Barack Obama! I want YOU to filibuster this odious attack on our Constitutional rights when the Senate considers this bill next week.

I know you're discussing your options with your staff. I know damn well a filibuster is one of the options. It has to be, in any thorough contingency planning.

I know this is a high-risk strategy. I know that if if backfires, it could torpedo your presidential bid. I know that would mean disaster for this nation and for the world.

This will be a short diary, because I have to go take a shower, with Lava soap and steel wool, to wash off the stink of right-wing hatred and unvarnished racism that festers like a boil in my own mostly liberal home state of Washington.

Even here we have our right-wing hate cult, which operates at a blog called Sound Politics, where the local rightards have their little echo chamber.

I get on there often and call them out. They ban me from time to time, but never for long. When I read this one, though, I figured I'd call in some help.

Don't be kind.

Al Gore was my first choice for president on the Democratic ticket. When he wouldn't run, Edwards was my man. Now that Edwards is out, I am for Obama. If Clinton gets the nomination I will be there for her. Will somebody please explain to me why I should give a flying F--- in a rolling donut who any politician, no matter what their caliber, endorses?

I'm for Edwards till the last rooster crows. I see no evidence that Obama "brings a new way of thinking." I continue to support Edwards because of his clearly stated priorities. I remain wary of an Obama candidacy because I have seen no evidence that Obama shares Edwards' priorities -- not only the "what," but the "how."

But there is an upside to an Obama candidacy that readers of this blog should consider -- and it is as significant as it gets. It comes from my personal experience and from some of my deepest convictions about this country and its people.

According to USA Today:

"We cannot replace a group of corporate Republicans with a group of corporate Democrats, just swapping the Washington insiders of one party for the Washington insiders of the other," Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards plans to declare today in what the Associated Press is calling his "toughest" attack yet on his rivals for the party's presidential nomination.

It's in the New York Post, so let's wait for some independent verification, but if this is true, this is good news indeed for newspaper readers online, and let's hope it's a trend.

Have we torn our hair, beat our breasts, rent our garments, donned sackcloth and ashes, bemoaned the loss of our Constitution, thrown our arms toward heaven and cried "O Lord! O Lord! Why hast thou forsaken me?" following Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's sentence?

Have we attacked our fellow Democrats enough by now as gutless, spineless, chicken, and "unfit to govern," even though there aren't the votes for conviction even if impeachment goes back "on the table?" and will not be for the duration of this Congress?

Well, let's look at what this does get us, and how we might make political hay of it.

From my fellow curmudgeon, Joe Bageant, entitled Dispatch from the Chinese Landfill.

But you have to go to the jump to read it.

Next, a pat on the back and an attaboy to Peter Goldmark in WA-05, for a race well run.

Darcy and Peter didn't capture the two House seats we wanted, but their races were the catalysts for a smashing Democratic wipeout in the Evergreen State, led by U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell. No Democratic House incumbent won with less than 60 percent of the vote. But there's more.

I mean, pictures don't lie! We have to suck it up and move forward now.

Stunning, irrefutable photo evidence below the jump.

But our first vice chair has a cousin in Sunnyside, Yakima County, in Washington's 15th Legislative District, and the two of them got to talking, and the next thing we knew, we had a proposal on the table for a "sister district" relationship with the 15th.

We thought we'd be cruising in 2006. We think we'll re-elect Maria Cantwell to the Senate. Jim McDermott and Adam Smith hardly have challengers for their House seats. Two of our three state legislators are unopposed and the third faces a perennial candidate.

We figured to give Darcy Burner some help. We have already, and we will again. But now we're up to our eyeballs in the belly of the beast--a State Senate race halfway across the state with a clear-cut battle between good and evil, and a view of the future for the fast-growing Latino voter demographic.

For those of you outside the Seattle area, Blatherwatch might be of limited utility. Of broader interest is the blog's motto :

Listening to talk radio so you don't have to ...

That's the niche Mike Hood fills for me on Blatherwatch, and the niche that Mike Stark fills for me on Daily Kos, so here's (I hope) a little help for him.

Much has been made of Qwest's notable refusal to comply with (probably illegal) NSA requests for the personal phone records of customers. This has earned them well-deserved praise across the blogosphere. Here at EA, however, we've been a Qwest customer for many long years and suspect there might be other factors at work. Through our own private intelligence sources, we have obtained transcripts of several calls between NSA headquarters and Qwest on this subject. They are presented here as a public service.

According to the Seattle Times, police estimated the number of demonstrators at 25,000, "far more than organizers had predicted."

Police estimates are known to be conservative. I have not yet heard from my friends who marched. It might be that the number was higher.

But what caused the number to be "more than organizers had predicted?" One answer might surprise you.

DHinMI and I were pretty tough on the diarist. DH can speak for himself. I do not apologize for my statements. They were based on experience, and on day-to-day party-building at the grass-roots level.

I deal every day with the dynamic reflected in the previous diary, and although I mostly comment and do not diary much anymore, I thought this was diary-worthy and maybe you will think so too.

I dashed off an e-mail to Senator Reid, with copies to my own two Senators, Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, and this is what it said:

Everybody can cite anecdotal examples of bad teachers, bad schools, or bad decisions by teacher unions. That's all beside the point.