I hurts to admit this...but I admire...I can't even say it.

There is a Univeristy on the East Coast that is highly repected. It is the third oldest in the country, and judged by many to be the third best (though nearly all of it's attendees consider it number one). I've talked a lot of trash about this particular school, and despite liking many of it's graduates, have a hard time saying anything good about it. There are trust fund babies at many colleges, but this one with it's dining clubs and obnoxious cliques goes out of it's way to redefine snobby. I admit to a particular contempt for this institution: so much that it is very, very difficult for me to praise it (though the campus is lovely). It is probably the most conservative university in it's calibre, and generally considered apathetic. In the height of Nam, protesting students carried banners that said "Even we are protesting."

This school evidently has deep ties to the Frist family, including a building named after one of them. That is the site of a bold student protest of the recent movement to prevent abolition of the fillibuster. Students (and guests) have been fillibustering the Frist building for 2 days. I should that it is very close to final exam time in most schools, but these students are taking the time (even at all hours of the night) to make a valuable political statement. I wish my school were capable of that. I am humbled. I promise, no more talking shit about Princeton, for at least as long as this protest endures.

Nobody told me!!

That the president was going to speak yesterday. As a rule I don't watch TV, but I might have made an exception. Apparently the networks were a bit unenthusiastic. Given that the bulk of the message was about a social security plan that is pretty much dead in the water before it is even written, they might question why they should cancel their regularly scheduled programming. Ironic, my TV watching friends were a little discouraged to have missed their regular shows, while I might have actually turned it on had I known. I'm sure there will be tons of analysis on wether it was brilliant or wasteful, with analysis of the analysis, etc...

All I'll say is that if you decide to butt in on people's private time, you'd better have a good reason, 'cause they'd rather be watching their shows (at least those who watch TV regularly). Did the president touch that exceptionally large core of the country who doesn't read, watch news, or follow politics? Or will they see this as an unwarranted cramming down throat of views they may not care about (preempting their regularly scheduled program).

For a minute there I wish I were a liberal journalist, or maybe a writer for the Onion. Editorial headline: President launches pre-emptive war against sweeps week.

By the by. How liberal is the big media showing this? (not very) This is an opposed policy. Was the opposition given time to speak?

The Bible is tough.

This passage is supposed to refer to a false church?

And this one a false prophet?

Where are they getting the papacy from those? I think the one voice we worship most is TV.

Most people I know would argue that trying to scientifically analyze the Bible is a waste of time. I'm inclined to agree. On the other hand, Iaasic Newton spent a good bit of time at it. He even had a posthumous publication, Observations Upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John. Of course that doesn't make it not a waste of time, but if it drew the attention of one of the most innovative scientists ever, well at least the folks over at rapturewatch are in prestigious company.

One final apocolyptic tidbit. The church where I had Sunday School was about 2 miles from a nuclear submarine base. Everyone in that town knew exactly what the apocolypse would look like. Sirens, then a flash. You won't feel a thing. Let's not be nostalgic for the Cold War.

Okay okay I admit it...I like this site...now let's see if I can rationalize why.

So even if you're not a holy roller, biblical scholar, or familiar with The Rapture episode of The Daily Show you probably know that Christians believe that there will (someday) be a second coming of Christ that marks the end of the world. I'm not positive, because it certainly wasn't covered in my Sunday school, but a lot of apocolyptic prophesies predate the New Testament. This site is an excellent resource for all of your apocolyptic needs. Myself, I'm not super-confident that God is going to wipe us out anytime soon, but I think tracking analytical markers is a good idea. Engineers like to stick numbers on things (we call it quantitate) and I think an Apocolyptic Index is a fine idea. This year that had a major disaster immediately after Christmas and Easter (Tsunami and Earthquake). How many consecutive religious holidays does it take to become statisticallly viable? More than we've seen, but if we go 4 in a row the scientist in me will start to worry.

Then there's the rhetorical question of when would you wash your hands of mankind? I was pretty worried after I read this article about Liberia two years ago:

Taylor added his own brand of brutality, assembling what he called his Small Boy Units _ youths as young as 9 years old who were armed, given illicit drugs and turned loose to massacre and mutilate whomever they wished.

