Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

We The People – Part OneAbsolutely Disgusting

by poputonian

It took a long time for Samuel Adams to come to the surface of Boston politics, even though his father was a powerful figure in the caucuses and the General Court. One reason for the delayed “arrival” is that Adams is almost alone in history as a man who sincerely desired anonymity. His major writings were signed not “Adams” but “Determinatus,” “Candidus,” “Vindex,” “Populus,” “Alfred,” “Valerius Poplicola,” “T.Z.,” “Shippen,”, “a Bostonian,” “a Tory,” “E.A.,” “a Layman,” “an Impartialist,” “a chatterer,” — even later, when he could have gained great credit by acknowledging his full opus, he would not take the trouble. The writings had done their work; that was what he wanted. He often ended his letters with the command “Burn this,” and he took his own advice by consigning nearly all his correspondence files to the flames, leaving behind a relatively small amount in the hands of others or in public print.
…
In the eighteen months from December 1770 to June 1772 he turned out 36 political essays for the [Boston] Gazette, an output not matched by any other writer of the time.
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[Boston Gazette, October 7, 1771]

I Think it necessary the publick should be inform’d, that his Excellency Thomas Hutchinson, Esq; Governor of this Province, has lately receiv’d, a warrant from the Lords of the Treasury in England, for the Sum of Twenty-two Hundred and fifty Pounds Sterling for his Services for one year and a half, being at the rate of Fifteen Hundred Sterling or Two Thousand L. M. per Ann. – The payment is to be made out of the Commissioners Chest; wherein are reposited the Treasures that are daily collected, tho’ perhaps insensibly, from the Earnings and Industry of the honest Yeomen, Merchants and Tradesmen, of this continent, against their Consent; and if his friends speak the truth, against his own private judgment. – This treasure is to be appropriated according to the act of parliament so justly and loudly complain’d of by Americans, for the support of civil government, the payment of the charges of the administration of justice, and the defence of the colonies: And it may hereafter be made use of, for the support of standing armies and ships of war; episcopates & their numerous ecclesiastical retinue; pensioners, placemen and other jobbers, for an abandon’d and shameless ministry; hirelings, pimps, parasites, panders, prostitutes and whores –
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~ Candidus

Samuel Adams, hiding behind the pseudonym of Candidus, complained about paying taxes to support an army occupying his own town, and called the Governor of Massachusetts a whore.

That is absolutely disgusting. Adams should have been barred from the Revolution.

In the article, Candidus struck at the fact that one of the Boston born, now appointed and paid by the Crown, was on the path to tyranny:

But the people, and a great part, I hope, of the clergy of this enlightened country, have understanding enough to know, that a Governor independent of the people for his support, as well as his political Being, is in fact, a MASTER; and may be, and probably, such is the nature of uncontroulable power, soon will be a TYRANT. It will be recorded by the faithful historian, for the information of posterity, that the first American Pensioner – the first independent Governor of this province, was, not a stranger, but one “born and educated” in it – Not an ANDROSS or a RANDOLPH; but that cordial friend to our civil constitution -that main Pillar of the Religion and the Learning of this country; the Man, upon whom she has, (I will not say wantonly) heaped all the Honors she had to bestow – HUTCHINSON!! –

The almost singular skill of Samuel Adams was in undermining the hierarchy, and his singular focus was to shift power to the people.

On a Sunday morning in the fall of 1803 he died. He was eighty-two, and John Adams said he had been a “weeping, helpless object of compassion for years.” He died at home, trying to whisper something to his wife, some few words that she could not make out. A friend, William Bentley, tried to sum him up that day in an entry in his diary. “He was feared by his enemies,” Bentley wrote, “but too secret to be loved by his friends.” He went on:

He could see far into men, but not into opinions. He could be sure of himself on all occasions, and he did more by what men thought of him, than what he discovered to them. His religion and manner were from our ancestors. His politics from two maxims, rulers should have little, the people much.

Saturday Night At The Movies

Children of Morons: Mike Judge Does America

By Dennis Hartley

If the 2007 Super Bowl commercials and ever-escalating voter participation in shows like “American Idol” are any indication, the dumbed-down “future” of America depicted in Mike Judge’s lightweight allegory, Idiocracy, is perhaps only belaboring the obvious.

Army librarian Joe Bauers (Luke Wilson) loves his cush job. It’s the perfect gig, because, as he tells a fellow soldier- “No one ever comes here” (I think I just heard every librarian reading this review say “No kidding.”). Much to Joe’s chagrin, however, his gravy train is derailed when he is “volunteered” as a guinea pig for a top secret military experiment.

