Amanda Marcotte, formerly the head blogger for the Edwards Campaign, will be joining us at TPMCafe next week to discuss her recent experience in political culture clash.

Next week at TPMCafe, former Edwards Campaign and and current Pandagon blogger Amanda Marcotte will be joining us to discuss political culture clash. But maybe not the culture clash you're expecting...

As Amanda's brief foray into presidential politics exposed, there appears to be a deep division between the wide open debate culture of the emerging blogosphere and the high-stakes, tightly controlled world of electoral politics. Must every writer tamp down the free flow of thoughts and ideas to have a future in politics? Or maybe our politics can be more accepting of the occasional controversial idea. Is there a middle ground in which the blogosphere and electoral politics can meet, or are we beginning to see a division within the public debate?

Amanda will share her thoughts starting Monday.

Alright, today it's more like early afternoon (President Bush's speech threw off our schedule). I'll keep this quick.

Glenn Reynolds (aka Instapundit) got a lot of attention yesterday when he argued that the US should be:

"...responding quietly [to Iranian aggression], killing radical mullahs and iranian atomic scientists, supporting the simmering insurgencies within Iran, putting the mullahs' expat business interests out of business, etc."

Glenn Greenwald went to town.

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Garance Franke-Ruta believes there are "Clinton Rules." Citing our own M.J. Rosenberg as evidence, she argues that Hillary Clinton is subject to different standards of fact in political journalism: an absence of them. Our own Greg Sargent makes a similar point about the NYTs piece in yesterday's paper. Matt Yglesias acknowledges Franke-Ruta's general point but hopes that "Clinton's good fortune in her enemies [doesn't] distract people from basic realities." In other words, as Scott Lemieux argues, unfair criticisms should be done away with mostly so that fair ones can be heard.

Kevin Drum, however, leans toward agreeing with M.J. on the substance of the first point: that Obama is better on the issue of Syria and Iran.

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A Jonathan Alter piece in Newsweek last week set off a flurry of discussion about the history of Rudy Giuliani on Friday. Matt Yglesias remembers Rudy as crazy, mean, and power-hungry. Ezra Klein worries that Rudy's nearly nuts enough to call an end to elections. Stranger at Blah3 has a great rundown of some of Giuliani's less flattering moments as New York's mayor. Mark Schmitt has a hard time remembering Giuliani as "anything other than a vain and dangerous authoritarian."

On Sunday, convervative bloggers Ross Douthat and Andrew Sullivan each pondered Giuliani's actual prospects. Douthat linked to polling showing many Republicans don't know much of Giuliani's social liberalism, but still thinks he has a shot (based loosely on the case originally made by Glenn Greenwald). Sullivan hopefully theorizes that Rudy could be the man to bring the Right back to social sanity.

Of course, the big candidate of the weekend was Barack Obama...

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