"[F]or proponents of the death penalty it was a great form of erotica."

Says Attaturk at Firedoglake, about the execution by lethal injection, yesterday in Ohio, that took 15 minutes to kill the condemned man. I blogged that story here, and we talked about it in the comments. Did any of us get off on the cruelty that resulted from the mishandled machinery of death?

FireDogLake calls out Kos: "Markos Moulitsas’ Ugly, Reverse-Racist Smear."

Kos: "NSA spying is bad! So is stop and frisk. So is splitting up families by deporting children to countries they’ve never been to and don’t speak the language. So is harassing American muslims. Government overreach is bad. But to act like having the government track who you call is the height of government abuse is a very white privileged view of the privacy issue. But as for Greenwald and Snowden? Seriously, I don’t give two shits."

FDL: "Please, Mr. Moulitsas, tell us, what is the proper, non-privileged, multi-cultural view of the 'privacy issue'? Is it one that stays within the confines of what’s allowed by the Democratic Party? Is it one that is relevant to the war on women, or voting rights, or immigration, but ignores the collapse of the rule of law and the justice system (which is far from a 'white privileged' issue)?"

FDL supplements its posting with a word from our leader, from the days when he was free of the burdens of leadership and leveraging our antagonism for the previous leader:

"Mayor Rahmbo had already come under suspicion as being an advocate of privatization but his current move left little doubt."

"Emanuel’s demonstration demolition is meant to endear him to the elite privatization movement. The destruction of public education will make way for more neoliberal policies, and of course, some nice business opportunities for friends and contributors. The only force strong enough to oppose the corporate ‘reformers’ is the teachers unions, which has made them enemy no. 1. If the unions fail to stop the looters it will be open season on universal education throughout America."

Alarm is raised at FireDogLake.

"Too bad the dems are such pathetic whipped (or complicit) losers they didn’t even have..."

"... a ‘roided has-been adulterous sex-harrasser movie star to step up to the guvship like the pukes did in CA."

Wound-licking — over the impending Wisconsin recall election — in the comments at Firedoglake.

Lefty bloggers irked that SOPA activism is moving Republicans and not Democrats in Congress.

David Dayen at Firedoglake:

The problematic figures here are the institutional Congressional Democrats, the ones who don’t have an election coming up, or whose seats are safe, who simply welcome the campaign checks, mostly from the entertainment industry, and the power and influence that goes along with them....

The Tea Party, Dayen says, has "struck fear" into the Republican Party, but the Democrats don't respond to their grassroots because "the progressive movement inspires laughter." Quoting Kos:

You have an entire wired generation focused on this issue like a laser, fighting like hell to protect their online freedoms, and it’s FUCKING REPUBLICANS who are playing the heroes by dropping support?

Those goddam Democrats would rather keep collecting their Hollywood checks....

Fascinating. There's long been this assumption that young people take their political cues from the entertainment industry, but it's pretty obvious that no matter how much they like movies and music, they care more about what they personally do on the internet than the entertainment industry's financial interests.

"Obama is a despicable man. Dishonest and heartless to the core."

That's a typical comment at Firedoglake, a big left/liberal blog. Here's another (and it's not like I'm skipping over compliments):

It is said that many Americans think that Barack Obama is a nice guy.

Barack Obama is not a nice guy, and the American people may soon realize that he is not a nice guy.

“Underdog” Obama clearly does not want a second term as President.

Perhaps he deserves another “term”, possibly ten to twenty?

And then, a taxpayer-paid visit to the Hague?

And:

Classless, cluless, cruel and corrupt.

"Classless" is a reference to the "Class Act," the voluntary long-term care insurance component of Obamacare, which the Obama administration has announced it will not — cannot — implement. (I'll write some more about that in the next post. This post is about the intensity of hatred aimed at Obama from the left.)

Another comment:

One more knife in the back for the working men and women of the country. This abomination of a president must be removed from office. He is ruining our country.

And:

Obama’s crappy healthcare overhaul is coming apart like a car put together with superglue, as it was supposed to do, of course, after it transferred everything to the insurance corpse and Big PhRMA.

Pretty soon the only thing left will be the mandate to buy skyrocketing insurance.

A commenter named "demi" says: "he’s not looking as well as he once looked. Something is taking a toll on the man." And the immediate response, from DWBartoo is: "I think he resembles Joseph Goebbels more … every single day, demi … the eyes … the eyes are dead."

Another commenter says: "I don’t understand why the right hates Obama. he is the best Republican President they’ve had in decades."

