WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The CIA denied on Wednesday that its new director had told the spy agency to shape intelligence to support the policies of President Bush.

Question: How much of what the CIA actually does would it ever confirm on the record?

I'm just asking.

The Washington Post again picks up the story of gay Oklahoma teenager Michael Shackelford, for good reason: after the Post profiled him earlier this year (see here and here), Fred Phelps hate-filled crew decided to picket Michael's church, former high school, and (although not mentioned in the article) another church in the Sand Springs area that tries to "convert" gay people to heterosexuality.

Yes, they picketed a conservative evangelical "ex-gay" ministry. Phelps' bunch believes that gay people were created solely to burn in hell, so any church that does anything but attack them is aligned with Satan.

No, I'm not kidding.

People in Sand Springs may not like homosexuality or want to see it, but when Phelps and his crew of demons started to attack Michael, they closed ranks. If Michael is a problem, they said, he's our problem, thankyouverymuch.

Sometimes I think people in urban areas don't quite understand the power that coming out of the closet has in smaller places. The TV preachers keep running the video of leather parades for a reason - until you know a gay person, they can make you believe that's what all gay people are really like. Looking someone in the eye and seeing that he's not rebelling, not deluded, and not lying to you - well, who are you going to believe? A TV preacher who made $50 million last year misinterpreting the Bible for you, or your own lying eyes and heart?

Godspeed to that boy, I'm telling you. He'll know far more of heaven than any member of Westboro Baptist Church ever will.

Update: Also see MetaFilter and Pandagon.

I've been away from the writing thing for several days, so I haven't written a lot about this year's election, but one of the themes (hinted at by this new department, "The Loyal Opposition") I'll be hitting is that the Democrats need to stop pretending they're the majority-in-exile, and start being a real opposition party. That doesn't mean opposing sensible policies for its own sake, as the GOP does - it means making the majority live with every single one of its decisions.

Take this bit about Tom DeLay, for example:

House Republicans proposed changing their rules last night to allow members indicted by state grand juries to remain in a leadership post, a move that would benefit Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) in case he is charged by a Texas grand jury that has indicted three of his political associates, according to GOP leaders.

The proposed rule change, which several leaders predicted would win approval at a closed meeting today, comes as House Republicans return to Washington feeling indebted to DeLay for the slightly enhanced majority they won in this month's elections. DeLay led an aggressive redistricting effort in Texas last year that resulted in five Democratic House members retiring or losing reelection. It also triggered a grand jury inquiry into fundraising efforts related to the state legislature's redistricting actions.

House GOP leaders and aides said many rank-and-file Republicans are eager to change the rule to help DeLay, and will do so if given a chance at today's closed meeting. A handful of them have proposed language for changing the rule, and they will be free to offer amendments, officials said. Some aides said it was conceivable that DeLay and Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) ultimately could decide the move would be politically damaging and ask their caucus not to do it. But Rep. Jack Kingston (Ga.), another member of the GOP leadership, said he did not think Hastert and DeLay would intervene.

House Republicans adopted the indictment rule in 1993, when they were trying to end four decades of Democratic control of the House, in part by highlighting Democrats' ethical lapses. They said at the time that they held themselves to higher standards than prominent Democrats such as then-Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski (Ill.), who eventually pleaded guilty to mail fraud and was sentenced to prison.

When Rostenkowski first got in trouble in the House Post Office scandal, the GOP was the opposition party, and they hammered it mercilessly. They brought it up every day, in every possible venue, until it metastasized. They changed their own rules, as the minority party, to emphasize that they would never allow such shenanigans if they were in the majority. And it lasted all of ten years.

When the GOP was the opposition, though, they took their stories and repeated them everywhere, all the time, regardless of their relationship to truth or reality. The Democrats don't have to lie to get their way, but they do have to repeat their hottest messages every day, everywhere, all the time, in every venue. Everywhere.

My friends will tell you that, since November 2, I've ranted several times about how the Democrats should be treating DeLay: Every Democrat who goes on television or radio should have said something very similar to this:

"Well, Anchortron, the Republicans certainly got their extra seats in the House that Tom DeLay paid for, and it looks like he's going to pay even more for it with an indictment. He needed so much big cash to force that off-year redistricting in Texas, and to control the story as he broke the law over things like having our Department of Homeland Security chase legislators who wouldn't cooperate with him, that three of his closest campaign supporters have already been indicted. And the House Ethics Committee's actions strongly suggest DeLay himself is next."

"He's been trying like hell to derail the investigation of him for years, and it's worked in the House - all but five House Republicans took campaign money from Tom DeLay, so the House can't possibly investigate his actions fairly, nor will they authorize an independent prosecutor. But DeLay can't control the Austin DA, and he's prosecuted enough Republicans that his typical it's-all-partisan-smears defense hasn't stuck."

"He's very close to going down over this, and when he does, he's going to take the entire GOP House agenda with him. He's held it together by force of personality for a decade, and without him, they're not going to get anything done. If they're smart, they'll drop him from the leadership before it implodes, but money and power is more important to these guys than 'smart.'"

If the Democrats want to get anything done, or win back the majority, they have to be the opposition, not the majority-in-exile. They should not spend time "building coalitions" with these guys, because their treatment of Arlen Specter shows how that works. They're not even interested in compromising with their own - it's their way or the highway. "Compromising" with DeLay's crowd means you give him what he wants and then later he uses it to make sure you don't get re-elected.

They have to spend their time destroying other coalitions that are bad for the country, and DeLay's cartel is as bad for America as they come.

Democrats have to flood the broadcast, cable, and radio shows now as much as Republicans have ever done, and every story is about Tom DeLay. Every story about legislation is about Tom DeLay's imminent indictment. Every process story is about how his money controls the House so completely that - whether it succeeds or not - most of the GOP members clearly want to adopt a pro-crime rule that says, "We don't care if our leaders commit felonies to gain more power." Every political story is about Tom DeLay's corruption and illegal activities. Every one of them.

Cabinet appointments? They're lucky they don't need House confirmation, since DeLay's House is a disaster. Iraq appropriations? The bribes DeLay demanded from energy companies make all Iraq spending related to oil and energy suspect, and the American people deserve an independent appropriation to support the troops instead of supporting the GOP's biggest shakedown victims. Gay marriage? Hard to see how these guys can be shouting "morals" when they take dirty money from a soon-to-be-indicted majority leader - what would Jesus think?

The difference from the GOP is that they didn't care if their stories were true or not. They painted every Democrat as a "flip-flopper" during the campaign season, we're reminded this week, and how many investigations have failed to stop them from mentioning Vince Foster? Even if DeLay escapes indictment, his ethical lapses are clear and won't be investigated by the same Congress that would happily amend the Constitution to ban Janet Jackson's breasts.

It is not enough for the bloggers to know about this, or for Democrats to mention it on TV today and tomorrow. Every day, every show, every venue, until DeLay is gone. That's what the opposition does - they did it with Rostenkowski, Jim Wright, and countless other House Democrats. They wrote the rules for this process. Make them live by them.

Back to work now.