We are offering two different designs on t-shirts, posters and mugs to help get the word out about John Kerry.

Berger mess continues

Congress is sure to hold hearings on former Clinton adviser Sandy Berger’s theft of top secret classified documents from the National Archives. The Washington Post offers damning information regarding Berger’s visits to the archives:

A government official with knowledge of the investigation said Archives employees took action promptly after noticing a missing document in September. This official said an Archives employee called former White House deputy counsel Bruce Lindsey, who is former president Bill Clinton's liaison to the National Archives. The Archives employee said documents were missing and would have to be returned.

Under this version of events -- which Breuer denied -- documents were returned the following day from Berger's office to the Archives. Not included in these papers, the government official said, were any drafts of the document at the center of this week's controversy.

The documents that Berger has acknowledged taking -- some of which remain missing -- are different drafts of a January 2000 "after-action review" of how the government responded to terrorism plots at the turn of the millennium. The document was written by White House anti-terrorism coordinator Richard A. Clarke, at Berger's direction when he was in government.

Kerry not inspiring Black voters

The Detroit Free Press covers the Urban League convention in Detroit and finds that Kerry and Bush are not stirring the fires of Black voters. This is bad for Kerry. Here is a quote about Kerry in the Free Press:

"He hasn't moved me," said [Yvette] Nwachukwu. He's not talking about issues dear to her heart, such as AIDS or Africa, and he's surrounded by white aides. "He hasn't told me what he will do to improve the black community. He hasn't made me feel like, 'yes.'"

Kerry, speaking at the Urban League, offered $400 million over ten years to stop gang violence.

"We can do so much better," Kerry said, "better for the communities that are living in fear because of gang violence, and better also for these young people who have a real future if we reach out to them. We need to send young people a strong, clear message that there is another path, and if they are willing to take that path, we will be there with them with job training, job opportunities, and drug treatment."

The Kerry campaign said that the $400 million Kerry is proposing would be split roughly evenly between funding law enforcement and the alternative programs. Kerry's campaign said he would pay for the gang program out of a $90 billion fund created by trimming other federal spending, such as cuts to federal contractors and the federal travel budget.

Two parties canceled

The delegations from Ohio and Michigan will not be attending the Boston Mayor’s welcoming parties because of the Boston police union’s threat to picket the mayor’s parties.

The Boston Globe reports:

Several state delegations -- including California, the nation's largest -- have pledged to stay away from parties where police are picketing, and Menino said that as soon as today's contract is announced, he will personally call delegations, asking them to attend.

''If they don't [come], they'll miss a good party," Menino said.

Group against MoveOn.org

Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp and former White House Counsel C. Boyden Gray are joining forces and creating a new group known as “FreedomWorks.”

"We believe that hard work beats daddy's money," Armey said. "MoveOn is doing all kinds of high-profile, big-dollar deals with money from George Soros and other rich Democrats."

"We can match that with people on the street who really care about Social Security retirement accounts, tax simplification, smaller government and freedom from frivolous lawsuits," Armey said.

Move On moving on

MoveOn.org is raising funds to run an ad in Nevada and Ohio.

Dear MoveOn member,

Although the debates between George Bush and John Kerry are still 10 weeks away, we've put together a sneak preview. Our latest ad morphs each candidate into the folks he really speaks for. Bush is represented by corporate CEOs; Kerry is represented by hard-working Americans. The ad ends with a succinct description of the Presidential contest: it's the corporations' choice versus the people's choice. When we tested the ad by running it in one city for a week, it produced an amazing 6% shift in the vote toward John Kerry.

We're trying to raise $690,000 TODAY to air this ad in Ohio and Nevada (another important battleground state). No Republican candidate has ever won the Presidency without winning Ohio, and this year the state is definitely up for grabs. Voters there have been hit hard by the recession and have soured on Bush's foreign policy failures. By contributing to run "Debate," you have the opportunity to make a potentially election-turning difference wherever you are in the U.S.

To view or read the script of the ad go to this (link).

Clinton Coup

The Washington Monthly reports that the former Clinton White House staff have taken over the Kerry campaign.

"The unofficial twin pillars of the policy shop are Gene Sperling, former head of the National Economic Council under Clinton, and Bruce Reed, who served Clinton as domestic policy advisor before heading over to the Democratic Leadership Council."
Then we have former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and former deputy secretary Robert Altman deeply involved in crafting Mr. Kerry's economic proposals. There is former Clinton State Department spokesman Jamie Rubin handling the campaign's foreign-policy sphere (until this week, he was advised by stocking stuffer and former Clinton National Security Adviser Samuel R. Berger), aided by former U.N. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke.

"Those are just a few of the outside advisers with Clinton administration ties. But inside, too, the Kerry campaign staff is beginning to look like a Clinton White House reunion," Ms. Sullivan says.

Consider that Mr. Clinton's former chief speechwriter, Terry Edmonds, is now Mr. Kerry's chief speechwriter. Minyon Moore, once Mr. Clinton's director of political affairs, spearheads Mr. Kerry's minority-outreach program. Also in the Kerry-Edwards camp are ex-Clintonites such as the campaign's influential communications director, Stephanie Cutter; policy director Sarah Bianchi; speechwriter Josh Gottheimer; and economic policy director Jason Furman.

More incredibly, running mate Mr. Edwards' primary campaign "relied even more heavily than Kerry did on ex-Clintonites, and many of his top aides have now moved to the Kerry campaign," Ms. Sullivan continues.

Take Miles Lackey, who served on Mr. Clinton's National Security Council before becoming Mr. Edwards' chief of staff in the Senate. He now is Mr. Kerry's deputy campaign manager for policy and speechwriting. Robert Gordon, a former Clinton hand on the National Economic Council and the Office of National Service, previously ran Mr. Edwards' policy shop and is now doing the same for Mr. Kerry's. And former Edwards spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri, Mr. Clinton's deputy White House press secretary, is a Kerry state media director.

Finally, those two guys who you see on the road with Mr. Kerry are trip director Setti Warren and senior aide David Morehouse, both Clinton White House veterans.

Poll watching 7/22

Pew Hispanic poll

The poll showed President Bush receiving a large number of Hispanic votes, 32 percent. This is a large enough percentage to spell disaster for the Democrats.

For the complete results visit the Pew Hispanic website.

Midwest Perception

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that battleground Midwest states do not understand Kerry’s position on the war and troops:

A large portion of Upper Midwestern voters have a wrong impression of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's position on U.S. troop levels in Iraq, according to a University of Minnesota poll in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa.