Thieves in the Temple.

the oncoming storm.

The Republicans in the House have finally voted to increase the federal minimum wage to $7.25/hr. So you know there's a poison pill attached, right? In fact, the mother of all poison pills is attached: drastic cuts in the Estate Tax.

How despicable, these men. Rep. Steven LaTourette of Ohio, one of the least despicable Republicans and a strong supporter of the minimum wage increase, suggests that they had to give Senate Republicans something to induce them to increase the minimum wage. Thankfully, as citizens, we don't have to think like that. We don't have to worry about Senator Warbucks wanting X so he'll vote for Y. We tell Senator Warbucks we want Y because Y is moral and right, and we don't want X because X is immoral and wrong, not to mention X will plunge us far deeper into fiscal hell and besides only 18 rich families and a few right-wing nutjobs want X anyway. We also tell Senator Warbucks that if he doesn't do our will, we'll remember come Election time. And then Senator Warbucks laughs, forgetting that arrogance is the downfall of many a man.

Some right-wingers are no doubt readying the "spirit of compromise" argument. To which I respond in two ways: one, when during the last six years have Republicans cared about "compromise"? Two, we do not "compromise" with immorality. We do not "compromise" by permitting more welfare handouts to more rich people who earn their zillions on the backs of their workers in the first place.

Harry Reid suggests that the bill won't pass. But Harry Reid might be wrong. The Nelson twins and Max "not Mike Mansfield" Baucus and the senior Senator from the State of Wal-Mart have already jumped ship; now Mary Landrieu and Mark Pryor and Ron Wyden might be induced to jump, too, being none too sturdy as defenders of the Estate Tax in the first place. Lincoln Chafee is in the political fight of his life, which could mean he stays strong and then again could also mean he might be susceptible to suggestion (a suggestion like, "no more RNC help against Stephen Laffey unless you give us some help on this"). And who knows what George Voinovich is thinking? On the other hand, some Republican Senators are so implacably opposed to a minimum wage hike that they'll oppose it no matter what goodies are attached. But leave nothing to chance: call your Senator and tell them you want the minimum wage increase but you don't want the Estate Tax gutted, and would happily kill this bill if that's what it means. I mean, I don't know if, say, Robert Menendez is really mulling this over, but I didn't have to mull it over, not even for a second. I knew what to do. Make them go on vacation without a minimum wage hike if necessary, then come back and do it right.

And if Democrats up for re-election can't guard themselves against the inevitable Max Cleland hatchet job, where their votes against this poisonous bill get blown out of their proper context, then it's their own damn fault.

good news.

Per Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, FEMA has reversed its policy of limiting media access to displaced Katrina survivors living in trailers. The policy change occurred approximately one week after FAIR's original action alert; if you were one of those who sent a comment to FEMA, pat yourself on the back.

Then brace yourself for tomorrow, because there's a storm coming.

minimum love.

Word on the street is that the Republican leadership in the House is ready to increase the minimum wage -- but only a little, and they may tie it to a poison pill like an attack on workplace rights. If so, what a repugnant bunch of little men they are, using public opinion against the public and for the greater enrichment of corporations, increasing the minimum wage exactly zero cents an hour since 1997 while giving themselves regular pay increases (and some of them, like Tom DeLay, cry poor while doing it). Democratic efforts to increase the minimum wage center around the figure of $7.25/hr, and, frankly, that's also still too low -- I know this from experience. But Republicans will go lower, unless we instruct them differently.

In other news, Consumers Union recruits citizens who want to meet with lawmakers and their staffs about opposing H.R. 3997, a toothless identity-theft bill that would not, for example, permit citizens to use a security freeze on their credit files unless they're already a victim of ID theft. To quote a Richard Benjamim movie from the early '80s, that's like closing the barn door after the horses have eaten your children. If you can meet with lawmakers, let Consumers Union know here.

penny rants for the day of July 27, 2006.

