By The River

By now, thanks to the Republican noise machine, you've probably heard that Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry "insulted" our troops in Iraq today in a speech in California during an appearance for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides. Kerry did no such thing, although his statement could be misread that way without too much trouble. What he did do was commit a stupid gaffe in the last week of the midterm election campaign and give the Republicans an "issue" they can misrepresent to their Southern base to get their minds off boy-crazy Republican ex-Congressman Mark Foley.

It has always been a key Republican strategy to make support for the President's war policies synonymous with support for U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq. It is the phoniest of equations, but the Democrats, especially Kerry, have let it be used against them. Of course we support the troops. That's why we want them to have the equipment they need but can't have because Bush has starved the American government of tax revenue. It's why we want them home in America and not getting killed in a pointless conflict that Bush started either for Iraq's oil or to avenge Saddam Hussein's attempt against his father's life, or both.

Anyone who thinks a war hero like Kerry, who served and was wounded on the ground in Vietnam, would deliberately insult the educational levels of the U.S. troops in Iraq probably also believes that weapons of mass destruction are still waiting to be found. Kerry intended this remarks to be a joke about Bush screwing up and getting the country stuck in Iraq. He violated an old rule of public speaking. If you're going to tell a joke, especially a pointed one, about Bush or anyone else, rehearse it a few times so it comes out right. Don't wing it. Keep it simple.

What he said backfired so badly because it touched a very raw nerve in America. The Army does aggressively recruit recent high school graduates to fight in Iraq who are economically desperate and have few college prospects. That's the only group likely to listen to appeals to join a lost war. Michael Moore captured that so well in his film Fahrenheit 911, when he showed Army recruiters practically chasing young men around a Flint, Michigan, store parking lot. College-bound young men and women from middle and upper class families haven't shown much interest in getting blown up in Baghdad for George W. Bush, notably the President's own daughters. And who can blame them?

Bush's fake outrage was to be expected. He's losing the election and seized on Kerry's remarks like a man trying to fight his way onto the last lifeboat off the Titanic. What did surprise me was that Sen. John McCain joined the chorus. McCain, who knows Kerry well, was likely playing to the Bush base in the South, which he hopes will nominate him for President in 2008.

Newspapers tonight are being very fair to Kerry, reporting his angry retort to Bush, but TV is not. NBC, which I watched, seemed to be playing right along with the White House line that Kerry had "insulted' the troops. And of course, lost in the noise entirely was Bush's own speech in Sugarland, Texas, in which he said the terrorists would win if the Republicans lost. Where was the outrage over that?

Posted by David at 08:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

President Bush, campaigning in a state of clear desperation, told an audience in Sugarland, Texas, yesterday that if the Democrats take over Congress after the Nov. 7 election, terrorists win. And it's not just the President doing this. Republican congressional candidates, with nothing to run on and running from the Iraq War, are putting out some of the slimiest political ads in memory, according to Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne.

It's hard to imagine even President Richard M. Nixon in the last days of his Presidency in 1974 stooping so low as to accuse Democrats of virtual treason. The Bush Presidency is beginning its death throes, and Bush has to know that he is about to be repudiated as remorselessly and thoroughly as President Herbert Hoover was in 1932. My only regret is that Bush won't suffer the ignominy of a decisive personal defeat at the polls (other than the one in 2000 overturned by the Rehnquist-Scalia Supreme Court majority). But perhaps, unlike Nixon, who was pardoned by President Gerald Ford before it could happen, Bush will someday face criminal indictment or at least a probing Congressional investigation for things he did in office.

Vice President Dick Cheney appears to be taking no chances. As Wonkette reported, a shredding service truck was recently seen heading toward the official Vice Presidential Home at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington. You can expect a lot of that to go on in the final months of 2008, whether it's illegal or not. Think of the mass shredding at Enron described in the book and movie, "The Smartest Guys in the Room."

