I'm a little blogged out at the moment, so I'm going to shut down the computer and spend the next couple of days reveling in some of life's finer things -- a good book, a sandy stretch of South Carolina shore, and the joyous trumpets that always sound when Mrs. O'Toole favors this old world with a happy laugh.

See you Monday.

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I want to take just a brief moment here this morning to offer a few words of encouragement to any Howard Dean supporters who may have felt their hearts breaking a little bit last night as they watched the governor step onto the stage and found themselves dreaming of what might have been.

In 1984, a little-known senator from Colorado named Gary Hart challenged former vice president Walter Mondale for the Democratic presidential nomination, and, due largely to Mondale's willingness to almost single-handedly destroy the post-Watergate campaign finance laws he'd helped to write, the senator's insurgent campaign of optimism and ideas ended in defeat after a long and sometimes bitter contest. It was a hard lesson in the ways of the world for a generation of starry-eyed young Democrats -- including a seventeen year old kid from South Carolina who, like so many others, had dropped everything to join the New Ideas revolution.

Funny thing, though. That's Gary Hart's Democratic party you're seeing in Boston this week -- unapologetically smart, squarely in the mainstream on national security and foreign policy issues, and willing to think creatively about how best to address this nation's challenges here at home. Sure, Bill Clinton gets the lion's share of the credit for our party's transformation from most folks (as he should, of course; winning matters) but, in truth, that was as much Hart's war he fought and won in the nineties as it was his own, and at least a few of us will always understand and remember that.

So, as the scripture President Clinton quoted in part on Monday night admonishes, be of good cheer, Deaniacs. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if a graying and slightly grizzled guy twenty years from now were to find himself sitting down to write a blog post (will we still call them that then?) not unlike the one you're reading now, about a little-known governor from Vermont who lost the contest for his party's nomination, but won the battle for its soul....

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"Their opponents will tell you we should be afraid of John Kerry and John Edwards, because they won't stand up to the terrorists. Don't you believe it. Strength and wisdom are not opposing values."

--President Bill Clinton, speaking last night at the Democratic National Convention

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Note: In a hastily-written (and ill-considered) post on Saturday, I promised that this follow-up to last week's Clintonism post would include a delineation of the small differences I have with some of the folks who responded to the original piece. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it was time for me to take a healthy dose of the medicine we DLCers like to ladle out so generously to others -- grow up, quit nitpicking, and get down to the tough business of solving real problems. So here goes....

Last week, in a post that I hoped would start a conversation about mending the left/center-left split in the Democratic party, I argued that eight years of Clintonism (broadly defined as centrist policies with liberal objectives) had produced far better results for people at the bottom of the economic pile than traditional liberals have generally been prepared to acknowledge. After making that case, I invited liberals to respond by both grappling honestly with the numbers I had laid out, and by stating specifically what they would like to see done differently in any future Democratic administration. And unless I've missed something in the various responses I've seen so far, I think it's pretty safe to say that the Democratic party tent is still plenty big enough for all of us to bed down in together -- particularly if New Dems like me are ready to embrace an agenda whose scope and ambition are worthy of the nation we hope to lead and the party to which we belong.

Take Jeanne d'Arc's reply, for example. If I read it right, she's saying that Clintonism succeeded as a narrow set of palliatives for some of the nation's worst ills, but failed as a governing philosophy because (a) it's goals didn't inspire the country, and (b) it's ideologically-barren rhetoric allowed conservatives to move the 50-yard line in American politics further to the right. Now, as a dyed in the wool DLCer, you might expect me to take issue with some or all of that, but I really can't. Jeanne's right. After the healthcare debacle of 1994, Clinton's presidency was mostly about protecting liberal gains rather than expanding them, and the results, while defensible on political and policy grounds, were about as exciting as a mashed potato sandwich. And at the end of the day, that's just not good enough.

So, if Jeanne, representing traditional progressives, and I, as a New Dem, can agree on those two predicates, how exactly would we go about taking the next step -- putting together an agenda that we could all not only live with, but celebrate? Well, what about if we start -- just start, now -- with former Clinton numbers-cruncher Matt Miller's Two Percent Solution, an ambitious but fiscally prudent set of proposals that uses the New Democrat policy toolbox to address four of the big ticket social injustices that America can no longer afford to ignore -- healthcare, a living wage, education, and real campaign finance reform?

Here are a few brief passages (lifted from Miller's website) that give us a pretty good sense of what that would look like with regard to the first two, heathcare and a living wage:

To cover the uninsured, Miller promotes what he calls "the Bill Bradley-George Bush Sr. health plan" -- new tax subsidies for the purchase of private health insurance policies from among competing private plans. (Few people realize that Bill Bradley and George W. Bush's father pushed virtually identical health plans -- one of countless examples Miller uses to show how the conventional terms of debate are shockingly misleading). Individuals would have access to some form of insurance pool to assure affordable group rates. The "grand bargain" we need on health care, Miller explains, requires Democrats to accept the existence of a private insurance industry and Republicans to accept the need to help everyone buy a decent policy. It's about liberals agreeing that innovation shouldn't be regulated out of U.S. health care, and conservatives agreeing that justice has to be regulated into it....

Miller explains why the current debate over a "living wage" -- now enacted in 80 cities, with more coming -- isn't serious about the 15 million people living in poverty despite living in homes headed by full time workers. The problem is that while liberals are right about the injustice facing unskilled workers, they're wrong about the economics of fixing it. It is simply not possible to solve the problem on a sustainable basis, Miller shows, by mandating that private firms pay wages as high as $10 or $12 an hour for employees who, in economic terms, are "worth" only six. The living wage laws that have been enacted have passed, paradoxically, only because their scope has been narrowed so as to have almost no impact -- a weird rallying cry for a movement! But at least the left is trying. While liberals settle for baby steps, the right merely sidesteps with calls for "education and training" that can't help those not destined to be retooled into software whizzes. Our national "living wage" debate amounts a showdown between the inadequate and the ineffectual. Shouldn't there be a better way?

Miller says yes -- starting with a national commitment that full time work should deliver at least $9 an hour. But they key is to make sure this cost isn't all be borne by the employer. Miller would guarantee $9-10 an hour for full time work via a sliding-scale tax credit to employers (based on an plan crafted by Columbia University economist Edmund Phelps). The "grand bargain" here requires the left to stop trying to place the full burden of a living wage on employers, while the right accepts the need to have government fund the rest. Business should love it, because workers could be hired for as little as $6 an hour, with government putting up $3 to match it. Since the social benefits of work (in terms of less crime, welfare dependency, etc.) exceed less skilled workers' productivity (which limits what employers can offer in wages), it makes sense for society to subsidize the difference.

First off, let's state the obvious -- none of that is perfect from anyone's point of view. But is it a reasonable jumping-off point for our discussion? I think it is. And rather than bore you any further with my take on Miller's ideas, I'll just put them on the table as is, and again, invite our liberal allies to reply. What's your first response to all that? More importantly, perhaps, what's your second response? Are there any liberal must-haves that we need to include? And if there are, are they important enough to risk losing any chance we have of actually extending decent healthcare and a living wage to millions of our fellow Americans at any point in the near future?

