From the transcript of Glenn's appearance on DemocracyNow:

"when the President ordered the NSA program back in 2001, he did so as part of an executive order of which warrantless eavesdropping was but one of numerous covert spying programs aimed at Americans, the content of which we still do not know. And two months earlier, James Comey testified before the Senate that he and Ashcroft and others had discovered that whatever it was that they were doing from 2001 to 2004 was so illegal, so unconscionable, that they had all decided to resign en masse from the government unless that behavior ceased immediately.

And I had the opportunity this weekend at YearlyKos to interview several senators, including Senator Chris Dodd, and I asked him whether or not senators have any idea of how they have been using their secret spying in order to spy on Americans, what these additional programs are, what it is that we’re doing that made James Comey and John Ashcroft threaten to resign from the government. He has absolutely no idea, nor do the other senators.

And so, what they’ve done is they convened Congress and stayed in session under the President's order to revise a law at his direction, that they actually have no idea how it’s been administered and what this government has been doing."

And that snide remark addresses the premise of my reply to you in what way? Did I miss something?

No, you didn't. You are wrong about what constitutes either "flat denial or ignorance." Blue Dog/Conservative Democrats are what Indiana elects for the most part, and that is not going to change any time soon -- to not realize that is to be either ignorant or in denial. And I'd be delighted if one those Democrats replaced the execrable Mark Souder (R) in the House. But a Nancy Pelosi wouldn't have a snowball's chance.

You're exactly right, Glenn, and the Democrats' inaction leaves most of the country without viable representation and leadership. "Feckless" came to my mind,after I'd recovered from feeling quite sick at what the Democrats had done. "Feckless" is related to "ineffective," only in this case it's the kind of ineffectiveness shown by a father standing on shore yelling petulantly even as his kid is out there drowning. Anyway, that's the image that sprang to mind when I read Jack Balkin's rant*-- which I also agree with wholeheartedly.

We are slowly inching, through each act of fear mongering and fecklessness, pandering and political compromise, toward a world in which Americans have increasingly little say over how they are actually governed, and increasingly little control over how the government collects information on them to regulate and control them.

It's that "increasingly little say in how they are actually governed" socked me in the gut.

*http://balkin.blogspot.com/2007/08/party-of-fear-party-without-spine-and.html

I strongly disagree with your assessment of red state voters and your belief that they're not very interested in constitutional issues. What are gun control and even abortion (in terms of Roe v. Wade being seen as a bad constitutional ruling by the right) if not constitutional issues--in their minds at least? I'm guessing that many of these people, if properly informed about what these bills are actually about, would be livid about their constitutional rights being slowly taken away from them. Someone who's a strong believer in the 2nd Amendment is probably also a strong believer in the 4th Amendment as well.

So to view such voters as blindly supportive of anything that the GOP forces on them is to completely misread the political spectrum, both fundamentally and currently. Bush is at less than 30% approval because a substantial number of right-wing voters have given up on him, and they are not as monolithic as many people believe--even in Indiana. And your implication that voters who are pro-life and anti-gun control are not likely to care about issues like illegal warrantless wiretaps and torture are, I think, misplaced.

Broadly speaking, GOP and GOP-leaning voters are not one monolithic group that hold the same values and support the same positions. There are the true authoritarian wingnuts, who continue to blindly support Bush, the war, torture, the dismantling of the constitution, etc., but they're only 25-30% of the voting population. There are also, though, a similar number of right and right-leaning voters who are not this authoritarian, but of a more traditionally conservative and/or libertarian bent (which I would have thought you would have realized), who are clearly, as the numbers show, not as enamored of the GOP's current policies.

I'm afraid that you're misreading the political map, Mona.

Do not condescend, pity, or chide me for defending an inocuous post turned black by little people...

Do not lecture me on a generalization committed by me when you do the very same by commenting (as an aside or not) about the current crops of humans.

To detail things:

You choose to briefly criticize the impromptu gangbang that LWM and Celery were working themselves up to; yet spend an comparitive treasure saying I'm the bad guy...

That sounds like a familiar theme doesn't it???

To all: here we have in a microcosm of what the Reps do to the Dems every day.

Read and learn from it--it is a step by step guide on how to shut someone up.

1) Person 1 (The Wolf): Attack

2) Person 2 (The Hyena): "Yeah, what he said and "

3) Person 3 (The Saint): Nail the defender to the cross his indescretions.

I ask for no quarter and give none.

Obviously, the various truthful and candid performances by Fredo Gonzales have convinced the senate Democrats that there was an urgent need to bestow on him extraordinary and unprecedented powers of unwarrented spying on us.

As for 9/11, as time goes by, I'm having a harder and harder time convincing myself and others that Bush/Cheney were not involved in either planning the attack or deliberately failing to prevent it. As conspiratorial as it seems, 9/11 was extraordinarily serendipitous in giving those people the excuse and rational forputting their grand scheme into action and I just don't believe in coincidences.