[Note: This article has been corrected since it first ran. See below.]

President Obama, when he first announced the United States' intervention in the Libyan revolution, was assailed from all sides for his war plan. Five months ago, both Democrats and Republicans were offering up pointed criticisms for just about every aspect of Obama's decision. Whatever Obama did, there were large numbers of both Republicans and Democrats quite willing to loudly second-guess him. Including Representative Dennis Kucinich (a Democrat), who called President Obama's actions "an impeachable offense."

These criticisms were often contradictory (coming from the same people, at times), and were scathing and absolutely relentless: Obama had waited too long, Obama had moved too quickly, Obama should have gotten Congress' approval, Obama shouldn't have gotten the U.N.'s approval, America should just invade in a land war, America should just drop a bomb on Ghaddafi and be done with it, the rebels were in reality Al Qaeda, why are we intervening in Libya and not elsewhere in the Arab Spring, America can't afford another war, air power alone never wins wars, America will be forced to put "boots on the ground" whether we like it or not, America should be leading the war, Obama is "leading from behind," we're letting the French take control (?!?), Obama is kowtowing to the Arab League, another war in a Muslim country will just serve to inflame the region, what about the War Powers Act, we're going to wind up occupying Libya no matter what happens, the "ragtag" rebels will never win, the best the rebels can hope for will be a stalemate, Libya will end up partitioned with Ghaddafi holding on to the west of the country, Ghaddafi will unleash international terrorists against us, Obama didn't come home from South America when it began, Obama is "dithering," Obama didn't explain to the American public what was going on, and (an old favorite) America will end up in a quagmire. Back at the beginning of the war, Salon ran an amusing flowchart to track the Republican complaints, which isn't all that far from the reality Obama faced at the time (although the chart is admittedly partisan, because it doesn't address the criticism directed towards the president from his own party).

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It's silly season in the political world, once again. And this year -- just like every year a Democrat occupies the White House -- an old favorite of a story is making the rounds. It involves some very thinly-veneered outrage, which is completely fabricated and hypocritical in the extreme.

President Obama is on vacation. This fact is being subject to ridicule from Republicans, and their enablers in the media. Which has prompted me to -- in the fashion of Bill Maher -- come up with a New Rule. My New Rule is this: nobody is allowed to get on their moral high horse on television over the president's vacation if they have taken more vacation time than he has in the past year. To make it even more effective, I would also sincerely enjoy it if the blow-dried media types on television had to offer up the following with their snarky reporting on Obama's vacation: "Full disclosure, I took three weeks off this year and flew my family to Fiji and then Japan and Australia, a vacation far more lavish than the one the president is currently enjoying."

If that's too much to ask, how about the media correctly reporting this "outrage" -- in full context. "Republicans in Congress are expressing outrage over the president's ten-day vacation. Of course, it was rather hard to reach most of these members of Congress, since they are all off enjoying their own five-week long vacation. By the time they return to Washington in September, Congress will have taken more vacation time this year alone than Obama has for his entire term. Making their 'outrage' over Obama's vacation schedule more than just a little hypocritical."

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The rebels are on the move in Libya.

Unfortunately, getting answers to the question "where exactly are they moving?" from the American media is not that easy. There are a few reasons for this, but before I get to that, here's the map the media really should be providing on a regular basis (but are not). [I suggest you open this map in a separate browser window, to use as a helpful reference for the rest of this article.]

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Well, it's been a month since the last time we checked in with the Republican presidential nomination race, and with so much movement among the players of late, we've simply got to take another look at the way things are shaping up.

Almost a full month ago, I placed four names in the "Frontrunners" category: Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Rick Perry, and Mitt Romney. This list hasn't changed at all, although Palin will fall back the next time around if she doesn't announce in the next three or four weeks (more on this in a bit).

What has changed this time around is the field itself is tightening up. As a result, we're dropping one category entirely ("White Horses"), since there's only one left and she's already listed with the Frontrunners. Also, the "Dark Horses" category is going to shrink as well, and may disappear altogether over time.

As we get closer and closer to the actual voting, we're going to be paying more and more attention to the people in the race who actually have a shot at winning it. This means less space for those who do not, as a result.

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I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the Iowa straw poll is meaningless. Unless you attach "meaning" to a process which seems designed to show the world the power of candidates to outright purchase votes, which I have to say, I do not.

The Republican debate last night in Iowa wasn't as meaningless, but will also soon be forgotten as Republican presidential candidate debate season really gets into full swing.

Having thus sneered at the two events in the political world which got the most coverage last week, allow me to sneer at the media in a more free-floating fashion. A few things caught my eye this week, as spectacular examples of outright failure by the mainstream media. Add these to the enormous list of issues which the media considers absolutely taboo to discuss on the airwaves of America, I guess.

