Fables of the reconstruction

QOTD

Lance Mannion:

So, whenever we're responding to something in the news, something a candidate for President or Congress said, something a pundit spouted on the Sunday bobblehead fests, and we get the urge to speak for regular people and tell our reader how they're feeling or thinking or likely to feel and think, we'd better have some specific facts to back it up, poll numbers for instance.

Because...

While we're writing about an issue or a candidate or an event, putting all our passion, intelligence, insight, and talent into it, most normal people are reacting to the issue or candidate or event by saying to themselves, "Damn!  I forgot to pick up the bread."

Yes. I may think I am right, but I know it's my job to persuade nonpolitical people of my rightness, because I have enough residual common sense to remember that my political instincts are not (ahem) universal. Bear this in mind when you next hear someone from our side of the political aisle call for radical action on some topic: "Impeach now!" or "Bring all troops home now!", etc. What most people want in policy terms is competence at the basic functions of government. The Congressional Republicans, for example, got fired in 2006 because they did not do their jobs as defined by normal people, not activists.

Yet more corruption

This article about the evisceration and abuse of the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ is deeply disturbing.  Living in the DC area, I think I have a pretty good grasp of how different administrations affect different agencies.  It's going to be lean times if you work for, say, the Department of Labor, during a Republican administration.  Priorities vary.  This goes way, way beyond that.  One startling example: the Civil Rights Division is charged with protecting the voting rights of minorities.  As part of those duties, it "pre-clears" (or not) proposed voting laws.  Georgia came in for pre-clearance of a law requiring government-issued identification to vote.  Career staff recommended against pre-clearing the law, given its effect on minority voters.  The political appointees realized that the most common form of government id is the driver's license; people without driver's licenses are people without cars, poor people.  Poor people don't vote Republican, so the political appointees not only overrode the career staff's recommendation, they barred them from offering any more recommendations.

Study shows day care has virtually no effect on kids

I've been reading articles about the study of kids who have and haven't been in day care.  The three main points, in order of significance, were that, by 6th grade, (1) parenting has by far the most significant effect on behavior, (2) there's a slight correlation between increased hours of day care and disruptive behavior in school, although the level of disruptive behavior was well within the range of normal, and (3) there's a slight correlation between high quality day care and better vocabulary scores.  I'm still trying to figure out how this translates into headlines like "Day Care Linked to Bad Behavior." 

Take a look at the assessments this study does; there are nine pages of assessments and questionnaires in everything from friendships to use of after-school time to quality of adult interactions.  It's thorough.  And from all of this, what is the result?  Kids who go to day care have no behaviors outside the range of normal.  That's the real news here: Day care has virtually no lasting effect on kids.  Of all these assessments, the only thing to report is a slight correlation between disruptive behavior and kids who have been to day care; but that disruptive behavior is within the range of normal. 

And a final thought: people tend to forget that the the point of raising kids is not to minimize your own annoyance, it's to wind up with functioning adults.  In light of this, why is disruptive (within the range of normal) per se bad?  I would think that the least disruptive kids are the most timid, which might lead to trouble navigating the world as an adult.  At my son's parent-teacher conference, he got kudos all around.  They also mentioned, as a minor thing, that he sometimes corrects the teacher and shouldn't do that.  Is that disruptive?  Well, yeah, a little.  But is it something that's going to lead to dysfunction as an adult?  Isn't it just as likely that the behavior results from intellectual curiosity, confidence, and willingness to question authority, and that those qualities will help him as an adult?

Privilege

One problem with the administration's assertion of executive and deliberative privilege for its guys: "the privilege disappears altogether when there is any reason to believe government misconduct occurred. "  In re Sealed Case, 121 F.3d 729 (D.C. Cir 1996). 

Gonzales Aide Invokes Fifth Amendment

Monica Goodling, counsel to and White House liaison for Alberto Gonzales, will refuse to answer questions based on her fifth amendment right not  to be compelled to be a witness against herself.  The Fifth Amendment protects a person from giving testimony where her answers would provide evidence of a crime that she has committed.  The judge must be satisfied that the witness's answers would tend to provide evidence of a crime, or a link in the chain of evidence.  But the reason her lawyer gives is not that Ms. Goodling's testimony would provide evidence of a crime but that, in giving her testimony, Ms. Goodling might commit a crime. 

In Goodling's attorney's words, Congress is laying a "perjury trap" for his client.  Now, it is a laughably obvious political ploy for this guy to accuse Congress of intentionally trying to set it up so that an innocent person will be tried for perjury.  The only "perjury trap" that could result from this testimony would be a trap that his client sets for herself.  In any event, you can't assert the Fifth Amendment to protect your right to maybe lie to Congress later.  The Eighth Circuit has held as much* by denying a witness's assertion of the Fifth Amendment despite her fear that  her testimony before a grand jury "would subject her to later perjury prosecution."  This is a pretty sensible rule, given that there is a really simple, obvious way to avoid a "perjury trap."   But it is nice to see that someone associated with Gonzales and this administration has finally found some use for the Constitution.

*97 F.3d 1090, 1093 (8th Cir. 1996), described here. 

QOTD

Fred Clark of slacktivist:

My new theory is that President Bush really does hear the voice of God directly. Unfortunately, he's also dyslexic. So when God says what God is always saying -- that politics must be shaped by justice -- Bush gets this mixed up and decides that the Department of Justice must be shaped by politics.

Thought of the Day

Only saints do good things for other people entirely without selfish motives, and there are no saints.

Department of Clueless Urban Liberals

On page 91 of this:

Someone (and their editor) thought this was just a funny mistake:

Because they are from New York and may never have actually seen a porch with an outdoor ceiling fan.

Enough with the ribbons already

I spent a lot of time driving around suburbia today, the outside-the-beltway kind of suburbia, and I saw a lot of yellow "support the troops" magnets.  And I was wondering, do any of those people actually do anything to support the troops?  Or do they just think the power of their brain waves or the magnetic force of their car ribbons makes some kind of psychic difference to the guys in Iraq? 

House passes bill requiring troop withdrawal

The House has passed a bill requiring the Iraqi government to meet certain requirements and the withdrawal of US troops starting March 2008, to be complete by September 2008.  The White House has threatened to veto the bill as setting "arbitrary" deadlines that should be left to military experts as a matter of "military strategy."  But generals have never had the power to decide policy.  How to carry out an occupation is a matter of military strategy, whether to carry out an occupation is a political matter.

Bestiary

If you want to see the similarities in territorial behavior between humans and chimps, there's no place like the airport security barrier.

Newspaper v. Blog

The Big Blue Jogger says:

My theory is that Swampland's business model is to get writers to write stuff so stupid that liberal bloggers like me will be baited into linking to it.

I think that's basically right, actually, but even more so with NYTimes.com's The Caucus, which doesn't even allow links in comments. Clearly, it's not intended as a means to engage with blogs, just a way to spur interest or outrage and then allow the little people to vent in comments. I fear this is the way things will be with the Post and the Times for a couple of years, until someone with a clue realizes what kind of value they're squandering.

