Haaretz:

Defense Minster Ehud Barak on Friday blamed Hamas for the escalating violence in the south, and said the Islamic movement would bear the consequences of it.

"Hamas is directly responsible for the current situation and will be the one to bear the cost of our response", Barak said during a visit to Ashkelon, adding that "an Israeli response is necessary and will be carried out."...

Also Friday, the chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee said the IDF must reoccupy part of the Gaza Strip for an unlimited time and overthrow the Hamas government.

"The State of Israel must make a strategic decision to order the IDF to prepare quickly to topple the Hamas terror regime and take over all the areas from which rockets are fired on Israel," MK Tzachi Hanegbi (Kadima) told Israel Radio. He said the IDF should prepare to remain in those areas for years.

MK Gideon Sa'ar (Likud) said his party would back an invasion of Gaza, though he fell short of advocating reoccupation.

"There is no doubt that the security response needs to include a ground component," said Sa'ar. He said the "takeover of territory in the northern Strip" from which the Palestinians launch rockets at Israel would reduce the barrages from Gaza.

Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai went as far as threatening a "shoah,"
the Hebrew word for holocaust or disaster. The word is generally used to refer to the Nazi Holocaust, but a spokesman for Vilnai said the deputy defense minister used the word in the sense of "disaster," saying "he did not mean to make any allusion to the genocide."

"The more Qassam fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, [the Palestinians] will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves," Vilnai told Army Radio on Friday.

Let us hope that Israel will succeed far better than it did against Hezbollah in 2006.

Frank Gannon:

Sandy Quinn’s posting of Dick Morris’s column about Barack Obama’s readiness to be president is well worth reading. The column reflects what seems to be the conventional wisdom developing here in Washington: that anyone who can run such an efficient and effective a campaign (much less starting from practically behind square one in terms of recognition and organization) is ready to be POTUS.

Of course Sandy Quinn himself is no mean observer, having been engaged in every Republican presidential campaign since he emerged on the scene as the leader of Youth for Benjamin Harrison.

Senator Obama is clearly a man of exceptional ability and presence. He also is an excellent judge of talent. His choice of Chicago’s David Axelrod to conceive and execute his candidacy accounts, in no small part, for its great success so far.

Axelrod is a colorful New Yorker who started out as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago and ended up as the Chicago Tribune’s chief political writer. He has worked for Paul Simon, Richard M. Daley, Rahm Emmanuel, Chris Dodd, Tom Vilsack, John Edwards, and Deval Patrick. The latter gig supplies an Obama/Patrick link that is far more important than just some shared rhetoric.

Axelrod got to know the young Obama some fifteen years ago when a local Democratic party activist got them together for a voter registration drive. The still young pro saw the great potential in the still fledging pol and has been following him around with cameras and sound crews ever since he entered the US Senate in 2004.

Axelrod, in his early fifties, has delegated managing the Obama campaign to David Plouffe, one of the partners in his consulting firm AKP&D Message and Media (Plouffe is the “P”).

There are lots of interesting insights and colorful asides to be found in Ben Wallace-Wells’s profile of Mr. Axelrod — “Obama’s Narrator” — which appeared last spring in The New York Times Magazine.

One of the things that occurred to me on reading this article was that the spectacular Obama career trajectory (the Democratic nomination and the US Senate seat after only a few years in state politics) was based on two surprising scandals.

His path to the nomination was cleared when his major opponent, a millionaire liberal who was leading in the polls, was suddenly poleaxed by the revelation that his ex-wife had accused him of physical and verbal abuse and filed for an order of protection. The Chicago Tribune called nominee Obama “the beneficiary of the most inglorious campaign implosion in Illinois political history”.

That November he ended up creaming carpetbagger Alan Keyes because his nominated Republican opponent, millionaire businessman Jack Ryan, had to withdraw before his campaign even got started because of the sudden revelation that his ex-wife had claimed he had forced her to visit sex clubs.

Anyone thinking “third time unlucky”?

A symposium over at National Review.

Captain Ed writes that John McCain has passed his Sister Souljah moment. I agree.

