Saturday, August 05, 2006

Saturday Evening

Party on.

What Happened?

I suppose this lends support to the "he got pouty when no one wanted him to be president" theory. Inspired by this:

Mr. Lieberman, in an interview on the campaign trail on Friday, suggested he had been as critical of the administration as Mrs. Clinton in some ways. “I had to laugh at — I don’t mean laugh, but be surprised at all the attention to Senator Clinton calling for Rumsfeld to resign,” Mr. Lieberman said, pointing to comments he had made as far back as 2003 indicating that if he were president, he would ask Mr. Rumsfeld to step aside. But Mr. Lieberman never demanded that Mr. Bush take that step.


I went to look for it. And he did in fact do so:

Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), a Democratic presidential hopeful, said Rumsfeld is unpopular with the military and President Bush should fire him. "If I were President, I'd get a new secretary of defense," Lieberman told CBS' "Face the Nation."



And then I discovered that as much of a wanker as Lieberman is, he did in fact become a much bigger wanker after he was part of a four way tie for third place in his home state of Connecticut. Consider other things he said on that Face the Nation.

Sen. LIEBERMAN: You're--you're absolutely right. Look--look, the administration keeps talking--Ambassador Bremer, President Bush, Secretary Rumsfeld, 'Everything's going great in Iraq.' We know everything is not going great in Iraq, even those of us who feel that what we did in Iraq was--was right, that the world is safer with Saddam Hussein gone feel even more intensely that the administration has--has really messed this up by its one-sided foreign policy which--which has kept other countries away from helping us and--and by its failure to have any kind of plan to secure post-Saddam Iraq.

Remember General Eric Shinseki, the head of the Army, earlier this year, said that we would need more than 200,000 troops, not just to win the war but more to secure the peace. He was right. Secretary Rumsfeld, the administration, all--they disagreed with him. They, in some senses, demeaned him. The fact is that if the--the administration had a more multilateral, open, cooperative policy, we'd have foreign troops in there helping American troops to keep the peace. We'd have foreign countries paying more of the cost of rebuilding Iraq than they were willing to pledge the other day in Madrid.

SCHIEFFER: Do you think this means that perhaps the president ought to change secretaries of Defense?

Sen. LIEBERMAN: Well, look, ultimately the buck stops at the--at the w--president's desk. He's the commander in chief. He has to take accountability if things don't work well. I'll--I'll--I'll tell you this, that Secretary Rumsfeld told the truth in that private memo, that they haven't been as trusting of the American people to tell us the truth about the fact that we're not doing as well as they--that we should be doing in the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq. And--and the worst thing about Don Rumsfeld's time at the Pentagon, the uniform military feel deeply that he doesn't respect them, doesn't listen to them. That--that's not the kind of relationship that we need between a secretary of Defense and the military. Judgment about whether he stays or not is up to President Bush, but if I were president, I'd--I'd get a new secretary of Defense.

SCHIEFFER: You would?

Sen. LIEBERMAN: I would.

Tuesday

Well, it'll be a miracle if Lamont pulls it off on Tuesday. Yes, 3 polls in a row have him up substantially, but no one really knows who the hell is going to go to the polls on Tuesday.

I'd like to think that if Lamont loses something will still have been gained, though I'm not sure I can actually make that case. I do think this campaign has helped to shift CW somewhat on certain issues, but a Lamont loss will probably snap it right back to where it was.

If you can, get to CT and help.

The Last Honest Man

Apparently Joe Lieberman is the world's greatest living human. I had no idea.

Afternoon Thread

Enjoy.

Psychotic Gnomes and Leprechauns

The increasingly likely explanation for the entity known as Patterico.

Morning Thread

Enjoy.

AM





Friday, August 04, 2006

Nedrenaline!

New poll has the race at 53-43.

We Must Hurry If We Are Going to Dance

Roy reads Arcadia.

Friday Cat Blogging

Special guest kitty Pirate edition.

Late Night

Party on.

Evening Thread

Enjoy.

Oh My

Lieberman will call for Rumsfeld's resignation, according to Raw Story.


If true, what about this?
But others say the demand for pink slips is merely politics in an election year when Democrats are hoping to oust President Bush.

"The Congress will politicize this, will spend too much time investigating it," Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., told Fox News. "The other danger is, the administration will be defensive about this instead of being aggressive ... This has been a setback for our cause."

...

Lieberman told Fox News that the calls for Rumsfeld's ouster are a distraction from the larger picture.

"We're in the middle of a war — you wouldn't want to have the secretary of defense change unless there's really good reason for it and I don't see any good reason at this time," Lieberman said.




And this:

Secretary Rumsfeld's removal would delight foreign and domestic opponents of America's presence in Iraq.

Cornered

It's a miracle these people manage to tie their shoes.

Lieberthug Goes Quiet

Won't say much to Greg Sargent, but does confirm identity.

Win by 10

I don't know if Lautenberg is saying what he thinks is true or putting a message out there to make it become true, but either way...

Wanker of the Day

Crazy Curt Weldon.

Goodstein

Oh my.

Meanwhile

In that other crisis in that other Middle East.

*HADHAR - Ten people, including three policemen, killed when a suicide car bomber drove into a crowd of spectators at a soccer match where a police side was playing a local team in the town of Hadhar, 90 km (55 miles) south of Mosul. There were 12 wounded, including nine police, police said.

*MOSUL - A senior Mosul police officer and two bodyguards were killed by a car bomb and at least one policeman and four militants died in heavy clashes between insurgents and U.S. and Iraqi forces in the city, police sources said.

*BAGHDAD - Three suspected militants linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq were killed in U.S. raids and an air strike southeast of Baghdad on Thursday, the U.S. military said.

BAGHDAD - Two marines killed in action in separate incidents in Anbar province, west of Baghdad, the U.S. military said. The marines, assigned to Regimental Combat Team 5, died on Thursday.

No More Friedmans

I guess the limit is about 6 and a half.

I've been thinking a lot about Friedman lately (yeah, I'm twisted). When he defended his Friedman Units to Howie Kurtz he revealed a lot about how he sees the world.

FRIEDMAN: Not really. You know, the problem with analyzing the story, Howie, is that it doesn’t — everyone, first of all, this is the most polarized story I’ve certainly written about, so everyone wants, basically, to be proven right, OK?

