They did such an awesome job – made me swoon to be a democrat!

Two things of note, in something of a tangential followup to the discussion ongoing under the Brown/DeWine/torture bill post and on past bloggery during elections here on the dc — Andrew Sullivan muses briefly about the notion of Goldwater Democrats (!) here, riffing off of Markos Moulitsas’s essay on the libertarian Democrat at the Cato Institute’s (!) online magazine CATO UNBOUND.

An interesting notion, although my first thought was “leaving aside the personal peccadilloes, doesn’t this pretty much describe the last administration?” Anyway, bears some thinking about…

What the title says:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zXU0N__6HY]

(via waxy and kotaku)

So here’s something not one of you ever thought you’d hear me say, but I just decided: I’m definitely voting for DeWine in November.

Why? Mostly because I believe Mike DeWine has the courage of his own convictions — right or wrong, agree with him or not, I at least think he has some principles. Sherrod Brown, however, apparently frightened that the GOP might paint him as a weak-kneed soft-on-terror liberal in the upcoming election, voted in favor of the detainee-and-torture bill mentioned below.

Voting for a bad, bad piece of legislation just so you can improve your chances of getting elected is pretty much my definition of the worst kind of politician, no matter what their individual politics are. (And what, hoping that you get a majority in November that would let you undo whatever piss-poor decision you made in September? That’s so dumb I don’t even know where to begin with that one.)

Also note that gubernatorial candidate Ted Strickland apparently didn’t vote on this bill at all. Not happy with that, either, but you know, at least it wasn’t a complete rejection of the ideals you profess to have.

Kevin Drum has more here. Frankly, I’d seen in the DISPATCH earlier today that there were actually 34 Democrats who voted for the bill in the House yesterday, but it never even occurred to me that in this most heated of Senate races this year, Brown would have been one of them. Idiot.

Worth repeating:

Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser.

…There is not enough time to fix these bills, especially since the few Republicans who call themselves moderates have been whipped into line, and the Democratic leadership in the Senate seems to have misplaced its spine. If there was ever a moment for a filibuster, this was it.

We don’t blame the Democrats for being frightened. The Republicans have made it clear that they’ll use any opportunity to brand anyone who votes against this bill as a terrorist enabler. But Americans of the future won’t remember the pragmatic arguments for caving in to the administration.

They’ll know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.

Read the whole damning, depressing thing.

It’s a new TV season, and while we’ll have more to say on that subject later, for now, here’s a long but endlessly fascinating essay on the opening credit sequence for the first four seasons of HBO’s THE WIRE — easily the best show on television right now. And check the comments for responses from creator David Simon and producer Karen Thorson!

(And shhhh! I haven’t had a chance to watch yet this season — all on TiVo right now — so try not to spoil too much for me!)

RADAR ONLINE interviews John “I’m a PC” Hodgman about his book, THE AREAS OF MY EXPERTISE.