I blogged last month on Jim Mc­Der­mot­t's long-running First Amendment legal battle with John Boehner, the new Republican Majority Leader. The Stranger has a cover story giving a lot of detail on the case.

President Clinton will be appearing at the Seattle Center on June-3rd in a fundraiser for McDermott.

Update: The We The People event will be held from 5:30-7:30pm at the Seattle Center Exhibition Hall. Tickets can be ordered here. I just ordered tickets for Emma and me. See you there.

Amy Sullivan has a piece in the Washington Monthly about the little-sung successes of the Democrats.

Apparently, there is some strategy and co­or­di­na­tion going on in the Democratic leadership, despite what the press might lead you to believe. The Dubai ports deal blew up because Schumer kept calling press con­fer­ences about it, though Schumer has hardly been credited with lobbing the grenade. Murtha was not left out in the cold by Pelosi and other Dems; it was a deliberate strategy to prevent him being labeled as a token hawk. And the Dems managed to kill Bush's pri­va­ti­za­tion of Social Security, by dis­ci­plined attacks on Bush's "risky" proposal. Their not …continue.

David Neiwert writes:

Go smugly amid the noise and haste,

and remember what peace there may be in stonewalling.

As far as possible, leave no chance of surrender

and be on superior terms to all other persons.

Speak your truthiness loudly and garbled;

and never listen to others,

especially not the wise and the well-informed;

they can all just go to hell.

Rest here.

President Al Gore on Saturday Night Live, spoofing the disastrous six years of Bush.

A lot of anti-war music and videos are appearing of late, and about time too.

Via Amer­i­ca­Blog, I learn today of Jackson Browne's new anti-war video, Lives in the Balance.

There's also Pink's song Dear Mr. President.

Not to mention Neil Young's new album, Living with War. You can listen to the entire album online.

And the Dixie Chicks' forth­com­ing album, Taking the Long Way.

On Saturday night, at the White House Cor­re­spon­dents Dinner, Stephen Colbert did something brave and unparalled. Standing 10 feet from George Bush and in front of an audience of hundreds of members of the Washington press corpse, Colbert, acting in his persona of a Bill O'Reil­lyesque pundit, flayed them with irony and sarcasm.

The greatest thing about this man is he's steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday. Events can change; this man's beliefs never will. As excited as I am to be here with the president, I am appalled to be surrounded by the …continue.

Over at Fire­DogLake, they've put together an impressive (and depressing) series on the "racist freak show" that con­sti­tutes so many right-wing blogs.

En­light­en­ing, if dis­taste­ful.

I'm a lot happier in my U.S. con­gress­man, Jim McDermott, than I am in my senators, Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell. (Especially Cantwell.)

Jim has been a strong pro­gres­sive voice in Congress for years. His early opposition to the Iraq War led to him being dubbed 'Baghdad Jim' by infuriated Re­pub­li­cans. He was one of the first national politi­cians to support Howard Dean's bid for the presidency. He had a big role in Fahrenheit 9/11. And he reads the role of Leopold Bloom for the Wild Geese Players of Seattle's readings of *Ulysses*.

For a decade, Jim has been fighting a legal battle …continue.

It's no secret that Bush is ap­palling­ly vacuous and incoherent whenever he has to answer a question that he hasn't been prepped for. Here are a few excerpts from his recent appearance at Johns Hopkins University:

The Presidency Is No Place for a Smart person

We're a in­flu­en­tial nation, and so, therefore, many problems come to the Oval Office. And you don't know what those problems are going to be, which then argues for having smart people around. That's why you ought to serve in government if you're not going to be the President. You have a chance to influence policy by giving good rec­om­men­da­tions to the President.

Return of …continue.

In The Media's Chance at Redemption, Russ Baker ably takes the MSM to task:

When, oh when, will the U.S. “main­stream media” finally stop hemming and hawing, parsing and un­der­stat­ing? When will they simply go for the jugular to confirm what any thoughtful American has already learned from “less reputable” but in­creas­ing­ly relevant al­ter­na­tive in­for­ma­tion sources: that from the beginning of the Bush ad­min­is­tra­tion, invading Iraq has always been as much an article of faith for the president as, well, promoting faith over reason?

...-

The Times report was full of throat-clearing and arcane notations that, while the memo had previously been reported, it had never been as fully reported, or that …continue.