So the left — people who hated the war, they want you to declare the war is over, finish, we give up. The right, just the opposite. But I’ve been trying to just simply track the situation on the ground. And the fact is that the outcome there is unclear, and I reflected that in my column. And I will continue to reflect.


Friedman doesn't actually consider himself to be an opinion columnist. He sees himself as a reporter. As a reporter, he's reporting the facts. The Truth. Therefore, his every statement is simply Revealed Truth to the world. He's never wrong, and in fact he's incapable of being wrong. Other people have opinions, but only the Moustache of Understanding possesses the truth.

It's pretty weird.

No Jobs for You

Hopefully he didn't stiff any kids:

Facing a likely defeat, Lieberman has scrapped plans for a massive and costly get-out-the-vote operation on primary day, according to several Democratic sources. Instead, he will shift some of his resources into more television commercials designed to highlight his accomplishments for the state, in hopes of boosting his battered image.

Joe's Greatest Betrayal

I don't think Lieberman's going to replace Rumsfeld and I don't think he expects to, but consider what it would mean if he expected to do so after the Novemeber elections. It would mean that Joe would be deliberately handing his Senate seat over to a Republican - the governor is a Republican, after all, and would appoint a replacement until the special election. If Joe were running for re-election knowing that he was going to dance into the SecDef job soon afterwards that would, in fact, be his greatest betrayal.

Still, I don't think it's in the cards.

Under

Forgot to make my bet, but I was going to go with the under. Again.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Job growth came in weak for the fourth straight month in July while the unemployment rate jumped, a government report released Friday showed.

The U.S. economy added 113,000 jobs in July, down from an upwardly revised gain of 124,000 jobs in June, the Labor Department said. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com were looking for a gain of 145,000 jobs.

The unemployment rate rose to 4.8 percent, up from 4.6 percent in June, the report also showed. Economists were expecting the unemployment rate to hold steady.

Morning Thread

Enjoy.

Late Night

This sounds familiar:

No one knows for sure who he was, that Middle Eastern man in an American flag shirt and a cowboy hat who was supposed to sing the national anthem at a rodeo Friday night in the Salem Civic Center.

But he sure shook up this town before leaving in a hurry.

Introduced as Boraq [sic] Sagdiyev from Kazakhstan, he was said to be an immigrant touring America. A film crew was with him, doing some sort of documentary. And he wanted to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" to show his appreciation, the announcer told the crowd.

Speaking in broken English, the mysterious man first told the decidedly pro-American crowd - it was a rodeo, of all things, in Salem, of all places - that he supported the war on terrorism.

"I hope you kill every man, woman and child in Iraq, down to the lizards," he said, according to Brett Sharp of Star Country WSLC, who was also on stage that night as a media sponsor of the rodeo.

An uneasy murmur ran through the crowd.

"And may George W. Bush drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq," he continued, according to Robynn Jaymes, who co-hosts a morning radio show with Sharp and was also among the stunned observers.

Thursday, August 03, 2006

Run Away

I think Kevin Rennie's just writing liberal porn to attract hits at this point. There's nothing wrong with enjoying ourselves - we don't get many chances - but aside from the entertainment value it all means nothing until we get the results on Tuesday.


Also, credit where credit is due - Senate Democrats killed the estate tax bullshit today and Ted Stevens' attempt to turn the internets into a truck is dead for the moment as well.

Why I Don't Run a Scoop Site

Answer here.

Borat

Anyway, slightly longer review. As film society members we get tickets to various advance screenings, so 98% of the time if I see a movie early it isn't because some publicist has decided the almighty Atrios should have a free ticket.


For those who know (and like) the character from the Ali G show, the movie will not disappoint and will in fact surpass your expectations. It's very very funny, and often very very wrong. At times it goes a bit far in that at some point ironic racist/misogynistic humor becomes a bit indistinguishable from actual racist/misogynistic humor. But, I haven't been to a movie where people laughed that much in a long time, if ever...

And Jesus's General will love this movie, perhaps more than he's ever loved anything before...

Thugs

Lieberman's new strategy - starting fights.

Clinton sez Rumsfeld Should Resign

Sadly I imagine Rumsfeld will be with us for another few Friedmans.

The Crazies

At the end of a mostly reasonable analysis Stu Rothenberg concludes:

Lamont’s victory, however, would not be without its downside for Democrats, since it would only embolden the crazies in the party, a consideration not lost on other Democratic elected officials and strategists.

Lieberman’s defeat is likely to add to the partisanship and bitterness that divides the country and Capitol Hill, and to generate more media attention to grassroots bomb-throwers who, down the road, are likely to make the party less appealing to swing voters and moderates.


I'm not quite sure who these crazies are, but it got me thinking about what crazy is and who actually is crazy. Consider Will Marshall of the DLC.



In 2002 Marshall was involved with the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. As Matt Taibbi wrote:

In addition to his duties as the president of the PPI, Marshall kept himself busy in the last few years. Among other things, he served on the board of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, an organization co-chaired by Joe Lieberman and John McCain whose aim was to build bipartisan support for the invasion of Iraq.

Marshall also signed, at the outset of the war, a letter issued by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) expressing support for the invasion. Marshall signed a similar letter sent to President Bush put out by the conservative Social Democrats/USA group on Feb. 25, 2003, just before the invasion. The SD/USA letter urged Bush to commit to "maintaining substantial U.S. military forces in Iraq for as long as may be required to ensure a stable, representative regime is in place and functioning."


Their web site has been disappeared, but here's their mission statement.


Five Friedmans ago Marshall wrote:


Are Dennis Kucinich and Donald Rumsfeld secret allies? You'd think the Democrats' most vocal peacenik and the GOP warlord would have little in common, but both seem to be in a hurry to get U.S. troops out of Iraq. Even with Saddam Hussein in the bag and awaiting trial, that's a bad idea.

If Rummy is from Mars, Kucinich is from Pluto. The longshot presidential aspirant wants to withdraw all our troops now and dump the whole mess on the United Nations. Rumsfeld's exit strategy is Iraqification -- drawing down U.S. troops in this election year and handing off responsibility for security to hastily trained Iraqi forces.

If the U.S.-led coalition was merely mopping up Saddam's diehards, bringing some troops home would make sense. But the Pentagon announced its force reductions back in November, which turned out to be the bloodiest month of the conflict to date as 81 Americans were killed.

...


America has about six months to break the resistance and give the new Iraqi government a fighting chance to survive. It would help if our leaders stopped casting anxious glances toward the exits.



