Barack Obama’s communications director, Robert Gibbs, just said in a conference call that John McCain’s apparently sympathetic remarks about comprehensive immigration reform to a group of Hispanic voters in Chicago amounted to more evidence of "John McCain being in a tortured debate with John McCain."

Gibbs pointed out that one of the attendees, who happened to be a member of the anti-immigration Minutemen group, said that McCain seemed to have one message for white Republicans and another for Hispanics.

Gibbs said that the remarks of McCain and his campaign on immigration, offshore drilling and Roe v. Wade amounted to a "week of pandering across the double-talk express."

Gibbs, of course, was immediately challenged on Obama’s reversal on matching funds, to which he offered the campaign’s lawyerly explanation that the McCain campaign wasn’t willing to tighten loopholes against 527s.