As Barack Obama prepares to meet with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley for the purpose of quieting the controversy generated by his stupid comments last week -- a purpose which could be achieved more easily, as I've already written, if he actually came out and apologized to Sgt. Crowley -- he may find it useful to explain the evolution of his thinking on the matter of the relationship between police, and homeowners, and knocking on doors.

Last week, I recalled the story of Hale DeMar, the homeowner who used a hand gun to defend his children and his home against an intruder, and who was "rewarded" for his courage by being fined by his village for illegally possessing that .38 caliber Smith & Wesson pistol.

But I didn't write the other half of the story -- the half that makes Obama's views on policing and private property so much more interesting -- because I didn't have the requisite citation in hand.

"Dear Birthers,

"Stop!

"Sincerely,

"Serious Conservatives."

I've held fire for the last several months as I've watched the so-called "Birther" movement gain steam.

At first it was amusing, like playing a drinking game -- you know, like taking a shot every time Chris Matthews explains why he insists on pronouncing the former Vice President's name "CHEE-knee."

What's inside this chart is thoroughly disgusting.

It's the new CQPolitics House Race Ratings map -- the first take by CQ's in-house experts on the lay of the land for the 2010 campaigns for the 435 seats up for grabs in the House of Representatives.

"Up for grabs," of course, is a euphemism. According to the CQ Politics analysis, unless some bolt out of nowhere strikes, 335 of the 435 seats are considered "safe" for the incumbent.

Take a moment to read Barack Obama's description of his "apology" to Cambridge, Mass., Police Sgt. James Crowley.

Did you notice what words were missing?

"I told him I'm sorry" was nowhere to be found. "I said, 'I apologize,'" didn't make the final cut. "I asked him to forgive me" isn't there, either.

Come to think of it, neither are "mistake," "regret," "contrite," "repentant," "remorse," "penitent," "rueful," or -- and this is the one I really wish had been there, but isn't: "guilty," as in, "When I answered the question the other night and took that uncalled-for shot at Sgt. Crowley, I was guilty of -- to coin a phrase -- 'acting stupidly.'"

Would South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham have announced his support for the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor if the National Rifle Association had announced a week ago its determination to rate the confirmation vote?

That's the question some conservative leaders and activists are asking themselves today, as they ponder stories with headlines like "Graham takes on conservatives."

Graham, after all, has always scored exceedingly well on the NRA's important congressional ratings.

Listening last night to Barack Obama tell the tale of the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. at the hands of the Cambridge, Massachusetts, Police, I found myself lulled momentarily into the belief that Obama is a man who believes in the sanctity of the home, the notion that any citizen should safely and properly consider his home his castle, inviolate and inviolable.

But then I remembered the case of Hale DeMar, and I snapped out of it.

DeMar was a 54-year-old restaurateur whose home in Wilmette, Illinois was burgled on the night of December 29, 2003 by Morio Billings, a 31-year-old recidivist whose rap sheet included some 30 arrests, plea deals, and convictions for home burglary and the like. Billings was AWOL from the Army and in violation of his probation. On the following night, the burglar -- having stolen, among other things, keys to the house and a BMW X5 SUV -- returned, to continue his robbery.

Garbage in, garbage out.

The term, generally credited to IBM programmer George Fuechsel, simply refers to the fact that computers will process whatever information they are given, without making judgments as to the validity or accuracy of the information -- and when inaccurate information is input into computers, inaccurate output will be the result.

Over the decades, "garbage in, garbage out" has been shortened to its acronym, GIGO.

In politics, one of the places where you're most likely to run across the GIGO phenomenon is in the construction of a survey sample.

At dinner last night with some good friends from my days at the Republican National Committee, we got to talking about the current campaigns for governor in my home state of Virginia and my seemingly adopted state of New Jersey.

I opined that while it was clear that the Republican candidates for governor in both states were running ahead right now, Republicans couldn't afford to take anything for granted -- that Virginia's political demographics had changed significantly over the last decade, and that New Jersey is, well, New Jersey, where Republicans have had a tough go of it these last, oh, 38 years or so.

Then this morning I read my Washington Post, and I did a double-take -- GOP gubernatorial nominee Bob McDonnell yesterday announced the endorsement of Sheila Johnson, the co-founder of Black Entertainment Television, the nation's (world's?) first black female billionaire, and -- wait for it -- a major Democratic donor to both current governor, Tim Kaine, and former Gov. Mark Warner.

Forgive me for asking the obvious, but -- what happened to Barack Obama's fabled Money Machine?

Finance reports filed yesterday by the two major party committees tell the tale:

For the first six months of the year, the Democratic National Committee reported raising $37.4 million. The DNC spent $29.9 million, and was left with a balance of $13 million, with $4.9 million in debts.

That means the DNC has a little more than $8 million it can safely obligate.

Mike Allen's piece in Friday's Politico -- "Conservative group offers support for $2M" -- roiled conservative waters in Washington and led some to wonder if American Conservative Union Chairman David A. Keene would leave the post he's held for a quarter-century.

Don't hold your breath.

