By Steve Clemons

Watch out for her bite.

Free Webcam Chat at Ustream Four years ago, Osama bin Laden chronicler and CNN and New America Foundation terrorism expert PETER BERGEN, The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib author and NYU Center on Law and Security Director KAREN GREENBERG, and I organized a day long mega-meeting of the world’s best and brightest al…

Here would be an interesting line of defense in Senator Norm Coleman’s brewing scandal. Perhaps Coleman just BORROWED the suits — and wore temporarily — a few times — and then returned them to friend and campaign supporter Nasser Kazeminy. Note to the press: Ask the spokesman if Coleman just took a few loaners. ….

Thanks to Politico‘s Ben Smith for sending this our way. This is the most painful press engagement between a campaign spokesman and a “polite, but persistent” group of media I have ever seen. Let’s just hope that Al Franken buys all of his own suits.

This is important and is more evidence of the dismantling of George W. Bush’s imperial presidency. Federal District Court Judge Ricardo Urbina has ordered the release by the end of this week of 17 Guantanamo detainees who happen to be Uighers.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel My colleague Michael Lind — who is Senior Fellow and Director of the New America Foundation’s American Infrastructure Initiative — offered some thoughts on what the future might look like over at The New Republic‘s “The Plank“.

I never learned to play a musical instrument. I have huge, widespread hands and should have been a pianist.

I have a friend, Roee, who just sent me moving personal commentary of his own thinking about sin and atonement in the context of spending time with a Chinese immigrant family in San Francisco. I am not going to post his piece — but it did remind me that Yom Kippur starts tonight.

First question is on the economy. Both Obama and McCain are doing well in responding to a person’s query about what to do with the average family being undermined by current economic conditions. John McCain and Obama both started to walk around and try to talk to the audience.