John McCain is coming tomorrow and the GOP does not want me to ask him any questions. The GOP and Kelly Ayotte will have to stop threatening to arrest me when I show up to public functions where other media are involved, pure and simple.

The smell of sweat and desperation is rising from the White House.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs became the spokesperson for Obama Administration contempt toward the left on Tuesday. The display of contempt came in the midst of a nearly 70 percent shift in Wall Street executive donations from Democratic candidates to Republican candidates ahead of the November mid-term elections.

Activists on both sides of the liberal-conservative divide have embarrassed themselves in the Sherrod affair, and we can all learn a lesson to be more careful.

CBS journalists were filming a beach in South Pass, Louisiana, when, according to CBS, a “boat of BP contractors and two Coast Guard officers told them to turn around or be arrested.” The incident is thought by bloggers tracking the oil leak in the Gulf to not be the only time that BP has challenged the right of journalists to film.

Among the hand-wringing about we couldn’t have done any better, the excuses for Obama that continue to permeate the blogosphere, the joyously arrogant and premature victory cries, and the moving on to the next failure, is missing the component necessary to all movements: self-reflection.

Being skeptical is a good thing, but how do you balance it without becoming cynical?

As part of the firedoglake preparation for the author’s appearance at fdl’s Book Salon on Sunday, here’s an update on what Eric’s subjects of Chapter Thirteen, Saradise Lost, have been up to since early November, 2008:

Alaska’s Gov. Sarah Palin created an alternative universe this January, that conjured an image of herself as victim of “Bored, anonymous, pathetic bloggers who lie.” She was never able to cite the lie. And early this week, Palin credited these same pesky bloggers with spreading lies that led to the defeat of her nominee for Attorney General. To illustrate her point, she once again failed to cite the lie she believed we had created. What we have done, though, must annoy her. We have challenged her to the point that she can no longer claim the mantle she once wore as an “ethics reformer.”

The GOP-dominated Alaska Legislature rejected Gov. Sarah Palin’s nominee to replace her disgraced Attorney General, just minutes ago. Although Alaska’s mainstream media failed to see this Palin defeat coming, several Alaska blogs and civil rights activists combined efforts to educate the public and get them to write to legislators.