Many of Taylor's fighters in what he called the National Patriotic Front of Liberia donned women's wigs, painted their fingernails and even wore wedding dresses as they marauded, often accompanied by the blasting of songs by the Temptations and Aretha Franklin. They sometimes anchored decapitated heads on the license plates of their vehicles.

I read those sorts of things and think, yeah maybe there's something to this apocolypse idea after all. Anyway, I encourage the concept, but for shear entertainment, check out the scoring:

29. Liberalism It's not just a part of the democratic party. liberalism is what I would call the "true conspiracy." The liberal media is 100 percent control by the forces that bow to this humanistic ideology.

Fourtunately, liberalism is currently downgraded to a 1 of 5. Well, I do have to agree that the Liberals aren't in danger of destroying the Earth anytime soon (cough, cough, more than I can say of others). In addition to dangerous things like liberalism, the index tracks national objectives (or maybe global ones) like

Unemployment
Inflation
Interest Rates
The Economy
Oil
Supply/Price
Debt and Trade
Financial unrest

Hardly Biblical issues. Can we get some justification for those? Indeed.

8. Oil Supply/Price Oil remains an economic and a
political issue. We fought The War in the Gulf because of its
strategic importance. The final battle of Armageddon may also
involve a dispute over oil.

Now. Do we call that policy, or just speculation?

I'm not too stoked that the authors (I'm guessing Baptists) have tried to finger the papacy as the most probable ascendance for the anti-christ. Why not the Dali Lama, or the President of U.N.? Rupert Murdoch?

Hilarious

Drinking liberally. Fighting conservative values on 2 fronts.

side note: Ten Stone in Philadelphia has a great brunch on Sundays.

I can't believe it

I may have given Republicans too much credit a few days ago when I suggested they wouldn't really go for the abolition of the fillibuster. Even if they assume they will control the Senate for another 20 years, it is a foolish move. And yet, these people actually believe that upper-class tax cuts stimulate growth. My bad.

There remains the possibility that this is still just some boogeyman issue. I haven't heard a whisper of fillibustering anyone other than the judges rejected last term. Maybe the Repubs are just using the obstructionist threat to get whatever else they want through...I don't know.

Condoleeza Rice

Here's a question for you. Why do so many bloggers feel comfortable referring to Dr. Rice as Condi? Yes, it's a catchy nickname, (and Condoleeza is hard to pronounce) but is there more to it than that? Is there some sexist/racist thing behind it? Of course Hillary is Hillary, but there is some ambiguoty in 'Clinton'. Who else warrants such comfortable first name usage? It's not just a matter of specificity, if I say Alberto you know who I mean (or possibly you're confused, but certainly not thinking of the wrong Alberto), and there is no other Rice with substantial import. Do we hear references to Teddy or Tony? I don't get it. There is only 1 prominent Colin, Olypmia, or Clarence, but they are invariably Powell, Snowe, and Thomas.

Whether the nickname is derrogatory or a sign of coordial familiarity, I denounce it. Rice has earned equal treatment with her peers. While she also earned my ire misleading us into a war, I don't know her well enough to refer to her by first name, let alone a nickname.

A good number of papers seem to refer to her as Ms. Rice. Let's not get started on that.


PS: Another example, generally found on conservative sites: Kofi. It's looking more like use of the first name is a deliberate sign of disrespect. I wouldn't rule out racially baised issues either.

Of course, the White House didn't sanction this...

Wow. That's a spanking for getting out of line. From Howard Kurtz:

Well, it took about 30 seconds for the group Move America Forward to post this attack ad:

"Wife: Honey, were you watching C-SPAN today? Did you hear how disloyal Senator Voinovich was to Republicans and President Bush? Voinovich stood with the Democrats and refused to vote for John Bolton, the man President Bush has chosen to fight for the United States at the UN
"Husband: No, I was streaming it on the Internet at the office, but from what I could tell, Senator Voinovich played hooky from the hearings?
"Wife: Yeah that's right. He's missed most of the Bolton confirmation hearings, but then shows up at the last minute and stabs the President and Republicans right in the back.
"Husband: That's ridiculous -- the United Nations needs reform, we need someone who will stand up for the United States and fight the UN's corruption and anti-Americanism.
"Wife: Shame on Senator Voinovich. After the Democrats smeared Condoleeza Rice for Secretary of State and Alberto Gonzales for Attorney General, how could Voinovich side with the Democrats in smearing John Bolton?"
Interesting word, smear.

