This is really not news. This has been out there for months waiting to be picked up. It's only news because Brian Ross and ABC decided to make it news. Listeners and viewers of Democracy Now with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales have known about this abridgment of constitutional rights for months. Go check out the May 13, 2008 broadcast where Sgt Adrienne Kinne is interviewed by Amy Goodman. And, oh yes, the Palestine Hotel was deliberately targeted by our military.

It was very convenient and misleading to leave out Nagourney's mention of Bobby Jindal, republican governor of Louisiana. He is a rising star in the GOP firmament, and we should track his movement. He is smart, young and ethnic -- which should appeal to the new demographics -- and shrewd. He can avoid answering questions with finesse -- such that Sarah pales in comparison. So keep an eye on him.

Second point:

In the grand sweep of things, it is really not ideology that provides the rudder to guiding the course of the ship of political parties, it is their constituency or whom the party serves. The ideology serves the needs of their constituents; and when there is a coalition of several constituents, it is very easy to develop mixed messages and straight out contradictions. For example, it is in the country-clubber Republican's interest to appeal to small government and deregulation because that benefits their business interest. On the other hand, carrying out the religious right's agenda demands a larger more authoritarian government and more regulation. Same party. Same coalition. Different ideologies and messages.

The business wing of the GOP has owned the party since the times of Mark Hanna of 1896 if not earlier. The religious right is a much later grafting since Reagan and Ralph Reed / Jerry Falwell. Until their arrival, the Dems had enjoyed a grass root organizing advantage while the GOP enjoyed better financing. The religious right provided both populism and grass root activism which countered the union and door-to-door activism of the Democrats, but Democrats always were at a financial corporate-donor disadvantage -- except during Clinton's second campaign when he enjoyed the spoils of incumbency. A new financing model involving grass roots on the Internet forged by Joe Trippi and Howard Dean and brought to fruition with the Obama/Plouffe/Axelrod campaign has brought the two factors together with marvelous synergy. It remains to be seen whether the coalition of gun owners, the religious right, and Wall Streeters hangs together fusing populist fervor with corporate financing now that the last nail has been driven into the Rockefellerian coffin.

Keep your eye on that coalition. Norquist is.