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[Howie Klein has some news:  "Tomorrow Blue America is going off schedule to accomodate Congressman Jerry Nadler. As much as I hate changing times-- we'll have him at 8am PT/11am EST-- I think it will be worth it if the brilliance on the phone today comes across in the live blog session. The guy blew me away, thanks in part to Christy's great suggestions for lines of questioning."  So please tune in earlier tomorrow for a great early edition Blue America with Jerry Nadler -- Pach] 

Listen to the Bush enablers pray fervently not to have their party, the party of the Asshat in Chief, tied to their necks for 2008 in tomorrow's Judy Miller Times:

WASHINGTON, April 6 — If the Democratic ascendance on Capitol Hill was supposed to usher in dark days for Republicans, it is hard to tell from talking to moderate ones like Mike Ferguson, who represents a suburban district in central New Jersey.

As the new Democrat-led House rushed to complete its business before adjourning for spring break this week, Representative Ferguson was marveling at the many bills that had been passed in Congress’s first 100 days, including one that would make it easier for unions to organize and another that would increase the minimum wage.

“Under the Republican majority, those bills would have never gotten to the floor,” he explained before heading back to his district. “Now they have been brought to the floor, and I’ve voted for them.”

Mr. Ferguson’s enthusiasm captures a peculiar political reality in the Capitol: many Republicans from swing districts in the Northeast are finding that life under Democratic rule has its advantages.

During the 12 years that Republicans controlled the House, moderate Republicans were the stepchildren of their party, expected to vote with their conservative leadership on crucial issues, even if it meant taking positions that could anger centrist voters back home.

In fact, the Democrats made some of their deepest inroads last year in the Northeast. A total of 10 Republican incumbents in the House were defeated in four states — New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania — where the challengers aggressively tried to tie the incumbents to President Bush and his conservative allies on the Hill.

Now, with those losses still fresh in their minds, Republican moderates remaining in the House are vowing to pursue their centrist positions more assertively, even if it means endorsing Democratic initiatives.

And the new Republican House leadership, concerned about losing even more seats in 2008, appears to be showing a pragmatic streak by allowing moderates to stray more freely from the party fold.

“If there’s a good idea, we should work to get it done, regardless of whether it’s a Republican or a Democrat who came up with the idea,” said Mr. Ferguson, who was re-elected last year with just 49.5 percent of the vote.

Since taking control of the House in January, Democrats have pushed through bills that would raise the federal minimum wage, overturn President Bush’s restrictions on embryonic stem cell research, cut interest rates on college loans and implement Sept. 11 commission security recommendations.

Many moderate Republicans joined the Democrats in supporting those measures, including Representative Christopher Shays of Connecticut, who won his own re-election campaign with 51 percent of the vote.

“Democrats basically grabbed the center and ran with it politically,” Mr. Shays said, adding that he would continue working with the Democrats provided they did not veer from the political center.

Representative Peter T. King, a Republican from Long Island who regularly sides with conservative Republicans on abortion and immigration issues, said there were “definitely positives” in the direction Democrats have taken the House.

“For a pro-labor Republican like me, it’s been very beneficial,” he said.

Republicans who survive the continuing blue trend in the Northeast will be rare indeed.  I don't know about Ferguson's district, but Shays will be lucky to survive another round in Connecticut.  The New York Republican party is all but dead, and though King has been pretty strong in his Nassau County district, as a seriously shameless Bush fluffer, he should be quite vulnerable to a strong challenge should one surface.  Does anyone know if Blue America candidate Dave Mejias is running again? 

This may be Easter weekend, but there will be no political resurrection for the Bushies, and this Judy Miller Times story is just so full of GOP spin and bullshit I'm wondering if Fred Hiatt has taken over their news division, since he sure doesn't care for the reporting by his own paper's news outfit. 

I swear, we're uncovering so much systemic corruption in the executive branch nowadays, I'm pretty sure that if Waxman and others keep pulling those threads, we're going to bump into a few more reporters, editors and media owners, dontcha think? 

Because while everything may not be good for Republicans, what's good for Republicans seems like it must be good for the big media outlets, or we would not ever have gotten anywhere near the fix we're in now as a country.  There's way too much "coincidence" for all this to have been a coincidence for all these years. 

Oh, and by the way. . . Atlanta?  Ha ha!  

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