Once again, folks, the floor is yours.

POSTSCRIPT: I didn't include Miller's education and campaign finance proposals (which you can find here) in the post above because (1) I was trying to compose a blog entry, not War and Peace, and (2) as attractive as I might find them from a New Dem perspective, I'm not at all sure that his ideas in these areas are even theoretically acceptable to traditional liberals or the public at large. If anyone out there disagrees, though, I'd be happy to take a look at them in a future post.

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Just in time for the convention, my old friends at PoliticsOnline have unveiled what's sure be an outstanding new destination in the blogosphere: Buzz Webster's PoliticsBlog. Check it out today.

UPDATE: And while I'm welcoming new additions to the blogosphere, I probably shouldn't forget this guy, huh?

So, uh.... Welcome, Dr. Black.

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Jack Balkin: "The task of a progressive constitutionalism is the task of understanding that the Constitution can be better-- no, *is* better-- than those in power want it to be. It is the work of aspiration, imagination, and, above all, remembrance."

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Like just about everything she writes, this Jeanne d'Arc post on the left/center-left split in the Democratic party is insightful, measured, and persuasive. (If only the same could be said of your humble correspondent and his scribblings....) That said, though, she seems throughout the piece to accept as axiomatic an idea that I often see asserted but seldom addressed substantively: namely, the notion that Clintonism was by its very nature a sellout of the goals and the soul of traditional liberalism.

Now, it is certainly true that the DLC-style centrism that Clinton embodied represents at least a partial rejection of the means generally associated with Great Society liberalism. (Though, interestingly, not necessarily those of the New Deal; it was FDR, after all, who called any system of long-term public assistance for the able-bodied a "narcotic.") But a look at the Clinton record would seem to indicate that his policies were far from disappointing in terms of achieving liberal ends -- which, one would think, should be the real test of the soul of any Democratic politician or governing philosophy.

Here's a brief passage from a 1999 speech by Clinton economic adviser Gene Sperling that puts a few important facts and figures on the table:

From 1993 to 1998, poverty has fallen across the board and incomes have risen for each and every income group.

• The poverty rate has fallen from 15.1 percent in 1993 to 12.7 percent in 1998, lifting nearly 5 million people out of poverty.
• Between 1993 and 1998, the poverty rate has fallen by 15 percent or more for all persons, African Americans, Hispanics, children, African American children, Hispanic children, single mothers, and many other groups. The poverty rate is now the lowest on record for African Americans, African American children, Hispanic children, single mothers, African American single mothers, and Hispanic single mothers.
• At the same time, incomes have grown by 9.9 – 11.7 percent for every quintile of the income distribution. For the bottom three quintiles, this is the strongest growth since at least the 1970s. The 10.3 percent increase in incomes for the bottom quintile over the last 5 years represents a particularly dramatic turnaround from the 4.4 percent decline between 1981 and 1993.
• Over the last 5 years typical families have seen their income rise by 12.1 percent and African American families have seen their incomes rise by 21.0 percent. That represents more than $5,100 in income for the typical African American family.


• In 1998, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) lifted 4.3 million people out of poverty – twice the number of people lifted out of poverty by the EITC in 1993.

With all due respect to my more liberal friends, I think this anti-poverty record deserves closer examination before Clintonism is simply dismissed as Republican-lite economics or corporatism run amuck. The lives of millions of real people -- the people that we as Democrats claim to speak for -- would appear to be significantly better because of Bill Clinton's centrist presidency. And speaking as a lifelong member of the Democratic party who stands foursquare and unapologetically for social and economic justice, I, like many others I suspect, would have to see that idea convincingly refuted before I could seriously consider supporting a return to traditional liberal politics and policies.

And if that sounds like a challenge of sorts, I suppose that's because it is. Some of the blogosphere's finest minds and pens belong to traditional liberals, and it would be a real service to both blogdom and the Democratic party if one or more of them were to substantively address this issue. How, exactly, would a liberal Democratic administration differ from the Clinton model with regard to its policies and initiatives? How would it go about getting those policies enacted? And, most importantly, why should we expect it to produce more impressive outcomes for the people at the bottom of the economic pile?

Those strike me as fair, and perhaps even essential, questions -- particularly given the fact that a return to traditional liberalism would be, at minimum, a harder sell for the party. It would require us to reject a strategy that has produced three popular vote victories in a row at the presidential level, while at the same time appearing, at least, to have significantly advanced the cause of our nation's most hard-pressed citizens. Given those realities, it seems to me that the burden should be on our liberal allies to make the case for any radical change in the party's message and direction.

So, ladies and gentlemen ... the floor is open.

POSTSCRIPT: In case you don't want to wade through the Sperling speech in its entirety, you'll find the tabular data here.

UPDATE (7/26): More here.

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Posting has been a little light for the past day or two, and probably will remain so until the new campaign site I'm finishing up for a client goes live (he says, fingers crossed) on Monday morning.

In the meantime, please read Jeanne d'Arc's responses to Wednesday's Clintonism post (here and here), as well as Kevin Drum's; unsurprisingly, considering the sources, they're every bit as smart and cogent as anything you're liable to find at your local newsstand in a month of Sundays. (Though, as if determined to prove my own point that the left/center-left split in the Democratic party is in no small measure about the narcissism of small differences, I do have a nit or two to pick with each of them. Look for a post along those lines as soon as I get the aforementioned campaign site out the door.)

Anyway, have a good weekend, everybody, and I'll see you Monday.

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Jeanne d'Arc wishes we still had an EPA that gave a rat's a-- about the problems associated with rodenticides and children.

Me too.

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Survey research guru Ruy Teixeira analyzes a "boatload of interesting polls ... on the eve of the Democratic convention" here.

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"Everyone was caught unawares by Sept. 11 -- the president, the Congress, the American people, law enforcement agencies. Blame, if there's blame, has to be spread all across the board because the American people never demanded more or better. But now we've been warned, specifically warned. And now we've been told by everyone, from the president of the United States on down, it's going to happen again. And if it happens, and we haven't moved, then the American people are entitled to make very fundamental judgments about that."

--Republican 9/11 Commissioner James R. Thompson, on the possible political consequences if President Bush and the GOP-led Congress refuse to act promptly on the Commission's findings

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If you're one of the folks (like, well, me) who's been looking for a little clearer explication of the whole Sandy Berger mess than we've gotten so far from the major networks and newspapers, you'll find a helpful primer on the subject (as well as what sounds like some sensible analysis) by Slate's Fred Kaplan here.

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Over at Legal Fiction, Publius points out that the values debate is like any other political dispute; you can't beat something with nothing.

“Values” has been used as a means to oppose progressive policies. The Left has responded by demonizing religion or rejecting the rhetoric of values altogether. A better approach is to construct, rather than to deconstruct, a new concept of values. If “values” is the obstacle, redefine it. Offer a new version – Values 2.0, if you will. Tell the world what your values are, rather than arguing within the definition of "values" created by Reagan (or perhaps Goldwater and Wallace).

