Category: America

Looking for an Internet candidate in this election year? Cathy Woolard has just declared for the US House of Representatives in the Fourth Congressional District in Georgia. (Cathy, who will be Georgia’s first openly gay congressional candidate, is an outspoken opponent of state bans on gay marriage who has been active in local politics for a long time.) Greg Greene, who has done work for her over the years and who blogs at Blog For Democracy and the Political State Report as well as at the Green[e]house, wants to know whether the campaign should hop on the Internet bandwagon with blogging, online fundraising, and all the rest.

Me? I think in these days of limited soft money contributions, getting micropayments online from progressive, tech-savvy bloggers and blog readers is probably one of the surest bets. And picking up the Dean modus operandi on behalf of a real live candidate, and taking all the way through a win in November, is the surest way I can think of to get national press.

Get out there and pound some doors, online and off, Greg.

I finally got around to changing my tagline (the old one, “Because no one has a monopoly on Fair and Balanced,” was getting a little long in the tooth). The new one, “You don’t need the bullet if you’ve got the ballot,” is simultaneously a shout out to George Clinton and the P-Funk crew (the song the line comes from, “Chocolate City,” is the fondest and sharpest look ever recorded at the darkening of the Washington, DC population) and a reminder to register to vote, and then actually do it.

Because all the blogging in the world only makes a difference if it changes the ballot box. And the hearts and minds of those placing their vote there.

After rumors and accusations, a former counterterrorist official in George W. Bush’s administration (and Reagan’s, and George H. W. Bush’s, and Clinton’s) is out in print and on 60 Minutes, laying out how the administration’s criminal neglect of its duties in 2001 laid the groundwork for 9/11. Commentary by Oliver Willis and Talking Points Memo/Joshua Micah Mitchell.

Other pointers: the relevant chapter from Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them; the first rumblings of Republican smears against Clarke, with attendant debunking

Oliver North says that liberals worry too much about conspiracy theories. This is, of course, the same Oliver North who was the principal criminal and photogenic felon for the conspiracy to sell arms to Iran and send the money to the Nicaraguan Contras while defrauding Congress. So he should know.

—Am I on Candid Camera???

(via Boing Boing)

I just watched the implosion of Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia about three times on network TV. Say what you like about network television, there is no better medium for high fidelity replays of vast deployments of explosive devices.

I love the quotes from Philadelphia residents in the San Jose Mercury News: “I’ve lived here 12 years, and it was a pain in the rear end.”

Bonus link: history of the Phillies’ stadiums at their official site. Bonus link #2 (mature audiences): Lyrics to Perry Farrell’s song “Porno for Pyros,” in which he shares similar feelings about the LA riots.

I’ve tried to tone down a bit of my rhetoric against the administration recently, mostly because I now know there are people out there who do a far better job of calling them on their fouls than I do. I even winced a little when I saw the title of Al Franken’s book again recently. Lies and the Lying Liars That Tell Them is, shall we say, a little inflammatory.

Then I was strengthened in my resolve by two ads:

1. As pointed out by Greg Greene, someone who says that his opponent wants to hurt individual soldiers, but who himself sends reservists to Iraq in inadequate body armor, floats the prospect of cutting the pay of soldiers in live combat, and interferes with the health care benefits of veterans, active duty troops, National Guardsmen, and reservists, can hardly be called anything but a liar. Unless it’s two faced hypocrite.
2. The recent understated ad at MoveOn.org that lets Donald Rumsfeld hang himself with his own words. In a discussion on CBS’s Face the Nation, Rumsfeld claimed that no one in the administration had ever called Iraq an “imminent threat,” that someone in the press had made up the phrase and was floating it to aggravate the WMD issue. Being hoist on a petard made of your own statements before and during the war about the imminentness of the Iraqi threat: priceless. (thanks Josh)

One is tempted to ask, with I.F. Stone, “is it necessary to repeat after 2,000 years all the things you people learned in Sunday school?! How — how absent-minded — how forgetful!”

So this is our compassionate conservative president. Don’t know how good his grasp of the English language is, but Bush’s proposal to amend the constitution to ban gay marriages strikes me as fairly uncompassionate and surprisingly radical.

Lots of people up in arms about this one, e.g.:

• Oliver Willis (and here, and here)
• Josh Marshall, who makes the extremely cogent point that the president is making no friends in Congress with this move
• Mathew Gross, who thinks the president’s move here as a pander to the religious right will hurt his standing with soccer moms
• Andrew Sullivan

And all for what? To keep people like Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, who had been together for 51 years, from celebrating their commitment to each other.

Maybe we ought to be amending the Constitution to do something about Bennifer and Britney. But Phyllis and Del? And my gay friends whose relationships illustrate new dimensions of love, respect, and fidelity? I say, leave my Constitution alone.

Courtesy Scripting News, a whole bunch of pointers to coverage of Dean’s withdrawal from the race:

Dean quits: Telegraph, BBC, MSNBC, Dean weblog, Edwards weblog, CNN, Fox, AP.

Lisa and I are taking the day off today. Neither of our employers observes Presidents’ Day, but we both have flexible holidays, and since Lisa is heading to a conference for the rest of the week she decided to take pity on me and help me get ready for my first days alone with the dogs.

So we’re sitting down watching the Today Show and finishing our breakfast. A little about Kerry and Edwards. Nothing about Washington or Lincoln. In fact, the only president I’ve come close to this weekend was Thomas Jefferson, and he only as a quote on the back of a bottle of Vacqueyras: “Good wine is a necessity of life for me.” Which illustrates one secret of being a memorable president: be quotable. (As opposed to Washington, whose collected letters appear to consist entirely of military orders or farm business.)

