I know I posted an overnight thread already, but this is too good to pass up: ’Time’ Publishes Definitive Obama Puff Piece.

NEW YORK—Hailed by media critics as the fluffiest, most toothless, and softest-hitting coverage of the presidential candidate to date, a story in this week’s Time magazine is being called the definitive Barack Obama puff piece.

“No news publication has dared to barely scratch the surface like this before,” columnist and campaign reporter Michael King wrote in The Washington Post Tuesday. “This profile sets a benchmark for mindless filler by which all other features about Sen. Obama will now be judged. Just impressive puff-journalism all around.”

The 24-page profile, entitled “Boogyin’ With Barack,” hit newsstands Monday and contains photos of the candidate as a baby, graduating from Columbia University, standing and laughing, holding hands with his wife and best friend, Michelle, greeting a crowd of blue-collar autoworkers, eating breakfast with diner patrons, and staring pensively out of an airplane window while a pen and legal pad rest comfortably on his lowered tray table.

According to political analysts, the Time piece features the most lack-of-depth reporting on Obama ever published, and for the first time reveals a number of inconsequential truths about the candidate, including how he keeps in shape on the campaign trail, and which historical figures the presidential hopeful would choose to have dinner with.

“The sheer breadth of fluff in this story is something to be marveled at,” New York Times Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet said.

Of all the Village Voice socialists, Nat Hentoff has always seemed the most intellectually honest, and the most willing to critically examine the received leftist wisdom. And now he’s disillusioned about Barack Obama.

During my more than 60 years of covering national politics, I have never seen a candidate’s principles and character so effectively tarnished — after so extraordinarily inspiring a start — as Barack Obama’s. He has come to resemble another mellifluous orator I came to know in Boston during my first time reporting on a campaign — James Michael Curley, the skilful prestidigitator whom Spencer Tracy masterfully played in the movie “The Last Hurrah.” Obama’s deflation has not been due to ruthless opposition research by John McCain’s team but by the “change” candidate himself. Like millions of Americans, I, for a time, was buoyed by not only the real-time prospect of our first black president but much more by the likelihood that Obama would pierce the dense hypocrisy and insatiable power-grabbing of current American politics.

Also, as a former teacher of constitutional law, Obama gave me “hope I could believe in” that he would rescue the Constitution’s separation of powers, resuscitate the Bill of Rights and begin to restore our reputation around the world as a truly law-abiding nation.

Savoring the high expectations he had secured among so many Americans, Obama has decided he can also come closer to securing the Oval Office by softening his starlight enough to change some of his principles toward the calming center of our stormy political waters.

In a defense by Dan Gerstein, a New York political consultant — echoing what you’ll be hearing more of from Obama’s campaign operatives — the gossamer script goes: “He is trying to broaden his appeal to a larger electorate and to be true to this postpartisan, unifying message that he’s been campaigning on.” But instead of the ennobling clarion trombones of CHANGE we have been promised, this “adjusting” of one’s principles has long been the common juggling of our common politicians.

Accordingly, as his presidential campaign gathered such momentum, Obama, with justifiable pride, pointed to the resounding fact that most of the bountiful funds he was raising came from small donors, “the people,” not the sort of supporters who move above us in private jet planes.

But after abandoning his pledge to abide by public financing, this apostle of cleansing the political culture is now going after the high rollers. As the July 3 New York Times reported, “Last week, the Obama campaign collected about $5 million at an event featuring celebrities in Los Angeles. The evening began with a dinner at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion for more than 200 people who had contributed $28,500 per couple, or raised $50,000.” Then there is the current furor among a rising number of Obama contributors with wallets far below the $50,000-a-pop crowd about his change on the “compromise” FISA Amendments Act of 2008 that passed the House and Senate, and has been signed by the grateful president.

He’s still wrong about a lot of things, but at least he isn’t wearing partisan blinders.

An astounding gaffe from Barack Obama, who grew up in Hawaii but apparently never learned the history of the attack on Pearl Harbor: Obama Ignorance Watch.

Throughout our history, America’s confronted constantly evolving danger, from the oppression of an empire, to the lawlessness of the frontier, from the bomb that fell on Pearl Harbor, to the threat of nuclear annihilation. Americans have adapted to the threats posed by an ever-changing world.

I’ve written several times that I suspect Barack Obama of being almost completely ignorant of world history. Now it’s becoming clear that he’s even ignorant of the history of the state in which he grew up.

That Associated Press photographer who tagged along with the Taliban on a mission to slaughter two helpless women, and took photos and video as they were murdered, was detained briefly by Afghan authorities and has issued a series of ludicrous excuses. It sounds very much like this guy was coached by AP’s lawyers: Photographer Detained After Filming Taliban Execution of Two Women in Afghanistan.

Naikzad said he has no ties with the Taliban, and he gave the following account of why and how he became witness to the executions.

He said the Taliban issued a press statement calling all media outlets in the province of Ghazni, which has a large Taliban presence, to cover them “carrying out the Shariah” on a few burglars in their custody. Naikzad said he believed the Taliban would be cutting off the limbs of their prisoners, according to strict Islamic law.

He said he and other journalists were reluctant to go because of security concerns, but that an unknown person who identified himself as a member of the Taliban contacted him directly on his cell phone and assured him of his safety.

“We talked for about five minutes on the phone, and he said my safety was absolutely guaranteed,” Naikzad explained.

He said he checked with the Kabul office of the Associated Press, for which he works as a stringer, and then set off around sunset on his motorbike to a village on the outskirts of Ghazni City, only to find that no other journalist was there.

That, he said, was when he learned it was two women — and not burglars — whom the Taliban had arrested, and that they had been charged with running a prostitution ring for coalition soldiers and local men.

Naikzad interviewed and filmed the Taliban, who said on tape that the two women “took the pure girls and women” and “indulged them in immoral acts.”

After the interview, he said, the Taliban picked up the two burqa-clad women from a house, put them in a white Toyota Corolla and drove off to a different location.

Naikzad said he followed the Corolla on his bike, with a Taliban car following him. About a half-hour later, he said, they stopped near Arzo village, close to the Ghazni-Paktika highway, on the outskirts of the province.

The women — one of whom appeared to be carrying a shopping bag — were then taken out of the car and told they would be executed.

Naikzad said he tried to persuade the Taliban not to carry out the executions. “I told one of the Taliban, ‘These are women, they are harmless. Why would you want to kill them?’ But they didn’t listen to me.”

When his pleas went unheeded, he said, he asked the Taliban if he could film the execution.

Disgusting.

Some amazing chromatic harmonica playing from Brendan Power: “The Drunken Landlady.”