Digby on Katrina: One Year Ago Today

I heard him in a small club in Long Island--back in the '70's and he smoked. He has such a unique sound. There's a bunch of other performances posted too...

Sweet Dreams: The Anthology

d r i f t g l a s s: From A to Z in the G-Dub alphabet

The Gaelic Starover: Apparently, the National Review believes that aversion among Catholics to blowing up other human beings, their villages, market places, houses of worship, bridges and general infrastructure is found solely on the “Left”. Meanwhile, the hacktacular Murdoch mouthpiece, Ralph Peters has graciously relieved "The Left" of responsibility for the Iraq debacle.

Pandagon: The "feminized" classroom causes "gay bullying."

MaxSpeak, You Listen! Would you prefer to live in 1967 with today’s real median household income ($46,326) or live today with 1967’s real median household income ($35,379)?

The Heretik: Wait Til He Gets His Haynes On You

Liberal Country Fan: The Country Music Association demonstrates that politics are more important than quality of music or even popular success in its nomination process.

Keith Olbermann had John Dean on last night to get his views of the Rumsfeld comments this week.

Download | play - WMV Download | play - QT

Dean hits on a great point. By Rumsfeld and Bush associating terrorism to fascism implies that terrorism is more state based than ideological based, a definition that goes against all other definitions of terrorism. Since it does conflict with other, more appropriate definitions, it proves more so that Rumsfeld and the other administration officials are out using such statements as pure attacks against critics.

You can pick up his book here.

Glenn Greenwald does a follow-up post to mine and it's just as awful:

Yesterday, David Warren, a columnist for Real Clear Politics and The Ottawa Citizen, attacked Centanni and Wiig for being cowards and "men without chests" and said that they illustrate so much of what is wrong with the West and why we are losing to the Islamofascists...read on

Rasmussen Reports conducts a national tracking poll of 15,000 voters per month, and in its latest round of polling, they found fewer and fewer people who wanted to identify themselves as Republicans.

The number of Americans calling themselves Republican has fallen to its lowest level in more than two-and-a-half years. Just 31.9% of American adults now say they're affiliated with the GOP. That's down from 37.2% in October 2004 and 34.5% at the beginning of 2006. […]

The number of Democrats has grown slightly, from 36.1% at the beginning of the year to 37.3% now. Those who claim to be unaffiliated have increased to 30.8% this month. That's the highest total recorded since Rasmussen Reports began releasing this data in January 2004.

Add it all together and the Democrats have their biggest net advantage — more than five percentage points — since January 2004. In the first month of 2006, the Democrats' advantage was just 1.6 percentage points. Last month, 32.8% of adults said they were Republicans and 36.8% identified themselves as Democrats.

Given the past several years, can you really blame people for distancing themselves from the GOP? If I were a Republican, I wouldn't want to admit it either.

– Guest Post by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report

Many people already believed Armitage was Novak's source. The wankers are wanking mightily.

Atrios:

Yes, I have them, and they seem obsessed with the fact that I haven't commented on the information that Armitage was apparently Novak's initial source on Plame. I haven't commented because it isn't especially interesting, it doesn't change the basic narrative at all...read on

Empty wheel has a great post:

Pretty remarkable. It's been three years. And the wingnuts are still working off the talking points Dick wrote when he first read Wilson's op-ed...read on

No Quarter has much more...

How low can they go? I refer of course to the latest vitriol directed at Valerie and Joe Wilson by the likes of Christopher Hitchens and Fred Hiatt of the Washington Post, who claim that Joe Wilson, not Bush Administration officials, is responsible for destroying his wife's cover and exposing her as a CIA operative...read on

Jane Hamsher: Wrong Said Fred

There are probably few people outside the Bush Administration who bear as much responsibility for selling the American public a bill of goods and leading them down the primrose path to war as Fred Hiatt. The unheralded level of cynicism with which the press is now regarded has no more deserving poster boy than Hiatt,..read on

More from Michael Collins and "Scoop" Independent News:

Pre-Certification Swearing in by Hastert
Terminates All State Legal Authority Over Elections

The People's House is now the Speaker's House.

"If they can do that, they can do anything. Why even have an election? They could just swear in whoever they want because the election need not be final."
- Paul Lehto, Attorney for Plaintiffs Aug. 25, 2006

San Diego Superior Court Judge Yuri Hofmann rendered his decision in the election challenge in California's 50th Congressional District. He dismissed the request for a recount and for discovery of the facts of the Busby-Bilbray election stating specifically that "Once the House asserts exclusive jurisdiction and selects a candidate, the court no longer has jurisdiction" (emphasis added). The judge argued that the June 13 swearing in alone was sufficient to establish Bilbray's "election." The event had the power to take away any and all citizen rights and immediately rescind authority over their own elections.

Requests for a recount resulting from major problems with the election were deemed insufficient and the rights of voters to due process were cast aside in deference to Speaker Hastert or any future Speaker. The induction of Republican Bilbray was just seven days after the election and a full 17 days before the election was officially certified by the San Diego Registrar.

Continue reading »

Continuing his long-standing effort to enrich the civic discourse, Hannity recently said:

If you believe that these are consequential, transformative times, if you believe our borders need to be secure, if you believe that we need to cut taxes to keep the economy humming, if you think it's an absolute mistake and a disaster to pull out of Iraq too early, if you think we're gonna retreat in the war on terrorism, if you think we're gonna be less safe, less secure with a party that has a pre-9-11 mentality, then this is the time not to give up. This is the moment to say that there are things in life worth fighting and dying for and one of 'em is making sure Nancy Pelosi doesn't become the speaker.

Three questions for the Hannitized one:

1) So if given the choice, would you actually trade your life to keep Nancy Pelosi from becoming speaker?

2) If yes, is this localized to Pelosi, or generalizable to any Democrat?

3) Since you included "fighting" in your quote, would you be willing to murder Pelosi? What about a suicide mission?

You can contact the Hannity show using this form.

--Ezra Klein