Twenty-five. Twenty-five senators with something resembling principles. That's all we got.

Fortunately, we also have Digby. I mean it, if you're down about the Alito debacle (which is to say: if you live in the US, were paying any kind of attention and are not dead from the neck up), go read this post. It'll help.

Update: MoveOn has a handy letter you can send to the twenty-five (not twenty, as I originally wrote!) senators who stood up. It's as important to encourage congresscritters when they do the right thing as it is to excoriate them when they don't, so please take a moment and send a note of thanks.

I was all set to work my way through news, press releases, blogs and so on in order to find where the crucial votes lay on the Alito/filibuster issue -- but Bob Fertik has already done the legwork.

Here's an even briefer version of Bob's post: call THESE senators (the post below contains instructions for doing so for free):

Democrats who will vote for Alito (i.e., traitors):

• Ben Nelson (D-NE) 202-224-6551, fax: (202) 228-0012
  
• Tim Johnson (D- SD) , 202-224-5842, fax: (202) 228-5765
  
• Robert Byrd (D- WV) , 202-224-3954, fax: (202) 228-0002

Democrats who won't vote for Alito but won't support the filibuster:

• Mark Pryor (D- AR), 202-224-2353
  
• Ken Salazar (D- CO) , 202-224-5852
  
• Kent Conrad (D- ND), 202-224-2043
  
• Bill Nelson (D- FL), 202-224-5274
  
• Daniel K. Akaka (D- HI), 202-224-6361
  
• Mary Landrieu (D- LA), 202-224-5824
  
• Byron L. Dorgan (D- ND) 202-224-2551

Democrats who won't vote for Alito but are undecided about the filibuster:

• Joseph Biden, Jr. (D- DE) , 202-224-5042 (will vote for filibuster but only once)
  
• Blanche Lambert Lincoln (D- AR), 202-224-4843
  
• Joseph Lieberman (D- CT), 202-224-4041
  
• Thomas Carper (D- DE), 202-224-2441
  
• Daniel Inouye (D- HI), 202-224-3934
  
• Tom Harkin (D- IA), 202-224-3254
  
• Evan Bayh (D- IN), 202-224-5623
  
• Barbara Mikulski (D- MD), 202-224-4654
  
• Carl Levin (D- MI), 202-224-6221
  
• Mark Dayton (D- MN), 202-224-3244
  
• Max Baucus (D- MT), 202-224-2651
  
• Frank Lautenberg (D- NJ), 202-224-3224
  
• Robert Menendez (D- NJ), 202-224-4744
  
• Jeff Bingaman (D- NM), 202-224-5521
  
• Jack Reed (D- RI), 202-224-4642
  
• Patrick Leahy (D- VT), 202-224-4242
  
• Maria Cantwell (D- WA), 202-224-3441
  
• Patty Murray (D- WA), 202-224-2621
  
• Herb Kohl (D- WI), 202-224-5653
  
• John Rockefeller, IV (D- WV), 202-224-6472

Republicans who might do the right thing:

• Lincoln Chafee (R- RI), 202-224-2921
  
• Olympia Snowe (R- ME), 202-224-5344
  
• Susan Collins (R-ME), 202-224-2523
  

If your State Senator is not on that list, call them anyway -- calls from a constituent always carry more weight. If any of the above are your representatives, consider also calling their local offices (Bob's post has the contact details). It's also worth a call to those Dems who are going to support the filibuster, to thank them:

• Barbara Boxer (D- CA) , 202-224-3553
  
• Dianne Feinstein (D- CA) , 202-224-3841 (1,)
  
• Christopher Dodd (D- CT), 202-224-2823 (1,)
  
• Richard Durbin (D- IL) , 202-224-2152
  
• Barack Obama (D- IL), 202-224-2854, fax: (202) 228-4260
  
• John Kerry (D- MA) , 202-224-2742
  
• Edward Kennedy (D- MA) , 202-224-4543
  
• Paul Sarbanes (D- MD), 202-224-4524
  
• Debbie Stabenow (D- MI) , 202-224-4822
  
• Harry Reid (D- NV) , 202-224-3542
  
• Hillary Rodham Clinton (D- NY) , 202-224-4451
  
• Charles Schumer (D- NY) , 202-224-6542
  
• Ron Wyden (D- OR) , 202-224-5244
  
• Russell Feingold (D- WI) , 202-224-5323
  

Call your Senators, and then no matter where you live call Ben Nelson (who has said he will vote for Alito): if confirmed to the Supreme Court, Alito will be a disaster for progressive politics in this country for the next four or five decades.

Here's how to do your part in the last-ditch effort to prevent this disaster (the spousal unit and I will pay for the call):

1. find your senators' phone numbers: look here or here

2. call 1-800-323-6263 (for English) or 1-800-323-6269 (for Spanish)

3. the voice will ask for your PIN; dial 2785446232

4. the voice will ask you to dial the destination number; dial your Senator and let him/her know you're watching, and you expect him/her to do the decent thing and vote against Samuel Alito's nomination.

5. call Ben Nelson on 202-224-6551 (Washington) and let him know that if he votes for Alito he will betray his party and his country.

For those who haven't been paying attention, here's Barbara Boxer to explain:

... after reviewing the hearing record and the record of his statements, writings and rulings over the past 24 years, I am convinced that Judge Alito is the wrong person for this job.

I am deeply concerned about how Justice Alito will impact the ability of other families to live the American dream -- to be assured of privacy in their homes and their personal lives, to be secure in their neighborhoods, to have fair treatment in the workplace, and to have confidence that the power of the executive branch will be checked.

As I reviewed Judge Alito's record, I asked whether he will vote to preserve fundamental American liberties and values --

Will Justice Alito vote to uphold Congress' constitutional power to pass laws to protect Americans' health, safety, and welfare? Judge Alito's record says NO.

In the 1996 Rybar case, Judge Alito voted to strike down the federal ban on the transfer or possession of machine guns because he believed it exceeded Congress' power under the Commerce Clause. His Third Circuit colleagues sharply criticized his dissent and said that it ran counter to "a basic tenet of the constitutional separation of powers." And Judge Alito's extremist view has been rejected by six other circuit courts and the Supreme Court. Judge Alito stood alone and failed to protect our families.

In a case concerning worker protection, Judge Alito was again in the minority when he said that federal mine health and safety standards did not apply to a coal processing site. He tried to explain it as just a "technical issue of interpretation." I fear for the safety of our workers if Judge Alito's narrow, technical reading of the law should ever prevail.

Will Justice Alito vote to protect the right to privacy, especially a woman's reproductive freedom? Judge Alito's record says NO.

We have all heard about Judge Alito's 1985 job application, in which he wrote that the constitution does not protect the right of a woman to choose. He was given the chance to disavow that position during the hearings -- and he refused to do so. He had the chance to say, as Judge Roberts did, that Roe v. Wade is settled law, and he refused.

He had the chance to explain his dissent in the Casey decision, in which he argued that the Pennsylvania spousal notification requirement was not an undue burden on a woman seeking an abortion because it would affect only a small number of women, but he refused to back away from his position. The Supreme Court, by a 5-4 vote, found the provision to be unconstitutional, and Justice O'Connor, co-writing for the Court, criticized the faulty analysis supported by Judge Alito, saying that "the analysis does not end with the one percent of women" affected... "it begins there."

To my mind, Judge Alito's ominous statements and narrow-minded reasoning clearly signal a hostility to women's rights, and portend a move back toward the dark days when abortion was illegal in many states, and many women died as a result. In the 21st century, it is astounding that a Supreme Court nominee would not view Roe v. Wade as settled law when its fundamental principle -- a woman's right to choose -- has been reaffirmed many times since it was decided.

Will Justice Alito vote to protect Americans from unconstitutional searches? Judge Alito's record says NO.

In Doe v. Groody in 2004, he said a police strip search of a 10-year-old girl was lawful, even though their search warrant didn't name her. Judge Alito said that even if the warrant did not actually authorize the search of the girl, "a reasonable police officer could certainly have read the warrant as doing so..." This casual attitude toward one of our most basic constitutional guarantees -- the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches -- is almost shocking. As Judge Alito's own Third Circuit Court said regarding warrants, "a particular description is the touchstone of the Fourth Amendment." We certainly do not need Supreme Court justices who do not understand this fundamental constitutional protection.

