You decide if you think Roger Perkins is a liar. I have made up my own mind on the subject.

Charlie was there, and it is his right under the freedoms afforded by the Constitution. Not a big deal. Why would he deny being there? Maybe he thought that he had made a mistake. Well, in that case you say "yes, I was there, it turned out to be something completely different that what I thought it would be and I left, I wish I had never shown up" That would have been the end of it, why deny you were there? Are you trying to pull the wool over people that may not vote for you if you said you attended the "happening"?

In political campaigns, truth is the first casualty. I have always distrusted chameleon politicians that adapt themselves to their audience and no one really knows what they stand for.

McClintock on the other side, never wavers on his beliefs and since I don't agree with most of his political leanings I guess I won't be voting for the chameleon or the obstructionist carpetbagger.

Kewl. More fundraising material. Thanks!

These old Doolittle ads are so handy !

Anybody notice how Republican candidate Tom McClintock was doing a voter's forum OUT of the district this weekend ? Does the man, er, do the campaign consultants not know where the district is ?

loomisresident - Call me skeptical, but I'm still not convinmced Charlie was there. The photo I saw was of a short guy with glasses wearing a desert pattern cammo jacket.

erratum: "convinmced" should read "convinced"

Skeptic: You take your moniker too seriously. Charlie has even admitted being there now that the video came out. Being skeptical to the extent that you take it is not healthy.

Brown did attend but as loomis says, so what? However Loomis is incorrect in saying that Brown denied he was there. He has never done that and I challenge anybody here to show proof of that. He said he was there, wearing a cammie shirt and a boonie hat.

This gutter stuff is backfiring with voters. The funny things is, McCain/Palin are going down the same desperate road in their battle for the White House by attacking Obama using smears, half-truths and exaggeration. The Obama Campaign, unfortunately, is responding by pointing out McCain's connections to the Keating Five. The AP published a story today linking McCain to a shady group that was involved in the Iran-Contra debacle. But none of this really matters.

What matters are the real issues. A campaign's attempt to distract with effigies or pastors or whatever is simply an attempt to change the subject from the issues that matter.

So why does the McClintock Campaign want to change the subject? Are they worried that "California's Conservative Icon" is wedded to an ideology and to policies that are out-of-step with the issues district voters care about today? I believe they are and so all we get from McClintock and his surrogates is one attack after another. Voters this year are very sensitive to negative campaigns. They are beginning to understand that negative attacks are a distraction and, worse, an indicator that a candidate is weak both in policy and character. They remember the Karl Rove stuff that led to four more years of George Bush who enjoys the highest disapproval ratings since modern polling began in 1938. They remember Doolittle's dirty 2006 campaign. They don't like the results of being fooled and will be much more careful to make a choice based on a wider set of data.

So I say, "Keep it up!" Keep throwing slime. Each ad and each blog post is helping Charlie Brown. It's causing people to reach into their pockets and donate money to his campaign. It's causing voters who ordinarily don't think too much before filling in the "R" bubble next to a name to pause and wonder just what kind of person they are voting for. It's backfiring.

Miuwtant: There are numerous cases of Charlie Brown and his surrogates denying his presence at that rally. Skeptic is still denying it.

They denied that he was wearing his military fatigues until the photos demonstrated it.

They denied it was an effigy in the letter I cited.

This is not "slime", it is called "truth".

You leftwing nutcases are so caught up in the dementia of your liberal desires, you cannot see the truth.

Charlie attended the rally and while you write it off as "so what?", many people understand that it demoralizes our troops to see such crap because they fear that our politicians will bend to the pressure and stop supporting them.

I know, you say it does not...but then why did Tokyo Rose have a job if that kind of action did not work?

Skeptic is not denying it. Skeptic is simply saying that the photo shown as evidence is not convincing. Maybe Charlie Brown was there. Maybe not. I hope he was there, exercising his Constitutional right like a bold patriot under the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights. That takes initiative. Going along with Cheney's failed war program does not. In any case, the short man with glasses and cammo shown photo is not Charlie Brown.

- Does "support our troops" mean that we also have to support the political or personal agenda of the politicians who continue send our troops into harm's way for reasons that have never been made clear? No, it doesn't mean that. Americans are not required to agree with their government, and they aren't required to support attempts by our temporary public servants to achieve questionable goals by needlessly deploying the armed forces.

- Does "support our troops" mean that we should also support the use of our military for reasons of which we would otherwise disapprove? No. Americans are amply justified when they disagree with the ways their elected representatives may try to achieve valid and moral goals, much less an illegal military invasion and military occupation of a harmless sovereign nation. Politicians are quite capable of making really terrible decisions and it is never unethical to dissent from decisions when you honestly believe they are morally wrong, or harmful to the United States.

Pledging to risk one's life in the military for a noble cause is never dishonorable. Politicians who exploit that honor and selflessness are.

Dissenters may also object to the fact that our soldiers are dying for reasons not at all related to our freedom as Americans. If one honestly believes that the American armed forces are being used illegally or immorally, "support our troops" is a null argument.

- Does support the troops mean that the troops should not know that the majority of us back home are dissatisfied with the decisions being made by politicians? Of course not.

The troops know what's going on. And to believe that troops under fire are complacent and grateful to the Republican Chicken Hawks who sent them there is a clear indication that you never experienced combat, ignore those of us who have, or both.

The fact that Americans are risking their lives to achieve the short-term political goals of a wealthy few is no good reason to hide our disagreement; on the contrary, the risks and hardships which the troops are needlessly suffering are reason enough to disagree in the first place.

Any principled and ethical opposition to the Iraq blood and money quagmite has to include support and concern for those in uniform; our friends and family members fighting.

We support them not by leaving them to be crippled or die in Iraq for nothing, but by bringing them safely back home. Right now.

erratum: "quagmite" should be "quagmire."