If you’re in town, come by Timberlake’s in Dupont Circle and see Jeffrey Feldman, author of “Outright Barbarous: How the Violent Language of the Right Poisons American Democracy” (available for purchase through the Progressive Book Club) and fellow blogger over at Frameshop.

So join me and come by tomorrow at 6:30 for a few drinks and a chat with Jeffrey.

Alex and I will be hanging and talking politics as part of MyOoVooDay at 8pm EST (that’s now!). Follow this link, sign up and sign on, and come chat to give us something to talk about!

With the Justice Department announcing today that the longest serving Republican Senator in history, Alaska’s Ted Stevens, is being indicted on seven counts of “making false statements on his financial disclosure forms,” that Senate race should tip even more favorably towards the almost-certain Democratic nominee, Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich. But it is possible that Stevens will not wind up being the nominee, and if that is the case, what happens to this race? Some scenarios:

1. Stevens withdraws from the race before the August 26 primary– In this instance, there are five candidates who are currently challenging Stevens in the primary and they would stay on the ballot.  The two best funded are former state representative Dave Cuddy, who is also a wealthy businessman who can self-fund, and political neophyte Vic Vickers, a wealthy lawyer who not only can use his own money, but has already announced a $410k ad buy through the primary basically attacking Ted Stevens’ ethics. Neither candidate has anything approaching a state-wide standing.  Even though Alaska’s GOP lean has been strong in the past, the corruption scandal affecting the far reaches of the state Republican Party makes them underdogs coming out of the primary.
2. Stevens wins the primary but then withdraws from the race– If Stevens wants to do this so that the state party can pick his successor, it appears that this needs to be done before September 17th.  If Stevens leaves before this date, the state party can basically pick whomever they want.  After that date it may be that his name can not be replaced on the ballot.  This may be the scenario which would be most favorable to the state party as they could choose someone who could actually challenge Begich rather than be a sacrificial lamb.  While I am no expert on Alaska’s state politics, there would seem to be only two that would be truly viable Republican candidates for this race.  The first, current Governor Sarah Palin, is popular but unlikely going to want to take the demotion to Senator.  The second possibility is Lt. Governor Sean Parnell who is currently challenging Republican incumbent Don Young for the at-large House seat.  Now Young is under his own ethical cloud, so Parnell could possibly win the primary, but if he doesn’t he may be the right choice for the state party to take Stevens’ spot on the November ballot.
3. Stevens stays in through the November election– Let me introduce to you Senator Mark Begich.

The recent polling on this race already showed that Begich was picking up steam, with a Rasmussen poll from last week giving Begich a nine point lead, 50%-41%. He also went on the air last week with a great ad, “Car Wash” which emphasizes the corruption issues enveloping Alaska’s Republican politicians.[You can view the video HERE on YouTube] While it is possible that Stevens may not now be the Republican nominee, Begich is in good shape to face whomever the Republican Party throws at him.

Tomorrow at 8 pm, Alex Thurston (back in the United States after a summer abroad) and myself will be talking politics as part of MyOooVoo Day.

Basically, Alex and I will be around from 8 pm to 9 pm EST, and anybody who downloads the free ooVoo software can call in and chat with us. We’ll be broadcasting live, and then hopefully we’ll have the entire chat recorded so we can post it up here when we’re done.

The events are going on all week. Here’s a list of the hosts:

• Adriana Maestas, Marisa Trevino & Edmundo Rocha/Latino Politics Blog, Latina Lista & XicanoPwr
• Albert Maruggi/Provident Partners
• Arlene Fenton/Black Women Vote
• Baratunde Thurston/goodCRIMETHINK
• Eric Roston/Carbon Nation
• Eileen Smith & Mike Chapman/In The Pink Texas & Every Dot Connects
• Erin Kotecki Vest/Queen of Spain
• Jason Rosenbaum/The Seminal
• Joanne Bamberger, Glennia Campbell & Stefania Pomponi Butler/PunditMom, The Silent I & City Mama
• L.N. Rock/African American Political Pundit
• Leslie Carbone
• Liza Sabater/Liza Sabater, culturekitchen, Daily Gotham
• Mary Katherine Ham/HamBlog
• Matt Parker/Political Buzz
• Morra Arons/Women and Work
• Nicco Mele/EchoDitto
• Robert Millis & Will Coghlan/Hudson Street Media
• Todd Zeigler/The Bivings Report

So call in tomorrow at 8, and come with a good question!