Joe is assigned to spend one year in a suspended animation “pod”, a process the military is testing for typically nefarious reasons. Joe is not alone, however. A hooker named Rita from “the private sector” (SNL’s Maya Rudolph) is also enlisted (don’t ask.)

When our intrepid pair finally awake, it’s a tad more than a year later. After a series of silly events, they in fact find themselves in the year 2505 (whoops!). Does hilarity ensue?

Well…the America of 2505 is not so much dystopian, as it is dys-stupido. As the droll narrator explains, evolution has favored those who reproduce the most (you know…morons!). The #1 TV show is called “Ow My Balls”, and the #1 film is “Ass” (kinda says it all). Anyone who conjugates a verb or speaks in complete sentences is accused of talking “like a fag”. In a nutshell, this is what would happen if the entire U.S. gene pool was whittled down exclusively to the descendants of Gallagher’s fan base.

If you’ve surrendered to the premise at this point in the film, you won’t flinch when the President, a former WWF champion (not such a stretch, considering former and current guvs Ventura and Schwarzenegger) ends up appointing Joe his Secretary of the Interior.

Judge isn’t really saying anything new here, beyond pointing out that we live in a dumbed-down culture (yawn). There are a few inspired moments; particularly the keen observation that the accelerated reduction of America’s average IQ seems to be directly proportionate to the ever-increasing square footage of the average WalMart.

There is a bit of irony I can’t get past; it was Mike Judge who created the “Beavis and Butthead” show, which one might argue played its own part in the “dumbing down” of a generation that came of age in the 90’s. (Despite the satirical intentions, I think B & B ended up as role models for some, not unlike those cowboys who completely missed the joke and merrily sang along with Borat’s “Throw the Jew Down The Well”…discuss!)

What a stupid country: Borat – Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan Team America – World Police (, Jackass – The Movie, Napoleon Dynamite, Clueless , Drop Dead Gorgeous, Smile(1975), Network , Broadcast News, To Die For, UHF, Being There, Dave, The Hudsucker Proxy, Zelig, Sleeper, Natural Born Killers, Dawn of the Dead (1978) Fahrenheit 451, Death Race 2000

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Your Daily Donohue:

by digby

DONAHUE: That’s right. As a Catholic, I believe that everyone has the capacity to come to Jesus, to come to know Jesus, and to be saved. It’s not the function of some sort of genetic code. You know, this same guy came up with this idea of the “gay gene”, all right? I remember when that conversation was going on, gays were all of the sudden worrying if people would start aborting kids if they found out the DNA suggested that the kid might be gay. God forbid we run out of little gay kids. So all of the sudden, they became pro-life. Now here we have a situation where some of the atheists, they may want to have…to abort the kids if they thought in fact there was some type of religious-inclined gene. God forbid they might have a kid who believes in God

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Update: Media Matters caught Donohue yesterday on Kudlow and Company:

BEINART: It’s absurd. It’s absurd we’re talking about this issue given the magnitude of the problems facing the country. What those women said was absolutely disgusting.

UNIDENTIFIED GUEST: Agree.

BEINART: I would never defend it in a million years. But I think the question — there is —

KUDLOW: Then why didn’t he fire them and keep them fired, Peter?

BEINART: It seems to me there is —

KUDLOW: Keep them fired.

BEINART: There is —

CONWAY: Absolutely.

KUDLOW: I mean, you know, this reflects on Mr. Edwards’ judgment.

BEINART: Let me say. If you were to go through — if I could just — if I could finish —

KUDLOW: This reflects on his character, Peter.

BEINART: If you wouldn’t mind —

KUDLOW: Why didn’t he keep them fired? That’s my question.

BEINART: If you wouldn’t mind letting me finish, Mr. Donohue. You have made anti-Jewish, anti-gay comments —

DONOHUE: I didn’t say a word. What are you talking about?

BEINART: Bill Donohue has made anti-Jewish, anti-gay comments —

DONOHUE: No, I haven’t.

BEINART: — which are as bad as what these women — you said that the secular Jewish Jews in Hollywood hate Christianity. That’s a horrible, bigoted —

DONAHUE: Wait a minute. Wait, wait.

BEINART: — statement, so it seems to me the question becomes —

DONOHUE: Peter. Peter —

BEINART: — what is our standard here?

DONOHUE: Peter, the Jewish Forward said in 2004 that Jews run Hollywood. Are they anti-Semitic?

