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From C&E:

The Biden for President Campaign is pleased to announce today the endorsement of Jack Carter, the 2006 Democratic nominee for US Senate and son of former President Jimmy Carter.

“Today my wife Elizabeth and I are announcing our support for Joe Biden in his bid for the Presidency. He was the first Senator to support my Dad in 1975, and he was helpful in my own campaign last year” said Carter. “He is experienced, knowledgeable, affable and humorous. Sen. Biden has entered serious proposals into the debate on many of the issues critical to Americans - and others - today.”

“With Joe Biden, we don’t have to worry about the problems of lack of experience or high negatives affecting our chances in November 2008. I’m very comfortable that he can win” said Carter.

On NPR this morning:

While Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware has been mired in the second tier of Democratic candidates and lags far behind in the money race, he says he has a plan to win Iowa, and the experience to hit the ground running if he’s elected president.

Changing the tone of politics apparently includes calling the best friend of firefighters in Congress “craven,” it would appear.

An aide to Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-Ill.) presidential campaign said the candidates planning to attend today’s memorial service in Charleston, S.C., for nine firefighters who died this week are engaging in a “pretty craven political act.”

The Biden campaign’s official response:

Sen. Biden attended today’s memorial service at the express invitation of IAFF Pres. Harold Shaitbarger and Charleston Mayor Joe Riley. He is the Co-Chairman of the Congressional Fire Services Caucus, and he flew down with a delegation of Delaware firefighters to honor their fallen brethren. The Obama Campaign’s lack of familiarity with Sen. Biden’s longstanding personal relationship with firefighters is no excuse for such a cheap shot and a great example of new politics.

If you don’t know about Biden and firefighters, watch this speech. It’s long, so hit pause and let it download, then skip ahead to about 6:30 and watch the next 4 or 5 minutes. Then you’ll know why, whenever firefighters are in need, Joe will be there.

Columnist Mark Shields reminds the liberal base that Joe Biden has been “one of the strongest and most consistent critics of the Bush policy.”

For those of us who have covered him during his Senate years and during his aborted 1988 presidential campaign, this was a different Joe Biden.

Gone, for the most part, was his earlier proclivity when asked, “What time is it?” to launch into the history of watch-making and why Switzerland was its home. As he has mostly been in two disciplined debate appearances, at the Monitor lunch Biden was short-winded and straightforward.

What about Democratic presidential candidates who talk about not leaving any residual troops in Iraq?

“They don’t know what they’re talking about is the honest-to-God truth.”

Asked if the option of U.S. military strikes against Iran is realistic, Biden answered, “No,” and added, “The one thing that would unite the Iranian people is to bomb Iran.”

By my lights, Joe Biden was wrong in voting to give George W. Bush the authority to invade and occupy Iraq. He has been since one of the strongest and most consistent critics of the Bush policy, especially of its lack of planning, too few troops for the mission and defective intelligence. He still has the best teeth in politics, a quick wit and a streak of candor.

Why did he end the reporters’ session some 20 minutes early? To get back to a Senate vote on making it easier for unions to sign up workers, he admitted, because organized labor — which matters to him and his campaign — wanted him to.

A recurring, and mostly deserved, slam on political candidates is that they are too rehearsed, too programmed, too given to parroting their talking points. Not so Joe Biden — he is not pre-packaged.

Learn it, live it, love it. It’s not that hard to say, and by deliberately not saying the common and respectful greeting while in Egypt to the Iranian Foreign Minister, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice opted for the complete diss (and by a female, no less, to a representative of a misogynist regime) instead of productive diplomacy. Nice move.

At Thursday’s lunch, Mottaki greeted the gathered diplomats with the Arabic phrase, “As-salama aleikum,” a Muslim greeting often used by Iran’s Farsi speakers meaning “Peace be upon you,” according to an Iraqi official who was present.

Rice replied to him in English, “Hello,” then added: “Your English is better than my Arabic,” according to the Iraqi official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the lunch was private.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit then piped in, telling Mottaki, “We want to warm the atmosphere some.”

Mottaki smiled and replied in English with a saying: “In Russia, they eat ice cream in winter because it’s warmer than the weather” — more or less meaning, “You take whatever atmosphere-warming you can get.”

