On Wednesday, we were told that Kentucky’s administration wasn’t censoring particular blogs — they had cut off the whole category to state employees. But it seems there are exceptions…

Update: A Kentucky official says it’s up to the individual agencies as to which blogs their employees can read. Good thing the government isn’t in the middle of a scandal over political favoritism in hiring — or there might be cause for concern.

Later Update: Indiana just instituted its own filtering technology but strangely doesn’t see the need to manage employees’ reading habits.

Consider this post an open letter to Senate Democrats.

You’re really doing a poor job in the public debate over Iraq.

Luckily, unlike what’s imagined by the imbeciles who write The Note and others in Washington, reality is not simply a DC media and politics confection. The Dems can muff this several times before coming back and getting it right. And they’d still be more or less fine. Because the Iraq War is still really unpopular. And the great majority of the country has lost faith in President Bush’s conduct of the war.

But that’s still no excuse for handling this so poorly.

The Democrats have to be much more aggressive. But ‘more aggressive’ doesn’t mean a quicker withdrawal. It means making your point forcefully, on your own terms, repeatedly.

But they’re not doing that.

What I see is Republicans on TV repeating their ‘cut and run’ charges. And to the extent I see Democrats, it’s Democrats denying the charge. No, we’re not for cutting and running.

The president wants to stay in Iraq for at least three more years. It’s not that he won’t set a date to withdraw. He doesn’t even have a plan that gets to the point where the US could end the occupation. In practice he wants to stay in Iraq forever. What Repubicans are voting for is More of the Same, More of the Same failed policy.

Let’s work through a bit of this. If the president had a plan for success he would say, ‘I plan to get X, Y and Z done and then we’re going to bring American troops back home. I expect those three things will be accomplished by the middle of 2007.’ Or maybe he’d say 2008 or the beginning of 2009.

But he doesn’t say any of those things. When he says we’re staying in Iraq as long as he’s in the White House he makes clear that he doesn’t have any plan other than staying in Iraq. Other than staying there indefinitiely or basically forever. Isn’t it possible his ‘plan’ could work and have us out in 2008? Obviously, he’s discounted that possibility because, again, he has no plan.

For my part, I’d rather put more troops into Iraq than leave the status quo, as long as there was a clear plan for bringing the war and occupation to a satisfactory conclusion. The thing is that the status quo is morally indefensible because it just means continue to burn through men and money for a failed policy because President Bush isn’t capable of admitting his policies have failed.

He’s like an owner of a business that’s slowly going under. He doesn’t know how to save the situation. So he won’t get more money or resources to fix the business. That’s throwing good money after bad. And he won’t just liquidate and save what he can, because then he’d have to come to grips with the fact that he’s failed. So his policy is denial and slow failure. Here of course the analogy to President Bush is rather precise since he only has to hold out until 2009 when he can give the problem to someone else, just as he did in his past life with other businesses he drove into the ground.

But for the country that’s not acceptable. We don’t have a policy except for slow burn and denial. And the president’s ego isn’t enough to ask men and women to die for. We need an actual plan. And the president doesn’t have one.

Democrats need to hammer this point again and again and not get tripped up in the president’s bully-boy rhetoric. The president has no plan. He wants to stay in Iraq forever. He says for at least three more years. All the Republicans agree they want more of the same.

No one wants that in this country. All the Democrats have to do is get up on the airwaves and say it. Again and again.

Even the side with an insipid argument can take the day if the other side remains unheard.

It’s good news whenever we roll up anyone who aspires to become a terrorist whacko. But even if Al Gonzales won’t ‘fess up, I’m sure the FBI special agents working this case must have realized this was the stupidest group of would be terrorists they’re likely to come upon.

From the DOJ release …

In addition to conducting surveillance, the defendants allegedly provided the individual, whom they believed was an al Qaeda member, with a list of materials and equipment needed to wage jihad, including boots, uniforms, machine guns, radios and vehicles.

Boots and uniforms? Terrorist uniforms?

Here’s the indictment.

So Grover Norquist has been exposed as a money launderer and crypto lobbyist. What happens now?

Uniforms and shoes were the least of it.

It seems the new terrorist cell rolled up near Miami was in such preliminary stages of launching their jihad that they hadn’t yet set aside time to become Muslims.

From the NYT: “Neighbors said at least some of the men were in a religious group called the Seas of David that appeared to mix Christian and Muslim beliefs. The group wore uniforms bearing a Star of David and met for Bible study, prayer and martial arts in a one-story warehouse in the heart of the predominantly Haitian section of the impoverished Liberty City area.”

