The Culling.

“‘It’s just astounding — the very arrogance,’ said Cynthia Canary, director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform and a close observer of state politics. ‘And yesterday he was saying there’s not a cloud in the sky.'” Poised on the brink of a new Democratic era in Washington as we are, what better time to see the cobwebs cleared out of some our own party’s shady corners? First indicted and pretty clearly crooked congressman William Jefferson, much like his GOP counterpart Ted Stevens, went down to a surprising defeat in Louisiana against GOP challenger Anh “Joseph” Cao. And, of course, in today’s big news, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has been charged with all manner of crooked schemes by former Libby prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, including brazenly trying to pawn off Obama’s Senate seat to the highest bidder. (“[It’s] a f**king valuable thing, you just don’t give it away for nothing.“)

Well, good riddance to both. Any way you cut it, this is addition by subtraction for our party. (And for the potential conspiracy theorists out there, Slate‘s John Dickerson has a good post on why the President-elect “comes off as good as he could possibly have hoped for: He’s behaving well even when you don’t think anyone is watching.” And, with a tip of the hat to Al Smith and Tammany Hall, Politico‘s Ben Smith ably discusses how Obama kept his independence from the Chicago machine back in the day.)

Wright and Wrong.

“I feel that those citizens who say that have never heard my sermons, nor do they know me. They are unfair accusations taken from sound bites…I served six years in the military. Does that make me patriotic? How many years did Cheney serve?” I haven’t watched the Sunday shows yet, but, if today’s press is any indication, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is the big story in the news, after he delivered remarks in several venues aimed at defending himself against the recent media throng, as well as horrifying attempts by the like of George Stephanopoulos to McCarthify him on national television. (As I said here, we seem to have entirely skipped the rails when kindly ole Mike Huckabee is the biggest voice for tolerance and historical understanding in the conversation.)

At any rate, the return of Obama’s Angry Black Preacher-Man prompted tut-tuts of electoral worry from Clinton-leaning concern trolls like like Salon‘s Joan Walsh, and the usual waiting for the other-shoe-to-drop from breathless political blogs like War Room and Ben Smith. What I haven’t seen yet today, amid all the puttering from the press on the subject of Wright, is any attempt to put the Reverend’s remarks in context of this weekend’s highly dubious acquittal in the Sean Bell case. To wit, New York City cops shoot an unarmed black man and his friends 50 times and end up getting off for it, and, outside of Harlem, there’s barely a shrug, including in the news media. Meanwhile, when it comes to anything and everything involving the fates of Natalee Holloway, Laci Peterson, and any other white damsel in distress, the press drone on about it endlessly, funnelling info to us months or even years after the cases have gone cold. But, as they say, this ain’t Aruba, b**ch.

Is Rev. Wright angry? At this point, and as this weekend’s fiasco makes clear, he has every right to be. Perhaps the press and the punditocracy could investigate more thoroughly why black America may be less inclined to think well of our nation at times, rather than working themselves into yet another holier-than-thou froth about occasional intemperate remarks, and/or endlessly fretting about their potential impact on the electoral whims of the white working class. God forbid these media asshats break out of their echo chamber bubble once in awhile and do some honest-to-goodness reporting. Heck, I’d be happy just to see a few of ’em think for themselves.

Recrimination Time.

“With a week to go before climactic tests in Texas and Ohio, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign team has slipped into full recriminations mode. Looking backward, interviews with a cross-section of campaign aides and sympathetic outsiders suggest a team consumed with frustration and finger-pointing about the apparent failure of several recent tactical moves against Barack Obama. Looking forward, it is clear Clinton’s team has only a faint and highly improvisational strategy about what to do over the next seven days. Simply put, there is no secret weapon.” Politico’s Mike Allen and John F. Harris offer another dismal window into what looks to be the final days in Camp Clinton.

In related news, Atlantic blogger Marc Ambinder — who, along with Politico’s Ben Smith and Salon’s Joan Walsh, has been one of the more obviously Clinton-leaning pundits in the paid blogosphere (nice work if you can get it) — pretty much gives up hope: “The ‘HRC can come back’ bandwagon is rolling through town, and I spent a long time yesterday contemplating whether to jump on board. But the platform on which her supporters stand right now seems more tenuous by the day…Advisers figure that a loss in Texas is as likely as a win in Ohio; a large number of staffers appear to be willing to quit en masse next Wednesday if there’s a split decision and Clinton gives notice that she intends to fight for another month.“

Update: Former Chief of Staff and long-time Clinton loyalist Leon Panetta gives his own post-mortem for the campaign, and puts the blame squarely on Mark Penn: “‘[Penn] is a political pollster from the past. I never considered him someone who would run a national campaign for the presidency,’ he said. He asserted that Mr. Penn ‘comes from an old school, like Karl Rove — it’s all about dividing people into smaller groups rather than taking the broader approach that was needed.’“