Posted by David at 06:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Only a small percentage of Americans travel outside the country, so most don't have the opportunity to learn firsthand how George W. Bush and his Iraq War have damaged the international standing of the United States. They may read about it here and there, or hear some commentator on Fox News give a sneering "Who cares!" about what Europe thinks about us. But it is very different to be personally confronted and showered with ill will.

Or a gob of spit, in the case of one of my neighbors just back from a couple of weeks in Europe. And no, it wasn't in France. He says it happened in a public square in jolly old London, England, which didn't really surprise me. I had heard from another friend about an ugly encounter she and her family had on a London bus, I think around January 2004. I was in London for a day with my family in the spring of 2004 (we came over from Paris on the Chunnel train) and had a weird experience near the Tower of London where no one seemed to know where the subway/Tube station was, although we had to be within a block of it. We ended up taking a taxi. Not quite the same as getting spit on, but I sensed a real coldness. They know you're an American as soon as they hear you speak. We have a quite distinctive accent.

My neighbor said two Londoners approached him, berated him for the foreign policy sins of the United States, and let loose a spitball before strolling away. Two other Londoners who saw what happened came over and helped him clean up, while mentioning that they didn't much like what the U.S. was doing in the world either. While I'm very skeptical about claims by Vietnam veterans that they were spat upon, usually by "dirty hippies," in airports while returning from the war--these are largely urban legends--I believe my neighbor. He's older than me, quite sophisticated, and I think dislikes the President and the Iraq War to at least the degree I do. He has no reason to make this up.

A large percentage of the British public polls in opposition to George W. Bush and the Iraq War. It's a big reason British Prime Minister Tony Blair is near the end of his career. A British film director has just released a faux-documentary called Death of a President, about a fictitious assasination of Bush and how the U.S. just doesn't understand why the world hates it so. But you would find similar scorn toward Bush and the Iraq War if you polled Germans.

I've been to Germany twice since the Iraq War started, most recently this past spring, and had numerous discussions with Germans about Bush and his war. Perhaps because I agree with many of their opinions, these discussions tend to begin and end peacefully. The topic never came up when we were in Paris in the spring of 2004, and no one was less than friendly to us.

Ironically, I suspect the reason Americans are running into these problems in London is because they speak the same language as the British, more or less. It is much easier to unload political invective on a tourist when he or she can understand every word you say. In addition, American tourists are more likely to interact with average members of the public in London than they are in France or Germany, where encounters are more typically with hotel staff or other people who have an economic interest in you.

It sucks to get spit on, and there is no excuse for it. I suspect many Britons would be like those who came to help my neighbor: horrified at the bad manners and injustice, even though they dislike Bush. The world has changed for Americans because of the 43rd President, and not for the better.

Postscript: The Guardian in the U.K. is reporting on a new poll that shows the British public thinks George W. Bush is a greater threat to world piece than Kim Jong Il in North Korea. Bush still ranks behind Osama bin Laden, however. It's no wonder my neighbor had the experience he did.

Posted by David at 07:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Halloween began Thursday night in my neighborhood by the Susquehanna River. It was official Trick-or-Treat night for the city of Harrisburg, and I handed out candy to a flock of kids, many from outside the neighborhood. I don't begrudge that; when I was about 11, I figured out that I would get much better candy if I went to South Shore Drive, a largely well-off street in Holland, Michigan, the town where I grew up. Back then, and I'm talking the mid-1960s, people weren't as generous with candy. You might get a single piece of Bazooka Joe bubble gum or a popcorn ball, not the handfuls of candybars kids expect today in our more affluent world.

After the festivities for the children ended around 8 p.m., the festivities for the adults began. Nick Woods hauled his portable fireplace out into Showers Street, the alley between Conoy and Tuscarora, and he and his friend Becky Ross got a roaring fire going (he just needs to be careful with that axe). Bottles of wine and glasses materialized from nearby homes, and we warmed ourselves in two ways.

Our conversations ranged from the Harrisburg budget crisis, to Game 4 of the World Series between the Tigers and the Cards, to actor Michael J. Fox's pro-stem cell research TV commercial in Missouri and Rush Limbaugh's ugly accusation that Fox somehow faked symptoms of Parkinson's Disease. Nick works for Medtronic and helps doctors implant medical devices, including one to reduce the tremors of Parkinson's. He filled us in on some of the back story.

