In an effort to absolve George Bush of his failures as the Leader of the Free World, Pope Benedict XVI has graciously offered to annul his presidency, sources now confirm.

Hello, all,
This has come up in the last couple of days in discussions: namely, the question of whether supporters of one candidate here would vote for the opposite candidate in the general.

I've seen polls on dKos asking everyone whether they'd vote for Clinton in the general; however, the results would contain some votes from Clinton supporters.

It's also important to note that the results of this poll aren't necessarily representative of what will happen in November, after months of general election campaigning.

Please do try to be honest, though.  I realize the temptation may be there to make the "other side" look bad, but it won't do much in the long run.  The poll is more valuable as a look at honest intentions.

Oh, and please, if you're not eligible to vote (too young, outside the US, etc.) please don't vote.  This is a measure of US general election preferences.  Thank you!

I wrote about this last night in comments, and I think I should expand upon my thoughts here.  What I want to do is detail why I'm deeply afraid that a Hillary Clinton nomination, should she manage to win that and a victory in the general election, would be a very bad thing for the long-term prospects of Democrats and progressives.

Well, we're back.  This one will be a short entry.  It's a response I composed to the "Obama is a Secret Muslim" smear, and the response is specifically designed to appeal to wingnuts.

Response on "Side B".  Feel free to lift it and make modifications at will.

Now that we have the exciting title out of the way, safety the snark for a bit: I'd like to discuss the flap over Obama's alleged "plagiarism" and what we can look forward to after Obama gets the Democratic nod.

I think we may have just dodged a bit of a bullet.

Follow me through the FutureSmear Looking Glass.

Those of us who were netroots activists in 2004 remember well the smears that were leveled at John Kerry.  Of course, smears are nothing new, and the GOP's tendency toward the use of smears has existed a long time.

The main Kerry smear (so infamous it produced the term "Swiftboating") was carefully cultivated over more than a year's time, then brought to fruition late in the campaign.  Arguably, it was one big reason Kerry lost in 2004.

This is an overview of what I think our main candidates may be facing this year.

Let me say that I'm not trying, in this diary, to address every attack on the records of the two candidates we're likely to see.  Every election cycle, the GOP attacks our candidates for switching positions, missing votes, raising taxes 200 times, etc.  Covering all of these distortions would require a series.

This diary addresses the "big lie" smear: smears so big they are designed to radically raise a candidate's negatives with out-and-out false stories.

INTRODUCTION

Over the last two weeks, I've written some about encryption basics, as well as one practical application of encryption to protect email communications.  This week, I intend to discuss a free, open-source application that may be used in multiple ways to protect your data.  For most of us, this sort of data protection is primarily useful to keep your private data out of the hands of thieves, should your computer or media be lost or stolen.  For businesses, protecting your data by encrypting it could save thousands (millions?) of dollars.  And for political campaigns, keeping critical inside information private, in light of stories of break-ins and stolen computers every election cycle,  can make the difference between victory and defeat.  

Join me after the jump.

INTRODUCTION

Last week, the inaugural edition of the "Security Sunday" series was dedicated to an overview of encryption.  This week, I intend to build on that discussion and detail one set of practical applications of modern strong encryption, including several free programs that can be used to keep your communications safe.

A logical first question is, "what can encryption do for me?"  Well, for starters, modern strong encryption can make it virtually impossible for criminals, identity thieves and/or nosy individuals to read your communications.  For another, they may help to keep you out of the reach of prying eyes that disregard the 4th Amendment.

So, without further ado, let's get to it.

I've long been a proponent of the use of encryption when it comes to electronic communication.  This pre-dates Bush's massive violation of the FISA law; most electronic communication is vulnerable should some bad actor decide to listen in, and the situation has become 100 times worse in the age of email.

In short: everyone should be encrypting their communications.  It is simplicity itself for a criminal to read your online communications.  You don't have to be concerned about violations of the 4th Amendment to be concerned about protecting your privacy.

This is the first of a series of several diaries (not sure how long it will be) discussing encryption, the protection of private communications and the protection of privacy in general.  There's no "insider knowledge" presented here, since I have none to present.  Rather, the information contained herein is gleaned from years of hobby interest in the field.  Any corrections are welcome.

