There are (at least) two big issues of justice that separate the liberals from the conservatives when it comes to The Global War On Terror™.

The first is impeachment. Many of us would like to see Bush and Cheney impeached for their actions over the last 7 years. Even so, most of us who feel that way don't believe this to be a realizable wish. We might applaud Kucinich acting as Don Quixote, but ultimately realize that it's just not going to happen. We are very eager to forgive Obama (and/or Clinton) for not pursuing this.

The second is telecom immunity. Remember that immunity is about forgiving past criminal actions and not about preventing future ones, although with all questions of justice, these are related. Again, most of us are against telecom immunity (both civil and criminal). However, many of us (myself included), aren't quite as eager to overlook Obama's differing stance on this one. Why is that?

I think that most of us who feel this way (i.e., with the contrasting opinions on impeachment vs. immunity), it really boils down to whether we think this was a necessary compromise. Most people who are defending Obama think that it was. Most of us who aren't so quick to defend don't think that it was. So, whether than it being so much a question of ethics (else, why would we be so ready to forgive his lack of support for impeachment?), it really boils down to a question of pragmatism. Was it really necessary, and how sure are you of it?

I don't think it was necessary, even on the civil side (as I understand it, criminal prosecution is still open), but I can't say I'm even 80% sure of it.

So, although I think he made the wrong call here, it's not the same crushing blow to my opinion of him that it seems to be for some people who also think he made the wrong call here. As usual, part of my purpose in posting this is to find a middle ground where we can at least agree to disagree without getting lost in hyperbole.

Censorship.

It's an ugly word, isn't it?

I would argue that self-censorship is not only not ugly, but desirable. Otherwise, we might as well be suffering from Tourette syndrome.

Nevertheless, I've read from other posters here about how trying to be nice to others (or heaven forfend trying to avoid using vulgar language) amounts to self-censorship and is implicitly therefore a bad thing.

Yet, anyone who has studied child psychology can tell you that self-censorship is a skill that is a vital part of growing up.

That doesn't mean you can't cuss. It doesn't mean you can't be sarcastic. It definitely doesn't mean you can't speak to harsh truths. It does mean you should be mindful of what you write, and possibly even re-read what you write before pressing the Submit button. (If I did that more often, perhaps I'd have fewer spelling/grammatical errors in my comments.)

Preachy rant over, for now.

It's been suggested that we should share some of our tips and tricks for "working around" some of the limitations inherent in TPM's UI. So, I'll share mine here, and I'll encourage others to add theirs in the comments.

1. Avoid using an apostrophe (AKA single quote) in either your user name or in your blog titles. That is the reason this blog was not titled "A User's Guide for TPM". Using an apostrophe in your user name means that people can't reply to you. Using an apostrophe in your blog title means that the previous and next feature won't work. There used to be a problem with double quotes as well, but that's now been fixed. So, er, great—we can now reply to "Present".

2. Want to know if someone has responded to your comments? Trying to get back to what you were last reading? [Ctrl]+[f] is your friend. In most browsers this will bring up a find dialogue that allows you to search for your name or some other phrase. (On Macs replace [Ctrl] with [Open Apple].) Sometimes I search on just "Ben" in case someone's posted a comment down below due to the reply feature not working properly. Of course, hrbendorf provides false hits when using that search. Luckily, I don't mind reading what he's written. :)

3. Trying to look for old posts? There are two tactics for dealing with this. First, if you know ahead of time that a post will likely be one you'll be returning to, bookmark it. Get to know how to organize bookmarks in your browser as you'll probably want to put these in one or more folders for easy access. Second, if you're looking for one that you didn't bookmark, try using Google's site feature. If you add site:talkingpointsmemo.com to your search criteria, it will limit its search to only this site.

4. Recommend those posts that you want to show up in the most recommended list. ;)

I wrote about this once before, but it seems that people are still arguing (without intent of irony) that what we post here just doesn't matter. (Note: I've singled out one instance of it, from someone I respect, but he's certainly not alone.) We're only one voice, after all.

