John Edwards addresses the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council

John Deeth Blog

Overflow crowd on the second floor of Iowa City’s Hotel Vetro — my guess is 300 or so. Some prominent Edwardians but a lot of look-see-ers. Questions will be written and chosen by the moderator. Atmosphere is formal, almost academic.

Was Scooter Libby working for Al Qaeda

If you use Hoekstra’s logic he was.

Double standards of the Versailles villagers

Gene Lyons

Take the Valerie Plame affair. What if the Clinton White House had deliberately identified a CIA employee to punish her husband for not going along with an administration line that helped drive the nation to war ? What if Vice President Al Gore’s chief of staff had been convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice ? Would Bill Clinton have survived to commute his sentence before being impeached, convicted and removed from office ? Would Gore have escaped criminal indictment ?

To ask the question is to answer it. Goodness, Washington went berserk over Clinton’s ignominious sex lies. Add a beautiful blonde and the word “treason,” and the Capitol dome would have levitated into the heavens. On “Meet the Press,” Tim Russert would have spontaneously combusted.

Dodd is anti-usury

A New Beginning for American Families: The Dodd Plan for Fair, Practical Bankruptcy Reform

Why I hope Hillary Clinton goes down in flames

Ezra Klein

Generally speaking, I find Obama’s constant harping on “the new politics” annoying. What, pray tell, are the old politics?

Well, question asked, question answered. Hillary Clinton is bringing the Co-mentum and hinting that she’ll appoint Colin Powell to help restore our standing in the world.

Colin Powell is a traitor. He is an apparatchik and always has been. I don’t understand how anyone could take Hillary Clinton seriously on national security after this.

Decline and fall of Joe Klein

For decades Joke Line has been serving as the resident pseudo liberal for whatever media mogul is publishing his work. That is why he was selected to carry TimeWarner’s water on FISA abuse. It may come back to bite him.

Glen Greenwald has been writing a series desconstructing Klein’s work. Jane Hamsher organized a conference call to discuss the latest column and now Atrios and Stoller have joined in.

The problem is that Klein can’t retract the column. It is part of TimeWarner’s PR offensive to win legal immunity before they have to disclose their potential legal liability to their shareholders. Moreover, if they don’t get immunity and they get hauled into court, the whole contradiction of a news organization serving, in effect, as secret police will begin to sink in on people. How would you like your presonal email on the pages of Time Magazine? Or discussed on CNN? If TimeWarner is your ISP provider there is nothing to prevent that.

Edit – Booman on why this matters.

Lambert comments.

Question for Hillary Clinton

Can anyone tell, from her site, whether Hillary has a plan to restore Constitutional government?

I really hope we nominate Edwards or Dodd.

DC residents are asking presidential candidates about DC voting rights — YouTube style.

Eleven volunteers submitted videotaped questions through YouTube, the online video sharing site, for the upcoming CNN/YouTube Republican candidates debate including: two members of the DC City Council, the chair of the DC Republican Committee, the chair of the DC Young Republicans, a Vietnam veteran, a schoolteacher, an Abe Lincoln look-alike, and others.

Probably a mistake to cooperate in this. CNN will probably trivialize this the same way they trivialized the Nevada debate.

DC Voting Rights – YouTube/CNN GOP Debate Questions

Dodd on the status of women

Dodd Rolls Out Plan for Women & Families

Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd held the first of three roundtable discussions this morning at House of Mercy in Des Moines while unveiling his plan for putting women and families first. He was joined at the event by Eva Bunnell, the woman whose story helped motivate him to author the Family and Medical Leave Act, which has allowed an estimated 50 million workers to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a new child or a sick family member.

Iowa online straw poll

Dodd wins. Wish this were more representative.