root causes. bwahahaha!

* josh holland on support for joe:

"This has very little to do with the Iraq occupation, the defining issue of the day.

It's about fear of being boxed in. It's about a growing balance of fear -- of having to take fire from two directions instead of one. Because it's much easier to take cover when the rounds are coming at you from just one side.

[]

Now imagine watching a grass-roots movement of pissed-off voters, organized via the Internet, growing year after year. It's a movement of regular people who simply don't get the rules by which Washington plays. They're not "ultraliberal," as the establishment would have you believe, but they are unwashed, uncouth, and when you don't stand up for your constituents, they talk about it in the most impolite terms. They raise awareness of your sins and money for no-name candidates. They can generate early buzz around races that aren't even on the mainstream media's radar screens.

They're shooting at you from your left flank, and it's going to be almost impossible to hide. You're getting boxed in. It's terrifying.

That is to say: it's as terrifying for them as it is good for American democracy."

* AP:

"Republican Thomas Kean and Democrat Lee Hamilton also say in "Without Precedent" that their panel was too soft in questioning former New York
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani — and that the 20-month investigation may have suffered for it.
[]
Unidentified members believed that "listing U.S. support for Israel as a root cause of al-Qaida's opposition to the United States indicated that the United States should reassess that policy," which those commission members did not want."

root causes. bwahahaha!

* tpmm:

"In his comments to the Times, Wilkes paints the impression that Lowery, along with Lewis and other appropriators, worked an extortion racket: they forced businesspeople like Wilkes to pay campaign contributions and lobbying fees in exchange for the contracts.

His lawyer, Nancy Luque, is quoted saying that "prosecutors should be looking at the entire [appropriations] committee," not just Duke.

That seems to be the framework for his defense -- one he appears likely to deploy sooner rather than later, since a grand jury is reportedly in the process of weighing evidence and deciding whether to indict him."

* the brithume all-star team were waxing lyrical about marty peretz' latest aint-joe-grand piece. here's digby and ew on the same. glenn too. funny comment from ew's place:

"I'd like to thank Marty Peretz and the rest of the cabal of neocon pundits for so decisively putting the lie to the ancient anti-Semitic slur that "all Jews are geniuses." What a bunch of maroons."