Original title: Oh My God!! Shots fired at political

webside too quickly.  C'mon folks, what is up with the proliferation of "breaking" diaries that take the strategy of posting a link, a few sentences from the linked item, and a breathless and usually erroneous conclusion, only to be later "Updated" one or more times to include the content that should have been in the diary in the first place?

Today we see two examples of this on the Air Force "resignations."  The skeleton nature of the diaries immediately led to speculation that the "resignations" were protests agianst bombing Iran.  But, even a cursory Google search revealed that the "resignations" were really punishments for the Air Force's scandalous mishandling of nuclear weapons.  Yesterday we saw similar breathless two line "breaking" diaries that only became worthwhile or accurate after multiple "updates."

Mark Steyn of the National Review noted yesterday that for this election Reagan's famous "11th Commandment" precluding Republicans from attacking each other has "been repealed."  Steyn believes it's been replaced "by a 12th commandment saying thou shalt speak ill of every other Republican in the race."  Steyn further opined that he "can't think of any other primary season where so many candidates have been so reviled by so much of the base."  Jack Balkin thinks the Reagan coalition that has driven the Republican Party's success since 1980 is toast.

That's great news for Dems!  But is also a cautionary tale for us Kossacks. Let's look at this further:

Who would have guessed that Byron York of the  National Review would provide the perfect celebration of YearlyKos:

Two years ago, I wrote a book, The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy, about the emerging [netroots] establishment....  The reaction from some on the left was: Conspiracy? Vast? There’s no such thing! ... A more perceptive reaction came from Markos Moulitsas, founder of DailyKos and the star — sorry, Sens. Obama and Clinton — of YearlyKos: "Quite frankly, [York] is about 2 - 5 years too early on this. We ARE building a Vast Left Wing Conspiracy to rival the $300 million conservatives spend on theirs every year. But we are but a seedling at this point...."

Well, here we are, two years later, and the seedling has grown quite a bit. ...  And now voters have changed the leadership of the legislative branch, and Democrats stand a good chance of capturing the White House next year.

Celebrated University of California at San Francisco biochemist Joe DeRisi, the man who found the SARS virus in 2003 thinks he has discovered the culprit in the Honey Bee deaths.  From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Tests of genetic material taken from a "collapsed colony" in Merced County point to a once-rare microbe that previously affected only Asian bees but might have evolved into a strain lethal to those in Europe and the United States, biochemist Joe DeRisi said Wednesday.

DeRisi said tests conducted on material from dead bees at his Mission Bay lab found genes of the single-celled, spore-producing parasite Nosema ceranae, which researchers in Spain have recently shown is capable of wiping out a beehive. "It is wise to strike a conservative note, because this is early data, but it is interesting,'' he said.

Yesterday, in Rep. Peter DeFazio told members of the Rotary Club of Roseburg that he has already told the party leadership he doesn’t plan to run for Senate twice, and indicated he'll say "no" again.

He also said that Sen. Barbara Boxer has lobbied him run, even offering to let him help her write the federal highway bill in the Senate.  He said he responded: "Thanks, Barbara, but the way it is now, I’ll write the (House) highway bill and I’ll negotiate it with you."

Those are not the words of a man planning to run for Senate.  So what's Plan B?

Word is that Chuck Schumer spent much of Wednesday bombarding Congressman Peter DeFazio's staffers with calls to try and set up a teleconference to lobby the Congressman to run for the Senate.  DeFazio relented, and word is that he was able to book an hour of the Congressman's time Thursday morning.  Meanwhile, Kos, who appears to be allied with Schumer in the effort to draft DeFazio, had a suspiciously well-timed (for Schumer) front page post on DeFazio around the time of the call.  So who will run for Oregon Senate against Smith?

Well, astute observors of Oregon politics just got an answer!

With the new Time article, I guess it's time to, once again, review the historical record.

The Colonies declared their independence from England in 1776, but the country was not truly formed until the U.S. Constitution was drafted in 1787 and ratified in 1788.  The original Constitution was a radical document.  The Constitution invoked the "blessings of Liberty" not the "blessings of God," and formed a country based on the authority of "We the People" not the will of God.

While transcripts of the debates surrounding the drafting of the Constitution were not preserved (if even made), most of the debates in the State ratification conventions were transcribed, and the public debate in the media of that time is also preserved.  And these documents reveal that the men who founded our country, who framed the Constitution and voted to ratify its adoption, firmly believed that the U.S. was founded as a secular country.

Mitt Romney has a problem: He's a Mormon.  You see, on the Theocratic Right, being a Mormon is ok if you stay in Utah or liberal Mass, but a very bad thing if you want to be President of the U.S. of A.  

