-- By Brad Friedman and Ernest A. Canning

As The BRAD BLOG reported over the weekend, an internecine firefight has blown up among progressives who support the candidacy of Marcy Winograd against entrenched "Blue Dog" Jane Harman (D-CA), and Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), long regarded as one of the more progressive members of the U.S. Congress.

Woolsey, the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) and a longtime Advisory Board Member of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), stunned progressives over the last several days when it was revealed that she was endorsing, and would be participating in a fundraiser for Harman next Saturday, January 16th, as noted in our report yesterday.

In the wake of Woolsey's curious support for the seven term Democrat, PDA is issuing an email blast to supporters tonight, asking them to sign on to an open letter (posted in full below) demanding Woolsey withdraw from the upcoming event, as well as drop her endorsement of Harman who will be challenged this year by Winograd, a longtime leader in PDA's Los Angeles chapter, and the first candidate of 2010 to be endorsed by the group. Winograd ran an unsuccessful challenge against Harman in 2006, but has begun her campaign earlier this year, and hopes to capitalize on growing progressive outrage at entrechned Congressional Democrats such as Harman. In a recent letter to supporters, Winograd described Harman as "the Joe Lieberman of the House."

In the open letter posted here, initially signed by Tim Carpenter, PDA's National Director, Mimi Kennedy and PDA's Advisory Board Chair, the group, describes the process signing the letter as "painful," but describes the negative response from members to the Woolsey endorsement of Harman, and asks for her to withdraw from the event immediately.

"The tone and emphasis of the responses vary, but the overwhelming gist is clear," Carpenter and Kennedy write to Woolsey, "The progressive base is upset about your scheduled involvement [in the January 16 fund-raising event] and hopes that you will withdraw from this event. As an organization, Progressive Democrats of America joins in that request."...

While criticism of Obama and Democrats is as easy as it is appropriate (as well as frequently engaged in here), their failures on the marquee items --- Afghanistan, health care, torture accountability, etc., ya know, the items Fox "News" and the other wingnuts like to talk about --- tend to obscure the very real differences between the current administration and the former one across a broader, and much less sexy (by cable news standards), level. That's just one of the reasons I reject the far too lazy "Democrats are just the same as Republicans" knee-jerkisms.

While on the big ticket items, as noted above, there is far less difference in real world results than all of us would like, but below the radar, in executive departments and policies, the difference has been, at times, and in some areas, like night and day.

Desi Doyen and I have made this point on a number of occasions in our Green News Reports --- most recently in last Thursday's edition, highlighting new, important and aggressive policy changes and initiatives at the EPA, federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Dept. of Interior.

Now, some important changes at the DoJ's Civil Rights Division, and of particular note to long time readers of The BRAD BLOG, its Voting Rights Division, are beginning to show real change and significantly for the better, whether you hear about it on Fox and CNN and MSNBC or not.

Adam Serwer of The American Prospect highlighted some of that positive change late last week on the heels of an upheaval at the DoJ's Voting Rights Division over which The BRAD BLOG played a very direct and significant role in 2007....

Was on the road all day Friday...Here was the view from Holbrook, New Mexico...

This just in. More Republican traditional family values...

Remember, we must protect traditional marriage at all costs! Even for attempted Republican murderers and the recently twice-divorced Karl Rove, to whom we must give credit for at least having had the decency of not trying to murder either of his former wives (that we know of).

Furthermore, we hope they don't try to disbar Farren over this policy difference between him and his wife. Politicizing his belief that she should no longer be alive would just be wrong, set a very bad precedent for future administration attorneys, and put our nation at even greater danger from terrorism.

While that may be biggest "no, duh" headline ever for readers of The BRAD BLOG, happily it's actually news today at Washington Post [emphasis added]:

Note to rest of media: Begin ignoring the above immediately. It never happened.

A bit of good-ish, encouraging news from out of an otherwise horrible year, from this week's New York Times...

The BRAD BLOG has long endeavored to fight back against the disinformation being put forward by the GOP "voter fraud" charlatans and fraudsters contending that massive fraud is being carried out by voters at the polls, requiring the institution of disenfranchising Photo ID restrictions at the polling place which would result in some 21 million Americans being unable to cast their legal votes, according to the League of Women Voters and most other serious experts on these matters.

