We need your help.

It’s nothing short of amazing how many candidates there are out there this election season who refuse to give a straight answer on whether they support preserving Social Security or phasing it out and replacing it with private accounts. President Bush says he’ll try to phase it out next year if he holds on to Congress. The Republican Social Security chairman in the House says the same thing. So it’s definitely an issue on the ballot this November. But dozens and dozens of candidates — like Tom Kean, Jr. and Michael Steele and Mike DeWine — simply refuse to answer the question.

As the Cincinnati Post put it charitably last year during the thick of the Social Security debate, DeWine’s office “had a tough time explaining whether or not he stands with the president” on Social Security phase out. As near as we can tell, they’re still having a tough time.

So, with that in mind, we’re putting together a list of candidates around the country who just plain won’t come clean on this vital question. We’ve started compiling names here on this list. But we need your help. Who’s running for Congress in your district? And who’s running for the senate in your state?

If they won’t give a straight answer or won’t answer the question at all, tell us. Send us an email at the comment email up over on the right.

Once we have our list in order we’re going to start trying to get answers from the folks on the list. Last week, we announced a contest to see who could get a straight answer from Washington senate candidate Mike McGavick. But our effort was sort of short-circuited when David Postman of the Seattle Times got an interview with McGavick and got him to admit that, yes, he does support phasing out Social Security and replacing it with private accounts. Actually, short-circuiting probably isn’t the best way to put it since Postman said he asked McGavick about his position on Social Security in response to our contest.

So McGavick has sort of come clean — though we’re still looking at the weasel words in his answer. But what about Tom Kean, Jr. in New Jersey. State voting record says he’s a phase-out man on Social Security. But guy’s criss-crossing the state and refusing to say what his position is on Social Security.

In any case, we want to get everyone’s position on the table before the November election. So take a look at the list and tell us who’s not on it. And for folks who can get straight answers out of these bamboozlers there will of course be prime TPM T-shirts and special place in our new TPM Hall of Social Security Heroes — whether you have to do research on the web to dig up the answer, ask a question at a town hall meeting, call in on the radio, or whatever. Yes, the fun and TPM merchandize will be endless.

So get ready. And drop us a line with the name of the Social Security bamboozlers in your neck of the woods.

Hey Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA), swing batter batter! That and other news of the day in today’s Daily Muck.

The best evidence yet surfaces of a quid pro quo between Jack Abramoff and Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA).

Murray Waas has a new story on the Valerie Plame investigation — what President Bush told Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald in 2004.

Right-wing nutballs: NYT would have revealed hiding place of Anne Frank.

I find myself not knowing quite what to say or to think about this unexpectedly fast emerging dust-up in the Connecticut Senate race. TPM Reader SS wrote in the following yesterday in response to Lieberman’s decision to run in the primary and run as an independent if he loses the primary.

Received a phone message today from Lieberman asking for signatures on his petition to run as an independent. He promises he will always vote Democratic. While I think we are better off with a two way race and hope he wins in the primary, he makes it harder and harder to support him.

Reed Hundt yesterday said that Lieberman has every right to run as an Independent. The question is whether he’d really serve as a Democrat. And I agree.

But like I think SS is suggesting, I think Lieberman may have done himself great damage by choosing to run both ways (as a Dem and an Independent) at the same time.

Politics is all about maintaining the initiative and, well … momentum. And just evaluating this in strategic terms, I think that Lieberman’s key issue in this race is proving, to put it bluntly, that he’s not a weasel.

Two ways suggest themselves to demonstrate that. One way was for him to call a press conference and say ‘People say I’m not a Democrat. But I’ve been a Democrat for 40 years. I’ve been representing this state for 18 years. And I’m going to put my fate in the hands of the Democrats of this state. And I’m gonna fight for this nomination and tell the voters of this state …”

You get the idea. Lieberman would send a very powerful message to Democrats by putting his fate in their hands.

