4/28: So Republicans Really Are In Charge?

At a time where several major stories are getting coverage -- but no one issue dominating -- yesterday's news is, well, yesterday's news. "Justice Sunday" and talk of Pres. Bush holding hands with the Saudi Crown Prince has mostly subsided, replaced mainly by the GOP's "retreat" on House Ethics rules. That, combined with news of Bush's prime time presser tonight, is seen by some as a growing sign that perhaps the GOP is feeling more heat, even if it is waging several battles on several fronts -- UN Sec nominee John Bolton, filibusters, House Maj. Leader Tom DeLay, and SocSec. One story that has emerged, however, is that of one, if not several House GOP cmte chairs, let's say, taking some liberty with the wording of Dem legislation and amendments.

Perhaps fatigued by the multi-front battles, activity in general seems to be down on the blogs. The Air America radio gun shots are a big background story, with debate on whether the Secret Service should investigate and others seeing it as a lame publicity stunt.

And with all the focus on the GOP, could TX really elect a Dem gov?

TRACKBACKS: The Rules Are Meant To Be Broken, Then Restored?

Where the blog swarm is headed, who's taking part, and what they're saying:

• The Washington Post's story gets the most play. Linking: Political Animal; Heretical Ideas; The Moderate Voice; Best of the Blogs; View From The Radical Center.

  >> Self-styled moderate "Vyan": "Well, you can color me surprised, as the GOP has apparently decided the heat on DeLay is starting to burn and contrary to my earlier prediction, have decided to reverse recent changes to the House Ethics Committee rules which have caused Democrats to block the Committee from meeting, and kept growing ethics issues surrounding DeLay from being investigated. This is probably a good move for the GOP as it will give plenty of time to have these DeLay problems swept under the rug long before the 2006 election."

  >> Liberal Clip Monkey: "Whether giving John Bolton a beat-down, slapping around Tom DeLay, ripping the Ethics rules changes by House Republicans, or blasting Bush's Social Security plan, the minority party in Congress is showing some signs of life. And the Republicans seem to be responding on ethics and Social Security, if only a bit."

• Raw Story's piece about a supposed GOP effort to "rewrite Democratic amendments to make the Democrats amendments look preposterous" is getting a lot of buzz on the left. Linking: The Left Coaster; The Mahablog; ahistoricality; Immoral Actions.

  >> Liberal Left Coaster poster "Charles": "Talk about an ethics violation! ... There will have to be some kind of institutional penalty for this--otherwise, we have no institution called the U.S. House of Representatives any more. The institution is dissolved by the unspeakably horrible acts of its own members in subverting the very purpose it exists for -- drafting and passing legislation."

• Most blogs get news of Pres. Bush's prime time presser comes from Reuters. Linking: The Left Coaster; The Moderate Voice; Eschaton; Unqualified Offerings; Daimnation; Slideshow.

  >> The Moderate Voice's Joe Gandelman writes that the presser "comes after a tempestuous period crammed with huge controversies" over Terry Schiavo, Tom DeLay and judicial nominations. "George Bush has usually done quite well with his press conferences," and "in general he makes his case quite well." Three "key questions linger" about the presser: "Will the press ask the President tough questions? ... Will reporters INSIST on doing follow up questions? ... Will Jeff Gannon be there? Or will he be busy (or booked)?"

  >> Lefty Slideshow says the presser is "excellent news" for opponents of his SocSec plan: "He will reach even more of the public with this --- and, as we know, the more he talks about it, the more people hate it. And the lower his approval ratings go."

ETHICS: Would This Be Considered A Flip Flop?

Looking at recent GOP maneuvers on SocSec, Bolton, Judges and Ethics, moderate Joe Gandelman writes in The Moderate Voice: "The bottom line is: there seems to be a readjustment on the part of the White House and Congressional leaders to defuse some of the crises -- but not totally. Will this be enough?"

Talking Points Memo's John Marshall: "Tonight, Rep. Chris Shays [(R-CT)] may not have the whole world in his hands. But he's sure got the whole House Republican Caucus."

Liberal ArchPundit lists comments by IL Rep. (and GOV candidate) Ray LaHood (R): "To which, one must ask, who the hell didn't think this was going to happen? I mean really? You have a Majority Leader who is ethically challenged and you change the rules concerning how an investigation starts? Besides it just being a bad idea in the first place--doing it under these circumstances was just stupid."

TX-based lefty Off The Kuff's Kuffner lists TX Reps. who voted against changing the rules changes: "When someone asks 'Who's your daddy?', these guys know what the answer is ... .

Right-leaning Eric Pfeiffer of Beltway Buzz notes that much of the New York Times' story "is spent mocking House Speaker Dennis Hastert, describing the move as a 'a rare retreat,' 'a significant political embarrassment,' and when assessing the GOP leadership, declaring, 'they surrendered to the Democrats.'"

