The TL kid is in town for a few days, fresh from taking the NY bar exam, so my blogging will be light today. Here's an open thread for you.

Here we go again. Like clockwork, at least once a year, someone starts a dust-up about whether the blogosphere has enough women bloggers.

The Washington Post started the latest one with its assertion that Yearly Kos seemed dominated by white middle age males. Could have fooled me and I was there.

Jane at Firedoglake responds.

I have nothing much to add except to reiterate what I wrote in 2005, I am Woman, Hear Me Blog?

Maybe it's just me, but I am much more attuned to whether the blogger or opinionator has a voice I agree with and find readable, than whether s/he is male or female. There's only so many hours in the day, and I just don't spend many of them reading blogs and columnists who are going to make my blood pressure rise.

I saw an equal number of females and males over the four days at Yearly Kos and almost everyone seemed younger than me. It didn't matter to me one way or the other. I'd also point out that many of those who attended Yearly Kos were not bloggers at all but employees of progressive organizations, media outlets and candidates who were able to attend because their employers (or their campaigns) paid for it.

As for site demographics which also seem to be a topic around the blogosphere today, here are the latest for TalkLeft, from the recently completed Blogads Reader Survey:

Matt Stoller pens a diary that I find troubling and a vicious cheap shot at the ACLU:

Why did this bill happen suddenly this week, with little warning? Why did it create a situation where activists had basically no time to act? Where was the communications breakdown? I've hinted before at the rank incompetence of Anthony Romero's ACLU. . . . We saw that their narrow legalistic strategy failed here (as it often does). The ACLU should have been coordinating with the liberal House leadership on bills like this, giving outsiders weeks of notice so organizing can actually happen. We may not have been able to stop the bill, but at least we as a movement could have fought the fight. That this did not happen suggests an immense and unforgivable incompetence at the ACLU.

Excuse me Matt. Anything and everything I learned about the bill, and I started writing in the short term about this two weekends ago, came from the ACLU. In particular, Rachel Perrone was very helpful and proactive. The failure of the blogs and the self-appointed leaders of the Netroots this year has been abject and complete. From Iraq to FISA. How about looking at our own pathetic performance this year before we start casting stones.

It takes some nerve for a failing Netroots to go potshotting like this. Let's look in our mirrors first.

It's a done deal. President Bush today signed the FISA Amendment into law. Law Prof Jack Balkin justly blames the Democrats.

Following up on Big Tent Democrat's analysis of the FISA bill, I have a few thoughts and additional links. First, thanks to Balkanization for posting the link to the FISA bill. It's S. 1927 (pdf).

As Marty Lederman noted,

The key to understanding the FISA bill is that it will categorically exclude from FISA's requirements any and all "surveillance directed at a person reasonably believed to be located outside of the United States," even if the surveillance occurs in the U.S.; even if the surveillance has nothing whatsoever to do with Al Qaeda, terrorism or crime; and, most importantly, even if the surveillance picks up communications of U.S. persons here in the States -- indeed, even if the surveillance is in part designed to intercept U.S. communications, so long as it is also "directed at" someone overseas.

....The amendment means, I think, that as far as statutory law is concerned, all of our international phone calls and e-mails can be surveilled, without exception, as long as the surveillance is in some sense "directed at" a person overseas.

Among those who sued over the warrantless NSA program were U.S. lawyers representing clients charged with terror offenses. At the time the suit was brought, lawyer Nancy Hollander, one of the plaintiffs, wrote:

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I'm at Midway airport in Chicago, waiting for my flight home from Yearly Kos.

Here's something I've never seen before: Rocking chairs.

I'm sitting in a very comfortable hand-painted rocking chair, thoughtfully placed next to a power outlet, with Wi-Fi, in the middle of concurse A between two moving runways. What a stress-free way to blog. My gate is within eye distance. I could blog like this for hours.

Cheers for Midway. More like this please.

If you haven't read Markos' closing remarks last night, you can read them (or watch him deliver them) here.

Shorter version: "I'm just a guy who built a website. You did the rest."

And this I love: Gina Cooper, Yearly Kos' executive director has announced that next year it won't be called Yearly Kos 3 but Netroots Nation.