To be honest, I think the Democratic Leadership Council's "American Dream Initiative" is a mixed bag. I bet a good three-quarters of these ideas work OK, and I don't ask for a lot of help, just help that create opportunities and levels the playing field. But even its two best ideas -- cutting $20 billion-plus in corporate welfare yearly and giving $500 savings bonds to newborns -- aren't bold enough. The real problem with Democrats isn't incrementalism, it's a lack of courage: you don't start out trying to cut some corporate welfare, you start out trying to cut all the corporate welfare and only settle for cutting some if you must. And the paranoid in me wonders if those retirement accounts they want to make mandatory for businesses with more than five employees are a prelude to caving in on privatizing Social Security.

A recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll suggests that Americans are more pro-Israel than I suggested the other day -- but not much, and not in so monolithic a manner as their leaders and the punditry. 57% of Americans sympathize more with Israel than Lebanon, the poll says, and Americans approve of Bush's handling of the crisis by a 45-39 margin. Of course, Bush doesn't score 50% on the latter question, the inclusion of the words "cease-fire" might have yielded an entirely different result, and I wonder if the 57 figure would be that high if the question replaced "Lebanon" with "Palestine." And I know there are significant differences in methodology between a QuickVote (which anyone can choose to join) and a poll in which the pollster selects the respondents. But all in all, the WSJ/NBC figures validate my faith that workaday American opinion on the Middle East is a lot more diverse than gets covered in the media or represented in the government.

Hate hate hate hate hate Michael Starr's report (echoed on the AP wire, too, until recently) that jillion-dollar Jeopardy! winner Ken Jennings "blasted" the hit game show. Read the original Ken Jennings post and it's obvious he's joking. Is said post funny? Generally, yes. It'd probably be funnier if I knew what exactly possessed him to post it, and I'm not really going to investigate that. But I suppose "Ken Jennings blasts Jeopardy!" would fly in a society that accepts the contention that Ann Coulter is "joking," or Bill O'Reilly is "joking." We're not that society, are we?

Yes, we are. Do Fox News hacks Kondracke and Barnes offer even one piece of evidence to support their contention that the "MoveOn.org-Howard Dean-Daily Kos-Michael Moore left wing of the Democratic Party" is meaner than Michael Savage or Rush Limbaugh? Despite stacking the deck with a "wing" represented by four persons/organizations including a mainstream liberal organization, a centrist former governor, a mainstream liberal blogger, and a leftist filmmaker? No, not even one. Did their mothers teach them to act this way?

sunset this!

The House will vote today on several "sunset commission" bills that would force government programs to justify themselves before an unelected commission or die. Congress should continue oversight of federal programs why? Because Congressfolk are elected representatives and therefore accountable to the people on Election Day; unelected commissions are, by definition, unaccountable on Election Day. Todd Tiahrt's long-conceived brainchild is probably the best of the bills, mainly because it operates infrequently and leaves major entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare outside its scope, but the other bills (there are at least three) would put any and all government programs before an unelected commission, so that we might wind up with no Head Start, no Medicare, no veterans' services, and privatized Social Security before we knew it. We're the people, and we don't have to compromise with Congress; it's their job to do our will. We can, and must, oppose all sunset commission bills.

There's another philosophical problem, too. Republicans have had 12 years to roll back government programs consistent with conservative principles; if they've done a bad job of that (and many conservatives would say they have), I don't think they should get to cheat by passing the equivalent of a legislative smart bomb, which would be just as imprecise as the real-world smart bombs. Stop this legislation in its tracks by using this email action page or, more appropriately, find your House Rep's phone number here, here, or here.

the dart of love.

The House Judiciary Committee may vote as early as today on H.R. 2679, the "Public Expression of Religion Act." And according to this Congress, what does "public expression of religion" mean? Why, just as you guessed, it means "(denying) legal fees and out-of-pocket expenses to plaintiffs who win lawsuits under the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause," as put by Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. That means if you win a separation of church and state case (hence the bill specifying the "Establishment Clause") -- mind you, win, in which case it'd be tough to accuse you of wasting a court's time with a "frivolous" lawsuit -- you don't enjoy the same rights as others who file suit against the government for constitutional violations. That's what we'd call "discrimination," gang. Here's the Americans United Press Release, which goes into more detail, and here are those Judiciary Committee members, whom you may contact using the "Get Member Info" button.