Another:

I tried to read his autobiography. Found it chock full of trite, and gave up. I knew he was full of BS. I knew he was a front for the elites.

The night he got elected, I went to an election party, had to my partner is a big dem supporter. I kid you not people were crying and hugging one another. I was horrified. had a few people shout at me for not going along with the group hysteria.

Which draws the response: "Have to confess: I fell for it."

And:

I wasn’t into the hysteria but I thought that for once I wasn’t voting for the lesser of two evils but somebody I really wanted in there. Now I don’t believe I voted for the lesser but rather the greater of the two evils. At least if McLame had come up with such an abominable plan, the Democrats would have blocked it if for no other reason than because McLame has an “R” after his name.

All right, I'm going to stop now. I've only combed through a third of the comments, but you can see what is happening: Obama has become the embodiment of their grief over the pending stillborn death of Obamacare.

I'm thinking Obama's best hope for reelection is for the Supreme Court to strike down Obamacare — find the individual mandate unconstitutional and the remainder of the law inseverable. Take the whole thing down.  Let Obama rhapsodize about the beautiful future that might have been — it's very pretty when it's not real — and blast away at that terrible Supreme Court that reaches beyond the realm of the law. Ironically, Obama would be publicly denouncing the Court for getting political and secretly grateful that the political benefit came to him.

Think about it. Obamacare is the nonviable fetus that we continue to carry to term, agonizing in anticipation of a stillborn. It's very sad. But there is the possibility of ending the existence of that misbegotten child. Do you like my metaphor? Within it, the Supreme Court is the abortionist. It can intervene right now and end the suffering.

Obama's liberal critics catch fire.

!. Jane Hamsher finds it "just weird" that one of Obama's people is denouncing Paul Krugman and the “Firebagger Lefty blogosphere."

I know the goal is to attract the much-prized Independent for 2012. But who do they think is keeping Obama’s poll numbers afloat?

2. Congresswoman Maxine Waters complains that Obama's bus trip didn't include any black communities and has this colloquy with her audience:

WATERS: We don't put pressure on the president.

CROWD: That's right!

WATERS: Let me tell you why: We don't put pressure on the president because y'all loooove the president.

CROWD: No! (grumbling, shouting)

WATERS: You loooove the president. You're very proud. You're very proud to have a black man...

CROWD: That's right! Yes, we are.

WATERS: ...first time in history of the United States of America.

CROWD: (shouting)

WATERS: If we go after the president too hard, you going after us. When you tell us it's all right --

CROWD: It's all right! (shouting)

WATERS: When you tell us it's all right and you unleash us, and you tell us you're ready for us to have this conversation, we're ready to have the conversation!

Charging with fists raised at Althouse: from the right, it's Robert Stacy McCain, from the left, it's Thers.

I'm thinking of ducking down the alleyway and letting the 2 men collide with each other. I'll find a high vantage point and watch the fracas. First one to unball his fists and put his palms up defensively loses... unless the other one, sensing a touch to the chokepoint on his neck, backs off and shrieks "You choked me."

Robert Stacy McCain should be pleased that Thers decided to attack me on the same day, because I wouldn't have rewarded his attack with a link if it wasn't funny to find myself in the "Clowns to the left of me/Jokers to the right" position.

McCain's post is titled "Ann Althouse: Rube." The word "rube" denotes a dumb rural character, but McCain uses it not for it's actual meaning, but because he's noticed there's a way that Glenn Reynolds uses it, and he seems to imagine that using Glenn's word will bring Glenn in on his team. Which is fine with me, because I've ducked down the alleyway, and Stacy is going to be fighting Thers, who might have "Eli" with him. I doubt if Glenn answers to the dogwhistle "rube," but I do think the fracas will be more amusing with Glenn there. (By the way, the expression "hey, rube" is traditionally "a rallying call, or a cry for help, used by carnies in a fight with outsiders." It's not a way of saying "I think you are a dummy from country.")

Anyway, Stacy's in a dither because, last Friday — predicting Obama's 2012 campaign strategy and referring to the emotionalism of the 2008 Obama campaign — I dropped a footnote to say that even though I voted for Obama, I wasn't caught up in the emotionalism. I observed it and critiqued it. I was in my high vantage point. I was sober and rational, but — confronted with the 2 major party candidates — I picked Obama. I have never apologized for that choice, because I still think McCain — John McCain — would have been worse, and the Republican Party would be in a far weaker spot right now if McCain were President. You can disagree with me, but don't portray me as another "Yes We Can" dreamer. My 2008 posts are all there in the archive. You can see how distanced I was from the Obama love cult.

