† Is Obama The New JFK?: Writing for The Nation blog, “The Notion,” Jon Wiener poses the question: “If Obama is JFK, who is Hillary?” It would be folly for The Stiletto to spoil the fun by divulging his answer, so click here if you wanna find out.

† It’s A Topsy-Turvy Campaign: New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof notes that “conservative Christian churches do superb work on poverty, AIDS, sex trafficking, climate change, prison abuses, malaria and genocide in Darfur,” and claims that “evangelicals have been startlingly receptive” to Barack Obama and that either he or Hillary “has a real chance this year of winning large numbers of evangelical voters.”

Meanwhile, Ike’s granddaughter and “lifelong Republican” Susan Eisenhower, wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post explaining why she is Obama:

Deep in America's heart, I believe, is the nagging fear that our best years as a nation may be over. We are disliked overseas and feel insecure at home. We watch as our federal budget hemorrhages red ink and our civil liberties are eroded. Crises in energy, health care and education threaten our way of life and our ability to compete internationally. There are also the issues of a costly, unpopular war; a long-neglected infrastructure; and an aging and increasingly needy population.

We have been living in a zero-sum political environment where all heads have been lowered to avert being lopped off by angry, noisy extremists. I am convinced that Barack Obama is the one presidential candidate today who can encourage ordinary Americans to stand straight again; he is a man who can salve our national wounds and both inspire and pursue genuine bipartisan cooperation. Just as important, Obama can assure the world and Americans that this great nation's impulses are still free, open, fair and broad-minded.

She is amongst a growing number of Republicans who have become enchanted by Obama’s message of hope and change. He might even win some of their votes – if he runs as a moderate in the general election. As Peter Wehner, a Bush 43 alumnus and senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, put it in another WaPo op-ed: “Barack Obama is among the most impressive political talents of our lifetime. If he defeats Hillary Clinton, the question for the general election is not whether he can transcend his race but whether he can reach beyond his ideology.”

† Terrorist Mouthpiece Disbarred: Radical attorney/activist Lynne Stewart is appealing her 2005 conviction for providing material support to terrorists by passing messages from her client Omar Abdel-Rahman (AKA "the blind sheik")  to an Egyptian terrorist group. Arguing her case before the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, her defense attorney claims that Stewart's release of a statement by Rahman – who is serving a life sentence for seditious conspiracy against the U.S. - to his followers was protected by the First Amendment, reports New York Law Journal. Prosecutors counter this argument, noting that Stewart knew full well that the sheik was “forbidden from communicating with the outside world from his prison cell” and that there was "abundantly overwhelming evidence" that Stewart and interpreter Mohamed Yousry "knew that what they were doing was wrong." The courthouse is located on Pearl Street in lower Manhattan, not too far from the gaping hole that was filled with the debris of what used to be the World Trade Center.

† Is The Iraqi Criminal Justice System More Efficient Than Ours?: DeKalb County Superior Court Senior Judge Hilton M. Fuller Jr., who has come under intense scrutiny and criticism for allowing the cost of defending of courthouse shooter Brian Nichols to exhaust the resources of the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council, was forced to recuse himself from the case after telling Jeffrey Toobin, “everyone in the world knows he did it” in an article for The New Yorker. "Judicial impartiality, real and perceived, is a critical element of the trial process," wrote Fuller in a letter to Fulton County Superior Court Chief Judge Doris L. Downs. "In light of recent media reports, I am no longer hopeful that I can provide a trial perceived to be fair for both the state and the accused." According to the Fulton County Daily Report, Fuller acted before District Attorney Paul L. Howard Jr. could ask for his recusal – as well as to prevent Nichols' lawyers from later appealing a conviction on the grounds that he had prejudged their client.

† Say It Aint So Roger, Andy, Jason …: To disprove allegations that Yankee pitcher Roger Clemens used steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs, his agents released a detailed 45-page, 18,000-word statistical report with 31 charts that The New York Times characterizes as being “similar to those created for players’ salary arbitration cases, and claims that Clemens prolonged his career by making adjustments in his pitching, not drugs”:

The report, prepared by Hendricks Sports Management, contains but does not specifically refute the claims made in the Mitchell report that Clemens was injected with steroids and human growth hormone on 16 occasions from 1998 to 2001. The report does demonstrate that Clemens’s best statistical years came at different points over his 24-year career.

The report argues that as the speed of Clemens’s fastball diminished, he began to rely on his split-finger fastball and superior control. "He also threw more two-seam fastballs that had a lot of lateral movement," the report says. "This combination made him a superior pitcher, even as his velocity decreased to a roughly average rate for the major leagues.”

Tim Keown, senior writer for ESPN The Magazine, for one, is not impressed:

It's difficult to figure out the target audience for the Roger Clemens report, a lengthy, numbers-laden rundown of the pitcher's 24-year career with or without steroids. …

 It is written with a mixture of the arcane and the simplistic, as if a Bill James impostor and Dr. Seuss took turns on the keyboard.

The bulk of the report is a skull-crushing dissection of nearly every start the man ever made. It is placed in the context of run support and other factors I think are supposed to make you believe Clemens is just a guy trying to make his way in the world, through the good and the bad, just like you and me.

And, therefore, not a steroid user. …

Much of the evidence is established through the analysis of several statistical factors. The one leaned on most heavily is something called ERA margin, which might be a wonderful statistic to determine the worth of a starting pitcher, but it falls somewhat short in the area of proving or disproving steroid use.

However, last month, Washington Post reporters Mary Ann Akers And Paul Kane took a look (second item) at how Clemens and fellow Yankee pitcher Andy Pettitte (who admitted to getting just two human growth hormone injections in 2002 for an elbow injury) “fared against … three of the game's most fearsome sluggers,” Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro,” all of whom appeared before the before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in 2005 to testify on MLB steroid use:

Palmeiro - who famously told lawmakers that he never used any performance-enhancing substance "period," then tested positive for steroids five months later - pretty much owned the Yankee duo. He batted .323 lifetime with three home runs against Clemens, and .348 with five homers against Pettitte. Sosa hit .500 against Pettitte (in just 12 at-bats) and .182, with eight strikeouts in 22 chances against Clemens.

McGwire? Not so much. He hit only .250 against Pettitte and a miserable .080, with 14 strikeouts, against Clemens, one of the game's best.

These stats appear to support the conclusions of an analysis by a sociology professor and statistics professor that suggest performance enhancing drugs have “little or a negative effect” in baseball and other team sports.”