From the 'Family Food Fight' file...

Dropping Rep. Louise Slaughter's report on the costs of Republican corruption from the Minority Leader's website has sent Matt Stoller after Nancy Pelosi's head. Now, there may be grounds for a leadership race in the Democratic caucus when they reorganize next year, but if this is a case in point, Matt doesn't quite make it.

Part of the problem is the report itself, for which Slaughter was immediately charged with using House resources to produce a partisan document. Matt dismisses the charges, noting that "...Louise Slaughter is a member of the House Rules Committee, so documenting the costs of corruption was completely reasonable." Maybe he thinks the House Rules Committee has something to do with enforcing rules related to the finances or behavior of member, but a good American government class would quickly disabuse him of that notion. Rep. Slaughter may have any number of good reasons for launching her investigation, but service on the Rules Committee, which sets the legislative agenda and the rules of debate and order of business, simply isn't one of them.

Similarly, when Slaughter's report was removed from the Pelosi's leadership site, characterized by Stoller as "a final insult," amid concerns about potential ethics charges. As Matt parenthetically notes, hosting the report "…supposedly violates House Franking rules, which are incoherent and a huge mess and part of the tyranny of Republican rule in the House." In other words, he doesn't know what the rules are and finds them too confusing to care about. That's fine, as far as it goes, but if the staffer who made the 'boneheaded decision" to take the report down is "just out of touch" with Matt Stoller's desires, perhaps they're a bit more familiar with the House rules. He doesn't have to care. They do.

Matt closes with a warning…

...In order to build a progressive America, we need to get a real cultural change in Congress, a change driven by strength and leadership.

That's what the netroots wants, and that's what we're going to get. It's going to take time, but we're coming.

It's good to want things, and better to work for them, but real cultural change in Congress will not happen without a new Democratic majority in Congress, so if that's what you really want, well, you have to ask yourself what your words, deeds or dollars are doing to create that new majority. Ranting against a minority leadership that's struggling to operate under rules they didn't create and can't amend, with an agenda that's limited to stopping the absolutely worst stuff the R's dream up while occasionally slipping something half decent through the back door isn't a way to do that.

As for what the legendary 'netroots' wants, well, I think my membership claim is as strong as anyone's, and what I want, well, one of the things I want, is Speaker Pelosi.