By Steve Clemons

(photo credit: Matthew Winters) This beautiful pic was taken at sunset from a moving car through the front window in Centreville, Maryland – on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay.

Will anyone notice? Barack Obama’s team just threw its key Muslim advisor under the bus. Barack Obama needs to make a statement loudly, clearly, and with passion that he embraces Muslims as much as any other Americans of Christian, Buddhist, Jewish or other religious persuasions.

(Steve Clemons listening to Gen. Wesley Clark at Yearly Kos 2007 in Chicago) Wow. I was speaking to some students of Shelly Williams of the Osgood Center at Johns Hopkins/SAIS this morning and just recalled that it was the fourth birthday of this blog.

I have heard from a definitive, first tier source tonight. Barack Obama’s VP selection process has not played itself out. There will be no announcement that Evan Bayh is his running mate tomorrow when the Democratic presidential candidate appears in Indiana.

My phone is ringing off the hook. Some top sources tell me that they buy Bahy’s denial. One high source tells me not to count the pro-life Virginia Governor Tim Kaine out. Another says Biden is still kicking. . .

Rumors are flying that tomorrow in Indiana, Barack Obama is going to name Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN) as his running mate. Bayh denies it — and says that he doesn’t think anything special is being cooked up tomorrow. This all could be a head fake — or a couple of head fakes.

This debate over oil and energy policy disgusts me because both Obama and McCain are trying to force short term, knee jerk responses to a major policy challenge for the nation. I remember hearing John McCain once tell me that “Congress never makes good policy decisions in the heat of a crisis.

This video of a seemingly innocent taxi getting demolished by a tank in Iraq has awakened in me all of the reasons we must withdraw from that country. American soldiers are too distant from the fate of Iraqis and on a systems basis can’t ever act in their interests.

(UT Austin LBJ School Dean and potential Obama National Security Advisor candidate James Steinberg) There are four horses out front — way ahead of everyone else who might be considered.

Peter Rodman died of complications from leukemia on Saturday, August 2nd. I didn’t know he was ill, and over the last decade we weren’t close friends but were well acquainted. I think he disliked my foreign policy views and political direction quite a bit — but he was always a gentleman when we crossed paths.