It turns out that when John McCain asked, "Who is Barack Obama?" maybe he wasn't being rhetorical. Maybe he really wants to know. And who can blame him, when his own campaign can't get its attack stories straight?

For weeks, McCain's partisans have been hollering that Obama is an elitist,...

Great news from the campaign on the rescue front!

Not the economic rescue package. This is a canine rescue package.

Michelle Obama pledged on Entertainment Tonight that when the family gets a dog -- Barack Obama promised one to his daughters once the campaign is over --...

In her sometimes clumsy tributes to regular folks during the vice presidential debate, Sarah Palin put a halo on teachers. She was speaking of Jill Biden when she said, "God bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right?''

From this I took away two things.

...

The day after I hit the ''send'' button on my Los Angeles Times book review of Christopher Buckley's latest novel of political satire, John McCain put Sarah Palin on his ticket.

How was I to know? How did Buckley?

The main character in ``Supreme Courtship'' is Pepper Cartwright, a hottie...

We'll just have to rename the "October Surprise."

We've had so many surprises sprung on us, starting with the August Surprise of the Sarah Palin nomination, what could astonish us any more?

Big drop in gas prices just before the election? Been there, done that. Sudden...

It's pretty obvious from the last month's financial shenanigans that the heart of American financial commerce has forfeited the rights to its old name.

I say, demote ''Wall Street.'' The best it deserves is ''Wall Alley.''

Sarah Palin opposes abortion, even in cases of rape and incest. As she said in a gubernatorial debate nearly two years ago, even if her own daughter were a rape victim, she - not the daughter, interestingly, but she - would ''choose life.''

Now there's an e-mail making the...

Maybe we were too hasty, bringing Alaska into the union as the 49th state.

Let's go back even further. Maybe Seward's check for $7.2 million should have bounced.

I'm sure some people feel the same way about Hawaii, most of them Hawaiians. Both states have sovereignty...

From the first, the crowd reaction to the McCain-Palin duo reminded me of Charles and Diana.

Even though Prince Charles was the one who was descended from William the Conqueror and all the rest, even though he was the future king regnant, she was the one who drew the...

I have been thinking hard about what I can cherish and treasure from the Bush White House years, one simple thing I have to be thankful to Dubya for, and I have found it.

Perspective. Bush's Iraq war has given me a sense of scale about money that's actually relieved...

Looks like Harold Simmons doesn't mind spending big money for what he believes in, starting with ... Harold Simmons.

Simmons is the corporate raider and sept-billionaire [worth more than $7 billion, according to Forbes] who gave millions to the Swift Boat attacks on John Kerry in 2004.

And...

It's the latest Bush administration tactic: scorched earth.

His scorching, our earth.

It's a tactic used by troops fleeing or retreating from the enemy -- to destroy everything that might be of use. We had Sherman's March to the Sea during the Civil War, and now we have Bush's March...

Yes, I know it's a joke ... for most people.

But if you have, in any seriousness, pasted a ''Paris for President'' bumper sticker on your car, I hope you plan to keep that vehicle for a loooong time.

The Constitution requires that a president be at least 35 years...

A quartet of Olympic cyclists arriving in China from the United States has apologized for showing up at the Beijing airport wearing smog masks.

Why? I don't mean why wear the masks -- it's obvious that China grades its air pollution on the curve, and what's considered passing...

Okay, so it wasn't perfect. Big deal. In this country, these days, not-perfect gets you a book deal and a talk show.

Or a movie -- in this case, a less-than-perfect movie that I rather liked. And I'm not just saying this because Arianna makes a cameo appearance.

With 600 of THOSE coffee shops closing across the country -- some to cries of caffeine-deprived protest -- I guess I shouldn't quibble about the details.

Two of them in South Los Angeles got the hail-and-farewell treatment from the Los Angeles Times, because their opening had been regarded...

This is not a joke. How many Air Force generals does it take to choose upholstery?

At least four. At least that many ranking generals had a hand in choosing the decor of deluxe ''comfort capsules'' for themselves and their peers aboard military transport planes, so the brass don't have...

In an op-ed essay in today's Los Angeles Times, my colleague Ron Brownstein writes about Colorado's perhaps pivotal role in the presidential election equation, and he quotes sundry Coloradans on what's going into the making of their choices.

The one who got to me was a fellow who only offered...

Most Americans say they would have no problem voting for an African-American for president.

What about voting for a fat candidate for president? Would you?

[The obese William Howard Taft doesn't count -- he was president nearly a hundred years ago, when there was no YouTube, and prosperous...

The Third Amendment -- going, going ... ?

Nice work, Blackwater.

The Third Amendment says that "No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.''

Apart from...