Congratulations to the Phillies for giving it a great try as defending champs and to my Philly blogger friends like Chris Bowers, d-day, Will Bunch and C&L's own Susie Madrak who were good sports with me as we all watched the World Series.

Jeter, Posada and Pettitte were on David Letterman Thursday night to celebrate #27. Matsui, who made all of Japan proud by winning the MVP came on, holding the trophy. The only one missing from the Core Four was Mariano Rivera, the greatest reliever of all time. He'll be 40 this month and no one has ever done it better. These guys play the game the right way and do not act like fools doing it as so many pro athletes do these days.

And the Yankees do really well with a Democratic President:

Since winning the 1958 World Series when Republican Dwight Eisenhower was president, all nine of the Yankees’ titles have come under Democratic administrations — 1961, 1962, 1977, 1978, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2009. This bodes well for the Yankees for at least the next three seasons.

You may have wondered why I stopped posting about the series after my first one. Well, I'm kind of a superstitious sports fan (OK, I'm just a little bit obsessed) and when the Yanks lost Game One after I live-blogged it, I immediately gave that up.

It was a jinx, you see.

SC's Jim DeMint is the most extreme right wing Senator in the House of Lourdes and he's taking it as far as he can. Well, I should withhold my judgment until we see where we are by the end of the month.

Conservative leaders will push delay any vote on health care reform until after the August recess to capitalize on what they say is a growing tide of opposition to reform measures, they said on a conference call with "tea party" participants today.

"I can almost guarantee you this thing won't pass before August, and if we can hold it back until we go home for a month's break in August," members of Congress will hear from "outraged" constituents, South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint said on the call, which was organized by the group Conservatives for Patients Rights.

"Senators and Congressmen will come back in September afraid to vote against the American people," DeMint predicted, adding that "this health care issue Is D-Day for freedom in America."

"If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him," he said.

My pal Steve Benen added:

Last week, Sen. Jim DeMint (R) of South Carolina, arguably the chamber's most right-wing member, told an audience at the National Press Club that the United States is currently "about where Germany was before World War II." Everything about his remarks -- the sense of history, the understanding of current events, the philosophy -- was a special kind of stupid. But DeMint seems quite pleased with himself, and keeps churning out new and creative insanity

Think Progress follows up with the audio from one of Nixon's hatchet men, G.Gordon Libby.

And while promoting his new book on the G. Gordon Liddy show yesterday, DeMint agreed with Gordon — who ironically has a history of expressing sympathetic views to Nazis — that Obama has created a government like that under Hitler:

LIDDY: But there’s something else that I remember because I’m a lot older than you are and it’s called national socialism and that’s where the government allows private people to continue to own industrial capacity and what have you but tells them what they may — must do with it. You know, you will make Messerschmidts, etc. That was national socialism. That seems to me the way we’re going.

DEMINT: You’re right we’ve got national socialism, national paternalism and our form of socialism seems more benign than the classical form that we noted in Europe.

--

As Matt Yglesias previously wrote, “Look, comparing your domestic political rivals to Nazis is a time-honored tradition. But confusing the Nazis and Germany’s Social Democrats is a scandal.

The closer we get to health care reform---the crazier the debate gets. Even the media has turned hostile towards the health care debate. Just watch the way they frame every debate, every question and try to just shred it instead of bringing us news so we can to evaluate the state of health care. A major campaign pledge by all Democrats running for President was to reform health care, but they are trying to make it seem like it's some fringe idea now. Suddenly all Americans love their health care. How many stories have you seen by the MSM that highlight how the health insurance companies operate under the current system and how they dictate what shall be covered for you and your family? Not too many...

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The cable networks were all over promoting Michael Steele's speech to the RNC yesterday. (d-day asked if they ever televised Howard Dean's speeches to the DNC when he was elected, but I digress.) They gave Steele unfettered access to our airwaves and allowed him to give a partisan attack speech for almost thirty minutes to a man who is the laughingstock of the GOP and needs all the support he can get.

Giving him free, unpaid airtime to make a lengthy statement denigrating President Obama devoid of ideas, I guess, seemed like a good thing for Steele, but if they really wanted to show us what the RNC is all about, why didn't they televise the debate they had about their resolution which would have branded the Democratic Party the “Democrat Socialist Party"?

This would have been a much clearer window into the minds and hearts of the Republican Party, which has been the party of know-nothings and do-nothings and extremist rhetoric since the day Obama took office.

In the video above, you can get a glimpse of this internal debate: Neil Cavuto on Sunday absolutely castigated Republican National Committeewoman Cathie Adams for proposing the resolution.

Well, it looks like they are toning it down somewhat:

Members of the Republican National Committee appear to have reached a compromise that would let GOP leaders avoid a possible dispute over a controversial resolution that calls on Democrats to re-name their party the "Democrat Socialist party."

Steele has come out against the resolution, calling it "not an appropriate way to express our views on the issues of the day." One of Steele's allies on the committee, Florida GOP chairman Jim Greer, told CNN the resolution is "stupid" and "ridiculous."

However, New Jersey committeeman David Norcross, one of the sponsors of the resolution, told CNN the language is being massaged so that Steele and others on the committee will be more receptive. "The language is being changed so that the proposers and chairman Steele are on the same page," Norcross said.

He said that as of Tuesday afternoon, the chairman of the RNC Standing Committee on Resolutions had changed the language to "condemn the Democrats' march to socialism" instead of "talking about the 'Democrat Socialist' party."

The change was made, Norcross said, so that members "wouldn't have to fight about it, and I think everybody agreed."

Steele figures that just calling Obama and the Democratic party socialists all day long in print and on TV is good enough because the talking heads will not call them out on it. Why go to the effort when their media enablers are happy to handle the chore?

I want to congratulate d-day, the Courage Campaign, John Podesta and everyone who signed all the many petitions put there because the California Democratic Party heard you loud and clear. (C&L joined with the Courage Campaign.)

d-day explains:

Thanks again to all of you who signed petitions and made phone calls and helped push the resolution to open a Congressional inquiry into Torture Judge Jay Bybee, which the California Democratic Party adopted at its convention yesterday. I have been told by the authors of the resolution that the pressure from the outside really aided their efforts.

The passage of the resolution was a beginning, not an ending. I view the impeachment of Jay Bybee from the 9th Circuit Court as a moral and legal imperative, but also an entryway into the larger fight for justice and accountability for those who authorized and directed torture in our name.

UPDATE: Ryan Grim of The Huffington Post has the full story of the passage of the resolution at the convention.

So what do we do next? Keep the heat on.

So what do we do now? Members of the California Democratic Party include 34 members of Congress, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and six men and women who sit on the House Judiciary Committee, where an impeachment inquiry would be remanded. They need to hear that their party just recommended that they open an immediate Congressional inquiry into Judge Bybee, with all appropriate remedies and punishments available. In fact, the entire House Judiciary Committee needs to hear this.

You can contact all the members through d-days site, the tools were provided for by Jane, and you can call you can call your members of Congress and tell them that they must support an immediate inquiry into the actions of Jay Bybee, federal judge on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The Congressional switchboard at 1-866-220-0044 can connect you to your member of Congress as well.