February 2006 Archives

[Editor: This is from DCP blogger Veritas.]

What does the term "shadow government" mean to you?

I used to think in terms of the British model: unlucky politicians playing "let's pretend" as a wish-fulfillment coping strategy to console their bitter electoral defeat.

But that's not how I see a shadow government these days. Many times and in many places throughout history, when the official government has either abandoned or failed in its responsibilities, a "shadow government" has emerged in its place to take over its work.

Sometimes this is called "self-government" but it's not really people taking care of themselves, as utopian as that may sound. It's unelected, sometimes unpaid workers taking on the jobs of the irresponsible or incompetent or unwilling.

Dear Reader: This week, our intrepid political healer Polly Sigh is asking for your input. As actively participating members of the charred political landscape, it’s time for your voice to be heard… Polly’s note is below.

Dear Friends:

Tons, even gobs, of love,
Polly

Another Monday morning in Washington DC, and here comes the next outrage.

How many of us know that President Bush is about to blow up the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty? Last week's Washington Post buried the article on page A 17, and not much has penetrated beyond that. But please, let people know.

Not that we need any stinkin' treaties...He is, after all, the Unitary Executive--But this quiet little trip he is taking to India has huge ramifications.

Brent Blackwelder, President of Friends of the Earth, issued this statement today, and he will be at the Capitol at 12:30 today, along with Rep. Ed Markey and others to make sure the message is delivered:

Have you ever thought, "Hey, I could do that-" while you were watching Jib-Jab, or a snippet of South Park, or any other short political comedy bit?

Have you ever thought, "You know, I could put together a short montage of scenes from the war that would be way more powerful than what we are seeing on CNN?"

If you have, then I have just the place for you to go to. It's called the Contagious Festival.

Here's the announcement from festival organizer, Jonah Peretti:

The Contagious Festival is a unique opportunity for talented designers, political activists, filmmakers, comics, and everyone else to reach millions of people with creative, viral online work. The Huffington Post is expanding our pool of contributors beyond bloggers and we are looking for contributors with creative ideas that could become the next JibJab, Numa Numa dance, Detroit Project or Black People Love Us. The contestants that create the best projects get Internet fame, prize money, and the chance to meet with friends of the Huffington Post from the worlds of entertainment and politics to discuss future projects and opportunities.

The first round of entries went live, beginning on February 1st, but don't worry. You can join in the March entries. I urge you to go visit the site and watch these entries and vote for your favorite. There is quite an array of talent on display.

To enter the Contagious Festival, click here to get started.

For more information of the Contagious Festival, click here.

This is a great way to find new and creative voices coming from all over the globe. One of them could be yours!

I see that Senator John McCain has come out in favor of the Dubai deal, in part, because we need to "trust the President". The other part of the rationale goes something like this: We need Dubai militarily, because we move military equipment and personnel through their ports to continue the War on Terror. You know what that means...the Commander-in-Chief has inherent authority under the Constitution to do whatever he wants and Congress can't stop him.

And Congressional Republicans are, shocked to discover that the White House considers them an annoying appendage that could just as well be chopped off.

REP. CURT WELDON (R), PENNSYLVANIA: It almost smacks of an arrogance, like it doesn't matter what the Congress says.

Ya think?

Of course, the mystery for me is WHY are the Congressional Republicans shocked that the President has just informed them he can do anything he likes?

Why are all of the Republicans that just voted for Alito (and therefore John Yoo) whining about the very thing they just spent the last month defending?

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, paper, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath of affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. Article IV of the Bill of Rights

I don't know about you, but I find the layers of secrecy this administration dances through simply dizzying. On one level, I would marvel at their agility, except for the regular stumbling akin to the long-program figure skating last night. On another level, it is clear we (sort-of) elected a bunch of incompetents; clearly not ready for the big events.

Aside from the obvious fact that the actions of the Bush Administration in circumventing FISA (layers of secrecy upon layers), I have been thinking lately about the whole cabal of criminals. GITMO, FISA, and the entire program that oversteps the Constitution and the Bill of Rights--the Big Brother/Hitler comparisons come along easily, but don't always feel quite right to me.

Hell in Iraq just became one giant step closer to Hell in America.

As a result, there will be Hell to pay.

