So Mickey Kaus is debating running against “Call me Senator” Boxer – which would be a hoot since Mickey is clearly policy-informed enough to create some really, really interesting debates if Boxer is ever brave enough to subject herself to a debate with a mere citizen. He won’t win, but it’d be a fascinating way to kick some policy issues open and into public view, which is what I assume he’s doing.

The netroots blogs are alive with comments tagging Mickey for – basically – having gay sex with goats. I was kind of scratching my head on this one, and so turned to Da Google, and discovered that Juicebox Matt Yglesias did a post on October 14, 2007 where he – to put it mildly – challenged Mickey for supporting those AWFUL allegations that John Edwards had been having an affair with Rielle Hunter (the post is gone from the Atlantic, but the Google cache is still alive):

Mickey Kaus’ long post here about John Edwards’ alleged affair with Rielle Hunter is almost self-refuting. Basically, we have an anonymous source saying Hunter said she had an affair with Edwards, versus Hunter, on the record, saying that’s not the case. Then there’s Edwards, also saying it’s not the case. But Kaus initially deems Edwards’ denial too vague and non-specific. But then:

Update: The AP has Edwards adding “It’s completely untrue, ridiculous” and saying the story was “made up.” By the Enquirer? Or by one of the people the Enquirer cites? Either way, it’s a direct attack on the integrity of someone (not necessarily a smart move for a politician in Edwards’ position). …

[Banging my head against the wall] Basically what we have here is that if we assume the anonymous hearsay is true and the on-the-record first-hand denial is false, then Edwards is either mishandling the story by denying it too vaguely (“the story is false”) or else is mishandling it by denying it too directly (“made up”) but what if the story’s not true? No doubt by now we’ve had all the legitimate news organizations in the country looking into it and it seems that . . . nobody can come up with any evidence. As we saw with Scott Beauchamp, and the fake John Kerry intern affair story, if you just operate from within an assumption of guilt it’s very hard for someone to prove his innocence but that’s why we . . . don’t operate with an assumption of guilt!

Now, we all know how this turned out, right?? I’m sure Matt apologized to Mickey at some point…

But on Matt’s post commenter Hank Essay explains that Mickey blows goats.

Hank has, I’m sure apologized since the affair turned out to be true…

The next day, equally classy Atrios (nee Duncan “f**k with us a little bit and YOU NO LONGER LIVE BITCHES!” Black) and Matt had picked the comment up.

(Both of them wrote long, heartfelt apologies when it turned out they were full of shit…I’m sure…wait…maybe not…Matt has a post up today where the commenters repeat the slur…it’s almost like he’s proud of it)

And so, today – for telling the truth – Mickey gets tagged with a slur that sounds exactly like the kind of thing my 13 year old and his buddies used to say about their schoolmates – until they got to middle school.

Nice work, Netroots!! And that’s why you don’t deserve, and won’t get, and real power.
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….and I’m getting just kinda uncomfy sitting here.

A pro-gun editorial, that makes an honest case for the fact that you can’t defend just some Constitutional liberties – in the LA Times:

But if the court would identify an important individual right — in this case, the right to bear arms — and then deny that it applied to the states, those who never accepted the incorporation doctrine might try to “de-incorporate” other rights. That’s not a risk worth taking.

Isn’t that a peach??
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