In his day, Curt Schilling  was one of those pitchers with a reputation for competitiveness. Helping the Red Sox win the  2004 World Series championship, their first in 86 years, Schilling ignored a bloodstain on his sock to pitch his team to victory in Game 6 of the American League championship series against the New York Yankees.

Now, the 42-year-old Boston resident -- who won his first World Series with the Arizona Diamondbacks -- has his eye on a new prize: the Senate seat held by Ted Kennedy for almost 50 years.

“I do have some interest in the possibility,” Schilling wrote Wednesday on his blog, 38 Pitches   (named after his uniform number with the Red Sox). “That being said, to get there from where I am today, many, many things would have to align themselves.”

A registered Independent, Schilling campaigned for George W. Bush in 2004 and for John McCain last year, and often vents, in populist voice, against Washington insiders who have lost touch with constituents.

Approached by Republican insiders to consider the idea, Schilling quipped to one journalist that his famous feuding with reporters might disqualify him. "My first press conference could probably be my last as someone on the political scene, which probably wouldn’t be a bad thing," he told New England Cable News.

Lots of other names have been floated for the Senate seat, including Democratic Atty. Gen. Martha Coakley, who announced her candidacy this morning, saying, "We have lost our distinguished and tenacious senator Ted Kennedy.... No one can fill his shoes, but we must strive to follow in his footsteps."

Of course, being a popular baseball pitcher does not a great senator make. Just ask Jim Bunning, the Kentucky Republican and former major league pitcher for Detroit and Philadelphia, who was asked by GOP colleagues not to run for office next year.

Bunning was so controversial -- he infamously predicted last February that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would die of pancreatic cancer within nine months -- that  Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a fellow Kentucky conservative, feared Republicans would lose the seat if Bunning stayed.

But hey, maybe baseball pitchers are well-trained for the rigors of politics. After all, they're used to the sound of cheers. And boos.

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Schilling pitching against the Yankees Oct. 19, 2004. Credit: Associated Press

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If former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin thought John McCain’s staffers stabbed her in the back when they tried to blame her for his loss last November, one can only imagine what she thinks these days about Levi Johnston, the father of her grandchild.

Johnston, who is weighing the many "celebrity" career options now coming his way thanks to the meteoric rise of his former mother-out-of-law, is in sharper-than-a serpent’s-tooth mode in the October issue of Vanity Fair, where he -- how to put this delicately? -- rips Palin a new one for what he perceives as her personal failings. The magazine said it paid him an author fee, since the story is in his own words.

In “Me and Mrs. Palin,” Johnston’s first-person account accuses Palin of being a bad mother, of being a bad wife, of not knowing how to shoot a gun, and even -- get this! -- of not even being a real hockey mom! (She only attended 15% of her son's games, says Johnston, who was his teammate.)

In short, he accuses Palin of being an all-around phony. Paging Holden Caulfield!

As many parents know because they find out the hard way, teenagers are excessively judgmental creatures who are usually operating with a limited amount of information and experience. So 19-year-old  Johnston’s perceptions should be taken with a grain of salt. Still, he did live with Alaska’s first family, and was privy to deeply private incidents and attitudes. And the details of what went on inside this apparently dysfunctional American family are juicy.

The Palins frequently fought, says Johnston, and Todd, who sneaked beer in the garage because Sarah didn’t like him drinking, regularly threatened divorce.

Palin, he says, paid more attention to Bristol and Levi's baby, Tripp, than she did to her own baby, Trig, who was born with Down syndrome and became a symbol of hope for parents of special-needs children during the campaign. Says Johnston: "I couldn't believe it when she would come over to us and sometimes say, playing around, 'No, I don't want the retarded baby -- I want the other one' and pick up Tripp. That was just her, even her kids were used to it."

Attempts to reach Palin's spokewoman were unsuccessful.

