Scott

I agree with you that Brian O'Dwyer's statement on the bloggers on Edwards campaign is aggressive and angry.

However he did not give 12000+ to Hilary Clinton.  That is an illegal amount, so I looked it up.   I 'll post the link now, but  the site is down. He was reimbursed $4000 by her campaign and so he donated the $6000 dollars.

http://www.newsmeat.com/fec/bystate_deta il.php?city=NEW+YORK&st=NY&last= O%27Dwyer&first=Brian.  

The 2000 cycle max for the Senate  is $4000.  the 2006 cycle max for the Senate was 4200. (It is now 4600).  So any total amount over 8200 would be illegal.  

I can't say with 100% certainty that the Clinton people smiled in Brian O'Dwyer's statement, but I highly doubt it because I know a lot of her staff and they are not happy about this controversy at all. They all have or will have bloggers.

I did meet him once, but it was not political. His mother? or aunt? was interesed in an apt I was representing for sale.  It struck me beecause I had never seen him before and I know lots of people in politics in NY.  I can see he donates a lot.  It seems to be business related.  Even thought he lives in Rockland county, north of the city, he donates a lot to Nydia Velasquez who represents Brooklyn and is now chair of Small Business.  Here's alink to article about his law firm repping new voting machines.
http://www.votersunite.org/article.asp?i d=811

Brian O'Dwyer is somewhat peripheral to the NY political scene and community. His uncle and father used to be the heart of the liberal community in NY inthe 40's, 50's, 60's but not now.  If I recollect that was before Roe and the O'Dwyers being such devout Catholics are anti choice.

Seriously the Clinton campaign is not happy about this popping up.  They want it to go away and statements like O'Dwyer's don't make it go away; it just stirs the waters.

I think this group is Brian's way to make the ODwyer voice heard again in NY and does not have anyone's imprimatur.  

He was very involved in the Irish question --that's why Peter King.  But Ireland seems to be resolving itself.  He needed another platform

I have never heard of Brian O'Dwyer, but I met his father, the late Paul O'Dwyer.  To refer to him merely as a "former Democratic NYC Council President" is telling only a small part of the story.   My first political campaign involvment was on behalf of Paul O'Dwyer, when he ran as an anti-war candidate for the US Senate in 1968.  Prior to that time he was very active in the civil rights movement, and, at a time of intense fear of communism, he accepted leadership of the Lawyer's Guild, a very progressive organization.   After his failed Senate run, he was President of the NYC Council, but was also at the forefront of every progressive cause until his death in 1998.  

know, on KOS also the front page piece with a quote of a fellow democratic campaign, blasting Edwards support of the bloggers. I don't believe anyone has found out yet which campaign staffer was at fault for the slap about supporting Amanda and Melissa in the first place, attack on the netroots.

I wish someone could get to the bottom of the attacks. With Edwards being in the top 3, it would logically look like the two to gain the most would be Clinton or Obama.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/9/1 55311/6433

This line from the 3 update says alot:
Update III: I have confirmed with Slate's John Dickerson that his source was with a Democratic campaign.

As you note, the answer to that question assumes a fact not in evidence: that he IS angry. Dems, of all types, have believed now for some time that there is more gain to be made by 'moving to the center'. We know who the leader of this movement has been...the Clinton's. We know the deal....we get a Dem president and all the not inconsequential benefits that flow from that.  The price is a weakened party that stands for little. Especially when standing for something has a public cost.

It is part and parcel of my conclusion, whether right or wrong on my part, that the Dems are the Whigs of this century. And they will prove unable to confront the forces that line up against them/us. As the Whigs were unable to confront the forces of the Confederacy. I will be more than happy to be proven wrong on this. In the mean time I will keep supporting Dems with both money and effort. As I have in the past. But I still think they are doomed as a party.  

Obama started his speech in Springfield by "giving thanks to God", because Blacks, Christians, Republicans, Democrats and Independents mostly believe that there is a God and they want to know that their government is not averse to God.  

