A Jonathan Alter piece in Newsweek last week set off a flurry of discussion about the history of Rudy Giuliani on Friday. Matt Yglesias remembers Rudy as crazy, mean, and power-hungry. Ezra Klein worries that Rudy's nearly nuts enough to call an end to elections. Stranger at Blah3 has a great rundown of some of Giuliani's less flattering moments as New York's mayor. Mark Schmitt has a hard time remembering Giuliani as "anything other than a vain and dangerous authoritarian."

On Sunday, convervative bloggers Ross Douthat and Andrew Sullivan each pondered Giuliani's actual prospects. Douthat linked to polling showing many Republicans don't know much of Giuliani's social liberalism, but still thinks he has a shot (based loosely on the case originally made by Glenn Greenwald). Sullivan hopefully theorizes that Rudy could be the man to bring the Right back to social sanity.

Of course, the big candidate of the weekend was Barack Obama...

Even before Senator Obama could officially announce his candidate Saturday morning, a mini-controversy boiled up over a pre-hit piece on his possible weaknesses by the Politico's Mike Allen. One of the pieces of dirt Allen predicts Obama will be hit with is supposed inconsistency over how he describes his name:

When he was growing up, his family, friends and teachers called him “Barry.” Then as a young man, he started insisting on “Barack,” explaining in a memoir published in 1995 that his grandfather was a Muslim and that it means “blessed” in Arabic. His dad, who was Kenyan, had gone by “Barry” -- probably trying to fit in when he came to the States, his son figured. On the campaign trail during his 2004 Senate race, Obama told reporters that “Barack” was Swahili for “blessed by God.” Whatever its origins, the exotic, multicultural name...

Unfortunately, Brad DeLong notes that the apparent inconsistency falls apart quickly:

Two minutes of Googling would have told Mike Allen that "barack" is both a Swahili word meaning "blessed by God" and an Arabic word meaning "blessed." There's been lots of trade between Swahili-speaking East Africa and the Arabic-speaking Middle East for millennia. That "barack" is a word in both languages is part of the same process by which the largest Swahili-speaking port in the world has a pure Arabic name--Dar es Salaam, meaning "House of Peace."

DeLongs debunking was widely linked to. Matt Stoller took the occasion to document Allen's history of echoing superficial conventional wisdom.

Of course, Obama's speech was also an occasion for many to reiterate their thoughts and concerns more generally. Ezra Klein is unhappily skeptical about whether Obama's actions can match his ambitions, and Christopher Hayes compares some progressives' sense of the emerging candidacy to the "punk-rock-band-gone-MTV disaffection" of a hidden gem going mainstream.

Finally, on Obama's response to an attack from Australian PM John Howard, Atrios is typically dead on in capturing liberal sentiment: "More Like This."