If you've been watching the television news, or reading the newspaper, or monitoring things from your state of the art productions studio like Osama does, then it would be difficult to near impossible to have missed these important stories: Vice-President Dick Cheney shoots hunting partner 78 year old lawyer Harry Whittington in the face; the President okays a deal to have the govenment of Dubai assume control of US ports; and kicking off his new energy policy this week, the President visits an alternative energy research company, only to find that 32 people were to have been laid off due to government financing cutbacks.

Let's take these one by one.

What is it about energy independence that's so difficult to get? For those of you tough enough to listen to the State of the Union in its entirety, you could be forgiven for yelling, like Yossarian's dying hospital mate Guisippe in Catch-22, "I see everything twice!"

A tip of the hat to Al Thompkins daily update for reporters, "Al,'s Morning Meeting," on the Poynter Institute's great press site. Thompkins provides us with links to similiar comments by other presidents, with Richard Nixon's "energy independence" kick-off all the way back in 1974.

President Bush said similar things in 2003

Bill Clinton urged fuel-efficient homes, cars and renewable fuel development (as he closed his speech) in 1998

Jimmy Carter noted the need to get oil independent in 1980 (Boy -- if you want to read an intense State of the Union speech, read this one!)

Gerald Ford talked about energy independence in 1975

Richard Nixon promised energy independence in 1974

[Editor's Note: Ladytechie, madame defarge and dwahzon collaborated on putting this item together in the IRC.]

With a hattip and thanks to Martin in MD at dailykos for bringing this to our attention. We think it's far too important to allow it to remain buried.

West Point to Bush: Your War Is A Failure [Was This the Best-Kept Secret of the Week?]

What could have been a bombshell story this past week seems to have been snowed under by all the newsprint given over to Mr. Cheney's "accident". The entire rationale for the on-going carnage in Iraq was seriously called into question on Tuesday ... and despite this very large tree falling in the forest, it apparently made no sound. I've seen virtually no coverage of this story at all, despite the fact that the people pointing the finger are not Quakers or members of Greenpeace or even of the Democratic Party, but rather spokesmen for the United States Army.

The current [U.S.] military strategy [in Iraq] is only helping radical Muslims, according to a West Point critique of U.S. terrorism policy," begins a story by John Diamond that was published in USA TODAY on Tuesday, and re-printed in the Detroit Free Press on Wednesday. Quoting directly from the report by the Combatting Terrorism Center at the U.S. military academy. Mr. Diamond writes, "Direct engagement with the United States has been good for the jihad movement." The report goes on to say that the U.S. needs to emphasize indirect action -- propaganda and the use of allies in the Middle East -- more skillfully and extensively."

The report also declares that military action "rallies the locals behind the [jihad] movement, drains the United States of resources, and puts pressure" on U.S.-backed regimes. And what is the report's title? "Stealing Al Qaeda's Playbook".

In other words, here is the U.S. Army -- again, not some "peace outfit" -- declaring that the "war in Iraq" is a failure when it comes to dealing with the threat of terrorism. And not only a failure, it is actually contributing to the success of the terrorism movement.

This report effectively cuts the legs out from under George W. Bush's repeated claims that "the war in Iraq is a central front of the War on Terror." Actually, Mr. President, your war is doing more harm than good. And all of those "brave young men and women" who are dying and losing limbs in Iraq? Painful as it is to confront it, the truth is that they are not "sacrificing for freedom" but instead losing their lives and legs and sanity in the service of an operation that is helping to fuel the very menace they are supposedly fighting.

Again, this to me is a blockbuster story. And yet, where was it this past week? I saw no mention of it in the Washington Post, which is my daily read. I saw no mention of it here on DK, nor on any of the other blogs I frequent. Did I miss it? Or was it conveniently covered up by L'Affaire Cheney?

And here's a link to the West Point report. It's a pdf titled CTC Report "Stealing Al-Qa'ida's Playbook". CTC stands for the Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point.

We think that this needs some attention and wider distribution. Our brainstorming in the IRC: Letters to the editors, calls to your local news stations, emails to your congresspersons, media representatives, and whatever creative possibilities you can come up with.

And do ask: Why isn't the administration listening to this? This isn't just another peace group. A good leader seeks advice from experts to solve problems and one should certainly consider the staff at West Point experts in this area.

In the end, it appears that this administration feels that it knows better because after all this war is just a business to them. Which brings to mind one of Calvin Coolidge's remark, "What's good for business is good for America".

Only this time -- it isn't.

Our weekly humor and satire columnist, the intrepid Polly Sigh, brings us her column from far off places....

