[UPDATE: Added an excerpt of Leahy’s input during the day of the Bush Torture Act hearings in the comments. Please click here and THANK Senator Leahy.]

Today was the first day of Arlen Specter’s show hearings regarding the President’s bill retroactively making torture and rape legal, and rescinding of the right to a trial.

I watched the hearings live, and must say “Thank You” to Senator Leahy for stating clearly that this bill is utterly UnAmerican. I hope, as the hearings continue he will continue to do so.

[more after the jump]

During the hearing, the Senator entered the following editorial into the Congressional Record. The editorial identifies this bill as a constitutional crisis [emphasis mine]:

In the blizzard of expensive TV ads and scathing stump speeches as the midterm elections approach, I doubt if any of the candidates and their supporters will focus on, or even mention, this assault on habeas corpus. But nine retired federal judges have tried to awaken Congress to this constitutional crisis. Among them are such often-honored jurists as Shirley Hufstedler, Nathaniel Jones, Patricia Wald, H. Lee Sarokin and William Sessions (who was head of the CIA and the FBI).
  They write, particularly with regard to Mr. McCain’s concerns about torture, that without habeas petitions, how will the judiciary ensure that “Executive detentions are not grounded on torture”? The judges also remind Congress that the writ of habeas corpus has been suspended only four times in our history — and then, the Constitution states, only in “Cases of Rebellion or Invasion (when) the public Safety may require it.”)
  To be sure, Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas during the horrors of the Civil War; but in 1866, the Supreme Court declared that action unconstitutional because the civilian courts were still open during the war — as they still are right now. So, if this suspension becomes law, say these deeply concerned retired federal judges, “there will be protracted legislation for years to come” — and many detainees may never experience justice.
  These judges also remind us — and Messrs. Warner, McCain and Graham (the latter has long wanted to undermine habeas) — that, as Chief Justice John Marshall declared, and warned, “ours is a government of laws, not men.” Having certainly acted on principle in putting the president on the defensive, McCain and Warner should now stand up for “the ‘Great Writ.'”
  And Thomas Jefferson, as the Constitution was being written, objected even to the inclusion of a clause suspending habeas corpus because of the danger that suspension could be “habitual.”

Remember, the whole concept that every person deserves a trial, to ensure that they weren’t just imprisoned for pissing off the wrong guy, was originally included in the Magna Carta. It was subsequently suspended, and not reinvoked in Brittain until the 1670s, when the members of Parliament realized that their lives were on the line after the peasants decided that perhaps they, too, deserved some rights.

It was then included in the Constitution, because the Founding Fathers had witnessed firsthand the abuses of a government that reclassifies people who disagree with it as criminals and locks them up indefinitely without cause.

And ever since that time, with a few exceptions which were roundly denounced by the Supreme Court, it has held as the law of this land.

Past administrations defended this country against entire nations without sacrificing our rights, but this crew can’t even protect us from a rag-tag band of thugs without destroying everything we stand for.

The right to a trial is the stepping stone that makes all of the other rights in the Constitution mean something. If you can be carted away for no reason whatsoever, and imprisoned without ever coming before a court of law, then you have no rights. You can have no “due process” those rights laid out in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights as amendments 4, 5, and 8, if you can’t even get into a courtroom to be heard.

All that has to happen for one to lose everything is to be declared an “enemy combatant” by someone, which means that without any evidence, without any warrant, without having committed any crime, you can lose your future. If this bill passes, you will have no right to a trial to make sure that you’ve been locked up for committing an actual crime. As an added bonus, most of the immoral and  counter-productive procedures formerly known as torture and rape will be re-defined as “forceful interrogation,” making them “legal.”

This means that, for the simple act of pissing off the wrong person, – or worse having the wrong name or looking suspicious –  you can spend months, years, or the rest of your life in a filthy cage, having other people’s genitals forced down your throat without it being considered rape, and you can have your face wrapped in Saran Wrap, then have water poured over your head repeatedly, so you’re suffocating and feel like you’re drowning, all while strapped down and unable to move, without it being considered torture. Note: You’ll actually be tortured and raped, but the torturers and rapists will be get off scott-free, because someone called you a combatant, like the guy from Canada who was dragged off to a rent-a-gulag in Syria and tortured for the horendous crime of catching a flight home.

So, again, thank you to Senator Leahy for this first salvo today. Please keep up the good work. Please do whatever you can to keep this piece of wicked doggerel from making its way to the floor for a vote.

If you think there is any way your constituents can help prevent this bill from seeing the light of day, let us know. We’re listening.

The news is clear now: the war in Iraq has increased the terrorist threat.

So what do we do about it?

