Part II (The findings on terrorism can be found at my initial post.)
Consider for a moment that a Republican controlled Senate Intelligence Committee released the reports today that are so damning to the lies Bush and Cheney repeated ad nauseum for the last three and a half years. What the hell is in the three additional reports that they don't want to release until after the November elections? It is difficult to imagine the truths still to be told.

These reports make clear that the case for war in Iraq was manufactured by ignoring the intelligence. However, this is not only an indictment of Republicans; it is an indictment of every Democrat who voted for going to war. Can't these people read? If the National Intelligence Estimate reflected a clear, unanimous opinion, then the Democrats could argue, "we were mislead by the intelligence". Hell bells, folks, the NIE consistently had dissenting opinions. That means there was NO AGREEMENT among intelligence analysts. Shame on every Republican and Democrat who were too goddamn lazy to read the NIE!

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Truth in advertising. I consider myself a friend of Eli Lake. He's a hard-working journalist whose sympathies are with the neoconservatives, but he doesn't let them get away with vapid thinking or positions that are completely beyond sensibility.

That said, Lake has a piece in the New York Sun on the Lincoln Chafee-Stephen Laffey race that could have been much better, and he used the Bolton battle as a major hinge in his article.

Lake paints Chafee to be the Republican's version of Lieberman, i.e., somewhat politically ambidextrous.

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Still don't believe Social Security is on the ballot this November?

In an interview published today in The Wall Street Journal (sub.req.), President Bush told editorial page editor Paul Gigot that next year he plans on partially phasing out Social Security and replacing it with private accounts, and that he thinks he can do it as long as the Republicans retain control of Congress, which he thinks they will.

Details after the jump.

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The following is Senator Lincoln Chafee's letter to Condoleezza Rice, implying in the first paragraph that if a vote had been held on September 7th, Bolton would have received a "no" vote from the Senator.

The pdf of the letter is here.

Chafee writes:

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I've been trying to think fairly about the ultimate question this 9/11 memorial weekend: why haven’t we been attacked since 9/11? It’s the question of the moment, inviting experts, commentators and politicians to guess at our successes and their failures. It is, indeed, a truly remarkable fact. Other than the anthrax attacks in the fall of 2001 -- attacks that law enforcement has yet to conclude were the work of foreign terrorists – there has been no repeat of the tragic events of that day. Nor have we seen random suicide bombers, detonating themselves in suburban malls, as many feared. Five years after 9/11, few would have expected this good news, particularly given the evidence that our nation still remains unprepared and vulnerable and that the threat remains real.

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Earlier this week, Senator Hagel, you revealed that you had a "direct and honest conversation" with John Bolton. Today, Bolton traveled to your home state of Nebraska and gave an hour-long speech. In case you missed it, the boiled down version is: "go to hell."

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WOW! WOW! and Wow! Message to Karl Rove and Dick Cheney--read it and weep baby. Cheney's newly appointed biographer, Stephen Hayes, is blown out of the water. Ditto Christopher Hitchens. Bottomline, Saddam rebuffed cooperation with Bin Laden, tried to capture Zarqawi, and did NOT repeat NOT train foreign terrrorists at Salman Pak. The Senate Intelligence committee today released Postwar Findings about Iraq's WMD Programs and Links to Terrorism and How they Compare with Prewar Assessments and The Use by the Intelligence Community of Information Provided by the Iraqi National Congress as part of its long awaited and long promised Phase II report about the accuracy of the intelligence and it is ugly for the Bushies.

I will do more detailed analysis in the coming days. Here's the down and dirty on the questions about Iraq's links to terrorism:

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State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack spoke with reporters this morning. You be the judge:

And we have been very well represented by John Bolton in the year that he's been up there. And the President and Secretary Rice fully support his continuing as Perm. Rep. at the United Nations. Now of course, that would require a vote by the Senate and I understand that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee decided to defer until possibly next week a discussion and action on reporting John out to the full Senate if, in fact, that's what they decide to do. We would call upon them to do so, and we would call upon senators to give John a fair up-and-down vote on the floor of the Senate.

