As I always I speak only for me

Atrios is as smart as a whip and much more progressive than me, a dirty corporation defending lawyer. He, along with the other 800 pound Left Blog gorilla, Markos, has not an ounce of corruption in them. Indeed, I have been an arse in defending them from scurrilous charges in the past. But he is missing the point in this piece:

[W]e're having another round of "my opinions are pure yours are somehow corrupted" in the blogosphere. I don't claim to be right about everything, but the fact that I disagree with you doesn't necessarily involve some grand conspiracy.

This is about the Iraq supplemental. I strongly disagreed with the position taken by Atrios, MYDD, Sirota and others because I believe they are wrong. But also because, for the most part, their arguments (excepting Sirota's) were largely based on hometeamism, support the Dem leadership rationales. This is a form of cooptation. Not corruption.

The usually very good NYTimes Editorial page is very bad today on the Iraq supplemental funding bill. The basic problem is it is wrong on all the facts. The Times said:

The benchmarks spelled out in this legislation . . . require that the Iraqi government stop shielding and encouraging the Shiite militias that are helping drive the killing. . .

No it does not. The President "decides" if the Iraqis are making progress. Any doubt on what he will think?

I've been absent a lot the past few days because I've been working on my cases in the morning so I could attend and live-blog the jury selection and opening arguments of the Joseph Nacchio insider trading trial that began this week in Denver. A big thanks to Big Tent Democrat and TChris for posting in my absence.

A few things I learned from the Nacchio trial: I'm clueless about stock trading. I don't know a recurring revenue from a one-timer, a publicly stated financial target from a growth target, a sale of stock from a sale of a stock option. Nor do I want to.

I'll take kilos of pot, the legalities of wiretapping, how to cook powder coke into crack or whether lies amount to obstruction of justice any day of the week over this stuff. It's a good thing I'm not on the Nacchio jury. The learning curve would be way too steep.

Anyway, I'm done live-blogging Nacchio until the cooperating witnesses testify. That's the juicy part to me. Did they agree to tell the Government's truth in exchange for promises of leniency for their own misdeeds?

The highlight of the day for me was getting to talk to our relatively new U.S. Attorney Troy Eid in the elevator.

More...

As always I speak for me only and kudos to Bob Fertik for speaking the truth

Chris Bowers continues the MYDD approach of arguing by assertion the DC Dem Establishment position, while, to his credit, NOW acknowledging that he is not arguing the PROGRESSIVE position:

At this point, there are very few Republicans who will vote in favor. From what I hear, there are also currently more Progressives opposed to the bill than there are Blue Dogs. Given this, the politics of the supplemental fight, which will continue for some time even after the House votes on this bill, now make it clear that it is extremely important progressives do not join with Republicans in order to defeat this legislation at this time. The simple fact is that if this bill is defeated in the House, then there will be another--weaker--funding bill. . . .

It is ironic that while reporting that THIS bill is in grave danger of not passing, Chris assures us that a WEAKER bill WILL pass. What is he saying here? It is this - the DEMOCRATIC Leadership will accomodate REPUBLICANS before it will accomodate Progressives. What an indictment of the Dem leadership in the House. I could not have said anything more damning than Chris has just done.

From Ken Bazinet:

Some top White House officials think Attorney General Alberto Gonzales somehow survives the flap over his firing eight federal prosecutors. Just hours before stacks of Justice Department documents were going to be distributed to reporters, one senior Bushie predicted Gonzo will make it through the ordeal.

This must mean Rove is not involved in deciding on the issue. Because not getting rid of Gonzo would be the absolutely stupidest political move imaginable. While Dems would love the scandal to be big big big no matter what happens to Gonzo, the truth is that absent him, the size of the scandal in PR terms shrinks immeasurably.

Why? Because the big hook here is the lying to Congress. The big hook here is hearings on Gonzo himself, maybe even impeachment hearings on Gonzo.

Take Gonzo out and what you have is the White House being political. That's not against the law.

So please, please, please, BushCo, FIGHT for Gonzo. Go ahead, make the Dems' day.

A reminder, on all my Iraq defunding posts, indeed all my posts, I speak ONLY for me

One of the most maddening things about the reaction of Move On and much of the Netroots to the disastrous House bill on Iraq funding is the newfound belief that it is now their role to be the "pragmatic conciliators" who need to cut deals.