Incorrectly Built Levees Caused Katrina Disaster

Washingtonpost.com:

The design and construction of the New Orleans hurricane levee system was flawed because the Army Corps of Engineers ignored warnings about the power of potential storms and made critical engineering miscalculations, according to a long-awaited investigative report from a team of Louisiana engineers and scientists.

Remember: The loss of life in New Orleans resulted from two things: One, the Army Corps of Engineers fucked up. Two, FEMA fucked up. The levees should have held. And when they didn't, the federal government is the only entity with the resources that could have saved people. It wasn't the fault of poor, elderly and ill people in the city who just refused to get out of the storm's way.

Third Circuit Rules COPA Violates First Amendment

Good news: The federal court of appeals for the 3rd Circuit here in Philadelphia has struck down the "Child Online Protection Act" as unconstitutional:

The law would have criminalized Web sites that allow children to access material deemed "harmful to minors" by "contemporary community standards." The sites would have been expected to require a credit card number or other proof of age. Penalties included a $50,000 fine and up to six months in prison.

Sexual health sites, the online magazine Salon.com and other Web sites backed by the American Civil Liberties Union challenged the law.

I haven't read the opinion, but I think the two most objectionable things about COPA are its vagueness in defining objectionable material and in the bluntness of the tool it uses to identify people as adults. Several witnesses at trial testified that they could not be sure whether a zealous United States Attorney (!) would bring them up on charges for for material related to, say, contraception, or sexual health issues. This vagueness would have a chilling effect as web providers would have to always err on the side of not publishing anything that is even remotely possible to be called pornographic. On the other hand, using credit cards to verify that people are adults is both under- and overinclusive. Many adults don't have credit cards, and some minors do (or at least, have access to one, which is the same thing). In an ordinary legislative area, this might still be okay, but when you're curtailing speech you have a much greater burden to carry. The government didn't.

Good result.

No Comment Needed on the Prosecutors Scandal

A lot of shit is emerging about the political firings of United States attorneys by the administration. An 18-day gap in the emails provided to Congress, for starters, as well as a 1-day gap immediately preceding the first firing. Bush petulantly claiming executive privilege in a prime-time speech, then his spokesman reveals he was never informed of the matter. In my world, you can't claim something's a privileged communication unless it's, you know, communicated.

And most importantly, we have subpoenas going out now to hale Karl Rove and Harriet Miers in front of Congress.  It will not be pretty, but think of this as a life-saving surgical procedure: Congressional Democrats are now going to work to extract this - shall we say - cancer on the presidency. To act as a check on the executive branch, which the Republicans failed to do for years. To discover the truth, identify those who broke the law, if any, and ensure it doesn't happen again.

It's nice to have adults in charge again, isn't it?

Bob Brady's Committing Pension Fraud? I'm Shocked.

This is emblematic of why I will not be voting for Bob Brady for mayor of Philadelphia.

Pirates of the Caribbean III: At World's End

I am not a big movie watcher, but I really liked Curse of the Black Pearl, which took an amusement park ride and turned it into a fun, funny movie. The movie's success caused them to run out and shoot two sequels, the first of which came out in record time. It also sucked. The first Pirates movie had a really tight script, while Dead Man's Chest relied on CGI and action sequences to meet the rush deadline.

I have been holding out hope that the extra year they had to put together Pirates III would allow them to refind the wit. But now the trailer and a clip are out, and it doesn't look good. Monster fish men, titanic sea battles, a literal edge of the world complete with waterfall, and a "woo woooo" spooky sensibility. Oh, and Orlando fucking Bloom trying much too hard to be butch Errol Flynn. Ugh. I think what's gone wrong is that they didn't expect the first flick to do much, so they left the director alone, but since people are stupid and Dead Man's Chest with $1 billion was the third highest-grossing movie of all time, they're smelling blockbuster, and you know what that means. That means frenetic, pointless, effects-laden action! Awfulsome. Whatever the opposite of awesome is.

Jonah Goldberg's got your back

Jonah Goldberg, I guess in a sudden spirit of bipartisanship, has reached out to let his Democratic friends how our leadership is is failing us.  Intellectual dishonesty, it's the new black.

Ignorance and Racism in Hazleton, PA

Hazleton, PA passed an anti-immigrant ordinance because it claimed an influx of undocumented migrants were causing a crime wave. Not so much:

In the midst of a rapidly increasing population and a drastic cut in the size of the police force, total crimes in Hazleton from 2001 to 2006 remained relatively stable, and the crime rate- incidents per 100,000 residents- actually dropped. ...

• From 2000 to 2005, Hazleton's population increased from 23,000 to 33,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
• In 2000, the city PD had 42 officers but went down to 23 in 2001 due to budget cuts. Today the department has 30 officers with three more in training. ...

• In 2001, there were 1358 crimes in the city.
• In 2006, there were 1397 crimes in Hazleton.

Oops.

Meanwhile, Hazleton's idiotic mayor, Lou Barletta, has allowed a group called the Mountain States Legal Foundation use his name and the town's name for fundraising. Now he claims he had no idea those fundraising letters said things like this:

Among other assertions, the letter predicts the fall of America because of an influx of illegal immigrants, specifically, Mexicans. ...

After predicting America’s demise, [Mountain States' president William Perry] Pendley's letter goes on to say those fighting Mr. Barletta’s ordinance “love illegal immigration.” The next sentence asks: “What better way to turn America into a socialist, multicultural ‘Tower of Babel’ than to have open borders?”

Mr. Barletta said the foundation asked about using his name for fundraising purposes, but he did not approve the mass mailing message.

“I have no control over what they do to solicit donations,” Mr. Barletta said. “It wasn’t put out by us.”

Well, you know, Mayor Barletta, you could tell them to stop using your name is that stuff offends you. Because if you don't tell them to stop, you are clearly endorsing their message. It's not like you can claim there isn't intimate contact between you and Pendley, since he's been writing the latest iterations of your moronic law:

Mr. Barletta said in his testimony Wednesday that  Mr. Pendley helped draft recent versions of Hazleton’s ordinance.

(Via Mac at pesky 'apostrophe.)

Mainstream Media My Ass

I subscribe to the Sunday Washington Post and read the daily on-line.  The thing about the Post is, I imagine people still think the WaPo is either trying to be objective or slanted to the left.  Ha.  Every week, the Outlook Section gets me.  This Sunday, I was almost all the way through, and pleasantly surprised that nothing had made me rabid yet, when I hit an editorial entitled Lessons of War.  That sorry-ass apologia was spinning so fast, I had to get out the Sea Bands.

