How dull it is to pause!

It's time for Dover Bitch to hang 'em up. This blog has been neglected by me for some time, but I've been waiting until an appropriate day to put it to rest, and that day is finally upon us.

It is the end of an era, at last: The country is now out of Dick Cheney's cold grip. Many of us survived. Some spectacular people did not.

When I started this blog, it did not actually occur to me that anybody would read it. I had zero ambition for it. It was to be my online catharsis.

The day I met Digby, I gave her a poem by Theodore Roethke, "Against Danger." The word "against" is the greatest of all adpositions. Unlike "on," "within" or "among," the word "against" carries with it a vitality. There is an implied force behind it. A will. And to have been a left-leaning blogger during the Bush years was certainly to have been "against danger."

During the anthrax attacks, I had an epiphany while re-reading Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" and Anthony Hecht's "Dover Bitch." In short, it occurred to me that it was presumptuous to assume that the woman in both poems was the "bitch." Perhaps it was Arnold (Hecht makes Arnold the speaker of his own poem). Perhaps it's the man in "Dover Bitch." Perhaps it's all or none of them. A situation can certainly be a bitch. The complaints of both speakers could be bitching.

But the revelation I had is that attempts to reject the world fail. Arnold looked out his window and did not realize the world he despised was right there in the room with him. In fact, his window is a part of that world. He, too, is a part of the world. It is reason I named this blog Dover Bitch and gave it the description: Your window to the world is a part of the world and so are you.

With that spirit, I tried to do more than be "against danger." More often than not, I think I failed. But I learned quite a bit, mostly through my interactions with other bloggers and commentators. And so I would like to thank a few of them.

First and foremost, I would like to thank Digby. Guest posting at Digby's blog is a real fast way to discover how much better she is than everybody else (or at least, than I). I'm happy to say that I think I saved my best post ever for General JC Christian's blog. Thanks for everything, General! I'd also like to say thank you to Glenn Greenwald, who definitely made blogging a more rewarding experience.

Other people who made my blogging days rewarding (and I'm sure I will forget more than a few), some of whom I was fortunate to meet and some of whom I was lucky to engage in correspondence (some I only read) are: Atrios, TRex, Steve Gilliard, Roy Edroso, Dengre, Batocchio, Jane Hamsher, Christy Hardin Smith, Suzanne, SteveAudio, Greg Sergent, Josh Marshall, Steve Benen, Brad R, David Neiwert, MJS, Lindsay Beyerstein and Kagro X. I'd also like to thank a certain Maverick, whom I was never able to lure into the world of blogging. He would have made this a much better blog with his own personal touch, but he influenced it, nonetheless.

Finally, it is not only because Obama will be president in just a few days that I'm shutting down today. This blog actually began on the anniversary of Anthony Hecht's death, and it seems fitting to end it on his birthday, January 16th. So in tribute to him, I say farewell on this day.

Maybe I'll see you around in the comments somewhere. Maybe one day I'll feel compelled to call myself a blogger again. I don't expect to. But I wish you all health, happiness and peace, and I leave you with one of Hecht's finest poems...

-DB

Riddles

And the Spirit of God
moved upon the waters

Where the wind listeth, there the sailboats list,
   Water is touched with a light case of hives
Of wandering gooseflesh. The strange power and gist
   Of whatever it is that animates our lives

Scrawls with a lavish hand its signature
   Of ripples gathered into folds and pleats
As indecipherable, chiselled, pure
   And everlasting as the name of Keats.

The surface wrinkles in spirit-shapes that sprint
   Like small rapids or frightened schools of fish;
They blot out images of cloud, the print
   Of passing hulls, obeying something's wish.

These vagrant hieroglyphs, now here, now there,
   In which the fate of everything lies writ
By the invisible majesty of air,
   Prove we are one and all illiterate,

And should be asking: "What do they portend?"
   Other, please God, than those fiery words for coins
That signified to Belshazzar the end
   Of all his hopes and the issue of his loins.

Alons enfants de la patrie

Because I'm "probably French," I'm going to find whatever Francs are in my sofa and didn't get converted to Euros, so I can give them to one of the finest satirists on the intertubes. Join me in keeping Jesus' General riding to Armageddon in his gold-plated Abrams M1 tank.

