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The Liberal Doomsayer
My blog deals primarily with national politics in the U.S. as well as, on occasion, local politics in Pennsylvania. From time to time, I may have something to say about sports and entertainment as well. I try to interpret information that shapes the news and provide context to current events. I am definitely left of center politically, but I believe no one knows everything.
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For Moms Everywhere
2008-05-11 22:34:09
To quote Frank Sinatra, "Happy Mother's Day, all you muthas out there"...Seriously, I thought this was actually a good column from Tom Friedman (his work has improved since he's decided not to peddle propaganda on behalf of the Iraq war). ...
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A Bang-Bang Manion Freeper Misfire
2008-05-11 00:07:41
This story in the Bucks County Courier Times tells us that…Compelled by the murder of Philadelphia police Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell and Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter on Thursday called on Pennsylvania's congressional delegation to re-enact a federal assault weapons ban.“This issue is quite simple,” Rendell said in a statement. “Either (you) support law enforcement or you don't. And if you don't, you'll have to tell the widow of the next victim or the young child of the next victim why you didn't vote to protect them.”And according to this information from The Brady Campaign, Rendell is absolutely right…Q: Does law enforcement support the ban on assault weapons?A: Every major national law enforcement organization in the country supported the federal assault weapons ban and worked for its passage (note: the ban was passed in 1994 but Dubya allowed it to “sunset” in 2004 despite his campaign promise to renew it). Among the many law enforceme ...
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Where The Rubber Meets The Road (5/9/08)
2008-05-10 00:38:15
As reported in last Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer, here is how Philadelphia-area members of Congress were recorded on major roll-call votes last week.Combustible-dust rules. Voting 247-165, the House passed a bill (HR 5522) directing the Occupational Health and Safety Administration to adopt rules for controlling combustible dust at factories. The regulations would preempt any state rules that do less to protect workers from dust explosions and fires. The federal rules would be in addition to existing OSHA regulations for grain silos. The bill would require interim rules within 90 days of enactment and final ones within 18 months. President Bush has threatened to veto the bill, which is now before the Senate.A yes vote was to pass the bill.Voting yes: Robert A. Brady (D., Pa.), Michael N. Castle (R., Del.), Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.), Tim Holden (D., Pa.), Frank A. LoBiondo (R., N.J.), Patrick Murphy (D., Pa.), Allyson Y. Schwartz (D., Pa.), Joe Sestak (D., Pa.), and Christopher H. Smith ...
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"Dividing" The Dems At Obama’s Expense
2008-05-09 22:30:22
The New York Times presented more Democratic “doom and gloom” yesterday (from here)…All of this (re: Obama’s primary success) poses a challenge to Mr. Obama as he seeks to move the Clinton wing of the party beyond with (sic) the Clinton era without offending Mrs. Clinton’s considerable base of supporters. Exit polls in Indiana and North Carolina once again suggested just how cleaved the party is between young and old, white and black, lower-income and upper income.That’s interesting, given the fact that Obama’s support among white voters equals that of John Kerry four years ago (here). Also, this tells us that Obama is better at retaining Democrats for the general election against John W. McBush than Hillary. Finally, this tells us that Obama’s support remains unchanged after the “bitter” nonsense that played out during the PA primary and has pretty much rebounded after the manufactured media controversy surrounding a certain African American preacher here.I don’t ...
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Meet The "New" Boss, Comrade
2008-05-08 23:26:14
This MSNBC World Blog post tells us that Dmitry Medvedev was recently sworn in as the new Russian president, with Vladimir Putin still very visible and hanging around as prime minister.While press censorship is extreme in Russia, among other places, it should be noted that a white paper by Russian journalist Boris Nemtsov recently emerged (as noted here, it is not being carried by Russian bookstores, but it is available from the blog La Russophobe).As the Moscow Times tells us…After a one-paragraph review of Russia's success -- "true but only the lesser part of the truth" -- the authors launch into an unremitting assault on the crimes, follies and failures of the Putin administration. The central failure was not using the oil windfall to modernize the country's economy, army, health care, education and infrastructure.Authoritarianism only brought corruption on a colossal scale -- $300 billion a year. Transparency International ranks Russia 143rd on its Corruption Perceptions Index, a ...
