Photo: Obama illegally invites campaign adviser into Senate office; Update: Obama backs out of Fox debate

Barry Obama invited David Axelrod, his chief political adviser into his Senate office, an illegal move according to the Congressional ethics rules.

Drudge reports:

A snapshot of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and his chief political and media adviser David Axelrod — taken in the Senator’s Capitol Hill office! ROLL CALL reports: Congressional ethics rules forbid the use of federal office space for political and campaign activity.

Uh, oops.

Update (AP): I wonder if this news or the recent nutroots uproar over his Iraq funding comments explains why Barry O is now sudenly backing out of the Fox News Democratic primary debate in Detroit. This should be checkmate in the long chess game of racial politics that’s been played since the Dems abandoned the Nevada primary debate that Fox was supposed to host: first Fox approached the Congressional Black Caucus to co-sponsor a new debate, believing that the Dems wouldn’t have the stones to bail on the CBC; then grassroots black progressive groups attacked the CBC for working with Fox, which granted Edwards the racial cover he needed to cancel; and now, just 10 days after the CBC formally struck a deal with Fox, the Messiah himself has bestowed the imprimatur of racial authority on cancellation, thereby neutralizing the CBC and greenlighting the rest of the Democratic field to withdraw. Edwards’s surprisingly strong showing in the latest polls, doubtless spiked by sympathy for him and his wife, may also have Obama feeling nervous and more inclined to appease the nutroots.

Everyone wins, really — the Dems get to show how tough they are against an enemy who’s more their speed and Fox gets to tout itself as the network that frightens the left. The only losers are our friend Kirsten Powers and her centrist ilk, who have to sit there and pretend that the Kossack morons are still a fringe movement, that they don’t speak for the Democratic Party, and that it’s really folks like her who get hit pieces written about them in Salon who represent the “real Democrats.” Keep telling yourself that, KP.

Expect plenty more theatrical Fox-bashing from Democrats going forward, all of it coincidentally timed to incidents that hurt their standing with the fightin’-y fightin’ nutroots.

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