Slate, aka the Washington Post's attempt at entering the 21st centur, is now publishing similar crap, although disguised as actual fact rather than opinion.  Take this article about U.S. infant mortality rates.  The article notes that U.S. infant mortality rates are higher than many other developed countries and that while many (silly!) people argue that this shows a need for better health care, in fact, the high U.S. infant mortality rates result from too much healthcare.  The argument goes that, one, the increases in assisted reproduction have resulted in multiples and multiples are often at-risk preemies.  Plus, the author argues, neonate units are cash cows of some sort, so infants are referred to neonate units willy-nilly, where they are promptly killed.  (Because hospitals with larger NICU units have better results than hospitals with smaller NICU units, but lots of hospitals build NICUs anyway so they can kill babies for profit).

Problem is, the Save the Children report cited in the article clearly states the wickedly unsurprising fact that infant mortality in the U.S. is related to low socioeconomic status, minority background, and low education levels.  These poor, undereducated minorities are not having twins and triplets due to in vitro, sorry.  What they are having is low birth weight babies.  There are a number of factors that contribute to low birth weight in at-risk populations, notably smoking, low maternal weight gain, genital and oral microbial infections, and exposure to violence and environmental toxins such as lead paint.  Meanwhile, I don't think hospitals are getting rich off of the medicare payments, because these women don't typically have private insurance.  But, quick, someone tell them how their babies are dying because of too much health care. 

The WaPo editorial that enraged me argued that George Bush didn't lie about the war, he just cherry-picked and "exaggerated" the evidence*; in other words, he was simply willfully ignorant, not bad.  So I wonder, is this article a pack of lies or is it just willfully ignorant?  More to the point, what the fuck does it matter?  If someone with information manipulates that information in a way to give an impression that lies are truth and truth are lies, do we really need to stop and have a semantic discussion about how the lies weren't really lies, they were just mistruths?  Is there such a thing as the public trust anymore?  Now that "mistakes were made" has become the standard answer, is there such a thing as responsibility, or am I just being silly and old-fashioned?  I can't believe it actually needs to be said but: people and entities in positions of control over information, like, say, the POTUS and the media, are responsible to take care with the information they disseminate and can't just pull pet theories out of their asses and pass them off as fact. 

Bush threatens veto of whistleblower bill

Congress passed H.R. 985, which enhances protection of whistleblowers, by a vote of 391-94, but Bush is threatening a veto on the argument that the bill is unconstitutional and a threat to national security.  The White House Statement of Administration Policy that threatens the veto does not specify the basis for its claim of unconstitutionality.  But it is clear what the White House dislikes about this bill.  This is, first, an administration that believes it is the primary branch of government, not one of three equal branches.  It believes that it can lie about the bases for any decision that it wants to take, such as reasons for going to war or firing attorneys general because of their refusal to persecute the administration's political enemies or lay off its political allies. 

The White House complains that "By vesting subordinate Executive branch officials with a right to disclose classified information outside of the Executive branch without receiving official authorization from the President or his official designee, the bill would impede the President’s necessary coordination function."  In other words, the President is only concerned about disclosures outside the executive branch -- and the only provision for making disclosures  outside the executive branch is the provision allowing disclosure to authorized members of Congress.  (The bill only allows such disclosures to be made to authorized members of Congress, the IG of the whistleblower's agency, or an authorized official at the DOJ.)  Authorized members of Congress include only specific individuals, such as those on the House or Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, also those on committees dealing with homeland security, government oversight, and oversight of the agency in question.   Is the president really serious that we can't trust our representatives to protect national security?  After all, it's not anyone in Congress who outed a covert intelligence agent. 

The last time Bush showed any iterest in the rule of law was upon the handing down of Bush v. Gore.  He's lied at every turn, repeatedly evidenced his disdain for the law in his signing statements and his contempt for the Constitution by consistently violating the civil liberties it is supposed to protect.  Even a majority of the Republicans in the House voted in favor of this bill, apparently recognizing that the time is well past due for some oversight.

Names of the Dead

2003.

It begins with Major Jay Thomas Aubin, and ends 485 names later, with Spc. Justin William Pollard.  In just the first year.

2004. 845 dead.

2005. 844 dead.

2006. 819 dead.

2007. 212 so far. On track for a record.

War without end, amen.

Bong Hits 4 Jesus

Drug Policy Alliance:

A Juneau, Alaska, high school student, Joseph Frederick, who was disciplined by his school principal in 2002 for publicly displaying a banner that the school claimed expressed pro-drug sentiments.  While off school property at the public Olympic Torch Relay in Juneau, Frederick unfurled a banner in an attempt to get media attention. The banner bore words whose precise meaning remains elusive: "Bong Hits 4 Jesus." Although the banner caused no disruption, the school suspended Frederick from classes for five days for allegedly violating the school's anti-drug / zero-tolerance policy. When the principal informed Frederick of his suspension, Frederick responded by quoting Thomas Jefferson and stating that he was simply exercising his constitutional right to free speech.  The principal, in turn, doubled Frederick’s suspension to 10 days. Frederick sued the school for unlawful censorship, and was represented by ACLU of Alaska.

Nice. Kid stands up for his rights, and the authoritarian principal doubles his suspension. NYTimes.com includes another little detail:

[Principal Deborah] Morse found no humor but plenty of meaning in the sign, recognizing “bong hits” as a slang reference to using marijuana. She demanded that he take the banner down. When he refused, she tore it down, ordered him to her office, and gave him a 10-day suspension.

They were off school property, and she physically destroyed his sign. Good thing she doesn't have a badge, because she would have clubbed his ass, too.

Frederick is now 23 and the case is in front of the Supreme Court. It's attracting attention both for the issue involved and for who is choosing sides. Of course, the Bush administration intervened on behalf of the principal, apparently because it believes whether in Gitmo or a public high school, institutional inmates have no enforceable rights:

The solicitor general’s brief asserts that under the Supreme Court’s precedents, student speech “may be banned if it is inconsistent with a school’s basic educational mission.”

The Juneau School Board’s mission includes opposing illegal drug use, the administration’s brief continues, citing as evidence a 1994 federal law, the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act, which requires that schools, as a condition of receiving federal money, must “convey a clear and consistent message” that using illegal drugs is “wrong and harmful.”

[Principal's counsel Kenneth] Starr’s main brief asserts that the court’s trilogy of [student free speech] cases “stands for the proposition that students have limited free speech rights balanced against the school district’s right to carry out its educational mission and to maintain discipline.”

Mr. Frederick has the ACLU and the Drug Policy Alliance on his side, naturally. What's unnatural is that the Christianist religious right has also taken up his cause:

The groups include the American Center for Law and Justice, founded by the Rev. Pat Robertson; the Christian Legal Society; the Alliance Defense Fund ...; and Liberty Legal Institute....

The religious groups were particularly alarmed by what they saw as the implication that school boards could define their “educational mission” as they wished and could suppress countervailing speech accordingly.

Good thing, right? No. The rightwingers are hoping to get the Supreme Court to hand them a hammer to use to get officially sanctioned religion in the public schools:

[University of Michigan Law School] Professor [Douglas] Laycock said that religiously observant students often find the atmosphere in public school to be unwelcoming and “feel themselves a dissident and excluded minority.” As the Jehovah’s Witnesses did in the last century, these students are turning to the courts.

