According to the ever-observant John Fund in the (dirt cheap) subscription-only WSJ.com’s Political Diary, Congr. Charlie Rangel of NY has his eye on the prize of a Gov. Spitzer resignation, if and when:

Should Mr. Spitzer resign, Mr. Rangel would . . . be in the catbird’s seat. Lt. Gov. David Paterson, a former state senator from Harlem, is a longtime protege of Mr. Rangel and would likely grant his mentor wide influence over patronage and fiscal issues. “Rangel could have instant access to Paterson anytime of the day or night,” is how one New York Democratic leader evaluates Mr. Rangel’s likely importance in a Patterson administration.

The ebullient Charlie smells the meat acookin’, to use the old Illinois expression. 

It’s how Paul Powell, who died with $800G in shoeboxes in his closet, put it.  Powell was one of the imprisoned former Ill. secretary of state (and governor) George Ryan’s predecessors in that office.

“A big old country boy , [he] could shake you down and make you like him,” per a boyhood friend.  That’s certainly a knack for government.

In response to objections to his endorsement by televangelist John Hagee, who has called the Catholic Church “the great whore” and a “false cult system” and “the apostate church,” McCain offered a delayed response:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Friday repudiated any views of a prominent televangelist who endorsed him last month “if they are anti-Catholic or offensive to Catholics.”

If? He’s not sure?

And he said this only after criticism by The Dreadful Pelosi, that eminent Defender of the Faith from San Francisco.

Running for office, he rejects “any comments that are made” but not the commenter. This is standard gobbledygook apology, of course, long since perfected by offenders awaiting sentencing.

On the other hand, “Minister” Farrakhan loves Obama, doesn’t he, but O.? What O. said about that briefly took wind from opponent’s sails in his recent debate with What’s-her-name, just after he had feinted and dodged some Tim Russert qq.

And Farrakhan tore into Catholicism a few years back, didn’t he? He was quizzed by Russert in 1997, who quoted him:

“We just got to tell the truth. Catholicism has been by white people, for white people, to subject black people to a white kind of theology that strips us of ourselves.” That was you in 1994 [said Russert].

And [Catholics] particularly took great offense to Khallid Muhammad, your former chief spokesman, who said [in 1993], “The old no-good Pope–you know that cracker, somebody needs to raise that dress up and see what’s really under there.” Do you understand why Catholics take offense and believe that you are bigoted towards them?

As for McCain and Hagee:

“We’ve had a dignified campaign, and I repudiate any comments that are made, including Pastor Hagee’s. . . .

“I sent two of my children to Catholic school. I categorically reject and repudiate any statement that was made that was anti-Catholic, both in intent and nature. I categorically reject it, and I repudiate it,” McCain said.

Point is, does he recognize the Hagee quotes and does he go beyond a blanket repudiation? No, because he’s a politician running for office, like Mutt & Jeff on the other side, for neither of whom would I cast my vote for dogcatcher.

And speaking of politicians, note this well, that Rev. Michael Pfleger of Chicago has endorsed Farrakhan, to whom he has surrendered the pulpit of St. Sabina’s Church on the South Side and whom he has called “a gift from God to a sick, sick world.”

If Obama is a rock-star candidate, this babe, recently relieved of her duties as a key foreign-policy advisor for identifying Hillary as (that is, calling her) a monster, is a groupie:

In America, Miss [Samantha] Power has been compared to Condoleeza Rice.

“I’m nothing like her,” she says. “I don’t have any conventional political ambition.”

But if Mr Obama wins the Presidential race she is likely to remain a powerful force. “I’d do anything he asked me to do. It’s not about working for the next President of the United States, it’s Obama. If he ran General Motors I’d be working for him.”

He’s got her vote.

The lemmings turned?

Over the last few days, the tone of the Democratic contest seems to have shifted, with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign more buoyant and Senator Barack Obama’s more defensive.

That shift may be traceable in part to the “Saturday Night Live” show on Feb. 23, when, back from the writers’ strike, it mocked the news media for treating Mr. Obama more gently than it treated Mrs. Clinton.

Mrs. Clinton amplified that view later in a debate, and her aides stoked it all week, practically browbeating reporters.

They are so little sure of themselves?  So much with finger to the wind?  The public press is a public trust and all that, but who can withstand Saturday Night Live?

Of course, this is NY Times reportage, ignoring Chicago newspaper coverage of B.O., which did not begin only this week to press him on important issues.

Michelle Obama laid it on heavy in recent campaigning about how bad we have it.

In a New Yorker profile, she is quoted in a stump speech made throughout South Carolina as characterizing America as “just downright mean.”

She said the country is divided, life is not good, the people are “guided by fear” and cynicism.

“We have become a nation of struggling folks who are barely making it every day,” she told churchgoers in that primary state. “Folks are just jammed up, and it’s gotten worse over my lifetime.”

She ain’t seen nothin’ yet.  Wait till the mainstream reporters really get warmed up with their Rezko qq.  Then she’ll really howl.

“Let me tell you, don’t get sick in America!” she exclaimed.

Especially when U. of Chi Hospitals are your option.  Lots of insurance needed to help cover her $316,952 salary there as an administrator — up from $121,910  once her man became a U.S. senator.

She’s — ahem — conflicted about her success, or was in 1985 when she wrote her undergraduate thesis, “Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community,” in which she makes a heartfelt cry:

Princeton both humiliated her and corrupted her, Michelle Vaughn Robinson complains in an undergraduate prose that is all the more touching for its clumsiness. By condescending to the young black woman from a Chicago working-class family, the liberal university made Michelle feel like an outsider. Worse, by giving her a ticket to financial success, Princeton caused her to feel that she was selling out to the institutions she most despised.

We call it guilt.  She’s made it big, and that ain’t bad, but she feels bad about it and wants us to feel bad too.  Grrrrrr.