Right Wing Nut House

Winter in all its fury has descended on northern Illinois. Today is the first day in more than a week that the temp has climbed into the 20’s after a low last night that once again plunged below zero. The previous high for the last 8 days was 11 degrees with nightime temperatures so bitterly cold that keeping a trickle of water running from each faucet in the house was a necessity lest one of the water pipes burst.

It has been so cold that the Coke and Pepsi in the refrigerator we keep in the garage froze and exploded. It has been so cold that joints in the walls of the house have been contracting and expanding, making loud, worrisome popping noises in the middle of the night. If you were dumb enough to be outside for any length of time as I was on Thursday shoveling a couple of inches of snow that dusted the area, you begin to notice within 5 minutes or so that you’ve either lost your nose or that it’s so cold, frostbite becomes a real danger.

The cold makes you feel like a trapped animal. I can imagine Cro Magnon man dealing with winters in Europe 40,000 years ago. This is before the current global warming trend that started when the last ice age ended 20,000 years ago and when winters were really bad - not these blessedly warm winters we are experiencing thanks to man-made Global Warming. Our ancestors only had a roaring fire and crude shelters to keep the cold from killing them. During stretches like the one were experiencing now, I’ll bet the smell in their living quarters gave new meaning to the word “ripe.” Too cold to go outside and use the Necessary.

I wonder how they amused themselves? Probably by talking about how cold it was. There is nothing that breaks the ice between strangers in weather like this than, well, talking about weather like this. We commiserate with each other, united in our misery while relating amusing anecdotes that exaggerate our distress. Surprisingly, it makes us feel better to know that everyone else is suffering. And if you’re a real cad, you hope they’re suffering more than you.

Actually, our ancestors almost certainly had a rich, oral storytelling tradition so if you were a kid, it was probably a fascinating time to sit around the fire, munching on a deer haunch, and listening to how the clan’s elders had to walk 5 miles to school with a bear on their back when they were your age or maybe sit in awe of some old greybeard while he talked about the time he singlehandedly brought down a Mammoth with nothing but a hunting ax and a broken spear.

But even that must have gotten old after a while. Maybe that’s when early man invented the board game. Or perhaps playing cards. Must have been pretty awkward trying to figure out whether you should bid 4 or 5 hearts when holding 13 pieces of tanned animal hide. And can you imagine playing Clue? “My guess is Mr. Boarstooth. In the cave. With a Mammoth tusk.”

Boredom killing is an ancient human concern. It almost certainly contributed to the development of speech in our species. Here we were, hundreds of thousands of years ago with these great big brains, going out of our minds just sitting in front of a fire with the rest of the clan watching wood burn. What do you suppose were the first words spoken? I’ve got an idea that some brilliant guy, much smarter than the rest, who had his eye on the comely brunette sitting across the cave from him picking lice out of her hair probably caught her eye, winked, and said “Yuwanna?”

Because obviously, sex is the best way to kill boredom. Put a little Barry White on the stereo (I prefer metal actually. Zsu Zsu likes Enya) and you can kill a couple of hours no problem. Of course, when I was younger, I could kill two or three days so occupied. Whoever said “Growing old sucks” had it just about right. “It” is not the first thing to go as you age. But about the time you realize that bending down to pick up a penny you dropped wasn’t quite as easy as you remember it and when you can’t think of the last time you saw the clock strike midnight, it’s time to start worrying.

If you’ll excuse me, Zsu Zsu just put on A Day Without Rain so I’m going to be busy for the next few hours - at least.

A day without rain is nice. A day where the temp gets above 40…priceless.

It’s been a long time since we here in Illinois had a favorite son to cheer on in the Presidential race. The much beloved former Illinois Senator Paul Simon, was a candidate in 1988 and ran a throwback race. The gentle man with horn rimmed glasses, bow tie, and professorial manner was an unreconstructed liberal in the classic sense. Perhaps one of the smartest men ever to serve in government, Simon’s cerebral campaign never caught on with the voters and he ended up in the back of the pack - a shame in many ways since politicians who are honest, smart, and actually care about the people are something of a rarity. I don’t think I would have agreed with Simon if he said the sun set in the west. But I would have given serious consideration to voting for him if he had been the Democratic nominee for President.

Simon had been in politics for nearly 35 years before making his attempt at the brass ring. He served in the Illinois House, as Lieutenant Governor, the US House, and was elected to the Senate in 1984. Rarely has a man with such breadth of experience in government, keen intellect, and passion for politics offered himself up as a candidate for high office. I suppose time had, in many ways passed him by in that the slick, media driven campaigns he was up against overwhelmed his efforts. Hard to condense his thoughtful and articulate ideas into 30 second sound bites.

Illinois’ current favorite son in the Presidential sweepstakes does not have 35 years of experience in politics. He is not possessed of a great intellect. But Barak Obama is many things - smart, charismatic, articulate, an excellent public speaker, and something of an idea man. And as of today, he is a candidate for President of the United States:

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama formally entered the 2008 race for the presidency today, contending he has the experience to know that “Washington must change” and billing himself as the leader who will bring a new generational attitude to address the nation’s challenges.

Speaking in a single-digit, morning chill and sunshine to thousands of supporters outside the Old State Capitol, the first-term Democratic senator delivered an address that built upon his biography as a community organizer in Chicago, state legislator and U.S. senator to call for quick action on issues ranging from bringing a close to the Iraq war to the need for universal health care and an end to foreign-oil dependence.

The historic announcement by the state’s 45-year-old junior Democratic senator–launching a three-day wave of campaign events in Iowa and New Hampshire with a Chicago fundraiser in between–is heavily tinged in symbolism for the first black candidate with a realistic chance of obtaining the broad-based support necessary for securing a major party presidential nomination.

And befitting a favorite son from Illinois, Obama summoned the ghost of Abraham Lincoln, calling forth the spirit of the Great Emancipator in an effort to unite the nation under the banner of the first black candidate of either party who is seen as having a good chance at winning through to victory:

Using the home of Lincoln’s 1858 “House Divided” speech as a backdrop, Obama frequently paid homage to the 16th president for using his will and words to bring a country divided by war together as one through the goal of freedom.

“In the shadow of the Old State Capitol, where Lincoln once called on a divided house to stand together, where common hopes and common dreams still live, I stand before you today to announce my candidacy for President of the United States,” Obama said.

“I recognize there is a certain presumptuousness–a certain audacity–to this announcement,” he said. “I know I haven’t spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I’ve been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change.”

Now that he’s in the race, if history is any guide, the national press will do their best to tear him down. After months of building him up and making his candidacy seem more like a coronation, all of the pundits and scribblers who have urged him to run will now shift gears and start digging into his past. Every word he has uttered will be scrutinized. Every vote will be analyzed. They will interview his high school sweetheart, his teachers, his minister, his boyhood friends, neighbors, acquaintances, and most especially, any enemies he’s made as he climbed the ladder of success.

The problem that the press and Obama’s opponents will have, however, is that there really isn’t much there to criticize - yet. Not much of a record. Not many votes. Very few public pronouncements. Obama is still something of a cipher. His public personae - cool, controlled, collected - gives few clues as to what’s behind the engaging smile and confident bearing.

One thing is certain. In the crucible of the marathon that is a Presidential campaign, it will be next to impossible to hide any shortcomings. Obama will be tested as he has never been tested before. The campaign will have its way with him and we will discover together whether he truly has what it takes to be president.

Can he win? He and Hillary will battle it out in the early primaries (assuming Obama doesn’t collapse in the next year due to a scandal or some major faux pas) along with John Edwards whose longshot effort will collapse if the former North Carolina Senator can’t win one of the first 4 contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, or South Carolina. But Hillary and Obama will probably be well funded enough that they will be able to absorb some early setbacks and stay competitive at least through the first “Super Tuesday” on February 5th when 10 states will hold primaries. Beyond that, it is impossible to say. That’s because it is difficult to gauge Obama’s appeal to different regions, different constituencies.