Will Justice Alito vote to let citizens stop companies from polluting their communities? Judge Alito's record says NO.

In the Magnesium Elektron case, Judge Alito voted to make it harder for citizens to sue for toxic emissions that violate the Clean Water Act. Fortunately, in another case several years later, the Supreme Court rejected the Third Circuit and Alito's narrow reading of the law. Judge Alito doesn't seem to care about a landmark environmental law.

Will Justice Alito vote to let working women and men have their day in court against employers who discriminate against them? Judge Alito's record says NO.

In 1997, in the Bray case, Judge Alito was the only judge on the Third Circuit to say that a hotel employee claiming racial discrimination could not take her case to a jury.

In the Sheridan case, a female employee sued for discrimination, alleging that after she complained about incidents of sexual harassment, she was demoted and marginalized to the point that she was forced to quit. By a vote of 10 to 1, the Third Circuit found for the plaintiff.

Guess who was the one? Only Judge Alito thought the employee should have to show that discrimination was the "determinative cause" of the employer's action. Using his standard would make it almost impossible for a woman claiming discrimination in the workplace to get to trial.

Finally, will Justice Alito be independent from the executive branch that appointed him, and be a vote against power grabs by the president? Judge Alito's record says NO.

As a lawyer in the Reagan Justice Department, he authored a memo suggesting a new way for the president to encroach on Congress' lawmaking powers. He said that when the president signs a law, he should make a statement about the law, giving it his own interpretation, whether it was consistent with what Congress had written or not. He wrote that this would "get in the last word on questions of interpretation" of the law. In the hearings, Judge Alito refused to back away from this memo.

When asked whether he believed the president could invade another country, in the absence of an imminent threat, without first getting the approval of the American people, of Congress, Judge Alito refused to rule it out.

When asked if the president had the power to authorize someone to engage in torture, Alito refused to answer.

The Administration is now asserting vast powers, including spying on American citizens without seeking warrants -- in clear violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act -- violating international treaties, and ignoring laws that ban torture. We need justices who will put a check on such overreaching by the executive, not rubberstamp it. Judge Alito's record and his answers at the hearings raise very serious doubts about his commitment to being a strong check on an 'imperial president.'

In addition to these substantive matters, I remain concerned about Judge Alito's answers regarding his membership in the Concerned Alumni of Princeton and his failure to recuse himself from the Vanguard case, which he had promised to do.

[...]

Perhaps the most important statement Judge Alito made during the entire hearing process was when he told the Judiciary Committee that he expects to be the same kind of justice on the Supreme Court as he has been a judge on the Circuit Court.

That is precisely the problem. As a judge, Samuel Alito seemed to approach his cases with an analytical coldness that reflected no concern for the human consequences of his reasoning.

Listen to what he said about a case involving an African-American man convicted of murder by an all white jury in a courtroom where the prosecutors had eliminated all African-American jurors in many previous murder trials as well.

Judge Alito dismissed this evidence of racial bias and said that the jury makeup was no more relevant than the fact that left-handers have won five of the last six presidential elections. When asked about this analogy during the hearings, he said it "went to the issue of statistics... (which) is a branch of mathematics, and there are ways to analyze statistics so that you draw sound conclusions from them..."

That response would have been appropriate for a college math professor [No it wouldn't! Shit, I expect better than this from a Senator, especially Boxer --senn], but it is deeply troubling from a potential Supreme Court justice.

As the great jurist and Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote in 1881, "The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience... The law embodies the story of a nation's development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics."

What Holmes meant is that the law is a living thing, that those who interpret it must do so with wisdom and humanity, and with an understanding of the consequences of their judgments for the lives of the people they affect.

...I conclude that Judge Alito's judicial philosophy lacks this wisdom, humanity and moderation. He is simply too far out of the mainstream in his thinking. His opinions demonstrate neither the independence of mind nor the depth of heart that I believe we need in our Supreme Court justices, particularly at this crucial time in our nation's history.

If you live in the US, you know that the Senate hearings regarding Samuel Alito's appointment to the Supreme Court are underway. I've noted before that Alito is a dyed-in-the-wool asshole. Inter, no doubt, alia, MoveOn, Planned Parenthood, NARAL and People for the American Way all have petitions you can use to let your representatives know that they must do all they can to stop this self-serving, woman-hating lickspittle to the rich and powerful from being appointed for life to the most powerful court in the land. Please take a moment to sign one, or, preferably, all of them.

I'm with Rafe: this is IT for the Dems for me. If it comes down to it, they must filibuster. The nucular option is going to be hanging there all Damoclean and shit until they fight that fight anyway.

And if more of them were like Adam Frankel we'd be a lot better off. I'm really impressed with his "ten lessons from the Kerry campaign", for which he was a speechwriter. The excerpts below are to whet your appetite; do go read the whole thing.

The difference today between having good leaders and not having them is the difference between war and peace, life and death. It's the difference between a satisfying, rewarding life and a miserable one, the difference between good health and sickness, prosperity and poverty, enlightenment and ignorance. Ultimately, it's the difference between right and wrong.

When I was a senior in college, working on a thesis about the global AIDS pandemic, I met with a former Dean of the Yale School of Public Health. He asked me, "What's the goal of the fight against AIDS?" I said, "To increase condom distribution around the world." He said, "That's a tactic. What's the goal?" I tried again: "To increase our support for the Global AIDS Fund so countries can tackle their own epidemics." He said, "That's also a tactic." "The goal," he said, "is to stop the spread of AIDS and care for those who have it."

If a politician needs a poll to know whether to raise an important issue, that politician has failed a central test of leadership.

I joined the Kerry Campaign, because I was angry about the course of our country, and I thought Kerry could change it. But as I realized, a few months into the campaign, anger will not sustain you ... Whenever I was feeling exhausted or beat, no matter how small or unimportant the issue I was working on, I'd think about all the people in this country who were depending on us. That's where I got my energy. You have to have a hunger to build -- to repair -- not just to tear down.

If you were born with a sense of injustice, hold onto it. If you were born with a sense of entitlement, I hope you'll outgrow it. And if you were born with curiosity and an active mind, I hope it will lead you to a life in public service.

Further to the last post: via Americablog, the Repub-dominated Congress has voted to drop the "bridge" part and let Alaska keep the pork with no strings attached. And the pliant press has reported it as instructed, as though the project was killed. If you haven't yet taken 30 seconds to lend Sen Cantwell your support, please do.

Via On The Road To 2008, Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) has a petition she'd like you to sign:

Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska has introduced a bill to repeal the Magnuson Amendment, a law written by Washington's own Warren Magnuson in 1977 to limit oil tanker traffic in Puget Sound. The Magnuson Amendment has kept the Cherry Point Refinery near Bellingham from becoming a super-port for oil to be shipped overseas and across the country. Stevens' bill will undo these protections. If it passes, pristine Puget Sound is at risk for oil spills, with little economic or energy benefit to our state.

Senator Stevens has also suggested that Cherry Point should expand dramatically to refine oil taken from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. As you know, I have been leading the fight in the Senate against under-handed measures to open the Refuge to drilling, and I intend to fight this expansion. Stevens' plan will quietly reverse important protections supported by Washington's Republicans and Democrats for decades.

Last month, Democrats and Republicans in the House blocked a similar plan, but Senator Stevens is trying again. And this time he is keeping a low profile. But we can't let him get away with it. We have to show Senator Stevens that Washington state won't stand by silently and let one of our greatest treasures fall to the whims of greedy oil companies. Please join me in signing this petition to keep the Magnuson Amendment in place and protect Washington's waterways and coastlines from being overrun with oil tankers.

Stevens (R-Porkbarrel) is, you may remember, the guy who wants to build a $223 million bridge from Ketchikan, Alaska (pop. 8,900) to its airport; the ferry ride the bridge will replace takes seven minutes. Stevens is also a constant menace to the ANWR. If you have a minute, go help Sen Cantwell smack him around some.

While we wait to see whether congress will piss all over habeas corpus, the most important freedom in this wonderful experiment, the US of A, I want to ask any US resident reading this: please call your senators. I also want to repeat something that might have been lost at the bottom of the last, somewhat lengthy, post.

I know long-distance calls are spendy, and I know what it is to watch your budget to the last cent. That's why the spousal unit and I have a phone card for your use -- it won't cost you a thing. If you're concerned about using work facilities for political activity, the card might solve that problem too. Here's how it works:

1. find your senators' phone numbers: look here or here
2. call 1-800-323-6263 (for English) or 1-800-323-6269 (for Spanish)
3. the voice will ask for your PIN; dial 2785446232
4. the voice will ask you to dial the destination number; dial your
senator and let him/her know you're watching, and you expect him/her to
do the decent thing and support the Bingaman amendment.

In fact, don't just call your own senators. From the CCR, here's a list of the key senators, complete with phone/fax numbers:

Collins (ME) T: (202) 224-2523 F: (202) 224-2693

Snowe (ME) T: (202) 224-5344 F: (202) 224-1946

Dewine (OH) T: (202) 224-2315 F: (202) 224-6519

Mccain (AZ) T: (202) 224-2235 F: (202) 228-2862

Warner (VA) T: (202) 224-2023 F: (202) 224-6295

Hagel (NEB) T: (202) 224-4224 F: (202) 224-5213

Nelson (NEB) T: (202) 224-6551 F: (202) 228-0012

Conrad (ND)T: (202) 224-2043 F: (202) 224-7776

Landrieu (LA) T: (202)224-5824 F: (202) 224-9735

Lieberman (CT) T: (202) 224-4041 F: (202) 224-9750

Wyden (OR) T: (202) 224-5244 F: (202) 228-2717

If you have the time, we have the money: call 'em all.

Fuck. The Bingaman amendment was rejected. When the roll call goes up you can see who the traitors were by clicking the vote number (324).

Looks like the bullshit compromise might have got up, vote 325 was on "Graham Amdt. No. 2524; In the nature of a substitute" and was agreed to.

From vote 324, the following so-called Democrats voted nay and are hereby advised (let them tremble!) that I will be working to see them out of office:

Bayh (D-IN)
Conrad (D-ND)
Lieberman (D-CT)
Nelson (D-NE)

I knew that venal ratfucker Nelson would turn. In this Congress, he's voted more times with the Republican position than with his own party (I'll have more on that later).

Attention conservation notice: if you already know that the Graham amendment is vile and just want to get to the part where we'll pay, go here.

Further to this post, it appears that there's a compromise amendment on the table aimed at undercutting the Bingaman amendment:

A bipartisan group of senators reached a compromise Monday that would allow detainees at Guantanamo Bay to appeal the rulings of military tribunals to the federal courts.

Under the agreement, detainees who receive a punishment of 10 years in prison to death would receive an automatic appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Lesser sentences would not receive automatic review, but detainees still could petition the court to hear their cases.

In addition, the 500 or so detainees at the U.S. naval base in Cuba would be allowed to challenge in federal court the procedure under which they were labeled "enemy combatants."

This is bullshit. Quite apart from anything else, "only" ten years? Oy. But more to the point, habeas corpus is a Good Thing™ and there is no reason to suspend it for "enemy combatants" or anyone else. Digby's right, it's the "very foundation of our system of government and the single most important element of liberty". We do not want to (continue to?) be a country where people disappear. More from that WaPo article:

Graham said he opposed Bingaman's proposal because it did not correct "lawsuit abuse" by prisoners at Guantanamo, and, he said, it would continue to treat terrorism suspects as criminals by affording them the right to file habeas corpus petitions to fight their detentions in a U.S. court.

The Supreme Court gave that right to the 500 or so prisoners held at Guantanamo in 2004. Many of the prisoners were captured in Afghanistan and have been held at Guantanamo for several years without being charged.

Is this asshole trying to claim we can't afford to have 500 petitions heard in three years? Tell it to Adel, motherfucker.

The Center for Constitutional Rights has a debunking of seventeen myths and distortions about the Graham amendment; read it all, but here's a short version:

Myth: Everyone in Guantánamo Is a Terrorist
Fact: According to Military Officials, Most of the Prisoners in Guantánamo Are Innocent and Should Not Be Detained

Myth: Everyone in Guantánamo Was Captured on the Battlefield
Fact: The Prisoners in Guantánamo Include Many Civilians Who Were Seized All Over The World - Not Just From Afghanistan

Myth: The Rasul Decision Gives Terrorists the Right to Sue U.S. Soldiers in Federal Court
Fact: The Rasul Decision Simply Reaffirmed the Historical Right to Challenge Indefinite Detention

Myth: The Rasul Decision Gives Terrorists in Guantánamo More Rights than Those Held by U.S. Soldiers Captured By Our Enemies
Fact: U.S. Soldiers Imprisoned By Other Countries Cannot Be Detained Indefinitely and Must Be Given a Fair Hearing

Myth: U.S. Soldiers in U.S. Military Custody Do Not Have the Right to Habeas Review
Fact: U.S. Soldiers Have the Right to Habeas Review of Their Detention by the U.S. Military

Myth: The Habeas Petitions by Guantánamo Detainees Are Clogging Our Federal Court System Across The Country
Fact: The Habeas Petitions Are Coordinated in a Single Federal Court and Proceeding in an Orderly Fashion

Myth: Habeas Review Interferes with the Military's Intelligence Gathering
Fact: the Military is Not Receiving Any Meaningful Intelligence from the Men Imprisoned in Guantánamo

Myth: The Graham Amendment Preserves Meaningful Post-Conviction Review of Military Commission Prosecutions
Fact: The Graham Amendment Eliminates Post-Conviction Habeas Review for Military Commission Defendants, Even Those Sentenced to Death

Myth: CSRTs Provide Robust Due Process
Fact: The CSRTs Are Sham Proceedings That Fail to Provide Minimal Due Process Protections

Myth: CSRTs Are "Geneva Conventions on Steroids"
Fact: The CSRTs Are Kangaroo Courts That Denigrate Our Military Justice System

Myth: Court of Appeals Review of a CSRT Conclusion Provides Meaningful Due Process
Fact: Any Review of A Sham Proceeding Is Meaningless - The Underlying Hearing Must Provide Adequate Process

Myth: Terrorists in Guantánamo Are Being Held in Humane Conditions
Fact: Innocent Men Are Imprisoned Under Inhumane Conditions at Guantánamo

Myth: Meaningful Monitoring of Guantánamo Will Continue Without Habeas Review by Federal Courts
Fact: Without Judicial Review, Guantánamo Slips Back Into A Legal Black Hole And We Will Never Know Who The Prisoners Are and What Has Happened to Them

Myth: Eliminating Habeas Corpus Review Is Consistent With Our Legal Traditions and Values
Fact: The Graham Amendment Is a Radical Rejection of Our Anglo-American Legal Traditions Dating Back to the Magna Carta

Myth: Any Problems That May Have Occurred In the Past Will Be Solved By Future Annual Review Boards (ARBs)
Fact: The ARBs Serve a Different Purpose and Fail to Correct the Flaws in the Initial CSRT Record

Myth: The Graham Amendment Will Improve the CSRT Procedures
Fact: Congress Will Not Be Able to "Fix" The CSRTs Because the CSRTs Are Completed for Every Individual in Guantánamo

Myth: The Habeas Petitions Raise Frivolous Issues
Fact: The Habeas Petitions Raise Limited and Fundamental Challenges to Imprisonment

Speaking of short versions of things that should be tattooed onto Lindsey Graham's body, Hilzoy and Katherine have wrapped up their argument against the Graham amendment, and Norbizness has posted the Cliff's Notes.

I hope you're convinced, now, that this is important enough to warrant 60 seconds of your time. That's all it will take, because the spousal unit and I will pay for your call to your senators. Here's what you do:

1. find your senators' phone numbers: look here or here
2. call 1-800-323-6263 (for English) or 1-800-323-6269 (for Spanish)
3. the voice will ask for your PIN; dial 2785446232
4. the voice will ask you to dial the destination number; dial your senator and let him/her know you're watching, and you expect him/her to do the decent thing and support the Bingaman amendment.

There's enough on that card to pay for nearly 500 1-minute phone calls.

Please. Call now.

P.S. if you're worried about calling from work, you could use the method above on your break: use a cellphone, or duck out to a payphone, and remove all workplace/politics conflict. Just, whatever you do, call.

