"Every time someone tries to hold Norm Coleman accountable, he runs to court to try to weasel his way out of it."

Al Franken does not like being sued for defamation. Who does? I hate to see political mud-slinging turned into lawsuits, even if there are plenty of people who will make the argument that if something were really a lie -- e.g., the "Swift Boat" attacks on John Kerry -- the candidate would have sued.

I thought conservatives loathed tort suits... not to suggest that it's fine for liberals to drag political battles into the courtroom.

***

By the way, "Senator Franken"... won't that be weird? If it happens. Not really weirder than Sonny Bono in Congress. Or Arnold Schwarzenegger as Governor of California. Ah, I guess nothing about blurring the showbiz/politics line can be weird anymore. It's utterly banal.

***

Did you know Sonny Bono's epitaph is "And The Beat Goes On"?

Sullyboating, Swiftboating, sandals, sticks, stickage, and strawberries.

Sullyboating. It's not Swiftboating.

Let's see if I get Sullivan's argument - McCain's memory of a cross in the dirt is not a story about his courage or in his military record, and he may or may not have invented it in 2000 for political purposes; therefore, critics are not engaging in "Swiftboating" when they pick at it.

(Via Instapundit.)

Sullivan has tried to justify himself by displaying a campaign ad — an effective one — and noting that, there, we see the cross drawn in the dirt with a stick, but McCain has said the guard drew the cross with his sandal.

Could the campaign confirm that the ad itself is visually incompatible with the Salter story? Or were they unconcerned with such detail, assuming no one would be foolish enough to question a war hero's unconfirmable anecdote - and eager merely to show the deeper (and true) point that McCain relied on God to survive the unimaginable?

This incident is not part of McCain's military service - certainly not one he thought was in any way salient in his first 12,000 word account of his experience. It is part of his 2000 and 2008 campaigns and the religious mythology they coopted in order to appeal to a very specific audience. If a blogger cannot raise factual questions about a campaign ad and a campaign narrative, he's not really worth much.

My response:

1. If Sullivan's distinction bothers you, maybe you just don't have the appreciation for nuance that it takes to vote for a Democratic presidential candidate these days.

2. I think most people would laugh at the argument that a particular type of attack is legitimate so that bloggers will be worth more. What if the National Enquirer justified its publication of sneak pictures of a candidate in his hotel room on the theory that otherwise supermarket tabloids are not really worth much?

3. Wouldn't it be easier to say that what the Swift Boaters did was okay?

4. It can't help Obama to show that McCain ad over and over again for the purpose of arguing about a stick and a sandal. I think ordinary people — who aren't dumb enough to think we're looking at the original footage (or stickage, if you will) — would regard it as weirdly disproportionate to obsess over the detail of sticks and sandals. So let's take a film break:

527s!

"Bitter attacks":

"John yesterday said that he didn't believe in 527s," [said Barack Obama]...

“I do not support 527 groups. They are part of the law, but let me be clear: I am asking this group and others not to run the ads. I would encourage all the 527s to stay out of the political process,” [said John Edwards]...

... Obama said his concern was not with the independent spending by labor unions per se but with the question of Edwards' character.

"I love labor," he responded. "It's just important not to say that you oppose" 527 spending "the day before" the spending begins. ...

"I already said I'm against 527s," Edwards said, ignoring a question about whether he'd call publicly for his allies to cease spending on his behalf. "I've been fighting against these people my entire life."

In 2004, Edwards demanded that President Bush stop independent spending on his behalf by the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth with "three words: Stop these ads."...

But a person close to the group [said it] was barred from responding to Edwards' call for them to stop advertising — because that would constitute coordinating with his campaign, which is illegal.

Count the delicious ironies.

"They are not Swift boating us on security."

Says Nancy Pelosi, implying that the disparagement of Democrats on national security is just some underhanded trick. Note the second bird killed with that stone: the "Swift boating" verb embeds the assumption that the issues raised by the Swift boat veterans against John Kerry were illegitimate.

"More wicked than your average blogger"?

A squib about Al Franken's new book in the NYT Book Review:

"The Truth (With Jokes)," by Al Franken, [is] a gloomier, more astringent book than his "Lies (and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them)," which came out in 2003. Franken's new one has dark circles under its eyes. "The Truth (With Jokes)" went to press before Katrina and the indictment of Lewis Libby, so it already feels mildly dated; and regular readers of political blogs, which have multiplied exponentially since Franken's last book, may feel a lot of the material here (on John Kerry and his "Swift Boat" attackers, Abu Ghraib, Fox News) has already been hashed to death. But Franken is more wicked than your average blogger.

