For your perusal:

—- Has 60 Minutes been duped - again? Gateway Pundit examines a news story they recently did on Karl Rove regarding disgraced former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman and Rove’s “role” in Siegelman’s downfall and finds the sourcing highly questionable. So does the Alabama state GOP. Make sure to read the whole thing.

—- Blackfive posts that our patatroopers in Afghanistan need a morale boost. Visit his site to find out what you can do to help. For that matter, after you send an email to support to our paratroopers in Afghanistan, go here and show your support for all of our combat forces fighting overseas to keep us safe here at home.

—- Oh, and speaking of Afghanistan, thanks for nothing, Drudge. More here.

—- One person who I’m betting many male troops in Iraq are happy to hear about supporting them is actress Angelina Jolie. Yep, you read it correctly

—- As if that weren’t enough to please male Republicans across the country, US Magazine reports that actress Angie Harmon - wife of former NFL pro Jason Sehorn - is supporting John McCain.

—- More importantly to yours truly and female readers of this blog is the news that Patriots QB Tom Brady might model for a few Calvin Klein ads. I’m already having trouble concentrating at the thought. Who am I? What does “Dell” mean?

—- Shocking news (not): Looks like Barry Bonds tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2001, the same year he hit 73 home runs, breaking Mark McGwire’s 1998 single-season 70 HR record. And while we’re on the subject of steroids and baseball, what’s your take on all the Congressional back and forth going on on the subject?

—- Here’s the latest on the ricin found in a hotel room in Las Vegas yesterday. The occupant of the room is in critical condition and has been in the hospital since mid-February. A family member discovered the ricin Thursday after visiting to pick up his things. Authorities have ruled out terrorism but still don’t know how the ricin got there.

—- Uh, waterboarding as a motivational tool to increase sales?

—- Last but certainly not least, congrats to Bob Owens and his wife and their bundle of joy, who first graced them with her presence on Valentine’s Day. The latest addition to the Owens family is absolutely beautiful

It’s official: The Captain reports that “[t]he time has come to sail Captain’s Quarters into drydock” and tomorrow will be his first official day blogging at Hot Air. CQ will no longer be updated, but his archives will, thankfully, still be available.

As I noted earlier this week, I have mixed feelings about this, but of course wish Ed only the best. If you get a chance, please drop him a line in this post and wish him well or email him at captainATcaptainsquartersblogDOTcom.

…. the “toughies” at Code Pinko call —— the Marines.

I swear, you can’t make this stuff up.

**Bump to the top - scroll down to the bottom for updates**

Yesterday, I wrote about a CTV (Canada) story that reported that a “senior member” of BO’s campaign told the Canadian Ambassador Michael Smith that Barack Obama’s tough talk against NAFTA was merely campaign rhetoric, and assured them not to worry. Naturally, all camps denied anything was said (Smith himself, to my knowledge, hasn’t commented). I posted some updates to that story in my original post but wanted to start a new one on it with the info because I think the update deserves it’s own post. CTV is standing by its report:

The Obama campaign told CTV late Thursday night that no message was passed to the Canadian government that suggests that Obama does not mean what he says about opting out of NAFTA if it is not renegotiated.

However, the Obama camp did not respond to repeated questions from CTV on reports that a conversation on this matter was held between Obama’s senior economic adviser — Austan Goolsbee — and the Canadian Consulate General in Chicago.

[…]

On Thursday, the Canadian embassy in Washington issued a complete denial.

“At no time has any member of a presidential campaign called the Canadian ambassador or any official at the embassy to discuss NAFTA,” it said in a statement.

But just yesterday, one of the primary sources of the story, a high-ranking member of the Canadian embassy, gave CTV more details of the call. He even provided a timeline. He has since suggested it was perhaps a miscommunication.

The denial from the embassy was followed by a denial from the Obama campaign.

“The Canadian government put out a statement saying that this was just not true, so I don’t know who the sources were,” said Obama.

Sources at the highest levels of the Canadian government — who first told CTV that a call was made from the Obama camp — have reconfirmed their position.

