No wingnut grievance is too small or ridiculous for the Obama White House

Shoot me in the face:

The Department of Education has now changed their supplementary materials on President Obama's upcoming address to schoolchildren on the importance of education -- eliminating a phrase that some conservatives, such as the Florida GOP, happened to have been bashing as evidence of socialist indoctrination in our schools.

Waxman v. Dingell

So the H-Dog took the first round yesterday in the Steering Committee. Today is the whole caucus vote. Here's Jay Newton-Small's senior leadership source:

Member A, a Democratic Committee Chairman, routinely votes against the Party's position on defining issues, endorses the Republican candidate for President, spends months campaigning with that nominee, denounces Barack Obama as "naive" and "dangerous" and keynotes the Republican convention.

Member B, also a Democratic Chairman, raises more than $2 million to elect Democrats to Congress, helps expand the majority, helps deliver two new congressional seats in his home state and votes with the Party 97 percent of the time.

Which one gets an intraparty challenge for the gavel of the Committee?

Small adds: "In other words, many -- likely a majority -- in the Dem caucus don't feel Dingell deserves to lose his gavel."

But obviously the relevant comparison isn't between Dingell and Lieberman, now, is it? It's between Dingell and Waxman. The decision to let Lieberman keep his chairmanship was bad enough on its own merits. Now it's being used as an argument for letting another suboptimal committee chairman (for entirely different reasons) stay where he is?

It's not a question of whether Dingell "deserves" to keep his seat. It's a question of his representing Michigan, which puts him in a terrible position to facilitate climate change legislation. So here's hoping that Henry "The Ratface Killah" Waxman carries the day in the caucus at large. I read somewhere that the steering committee vote was relatively more Pelosi-influenced and therefore Waxman-friendly than today's vote will be, so it may be another disappointment.

Update:
He did it! Waxmania!

Get used to this face, America:

FISA Capitulation

Well it looks like retroactive immunity for the telcos is locked and loaded, which is great because we really don't want private companies having any qualms about breaking the law if they're asked to do so by the executive branch. We want the rails to be greased the next time an administration decides it wants to completely flout duly enacted laws but needs the private sector's help in doing so.

Greenwald is all over this, as he has been since the warrantless surveillance program was reported by the NYT in 2004, and a lot of people are joining him in calling on Obama to come out and call this the travesty it is. 

I'd love it if he did. I'm betting that he won't. It's completely fucking wrong, and he knows it, but he may not deem it worth spending any capital on. Caring about the preservation of the Constitution has somehow become the province of the lunatic fringe in American politics, as defined as Daily Kos readers and Ron Paul supporters, and Barack's got a general election to win. C'est la guerre.

Sad but true

Marc Ambinder: "For enough Democrats, Clinton represents enough change... Obama represents more change, certainly, but the perfect isn't the enemy of the good when there are other factors to consider."

It's frustrating that so many Democrats believe the party's second-most enthusiastic supporter of the Iraq War represents "enough change." It would seem to call into question just how important the war is as an issue, despite all the polls that until recently had it #1. But people seem to think of her as a foreign policy dove no matter what she does. A poll in December found that Democrats in the three early states trusted her the most on Iraq. The most, despite her obviously disingenuous insistence that she doesn't bear any responsibility for enabling it.

How stupid are Democrats? Polls say very.

It Burns

WSJ: "Frustration Builds for Democrats"