This is one of the biggest party weekends of the year in Shipoke. On Saturday night is a costume party at Mike and Melissa Snyder's house. On Sunday afternoon is the annual Halloween Parade for neighborhood children and their friends. My wife, Lisa Brittingham, and Kathy VanderWoude created the parade years ago, when our daughters first were able to walk, to remind some of the less kid-friendly people in Shipoke that it wasn't just a neighborhood of DINKs anymore. That used to be an annoyance; there was once a serious proposal to remove the playground equipment (in favor of a tennis court) because "there are no kids in Shipoke." But no more.

The parade will be followed by games and a potluck picnic in the playground that often lasts well into the evening. It is often the last big social event of the year, prior to our winter hibernation when people disappear into their homes and you don't see them for months. Unless you wave a bottle of wine outside their window.

Posted by David at 06:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Defeat is nipping at the heels of U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, the embattled Pennsylvania conservative Republican.

He can't seem to budge State Treasurer Bob Casey Jr.'s consistent double-digit lead in the polls, and even the endorsement of the National Rifle Association (which also more-or-less likes Casey) hasn't been the benefit it was in his 2000 re-election campaign against Ron Klink. Santorum has reportedly pulled his ads off network TV in favor of cheaper cable channels--he claims it was a strategic move--and the only big-name endorsers he can get to appear for him are fellow wingnuts like Fox News commentator Sean Hannity, who is appearing on his behalf in Lancaster County this Saturday. That will lock up the right-wing vote for sure, but he already had that and it will drive even more Republican moderates to the Casey camp.

Perhaps the oddest contretemps for Santorum came after he used Lord of the Rings imagery to describe his position in the war on terrorism. Tolkien fans scornfully ripped him limb from limb, at least metaphorically, for his errors. God help Santorum if he tries Star Trek imagery next and screws that up.

Yesterday, he was reduced to moaning that Casey is supposedly "unqualified" to serve in the Senate. This follows a charming commercial showing Casey's head next to an A-bomb mushroom cloud. Santorum's reasoning is that because Casey doesn't subscribe to the same Bush-Cheney paranoia that he does, he must be some sort of wimp.

Really the only thing that could save Santorum now is a mass defection of liberals from Casey, who is as conservative as Santorum on some issues but not nearly as nasty. But leave it to Santorum, he couldn't help himself when the New Jersey gay marriage ruling came out earlier this week. He didn't exactly call it an abomination, but every liberal got the point and remembered why they dislike him so much. All Santorum needs now is for George W. Bush to call him "my good friend" and you might as well call the election now.

Posted by David at 06:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Everytime it seems the Republicans have hit rock bottom they find another rock to crawl under.

I didn't think they could go any lower than attacking Sen. Max Cleland, a triple amputee (Vietnam War) from Georgia, for supposedly being unpatriotic, but then Ann Coulter came along with her nauseating accusation that the 9/11 widows known as the "Jersey Girls," who have been critics of the Bush Administration, were "enjoying" the deaths of their husbands. When the New York Post tried to peddle the story that one of the widows was having an affair with Bruce Springsteen, I thought it had to be the end. But it wasn't.

Now rightwing hate gusher Rush Limbaugh is telling his listeners that actor Michael J. Fox is either faking symptoms of Parkinson's Disease or deliberately went off his medications in ads he has recorded in favor of embryonic stem cell research for use by Democrats in campaigns in Maryland and Missouri. You can see the ad in question here. Fox has tremors as he speaks, which a spokesman said were caused by his medication, not the lack thereof.

Fox, who is able to keep his acting career alive only with the greatest of effort, supports embryonic stem cell research because it offers real hope for Parkinson's sufferers. President Bush stopped most of that research in the U.S. in his first year in office as a favor to the Catholic Church and the religious right. Democrats will restart it after they regain power, but we will have lost eight years. Fox's willingness to go public with the extent of his disability has led to one of the most powerful political spots in years.

