Support the environment, get rid of Bushes.

Jebediah Bochepus Wonkerston Bush, err...I mean John Ellis "Jeb" Bush, former Florida governor, disenfranchisement conspirator, "shadow government" proponent, arrogant authoritarian policy-maker, neoconservative hawk, lobbyist and general jackass is "seriously considering" a run for the soon-to-be-vacant U.S. Senate seat of Mel Martinez.

You can probably see what I have to say coming.

NO MORE JEB. NO MORE BUSH POLITICAL DYNASTY.

More when I stop frothing.

Edit: Update: J.E.Bush isn't running for the Senate, but his father and other political figures keep mentioning that he would be a good president. They are, of course, wrong.

Murdered for a Bargain

Jdimytai Damour was attempting, along with co-workers, to hold together the sliding glass doors that were beginning to bulge and break under the press of eager shoppers as Wal-Mart's opening time neared. This action cost him his life.
The overstrained doors shattered, and a throng of eager shoppers streamed in, knocking Damour and his co-workers to the ground and viciously trampling them. Other workers who tried to help were beaten back by the streaming crowd.
When I read the reports of the New York Times and Associated Press regarding these events, I was horrified. How could people be so callous? Is a half-price vacuum cleaner really worth a person's life? What's more, shoppers stepped over Damour's body to continue getting into the store. More shoppers casually walked by, through the broken doors, as rescue crews tried to revive the slain man. Further, when it became evident that he was dead and management tried to close the store, the crowd resisted!
“When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, ‘I’ve been on line since yesterday morning,’ ” a witness told The Associated Press. “They kept shopping.”
The police had to help employees clear the store.
Ridiculous is too mild a word to describe the situation. It is positively criminal. The people who broke down that door and through that man are murderers. The ones who stepped over him are guilty of negligent homicide. Did they forget their conscience at home when they went to wait in line for what they knew would be days? How does the desire to buy gifts override the instinctive concern one has for those who are injured? Perhaps these people have no such instinct.
Wal-Mart addressed the issue mildly through a spokesman, affirming the "priority" of the "safety" of their "associates": “The safety and security of our customers and associates is our top priority. Our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families at this tragic time.”
The New York Times thought to seek the opinion of the United Food and Commercial Workers, whose attempts to unionize Wal-Mart employees have been continually rebuffed by the discount chain.
“Where were the safety barriers?” said Bruce Both, the union president. “Where was security? How did store management not see dangerous numbers of customers barreling down on the store in such an unsafe manner? This is not just tragic; it rises to a level of blatant irresponsibility by Wal-Mart.”
One has to see Mr. Both's point, even though he obviously has an agenda. Wal-Mart and store management could have done numerous things to prevent this occurrence. I doubt that Damour and his co-workers went to barricade the door of their own free will; it must have seemed dangerous at the time. Store managers must have ordered them to. This was shortsighted and irresponsible, yes, but who could have foreseen the inhuman mobbish mentality of those who broke down the door?
What truly chills me to the quick about this tragedy is that I have a dear, wonderful friend who has had the misfortune to be assigned by her temp agency to Wal-Mart for the holidays. She is nowhere near Nassau County and didn't work on Black Friday, thanks to the graces of fortune.
Negligence and a tepid concern for safety are what we have come to expect from Wal-Mart, so their role in this is unsurprising. It fits their modus operandi of low-grade insidious evil. However, it is disturbing when one realizes that each of the members of the crowd that broke down the doors of a discount store and trampled a man to death in search of bargains is a human being; a thinking, reasoning individual. They made decisions that resulted in this end. This Wal-Mart is situated in one of the richest counties and villages in the United States, and it also attracts shoppers from neighboring Queens, New York. These were not people forcing their way in out of true necessity. What was different in their experience that made it okay to break down the doors of a store in search of Black Friday bargains? Has advertising worked that heavily on the American consciousness?

Swing State Blues...or WTFlorida?!