Frankly, I think he doesn’t have much of a chance. Not because he’s black. Not because he doesn’t have enough experience. Quite simply, he is too liberal for this new Democratic party that is emerging in the south and west:

When Obama’s record and views are separated from the mythmaking and rock star rapture he’s wrapped in, the problem of his electability looms large. Obama got a perfect 100 rating from the NAACP, National Organization for Women, National Education Association, the Children’s Defense Fund, the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees, and the Illinois Environmental Council (during his stint in the Illinois legislature), and a huge plus rating from the ACLU. He got his perfect rating from them for his Senate votes on labor, education, the environment, choice, civil rights and civil liberties. These are America’s top liberal advocacy groups, and they are some of his most ardent cheerleaders.

Meanwhile, Obama bombed badly in the ratings he got from the conservative National Taxpayers Union, National Right to Life, the Gun Owners of America, the NRA, the Federation for Immigration Reform, and the American Conservative Union. These are some of the nation’s top conservative advocacy groups, and they reflect the interests and views of millions of voters on immigration, spending, guns, abortion, and military prowess. These are the voters that will scrutinize his record and his views with a laser eye.

In short, Obama could very well be blown away in many midwestern and western states where the black vote is less important and where many of these “new Democrats” were elected in 2006. Less liberal, more socially conservative than Democrats in the northeast, Obama will have to sidle toward the center if he wants to be competitive in many of those states.

And under the proportional distribution system for allotting delegates, this would mean that he would have to win big in the larger northeastern states as well as delegate-rich states like Texas and Florida in the south in order to remain viable. It could be that by the March 18 Illinois primary, Hillary will be seen as the inevitable choice, rendering the rest of his campaign an exercise in futility.

Then again, Hillary could stumble early and make Obama seem inevitable although that scenario presupposes that the more than $100 million dollars that she can raise by forgoing public financing between now and the primaries won’t be a difference maker.

This is not Obama’s time. And he is young enough that he could absorb a defeat and still come back in 8 or even 12 years to try again. But any way you look at it, his candidacy will be historic and, for those of us who love politics, exciting to watch.

UPDATE

Ed Morrissey has a great civil war analogy that refers to Obama’s invoking Lincoln in his announcement:

Obama, on the other hand, wants to inherit the mantle of Lincoln while essentially arguing for everything Lincoln opposed. He wants to assume the leadership of the new Copperheads, who believe that the present war cannot be won and that America should withdraw forthwith. Obama seems closer to George McClellan in this regard, who lost against Lincoln in 1864 after getting fired by Lincoln as commander of the Union Armies.

No one can doubt that Obama has charisma beyond anything seen on either side of the political divide at this time, and he’s no dummy, either. He lends an aura of gravitas to every debate in which he participates, and his confidence will attract plenty of support in the primary cycle. However, he’s only 45 years old and has almost no track record on which to run. Even John Kennedy, one of the nation’s youngest Presidents, had fourteen years in Congress and a Vice Presidential run on his resumé when he ran for the Presidency at 43. Obama has won one national race, and that one was against the carpetbagging Alan Keyes, where Obama didn’t even have to break a sweat.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

I have called Jack Bauer a thug, someone who would be in jail if he weren’t out saving the country every week. And yet the fact that Jack seems to be remarkably untroubled by the methods he uses to battle the terrorists has always been one of his more attractive attributes. We want the kind of certitude exhibited by Jack. We long for it. We crave it. A black and white world where we don’t have to wrestle with our consciences about what to do with real terrorists and where the choices made by our government to protect us would meet with universal approval is something most Americans would give their right arm for. This, more than anything else, helps explain the popularity of the show.

The moral choices made by characters on 24 do not necessarily shed light on contemporary America so much as they illustrate time-honored thematic constructs from great literature and drama of the past. By definition, these themes are “conservative” in that they reflect a traditional approach to drama while offering a point of view regarding the threat of terrorism that more conservatives seem to be comfortable with than liberals. But at the same time, the show seeks to redefine the moral universe inhabited by the characters who are asked to sacrifice traditional values for the greater good of saving the country.

But we don’t live in Jack’s world. The world we live in is a many layered, textured nightmare of progressively darker shades of grey. What is torture? Is it right to make someone stand for 12 hours straight? Can you “waterboard” someone? Beyond the moral choices regarding torture, does it work? Is it necessary? The rest of the world is appalled at some of our answers. Shouldn’t we be?

And so, 24 remains what it is; a television show with a devoted following among the political class in America with the consequence that its impact on our culture and politics travels far beyond the 15 million people who watch the show every week.

In this serious and thoughtful piece in The New Yorker, Jane Mayer explores the personal politics of 24 creator and producer Joel Surnow. In the process of dissecting Surnow’s beliefs, we discover that some of our country’s most authoritative sources on matters of interrogation and torture feel that the character of Jack Bauer is a bad influence on the troops and that the show may even be responsible for the mistreatment of some prisoners.

Mayer gives details of a visit to the set last November by U.S. Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point, along with several senior FBI and CIA agents who have conducted thousands of interrogations in their careers. Their verdict was simple and straightforward; the torture scenes in the show were affecting the way that cadets at West Point as well as troops in the field were approaching the interrogation of prisoners:

Finnegan told the producers that “24,” by suggesting that the U.S. government perpetrates myriad forms of torture, hurts the country’s image internationally. Finnegan, who is a lawyer, has for a number of years taught a course on the laws of war to West Point seniors-cadets who would soon be commanders in the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. He always tries, he said, to get his students to sort out not just what is legal but what is right. However, it had become increasingly hard to convince some cadets that America had to respect the rule of law and human rights, even when terrorists did not. One reason for the growing resistance, he suggested, was misperceptions spread by “24,” which was exceptionally popular with his students. As he told me, “The kids see it, and say, ‘If torture is wrong, what about “24″?’ ” He continued, “The disturbing thing is that although torture may cause Jack Bauer some angst, it is always the patriotic thing to do…”

The third expert at the meeting was Tony Lagouranis, a former Army interrogator in the war in Iraq. He told the show’s staff that DVDs of shows such as “24″ circulate widely among soldiers stationed in Iraq. Lagouranis said to me, “People watch the shows, and then walk into the interrogation booths and do the same things they’ve just seen.” He recalled that some men he had worked with in Iraq watched a television program in which a suspect was forced to hear tortured screams from a neighboring cell; the men later tried to persuade their Iraqi translator to act the part of a torture “victim,” in a similar intimidation ploy. Lagouranis intervened: such scenarios constitute psychological torture.

Finnegan said that he’d like to see a show “where torture backfired.” All the experts agreed that torture, even when used in the show’s “ticking bomb” context, would never work. They pointed out that the fanatics, knowing that the bomb would go off soon, would simply hold out, secure in the knowledge that their suffering couldn’t last much longer.

They also pointed out that terrorist prisoners actually looked forward to torture as the first step towards martyrdom. An interrogation professional would never use it and would, instead, take the opposite tack of trying to build a relationship with the prisoner, drawing him out gradually by gaining his trust. Besides, the “ticking bomb” scenario itself was totally unrealistic and would never happen in the real world.

Of course, changing the parameters of the show by taking away the clock and interrogating prisoners the right way would make for lousy television which is why the producers would never agree to pursue such a storyline. More interesting is the idea that our troops actually think that this is the best way to get information from a suspect. Is what Finnegan and the others say true? Can our young men and women be so stupid as to reject their training and simply copy what a character on a fictional television show does, thinking that it is both legal and will get the job done?

