The Take Back America Conference begins today. These events will be streaming live.

MONDAY, JUNE 18th

Progressive Senators Town Hall: 8:00-9:30 PM ET
TUESDAY, JUNE 19th

Sen. Mike Gravel: 8:30-9:00 AM ET
Gov. Bill Richardson: 9:00-9:30 AM ET
Sen. Barack Obama: 12:00-12:30 PM ET
Sen. John Edwards: 12:30-1:00 PM ET
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 20th

Sen. Hillary Clinton: 8:00-8:30 AM ET
Rep. Dennis Kucinich: 8:30-9:00 AM ET

If you can't watch live, there will be video on demand for later viewing. The Firedoglake crew is there, so check in with them and other blogs for first-hand reports

Update: Oliver Willis is in attendance and so far, less than overwhelmed.

The White House has been straight out lying about the US Attorney Purge. As Steve Benen points out, just yesterday, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow lied about the lying:

Q: Okay, but at the beginning of this story, the President, you, Dan Bartlett, others said on camera that politics was not involved, this was performance-based. MR. SNOW: That is something -- we have never said that.

Of course, Tony Snow himself said exactly that:

"[W]hat the President has -- the Department of Justice has made recommendations, they've been approved. And it's pretty clear that these things are based on performance and not on sort of attempts to do political retaliation, if you will."

Was the Media always so ho hum about being lied to by the White House? Why no. Of course when President Clinton's White House did not give the Beltway Gasbags the answers they wanted, it was a Constitutional Crisis:

The Beltway Pundits think they are moderate by virtue of being Beltway Pundits. Joe Klein is one example. Tim Russert is another:

Hannity: I think the Democrats have gone further left than anybody would have anticipated. I think these bloggers have really gotten to them. I think they’re really positioning themselves that they’re gonna have a very difficult time moving center. Do you see that?”

Russert: Absolutely…

The view expressed by Russert is extreme. I could argue that just by virtue of agreeing with Hannity Russert's is an extreme view but instead I'll cite a poll:

In his podcast with Ana Marie Cox, Joe Klein said he does not believe the polls on Iraq. I believe him when he says that. He claims to be a Moderate on Iraq and in order to do that he must disbelieve the polls:

"In your opinion, should the United States withdraw troops from Iraq right away, or should the U.S. begin bringing troops home within the next year, or should troops stay in Iraq for as long as it takes to win the war?"
Withdraw Imm. -- Withdraw W/in Year -- Stay

%25 ------------------- 43 -----------------------26

Joe is with the 26%, as he makes clear in his wish list for the next Presidential agenda:

David Broder is the Dean of the Washington Press Corps and a leader in the strange musings that pass for thinking inside the Beltway. Consider his hilarious column today and how Broder sees Senator Reid playing with political fire. You see, in Broderland, Democrats will suffer for NOT passing the immigration bill and for fighting too hard against the Iraq War. I kid you not:

All this, from a Senate that had spent most of the past five months battling futilely with President Bush over a timetable for American withdrawal from Iraq -- and that then closed down for three days over last weekend and used Monday for a debate on a purely symbolic vote of no confidence in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

. . . He may be playing with fire. A poll that Andy Kohut completed for the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press four days before the Senate fiasco on the immigration bill found a striking increase in disapproval of Democratic congressional leaders. . . .

Reid may think that Bush will suffer if immigration reform is killed. But the public is likely to put the blame where it principally belongs -- on the leader of the party that runs the Senate.

I hope Democrats can now see that their cocktail party buddies like David Broder are the most clueless, disconnected people on the Earth. Broder thinks the American People wanted the immigration bill and are tired of Democrats trying to end the Iraq War. Please remember this when you worry about being criticized by David Broder.

I put up a Sopranos open thread before the start of Sunday night's finale as I have every week the past two seasons. I was too angry after the show to add my thoughts. I waited until I slept on it and watched it again. My final reaction: Count me among those who are livid.

Like many viewers I've watched every episode of the show. Unlike the most obsessed viewers, I cannot recall all the players in all the episodes in all the seasons. I just enjoyed the show as I watched. It was entertainment. I never saw any greater message in the show, never cross-checked the minor characters with their real actor names to see if they re-appeared in future episodes and didn't analyze the dialog or action searching for clues.

But, at the end of each show I wondered what would happen next. I never expected that the final episode would be one in which nothing happened.

More...

Well, not really. I don't think Klein even knows the sentencing guidelines exist. But he did write this:

Surely, there are cases of perjury where jail is an appropriate penalty--cases where the perjurer let an actual criminal off the hook. . . . If it could have been proven that Libby had knowingly blown the cover of a covert operative, I'd be in favor of hanging by his thumbs. But Fitzgerald was unable to make that case. . . .