Maybe Johnston's quest for attention should be dismissed as only that, but we did enjoy his portrait of Sarah Palin as a busy governor:

“Throughout the years I spent with them, when Sarah got home from her office -- almost never later than 5 and sometimes as early as noon -- she usually walked in the door, said hello, and then disappeared into her bedroom, where she would hang out. Sometimes, she’d take an hourlong bath. Other times she sat on the living-room couch in her two-piece pajama set from Walmart -- she had all the colors -- with her hair down, watching house shows and wedding shows on TV. She always wanted things and she always wanted other people to get them for her. If she wanted a movie, Bristol and I would go to the video store; if she wanted food, we’d get her something to eat, like a Crunchwrap Supreme from Taco Bell. She’d try to bribe everyone in the house, or give us guilt trips." 

  Kids today!

-- Robin Abcarian

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Photo: Levi Johnston and Sarah Palin in the October issue of Vanity Fair. Credit: Vanity Fair

Politicians say some pretty ridiculous things -- not that we needed to tell you that.

U.S. presidents especially, being in the center of the public eye, are constantly jostled for their almost never-ending stream of bad quotes. Of course, some leaders are more prone to slipping up than others.

The Russia Today blog has put together a list of what it calls the "Top 10 silliest quotes ever by politicians." It runs the gamut of the world's most visible leaders in recent history, and we're proud to say that half of the list is composed of U.S. politicians. Go America!

The blog pulls out some real gems. For example, we have President Obama blathering something about having visited 57 states during his campaign.

President Bush, the master of malapropisms, talks about inflecting harm on our country. And John McCain discusses a meeting with Vladimir Putin, the president of, er, Germany?

There's also a surprising quote from President Clinton during his trials -- though, as far as we know, the statement came secondhand via Monica Lewinsky. It gets a little risque, so we'll let your curiosity carry you there.

Adding a few of our picks, we liked President Ford's assertion back in the 1970s that Poland was not under the domination of the Soviet Union. OK, Gerry.

We would also add something from Sarah Palin, like the one about "gotcha journalism" or her library of news periodicals, but we could go on for days with that. What's your favorite political babble?

-- Mark Milian

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Photo credit: Saul Loeb / AFP/Getty Images

The White House announced with some fanfare over the weekend that its Twitter account had passed the 1 million mark.

“A million followers – nice,” the White House @whitehouse wrote in a tweet sent out Sunday afternoon. “What would you like to see more of from this feed? Photos? Quotes? Cowbell? Tell us @whitehouse.”

Big deal. 

Arizona Sen. John McCain, who lost to Barack Obama in the 2008 election, passed the 1 million mark six weeks ago. He declared that tweeting, which for him was novel, was "a phenomenal way of communicating."

Like most things that come out of Silicon Valley, Twitter was assumed to be in a purview of the left, another tool for tech-savvy liberal netroots to use as they besieged the political system in the name of progressive change, in 140-character bites.

But the left has usually used Twitter to promote ideas, according to Alan Rosenblatt, of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. "We have a lot of amazing progressives on Twitter," he told Maine's online news source, the Exception.  But, he added, there had been "nothing that brings everyone together."

By contrast, he said, the right has been using Twitter to create new pressure points in politics. Conservatives have a website, Top Conservatives on Twitter, that ranks various right-wing tweeters (former House Speaker Newt Gingrich currently rides on top), and offers pointers on how to organize.

Liberals are fighting back -- Rosenblatt has created a rival website, TopProg.org -- but it's in its infancy.

Meanwhile conservatives seem to be having more fun with Twitter.

When Republicans staged a protest last summer and refused to leave for summer recess, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi simply adjourned the session and turned out the lights, effectively turning off the C-SPAN cameras. So several GOP stalwarts started tweeting an account of what was going on from the House floor. They developed a following and prompted conservative commentator Michelle Malkin to call Twitter "the new gathering place for conservative activism.”

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: California Democratic State Senate candidate Edward Paul Reyes works with a colleague on his Twitter page recently at a Los Angeles Starbucks. Credit: Associated Press

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Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain has made it official.

He really likes federal Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Thinks she's got an excellent resume. An inspiring life story. Heck, he even thinks she has the professional qualifications to be a Supreme Court justice.