I have no doubt that General Finnegan and the agents are genuinely concerned about the show’s impact on the troops. But the idea that some of the abuse of prisoners meted out by American soldiers is the result of watching a television show is absurd on its face. Blame it on our not giving the prisoners Geneva Convention protections or on poor discipline or leadership. But the intelligence professionals who carry out the overwhelming number of interrogations on prisoners can’t all be that stupid.

In fact, in an article in City Journal, Heather McDonald described how truly professional these dedicated men and women are and what they were up against when it came to interrogating al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners:

Army doctrine gives interrogators 16 “approaches” to induce prisoners of war to divulge critical information. Sporting names like “Pride and Ego Down” and “Fear Up Harsh,” these approaches aim to exploit a detainee’s self-love, allegiance to or resentment of comrades, or sense of futility. Applied in the right combination, they will work on nearly everyone, the intelligence soldiers had learned in their training.

But the Kandahar prisoners were not playing by the army rule book. They divulged nothing. “Prisoners overcame the [traditional] model almost effortlessly,” writes Chris Mackey in The Interrogators, his gripping account of his interrogation service in Afghanistan. The prisoners confounded their captors “not with clever cover stories but with simple refusal to cooperate. They offered lame stories, pretended not to remember even the most basic of details, and then waited for consequences that never really came.”

Some of the al-Qaida fighters had received resistance training, which taught that Americans were strictly limited in how they could question prisoners. Failure to cooperate, the al-Qaida manuals revealed, carried no penalties and certainly no risk of torture-a sign, gloated the manuals, of American weakness.

The solution was to initiate a series of extraordinary mild “stress techniques” that didn’t harm the prisoner but did put doubt in his mind that perhaps what he had heard about the Americans and their restraint wasn’t true:

Many of the interrogators argued for a calibrated use of “stress techniques”-long interrogations that would cut into the detainees’ sleep schedules, for example, or making a prisoner kneel or stand, or aggressive questioning that would put a detainee on edge.

Joe Martin-a crack interrogator who discovered that a top al-Qaida leader, whom Pakistan claimed to have in custody, was still at large and directing the Afghani resistance-explains the psychological effect of stress: “Let’s say a detainee comes into the interrogation booth and he’s had resistance training. He knows that I’m completely handcuffed and that I can’t do anything to him. If I throw a temper tantrum, lift him onto his knees, and walk out, you can feel his uncertainty level rise dramatically. He’s been told: ‘They won’t physically touch you,’ and now you have. The point is not to beat him up but to introduce the reality into his mind that he doesn’t know where your limit is.” Grabbing someone by the top of the collar has had a more profound effect on the outcome of questioning than any actual torture could have, Martin maintains. “The guy knows: You just broke your own rules, and that’s scary. He might demand to talk to my supervisor. I’ll respond: ‘There are no supervisors here,’ and give him a maniacal smile.

This is not to say that there hasn’t been torture committed by Americans. There have been more than 700 investigations carried out by the Army involving prisoner abuse and 25 detainees have died in American custody that have been ruled homicides. But to posit the notion, even tangentially, that the actions of Jack Bauer on a fictional TV show somehow contributed to this state of affairs strains credulity.

In Mayer’s New Yorker piece, she points out that while the show is fantasy, it sometimes crowds reality by depicting torture that actually occurred in real life, citing an incident last year where a terrorist was denied pain medication mirroring a similar event that occurred in Afghanistan. But the show’s senior writer Howard Gordon says that he makes up the torture scenes himself:

Howard Gordon, who is the series’ “show runner,” or lead writer, told me that he concocts many of the torture scenes himself. “Honest to God, I’d call them improvisations in sadism,” he said. Several copies of the C.I.A.’s 1963 KUBARK interrogation manual can be found at the “24″ offices, but Gordon said that, “for the most part, our imaginations are the source. Sometimes these ideas are inspired by a scene’s location or come from props-what’s on the set.” He explained that much of the horror is conjured by the viewer. “To see a scalpel and see it move below the frame of the screen is a lot scarier than watching the whole thing. When you get a camera moving fast, and someone screaming, it really works.

So does the show “enable” torture by sanitizing it while showing that it is necessary? Clearly, the audience is asked to accept the illegal methods used by Jack Bauer as the price that must be paid to save the country. But are we asked to approve of it? Mayer makes the case that in fact, by making the audience complicit in Jack’s law breaking and by showing Bauer to be basically untroubled by his use of torture, the show removes any moral complications the audience might feel:

The “24″ producers told the military and law-enforcement experts that they were careful not to glamorize torture; they noted that Bauer never enjoys inflicting pain, and that it had clearly exacted a psychological toll on the character. (As Gordon put it to me, “Jack is basically damned.”) Finnegan and the others disagreed, pointing out that Bauer remains coolly rational after committing barbarous acts, including the decapitation of a state’s witness with a hacksaw…

Although reports of abuses by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have angered much of the world, the response of Americans has been more tepid. Finnegan attributes the fact that “we are generally more comfortable and more accepting of this,” in part, to the popularity of “24,” which has a weekly audience of fifteen million viewers, and has reached millions more through DVD sales.

Frankly, I think that because the show is so popular with the politically active segment of the population that we tend to overestimate its impact on the rest of America. I doubt whether the majority of Americans who may be aware of who Jack Bauer is actually take his methods to heart. And as far as being more accepting of torture, 63% of Americans oppose physical abuse according to an ABC Poll conducted in 2004 with 35% supporting torture. And even higher majorities (75% in a USA Today poll) opposed the kind of treatment meted out to prisoners at Abu Ghraib. This hardly seems “tepid.”

In the end, it’s just a television show. A rollicking good show to be sure. It is well written, well acted, with production values that are the envy of series television. But basically the show functions as a safe outlet for our fears about terrorism and security. And Jack Bauer may be a goon but his dedication to duty and his patriotism are so attractive that the audience is more than willing to forgive him his shortcomings.

Most of us like to think that there is someone out there in real life with that kind of tough, no nonsense approach to protecting America but without the moral baggage that Jack carries. In that sense, the show succeeds in what it sets out to do; entertain us for an hour every week with thrilling, edge-of-your-seat action while making us wish that next week’s episode would hurry up and get here.

Can a pro-choice candidate win through and capture the GOP nomination for President?

Conventional wisdom would seem to mitigate against it. For more than a quarter of a century, the pro-life lobby has been the most consistent and reliable of GOP interest groups. Their ranks have fleshed out GOP presidential campaigns with volunteers and fundraisers. And it is no exaggeration to say that their advocacy contributed mightily to GOP victories in the House and Senate during the decade and a half of GOP control of Congress.

The pro life lobby has also shown that it has muscle at the state level, passing laws in numerous legislatures regarding parental consent, strictures against late term abortions, and something known as “informed consent” where the woman is told about the development of her fetus before the procedure.

But with the Republican party in turmoil and conservatives re-examining everything about themselves, it might just be possible for a nominal pro-choice candidate like Rudy Guiliani to squeak through and capture the nomination.

This is because his main pro-life rival John McCain has his own problems with conservatives despite his near perfect opposition to abortion. If Rudy could capture the bulk of conservatives who don’t assign as much weight to pro life issues as some others (and if Rudy can avoid a few other landmines on guns, affirmative action, and questions regarding his personal life), I think he has a decent chance of winning.

I characterized Guiliani’s pro-choice stance as “nominal” above. In fact, his views are very close to the mainstream of the country which, in the end, is pro-choice but supports most of the restrictions placed on the procedure at the state level. And the out of control, rabid positions of pro choicers with regards to partial birth abortions as well as their curious reluctance to acknowledge that neo-natal science has progressed since Roe v. Wade in 1973 makes Rudy’s views much more mainstream than say, Hillary Clinton who supported a “mental health” exception in a partial birth abortion bill in 2003.