Jake Tapper has more:

ABC News’ Jennifer Parker spoke to Goolsbee, a University of Chicago economics professor, Thursday who would not confirm or deny that he had a conversation with Georges Rioux, the Canadian Consulate General in Chicago. Rioux, in meetings this week in Ottawa, would also neither confirm nor deny any conversation took place. Both men did say that they know each other.

What not a lot of people caught yesterday was the double speak coming from Canadian officials, which I noted last night. First, there was the official denial:

A spokesman for the Canadian Embassy to the United States, Tristan Landry, flatly denied the CTV report that a senior Obama aide had told the Canadian ambassador not to take seriously Obama’s denunciations of NAFTA.

“None of the presidential campaigns have called either the ambassador or any of the officials here to raise NAFTA,” Landry said.

He said there had been no conversations at all on the subject.

“We didn’t make any calls, they didn’t call us,” Landry said.

“There is no story as far as we’re concerned,” he said.

No calls at all? The Canadian embassy’s minister of public affairs is singing a different tune:

Roy Norton, the minister of public affairs for the Canadian embassy, is flatly denying that any Obama campaign official spoke to the Canadian ambassador in recent days or told him that Obama’s anti-NAFTA stump speech is merely “campaign rhetoric.”

“No, none,” Norton told me when I asked him if Michael Wilson, Canada’s ambassador to the U.S., had spoken to any Obama advisers recently. He added: “Neither before the Ohio debate nor since has any presidential campaign called Ambassador Wilson about NAFTA.”

Norton did allow, however, that the embassy on the staff level had discussed multiple issues, including NAFTA, with the Obama and Hillary campaigns at various times, and had urged them to look at NAFTA in a positive light.

“We’ve impressed upon them the fact that NAFTA has been good for all three countries,” Norton said. “They have made it clear that NAFTA is an issue of contention in the [U.S.], and that inevitably there would be discussion and debate surrounding NAFTA.”

He denied, of course, that either campaign had made any commitments one way or the other.

As intriguing as this story is, the only way it has legs is if one of the high ranking sources CTV claims to have steps forward, and that’s highly unlikely, as no Canadian official is going to want to be seen as trying to influence a US presidential election. BO himself is acting as though he is above it all, if what I saw last night on TV of his reaction when a reporter travelling with him who asked him about it was any indication.

On a related note, I read a fascinating piece last night written yesterday by a guy who used to cover Barack Obama when he was still a state Senator (this 2004 piece he wrote provides some additional background). Bits and pieces of what I read in this story I’ve seen elsewhere, but he has a whole lot more, and explains how Obama’s star rose so fast in Illinois.

Essentially, BO had a kingmaker the last couple of years he was in the state Senate, and it wasn’t difficult for BO to get most legislation passed during that time because Democrats controlled the House and Senate in Illinois. Not only that, but there was some resentment from some black legislators because, according to them, some of the bills BO had been given had been legislation they had worked on in various forms for years, but he was given the legislation and, according to them, got credit for the leg work they had already done on some of the legislation. The article also talks about how Obama bulldozed his path into the state Senate, and had no real opposition in his run for US Senate, thanks to scandals that knocked down his main opponents early on, and thanks, of course, to the lame candidacy of Alan Keyes.

Some of the info in there isn’t new, but some is, and I think you’ll find it interesting reading. It’s not a hit piece, but instead more of an ‘inside look’ from that reporter’s perspective, and who he talked to.

If you read nothing else today, please make sure to read this piece in full. I’m also going to link to it on the right side column.

Update 1: Regarding Austan Goolsbee, the senior adviser to Obama’s campaign, not only is he a senior advisor, Jim Geraghty reports that Goolsbee also briefly had a blog on Obama’s website. Captain Ed notes that Obama’s site identified Goolsbee not just a “senior advisor” but as a “Senior Economic Policy Advisor,” which confirms CTV’s assertions as to his position with the campaign.

Update 2: More, from Mark Halperin (emphasis his):

Clinton campaign stokes Canadian TV report about alleged Obama Canadian contact about NAFTA.

Segment earlier in the week reported that Obama campaign official warned Canadian ambassador that candidate would take heavy swings at NAFTA, but told him not to worry because it’s just “rhetoric.”

