I'm sorry to have to say it, but it's true.

Milbank nails Leahy.

[The White House has] stalled or ignored Leahy's requests as his committee looks into the wiretapping program and the travails of Gonzales. They have calculated — accurately so far — that the Dynamic Duo of Leahy and Schumer would deliver harsh words but no punishment of consequence.

“The time is up. The time is up,” Leahy announced yesterday. “We've waited long enough.”

But what would Leahy do about it? The first questioner riddled Batman with this.

“The full Judiciary Committee will have to sit down and determine whether to seek contempt from the full Senate,” said the noncommittal action hero.

Does that mean he would seek a contempt-of-Congress citation? “What I want to do is get the response to these things,” Leahy demurred.

Rebecca Carr of Cox News tried again to pin him down, but Leahy continued to escape. “What we have to find out is what happened here,” he answered.

How about withholding money from the administration? “Let's take it step by step,” he proposed.

Holy incrementalism, Batman!

Weak, weak, weak. Weak tea.

The best spin that can be put on this — and the spin Leahy would no doubt put on it — is that the Senator was careful, even cagey, and displayed a statesmanlike refusal to tip his hand.

The rest of the world saw this: He's got nothin'.

I understand, of course, that Leahy wants — needs — to proceed with caution. But then why not just do that? Why not issue your non-statement from Vermont? Why fly to DC to say you have to fly home and then fly back again when your colleagues get into town, then meet with them and decide what to do?

The White House spin machine even sent out signals yesterday that August 20th was never supposed to be any kind of deadline. Leahy showed up to insist that it was.

And a deadline for what? Apparently for him to hold a press conference to announce that he would have to wait until September to confer with his colleagues about what to actually do about the White House missing the “deadline.”

Which in the real world means September was the deadline. And yesterday's performance did nothing but reinforce the appearance of a Congress unwilling to stand up for itself.

It may well be that Leahy has the resolve to move forward with contempt charges. And why wouldn't he? It's risk free. The “administration” has already said point blank that this Department of Justice will not prosecute such charges. But he couldn't say so, because he knows he can't count his chickens before they're hatched. And when your “chickens” are people like Arlen Specter, it's probably quite wise not to count them for anything. Specter collapses so often, I wouldn't even feel comfortable counting him as an egg, quite frankly.

So yes, it's a difficult line to walk. But when you know how squishy your troops are, you've got to include that in your calculus. Don't set deadlines you can't enforce, and for God's sake, don't have press conferences to announce you can't enforce them. Although to be honest, a presser to announce that would have at least been more concrete than the thin gruel we got yesterday. At least it would have been definitive on something.

I got into it last week with a couple Obama supporters, one of whom had an interesting criticism of GMD. It's a variation on one I've heard a lot – that is, that we're so negative at GMD. My response is that we're not a cheerleading site as a whole, and that the success of the blogosphere has been twofold (in my opinion, and to reduce it to the simplest possible terms): one – that we turn out support (votes, money, volunteers) for our candidates to win elections (largely by working around the traditional media to bring information that would otherwise be ignored or belittled front and center for discussion and dissemination), and two – that we act as a gauntlet by which our candidates are made better.

It's the second one that brings out the so-termed “negativity.” The political blog movement has placed high expectations on our candidates in terms of issues, candor, strategy and style. In the process of acting and speaking on those expectations, we squeeze out some, but make the others stronger. I think the reality of the last national election is not simply that more voters turned out to do more work for candidates, it's that many of the candidates themselves were a notch or two better than we've become used to seeing – and I give a lot of credit for that to the national blogs and their impact on the process.

It's also true that blogs are all about subjective biases. This is “What I Believe” writ large, and as such there is no requirement that we give every candidate equal time. Still, out of curiosity, I went back and searched for every time a GMD front pager has made a reference to one of the “big three” in the Presidential race, and categorized those references as “positive,” “negative” or “bland” (by which I mean it was matter of fact, and without characterization – implied or otherwise). References that defended the candidate from attacks – or which cast a political attack as a bogus “hit job” were dubbed positive (even if they were crude, as kestrel's “Why I Love Hillary” diaries were). Here was the breakdown:

Obama— Positive: 12, Negative: 15, Bland: 11 (Total: 38)
Clinton— Positive: 3, Negative: 12, Bland: 5 (Total: 20)
Edwards— Positive: 4, Negative: 1, Bland: 5 (Total: 10)

Is that the spread you'd expect? It's clear that Obama gets the most digital ink, as he has more Positves, Negatives AND “Blands” than the other two combined. Edwards is the only one with more “blands” than anything else, which is interesting. Hillary has a 4-1 Negative-to-Positive ratio, and Obama has the most even spread overall. Gravel, Dodd, Biden, Richardson, and Kucinich have all been mentioned, but so rarely its hard to create a real spread (and they're all over the map in terms of positive/negative).

What do folks think (and what are the implications if Clinton pulls this out and gets the nomination)?

Obama to call for the lifting of sanctions on Cuba. It does seem like Obama has been finding some nerve lately. This bodes well for his campaign, and for the whole field of debate.

Following up on Jack's diary about the refusal of the Anti-Defamation League to recognize the Armenian Genocide so as not to enflame political relations between Turkey and Israel – it seems the New England Director of the ADL (rightfully) broke with the National office on the matter – and was promptly fired for doing so. The ADL's defense of itself has been poorly considered, and prominent members of its New England board have already resigned in the face of anger and sadness from many in the Massachusetts Jewish community. Still no national press on this, though – only the Boston Globe seems to be following the story.

Are the Netroots getting impatient with Senator Leahy? This front page diary at dKos is very ho-hum about our senior Senator's most recent deadline for subpoenas information and its apparent two week grace period. Speaking of Leahy, I've put up a poll as to whether or not readers think he deserves credit for Rove's abandoning the ship, as Watercloset suggests. UPDATE: Kagro X registers his frustration as well at dKos.

Is Brian Dubie sucking up to Bill O'Reilly? That's what O'Reilly claims, and the Democrats are all over it. Can't appease a bully that way, Dubes – it only makes 'em get worse.

Belated congratulations to Dem consultant and political usual suspect Matt Levin on his wedding last week. (With his family in town, if you were in the Montpelier area last week and thought you saw Rep. Sander Levin or Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, you may not have been imagining things).