That in-depth post...

This month has been designated as Israel Solidarity Month. Here's some signs that could be hung up anywhere.

Well, look who walked out of a John Mellencamp concert. Dan Quayle. Perhaps, someone should have told him that Mellencamp is a Democrat?

He then made a statement of his own by walking out during Mellencamp's rendition of "Walk Tall." Before launching into the song, Mellencamp told the Harveys casino crowd, in effect, that it was dedicated to everyone hurt by policies of the current Bush administration.

Quayle, who served as vice president for President Bush's father in 1989-93 walked out of the venue before Mellencamp finished the song.

Quayle said through a publicist: "Well, I think Mellencamp's performance was not very good to begin with, and the comment put it over the top."

FYI, there is another Orthodox Jewish mayor.

The wealthy Orthodox neighborhood of Lawrence, N.Y., has one; the fervently Orthodox enclave of Lakewood, N.J., has one; and now the modern Orthodox community in Teaneck, N.J., has one as well.

Elie Katz, owner of the local restaurant Chopstix, was elected Teaneck mayor by his fellow township council members last week, after receiving 60 percent of constituents’ votes in his race for the council seat.

Katz, 31, who is not only Teaneck’s first Orthodox mayor but also its youngest mayor ever, told JTA that he has “been active in the town for the last 15 years," and was also the town’s youngest-ever council member when he was first elected nine years ago.

Getting to the conflict overseas, the major bloggers have been silent for the most part. Other than praying for peace, there's nothing much one can do in this situation. True, I do support Israel and would prefer that there be no civilians that die but in wars, civilians are often casualties. It's a fact of life.

Bloggers — as the feisty class of Internet pundits are known — love to paint themselves as free-speech warriors who bravely tackle the hard truths that mainstream media outlets either ignore or distort. But as the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah raged on and conventional media outlets covered the news from the ground, major players in the liberal blogosphere were keeping, by their own admission, decidedly quiet.

The most prominent liberal blogger, Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, briefly addressed the topic Monday on his eponymous Web site DailyKos.com, in a post titled "Why I won't write about the Israel/ Lebanon/ Palestine fighting."

This is "a morass of a mess of a disaster of a quagmire of a sinkhole," Kos wrote. "It doesn't matter what the President of the United States says. Or the United Nations. Or the usual bloviating gasbag pundits."

In progressive circles, Kos is known as both a commentator and an organizer — readers of his donated roughly $500,000 to Democrats in 2004 and his Yearly Kos convention in Las Vegas last month drew senators and celebrities, along with young activists.

Other leading liberal bloggers — including Josh Marshall of TalkingPointsMemo.com, Kevin Drum of the Washington Monthly and Matt Stollar of MyDD.com — acknowledged that they also were reticent to weigh in, for reasons that included both the vehemence of rhetoric from readers on both sides, and the difficulty of commenting on the rare issue that truly divides liberals.

The "venom... is just, from my personal experience, just a whole order of magnitude greater than with garden variety political topics," Marshall told the Forward. His Web site, Marshall said, typically receives 100,000 visitors a day, and as many as 300 to 500 emails from readers. In the past week, most of the vitriolic responses have come from critics of Israel.

I "touched off the fireworks" in saying that "Israel has a right to respond strongly when they have a border incursion over the Lebanese border," Marshall said. "Some readers think that because I'm critical of our policy in Iraq... I'm going to be reflexively critical of what's going on now, which I'm not."

Marshall — who was raised in a secular Jewish home and considers himself "in some ways a critic of Israel, but still a Zionist and a supporter of Israel" — said he is uncomfortable with the strange bedfellows he sometimes wins by raising concerns about Israel's conduct.

"I understand the Palestinians' rage," Marshall wrote in a July 15 post on his blog. But for "Americans who seem only to see Jewish evil in the midst of this protracted conflict I can't have anything but contempt. And it puts me on my guard."[...]

"Most conservatives simply take the uncomplicated stance that Palestinians are terrorists and that Israel should always respond to provocation in the maximal possible way," Drum wrote. "Liberals don't really have a similarly undemanding position for the quick-hit nature of blogging."

Matt Stollar echoed the thought on MyDD.

"I've noticed some clucking in the right-wing wrongosphere about silence from the major left-wing blogs on the situation in the Middle East," Stollar wrote on Saturday. "There hasn't been silence, but there has been humility in the face of a fast-moving situation that is difficult to understand."

Nine days after it all started, Congress finally moves to support Israel. For more on that, click here.

Check out BangItOut.com's latest top ten. It's hilarious!

Stephen Stills talks about this summer's tour and Democratic candidates. Also, he considers himself a centrist.

