DCDL

Chris Bowers at MyDD wrote yesterday about how the media portray Ned Lamont’s primary challenge against Joe Lieberman as an attempt by extremists to purge the party of anyone deviating from their liberal beliefs, but never have similar stories about primary challenges from the right. This morning NPR’s Morning Edition had a story headlined “Democratic Hawk Faces Antiwar Primary Challenger” about Marcy Winograd’s primary challenge to Rep. Jane Harman in California. It followed the script described by Bowers, so I decided to use the contact form to send a letter to NPR:

The story by Rachael Myrow highlighted the primary challenge to Jane Harman, as well as mentioning the challenge to Lieberman, and portrayed this exercise of democracy within the system as an attempt to purge the party of anyone disagreeing with the liberals.

If such a purge is going on, it’s certainly not getting very far. Liberals are not at all in control of the Democratic Party.

Will you have a similar story about the primary challenge to Lincoln Chafee in Rhode Island? It’s much more likely to succeed than the one against Harman, and it’s much easier to make a case that Republican conservatives are purging moderates from their party. It seems that you’re depicting liberals as unreasonable extremists tearing their party apart, while finding the same behavior by conservatives perfectly acceptable.

Based on input from last Thursday’s DCDL meetup, I scouted out a few places for Saturday’s Dinner & A Movie, focusing on Georgetown.

“Why Georgetown?” you might ask. “Isn’t that pretty far away from Metro?” Fair enough. This DL’er is a big fan of the Landmark E St. theater, loves its proximity to the Red Line Metro, but wishes the environs were more conducive to after-movie dining. I’ll add that Georgetown is a pretty cool place, and for folks like me who will probably bike there, anyway, the Metro shouldn’t be the only factor.

I’ll also note that when we were discussing this last Thursday, Bethesda Row wasn’t listed. Now it is. Is this a more favorable location?

Here’s the showtimes. The AMC Loews (3111 K St NW) is showing “An Inconvenient Truth” on Saturday at 6:10, 7:40, and 8:40. The playing time is 100 minutes which would put the 7:40 show ending time at roughly 9:30.

The Au Pied Bistro (2815 M St.) would be my #1 pick for after movie dining. Several entrees under $10, with a variety of attractive picks in the $10-$20 range. While it’s a few blocks from the theater, it’s also very convenient to the Foggy Bottom stop.

As a backup, Paulo’s (1303 Wisconsin Ave) has pizza’s in the $10 range, and plenty of pasta dishes in the $10-$20 range.

Both places can accomodate a party of 15 (roughly my guess), and can take reservations.

The latest bit of right-wing innumeracy comes from Rep. Peter King (R-IA), who claims to believe that the civilian death rate is lower in Iraq than in Washington, DC. Of course King’s statistics are now making the rounds of the pro-war blogs as an example of why we should be clapping harder. Since King’s conclusion doesn’t correspond to most people’s views of reality, you might guess his numbers are wrong, and you’d be right. Kieran Healy and his commenters at Crooked Timber weigh King’s analysis and find it wanting. And if King really believes what he’s saying, Healy has a proposition for him:

In the meantime, I have an offer for Rep. King. He should pay my expenses for a vacation to DC, including a flight to the city, a taxi to a local hotel, a few dinners out at restaurants. Maybe some tickets some museums and local sights, perhaps a concert or a game. At the same time, he could take a parallel trip to Baghdad and do the same things — commercial flight in, local taxi, wander out for dinner, etc. We’ll both bring camcorders and see how it works out. If DC is so much more dangerous than Iraq I’m sure something like this would really show up people who say the situation in Iraq is terrible.