The EFF also has an action page with which you may express your displeasure with the Specter warrantless-wiretapping "compromise" bill, which legitimizes most of Mr. Bush's domestic spying without adequate oversight from Congress or the courts. There are worse bills out there -- Mike DeWine has one -- but that doesn't mean we must "compromise" and accept Specter's bill; we're the people, dammit, and we can reject them all if we like, until Congress gets the point.

Pennsylvania voters, take note: Senate Bill 566 would prohibit insurance companies from using credit scores to deny coverage or bump up rates. One has very little to do with the other, really -- no law of Isaac Newton's proclaims that folks up to their eyeballs in debt file excessive claims or drive badly. Insurance companies claim that credit scores and excessive claims are related, but won't produce evidence to back up that claim. It gets worse. You could get a worse credit score because you have a lot of credit cards or because you have no credit cards, or because you pay a majority of your bills with cash or money orders. Of course, the poor suffer more, because the credit agencies that cater to them, like check-cashing and rent-to-own stores, rarely even report to credit bureaus (and thus don't help the poor develop good credit standing when they deserve it). All in all, it seems that insurance companies see ballooning middle-class debt as, in Condi Rice's words, an opportunity to make more unearned money. At least Pat Buchanan sees ballooning middle-class debt as an opportunity to criticize the economy. PennPIRG's action page is here.

Finally, if you're in New York City today, you may want to stop in at St. Bartholomew's Church at 51st Street and Park Avenue to hear first-hand accounts from folks who were on the ground in Lebanon until recently. You'll also get the opportunity to ask questions. The Network of Arab-American Professionals of New York sponsors the event, which is free to the general public. Call Yasmon Hamidi at 1.917.860.6828 for more information. (Hat tip to United for Peace and Justice for this item.)

"National Call-in Day" for the Kucinich plan.

I'm intrigued to see how this works:  Jewish Voice for Peace has declared today to be a "National Call-in Day" for H.R. 450, which would call for an immediate cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon, multi-party negotiations, and an international peace-keeping force.  Go to Jewish Voice for Peace's homepage, scroll down to the "Who's Your Rep?" area on the right-hand side, and enter your zip code; that'll give you the phone number for your House Rep.  It seems like everyone has a better contact-your-Rep tool than I do.  Read the text of the bill here.  The Democracy in Action email page is here, but phone calls are more effective, especially as part of a campaign.

the world don't stop 'cause the Middle East is on fire.

This may come as a big surprise to you, but FEMA has been insisting on sitting in on interviews between journalists and Katrina victims.  And worse, according to the July 15 Baton Rouge Advocate:  some personnel have been telling reporters they can't talk to Katrina victims at all.  Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! reported even more extensive harassment after she tried to speak to Katrina victims in April.  But Tha Bush Mobb has slipped up and offered a handy website for you to report “allegations of civil liberties or civil rights abuses” to the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, and preventing or hindering Katrina victims from speaking to reporters sure sounds like a violation of First Amendment rights to me.  You may want to use the above link to point DHS to Sandy Davis's Baton Rouge Advocate article or Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! article.  (Look for "Fraud, Waste, and Abuse Contacts.")

Internet pay-to-play legislation is still stalled in the Senate (thanks to The Daily Show?), and now USPIRG wants us to write the CEOs of Verizon and AT&T to tell them to stop trying to hijack the internet from its users.  I presume that such a missive would elicit sober pronunciations that of course the big telecoms would never censor internet content, because that would cost them money.  And I suppose, in this Brave New World, if you simply can't get to UFPJ or MediaMatters via Verizon, a phone call to Verizon would probably fix that.  But the big telecoms also know that not everyone who can't access a site is going to get right on the phone with their service provider.  And said phone call wouldn't get you to UFPJ or MediaMatters as quickly as whatever content loads first, of course.  And it doesn't help anyone who doesn't know those sites are there in the first place, who've been fed a steady diet of junk news thanks to junk news providers paying to have their content prioritized.