Just for the record, the Democrats have no one so despicable as Coulter or Limbaugh working their side of the street.

Posted by David at 12:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By The Associated Press
¶
Some priorities Democrats have set if the party takes control of the House, the Senate or both in the midterm elections: ¶
— Military: Force an immediate drawdown of troops in Iraq and conduct oversight hearings on missteps on the war.¶
— Intelligence: Increase attention given to emerging terrorist threats in Africa and Southeast Asia and devote more resources to North Korea and Iran. More oversight of terrorism and government surveillance.¶
— Homeland security: Boost security for rail and mass transit systems. Tougher oversight of the Department of Homeland Security, potential restructuring of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.¶
— Judiciary: Conduct oversight hearings on treatment of terrorism detainees, domestic surveillance programs and President Bush’s use of “signing statements” affecting some requirements in the laws he signs.¶
— Minimum wage. Pass legislation to raise the minimum from the current $5.15 an hour to $7.25. ¶
— Veterans affairs: Increase oversight with detailed budget accountings. More funding for veterans’ health care, including additional mental health counseling for vets returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.¶
— Health: Allow the Medicare program to negotiate directly with drug companies for lower prices. Pass a vetoed embryonic stem cell research bill again. Require insurance companies to provide benefits for treating mental illnesses equal to other medical and surgical benefits. ¶
— Transportation: Consolidate air traffic control facilities. Allow more foreign control of airlines. Limit the number of Transportation Security Administration airport screeners to 45,000. More oversight hearings on the Federal Aviation Administration. ¶
— Taxes: Increase education-based tax breaks. Close the so-called $345 billion tax gap, the estimated amount that people and companies owe but avoid paying each year.¶
— Trade: Let expire a law that forbids Congress to amend trade agreements negotiated by the president. Create a chief enforcement officer in the office of the U.S. trade representative. ¶
— Energy and environment: More incentives for biodiesel, ethanol and other alternative fuels as well as wind, solar, geothermal and other sources of alternative energy. Renegotiate oil and gas leases that waived royalty payments to the government. Impose a national cap on industrial carbon dioxide emissions. Resist Bush’s efforts to open more public lands to oil exploration. ¶
—Agriculture: Increase conservation programs and require more corn-based ethanol in motor fuel blends.¶

Posted by David at 06:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It seems that old President Bush--father of the current occupant of the White House--is concerned about what those terrible Democrats will do to his boy after they take over Congress in January (this assumes a Democratic takeover of at least one house of Congress, but a takeover of the House of Representatives seems pretty well assured).

As Paul Krugman writes in his column in the New York Times this morning (I can't link because you can read it by subscription only), the Democrats are starting to be pressured by the Kumbaya crowd that they must not be vindictive, or partisan, or do anything really differerent than is being done now. Krugman urges Democrats, for the good of the country, not to surrender to this sort of Democratic Leadership Council defeatism. I second that.

There won't be an impeachment--that would just give us Cheney as President. But the nation needs and wants to know what really happened during Bush Administration. Why we really went to war with Iraq. Why the Hurricane Katrina response was so bungled. The list is endless, and once Democrats have control of the Congressional committees and their subpoena power, they can go to town and ensure that George W. Bush is thoroughly discredited for all time. I, for one, hope they kick ass.

Posted by David at 07:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon, the longtime Delaware County, Pa., Republican congressman whose re-election campaign is fast collapsing (his daughter's lobbying operation was raided by the FBI this week), has finally figured out why all these bad things are happening to him: it's all Bill Clinton's fault, or to be specific, Clinton agents still hiding out in the federal bureaucracy.

Credit to the Daily Pennsylvanian blog, The Spin, at the University of Pennsylvania for catching up to Weldon and grabbing this video. His opponent, Joe Sestak, and the liberal blogs are of course having a field day with this latest surfacing of the Great Satan. I used to think being a former President must be a pretty cushy job, but with all these conspiracies Clinton has to aid and abet, I don't think so anymore.

