This wasn't news this was an op-ed piece promoting liberal ideals. I am moderate in my beliefs, but come on! Comments like "Rove will also apparently regrow his hair and play for the Cowboys." In response to his belief that the Republicans will win the White House in 08?? I think they will.

Look at the facts:

1.) Iraq is going better than expected. Lowest death count since the invasion. Things will be even better by the 08 elections. Ask anyone who has been there recently!

2.) Bush has higher approvals then the Dem's in Cogress. By the way what have they done since we put them their? Raised the minimum wage? BIG DEAL

Thus: It seems that the Republicans are more apt at running our country and will probably receive my vote. In the meantime keep the bias for the op-ed pieces.

The US death toll in July was 73. That is not anywhere near the lowest monthly death toll.

Bush has a slightly higher rating than near 50/50 split in Congress. I think that means that voters will elect more dems to find out what happens when the dems have a veto proof majority.

The dems have passed significanlty more legislation than the minimum wage bill. The ethics bill is important, since it may help kill the pork that republicans have been putting into the budgets.

Will it also kill the pork the Dems have slid into the budget? Don't even try and claim there hasn't been any. That pants-wetter Murtha is all over that stuff. So is Pelosi, for that matter. Pork is Pork, no matter from which side of the isle it comes...

Come on, man, this is America ... don't you have xm radio? I am sure Uncle Rush Limbaugh is on somewhere to give you some of the conservative based pablum that you crave!

Many people refer to earmarks as pork, without any real evaluation as to the value of the money spent. If you look into earmarks from the Clinton years and compare them to the Bush years you will find that there were something like 5 times as many projects added to the budget. The problem is really that people like Stephens put money on the tab to make themselves rich....Now at least the earmarks must carry the name of the offender.

The other part of the bill has to do with lobbyists and if you can find a parallel between how the democrats have treated lobbyists and the way that the republicans made them part of the government, please tell me an example or two of anything like Abramoff and the K street project or the oil companies helping Cheney write energy policy.

Adept, not apt. Maybe you mean aptitude.

This IS an op ed piece. It's not a liberal bias. It's an opinion/point of view.

As for whether the GOP could win the White House in '08, I agree that they could well.

To even think that things in Iraq are going "better than expected" indicates to me that you haven't been paying attention to what has happened since the invasion. Better than expected...ten minutes ago, perhaps.

Congressional or presidential approval ratings don't have much to do with policy or aptitude or skill or anything. What about the management of Katrina/New Orleans, the ethics of the last congresses, the handling of post-war planning in 2003 by the Defense and State Departments, the handling of medical treatment for the large number of seriously wounded soldiers, for example, say to you that the Republicans are good managers of government?

Adept at running the country? Which country are you referring to? Maybe a country CLUB. Essentially Bush has been asleep at the wheel. He prides himself on being able to make decisions. He's right about that. Unfortunately, the extent of his decision-making is to put someone he likes in charge and then assume they are handling things. Cheney, Brownie, Gonzales, Rumsfeld... They all did a "heck of a job".

I'm not positing that the Dem's can or will do a better job, but let's face reality. This administration has been a train wreck.

Thanks for posting. I always wondered what the world looked like through the rose colored haze of Prozac.

Reading Chitown2277's "What a liberal bias" is like a primer on everything that's wrong with political information in this country: we live in an atmosphere where propagandists need never fear being called on bad information even when they are unable to master spelling and usage.

The assertion in his 'facts' that 'Iraq is going better than expected' is a meaning-free statement (expected by whom?), which is only made worse by its being untrue.

Also, once you climb past the nonsensical assertions and mention, yet again, that the war in Iraq is a cynical exploitation of the 9/11 attack to wage a war that is destabilizing the situation in the Middle East. It also emboldens our enemies in the region by demonstrating the limits of U.S. military power--at a cost of a score or so of U.S. service personnel and several billion dollars every month--Chitown's 'facts' transition from idiocy to obscenity.

In a perfect world there would be a perfect political climate in which facts and results would have knife-edged clarity. The Chitown's of the world would have to knuckle under and spend their time sitting at home and grumbling. Unfortunately for America and the world, drool is fact until proven otherwise, and explanations of why drool is drool, are longer and harder to read than the drool itself is.

It's sad, but true: even poorly-spelled propaganda finds its way into the veins of democratic political discourse without its writer's having to fear an effective answer.

yesterday might disagree with the "better than expected" statement - not to mention the 9 US soldiers and their families.

<link>

What do you expect from a Democrat congress?

A Summary of the beloved Dems,,,ummmmmmmmm work so far.

"The House and Senate entered recess for the summer last week, capping off a mixed first semester for the Democratic majority with an unprecedented and rowdy breakdown in the House as well as a shocking confirmation victory for Republicans in the Senate.

The two most startling developments of the end-of-semester action -- the Senate Judiciary Committee's approval of a maligned 5th Circuit nominee and the cut-off vote on the Agriculture bill -- play to the Republicans' advantage. The White House pulled out a win on renewal of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Otherwise, Democrats won victories in expanding government.

Southwick Nomination: Last Thursday, Judiciary Committee Republicans and Democrats alike were caught off guard when Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) voted in favor of Mississippi Supreme Court Judge Leslie Southwick's nomination, giving Southwick a majority in the Judiciary Committee and sending his nomination to the floor.

1. Southwick, nominated for the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, was a prime target of the liberal groups behind the Democrats' filibuster campaign that began with Miguel Estrada's nomination in 2002. Southwick was targeted in good part because of his rulings on homosexual issues. For the groups in the liberal coalition fighting over nominees, homosexual issues are second-most important behind abortion -- and these priorities are reflected in Democrats' fundraising sources. The public arguments against Southwick usually rest on assertions he was racist. Feinstein, in voting in favor of his nomination, rejected those accusations outright.
   