Or he could say, “I’ve represented this state in the Senate for 18 years. I’m a Democrat. But I don’t represent the Democratic party in the senate. I represent the people of the state of Connecticut …”

Both of those would have, I think, given Lieberman serious forward momentum. In different ways, yes. But both forward. Remember, there aren’t just Democrats in Connecticut. There are Republicans and more importantly Independents. And my impression is that Lieberman is still pretty popular among Connecticut voters generally. The latter choice would play to their strengths with them. The former, of course, would play to Democrats.

Which he should do depends on who he is.

But here he’s just covering his bases. He’ll play whichever card works best for him when the time comes. Most importantly, he’s not showing any Connecticut voters he’s willing to take risks. And in so doing I think he may be taking a much bigger risk than he knows. He’s telegraphing weakness and equivocation and the alleged trait that got him in this fix to start with.

TPM Reader MM says the anti-Joe campaign is getting out of hand …

C’mon Josh, quit accepting the standards of the disinfo crowd, when did Lieberman say he would be campaigning as both independent and democrat at the same time? He said that if he lost the democratic primary, he would run as an independent.. but that’s not quite the same thing. Lieberman isn’t my favorite guy in the world, but this propaganda campaign is getting a bit pathetic. Back in the day, Lieberman was activist and fighting to end Jim Crow, the propagandists from outside CT who are waging war against him can’t even be bothered to care about the issues of poverty and class.. for Christ’s sake, some of them who post on TPM are against the labor movement and rationales for class inequity.

If you’re looking for parallels between extremes, start looking at some of those in your own backyard.

I’m not really sure where MM is coming from. The only way you ‘run’ to get on the ballot as an Independent is to collect signatures, which he’s doing. So I’m not sure there’s anything unfair or incorrect about what I said below.

Okay, enough about Joe Lieberman for the moment, how about giving TPM some tech advice? As a number of you know, I bought my first Mac a few months ago. And at the moment I have a PC at home, which I’m writing on now, and a Mac over at TPM HQ — the reverse of the normal bi-OS set up. Now, we’re planning on adding a video component to our offerings at TPM. So I’m looking at different machines that are high-powered enough to deal well with video editing. My limited experience working with video on the Mac Mini I have at work tells me that the Mac really was pretty impressive working with video on the ease of use — ‘it just works’ — front, even working with HD video. But because of Mac’s transition to their new Intel processors, the most high-powered machines they have are the souped-up iMacs. (The G5s Mac is selling still have the old PowerPC processors — so they’re soon to be out of date.) Has anyone out there done video editing on one of those machines? I’m wondering whether it makes sense to get one of those or whether I should get something in the PC world. Advice appreciated.

Okay, so … North Korea test fires four missiles, one of which was the long-range Taepodong-2. The Taepodong-2 failed about thirty seconds after lift-off.

Press reports frequently claim that the Taepodong-2 is capable of hitting the United States. The fine print is important, though. As the Times notes in their dispatch today: the Taepodong-2 “is thought to be potentially capable of reaching United States territory in Alaska, if North Korea perfects the technology. But that ability has never been demonstrated in a test. (emphasis added)”

It’s a serious issue that bears watching. But also note that UN Ambassador John Bolton is the lead-milker of this story.

TPM Reader PK on the Lieberman meta-message …

My moment of Zen today came a few minutes back when I was checking in on your site, reading your morning post on the Lieberman situation (geeze, if only he was a tad less dry you could have the makings of a Robert Ludlum novel there) and listening to Randy Newman’s “Political Science”.

I think you nailed it. While the progressive community has been hammering Joe for this decision, the fact remains that the flat-out politics of his announcement yesterday scream fear and cowardice. The best play would have been a decisive course, one of the two you offered…either challenge Democrats to support Joe Lieberman, life-long Democrat or play the “I’m doing what’s best for the people of Connecticut” card. But going the “I’ve been around long enough to have my cake and eat it too and deserve better than having my ass handed to me by a political newcomer” route, Joe has essentially abandoned ship and pushed the women and kids out of the way to take the last remaining lifeboat for himself.

Not the best move given the fact that it plays into his overriding negative, which you mentioned and which I will call “the weasel factor”.