For pastors to endorse McCain is kind of hilarious because they hate him almost as much as liberals do, but something should be done about this.

Defying a federal law that prohibits U.S. clergy from endorsing political candidates from the pulpit, an evangelical Christian minister told his congregation Sunday that voting for Sen. Barack Obama would be evidence of "severe moral schizophrenia." Johnson and 32 other pastors across the country set out Sunday to break the rules, hoping to generate a legal battle that will prompt federal courts to throw out a 54-year-old ban on political endorsements by tax-exempt houses of worship.

The ministers contend they have a constitutional right to advise their worshipers how to vote. As Johnson put it during a break between sermons, "The point that the IRS says you can't do it, I'm saying you're wrong."

They want this to be an issue. Just remove their tax free status (preceded by a lengthy, expensive audit) and be done with it for all those that break the law.

More at Project Fairplay, which specifically targets these abuses by churches and pastors.

As Murray Waas wrote about yesterday, Attorney General Michael Mukasey, acting on the guidance of the DoJ Inspector General, has decided to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the USA firing scandal. Unfortunately, there will be no grand jury for Gonzo.

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Bloomberg:

Attorney General Michael Mukasey named a special prosecutor to investigate possible crimes arising from the Bush administration's firing of nine U.S. attorneys.

An internal Justice Department review of the dismissals recommended the appointment today after finding there was a possibility officials made false statements, obstructed justice or committed wire fraud. The report said the matter warranted further investigation by an attorney who has the ability to compel witnesses to cooperate.

"The Justice Department has an obligation to the American people to pursue this case wherever the facts and the law require,'' Mukasey said in a statement.

Bloomberg:

The Federal Reserve will pump an additional $630 billion into the global financial system, flooding banks with cash to alleviate the worst banking crisis since the Great Depression.

The Fed increased its existing currency swaps with foreign central banks by $330 billion to $620 billion to make more dollars available worldwide. The Term Auction Facility, the Fed's emergency loan program, will expand by $300 billion to $450 billion. The European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan are among the participating authorities.

The Fed's expansion of liquidity, the biggest since credit markets seized up last year, came hours before the U.S. House of Representatives rejected a $700 billion bailout for the financial industry. The crisis is reverberating through the global economy, causing stocks to plunge and forcing European governments to rescue four banks over the past two days alone. Read on...

I'm not an expert on the economy or Wall St., but this sure looks like an end-around by the Bush administration to give away hundreds of billions of dollars without the approval of Congress.

Chris Matthews cuts through the spin and pins the blame squarely where it should be: On House Republicans and John McCain who promised to deliver their vote.

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"McCain said he was going to lead the Republican charge, he was going to make sure that this was a bipartisan success. He called charge, and the Republican retreated. That's what happened here. "

Politico's Mike Allen writes:

McCain takes credit for bill before it loses

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and his top aides took credit for building a winning bailout coalition – hours before the vote failed and stocks tanked.

The rush to claim he had engineered a victory now looks like a strategic blunder that will prolong the McCain’s campaign’s difficulty in finding a winning message on the economy.

Think about how bad this is for McCain. He "suspended" his campaign last week and promised to get the House GOP on board. The bill failed today because those very same Republicans bailed once Pelosi hurt their feelings. McCain put his leadership credentials on the line and failed. Not a little fail, but an Epic Fail. And the worst part about it is he and his campaign have been claiming for the past 48 hours that it was McCain's leadership that got the bill passed.

Marc Ambinder asks the right question:

So if McCain wanted credit for passage, should he share some of the blame for its defeat?

TPM's Greg Sargent wonders if the failure to pass the bailout with cause McCain's suspension stunt to backfire:

In political terms, John McCain needed this bailout bill to pass. Now that it's failed in the House, it's clear that this could pose a serious blow to his campaign -- and that his big campaign suspension gambit could backfire badly.

During a press conference following the failure of the bailout bill, Barney Frank was asked about Republicans blaming Nancy Pelosi and a speech she gave for it failing. Barney Frank fires back with his quick wit and humor and even gets laughs out of the press pool.

