Wasn't he the guy who wrote that fawning piece of crap article just after September 11 that quoted "Democratic insiders" as being glad that Gore hadn't won the election, because now we could have a real man of action." Whatever the winger boys are saying in the bars, that's what Adam says, too. For the gin bottle straight to you.

We're not supposed to have a circular firing squad when we WIN.

No, the Communist Party did not take over the country. Neither did the ghost of Strom Thurmond, or those pre-1994 blue dogs, either -- most of whom went over to the Republicans afterwards anyway, after helping to muck up Clinton's first two years.

Over at MSNBC, the impeachment people are going to town. On liberal talk radio, people just want to go to war crimes tribunals and the like.

Calm down, people. Dean is obviously not a maniac, and a big part of what he did worked. It seems there are a lot of right Democrats who actually buy the notions that the RNC put forward about the loony left and so on. I'll thank you to have a little respect for the other people in your party.

Remember the invincible "values voter"? We got a third of the evangelicals this time. And Webb a right-winger? Have you heard his very pro-worker, pro-economic justice economic ideas?

I think the tragic fact about Carville is that he was once as big a "boy genius" as Rove. Then he got inside DC, and he made that unfortunate marriage, and he's become the kind of insider he would have eviscerated a few years ago. Who's winning that marriage, I wonder?

Harold Ford could raise money that Dean couldn't? Good. Let him work for Dean. Keep Dean off the air, for the most part.

But the establishment should really look at the overall record here. Dean was at the helm for the biggest Democratic victory since the Watergate era.

And where are the biggest wankers? Posting on the TNR website.

The national Democratic Party used to dominate the South one way: they turned their eyes away from segregation -- that Southern Democrats had put in place -- and made sure to send them the New Deal money. In the long term, the idea was that the South would recover from the poverty-stricken status it inherited from the Civil War, and then white and black might reconcile. Well, 1965 was the time. The reward, predictably, was that the South deserted their old party and turned Republican. Meanwhile, having the old shackles taken off, corporations could finally go South, and they did in droves. It was desegregation that started off the South's economic boom.

Now, we should never write off any region of the U.S., and we should definitely keep Dean's 50-state strategy going. But two things are true: we can't pretend we're not the party of John Lewis or the end of segregation, but we have to show some flexibility about our candidates if we want to have the chance of winning. But we also have to make clear that when we become a big tent, we're not betraying basic principles.

An anti-abortion Democrat can't go against the banning of all abortions. But he could work to make abortion safe, legal and rare. Why not? Could a Democrat work to make it easier for unwed mothers, so that economic hardship would never be a reason for an abortion? Could adoption laws be made easier? We can't desert women, and we shouldn't become another anti-abortion party, but we could use some creative thinking.

I've got a few male unfavorites working for Salon, but you're one of my favorites, male or female.

I think sometimes the world has gone mad with language police. Here's the problem, in a nutshell. In legal terms, if you and your betrothed go to City Hall, or a Justice of the Peace, you can get "married" any time. For time immemorial, we've called this "civil marriage," to distinguish it from religious marriage. Same legal basis. In fact, identical, that's the point. If you married in the Catholic Church, you couldn't get a divorce, but the state would give you one, because, well, it would give any citizen a divorce as long as they fulfilled the legal standards of that state, which didn't admit to the Catholic inseperable union. Maybe in Franco's Spain, and I know for sure in Duplessis' Quebec, the Church was allowed to define marriage -- but that fell long ago, because it was, you know, a pain in the ass. Even in Quebec during the Dark Ages, you could get a divorce, but it took an Act of Parliament and it was very expensive.

Anyhow, I think this is the key to defeating this craziness, eventually. Find churches that will bless gay marriage. Then appeal on the basis of religious freedom.

And meanwhile, we can claim back the perfectly good term, civil marriage. It's a marriage, see. Only the couple isn't religious. As a courtesy, when a religion marries you, we give you a blood test and a civil marriage license too. So you're joined, and no man can put you asunder, but I wouldn't take that literally. Judges can. God may hate you, but you're cool with the state.

The worst thing about Beck is that he takes screen time away from Erica Hill, the witty and foxy newsreader. And sometimes he feels as though he must act flirtatious with her, which strikes me as actionable.