Free Republic

SAN ANTONIO--More than one political venture has met an unseemly end in the hardscrabble landscape of South Texas. It was here, in 1948, that Box 13 gave Lyndon Johnson a dubious 87-vote primary victory, crushing former Gov. Coke Stevenson's Senate aspirations. It was here, two years ago, that a bitter primary fight for a House seat shattered a friendship between two Hispanic Democrats. And it was here, this month, in a rematch of that contest, that a blogger-led quest to defeat a mainstream Democrat and drive the party further to the left smashed head-on into the realities of local politics....

WASHINGTON - The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll might sound like a broken record, but the tune grows louder as congressional midterm elections get closer and closer: President Bush is once again facing the lowest job approval rating of his presidency, the lowest percentage of Americans who believe the country is headed in the right direction, and an electorate that greatly prefers a Democratic-controlled Congress over a Republican-controlled one. Yet the poll also shows something else that goes beyond the November midterm elections: A strong majority believes Bush is experiencing a long-term setback from which he’s unlikely to recover....

Neither man lied. Indeed, the reverend and the former president on Tuesday both spoke several obvious and undeniable truths. That they were jaw-droppingly uncomfortable truths - the current president, after all, was seated directly behind them - was, you just have to figure, the whole point.

The Anti-Defamation League has called on Democrat Sen. Dick Durbin to apologize for comparing alleged abuses at Guantanamo Bay to torture and killing by the Nazi regime. "Whatever your views on the treatment of detainees and alleged excesses at the Guantanamo Bay facility, it is inappropriate and insensitive to suggest that actions by American troops in any way resemble actions taken by Nazis in their treatment of prisoners," wrote ADL head Abraham Foxman in a letter to the Illinois lawmaker. [See video of the remarks here.]