(emphasis mine)

Two things. First, based on McCormack's statement, it sounds like the Administration is desperate just to get movement in committee. It sounds like defense. Second, maybe I'm reading too much into this, but McCormack says plainly that "his continuing as Perm. Rep...would require a vote by the Senate."

Unless that's simply a slip of the tongue, that's means no second recess appointment. That would be huge.

More soon. I'm listening to Bolton deliver a VERY un-Chuck-Hagel speech in Hagel's home state of Nebraska.

There is a growing consensus among progressives that a crucial problem in the American economy comes from the flat wages of American workers over the last generation. It plays a major part in the New Democratic Network's report on the Bush economic record. It is a lens for looking at the politics of poverty and the health of the economy.

It's part of a larger question, however, and that is do Americans own America? Or do we just rent the right to be here from someone with more money?

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Today is the anniversary of the most transparent attack against the working poor by a government in my memory: the suspension of the Davis-Bacon act for all the counties/parishes affected by hurricane Katrina. In a stunningly cynical move, Bush argued in the proclamation itself that this suspension would "result in greater assistance to these devastated communities and will permit the employment of thousands of additional individuals."

Of course, it wasn't just Bush. There was significant pressure for him to do this within his own party.

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Several well-placed sources close to the Bolton nomination process have reported to me that the Bolton confirmation process is now dead.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is "highly unlikely" to reconsider Bolton's confirmation again as things now stand.

One insider reported, as far as the Committee is concerned, "we consider the confirmation over. It's dead."

American diplomacy may get a boost in January. She's tough and not a darling of many progressives, but my vote is for Bush's next nominee to serve as US Ambassador to the United Nations is Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky.

Senator Lincoln Chafee gets this week's 'Conservative with a Conscience' Award for his principled stand on the importance of America's Middle East diplomacy and for making the Bolton confirmation process an appropriate vehicle to express his concerns.

-- Steve Clemons is Senior Fellow and Director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation and publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note.

Lee wonders about the silence of the party in light of Bush's speech regarding Gitmo. I think the Dems have got it just right.

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Several well-placed sources close to the Bolton nomination process have reported to me that the Bolton confirmation process is now dead.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is "highly unlikely" to reconsider Bolton's confirmation again as things now stand.

One insider reported, as far as the Committee is concerned, "we consider the confirmation over. It's dead."

American diplomacy may get a boost in January. She's tough and not a darling of many progressives, but my vote is for Bush's next nominee to serve as US Ambassador to the United Nations is Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky.

Senator Lincoln Chafee gets this week's 'Conservative with a Conscience' Award for his principled stand on the importance of America's Middle East diplomacy and for making the Bolton confirmation process an appropriate vehicle to express his concerns.

-- Steve Clemons is Senior Fellow and Director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation and publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note.

What does the Democratic party stand for? On President Bush's proposal yesterday about how the United States of America should prosecute and treat military detainees, apparently, not much.

The Republican leadership, including Lindsay Graham, John McCain, and John Warner, have all criticized the White House's proposal yesterday to deny military detainees, including those facing execution, the right to see evidence against them. Uniformed lawyers have lined up against the President's proposal, too. In the meantime, President Bush yesterday put forward draft legislation that seems intended to permit interrogation techniques that the Geneva Convention outlaws. What has the leadership of the Democratic party to say?

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Democracy Corps released its latest strategy memo and poll results earlier today. It’s worth taking a look at the entire memo: it’s all about national security and the November election. However, one finding caught my eye. Apparently, the public now considers dependence on foreign oil to be the nation’s top national security concern –more important than terrorism or Iraq. Forty-two percent of those polled identified dependence on foreign oil as one of their top two concerns. That’s more than fifteen points higher than fighting terrorism (twenty-six percent) or the Iraq war (twenty-five percent). Is Democracy Corps simply tapping into anger over gas prices or is something more fundamental going on here?