So, after 9/11 he was fixated on invading Iraq. A year after the invasion he was fixated on making sure we stayed in Iraq. And now what does Will Marshall have to stay about Iraq, when he isn't busy defending Joe "lost the plot" Lieberman?

Democrats' fixation on Iraq, in at least one respect, is a boon to President Bush: It distracts attention from the administration's inept handling of the larger struggle against jihadism.



And then concludes:

It's time for America to speak to the Muslim world less in the language of war and more in the common vocabulary of universal human aspirations for freedom and justice.


And a pony.

Joementum!

Great picture and video.

Poor Joe

Can't even pay people for support.

If you can, head to Connecticut to help the good guys out...


As Pierce says:

Just go away, you sad little fellow. Your time, if it was ever your time, is quite up.


It's time for him to go.

O'Reilly and Geraldo Gone Wild

As somebody said in comments, Stewart and Colbert are going to be fighting over who gets to use this...

Borat

Oh my.

And DeLay stays on the ballot.

Class Dismissed

No, I don't think David Broder's sudden decision to notice that maybe everything isn't right outside of his neighborhood is going to impact much. The country doesn't care what David Broder thinks. He reflects the conventional wisdom of his clique back at them. That's his audience.

Once upon a time that clique had power and influence. They imagine they still do, but it's fading, and not because of the rising power of blogofascism. It's because the Bush administration doesn't care what the Grand Old Men of Washington think. They've made that perfectly clear.

Not Just the Blogosphere

I appreciate a bit of smackdown on conservative conspiracy theorists, but let's not let the Right off the hook by marginalizing this stuff as just coming from "bloggers." It's being pushed by syndicated columnist and Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin and syndicated columnist and regular media figure Jonah Golberg.

It's become part of the stock conservative narrative. It isn't just some nutters on the internets.

Lies and the Lying Liars

Lieberman campaign full of it again.

Psychotic Gnomes and Leprechauns

It's one theory.

America the Fringe

Majority support for option that almost never gets expressed in your liberal media.

NEW YORK A new Gallup poll released today revealed another upward bump in the number of Amercians who now want a complete U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq in the next 12 months.

That number now stands at 55%, with 19% supporting immediate withdrawal and another 36% wanting it done by August 2007.

Losing Friends

Funny:

Mayor John DeStefano stood proudly by Ned Lamont at the Bethel AME Church Tuesday, receiving a big jolt in his gubernatorial campaign as civil rights champions Jesse Jackson (and Al Sharpton, in similar joint appearances earlier in the day) endorsed both candidates. "Ned is full of passion and presents an important choice for all of us -- thanks for being here, Ned," said DeStefano of the man seeking to oust three-term U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman.

Wait a second, mayor, didn't you endorse Joe?

...

Speaking to a crowd that had just stood on their feet for a pro-Lamont speech, DeStefano didn't mention the senate race. He focused on a theme of change: Election day is about choices, "more of the same, or doing something different," such as universal health care, an issue on which he and Lamont agree. He led the crowd to repeat: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a better result." That's why, said DeStefano, you should vote against Gov. Rell and Dan Malloy.

Wanker of the Day

Patterico.

Hail Mary

Nice try:

Embattled Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman - facing a possible primary defeat Tuesday because of his strong backing for the Iraq war - yesterday launched a Hail Mary attack on the Bush administration's handling of the war.
"I supported our war in Iraq but I have always questioned the way it was being executed," Lieberman said.

"This administration took far too many shortcuts. We continue to suffer the consequences, as do the Iraqi people."

What happened to:

It's time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that he will be the commander in chief for three more critical years and that in matters of war we undermine presidential credibility at our nation's peril.


Lying Dan Gerstein sez:

Lieberman's campaign said the senator's attack on the administration was nothing new. "This is one of those great myths that the Lamont campaign have been able to peddle," said spokesman Dan Gerstein. "He's been critical [of the handling of Iraq] since the war started."


but but but just a couple of weeks ago Joe Klein couldn't get anything out of him:


After his AFL-CIO speech, I asked the Senator, "If you believe that winning this war is so crucial, why haven't you been tougher on the Bush Administration's inept prosecution of it?" Lieberman replied, mildly, that he had criticized the Bush Administration in the past. And then he did a curious thing. "I think we may have wasted the first year in Iraq," he offered, then retreated, "Well, that may be a little hard ... Maybe I should say we lost opportunities," and then, noticing that I was about to splutter with indignation, he retracted his retraction. "No, we wasted it." To say the least!




some critic.

Bush in Crawford?

Oy. That never ends well.

Nedrenaline!

New Quinnipiac poll has it at 54-41 for Lamont.

Still, with Lieberman getting support from Tom DeLay, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, David Brooks, and David Horowitz we've got a lot of work to do.

For Those Confused by Borat

Borat the Movie

Tomorrow I see it.


Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Late Night

Enjoy.

Region Free DVD

Kevin asks:

Second: does anyone make an inexpensive DVD player that plays discs from multiple regions? Can anyone offer a recommendation?


I've had this one for awhile and haven't had any problems. Like all sub-$50 DVD players there's an element of buyer beware, but mine works fine. You can kill the region coding and it also converts PAL to NTSC.

Ani on Conan




Free legal .mp3 of Cd version here.


Going Green

I'm sure these people all have the progressive agenda in mind.

Loser

Lieberman's gonna sack his team if he loses on Tuesday. Odd he refuses to sack himself.

Supposed to be a new poll out tomorrow AM...

Meanwhile

In the other crisis in the other Middle East:

AGHDAD - Two U.S. servicemen were killed in action in Anbar on Wednesday, the U.S. military said. One was a marine, assigned to the 1st Brigade, 1st Armoured Division. The other was a soldier assigned to the 9th Naval Construction Regiment.

BAGHDAD - Two roadside bombs killed at least 10 people and wounded 13, mostly young soccer players, in the western Baghdad district of Amel, a police source said. He said the bombs had been planted near a soccer field opposite a police station.

MADAEN - Fifteen insurgents and three policeman were killed in fighting near Madaen, south of Baghdad, Iraqi police said.

QAMISHLI - The bodies of two blindfolded men with their hands bound were found on a rural road in Qamishli, south of Baghdad, police said.

NEAR DIWANIYA - A roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi army convoy exploded on a main road between Simawa and Diwaniya, south of Baghdad, killing one soldier and wounding three, police said.

