TPM has the video of Rudy as Zelig, claiming to have experienced what the first responders of 9/11 experienced:

What an unfeeling, narcissistic boor the man is.

Eugene Volokh discusses a Univ. of Iowa definition of sexual harassment, and, it seems to me, unecessarily complicates what seems very straight forward to me. Volokh writes:

From Iowa's sexual harassment policy, which covers student-student interactions and not just employment:

Sexual harassment occurs when somebody says or does something sexually related that you don’t want them to say or do, regardless of who it is. . . .

This seems simple enough. And it makes sense. Don't invade someone's space with sex talk unless such talk is welcome. What is hard about that? Plenty apparently, according to Volokh. I'll explain on the flip.

Via Kos, Harold Ford finds himself the new darling of the WSJ Ed Board:

Mr. Ford, for his part, has dark warnings for those activists selling the line that last year's election is proof that their liberal ideas are now "mainstream" . . . "That's called short-term memory," he says . . .

Perhaps Harold Ford has forgotten that he lost his race in 2006 in a big Dem year. Or perhaps he is as ignorant as the WSJ regarding the 2006 election:

David Sirota is thinking creatively about how to end the Iraq Debgacle. Unfortunately, David does not deal with the reality that the possibility of achieving a veto-proof majority is a myth. David proposes:

So here's the concept (which, though I'm not 100 percent sure, I don't think has been tried yet in Congress): How about when Congress reconvenes in September, Democrats bring a bill to the floor of the House and Senate mandating that, say, 25,000 National Guardsmen be taken out of combat in Iraq and be immediately redeployed to guard America's porous domestic borders - both southern and northern? If Democrats wanted to get even more creative, they could additionally mandate that some of these National Guardsmen being redeployed be immediately sent to forest fire emergency zones - many of which are in Republican states right now. Think this through for a moment. All of a sudden, the illegal-immigration-obsessed Tom Tancredo wing of the Republican Party, which also happens to be the most reflexively pro-war wing of the GOP, would be forced to choose either the Iraq War or beefed up border security. All of a sudden, we would be having a debate about two very real, very pressing priorities, rather than theoreticals and hypotheticals, and we would be discussing exactly how the misuse of our National Guard as a wing of the regular Army harms our ability to deal with the domestic challenges the National Guard was originally established to deal with.

This is imaginative thinking, and I'll even give David a pass on the militarization of the borders. The trouble is it will not work. Bush will oppose it, call it an end run to surrender in Iraq and Republicans ion Congress will fall in line. See, David's problem is he is not dealing with the central reality here, not enough Republicans will ever break with the President to make a strategy requiring a veto proof majority work. This is simply the way it is. It is why I have always urged an approach that does not require Republican votes - the NOT funding after a date certain approach:

Via Benen, on Hardball yesterday, Ezra Klein had this exchange with Tweety and GOP operative Karen Hanratty:

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you about this more tricky question of Albert Gonzales. The president said the guy has done nothing wrong. Point to something he has done, Ezra. Because either that or the president is right completely. Point to something he did wrong.

KLEIN: Aside from the firing of the prosecutors?

MATTHEWS: No, what did he do wrong?

HANRETTY: That wasn’t wrong.

KLEIN: Well, there you go.

MATTHEWS: What crime did he commit? (CROSSTALK)

KLEIN: I’m not going to speak on whether or not he committed a crime, I’m not a lawyer. But what he did wrong was fire prosecutors for political reasons. I think we can agree on whether that is an ethical violation.

MATTHEWS: And that has never been done before?

HANRETTY: That is not illegal…. Yes, you absolutely can fire someone midterm for political reasons. It is not against the law.

More.

Iraq Debacle and Surge supporter Ken Pollack, author of the 2002 book "The Case For Invading Iraq," not surprisingly wants Democrats to keep quiet about Iraq "until 2008":

[Q:] The Democratic candidates have been fighting among themselves over what to do. Your advice to the Democrats is what, to cool it until the election?

POLLACK: Certainly to cool it until early 2008. . . . We found the surge was definitely making some progress and in some areas it was making quite good progress.

But we’re also saying, “Look, it is very late in the day; Iraq is a deeply troubled country and dealing with its problems is going to take, not just a lot of savvy and a lot of resources, but also a lot of luck.” And therefore you can’t just simply say, “The surge is working, we’re done, we’re just going to let it continue on until it produces inevitable victory.” Because there’s no guarantee it’s going to produce inevitable victory. Therefore, you have to keep reassessing, and it may be that in early 2008, the progress we saw on this trip peters out. If it peters out, that’s important and that means you’re going to have to reassess.

Uh huh. How about we do this - how about Ken Pollack keeps quiet for about 6 months and then we can reassess that strategy in early 2008? If ANYTHING Ken Pollock has said proves true then he can talk some more. If instead, as has been the case for the past 5 years, everything he says is wrong again, then he keeps quiet for another 6 months. When we reassess.