A battle is shaping up in Congress that will have a profound effect on military personnel, and the biggest, best-funded guns are aimed directly at our fighting troops. The military is asking Congress to outlaw a practice that it says “undermines military readiness, harms the morale of troops and their families, and add to the cost of fielding an all-volunteer fighting force.”

The practice? Predatory lending. Specifically payday lenders that charge 400-800% interest for loans directly targeted at military families.

The plan?  A cap on interest rates for military families. 

What are the big guns on the other side? The very profitable payday lending companies, backed up by their powerful lobbying forces. They may have some allies in the form of the American Bankers Association; their group is worried that proposed legislation will cover high-priced credit cards and other consumer loans.

Will the military, led by Senators Jim Talent (R-Mo) and Bill Nelson (D-Fl), prevail? Or will the heavy lobbying assault from the industry win out?

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Doc Searls challenges me to come up with the goods, though in a good natured way. Since what he has done with the Linux Journal and in the open source community has had a tremendous influence on my own thinking, let me boil down one of the simplest and most important ideas of the next half century into a short space.

The postage stamp history of political ideology in the 20th century is between left and right, and between public and private sectors of the economy. This view is wrong when you look at it, and misses the third great sector: the social sector, the sector which runs not on money or political consensus, but on the intricate interactions of people. What the internet is doing is allowing a rebirth of the social sector, and giving it the means of producing value. Linux, blogging and wikipedia are value, which while enabled by the public and private sectors are driven by the social sector. The rebirth and resurgence of the social sector is a driving force in politics, and one that is going to change the direction of not merely American politics, but politics in every country.

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Senator Lincoln Chafee impressed just about everyone during the recent testimony of John Bolton before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He pushed Bolton for hard answers to important questions, and did not yield when Bolton tried to duck and swerve Chafee's queries.

Chafee is worried about American foreign policy and the absence of a clear plan in the Middle East. He thinks that the administration has done nothing credible in recent years to push forward a "viable, two state solution" in Israel-Palestine affairs.

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We’ve struck it rich again. Black gold ready to spew forth (in pipes, hopefully) from the Gulf of Mexico. The largest oil discovery in a generation. As much as a 50% increase in U.S. oil reserves. Thank goodness, no need to pay attention to all that talk about the need for a new energy policy.

Read further, though. The estimates do run as high as 15 billion barrels. But also as low as 3 billion. No reflection of that in straightforward headlines like in the NY Times, “Big Oil Find is Reported Deep in Gulf.”

And even at the high end, at current consumption rates of 20.5 million barrels/day, all all this oil would do is fill two years worth of U.S. consumption.

Guess we still need to do something about the addiction.

As the Bush administration markets its post-9/11 five year assessment, two points to go along with those made by Ernie, Juliette, Ivo and others.

One is the Rumsfeld terrorism metric. I keep coming back to this because it’s the set of criteria the Bush administration defined for themselves not ones imposed on it by critics. ”Every day,” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said back in October 2003, we need to ask ourselves, “are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists than the radical clerics and madrassas are recruiting, training and deploying against us?” Do the two column accounting. Be fair about what does deserve to go in the credits column. But be honest about what goes in the debits column. The balance is a negative one.

The other is the issue that the Bush administration is so earnestly trying to take out of the accounting: Iraq.

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Herein lies the dilemma now facing the GOP leadership of the 109th Do-Nothing Congress: with control of Congress at stake in November, do you keep voting on the estate tax and make a point with your conservative base, or vote separately on the elements of the "trifecta" and actually make productive and positive policy?

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College admissions officers roll out the red carpet for children of the rich and famous, according to a new book that has rekindled debate over college admissions practices.