BEINART: You said they hate Christianity, Mr. Donohue.

DONOHUE: Oh, we like the movies that are coming out of Hollywood. They’re very nice to Catholics.

BEINART: No, no. Did you say that or not?

DONOHUE: They’re very nice to Catholics.

BEINART: You said that secular Jews in Hollywood hate Christianity.

DONOHUE: What world do you live in? What world do you live in? Have you seen what they — what movies they make about Catholics?

BEINART: Yeah. Do you defend that statement?

DONOHUE: I defend the fact — there’s two parts to the statement. One part is, right out of the Jewish Forward: Jews run Hollywood. If you think it’s the Chinese, make your case. And do they make nice movies about Catholics, or do they make lousy movies?

BEINART: You said they hate Christians.

DONOHUE: What kind of a — well, oh, I’m telling you —

BEINART: You say — you made a blanket statement about secular Jews in Hollywood that hate Christians.

DONOHUE: No, I’m talking about — no, I’m talking about the movies that come out of Hollywood, and the predominant ones — you got [director Martin] Scorsese. He’s not Jewish. It’s the people in Hollywood. There’s a mindset about this, and I think you should talk to The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, which have said that the Hollywood studios are dominated by Jews. I tried to even qualify it more than that.

BEINART: You’re bobbing and weaving more than Edwards.

DONOHUE: I’m not going to put up with it. I’m not the issue here, Peter.

KUDLOW: I want to — I want to get Frank —

DONOHUE: You want to take me on on this, I’ll take you on any day of the week.

KUDLOW: Hang on a second, Bill. I want to get Frank —

PRESS: Hey Larry, this proves why this issue is not going to win.

KUDLOW: No, Bill Press, please. Let me bring in Frank Luntz, who’s been very patient and extremely well-mannered.

Watch the video at the link to see Donohue almost blow his top.

Good for Peter Beinert. He was prepared with the proper information to challenge Donohue’s standing to accuse other of religious bigotry. The NY Times and most of the rest of the media failed in their duty to put this man in the proper context as someone whose history of anti-semitic, anti-gay and other extremely controversial rhetoric renders his accusations against others for bias and bigotry suspect at the very least.

If David Duke shows up at their door complaining about affirmative action, do they rush into print?

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Ready To Go

by digby

Barack Obama officially threw his hat into the ring today and a welcome addition he is. This is going to be a very interesting and exciting primary race. I agree with Simon Rosenberg at NDN who says that it is already historic:

Many words will be used to describe the Democrat’s field this year but the one I believe is most accurate is “modern.” Democrats just look like a 21st century Party, with leaders who look like and speak to the people of the America of today and tomorrow. The Republicans on the other hand are struggling with reinventing their politics around these new realities. Yes, over the objections of many, they now have a Hispanic immigrant as the Chair of their party. But that same week Senator Martinez was chosen, the Senate Republicans made Trent Lott, a Senator with a history of institutional bigotry and racism, their number two. Their Presidential field is all white male, the only minorities in their Congressional Party are four Cuban-Americans from Florida and many leaders in their Party continue to fight comprehensive immigration reform in horrible and racist terms.

The Republicans should be worried about these developments. For getting on the wrong side of enormous cultural trends like this one can make a party a minority party for a long time. But perhaps in times of great change this what we should expect from one party long associated with the word “progress,” and another associated with the word “conserve.”

Yessiree. Maybe the country is ready for a little progress, vision and hope after all this ugliness. Most importantly, it’s almost certainly ready for some solutions to our problems and after years of conservative corruption and cant, they may have wised up about the tired, facile, over focus-grouped GOP pitch. They had their chance and the results are in.

The entire Democratic field is superior to anything I’ve seen in years, with at least five excellent candidates who could be president tomorrow in my opinion. We are ready.

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Well, That Explains It

by digby

New York Times Reveals “Reporter” Michael Gordon Actually Voice-Activated Tape Recorder

NEW YORK—New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller today announced that the paper’s longtime staff writer Michael Gordon is not an actual person, but rather a voice-activated tape recorder.

“I’m not sure why everyone didn’t figure this out before now,” said Keller, pointing to the fact that, in Gordon’s 26-year career, all of “his” stories have consisted entirely of transcribed statements by anonymous government officials.

According to Jill Abramson, the paper’s Managing Editor, Gordon was purchased for $27.95 at a Radio Shack on West 43rd Street. Describing the situation as “a prank” that had “gotten slightly out of hand,” Abramson said the paper had decided to acknowledge Gordon’s identity because—after the tape recorder’s front page story today, “Deadliest Bomb in Iraq Is Made by Iran, U.S. Says”—there “was no place left to take the joke.”