We don't get much good news at "Thieves in the Temple," which is partly due to the relative dearth of good news in Bizarro World America, but which is also partly due to a lack of diligent follow-up on my part.  So here's some good news:  a federal court denied a government motion to dismiss a suit brought by the Electronic Freedom Foundation against AT&T for collaborating with the government in its NSA warrantless wiretapping program.  Those damn activist judges!  Most of whom, er, were appointed and/or confirmed by Republicans, and many of whom must be absolutely aghast at the world they helped make.  Knowing that real conservatism is a valuable strain of American thought, I feel for them, and I'm pulling for them, too.  I only hope we can contain the likes of John Roberts and Sam Alito, who believe corporations have more rights than people, who believe Mr. Bush can do whatever he likes because it's endless-though-conveniently-undeclared-war.

the "Night Fever" of "thieves in the temple" posts.

News Dissector has, for the past two weeks, been my one-stop shop for news about recent conflicts in the Middle East. Go forth and read. I'm finding neocon efforts to tie Iran to this conflict to be a bit strained. I'm also finding neocon efforts to tie the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers to the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand to be a bit strained. And, finally, Newt Gingrich, that "student of history," should rein in his glee at the onset of "World War III" or he'll soon have his own damn Presidential website at nochance2008.org.

Are the Republicans really trying to make the world such a crazy place that voters have no choice but to cling to them in These Troubled Times, as I've suggested previously?

It could be that. It could also be that they're merely very good at turning incompetence into opportunity -- and since they're very incompetent, they'll always have plenty of opportunities.

It could be something even more banal. Don Rumsfeld has supposedly said that if you can't manage a problem, you need to "enlarge" it. This isn't crazy neocon talk so much as it's crazy management-theory talk. Of course, for every manager who's a skilled "enlarger of problems" there are a hundred who think they are but aren't, who just inflict chaos on everyone around them, and it's the latter who seem to find jobs in Tha Bush Mobb.

So maybe the Republicans aren't Snidely Whiplash-types who create chaos just to get votes -- maybe they create chaos in an effort to ultimately bring chaos under control, or maybe they just see opportunity in chaos.

But, really, how is any of that better? It all has the same result. Innocent people still die. This is the level of incompetence that finished Democratic hegemony in the United States in 1980. The difference is that President Carter seemed overmatched then, whereas Mr. Bush always struts his stuff and puts on his confident face no matter what happens. We would come very far as a people if Mr. Bush's arrogance would revolt us the same way Mr. Carter's indecision revolted us in 1980.

In any case, the American people need to make some noise. Paul Craig Roberts, one of America's last living conservatives, reports that "(a)s of noon July 19, 800,000 people had participated in CNN’s Quick Vote, with the result that 55% oppose Israel’s attack on Lebanon. This result is despite the fact that US television reporting explains the news from the Israeli perspective." Currently (17.30 EST on Sunday 7.23), 51% of over 89,000 votes on another CNN Quick Vote support a cease-fire in the Middle East -- and this, also, occurs despite the total pro-Israel bias in the American press. All of this also occurs despite the fact that approximately 100% of American politicans support Israel's attack on Lebanon.

The right amount of noise about this issue (as with every other issue!) would be a hundred thousand Americans outside the White House demanding to speak peaceably to Mr. Bush. For now, though, Dennis Kucinich has introduced H.R. 450, which calls for a cease-fire and international negotiations. No doubt American knuckle-draggers will say that a cease-fire is useless because "the terrorists won't respect it," but currently the vast majority of firepower being discharged in the Middle East is coming from Israel. And it's not "self-defense," unless the mass killing of civilians and the mass destruction of another country's infrastructure is how a country must defend itself against the abduction of two soldiers. Use this action page or call your Representatives using either of these toll-free numbers, 1.888.355.3588 or 1.800.828.0498. It'd help, tactically, to state the case simply, without very much of the righteous invective that I've been pretty good for in this space.

penny rants for the day of July 22, 2006.

Here's the sort of blog post I don't like, and it's called "Why Bill O'Reilly is Irrelevant."  Why don't I like it?  Because the writer has one fact (the average age of the Bill O'Reilly viewer is 71) and pounds 10 paragraphs out of it.  You know it's bad when several of his commentors raise points like "well, they're not irrelevant if O'Reilly's viewers all vote at a higher rate than young people" or "Olbermann's audience isn't that much younger" that the post's author doesn't appear to have even investigated.  When folks fear that the internet will allow just anybody to say just anything, this is kinda what they mean.