JUDGES: Gore May Be Ignored By The MSM, But Not Right-Leaning Blogs

Right-leaning Balloon Juice's John Cole, on Al Gore saying he was "genuinely dismayed and deeply concerned" by the GOP's attempt to strip the Senate "of its right to unlimited debate": "There has not been unlimited debate. If there were unlimited debate, the Democrats would lose. People would watch two weeks of debate on the nominees and finally start to say to themselves -- "Why don't they just vote on the damned guy." In a separate post: "The Senate is no longer the deliberative, dispassionate body it once used to be, and is now simply a smaller House of Representatives. ... Change the internal rules of the Senate requiring supermajorities, and let the chips fall where they may."

Lefty Talking Points Memo's John Marshall has posted about Princeton Univ. students who had been "filibustering outside the Frist Campus Center," a building his family "paid a bunch of money to have named after him." Most recently, he asks if Senate Maj. Leader Bill Frist pulled "a little nuclear option (sort of a tactical nuke, I guess)" on the students after campus police shut down a web cam that had been set up." He updated to say the cam is back online.

Colorado Pols, on Sen. Ken Salazar's (D-CO) interview on KKTV: "[S]omewhere between 'suspect theology' and 'Anti-Christ' comments, Ken has managed to completely abandon that middle ground he campaigned on."

Basie features an interview with Ex-AZ Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D). DeConcini, on the nuclear option: "It will be a big mistake. It will not bring down the Republic, but it will be a big mistake." On the would-be judges: "I think that some of these judges that the Democrats [have held] up, I have not looked at their file, but I would probably vote for some of them."

GOPERS: Revisionist History

Raw Story's piece about a supposed GOP effort to "rewrite Democratic amendments to make the Democrats amendments look preposterous" is getting a lot of buzz on the left.

CAP's ThinkFirst tracks the transformation of the "'conciliatory' Dr. Frist" to the "combustible Mr. Hyde."

BOLTON: Powell's Power Grab?

Ex-WH speechwriter David Frum questions ex-Sec/State Colin Powell's motives in a piece at ConfirmBolton.com: "If Powell prevails, the former secretary will have seized for himself a unique and arguably unprecedented role in US foreign policy. From now on, nominees to foreign-policy positions will be on notice that Powell's endorsement or veto could make or break their careers -- and they will if wise make sure to stop by Powell's office for a session of forelock-tugging before their Senate hearings. For Powell, the ego rewards from such a victory would be sweet. The material rewards would be even sweeter. It's widely expected in Washington that Powell and his old deputy and friend [ex-Dep. Sec/State] Richard Armitage will soon launch a consulting firm together on the model of Henry Kissinger's immensely lucrative Kissinger Associates. The success of the Powell/Armitage firm will greatly depend on whether Powell and Armitage are perceived to possess continuing influence. And how more splendidly to create that perception than to score a hugely publicized victory over a Republican president in a Republican Senate?" Also linking: RedState.

The Moderate Voice: "If you strip all the niceties away from a recent New York Times article, the highly controversial nomination of John Bolton as U.S. Ambassador to the UN can be boiled down to one sentence: Win this one for OUR team." More: "What will be interesting is to see whether all of this taken together confirms the school of thought that the U.S. has now shifted from an era where elections are won by whoever captures the most of the center to an era where whoever better activates their base wins."

BLOGS VS. THE MSM: Oops

Power Line's John Hinderaker posted previously that the Minneapolis Star-Tribune "was fervently anti-filibuster during the Clinton administration ... but has changed its tune" now that Dems are using it to block Pres. Bush's judicial appointments. 4/27 he wrote that said post "drew an outraged response from the Strib's Deputy Editor, Jim Boyd, who claimed that the paper had never advocated changing the filibuster rule." In a reply to Boyd, Hinderaker quoted a '94 editorial, which said: "[Reformers] should crusade for changes in Senate procedures that would prevent an obstructionist minority from delaying action indefinitely." Hinderaker received a reply from Boyd, titled "Oops," saying: "I think you actually have caught us in a contradiction. We can change our mind, as we did on light rail, but in this case, we really didn't. We simply missed the precedent and, like a court, if we make such a shift, we owe readers an explanation for why we did it." Hinderaker wonders: "[I]s the Star Tribune's editorial board actually going to try to explain why it advocated terminating the filibuster when the Republicans were in the minority, but considers it a bulwark of democracy now that the Democrats are using it?"

The Left Coaster's Steve Soto asked readers to "Be a Journalist, For a Day." He followed up 4/27: "My question was posed to make everyone live the life of a journalist for a single day to get a wee sense of the pressures you are likely to face from the Right. Every error will be magnified. Every example of 'liberal bias' will be blasted to you and your management. Never mind, a lot of it will have nothing to do with facts." More: "I'm not trying to make excuses for journalists who are bad at their jobs and publish tripe just because of pressure from the Right. Having been a rather strong media critic for nearly 3 years, I would hope readers here understand that. Rather, I'm blogging to solve problems."

