It seems like only a few glandular cases are obsessed with the fact that Barack Obama knows Bill Ayers, the vintage '60s "revolutionary" and former mad bomber, with everyone else including the New York Post dismissing the charge as a low blow.

But the Ayers controversy is only the spearhead of a massive Internet campaign by McCain supporters to brand Senator Obama a "socialist," the timing of which is exquisitely (if unintentionally) comic.

It goes like this: Sometime in the distant past, Obama won the endorsement of the Chicago chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, or D.S.A.—a rather moderate group of activists by left-wing standards, who have always believed in advancing such radical concepts as universal health care, green technology, union jobs at decent wages, as well as many other worthy ideas that are now boringly mainstream.  read more »

Only one half of the Democratic ticket is actually set. With this afternoon's acclamation vote, Barack Obama is now officially the party's candidate for president. But Joe Biden, his handpicked running mate, must still win the convention's formal blessing. Technically, the party could go through another time-consuming roll call of the states to nominate Biden, but there's no need for that. Instead, Biden will be nominated just after 10 tonight (after Bill Clinton's speech) by Quincy Lucas, a Delaware woman and domestic violence activist. There will be no seconding speech; to save time, delegates will simply be asked if anyone seconds the nomination -- and hundreds of them will shout back "I do.  read more »

Theodore Sorensen, who was John F. Kennedy's speechwriter and one of his closest advisers, approves of the speech Barack Obama delivered yesterday to 200,000 Germans in front of the Victory Column in Tiergarten.

"I thought it was a magnificent, historic speech," said Sorensen, who helped draft Kennedy's famous 1963 "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech. "It was a comprehensive declaration of new American foreign policy which will close the chapter on the nightmares of the last seven and a half years and hold out hope for sensible Europeans that America will once again be a collaborator."

Asked how Obama's speech echoed Kennedy's decades earlier, with its tone and repetitive references to freedom and Berlin, Sorensen said, "Of course there are parallels between two, young, aggressive internationalist-minded Democrats speaking in that historic place.  read more »

President of NBC Universal, Jeff Zucker, will file a defamation suit against Harvey Weinstein if he calls him his friend again in public. [P6]

Not-yet-fired Elle fashion director, Nina Garcia, has been asked to take a lesser title at the magazine, but was also told that if she leaves all together, she will no longer be a judge on Project Runway. [P6]  read more »

Nothing is original in late-capitalist America!

Before Pamela Anderson, Rob Lowe, and Paris Hilton paved the way for sex tapes, apparently, there was a black and white video of Marilyn Monroe performing oral sex, which just sold to "a New York businessman" for $1.5 million, The New York Post reports.

The silent, 15-minute reel of 16 mm footage "appears" to have been shot in the 50's and shows Ms. Monroe performing the act on an unidentified man, who for a long time the F.B.I. tried to prove was John F. Kennedy or Robert F. Kennedy.

In the tape, Ms. Monroe is on her knees and never looks at the lens, while the man’s face is out of the shot, according to the Post.  read more »

After studying the speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy, linguist Mark Liberman found that their speaking styles are “radically different.”

Then there’s Barack Obama.  read more »

Steve Kornacki thinks the strategy behind Mitt Romney's religion speech owes more to George H.W. Bush than to John F. Kennedy.

Also from the Observer, Jason Horowitz reports on the reaction to the speech from two prominent Catholic commentators.

Upon tuning in for Mitt Romney’s much-hyped speech on religion Thursday morning, many viewers probably asked the same first question: What’s George Bush doing there?

The former President invited Mr. Romney to deliver the address at his presidential library in College Station, joined him on stage and even offered a personal introduction.  read more »

It has taken over four decades, but the time may once again have come for the Democratic Party to run on defense and foreign policy. They have good reason to do so.  read more »

In letters to the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Howard Dean, and the Commission on Presidential Debates, Schumer said:

Hofstra University is one of only two candidates in the Northeast. In fact, New York has not hosted a debate since 1960 when John F. Kennedy and then Vice-President Richard M. Nixon met in a Manhattan television studio.

The letters are after the jump.  read more »