Mike DeWine of Ohio, far from my least favorite Republican Senator, owes America at least one apology.  Not just for another ad using photos of 9.11 hijackers and footage of the Twin Towers burning to fearmonger voters, but for actually doctoring film of the Twin Towers burning in the same ad.  (Reported by U.S. News and World Report, not known for being cuddly with liberals.)  Doctoring that footage is not only an insult to the memory of those who died, it's a way of saying you don't trust voters to believe the truth.  It's also rather desperate for DeWine, who's been good enough on some things (Social Security, the Bush budgets, ANWR drilling) that he could beat Brown without resorting to that kind of manipulation.  Well, only three and a half months more of this until Election Day.

Ted Stevens took a beating on the Daily Show for saying (among other things) that the internet wasn't "a truck" but "a bunch of tubes," but one of his points is worth addressing.  Stevens argues for tiered internet service because he, as a U.S. Senator who's almost older than God, shouldn't have to wait three days for an email, as has apparently happened to him at least once.  (Out of the ten thousand or so emails I've ever received, it's happened to me at least twice.)  Trouble is, paying to prioritize some emails over others isn't going to solve that problem -- in Ted's World, he'll will still get the occasional email in three days, and I'll get the occasional email in six.  Only expanding bandwidth will solve that problem, and the main way government can promote the expansion of bandwidth is to curtail the monopolistic practices of internet service providers, so little guys with better ideas can break in.  Giving more welfare handouts to corporations in the form of things like the COPE Act doesn't "permit" corporations to "innovate," it makes them so fat and complacent that they only "innovate" new ways to pick consumers' pockets.

According to the incorrigible Bob Novak, Harry Reid has instructed the Democratic caucus in the Senate that they are not to make a deal with the Republicans to repeal any part of the Estate tax.  That doesn't mean Landrieu, Pryor, Bayh, and Wyden won't peal off (as Lincoln, the Nelson twins, and Baucus have already done), but good for Harry Reid.  Novak seems to think, however, that Reid's line in the sand "could help Republicans before the 2006 elections."  The thought that hordes of Americans care so much about the rich being taxed that they'll turn out for Republicans!  Bob Novak is such a card.

organized labors.

Stephen Colbert demolishes a Kentucky hospital's efforts to reclassify nurses as "supervisors" so they can't join unions.  And, unfortunately, satire is a little too close to reality these days -- Bill O'Reilly argued almost this insanely when he tried to justify Bush's 2003 tax cuts. And a few other times, too, but that's just what came to mind right off.

But this is the internet.  We don't have to just commisserate about how bad things are, and maybe even have a laugh about it -- we can also do something about it.  Like, hypothetically, push Congress to demand that the NLRB hold public hearings on the aforementioned issue and others.  I know, I know, getting this Congress to do anything is a Sisyphian effort.  But the last Congress repealed Bush's overtime rule changes twice (before Bill Frist, in a downright dirty trick we should start calling "fristing," inserted them into a must-pass appropriations bill), so we know they can be moved.

"know thy enemies, for they are your leaders."

The Senate passed stem cell legislation easily yesterday; now Mr. Bush intends to veto the damn thing.  You can contact Mr. Bush and instruct him not to veto the bill if you like, though he doesn't listen to us anyway, because we're not rich and/or our knuckles don't drag on the ground.

Sometime this week, the House will vote on H.R. 2389, the "Pledge Protection Act," which would prevent federal judges from hearing any First Amendment-based challenges to the Pledge of Allegiance.  Strikes me as unconstitutional (you're going to tell me I can't petition for the redress of grievances?), not to mention childish, not to mention that it coddles weaklings who are apparently threatened by the prospect of disagreeing with an atheist.  Pimp-slap the enablers here.