Dan Golden's "The Price of Admission" builds upon his Pulitzer Prize-winning series for the Wall Street Journal. Golden is not afraid to name names: he describes how the sons of Al Gore, Bill Frist, Michael Ovitz, and New Jersey billionaire Charles Kushner were admitted to top colleges despite their marginal credentials.

These special deals, as well as the boost that many colleges give children of alumni (called "legacy preferences"), tilt the playing field against middle-class applicants. According to two Princeton professors, legacy status is worth 160 points on the SAT.

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In the most recent issue of Foreign Affairs, James Goldgeier and I observe that with the advent of a new global politics after the Cold War, NATO has expanded its geographic reach and the range of its operations. Now, NATO must extend its membership to any democratic state that can help it fulfill its new responsibilities. Only a truly global alliance can address the global challenges of the day.

You can read the complete article here.

Josh today seconds Jack Schaefer in Slate, in asking whether Lee Siegel's offense, in commenting pseudonymously under a pseudonym on his own blog posts was really such an offense.

I haven't followed this whole controversy too closely, and my general attitude is that if a fight breaks out involving Ezra Klein, I'm on Team Ezra. (That goes for the Ezra/Nathan Newman argument about whether the employer-based health care system can be saved, which I'll get to eventually.)

But it seems to me the answer is really simple: Anonymity is fine. Pseudonyms are fine. Both are long traditions that for various reasons have enriched our political discourse.

But impersonating someone else is not fine.

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Lugar has postponed the Bolton vote. It's unclear exactly what this means at this point except that some Senators may be having second thoughts about Bolton. In the spirit of "I told you so," I'll point out that this has evolved into a classic example of Republican bluffing. As recently as yesterday, Lugar's staff was saying that they expect a party-line vote on Bolton, which would approve him and send him to the full Senate. It now appears it isn't nearly that simple.

Update: Arianna Huffington reports that the WH asked Lugar to postpone the entire business meeting to mask the uncertainty surrounding the Bolton nomination, but Lugar refused. She attributes this to a weakened WH; I would add that it's clear that Lugar, along with at least half of the Republicans on the Committee, don't like Bolton. Lugar's not about to stick his neck out for him.

Chris Bowers at MyDD also reports on an e-mail he received that the nomination may be abandoned altogether. I think that's wishful thinking, but any way you slice it, the Bolton nomination is most definitely on the ropes.

Stay tuned. 

This from the President's local newspaper:
"By challenging Congress to immediately give the administration authority to try notorious al-Qaeda figures such as Khalid Sheik Mohammed by military commissions, he shifted the argument with Democratic critics of national security policies and competence."

Well, you read it here first. When the Supreme Court case came down I blogosputtered that the Democrats needed to introduce legislation in a hurry that established an aggressive new way to bring bad actors to trial and also that they needed to demand immediate trials. The general wave of commentary even in the mainstream media was that the Supreme Court had checked the White House's illegal activities and that the rule of law had been given a shot in the arm. I was a cynic.

So the loose group known as Democrats didn't demand trials, didn't insist on anything, and its various leaders instead began writing letters exclusively about Iraq.

The letters are good, Rumsfeld is a good topic, but politics is tennis, not baseball: you have to hit everything that comes at you, and not just wait for your favorite pitch.

This year, as always the White House will insist on Congressional votes, on the eve of the election, that are framed to make Democrats look bad. Don't, friends, wait for the votes. Start demanding legislation right away that compels the White House to take action on many terrorism-related topics. Put the other side on the defensive, not just as to firing Donald Rumsfeld but to the many other ways the White House has failed us on foreign policy. It's not the details that matter but the demands. Stop complaining that you don't control the process. It's the court of public opinion, of course, that matters now and you can say whatever you want in that forum. We need at least ten different demands, each cast in form of bill or resolution, that Democrats say Congress should pass and will if they take charge. The topics should include negotiation with Iran, catching Osama, sealing the Lebanese border with Syria, replacing the head of Homeland Security, having the Attorney General explain in a public report why his prosecution record against terrorists is so abysmal, and so forth. Think of this as a Contract with America to have the war on terrorism run right.

