Glenn, shouldn't you be using anesthetic when you do this?

I think we need to come up with some jargon or terminology that helps us on this topic. A big reason they feel justified with this kind of argument is that it is very easy to equate a block such as TPM or Altercation or Glenn Greenwald or the Daily Howler with the obnoxious and truly irresponsible blog poster that are trying to be the new Drudge by being even more outrageous than he is. They're all "blogs" aren't they? For the clueless swing voter, that's all they need to know and you can bet that Karl Rove knows that.

I never like the word "blog" to begin with, but we need a new name for this institution here. I'm at a loss for what that could be but if someone invented something that sticks that would be the single biggest contribution to the online progressive cause since it started.

What would it take for congress to recover its oversight authority? Do we need to clean out about 65% of the Democrats and replace them with individuals who are willing to take political risks to advance the cause?

If I had been there, I would de-fund the FBI, de-fund the VP Office (too late for that now), freeze all promotions at the pentagon, hold witnesses in the cloak room indefinitely under guard, and remove 10 AGs in a row in 7 days if that is what it takes for them to answer simple questions. Or at least even take the fifth.

I suppose it is a good thing that you can ignore a congressional summons with impunity. We don't want to live in a totalitarian state after all, but I don't think the same rules apply to you and me as they do to someone who has something on Bush or Cheney.

We can hope but I wouldn't expect any free-market true believer to shut up anytime, now or later. From their point of view the free market is working -- what you see is a correction that punishes those that made bad choices and rewards those that made good choices. There are no "innocents" and those getting hurt right now is just more evidence about how free markets work. If only the government would stay out of it the bad-choice makers would eventually die out and the market would "correct" itself.

I hear this kind of thing a lot. Can you tell?

What they never get is that the people with economic power will always trade for their own short term gain in exchange for your long-term loss if they have a chance. Sure there will be some ex-billionares and ex-millionaires to be made out of all this, but by and large those who are really responsible for this are high and dry, secure with their trust funds and off-shore accounts that might be a fraction of what they could have made in a few more years but more than enough to support themselves in comfort and country-club privilege for the rest of their days.

Oh, and you can be sure that a big percentage of those voting for McCain this November will be doing so because they represent "personal responsibility." Now how can you argue with that.

Just what it is that Malkin, Kristol, or anyone at NRO or WSJ editorial or any of the rest of them think when the read one of these columns? You know they do. Glenn's inbox must be more priceless than a DC call girl's.

At some point in our evolution, instinctive tribal protection was a necessary survival skill. There is "us" and "them" and that's all you need to know in order to decide whom to attack and whom to defend. Even ants can do it.

Writing right-wing blog entries is a behavior arguably of a higher-order organism, but the motivation behind it is not.

All news is good for Republicans. No matter what it is.

I think it has to be the case that the Democrats are so pliant precisely because they feel one of their own will be in power come February.

I love GG's column, but I just don't think sarcasm works well here. Anyone else here feel the same way?

I can't remember the last time I read an essay so loaded with scorn. I think I would have to go back to the '70s when there were endless queues of new feminists churning out steaming paragraphs.

Speaking as one of the choir that is preached to, it doesn't bother me. (Far from it I love reading this.) I do, however, have to wonder what net good it would do to put on record something that the so-called "centerists" in the media will use this as ammunition about how unhinged we all are with our "anger," and "hatred." If we are going to do this, we need to follow up with a strategy that deals with the fallout from not the right wing nuts, but the "reasonable" persons of influence that will say this shows that the left is just like the right.