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Snarlin' Arlen Tries To Nix Bushco Court Compromise
2008-05-08 22:06:23
The news here I guess is that Bushco is actually giving ground to the Dems a bit (don’t worry, though – they’re still likely to get the upper hand).This New York Times story tells us the following…WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats and the White House moved ahead Wednesday with a compromise to break a years-long impasse over approving judges for the federal appeals court based in Ohio.The court in question is the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, by the way.But Senate Republicans seemed markedly unenthusiastic about the plan as the Judiciary Committee held hearings on two nominees to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit who are at the heart of the compromise. One nominee is Helene N. White, a liberal Democratic candidate originally put forward by President Bill Clinton, while the other is Raymond M. Kethledge, a conservative Republican chosen by the Bush White House.One effect of the compromise would be to cement Republican conservative cont ...
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Little Ricky's Terra! Terra! Terra! Name Game
2008-05-08 19:07:15
It looks like Senator Man-On-Dog has returned to his regular schedule for concocting his “Elephant Poop In The Room” column.It's official: We're fighting . . . terrorists.You can also call them violent extremists if you like, but never use jihadist or mujahedeen or Islamo-fascist to describe our enemy. These words are deemed pejorative and offensive, according to a recent Bush administration memorandum to federal employees whose jobs involve explaining our ongoing war to the public.Gosh, I’m so glad Little Ricky cleared that up, aren’t you? Why, I’m sure this has already been propagandized about, oh, I don’t know – maybe a few hundred times already??!!And our former senator also communicates that he encouraged President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History to stop using the word “terror” (which, as far as Ricky is concerned, is only a means to an ends) and instead used the term “Islamic fascism” to connote what we’re truly up against.Also, our hero ...
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McCain And Hangin' Judge J.R. - Perfect Together
2008-05-08 02:54:56
So “Senator Honor And Virtue” criticized Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for very wisely opposing the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court (a related post is here; glad the two Dem nominees weren’t in that group of 22 senators who caved).And of course, this gives John W. McBush all the opportunity he needs to crow to the conservative “base” about how he would appoint “non-activist” judges were he the winner of the November election (God help us).Well, I think Christy Hardin Smith at firedoglake here pretty much “took down” that farcical label here. And in a link to a New York Times editorial nested in her post, we learn that…A new study supports our fears: Supreme Court nominees present themselves one way at confirmation hearings but act differently on the court.…Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, for example, told the Senate that they had strong respect for Supreme Court precedents. On the court they were the justices most likely to vote to ...
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Will Hoosier Repugs Bounce Burton At Last?
2008-05-08 01:40:39
Ordinarily I really wouldn’t care about what goes on in a Republican primary election, but today could be a historic day in Indiana; longtime U.S. House scumbag Dan Burton is up against challenger Dr. John McGoff, with the winner facing a Dem opponent in November, as McClatchy tells us here…The key issue is ethics, as McGoff hammers Burton for skipping House votes to attend a golf tournament and for casting the only no vote against a bill banning gifts from lobbyists. He's said he wanted a stronger bill."He's being badgered because of absenteeism and arrogance, and he finally has a quality opponent," said Jim McDowell, a political scientist at Indiana State University.Burton has been forced to spend more than $1 million, a career high, to fight off McGoff's challenge. McGoff has spent less than $400,000.Where to begin with this guy? Well, let’s start with the Helms-Burton act then, a truly odious piece of legislation that tried to punish non-U.S. corporations and non-U.S. investo ...
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A Betrayal In Victory From Another Era
2008-05-08 00:24:03
I had planned to post on yet another episode today of Incurious George lambasting Congress while we sink further into oblivion (I honestly wonder sometimes why any of the three current principals want to be president, considering the mess they will inherit from this clueless narcissist and his gang of pirates), but I came across this item today from Der Spiegel that I thought was much more interesting.It tells the story of Yevgeny Khaldei, a lieutenant in the Soviet Navy during World War II, who also photographed the image of the hammer and sickle flying over the Reichstag in Germany after it fell to the invading Russian Army on May 2nd, 1945.As the story tells us…Khaldei used up an entire roll of film, shooting 36 photographs. Various versions of one of (the photos) became an icon of the 20th century. It was an image that came to symbolize the defeat of Nazi Germany and the Red Army's victory in both the German and Russian collective memories.After the war Khaldei became the victim ...