ABC and Rick Klein can't handle the truth

So Rick Klein puts up this imbecilic post about how Wes Clark "went where no Democrat really truly wants to go on Sunday -- calling into question, in surprisingly sharp language, Sen. John McCain’s military record."

Feeling a little punchy on a Monday morning, I posted a comment:

What the hell is wrong with you, Klein?

Did Wes Clark say John McCain didn't really get a wound that required more than a bandaid? Did Clark say that McCain shot himself to get a purple heart? Did Clark say McCain turned his boat around and ran away instead of helping his troops? Did Clark say McCain only joined the military so he could run for president one day? Did Clark say McCain shot an unarmed child in the back? Did Clark say McCain called every soldier a war criminal?

Those are unfair attacks that the media played over and over again in 2004. Clark said nothing of the sort today.

You guys need to join the rest of us on Planet Earth.

Not my best comment ever, but not the worst thing I've ever written. Checking back later I discovered that ABC deleted my comment. I thought that was pretty strange so I asked why they deleted my comment. Was it because I asked Klein to join the rest of us on Earth?

This comment, too, was deleted. Then I noticed in an update they linked over to TPM's response to the post. So I made one last attempt at a comment:

I asked what's wrong with Rick Klein's comprehension and my comments get deleted.

Josh Marshall says this post is "Sub-Zero Stupid" and you link to him!

Maybe I should have insulted him more pointedly.

This blog gets more absurd by the minute.

This comment was deleted also. What a joke that blog is. They put up an insipid bunch of nonsense and then delete comments that criticize them. Intellectually soft losers.

By the way, here's some comments that they apparently endorse through non-deletion:

America WAKE UP! Obama has soooo many questionable ties to unsavory people...that we know of!...REZKO, AYERS, WRIGHT, his overzealous anti-American Muslim half brother...who or what else lurks in BO's closet? he's supporters are yelling for "Slavery Reparations"...there is a clear pattern emerging here...Disdain for America!

Rush Limbaugh has the perfect nickname for Wesley Clark...Ashley Wilkes (Gone with the Wind character). A weenie, whiney, wussy.

sure as hell beats being a community orgainizer in the most corrupt political city in the country.
I'll take my chances with a war hero over an empty suit.

Although...being married to Michelle might qualify Barry as a war hero...

Wesley Clark is a political opportunist hero wannabe. He bad mouths a veteran while backing a non veteran. What a JACKASS!. He needs to find a B movie to star in so his ego will be soothed. He is a whiner. The Army never has been able to do anything right.

I wonder if Martin Luther King Jr. would agree with Mr. Obama? I think not... because MLK was a Republican.

McCain ought to talk about how obama isn't really african american.. he has NO african american relatives.

He's a white wealthy prep school kid

Sorry my comments didn't meet your high standards, ABC.

Seriously

Kevin Drum flags this steaming pile of crap from Gideon Rose, managing editor of Foreign Affairs:

The lefty blogosphere, meanwhile, has gotten itself all in a tizzy over the failings of the "foreign policy community." The funny thing is...hell, I'll just come out and say it: the netroots' attitude toward professionals isn't that different from the neocons'....

The charges the bloggers are making now are very similar to those that the neocons made a few years ago: mainstream foreign-policy experts are politicised careerists, biased hacks, and hide-bound traditionalists who have gotten everything wrong in the past and don't deserve to be listened to in the future. (Take a look at pretty much any old Jim Hoagland column and you'll see what I mean.) Back then, the neocons directed their fire primarily at the national security bureaucracies — freedom-hating mediocrities at the CIA, pin-striped wussies at the State Department, cowardly soldiers at the Pentagon. Now the bloggers' attacks are generally aimed at the think-tank world.

Wow. Not unlike the pathetic whines of the traditional media, who think that they must be doing something right because they get complaints from "both sides," when the right-wing wants them to advance their agenda and the left just wants an honest discussion.

America's foreign policy is a disaster. The majority of Americans think the Iraq War was a mistake, wasn't worth it and would like to see it over with as soon as possible. In fact, the majority of people on Earth think that. By any objective standard, in fighting the Iraq War, none of the goals one would normally hope to accomplish in a war have been reached. Unless you see the Iraq War as a step in a desirable expansion of hostile actions in the region, which is, of course, the neocon agenda.

On one hand, a small faction of people who are complaining that the professionals are not helping them advance their narrow agenda.