BLOGGERS VS. BLOGGERS: Until Proven Innocent

Righty Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds writes: "I think that Andrew Sullivan is guilty of overreading my earlier comments on the religious right. Unlike Sullivan, I don't think we're in the grip of a theocracy -- unless 'theocracy' is defined as 'a population that doesn't support gay marriage,' in which case the point is true, but trivial. ... Andrew did a wonderful job of convincing undecideds -- and even some decided-againsts -- to think positively of gay rights and gay marriage, but lately his tone has been such that I doubt it's winning many converts. ... You go from being a minority position, to a majority position, by convincing people that you're right. It's not clear to me that playing the theocracy card will do that."

WHITE HOUSE '08: Poll Vaulting

Patrick Ruffini shares some thoughts on his poll testing ex-NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani vs. Frist, John McCain and VA Sen. George Allen and provides detailed crosstabs sorting "results by referring blog, by intensity, by top issues, and by ideology." Running against the proverbial unnamed conservative ... it would be tight and Rudy could win. ... Among self-identified conservatives, Giuliani squeaks by [Allen] 47.0% to 45.4%. With values voters, Rudy's albatross, it's Allen 58%, Giuliani 32%; Frist 52%, Giuliani 37%; and a thin majority of SoCos would go Rudy if he squared off against McCain, 51% to 32% with 17% undecided, a distinct example of party being thicker than ideology."

RedState's Erick Erickson writes about Sen. Allen's PAC: "With both his own election in 2006, and the need to build loyalty among potential future supporters, Allen will need to hoard his dollars and give strategically. It will be interesting to see how much of his money begins to flow to places like South Carolina, New Hampshire, and Iowa over the next two years." He does "have one lagging gap. Contributions to his Leadership PAC come mostly from Virginia. ... Allen needs to start expanding the reach of his PAC on the contributor side and targeting strategically on the expenditure side."

AIR AMERICA: The Shots Heard Round The Blogs

Right-leaning Balloon Juice: "I think it would be to the detriment of our nation and the reputation of the Secret Service if this is seriously investigated, and [Instapundit's] Glenn is right -- this does smell like a lame PR stunt. Besides -- I thought no one listened to Air America?"

IN THE STATES: What's Bad For DC Might Not Be For Austin

Launching 4/27: the blog Draft Lincoln Davis, which describes itself as a "grassroots effort to recruit" Rep. Lincoln Davis (D-TN) "to replace Bill Frist" in the Senate. From its manifesto of sorts, titled "We Are For Real": "We are all tired of the right wing Bible thumpers trying to tell us how we should vote. In fact not until the 1980's were the 'Christian right' even out of their basements. Tennessee needs a new kind of leader, a real southerner with real ideas. That man is Congressman Lincoln Davis."

Left-leaning Burnt Orange Report's Byron La Masters writes of the TX GOV race: It could be argued that of the past 7 elections, 5 ('78, '82, '86, '90 and '94) "were relative upsets. Does this mean that Democrats should be confident of victory in 2006? No, but it should teach us the lesson that anything can happen." Recent elections of Dems in "some of the reddest states" like WY, KS and OK, and of GOPers in blue states (MA, NY, VT, MD) "show that it is not uncommon for a state to vote against their partisan leanings in a race for governor."

MISCELLANY: It All Goes Back To Religion

Lefty Bull Moose Blog "concedes" a point to the right, that "the left is hypocritical when it asserts that religion should have no role in politics. In truth, there is a long and proud progressive faith tradition. ... Ultimately, the fundamental question is not one of faith, but the type of faith vision. Unfortunately, too many on the left are blinded by their secularism to recognize this reality. The debate should not center on the separation of church and state, but rather a justice-based faith vision versus a power-based faith vision."

Whiskey Bar's "Billmon" re-emerges after some time off with a long review/commentary on Shadia Drury's book: Leo Strauss and the American Right. "Billmon" concludes: "The risk, then, is that by unleashing the forces of religious populism to save America from the inevitable consequences of liberal nihilism, the Straussians conceivably could end up assisting the very catastrophe they claim they're trying to avoid. And wouldn't that be ironic."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Beware Of The Sponsored Link

BuzzMachine's Jarvis: "Google helped explode the internet. Without its search, no one would find our content. Without the ads, Google wouldn't make money. But then, that's Google's problem, isn't it? And a not-very-big-problem it is. ... I love Google; we all should. I don't hate Google. But I think it's time to consider fearing Google. Just to be safe."

LEST WE FORGET: Attack Of The Cheese Ninjas

A release from the NY-based prankster org. News Breakers: "A mysterious ninja crept into a live television broadcast, whizzing processed cheese toward a news team and quietly tiptoeing through their report. The stealthy invader infiltrated a WXXA-TV FOX23 broadcast undetected, as a reporter deadpanned through a live report, seemingly unaware of the cheese bombardment that ensued." True. Video is available in Windows Media or Quicktime.