MORNING READ

Less than a week before the election, conservative bloggers are going on the offensive on behalf of John McCain’s presidential campaign. They’re demanding that the Los Angeles Times release a tape that allegedly shows Barack Obama at a party with Palestinians. They’re also criticizing an aide to a former McCain rival who has undermined McCain’s running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Liberal bloggers defend Obama from the latest attack by Joe the Plumber, and they get help from an unlikely source.

The Times reportedly has a tape showing Obama at a 2003 dinner for Palestinian activist Rashid Khalidi, but it won’t release it even though one of its columnists wrote about it earlier this year, writes Gateway Pundit. The Times refusal to release the tape is just one of a string of instances in which the media has suppressed information for Obama, according to Michelle Malkin. If the Times is going to keep the tape under wraps to honor a source’s request, the newspaper should at least give a fuller description of what’s on it, writes Contentions’ Jennifer Rubin.

A key aide to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R), Kevin Madden, went on CNN to call Palin “unseasoned” and to suggest that McCain should have picked a running mate who was a governor for a