That amendment failed to lower the bar for “viability of the fetus outside the womb” below 24 weeks - a totally unscientific and arbitrary time period given the fact that 21 week old fetuses routinely are delivered and survive.

But “mainstream” views on abortion are different than those held by pro lifers. And as this NR piece points out, if Rudy can make it through the primaries, he can probably expect the support of the pro life crowd in November, 2008:

In many cases over the years, pro-lifers have been willing to overlook politicians’ pasts and embrace their conversions. It is never too late to begin protecting life. In other cases, pro-lifers have reached a modus vivendi with politicians who continue to disagree with them. The late Sen. Paul Coverdell, for example, supported legal abortion. But once he won his primary, pro-lifers supported him since he promised to vote to ban partial-birth abortion, oppose public funding of abortion, and support conservative nominees to the judiciary. He lived up to those promises. He stayed theoretically pro-choice, but was operationally pro-life. The bar for Giuliani will be higher, since he is running for president — and so far he has done less.

He has moved on partial-birth abortion. On Meet the Press in 2000, he said he would “vote to preserve the option for women.” He also said, “I think the better thing for America to do is to leave that choice to the woman, because it affects her probably more than anyone else.” Partial-birth abortion is inches away from infanticide, and more than 60 percent of Americans — including many people who consider themselves “pro-choice” — think it is abhorrent and should be prohibited.

Giuliani has now joined this consensus, which is the bare minimum a presidential candidate who wants to find common ground with pro-lifers must do. On Hannity & Colmes on Monday night, Giuliani said that he supports a ban on partial-birth abortion, so long as it allows the procedure when necessary to save the mother’s life. The qualification is puzzling: Nobody has ever presented a persuasive hypothetical case in which a woman’s health would depend on partly delivering her child and then crushing the child’s skull and sucking out the brains — let alone an actual case in which her life was at stake. But we applaud the mayor’s newfound willingness to endorse a ban at all.

But the primaries is where the power of the pro life lobby is most keenly felt. And from what I’ve read from some of the leading lights of that group, they are by no means taken with the candidacy of John McCain. Aside from McCain’s other problems with conservatives on judges and campaign finance reform, the Senator has actually muddied the waters a bit with regards to his pro-life stance, calling legalized abortion “necessary” at one point while saying he would not be in favor of repealing Roe v. Wade:

McCain said, “I’d love to see a point where Roe vs. Wade is irrelevant, and could be repealed because abortion is no longer necessary. But certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe vs. Wade, which would then force women in America to [undergo] illegal and dangerous operations.” A spokesman said that McCain “has a 17-year voting record of supporting efforts to overturn Roe vs. Wade. He does that currently, and will continue to do that as president.”

This may cause the pro life lobby to either turn to another candidate - someone like Sam Brownback or Duncan Hunter - or perhaps even split their support several ways. This would help Rudy even more in the primaries as he and McCain slug it out.

I frankly think Rudy’s biggest problem will be a limited appeal in the south. He will be competitive in Florida and Texas but I think McCain has a real chance to shut him out elsewhere, racking up large majorities in the old cotton south as well as most of the border states. Perhaps that perception will change but if you think about it you’ll see what I mean: The last northeastern candidate from either party to win the Presidency was John F. Kennedy in 1960. And the last northeastern candidate to win the Republican nomination was Tom Dewey in 1948.

I want to congratulate former Senator John Edwards and the entire network of netroots activists who, through a combination of thuggish threats and wild obfuscations of the facts managed to cow a candidate for President into doing their bidding by keeping two female bigots on his staff.

Amazing. So many issues have been raised by this dust-up that my “Last Word” post yesterday really doesn’t do the matter justice - especially after the shocking statement announcing the decision was released. For in my opinion, this couldn’t have ended worse for Edwards or the netroots if Karl Rove had planned it.

The general consensus among righty bloggers who are looking at the matter dispassionately is that Edwards probably did the only thing he could do in keeping the two women on board but that the prevaricating statement he issued to announce his decision was shocking in tone and substance. Simply put, to say that the two bloggers in question weren’t trying to malign Catholics or Christians is a crock.

Ed Morrissey:

However, it’s difficult to give much credence to Edwards’ explanation. He says that both bloggers have “assured me that it was never their intention to malign anyone’s faith,” but given the quoted material, it’s almost impossible to reach any other conclusion. Calling Christians “misogynists” for their beliefs on the nature of life and the Virgin Birth, and that their opposition to abortion aims to force women to produce more tithing Catholics, certainly qualifies as intentionally malignant. It’s a convenient dodge, as were the “apologies” from the pair for having been misunderstood.

Contrary to the opinions of some well-intentioned bloggers, this never had anything to do with free speech. It had to do with the judgment of the Edwards campaign in hiring two incendiary bloggers known in part for their hostility to Christians.

This brings up a point that has puzzled me since the entire imbroglio began; how can you “smear” someone with their own words? Chris Bowers used the terms “smear” several times in this post in reference to the right’s attempt to highlight what any reasonable person would conclude are bigoted references to someone else’s personal religious beliefs. And despite the denials of both Marcotte and McEwan that they were only kidding or being satirical, the context of those hateful words and phrases clearly indicates rage not comedy was at work and a deliberate attempt to inflict emotional pain on Christian believers was fully intended. Why else would Marcotte refer to Jesus as “Jebus” so often on her site (one blogger counted 114 references to “Jebus”) or so shockingly refer to Christians as “misogynists?”

I suppose I should make it known for the umpteenth time that I am an atheist and am only concerned about the impact of these words on others. For the same reason we all blanch when someone uses the “N” word in a joke or other derogatory manner due to its hurtful connotations, we should all roundly and specifically condemn these hateful, hurtful, insensitive remarks published by both these women on their blogs.

But in this case, politics has trumped decency. No major netroots blogger that I have read has taken these women to task for their extraordinarily vile and disgusting diatribes. A few brave liberal commenters on my first post regarding Marcotte expressed outrage. But the outrage of the netroots was reserved for conservatives who, as I mentioned yesterday, were using the issue to try and damage Edwards while doing a little scalp hunting. While admitting the motives of conservatives were not pure, I was still shocked that nary a peep was heard regarding the two bloggers disgusting characterizations of Catholics and Christians in general. “Christofascists” as McEwan continually referred to them.

But the extent of whitewashing being done by the netroots when they concentrate on defending the obscenities used by the bloggers rather than the substance of their remarks is truly remarkable. I actually defended Jesse Taylor former blogger at Pandagon, and the use of obscenities in this post. I doubt that a few F-bombs would have been enough to cause the kind of stink that erupted. Saying that I or any other conservative is objecting solely on those grounds is a strawman argument plain and simple.

I have my own problems with the religious right but you would never, ever catch me using the kind of invective employed by Marcotte and McEwan. For me, it makes the defense of the two bloggers all the more curious. Apparently, tolerance, like every other part of liberal dogma, is a relative thing and that it can safely be disregarded if it interferes with the drive for power that is animating the progressive community.

Goldstein:

But lost on these Marcotte supporters—who are cheering on the power of the “netroots” to cow a politician into keeping on an ugly and hateful liability—is that Edwards just showed up Marcotte and McEwan as frauds and posturing blowhards, writers who have been pulling the wool over their audiences’ eyes by posting vicious “arguments” they never truly believed. To use the loaded language of establishment feminism—he publicly castrated them—and in so doing, he made fools out of their audiences, to boot.

Further, in doing so, he has shown himself to be nothing more than a calculating political opportunist of the worst sort—one who believes the voting public so daft they might actually buy a statement like the one he just released.

As I wrote yesterday, I don’t care one way or the other, personally, about whether or not Marcotte and McEwan are allowed to keep their jobs. That’s Edwards’ call. And from a blogging perspective, I suppose Edwards’ decision is good news.

