Dan Moldea, the author of a Sirhan-did-it-alone book on the RFK case (when provably, Dan knows better, as shown by his earlier article on the case), was in the news tonight in the strangest of ways. He was working on a book about the DC Madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey and was "one of the last people to see Palfrey alive" (per CNN). Moldea said he had lunch with her and Jim Grady, a friend of his, "a few days before her conviction."

"She was fine," he said. "She was very upbeat" and "convinced that she was going to be acquitted." But he also says that on no less than three occasions she had said she was going to kill herself if she was convicted.

He says he had information "from a very reliable source" that Jeane had tried to kill herself before - that she had taken an intentional overdose that failed. I can't help but wonder who that "reliable source" was - one of his CIA buddies?

I say that because Moldea dedicated his book on the RFK case to Walter Sheridan, a man who "disposed over the personnel and currency of whole units of the Central Intelligence Agency." Moldea was also friends with Carl Shoffler, the cop who was supposed to be on his way to his own birthday party, who instead sat in a car near the Watergate and was the first to respond - in plain clothes - when the call came in. Shoffler's ties to the CIA are put in context in Jim Hougan's excellent book Secret Agenda, which I still consider to be the best book ever written on the Watergate story, even while I think it's incomplete in terms of the Hughes angle. Hougan's book is also relevant to the DC Madam case in that it details how the CIA has used sex rings to obtain political intelligence as well as blackmail material on opponents.

Hearing Moldea touted as one of the 'last people' to see the Madam alive, while an obvious exaggeration, reminded me of two other figures who died mysteriously shortly after meeting with high profile journalists with intelligence ties.

During New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison's investigation of the Kennedy assassination, key figure Dave Ferrie died. The last person to see him was longtime Washington Post journalist George Lardner, Jr. Lardner has built a career on his access to the CIA - access granted only to friendlies and the CIA's own agents in the media. Oddly, the coroner felt strongly Ferrie had to have died before the time Lardner said he had left Ferrie's apartment. Yet Lardner reported Ferrie was alive and well when he left.

During the House Select Committee on Assassinations' investigation into the JFK case in the late 1970s, George de Mohrenschildt allegedly committed suicide just before his appointment with House Select Committee investigator Gaeton Fonzi, and just after meeting with another longtime journalist and personal protege of the CIA's 25-year counterintelligence chief, James Angleton, Edward J. Epstein. Epstein would purport that de Mohrenschildt had expressed thoughts of suicide.

So when I heard Moldea was trying to say he had personal knowledge that she committed suicide, I couldn't help but think, "how convenient." A lot of people would have a lot to cover up if this woman decided to talk.

I believe Moldea when he says she was in good spirits. I don't believe him when he says she had talked about suicide before. Which doesn't mean that isn't true. But Moldea's so intellectually dishonest book on the RFK case has earned him no trust in my book. And the pattern is not without precedent. Get some high profile journalist to put out the official version of what happened and no one looks twice. No one, that is, except people like me, who know from experience that it's usually not until you look at least twice that the truth starts to surface.

On May 10, the Obama campaign is planning quite an extraordinary event. They want to send their volunteers out to register new voters, no matter who the winner of the Democratic primary will be.

This event will either be a big media story, or not, depending on YOUR participation. Yes YOU. People always think well, someone else will do that. I don't need to. But that's the difference between a few hundred participating, and a few hundred thousand participating.

Want to find out what this is all about? Continue with me under the fold.

Rather than dwelling on worst possible outcomes, I want to share my fantasy for the convention in August. Then I want to hear YOUR fantasies!

This is what I want to see in the opening minutes of the televised broadcast of the Democratic National Convention:

Over stirring music, individuals of every color, size, height and shape step forward, individually and collaboratively, to recite these words:

"The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object. Thomas Jefferson."

"America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. John Quincy Adams."

