One of Matt Stoller's best qualities is his willingness to roll up his sleeves and wrestle over an issue with you. He does that in his response to my post on Iraq and the Netroots:

Respectfully, your pet solution is not THE ANSWER. There is no THE ANSWER. Strategy is actually putting out a set of parameters that actually map to reality, and the reality is that there is not the discipline in the party to do what you suggest . . .

Is Matt's view of the "reality" of the situation accurate? I don't think so but really that is irrelevant. Part of being an activist, part of what the Netroots is supposed to be about, is trying to CHANGE the unacceptable reality of today. Matt seems resigned to accepting what he views the "reality" to be and to just raise the white flag on the issue.

In its never-ending battle against the undocumented among us, Congress enacted the Deficit Reduction Act. The goal was to deprive undocumented residents of Medicaid. But, it's also depriving U.S. citizens.

Under a 2006 federal law, the Deficit Reduction Act, most people who say they are United States citizens and want Medicaid must provide “satisfactory documentary evidence of citizenship,” which could include a passport or the combination of a birth certificate and a driver’s license.

Some state officials say the Bush administration went beyond the law in some ways — for example, by requiring people to submit original documents or copies certified by the issuing agency.

“The largest adverse effect of this policy has been on people who are American citizens,” said Kevin W. Concannon, director of the Department of Human Services in Iowa, where the number of Medicaid recipients dropped by 5,700 in the second half of 2006, to 92,880, after rising for five years. “We have not turned up many undocumented immigrants receiving Medicaid in Waterloo, Dubuque or anywhere else in Iowa,” Mr. Concannon said.

Stupid is as stupid does.

Uh-oh. Another Justice Department official is on the hotseat. This time it's Michael J. Elston, Chief of Staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty.

Fired U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins of Arkansas testified he felt threatened by a phone call from Elston. Elston says it's all a misunderstanding and he's "horrified" by it.

In testimony and in an e-mail to fellow attorneys, Cummins said there was a "threatening undercurrent" to the call. He said Elston warned that the Justice Department would retaliate if the attorneys talked to the media or volunteered to testify in Congress.

Elston said he never intended such a message and recalls only expressing regret that the attorneys issue is "playing out in public."

Completely off topic, but I've come to conclude that as you get older, downsizing is a fact of life. I've been doing it for several years now. And, with more of us taking charge of our elderly parents' downsizing, we often have to decide what to do with their lifetime accumulation of belongings.

The New York Times this week had a feature article on how we have become a society "hooked on storage."

Many of us pay thousands of dollars a year to store our kids' first drawings, the artifacts we brought back from other countries on vacations, the furniture that will not fit in our downsized homes or apartments.

Is it worth it?

More...

As always, I speak for me exclusively

I can not tell you how frustrating it is to me to read this post from Matt Stoller:

I've honestly been very confused about the debate over Iraq, and much of my time has also been taken up with the Fox News scuffle over the past three weeks. Fox News was a fun fight, fun because it was so clean-cut. The objectives were clear, and what victory meant was clear.

Iraq is different. It's huge. It's the problem. . . . [T]he progressives are being pretty unstrategic and obnoxious, though that doesn't really matter either. The Blue Dogs, as usual, suck, though that too doesn't really matter.

If you're looking at it from the inside, all you see i[s] bleakness. It's unlikely that we'll be able to get a bill through the House, and through a Senate filibuster, and through a White House veto, and past a constitutional crisis. Right? The votes aren't there. They just aren't.

Matt has not been paying attention and neither has Chris Bowers.

Speaking for me only, and now also speaking for Paul Krugman:

The good news is that for the first time in six years, it’s possible to hope that all the facts about a Bush administration scandal will come out in Congressional hearings — or, if necessary, in the impeachment trial of Alberto Gonzales.

Come on Jeralyn, join the Shrill! The water is just fine . . .

There are three million children in the U.S. with at least one parent who is an undocumented resident.

What happens to them when their parents are swept up in an immigration raid?

What is going to happen to the children? These children are American-born," said Helena Marques, executive director of the Immigrant Assistance Center in New Bedford. "There are hundreds of children out there without their moms, in tremendous need. These babies have become the victims of a problem that legislators can't seem to fix."

It's time for these immigration raids to stop. We need a path to citizenship for those who are already in this country.

There's some good stuff out there to read today.

• Digby's Lancing the Boil

• Frank Rich's (free link) Why Libby's Pardon is a Slam Dunk, via Buzzflash

• Nora Ephron at Huffpo: The Secret: A Testimonial

• The You Tube video of Rudy Giuliani in 1989 calling for public funded abortions.

Sen. Charles Schumer called on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to step down today. Sen. Joe Biden hedged his bets and said it's Bush's call but it wouldn't be a bad idea.

I doubt it will happen. He's too entrenched. Then again, it wasn't that long ago that Harriet Miers, another of Bush's long-time, loyal counsel, didn't get confirmed to the Supreme Court.

I think rather than having Gonzales step down now, we should concentrate on electing a Democrat as President in 2008, so that we hopefully can get a less ideological Attorney General in 2009.

However bad Gonzales may be, he's no John Ashcroft. It was Ashcroft, not Gonzales' Justice Department that brought us the Patriot Act, pushed Patriot Act II, the Feeney Amendment, created guidelines for attorney-client monitoring of conversations, demanded the DEA raid medical marijuana clinics in states that had legalized medical use of the substance, and so on and so on.

Gonzales hasn't had that much of an effect on the day to day workings of the criminal justice system, so far as I can tell -- at least not in my cases. The main restrictions we face are those created by Ashcroft -- and Congress' continued willingness to enact mandatory minimum sentences.

There's lots of blame to go around.

Update: If you feel differently, you can join in Big Tent Democrat's series on why Gonzales should be impeached. Philosophically, I agree. As a practical matter, I'd rather invest my time in seeing a Democrat get elected.

The brackets.

The number one overall seed is the defending champions Florida Gators. Other number 1s were Ohio State, Kansas and surprisingly for me, North Carolina.

UCLA has a beef is you ask me.

Most dangerous 2, imo, Georgetown. 2 most likely to have an early exit? Sorry, TChris, the Badgers of Wisconsin.

Early dark horse (defined as 5 seed or lower?)? I dunno. None that I can see. Let me think some more. Ok, gun to my head - Southern Cal.

An AP television writer asks whether the writer known to TalkLeft readers as "the She-Pundit with long blond hair" has hit her tipping point, "whether her shelf life is expiring." Does it matter? As long as AP keeps writing about her and networks continue to air her intolerant rants, she'll still be stinking up the shelf.

At daily kos, BarbinMd questions why Congressional Dems place any trust in Bush on Iraq:

As House Democrats continue to hammer out the details of a toothless supplemental funding bill for Iraq, where the enforcement of benchmarks is left in the hands of George Bush, perhaps they should think about what his word means.

Barb is obviously right, of course, but we are fast approaching a point where we need to ask why we should place any trust in the House Dems. They simply will not do what must be done to even put themselves in position to stop the Iraq Debacle sometime in the future. And yes, in the end, it will require not funding the Debacle after a date certain.