The Sideshow: Something old, something new

Lawyers, Guns & Money: To know is to hate?

Wonk Room: Mitchell reaffirms 'linkage' in remarks on direct talks

AlterNet: Dylan Ratigan's Crusade

field negro: "Your glasses or your life"

Dennis Perrin: In Gawd's Image

On the campaign trail, John McCain likes to brag that he went after corrupt uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff as some sort of high-minded reform crusade. Well, according to a new book by Boston Globe reporter Gary S. Chafetz, McCain's war against Abramoff was motivated more by revenge than any sort of noble principle.

Politico:

A new book released the day after Sen. John McCain accepted the Republican presidential nomination attacks one of his trademark political successes: his investigation of now-jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff in 2004 and 2005.

“The Perfect Villain: John McCain and the Demonization of Lobbyist Jack Abramoff,” by former Boston Globe freelancer Gary S. Chafetz and put out by small independent publisher Martin and Lawrence press, aggressively puts forth the case that McCain’s investigation into Abramoff wasn’t the high-minded reform crusade he has made it out to be on the campaign trail, but rather was pure political payback.

ThinkProgress has more.

Informed Comment: The real question is, would John McCain be good for women?

Feministing: Weekly feminist reader

Greatscat! Priorities, priorities...

Hammer Of The Blogs: Stop Apologizing

The Satirical Political Report: The true story of the Democrats' 2008 "color wars.'

HOLY CRAP: Which Senator lives and loves with D.C. Satanists?...Trying to find something that will stick...Israelis argue over Hagee...'Personhood' begins at fertilization...Repuglican Supreme Court Justices in Wisconsin see nothing wrong with Pastor's call to kill homos...Jesus endorses Obama...Hagee gets ovation at AIPAC...Can Obama get 40% of the evangelical vote?...Is the war in Iraq a U.S. Crusade for Christ?...Al Quada mastermind questions terrorism...Bill Maher's movie on religion coming soon...Balancing faith and doubt

Mahablog:

Greg Gordon writes for McClatchy Newspapers that Hans von Spakovsky, a Justice Department lawyer now serving on the Federal Election Commission, allegedly used his position to prevent minorities from voting.

During four years as a Justice Department civil rights lawyer, Hans von Spakovsky went so far in a crusade against voter fraud as to warn of its dangers under a pseudonym in a law journal article.

Writing as "Publius," von Spakovsky contended that every voter should be required to produce a photo-identification card and that there was "no evidence" that such restrictions burden minority voters disproportionately.

Now, amid a scandal over politicization of the Justice Department, Congress is beginning to examine allegations that von Spakovsky was a key player in a Republican campaign to hang onto power in Washington by suppressing the votes of minority voters.

Think Moderate: President Bush lies (again) about the troop 'surge'

d r i f t g l a s s: Please, I am begging you. Begging. Keep defending Alberto Gonzales! Keep regurgitating GOP talking points many Friedmans after the facts have consigned them to the compost heap of history.

INSTAPUTZ: Wingmutts accuse captured Brits of 'cowardice' and even cite the GENEVA CONVENTIONS!....and they're beating the war drums

Norwegianity: How a bogus letter became the case for War

Sic Semper Tyrannis 2007: A couple more BUSHCO flacks experience eleventh-hour conversions. Take note of both the accuracy of their present analysis and the egregious crap that they've been shoveling until now.

HOLY CRAP: The Conservative Weather Channel...Sexual and religious addictions aren't strange bedfellows...Have you ever had unkind thoughts about L. Ron Hubbard?...Beware The Workplace Religious Freedom Act...The right to worship, or not...Mr.Deity, and the signs from god...Bible Study for Atheists...Top Ten Courses offered by Pat Robertson's Law School...God Debate: Sam Harris vs. Rick Warren...Religious Right fat cats bankroll legal crusade against church/state separation...It's Stem Cell Time...Did the Red Sea Part? Fuhgeddaboudit!