Hardball ladies and gentleman, hardball. You could pretend this is a new low, you could pretend this won't play well to the Republican base, you could even pretend the White House isn't happy to see this ad. But who would you be kidding? It's brutal none-the-less. We'll see whether Vionovich has the character to withstand this.

If there's any justice this will bring more of a spotlight on the actual issues. One of the Dems questioned the committeee whether any of them would hire Bolton to their staff. And truthfully, probably none of them would. On the merits, this guy is a bad choice. But it's never that simple.

I'm past caring what anyone thinks of GWB at this point, but notice the not too subtle plugs for 2 future power brokers? On the other hand, Rice might not want to be too closely associated with Bolton in the forseeable future.

Here's a question for Dems though...if this guy is so bad, why not filibuster the nomination? Why are only judges fillibustered?

Vermont Love

How ignorant of me. In my old I Luv New England posting I never noted that the one and only house member from VT is an Independent (cause I didn't know!). Barry Sanders is slated as the front runner for Jeffords open senate spot. Of course I regret that Jeffords is leaving, but at least Vermont will maintain some of it's polotical independence. Imagine if both senators from VT were independent. Dare to dream.

Don't tread on me.

Ah...who could have forseen this?

Back to the branding topic of 2 posts ago. Republicans have caught on and are pushing for a change. By the by, I think "Constitutional Option" is a bad name, but it should get their nationalistic base fired up. Josh Marshall's blog is one of the very best on the web, winner of a Koufax award, etc etc. I will at some point add a sidebar link to his page. He has a tendency to latch onto a singe topic and explore it in depth. I am a big big fan of his work. Lest anyone think I have only good things to say about JM: he's extremely partisan (Democrat) and his dog is ugly (at least when dressed in ridiculous sweaters). I could hyper-link those comments, but let's just keep them as insider jokes.

Go get 'em Josh!

Fun times with government agencies

First there's this pretty good commercial for FBI intel positions and then there's a nifty kids page at the NSA! (no really, go see)

I suppose I should justify why I'm on these pages...I'll be looking for a job in about a year and I've always had a passing interest in security. When 9/11 hit I really, really wanted to join an agency and I guess part of me still does. On the other hand, a doctorate in Chemical Engineering is probably a bit over-speciallized for standard Special Agent assignments. I still think it might be cool to work in counter-terrorism. Especially counter-bioterrorism. I should mention today's curiosity was prompted by this post about the future of genetic engineering. Now as a genetic engineer, I found the post and comments are occasionally thoughtful and generally naive. The truth is genetic engineering will never be cheap and easy by teenage standards. It will however be cheap and easy by coorporate standards, government standards, and yes terrorist standards. I think we'll always be talking a few hundred thousand dollars for the infrastucture and reagents to do anything worthwhile or dangerous. Just the same, I hope people in the above agencies are looking into ways to monitor it. (And for ME to advocate government tracking means I think the bioweapons threats are the real deal) Maybe I'll feel more like writing about this someday.

But back to the subject at hand...I'm glad to see the FBI is looking for the people it needs. As for the NSA, try the games and puzzles. They're looking for some damn smart kids.

Branding

I tend to think that Republicans do a better job of branding than Democrats. Changing the "Estate" tax to the "Death" tax, "Privatization" to "Personal Accounts", even "Religious Right" is a great term. Whatever. ..examples abound. Lately though, I wonder if it's not a case of the grass is always greener. (I also think they fertilize more)

The verbal twist that really tickles my fancy at the moment is the so called "nuclear option". I believe a Republican came up with the name, and most likely one who was somewhat apalled at the idea, but wanted to show off. (The badness of this idea transcends partisan politics) Whomever it was coined a great phrase. Things Nuclear are powerful, extreme, and generally dangerous. Some say that the shennanigans before the Bolton hearing were a taste of what Republicans will get if they decide to "go nuclear". They get a senate in lockdown, disarray, etc...or if you like: that is the fallout. The proposal is also very radioactive, promising to contaminate the party that does it. See, a very useful term.