Posted by David at 06:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you like Bob Dylan's music and happen to be in New York City, be sure to check out the Dylan exhibit at the Morgan Library at 36th St. and Madison Ave. through Jan. 6. The time span is from his high school years on up through his motorcycle accident in 1966, after which his music made a profound shift. This is probably the first serious museum exhibition on Dylan, and it definitely has some amazing stuff.

Right up there for me was seeing Dylan's original, hand-written lyrics for "Blowing in the Wind." The material from his early life includes some paragraphs he wrote in a Hibbing (Minn.) High School yearbook, plus his own picture from the yearbook. There is a photo of his father, Abraham Zimmerman, the first I've ever seen of him, and father and son look much alike. His friendship/relationship with Joan Baez is part of the exhibit, which includes an anti-Vietnam War poster portraying Baez and two other women, possibly her sisters. The caption? "Girls Say Yes to Boys Who Say No." There are listening booths where visitors can listen to Dylan songs, or selections from filmed interviews with him at various points during his career.

The ultimate irony of this exhibit is that it is being presented in the Morgan Library, as in financier J.P. Morgan. Morgan was arguably the original "Master of War," having helped finance World War I. The Morgan Library had been rather a stuffy place, showing mostly art from the Middle Ages and rare books (like a Guttenburg Bible). Be that as it may, the exhibit is well worth your time if you happen to be in New York.

Posted by David at 12:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last night I had an opportunity to watch a staged reading of an exciting new musical, "A Shelter In Our Car." A staged reading has the actors on stage speaking the dialogue and singing the songs, but with no costumes or sets or much movement. This was performed in the basement of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church at 65th St. and Central Park West in New York City. The book and lyrics were written by Sophie Jaff, and the wonderful music for Jaff's lyrics was written by Robert L. Wilson III. Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj, of Indian-Bahamian descent, is the director. Tony Perry, an old friend of mine from The Patriot-News, is one of the seven actors.

The play, which is billed as being for children but which will likewise be enjoyed by adults, is about an immigrant Jamaican woman and her daughter who have sunk into homelessness in New York City after her husband and chief breadwinner died. She is a trained nurse, but cannot work in her profession here without a New York nursing license, which she is working hard to obtain. In the meantime, she and her daughter, Zettie, live in their car. Mom makes a few dollars now and then handing out fliers.

Both homelessness and the current Republican campaign against immigrants are addressed in this musical, but it is a human story at heart. That is often the best way to address issues in art, by showing the impact and not preaching.

The play is based on a children's boook by Monica Gunning of the same name, and is being produced under the auspices of the Making Books Sing program in New York. It will be performed in New York schools beginning in January, but I have to think with songs this good it will have a life beyond that. I would even like to see it expanded a little bit beyond the short attention span of grade schoolers.

Posted by David at 01:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

David Kuo, the former deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, claims in a new book that the Bush Administration publicly embraced the Christian Right to get their votes while privately rolling their eyes and considering its leaders "boorish" and "nuts."

Kuo's assertions in "Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction" have been disputed by his former boss, now president of St. Vincent's College in Latrobe, Pa., but that is right in line with past practice when other negative insider accounts of the Bush White House have been published. I will say it is possible that someone like Kuo expected reverential treatment of James Dobson and other Christian Right leaders, and that normal political bantering might have offended him. But coming on top of the Foley scandal, his book could drive even more Christian Right voters--Bush's most dedicated bloc up till now--to stay home this coming November and in 2008.

Admit it--didn't you always believe that Bush's public piety was a political sham? I doubt we know the half of it.

Posted by David at 09:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For that small subset of people who are fans of both the Detroit Tigers and the Harrisburg Senators, last night's American League Championship Series game between the Tigers and the Oakland A's became a nail-biter of particular poignance in the bottom of the 9th inning.

The Tigers, who had played well all night, were up 8-5. The A's had two men on, and the next batter was Oakland's power hitter, Milton Bradley, who had already hit two home runs that night. And Senators fans went, oh shit! Here we go again!