But let’s not confuse the effect with the rationale—which is both risible and insulting. Because were it really never Marcotte’s intent to malign anyone’s faith, she probably wouldn’t have dedicated so many hate-filled blog posts to, you know—maligning anyone’s faith.

Indeed. Numerous sins can be forgiven as long as those transgressions serve the “higher purpose” of electing a President beholden to progressive online community. Jeff thinks that Edward’s statement emasculates the two bloggers. Nothing could be further than the truth. With a wink and a nod at his online supporters, Edwards has included them in his political gambit of appearing to chastise the bloggers for the benefit of the press and the rest of America who view what the two bloggers wrote as beyond the pale while acknowledging to his supporters that he knows where they’re coming from.

The questions raised about Edwards in this regard are extremely troubling. If he can’t stand up to Chris Bowers, can we expect him to stand up to the Iranians? Or the North Koreans? Or perhaps China who some experts believe are ready to use force to take back their “lost province” of Taiwan in the next 5 years?

Are these unfair questions? I think not. This is what Presidential campaigns are all about. Voters examine a candidate using a variety of criteria and certainly personnel decisions are among the most important. In this respect, Edwards may have gained some online friends but lost some others - including the religious left:

“We have gone so far to rebuild that coalition [between Democrats and religious Christians] and something like this sets it back,” said Brian O’Dwyer, a New York lawyer and Irish-American leader who chairs the National Democratic Ethnic Leadership Council, a Democratic Party group. O’Dwyer said Edwards should have fired the bloggers. “It’s not only wrong morally – it’s stupid politically.”

O’Dwyer e-mailed a statement to reporters saying: “Senator Edwards is condoning bigotry by keeping the two bloggers on his staff. Playing to the cheap seats with anti-Catholic bigotry has no place in the Democratic Party.”

This is what people outside of the online community are thinking. Are they part of the “right wing smear machine?”

I have no doubt that the issues that surround the use of bloggers on campaigns is far from settled. I disagree with some of the conventional wisdom that this will necessarily make things harder for both bloggers and candidates to come together.

Joe Gandleman:

It’s the nature of blogging (unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) for many blog writers to take positions that might be controversial in content, presentation, or language (each site makes a judgment on the latter and we avoid non-newspaper language here.) While some blog writers and commenters choose words carefully, more often than not blogging resembles a cyberspace form of talk radio with little censoring. And blogwriters can be far more blunt than newspaper columnists or editorial writers.

So if this is the new standard to be applied to campaigns on the left, it’s clear there is going to be a demand for the same standards to be applied to campaigns on the right.

The Marcotte-McEwan dustup has lowered the bar somewhat but I see this as a problem much more for the angry left than the right. Bloggers who have already attached themselves to Republican candidates (with the exception of Patrick Hynes working for McCain) are pretty staid representatives of the conservative sphere. Patrick Ruffini, hired by Rudy Giuliani is a long time GOP activist and can hardly be considered a bomb thrower. And a cursory glance at the top 50 or so conservative bloggers reveal a few that resort to obscenity laced tirades but most fall into a category more vanilla than hot sauce. Skewering the opposition without using dirty or inappropriate language will not be a hindrance in hiring them for GOP Presidential campaigns.

Of course, there are plenty of lefty bloggers who get their point across without tossing F-bombs all over the place or resorting to the kind of hate speech employed by Marcotte-McEwan. I have no doubt that some of them may have moved up the list of potential hires for Democratic candidates. It will be interesting to see what will happen as a result of this controversy. For instance, the bloggers at Firedog Lake are among the most raucous writers on the left. Will this keep some of those excellent bloggers from being employed by a Democratic candidate? Time will tell.

Edwards may have guaranteed that his candidacy will last at least through the first round of primaries by keeping the netroots happy. But he may have damaged his chances beyond that point by standing behind Marcotte-McEwan and their savagely anti-Christian pronouncements. Make no mistake. He can’t have it both ways. He can say from now until doomsday that he condemns the hate speech. But by keeping the two women on his staff, he is announcing to the world that he tolerates it.

I have a feeling this candidate/blogger issue will become a blood sport by summertime as all the announced candidates begin fleshing out their staffs to include members of the online community from both right and left. What this means for blogging in general and the future of the sphere, I have no idea. But I know there’s no way I would ever open myself up to the kind of public scrutiny that these bloggers will have to go through in order to participate in The Great Game.

The votes are in from this week’s Watchers Council and the winner in the Council category was yours truly for “9/11: Just a Real Bad Day.” Finishing second was newbie Bookroom Worm for “They’ve Finally Admitted It.”

Finishing first in the non Council category was HuffPo for “New Trend on the Rise: The Patriotic Terrorist.”

If you’d like to participate in the Watchers Council, go here and follow instructions.

“Beware lest clamor be taken for counsel” (Desiderius Erasmus )

“Are we nothing more than a pack of digital yellow journalists writing pixelated scab sheets vying to see who we can lay low next? If this be the way to fame and fortune in the blogosphere, I truly fear that, like television, the last great technological breakthrough that promised to change the world, we will degenerate into a mindless, bottomless pit of muck and mudslinging, dragging down the culture and trivializing even the most important issues.” (Me)

Learning came late in life in my case. For 25 years, I goofed off in school, barely squeaking by as I was ushered from grade to grade, from high school to college, graduating only because of the kindness of professors I was wise enough to suck up to.

After college, I persisted in my ignorance, wearing it like a badge of honor and mouthing the liberal platitudes and pablum of the times. But forced to finally confront my ignorance as I set out to make a living in the world, I realized how truly deficient my knowledge of the larger world of ideas was and I began a conscious effort to rectify the situation.

Not having read much philosophy, I began by reading the Greeks Socrates and Aristotle, moved on to Erasmus, devoured Kant, Hume, and Rousseau and ended my initial explorations with Hegel and Marx. To this day, it is hard to put into words the excitement I felt when the ideas of those giants slammed into me, so powerful was was the force of their logic and personalities. This started my journey as an auto-didact. And for the nearly 30 years since those heady days in the summer of 1979, I have experienced the joy of learning simply for the sake of knowing.

Knowledge for its own sake is a concept perhaps out of style at today’s educational assembly lines where we churn out lawyers, accountants, and B-school grads. I guess when you’re paying in excess of $100,000 a year to educate your child, you tend to demand that what they learn is “relevant” to the employment conditions they will find after graduation.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this kind of education - as long as it is augmented with a well rounded curriculum that includes the humanities, the sciences, and the arts. My understanding is that these opportunities are still available to the undergraduate - even if you are pre-law or pre-med. It would be my advice to anyone going off to college to take advantage of everything the school has to offer including the study of subjects that hold no promise to assist you in whatever field you have chosen to make your life’s work.

But the accumulation of knowledge is only part of the equation. As Confucius said “Real knowledge is to know the extent of ones ignorance.” Knowledge does not automatically lead to wisdom or infallibility nor does it insulate us from making mistakes in judgement. And that, my friends, may be the most important idea you read today.

The reason for this personal digression is that I wanted you to understand not how smart I am but how truly ignorant we all are. If, as Erasmus said “Humility is Truth” then surely it follows that before one can glimpse the truth, we must recognize and admit to our own ignorance, our own mistakes. Anything less reveals a towering conceit born of ego - a hubristic mindset that brooks no opposition and where ideas are set in stone rather than existing as free agents capable of altering their shape, their texture, even the very foundations on which they exist.

Long time readers of this site know exactly what I’m talking about. You can trace the arc of my support for the Iraq War, for the President, for Republicans, even for conservatives from where I started to where I am now and see where my ideas have changed to reflect the knowledge I have gained as well as changes in perception that have colored my thinking on a host of issues. Does this make me wishy-washy? To some, perhaps. I prefer to think that it proves I am at least receptive to examining other ideas that may clash with some of my long held beliefs.

