"Libel of the dead is not an offence known to our law," read the 1887 court decision that dismissed a defamation of the dead suit. It continued, "The dead have no rights and can suffer no wrongs." That hasn't remained an absolute in the last 121 years, but the line on too much or too soon is still pretty difficult to cross.

Every day that I awaken to the obituary of one who was our political enemy in life, I know that the knives are out at Daily Kos, and it was no different this morning when I saw that Tony Snow has lost his battle with cancer.

Maybe its just age that is catching up with me. In my twenties I reveled in being a Front Page style character whom scandal made glow all over and a grisly murder sent packing merrily off with the other ghouls and minions of the newsroom to the nearest bar.

Or maybe its that the speed of technology has changed the comic timing of sarcastic reportage and comment on the shuffling off of mortal coils. When "two bits" follows "shave and a haircut" too closely the meaning gets lost. Maybe that's why, when the death of a Helms or a Falwell produces an immediate chorus of Louis Armstrong's You Rascal, You here at the great orange satan, I'm sad not only for the family who lost someone whom they loved but we couldn't. I'm sad for us, too.

It was Senator Obama falling off his pedestal. I am a strong Obama supporter, and am working as a volunteer in the campaign. He has my vote, and will continue to benefit from my donations of money and time. But I now see Mr. Obama as far closer to Bill Clinton than the Kennedys and Kings in whose image I once thought he was fashioned.

That means that we can expect not only more disturbing changes during the campaign, but a substantial January surprise after inauguration, and to inure myself, I will not be maxing out for our candidate the way I expected. Much more of what money I can afford will be supporting liberal candidates on the assumption that we will need them to pressure the new president into making the honorable decisions that should be made on principle but apparently will need to be made through yielding to pressure.

That wasn't the deal you heard breaking, Senator, it was my romanticized idol of you fashioned out of finer stuff than it appears you're really made and enshrined in a place you don't belong.

[crossposted from Senator Obama - Please vote NO on Telcom Immunity - Get FISA Right on MyBarackObama.com]

If you'd told me a month ago that I'd be giving Hillary Clinton anything besides a piece of my mind (and there's precious little of that left), I would have spewed invective that would make a sailor blush. But today, I proudly sent her money, and I came here to crow about it and urge other kossacks to do the same.

I'd been thinking about doing it for a while, but today her Unity mass mailing arrived, and its postscript was the impetus:

P.S. So many of you have reached out to help us retire our campaign debt -- I'm so grateful for your support. If you haven't, I hope you'll consider making a contribution today to help me as I continue standing up for the values we share.

The New York Times reporting:

ALBANY — Gov. David A. Paterson has directed all state agencies to begin to revise their policies and regulations to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions, like Massachusetts, California and Canada.

The governor decided there was no compelling reason that the state should stand in the way of making the benefits of marriage available to those who would otherwise receive them except for their gender and that of their legally wed spouse.

Its nice to be fought over even when no one is saying nice things about you. Its even nicer when those who are suddenly running in claiming to be your best friends are the folks who screwed you over in the first place.

Hillary wants our votes down here to count, but its a new found cause for her. The folks who were most responsible for our original disenfranchisement were Terry McAuliffe, Donna Brazile, and a whole host of long time Hillary faithful who were absolutely rabid about this issue when the Hillary campaign was going to be a cakewalk and the marching orders were to maintain the status quo so that she'd take the cake at the magic moment.

Fuck Florida said the Clintonistas. We don't need 'em anyway! Add to them the party gestapo who wanted to make an example of us. Nobody else much cared.

If there's anybody out there willing to look past whipping us for the delight in doing so, or using us as pawns because there's some short term advantage to counting or nullifying our vote for your preferred candidate, please follow me over the break.

The Wall Street Journal has been abuzz recently over Clear Channel. First came a doom and gloom piece. But the agreement is full of gotchas and ways Clear Channel can force the potential buyers in ways from either keeping it alive or denying that its dying.

If the deal falls through, the private-equity firms would likely have to pay a breakup fee to Clear Channel that could be as high as $600 million. The firms would probably try to force the banks to pick up the bill.

One of the issues surrounding the deal is what one banker called the "onerous" requirements on the deal's debt. One person involved in the deal said that the banks want the two private-equity firms to sell Clear Channel assets to pay down the future maturities on some of the company's debt. The first of those maturities occurs in 2011, which would give the firms three years to figure out how to refinance, this person said, but the two firms have balked.

But then came all the articles and commentaries about how the deal is going to force some very strange statements and some dissonant actions among the parties.

What does Rush Limbaugh have to do with this? Follow me into the ether...

I like looking behind the curtain. Always have. At a public function, I'm as interested in what's on the light bars as what's on the stage.

Here, I'm fascinated by what makes this place work; the complex dance of server software and client-side scripting that makes this a near-real-time debate. Its no secret why this is the envy of redstate, who can't seem to get their software to work and even found a way to try and blame liberals for it.

Tonight is going to be a rough one. There may be more eyeballs here tonight than ever before. The stakes are higher, the fights are more intense, and the outcome may not be known for hours. Already the system is straining under the load. Its been down for tweaks at least twice.