These folks really have no sense of shame do they?

Paying religious conservatives to surf for p!rn is not a wise use of the nation's tax dollars.

Logo TV tonight had the LGBT presidential debate:

Logo and Human Rights Campaign Foundation present this historic and first-ever live televised U.S. Presidential candidate forum on issues of importance to the LGBT community, with the leading 2008 Democratic presidential candidates including Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson....

I was able to see most of it. Obama went first and in my view, didn't impress. Especially when he said gay marriage should be left up to individual churches to decide. Edwards did a credible job. He came so close to endorsing gay marriage and then backed off. Too bad. Still, a positive step for him, he's clearly on as he says "a journey." I missed Gravel. Dodd wasn't there after all. Kucinich, not suprisingly, had the best and most heartfelt answers.

Richardson blew it big time. He was asked whether being gay is a matter of choice or whether you're born that way and he immediately responded "choice." Figuring he misunderstood the question, the panelists, including Melissa Etheridge and Margaret Carlson, gave him another chance. He still didn't get it and framed his answer in terms of equality, saying it didn't matter. Can someone please educate him?

More...

Let's face it. Rudy Giuliani is running on the deaths of over 3,000 Americans killed by the evil Osama bin Laden. If not for Osama bin Laden, Rudy Giuliani would be long gone from our public consciousness. But Rudy can't just point to 3,000 murdered Americans and say he should be President. And he provides more - lies. Via Drum, Wayne Barrett documents the many despicable lies Rudy tells to promote his candidacy:

As United States Attorney, I investigated the Leon Klinghoffer murder by Yasir Arafat," he told the Jewish audience, referring to the infamous 1985 slaying of a wheelchair-bound, 69-year-old New York businessman aboard the Achille Lauro, an Italian ship hijacked off the coast of Egypt by Palestinian extremists. . . . "I went over their cases." On the contrary, Victoria Toensing, the deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department in Washington who filed a criminal complaint in the Lauro investigation, says that no one in Giuliani's office "was involved at all." Jay Fischer, the Klinghoffer family attorney who spearheaded a 12-year lawsuit against the PLO, says he "never had any contact" with Giuliani or his office. . . . [Arnold] Burns, who was also the finance chair of Giuliani's mayoral campaign, was the deputy U.S. attorney general in 1985 and oversaw the probe. "I know of nothing Rudy did in any shape or form on the Klinghoffer case," he says.

Who would lie about something like that? Rudy Giuliani would. More.

Chris Bowers insists that the Netroots really do matter - but now about issues now - but about the 2008 election:

No matter the trend, and no matter the cause, I still think that this holds an important lesson for the progressive blogosphere: we still have the ability to drive the conversation on the 2008 Democratic primary. It was through the combined efforts of the progressive blogosphere that Clinton ended up going on record defending lobbyists. Once that happened, her comment received extensive news coverage, and has now been used as an avenue of attack by both the Obama and Edwards campaigns. During it all, we discussed the incident with our large, primary voting readerships.

Terrific!! The Netroots drove conversation on a "phony issue," as Matt Stoller concedes. Woo hoo! Hey Chris and Matt, how about driving a little conversation on ending the Iraq Debacle?

Oh BTW, the Netroots really did not drive the phony dispute on lobbying - it was MSM reporter Matt Bai who took over the "Netroots" Debate with this nonsense and created the MSM headlines the next day. Can the Netroots stop trying to pat itself on the back for a while and actually try to drive the conversation about something that actually matters? Like, say ending the Iraq Debacle?

More

Via Kevin Drum:

Tuesday night Sanchez said she could not support the [anti-Iraq Debacle] protesters because the $145 billion in Iraq war funding was in the same bill that would provide money to build the C-17 aircraft in California. "I never voted for this war," she said. But "I'm not going to vote against $2.1 billion for C-17 production, which is in California. That is just not going to happen."

Rep. Sanchez, you just said you were going to vote for the war, so that a California company will get a defense contract. 395 Californians have died in Iraq. Loretta Sanchez can put a price on their lives - 2 billion dollars. Not to mention the damage to the interests of the nation.

But I have a solution for Rep. Sanchez, maybe she has not thought about it - how about NOT putting Iraq appropriations in the bill?

What a disgusting thing to say. I have much more respect for Republicans who support the war than for this drivel from Sanchez. Outrageous.

A TPM Reader cracks wise:

Reading about Mitt's claim that his five sons are serving the nation by driving the Winnebago through Iowa, I was put in mind of the once-famous Sulllivan Brothers, five Iowa boys who were all in the navy during WWII, were all serving on the same ship, and were all killed at the same time. I hadn't thought of the Sullivan Brothers in years. After their deaths, the military put in a rule that blood relatives could not all serve in the same unit. So the Romney boys should not all be riding around in the same Winnebago.

Heh.