Edwards made a big mistake politically by appointing people who took others' spiritual beliefs lightly and ridiculed basic fundaments of others' beliefs.  Ridiculing the foundations of others faith is the essence of religous intolerance and the American electorate is not going to vote for that.

I've read some stuff from Amanda's site and while she has a right to deconstruct and doubt religous tenets, she does so in a way that would necessarily be offensive to people of those religions.  I do not believe that John Edwards is anti-religion, but he has not shown that he has sufficient sollicitousness for religious tolerance in his decision-making.

Polls show that there is about a twenty-five percent gap between the numbers of voters who believe Republicans are anti-religion and and the numbers who believe Democrats are anti-religion.  More voters believe Democrats to be anti-religion.  Anything that exacerbates that perception is bad for our presidential chances and bad for the future of the Democratic Party.

I have to imagine the Clinton(s) are the invisible hand-deciding the Democratic nominee before the American people have spoken!

  What does Brian O'Dwyer have to say about Rudy Giuliani's lifestyle choices, which are a permanent affront to Catholicism?

  A Ned Lamont donor who supports Hillary Clinton.

 Extreme cognitive dissonance isn't just a contagion of the right, it appears.

If this is "Brian O'Dwyer" of 350 Central Park West he gave 4100$ to Hillary in 2005 and

someone with the same Last name and address (wife?) gave 500$

http://images.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/fecimg ?26020091774

http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/can_ind /2005_S0NY00188/1/O

Is this the guy?

John Edwards is attacked for not firing the bloggers, yet he also is attacked for not tying them up and preventing them from resigning.  

Amanda and Michelle still support John Edwards.

There's a pattern here, and that pattern is that any candidate who threatens the status quo will be brought down.  Remember Dean?  This is typical Hilary, through a surrogate.  

But the netroots are proving to be very weak, because they do not support John Edwards on this.  Many folks have turned on him too easily.

Matt and Chris have been stalwart on this issue, and I think they argue from a netroots perspective.  

One thing we know, Hilary is not going to empower the netroots.

The Clinton campaign will do everything it can to gut the Democratic brand in favor of Hillary's aspirations, but almost exclusively through surrogates.

They always keep their prints off the knife.

Excellent research, Scott. One can learn a lot by pursuing just two questions:

(1) Who is funding and supporting whom?

(2) Qui bono (who benefits)?

Don't blame O'Dwyer and don't blame Edwards. I think O'Dwyer's comments showed the Edwards campaign that the blogger controversy had legs, but if O'Dwyer hadn't pushed them, someone else would have further along down the line. The fact is that a lot of Catholic Democrats, including progressive Catholics, would be offended by blasphemy and insults of the Virgin Mary and the church hierarchy. We might not like all the bishops, but they're our bishops and when they're attacked we defend them. Edwards didn't need to be apologizing at every campaign stop for those old throwaway lines by a couple junior aides.

That said, I think progressives and Jewish groups ought to raise hell and demand that Catholic bishops and Republicans repudiate William Donohue for his anti-Semitic, homophobic and other offensive remarks. He has set the standard for guilt by association.

Why is Clark included and not Gore? Did he declare?

Since you quote me, I feel compelled to respond.
First off, I was speaking for myself and not the Christian Alliance for Progress. Secondly, you quote me out of context here. I didn't say Matt himself was arrogant and intolerant--Isaid his approach to this issue were.

Here's what I actually wrote:

Mr. Stoller's conviction that there can be only "one" moral response to a situation is the absolute height of intolerance and arrogance. Such cocksure moral certainty is exactly the way the religious right expresses itself. No religious liberal would ever compose such a sentence--because their world view recognizes the limits of our own ability to peceive "the truth."

One definition of tolerance is: "sympathy or indulgence for beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one's own." To say there is only "one way" to respond to things is inherently intolerant.

Arrogance: "exaggerating or disposed to exaggerate one's own worth or importance often by an overbearing manner..." And, yes, I think that fits, too. It was absurdly arrogant for Stoller to say the religious left only pretends to fight the right. Later, this blog personally attacked Jesse Lava for a post he didn't even write!