I agree with what you say about the behavior of Democrats in the past on the torture issue. I can't help but hold out hope, though, that this time, Sheldon Whitehouse's question on waterboarding has put the Bush administration in a corner. By demanding no less than a statement that waterboarding is torture and therefore unconstitutional, the Democrats put Mukasey in an impossible place. He knows that the Bush administration has made waterboarding quasi-legal through its secret memos, and that those who have engaged in waterboarding have received quasi-immunity. (We all know this). So he can't say it is unconstitutional or illegal without jeopardizing that part of the Bush administration's secret structure. But he also cannot come out and say that waterboarding, which is so obviously a practice of repeatedly simulating the death of the prisoner, is constitutional.

There's nothing Mukasey can say on this. Let's just hope that the Democrats don't back down.

I recommend the baseketball video posted on dailykos (http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/4/17/18552/9905/458/496865) yesterday. It comes not from the news media but from HBO sports. It's not that we should judge Barack Obama by his sports ability. Rather, this piece refutes David Brooks' claim that Obama's bad bowling score shows him to be elitist. If he did a little research, he would know that Obama's sport is basketball, which is not an elitist sport by any means. The basketball piece presents a somewhat tongue-in-cheek argument that Obama's behavior on the court says a lot about his leadership style (e.g., he passes the ball, and doesn't take all the glory, but he can hit it when he wants to). It's not news, nor should it be seen as such. What the basketball video shows, though, is that the focus on bowling is not only absurd as a means for judging a politician's ability, but it is also misleading, since Obama has real skills in a sport that is also non-elitist.

If the Iraq War has any positive outcome, it will be this: the Vietnam myth can now be put to rest. Here we have a war with complete congressional compliance and complete media compliance. And yet the US still cannot "win." That's because, as in Vietnam, the US did not understand whom or why they were fighting.

Meanwhile, the reason many more Vietnamese did not die from the bombing of N. Vietnam is that they had an elaborate system of warning sirens and underground bunkers. In fact, the bombings took place at the same time everyday at some points. I read somewhere that some men died not from direct hits but from feeling the pressure from the bombs in their testicles.

A great work of fiction from the Vietnamese perspective is "Behind the Red Mist," a collection of stories by Ho Anh Thai.

I say: if they want to bring up the Vietnam War, by all means, let's revisit it. Tragically, students barely study it in high school or college these days.

We might want to dispense with the title "the left." "Progressives" doesn't quite cut it either. I would like to have a term that focuses on human rights, civil, political, economic, social, culture. I realize "human rightists" is not smooth-sounding. But a better-sounding term that carries this connotation can unite people around specific values.

Three points:

1. Today "the left" is more likely to protest Prop H8 than the fact that 250,000 will lose their homes to foreclosure this month. I see very little on "lefty" blogs about the foreclosure crisis, and very even less pressure on the govt. from the left to help homeowners. There is more on the local TV news each night about this topic than on the "lefty" blogs. Should we not critique "the left" (ourselves) for not leading protests and advocating for help for mortgage holders? Shouldn't "the left" have a plan for action on this? Credit card debt is another case in point. I've never seen a discussion on 30% interest rates on credit cards. This is shameful. What does the left have to say about it?

2. On the other side, I heard someone yesterday on the "lefty" radio station KPFA demanding that the govt. solve the problem of the auto industry. Contrast Van Jones' "Green Collar Economy" that calls for people to just get working and set up businesses (with help from govt. and private investment). Van Jones will be critiqued by the left for advocating public-private partnerships and not being ideologically pure. But he's the one who is getting things going on this issue.

3. The argument against Lieberman was not focused. he was mostly called disloyal to the democrats. Only a few bloggers and Rachel Maddow focused on his incompetence with Katrina among other things. This should have been the main argument. The dems didn't want to give the impression of being vengeful. But they might have been pushed to punish incompetence, specifically re: Katrina. This point is much more aligned with a "human rights" approach that crosses all class/ethnic/gender lines.

Thanks for reading!