From CNN: “The sister of Lyglenson Lemorin, or “Brother Levi,” one of the men arrested Thursday on charges of concocting a terrorist plot, said her brother was involved with the group of men to study religion. Gina Lemorin, who had just returned from her college graduation in Atlanta, Georgia, when she learned of the charges, said he had been with the group in Miami doing construction work. But when the group began practicing “witchcraft,” she said, Lemorin left and moved to Atlanta about four months ago …The family of Phanor, who according to the indictment calls himself “Brother Sunni,” told reporters in Miami he was innocent of all charges and was a practicing Roman Catholic, not a Muslim. “They all call themselves brothers and they well-mannered,” said his older sister, Marlene Phanor. “All they was trying to do was clean up the community. We are Catholic. He’s Catholic.” She said the family attends St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Miami. Sylvain Plantin, a cousin of Phanor’s, said he was involved in a religious group called “Mores,” which met to read the Bible.”

From KR: “The group apparently did little to inspire fear in the Liberty City neighborhood where they took up residence. A close family friend and a distance cousin of Stanley Grant Phanor described the leader of the group, Narseal Batiste, as a “Moses-like figure” who would roam the streets in a cape or bathrobe, toting a crooked wooden cane and looking for young men to join his group. Sylvain Plantin, 30, said Batiste was a martial arts expert who preached an obscure religion.”

Cheney on Miami ‘Seas of David’ Cult: “a very real threat.”

The Iraqi government wants a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops. The Bush administration is firmly against it.

What should we draw from that?

The key, I think, is this: putting a limit on the duration of the US troop presence in Iraq is not a counsel of despair. It isn’t just getting the hell out. It is a necessary part of the solution, or what we might call, at this late stage, the least bad possible outcome for the country.

Not just the departure of American troops at some distant and unspecified point in the future when everything in Iraq has calmed down and it’s a fun place to live, but having it begin to unfold in the here and now. That accomplishes two things — it begins to lance the boil of foreign occupation and it forces the Iraqis themselves to start taking steps to run and control the country themselves. This would have to take place as part of a political program of national reconciliation as Prime Minister Maliki is proposing.

Am I sure this will work? Not at all. As I’ve written at various points over the last couple years, this is the root irony and tragedy of the situation we’ve gotten ourselves into in Iraq. We are both the glue holding the country together and the solvent tearing it apart.

But President Bush’s policies are not only failing. He has shown by words and deeds that he’s given up on doing anything else but holding on with the status quo until he can unburden himself of his responsibility for the situation in January 2009. He has no policy or plan but denial.

TPM Reader GG advances the point …

I’m convinced that one of the primary reasons this administration doesn’t want a timetable is that it would pin them down on what they are trying to do, how long they think it will take, and what it’s going to cost. It would start to make them accountable. This drivel about not wanting the insurgents to know when we will be leaving is just bunk. It’s easy to create a timetable with enough latitude and thresholds to allow the flexibility to alter or delay troop movements. I would hope that troops would be moved in progressive stages and positions, so that if setbacks occur we can reverse course.

The administration’s position is geared to hiding as much as they can from us. Accountability is not a word in their vocabulary. The Dems need to keep pushing for a flexible timetable with thresholds set for Iragi army and security force levels and competence. While there should be some flexibility to accommodate setbacks, the only way we can get Iragis to really step up is to provide them with reasonable deadlines. A timetable will also have an positive impact on all the reconstruction efforts (such as they are) and force them to a timetable of their own, which would also create some accountability.

Bottom line is this administration doesn’t want to be accountable.

More evidence that the administration has no plan in Iraq.

No leaving Iraq until 2009, the president says. But then the administration leaks word that the pull-out is in 2007. No plan — just whatever sounds best at the moment.

Against a phased withdrawal before they were for it.

They can’t keep their story straight because they don’t have any plan or sense what they’re doing.

Who can trust them to get it right after they’ve gotten it wrong so many times?

BBC: “The “reconciliation” plan announced on Sunday by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki is part of a grand strategy by the Bush administration to stabilise Iraq – or to stabilise the perception of Iraq – in advance of the mid-term elections for Congress in November. Other parts of the plan are an insistence that democracy has arrived in Iraq and must be supported, a refusal to set any date or timetable for a total withdrawal of US troops (presented as a weakness), yet with a suggestion that a reduction might start soon as the effort to transfer responsibility to Iraqi forces gathers pace.”