Why? Because they are perfect spokespeople for the rabid right wingers currently in control. People like Rove, Cheney, DeLay or Bush are far too polished to say anything quite so bold about the NY Times, Democrats, or 9/11 widows, although secretly they share their sentiments. But not Coulter or Morgan or their millions of like-minded followers. These nutjobs will readily proclaim that the Times editor should be gassed or that McVeigh should have bombed the Times building instead. Meanwhile, moderates and undecideds get to see the radical right expose its own intolerant, irrational, and hateful underbelly.

So keep blabbing, Annie and Melanie. Love ya both!

getting a bit weary and confused by hearing every single little minute twist or tidbit of speculation/tea leaf reading in this investigation?

Seriously. Fire him now.

No matter how one feels about the war, this kind of bad judgment goes beyond "mere" negligence or incompetence and shows him deliberately choosing political expediency over taking an interest in carrying out the Iraq mission successfully. People often die because of avoidable foolishness like this. If what the general says is true both Republicans and Democrats alike should be appalled enough to push for his resignation.

Although, I have been a staunch opponent of the war from the beginning, I have also believed that the war is probably winnable if the U.S. was willing to commit the human and financial resources to execute it. But after 3 years of muddling along, following Rumsfeld's plan of using 140,000 troops to wage some kind of politically palatable "war–lite," it is abundantly clear to anyone with an open mind that this plan is not going to stabilize Iraq.

So yes, as Tim suggests, let's have the debate. Let’s get serious and either spend the money and send in the troops necessary to do the job for the long haul, as Kristol and Lowry suggest, or leave. Because the only thing the current losing strategy is accomplishing is getting a lot of Americans and Iraqis killed while, as the saying goes, creating a lot more terrorists than we can kill.

At this point I really hope the Dems give up the impeachment dream. If the Dems actually take one or both chambers, it is critical that the Dems try to become something more than the Anti-Bush party. Being the Anti-Bush party may be a short-term way to get elected, and certainly slowing down radical right ideas is and providing oversight is important. But if the Dems would like to remain in power they need to demonstrate that they are capable of both coming up with good ideas to govern the country and spend their time dealing with pressing issues. I dialog and action on Iraq would be a great place to start. Right now, I'd bet that most voters are somewhat uncertain about whether the Dems are up to these tasks.

Everyone else has one.

Certainly, getting control of the House would be a major step towards putting a "check" on some of the executive branch's overreaching powers, and a restoration of "balance" in the Pres's and Congress' radical policy agenda.

But as nice as a House victory would be, it would still not be able to block extremist Scalitoesque court nominees. That power rests in the Senate. Here's hoping the Senate flips too.

I couldn't care less about a candidate's sex life, library records or several other nit-picky personal bits of information. That kind of information is irrelevant to judging a candidate’s qualifications. But that is not the kind of information that the DSCC seeks. The issue here is possible CRIMINAL misconduct perpetrated by a U.S. Senator. In other words, these could be some very, very bad acts that he committed. Or, they could be trivial: we do not know. But even though the incidents happened some thirty years ago and may or not be relevant to a candidate's character today, voter's should still have information about whether or not a candidate has a serious criminal past and be allowed to weigh such information accordingly.

When you are running for the United States Senator, you should expect people to be curious about warrants.

His tactic this weekend was to call voters when they were asleep, start the message with his opponent's (Charlie Brow's) name followed by a long message with "I'm John Doolittle and I support this message" at the very end. The problem is, sleepy voters are so pissed off at being awakened that they hear the "Charlie Brown" part and hang up before getting to the "I'm John Doolittle" part. So, they think the Brown campaign woke them up to push for their votes.

Nice...we’ve got a member of Congress who is doing crank calls to win an election. Doolittle has been doing this kind of crap for years, long before he was elected to Congress or became associated with Abranoff.

Actually, there have been reports of glitches benefiting Dems:

http://www.cqpolitics.com/2006/11/election_day_news_update_324_p.html

Tim?

James Carville just said his source told him that there are 31,000 uncounted absentee ballots from Fairfax county, which is a democratic-leaning county.

http://sbe.virginiainteractive.org/index.htm

--woo-hoo!!!

I doubt Faux news will claim that Florida was essentially tied in 2000.

Tester is only leading by 3600. His lead has been steadily declining.

Yawn.

Why? Because she is a vile, repugnant, chickenhawk mouthpiece who speaks forthrightly about what many or most Righties feel deep down but are too polite or savvy to say. That is why I'm glad Salon occasionally publishes her rants: her hateful diatribes alienate moderates and weaken her causes*.

*Except her number one cause, which of course is selling her books.

Twenty years or so ago, the leaders of the United States, including Donald Rumsfeld, provided weapons to Saddam Hussein to kill Iranians in a proxy war. And now we are accusing the Iranian leaders of doing the same thing by providing Iraqis with weapons to kill Americans in a proxy war.

What comes around goes around.