It appears that Hillary Clinton is still running for president, still delegitimizing the process, and still engaging in delusional math. It's irresponsible for her to lead her supporters on like this. It's irresponsible to raise false questions about the legitimacy of the process. And it is just one more example of how she is making it harder for the party to come together. She needs to let it go.

Damn. That's an amazing response. I hope Al Gore and John Kerry were taking notes.

I knew as soon as the California Supreme Court marriage ruling was posted, that I would read the whole thing. I started reading it at my desk, after it was posted, but stopped once got to the "bottom line" of the ruling — and, truly, because as I realized what I was reading, and what the California Supreme Court had said, the emotion was too much.

I wasn't born when the Brown v. Board of Education ruling was handed down, so I don't know what it was like for those Black Americans who heard it or read it and realized what the court had done. But I think I have an idea, based on what I felt yesterday after reading the decision.

John Fund gives another example of just how out of ideas the Republicans are. He runs through the standard formula detailing the recent special election losses, etc. And then he provides the prescription for success in the fall.

With John McCain at best an even bet to win the White House, Republicans may enter the fall homestretch with the prospect of losing the White House and sinking much further into minority status. It would be better if congressional Republicans finally decided to adopt a coherent message and a bold reform program for this fall's elections. But an alternative may be to emulate their 1996 success and make a direct appeal to voters to keep power divided so that Democrats once again don't have a blank check.

That's right, while it would be ideal for the party to adopt a bold reform message, they can alternatively go to the American people and ask them to vote against the Democrats to keep the government divided. 'Please don't let the country be united, vote for us.' That's what John Fund wants to use against the Politics of Hope. And what about that bold reform package?

Although congressional Republicans have many gripes about John McCain, they would do well to embrace some aspects of his record: his pledge to veto all earmark spending, his record of opposing corporate welfare, and his willingness to make bold free-market proposals to reform health care.

This is very weak tea. An end to earmark spending would be a bold move, but almost no one is going to believe it until they see it. Who votes on earmarks anyway? The voter that cares about earmarks, cares about the budget. But John McCain promises to keep taxes where they are or lower then while keeping our troops in Iraq through his whole first term. How is that going to help the budget?

As for opposing corporate welfare, I don't think John McCain has a good record on that issue. But it is laughable to think that the Party of Corporate Welfare is suddenly going to change their ways. Favoring Corporate America is in the GOP's DNA. And where would they get the money to fill their PACs?

And on the whole concept of 'bold free-market proposals to reform health care', the Republicans are not going to gain any traction on that whatsoever. Health care costs are skyrocketing at the same time as energy and food prices are going up. The price of higher education is insane. People do not want to hear about more corporate health insurance. They want coverage they can afford.

I keep reading these post-mortem articles about what the GOP needs to do, and they all share the same feature that they have no idea what to do. John McCain is running on more war, bigger deficits, and no help to the middle class. His idea of bold is merely admitting that Global Warming exists. He doesn't even want a rape and incest exception to his ban on all abortions.

The problem with Republicans is that we've seen them in power and they don't do what they say they will do. They're awful at keeping us safe, their foreign policy is a disaster, they can't balance the check book, they prey on pages, beat their mistresses, troll men's lavatories for dates, and have secret second families. They haven't overturned Roe v. Wade, they haven't stopped gay marriage, they have done nothing to stop illegal immigration, they haven't restored honor and dignity to the White House, and they have divided, not united, the country. They have failed at everything except letting the rich keep more of their money, slashing environmental regulation, and letting their buddies loot the treasury.

I don't think more of McSame is going to be a winning argument in the fall.

If you haven't had the chance yet, head on over to Man Eegee's new blog project, The Sanctuary, and get yourself a low user ID.

Democrats are fascist appeasers like Neville Chamberlain. Republicans, on the other hand, are people who believe Nazis were the agents God used to force "spiritually dead" Jews back to Israel where they belong so Armageddon can occur in the Middle East. Or at least Republican politicians like John McCain are willing to accept the endorsement of conservative Christians such as Pastor Hagee who preaches that Hitler and the Holocaust was all part of God's divinely inspired plan to bring about the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. See and hear it for yourself:

And McCain sycophant Joe Lieberman is best buds with Hagee, too. Wonder what Jiltin Joe thinks about Pastor Hagee's idea that Hitler was simply God's own final solution for soulless, Jesus forsaking Jews? Oh well, each of them has the hots to nuke Iran and its Islamofascist Menace, so I guess that justifies overlooking a few minor theological differences.

