Jon Chait attempts an explanation of the Netroots for perplexed The New Republic readers. It is a quite good piece and Chait has some interesting things to say, but he gets a lot wrong. To me, this is his biggest mistake:

All the lessons the netroots have gleaned about U.S. politics were on display in this noxious denouement [the 2000 Post-Eloection Fight], and those lessons have been reinforced time and again throughout the Bush presidency. The Democratic leadership and the liberal intelligentsia seemed pathetic and exhausted, wedded to musty ideals of bipartisanship and decorousness. Meanwhile, what the netroots saw in the Republican Party, they largely admired. They saw a genuine mass movement built up over several decades. They saw a powerful message machine. And they saw a political elite bound together with ironclad party discipline.

It is not admiration that the Netroots expresses here. It is dealing with the reality of the situation. Chait mistakes understanding your political adversary, what you are up against, with admiration.

No one wants the nation so divided politically. Everyone wishes we could all be reasonable. But only a fool acts as if the world is how he wishes it to be. I have written about this in the past:

Episode 81 is tonight: "Chasing It."

This week, Tony hits an unlucky stretch and AJ makes a life-changing decision. Meanwhile, Vito's widow Marie turns to Tony for help with her troubled son.

Is AJ going to decide to join the mob?

I have been hard on the Left Blogs/so called "Netroots" lately on Iraq. My main reason is they have been wrong about it. But I have also been hard on them because it seemed to me they were abdicating a critical role the Left Blogs play in the political debate. I thnk Atrios explains that role nicely:

Overall what blogs have been able to do is create an unfolding political narrative which has been largely absent elsewhere. Sometimes it's about emphasizing different things, sometimes it's about combating DC conventional wisdom, sometimes it's about highlighting things which are being ignored. But taken all together it's about telling the story of politics in a different way.

When the Left blogs/Netroots decided to cheerlead the House Supplemental, playing the "pragmatic" insider, they ceded their real power in the debate. Move On and others simply failed to understand what their power is. It is not in settling for inadequate proposals and cheerleading inevitable compromises. It is describing the progressive postion and providing a narrative that keeps the Beltway, Media and politicians honest.

The Left Blogs/Netroots forgets this at its peril. If it goes down that road, and comes to resemble the Right blog relationship with the GOP in its relationship with the Democratic Party, it will be considerably weakened as a force in the political debate.

I've got court all afternoon so feel free to take over and direct the conversation.

Michelle Malkin is really funny. Via atrios, tbogg delivers the punchline:

Michelle Malkin, has a bitchin' idea on how to show those defeatosurrenderquitterocrats a thing or two about stick-to-it-tiveness; Send 'em a white feather:

The White Feather has been a symbol for cowardice. I suggest that white feathers be sent to the leaders of the Senate and House for the cowardly vote that abandons our soldiers around the world. . . .Wha? Oh. Michelle has an update: Update: Several readers note that legendary Marine Corps sniper Carlos Hathcock wore a white feather in his hat band. . . .

Maybe not. But if it is a go, how about sending them to Bush and Romney:

[Romney said] "It's not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person." [Bush said about the war on terror]"I don't think you can win it."

Let Bush and Romney be as perplexed as Congressional Dems Michelle. I guess white flags are too expensive for this "gesture."

[Note: I will periodically bump this to the top the next day or so, so check below for newer posts on our regular topics.]

It's been three months since I've asked readers to donate to TalkLeft. It's time to make some rain.

Site expenses and my time commitment are up, and any help you can give, even $5 or $10 would be greatly appreciated.

TalkLeft is almost 5 years old and in that time we've had almost 18 million visitors and more than 33 million page views. There's also been many improvements to the site over the years.

If you appreciate the work we're doing, I'd love your support.

While contributions from everyone who appreciates TalkLeft are welcome, I'm hoping that particularly you lurkers out there who read TalkLeft almost every day but don't comment or usually contribute, will chip in.

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I see London, I see France...

Sen. Gary Siplin of Orlando, a Florida lawmaker has introduced a bill to suspend students if you can see their underwear.

It's called the "Pull Up Your Britches" bill. Students in violation would face a ten day suspension.

