Let's start with this. It's completely irrelevant to anything relating to the performance of one's duties as president whether the president has had affairs.

For all my conservative friends who insisted that in Clinton's case it wasn't about the sex, it was the perjury trap, I want to assure everyone that I don't care, and no one should care, whether McCain had sexual relations with that woman.

Per se.

The real tragedy of something like Virginia Tech is that sometime soon, some politician looking to score points with the reflexively limp-dicked nannystaters is going to call for a total ban on killing.

Look, the laws we have against killing are clearly ineffective. It didn't prevent this, after all. What we should do is let individuals take responsibility for their own defense: teach every American how to kill people, and repeal laws all laws against killing. If nanny-state laws didn't forbid most responsible forms of killing, the nutjob who was killing people in Virginia would have been killed in retaliation by somebody once he started his rampage. And many of those tragically killed could have been saved, if only they had the means to kill people themselves.

Let me be the first to call for a return to responsible gunplay in our once-proud schools.

Nanny-state regulations that infringe on my inherent right to kill lead inevitably to totalitarian repression. A violent society is a polite society.

After all, look how polite everybody is today.

No, actually, I did not in fact receive any such letter. I am in no position to expect to receive a national security letter. It would be ludicrous to suppose I had; I am not in possession of any information about anyone that the FBI would want to know.

But the subject of this diary is something no one who receives an NSL could legally write.

But I can. I am not under oath, I am not revealing any classified information, I am merely stating something publicly that happens not to be true. Then retracting it; I am not attempting to deceive anyone, least of all any government agency.

But what would happen if everyone who did not receive an NSL were to claim, on their blog or otherwise in a public forum, that they had?

I know Kos wants to get libertarians to vote for Democrats.  Politics makes strange bedfellows (the Democratic Party was, after all, for decades, the party of Northern blacks and Southern racists) but I just plain don't think it's tenable, and if it is I don't want to be here.

If Libertarians start voting for our guys, I -- and hopefully the rest of us -- will view them much the way my nominally rational Republican friends view racists and fundies: pay them lip service and keep them happy with code words so they keep voting for us. If we must, we can look for little bits around the edges that we can implement that wouldn't harm our core values too much; but if their policies ever get enacted in large scale it'd be an unmitigated disaster, and we need to rely on them continuing to be fools if we mean to count on their votes.

What do they care about most? Ask them. Every libertarian I know tells me his top priorities are "cut taxes and prevent gun control".  There's already a political party for these people, and it ain't us.

There was some kind of real plot. Sure. There are terrorists out there and they're trying to kill people. They're bad guys and the police should stop them and the papers should report when they do.

The government is anxious to be seen as doing something about terrorism. They'll hype it. Of course they will. Nothing intrinsically wrong with propaganda, so long as it's not dishonest.

But...

It portrayed two Klansmen. One was holding a paper showing a recent quote from the news: "One cannot be a racist by talking, only by acting. - Louis Farrakhan." The other was nodding, saying "That nigger makes a lot of sense."

As one might imagine, there was a firestorm of protest at the use of that word in a newspaper.

We are fucking with the global climate. Nature is going to keep saying this to us, over and over, louder and louder, until we hear.

The National Guard would be called out to help, but they're in Iraq.

I'm debating someone who is sympathetic to the flypaper strategy and could use an authoritative source for this information.

Sorry if it's bad form to post diaries as requests for information, but the search function seemed not to give me what I needed.

Bush is at 42% in the polls, and his chief advisor is about to be indicted.  Bets on what happens to those two conditions now?

Now, I'm not really such a tinfoil-hatter to seriously believe -- right now -- that there's any connection.  It's likely that it's timed with the G8 summit and has nothing directly to do with influencing American politics specifically.  After all, not every terror attack involves friends of friends of the president.

But the timing sure is convenient.  If Americans start, as a result of this, giving the president "better marks on the war on terror", I'll start being suspicious in truth.

But maybe, just to be safe, Bush had better fire Fitzgerald before something worse happens.

Which was seven months ago.

How many Orange Alerts in the seven months prior to the election?

"We don't play politics in the Department of Homeland Security."

The only person I've seen even mention this is Bill Maher -- has anyone else really sat up and noticed? An editorial anywhere?

Theocons got what they wanted -- because they wanted to lose, as they always want to lose.

Huh? you ask. What are you talking about?  Reid casts this as a win for us, and casting a draw as a win, especially for the minority, is shrewd politics, right?  Frist is washed up, right?  Dobson is issuing fatwas in outrage.  How can we say this is what they wanted?

Because losing strengthens theocons.

I don't get that at all.  Wasn't exit poll data done a while earlier this evening?

It used to show about 52-48 for Kerry -- women were 53-47 for Kerry and men were 51-49 for Kerry. Now -- just now -- it changed to 52-48 Bush (male) and 50-50 (female).

I don't understand their methodology.  What happened between 12:45 and 1:20 AM to change the exit poll data?

If we presume Democrats are more likely to vote early, absentee, or provisionally, and if we realize county reports don't count absentees or provisionals (do they report earlies?) and exit polls don't count absentees or earlies (and maybe don't count provisionals either?) -- doesn't everything about HAVA push in the direction of causing networks to call states for Republicans prematurely?

And can SOMEONE PLEASE POINT THIS OUT IN THE SCLM?

Absentees and provisionals presumably are not counted right now.  How many are there?

He passed away just after Labor Day weekend 1996. He was born in 1928, and grew up during the Depression, the son of a minister "poor as a churchmouse", as my grandmother called their family. He was a Roosevelt Democrat, with a bit of socialist in him. He'd called Reagan "the most vicious president in history -- except for Nixon", and was responsible for helping me mold a lot of my political views.

He was an engineer who loved computers; when he died, three years after retirement, he was learning the C language and writing small programs for himself. He'd be commenting on Kos if he were around today.

Or has he?

Remember that Bush has been master of the "parsed lie" -- sounding like he's saying one thing when he's really not.

So I went and searched a bit.  What I found were interesting quotes and interesting unquotes.

"If you are elected president, what will you take to that office thinking is the single most serious threat to the national security to the United States?"

His answer just made me jump and shout that this is my president.