Several of our readers have commented that our coverage of late has been skewed a bit toward the Democratic side. And they’re right, but the Dems have been the ones in the headlines lately, with Barack Obama (finally) claiming his party’s nomination and Hillary Clinton (finally) endorsing him. But to be fair, it’s time to turn our attention back to the GOP and its presumptive nominee, John McCain. So here are some things that have been going on in the McCain universe:

• McCain will participate in a town hall–style meeting tonight at Federal Hall in New York, televised by Fox News.
• The Republican nominee will give a speech next week in Canada about free trade, an issue he has emphasized on the campaign trail.
• On the “Today” show yesterday, McCain was asked if he could provide a timeline for bringing troops home from Iraq. He said that his priority was to reduce casualties. Democrats, including John Kerry, Howard Dean, Harry Reid, and Joe Biden, jumped on McCain’s response, calling him “out of touch.”
• Also on “Today,” McCain touched on rising gas prices, saying that he doesn’t expect them to go down anytime soon: “The point is, oil companies have got to be more participatory in alternate energy, in sharing their profits in a variety of ways, and there is very strong and justifiable emotion about their profits.”

How much democracy is too much democracy? Last week, Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr demanded a California-style national referendum on any security agreement decided between the US and the Iraqi government. Washington and Baghdad have yet to respond to al-Sadr’s demand for a democratic check on the process.

At issue is a standards of forces document, written by the US and now in Iraq’s parliament, which will replace the expiring UN resolution allowing foreign military presence in Iraq. A growing Iraqi resistance to the current document, spearheaded by al-Sadr, has focused on the US schedule for withdrawal from Iraq.

Some in the Iraqi government are concerned that the proposal would violate Iraqi sovereignty by establishing permanent US bases, although Washington has stated repeatedly that is not in the plan. Iraqi negotiators have said that they have a “vision and a draft that is different” from the draft before parliament.

Despite a muted political response to al-Sadr’s call for a national vote, the religious leadership of Iraq spoke out in a tour de force of support. The most surprising support came from Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani (who is, by popular respect, the Billy Graham of Iraqi Shiite Islam). On Thursday, the usually reclusive al-Sistani sought out Iraq’s Prime Minister to advise that he organize a national referendum on the security pact. With al-Sistani’s support, a number of other top Shia leaders agreed to protest the agreement.

There was no visible political response. Al-Sadr’s Tuesday pronouncement did not earn him mention in Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday’s State Department press briefings, or any official attention since. The leadership of Iraq has similarly not responded to al-Sadr’s calls.

US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, in her remarks at the Iraq Compact Conference this weekend (an economic forum unrelated to the security pact), noted that “The United States, of course, remains committed fully to fostering a sovereign, democratic, prosperous, and unified Iraq.” This echoes a long history of President Bush’s policy of promoting democracy in Iraq since 2004. Al-Sadr’s call for a referendum vote may test that commitment to democracy.

As Americans were celebrating Memorial Day, Iraqis too were somber. That’s because Iraq’s struggle for peace got even harder on Monday when FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, suspended Iraq’s national soccer association, preventing Iraq from international play.

FIFA took action after the Iraqi government dissolved the Iraqi Olympic Committee. Defending its actions, the government said it made the move because the Committee was operating illegally, had refused to hold new elections, and members had become corrupt. Others, however, believe the decision is motivated by sectarian differences and is an abuse of power.

But whatever the reason, the issue must be resolved soon. A country ravaged by sectarian violence, soccer may be the one thing that can unite it.

History has shown that soccer can unify a country enough to make its citizens forget their differences. In June 2006, Ivory Coast’s debut in the World Cup, international soccer’s greatest competition, bonded the country so much that it committed to end the four-year civil war which divided the North and South. Less than a year later, the country officially reunited.

Indeed, during the 2004 Athens Olympics, soccer gave Iraq ethnic amnesia. Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds comprised Iraq’s national team that year. Fans united to support their team, not their sect. “No one in Iraq cared that a Kurd scored the first goal against Costa Rica,” an NBC report said. “They just cared that an Iraqi scored.” With the support of its country, the team that practiced alongside grazing sheep made an unlikely run to the quarterfinals.

Deceased Army Pfc. Nick Madaras realized that soccer can unify. He started a program which sends soccer balls, and hope, to Iraqi children. But it’s not that soccer holds a magical power. It’s that soccer supports and teaches a timeless biblical principle: teamwork. Which is why, as Ron Borges says, the soccer field may be the perfect training ground for a peaceful, united Iraq:

“It happens [on the field] first, this idea of abandoning old hates and fears in exchange for cooperation and, in the end, victory. Perhaps it must be delivered there first, on a place where politics counts the least because it seems safest there for all involved.”

UPDATE (May 29):

After Iraq clarified its reasoning for disbanding its Olympic Committee, FIFA has reinstated the countries soccer association. Such a decision could not have come too soon. As the New York Times reports, Iraqi soccer is “a rare symbol of national unity.”

While there are many nuances which must be considered in the Iraqi democratic experiment, the power of a common goal cannot be understated.

As Baghdad resident Najah Nasser says, “It is very good news, because football is the only relief for us.”

This essay bears little preface.  In it, Maj. Gen. William Troy speaks about military funerals.  The army requires a general officer to attend the funeral of everyone who falls in service to country.

