But what committees actually serve as are lobby beacons.

They aren't lobby beacons because they're committees. They're lobby beacons because they're there.

If you replaced the Congressional committee structure with something else, the lobbyists would go there instead. Referenda? They wage massive public "FUD" campaigns. A random sampling of nursery schoolers? They show up with a truckload of lollipops. Cutting up a pig and viewing the entrails? They pay off the shaman doing the reading.

there's no real voter control over these sorts of procedural issues.

What difference would voter control make? The control the voters do have, they're not even exercising.

Politicians elected with lots of union votes seldom seem to have any trouble remembering to support labor rights. Gavin Newsom, San Francisco's bumbling airhead mayor, suddenly found conviction and courage when it came to backing gay marriage on behalf of his city's large population of queer registered voters. Bernie Sanders, the socialist Senator from Vermont, doesn't ever seem to forget the left-wing hippies who turn out in droves to send him back every 6 years.

You don't usually hear those groups complaining that their leaders only ever go where the lobbyists tell them to. Somehow, I don't think it's the committees that are to blame.

Isn't it so interesting how the phrase "Patriot Act" was the symbol of everything Democrats claimed to find so heinous during the Bush years, but now that there's a Democratic President, Senate and Congress, it's absolutely certain that the Patriot Act will continue, and civil libertarians are reduced to hoping that there may be some tiny modifications to it, and even that's highly unlikely?

Let's ask this question in a more quantitative way: how many Congressional Democrats risk losing their seats because of their continued support for the Patriot Act and telecom immunity? Which ones are facing real primary challenges?

I ask that in all seriousness. Specter? Anyone else? And is his increasing unpopularity even due in any part to his position on these issues?

These people are all sticking their fingers up in the wind, same as usual. So long as they see no benefit to unraveling the national security state, and potential harm to doing so, why will they ever change the way they vote?

Or put yet another way, as a thought experiment, what would it take to field competitive primary challenges to, say, the 5 most vulnerable Democrats in the Senate running in 2010, and the 50 most vulnerable in the House?

Do I remember right that it's a few million dollars to run a competitive Senate race, and a hundred thousand or so for the House?

So roughly that's about $10 million. Who has that kind of money, and where do we find the talent?

Continuing the thought experiment, suppose that half of the primary runs are successful, and of those 2/3 go on to beat the Republican opponent. That's a pickup of 2 solidly pro-civil liberties Senators, and 20 or so solidly pro-civil liberties Representatives.

That will definitely raise some eyebrows, and it might even instill in the others a more suitable fear of the wrath of their constituents. But it's still just a shift in the plate tectonics as far as Congressional voting patterns go. The real movement comes in 2012, and 2014, as the rest start feeling the heat and/or come around voluntarily as they face extinction.

And that's assuming that the movement can raise another $20 million or so.

That's not a lot of money, in terms of politics, but it's a lot of money to most people. If they're like me, they don't know where to even begin thinking about that kind of fund raising or organizing.

So who does? Who's on this? Where are they? How are they doing? What are they doing?

(Aside from "Mr Greenwald, in the Salon, with the Brickbat." Him we already know about.)

the very creepy pols of today like Palin, Bachman, Broun, Franks, Inhofe, King, Nelson,

I'm not sure what all of those have in common that makes them creepy.

But there is a difference between then and now and this is key. At least for me. ...

The founders expanded the franchise of rights overall. Today's pols have not even attempted to do that, pretty much since the 60s.

Woah.

What about gay rights? Women's rights? Access to capital? Representative democracy within political parties? Ecological rights? The ability of poor people to use eminent domain in their own interest?

And that's not to mention emerging concepts like a right to health care, and animal rights.

[The founders] fell waaaaaaay short. But they set the table.

That's a good way of putting it.

Neiman and others who reassess the Enlightenment believe that the left has given up the fight in a sense.

Well they have certainly given up something, for some reason.

I would say it has more to do with a reflexive refusal to build lasting institutions. Lobbyists, trade unions, and right wing ideologues have vast influence over our political system because they have devoted vast resources to that end for decades. The one group that has not — the progressive left — is also the one group that is perpetually standing around being disappointed all the time.

But you know, that's just a thought. It's still something of a mystery to me.