They're better than the red state blues, but a lot more confusing. Oh, I know this state is purple, and that political allegiances shift like the waves as the population grows and moves around, but a lot of the results around here point to an electorate that is maybe a wee bit schizophrenic.
The state managed to elect Barack Obama with 50.9% of the vote, which is close, but not unusually so for Florida. On the other hand, 62% of the electorate voted for Amendment 2, which seeks to define marriage as between one man and one woman, and outlaws anything else that "is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof". It's a sweepingly overreaching constitutional amendment, especially considering that homosexual marriage is prohibited by state statute anyway (blame Jeb Bush). Also, in rejecting Amendment 1 (by 52.1%), Florida elected to retain language in the constitution that allows the legislature to prohibit aliens ineligible for citizenship (like, oh, the king of Bhutan) from owning land.
This means that, statewide, there are about 200,000 people who voted for a black, liberal, pro-choice, pro-equality president, but also voted to ban anything that smelled like legal marriage between homosexuals and to retain the possibility of taking land away from law-abiding resident aliens. Conservative black voters? Maybe. Crackers Against Palin? Maybe. Who knows?
Locally, the results are equally as odd. I live in Hillsborough County, which is comprised of the sizable city of Tampa, its suburbs, a few smaller towns, and a large amount of rural land in the southeastern portion (it also comprises the central section of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, whereas the northern and southern ends of the bridge are in Pinellas and Manatee counties, respectively. Not that there are any voters living on the bridge). The county elected Barack Obama with 53% of the vote, reflecting the trend of population centers going blue. Amendment 1, however, failed by the same margin. Amendment 2 passed by 59% here, which I personally find sickening. However, this county elected the openly gay Kevin Beckner to the county commission with 55% of the vote. This means that 14% of this county's electorate think it is a good idea to have a gay man on the county commission, but he can't be allowed to marry his partner. Quoi?
These observations are, of course, oversimplifications in that I barely paid attention to that commission race and am not sure what arguments were thrown back and forth. I personally voted based on my dislike for Beckner's opponent Brian Blair, the former professional wrestler who has been avidly pro-uncontrolled-growth and arrogantly anti-environment.
But that's not all the fun in Hillsborough! After five years of ridiculous problems with nearly every election he supervised, Buddy Johnson (a Jeb Bush appointee), conceded his own race to his opponent Phyllis Busansky after losing votes, miscounting votes, and being out of communication for several days, leaving the Supervisor of Elections election in limbo. Tribune columnist Daniel Ruth today described Johnson as "dumber than a sack of toothpicks".

I guess the good thing is that all this swinging about keeps us Floridians on our toes.

Election Night IV

I was planning for this to be a long session, to wait for into the night for election returns, and prattle on about the candidates as I did so. But with John McCain's concession speech, that closes the deal. Hopefully. I didn't get to nitpicking and criticizing Barack Obama tonight, but it seems that I will have four years to do that!

Honestly, I am so happy that our country could overcome so much in the way of nastiness and racial hatred, bigotry, dislike of "foreignness", and mudslinging. I have never been more proud to be an American than I am right now.

Election Night III

The BBC, adding the west coast to Obama's score, is calling the election for Obama. Of course, they're British, so not too sure how right that is.

But yay anyway!

Election Night II

New Mexico has been called for Obama, the first Western state to go blue so far. But it's been called red by the New York Times. Ahh, exit polls. Texas has gone red according to the BBC, and that's no surprise.

Elizabeth Dole has lost her Senate seat after one term, and apparently John Sununu also lost. There seems to be a backlash against legacy Republicans.

Election Night

This election cycle has taught us a lot about John McCain and Barack Obama. We've learned more, I think, from the way they each campaign than from any of the late election smear campaigns.

As of this point in the evening (7:30), Vermont has been called from Obama and Kentucky has been called for McCain. No real surprises there.

I was forwarded an article from Rolling Stone that completely took McCain apart from his childhood on. It made the case, very well, that McCain was a selfish, womanizing hot dog for most of his adult life. It also contended that his success in life is the direct result of flagrant nepotism. It painted the man as saying or doing absolutely anything that would make him look good, as well as making erratic decisions with sometimes disastrous consequences.
These contentions make a lot of sense in the context of McCain's political life, and his 2008 presidential campaign has provided a lot of evidence for their veracity. Sarah Palin is one such erratic decision, I feel. He seems to have spent very little time in considering her, and I believe that he only met her once or twice before declaring her his veep pick. Se was, of course, under investigation, and has very little experience on the national and world stages. Oh, and she's an idiot. Okay, that last jab was mine. Her politics are evangelical Christian conservative. If McCain was banking on the fact that she is a woman, thinking that this is the only thing that Hillary Clinton supporters care about, he seriously underestimated them. Hillary had women's issues at heart, after all, and Palin takes the opposite tack on all of them. The only think McCain could seriously hope to gain with Pain was the renewed respect of the religious right....and who would they vote for anyway? Not a Democrat.

OK,TN and SC have been called for McCain. ME,MA,CT,NJ,DE,MD and IL have been called for Obama. (8:26)

So yeah, I once said that McCain would probably be better than Bush. I don't think I believe that anymore. His reactions are too reflexive, he has too hot of a temper, he's not enough of a diplomat to be a real head of state.

Speaking of things that are ridiculous, accusations of "socialism" are really annoying echoes of Nixon's lambasting his opponents as "soft on Communism". Even if Obama was a true socialist, there is no way true socialist policy could be made with even a supermajority of Democrats in congress. There would be too much resistance. The biggest socialist steps we ever took came only after a decade of absolutely terrible economic performance. Not that our economy has really been that great during the Bush era.