Well, by the same logic, our vote doesn't matter either, but we still feel that it's our civic duty, don't we? Why is that? I'd argue that it's because although each individual vote doesn't matter, collectively those votes are what decide the election, of course. There are a lot of actions in life that are like that. You touching that priceless piece of history won't do any real damage, but if everyone were to do so, it'd be destroyed far too quickly.

So, yes, what you write here does matter. I'll avoid getting preachy (yeah, I know, too late) and telling you how I think you should comport yourself, but don't think that what you write doesn't matter. Each comment by itself is like a vote—it has little impact by itself, but collectively we decide the very atmosphere of TPM as well as how some people perceive our favored candidate.

So, up on TPM Election Central is a story about a new ad for Sen. Clinton that fails to mention Obama. Of course, Obama has had several ads that fail to mention Clinton as well. So, here's the question: can they use funds for the general election on these, and how much do you think that factors into their decision to not mention their primary opponents in these ads?

So, I'm wrestling with an ethical question. I've got Republican friends who aren't exactly thrilled with McCain, but who can't bring themselves to vote Democratic. It seems like a bit of a cheap shot to encourage these people to vote 3rd party when I've discouraged all of my Democratic leaning friends from doing so when they're not thrilled with the Democratic candidate. On the other hand, I'm convinced that it actually is in their best interest since I think that a Democratic president will help almost all of us. (Those earning more than $250,000 might reasonably disagree, depending on their priorities.)

So, what do you think? Is it ethically wrong to encourage them to "throw their vote away"?

Putting aside your feelings about including MI & FL, I think it's interesting to look at the total delegate count as it stands now if you include them. Including MI & FL gives us the following pledged delegate math:
Total pledged delegates: 3566
Needed for a majority: 1783.5
Number Obama has outright: 1725.5
    including uncommitted: 1780.5
    and Edwards' dels: 1800.5

Including the uncommitted and Edward's delegates is not unreasonable considering that Edwards has endorsed him, and (I believe) every Edwards pledged delegate that has changed so far has gone to Obama. The uncommitted delegates were also almost all undoubtedly intended for either Obama or Edwards, so that just continues the point. Even just giving him Michigan's uncommitted delegates would put him within 3, which I think it's safe to say he'll get in any one of the remaining contests, let alone all of them.

This doesn't answer the question about whether to seat and MI & FL (and if to seat, how many to seat), but it does change the context somewhat. Really, the only concerns now are setting a bad precedent vs. upsetting two states that we really want to vote for us.

Since I was quite surprised to discover this, I thought I'd point this out for the rest of the TPM community. John Edwards is not a superdelegate. He's no longer a Senator, and obviously never achieved Democratic Party Leader status, but he's also not one of the DNC superdelegates, either.

On the upside, as others have already pointed out, he does have a few pledged delegates that will most likely drift Obama's way (in fact, this has already begun to happen).

Although I think it's important for each of us to make up our own minds about who to vote for in November, few of us really have the time (and/or inclination) to learn every relevant factor about our voting options. A convenient shortcut is to find one or more groups that we agree with and look at their scorecards for the candidates in question. Along those lines, I'm including the scores from a few groups and encourage commenters to include those I've omitted.

League of conservation voters (lifetime): Obama: 96, McCain: 26
LCV (110th): Obama: 100, McCain: 29
NARAL: Obama: 100, McCain: 0
Planned Parenthood: Obama: 100, McCain: 0
National Right to Life: Obama: 0, McCain: 82
ACLU (lifetime): Obama: 82, McCain: 25
ACLU (110th): Obama: 89, McCain: 17
NRA: Obama: F, McCain: C

NAACP: Obama: 100, McCain: 7
NOW: Obama: 91, McCain: 13
Children's Defense Fund: Obama: 100, McCain: 10
National Education Association: Obama: 100, McCain: 0
National Farmer's Union: Obama: 100, McCain: 0
AFL-CIO: Obama: 93, McCain: 7

United Auto Workers: Obama: 85, McCain: 9

Note: Presumably most of TPM will be voting for Obama in November. This information is intended not just for your consumption, but also for sharing with your friends and family.