That's right. And the rest is here.

UPDATE: The values issue actually has two parts -- the rhetoric, which Publius ably addresses above, and the policy piece, which involves devising programs and initiatives that reflect the values that most Americans share; e.g., the Earned Income Tax Credit that rewards work, the GI Bill that rewards service, etc. Needless to say, we have to be careful here -- it's awfully easy to leave the "undeserving poor" behind when constructing programs along these lines. Still, as Social Security's enduring popularity demonstrates, programs that connect with people's values are more sustainable over time than those that don't.

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And a bit more, actually....

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Paperwight says he's been rendered "almost speechless" by the latest machinations of the Mayberry Machiavellis -- though he does manage to find his voice in time to make a couple of very good points about the seemingly boundless cynicism of "the New Republican Tribe."

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True story: About six months ago, several things broke down at about the same time on my in-laws' small farm in rural South Carolina. First, the septic system went. Then it was the electricity. And finally, to top it all off, a colony of termites suddenly took up residence in the house my wife's father and his seven siblings grew up in -- a sturdy little A-frame that sits empty but well-kept an acre or so away from what's now the family's primary home. And in each case, the same thing happened: A polite, broad-shouldered young man in a work shirt came out to the farm, took a look at the problem, and announced that any solution would cost several thousand dollars more than my now-retired father-in-law had expected due to a new (or until recently unenforced) health, environmental or safety regulation.

The septic tank was a total loss; got to put in a new one, sir -- the gummint, you know? The electrical problem wasn't really a big deal in and of itself -- but the wiring throughout the house had to be expensively "brought up to code" before they could fix it. And the termite people, God bless 'em, they couldn't even begin to treat his daddy's old place until the existing well, which was too close to the "living area" that no one has lived in for many years, was sealed, and a new one -- one that met all the current regs, of course -- had been sunk.

Needless to say, my father-in-law was thrilled. After all, how often do you get a chance to spend your next five or ten Social Security checks all at once without, you know, getting to play shuffleboard on the Lido Deck or something? Not to mention the fact that getting screwed with your pants on is always twice as much fun when your hard-earned tax dollars are financing the operation....

Okay, so here's the punch line: As a good Democrat, I know why all this makes sense. We don't want people contaminating the environment with their septic tanks or burning to death in poorly wired houses or guzzling gallon after gallon of termiticide-tainted water. Clearly, those are not good things, and I think the government has an obligation to try to keep them from happening.

That said, Mr. Sonny, as the old man is known, is the one being asked to pay the check for my idea of what constitutes good government here. And while that may just be one of those facts of life that country people like him will eventually have to learn to live with, I would never insult those folks by implying that they're too stupid to know which side their bread is buttered on just because most of them vote for the guy who says he wants to get the government off their backs. Fact is, the government is on their backs, and it's on them in ways that most city dwellers don't even begin to comprehend.

Which, to make a long story short, is why this kind of well-meaning lefty claptrap so irritates me. Rural people aren't a bunch of dummies who've been snookered into voting their prejudices rather than their pocketbooks. It's a lot more complicated than that. And until we Democrats start to get our heads around the idea that the culture war is as much about people not wanting to be told that they have to rip the well out of the house they grew up in as it is about God and gays, I'm afraid that we aren't going to be able to get these folks to listen to a word we have to say.

POSTSCRIPT: Almost forgot. Via Matthew Yglesias, who, as you would expect, has a smart and witty take on all this.

UPDATE: See what I mean?

UPDATE 2: Well, that certainly went over well....

UPDATE 3: And even better (if that's possible) in the comments over at Political Animal.

FINAL UPDATE (7/21): Max Sawicky has more.

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Despite some legitimate Democratic concerns about the timing of all this, the Kerry campaign's decision to cut former national security adviser Sandy Berger loose was a proper response to a serious lapse, just as President Bush's difficult decision to fire Donald Rumsfeld in the wake of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal was both necessary and entirely appropriate given the defense secretary's gross maladministration of post-war Iraq. ... Oh, wait. That didn't happen, did it?

Well, I guess we'll just have to add another bullet point to our growing list of reasons to vote for John Kerry this November: The man isn't afraid to hold his advisers and subordinates accountable when they make serious errors in judgment.

Refreshing, isn't it?

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And how did the president get away with childishly snubbing the NAACP last week? Well, the fact that stories like this one get buried on page A-15 might have something to do with it.

Victory Slipping Away for Black Farmers USDA, Justice Dept. Thwart Payouts to Most in Landmark Settlement, Report Says The Department of Agriculture has denied payments to almost 90 percent of black farmers who sought compensation for discrimination under a landmark court settlement the agency reached with African American growers five years ago, according to a report set for release today by a Washington-based environmental group.

A two-year investigation by the Environmental Working Group found that USDA officials contracted Justice Department lawyers to aggressively fight the farmers' claims after the settlement of the $3 billion class-action lawsuit. Of the 94,000 growers who sought restitution for discrimination in a process set up by the court, 81,000 were turned away, the report says.

The report, funded by the Ford Foundation, said the USDA's actions "willfully obstructed justice" and "deliberately undermined" the spirit of the settlement.

Compassionate conservatism, indeed. Read the rest here.

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Like most of the programming on FNC, FOX News Watch is pretty good television -- fast-paced, slickly produced, and just contentious enough to keep you from nodding off as the panel dissects the latest media scandalette. It is also, as Lawrence Lessig persuasively demonstrates, about as fair and balanced as an RNC press release.

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Glenn Reynolds notes that next week's 9/11 Commission report is expected to "spell out a connection between Iran and Al Qaeda," and asks, "Will those who said that it was wrong to invade Iraq because there wasn't enough evidence of such a connection now weigh in in favor of invading Iran?" (Link via Kevin Drum.)

No, they probably won't, Glenn. Instead, they'll simply direct people to your archives so that they can see for themselves that the 9/11 Commission and its findings are fundamentally unreliable.

In fact, if they're in a particularly snarky mood, they'll simply say, "The 9/11 Commission claims there's an Iran connection? Well, consider the source. I stopped taking them seriously a while ago."

POSTSCRIPT: For the record, I've taken the 9/11 Commission seriously from the beginning and will continue to do so until their work is finished, whether I find it helpful on a political level or not. Down here in South Carolina, where a term like "intellectual honesty" can sound a little phony and highfalutin', we call that kind of consistency "integrity" -- and it would be nice if we saw a little more of it from the folks whose presidential candidate keeps insisting that this election is ultimately about the nature and quality of each side's values.

UPDATE (8:30am): I just reread this post, and the last sentence is too tough. Though I do think it's grossly unfair to smack your political opponents across the chops with a report that you've previously gone to great lengths to discredit, I shouldn't have personalized the discussion by implying that Glenn lacks integrity. That's not what we're about around here, and I apologize. And I'll try to not to let my Irish get the best of me next time.

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"Many of you who heard me during the presidential primaries heard me talk about one America where people struggled to get by, struggled to pay their bills, can't save any money. ... Well, this is the other America, right here."

--Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards, speaking to a crowd of supporters yesterday in Orange County, CA

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Kieran Healy over at Crooked Timber has examined a new study on the US penal system and posted some of its more remarkable findings, including this eye-grabber: "A startling 58.9 percent of black high school dropouts born from 1965 through 1969 had served time in state or federal prison by their early 30s."

POSTSCRIPT: As a Clinton-style law and order Democrat, I have to admit that I'm a little leery about arguing for truly radical reform in the American criminal justice system. But these kinds of numbers are too disturbing to ignore. And if those of us who call ourselves New Democrats are really serious about the "Democrat" part of that formulation, we need to be willing to use some of the credibility we've built up with moderate voters on this issue to start making the case for real and, yes, responsible change. Otherwise, our critics on the left may well have a point when they claim that the Third Way is just conservatism with a smiling face.

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Nah. But it's a fun story, nonetheless.

Fukuyama Withdraws Bush Support Famous academic Francis Fukuyama, one of the founding fathers of the neo-conservative movement that underlies the policies of US President George W. Bush's administration, said on July 13 that he would not vote for the incumbent in the November 2 US Presidential election.

In addition to distancing himself from the current administration, Fukuyama told TIME magazine that his old friend, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, should resign.

More at (and via) Hullabaloo.

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Once again, a high-profile blogger is outraged over where the "hacks" are putting their money in this election:

JOURNALISTS FOR KERRY: Michael Petrelis has done some digging and found which hacks have given to which candidates. Big surprise: "President George Bush didn't receive a single donation from any outlet or reporter in my search." The New Yorker is, in particular, up to its eyeballs in reporter contributions to lefties and Dems.

Just a quick reminder, folks: The vast majority of Americans get their news from TV and radio -- particularly from local TV and radio, where the station managers are making most of the news judgments -- not from The New Yorker. (Red State Reality Check for Blue State Conservatives: According to the local postmaster, your humble correspondent happens to be the only person in his zip code who subscribes to that particular publication. [You know your local postmaster? -- ed. Of course. Gee, that's another Red State Reality Check of sorts, isn't it?]) And, as you can see for yourself, the over-the-air guys aren't exactly throwing money at John Kerry and the Democrats.

TV/Radio Stations:
Long-Term Contribution Trends

NOTE: Chart lifted from opensecrets.org.

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As you've probably noticed, posting has been light today. Look for new stuff to start appearing overnight or in the morning.

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In keeping with this site's longstanding policy against bringing the families into it, I haven't written a word about the president's daughters and their new-found interest in politics. However, were I to do so, this is essentially what I'd have to say on the subject.

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With the personal grace and subtlety of thought that give so many modern conservatives that touch of real class, Steven Den Beste demands that Kevin Drum tell him how many divisions the pope has.

(Via Stephen Green.)

MORE: TBogg notes, "Lots of links prove that you did your homework but they don't necessarily mean that your homework is correct."

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No, not that crypto-creationist folderol. The real thing -- a smart new Sekimori look for Stephen Green's VodkaPundit.

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The Poor Man recounts a 2002 presidential fib that was so brazen, so utterly breathtaking in its audacity, I'm not quite sure whether to be horrified as a citizen, or quietly impressed as a communications professional.

UPDATE: Lightly edited at 8:44pm.

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Ryan to Ditka to ... Sawicky! It's almost like one of those old Ascent of Man drawings, isn't it?

MORE: And then, of course, there's Ted Nugent. Seriously... (Via Oliver Willis.)

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Having done the same thing several times myself, I can't really blame Ogged for deciding to take a blog break. But I don't have to like it.

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Slate's Fred Kaplan says that Senate Democrats should keep pushing for the release of the intelligence synopsis the CIA provided to President Bush in the run-up to the Iraq war:

If all George W. Bush knew about the Iraqi threat was gleaned from a one-page summary that stated the case for WMD—and that did not even acknowledge the existence of a case for skepticism—that's important to know. It's important for citizens who want some insight on why we went to war. And it's important for the president, who may decide to read a longer document the next time there's trouble.

While I'm often sympathetic to the executive privilege argument the Bushies are putting forward to defend their decision to withhold the summary, Kaplan's got a strong case here. [A slam dunk? -- ed. Boy, sometimes I wonder whether you're really a nice guy....] There's just no way to get to the bottom of all this without that one-pager, and, in this instance, the public's right to know (not to mention the Congress' responsibility to oversee) clearly trumps any EP argument the administration might make.

Besides, President Bush is the world's most famous evangelical Christian. How can he not know that the truth will set him free?

UPDATE: Matthew Yglesias corrects a Kaplan error.

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Is it just me, or is this a big deal?

Realizing that a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage faces little chance of passing soon, if ever, House Republicans yesterday discussed alternative approaches, including stripping federal courts of jurisdiction over the issue, passing a federal law to define marriage and using the appropriations process to ban gay marriage in Washington....

Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) told reporters yesterday that he plans to use “jurisdiction stripping” measures to achieve other social policy goals as well....

The U.S. Constitution establishes only the Supreme Court but leaves it to Congress to “ordain and establish” the lower federal courts. Arguably, therefore, Congress has the right determine the federal courts’ jurisdiction.

“That [Supreme Court] building is the Taj Mahal. Everybody should stay away from it,” he said about Congress’s past unwillingness to challenge Supreme Court decisions.

DeLay said the time is “not quite ripe” to apply the GOP’s new legislative tactics to the issue of abortion. [Emph. added.]

For those who feel up to it, the rest is here.

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Much to their chagrin, the GOP is learning that, in today's America, that old gay mare, she ain't what she used to be:

[T]he way in which the [Federal Marriage Amendment] proposal went down with a whimper - short of a simple majority, much less the two-thirds of the Senate needed for approval - raised questions about whether the White House had fundamentally misjudged the nation's attitude on the issue. And the vote left even some of Mr. Bush's own advisers wondering if his backing of the amendment did not hurt him politically more than it helped by further stoking opposition to him from the left.

"It's a net loss for Republicans politically," said one prominent Republican in Washington who works closely with the White House. "It does nothing for our base, because they're grumpy about not having it, and it energized a significant portion of their base. I guarantee you that the gay community will give twice as much money and work harder for Kerry now, not so much because they care about marriage per se, but because this effort plays to their fears that we're homophobic."

Yep.

MORE: Via Sullivan, Volokh refutes the legal arguments of the man-on-dog caucus.

AND MORE: Kevin Drum adds, "We all know that tolerance of gays increases steadily every year, which means that if FMA didn't pass this year, it's never going to pass. It's just plain dead."

STILL MORE: "Jackass."

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Last week, Glenn Reynolds made it clear that he doesn't particularly appreciate being branded a conservative blogger: "Pro-gay-marriage, pro-choice, pro-drug-legalization, but pro-war? You're a 'conservative.'"

Apparently, right-wing talker Hugh Hewitt didn't get the memo. (Link via James Joyner.)

