I'm sure you've seen the video of Blue Dog Etheridge basically assaulting probably a couple of Breitbart-flunkie-wannabe jackasses. I'll never trust anything that Breitbart releases unless we got the entire video--unedited, but still there is no defense for Blue Dog Bob's behavior. He released a statement about it and apologizes for his outburst.

"I deeply and profoundly regret my reaction and I apologize to all involved," Etheridge said. "Throughout my many years of service to the people of North Carolina, I have always tried to treat people from all viewpoints with respect. No matter how intrusive and partisan our politics can become, this does not justify a poor response. I have and I will always work to promote a civil public discourse."

Glenn thinks he should be charged with a crime. I'm all for it. (Recently I had a close encounter with a conservacreep whose name appears in the original article which I'll discuss at a later date.)

Brad Woodhouse makes a good case that motives matter especially when right wing hatchet men are most likely behind it, but since Blue Dog Bob took responsibility for his actions, Woodhouse's response doesn't negate the crime. Maybe he could go for jury nullification if Brad is the defense attorney and Blue Dog Bob was on trial, but GGreenwald would know more about that. I picked the idea up from a great documentary called Terror's Advocate that we reviewed here on C&L and also Law & Order type shows--which I also love--delve into that tactic. My initial reaction was satirical and I wondered if Blue Dog Bob's inner conservative lashed out, but there is never any excuse for violence when a politician is being approached with or without some form of video camera or recorder.

Digby writes:

This idea that politicians, regardless of party affiliation, are allowed to assault citizens who ask them questions is beyond the pale, no matter who the questioner is. It's a tough gig, I know, but they chose it and they have to be answerable to the people. Even if one of them is an Andrew Breitbart stooge (which this kid probably wasn't, btw.)

But it should be noted that this kind of thing is hardly unprecedented and it never gets prosecuted. Recall Mike Stark questioning George Allen?
--
This Etheridge incident is disturbing. But it's just the latest in a long line of incidents in which people are physically assaulted for asking questions of politicians.

Wasn't it Ari Fleischer who said "watch what you say?" These guys mean it.

It's happening more and more in our society on a whole. Digby reminds us of the tasering at a Kerry event which wss sickening and more recently we had the tasering of a fan running onto the field of a Phillies game and the fans cheering for more.

Do you see a pattern developing?

Lawyers, Guns & Money: "Traitor-in-Defense-of-Slavery-American" would be fine

Consortiumnews: GOP's double standard on anger

The Impolitic: Republicans say "hell no" to civility

alicublog: The Pantload and The Perfesser Do America

BAGnewsNotes: Obama on Offense: Taking off the Mitts (and the Karls)

ANNALS OF JOURNALISM: WashPost FAIL...Perhaps the stupidest man on planet Earth...NPR Ombudsman...West coast Newspaper War...NYT FAIL...Saving Real Journalism...Depends on what you call news...Hannity’s Scam:...Christian stenos...'Hed' shots...Dragged, kicking & screaming...Inside Iraq...(Un) Covering El Salvador death squads...Boston Newspaper Guild rips Times Co....O'Reilly DOESN"T AGREE with wingnut!...

It looks like the vote is coming down finally. Ezra Klein is saying the vote should come down at 9:00 pm Eastern/6:00 pm Pacific. You can watch the streaming video of the vote on C-Span. I'm totally exhausted and let's face it---the whole country is exhausted. Obama gave a good speech yesterday and hit the republicans as he should. You can read the entire transcript here.

In what the New York Times called "an extraordinary session," President Obama began his speech by quoting Abraham Lincoln. "I am not bound to win, but I'm bound to be true," he said. "I'm not bound to succeed, but I'm bound to live up to what light I have."

"You have a chance to make good on the promises you made," Obama told the House members. "This is one of those moments. This is one of those times where you can honestly say to yourself: 'Doggone it, this is exactly why I came here. This is why I got into politics. This is why I got into public service. This is why I made these sacrifices.'" Washington Post media columnist Howard Kurtz described Obama's address as "the most emotional speech I've ever seen him give."

I agree with Digby though. These "mission accomplished" speeches are a bit much.

Can I just say once again how much I hate these little "Mission Accomplished" press conferences? I realize that it's human to want to celebrate the (apparent) end of a hard fought battle and that they all loved to be stroked by each other in public, but it's unseemly.

Instead of telling each other how wonderful they all are, perhaps they could spend time time explaining why the bill is important and thanking the American people for their forbearance. They can give each other big smooches and hearty pats on the back when the cameras stop rolling.