Stephen Stills wasn't being evasive. He just didn't think he was qualified to explain why Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young is calling its summer tour Freedom of Speech '06.

"I wasn't at the meeting," said Stills, who instead was on a solo trek that brought him to the Fine Line Music Cafe in Minneapolis.

He's since been to CSNY rehearsals and knows that the legendary quartet will perform nearly all the material on Neil Young's new "Living With War" and "every protest song that we ever wrote."

"We're approaching it as the 'Everything You Hate About Liberals Tour,' " Stills said with a chuckle before a recent rehearsal. That probably means "Ohio," "For What It's Worth" and "Rockin' in the Free World," among others.

Stills, 61, is not concerned about the kind of fan backlash the Dixie Chicks experienced because of their outspoken anti-Bush views. "You know what you're getting when you show up at our show," Stills said.

The point of Young's album - and the focal point of the CSNY tour - is not subtle.

"Basically, it's, 'We've had enough of Republicans and this administration and this war and the lack of leadership in this country,' " said Stills. "I certainly concur. But I'm the guy saying, 'We're becoming everything we hate about liberals. Be careful.' Still, we're in our 60s - if anybody can speak up, it's us."

Stills considers himself the political centrist of CSNY, which of course includes David Crosby and Graham Nash.

"Graham's always been outspoken to the point of anarchy. Dave is Dave. Neil is pretty ferocious when he gets his teeth on a whole thing," said Stills, a member of the Democratic National Committee since the 1980s. After the concerts, he will campaign for Democratic candidates, although he knows some of them "may run from me because of this tour."

Yarmuth has a new campaign manager.

Yarmuth said last month he hoped two developments would raise the national profile of the race and help him raise money -- his newly hired manager, Jason Burke, 34, a Connecticut native and veteran of seven congressional races, and a poll commissioned by his campaign in June showing the race was a dead heat.

Burke, who began work for Yarmuth July 10, managed a successful write-in campaign in the May primary for Democratic congressional candidate Charlie Wilson in Ohio's 6th District.

He replaces Dan Borsch, 30, a lawyer who said in an interview last month that he and Yarmuth had a "mutual coming together of the minds" over his role.

James Carville is in town this week.

A new Blues Brothers film?!? Check it out here!

When SNL returns in the fall, it will be without Tina Fey and Rachel Dratch. Word has it that, due to budget cuts, the cast will be smaller than usual so who knows if there will be any new cast members.

Hastert will show where he truly stands on Israel given the latest.

Maliki sharply criticized Israel last week for its response to Hezbollah attacks on Israeli territory.

Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives said in a statement that those remarks "have undermined U.S. objectives in the Middle East."

The members want House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) to secure an apology from Maliki or cancel his speech.

Bayh will help the middle class if he's elected President in 2008.

"If this president will not speak for our middle class, I will. And if Democrats want to lead our nation again, we must," Bayh said.

In speeches both in Washington and Iowa, Bayh recently proposed a $6,000 tax credit to help with college costs for families making as much as $100,000 a year, new government health coverage for catastrophic illness to help bring insurance rates down and a 30-percent government match for individual savings accounts to help people save for retirement.

Bayh's new middle-class pitch seems aimed at Iowa specifically, where he only drew two percent support in a recent newspaper poll and where the Democrat who polled the highest, John Edwards, has been emphasizing help for those in poverty.

Finally finished with political news for the day, let's move on to sports. In Red Sox news:
July 14: L 15-3 against Oakland. Beckett (11-5) picks up the loss.
July 15: W 7-0. Schilling (11-3) shut's A's out. Ortiz hits #32.
July 16: L 8-1. Snyder (1-1) picks up the loss. Gonzales hits #2.
July 17: W 5-4 against KC. Timlin (5-0) gets the win. Papelbon his 27th save. Mirabelli hits #3.
July 18: W 1-0. Lester (5-0) combines with Papelbon (28) for the win.
July 19: W 1-0. Beckett (12-5) combines with Papelbon (29) for the win. Manny hits #25.
July 20: W 6-4 against Texas. Schilling (12-3) combines with Timlin (2) for the win.
July 21: W 9-4 against Mariners. Snyder (2-1) picks up the win. HR: Alex Gonzalez (7), David Ortiz (33), Manny Ramirez (26), Jason Varitek (10), and Kevin Youkilis (11).
July 22: L 5-2. Gabbard (0-1) gets the loss. Lowell hits #13.
July 23: L 9-8. Timlin (5-1) gets the loss. Varitek hits #11.
July 24: W 7-3 against Oakland. Beckett (13-5) gets the win. HR: Alex Gonzalez (8), David Ortiz (34), Manny Ramirez (27).

Ortiz is less than 30 home runs away from tying the single season record for home runs in the American League. It's still at 61.