What delusion. What hubris. A dkos commenter, Eugene, captures what is wrong with this mindset:

You say, at one point:

Just the numbers aren't on the side of those who wish to end the war.

That's your problem right there. You see that as a conclusion instead of as a starting point. You see it as an answer, not a question.

That the votes aren't there right now is not relevant to the conversation. What matters is how we get those votes. How do we twist arms to make these "Democrats" who have sabotaged even a proviso to stop an attack on Iran come around and change their minds?

In December 2005, I engaged in an interesting discussion with Dan Solove of the very good law blog Concurring Opinions on the nature of the blogosphere Left and Right. I took issue with this assertion from Solove:

. . . [T]he conservative blogosphere is much better integrated in its intellectual and activist dimensions. For example, the conservative political blogosphere seems much more deeply connected to the legal blogosphere, where political bloggers seem to more routinely tap into the expertise of law professors about various legal issues. Indeed, many of the prominent political bloggers in the conservative blogosphere are academics; fewer of the liberals are. This strikes me as representative of a larger difference between the Left and Right. The Left must better connect its intellectual and activist sides.

This struck me, and still does, as extremely naive about the nature of the so called "intellectual" side of the Right, which is nothing if not activist and highly partisan. Solove fundamentally failed to grasp this basic point at first, though he came to concede a fair bit of it in comments.

The L.A. Times gives credit where credit is due: to Josh Marshall's Talking Points and TPM Muckraker for besting the mainstream media on the coverage of the U.S. Attorney firings.

In a third-floor Flower District walkup with bare wooden floors, plain white walls and an excitable toy poodle named Simon, six guys dressed mainly in T-shirts and jeans sit all day in front of computer screens at desks arranged around the oblong room's perimeter, pecking away at their keyboards and, bit by bit, at the media establishment.

The world headquarters of TPM Media is pretty much like any small newsroom, anywhere, except for the shirts. And the dog. And the quiet. Most newsrooms are notably noisy places, full of shrill phones and quacking reporters. Here there is mainly quiet, except for the clacking keyboards.

It's 20 or so blocks up town to the heart of the media establishment, the midtown towers that house the big newspaper, magazine and book publishers. And yet it was here in a neighborhood of bodegas and floral wholesalers that, over the last two months, one of the biggest news stories in the country -- the Bush administration's firing of a group of U.S. attorneys -- was pieced together by the reporters of the blog Talking Points Memo.

[hat tip Kevin Drum]

There are other things going on in the world besides the fired prosecutors. With all the Gonzales news yesterday, I forgot to do the Tuesday open thread. So here it is one day late.

All topics welcome. Keep it civil, and don't forget urls have to be in html format because the long ones skew the site. Use the link button at the top of the comment box or follow the instructions at the bottom of the comment page.

To hear some in the "Netroots" (Update [2007-3-13 13:6:21 by Big Tent Democrat]: A good point from Kos to me, Stoller is not the "Netroots" - though I think Stoller is a big part of the "Netroots") tell it, defunding the Iraq Debacle by the Dem Congress is pipe dream crazy talk. Here is Matt Stoller:

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 . . .

For Stoller, defunding can not be done. At least not by Democrats. For Stoller, it takes REPUBLICANS to defund:

There's only one endgame for Iraq, and that's to force Republicans in Congress to recognize that it's their [behinds] on the line.

From Greg Sargent:

. . . Though the bill mandates withdrawal by Fall 2008 at the latest, it's going to be at least partly a disappointment to some House liberals. That's because language that was in earlier drafts that would have clipped funding after the deadline -- as opposed to merely declaring the war illegal -- has been taken out. House leaders will argue that the bill does do its job, because it declares the war illegal beyond a certain date. But liberal House sources say this removed language was critical in ending the war in practice, because it would enforce the war's end with the power of the purse rather than requiring a trip to court in hopes that judges will end the war.

Remember the Kosovo case Kucinich brought? A court case to end a war? Just pathetic. Let's see Matt Stoller and Chris Bowers sell this one.

This is simply horrible. Just horrible.

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.