On the other hand, everybody else, with countless different agendas, who have witnessed the disaster yielded by the neocons and complain that we turn on the TV every day to see only neocons and think-tankers calling us "unserious" and supporting that disastrous agenda.

Yeah, the netroots' attitude is just like the neocons'.

Error of omission

DB made a grievous error in an earlier post today.

While attempting to list five blogs that make me think, I did not consider any DailyKos diarists. I was trying to think of blogs that don't appear in the highest echelon of traffic, so I completely blocked that site out.

Terrible mistake. Dengre is an important blogger and his work deserves a significant amount of attention from the progressive community. More, I'm afraid, than it is getting. I will do my best to rectify that.

Independence

At TPM, Steve Benen writes:

There was, however, one piece of information from the report that struck me as odd.

While these independents swung substantially to the Democratic side in 2006, 77 percent of them say they would seriously consider voting for an independent if one were running.

Is it me, or is 77% a little low? Nearly one-in-four self-described independents wouldn't consider voting for an independent? Then why even consider yourself an independent?

That doesn't seem odd to me at all. There are plenty of reasons to consider yourself an independent without supporting an independent candidate. First of all, you might despise the two-party system, but wouldn't consider voting for a candidate you don't think has a prayer of actually winning.

Second, in some states, there's not really a reason to actually register as a member of a party. In California, for instance, you can vote in any primary you choose. What is the benefit of being in a party? You can still give money to any candidate or party you like. Even if you were emphatically supportive of a particular Democrat or Republican, what is the incentive to register with that party, unless you intend to run for office yourself?

Or, you could be happy with a member of either party. Personally, I think every GOP candidate is utterly unsuitable, but there are some people who would be happy to see either Obama or Rudy. I can understand why Benen would assign those people to the "no-idea-what-they're-talking-about bloc." I'd tend to give them that classification, too, but they're not all as oblivious as those voters who told pollsters they would either like Howard Dean or George Bush back in 2004.

Even if half of that 23 percent were clueless, it wouldn't surprise me a bit to learn that 12 percent or so of independents simply don't see a point to associating themselves with a party, but would still consider a vote for a candidate outside the two-party system to be a waste. I imagine there are more than a few Nader 2000 voters who wish they could go back in time (even if they won't admit it.)

Blogs that make you go hmmmmm

DB was picked by SteveAudio to receive a Thinking Blogger Award (in a post with a Neil Young-related title, no less... Bravo, Steve!)

Congratulations, you won a !

Should you choose to participate, please make sure you pass this list of rules to the blogs you are tagging. I thought it would be appropriate to include them with the meme.

The participation rules are simple:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn't fit your blog).

That was that! Please, remember to tag blogs with real merits, i.e. relative content, and above all - blogs that really get you thinking! It is the first time I am starting something with my blog so I hope it doesn't come back to haunt me.

Happy link-love-sharing, whatever it is!

I've been reluctant to follow suit, just because the blogs that have me thinking the most are typically ones already well known around the blog-o-sphere. Also, some of the blogs that get me thinking the most aren't exactly ones I'd like to link to or promote.

If this were an A- or even B-list blog, it would be easy to find some lesser-known writers to promote. Unfortunately, this is a tough assignment for me because I'm looking upwards, and if nothing else, this award has made me realize I need to expand my bookmark list.

But here's stab at it, trying to avoid the most ultra-popular blogs (you know who you are) while simultaneously trying not to imply that these five are, by any means, unpopular:

1. Balkinization
   
2. Ornicus
   
3. LA Observed
   
4. David Byrne's Journal
   
5. Obsidian Wings
   

In the spirit of promoting another blogger whom I've only recently discovered and who wrote to me, "I like to think we 'lesser stars' also add to the brilliance of this galaxy," I'll give an honorable mention to Gail Jonas' Thinking Out Loud.

Thanks again, SteveAudio.

UPDATE: I made a glaring error of omission.

Presidential Power

Thinking about how radical the Bush administration has been led me to pick up my dusty copy of Richard E. Neustadt's Presidential Power, one of the best books ever written about the executive branch. I just wanted to see how (my outdated copy of) the book holds up in light of the absurd nature of politics and the media in the early 21st Century. In some respects quite well, in others, not so much.

Interestingly, I found two opposite pages (164-165) that stuck out in my mind for different reasons, and both are bouncing around in my head today.