The briefs from the conservative religious organizations depict the school environment as an ideological battleground. The Christian Legal Society asserts that its law school chapters “have endured a relentless assault by law schools intolerant of their unpopular perspective on the morality of homosexual conduct or the relevance of religious belief.”

The American Center for Law and Justice brief, filed by its chief counsel, Jay Alan Sekulow, warns that public schools “face a constant temptation to impose a suffocating blanket of political correctness upon the educational atmosphere.”

So, I'm torn. Clearly, Mr. Frederick is right.  However, if he wins this case, there is a good chance Christianist teachers and students will use it as an excuse to further turn schools into religious discrimination engines. The assertion that it's Christians who are oppressed turns the truth on its head and feeds far right religious paranoia. And the statement from the Christian Legal Society shows they want to go beyond high schools and impose Christianism in colleges and law schools, too. So, strange as it feels, I agree with Ken fucking Starr, who is arguing the principal's case before the Court today:

“I welcome this outpouring because it will help the court see that it shouldn’t go too far either way.”

Right. The facts of this case are (1) legal conduct (2) involving off-campus speech (3) not in any way condoned or encouraged by teachers or school officials. That means it should not be a precedent for, say, teachers and students praying together during class and ridiculing or threatening kids who refuse to participate, which is the kind of thing that really happens today.   

"[McCain] Transcends the Partisan Divide"

Hilarious, on so many levels:

More important than ideology or personality is culture. For years conservatives have cast a suspicious eye on Senator McCain because non-conservatives find him appealing. They distrust the institutions of liberal culture — the news media in particular — to such a degree that a politician those institutions embrace must be suspect. They grow furious when they hear Senator McCain on Don Imus’s radio show but not Rush Limbaugh’s. The politics of polarization militate against a McCain candidacy. The man transcends the partisan divide — but what partisans want above all is a fellow partisan.

"The man transcends the partisan divide" deserves a snort of derision.  But the rest of it is just funny: The far right is so consumed by fear and ignorance that it views John McCain as insufficiently conservative. Don Imus is the mainstream media, which itself is an institution of liberal culture. Stop it, you're killing me.

Either they nominate a real knuckle-dragger or they make McCain veer sharply right; either way, we win. Woo hoo!

What Does "Portions Toll" Mean?

I have this post from 2005 titled (Portions Toll) that refers to my annual 24-hour roadtrip to Florida, but the unintended effect is that people regularly arrive here looking for an explanation of the phrase. I assume that they are people reading it on a map and can't intuit its meaning - which is reasonable. It's not exactly obvious, and it's one of the few phrases I have ever encountered that if you google it, nothing useful comes up.

Until now: What "portions toll" means is that the highway at that point in the map is neither all freeway nor all toll road, but some parts of it (like, say, a couple of the major exits) have a toll and other parts do not.

Why Does This Woman Not Have a Newspaper Column?

Ginmar:

On the lighter side, I did make my neighbors take their stolen shopping cart out of my yard where they deposited it, and put it in their yard. Then Molly skittered out and I had to chase her around in my pink camo socks. I had just been doing some ballet exercises with ankle weights on, which occurred to me probably looked to my neighbors like ankle bracelets of the correctional sort. I can just see that dinner table conversation: "They got TWO bracelets on her, man! Dude down the street say she crazy, too, been in the war and all. What'd she do to get TWO bracelets?"

She's funny, informed, angry, and a vet. Someone call the fucking New York Times, please.

Bulldog Skin

Shorter von:

The U.S. military fights wars, it doesn't guard our culture.

Right. Oh, and about this shit, by Charles M. Province, a veteran of the US Army:

It is the Soldier, not the minister
   Who has given us freedom of religion.

It is the Soldier, not the reporter
   Who has given us freedom of the press.

It is the Soldier, not the poet
   Who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the Soldier, not the campus organizer
   Who has given us freedom to protest.

It is the Soldier, not the lawyer
   Who has given us the right to a fair trial.

It is the Soldier, not the politician
   Who has given us the right to vote.

It is the Soldier who salutes the flag,
   Who serves beneath the flag,
   And whose coffin is draped by the flag,
   Who allows the protester to burn the flag.

This one has been emailed around quite a bit recently. Mr. Province, you're just mistaken. The rights you listed are actually secured by the minister, the reporter, the poet, the campus organizer, the lawyer, the politician and the protester, usually in the face of a hostile government, and doesn't involve troops in any way. And while I have tried to work up some gratitude for my military killing the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who were about to swim over here and kill my mom, I just can't, because it's not true. The truth is this the last half dozen wars (approximate, I didn't count) or more had nothing to do with protecting American freedoms, unless you count the freedom to commit global commerce.  Being a capitalist, myself, I appreciate that freedom, but it would make a very short poem, wouldn't it?

The other thing, Mr. Province, is that underneath the mistaken message of your poem is a wrongheaded emotion - resentment. I think it comes from right wing politics which hold that all use of military force by Republican presidents (and some Democratic presidents, so long as they're not currently alive) is good and right, which makes people who protest any such action bad and wrong. Not just bad. Immoral, decadent, treasonous. This taints public opinion against anyone who exercises their rights as somehow presumptively subversive. What your poem implies is that the military is the guardian of our nation's honor, which is not its purpose. Its purpose is to win wars the civilian leadership tells it to fight, or to explain why it can't be done.  Those countries whose militaries regard themselves as the protector of the nation's honor also tend to be the ones which have the fewest freedoms, and the most military coups.

So, I do thank the soldier for doing her duty. And I encourage the soldier to exercise his freedoms. But any soldier who thinks it is the military's role to stand apart and above civil society is a danger to those freedoms. One of the many ways that rightwingers have been reckless the past 30 years is to have encouraged anti-liberty resentment which, rather than any foreign enemy, poses the greatest danger to the Constitution.

Put Up or Shut Up

Blue Tex at Instaputz:

Where's the campaign to have the Bush Administration's DOJ charge her with perjury? Isn't lying to Congress a crime? Shouldn't the right wing blogs be organizing a "call your Representative" campaign to have Plame investigated at the very least?

Put up or shut up, wingnuts. Either she's a liar and perjured herself (and Gen. Hayden is also a liar), or you're all full of shit.

Goddamn, that's an easy one.

Ray Doskus, 1962 - 2007

A Philadelphia memorial will be held Friday, March 23rd, at the Morning Glory, 10th & Fitz. 10 a.m. for close friends and family, 11 a.m. for everyone.

Raines: The House, M.D. of Detectives

Out in the frozen tundra of the near western suburbs once again, babysitting this time (yes, people trust me with their child - amazing, I know), watching first my mom's alma mater win and then Jeff Goldblum's new NBC detective series, Raines, which, as I say, is much like the Fox series House. (Okay, from that link, I learn that House is "critically acclaimed", to which I say, shoot me now, and if you agree with the acclaim, shoot yourself next.)

