Midday open thread

• David Broder scratches his head, wondering why people don't just agree to agree with each other.

  I contacted Bailey recently to ask what had happened to this bold gamble, and he was the source of that 35,000 figure for the number of people who have lent support to the scheme. They obviously have a long way to go before they can claim to be a viable political force, but they are making slow, steady progress.

  When I called Bailey, it had been just a week since the group announced that anyone who was interested could sign up at http://www.unity08.com as a voting delegate to a national convention planned for June 2008. Most of the sign-ups came before that formal start, Bailey said, in response to last year's publicity about the formation of Unity08.

• C-SPAN continues to claim copyright over congressional hearings, even demanding Nancy Pelosi take down a YouTube clip of a committee hearing. Any entity that claims it owns the proceedings of our democracy is on dangerously thin ice.

  It's time for Pelosi to end that undemocratic monopoly.

• Cheney admits the truth -- Democrats are forcing the Bush Administration to do its job on terrorism.

  Vice President Dick Cheney made an unannounced trip to Pakistan on Monday to deliver what officials in Washington described as an unusually tough message to Gen. Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, warning him that the newly Democratic Congress could cut aid to his country unless his forces become far more aggressive in hunting down operatives with Al Qaeda.

• Lindsay Beyersten (a.k.a. "Majikthise") writes why she passed up the opportunity to blog for Edwards. Great call.

  The Edwards campaign wants decentralized people-powered politics. Ironically, by hiring well-known bloggers to manage a destination Web site, it was actually centralizing and micromanaging. Every campaign needs a blog, but the most important part of a candidate's netroots operation is the disciplined political operatives who can quietly build relationships with bloggers outside the campaign. And the bomb-throwing surrogates need to be outside, where they can make full use of their gifts without saddling a campaign with their personal political baggage.

• As an aside, I can't tell you how many times I've heard people say (in DC and outside it) "I wish Elizabeth Edwards was running instead of her husband." I don't take that as a knock on John, but testament to how much of a star Elizabeth could be.