"More wicked than your average blogger"? What kind of a standard is that? Isn't the average blogger a rather amiable person, telling stories about the kids, the job, hobbies, sports, and TV? Or does "blogger," as used in the NYT, not actually refer to the tens of millions of bloggers on the planet, but to the set of American political bloggers? That might establish some standard of wickedness so that being more wicked than average would mean something, seeing as there are some real bastards at the front end of that bell curve.

But how wicked is Al Franken? The example the Times offered up as proof wasn't pithy enough for me to want to keep in the block quote. The NYT is really trying to sell us on a book that snarks on the current news in a world where most of the writers who satirize current politics react within minutes after news hits the web. Even later the same day, the story seems stale. If you've waited a day to crack your joke, you're better off finding the next thing to snark about. How can you possibly compete on the long time line of a book?

There are at least two good reason for books like this to exist, however.

1. You go to the bookstore. You see the bookcover. You feel: this expresses something. You buy it and voila: this expresses something about me.

2. Look at the damned calendar. It's a Christmas present! For that political friend or family member of yours. Oh, Josh will like this. He's a political junkie.

"This selection has become a political blunder of the first order."

The Wall Street Journal editorializes against the Miers nomination:

Regarding Ms. Miers's qualifications, we aren't among those who think an Ivy League pedigree or judgeship is a prerequisite for a Supreme Court seat. But the process of getting to know Ms. Miers has been the opposite of reassuring. Her courtesy calls on Senators have gone so poorly that the White House may stop them altogether.

And on Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee took the extraordinary step of asking her for what amounts to "do-over" on a standard questionnaire about her judicial philosophy. The impression has been created, fairly or not, that Ms. Miers is simply not able to discuss the Constitutional controversies that have animated American political debate for two generations....

[A]fter decades of Republican anger over judicial activism, and 20 years of disappointing GOP Court selections, a nominee who was a blank slate was bound to get pounded. Mr. Bush has set her up to be hit by a withering political crossfire....

Perhaps Ms. Miers will prove to be such a sterling Senate witness that she can still win confirmation. But so far the lesson we draw from this nomination is this: Bad things happen when a President decides that "diversity," personal loyalty and stealth are more important credentials for the Supreme Court than knowledge of the Constitution and battle-hardened experience fighting the judicial wars of the past 30 years.

Also in the Wall Street Journal, John Fund notes that "the politics of the Harriet Miers nomination are getting stranger." About that Texas Lottery Commission:

Two key players in last year's presidential campaign--Jerome Corsi, co-author of the Swift Boat Veterans book "Unfit for Command," and Ben Barnes, a former Texas lieutenant governor who claimed President Bush got special treatment when he joined the Texas Air National Guard--are involved in the debate.

In a plot twist worthy of "Dallas," Mr. Barnes is effectively siding with President Bush's appointee, while Mr. Corsi is opposed. Mr. Corsi has written a half dozen Internet stories on the Lottery Commission scandal, while Mr. Barnes is calling the offices of Democrats on the Judiciary Committee and urging them not to question Ms. Miers about the Lottery Commission because it will prove embarrassing to him and other Texas Democrats....

[Go to the link to read the details of the controversy!]

The bizarre maneuverings behind the Miers nomination threaten to take the confirmation hearings far afield from a discussion of constitutional law and judicial philosophy....

But another possibility is that both political parties' desire not to turn up old scandals--whether they be the Lottery Commission or who exactly did fake those Air National Guard memos that appeared in the same "60 Minutes" segment as Ben Barnes--prompts senators to suggest privately to Mr. Bush that Ms. Miers withdraw. It's a cliché, but doubly true in this case, that politics makes strange bedfellows.

(Hmmm... good general point about which scandals play out on the public stage.)

Staying with the WSJ, Daniel Henniger has a four-point plan for Bush to "get his mojo back," and point one is to withdraw the Miers nomination:

• Withdraw Harriet, nominate Edith. Harriet Miers is the canary in the Bush mineshaft. Her nomination sent fissures through the walls of a Republican coalition already cracking under the weight of federal outlays for a prescription drug entitlement and highways to nowhere. The disappointment of conservative intellectuals over attorney Miers is said to have been predicted inside the White House, and discounted. A mistake. Many of the best people in conservative politics have walked away from the Bush presidency.

The President needs his party to sustain him through the end of the term, and most of all this means completing the mission in Iraq. A Supreme Court nomination, however important, is a political obligation. Iraq is a moral obligation. The Miers nomination, by undermining the President's standing in his own party--and it has--is threatening Mr. Bush's ability to finish the job in Iraq. The imperatives of presidential leadership trump personal loyalty, especially in time of war, and we are at war.

So, the Wall Street Journal is awfully hard on Harriet today.