   
2. Southwick's victory was a surprise and a real failure for Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy (D-Vt.). Leahy scheduled the Thursday vote in part to punish Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for "grandstanding" by offering an amendment calling for a floor vote on Southwick. Leahy had been honoring a GOP request to delay the vote, and when he scheduled the immediate vote for Thursday, it looked like a death sentence for the Southwick nomination.
   
   
3. Leahy expected a party-line defeat of Southwick in committee, but Feinstein's switch, together with nine Republican senators' staying in line, gave Southwick a 10-to-nine victory. This was a serious embarrassment. While Republicans were never excellent at enforcing party unanimity in committee or on the floor, committee chairmen were almost never sandbagged this badly -- scheduling a vote expecting a win, and then losing. The closest thing in the GOP Congress was when Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) sank John Bolton's nomination to be UN ambassador in 2005, shortly before a vote.
   
   
4. Besides being a failure of Democratic leadership, Southwick's win is also a victory for McConnell and President Bush. McConnell's persistence paid off, and he succeeded in keeping Republicans in line. Southwick's win gives the White House some hope on future nominees -- including a possible Supreme Court nominee. But on that score, nobody should read too much into Feinstein's flip.
   
   
5. Feinstein, the former mayor of San Francisco, has an undeserved reputation as a hard-core liberal. Ever since her tight reelection in 1998, she has amassed a somewhat moderate record, though none of the true moderate Democrats have seats on the Judiciary Committee.
   
   
6. For both parties, judge battles -- especially at the circuit court level -- are primarily about serving the parties' activists. Voters are not tuned in to parliamentary squabbling on lower-court judges, but the groups that do much of the parties' heavy lifting put more weight on this issue than on most. For Democrats, the added pressure is that these groups are also major campaign contribution pipelines.

Intelligence: For all their toughness on most issues and their harsh criticism of executive branch assaults on privacy and civil liberties, Capitol Hill Democrats surrendered to the White House on updating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

1. Both Republicans and Democrats wanted to modify FISA to close a "loophole" that excluded from the act -- which allows for warrantless wiretaps of foreign entities -- foreign-to-foreign conversations that are routed through the U.S. The White House, however, upped the ante by demanding FISA extend to conversations in which only one party is outside the country, and the other is here. Democrats on the campaign trail call this "domestic spying" by the administration.
   
   
2. This "domestic spying" is one of the chief points of attack that the mainstream media and the Democratic base use against the Bush Administration. It's telling, then, that Democrats caved and passed the White House bill.
   
   
3. Although they are emboldened by the President's low approval ratings and by the low approval of the Iraq War -- and although they probably have the upper hand in foreign policy battles -- Democrats are still terrified of looking weak on security. This fear, which dates back to the beginning of the Cold War, will play an interesting role in the presidential election next year.

House: In an unprecedented turn of events on Thursday night, as the House approached summer recess, Democrats ended a vote prematurely as Republicans appeared about to pull off a win. This incident further poisons the well on Capitol Hill and reflects on Democratic inexperience in the majority.

1. The measure under consideration -- a motion to recommit the Agriculture appropriations bill with instructions to add a provision prohibiting illegal immigrants from receiving food stamps -- was more show than substance. Under current law, illegals are not eligible for food stamps, but it was a good red meat vote for the GOP. Losing the vote is in no way a setback for Republicans nor a victory for Democrats. In fact, it probably cuts the other way.
   
   
2. On orders from his party's leaders, Speaker Pro-Tempore Michael McNulty (D-N.Y.) gaveled closed a vote on the measure when it was tied 214 to 214, thus sinking the motion even as Republicans in the "Nay" column were visibly calling to change their votes to "Yea." This sent Republicans into chants of "shame! shame!", cries of cheating and a walkout. Tempers stayed high for the next two days until recess.
   
   
3. The Democrats' rush to end the vote reflected more disorganization and panic than out-and-out cheating. After closing the vote at 214 to 214, Democratic leaders called for the vote to be reconsidered, and they won that vote 216 to 213 -- Democratic leaders had successfully flipped three of their own members. The question is: Why did they need such clumsy tactics to win the vote? Under the same circumstances in past congresses, Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) would have held the vote open long enough to flip their members and win -- a move that would have evoked protestations but would not have smacked of cheating and theft. The answer is: inexperienced Democratic leaders panicked.
   
   
4. While the dust-up was sparked by a Democratic stumble, the majority held firm as Republicans spent the next two days launching various protests. On Friday, when the minority tried to reject approval of the previous day's Congressional Record because Democrats had scrubbed any trace of the original 214-to-214 vote, Speaker Pro Tempore John Murtha (D-Pa.) overruled the protesting Republicans and denied their call for a recorded vote.
   
   
5. If there was any hope of a renaissance of civility on the Hill -- and there wasn't, really -- it's gone now. Things have been getting progressively worse for more than a decade, and the escalation will continue. Mainstream media anticipation of newfound congressionally civility was grounded in the hope that the Republican minority would return to its pre-Newt Gingrich docility. With the GOP caucus consisting mostly of Gingrich-era or DeLay-era conservatives, that's not going to happen. "

You prefer republican efforts at ethics reform? You do remember when they removed republican members of the ethics committee for investigating and issuing a reprimand to DeLay?

It is funny that you would criticize any attempt to improve the situation....well, maybe not. I guess I can see you'd be upset that republicans don't get to carry on as before.

I would like a Bill that actually accomplishes something....... this is NOT it.