Raines is sarcastic and obnoxious. House is sarcastic and obnoxious. Raines is brilliant; House is brilliant. Neither waste an opportunity to remind people of it. Both are troubled. Raines sees dead people. House takes pills. Their afflictions are destined to get them into trouble, professionally and personally.

The differences are as follows: Raines has none of the annoying special effects that plague House. Raines does have snappy Goldblumish dialog, sort of the guy in Independence Day with a gun. Whether it has a prayer of being a success, I doubt. But then again, I think House sucks, so what do I know?

Wintry Mix

Yesterday morning I was wearing shorts. Thanks, mid-atlantic weather!

Psychology of BDSM and Kinky Sex

I mainly avoid Psychology Today for its frequent reckless promotion of retrograde pop psych, but this article on S&M is pretty good:

Bind my ankles with your white cotton rope so I cannot walk. Bind my wrists so I cannot push you away. Place me on the bed and wrap your rope tighter around my skin so it grips my flesh. Now I know that struggle is useless, that I must lie here and submit to your mouth and tongue and teeth, your hands and words and whims. I exist only as your object. Exposed.

Of every 10 people who reads these words, one or more has experimented with sadomasochism (S & M), which is most popular among educated, middle- and upper-middle-class men and women, according to psychologists and ethnographers who have studied the phenomenon. Charles Moser, Ph.D., M.D., of the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco, has researched S & M to learn the motivation behind it--to understand why in the world people would ask to be bound, whipped and flogged. The reasons are as surprising as they are varied.

The article provides ammunition for those who accept consensual S&M as a healthy behavior and those who consider it sick, which makes it fifty percent better than most.

My personal opinion is that all sex involves the expression of power and helplessness, so S&M just makes it explicit. Someone is always pursuing, someone is always being pursued; someone is doing the fucking, someone is getting fucked. This dynamic is present, I think, even if it's not noticeable from the sweet, romantic exterior. (In our romantic myths, there is a reason damsels are in distress - distress is hot.)

I realize a lot of people would disagree with this, mainly on the grounds that it seems to undermine the loving aspect of sex. But - and the article doesn't do a very good job of showing this - kinky sex is loving sex, too, or at least as with all sex it's as loving as you and your partner are.  There are many people who enjoy kinky sex but refuse - sometimes angrily - to identify it as such; they prefer to think it's their own thing, special, not subject to categorization. Partly it's out of the negative connotations around "whips and chains", but it's also the consequence of sex being something Americans permit themselves to obsess over but not think about. That latter tendency is ever so slowly beginning to diminish, which is good, but we have a long way to go.

There is also a strain of feminist thought which holds that kinky sex involving a man dominating a woman is abusive, patriarchal and fucked up. I try to engage these ideas by pointing out that there are quite a few dominant women out there, and that kinky porn is as often about (you know these links are NSFW, right?) men submitting as it is women. I think the problem here is that so much mainstream porn is outright misogynist that the presumption is that kinky porn is, too. And it's also true that hardcore S&M uses elements of misogynistic and homophobic culture, since you have to use what the culture hands you. I argue that intentionally making those things part of play actually disempowers them, and enables both the top/dom and sub/bottom to recognize and fend them off outside of the "scene." Clearly, this discussion is beyond the scope of most people's interests, and that's probably a good thing.

Plame Was a Covert Intelligence Officer, CIA Says

Well, so much for that question. Yet, none dare call it treason.

Ain't Technology Wonderful

I just installed Typepad Mobile on my new Palm 700p, and am trying it out. It's okay. Makes it easy to enter text and pics, but not links. (Not that it would be easy to do so on a phone, but still.) There's no spellcheck.

Bottom line: A toy I'll play with occasionally, but unless I get a cameraphone pic of an airliner crash, not very useful.

"Veterans Deserve the Honor of Being Trusted First."

Ginmar:

I'm an old bitch and I can handle myself but young soldiers are not used to this kind of thing. I wonder about the Marines that recently commited suicide here in Minnesota after being denied care at the VA, and I wonder how much skepticism greeted them upon their requests for help. I wonder how many suicides have fallen below the radar, how many soldiers, sailors and Marines, at the most vulnerable points in their life, got a taste of this penny-pinching skepticism when they needed help most of all.

I'm afraid of the answer.

A subtle problem permeates these notes, and it takes a while to dawn. It's the lack of respect that gets you, the lack of recognition that the person so disparaged in the notes fought for their country and would do so again if given the chance. Rather, one would think that the interviewee is someone untrustworthy.

Veterans deserve better. Veterans deserve the honor of being trusted first, and cared for. They should not have to run a gauntlet at a time when they are least able to survive it. They deserve the respect due a veteran, and they deserve the benefit of the doubt. I wasn't given this, and still have not recieved it. I suspect many others are in the same position as well. At the very least, it comes down to this: the VA should not set itself up as another enemy for soldiers, sailors and Marines to fight. Not trusting soldiers when they have risked their lives for their country is a slap in the face, and it should render the person offering the insult untrustworthy, rather than reflect on the person so insulted.

We deserve better.

End "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"

If gay and lesbian troops are good enough to keep around so they can fight and die when there is a war on, then they're sure as hell entitled to serve openly.

Time For Another Blogger Ethics Panel

Time magazine photoshops a picture of Reagan for its cover on how the Right went wrong. Pass the popcorn; can't wait to watch this shitstorm.

Update 3/18/07: More like a shitshower, or shitsprinkles.

What Kind of Action Can I Buy For That Dime's Worth of Difference?

Teh Editors:

I’m not saying this is a pleasant thing to watch - trying to bed the tens of millions of retirees and right-wingers and paranoids and religious fanatics and all the rest of the Fellini film extras that make up the gorgeous tableaux that is The American Voting Public - but it’s the exact thing one needs to do if one one wishes to win elections, and the history books are filled with decent, forthright people who scorned this advice and got their asses kicked by some slick little Clintonoid. (The books are even fuller of ambitious jackoffs who followed this advice to the letter and lost anyway - the exceptions that prove the rule.) And I even understand that it may even feel like a betrayal, seeing that dashing candidate with whom you shared that magical night of democratic passion, who you thought was your one true political soulmate, suddenly putting these crude moves on everyone in sight. And scowling octogenarian virgin Ralph Nader understand this, too, and will welcome thee to his nunnery with open (but chaste) arms, and if you’d prefer to spend date night like that, well, it’s your cherry. But do try to avoid singing from the same “Democrats are really just as bad as/worse than Republicans” hymnal this time. Because, if you have noticed nothing else about the past six years, you must at least have noticed that this isn’t so. You don’t have to put out to be cool, but there’s just no excuse for cockblocking.

I've already about had it with the naive fuckwits complaining how impure the Democratic presidential candidates are or how ineffective the Democrats in Congress are.  I am sure ambitious twits like Nader will trade on this idiocy, but we can only hope that enough people have learned their lesson from last time that we won't again be fucked by people who have never understood the saying, "The perfect is the enemy of the good."