Or better yet, since most of us aren’t running for Congress, maybe Martha Rainville should answer a few questions:

1. Do you agree that the country is more vulnerable to terrorist attack than it was five years ago?

2. Do you agree with the retired generals who have concluded that the war in Iraq has strengthened the position of the terrorists?

3. Do you agree with Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Pat Roberts and Democratic Representative Pete Stark that the new National Intelligence Estimate should be declassified?

4. Is “more of the same” still an effective strategy in Iraq?

Here’s how to get in touch with her: info@martharainville.com

( – promoted by odum)

Governor Jim Douglas’ objection to the New England Wilderness Act of 2006 is
perplexing, and reminds us of the last minute attempt to include all-terrain
vehicle access to the Lamoille County Rail Trail. In both cases he appears
to support the interests of motorized sports.

Thousands of acres of national forests in Northern New England would be
designated as wilderness by the federal government, thanks to a bill moving
through Congress that has angered timber industry advocates, but perhaps
more importantly, the motorized sports clubs.
The act won approval from the U.S. Senate last week with support from
Senators Pat Leahy and Jim Jeffords. Bernie Sanders has promised to support
the measure when it reaches the House.
The bill calls for adding 47,700 acres of wilderness in six different
parcels to the 400,000-acre Green Mountain National Forest in Addison,
Windsor and Bennington Counties.
The designation would more closely regulate the uses permitted on the land,
which conservation advocates say will permanently protect natural areas. It
would prohibit motorized access to the area.
Douglas has made it clear that he opposes the bill and would like to have it
stopped, going so far as to write a letter to Rep. Richard Pombo of
California, Chair of the House Committee on Resources that will consider the
bill before it moves to the full House. Douglas said in his letter that he
supported additional wilderness, but that he was concerned about the bill
because it went beyond a plan adopted by the Forest Service and because
several communities in Vermont oppose it.
Pombo is one of the most conservative, anti-environmentalist members in the
House who could use the Governor’s letter to stop the bill in committee.
What Douglas didn’t mention was that hearings were held over the course of
years that included responses from thousands of Vermonters, the vast
majority of whom support the wilderness designation.
Douglas appears to be seeking to please the special interests of loggers,
sportsmen’s groups and a few Select Boards by writing the letter.
This is where the similarity to the Lamoille Rail Trail situation exists.
After a multi-year process of hearings, the Vermont ATV Sportsman’s
Association suddenly appeared to have a chance of gaining access to the
96-mile former rail bed for trail crossings.
The Rail Trail will be constructed by the Vermont Association of Snow
Travelers, a large motorized sports club who want to operate the trail as a
snomobile through-way in the winter. Their lease from VTrans will require
them to maintain it as a recreation path for non-motorized use the other
three seasons.
In spite of opposition from almost every other user group, planning group
and local elected official, VASA was on the verge of having ATV access
written into the lease. The plan was killed by federal rules on the $5.8
million earmarked for the trail that prohibits such use.
Information obtained by the Friends of the Lamoille Rail Trail suggest the
administration was supportive of including ATV access to the LVRT and worked
with Steven McLeod, the VASA lobbyist to help make it happen.
McLeod used to be the lobbyist for VAST, as well as one of the antagonists
fighting the Champion land deal that set aside wilderness in the North East
Kingdom.
Douglas is playing to his conservative base by opposing the new wilderness
designation plan as well as by supporting ATV access to the LVRT.
We think opposing the wilderness designation is short-sighted and wrong.
Vermont needs to have places where there are no motors. The population of
the earth is rapidly expanding and finding forest areas without roads, RV
campgrounds and noise will become increasingly difficult. Setting aside this
land now will help ensure that there will be places to go to hunt, fish and
explore without the noise of modern society intruding.
There is no doubt that adding to the 5000 miles of snowmobile trails in the
wilderness areas will boost tourism, but the short-term gain will be out
weighed in 100 years when people look for a place in the wilderness.
We should designate the area as wilderness and let our children, or
grandchildren, decide if they want to open it back up.

This editorial is scheduled for publication in the 9/27 edition of the Vermont Journal.

In truth, it’s hard to be sure.

The Vermont political calendar is in flux these days. Election season starts far, far earlier on the one hand, but most casual observers still don’t really check in until October. The Tarrant for Senate campaign has tried to break out of that cycle (and its obvious benefit to incumbents) through advertising, running more ads than any Senate campaign in the country, but that strategy seems to have largely backfired. Whether it’s because voters don’t want to think about these things before October, or simply because the ads are so distasteful is hard to say.