"Americans are not a perfect people, but we are called to a perfect mission. Andrew Jackson"

"We are citizens of the world. The tragedy of our times is that we do not know this. Woodrow Wilson"

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. Franklin Delano Roosevelt."

"We must build a new world, a far better world -- one in which the eternal dignity of man is respected. Harry S. Truman."

"I look forward to a great future for America - a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose. John F. Kennedy."

And then a very familiar voice is heard reciting:

I've been reading various commentators who assure us that Clinton's campaign received 100,000 donations after PA.

Okay. Let's accept that. Let's take that at face value and forget Tuzla and NAFTA and all the other lies. Let's pretend that's a fact.

How does 100,000 donations become $10 million dollars?

Only if 100,000 people give $100 each.

Does anyone here think her poor, blue-collar base and elderly women are capable of that, en masse? I sure don't.

I also noticed Tuesday night that to get to her campaign Web site, you first had to go to a page begging you to contribute $5.

So I'm thinking - why would I give $100 if someone is only asking for $5, especially if I'm in some rural area where refueling the car is now 20% of my household budget? Why would I fork over money I need to feed my children if the campaign would be pleased as punch if I just gave $5?

I just bet her campaign is "projecting" that amount based on "average" donors. But since she has many big money donors who have maxed out, this is a bad measure, as they can't contribute another $100, and therefore shouldn't be allowed in any average.

And come May - you just watch. It will turn out she raised maybe the original figure of $3.5 million, total. I'd be surprised if even that is accurate, given how little she raised last month.

Well, "movie" is stretching it, in that it's about 1.5 minutes. But if you knew all that went into the making of this, movie is the correct term.

As you will recall, Omir here posted a hilarious sketch about "Mrs. C". I loved it and couldn't get it out of my head.

I talked to two people I had met in a screenwriting class, one of whom just completed his first film, and another who was dying to get a project under her belt. Between the two of them, aided by some generous donations from several people, we managed to get this video, birthed right here on Booman, up and running!

Please send this to all your friends!!

Everyone involved donated massive amounts of time and goodwill to make this happen. Please let me know what you think so I can share it with the team!

Whenever I hear progressives ding Kennedy's foreign policy record, I cringe. But I also realize they do so out of an ignorance not of their own making, but of one studiously foisted upon them.

It is important to remember, especially with President John Kennedy, that history is written by the victor. Kennedy wasn't just killed once. He was killed posthumously so that all he was trying to do, and stood for, would be washed away. By making him less than who he was, his assassination would seem less necessary. By painting him as a rabid cold warrior, no one would suspect cold warriors of having killed him.

Sadly, a whole set of generations are now growing up with false history about John Kennedy (and Bobby, albeit less so). I felt the need to correct a bit of that record.

[Crossposted from my Real History Blog]

I woke to find to my astonishment coverage of new evidence in the RFK case on MSNBC this morning. The MSNBC coverage was cursory, so allow me to fill in the bigger picture here.

I was the first person to make public the fact that a new audiotape had surfaced in this case when I testifed to the Los Angeles Unified School District at a hearing regarding the tearing down of the Ambassador Hotel. I begged them not to do that, in light of this new tape. I brought with me statements of support from nearly 40 people from multiple countries begging the LAUSD not to destroy the hotel. Sadly, this pitted me against Max Kennedy, one of the many sons of Robert Kennedy, as he and the family thought RFK would be better served by the building of a school on that lot.

A newsman at a mainstream media organization who has a personal fascination with the case first alerted me to this tape, and I confirmed with Phil Melanson that indeed, such a tape was a completely new find. It had languished unheard in the California State Archives, which houses the evidence the Los Angeles Police Department collected during their "Special Unit Senator" investigation of the Robert Kennedy case. A freelance reporter named Stanislaw Pruszynski had accidentally left his audio recorder on after Robert Kennedy finished his acceptance speech, having just won the California primary. Pruszynski followed Kennedy into the pantry while his recorder was still running.