Waiting with 'bated breath.

Say goodnight to Gracie, Mike!

Apparently Gracie Mansion is so comfortable, posh, and well located that no one ever wants to leave it. Okay, fine, so Giuliani was forced to move out and Bloomberg has never lived there, but it made a fun metaphor. Bloomberg, like Giuliani before him, is trying to circumvent the rules that the people laid down for the Mayor of New York by extending his time in office.
Giuliani, as you may recall, wanted a three-month extension of his mayorality so that he could "ease that transition" of power after the Sept. 11th attacks. He also suggested that the term limits imposed just a decade before be repealed. Fortunately, neither effort came to pass.
Now Bloomberg is fighting to overturn the term limits (imposed in 1993 as section 50 of the city charter). His argument is that as a billionaire and Wall Street guru, he is exactly what the city needs to pull it out of the recent economic collapse.
He had his eight years to make sure that the city was financially sound, why does he need more? Oh, and wasn't it big Wall Street financial gurus who got us into the economic mess we're in in the first place?
Really, keep the term limits. They're good for democracy, and good for New York.

Which way Beijing?

Lately I've not had time for many rowrz...I've had a bunch of things to rowr about, though. Here's one. Olympic medal counts.

So many news outlets here in the United States have chosen to print medal counts by total number of medals won, in which the United States came out on top pretty much since the games opened and ended up with 110 to China's 100. This may be just to make America feel better that China did, in fact, beat the pants off of us 51-36 in golds. Such negative feelings about any country bettering America at the Olympics is very much against the original ideas behind the games, and the Olympic creed itself:

"The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well."

It is, however, pretty telling about our...ahem...national personality. Yeah, it seems we have a thing about being #1 at everything.

There is something else that Americans who feel this way might be able to take comfort in, though: there is a significant home court advantage for whatever country is hosting the games. There are a crowd of usual suspects that are nearly always in the top five, namely the United States, Russia (or the USSR), Italy, France, and Germany. Sweden, Hungary, and the United Kingdom have also traditionally had strong showings. The United States, has, in fact, been in the top five of every games that it has participated in. Russia has too. China has been winning a lot of medals in recent Games as well, and was #4 in 1992 and 1996, #3 in 2000 and #2 in 2004. It's only natural that this progress should continue, and compounded by the home court advantage led to an exceptional medal count.

So yeah, the home court advantage. There are three countries (Belgium, Greece, and South Korea) who have only been in the top five in the years that they have hosted. In fact, the host country is nearly always in the top five, and with few exceptions in the top ten. These exceptions are Canada (#27 in Montreal), Mexico (#15 at Mexico City in 1968), the United Kingdom (#12 at London in 1948, definitely a counterargument)and Greece (#15 at Athens in 2004). The United States has won the most gold medals at every Olympics it has hosted so far. The U.K., Russia, and China have too. France won the most in the 1900 games, but came in third in 1924. Germany won the most in 1936, but didn't do as well in 1972 as a divided country.

Of course, politics have to do with it as well. Especially with authoritarian regimes you get the need to prove that your country is better. See Germany in 1936, Russia in 1980, Mexico in 1968 (in 1964 they had been #35) and China this year.
During the Cold War the US and the USSR generally traded the top two places back and forth when they weren't boycotting each other.

So yes, winning gold medals seems to be less about athletics and more about how much in the way of resources individual nations put in to their Olympic teams. Panama had only 3 athletes at the 2008 Olympics, and brought home a single medal. China had 639 athletes there. The U.S. had 596.

Anyway, it's supposed to be friendly competition, don't put so much importance on medals. Celebrate the individual athletes.

WTFFacebook, take two

This is an ever graver error than the last. That is a cute and healthily toned tummy! Why would someone think that that is fat unless they kept being bombarded with advertising saying that this was fat?

Oh, and facebook, please stop letting advertisers use data from my profile in their ads. I am a perfectly fine weight.

A letter to Jerrold Nadler

Rep. Jerrold Nadler
2334 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

June 6, 2008

Rep. Nadler,

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for the service you continue to perform for your constituents in New York and all Americans. Your commitment to tough, incisive questioning of those brought before the House Judiciary Committee is deserving of the highest of praise. During the (unfortunately timed) inquiry into the Department of Justice's policies toward the Bush Administration, your questions put into sharp relief the Bush Administration's "L'etat, c'est moi" style of governance and made it clear that the Attorney General was not upholding his constitutional obligations. More recently, in the case of Maher Arar, your steady, solid, and revealing questions led Homeland Security officials to admit that the Administration had knowingly engaged in illegal extraordinary rendition. All of this is now in the public record, thanks to you. I also applaud your vocal support of gay and lesbian equality in a time when many states are amending their constitutions to prevent these citizens from having the right to marry whom they please. Your courage is exemplary. Thank you for all of your work to ensure liberty, equality, justice, and openness in government in these difficult times. I look forward to hearing of your work for many years into the future.