Specifically with regards to Marcotte and the left in this matter, it is obvious their desperation to shift debate on this issue from Marcotte’s hate filled spewings to what they consider to be similar sins committed by conservatives precludes their having to examine their own beliefs, their own complicity in her shockingly corrupt ideological rantings.

In truth, they see nothing wrong with her warped view of Christians, Catholics, conservatives, men, and any other enemy she targets with her vile invective. Nor do other liberal commenters who have hurled obscene racist epithets at Michelle Malkin or made wild accusations about me, about my brother, or any other individual who has questioned Marcotte’s fitness to serve in any capacity on the staff of a major Presidential candidate demonstrate the slightest ability to examine what Marcotte’s insults and hurtful diatribes mean in a wider context.

By maintaining their silence or even voicing approval for what those outside the left side of the blogosphere almost universally condemn as hate speech, the left proves once again that ignorance is bliss and that self examination, like a little knowledge, is a dangerous thing, something to be avoided at all costs lest one lose their place in the stratified pecking order of lefty blogs.

But I cannot leave this subject without examining the role of those of us on the right who flogged this story into the mainstream media and may have cost Marcotte her job. Certainly our motives lacked nobility. I will be the last to argue that anything more than “scalp hunting” animated this effort. And the questions I raised in the quote at the top of this page remains valid: Is this all we are? Is this what we have become?

In the heat of battle, it is easy to lose sight of those questions. This is not an excuse but rather an explanation. And whatever the outcome of this latest blogosphere dustup, it may be well to ask a third question: Is there anything we can do to change this dynamic? The constant back and forth of charge, counter-charge, revelation followed by the inevitable attempt to alter the discussion by pointing to the sins of the other side - all of this has become an all too familiar pattern of behavior that any rational person would have to say cheapens us all on both sides of the aisle and doesn’t solve anything. Instead, it actually breeds resentment so that the next rhubarb will follow exactly the same course with perhaps even more intensity in the use of language and invective.

I don’t have any answers. And the only thing I’m sure of is that I and everyone else will be guilty of the exact same sins the next time blogs swarm in and target someone for scalp lifting.

Nature of the beast? Or something that can consciously be changed? I don’t know. I just don’t know.

UPDATE: A LITTLE HONESTY WOULD BE A GOOD START

Statement from Edwards:

The tone and the sentiment of some of Amanda Marcotte’s and Melissa McEwan’s posts personally offended me. It’s not how I talk to people, and it’s not how I expect the people who work for me to talk to people. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but that kind of intolerant language will not be permitted from anyone on my campaign, whether it’s intended as satire, humor, or anything else. But I also believe in giving everyone a fair shake. I’ve talked to Amanda and Melissa; they have both assured me that it was never their intention to malign anyone’s faith, and I take them at their word. We’re beginning a great debate about the future of our country, and we can’t let it be hijacked. It will take discipline, focus, and courage to build the America we believe in.

“…[I]ntended as satire, humor, or anything else…”? How about deliberately hurtful? And the idea that Marcotte’s intention was not to malign anyone’s faith is a baldfaced lie. “Reproductive issues” - including anti-abortion beliefs - that she denigrated in such a scurrilous and vile manner are the essence of some Catholic’s faith! That and her disrespecting the Pope show that it was fully her intention to malign the Catholic faith and any statement that says otherwise is meaningless drivel.

The left now has their champions ensconced in a campaign after the principal releases a statement full of what everyone with an ounce of decency recognizes as lies. I’m all for forgiveness but how about a little honesty? If Edwards had come out and said that while he recognized that Marcotte’s views were hurtful to some Americans, they didn’t reflect his beliefs or what he was trying to accomplish with the campaign. Instead, he pretends that Marcotte’s screeds were humor or satire and he further pretends to believe them when they say that they weren’t trying to be hateful or hurtful to anyone.

None of the players covered themselves in glory over this - least of all Edwards.

Also, check out the comments by The Anchoress below as well as her post here.

UPDATE II

James Joyner agrees with me:

These statements have all the believability of 5-year-olds being made to shake hands and apologize. Further, while I have no doubt both these women believe in the 1st Amendment, it’s utterly ridiculous to claim that they never intended to criticize people’s religious views. They did so routinely. The only way that religious people would not have been offended by any of dozens of statements on their blogs was by not reading them.

Of course, that was likely the case in most instances. Blogs that appeal to rabid partisans often devolve into ridicule and dripping condescension toward those who disagree. That’s great for building a fan base, as numerous bloggers (and talk hosts) on both sides of the aisle can attest. It’s not very effective for holding a national conversation, though, let alone a presidential campaign.

Malkin: “Meanwhile, the nutroots are waving their guns around in triumph.” Yep. Firing off their weapons in celebratory triumph like all the other primitive peoples of the earth.

Goldstein:

But lost on these Marcotte supporters—who are cheering on the power of the “netroots” to cow a politician into keeping on an ugly and hateful liability—is that Edwards just showed up Marcotte and McEwan as frauds and posturing blowhards, writers who have been pulling the wool over their audiences’ eyes by posting vicious “arguments” they never truly believed. To use the loaded language of establishment feminism—he publicly castrated them—and in so doing, he made fools out of their audiences, to boot.

Further, in doing so, he has shown himself to be nothing more than a calculating political opportunist of the worst sort—one who believes the voting public so daft they might actually buy a statement like the one he just released.

See also some interesting thoughts somewhat similiar to my own about blogs and blogging from Sister Toldjah.

Allah is on fire. Keep scrolling.

Lambchop and TT-Boy at a recent strategy meeting of left wing bloggers.

It’s been a while since I’ve felt the need to fend off the chigger bites and gnat stings of some of my friends on the left. Oh, there has been the odd snarky comment, the snide reference to some post or other that the dufus either never bothered to read or couldn’t understand. But frankly, I’ve felt neglected of late by the port side of the sphere. In fact, I was getting worried that I was losing my ability to get a rise out netnuts.

It’s not been for lack of trying, I assure you. It’s just that it seems I’ve been getting a helluva lot more criticism from my friends on the right than the unhinged crowd on the left recently. Perhaps this says more about the inability the left to understand words containing more than 2 or 3 syllables than the unsettled nature of conservatism at present.

At any rate, my post on Marcotte below - specifically my update where I link Terry’s piece that asks some rather uncomfortable questions that the lefties have deigned to ignore entirely - has really flushed the cockroaches out from under the floorboards and sent them scurrying hither and thither, making a stink about my links to Dan Riehl and Michelle Malkin’s compilation of bigoted Marcottisms as well as making the charge that Terry and I somehow coordinated our posts, echoing each other’s talking points.

Terry is a big boy and can take care of himself. He hardly needs (nor, I imagine, wants) any input or “coordination” with me.

As for my linking Dan and Michelle, it is certainly a curious way to delegitimize any of my arguments by trying to say that Marcotte’s own words, which was the reason for my linking those posts in the first place, are somehow less bigoted, less hateful, less of a problem for her if they appear on blogs that the lefties don’t approve. The reason that is “ironic” escapes me as I’m sure it does most people with an IQ higher than your average marmoset.

This, of course, removes TT-Boy from that list:

Rick “The Lesser” Moran writes about Amanda and then he invites his readers to go see the ever-sensible Michelle Malkin and Dan Riehl.

I could have stayed up all night and not come up with anything near that funny…

The fact that TT Boy does indeed stay up all night in his job as grocery store stocker means that he truly can’t come up with anything near as funny as Marcotte’s nauseating, hate filled rants that I linked at those two websites. I’m sure if he really put his mind to it (or checked his archives) he could come close.

