Is your point that fringe wackos post a lot on message boards? By the way, this is the same way that O'Reilly goes after DailyKos - he pulls a few posts, and pretends that these random a-holes represent the majority of the progressive movement. I personally cannot stand Kos - he is too self-serving - but I am missing your point. Or I have read the same point made over and over on this blog - yes there is a segment of the liberal movement ("Progressive Purists") who are unrealistic and blame the Dems for everything. What is more interesting is how the mainstream media has jumped all over this congress. I personally think that this congress has done a fairly good job, other than in managing the PR. Who cares about a bunch of whiney self-hating liberals who hang around message boards all day?
 

Joseph,

Like you, I was ready to rail on Steny Hoyer for trying to table Kucinich's bill. I was shocked to see the Republicans voting to not table the bill and move to debate...

Until I heard Ed Epstein from Congressional Quarterly explain on C-SPAN _why_ the Repubs did not want to table the resolution: They wanted to use the resolution's debate to embarrass the Democrats.

Hear that? The Repubs' vote had NOTHING to do with upholding the law. Nothing at all. It was all part of a ploy to gain political traction via embarrassing the Democrats.

(And just think of all the Purists who are praising the Republicans for their actions...people, how could you not see the two-faced nature of this?)

Of course, the majority of Dems voted to send the resolution to the Judiciary Commitee, where it should go. Still, it was funny to see the Republicans reverse themselves and vote against that.

So, at the very least, it's now in Conyers' hands. At least there is finally something concrete in regards to impeachment...but it's only the first step. There are many more to go before Cheney can be held accountable. It is probably easier to go after him than Bush but...we'll see.
 

"Is your point that fringe wackos post a lot on message boards?"

My point is that these people are numerous enough to cause huge trouble. They WANT the Republicans to win in 2008.

Nader. 2000. 97,000 votes in Florida.

I will NEVER stop waving that particular bloody shirt.
 

if you want for Cannon fodder go here

http://www.impeachpac.org/
 

"... we must now wait for the Conyers hate to kick in" is funny stuff. I can't name a career pol I've admired more than or as much as John Conyers. He's the kind of guy a real-life James Bond would wish he could be like. In a blink he glides from suave to comic genius. Sometimes I think the spirits and bones of every great gentleman of politics and state inhabit him. (Had he been made to suffer and brought up on any formal House Ethics Committee charges, or charged by the FBI, for his gentle ways of largesse, I'm sure all of Detroit and most of Michigan would have called a strike and shut down the state.}

The Yay votes from Senators Schumer and Feinstein to recommend confirming Mukasey make good sense and make for excellent politics. First, no one at this late stage is worth going to the mat over, if it even would come to a fight. Second, Feinstein was the primary force on Judiciary against Gonzales during the last 2 open-pit barbecues, when she seared his ass over the Carol Lam firing. She won the day, and a lot more; so we can't expect her to look mean and vicious, or be tagged vainglorious. We should remember that confirmations are denied only for extreme cause. Also, it could have been a lot worse -- everyone (cough) knows that Clarence Thomas was confirmed to the SCOTUS only because Robert Bork got mugged righteously. Dianne can be petty, but she did all right this time. Most important, she saved a lot of her remaining capital for the many hunting parties still on the docket. She obviously has a crackerjack staff because she seldom comprehends the wordprocessing notes she reads from during the hearings.

Senator Schumer's Yay vote is even easier to justify because he's no one to fuck with, as they say in Brooklyn. Now he's made it clear to the Administration and the Republicans that his votes are virtually but not actually negotiable, i.e., he'll deal or kill. Of course, by voting Yay the Republican attack machine can't bother with him hardcore for now, which is supremely significant because he's the Senate honcho charged by the DNC with gaining something close to a super majority in the Senate next November. He and Howard Dean have been singing great harmony, and they're married to Jewish women, meaning they don't need Yoga, Zen, or chess grandmasters to teach them anything they haven't already learned.

We need another civics lesson to distinguish pop parlance from the parliamentary kind: Pelosi said impeachment is off the table, but for that to be enforced the only extant formal impeachment resolution has to be placed on the table. If not a civics lesson, Mort Sahl will do.
 

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To my attackers:

You're wasting your time. You obviously do not know how the Blogger interface works. It shows your nick, and certain nicks are deleted on sight, message unread.

Blogger also displays the first few words your messages -- and ONLY the first few words -- which is enough for me to know who is who. I don't click on such messages to read the rest.

So you are not communicating with my audience. You are not even communicating with me.

Just go away.
 

Good point on Nader. There was almost an interesting compromise that could have helped Nader and Gore and prevented Bush. Nader needed to get 5% of the vote in order for the Green Party to qualify for federal funding for future elections. Thus a lot of Nader/Green Party supporters were stuck between wanting to help the party get funding but also not wanting Bush to win. A law professor wrote an article in Slate about how voters in swing states who wanted to vote for Nader could trade their votes with a voter in a non-swing state who supported Gore. The swing state voter would vote Gore instead of Nader, and the safe state voter would vote Nader - since his vote was not going to impact that outcome. Thus Gore could win, and Nader could still get his 5%. Websites went up all over the country to facilitate the vote-swapping. Unfortunately a bunch of republican state attorneys and even one democratic state attorney from Minnesota got injunctions and shut down the sites for corrupting the electoral system or something. Too bad...might have swung the election.
 

Let me see if I have this right.

We have a Democrat (Kucinich) who wants to do the right thing, in my opinion and apparently 54% of the voting public agrees.

The Republicans who have a say in the matter chose not to kill the measure, that is they are gambling that the voting public will see their move as strategic to winning the next election. So, justice be damned, the larger goal should be the careers of our Patriots in office over what is best for the country?

Therefore, the Dems will be the only party to suffer?

sig. Mentor