The bill is under debate by the Education Appropriations Committee. As to Sen. Siplin,

The senator was convicted of grand theft for paying his office staff with state money while he worked on his re-election campaign. The senate has suspended action to remove Siplin from office pending his appeal.

[Hat tip The Agitator]

There's a freezing rain storm here today and very gray skies. It's the kind where you can hear the wind from inside and watch the rain pound the windows and you just know you aren't going outside unless you have to.

I'm going to spend it reading discovery, listening to wiretaps and organizing my files.

I'll leave the blogging to you.

Via Glenn Greenwald, Powerline writes:

Meet Dave Gaubatz The current issue of the (UK) Spectator has some extremely interesting articles[,] . . . but none surpasses Melanie Phillips's "I found Saddam's WMD bunkers" in interest. Phillips's article tells the story of Dave Gaubatz, an agent in the US Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations who searched Iraqi WMD sites after the fall of Saddam.

Gaubatz "found the WMDs" and says that the Bush Administration has covered up the fact that WMDs were discovered. This is crackpot of course. But as Johnson says, let's meet Dave Gaubatz. Glenn spotted this:

It is our task to conduct an extensive mapping of all the Islamic day schools, mosques, and other identifiable organizations in the US and to determine which ones teach or preach Islamic law, Shari’a. Further, the mapping will scale the Shari’a threat by identifying to which school of jurisprudence it belongs, its historical and contemporary call for Jihad, and whether the Jihad includes violent Jihad against non-believers. . . . Finally, we will examine and map any potential targets situated near these organizations, such as city, county, and federal government buildings, schools and universities, US military installations, major utility or infrastructure sites (i.e., nuclear installations, pipelines, water supply, etc.), and transportation hubs.

His organization is ironically called SANE, for Society of Americans for the National Existence. Hoo boy.

I've got lots to do today. What's on your mind? Here's an open thread to talk about it.

Journalist, author and TalkLeft pal Dave Cullen, who is writing the definitive book on Columbine, A Lasting Impression: The Definitive Account of Columbine and Its Aftermath (to be published this year) has posted a diary on TalkLeft, The Myth of the School Schooter.

The loner myth has been going on all day. CNN was talking about it all morning--how these shooters all turn out to be outcasts and loners. No, what actually happens is that the media got the loner/outcast narrative down years ago, and always jumps to that conclusion, so the repetition convinces them that it's true. In the Virginia case it's looking like it was true--however, in Columbine, and two-thirds of the other cases, it was a wild misconception.

The larger point is that the media does the public a major disservice by trying to convince us that there is such a thing a particular profile that these shooters fit. They try to fit all these ghastly events into a single personality type that we can be afraid of, but it's just not so.

Go read the whole thing, and I hope you'll click the "recommend diary" button so more people will read it.

Via AdamB, the SCOTUS upheld a federal ban on late term abortions. SCOTUSBlog reports:

Dividing 5-4, the Supreme Court on Wednesday gave a sweeping -- and only barely qualified -- victory to the federal government and to other opponents of abortion, upholding the 2003 law that banned what are often called "partial-birth abortions." Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority in the first-ever decision by the Court to uphold a total ban on a specific abortion procedure -- prompting the dissenters to argue that the Court was walking away from the defense of abortion rights that it had made since the original Roe v. Wade.

. . . Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, speaking out in the courtroom for the dissenters, called the ruling "an alarming decision" that refuses "to take seriously" the Court's 1992 decisions reaffirming most of Roe v. Wade and its 2000 decision in Stenberg v. Carhart striking down a state partial-birth abortion law.

Ginsburg, in a lengthy statement, said "the Court's opinion tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. For the first time since Roe, the Court blesses a prohibition with no exception protecting a woman's health." She said the federal ban "and the Court's defense of it cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this Court -- and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to women's lives. A decision of the character the Court makes today should not have staying power."

Kennedy's vote with the majority; Roberts and ScAlito joined Scalia and Thomas, makes clear that those of us who fought against both the Roberts and Alito nominations were right to expect this from those nominees. Roe and Casey will not survive if this Court gets to decide the issue.