It's been a fun week...

First we had Obama promising to meet with leaders of just about every rogue nation within his first year of office, if elected, followed by Hillary essentially calling him "irresponsible and naive." I believe this constitutes the first real broadside of the Democrat election campaign.

Of course, the GOP has its own issues: the House is declaring 2 White House aides to be in Contempt of Congress, and the Justice Department has already said they won't prosecute. Checks and balances, indeed. And to add insult to injury, it looks very much like Attorney General Gonzales just might have perjured himself. Oops.

McCain's election team is continuing to fall apart: he says they're becoming a leaner and meaner machine, but let's call a spade a spade: his campaign is in very serious trouble, and losing good campaign staff can be devastating.

Thompson's campaign is also restructuring, but his looks to be more of a shift from establishing a base infrastructure to getting seasoned political advisers where they need to be. Analysts are guessing he's going to declare his candidacy in September, but he'll need to be careful: opponents have already unearthed a fairly large number of skeletons in his closet. I still think he's got a good chance, but he'll be on the defensive from the get-go.

Please make it go away

It's starting. In the last week and a half, I've been solicited by 3 political "opinion polls." At least 2 of them were paid for by a campaign or party, but at least one was decent enough to be up front about it. One of my political pet peeves is the use of faux opinion polls to influence voters under the guise of asking their opinions.

How much do you agree with the following statements?

• Congressional Democrats have not lived up to their promises since taking power in 2006.
  
• Congressional Democrats have failed to lower taxes, and in fact have raised taxes even higher since taking power.
• Congressional Democrats are out of touch with the American people.
• Congressional Democrats are really communist sympathizers who want nothing more than to turn the U.S. into an Islamist state run by Al Qaeda.
• etc.

It's disturbing, really. And I really wish it would stop.