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.

More...

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.

The San Francisco Chronicle writes up Yearly Kos and its growing influence. It makes the point that right wing sites are just not in the same league as Daily Kos and other widely read liberal blogs.

Here's all you need to know about how influential the YearlyKos convention has become: Five top presidential candidates are going....Analysts say the community of liberal online activists -- the "netroots" -- has become not only a coveted constituency for the left but a legitimate threat to conservatives, who trail Democrats in online campaigning and fundraising.

There will be 200 journalists covering Yearly Kos. The right will be criticizing, but, I suspect, speaking to their echo chamber.

The article also compares blogs in 2007 to those in 2004:

The netroots have come a long way from the 2004 Democratic National Convention, when it was big news that bloggers were given media credentials.

Most of the public didn't even know what a blog was then. We've come a long way, but it's where we're going and what we are going to do that counts.

More...

The whole world doesn't revolve around prosecutors. Other good things to read today:

• Say hello to Prison Legal News, gathering injustice stories from all across the country.

• Republican maybe-candidate Fred Thompson writes there are too many federal crimes and criticizes the expanding prison population, but as Ilya at Volokh notes, he ignores the elephant in the room, the war on drugs.

  However, there is a major elephant in this federalism room that Thompson doesn't mention. He is right to note the massive growth in the federal prison population over the last 20 years, but fails to point out that most of that growth is due to the War on Drugs.

• Don't miss the brief by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (pdf)filed in the Kimbrough case on crack cocaine penalties. It focuses on the racial impact of crack sentencing and how the disparity affects not only defendants but families and the community and undermines respect for law. [Hat tip to Peter Goldberger.]

• Also, via White Collar Defense Blog, check out the Federal Defender's amicus brief (pdf)in the Gall case on the reasonableness presumption of the federal sentencing guidelines.

I'm updating TalkLeft's Facebook page today.

For those going to Yearly Kos, the Live Blogging the Libby Trial panel is on Thursday at 9:30 am. Also check out the panel on Friday at 4:00 pm, Ensuring Every Vote is Counted

Can we trust our voting machines to count every vote? Are minority voters given a fair chance at the ballot box? What happens when elected representatives can draw their own district lines? This panel will consider a variety of issues, ranging from redistricting to voter ID laws to felony disenfranchisement to caging, and will explain what progressives can do to ensure every adult citizen may vote, and that every vote is counted.

For those of you following the news, here's a place to talk about it.