subsidiaries of the Republican Party--or the Democratic, for that matter.

The groups are also getting ready to run a full-page ad with the same message in the New York Times, just to remind all of those good Christians in town for the GOP Convention. It's about time someone outside the Religious Right got some media savvy and gumption. Good for them.

Command in Chains... The big unanswered question about Abu Ghraib prison scandal has been: to what degree, if any, do Bush administration policymakers, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in particular, bear responsibility? Obviously, nobody at the top ordered this kind of sick (and militarily counterproductive) abuse, or wanted it to happen. But did their decisions to some extent “set the conditions” for it?

The most high-profile investigative effort to find an answer has been conducted by a panel headed by former Defense Secretary James R. Schlesinger, which released its final report yesterday. If front pages are verdicts, then the Bush administration can’t be too happy. “A Trail Leads to Rumsfeld,” reads the headline of the analysis piece in The New York Times. “Rumsfeld’s War Plan Shares the Blame” reads the equivalent piece in The Washington Post. Still, in reading the coverage, I’m a bit confused.

From what I can tell, Rumsfeld’s leadership contributed to the problem in three ways. First was his best-case-scenario planning, or lack of planning, for what might happen after Saddam’s regime fell. The Pentagon leadership, noted Schlesinger, “did look at history books. Unfortunately, it was the wrong history.”

Second, and most disastrously, was Rumsfeld’s decision to put too few troops in Iraq, and to shut down anyone who questioned that decision. The Times notes that the report “sidestepped” the broader question of overall troop numbers, instead focusing on the short staffing of MPs. As the Post puts it:

“At one point, the report noted, there were 495 detention personnel in Iraq, compared with an authorized level of 1,400. The ratio of military police to detainees at Abu Ghraib was as high as 1 to about 75, the report said, compared with a ratio of 1 to 1 at Guantanamo Bay.”

The Post elsewhere explains:

“The pervasive lack of troops, especially those with specialized skills, had a cascading effect that helped lead to the abuse, the report said. As the insurgency took off, frontline Army units, lacking interpreters, took to rounding up "any and all suspicious-looking persons -- all too often including women and children," it said. This indiscriminate approach resulted in a "flood" of detainees at Abu Ghraib that inundated demoralized and fatigued interrogators, it continued."

Third was Rumsfeld’s efforts to parse or otherwise get around legal constrains on how prisoners at Guantanamo could be interrogated, and his decision to apply some of those looser standards to Iraq. Reads the report:

“It is important to note that techniques effective under carefully controlled conditions at Guantanamo became far more problematic when they migrated and were not adequately safeguarded.”

This third issue is the one I’m most curious about. On the one hand, it seems just like the Bush administration to thumb its nose at international constraints that have served us well for years, like the Geneva Convention, and expect that doing so won’t have major negative repercussions. On the other hand, I’m sure that anyone in Runsfeld’s shoes, faced with terrorists who don’t play by the normal rules of war, and an insurgency in Iraq where commanders needed lots of intelligence fast, might have had good reason to rethink old policies. It is for questions like these that God invented Phil Carter.

Update: It should be noted that the panel did not believe that Rumsfeld should resign or be fired for what happened at Abu Ghraib, that you can't judge a leader by just one disaster on his watch. I agree. He should resign or be fired for screwing up the entire war.

Is That The Same Ben Ginsberg?....Hmm. The front-page story everywhere today is that a top lawyer for the Bush/Cheney campaign has, at the same time, been advising the infamous 527 Swift Boat Vets group. The lawyer at the center of the story, Ben Ginsberg, says that everything he's done is technically legal. And that may be true -- I'm not enough of an election law expert to judge.

But what's also true is that Ginsberg himself has attacked what he characterizes as the impropriety of individuals holding dual roles with campaigns and 527s.

An article that appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer just two weeks ago included this bit about Ginsberg: "Ben Ginsberg, a legal adviser to the Bush campaign, specifically condemned the dual roles played by Democrats Harold Ickes and Bill Richardson, who had official roles at the convention and also within prominent friendly 527s. 'They're over the coordination line,' Ginsberg said of Ickes and Richardson. 'The whole notion of cutting off links between public officeholders and soft-money groups just got exploded.'"

To make things even better, Ginsberg doesn't just advise the Swift Boat Guys -- a role he will no doubt seriously downplay over the next few days. He serves as the official chief counsel to Progress for America, another 527 that, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, exists to "form 'issue truth squads' that respond to Democratic attacks on President Bush."

I know these guys are shameless, but still.

Update: Ginsberg resigns.

