Here’s a slick piece on the scrubbing of the voter roles in Florida. If you don’t like Katherine Harris, you will like this piece.

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John Ashcroft had the chutzpah to stage the Boston leg of his pro-PATRIOT Act road show in Faneuil Hall, where Sam Adams proclaimed the liberties he was ready to die for. Apparently, this is the first time Faneuil Hall has been closed to the public for a political event since it was built in 1742. (If that factoid is more ‘toid than fact, well, it’s still worth believing for a couple of minutes.)

Here are some of the signs I enjoyed:

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Attorney General John “No Boobies” Ashcroft is bringing his PATRIOT Act Wild West Show to Boston. Gotta give him credit for stepping foot in Massachusetts. On the other hand, won’t you please join a few thousand of us in telling him just how unwelcome his rights-repressing policies are? MoveOn.org is putting out word about the rally sponsored by the ACLU. There’s information about the rally at Faneuil Hall here, and directions here.

Here’s the Electronic Frontier Foundation‘s intro to the PATRIOT act. Here’s the ACLU’s analysis. Here’s the act itself. And here’s John Ashcroft, one of our oddest and most frightening public servants, singing his song, “Let the Eagles Soar.”

The protest is also noted in DeanLink, a friendster-ish site that enables Dean supporters to find one another. It’s still a little rough around the edges, but it’s a very cool app.

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Paul English has an idea about how to turn conspicuous consumption into a good thing….

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Dean’s success has to be at least partially responsible for the new fire in the bellies of all the Democratic candidates at last night’s debate. No more pussy-footing around W’s “miserable failure” (Gephardt’s phrase) as a president.

Who “won”? How the hell would I know? I thought Gore absolutely trampled W in their debates, and I couldn’t imagine anyone voting for Reagan after the Mondale debates. That said, I thought Dean did well but didn’t stand out as much as he should, in part because so many of the Democrats now sound like him. Gephardt’s passion helped counteract the nebbishness that comes from spending a lifetime in the House (and from looking like the adult version of the Pillsbury Doughboy). Kerry has a great voice, but I thought failed to make himself as interesting as his hair. I love Carol Moseley Braun and wish that she weren’t doomed by race, gender and political position; also, she was a weak senator. Jonathan Edwards seemed a very credible vice presidential candidate. Lieberman was the token Republican at the debate. As for Dennis Kucinich: Embarrassing, hello?

Neither Al Sharpton nor Bob Graham showed up, although Graham sent his body.

Halley writes about On Point, a talk show syndicated on NPR stations that last night had a round table discussion with experts about the Democratic candidates. She applauds Eli who called in and contradicted the pundits’ assessment of Dean as a left-wing candidate.

I was listening also and felt the same way. If I hadn’t been in a car, I was tempted to call in and say:

You media pundits have already fallen for the trap: Karl Rove said that the Republicans want to run against Dean because he is the most liberal candidate, and you believed him. Most liberal?? Here are some of Dean’s positions:

– Backed the first Gulf War and the invasion of Afghanistan

– Is supported by the NRA (!) because he thinks gun legislation generally is a state issue (although he backs the Brady Bill and the ban on assault rifles)

– Believes in a balanced budget

– Says we have to finish the job in Iraq, albeit by internationalizing it

How the hell does this make him more liberal than he rest of the Democrats in the race?

I’m a classic, kneejerk, bleeding-heart liberal. Dean is much harder to categorize. It’s the media’s job to get past the competitive labeling. But you know what? Maybe we can no longer afford to assume it’s the media’s job. Maybe now it’s our job as bloggers and citizens.

Halley also points out this surprising snippet from Andrew Sullivan:

BIG GOVERNMENT BUSH: More evidence of the runaway federal government under Bush. The sheer profligacy of this administration continues to astound. If you’re a fiscal conservative, Howard Dean is beginning to look attractive.

[Damn, I just saw that Halley linked to my Springsteen entry. And I’m linking to her. So now it’ll look like tit-for-tat linking! Honest, it wasn’t.]

John Edwards has started a blog. It’s a little boring so far, but a posting by Nick Baldick shows promise. And there is a strong and welcome emphasis on reader comments.

The Dean blog continues to get lots and lots of unfiltered comments, running open threads quite regularly. The first open thread got 287 comments, so they posted a new one and then another. A quick scan (and the fact that there’s no good way for humans to scan 800 msgs — time to move to a more slashdotty comments capability) shows that although the vast majority of the comments come from “Deaniacs,” the conversation frequently gets pretty frank.

You can see Gephardt’s first TV ads here.

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Mr. Poon, whose blog I found via Ernie the Attornery (nee Ernselor the Counselor), writes about Friday’s airing of 20/20:

Anyone watching 20/20 right now? They have a heartwarming story about a “bubble boy” who gets a stem cell transplant to be able to have a better-functioning immune system. While showing scenes of the baby finally going home from the hospital, the reporter gives us a voice-over question: “So were prayers answered, or was it science?” Lady, let me explain something: A lot of the people out there who thinks this was prayers being answered want to make sure that stem cell transplants don’t happen.