SUWAYRA - The bodies of 11 men with their hands bound were pulled from the Tigris river near the town of Suwayra south of Baghdad, a police source said. They had been shot and also showed signs of torture.

College Republicans for Joe

Hilarious.

Oh My

We are truly ruled by idiots.



(via mydd)

817

Lieberman only has about 6700 signatures to go before he joins the Lieberman for Lieberman party. It seems town clerks have to verify signatures before passing them to the SoS, and they're all due by Wednesday, so they'd better hurry up. These things take time.

Katie

I'm not entirely sure why Katherine Harris's train wreck of an existence isn't providing me with more amusement, because it certainly is amusing.

Oh My

This reminds me of this.

The Clenis

I know it's supposed to be all powerful but I've long been puzzled by the notion that 9 months after he left office he was still supposed to be running the defense of this country.

Rumors

I'd love to see how they play this one. As recently as a couple of weeks ago Lieberman couldn't offer up any criticism of the war to Joe Klein, and a month ago at the debate he still was saying things were getting better in Iraq.

If a primary challenge drives this man of principle to change his mind on his principled support for the principled Iraq war, then I'd really like someone to explain to me, finally, just what principles motivated the goddamn support in the first place.

Big Time

Vanity Fair:

NEW YORK, N.Y.­—Vanity Fair writer Michael Bronner is the only journalist who has listened to the complete audiotapes—covering six and a half hours of real time—made in the bunker of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)’s Northeast headquarters (NEADS) on the morning of September 11, 2001. Bronner calls the tapes more important in terms of understanding America’s military capabilities that day than anything happening simultaneously on Air Force One, in the Pentagon, or in the White House.

The tapes, which Bronner describes as “fascinating and chilling,” have never been played publicly beyond a handful of sound bites presented during the 9/11 hearings, and may be heard on www.vanityfair.com.

The tapes prove that:

· There was no command given to shoot down United Flight 93, despite implications to the contrary made by Vice President Cheney. Cheney was not notified about the possibility that United 93 had been hijacked until 10:02 a.m.—only one minute before the airliner impacted the ground. And United 93 had crashed before anyone in the military chain of command even knew it had been hijacked. President Bush did not grant commanders the authority to give a shoot-down order until 10:18 a.m., which—though no one knew it at the time—was 15 minutes after the attack was over.

· Parts of Major General Larry Arnold and Colonel Alan Scott’s testimony to the 9/11 commission were misleading, and others simply false. The men testified that they had begun their tracking of United 93 at 9:16 a.m., but tapes reveal that the plane had not yet been hijacked, and that NEADS did not get word of the hijacking for another 51 minutes. According to Bronner, when confronted with evidence from the tapes that contradicted his original testimony, a NORAD general admitted, “The real story is actually better than the one we told.”

· For the NEADS crew, 9/11 was not a story of four hijacked airplanes, but one of a heated chase after more than ten potential hijackings—some real, some phantom—that emerged from the turbulence of misinformation that spiked in the first 100 minutes of the attack and continued well into the afternoon and evening. The fighter pilots over New York and Washington, D.C. (and later Boston and Chicago) would spend hours darting around their respective skylines intercepting hundreds of aircraft they deemed suspicious. Meanwhile, NORAD was launching as many additional fighters as it could, placing some 300 armed jets in protective orbits over every major American city by the following morning.

When Bronner asks Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Nasypany, NEADS mission control commander, about the conspiracy theories—the people who believe that he, or someone like him, secretly ordered the shootdown of United 93 and covered it up—the corners of his mouth begin to quiver and he puts his head in his hands and cries. “Flight 93 was not shot down,” he says. “The individuals on that aircraft, the passengers, they actually took the aircraft down. Because of what those people did, I didn’t have to do anything.”

Young Wingnuttery

I really do worry about the next generation of wingnuts. These are people who think Jonah Goldberg is a towering intellectual.

QOTD

Greg Sargent:

Brooks and his ilk would sooner allow the complete deterioration of their credibility, their capacity for orderly, rational thinking, and perhaps even their sanity before admitting that in supporting Bush's Iraq invasion, they fell prey to a catastrophic lapse in judgment that's left us hopelessly mired in an ever-expanding disaster with no foreseeable end.

I just wish I understood why they won't just let go and admit this already. Would it really in the end be all that difficult? Wouldn't it be an enormous relief, even a great freeing experience of sorts?



The problem, of course, is that "and his ilk" includes much of what passes for the liberal commentariat in our mainstream media and a healthy chunk of Democratic senators. Even most of those who have recognized that maybe, just maybe, they got it wrong still cling to the phrase "everybody thought he had WMDS!" which is ahistorical bullshit.

Morning Thread

Enjoy.

Smackdown

Colbert challenges Lieberman.




and, bonus:

I'll tell him [Peter Beinart] where he can enlist.

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Wanker of the Day

Okay, it's 4 minutes early, but...


Peter "Prime Fighting Age" Beinart!

Late Night








...and in honor of the MTV anniversary:




Evening Thread

Enjoy.

Condolences

Senator Baucus's nephew killed in Iraq.

Bayh

So Bayh's view is:

Does Bayh think we need to leave Iraq? Yes. Does he think the Iraqis have gotten their political act together? no. Does he think the Bush Administration has a plan to help the Iraqis do that? Absolutely Not. Does he support adopting a flexible timeline for leaving (like Levin-Reed)? Yes. He does, however, oppose a date-specific withdrawal and he opposes a policy of staying the course indefinitely.

Senator Bayh believes that the question is not whether we should be out, but how we should get out. He agrees that we need to leave, he just think we need a plan to leave as Iraq stable as possible, because that is in our national security interest.

Afternoon Thread

Enjoy.

Might Be That Simple

Yglesias:

A small but non-trivial proportion of the population have followed that trajectory since 9/11 -- turning into the sort of liberals who think torture is fine and that human rights should be spread primarily through waging preventative war against America's geopolitical rivals. Why shouldn't one of the people to follow that path be a United States Senator?


I'm really not sure I buy the "Joe got all pouty when no one wanted him to be president" theory. He was pretty wankerific before the presidential primary campaign heated up (and, of course, during it.)

Iraq'd

After listening to Will Marshall earlier I admit I'm getting even more confused.

