Outstanding idea. Count me in for any debate. I have quite a few debates on my blog that tend to be fairly informative. They aren't quite as formal as you may be envisioning but the web is the perfect format.

Too Sweet Dude... Great Idea. If O'Reilly and Hannity/Colmes can do it, why can't the bloggers? Bloggers would make more sense and ad a lot more context, being that they can spend more than 2 seconds thinking of a response.

...Can you imagine if both of the bloggers had a researcher or two behind them, feeding them links and offering angles? It'd be the Great American Debate on steroids! Maybe the History Channel would want to cover it and make a docu-drama out of it in the vein of American Chopper or Straight Eye for the Queer Guy or something... Just a thought.

I dunno - I sort of like the current blog debate format that you point out that includes references and citations and such. I think this leads to a more reasoned and fact centered debate than just watching two people call each other names for half an hour.

Johnd01's idea sounds like a great approach

Interesting story about Iraqis turning against insurgents:

"On Friday, hostility to the insurgency apparently boiled over into bloodshed in Wihda, 25 miles south of Baghdad. Townsmen attacked militants thought to be planning a raid on the town and killed seven, police Capt. Hamadi al-Zubeidy reported"

We already have a National ID card. It's called a SSN. It is easily verifiable and if you're alive, not a dead Demonrat, then you have one. Thanks to the Demonrats, there is more voter fraud here than in most third world countries.

I like, especially that topic. I am so divided on that subject. Half of me (the libertarian half) still measures everything agaisnt it's likelihood of inducing a 1984, Bladerunner set design future with the government herding us around (even more) like sheep from factory to factory aided by some national ID card. "Hell," I think, "why not just skip the card and go straight to the tattoo on the forehead? Or better yet, some sort of cyborg tracking implant! Matte finish please!"

Then the other part of me (the conservative part), wants to slap that lil'-bitch part of me silly. Scream at me "Grow up, you pimply faced moron! This is the real world. With real problems a little more realistic and pressing than the 'thought police' nightmares scared into you by your bedside stack of manga. Real problems like terrorism and immigration!"

In short, I want to see those two fight it outon that topic. I want to see one side in me finally win out over the other. In short, I love it.

(I also have very strong feeling w/r/t the outfit Ms. Malkin would wear to the debate. Something Condi/Matrix. Not black though. That is so tired.)

It's a good idea.. so why don't you get things started? If a topic's worth debating, you should have in on it.

As I've said before, I'm tired of debates. I'd rather see Malkin and Reynolds settle it with a drinking contest, like in Raiders of the Lost Ark with the bloggers standing around in the table in a run down Nepalese bar screaming and waving fistfuls of cash.

Waitaminute. Has Michelle Malkin definitively come out for National ID cards? I read her blog pretty regularly and I don't remember seeing that one.

Anybody have a link?

Check out the old "Iron Blogger" thing sometime. It seems to have died around the election, but was a great forum for sensible, opposite minded bloggers to debate each other. Something like that with a different format, and perhaps more high profile bloggers, would be great....

http://theironblog.blogspot.com/

See-Dubya is right. Michelle has not taken any position on the National ID card.

Is that so? I thought I read a post in which she complained of efforts to water down its provisions to allow illegal aliens to get such a card.

Not an endorsement? Just more of a "If we're going to have it, let's do it right" sort of thing?

Ace--you might be thinking of California drivers' licenses for illegal aliens, which I think she (and a majority of Californians) oppose.

Iron Blog was interesting for about two weeks. One problem is in the judging; people get more wrapped up in the scoring than the debate.

Of course, you could do it without judging and let people decide for themselves...but that's not significantly different from the current "link and response" bit.

The Commissar made the proposal a while back that you should make a point to disagree with a blogger you respect once per week. That might be good enough to get ideas flowing.

Why not have debates with left/liberal blogs?

Intraparty squabbles have limited appeal; many of us from the lib/Dem blog world, and surely many of y'all from the "dextrosphere" as well, would like to see actual interparty argument.

Michelle has written in support of the Real ID Act, a bill sponsored by James Sensenbrenner. One of the Act's provisions places limits on the degree to which states can give driver's licenses and ID cards to illegal aliens. There are other provisions that deal with things like asylum abuse.

The Real ID Act does *not* create a single National ID card issued by the federal government.