On a recent Democracy Now! (transcript) about 26m04s into the show, Norman Solomon, co-founder of Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, and Vote2StopBush.org signatory and, therefore, squelcher of presidential competition in 2004, helps keep the Karl Rove scandal in perspective:

“It would be a big mistake for social movements to pin their hopes and their futures on what a court or prosecutor does. I think it’s also important for us to remember that the news media themselves, as major institutions, are framing this. They are themselves participating in the spin, and a lot of what we are getting now is this notion that there’s nothing more crucial for U.S. national security than protecting the identity of a C.I.A. agent. And hat’s a perspective, I think, that’s rather warped. National security involves, among other things, making sure that the United States government does not create enemies around the world by dropping bombs on innocent people. It also involves as national security, broadly defined, making sure that we don’t continue with the decimation of communities around this country, where we have schools and clinics, and social services being damaged severely. So I think what we’re seeing here, while it’s very interesting palace intrigue and certainly has great historical and political importance, the kind of recasting of what is on the front burner, and ironically, public concern about Iraq itself and the implications of the U.S. war there, are to some degree being shunted aside by this controversy which, in fact, has its roots in the lies about this war.”

An interesting discussion, if only to watch Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and senior advisor to President Clinton, squirm as he tries to avoid admitting that the Democrats are a party of collaborators in “tap-dancing while the blood continues to run” (as Solomon put it) in this “madness of militarism” (Solomon said, citing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.). Regardless of whether the Democrats are in power now or not, nothing prevents them from taking the right stance and speaking truth to power. The Democrats are simply more loyal to their corporate campaign funding sources than they are to what the majority of the country in their own constituencies want.