for a balanced, well-written story, a welcome counterpart to Joan Walsh's unnecessary, one-more-time ponderings on sexism and the even more over-the-top letters thread it generated.

Frank Rich's column was the read of the weekend, as was Amy Sullivan's earlier Time article on which he drew. As they point out, much of the noise is coming from Republican-leaning women who crossed over in response to the opportunity of supporting a woman and are now headed back.

The rest, however, comes from women with more alliance to classical feminism than either political party, and an urge to remake the party of their choice in their image. Not surprising this should be resisted by those with a broader view, especially after the ongoing quarter-century disaster that is the American government.

This is the giant troll Salon has been feeding. For the sake of the country, it's time for a new direction. Please, more analysis of this quality, less tolerance of PUMAs, and, please, no more "summer of the sensitive slut."

The first Salon VP speculation that makes any sense. What else has all this self-abasement been about? The guy is seriously ambitious, banking on a win and a one-term (or less) president. He doesn't care about politics, party or anything else.

The only valuable lesson from this debacle is that there are two Democratic Parties, with increasingly little in common.

The Democratic leadership in Congress, particularly Hoyer, Rahm Emmanuel, Jay Rockefeller and other DLCers, sold us out for immunity -- their own, in addition to that of the telecoms -- and for domestic additions to the war funding bill such as increased funding for the unemployed and educational benefits for veterans that they should have been able to pass with a veto-proof majority on their own merit. Failing that, they could have waited until after the next election. That they didn't signals they may be as nervous as the Republicans about what's to come.

They represent one Democratic Party, the party of the Clintons and the DLC. The other is led by Howard Dean, Chris Dodd, Russ Feingold and their allies, and they haven't been shy in criticizing this horror. Obama is their candidate, for better or worse, but don't expect much from him. He's too busy building a "unity" party to win the election. This is where the old saying about politics and sausage comes in.

Abandoning the Democratic Party for tiny, underfunded, inept fringedwellers like the Libertarians and the Greens will only ensure the resurgence of the Republicans. There are many groups devoted to the reform of the Democrats that deserve attention and support. Dean's Democracy For America, MoveOn.org, TrueMajority and Russ Feingold's Progressive Patriot's Fund are all working to elect Democrats that won't barter away or simply desert our Constitutional principles. It's been a hard fight but we've come a long way already. We just have further to go.

It's been predicted since at least 2005 that Bush's worst excesses would come in the last year (we hope) of his presidency. It's happening now, with this and the Iraqi defense and oil "agreements," in the summer, after a major disaster, when the people's attention is elsewhere.

Keep the pressure on, keep working to elect good people and push them to do what's right. Keep weighing the alternatives and come up with new approaches and ideas. Listen to the real leaders instead of agonizing over those who have never represented us. Don't throw your vote away. Make it, and your money, count.

A few more Real Democratic groups:

Perhaps the most outspoken Democratic organization opposing the FISA bill is Democrats.com. This group is unafilliated with the Democratic Party but supports the principles of the DNC and Howard Dean. In the last few weeks they have opposed the FISA bill and the bill to continue funding for the Iraq war, and supported the bills calling for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney. If you agree with most of the posters on this site, they're very much worth a look.

http://www.democrats.com/

Howard and Jim Dean's Democracy For America is http://democracyforamerica.com/

and, among other things, provides professional quality training in political organizing for state and congressional races.

The ACLU, leading the fight against the FISA bill, is http://www.aclu.org/

Russ Feingold's Progressive Patriots Fund, which supports progressive candidates, often running against the so-called Democrats who've enabled this tragedy, is at

http://www.progressivepatriotsfund.com/

TrueMajority, founded by Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry's, is a conceptually revolutionary organization aimed at redirecting American policy toward peace through substantial reforms in the federal budget. Two of their offshoot groups are Americans for Sensible Priorities and Businesspeople For Sensible Priorities. They're at http://www.truemajority.org/

These are just a few well-organzied and grassroots-financed groups who have made a difference already and aren't giving up.

Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont came out forcefully today against the FISA bill. He joins Feingold, Chris Dodd and Tom Harkin of Iowa as the real Democratic leaders. And don't forget Al Gore and John Edwards, who, while no longer in Congress, still have great influence and can be expected to be active in the future.

It's not over. You always hit greater opposition when you're making progress.

For information on the link between the Bush, Saud and bin Laden families, see House of Bush, House of Saud by Craig Unger, The Iron Triangle: Inside the Secret World of the Carlyle Group and The Halliburton Agenda: The Politics of Oil and Money by Dan Briody, both of which deal with Cheney as well, and American Dynasty and American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips. The truth isn't just out there, it's pretty well known. It's all about oil and world domination.