Obama's first press conference

I thought it was really weird that he called himself a mutt. I wonder what other biracial people think about that.

With his transition economic team on hand at the Hilton in Chicago, Barack Obama took several questions -- from Nedra Pickler, Lee Cowen, Chip Reid, John McCormick, Lynn Sweet, Candy Crowley and Jeff Zeleny -- that spanned his goals in the first 100 days to the Obama family's puppy selection process.

In explaining his decision not to introduce new economic plans today, Obama said that the nation has just one president at a time -- read: make no mistake, this economic mess still belongs to George W. Bush. He did say that he endorses passage of a stimulus package, either during the lame duck session of Congress or after he takes office. And he dodged questions about his post-election intelligence briefing(s) and if he intends to raise taxes for Americans in the upper income bracket.

As for the all-important matter of the dog, there are two issues in play: weighing the need to have a hypoallergenic pooch for one allergic daughter and a family interest in adopting a shelter dog, or a "mutt," Obama said, just like he.

Dixville Notch goes to Obama

Democrat Barack Obama came up a big winner in the presidential race in Dixville Notch, N.H., where the nation's first Election Day votes were cast and counted early Tuesday.

Obama defeated John McCain 15-6. Independent Ralph Nader was also on the ballot, but received no votes.

The first voter, following tradition established in 1948, was picked ahead of the midnight voting and the rest of the town's 19 registered voters followed suit in Tuesday's first minutes.

Town Clerk Rick Erwin says the northern New Hampshire town is proud of its tradition, but says the most important thing is that the turnout represents 100 percent vote.

President Bush won the vote in Dixville Notch in 2004 on the way to his re-election.

DIXVILLE NOTCH, N.H. (AP)

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15 to 6. That's right. Obama won by a whopping 9 votes!!!

Joe Biden - Plagiarism scandal

Joe Biden is a plagiarist. Is that surprise?

The only practical explanation for Biden's plagiarism is he guessed that being Kinnock on the stump would be more compelling for his audience than merely citing him. And he was probably right. Anecdotes about how a British politician made a success of himself thanks to Labor Party policies would hardly encourage an American voter to pull the lever for Joe Biden. Biden plagiarized because, like most plagiarists, he was unsatisfied with his own, honest material and decided that the payoff was worth the risk.

Another time-honored defense of plagiarists is that the incident was a one-off. But in Biden's case, we know that's not true. As E.J. Dionne Jr. reported in the previously mentioned Times article, he "plagiarized a law review article for a paper he wrote in his first year at law school" at the Syracuse University College of Law. According to a Dec. 1, 1965, report by the law school, five pages of Biden's 15-page paper were copied without quotation or attribution.

Biden's defense? He told Dionne—and his professors at Syracuse at the time—that he misunderstood citation and footnoting rules. The Dionne piece is especially rich with other Bidenisms. The candidate accuses other presidential campaigns of digging up the Syracuse law school story, but he does not specify which campaigns engineered this smear.

If you give Biden the benefit of the doubt—and I don't—you'd expect that such a calamitous "mistake" from his youth would have seared into his mind the importance of keeping his mitts off of other people's words. That it didn't speaks terabytes about his character.

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