Bristol Palin has been trying mightily to keep her lawsuit for sole custody of her and Levi Johnston's son Tripp closed to the public. Levi wants them open, as protection, primarily, he alleges, because of Sarah Palin's interference and manipulation.

This week the Judge ruled in Levi's favor and unsealed all the documents to date. This pleading has most of them, including Levi's answer to Bristol's petition for custody in which he asks for joint custody, Bristol's petition and the orders denying closure of the proceedings and a related request they use pseudonyms instead of people's names.

The pleadings also include Bristol's request that Levi's mother be barred from unsupervised visitation because of her use of pain meds for a chronic medical problem and her felony drug conviction. [More...]

In the theatre of the absurd:

Anti-child abuse campaigners are demanding that rock star Pete Townshend be treated as a sex offender when he plays at next year's Superbowl concert in America. They want the guitarist of The Who to provide DNA samples and fingerprints and to pose for a police mug shot before being allowed to perform during the half-time show of America's biggest sporting event.

Townshend was never prosecuted after his 2003 arrest for accessing child p*rn on his home computer. He agreed to be placed on the sex offender registry for five years but insisted he wasn't guilty and had been doing research.

The group is Protect Our Children. Who will protect the rest of us from them?

After spending the past 3 hours reading discovery in a new drug case, the only thing that's popping into my mind is this 1984 video by Glenn Frey, a song later made famous by Miami Vice. (Great lyrics too.) Some things are still the same as in 1984 -- informants and wiretaps still rule the day. The differences seem to be drugs are cheaper, Mexico predominates, the busts involve smaller overall quantities but bond is harder to get and sentences are much longer ... and cell phone records bring everybody down.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Does anyone still care about Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky, Ken Starr and Whitewater?

The Death of American Virtue: Clinton vs. Starr, a 769 page book by Duquesne law professor Ken Gormley, which Politico says is "the definitive" history on the "scandal" will be published in February.

Both Bill Clinton and Ken Starr agreed to tell their stories to the author. Apparently, neither one gets a clean bill of health. [More...]

This Greg Sargent post explains precisely why I am trying hard to coin the new phrase "Village Bloggers" --

There’s a debate raging in the blogosphere about whether the Senate bill has been so watered down that it’s time to try to kill it, and one thing that’s interesting is how cleanly it breaks down as a disagreement between operatives and wonks. The bloggers who are focused on political organizing and pulling Dems to the left mostly seem to want to kill the bill, while the wonkier types want to salvage it because they think it contains real reform and can act as a foundation for further achievements.

[. . .] In the latter camp are wunder-wonk types like Ezra Klein, Jonathan Cohn, and Nate Silver.

(Emphasis supplied.) You see. The new Very Serious People. Our very own Tom Friedmans. BTW, NATE SILVER is now a health care "wonk"?!? Sheesh. And why no Kevin Drum or Matt Yglesias? I wonder if feelings have been hurt.

Speaking for me only

From "Change You Can Believe In" to "Grow Up", from the "smarter elements in Washington, D.C.":

[I]t’s also worth sparing a few words for the potentially demoralized voters who are considering staying home. To wit: Grow up. [. . .]

There's a winning message. My message to the Village Blogs: Contempt for the electorate is not a winning strategy.

Speaking for me only

Matt Yglesias:

If reconciliation could be revived, things might look different. There’s a good case for not doing this legislation through reconciliation. The product that emerged from the parliamentarian’s wringer could be sub-optimal in various ways. But the product that emerges from Lieberman’s wringer will also be sub-optimal. So given a viable threat of reconciliation, it seems to me that both sides would have some incentive to compromise.

NOW he writes this? Sheesh. This was the point when a lot of us were writing this 6 months ago. The worst political bargainers in the history of political bargaining.

Speaking for me only

Matt Yglesias:

The smarter elements in Washington DC are starting to pick up on the fact that it’s not tactical errors on the part of the president that make it hard to get things done, it’s the fact that the country has become ungovernable.

You see? The Village (or the Obamabot part of it anyway) has decided it is NOT Obama's fault! He is impotent! I suppose this is all a set up for a Truman-like "Do Nothing Republican Congress" campaign in 2012 by Obama. Of course that will require the Democrats lose the Congress in 2010. Hey, wait a minute . . .

Speaking for me only

Blogometer quotes Nate Silver:

"Liberals have tended to underestimate what a significant political achievement it would be for Democrats to pass such a major bill that has become rather unpopular with the public."

Is Silver praising Democrats for making health care reform unpopular? Or praising them for doing the bidding of certain interests in the face of the unpopularity Dems have created regarding health care reform? Should I read Silver to find out? Maybe later.

Speaking for me only

Kevin Drum:

Is lefty obsession with the public option going to torpedo Dems in 2010?

Wow. People should not care about issues because that might hurt someone's electoral chances? Wow.

Speaking for me only

29 years ago tonight, in the middle of Monday Night Football, Howard Cosell announced there had been an "unspeakable tragedy in New York City." John Lennon had been shot. (Video here.)

This is my seventh annual blog post about that night, and how for me, it's a day of both sadness and celebration. [More...]

Funny one from DougJ:

Executives at National Public Radio recently asked the network’s top political correspondent, Mara Liasson, to reconsider her regular appearances on Fox News because of what they perceived as the network’s political bias [. . .] Liasson was summoned in early October by [. . .] NPR executives [who] said they had concerns that Fox’s programming had grown more partisan, and they asked Liasson to spend 30 days watching the network.

At a follow-up meeting last month, Liasson reported that she’d seen no significant change in Fox’s programming and planned to continue appearing on the network [. . .]

(Emphasis supplied.) Honestly, who can quibble with Liasson's assessment? Fox has not changed in its entire existence - it has always been an arm of the Republican Party. The issue of course is that Liasson should not be on NPR. Let her stay on Fox. Just get her off of NPR.

Speaking for me only