More here.

(And here.)

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Talking About “Cooked Links” Won’t Cut It

by tristero

On the day of the week when the fewest people read the Times, the brave, brave editors got around to opining on the unbelievably filthy activities of Douglas Feith:

It took far too long, but a report by the Pentagon inspector general has finally confirmed that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s do-it-yourself intelligence office cooked up a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda to help justify an unjustifiable war…

The inspector general did not recommend criminal charges against Mr. Feith because Mr. Rumsfeld or his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, approved their subordinate’s “inappropriate” operations.

Now let’s shake off the lulling effect of their deliberately dispassionate language and think about all this for a few moments. Then it becomes quite clear that given what is actually at issue here, the editors’ atrociously mixed metaphor – “cooked up a link” – is an inexcusably cowardly effort to avoid their solemn responsibility to talk truth to power.

Even in the face of an official report from the Pentagon inspector general which all but says so, the New York Times still cannot screw up the courage to state plainly the only possible conclusion: The Bush administration knowingly, criminally lied to the American people in order to start an illegal war and invade a country that, no matter how odious its leader, was no threat to the United States. Nor do the editors have the guts to dispense with cooked links and write clearly about the ghastly consequences: Feith’s hands – and those of even higher officials – are dripping red with the blood of over 3100 American soldiers and countless thousands (literally) of innocent Iraqis, victims of the murderous evil of this administration’s lies.

This is not the kind of behavior over which to mince words. These are the sorts of actions that treason trials and international war crimes tribunals are for.

There is something terribly corrupt about a country that will permit such unspeakable, murderous acts to remain unpunished. And it is high time the so-called political and cultural leaders of this country said so without equivocation. My God, people, we’ve had our country’s government openly as well as secretly establish concentration camps all over the world; practice torture as an approved government policy; engaged in, and boasted about, international assasinations; destroyed through military action a foreign state merely because it could (and openly plan to do it again in the near future); undermined the integrity of the press by deliberately planting false stories and suborning journalists; been exposed as capable of using every tactic short of physical violence to prevent critics from publishing the truth; ignored the will of the American people, expert opinion, commonsense, and all common decency; advocated ever more bizarre theories of unlimited, unchecked power, and acted as if they were the law of the land …

We are being ruled by psychopaths and fascists, not link cookers.

Quiet Coup

by digby

TPM , The Carpetbagger Report and others including yours truly wrote recently about this bizarre new theory that the VP’s office has cooked up apparently granting him some sort of special, unaccountable status as an office that is both Executive and Legislative and so reports to nothing and no one.

Steve Benen reports tonight that this is actually a working theory they are using in other circumstances:

An important legal ruling is pending over Vice President Cheney’s refusal to disclose statistics on document classification and declassification activity. The Information Security Oversight Office, which is responsible for the policy and oversight of the government’s security classification system, has asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to direct Cheney’s office to disclose these statistics.

Cheney’s office provided the information until 2002 but then stopped doing so, J. William Leonard, the director of ISOO, told U.S. News. At issue is whether the office of the vice president is an executive branch entity when it comes to supporting the activities of the president and the vice president. The reporting requirements for disclosing classification and declassification activity fall under a presidential executive order.

“Basically the definition says that any entity of the executive branch that comes into possession of classified information is covered by the reporting requirements,” says Leonard. “I have my understanding of what the executive order requires, and I’m going to the attorney general to ascertain if my reading of the executive order is correct.”

However, Megan McGinn, Cheney’s deputy press secretary, says the vice president’s office is exempt.

“This matter has been thoroughly reviewed,” McGinn told U.S. News, “and it has been determined that reporting requirements do not apply to the office of the vice president, which has both legislative and executive functions.”

Benen says: “At the risk of sounding intemperate, this is insane.”

At the risk of sounding even more intemperate, Dick Cheney may need to be removed from office. This makes Dick Nixon’s theories of presidential power look like childsplay.

When I asked if Cheney had “found” a fourth branch of government in position that until a decade or so ago was considered a seat warmer for a presidential run and the designated state funeral stand-in for the president, I didn’t realize they were actually setting this forth as a legal argument. Dear God.

This means that he considers himself even more “unitary” than he considers the president, beyond all reach of either branch, answerable to no one.

Cheney is refusing to comply with a presidential executive order. What do you suppose the Empty Codpiece feels about this? Does he know that his Vice president believes he has an independent office that doesn’t answer to him or anyone else?

