[Daily Brief]

All Blog Edition

Kevin Drum links to a list of nicknames Dubya has bestowed on various people. To actually make the list means you've hit his radar, and even though some of them are patronizing, it's interesting to see Dennis Kucinich there ("Mayor.") Maureen Dowd is the cobra. Appropos of my post below, Brad DeLong provides the obverse example--intellectual honesty in defending Bill Bennett against racism charges. And another example: yesterday, David Dreier was the replacement Majority Leader for about ten minutes--the length of time it took the GOP to run him out on a rail. Now a debate is breaking out about whether it's appropriate to even mention the Dreier may be gay. Hey, look, one party has made a cottage industry out of depriving gays of their rights, and when they 86 one of their own, we're not supposed to mention why? Fair is fair, but that's just stupid.

DeLay is rousing the usual opinions (no need to link elsewhere--just scroll down!), but today's lead WaPo editorial is getting a lot of run. The editors, despite admitting that they haven't a clue what Earle has on DeLay, think it ain't enough. Righties have seized on this as evidence of an Earle vendetta (liberal media, why do you torment them so?): Cap'n's Quarters, GOP Bloggers, Sully. TAPPED has a nice rebuttal. Also, Jerome at MyDD recounts the largesse DeLay lavished on his party.

Finally, on the absent Democrat meme, Oliver Willis has some great thoughts.

And that's today's brief.

(Oh, one more thing. Crooks and Liars has a 10-minute clip of a Brit Hume interview of Tom DeLay. I'm not sure which one is spinning harder. I think it's time for FOX to change its name to WGOP.)