Excuse me for being confused, but didn't the administration claim that public knowledge of secret CIA prisons threatened our nation's security? Didn't Porter Goss fire a long-standing CIA analyst for allegedly having talked to the press about CIA detainees? Didn't Alberto Gonzalez suggest that journalists publishing this kind of information might be prosecuted? So why would Bush now confirm publicly what no one was supposed to know? Could it be because it now serves his political purpose?

It’s true; I couldn’t make this up. A friend and I were discussing how CBS had used some kind of photographic technology to slim down Katie Couric to promote her debut as the first female anchor of the evening news.

Well, it turns out that you, too, can instantly lose weight and appear slimmer in a photograph. On Hewlett Packard’s shopping web site, there are a slew of digital cameras that take off those extra ten pounds and instantly slim you down.

Underneath the seductive words, “Slimming photos with HP digital cameras,” appears this teaser: “They say cameras add ten pounds, but HP digital cameras can help reverse that effect. The slimming feature, available on select HP digital camera models, is a subtle effect that can instantly trim off pounds from the subjects in your photos!”

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If we had to rely solely on the word of George W. Bush about the progress in the war on terrorism and the value of information obtained from Muslim prisoners in U.S. custody we would be in trouble.  Bush's speech today from the White House was both self-serving and misleading.  I give the President credit for one thing--he's a great propagandist.  Let's ignore for the moment that terrorist attacks in which people have been killed or wounded have quadrupled since 2001.  Are you getting this?  We have four times as many attacks with people being killed and wounded by terrorists and Bush wants you to believe you are better off.  But I digress.

According to Bush, secret prisons and torture have kept America safe.  Not entirely true.  While fessing up to the secret prisons, one of the critical things Bush failed to tell the American people was that CIA interrogators learned the hard way that torture was not an effective interrogation method.  Books written by Jim Risen and Ron Suskind during the past two years provide compelling accounts that torture against people, particularly Khalid Sheikh Mohamad (KSM), was ineffective.  Suskind recounts that KSM, one of the masterminds behind the 9-11 attack, was waterboarded--a technique designed to make you feel like you are drowning.  Interrogators also threatened to rape and murder his family.  KSM reportedly replied, "Do what you will, my family will be with God".

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Bush to Katie Couric today: "One of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror."

I am not making this up.

Then the President of the United States hesitated for a fraction of a second--perhaps he half-realized what had just come out of his mouth--and so he went on: "I believe it, but the American people have got to understand that a defeat in Iraq, in other words if this government there fails, the terrorists will be emboldened, the radicals will topple moderate governments. I truly believe that this is the ideological struggle of the 21st century. And the consequences for not achieving success are dire."

The truth came first. Spontaneously.

As the man said: It's a hard job, being president of the United States.

As we get close to crunch time, a couple of quick updates.

First, Senator Hagel is no longer undecided on Bolton. After having "a direct and honest conversation" with Bolton, Hagel has decided to support the nomination. I learned about this yesterday and his position is reflected in my earlier whip count. I'll leave it to others to break down how Hagel could be so wildly inconsistent, partisan, and shameful. I'm more interested in what hasn't changed: we've still got the votes.

Here's a piece I published this morning on TomPaine.com about why Senators should oppose Bolton.

Here's Matt Stoller's excellent rundown of the Bolton fight and why it's important that Democrats stand up for principle.

Finally, below is the excellent speech that Chris Dodd delivered on the Senate floor this morning. Dodd has really led the anti-Bolton fight while Chuck Schumer has looked like a deer in headlights. Fortunately, Schumer still may do the right thing.

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The press release has now been posted for Michael Isikoff and David Corn's new book, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War. It can be found at Corn's web site, and it contains some startling revelations. According to the release, Bush reacted with a curse-filled tirade when told in May 2002 that reporter Helen Thomas was asking about the need to oust Saddam. Bush snapped:

"Did you tell her I intend to kick his sorry mother f**king ass all over the Mideast?"