Barack Obama didn’t just pass the “presidential threshold” in his trip this week, he established himself as more presidential than John McCain, leaving a floundering McCain campaign to play catch-up.  Obama is now laying out the terms for debate, leaving McCain in reaction mode.  Obama met with foreign leaders, who endorsed his approach in Iraq and welcomed him as a world leader, while McCain scrambled to insert himself into the conversation by meeting with the Dalai Lama.  McCain, who constantly calls timelines a form of surrender, was forced to acknowledge that Obama’s timeline for redeployment from Iraq is a “pretty good one“.  While Obama had success after success overseas, McCain did his best George H.W. Bush impression, looking like a guy who hadn’t been in a supermarket in decades as he read the price of milk off a note card.

McCain’s advisers believe the only way he can change the current dynamic is by going (even more) negative.  The latest: an incoherent charge that Obama decided on a timeline for getting out of Iraq based on “political expediency.”  As noted, some call McCain’s tactic the worst thing they’ve ever seen from a major party presidential candidate.  This mud-slinging also makes no sense.  Obama has opposed the war in Iraq from the start, when it was hardly a politically expedient decision.  In March 2003, as we headed toward invasion, Americans narrowly supported war with Iraq.  In August 2003, 2/3 of Americans thought the war was worth fighting. 

For more than five years, Obama has consistently held the view that the war in Iraq was a mistake.  The public has caught up with him on this issue, not the other way around.  That’s not political expediency, it’s wisdom and leadership. 

Of all the speakers at yesterday’s hearing on executive power and its Constitutional limitations, perhaps the most intriguing was Bob Barr.  Barr, a former Republican congressman from Texas and the current Libertarian candidate for president, rose above the partisan emotions of the day and addressed the fact that the issues at hand go far beyond the misdeeds of the Bush administration. 

It is axiomatic that no matter how much power government has, it always wants more. While the executive branch under George W. Bush has taken this truism to new heights, it is not unique in its quest for power. Unfortunately, the other branches of government have failed to do enough to maintain the constitutional balance.

So Bush is not the first executive to overreach his powers, and he won’t be the last.  But the capacity for abuse seems to have been increasing since at least the time of FDR:

The 20th Century witnessed a steady if irregular expansion of presidential authority, which has carried over into this first decade of the 21st Century. The role of the president as the military’s commander in chief has taken on increasing importance as it has been used to justify the aggrandizement of the executive’s authority at the expense of that of both Congress and the judiciary.  This expansion of presidential power has increasingly put the people’s liberties and privacy at risk.

After 9-11, the prevailing attitude around the country was that the president needed more authority to fight terrorism.  Whether his actions were legal or Constituional was not as important, as long as he kept the nation safe.  But Barr is making the point that it is especially during times of war and especially when our nation is facing the gravest danger that the people need to take special care to guard against the abuse presidential power.  This final quote explains why: 

The temptation to cut constitutional corners is not the province of any one party. Rather, it grows when one party controls both the executive and legislature. Then party comity sometimes overrides institutional differences, as it did most recently between 2001 and 2006.

So this Constituional crisis is not limited to the Republican party.  It has a history that goes back well before George Bush, and the same temptations will face the next president - whoever it is.  The next president will enter office with more power than any previous president has enjoyed.  And since it is quite possible that we will have a Democratic president with a Democratic Congress, there will be a strong chance that executive power and the temptation to abuse it could increase even more. 

Barr’s messgae, which was echoed by a number of the other speakers at the hearing, boils down to this.  The impeachment needs to proceed - but not to punish Bush or achieve some sort of political vengeance.  The message needs to be sent that the trend of increasing presidential power is coming to an end, that Congress will no longer acquiesce in its abuses, and that the nation is committed to returning to the Constituionally mandated balance of powers.

