I have actually encountered Mr. Stoller at both bars and kitchen tables.  

Is it just me, or is it amazing that 17% of respondents chose kidney infection?  Even assuming that all 7% of respondents who'd heard of net neutrality understood that the question was loaded, that means 10% of respondents didn't know the definition of "barring."

Between Chafee, Specter, and Hagel, I think Matt's got a pretty good thought here.  These guys melt into a mewling puddles under the slightest heat.

Matt,

I think he just misses the daily give and take of the White House press operation.  Maybe he's auditioning to replace Scott McClellan?

You know, Casey strikes me as a decent, if conservative, guy.  He's smart, and he's willing to look at evidence before settling on a policy, rather than the converse.  

To suggest that Casey is just a pale imitation of Santorum is just wrong.  Casey's a member of the reality based community -- different in kind from Santorum, not degree.

Great catch, very important issue. Maybe we can work out a decent bit of activism.

Chris -- Weldon's craziness is almot unbound.  If you're looking for more info, I strongly recommend you look at some of Laura Rozen's reporting over at warandpiece.com and at some of her published articles in the Washington Monthly and elsewhere.  She's done an incredible amount of investigative work into some of his loopier claims.  

You might want to send her an email.

Dave Meyer

Maybe they aren't obviously for redeployment because redeployment isn't obviously a good position?

There are a number of arguments floating around as to how redeployment will make American safer.  None of them have been presented in a compelling form, with evidence, research, and a compelling narrative foundation, to the American public, and I'd wager to the establishment Dems.  The case hasn't been made. Ironically, it's a failure of wonkery, rather than politics.

I'll be honest, I'm still stuck in the "I don't know what the fuck to do" stage with Iraq.  

Redeployment will make us safer in three ways:

1.  Stop the bleeding.  Fewer terrorists generated by our presence in Iraq, fewer getting the invaluable training only available in urban guerilla warfare.

2.  Convince Iraqis to take responsibility.  Without the American crutch/mobilizing focus, Iraqi combatants will be more likely to find a political solution (the civil war will not last as long).

3.  We'll have more resources to spend on more important security threats that are currently being neglected.  Iran. North Korea. Osama bin Laden.  

All of those arguments are good.  But do I think they're true?  I don't know.  I haven't seen enough to persuade me, and there are obvious rejoinders to each.  In a scenario, the civil war will flare up, regional sunni states will support one faction, Iran the other, major proxy war, even bigger breeding ground, international force deployment, sucks out our resources.    

The best way to convince Dems to support redeployment is not by hectoring them with politico-strategic analysis, but by laying the factual groundwork on which they can walk.  Right now, they don't see it.  The policy case isn't being made.  The policy case isn't meandering through public consciousness, so that politicians on the stump can invoke it with a few buzzwords and contextual clues.  

There aren't opeds being written on the need for redeployment to save the country.  There aren't policy shops distributing talking points to our meager representatives on television.  There aren't magazine or journal articles making the case.

The netroots can help make that happen.

From Bluegrassreport,  an article from 1994:

And Congress needs to be reformed itself, he said. Whitfield supports campaign finance reform and term limits.

Whitfield said the existing campaign finance system favors incumbents, many of whom stay in Washington for decades. Congressmen should only be able to serve six terms in the House - 12 years, he said.

The idiocy of this is that AOL spam filters are not the only obstacle to email eyeballs.  

People -- email readers -- will have the final say.  Would you be more or less likely to open an email from someone who's fucked up the idea of freemail?  The more visible AOL's "certification" is, the more likely it is to engender a backlash.  It's not dissimilar from the Sony DRM fiasco.

AOL might think this is a feature, but it's a bug. They would lose customers.

Kos and Instapundit, for instance, do two completely different things.  There's almost no point calling the two the same thing.

Little is known about Americans for Job Security, which is based in Alexandria, Va., just outside Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1997 with a $1 million contribution from the American Insurance Association, which Dubke says is no longer associated with Americans for Job Security.

They called Wellstone a "money grubber" because of his support for the estate tax.  They flew a plane towing a banner reading "Wellstone: Stop taxing the dead." over the MN State Fair.

Just two weeks ago, Fried told the Boston Globe:

Fried, while saying "I don't think anybody in their right mind ever says that no precedent ought to be overruled," predicted that Alito would not vote to overturn Roe v. Wade because of respect for precedent.

Fried said he was didn't realize that Alito was a strong conservative, as Alito portrayed himself in his 1985 job application.

"I didn't know that about him, and he didn't tell me that," Fried said. "I don't remember him as being particularly political. There is nothing strident about him."

Apparently Fried wasn't counting on that memo being made public.

A former assistant attorney general under President Reagan, Charles Cooper, said the existence of the 1985 memo was likely a surprise to the White House.

"This memo was definitely a mistake because it was an internal solicitor general's memo," Mr. Cooper said. "Those are never produced in response to Freedom of Information requests. I don't have any personal knowledge of exactly how that brief was prepared, but I certainly have knowledge of the players involved. I know Sam Alito well, and he is utterly without guile."

1.  Labor Unions have been working with the Alliance for Justice against Bush's Supreme Court nominees.  It's an important growth in their political activism beyond traditional labor issues.

2.  Labor Unions have been extremely effective working with the Campaign for America's future on the ad hoc coalitions they've established on Social Security, the 2006 Budget, and a number of other issues.

3.  One of the biggest threats facing labor at the moment is the abuse of the bankruptcy system for union-busting.  The judge in the Delta bankruptcy recently said:

Her remarks came amid a testy exchange between the judge and Delta lawyer Jack Gallagher in which Beatty, who the pilots have in the past accused of siding against them, assailed some of the airline's main arguments.