You gotta love the New York Times chiding itself for dragging the ghost of Karl Rove into a McCain camp dissension story even though he is “not directly involved” in the campaign. (“You thought we were going to write a story about the internal dynamics of a presidential campaign without mentioning Mr. Rove?”)

And like the Saturday Night Live joke that “Franco is still dead,” the action in Mosul still remains a secret among the mainstream media.

You mean Barack Obama’s spending isn’t paid for by just jacking up taxes on the rich? (Read the whole thing and give Leon Panetta points for honesty.) And if he was going to pay for it by ending the war in Iraq and now isn’t going to end the war in Iraq will he trim some billions off his spending? Didn’t think so.

Bob Herbert explains why Barack Obama’s flip-flops are different than those of most politicians:

Barack Obama went out of his way to create the impression that he was a new kind of political leader — more honest, less cynical and less relentlessly calculating than most.You would be able to listen to him without worrying about what the meaning of “is” is.This is why so many of Senator Obama’s strongest supporters are uneasy, upset, dismayed and even angry at the candidate who is now emerging in the bright light of summer. . But Senator Obama is not just tacking gently toward the center. He’s lurching right when it suits him, and he’s zigging with the kind of reckless abandon that’s guaranteed to cause disillusion, if not whiplash.

Howard Wolfson joins Fox and lets on that its viewers are more important since they include more independents who might be subject to persuasion. Seems the demonization of Fox may be coming to an end.

The Washington Post editors think Obama got scared by his liberal base about shifting on Iraq. (It’s hard to recall a presidential nominee so intimidated by his own supposedly infatuated base.)

And it’s reassuring when a member of the liberal punditocracy can identify an “idiot” at the UN. It would be better if elected Democrats did. Come to think of it, why don’t they?