But yesterday he took to the Senate floor to explain that he's voting against her nomination. He suspects she's one of those activists judges who will legislate from the bench.

"Regardless of one's success in academics and in government service, an individual who does not appreciate the common-sense limitations on judicial power in our democratic system of government ultimately lacks a key qualification for a lifetime appointment to the bench," McCain explained.

Hard to know what role politics played in the decision.

McCain is up for reelection next year in a state with an increasing Latino population, so the vote could spell trouble. In fact he went out of his way during Monday's speech to note that he backed the nomination of Miguel Estrada to the federal appeals court, a Bush administration nomination ultimately pulled because of Democratic opposition. As he himself explained to CNN after the election last year, "Unless we reverse the trend of Hispanic voter registration, we [Republicans] have a very, very deep hole that we've got to come out of."

On the other hand, the National Rifle Assn. has for the first time weighed in on a judicial appointment, targeting Sotomayor as hostile to the 2nd Amendment and warning senators thinking about voting yes that the NRA will use that vote against them. The powerful gun lobby may have swayed McCain, along with Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, where South Carolina's Lindsey Graham -- ironically a key McCain ally -- was the only Republican to back Sotomayor.

With the Senate scheduled to vote on the nomination this week, most think Sotomayor will be confirmed as the nation's first Latina and third female justice.

Still, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs called it "disappointing" that McCain decided not to back Sotomayor just after visiting the White House and "talking about bipartisanship."

There's a fair amount of turn-about-is-fair-play here.

While a senator, Barack Obama voted against former President George W. Bush's nominations of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.  and Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. Saying it was fair to hold the nominees accountable for their ideology as well as their qualifications, the future president also voted in favor of filibustering Alito's confirmation vote.

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor on Day 3 of her confirmation hearings in July. Credit: Charles Dharapak / Associated Press

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President Obama heads out this morning on another presidential sales trip. You'll never guess what he's going to talk about.

Prediction: It won't be missile defense. Hint: It's something we'll all soon need some healthcare to handle any more talk of.

He'll talk about healthcare reform some more in Raleigh, N.C., and again answer some staged questions from employees at a Virginia supermarket.

Hopefully, this time the White House advance team has briefed the store manager on what to say when the TV crews surround him afterward. (Remember, the Caterpillar president last winter contradicting Obama's speech claim that the urgently needed and then-still eagerly awaited economic stimulus would allow the plant to hire back laid-off workers?)

Obama departs with an unsurprising Senate Judiciary Committee vote to confirm Sonia Sotomayor in his aide's briefcase. (Sotomayor vote details over here.) He'll probably ...

There's not a lot to this image of President Obama that's been passed around the Web over the last couple of days.

First, click here because we don't want to spoil what little surprise there is.

See it? Did you crack a smile?

We're split on our end. Some found it hilarious. Others got frustrated because, they said, it doesn't make any sense. Fair enough.

Maybe they should pass this around when Sgt. Crowley and Prof. Gates come over for that White House beer this week.

The copycats gave us a chuckle, too.

Sen. John McCain can apparently do the Obama smile.

President George W. Bush can actually turn into an Obama hybrid.

And Dick Cheney has some trouble emulating.

What do you think? Did "do this" make you smile?

-- Mark Milian

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Photo: Associated Press

Remember last year during the presidential campaign when the Ohio Republican Party ran a web ad online in support of Sen. John McCain and used a musical clip from Jackson Browne's "Running on Empty"?

We don't either.

Anyway, as often seems to happen in political campaigns, the Republican candidate, who along with 99.999% of Americans never saw the Web ad, got sued for copyright infringement by liberal activist Browne. Because they didn't have a license to use the artistic presentation.

Big-name targets on lawsuits help garner publicity for the suing party who never seem to mind news coverage of the music involved which, who knows, might help sell a few copies of something to somebody.

So again anyway Browne's lawyers sued the Ohio party, and the Republican National Committee and, of course, McCain, no doubt a huge lifelong fan of what's-his-name.