Not exactly breaking news, I know. His campaign manager, Mike Tibbles, sent an attack email to supporters the other day which indicates exactly how clueless they are.

Just last quarter, the mayor raised more than $37,000 from just one liberal Lower 48 Internet campaign known as ActBlue (the 1,500 out-of-state donors he gained through this site amounted to a third of the “grassroots” support he received last quarter).

I hope you will help us in ensuring that Outsiders don’t buy a Senate seat in Alaska.

Fortunately, his opponent, Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, has Matt Browner-Hamlin working to keep the Stevens campaign honest. Here is a snip of the epic smackdown, but be sure to read it in full as well.

What sort of website is ActBlue? Well, it is a website that allows Americans to make donations to candidates they support. That’s it. It processes credit cards. So when you imply that we raised money “from” ActBlue, it’s kind of like attacking us for raising money “from” PayPal or American Express or personal checks.

And it sure would be silly for you to criticize us for taking money “from” American Express (I’ll spill the beans — some of our donors gave with their AmEx cards).

I’m sure that the first email you’re sending as Campaign Manager is an indication of what we can expect from the Stevens campaign: False attacks that stir up fear and don’t do anything to help Alaska families. Of course, falsely smearing Mark might be all you have recourse to when a majority of Alaskans support him for US Senate in this election

That said, I’m happy to educate you and feel free to come back for future lessons into how the internet works and why Alaskans can’t trust what the Stevens’ campaign tells them.

Brilliant. This race is going to be a lot of fun to watch. Want to help us get rid of Ted “series of tubes” Stevens? Contribute now.

Watch!

Update (Josh): Some of you may have noticed that Cenk asked Sen. Reid a question I emailed in. If not, you can see/hear it at 12:04-12:54 in the video above. I’ll have a followup response to the Senator later today.

Fantastic:

About four hours after the announcement that his controversial, politically charged ninth album was number one in the country, Nas was on a small podium in front of Fox News headquarters in New York City protesting what he sees as racist attacks against Black Americans and presidential candidate Barack Obama.

The rapper stood next to 19 neatly stacked cardboard boxes, with the number 620,127 taped to the side of each one — over 600,000 signatures gathered by ColorOfChange demanding that network president Roger Ailes “find a solution to address racial stereotyping and hate-mongering before it hits the airwaves.” Fox rejected the petitions, but Brave New Films says that Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report will accept them instead.

Additional coverage of this from: MTV, The Nation, Reuters and Billboard.

Kudos to Color of Change, Nas, Move On and The Colbert Report for their excellent work on this.

Yesterday Hillary Clinton appeared in the Huffington Post lambasting the Bush Administration for a truly heinous set of health regulations announced to members of Congress last week:

Clinton also spoke passionately against the regulations in New York last week, calling it a “gratuitous, unnecessary insult” to American women. She and about 100 other legislators have sent a letter to George Bush demanding that he stop advancing the regulations, and Clinton has started an online petition to challenge the proposal.

For those of you who missed it last week, see if McCain’s gripping response to whether he agreed with (his own surrogate) Carly Fiorina’s criticism of health insurance companies that cover Viagra but not birth control inspires any confidence at all that he will depart from the Bush policy on birth control:

Doesn’t know enough? Comforting, as McSame “has voted twice against mandating insurance companies to provide coverage for birth control, once in 2003 and again in 2005.”

Setting aside the outrageousness of a candidate unwilling to jump to womens’ defense and insist they be given free access to birth control, what is anyone doing even considering a candidate who cannot/will not remember that he (a) has a position on an issue and (b) has voted on it twice? Frankly, if this is McCain’s idea of engaging in discussion and showing leadership the people of Arizona (and all Americans) would be better served having a Labrador represent them in Washington.

Obama on the other hand, like Clinton, can remember where he stands on issues AND supports requiring insurance companies to cover birth control. Quite the accomplishment, apparently.

For more on how the HHS Dept is railing on womens’ reproductive rights see here .