More after the jump.

As many of us are now aware, Mr. Bush has chosen to push for changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) right now.  At a guess, he did this at this time because

1. Congress wants to go on vacation, and he's keeping them in session

2. It's a Friday night

3. Many people who would put pressure on Dems to oppose changes are at YearlyKos.  Yes, I can believe it would figure into the calculations.

As most of us know, FISA law has been at the center of controversy for this administration: we have good reason to believe Bush has ordered the systematic violation of FISA law for the last several years (which requires domestic wiretapping to be subject to judicial oversight).

Unfortunately, Bush wanted his program(s) legalized, and unfortunately, it looks like Congress may give him just that.

More after the jump.

For me, the timing of DogAte has been interesting.  I've been in the middle of completely overwriting the hard drive on my new laptop (it caught a lovely little difficult-to-uproot virus -- I'd like to send a big "thank you" to the creators of "vundo" -- and in the course of attempting a disinfection, I accidently nuked Windows).  In the process of re-installing everything from scratch, I decided to encrypt part of the hard drive.

So, say you want to completely erase sensitive data and/or protect private information from prying eyes.  How do you go about it?  As it turns out, it's not all that tough, and most of it can be done with software that is absolutely free.

What follows is a Windows-centric description of this process.  Similar (and sometimes, the same) programs are available for most operating systems, though.

By now, most of us have had a chance to review Victoria Toensing's performance before the House Oversight Committee this afternoon.

As LitigatorMom and others have noted, Vicky was a little fast-and-loose with her interpretation of the law (the Intelligence Identities Protection Act).  Passing herself off as an expert on the law due to her involvement in drafting the statute, she appears to have misquoted the criteria for an agent to be considered "covert".  This, of course, wasn't the first time she's done so.

In closing, Chairman Henry Waxman mentioned his skepticism of Toensing's comments.  I would very much like to see her recalled before the Committee to answer for several of the statements she made that were clearly counterfactual.  After the jump, I've written up my idea of how such a session might go.

The possibility of former Senator Fred Thompson jumping into the 2008 for President has been discussed here and elsewhere.  The idea has evoked a mixture of speculation, apprehension and bravado over the possibility and what it means to Democrats.

For myself, considering that presidents are still elected based mainly on perceived personality, I think that Mr. Thompson represents the single best hope for the GOP to hold on to the White House, and the single biggest threat to Democrats' '08 hopes.

But he's not unbeatable.  More after the jump.

As I'm sure we're all aware, the GOP has been happily spinning lie after lie about Nancy Pelosi and her alleged request for luxury jet travel.  These lies have, of course, resulted in several troll diaries right here at dKos trying to peddle the same crap.

Now, this situation has resulted in the House Sergeant-at-Arms, a GOP appointee, having to issue a statement expressing regret for the whole thing.

Like many here, I went to sleep certain we'd retake the House, less certain about the Senate.  Like many, I'm overjoyed -- make that ecstatic -- about how this new day is dawning.

I've been looking forward to this for 12 years.  And to a great degree, we made this happen.  Right here.

Heads up, Maryland:

I just got a robocall pushpoll in Maryland for Michael Steele.  It went through various issues asking me what I thought.  On one question, "do you support medical experimentation on unborn babies", I answered "no" just to see what would happen.  The automated voice then launched into an attack on Ben Cardin, claiming he was for experimentation on unborn babies.  Michael Steele, of course, was against this.

Much discussion.  Much disillusionment.  Much knashing of teeth.

We've seen it all before: with the Bankruptcy Bill.  With Alito.  The list goes on and on.

But this time, it's different.  This time, our anger should result not in liberals failing to back democrats, but rather in liberals going to the polls en masse.

Join me on the flip.

OK, for the last week, my "refresh" button has seen the kind of action normally reserved for election nights.  I'm hanging on every new diary, every new post on the top blogs.

So, after seeing the ABC/Disney debacle play out to the current point, my feelings on this are:
1) PT9/11 isn't going to influence the election, nor was it truly intended to, and
2) ABC has a deathwish.

More in the extended.