Since this blog first went up in August of 2004, it has been sponsored by the Democratic Leadership Council, where I have been Vice President for Policy and/or Policy Director for a good while.I’ve now gone part-time with the DLC and its think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute and am no longer acting as a spokesman for the DLC. And in an act of real generosity, the DLC is letting me take NewDonkey.com completely independent.I want to emphasize that my new status does not represent some sort of rift with the DLC. After nearly twelve years there, it was just time to do some other stuff as well, while enabling myself to work at home for the most part. Moreover, regular readers of NewDonkey probably won’t notice much of a change in content. Nobody at the DLC tried to censor NewDonkey, though I did occasionally censor myself (e.g., on Iraq) so as to avoid “disarray at the DLC” blog entries among the organization’s many detractors. Now that I’m no longer officially or unofficially speaking for anyone but myself, I’ll say exactly what I think. And that may well continue to include occasional ripostes to those who have lurid and completely inaccurate views of what the DLC is all about.This change in NewDonkey, I guess I should add, has absolutely nothing to do with the recent decision by my former colleague The Bull Moose, to shut down his own, DLC-sponsored blog. He decided to do that because he’s going to be a full-time spokesman for Joe Lieberman. I don’t have that handicap at present, but will shut down NewDonkey if any conflicts of interest develop in my non-DLC work (I am, for example, doing some contractual speechwriting work for a potential Democratic ’08er, and will strictly avoid blogging about the Democratic presidential nominating contest so long as that arrangement exists). In any event, I hope old readers stick with the New NewDonkey. I’ll try to keep it interesting.