Everything you ever needed to learn about the defensibility of creationism in a fun-filled video with Kent Hovind:

During that time [before the Flood], everything lived over 900 years. Now, reptiles never stop growing. It’s a simple biological fact, reptiles grow all their life. Now what would happen to a reptile if you put him in the garden of Eden and let him live to 900 years old? You’d have a big lizard, a really big lizard. So “dinosaurs” were giant reptiles that lived with Adam and Eve before the Flood; they did not live millions of years ago. They were pre-flood, not pre-historic.

Now Noah was 600 years old when he built that boat, I bet he was smart enough to figure out, you don’t have to bring the biggest ones you can find: bring two babies. Just be sure to get a pink one and a blue one, that’ll be important later.

It’s seriously hard to stop watching, like Anna Nicole Smith.

There’s more to being smart than just not misspeaking. The world is a complicated place. … Which is why for this next election, we need to pick the smartest candidate, not the dullest one who simply never had a verbal gaffe and said a wrong word or phrase.

A couple of weeks ago, Senator Joe Biden hit the ground flopping when he described Barack Obama as articulate and clean. But if you think he’s a racist, then you’re not really thinking, you’re just playing Gotcha. Yes, the remark was cringe-worthy - it always is when someone old and out of touch says something creepy - even a Chinaman knows that.

However, when it comes to the most important ISSUE of the day, last year, Joe Biden was out ahead on calling for an Iraq broken into three countries - and that is what’s going to happen, no matter how much surging George Bush does. And I say fine, so what if Iraq gets broken up, it’s a made up country anyway, there’s only been an Iraq since 1932 - it’s 7 years younger than Paul Newman.

So, the guy who got this right, he can’t run, because we’re a very sensitive people, and he said a black man was clean, and we care more about a one second verbal brain-fart than we do about who has the right answers.

From the HuffPo by way of Biden’s blog.

Yes, we elect some real yokels in Georgia. Steve Davis is a racist, anti-family jackass who is afraid of exposing his perfect white children to such issues as families living in poverty and racial equality. Makes me want to hit him with a stick every time he refers to God.

It is called Family Day so that legislators can bring their wifes and kids up for the day and show our family atmosphere. However I do not bring my family due to the spectacle presented by the fringe groups in front of our children. You have Labor Unions, “Working Families” wanting minimum wage increases, marches for racial equality, and the worst is GSLBT groups that try to prove they are families too(by exposing our young children to them kissing and holding hands). I will just say that I am very passionate about the issues but I did not get into politics to expose my children to adult issues. It is a shame that these groups try to exploit this event the way they do.

As he sends more children to get shot up and broken by bombs in Iraq, he plans on spending less on their medical care should any of them return. BUT we have to keep the tax cuts for the wealthy, so….
Vets face more health care cuts

The Bush administration’s budget assumes cuts to funding for veterans’ health care two years from now - even as badly wounded troops returning from Iraq could overwhelm the system. … Even though the cost of providing medical care to veterans has been growing rapidly - by more than 10 percent in many years - White House budget documents assume consecutive cutbacks in 2009 and 2010 and a freeze thereafter.

Majority Whip Barry Fleming hates the jury system:

The bill, which was filed Friday, would give judges the discretion to impose the death sentence on nonunanimous jury verdicts in which at least nine jurors voted for execution.

Prosecutors say the change will help them secure death penalty verdicts, which are increasingly difficult to get as questions mount over the imposition of capital punishment in the United States.

Yes, let’s not let problems with the judicial system stop us from putting people to death; mostly guilty is good enough.

Defense lawyers say such a change would put Georgia in a category of only a few states that allow elected judges to impose a death penalty without a unanimous verdict.

He said that during jury selection some people will say they can impose the death penalty if necessary, but later refuse to do so on moral grounds.

“People morally opposed to the death penalty obviously aren’t opposed to fibbing,” Fleming said Monday.

Well, you can’t trust those shiftless pro-actual-life communists about which he broadly and arbitrarily spins yarns. You just can’t trust those “some people.” I also hear that “some people” will sponsor pro-death legislation and then go home and bugger their dog. So I hear.