Is anyone in liberal Hawkistan, Joe Lieberman and his defenders included, providing any leadership on Iraq? Can Lieberman's defenders really not see that the judgment of a man who continues to defend not just the invasion but the prosecution of the war and the occupation is deeply flawed? Is there anyone who can, with good conscience, argue that this man has not, as Michael Ware said, "lost the plot" on Iraq and that we should keep such a person in office?

We were told Iraq was the most important thing ever, and that we should take our leadership on that issue from people like Joe Lieberman. Now Iraq is no longer important and it's just fine that Joe does nothing.

I don't understand.

I'm generally not very nice to Joe Biden, as he provides more bluster than action, but at least he provides the bluster. Is Joe "stay the course" Lieberman really someone who deserves to be in the US Senate?

Borrowing Bowers

I think Jon Carroll should send Chris Bowers a check. (joke)

Wanker of the Day

Assrocket.

Lies and the Lying Liars

The real interesting question is who fed the Powerliners the edited clip.

Decider

Patrick Murphy's new ad is pretty good.

Meanwhile

In the forgotten war:

* BAGHDAD - A U.S. soldier was killed by a roadside bomb on Monday south of Baghdad, the U.S. military said on Tuesday.

BASRA - A British soldier was killed when a mortar round landed on the British military base in Basra, 550 (340 miles) southeast of Baghdad, the British military said.

...

NEAR TIKRIT - A roadside bomb went off near a bus carrying Iraqi soldiers, killing 20 of them and wounding 13 near Tikrit, 175 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad.

BAGHDAD - At least 10 people were killed and 22 wounded when a car driven by a suicide bomber exploded near an army patrol in the mainly Shi'ite Karrada district of Baghdad, a source in the Interior Ministry said.

MUQDADIYA - Seven people were killed and 15 wounded when a car bomb exploded beside a police patrol near a hospital in the town of Muqdadiya, 90 km northeast of Baghdad, police said.

Nedrenaline!

Lamontblog has the full update.

Shrill

Digby sez:

This blatant genocidal bloodlust has become de rigeur on the right now. It's on talk radio, TV and in the columns of respectable newspapers. They don't even pretend to be civilized anymore. Maybe it's just the SOS, but I've got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I don't ever remember this kind of stuff being openly bandied about like it's normal. And those who did, like Curtis LeMay, didn't have audiences of 25 million listeners to spew their bilge to.



The thing is, it wasn't even like this right after 9/11. There's a growing sickness.

Monday, July 31, 2006

Nedrenaline!

Lamont on the Colbert Report in a few.

...video at C&L.

Evening Thread

Enjoy.

How Joe Went Wrong

This Salon article is quite good. And after you click through the damn ad and read it you can see Tom Tomorrow's latest.

Yuk Yuk

Joe's best friend makes him laugh.




(the video is labelled incorrectly. it was actually the 2004 Radio and Television Correspondents' Dinner.)

The Rule of Law

Ah, I miss the good old days when the nation the elite beltway chatters were convinced the fate of the Republic might depend on which telephone Al Gore used to make fundraising calls...


...er, this is actually what I meant to link to.

Does This Make Any Sense?

Al Hunt gives us the latest defend-Lieberman-at-any-cost column. But I have no idea what this even means:

``A Lieberman loss is very bad for Democrats; it says we are one dimension on Iraq,'' says Peter Hart, a top Democratic polltaker. ``Politically, Iraq should be a debate about the Bush administration. A Lieberman defeat detracts from that.''


Can anyone decipher this?

They Write Letters

Democratic Leaders write to President Bush:

The President
The White House
Washington, D.C.

Dear Mr. President:

While the world has been focused on the crisis in the Middle East, Iraq has exploded in violence. Some 6,000 Iraqis were killed in May and June, and sectarian and insurgent violence continues to claim American and Iraqi lives at an alarming rate. In the face of this onslaught, one can only conclude that the Baghdad security plan you announced five weeks ago is in great jeopardy.

Despite the latest evidence that your Administration lacks a coherent strategy to stabilize Iraq and achieve victory, there has been virtually no diplomatic effort to resolve sectarian differences, no regional effort to establish a broader security framework, and no attempt to revive a struggling reconstruction effort. Instead, we learned of your plans to redeploy an additional 5,000 U.S. troops into an urban war zone in Baghdad. Far from implementing a comprehensive "Strategy for Victory" as you promised months ago, your Administration=' strategy appears to be one of trying to avoid defeat.

Meanwhile, U.S. troops and taxpayers continue to pay a high price as your Administration searches for a policy. Over 2,500 Americans have made the ultimate sacrifice and over 18,000 others have been wounded. The Iraq war has also strained our military and constrained our ability to deal with other challenges. Readiness levels for the Army are at lows not seen since Vietnam, as virtually no active Army non-deployed combat brigade is prepared to perform its wartime missions. American taxpayers have already contributed over $300 billion and each week we stay in Iraq adds nearly $3 billion more to our record budget deficit.

In the interests of American national security, our troops, and our taxpayers, the open-ended commitment in Iraq that you have embraced cannot and should not be sustained.

Rather, we continue to believe that it is time for Iraqis to step forward and take the lead for securing and governing their own country. This is the principle enshrined in the "United States Policy in Iraq Act" enacted last year. This law declares 2006 to be a year of "significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty, with Iraqi security forces taking the lead for the security of a free and sovereign Iraq, thereby creating the conditions for the phased redeployment of United States forces from Iraq." Regrettably, your policy seems to be moving in the opposite direction.

This legislation made clear that Iraqi political leaders must be informed that American patience, blood and treasure are not unlimited. We were disappointed that you did not convey this message to Prime Minister Maliki during his recent visit. Reducing the U.S. footprint in Iraq will not only give the Iraqis a greater incentive to take the lead for the security of their own nation, but will also allow U.S. forces to be able to respond to contingencies affecting the security of the United States elsewhere in the world.

We believe that a phased redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq should begin before the end of 2006. U.S. forces in Iraq should transition to a more limited mission focused on counterterrorism, training and logistical support of Iraqi security forces, and force protection of U.S. personnel.

Additionally, every effort should be made to urge the Iraqis to take the steps necessary to achieve a broad-based and sustainable political settlement, including amending the constitution to achieve a fair sharing of power and resources. It is also essential to disarm the militias and ensure forces loyal to the national government. Finally, an international conference should be convened to persuade other governments to be more involved, and to secure the resources necessary to finance Iraq's reconstruction and rebuild its economy.