So why has Presidents’ Day become just another day for car sales? Isn’t soldiering on against the British, or saving the Union and freeing the slaves, worthy of memory?

There’s a word used in literary criticism which plays much more strongly in Christian liturgy: anamnesis. Not just remembering, it is actually a “bringing forward” of actions into the present so that we enter the moment again. It happens at major holidays for Christians, and at a few major secular holidays (the Fourth of July comes to mind). Presidents’ Day is not one of them.

But looking at the Cincinnatus of our country, who not only held the British at bay long enough for the French to join us and drive them to surrender but also held together the most amazingly talented collection of advisors in US history—John Adams, Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Henry Knox, and Edmund Randolph. Keeping them from killing each other must have been a full time job in itself.

So, take a moment today to bring forward that other famous Virginian president into the present.

Heh. Oliver Willis gets my laugh of the morning award for pointing this MSNBC graphic out:

My questions about brain function related program activities have been percolating for at least four years now.

(via MSNBC) [Oliver Willis: Like Kryptonite To Stupid]

Caught yesterday, but not posted as I couldn’t see over the creeping crud in my system: Part of Patriot Act Ruled Unconstitutional. US District Judge Audrey Collins ruled that a portion of the act, which criminalized providing “expert advice or assistance” to terrorist groups, was “impermissibly vague.”

(I’m not clear what part of the Constitution that violates, other than the part about our not acting like Winston Smith’s boss, but I’m sure someone can fill me in.)

Anyway: all who were surprised that any part of the Patriot Act was ruled unconstitutional, raise your hands. Higher. I can’t see you. Oh, put your hand down, Mr. Cheney; you know better.

Geez. I did a Google News search that turned up a two week old story in the Nation that cites the GOP snooping, and indicates that it’s been public knowledge since the Wall Street Journal published the leaked memos in November. (And the article quotes Orrin Hatch as saying, “there is no excuse that can justify these improper actions.” I guess his staff weren’t listening, or they wouldn’t have offered the defenses quoted in the Globe article.)

Apparently what’s new today in the Globe article is the scope and duration of the intrusions.

Via Josh Marshall and the Boston Globe, “Senate’s GOP staff pried on Democrats.” Sounds eerily familiar, except this time (thirty years later) it’s the Senate, not the White House staff, being accused of illegally eavesdropping on the other party. Apparently, for almost a year, GOP staffers on the Senate Judiciary Committee were accessing what the Globe article calls “restricted Democratic communications” and leaking the information, including sensitive documents about Democratic positions and tactics on judicial nominees.

On the technology level, there is a claim in the article that the GOP’s computer technician told his Democratic counterpart of the problem but that nothing was fixed. Hmm. So if I happen to notice that your office is unlocked, that means it’s OK to come inside, read your mail, and leak all the juicy parts to your co-workers?

On the political level, it’s interesting that only the Republicans chose to take advantage of the glitch, though it appears to have granted equal access to both sides’ documents. It’s also interesting to speculate how high up there was awareness that these files were being accessed.

It’s no executive level cover up. But it is interesting to hear GOP spinmasters say things like “There appears to have been no hacking, no stealing, and no violation of any Senate rule.” That sets an interesting precedent for prosecuting computer crime going forward.

A quick roundup of SOTU links so that I can finally close this collection of tabs in my browser:

• Scott Rosenberg: “Every single senator, congressmen and dignitary who clapped at that moment was applauding the continued existence of the terrorist threat. ‘Hurray! The terrorists are here to stay!’ Not too bright.”
• The Independent (UK): “0: Number of funerals or memorials that President Bush has attended for soldiers killed in Iraq. 100: Number of fund-raisers attended by Bush or Vice-President Dick Cheney in 2003.”
• Oliver Willis: “That’s a big leap down from those sixteen words last time.”
• Southpaw: “Protecting the religious aspects of marriage is not the job of the president.”
• Molly Ivins: “Last year, Bush predicted a deficit of $262 billion. According of the CBO, the deficit is currently $480 billion. Bush plans to cut biomedical research, health care, job training and veterans funding, and that still leaves a projected deficit of $450 billion. It is unclear to me why anyone would believe anything the president says about our fiscal situation. Keep in mind, this is a man who took three Texas oil companies into bankruptcy.”
• Zogby International: 50% of Americans polled Jan 15–18 disapprove of President Bush’s job performance.
• Jake points to Moby’s deconstruction of the State of the Union: “’no child left behind’ is a fairly decent program. too bad bush has actually cut funding to education in the 3 years he’s been in office.”
• New York Times editorial board: “It is actually a cruel hoax to pretend that Washington can afford to do anything new, even with the modest grab bag of small new initiatives and familiar retreads suggested by the president. In that context, his decision last night to re-endorse the Social Security overhaul plan from his last campaign was terrifying.”
• Cheryl Jacques of the Human Rights Campaign on the President’s proposed constitutional marriage amendment: “In more than 200 years of American history, it has never been necessary to use the Constitution to deny basic rights.”

There’s too much chatter about the Iowa primary this morning to summarize even a thousandth of what’s being said. Two quick pointers: Scoble and Doc think Dean’s loss is about the Internet candidate not translating well to television; Greg wonders if this will position Dean as the power broker for the convention.

The real question for the Internet candidate, as I think for all of us who feel passionate about America and about our freedoms and using the Internet to build a more perfect union, is how do we make that vision real? How do we infuse the rest of America with our conviction? How do we translate passion into real action? How do we get down out of our ivory towers long enough to save the world.