Despite this fact, the campaigns have to start early – to raise money, test messages, lay the institutional groundwork and ideally build a field campaign (although everyone still waits too long on that one, as a robust, proactive field operation is still considered lower priority to most insiders).

However, although candidates and insiders have expanded their election calendar, most Vermonters-at-large haven’t, at that makes the late season dynamics hard to read. Although structurally not significantly different than the Clavelle campaign (and at roughly the same point in the polls from this time two years ago), the Scudder Parker campaign has all of a sudden created quite a stir among the media and we political junkies. In fact, the stir was teed up by the strategically incomprehensible decision by the Douglas campaign to run insulting attack ads against Parker. This caused many folks to sit up and take notice (even if they were scratching their heads), and set up Parker perfectly for his superior debate performances. Parker more than made up for his shaky and often underwhelming vocal timbre with direct, specific surgical strikes in these forums that have been the most effective rhetorical jabs Douglas has ever had to grapple with – and Douglas’s reaction belied how unaccustomed he is to such treatment.

Nevertheless, it’s very hard for those of us who have been following this race for some time to discern whether or not Parker is scoring points with the greater populace. To us, this is the latest chapter of a months-long narrative that suddenly has the makings of an underdog story like “Rocky.” But most folks are only just checking in, and are only just now building their own narrative of the race. To them, Parker is likely appearing as a genuine challenger as a result of the attention, but there has not been an opportunity as yet to build real momentum. In other words, there’s likely buzz, but not necessarily progress.

With such a short window of opportunity against so popular an incumbent, there may simply not be the time to build any momentum. Still, thanks to his debating skills and with the help of the Governor himself, Parker does have a genuine opportunity to build that momentum that he didn’t have before. Whether six weeks is enough time is hard to say. Small states like Vermont can turn on a dime, but they usually don’t.

Still, against the changing character and schedule of Vermont elections, we are still to an extent in uncharted territory. We’ll have to see what the next weeks (and debates) bring. Played right, who is to say the buzz couldn’t snowball (please pardon the mixed metaphor, there…)?

( – promoted by Jack McCullough)

Ok, going to make that rare excursion into VT politics again. I’ve just returned from a ‘house party’ for Peter Welch, who is running to fill Bernie Sanders’ seat. Now, for those of you not in the know, in Vermont, due to our smallness factor, we have ‘house parties’ for candidates at the local and statewide level (I’m sure other states do this too, I just don’t know). Anyways, sometimes they’re publicly advertised, sometimes private invite. Since I’ve gotten more involved in VT politics working on the Osman senate campaign, and have gotten to know many more of the ‘movers and shakers’ (god, I hate that term), I seem to get invited to a lot of these house parties, or ‘coffees’ as they’re called. They are kinda cool, because they give one the opportunity to meet the candidate one-on-one, look them in the eye, and question them… and give them follow-ups if they give you the typical politician non-answer. Lots of schmoozing. And, of course, the opportunity to raise cash.

So, anyways, Jenni and I went to the coffee in Marshfield. There were lots of people I knew there. When Welch showed up, I approached him, and thanked him for acknowedging my Rainville bash letter to the Times Argus. He remembered it and thanked me again.

Anyways, after lots of good cheese, pastry and almost too much wine, I went into the big room to hear him speak. His speech was heavy on the Bush-bashing, but more importantly laying out some of the things he wants to do in Congress, such as bringing the troops home, fixing the Medicare D donut hole, protecting Social Security, and repealing the tax breaks for the wealthy and the oil companies. Welch is a very personable guy, not slick at all, and that was a plus in my book. He’s quite soft-spoken, not the Bernie firebrand type.

After the speech, he took some Q&A, and I asked him that basically, time and time again, whether it be torture, war, wiretapping, 9-11, whatever, the Dems drop the ball and roll over, time and time again. I asked him what his thoughts were on that, and considering how unpopular Bush is in VT (the 20’s), it would be politically quite safe to take on Bush, and how agressive would he be in regards to holding Bush and co. accountable?At first he was treading dangerously close to being a bit evasive, repeating his plans to fix things. So I followed up, “Peter, that’s great, but what about accountability? What about investigations and such?” He brought up a good point that often investigations and such can derail other initiatives and be turned against the party (while they are important, they cannot be the only focus), but also talked about the power of committees, in that they can stop a lot of things from seeing the light of day in the first place. He agreed that the Dems have been too timid in taking on Bush and that he would not back down from agressively fighting the president. So he sounds like he would be an obstructionist to the Bush agenda, which is what I was looking for. Every other question from the audience was pretty in-depth and intelligent, and he answered everything straight on, not giving the stock answer. He’s not the pandering type.