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A Baseball Legend Hangs Up His Spikes
2008-05-08 00:17:26
I’m going to “dust off the memory banks” a bit here and delve into sports, which I haven’t done for a little while (sorry, but I just can’t deal with super delegates, declining home sales, a dead ice cream salesman, or the fact that almost 19,000 Indianans - ? – actually voted for Willard Mitt Romney in the Repug primary yesterday).It’s going to take a minute or two for me to set this up; I’ll move it along as fast as I can.In 1982, I was still a pretty avid area sports fan (much less so now, though I’m still interested to a point), and it mattered to me whether or not the Phillies actually had a shot at the World Series (they ended up getting there in ’83, though they then lost to the Baltimore Orioles). But back then, the team’s “brain trust” was composed of four individuals: owner Bill Giles, GM/manager Paul Owens, head scout Hugh Alexander, and a certain “Jack Daniels” if you will; the news about this fourth “representative” came out later, though ...
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Newt Gingrich Is Lost In Space!
2008-05-07 21:33:56
Fear not, GOP, your deliverer is at hand (or so he thinks anyway).This New York Times story (I pretty much don’t even bother with the Inquirer anymore unless something extraordinarily stupid is published, though I should check out other sites more I guess) tells us that the author of the Contract On America is back to warn his fellow party members of impending doom (doesn’t take a rocket scientist or even a TV actor to see this one coming, does it?)…In what was titled “My Plea to Republicans,” published on the Web site of the periodical Human Events, Mr. Gingrich, a former speaker, urged House Republicans to convene an emergency meeting in the wake of Saturday’s loss of a longtime Republican House seat in Louisiana. He called on them to force the leadership into devising a new approach to the coming elections.“This plan should involve real change in legislative, communications, and campaign strategy and involve immediate, real action, including a complete overhaul of the ...
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MySpace Is Worse Than Useless!
2008-05-07 04:37:04
(You can file this under "a word from our sponsor" and ignore it if you so choose...).I've received a few "friend requests" from individuals in MySpace, and I have a message for these people (in the event that they happen to read this blog, of course).I apologize for not responding to you, but I have been locked out of my account for some reason for months; I continually receive the message "You Must Be Logged In To Do That!" whenever I try to log on (MySpace is truly a wonderful community networking site - snark - there's no bleeping way to log off!).And yes, I have contacted MySpace through every available link I can find to obtain something approximating technical support that could somehow address this (and perhaps provide some elemental information that I apparently do not get somehow), but all I receive are auto-generated messages that are a total waste of time.So if you've contacted me and wonder who this guy thinks he is to keep blowing me off, rest assured that I would reply i ...
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Praising Those Who Risk Their Lives To Inform Us
2008-05-07 00:30:44
(Posting may get sporadic again starting tomorrow – not sure yet…)I should apologize at the outset because, though I was out of commission towards the end of last week anyway, I could not acknowledge Saturday May 3rd as World Press Freedom Day (of course, our media organizations with acronyms for names didn’t bother acknowledging that either since they were preoccupied with still more rehashing of a certain black Chicago preacher, pictures of Miley Cyrus’s semi-nude back, and the tragedy of putting down a horse with broken ankles in the middle of a racetrack).As correspondent Mark Fitzgerald tells us here…The annual snubbing of World Press Freedom Day by U.S. newspapers and other media is yet another indication of our insularity. This is a big deal in the rest of the world. There will be demonstrations in Paris and London. In Mozambique, Unesco, the UN agency that created the day 15 years ago, will present the 2008 Unesco/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize to the courag ...
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“Mighty Mike” Does A Heckuva Job At Bushco’s DEA
2008-05-06 23:49:25
This AP story tells us a Justice Department audit found that……19 of 699 DEA intelligence analysts surveyed had only low-level security clearances needed to review intelligence, while another 62 had not been reauthorized to keep their top secret clearances, as required every five years. One additional analyst had no security clearance at all as of last September, the audit found.All DEA analysts are required to have top secret clearance in order to fully do their jobs.“Because our testing showed approximately 12 percent of DEA's intelligence analysts' security clearances did not meet the DEA's security requirements, we are concerned that similar deficiencies may exist in the approximately 19,300 clearances that we did not review,” the audit noted.Uh huh: the story states that “an estimated 20,000 employees and contractors work for the DEA.”And here’s why this matters…The DEA collects intelligence and other information about drug smugglers and shares it with other spy and ...
