links for 2009-04-21

Cut a latte or two out of your annual budget and you've just done as much belt-tightening as President Barack Obama asked of his Cabinet on Monday.

The thrifty measures Obama ordered for federal agencies are the equivalent of asking a family that spends $60,000 in a year to save $6.

Obama made his push for frugality the subject of his first Cabinet meeting, ensuring it would command the capital's attention. It also set off outbursts of mental math and scribbled calculations as political friend and foe tried to figure out its impact.

The bottom line: Not much.

Meghan McCain said Tuesday that she voted for Vice President Al Gore in the 2000 presidential race. But McCain, who was born in 1984, was too young to vote in that race.

McCain said on Fox News that she cast ballots for Gore in 2000 and Sen. John Kerry in the 2004 because of ill will toward President Bush, who defeated her father, John McCain, for the 2000 GOP presidential nomination. McCain dropped out that year after losing the South Carolina primary. His allies have the loss on rumors that he had a fathered a child out of wedlock and that his wife was a drug addict.

"MSNBC News Live" host Contessa Brewer on Monday speculated as to whether the liberal-leaning Meghan McCain could become "the voice of the Republican Party." Brewer, who was talking to Washington Times reporter Christina Bellantoni about the daughter of the 2008 GOP presidential nominee, ignored the fact that Ms. McCain has admitted she supported Democrats John Kerry in 2004 and Al Gore in 2000.

Remember when Republicans were worried about whether new RNC chairman Michael Steele could be an effective fundraiser, or whether his controversial comments would hurt the party's finances?

Month by month, that looks like an increasingly overblown concern.

In January, Steele's first month, the party collected $5.8 million. In February, $5.1 million. Last month, $6.7 million. Including $7 million transferred to the RNC by the McCain-Palin campaign, the committee raised $25.3 million in the first quarter.

Rep. Jane Harman , the California Democrat with a longtime involvement in intelligence issues, was overheard on an NSA wiretap telling a suspected Israeli agent that she would lobby the Justice Department to reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the most powerful pro-Israel organization in Washington.

Harman was recorded saying she would “waddle into” the AIPAC case “if you think it’ll make a difference,” according to two former senior national security officials familiar with the NSA transcript.

British delegates joined a dramatic diplomatic walkout today when President Ahmadinejad of Iran told a major UN conference against racism that the state of Israel had been founded "on the pretext of Jewish suffering" during the Second World War.

Around 20 delegates, including envoys from the UK, France, Canada and Finland stood up and left the room at what was considered an anti-Semitic remark by the Iranian leader, who has repeatedly called for Israel to be wiped off the map.

Steve Schmidt says the problem with the GOP is too many religious voters.

Funny this is the Democrats' view too.

Democrats are engaged in a highly sophisticated outreach strategy with the same basic message point: the GOP is not the natural home for religious people. Prolife Catholics can support Obama. The public things you see are only a small part of the money being flooded into penetrating religious peoples' intellectual networks to reduce effective opposition to sexual liberalism by disaffiliating their leaders from either the GOP or from their traditional stands on morality (cf. Rick Warren).

This is the Democrats’ carrot to religious people. They also are developing an increasingly big stick: After gay marriage, the most religiously committed Americans will be effectively marginalized as a public force—because they cannot act or support the idea that gay unions are marriages.