I received a call from a very reliable ‘official Washington’ source regarding an incident involving the Vice President and some of our inter-galactic neighbors…it seems that word is leaking out of the administration once again. Leaks are not pretty.

I felt it was important enough to share it with you.

In America, the church has long been an ally in the antiwar and civil rights movements. America seems to be a religious country and predominantly Christian, but there are massive splits in philosophy, moral values, social activism and direction - just as there are in other religions right now.

The separation of church and state sometimes seems like a fond memory. There are days when it seems like fundamentalist Christian religion has taken over the entire US government. This seemingly "official" religion does not come anywhere near representing the values of many Americans, regardless of their religious or spiritual beliefs. We are stuck in a war that many of us opposed with every fiber of our being, yet our President pulls in three million dollars in one evening at Disneyland hotel - by saying that The Almighty gives us freedom.

It gives me hope to read that in a statement released on 2-26-2006, the National Council of Churches USA called for closure of Guantanamo Bay detention facility, and stated that alleged torture violates "the fundamental Christian belief in the dignity of human persons."

[Editor's Note: This Saturday, our regular feature, Art and Politics, comes to us from guest writer, Nolie. We would like to thank our guest blogger, and many thanks for this interesting and insightful piece.]

Do any of us realize exactly how much we internalize the music of our culture as a response to politics?

We are constantly bombarded by it in advertisements, either with "hip" new jingles and jingles reminescent of popular songs, or with themes stolen from preludes and symphonies. It is no different with us politically. We are encouraged to hear certain instruments and feel grandeur and integrity, such as military bands playing John Phillips Sousa or trumpets playing the taps.

One of the most popular political pieces of music is Beethovens 9th Symphony, best known for the movement "Ode to Joy".

As we have discussed in this space many times, the media skews right. It's almost impossible not to notice the mulititude of conservatives vs. neutral reporters/very occasional progressive, on Sunday morning newschat shows. And yet we have seen something of a debate taking place over at Media Matters over just that fact.

Media Matters produces a study, states its methodology, and then the television folks from the traditional media strain credulity in their eagerness to refute the study's findings. In separate letters/columns to Media Matters, CBS's Public Eye's Vaughn Ververs, and Meet The Press' Executive Producer Betsey Fischer snipe at Media Matter's findings for not studying things that Media Matters never claimed it was studying in the first place, and, in fact, specifically claimed it wasn't going to study. It's roughly the equivalent of me doing a study on Idaho potatoes and including the methodology that I was studying only Idaho potatoes, and you sniping at me because I didn't include in my study the fact that there are also potatoes grown in parts of Russia.

Here's an excerpt from the back and forth between Media Matters and Fischer:

Betsy,

You ask why our report did not discuss Clinton's first term, and you say that "perhaps it's because statistics from Clinton's first term do not support their ill-defined 'conclusion.' " Later, you call our study "intellectually dishonest." You seem to be suggesting that we analyzed the data from those years, decided it didn't fit the point we wanted to make, and thus excluded it from our public report. That would have been appallingly dishonest, and it is frankly offensive for you to suggest that we have done so. I have been asked in a number of interviews why there is an imbalance on the Sunday shows, and I am always careful to say that we ascribe no sinister intentions to the producers. It is unfortunate that you apparently couldn't bring yourself to extend us the same courtesy.

Let me be clear: We didn't examine the guests from those years, so we have no idea what doing so would have showed. We decided to go back only as far as the second Clinton term because there were gaps in the Lexis-Nexis data, and we had to stop somewhere. Gathering and analyzing the data for all the nine years was itself an enormous task. Since you seem to have a complete list of guests on Meet the Press available, if you send it to us, we would be happy to analyze the first Clinton term.

As for the numbers you provide, it is you who have mixed apples and oranges. You say that for the first Clinton term, the guest breakdown was 56 percent Democrats to 44 percent Republicans. Since you are speaking only of Democrats and Republicans, the relevant comparison in our data is not the overall guest list, which includes not only elected and administration officials but all guests, including journalists; the relevant comparison is the list of elected and administration officials.

The complete inability for the traditional media to even hear the word bias, let alone be willing to examine that bias honestly and forthrightly is disturbing. This sort of snarky knee-jerk response that Fischer gave to Media Matters provides nearly as much insight into the problem as the Media Matters study itself. For how can you solve a problem, when you spend all of your time denying its very existence?