Some familiar names are accusing Obama of attending one of Reverend Wright's inflammatory sermons.

Ron Kessler, author of several books that inordinately praise the CIA and FBI, wrote in Newsmax this weekend that, based on fellow Newsmax reporter Jim Wright's account, Obama attended one of the services where Wright made his inflammatory statements.

But as the campaign points out, Obama gave a speech in Florida on this day.

So who is behind this smear? It's worth a reminder.

Would you vote for a president who rewarded lawbreakers?

Then why would you vote for Hillary Clinton?

She wants to seat the delegates of two states that broke the law.

She's so insistent, of course, because she can't even have a tiny chance of winning without them.

But since when should her personal gain trump the law?

What laws would she break as president if it suited her interests? What about when she's up for re-election. She protests FISA now, but would she look the other way if the FBI started dropping political intelligence against her re-election competition on her desk? From what we see now, it's a fair assumption she'd use that intelligence, no matter how it was obtained.

And that's obscene.

And that's yet another reason why she'd be a horrible president.

The end doesn't justify the means. The means are the end. Obama gets that. That's why he's running a high-minded campaign.

Clinton thinks all's fair in love and war, and considers politics a hybrid of both (she loves the nasty parts. She said this is the "fun" - tearing down your opponent.)

Tonight, I saw her claiming that the Michigan delegates should be seated since they had a fair election.

What is fair about having only one candidate on the ballot? How is that an election at all?

Clinton's self-serving attitude is not just bizarre, however. It's frightening. Because it's working.

Talk to her supporters, and they parrot back like drones a list of her talking points. She talks and they echo. It's like watching mass mind control at work.

She says Obama is the one injecting race into this, even though there's no evidence Obama or anyone on his campaign has EVER injected race. They have responded to racial slurs, intended or unintended. If you hit a pedestrian with your car, it doesn't matter so much whether you hit him by mistake or not. There are serious consequences.

How is it that the oh-so-bright Hillary doesn't get this?

Of course, she does. But she's learned the technique of the big lie. Say something hugely wrong, bold. Keep repeating it. People will actually start to believe it, no matter how outrageous the lie. And as Mark Twain told us, a lie gets halfway around the world while the truth is getting its boots on.

No wonder Clinton rewards lawbreakers. She can relate to them. They're far closer to herself than those pesky, high-minded Obama supporters.

Hey all - you might remember this, from Omir the Storyteller:

SCENE: An emergency room operating theater. Lots of medical beeps and noises. A woman wearing scrubs, a Hillary Clinton haircut and a surgical mask finishes washing up and backs into the ER, where a clock on the wall says 2:59.

MRS C: Is the patient prepped?

NURSE: Wait a minute, you can't be in here!

ANESTHESIOLOGIST: Mrs. C, what are you doing here? You can't be in the operating room!

MRS C: Of course I can. I know how it's done! My husband was head of surgery here for eight years! I used to watch him all the time.

ANESTHESIOLOGIST: Your husband retired eight years ago. I'm sorry -- (continues in background as we)

CUT TO

NURSE ON (red) PHONE: Security to ER One stat!

ANESTHESIOLOGIST (in background) but just watching your husband operate --

CUT TO

ANESTHESIOLOGIST: doesn't qualify you to be a surgeon.

MRS C: I was co-surgeon! I'm ready to operate on day one! Hand me that sharp pointy thing and . . . those funny scissors!

(RED PHONE rings as clock on wall reaches 3:00)

MRS C: Is someone going to get that?

Well guess what? I have a filmmaker friend who is AMAZING and is willing to do this for free. But rental space and camera stuff isn't free, so we have to quickly raise $1000 bucks. He can literally shoot it this week and have it uploaded by Sunday.

Here's your chance to get Omir a produced credit while helping get Obama elected!

