Set aside for a second that Jon Powers is running for Congress. Instead, take a look at the story he told today of the Bush administration mismanagement of the Iraq war.Powers, a veteran of the war, explained how, when his platoon went into one community, the streets were filled with garbage. He asked his higher-ups for money - $40 a week - so some of the citizens could restart their garbage and sewage trucks and haul away the waste. The request lingered and was eventually denied because US officials wanted to bring in a private contractor, which was more expensive.Retired

Politicians' family members are off limits, especially their children. That's the code.It may be, but not always for the right reasons.Of course young children of politicians have nothing to do with their parents' careers. They can be drawn into the spotlight because of who they are.Still, none of us get to choose our parents or their careers. What's more important is how political ideology and public policy-making is reflected in one's personal life. Republicans have been characteristically unsympathetic to teen mothers.They have routinely funneled public funding to faith-based abstinence-only messages, while obstructing funding to rigorous sex education.Neither Palin's daughter nor

Oh, me. So now we have new qualifications for our presidents: they must be war heroes, and they must have executive experience.Fred Thompson used much of his Republican Convention speech last night to lay out, in detail, the horrors of McCain's captivity during the Vietnam War. No one disputes McCain's courage or his loyalty. But by hammering away on those themes, Republicans imply that Obama is neither - and that war heroism eclipses every other qualification for the presidency. They would not make the same case, of course, had any of McCain's primary opponents become the Republican nominee.(I thought it was

Oh, my goodness: what to say? I know that a main goal of a political convention, now that the candidate is selected beforehand, is to throw red meat to the faithful. And the Democrats did their own attacking in Denver. But the Republican convention has turned into a snarly, name-calling affair. And I assume that this is just a taste of things to come.We got a good look at Sarah Palin last night, and she enthusiastically lived up to her "barracuda" nickname. Her speechwriter had written a good speech - and yes, those were a speechwriters' words, not her own - and

NPR's host of Fresh Air, Terry Gross, interviewed New York Times reporter David Kirkpatrick yesterday. Kirkpatrick has written a series of articles on McCain that are quite illuminating. We learn something about McCain and what kind of president he would make.Kirkpatrick talks about the "maverick" image McCain has received. It is not an image his Republican peers see in him. Essentially, Kirkpatrick says, McCain learned a technique of connecting with the public through a self-effacing admission of being wrong that dates back to the Keating years. McCain learned that if he admitted being wrong and apologized before the public turned

The speeches and the crowd at the Republican convention have left me dismayed.John McCain got a lot of applause last night when he promised an end to politics as usual. No more partisan rancor, he said.But the other convention speakers, who spent the previous nights whipping up the crowd, have shown how shallow that claim is. This was McCain's convention, orchestrated and vetted by his campaign. And the entire event consisted of personal attacks aimed at Barack Obama, worship of McCain's war record, and a scary appeal to mindless patriotism.The low point in all this, best I can tell, was

Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin crowed on Monday about bringing change to Washington. McCain is about as status quo as anyone in Washington after being there for nearly 30 years, but you wouldn't think so from listening to Palin.Senator Barack Obama responded by saying that Republicans must think you - the American people - are stupid. Well Barack, you're finally getting it.After eight years of Bush and mostly Republican control, even the mere chance of extending this catastrophe and spinning it as "change" should be a no-brainer for most Americans.Apparently not.Palin stopped "the bridge to nowhere" and the

What a shock the 26th Congressional District Democratic primary turned out to be. Everybody thought the race was between Jon Powers and Jack Davis. No one gave Alice Kryzan a shot. But, as one Democratic insider put it, Kryzan "ducked and let the mud hit the other guy." If Kryzan's victory seems like a minor upset, think again. This race was being watched by Democrats and Republicans from across the country. The seat is a top priority for both parties.The big question now is whether Dems will line up behind Kryzan. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which backed Powers, issued a

The day is still young, but Democrats are starting to line up behind Alice Kryzan, upset winner in the 26th Congressional District Democratic primary. The Monroe County Democratic Committee, which supported Jon Powers in the primary, has pledged its support to Kryzan.  The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, another Powers backer, has also rallied to Kryzan. This afternoon, committee officials added Kryzan to their Red to Blue program. Through the program, the committee runs advertising on behalf of candidates and directs donors to them, though they work independent of the candidates' campaigns.For the party faithful who want a Democrat in the

Another Bush problem for John McCain to run from?Today's New York Times is reporting that the US Interior Department, which is responsible for collecting oil and gas royalties, "has been caught up in a wide-ranging ethics scandal - including allegations of financial self-dealing, accepting gifts from energy companies, cocaine use and sexual misconduct.""A culture of ethical failure" besets the agency, the department's inspector general, Earl Devaney, wrote in a memo accompanying three reports given to Congress today.The news breaks as Congress debates permitting more offshore drilling.

