(Guest Post from Big Tent Democrat)

Tom Maguire is selling black helicopters on GOP Predatorgate:

Color me skeptical. Maybe the blog author was an unwitting catspaw, but I would want some assurance that this was not simply a successful attempt to promote a story that wasn't quite ready for the Mainstream Media by laundering it through some blogs (and wasn't that Matt Drudge's ecological niche, back in the day?).

Actually, color you a GOP sycophant who has gone around the bend. But tinfoil has always been largely the province of the Right, 9/11/Diebolders notwithstanding. It penetrates the Right's "mainstream" so readily. Remember Clinton's cocaine ring? Vince Foster's murder? Those stories ended up on the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page. I guess Maguire is gunning for a slot.

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

Howard Dean is a controversial figure in our Democratic Party. I did not support his Presidential run - I think he was and would be a flawed Presidential candidate. I did support his run for DNC Chairman, I thought he could bring an energy and a grassroots following to our Party, which was sorely in need of it.

But I think Dean has brought a vision that is as valuable as that energy - and that vision is described thusly in Matt Bai's NYTimes Sunday Magazine piece:

the Democratic Party needed to be decentralized, so that grass-roots Democrats built relationships with their state parties but had little to do with Washington at all. "State parties are not the intermediaries," he said. "If I get them trained right, they're the principals."

In other words, I suggested, he was talking about "devolving" the national Democratic Party, in the same way that Reagan and other conservative ideologues had always talked about devolving the federal government and returning power to the states. "That's what I want to do," Dean said firmly.

Matt Bai misinterpets this vision as an attack on the national party structure - an attempt to "starve the beast" to irrelevance, Bai called it. I think it is quite the opposite. It is an attempt to renew the relevance of the Democratic Party as a whole, which is much more than the DNC headquarters in Washington, D.C., indeed the heart and soul of the Party is the millions of Democrats across the nation - our Big Tent. Let me explain why I think Dean's vision is the right one on the flip.

An op-ed at USA Today revisits the bloggers' lunch with Bill Clinton, suggesting that Hillary may be using Bill as a blog Ambassador and positing three options for Hillary vis a vis blogs: Ignore them, attack them or co-opt them.

It's not that simple. The first and second suggested options would be fruitless. The third is not possible. Politicans as astute as the Clintons surely know this.

Is it so hard for non-bloggers to believe that commencing a dialogue between politicans and bloggers is a worthwhile endeavor? Talk to us, bring us into the fold, let us know your values and your beliefs. We'll listen. We may or may not agree, but we'll appreciate the overture and respond. Now, is that so hard to fathom?

Update: The author's full article, before being edited and shortened by USA Today is here.

What is it with members of Congress that they think entering alcohol rehab is an appropriate response to whatever misdeeds they are accused of? Mark Foley is the latest:

Foley has said nothing since announcing his resignation. Yesterday, a statement purportedly sent by Foley to news organizations, including The Washington Post, said he has entered an alcohol-treatment facility in Florida.

Republicans continue to justify their inaction:

Republican leaders continued to insist yesterday that it was understandable that the "over-friendly" Internet e-mails they had seen did not set off alarm bells. But one House GOP leadership aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing his job, conceded that Republicans had erred in not notifying the three-member, bipartisan panel that oversees the page system. Instead, they left it to the panel chairman, Rep. John M. Shimkus (R-Ill.), to confront Foley.

Also yesterday, a former House page said that at a 2003 page reunion, he saw sexually suggestive e-mails Foley had sent to another former page. Patrick McDonald, 21, now a senior at Ohio State University, said he eventually learned of "three or four" pages from his 2001-2002 class who were sent such messages.

He said he remembered saying at the reunion, "If this gets out, it will destroy him."

Can anyone think of a pot-smoker who blamed pot for inappropriate sexual contact with juveniles? I can't.

Yom Kippur begins at sunset -- an hour or so from now, Denver Time. Arianna gets a head start with a list of people who most need to atone. Chief among them: George Allen, Mark Foley and congressional Republicans and Democrats who voted for the torture/denial of habeas bill.

This has me laughing out loud. Newt Gingrich on Fox News Sunday, via Media Matters, which also has the video.

Discussing the recent resignation of former Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) with host Chris Wallace on the October 1 edition of Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday, Fox News political analyst and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) claimed that House Republicans would have "been accused of gay bashing" if they had "overly aggressively reacted" to Foley's allegedly inappropriate email communications with a 16-year-old male congressional page when House Republicans reportedly first learned of Foley's actions in late 2005.

.....Wallace then asked: "How would it have been gay bashing?" Gingrich replied: "Because it was a male-male relationship," adding that "there was no proof" that Foley was a "predatory person."

The issue isn't the male-male nature of the contacts, it's the age of his victims, his sexual harassment of them while they worked for him and the fact that Republicans left him in a leadership role on committees addressing sexual misconduct of youth after they knew about it.

Update: Another laugh out loud: Wonkette's "strip down and relax" post.

Via the Washington Post:

ON WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 2004, eight days after the president he served was elected to a second term, Secretary of State Colin Powell received a telephone call from the White House at his State Department office. The caller was not President Bush but Chief of Staff Andrew Card, and he got right to the point.