Mr. President, simply staying the course in Iraq is not working. We need to take a new direction. We believe these recommendations comprise an effective alternative to the current open-ended commitment which is not producing the progress in Iraq we would all like to see. Thank you for your careful consideration of these suggestions.



Harry Reid, Senate Democratic Leader
Nancy Pelosi, House Democratic Leader
Dick Durbin, Senate Assistant Democratic Leader
Steny Hoyer, House Minority Whip
Carl Levin, Ranking Member, Senate Armed Services Committee
Ike Skelton, Ranking Member, House Armed Services Committee
Joe Biden, Ranking Member, Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Tom Lantos, Ranking Member, House International Relations Committee
Jay Rockefeller, Vice Chairman, Senate Intelligence Committee
Jane Harman, Ranking Member, House Intelligence Committee
Daniel Inouye, Ranking Member, Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee
John Murtha, Ranking Member, House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee

What's the Matter With South Dakota?

Come November, we may find that it's doing okay (from emailed press release):

Sioux Falls, SD – Today the Argus Leader and KELO TV released poll results indicating that voters are likely to reject the restrictive abortion ban signed into law by Governor Mike Rounds earlier this year. The Mason Dixon poll sampled 800 registered voters and found that 47% plan to vote No on Referred Law 6 in November, while 39% of respondents would uphold the abortion ban.

“We are pleased with the results of the poll,” commented Jan Nicolay, co-chairperson for the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families. “Earlier this spring, a large group of volunteers made sure that the voters of South Dakota would have a chance to decide this extremely important issue. This poll is confirmation that the ban is too restrictive and goes too far. However, between now and November, we still have a lot of work to do to defeat the national extremist groups who have taken over our State Government.”

“South Dakotans think this ban is too restrictive and their legislators and Governor have misrepresented them in Pierre. With the continued support of our volunteers across the state, we are confident the ban will be overturned in November.”

Happy Evan Bayh Day

About two months ago - One Bayh, to be exact - Evan Bayh suggested that we need to wait and see a little bit longer on Iraq, and if things aren't working out swimmingly "we're out." He didn't provide precise conditions, leaving him room to wiggle out, but here's what was said:

Calling it “the biggest political and military blunder of my lifetime,” Sturgeon said to Bayh, “I’d like you to explain your vote on the war and why you gave the president a blank check to get us into this disaster.”

Bayh calmly answered that “I wouldn’t cast the same vote today as I did then.” He noted that “the French believed that (there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq), the Germans believed that, the Russians believed that, everybody believed he [Saddam Hussein] had weapons of mass destruction.”

Bayh said if the Iraqi factions “get their political act together — and we will know this in the next six to eight weeks… if they can form a government… then there’s something to work with there.” If not, then “we’re out.”


Again, it's not really clear what conditions he was imposing, but presumably it involved the Iraqi government getting their shit together and making things better.

Since then Iraq has become the forgotten war, but things are not in fact going swimmingly.

BAGHDAD (AP) - Gunmen kidnapped 29 people in Baghdad on Monday, while Iraq's latest wave of violence killed 27 people, including four Iraqi soldiers in a suicide bombing.

The interior minister faced calls for his dismissal because of the worsening security crisis in Baghdad and surrounding towns, mostly blamed on sectarian conflict between Shiites and Sunnis.

The Iraqi government said Monday that 30,359 families have fled their homes to escape sectarian violence from mid-February through July 30 - roughly 182,000 people. Baghdad accounted for the highest number of displaced.

Gunmen in military fatigues drove to the main shopping area of Karrada in 15 vehicles and split into two groups, one going into a mobile phone shop and the other into the office next door of the Iraqi-American Chamber of Commerce, said police Lieut. Thair Mahmoud.

They kidnapped 15 staff and customers from the shop and 11 from the chamber, he said. All were believed to be Iraqis. No other details were available.


Perhaps a reporter should ask Bayh if it's time to get out.

4,000

Lieberman's hiring a huge ground force, though he's doing it stupidly.

Communicate with your friends and family.


Invite your friends and family to reach out to their friends and family.

Contact the campaign to help.

Checklist Liberalism

Mark Schmitt writes:

But it’s not working. Why? Two reasons: One of course is that Iraq, and the constellation of foreign policy and security failures it represents really is huge. And while Democrats can accept a fairly wide range of viewpoints, roughly from Biden’s make-it-work to Murtha’s get-out-now, only Lieberman’s stay-the-course is ridiculous. It’s pretty difficult to look at ANWR and Iraq and conclude that a good position on ANWR more than offsets a bad one on Iraq. (Especially if there’s no reason to think that Ned Lamont has a different position on ANWR or the other three buttons.)

The second reason is that Lamont supporters actually aren’t ideologues. They aren’t looking for the party to be more liberal on traditional dimensions. They’re looking for it to be more of a party. They want to put issues on the table that don’t have an interest group behind them - like Lieberman’s support for the bankruptcy bill -- because they are part of a broader vision. And I think that’s what blows the mind of the traditional Dems. They can handle a challenge from the left, on predictable, narrow-constituency terms. But where do these other issues come from? These are “elitist insurgents,” as Broder puts it - since when do they care about bankruptcy? What if all of a sudden you couldn’t count on Democratic women just because you said that right things about choice - what if they started to vote on the whole range of issues that affect women’s economic and personal opportunities?

But caring about bankruptcy, even if you’re not teetering on the brink of it or a bankruptcy lawyer yourself, is part of a vision of a just society. And a vision of a just society - not just the single-issue push-buttons of a bunch of constituency groups - is what a center-left political party ought to be about. And at the end of this fight, I don’t expect that we’ll have a more leftist Democratic Party, but one that can at least begin to get beyond checklist liberalism.


I think he's really hitting on some important here. Recently a congressional staffer was complaining about the fact that us blogofascists spend too much time criticizing Dems instead of going after Republicans, especially since the conservative wankosphere almost never criticizes their own. While there's perhaps some merit to that general complaint, I responded that Democrats aren't really used to getting criticism from their left. He looked at me like I was nuts and said they get it all the time from interest groups.

That's true, but it is a very different kind of criticism. It's a known dance. They know what the interest groups want, and know what they have to do to satisfy them, or not. Also, the interest group criticism doesn't really get into the media bloodstream, it comes mostly in private other than affecting endorsements.