I have attended 23 funerals in many different states and, to my surprise, have never encountered an angry parent — only heartbroken ones who are intensely proud of their son or daughter. Grief is the crushing load these parents and spouses bear. Yet far more often than not they treat the military in attendance as family. They invite us to the receptions after the services, where they show us scrapbooks and introduce us to friends. They hug us and wish us a safe return to our units and families. They smile through their tears. I often get the feeling their sense of duty wills them through. I suspect that when the crowds have left and they are allowed to be alone, they collapse in grief and exhaustion.

Happy Memorial Day.

HT: Slate.com

Just when we thought Ted Turner was finally making sense, he appeared on the Charlie Rose Show, opened his mouth, and removed all doubt of where his head is. Here’s a link to the NewsBusters report, which features these gems from the interview …

On the “catasthropic” effects of global warming: “Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals.”

On China’s military buildup: “China just wants to sell us shoes. They’re not building landing craft to attack the United States.”

On Iraqi insurgents: “I think that they’re patriots and that they don’t like us because we’ve invaded their country and occupied it.”

Alexis de Tocqueville in the 1830s wrote about the American tendency to use “crisp, clear and unadorned language” in business dealings, only to turn to “bombast” and “relentless pomposity” when indulging in supposedly-poetic public speaking. But de Tocqueville thought that realism would eventually win out—and so it has in most presidential elections of the past 30 years, even when the campaigns initially were full of air. Obama’s brilliant oratory so far has allowed him to escape specifics, but he eventually will have to go beyond the question of who opposed the war in 2003: the real question now is what to do in 2008. An article by Angelina Jolie in The Washington Post late last month, with the surprising headline “A Reason to Stay in Iraq,” was worth a thousand bombastic speeches.

Jolie argued that the U.S. should not squander what the troop surge has achieved, an opportunity to make “humanitarian progress” that will be lost if American forces pull out precipitously. Although Cosmogirl.com readers voted Angelina Jolie #3 on their list of desired presidential candidates (behind Oprah and Jon Stewart, ahead of Bono), she apparently is not on McCain’s list of possible running mates—but he should run with what she wrote.

If the race is McCain vs. Obama, the older senator will needs to pop the younger’s halo of humaneness. One way is to listen to Jill Stanek, the whistle-blowing nurse who saw close-up at an Illinois senate committee hearing Obama’s opposition to protecting even babies born alive after failed abortions: “Obama’s clinical discourse, his lack of mercy, shocked me.” The Chicago Sun-Times ran a cartoon of Obama holding a sign with “LIVE BIRTH ABORTION” on it, God reaching down from heaven to a baby in front of the state senator, and Obama yelling at God, “You keep out of this!”

Is McCain up to criticizing Obama (or Clinton) on abortion? Perhaps not, but GOP honchos should talk with Clarise McFarlen, a 16-year-old from Wichita, Kansas, who—like Obama—is of a mixed racial background. At first excited to hear of Obama’s candidacy, Clarise changed her mind when she learned of his position on partial-birth abortion: “My heart just stopped. If you support killing babies, there’s no way you can have true compassion.”

The war in Iraq will be a major campaign issue this fall, so John McCain decided to spend part of his time waiting to see who his Democratic challenger will be by traveling to the war-torn country. McCain visited Iraq over the weekend, meeting with Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh. He was also scheduled to get together with Gen. David Petraeus. McCain, who is traveling with Sens. Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, will head next to Israel, France, and Great Britain, where he’ll have his first meeting with Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He also is expected to meet with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

In an odd scheduling quirk, Vice President Dick Cheney was also in Iraq, but it didn’t appear that the two crossed paths.

Mindy Belz reports that a car bomb exploded this afternoon outside a church in Mosul: “The explosion marked the third wave of attacks on Christian sites in Iraq in 10 days, and further elevated concern that religious minorities are facing new threats despite an abiding history of coexistence with Muslims and other minorities.”

And here’s a link to an advance look at an article by Mindy about the recent attacks on Iraqi churches that will appear in the upcoming issue of WORLD, as well as one to last week’s Web Extra on the bombings.

Yesterday on Meet the Press, Hillary Clinton claimed that the Iraqis are changing their ways — now contributing to the quelling of terrorist violence in their country — because of the Democratic candidates’ “commitment to begin withdrawing our troops in January of 2009.”

So, William Kristol notes wryly on today’s New York Times op-ed page. . .

. . .the Democratic Party, having proclaimed that the war is lost and having sought to withdraw U.S. troops, deserves credit for any progress that may have been achieved in Iraq. That is truly a fairy tale. And it is driven by a refusal to admit real success because that success has been achieved under the leadership of … George W. Bush. The horror!

Read Kristol’s entire op-ed here.

In Iraq, a number of Sunni Arab tribes in the Anbar province have formed a coalition, fighting al-Qaida-linked insurgents. U.S. officials credit such so-called “Awakening Councils” for sharply reducing violence in the region, and the U.S. military has been working to form similar coalitions elsewhere.

The trend has apparently caught the attention of Osama Bin Laden who on Dec. 29 issued a 56-minute audiotape in which he warned Sunnis in Iraq not to fight al-Qaeda and vowed to expand his holy war into Israel. Here’s the story on the tape. U.S. officials claim they have al-Qaeda on the run in Iraq. Is the Bin Laden tape an indicator that they’re right?