"Just because there's no personal corruption does not mean that this institution is independent. It doesn't mean that there's no institutional corruption."

That's how Stanford Law Professor and Creative Commons founder Larry Lessig described the U.S. Congress at an event at the National Press Club today where he alleged that Congress "is driven by interests that ought not to be driving it." Lessig is far from the first person to bemoan the influence of money in Washington politics, and he acknowledged as much in his lecture. But he is offering a new, well-thought-out way of tackling a problem that he says causes government to consistently make the wrong decision in "easy cases," where the proper course of action is obvious. (Lessig pointed to copyright terms, nutrition guidelines, and global warming as three examples of "easy cases" Congress gets wrong).

Lessig's new group, "Change Congress", will try to "leverage and amplify" the work of the existing government reform movement. Run by Lessig and Howard Dean/John Edwards campaign manager Joe Trippi, Change Congress will use an internet-centered model similar to that of the incredibly successful Creative Commons project Lessig founded in 2001. (Creative Commons uses the internet to give artists and content creators an easy way to clarify how they want copyright to apply to their works. And it's how MotherJones.com and websites can license so many great flickr.com photos for free.)

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The blogosphere poked some fun a couple days ago when McCain said dominantly Shiite Iran was aiding dominantly Sunni al Qaeda and had to be corrected by his traveling buddy Joe Lieberman.

But I'm starting to wonder if McCain simply doesn't have a strong grasp of the subject matter. He said it twice at the March 18 press conference where he was corrected by Lieberman. He made the same assertion last month, and said it on the radio on March 17. And to commemorate the 5th anniversary of the war, he sent out a statement (likely written by his staff) that appears to repeat the claim.

The McCain campaign's explanation is that McCain "misspoke" at the press conference with Lieberman. I'm starting to seriously doubt that. But what's the actual explanation? McCain can't possibly be so ignorant of foreign affairs that he thinks Iran and al Qaeda are in bed together, can he? After this many years in the Senate? Perhaps he was having a series of what my parents call "senior moments."

For a man who has staked his entire campaign on Iraq and his understanding of foreign policy, this is bizarre.

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Good times! John McCain and Joe Lieberman are on a road trip through the Middle East and are continuing their pattern of gaffes. This one is not as serious as the Sunni/Shia mix up, but it is awfully amusing.

In Israel yesterday, NBC's Lauren Appelbaum reports, Lieberman once again intervened when McCain made an incorrect reference about the Jewish holiday Purim -- by calling the holiday "their version of Halloween here."

McCain made the incorrect statement during a press conference with Defense Minister Ehud Barak after touring the Israeli city of Sderot to view building damaged by Hamas rocket fire. McCain was discussing the numerous rock attacks on the city. "Nine hundred rocket attacks in less than three months, an average of one every one to two hours. Obviously this puts an enormous and hard to understand strain on the people here, especially the children. As they celebrate their version of Halloween here, they are somewhere close to a 15-second warning, which is the amount of time they have from the time the rocket is launched to get to safety. That's not a way for people to live obviously."

Purim is not the equivalent of an Israeli Halloween, Appelbaum notes. The holiday -- although a joyous one -- commemorates a time when the Jewish people living in Persia were saved from mass execution. When Sen. Lieberman had a chance to speak at the press conference, he placed the blame of the mistake on himself. "I had a brief exchange with one of the mothers whose children was in there in a costume for Purim," Lieberman, who is Jewish and celebrates the holiday, said. "And it's my fault that I said to Senator McCain that this is the Israeli version of Halloween. It is in the sense because the kids dress up and it's a very happy holiday and actually it is in the sense that the sweets are very important of both holidays."

I hope someone makes a movie out of these two. The very underrated mid-90s goofball comedy My Fellow Americans could be the inspiration. Except instead of the hilarious misadventures of two old, curmudgeony ex-presidents, it would be two old, curmudgeony wanna-be presidents.

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Vice President Cheney took to ABC to call the war a "major success" and to dismiss the will of the American public:

CHENEY: On the security front, I think there's a general consensus that we've made major progress, that the surge has worked. That's been a major success.

MARTHA RADDATZ: Two-third of Americans say it's not worth fighting.

CHENEY: So?

RADDATZ So? You don't care what the American people think?

CHENEY: No. I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls.

While we're contemplating whether we still live in a representative democracy, let's take a look at some long-term Pew polls that illustrate exactly what the American people think.

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