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CNN's Rick Sanchez played a portion of Arlen Specter's press conference to South Carolina's Jim DeMint and asked him if Republicans are weeding out the moderates from the party -- and isn't that a bad thing?

Sanchez: Republicans are making it very difficult for other Republicans because, and he said this on several times, you tell me what you think of it. You're shrinking the electorate to an extreme, to a point that a regular republican can't win. What do you make of that argument?

DeMint: Oh, that's quite the opposite. We're seeing across the country right now, the biggest tent of all is freedom and what we need to do as Republicans is convince Americans that freedom can work in all areas of their life, for all Americans, whether it's education or health care or creating jobs...

Sanchez: What the hell does that mean? The biggest tent is freedom. FREEDOM, I mean, you gotta do better than that.

DeMint: No, what it means is what has worked in America, free people, free markets for years.

Conservatives always say that there problems aren't really problems at all. It's Freedom baby, Freedom is our Big Tent party! That freaked out Sanchez -- understandably, because DeMint's answer made no sense. See, Specter leaving the Republicans is a good thing because he's free to do what he wants. His defection is just an application of their Freedom principle. I'm surprised DeMint didn't paint his face blue and don a kilt for this performance.

And DeMint actually says that Club For Growth's Pat Toomey is a mainstream American. Yeah, a Grover Norquist mainliner, he means. CFG is very upset that they are being attacked. He also blames Democrats for the auto companies falling apart.

Piece. Of. Work.

The Star (h/t NonnyMouse):

An odd-looking Canadian coin with a bright red flower was the culprit behind the U.S. Defence Department's false espionage warning earlier this year, the Associated Press has learned.

The odd-looking - but harmless - "poppy coin" was so unfamiliar to suspicious U.S. Army contractors travelling in Canada that they filed confidential espionage accounts about them. The worried contractors described the coins as "anomalous" and "filled with something man-made that looked like nano-technology," according to once-classified U.S. government reports and e-mails obtained by the AP.
The supposed nano-technology actually was a conventional protective coating the Royal Canadian Mint applied to prevent the poppy's red color from rubbing off. The mint produced nearly 30 million such quarters in 2004 commemorating Canada's 117,000 war dead.

It's really a shame that the media is more interested in displaying the irrational fear over a decoration on a Canadian coin then the actual declining value of our own currency.

Rebellious Peasant: U.S. Holding Children as POW's

The Heretik: the 'legal' beagles who have assured Junior Mint that it's OK to wipe his ass with the Constitution.

whatever already! Murray remembers Jack Anderson, a muckraker who took 'em all on...from McCarthy to Nixon.

Of Cabbages and Kings: TheChristian War on Christmas

Bob's got the Cartoons

Virtual Matter: Randi Rhodes on C-SPAN today (12/18/05)Cartoons

Virtual Matter: Randi Rhodes on C-SPAN today (12/18/05)