As an aside: the Delay/Shiavo/anti-judge-hate-speech issues are being construed as Abuses of Power. Dems could have painted them as corruption, pandering, or foolery, but they chose to docus on a theme of abuse of power. Part of the point is to prevent the nuclear option.

Honestly, I don't think that the Republicans have lost their way so far as to go nuclear (or even nucular). The bulk have been whining about big government way too long to suport this. What scares me, is now the idea is on the table. Any majority knows this option exists. I worry that Democrats might use it someday. And I firly believe it just as dangerous in their hands. Another fitting analogy....we have another concept that I wish we could uninvent.

The cynic reawakens...

Whew, didn't take long. I wonder if Vionovich was looking at a potential Dem fillibuster and the likelihood of having to explain why he supported him. Or maybe he's specifically pimping for something in the budget?

No, no....quiet evil whispering voice. He is doing this for the good of the country. Go USA. Happy thoughts. Happy. Hey look, bedtime...(yeah, past bedtime)

Did I post too soon?

Maybe there are limits to how far some Senators will whore themselves out to the Bush administration. Makes me wonder what is really going on. Did these 2 just get fed up? Is it retaliation for some specific insult? Is it to further politics by demonstrating bipartisanship? Pressure from their constituents? Or maybe for the good of the country? Regardless it's a strange occurance to suddenly decide 3 weeks later that you want to hear more. Really. I consider this like, shocking evidence that the system might be working, and Senators might be learning things at this hearing and making judgements based on the evidence. As a cynic, that really surprises me.

It will be VERY interesting to see how this one plays out. All along the buzz was on whether or not Chafee would turncoat. He swings enough to be generally disliked by his peers. Looks like he was wise to keep silent this time. If he had crossed lines here, he would have been the whipping boy. The other 2 are pretty much safe. Sure the rabid types will be mad, but the purely objective truth is most people wouldn't hire this guy for a job. That's how I would word it in a press conference. "Look, this is a job interview. The candiate wasn't right for the job. End of story." (At least that's how I would word it if I were a Republican, if a Democrat I would demonize the hell out of Bolton, Bush, and the Repblicans who supported him.)

Here's the deal...the president can nominate anyone he wants. Why did he go out of his way to find someone so rancid? Yeah it's disrepectful to the UN, but it's also disrespectful to Congress.

Please, please let this be the beginning of the end.

More of the social security and all that stuff....

Josh Marshall posts a bit of strategy for Dems. Josh is good, but I think he's missed the boat. So have the Dems. Not surprisingly, the Dems can't capitalize when they have the advantage('cause when have they?).

Here's the deal. The president is losing popularity, but still a pretty likable guy. The more face-time he gets the more likable he is. The more he has to face the issues, the less likeable he is. Congress on the other hand, is disliked out-and-out. Play to that.

The president has proposed private accounts. The populace doesn't like popular accounts. Republicans will paint Dems as obstructionists to make them pay. And now, evidently Dems are afraid and running scared: possibly the worst mistake they could make. The post-analysis that I choose to believe (there are many) is that Dems lost in 2004 because the people felt they couldn't be trusted on national security. Meaning, they're a bunch of French-loving, spineless, wussie-boys (and girls).

While Dems cannot be painted as obstructionists, this is their chance to show a little mettle. MORE, this is a chance for some comeuppance and bravado. The President is strong, he's got moxy and people respond to that...why not use that? The issue as Dems should present it: "The people don't want Social Security privatized. They don't want it because they think it's a bad idea, and it is. George has come up with a visionary idea and I respect that, but it's still a bad idea. The problem is that no one within his party has the gumption to stand against him. If he says lets paint the moon purple, then the Republicans in congress are going to allocate him the money. They know it's a bad idea, but they can't say no. How many Republican senators are out actively selling this to the people? Half of them? Less than half? Well, let's just say there are a lot of really quiet Republicans. We Democrats want to prevent a really bad idea. If there were 5 fewer Democrats in congress this bill would have been rushed through and signed at midnight before anyone could think twice about it. And it turns out the bill wouldn't have had to be rushed, because even after months to see how expensive and useless this proposal is, only a handful of republicans have the guts to stand up to the President. If you don't support privitization of Social Security and you live in a Republican district, then write to your Senator and tell him that you live in his district and the President doesn't. Encourage him and help him think about the people. Help him find the courage to say no to a bad idea."

