Conservatives are on Crack

Here are two conservative pundits talking about Harriet Miers:

The most useful way of discovering a nominee's views is through "litmus tests." One question would yield the maximum information about a nominee's judicial philosophy (without requiring a commitment as to any future ruling): "What do you think of Roe vs. Wade"? The answer could explain her theory of constitutional interpretation, her views on the judicial invention of rights not set forth in the Constitution, her views on when courts should follow precedent, and her views about the judiciary's role in our constitutional system.

I know it isn't anything new to the readers of this blog that the "right" feels this way about our Constitutional rights and it isn't anything new to this blog's readers that there's this little thing in the Constitution known as the Ninth Amendment which reads:

Amendment IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

This Amendment sounds to me, as it has sounded to many observers, that the Framers didn't want a specific Bill of Rights to result in those rights not being specified being subjected to government infringement. This was in fact one of James Madison's stated reservations about inserting a Bill of Rights in the Constitution.

But as if you didn't require any further confirmation, carefully consider this statement by our conservative bretheran once again:

"...the judicial invention of rights not set forth in the Constitution..."

Conservatives are again making plain their antipathy towards freedom, individuality and human rights. They don't like "rights". Rights from whom? Themselves, the government, the ruling powers. They don't believe the individual is sovereign over her or himself. That is the thrust of their ideology and "movement". And I would submit that this issue, more than any other, including wars, budgets, corruption and cronyism, is the most important matter facing the electorate in 2006 and beyond.

With Friends Like These, part 56

From MyDD:

"...what I would like to discuss in this post is not conservative code, but instead Democratic hawk code. This is a code that is starting to rise to the surface more and more as the country turns in favor of withdrawal, against the Iraq war, and all the dreams of Democratic hawks are crashing down around them.

For example, look at this code-laden excerpt from Amy Sullivan (emphasis mine):"

'The conclusion in many liberal circles seems to be: We just need to talk about those issues more. Voters don't seem to realize what our positions are. No, voters know damn well what you stand for. They simply aren't listening to you because you haven't satisfied their initial conditions: credibility on national security and on culture. It doesn't matter that you'd prefer to talk about domestic issues. If you can't pass the threshold of convincing them that you can be trusted on those other two fronts, they're not going to listen to a word you say about the other stuff.

This doesn't mean Democrats have to make their campaigns all about national security and culture. Far from it. But they do need to suck it up and accept something Republicans realized a long time ago: You can't tell Americans they must care about what you want to discuss; you must discuss what they care about.'

"This is an amazing excerpt. It contains what strikes me as the ultimate piece of Democratic hawk code in the first quoted paragraph: "credibility on national security." If you don't believe that this is Democratic hawk code, just plug "credibility on national security" into Google and here is what you get, in order:

1. Evan Bayh on Fox stating that Democrats lack "credibility on national security.
2. The "Progressive" Policy Institute (aka the DLC) arguing that Democrats need to re-establish "credibility on national security."
3. Democracy Corps arguing that Democrats must cross the threshold of "credibility on national security."
4. A post from the Left Coaster about a New Yorker piece that quotes Democrats with the most "credibility on national security," but actually only seems to be about Kerry and Lieberman railing against "blogger types."
5. A Washington Monthly blog post about Howard Dean lacking "credibility on national security."
6. An article from the National Review discussing how the Bush campaign successfully raised questions about Kerry's "credibility on national security."
7. A piece from Mathew Yglesias about how Democrats have never had "credibility on national security" since he Vietnam era.

And on and on and on. The pattern here is obvious. The vast majority of uses of the term "credibility on national security" come from people who fit all of the following characteristics:

-They are self-identified Democrats.
-They have strong ties to center-right Democratic organizations.
-They were openly in favor of invading Iraq.
-They are vehemently opposed to withdrawal from Iraq.

"Credibility on national security" is actually DLC-type code for "continue neo-con military policies, especially in Iraq." The majority of people who seem to be trumpeting that Democrats are lacking "credibility on national security" are Democrats. They are, without fail, Iraq hawks. "


As Chris Bowers accurately notes, public opinion is on the side of us lefties here. So we don't need no damn national security credibility. But even if public opinion wasn't on our side, or was more muddled, the "Democrats lack credibility on national security" rhyme being put out by the DLC and other pseudo-Democratic neocons would still be nonsense. With the administration finally on the ropes after enduring four post-911 years of being labeled traitors, Democrats and the left have an opportunity to reassert ourselves, change the debate, and ultimately change policy. Instead, the DLC is chirping in with their favorite past-time activity--bashing other Democrats.

Lest we think maybe the DLC is just engaging in some much deserved tough love and forget the DLC's lack of committment to the Democratic Party's cause, consider these statements from Rick Perlstein:

"After the 1994 elections Joel Kotkin, a senior fellow of the DLC's Progressive Policy Institute, called for New Democrats to cut Clinton loose in favor of a primary challenger in 1996 or even think about leaving the Democratic Party alltogether. The DLC's Progressive Foundation put out feelers to begin a third-party movement--'a new approach' according to the PPI board chairman, Michael Steinhardt, 'to separate ourselves from the Democratic Party'.

taken from The Stock Ticker and the SuperJumbo by Rick Perlstein, page 111.


As Iraq continues to crumble into anarchy, and the administration that propagated the rational for becomes bogged down in the corruption of its own making, let's not let the DLC force the Democratic Party to carry the baggage of this botched invasion around in 2006 or 2008 because the DLC doesn't have our best interests at heart.

Iraq

From TPM Cafe:

Secretary Rice traveled to Capitol Hill today to testify, for the first time ever, on the biggest foreign policy issue confronting our nation: Iraq. In her opening statement, Rice said this about our objectives:

We know our objectives. We and the Iraqi Government will succeed if together we can:

-- Break the back of the insurgency so that Iraqis can finish it off without large-scale military help from the United States.
-- Keep Iraq from becoming a safe haven from which Islamic extremists can terrorize the region or the world.
-- Demonstrate positive potential for democratic change and free expression in the Arab and Muslim worlds, even under the most difficult conditions.
-- And turn the corner financially and economically, so there is a sense of hope and a visible path toward self-reliance.

Now, read that again, and tell me if this is serious.

Let's remember, there was no insurgency in Iraq before we invaded the country and then totally bungled the aftermath. And there was little chance of Iraq becoming a safe haven for terrorists before we invaded the country and then totally bungled the aftermath. In other words, our first two objectives in Iraq are to undo the disaster our own actions and inactions created!

As for the remaining objectives, demonstrating the "positive potential for democratic change and free expression" is a very long cry from establishing a viable democracy in the heart of the Arab world, which a couple of years ago was declared the official aim of our continued involvement in Iraq. And "turning the corner financially and economically," though difficult, doesn't strike me as setting the bar terribly high.

Which leaves me with this thought: the limited nature of these objectives suggests that the administration may finally be realizing the extraordinary disaster we're in and is trying, desperately, to find a way to declare victory so we can get out.

Liberals and Conservatives

Paul Waldman:

There was a time when a "liberal" was something most people -- even some conservatives -- wanted to be. On the stump in 1952, Dwight Eisenhower said "we need in Washington liberal and experienced members of Congress." Eight years later, Richard Nixon quoted FDR's definition of a liberal as "a man who wants to build bridges over the chasms that separate humanity from a better life," and said, "It is a wonderful definition, and I agree with him."

But when Republicans began to go after liberalism, Democrats cowered in fear, not only trying to distance themselves from the term but embracing the idea that a "conservative" is a great thing to be. Few Republicans would claim to be "social liberals" -- even if they are -- but Democrats are always claiming to be "fiscal conservatives," saying they have "conservative values" or chiding Republicans for not holding to the principles of conservatism on issues like the deficit. The message this sends to Americans who don't know much about politics is that, regardless of the details of policy, it's good to be conservative and bad to be liberal.

Which brings us to what may be the most important feature of ideological competition in America today: Unlike liberals, conservatives don't simply criticize specific candidates or pieces of legislation, they attack their opponents' entire ideological worldview. Tune into Rush Limbaugh or any of his imitators, and what you'll hear is little more than an extended discourse on the evils of liberalism, in which specific events are merely evidence that the real problem is liberal ideology. Liberals may write best-selling books about why George W. Bush is a terrible president, but conservatives write best-selling books about why liberalism is a pox on our nation (talk radio hate-monger Michael Savage, for instance, titled his latest book Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder).

