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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (26187)	8/10/2006 12:36:42 AM
From: wonk	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541025

I have no idea what you just said. … If I may guess without offending you (I can never tell whether people want me to guess or don't) -- I think you're saying that many more people than I realize agree with the "Talk Left, Move On, Daily Kos" position. Basically, yes. But to be more clear, in addition I was responding to: …tiny minority of the country and will never amount to much other than gadflies in the side of the Body Politic. It's the reflexive position of teenagers and college kids without jobs, not married, no kids, and no houses. Most outgrow it…. If that’s your opinion, I was attempting to refute, at least anecdotally, that – if I may paraphrase - only adolescents, slackers and people without responsibilities or seasoning would read such “liberal” blogs representative of the ones you mentioned. It's not the center, though. JMHO. I agree. About as hard left as Bush is right -- correction, as Cheney is right. I certainly disagree and that was the point of the lemonade stand. Most business people I know certainly believe that our current government is incompetent. The ones on the left might believe they are scoundrels while the ones are the right believe “all” politicians are the same. The labels – liberal, moderate and conservative - provide no insight into their beliefs so why use them? Putting that aside, and speaking only for myself, kos is representative of an information source. It along with many others I use for education and insight. No different than SI, sometimes, somethings are a waste of time. One learns to screen those out. Others are highly worthwhile. I also use the Wall Street Journal. I don’t think I can be categorized by what I read, - and by what I find informative - regardless of source. For example, scanning kos today, I found out that Justice Kennedy gave the Keynote Address to the ABA. It led me to Raw Story. If this was in the Journal I missed it, yet I find the speech significant in both substance and tone, especially when viewed in context with Hamden. Now the kos diarist has his spin, which I don’t necessarily agree with. dailykos.com If you have a philosophical aversion to kos then you can go to Raw Story and watch the video which provides better context. rawstory.com Perhaps you’ll find it significant, perhaps not. I’d love to see the full text. Also, surfing through the liberal blogs, I moved from Greenwald to Anonymous Liberal and eventually got pointed to Owen Kerr’s blog on Specter’s proposed FISA amendments. Another trick one learns is to quickly scan the summary, and if more context is needed, go to the source or raw data. orinkerr.com It is not my understanding that Kerr - historically - could be characterized as a liberal: his analysis is interesting. Here’s an except: The changes to the definition of “electronic surveillance” are even more important. Part of the changes are presumably needed to authorize the NSA program; much of the program would seem to be excluded from the definition of “electronic surveillance.” But more broadly, note that under the new definition, monitoring does not constitute electronic surveillance if a) the person monitored has no Fourth Amendment “reasonable expectation of privacy” or b) no warrant would be required to conduct that monitoring in the criminal context. This explicit incorporation of Fourth Amendment law as the sole test of the statute is troubling, I think, because the Fourth Amendment standards for electronic surveillance are tremendously murky right now. For example, courts have held that you don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy in calls to or from cordless phones, and they have used reasoning that would also appear to apply as well to cell phone calls. (You have statutory privacy protection, which is much stronger than constitutional protection, but not constitutional protections.) If you don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy in your cell phone calls, which those cases suggest is the case, Specter’s bill would mean that the NSA can tap every cell phone in the country of every US citizen, for entirely domestic calls, all without a warrant. This monitoring wouldn’t be “electronic surveillance” because (based on the cordless phone cases) the Fourth Amendment doesn’t apply…. The warrantless wiretapping program for me is both a matter of professional interest and personal interest as a citizen. Why does it matter how I stay informed – as long as I am informed? ww p.s. I almost entirely agree with your exposition on rights. What does that make me?

To: Ilaine who wrote (26187)	8/10/2006 2:42:37 AM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541025

If Michael Moore, Daily Kos, Josh what's his face, etc., own the Democrat party -- not good for the center. Did those individuals and publications buy off the CT voters who chose Lamont? Brainwashed them with magic powers perhaps? It is odd to find this interspersed your many eloquent posts about voting and democracy. The people voted in a democratic election and the people chose their nominee for the Democratic Party in CT. There is no logical and supportable assumption that CT Democrats represent all Democrats in the other 49 states. And even if they did, that is their democratic (small d) right to vote their conscience, right? This is where Barnes and the others are going wrong. They will attack the personalities and institutions they don't like (i.e. anyone remotely to his left) and not stop to ask, what do the voters want right now? Too many years of trying to dictate what the people should want, and never convincing more than 51% of them in the voting booth. That approach will hurt them badly in November.

To: Ilaine who wrote (26187)	8/10/2006 7:07:29 AM
From: KonKilo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541025

If Michael Moore, Daily Kos, Josh what's his face, etc., own the Democrat party -- not good for the center. We all know Michael Moore, and Kos is quite partisan, but Josh Marshall is an excellent, serious journalist. He admittedly leans left, but is even-handed and fair. I would consider him as being in the center.