POSTSCRIPT: I want to state for the record that I'm not mocking Glenn here. He has a point when he says that he's not a doctrinaire conservative. He isn't. That said, Instapundit is a conservative weblog, in much the same way that The New Republic is a liberal magazine; specific issue positions aside, their sympathies, like my own, are as obvious as Dolly Parton's, er, talents.

UPDATE: Edited slightly at 10:07am.

RELATED: Messrs. Reynolds and Cone have a frank and open exchange of ideas.

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Whiskey Bar: "How many times does the Bush family have to steal a Florida election before they finally get it right?"

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"He ain’t playing with a full deck."

--South Carolina's very own Rep. James Clyburn, on independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader (Link via The Note.)

MORE: And from Angry Bear, here's Salon editor David Talbot making a similar point....

FINAL NADER UPDATE (MAYBE): Usage note from McSweeney's soon-to-be-published Future Dictionary of America: "He ralphnadired their relationship when he condi-scendingly denied that he'd cheneyed their joint account."

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According to a "relatively senior person" at FOX News, "The true journalists here ... want EVERYONE challenged, not just Democrats. But that's not the Fox News way."

CableNewser has the exclusive.

UPDATE: Media Matters has taken the 33 internal FOX News memos that Wonkette published this morning and organized them by issue for quick and easy web digestion. (Via TAPPED.)

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Think again.

Ruy Teixeira: The latest Gallup poll, consistent with the analysis I posted yesterday, shows the Kerry-Edwards ticket getting a warm reception from voters. In the poll, Kerry-Edwards leads Bush-Cheney by 7 points (51-44) among RVs. That's up from a 4 point lead in Gallup's last poll about three weeks ago.

Internals of this horse race question also look very good for the Democratic ticket. Kerry-Edwards have a very healthy 13 point lead among independents (50-37). And Democrats are supporting their ticket even more strongly (92-6) than the Republicans are supporting theirs (87-9); the reverse has generally been true in the campaign up 'til now.

Kerry-Edwards also have a wide 19 point lead in the solid blue states (58-39) and, even more important, a substantial 10 point lead in the purple, up-for-grabs states (51-41).

Indeed, indeed. Read the rest here.

MORE: "Of the 16 [battleground] states, Mr. Kerry now leads in 12, up from the nine states he held three weeks ago. Mr. Bush holds three states, down from seven, and the candidates are tied in one state, Tennessee."

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Though I had a small (very small) role in the campaign that sent him packing in 1994, I've always thought that former Swedish PM Carl Bildt was one of the world's good guys. And if you follow this link to his recent Raw Story interview, I think you'll see why.

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Mickey Kaus is really, really full of it.

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Ezra Klein thinks our Republican friends need a little reality-check on the whole issue of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton:

To people on the Democratic side, Hillary is a highly polarizing junior senator from New York. That's it. She's interesting, we like her, it's fun to watch Safire construct whole new worlds based entirely on her deviousness, but we're not anxiously waiting for her to run for President nor sitting in front of our televisions hoping she'll drop a clue to her future plans."

That's basically true, I think. Hillary is interesting, and she may well be The Next Big Thing, but she really isn't right now. On the other hand, as Mr. Safire could no doubt explain to you, that's probably just part of the plan....

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Michelle Malkin has a point. (Via OTB.)

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Oh, those Mayberry Machiavellis:

New government estimates suggest that employers will reduce or eliminate prescription drug benefits for 3.8 million retirees when Medicare offers such coverage in 2006.

That represents one-third of all the retirees with employer-sponsored drug coverage, according to documents from the Department of Health and Human Services....

In last year's debates, Republicans repeatedly said the new drug benefits would be completely voluntary. "Seniors happy with the current Medicare system should be able to keep their coverage just the way it is,'' Mr. Bush said in his State of the Union Message in 2003.

But Representative Pete Stark of California, the senior Democrat on the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, said it now appeared that the new law would "force millions of retirees out of comprehensive retiree drug coverage and into a flawed, inadequate program.''

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is as good an example as you'll find of why you don't want Karl Rove and the political team running the policy shop. Half a trillion bucks out the door and nobody -- absolutely nobody -- is happy.

Now that's what I call changing the tone.

UPDATE: Well, sure, policy may not be their thing. But they're actually quite adept at running "the most relentlessly negative re-election campaign in memory."

MORE: And just how negative? Well, according to the AP, pretty damned negative: "Searching for 'Kerry' on the Department of Homeland Security's Web site Tuesday afternoon turned up an unexpected top hit: a Republican attack on the Democratic presidential candidate."

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How much intellectual dishonesty does it take to push the simple act of being wrong into the more troubling territory of telling a lie? I honestly don't know. But I'm getting awfully tired of having an administration that keeps forcing me to ask the question.

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New to the blogroll today: Tacitus' Red State, and Kos & Armstrong's Our Congress.

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I thought only liberals trafficked in vile Nazi references (via Nosey):

Syndicated right-wing radio host Michael Savage accused Senator John Edwards (D-NC) of telling "a Goebbels lie." (Joseph Goebbels was Adolf Hitler's minister of propaganda.) On the July 7 broadcast of Savage Nation, Savage said, "And yet John Edwards has the nerve to say that he fought for the little guy by fighting HMOs and insurance companies. It's utterly -- It's a big lie. It's absolutely a Goebbels lie that if you tell a big lie often enough it becomes the truth. It's the absolute opposite of what he did."

Oh, well, I guess it's like so many other things in American life, from irresponsible government spending to the occasional extramarital fling.

It's only wrong when lefties do it.

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At one point in 1992, Bill Clinton remarked that the first President Bush was distributing so much pork to local communities on his campaign swings, it was probably time to put a meat inspector on Air Force One.

Today, Tapped's Nick Confessore reminds us that the apple don't fall far from the tree.

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Late last week, I added a box on the right for links to off-site news articles and blog posts of note, but for all sorts of reasons that wouldn't (and shouldn't) be of any particular interest to most readers, I wasn't altogether happy with the results. So, for the next day or two, I'm going to experiment with adding some Glenn Reynolds-style "just a link" posts here in the main body of the blog.

Frankly, I have no idea whether I'll enjoy that kind of blogging, or whether you will either, for that matter. On the other hand, as I've made clear in the past, I think the Slashdot-y political blog model that Glenn pioneered has real, if mostly intangible, benefits, and I'd like to play around with the concept a little.

So, now that you've been duly warned informed of my intentions, let's get started.

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Elizabeth Edwards, who's such an inveterate weblog reader that she's even graced our humble Internet abode with her presence, tells blogger Ed Cone that the energy level on the campaign trail is so high, she can "feel a change a-comin'."

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No, the GOP's Federal Marriage Amendment isn't going to pass -- and everybody in the country knows it.

Still, Reason's Julian Sanchez thinks there may be a silver-lining in all this for the Republican party: "Maybe ten years from now when GOP legislators are scrambling to distance themselves from this farce like ex-segregationists, they can reach out to the gay community by claiming they were motivated by a love of the theater."

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BoP's Matt Stoller finds market guru James Cramer "waxing nostalgic for the Clinton team."