Hey, at least Hagee isn't some crazy black minister who hates America like Jeremiah Wright. Hagee, after all, is a white guy, and in America, that makes all the difference between whether you are an insane, evil traitor to our country or merely a revered, respected and influential religious figure beloved by all right thinking, full blooded Americans.

Since Kevin James couldn't do it, I'll answer Chris Matthews question. What did Neville Chamberlain do wrong in Munich in 1938?

I'm going to gloss over a lot of detail here for brevity's sake. Adolf Hitler invaded Austria in March 1938 as part of a larger program that was sold as a unification of Germanic peoples. His next step was to demand that a German speaking area of Czechoslovakia (called the Sudetenland) be ceded to Germany. Czechoslovakia had a mutual defense treaty with France, and France had a mutual defense treaty with England. If Germany invaded Czechoslovakia then France was duty-bound to declare war on Germany. And if France found itself at war with Germany, then England was duty-bound to come to France's aid.

In other words, Hitler's irresponsible demands were threatening to pull all of Europe into a Second World War. Just twenty years earlier, in the First World War, France had suffered 1.7 million killed and 4.2 million injured, while the U.K. suffered one million killed and 1.7 million injured. In total, the war had cost 20 million people their lives and injured another 22 million. And when it was all over, no one could make a convincing argument for why the war had been necessary. It was in this context that Neville Chamberlain sought to avoid a resumption of a continent-wide war, with new and more powerful weapons. He decided to sell-out the Czechoslovakians, and got France's agreement to renege on their treaty obligations. Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier decided to use a strategy of appeasement to prevent war. Here is what happened:

British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain met with Adolf Hitler in Berchtesgaden on 15 September [1938] and agreed to the cession of the Sudetenland. Three days later, French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier did the same. No Czechoslovak representative was invited to these discussions.

Chamberlain met Hitler in Godesberg on September 22 to confirm the agreements. Hitler however, aiming at using the crisis as a pretext for war, now demanded not only the annexation of the Sudetenland but the immediate military occupation of the territories, giving the Czechoslovakian army no time to adapt their defence measures to the new borders. To achieve a solution, Italian prime minister Benito Mussolini suggested a conference of the major powers in Munich and on September 29, Hitler, Daladier and Chamberlain met and agreed to Mussolini's proposal (actually prepared by Hermann Göring) and signed the Munich Agreement accepting the immediate occupation of the Sudetenland. The Czechoslovak government, though not party to the talks, promised to abide by the agreement on September 30.

The Sudetenland was occupied by Germany between October 1 and October 10, 1938. This unification with the Third Reich was followed by the flight or expulsion of most of the region's Czech population to areas remaining within Czechoslovakia.

The remaining parts of Czechoslovakia were subsequently invaded and annexed by Germany in March 1939.

The initial reaction to the Munich agreement in England and France was very positive. No one wanted war. But the strategy backfired because it only made Hitler stronger and more ambitious. And it made it much harder to defeat him when war eventually became unavoidable.

Ever since, it has been an article of faith that it is never a good idea to appease your enemies. However, this hard won lesson is being misappropriated by the Bush administration, and McCain and Lieberman, to suggest that simply talking to your enemies is constructively the same as appeasing them. Neville Chamberlain isn't reviled by history for traveling to Munich and holding discussions with Adolf Hitler. He is reviled for handing over the Sudetenland to Hitler without a fight, as if that would make the problem of National Socialism go away.

Chamberlain made a gamble for peace. He tried to spare the world a catastrophe. And, remember, while Germany lost the war, England lost their empire. Ultimately, Chamberlain made the wrong call. He did so in part because he so wanted to avoid war. He also misjudged his enemy. And that is the real key.

Hitler did not have limited territorial objectives, but nearly boundless territorial ones. And everywhere he sent his armies he intended to commit atrocities of unprecedented and unimaginable savagery. Not only that, but he had the military wherewithal to carry these ambitions out. And the question we need to ask McCain, Lieberman, and Bush is, how does modern day Iran resemble Nazi Germany in any of these respects?

They have no military wherewithal to seize and hold territory. They are making no territorial demands. Their human rights record is fairly deplorable but nothing compared to Saudi Arabia or Zimbabwe. If you ask Iran what they want, they want assurances that we won't attack them, not the other way around. They would like normalized relations and a lifting of sanctions. It's hard to see how they have much of anything at all in common with Nazi Germany.

The one area where there is a similarity is in their anti-Semitic pronouncements, and in their aid to groups that commit and have committed lethal acts against innocent Jews. As long as Iran engages in this rhetoric and behavior, they have to be considered as a hostile nation. They cannot be rewarded or appeased for their irresponsible actions. But that doesn't mean that we can't talk to them. It means that if we are going to give them anything we must get something in return.