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Screwed By The Second Circuit Again
2008-05-06 21:50:55
The New York Times tells us here that the U.S. Court of Appeals of New York for the Second Circuit did it again last week. But first, a bit of background.As noted, the city filed suit against gun manufacturers in 2000, alleging that they had “knowingly flooded illicit, underground markets with their weapons.” and the suit was upheld in December 2005 by Judge Jack B. Weinstein of Federal District Court in Brooklyn.Enter the Second Circuit (from here)…The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, by a 2-to-1 vote, ruled (on 5/1) that the nuisance law (the city argued that the gun makers were in violation of that law) does not count because it does not apply specifically to gun sales. That is a bad reading of the federal law. Congress said only that the state law must be “applicable” to gun sales, and the nuisance law — which prohibits creating a condition that endangers the safety of others — clearly is.Congress, of course, is also very much to blame, for tryin ...
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Jerry Lewis And House Slapstick Of Another Kind
2008-05-06 20:25:44
In today’s New York Times, we learn from here that…WASHINGTON — Defying President Bush, House Democrats are preparing to forge ahead with a war spending measure that would include extended unemployment assistance and new educational benefits for returning veterans.After a meeting Monday evening of House Democratic leaders, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she hoped to bring a $178 billion measure to the floor this week. What could be a contentious debate on the matter is likely to be held on Thursday, aides said.Cue the predictable Repug umbrage…“The Democrat leaders of the House and Senate are attempting to jam a 200-plus-billion-dollar spending bill through the Congress with absolutely no oversight or scrutiny by a vast majority of members, senators or their constituents,” Representative Jerry Lewis of California, the senior Republican on the Appropriations Committee, said in a statement on Monday. “Never in my 30 years in Congress has there been such an abuse of the processes ...
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Does “Don Vito” McCain Have An Offer? Would We Refuse?
2008-05-06 05:08:54
Gosh, I’m shocked to hear that “Senator Honor And Virtue” has such as low opinion of the U.S. Congress (as noted here - sticking with the Times)…On his campaign bus, Mr. McCain said he was confident there was enough wasteful spending in Washington that he would be able to find cuts to offset the programs he would want to keep.He used a colorful analogy to make the point that while good things can come out of a bad process, they do not excuse it. “The Mafia does good,” he said. “There are some projects that the Mafia’s engaged in that do good. I will accept that. I will accept that sometimes a godfather helps the ailing child of a member of the Mafia.” But he added that the ends do not justify the means. “I can’t give you a justification for the Mafia,” he said. “I can’t give you a justification for the corruption that’s been bred, which has sent members of Congress to federal prison.”Now watch and see if McCain is vilified for this as much as a certain s ...
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Some Truly Bad Twenty-Year-Old Wanking
2008-05-06 05:04:24
(Huge network issues earlier, so I'm just getting to this now...)Robin Toner of the New York Times managed to do something pretty unbelievable – and repugnant – yesterday in this Political Memo column, which included the following (digging for some really old dirt in an effort to impugn the Democrats in general and Barack Obama in particular)…WASHINGTON — Sometimes, as Senator Barack Obama seemed to argue earlier this year, a flag pin is just a flag pin.But it can never be that simple for anyone with direct experience of the 1988 presidential campaign. That year, the Republicans used the symbols of nationhood (notably, whether schoolchildren should be required to recite the Pledge of Allegiance) to bludgeon the Democrats, challenge their patriotism and utterly redefine their nominee, Gov. Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts.The memory of that campaign — reinforced, for many, by the attacks on Senator John Kerry’s Vietnam war record in the 2004 election — haunts Democrats ...
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A Corporate Media "Sign 'O The Times"
2008-05-05 20:24:11
(Now watch me get sued by The Artist Formerly Known As…).This post by Meteor Blades over at The Daily Kos today pretty much captured how I feel and what I wanted to say about the fact that our dear cousins who work for “news” operations with initials for names have pretty much ignored what I would call the story of the year (and in the running for story of the decade as far as I’m concerned).And that would be the total co-opting of our military analysts by Don Rumsfeld’s Pentagon to the point where these people went on T.V. to provide commercials for the war and thus feather their own financial nests; the problem is that their words utterly flew in the face of reality to the point where our military was killed in ever-increasing numbers, to say nothing of other coalition force members as well as innocent Iraqis (all of this was thoroughly and expertly documented by Times reporter David Barstow a week ago Sunday).And as much as I want to praise Meteor Blades here, I have to ma ...