I do so love to be told, when I say I'm against drilling for oil like mad on our coasts, that I don't care about our energy independence.  That statement implies that drilling for oil like mad on our shores is the only solution to our energy woes, when Congress has squandered dozens of opportunities to raise auto fuel standards, promote alternative energy sources, and levy punitive taxes on profit-glutted oil companies.  The Senate is about to consider a House bill -- authored by the notorious Richard Pombo, he who would destroy the Endangered Species Act -- that would allow drilling on 8 million acres on Florida's coast.  Maybe Bill Nelson is so entranced by his (quite undeserved) 30-point lead over Katherine Harris that he thinks he can sit this one out.  Maybe his junior partner, Mel Martinez, will forget his past committments to stop this madness.  Let's not make it easy on them.

two fists of wrath!

Here's the thing about Arlen Specter:  it's not merely that he talks tough and then doesn't back it up, or only backs it up when the Democrats give him a lot of cover (cf. his vote against Robert Bork, vs. his ardent support for Clarence Thomas) -- it's that his philosophy of law and government (though not economics) has historically been so at odds with his party's that he constantly has to prove his loyalty.  So it goes with his shepherding of Roberts and Alito and his opposition to Harriet Miers, and so it goes with the "compromise" warrantless wiretapping legislation he's fashioned, which does little more than give the White House more power to spy on you and your neighbors.  The Specter bill legalizes the NSA wiretapping program, makes FISA court oversight optional, lets the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court pick the judges who'll hear challenges to surveillance, and lets the Executive branch refuse to reveal names and numbers of Americans who've been spied on.  Presumably this is all the price for allowing FISA to rule on the NSA program's constitutionality, but even if FISA rules the way Specter and I think it will, it's too high a price to pay.  Bush and his Mobb are wrong, dead wrong, and we don't appease people who are wrong.  The ACLU has a letter-to-the-editor tool at your disposal.

Meanwhile, the House moves on, not merely with its flip-flopping on the Voting Rights Act, its stand against the minimum wage, and its (failed) push to Protect Marriage from Those People, again:  it also wants to gut state laws with stronger identity theft protections than the Republican "leadership" and its corporate paymasters want.  You'd think after some idiot at the VA took home 26 million records to work on and had them stolen the feds would understand the issue a little better, but the only things the Republican leadership understand are a) how to give away our government to corporate fascists and b) how to stoke hate in the hearts of knuckle-draggers.  Use this toll-free number to pimp-slap the bastards.

UPDATE.  According to the EFF, the Specter bill is even worse -- though it defines a procedure for the FISA court to rule on the constitutionality of the NSA warrantless-wiretapping program, it doesn't compel the FISA court to rule on said program.  The Washington Post, which is not now nor has ever been a card-carrying member of the "liberal media," calls the bill a "captulation."  But the EFF has a call-your-Senator tool.

good news, bad news.

Good news:  Voting Rights Act reauthorization passes House by 300-vote (and therefore obviously bipartisan) margin; Protecting Marriage From Those People amendment fails on its second go-round in House; Give Away Our Internet to Fat Cat Corporations legislation stalled in Senate.

Bad news:  escalating conflict in Middle East still looks to me like a pretext for the election of a few more knuckle-dragging warmongers to Congress, the eventual declaration of martial law in the United States, and the inevitable division of our citizenry into a few CEOs living in gated communities and the rest of us.

As usual, the bad news trumps the good.  But hope trumps bad news.  Most Americans have a subtler understanding of the Middle East than black hats/white hats, and the trick is to make our voices louder than the 36% or so who think Bush is doing a fine job.  Toward this end, the Union of Concerned Scientists' home page can get you contact info for your Reps and Senators in one click.  (Use the box on the right-hand side.)

our duty and damn the consequences.

Because you reminded Bill Frist that promises must be kept even if they're not made to corporate greedheads or religious bigots, the Senate will vote on a stem cell bill, and we need to remind our Senators of their duty. Mr. Bush will veto it, of course, because even though stem cell research does not cause abortions and does not play God with life, the most rage-filled of Mr. Bush's supporters think that it does. Certainly stem cell research doesn't play God like Rick Santorum's "altered human embryos" rubbish, which is right out of Human Duplicators or something.

