Yes, quite a lot of them, as a matter of fact: on the evangelical "agenda" and the leadership post-Falwell. Short version: there are positive signs out there, but it's too early to tell which way things are headed.

Sorry for the whoring.

Wait, you're not interchangeable?

...Sorry.

Chris, I think you're on the right track at the end of this post. It's really CNN's responsibility to ensure that Carville's roles are fully disclosed. They pay him for commentary, and they provide that commentary to consumers. That makes it their obligation to make sure that the product is reliable. Best would be not paying someone who works on behalf of a campaign, next best fully disclosing their ties.

No it wasn't!

I agree with you that size matters, but only up to a point. When I came to dKos, you had the Clark/Dean wars, Armando, a gilas girl, galiel, and marisacat all over the place.

Yeah, things have gotten nastier over time, but let's face it: there have always been assholes a dKos.

Um, I mean theory.

Street Prophets is almost the opposite of MyDD in regards to community - we have lots and lots of it - but not very much "work" gets done. I keep trying to steer things back to the other side, but they don't listen to me.

The interesting thing is that we haven't had nearly as many meta explosions as you might think. There's been some churn, but only once or twice where we've had to hash things out directly just to keep things going. Partly, that because of our size. And partly, it's because so many of us are dKos refugees. We've had it with the fighting and the fighting and the crazy-making, and we don't want it on our site.

Thanks for believing in me. Trust me, I get plenty angry as it is...

we got 'em over at Street Prophets. Hopefully, we'll be able to cajole a few of them into stepping forward on this subject, among many others.

I agree with Inigo Montoya that there are some people who can be real horse's asses about this stuff, but I don't need to be told about religious voters. I am in fact a pastor who has served exclusively in highly conservative areas. Believe me, I'm sensitive to what rank-and-file Christians think about politics.

After I posted my first comment above, another one-sentence response occurred to me: "Why does the phrase 'whitened sepulchres' suddenly spring to mind?"

I like it.

that's two sentences. ;-)

Someone asked me if I had a one-sentence response to Donohue's charge that if Marcotte and McEwen had made equivalent comments about gays, women or racial minorities, they'd be gone already.

My response was it's a pretty shallow faith that can't make a distinction between practice and identity. He thought that was good intellectually, but not so satisfactory for politics. Can anyone improve on it?

It's funny you should mention this - I was thinking about some related issues this morning. One basic thing that I've often tossed over in my head is a netroots charity - an organized way to provide emergency support to bloggers in need, and perhaps to do some "good works" such as Katrina relief or what have you.

In light of this post, I may have to think a little harder about that idea. It's not an immediate answer to the problem you've named, but it is something worthwhile.

It's just that liberation is as much a part of the gospel as holiness for them.

I think this is an area where religious experience may come in handy. Good religious experience, anyway: one of the positive messages of "being created in the image of God" is that we exist - and have value - separate from what we do. Good churches/synagogues/temples/groups help their members cultivate that difference in the interest of a healthy life.

I bring that up mostly because I know where you've been. Mostly, it's a positive that blogging keeps me out of extreme navel gazing, but of course the flip side is that it can just suck me into something equally unhealthy. My responsibilities to the church community keep me from withering away to internet ghostdom. (Er, my wife does as well, but she has a harder time with it.)

In any case, the important thing is to develop a life outside the blogworld. Having a responsibility as opposed to a hobby is helpful, since responsibilities tend to pull you out whether you like it or not. More important, they make you question the importance of what you're doing. There are days when I could go on an epic rant about something, but I realize that I have to go on a home visit, and it just doesn't seem worth it anymore.

Whatever works for you.

Oh, and by the way, if you don't exist, who'd I bum a smoke from at Yearly Kos? Elvis? Barack Obama?