Peter’s an intelligent, thoughtful down-to-earth kind of guy, with none of the slickness(such as Bernie), which is a plus in my book. Of course, he’s not as leftie as I would like but I can be quite far to the left of the spectrum, but he needs to get elected, and I don’t think statewide that kind of radical leftism will sell. I donated some to the campaign and also volunteered to drive him around if he needs it. I’ll vote for him, and won’t feel bad about it, unlike when I voted for Kerry. I encourage you to do the same. I think he’d make a great congressman.

Several people approached me afterwards and thanked me for ‘putting his feet to the fire’. Other conversations I had with some of them there agreed that we need to take the gloves off and start getting agressive. Many liberals, for some reason, find this hard to do, whether it be because of political correctness, or the idea that agressiveness is never good, it’s too masculine, whatever. Bullshit. I was having some beers on Friday with my longtime friend Wes and spent a lot of time talking about this liberal hypersensitivity, and how it’s crippling us. That, as well as an overreliance on magical thinking. Libs often offer up these silly, hippie-dippie answers, with no basis in reality and we get mocked by the right-wing even more, because we feed into the stereotypes. Or we offer answers that are hopelessly idealistic, and don’t take into account the political and social realities of America (like the Bible Belt). Enough. I’ve had it.

That is the big difference between the lib/progressives of today and the 60’s radicals. Backbone. For whatever reason, whether because of political correctness or whatever, it’s been lacking, and we get our asses kicked on the political stage constantly since Reagan.

These people fighting us don’t want to compromise; they want to destroy us, and that seems lost on many on our side. Whining and playing defense while worrying about offending people is not a winning strategy, it’s a recipe for disaster, and certainly not a way to win anything.

Wes and I half-joked about starting up a think-tank for rational, proactive liberalism, unburdened by magical thinking, naivite and hypersensitivity, and that plays offense as well as defense. We then realized how few people we knew that we could ask to join. But it’s time for a realignment in the liberal movement that is aggressive, fights back, and commands the dialogue. In some ways , yes, be more like the GOP, except tell the truth and not make shit up like they do. And no, I’m not talking about self-described ‘anarchists’ who go to rallies and throw trash cans through windows – they make themselves feel better about themselves and the futility of their movement, and alienate lots of people who might otherwise agree, but I fail to see how they’re helping the cause progress in any way. Now, I’m not saying the Black Panthers, Weathermen, SDS, or the Yippies did everything right. But dammit, at least they knew how to fight. It’s time we did , too.

You can read this and: other ‘Observations about culture, politics, secular humanism, Christofascist idiocy, Blaxploitation films, Spaghetti Westerns, music and other amusing things, from the Green Mountain state. Not for the ultra-PC or hypersensitive…’ at http://www.fivebefor…

Anyways, it’s time to take a look at the GOP stooge that is vying for Bernie’s old seat, Adj. General Martha Rainville. Now, the purpose of this is mostly to let you know that as much as the VT GOP would like you to believe Martha’s not some backwater Neanderthal Repub (like most of the ones now), a closer look at her shows she is really just another Bush Republican. See, it seems that the strategy the GOP tries time and time again is to avoid talking about issues unless absolutely necessary, because they know that they are nowhere near what traditional VT Repubs, such as the venerable George Aiken, were.

So, lets have a look, shall we? You can look at the bio stuff on her site, I’m going to look at where she stands on the issues, both from the material on her website, and through a Democratic press release graciously forwarded to me from Odum, over at Green Mountain Daily.

A cursory glance on her issues page shows 16 issues, from the Iraq war to No Child Left Behind. Conspicuously absent are two that seem to be quite important to Vermonters, the environment, and gender equality issues. Her energy policy has me quite confused. She mentions often about conservation and weaning us off of fossil fuels numerous times, but still is pushing the ‘increasing domestic production’ option, which to me, is no longer a viable option. There are many people in this country that simply think the answer to our energy problems is drilling our way out of it. Rainville is enabling this short-sighted thinking, and that mentality is also what is pushing for drilling in ANWR and other pristine, formerly-off-limits places. Granted, there are some good points to her energy plan, such as increased conservation, and the use of flex-fuel or hybrid government vehicles. There’s nothing about ending oil subsidies, nothing about increasing fuel mileage standards, nothing about increasing subsidies for solar, biomass and wind technologies.

On other things such as abortion, she supports parental-notification, and is opposed to the Republican buzzword ‘partial-birth abortion’. She supports line-item veto, which, considering we have a president that just ignores parts of the law he doesn’t agree with, seems kind of unnecesary(anything that gives an already power-obsessed executive branch more power is not a good thing).