Iran is more powerful because we toppled Saddam Hussein and insisted on letting the Iraqis elect a Shi'ite-dominated government. They now have an ally in Iraq, rather than an implacable foe. That may have been a strategic error on our part, but it not Iran's fault. We must now live with the consequences of our actions. We have a weaker negotiating hand than we had before Bush became president and ran our foreign policy off the rails. But Iran did not suddenly become as powerful as Nazi Germany. They do not require appeasement, nor do we need to attack them now before they get stronger. They cannot and will not attack Israel, except by proxy. And we have no good reason not to talk to them in the interests of peace.

Yes, they are our enemies and the enemies of Israel. But talking to them is not appeasing them. Neville Chamberlain didn't make a mistake by talking to Hitler. He made a mistake by caving in to his demands. No one is suggesting that we cave in to Iran's demands. And Iran isn't about to conquer half of Central Asia and exterminate 9 million innocent people if we get our strategy wrong. Enough of the warmongering. It's time to have a little diplomacy for a change.

I don't get much hate mail. I might get one piece every two months or so, and it usually just tells me I'm stupid. But then I don't have Bill O'Reilly stirring up the nativists, either. It's really disturbing to see the kind of mail that Markos gets. I know why liberals are angry...look at the economy, for starters. But why are Bill O'Reilly's listeners so angry? What explains the hatred of so many people on the right?

And, to be honest, I don't think this is an unusual situation. There seems to always be a certain percentage of people, in every country, that basically feel like Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter do (or say they do). It only becomes a serious problem when the group grows large enough to start putting their enemies up against the wall. As Roger Waters put it:

Are there any queers in the theater tonight?
Get them up against the wall!
There's one in the spotlight, he don't look right to me,
Get him up against the wall!
That one looks Jewish!
And that one's a coon!
Who let all of this riff-raff into the room?
There's one smoking a joint,
And another with spots!
If I had my way,
I'd have all of you shot!

I mean, how is that any different from what people are writing to Markos?

As far I can tell, the Republicans are now officially suicidal. Voting against funding wars they support and voting against timelines that Americans support, and voting against a GI Bill for the soldiers that is just unconscionable.

Most of the people that do Senate predictions play it pretty safe. Until they see a poll that shows a challenger well ahead, they tend to keep races in the 'lean incumbent' or 'toss-up' category. But I don't need any polls to tell me that the Republicans in the Senate are set up for a world of pain. I've seen what polls are out there, and they inform my opinion, but I'm going with my gut here. No toss-ups or leans, just flat-out predictions for who will win.

1. Mark Warner of Virginia
2. Tom Udall of New Mexico
3. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire
4. Mark Begich of Alaska
5. Mark Udall of Colorado
6. Ronnie Musgrove of Mississippi
7. Jeff Merkley of Oregon (but not Novick)
8. Al Franken of Minnesota
9. Kay Hagan of North Carolina
10. Rick Noriega of Texas

Right now, I think all 10 of these seats are more likely to fall to the Democrats than not. But that's not all. The following contenders will have plenty of opportunity to gain strength and win.

1. Tom Allen of Maine
2. Scott Kleeb of Nebraska
3. Andrew Rice of Oklahoma
4. Bruce Lunsford of Kentucky
5. Larry LaRocco of Idaho
6. Jim Martin of Georgia (if he wins the primary)
7. Jim Slattery of Kansas
8. Bob Tuke of Tennessee

I think the Dems will ultimately win at least two of these eight contests, but it is too early for me tell which two. The only really safe Republicans I see are:

1. Mike Enzi of Wyoming
2. John Barrasso of Wyoming
3. Jeff Sessions of Alabama
4. Thad Cochran of Mississippi
5. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina

So, my prediction is that the Dems will pick up 12 Senate seats. They'll tell Lieberman to caucus with the stump Republican caucus, and the breakdown will be:

61 Democrats, plus Bernie Sanders
38 Republicans, plus Joe Lieberman

And the best part? No John Cornyn.

I think Obama should use the same whistle-stop train strategy he used in Pennsylvania during the general election. Maybe, take the train from St. Louis to San Francisco and make a bunch of stops along the way. He also should makes trips down the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. Expand the map. And it looks like a trip or two to Alaska is a good idea, too.

Marriage Equality in California!

The California Supreme Court has overturned a gay marriage ban in a ruling that would make the nation's largest state the second one to allow gay and lesbian weddings.