"The president would like to make a change," Card said, using a time-honored formulation that avoided the words "resign" or "fire." He noted briskly that there had been some discussion of having Powell remain until after Iraqi elections scheduled for the end of January, but that the president had decided to take care of all Cabinet changes sooner rather than later. Bush wanted Powell's resignation letter dated two days hence, on Friday, November 12, Card said, although the White House expected him to stay at the State Department until his successor was confirmed by the Senate.

The source: Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell, being published October 10 by Knopf.

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat

Mark Halperin, of ABC's The Note fame, actually seems to get it better than just about all Democrats, until he proves he is just as stupid, or cowardly:

[M]any . . . believe that the Republicans' strategy of fighting from the base has worn out its welcome. Therefore, this view holds, a campaign that appeals to moderates, one waged from the center, is the only way for the party to maintain control of the House and Senate. Interesting theory, but it probably won't work. If the Republicans want to keep their majorities in the midterm elections, their best chance is to stick with the old, base-driven Bush-Rove electoral strategy.

Why? In the eyes of the Bush team, America is a polarized country, one where there are fundamental divisions worth fighting over. A president -- and a party -- should not worry about slender margins of victory or legislative control. The goal is to accumulate just enough power to use the energies and passions of the base to effect ideological change in the nation's laws and institutions, even if -- sometimes especially if -- those changes might be at odds with majority public opinion.

Broder? You listening? Democrats, you listening? More stuff to listen to on the flip.

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

Here's another reason to take the rogue Dems to task. Look what they have wrought:

Mr. Bush must bear responsibility for his cynical pursuit of the wrong answer, but he could not have prevailed without a lot of help. Republicans in both chambers, forgetting that Congress is supposed to be an independent branch, snapped to attention when the president told them what to do. At least some of them obviously knew better. Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) courageously championed an amendment to restore the judicial oversight that Mr. Bush opposed. When his amendment failed on a 51 to 48 vote, the senator said he would vote against the bill, calling it "patently unconstitutional on its face." Then he voted for it. The bill, he explained, had good points, and the courts "will clean it up."

Democrats hoped that they could duck behind Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and two other Republicans who for a time fought a lonely fight for a better bill. When the three renegades settled for very little, the Democrats were left exposed, and it wasn't pretty. Nearly all of them voted for Mr. Specter's amendment, yet 12 -- including Joe Lieberman (Conn.) and three other senators facing reelection -- voted for the bill afterward. The rest contented themselves by voting no but did not lift a finger to slow it down or stop it.

. . . Mr. Bush's pressure tactics worked again. He has the lamentable legislation he wanted -- which will bring discredit onto this country in any number of ways -- and Republicans are busily blasting Democrats as terrorist-coddlers anyway.

Sad but true. And it hurts. Morally and politically.

by TChris

We've heard the rhetoric before. Republicans are repackaging their "tough on crime" speeches as "tough on terror" and complaining that anyone who stands in the way of increasing executive power at the expense of individual rights is "coddling" -- criminals or terrorists, your pick.

And so we have Dennis Hastert saying:

"Democrat Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and 159 of her Democrat colleagues voted today in favor of more rights for terrorists," Hastert said in a statement. "So the same terrorists who plan to harm innocent Americans and their freedom worldwide would be coddled, if we followed the Democrat plan."

The "Democratic plan" is simply to expect the government to obey existing laws rather than brushing them aside with a quick legislative assist, but what is truly offensive and disingenuous about Hastert's attack is the assumption that Democrats want to "coddle terrorists" rather than "protect the innocent." It is astonishing that the GOP, so long distrustful of the ability of government to make decisions wisely, is now populated with members who are certain that the executive branch will never err in taking custody of a suspected terrorist. The rights that protect against a wrongful conviction -- freedom from tortured confessions and a ban against the inherently unreliable evidence that coercion produces, confrontation of witnesses, discovery of evidence, judicial review and more -- can be safely withheld because of ... presidential infallibility?

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

What a sad spectacle is David Broder. He has spent the last few weeks making a fool of himself - lionizing the Mealymouthed McCain, who promptly exposed Broder's foolishness by rubberstamping the Bush atrocities. In search of new "independent" heroes, necessary to avoid having to face his stupidity, this petulant, childish, stubbornly foolish Beltway buffoon traveled to California to worship at the feet of Arnold Schwarzennegger. But a funny thing happened on the way to "independence" - Broder endorsed the Democratic agenda:

Instead of the partisan assault on public employee unions and Democratic legislators (a.k.a. "girlie men") that marked his rhetoric in 2005, Schwarzenegger has negotiated agreements this year on a minimum-wage increase, higher school spending, curbing air pollution and a mega-bond sale designed to meet overdue highway, flood-control and school-construction needs.

. . . More important, his current political posture mirrors the makeup of this complex state, where the only growing political group consists of those who decline to state a party preference and where myriad competing racial, ethnic and geographic forces require political leadership with dexterity and flexibility.

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

Barack Obama quoted Justice Brandeis:

Do you worry that people are piling too many expectations and hopes on you? Some people seem to say, "OK, there is an easy answer, it's Barack Obama."

I go back to the quote from the speech I just gave: Justice [Louis] Brandeis saying that "the most important office in a democracy is that of citizen." I come from a community-organizing background and a civil-rights background. I always believe that ultimately, if people are paying attention, then we get good government and good leadership. And when we get lazy, as a democracy and civically start taking shortcuts, then it results in bad government and politics.

Amen. More on the other side.