Bradley played for the Senators in the 1999 season. He was already showing the anger and attitude that would get him into trouble with umpires and fans from time to time, but he had also proven himself to be a tremendous hitter. Fast forward to the end of the 1999 season and the Senators are playing in a five-game series for the Eastern League crown. It is the deciding game, and the Senators are down by three. Bottom of the 9th, two outs, but the bases are loaded.

Whack! Bradley hits the first pitch out of the park for a grand slam, giving the Senators the Eastern League title. Blogger Matt Bruce, who follows Oakland, wrote earlier this summer that it was one of the 10 greatest home runs in Minor League history. So we Tiger fans were glad that Bradley was held to a single that didn't turn into an RBI. The next batter hit a fly ball that was caught, ending the game and putting the Tigers up 2-0 as they head into Game 3 in Detroit Friday night.

Posted by David at 04:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Much has been made of how the Amish in Lancaster County have forgiven Charles Carl Roberts IV for gunning down 10 of their young girls Oct. 2 in a one-room schoolhouse in West Nickel Mines, Pa. Five have died so far, and the others will be scarred for life. Yet the Amish have very publicly forgiven Roberts for his hideous crime and expressed their personal condolences to his widow and children on his death (at his own hand after he shot the girls). This is being hailed in rapturous terms in the mainstream media as the epitome of Christian love and devotion to Jesus, and how it will bring "healing" to the community. Go Thou and do likewise, fellow doormat.

Sorry, I disagree. To forgive Roberts for what he did belittles the horror of what happened to those young innocents. Worst case, it might even encourage some other simpleminded idiot to do something similar. I know forgiveness is an old Christian virtue stressed by Jesus himself, but my reading of that 70x7 passage is that He was talking about the petty annoyances of everyday life, such as bothersome family members, not an evil man who murders your children. I would argue that some crimes are indeed unforgiveable except by God. You don't see Jews, even Jews for Jesus, rushing to forgive Hitler for the Holocaust.

Jewish teaching on the subject of forgiveness is somewhat different than Christian teaching and I like it a lot more. They believe that forgiveness is fine, but don't rush into it. Insist upon sincere efforts by the one who caused you harm to atone for what he or she did. Fix the damage, then seek forgiveness. Mrs. Roberts, though innocent of any involvement in this horror, could help atone for the shame that will inevitably attach to her family name and that of her children by working to help rid America of the sort of weapons her husband used in the slaughter.

Or perhaps by speaking at some events to raise money to pay the medical bills of both the living and dead children, which must be enormous. I understand that charitable donations have been pouring in and will pay some of those expenses, but I find it hard to believe they will cover everything.

Posted by David at 12:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Now comes word that the Navy lawyer who took the habeus corpus petition of Osama bin Laden's former driver, Salim Hamdan, to the U.S. Supreme Court and won has been denied promotion by a Navy board and must, under Navy rules, retire from the service. Or to paraphrase: Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift has been thrown out on his ass for embarassing the Bush Administration.

His immediate superior called it "quite a coincidence" that the decision to deny promotion to Swift--recently picked by the National Law Journal as one of the country's top 100 lawyers--came two weeks after the Supreme Court ruled that President George W. Bush had violated the Constitution six ways to Sunday in establishing military tribunals with new and creative procedures and rules of evidence to fry, er, try suspected terrorists at Guantanamo.

I would guess that the Bush regime's move against Swift will cause consternation in the military justice system. Military lawyers take their jobs quite seriously and pointed with pride--in the past--to rules intended to prevent so-called "command influence" in military justice proceedings. While throwing Swift out on the street may not technically violate those rules, all military lawyers now know the price for aggressively defending someone the Commander in Chief wants locked up for life.

Posted by David at 10:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann is the closest thing we have in the early 21st century to Edward R. Murrow, the famous CBS News reporter in the 1950s who took on rightwing ideologues like Sen. Joseph McCarthy. It is no secret that Olbermann is proudly liberal, and good for him. Conservative voices so dominate the airwaves that he stands out like a beacon of hope.

Anyway, last night Olbermann delivered a scathing personal critique of President Bush, focusing on his recent attempts to all but accuse Democratic critics of treason for refusing to enthusiastically back his assaults on the Constitution. Olbermann delivers his comments directly at Bush. It is a full frontal assault. And long overdue.

Posted by David at 07:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Harrisburg this week celebrated the 100th anniversary of the dedication of Pennsylvania's beautiful State Capitol. Republican President Theodore Roosevelt spoke at the ceremony on Oct. 4, 1906. If you go to the Capitol Rotunda, you can see the spot marked where he stood and delivered a long speech that blistered his foes among the wealthy plutocrats. Heck, you'd think you were listening to a Jesse Jackson speech, not a speech from someone in the same party, at least in name, of George W. Bush and Pat Robertson.

The Harrisburg Patriot reprinted TR's speech in full on Oct. 5, 1906. It's too long for me to include it all, but here's the section that had flames licking around the words:

"Our Union is firmly established. But each generation has its special and serious difficulties, and we of this generation have to struggle with the evils springing from the very material success of which we are so proud, from the very growth and prosperity of which, with justice, we boast. The extraordinary industrial changes of the last half century have produced a totally new set of conditions under which new evils flourish; and for these new evils new remedies must be devised.

"Some of these evils can be grappled with by private effort only, for we never can afford to forget that in the last analysis, the chief factor in personal success, and indeed in national greatness, must be the sturdy, self-reliant character of the individual citizen. But many of these evils are of such a nature that no private effort can avail against them. These evils, therefore, must be grappled with by government action. In some cases this governmental action must be exercised by the several states individually. In yet others, it has become increasingly evident that no efficient state action is possible, and that we need through executive action, thru legislation, and through judicial interpretation and construction of the law, to increase the power of the Federal government.

"If we fail thus to increase it, we show our impotence and leave ourselves at the mercy of those ingenious legal advisors of the holders of vast corporate wealth, who, in the performance of what they regard as their duty, and to serve the ends of their clients, invoke the law at one time for the confounding of their rivals, and at another time strive for the nullification of the law in order that they themselves may be left free to work their unbridled will on these same rivals, or on those who labor for them, or on the general public. In the exercise of their profession and in the service of their clients these astute lawyers strive to prevent the passage of efficient laws and strive to secure judicial determinations of those that pass which shall emasculate them.

"They do not invoke the Constitution in order to compel the due observance of law alike by rich and poor, by great and small; on the contrary, they are ceaselessly on the watch to cry out that the Constitution is violated whenever any effort is made to invoke the aid of the national government, whether for the efficient regulation of the railroads, for the efficient supervision of the great corporations, or for efficiently securing obedience to such a law as the national eight-hour law and similar so-called “labor statutes.”

"The doctrine they preach would make the Constitution merely the shield of incompetence and the excuse for governmental paralysis; they treat it as a justification for refusing to attempt the remedy of evil, instead of as the source of vital power necessary for the existence of a mighty and ever-growing nation."

(If anyone would like to read Roosevelt's entire speech, send me an e-mail and I'll send it to you as an attachment)

If you think this is musty old history, the weak-sister interpretation of the Constitution that TR rails against is popular once again among the most conservative lawyers and jurists, especially those in the Federalist Society. They call it the "Constitution in Exile." If you can turn the Constitution into an enemy of the people and a friend of big business, well, you can do just about anything. Or nothing at all.

Posted by David at 11:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

George W. Bush has been talking of late about how Osama bin Laden will be brought to justice. After reading a couple of weeks ago that Karl Rove was telling Republicans not to worry, that something would happen before the election to help them hold onto Congress, I'd been wondering if Osama bin Laden was suddenly going to be captured. We'll see.

Posted by David at 07:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

God, I hate the NRA. That group and its mad campaign to stop gun control are as much to blame as one lone gunman for the latest school shootings we now endure.

