The topic below was originally posted in my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal.

I feel like Count Vitte who served the insipid Czar Nicholas II in the final years of Russia's monarchy. A stupid boy sovereign who believed he was annointed by God. His subjects, the ungrateful peasants and proletarians lost their stomach for a noble war.

Rabble rousers, subversives and opportunists sowing the seeds of dissent and undermining morale. "Peace, land and bread!" Now it's peace, healthcare and raise the minimum wage! Put a mustache and beard on Senator Schumer and he resembles Leon Trotsky! Instead of Lenin's propaganda pamphlets we have blogs. Hillary Clinton might as well be the reincarnation of Vladimir Lenin's wife Nadezhda Krupskaya.

Okay, so Pelosi put herself in the line of fire when she decided to make very public her campaign to make John Murtha her second in charge.

Some say her act was a sign of courage. She took a solid position on what she thought was best and she stuck with it through to the very end -- no apologies, no excuses. That's what leaders do. Of course they can't win every battle.

Others, including the mainstream media and conservative bloggers, have pointed out that Hoyer's win was a 'devastating' defeat for Pelosi -- one that might set the stage for Democratic infighting or serve as a hobbling message to Speaker Pelosi. Clearly this is the easiest tack for media outlets to take. It's simply more exciting to the average reader to hear about such drama. That Pelosi has 'great leadership skills' would seem far less interesting for the majority of the consuming public.

So off they ago...

The AP notes Pelosi's own election is being largely "overshadowed by Murtha's defeat,"

The USA Today says "the next speaker of the House lost her first test Thursday."

Dana Milbank writes in the Washington Post that Pelosi "experienced her first smackdown." It "should have been a coronation," but "instead, her party...plunged into fratricide."

The Los Angeles Times wrote "Pelosi's Early Setback Has Her Party On Alert," and says Democrats "gave Pelosi a brusque lesson in the limits of her power." Hoyer "didn't merely defeat Murtha, Pelosi's strong preference, but trounced him."

On the CBS Evening News, Bob Schieffer said the Murtha-Hoyer debate "has raised real questions about [Pelosi's] judgment."

The Washington Post says the vote "was viewed by many in the party as a repudiation of Pelosi's strong-arm tactics."

The Baltimore Sun reports California Rep. Maxine Waters, "a Hoyer supporter, said Pelosi's campaign...had raised serious questions within the party. 'What most people didn't understand was the why's of it all,' Waters said."

And the New York Times notes "some supporters of Mr. Murtha...were disgruntled and said they were trying to identify lawmakers who had broken pledges to support him. 'We won't trust them on issues like this the next time,' said Representative James P. Moran, a Murtha ally from Virginia who said Mr. Murtha had been betrayed."

Perhaps next time, Speaker Pelosi will deal with such internal matters more subtly and behind closed doors as much as possible. After all, she had relatively little to gain and much to lose from making this such an unnecessarily public debate.

I think I'm going to be sick.

Today, both Devilstower and Larry O'Donnell let rip with a scathing criticism of a potential Jack Murtha House majority leadership position -- seemingly in reaction to a Washington Post Article endorsing Hoyer as House majority leader in lieu of the ethically 'questionable' Murtha.

I would like to reiterate the absolute importance of Pelosi's and the Democrats' exclusion of such questionable figures from leadership positions. Murtha has no business representing Democrats -- a party that has rightly adopted a "culture of integrity" -- one that intends to "Drain the swamp" of congressional corruption.

Pelosi should know better.

I don't expect this to be a popular post.  In fact, I might get about as many favorable comments by voting Bush the bestest president ever.  But after looking at the issues, and considering what's ahead, I've come to the conclusion that it would be best if Jack Murtha halted his pursuit of a leadership position and allowed Steny Hoyer to take that role.

The reason: ethics, earmarks, and the politics of the personal.

An unpopular war raged but the president refused to acknowledge error or change course. A talented and ambitious congressman continued to support his president in spite of private doubts and even misgivings from his own children. He largely supported the president's domestic agenda and as a Washington insider received many briefings from the Pentagon, State Department and CIA.

They all told him the administration's policies were working and a premature withdrawal was tantamount to weakness. The war was of course Vietnam. LBJ was in the White House. And a Massachusetts congressman named Tip O'Neill was on a collision course with President Johnson after years of steadfast support.

You'd think they'd get tired of smearing decent people but I guess we all knew they'd take a shot at Murtha...

from rep. john murtha writing in the huffington post this afternoon...

