The Democratic presidential candidates held their first debate Thursday in South Carolina. Most commentators were bored.

Lane Hudson found yesterday’s debate questions “softball” and the answers status quo.

The National Review’s “Hillary Spot” blog offers a republican strategist's wrap up of the debate. He was underwhelmed by Obama and Hillary.

Walter Shapiro talked to strategists for the various candidates and found them admitting, in private, that the Orangeburg debate “didn’t change anything.”

Ben Smith found the Dems playing nice. The differences between them were drawn lightly in pencil.

John Dickerson found the Democratic debate generally lacking in excitement, except for the statements from very long shot contenders like Mike Gravel. When Gravel said that he owned a gun, one of the leading candidate’s advisors said afterward that he “was worried that he meant he had one with him at the moment."

Mario Cuomo tells the Democrats to come up with something better than recounting GOP failures. They need to tell us what they would do differently, he says.

Byron York found two of the three Democratic frontrunners weak on their response to Brian Williams’ questions on terrorism. Hilary did the best of the three, in his opinion.

Finding the key facts beyond the rhetoric

Congress sent the president an Iraqi War Supplemental Funding Bill yesterday. Even before the votes were cast, Bush was denouncing the legislation for setting an arbitrary date for the withdrawal of U.S. troops, which he says will only embolden the terrorists.

So what day will the last soldier in Iraq come home? See if you can find it in the text of H.R. 1591.

Don’t feel bad if you can’t find it. It isn’t there. In fact, while the bill requires troops to begin returning home in October, there isn’t a day set in stone that America would abandon all operations in Iraq.

Congressman Vic Snyder - Ark., who serves on the House Veteran Affairs and Armed Services Committees, points this out in a recent op-ed (subscription required) in Roll Call:

While two alternative timelines for redeployment of our troops are contained in the bill, depending on whether the president makes certain certifications, very broad tasks for American troops in Iraq are specifically authorized at a troop strength level without limitation in number or time.

So U.S. troops can continue to train Iraqi forces indefinitely, and there’s no limit to the number of troops that may be deployed to protect these trainers or American civilians in Iraq. The bill also specifically authorizes U.S. troops to be deployed or maintained to hunt down "al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations with global reach" which, of course, would include Iraq.

The House-Senate conference committee has prepared a $124 billion war funding bill that President Bush has promised to veto. His bone is with the bill's timetables for withdrawal from Iraq. If the bill doesn’t pass, whose burden is it? The pundits on the left and right debate that question.

The Washington Times argues that “by tying funding for the war to a surrender bill that the president will veto, the Democrats are showing studied contempt for our troops in the field.”

Joseph Morrison Skelly says we can’t leave Iraq until a stable government is achieved. Our national interests and honor demand it, he argues.

Bob Geiger expects Bush to veto the supplemental funding bill “unless he is struck by lightning or gets a conscience transplant.” The burden of troops without funding is on Bush.

The New York Times calls on Bush to stop pretending victory is still possible in Iraq. “The sooner Mr. Bush and his allies drop the pretense that military victory is still possible in Iraq and their charges of 'defeatism' against those who know better, the closer the nation will be to rescuing what can still be rescued from the debacle.”

Arianna Huffington reflects on General Petraeus’ blueprint for success in Iraq. He was on Capitol Hill this week and the Republicans presented Petraeus as a kind of Iraq War messiah. Huffington doubts the authenticity of their faith. If Petraeus is so good, why doesn’t the administration actually do what he says, she asks.

The McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law will be before the Supreme Court today. Three terms ago the same law was challenged by everyone from Right to Life to Planned Parenthood, but the law was upheld. Now the pundits are arguing whether the law works to preserve democracy or pervert it, whether it should be upheld or struck down.

Bradley Smith and Stephen Hoersting argue that the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law does more to insulate politicians from criticism and squelch free speech than it does to clean up election funding.

Woody Mena doesn’t always like the issue ads that McCain-Feingold restricts, but he believes in free speech. McCain-Feingold restricts that speech, he argues.

The Washington Post says that the supreme court shouldn’t contradict its earlier ruling that upheld the McCain-Feingold law. To overturn that earlier ruling would tarnish the credibility of the court and elections to come.

Armstrong Williams doesn’t think McCain-Feingold goes far enough. The only way to make campaigns clean is to allow only public financing.