The bankruptcy bill is the perfect example of legislation no one claiming to be a Democrat should support, and more than that one that every good Democrat should have opposed by any means at their disposable (including filibuster, Joe). It's the kind of legislation which is often marked as "centrist" by the media, as it's supported by a coalition of evil Republicans and self-described "moderate" Democrats, but there's nothing centrist or moderate about it. Unlike some other awful Republican legislation which conservatives have been trained to support (any tax cut, tort reform...) there was no popular support for this bill. It was a complete givewaway. It was just stealing from people and giving to campaign donors.

Failing to oppose the bankruptcy bill is one of the reasons brand Democrat has such problems. It's the type of thing which shouldn't require outside pressure. The bill was wrong. Everybody knows that. It was an evil sadistic piece of legislation which will destroy lives. Good Democrats shouldn't have needed to be pushed to oppose it.

On the Senate side, Democrats who voted for it:

Baucus
Bayh
Biden
Byrd
Carper
Conrad
Inouye
Johnson
Kohl
Landrieu
Lincoln
Nelson
Nelson
Pryor
Reid
Salazar
Stabenow


Shame on them.

...adding, missed Bingaman.

Lies and the Lying Liars

Wankers.

Don't Talk About the War

Lieberman won't talk about it. Ned Lamont will.

Why?

I'm not posting this to be critical. I'm genuinely perplexed. Why do some people like Lieberman? What, really, is there to like about the guy?


...oops, Stoller got there before I did.

Josh Marshall keeps talking about how much he likes Lieberman, what a nice guy he is and was, and how loved he was. The narrative seems to be that this guy fell from grace, a wonderful and brilliant man beloved by all who changed recently and suddenly, becoming out of touch and angry. I've heard it said that he is by far our smartest Senator, traditionally with the best and most loyal staff on the Hill.

Maybe it's because I'm inexperienced in politics, but I don't get this at all. Lieberman's justification of torture is just a flashing red light that this guy has no moral center. But Josh isn't the only one talking as if Lieberman were once Ghandi; it's a trend among men I know that are in their thirties or above, and had a strong connection to the political establishment prior to 2001.

Speaking of Bouncing

While Stoller's slogan needs a bit of work, the basic point stands. Republicans must be waking up every day thank Jeebus for the fact that the Democrats haven't bothered to notice that everybody hates George Bush.

WHEEEEEEEEEE

Bush bouncing all the way to 36%!

(via pony boy)

Late Night With Elvis

Enjoy.

Sunday, July 30, 2006

Mel

Ah, what can I say.


Aside from maybe, just maybe, spelling it out so clearly that idiots in the mainstream media will stop pretending otherwise I guess I didn't find Gibson's little outburst all that interesting. He laid it out nice and clearly awhile back, and everyone agreed not to notice. I'm not sure if Holocaust Denial is perfectly correlated with anti-Semitism, but it's close enough not to need to draw a distinction. Maybe lots of his best friends are Jewish, but Gibson made his holocaust denial (minimizing, to be exact, but it's all part of the same thing) perfectly clear to Magic Dolphin Lady Noonan.

As I wrote previously:

Holocaust deniers for the most part don't claim that it was entirely fiction. What they do is say that the numbers and intention were exaggerated, that World War II was a tragedy all around and the holocaust happened in the context of a war in which lots of people were killed. In other words, yeah some people died but it wasn't the big deal everyone makes it out to be. And, that's precisely what Gibson said to Peggy Noonan:

I have friends and parents of friends who have numbers on their arms. The guy who taught me Spanish was a Holocaust survivor. He worked in a concentration camp in France. Yes, of course. Atrocities happened. War is horrible. The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps. Many people lost their lives. In the Ukraine, several million starved to death between 1932 and 1933. During the last century, 20 million people died in the Soviet Union.


As David Neiwert wrote:

It's important, of course, to understand that this is exactly the storyline pushed by Holocaust deniers, namely, that yes, there were many Jews killed in Europe during World War II, but they were only a small part of the total who died in the war, and the "6 million" number is grossly exaggerated. Not only is this exactly what Hutton Gibson told the New York Times, you can find the exact same views at such Holocaust-denial organs as the Barnes Review, the Institute for Historical Review, and the Adelaide Institute.


There's no conflict between creating a miniseries based on a novel which takes place in the context of the holocaust and being what we call "holocaust deniers."

Could Be Worse

I know nothing of Jared Kushner, but prompted by Drudge who sez:

REPORT: A 25-year-old law student has bought the NEW YORK OBSERVER... MORE...

Jared Kushner, son of Charles Kushner, a once prominent but now disgraced New Jersey real estate developer, has bought the paper...

Kushner is independently wealthy, paid under $10 million for the salmon-colored sheet... Developing...


I decided to see which team he played for. Could be worse.

CSN&Y and Patrick Murphy

Watch the documentary.

Damned Dirty Hippies

And they're threatening to vote!

Evening Thread

Enjoy.

Time for Another Blogger Ethics Panel

You mean people in Washington sometimes have financial conflicts of interest which aren't always clearly disclosed? I'm just shocked. I'm sure no journalists are aware of this stuff either.

One Biden

Apparently it's equal to five years.

To build something that can outlast us, we're talking about being there at least another five years," says Sen. Joseph Biden, who returned from his seventh trip to Iraq in July. "If we were doing it well and we had a little luck, we could be there in a circumstance where we are not dying but we are spending."


"We" are not there. "We" are not dying. Those serving the armed forces and obeying the military command, Don Rumsfeld, and CiC George W. Bush are.

CNN Has a New Show

Meanwhile

In the forgotten war Joe Lieberman doesn't want to talk about anymore:

*BAGHDAD - Four marines were killed in action in restive Anbar province, the U.S. military said on Sunday. The marines, assigned to Regimental Combat Team 7, died on Saturday.

*YUSUFIYA - Two people were killed and three wounded when gunmen attacked a minibus in Yusufiya, 15 km (9 miles) south west of Baghdad, a police source said.

BAGHDAD - Three suspected insurgents died and a fourth person was wounded in an explosion in a house that an interior ministry source said was being used as a factory for homemade bombs.

BAIJI - A policeman was shot dead by gunmen in the oil refinery city of Baiji, 180 km (112 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

NEAR TUZ KHURMATU - Kidnappers killed a policeman and a civilian after snatching seven people in an ambulance near Tuz Khurmatu, 70 km south of Kirkuk, on Saturday evening. The five others, including a second policeman, were released after being tortured, the police said.

