Did You Ride the (emotional) Rollercoaster Too?

I’ve gone from annoyed to angry.

Angry to enraged.

Enraged to incensed.

And now, incensed to depressed.

All this in just two days too! That’s got to be some kind of record for me.

So what caused this rapid downward spiral?

The Alito Hearings.

I think I’m going to have to agree with Senator Biden when he says that these Supreme Court Nomination Hearings are a waste of time. And, of course, Biden should know because he used his allotted time for questioning to engage in some of the most shameless grandstanding and self-promotion I’ve ever seen. I swear that one of his so-called questions took nine minutes and fifty-five seconds of his allotted ten minutes and then it required only a simple yes or no response from Alito. (Okay, I’m exaggerating but not by much)

Then there was Alito himself going through this now familiar bobbing and weaving routine to avoid giving even a single answer of substance. We have become accustomed to this routine where nominees are coached and schooled on how to avoid answering questions no matter how hard the Senators press for a substantive answer. In addition, this is AFTER they have been chosen because they either do not have a paper trail which would give some clue as to where they actually stand philosophically on some issues, or, a paper trail that could be explained away as being the lawyer’s advocacy for one client or another. In Alito’s case, some of the advocacy was for his client, the Reagan Administration so the right-wing views expressed in his writings were casually written off .

Even Alito’s record as an Appellate Judge was obfuscated to create an aura of doubt about where he really stands even though some of the issues addressed showed that Alito’s opinions were far removed from mainstream legal thought and, in my opinion, far to the right of most conservative thought.

Alito tripped over himself a few times with the old, familiar dodge, “I can’t discuss (insert issue here) because there may be a case concerning (insert issue here) coming before me as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.” That’s been a classic tool of nominees to keep from addressing issues for a long time, but although Alito used this tool frequently, he went ahead and talked at some length about the death penalty while, in fact, there are no less than four (4) cases concerning the death penalty pending before the court now. (Thanks to Reddhead from firedoglake.) So Alito contradicted himself once again.

But alas….. nobody cared.
There were brief moments of hope in the hearings.

Feingold seemed to be onto something in noting that Alito’s “Moot Court”, the forum used to prepare him for the hearings, may have included Senator Lindsay Graham. (The Washington Post had reported it and it was picked up by the blog: The Daily Kos) This would have been a clear violation of the Senate Ethics rules. But apparently that didn’t pan out.

Kennedy thought there was information in papers from the old Princeton elitist group, Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP) that would tie him (Alito) to the sexist, racist policies of the CAP. But apparently there was nothing there except the obvious fact that Alito had used the group to build up his “street cred” (cool. I get to use a “ganstra rap term.) with the Reagan Administration.

But in the end it was all useless.

The bottom line at the end of the hearings was exactly what it was at the beginning. The Republicans have the votes to put a far, far; far rightwing ideologue on the court and the Democrats in the Senate won’t filibuster. This guy will change the balance of ideals on the court to decades to come. My son’s children (and he isn’t even remotely close to having any yet.) will suffer through the convoluted ramblings of this Supreme Court Justice long after I’m gone.

And that’s depressing.

The Hypothetical Hypothetical

It seems our kindly conservative friends are fond of using the "24" to justify the use of torture of prisoners. But that's carrying things a bit too far. Our friends at The Blue Republic (http://www.thebluerepublic.com/) have a great take on this. I have the author's permission to reprint it here.

You say you’re against torture, and as a nation we should never endorse its use. But what if a nuclear weapon is set to go off in Manhattan within hours and you have a terrorist in custody who knows where the bomb is? He's not talking. Do you torture him for information?

Of course you do! Do you see the error of your ways? How foolish you’ve been – do you think for a moment that torture isn’t a necessary tool in our war on abstract nouns? In this simple scenario, the intellects on the right have rendered your bleeding heart supposition - that torture is in itself evil - into American-hating “Michael Moore think”. You godless, Christiane Amanpour loving bastard!Unless……perhaps you were employing reasoning that is a tad more sophisticated than the question posed above. Is that it? Is it possible that the masters of right wing rhetorical reasoning like Dick Cheney may have missed some logical construct that would make the above scenario seem both stupid and simplistic beyond measure?Gasp! I think I know where you’re coming from.

For example: if you were holding two people and only one had the information about the location of the bomb - but you didn't know which one - would you torture both people? And for that matter, what if there were 200 people in custody and you didn’t know which one had the information? What about 2,000? Hey, the moral ambiguity here is starting to vaporize. And here’s one for you – what if the “terrorist” has an innocent 14 year-old pregnant daughter who doesn’t know where the bomb is, but if you tortured her…the terrorist dad might spill his guts? Indeed, while you’re making up scenarios – why not make up one where we actually know where the bomb IS! It doesn’t take too much contemplation to realize that the simple scenario offered by the fans of torture is not only simple-minded, but dishonest

Be sure to click on the link and read the whole article. I comes in handy when arguing with Republican apologists.

Ed

Update

I'm forgetting my (web) manners....

In referencing David Brooks article in the NYT below, I neglected to give the link for the article....