If the President had started out the process as forcefully as he has been lobbying now, the bill would have been finished before the dog days of last summer. Glenn Greenwald's take here is understandable. He wants the bill to pass too, but with tepid support and is miffed at the politics of it all.

As liberals, we have fought hard for what we believe in, but building a powerful liberal/progressive coalition in Congress is going to take time. And we need a strong ground game to go along with them. Many of us are somewhat disappointed in the final bill, but it does have some important changes that have been discussed endlessly already and I won't rehash them all now.

Remember, conservatives have been actively building their movement since Barry Goldwater and then it continued with the rise of Jack Abramoff, Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed. Having the backing of billions of dollars from overzealous corporations and wealthy families that the left doesn't have access to has been a major obstacle for progressive change and will continue to be one. And we know all about the right wing noise machine that is allowed to permeate our airwaves while traditional journalism goes out of business, which will slowly turn all news into opinions.

The liberal blogosphere is still in its infancy. Kudos to the many interest groups that have been fighting the good fight for decades, but I think bloggers can build "Movement Progressivism " better in the long run because it encompasses all of our special interests and combines them.

Atrios writes:

Both on substance and politics, better to pass it than not. It does not do the important work of sowing the seeds of the insurance industry's destruction, leaving the skimmers in place, and only takes baby steps towards moving them to the regulated public utility model. It also doesn't get rid of their anti-trust exemption, leaving the effective monopolies in place.

This leaves us open to continued abuses by the industry and fails to do the most important cost-cutting measure, cutting out the paper pushers who serve no useful purpose in the economy. But there is good in the bill, too, and one has to be a bit Hopey that over time demands by the public will make the bad and unpopular stuff less bad and less unpopular.

As it pertains to the politics of it all, the President needs this bill to pass. If it does then I believe the MSM will hail it as a great achievement on his part.

I'll have a lot more on this after I get some much needed rest.

The arrest of ten Baptists in Haiti for attempting to kidnap and deal in child trafficking (allegedly) brings out the usual right wing defenders. Too bad the religious right acts more like a partisan political party instead of promoting true religious thoughts.

Glenn Greenwald documents the hypocrisy.

To J-Lo, human decency and real human rights are only to be delivered to her tribe.

You know I can't stand this asshat and I loved it when he was crying because he only got one request a day for an interview.

Usually he's on TV cheerleading for more war a la Bill Kristol, but now he's back trying to get some ink and he's turned his attention to gay-bashing.

Glenn Greenwald rips him apart.

Ironically, the highest number of discharges came in 2001, when more than 1,000 people were discharged for being gay. For some strange reason, Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution was on CNN to opine about all of this today, and this is what he said (h/t Michelangelo Signorile):

Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institute said the real test will be in the barracks, with the rank-and-file members of the military.

"We can talk about this delicately or we can just be fairly direct," O'Hanlon said. "There are a lot of 18-year-old, old-fashioned, testosterone-laden men in the military who are tough guys. They're often politically old-fashioned or conservative; they are not necessarily at the vanguard, in many cases, of accepting alternative forms of lifestyle."

First of all, O'Hanlon sounds like he just stepped out of a 1981 Moral Majority documentary. Who still talks about sexual orientation being an "alternative form of lifestyle"? That was always a dishonest and propagandistic phrase -- as though gay people intrinsically lead a different "lifestyle" -- and it's rare these days to hear anyone outside of Jim Dobson and Maggie Gallagher use it. And the apparent belief of O'Hanlon that there's an inverse relationship between masculinity and acceptance of gay people ("testosterone-laden men who are tough guys") is ludicrous, though, almost certainly, his saying this unintentionally reveals some disturbing psychosexual undercurrents that are driving O'Hanlon himself...read on

First of all has he done some new polling which finds that these young men are actually conservative? I don't remember army recruiters pounding on the doors of the very rich, but instead hung out in the most impoverished areas looking to entice young men with cash and breaks on college tuition's. What he really means is that those 18 year old neo-Nazis, and White Supremacists that have flooded the military along with the Christianists probably won't dig it because they are homophobes. We even have religion infiltrating our weapons.

I am totally against the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, because to me "free speech" has turned into a bought-and-paid-for commodity, but there are arguments from the left on both sides of the issue.

I've had some experience with trying to buy ad space during elections, and as the days creep closer to one, the ad space becomes more expensive, for the most part. At least in my experience.

My question is what happens when Big Corp decides to buy up the last month, or two or three, of available ad space on all major media outlets for a particular election? That would have an incredible impact on either an election or like we have in California, a proposition. We saw what happened when the Mormons bought up a ton of air time in California to oppose Prop. 8

We need regulations in politics, just like we need them for Wall Street and just like we need them when you buy a car. Hopefully, Congress will act and pass much needed legislation to help preserve our Democratic process. It already is deeply flawed, but this ruling only makes it worse.