Editor's Note: No, this is not a mistake that this post is still up. We made an editorial decision that this post will remain up for two days in order to give as wide an audience time to see it as possible, and to post about it here and everywhere else you can. This story is being largely ignored by the traditional media, and not just because Dick Cheney shot someone in the face. It's being ignored because the images are disturbing, and nobody wants to think that Americans do that to people.

Well, here's the news. Americans DO THAT to other people. And the media reaction of, "Oh, this is more of the photos from Abu Ghraib, and those people were already tried. Let's move on," just doesn't cut it. These photos represent the cover up of torture of prisoners, sexual abuse, and flagrant violations of the Geneva Conventions.

And it wasn't just some 11 "bad actors", as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was fond of saying when photos first surfaced. It was most likely people hired by the US government, in addition to US military personnel, who were carrying out instructions to torture people at Abu Ghraib. After all, I don't imagine Lynndie England got the studded dog collar, leather helmut and leash in a care package from her family back in West Virginia. I don't think there has ever been a satisfactory explanation for how the chain of command of torture worked. It's past time that there was.

So I would ask that you pass this link around to everyone you know. Put pressure on the traditional media to cover the story, and abandon their heretofore attitude of "torture is icky", in favor of a more dignified approach, like a commitment to finding out and reporting the truth.

For years, the Bush Administration has been trying to prevent the release of photos that finally saw the light of day in media outlets from Australia.

From The Sydney Morning Herald:

Tonight the SBS Dateline program plans to broadcast around 60 previously unpublished photographs that the US Government has been fighting to keep secret in a court case with the American Civil Liberties Union.

Although a US judge last year granted the union access to the photographs following a freedom-of-information request, the US Administration has appealed against the decision on the grounds their release would fuel anti-American sentiment.

Some of the photos are similar to those published in 2004, others are different. They include photographs of six corpses, although the circumstances of their deaths are not clear. There are also pictures of what appear to be burns and wounds from shotgun pellets.

After having seen the photos, I can certainly understand why the Pentagon is concerned these will fuel anti-American sentiment. These images and actions of torture from American or American directed armed personnel, upon Iraqis, are beyond inhumane. If cartoons depicting images of the prophet Mohammed spurred the outrage we are seeing throughout both the Middle East, Asia and Europe are any sign, they going to be some serious hell to pay over these photos.

If you wish to view these photos, you can see them on Kos at Waitingtoderail's diary. They are sick and sickening.

I seriously doubt that the prosecution and convictions of a handful of "bad actors" will do anything whatsoever to mitigate the situation, and I suspect the White House will continue to do everything in its power to shoo this story down the memory hole, just like last time.

But isn't it time for America to demand a little bit more from its leadership?

Isn't it time that the moral outrage in America over what is being done in our name to innocent Iraq civilians, matches the moral outrage of some of the Iraqis?

This is what is being done in your name, America. Shouldn't those responsible be made to take responsibility for their complicity in war crimes?

Isn't it past time for Donald Rumsfeld, the most incompetent Defense Secretary in history, to resign?

If the United States citizens allow Rumsfeld to continue to serve, it does so at the risk of putting its stamp of approval on the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. And God help us all if that happens.

These two pieces should once and for all put to bed the common nonsense meme of "the liberal media" that is so widely circulated in the echo chamber of traditional media.

Hat tip to Atrios for providing this information:

When liberals do appear, the balance is often stacked against them. For nearly three years in the late 1990s, the regular roundtable on "This Week" featured George Will and William Kristol double-teaming George Stephanopoulos. On five occasions, Stephanopoulos was absent, and Will's establishment conservatism had to provide "balance" to Kristol's triumphalist conservatism. But even when the former Clinton aide was in the studio, he was in the process of trying to shed his political reputation and become a "Journalist," he who expresses no personal views, making the debate even more lopsided than it otherwise would have been.

The consequence of all this is that in every year since 1997, conservative journalists have dramatically outnumbered liberal journalists, in some years by two-to-one or more. Why would the producers of the shows believe that a William Safire (56 appearances since 1997) or Bob Novak (37 appearances) is somehow "balanced" by a Gwen Ifill (27) or Dan Balz (22)? It suggests that some may have internalized the conservative critique of the media, which assumes that daily journalists are "liberal" almost by definition, and thus can provide a counterpoint to highly partisan conservative pundits.

