"The AWOL story is a volcano that is about to blow. The purpose of this blog is to monitor the early warning signs so that you, dear reader, will be among the first to know when the pent-up gases and red-hot lava blow the cap right off the mountain, blasting Bush's utterly phony "patriotism" - and his entire administration - to smithereens." So begins Bob Fertik's new blog. Jump right in with your own comments on the latest Bush scandals! (Democrats.community registration required).

Democrats enter the convention more united than ever. And Democrats.com is proud to be one reason for this unity. David von Drehle reports, "When the country rallied to Bush after the terrorist attacks of 2001, the party mainstream lost still more confidence. Unsure and timid, Democrats lost congressional seats in 2002 -- an almost unprecedented failure by an opposition party in a midterm election. Through it all, grass-roots and liberal Democrats seemed more focused on the enemy. Web sites such as Moveon.org, Democrats.com and Truthout.org skipped the Gore campaign autopsy and directed their fire at what they judged to be an illegitimate -- even a 'stolen' -- election result." Congratulations to all Democrats.com members!

Democrats.com co-founder Bob Fertik will be a guest on All-American Talk Radio with Jon Elliott on Thursday Oct. 23 7-9 pm EST. They will discuss Democrats.com, George Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and everything under the sun. Bob will be followed by David Lytel, recently departed co-founder of Democrats.com and founder of the exciting new Re-Defeat Bush PAC (redefeatbush.com).

Writes Mike Hersh: "The Bob Fertik vs. Bill O'Reilly contest -- in which a relative rookie bested the top 'Tough Guy' of the right wing -- exposes not just O'Reilly, not just FOX (aka FAUX) News, but most of the mass media as an uncritical arm of the right wing propaganda machine. Most moderate and liberal guests on 'news' shows run into a buzzsaw of right wing bias and bullying. Here's the solution to right wing dominated mass media discourse, as demonstrated by Bob Fertik of Democrats.com. Bob Fertik, a mild mannered moderate devastated Bill O'Reilly, a leading right wing bully. How did he do that? He refused to back down, he stood toe to toe with one of the self-proclaimed heavy weights, and blew him off the stage. Fertik knew his facts, and stayed 'on message.' Silly taunting failed to cow Fertik, who anticipated and refuted the Republican press releases almost before O'Reilly could parrot them. Fertik didn't fall for the right wing lies."

On Tuesday, Ted Kahl, the Dems.com newsletter editor, will be on the Meria Heller Show. Ted and Meria will cover a wide range of topics, including the Bush family history, the intelligence community and the Right Wing. You can hear the webcast live at 10 am PT/ 1 pm ET. Afterwards, the show will be available for listening in Meria's archives. Also, check her archives for recent shows including Tom Driver and Anne Barstow in a discussion of their film, "Colombia, the Next Vietnam?"

We recently reported that Rodale threatened to sue a Web site that linked directly to their ad-free "printer-friendly" pages, and urged our readers to persuade Rodale to change their position. We're delighted to report that your efforts were a big success! Rodale solved their problem by placing ads on their printer-friendly pages, rather than pursuing a court battle that could easily have led to an awful decision by a right-wing judge. Congratulations Karilee Shames and everyone who contacted Rodale!

Since our launch at the Democratic convention in August 2000, Democrats.com has become the definitive news source for Democrats. From the outset, we built our news engine around a sophisticated database that is fully searchable by keyword (see our .compass search engine box). Democrats.com is proud to introduce a new feature called ".Compendium", which organizes all of our news items by essential topics. We hope this will be another valuable tool for researchers who want to understand the Democratic perspective on the crucial issues of our time. Once again, we thank YOU - our generous supporters - for making these continuing improvements possible!

About two months ago, an e-mailed "report" was forwarded to us from someone who described themselves as a concerned reader. The report appeared to be the work of a think tank called the "Lovenstein Institute" of Scranton, PA and presented findings on the IQs of all presidents back to FDR. According to the report, Bush had the lowest IQ of all. As it came from a reader, we started to post it as a commentary. But something about the data seemed a bit too convenient - with Clinton having an IQ exactly twice as high as Bush, and both Bush's having IQs that were so low that it made us suspicious. We did a little digging and discovered there is no such outfit as the Lovenstein Institute. The report was phony. We may bash Bush - but only for actual failings and actions. Lord knows there are enough of those without manufacturing them. So, we are proud to reassure our readers once more that what you read at Democrats.com is for real and as accurate as we can make it (hey, what's a few typos among friends?).

Last week there were problems with our server that necessitated using alternative means to generate the newsletter. Although we did send out the newsletters, some e-mail services mislabeled them as sent by "unknown sender." This was especially the case for our subscribers who use AOL for their e-mail. If you received such a (mis)labeled e-mail -- that you deleted -- it may have been our newsletter. We apologize if this caused you to miss our news. You can catch up on any editions that you may have missed, by going to the archive linked below.