Oh, he's probably done bad things too, but he has a progressive record and how are our legislators ever going to learn if they're not given little nudges now and then?

American political liabilities of the past

With all the contention in recent years over candidates and their various political liabilities, things that would not truly affect a presidency but for some reason or another cast aspersions on the character of the person in question, I am curious about some of the United States' past officeholders and the issues they may have dealt with that would make then unelectable today. In other words, I'm trying to figure out if our media-run political process has, as it has become more and more relevant, made the candidates for public office water themselves down into blandness by attempting to dispose of those little kinks that make them individuals. I'll forego the obvious and politically relevant things in judging whether someone might be electable today, such as hawkishness or doveishness, but focus on the little things that the media also likes to scrutinize so heavily these days (I mean really, what the hell does Hillary Clinton's choice of wardrobe have to do with anything?).

The first few prezzies are too easy game. Washington had no teeth. Jefferson owned slaves. Adams...well...people hated Adams. So we'll begin with one of the less obvious of our early executives.

Martin Van Buren was the eighth President of the United States, serving from 1837-1841. A one-termer. He had been Secretary of State and then Vice President under Andrew Jackson (which would have carried severe political baggage nowadays, what with the Native American vote), so he was long entrenched in Washington politics. He opposed universal suffrage, wishing to keep the property ownership required for someone to vote, while helping to draft the New York state constitution. These might be problematic today, but the biggest political liability he would have in the current election is simple: English was not his first language. He spoke Dutch when he was a child and in his early schooling. Pundits today would call him a foreigner and accuse him of wanting to destroy America.

James Buchanan was the fifteenth President of the United States. He had been Secretary of State under Polk, and Minister (Ambassador) to the Court of St. James (Britain) under Franklin Peirce. He supported annexing Cuba and spreading slavery there. He liked to refuse nominations to higher office, as he did with an appointment to the Supreme Court under Polk. One of his big issues was that he didn't want to be President. He reluctantly accepted the nomination. The only way he got there was the fact that in the odd election of 1856 none of the candidates for president actually campaigned. They left it to their parties. These might all seem like political liabilities today, but the big one was this: He never married. He was a bachelor all his life. This would raise eyebrows today, and the talk shows would bellow about him being gay and the candidate of the "homosexual agenda".

Chester A. Arthur might be mostly lost to history, but he served as the twenty-first President of the United States. He was Vice President under James Garfield, but had a fairly contentious relationship with his new patron. They were from differing factions of the Republican party. Nevertheless, when Garfield was shot in the back by a political assassin and Arthur ascended to the Presidency, he denounced the politics behind the assassination and resolved to be above factional rivalries during his term. Because of this he is regarded as a good president by many historians. He did not run for re-election, so his only campaign was for Veep. He had a secret that stopped him from running for his own term as President: He was terminally ill. He had Bright's disease, which could cause kidney failure and death at any moment. Once this was leaked to the press by opposition party burglars and researchers, there would be no way he could win an election. However, he had an even bigger political liability than impending sudden demise to modern pundits: He might have been born in Canada! His parents had moved from Quebec only shortly before he was born, if indeed they had moved before his birth at all. Paperwork was lacking back then. This didn't matter, of course, because he was a citizen by right of his parents being citizens, but you can imagine what Fox News would have done with that notion (oh, right, he was a Republican. They'd have ignored it after the primary).

Arthur's successor, Democrat Grover Cleveland, served at the twenty-second President. He was also the twenty-fourth. He won the popular vote three times. He was a fellow who was greatly admired in many circles for his honesty and courage. He was also fiscally responsible, which gained him many political enemies. These enemies tried all they could to sully Arthur's reputation, uncovering a possible illegitimate child in the process. If they had the instincts of today's scandal-diggers, though, they would know that his bigger liability was the fact that he paid a Polish immigrant $150 to take his place when he was conscripted to serve in the Union Army during the Civil War. Dodger! Unpatriotic enemy-hugger! He was also a bachelor when elected. Worse and worse!

