The Rev. Dr. Robert “Bob” Edgar is the general secretary of the National Council of Churches, a partnership of “thirty-six Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox member communions, with 140,000 local congregations and approximately 50 million congregants.” This week he did an interview with me about the role of NCC, their efforts to foster peace in Iraq, and NCC’s “Let Justice Roll” voter registration drive. Click here to read the interview.

The Political Animal takes bloggers to task for being too hard on the liberal hawks and neocons who are now having second thought about the war. He says we should warmly embrace them to our side. Since I just wrote about this last night, I feel I should answer that complaint.

First of all, it would be a lot easier if they didn’t feel it was necessary to insult the millions of people who did make the right call while they are expressing their regrets. That indicates to me that they are not very likely to pay any heed to those voices in the future. But, that’s not the real problem.

In order to truly understand what went wrong before this war, you have to look at what was being said and what was being heard before we went into it. I’m not seeing a lot of that from the Mea Culpa singers. Peter Beinert (with whom I regrettably proved Kevin’s point by being deliberately snarky) was one of the few to actually examined his prejudices and preconceptions as a way of explaining why he came to the conclusions he did. As far as I know, he is the only one to do that. All the others are based upon misplaced trust in the administration and a shock that they could have been so dishonest/incompetent/incoherent. They have not grappled with the fact that they chose to ignore plenty of evidence prior to the invasion that should have tipped them off. I can think of a handful right off the top of my head, and I’m sure there are plenty more:
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Bush supporters are hoping that anti-gay marriage initiatives in various states will help bring out large numbers of religious conservatives in November. What does the Bible actually say about homosexuality? It might not be what you think.

Since Gulf Preemption II is now officially over, and there will be no more attacks on Americans by the grateful Iraqis, I have turned my sights to winning the Culture War. I present examples of how useful tips for lashing liberals (and leftist artists) can be gained from old rightist fiction, in “La Sauce Pour Le Jars”, a June 30 entry on my blog. (That’s just on top of my June 28 entry that explains why The American Street REALLY went down this past weekend, “The Lone Star Civil War”.)

Hi, my name’s Jenny, and I’ll blogging here on the Street as delegate to the Democratic National Convention. I’m a Kerry delegate from Oregon’s 3rd congressional district. I’ll also be talking about my experience of trying to change the Democratic Party from the inside.

I’ve been an almost full-time volunteer for the Democrats since my dot.com dot.bombed in 2003. I have no elected position, other than as a local precinct person, nor do I work for any Democratic organization for pay. I have been volunteering for the state and county parties, and have learned a lot about the way the Democratic Party works in the process. Some of it’s pretty, some of it ain’t.

I ran for delegate because I want to change the Party. I have two issues: the direction the Party’s headed and the way the Party works.

I’m a progressive–the DLC simply doesn’t represent me, and sometimes I wonder about the DNC as well. As an early Howard Dean supporter, I’m glad that Howard managed to give the Party a spine transplant, but I believe that the Party needs to regain its soul as well as its backbone. For those of who call ourselves Democrats–just what does that mean?

I also believe that the DNC has failed to nurture its grass roots. By concentrating on national