Since Duverger's Law says we can only have two parties, (until we change a few things) we can have all the decent Republicans in the Democratic party and it's high time for -- what is it? The fourth incarnation of the Progressive party in American politics. May this one be as successful as the first incarnation, old TR's Progressive party.

feel hope so do our enemies. 9/11 part two is on the way and our enemies will just wait for the appeasers to take control.

Then you can all really feel good.

A British officer was said to have written this to his colleagues back in England at the time of the American Revolution. He was involved in putting down the rebellion, and the problem was those pesky Rebels weren’t playing by the rules. They were aiming at the British officers, and because many of the frontiersmen had new rifled weapons, they were deadly accurate. As far as many British officers were concerned, rifles were the difference maker in this war.

Today the rifles we’ve got are our computers linked to what little King George calls 'the Internets'. The new rifles of today are held by the irregular left blogosphere militias and the rebel blog leaders. They are constantly aimed at the imperial swine of the MSM and the rightwing lie machine.

That’s the difference maker today – the great equalizer. The blogosphere can blast volley after volley of infernal facts and bad news at the hapless righties. Important facts or news can be volleyed across the blogosphere at the speed of light that can outflank and undercut the rightwing noise machine.

If imperial MSM officers like David Broder are foolish enough to make false claims, well he can be blasted to smithereens by the irregulars of ‘the Internets’!

It’s satisfying to know that our rifles of today will deliver even more volleys against the MSM and the rightwing noise machine. We rebels of the blogosphere think that is damn fine sport.

The ridicule being heaped on David Broder is a good sign. Once he's removed, as the huge barnacle that he is, from that sleek ship that should be our free press, these moments of media independence and journalistic integrity will finally begin to flourish again.

And thank God for McClatchy newspapers. They are the media company for a new era.

Anchors Away!

Does Watergate have a ghost that still inhabits the nondescript block buildings that surround DC? That seems to be the point the Tenet is trying to get across. Yes, his effort is belated, but if what he is implying is true, he is still jeopardizing not only his career but his life. The lesson of Watergate is that a President (Nixon) can and will surround himself with his own intelligence agency (White House Plumbers) that seems to have been culled from an earlier assination squad ( exile Cubans trained to assinate Castro). Is Tenet implying that such an organization exists now, or even has existed continously from the Eisenhower era through today?

What we were hearing sounded like an off-the-books covert-action program trying to destabilize the Iranian government," Mr. Tenet writes, calling such a program "Son of Iran-contra."

By describing the destabilization effort in terms of older off the record destabilization operations, he is implying that the team of assasins, otherwise knows as the White House Plumbers, is still in operation. Has it occured to anyone that GWB's father was a former CIA head, and may in fact still be pulling strings in the intelligence community?

As far as when the sea change started, I'll go back to this moment last April (not sure of the exact date):

http://youtube.com/watch?v=qEex9zYNEus

It's almost enough to make you proud to be an American.

bebop-o: "I do believe it's okay to say love and sit and watch grass grow green at Greenwood's site for adjusting sore eye pupils."

Amen, brother. Amen.

Irving 143: Please get Hegel to run. Thx.

Maybe we can't get Rush booted just now. But what exactly is the downside in putting him and his GOP enablers on the defensive for his racism???

In case you aren't aware, Limbaugh's parody is based on an Op-Ed piece from the LA Times......

Obama the 'Magic Negro'

The Illinois senator lends himself to white America's idealized, less-than-real black man. By David Ehrenstein

Your desire to deprive people of their first amendment rights is noted.

Oh, and Glenn. Thank you for scaring the shit out of me with that material about Ledeen. I had no idea.

I suppose there has never been any shortage of ideological nutcases scampering around the halls of power. But I wish that the ones we had now were less ... ideological nutcases, I guess.

Colin Powell quitely slipped out the back door of the administration after being the point man, at least from a public perception perspective, of the Iraq march to war. Powell did stand in there long enough to get GWB reelected. Does Powell have anything to say?

And then there are the not-yet-fully-appreciated revelations in George Tenet's new (and unconscionably and unforgivably belated) book,

Politically Lost raises a most inconvenient truth: that it's not just politicians and so-called "journalists" who have failed We the People so badly in the last fifteen years. Where was America's distinguished army of lawyers during this long nightmare? Where was the ABA when torture became kosher and the Geneva Conventions were declared quaint? Where were the first-tier law schools and professors when the unitary executive and his fawning courtiers at the latter-day Versailles decided that his oath "to do whatever is necessary to protect the American people" required warrantless searches and seizures of citizens?

Melanie Sloan's CREW has done great and important work, and I know others have tried; but seeing Pakistan's barristers defying a dictator by protesting in the heat and humidity in their court costumes made me more ashamed to be an American than anything David Broder ever wrote. It's like the scene in "Trading Places" when Eddie Murphy's character pleads for legal help and finds none in a room full of wealthy lawyers. Regent Law School notwithstanding, the U.S. has educated more juris doctors than any nation on earth, all for naught, apparently, if it takes only signing statements to repeal the Constitution.