Just as in Goldwater's time, Netroots Democrats have begun building a real infrastructure that can have that discussion. Since that structure is based on the Internet, it is inevitable that Internet values are assumed. Ideas like openness, consensus, and connectivity are taken for granted. And it's what is assumed true, not what is argued about, that lies at the heart of any new political Myth.

I just Googled the words “Ken-Mehlman gay rumors” and do you know how many hits I got? 168,000.

Carol Shea Porter was out-spent 10-1 in a Democratic primary and won it. She was given no money by Rahm Emmanuel of the DCCC and she won anyway. She ran no negative ads, she couldn't afford them. But the radio ads supporters dreamed up for her were e-mailed all over the district.

The Copps talk, then, can be seen as a roadmap for demands he and Adelstein are making as the price for approving the merger, as merger approval conditions, if you will. They won't get everything they seek, but they will get some. Perhaps as early as next week, if AT&T gets serious in negotiating with them.

There seems to be an unspoken agreement among drivers about the risk they are willing to accept on the highway. It's a stupid risk-reward equation, but there it is. The reward of getting there a few minutes earlier balanced by the risk of sudden, horrible painful death. The same balance seems to be taking place on the Internet.

Consensus leaves room for what you might call trolls, people who are violently opposed to the change I seek, who very much want to pull things in another direction.

I'm averaging one of these a minute My daughter's account, which she doesn't check, has 861 copies of this since just yesterday. This looks like spam as Denial of Service attack.

What if it's all true, that the 2000 election was a fraud, and you went along with it. The American electoral system was subverted, and you went along with it. The middle class was destroyed and you went along with it. The Earth was tipped into a Global Warming Armageddon and you went along with it. The American economy was bankrupted and you went along with it. Better not think about it.

This is at least as serious a threat as 9-11 was, so we start in the same place. A commission, drawn equally from both sides, appointed either by Congress or the parties (I don't care).

Thanks to the coming closing of the network, the MSNBC "talent" has been engaged for the last week in a steel cage anchor death match, with jobs at 30 Rock the prize.