What gets left behind, of course, is the real liberal. Not only do openly liberal columnists like Paul Krugman appear far less frequently than their conservative colleagues, writers, and editors from magazines like The Nation, The American Prospect, and The New Republic are seldom seen (forget about the Progressive, Mother Jones or In These Times), while the Weekly Standard and the National Review are regularly represented. Last year saw eleven appearances by writers from the two conservative magazines, but only two from liberal magazines. (There was one bright spot in the data: A December 1998 episode of "Meet the Press" featured none other than Charles Peters, this magazine's founder. Unfortunately, that was the last time anyone from The Washington Monthly graced the Sunday shows.)

[Editor's Note: The following essay was submitted by DCP blogger Ladytechie (and somehow the original editor's note was omitted). Her point reinforces the concept mentioned by William Raspberry that Otter brought to our attention several weeks ago here and here.]


Wherein I timidly propose that, once in while, we should watch O'Reilly or Hannity or Joe Scarborough.

Now I know that most of you have raced to the bottom of the page to hit the comments section to question my sanity. Hear me out.

We have talked much about where do we go from here. Most of us agree on one thing whatever our pet issues are: that the climate has suddenly turned and administration change is now possible. Not only possible, but probable.

How do we make sure that it happens? One voter at a time, of course. Now is the time to reach out to those whom before we would have assumed were so hardened in their beliefs that we would waste our time talking to them.

And here is where we need to stop avoiding the mainstream press, and even television. It is a golden rule of debate that in order to win a debate you must be able to argue both sides of the proposition.
That's where O'Reilly comes in, as does ABC, NBC, CNN and don't forget that CBS does still have a news broadcast. Whether we like it or not, the majority of those around us still get all of their news from these sources. It is so much easier to expand a conversation when you understand the other person’s frame of reference.

"I don't have to watch to know what the mainstream is saying, I can read it on the blogs, or catch a clip", you say. Yet by reading just the sound bites we miss much. We take more away from a viewing experience than just the words. The non-verbal often says as much or more. Just watching O'Reilly for example, is a wonderful exercise in interpreting body language, both his and his beleaguered guests’.

I don't for one minute suggest that we're watching to become informed. All of us here have learned about the wealth of resources on the Internet. What I am saying is that it is still true that the majority of people in the United States don't use those resources. We need to understand the world view of the nonpolitical to bring them into the process. In order to do that, we have to start where they are, not where we want them to be.

Not long ago I ran into a lady who remarked to me, “Oh, if I see it on Fox, then I know it's true.” My reaction was just as knee jerk as any good liberal… How dumb can this woman be? Yet, if I only get my information from the Washington Post, or Rawstory, or just this blog, I am as narrow minded as she is.

Civil discourse can only happen if we listen to both sides of the discussion, pay as much attention to what Condi says as we do Kerry or Kennedy. It is civil discourse that will change the direction we are taking, not a hardening of the attitudes. This is true on both sides of the aisle.

The listening has got to start someplace, let it begin with us.

~Ladytechie

The latest in our series to give spiritual guidance to the politically injured…

Dear Polly:

Edgy Amarillo Gal Looking East

[Editor's note: This essay is from DCP blogger oncall and it reminds us of key points that are central to events of the last several weeks.]

"I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God."

I had the opportunity to catch Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company at UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall doing Bill's new piece "Blind Date", his response to the deeper issues behind the elections of 2004 and the Iraq War.

"Blind Date" premiered in New York in September of 2005. I saw its production here in Berkeley where Mr. Jones and dancers wove their way through the questions of what comprises "patriotism", "faith", "courage". In the program notes, the company defines the intent behind "Blind Date":

Jones feels that if those of us who are not fighting insist on rejecting the values that lead many young men and women to lay down their lives for an ideal, then we must ask ourselves if, in fact, we believe in anything with the same passion and commitment as they do.

Another early morning discussion with Dick; this one as he got ready to fly off to the west coast for a discussion of peak oil and what can be done about it.

What can be done about ANY of the truly formidable challenges we face right now? We have a corrupt government, full of selfish spoiled people who think they are clever, but whose arrogance may take us all down yet; we have abandoned the least among us, we have a cynical and irrelevant press, and broadcast news personalities who know the price of everything but the value of nothing, and we have only a mere shell of our constitutional democracy.