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Since the news this morning out of Wisconsin is a bit depressing for progressives (and Progressives), I thought it was time to mark an important upcoming centennial there. On the first of September in 1911, the first constitutional workers' compensation law took full effect in Wisconsin. The law had been passed on May 3, 1911. By all rights, I should have written about it back then, or waited until September for the anniversary of the law taking effect, but I thought today was a good day to reminisce about when Wisconsin was at the forefront of the Labor movement, instead of where they find themselves today.

Anyone unaware of Wisconsin's role in the Progressive movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries would do well to just skim Wikipedia's history of the Badger State's most famous Progressive, Robert "Fighting Bob" La Follette. Here's just a sample sentence from his biographical entry:

"As governor, La Follette championed numerous progressive reforms, including the first workers' compensation system, railroad rate reform, direct legislation, municipal home rule, open government, the minimum wage, non-partisan elections, the open primary system, direct election of U.S. Senators, women's suffrage, and progressive taxation."

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I still haven't made up my mind whether to direct an "open comment thread" on Tuesdays and Thursdays here, or just to forego any columns on these days altogether for the rest of the month.

But for today, I'd like to offer up this article from Katrina vanden Heuvel at the Washington Post. I think it's got parts in it that everyone will appreciate here, as well as being an excellent collection of links within the article itself. Of particular note is the last link in the article, to another exceptional article, an op-ed by Drew Westen that is definitely worth reading.

Discuss amongst yourselves...

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

This week is being touted, in the political world, as a big week in the state of Iowa. There will be a nationally-televised Republican presidential candidate debate, and then a few days later the Ames Straw Poll will take place. The straw poll is (as always) being hyped in the media as the "first voting" in the upcoming presidential nominating contest. But the media should pay more attention to what is happening in Wisconsin this week, because rather than some "vote"-buying exercise (that always proves itself to be completely meaningless in the grand scheme of the presidential election process), Wisconsin could prove to be a much better weathervane in terms of predicting which way the political winds will be blowing, come next year.

The less said about the Iowa straw poll the better, actually. The entire thing is an obscene display of how party machinery and blatant vote-buying have absolutely nothing to do with American voters actually choosing their president. The winner of the straw poll does not have any sort of "lock" on the state of Iowa, and indeed is often not even one of the top-tier candidates in the actual election. The only thing it accurately measures is the ability of each candidate to organize and pay for the massive people-moving which is required to do well in the straw poll (those buses to get "your" supporters to the straw poll don't pay for themselves, in other words). But beyond organizational, boots-on-the-ground mechanics, the straw poll measures precisely nothing of any real-world value (or even political-world value, for that matter).

Not so what will take place in Wisconsin tomorrow. Because tomorrow's vote is going to prove to be a bellwether in terms of how strong the Tea Party Republicans truly are, and how big their influence on next year's election may be. A good showing for Republicans tomorrow in Wisconsin will energize the Tea Party faction to bend the rest of the Republicans to their wishes throughout the entire campaign. Conversely, a win for Democrats tomorrow will show Democrats that the public is souring on the Tea Party creed, and will energize the Democrats for 2012.

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With the conclusion of the debt ceiling "crisis," the media pivoted swiftly to their standard larger questions (to them, at any rate) about any political event these days: "Who won? Who lost?"

Sigh. Well, in this one, we all lost. America lost. As the public got a close look at the innards of the political gastro-legislative tract, mostly they recoiled in horror. It's been said of Republicans that they get elected to Washington with the slogan "government doesn't work," and then they go about proving the truth of that statement with all their might. The past few weeks are a perfect example of this.

Finding "winners" in this mess is tough. Strangely enough, President Obama seemed to escape with the least political damage. The most fervent of his base said he surrendered and gave away the store, and the most fervent of his opposition is never going to give him credit for anything. But somehow Obama did manage a few scraps of victory in the power struggle. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are safe from cuts... for the next few months, at any rate. Obama will be able to extend the debt limit on his own (Congress is going to have a Kabuki vote each time, which will be meaningless) all the way through the 2012 elections, which was his "line in the sand" negotiating position. Neither was a sure thing, but these are mere scraps of victory, indeed. More intangibly, Obama's positioning as "the adult in the room" worked to a large extent, but that was fairly easy to do, considering how the other side was behaving.

The real winner, though, was the Tea Party. Even if some of them seem not to have gotten the memo. While some on the Left fulminated against the eventual deal, it was nothing compared to what some of the Tea Partiers were saying about it. "We only got 98 percent of what we asked for -- this is simply unacceptable!" seemed to sum up the hardest-core Tea Partiers' position.

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My apologies for the lack of a Thursday column. I really did want to write a column today, and was planning on next Tuesday being the first break here (see Program Note 3, at the beginning of Tuesday's column, for details). Unfortunately, I spent the day delving into the mysteries of Volvo braking systems instead. So I guess we're getting an early start on the new (temporary) Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule, here. Apologies, and all of that. But the brakes now work great, do not scream with the tortured grinding of metal-on-metal, and the car stops on a dime now. So, all in all, it wasn't too bad a day.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant