Opinion - RealClearPolitics.com

Tomorrow, Barack Obama will step off his plane into Israel and under a microscope. While he is there, American voters - Jews, Evangelical Christians and others - who factor a presidential candidate's policies toward Israel into their electoral choice, will watch Obama's every step and listen to his every word very, very closely.

Former Vice President Al Gore and his entourage arrived at Constitutional Hall in Washington D.C.

The Washington Post reports:

As Republicans look toward rebuilding their party and inching back to the majority, an accurate diagnosis of what went wrong will be critical to finding the eventual cure.

Speculation abounds these days about whether this fall's presidential election will produce a dramatically different electoral map than the virtually static one of the last two contests. Will Colorado and Virginia lead an array of longtime Republican states that might be won this time by Democrat Barack Obama? Or might Michigan and Pennsylvania be in the vanguard of Democratic strongholds picked off by Republican John McCain?

This year Americans have worked until today, July 16, to pay for the total costs of federal, state and local government. This is 197 days of the year consuming 53.9 percent of national income. Over the past 22 years, in only four years (1982, 1983, 1991 and 1992) did Cost of Government Day fall later in the year.

With a nearly seven-to-one cash on hand advantage, an advantageous political landscape second only to that of two years ago and an opposing party whose follies seem to get worse by the day, House Democratic strategists are looking to expand the playing field into previously untapped Republican territory.

The United Nations resolution authorizing the United States presence in Iraq runs out at the end of this year. The United States and Iraq are now negotiating a new agreement to govern U.S. relations and conduct when the U.N. agreement expires.

During his eight years in the Illinois state senate, Barack Obama voted "present" 130 times. That's an astounding 12-13 times a year in which he said, in effect, "I'm here, but I'm not going to take a stand on this issue."