The Obama administration has been sticking to many of the tactics Bush used in his efforts in dealing with terrorism. The FISA fiasco was telling and now we have The Patriot Act. It's not surprising that any president would like to keep the status quo when they take office if they've been handed an office that has more power over our civil liberties than ever before. Sure, Obama is not Bush or Cheney, and I doubt he'd ever act like them, but that is no justification for not reining in the Patriot Act.

Glenn Greenwald

Reining in the excesses of the Patriot Act (and, relatedly, of ever-expanding eavesdropping powers) has long been a top agenda item for civil liberties groups -- and, at least so they claimed, for Democrats generally. In fact, when Obama voted for the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 last year in the middle of the campaign, he emphatically vowed that he would "fix" the problems with the FISA framework. But right as these reforms are finally being considered, the administration seizes on the Zazi case to insist that no such changes should be made:

At the same time, the Obama administration is pressing Congress to move swiftly to reauthorize three provisions of the USA Patriot Act set to expire in late December. They include the use of "roving wiretaps" to track movement, e-mail and phone communications, a tool that federal officials used in the weeks leading up to Zazi's arrest. . . .

"The Zazi case was the first test of this administration being able to successfully uncover and deal with this type of threat in the United States," a senior administration official said. "It demonstrated that we were able to successfully neutralize this threat, and to have insight into it, with existing statutory authorities, with the system as it currently operates."

So the Obama administration has its first allegedly big Terrorism case, and they can hardly contain themselves as they exploit it to justify a continuation of the very Patriot Act and FISA powers which Democrats (and, in the case of FISA, Obama himself) long claimed to oppose. Indeed, key Obama ally Dianne Feinstein has worked diligently in the Senate not just to block Patriot Act reforms, but to make the law even worse, and has repeatedly cited the Zazi case to justify that.

Glenn posted the above video from Julian Sanchez, who destroys the FOX Noise fearmongering arguments of why we just have to have FISA and TPA.

Cato's Julian Sanchez examines -- and absolutely destroys -- the fear-mongering claims from Fox News about efforts to reform the Patriot Act and FISA, with a particular focus on Fox's efforts to use the Zazi plot to justify the need for these powers

.

David E’s Fablog: Race Riot, sponsored by corporate lobbyists

Glenn Greenwald: There's nothing new about right wing insanity...or stupidity

distributorcap NY: All American Children Left Behind

Scott Horton: Two Marine Generals take Cheney to the woodshed

$Blind In Texas$: I'm a Ninther

AMERICAblog News: One year after the fall of Lehman, few changes

The Politico is at it again. It now proclaims that the Democrats are in trouble and the Republicans are on the offensive like it's 2004.

Bolstered by historical trends that work in the GOP’s favor -- midterm elections are typically hostile to the party in power -- and the prospect of the first election in a decade without former President George W. Bush either on the ballot or in office, Republicans find themselves on the offensive for the first time since 2004.

They actually said that. They haven't been attacking like maniacs since then? I guess calling Dems traitors and terrorist sympathizers is a compliment. As Glenn Greenwald takes their analysis apart, guess who their sources are that they use as proof that it's 2004 again.

Who are the sources for Politico's exciting announcement of a GOP resurgence? A grand total of three: "GOP pollster Whit Ayres," "GOP pollster John McLaughlin," and "Republican pollster Neil Newhouse," all of whom assure us that the signs point to imminent Republican triumph and Democratic doom.

Just read Glenn's piece because he thoroughly debunks them.

Kos also notes a big traffic plunge for them:

But hey, Drudge will likely give the Politico a link. And given their traffic trends, you can bet that's a major motivator. Yup, Politico has lost over 1M unique monthly readers since its peak in February. There's nothing like Drudge bait to help turn that around.

Gin and Tacos: How to lie with statistics; also, laziness.

skippy: the rats are leaving the ship.

Whiskey Fire: K-Lo – a nitwit, but so much more.

Dave's Daily Dump: Expand the Civil Rights Act to include LGBT rights – a video collection.

Balloon Juice: Try to keep up with the shifting wingnut talking points. (Maybe spicing things up with magic unicorns and ravenous zombies would help.)

Glenn Greenwald: Still banning the word "torture" in reporting on torture. (How will they cover the CIA IG report on torture, I wonder?)

Headline poetry from Poetic Justice and Mad Kane.

Guest post by Batocchio. Temporarily e-mail tips to batocchio9 AT yahoo DOT com.