Today in eastern Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, the world saw the ultimate result of letting anyone buy assault weapons. As of this writing, five Amish school girls are dead along with the killer, and five others are clinging to life in hospitals, their bodies ripped apart by bullets because another madman wanted to go out in a blaze of glory. And like the killer in Colorado last week, he targeted exclusively girls.

Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, the killer, drove a milk truck for a living. State Police Commissioner Jeffrey B. Miller said at a news conference that Roberts had nursed a grudge against someone or something for 20 years. He wouldn't give details, but we will learn soon enough.

Miller armed himself with a 9 mm semi-automatic pistol, a shotgun, and 600 rounds of ammunition for his assault on the Amish one-room school near Christiana, Pa., where my cousin Faith's husband was once pastor of the Presbyterian Church. Miller referred several times during the news conference to an "automatic" pistol. Automatic pistols have been illegal for civilians for decades, but certain semi-automatic models--notably the notorious Tec-9, Sweden's worst-ever export to the U.S.--could easily be converted to full automatic. If Roberts got his hands on a so-called "pre-ban" Tec-9, perhaps that was what he was using. Yet any number of other rapid-firing 9 mm semi-automatic pistols would have done the job just as well.

Many semi-automatic weapons like this were banned by the 1994 assault weapons bill enacted by the Democratic Congress with strong support from President Clinton. The National Rifle Association set about punishing or trying to punish legislators who voted for the ban. Two years ago, President Bush and the Republican Congress let the assault weapons ban expire. It will be interesting to see if a direct link can be made between the expiration of that law and Roberts' apparently legal purchase of his mayhem machine.

He entered the school, according to Miller, and separated out most of the girls, letting the boys and their teacher go. Then he tied up the girls and lined them up by the blackboard. When the State Police called him on his cellphone, he began executing the girls methodically with shots to the head. Even the survivors--and some of these will likely die--were shot "multiple" times. Then he turned the pistol on himself.

The NRA has arguably become the equivalent of the 1920s Ku Klux Klan in American politics. The Klan back then was a corrosive and politically intimidating force in state and local elections in certain states, not all in the South. Today, the Klan is largely a joke, but it wasn't back then. Just as the NRA isn't today. Thanks to the NRA, we don't have the effective gun laws that might have prevented today's tragedy in a small, Amish schoolhouse. It is as much a terrorist organization--albeit in an indirect way--as the terrorists who attacked on Sept. 11, 2001.

Posted by David at 08:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you haven't been reading the newspapers since late last week, Rep. Mark Foley, R-Florida, has become the latest reason to return Congress to control of the Democrats. This scandal might be the final straw.

Foley got caught sending sexually suggestive e-mails to former Congressional pages, who can be boys or girls but in this case were all boys. These are teen-agers who spend a year or two in Washington, D.C.,doing the gofer work of Congress and enjoying the opportunity to view Congress in action from close-up. Some of the ones who didn't get the e-mails knew about what their fellow pages were receiving, but kept quiet out of fear of retaliation. What makes matters worse for the Republicans is that Foley was co-chair of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children (he resigned from Congress last week and checked himself into alcohol rehab after the e-mails became public).

The Washington blog Wonkette did some YouTube sleuthing and came up with a clip of Foley on the O'Reilly show on Fox in May castigating Ted Kennedy for holding up passage of a bill to create a national sexual predator list (Kennedy wanted a hate crimes bill attached to that legislation). Here's a link to the clip through Wonkette. As they say in the Mastercard ads, priceless.

Compounding the scandal is that the GOP House leadership apparently knew of the e-mails for over a year and did nothing about it. Where this could particularly hurt them is in vote totals from their Christian Right base. Christian Rightists can forgive financial scandals but not garbage like this. And before anyone brings up Bill Clinton, let's recall that Bill and Monica were two consenting adults. Foley was an adult and the ex-pages were teenaged boys who had once been his employees.

The more extreme nutbars on the right are using the Foley scandal to whip up a pogrom against gays, even though an average gay man is no more likely to be a pedophile than an average heterosexual man. Take it as a sign of their desperation.

Posted by David at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)