I strongly believe that one of the ways we're going to win this election is to activate a new group of voters who have been previously apathetic about politics.  At the most simple level, that is going to involve registering voters who haven't registered before or have allowed their registration to lapse.

As part of that, I volunteered today to register voters in North Hollywood.  And for those of you outside California, North Hollywood isn't what you think of when you think of "Hollywood."  Its very mixed income.

Having not done this before, I wasn't sure what to expect.   I showed up at the central site, and was immediately impressed.  Big tables, a large "Stand for Change" sign, pens, clipboards, and voter registration forms with all the necessary fields already highlighted.  Myself and another volunteer (who'd clearly been doing this awhile) set up shop at Gelson's market, one of us at each enterance/exit.  Another team went to Ralphs (for those of you not familiar with these markets, Gelson's is upscale, Ralphs is a regular supermarket).

Look, clearly my candidate is superior to your candidate: more progressive, a better record, and will be a better candidate in the general election.  This is shown all the more by the fact that your candidate's spouse, pastor, or surrogate said something that is completely out of bounds, probably about gender or race.  Your candidate needs to apologize for what was said by that person.  

After the publication of cartoons which depicted Muhammad with a bomb and a burning fuse on his head, the Muslim world erupted in protests.  Today, those protests turned from threats of violence into actual violence, as Syrians burned the embassies of Denmark and Norway.
http://news.yahoo.com/...

Clearly, a lot of liberals and progressives are planning to leave the Democratic Party over Alito.  There are a lot of people harassing you about your decision, but there are a lot of people you're going to make happy.  Basically, everyone who voted for cloture today will be happy.    

One thing that has jumped out at me about Hillary's comments is that at first glance we've lapsed into a Republican trick in our defense.  Specifically, we point to 'plantation' comments by Newt Gingrich, and writers from The National Review, Townhall, etc to justify Hillary's words.  Is this the the same as when Republicans point to claims that Democratic presidents have violated FISA in defense of Bush's illegality?  No, its not, and I can think of two main reasons why that's the case.    

The Washington Post is reporting that a partial withdrawal from Iraq will begin in early 2006, with US brigades being reduced from 18 to 15.  

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

As you may have seen, there are some reports that Tom DeLay's case may be thrown out of court tomorrow.  

http://hotlineblog.nationaljournal.com/...

Given Scanlon's plea bargain, even if this happens DeLay's evading the bullet will probably be temporary.  However, in the meantime we should pushback with our own frame.  No wallowing, people!  My suggestion for that frame would be "DeLay gets off on a technicality."    

Primetime Live tonight announced they had a new segment tonight called Doubletalk.  "For when politicians say one thing and do another."  First subject: Sen. Rick Santorum.  

Support them when they do something right for a change.  

http://www.cnn.com/feedback/forms/form4.html?5

And yes, I know that you still have Kyra Phillips making dumb comments.  Baby steps, though.  This is evidence that they're seriously considering becoming a news network.  And that is something that must be nurtured and encouraged.

Damn all you talented writers starting your own blogs!  You eat my time!  Not to mention make me wish I had similar talents.  

Seriously, though, its great to see so much vibrancy here.  After the election, there was a lot of people saying this site would fade away or go to a much lower pitch.  That has been proven so wrong with this site continuing to go strong, and seemingly adding new spinoffs all the time.  

I found a few stories and votes on Rove that I believe would greatly benefit from input from good, honest citizens.  Remember to vote your conscience!  

One of my favorite news sites is Rawstory, which has  helped keep me Drudge-free for quite some time now.  Anyway, they're doing a fundraising drive, so they can do crazy things like buy a laptop to cover stuff live.

Here's the site, if you can chip in.  I put in $15, and I'm an extremely in-debt law student.  

This is a blast from the past.  I assumed that all government websites would have been scrubbed of embarassing titles like this, and instead the speech would be entitled something more general like "President Bush addresses USS Lincoln" or whatever.  

But nope.   Here is the official state department transcript of the speech.  And they don't even go with "major combat operations", its just "combat operations."  So I'm really not sure what we we've been doing for the past 2 years....

I don't know how many of you saw "Supersize Me", but I'm sure those that did found it interesting.  I like Spurlock (the director)---he's much more content to let the facts speak for themselves rather than trying to have an answer for everything, the way Michael Moore sometimes does.

But in the premier episode of "30 Days" on FX, Spurlock takes on a much bigger topic than fast food: trying to live on minimum wage.    

During Clinton's presidency, I heard MSM outlets refer to the "scandal-plagued Clinton Administration." Considering that BushCo would find something like Travelgate to be just the opening warm-up to another day of corruption, I find the fact that it hasn't been applied to them to be entirely insane.  

So I believe that we can start applying to them.  Use it in emails, calls, etc, to the media outlets. Speaking to friends, if you feel like.    

I don't think Slate has this one up yet.  The sixth paragraph down in this Washington Post story.  

He added, "It seemed like to me they [Amnesty International] based some of their decisions on the word of and the allegations by people that were held in detention, people who hate America, people that have been trained in some instances to disassemble, that means not tell the truth."

Um...they may have been trained to dissemble.  Perhaps disassemble as well, maybe the next Al Queda plot is to pull all the hinges out of the Brooklyn Bridge.  Seems overly complicated.    

As many of you do, I read Rawstory a lot for instant news (it helped me break my Drudge addiction).  Today, I was checking it out, and noticed that there was a mistake: a headline said that mayors representing 129 million people had been working together to reduce emissions here despite the Administration, when in fact it was 29 million.  

I emailed them to let them know of the error.  2 minutes later, they emailed back to thank me for letting them know, and sure enough the site had been fixed.  How nice to find a news source that values fact-checking from its readers, as opposed to resenting it.