Fuuuuuuuuuuck. Phosphorus bombs, crucifixion, extraordinary rendition (aka torture outsourcing), our very own gulag archipelago and an administration trying desperately to give itself the unassailable legal right to continue what its lying asshole figurehead says "we" don't do.

Fuuuuuuuuuck.

The idea that a woman should not be legally required to (that is, liable to criminal prosecution if she doesn't) tell her husband if she has an abortion is being spun as "pro-wife extremism". I shit you not.

Lemme tell ya, these pro-wife extremists are a danger to America. They've destroyed a husband's right to beat 'em, don't consider 'em a man's property, and won't let the law tell 'em what to do with their own bodies. What next, equality or some shit?

Oy.

(For the sarcasm-impaired: I am a pro-wife extremist. My wife's body is her own, and if I cannot establish a mature and trusting relationship with her, in which she feels safe involving me in medical decisions, that's my problem and I shouldn't go whining to Johnny Law to step in and solve it. Grow a pair, you foetus-worshipping feebs.)

Picture from WaPo via Atrios. My original caption was unsubtle and vaguely sexist, so I stole a better one from commenter "The Fool" in Atrios' thread.

P.S. as Atrios says, reward good behaviour: if you have a few dollars to spare, send 'em to the Senator.

I'm swiping this transcript from For The Record, just because I want it on my site. Em nau.¹

----

Mr. Reid:

Thank you very much, Mr. President. Just a couple of days ago, my son Lief called me and indicated that his lovely wife Amber was going to have another baby. That will be my --? our 16th grandchild. Mr. President, I have thought about that, and I have to say that I've been in public service a long time.

Never have I been so concerned about our country. We have gas prices that are really unbelievable. This year they've been over $3 in the state of Nevada. Diesel fuel is still over $3 a gallon in Nevada. The majority leader of the House of Representatives is under indictment. The man in charge of contracting for the federal government under indictment.

Deficits, Mr. President, so far you can't see them. The deficits have been basically run up by President Bush's Administration these last five years. We're the wealthiest nation in the world but we are very poor as it relates to health care. We have an intractable war in Iraq. Is it any wonder that I'm concerned about my family, my grandchildren

This past weekend, we witnessed the indictment of L. Lewis Libby, the Vice President's chief of staff, also on the President's staff, a senior advisor to the President. Mr. Libby is the first sitting white House staffer to be indicted in 135 years. Is it any wonder, Mr. President, that i'm concerned about my grandchildren?

This indictment raises very serious charges. It asserts this Administration engaged in actions that both harmed our national security and were morally repugnant. The decision made to place united states soldiers, our military into harm's way I believe is the most significant responsibility the constitution vests in the Congress and in the President. The Libby indictment provides a window into what this is really all about, how this Administration manufactured and manipulated Intelligence in order to sell the war in Iraq and attempted to destroy those who dared to challenge its actions.

Mr. President, these are not just words from Harry Reid. Larry Wilkerson, Colonel Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff -- Colin Powell, of course, was Secretary of State. This man was his chief of staff for four years. Here's what he said about the war in Iraq.

"In President Bush's first term, some of the most important decisions about U.S. National security, including vital decisions about post-war Iraq, were made by a secretive, little-known cabal, was made up of a very small group of people led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. But the secret process was ultimately a failure. It produced a series of disastrous decisions."

That's what I'm here to talk about today, Mr. President. As a result of its improper conduct, a cloud now hangs over this Administration. This cloud is further darkened by the Administration's mistakes in prisoner abuse, hurricane Katrina, and the cronyism and corruption in numerous agencies throughout this Administration.

And unfortunately, it must be that said a cloud also hangs over this Republican-controlled Congress for its unwillingness to hold this Republican Administration accountable for its misdeeds on these issues. During the time that we had a Democratic President, eight years, and when the Democrats were in charge of the Committees, we were in the majority, oversight hearings were held covering the gamut of what went on in this Administration -- that Administration. Today there is not an oversight hearing held on anything.

Let's take a look at back how we got here with respect to Iraq. The record will show that within hours of the terrorist acts of 9/11, senior officials in this Administration recognized those attacks could be used as a pretext to invade Iraq. The record will also show that in the months and years after 9/11, the Administration engaged in a pattern of manipulation of the facts and retribution against anyone who got in its way as it made its case for attacking, for invading Iraq.

There are numerous examples of how the Administration misstated and manipulated the facts as it made the case for war. The Administration’s statements on Saddam's alleged nuclear weapons capabilities and ties with Al Qaeda represent the best examples how it consistently and repeatedly manipulated the facts. The America people were warned time and time again by the President, the Vice President, the current Secretary of State and their other capacities about Saddam's nuclear weapons capabilities. The Vice President said -- and I quote --

"Iraq has reconstituted its nuclear programs,"

Playing upon the fears of Americas after September 11, these officials and others raised the specter that left unchecked, Saddam could soon attack America with nuclear weapons.

Obviously we know now that their nuclear claims were wholly inaccurate. But more troubling is the fact that a lot of Intelligence experts were telling the Administration then that its claims about Saddam's nuclear capabilities were false. The situation is very similar with respect to Saddam's links to Al Qaeda. The Vice President told the America people -- I quote again –

"...we know he's out trying once again to produce nuclear weapons and we know he has a long-standing relationship with various terrorist groups, including the al qaeda organization."

These assertions have been totally discredited, not a little bit, totally discredited. But again, the Administration went ahead with these assertions in spite of the fact that the government's top experts did not agree with these claims.

Again, Wilkerson is a person in point. What has been the response of this Republican-controlled Congress to the Administration's manipulation of Intelligence that led to this protracted war in Iraq nothing. Did the Republican-controlled Congress carry out its constitutional obligations to conduct oversight no. Did it support our troops and their families by providing them the answers to many important questions No. Did it even attempt to force this Administration to answer the most basic questions about its behavior? No.

Unfortunately, the unwillingness of the Republican-controlled Congress to exercise its oversight responsibilities is not is not limited to just Iraq. We see it with respect to the prison abuse scandal. We see it with respect to Katrina, and we see it with respect to the cronyism and corruption that permeates this Administration.

Time and time again, this Republican-controlled Congress has consistently chosen to put its political interests ahead of our national security. They have repeatedly chosen to protect the Republican Administration rather than to get to the bottom of what happened and why it happened.

There's also another disturbing pattern, namely, about how this Administration responded to those who challenged its assertions. Often this Administration has actively sought to attack and undercut those who dared to raise questions about its preferred course. For example, when General Shinseki indicated several hundred thousand troops would be needed in Iraq, his military career was ended -- fired, relieved of duty when he out its inspectors.

When Nobel prize winner and head of the IAEA raised questions about the Administration's claims of Saddam's nuclear capabilities, the Administration attempted to remove him from his post.

When ambassador Joe Wilson stated that there was an attempt by Saddam -- no attempt by Saddam to acquire weapons from Niger, the Administration not only went after him to discredit him, they launched a vicious and coordinated campaign, going so far as to expose the fact that his wife worked as a C.I.A. spy.
These people are now having 24-hour protection fearing for their own safety.

Given this Administration's pattern of squashing those who challenge its misstatements, and I've only mentioned a few, what has been the response of the Republican-controlled Congress?

Absolutely nothing. And where with their inactions they provide political cover for this Administration at the same time they keep the truth from our troops who continue to make large sacrifices in Iraq. Now everyone may think that the troops in Iraq are 100% Republican.

I've made a friend. He's a Marine. He was over in Iraq when the elections were held ten months ago. He said where he was and he never even went to the bathroom without a rifle, wherever he was in his duty all over this area, he said he couldn't find anyone that was happy with the way the elections turned out.

They, the Republicans, do anything they can to keep the truth from people like my Marine friend. This behavior -- I would give you his name -- this behavior is unacceptable. The toll in Iraq is as staggering as it is solemn. More than 2,000 -- 2,025 now -- Americans have lost their lives. Over 90 Americans have paid the ultimate sacrifice in the month of October alone, the fourth deadliest month in this going-on-three-year war. More than 15,000 have been wounded. More than 150,000 remain over there in harm's way. Enormous sacrifices have been made and continue to be made.

