The lamest part of last night’s festivities involved the mocking of Obama’s service as a community organizer.

Here’s the response from a group called Catholic Democrats:

Catholic Democrats is expressing surprise and shock that Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech tonight mocked her opponent’s work in the 1980s for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development. She belittled Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama’s experience as a community organizer in Catholic parishes on the South Side of Chicago, work he undertook instead of pursuing a lucrative career on Wall Street. In her acceptance speech, Ms. Palin said, “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.” Community organizing is at the heart of Catholic Social Teaching to end poverty and promote social justice.

Joe Klein goes further:

So here is what Giuliani and Palin didn’t know: Obama was working for a group of churches that were concerned about their parishioners, many of whom had been laid off when the steel mills closed on the south side of Chicago. They hired Obama to help those stunned people recover and get the services they needed–job training, help with housing and so forth–from the local government. It was, dare I say it, the Lord’s work–the sort of mission Jesus preached (as opposed to the war in Iraq, which Palin described as a “task from God.”)

This is what Palin and Giuliani were mocking. They were making fun of a young man’s decision “to serve a cause greater than himself,” in the words of John McCain. They were, therefore, mocking one of their candidate’s favorite messages. Obama served the poor for three years, then went to law school. To describe this service–the first thing he did out of college, the sort of service every college-educated American should perform, in some form or other–as anything other than noble is cheap and tawdry and cynical in the extreme.

Perhaps La Pasionaria of the Northern Slope didn’t know this when she read the words they gave her. But Giuliani–a profoundly lapsed Catholic, who must have met more than a few religious folk toiling in the inner cities–should have known. (”I don’t even know what that is,” he sneered.”) What a shameful performance.

It’s amazing to me how low someone like Giuliani will go. He performed well on 9/11, but since then he’s been cashing in on his “celebrity” giving high-priced speeches. When he ran for president he spent $50 million and got one delegate. Perhaps the American people know a fraud when they see one.

In a year where we have economic troubles with ordinary Americans struggling, the GOP decides to attack someone for doing this kind of service early in their career.

None of this is surprising. The GOP has won plenty of elections demonizing and mocking their opponents. This year, with Obama and Biden, they have opponents that will fight back.

For years, John McCain was the darling of the press. Now that some of them are criticizing him and questioning his VP selection, McCain is going ballistic. The fact that he won’t even go on Larry King is just a joke.

Steve Schmidt and the McCain campaign have made the tactical decision to slime the press and get their supporters all riled up over the “liberal media.” Joe Klein is having none of it.

There is a tendency in the media to kick ourselves, cringe and withdraw, when we are criticized. But I hope my colleagues stand strong in this case: it is important for the public to know that Palin raised taxes as governor, supported the Bridge to Nowhere before she opposed it, pursued pork-barrel projects as mayor, tried to ban books at the local library and thinks the war in Iraq is “a task from God.” The attempts by the McCain campaign to bully us into not reporting such things are not only stupidly aggressive, but unprofessional in the extreme.

John McCain used to held in high regard by many in the press corps, including guys like Joe Klein. Those days are over.

McCain earned a tremendous amount of respect for the way he ran his 2000 campaign, and in the manner he endured the despicable attacks levied against him and his family during that election. Now he’s decided he can only win by using those same tactics.

Klein used to have lots of nice things to say about McCain, but now he’s fed up, and he’s letting McCain have it.

But there is no excuse for what the McCain campaign is doing on the “putting America first” front. There is no way to balance it, or explain it other than as evidence of a severe character defect on the part of the candidate who allows it to be used. There is a straight up argument to be had in this election: Mcain has a vastly different view from Obama about foreign policy, taxation, health care, government action…you name it. He has lots of experience; it is always shocking to remember that this time four years ago, Barack Obama was still in the Illinois State Legislature. Apparently, though, McCain isn’t confident that conservative policies and personal experience can win, given the ruinous state of the nation after eight years of Bush. So he has made a fateful decision: he has personally impugned Obama’s patriotism and allows his surrogates to continue to do that. By doing so, he has allied himself with those who smeared him, his wife, his daughter Bridget, in 2000. Those tactics won George Bush a primary–and a nomination. But they proved a form of slow-acting spiritual poison, rotting the core of the Bush presidency. We’ll see if the public decides to acquiesce in sleaze in 2008, and what sort of presidency–what sort of country–that will produce.

As a political junkie, it’s hard to imagine Sundays without Russert on Meet the Press. He was a class act.

The tributes will be numerous. Joe Klein was a long-time friend and he offers some interesting insights.