A new SurveyUSA poll shows Sen. John McCain leads Sen. Barack Obama, 49% to 44%, among respondents who were asked "if you were placing a bet today" who do you think will be elected president?

The Republican convention has given Sen. John McCain and his party a significant boost, a USA Today/Gallup Poll taken over the weekend shows, as McCain now leads Sen. Barack Obama, 50% to 46% among registered voters.

Among likely voters, McCain leads Obama, 54% to 44%.

However, McCain's ties to President Bush "remains a vulnerability. In the poll, 63% say they are concerned he would pursue policies too similar to those of the current president. Bush's approval rating is 33%."

From the desk of George Phillies:

I do not believe there is a unique legitimate process in the Bylaws for ejecting an At-large Member from a meeting, and that is a motion that passes to expel the At-Large from the LNC.

Angela, I strongly urge you to write a letter to the Judicial Committee claiming that the ejection was an expulsion, and asking them to rule on the validity of the expulsion.  This will short circuit any later claim from the guiding geniuses that the expulsion really was an expulsion and, because you did not appeal, you have been expelled.  Remember what you are dealing with.

I do not believe that the LNC can legitimately vote in executive session.

It does appear to me that the LNC managed to spend 2/3 or more of its only general election campaign meeting in a Presidential election year on this issue.

According to my reports, you were abandoned by the radical faction and defended only by Admiral Colley and the Barr campaign.  Is this true?

I just lost my elector agreement to substitute Barr for me.  Goddess knows, it may return, because people were also upset with Steve Gordon, but that is not presently the case.

My State Committee did vote to sever all relations with the LSLA.

My State Convention is going to have a disaffiliation motion, though it may be a motion that the LNC stands disaffiliated from the Libertarian Party.

Out of the many groups supporting the candidacy of Chuck Baldwin, one has recently started that makes up a sizable core of Constitutionalists and principled conservatives: Latter-Day Saints (Mormons). On their website, their introduction speaks about the inportance of the US Constitution- “...The Lord told us that He inspired the Constitution and that “it should be maintained [...]

Bill Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama "will have a private lunch together in New York City on the anniversary of Sept. 11," ABC News reports.

"Although Clinton has said he will campaign on behalf of Obama, there are no campaign events or public appearances scheduled for the two men as yet."

Christopher Conkey reports on the presidential election.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said he had been too flip when answering a question about abortion at a religous forum last month.

Appearing on ABC-TV’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” the Illinois senator was asked whether his response – “above my pay grade” — to the question of when a baby gains human rights was “too flip,” Obama told Stephanopoulos, “Probably. Yes. All I meant to communicate was that I don’t presume to be able to answer these kinds of theological questions.”

On NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” Obama’s running mate, Joe Biden, a Roman Catholic, said he is “prepared to accept the teachings of my church” that life begins “at the moment of conception.” But he stressed that “there are an awful lot of people of great confessional faiths…who have a different view.”

Many abortion opponents have seized on Obama’s “pay grade” comment at the
Saddleback Church forum in California to draw distinctions with his Republican rival, Arizona Sen. John McCain. During the Republican convention, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said: “It is not above John McCain’s pay grade to grasp the simple fact that life begins at conception, and he is committed to protecting it.”

McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, didn’t directly refer to abortion during their acceptance speeches last week, although McCain expressed his belief in the “culture of life” and the need to appoint conservative judges. At the religious forum where Obama made his “pay grade” remark, though McCain answered the same question concisely: “At the moment of conception.”

Democrats have repeatedly noted that McCain had considered abortion rights supporter Sen. Joe Lieberman to be his running mate before deciding on Palin, who, like McCain, opposes abortion. Their point is that abortion doesn’t appear to be that high on Sen. McCain’s priority list.

After voicing respect for abortion as a complex issue on Sunday, both Democratic candidates reiterated their policy goals: maintaining a woman’s right to choose and reducing the number of abortions.

“What I do know is that abortion is a moral issue…and that in wrestling with those issues, I don’t think that the government criminalizing the choices that families make is the best answer for reducing abortions,” Sen. Obama said on This Week. Sen. Biden said of his personal views against abortion: “For me to impose that judgment on everyone else who is equally and maybe more devout than I am…is inappropriate in a pluralistic society.”

Christopher Conkey reports on the presidential race.

Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin will break her media silence this week in an interview with ABC News, the McCain campaign said Sunday. The decision could begin to cure what was increasingly becoming a distraction for the campaign.

Palin, who famously dissed the mainstream media in her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention but has nonetheless dominated recent press coverage of presidential race, was the only one of the four major candidates missing from the Sunday airwaves. Since the convention, the McCain campaign has largely shielded her from the press, and she has only made public appearances with John McCain.

McCain campaign manger Rick Davis explained the move to shield Palin today on Fox News Sunday.

“The information that the news media has been putting out on Sarah Palin is not what I would call objective journalism,” Davis said. “So until at which point in time we feel like the news media is going to treat her with some level of respect and deference, I think it would be foolhardy to put her out into that kind of environment.”

At the time, Davis would not say when Palin would begin to grant interviews or respond to media queries.

“She’s not scared to answer questions,” he said. “We run our campaign, not the news media. And we’ll do things on our timetable.”

Democrats have pounced on the McCain campaign’s protection of the Alaska governor.

“Eventually she’s going to have to sit in front of you like I’m doing and have done,” Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Joe Biden said Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press. “She’s going to have to answer questions and not be sequestered.”

The McCain campaign said there would be no ground rules for the interview, which will take place over two days at multiple locations.

To thwart efforts by a cabal within the LNC to remove at-large rep. Angela Keaton from her duly elected post, renegade Massachusetts Barr-elector Arthur Torrey, who has already stated publicly he will not vote for Barr “should he win the state of Massachusetts,” said he would not support the substitution of Barr’s name for Phillies’s name on the Massachusetts ballot should Keaton be kicked off the LNC. This would have likely killed any chance of Barr appearing on the Massachusetts ballot, and as a result, the Barr campaign intervened and sent their proxy Bill Redpath a “request” that Ms. Keaton not be removed from the LNC.

An interview with Ms. Palin after pressure comes from news organizations