In another revelation, the release says: "When Bush was first briefed that no WMDs had been found in Iraq, he was totally unfazed and asked few questions. `I'm not sure I've spoken to anyone at that level who seemed less inquisitive,' the briefer told the authors." Read the whole release here.

While we wait to see the specifics of Bush's plan to move CIA detainees to DoD custody, a few questions that ought to be answered:  is there any relevance to the transfer of folks who clearly have no intelligence value any longer?  Does Bush's new policy mean that the CIA will no longer take hold of these folks?  Is ALL that is happening is that guys who likely now have no idea what year it is simply get sent to DoD because the CIA is done with them.

Now tell me that the CIA will close all the ghost prisons and that would be news. 

Less than a hundred days after being sworn into his second term, the Mayor of New Orleans already has a "Recall Nagin" effort on his hands.

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It’s all the rage now for Republicans to peer at the naked flesh of the brush-clearer-in-chief and discover that, whaddaya know, his outfit’s not what it was cracked up to be. Well, better late than never. It's good for the country. It clears some air. It gets some distance from a sinking ship. So it looks good on a resume--"Pay attention to me. I broke with Bush."

But those who recant also owe us, and themselves, and all those who listened to them and took them seriously, some understanding--including self-scrutiny. Where, after all, did they go so badly wrong all the while they were cheering Bush?

For logically there are only two possiilities. Either Bush has changed or he hasn't. If he hasn't, why was it right to join him on his heedless, catastrophic course in the first place? If he has changed, show us where.

Truth is, as the apostates and grumblers must know, Bush hasn't changed. The most you can say is that it took a while for the logic of his illogic to play itself out. So the question remains: What should reasonable people conclude about the (tunnel) vision that led them to years' worth of cheering Bush on and denouncing his adversaries on the left?

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Five years into the global conflict that followed the worst terrorist attacks in history, who is up and who is down? The list of winners and losers is long — from the people in Afghanistan and Iraq who were freed from brutal dictatorships only to be confronted with renewed violence and chaos to the people in Darfur who have had to confront a genocide largely on their own.

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The latest revelations from David Corn and Michael Isikoff confirm what me and my CIA colleagues (Jim Marcinkowski, Michael Grimaldi, and Brent Cavan) have said for the last three years--Valerie Plame Wilson was an undercover security officer when her relationship with the CIA was exposed by Rober Novak. Prior to today's news, Raw Story and MSNBC reported that Val was working on Iran. Corn and Isikoff's scoop says it was Iraq and provides some pretty meaty details to back it up. This much is certain:

• Valerie Plame was working undercover as a senior CIA operations officer.
• Valerie Plame was working on issues related to Weapons of Mass Destruction in order to keep America safe.
• Valerie Plame traveled overseas as part of her undercover work and was protected under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.
• Valerie Plame was betrayed by President Bush and his political appointees.

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I suppose I have to watch the ABC docudrama on 9/11 to be fair in commenting on it. But by then the harm will have been done and the election that it of course is intended to influence will be upon us. If I were in the government, as a regulator, right now, before it is too late, I'd ask these questions:
1. What is the reason ABC is showing this, aside from attracting an audience to advertise to?
2. What remedy exists for those who allege that falsehood is embedded in the show?
3. What methods of making and distributing alternative content, of a different point of view, exist? If there aren't adequate alternatives, how could they be created?
4. Would ABC consider offering, in fairness, a rebuttal opportunity before or after the show? for example, to Richard Clarke or President Clinton?

I'd ask these questions in public. I would put them to the CEO of Disney. He can take it. Certainly the FCC isn't as powerful in Hollywood as, say, Tom Cruise. But what power it has lies in the ability to ask questions, as much as anything else.