Well, maybe it was a coincidence that God happened to listen to the prayers for the kid who got the stem cell transplant.

Yeah, sure. If this is as Mr. Poon reports it, 20/20 ought to be ashamed for itself for such lousy journalism.

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As a member in good standing of GOP Team Leader, the site that helps you spam newspapers in return for valuable free merchandise (registration required), I get a weekly mailing from the Republican leadership. The latest touts this video. (The transcript is here.)

It picks out clips of Democratic candidates criticizing W and the Republicans and urges us to adopt the “Republican’s positive agenda.” It includes a clip of Dean hoarsely thanking a crowd, which strikes me as not so very negative; clearly it’s there to make him look wild-eyed.

The ad is obviously of no appeal to people who agree with the Dems that Bush is a “Pinocchio president,” as Bob Graham is quoted as saying. Will it motivate people to join GOP Team Leader? I wonder. I think the take-away is that the Dems are a bunch of pessimistic clowns who don’t stand a chance. But I am definitely not in the target audience for this ad.

Now can I get my 12-pack insulated bag (350 points)?

The launch of the GOP ad supports an article in Salon by David Talbot that asks why Gov. Dean and Al Franken are hot now:

On Monday, the New York Times’ Adam Nagourney reported that the White House and the Democratic Party have both concluded that because of the increasingly polarized and evenly divided political landscape, the 2004 race will focus mainly on turning out the parties’ core voters, rather than appealing to swing voters and independents. This means a campaign unlike 2000, with its muted, centrist tones, but one that delivers red meat to the parties’ respective bases. And what is the temper of the Democratic Party base? They loathe Bush and everything he stands for…

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The self-styled progressive site CounterPunch has a scathing article about Howard Dean’s record as governor of Vermont. It claims he is a “Clintonesque Republicrat whose stances are not far from that of the current administration.” Oh no! not Clintonesque!

I hadn’t followed Dean when he was governor, so much of this was news to me. But most of the positions that the authors find outrageous are either mainstream or compromises (e.g., after getting 99% of the state covered with health insurance, the state then increased co-pays and cut back some benefits). You know what: Good! I am personally to the left of Dean on almost all issues. I would de-militarize the “war on drugs” and would legalize marijuana. I’d look at socializing the pharmaceutical industry. I hated the Tough Love Welfare Reform Act. In general, Carol Moseley Braun better represents my political views. (Probably not this Braun, however.)

But I also think that it is laughably short-sighted to say that there’s no real difference between W and Dean. Sure, the Himalayas are no higher than the bump on the skin of an orange, but only if you’re living on Mars. On earth, the differences are enormous and if you’re too morally pure to see that, then the damage that W’s second term would do to the environment, to the poor, to the powerless, to the different…all that now is on your head.

For me, the most telling moment — and the funniest — in the article comes when the authors each state whether they’d vote for Dean against Bush, and Ron Jacobs writes:

I have never voted for a presidential candidate. Indeed, the last one I even wanted to see in the White House was George McGovern, but my 18th birthday came after the 1972 election. The only candidate I have consistently supported for the presidency is the candidate managed in his first several campaigns by Wavy Gravy: NOBODY. Why? Because I honestly believe NOBODY really cares about the poor and the young, especially when they don’t vote…

Poor Ron Jacobs! He’s too right to ever vote.

Politics is about compromising enough to be able to share the planet with people you disagree with. The inability to compromise is as dangerous as having no moral ambiguity. Scary.

Similarly, if you tell me that Howard Dean has compromised and taken mainstream positions, my response is: Thank God!

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Michael Cudahy has written a terrific explanation of why he, who has supported many a Republican all the way back to Goldwater, is supporting Gov. Dean. Among other things, he writes:

Governor Dean projects a complete unwillingness to be afraid … From what I am hearing from friends inside the Republican Party, they are deeply concerned by the Dean campaign because they do not know how to deal with it.

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Some excellent and quite positive coverage of the Dean 4-day “Sleepless Summer” tour in the New York Times and elsewhere. All the reports I’ve read point to the enthusiastic crowds and the success of the Governor’s new crowd-pleasin’ delivery. Not to mention the new Zogby poll that puts Dean at 38% in NH compared to Kerry’s 17%; for the past seven months, Dean and Kerry have been statistically flat at 19% and 25% respectively. Not to mention the $1,000,000 Dean raised over the Internet in 4 days, from 17,000 contributors, of whom 10,000 are first-time contributors.

And yet I watched the NY rally on CSPAN last night and with the crowd noise turned way down Dean looked awkward. We could say that that was just bad miking by CSPAN, but the TV interviews I’ve seen and the televised debates so far aren’t capturing what you see of Dean in person, on stage or in smaller groups: someone relaxed, “comfortable in his own skin” (as Chris Lydon put it), serious, but also enjoying himself. It’s a mysterious medium.

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