Well, just to wrap up one more loose end from the billion-dollar-plus '08 presidential campaign, we are delighted to announce here that the aforesaid parties have reached an agreement.

According to legal tradition, the financial terms of the settlement are confidential.

However -- and here's the big news, forget healthcare -- the state party, national party and McCain himself issued a historic statement which will forever protect artistic rights from evil pols. Here it is in full:

We apologize that a portion of the Jackson Browne song 'Running On Empty' was used without permission.

Although Sen. McCain had no knowledge of, or involvement in, the creation or distribution of the Web campaign video, Sen. McCain does not support or condone any actions taken by anyone involved in his 2008 presidential election campaign that were inconsistent with artists' rights or the various legal protections afforded to intellectual property.

The ORP, RNC and Sen. McCain pledge in future election campaigns to respect and uphold the rights of artists and to obtain permissions and/or licenses for copyrighted works where appropriate.

In other words, Browne, an Obama contributor who said he was merely defending artistic rights, got nothing, zippo, nada, de rien, $00.00 out of the 11-month legal tussle. Except for the publicity. Hence, the financial agreement, which is confidential because it's empty. And the offending parties really sincerely apologized.

The people who got the real $$$$$ out of this suit were the lawyers for everybody, who bill by the hour and can now easily make their August BMW payments. Or, heck, even buy a brand new one out of the agreement. And help stimulate that German economy, which isn't running on empty.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: WireImage

Any time in modern American politics that you hear a member of one party praise a member of another party -- turncoat Arlen Specter aside -- with the utmost insincerity they can manage, we all know now that the next sentence will begin with a firm, contradictory: "But..."

Remember the heartfelt tribute of Sen. Barack Obama? "Sen. McCain is a true American hero and we salute him for a lifetime of service to his country."

So when Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele opened his Washington remarks today (full text and videos below) with "President Barack Obama is a good man who cares deeply about his country," anyone with any savvy knew what was coming next. And sure enough:

"But he is determined with an unprecedented single-mindedness to transform it into something none of us would recognize."

On the president's six-month anniversary, the new polling must be in. And it apparently shows a weakness involving the word "experiment." We know the president's personal popularity has slipped while remaining relatively high. We also know it will likely sink lower, especially if unemployment continues to soar past the 8.5% the Obamas promised as max.

However, Obama's approval on specific programs is fading faster, even as his hastily-arranged economic stimulus plan doesn't stimulate and concern over his spending plans grows. The Ticket analyzed the president's unfolding public relations strategy here. The more the healthcare plan is discussed, the more questions Americans seem to have about it and its costs. Hence, Obama's rush. Hence, the GOP's what's the hurry?

So today, smelling a little blood, Steele's RNC launched a sizable ad buy in Arkansas, North Dakota and Nevada. If you like cute (but worried) kids, you'll love this ad. Watch here:

Of course, cute kids are just props and innocent bystanders in the brass knuckles brawl unfolding on those hot summer days in DC. Asked after his speech if Obama's healthcare plan was socialism, Steele tersely answered, "Yes!" Knowing full well that ...

The same secret weapon that rocketed "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" ahead on June 7 in the Sunday talk show ratings battle struck again last week, producing very similar results.

Yep, more tennis.

The ABC News show took the lead on July 5 when Stephanopoulos interviewed Vice President Joe Biden from Iraq, scoring 2.77 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research.

That same day, CBS News' "Face the Nation" had 2.43 million and "Fox News Sunday" trailed with 1.17 million. "Meet the Press with David Gregory" took the week off for NBC's broadcast of the Wimbledon's Men's Finals.

Filling in for "Face the Nation" moderator Bob Schieffer last week was CBS News analyst John Dickerson, who interviewed Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and two senators.

We won't have the ratings for this morning's talk shows for a few days. But we can probably assume that "Meet the Press" will return to its top spot thanks to an interview with former Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain. On the show, McCain discussed Sarah Palin's resignation as Alaska governor.

-- Mark Milian

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Photo: Jay Tamboli via Flickr