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NAACP President Kweisi Mfume: "They've financed a conservative coalition of make-believe black organizations, all of them hollow shells with more names on the letterhead than there are people in their membership."

Oliver Willis has the story....

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Krugman: "The larger picture is this: Mr. DeLay and his fellow hard-liners, whose values are far from the American mainstream, have forged an immensely effective alliance with corporate interests. And they may be just one election away from achieving a long-term lock on power."

UPDATE: Geez, do I have to draw you a picture? Don't you know "caricature assassination" when you see it?

MORE: Charles Kuffner notes, "It's all one big happy back-scratching family in DeLayLand, isn't it?"

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Jesse Taylor has some interesting thoughts on the "Buy Hitch a Drink!" fundraiser they're holding over at Winds of Change.

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Now that conservatives are claiming vindication in the Valerie Plame affair, Josh Marshall has a question for the folks who leaked her name to the press: If you've really got nothing to hide, then, uh, why are you still hiding?

UPDATE: The Poor Man has more.

UPDATE 2: Ogged has yet more. And Tom Maguire weighs in from the right.

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This is probably going to surprise just about everybody who's familiar with this weblog (including, well, me), but I think Thomas Sowell has a point here (via AtlanticBlog):

Blacks have, in effect, been adopted as mascots by many white liberals. Mascots serve to symbolize something for others but the actual well-being of the mascot himself is seldom a major concern. Blacks have long been used by the left to indict American society.

And which libs are guilty of that kind of callous, morally indefensible posturing? Well, let's just say they seem to represent about two percent of the population at the moment.

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In the middle of an otherwise excellent post, billmon writes, "The DLC types will never admit that class warfare works - their entire political premise is based on the notion that Democrats have to talk like smarter Republicans when campaigning on economic issues."

Let's see now.... Would those be the same DLCers that Bill Clinton was leading in 1992 when he explicitly ran on a promise to raise taxes on the well-to-do to pay for tax cuts for everybody else? Or the DLCers whose New Orleans Declaration clearly states, "We believe a progressive tax system is the only fair way to pay for government." Or is billmon referring to the "DLC types" whose website is currently teasing an article with these Republican-sounding words: "The middle class is getting squeezed in today's economy -- and Bush's plutocratic policies are making matters worse"?

Fact is, the DLC has always understood class warfare. We just have this crazy idea that maybe it doesn't make a lot of sense to fight it exactly the same way that George McGovern, Walter Mondale and Mike Dukakis did in the course of their, uh, groundbreaking presidential campaigns.

So sue us.

Hell, we're just two for two in the presidential elections department anyway, right?

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A sobering statistic: "[T]he U.S., with five percent of the world's population, has 25% of the world's prisoners."

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The already infamous Newsweek report that the administration is considering the possibility of postponing the November election in case of a terrorist strike tells you everything you need to know about why these guys need to go.

Did they quietly bring leaders from both sides in the House and Senate up to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. to talk this thing through, and to try to come up with a plan that would address both their concerns about terrorism and their opponents' worries about investing an unprecedented level of authority in the chief executive? Then, did they hold a press conference with the leaders of both parties standing side-by-side to present their proposal, so that the American people could have a little confidence in their good intentions?

Oh, hell no. They just started drawing up a plan and let it leak. In fact, it's the Iraq model all over again, isn't it? We know what's best, and if you don't trust our judgment completely and without reservation, you're a bad ally. Or worse, a bad American.

Look, this kind of planning is probably necessary. These really are dangerous days, and the country needs to be prepared for any eventuality. But this isn't the way to go about it. And the fact that these guys need a blogosphere to tell them that is just another reason to vote for the tall guy this November.

Assuming there's an election to vote in this November....

POSTSCRIPT: Via Pandagon, here's The Moderate Voice with some smart commentary on this issue, and a first-class set of links to go with it.

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Though we've suspected it all along, Newsweek now has documents that prove that many of those tortured at Abu Ghraib prison were nothing more than petty criminals.

What if the FBI had tortured Zacarias Moussaoui, the would-be 20th hijacker, into revealing the plot to destroy the World Trade Center in time to stop it? Who could blame it? These were not people playing by any rules of civilized warfare, and nor are terrorists in Iraq. At Abu Ghraib, military-intelligence officers were concerned about the poor "product" they were getting from prisoner interrogations, and they pressured the military-police guards there to "soften up" their charges between sessions. That, at least, is the defense of the six MPs now facing charges in the scandal. So why did Cpl. Charles Graner Jr. order a young woman to pull her shirt up to her neck? She was an accused prostitute. MPs allegedly ordered Hussein Mohsen Matar to masturbate, and rode on his naked back as he crawled on all fours. He was an accused thief. Haqi Ismail Abdul-Hamid, famously menaced by a snarling dog, had at least kicked an Iraqi policemen and threatened to kill Coalition soldiers. But he was ordered released as a mental case. Not only did military police torture prisoners at Abu Ghraib, they often tortured the wrong prisoners.

And, believe it or not, it gets worse.

It's difficult to escape the conclusion that the Abu Ghraib torturers were just having a good, if sadistic, time. One military investigator wrote in his notes on Graner: "the biggest S.O.B. on earth," a comment he underlined twice. The price for the party is enormous: damage done to Iraqi support for the American occupation has been incalculable. The details are sickening. Noor, a detainee whose full name is being withheld by NEWSWEEK, was forced to expose her breasts and genitalia and is shown in the MPs' pictures giving a forced smile for Graner, who sources believe was the photographer. Subsequently a letter signed by a woman named Noor circulated widely in Baghdad saying she had been raped and impregnated by American soldiers, and begging the resistance to "please kill all of us." Prisoner Satar Jabar's photograph, showing him hooded and wired up, has become familiar to Iraqis, who derisively call it "the Statue of Liberty." Far from being a dangerous insurgent, however, Jabar, 24, was an accused car thief.

Like many (though certainly not most) Democrats, I've tried to walk a fine line on Iraq, supporting the war on a broad, strategic level, while decrying the seemingly endless tactical missteps we've seen in its prosecution. Unfortunately, President Bush's almost cavalier response to Abu Ghraib has made it almost impossible for me -- or anyone else of good conscience, I would think -- to continue to support his Iraq policy in any way, shape, or form. You simply can't allow the Secretary of Defense to skate when his policies have produced this kind of a moral and strategic disaster; it's irresponsible at best, and damned near anti-American at worst. Yet the president has apparently decided to do just that. As a result, I'm afraid he's forcing the last of this war's centrist supporters to start looking for the exits.

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Via Drudge, here's some pleasant news for a South Carolinian like yours truly to enjoy with his morning coffee.

Fifteen tanks holding deadly atomic waste at a nuclear weapons complex along the Savannah River have cracked, rusted or leaked, according to federal inspection reports.

Some of the cracks date to the 1950s, when the steel tanks first went into use at the Savannah River Site. But inspection reports say some leaks have been found in the past three years.

In 2001, 92 gallons of radioactive waste leaked through a 40-year-old tank into a containment area. Six leak sites were found on the 750,000-gallon, 24-foot high steel tank.

