Woolcott: "the Vampires Descend"

"the Vampires Descend"
from James Wolcott, yesterday:

Steve Gilliard, Atrios, and--well, just about every liberal blogger in whose veins decency flows is sounding the alarm about oozing through the Senate.

This unleashing of legislative machinery to further crush and pauperize the weak and overwhelmed in America sent me back to one of the most depressing yet indispensible books I've read in recent years, Liberty Under Siege by the late Walter Karp, the brilliant, committed historian and journalist...

Liberty Under Siege covers the honeymoon glow and warm promise of Jimmy Carter's inauguration and how swiftly, brutally they were snuffed, not just by Republican opponents but entrenched Democrats with their honkers in the trough and the Washington press corps (esp the Wash Post), which set about to savage Hamilton Jordan and Bert Lance to teach the upstarts from Georgia who runs this town. Today, even sympathetic souls dismiss Carter as an "ineffectual" president who has done exemplary good works since, but Karp documents how the political establishment, military and Israeli lobbies, and media crippled Carter from the outset, cut him off at the ankles after his first few steps.

via The Daou Report.