Next Draft... Paul Rieckhoff, the ex-Army lieutenant who served as an infantry platoon leader with the 3rd Infantry Division in Iraq and gave the Democrat's rebuttle to one of President Bush's radio addresses, has co-founded an organization called Operation Truth. From its web site , the group looks fairly non-partisan. Among other things, the site warns that the current overstretching of the military is going to lead to a draft. But it doesn't actually say that a draft would be a bad thing. For what it's worth, I happen to think it'd be a good thing. (I've talked to a quite a few ex-military folks who agree with me, by the way.)

Calling RE/MAX... Earlier this year, Ben Wallace-Wells argued in The Washington Monthly that the fragile economic recovery could be brought down by a collapse of home prices. As evidence that there is indeed a housing bubble, he noted economic studies showing that in the nation’s twenty or so most overheated housing markets (where about half of all housing wealth is located), the rise in home prices has far outstripped increases in rents and personal incomes—classic signs of inflated housing values. Alan Greenspan long denied the existence of a housing bubble and indeed helped engineer it with his low interest rate policy. Today, however, he issued a warning:

“In response to a question about soaring house prices, Greenspan conceded that in some areas prices have outstripped growth in incomes and rents. ‘This observation raises thew possibility that real estate prices, at least in some markets, could be out of alignment with the fundamentals.’”

Methinks They Doth Protest Too Much....When I saw the rather large banner, "What Did the 9-11 Commission Say About Saudi Arabia?" across the top of my Washingtonpost.com screen, I said to myself, well, that's gotta be an ad by the Saudis. And, sure enough, if you click on the ad, you jump to a page where our helpful friends at the Saudi Embassy (you know, the one protected by Secret Service agents...) tell us that there is no evidence that the Saudi government funds al-Qaeda, that the Saudis have, in fact, been hunting down that rascal Osama bin Laden for quite some time now, and other interesting tidbits about how great the Saudis are. I don't know about you, but that sets my mind at ease.

Two Can Play That Game....Before the Democratic Convention, you may recall, Republicans played a little game they like to call "Inflating Expectations for Other People," telling any reporter who would listen that they fully expected John Kerry to come out of Boston with a 15-point poll bounce. What's been clear over the past six months to anyone who reads polls is that the country is not only firmly divided, but a good 90 percent or more of voters seem to have already made up their minds.

So the whole idea of a phantom 15-point increase in Kerry's favor was ridiculous from the start. This campaign is going to move in increments of two or three points, with a final push at the end from those infamous swing voters who don't start paying attention until they're holding a butterfly ballot up to their face, and maybe not even then. (For a great take on swing voters, read this Alan Wolfe op-ed that appeared in the New York Times in 2000. As Wolfe puts it, "There is something wrong with a system that listens the most to those who care about the nation the least.")

The Kerry campaign has now decided to join the same game, sending out a mass email from pollster Mark Mellman, who notes that, "Following their conventions, the average elected incumbent has held a 16-point lead, while winning incumbents have led by an average of 27 points." Ooof.

Experience tells us that Republicans will prepare for the Convention (not to mention the debates) by implying that their guy will be lucky if he can walk to the podium without tripping over his untied shoelaces. It worked in 2000. But, to point out the obvious, Bush wasn't president then. He now has to simultaneously project command of the office and a lack of confidence in his ability to match up against this John Kerry fella. Maybe they can still pull it off this time. But Democrats should keep the pressure on to raise the bar high.

You Can Take Off the "Free Matt" T-Shirts Now ....Well, that's a relief. Time magazine White House correspondent (and Washington Monthly contributing editor) Matt Cooper is no longer being held in contempt in the investigation into who leaked former CIA operative Valerie Plame's name. Cooper, who had faced 18 months in prison, gave a deposition to prosecutors yesterday after Cheney chief-of-staff Scooter Libby released him from a promise of confidentiality.

That's good, because risking imprisonment for a principle is one thing. But going to jail for Scooter Libby? That's just not right.

Nader Raided... A friend of mine with wide experience in politics and national security was telling me, apropos of the GOP's attacks on Kerry's medals, that this whole race will ride on whether the Kerry camp is willing and able to practice what my friend calls the political "black arts." I hope he’s wrong, and not because I’m so squeamish. I lived for 13 years in Chicago, where I thoroughly enjoyed watching, covering, and on occasion playing Chicago-style politics. It’s just that the stakes in this race are so huge and the president’s record in office so obvious, I would expect (hope?) that most voters would make their decisions on the merits. Also, outside places like Chicago, whose politics are a vestige of a previous era, today’s Democratic supporters and operatives simply aren’t comfortable with ruthless political tactics the way their GOP counterparts are.

