Is Russ Feingold...

...a secret driftglass fan?

I dig Senator Russ.

He is, as a rule, clear, focused and unbending when it comes to matters of principle. Also he can knock heads like Moe Howard.

But could it also be that his peeps peep me? Cruising for clever catch phrases?

We allege; you decide :-)

This from the Senator’s excellent Dkos Diary from Feb 02, 2006 (Go read the whole thing)

Pre-1776 Mentality

by Senator Russ Feingold

The President and his administration continue their spin and media blitz in attempts to defend the fact that they broke, and continue to break, the law. Their weak and shifting justifications for doing so continue. The latest from the President seems to be that basically the FISA law, passed in 1978, is out of date. His decision that he can apparently disregard "old law" fits the pattern with the President and his administration. He's decided to disregard a statute (FISA) and the Constitution (the 4th Amendment) by continuing to wiretap Americans' phone calls and emails without the required warrant, while at the same time claiming powers of the presidency that do not exist. (Perhaps he feels the Constitution is too "old," as well.) This administration reacts to any questions about spying on American citizens by saying that those of us who stand up for our rights and freedoms are somehow living in a "pre-September 11th, 2001 world."
In fact, the President is living in a pre-1776 world.

Our Founders lived in dangerous times, and they risked everything for freedom. Patrick Henry said, "Give me liberty or give me death." The President's pre-1776 mentality is hurting America and fracturing the foundation on which our country has stood for 230 years. The President can't just bypass two branches of government, and obey only those laws he wants to obey. Deciding unilaterally which of our freedoms still apply in the fight against terrorism is unacceptable and needs to be stopped immediately.
…

The phrase that pays – “a pre-1776” something – pops up a lot after the Senator’s dairy, and came up again today from the Senator at the Bush Domestic Wiretap Scandal Hearings.

(Hmmm. Shall we call it... Arro-gate? (tm) Because I think that sums it up perfectly.)

All of this takes place during the first two weeks of February.

However, during the last week of January, this from little, ol' me...

Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

“Through an ass darkly…”

Wherein the GOP demonstrate their “Pre-1776” mindset.

Why do I bring it up?

First, as a goof. It’s just kinda cool to think about. Folks have shot me missives about this blog being linked-to in some fairly far, wide and strange places, and given how fast information centrifuges through the internets, it’s not exactly impossible that some little thing I wrote ended up in the public comments of a public official.

Is it probable? Not especially, but it is possible…and that, as I said, is kinda fun to think about.

Second, if true, Senator Russ, drop me a line. If you want another more-or-less reliable inkpiddler who can toss you an occasional punchy phrase, I’m reasonably priced and very discrete. :-)

Third, and more generally, the whole predicate of Left Bloggylvania is that we’re all in this together. That communications should be as open, free and non-hierarchical as possible, and that the lines between grassroots/netroots and public officials should be short and unfiltered as possible.

There was a little storm over on Atrios the other day about the Sunday Talk Shows, and “why bother”?

Speaking only for myself, the reason is simple.

We’re out here talking and listening and bitching and flirting -- which is all good -- but little by little, we’re also building tools for taking the fight to the Bad Guys. Networks. Idea banks. Lensing fundraising. And not just trying to hook up with Libidinous Liberal Lasses, but as we were taught by the Great Mother of All Wisdom -- Schoolhouse Rock -- “Hooking up words and phrases and clauses.”

Over the course of a year, the Sunday Mouse Circus is where ninety-nine Red State trial balloons are launched and, like it or not, it is where, God help us, millions of Americans go to get their weekly dose of “elite” political wisdom.

I want to know what the Bad Guys are saying, and how they are saying, because I want to beat them.

The Sunday Morning Talks are one of the few public places where they roll out their maps and show us roughly how their troops are going to be deployed. Of course they also lie like dogs with Ganser's Syndrome, so it helps to be a bit of a Kremlinologist. But when some Freeper goes off on a rant about how the Southern Strategy is a Liberal Myth, and how the Republican Party is the Party of Lincoln and the Dems are the Party of Segregation...it helps to not only know some basic U.S. history, but also that Chairman of the RNC -- Ken Mehlman -- went so far as to half-apologize for his Party’s use of the Southern Strategy on teevee on thus-and-so date.

Not that this changes the mind of the average, zombie Freeper – these are, after all, people who would rather blow up whole countries rather than admit that their Dear Leader lied to them – but it’s fun to see them go squealing back to the GOP Hive to have their Unbendingly Held Opinion software, bent, reformatted and swapped out for a newer release.

And this is a war for a sliver in the Middle anyway. For those 100,000 – 300,000 voters who can, in one election, transmute George Bush from Smirking, Constitution-Shredding Toxin into a fine Milhouse-Nixon cabernet, vintage Summer ’74.

So as we watch and listen and squabble and snark, we also palpate the body politic. We scout out the outlines of the issues, and then stock our arsenals with the apparatus we accrete during the electronic refining and winnowing process that makes Left Bloggylvania vital and passionate and often pissy.

And if any one of us can add to that store of rhetorical artillery, even just a little bit, then all the “fucks” and “Frists” and wee-wee jokes will have been worth it.

Not that there’s anything wrong with a good wee-wee joke.