Shakespeare's Sister has moved over to Shakesville

Senator Brownback's anti-pornography crusade

Arthur: The sexual behavior engaged in by consenting adults is none of the government's business, period....read on

Seymour Hersh with Blitzer

Sy Hersh joined Wolf Blitzer, on Late Edition and discussed his new article called " "Up in the Air. " This article is loaded with peeks into the future of Iraq and some very scary stuff about Bush's mental make-up. (Transcripts)

Hersh: They're beginning to talk about some of the things the president said to him about his feelings about manifest destiny, about a higher calling that he was talking about three, four years ago. I don't want to sound like I'm off the wall here. But the issue is, is this president going to be capable of responding to reality? Is he going to be able -- is he going to be capable if he going to get a bad assessment, is he going to accept it as a bad assessment or is he simply going to see it as something else that is just a little bit in the way as he marches on in his crusade that may not be judged for 10 or 20 years.
He talks about being judged in 20 years to his friends. And so it's a little alarming because that means that my and my colleagues in the press corps, we can't get to him maybe with our views. You and you can't get to him maybe with your interviews.

How do you get to a guy to convince him that perhaps he's not going the right way?

Download | play -WMP Download | play -QT

Hersh: Jack Murtha certainly didn't do it. As I wrote, they were enraged at Murtha in the White House.

And so we have an election coming up -- Yes. I've had people talk to me about maybe Congress is going to have to cut off the budget for this war if it gets to that point. I don't think they're ready to do it now.

But I'm talking about sort of a crisis of management. That you have a management that's seen by some of the people closely involved as not being able to function in terms of getting information it doesn't want to receive. (hat tip Atrios)

Ademption has much more about troop levels and the use of our air power that Hersh talks about.

Unqualified Offerings

Pretty much every massacre Saddam Hussein’s regime committed was undertaken as part of a war or civil war. (Iraq’s Kurds have been in periodic armed revolt since the 1960s, its Shiites since the time of the Iran-Iraq War.) Many of the individuals and families he slaughtered were connected to attempted coups and assassinations. The Dawa Party at the time of Dujail cleaved to an enemy power, theocratic Iran.

If you believe there can be such a thing as a war crime, Saddam Hussein is a notorious war criminal and deserves whatever he gets. If you believe in “war the way it needs fighting, with grim ferocity and cold unconcern for legalistic niceties,” then Saddam Hussein is your boy. You and he are brothers under the skin. If you believe that there can be war crimes when our enemies commit them, but not when we or our allies do
What’s surpassingly interesting is that the people who bleat loudest about the morality of our crusade seem to keep a healthy supply of a-moralists around to justify the rough stuff. Read it all...",0]);D(["ce"]);D(["ms","869e"]);//-->, then perhaps Saddam Hussein himself would be shamed by your company.

What’s surpassingly interesting is that the people who bleat loudest about the morality of our crusade seem to keep a healthy supply of a-moralists around to justify the rough stuff. Read it all...

DOD Web site jokes of Christian crusade against Muslims

via : It's a photo of a US tank dubbed the "New Testament" - the name of the tank is written across its barrel. The even funnier part is that this photo MADE IT PAST military censors and the DOD Web page with the photo on it even brags about the name "New Testament" in the caption. So some jerk at the Pentagon knew exactly what this was about and found it funny enough to put on their Web site, and it passed various level of review. Lovely. click here for the picture

Masters of Sleaze excerpts:

... Only a giant like Abramoff would have the guts to use one tribe's casino money to finance a Focus on the Family crusade against gambling in order to shut down a rival tribe's casino.... Soon the creative revolutionaries were blending the high-toned forms of the think tank with the low-toned scams of the buckraker. Ed Buckham, Tom DeLay's former chief of staff, helped run the U.S. Family Network, which supported the American family by accepting large donations and leasing skyboxes at the MCI Center, according to Roll Call.

Reed so strongly opposes gambling as a matter of principle that he bravely accepted $4 million through Abramoff from casino-rich Indian tribes to gin up a grass-roots campaign. read on

You have got to read this article. I guess it just took a matter of time for David to finally see some truth after all. Either that or he drank some Gatorade instead of the Kool-aid.