Matt, you blew my mind with this one: "As for Senator Clinton, the most right-wing candidate in the field..."

Now, I'm no fan of Clinton, but I'd say Richardson, for example, is well to the right of Clinton.

Take, for example the New Mexico TABOR, his support for more military spending, every free trade deal ever made, school vouchers, faith-based programs, prison instead of rehab for drug violations, the death penalty and mandatory three-strikes sentencing.   He's also middle-of-the-road on gun control.

I think there are also good arguments that Clark and Biden are also well to the right of Clinton.

Major kudos for Obama here. Disclosure: I am an Obama supporter, but I had started to become disillusioned with his silence for most of the past month. Universal health care and withdrawal from Iraq, back to back, have sewn me back up again.

And Hillary has MASSIVE netroots support.

In other news, the DLC is on the rebound, Bush has a bounce, and the only problem with Iraq is that it wasn't executed well.

Feingold's bill is S 121.

Problem is: these bills are legislative dead meat. The only way of getting to first base in stopping the war is to tailor an amendment to the upcoming Iraq supplemental and dare Bush not to sign it.

Bush will then either trigger a constitutional crisis - or, more likely, just get the moolah from elsewhere in the DOD apps behemoth.

If there is a legislative way to get it done, I'd love to be walked through it. As it is...

For some details, this from the AP report on Yahoo:

"It is important at this point that Congress offer specific constructive approaches to what's proven to be a foreign policy disaster," Obama said in an interview with The Associated Press, "because we've got too much at stake to simply stand on the sidelines and criticize."

Obama's bill would cap troop levels in Iraq at the early January level of around 130,000, when Bush announced he would send 21,500 additional U.S. forces to Iraq. It would require that troops begin coming home on May 1 with the goal of removing all combat brigades by March 31, 2008.

Some Democratic rivals such as John Edwards and Tom Vilsack have called on lawmakers to withhold funds for the additional troops.

"If we simply cut off funding without any structure for how a redeployment takes place, then you could genuinely have a Constitutional crisis or at least a crisis on the ground where the president continues to send troops there but now they're being shortchanged in terms of armaments and support," Obama said.

Some legal scholars question whether Congress has the authority to bring troops home because the president has control of military forces.

Obama noted that he taught constitutional law for 10 years and rejected the notion that the congressional authorization for war in 2002 gives Bush "carte blanche to proceed in any way."

"The notion that as a consequence of that authorization, the president can continue down a failed path without any constraints from Congress whatsoever is wrong and is not warranted by our Constitution," Obama said in a 10-minute telephone call.

Very impressive - Obama, right on the merits, and making sense in explaining his bill.

As a supporter of Obama who lives in Illinois and is planning to go to his announcement on the 10th, I am thrilled he got this bill introduced beforehand.
As for ms. repug. lite, she can only dream of being our nominee.

I see the MURDOCH connections are working well eh!

Now we need the MSM to pick up on this instead of the nonbinding resolutions and ridiculous debates about bad and evil men" jokes and nonsense madrassa stories.

Any thoughts Matt, Jerome, Chris?

If any candidate wants my vote, laying down a solid deadline for Iraq is a must.

So Senator Obama has been burning the midnight oil instead of stumping around Iowa and New Hampshire, well how 'bout that.  I figured he was up to something lately.  And in one deft stroke he answers the criticisms of the Bushies, puts some teeth into the raft of 'non-binding' proposal mush floating around in Congress, outflanks HRC big-time, puts forward a sane alternative to this disasterous escalation, nails his writ to the cathedral door on policy regarding actually ending this war and gives us an unequivocal and expert opinion on constitutional law and the powers of the executive branch.  Needless to say I like it!

The interesting thing is that not only does this wrongfoot the Bushies it basically puts each and every serving Democrat in Congress on the spot to either sponsor, support or at least vote for this  proposal or offer an alternative.  And not a few Republicans too!  Who is going to co-sponsor this bill, Hagel or Kennedy?  Hopefully both!  Do you reckon they will get a two-thirds majority on Bush's veto?  I do.  And how much more likely than for Bush's impeachment?  Heaps.  Would love to be fly on the wall in the West Wing when it comes to  the strategy session on vetoing this piece of legislation.  Hope they can count!

And underlying all of this I sense that the Senator is using his 'star' status to actually facilitate a necessary and important piece of legislation, let the polls fall where they may. I am proud to be supporting a condidate that actually stands for something, win, lose or draw.  Thanks Obama!

Very similar, the Feingold bill calls for redeplyment within 180 days after enactment, however and requires the military to do the planning.  Obama's bill gives a much longer, staged, and more realistic, period and also cleverly uses recent statements by the Bushies to establish a 13 point set of conditions which would affect the redeployment if they were met.  I presume this is designed to garner bipartisan support from Republicans who would otherwise be seen as directly opposing the President, as in the Feingold bill.  We all know they are unlikely to be met but it appears to give potential moderate supporters an exit clause.  Basically it says if the President's statements are proven to be manifestly true, and are achieved as milestones, the redeployment can be postponed.  If not the redeployment continues as scheduled.  

Can't find the Obama text yet in THOMAS and am just going on the press reports.

Obama doesn't have the clout in the Senate o pass major legislation. As for Clinton, she called for a similar measure, basically every Democrat except for Lieberman, Ben Nelson, are with us on this.