Sometimes you see a PR flack spin something so hard he falls off the merry-go-round. Wheeee!

The Senate Republican Policy Committee, headed up by Sen. John Ensign, welcomed Frank Luntz — a famous GOP pollster — yesterday afternoon at a meeting about health care.

POLITICO reported yesterday that Luntz is aiding the GOP-ers on this topic — he also wrote a confidential 26-page report for them on the issue. But some Republicans are still miffed about Luntz’s recent addition to his client list: Democrats. “Somebody didn’t get the memo that Frank is no longer hitting for our side!” scoffed a high-level Senate aide.

Ensign spokesman Tory Mazzola told us, “Sen. Ensign, like Frank Luntz, is bipartisan. No party has a lock on good ideas, which is why Sen. Ensign is looking at many different solutions. Luntz has valuable information to offer Republicans as we put together health care reform that encourages wellness, ensures access and improves quality of care. It’s not about what Luntz says; it’s about what senators hear. We’re bringing in a wordsmith to help contrast our health reform plan with the government takeover pushed by the Democrats. All the Democrats’ rationed-care plan needs is a ‘Line forms here’ sign.”

Evidently, schizophrenia runs rampant in the Senate if Ensign, a true party hack, can be called bipartisan because he sure hasn't seen the sunny side of Centrism. And We're bringing in a wordsmith is such a beautiful hunk of polished empty bullshit it's as if we could fertilize with diamonds.

Oh well. Let's hope a rationed-care plan helps that guy with his concussion.

Today David Brooks notes that the meme of the Rugged Macho Individualism of the Old West that has characterized Republicans since Ronald Reagan put on a cowboy hat and rode around his stage ranch doesn't resonate anymore:

Republicans generally like Westerns. They generally admire John Wayne-style heroes who are rugged, individualistic and brave. They like leaders — from Goldwater to Reagan to Bush to Palin — who play up their Western heritage. Republicans like the way Westerns seem to celebrate their core themes — freedom, individualism, opportunity and moral clarity.

But the greatest of all Western directors, John Ford, actually used Westerns to tell a different story. Ford’s movies didn’t really celebrate the rugged individual. They celebrated civic order.

For example, in Ford’s 1946 movie, “My Darling Clementine,” Henry Fonda plays Wyatt Earp, the marshal who tamed Tombstone. But the movie isn’t really about the gunfight and the lone bravery of a heroic man. It’s about how decent people build a town. Much of the movie is about how the townsfolk put up a church, hire a teacher, enjoy Shakespeare, get a surgeon and work to improve their manners.

The movie, in other words, is really about religion, education, science, culture, etiquette and rule of law — the pillars of community. In Ford’s movie, as in real life, the story of Western settlement is the story of community-building. Instead of celebrating untrammeled freedom and the lone pioneer, Ford’s movies dwell affectionately on the social customs that Americans cherish — the gatherings at the local barbershop and the church social, the gossip with the cop and the bartender and the hotel clerk.

Today, if Republicans had learned the right lessons from the Westerns, or at least John Ford Westerns, they would not be the party of untrammeled freedom and maximum individual choice. They would once again be the party of community and civic order.

Of course we've had a taste of the Republican vision of civic order in the federal Administration of George W. Bush and the local one of Rudy Giuliani. It's a vision of mass surveillance of Americans' comings and goings, a concept of pre-crime where we'll assume you are guilty no matter how innocent you are, and then of course there's the ever-popular police shootings of unarmed black men.

But Brooks' main point serves to underscore what's wrong with the Republicans, again, ever since Reagan: They can't distinguish between reality and fantasy. Ronald Reagan wasn't an actor who played "The Gipper", he really WAS the Gipper. He put on a cowboy hat and that made him a rancher. George W. Bush bought a stage ranch in Texas, denying his Kennebunkport roots, and became a cowboy who spent his vacations clearing brush trucked in from a local schoolyard. Republicans worshiped the illusion of cowboy rather than the real thing. And then there's Jack Bauer, the fictional CIA agent of 24. How many times have we heard the "ticking timebomb" what-if scenario used to justify torture? This scenario is taken right out of 24, and that show is used to "prove" that torture works. Yes, in the eyes of the defenders of torture, we know torture works because we saw it in 24.

The other night I saw a TV commercial in which a tired, bored therapist ignores a patient's desire to burn down his office and ends up sitting in an inferno. In small print at the bottom of the screen is a message: "Never commit arson." Then of course there are the disclaimers "Stunt driver on closed track. Do not attempt" messages in car ads. One would think these shouldn't be necessary. But as long as there are Republicans who can't tell fiction from reality, I suppose they will be.

Labels: American Idiots, Republicans

I know, I know...the John Edwards debacle was and is stunning, heart wrenching, and life changing, and now its back in the headlines in all its glory! Edwards announced today that there is a federal investigation going on into his campaign funds (.... to determine if certain funds disbursed to the company of the woman that he had an affair with were legally transferred, or if there was some nefarious plot to shut her up and keep her in grand style ...with their maybe love child...) over the sum of...um...$114,000, give or take.

Look maybe you can keep your baby's mama in a nice trailer park for that amount, but it seems to me that this might perhaps be production money, as she was the videographer on the campaign trail, and anyone who has had to shoot for hours and then spend hours editing down footage for public consumption will know that an amount like that is chump change. Did he pay her to go away? Did he buy her jewels and furs? Who knows and who cares?



His career is ruined for now, and it seems to me that it serves a whole portion of others in the political and business spectrum to have his voice shut down because of what his message was and is. So, yeah, hes an idiot narcissist who imploded, and he's lucky that, from the outside anyway, his family has survived....If you've read my previous posts on this subject, you'll know that it interests me little to hear speculation about the details of this stupidity, and if he misused 100 grand of campaign funds, I'm sure that there have been worse crimes committed...oh, like the Clinton's real estate bamboozle and Bill Clinton's flirtation with the young Monica Lewinsky. I'm sure that never, ever happens in the halls of power....right? What kind of time and money are we willing to waste because of the hint of a sex scandal?

Which brings me to Joe Lieberman, our favorite Jr. Senator here in Connecticut. Today in the local Stamford Advocate, we were treated to a large piece on the news of Edward's probe, and then a page or two back and in a small box, was the news that Joe himself is also under investigation for misuse of campaign funds. This is a story that is not being covered by much of the media, except for snippets in our local papers here in Connecticut, and only by the Connecticut blogs such as My Left Nutmeg, which has been great all through the nightmare that has been Connecticut politics for more years than even Bush was the national nightmare. The New Haven Register had this story about Lieberman, as if his misuse of funds was just a blip that a small fine would take care of; a civil penalty of $50,000.



The Register also had the same article on Edwards that was published in the Advocate, (but which the Advocate hasn't, as of this time, put on line; nor have they put up the Lieberman story.) The Edwards article talks about his buried career and how he is finished, the turmoil of his marriage and any other projections that the writer could come up with because, heaven knows there isn't much in the way of facts there; not the gay in the bathroom stall/affair with a male page sort of deliciousness brought to us by the now defunct republican majority; now THOSE were facts!

Still, the article makes the Edwards situation sound like he took pallets of cash to another country that we had invaded illegally and just lost it with no explanation....oh yeah, that's the former President of the United States, who we can hardly muster the balls to investigate on charges of real war crimes, much less the money misspent, lost, given out with no explanation, and pocketed in conflicts of interest such as Halliburton/Blackwater & it's subsidiaries/Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld/Tamiflu/Aspartame.

Look, I'm not an apologist for Edwards. I'm as disappointed as anyone who was a true believer in his message, and who was mortified to find that he didnt get out of the race, and continued to wield his delegates, knowing that this was likely to come out. But here's the deal, Edwards is not in office, nor has he been nominated to any cabinet post. He is old, tragic news, in a very interesting election cycle, who will likely have his second act as they all do in show business.

Joe Lieberman, on the other hand, is still actively jumping parties out there and holding his chairmanships on some pretty important committees, (Homeland Security and Government Affairs to name but two.) He is a sitting senator and as much as his crony's have forgiven him for his insane campaign to get back into that seat, the people of Connecticut largely have not.

Why this isn't a bigger story isn't much of a mystery to me, because I was there and saw the tactics of the Lieberman campaign first hand. I worked for Ned Lamont during every free moment I had and manned a contentious poll on election day. The Lieberman investigation was about a whopping $387,000 that was given out improperly, and much of it was to stage a ground war here, when he hadn't planned much campaign presence at all because he was so sure that he would win! When faced with a real lack of volunteers, the campaign hired ground teams to disrupt Lamont's events and basically make a nuisance of themselves. They plastered much of downtown Stamford with Joe signage, which was illegal, they ran through the streets of anyplace that Lamont was appearing and jostled in front of TV cameras with signs that they, themselves didn't understand, and they menaced even old folks and parents with babies in carriages with their aggressive actions.

At a Lamont speech in Greenwich I asked some of the kids, (they were all black for that event and it made the white Joe T-shirts pulled over baggy clothes stand out all the more, as if a crowd of black kids on Greenwich Avenue weren't enough in that stogy old-money town!) if they knew what Joe stood for, and they said no, that a guy in a van offered them $60 per day to wear the t-shirt and support Joe. Later when someone I know asked again, the amount had been raised to $100 per day. A kid said that he didn't know who Joe was or what he stood for but that it was just a job and he was following orders. At the time I was down in what is the inner city of Stamford quite a bit for some personal reasons, and on the cul de sac circle of the cluster housing that now replaces part of the old projects, a white Joe van would drive up and kids would go up to the van looking for work.

At the time the army recruiting offices were active in just such neighborhoods because these were the kids likely to go for the bonus money to go to Iraq for an indeterminate amount of time. Was it right for Joe, who supported the war and had no answers on how we were going to handle the military in Iraq or when they came home, to have children working for him against their own interest? Was it right to pay the on the ground volunteers in a political campaign who don't know what they are representing? I told a few of them that he was pro war and they shrugged, like teens do, and said that they didn't care because it was a job. I felt like that white van circling the entryway to the neighborhood that held all the poor in this city separate from the very rich and thr quickly dwindling middle-class, was preying on these kids, and that they should have been as against the law as any predator enticing kids with cash or candy.

Joe was a strong Bush supporter and allowed himself to be used as a representative for the democratic party implying that some of us were pro Bush and pro war. In reality, Joe was in a world of his own and the only pro war people around were those who were afraid of the terra, and who bought the victory line against the facts presented by experts. That was not what the people of Connecticut wanted, and as our representative we let Joe know that in the primary when we chose Ned Lamont to be our candidate. Joe wouldn't take that laying down and he jumped parties to run as an independent, thus getting elected on the Republican vote and the votes of those who had known him for years here and who either weren't paying attention or who thought that he would come to his senses.

Those kids didn't understand that on key issues Joe was not for them and that they were actually working against their own interests. But that was another Rovian tactic that seemed to work well when used in many different cases. Many of them were very young and in no position to represent one candidate over another, but cash talks, and when a small amount wasn't enough the ante was upped.

Well, we would soon come to find that the way the campaign was paying out for these services was incorrect and illegal. But for Joe, who is still seated on his committees and who was welcomed back with open arms and a standing-O by his coworkers in the senate, even after he lied to his supposed constituents, dumped his party, and let us know in no uncertain terms that he knew better than we did what was best for our state, this was a non-starter. The rules don't apply to guys like Joe; that's the old Bushism that was not only shot down, but smeared into a paste and is now being washed down the same sinkhole that it slithered out of so many years ago; before Reagan, before Nixon...back, back, back to the barons of power who set the stage for the wealthy to maintain their prominence by creating a permanent underclass to fight our wars and tend our lawns, middle-class be damned!

Joe Lieberman has been sheltered by the media of this state and the country for no reason at all. He has been allowed to conduct the business of paying his fine in relative privacy, and in light of other investigations that are getting bold print treatment, he has been favored as always, by a system that protects its own. The end is near for Herr Lieberman and his little Hadassah, so they can return to the country club in Westport where he has been seen airing his furry little body in the pool. He can write his book and take a nice cushy job like Hadassah has. He has certainly represented the interests of big business and war in his years in office enough to deserve something with a corner office and a seven figure salary.

Meanwhile, is it really worth the small civil fine to persue this matter with Edwards? It depends on how serious the powers that be, in whats left of the old guard of the federal government, want him silenced for the long term. However long, it wont be forever, because regardless of bad personal choices, which are just that, personal, the message of the two Americas still rings true, and as much as a watered down Obama will try to address the poverty issue, he is not a bulldog on this issue like Edwards is. So, we will see what happens, and just when you think that hes gone for good, like our friend Elliot Spitzer (who in polling today was overwhelmingly preferred over Patterson as Governor of NY...in fact they want him back!) the second act will arrive.

c/p RIP Coco

Labels: campaign financing, federal probes, Joe Lieberman, John Edwards, lies

Did you honestly think that the Bush family would go away quietly, even though their scion just wrecked the country? The United States may be a ruin of a fiefdom for the Bush family and their friends, but it is, in their mind, THEIR fiefdom for the Bush famiily and their friends.

Don't kid yourself that this "National Council for a New America" is about rethinking, or even rebranding, the Republican Party. This is the greed wing, the Grover Norquist wing, of the Republican Party making a pre-emptive strike against Evita Mooselini, Bobby the Exorcist Jingles, and the rest of the Christofascist Zombie Brigade that hijacked John McCain last year and now threatens to hijack the rest of the party in the upcoming midterm elections and into 2012. And while Mitt Romney has a prominent role, the savior for the interests of the wealthy that is making the Greedmeisters get all tingly in the groin is Jeb Bush. Oh, they're putting Eric Cantor out there to equate "freedom" with "rich people being able to do whatever they want to amass as much cash as they want no mattter from whom they take it", and Mittster is calling for the nomination of a "center-right" Supreme Court nominee, but don't kid yourself -- these guys are Jeb Bush's stalking horses. They may all run in 2012, but Cantor and Mittster and even Newtie are just flies to be brushed off the back of America's self-styled royal family.

It's amusing to see Jeb Bush painted as a "new young fresh face" in the Republican party. Maybe he'll cut a hip-hop album to appeal to those pesky Gen-Y-ers and Millennials who voted for Obama because they're having trouble finding a job that will allow them to move out of their parents' house and might listen to the siren song of Wall St. riches again. "Who ya gonna believe," the Republicans are telling the kids, "...me or your lying eyes?" So far the kids are alright in believing their eyes, not the false promise of greed.

DCap, in his trademark picturesque fashion, describes this Band of Brothers thusly:

• Eric Cantor, douchebag and objectionist extraordinaire. Cantor, as Congressional minority whip, has been one of the prime motivators of the "Just Say No" policy. It is his "persuasiveness" that has helped the GOP fall to its lowest identification level in over 40 years. I am sure they were frying his brain on those anti-drug ads.
  
• Mittens Romney, failed candidate and out-of-touch billionaire. Romney failed to resonate much of a message with his own base during the primary season last year. Many have said he would have been a "great" VP candidate when the markets collapsed - and compared to Palin he would have been. Then again anyone, including Michele Bachmann, would have been better than Palin. Considering the state of the financial industry and how people feel about bailouts and finance companies - does anyone really think the former CEO of a venture capital firm is the one to send a message?
  
• Jeb Bush, brother of the biggest failure and most hated president in American political history. He might as well change his name to Jeb Stalin, Jeb Hitler or Jeb Khan, it will be much more palatable.

I think DCap is perhaps a bit more dismissive of Jebbie's prospects than he should be. Remember, this is the same country that allowed his wastrel cokehead brother to get close enough to winning to steal two elections.

Labels: American Idiots, Eric Cantor, Greedy Republican Bastards, Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, Republicans

...like a supporter who was completely bamboozled.

Oh, Lynn tried to tell me. She told me he was a phony, but I wouldn't listen. After six years of George W. Bush I didn't want the DLC lean-as-far-right-as-you-can posturing of Hillary Clinton or the toe-in-the-water caution of Barack Obama. I wanted a full-throated progressive populist, and in John Edwards I got one. Sure, there was that aw-shucks grin and the honeyed voice that always makes me think "PHONY!", and there was always that thought in the back of my mind. But he said all the right things, and I needed to believe, and there he was with his FIRST wife who not only looked every year of her age but had recurrent breast cancer to boot, and HE STAYED WITH HER, which---

And then of course we found out what was really going on.

"You can't tell what a person is like by seeing them on TV." I know this. I've told other people that, usually in the context of Oprah Winfrey, who people think they adore, but who knows, she may be a complete harridan in real life. But what about when a person like Elizabeth Edwards STANDS UP ON THE STAIR LANDING IN YOUR OWN HOUSE and says, in person, emphatically, to your face that these are the things John stands for and he's just what we need WHEN SHE KNOWS WHAT'S ACTUALLY GOING ON? It's one thing to be bamboozled by a TV image. But when you host a fundraiser for the man and his wife is in attendance and gives you no hint of what's actually going on, whatever Spidey-sense that's tingling is going to shut up really quickly.

This is what I've never understood about Elizabeth Edwards in this whole mess. I understand not wanting to leave, to forgive for a mistake. I especially understand when there are young children and a dire illness involved. But how she could go out there on the campaign trail and lie through her teeth for him and be so convincing doing it?

And now it seems it was worse than we knew:

The two-time Democratic presidential candidate acknowledged Sunday that investigators are assessing how he spent his campaign funds -- a subject that could carry his extramarital affair from the tabloids to the courtroom. Edwards' political action committee paid more than $100,000 for video production to the firm of the woman with whom Edwards had an affair.

The former North Carolina senator said in a carefully worded statement that he is cooperating.

''I am confident that no funds from my campaign were used improperly,'' Edwards said in the statement. ''However, I know that it is the role of government to ensure that this is true. We have made available to the United States both the people and the information necessary to help them get the issue resolved efficiently and in a timely matter.''

While Edwards focused his comment on campaign funds, he also had a range of other fundraising organizations -- including two nonprofits and a poverty center at his alma mater -- that have come under scrutiny.

Chief among them was the PAC that paid Rielle Hunter's company for several months in 2006 for Web videos that documented Edwards' travels and advocacy in the months leading up to his 2008 presidential campaign. The committee also paid her firm an additional $14,086.50 on April 1, 2007.

Edwards acknowledged the affair with Hunter last year, months after dropping his presidential bid.

At the time of the 2007 payment, the PAC only had $7,932.95 in cash on hand, according to records filed with the Federal Election Commission. That day, according to the records, Edwards' presidential campaign paid the PAC $14,034.61 for what is listed as a ''furniture purchase.''

Willfully converting money from a political action committee for personal use is a federal crime.

I hope it was a REALLY GOOD fuck, Johnny -- and that it was worth it.

Labels: assholes, John Edwards, scumbaggery

Arlen Specter appeared on Meet the Press this morning to grease his slide to the left and to remind us that his seniority is not a bribe for his defection, but an entitlement for his time served since 1980. Seems to me that if that were true that Joementum Lieberman would be able to keep his....um...nevermind....



Complaining about stacked decks and how he was doing it for the people of Pennsylvania, he was asked by David Gregory what his core beliefs are now; um, um, um....inspiration of his father, his record as being for the little guy; but the question remains, what the fuck has he been doing as Rome burned? This guy has as much experience in the old guard of Washington as anyone, and he stood by as a Republican while his party was gutted and the economy was destroyed, talking about rules and how he had to strengthen the party. He exclaimed along the way that he stood behind his party and wanted to grow it, but like all the other rats who aren't hanging onto the edge of the fringe, he abandoned ship. Indeed, Specter is a problem for both parties because he votes in what seems to be his own interest, all over the place. You can appreciate one vote, but the rest don't always line up. This makes me wonder who Arlen Specter really is.




Here in an interesting 2001 clip from CSPAN, Specter asks for a rule to prevent party switching. Odd in how this is exactly what he would do, not so many years later:



As Jill says here there is no allegiance or pattern to Specter's beliefs; its all about his own ass and his own job security. If the tattered remains of the Republican party wanted to vote Specter out as too liberal, then so be it, but don't come running to trade your seniority and votes for your job. This is the problem with these lifers; the country loses the ability to have ever-changing ideas and representation, as intended by the founders, because guys like this have done everything in their power to prevent new voices from being heard.

As he said to David Gregory "I don't expect the American people to agree with all of my votes, I don't even agree with them at this time!" I guess it would be more understandable if he hadn't just made a move that would secure his seat along the path of least resistance as opposed to standing up within his own party and fighting for the side that he represents. Are these the kind of Democrats we want?

As I watched the long, hideous process of the fall if the house of Bush, I kept saying that after we get to a safe place as far as fixing whats been done to the country, we need to shake out the dug-in, old-school, Dems who have been sliding by on name recognition and cronyism. We may need a majority right now, but the party has to be stronger in what we give away to these defectors. Arlen Specter, who has voted time and again against what the American people finally pulled their heads out of the sand long enough to remember and confirm, does not serve our long term. He will be forever considered a conservative democrat who will eventually be voting against his new party if it serves him.

Fuck inclusive politics! The Bush administration nearly destroyed us, and the jury is still out on what the future will be like and how much Obama can really do. This is a guy who sat there while Bush and Cheney tortured and killed people. Did he not notice what was happening? Why would he pick now, when his party needs his voice so badly, to defect? He has a history of switching parties along with the direction of the power, as he began his long journey as a democrat. For the democratic party, this is grabbing the low hanging fruit...we may need any fruit we can get, but lets stop messing around about the whys of this; its a business deal and it serves all involved; cue the senate dems to jump to their feet in applause when he next takes the floor.

After twenty six years of representing what was supposedly the less extreme part of the republican party, look where he left his party. I would venture to say that he has done a pretty piss poor job of promoting the balance that he talked about, and pretty much proved all those old memes of the crony's controlling things with their guaranteed positions in the power structure. I say that if its up to the American people, let us vote on it. So, lets fund and encourage any primary challenge to this rat. Here again, is the facebook page dedicated to that movement.

c/p RIP Coco

Labels: Democratic sellouts, rats sinking ship, Republican sellouts, Senate, specter

The latest winner of the Douglas Feith Memorial Stupidest Fucking Person on the Planet is...

Louisiana Republican Senator Daivd "Diapers" Vitter, who has decided to put a hold on Barack Obama's nominee to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency because "a list of hurricane recovery issues he'd sent to FEMA have not been 'adequately addressed.'"

So he's going to refuse to allow someone competent to head the agency because the INcompetents who ran it during the Bush years haven't done their jobs.

And hurricane season starts next month. Brilliant!

Labels: idiocy, Republicans

The BBC's Jon Leyne in Tehran says that early on Friday morning Delara Darabi made a desperate phone call to her parents, saying she could see the hangman's noose.

"Mother they are going to execute me, please save me," she said, before a prison official took the phone away and said: "We are going to execute your daughter and there's nothing you can do about it."

Delara Darabi was hung on Friday in disregard of a stay of execution granted by the head of Iran's judiciary & international protests. She was 23 years old, had been convicted of a murder committed when she was 17 & for which she said she confessed to save her boyfriend. There was a strong possibility that this was the truth. Which shouldn't have mattered. Iran will not renounce the execution of juvenile offenders.

Labels: Iran, just another outrage, medievalism, obituaries

To paraphrase Rob Zombie, Democrats are less human than human. It's a meme that's been circulated from the 40's up until the present day by not just Republicans but the mainstream media that provides them with huge soapboxes and megaphones the size of Long Beach.



Yet for some reason, we continue letting them get away with it when in fact the charges being leveled against us (not having a will of our own, etc) are doubly true of the Republicans.



They'd also succeeded in doing the same thing to same sex couples who have been trying unsuccessfully for decades to institute the legalization of gay marriage. The lead picture above, an argument between a gay marriage advocate and an opponent to it is a perfect delineation both literally and symbolically of the divide that gay marriage has created in our nation. And for all those decades, proponents of gay marriage had been on the losing end. Just when they'd fought tooth and nail to get same sex marriage into a third state, defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory on Election Day in California thanks to Proposition 8.

But now the tide is turning with a vengeance and just in time for the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Inn riots of July of 1969.

Gay marriage in the past month or so had been legalized in two more states, Vermont and Iowa and more are making strong advances toward adding to the avalanche. NY Gov. David Paterson is introducing legislation that will legalize same sex marriage and this belatedly coming on the hills of the Governor's intention of allowing same sex marriage to be recognized in New York State. Add to the mix the improbable gay marriage contenders New Hampshire and Maine, two of the most staunch conservative Republican of the six New England states.

And, as with the "argument" that Democrats are deranged anarchists, Socialists and even Communists, we've also let unchallenged the meme that homosexuality is both a sin and an immoral lifestyle choice. As long as we continue letting these homophobic blowhards frame the terms of debate thusly, we will always have the appearance of advocating an immoral position.

Homosexuality, as we liberals know and accept, isn't a mere lifestyle choice but an orientation and lifestyle with which one is, typically, born. What it all seems to come down to is discrimination against a perennial segment of human society that differs only from heterosexuals in what they do behind closed doors.

Which is no one's business but the gay couple's.

Yet Republican and Democratic lawmakers and even our "liberal" president and vice president have spoken out against gay marriage. Both sides of the aisle seem loathe to impose the federal government's will on the 50 states by passing a sweeping gay marriage bill that would force them to recognize gay marriage. The unconstitutionality of such a piece of legislation would surely wind up in the Supreme Court is, in my mind, the only legitimate reason why the government shouldn't even introduce such legislation.

Yet one thing is clear: Some of the most reliable barn-burning issues of the GOP these past 8 years and beyond are proving to be both out of vogue and out of touch. The people are weary of war in Iraq and Afghanistan (even though we haven't had to pay or even see the consequences). The rationales for going to war with Iraq have since fallen to the wayside and IED'd into oblivion.

Opposition to gay marriage is now the next to be slated to the ash heap of the GOP's legacy of the closing decade. The GOP will evolve and adopt more conciliatory stances but not because it is the right thing to do but because it is the expedient thing to do in terms of political survival, to retain some semblance of relevance.

And, that, in my opinion, is far from being compassionate or should I say "human."

This is truly spectacular - from the China Disabled Persons Performing Arts Troupe:



The dancer in the front is Tai Lihua, who has been deaf since the age of two. She writes on the troupe's web site:

I am deaf and suffer from lack of hearing, but I am happy. There are hundreds and thousands of outstanding artists in our country. The disabled artists are privileged to perform in famous theatres in more than 40 countries. It is our country that made this possible for us and many kind people have helped us realise our dream.

My white dance shoes share my best moments in life.

My white dance shoes bring me the joy of life.

We share our experience with the world:

As unyeiding as nature may be,

so must we ceaselessly strive along.

As tolerant as mother earth may be,

so must we act within our world with virtue.

Simply glorious.

(h/t)

Labels: arts, music

Justice David Souter is retiring:

David Hackett Souter had only been on a federal appeals court bench for a few months when he was tapped to replace liberal lion William Brennan, a choice many Republicans hoped would move the high court rightward and reshape American law.

"I think that is good news for all of us who are committed to the Constitution of the United States," said President Bush. "He'll be a superb justice for the Supreme Court."

In reality, Souter was in many ways a typical, old-fashioned Yankee Republican -- a moderate with an independent, even quirky streak. Whether he became more liberal in his views after joining the Supreme Court, as many conservatives believe, may depend on your politics.

"Justice Souter will never escape the label of having been an enormous disappointment, a traitor to the right," said Thomas Goldstein, a Washington appellate attorney and founder of Scotusblog.com. "It instead created the opportunity to entrench a series of more liberal rulings. So he became the right's greatest failure and we will forever hear the mantra 'No More Souters' from conservatives."

Colleagues dismiss suggestions that liberal colleagues on the bench helped move Souter to the left.

"I find that incredibly unbelievable," said Rebecca Tushnet, a former Souter law clerk and professor at Georgetown Law Center. "He was faced with different issues on the Supreme Court than he was as a state official. A Supreme Court justice requires you to make different decisions, ones that aren't always consistent with your politics. And remember the Republican Party of Nixon is a different party than the one we have today, and we have a number of judges who came out of that earlier Republican Party who may not be in line with the priorities of people in power in Republican circles today."

I remember when Souter was appointed to the Court. I remember referring to him in conversation as "Norman Bates", because of the photos of his rustic house in New Hampshire where he lived with his elderly mother. He looked creepy too at the time, and the prospect of this guy replacing William Brennan was terrifying. But as happens to many justices not named "Scalia", "Thomas", "Roberts" or "Alito", once on the Court, his opinions became somewhat unpredictable. As Republican-appointed justices go, he really hasn't been too bad.

The Court has been, or should have been, a major issue in the last three elections. Perhaps because it's been a long time since a major decision that significantly affected most people's lives came down from the bench, far too many people thought about what it means when an ideological president chooses staunch ideologues like the two doctinal wingnuts appointed by George W. Bush. I can remember seeing video clips of college girls blithely saying, "Oh they'll NEVER make abortion illegal again." That was the point at which I seriously considered just saying "Oh, the hell with it," except that then there were other issues like wiretapping and Miranda and voting rights other cornerstones of Americans' right to be left alone by their government and treated fairly by the system that a Bush (or McCain/Palin) Court would gleefully dismantle and still have room for dessert.

It's going to be interesting to watch the Republicans blather about "legislating from the bench" as they demand a justice in the mold of Sammy the Stem Cell Alito, which the President made clear the other night they're not going to get:

I do think that, to my Republican friends, I want them to realize that me reaching out to them has been genuine. I can’t sort of define bipartisanship as simply being willing to accept certain theories of theirs that we tried for eight years and didn’t work and the American people voted to change. But there are a whole host of areas where we can work together.

And I’ve said this to people like Mitch McConnell. I said, look, on health care reform, you may not agree with me that we should have a public plan — that may be philosophically just too much for you to swallow. On the other hand, there are some areas, like reducing the cost of medical malpractice insurance where you do agree with me. If I’m taking some of your ideas — and giving you credit for good ideas — the fact that you didn’t get a hundred percent can’t be a reason every single time to oppose my position. And if that is how bipartisanship is defined — a situation in which, basically, wherever there are philosophical differences I have to simply go along with ideas that have been rejected by the American people in a historic election, we’re probably not going to make progress.

I fully expect Obama to appoint a cautious, centrist justice in the mold of Stephen Breyer, and while the Republicans will blather and throw fits and get their knickers in a twist, there won't be much they can do to block whoever the nominee may be. And if they somehow manage to block, I think Obama will keep sending up names until they stop, rather than capitulate to the kind of police state theocrat that the Republican base wants.

Labels: Supreme Court