A man well set up to be president, who had much in the way of political experience and was the chosen heir of a popular president, was William Howard Taft. He had been Governor of the Phillipines, and negotiated with foreign powers on behalf of the United States, and had a strong legal background. Everything that the populace generally wants in a president. There were some issues that might derail him today, though. Firstly, he was a Unitarian. He even stated on the record once (after his election) that he didn't believe in the divinity of Jesus or many other tenets of Christian scripture. Wooo! Rush would have a field day. But the bigger problem for his image in today's thinness-obsessed America would definitely be his weight. Taft was fat. Quite obese. Just under six feet tall and 320 pounds at one point during his presidency. He seemed to have a good sense of humor about it, though. To illustrate, here is an excerpt from the memoirs of Senator James Watson: "One day I was in the President's private room ... when [Senator] Chauncey Depew came in. ... After we had talked serious matters for a few minutes and were about to depart, Mr. Depew stepped up to Taft and, taking liberties that I never would have thought of taking with a president, said to him, putting his hand on Mr. Taft's big frontal development: 'What are you going to call it when it comes, Mr. President?' It was just about that time when Mr. Taft was beginning to have some difficulty with Roosevelt, and he quickly responded: 'Well, if it's a boy, I'll call it William; if it's a girl, I'll call it Theodora; but if it turns out to be just wind, I'll call it Chauncey.'"

In Taft's successor, Woodrow Wilson, the United States has a president that has yet to be equaled and likely never will. He was terribly racist. When he was President of Princeton, he actively discouraged blacks from applying. His presidential administration veritably purged those of African heritage from governmental offices in Washington. When a delegation of blacks protested these moves, he reportedly said "segregation is not a humiliation but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen." Al Sharpton would have his head for breakfast. Oddly, this may not be the biggest thing preventing him from winning high office today. What makes him less electable is likely the fact that he had a Ph.D in history and political science. That makes him an intellectual. An intellectual Democrat. Not happening these days. There hasn't been a president with a Ph.D since.

Succeeding Wilson was Warren G. Harding, whose administration was dogged with scandal from day one. He also was pretty inept with the English language, despite having a gift for public speaking. Apparently this is considered charming. At any rate, he suffered from one major drawback (aside from the rampant corruption): He had a mistress. Best of all, he had a mistress who had lived in Germany, and during the lead up to World War I she returned to the United States and threatened to go public if he voted for war. Fortunately, he was able to call her bluff. In 1920, when Harding was the Republican nominee, the party sent her to Japan and paid her $50,000 in extortion money. Surely if that news had broken, along with his rumored other affairs, he would have been dead in the water.

Skip a few, and we come to Franklin Roosevelt, arguably one of the greatest presidents this country has known. Amazingly and unprecedentedly elected to four terms, three of which he served fully. His administration pulled the country out of the Great Depression and won the second world war. He created the Securities and Exchange Commission, The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and Social Security. Eh, you likely know all that. As a candidate for public office, though, he had several issues that would cause him great harm today. For instance, he married his cousin. Oh, Elenor was far enough away for it to be legal, but you can bet that today's ravenous press would grab on to that. He was also a notorious adulterer, and was in fact with his mistress (who had been Elenor's assistant) when he died. He also had about him a patrician air, with his long cigarette holders and monocle, that likely would not fly today. The biggest thing that would have held him back today, however, was the fact that he was paralyzed from the waist down. There would be no hiding that from the current media scavengers, especially with the nearly 'round-the-clock media coverage candidates get these days.

I don't think I need to go into the personal foibles of presidents since Roosevelt. Most of their legacies are still in doubt anyway.

A few of those politicians I talked bout truly helped the country in difficult situations and handled things very well. Would someone who had no foibles or flaws that alienated a chunk of the electorate have done as well in their place? Does the heavy media scrutiny of this election have merit? Maybe. It's not like our last few have been squeaky clean, after all. Even there, I'm still seriously uninterested in Obama's ability to bowl, where Clinton sits down to talk to voters, and McCain's...erm...everything.

WTFacebook

I was puttering around Facebook one afternoon, like I do on the slow days at work, and was ambushed out of nowhere by the following advertisement:



Oh where do I begin with this one? The cruelty? The reinforcement of unrealistic stereotypes?

The person in the photo is not disgusting by any means that I can see. Her stores of fatty tissue seem to me to be perfectly normal, and even healthy. Nowhere near the outer bounds of weightiness, she is not obese in any sense of the word except maybe the sense believed by worshipers in the stick-thin cult. It is good to have some fat about one's person, after all. Really, when a person with cute love handles is attacked for being "OMG Disgusting!", the culture needs to do some serious self-examination. Bodies generally have a natural weight and shape that they will generally hover around, given that the person is active and the diet isn't insane. Nothing disgusting about it. There is no merit in being extremely skinny, nor is there any shame if one comes by it naturally. I personally think that some flesh on the bones is a very good thing - breasts are made of fat, after all - and I think I may be in the majority. The real majority, that is, not the manufactured majority produced by the odd fluctuations of our cultural ideals. Hell, we're all used to being bombarded with the unhealthy diet ads and the pressures to look like Twiggy, but I was a bit blindsided by the fact that it was Facebook. I hadn't noticed Facebook's ads being blatantly discriminatory, offensive, and maddening before this. I'll look harder. And send emails.

