Democratic Ideological Battle -- Hillary vs. Dean

The New Republic has an good overview of the ideological battle raging within the Democratic party epitomized by the heavyweights on either side -- Hillary and Dean. Hillary representing the moderate, corporatist, DLC wing of the party, with Dean the champion of idealistic liberals and self-styled "Washington outsiders."

An interesting sub-text to the story is the role of bloggers in all this. Clearly, blogs -- the so-called netroots -- were instrumental in Dean's rise in '03; however Hillary and the mainstream Democratic machine, after their initial dismissiveness, have seen the power of Internet activism and are building (or co-opting) an on-line presence. A high-profile example of this is Hillary's recent hiring of Peter Daou of Salon's Daou report.

The TNR piece speculates that some bloggers are becoming less idealistic because either: (a) they're hungry, need a better-paying job and feel like now is the time to cash in and become part of the party's power structure, and/or (b) they feel compromise is necessary in order to win elections and half a loaf is better than none at all. As I read this I couldn't help but think of Idaho's own Julie Fanselow, writer of the Red State Rebels blog, and now on-line coordinator (a paid staff position) for Larry Grant's Congressional bid.

Here's hoping that the liberal blogosphere can push Democratic political candidates to embrace the idealistic vision and not get subsumed as on-line drones for yet more fruitless, DLC/Republican-lite, campaigns.

The End of Tripartite Government?

The American Bar Association report (summary here, full PDF report here) on the abuse of presidential signing statements by is the latest dead canary in the metaphorical mineshaft of this Republic warning of grave danger to its future as a nation of laws. One needn't go so far as to compare the current state of this administration to the genesis of European dictatorships early in the last century to be alarmed. While we may not be on the path to fascism or tyranny, we are on racing headlong towards having an elected emperor with the other two branches of government reduced to ceremonial anachronisms.

Should Congress and the Judiciary not act to quell this presidential power grab -- essentially a unilateral rewriting of the Constitution to eliminate the possibility of veto overrides -- how long will it be before the elected king decides to ignore other troublesome parts of the Constitution like Article II, Section 1 (presidential term of office and means of election) or the 22nd Amendment (presidential two term limit)?

Welcome

This is just a welcome and a placeholder until I get get rolling. In the meantime, I have been guest-blogging over at candidate Larry Grant's (D, ID-01) blog.
My first take was on Bush's veto of the embryonic stem-cell bill and Tony Snow's comparing such research to murder. Next, I highlighted a video news story from one of the Boise TV stations about the linkage between Republican candidate Bill Sali and the anti-government group, Club for Growth. Finally, I dug up some information about one of the fundamentalist PACs supporting Sali that refers to the US as an "unbiblical welfare state."
I'll have more to come about the ID-01 race since it features a far-right candidate, Sali, in the mold of Tom Tancredo (R-CO), J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ) and Tom Coburn (R-OK).