Josh Gerstein, New York Sun

Long-standing ties between a member of Senator Obama’s new vice presidential search team and a prominent mortgage executive the senator has pilloried could become a political liability that hampers the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee’s ability to tap into public ire over the subprime mortgage crisis.

James Johnson, one of three people tapped by Mr. Obama recently to oversee the search for his running mate, took at least five real estate loans totaling more than $7 million from Countrywide Financial Corp. through an informal program for friends of the company’s CEO, Angelo Mozilo, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday. (more…)

JAMES T. MADORE, Newsday

Good-government groups accused Gov. David A. Paterson and his predecessor, Eliot Spitzer, yesterday of breaking a campaign promise to overhaul state government - even as Paterson unveiled a plan to curb the influence of money in politics. (more…)

As John McCain officially kicks off his general election campaign for President, the distinction between Republicans and Democrats has never been clearer. Republicans are fighting to deliver results on the issues that matter to people—providing relief from property taxes, helping small businesses create jobs, keeping people safe, and ensuring quality health care and educational opportunities.

The Republican Party, nationally and here in New York, is united to address these challenges and support the candidacy of an America patriot and dedicated public servant in John McCain. He has the experience and leadership we need in a challenging and dangerous world. (more…)

Stephen Dinan, Washington Times

Sen. John McCain kicked off his general election campaign Tuesday night with a message seemingly ripped from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s political playbook and in a location - just outside New Orleans - that highlights the biggest domestic failure of President Bush’s tenure.

In agreeing that this year has become “a change election,” Mr. McCain adopted the vanquished Mrs. Clinton’s critique of Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama as incapable of delivering the change he has promised.

“Both Senator Obama and I promise we will end Washington’s stagnant, unproductive partisanship.But one of us has a record of working to do that and one of us doesn’t,” Mr. McCain said in Kenner, La. “For all his fine words and all his promise, he has never taken the hard but right course of risking his own interests for yours - of standing against the partisan rancor on his side to stand up for our country.” (more…)

Rich Lowry, New York Post

IN their litany of US presi dents who met with hostile dictators, supporters of Bar ack Obama cite John Kennedy and his meeting with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna in 1961. They leave out how it went. The earnest, young president wanted to forestall any possibility of misunderstanding and to win Khrushchev’s commitment to the international status quo. The blustery, risk-taking Soviet premier wanted to bludgeon Kennedy into making concessions that would further the Soviet goal of global revolution. With such clashing objectives, the two leaders didn’t exactly hit it off. (more…)

Steve Huntley, Chicago Sun Times

Barack Obama says the United States should not negotiate with Hamas “unless they recognize Israel, renounce violence and are willing to abide by previous accords” that Israel reached with neighboring Arab states and the Palestinians.

Which of those objections does not apply to Iran? The Democratic presidential candidate has said he’s willing to meet, “without precondition,” with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. (more…)

Krissah Williams, Washington Post

Lifelong Democrat Kathleen Cowley watches with disdain as huge crowds hang on Sen. Barack Obama’s every word. She dismisses Obama’s “intolerable logic.” She turns the channel on pundits who chalk up Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s primary victories to little more than racism. And she doesn’t much care for the notion that while Obama is fresh and inspiring, Clinton is, by implication, old and mean.

“There’s just been an attitude that if you aren’t voting for Barack Obama, then you’re a racist,” said Cowley, 49, a mother of four from Massachusetts who has vowed to never back the senator from Illinois. “I just find that intolerable. I feel like when the members of the media talk about how [Obama’s supporters] would react, they say, ‘Well, we can’t take the vote away from African Americans.’ Well, excuse me, there’s a higher percentage of women.”

A Democratic race that a couple of months ago was celebrated as a march toward history — the chance to nominate the nation’s first woman or African American as a major-party candidate — threatens to leave lingering bitterness, especially among Clinton supporters, whose candidate is running out of ways to win. (more…)

KENNETH LOVETT, New York Daily News

rate Senate Republicans vowed Tuesday to go after filmmakers who deliberately film beatings and then post them on Web sites like YouTube.”They make me sick,” state Sen. John Flanagan, a Long Island Republican, said of recent videos with titles like “Dude gets savagely put to sleep” and “Brutal girl fight.”

“We should never, ever, ever glorify this type of behavior,” Flanagan said. (more…)

Democrat and Chronicle Editorial

It may be years before all the sordid details of the Albany scandal known as Troopergate are made public. After all, there’s much more here than a governor — now ex-governor — playing dirty tricks on a political rival.

There’s the involvement of the State Police in the messy business of political spying. There’s the integrity of the initial investigations of the state inspector general, the attorney general and the Albany County district attorney. And there may be a bigger deal still in how former Gov. Spitzer’s ham-handed political attacks led to his own downfall early this year. (more…)

Rich Lowery, New York Post

IF Barack Obama gets his way, the Oxford English Dictionary will update its definition of “distraction” by the end of the campaign: “Diversion of the mind, attention, etc., from any object or course that tends to advance the political interests of Barack Obama.” (more…)