by Eli [courtesy of Firedoglake]

This is quite possibly the most horrifying thing I have ever heard.  Joe Lieberman goes waaaay below and beyond the call to defend poor Johnny's beleaguered bearings.

by brownsox [courtesy of Daily Kos]

On the heels of the fascinating drunken Vito Fossella love-child scandal (if you can come up with a pithy little term for this scandal, please do, we sure could use one), SurveyUSA has polled NY-13, and finds that voters, by and large, think Fossella should not resign. Voters are mixed on whether he should run for reelection, with Democrats generally feeling he should not, Republicans feeling that he should.

61% of adults from New York’s 13th Congressional District say their U.S. Representative, Republican Vito Fossella, should remain in office, according to an exclusive SurveyUSA poll conducted for WABC-TV in New York. 32% say Fossella should resign.

Both Republicans and Democrats say Fossella should stay put: 66% of Republicans and 55% of Democrats say he should remain in office.

...

Asked if Fossella should run for re-election in the fall, however, numbers shift somewhat: overall, 53% say he should seek re-election; 42% say he should not. Republicans say he should run by a margin of nearly 2-1; Democrats are divided equally on the question. Fully crosstabbed results of the poll are here.

However, Phillip at The Albany Project notes that the local media is adamant that Fossella should resign. From the New York Post:

That Fossella betrayed his wife and family is between him and them. But his betrayal of his constituents was only marginally less egregious.

Vito Fossella needs to just go away.

Now.

The Staten Island Advance and New York Daily News concur.

by Phoenix Woman [courtesy of Firedoglake]

Last Monday I did a piece on how the AP has joined the local media in the Twin Cities in enabling a certain paid Republican operative and blogger named Michael Brodkorb, treating him as respectfully as they do Matt Drudge, even though (like Drudge) he's known for spewing bogosities. And like the national press, the Twin Cities press isn't as deferent to non-conservative bloggers; the same media that cites Brodkorb by name as an honest and "independent" source seem to suffer memory lapses where the contributions of lefty bloggers are concerned.

by BarbinMD [courtesy of Daily Kos]

It's time to draw a line in the sand.  There are forty-seven members of the Blue Dog Democrats, and we need to know which ones support the U.S. troops who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan and which ones agree with Rep. John Tanner that they are nothing more than deficit-enhancing debris. This is what Mr. Tanner had to say when announcing the plan by a segment of the Blue Dogs to block a vote on the GI Bill of Rights:

Some of us oppose creating a new entitlement program in an emergency spending bill, whether it’s butchers, bakers or candlestick-makers.

A group that has voted time after time to support George Bush's war, at a cost of over $500 billion dollars, now dismisses the men and women who risked their lives as candlestick-makers who don't deserve money to go to college?  The Blue Dog's reason?  Because their budgetary rule of pay-as-you-go has "been ignored one too many times."  Yes, these champions of fiscal responsibility are fine with George Bush's twice-a-year $100 billion "supplementals," they are fine with billions going to Halliburton and Blackwater, but when it comes to providing a benefit to the people who fought in the war that the Blue Dogs supported, well, to hell with the troops.  

The Blue Dogs only need 15 votes to block a vote on this measure which scheduled to come up next week, and when asked if they had enough members opposing the bill, Blue Dog leader Rep. Allen Boyd (D-FL) said:

"There’s 47 of us, what do you think?"

Your vote:

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by Jane Hamsher [courtesy of Firedoglake]

Commenter cinnamonape: : "Lost his bearings?" Now we know why McCain almost flunked out of Annapolis. How can a third-generation Navy man not know that this is a NAVAL TERM that means an individual has lost sight of their navigational standards. It has nothing to do with AGE…Navy men and those that used this slogan were ALWAYS referring to people who had become sidetracked away from their presumed course. Young captains could “lose their bearings” as well as old ones.

Sad that McCain doesn’t even know Naval Terminology!

by DHinMI [courtesy of Daily Kos]

Michigan offered up a plan for seating its delegates:

Under that proposal -- hammered out weeks ago by Sen. Carl Levin, Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, UAW President Ron Gettelfinger and National Committeewoman Debbie Dingell -- Sen. Hillary Clinton would get 69 of the state's delegates and Sen. Barack Obama, 59.

The compromise would cut only slightly into Obama's lead. The Illinois senator has 1,846.5 delegates to Clinton's 1,696, according to the Associated Press.

The proposal also would seat the state's 29 superdelegates.

The proposal essentially splits the difference between the 73 delegates Clinton won under state party rules in the disallowed primary -- Obama had taken his name off the ballot -- and an Obama proposal to award each candidate half the delegates.

State Party Chairman Mark Brewer said he was directed during a conference call with the state party's 80-member executive committee Wednesday night to bring the plan as a challenge to the Democratic National Committee's Rules and Bylaws panel when it meets May 31 in Washington.

Brewer said support for the compromise was sizable.

Among those supporting the plan:

DNC member Joel Ferguson, a co-chairman of Clinton's Michigan campaign who said he could support the 69-59 plan.

"While we compromised on how many delegates we get, we still recognize the plurality of the election," Ferguson said, noting that proposal lets Clinton keep a 10-delegate lead in light of her primary victory.

Your vote:

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by Donita Sparks [courtesy of Firedoglake]

I finally got to see Martin Scorsese’s concert film of the Rolling Stones, Shine A Light last weekend. I’m sick of people talking about the Rolling Stones being old, looking old, whatever. Anyone should look so good at their age. In fact, most snipers probably should look so good ever in their lives.

by Christy Hardin Smith [courtesy of Firedoglake]

The YouTube at left is the original CNN attempt at "debunking" the idiotic Obama e-mail smears -- my favorite part is Howie Kurtz saying that the way the media works these days is to run with unsourced internet smear rumors, and then backtrack to determine their veracity after the information is already "out there." Journamalism at its finest, eh?McClatchy shows how this ought to be done, getting to the heart

by David Sirota [courtesy of Open Left - Front Page]