Yeah, I can't write speeches (or project policy). The point is use the president's strength to underscore the Republican Congress's weakness. They are the lackey wussies, Dems are a rare combo of brains and balls. Also, go ahead and conceed that Bush is a visionary. He is. So was David Koresh. Point out that the vision isn't good for America. In that, I agree with Josh. Make him focus on the issues. But in the big picture, this isn't about the Presidency, this is about Congress and convincing them to not implement a really bad idea. Feel free to beat them with it, and go ahead and use the president to do it.

Later drop talking points like "The President has never vetoed a single bill, because Congress bends over whenever he asks..." etc...

Note: This is also good pre-emption for 2008 Pres elections, start tar and feathering Frist and McCain now. Unless McCain switches sides on SS.

The abortion issue

So much of abortion coverage is either "for abortion" or "against abortion". It's way too simple. Suppose you're a journalist and ask: Are you for or against abortion? And someone responds: "I wouldn't have one, I think it's tragic and wasteful. But function of legislation is to provide a government and protect peoples rights, not to enforce my personal beliefs." How do you report that?

God bless the Democrats

Ok, I don’t really have the skills to propose policy, and perhaps these views are a bit naive. It's a little hard for me, since I don't truly advocate either party, but it doesn’t take a genius to identify trends. As an ardent anti-republican I smell trouble brewing.

Primarily I want to bounce off what JDK said at LeftAdvocate. There’s a new war on the winds, it’s not the War on Drugs, nor is it the War on Terror, no I’m talking about the “War on Religion”. Indeed folks, culture war: pre-packaged and brought to you loudly and repetitively by theocons everywhere. And let me give you a hint what’s great about this war: the outcome is known If there is a War on Religion the Republicans will win. Guaranteed. It's a simple matter of demographics and values. Religion is important to religious people. It is something they will fight for. If Republicans make this a primary wedge issue they will be untouchable.

Being the party of religion has a number of tangible benefits. Back in the day the atrocities of kings were supported by their Divine Right. Today it’s ok to be pro-war, pro-torture, and anti-environmental…so long as you’re anti-abortion, you have “moral values”. Having religion on your side is the ultimate moral trump card. When it comes to God, you’re either with us or against us…and who really wants to stand opposed to God? Filthy godless heathens, that’s who. Of course there is a difference between arguing against God and arguing against enforcing Biblical Law, but people are going to spin it that way.

So wherever possible Republicans are going to try to make it look like Democrats are anti-religion. It reinforces their base and gives them moral capital to waste on things like torturing people. A lot of it will be lip-service like the marriage amendment and the Terri issues, but what does it hurt? It certainly doesn’t cost votes, (not any they would get anyway) and Republicans get to trumpet all over how moral they are. Occasionally they can use religion to directly remove barriers. Are activist judges preventing your complete and total power? Sic the people on them. If the filthy godless heathen Democrats try to support the Constitution, well, make them pay for it.

The control in how far Republicans can push the religion issue, is to some extent in the veracity of their demographics. Suppose a church leans right (if they’re centrist here central Philadelphia, I assume they're conservative in most places). Chances are the clergy are farther right than most of the parishioners and maybe they’d like to go further. However there’s only so far a priest (minister, deacon, whoever…) will pull against the will of the congregation. It may be that by radicalizing the religious right it gives the clergy more room to work and still be “only a little conservative”. The more Christian Democrats can be silenced, the more radical it will get, until voting Democrat and killing puppies are morally equivalent. (Upside: You will may yet get to excute criminal juvenilles if we do something about those activist judges.) Keys to the pearly gates will depend on your voter registration.