Ummm, Joe your beef is with the application of the Sentencing Guidelines and the cross-referencing used when obstruction of justice is involved. And no, I didn't know about this, until I read about it at TalkLeft. Maybe a big time journalist like Klein could talk to somebody that knows about the subject . . . before he spouts.

Joe Klein just asks for it. Now he blathers on the Scooter Libby sentence:

I have a different feeling about Libby. His "perjury" . . .[why in quotes joe? He was convicted of 2 counts of perjury and two counts of obstruction of justice] would never be considered significant enough to reach trial, much less sentencing, much less time in stir if he weren't Dick Cheney's hatchet man.

Joe Klein's basis for this statement? Why nothing but his own imagination. Lying to a grand jury and obstruction of justice are considered serious crimes by every prosecutor I know. They are often prosecuted. See here:

A federal jury yesterday found Allegheny County Sheriff's Capt. Frank Schiralli guilty of perjury for telling a grand jury that he never kept lists of deputies who bought tickets to fund-raisers for Sheriff Pete DeFazio. . . . The two-week trial was the first to develop out of a federal investigation of macing, abuse of power and other illegal activity in DeFazio's office, a probe that began in January.

And here:

He never fails to live down to my expectations. David Broder can be counted on to repeat the false GOP talking point, this time on Scooter Libby's obstruction of justice:

Like other special prosecutors before him, Fitzgerald got caught up in the excitement of the case and pursued Libby relentlessly, well beyond the time that was reasonable. Nonetheless, on the fundamental point, Walton and Fitzgerald have it right. Libby let his loyalty to his boss and to the administration cloud his judgment -- and perhaps his memory -- in denying that he was part of the effort to discredit the Wilson pair. Lying to a grand jury is serious business, especially when it is done by a person occupying a high government position where the public trust is at stake.

Earth to David Broder. Obstruction of justice blocks the investigation of the underlying crime. Libby's perjury was part of obstructing Fitzgerald's investigation of the underlying crime. We will not know if there was an "underlying crime" (Broder's phrase for knowingly disclosing the identity of a covert intelligence officer in violation of the IIPA) BECAUSE of Libby's obstruction. The man is pure and simple, an idiot, not very bright. He is appropriately, the Dean of the Washington Press Corps. What an indictment of the Washington Press Corps.

As a service for Joe Klein to enable him to better understand the "extremism" of the Left blogs in their critique of the Media, I will be periodically pointing out instances where the Media "reporting" and "analysis" is fact free. In today's edition, I point to ABC's Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous and the Washington Post's Dan Balz. Balz writes:

The collapse of comprehensive immigration revision in the Senate last night represents a political defeat for President Bush, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) . . .The defeat of the legislation can be laid at the doorstep of opponents on the right and left, on congressional leaders who couldn't move their troops . . .

As reported by Kevin Drum, Gibson and Stephanopolous said:

Their conclusion? It was killed by extremists on both sides: liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans overwhelmed the centrists.

The facts? Not present in the reporting. As Kevin Drum wrote:

Paul Krugman writes:

In Tuesday’s Republican presidential debate, Mitt Romney completely misrepresented how we ended up in Iraq. Later, Mike Huckabee mistakenly claimed that it was Ronald Reagan’s birthday. Guess which remark The Washington Post identified as the “gaffe of the night”? Folks, this is serious. If early campaign reporting is any guide, the bad media habits that helped install the worst president ever in the White House haven’t changed a bit.
. . . Asked whether we should have invaded Iraq, Mr. Romney said that war could only have been avoided if Saddam “had opened up his country to I.A.E.A. inspectors, and they’d come in and they’d found that there were no weapons of mass destruction.” He dismissed this as an “unreasonable hypothetical.” Except that Saddam did, in fact, allow inspectors in. Remember Hans Blix? . . .Mr. Romney’s remark should have been the central story in news reports about Tuesday’s debate. But it wasn’t.

I disagree with Krugman in this respect. Rudy Giuliani's false remarks about Iran should have been the central story:

Funniest headline of the day considering the columnist - Candidates Lacking A Real World Clue. David Broder claims the mantle of "reality based." And he writes this:

The dynamic on both sides is trending toward extreme positions that would open the door to an independent or third-party challenge in 2008 aimed at the millions of voters in the center.

Heh. As for Broder's discussion of issues like Iraq, etc., well, we know how silly he is on that. But the headline was good for a chuckle.