BAGHDAD - Iraq's oil pipeline to Turkey has been fixed and exports will be resumed to the port of Ceyhan at a rate of 600,000-700,000 barrels per day, Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani said. A senior oil ministry official said pumping would start within a few days.

BAGHDAD - Police said they found 15 bodies in different parts of the capital, all bearing signs of torture and shot in the head.

Destabilize

Our country is being run by psychopaths. I don't know what to do about that.


Damned Dirty Hippies

Like Digby I'm extremely tired of - and puzzled by - a bunch of clueless old men seeing politics solely through the lens of their political formative years.

As usual the Lamont blog has a great roundup of Joe stuff, but I was actually most struck by this nugget from Lieberman:


His upbeat article would be published in the Wall Street Journal under the headline, "Our Troops Must Stay," contradicting the dramatic call days earlier by U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

And so ended any chance for Lieberman, 64, a three-term senator, to have his usual easy conversation with Connecticut voters about his re-election.

Today, with nine days left until his Aug. 8 primary with anti-war challenger Ned Lamont, Lieberman is scrambling to regain his footing among Democrats who repeatedly signaled their anger over the war - only to be ignored.

Public and private polling told Lieberman in January that Democrats were abandoning him over his efforts to prop up public support for an unpopular war that was paralyzing the Bush administration and jeopardizing the GOP's control of Congress.

But Lieberman persisted.

"I was worried about a repeat of Vietnam," he said Friday during an interview aboard his campaign bus. "Public opinion was moving away from supporting the war for reasons that were understandable, but not complete."


One of the standard lines about Lieberman from his supporters is to point to his support for the civil rights movement and his opposition to the Vietnam war as reasons to support him, as if what he did 40 years ago is more important than what he's doing now. This Washington Post article says:

Lieberman broke into politics as a reformist who opposed the war in Vietnam, and he won a state Senate seat in New Haven in 1970 with the help of, among others, Bill Clinton, who was a student volunteer at Yale Law.



I'm not entirely sure what Lieberman is saying now, but the only rational interpretation I can take is that the problem with the Vietnam war - which he once opposed - was that the public turned against it, and not with, you know, the war itself.

Wow.

Slightly Deranged

Zakaria is right. Rumsfeld's a loon and it's time a few more people said so.


We can't count on the junior senator from Connecticut to do so. His view:

We're in the middle of a war — you wouldn't want to have the secretary of defense change unless there's really good reason for it and I don't see any good reason at this time.



That was in 2004. As far as I know he still hasn't seen "any good reason" for Rumsfeld to resign, even though his senior colleague certainly has.

Unity

There's a very creepy trend out there. It's driven by a combination of arrogance and elitism and it also has a strong authoritarian streak to it. We get the latest version of it from (no surprise) the idiotic Moose:

“Both of them realize there is a desire in the country for a different politics of national unity that transcends the current polarization,” Mr. Wittman said.

At the same time, both have endured serious presidential campaigns before and market themselves as independent power brokers within their parties.

“That’s their great commonality,” Mr. Wittman said. “Obviously, if they faced each other in a general, they would emphasize their differences.”


Basically there are people who imagine that there is a supermajority political consensus in this country which is shattered by nasty partisanship from politicians. There's a belief that fundamental disagreements about how this country should be run come not from voters but from politicians.

Magically, of course, this imagined supermajority political consensus always seems to match perfectly with the personal political views of the person calling for unity. And, unsurprisingly, it tends to roughly match up with the basic worldview of the Washington Post editorial board.

It's authoritarian because it calls for conformity and brands dissenters as the problem. Get on board the unity bus, they say, can't we all get along. That's what the nation needs. Stop your nasty disagreements, and let my team rule without criticism.


For all his railings about the blogosphere, the Bullshit Moose is about the most unhinged blogger there is. He's troubled by disagreement, especially anyone who disagrees with him. He assumes their motives, unlike his, are impure and base (odd for someone who has made his living getting paid to agree with other people, from the Christian Coalition to the Heritage Foundation to John McCain), while he transcends all that petty nonsense with his vision of a shining country on a hill. It isn't just him, of course. This basic view is possessed by many members of the elite chattering class. It's quite disturbing.

NYT for Lamont

Here it is:

On the Armed Services Committee, Mr. Lieberman has left it to Republicans like Lindsey Graham of South Carolina to investigate the administration’s actions. In 2004, Mr. Lieberman praised Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for expressing regret about Abu Ghraib, then added: “I cannot help but say, however, that those who were responsible for killing 3,000 Americans on September 11th, 2001, never apologized.” To suggest even rhetorically that the American military could be held to the same standard of behavior as terrorists is outrageous, and a good example of how avidly the senator has adopted the Bush spin and helped the administration avoid accounting for Abu Ghraib.

Mr. Lieberman prides himself on being a legal thinker and a champion of civil liberties. But he appointed himself defender of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the administration’s policy of holding hundreds of foreign citizens in prison without any due process. He seconded Mr. Gonzales’s sneering reference to the “quaint” provisions of the Geneva Conventions. He has shown no interest in prodding his Republican friends into investigating how the administration misled the nation about Iraq’s weapons. There is no use having a senator famous for getting along with Republicans if he never challenges them on issues of profound importance.

If Mr. Lieberman had once stood up and taken the lead in saying that there were some places a president had no right to take his country even during a time of war, neither he nor this page would be where we are today. But by suggesting that there is no principled space for that kind of opposition, he has forfeited his role as a conscience of his party, and has forfeited our support.

Mr. Lamont, a wealthy businessman from Greenwich, seems smart and moderate, and he showed spine in challenging the senator while other Democrats groused privately. He does not have his opponent’s grasp of policy yet. But this primary is not about Mr. Lieberman’s legislative record. Instead it has become a referendum on his warped version of bipartisanship, in which the never-ending war on terror becomes an excuse for silence and inaction. We endorse Ned Lamont in the Democratic primary for Senate in Connecticut.

One of the Gang

Not enough has been said recently about Lieberman's membership in the "gang of 14," a bipartisan group of Republcian bullies and Democratic losers. Basically the Democrats in this group endorsed the very important principle put forth by the Republicans that the Republicans had the right to cheat. The principled Democrats in the gang managed to get the very important compromise which basically got the Republicans to promise to not cheat as long as the Democrats didn't give them a reason to ever want to.

Some principles.

Losers.

Morning Thread

Apologies. The truck that brings the internets to my house had a flat tire, so I had to get up and head to a local coffee shop.