As we talked, we went back to something we had begun talking about earlier. Dick found this article from Germany yesterday:

One thing is certain: the way humanity has organized itself – "capitalism", "competition", "empire", "globalization" – not only does the number of losers increase every day, but as in any large group, fragmentation soon sets in. In a chaotic, unfathomable process, the cohorts of the inferior, the defeated, the victims separate out. The loser may accept his fate and resign himself; the victim may demand satisfaction; the defeated may begin preparing for the next round. But the radical loser isolates himself, becomes invisible, guards his delusion, saves his energy, and waits for his hour to come.

I found that passage chilling and true. But not quite as chilling as the following:

There is a very good article by Kirsten Powers at Huffington Post on just how the RNC has gone about, and is going about, implanting the "negative narrative" about either a Democratic candidate for office, or a member of the opposition party.

Here is a sample:

This week, we saw Republicans launch their first attempt to negatively brand one of the contenders for the 2006 Democratic presidential nomination. Regardless if you are a Hillary lover or Hillary hater, anyone who is a Democrat should have their antennae up as a result of the RNC Chairman’s statement that “Hillary looks angry.” Republicans are trying out a narrative that will scare most Americans: the specter of the “Angry Woman.”

If you have any doubt about the complicity of the media, just check out the headlines on "Hardball". In less than 24 hours, RNC leader Ken Mehlmen's remarks that Hillary "looks" angry, has become Hillary "is" angry, with a not so subtle question mark after it.

Ms. Powers continues:

If this strategy seems eerily familiar, it’s because it is. It’s been relentlessly used in the last two presidential elections and it’s known in political circles as the “negative master narrative.” What it means is that Republicans test out different negative narrative threads about Democratic candidates in an attempt to caricature some minor trait – real or imagined – that they have determined American voters will reject. Reporters latch onto the caricature because they like themes. Before you know what happened, the average American voter is claiming John Kerry seems “French” (read: not like me) or that Al Gore lies and exaggerates and claims he invented the Internet (which he never said).

This is just the first two paragraphs of the article. She goes on to deconstruct the process and provide a great education on the issue.

Along the same theme of discussing the importance of narratives, is this Peter Daou piece. Peter's article gets at the same issue, but provides more context for the media's role in the process. I also recommend Peter's piece as part of a great education on media and electoral politics.

What both of these articles have in common is their agreement that something is seriously wrong with how the news is reported and the role of the media in electoral politics.

The role of news outlets, both television and print media, has changed dramatically, beginning with the mass and rapid dissemination of information available worldwide. If the news isn't "new", what is their role?

Their new role is the narrative. No longer is the reporting of events their central role. Their role is now to provide the narrative, the emotional context and meaning for any event that occurs. Which might be fine, if the narrative had anything to do with the truth. Unfortunately, the narrative has a much closer relationship to truthiness, than truth.

What is the effect on modern electoral politics?

Simple. He who wins the positive narrative game for their candidate, has the edge. And if you win the positive narrative for your candidate, while winning the negative narrative against your opponent, you can get anyone elected to office.

Just one problem-getting elected by means of the truthiness narrative, doesn't mean that the guy getting elected knows anything whatsoever about governing, and woe betide the electorate who bought the narrative.

More and more, it looks like the biggest role of the modern media is that of seriously damaging democracy.

[Editor: This piece was submitted by DCP blogger Veritas after length discussion in our "think tank" (IRC) with DCPer madame defarge.]

Tired of dodgy elections?
Worried your votes aren't counting?
Itching to make vote reform a reality?

Then I challenge you, challenge all of us here at the DCP: Find a way to join, even run, your local Board of Elections.

From the "inside", you have the opportunity - in fact, the responsibility - to ensure that every vote counts. You will have first-hand knowledge of voting machines and absentee ballots and ballot validity. What's more, you will be able to expose any irregularities and advocate for truth-in-voting from a position of power and respect.

Check out the responsibilities of one Election Supervisor, whose duties include speaking to "schools and civic groups about elections, voter registration, and voting", among other, more predictable, job components.

Think it's too tough? One job description listed the following requirements for applicants:

-Bachelor's degree or equivalent general, broad professional/technical knowledge.
-Three years of experience in administration, management, or teaching
-The ability to read and interpret election law
-Able to interpret voting machine tabulations and Census data
-Management responsibilities over Election Assistants

I haven't met all of you personally, but I know from your comments here on the blog and in the IRC that most DCP'ers have experience and knowledge far beyond these minimal qualifications.

