"They want us to play a role that isn't really our role. Our role is to ask questions and get information."

When Steven Colbert said the same thing a year ago -- something like, "your job is simply to listen to the press secretary, type it out for publication and go home," the WH Press Corpse got offended. But now Wolffe admits Colbert was right.

Honestly, is there any form of performance art less compatible with the very idea of a "hall of fame" than rock 'n' roll? We can't even define it, let alone agree on who belongs and who doesn't. At the very least, nobody should be eligible for the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame unless he's (or she's) been dead for five years AND at least one of this year's top concert bands counts him as an influence. That would make for a small Hall and leave more room for the museum, which according to Jonathan is the fun part anyway.

Maybe the MSM chastises liberal vulgarians and not LGF vulgarians (whatever happened to Freepers, by the way?) because the MSM reporters share basic values with the liberals. This is not to endorse the "liberal media" trope -- it isn't about the political spectrum, it's about culture.

I have a firm picture in my head of liberal bloggers and their commenters as thoughtful herbivores. They've been to college, they care about whether their writings make sense. Some might be real assholes but you'd be surprised to find one accused of vandalism or date rape. Right Wing blogs have some such people, too, of course, but my mental picture of a Freeper or, apparently, LGFer is a pimply teenager venting on the blog comments because he keeps getting a busy signal at talk radio stations. They're disproportionately male, nervous about women and gays, and even if they lack the stomach for full strength Rush or O'Reilly they lap up the watered-down version offered up by classic-rock disk jockeys (like Chicago's WLUP). In a word, creeps.

If that's how a reporter, say Howard Kurtz, sees it, then he might well feel ashamed when the vulgarisms he expects on LGF begin to infect liberal blogs. "They should know better," he might say. And that's the attitude in his journalism.

Maybe the Democrats should investigate and bring the Bushies to justice simply to save the Constitution. Maybe even President Romney (ugh) or Giuliani (double ugh) is a price worth paying.

Because to leave the unitary executive theory unchallenged is to hand future Presidents the One Ring to Rule Them All. I prefer not to subject Hillary, Barack, or anyone else to that temptation. After all, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

"If you assume that Americans troops will leave Iraq someday -- and, one way or another, everyone says that they will --"

Everybody says so? Surely not Bush and Cheney and Halliburton. They're building bases for a long occupancy. I'd guess, as long as there's any oil under the sand.

Unless you mean that Bush expects U.S. garrisons to leave Iraq on Judgment Day. They will, I suppose.

Josh Marshall bird-dogged the fired-attorney scandal when the entire MSM was still hypnotized and Hiatt-ized. If Josh were an employee of a powerful newspaper, he'd be a lock for the Pulitzer.

I think the blogosphere should agitate for Josh's Pulitzer anyway. He deserves it.

jfruhlinger and cloudberry --

I know plenty of people who still call it "Friendship Airport," and think "BWI" is already too much of a mouthful.

But, hey -- at least they aren't (yet) selling the naming rights like stadiums do.

The truth is that the outcome of most wars remains in doubt until they are very nearly over. Until late 1864, it looked as though the Union might well lose the Civil War. Within a year, Lincoln had triumphed.

False. It was obvious in late 1862 that the Union would win the Civil War, if the Yankee people continued to believe victory was worth the price. The Emancipation Proclamation, announced in September 1862, nixed the rebels' hope of foreign (British) intervention, added millions of freed slaves to Union manpower, and did not, as was feared by some, provoke mutiny in the border states or among the Army of the Potomac. Lincoln held all the cards.

The issue in August 1864 was not whether the Yankees could win. Sherman was driving on Atlanta, Grant and Lee were locked in a war of attrition that Lee would inevitably lose, the blockade was getting tighter and tighter. It was clear to everyone, north and south, that the Yankees would win unless northern voters became discouraged by the "butcher's bill" and voted Lincoln out of office in November. That fact was central to Confederate tactics, especially Lee's. Killing Yankees, even at a ruinous cost to himself, was his last chance to secure Southern independence.

By late October, Sherman had burned Atlanta, Farragut had taken Mobile Bay, and Sheridan had trounced the rebels in Shenandoah. The voters reelected Lincoln.

That's the point. The voters sustained Lincoln and the war because they believed Lincoln had a clear definition of victory, a sound strategy to achieve it and plenty of evidence that although many men had yet to be killed, that victory would come.

None of those things are true of George Bush.

Apparently Glenn Greenwald and Salon.com readers aren't up on their classic musicals.

From West Side Story:

I feel pretty,

Oh, so pretty,

I feel pretty, and witty, and gay,

And I pity

Any girl who isn't me today.

That is, Eve Fairbanks was deliberately echoing Ann Coulter's famous "faggot" remarks.

Journalists who work in the world Ruled by Drudge really ought to refrain from lamenting the desecration by bloggers of our previously sacred, dignified and elevated political discourse.

On the third reading, I concluded that you're being facetious. First two times I wondered, where did Glenn use to live?