Name In Vain 
Hope Arkansas’s Second Son Mike Huckabee graced the stage at the Republican convention’s Wednesday session, offering up democrat and god fearin’.
Sadly the Arkansas Augustus has been caught out making up a Lincoln quote, the gist of which is to make Old Abe an enemy of big government. It’s been attributed to much of the Founders pantheon, but it’s really just a Gerry Ford line from the 70s.
The whitest Republican convention in forty years remains eager to drop Lincoln’s name, the latest being both Cindi and John McCain Thursday night.
 You’d think she might shy away from the word Lincoln.
Mount Up & Ride  
It’s come to this: Vaseline-lensed Ronald Reagan nostalgia mobilized as the bridge between the today’s grim reality and yesterday’s failed successor, who spun tales about the Republican nominee to be.
Right Said Fred  
 President Bush managed to scrape up a satellite link to the Republican convention, Reagan weaved his magic from beyond the grave, and then spirits sank in the jowly presence of one of the party’s legion of New Reagan burnouts, Fred Thompson.
What was the source of Reagan’s special magic? He was a Maverick!
“…the media despised him, they called him an outsider.”
The convention video also pointed to President From The Future Reagan prophesying McCain’s provocative “Country First” slogan, as demonstrated by jaunty hat usage while serving stateside in the great war.
  CNN’s thoughtful John King swooned that “for any American watching it was a nostalgic trip back in time,” building on the great media tradition of getting all dreamy at the mention of Reagan.
Where’s His Wedding Ring?  
Not content with periodic sightings of “New Reagans, ” Michael Reagan has pronounced victory in the search for Ronald Reagan’s Celestial Soul-mate.
Overcome with excitement at John McCain’s fresh faced choice Sarah Palin announcement, the Reagan offspring rounded up the usual icons:
“Now we’ve got our Maggie Thatcher.“
Zoned Out? 
Time to dust off those crumpled copies of the Constitution every old coot pol seems to carry in their pocket for all occasions, and read up.
Specifically, Article II and the 14th Amendment, the portions demanding that presidents be a “natural born citizen” and the mid 19th Century amendment, which may or may not have clarified this.
Infant Alien 
A law prof has a new analysis on what this all means to Panama Canal Zone born John McCain. Gabriel J. Chin says Congress’s many attempts to change the status of Zonians since the 1930s can’t overcome the plain language of the Constitution.
“It’s preposterous that a technicality like this can make a difference in an advanced democracy …But this is the constitutional text that we have.â€
This would leave McCain out of luck if anyone bothered to pay attention to The Founders except as it benefits grits.
Another reason to ignore the 14th Amendment: It’s a Commie Plot anyway. 
Telling Tales 
Having done his part to continue the Clinton era celebration of Harry Truman’s muscular liberalism, Peter Beinart is casting his eyes back further, to the glories of Wilsonian foreign policy.
It’s somehow to be different from George W. Bush Wilsonism. 
Beinart presents a highly selective version of Wilson, what he might call “coherent.” It’s heavy on Wilson’s doomed world vision for after that messy war he joined. Wilson without tears – no unhappy interventions in Russia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Nicaragua [inherited], no teaching the Mexicans to elect good men.
It’s gonna be great.
“McCain’s singular focus may be more easily grasped; Obama’s broader catalogue could end up sounding less like a vision than a list. Collective security offers a way of linking these disparate concerns and telling a coherent story about today’s problems and how to solve them…In 1916, Woodrow Wilson talked of “a common order, a common justice and a common peace.†In the 2007 Foreign Affairs article in which he set out his foreign policy views, Barack Obama wrote about “common threats,†“common security,†and a “common humanity.†America’s fate and the world’s fate, both men were trying to say, are ultimately indivisible. We rise together or fall together. Never has the world so badly needed to hear these words from an American president, and never have the American people been so prepared to embrace them. Wilson’s dream has been too long deferred. The time to revive it is now.”