That said, I as not disheartened to read in today's Washington Post this anecdote about the difficulties Ralph Nader is facing getting on state ballots:

“In Oregon last month, Nader attempted to round up 1,000 supporters in a day to sign a petition -- one way to get on the ballot in that state. But Democratic activists packed the hall and then declined to sign on, leaving his petition a few hundred names short. His campaign must collect 15,300 signatures by today, and it has accused local Democrats and union officials of threatening petition gatherers with jail time if they turn in names that prove fraudulent.”

Could it be that at least some Democrats are getting back at least some of their political toughness mojo? I’d be interested to know of any other examples.

Group grope... To connect some of the dots of the discussion by Matt Yglesias, Atrios, and my colleague Amy (see below) about the president's curious sudden dislike of 527s. The group his campaign set up to cover the legal and political expenses of contesting the 2000 Florida recount was, yes, a 527. I don't know if that group, the Bush-Cheney 2000, Inc-Recount Fund, ever ran adds. But it did come close to running afoul of a law designed to force 527s to disclose their donors. And, tellingly, the disclosure law it almost broke was put in place just before the 2000 general election as a direct response to the mysterious appearance during the GOP primaries of yet another 527, Republicans for Clean Air. That group ran ads bashing John McCain's environmental voting record and praising then-Gov. Bush's. Not only were the facts in the ads a stretch, but because there was at the time no disclosure requirement, no one knew who was paying for them. The mystery was solved by the New York Times, which eventually revealed the donor to be Dallas billionaire and Bush-backer Sam Wyly. The final irony, Public Citizen's Craig Holman tells me, is that those same disclosure requirements are what made it possible for the New York Times last week to pretty quickly figure out the web of Bush cronies who supported the anti-Kerry swift boaters.

I Hate You and I Hate Your $24 Million....Matt Yglesias makes a good point: Why does Bush keep trying to pretend that 527s are all evil liberal fronts for the Kerry campaign? He and his wife support any number of conservative 527s, including the National Federation for Republican Women, whose magazine cover they currently grace. And Lord knows they benefit from them.

The National Republican Congressional Committee and National Republican Senatorial Committee -- two 527s that are, um, Republican -- raised a whopping $24 million in July at the "President's Dinner," one of the largest fundraising events of the year that stars the big man himself. $24 million. I guess those 527s can come in handy sometimes after all.

What Was That About Trial Lawyers?....Remember the good ol' days, when Bush tossed off blatant applause lines in his State of the Union address, skewering trial lawyers while the networks immediately cut away to a shot of John Edwards sitting patiently? When the GOP came out swinging, calling Edwards "a disingenuous, unaccomplished liberal and friend to personal injury trial lawyers" just minutes after his selection as Kerry's running mate was announced?

You may have noticed, however, a curious silence on the subject in Republican circles lately. Wasn't this supposed to be a slam-dunk issue the Bush/Cheney camp could use to tar Edwards as a fake populist? Apparently not. According to an article in today's Washington Times -- "GOP Reluctant to Criticize Edwards Over Tort Reform" -- Republican strategists are worried that continued attacks on Edwards' trial background could backfire. Because it's not as if Edwards had no clients. And their stories are pretty darn compelling. Pretty darn television-worthy, in fact.

Who would have thought? Well, the The Washington Monthly's own Josh Green, for one. Back in 2001, Green predicted that Edwards' background as a trial lawyer would not be the liability that salivating Republicans hoped it would. In a Monthly essay, Green wrote:

Edwards is uniquely situated to refute Bush's attacks on trial lawyers and tort reform because he's the living embodiment of how a trial lawyer can serve a regulatory function in the face of misbehaving corporations, cities, and professionals. Indeed, attacking him is one of the surest ways for Bush to inadvertently highlight his own greatest vulnerability: the perception among voters that he's a shill for corporate America. As Carlton Carl, the trial lawyers association spokesman, is quick to point out, "People hate insurance companies more than they hate lawyers." By reprising the '98 Senate race at the national level, Republicans play to Edwards' greatest strength.

Beware Of DINOS?....I'm usually of the opinion that Democrats should take all the help they can get on their way to reclaiming majority party status in the U.S. Senate. That means supporting anyone to the left of Zell Miller. Sure, sometimes you get self-financed millionaires who have never rubbed together two policy thoughts. And sometimes you get a vaguely corrupt hack or two. But on balance, it's better than a world in which Bill Frist runs the Senate, all the while doing the bidding of Karl Rove.