Secondary containment systems have kept radioactive poisons from getting into groundwater. But a containment system failed in 1960, and the waste leaked into the ground, the reports said.

The 300-square-mile federal weapons complex has 51 steel tanks holding 37 million gallons of waste, including uranium, cesium and plutonium.

Westinghouse Savannah River Co., which runs the site for the U.S. Department of Energy, says some tanks are within 8 to 10 feet of the water table, raising concerns. But Dean Campbell, a spokesman for Westinghouse, says the government does not know of any tanks that currently are leaking.

Read that last sentence again, and see if you can find a denial in there someplace. Because I've read it three times now, and all I see is a "we dunno."

Now do you understand why our state motto is "Dum spiro spero?" ("While I breathe, I hope.")

You know it, babe.

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New to the blogroll today: RoguePlanet and Blog for Democracy.

POSTSCRIPT: As always, the Standard Blogroll Note applies.

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The fact that you seldom get to read about the scandalette of the day on this blog has nothing to do with journalistic ethics; it's simply the result of my being so hopelessly lazy that I generally don't bother to read stories that can't possibly be true. (Which isn't to say that they're not "accurate," of course, but that's a different issue entirely.) For example, if I stop by Drudge's place and see a link along the lines of "DASCHLE CALLS SODOMY 'THE GIFT OF A LOVING GOD'," it's exceedingly unlikely that I'll click through to the full story. Life's just too short, you know?

Anyway, that's the way I've felt for the last day or so about the Dick Riordan "stupid, dirty girl" stuff. There was just no way in hell that that story could conceivably be true in any meaningful sense, so I didn't take the time to learn anything about it. But now, thanks to Ogged, I not only know all about the story, I know why, in fact, it's not really true. And, best of all, I know that it's only right and proper for me to continue in my indolent ways.

UPDATE: This post was lightly edited at 6:21 pm.

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Though the campaign says it ain't gonna happen, some Kerry folks are apparently examining the idea of opting out of the public financing system this fall.

Aside from a level of confidence that comes with Mr. Kerry's fund-raising prowess, two concerns motivate the calls to forgo public financing. One is that with public financing Mr. Kerry is limited to spending the $75 million over three months while Mr. Bush can spend the same amount over two months. The clock starts with each candidate's official nomination. Mr. Bush is accepting on Sept. 2, and Mr. Kerry on July 29.

Another fear is that Mr. Kerry will accept public financing only to watch Mr. Bush, whose fund-raising topped his, later opt out of the program.

"Bush can decide that he ain't going to do federal funding,'' said Tony Coelho, who for a time managed Al Gore's campaign in 2000 and is now urging Mr. Kerry to consider forgoing public money. "He can go and spend $200 million, which he could raise. And Kerry would be stuck at $75 million."

Mr. Coelho said Mr. Bush should be asked for a formal promise to use public financing. Officials at Mr. Bush's campaign said they would not address such a hypothetical situation. A spokeswoman for the Bush campaign, Nicolle Devenish, said, "We have no plans of opting out of public financing."

As the article goes on to explain, there are some real downsides to this idea, including doubts about whether fundraising is really the highest, best use of the candidates' time between now and Nov. 2, and the possibility of a major terrorist attack, which could bring down the Internet and/or the US Postal Service. Still, I'm glad somebody is at least looking at the alternatives, particularly since the Bushies, who have shown a real taste for the jugular over the years, are unwilling to address this decidedly non-hypothetical "hypothetical situation" until Kerry has boxed himself in.

UPDATE: And that's what I get for not keeping up with my blog-reading: Kaus covered much of the same ground, and in some detail, days ago.... (Via Glenn Reynolds.)

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Robin Wright and Glenn Kessler examine John Edwards' foreign policy record in today's WaPo, and unsurprisingly (to those of us who are familiar with it, anyway), it looks pretty good. Here's a taste:

In the summer of 2001, when much of the Republican and Democratic policy community was obsessed with missile defense, Edwards urged more attention to terrorism. The North Carolina senator had such limited luck pitching an OpEd article on terrorism to major newspapers that the piece, warning of poor cooperation among federal and local law enforcement, ended up in the weekly Littleton Observer, circulation 2,230 -- four weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks....

On key national security issues, Edwards has increasingly staked out a centrist and occasionally hawkish policy, making terrorism his top focus well before Sept. 11, 2001, and pressing for a global push on democracy before Bush made it a cornerstone of his Middle East policy.

Because he had been working on legislative proposals on counterterrorism, Edwards introduced a broad bill within a week of the Sept. 11 attacks to tighten seaport security, including provisions for special Coast Guard units, the use of sea marshals and inspection of high-interest vessels. A month later, he co-sponsored a bill with Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) to improve preparedness against chemical and biological terrorism. He also proposed legislation to hinder cyberterrorism. None of the three made it to the floor for a vote, but elements were included in subsequent legislation.

Read the rest here.

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Via Stephen Green, here's Dick Morris demonstrating the good judgment that took him from the top of the political world to the back pages of the NY Post.

During his run for the top job, John Edwards relied heavily on leading trial lawyers. Twenty-two of his top 25 donors were trial attorneys. And those donations likely cloak a multitude of sins and violations of the campaign-finance laws.

Edwards' trial lawyers bundled massive contributions from their assorted law firms and client lists to float his presidential run. Bundling isn't illegal — except when the donors are straw men and women putting up money given to them by a wealthy patron.

For example, $1 million of Edwards' funds came from trial lawyers' wives — identified merely as "homemakers" in the campaign-finance filings. If the money came from their husbands, there could be a violation of law.

More significant is the example of Little Rock trial lawyer Tad Turner, whose firm gave $200,000 to the Edwards campaign and associated committees. But Slate found last Aug. 29 that many of the "contributions . . . appear to be illegal." The online magazine reported that "one clerk who gave $2,000 said that Turner had 'asked for people to support Edwards' and assured them 'he would reimburse us.' " Another clerk told much the same story.

When that came out, Edwards returned $10,000 to Turner employees. Tad Turner himself — a noted trial lawyer — said that he didn't know his promise of reimbursement was illegal.

How many more stories like Turner's are there buried in Edwards' filings?

Okay, let's dispense with this loathsome crap as expeditiously as possible, shall we?

1) As someone who's raised a little campaign cash from time to time, let me assure you that nobody -- and I mean nobody -- on either side has any interest in trying to disentangle the finances of husbands and wives. In fact, if you take a quick look at the Bush campaign's disclosures to date, you'll see just how little interest those folks would have in starting down that road.

2) Every major campaign has to return some donations from irresponsible contributors who may have broken the law. And the more money you raise, the more often that's likely to happen. Again, who really wants to start that discussion?

3) Of course, the real purpose of Dick Morris' blather in this case is to hammer once again on the whole trial lawyer issue. The problem? It's the stupidest possible way to go about it. Because if the GOP starts discussing John Edwards' largest contributors, the press will eventually insist on discussing the president's. And, as we all know, Mr. Bush's largest contributor is about to be frogmarched into federal court for stealing the life savings of widows and orphans from sea to shining sea.