Once again, a story out of Kentucky helps us highlight that it's election insiders, not voters themselves, who are, by far, the greatest threat to the integrity of elections.

We reported early last year on the passel of election officials in Clay County, KY, arrested for buying and selling votes, manipulating ES&S electronic voting machines without the knowledge of voters, and otherwise fixing elections from 2002 to 2006.

As their January 19 trial date nears, more motions are being filed by federal prosecutors. The latest, filed last week, alleges that two of the top officials charged --- one, a circuit court judge and the other, the county school Superintendent --- had been fixing elections for decades before their recent indictments...

The baseball metaphors were theirs. I just thought I'd pick up on them.

Over the holiday weekend, there was a bit of an "academic" tête-à-tête in the upper-blogosphere over President Obama's handling of the arrest, detention and prosecution of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Detroit "Underwear Bomber," as it compared to George W. Bush's almost exactly similar handling of the arrest, detention and prosecution of Richard Reid, the "Shoe Bomber," and other alleged terrorists by the former administration.

While there were swell arguments into which "both" sides could firmly dig their heels, as usual, the conversation that the people of this country really need to be having was shunted far aside in favor of the one Dick Cheney and Karl Rove prefer to be having...

In case you missed this bit of shame and unsurprising-by-now hypocrisy buried in between the holiday news holes...

Glenn Greenwald has more...

[Hat-tip longtime BRAD BLOG toon sherpa Pokey Anderson.]

Josh Marshall at TPM: "Sen. John Ensign goes on CNN to demagogue the terrorism issue and gets ambushed with a series of questions he's never answered about his affair and the ethics investigation surrounding his and his parents efforts to cover it up with lobbying infractions and pay-offs ... Truly must-see."

Brad at The BRAD BLOG: There must be some confusion here. CNN is asking actual and persistently dogged and tough questions of a high-ranking public official, a member of Congress no less, live on TV and everything, like actual journalists or something. And the guy isn't even a Democrat! What the?!...

It's my final night guest hosting for the The Mike Malloy Show from Dallas' AM 1360 Rational Radio. It's almost their last night on the air too, unless an angel flies in to keep progressive radio on the public airwaves in a city that needs it as much or more than any!

We're on again from 9pm-Midnight ET (6p-9p PT) and, as last night, we'll be VIDEO WEBCASTING the entire show! Check back here just before showtime for the live video feed embedded below (if you can stand to look at me for three hours).

If you'd like to use your public airwaves tonight --- before they disappear in Dallas --- the call-in number this week only will be: 800-277-1637, ext. 703. Our handy-dandy live chat room will be up and operating here during the show, along with the video feed, so jump into the conversation there as well! (We'll open it a few minutes before airtime, see down below.)

TONIGHT...

• Mis-reported/under-reported stories of the year and/or decade! (Gonna need more than three hours, I think!) My top stories and yours at 800-277-1637, ext. 703
• PLUS: We'll be checking in with some old friends along the way! Tune in to find out who they are!

Malloy's show is nationally syndicated on a number of air affiliates around the country, also on Sirius Ch. 146 & XM Ch. 167. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio streams here or here!

Click here to jump into our LIVE Chat Room during the show, hosted by Zen mistress "Agent 99". Or just see below!...

POST-SHOW UPDATE & AUDIO ARCHIVES: Thanks for a great week in Dallas, guys! The audio archives, rants and all, are now below, along with the archive from our live chat during the show. Enjoy! Happy New Year! And thanks to Mike and Kathy for allowing me to sit in once again. Always a pleasure and honor!...

Add this to our post yesterday calling for a 'War on Lightning', since the chances of being a victim of same in any given year (1:500,000) are so much higher than being a victim of terrorism on an airplane in the last ten years (1:10,408,947).

And yet it's those nasty terrorists the cowardly wingnuts are afraid of. Lack of health insurance? Salmonella? Firearms? Not so much.

Blue Texan at firedoglake has more...