The Big Show

This Politico item carries a whiff of impropriety:

"Aides to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) scheduled pricey luncheons, roundtables, readings, VIP receptions and policy dinners with campaign officials and advisers, offering donors a taste of his potential administration.

"Supporters could eat dinner in Los Angeles with Warren Buffett, an Obama adviser and one of history's shrewdest investors, for $28,500, the federal limit for donations by an individual to a national party committee. Or they could attend a 'VIP reception' with the sage of Omaha for $10,000, or an 'economic roundtable' for just $1,000. The Obama campaign declined to comment on the schedule.

"A 'Round Table Discussion' in Boston with Robert E. Rubin, who was Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton and talked on the phone with Obama as the financial crisis broke out, cost $28,500. And a reception in Boston with former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), a possible chief of staff in an Obama White House, was offered for $500 or $2,500."

This sort of access-peddling is not unusual, but it doesn't exactly sound like a candidate who's leaving behind old-style politics, does it?

The McCain campaign is hitting hard at the L.A. Times for refusing to release a videotape of a 2003 banquet at which Obama praised Palestinian rights activist Rashid Khalidi. The paper did break the story last April, but perhaps the Times should have done a better job of explaining its position, as when I called Monday night. Now comes the belated reason:

"The Los Angeles Times did not publish the videotape because it was provided to us by a confidential source who did so on the condition that we not release it," said the newspaper's editor, Russ Stanton. "The Times keeps its promises to sources."

It's not clear to me why the source would leak the story but put the video off-limits. On the other hand, McCain has backed a federal shield law for journalists, so it's interesting that he's pounding the paper for keeping its promise.

The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg calls the LAT a pro-censorship organization.

It's Obama by a landslide . . . at Slate. McCain gets only one vote.

Slate Editor-in-Chief Jake Weisberg on the Democratic nominee: "I've been following his career since he was in the Illinois Senate and rooting for him to run for president since the spring of 2006, when I read his first book and interviewed him for a magazine story. I came away from that encounter deeply impressed by Obama's thoughtfulness, his sensitivity to language, and his unusual degree of self-knowledge. This guy is the antidote to the past eight years."

Media man Jack Shafer is for Bob Barr: "I've continued to punch Libertarian on my ballot because no other candidate or political party comes close to reflecting my political views of limited government, free markets, civil liberties, and noninterventionist foreign policy."