On tax cuts, she’s taken the words right form the Bush book:
“As a fiscal conservative, I believe that taxpayers spend their hard earned money better than the government. Tax cuts stimulate the economy, promote strong economic growth and create new jobs.”
No surprises there, still playing the thoroughly discredited trickle-down theory.

Same on jobs, more form the tired old Repub playbook that’s running this country into the ground: “cut taxes, reduce regulatory burdens and reform our legal system”. Yep, damn trial lawyers and regulations… She offers nothing new on healthcare reform either, and I suspect that she believes the ‘market’, you know the one that has done such a great job so far with it, just needs a few reforms here and there and it will be ok. Screw universal healthcare.

Now to be fair, she supports a raise in the federal minimum wage, has called for diplomacy when dealing with Iran, is against the Federal Livestock ID system (a big issue in VT), and is in support of some sort of ethics reform. So basically, she’s not a far right lunatic. But, ultimately, what I find so discomforting about her is her position on Iraq. Like all of the assholes pushing the ‘stay the course’ vibe, she ties Iraq into the GOP ‘war on terror’ talking point, and what’s worse, she sees the failure in Iraq as primarily a failure of our government to communicate:
“A very important element has been missing, and that is good communication on what’s going on there… It’s very difficult for citizens to have an accurate perspective of the war of our successes… Part of that is, I believe, the fault of all of those involved for not communicating more openly with Americans, or not telling the story of what’s going on in Iraq.”
So basically, we’re losing the war because we’re not getting the right spin on those 30 or 40 Iraqis killed every day due to sectarian violence and the 2600+ Americans who have died for the lie. Ok. Feel better?

Apparently, Rainville uses this same illogic to explain away the miserable failure known as the Bush Administration:
“I think his weakness all along has been communicating with people. I wish so much that he would tell more of the good news that’s there. There are some positive things happening… We tend to hear the bad news which is a function of how we cover news. I think the help to the Iraqi people that the war has given – I think that needs to be better understood. Those stories get lost, and I think it’s important for our nation as a whole to understand all that’s going in so that we can judge the strengths and weaknesses better of our president or our congress or our foreign policy.”

So what does that mean, Bush needs to lie better? Needs to hide his imbicilic IQ better? Sorry, Martha, that dog won’t hunt. Blame the liberal media? That is soooooo 2002.

So where am I getting at with all this? Well, in case you haven’t noticed, one-party GOP rule has been an unmitigated disaster for this country. It’s been polarizing, and morally bankrupt. It needs to end, now. Bush needs his power checked, in a serious way. And the thing you need to remember, no matter how much Martha Rainville (or Rich Tarrant, whom I’ll get to shortly) wants you to think they are ‘independent’ and ‘moderate’, they are still members of, and will be contributing to the numbers and power of the party responsible for screwing this country up so royally. A vote for a Repub on the national ticket means a continuace of bad foreign policy. Of no accountability. Of divisive domestic agendas that do nothing to make the average person’s life better, nor us better as a society as a whole. Party really does matter in this election, folks. Now I know there is a lot of talk about the lackluster candidacy of Peter Welch, and it is increasingly getting harder to hold our noses and vote for the lesser of two evils, as we had to for Kerry. But you know damn well Welch is not going to be another rubber stamp for Bushco. Rainville and Tarrant will, no matter how hard they try to convince you otherwise. Rainville: wrong for Vermont. So there.

The bipolar ups-and-downs of the political landscape have dropped us in the ditch again. This time, as has been talked about here, due to the apparently complete impotence of Senate Democrats to even meaningfully try to stop the retroactive legalization of torture (and presumably, the retroactive legalization of the wiretaps through Sen. Specter’s legislation) after foolishly and shamefully allowing themselves to be sandbagged on the issue by supposed “maverick” Republicans such as Sens. Graham, Warner, and as usual, McCain. Georgia10 at dKos weighs in eloquently:

It would be effortless for us to take our ball and go home.  We have every reason and right to wonder why the hell we should do anything for a party that seemingly lets torture and wiretapping slide (not to mention one that has dropped the ball on several other issues, from Iran to Iraq).

But this late in the game, like so many other frustrated Democrats, I refuse to quit. 

So we will work. Over the next several weeks, we will sweat. We will write.  We will walk around neighborhoods until our feet are sore and cold call until our voices crack.  We will show the GOP what a pissed-off Democratic base can accomplish.

But elected Democrats–listen up. 

We won’t be doing it for this Democratic Party.  It’s not for the preservation of today’s Democratic Party that we fight. We don’t want today’s party. 

We do it for the birth of a new Democratic Party. We’re going to work our asses off for Jim Webb, and John Tester, and the other candidates who if elected will usher in a new era in Democratic politics.

