After the disgusting FISA vote and the insulting lies Dems spilled to defend the indefensible, Steve Soto will vote for the Yellow Dogs, but that's all: "Then today, I got the face-slap that an Obama administration will not prosecute most Bush Administration officials for their lawbreaking. As a result, he'll only get my vote and nothing more. [...] But life's too short, and I've been disappointed by my party and its leaders many times over the last eight years, and I don't feel like going along anymore. Money is tight but principle is still in abundance with me. The DSCC, DNC, and DCCC don't need me and frankly never have. And truthfully, Obama doesn't either. There's the Beltway, and then there's the rest of us." Me, I will still call my reps from time to time and ask why they voted for indefensible bills and against good ones, but if they tell me lies about how they were protecting me, I will routinely say, "But since everyone already knows that's a lie, what's the real reason?" In fact, I think we should have a postcard campaign in which we write to our reps and say something similar. "Dear _______ ________, When I called your office and asked why you supported the FISA bill, I was told that we need it to protect us and the new version protects our civil liberties. Since everyone knows that this is a lie, please tell me the real reason you supported it." (Copy it to your nearest local and national papers.) They won't answer, but they should be told they're not fooling anyone.

Macro Man presents A modest proposal to re-fill US coffers and get rid of some debt burdens at the same time - beginning with what you might call The Louisiana Unpurchase. Via Mercury Rising, where I also learned that another attempt at persecuting Al Sharpton has again fizzled, and Blackwater has been diversifying.

Since the Bush administration makes a lot of "mistakes" that turn out to be remarkably convenient for them, didn't you wonder how they "accidentally" sent out a private memo to their entire press list? And isn't it odd that the headline of that memo said that the administration's hand-picked Iraqi Leader had endorsed Obama's withdrawal plan - almost as if it were sent out by pro-Obama, anti-occupation activists? It's puzzling... unless you conclude that the GOP is now making moves to change their position for some reason. Swan suggests that their reason might be that they have all come to doubt the wisdom of staying in Iraq, but it occurs to me that there's another: They need to recast it as a debacle that's in the Democrats' hands so they can start screaming at them for not getting out yet on January 21st.

J. Sidney McSame likes to pretend he's been a critic of Bush's Iraq policies, but The Jed Report has the video that suggests otherwise. And here is the evidence that CBS edited McCain's interview with Katie Couric in which he claimed the Anbar Awakening was the result of The Surge, even though it started before the surge - as McCain used to know.

What George H.W. Bush thinks of Obama's world tour.