The first is this:

In 1898, two years before Wilson's apologia, a scholarly observer who may well have influenced him wrote a deeper book than Congressional Government. This was Henry Jones Ford, his book The Rise and Growth of American Politics. Correctly, in my view, he even then put the Presidency at the system's center:

The agency of the presidential office has been such a master force in shaping public policy that to give a detailed account of it would be equivalent to writing the political history of the United States.

The evidence... history affords seems conclusive of the tact that the only power which... define[s] issues in such a way that public opinion can pass upon them is that which emanates from presidential authority. ...

The rise of presidential authority cannot be accounted for by the intention of presidents; it is the product of political conditions which dominate all the departments of government, so that Congress itself shows an unconscious disposition to aggrandize the presidential office. ...

Eighty years later the trend seems the same.

Today, the talking heads are having a field day with the news that Congress has abysmal approval ratings. Lou Dobbs is reporting that fact as I type this.

In the comments to my posts this week at Hullabaloo, it was plenty clear to me that people have lost faith in Congress' ability to rein in this president. The failed Iraq Supplemental opportunity to end the war and the fact that Nancy Pelosi said impeachment is off the table seem to have crushed a great deal of whatever optimism voters had after last November's elections.

No doubt, it is true that the power this president has was ceded to him by the GOP-controlled Congress of the recent past, and has yet to be reclaimed by the thin majority the Democrats "enjoy" presently. Personally, I don't think they have the votes to change that much. The only real weapon they have is to continue investigating this reprehensible administration and hope that something comes out that is so egregious, even John Boehner and Mitch McConnell won't be able to save Bush.

What is incredibly gut-wrenching to so many of us is the previously unimaginable extent to which the GOP Congressional leadership and noise machine has been willing to defend the indefensible. Which brings me to the opposite page (165) of my copy of Presidential Power:

In the aftermath of Watergate, however, we have seen occasions where distinctions between reputation and prestige seemed to dissolve, where Washingtonians seemed quite like members of the general public, reacting to a President in almost the same terms, conducting themselves accordingly.' One such occasion was the "Saturday night massacre" of 1973 when Nixon fired the Watergate Prosecutor, forcing resignations from the Attorney General and his Deputy, all of whom responded on TV. This dramatic sequence-televised and thus "firsthand" in all parts of the country seemed so to contradict the President's contentions as to drain them of credibility, enlarging what we now label a credibility "gap," indeed extending it so wide as to cast doubt on his legitimacy and with it his authority as President. Nixon seemed to be engaging in a cover-up of criminal activity. He seemingly was fighting law enforcement. But he had sworn an oath of office encompassing the "take-care" clause. Hence the cloud on his legitimacy. The "massacre" tripped off impeachment proceedings. It is easy to see why.

What was striking then is that inside the government or near it, in the watchful circle of the Washington community, reactions against Nixon seemed to have so much in common with the popular impressions outside government. Citizens at large were swept into a "firestorm" of protest and suspicion. But so were commentators, congressmen, and civil servants. Apparently the President's behavior planted the same question in all minds. Some Washingtonians, waiting upon evidence, were slower than others to draw ultimate conclusions, and slower by far than some citizens, but he was treated henceforth with reserve throughout the Washington community. Diplomacy aside-there was a crisis in the Middle East-he turned away from governing and focused on the prospect of impeachment. Had Nixon tried to be assertive in domestic spheres, I take it that he would have been ignored or resisted. All over town officials shook themselves free of the White House, released by suspicion from deference, distancing their programs from his person. This occurred within one year of his triumphant re-election, three years before expiration of his term. For Washingtonians it was a most uncharacteristic reaction, especially so early in the term. Calculations about possible impeachment played a part, no doubt. But so did outraged feelings about Nixon's performance. There was precious little rallying around him. Instead, so far as I can judge, there was a widespread sense, even in some quarters of the White House, that he had compromised his right to be there and should go, impeached or not.

It is hard to imagine Washingtonians having less "in common with the popular impressions outside government" today (or during the Clinton impeachment proceedings.) As Digby correctly noted in her magnificent speech, the mainstream media -- the High Broderism and Meal Ticket Journalists -- have failed us completely.

Glenn Greenwald wrote today:

Only in the true fringe -- what Digby calls "the modern conservative movement of Newt and Grover and Karl and Rush," as well as their establishment media enablers -- does opposition to the Iraq War, or Guantanamo and torture, or the abolition of habeas corpus, or the grotesque deceit of the Limbaugh Right make one a "leftist" or fringe liberal, as those terms are used in their pejorative sense. The reality is that the views Digby identifies as the crux of the "progressive blogosphere" are entirely mainstream American views. "Extremism" is marked by those who reject those beliefs, not by those who embrace them.

Radicals and extremists are those who believe that we ought to invade and occupy foreign countries which have not attacked and cannot attack us, or that we ought to lock people away indefinitely with no process and/or torture them, or that the president has the power to ignore our duly enacted laws. As is true for any collection of large numbers of people, there surely are liberal bloggers who hold views that are shared only by a small minority. But objectively speaking, the defining views, the ones that its members hold almost unanimously in common, are anything but radical or "fringe."

It is not only our national character that has changed fundamentally over the last six years. So, too, has our political spectrum. As I've argued many times before, the term "liberal" or "the Left," as used most commonly, now denotes "opposition to Bush radicalism." Anyone who meaningfully deviates from the worldview of the Bush movement, who devotes themselves to opposing it, finds themselves -- for that reason alone -- described as "on the Left." Even the CIA, and Bush appointees such as Richard Armitage and James Comey, are so described that way. That is how profoundly these terms have been transformed.

Ideas that were always previously so radical as to be unthinkable are now routinely identified as "mainstream conservatism." Conversely, political principles that have been such an integral part of America's political identity as to be unquestionable are now the hallmarks of "fringe liberalism" (a "fringe" which, as our last election demonstrated, now includes an ever-growing majority of the population). Those whose views of "bloggers" are based upon the caricatures of Time Magazine and The Washington Post would undoubtedly be shocked to learn of just how unremarkable is the Platform of Beliefs of the "Progressive Blogosphere" as articulated by one of its leading and most admired commentators.

The litany of abuses of the public trust, to the point at which one of the highest ranking officials in the administration was convicted by a jury of obstructing the only significant criminal investigation of wrongdoing in the White House, has been so well-documented there's no reason to go through it here. When John Ashcroft was willing to resign to stop Bush and Cheney from hatching one of their schemes, we wondered what could have been so bad to make him say no.

What it will take to make the rest of today's Washingtonians to say no? What it will take -- beyond a veto-proof majority -- to hold Bush accountable for his misdeeds and get this country back? The simple answer to my simple question is probably "nothing."

Still, this member of the "fringe" will not relent.

Digby

What a speech! Digby is the best.

Pinch-hitting

DB's posting here has been pretty thin lately, sorry. With all the work and travel, there hasn't been much time to write a whole lot over here.

But this week things should pick up a little as I have the honor of supplementing the awesome work of Digby over at Hullabaloo. That is, if I can figure out how to publish over there correctly. When I do, I'll cross-post over here.

Also, I've been asked by TRex to help out with the Friday night Late Night FDL shift, which I have done the past two weeks. (Here's last week's.) I won't be there next Friday (on the road again), but after that I hope to post regularly.

UPDATE: Still working on getting a post up on Hullabaloo. I don't want to post it here until I can get it working over there. Hopefully, I'll get this straightened out soon. Sorry for the anti-climax.

Steve Gilliard, 1966-2007

Often, there are days when DB thinks about closing up shop here.

When I used to play guitar, I was always amazed at how Jimi Hendrix could simultaneously inspire me and make me want to put my guitar away forever. What was the point of playing when the benchmark was so high?

I wrote that once to Digby, in reference to her blogging. Blogging is harder than it looks. It is especially harder than some bloggers in particular make it look.

Steve Gilliard was also like Jimi Hendrix to me. I'm not sure I have a bigger compliment in me than that.

Though there are reasons I sometimes think of hanging it up, every now and then -- often enough to keep me going -- things happen that keep me inspired to contribute, at least to try. Here is just one example:

Last summer, when Net Neutrality was coming up for a vote in corrupt Senator Ted Stevens' Commerce Committee, I had the pleasure of authoring a few posts at FireDogLake. I was trying to lead progressive people to come up with some creative analogies to help explain what the issue was all about. Then, to act locally to get the message out.

It was a thrill to have a chance to be a positive influence with regards to an important issue that means a great deal to me. It was an honor to be invited to post at FDL.

