Reuters reports:  "Obama speech stage resembles ancient Greek temple." 

Or maybe Imperial Rome: All Hail Barackus Huss-heinous Obamaius!

From Reuters:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's big speech on Thursday night will be delivered from an elaborate columned stage resembling a miniature Greek temple.

The stage, similar to structures used for rock concerts, has been set up at the 50-yard-line, the midpoint of Invesco Field, the stadium where the Denver Broncos' National Football League team plays.

Some 80,000 supporters will see Obama appear from between plywood ...

From the AP via Michelle Malkin:

DENVER (AP) - Barack Obama is striking back fiercely and swiftly to stamp out an ad that links him to a 1960s radical, eager to demonstrate a far more aggressive response to attacks than John Kerry did when faced with the 2004 "Swift Boat" campaign.

Obama not only aired a response ad to the spot linking him to William Ayers, but he sought to block stations airing the commercial by warning station managers and asking the Justice Department to intervene. The campaign also planned to compel advertisers to pressure stations that continue to air the anti-Obama commercial.

It's the type of going-for-the-jugular approach to politics many Democrats complain that Kerry lacked and that ...

Here is this week's column as it appears in The Washington Times, the first of 125 papers that now regularly run my column.

While we're on the subject of  questions for the presidential candidates, I realize this column introduces another question for them:  What, even under the best of conditions  the US military can achieve, can the US expect to "get" out of its immeasurable investment of blood and treasure in Iraq? 

If the answer is "an ally," please explain how this can be so.

If the answer is "a bulwark against Iran,&am ...

Robert Spencer poses key questions for the presidential candidates.

1. What would you do to deal with the national security aspect of immigration? With plans afoot to bring large groups of Iraqis, including Iraqi Muslims, into the United States, what kind of screening will you implement to try to ensure that we are not importing jihad terrorists into the country? Will you reevaluate immigration levels from Muslim countries based on recognition of the fact that there is no reliable way to distinguish a peaceful Muslim from a jihadist sympathizer or potential jihadist?

2. Forty percent of the foreign jihadists fighting against American troops in Iraq come from a putative ally of the United States, Saudi Arabia. The Kingd ...

If the Bright Idea behind the US surge was, in essence, to Surge 'Till They Merge--meaning, provide the requisite security conditions under which Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis and  Kurds  and, presumbly, remnant Christians still not ethnically cleansed by the above, would achieve "reconciliation"--we may have hit a wall.

Not in providing the requisite security conditions: That is the successful part of the surge story. The dodgy bit comes from the misbegotten twist of so-called strategic thinking that removed chances of ultimate US success from US hands, entrusting it instead to what we blithely (arrogantly and ignorantly) assumed would be the Iraqi reaction to enhanced security: the "reconciliation" of warring Iraqi parties. The surge succeeded, improving overall security conditions in ...

The Washington Post weighs in, lightly, on "The Jewel of Medina"  debacle. In recounting the story--by now much blogged on and written about by Yours Truly--they start describing the author's experience thus:

She started writing a fictionalized story of Aisha, a young and much-beloved wife of Muhammad. Seven drafts later, in April 2007, Random House gave Jones a $100,000 contract for "The Jewel of Medina" and a sequel.

Aisha wasn't just "young"; she was six.

I mostly read this stuff, so I haven't actually seen McCain spokesman Brian Rogers, but he's scored twice in 24 hours with some target-nailing responses to the Obama campaign: first here, and now this:

From National Review's Byron York writing at The Corner:

From McCain spokesman Brian Rogers, in response to the Obama campaign's new offensive on John McCain's houses:

Does a guy who made more than $4 million last year, just got back from vacatio ...

Photo: Major General Hammond apologizing for the Koran sniper incident.

I was on a plane to Europe on June 6, the day this column by Col. Hunt appeared on the Fox News website, and missed it until someone sent it to me this morning. It's about the Koran Sniper incident, which, I am reminded, took place at the end of May. When I looked up my own two columns on the subject, I was actually surprised at how recently t ...

Responding to an Obama commercial linking John McCain with the Abramoff scandal, a McCain spokesman comes back good and strong. ABC's Jake Tapper reports:

“Barack Obama’s ad is ridiculous," responded McCain spox Brian Rogers. "Because of John McCain, corruption was exposed and people like Jack Abramoff went to jail.

“However, if Barack Obama wants to have a discussion about truly questionable associations, let’s start with his relationship with the unrepentant terrorist William Ayers, at whose home Obama’s political career was reportedly launched. Mr. Ayers ...