A LIBERAL CASE FOR PORK? In September, TNR �s Brad Plumer argued � the liberal case for pork .� Call it vote buying if you will, but today, The Washington Post reports that House Democrats are tempting Iraq fence-sitters by adding $21 billion in domestic appropriations to the $124 billion war bill that sets an August 2008 deadline for pulling American troops out of Iraq. Waiting another year-and-a-half to remove our troops from harm�s way is less than ideal for many progressives, but Pelosi is waging a bare-knuckled fight just to get a veto-proof majority to support this bill. It puts Louisiana Republicans in the awkward position, for example, of either supporting redeployment or voting against tens of billion dollars in funding for Hurricane Katrina relief and flood prevention. The Post reports: For Rep. Sam Farr (D-Calif.), there is $25 million for spinach growers hurt by last year's E. coli scare. For three conservative Democrats in Georgia, there is $75 million for peanut storage...

ALINSKY 101. When Hillary Clinton graduated Wellesley in 1969, she turned down a job offer with community organizer and University of Chicago sociologist Saul Alinsky and headed to Yale Law School. In 1985, Barack Obama deferred law school to work with an Alinsky-inspired group on Chicago's South Side, partnering with black churches to advocate for better housing, job training, and other services for people in poverty. As Garance has noted , Ryan Lizza 's TNR piece on Obama's organizing days is a must read. So is this MSNBC story on Clinton's undergraduate thesis about Alinsky. Reporter Bill Dedman actually reads the much-mythologized thesis, which critiques Alinsky's methodologies as too focused on small-scale change within communities already decimated by systemic problems of segregation and poverty. (Incidentally, right-wingers have suggested Clinton's thesis, which at her request was kept under lock and key by Wellesley during her husband's administration, might contain proof of...