But Robert Stacy McCain doesn't seem too familiar with the Althouse blog... or even the one post he purports to write about. He's bouncing off of some other blogger's post about me (in the style of Emily Mills who attacked me using material she got not from my blog but from some other blogger who purported to know what I'd written). (Stacy also nicks a photograph from my Flickr stream and uses it without complying with the Creative Commons license I was nice enough to provide.) Anyway, Stacy's point seems to be that I was wrong to vote for Obama. But my post wasn't even saying I made the correct choice, only that I chose based on sober reasoning, not emotionalism.

In any case, R.S. McCain doesn't say I should have voted for John McCain or that every rational person choosing between McCain and Obama would have picked McCain. In fact, sounding damned emotional, he says: "If you put a gun to my head and told me to vote for John McCain, I’d tell you to go ahead and pull the trigger." He calls McCain "a treacherous bastard." Okay, then, why wasn't it rational to vote for Obama? At the point of voting, either McCain or Obama was going to be President. Pick one. No, R.S. McCain voted for Bob Barr. Like that was rational!

At least McCain's commenters are critical. Donald Douglas is the first commenter, linking to his own post: "Ann Althouse a Rube? Nah, Robert Stacy McCain's Just Trolling for Traffic." He accuses McCain of liking to post my picture, and Douglas posts another picture of me. (Douglas does make that picture link back to the Flickr site, but he too fails to follow the Creative Commons license, because he doesn't include the photographer's name. Douglas chose a picture taken 30 years ago by my first husband. McCain chose a picture taken last year by my present-day husband.)

Now, let's swivel leftward and see what's going on with Thers. Thers has been attacking my blog for many years, and usually I ignore him. I don't know why he's so fixated on me. He didn't post a picture of me, so take that for what it's worth. He illustrates his post with a video clip called "Detachable Penis" from a band called King Missile, so apparently he's trying to waggle his wiener in my direction. Thers is writing to defend his confrere Eli, whom I took a shot at yesterday, because he said something stupid that everyone was attacking yesterday because it was on Memeorandum. I don't know who, exactly, detached Eli's penis, but I got my cut in, and I understand that it caused Thers sympathetic pain.

Thers quotes me saying something that exemplifies the way I speak when I'm observing the fray from a high vantage point: "People who are immersed in politics ought to take a good look at their own minds." His idea for a comeback is pretty prosaic. Do you even have to go over there and read it? You can guess: I don't follow my own advice. It's the "I know you are but what am I?" Pee-Wee Herman-type riposte that's supposed to answer a personal attack, which that quote of mine isn't. And Thers, of course, doesn't follow my advice either. He's not self-reflective. He attacks me:

All the evidence shows that Althouse has been long separated from her mind; if she originally removed it in order to give it a proper gawking, that is a perfectly laudable motive. 

A grisly image. A man who's musing about his detachable penis pictures a woman with her brain removed from her skull.

And let us be charitable! 

A reflexive line, by a man whose conscience perhaps nagged him. He knows that after the Tucson massacre, we weren't supposed to be using graphic metaphors like that. He could have edited that out, but writhing over Eli's detached penis, he had to lash out.

Perhaps there is a perfectly sound reason that as soon as her mind departed her skull it promptly escaped, never to be heard from again; and very likely all she had on hand to fill the resultant cranial void was Franzia and guano.

He's straining so hard for comedy, and he can't decide whether to call me a drunk or a shithead. And what's with the Franzia? Didn't he get the memo about Paul Ryan? Yesterday was the day to attack right-wingers for drinking expensive wine.

Then he gets to my little joke on Eli: "I have no interest in these hysterical little men who obsess about whether their 'base' is getting served or stiffed." He rolls his eyes and says:

Althouse is watching consonants whirling through onion rings, yet once more. 

See? Go to those links. He's been reading my blog for a long time, and he remembers my old comic riffs about genitalia. Unlike Stacy McCain, he's familiar with the archive here, and he's been trying to to get the better of me in the genitalia humor department for years. But he can't. He says:

She’s got a dirty mind, don’t she, Yossarian? The dirtiest. 

So... a reference to "Catch-22"... disembodied. The book is funny. The detached reference? The sad waggling of a man who would be erudite, who's trying to show that he's smart and the woman is dumb. A literary reference. I typo'd "litterary" a Freudian slip, indicating that I think his writing is trash. He ought to pick that thing up.