I think a free subscription is required but I know may of our party are AVID readers anyway so....

here's the "linky thing":

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/tsc.html?URI=http://select.nytimes.com/2006/01/05/opinion/05brooks.html&OQ=hp&OP=2c73f0c9Q2FQ5E4Q7BLQ5E!Q2ACii!Q5EZQ3BQ3B@Q5EQ3BDQ5EQ3BpQ5Ei5SQ60SiQ60Q5EQ3BpLCiikQ2AGQ27!Q25N

Dave Obey gets good publicity...FROM A REPUBLICAN!

In case you didn't catch it, David Brooks, a conservative columnist, has a list of things the Republican Party must do in order to rid itself of the stink of Jack Abramoff. His third "suggestion" is interesting:

Third, Republicans need to steal David Obey and Barney Frank's lobbying-reform ideas. For some insane reason, having to do with their own special interests, Democrats have been slow to trumpet the ideas coming from their own party. Republicans have a chance to hijack them before the country notices. Specifically, there should be a ban on lobbyist-paid travel. (Members should be allowed to take spouses on publicly financed travel because it is important that members get out and see the world.) Former members should not be allowed to lobby on the House floor. All lobbyist contacts with government officials should be posted on the Internet.

Our favorite Congresscritter, Dave Obey, has been a voice in the wilderness for years when it comes to the Democratic party. Maybe this mention by a prominent conservative columnist will wake up the ruling powers within the Democratic party and they will listen to Dave.

Brooks has sounded an alarm bell for us that we should be paying attention to. The Democratic Party needs to get "out-in-front" of the issue of lobbying reform and take a firm stand against corruption. We have an opportunity before us much like the one the Republicans had in 1994 where they rode to power on a theme of "Reform".

If the party chooses the reform platform route, it must also be willing to make some very hard choices. Nobody can be naive enough to believe that corruption only exists within the Republican Party. If there are instances of corruption within the Democratic Party we must have the courage to expose it and deal with it of our own volition and not wait for it to be exposed by some special prosecutor. That will take extraordinary courage because we will risk losing the opportunity to regain majorities in either of the Houses of Congress.

Maybe we need a quick lesson in courage from Dave Obey.

and as an aside.............

I don't usually watch Chris Matthews' program Hardball on MSNBC (also occasionally known as MSRNC, (for Republican National Committee)) but I did last night to see if Matthews would admit that he was scheduled to appear at a fundraiser for a charitable group known as The Capital Athletic Foundation. That foundation was founded by everybody's favorite exterminator, Congressman Tom Delay, and a repository for money (bribes) from Jack Abramoff's clients. As it turns out and audit exposed that less than 1% of the money went to the organization's stated mission: "athletic activities for inner-city youth". Matthews didn't admit his involvement and went on reporting the Abramoff story with all the self-righteous indignation that we've come to expect from him.

There was a side benefit to watching Matthews last night though. He reported on Newt Gingrich's speech in which he called upon the Republican Party to reform itself and also to "fire" Delay as Minority Leader. To his credit, Matthews reminded correspondent Andrea Mitchell (who has her own problems regarding the Plame Incident and now the NSA ILLEGAL spying scandal) that Gingrich himself had left Congress under the cloud of scandal. After Andrea reluctantly admitted that Gingrich "had issues", Matthews said singer's reminded him of the old Hollywood quote: "I knew Doris Day BEFORE she was a virgin."


ROFL

Later.

Ed

Happy New Year

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

To all my fellow Wood County Democrats, I wish you a safe, healthy and prosperous 2006.

Actually it's 11 pm our time but I just watched the East Coast celebrations on TV. Okay, admit it. How many of you celebrate at 11 o'clock and fall asleep before midnight our time?

I was going to post a fairly long post concerning some of the topics that Dave discussed on Ryan Lindsay's Insight show on Friday but decided to put if off until a little while. I will just use this space to congratulate Dave on a good job on the show.

As the deadline for filing papers for local offices approaches, I have heard some encouraging news about Democrats filing for office. I'll write more about this later.

Good luck to all in the New Year...be safe if you're out tonight.

Christmas for Democrats

Hi everybody.

Best wishes for a Happy Holiday Season to everybody in Wood County.

Those of you who are into the "blogosphere", are aware that there is a fascination in Democratic circles with the work of Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald who is conducting the investigation into the outing of former CIA Agent and wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson by Robert Novak. A lot of joking is going around about having a "Merry Fitzmas", that is getting indictments of top Republicans given to us for Christmas presents. In honor of that, Symbolman of Take Back the media, has given us our own Fitzmas Tree to decorate. It's a lot of fun to play around with.

Here's a graphic to give you a hint of what's in store:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v77/mayor80/fitzmastree.jpg

Here's the link:

http://www.tbtmradio.com/flash/merryfitzmasornaments.swf

This link is provided with full permission of Take Back the Media and the famous Symbolman himself.

Last Chance Democracy Cafe

If you haven't heard of this series of articles, you're really missing something.

The Last Chance Democracy Cafe is a series of articles by Stephen C. Day writing for Buzzflash.com. It is set in a Cafe owned by a retired lawyer and features conversations among him and an eclectic group of regulars at the Cafe. More than any other site, I have found Day and his mythical group of liberals to more clearly give voice to ideals of the Democratic/Progressive movement than any other site I have visited.

Here's a link to the archives.

http://www.buzzflash.com/day/index.php

Read it at your leisure. There are lots of episodes. I'm pretty sure that, like me, you'll become a devoted fan of Stephen C. Day and eagerly await each new episode.

Ed