In 2004, the opposition party - with great assistance from corporate media - was extremely successful in painting presidential candidate John Kerry as a liar and a fake war hero, with additional thanks to Turdblossom protege now Arkansas US Attorney General Tim Griffin.

Over on Talking Points Memo is a headline article by Greg Sargent that discusses the gearing up of the opposition party's dirty tricks machine aimed at discrediting Senator Obama by any means necessary.

Sargent wrote under the headline, RNC Hiring Rove Protege To Dig Opposing Research On Obama:

A legitimate case with numerous postponements, it has finally worked its way to depositions - a Federal Election Commission fraud case based on a complaint filed against the Clintons that $1.2 million raised in a 2000 Hollywood Gala was illegally diverted to Senator Clinton's 2000 US Senate campaign for the seat she now holds.

Yesterday's Breaking News

In the landmark civil fraud case against Bill Clinton in Los Angeles, where the former President is charged with defrauding a Hollywood dot com millionaire to help Hillary Clinton obtain more than $1.2 million from him for her 2000 Senate campaign, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Aurelio Munoz ruled on Friday, April 25 that Hillary Clinton would not be required to testify in a sworn deposition as a material witness in the case until AFTER the November election!

Quite an interesting cast of characters - Stan Lee, the big time comic book cartoonist, La Streisand, Cher, and the ex-convict and central complainant, Peter F. Paul, who works with Lee.

Nearly 800,000 nonpartisan votes may be disallowed because voters failed to mark either the "American Independent Party" or "Democratic Party" bubble on their ballots.  At least 750,000 were cast by Los Angeles County "decline to state" voters. The issue could affect a large number of votes because more than 20 percent of the county's nearly 4 million registered voters are listed as "decline to state."

According to Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation,

"This could potentially impact hundreds of thousands of ballots," Alexander said. "There could be legal challenges."

the very first of the 21st Century, thus illustrating that there is at least some tiny sliver of democracy left to ring through our country.  

The bitter, vituperative name-calling battle waged earlier in Lucius Vorenus's diary went beyond the pale, so I thought I'd put a different and, hopefully, more objective, spin on the matter.

Face it: The 2008 Presidential nomination field is boring.  Why, just this morning, Markos blasted Nominee Hopeful Bill Richardson's campaign as "seriously incompetent."  Truthfully, this current crop of candidates on all sides of the aisle are, at best, mediocre leaders in most areas of constituency representation.  Since the 2006 General Election, both parties have shown themselves to be custard pie-backed weaklings in every aspect of governance.

This morning on C-Span, Jim Vandehei fielded questions and chatted up the Sunday host about a new "non-partisan" website, Politico, that is scheduled to "go live" in three weeks, on January 23, 2007.

What anti-impeachment people don't seem to realize is that it wasn't the Democrats who threatened impeachment and sought and received Nixon's resignation; it was the Republicans. Talk about shock and awe, huh?

Dim Son's own party folk are tired enough of him and Trigger Happy Dick to want to assassinate them, let alone impeach them. The cliche "the politics of personal destruction" has nothing to do with these people being impeached; they've committed crimes and should be punished for them. Stevie Wonder can see this; it's not rocket science.

Yeah, 8 years ago, no one had committed any of the crimes these people have; 8 years ago it was about personal destruction; but it ain't about that now.  Just as y'all don't get why we see their criminal acts as being punishable by impeachment, I don't get how y'all can compare impeaching Bush/Cheney with the politics of personal destruction.  It makes absolutely no sense whatsover to castigate those of us who argue that constitutional laws have been broken and these people have trampled all over the legalities of such.  This ain't personal; this is about the political business of wise, responsible governing....

This morning, I was riveted by Democracy Now!'s glimpse into this country's protest marches against Bush.

The Democracy Now discussion brought together two people involved in the unfolding of Watergate. First, there was Elizabeth Holtzman who served four terms in Congress and played a key role in House impeachment proceedings against President Richard Nixon. Holtzman will be speaking in Philadelphia tomorrow at the pro-impeachment rally and has a new book, "The Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens."

The second guest was Daniel Ellsberg, this country's best known, pioneer whistleblower who leaked the 7,000 page Pentagon Papers, a top-secret study of U.S. decision-making in Vietnam. Ellsberg's whistleblowing set in motion events that eventually toppled the Nixon presidency. Ellsberg recently published an article on Iran, "The Next War,"  in Harpers magazine.