While Obama has been criticized for his decision to decline public financing, the reality is that the financing mechanism he has implemented, both for his campaign and the DNC, is exactly in keeping with the spirit of the campaign reforms implemented in the wake of Watergate.

I saw the kos poll today on the US Senate race in Minnesota, and noticed the overwhelming support for Al Franken. I'm a newspaper editor in a small town in Minnesota and I've had the opportunity to interview two of the candidates in this race, at length.. as in one to two hours, one on one.

I don't know whether I was the last person to find out about The Real News or not, but if you haven't checked out their website, you really should take a look.

I don't know about you, but I am growing increasingly tired of the Democratic charade on the subject of Iraq.

The I-35W bridge wasn’t the only thing in Minnesota that collapsed last week. I believe last Wednesday’s tragedy will mark the beginning of the end for the ideology of something for nothing.

Having power and being willing to lead are two very different things.

This isn't a big surprise, but it's as definitive as anything we seen to date on Franken's expected challenge of Minnesota senator Norm Coleman. The Associated Press is reporting that Franken has just told top Democratic officials that he's in the race. An announcement is expected any day now.

So much for crashing the gate! Give a blogger a little credibility and attention and he quickly becomes part of the problem, just like the rest of the worthless Democratic establishment that believes the party should never, ever, put principle above politics.

Democrats have the Bush administration's foreign policy all wrong, and it could cost them dearly come November. For years, the Democrats and many Bush critics have pointed to administration incompetence as an explanation for the ongoing bloodbath in Iraq and the associated instability in the Middle East, most recently expressed in Lebanon.
I have held a similar view until recently, when I began to take seriously the notion that elements within our own government may have been complicit in allowing the 9/11 attacks to happen for political purposes. Once you accept that this administration has lied from the very beginning about the war on terror, it becomes much easier to understand their game plan.

So now we know, thanks to the Real Security plan outlined this week by Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton et al. The Democrats plan to make their 2006 case to the people firmly on Republican turf.

I was shocked at the comments of Minnesota senator mark dayton regarding Sen. Russ Feingold's censure proposal.

The headline made you look, didn't it.
Now imagine the headline was true.

It's no secret to Kos readers that the U.S. is facing a constitutional crisis over the Bush administration's position on wiretaps, torture and other issues where the president is claiming the laws passed by Congress don't apply to him.  While many are focusing their anger on the administration, the bigger problem in this case is with Congress. And that creates an opportunity for Democrats looking to reclaim control of the House or Senate.

The Weekly Standard has an online posting that makes the only remotely convincing I have seen that Bush may be in the clear legally on the NSA spying case. Bush critics need to have a clear rebuttal, which is why I am posting it here. Talk it through...

I believe that when the full extent of President Bush's abuses of power are known, they will exceed even those of former President Richard Nixon.

The parallels are already becoming clear with the revelation, and admission by Bush that he engaged in illegal wiretapping- actions that played a major role in Nixon's impeachment.

Since the latest oil price spike, right wing blogs and editorial writers have repeatedly pointed the finger at environmentalists as the problem. The story line is that environmentalists have prevented the well-intentioned oil companies from building new refining capacity in the U.S., which has contributed to our vulnerability to price shocks.

If you didn't hear the report this evening on National Public Radio by Laura Sullivan and Daniel Zwerdling, go to npr.org and listen to it. The revelations they report suggest there could be a scandal of unprecedented proportions in the New Orleans response. According to the report, state, local and federal officials from FEMA had worked out detailed hurricane response plans more than 24 hours before Katrina hit.

National Guard forces were on alert and ready to respond as of Monday, but orders were never issued. The report doesn't indicate who should have issued those orders, but the implication was clearly that it should have come from Washington.

A CNN poll released Dec. 26 revealed that 64 percent of Americans feel that America is facing a moral decline. It's an opinion that cuts across political fault lines. Religious conservatives make up no more than 15-20 percent of the electorate, so clearly there are a great many Americans out there, besides religious conservatives, who understand the moral and ethical decay that is so prevalent in this country right now. From corrupt CEOs, to an administration that every days tells the public that black is white, to athletes on steroids, to our utter lack of respect for the environment, we are buried in evidence of our moral and ethical decline.

Virtually every Democrat I know here in northern Minnesota, shares this attitude and sees it as a serious, if not fundamental, problem for the country.

The question is: why do Democrats keep their doubts such a deep, dark secret?