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Frank: "We don't believe they had the votes and I think they are covering up the embarrassment of not having the votes. But think about this: somebody hurt my feelings so I will punish the country. I mean that's hardly plausible. And there were twelve Republicans who were ready to stand up for the economic interest of America but not if anybody insulted them. I'll make an offer: Give me those twelve people's names and I will go talk uncharacteristically nicely to them and tell them what wonderful people they are, and maybe they'll now think about the country."

Classic.

Earlier Ed Henry reported about Republicans blaming Democrats and said he couldn't find anything partisan in the speech given by Nancy Pelosi. The speech is available here and after going through it, I can't find anything that would be considered overly partisan in it.

What a bunch of WATB. The House GOP "Leadership" addressed the media just now after the bailout bill failed and pointed their fingers at Nancy Pelosi for giving a speech that upset them. The speech hurt them so much that it forced them to sink the bill and now the market is down more than 600 points. Why are you so mean, Nancy? Don't you know Boehner is a really sensitive guy?

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"I believe we could have gotten there today if it weren't for Speaker Pelosi's partisan speech."

So you're willing to kill the bill and let the market plunge 600 points because Nancy gave a mean speech? Wow.

Eric Cantor is particularly hysterical. It looks like he wants to cry. Nancy is so mean!

Barney Frank sums it up best:

"In the sphere of numerology the number of Republicans who ignore what's best for the country because of a speech turns out to be exactly the number of Republicans we need to pass the vote. "

Hovering around a 700 point drop at this point...
UPDATE: (Nicole) The Dow closed 777.68 points to 10365.45

That's lower than on Bush's first day in office, January 22, 2001

Click in the blue box shown to check your voter status. Obviously voter registration is critical to helping the Democrats win this election.

Wow, it's going down to the wire with many NO votes...207-226 right now.

The Market is tanking badly too...And Newt Gingrich issues a statement that I heard on MSNBC which says he would reluctantly vote for it...Hmmm....

UPDATE: It failed....No one trusts Bush and McCain did nothing....

This mess shows that Conservatism is a failure. I know we are dismayed by our politicians, but don't forget that under conservative leadership, we've had the total collapse of our financial sector and we can never stop saying that.

And if the media tries to portray Republicans as hero figures I'll start my own drinking game.

Crying Boehner is saying it's Pelosi's fault because she gave a partisan speech. What jokers. A speech made them vote against it. They are saying it is not a partisan crisis, but an economic one. Sure---that was caused by Republican/McCain hunger for deregulation.

Will McCain suspend his campaign again and try to cancel Palin's debate?

I'm continuing to sift through the post debate analysis from Friday night so we can get a glimpse at what some conservatives had to say about the Ole Miss Friday night not-pay per view -event. First Dick Morris thought Obama won and now Charles very clearly gave the advantage to Obama. It's interesting when a political opponent gives a non partisan explanation now and again.

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Krauthammer: I thought he hammered a little bit , he kept repeating, 'my opponent isn't experienced, he doesn't have the judgment, he's not ready,' but he's gotta make the case. And except for the last moment, I think McCain had a poetic moment when he very quietly and softly ended by saying I know how to heal a nation after a war, I know who to deal with adversaries and with... I thought he was hammering a lot. Now, there styles are different. McCain is a guy who hits, he hammers, he jabs. Obama is smooth, he's very elegant and he was nimble and here's a subject in which you'd think he be alien, but he was never flustered, he was never at a loss. I think he was on the defensive on a couple of issues like Iran, but that's because of statements he made earlier in the campaign. I thought he came out only slightly behind on foreign affairs, thus overall in the absence of a sound byte, in the absence of an embarrassing moment on his part, I think he comes out of this neutral and thus ahead because we're now going to have debates on the economy which are going to be his strong areas and McCain will be on the defensive....It does end the drama of the McCain week.

Yes, no sound bytes to pounce on. CK uses some weird language to make his point, but what he said is round one goes to Obama and that was a very important round indeed. I was against foreign policy being the lead topic of the three debates because it had the ability to side track the favorable polling news that has changed since the economic meltdown began for Obama, but it turned out pretty good so far...Lindsey Graham certainly was grumpy about it.