Wesley Clark on Why the U.S. Must Stay in Iraq

Amy Goodman interviewed Wesley Clark, and among much else that was interesting, he said this:

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to get your response to Seymour Hersh's piece in The New Yorker to two key points this week, reporting the Pentagon's established a special planning group within the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to plan a bombing attack on Iran, that this is coming as the Bush administration and Saudi Arabia are pumping money for covert operations into many areas of the Middle East, including Lebanon, Syria, and Iran, in an effort to strengthen Saudi-supported Sunni Islam groups and weaken Iranian-backed Shias -- some of the covert money has been given to jihadist groups in Lebanon with ties to al-Qaeda -- fighting the Shias by funding with Prince Bandar and then with US money not approved by Congress, funding the Sunnis connected to al-Qaeda.

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I don't have any direct information to confirm it or deny it. It's certainly plausible. The Saudis have taken a more active role. ...

[T]he Saudis have basically recognized that they have an enormous stake in the outcome in Iraq, and they don't particularly trust the judgment of the United States in this area. We haven't exactly proved our competence in Iraq. So they're trying to take matters into their own hands. The real danger is, and one of the reasons this is so complicated is because -- let's say we did follow the desires of some people who say, “Just pull out, and pull out now.” Well, yeah. We could mechanically do that. It would be ugly, and it might take three or four months, but you could [withdraw U.S. forces.] ...

But when you leave, the Saudis have got to find someone to fight the Shias. Who are they going to find? Al-Qaeda, because the groups of Sunnis who would be extremists and willing to fight would probably be the groups connected to al-Qaeda. So one of the weird inconsistencies in this is that were we to get out early, we’d be intensifying the threat against us of a super powerful Sunni extremist group, which was now legitimated by overt Saudi funding in an effort to hang onto a toehold inside Iraq and block Iranian expansionism.

"When you leave, the Saudis have got to find someone to fight the Shias."

As I've said, I am not a foreign policy expert at all; I am just a citizen of the most powerful country on Earth trying to do the responsible thing by trying to figure this subject out.  I arrived at the theory that the U.S. was presiding over the effective partition of Iraq, but I never asked myself two questions: Since we know the parties will be tempted to cheat, who will enforce the partition once it's in place? And if the partition is not successful, what is the fallback strategy of countries like Saudi Arabia?  Clearly, the answer to the first question is the United States. And Clark provides the answer to the second question: Saudi Arabia, which has already been funding Sunni militant groups associated with al Qaeda in Syria, Iraq and Iran, will fund those groups more heavily so they can take on the Shiites directly.

What I conclude from this, with the utmost reluctance, is that Hillary Clinton is right:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton foresees a “remaining military as well as political mission” in Iraq, and says that if elected president, she would keep a reduced military force there to fight Al Qaeda, deter Iranian aggression, protect the Kurds and possibly support the Iraqi military.

We'll pull back to protected bases and provide air cover and launch occasional airmobile attacks. Bush has driven us into a ditch, and truly, there is no way out.

QOTD

I was telling a friend that Starbucks is offering free coffee today from 10 to noon, but she hates Starbucks for driving out the local coffeeshops in her area, so she said, "Screw Starbucks and the big corporate jet they flew in on."

Hazleton Mayor Claims Illegal Immigrant Crime Wave; Has Not Read City's Crime Statistics

Pittsburgh post-gazette.com:

During five hours on the witness stand, Mr. Barletta said Hazleton is being ruined by violent crime, crowded schools and a clogged emergency room at the city's private hospital. He attributed many of the problems to what he called "illegal aliens," even though he admitted he had no idea how many such immigrants are in his city.

Lawyer [Vic] Walczak, of the American Civil Liberties Union, got the mayor to concede that he could not name a single instance where illegal immigrants had received service from Hazleton's fire department or health officer. Mr. Barletta also was forced to admit he had no proof that illegal immigrants were the source of schools so crowded that numerous classes have to be taught in trailers. ...

Mr. Walczak, though, said Hazleton's own statistics show that illegal immigrants have committed only a handful of serious crimes. Of the 8,575 felonies in the city since 2000, about 20 were linked to illegal immigrants, Mr. Walczak said.

He tried to question the mayor about these statistics, but the city's lawyers objected. They said questions about crime statistics should be posed to the police chief, not Mr. Barletta.

Judge Munley disagreed, ruling that the mayor must answer questions about the numbers. But he gave Mr. Barletta until today to study so he can be prepared for Mr. Walczak's questions.

(Via Speaking Freely.)

This is just disgusting

So Gavin over at Sadly, No! did his two-minute Townhall shtick today, which is always a treat, except for the part where I occasionally get curious and actually go over to Townhall and then need to bleach my eyes.  So, I followed a link over there to one of the columns and I see an ad that says more funnies click here featuring a Muslim in camo with a machine gun sporting an Obama pin.  In case the ad changes, the permanent one is here;  scroll down to the 2/14/2007 cartoon.  Of all the comics they chose to feature as an ad for their "funnies," why this one?  Why not this one about Fox in the chicken house?  That one I can understand, I can see the Republican humor in it.  There are others that, you know, I don't find funny because I think they're lame, but I see that they have a point (Hillary is a liar, global warming doesn't exist, whatever, not points I agree with, but points).  But the point of the one they choose to feature as representative of the comics on their site is  that the black guy with the funny name is dangerous, be afraid of him because he's a black guy, and he has a name like we've never heard round these parts.  This is Amurkan at its absolute worst.  I'm so disgusted I can't even be snarky about it.  It's appalling that this kind of racist trash is not only published over there but held up as some kind of standard of humor.  I know there's a group of really hateful people in the right, there's got to be for the Ann Coulters and the Bob Gorrells to have an audience.   But dehumanizing the other is always immoral and always dangerous.  And, I believe, unAmerican, because the American ideal is a land of opportunity where all people are free and equal and your talent is more important than your parentage.

I react to things like this by trying to have an antidote.  When people get stressed, I get calm.  And so I want to react to this dehumanizing with rehumanizing. So I feel compelled to exempt the bulk of normal conservatives/Republicans from this kind of crap.  As I was traveling around the blogiverse after the Ann Coulter CPAC thing, I saw plenty of comments from conservative blog readers (and some bloggers) expressing their distaste for her words, and I appreciated that.  The more polarized things get, the more I like to find points of common ground, because it's at those points that both sides can recognize the other side's humanity. 