Liberal Guilt

There was a political cartoon in the Tampa Tribue the other day that suggested that the only thing keeping Obama afloat was "White Liberal Guilt".

As a person who voted for Obama in our primary (even though it didn't count), I find this to be utter crap. I don't have any guilt associated with my being a white person. I was born that way. And I'm certainly not voting for Obama because he's (half) black. There are a bunch of people who have attempted to run for president who were black that I wouldn't vote for at all, among them Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton (scary!), and Alan Keyes. I need no excuses for being irritated by those people. They're irritating. Another mark against two of the three in my book is that I would never vote for an ordained priest of any religion. Call it a church/state issue. Alan Keyes is far too far to the right for me, being anti-gay and pro-life.

So yes, Obama is afloat because he's a charismatic leader, and not an annoying idiot.

The first (insert distinction here) President!

Any way you slice it, assuming that Huckabee (heavens forbid) dosn't have a sudden surge of popularity leading to victory in November, the next President will be a first.

The most obvious firsts being Hillary Clinton as the first woman president and Barack Obama as the first biracial president. Only slightly less obvious is McCain as the oldest President at time of assuming office.

Did you know, though, that McCain would also be the first President born in a U.S. territory, not a state? Obama would be the first from Hawaii, and Clinton would be the first former First Lady president. All three are sitting senators, of which only two others have been elected to the presidency: John F. Kennedy and Warren G. Harding.

I'm sure there are a slew of other firsts that the color commentary researchers will make notes of on Inauguration Day.

L'Etat, c'est moi.

Louis XIV said it first, or at least most recorded and most ostentatiously in written history. But that was before the American and French revolutions, and they were supposed to fix that whole monarchy thing and replace it with a government answerable to the people. Right?

Right?

Apparently not.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey, during an unfortunately timed House Juiciary Committee hearing on the seventh, explained that the President could legally do anything as long as the Justice Department (Under the control of the executive branch, as we know) says it's legal.

That's right. Here's the video of the questioning by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY):



Nadler should generally be commended on this line of questioning. It has revealed that the Department of Justice will refuse to investigate the executive branch for criminal violations (as anything the President does is signed off on by the Orrice of Legal Council within the Justice Department) and refuse to take up civil actions against the president under the "state secrets" privelege. This puts the Department of Justice, by default, in the position of creating law that is supposed to be held by Congress. Dince the Justice Department is part of the executive branch and will not investigate istelf, this effectively puts the President above the law.

There are no words for how worrisome this is, how terrifying it could be. Congress needs to sharply re-assert itself now, before it is too late...hopefully it is not yet too late...to return powers to the legislative and judicial branches of government.

Here is a transcript of the questioning by Nadler, if you wonder years from now where it all went so wrong:

NADLER: Mr. Attorney General, I was interested to hear you say a moment ago that if the president ordered someone to do something against the clear intent of Congress, that's outside the law.

The FISA act said a person is guilty of an offense if he intentionally, one, engages in electronic surveillance under the color of law, except as authorized by statute.

Now, the president admitted that he did that. Every 45 days he signed an authorization to direct the surveillance of people in the United States without a warrant as required by the FISA act.

Now, I had previously asked your predecessor, Attorney General Gonzales, given this apparent prima facie case that the president and people under him, including the prior attorney general, engaged in felonious conduct by doing so, that he appoint a special counsel to investigate the warrantless surveillance of Americans.

And I recently reiterated that request to you.

Now in your testimony before the Senate last week, you responded to Senator Leahy's questions on whether the president violated the law by authorizing wireless surveillance by stating that you, quote, "don't know whether the president acted in violation of statutes," unquote, including FISA.

I believe we need to know the answer: Did the president, with, as has been reported, the advice of the Justice Department, break the law?

I believe the answer is clear that he did.

Given the extraordinary circumstances involved, allegations of criminal conduct by the president and other high-ranking officials and the possibility of conflict at the Justice Department, will you now agree to appoint outside special counsel so that we finally will get an answer to this question?

MUKASEY: The direct answer to your question is no, I will not.

NADLER: Because?

MUKASEY: Beg pardon?

NADLER: Because?

MUKASEY: Because -- because there is one detail that was omitted, and it may very well have been my fault in saying I didn't know when I'd forgotten or overlooked.

There was in place an order -- I'm sorry, an opinion of the Justice Department describing the legal basis for the program to which you refer. That included the authorization of the use of military force, as a congressional statute on which it was relied that that behavior was legal.

I understand that there are views on both sides of that -- strong ones.

