I have great admiration for John and Elizabeth Edwards. Her cancer has returned, and it is in a form that is "not curable, but treatable." She also says she is asymptomatic. Since they've decided to soldier on, I hope that the psychological blow of knowing that this will remain for the rest of her life doesn't tear them down too much. There can't have been enough time for the real impact of that to sink in.

Her doctor says that, in general, patients go about their lives, and the only change is that they go to the clinic more and perhaps feel more tired than usual from the treatment.

I can picture him asking if he should end or suspend the campaign, and she tells him absolutely not. It's a good mental image.

Good, good people. Prayers and thoughts for them--and for those people who are not so fortunate as to discover it early, or who don't have adequate health care to treat it.

Why does the Conservative Political Action Conference have any credibility in Republican political circles? It's apparently little more than a hate-fest in which the speakers run a race to the bottom.

By this time anyone who follows politics has heard about the ugly rantings of Ann Coulter, and her homophobic slur against John Edwards. The condemnation from all sides has been absolutely justified. This woman has been allowed to get away with spewing verbal vomit for far too long without being held to account for it in a meaningful way. She's the one who, if you'll recall, made nasty remarks about the 9/11 widows because they held politics other than her own. Now, I'm all for free speech. However, when I say "allowed to get away with" what she does, I simply mean that her brand of political "commentary" should disqualify her from the pundit's seat that she has occupied for a long time. She has the right to say it, but what she has to say adds no value to the political system and shouldn't be given airtime.

However, there was another remark made that is, arguably, equally offensive, if not more so. This remark has had very little coverage except on the blogs. I only discovered it myself from the Blog for Our Future coverage, via Crooks and Liars.

For your reading pleasure, the dishonorable Newt Gingrich on Hurricane Katrina victims:

How can you have the mess we have in New Orleans, and not have had deep investigations of the federal government, the state government, the city government, and the failure of citizenship in the Ninth Ward, where 22,000 people were so uneducated and so unprepared, they literally couldn't get out of the way of a hurricane.

It's no secret that the response to Hurricane Katrina was a fiasco, wherein no one got really suitable treatment but the level of recovery was still dramatically divided by race and class boundaries. Based on some of the stories in the news, which speak glowingly of Mardi Gras or the rehabilitation of the Superdome, you'd be led to believe that these disparities only surfaced during the immediate response attempts, and that things have been hunky-dory since then.

Well, you'd be wrong. The recovery of Hurricane Katrina is plagued with problems, the first of which I have already touched on--it does not consider the coming rise of the sea levels or the inundation of the coast's natural defenses, which global climate change is predicted to cause. As I've said, there are several others: environmental damage, the domination of the rebuilding process by big industry, and the class-based inequality of personal property recovery. Although they are all closely related, today's blog will only look at the last one.

The homeowners of coastal Mississippi have been parties to a lawsuit headed up by the state's Attorney General. The basis of the suit was that their home insurance companies wrongly denied them damages for wind damage, because water damage that occurred later (and may or may not have been insured) obscured what part of the damage was actually caused by wind. Contrary to a popular claim, the lawsuit did not seek to award flood insurance damages to anyone who did not have flood insurance, nor did it award any damages to anyone who didn't have hurricane insurance. In its sales pitches, the insurance industry misrepresents just what "hurricane insurance" really is (it's homeowners' insurance and does not include flood damage), but they don't outright lie in the legal contracts. The fine print is there to read. Any lawsuit based upon this would have been, well, dead in the water. (Sorry for that.)

They won their suit. And one of the companies, State Farm, retaliated by freezing new policies for the state, as well as issuing a veiled threat to the entire Gulf Coast that they would pull as much existing coverage as they could legally get away with before the 2007 hurricane season begins. Louisiana pre-empted this by implementing a rule for insurers that:

suspends the right of any insurer to cancel or nonrenew any personal residential, commercial residential or commercial property insurance policy covering a dwelling, residential property or commercial property located in Louisiana that sustained damage as a result of Hurricane Katrina or its aftermath, or Hurricane Rita or its aftermath.

As appalling as the treatment of Mississippi's insured coastal homeowners is, though, the plight of the uninsured or under-insured is far, far worse.

Embattled John Edwards blogger Amanda Marcotte resigned, despite being told by the campaign that she was welcome to remain as a blogging consultant. I don't particularly blame her; she probably felt that the best thing to do was to remove herself from the auspices of the official campaign, because her effectiveness as a supportive voice had been reduced dramatically.

You thought that would discourage the "religious" group that started all this in the first place? Think again.

They've sent letters to the other two front-runners, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama (warning: both links are PDF), to condemn the bloggers (and, implicitly, the Edwards campaign itself). Some samples:

By taking up this issue publicly, you will be able to distinguish your candidacy from Mr. Edwards[...].

They [a professor and a member of a think tank] believe that Mr. Edwards mishandled this attack on Catholics and Christians, and by permitting Marcotte and McEwan to remain on his staff, it has harmed efforts aimed at building coalitions between Christians, Catholics, and Democrats.

On blogs, there is a term for this: concern trolling. It's when a complete outsider, often (usually) opposed to the person or group's aims in the first place, comes forward and expresses concern that some action a person or group took will harm those aims. It's pure psyops, intended to create self-doubt and weakness among the ranks.

