A long time ago, before Daily Kos had scoop, or frontpagers, or widespread renown, Markos needed to take a break from the site for a few days. There was no one but Kos posting on the front page, so he needed a guest host to fill in while he was away.

Markos asked Larry Lessig, an amazing and hugely influential Stanford Law professor and activist. This was my introduction to Larry Lessig, and he was incredible... he was knowledgable, readable, funny, and very, very smart.

Lessig lives in Tom Lantos’ district, and since Lantos’ unfortunate death, has decided to explore running for congress.

There has been a whole lot of discussion around here about Pledged vs. Unpledged delegates to the Democratic convention. Exactly who to count as being for which candidate seems to be something nobody can really agree on, but one minor point seems to be uncontroversial:  John Edwards won 14 national delegates in Iowa.

The thing is, he actually didn’t.

As soon as the Iowa caucuses were finishing, the national media very quickly extrapolated the numbers to predict how many national delegates each candidate will earn. The only problem is, nobody has actually earned them yet!

Let's play a game. Let's imagine that Democrats regain control of both the house and the senate this November. (This is not as likely as you might be thinking, but let's pretend.) Should the Democrats impeach the president?

The Democrats should not. Oh I know, it would be SOOOOO satisfying... and believe me, I sure as hell don't think the guy is morally or intellectually qualified to be president either. I get a little thrill every time I see an "Impeach!" sticker or poster. Torture, secret prisons, suspending habeas corpus, illegal wiretaps, prosecuting a wasteful, deadly and illegal war... they sure seem like good reasons to impeach, don't they?

Not good enough. Let me explain why.

My campus has been overrun. Starting yesterday and culminating in the grand event tommorrow night, thousands of news media and political activists are invading ASU. Parking is hellish, and serious guys in suits are wandering around campus. An aqauintance of mine was rushed and (aggressivly) threatened with arrest for touching the new fence surrounding the auditorium.

How can we turn this media storm to our advantage? Help me help Kerry! More below.

John McCain has continued his pattern of "soft" critique of the Bush administration. In the last ten minutes on my NPR station he has pretty strongly critiqued the planning of the Iraq war. (he is in favor of more troops.)

He also said, in reference to 9/11:
"the Bush administration is guilty of not doing more" This did come in the middle of a statement saying that Clinton and the intelligence agencies are also guilty of not doing more. Not the party line, but also not unexpected from John McCain.

However, he then related this story when asked who ought to be fired as a result of 9/11:

"One of my earliest memories as a small boy is when the battleship ____ ran aground off of Norfolk. The captain was asleep in his cabin, it was the navigator who ran the ship aground, but the captain was off the ship within two hours, because he was the one responsible."

This is a paraphrase (obviously, since I can't remember the name of the ship) but I don't think I have misinterpreted it... it sounds to me like he thinks Bush should be fired.

Any speculation about why McCain has taken this tack? I know we have already talked about how much McCain has reason to hate Bush, but what do we think his short term political goal is?