Believe it… details over at Hub Politics….

Listening to Hillary and Obama on the campaign, there have been plenty of debate over who will be ready in the general election campaign to not only face McCain, but to handle everything “the Republican throw at them.” They act all high and mighty, claiming to care about the issues and not attacks against their opponents. Well, according to this story from The Hill, it appears the Democrats are much interested in digging up dirt for ammunition than they are in debating the issues.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) filed a number of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with Cabinet-level agencies and inter-agency departments looking for opposition research to use against presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.).

In early February, there was a sharp uptick in the number of FOIA requests from the DNC with McCain as a specific target. February was about the same time McCain emerged as the front-runner and likely nominee.

A review of FOIA requests and independent confirmations obtained by The Hill turned up requests from the DNC at at least three agencies – the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Department of the Interior (DOI), the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and the Commerce Department.

According to one filing, Alicia McClintock, a DNC operative, wrote DOI asking for “any and all records of communication (including but not limited to letters, written requests, reports, telephone records, electronic communication) between your agency and John McCain or his offices/staff from 1999 to present during which period he has been a United States Senator.”

Despite their posturing, it is obvious the Democrats have a win-at-all-costs attitude about elections, and smearing their opponents is undoubtedly the biggest and most important part of their game plan. In public, they’ll say that the voters don’t fall for such attacks, but behind closed doors they work hard to engineer the worst of the worst attacks against anyone who stands in their way.

I wouldn’t call it a good thing when your candidacy is endorsed by a terrorist organization… but it’s even worse that Obama’s campaign is apparently flattered by the endorsement.

In the spin room following the debate, I asked Barack Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, to respond to a report that a top Hamas official had endorsed Obama.

“I have no idea about that, I have not heard that,” Axelrod replied.

I told him that the words were spoken by Ahmed Yousef, and offered to read him the quote, which I I proceeded to do from my Blackberry: “we like Mr. Obama. We hope he will (win) the election and I do believe he is like John Kennedy, great man with great principle…”

Axelrod focused on the Kennedy portion of the quote, and was “flattered” by the comparison.

“I like John Kennedy too,” Axelrod said. “That’s about the only thing we have in common with this gentleman from Hamas. We all agree that John Kennedy was a great president, and it’s flattering when anybody says that Barack Obama would follow in his footsteps.”

Michael Goldfarb says it all:

Note the slipperiness. Axelrod first distances himself from the “gentleman from Hamas,” but in the next breath he embraces the gentleman/terrorists’ comparison to Kennedy, pronouncing it “flattering.” Only recently Obama declared that “nobody has spoken out more fiercely on the issue of anti-Semitism than I have.” Apparently there’s an exception for when anti-Semites compare Obama to Kennedy. Then all bets are off!

Perhaps the Obama campaign would be equally flattered by an endorsement from Osama bin Laden if the endorsement compared Obama to MLK.

John McCain condemned Jimmy’s Carter’s plan to meet with the terrorist organization Hamas on Monday… He made the following statement:

“It is a grave and dangerous mistake for an American leader to meet with a terrorist organization like Hamas. Engaged in a campaign that deliberately targets innocent Israeli civilians, Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. President Carter is wrong to meet with Hamas, a terrorist group that has also killed innocent Americans.

“The very idea that a former President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief would meet with a terrorist organization demands a clear stance from all presidential candidates. Refusing to take a stand, as Senator Obama has done, is not the strong leadership we need today. If Senator Obama is not decisive enough to condemn former President Carter, how can he be strong enough to deal with the threat they pose to America and to our allies?”

Obama finally commented on Carter’s trip today… but fell short of an actual condemnation.

We’ll have to see if this comes up in the debate tonight…

The Hill reports on the possibility…

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), the Democratic Party’s 2000 vice presidential nominee, is leaving open the possibility of giving a keynote address on behalf of Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) at the Republican National Convention in September.

Republicans close to the McCain campaign say Lieberman’s appearance at the convention, possibly before a national primetime audience, could help make the case that the presumptive GOP nominee has a record of crossing the aisle. That could appeal to much-needed independent voters.

McCain has yet to ask Lieberman to speak, either in primetime or elsewhere, at the convention. But if McCain thinks it will help make his case for the White House, as some of his allies suspect, Lieberman would be willing to speak on his behalf.

“If Sen. McCain, who I support so strongly, asked me to do it, if he thinks it will help him, I will,” Lieberman said in a brief interview.

If Lieberman does speak at the GOP Convention, that would be devastating for the Democrats. In the past eight years, Joe Lieberman has sought the Democratic nomination for President, and has been the Democrats’ vice-presidential nominee. As the Democratic Party shifts further and further to the far left, Lieberman’s appearance would highlight how out-of-the-mainstream today’s Democratic Party has become.

You know, it’s funny, Barack Obama claims to be a uniter, yet in recent weeks, he’s referred to his grandmother as “a typical white person,” and insulted small town Americans. Those aren’t the words of a uniter. A uniter is someone who could bring the former vice-presidential nominee of his opposing party to speak on his behalf at his party’s convention.

It’ll be interesting to see not only what Lieberman does, but what Democrats do to prevent him from speaking for McCain at the GOP Convention.

Last week, Retired Spook informed the Blogs For Victory community that Michael Turner, (aka Scaramonga) passed away last week, the morning of Monday, March 31. Michael blogged regularly at his own blog, and also was a regular in the comment threads here at Blogs For Victory. He posted his last comment here the night before he passed away.