I spent far too much time this morning trying to find out what time tonight ABC will air the first excerpts from Charles Gibson's the interview with Sarah Palin. It's at 6:30 and again on Nightline at 11:30. (There'll be more on "20/20" at 10 tomorrow night.Despite the interview's importance - and, I assume, big public interest - as far as I can tell, there wasn't a word about it in the D&C this morning. Couldn't find it in the Times, either. Or on CNN.com. Finally found the time on the ABC website, but even that took some doing.Palin's October 2

ABC has started airing Charles Gibson's interviews with Sarah Palin, and so far, there've been no surprises. I can't imagine that these interviews will change anybody's mind about her.As many of the media were reporting this morning, Palin has a tough approach to foreign policy. Based on her answers to Gibson's questions, if she were president, we'd have a repeat of the Bush militaristic approach to the world. She stands by Georgia's Saakashvili, favors admission of Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, and yes, if they were admitted and Russia attacked one of them, the US would need to go to

Agreeing with Karl Rove isn't easy. But he's absolutely right. Senator Barack Obama can't win this election, Rove said in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, if he continues to get distracted, defensive, and ends up running against Governor Sarah Palin.The Republicans have once again ignited the Culture Wars. And true to form, the strategy is to attack and then cry victim. It worked in 2000 and 2004.They're baiting Obama with comments from Palin, hoping he'll implode into the angry black man. So far, it hasn't worked.But every minute the Obama camp talks about Palin is time he isn't speaking about McCain

The presidential campaign is getting more bizarre, and much more worrisome.Here's what we've learned about Sarah Palin since John McCain picked her to run for vice president:McCain has said that Palin hasn't sought federally funded earmarks in her time as governor of Alaska, but the Wall Street Journal says she has sought $453 million worth of them.Her campaign said that on a trip to visit Alaska troops in Kuwait, she also visited Iraq. Now she agrees that she did not. Her campaign said she visited Ireland; "visit" is a bit of an exaggeration. National media report that she was on an airplane

A note to the national media: give us our scandal name back. "Troopergate" belongs to New York, not Alaska. It belongs to former Senate leader Joe Bruno and former Governor Eliot Spitzer, not Alaska governor and VP nominee Sarah Palin. Here's a bit of a refresher. Our Troopergate revolved around Spitzer, whose staff directed state troopers to compile Bruno's state travel records so they could be used to smear him. But interested waned after "Hookergate," when Spitzer was caught up in a federal prostitution ring bust.Palin's scandal revolves around allegations that she fired the state public safety commissioner because he

Election campaign articles worth reading:1) "The State of Sarah Palin," Philip Gourevitch's thoughtful article in the current New Yorker. It's primarily a study of both Palin and Alaska, a region that obviously has had a strong influence on her. But Palin critics will take sadistic pleasure in some parts of the article.For instance: Gourevitch says Palin initially promised "full cooperation" with the commission investigating her firing of the public safety commissioner. "Hold me accountable," Gourevitch quotes Palin as saying. "We would never prohibit, or be less than enthusiastic about, any kind of investigation. Let's deal in the facts."Yesterday, though, CNN

In less than a week, the American taxpayer has been saddled with nearly $1 trillion in debt. And the worst thing - it's not over yet. Investors are panicked and running away from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley faster than Republicans have been running away from George Bush. You can thank Newt Gingrich for at least some of this mess. Gingrich and the Republican Revolution of the 1990's was largely built on stirring mistrust of government, demonizing government workers, convincing the public that taxation was evil, and tossing government

How well the media has been covering this election depends a lot on who you talk to. The Republicans' drumbeat has been: don't believe the liberal media; they're against us. Democrats have been saying: they're not asking the tough questions; they're not going for the real story. We may be - in addition to an energy crisis, a health-care crisis, and a financial crisis - in the middle of an information crisis. Few of us really believe there is much truth in advertising. But much of what passes for

  It's still way, way early in the planning stages - "just an idea we're investigating," as Bill Cala puts it - but yesterday's public information meeting on a proposed metropolitan school drew a big crowd, nearly filling a chapel at Nazareth College.Cala, former Fairport schools superintendent and, last year, interim superintendent in Rochester, has been meeting with several area superintendents, Nazareth representatives, and others to discuss the possibility of creating a public school on the Nazareth campus. It would be unusual in two respects: its students would come from both the city and suburban districts. And it would reject

The 20th century has been dubbed the "American Century," the connotation being that was our moment in time. Maybe what we are seeing instead is the end of Reagan era: free-wheeling capitalism, sky-high CEO salaries and bonuses, mergers, and leveraged buyouts. A 12 to 20 percent annual profit wasn't enough. Shareholders wanted 30 and 40 percent growth or you were out and another CEO would take your place. Now we have Congress dithering about what to do in the face of the financial crisis. Many of them don't understand it. Should we regulate?