But the most satisfying moment, for me, was when I looked at the FDL homepage and saw one of my posts sandwiched between a post by Digby and another by Steve Gilliard. I sent Christy an email to tell her exactly that.

I'm not crazy enough to think that means I'm in either Digby's or Steve's league when it comes to blogging. I cannot tell you how impressed I am, having done this now as long as I have, with the amount of consistently insightful, well researched and truly powerful posts that bloggers like Steve Gilliard produced day after day.

It's a tremendous amount of work and you have to have a tremendous fire inside to do it. You have to really care about people to try as hard as Steve did to make this a better world.

Rest in peace, Steve. You are already deeply missed.

Timing is all

This has been an exceptionally bad week for DB as far as timing goes.

I should have known better than to think for a second that Marty Lederman wasn't going to write a much better response to Doug Kmiec than I ever could have. But the salt in the wound was the fact that I stopped working on a different post about Lou Dobbs in order to address the Comey testimony and allowed another blogger to scoop me on that subject, too. The shards of broken glass in the salt on the wound is that, again, I was not only scooped, but it was by another sensational blogger who saw my point and raised me by a sum I could not hope to match.

I still have a few things to say about it, and I refuse to resign from blogging just because my absence would apparently not have any impact on anything, if the last week of online discourse is any indication.

So I'll be back with my post about Dobbs later. In the meantime, get out the world's smallest violin for me. And read Dave Neiwert's interview with Mark Potok and his follow-up post about Dobbs' incredible exchange with Laura Flanders.

UPDATE: Flanders chatted on FDL this morning about the episode with Dobbs, which is now on Crooks & Liars.

So now, in addition to the shards of glass and salt in my wound, there are now hungry rats. How are those tiny violins coming?

Chief Justice Marshall (redux)

Via FDL, I see that Eric Boehlert has taken the Washington Post to task for their uneven coverage of the blog-o-sphere.

DB would like to take the opportunity once more to restate my nomination for Josh Marshall as Chief Justice of the Internet.

Most e-mailed

From Glenn Greenwald's interview with Pulitzer-winner Charlie Savage:

In a related way, our website's "most e-mailed stories" lists, which I know editors pay attention to, provides a useful barometer for which stories are capturing readers’ attention. Several of these signing statements stories were among the most e-mailed at the Globe's website in 2006.

If that's how editors identify important work, then by all means, when you come across a critical piece of work or a reporter who is doing the work worthy of his profession (like Savage), use that website's email tool. Mail it to yourself if you have to.

The Top 100

Sure is great to see the most popular right-wing blogs up in arms about the way Pat Tillman's family described the treatment they received from the Bush/Rumsfeld military after giving this country the ultimate sacrifice:

Michelle Malkin:



Instapundit:



Powerline:



Hugh Hewitt:



Captain's Quarters:



The Corner:



But don't worry, there is one bold wingnut blog ready to expose the real crisis with the Tillman case:

NewsBusters:



UPDATE: I see that Powerline finally addressed the topic. And of course, they have concluded that there's nothing to see here, move along.

The speed of Kaus

Before DB started blogging, I used to read Mickey Kaus' blog on Slate. I read Slate before I started reading pretty much any blogs, so Kaus' was really my introduction to political blogging.

I almost always came to the conclusion that Kaus was wrong, but I enjoyed his blog because sometimes it would take me hours to come to that conclusion. It was thought-provoking and I enjoyed reading it.

After a while though, I realized that it was taking me less and less time to figure out why he was wrong. By the time he basically wrote that Valerie Wilson was to blame for her own outing by allowing her husband to have an opinion, I said enough. It only took me until the end of the paragraph to know just how wrong Kaus was.

For no good reason, I checked out Kaus' blog on Thursday and discovered something interesting. It's not that I got used to Kaus' style and became more enabled to spot his wrongness quicker... He's actually been steadily increasing his economy with wrongness in the absence of my readership. He begins:

Is the wrong party dissatisfied with its presidential candidates? I think so. ... 4:19 P.M.

No! One sentence! Where can he go from there? Well, the next item begins by asking:

Isn't Michael Ledeen right

No! Four words! It's amazing! I might have to start reading his blog again, just to see him reach wrongness singularity.