When President Bush and Senator Voinovich joined up little more than a month ago to put the Bolton nomination back on the Senate calendar, White House political strategists suggested that getting Bolton confirmed would be a walk in the park. Here’s some good news: those same WH strategists and Republican vote-counters are now fighting an uphill battle to get Cheney’s man approval in the Senate.

Repeat: the White House and Republican Senate leadership is now fighting an uphill battle to get John Bolton confirmed. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee vote is up in the air, and as of right now, Democrats have the votes to prolong debate and block Bolton’s confirmation.

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The well-argued, intersecting debates at the American Prospect and the Democratic Strategist about recapturing the support of the middle class may be having the counterproductive effect of leaving everyone hopelessly confused about whether there are even genuine economic problems confronting average American families, what they actually might be, and what to do about them. So let’s keep it simple: the biggest problem by far is our screwed up health care system, and the solution is universal coverage.

Pulling off universal coverage would make the vast majority of American families more economically secure, and the country will be able to stop squandering a huge and ever-growing share of our resources on an incredibly wasteful system. The ripple effects on wages, job security (in the context of global competition with countries already providing universal coverage), household debt levels, and bankruptcies, etc. are all likely to be positive. As Ezra Klein notes at Tapped, none of the other kinds of nickel-and-dime policy proposals bandied about will have a meaningful impact on the lives of a broad swath of the population. Maybe it’s because Democrats continue to be so cowed about proposing something that would clearly be economically meaningful to the middle class that those folks have been voting for Republicans.

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Jeffrey Birnbaum and Chris Cillizza say in this morning’s Washington Post that the Soccer Moms or Security Moms that every politician tried to woo in past elections have been replaced by the Mortgage Moms. These are the women who understand the squeeze on middle class families—rising costs for housing, health insurance and childcare that can’t be covered by stagnant wages. And these are the moms who will vote for someone who connects on those issues.

If Birnbaum and Cillizza are right, then the debate over on the Democratic Strategist is critical. That’s where Kim, Solomon and Kessler are arguing that Democrats should give the family economic news an “optimistic” spin so they will sound, uh, optimistic and thus appeal to the masses of Mortgage Moms. By comparison, folks like me who talk about the pressures on the middle class sound like the love-child of Casandra and Eeyore.

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The momentum keeps building for Donna Edwards, who is challenging Rep. Al Wynn (DINO-MD) in the Sept. 12 Democratic primary. She got a big endorsement from MoveOn voters and, amazingly enough, from the WaPo.

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Been gone for a month, and always takes me a while to get back into gear. But, I'm watching this press conference now (I do feel like I've seen it before, wait, I have) and it really is nothing. But, the Democrats reply highlights a report by Third Way, the folks who came up with "tough and smart", that is simply excellent with almost no commentary. Just the numbers.  Helpful for those like me who have shied away from anything remotely close to math since 7th grade. 

I guess it's right to stay true to form. In a report out today, the Bush administration is saying that on the fifth anniversary of 9/11 "America is safer but we are not yet safe."

I take this to mean that just in time for the November elections we have arrived at the administration's sweet spot of terror preparedness: a lot safer thanks to all the good things the president has done to foil the terrorists but also not so safe that people should feel safe enough to vote for the traitorous Democrats.

Truly the sweet spot.

According to today's Pennsylvania Morning-Call, out-of-state money is gushing into the coffers of incumbent GOP Senator Rick Santorum and challenger Bob Casey race at a startling rate: "Nearly half of the $10.3 million Santorum has received in itemized individual donations during that time came from outside Pennsylvania...Casey's not far behind, drawing more than a third — 38 percent — of his $7.2 million in itemized contributions from the rest of the United States."

If you want to know why an almost hysterical antagonism towards science is becoming the unifying issue of the right, a few items from today's news will tell you. On one hand a study of ice cores shows that CO2 and methane are at their highest in 800,000 years and are rising faster than any time that they were able to measure. At the same time a promising oil well is trumpetted as increasing Amercan reserves "up to" 50%.

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