I come, however, not to blame the geeks, but to praise them. This is an old saw, but it seems appropriate.

Its not my job to drive the train
Nor to ring the bell
But let the fucker jump the tracks
And see who catches Hell.

Thank you, geeks. And buckle your seat belts, its going to be a bumpy night.

One of our digital circuits went down yesterday, and I spent a fair amount of time talking with an AT&T digital circuit technician after he found and corrected the physical problem, but before the switch-house cleared it and processed the paperwork.

Talk turned to politics, and then to Obama, and he surprised me when he shared his concern that Obama supported suing the phone companies. This issue hit home with him and was a dealbreaker, and I smelled the faint scent of the AT&T party line.

The more we talked about it, the more the missing piece became clear. The phone company had been patriotic, a team player, a good citizen. They shouldn't be punished for this; it was a windfall for the lawyers and a landmine for the phone companies and the ratepayers.

The missing piece? Though he understood far more about the business of telephony than most any average joe, he had never heard of the FISA court. The false "you need a warrant" admonition from Bush was either forgotten or never understood.

And I realized why our incremental victories are so tentative and temporary, and how tenacious we have to be fighting for these multidisciplinary issues like telcom immunity and net neutrality.

Did I win him over? Take the jump.

I cast my vote Friday. My partner and I weren't sure we'd make it back to town Tuesday in time for the "might be counted, might not" Florida primary, so we early-voted. It was the most difficult voting decision I've ever made. Maybe I know too much.

I held great hope for Edwards, and I gave him chance after chance. We went to see him in Miami early in the campaign. We expected to be energized but we left his presence disillusioned and almost angry. He was late for the event, he gave an uninspired short stump speech, and apparently did little or nothing to reach out to minorities. In a crowd of several hundred--in MIAMI--I could count the Hispanics on my fingers.

He didn't seem on a track to win. He didn't seem to understand that if that crowd was representative of his supporters, he wouldn't carry this state. I needed another candidate, and I went on a search that I'll tell you about on the other side.

In one of yesterday's Nataline-Sarkisyan-murder-by-spreadsheet diaries (Here's the truth: A transplant surgeon speaks out), there's a quoted email from one of our watchers:

for what it's worth, I'm a Conservative who monitors Kos.  Even I called CIGNA after reading your original diary.  Now you may condemn me for being a champion of the forces that led to the issue in the first place (I would argue it's more complicated than that) but alas, I was moved to call because they were wrong and you brought it to MY attention too.

In the comments, there are open letters, calls across the aisle, and realizations that we're closely watched..

In fact, while I came here originally (UID: 17835), I posted a few things but didn't stay. It was Bill O'Reilly who brought me back. The story is below the fold.

It's smart and witty and profound. It never gets caught teaching, yet teaches from the very first frame. It makes you proud of our government's higher purpose, and ashamed of its inability to follow through.

It shows Washington in the late 80s with a clarity I've never seen before: you can't look away because the acting talent is perfectly cast and the scenes of the tight script brilliantly acted. These are Oscar worthy performances. Tom Hanks, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Julia Roberts are all nominated for Golden Globes, as is Aaron Sorkin for his script based on the George Crile book. The nomination of movie itself brings the potential Golden Globes to five.

You don't need to be wonky to enjoy this movie. You don't need to appreciate caustic wit and clever repartee. With its lightning fast snappy dialogue, the sharp political insight will enthrall you as you are cleverly led to the understanding of how we could succeed so brilliantly only to fail so miserably.

Everybody should see this movie when they have a chance. Everybody who hangs out at dKos should see it immediately.

A federal judge in Tallahassee has ruled against Bill Nelson's (and others') lawsuit against the DNC that would seek to override the national party's refusal to seat its delegates. The national party disenfranchised Floridians in a dispute over Florida's early primary date.

"Florida has to comply with the same rules and procedures as everybody else, and does not get to have its own way," said U.S.District Court Judge Robert Hinkle following an hour-long hearing.
link

The judge ruled from the bench and is expected to issue an order Monday disposing of the suit.

But there's another suit, filed Tuesday. Details after the jump.

The Writers' Guild of America's (WGA) strike against Hollywood film and entertainment television producers has captured most of the media's attention, but another battle rages between news writers represented by WGA and news producers CBS and ABC. The CBS news writers took a strike vote and announced on November 20th that 80% voted to authorize.

There's good news! Yesterday ABC and the WGA reached a tentative agreement with its news writers, which only increases the pressure on rival CBS.

The deal, reached after three years of negotiations, is subject to a ratification vote next month by the ABC News employees...
link

More on the saga at CBS below the fold...

If Frank Capra had been directing, the now famous scene in the police station where Sen. Craig and Sgt. Karsnia disagree over what actually happened in the airport restroom would have ended so differently.

Capra would have taken a shot to reveal a high window in the interrogation room, showing how it filled the room with ambient light, a shot he'd take again just as Karsnia asks, "Anything to add?"

"Yes," Craig would have told the policeman in the Capra version. The advancing sun would hit the high window, bathing Craig in a light stream in the classic Capra visual cue for religious experience. "I've lied to you," Craig would continue.  "I don't need to make this flight, just the opposite. This is one that it is very important that I miss."