I've got a "dirty mind"? Oh, okay. Thanks. I suppose Freud had a "dirty mind" too. Isn't it funny the way lefties are, at bottom, puritanical about sex? Sex is dirty? As Woody Allen famously said: "Only if it's done right." And if it's done left, it's done with a detachable penis. Put some ice on it.  Maybe you can get somebody to sew it back on.

Quick, because here comes Robert "Stacy" McCain, fists a-flying!

At the lefty blog Firedoglake: "No, I’m not ready to crown Barack Obama the Worst President Ever just yet..."

But...

So which is worse?  The president who serves his base and sets the country on fire, or the president who stiffs his base and fights fire with gasoline?

President A is Bush, in case you couldn't figure it out. Shouldn't you suspect — oh, Firedoglake blogger "Eli" — that if your nominees for "Worst President Ever" are the 2 most recent Presidents, that you've got a perspective problem?

People who are immersed in politics ought to take a good look at their own minds. Maybe what just happened near you is not actually the most dramatic thing that ever happened. Your feelings are one thing. Reality is something else. Make an effort to discern the difference.

I have no interest in these hysterical little men who obsess about whether their "base" is getting served or stiffed.

Netroots Nation invites Russ Feingold to deliver its convention keynote because, like, he's from Wisconsin, and, you know, Wisconsin.

MyD says:

Feingold's direct involvement in protests and push-back against Walker's 'budget' in Wisconsin position him well. Reaction to events in Wisconsin have helped to define a clear narrative for this year's [Netroots] conference on the vigourous [sic] (and organized) GOP attack on unions, mass progressive push-back, and linking it all back to increased coporate [sic] influence through Citizens United.

Huh? Ignore the misspellings and shorthand leftspeak and focus on the factual deficiency: When was Russ Feingold involved — directly or indirectly — in the Wisconsin protests? He's been notably absent. Feingold is an important politico, and he's from Wisconsin, but that's what raises a big question around here: Where has he been? I guess from a distance, it's all just Wisconsin!

Here's FireDogLake trying to connect Feingold to the Wisconsin protests:

With the events in Madison over the past month sparking a new mass movement on the progressive side, Feingold is a good choice. He has involved himself in the Wisconsin labor protests and marched with protesters at one point, and practically every rally in Madison has included some variant of a “Feingold for Governor” sign. 

Hmm. Meade and I have been going to the Capitol for the last month — Meade has skipped, at most, 2 days, possibly 0 days — and he says he's seen "probably 2" "Feingold for Governor" signs. He has seen a few signs with a "Where's Feingold?" theme. Feingold marched with the protesters? When? I didn't notice that. Googling, I see he walked through the Capitol with some firefighters back on February 18th. Has there been a peep out of him since then?

Sorry. To me, Feingold has been a conspicuous no-show. No show, and no talk. The same is true of President Obama, but he's not out of office and living in Wisconsin, so his no show, no talk is less conspicuous. Somehow, the Netroots see Feingold as an embodiment of Wisconsinosity and that looks good enough in their blurry, woozy vision.

Lefty blogger loves the idea of restaurants refusing to serve people that their other customers express open hatred toward.

"Sounds like a good idea to me. I don’t generally consider myself a snob, but in this case I’ll make an exception — I’ll be happy to dine at an establishment that knows exactly which kind of undesirables should be kept out."

Swopa loves that a Madison restaurant asked Governor Scott Walker to leave when customers booed him. He/she links to a Madison blogger who deleted the name of the restaurant after the restaurant received threats. (Threats? Were they reported to the police?) Swopa notes that he edited his post to delete the name of the restaurant, but he leaves in his "via Howie Klein on Twitter" link, and the name of the restaurant is right there.

Idiot. Don't rely on Firedoglake to protect you. They care. They want to protect you. But they just can't quite pull off the protectiveness they'd love to give you.

And that's the problem with liberals. They care. They're here to help. They're here to help the people they've decided are the people who deserve to be helped. But they do a half-assed job of protecting even the people they care about.

And how about believing in principles that you are willing to follow at a high level of abstraction? You love the idea of restaurants letting the passions of their customers determine who ought to be seated (at least when they sympathize with those passions). What sprang into my head was: Ollie's Barbecue!

Ollie's Barbecue is a family owned restaurant in Birmingham, Alabama, specializing in barbecued meats and homemade pies, with a seating capacity of 220 customers... The restaurant caters to a family and white-collar trade with a take-out service for Negroes....