Despite the fact that major conservative blogs and media outlets like National Review's The Corner, Erick Erickson at RedState, Michelle Malkin, Outside the Beltway, Right Wing News, and Hot Air went crazy over the story on Friday -- many of them calling for Keene's ouster -- that outcome is highly unlikely.

On Friday, known in politics as "Take out the Trash Day," Joel Sawyer announced that he will be leaving his $65,000-per-year state government job to "pursue other opportunities in the private sector."

What? You've never heard of Joel Sawyer?

You're familiar with his work, in a manner of speaking. You just don't know it.

I have just one question for the decision-makers at the Republican Governors Association: Why are you running ads attacking Jon Corzine in New Jersey, instead of running ads building up Chris Christie?

As yesterday's Quinnipiac University Polling Institute release makes clear, the communications battle for the next 110 days will be a battle to define Chris Christie in the minds of the 40 percent of New Jersey's likely voters who still have not yet formed an opinion of him.

That's because while Christie is currently capturing the support of 53 percent of the likely voting electorate, his favorable rating is still only 39 percent -- which means that at least 14 percent of the likely voters surveyed (the difference between 53 percent and 39 percent) told the pollster they plan to vote for Christie, even though they don't yet have a favorable opinion of him.

Is Jon Corzine about to throw the long ball?

In the Garden State, GOP gubernatorial nominee Chris Christie's lead over incumbent Democratic Gov. Corzine is large, and growing larger -- 12 points, according to the latest survey by Quinnipiac University's Polling Institute, released this morning.

And Corzine, apparently, believes he may have to throw the long ball. But will his Hail Mary work, or will it end his campaign?

This race is not over, and national GOP leaders looking to tout a New Jersey victory as a "bellwether" would be wise to stay focused on execution for the next 112 days.

Well, we didn't have to wait long for this.

I have no inside knowledge of what I'm about to suggest, other than my knowledge of the way the other side works, gained at the price of too many painful defeats at their hands.

Having properly caveated myself, here's what I think is going on with Jon Corzine and his campaign against Chris Christie for Governor of New Jersey:

State Sen. Kirk Dillard, Republican of DuPage County, Illinois, announced his candidacy for the GOP nomination for governor today, the very same day that Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan announced she would not be running for governor (or for the U.S. Senate, for that matter).

Asked at his announcement speech what he thought of Madigan's declaration, Dillard replied, "She's been a good attorney general and if she wants to stay there, that's fine ... I look forward to having Lisa Madigan as attorney general when I'm the governor."

There's only one problem with Dillard's statement -- there's a Republican candidate by the name of Joe Birkett who's already announced his candidacy for the GOP nomination for, you guessed it, the Attorney General's office.

Lisa Madigan out, Mark Kirk in?

Are you kidding me?

Illinois Republicans haven't had this good a day since May 18, 1860.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan's decision to run for reelection to her current post next year -- rather than run for governor or U.S. Senate, as had been widely expected -- roiled the political waters worse than a Great White trolling the Lake Michigan shallows.

By the way, arguing against my last post, there actually was a president who had less experience in major public office before winning the presidency than would Sarah Palin, were she to win the White House after only two and a half years as governor -- Woodrow Wilson, who was elected president in 1912 after having been elected governor of New Jersey for the first time in 1910.

Of course, Wilson benefited from the split in the Republican Party -- former President Teddy Roosevelt chose to challenge incumbent president/Roosevelt successor William Howard Taft for the GOP nomination at the 1912 GOP national convention, and, failing to win, had left the GOP to form the Bull Moose Party to contest for the presidency in the general election.

Mark Levin says she's "running for president, get used to it;" Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol says she could run for president; Charlie Cook agrees with Kristol that she could run for president; but Karl Rove says the decision to resign early would hurt her in a future run for president, and RedState founder Erick Erickson flatly declares "she will not run for any elected office ever again."

What's missing in all the instant analyses of will-she-won't-she is a rather more simple calculus -- not as to whether or not this move will hurt her chances should she choose to run for President down the road, but as to whether or not this move should hurt her chances should she choose to run for President down the road.

As the South Carolina dramedy -- "Sanford and Sin?" -- continues to play out, two things become increasingly evident:

First, potentially former Gov. Mark Sanford is driving his handlers crazy.

Second, his wife Jenny looks less and less like the politician's wife, and more and more like a politician herself -- and a pretty good one, at that.

She's even got her own fan club on Twitter.

Former Senator Robert Torricelli -- who, like the boxer Roberto Duran, threw up his hands and yelled "No mas!" after enduring months of beating at the hands of Republican challenger Doug Forrester and a New Jersey press corps that thirsted for his blood during his 2002 reelection campaign -- is back, once again raising money for fellow Democrats.

This is nothing new. Torricelli raised eyebrows early in 2004, when he raised money for John Kerry for President.

As Herb Jackson of The Record notes, the interesting thing is not that Democrats are so desperate for campaign cash that they're willing to take money even from an event hosted by their disgraced former colleague; the interesting thing is that the head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, New Jersey Democrat Robert Menendez, is willing to take money even from an event hosted by a man with whom he's had a long-running and very well-known political feud.