What Roy said

Roy Edroso at Alicublog, one of DB's favorites, succinctly sums up the wingnut blog-o-sphere (and, quite frankly, many who often appear as "Republican Strategists" on our televisions) with this rebuttal to the right-wing reaction to NBC's coverage of the Virginia Tech killer:

When you read anything by these awful people that has to do with what should and should not be covered, please recognize that they are not trying to inform you. For them everything -- news, art, science -- is propaganda. There is no aspect of human life which they do not see an opportunity for partisan advantage.

That's why I'm so hard on them -- not so much because they're wrong on the issues, but because they're twisted freaks who seek power, and that sort always needs resisting.

Bingo.

Which is also why, when somebody complains about the "liberal media," the MSM should laugh it off instead of reacting like this jackass. I have always maintained that if they feel the forums provided to them are places that are fundamentally dishonest, unless they are personal hallmarks of integrity, they will have no qualms about lying with abandon.

My own personal view is that many of these hacks are so completely solipsistic they see the world as propaganda because that's all they are capable of delivering themselves and cannot imagine anything else.

Department of Injustice

One of these days, the complete record of what the Bush administration has done to minorities will be revealed and the GOP will be broken. Of course, the racists among us will find another vehicle for their warped agenda. But the damage that has been done to the Department of Justice will take a long time to repair.

Here's one thing that the Bush political appointees insisted didn't raise any red flags. The sponsor of the bill, Georgia state Rep. Sue Burmeister told voting section staff that "if there are fewer black voters because of this bill, it will only be because there is less opportunity for fraud," and that "when black voters in her black precincts are not paid to vote, they do not go to the polls."

Once again, Josh Marshall and his staff are taking the lead on this issue. Please join DB in awarding him the honorary title Chief Justice of the Internet.

Congratulations Charlie Savage

...and all the 2007 Pulitzer Prize winners.

Savage deserves it for all his tremendous work, not the least of which was his reporting on Bush's signing statements.

And for those of you who were pulling for Josh Marshall and TPM to win... you can still join DB in bestowing upon him the honorary title of Chief Justice of the Internet.

CHIEF JUSTICE JOSH MARSHALL

Before Jon Stewart earned DB's permanent respect for killing Crossfire, that show was on TV here all the time. One of the moments that made it watchable was this:

JAMES CARVILLE: I'll tell you what, that is the best money the government spent in all of 2002.

Trent Lott isn't the only Republican that wants to turn the clock back to the years of segregation. The embattled senator from Mississippi wants to take us back to 1948. Attorney General John Ashcroft, though, would rather return to 1848. Four years ago, Ashcroft gave an interview to "Southern Partisan Magazine," in which he described the importance of "defending southern patriots like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis."

(UNINTELLIGIBLE) to say not only segregation, but (UNINTELLIGIBLE). So tonight, I want to announce the formation of Liberals for Lott. Libs for Lott is dedicated to the American principle of equal justice for all. Leadership based on character and full accountability to those who seek to govern. Libs for Lott demands equality. If Senator Lott stays, so can Ashcroft. But if Lott goes, we insist that the Republican Party send Ashcroft with him.

(APPLAUSE)

Our group...

TUCKER CARLSON: Your group.

CARVILLE: Because I don't know what we're going to tell the children. Because when the little children come home and they say, mommy, why did Senator Lott lose his job? He was just for segregation.

CARLSON: But Senator Byrd...

(CROSSTALK)

CARVILLE: ... Ashcroft, who spoke out nostalgically about slavery keeps his. I don't understand. We have to be willing to have the courage to teach the little cowboys and cowgirls out there in America the lesson that everybody is responsible for their actions, even the attorney general.

CARLSON: Well, good luck, James. And in the absence of any real ideas, that would probably make a good platform for you. And I hope you do a great job with it.

CARVILLE: Please join Libs for Lott, because we're standing with Trent. Because we say equal justice for all. If it's good for the majority leader, it's good for the attorney general.

CARLSON: If the idea that the attorney general is a racist or a supporter of slavery, someone...

CARVILLE: Well why keep giving interviews to "Southern Partisan Magazine," a magazine that regularly praises the assassination of Abraham Lincoln? Do you think that was a good idea that Lincoln was assassinated? Speak out against it.

CARLSON: This is so insane, that I can't continue this conversation.

(CROSSTALK)

CARVILLE: ... wrong to assassinate Abraham Lincoln.

CARLSON: We're going to have to take a commercial break. Insanity demands it.