   This afternoon, CNSNEWS.com published an article entitled "Murtha's War Hero Status Called Into Question" on its website. The article questions the validity of my purple hearts. This is my response:

On ABC's This Week (12/04/05, Stephanopoulos), Rep. John Murtha responded to Hadley's comments on troop redeployment saying, "I like this guy. I mean, he's starting to come around. He's starting to understand what the American people are saying, and what the Iraqi people are saying. ... He's coming around because he's talking about redeployment. He's talking about pulling our troops out. And I can see, by what he's saying, that we're going to be out of there by the end of the year or very close to it."

Murtha was referring to earlier comments by National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley where Hadley said the US may be ready to reduce the number of troops in Iraq if Iraqis continued making progress at the current pace.

More over the flip...

The Johnstown, PA Tribune-Democrat published the following op-ed from Teresa Heinz Kerry yesterday.  She weighed in on behalf of Rep. Murtha.

Teresa is interested in feedback.  See below for how to contact her.

The latest rat to jump the sinking ship of Iraq is Congressman Norm Dicks of Washington. He admits that he was mislead and that Bush had doctored intelligence in the leadup to the war with Iraq.

Dicks' reversal comes as the steady drumbeat of revelations continues about the extent of the Bush plan to fix facts around the case for war in Iraq. He is the congressman for Washington's Sixth District, which includes Tacoma.

Or so the White House would have you believe.

Yesterday, this astonishing report came out - just a week after the GOP hounds of hell were let loose to savage John Murtha's patriotism:

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The White House has for the first time claimed ownership of an
Iraq withdrawal plan, arguing that a troop pullout blueprint unveiled this past week by a Democratic senator was "remarkably similar" to its own.

Hmmm ... remarkably similar indeed. The AFP article DOES point out this amazing coincidence:

Less than two weeks ago, McClellan blasted Democratic Representative John Murtha, saying that by calling for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, the congressman was "endorsing the policy positions of Michael Moore," a stridently anti-war Hollywood filmmaker.

But the White House, in its latest blast of bullshit, claims it's not Murtha's urging that led to Bush finally formulating a withdrawal plan, but Joe Biden's recent proposals for an exit strategy ... and that Biden was simply echoing the administration's plan, even though all we've heard from Bush's lips is the mantra: Stay the course.

This is who the state of Ohio narrowly chose over a Democrat: A shrill, lying, Naziesque crone of a woman.

Three days after Rep. Jean Schmidt was booed off the House floor for saying that "cowards cut and run, Marines never do," the Ohioan she quoted disputed the comments.

Danny Bubp, a freshman state representative who is a colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve, told The Enquirer that he never mentioned Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., by name when talking with Schmidt, and he would never call a fellow Marine a coward.

Send her a yellow feather, won't you?

(Via AMERICAblog)

Murtha, on Meet The Press:

REP. MURTHA: ...Let me predict this: We're going to be out of there, we're going to be out of there very quickly, and it's going to be close to the plan that I'm presenting right now.

MR. RUSSERT: You think we'll be out of Iraq by the end of 2006?

REP. MURTHA: I think we'll be out of there; if not completely out of there, we'll be very close to being out of there. I think we could be out--yeah, I predict we'll be out of there--it'll be 2006.

MR. RUSSERT: By Election Day 2006?

REP. MURTHA: You--you have hit it on the head.

Well of course we'll be out by Election Day.

Wow. As soon as the transcript pops up, anyone missing Murtha on MTP should read it.

He predicts that, despite the Republican "outrage," we'll be out of Iraq by the 2006 elections.

The guy makes such clear, sober sense. He obviously needs to work over some Democrats, but I think he's pretty damn persuasive. We're looking at the guy that's going to get us out of Iraq.

Some quotes below in the meantime...

With their smear of Congressman John Murtha, including a hysterical attack by Congressman Jean Schmidt calling him a coward, and the GOP House Leadership writing a bill requiring Bush to leave Iraqi immediately and portraying it as Murtha's bill, the Republican Party continues their brand of lies, hatred, smears, and political opportunism. Their smear of John Murtha shows that they appeal to the worst instincts in American culture by treating Murtha in a similar way that the segregationists treated Blacks in the Jim Crow era.

The expectations that the segregationists had for Blacks and the expectations that the Republicans have for military veterans are very similar. The segregationists expected Blacks to be quiet, not get too uppity, not make trouble for whitey, and stay on their end of the tracks. Blacks who didn't were regularly lynched; one writer I studied in college suggested that the White segregationists did so in order to show their sexual prowess.