Indeed, large portions of the conservative movement can be understood as an effort to crush liberalism in all its manifestations. Conservatives understand that their main enemy is not a law, government program, or social condition they don't like. Their main enemy is a competing ideology, and that is what they spend their time fighting.

In contrast, liberals spend very little time talking about conservatism. They talk about their opposition to President Bush or the policies proposed by the Republican Congress, but they don't offer a critique of conservatism itself. When was the last time you saw a book-length polemic against conservatism? Liberals have failed to understand that a sustained critique of the other side's ideology not only defines your opponents, it helps to define you by what you are against.

As a consequence, while there are "movement conservatives," there are no "movement liberals" for the simple reason that there is no coherent entity we could call the "liberal movement." Instead, there are a dozen liberal movements -- a pro-choice movement, an environmental movement, a labor movement, and so on. Whether cause or consequence, the conservative campaign against liberalism has been accompanied by a sharpening of conservative identity, not only in the public mind but in the hearts of conservatives themselves.

There is no doubt that the difference between the number of people who tell pollsters they are conservatives and those who say they are liberals should be a matter of concern for Democrats. But if they respond to that concern by "moving" to an imagined "center" -- in other words, by making their positions on issues more conservative -- they will find themselves in an even worse hole than they are now. The Democrats' "liberal" problem isn't about issues, it's about identity.

As part of a solution, many on the left have decided to start with a clean slate, ditching "liberal" in favor of "progressive." As a strategic move, this has much to commend it. Recent American political history has made it hard to argue that the root of "liberal" -- liberty -- belongs more to the left than to the right. In contrast, liberals can legitimately claim that they and not conservatives are the advocates of progress. They can argue that with their desire to conserve, conservatives are stuck in the past, while progressives want to achieve social and economic progress. Any number of different issues can be understood through this prism.

But the rebranding of the left through the substitution of "progressive" for "liberal" can only succeed if all on the left agree that they are in fact progressives, and proclaim it loudly. If they accompany that proclamation with a critique not just of conservative policies and politicians but of conservatism itself, they'll find more and more moderates calling themselves progressive. Otherwise, they'll be right back where they started.

I think this is exactly right, and suggests the idea that rather than running from the liberal label, Democrats would do better, over the long run, of resuscitating the word liberal (or progressive if you prefer) and begin the process of competing for voters on the basis of ideology, rather than personality or even specific issues.

Thanks to Atrios for the link.

Democrats: Show Us The Voters

I found this over at MyDD:

Growing the Democratic Party is perhaps the most crucial task we can commit ourselves to over the next year. If we're successful, we have a very serious chance to win back control of Congress. Two stories in particular have brought the issue to my attention today. Mathew Gross, commenting on the latest polling and strategy memo from Democracy Corps highlights Carville and Greenberg's suggestion that "Democrats should revisit the Perot voters and their concerns" if they want to "become the party of change" in 2006. Meanwhile, at CQ Weekly (subscription only), the cover story "New Heaven, New Earth" examines the political branching out of evangelical Christians into areas outside of anti-abortion activism.

(snip)

Here's how Carville and Greenberg define Ross Perot's natural base, which they view as up for grabs in 2006.

His voters were the most anti-political and anti-elitist, anti-big government and big corporations, anti-free trade and anti-immigration. They were pro-military but anti-foreign entanglements. They were libertarian and secular, pro-gun and pro-choice. The Perot voters were younger, more blue collar and rural, and economically pressed and uneasy in the new economy. They were also angry with the political and economic elites that failed to represent them.

They argue that this was the group that helped shift the House to the Republicans in 1994 as well as breaking for Bush in 2000. Examining this list point-by-point, it's easy to see how this group could be swayed to the Democrats in next year's midterms.

...Democrats created a near majority with their coalition of suburban and more secular voters, the best educated and more cosmopolitan, union households, and the growing number of minority voters, particularly African Americans and Hispanics. But that has been more than offset by their dramatic decline among white rural and blue collar voters - the consequence of the values issues but also of Democrats not figuring out how to incorporate the dislodged Perot voters.

Hey, I like Carville. And as far as 2006 goes, maybe he's even onto something. But this form of "strategery" concerns me. It sounds like pretty much what the party's been trying for the last twenty years in some form or another. And it just sounds very lacking of anything like consistency, principles, or values. It's a strategy that just wants to know how this year's voters can be appealed to. But it doesn't clarify what the party stands for, and it doesn't seem interested in responding to the very real crisis that I think modern conservatism presents us with.

Scott Shields seems to be wary of this himself as he says:

My fear is that many of the Perot voters are simply anti-government and therefore anti-incumbent. Though they very well could vote for Democrats in 2006, can we really count on them to stick with the party over the long haul?

My answer to that is, probably not. And that's the problem.

Meanwhile, even as we Democrats are getting a kick out of the conservatives' infighting amongst themselves over the Mier's nomination, I can't help but be bothered by the fact that at the root of their in-house bickering, lies an ideological dispute about their movement and what they want government to do and society to look like. Democrats don't seem to have arguments like this.

The Washington Post today has another article of how conservative ideologues and interest groups are reacting to the Mier's nomination and what the import is for the conservative movement.

In the Godfather II, Michael Corleone is in Cuba prior to the revolution on a business trip and witnesses the capture of a number of Castro rebels, one of whom blows himself up rather than be captured. This intrigues Corleone who reasons with Hyman Roth, an associate who wants Michael to put up 2 million dollars in cash in a hotel deal. Corleone notes that the soldiers of the Cuban government are paid to fight but the rebels are not. What does that tell you, Roth asks? Corleone responds by saying that It Tells Me They Can Win.

The conservative movement, complete with its inflexible, dogmatic interest group bosses, reminds me of this movie's scene and the drive of the rebels. They don't much care whether a majority of people agree with them or like them. They're going to do what they want anyway. Or die trying.

Democrats, on the other hand, show too many signs of trying to align themselves with voters rather than giving voters a reason to align themselves with us. In the case of the Carville-Greenberg memo, it's the elusive Perot-voter, which is another way of saying "the center". But this group is either non-existent, or isn't going to buy into what Democrats are selling because they are not selling something consistent.

Now, obviously, parties need to reach beyond a base of voters to win, and winning elections is what parties are all about. But the problem has become that the strategy of reaching beyond the base is the entire Democratic strategy, and there is very little base upon which to expand into the world of a governing majority.

As Robert Reich has noted:

We failed because we failed to build a political movement behind us. Americas newly ascendant radical conservatives do have such a movement, which explains a large part of their success. They have developed dedicated sources of money and legions of ground troops who not only get out the vote but also spend the time between elections persuading others to join their ranks. They have devised frames of reference that are used repeatedly in policy debates (among them: its your money, tax and spend, political correctness, class warfare). They have a system for recruiting and electing officials nationwide who share the same world view and who will vote accordingly. And they have a coherent ideology uniting evangelical Christians, blue-collar whites in the South and West, and big business, an ideology in which foreign enemies, domestic poverty and crime, and homosexuality all must be met with strict punishment and religious orthodoxy.

Democrats have built no analogous movement. Instead, every four years party loyalists throw themselves behind a presidential candidate who they believe will deliver them from the rising tide of conservatism. After the election, they go back to whatever they were doing before. Other Democrats have involved themselves in single issue politics, the environment, campaign finance, the war in Iraq, and so on, but these battles have failed to build a political movement. Issues rise and fall depending on which interests are threatened and when. They can even divide Democrats, as each advocacy group scrambles after the same set of liberal donors and competes for the limited attention of the news media.

This isn't to say that among most Democrats there aren't a core group of principles and issues we support. Abortion rights, the social welfare safety net, and opposition to the war in Iraq constitutes a pretty sizable section of the Democratic electorate. But many among the Democratic leadership have been backpedaling on their support for abortion rights, and most of the Democratic leadership supported the war in Iraq, as well as the president's series of tax cuts that have made the financing of social security and health care precarious.

So, yes, let's appeal to today's version of the Perot voters where we can. But let's not get sidetracked by trying to appeal to a whole new group of voters every two years. Let's articulate the agenda that we believe to be important, and work on selling the American people on it over the long haul.

Just Wait Till Next Time!

George Will dismisses the importance of Tom DeLay's indictment and even suggests, with a clever silver lining in the cloud analogy, that the turnover in House leadership will help the conservative cause of good--read, less-- economic government. Will points out the excess of pork in the recent transportation bill and notes the explosion of lobbyists in Washington since 2000, who are not committed, as Will is, to the goal of "less government". He points fondly, instead, to conservative purists, like Indiana's Mike Pence, who leads something called the republican study committee as a shining example of the kind of representative who will duly help turn the direction of government back to the agrarian days of yesteryore.

Will seems to think the demise of DeLay will finally usher in the dawn of true conservative governance, complete with relentless budget slashing, except for defense spending for which the sky is the limit, and further tax cutting utopia.

I don't think Will gets it. DeLay was a cog in The Machine. He'll be replaced by sojmeone else and business will remain the same. Conservative Republicans may have helped create the monster, but they're no longer driving the ship of state. Chopping government down till it can be "drowned in a bathtub" is the holy grail of "movement" conservatives. But it doesn't work in practice. It's unpopular, it's dysfunctional for the service of power, and its ultimately unrealizable.

Nonetheless, conservatives will continue to believe that THIS time, they really mean it. Just wait till they get THEIR man in as the Majority leader; Just wait until they get THEIR man elected president; just wait until THEIR man is confirmed to the Supreme Court. Just wait till THIS tax reduction package is approved. And on and on.

Please Nominate This Man

The NYTimes today has a piece on Kansas Senator Sam Brownback. The Senator is making an appearance in New Hampshire--an obligatory trip for all prospective presidential candidates. Should he run in 2008, Brownback would no doubt campaign on what has got him here so far--his religion or religions (once an evangelical protestant, he converted to Roman Catholicism a few years ago and on Sundays hits both churches), his new found committment to saturating political and social life with even more religion than it already has or can endure, and ultimately, his apparent thirst to propogate a "culture war":

At the Republican National Convention in 2004 he rallied a closed-door meeting of Christian conservatives with calls for a "cultural war."

The call for a "culture war" was a number one hit for Republicans in 1992. If most of the public is as tired of wars, culture and otherwise, as I suspect they are, a Brownback candidacy would be a most helpful boost to the next Democratic presidential nominee.

Really Off Center

From Christopher Hayes' review of Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson:

The second half of Off Center describes in detail how the Republican Machine works, how it rewards friends and punishes enemies, and how it has neutered or annihilated the moderates in its midst. Broken up into clear subsections with apt coinages like backlash insurance, the ways party leaders protect legislators from constituent disgust with the partys radical direction, Hacker and Pierson lay out in sober detail the various ruses the New Power Brokers employ: robbing committee chairs of their independence by instituting term limits, using the House Rules Committee (which has nine Republicans and four Democrats) to quietly kill threatening amendments, utilizing obscure administrative rules to institute broad policy changes, holding floor votes open while arms are twisted to pass legislation, shutting Democrats out of conference committees where corporate pork can be larded onto already passed legislation away from the minority partys prying eyes, tightly coordinating different factions of the right, and, as Nicholas Confessore first reported in these pages, bullying lobbying firms into hiring only Republicans.

(snip)

As lurid as the details are, one cant help but ask: Why didnt previous majorities do this sort of thing? Tip O'Neill was a smart guy. Why didnt he provide his members with backlash insurance, or change the Ethics Committee rules so that the majority party could single handedly stop an investigation? While Off Center never explicitly addresses this question, the implicit answer is a simple as it is disturbing. Much of what kept prior governing coalitions in check were informal, generally agreed-upon norms rather than black letter law or immutable rules. Consider that for years state legislatures have, as a matter of custom, redistricted congressional districts only every 10 years, following new census data. There was nothing stopping a majority party from engineering a mid decade redistricting for its own partisan advantage other than a generalized sense it would be cheating to do so. Such considerations mean little to Tom DeLay and Karl Rove.

This seems about right. But consider Democratic threats to filibuster ideologically radical judges. Republicans cried using the filibuster in this way was abusing this time-honored instrument. With the exception of the Republican-led filibuster of Abe Fortas in the 1960's, maybe they were right (although during the Clinton Administration many nominees never even got to committee). And ultimately, Republican counter-threats to scuttle the filibuster intimidated Democrats into compromising. So be it. But how come Republicans have not been made to pay for the Texas redistricting? How come Democrats haven't threatened (at least to my knowledge) to open up redistricting decisions in Democratic states? I think under the current circumstances, Democrats should consider all bets off. If the Miers nomination is withdrawn or defeated, and a more reactionary nominee is offered, Democrats should give no quarter. The Republicans have shown no concern for congressional or political norms. Or for recognizing the prerogatives of the minority party. Democrats should respond in kind. If Republicans threaten to filibuster nominees in a future Democratic Administration, Democrats should say they'll be happy to reopen redistricting cases in Democratic states. Until there is a substantive change in the Republican leadership, Democrats shouldn't feel obligated to play by rules that Republicans have long since abandoned.

Those CD case stickers

I came across this post over at Approximately Perfect the other day. First, I laughed, because it was hilarious. I am usually many minutes in my car, engine running, trying to pry my new CD's from their tightly sealed, plastic wrap, and then from that annoying sticker over the top of the CD cover that always comes off in little sticky pieces.

Fortunately, commenter Pinko Punko has a solution for the sticker on top problem:

Here's the trick with the sticker over the top. unhook the jewel case from the other side, and use the whole half of the case to peel the sticker off, then hook the jewel case back together. that should do it.

Thanks, Pinko Punko. I'll try it next time.

Is the Conservative Movement Worth Emulating?

Even when it is judged on its own terms--as a struggle over values, patriotism, national honor, and the correct way to worship the Almighty, the (conservative) backlash has pretty much been a complete bust. Culturally, it has achieved almost nothing in the past three decades. TV and movies are many times coarser than they were in 1968. Traditional gender roles continue to crumble. Homosexuality is more visible and more accepted than ever.

This is a basic earmark of the phenomenon, absolutely consistent across its decades-long history. Abortion is never halted. Affirmative action is never abolished. The culture industry is never forced to clean up its act.

This is vexing for observers, and one might expect it to vex the movement's true believers even more. Their grandstanding leaders never deliver, their fury mounts and mounts, and nevertheless, they turn out every two years to return their right-wing heroes to office for a second, a third, a twentieth try. The trick never ages; the illusion never wears off.

Thomas Frank, What's The Matter With Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, p. 121; pp. 6-7.


Since George Washington ran for reelection in 1793, there have been 53 presidential elections...twenty-nine of those elections involved incumbents running for reelection, of which the incumbent won 20, or 69 percent. The other 24 elections were open races with no incumbent, and in half of them, the party out of power won the election. In other words, if you take incumbents out of the picture, a party has a 50-50 chance of winning the next presidential election. I take this to mean that winning elections is a random sort of thing and not something that parties have much control over. Any sort of effort to rethink the Democratic Party and what it stands for is a rather futile proposition because events will outrun even the most perspicacious observers.

Philip Klinkner, "The Winds of Change", in The Stock Ticker and the Super Jumbo: How the Democrats Can Once Again Become America's Dominant Political Party; pp. 98-99.


There is more I intend to say about these references, but for now, I think it's enough to use them as a bit of context as Democrats look to 2006 and beyond. In surfing liberal blogs, there's an almost unstated awe and fear one finds on the part of liberals when assessing the Conservative Movement. They have big, well funded Think Tanks. They have a stable of wealthy, conservative financiers. They have a monopoly on Talk Radio. Now they have Fox "News". They have the TV evangelists, mega-churches, and "family" advocate groups on their side, completely dedicated to them and committed to eradicating us. Many liberal bloggers, and even this blog from time to time, have expressed an interest in replicating the conservative success, of restoring Democracy's golden era, much as down and out conservatives once teared up and plotted to restore their own heritage.

But is the conservative movement successful and is it worth emulating? The above quotations provide some evidence that the answer to these two questions is no. First, because despite its nominal hold on federal power, the conservative movement has not come close to achieving its aspirations, a fault line that has been at least partially exposed in the Harriet Miers nomination. Two, because despite all their money, organization, and rhetoric, they're success rate isn't much better than 50-50. And given that the last century was a liberal era, both politically and socially, it stands to reason that even if only by chance, Republicans were bound to win a period of elections at some point.

So what I conclude, at least part of the time, is that the conservative movement isn't all its cracked up to be. Liberals shouldn't necessarily fear it, and shouldn't worship it. On the other hand, that doesn't mean Democrats shouldn't confront conservatism's excesses and warn the voters of the harmful choices the Republican Party and its sponsors are offering.

O No

Looks like the Baltimore Orioles are going to keep Sam Perlozzo on as their skipper next year. Perlozzo became the interim manager when the O's let Lee Mazilli go on August 4. But Perlozzo didn't exactly endear himself in the win column.

The O's went 22-32 under Perlozzo, but faired particularly poorly against the Red Sox and the Yankees down the stretch, leading one commentator to wonder if the O's weren't guilty of fraud in not putting up more of a game against the contenders. The Orioles lost nine straight games towards the end of September, and went 12-18 for the month, a record greatly enhanced by the team's final weekend sweep of the Devil Rays.

Sam's a good guy, everybody likes him, but the O's needed to clean house this off-season, and with the exception of letting one of their two general managers go, they don't appear to be doing that.

Monday Morning Quarterback (Special Columbus Day Edition)

Ravens 17
Lions 35

Ravens flagged for 21 penalties and 2 ejections during the game; after the game, additional penalties were handed out for the following infractions: Neon Deon Prime Time Sanders actually on Ravens' roster--and playing--15 yard penalty; Brian Billick once known as "offensive genius"--10 yards; False start, Ravens' bus driver--5 yards.

Redskins 19
Denver 21

Redskins caught looking ahead to 49'ers game in two weeks.

Saints 3
Pack 52

Gee, ya think the Pack was pissed about its 0-4 start, and Favre about rumors of his retirement?

Pats 31
Falcons 28

Michael Vick a last minute scratch and Pats still have to barely hold on against somebody named Matt Mauck.

Bucs 12
Jets 14

Vinnie Testaverde returns and the Jets recover their ground game.


Texas Tech 34
Nebraska 31

Nebraska defense intercepts Texas Tech pass deep in its own end in final seconds to preserve certain victory, BUT THEN forgets to just down the ball, electing instead to RUN with the thing, resulting in a fumble back to Texas Tech and a last second Texas Tech toughdown pass to seal the game.

Braves 6
Roger Clemens 7 (18 innings)

I turned this game off in the ninth inning, Braves ahead 6-5, went out to do yard work, returned three hours later, AND THE GAME WAS STILL ON.

What's an Evangelical?

Well, you really have to feel for these conservative evangelicals, especially the ones down south. They've got their man in the oval office. They claim Tom DeLay, warts and all, as their own. James Dobson has the president's ear. And now they've gotten one of their charter members nominated for the supremes.

But.

Is she really evangelical enough? Is she the "right" kind of evangelical? Wasn't the evangelical label supposed to guarantee a certain political correctness of the conservative variety? I mean, baptize them, and they're supposed to come up out of the water opposing all forms of abortion, attacking gays, and demanding coerced prayer in the public schools. And, naturally, they shouldn't have any problem with an apartheid South America.

But while Harriet may be the president's best bud, and for all anybody knows, might be as harshly conservative as Edmund Burke, there's a little doubt. Her "pro-life" credentials are questionable. She apparently isn't afraid of gay people. She started up a women's group of some kind that invited liberal speakers. And back in the day, but after her conversion, she though the Dallas City Council needed to be better represented by minorities, and she even advocated the council divest any of its South African holdings while apartheid remained the law of the land there.

What the blog is going on here? No wonder George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Ann Coulter and William Kristol are throwing her under the bus.

Is it possible that "evangelical" might not mean true-blue, minority-bashing, homophobic, fire-breathing, poor people-hatin', political conservative?

Conservative and Liberal

A new book and a recent report raise anew the issue of Democratic liberalism vs Democratic centrism.

The difference between the two positions, more liberalism or more centrism, hinges, it seems to me, on what one believes about the country's "conservatism". As public opinion polls indicate, more Americans identify as conservatives rather than liberals, some polls showing almost a
2-to-1 conservative advantage.

But here is what I want to know: did Republicans adopt an overtly conservative rhetoric and agenda beginning in the 1950's and 1960's in order to cater to the public that it perceived as already inherently conservative, or did Republicans "create" a conservative majority in the public by the use of the conservative "brand name"?

It should be easy enough to find out what the conservative to liberal ratio was during the post-war years when the ideological split between the parties began to be more distinct. While this might be instructive, it's also the case that an investigation of this kind would be mired in conceptions of just what exactly constitutes "conservative" and "liberal".

But the basic point is, do you think that a "liberal brand name" can be "created"? I think this is the position that most of us on the left take. That Republicans have succeeded in no small degree by staking their claims unapologetically to a "conservative brand name" while Democrats have basically chosen to avoid ideological labels (think Michael Dukakis' "competence not ideology" based campaign) or to try to position themselves as the "moderates" or the "centrists".

But in any event, as I, and I think many on the left believe, whatever the realities of public opinion and ideological self identification among the public might be at any point in time, or whatever the public's perception of conservative-liberal dichtomies, the Democratic Party's avoidance of ideology in general, and its retreat from liberalism in particular, has been a disaster.

By shrinking from the liberal label, Democrats have embolded Republicans to be more "conservative" and to push the country's politics and policy further to the extreme right. Democratic acquiencense to the Republican conservative talking points has allowed Republicans and its media institutions to marginalize and in many ways demonize the word "liberal" itself, those wishing to move the country in a more liberal and humane direction, important institutions, such as the ACLU(again remember 1988) and more recently, groups like Moveon and people such as Michael Moore, and perhaps most importantly, liberal "values" such as reproductive choice, the right to privacy, the separation of church and state, and the freedom of expression both in war time and in other times.

And of course, ultimately, liberal Democrats believe that the public's embrace of liberal Democratic values on health care, social security and the right to choose, put it in a more favorable position to campaign as "liberals" than a superficial reading of conservative vs. liberal self identifiers might indicate.

Was Rove "summoned" or did he "offer" to come back to the grand jury?

After reading this yesterday I thought I had a pretty good handle on what was going on in the Plame investigation:

WASHINGTON - Federal prosecutors have accepted an offer from presidential adviser Karl Rove to give 11th hour testimony in the case of a CIA officer's leaked identity but have warned they cannot guarantee he won't be indicted, according to people directly familiar with the investigation.

Then, this morning, I read this:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 6 - The special prosecutor in the C.I.A. leak case has summoned Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, to return next week to testify to a federal grand jury in a step that could mean charges will be filed in the case, lawyers in the case said Thursday.

Maybe these reports are not as inconsistent as they sound: maybe the special prosecutor "summoned" Rove after Rove "offered" to come back in. But it sounds like a contrast to me. Maybe one of you can help me clear it up.

Colleen

I meant to mention this long ago, but among the candidates vying to reverse the neo-con agenda in Congress in 2006 is Colleen Rowley, the famous 9-11, FBI-whisteblower.

She's running as a Democrat in Minnesota's 2nd congressional district, currently represented by Republican John Kline.

Colleen's the kind of representation the country needs in Congress. You can visit her website and contribute to her campaign here.

Gore

Soon after television established its dominance over print, young people who realized they were being shut out of the dialogue of democracy came up with a new form of expression in an effort to join the national conversation: the "demonstration." This new form of expression, which began in the 1960s, was essentially a poor quality theatrical production designed to capture the attention of the television cameras long enough to hold up a sign with a few printed words to convey, however plaintively, a message to the American people. Even this outlet is now rarely an avenue for expression on national television.

(snip)

It is important to note that the absence of a two-way conversation in American television also means that there is no "meritocracy of ideas" on television. To the extent that there is a "marketplace" of any kind for ideas on television, it is a rigged market, an oligopoly, with imposing barriers to entry that exclude the average citizen.

The German philosopher, Jurgen Habermas, describes what has happened as "the refeudalization of the public sphere." That may sound like gobbledygook, but it's a phrase that packs a lot of meaning. The feudal system which thrived before the printing press democratized knowledge and made the idea of America thinkable, was a system in which wealth and power were intimately intertwined, and where knowledge played no mediating role whatsoever. The great mass of the people were ignorant. And their powerlessness was born of their ignorance.

It did not come as a surprise that the concentration of control over this powerful one-way medium carries with it the potential for damaging the operations of our democracy. As early as the 1920s, when the predecessor of television, radio, first debuted in the United States, there was immediate apprehension about its potential impact on democracy. One early American student of the medium wrote that if control of radio were concentrated in the hands of a few, "no nation can be free."

As a result of these fears, safeguards were enacted in the U.S. -- including the Public Interest Standard, the Equal Time Provision, and the Fairness Doctrine - though a half century later, in 1987, they were effectively repealed. And then immediately afterwards, Rush Limbaugh and other hate-mongers began to fill the airwaves.

And radio is not the only place where big changes have taken place. Television news has undergone a series of dramatic changes. The movie "Network," which won the Best Picture Oscar in 1976, was presented as a farce but was actually a prophecy. The journalism profession morphed into the news business, which became the media industry and is now completely owned by conglomerates.

The news divisions - which used to be seen as serving a public interest and were subsidized by the rest of the network - are now seen as profit centers designed to generate revenue and, more importantly, to advance the larger agenda of the corporation of which they are a small part. They have fewer reporters, fewer stories, smaller budgets, less travel, fewer bureaus, less independent judgment, more vulnerability to influence by management, and more dependence on government sources and canned public relations hand-outs. This tragedy is compounded by the ironic fact that this generation of journalists is the best trained and most highly skilled in the history of their profession. But they are usually not allowed to do the job they have been trained to do.

The present executive branch has made it a practice to try and control and intimidate news organizations: from PBS to CBS to Newsweek. They placed a former male escort in the White House press pool to pose as a reporter - and then called upon him to give the president a hand at crucial moments. They paid actors to make make phony video press releases and paid cash to some reporters who were willing to take it in return for positive stories. And every day they unleash squadrons of digital brownshirts to harass and hector any journalist who is critical of the President.

For these and other reasons, The US Press was recently found in a comprehensive international study to be only the 27th freest press in the world. And that too seems strange to me.

Among the other factors damaging our public discourse in the media, the imposition by management of entertainment values on the journalism profession has resulted in scandals, fabricated sources, fictional events and the tabloidization of mainstream news. As recently stated by Dan Rather - who was, of course, forced out of his anchor job after angering the White House - television news has been "dumbed down and tarted up."

(snip)

One of the only avenues left for the expression of public or political ideas on television is through the purchase of advertising, usually in 30-second chunks. These short commercials are now the principal form of communication between candidates and voters. As a result, our elected officials now spend all of their time raising money to purchase these ads.

That is why the House and Senate campaign committees now search for candidates who are multi-millionaires and can buy the ads with their own personal resources. As one consequence, the halls of Congress are now filling up with the wealthy.

Campaign finance reform, however well it is drafted, often misses the main point: so long as the only means of engaging in political dialogue is through purchasing expensive television advertising, money will continue by one means or another to dominate American politic s. And ideas will no longer mediate between wealth and power.

And what if an individual citizen, or a group of citizens wants to enter the public debate by expressing their views on television? Since they cannot simply join the conversation, some of them have resorted to raising money in order to buy 30 seconds in which to express their opinion. But they are not even allowed to do that.

Moveon.org tried to buy ads last year to express opposition to Bush's Medicare proposal which was then being debated by Congress. They were told "issue advocacy" was not permissible. Then, one of the networks that had refused the Moveon ad began running advertisements by the White House in favor of the President's Medicare proposal. So Moveon complained and the White House ad was temporarily removed. By temporary, I mean it was removed until the White House complained and the network immediately put the ad back on, yet still refused to present the Moveon ad.

Wow. I'm not used to politicians speaking this way. The last five years have dumbed us all down.

Read the whole thing.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

I'm standing here on the ground
The sky above won't fall down
See no evil in all direction
Resolution of happiness
Things have been dark
For too long

Don't change for you
Don't change a thing for me

from INXS, "Don't Change"

I've been walking forty miles of bad road
If the bible is right, the world will explode
I've been trying to get as far away from myself as I can
Some things are too hot to touch
The human mind can only stand so much
You can't win with a losing hand

Feel like falling in love with the first woman I meet
Putting her in a wheel barrow and wheeling her down the street

People are crazy and times are strange
I'm locked in tight, I'm out of range
I used to care, but things have changed

from Bob Dylan, "Things Have Changed"

I'm moving through some changes
I'll never be the same
Something you did touched me
There's no one else to blame
The love we had has fallen
The love we used to share
We've given up pretending
As if you didn't care

Change changing places
Root yourself to the ground
Capitalize on this good fortune
One word can bring you round
Changes

from Yes, "Changes"

Yesterday, in defending his choice of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court, the president said this:

I know her well enough to be able to say that she's not going to change, that 20 years from now she'll be the same person with the same philosophy that she is today. She'll have more experience, she'll have been a judge, but, nevertheless, her philosophy won't change. And that's important to me. It was important to me when I picked Chief Justice Roberts; it's important for me in picking Harriet Miers.

What?

She's not going to change in 20 years? This is a bizarre statement (yes, I know, consider the source). But how can you, me, the president, or anyone know that someone won't change, at least in some small way? And isn't change desirable anyway? Isn't it a part of life to grow, to change? OK, yes, I realize this is code for "Harriet Miers is no David Souter, Harriet Miers is no Anthony Kennedy". But is conservative ideology, or any ideology or political program unchanging? After all, Kennedy was conservative when Reagan picked him, but as the conservative movement has become more radical, Kennedy's brand of conservativism has fallen out of favor.

Won't change? Just very bizarre.

Can We Do This a Few More Times, Just For Fun?

Texas Grand Jury Indicts DeLay Again

God Bless, Catherine Crier

A few bloggerings ago, I mentioned that Catherine Crier, a lawyer and former elected Republican judge in Texas, who went on to host her own show on Roger Ailes' Fox "News" network, and then moved over to Court TV, and who has written such anti-liberal books as The Case Against Lawyers, has finally had it up to here with the religious fundamentalism that's taken over her party and that has infected the mainstream of American politics (not for the first time, by the way).

She's written a new book entitled Contempt: How The Right Is Wronging American Justice. Now, I usually don't buy or read books that have the author's picture, particularly a near full body shot, draped all over the cover. But Crier's book is an exception.

Last night, the occasion of the Harriet Miers nomination had her on the Comcast channel discussing the pic, where she got to lay one in good about how the "right" is trying to enforce their narrow view of law and life on the rest of us, as a representative from one of the "family" organizations sputtered.

Hey, I'm a religious person. I read the Good Book almost daily and go to church weekly. I think there is a god or a higher power of consciousness. Catherine Crier and millions of others like her do, too. But the Bible is not a political theory or public policy text. And anyone who says it is plainly has not read, or seriously considered, what's written in it.

I'll provide examples later, but for now, thank you Catherine Crier for coming out of the religious liberty closet.

Get Your Campaign On

85: That's how old liberal Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens is. Today. And yes we're glad to hear he's spry for his age and even plays a round of tennis now and then. But four years from today, when there'll be a new president, he'll be 89. Right to Privacy? Hello? If you're worried now about the new shape of the Court, wait and see what another four years of Republicanism will do. Whoever it is that's planning campaigns for Evan Bayh, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, can you make this an issue? Nice Constitution and Bill of Rights we have here. Be a shame if we lost it. (and by the way, since the next president will likely have at least one Court appointment, I'm not going to be doing any hand-wringing if a Joe Biden or Evan Bayh gets the nomination. While none of the prospective 2008 field is my kind of progressive, who would you rather see holding this next appointment--Evan Bayh or Sam Brownback?)

George Will, the conservative dean of pundits, has a column out entitled Why The Voting Rights Act is Bad for Everyone. I won't do the disservice of linking to it, because the title about says it all (although I recognize that column titles are usually determined by the newspaper or media outlet). In any event, HRC, Joe Biden, Evan Bayh, John Edwards, in the course of your campaigns, can you find some time for arguing why we need to reauthorize those portions of the Voting Rights Act that are up for renewal in 2007?

Roy Moore, the "ten commandments judge" is running for governor in Alabama. He'll challenge fellow Republican Bob Riley in the primary. While I don't wish this man on the good people of Alabama, it's worth considering that, should he win in 2006, he'd be ripe for the Republican's top slot in 2008. Needless to say, I think it'd be great for the progressive cause, and for the next Dem nominee, if Moore runs for president in 2008.

Monday Morning Quarterback

Redskins, 3-0. Let's not get too excited, mkay guys. We've won by margins of 2, 1, and now, 3 points--in O.T. no less, after the other team's winning field goal hit the crossbar at the end of regulation. And even this guy is keeping the bandwagon in the garage. Two road games coming up, with Denver and KC, and both could easily be losses. So let's keep the celebrating and bragging down to a quiet roar.

But I can tell you what I did like from what I saw on Sunday. Brunell's completions on third and long. How many of those were there? Half a dozen? And he's throwing darts. More importantly, the team looks like it knows what it's doing on offense for the first time in years. True, Brunell through a bum deep pass towards David Patton that was too short and which got batted down by a defender as a result. But these long offensive drives, combined with clutch third and long performances have me very pleased with the team so far. I didn't like the switch to Brunell right after the first game, but Brunell has surprised me.

Who's in a world of hurt? The Vikings. 1-3 after getting hammered yesterday in Atlanta. Seems that the Arizona Cardinals recovered last night after spotting San Fran 14 defensive points. That keeps the 49'ers in the Reggie Bush sweepstakes. And at 1-3, Arizona is still in the Matt Leinert hunt.

I don't like the Pack, but now I feel sorry for them. They're 0-3 and in Carolina tonight. For the sake of Brett Favre, who's a class act, I hope GreenBay pulls the on-the-road upset tonight.

I suppose Vinnie Testaverde, age 42, will be starting for the Jets pretty soon, after exhibiting no offense yesterday in Baltimore. Putting up only three points, and that after being given a spot at the Ravens' one-yard line after a fumble return. But I don't think the Ravens are going anywhere. New quarterback there next year.

Buffalo already looks done for. Will Losman get benched this week?

Miami, off yesterday, looks to be in better shape in the AFC Least that we would have thought. Saban has them playing well and the Jets and Bills are hurt and struggling.

Don't know what's going on in the AFC West. San Diego blew up the Pats yesterday. Denver is 3-1. KC started well but like yesterday's collapse against the Eagles at home, they don't seem to have the stamina for the long haul.

Bengals, Colts and Bucanneers 4-0. Cincinnati looks to be for real. May come down to them and Pittsburgh in the AFC North. If the Patriots don't get it in gear, Peyton Manning won't even have to go through New England to get to the big dance.

For the Senate

It's a rare day when I read the Wash Post Metro section, a rarer day still when I read the Metro section before the others.

But today was such a day.

First, there was an article and an opinion piece on the gubernatorial race announcement by Baltimore Mayor, Martin O'Malley. O'Malley's announcement was no surprise for those of us even remotely cognizant of Maryland politics. Fellow Democrat and Montgomery County Executive Doug Duncan will also announce shortly.

Second, American University history professor Allan Lichtman announced for the U.S. Senate in Maryland, to succeed the retiring Paul Sarbanes. Lichtman is on TV a lot to comment on various political and historical comings and goings, but he has never run for office before, and is considered a dark horse to Congressman Ben Cardin, and former Congressman and NAACP chief Kwasi Mfume. But I like what Lichtman had to say:

"I am running to change what is wrong in Washington," Lichtman said. "My friends, today there is too much government intruding in our private lives and not enough government meeting our needs."

As readers of this blog will recognize, this is exactly what I believe Democrats should be talking about. Conservative leadership has and is producing a government and politics that is committed to invading our privacy and enforcing a narrow brand of morality while bungling it's duty to protect its most vulnerable citizens, all the while it shifts the balance of power even further to corporations and the wealthy.

How difficult is this for Democrats to say? It's a simple message, with an ample supply of evidence from five years of conservative Republican government to back it up. But most Democrats continue to tread softly and cautiously, afraid perhaps of offending somebody.

With the Republican's two majority leaders in Congress either already indicted or under serious criminal investigation, with a former official arrested, with a well-connected lobbyist under increasing scrutiny, with the White House's top political guru the subject of a grand jury investigation, with the after effects of Terry Schiavo and the two hurricanes, the continuing downward spiral in Iraq, if Democrats can't gain an audience, I have a hard time believing circumstances will give them the same kind of opportunity again.

Here's hoping the party leadership will follow Dr. Lichtman's lead, and call the Republicans out for their hostile agenda and offer an alternative.

What the Senator Reads

I saw over on Lindsay's blog where she listed the books she had read that are also on the American Library Association's list of most frequently challenged books of 1990-2000. Lindsay has read 29 of them. Pretty impressive. So I gave the full list to the Senator and asked him to identify which ones he had read.

Here is the Senator's list:

13. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
37. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
41. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
42. Beloved by Toni Morrison
47. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
55. Cujo by Stephen King
60. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
71. Native Son by Richard Wright
72. Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Fantasies by Nancy Friday
83. The Dead Zone by Stephen King

So the Senator has read 10 of them (an eleventh, Brave New World, is on the Senator's night stand but he's only gotten through the first couple of chapters).

I remarked to the Senator that his list was long on Stephen King and short on classics like Mark Twain. Moreover, I was especially surprised to see #72, Women on Top on his list. Why had the Senator read this?

The Senator just gave me one of those looks and asked if I didn't have a hearing to attend or a constituent letter to write.

Why "No" on Roberts

So some Democratic Senators are coming out against the Roberts nomination.

But what they are saying as to "why" they oppose his nomination sound strange to me.

Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh said Friday he will vote against the nomination of Judge John G. Roberts Jr. to be the next chief justice of the United States because not enough is known about how Roberts will act.

"I cannot (conclude he'll be a great justice) because so much essential to reaching a considered judgment about this nominee remains unknown," Bayh said in a statement. "And that is not enough for a lifetime appointment to our nation's highest court, a court from which there is no appeal, a court that is the ultimate arbiter of our most basic rights and freedoms."

But we already know plenty about Roberts' background and views on important issues and values.

As special assistant to the Attorney General in the Reagan Administration, and later as a key legal strategist in the Reagan White House counsel's office, Roberts was an aggressive participant in the administration's attempts to restrict fundamental constitutional and civil rights. In fact, Roberts often came down to the right of ultraconservative legal luminaries, including Robert Bork, William Bradford Reynolds, and Ted Olson. He supported the legality of radical proposals to strip the courts of jurisdiction over certain school desegregation remedies, abortion, and school prayer. He denigrated what he referred to as the “so-called” right to privacy, resisted attempts to fully restore the effectiveness of the Voting Rights Act, and worked against measures aimed at increasing gender equity. As the Washington Post has reported, at times he was “derisive, using words such as 'purported' and 'perceived' to describe discrimination against women.”

He has dismissed the Constitutional Right to Privacy (oh yes, he offered qualified support for a right to privacy during the hearings, but what did you think he was going to say in order to forestall a Democratic filibuster?).

Sounds like reason enough to me to oppose him. Democratic Senators would be doing themselves and their constituents a much greater service if they would acknowledge these concerns, rather than hide behind, what sounds to me as, a fig leaf of "not enough about Roberts is known".

Using Force

From the Myrtle Beach Online, August 31, 2005 (via AllAmericaPac--Senator Evan Bayh's unofficial 2008 webpage):

He (Bayh) said Democrats need to improve their credibility on national security and convince Americans that Democrats are willing to use force when necessary.

Now, before delving into this statement--which is pretty much boilerplate for anyone affiliated with the DLC--I want to acknowledge the fact that, as Kos argues, progressives are going to have a hard time finding a candidate that satisfies all of their wishes in 2008. So I'm not about eliminating would-be candidates on the basis of any one statement or vote. What's more, I also need to add that despite what I'm about to say, I still like Bayh for the 2008 race, for reasons I will get into in another post. And of course, nothing I'm about to say is anything new.

Nevertheless, Bayh's statement is troubling on a lot of different levels.

The main one is it strikes me as a code message for: Bush was right to wage war on Iraq (and Democrats who supported the war were right to back the resolution providing its nominal authorization).

Among the statement's other implicit messages are that: (a) the public is worried about national security; (b) the display and deployment of military force is a, or the, proper and justified response to that worry; (c) the U.S. possesses nearly unlimited capacity and resources, political, economic, and moral, to wage war, and that (d) Democrats must campaign on a willingness, even a predisposition, to use military force to pursue the country's perceived security objectives.

While (a) is undoubtedly true, I would argue that (b), (c), and (d) are not. And I would argue that the idea that the Iraq war was, and is a fiasco, both as to lies leading to its start--up, as well as to the operational and political breakdowns in its carrying-out.

What's more, despite the subterfuge employed by leading political figures and the media, the public is coming to recognize the war's fallacies as well.

Again, none of these conclusions are new or unusual for a liberal blogger, but they point to the realization that Democrats don't need to be afraid to speak and act against the administration's war aims, especially when those aims are as flawed and dangerous as have been the ones pushed on the public since 9-11.

So why are Democrats like Bayh, Biden, and others, so hesitent to provide a more balanced view of the nation's security interests and the appropriate tools and responses for ensuring them?

Perhaps having voted for the war in the first place, they feel a need to "stay the course" as to their own political positioning, and thus to avoid any potential accusations of "flip-flopping". Perhaps they don't recognize the turnaround in public opinion, especially in the aftermath of Katrina and the soon to be fallout from Rita.

Whatever the cause, it is hoped that the next round of Democratic campaigns and candidates will begin to reassess their views and to come forward with a new framework for providing for the nation's security, one that recognizes the limits, economic, moral and military, to waging war, first, last and always.

The Difference

As much as I'd like not to think about or reference anything written at NRO, this item is probably worth mentioning (via Tbogg who has more of a stomach than me):

Plainly it is not governmental inefficiency these agents are worried about. They find the anti-pornography crowd disturbing because they believe that policing pornography violates fundamental rights. This has become the dominant view in our society: As long as what I do doesn't harm you personally, I have a right to do it.* It's a silly view and a view rejected by law enforcement policies all over the country. Were we to truly recognize such a philosophy, we would have to legalize prostitution, drugs and suicide -- as well as the murder of homeless drifters with no family or friends. After all, if someone kills a homeless drifter, how does that affect anyone else?

Once again, let me remind you that the speaker of this fascist drivel is a conservative. You know, the ones that keep lecturing us about how bad government is and how they're all for less government and want to get the government off our backs, supposedly.

So let's be reminded: modern conservatism is not about less government. It's not about freedom or liberty. It's about the opposite. And the great travesty of the last 25 years of American politics has been the Democratic Party's failure to confront efforts (mostly covert)by Republicans to restrict individual liberties and trample human rights. The nomination of John Roberts and his anti-privacy-right views are the fruit the Democrat's meakness on civil liberties issues has wrought.

And for the record, Democrats should be clear, in fact, that public policy should seek to allow people the freedom to do what they want, behind closed doors, among consenting adults, as they see fit, as long as it doesn't harm anyone else. So Ben's ridiculous analogy of the homeless man doesn't hold water. Utilitarian liberalism protects the homeless man because his life has value. It wouldn't matter if he had no families or friends. Unlike conservatives, liberals believe that each individual life has equal value, regardless of gender, sexual preference, race, income, nationality, or upbringing. And while we're at it, yes, the our drug laws are a violation of individual liberties, too.

But the conservative response to Katrina, among other things, should help us all better understand how conservatives really feel about individuals not of their own kind.

And for the record, the Justice Department's anti-pornography efforts are a waste of time and public resources, a violation of individual liberties, and a shameless pandering to a conservative group of special interests.


*a well known proponent of this utilitarian view, that liberty is the right to do as one pleases as long it doesn't hurt anyone else, was John Stuart Mill, whose book, On Liberty, was "a classic defense of liberty and individual sovereignty" and which as a result earned an honorable mention by the conservative Human Rights Online as one of the 10 most harmful books of the 19th-20th century.

Conservatives hate freedom.

Like I Was Saying

From Big Media Matt (via Digby):

WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH MISSISSIPPI? Apropos of nothing in particular, take a look at the exit poll data from Mississippi, where George W. Bush picked up the votes of 85 percent of the white population and just 10 percent of the African-American vote. In a state whose electorate is 65-percent white, that led to a hefty 60-40 win for the incumbent. Mississippi's an unusually stark case, but not all that much of an outlier.

Georgia saw 75 percent of whites and 12 percent of blacks pull the lever for Bush.

It was 75-9 in Louisiana, 78-15 in South Carolina, and a comparatively minor 63-6 in Arkansas (generally speaking, whites are most monolithically Republican in the least-white states like Mississippi and more open to Democrats in whiter states like Arkansas).

All of which is just to say that an awful lot of the post-election talk about "culture" and its impact on voting serves to obscure the extent to which a lot of politics is about race.

In Mississippi, Bush got a larger percentage of the vote from people who "somewhat dissaprove" of his administration than he did from black voters.

He did better among self-identified Democrats than he did among blacks, and far better (23 percent against 10 percent) among self-identified liberals than with non-whites.

I'm not sure exactly what follows from that, and I appreciate that commentators don't like to raise the point in order to avoid just engaging in naive allegations of racism, but it's really, really not possible to understand the politics of the South without delving into this stuff.


If you will recall, I posted about the racial characteristics of last fall's election in the south, some time ago, but Matt goes further with it than I did.

Now, it probably should be pointed out that these exit polling numbers should be viewed as not-quite-gospel accurate. If you look at the exit polls from all the states you'll stumble across some rather remarkable figures, and in some states, there were not adequate numbers of black or other minority voters to even figure into the final count, so the sampling and weighting of these poll numbers should be taken with a grain of salt.

Nonetheless, the continued racial impact on voting in the South goes a long way to explaining election outcomes and the public policy that results, such as the bizarre anti-labor, anti-working class efforts of southern representatives, including the president's Gulf Coast Wage Cut plan of post-hurricane reconstruction.

Mo Dowd

Since the Senator is a print-subscriber in good standing, here she is:

The president won't be happy until he dons a yellow slicker and actually takes the place of Anderson Cooper, violently blown about by Rita as he talks into a camera lens lashed with water, hanging onto a mailbox as he's hit by a flying pig in a squall, sucked up by a waterspout in the eye of the storm over the Dry Tortugas.

Then maybe he'll go back to the White House and do his job instead of running down to the Gulf Coast for silly disaster-ops every other day.

There's nothing more pathetic than watching someone who's out of touch feign being in touch. On his fifth sodden pilgrimage of penitence to the devastation he took so long to comprehend, W. desperately tried to show concern. He said he had spent some "quality time" at a Chevron plant in Pascagoula and nattered about trash removal, infrastructure assessment teams and the "can-do spirit."

"We look forward to hearing your vision so we can more better do our job," he said at a briefing in Gulfport, Miss., urging local officials to "think bold," while they still need to think mold.

Mr. Bush should stop posing in shirtsleeves and get back to the Oval Office. He has more hacks and cronies he's trying to put into important jobs, and he needs to ride herd on that.

The announcement that a veterinarian, Norris Alderson, who has no experience on women's health issues, would head the F.D.A.'s Office of Women's Health ran into so much flak from appalled women that the F.D.A. may have already reneged on it. No morning-after pill, thanks to the antediluvian administration, but there may be hope for a morning-after horse pill.

Mr. Bush made a frownie over Brownie, but didn't learn much. He's once more trying to appoint a nothingburger to a position of real consequence in homeland security. The choice of Julie Myers, a 36-year-old lawyer with virtually no immigration, customs or law enforcement experience, to head the roiling Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency with its $4 billion budget and 22,000 staffers, has caused some alarm, according to The Washington Post.

Ms. Myers's main credentials seem to be that she worked briefly for the semidisgraced homeland security director, Michael Chertoff, when he was at the Justice Department. She just married Mr. Chertoff's chief of staff, John Wood, and she's the niece of Gen. Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

As a former associate for Ken Starr, the young woman does have impeachment experience, in case the forensic war on terrorism requires the analysis of stains on dresses.

Julie makes Brownie look like Giuliani. I'll sleep better tonight, knowing that when she gets back from her honeymoon, Julie will be patrolling the frontier.

As if the Veterinarian and the Niece were not bad enough, there was also the Accused. David Safavian, the White House procurement official involved in Katrina relief efforts, was arrested on Monday, accused by the F.B.I. of lying and obstructing a criminal investigation into the seamy case of "Casino Jack" Abramoff, the Republican operative who has broken new ground in giving lobbying a bad name. Democrats say the fact that Mr. Safavian's wife is a top lawyer for the Republican congressman who's leading the whitewash of the White House blundering on Katrina does not give them confidence.

Just as he has stonewalled other inquiries, Mr. Bush is trying to paper over his Katrina mistakes by appointing his homeland security adviser, Frances Townsend, to investigate how the feds fumbled the response.

Mr. Bush's "Who's Your Daddy?" bravura - blowing off the world on global warming and the allies on the Iraq invasion - has been slapped back by Mother Nature, which refuses to be fooled by spin.

When Donald Rumsfeld came out yesterday to castigate the gloom-and-doomers and talk about the inroads American forces had made against terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq, he could not so easily recast reality.

In Afghanistan, the U.S.'s handpicked puppet president is still battling warlords and a revivified Taliban, and the export of poppies for the heroin trade is once more thriving.

Iraq is worse, with more than 1,900 American troops killed. Five more died yesterday, as well as four security men connected to the U.S. embassy office in Mosul, all to fashion a theocratic-leaning regime aligned with Iran. In Basra, two journalists who have done work for The Times have been killed in the last two months.

The more the president echoes his dad's "Message: I care," the more the world hears "Message: I can't."

More of the same

As if the Katrina debacle hasn't been enough, other government endeavors are causing further head-scratching, bewilderment and sighing.

First, consider the case of David Safavian, the Bush-appointed, former head of government procurement at the Office of Management and Budget, and before that, chief of staff at the General Services Administration, who was recently arrested on charges related to obstruction of justice and influence peddling involving scandal-emeshed, Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Turns out that Safavian has a wife who's gainfully employed, mind you, as the Republican House Government Reform Committee's chief counsel for investigations (she has recused herself from any cases involving her husband and OMB).

Take some time to let that connection and influence swill around your mind, and see if you aren't ready for a stiff drink. Government Reform, no doubt.

And as if that isn't enough to about send you over the edge, kicking and screaming, think about the recent jailbreak engineered by the British military in the southern Iraqi city of Basra. Um, the Brits had two undercover persons dressed in "full Arabic dress" were arrested by Iraqi policemen for shooting at Iraqi civilians. The Brits used a tank or tanks to bust through the jail, allowing 150 Iraqi prisoners of unknown criminal backgrounds to escape while the U.S.'s junior occupational partner retrieved their two spies. But the Iraqi police who arrested the Brits were policemen presumably trained and supported by the British military. So aren't the residents of Basra and its administration both supportive of, and supported by, the occupying "coalition"? Are we warring against ourselves in Iraq? Can a divided house stand?

Questions of sovereignty raised

The events raised questions about how much sovereignty Iraqi authorities really were granted when the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority handed over power to an interim Iraqi government in the summer of 2004.

How much Iraqi sovereignty? Um, that would appear to be none.

And I won't even bring up the other item on Atrios about the former Iraqi defense official under the previous U.S. installed, Allawi government, under investigation for embezzling funds.

Are there any more shoes left to drop?

Edwards Gets It Right

From today's Wash Post:

The former senator -- who was tapped by Kerry to be his running mate last year and, like Kerry, is contemplating a 2008 presidential run -- said the administration has long favored wealth over work. He criticized Bush for suspending a law requiring federal contractors along the Gulf Coast to pay prevailing wages on reconstruction projects.

"I might have missed something, but I don't think the president ever talked about putting a cap on the salaries of the CEOs of Halliburton and the other companies . . . who are getting all these contracts," he said in a speech at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. "This president, who never met an earmark he wouldn't approve or a millionaire's tax cut he wouldn't promote, decided to slash wages for the least of us and the most vulnerable."


Of the potential 2008 presidential field, Edwards is the only candidate with a narrative. I'm not convinced he has the gravitas to pull it off, but he's at or near the top of my preference list anyway. Since Dean was already out of the race by the time my primary came around, I pulled the lever for Edwards. Maybe this time, it will be for a winning cause.

Drowning Government in a Bathtub

Posted by a DailyKos diarist.

One State Free, But It's Not Over Yet

Yes, this is good news. I particularly liked the Wash Post's article on the vote:

Even though the amendment under consideration was known to be dead beforehand, its killing took on a party atmosphere.

First, there were speeches, from legislators who compared Massachusetts's place in the national debate to the radical role the state's Minutemen played in the Revolutionary War.

"We are as out of step today as we were on the village green in Lexington and Concord," said state Sen. Edward M. Augustus Jr. (D). "Massachusetts has always been the conscience of the nation."


Gotta like the twist opponents of the amendment used linking their support for gay rights to the fight for freedom exercised by the Massachusetts Bay Colonists during the Revolutionary War. If there's anything conservative reconstructionists hate, it's when progressives take back our history and unite the founders with our causes.

As for the current situation, in 2004, the constitutional amendment (crafted by Massachusetts state legislators in response to the Massachusetts Supreme Court decision in 2003 allowing gay marriage) banning gay marriage but allowing civil unions in Massachusetts passed by a 105-92 margin.

But because the constitutional amendment process in Massachusetts requires a proposed amendment pass in two consecutive legislative sessions before it could go to the voters in 2006, another vote was needed this year. This second vote on the measure was defeated soundly yesterday, 157-39.

What happened? Apparently some legislators who had voted for the measure the first time and initially opposed gay marriage, have had time to have second thoughts. Time that also allowed public opinion to become more favorable to gay marriage, time for the (no sky falling) results of gay marriage to be seen, and time for legislative supporters of gay marriage to face the voters after their votes and come away unharmed.

Unfortunately, the spin from anti-gay forces is that the current amendment's failing is just fine with them, since they didn't want even the civil unions permitted by the amendment allowed. What's more, anti-gay groups are pushing a new, anti-gay marriage, anti-civil unions "citizen's initiative petition" which

unlike a legislative constitutional amendment, ...needs just 50 votes in each of two successive constitutional conventions in order to be put to voters.

So the bar for passing a hostile amendment is much lower using this tactic. According to the NYT, the soonest this new anti-gay amendment could go to the voters would be 2008. Coupled with the highly financed opposition of groups like Focus on the Family, gay rights groups are not taking anything for granted in Massachusetts.

But today is a good day nonetheless. And the fact that a majority of Massachusetts voters approves of gay marriage means anti gay forces will have an uphill battle to fight in their efforts to scare people about how gay marriages will impact the lives and marriages of heterosexuals and the security of American families.

You Know It's Getting Bad When...

Catherine Crier feels compelled to write a book criticizing the right-wing's attempt to reconstruct American society and the Constitution according to their interpretation of the Bible. She also has a post up at the HuffingtonPost which is probably a good introduction and summary of the book's contentions and concerns.

Catherine Crier is a former Republican Texas (of all places) judge, a former Faux Nooz host, and resident criminal justice griper at CourtTV. And even she gets it.

That someone as prominent and conservative as Crier would come out with a book like this should be a good sign and an encouragement for other conservatives, if not greater numbers of moderates and liberals, to be more willing to address the threat posed by radical religious conservatism.

One can always hope.