Jesus, Dick. Did you really mean to open this particular Pandora's box?

Talk about bring it on....

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At least until after the election:

Senate Iraq Report Said to Skirt White House Use of Intelligence A bipartisan Senate report to be issued Friday that is highly critical of prewar intelligence on Iraq will sidestep the question of how the Bush administration used that information to make the case for war, Congressional officials said Wednesday. But Democrats are maneuvering to raise the issue in separate statements. Under a deal reached this year between Republicans and Democrats, the Bush administration's role will not be addressed until the Senate Intelligence Committee completes a further stage of its inquiry, but probably not until after the November election. As a result, said the officials, both Democratic and Republican, the committee's initial, unanimous report will focus solely on misjudgments by intelligence agencies, not the White House, in the assessments about Iraq, illicit weapons and Al Qaeda that the administration used as a rationale for the war.

The effect may be to provide an opening for President Bush and his allies to deflect responsibility for what now appear to be exaggerated prewar assessments about the threat posed by Iraq, by portraying them as the fault of the Central Intelligence Agency and its departing chief, George J. Tenet, rather than Mr. Bush and his top aides.

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And that, of course, is the problem with the Bush-Cheney campaign's decision yesterday to contrast Mr. Cheney's forty grim years in Washington with John Edwards' sunny six: America is a hopeful, optimistic place, and Dick Cheney is a profoundly (and unmistakably) pessimistic man.

Once again, the Bushies' mouths are way out in front of their brains on this one. (Can you say "Mission Accomplished?" I knew that you could.) Before this thing is over, they'll be very sorry they ever asked the American people to seriously ponder the idea of a Cheney presidency.

POSTSCRIPT: As we saw over and over during the Clinton years, the modern Republican party can be counted on to bring a sledge hammer to a turkey carving every time, and this is yet another example of that phenomenon. There's just no subtlety to their game; politics is all about blunt force trauma with them. And while that approach has worked (to some extent, anyway) at the congressional level, it's been nothing but bad news for their presidential candidates.

You know, you'd think that losing the popular vote three times in a row would have taught them something. But I guess you'd be wrong.

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Unfortunately, I'm on deadline with a project today, but I did want to make this quick point: the cliche that describes the veep selection as a nominee's first presidential decision is more than a little true. And the thoughtful, deliberative process through which John Kerry arrived at the best choice for his country and his party speaks volumes about what kind of a leader he is. It also stands in sharp contrast to then-Gov. Bush's non-decision decision to stand back and let Dick Cheney pick himself four years ago.

Think about that the next time you ask yourself how we got into this mess in Iraq -- and who's going to be able to fix it.

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Time to go to work.

POSTSCRIPT: Yup, there's still time to contribute.

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NBC is reporting that Sen. Kerry has selected NC's John Edwards as his running mate.

More as the story develops....

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TNR's Peter Beinart has examined the latest polling data on Iraq and the war on terror, and thinks that the Mayberry Machiavellis may have outsmarted themselves again [Sub. Req'd]:

[T]he Bush administration has waged an unrelenting p.r. campaign to make sure Americans see Iraq not as a separate conflict, but as "the central battle in the war on terrorism." The hope has been that the public's strong support for Bush's handling of "terrorism"--support that stems largely from his decisive response to September 11--would brighten its view of his handling of Iraq.

This winter--after it became clear that Saddam Hussein's capture wouldn't stop the Iraqi insurgency--that p.r. strategy began to fail. By February 11, support for Bush on Iraq was down to 47 percent. But 64 percent of Americans still backed his handling of the war on terrorism. Despite the administration's efforts to link the two issues, the public was increasingly seeing them as distinct.

For the White House, the failure of this linkage strategy was bad news--since it left the president with one foreign policy strength (terrorism) and one growing weakness (Iraq). But, this week, the news got far worse. According to the new ABC/Post poll, the public is connecting Iraq and terrorism once again. Except now, instead of terrorism pulling Iraq up, Iraq is pulling terrorism down. Bush's approval on Iraq has dropped to 44 percent, down three points from February. But his terrorism rating has plummeted to 50 percent, a whopping 14-point drop. For the first time in more than a year, the Iraq and terrorism numbers are within a few points of one another. The public again believes that Iraq is the central battle in the war on terrorism. Except now it fears America is losing both.

Now, wouldn't that be rich? (Mr. Rove, you had a wartime president and Ralph Nader on the ballot in several key states. Why aren't you in the winners' circle tonight? Well, you see, Judy, these results just make it official. We really lost this election way back in June, when our disingenuous PR strategy started working....) Poetic justice at last.

It couldn't happen to a better group of guys.

POSTSCRIPT: As I've said before, Karl Rove and Co. aren't nearly as good as their reputations would suggest, and if President Bush doesn't figure that out soon, he really could lose this election. But don't look for him to make that calculation in time. As the Monica mess convincingly demonstrated, we can't expect presidents to be what they're not -- and following bad advice just seems to be as fundamental a part of this president's character as his faith in God, his love of family, and his persistent and baffling trust in the strange idea that when you smirk, the world smirks with you.

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"[T]he world's security cannot be protected without the world's heart being one. So America must listen as well as lead. But, members of Congress, don't ever apologize for your values. Tell the world why you're proud of America. Tell them when 'The Star-Spangled Banner' starts, Americans get to their feet -- Hispanics, Irish, Italians, Central Europeans, East Europeans, Jews, Muslims, white, Asian, black, those who go back to the early settlers, and those whose English is the same as some New York cab drivers I've dealt with -- but whose sons and daughters could run for this Congress. Tell them why Americans, one and all, stand upright and respectful. Not because some state official told them to, but because whatever race, color, class or creed they are, being American means being free. That's why they're proud."

-- British Prime Minister Tony Blair, addressing a joint session of Congress on July 17, 2003

POSTSCRIPT: Happy Fourth of July!

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A client who's planning to offer free blogs to his users at a new progressive activist site wanted to know whether Drupal, which offers that functionality out of the box, could be styled to produce a more TypePad/Movable Type-like look and feel, so I played around with it for a few hours and this was the result. Not perfect, but close enough for what he has in mind, I think.

Anyway, the reason you're looking at it is that this design required some fairly major tinkering, and I'm not absolutely sure at this point that everything works properly. So you good folks get to be the guinea pigs. If you spot any problems over the next few days -- broken pages, screwy output, etc. -- please let me know.

Thanks.

POSTSCRIPT: As soon as the new activist site is fully deployed, I'll put up a link. If vast plans don't get tripped up by half-vast execution, it should be a winner.

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I've got a ton of work to get out of the door this morning and then meetings all afternoon, so, barring some huge news event that renders all that irrelevant, expect blogging to be light to non-existent until late today or early tomorrow morning.

In the meantime, there are, as always in the blogosphere, plenty of outstanding alternatives.

UPDATE: Not to mention everyone in the Blogroll on your left....

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Like your humble correspondent, Slate's Paul Boutin switched from Internet Explorer to Firefox in response to last week's virus scare. And it doesn't sound like he's in any hurry to go back to IE, either.

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