The justices' 4-3 decision Thursday says domestic partnerships are not a good enough substitute for marriage. Chief Justice Ron George wrote the opinion.

The city of San Francisco, two dozen gay and lesbian couples and gay rights groups sued in March 2004 after the court halted San Francisco's monthlong same-sex wedding march.

The case before the court involved a series of lawsuits seeking to overturn a voter-approved law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

With the ruling, California could become the second state after Massachusetts where gay and lesbian residents can marry.

"What happens in California, either way, will have a huge impact around the nation. It will set the tone," said Geoffrey Kors, executive director of the gay rights group Equality California.

California already offers same-sex couples who register as domestic partners the same legal rights and responsibilities as married spouses, including the right to divorce and to sue for child support. It's therefore unclear what additional relief state lawmakers could offer short of marriage if the court renders the existing ban unconstitutional.

A coalition of religious and social conservative groups is attempting to put a measure on the November ballot that would enshrine California's current laws banning gay marriage in the state constitution.

The Secretary of State is expected to rule by the end of June whether the sponsors gathered enough signature to qualify the marriage amendment, similar to ones enacted in 26 other states.

The effort to turn Iran into the latest incarnation of Nazi Germany is deeply dishonest and depressing. For some people, anyone that makes Israel uncomfortable is a de facto Nazi. Iran has not fought a war of territorial expansion in centuries. I can't even think of an example in the last 500 years. What's more, Israel is armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons. Iran has no nuclear weapons. And, if they did have them, they'd be no more likely to explode one in Israel than Pakistan is today. If Pakistan were to attack Israel with nuclear weapons there would be no need for America to 'obliterate' them because Israel would do the job first.

Iran has its faults. So did the Soviet Union. But the Soviet Union never used its nuclear weapons. And, unlike the Soviet Union, Iran has no territorial ambitions. Their support of Hezbollah is as much about strengthening their Shi'a brethren in Lebanon's internecine political fights as it is about harassing Israelis. And their alleged support of Hamas is about having street cred as one of the few Islamic countries willing to continue the fight post Camp David.

I don't expect Israelis to turn a passive eye to activities that threaten and sometimes kill their citizens. Israelis are rightly angered by both Iran's actions and their irresponsible rhetoric. But Iran poses a low-level threat, not an existential one. The Iranians are not suicidal.

Moreover, it pays to remember that even Nixon and Kissinger met repeatedly with our communist adversaries in China, North Vietnam, and the Soviet Union. They talked to the Soviet ambassador almost daily. And that is really what this debate is about. Do we talk to our enemies or do we just try to kill them?

When President Bush goes before the Knesset and compares Democrats to Nazi appeasers, he's crossing a line. And for Joe Lieberman to issue this statement is just appalling.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator Joseph Lieberman (ID-CT) issued the following statement in response to President Bush’s statement to the Israel Knesset this morning:

“President Bush got it exactly right today when he warned about the threat of Iran and its terrorist proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah. It is imperative that we reject the flawed and naïve thinking that denies or dismisses the words of extremists and terrorists when they shout “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” and that holds that—if only we were to sit down and negotiate with these killers—they would cease to threaten us. It is critical to our national security that our commander-in-chief is able to distinguish between America’s friends and America’s enemies, and not confuse the two.”

What does Joe want to do? Kill all the Iranians? Kill all the Lebanese? Kill all the Gazans? That kind of exterminationist thinking is a lot closer to NaziThink than Joe would like to admit. But it's implicit in his logic. And why does Joe Lieberman say that these groups threaten 'us'? Has Hezbollah attacked America, or attacked Americans in the last twenty years? Has Hamas, ever?

You want to know what has made Israel safer than anything else in its history? The peace treaties that Carter hammered out with Egypt and Clinton hammered out with Jordan. That was accomplished by talking, not fighting. Israel no longer faces any credible threat of land invasion, and they have the last two Democratic presidents to thank for it. Presidents Reagan and Bush encouraged two disastrous invasions of Lebanon. That's the kind of terrible advice Israel has received from Republican leaders that are supposed to be strong on terrorism. Prior to the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, suicide bombing was almost unheard of in the Islamic world, and Iran's influence was almost completely contained within their own borders.

Comparing Iran to Nazi Germany is a grave insult to our intelligence. Even our Secretaries of Defense and State recognize the necessity and advisability of engaging Iran. Is it any wonder why the Democrats kicked Joe Lieberman out of the party? I don't know what it would take to convince him that his policies make Israel less secure. History is so stark and decisive on the matter, that I suppose Lieberman just doesn't read it.