The New York Times reports in its Tuesday edition that Hillary Clinton is now unleashing a 'kitchen sink' fusillade against Obama, according to Drudge.

It's going to be a rough week. The lady with the schizophrenic campaign, that can't stay with a single theme on any given day, isn't going down easily. But going down, she is.

Politico:

Howard Opinsky, the press secretary for John McCain's campaign in 2000, says he wasn't a source for the Times story and hadn't even heard of Vicki Iseman.

"I never met this woman, I never saw her in my life," Opinsky said.

Opinksy, who contacted Politico unsolicited, said he was "absolutely not" the source of the story.

He said Times reporter Jim Rutenberg contacted him on Dec. 31 and that he only told Rutenberg he didn't know Iseman was.

"He was totally fishing around, trying to bait me into telling him something," Opinsky recalled. "After a while, he threw her name out there. I have had never heard of her in my life. But he was clearly trying to build a case on lobbying influence."

Opinsky also said that the Times use of the phrase "associates" to describe their McCain sources suggests that the leak may not have come from his campaign staffers at the time.

"There was only a handful of us [working on the campaign in 1999]," Opinksy said. "We never had a staff meeting to address any of this."

Asked who was behind the story, Opinsky said: "Lobbyists tell a lot of tall tales.

"What's behind this is money. There were a bunch of lobbyists in town who knew that if John McCain became president they were going to have a hard time."

Opinsky is now an executive at the Washington public relations firm Powell Tate. He supports McCain, but hasn't worked for the candidate this cycle.

And that's exactly what it is, as evidenced by John Weaver's statement today:

"The New York Times asked for a formal interview and I said no and asked for written questions. The Times knew of my meeting with Ms. Iseman, from sources they didn't identify to me, and asked me about that meeting. I did not inform Senator McCain that I asked for a meeting with Ms. Iseman.

Her comments, which had gotten back to some of us, that she had strong ties to the Commerce Committee and his staff were wrong and harmful and I so informed her and asked her to stop with these comments and to not be involved in the campaign. Nothing more and nothing less."

...to the New York Times hit job on him.

Where will Bill let off his steam?

With this Wisconsin iceberg now slamming into the Clinton campaign, I'm reminded of the scene in Cameron's Titanic where the ship's designer rushes to the bridge, unrolls the construction plans, and informs the Captain that despite the small shudder of the impact and the normal feeling on the bridge, the great ship is doomed. They're unrolling the plans tonight in Hillaryland. They'll be vicious infighting about various desperate Hail Mary plans -- like today's foolish trial balloon about trying to steal committed Obama delegates -- and lots of scapegoating top Clinton campaign officials. The former President will go ape, find a microphone, and embarrass himself somewhere in Texas or Ohio. But like water rushing into the Titanic's hull, the forces now flowing hard against the Hillary Clinton campaign are furious and the die is cast.

Matt Cooper:

When Obama pushed her aside tonight by starting her [sic] speech while she was barely into hers, there was something poignant about it. The Clinton voice has dominated politics for so long and tonight it was pushed aside, not only by Obama's speech but by his solid victory in Wisconsin, a state that could have been hers. Indeed, John McCain directed all of his fire tonight at Obama and ignored Clinton, even though a good Clinton jab would surely have fired up the conservatives he's been wooing so assiduously.

In Ohio right now giving a speech, again completely ignoring Obama's victory tonight. No mention of him, no congratulations.

John McCain: "My friends, I'm not the youngest candidate, but I am the most experienced."

McCain wins Wisconsin, and CBS exits showing Obama up 2 points among women and winning almost 2 to 1 among men. That's pretty incredible if it holds up in the actual results.

...would like to make a splash against Obama, she might just say that she "has always been, and is now very, very proud of America."

It was not Michelle Obama's finest hour.

Ouch:

The former KGB lieutenant colonel appeared to lash out at U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton — a leading Democratic candidate for president — when one reporter quoted her as saying that former KGB officers have no soul:
"At a minimum, a head of state should have a head," Putin said.