When Democrats were cowering in fear of taking a strong position on virtually anything...Jack Murtha stepped up to the plate and put his very political life on the line. He's done it before, literally putting his life on the line for his country.

This isn't a time for mealy-mouthed people to be in leadership positions. And it isn't a time for self-serving people to be in leadership positions. The very fact that Hoyer would say he's running because the office needs younger leadership is all you need, to know what he's about. The man is 67. Jack Murtha is 74. I don't see a young-man, old-man case here. I see a do-nothing-but-sit-at-the-center-of-comfy-press-briefings choice, versus a give-it-all-you've-got person.

There's a reason EVERYONE knows who Jack Murtha is, but NOBODY knows who Hoyer is. That alone is a good enough reason to put Murtha in a position to let his take-a-stand style do us some good.

I won't even say...he deserves it. He does. But that's not the point. We deserve HIM. He speaks up. And he's right.

As far as the past goes. That was then. This is now. I have a son in Iraq, and his brother has been there too. I am going through my third deployment as a mother, and planning a trip to be with my sons wife when she gives birth to my first grandchild in December...because my son will be in Iraq, fighting George's fiasco, missing the most important event of his life. The war in Iraq has controlled my life for years.

Abscam was an eternity away. Pork-barrel? Find ONE..yes ONE member of congress who isn't at the trough. It's called looking out for your constituents -- bringing home the bacon -- hence pork barrel. And if you don't do it...you don't get elected to national office, where your constituents are supposed to be (in my feebleminded ideology...EVERYONE...the greater good) Unfortunately, the greater good and it's cousin, Everyone, don't cast ballots in every state. So Senators and Representatives have to do what they can for the people who send them to Washington. Don't blame them...blame the system.

Today is my reality. And Murtha is my man. So Abscam me no Abscams. (By the way, he REFUSED the bribe in a sting. And he's being skewered anyway, now. Being Swiftboated has entered new territory.

Is Mark Benjamin campaigning for a job with The Washington Times, or does he already have one? "Condi's October Surprise" is no surprise to anyone who has been watching the scurrying and re-posturing after the November Massacre. Almost immediately, the White House, and the Republican Machine began separating Rice from "those guys", by hammering on a talking point that put her firmly behind this newly discovered "study group".

Benjamin reinforces again and again that Rice was doing an end run, going to Bush, trying to do the right thing. A year ago! All this on just the word of a bunch of Republicans scurrying to shore up '08, and seeing Rice as their best bet now that the good old boys have almost all shot themselves in the foot. Except McCain...who can't be trusted now to maintain his previous "do the right thing" stance. He defected to the hawkers, for the sake of politics, but Republicans don't trust him, or want him anymore than Democrats do. However, from a popularity stance, he's got good steam. From a political standpoint, he's not a safe bet for anyone.

So now, in spite of all her war-mongering, Bush supporting, mushroom cloud spouting and ... let's just say it...lying...she's the new Joan of Arc wrapped in Wonder Woman. We are going to see an increasingly agressive movement to paint Rice in a whole new light. I would hope that journalists who purport not to be PR agents would report the facts after they are proven, or report the "alleged" facts with appropriate reportage on the context and background as it "existed", not as it is "wished" or recast. We all know the Bush Republicans have shown a penchant for using "news" as finely positioned propaganda.

The only surprise in seeing this piece on "Condi's October Surprise" was that I saw it here.

Our current state of election dirty tricks has almost reached the intellectual level of fake wrestling. As the recipient of a flurry of Pennsylvania's Kurt Weldon calls, including one in which I was co-opted involuntarily into a "conference call" with the desperate Representative, from which I was unable to disengage my phone line...I know the "annoyance" of these tactics.

It's the insidiousness of them, however that leaves me terminally discouraged about the state of politics in America. Coersion and deception in elections is nothing new. For as long as there have been elections, there have been attempts to "rig" them. Unfortunately, in the age of technology, the ability to do far-reaching damage to the elective process is lethal. Using the sleazy, but effective, telemarketing and direct-response techiques, campaigns have made deception a political artform on the level of quick weightloss gimmicks and cheap miracle choppers.

But wait...there's more. By switching voting to systems of record-free, tamper-prone partisan-supplied electronic systems, we've upped the ante, taking it out of the hands of gullible and often intellectually lazy, voters, entirely. Just in case.

If ever there was a domestic issue worth reforming, it is our system of elections, and how they are played out. Gone are the days of armies lining up face-to-face in bright coats to take turns firing. Guerrilla warfare is the modern fighting mode. However, it has no place in the one fight that needs to be thoughtful, truthful, serious and beyond criticism. This newly configured governing body has to take a stand to make elections fair and reasonable, and not the battlefield of fraud and winner-take-all-at-any-cost debacles they have become. For years we have arrogantly stood over the elections of others to assure fairness. It's time to clean our own house.