Glenn: When I read your posts, I often think "Hey, you're Glenn Greenwald, with Salon, former constitutional lawyer, clear progressive," etc. etc. and, to state the obvious, it's hard to not want to look at your opinions in a meta way, all the time, and to try to engage personally with what you are writing. Because this pragmatism v. idealism post you wrote seems to be all about you...your mission as a blogger. So forgive this foray into the personal:

To me, you represent conscience and vision. Like Ralph Nader, or Cynthia McKinney. Not to say you align with their beliefs exactly, but you represent what SHOULD more than what CAN be done. Nader said recently that the importance of and justification for smaller political parties can be explained by the sparsely populated abolitionist parties that sprouted decades prior to Lincoln. These parties remained relevant, served as reminders and eventually prevailed. You, like them, represent ideology to me.

But here's where your argument breaks down for me. Someone can have an ideology rooted in pragmatism, can they not? For example, my friend voted for Ralph Nader in the past election. But she lives in reliably blue Maryland. Idealistic, with a hint of the pragmatic. Had she voted for Nader in Virginia, I'd have called her out on it. But in Maryland, I was all for it...hell I'd have done the same thing. We can have idealogy but keep our pants legs in pragmatism, can't we. Because if we didn't, I don't know how Obama would have won? Yes, he's a technocrat, corporate, establishment Democrat. And while he ran on few progressive ideals, his promises to end the war, close G'tmo, and his background as a community organizer appealed to progressives and represented, given the state we were in, PROGRESS. I noticed your wary tone after Obama won. But even though your posts after Nov. 5 weren't ecstatic, or off-the-hook (more wary, and relieved at end-of-Bush) I can't help bu think you celebrated giddily somewhere in your idealist heart. Am I wrong? Help me understand. Because I am not arguing to argue, I'm arguing to understand. I don't know how we make progress without pragmatism?

Thanks for reading.

P.S. Agreed on a previous posters' plea to fix the 10-comment per page thing.

Man, what a foul display of idolatry -- that NYT's piece should never have been written as it was. There is something about a new administration that makes editors want to print "optimistic" stories that are really just willfully blind puff pieces written to ride a wave of manufactured optimism. When Schmitt mentions iran-contra in that excerpt you provided, he fails to mention its ILLEGALITY, as if it was just a position Cheney took on an issue.

In the next two months, we can expect swooning from news editors because, they believe (abstractly) that American people so desperately want Serious Adults to save them (news editors don't need saving) and we can expect to be emotionally duped by all the adrenaline the push behind Obama. I appreciate your admitting your own puzzlement over how to solve this very complicated financial mess, and applaud you for expressing more-than-warranted distrust of all these incestuous, establishment relationships and the blanket adulation heaped upon them. This is the heart of the problem in governance.

A relief. Keep it up, Glenn.

Thank you, Glenn. Progressives have watched Tom Friedman's mass duping of malleable readers for the last eight years. He is the Bill Kristol of his particular constituency. When you talk about establishment Democrats being the most culpable group in our political class for what's gone on the last 8+ years, you should look to Tom Friedman as their journalistic counterpart. Like Kristol, he goes on television shows having been wrong about virtually everything, and feigns authority and knowingness and revising, revising, revising his cancerous reactionary response to 9/11.

George Packer next, please?

Glenn,

You did what you needed to do. You forced Wyden and Feinstein's staffs to clarify, thereby strengthen, their anti-torture positions and you made yourself (and your influential supporters')visible to them. They know, now, that we are watching.

To seize upon their possible backtracking (whether or not it was there are not, I have a hard time judging but I think politicans should never get benefit of the doubt)is the best thing you and Scherer could possibly have done to ensure it doesn't happen come bill-proposal time.

This is where journalism becomes advocacy, and I am a proponent of that beautiful intersection.

I know you're only human, and there are only so many hours in a day, and I see why you needed to write this follow-up, to address the blog chatter criticizing the NYT omission, and I, as a relatively new reader, am growing to appreciate your follow-through. You really earn your keep here.

You've done your job here...when it comes to torture and hapless Democrats, NOTHING is minor or irrelevant enough to warrant non-attention.

But: You're of great enough importance right now in the blogverse (John Brennan. This.) that I wish you could write posts about more than one topic per day. In case you haven't noticed, your words effect change. I get the importance of this topic, and it should be recurring, but there's so much more to talk about. If you're interested I could send you a wishlist, but my guess is you already have one.

Thanks.

P.S. This is meant as encouragement.

I didn't realize one topic per day was the exception. And I wasn't trying to be a dick, Mr. Ash. It's just a critical time, his blog is on some kind of popularity trajectory (i think) positioned to influence an embryonic administration, as it already has. That's a big picture perspective worth paying attention to.

On an unrelated note: your tone kind of sucks.

Fair enough. Thanks for responding. And yes, the post was meant in a spirit of cheering on.