I too saw the Babington AP article. I read through it, curious to see what conclusions he would draw from the Democratic shambles. Here is a snippet that drew my eye:

Also, a new Democratic leadership team overestimated the impact of the Iraq war and the 2006 elections, learning too late they had no tools to force Bush and his allies to compromise on bitterly contested issues.

This is bullshit, of course. It's hard to overestimate the impact of the Iraq war. Many of us are fed up with the Democratically led Congress not because we don't care about the Iraq War, but rather because we do care, rather passionately, and our Democratic "representatives" for the most part don't seem to share this passion. Further, the Democrats did not "[learn] too late they had no tools to force Bush...". They do have the tools. They don't have the desire or guts to use them. This myth that the Democrats are procedurally powerless only serves to give Bush's Democratic enablers cover. Mr. Babington would be well served to read GGs previous column exposing Harry Reid's nefarious doings. But then, he probably approves of the current mess.

If we are to get out of this mess through the electoral process we need to stop making excuses for the Democrats and rid ourselves of the Reids, Harmons, Rockefellers, Feinsteins, etc. They do not represent our interests.

But lets also not forget Senator Feingold, who never has deviated from his principles, starting even before he was the only senator to vote against the Patriot Act. Senator Feingold has made all us Wisconsinites who care about our country proud. The citizens of our country deserve 100 senators Dodd and Feingold representing them. If there were any justice in this world, there would not be just these few senators fighting for the real citizens of this country.

Perhaps we should just start calling the political reporters/pundits of the M$M, Versailles, the Village, etc. what they truly are: Sports Writers. Except that I would hate to impugn sports writers as a class. ;~)

Actually sportswriters generally are more used to being fair. Perhaps it's because their paychecks don't depend on whether the Red Sox or the Yankees win, whereas so many of these Beltway pundits, who are paid in 6 figures, are whores and mercenaries who clearly favor the ruling classes they aspire to belong to.

And if that argument doesn't win you over, Keith Olbermann is an ex sports writer.

To understand the scope of the bias, imagine if you will the NFL covered largely by sports writers all affiliated in one way or another with the Dallas Cowboys, or the MLB by reporters affiliated with the NY Yankees. How would your team get portrayed? This is what is happening now with political coverage. Most of the heavy hitters in the mainstream media now have a stake in the perpetuation of the institutions they cover.

To make matters worse, the FCC has just relaxed media ownership rules, despite broad opposition to such a measure. Now, establishment figures will be able to control yet more of media in any given location. So much for democracy.

Not long ago I remember hearing and reading over and over about how Bush's judicial nominees deserved an "up or down" vote. This was a Republican talking point, and thus repeated verbatim and often by our "liberal" media. I don't hear anyone complaining about the lack of "up or down" votes anymore. Gee, I wonder why?

Patrick Henry: "Give me liberty, or give me Death!"

Mitt Romney:"Our most basic civil liberty is the right to be kept alive."

People ought to be ashamed if they buy into Romney's and the Republican's position. Where is our courage? There can be no other word but cowardice to describe this shameful, contemptible, dishonorable argument.

to disregard international human rights treaties that the US Senate has ratified where said treaties, in his view, "impinge upon the President's constitutional authority"

These clowns are fascinating. They talk about the "President's constitutional authority." But what about the Congress' constitutional authority? What about the Courts' constitutional authority? What about all the limitations explicitly stated within the Constitution? None of that counts, of course!

Imagine if you will Mitt Romney's Constitution: It would look like one of those heavily redacted documents the Pentagon occasionally releases to the public. Article I Section 9 would thus become:

The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall --- be suspended, ------ when ----------------------------- the public Safety may require it.

John of Ventura says:

I am shocked that airline pilots make so little money. everybody in information technology with any experience is making 60-80K$ and noone's life is on the line.

Don't be so sure. I don't know exactly who you mean by "everybody in information technology" but consider who writes the software systems for Airbus, Boeing, etc; who sets up and maintains the ATC system, who programs the radiation treatment machines used for cancer treatment, etc., and you should realize that there are many people writing code for applications that could put people's life on the line in the event of a malfunction. Remember those Patriot Missiles that were supposed to work so spectacularly well? They didn't; and that was at least in part due to a programming error, a seemingly innocent oversight involving the precision of data types and the (mis)use of floating point values. Go ahead and read all about the bug here: http://www.cs.usyd.edu.au/~alum/patriot_bug.html, and see if you even understand it. 28 people died as a result.