One seemingly constant in politics is what I've often referred to as the "Price is Right" phenomenon. On that game show, the last person bidding will usually bid $1 more than the price they think is closest to (without going over) the real price. Thus, if they think the price of something is $650, and the current bids were $300, $500, and $800, that person would bid $501 instead of $600, for instance.

The same thing often happens in politics. Frequently, one candidate or the other (usually an incumbent) establishes their positions first, and then the other candidate "bids $1 more". That is, they pretend to move to the center (or left/right) to capture as many votes as they can. Although it might be ethically distasteful, it often makes good political sense. Bush did it to Gore in 2000, and Kerry did it to Bush in 2004.

When neither person is an incumbent, you might imagine that there might be a bit of a do-si-do as they both gradually move towards a perceived center, but it seems that this election that's not going to happen. I won't proclaim that "politics as usual" is dead, but I do think it's going to take a little nap at least. I won't give all the credit to Obama on this one, either. In an odd way we're in a bit of a prisoner's dilemma, except that neither person seems willing to "rat out" the other, in the sense that if one person shows an unwillingness to move, it makes it all that much easier for the other one to shift to the center.

It really seems like a lot of things are going to be different this year, and I'm really looking forward to the general election.

As I wrote about yesterday, Guam held its caucuses today. The current results have Obama with 1,738 votes and Clinton with 1,599. This might mean that Obama picks up a single net delegate if the delegates split 2.5:1.5 for him, or it might mean he picks up no net delegates. Regardless, the Hillary winning streak (HILLMENTUM™) of 1 is over.

Results are expected around 16:00 GMT, or about noon Eastern.

Just a reminder for those who'd rather talk about something other than gas tax holidays or a certain YouTube clip: Guam is holding their caucus tomorrow.

Guam is so far west of us, that it's actually to the east (or vice-versa). Its timezone is UTC+10, meaning that they're 14 hours ahead of us (or 15 if they're also observing daylight saving time) so it's already tomorrow there. Their population size is less than 200,000 (mainly of various Asian ethnicities), and about 3,000 are expected to caucus tomorrow. Although CBS describes it as a caucus (which tend to favor Obama), RealClearPolitics describes it as a closed primary (which tend to favor Clinton), although this description is via a footnote. I'm guessing this means it's a closed caucus (which I think most, if not all, caucuses are). There are a total of 8 delegates, each with ½ of a vote, so it counts as if there were only 4 delegates. In addition to the 8 pledged semi-delegates, there are 5 unpledged ("super") delegates. One of these, Taling Taitano, has endorsed Clinton, and the other 4 are uncommitted.

Although both have been campaigning here, it seems that (public) pollsters haven't bothered to ask people how they're going to vote, so I have no idea what to expect.

OK, so I was reading this story on NPR about a bill that "lets" Florida school teach alternatives to the Theory of Evolution.

This might surprise some of you, but I think this is a great idea, but I want to take it one step further. Allow the students to really understand the different perspectives—send them to the journals to find these so-called alternatives. Make it one of their class projects to find a viable alternative to the Theory of Evolution that has been published in a peer-reviewed journal. To make it easier on them, we won't put an oldest date limit on the research so that if they can find journals published prior to Darwin at least they'll stand a fighting chance. Of course, there'll have to be a primer drafted for the students so they'll be able to recognize legitimate journals, so I'm open for suggestions on how to do that without it seeming like we're being "unfair" to intelligent design. (After all, I believe there are a few such sham journals that contain articles published only by intelligent design "scientists".)

AP has the story here.

For once, I'm not going to provide a summary. Once you read the story, you'll understand why…

For those who were wondering when to get the popcorn out, Pennsylvania's polls close at 8 PM. State law requires that anyone who arrives at the polls by 8 be allowed to vote, no matter how long that takes, but I'm sure many precincts will be able to close their doors right on time.

Speaking of results rolling in, would TPMers expect that early results will be more favorable to Clinton or to Obama, as compared to later results? My guess is that early results will be more favorable to Clinton as that will be from the precincts where they close on time, which would correlate with (a) more rural populations (I'm guessing), and/or (b) lower turnout. Whether these actually benefit Clinton is also debatable, I suppose, but my impression is that this is the conventional wisdom.