The problem with Congress right now is that the Democrats aren't acting like a majority party. In particular, they continually capitulate to the Bush administration over two issues, Iraq and the Patriot Act (FISA). These capitulations are in a large part due to a lack of party discipline. There is a large conservative Democratic voting block in the House which consistently votes like moderate Republicans and against party leadership. This is unacceptable.

Matt Stoller of Open Left has started a campaign to push back at these Bush Dog Democrats. The first step in the ambitious plan is to profile the Bush Dogs one by one (you can write one too!), and so I present you with an overview of Ohio Representative Zack Space's career, voting record, and political context.

Zack Space is a freshman Congressman from Ohio's 18th District, just east of Columbus. Since 1994, the district had been squarely Republican and was led by former Representative Bob Ney, who won 6 straight terms. In 2006, Ney was implicated in the Jack Abramoff scandal. He ran for reelection anyway, but he resigned from Congress and dropped out of the race shortly before pleading guilty on charges of conspiracy and making false statements. Ohio Republicans failed to put forward a competent challenger, largely due to the allegations of Republican misconduct surrounding Ney and the Ohio Republican party, and so Space won the election by the largest margin of any Democrat challenging for a Republican held seat in 2006, 22%.

It is worth noting that Space had three challengers in the 2006 Democratic primary, Jennifer Stewart, Ralph Applegate, and Joe Sulzer. Space won handily there too, by 14 percentage points.

On the surface, Space actually looks like a decent progressive candidate. The vast majority of his campaign contributions (67%) came from individual donors. His PAC donations came mostly from labor or single issue sources and not from business. And he fully disclosed 95% of his donations. Space is an advocate for stem cell research and has been a guest on the Colbert Report, both sure to win him points with the progressives I know.

However, Space is out of sync with the progressive movement on two key issues, and I bet you know what they are. If you guessed Iraq and FISA, you win a toaster!

This week, we ask you to predict the outcome of the upcoming Iraq war funding battle in Congress. But first, last week's results:

Last week, in anticipation of the White House's progress report on Iraq due in mid-September, we wanted to know how Seminal readers thought the surge was going. Not surprisingly, the feeling was overwhelmingly negative, with 71% of respondents voting that the surge was not working. 16% voted that the surge was having an effect and 13% voted that they couldn't tell, closely mirroring national polls about the Iraq war in general.

On Wednesday, President Bush asked Congress for an additional $50 billion to fund the war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan, on top of the $147 billion he had previously requested. Most of this money will go towards Iraq, not Afghanistan, according to the Washington Post:

The revised supplemental would total about $200 billion, indicating that the cost of the war in Iraq now exceeds $3 billion a week. The bill also covers the far smaller costs of the war in Afghanistan. The Pentagon said recently that the cost of the Iraq war has surpassed $330 billion, while the war in Afghanistan has cost $78 billion.

Which of course is a problem, as Ish has argued we should be paying way more attention to Afghanistan.

There will be a fight about this supplemental request, as there was about the last one. Our question this week is more of a prediction. Do you think the Democrats will fold and provide Bush with the money he wants without attaching any significant conditions to it? (For example, no money until after political progress has been made, or attaching a deadline for a withdrawal.) Or do you think the Democrats will have the backbone to stand up this time?

Voting begins now in the sidebar at right. Feel free to leave your explanations in the comments below.

Here is the police interrogation tape of Idaho Senator Larry Craig, caught soliciting sex in a men's restroom. It's brutal.

The levels of denial here are pretty astounding. He sounds like a child who knows he's been caught, yet refuses to admit it. The real question here is why is Craig getting so much heat, but Vitter, who was caught paying for sex, isn't? Perhaps it's because homosexuality is such a greater crime in conservative circles than adultery and prostitution.

Sudan will accept Palestinian refugees from Iraq, the BBC reports:

The offer came after Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir received a letter from the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas.

The UN refugee agency has expressed concern over the deteriorating conditions for the hundreds of Palestinians in camps on the borders. They have tried to leave Iraq, but have been refused entry by Jordan and Syria…The UNHCR estimates about 34,000 Palestinians currently live in Iraq. Between 200 and 300 have been killed since the US-led invasion in 2003.

Sudan's actions are perhaps commendable on the surface. But in light of the refugee crises within Sudan involving actual Sudanese people, the government's actions appear both strange and hypocritical. Is the Sudanese government only willing to help fellow Arabs? Are they attempting to curry favor in the Middle East? Whatever their motivation, it seems that even gestures such as these will do little to boost their image in the eyes of the international community, so long as the genocide in Darfur continues.

What do you think?

Stories about Pakistan—the challenges it faces keeping insurgents at bay, the legacy of its troubled President & General Pervez Musharraf, the return of its exiled former prime ministers Bhutto and Sharif, tension between its executive and judicial branches, upcoming elections and its tenuous relationship with the West—appear in a variety of news-media/information sources daily. As promised, The Seminal will be following these developments closely with this on-going series Conversation :: Pakistan, so check back regularly, subscribe our feed and join the conversation below.

