Barack Obama raised $52 million for his campaign in June. Where does it all go, you ask? As prominent as Susan Rice (pictured) and a few others have been on the Obama foreign policy team, it turns out that they aren't sitting around a table for some intimate brainstorming. It's pricey to create a mini, 300-strong State Department of your own. That, reports today's New York Times, is what Obama has done.

Every day around 8 a.m., foreign policy aides at Senator Barack Obama's Chicago campaign headquarters send him two e-mails: a briefing on major world developments over the previous 24 hours and a set of questions, accompanied by suggested answers, that the candidate is likely to be asked about international relations during the day...

Behind the e-mail messages is a tight-knit group of aides supported by a huge 300-person foreign policy campaign bureaucracy, organized like a mini State Department, to assist a candidate whose limited national security experience remains a concern to many voters.