Jeff Merkley is a new Senator for me, although I was proud to be a supporter-from-afar when he ran for the Senate from Oregon in 2008. I like his taking-questions-from-constituents YouTubes and was happy to see Atrios featured one of them on today’s Eschaton front page.

All of Rod Blagojevich’s promised fireworks were duds, most precluded by a strict trial judge, James Zagel, through granting prosecution motions to preclude. And then, a little over a week ago, came the crushing blow that even Hot Rod himself would not take the stand in his own defense — Blago has simply gone into that good night.

While you work within the constraints put on any Speaker, to implement the agenda of the president who’s in your own party, please let San Francisco have real representation again. San Francisco values really matter to America. The City needs a Congressperson again. Let San Franciscans elect someone who needn’t compromise on their every viewpoint for the sake of the Speakership. You can do this, Madame Speaker. Please make it so. Finally, as I always close my letters and emails to you, more and more futile though they seem because of your dual role nowadays: Thank you for your service to San Francisco, to California, and to the United States of America.

Remember the plaintive cries of Democrats and progressives about the wrongful politicization of the Department of Justice by the Bush/Cheney Administration? Remember the stunning chart Sheldon Whitehouse whipped out at a Senate judiciary hearing on Alberto Gonzales’ tenure as AG showing how politicized the hallowed independent prosecutorial discretion of the DOJ had become under Bush, Cheney and Gonzales? The one that Pat Leahy called “the most astounding thing I have seen in 32 years”?

Ryan Grim and Sam Stein have an excellent piece on the coordinated efforts of various groups to support Bill Halter’s challenge to Blanche Lincoln. It represents the evolution of the efforts behind the Ned Lamont and Donna Edwards races, and now that the election is over, deserves some discussion.

Although the occasional cipher has been thrust into the highest levels of the Washington political scene in the past (see, for example, Dan Quayle) it seems that the process of driving substance out of the picture has accelerated since John McCain’s inexplicable choice of Sarah Palin to be his running mate. Now that President Obama’s choice for the Supreme Court has been revealed to be Elena Kagan, whose primary accomplishment to date has been to leave no record, instead of the clearly superior and substantial candidate Diane Wood, it seems that substance is in retreat in a way never seen before.

Horseshoes, handgrenades — and Bloomberg campaigns? Does “close” count there, too? There’s no more lucrative campaign business to be in than Michael Bloomberg’s. The wee Mayor bestowed his every-four-year bonuses on campaign staffers after barely winning re-election in a squeaker that was expected to be a blowout: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who spent [...]

It’s a lot easier to be famous when you’ve got God on your side.

There’s a lot of talk from defenders of the President about how every campaign breaks a promise or two when they get in office, and nobody voted for Barack Obama because he was going to televise health care negotiations on C-SPAN. But if there’s anything Obama ran as, it was as a reformer. He ran explicitly to “change the game” and not “play it better.” Yet everything in this health care deal represents a playing of the game better than past efforts, basically by buying off stakeholders and creating compromises favorable to their bottom lines. Every single thing.

Just before Christmas, on December 20, 2009, Dr. Drew Westen posted a lengthy article at Huffington Post entitled Leadership, Obama Style, and the Looming Losses in 2010: Pretty Speeches, Compromised Values, and the Quest for the Lowest Common Denominator. Dr. Westen’s piece caused quite a stir in both the blogosphere and more traditional media, and [...]