I've been taking the Times Empire Zone and Ben Smith to task today for being anti-Statenite.

Link Texthttp://empirezone.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/02/20/its-election-day/#comments

Link Texthttp://www.r8ny.com/blog/ben_smith/turning_out_in_the_40th.html#comment-369392

Say what you will: Democrats are just better.* From Nancy Pelosi's new blog, The Gavel, come these youtubed videos of Member's speeches during the Iraq war debate; here are the New Yorkers.

Charlie Rangel

Jerrold Nadler

*Exceptions to the 'Democrats are better' rule are of course members of the New York State Assembly, presided over by Shelly Silver.

Washington Post: Richard Cohen wants to know how Hillary Clinton failed her country.

The New York Times: Eliot Spitzer is expected to approve the Freedom Tower, with a view to the booming downtown real estate market.

More Eliot in the Times, in reference to the Comptroller fiasco. A typo: the Times refers to one 'relatively obscure' Assemblyman, ignoring that they are all mostly obscure, and deservedly so.

Surprise! The new Q-Poll gives Spitzer a 61-11 positive rating, while Silver and Bruno – the bouncing baby boys of Albany dysfunction – receive a 48-31 disapproval rating.

Still not going away: The Daily News rips some more flesh from yet another worthless Assemblyite, noting that they're starting to get a vague apprehension that their hackery has been noticed.

And lastly, not a news item, but an appeal: can't someone start a process that would give us term limits for the state legislature? Here's an idea: Contact your Assemblyist and tell them exactly how you feel. Urge them to embrace term limits, step down, retire, whatever it takes. Just get those people out.  read more »

Via DKos comes word of the newest blogosphereic effort to keep New York republics accountable: McHugh Watch, dedicated to the current Congressman from NY-23. The blog is funded by Robert Johnson, who ran against McHugh twice.

Good news. In the old days of carbon media, people like McHugh - or Sweeney and Kelly, Fossella and Kuhl - could hide their radicalism from scrutiny. No more.

Hillary's flip-flopping on the war – "You have to find common ground, but you also have to stand your ground" – gets panned in New Hampshire.

The New York Times buys into the framing of the so-called 'ex-gay'-movement.

Capitol Confidential has Governor Steamroller in Westchester today, and speculates on further gubernatorial slams against untrustworthy Silverites.

More signs that the Comptroller fiasco is not going away quietly: Eliot wants to know how much money Silver makes at his day job.

The Daily News says it's time to pick sides, and goes with Eliot.

Errol Louis hits one out of the ball park, excoriating the various toothless, sellout minority caucuses for not backing a black candidate in the Comptroller fight. One might add that Martha Stark, the candidate in question, is an out lesbian, while there is speculation that DiNapoli might be closeted.

And lastly, The Albany Project has a live book club tonight. Check it out.