Who screwed up the credit crisis legislation? Republicans or Democrats?

Well, neither - and both. I have little sympathy for either Nancy Pelosi's critics or Barney Frank on this one. Nine Senate Democrats (including libertarian Democratic favorites such as Russ Feingold and Jon Tester) voted against the Senate bill. The House tally was anything but party line. Seriously, how many times are you going to see Barbara Lee and Bill Sali on the same side of a major issue?

It should be noted Freedom Democrats-endorsed candidates Darcy Burner and Bob Lord spoke out against this too. I guess if you count me, that makes three.

In many respects (though not entirely), this was a libertarian revolt in both parties.

I suppose you could argue that Republicans voted against this to be anti-tax and to let the crisis solve itself. By and large the Democrats voted against this for different reasons.

I believe some action is necessary. There's nothing wrong with government regulation provided it fundamentally engenders public trust in financial markets. If we had more of that to begin with, perhaps there wouldn't be any need for this now. After all, regulation can exist with the aim of preventing further regulation.

Basically I'm agreeing with Sen. Feingold, who said, "The bailout legislation also fails to reform the flawed regulatory structure that permitted this crisis to arise in the first place. And it doesn’t do enough to address the root cause of the credit market collapse, namely the housing crisis."

Markos Moulitsas is another dissenting Democrat. I largely agree with what he's saying, too.

There were a few items in the Senate bailout bill that were good. Increasing the FDIC deposit guarantee limit to $250,000 immediately springs to mind. It's a shame Congress couldn't vote on some of those things separately.

What I'd like to see is us plug up the holes first and foremost and deal with whatever necessary taxpayer assistance later. Once Wall Street and the credit markets are sufficiently stabilized, get the government out - and no excuses. That's a plan I can support. Hopefully we'll get something vaguely resembling that when this is all over.

Shifting to a purely political focus, admittedly it is difficult to defend Obama from a libertarian standpoint on this matter, other than to say we as libertarian Democrats weren't all that surprised. Our support of Obama has always stemmed primarily from his positions on civil liberties. Once Bill Richardson dropped out, we knew we were settling on many things.

We'll be settling in '12 too, which is increasingly shaping up to be an Obama re-election effort on our side. Even in the ever-more unlikely event McCain pulls this election out of the fire, we'd be extremely hard-pressed to keep Hillary Clinton away from the Democratic nomination again. A defeated Obama - although probably still in the Senate - would be discredited on the national stage. The PUMAs would be out in full force, and there wouldn't be a change movement to stop them. Personally I'd much rather take my chances with a President Obama in '12 and try for someone more to our liking in '16.

As for McCain, is there any shred of credibility left in his imploding campaign? For me it's not an ideal situation, but nevertheless I'm truly going to enjoy voting against this joker and his moose-hunting Christian Dominionist sidekick even if my state doesn't.