Mr. President, we've had soldiers and Marines from Nevada killed, from Eli, from Las Vegas, from Henderson, from Boulder City, from Tonapaw. Every time one of these deaths occur, it's a dagger in the heart of that community. This behavior is unacceptable.

I'm a patient man, Mr. President. I'm a legislator and I know things don't happen over night. I'm a patient man but the call from my son has put this in perspective. I'm worried about my family. The toll in Iraq is as staggering as, I repeat, it is solemn.

The troops have a right to expect answers and accountability worthy of that sacrifice. For example, more than 40 Democrats wrote a substantive and detailed letter to the President canning -- asking four basic questions about this Administration's Iraq policy, and we received, Mr. President, -- we received a four-sentence fence that is response:

"Thank you for your letter to the President expressing your concerns with Iraq. I've shared your letter with the appropriate Administration officials."

--Remember we wrote it to the President --
"and agencies responsible in this area. Please be assured your letter is receiving the attention it deserves. Thank you for your compliments, Candy Wolf."

That's the letter the Senators of the United States wrote to the President of the its body and we get a letter from Candy Wolf saying,

“Thanks, we're working on it.”

America deserves better than this. They also deserve a searching and comprehensive investigation into how the Bush Administration brought this country to war.

Key questions that need to be answered include:

~~How did the Bush Administration assemble its case for war against Iraq? We heard what Colonel Wilkerson said.

~~Who did the Bush Administration officials listen to and ignore?
How did the senior Bush Administration officials manipulate or manufacture Intelligence presented to the Congress or the American people?

~~What was the role of the White House Iraq Group, a group of senior White House officials, tasked with marketing the war and taking down its critics? We know what Colonel Wilkerson says.

~~How did the Administration coordinate its efforts to attack individuals who dared to challenge the Administration's assertions? We know what happened to them. I listed a few.

~~Why has this Administration failed to provide Congress with the documents that would shed light on their misconduct and the misstatements?

Unfortunately, the Senate Committee that should be taking the lead in providing these answers is not.

Despite the fact that the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee publicly committed to examine these questions more than a year and a half ago, he has chosen not to keep that commitment.

Despite the fact that he's restated the commitment earlier this year on national television, he has still done nothing except assemble a few quotes from Democratic and Republican Senators going back to the first Iraq war.

We need a thorough investigation that that Committee is capable and tasked to do. At this point, we can only conclude he will continue to put politics ahead of our national security. If he does anything at this point, I suspect it will be playing political games by producing an analysis that files any of these important questions.

Instead, if history is any guide, this analysis will attempt to disperse and deflect blame away from this Administration. Key facts about the Intelligence --

a Senator: Would the Senator yield for a question.

Mr. Reid:

Key facts

June 4, 2003, Intelligence Committee commits to bipartisan review of the deeply flawed Intelligence in Iraq's w.m.d.
Phase one.

February 12, 2004, Intelligence Committee commits to Phase 2, an investigation looking at five areas including whether the Administration exaggerate and manipulated [unintelligible].

July 9, 2004, Committee publishes phase one report on the Intelligence agencies mistakes on Iraq. Senator Rockefeller says publicly that phase two is as yet unbegun. Republican Chairman Roberts says it is one of my top priorities.

July 11 on Meet the Press, Republican Chairman Roberts says, “Even as I'm speaking our staff is working on phase two and we'll get it done.”

Fall of 2004, House Intelligence Committee, after no follow through on the Iraq w.m.d. Investigation, the House announced on May 2003, “No final report.”

Republican Committee Chairman Peter Goss is selected to C.I.A. Director. Regarding the question of vetting the Valerie Plame leak, Goss said,

“Show me a blue dress and some DNA and I'll give you an investigation.”

End of quote.

November, 2004, we had the Presidential election.

March 2005, President's hand-picked w.m.d. Intelligence Committee says the Intelligence agencies got the Intelligence dead wrong, but says that under the President's terms of reference we are not authorized to investigate how policy-makers used the Intelligence assessments they received from the Intelligence community.

March 31, 2005, Senator Roberts says it would be monumental waste of time to replow this ground any further replow
April 10, 2005, "Meet the Press" Senator Roberts commits to Tim Russert that the review will get done.

September 2005, Committee Democrats file additional views to their authorization bill blasting the Committee for failing to conduct phase two. There have been letters written to the Committee, a press release was issued even saying that they were going to go forward with this. Mr. President, enough Time has gone by. I demand on behalf of the America people that we understand why these investigations aren't being conducted, and in accordance with rule 21, i now move that senate go into closed session.

Mr. Durbin: Mr. President, I second the motion.

The presiding officer: The motion has been made to closed session. The chair pursuant to rule 21 directs the sergeant at arms to clear all galleries, clear all doors of the Senate Chamber and exclude from the chamber and its immediate corridors all employees and officials of this senate who under the rule are not eligible to attend the closed session and are not sworn to secrecy. The question is nondebatable.

----
¹This Tok Pisin expression (a carryover from my childhood in New Guinea; pronounced "im now") doesn't have a satisfactory translation in English; it's approval and satisfaction and affirmation and more. In this context it's something like "aaaaaaah! that's the stuff!", and something like "well done!", and something like "now you've got it", and not quite like any of those. A cold beer after a day's hard work is em nau. A proud parent viewing a good report card might say em nau. I once saw an ocean going yacht, a yearned-for retirement home, named the Em Nau.

MoveOn has a petition to stop the appointment of Sam "Scalito" Alito to the Supreme Court. They're trying for 250K signatures in 48 hours; please take a moment right now and go sign it.

Briefly, here's why this matters so much:

Basic Rights for Working Families
As a judge on the Appeals Court, Alito issued a ruling to gut the Family and Medical Leave Act, which guarantees most workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a loved one in an emergency. The Supreme Court effectively overturned that ruling in 2003—but if Alito were on the Supreme Court he would pose a grave threat to the basic rights of working families.

Civil Rights (in the workplace and beyond)
In separate cases, Alito wrote dissenting opinions that would have made it essentially impossible to prove employment discrimination based on race or disability. He was overruled and harshly criticized by his colleagues, but if he were on the Supreme Court he could turn back the clock on decades of progress in securing civil rights for minorities and the disabled.

A Woman's Right to Choose
Alito's judicial record and published views make him widely regarded as a sure vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. The extremist anti-abortion group Operation Rescue (who opposed Harriet Miers) responded to Alito's nomination today by saying: "Roe's days are numbered...We are trusting that we are now on the fast-track to derailing Roe v. Wade as the law of the land." If Alito were on the Supreme Court, reproductive freedom would be in serious jeopardy.

Privacy and Civil Liberties
In one significant case, Alito wrote a dissenting opinion that would have allowed an unauthorized strip search of a woman and her 10 year-old daughter, in their own home, without a warrant. Again, Alito was outvoted and strongly criticized by his fellow judges, but if he were to join Thomas and Scalia on the Supreme Court he would pose a grave threat to civil liberties and individual freedoms.

This guy is a wingnut's wingnut, an American Taliban wet dream come true -- and he's up for Day O'Connor's seat. Let your representatives know you're watching, and you expect them to fight this and win.

Amp has a post up about Portland city council pulling funding from the Salvation Army's Harbor Lights Program. While Amp is quite right that there is an urgent need to increase, not decrease, such resources, I'm not going to call for the head of Tom Potter just yet. (And to be clear, Amp's not asking anyone to do that -- just write Mayor Potter and Commissioner Erik Sten and advocate for improved emergency facilities for homeless women.)

A quick look around the internets turns up this story in the local news, which links to the city's plan to end homelessness and quotes counselors from a local intervention center as saying that

...while the city is doing a great job at moving women into permanent housing, there is always an urgent need for emergency shelters.

It seems there's also more to the story about Harbor Lights:

For some advocates, the continued presence of empty mats at Harbor Light represents their ongoing frustration with Portland's largest social service provider and symbolizes the city's inability live up to assurances it made last summer, when homeless women began showing up dead in Forest Park.

"I put my reputation on the line to get the funding for the women's Harbor Light shelter," said Chuck Currie, outreach director at the United Methodist Church and Goose Hollow Family Shelter, "and I really feel like they are failing to live up to their promises." [...]

"The Salvation Army has the ability to provide excellent service," Currie says. "So they can turn Harbor Light around. They have to want to, though. They have to look at this as providing service for homeless women who are often in danger rather than as padding for their budget."