Today, we forge on. But we will never forget.

Seat by seat, complacent Democrats will be challenged.  Every primary will be a Connecticut primary.  Every passive Democrat will be actively and aggressively challenged, not just on election day, but throughout the year. 

Those who have abandoned fundamental Democratic principles–those who have abandoned basic American principles–will be abandoned themselves. 

It won’t happen in one election cycle. It won’t happen in two or three.  But eventually, we will reclaim our party, because we are Democrats.  The party isn’t made up of just the handful of currently elected Democrats and their incestuous clique of astonishingly incompetent consultants.  We’re the party, and from now, there will be no quarter for Republican-lite.  There will be no sympathy for incumbents who feel entitled to Democratic seats.  We’re taking it back, today and every day until we get the Democratic Party America needs and deserves.

I would add that we need to remind ourselves that we have little choice in the matter.

There is no magic bullet for fixing things. This takes commitment. It’s a long haul. I was going to write at some point on how the discussion at Charity’s blog on whether or not conservatives should dump the GOP was just their iteration of the perennial discussion on the left, but it’s obviously never long before that conversation comes around again on this side of the fence – and sure enough, the understandable third-party rumblings are increasing again in light of this week’s events.

There are two points I’d like to make, here. The first is that, active as we may be, we still seperate ourselves from the process through our rhetoric, and I think that’s a mistake. Google the phrase “the Dems” and the first ten hits you’ll see all use the term as a pejorative. And these are hits from across the political spectrum. Likewise, if you google “the Republicans” you get a mix – mostly simply analytical pieces.

I think this shows us we need to watch our rhetoric, as we on the left are every bit as guilty of creating a permanent association between “the Dems” and “bad” in people’s minds as the GOP is. It’s clear why that happens – self-identified Democrats don’t have a sense of party identity that folks who identify as Republicans, Progressives or Greens do. For most D’s under 50, the party is simply a means to an end, rather than a deep-seated part of our identity (I know that’s the case for myself and most people I know). As such, it becomes easy and natural to cast “the Dems” as “the other” when we’re actually pissed off at “Senate Democrats” or “House Democrats,” rather than the folks who showed up for the JP caucus in our town. But like it or not, the term “the Dems” is all-inclusive, so how we use it matters.

And we know how we use it. We only talk about what “the Dems” are doing when we’re mad at them. But when Conyers and company offer an impeachment resolution, we never say “the Dems are offering an impeachment resolution.” In fact, we say “the Dems are stopping them” when some of their colleagues express disapproval. Why does one set of elected Democrats get “tarred” with the term “the Dems” when the other does not? Because we use it as a pejorative.

My point, if it’s not painfully obvious yet, is that if we only ID the Dems when we’re mad, it 1) artificially seperates us from them — heck, as Georgia said, we at the local level are more “the Dems” than the electeds are. And 2) it feeds a narrative that benefits the other guys – that “the Dems” are some cosmic force for evil ONLY. If that gets out from every direction, it’s gonna drive down voter turnout.

So I think we have a responsibility – if we’re going to cast D electeds as “the other” by talking about “the Dems” (which I don’t, but it seems inevitable), that we have to carrot AND stick them – yell when we should, but also make a point to PRAISE when we should (just like raising a child, you could say). Otherwise, we end up supporting the GOP propoganda subconsciously, and we dont want that.

So we have to just hang in there. Run for office. Keep blogging. Keep writing letters. We’re pushing a boulder, not turning on an appliance…which brings me to my second point.

Building a third party as a solution to this dynamic just defies logic to me. It is the ultimate “magic bullet” solution. Trying to get around the long haul that is before us by taking our toys and going to play with a cooler, smaller crowd.

The first question posed by this path seems obvious; who do you expect to recruit for this third party? All the same people who identify as Dems now, right? No? Are they to just stay home and stop voting? If you do want their help, how will any of the dynamic we’re seeing play out be any different if we’re all calling ourselves the Green-Progressive-Labor-Pure Party? It’ll still be the same bipolar system made up of the same people, and we’re still gonna have to push that boulder.

If you think the Green-Progressive-Labor-Pure Party can exist in tandem with the Dems and GOP, you’re ignoring history. Every time another party has come on the scene, it has been at the expense of an existing one. Many of the third-party sorts simply don’t understand how TRUE their own rhetoric actually is. The problem with the system is that its a two-party system — not merely a system that just happens to have only two parties, as they seem to act like they really believe. We’re in a hardwired governmental bi-polarity – the party of the independently elected executive on the one hand, and the executive’s collected opponents on the other. Thats why it always has and always will sugar out to two, which is why we will ALWAYS have this problem in this system of government.