Latest CTV report says meeting was held between Obama’s senior economic adviser Austan Goolsbee and the Canadian Consulate General in Chicago.

Clinton camp holds noon ET conference call to discuss allegations.

Obama’s Plouffe denies reports on media call of his own: “The story’s just not true…. No one in our campaign has said or otherwise implied that he would back away from his position on NAFTA.”

Yet still no one from the campaign will deny or confirm whether or a convo took place between Goolsbee and the Georges Rioux. Now that the Hillary campaign has picked up on the story (even though it implicates here, too) it may just have some wings to it.

Update 3 - 3:07 PM ET: CTV has updated it’s earlier story from this morning:

Despite repeated requests, Barack Obama’s campaign is still neither verifying nor denying a CTV report that a senior member of the team made contact with the Canadian government — via the Chicago consulate general — regarding comments Obama made about NAFTA.

Allegations of double talk on the North American Free Trade Agreement from both the Obama and Clinton campaigns dominated the U.S. political landscape on Thursday.

On Wednesday, CTV reported that a senior member of Obama’s campaign called the Canadian government within the last month — saying that when Senator Obama talks about opting out of the free trade deal, the Canadian government shouldn’t worry. The operative said it was just campaign rhetoric not to be taken seriously.

The Obama campaign told CTV late Thursday night that no message was passed to the Canadian government that suggests that Obama does not mean what he says about opting out of NAFTA if it is not renegotiated.

However, the Obama camp did not respond to repeated questions from CTV on reports that a conversation on this matter was held between Obama’s senior economic adviser — Austan Goolsbee — and the Canadian Consulate General in Chicago.

Earlier Thursday, the Obama campaign insisted that no conversations have taken place with any of its senior ranks and representatives of the Canadian government on the NAFTA issue. On Thursday night, CTV spoke with Goolsbee, but he refused to say whether he had such a conversation with the Canadian government office in Chicago. He also said he has been told to direct any questions to the campaign headquarters.

Update 4 - 6:31 PM: ABC News is kicking a** on this story:

On Wednesday, the Canadian Television network reported that two unnamed Canadian sources said a “senior member” of Obama’s campaign team had called Michael Wilson, Canada’s ambassador in Washington, in the last month to warn him that Obama would be ratcheting up rhetoric against the North American Free Trade Agreement, but that he should “not be worried about what Obama says about NAFTA,” adding, “It’s just campaign rhetoric. … It’s not serious.”

Both the Canadian Embassy and the Obama campaign have repeatedly denied the CTV report.

However, a source close to the Canadian prime minister’s office tells ABC News that the original communication was between Austan Goolsbee, Obama’s senior economic adviser and an economics professor at the University of Chicago, and Georges Rioux, Canada’s consul general in Chicago, about Obama’s rhetoric against NAFTA.

According to the source, Wilson exaggerated the communication between the Obama campaign and the Canadian official during discussions this week with Ian Brodie, the prime minister’s chief of staff, who leaked the story to CTV.

[…]

ABC News spoke to Goolsbee, Thursday, and who denied calling the Canadian embassy in Washington, or calling Rioux, but wouldn’t confirm or deny whether he had spoke to Rioux about Obama’s NAFTA rhetoric.

“It’s not correct that I contacted them,” Goolsbee told ABC News Thursday. “They contacted me at one point to say ‘hello’ because their office is around the corner but it is not correct that I contacted them at all,” he said.

“I am not confirming or denying any meetings with anyone,” Goolsbee told ABC News, directing queries to Bill Burton, Obama’s campaign spokesperson.

Rioux, who was in Ottawa for meetings this week with the Prime Minister’s Office, told ABC News that he too will neither confirm nor deny whether he spoke to Goolsbee.

Both men live in Chicago, where Obama’s campaign is headquartered.

The Obama campaign isn’t responding to requests for information about the reported conversation between Goolsbee and Rioux.

The plot thickenz.

I’m interested in finding out what the ABC source means when he talks about Wilson “exaggerating” the conversation … and am still curious as to why Goolsbee and Rioux are doing the denial thing. If there’s nothing to this, they would be more upfront, I think. And the BO campaign not responding to requests for more info is interesting - perhaps they are trying to hold ABC News off until after next Tuesday?