(Those are very selective quotes, so go read the whole thing, and note that it's from 1999.) On top of that, the Salvation Army has a history of active homophobia and discrimination, so it's an organization I'd be cautious about funding with public monies. (Note, though, this story about the Canadian branch behaving more responsibly, so there's at least an argument for a sunshine policy instead of a boycott.)

In any case, what seems clear in all of this is that Portland needs more, not fewer, emergency shelters for homeless women. Amp makes the point that Potter and Sten do listen, and do have their hearts in the right place. Here's the text of my letter:

I read with concern that the city council has withdrawn its support for the Harbor Lights overnight emergency shelter program. While the city's long term plan to end homelessness certainly seems sound, and appears to be generating postive feedback from the relevant experts, I am very concerned that short-term, urgent needs may be overlooked in a ten-year plan. In particular, homeless women and children are an extremely vulnerable population who often require dedicated facilities, and I do not know of any other place for them to go for emergency shelter in Portland. If I have the figures straight, the city provides thirty such emergency beds for well over a hundred homeless women.

I would appreciate hearing back from you as to what plans are in place to provide for the immediate, urgent needs of homeless women and children in the absence of the Harbor Lights beds.

Update: damn, that was fast. Mayor Potter is overseas, but his office responded in about thirty minutes:

[...] Your email suggests to me that you saw or read the story broke initially by KATU. The Bureau of Housing and Community Development's (BHCD) decision to withdraw City funds from WENS was based on a long-term evaluation of the shelter. BHCD concluded that WENS has maintained both substandard facilities and services for a long time going. Furthermore, WENS did not transition their clients (many of whom have patronized the shelter for months) into long-term housing solutions.

Please know that BHCD, with community partnerships, is funding enhanced services for the 34 chronic residents of WENS to transition them into permanent housing. KATU's report fails to mention this, and that is extremely disappointing.

I was glad to read that you are concerned about homeless issues. I encourage you to support organizations that will find permanent solutions for the homeless.

Sincerely,

Jeremy Van Keuren, Public Advocate
Office of Mayor Tom Potter

(WENS= Women's Emergency Night Shelter; BHCD = Bureau of Housing and Community Development)

While this underlines the city's commitment to long term solutions, I feel it neatly sidesteps my point about overlooking urgent short term needs. I don't feel up to engaging Mr Van Keuren on the substance though, since another quick search turned up a Transition Projects report from 2004 (warning, pdf) that shows how little I know about the situation:

In June 2000, our "Women's Reality" report found that on any given night, there were more than 800 homeless single women in the city of Portland, with fewer than 161 beds available to homeless women who were not seeking shelter from domestic violence. While bed availability has expanded slightly in the interim, there is still a dramatic lack of shelter availability for homeless single women in Portland.

Eight hundred. Whoa. If I'd stopped to think about it, I'd have realised the number had to be well over the hundred of my initial guess (grabbed in haste from a website somewhere). I have some reading to do.

From a recent addition to my blogroll, Thoughts from Kansas ("Progressive politics, neat biology, and whackings of wackos", what could be better?), comes Be A Witness:

Genocide is the ultimate crime against humanity. And a government-backed genocide is unfolding in the Darfur region of the Sudan. As the horror in Darfur continues, our major television news networks are largely missing in action.

During June 2005, CNN, FOXNews, NBC/MSNBC, ABC, and CBS ran 50 times as many stories about Michael Jackson and 12 times as many stories about Tom Cruise as they did about the genocide in Darfur.

Whether it is coverage of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 60s, the Ethiopian famine in the 1980s, or recent coverage of the tsunami, television news can help stop grave injustices and end human suffering. Increased television coverage of the genocide in Darfur has the power to spur the action required to stop a devastating crime against humanity.

There follows a web form with which you can send a letter to the major networks; a form letter is filled in but you can edit it. The site also includes a good brief background on the issue and plenty of links to more information and more actions you can take.

Here's my letter:

According to beawitness.org, whose web form I am using to send you this letter, during June 2005 CNN, FOXNews, NBC/MSNBC, ABC, and CBS ran 50 times as many stories about Michael Jackson and 12 times as many stories about Tom Cruise as they did about the genocide in Darfur. The data are available for perusal on the beawitness.org homepage.

You are not asking yourself "what genocide?", are you? You know what I'm talking about. The minimal coverage we have seen has reached as far as media professionals like you, who have decided NOT TO GIVE THE ISSUE ANY FURTHER COVERAGE.

Why? Why have you done this?

You don't need me to tell you the power that broadcast media have to influence public opinion and political action, any more than you need me to tell you what's happening in Darfur. And of all broadcast media, television is unquestionably the most powerful.

Why are you hiding from the responsibility that accompanies such power?

Are you truly more concerned to exercise that power in the pursuit of profit than in defense of innocent lives? Do you honestly believe you have no greater responsibility than to pander to the lowest common denominator?

What the fuck is wrong with you?

Astute readers will note some hypocrisy here: this is the first time I've mentioned Darfur. I can say "I can't write about everything" and "I'm not a major media outlet", but the fact remains that I do try to use this site to cover important events in human need and in politics, and I feel bad that I haven't talked about Darfur by now. By way of easing my conscience, I'll come back in a later post to the other actions that Be A Witness lists.

For many people, even for some of you reading this, the title of this entry is a bit too close to home. Violence is a daily reality for millions of mothers, sisters, daughters, wives, colleagues -- 700 women a day. Seven hundred a day. I'm seriously gonna toss my cookies if I think about that much longer.

Fortunately, I can do something about it. I already pointed to an ACLU letter writing campaign aimed at getting the Violence Against Women Act renewed and reinvigorated; now I want to ask you to consider sending a few dollars to 700women.org for the same purpose. In addition to donating, you can join (at time of writing) 60,000 other decent human beings in signing the petition to Congress.

This is a critical piece of legislation, and a crucial issue. Cough up, dammit -- just a few dollars. That's the whole point of grassroots; a dollar from everyone who can afford it (and if you're reading this, you almost certainly can afford it) will add up to enough.

Update Aug 02: bugger. Schmidt 52, Hackett 48. Either the public freely chose a lying corrupt shitweasel over an educated, charismatic family man and Marine Corps Iraq veteran, or the election was swiz. Either way, I'm severely bummed. You'd do better to listen to Julia:

...we'll have to console ourselves that a district which went 65% for Our Fearless Leader broke from three decades of yellow-dog voting to give 48 percent of the vote to a man who said that Our Fearless Leader is an idiot and a failure.

It cost the Republicans seven figures to achieve that result.

And they have to do it all over again in a year.

I suspect that cooperation with the White House on the right of the House just moved down a few notches on the To Do list.

The previous incumbent wouldn't have been named trade representative unless this was seen as the ultimate safe seat.

Guess not.

And the rest of them are less safe than that.

Update Aug 01: Hackett's campaign is asking for more money:

To Get Out the Vote, we need to raise $30,000 today. Here's why.

Last week, the netroots stepped up and delivered around $40K a day. The campaign gambled and put all of that on TV (the ads are great and a Democrat is leading the Republicans in gross points in every market in every medium!!!).

It worked, and now Independents are breaking rapidly our way. And Democrats in the district are so fired up that the far more than expected are signing up for GOTV.

This has drastically increased the cost of the GOTV mobilization. The enthusiasm over the weekend was more than expected and more was spend during the huge door-to-door effort. Now the campaign needs money for tomorrow to finish the job.

The cost breaks down to around $50 a precinct with 600 precincts. The netroots best friend, Matt from ActBlue, is flying in right now to coordinate moving the money.

But we need enough to finish the job.

Your investments have made Hackett a contender. Please give one more time so we can win this in the field.

I gave again, because I think this is a very important race. The seat in question has been a 70-30 GOP stronghold since approximately forever and the Republican in question is particularly vile. Per the excellent Malcolm Gladwell, I'm hoping this will be a tipping point. Please give. Seriously, even just a dollar -- don't think it's "not enough" or "not worth the time" -- the power of small donations from regular people is what grassroots is all about. (Hat-tips: Majikthise, Atrios, Seeing The Forest.)