Ah, but who remembers anything anymore? It's today that matters. The war dead are dead, and now their memorial is a handy place to tape your signs and back your table up against so all your stuff doesn't fall on the floor.

And who thinks about tomorrow? The state capitol is occupied right now and plastered with thousands of signs this week, and isn't that just great? You haven't give a moment's thought — have you? — to what free speech rights will apply to the next group that wants to appropriate the state capitol? Are you planning on advocating viewpoint discrimination to keep the signs you find loathsome off the walls?

No. I know. You have no plan. You haven't thought about it. Swopa began his post this way:

Sometimes, it’s good to leave detached, cerebral meta-analyses of politics aside and just get a taste of public opinion being expressed the old-fashioned way.

Sometimes! The whole point of principles is that you're supposed to follow them all the time — especially when you would find it most satisfying to violate them. Swopa's all: Let's not be "detached" and "cerebral" today when we're having such fun.

What children!

IN THE COMMENTS: There's some evidence that the story of the booing and ejectment was a hoax. Of course, nothing in my post depends on whether the incident really happened or not. I'm writing about the reaction to the incident, not the incident itself. If it is a hoax, I would like to get to the bottom of it. Did the owners of the restaurant seek to endear themselves to Madisonians with viral P.R. about their political faith? Or were employees appropriating their employer's reputation?

"Hoft gets this through Instadouche and, unsurprisingly, Ann Althouse, who has been looking at pictures again, something that never ends well..."

"... as also of course happens when she 'thinks things' and then 'writes them down' and 'alerts the public as to her thoughts.'"

Heh. I got FireDogLake writing in the anti-Althousiana genre.

ADDED: I guess Firedoglake is flouting the "civility" bullshit that's been bandied about lately.

AND: Here's the link to Hoft, where there is a nice juxtaposition of photographs along with my quote about the President's hair color change. (Let's call it his "mood hair.")

I think it's important to talk about the way politicians use their visual image in communicating their message. Clearly, we talk about female politicians' hair all the time. It is different to talk about men's hair, of course, because men aren't supposed to care much about their hair.

It's part of the conventional manly image not to pay attention to hair, and when a man runs afoul of that image, he gives his opponents raw material that... well, that can make a hilarious video. (That video was much funnier before the pricks that own the "Theme from Rawhide" asserted their candyass rights.)

AND: Here's how female politicians are treated when they change their hair:

Firedoglake deploys mockery of Mormons to criticize the Mormon Harry Reid for opposing the the mosque near Ground Zero.

Making the cliché move of anti-Mormon bigots everywhere, Attaturk homes in on the undewear, titling his post "That’s no Sacred Undergarment, it’s 'Depends.'"

It's a very short post. Other than the reference to Reid's interest in reelection —  that's something we all thought of, right? — there's a question that I take as a rhetorical question meant to accuse Reid of inconsistency:

By the way Harry, I imagine you were up front in making sure the Mormon Church didn’t build some sort of Memorial at the site of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, because that would be, y’know, offensive to the memories of the victims for the same reasons?

You may need to do a little research to feel the bite that criticism. In the implicit analogy, 1. Mormans are to Muslims as the Mountain Meadow Massacre is to the WTC attack and 2. the memorial at the Mountain Meadows Massacre site is to the Mountain Meadows Massacre as the mosque near the WTC site is to the WTC attack.

I don't really see how the analogy holds up. As I understand it — and please correct me if I'm wrong — the Mountain Meadows memorial is a monument to the victims of the massacre (which occured in 1857). It was put up by Mormons in recent years, and, though today's Mormons were born long after the event and could not possibly have had a causal role in the massacre, they nevertheless take it upon themselves to express regret for what happened. Indeed, there is debate among Mormons about whether the apologies have gone deep enough.

An accurate analogy would be if today's Mormons put their efforts into making public statements informing us that they are not the ones who committed the massacre and that the vast majority of Mormons don't advocate doing that sort of thing, and then they wanted to build a place of worship for themselves near the site of the massacre which they want us to honor because of the way they would be making a show of the moderation of their form of Mormonism.

Come on, Attaturk! You can't even picture Mormons doing that, and certainly if they did, there would be screams of horror and disgust!

"Politics in Indiana is the old boy’s school. They’re getting ready to put one of their own in," said Tamyra D’Ippolito...

... to FireDogLake.