This is good investigative reporting, no matter how it turns out. NYT, are you paying attention?

**Sidenote**: I read somewhere that Goolsbee has been advising BO since 2004 - I can’t find the link at the moment, though.

Update 5 - 6:45 PM: Liberal blogger Matthew Yglesias has this interesting tidbit of info:

Now what really seems to have happened is that Austan Goolsbee tried to get someone from the Canadian consulate in Chicago to be a bit less worried about Obama. Whatever the details, this kind of ambiguous messaging is likely to recur time and again.

I recall being at a meeting in Cambridge, MA around the time of the 2004 Democratic Convention where John Kerry’s top economic and foreign policy advisors were essentially promising a group of assembled ambassadors that all of his anti-trade rhetoric was just empty rhetoric. This seemed like a typically Kerryish thing to have happen, but it would serve Obama may to try to avoid the same kind of thing repeating.

The Clinton campaign is pushing this story, too (they were quoted several times in the ABC piece). This is snowballing a bit. Will the NYT and WaPo climb on board? So far, this is all I’ve found at the NYT website, and it mentions only McCain’s general criticism of Hillary and Obama on NAFTA, and nothing about Goolsbee.

Update 6 - 7:02 PM: Goolsbee is a self-described “free-market type” - but he’s advising the campaign to be anti-NAFTA? Something smells fishy here.

Bonus - Flashback: 10/7/07 - The Offshoring of Hope: Obama Now Misleads Voters About NAFTA Expansion

The Fort Worth Star Telegram reports:

AUSTIN — The Texas Democratic Party warned Thursday that election night caucuses scheduled for Tuesday could be delayed or disrupted after aides to Hillary Rodham Clinton threatened to sue over the party’s complicated delegate selection process.

In a letter sent out late Thursday to both the Clinton and Barack Obama campaigns, Texas Democratic Party lawyer Chad Dunn warned a lawsuit could ruin the Democrats’ effort to re-energize voters just as they are turning out in record numbers.

Spokesmen for both campaigns said there were no plans to sue ahead of the March 4 election.

“It has been brought to my attention that one or both of your campaigns may already be planning or intending to pursue litigation against the Texas Democratic Party,” Dunn wrote in the letter, obtained by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “Such action could prove to be a tragedy for a reinvigorated Democratic process.”

Democratic sources said both campaigns have made it clear that they might consider legal options over the complicated delegate selection process, which includes both a popular vote and evening caucuses. But the sources made it clear that the Clinton campaign in particular had warned of an impending lawsuit.

“Both campaigns have made it clear that they would go there if they had to, but I think the imminent threat is coming from one campaign,” said one top Democratic official, referring to the Clinton campaign. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity.

Another Democratic official who was privy to the discussions confirmed Clinton representatives made veiled threats in a telephone call this week.

“Officials from Sen. Clinton’s campaign at several times throughout the call raised the specter of ‘challenging the process,’ ” the official said.

A Texas stand-off similar to what we saw in 2000 in Florida? Things are getting verrrrry interesting …

Via Memeorandum.

What’s shakin’?

The Dr. of Disology is at it again:

Howard Dean showed up to talk about Black History Month but the focus quickly changed to politics Tuesday night in ICC Auditorium.

The Chairman of the Democratic National Committee and former Governor of Vermont contrasted the two parties’ presidential candidates, saying that with a woman and an African-American as the two front-runners, the Democratic field “looks like America,” while the all-white male Republican field “looks like the 1950s and talks like the 1850s.”

Since this is the season for repudiations and apologies, will we see the Hillary or Obama camp repudiate these repugnant comments that do more than just imply racism, or let them slide? Or perhaps we’ll see Obama repudiate them a few days after they’ve had a chance to sink in, kinda like he did when his campaign manager tried to imply last month that the Clinton campaign was running a racist campaign against the O-man?

The NYT’s war on McCain continues:

WASHINGTON — The question has nagged at the parents of Americans born outside the continental United States for generations: Dare their children aspire to grow up and become president? In the case of Senator John McCain of Arizona, the issue is becoming more than a matter of parental daydreaming.