Yesterday, I discussed again the problem of Netroots focus and the deterioration into being concerned only with electoral politics and not enough with issues. In the dailykos diaries, Eugene writes a good piece discussing the dilemma. But I was struck by this comment from Daily Kos Contributing Editor Meteor Blades:

I think one aspect of the disconnect is not knowing how to exert whatever clout we have as effectively in the majority as in opposition. And this will, I believe, become more obvious, and perhaps worse if and when a Dem wins the White House. The key, in my view, is for us to act as a perpetual opposition, within the party as well as a scourge against the Republicans.

This is where Markos and I diverge. He has always said ours isn't an ideological fight, but rather an effort to install Democrats who themselves fight. In truth, it is an ideological battle, as the FISA vote and the discussion around Obama's foreign policy speech and statements have proved, just to point out two examples of many.

I have always believed, and will continue to believe, that the ideological fight must run in tandem with the fight to elected the best possible candidates to wield electoral power, while recognizing that those best will be hampered by "establishment values" of the party in which most of them reside - define those values how you will. For me, however, the real fight, the long-term fight, the paradigm-shifting fight, lies outside party politics.

This is a great comment but I disagree with Meteor Blades' conclusion that the fight lies outside party politics. I think it lies in concentrating on the issues but also concentrating on INTRA-party politics and primaries. I'll explain on the flip.

On this weekend of blogospheric celebration, someone has to rain on the parade. And that someone is me. One of our favorites, Avedon, links to LarryE lamenting the state of the anti-war movement:

the real reason that the antiwar movement seems unable to stop the war despite having the support of perhaps two-thirds of the public is that too much of that "movement" to too god damned concerned with its own image. Too god damned concerned with being "respectable," with being seen as "serious," as truly "pro-American." Too god damned concerned with politics over praxis, with positioning over protest. As a result, it has surrendered tactical decisions to the leadership of the Democratic Party and moral leadership to a crew of inside-the-Beltway wannabes both on- and offline who have mocked demonstrations and made Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi the arbiters of the acceptable limits of debate. And that has been a horrendous blunder, both tactically and ethically, with disastrous consequences for Americans and even more - far more - for Iraqis.

I think Larry is right about the anti-war Netroots failing miserably in 2007 but I think he is wrong on the why it is failing. I will explain my thinking on the flip.

This RNC ad is hilarious

Al From must be touched by the GOP's concern. Hat tip TPM.

At 4:00 pm today in Room 100a-c, I'll be moderating the voting rights panel at Yearly Kos.

"Ensuring Every Vote Counts" features former Gore campaign Manager Donna Brazile, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund's Director of Litigation Debo Adegbile, the Brennan Center's Justin Levitt and George Washington University law professor Spencer Overton, author of the book "Stealing Democracy," about voter suppression.

Donna will be highlighting Howard Dean's 50 state voter protection plan and providing tools and checklists to protect the vote in 2008. She'll also talk about voting problems affecting minorities. Debo will talk about voter denial and intimidation, including caging lists.

Justin Levitt will talk about the Department of Justice's alarming trend of using its authority in ways that limit rather than protect voting rights. Check out the Brennan Center's site, Truth About Fraud.

I hope they also discuss my favorite voting rights issue, restoring the right to vote to ex-offenders.

Hope to see you there!

Checking in from Yearly Kos in Chicago.

A few notes: The convention center is massive and between a 1/4 and 1/2 mile indoor walk from the hotel. Getting lost is quite easy.

Try to find someplace other than the hotel to eat. Last night Jane and Pach of Firedoglake and I ate dinner at the hotel restaurant. Drink, salad, small fillet and asparagus: $69.00. (a ribeye or strip steak would have been even more.) The food also took almost an hour to arrive.

On the positive side, Yearly Kos registration was smooth last night. We got canvas bags filled with stuff I haven't had time to rummage through yet, and a 70 page magazine consisting of the schedule,speakers and ads. I'd be lost without it, and if you'd like one, you can download it for free at Yearly Kos.

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Traveling Day here to Chicago and Yearly Kos. I'm not really bringing all that luggage, but close enough.

I'll stop in here at the airport as wi-fi and time allow. In the meantime, here's an open thread.

Leaving town for five days is always difficult, even more so when it's for a blogging event for which I feel compelled to bring a camera, camcorder, voice recorder, laptop and all the attendant cords, most of which end up staying in my hotel room.

Then there's trying to wrap up all the day job duties, make sure the bills are paid that are due on the first of the month and so on.

So, you're on your own today. All topics welcome.

Update: KingOneEye has a top ten list of media do's and don'ts for those attending YKos.