And while we’re Dem-watching, the Moose scores Joe Klein a TKO over Paul Krugman.

The smart and normally sensible New Donkey is skeptical of Hanna Rosin’s contention that the Christian Right is mellowing. One couple Rosin interviews who exemplifies her thesis is the Hasslers, Christian Right types who have settled down and even converted to the Episcopal church. The Donkey is non-plussed:

Smart as Rosin is, she seems to miss the joke: the particular church the Hasslers are attending is the notorious Truro evangelical Episcopal parish, home to Ollie North and Clarence Thomas, and one of the main protagonists of the right-wing movement to pull congregations out of the Church to protest the ordination of a gay bishop, and other offenses to cultural conservatism. Entering mainline Protestant Christianity through Truro is sort of like getting to know African-American opinion by listening to a lot of Armstrong Williams. I noticed looking at the church’s calendar that it’s featuring a Jews-for-Jesus presentation on Maundy Thursday (the day before Good Friday). That shows a fine sensitivity to Jewish concerns about the supercessionist themes that have so often led to anti-Semitic violence during Holy Week, eh?

The difference between the evangelical world and even a conservative Anglican parish like Truro is about five country miles. Everything from the aesthetics to the centrality of the liturgy to the sense of a hierarchical church. There is a gigantic difference. For the Donkey to conflate the two just because they agree on the ordination of gay priests is a misjudgment. As for the stuff about Jews-for-Jesus and anti-Semitic violence, does the Donkey really think that the Truro parish is sponsoring anti-Semitism? Or that these meetings will result in anti-Semitism? Or that these meetings will cause, somewhere down the line, anti-Semitism from people in and around Truro? I doubt it.

I understand that the Donkey is uncomfortable with the Christian Right, but this by-the-numbers attack is beneath him. (Or is it her? Damn these anonymous blogs!)

Over at Oxblog, David Adesnik has been encircled by lefty-bloggers. Not to worry; he handles himself well.

While Daily Kos and Howard Dean have been getting a lot of (deserved) attention, other Democrats are laboring for the soul of liberalism, too. Peter Beinart has an instructive piece in today’s Washington Post. It’s good to remember that despite all their noise, Dean and Kos aren’t the entire Democratic party. In fact, if you count votes and not decibels, they’re probably a minority.

I have always been a fan of Wolfgang Schäuble, the deputy chairman of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union. So it was with great enthusiasm that I met with him at a press breakfast last Tuesday at the Ritz-Carlton. Wheelchair-bound since a mentally deranged man shot him in 1990, Schäuble maneuvers himself into the room as easily as if he were still walking. He was kind enough to humor reporters, many of whom were fixated on Bush’s visit to Europe. (One blowhard was especially annoyed at the president’s obtuse manner. “When I covered the Carter-Brezhnev summit in the 1970s,” he began, putting the rest of us to sleep. Another reporter lamented Bush’s security detail in Mainz and how cold it all seemed.) Nevertheless, the deputy chairman was his genial self, stressing his belief in the Atlantic partnership and America’s active engagement in negotiations in Iran. When one journalist tried gauging his reaction to Bush’s “all options are on the table” comment, Schäuble scoffed, saying it’s a real problem in Germany that this remark caused “a great nervous reaction” and, much to his chagrin, was taken “more seriously in Germany than in Tehran.” (This answer clearly disappointed some of the reporters.) When asked what is the underlying problem in Chancellor Schröder’s dealings with Putin, Herr Schäuble said “Schröder being the chancellor is itself the problem” and credited Bush for taking a harder stance with Russia. “A good friend [meaning the chancellor] does not close his eyes to the problems.” He then went out of his way to point out “it was the United States who first recognized what was happening in the Ukraine, then Europe followed.” Schäuble understood America’s challenge to Europe as “Why don’t you trust a little in democracy? We in Europe make so many mistakes, we really shouldn’t worry about what mistakes America has made or will make.” Concerning the January 30 elections in Iraq, he joked: “The turnout in Iraq was as high as in Schleswig-Holstein and the risk slightly greater.” He then railed against certain Bush critics: “They say to me, ‘You know, I met the president and he is actually much smarter in person.’ Well of course he is! Do you think the president of the United States gets elected without being able to read and write?” The grudging silence from the reporters across the table spoke for itself.

A few weeks ago Tom Maguire noted that the primary difference between the liberal and conservative ends of the blogosphere is the difference between a hive and a pack.

That difference is perfectly illustrated by this post from the Daily Kos.

The Kossacks have decided to take down Alan Greenspan (perhaps because Paul Krugman attacked Greenspan in his New York Times column this morning). The battle cry from Daily Kos reads thusly:

. . . blogswarmer Bob Brigham suggested that we “unleash the blogosphere” on Greenspan. It’s a brilliant idea–no one is more worthy of having a halo-ectomy than St. Alan–so let’s have at it.

If you’re interested in joining this research project, here’s my thinking on how it should proceed. . . . We should hunt down anything Greenspan has ever written, said or done that reflects poorly on him. This would include erroneous predictions, older statements which contradict things he’s said recently, and anything that’s just plain wrong, venal or stupid. . . .

And for those of you who want to really get down & dirty in the trenches, we can turn this into a one-degree-of-separation venture. That is, if you can find similar material for anyone who is closely linked to Greenspan, that’s fair game, too. Good examples would be Greenie’s idol, the nutbag “objectivist” Ayn Rand, and Andrea Mitchell, his NBC reporter wife. (An aside: We can debate the merits of this approach all you like, but suffice it to say, there is no question that Republicans do the same crap to us all the time. If you still want to play by the Marquess of Queensberry rules, fine–but I’ve moved on to brass knuckles.) . . .

Get your browsers fired up and let’s get to work!

Whether or not the hive is able to harm Greenspan is interesting than noting how the hive is working.

The conservative blog “pack” has historically found overlooked stories or errors in mainstream news reporting and then flogged those stories until, eventually, the mainstream press paid attention.

The liberal “hive,” at least in this case, is working in precisely the opposite direction. An item attacking Greenspan appeared in the New York Times. The hive, taking its cue from the Times, is now going off in search of further damage it can do, organized by an explicit call to arms from the Internet’s biggest blog.

Very interesting stuff.

Now that I’ve destroyed Josh Chafetz’s productivity, go to the Name Voyager and look what happens to the name “Hillary.”

“Hillary” took off like a rocket in 1970s, crested in 1981(ish), and began a slow decline. Until 1992, that is, when it dropped off the table.

Democratic donors take note!

On the Standard website today Stephen Schwartz reports on an Israeli study examining the national origins of 154 terrorists killed in Iraq. While Schawartz focuses on the overwhelming number of Wahhabis from Saudi Arabi among the group, it’s also interesting to think about the number of dead Iraqis, who accounted for only 8 percent of this pretty rough sample. Anyone who still thinks Iraq was a distraction from the war on terror doesn’t seem to realize that Iraq has long been the main theater for the war on terror.