Mr. McCain’s likely nomination as the Republican candidate for president and the happenstance of his birth in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 are reviving a musty debate that has surfaced periodically since the founders first set quill to parchment and declared that only a “natural-born citizen” can hold the nation’s highest office.

Almost since those words were written in 1787 with scant explanation, their precise meaning has been the stuff of confusion, law school review articles, whisper campaigns and civics class debates over whether only those delivered on American soil can be truly natural born. To date, no American to take the presidential oath has had an official birthplace outside the 50 states.

“There are powerful arguments that Senator McCain or anyone else in this position is constitutionally qualified, but there is certainly no precedent,” said Sarah H. Duggin, an associate professor of law at Catholic University who has studied the issue extensively. “It is not a slam-dunk situation.”

Mr. McCain was born on a military installation in the Canal Zone, where his mother and father, a Navy officer, were stationed. His campaign advisers say they are comfortable that Mr. McCain meets the requirement and note that the question was researched for his first presidential bid in 1999 and reviewed again this time around.

But given mounting interest, the campaign recently asked Theodore B. Olson, a former solicitor general now advising Mr. McCain, to prepare a detailed legal analysis. “I don’t have much doubt about it,” said Mr. Olson, who added, though, that he still needed to finish his research.

In case this has planted a seed of doubt in anyone’s mind about the Mc’s eligibility, this post should put your mind at ease (h/t: Patterico).

This is an intriguing story, to say the least:

Barack Obama has ratcheted up his attacks on NAFTA, but a senior member of his campaign team told a Canadian official not to take his criticisms seriously, CTV News has learned.

Both Obama and Hillary Clinton have been critical of the long-standing North American Free Trade Agreement over the course of the Democratic primaries, saying that the deal has cost U.S. workers’ jobs.

Within the last month, a top staff member for Obama’s campaign telephoned Michael Wilson, Canada’s ambassador to the United States, and warned him that Obama would speak out against NAFTA, according to Canadian sources.

The staff member reassured Wilson that the criticisms would only be campaign rhetoric, and should not be taken at face value.

But Tuesday night in Ohio, where NAFTA is blamed for massive job losses, Obama said he would tell Canada and Mexico “that we will opt out unless we renegotiate the core labour and environmental standards.”

Late Wednesday, a spokesperson for the Obama campaign said the staff member’s warning to Wilson sounded implausible, but did not deny that contact had been made.

“Senator Obama does not make promises he doesn’t intend to keep,” the spokesperson said.

Low-level sources also suggested the Clinton campaign may have given a similar warning to Ottawa, but a Clinton spokesperson flatly denied the claim.

Hat tip to Captain Ed, who responds:

If true, this would show Obama as the worst kind of demagogue. It would mean he’s telling people what they want to hear while rejecting it himself, or alternately that he has begun his diplomatic relations with Canada by lying to them. Either way if true, it paints a disturbing picture of the kind of politician Obama really is.

This story has the potential to be explosive, especially if the Canadian ambassador to the US confirms it. I anticipate a lot of “diplo-speak” from both him and the Obama camp when other news outlets question them on it. In fact, I’m sure the Paper of Record will jump at the chance to cover this story to find out who said what and when

Stay tuned …

PM Update: As expected, both camps are denying this was said, with the Canadian embassy saying they have not been contacted by the Obama campaign and also saying they have they contacted any campaign. Odd, since the story reported that an Obama campaign spokesman said contact had been made by the Obama campaign (the spokesperson who made that assertion has been named). Something smells here, and it’s not with the CTV story, but the denials. Here was the Obama camp’s denial:

Today Bill Burton of the Obama campaign told ABC News no senior Obama campaign representative called the Canadian embassy. “The news reports on Obama’s position on NAFTA are inaccurate and in no way represent Senator Obama’s consistent position on trade,” Burton said separately in an email.

Note the careful wording there. No senior Obama campaign rep. That means the call could have been made by someone lower on the totem pole, but still high enough in the campaign to have had access to the number for the Canadian embassy.

