What is the central thread in those three comments from Panetta, Ford, and Bennett?  It is that actions have consequences, and that if the Democratic Party wants to stay in the majority, it had better take into account all of the consequences for its actions, and not just look at what the polls say.

Bennett in particular appears to believe that while it's important to get out of Iraq, it's wishful thinking to believe that everything will be all better once we do.  Iran still wants to boss their region.  Afghanistan is still a hot theater.  Radical Islam is still preaching hate in those countries and elsewhere.  None of that will stop, or even slow down, when we leave Iraq.

Shout down the "neocons" if you wish, but in the end there is wisdom in many advisors.

'nuff said.

I'm for open immigration.  Yes, really, as many as will come.  But I want a wall on both borders and a vigilant Coast Guard.  As one fellow put it on another (conservative) blog, America's mission is to be the haven of liberty.  But we're also a nation with enemies, and we need to know who's here.

I'm afraid not everyone sees it that way.  Some people see America as a giant inner-city factory whose workers live in the suburb of Mexico. I'd characterize them more as sharecroppers trying to save enough to buy their documentation, but that's a cheap shot.

Read what Bernie Nussbaum wrote in 1993.  

Essentially, what I said, or meant to say.  I'm not a lawyer, but as I understand it the signing statement contains arguments that attempt to assert Constitutional authority in this matter or that.  The arguments aren't binding, maybe even less than legislative history.  And yet, anyone opposing the President's point of view is probably going to have to defeat those arguments in whatever courtroom they're heard.

I've not seen case law referencing a signing statement, but it denies sense to suggest that judges would purposefully ignore it.  Courts look at all kinds of things, including foreign law. I would suggest that the opinion of the person signing a bill into law would be pertinent to its interpretation.

"The truth is, a more responsible teenager would've nipped this sort of thing in the bud. A less sloppy writer would have made sure that material copied from other places never made it into a published piece, and never necessitated apologies or explanations that will do nothing to stop the critics. I was wrong not to do so."

So "plagiarism" may in fact be too strong a word as well.

Actually it was the Washington Post that fired the guy.  Stoller has nothing to do with the emploment practices of the Washington Post.

The MyDD story that started this thread called for journalists to ignore all conservatives because one conservative blogger plagiarized.

I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that I thought I was reading, and responding to, the Washington Post.

These signing statements are just legal CYA.  Reading into them defiance of the law being signed is opportunistic hyperbole.

The Congress has certain powers.  The President has certain powers.  The Supreme Court has certain powers.  They collide sometimes.

Congress can't pass a law removing Presidental authority where the Constitution gives it to him.  

At bottom, the President signed the law.  He can't add to it or subtract from it, but simply give his understanding of what it was he was signing.  

The only time those words are of any weight at all is if the courts look at them. They're like Congressional hearings ("legislative history"):  part of the context for the text of the law, and can't by themselves change what it means on its face. The statements are effectively the same as the legal arguments an attorney defending the President's reading would make in court.

I'm no supporter of plagiarism.  When people use as their own the words others have taken the time to string together, it should be revealed as a spot on their character.

But you're using guilt by association and empty, increasingly banal charges of racism to try to remove voices from the public square -- voices which sound increasingly rational by comparison.

What he said was:

We would truly be fooling ourselves if we did not recognize the historic, negative impediments to black voting. Notwithstanding that, we should also not allow various individuals to scream racism -- a ridiculous charge -- over this law to have it defeated. That does not do anything to advance the conversation.

1 concern. We should work to stop voter fraud in absentee balloting, early voting, at the polls, and through intimidation. Requiring voters to show photographic identification is common sense. Additionally, the law, as written, would allow any person to obtain a free photographic id card to vote.

and find out what it is that's being done, before proclaiming the law's been broken. Neither thing is a settled matter at all.

The political maneuver of censure could backfire, either if the surveillance program remains popular or it's determined that whatever actually is going on is really within the President's Constitutional powers.

The Republicans have called on those who want censure to introduce legislation clearing up whether the surveillance program is legal or not.  If something bad is happening, pass a law to stop it.  If the President does it anyway, there's a case for impeachment.  

On the other hand, failing to introduce legislation, while going for censure, opens up the charge of hypocritical political grandstanding over a non-issue.  Censure won't stop the alleged illegalities from occurring, and doesn't help at all with impeachment.  It's a giant waste of time and political capital.

Get the facts first, then be mad.

Oops.

Charles Dobson is a progressive author.  

Pyschologist Dr. James Dobson is the conservative talk show host.  

I think you've bought the conventional old wives tale.

At this point, all McCain has is name recognition.  If the base has an opinion of him at all, it's "Viet Nam POW, outsider, campaign finance something or other".  

But people (non-poliwonks) haven't really started thinking about the election yet.  They'll wait until the ads start appearing on American Idol and endorsements start coming from Rush Limbaugh and Charles Dobson.  Not that those two hold sway, but they do get people talking at the gas station.

Between now and the summer of '08, a lot can happen.  The election is over 2 1/2 years away, an eternity in politics (though preparations are of course underway).  It's also a long time in a war, which means that Iraq could either be a heap of rubble or another Egypt, or anything in between.

And that will determine the victor more than who the candidates are.

Using the media as a bogieman plays really well in Red country.  

When Helen Thomas asks GWB "From the moment you stepped into the White House [you wanted to go to war with Iraq], so why did you go to war with Iraq?", it's a gift for him.  She may as well say, "I'd like to be slapped around a little."

Most people want to like their leaders.  They don't want them to be called liars.  It makes them uncomfortable.  It makes them feel good to think their leaders are trying to do the right thing, even if they're failing.

And they can spot a liar all by themselves.  

It's silly to class blogs as "left" or "right", as if blogs are just numbers having a left or right sign.

Silly, that is, unless your point is to grow and allocate a movement centrally, rather than to have the free exchange of ideas.

Besides, I think you're mistaken.  Conservative types in the heartland are just discovering the tools and turning their collective hand to blogging.

But metablogging is mental thumb twiddling ... of which I am now guilty, by virtue of this comment ... and having critiqued myself, I've meta-metablogged ... and meta-meta-metaAAAAaaahhhhh ....

A quick bit of googling reveals forty-eleven people saying "we didn't find any WMD in Iraq, so Bush must have Lied", and this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_we apons_of_mass_destruction#Former_senior_ Iraqi_General_states:_WMD_was_moved_to_S yria