You know it worries them because of the timing:

Late Friday, the White House turned over new documents in the Congressional investigation into the ATF “Fast and Furious” gunwalking scandal.

The documents show extensive communications between then-ATF Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix office Bill Newell – who led Fast and Furious – and then-White House National Security Staffer Kevin O’Reilly. Emails indicate the two also spoke on the phone. Such detailed, direct communications between a local ATF manager in Phoenix and a White House national security staffer has raised interest among Congressional investigators looking into Fast and Furious. Newell has said he and O’Reilly are long time friends.

Keep up the pressure.

[Posted by Karl]

Michael Kazin is both a professor of history at Georgetown and a co-editor of Dissent; in asking “Whatever Happened to the American Left?”, he lets the second get in the way of the first:

After years of preparation, welfare-state liberalism had finally become a mainstream faith. In 1939, John L. Lewis, the pugnacious labor leader, declared, “The millions of organized workers banded together in the C.I.O. are the main driving force of the progressive movement of workers, farmers, professional and small business people and of all other liberal elements in the community.” With such forces on his side, the politically adept F.D.R. became a great president.

But the meaning of liberalism gradually changed. The quarter century of growth and low unemployment that followed World War II understandably muted appeals for class justice on the left. Liberals focused on rights for minority groups and women more than addressing continuing inequalities of wealth. Meanwhile, conservatives began to build their own movement based on a loathing of “creeping socialism” and a growing perception that the federal government was oblivious or hostile to the interests and values of middle-class whites.

Kazin’s argument has at least two major flaws.  First, being a committed leftist, Kazin mentions that these movements were “backed up by powerful social forces” only in passing, although those forces are as important, if not moreso, than the activists on each side.  Second, while writing “the left should stop mourning its recent past,” being a committed leftist himself, Kazin could not bring himself to look too closely at the era he thinks should inspire today’s left. (more…)