NADLER: Well, there are views -- let's put it this way: The Supreme Court in the Hamdan case, in a case just about directly on point, ruled that -- for reasons I'm not going to get into now, we don't have time in five minutes -- that the use of the two excuses by the Justice Department, namely the president's inherent powers under Article II and the authorization for the use of military force as justification, was not, in fact, justification. The president is still bound by the law. The law was not repealed by implication by the AUMF and that that's not sufficient.

Now, the Justice Department, in a letter to congressman -- to congressman, excuse me -- to Senator Schumer recited these letters as a refutation by a host of constitutional scholars against that.

My second question, then, when this is -- on behalf of the Justice Department, in effect representing the president, although a step removed, you say that this is justified, that it's not illegal, for the reasons stated.

NADLER: Lots of other people say it's clearly illegal.

Normally, we would have that settled in a court. A court would decided whether something's legal or not when there's a dispute.

But when you attempt to get this into court -- you can't get it into court by prosecution, because you're not going to prosecute or appoint the special counsel. But when you attempt to get it into court by victims or alleged victims, plaintiffs suing in civil court, then the government comes out and says, "Oh, you can't get into court alleging violation of your rights through violation of FISA because of the state secrets privilege."

So now you've set up a situation where the president and the attorney general assert the president's right to do something which seems to a lot of people to a lot of people to be a violation of law and there is no way of checking that.

In other words, there's no way of getting -- well, let me ask you a different question. Under this, is there any way -- and would you agree that the state secrets privilege has to yield because otherwise there is no way for Congress or the courts or anybody to have any check on the president's claimed power?

MUKASEY: The state secrets privilege -- just to answer the last question first -- the state secrets privilege is invoked by the government and backup is provided for its invocation.

To my knowledge, that backup has been sustained...

(CROSSTALK)

NADLER: Well, the state secrets privilege has often been used where there's no backup provided, simply an affidavit.

Would you agree that where the state asserts state privilege -- state secrets, that the court ought to be provided with information in order to rule on the validity of the state secrets privilege?

MUKASEY: The court can be provided with and is provided with information relating to the invocation of the state secrets privilege and an explanation of the basis for it, and to rule on that basis.

NADLER: But the court often rules with -- simply on an affidavit without seeing the documents to judge for itself whether they deserve -- whether they would threaten national security were they revealed.

Would you agree that the court ought to see that and make that decision?

MUKASEY: I believe that courts see affidavits in some cases, affidavits and documents in others, and have what they consider to be an ample basis because they rule on that basis for a ruling.

MUKASEY: Sometimes things are quite clear.

NADLER: And sometimes they're not.

MUKASEY: And sometimes they're not.

NADLER: And, lastly, we have heard hearings in this committee on rendition -- on so-called extraordinary rendition. On the Maher Arar case we're going to hold further hearings.

Would you -- and we've been told that we got assurances from Syria that Mr. Arar would not be tortured when he was sent there, which of course proved not to be true.

Would you commit or agree that upon request, which will be forthcoming, that you will send someone from the department for a hearing here to answer the questions, "Who obtained these assurances? From whom were they obtained? What assurances were given?" so that we can get to the -- begin to get to the bottom of this rather horrendous case?

MUKASEY: It's my understanding that some of this has been the subject of classified briefings to various members of this committee and other committees.

It's also my understanding -- and this is based on an exchange of notes between us and Canada that became public, not because of anything that anybody wanted to do voluntarily -- that Mr. Arar is still on the no-fly list.

NADLER: Yes, he is; improperly so, in my opinion.

MUKASEY: Beg pardon?

NADLER: I've seen...

CONYERS: The gentleman's time may have expired.

NADLER: Let me just say, I've seen the confidential documents. He shouldn't be on the no-fly list. But we have not heard about the assurances from Syria, even on a classified basis. We need to know that.

ClintonVania

I recalled recently one of the things that I seriously dislike about Hillary Clinton. On the issue of freedom of speech, I believe that all art forms should be free of government controls or interference. Censorship is, in my opinion, not only wrong but damaging to the social development of our society. Voluntary censorship to reach the widest crowds possible, as in the movie industry, is acceptable as long as there are no governmental civil or criminal consequences when one wishes not to self-censor. A system of ratings is fine for the quick reference of parents who wish to control what their children are exposed to (good luck with that), but ultimately the responsibility should be on the consumer/viewer/player (or their guardian) for choosing what they consume.

Violent video games have been blamed for violent kids in the last decade or so mainly because they have arisen as a predominant medium, much in the same way that comic books, movies, heavy metal, and television have each in their time been accused of making kids violent. As if children were pacifists before. It really depends upon the temperament of the individual child, which is a case of parentage (in one sense) and parentage (in another sense).