Original entry:

With four days to go in the OH special election, this entry is late -- but better late than never. Terrance and Julia have all the details you need. Briefly, Paul Hackett is a returned Iraq veteran running for congress in a state that desperately needs an integrity infusion. Hackett looks like he might just provide one.

If Hackett loses he goes back to Iraq and another unprincipled greedy born-entitled asshole settles into a position of power.

Julia's exactly right when she says:

...a lot of us have been beating up on the powers that be for not fighting every race. Well, here's the thing. Right now, the Republicans are spending the best part of a million bucks to defend one of the safest seats in the country. The left ponied up, and because a very few activists made the statement that we're willing to fight, this has turned into a real race. That gave the DCCC the luxury of waiting until now, when last-minute dollars are going to make a much bigger splash, to chip in.

They can only afford what they can afford, and maybe the conventional wisdom is that dollars are better spent on "competitive" races.

What we need to do is let them know that when we get interested in a race, it becomes a competitive race.

Then we need to get interested in all the races.

Well, I'm interested in this one. If you can, please put your hand in your pocket. I'll leave this entry on top until after the election.

(For the record: I never ask readers to cough up unless I have done so myself. I won't usually say how much, because the amount is not the point. The point is to do what you can.)

What my friend Jared said is pretty much exactly what I've been thinking lately, except that I will have to take his word for it that a sense of decency was behind Durbin's apparent loss of backbone (I'd have called it a sense of vote-grubbing, though that is almost equally unsatisfactory as an explanation). I'd been working up a post, but J has saved me the trouble. Go read his entry, and then tell us both if you have any ideas about how to get progressive politics off the ropes.

Here's something that jolted me out of my hiatus: that maggot with legs, Catkiller Frist, has pulled the nuclear trigger in the Senate. MoveOn PAC has a petition you can sign, and I'm just going to crib this brief introduction directly from them:

Starting Monday, the petition will be delivered straight to Congress every three hours until the final vote, and many of our comments will be read aloud on the Senate floor.

Please sign right now at:

http://www.moveonpac.org/nuclear

Why is this an emergency?

This Tuesday, the Senate will vote on Republican Leader Bill Frist's "nuclear option" to break the rules of the Senate and give the Republican Party absolute control over appointing federal judges.

For 200 years the minority's right to filibuster has kept our courts fair, by making sure that federal judges needed to get at least some support from both sides of the aisle before they were given life time appointments.

If Frist eliminates the filibuster, his next step would be to force far right partisan judges onto the powerful U.S. Courts of Appeals. The real targets, however, are the four seats on the Supreme Court likely to become vacant in the next four years.

With that much power on the Supreme Court, the far right could strike down decades of progress on labor rights, environmental protections, reproductive rights, and privacy.

The "nuclear option" will live or die by a final vote, probably on Tuesday, and the vote is still way too close to call. There are at least 6 moderate Republicans still on the fence and only 3 more votes needed to win. If we can get enough of our voices into congress and into the streets in the next 72 hours, we can still save our courts.

More background can be had by reading Barbara Boxer's floor speech, in which she points out that the nutbags behind this naked grab for power are trying to effect profound change in the way this country is governed because they are not satisfied with a 95% success rate. The democrats have managed to stop 10 of 218 Bush judicial nominees, and that's not good enough for the radical right. They want ALL the power, now and forever.

The spousal unit points out that "forever" is exactly right. If you expected ever to be out of power again, would you try to eliminate one of the most powerful tools the opposition has? These bastards do not expect ever to lose another election.

Please do what you can to stop 'em, or I promise you we will all be sorry. Sign the petition and call your Senators.

Amp points to Rad Geek's bombing for choice campaign. I have done this sort of thing before, and I agree with Rad Geek's analysis of the results of that campaign, including Google's response. The answer to hateful free speech is not censorship but better free speech. Googlebombing is gaming the system, but it's inherently democratic: to have any impact it requires widespread adoption, and the "game" is available to anyone. So, I'm in:

Roe; Wade; Roe v Wade
abortion

I'll also, as Amp and RG suggest, add this to the sidebar over on the right, just above my links. It will be important not to overuse this idea, especially if "googlebomb sidebars" are going to become commonplace, but it seems a good way to add a little virtual weight to the right (that is, the correct!) side of the scales of public discourse concerning large-scale, enduring issues like abortion and racism.

PBS has decided not to distribute the "Sugartown!" episode of the children's animated series Postcards from Buster because it features a family with two female parents. Individual affiliate stations can decide for themselves whether or not to run the episode. You can find your local PBS station here; for me, it's Oregon Public Broadcasting. They do run Postcards from Buster, but it appears they won't be running "Sugartown!". My letter:

Dear OPB,

I am writing to ask you to air the "Sugartown!" episode of "Postcards from Buster", over which Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has created an absurd controversy. (I searched both the OPB site and the TV schedule and could not find evidence that you plan to run that episode.)

I am a PBS subscriber for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I believe I can rely on PBS to promote diversity and tolerance, and to be a voice for minority groups. This is particularly important in children's programs. A hateful but vocal minority in this country would like to see broadcast media reflexively self-censoring all mention of gay issues. Please do not let that happen. Please continue to send, particularly to our children, a message of inclusion and tolerance. Please air "Sugartown!".

Sincerely, etc.

Margaret Spellings is BushCo's brand-new Secretary of Education. According to the LA Times, last Tuesday she wrote to PBS asking them to consider removing her department's logo and returning public money spent on "Sugartown!". Hatefilled nutjob and self-confessed dachsund abuser James Dobson thinks that's just peachy, and his Focus Obsessively and Exclusively on the Straight, White, Evangelical Christian Family Foundation has provided a handy web form for use in patting Ms Spellings on the back. It shouldn't surprise anyone that I put it to better use:

Dear Ms Spellings,

I write to protest your recent complaints over the "Sugartown!" episode of the PBS children's program "Postcards from Buster". The positive portrayal of gay characters is in no way at odds with the educational goals that inform the public funding of such programming. According to the 2000 Census, same-sex couples make up about 1% of all US couples, and over 400,000 children live with same-sex parents. Gays and lesbians are a significant thread in the rich tapestry of American society, and the Education Dept should strongly support children's programming which reflects that fact.

You wrote that "many parents would not want their young children exposed to the lifestyles portrayed in this episode", and that is certainly true. Those parents are (perhaps unwittingly) harming their children, who will only suffer by taking on a regressive and intolerant outlook. It is not the job of the Education Dept to reinforce the preferences (or prejudices) of any particular group of parents. Rather, the nation relies on you to ensure that programs like "Sugartown!" are available to parents who want their children to value diversity and tolerance.

Sincerely, etc.

So, where did I hear about all this? SpeakSpeak, a website (and a 501(c)?) for those of us who are fed up with the lunatic fringe dominating public discourse:

SpeakSpeak will campaign for those of us who feel we’ve been unfairly written off as Popular Opinion’s pipsqueak kid brother. We know we’re not a minority fringe. We know we’re not bereft of morals or family values. We know that if the country were headed for damnation because of Janet Jackson’s boob, the scenery would probably be much more interesting.

And we know we have to work harder.

We must stop whining about the election. We must learn lessons from it. The winners won because they were organized. They mobilized. They did a very, very good job.

And on that note, welcome to SpeakSpeak’s inaugural campaign issue: "indecency," "obscenity," and who gets to define it.

SpeakSpeak’s first campaign comes in response to the chokehold the Parents Television Council (http://www.parentstv.com) has on the FCC. This has been a banner year for obscenity fines—$2 million so far, more than SIX TIMES the combined totals of 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2003. By its own account (which it is today denying—see speakspeak.org/news.html for more), the PTC is responsible for the increase.

The FCC is not a policing agency. It does not monitor the television—it responds to citizens who watch the television. The FCC is required to keep "obscenity" off the airwaves, but it has been given a very vague definition of the term—one that involves the "average person" applying "contemporary community standards." Yet they’re only hearing from a very specific community, one that doesn’t represent most of the country.

And this is where we come in.

SpeakSpeak is still getting off the ground, and seems to be largely a labour of love for founder Amanda Toering, but there's a blog and you can sign up for email alerts (both of which, as you can see, I find useful). If you too are sick of the soi-disant Moral Majority, please consider joining SpeakSpeak and myself as we take arms against a sea of assholes.