"My gut feeling tells me they’re meeting in a room, I don’t know if they’re smoking cigars," D’Ippolito said, basically working under the assumption that Bayh’s announcement was timed so the state party could pick the nominee by themselves. "The timing of this is amazing."

D’Ippolito told me she is the first woman to ever run for the US Senate in Indiana. Her impression from working on prior campaigns and from this one is that Indiana political culture is a "tight old boys school, it borders on sexism." In a state where the population is 52% women, D’Ippolito says "in the future, we women of Indiana are not going to tolerate" the chummy, insider culture.

Is that the way to run in Indiana, by flinging about accusations about how sexist everyone is? And FireDogLake has to walk back in an update:

The fact that Jill Long Thompson was the Democratic candidate for Governor in Indiana just two years ago would seem to cut against D’Ippolito’s suggestion that Indiana Democratic politics is ruled by men.

Ouch.

But it's an interesting situation, because  D'Ippolito has been collecting signatures to get on the Democratic primary ballot, to run against Evan Bayh:

She’s collected 3,500 of the 4,500 signatures, 500 in each Congressional district in Indiana, which are needed by noon tomorrow [February 16th] in order to qualify. D’Ippolito said that she’s particularly short in IN-08, in the Terre Haute/Evansville area of the district. Her campaign manager has contacted all of the heads of the county Democratic parties asking them if they would help her get on the ballot.

But she’s not getting the sense that they want to be helpful in that effort.

Now that Bayh is out, there's a danger that D'Ippolito will be the only candidate on the ballot, and other Democrats will need to run against her as write-ins. It's not surprising that people don't want to help her. Here's her campaign website. Read her background. She's a café owner who has never held public office (though she was once a board member of something called Women Inspire).

Why did FireDogLake operate as a brainless mouthpiece for this woman? Are they hoping for a Republican victory in the fall?

Here's Politico:

It would be something close to a nightmare scenario for Democrats: were D’Ippolito to qualify for the ballot, she would be the likely nominee and the party would be left to face the GOP with a political neophyte who said she is running in part to take on a party establishment she said practices “sexism with a big S.”...

[I]n the mad scramble following Bayh’s surprise decision, worried Democrats in Washington and Indianapolis were taking the prospect seriously.

“This would be a complete and unmitigated disaster,” said a leading Democrat in the state. “We’d be up sh—’s creek.”...

And conservatives saw it as an opportunity to wreak havoc among their foes.

"This could be fun," wrote RedState blogger Erick Erickson. "Those of you in Indiana should go out of your way to help Tamyra get the signatures he needs by tomorrow at noon."

Here's the adorable troublemaker:

Watch out, Sarah-haters, she's wearing lipstick!

She says things like: 

“I’m saying it’s an inside job. Indianagate instead of Watergate... The White House set this up, decided who they are gonna put in office, called the democratic county heads and told them to secretly get signatures. Bingo-bongo.”

Bingo-bongo!

IN THE COMMENTS: Fred4Pres croons:

Not so tall or tan, but lovely, The girl named D'Ippolito goes walking..

And when she passes, each Hoosier she passes, goes oh...
But we watch her so sadly...
Ooh! We'll be up sh*t's creek so badly...

UPDATE: D'Ippolito says she's got the signatures... and then takes it back...

"We have enough signatures and we're ready to go to court. We're ready to fight," said d'Ippolito. "And yes it's politics, and I'm sure there are certain Democrats, I hope they are the minority, I'm sure there are certain Democrats who will try those underhanded activities. I hope they would be wiser not to take that road."...

D'Ippolito said the people of Indiana should choose the candidate, not a party committee. "And this is what the machine in Indiana does not want to happen, because they want to choose the candidate, they want to put another Blue Dog in there," she said. "It's a different body than Evan Bayh, same thing, different face, Blue Dog. We don't want any more Blue Dogs. It's bye-bye Bayh, and bye-bye Blue Dogs in the state of Indiana."

I asked d'Ippolito about the possibility that Republicans may have given her a hand. Erick Erickson, for example, personally encouraged his Indiana readers to sign her petitions. "God bless him, because anybody can sign the petition," said d'Ippolitio. "Republican, Democrat, independent, teabag person, any registered voter with a warm pulse can sign."...

Late Update: After telling TPM that she already had the necessary signatures collected, d'Ippolito is now denying to Greg Sargent that she has them yet, saying instead that she would have them in time.

Oh, she's cagey! Oh! But they watch her so sadly....

UPDATE #2: Sketchy reports that she failed to meet the deadline.