Thursday :: August 30 :: Bhutto and Musharraf approach an agreement / Musharraf agrees to step down from military / Bhutto allowed to run for prime minister

According to the Associated Press, Pakistan's former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and current President General Pervez Musharraf are closing in upon a deal that would allow Bhutto to run for prime minister (currently, Pakistani law prevents the exiled two-term PM from serving a third term) and enable Musharraf to serve another term as president after he relinquishes his title as head of the military. Whether or not the deal has been completely finalized, this power-sharing agreement seems to be the expected outcome. Reuters reports:

A power-sharing pact between Pakistan's embattled President Pervez Musharraf and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto has almost been finalized, a cabinet minister said on Wednesday. Bhutto, who has lived in self-exile since 1998, has demanded a commitment from Musharraf to quit as army chief and become a civilian president as a condition for any deal, but Railways Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said the issue had been settled.

For weeks, there were rumors of talks between Musharraf and Bhutto (in an interview with the Wall Street Journal Bhutto admitted that neither party was denying the talks, though neither had formally announced their occurrence either). Yesterday, The New York Times announced that President General Pervez Musharraf would be resigning from his position at the head of Pakistan's military as part of the deal he has struck with the exiled Benazir Bhutto. The Malaysia Sun (and other news outlets) echoed similar sentiments. After weeks of negotiation and speculation, power-sharing seems to be the route these leaders have chosen, and given the problems Musharraf has had in the past with sharing power, this agreement between two outspoken enemies seems to be the best possible outcome for Pakistan.

Pakistan: President General Pervez Musharraf and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto are close to a deal.

New Orleans: Vigils were held and President Bush made a stop in New Orleans to mark the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Two years after the storm pummeled the city, insurance claims for damages are still in a state of disarray.

Iraq: Clashes between al-Maliki's military and the Mahdi (Mehdi) Army military caused violence in the city of Karbala in southern Iraq, which led to fifty deaths today. Following the violence, Mahdi Army leader Moqtada al-Sadr recently announced the Army would suspend all of its activities in order to re-organize.

Drug Trade: According to a United Nations official, illicit drug trade around the world is no longer growing.

India: MPs in India have begun what are likely to be two days of contentious debate over the "123″ nuclear deal with the United States.

Thoughts? Comments? Share 'em below.

I moved from Chicago, where I had lived for 5 years, to Washington D.C. last week. I'm not an extravagant person, yet I was obliged to rent a moving truck to haul my assorted belongings from the shores of Lake Michigan to the banks of the Potomac. I completed this half-cross-country trip in two stages, stopping in Cincinnati, Ohio for a couple days before continuing on with the main push to D.C.

Though moving can be a real pain, I was actually excited about the trip itself. My father told me stories as a child of a cross-country car trip he took when he was finished with college, and so I was looking forward to having something of a cross-country trip of my own. I was excited to see this great country and I wasn't at all phased by the thought of spending 8+ hours alone, driving a truck, with all of my worldly possessions riding behind me.

Of course, this truck, while newish and reliable (I used Penske, I highly recommend!), had no CD player or even tape player of any kind. And so my entertainment for the trip came solely from commercial radio.

Via the LA Times:

The death penalty system in California is so backed up that the state would have to execute five prisoners a month for the next 10 years just to clear the prisoners already on death row.

The average wait for execution in the state is 17.2 years, twice the national figure. And the backlog is likely to grow, considering the trend: Thirty people have been on death row for more than 25 years, 119 for more than 20 years and 408 for more than a decade.

Why don't we just end it then?

(Especially becaus the alternative to ending it is to have more lawyers.)

Two weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, President Bush said this:

After the frightening experience of September the 11th, Americans have every right to expect a more effective response in a time of emergency. When the federal government fails to meet such an obligation, I, as President, am responsible for the problem, and for the solution.

Today, to honor the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, President Bush visited New Orleans to espouse the work his administration has done to make good on this promise. His main soundbite: "New Orleans, better days are ahead."

Call me demanding, but it would have been nice if the President had said that two years ago, and that perhaps today could be a proverbial "better day." Two years after the storm, more than a few residents of New Orleans are unhappy with the pace of reconstruction, resettlement, and reimbursement for losses. And tonight, thousands are expected to protest in New Orleans about America's failure to speedily rehabilitate this historic and vulnerable area.

What do you think? Has the government provided an "effective response" since Katrina hit? The Seminal invites you to be our eyes and ears on the ground in New Orleans. We welcome comments from residents of New Orleans, tonight's protesters, and the rest of you.

In September, the Seminal will be tackling issues important to rural America, from farm policy to the drug problem. Stay tuned for our new monthly feature starting September 3rd.

In addition, we will be holding a monthly speaker series related to our current topic in Washington D.C. The first in this series will take place on Saturday, September 22nd from 11 am - 12:30 pm at the Cleveland Park Library, 3310 Connecticut Avenue, N.W. at Macomb Street, N.W.

We are busy lining up the speakers as I type, and as soon as we get confirmations I'll post some information and biographies.

We are all very excited to start bridging the online and offline worlds, and I hope our readers in the D.C. area can attend on the 22nd. Feel free to leave a comment if you are planning on coming!