Still, it can be tough to sit idly by and watch while Democratic hopefuls tack hard to the right in an attempt to win seats in conservative states. My Oklahoma informants tell me that the Democratic Senate candidate there, Congressman Brad Carson, is currently running television commercials that highlight his support of the partial-birth abortion ban and his opposition to gay marriage. I don't expect him to be out in front defending abortion and gay marriage -- that could be political suicide in a state like Oklahoma. But it's one thing to hold pragmatic conservative beliefs, it's quite another to aggressively run on them.

There's no question that Carson would be a more liberal addition to the Senate than rabidly conservative Tom Coburn, the Republican contender who has mused about the virtues of using the death penalty on doctors who perform abortions. And I'm not advocating a purge of Democrats-In-Name-Only as Republicans have done. Still, if Democrats want a caucus that eventually looks a little less like John Breaux, they need to figure out how to play offense on cultural issues.

Offense vs defense... So where are we in this swift boat controversy, what’s likely to happen next, and what ought to happen next?

The answer to the first question is pretty obvious: The Kerry camp, though damaged by the allegations, has all but won on the merits. In the last couple of days, several mainstream press investigations—see here, here, and here—have (despite a certain conventional even-handedness) undermined most of the key charges made by the anti-Kerry Swift Boat Veterans For Truth that John Kerry didn’t deserve his medals. The SBVFT argument has been further damaged by new testimony from previously silent eyewitnesses who back up Kerry’s version of the events that led to his first Purple Heart and his Silver Star. A series of suspicious-if-not-quite direct connections, and one spot-on one, have been established between SBVFT and the Bush campaign. And Kerry seems finally to be hitting back.

If that were the end of it, one could argue that this whole controversy might ultimately rebound to Kerry’s benefit. It could become, in the minds of voters, yet another example of the president aligning himself with a pack of politically convenient untruths. And if that happens, Kerry ought to be able to turn the tables—for instance, by asking all decorated war veterans in America what they’d feel like if someone started publicly asserting that they didn’t deserve their medals. (In fact, the Boston Globe makes this point in its Sunday editorial.)

But of course that’s not the end of it. Starting this week, SBVFT begins airing commercials attacking Kerry’s 1971 Senate testimony—a line presaged on the Sunday shows by former Sen. Bob Dole. It has long been understood that Kerry’s greatest potential Vietnam-related vulnerability is his leadership of an anti-war veterans group. In Karl Rove’s playbook, the attack on Kerry’s medals was just a softening-up exercise prior to the real assault. As Maureen Down puts it: “The White House must tear down [Kerry’s] heroism before it can tear down his patriotism.”

What I find infuriating about all this is that Kerry’s willingness to protest the war is an essential part of what, to my mind, makes him one of the great heroes—indeed, perhaps the greatest hero--of that era. Here’s a guy who, as a college student, understood and expressed publicly serious and well-founded doubts about the wisdom of America’s Vietnam strategy. Then, unlike many others of his generation, he put his doubts aside and his life on the line in order to do what he could to make his country’s policy a success. Then, having seen first hand that his initial suspicions were correct, and that the line coming out of Washington—that victory was just around the corner, that the “Vietnamization” strategy was working—was a lie, he stood up and told the public the unvarnished truth. In my book, that’s three morally courageous acts in a row. And that’s not counting the thankless but vital roles he played in investigating and ending the POW/MIA controversy, opening relations with Vietnam, and improving federal services for veterans. Name me one person in public life today who negotiated the moral minefield of Vietnam with greater courage and sure-footedness.

And yet, a couple weeks ago, when I asked with a friend working on the Kerry campaign why they weren’t framing Kerry’s protests in this way, my friend said that the polling suggested that American’s just weren’t prepared to hear that argument; that too many voters still think that protesting the war was a dubious act; and therefore the less said about Kerry’s role in those protests the better.

I could sympathize with this line of reasoning, even if I didn’t like it. But it seemed to me questionable then, given the predictable trajectory of GOP attacks. And now it’s clearly a dead letter. The campaign has a simple choice: on the issue of Kerry’s role as a Vietnam War protest leader, they can play defense or offense. The choice is as obvious as the argument the Kerry camp should be making. We are currently involved in a war in Iraq that is failing because policymakers in Washington have miscalculated and lied—to themselves and to the American people. In November, do we choose a president who has approved these miscalculations and trafficked in these lies, or one who, throughout most of his career, has calculated correctly and spoken the truth?