This group, known as Fidelis America, self-identifies as a Republican/Conservative political action committee. Here are the contributions that they made for the past election cycle, from disclosure database Open Secrets:

2006 Cycle:
Burns, Conrad (R-MT) - $100
Ensign, John (R-NV) - $100
Kyl, Jon (R-AZ) - $100
Santorum, Rick (R-PA) - $5,100
Talent, James M (R-MO) - $100
Total to Democratic Senate Candidates: $0
Total to Republican Senate Candidates: $5,500

And Democrats should cater to the demands of this group why, exactly?

These people will not endorse Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. In all likelihood, they'll endorse Sam Brownback. This is the Religious Right. Democrats have absolutely no obligation nor responsibility to condemn other Democrats at the urging of this group. The group donates to Republicans and does not care one bit about coalitions between Christians and Democrats. It probably shrinks in horror at the thought of the Religious Left becoming a force in politics. The purpose of this action is to create division and doubt among party ranks.

However, the right wing has sensed that the party tends to conduct itself this way -- attack each other out of sheer terror. They did it to John Kerry last year in the face of a right-wing onslaught (although, to their credit, Edwards and Obama did not join in the attack -- unfortunately, Clinton did). This behavior gives the right wing encouragement to continue with their attacks.

I sincerely hope that the other two front-runners repudiate this.

(Hat tip to Kagro X of the Daily Kos for the blog piece inspiring this entry.)

John Edwards has shown courage and class in deciding not to fire the bloggers after a rather dirty mini-campaign to smear him because of what they wrote in their private blogs. He could have done the easy thing, the thing that most politicians would do, and fire these people in the face of media onslaught -- but instead he kept them on, "talking to them" as he said to the press (because you have to tell these people that you're doing something or they'll never leave it alone). That has reinforced my support of him quite a bit, the fact that he doesn't cave to demands from the media machine.

I have no statement on the controversial comments themselves. I do realize that it is VERY common for bloggers, especially under protection of their online identities, to say things that they probably wouldn't say under other circumstances. Blogs on all sides of the political spectrum are often very politically incorrect, often vulgar, and generally highly emotional. It's the nature of the beast.

People really like it, too. Otherwise blogging wouldn't have taken off like a rocket in the past few years.

Blogging, in fact -- citizen media, as it's being called in some circles -- is becoming a major threat to the domination by mainstream media. It's a funny thing; news from mainstream sources is often politically correct to a fault. A major problem with the news in recent years has been the stubborn determination to present "balance" -- even if one side of the issue is patently wrong and has no facts to back up its point of view. There are some purported news sources that taint their product with sprinklings of political or ideological bias (*ahem*FOX*ahem*), but even from these sources, the bias isn't in-your-face in the way that blogging is. It's subtler.

However, the political scream shows on CNN, FOX, and MSNBC are a different matter altogether. Lou Dobbs, Tucker Carlson, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, etc. -- the shows where a self-styled pundit is given a microphone and allowed virtual free rein. Beck is the host who insulted Rep. Keith Ellison, a Muslim, by demanding that he say that he "wasn't working with the enemy" as a "Democrat, a Muslim, saying cut and run." This level of discourse is easily just as bad as anything that John Edwards' bloggers may have insinuated about Catholics.

And let's not even look at political talk radio. Just don't go there. The level of racist, sexist, and pseudo-religious vitriol on those shows far exceeds anything that is present on the respected political blogs.

The Edwards blogger "scandal" was a trumped-up sideshow blown completely out of proportion by the mainstream press, which is feeling very threatened by this new form of media that they cannot control or buy up. Kudos to him for not giving in.

Former Senator John Edwards for the Democratic nomination for President.

I was an early Edwards supporter in 2004 and switched to his running mate largely because of his superior experience. However -- despite my misgivings about making too much mention of Hurricane Katrina -- as a Gulf Coast native, I deeply appreciate the attention that he has called to it, especially in light of the State of the Union address that made NO mention whatsoever of the problems.

Edwards intends to address the horrible class war that is dividing America. He opposes the outsourcing of American jobs to foreign countries for the sake of lower wages and lower (or no) standards.

He is a voice against the Iraq War and plans to bring the troops home.

This endorsement is not a "well I have to go with SOMEONE." Edwards has been my second choice ever since the 2008 campaign kicked off, and now that the one who was my first is not a candidate, Mr. Edwards has become my first.

I offer him my support and my best wishes.

One unsurprising (Edwards), the other a bit of a stunner -- although not as big of a surprise as hearing that Mark Warner was out.

John Edwards plans to announce his candidacy for the presidency in New Orleans, apparently before the end of the year.

Personally I think it's kind of tacky to announce from the Lower 9th Ward, which is where it's supposed to occur, but I am probably over-sensitive to Katrina issues and imagery. I was also offended by those Chevrolet commercials during the World Series that showed New Orleans underwater.

It's just that Edwards making his announcement from a still-decimated disaster zone reminds me slightly of the 2004 Republican convention in New York City -- as a blatantly political move. That said, it's mitigated somewhat by the fact that Edwards does actually care about New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, and announcing from there could bring a much-needed media spotlight back to the Crescent City.

I think it should be patently obvious by now where my 2008 loyalties lie, but I'm glad that Edwards is in. I've liked him for awhile, and my slight disappointment over his choice of location from which to announce a presidential bid doesn't change that. But even if I were ambivalent, I'd be glad for another person to enter the field. The Hillary Clinton people seem to want to "coronate" her, and I am deeply against the idea of coronations. That's how the Republicans acted in 2000 with Dubya. The more legitimate contenders in it (and Edwards is definitely a legitimate contender), the more ideas will be floating around. People are likely to decide based on the debates this time. I think they're sick of "personality politics."