But maybe Junior likes being publicly humiliated by Dick Cheney. He seems to have a very high tolerance for looking like one of history’s most memorable horses asses, so who knows?

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Animals

by digby

Many people have noted that popular culture has added tremendously to an acceptance in the culture of torture techniques and abusive behavior toward suspects and prisoners. It’s a staple of television and movies and it’s even been posited that this has had an effect on poorly trained and sadistically minded people who have been involved with the US torture regime of the last few years.

So it was with interest that I noticed that HBO‘s series “Rome”, as violent and bloody a spectacle as you will ever see, featured an unusual perspective on the subject. One of the characters, a lieutenant of the future Augustus Caesar’s mother Atia, is called upon to perform despicable acts of torture against his mistress’s rival Servilia. But as time goes on he finds himself estranged from normal life, an outsider in his own family, disdained by his religious (but hypocritical) brother and generally coming to feel disoriented and odd. He gets edgier and edgier until he finally breaks down and refuses to carry out the latest horrific torture, screaming at his mistress “I’m not an animal!” and he lets the victim go.

I’ve written about this before, about the danger to the people we are forcing to carry out these inhuman acts in our names — and the danger to our society as a whole:

To some extent civilization is nothing more than leashing the beast within. When you go to the dark side, no matter what the motives, you run a terrible risk of destroying yourself in the process. I worry about the men and women who are engaging in this torture regime. This is dangerous to their psyches. But this is true on a larger sociological scale as well. For many, many moons, torture has been a simple taboo — you didn’t question its immorality any more than you would question the immorality of pedophilia. You know that it’s wrong on a visceral, gut level. Now we are debating it as if there really is a question as to whether it’s immoral — and, more shockingly, whether it’s a positive good. Our country is now openly discussing the efficacy of torture as a method for extracting information.

When Daniel Patrick Moynihan coined the phrase “defining deviancy down” he couldn’t ever have dreamed that we would in a few short decades be at a place where torture is no longer considered a taboo. It certainly makes all of his concerns about changes to the nuclear family (and oral sex) seem trivial by comparison. We are now a society that on some official levels has decided that torture is no longer a deviant, unspeakable behavior, but rather a useful tool. It’s not hidden. People publicly discuss whether torture is really torture if it features less than “pain equavalent to organ failure.” People no longer instinctively recoil at the word — it has become a launching pad for vigorous debate about whether people are deserving of certain universal human rights. It spirals down from there.

Today the Washington Post features a first person account by an American interrogator who reflects on his complicitness in the torture of prisoners in Iraq — and the nightmares he suffers from it:

A man with no face stares at me from the corner of a room. He pleads for help, but I’m afraid to move. He begins to cry. It is a pitiful sound, and it sickens me. He screams, but as I awaken, I realize the screams are mine.

That dream, along with a host of other nightmares, has plagued me since my return from Iraq in the summer of 2004. Though the man in this particular nightmare has no face, I know who he is. I assisted in his interrogation at a detention facility in Fallujah. I was one of two civilian interrogators assigned to the division interrogation facility (DIF) of the 82nd Airborne Division. The man, whose name I’ve long since forgotten, was a suspected associate of Khamis Sirhan al-Muhammad, the Baath Party leader in Anbar province who had been captured two months earlier.

The lead interrogator at the DIF had given me specific instructions: I was to deprive the detainee of sleep during my 12-hour shift by opening his cell every hour, forcing him to stand in a corner and stripping him of his clothes. Three years later the tables have turned. It is rare that I sleep through the night without a visit from this man. His memory harasses me as I once harassed him.

Despite my best efforts, I cannot ignore the mistakes I made at the interrogation facility in Fallujah. I failed to disobey a meritless order, I failed to protect a prisoner in my custody, and I failed to uphold the standards of human decency. Instead, I intimidated, degraded and humiliated a man who could not defend himself. I compromised my values. I will never forgive myself.

I’m sure there are those who have no such self-awareness, or who truly believe that such sadistic treatment was warrented and correct. But it will blow back on them too, in some way, somewhere. Because it is a simple truth that when you treat human beings like animals, you become one yourself. And on some level, there is a part of every person that howls in protest against such debasement whether they are the perpetrator or the victim.

This man knows what he did and is speaking out as a way to redeem himself. Others will likely use far less positive means to exorcize themselves of this pain and degradation. And everyone will pay the price.

Unfortunately, the cover-up continues.