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Thursday Mashup (5/1/08)
2008-05-02 21:21:27
I really don’t have much else for today but just a lot of stuff to throw together here; probably a good time to shut things down until early next week, which I plan to do after today.Did you know that John W. McBush supports a plan to allow people to bring loaded weapons into our national parks? And this tells us that he’s finally responded against Sen. Jim Webb’s idea of a new G.I. bill; see, McBush opposes “a new bureaucracy,” of course, and the bill McBush supports (didn’t know there was one) offers scaled benefits inclined to make our people re-enlist, which they’re doing anyway because decent jobs are ever more scarce because of Dubya’s recession.Update 5/2/08: What Kagro X sez (and a typically sleazy Inhofe move)...Here’s the latest from Walt Sherman and Shut The Duck Up! via Philebrity…it turns out that those ridiculous duck boats used for Philly tourism (making the noise of real ducks, along with the duck noises from the boat patrons), are causing an ecologi ...
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Tom Manion Joins The Fray (Sort Of)
2008-05-01 22:27:49
I noted the story yesterday where our U.S. House Rep Patrick Murphy and his Repug challenger Tom Manion both agreed on eliminating the gas tax over the summer, but I blew off some of what Manion said that I want to highlight now…Manion pointed out in a statement that the price of a gallon of gas has jumped from $2.33 to $3.60 since Democrats took control of Congress in January 2007 and said Democrats have given only “false promises†to lower the price of gas.“If the Democrats in Congress can't lead on this vital issue, they must get out of the way so real solutions can be put into place,†Manion said.Well then, Tom, let’s see what the head of your party has proposed in the way of “real solutions,†and that would be President Highest Disapproval Rating In Gallup Poll History…He whined that Congress wouldn’t let him drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an act of environmental terrorism opposed even by “Senator Honor and Virtue†running for preside ...
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Where The Rubber Meets The Road (5/1/08)
2008-05-01 22:10:26
As reported in last Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer, here is how Philadelphia-area members of Congress were recorded on major roll-call votes last week.(Not much to say this week - our people were basically on their best behavior, except for one U.S. House rep, as always.)HouseMedicaid funds dispute. The House passed, 349-62, a bill (HR 5613) placing a hold until April 2009 on new administration rules that would cut the federal share of Medicaid by $13 billion over five years and leave it up to the states to replace the funds or cut health services to the poor. In part, the new rules concern hospital and nursing-home services, graduate medical education, the placing of retarded children in family settings, and transportation for disabled children. President Bush has threatened to veto this bill.A yes vote was to block the Medicaid cuts.Voting yes: Robert A. Brady (D., Pa.), Michael N. Castle (R., Del.), Charles W. Dent (R., Pa.), Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.), Jim Gerlach (R., Pa.), Tim Holden ...
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Five Years Of Avoidance
2008-05-01 20:49:47
Greg Mitchell of E&P informs us of the 5-year anniversary of Dubya’s “Mission Accomplished†moment on the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, my vote for the stupidest and most insulting photo-op of all time (just remember that nobody got killed while former MA governor and one-time presidential candidate Michael Dukakis rode around in the tank, OK?). Here is more in recognition of this day from Democracy Arsenal (as well as this from BarbinMD at The Daily Kos; "the anniversary of when that banner flew on that ship," Dana? That sure wasn't how it sounded when your boss was crowing about it to everyone who had to listen to him).Also, here’s a post from Adam Blickstein at D.A. which tells us…"[al Qaeda] has reconstituted some of its pre-9/11 operational capabilities through the exploitation of Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas, replacement of captured or killed operational lieutenants, and the restoration of some central control by its top leadership, in partic ...
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Trying To Revive Obama-Rama
2008-05-01 19:50:54
(This is probably the “meta post from hell,†but I feel like I have to say this stuff.)I think it’s pretty clear that the candidacy of Sen. Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination is foundering at this point; even a filthy, unkempt liberal blogger such as yours truly can see that, let alone some high-profile, nicely accessorized and meticulously coiffed politico. And even though the damage is definitely not terminal, I’d like to chime in with some thoughts on how to try and put things right.(There were a couple of posts that helped me focus on this matter: the first is here from Open Left about how the campaign needs someone to help coordinate a competing narrative among us blogger types that we can keep trying to hammer over and over as opposed to the daily drumbeat of “Jeremiah Wright, flag lapel pins, orange juice without coffee, guns, bitter, Bill Ayers, bowling†etc., and the second here notes Hillary Clinton’s appearance with the local Indiana steel ...