One other thing about Estate Tax "reform": the House attached some goodies for Washington state's timber industry to their bill. What does Washington state's timber industry have to do with the Estate Tax? Nothing -- except that Washington Senator Maria Cantwell opposed moving forward with Estate Tax repeal, and Cantwell is facing the toughest re-election fight among Senate Democrats in 2006. It's hard to believe Cantwell would alienate progressives more than she already has with her unwavering support for the war in Iraq -- but it's not so hard to believe that Mike McGavick would run dozens of attack ads castigating her lack of support for Washington timber while forgetting to mention the poison pill to which said support is attached. Ms. Cantwell's task is no less clear, however, and I really don't give a damn if it costs her her job.

errata.

That ad attacking Rep. Weldon for his silence on the Voting Rights Act reauthorization? Turns out it was an ACLU ad, therefore not a Democratic Party ad. Therefore my criticism of the Democrats for their silence does not require yesterday's hedging.

The space key on my keyboard is acting up -- my Empire is crumbling! -- so no chance for another post today.

the Roberts Court so far.

The ACLU summarizes the civil liberties cases decided by the Roberts Court during its first year.

I think the media makes more of the Court's striking down of the Guantanamo tribunals than it should.  The five correct votes in that case were from judges appointed by Presidents Ford, Reagan, Bush the Elder, and Clinton; none were named Roberts or Alito.  Roberts recused himself from the case because he had already heard it at the district court level -- at which point he ruled in favor of the Administration.

now with more bile per word than ever before!

What on earth is the Democrats' problem? A few Southern Republicans are holding up the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act for no good reason, the House Republican leadership sits on its hands, and what do we hear from the putative defenders of black folks? Not a damn thing. Well, maybe not quite "not a damn thing" -- I heard an ad on the radio yesterday attacking Pennsylvania Rep. Curt Weldon for his silence. But Republican stonewalling ought to be front-page news. I guess the Democrats are worried about being criticized for being "partisan." I don't know what's partisan about making sure the disadvantaged have the same access to the voting booth that I do. Maybe we haven't been making ourselves clear enough. Maybe we ought to make some more phone calls.

Also, I expect the Senate will vote soon on the Estate Tax "compromise" passed recently by the House, a "compromise" that will hand out some $800 billion to the super-rich at the same time our soldiers in Iraq don't have armor to protect themselves and your school budget and library hours are being cut. That, Mr. Bill Frist, ye of the www.nochance2008.org presidential campaign website, is the definition of "vicious." And I suspect that some Democrats (Ron Wyden, Mary Landrieu, and Mark Pryor come to mind) will leap at the chance to satisfy some of their fatter constituents by embracing this "compromise" -- and though Republicans Chafee and Voinovich voted against moving forward with full repeal, who knows what they're thinking now. Begin whacking the moles here.

penny rants for the day of July 9, 2006.

Just one question for the Useful Idiots for al-Qaeda who want to try the New York Times for treason over the international bank monitoring story: if terrorists avoid international banks more and more as time goes on (per the Treasury Under-Secretary's testimony to Congress in 2004 and also per common sense), then to what degree might the government be using terrorism as an excuse to investigate and harass its political enemies, and why shouldn't the Times prompt that question, however obliquely? Y'all will be raising exactly that question when Hillary Clinton is your President.

The recent North Korean missile firings remind us of what, gang? They remind us that George W. Bush is an abject coward, who only invades countries that can't hurt the United States. Note well his long-held insistence that this imbroglio must have a diplomatic solution. Note, also, his recent change in tone over Iran, which happened after being repeatedly out-shouted and out-bullied by an even bigger jerk, Mr. Ahmedinejad. My mother always told me that bullies were themselves insecure, but I wish that wisdom gave me more comfort now.

life, liberty, and property.

FCC Chair Kevin Martin plans to relax media ownership rules so that one company can own (for example) the major newspaper, eight radio stations and three television stations in the same city.  Imagine if the News Corporation owned all that in your city!  Your hometown paper thinking its racist headlines are cutting-edge humor, just like the New York Postdoes!  Geraldo chasing ambulances and blowing up vaults on three TV stations, not one!  Hearing "For What It's Worth" and "Sunday Bloody Sunday" leeched of all their original holy righteous power on eight radio stations, not one!  When will these pedants learn that freedom does not always equal fewer rules, and that "free markets" aren't free if we're not all free, and we're not all free if five megacorporations control all the media outlets?  We can only hope that Mr. Martin's proposal hypes his career just like similar proposals hyped Michael Powell's in 2003 -- Mr. Powell, you may recall, got smacked down first by three million comments opposing the rule changes, then by two votes from each House of Congress superseding the rule changes, and ultimately by a federal court overturing the rule changes.  Begin handing out the beatdowns here.