Alberto Gonzales is the principal architect of the Bush administration's policy of torture. Under cover of legal sophistries provided by Gonzales, this administration has overturned longstanding US law, rejected the Geneva Conventions and abandoned key elements of the US Constitution. On Gonzales' advice, this president seeks to place himself above the law -- all law, everywhere. The infamous abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay are the public face of Gonzales' legal counsel and an enduring stain on this nation's history.

To appoint Gonzales to high office now would be to embrace this legacy and to declare openly that the US respects no law and cares nothing for human rights. I join Daily Kos and many others in urging the Senate to reject his appointment to the post of Attorney General.

Update 050131: The list of blogs opposing Gonzales is up to 533. The vote on Gonzales is expected this week, so if you have a blog please consider joining the list and adding the banner to your site. Whether you have a blog or not, please call your senators.

The Not In Our Name project has had a setback:

We had planned for the new Not In Our Name statement of conscience to run on Friday, January 21, in the New York Times. We had a contract and a confirmation number. This ad was to be our answer to the inauguration, and it was timed to appear in the middle of the inauguration news coverage.

The ad did not run. The advertising department were themselves deeply surprised by this, and have not been able to explain what happened. In fact, we were told that to their knowledge this had never happened before.

At the same time, the Times lead editorial said that this should be a time of legitimacy and acceptance for the President -- and that this was especially something that the opposition has to come to terms with.

It is unacceptable that we do not yet know why something that "has never happened before" happened -- a full page paid ad, accepted and slotted in, did not run. This is especially so when the content of the ad, the need to resist the course that this administration has set, is so important to the people of this country and the world. There needs to be an investigation of what went wrong and why. If it was just an honest mistake, we expect that the Times itself would want to know why in order to prevent it from occurring again.

The Times has given us a new ad reservation number and assured us that the ad will now run on this Sunday. However, there is the danger of it being buried in the back of the first section. This would be another way of marginalizing and rendering relatively invisible the voice of conscience and dissent.

We urge signers and supporters of the statement to e-mail the Times to demand that the ad run in the Sunday Week in Review section (where there will be summation of the inauguration) or in the first 10 pages of the first section. Send to the President and General Manager of the Times at president@nytimes.com and to the advertising department at advertising@nytimes.com.

You can read the statement here and sign it here. My letter, which I also sent to the NYT Ombudsman Daniel Okrent (public@nytimes.com) is as follows.

Dear Sir/Madam,

it has come to my attention that, for reasons as yet unexplained, the full-page advertisement taken out by the Not In Our Name project and scheduled to run on Friday Jan 21, did not run. The ad was accepted and a confirmation number was issued, putting the Times in clear breach of contract. Since its timing was particularly crucial to the effectiveness of the ad in question, the Times has a great deal of explaining and compensating to do.

Moreover, on the day on which the ad was scheduled to run, a Times editorial emphasized "legitimacy and acceptance" of the president and called for those who did not vote for Mr Bush to "wait for another day" to criticize him. The implication is very clear, and if the Times wants to retain public trust there must be a full, unfettered investigation into the reasons for the breach, the results of which investigation should promptly be made public. In addition, the Times must do everything possible to repair the damage done: specifically, the ad, which is now scheduled for Sunday, should run together with the inaugural coverage in the Week in Review section, or within the first ten pages of the front section. Finally, next to the ad the Times should run an apology to the Not In Our Name project.

Anything less will leave in the public mind a very strong impression that the NYT actively suppresses political dissent.

Sincerely, etc.

(via Sisyphus Shrugged)

Update 050131: Okrent replied, essentially, that it was just a screwup. I still don't know whether the ad ran in the organisation's second-choice position as requested.

Now that the dust has settled, I have a few final remarks to make about the recent storm-in-a-blogosphere-sized-teacup over Zephyr Teachout's remarks concerning blogs, ethics and a couple of prominent bloggers.

Regarding Kos: it's my enduring suspicion that Teachout thinks Kos somewhat less than honest, because there's a clear difference between her unequivocal apology to Jerome and her remarks regarding Kos. To the extent that it's because of the remaining clients that Kos won't disclose (and presently cannot disclose because of the nature of his contracts with them), I think ZT is being both inconsistent and overly hard on Kos. He was operating in the absence of the very community mores (concerning such things as client disclosure) that I am arguing for, and that ZT seems also to regard as worthwhile and necessary. If Kos got it wrong, that's something the blogosphere will work out with the benefit of hindsight, and it's a bit much to expect Kos to have nailed it first time around. ZT and Joe Trippi have both made similar arguments regarding decisions that were made in the absence of any precedents during the Dean campaign. (I will add, though, that I hope a more stringent standard of disclosure will become the norm as these conversations continue to take place.)

To the extent that ZT's attitude towards Kos has to do with history between the two of them, well, she should have kept it to herself -- but I have no idea and no way of ascertaining just what that extent may be. I will say that the accusations of grandstanding leveled at ZT ring hollow to me. Plenty of people comment on other blogs then post versions of those comments on their own site, and I see no reason to assume ZT is lying about having started the blog as a way of hashing out ideas for the much-maligned Harvard blogging ethics conference. Similarly, several commenters have raised, with varying degrees of vitriol, the idea that malice born of the refusal of Armstrong/Zuniga to employ ZT is behind any of this. Having no way to know how true that may be, suspecting as I do that ZT rather dislikes Kos, and observing that ZT has a pretty sweet job now and was never wanting for employment prospects, I think I'm just going to assume that particular accusation is bullshit.

Regarding the Dean campaign: my earlier comment was partly inaccurate, since although Trippi has directly quashed the idea that Armstrong was hired so that he would give the campaign good press, he was less clear about Kos' hiring. As I understand his remarks (in the Winer interview), Kos was hired as much to get him on side and keep him from advising others as anything. That's also the implication I read in ZT's narrative here. That scenario makes some sense to me, as I can't see that Kos had much to offer the Dean campaign that they couldn't already get from Armstrong. It seems to me both slightly unsavoury and probably standard-operating-procedure for a political campaign to have hired Kos on that basis. On that note, I don't buy Chris Nolan's assertion that ZT, politically astute Dean supporter, was all along carrying out a cunning political maneuver designed to boost Dean's chances at becoming DNC Chair. If the whole "blogola" thing has had any effect on Dean it's probably negative by way of a spurious association with pay-for-play, and if it did undermine Kos or Armstrong, well, they are both for Dean.

Finally, regarding the response to ZT: wow. I honestly didn't realise there were so many assholes nominally on the left. Kos and Armstrong may be excused the vehemence of their reactions, but their supporters and defenders, by and large, responded with inexcusable violence. I don't mean physical violence, but there were even threats of that -- one comment that sticks with me mentioned wanting to shave ZT's head in the manner of WWII collaborators. Jesus fuck. What's wrong with these people? Message to everyone who felt the need to call ZT vile names and post foul imputations about everything from her motives to her sexual habits: get off my side. Really. Go join Free Republic; I hear your ilk is welcome at sites like Little Green Footballs and Instapundit.

I have stayed away from news and discussion of the inauguration as much as I could; it makes me sick to think of that smirking moron at the best of times, and his $40 million orgy of self-congratulation is not the best of times. Excuse me while I sick up.

But others are not so faint of heart or weak of stomach as I, and have done a sterling job of pointing out the essential vileness of the event. Here are excerpts to whet your appetite, but in each case go read, as the kids say, the whole thing.

Juan Cole provides a pictorial commentary on Bush Minor's relationship with the US Constitution and says:

Bush has sworn an oath to uphold the US Constitution. He won't. But Congress can. It should insist that the sunset provisions of the so-called "Patriot Act" (which should be called the "Abrogation of the Constitution Act") be allowed to expire in 2005 and that the extremely dangerous "Patriot Act II" be completely rolled back. Republicans who care about the Constitution should join Democrats who care about the Constitution in putting a stake through the heart of this abomination. A noble 200-year-old experiment in civil liberties and democracy, for which US troops are giving their lives, must not be ended by a single act of terrorism and a clique of authoritarians in Washington.

Bush's speech was about bringing liberty to the rest of the world. Let's see if he can first do something to restore to the American public the liberties we enjoyed, as free men and women, until 2001. Let's see if he can bring US government policies back into alignment with the Geneva Conventions and other international law on huma