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More Anti-Dem Spin From "The Brian Williams Network"
2008-04-30 22:06:12
I came across the following “hatchet job” masquerading as reporting from MSNBC Mike Viqueira here (concerning the 110th Congress)…So far this year, the stimulus package has passed, and that's about it. It has been slow going, no question. Behind the scenes, the Democratic leaders are still wrestling with the question of how to handle the president's latest request for war funding, this time for $108 billion.Funny that Viqueira should mention the latest war funding demand hissy fit request, since Kagro X of The Daily Kos addressed that subject here (including Dubya’s promised veto if more funding is included for our military to receive the education they were promised upon enlistment; the Repugs’ protest over requiring President Stupid Head to sign waivers when he rotates untrained, unrested, and unarmored troops back into combat; Dubya’s demand that the war be funded through his term and six months into the term of his successor, and on and on).They are looking at legislati ...
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An Energy “Solution” That Taxes Only Our Sanity
2008-04-30 19:49:38
There aren’t too many occasions where I have principled disagreements with Patrick Murphy, but this is one of them.This Courier Times story tells us that both Patrick and Repug U.S. House challenger Tom Manion want to suspend the gas and diesel taxes for the summer. Even though it would be nice to alleviate the pinch on my wallet any way possible when I fill up the Doomsy-mobile, I am honestly concerned by the loss in revenue (approximately $10 billion by some estimates) that would be caused by a meager savings at the pump.However, it should be noted that Patrick wisely wants to make up that lost revenue by suspending the obscene tax breaks lavished upon our energy companies (and a good start in that process is to try and get this piece of legislation moving).Barack Obama quite rightly is opposed to suspending the tax for the summer, which has earned him the vilification of both Hillary Clinton and John McCain; “Senator Honor And Virtue” apparently came up with this hare-brained ...
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No Way To Run A “Necktie Party”
2008-04-30 18:43:49
This item from the New York Times blog The Lede tells us that the judge who sentenced Saddam Hussein to death recently voiced some regrets over the final moments of the former Iraqi strongman.Chief Judge Raouf Rasheed Abdel-Rahman said that legal and religious rules were broken during the hanging that took place on December 30, 2006, according to CNN.“It was uncivilized and backward,” he said. “In Iraqi law, there are no public executions. [The Sunni feast of Id al-Adha] is a time of love, tranquility and reconciliation, not a time for executions.”This tells us that there was a lot more that was wrong with the trial than the atmosphere in which the sentence was carried out…The court itself was set up illegitimately by the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority, under conditions of an illegal war and occupation. It was funded with $138 million in U.S. aid. Every aspect of the case, including courtroom procedures, the prosecution’s case, even the layout of the courtroom were de ...
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“Righting” An Imaginary Wrong
2008-04-30 00:10:58
Before this session of the Supreme Court began last September, the New York Times told us the following (I highlighted this in the following post on Justice John Paul Stevens also)…The case that will most test the court’s ability to rise above partisanship is a challenge to Indiana’s voter ID law. Indiana is one of a growing number of states that require voters to present a government-issued photo ID. Such laws have been billed as anti-vote-fraud measures, but there is little evidence of vote fraud at the polls. The Republicans who have pushed these laws are trying to make it hard for poor and minority voters, who are less likely than other groups to have drivers’ licenses — and more likely to vote Democratic — to cast ballots. The court has traditionally championed voting rights, but a conservative majority may boost Republican chances in 2008 by endorsing this disturbing barrier to voting.They absolutely nailed it (and here's more). But the really depressing part is that ...
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A Common American Of Uncommon Courage
2008-04-29 23:02:46
The New York Times ran this editorial on Sunday in praise of Laura Berg, a VA nurse who received the new PEN/Katherine Anne Porter First Amendment Award.As the Times tells us…The PEN American Center, the literary organization committed to free expression, is honoring an American most people in this country have never read or even heard of: Laura Berg. She is a psychiatric nurse at a Veterans Affairs hospital who was threatened with a sedition investigation after she wrote a letter to the editor denouncing the Bush administration’s bungling of Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq war.That’s right, sedition: inciting rebellion against the government. We suppose nothing should surprise us in these days of government zealotry. But the horror and the shame of that witch hunt should shock everyone.…Her superiors at the hospital soon alerted the Federal Bureau of Investigation and impounded her office computer, where she keeps the case files of war-scarred veterans she treats. Then she rece ...
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