[Posted by WLS]

Today is September 18.  The Obama campaign has not yet filed its Campaign Finance Report with the FEC for its fundraising in August.   It has until the 20th to do so. 

The options now are a Friday filing or a Saturday filing — notorious dumping grounds for news a political campaign wants to go under-reported.  Mike McCurry told the country how the Clinton White House made an art form out of the Friday afternoon “document dump.”

Lets recap the Obama campaign’s earlier filing dates of its illustrious fundraising efforts as catalogued here at thenextright.com:

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[Posted by WLS]

I’ve been itching to put up a post on the absolute abdication of journalistic integrity by Time Magazine. 

First, they hire that obviously qualified gossip columnist Ana Marie Cox, late of Wonkette, as editor of their online operation.

Next, Joe Klein is rabidly in the tank for Obama.  But he’s an opinion columnist who has never hidden his political views, and I don’t begrudge him his forum.  Conservatives have columns in news magazines as well.  But Klein’s willingness to simply be an Obama campaign mouthpiece has been a little much, as been his willingness to question McCain’s character and integrity every time McCain takes a step towards beating the Anointed One.

Then Jay Carney, whom I have always liked as a reporter, has had trouble hiding his contempt for the McCain-Palin ticket.  I’ll put up some examples of his writing later.

But the final straw right now is Karen Tumulty.  From her numerous appearances on a variety of television talk shows, her political sympathies have never been a secret.  But she is not an opinion columnist — she is their lead political reporter. 

An hour ago, in this post at the Swampland blog site, she took on the McCain campaign’s latest ad out today on the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac fiasco.  In the ad, the McCain campaign links Obama to Franklin Raines, the OMB Director in the Clinton Administration who left to become the CEO at Fannie Mae — a position to which he had to be appointed by Clinton.

Over the ensuing 5 years, Raines took home tens of millions of dollars in compensation and bonuses — but an auditor’s investigation found the accounting of Fannie Mae riddled with fraud, all of which the investigator attributed to the desire on the part of Raines and other Fannie Mae officials to hit certain pre-determined business targets in order to get their bonuses paid. 

The ad links Obama to Raines for two reasons — Obama, in just 4 years, received more campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac than all U.S. Senators except one: Chris Dodd, who happens to be head of the Senate Banking Committee.

Secondly, a Washington Post article, which the McCain campaign refers to in its ad, identified Raines as an advisor to the Obama campaign on issues of mortgage financing and housing. 

But Franklin Raines is African-American.  So is Barack Obama.

So Karen Tumulty pulls out the old “Bloody Shirt” and starts waving it over Time’s head in a call to storm the ramparts.

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[Guest post by DRJ]

The young man who may be the Palin email hacker is a college student and the son of a Democratic Tennessee State Representative. Gerard Van der Leun says Palin should give the kid a pass. As the parent of a college student, I say let him sweat for awhile and make him reimburse Mom and Dad for those attorneys’ fees (Edit: if he did it). The best lessons are the ones we learn the hard way.

And I may put on my jammies now that I’ve discovered Jammie Wearing Fool was as bothered as I was by the AP’s refusal to turn over the stolen emails to the Secret Service.

H/T Instapundit.

ADDENDUM: Van der Leun also has the Onion on Obama’s Gmail!

— DRJ

UPDATE BY PATTERICO 9:29 P.M.: My first quick read of these stories about this was that the father had admitted the son’s guilt. A second read confirms that he did not. This could all be elaborate misdirection by the hacker. Keep that in mind.

UPDATE BY PATTERICO 10:29 P.M.: Also, via an update at Hot Air, we learn that the alleged hacker’s father denies that he or his son have been contacted by any officials about this.

[Guest post by DRJ]

Despite being schooled on this last week by Charles Krauthammer, the man who first used the term the Bush Doctrine, the Boston Globe’s political blogger Foon Rhee continues to claim Palin flubbed the Bush Doctrine question in her ABC interview:

“And, she [Palin] is given another chance to explain the “Bush Doctrine,” which she flubbed in her first national interview last week:

“I see our role in the world as one of being a force for good and one of being the leader of the world when it comes to the values that — it seems that just humankind embraces the values that encompass life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And that’s not just in America, that is in our world.”

It’s all about the narrative, you know.

— DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

According to an AP article, 84-year-old Nigerian preacher Mohammed Bello Masaba has been arrested for having 86 wives and 107 children in violation of Islamic laws regarding marriage. The article states Muslim principles forbid men from having more than 4 wives but Masaba believes it’s Allah’s will:

“A man with 10 wives would collapse and die, but my own power is given by Allah. That is why I have been able to control 86 of them.”

I’m no expert on Nigerian marriages but I’m skeptical that Masaba can control 86 wives, and there’s no way he could do in America. In America, he’d be lucky to control the TV remote.

— DRJ