I go on and on about how to fight the political battle. But in a post, Digby discussed how governance has changed in our country:

It really can't be overstated how Newt's bare knuckle style of politics changed the way things worked in Washington. When it was combined with the big money media operations that finally came to fruition during that era --- Limbaugh, FOX etc. --- any old fashioned notions of political comity went out the window. And it was such a strong series of below the belt punches that it knocked the Democrats to the ground for nearly a decade. (It was providence that the Democratic president at the time was a skilled rope-a-dope fighter who could withstand a relentless rain of blows.)

Indeed, it has been governance as an extension of scorched earth politics and is the single most important reason why today's Republican Party simply is incapable of competent governance.

But let's assume Democrats, in some imaginable miracle, take both houses of Congress, how should they run the Congress? Some thoughts on the other side.

Update: The RSS feed is fixed. It displays the entire post, formatted and with pictures if you access it here or just the basic xml is here

We had problems with the RSS feed yesterday and this morning. It's fixed now, but set to display the first 40 words of entries. Does anyone remember what it used to show? Was it the whole article or just a paragraph or so? Which would you prefer?

If you have any issues with the new site, logging in, commenting or anything else, you can report them here.

Remember first to create a new account with your old (or different, your choice) user name and a password. You should get a screen right back that says "user created." User names must be letters, numerals or spaces.

If you don't see the link to create a new account it is here.

You can set your display preferences to suit you. For example, the number of entries to display on your home page. The ones immediately preceding that will show up in the middle right column under "older entries."

You can also set how you want comments displayed, flat, nested or threaded. I prefer nested. You can reply to a specific comment now, as opposed to the whole thread of comments.

You can also view all your comments, but those written before scoop won't come up under your name until we build a function that allows you to "claim them."

TalkLeft has moved to Scoop. The problems with comments are resolved. Just register once, and you will be set.

I hope you like the new ease of commenting. Once you register, you can post comments. If you want to be able to post diaries, e-mail me and I will consider re-setting your permissions to be able to do so.

TalkLeft should both load faster now and your comments (once you register) should be pretty close to instantaneous. We're on a huge server, and we're the only site on it.

It's taken 40 days and 40 nights and more than a few thousand dollars. Be kind.

If you have problems, e-mail me.

by Last Night in Little Rock

Yet another Republican House member is under investigation--for influence peddling.

AP reports today that Rep. Curt Weldon, R-PA 7, is under federal investigation for seeking lobbying and consulting contracts worth over $1M for his daughter Karen. Weldon's staff denied knowledge of an investigation with an interesting choice of words:

After yet another 20 hours of working on the site migration to Scoop yesterday and today, it looks like it will be early morning before we go live. To tide you over, here's Tom Petty and Eddie Vedder in Denver performing The Waiting (is The Hardest Part.)

Why is this the Last Worthless Evening? Because comments on this site will finally be fixed when TalkLeft launches on Scoop (beta version) tomorrow night. The new server is up and running and loaded. I will be so glad not to have to push comments through by hand every few minutes or hours as I've been doing for the last 45 days and the site will be so much faster. Hope you all like it as much as I do.

In the meantime, enjoy this Don Henley classic....from when he looked really sexy with his long hair. I used to think he was singing just to me. (For those not into guys, the woman in the video is really hot too.)

TChris is off in wine country this weekend (lucky him) and I'm working at my day job and testing the new scoop site in my spare moments. It's also a spectacular fall day and I want to get outside.

So, for those of you with something to say, here's the place.

Some things I would blog about if I had the time today:

• Lenny Bruce would have turned 81 today if still alive.

• Pot guru Ed Rosenthal indicted by the feds again -- after an appeals court threw out his first conviction.

• A British coronor has ruled U.S. forces in Iraq killed British reporter Terry Lloyd in the beginning days of the war.

Ok, it's taken 5 weeks to build a Scoop site for TalkLeft. In case you missed my previous post, here's why in a nutshell: TalkLeft has become too big and cumbersome for Movable Type to process, and the continual rebuilding that goes on in the background has made the site way too slow. I chose Scoop over Wordpress and other systems because I wanted the site to have growing room and to allow more people to post (not just comment). I want the site to load quickly and commenting should be a breeze.

I'm also moving TalkLeft to a new hosting company which specializes in Scoop sites and it will be on it's own dedicated server. If you want to see some other Scoop sites, see Daily Kos or click on those at that link.

The site will look almost exactly like it does now. That's why it took 5 weeks and a few thousand dollars or more (I haven't gotten the final bill yet) to build. It's a modified Scoop site. My hosting costs are going to increase by more than $200 a month. I'm looking at the cost as a long-term investment in the site.

I hope you all like it and find it easier to use.

[George Harrison and Eric Claption, Live In Japan - 1991]

October 15, the last date for filing tax returns, is right around the corner. My accountant says tomorrow is my due date, so I'll be buried in paper until the wee hours.

For those of you smart enough to have filed on April 15, here's an open thread.

Update: It's 11:05 pm and I just found my accountant's "tax organizer" that I have to fill out by tomorrow. It was buried at the bottom of the 10th moving box I just unpacked. I hope this isn't an all-nighter, but it's looking that way. On the bright side, what did people do before Quicken?

I've had four wonderful days in Manhattan, with the TL kid and great colleagues, being treated, as usual, like royalty by Lexis.com. I haven't read a newspaper, seen a television show, listened to a radio or blogged. A huge thanks to TChris and Big Tent Democrat for all their great posts.

I'm on the way to the airport (blogging this from my laptop's WWAN) and will be back to regular blogging tonight.

In the meantime, here's one more open thread.