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The Daily Donohue

by digby

I’m sure most of you have already seen this, but if not, click over to C&L to see The Daily Donohue, a new public service feature by John Amato devoted to the talk show oeuvre of the ubiquitous president of the conservative Catholic league.

Here’s the money quote:

“As for the alleged abuse, it’s time to ask some tough questions. First, there is a huge difference between being groped and being raped, so which was it Mr. Foley? Second, why didn’t you just smack the clergyman in the face? After all, most 15-year-old teenage boys wouldn’t allow themselves to be molested. So why did you?”

Reporters all over the country are quoting this man as being a leading spokesman for Catholics all over the nation.

Does he speak for you?

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Democratic Strategist

by digby

MSNBC featured a lively segmentthis morning between Dan Gerstein, Joe Lieberman’s personal WATB, and some other guy on the subject of the Edwards blogger brouhaha.

Nameless MSNBC blond host: Here to talk about how much this could hurt John Edwards are Dan Gerstein former senior advisor for Senator Joe Lieberman and Democratic strategist, as well as Brad Blakeman a Republican strategist.

Let’s start with you Dan. These bloggers that we’re talking about. If Edwards is so personally offended by their comments, why not just fire them and be done with it?

Gerstein: Well, it sounds like a simple question, but there’s a big problem in the Democratic party right now. And let me preface what I’m about to say by saying I have a blog, I’m a big believer in the power of blogs in politics to make it more Democratic and empower people’s voices, but for a lot of the Democratic bloggers there’s extremism, anger, and there’s a kind of lack of accountability for what people say and do and I think this is more and more going to become a problem in presidential politics as the blogosphere and the campaign world start converging. And I think, to sum it up, I think this is a warning sign there’s a risk of getting fleas if you lie down with blogs.

NMBH: Interesting. Hey Brad I have a question. Can you really hold John Edwards accountable for something that low level staffers posted this one in particular before she was even working for the campaign?

Blakeman: Yes you can because, you’re directly responsible for your employees. And this isn’t a third party who has no connection to Edwards. These are people who work for him. And there’s no way to defend this type of activity whether they are Republican or Democrat.These people need to go and they need to go quick. And if they don’t go quick, it’s going to be very detrimental to Senator Edwards.

NMBH: Dan, when you see someone like Bill Donohue jumping all over this. This is the head of the Catholic League,about 350,000 catholics across the country that are members of that, does it make you think that this incident might haunt Senator Edwards down the line, especially as he tries to court the conservative Christian voters?

Gerstein: Well in the short term it’s gonna help him because in the Democratic base, the activists, he stood up to the far right and he refused to be bullied, and the won the favor of the bloggers which are an important constituency in the Democratic Party. My concern is that how this is going to affect him and the Democratic Party down the line and particuarly in the general lection and here’s why.

The Democratic Party has made great efforts and I give Howard Dean great credit for this, for reaching out to the evangelical community, and the faith based communities in general to try and rebuild some of the trust that’s been eroded over the years. And an episode like this, what it does is, regardless of whether John Edwards fired them, he appears to be tacitly condoning anti-Catholic bias when there are a lot of Catholic Democrats in this country and that’s going to have the potential to turn off voters to the Democratic Party.

NMBH: Guys listen, I’ve got to call it a wrap, this time. I know you’re both coming back. Brad, I’m going to begin with you next time, make it a little more fair and balanced.

I know that we can’t expect MSNBC to know that Bill Donohue is a date-rape defending crackpot or to know that Dan Gerstein is a far right neocon who represents about three nominal Democrats in the whole country — Lieberman, Lanny Davis and Martin Peretz. The media are all very distracted by the breaking news that Anna Nicole is still dead and they don’t have time to seek out any real facts or provide serious context.

But really, do they not even know their anchors are using the FoxNews tagline? No wonder they languish in third place…

Cliff Schecter has more on the recent ramblings of Dan Gerstein, the Democratic “strategist,” who’s written an analysis for the DLC positing that Lieberman is the true representative of the base of the Democratic party.

Update: Uh oh. We’ve lost Bérubé.

From the comments:

Well, I used to be a Democrat, but these foul-mouthed liberal bloggers have left me no choice but to join forces with Bill Donohue and Dick Cheney. I’m looking forward to the restoration of civil discourse in the public sphere, and might I add, now that I’ve decided not to hate America any more, I’m really angry about Chappaquiddick.

Oh, yeah, almost forgot: I didn’t leave the left blogosphere — it left me.

Michael Bérubé

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