The best the Progressive-Green-Labor-Pure party can ever hope to acheive is to gradually supplant the Dems. If they get that, we’ll be right back where we started and no closer to a solution — meanwhile, in the 20 or 30 years it takes them to supplant the Dems, the GOP will have free rein in a way even more draconian than anything we’ve seen to date – and the environment, for one, won’t be able to take that.

I have kids, and as such I have to look their future square in the eye. I honestly can see nothing to be gained from a third party, and everything to be lost. If there were an opportunity to change the system into a parliamentary one where multiple parties could thrive, I’d be right there with that. If there were an opportunity to simply abolish parties, I’d probably be there with that. In other words, if there were an opportunity for truly meaningful, radical change, I might just sign on.

Trying to just add a party in a two-party bipolar system is not radical though. It just demonstrates a lack of understanding of the system and amounts to rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic while handing the bridge over to the Republicans. And given the state of affairs on the planet, the Titanic has already hit the iceberg and is sinking fast. We have no time to play faux-radical games with cool third parties just to find out it was a big waste of time when the boat goes under. We have to face the problem head on and stick with it until its solved, instead of trying to look for a magic bullet. You can’t fix the boat with a bullet. It takes a lot of slow, hard work and there’s just going to be no way around that if we’re serious about making things better.

Report Says Education Officials Violated Rules

Department of Education officials violated conflict of interest rules when awarding grants to states under President Bush’s billion-dollar reading initiative, and steered contracts to favored textbook publishers, the department’s inspector general said yesterday.

I am in a dialog with a friend who sent me an article from the LA Times, September 18, 2006 entitled “Head-in-the-Sand Liberals
Western civilization really is at risk from Muslim extremists.” By Sam Harris.  She is the same person that sent the list of Jewish and Muslim Nobel Prize winners. (See my post of Sep 17th).  The article makes some serious claims, you can get the gist of it from my specific responses at the bottom.  Here is my reply:

The article covers a lot of ground, and I won’t try to address it all specifically.  The author says he has written books on the various subjects and it is clear that almost every sentence is the conclusion at the end of a chapter.  I don’t want to write a book and you don’t want to read one. 

But the short answer is that I do not agree that liberals (as represented by me) are “soft on terrorism.”  Instead I believe that generally, terrorism can be defeated only by addressing three factors:  (1) the sense of overwhelming outrage and injustice against the west, especially the US.  This has a lot of sources, only one of which is uncritical support for Israel.  (This is a long discussion)  (2) The sense of powerlessness and repression that make asymmetric warfare the only feasible tool, and (3) the hopelessness and despair that make suicide bombers willing to strap it on.  (By the way, it is interesting to contrast suicide bombers with the motivations of  Japanese kamikaze pilots, who were generally educated young men with a lot to live for.  The similarities are a lot greater between them and the London and 9/11 bombers than the ones in Israel and Iraq.)  My characterization of the opposing (conservative) view is that we can defeat them by killing them, often along with whoever is standing nearby.  I don’t think so.  That just feeds the cycle.

But the article is about a lot more than that – it is about the role of religion.  That is a complicated issue, and instead of dealing with the article directly, I will try to describe something else – I’m not sure what to call it, but it is a result from the combination of my studies, experiences and personal and family history that forms the way I look at the world.