Do you think that was a good idea that Lincoln was assassinated, Tucker? Comedy gold.

DB is writing this post today for several reasons. First, it is timely. President Lincoln was killed 142 years ago today (and I'm a sucker for anniversaries).

Today is also Jackie Robinson Day at stadiums across America. The same TV stations that have spent the last two weeks hosting debates about racist comments directed at some fantastic young athletes and scholars will spend the afternoon celebrating, quite rightly, an American hero who heard the same and worse when he broke the color barrier in baseball 60 years ago.

Robinson was named Rookie of the Year in September 1947, just five months before President Truman delivered his civil rights agenda to Congress, which led to the segregationist 1948 presidential candidacy of Strom Thurmond. The candidacy that Lott romanticized above.

We've come a long way in America, but obviously not far enough. Over at Josh Marshall's TPMmuckraker, we saw this report by Paul Kiel last week:

During the first five years of the Bush administration, the Justice Department's voting section only filed a single case alleging voting discrimination on behalf of African American voters. That's despite the fact that the section, part of the Civil Rights Division, was created mainly to protect African American voters from discrimination.

But during that same time period, the section managed to file the first ever "reverse" discrimination case under the Voting Rights Act.

[...]

A similar shift has occurred in the division's employment litigation section, which is tasked with preventing discrimination in employment. That section has managed to file two "reverse" discrimination cases alleging discrimination against whites under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, while filing only one alleging discrimination against African Americans in the past six years.

Shameless.

All of this is of course compounded by the examples of misconduct emerging from the U.S. Attorneys scandal, which is breaking open in large part because of the persistence of Marshall and TPM.

Which brings DB to the main point of this post and also to the reason this it begins with that ridiculous exchange on Crossfire.

While Marshall and TPM have been appropriately receiving accolades for their work in "PurgeGate," the truth is that Marshall has been an online hero for justice for a long time. Here's Ashcroft praising that racist southern magazine:

"Your magazine helps set the record straight," said Ashcroft. "You've got a heritage of doing that, of defending Southern patriots like [Robert E.] Lee, [Stonewall] Jackson and [Jefferson] Davis. Traditionalists must do more. I've got to do more. We've all got to stand up and speak in this respect or else we'll be taught that these people were giving their lives, subscribing their sacred fortunes and their honor to some perverted agenda."

Who do you think broke that story for Slate in 2000? That's right, Josh Marshall. And here's what he humbly wrote at TPM:

And finally, why hasn't more been said about Ashcroft's interview with the Southern Partisan magazine? I'd like to take heaps of credit for being the first to mention this story late on the evening of December 22nd. But, honestly, a few Nexis searches are all that's required to get all the details. But a quick search on the self-same Nexis reveals that only one article (that by Tom Edsall in the Washington Post) has even mentioned the Southern Partisan interview since Ashcroft's nomination (and even then only in passing).

Isn't this sort of a big deal? Is it really too much to ask that nominees for Attorney General not give interviews to crypto- (or not-so-crypto) racist publications like the Southern Partisan?

The media did, finally, begin to notice and Marshall kept the questions rolling:

More on point is the fact, reported in the AP story, that George Bush, Sr. appointed Ashcroft to his commission on race and minorities in America. And Ashcroft was one of only two of the forty commission members who refused to sign the final report. Ashcroft said the report's "generalizations about setbacks in progress are overly broad and counterproductive."

Hmmm.

Talking Points hasn't seen the report. But he imagines that since it was sponsored by President Bush it probably wasn't a particularly afro-centric document, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, the point isn't that Ashcroft's a racist. But then that's not the standard, is it? Given all the evidence, let's just say that civil rights enforcement just doesn't really seem like John Ashcroft's cup of tea.

And since the AG is the head civil rights enforcer. Maybe he just ain't the right guy for the job.

So here we are, seven years later, and the results are in. The Department of Justice has not just abandoned its Civil Rights responsibilities. It has deceptively and deliberately worked to undermine its own mission.

Josh Marshall saw it coming and rang the alarm bell. Too bad it's taken seven years for him to make it to prime time cable news shows and to get some notice in the "Paper of Record."

DB thinks America is a better country when people are paying attention to Josh Marshall and I'd like to keep him in the spotlight.

Therefore, I nominate JOSHUA MICAH MARSHALL, CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE INTERNET

Who's with me?