I'm pleased to report, by the way, that Mr. Bush has done something right lately, in signing an executive (sic) order prohibiting the federal government from using eminent domain for any purpose other than building hospitals or roads or other demonstrable public use.  The order won't have much utility in practice -- mostly municipalities and states, not the federal government, abuse the eminent domain laws these days -- but I applaud the sentiment anyway.  I note, however, that the eighth paragraph in the above-referenced AP report casts the debate as one between conservatives and liberals.  Every liberal I know was outraged by the Supreme Court decision that approved of the taking of private property for strip malls.  And I'm still waiting for conservatives who hate government power to consistently stand up to corporate power when it runs roughshod over individual property rights.

(I have some penny rants percolating.  They ain't gonna be pretty.)

your Independence Day affirmation.

Today, as we celebrate the long-ago launch of this great experiment in freedom, let us consider a quotation from the Declaration of Independence:

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."

Yeah, that quotation. Mr. Jefferson (whose Francophilic tendencies would no doubt be the butt of Bill O'Reilly "jokes" in these times) does of course understand human nature, but he almost certainly did not foresee how "sufferable" the citizenry would find evils to be in 2006. Even by the standards of Bismarck's "sausage factory," Tha Bush Mobb's legislative priorities (and the Democratic leadership's all-too-frequent acquiescence) mock our great experiment in self-government more than at any time in recent American history. The late TV sci-fi writer Terry Nation came closer to foreseeing the difficulty of radical change in modern times, in the 1978-81 BBC series Blakes 7, which started with a population walking around in a drug-induced stupor. Even that's not what's happening now: fluoridated water hasn't made us a nation of zombies, but McDonald's, PlayStation, and on-demand cable sure have. Against the ease of excessive calorie consumption or the excitement of the release of the new Grand Theft Auto or a new episode of Lost or CSI: Jim Thorpe, it's hard to get people excited about Mr. Bush's flagrant violations of the Fourth Amendment; today's zombies have enough bread (dull and lacking in nourishment though it is) and far too many circuses. Sometimes I get frustrated that I don't have the magic pill that snaps them out of it. But I must remind myself that having the magic pill isn't the point; being there for other people is the point, engaging with your fellow humans is the point, taking your government, our government, as our birthright is the point. And engagement doesn't always snap people out of it immediately, but it does have more of an effect than withdrawing into one's castle. This works both ways: every time I've thought I was really alone in what I believed, I found out that not only wasn't I really alone, but I didn't have to go very far to find that out. This knowledge should not make us complacent. But it should make us hopeful, and last I looked hope was the only thing that kept us going.

In other news, we're off from Congress until Monday, and then it's only one short month until we're off from Congress for another month, as if we needed another reason to love the summertime. In this upcoming month, though, the House will be busy leaving its trail of slime wherever it goes: their "Pledge Protection" Act would "protect" the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance from "liberal" "activist" judges (some of whom, you may recall, were appointed by the famous liberal activist President Richard Nixon). The House also plans to (finally! After all these years!) vote on Todd Tiahrt's "sunset commission" brainchild, which could put almost any federal program on the chopping block. Meanwhile, the Senate plans to act on a House Estate Tax "compromise" passed near the end of June which would, like the Kyl/Baucus/Snowe "compromises," virtually gut the Estate Tax. And word on the street is that Senate Democrats might actually filibuster the new telecom bill unless it includes strong network neutrality provisions -- which, since it would be an unusual stand against corporate power, must be untrue. Last but certainly not least, the Republican-dominated House is dragging its feet on the Voting Rights Act reauthorization -- and why, since said foot-dragging seems to me like weapons-grade PR, are the Democrats not spewing palpable anger about it?