The New York Times wants to keep corporate and union money out of politics and they believe that McCain-Feingold helps do that. The “issue ads” that are at the center of the case are, they claim, “phony” commercials “intended to elect or defeat a particular candidate.”

James Bopp Jr. offers a brief history of “sham arguments” for McCain-Feingold. Free speech suffers more than the corporate accounts of politicians, he argues.

The former president of Russia – the first to be democratically elected after the fall of the Soviet Union – died yesterday at the age of 76. Here’s what a few pundits had to say about this often contradictory political figure.

Nikolas Gvosdev compares Yeltsin to former U.S. president Ulysses Grant: “Both men were heroes with alcoholic reputations when they became presidents of their respective countries (the difference being that Grant had saved his Union via bloodshed while Yeltsin had dismantled his peacefully) but who left office after two terms under the clouds of scandal and corruption.”

Jack Matlock, former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, says that to truly understand Yeltsin, it helps to look back at the early years of his political years before his rise to prominence. Then, he was known to bust shop managers for hording supplies to sell on the black market.

Anne Applebaum says Yeltsin’s 1987 speech at the 70th anniversary celebration of the Bolshevik Revolution and subsequent resignation for the Communist Party made a name for him as a reformer. But certain actions as president undermined the image he had cultivated earlier.

David Satter thinks Yeltsin's legacy is that of opportunities lost, as the years of criminality under his rule paved the way for a descent back into authoritarianism under current Russian president Vladimir Putin.

The Washington Post believes the image of Yeltsin that will be most remembered will be of the former president standing on a tank in front of the Russian parliament, defying a 1991 coup by Soviet defenders.

The scandal over Paul Wolfowitz’s alleged nepotism at the World Bank is growing. Many World Bank staffers are wearing blue ribbons to show their support of his dismissal and the European members of the board are not hiding their desire for Wolfowitz’s exit. But the facts of the case continue to grow in complexity as Wolfowitz’s defenders and detractors argue over his fate.

Robert B. Holland III, a former World Bank board member, offers his take on why Wolfowitz is being targeted. It’s the politics stupid, not financial infidelities.

Sydney Blumenthal sees Wolfowitz’s tenure at the world bank as “yet another case study of neoconservative government in action.” For Blumenthal the Wolfowitz scandal is marked by other neoconservative traits: “grandiosity, cronyism, self-dealing and lying—followed by an energetic campaign to deflect accountability.”

The Washington Post argues that we shouldn’t rush to judgment of Wolfowitz. The facts are complex, and though Wolfowitz did apparently make some bad choices, this might not be the scandal his detractors would like us to believe.

David Rieff says that the staff of the World Bank were gunning for Wolfowitz from the day he was nominated. This is unfair, perhaps, but Wolfowitz gave them the “loaded revolver with which to do the deed.”

The VA Tech shootings have continued to dominate headlines and editorial pages. From the media’s response to gun control this tragedy has opened many lines of debate from which we have selected a few of the best opinion pieces.

Charles Krauthammer argues that the most important issue coming out of the VA Tech killings is not gun control, but psychosis control. We need stronger laws to hospitalize and quarantine the mentally disturbed to help them and keep them from hurting others.

Nicholas Kulish recounts his own experience with a disturbed classmate. He found this classmate threatening, but still didn’t feel completely unsafe. Why? Tight gun laws in New York City. Laws he argues should be extended to the rest of the country.

Paul Jacob says that as that the media shouldn’t be so quick to put the VA Tech administration and police on trial. Now is a time to mourn, not to criticize.

Brian Williams, host of the NBC Nightly News, defends NBC’s decision to air portions of Cho’s “multimedia manifesto.” It was no decision they wanted to make, but it was a truly newsworthy development.

Lionel Shriver says that the one thing that ties recent mass killers together is their desire for media attention. We shouldn’t give them their wish, he argues.

James Q. Wilson, a public policy professor at Pepperdine, takes a careful look at gun control. It is impossible to get guns off the street, he says, and tighter gun control laws would be ineffective. What we need is “to work harder to identify and cope with dangerously unstable personalities.”

Bruce Shapiro traces the story lines that have come out of the VA Tech shootings. For all of the irrationality of Cho’s act, he says, we must work to get the story straight so that the narrative won’t be repeated again.