Who isn’t disgusted with the whole load of them?  Nothing is needed more than term limits.  Mark Tapscott agrees (via the Captain) and thinks that what the Internet has done for media, it can do for politics:

What’s needed is a massive and continuing infusion of new blood — citizen legislators — in Congress. The careerists will never agree to that, of course, so it will have to be imposed from the outside. That’s where the Internet, the wisdom of crowds, term limits and a potential new post-partisan political movement converge.

Of this, I am skeptical.   Media are just that:  Media, i.e., conduits.  Freed of technical and economic constraints, information and expression can now flow as never before.

Politics, though also a base of power as the established media powers still are, is not a medium at all.  It is an accretion of power and institutions.  That power is given back to the governed only in the most grudging fashion, and usually while at the same time it usurps more with the other hand.

This is not necessarily so bad.  Government should have stability.  Change in societal expectations about government is best made gradually, not only because of “social order” but because massive economic and social decisions are made on the basis of reasonable expectations about the regime.

Fine.  That’s what a constitution is for.  Now let’s fix ours, using its own mechanisms, and nail down term limits for legislatures, once and for all.

KNBC reports:

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez are among those expected to join immigrant-rights activists Thursday for a march and rally to denounce the actions of Los Angeles riot police at a May Day rally at MacArthur Park.

The debasement of politics, leadership, statesmanship:  Protest against your own administration!  Nothing is beyond the demagogue.

What a … riot.

Two things. Maybe three:

1. The good thing about being obscure is you can change your find and pretty much no one will call you on it. (That is another version of pretty much no one will care, true, but every blog is a vanity project, at the end of the day, isn’t it?)
2. Does this mean Instapundit is part of the Fred campaign? Hard to get much more front-and-center on an endorsement than embedding a campaign video on that blog.
3. If you’re not up to date on the facts about Fred Thompson, click here.

Okay, and as to number one? I still like Rudy. But I am convinced there is so much animosity toward his pro-abortion position that he cannot get the nomination.

UPDATE:  “Who do you think the Left fears most?”

TheHill.com reports that the boys at Red State are mad as hell and they’re not going to take it any more:

The editor of a popular conservative blog declared “war” on the GOP House leadership following the decision of Republican members to appoint Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.) temporarily to a powerful House panel.“The House Republican Leadership just does not get it and they will not take us seriously until we flex our muscle against them,” wrote Erick Erickson, editor of http://www.redstate.com. “We must fight the House GOP and we must fight today.

Here’s the link. I like the sound of this. Calvert has already written in — first he sent a staffer; when that didn’t work he “submitted” a pure-PR press release in his own name — begging for mercy.

He might be entirely worthy of it. He might be a saint on earth. It doesn’t matter. The GOP leadership is blind, deaf and dumb to what’s going on politically both at the top and at the bottom, and if Rep. Calvert has to be the sacrifice here, so be it. Nothing personal, Gentleman from California.

Where do I sign up?

Alex Beam:

I wouldn’t mind living in a country where Barack Obama is president. Brains; candor; charisma; ambition hitched to a work ethic; I admire those qualities. But frankly, the people who’ve ponied up $4,600 for Obama in this election cycle might as well have piled the money on the kitchen table and set fire to it. Or donated it to the Audubon Society, which has a lot better chance of being in business a year from now than Obama’s presidential campaign.If you listen closely, the silent dog whistle is already blowing for the Obama candidacy, and the tune it is playing is taps.

I thought he just wasn’t ready. Beam suggests he just isn’t up to it. The closer you look, so do Obama’s own words and actions.

I said earlier this year that what was going to doom John Edwards — besides everything else — was the obvious contradiction between his running on a class-envy platform and his hair his immense wealth and conspicuously wealthy lifestyle.

Now this:

Edwards said it’s legitimate to ask questions about whether there is a contradiction between campaigning against poverty while working for a hedge fund that is designed to make rich people richer. He said the job was a compliment to his position as the head of a poverty center at the University of North Carolina.

“I didn’t feel like I understand, and to be honest with you still learning right now, sort of the relationship between that world and the way money moves in this country through financial markets,” Edwards said.

Hypocritical… cynical… and a complete BS artist!