Wally e-mailed to highlight BuzzFlash's latest at Wings of Justice. This week they salute Howard Dean:
It takes a guy with courage to take on the schoolyard bully who threatens democracy -- and Howard Dean passes the gut check with flying colors. Not only does Dean have to take on the radical anti-Constitutional Busheviks, he has to contend with the appeasement wing of his own party.
Click here to continue reading.
Kyle e-mails to note Folding Star's post re: John Bolton and finds some good news in the "big tent" splintering (for the GOP):
The surprise of the afternoon actually came from a Republican Senator. You'll all remember that back during the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on Bolton, Ohio Senator George Voinovich stunned his fellow Republicans (and no doubt the Democrats as well) by announcing that after what he'd learned about the Nominee, he wasn't willing to vote to send the Nomination to the floor at that point.
Voinovich's decision that day allowed the Committee to investigate Bolton further and delayed by several weeks the moment when the nomination headed out of Committee and on to the floor of the Senate.
Joey e-mails to note Bill Scher's take on it at Liberal Oasis:
The Dems are still showing fight, despite the odds, despite the White House pressure.
But why are they showing fight? How did Biden and Reid keep the caucus together?
Not by focusing on why Bolton’s nomination would be bad for America’s national security.
But by focusing on the rights of Senators to get information they request.
Granted, that is an important (small “d”) democratic principle.
But it seems like, outside of Social Security, the only time Dems can really show spine is when their rights as Senators are threatened.
[. . .]
But the Dem message is just about Senate rights, which keeps the focus off of Bolton, off of his views, off of his abusive behavior.
We'll second that. The Democratic Party gave up on fighting the larger issue of who are we and what are going to stand for from the start of Bolton's nomination.
Keesha highlights Thom Hartmann's latest book review (exclusive to BuzzFlash):
Two weeks before the presidential election of 2004, The Washington Post ran an article titled "Some Fear Ohio Will Be Florida." "Florida" has become shorthand for the illegal purging of tens of thousands of largely Democratic African American voters by Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris, and that state's Republican machine just before the election of 2000.
"We cannot forget what happened in Florida," the Post quoted Congressman John Lewis (D-Ga.), as saying about the stories in the news that were already emerging about massive Republican voter disenfranchisement efforts in Ohio. "And," Lewis added, "it will not happen here."
Lewis was wrong. It did happen in Ohio. George Bush Junior stole another election.
Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee refused to participate in any sort of investigation of voting irregularities in Ohio, so the Committee's ranking Democrat, John Conyers, went to Ohio with 11 other Democratic members to convene a hearing and take testimony under oath. What he found was startling.
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