And why is there no religious left? Is it simply abortion? Let me paint a picture for you. Suppose the Democrats had an official interest group, the religious left who were part of the party, though perhaps a bit fringe. Suppose they were allowed to run their mouths like Dobson or Falwell, and the Democrats could shrug and say no comment. What would they say? Would they want to know why the Pope supported the war in Afganistan but not the war in Iraq? Maybe they would ask why we are spending tax dollars bombing and killing people while some of ours go hungry here at home. I would like to hear the administration respond on "What would Jesus do?" in the context of Gitmo "Persusaion". What would he say about the Iraqi hung from his arms on bars until his lung muscles gave out and he suffocated to death? (switch the bars with a cross and we have a name for that process) Torture memos? Disintegration of the EPA? Bankruptcy bills? Greed and tax cuts for the wealthy? Using churches to recruit soldiers? But alas, Democrats have no such voice. And it costs them dearly.

If I were making Democrat policy, here are a few guildelines I would follow.

1: No more use of the term Religious Right. There is a fallacy of ambiguity there. We would all rather be right than wrong. It is fantastic marketing. Where a view can be construed as one where less than half of religious people believe in it, call it the "religous fundamentalist" view. I read that and say, well I'm religious, but not a fundamentalist. Where the views are more minority get more agressive. Theocrat is a good choice. Republican theocrat if possible, with an occasional theocon tossed in, but don't under any circumstances, use a charged term on subjects with mass appeal. When forcing a wedge issue, generally you want the larger chunk.

2: Decouple religion from Republicanism. An insidious way to to this would be to have a pro-war Dem admit that war is not the religous thing to do, but it mustbe done anyway. Anti-war Dems can point at torture and other things. Trust me, there's tons of material here.

3: Make Republicans pay for their alliance. Taint the word conservative the way liberal seems tainted. Prohibition of birth control is a conservative view, even 70+% of catholics believe in using birth control (at least married). While not necessarily a Republican view prohibition of birth control is undisputedlty a conservative view. Refer to it as a conservative view (not religious, or even catholic, etc...). Refer to the Taliban as conservative. The people who want womens faces cloaked in the mid-East...those are the conservatite Islamists.

4: Find a high profile candidate who can say "God" with a straight face. Imagine hearing this: "I belive abortion is wrong, there are a lot of Democrats who don't like hearing that, but it is what I believe. However, God gave us free will. I'm not about to hold my personal religous beliefs above free will. There are lots of things that are wrong that are legal. It is legal to choose be mean. It is legal to choose to be greedy. And it is legal to choose to have an abortion. Chances are if you're considering an abortion, you've had some trouble. I'm not going to add to those troubles by letting the government impose religous law on you. You have your own values, and a legal right to exercise free will. But please, think and pray carefully on your decision. It's very important." How much would that make secularists squirm? I don't know, but it would make the Republicans pretty damn nervous.

5: Call out hippocrasy. Do it in a flamboyant way. It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a Haliburton executive to enter the kingdom of God. Or maybe point out that for all GWB talks about God, his attendance at church is pretty poor. That might be ok for some religions, but it's sinful in others, and smacks of hypocrasy.

6: As a combination of 3 and 6... would anyone else love to see a seven deadly sins commercial with soundbytes from Tom DeLay?
-Pride: take your pick
-Greed: any fundraising or taxcutting clip
-Anger: the anti-judge quote is good, anger at Shays would be great
-Envy: maybe an anti-judge thing here
-Gluttony: the free trips, when was the last time your family spend 80k on a family vacation?
- Leaves sloth and lust...find examples, or maybe let him off the hook and say he's only 5/7th of a bad person...whatever.

7: Finally, as an obvious correllary of 1: Don't attack religion itself, nor the Bible. At this point don't even attack the religious right. When you have a beef, take it out on "theocons". Most importantly, do not be drawn into stupid fights. Especially drummed up controversy. Here's my Democrat response for the Terri Schivo issue: "We're in the middle of war, X soldiers died this month. We're in the deepest debt we've ever been in, and the dollar is falling. You want my opinion on Terry Shiavo? Very well. I pray for her soul, and look forward to the day when congress cares about its soldiers and the needs of the entire nation as persistantly as those of a single person."

The point is Dems will lose big time in a War on Religion. But the powers that be have the most to lose in a War for Religion.

A sad day for Democrats

I admit it. Occasionally I bottom out and hit the extremities...this time the talk at DailyKos is just too disturbing. Read the passage if you like, but more so read the comments. The passage is about Lieberman and his high ratings among Republicans. Yeah, it's true that I don't like Joe for being hawkish and because I agree with Huey. The Kos clan argument goes something like this: he's bad because 1 Republicans like him 2 He criticizes other Democrats and weakens the party.