Evening Update - 10:45 PM: In spite of the denials, CTV stands behind its story:

But just yesterday, one of the primary sources of the story, a high-ranking member of the Canadian embassy, gave CTV more details of the call. He even provided a timeline. He has since suggested it was perhaps a miscommunication.

The denial from the embassy was followed by a denial from the Obama campaign.

“The Canadian government put out a statement saying that this was just not true, so I don’t know who the sources were,” said Obama.

Sources at the highest levels of the Canadian government — who first told CTV that a call was made from the Obama camp — have reconfirmed their position.

Who is their source? That is the million dollar question.

And check out this little inconsistency. First, the denial:

A spokesman for the Canadian Embassy to the United States, Tristan Landry, flatly denied the CTV report that a senior Obama aide had told the Canadian ambassador not to take seriously Obama’s denunciations of NAFTA.

“None of the presidential campaigns have called either the ambassador or any of the officials here to raise NAFTA,” Landry said.

He said there had been no conversations at all on the subject.

“We didn’t make any calls, they didn’t call us,” Landry said.

“There is no story as far as we’re concerned,” he said.

Bbbbut:

Roy Norton, the minister of public affairs for the Canadian embassy, is flatly denying that any Obama campaign official spoke to the Canadian ambassador in recent days or told him that Obama’s anti-NAFTA stump speech is merely “campaign rhetoric.”

“No, none,” Norton told me when I asked him if Michael Wilson, Canada’s ambassador to the U.S., had spoken to any Obama advisers recently. He added: “Neither before the Ohio debate nor since has any presidential campaign called Ambassador Wilson about NAFTA.”

Norton did allow, however, that the embassy on the staff level had discussed multiple issues, including NAFTA, with the Obama and Hillary campaigns at various times, and had urged them to look at NAFTA in a positive light.

“We’ve impressed upon them the fact that NAFTA has been good for all three countries,” Norton said. “They have made it clear that NAFTA is an issue of contention in the [U.S.], and that inevitably there would be discussion and debate surrounding NAFTA.”

He went on to say that even with those conversations, the campaigns made no specific committments. Hmmm …

From the Department of Self-Loathers:

Five states did something over the past 12 months that no state had done before: expressed regret or apologized for slavery.

This year, Congress, which meets in a Capitol built partly by slaves, will consider issuing its own apology.

“We’ve seen states step forward on this,” says Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, citing the resolutions of Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, Alabama and New Jersey. “I’m really shocked, just shocked” that the federal government hasn’t apologized. “It’s time to do so.”

Harkin says he and Sen. Sam Brownback R-Kan., will propose as early as March an apology not only for slavery but for subsequent “Jim Crow” laws that furthered racial segregation. So far, they have 14 Senate backers, including Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. A similar House measure introduced last year has 120 co-sponsors.

“I think 2008 will be the year,” says Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn. He says an apology could begin a dialogue about race that Obama could continue as the nation’s first black president.

“The success of the Obama candidacy underscores the irrelevance of an apology” because it shows “enormous progress” in race relations, says Roger Clegg of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a conservative group that describes itself as opposed to racial preferences. “Haven’t we already moved beyond it?”

Not if it can be used as an excuse to create even more government programs the “disadvantaged”:

Apologies are controversial because they could lead to reparations.

They “carry weight” as a step toward racial healing and don’t have to “open the door” to reparations, says Carol Swain, professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University.

Other proponents say an apology should lead to remedies.

“A mere apology doesn’t do anything for me,” says state Rep. Talibdin El-Amin, a Democrat who is lobbying for such a resolution in Missouri.

An apology is a necessary first step because it recognizes a wrongdoing, says Hilary Shelton of the NAACP.

He says it’s “hollow,” though, unless it leads to a remedy for African-Americans, who still suffer economically and educationally from the aftereffects of slavery and segregation.

Remedies don’t have to be monetary payments but could be government programs to help the disadvantaged, Cohen says.

It’s unfortunate that Senator Brownback chose to be a part of this.

How much do you want to bet that this was a move timed to, in part, see if the GOP nominee would/will sign on to it? Because if McCain doesn’t, you know what will happen.