Meanwhile Atrios, about whom Chris Bowers gushed:

“Atrios has somehow managed to put up twelve posts a day, every day, for five years. A superhuman effort few can match.”

Well, let me play Superman for a moment and try to match the “twelve posts” put up by Duncan Black every day..

1. Open Thread
2. Open Thread
3. Open Thread
4. Bush Sucks! No more War.
5. Open Thread
6. Open Thread
7. Open Thread
8. Conservatives are Poopies!
9. Open Thread
10. Open Thread
11. Beware the Theocrats!
12. Open Thread
13. Open Thread

Befitting my Superhuman abilities, I went and did Mr. Black one better.

At any rate, The Reverend Mr. Black has made Terry “Wanker of the Day” calling him my “sock puppet.” A singular honor for which Terry is, I’m sure, grateful although since we disagree on almost every issue under the sun, that sock sure has a lot of holes in it - perhaps as many as we could find in Mr. Black’s head.

Yes, it sure is great to be back in the left’s bad graces. Now I can sit back and enjoy all the ever more imaginative insults and verbal bric-a-brats hurled in my direction, secure in the knowledge that when it comes to pissing off the lickspittle left, I haven’t lost my touch.

UPDATE

Terry responds to his critics here.

Well done, brother. And thanks.

Watching the destruction of Amanda Marcotte, Pandagon blogger and soon-to-be-ex “Blogmaster” for the Edwards campaign, has been one of the few bright spots in this otherwise dreary and depressing new year.

If ever there was a left wing hysteric who deserved to be tarred, feathered, and dragged through the mud and slime of their own writings, it is Marcotte. She is a perfect illustration of the liberal mindset that posits the notion of a relative moral code when it comes to racial, ethnic, religious, and gender semantics. For her, anything goes. No characterization of her political opponents is too vile. No racist, sexist, or bigoted thought is out of bounds.

This is because the left has insulated itself from such mundane considerations as good manners and decorous language by elevating themselves to what they consider to be a higher moral plane than the rest of us. Simply because they mean well, they are vouchsafed all manner of perfidious name calling and calumnious charges directed against their opponents.

The fact that Marcotte sees the world through the prism of post-modern feminism makes her impossible to take seriously on any level. Her writing is full of so many half truths, manufactured criticisms, dead-wrong assumptions, and a child like ignorance of the emotional universe inhabited by normal men and women that trying to decipher her scribblings - once you can get by the obscenities and work your way through the incoherence - is a task best left to a psychiatrist.

I won’t pollute this site with too many examples of what I mean. For that, I urge you to see Dan Riehl’s posts or Michelle Malkin’s writings on Marcotte.

This is one of those stories that starts out on the internet, jumps to cable talk shows, and finally, when the issue can no longer be ignored, appears in the mainstream press. In the case of Marcotte, her initial effort to hide some of her more outrageous and obscenity laced tirades against conservatives in general and men in particular by deleting the offending posts at Pandagon only made matters worse. In effect, it was no longer what she said (which was bad enough) that was the issue but rather her clumsy attempt to cover it up once she was named “Blogmaster” of the Edwards campaign.

But someone with a track record of stupidity as long and varied as Marcotte’s should have realized that she wouldn’t be able to delete all the offending posts written over the last few years. In the end, her weird anti-Catholic bigotry will probably end up bringing her career as “Blogmaster” to a quick and unceremonious close. Here’s Marcotte on the Catholic belief in the Immaculate Conception:

Q: What if Mary had taken Plan B after the Lord filled her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit?

A: You’d have to justify your misogyny with another ancient mythology.

(HT: Patterico)

And in one of the more delicious ironies I can imagine, Marcotte may be brought down by the object of some of her more unbalanced rants; the Catholic Church:

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, demanded that Edwards fire Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan.

“John Edwards is a decent man who has had his campaign tarnished by two anti-Catholic, vulgar, trash-talking bigots,” Donohue wrote in a statement. “He has no choice but to fire them immediately.”

The Edwards campaign declined to comment. McEwan and Marcotte did not respond to e-mails requesting a response.

The New York Times tries to excuse Marcotte’s ravings as a consequence of being a member of the blogosphere:

The two women brought to the Edwards campaign long cyber trails in the incendiary language of the blogosphere. Other campaigns are likely to face similar controversies as they try to court voters using the latest techniques of online communication.

This is absurd. Marcotte is not being taken to task for “incendiary” writing. Holy Smokes! Anyone peruse the DNC or RNC sites lately? “Incendiary” language is hardly frowned upon and is, indeed, a prerequisite for latching on to any political campaign.

Marcotte’s will lose her job because despite the fact that she believes herself to be well meaning and, probably according to her lights incapable of hatred directed against any group, she is a rank bigot, a nauseating, die hard dogmatist whose sickening screeds against people she disagrees with (including most non-emasculated men) have sullied the debate between right and left for far too long.

Unfortunately, Marcotte’s type will always have a home on the left. She will be welcomed back with open arms and continue her unbalanced rants, raging against people whose only transgression is that they fail to fit their beliefs into her own narrow, warped, and cockeyed worldview.

Perhaps there will be an opening soon in some other campaign, a job that she will be eminently qualified to perform as only she is capable.

I hear Ahmadinejad will be running for President again. Those two see eye to eye on more issues than either is likely to admit. Not to mention both being a couple of draughts short of a full keg.

Sounds like a match made in heaven…

UPDATE

It has been far too long since we’ve heard from the lefty’s #1 thinker, pundit, and sock puppet Lambchop.

Here, Lambchop weighs in on this controversy in his usual understated, intelligent, and perspicacious manner. And I quote:

NEENER!! NEENER!! NEENER!! NEENER!! NEENER!! NEENER!!

UPDATE II: OMIGOD THE MORANS AGREE ON SOMETHING!

My brother Terry (who has a new blog that you should bookmark immediately) gets it exactly right:

Questions: What, if anything, does it tell us about Edwards that he’s joined up with this blogger? Is Edwards’ association with a person who has written these things a legitimate issue for voters, as they wonder–among other things–whom he might appoint to high office if he’s elected? If a Republican candidate teamed up with a right-wing blogger who spewed this kind of venom, how would people react? Is the mere raising of this issue a kind of underhanded censorship, a way of ruling out of bounds some kinds of opinion? Are we all just going to have to get used to a more rough-and-tumble, profane, and even hate-filled public arena in the age of the blogosphere?

Like any good journalist, he is asking the right questions - and the questions sort of answer themselves, don’t they? (HT: Malkin)

UPDATE III

Hugh Hewitt nails it and offers a challenge:

As L’Affaire Marcotte nears its inevitable conclusion, I can’t decide who was dumber, Marcotte or the Edwards campaign. On the one hand I can’t believe that Marcotte had become so comfortable in the left wing echo chamber that she actually believed her past didn’t preclude her from publicly entering a mainstream presidential campaign. On the other hand, I really can’t believe that the Edwards campaign apparently didn’t vet a high profile hire.

I’ve got this Friday at 9:13 a.m.

Okay, Big Daddy I’ll take some of that action. Give me Thursday at 2:00 PM Central. As you know, good politicians lance boils quickly. The very good ones do it decisively. Marcotte is gone by the end of lunchtime tomorrow. Book it!

The operation to get control of the streets in Iraq’s capitol is apparently underway according to both AFP and Omar of Iraq the Model.

AFP is reporting that one of the initial operations is mainly made up of Americans:

Iraqi and US forces have pushed deep into one of Baghdad’s most notorious Sunni bastions, making arrests and seizing weapons as part of a new plan to overrun insurgent strongholds in the capital.

The US military, meanwhile, said Wednesday it was probing reports of another helicopter crash near Baghdad.