I'm not going to defend Lieberman. I don't like him. I will say that the reason to vote out a Senator is that he isn't doing a good job for his constituency. The fact that he has bipartisan appeal is immaterial, or maybe even a good counter-argument.

I wish I were Republican and could laugh as the various commenters bash a Democrat for bashing Democrats. Ah, the juvenile rants, the infighting...and most assuredly the notion that anything they do is a win-win for me.

Rabid liberals, please, please focus on defeating Republicans, not yourselves.

Stupid or Evil?

The Republican attack on the judiciary swings a little too far…

Says Senator John Cornyn:

I don't know if there is a cause-and-effect connection but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country. Certainly nothing new, but we seem to have run through a spate of courthouse violence recently that's been on the news and I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters on some occasions where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in - engage in violence.

Says Jonah Goldberg: (emphasis added)

I haven't seen the comments in their full context yet, but assuming Josh Marshall and Glenn Reynolds are being fair (and I have no reason to suspect they're not), it seems to me the outrage is well-deserved. This is almost exactly the same logic the left used to justify or explain away inner city riots. It seems to me there's no substantial difference. The judge in Atlanta was not murdered because he had an expansive view of the penumbra to the Bill of Rights. Neither was the murder of that judge's family in Chicago attributable to judicial activism. What other violence is Cornyn referring to? I leave some room for the possibility that Cornyn was being stupid rather than sinister. But this strikes me as an indefensible statement.

Jonah, the word you’re looking for is “Dumbass”. It covers both possibilities. And while we're at it, let's not rule out both.

A diamond in the rough...

TIA trips me out. The posts are great, but boy do they wander all over the place (and they're long enough to make your eyes hurt). If you've the patience to follow them though, you can get some great insights. This post is ostensibly euphemasia, but buried in the is a phenomenal observation.

Look for the bit on Americans as consumers rather than citizens:

And it is indubitably a 'piece', not a mere op-ed. Peggy is good at what's known as 'creative writing' (it's not just writing; it's creative writing!), a concept invented in the US sometime in the late 60s - early 70s. A particularly cheesy remnant of that era, 'creative writing' was one manifestation of the vaguely leftish idea that 'expressing yourself' (however incoherently) trumps reason, persuasion, logic, critical thinking. In other words, just having an opinion or a 'feeling' of some kind is the total extent of your responsibility as a, pardon me, sentient human. This overall concept's wholesale political adaptation by the GOP gradually affected a change in how Americans see their own basic role as Americans: the role of 'citizen' was supplanted by that of 'consumer'. It's a subtle but fundamental change. A citizen is active and makes judgments; a consumer is passive, and has only to have an opinion. This confusion of the two roles is summed up in the cliche 'voting with your pocketbook'.

Wow. That is so true. Citizens wouldn't be force-fed pre-packaged news, sound-bites, and talking points...but consumers would. I'm not about to get all Starship Troopers on "citizen" nor pretend that people haven't voted on their wallets since democracy began, but I would love to see an entire post on this rather than reading it as a tangent from a tangent.

Can't kick the habit...or back in a time of need?

Publius is back, and at least as good as ever. He strikes at the heart of recent issues: abuse of constitutional powers. While we wave American flags and claim to cherish this country, we've allowed one of it's core values to dissolve. No balance of powers. No oversight. No independent judiciary. No democracy.

And there are people actively trying to make this happen.

Balance of powers

I suppose it's only natural. When one party cohesively owns both chambers of congress and the executive, when there hasn't been a veto in four years, when the president gets exactly what he wants with zero accountability: then (and only then) can the executive and legislative branches directly attack the judiciary.

BBC: Mr DeLay said.

"We will look at an arrogant, out-of-control, unaccountable judiciary that thumbed their nose at Congress and the president."

There are but two balances left in our country: the Senate fillibuster, which is weak and costly, and the Judicial review which requires adherence to our Constitution. Both are at now at risk. I admit to a morbid curiosity of what would happen to this country if those last two modes of legality were removed. The stuff of dreams for a powerful few. Then one could achieve real change, dynamic change, the kind that could never be undone... or damage that could never be repaired.