Ramesh Ponuru, a Catholic religious conservative writer for the National Review, explains:

One thing I think Damon Linker got right is that the potential negative reaction to a candidate's Mormonism is not limited to evangelical conservatives. Thinking about those voters alone, however, I wonder if Romney would be better off if the Mormon church did not present itself as Christian. The suspicion of heresy seems to be part of what riles people up; it wouldn't be present if Mormonism were just another religion.

Today, Congressman Peter DeFazio confirmed that he won't make a run at the Senate:  "I had my run at the Senate," DeFazio said. "I’m holding a gavel for the first time in my 20-year career. I’m not looking to do anything else — become the junior senator from Oregon with no seniority and not chairing a committee."

There is no real reason to think that Congressman Blumenauer will run either.

Further, Democratic two-term former Gov. John Kitzhaber and state schools Superintendent Susan Castillo have reportedly pulled their names from consideration.

So who should we support?

I missed the T-shirt thread.  I'm sure some of the rest of us did too.  So I thought, why not put up a T-Shirt ideas thread?

So here it is.  For those who don't know: Kos is apparently retiring some of the time sensitive T-Shirts, like "Is it 2008, yet?," and he's looking for replacement slogans.  My favorite current slogan is "Building Democracy One Thread At A Time."

Kos says he wants T-shirts that play off the Democratic victory.  So slogans like "People Powered Politics" and all its variations may be a little too generic.  Add your ideas below.

It's time to pass the "Truth in Legislative Labeling Act."  

In his 1946 essay, "Politics and the English Language," George Orwell explained:

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism., question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.

Illustrating this concept, in his classic book 1984, Orwell portrayed a totalitarian state in which the Government's oxymoronic language created false truths: "War is Peace," "Freedom is Slavery," and "Ignorance is Strength."

The past five years of Republican rule has provided many examples of the use of Orwellian language.  But, perhaps the worst of these examples has been the blatant mislabeling of legislative Acts.  

Let's not forget what else is going on in the world. Today, the S.Ct. heard its first abortion case with Alito and Roberts on the bench.  It concerns the legality of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.

As background, the S.Ct. was certainly aware of the Democratic victory in the election, and probably knew that South Dakota voters repealed a state law that virtually outlaws abortions, and California and Oregon voters rejected measures that would have required that teenagers get their parents' consent before having an abortion.  

But, the S.Ct. should not be, and probably is not, swayed by voter sentiment.  Kennedy is the swing vote on all abortion cases because Alito, Thomas, Scalia and Roberts will vote against abortion rights.  And Kennedy has already ruled in a prior case that he believed laws like the one under review pass Constitutional muster.  Thus, abortion opponents are confident the law will survive.

So what happened today?  

Is Jerome a Paris a right winger trying to suppress the Democrats GOTV efforts!?!  

I don't know, and I don't care, and you shouldn't care either.

Because every minute you spend staring at the old computer boob tube, screwing around, instead of making calls, walking precincts or otherwise helping campaigns is a minue spent aiding and abetting the Republicans.  So stop wasting your time on this site, especially on ill-timed meta debates that have the effect, albeit probably not the design, of taking your attention from the most important thing to our democracy: the election!

When Theodore Roosevelt first articulated a vision of an expansive foreign policy wherein the United States would assert international police power over the Western Hemisphere he quoted the African proverb: "Speak softly and carry a big stick."

Roosevelt understood that bluster, with no backup, was poor diplomacy.

George W. Bush is no Theodore Roosevelt.  North Korea demonstrates just how poor G.W.'s foreign policy is, especially when compared to that of his Democratic predecessor.

Judge Anna Diggs Taylor has made a forceful statement in support of liberty and against unbridled executive power today.  In her opinion in ACLU v. NSA she holds:

The Government appears to argue here that, pursuant to the penumbra of Constitutional language in Article II, and particularly because the President is designated Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, he has been granted the inherent power to violate not only the laws of the Congress but the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution, itself. We must first note that the Office of the Chief Executive has itself been created, with its powers, by the Constitution. There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution. So all "inherent powers" must derive from that Constitution.

GW must be saying "ouch."

You can tell a lot about a person by looking at their freinds and admirers.  Joe's latest big booster, offering him an early endorsement over the Republican candidate, is www.nationalreview.com.

I find diaries like NYCEve's diary maddening.  While simultaneously recognizing that Jews "escape the sting of [anti-Semitism] in the United States" and that "American Jews are blessed to live in a country that still treats us with relative decency" she writes in support of a country that does not afford to non-Jews the same protections our country affords to all peoples.  

The cognitive dissonance is astounding.  I think everyone involved in the "Israeli-Palistinian" debates would be well served by remembering why we don't have that problem here.  To take a moment to realize the genuis of our founders, and what we, as Democrats, are striving to protect and ensure.