A US military official said a crackdown on Sunni insurgents in the northeastern Adhamiyah district of the Iraqi capital began Tuesday in an operation involving some 2,000 US troops and hundreds of Iraqi soldiers.

According to an AFP photographer embedded with the US military more than a dozen people were detained overnight and large numbers of weapons seized.

Major Robie Parke of 3-2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team said the security sweep in the Shaab and Ur areas of Adhamiyah marked the start of the much-vaunted crackdown by US and Iraqi forces against Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents in Baghdad.

“Iraqi and US forces conducted clearing operations in Adhamiyah today, which is the beginning of the new security plan,” Parke told AFP late Tuesday.

“Operation Arrowhead Strike Six” is apparently only one of the thrusts planned to clear the capitol of insurgents and blunt the activities of the death squads:

One US officer who asked not to be identified told AFP the operation would set the conditions for a “control and retain” force to move into Shaab and Ur and establish combat outposts in conjunction with Iraqi security forces.

The high-ranking US army official stressed that the Baghdad security plan was a process involving a broad range of troop and logistics movements as well as strategic planning.

“The process has already begun. The Baghdad security plan is a process, it’s a long operation, it’s not going to be a three day operation or a three week operation,” the officer said.

“You have to look at the whole process instead of just thinking in terms of a raid, or an operation in one of the districts, it’s much, much larger than that.”

As usual, the Iraqis are slow, disorganized, and have been hampered by sectarian squabbling over the command structure:

Pressure is increasing on the Maliki government to show signs of progress on the security plan that was announced more than a month ago, especially after three weeks of bloody violence that has killed 3,000 civilians.

Mr. Maliki made it clear to the commanders that they needed to show results soon. “I call on you to quickly finish the preparations so that we don’t disappoint people,” he said.

Mr. Maliki offered no reasons for the delay, but Iraqi military officials have expressed frustration over the slow pace and have cited several problems, including the failure of Iraqi troops from other parts of the country to arrive on schedule in Baghdad, the capital.

The choice of top commanders, drawn from the army and the police, has largely been settled, the officials said, but was slowed by sectarian disagreements, with Shiites objecting to Sunnis and Sunnis objecting to Shiites.

Integrating the Iraqi police force with the army, essential to the plan, remains a problem, officers say. Some Sunni neighborhoods remain off limits to the police, because they are thought to be deeply infiltrated by Shiite militias and are widely distrusted by Sunni residents.

This is actually the second Baghdad security plan signed off on by Maliki. The original plan back in July called for upwards of 10,000 Iraqi troops and policemen to set up check points and patrol neighborhoods while American forces (augmented by around 5,000 in early July) carried out “sweep, clear, and hold” operations, handing over control of pacified areas to Iraqi police and army units.

Of course, Maliki couldn’t get 10,000 troops to come to Baghdad. Kurdish units in the north balked at the idea of patrolling the streets of Baghdad and mutinied, according to US Army sources. And Sunnis were reluctant to go after their co-religionists who were part of the insurgency. In the end, Maliki was able to scrape together less than 4,000 troops which, by the middle of September, it became apparent that the forces he had were inadequate to meet the security challenge.

This is where the second security plan came in. It envisioned up to an additional 17,000 American troops for Baghdad - the “surge” announced by the President - but also another 20,000 Iraqi troops divided between east and west Baghdad with an Iraqi commander in overall control. No word yet on whether Maliki has been able to achieve the troop levels he called for.

But we do know that he has enough to begin operations. This includes moving joint American and Iraqi forces into Baghdad neighborhoods to establish a permanent presence:

American officers said the new plan, under which an additional 17,000 American forces are to be deployed in Baghdad, would not necessarily have an official start. They said it would be more accurate to describe the effort as a broader strategy shift that would put American troops in Baghdad neighborhoods in more aggressive ways, living and working with Iraqi troops.

The Americans are arriving in staggered intervals over months, and troops on the ground are beginning to carry out the new strategy, the officers said. In western Baghdad, American forces are living with Iraqi soldiers at new Joint Security Stations in two neighborhoods. More stations are under construction.

From the beginning, American officers have cautioned that the new plan would take time, because any chance of success rests on building trust with a population whose faith has been severely tested by nearly a year of vicious sectarian violence. But they know that time is not on their side.

Time - something the President does not have. That, and the luxury of the surge plan being given a fair chance to succeed in reducing the violence in Baghdad.

There is no way that war critics will allow this plan even the perception of success. Any progress made will be minimized. Every car bombing, sectarian massacre, and terrorist attack will be lovingly dwelt on - proof that the plan is a “failure.”

We will have the interviews with Baghdad residents in a few months who will complain that they see no difference in their daily lives - that things are still dangerous. Every miscue by the Iraqi army will be headline news. And God help us if Americans were to kill an innocent civilian. Or at least a civilian that the AP tells us was innocent.

The sad fact is that no matter what progress is made in securing Baghdad, the only thing that can turn perception on its ear and actually start changing some minds is progress in the political arena by the Iraqis. If this surge had been accompanied by an announcement by al-Maliki of some political overtures to the Sunnis, of concessions on oil rights, amnesty for insurgents, and other necessary political steps that would start the process of giving the Sunnis a reason to stop fighting, then I think the surge would have had a vastly better chance of exceeding expectations and thus being pegged a success.

But Maliki and the Shia nationalists who hold sway over the government are not interested in sharing power and, in fact, are desirous of seeing Iraq “Sunni free.” This from StrategyPage:

The Sunni terrorist organizations are now attracting some truly fanatical recruits. It appears that a small percentage of the Iraqi Sunni Arabs are willing to fight to the death. Of the four million or so Sunni Arabs in Iraq in 2003, about half have already fled their homes, and either left the country, or moved to areas where the population is entirely Sunni. But even if only three percent of the Iraqi Sunni Arabs fight to the death, that’s over 100,000 people who would rather die than live in a democracy with the majority Shia Arabs. These diehards are getting financial and emotional support other Sunni Arabs in the region, who see an Iraq run by its Shia Arab majority, as a danger to all Sunni Moslems. That’s because of the ancient feud between Sunni and Shia (who disagree on who should be the supreme authority in the Islamic world, and on several other religious issues.)

While the United States would like to have the Iraqi government take care of these diehards, that would be a messy process. Many of the Shia and Kurd troops that predominate in the security forces are willing to kill all Sunni Arabs they encounter in a hostile area. The American troops can go in and just pop the bad guys, leaving most of the innocents unhurt. But to the majority of Iraqis, there’s no such thing as an innocent Sunni Arab, and would prefer to see them all dead, or gone to some other country.

As long as there are Shia militias, rogue Interior Ministry units, and killers-for-hire who are seeking to eliminate the Sunni presence in Iraq, the insurgents will continue to fight no matter how many of them we kill. Many of these insurgents belong to tribal based militias whose numbers are constantly being replenished. While it is true that we have made some progress with the tribes in Anbar at getting their help and cooperation, we are less successful in other Sunni provinces at bringing the tribes to our side. This is partly because al-Qaeda in Iraq has been most active among the tribes in Anbar, building resentment with their heavy handed administration and fierce religious conservatism.

For the tribes, they feel their own survival is at stake. With more than a million and a half Sunnis already having fled Iraq in the last 3 years and an estimated 350,000 displaced inside the country, the burden for proving that there is a place for the Sunnis at the table in Baghdad rests with the Shia majority. And al-Maliki - for a variety of reasons - has proved unable and unwilling to take the necessary steps to take the fire out of the hearts of both Shias and Sunnis and attempt a reconciliation that would lead to a more peaceful and just society.

I hope and believe the surge will do everything it is supposed to do - make Baghdad a safer place and give Maliki a political boost among the Iraqi people. What he does with this breathing room will determine whether or not the blood and treasure we are expending in this final effort to turn the situation around in Iraq will have been in vain.