Michael had actually been a part of our community since the early days of Blogs For Bush. Michael volunteered his time and energy to be our moderator. His help contributed to Blogs For Bush becoming one of the most successful blogs during the 2004 campaign.

I would like to offer my condolences to Michael’s entire family. I spoke with his wife earlier this week, and she remember how Michael helped with Blogs For Bush, spending night and day on it. He remained a die-hard Republican until he passed away.

In order to honor Michael, his life, and his contributions to B4B and Blogs For Victory, I ask our readers here to consider contributing to The Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund, which supports the families of fallen and injured men and women of the Armed Forces.

Please click here to donate to The Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund, via their website.

You are also welcome to leave your thoughts here.

What would you call Obama’s broken pledge that if his general election opponent accepted public financing for his campaign that he would as well.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: A nightmare for Democrats, according to Marist – McCain leads Obama and only barely trails Hillary in New York. Polls, as I endlessly point out, are weak reeds, especially this far out from the actual voting…but such polls (and there are a lot of them these days showing this sort of thing) have to have hearts trembling with fear over at the DNC, and explain why Dean wants this whole thing wrapped up by June 1st.

UPDATE, by Matt Margolis: I think it is quite clear from the attacks by the DNC against McCain that the Democrats are afraid of him. Now Dean is claiming people are concerned about McCain’s age.

Howard Dean can’t seem to open his mouth without saying something nonsensical… Earlier this week he said that John McCain isn’t a strong candidate … yet both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are “extraordinary.”

Howard Dean is as partisan as they come, but for him to make both those claims is just plain stupidity. John McCain has more experience than Hillary and Obama combined. Four years ago, Democrats claimed that John Kerry’s four months in Vietnam made him more qualified to be commander-in-chief, but today they say that John McCain, who served far longer and endured far more than John Kerry did, is a weaker candidate than both Hillary and Obama, neither of whom served in the military. Hillary and Obama support disastrous policies…. They both want to cut and run from Iraq. They both want to raise taxes. They both want socialized health care. Yet, Howard Dean calls them extraordinary…

“Like most Americans, I’m eager to hear what General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker have to say about military and political progress in Iraq. These men have spent decades mastering their respective professional fields. They deserve our respect.” -Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell

Mark and I are both at work… So feel free to talk about the hearings… give us the details of the Democrats’ defeatist grandstanding… Let’s have it.

UPDATE: Snippets of Patreus’s remarks:

Since September, levels of violence and civilian deaths have been reduced substantially, Al Qaeda-Iraq and a number of other extremist elements have been dealt serious blows, the capabilities of Iraqi Security Force elements have grown, and there has been noteworthy involvement of local Iraqis in local security. Nonetheless, the situation in certain areas is still unsatisfactory and innumerable challenges remain. Moreover, as events in the past two weeks have reminded us and as I have repeatedly cautioned, the progress made since last spring is fragile and reversible.

And yet, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton want to retreat.

A number of factors have contributed to the progress that has been made. First, of course, has been the impact of increased numbers of Coalition and Iraqi Forces. You are well aware of the U.S. surge. Less recognized is that Iraq has also conducted a surge, adding well over 100,000 additional soldiers and police to the ranks of its security forces in 2007 and slowly increasing its capability to deploy and employ these forces.

So, the surge is working and Iraqis are standing up and doing their part.

Not that we should have expected anything different from Oliver Stone, but his planned film “about” President Bush apparently has as much accuracy as a Michael Moore documentary:

Reactions to the script from the biographers were mixed. They said specific scenes are largely based in fact but noted that the screenplay contains inaccurate and over-the-top caricatures of Bush and his inner circle.

“It leaves you with the impression that the White House is run as a fraternity house with no reverence for hierarchy, the office itself or for the implications of policy,” said Robert Draper, author of “Dead Certain: The Presidency of George Bush.” “Everybody calling everybody else nicknames and chatting about whether to go to war as if they were chatting about how to bet on a football game really misses the mark of how many White Houses, including this one, are run.”

Jacob Weisberg (“The Bush Tragedy”) was skeptical about Stone’s claim that he wants to make “a fair, true portrait” of Bush. “His saying he is going to be fair to Bush is like Donald Trump saying he is going to be modest,” Weisberg quipped.

[..]

In the script — then titled “Bush” — the president’s policy judgments are often manipulated by his White House staff, a depiction several of the biographers said did not ring true.

“The problem here is it goes to this notion of Bush as being the passive receiver of policy and the White House being run by (Dick) Cheney, (Donald) Rumsfeld, (Karl) Rove and others,” Draper said. “Bush’s adversaries have been ill-served by this belief that Bush is an observer to his own presidency. This notion that his schedule is driven by what’s on ESPN is ludicrous.”

This is just a sad attempt at liberal Hollywood trying to define Bush’s presidency with their usual lies, but I’m guessing that you won’t see Bush do to Oliver Stone what the Clintons did prior to the premier of “The Path To 9/11” back in 2006…

With no date for the release, questions are being raised about whether political pressure is behind its current status as a stalled or discarded DVD project. The reasons are murky, but the miniseries’ writer, Cyrus Nowrasteh, believes it’s crystal clear: Powerful forces are out to protect Bill Clinton’s presidential legacy and shield Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) from any potential collateral damage in her bid for the White House.

Nowrasteh, also one of the miniseries’ many producers, said he was told by a top executive at ABC Studios that “if Hillary weren’t running for president, this wouldn’t be a problem.”

Oliver Stone won’t define Bush’s legacy. History will. And history will look back favorably on Bush’s presidency, no matter how much Hollywood and the Democratic Party tries to distort it.