Pull up a deck chair and watch this ship sink

I have to say I am impressed with my own resistance to cynicism.  Because, after six years of constant idiocy, corruption, malfeasance, authoritarianism, ad nauseum, I am still capable of being shocked.  I pulled up the Washington Post to find this article about how Bush is defending the firing of the US Attorneys because of their failure to investigate election fraud.  I really need to replace my irony meter, it's a 1999 model and only goes to eleven.  In the legal field, we have a thing called "the straight face test."  This is a much-needed internal check because lawyers will really say anything to win (hey, don't blame us, it's the system).  I think Bush, no forget it, Bush wouldn't understand the straight face test.  I imagine Bush actually thinks this does pass the straight face test.  I mean, the guy's defense to firing the USAs is that these Republican loyalist political appointees weren't prosecuting politically-motivated election fraud cases?  Are you fucking kidding me?  (Hey, Washington Post, when you're reporting on a story where the administration is suggesting some kind of pro-Democrat bias, you really, really, let's add another really, need to be clear about nature of the people accused of that bias).

The more I think about it, the more I like the White House angle.  Because I think, unfortunately for Bush, that this scandal is actually simple enough for the average person to understand in thirty seconds.  And then there's that part about how Bush only is president in the first place because of, you know, Florida, where the election was contested, where his brother was governor at the time.  Way to start from a position of moral authority there.

A Wales is Five Times a Rhode Island But Sixty Percent of a Belgium

To supplement your English-American translation guide, here is the Rhode Island/Wales/Belgium/Texas geographical area conversion chart.

(Via Michele Grant at Letters to the Management.)

Dangerously Beyond Reproach

William Arkin argues that beyond the incompetence or insanity of civilian leaders like Rumsfeld, beyond problems like the ones uncovered at Walter Reed, the Army is incompetent at the most important thing it does - fight wars.

Separately, Fontana Labs at Unfogged says:

I recently had some drinks with a friend in the Army. The news is pretty grim, and I was sad to hear that the Army's clever decisionmaking extends only as far as making numbers (e.g. recruiting, stop-loss) appear better than they are via sleight of hand; when it comes to other sorts of management, they're not so good.

Moderate Evangelicals Taking on Dobson

So, if you're a nonconservative evangelical who wants to be politically effective, what you should do, instead of whining that the Democrats are big meanies, is stuff like this:

Rebuffing Christian radio commentator James C. Dobson, the board of directors of the National Association of Evangelicals reaffirmed its position that environmental protection, which it calls "creation care," is an important moral issue. ...

[In a letter to NAE, Dosbon and other right wingers] argued that evangelicals are divided on whether climate change is a real problem, and it said that "[NAE vice president Rev. Richard] Cizik and others are using the global warming controversy to shift the emphasis away from the great moral issues of our time," such as abortion and same-sex marriage.

If Cizik "cannot be trusted to articulate the views of American evangelicals on environmental issues, then we respectfully suggest that he be encouraged to resign his position with the NAE," the letter concluded.

(Emphasis added.)  "Creation care" is pretty good rhetoric.  Note also that Dobson is forced to label abortion rights and marriage equality great moral evils while downplaying the moral significance of global warming - all positions at odds with the majority of normal people.

The Rev. Leith Anderson, the association's president, said yesterday that the board did not respond to the letter during a two-day meeting that ended Friday in Minneapolis. But, he said, the board reaffirmed a 2004 position paper, "For the Health of the Nations," that outlined seven areas of civic responsibility for evangelicals, including creation care along with religious freedom, nurturing the family, sanctity of life, compassion for the poor, human rights and restraining violence.

They ignored him. Perfect.

On Friday, the association's board approved a 12-page statement on terrorism and torture. Anderson said that Cizik gave a report to the board on his work in Washington as vice president for governmental affairs and that there was no effort to reprimand him. "I think there was a lot of support from me, from the executive committee and from the board for Rich Cizik," Anderson said.

Great. Where is James Dobson's outrage over torture? And note that Cizik is not just a spokesman, he's VP for government affairs, meaning he's the NAE's chief lobbyist.

Having said that, let's not forget that Cizik and friends are not our allies, just the enemy of our enemy in this case:

Cizik is a pro-Bush Bible-brandishing reverend zealously opposed to abortion, gay marriage, and embryonic stem-cell research. He is also on a mission to convert tens of millions of Americans to the cause of conservation, using a right-to-life framework.

Since Dobson's political power is based on hate, it's understandable he would want to purge the movement of ideas like this:

Q:    The Bible also says that humans have "dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing." Some in your community interpret this as a license to exploit natural resources.

A:     That is a deeply flawed interpretation. Dominion does not mean domination. It implies responsibility -- to cultivate and care for the earth, not to sully it with bad environmental practices. The Bible also teaches us that Jesus Christ is not only redeeming his people, but also restoring God's creation. Obviously, since the fall of man and entrance of sin into the world, all of creation has yearned for its redemption from sin and death and destruction. That will occur with the Second Coming of Christ. But in the meantime we show our love for Jesus Christ by reaching out to and healing the spiritually lost and by conserving and renewing creation. Christ's call to love nature is as simple as his call to love our neighbors as ourselves.

This cuts right to the core of Dobson's financial support, which is corporate and wealthy. The rich fund Dobson because some of them are co-fanatics, but more importantly because he harnesses the haters to support the party through which the rich can impose their will on the government. A pro-environment, anti-big business message like Cizik's is poison to them:

BILL MOYERS: Senator James Inhofe is a prominent evangelical Christian and one of the most powerful Republicans in Congress. He heads the Senate Committee with Jurisdiction over the Environment. Back home in the oil-producing state of Oklahoma, his supporters cheer him for ferociously taking on environmentalists. Man-made global warming? Don't you believe it.

SEN. JAMES INHOFE [video]: Could it be that man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? I believe it is.

RICHARD CIZIK: The conscience of man doesn't always speak clearly. And I would ask the Senator does the $400,000 plus he gets from the oil and gas industry, about that. I'm not sure of the exact figures. Impact his ability to make decisions on the environment. And I don't really blame Senator Inhofe. I believe he's a fine man, a fellow Christian, whom I will not attack. I say, I love you. He's my brother in Christ. I have to love him. But that doesn't mean I have to agree with him.

SEN. JAMES INHOFE [video]: Pat, I don't have to tell you about reading the Scriptures, but one of mine that I've always enjoyed is toward Romans 1, 22 and 23 I think it is. They talk about you quit worshipping God and start worshipping the creation- the creeping things, the four-legged beasts, the birds and all that. That's their god. That's what they worship.

RICHARD CIZIK: If you are the senator of the committee in charge of the environment, of the most powerful nation in the history of the universe, in charge of the environment, and you maintain against all the science, that this climate change is surely a hoax, then I think you have to be the biggest riverboat gambler in all of history. Gambling you see, not just your own life, but the lives of millions of people. Not just Americans but others in low-lying countries around the world, that will be impacted by climate change, now, and not in generations to come. And do we have the right to say there's no consensus? To allow politicians off the hook? To permit years to go by, as it has occurred in this Administration? That is dangerous. That is almost, you see, spiritually dangerous.

Cizik says the right things about the political process:

The president is the president of all the people. He's president of not just the Protestants. He's president of the Catholics, and of the Muslims, and the orthodox and the unbelievers. So should this president cater to the evangelicals? I don't think so. Frankly, I don't think we can go to this administration and ask for favors. We don't.

