The scuttlebutt is that the DLC financed the setup for DU in order to keep the extreme left fringe out of the public eye after their loss in the 2000 election. There are quite a few threads here on the subject and one in particular that goes into detail, but I wasn't able to find it quickly. I bet franksolich knows where it is.
I remember writing it, but I have no idea where it's at.
Once I write something, I tend to forget all about it and move on to something else.
Anyway, my fellow alum used to be an aide for U.S. Senators Joseph Biden, Ron Wyden, and Carl Levin--although on the third, don't take my word for it, as it might have been Levin's brother the Congressman Sander Levin.
Skins was also a congressional aide for congressman David Bonior, who made an outstandingly stupid mistake of running in the Democrat gubernatorial primary in Michigan about ten years ago, losing to that woman from Canada, and hence losing his seat-for-life in the House.
It's all on the internet, somewhere, including that Lord Marblehead EarlG had some sort of connection with the U.K. Ministry of Defence during the late 1990s (his college education was financed by them, or something, or he was an intern there; one no longer remembers), but it's information so ancient it would demand the deep-googling skills of a miskie to find it now.
My particular flaw in such matters is that I'm not so much interested as in where people have been, but more so in where they're at now, and where they're headed.
As for the Establishment Democrats setting up Skins's island so as to identify, attract, and isolate the fringe elements from the public eye, lest the nuts embarrass the Democrats, costing them elections, there were many links to this issue during the Scamdal five and a half years ago, but at any rate,
res ipsa loquatir; the thing speaks for itself, and demands no corraborating evidence.
