Bruce sings at Tim Russert's funeral tribute

I'll admit that I was not a huge fan of Tim Russert, but I am completely touched by how much he was loved and respected across idealogical and political lines. I'll confess that I wept watching his memorial yesterday, thinking of Russert and his son, and about me and my own sons. And I wept again listening to Bruce sing Thunder Road. And yes, Russert's son Luke is a pretty amazing young man.

Is Russert a racist?

Tim Russert hammered Barack Obama during the debate Tuesday, demanding that he publicly denounce the support of Louis Farrakhan. Obama had no trouble with the denunciation since he had, in the past, provided just such a denunciation of Farrakhan's repulsive viewpoints.

But as Glenn Greenwald points out, Russert has never confronted Republican candidate John McCain because of the support he receives from the powerful zealot Christian, Pastor John Hagee, whose anti-Muslim, anti-gay biases have been well-documented. Even our own Creepy Joe™ Lieberman courts the support of Hagee.

I don't think it's about party. I think its about skin color.

What's happened to Chris Dodd?

While Chris Dodd has had an exemplary career, he hasn't always been right. He voted for George Bush's invasion of Iraq, and as Tim Russert pointed out, Dodd gave a speech assuring the public that WMD's surely existed in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Dodd has also been kind to bankers, but more on that in a later post.

The difference between Dodd, and Hillary Clinton, for example, is that Dodd admits that he was fooled by the intelligence provided by the White House, and now admits that he was wrong.

But something significant has happened. And it's a mystery what the trigger may have been. Was it the abandonment of the Democratic party by his colleague and (former) friend Creepy Joe Lieberman (and Dodd's subsequent show of support for Lieberman's opponent, renegade candidate Ned Lamont)? Was it the realization that a candidate who doesn't show in the media polls will be ignored by the selfsame media (including those who conduct the debates)? Was it working on a book about his father's part in the Nuremberg trials and realizing that the Constitution and the rule of law are more important than government and power? Was it an understanding that, as Ralph Nader said a few elections ago, there isn't a dime's worth of difference between the Republican and Democratic candidates for presidents (or more specifically there's no difference, really, between George Bush and Hillary Clinton and will we be resigned to having the presidency passed between these two dynastic families for the next several decades?) Is it his notion that running a quixotic campaign, he's got to sound different or be relegated to the scrap heap of also-rans. Or is it simply that, as he said last night on Chris Matthew's show Hardball, that with the loss of habeus corpus, domestic spying and torture, he doesn't recognize America anymore?

Whatever it is, Chris Dodd seems different to me, and apparently to others. He's not the perfect candidate, and I fear that with any hint of success he may revert to a safer version of the man now knocking on doors in Iowa.

I suspect that, at the moment, he's mad as hell, and he doesn't intend to take it anymore.