Hillary Clinton sponsored a bill, S. 2126 [109th]: the "Family Entertainment Protection Act", which provides stiff fines and mandatory community service for anyone caught selling a game that has been rated "Mature","Adults Only" or "Rating Pending" to anyone under 17 years of age. As I said, this would be a government-mandated punishment for violating the dictates of a censor. This is a far stiffer control than that applied (voluntarily) to the movie industry or (also voluntarily) to the comic book industry.

That rubs me the wrong way. Fortunately, the bill died the death. Unfortunately, if Clinton became president, she would likely find a way to resurrect it. Not Unlike Dracula.

Primary Day!

Actually Super Tuesday. I neglected to blog on Florida's actual primary day. I would tell you that it was because Florida's votes didn't really count, but it was truly because I've been a very lazy kitty of late. Predictably, Clinton won our race due to early fronrunnerness and a bit of guerilla marketing. McCain also won, which showed a bit of sense perhaps...but most likely just a sense of solidarity among the elderly of this state.
I am paying attention to the polls today, though. Somewhat. I'm playing with friends, though, which does divide my attention somewhat. I saw Huckabee won West Virginia. Unsurprising, as it is rumored to be a very conservative electorate that tends toward the evangelical.
I think, however, that whoever the Democratic nominee is will win the presidency. The biggest challenge would come from McCain, and he's been too deeply in bed with the current administration for the taste of those who find W distasteful.

Toeing the line is, in fact, what I have against McCain. Despite railing against Bush in the 2000 campaign, he has since agreed with most everything the neocons have spit at the public. I suspect that the GOP promised McCain that if he would lay off they would give him the nomination this year. He tries to play the maverick, but he can't have it both ways. That being said, he'd likely be better than W anyway.

I am not afeared of Hillary either, I just think that she has been terribly gullible in voting for the Iraq war among other things. Either gullible or politically expedient, which is what has gotten us into an unfortunate mess with the hawks in the white house. She's mediocre. Meh. Not a dynamic centrist like her husband, though she can count on him for support.

Obama is a stirring speaker, and an inspirational leader. He has had a quick rise, which I appreciate. He's young, which I also appreciate. He has a rich baritone that I would not mind listening to for the next few years. On the other hand, he wants to be president, which means he is obviously insane.

More as the zany Super Tuesday results come in, maybe.

That whole mess of candidates.

In honor of Iowa Caucus day, I'm posting a chunk of a note I sent a lovely friend of mine regarding what I thought about the 2008 presidential candidates.

---

I must say that there is no presidential candidate that I'm completely in love with. I can pigeonhole myself in a few ways. For one, I am pro choice all the way. For two, I fully support gay and transsexual equality. My life experience has taught me that there is nothing to be gained and everything to be lost by excluding these individuals. On the other hand, I don't think marriage should come with special government-granted privileges. That speaks to another pigeonhole of mine, church-state separation. That's a big one, actually. I think our government should seriously stay away from even seeming to support any particular religion or group of religions. As marriage is a religious ceremony, government should have nothing to do with it.

That's where I am socially, at least. Call it a liberalish platform. I am also confused as to why so many people are afraid of socialized medicine. It seems to work well for Great Britain, where the National Health Service enjoys a very high rating for excellence. I'm sure it would boost our economy as well, as the huge insurance premiums being paid by individuals (such as myself) these days would evaporate.

Our interventionist foreign policy has been a total disaster from beginning up until the present. I agree with Ron Paul on that point. We should definitely reduce our presence around the world and stop being the world police. However, disengaging from NATO is a terrible idea. It would amount to abandoning our friends on the world stage and seriously damage global security. By supporting NATO, we mutually guarantee security with much of Europe. As big a country as we are, we really shouldn't try to go it alone. Foreign policy in the United States requires a very even hand, careful and canny. W just blundered through it, and we see what that got.

So that would be some points of my policy were I running for President. I would lose badly, not just for the policies, but for the fact that middle America at this point would not vote for a polyamorist.

So who else? I generally support Barack Obama. I really appreciate his mutiethnic and diverse upbringing, and I think it would serve him well on the world stage. His health care program is a bad idea, but not as bad as what we have now, and no one has detailed anything better. He seems to grasp foreign policy much better than most of his co-candidates. He is a wise observer of the human condition. He supports stem-cell research, as I do. He seems to have my opinion on most social issues.

Alternately, I support Dennis Kucinich. He's very bright and really does have peace in his heart, and I agree with his social ideas, generally. His foreign policy leaves much to be desired, though.

So sure, I'd like to see an Obama/Kucinich ticket.

As for everyone else (in order of how likely I would vote for them): Edwards is meh. Clinton goes for political expediency over wisdom and is possibly gullible. Ron Paul you've heard me talk about. McCain is too socially conservative for me. Who is this Brownback again? Romney is a lying ignorant-of-history douchebag. Huckabee is the religious right. Fred Thompson mimics Reagan. Giuliani should be jailed for his criminal activities.