It being both the holiday and campaign season, it's easy to get wrapped up in yourself.  You forget to think about others - the huddled masses, the less fortunate, the downtrodden, the wayward, and so on.  I know I do.  I haven't thought about the downtrodden since August.

But not Hillary Clinton.  She is vigilant.  So it's not surprise that today, when John Edwards told the most downtrodden of the wayward, our Congress, that they should go without health insurance for as long as the rest of America does, Hillary's campaign was there to say, "Heck no!"

Bravo, Hillary!  It isn't easy to defend an institution that is, at present, less popular than many of the diseases from which uninsured America currently suffers, but that is no reason to deprive Congress of their health care.  Be proud, because we are proud of you!

After Edwards released his health coverage plan, and after it was roundly praised, the heat was on the other campaigns to provide their own.  It was a challenge, and Barack Obama responded to that challenge with his own health coverage plan.

He did, and it wasn't bad - but it wasn't as good as Edwards'; it did not require that everyone buy in, and thus share the cost of health care for all, and it did not permit everyone to choose a public alternative.  Obama had an opportunity to shine, and instead, he played it safe and fell short.

But I'll vote for Obama, because he has money.

I'm neither blessed nor cursed with a photographic memory, but I do remember this - Molly Ivins' view of John Edwards, from her August 2003 column on the Democratic candidates in The Progressive:

John Edwards in the early appearances struck me as almost a little too pretty, a little lite. But he's got a populist streak I like--his daddy spent thirty-seven years working in a North Carolina mill, and Edwards ain't forgot it. Seemed to me he might develop. In a recent speech at Georgetown University, the sumbitch hit a home run. (Look it up.)

Apparently, way back in 2003, before John Edwards supposedly "reinvented" himself as a populist, a fine judge saw a populist in him herself.

And so did I.

Edwards has taken some heat from Kossacks for the bellicose tone of his recent speech on Iran. Yesterday, Ezra Klein interviewed Edwards on Iran, in which he asked Edwards to elaborate on what he said.  Specifically, he addresses his statement that "all options must remain on the table," including the use of force against Iran:

EDWARDS: I think the reason people react the way they do -- I understand it, because, when George Bush uses this kind of language, it means something very different for most people. I mean when he uses this kind of language "options are on the table," he does it in a very threatening kind of way -- with a country that he's not engaging with or making any serious diplomatic proposals to. I mean I think that he's just dead wrong about that.

KLEIN: So we should, first step, talk to Iran, try to open up negotiations?

EDWARDS: Correct

KLEIN: Do it, if necessary, bilaterally?

EDWARDS: Absolutely.

I thought it would be interesting to look at what Collins thought of recounts in 2000.

In his speech, Bayh said the party has focused most of its attention on the needs of lower-income Americans, but it also must address issues that matter to people on the next rung up the economic ladder.

"Without an agenda that speaks directly to the middle class and all who aspire to it, we will no longer be the party of Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and Clinton. And we will not be a majority party," Bayh said, invoking the names of former Democratic presidents.

Raise your hand if you think that the Democratic Party has been too focused on the poor and working class.  Anyone?

This afternoon, I was doing the laundry and reading Adbusters' "The Good, the Bad and the Google." From the article:

Google announced that the new Chinese version of its site, Google.cn, would comply with Beijing policy by removing politically sensitive websites from search results. . . . In the months since the launch of Google.cn, Adbusters has been intermittently returning to the site to test out a few of China's most troublesome bugaboos. Filtering is usually obvious. A text search for "Taiwan Independence" was met with about 210,000 results in mid-March; on Google.com, the results numbered over 12,000,000. "Free Tibet" scored 19,600,000 on Google.com, but a paltry 170,000 on Google.cn.

I thought it would be interesting to see how my every day Google searches would be different if I used Google China, so I wrote a Greasemonkey user script to find out. If you install the script, you can find out too.

Across the country, Republican legislatures have restricted the forms of identification a voter may present in order to vote, ostensibly in an effort to reduce fraud. In reality, it's an effort to restrict the vote to those who can afford those forms of identification, and to disenfranchise the rest: the poor, the elderly, the people of color, and the city dwellers who might, but for identification, vote Democratic.

And today, that effort almost disenfranchised a Congresswoman.

This afternoon we gather in the quiet of this sanctuary to pay our last tribute of respect to these beautiful children of God. They entered the stage of history just a few years ago, and in the brief years that they were privileged to act on this mortal stage, they played their parts exceedingly well. Now the curtain falls; they move through the exit; the drama of their earthly life comes to a close. They are now committed back to that eternity from which they came.

These children - unoffending, innocent, and beautiful - were the victims of one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetrated against humanity.

I don't know why this surprised me.  The Bush Administration has been willing to play politics with health at the FDA; why wouldn't they play politics with voting rights at the DOJ?

A team of Justice Department lawyers and analysts who reviewed a Georgia voter-identification law recommended rejecting it because it was likely to discriminate against black voters, but they were overruled the next day by higher-ranking officials at Justice, according to department documents.

They should fight like hell.  And they should use that fight to define who they are.

In fact, the inconvenient problem is Jonah's.  The publication he cites, "Losing the Vote: The Impact of Felony Disenfranchisement Laws in the United States," acknowledges nothing of the sort.

Smart Republicans know their agenda is a tough sell.  But if Stupid Democrats are loud enough, they may convince Stupid Republicans that it is in their interest to support the elimination of the deduction.  "Eliminate the state and local income tax deduction?  Sure!  It's a tax on blue states!"

As usual, a Smart Republican's best salesperson is a Stupid Democrat.

If you believe the most recent batch of SurveyUSA polls.

From Colorado Luis: Another Republican Secretary of State is stealing votes from Democratic candidates.

In Colorado, Donetta Davidson has ordered that on a provisional ballot, the only vote counted will be the vote for president.  Votes for Senate and Congress will not be counted. Given the competitive Senate race and a number of competitive House races, this could destroy the Democrats chances of winning control of the Senate and the House:

This could hobble Democratic efforts to win a majority in Congress.

Colorado Common Cause is suing to stop Davidson's order. You can act as well:

1. Contact Donetta Davidson. Tell her how you feel about this decision.

   PHONE (303) 894-2200, Option 3
   FAX   (303) 869-4861
   EMAIL sos.elections@sos.state.co.us

2. Contact Colorado newspapers and Colorado television stations. Ask them to report on this issue. The Denver Post already has; ensure that the rest do, too.

3. If anyone has the contact information for county election offices, post it in comments, and I'll post it here.

These stories have been prompted by the "revelation" that Chung Byung-Man, a South Korean consular officer in Los Angeles, worked for South Korea's National Intelligence Service.  Earlier this year, Chung spoke with David K. Lee and Rick Yi, both Kerry fundraisers, about forming a Korean-American political advocacy group similar to Committee 100, a Chinese-American group.  Both Lee and Yi declined, but the apparent effort by a South Korean spy to influence American politics is now news.

Background on the story follows.

Bush supporter Phil Parlock, shown above holding his crying daughter, claims that while attending a Kerry rally, a Kerry supporter tore his daughter's Bush-Cheney sign in half.

Apparently, Parlock is a professional victim. He's told the same story in 1996 and 2000.

But Parlock isn't just a professional victim. In 2000, when he ran the same scam, he was a Bush campaign worker.