1. What we are pleased to call “western civilization” is one which emerged in Europe as a result of the Norse invasions of the 8th and 9th centuries, and is based on the notion of the individual as the fundamental unit.  Oriental societies before and since are based on the tribe as the fundamental unit.  This view emerged from the quasi-religious based system of paternalistic families evolving into tribes, where the divine or divinely-sanctioned ruler is the father and the family members-subjects exist to preserve the family-tribe.  The individual is unimportant.  You can see the difference in the way “I” is formed in various languages.  In European languages it is an explicit and separate word, but as one goes east, it runs into an ending on a verb and becomes indistinct, finally disappearing.  The Norse and other barbarian languages which have a word for “I”, gradually replaced Latin after the overthrow of the Roman Empire. (Read Borkenau on this subject.)
2. The fundamental psychological problem of humans – the price of the self-awareness that animals mostly seem to lack – is the knowledge of eventual death.  The fear of death generates a psychological insistence on the existence of an afterlife, despite the total lack of any evidence for it – it is founded not on reason but on faith.  And it is religion that provides the framework for that faith.
3. Reasoned judgment requires hard work – it requires thought, investigation and information.  It requires constant questioning, because we are always acquiring new information as a result of experience, both personal and historic.  And that means that one has to be open to changing ones mind and admitting being wrong. It’s like a system of cogs and wheels that works to turn a system in one direction –if you add one more cog, the direction reverses.  A statistician calls it the “missing variables” problem.  It is much easier to check one’s brain at the door of the church, allowing the priests to make the rules.  Surrendering reason to faith is the easy path, because it does not require judgment.
4.  In the West, individualism after the end of the Viking wars over time generated a huge number of sects and churches in the various Protestant traditions.  But in the Orient, that fragmentation is much less pronounced, with just a few large separations into Shia and Sunni.  And that was based not on individual interpretation of dogma but on historical arguments about legitimacy of succession.  It is Orientalism that guided the historical development of Islam, not the other way around.  And that means at the extreme, that there is a willingness to sacrifice others and oneself for the benefit of the tribe and its ruler, and a view that it is the duty of the faithful to do so.  A good example is the Assassin cult that arose during the Crusades.  It is not Islam as a religion but Orientalism that has been cloaked in Islam that generates this.
5. Religion provides a story of divinity and a variety of myths that enable faith, but because faith is the easy way, it can overcome reason.  And religion, by emphasizing the mysterious and unknowable and by introducing rituals and rites and secret knowledge, creates a gap between “us” and “them.” This creates the opening used by politicians throughout history to use religion as a means of manipulation to achieve worldly ends that are cloaked with justification by religion. This is what Marx meant when he said that religion is the opiate of the masses.  Much of the human – generated evil that has existed in the world has been justified in these ways.
6. It is interesting that the Romans never undertook religious wars.  They were polytheists, and that necessarily generated tolerance of multiple gods.  It was not until Akhenaten’s, Abraham’s, Moses’, and later Mohammed’s widespread monotheism that large scale religious persecution and wars justified by divine revelation began.  The Albigensian Crusade in France, the Crusades to the “Holy Land”, the various religious persecutions and religious wars throughout European history, all had “god on our side” and were positioned as a battle between good and the other – the  evil – religion.  My father and grandfather lived through the Armenian (Christian) massacres by Turkey (Muslim), and told me vivid stories of that time.  My mother’s family lived through the rise of the Nazis (state religion)  in Germany and told me vivid stories of that time.  Bush Senior fought in that war and lived through that history, and understood this, but his son, who is poorly educated and seems ignorant of almost everything except faith, has no clue.
7. The Enlightenment was at its core a separation of religion from the affairs of state.  The Constitution is a product of the Enlightenment.  The First Amendment was not put there just to protect religion from the state but also to protect the state from religion.  For the divine right of kings, it substituted elections and a human-based system of checks and balances.  It looks like religious “conservatives” want to return to the pre-Enlightenment structure.  I don’t. 
8. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, in physics and in human society (where Hegel calls it dialectics).  We tend to become our enemy. That is what is so infuriating to me about Bush.  He is turning the US into a version of the enemy that he opposes, breaking down the separation of government from religion, with international aggression, police state tactics, and a belief that it’s OK if we do it but not if others do.  He seems prepared to thoughtlessly destroy the Constitution, which is what makes the United States exceptional, and that gives us a moral stature in the world that has almost totally evaporated.  And we have nothing to show for it, even in Bush’s own terms of reference. 

So to come back to the article:
– I agree that religion should be kept out of public life.
– I share the view that there are many legitimate unanswered questions about 9/11, although my general rule is not to explain by malice what can be attributed to sheer incompetence.
– Neither the US nor the Israelis are innocent of killing civilians, and the view in the region is that neither we nor they try very hard to not do so.  It is not so much that opponents are inhumanely using human shields, but that they are part of the fabric of their societies. Mao Tse Tung said that a guerilla must swim in the population like a fish swims in the ocean and Hamas and Hezbollah do.  Anyway, Muslims live their religion at a level that a fundamentalist Christian would understand perfectly.  But in the Middle East, everybody is that way, not just a minority as in the West.
– Israel does not hold the moral high ground against Hamas and Hezbollah as far as people in the region are concerned.  The article is totally wrong on that.  Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians has put it into the same moral category as South Africa under apartheid.  And if the US generally accepts and supports his view, which it does, then this puts the US also on the wrong moral side.
–  Liberal tolerance is not the problem; it is part of the solution.  The rest of the solution involves education, economic development, decent jobs, and an opportunity for the hope that the future will be better than the past. The problem is not whether there is life after death, but whether life after birth can be made tolerable, rewarding and hopeful.  That’s how you defeat terrorism.

Which of the following is acceptable:

a) Calling an entire country “evil”
b) Calling three whole countries “evil”
c) Calling one misguided president the Devil?

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