But even if we could, we shouldn't simply because he's an evangelical. We have to make arguments based upon what is good for everybody. If it's not good for everybody, then you're wasting your time. …

Part of that is because evangelicals have matured; not only about our methodology in politics, but we've also come to understand you can't change America solely by politics. It won't happen. You have to change the hearts and minds of the public on issues like abortion. We're not going to statutorily prohibit abortion in America, I don't believe.

Fine. This I can live with. As I have said, I have no problem if your political aims are motivated by your religious beliefs. But when you make policy arguments, you have better be able to defend them in secular terms, because "God wants you to obey me" is not going to cut it. Digby says:

If the evangelical movement decides to pursue its agenda as a special interest rather than as GOP soldiers, I predict they will find friends across the aisle on different issues.

I would be a little more clear. Dobson et al are already a "special interest rather than ... GOP soldiers", because Dobson has told the Republicans in the past that he would abandon them if they didn't adopt his policies. Dobson really is a conservative soldier, while Cizik appears to be a principled evangelical.

Cizik is out in front of his membership, and is acutely aware that they need to be brought along:

Q:    My understanding is that you publicly rejected an offer by the leaders of the Sierra Club and the National Wildlife Federation to join forces.
A:     I said, "Not for now." Look, there are those in my community who are concerned that environmentalists are advocates of population control, of big-government solutions, or New Age religion, and have apocalyptic tendencies. In the latter case, there's some irony in my opinion. It's like the pot calling the kettle black. I am trying to reason with my community that we've earned our spurs in co-belligerency -- collaborating with groups we wouldn't otherwise work with, in the name of the common good. I say, if we've worked with Free Tibet on religious freedom, the Congressional Black Caucus on slavery, Gloria Steinem and feminists on rape, and the gay and lesbian lobby on AIDS, why can't we work with environmentalists?

(Emphasis supplied.) So, Cizik ain't no liberal, but can you imagine Dobson ever working with liberal groups on anything?

Here's the reason Dobson is afraid of this guy:

Q:    How much influence do you think you have on the direction of the Republican Party?

A:    Our membership is 30 million strong, with 45,000 churches, 7,000 megachurches, some with billion-dollar budgets. We represent 40 percent of the Republican Party. There is a saying that "as evangelicals go, so goes the West" -- meaning our community sets trends. Is everybody in our community ready to support a creation-care agenda? Certainly not. But conservation is conservative at its roots, and they can be regrown.

Whoa. "[C]onservation is conservative at its roots...."  So is banning torture. So is opposing aggressive war. So is favoring fair trade. So is supporting - really supporting - human rights.  No, NAE will never be our best buddies, but they're a pretty sharp stick to use against the Dobsons of the world.

 

ACLU Live-Blogging Hazleton, PA Immigration Ordinance Trial

Speaking Freely:

The trial challenging Hazleton's anti-immigrant ordinance started today in Scranton in northeast PA with ACLU-PA legal director Witold "Vic" Walczak calling Hazleton mayor Lou Barletta an "opportunistic mayor" and the "chief story teller" in his opening statement, leading the mayor to bite his lip at one point and laugh at another.

Calling the ordinance "a shortcut through the U.S. Constitution," Vic noted that the city has every right to weigh in on the immigration debate "but cannot pass laws to regulate immigration."

Update: "If you speak English, you're not a criminal."

Liberal Media Taking Shots at Netroots for Attacking Fox News

Kate Phillips at The Caucus ("All the News That Fits the Establishment Narrative"):

There’s still some interesting fallout from the dissolution between Nevada Democrats and Fox News, after senior party officials decided to cancel an August debate amid an uproar among liberal bloggers and activists over the choice of networks.

The "interesting fallout" turns out to be these two items:

1. "I didn’t take great offense at [Roger Ailes's] joke,” Obama said.... “I have been called worse.”
2. [A]fter the debate was canceled, [Edwards campaign spokesman Jonathan] Prince courted online donations on behalf of Mr. Edwards, citing his support for the so-called “netroots” and denouncing Fox.
   But in an interview with The Washington Post’s Dan Balz, it seems pretty clear that Mr. Edwards wasn’t even aware of the controversy between the activists, including MoveOn.org, Fox and Nevada Democrats.

Gotcha! See, the "so-called 'netroots'" don't matter, because Obama wasn't really offended and Edwards independently decided not to attend the Fox debate. They're not "roots" at all, they're fringe!

Good girl, Katie. Two pats on the head and the key to the junior executive washroom for you.

Impeachment

I have not been a fan of the drive by some liberals to impeach Bush. It's not what the American people want.  The people fired the congressional Republicans in '06 for allowing self-interest and petty obsessions to distract them from doing their jobs.  I have said repeatedly when the impeachment idea has come up that we'll find ourselves receiving the same judgment in '08 if we pursued impeachment. Instead, I said, investigate, for two reasons. One, we need to find out what happened and how things were messed up in order to fix them. Two, the work product of Congressional investigations would all be grist for the political mill. To be honest, I thought that while very seedy details would come out about Iraq, Katrina, K Street, etc., there would be no new major scandals.

Then the United States Attorney story broke. I have now started to wonder if impeachment might be a possibility.

If there is anything that cannot be tolerated in a free country, it's the executive branch turning law enforcement into a political weapon.  The reason should be obvious to anyone, conservative or liberal. It's worse than rigging an election. If the corruption of politics is pushed down to every district in the country, we will all lose any assurance that when our party is out of the White House, that our elected officials elsewhere will be treated fairly. If all the cops are bad, then there is no point in obeying the law. More than idiotic wars, more than illegal wiretaps, more than truly evil propaganda, more than ideological judges, more than cronyism, I fear a political system that treats law enforcement as a spoil of war.

That's exactly what Bush and Rove seem to have done, and their efforts may have succeeded.  Beyond the eight U.S. Attorneys who were fired, how many succumbed to pressure and were retained? An investigation may reveal the answer.  If it is as bad as I suspect, then with greatest reluctance I think it will be our duty to impeach Bush. To save the Constitution.

Of course, it may not come to pass. Maybe it's not as bad as it seems. I really and truly wish it's not. But I am not hopeful.

Post: Who's to Say What the Truth is About Iraq? Not Us.

Dear Shankar Vedantam:

I am sure you'll be unsurprised to learn that some people question your motives for writing this piece.

If you had limited yourself to examining what people think of other ordinary people's motivations, that would have been a good article. But to imply, as you do, that one cannot form a valid opinion about the Bush administration's motive after six years of scandal goes beyond simple observation. The thing you elide is that there is evidence in the form of news reporting about the Bush administration that might cause people to hold certain attitudes about Bush, while that is not true (or certainly not nearly as true) about his followers. At best, you should have said that people's beliefs about each other are congruent with their beliefs about Bush.

The impression you leave is the frustrating "on one hand, on the other hand, who's to say what the truth is" cop-out that marked so much of the journalism around the Iraq war - including that of the Post.

-Mithras Invicti