If anyone can donate ANYTHING - $50, $20, $100 - whatever you can - it will either take a lot of small donations or a few big ones - let me know asap. We need to get the funding quickly or the window of opportunity to do this disappears.

Contact me at lpease - cat - gte - dog - net. Thanks!!

Whether you did or didn't, you have to check out http://www.idreamofhillaryidreamofbarack.com/.

A novelist is collecting people's dreams of Hillary and Barack and they range from the weird to the hilarious! Check these out:

Keanu Reeves was voted in as the next President of the United States. He was giving his acceptance speech, dressed in jeans and a hoodie. He looked good, but we were all shocked. How did he win? Did we even know he was running? I set about urgently painting him a sign, twelve metres long, with a too-dry paint brush, reminding him of all the things he had to remember: Prioritize education. Provide medicare. Cap corporate profits. The environment! There were two brief interruptions as we fielded interviewed reactions from Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. They were both equally stumped. They didn't know he was running, but were gracious losers.

More samples below the fold.

I have no patience for purists. They find fault with every candidate, and then pat themselves on the back for having such neat and tidy principles that no candidate will ever fulfill them.

Well guess what, purists?

You are part of the problem, not the solution.

I was not in the least surprised that Jann Wenner, the driving force behind Rolling Stone magazine, endorsed Obama. After all, I first "met" Wenner politically while working on Jerry Brown's original "We the People" campaign. Joe Trippi was a part of that campaign, and Jodie Evans of Code Pink was the fantastic campaign manager.

But reading Wenner's words, he's deeper than I even suspected. Here's what he has to say, in his article, titled brilliantly, "A New Hope":

first learned of Barack Obama from a man who was at the highest level of George W. Bush's political organization through two presidential campaigns. He described the first-term senator from Illinois as "a walking hope machine" and told me that he would not work for any Republican candidate in 2008 if Obama was nominated. He challenged me to read Obama's autobiography, Dreams From My Father.

The book was a revelation. Here was a man whose honesty about himself and understanding of the human condition are both deep and compassionate. Born to a white mother and an African father, he was raised in multiracial Hawaii and for several years in Indonesia. He drifted through some druggy teenage years -- no apologies! -- before emerging as a star at Harvard Law School. He chose to work as a community organizer in the projects of Chicago rather than join the wealthy insider world of corporate law. And as a young adult, he searched, in the distant villages of Kenya, for the father and family he never knew.

...

Throughout the primaries, and during a visit he paid to our offices, we have come to know Barack Obama, his toughness and his grace. He would not be intimidated, and he declined to back down, when Senator Clinton called him "frankly, naive" for his willingness to meet leaders of hostile nations. When one of her top campaign officials tried to smear him for his earlier drug use, he did not equivocate or backtrack. On the matter of experience and capability, he has run an impressive, nearly flawless campaign -- one that whupped America's most hard-boiled political infighters. Indeed, Obama was far more prepared to run a presidential campaign -- from Day One -- than Senator Clinton.

Wenner really lets Clinton have it, and rightfully so:

All this was made clearer by the contrast with Hillary Clinton, a capable and personable senator who has run the kind of campaign that reminds us of what makes us so discouraged about our politics. Her campaign certainly proved her experience didn't count for much: She was a bad manager and a bad strategist who naturally and easily engaged in the politics of distraction, trivialization and personal attack. She never convinced us that her vote for the war in Iraq was anything other than a strategic political calculation that placed her presidential ambitions above the horrifying consequences of a war.

His closing few paragraphs made me catch my breath a bit. I wonder if you'll feel the same.

Read the whole thing. I promise, you'll feel so much better.

There is one very important thing you can do this weekend.

It isn't blogging.

It's calling people in Texas and Ohio. You can choose.

BooMan's front page diary this morning is right on point. Obama is going to be the nominee. Now it's just a matter of time, and the longer this plays out the more our own party will have weakened him in advance of the general election.

It's time to come together and support the best candidate we can field at this point in time.