On CNN’s Crossfire, Bob Novak dug into John Kerry for making the statement that he voted to grant the president the power to go to war in Iraq in order to authorize a credible threat of force so that Hussein might allow inspections and the matter might end peacefully. Novak asked where he got that idea from (transcript); Fox News chips in also, asking, in a fair and balanced way, I presume, how Kerry can say that when he authorized full force?

Conservative pundits seem to have short memory spans. A quote from Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz from last October: the only hope of “achieving the peaceful outcome is if we can confront the Iraqi regime with a credible threat of force behind our diplomacy.”

Where indeed did he get that crazy idea? The only thing we can fault Kerry for is being fool enough to go along with the president and his wacky administration.

Arnold Schwarzenegger promised loudly on the campaign trail yesterday, “egged on” by the crowd, that he would not, absolutely never, accept money from unions. My first thought: oh, goodie, because I was afraid the AFL-CIO would want to shower him with millions. His promise sounded as thin and hypocritical as a Democratic candidate promising that he would never accept donations from the NRA.

But the world is full of surprises, and Arnold had yet another “Oops” moment in store. It turns out that he had already received a donation from a union–this one a union of L.A. sheriffs. Arnold says he’ll be returning it.

Best one-liner of the day: “This guy owes me bacon now.”

Here’s a very good article in the Washington Post about why Howard Dean and Al Franken are so popular right now (the article covers many other issues as well). Now, I admire most Democrats for their stance on most issues and the fact that they are less bloodthirsty, hypocritical and merciless in their political play than most Republicans, but their downfall is that they have little spine when pressed hard. When the GOP was pushing its post-9/11 agree-with-everything-we-say-and-do-or-we’ll-call-you-traitors strategy, the Dems knuckled under. It was very hard to find any Democrat who was not in full support of the president, even when you could tell they didn’t really want to be. So now Dean is a front-runner, in part because he’s one of the only ones who can say “I have always been against the war” and not look like a liar when he says it–and we need someone who can say that. That’s also one reason why Clark would be a fitting VP candidate for him (not to mention the North-South combo there).

Get ready for this… some Egyptians are preparing to sue Jewish people worldwide because their ancestors, when freed from slavery in Egypt by Moses, stole “gold, jewelry, cooking utensils, silver ornaments, clothing, and more.” My only comment: okay, this past-reparations thing is going a bit too far….

Britney Spears apparently told Tucker Carlson that she believes “we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that, you know?”

She also said she didn’t know her kiss with Madonna “was gonna be that long and everything.”

We’re obviously dealing with a high-level intellectual here. Better do what she says.