a bill to reinstate the draft

* jeralyn:

"For all you naysayers who thought we were crazy when we wrote about bringing back the draft, here it is, Charlie Rangel, obviously having a deranged moment, is introducing a bill to reinstate the draft.

Rangel mistakenly thinks that a draft would have prevented the war in Iraq.
[]
A draft would not have prevented Iraq any more than it prevented Vietnam. I cannot support risking the lives of this country's youth to make a political point. They should not be used as pawns in the war debate.

Let's hope Rangel's bill dies as swift a death this year as it did in 2004."

* comin down with driftglass:

"When I heard Kerry was going to be on (FNS), two thoughts – a question and answer – flashed immediately to mind.

First “WTF is Kerry doing on Fox?”

Then “Oh Jebus; he thinks he’s Clinton.”

But he’s not Clinton. He was just a tacking dummy. Because Wallace, being a troll in the pay of the thugs on Planet Murdoch, and having been soundly beaten into a puddle of aspic and shit by the Big Dog, desperately needed reassert his dubious manhood by beating on a Democrat.

And Kerry obliging walked right into the band saw.

So when Kerry answered the question once and tried to change the subject?

Wallace: No, sir. We’re gonna fucking well talk about The Joke, sir. We’re gonna dissect two-syllables and your endless, humiliating apologies, sir. And then maybe we’ll talk about other shit.

And that’s when Kerry should’ve raised or walked away.

He did neither. He stayed and played Wallace’s “Alan Colmes”, so for 90% of Kerry’s face time they talked about The Joke.

When Cheney shoots someone in the face, he goes on Fox to resuscitate his image. Or is the correct word “rehabilitate”? Disinter? Shit-sculpt his cancerous soul into a facsimile of something human? Whatever. He goes there because he knows Fox is the GOP Media Vaterland. That never will be heard a discouraging word about any Republican war criminal.

So why did Kerry go there?

Because he thought he could go to Mordor and rip Chris Wallace’s black, beating heart out of his chest. He thinks he’s Verbal Warrior Clinton and he’s most emphatically not. He’s a laminated plank. He’s as predictable and “agile” as a rusty Slinky oscillating at the bottom of an empty oil drum.

Kerry actually tried plead his case about the GOP Attack Machine -- which “kicked into full gear” which “knew full well what I meant to say” -- while sitting in the belly of that very beast. As if it were a neutral venue, proving yet again that Kerry – a man of many virtues – just plain sucks as a politician."

actually, I thought that Kerry did ok (which is separate to why on earth he was there)

* larry johnson tears shreds off Peter Lance's new book.

* booman:

"The Dems are going to get to the bottom of the NSA program. And it is going to make Iran-Contra and Monicagate look like a Disney movie by comparison.

Simply put, nearly a dozen NSA officers would not have risked their careers and freedom to leak word of a highly classified program to the New York Times...if that program was limited to phone calls from suspected terrorists abroad calling into the United States.

Cheney and Gonzales are afraid that they will be going to jail. Luckily for them, Joe Biden doesn't want to mention "woulda, coulda, or shoulda.""

* booman:

"The larger question about netroots' influence is how our adamant insistence on confronting the President will influence, positively or negatively, the Democratic Party and their prospects in 2008. One thing I can tell you right now. Hillary Clinton may be the Establishment's front-runner and she may have a wide lead in the early polling, but she is unlikely to get any unpaid support from the Netroots from any quarter. The Netroots is tapping into a new ethos and is totally at odds with the policies of the Democratic Leadership Council. As far as I can tell, the Israel Lobby has almost no influence over the Netroots, as evidenced by the reaction to the devastation of Lebanon, the uniform opposition to Joe Lieberman, and the support for replacing Jane Harman as House Intelligence chair.

The Netroots is totally deaf to Israel's concerns (on Israel's right) in the 'War on Terror' which is why it is totally alienated from people like Ed Koch, Joe Lieberman, Jane Harman, James Woolsey, and other traditionally hawkish Democrats. A lot of people from that constituency suspect an anti-Israel or even anti-Semitic bias in the Netroots as a result of this attitude, but it isn't that. It's a lack of faith in the strategy of the 'war on terror'. My number one pick for the 2008 nomination was Russ Feingold. He's Jewish. And his ideas on safeguarding Israel are much more aligned with my ideas than Joe Lieberman's."