Do FDL and the other progressive blogs frighten Bush rubber-stampers like Susan Collins precisely because of their dedication to principle?

I just wanted to join Howie (see below--and note the update with Firedoglake's public statement) in registering astonishment at the bizarre attack launched by the campaign of Maine's Sen. Susan Collins, apparently increasingly desperate about her reelection prospects, against a cadre of progressive blogs. They're such different entities, but all in their ways irreplaceable. DailyKos gave us a gathering place for a true marketplace of ideas. The MoveOn "family of organizations" do heroic jobs of spearheading public awareness of crucial issues and of manning the virtual trenches of political organizing.

Most mystifying, surely, is the grotesquely sexist as well as plug-ignorant attack on Firedoglake. The imbecile who wrote it either has never actually looked at the site or is too dim to understand the work being done there by our friend Jane Hamsher's remarkable team. I don't want to mention any other names, for fear of leaving deserving people out, but Jane can take a bow as the ringleader who assembled this group of (yes) brilliant women but also remarkably able men.

I wonder if the reason the attack on Firedoglake seems so utterly inexplicable may in fact explain the virulence of the attack. The FDL people are known as being not just really, really smart, but fiercely principled, hard-working, and incorruptible. If you were a low-grade P.R. flack for a sad political hack like Senator Collins, wouldn't that kind of passion and principle frighten you too? It's deeply offensive to the corporatist thugs and ideological primitives who justify such slugs' existence.

As far as I know, the lunk who wrote this nonsense is still employed by the Collins campaign. If you want to send that campaign the kind of message such people understand, the dollars-and-cents kind, check out Howie's post for information on contributing to the campaign of the senator's outstanding Democratic opponent, Rep. Tom Allen.

When the Collins "brain trust" imported Holy Joe Lieberman as a campaign weapon, smart progressives turned him into a secret weapon, a really big-time fund-raiser--for Tom Allen! The way things are going, it looks like every time the senator opens her mouth or her campaign issues a fatwa, it's going to be money in the bank for Allen.

And you might want to stop by firedoglake.com and give the ladies and gents there a hug. They're only human.