Obama, Up Close and Unfiltered

"Whatever Johnson brings as a search committee member, there's got to be somebody else out there with the same skills without his dirt and scandals . . .

"Might I add, Obama left his church to get rid of a lingering controversy. I'm not sure why Jim Johnson would expect more loyalty."

Also at NR, Mark Hemingway whacks Newsweek for its recent reporting on Obama and Lieberman:

"Newsweek aids and abets the Obama campaign's decision to slander Joe Lieberman:

" In a brief but animated Senate floor confrontation last week, according to a campaign aide who asked for anonymity when talking about private discussions, Obama told Lieberman he was surprised by Lieberman's personal attacks and his half-hearted denials of the false rumors that Obama is a Muslim . (The aide says Lieberman was 'strangely muted' during the exchange; a Lieberman spokesman says the chat was 'private and friendly.') . . .

"So a call to Joe Lieberman's office was in order. Since Newsweek didn't make it, National Review Online did. Actual Lieberman spokesman Marshall Wittmann says, 'The anonymous Obama campaign staffer's characterization of the private conversation was entirely false and fabricated.' Another Lieberman aide confirmed, 'I was not told that the Obama campaign was selectively leaking the contents of that conversation, or I would have made it clear that that characterization was completely and utterly false. The first time I knew what the Obama campaign was saying was when I saw it in a magazine.' "

Josh Marshall sees Lieberman as a turncoat:

"What does seem clear to me is that Lieberman's days in the Democratic caucus, or more specifically, his days with a committee chairmanship courtesy of the Democratic caucus are numbered in months.

"My assumption is that after the November election, regardless of the outcome of the presidential campaign, Joe will be stripped of his chairmanship. (This seems even more certain to me if Obama wins the general, but I suspect it will happen regardless.) Whether he'll actually be expelled from the caucus I don't know and probably doesn't really matter. Once he's stripped of the benefits he gains from it, presumably he'll leave himself and become an actual non-caucusing independent or, more likely, start caucusing with the Republicans.

"What that tells me is that Lieberman has no incentive not to make the maximum amount of trouble over the next five months both for his senate colleagues and for Sen. Obama."

But for all the day's substantive events, it's this Politico item that gets the Drudge headline:

"Every presidential candidate can use a sexy blonde movie star to liven up his or her campaign, appear at big money events and rally the entertainment community. Sen. Barack Obama's go-to Hollywood hottie is Scarlett Johansson, a starlet who trades frequent e-mails with the presumptive Democratic nominee, campaigns tirelessly on his behalf."