Some supervisory Elections positions are elected, but many are simply government jobs that you can apply for through normal processes. And even elected officials have a staff consisting entirely of regular government hires. (If you don't have time to be a full-time Supervisor, or Registrar, or Clerk, you can always be an hourly-wage, temp-hire Election Assistant.) Not that you'll suffer in these positions: in addition to the typical government-job reliable pay, job security, and benefit packages, supervisory Elections positions can pay upwards of $100K yearly. Getting paid for ensuring legal voting: priceless.

So I challenge all of us to research the makeup of our local Elections Boards. Find out who runs what. And then find a position where you can make a difference from the inside. Officially. Daily. Because you never know what will be your Katrina, your Gore v. Bush, your Iraq war, your strip search. You never know when it might be too late to make a difference. You never know when even your most desperate fight for everything you believe will be in vain.

Keep us updated on your progress.

I am sure the self-appointed funeral police will be all over the poetic remarks by the Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowrey, just as they were about the scandalous mention of politics at Senator Paul Wellstone's funeral.

Coretta Scott King and Paul Wellstone spent their lives in the pursuit of racial equality, economic justice and giving political voice to the rights of those who had none. I cannot imagine a funeral without their work and beliefs being at the center of the proceedings. For what purpose would her friends and family come to grieve and to celebrate, if the truth of the person being honored, remembered, raised up in tribute and memorialized, is obscured?

Go watch.

Last week, civil rights icon Coretta Scott King quietly slipped from the bonds of this life. Today is her funeral which will be attended by current and past Presidents of the United States in acknowledgement of her role along that of her husband, civil rights leader Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King.

She was mother, wife, partner, civil rights and women's rights movement leader and a widely admired public icon in her own right.

Mrs. King had many rich and wonderful qualities, and I don't know how she fit them all in that small frame and deceptively delicate body. A true steel magnolia, long before the phrase was first spoke, and the play ever written.

UPDATE: Well, there you have it. The Attorney General just told Senator Biden that we will be at war forever, as long as there is one person alive that could possibly be considered a threat to the United States or its interests. Any questions?

Glenn Greenwald will be doing much of the legal-blogging coverage, as he's both a lawyer and an expert on these issues.

And if you are up, Glenn will be on C-SPAN's Washington Journal tomorrow morning from 7:45-8:30 a.m EST debating the NSA scandal with University of Virginia Professor Robert Turner.

Glenn sez:

This clip of George Bush should be talked about all week -- why, if the Administration had all the legal authority in the world to eavesdrop without warrants and outside of FISA did it repeatedly make false statements to the public and to the Congress assuring us all that it was eavesdropping only in accordance with FISA? Parties make false statements in order to conceal their behavior only when their behavior is improper and wrong, not when it is justified and legal. And deliberately false statements of that sort from our government officials happen to be unacceptable and wrong, and really constitute a scandal unto itself.

Or at least they should constitute a scandal in and of themselves.

Glenn also has the inside scoop on Ted Kennedy's line of questioning and you can read about that here.

While Senator Kennedy's line of approach may be unexpected, it shouldn't be. There are only two real ways to win this fight, and one of them is already been somewhat lost. The first way, would have been to control the conversation. The White House wanted the coversation to be about National Security, while the rest of the folks who have read the Constitution, want it to be about The Constitution. That point has been lost, I fear.

So Senator Kennedy has done what I think is a wise move, which it appears would be to pivot, to cede nothing to the administration or Gonzales on National Security, but rather make them prove that this program actually worked, and worked so damn well, that it was worth breaking the law, et cetera.

Of course, having seen this committee at work during the Alito hearings, I kicked my expectations to the curb last week for any democratic coordination or effectiveness during this set of hearings.

I'm with Dr. Greenwald on this one - we'll all wait and see.

Consider this an open thread on the NSA hearings.

I am getting to feel like an old-timer as the greats pass. This is my 3rd eulogy - Hunter S. Thompson, Eugene McCarthy, now Betty Friedan. My reaction is the same as for many, which is to reflect on my exposure to the person, and the connection with the rest of my life context. I imagine many women, and also some men, are doing the same today.

By 18, I had seen my mother support three children when my father was hospitalized with PTSD. I had seen posters on the walls of the Post Office which showed separate minimum wages for men and women. I had worked the summer at Shell Oil, where there was a rule that women who became pregnant had to stop working. I started college but dropped out and got married. Against the odds, I returned and soon after, was handed a copy of the first issue of "MS" magazine. I read "The Feminine Mystique," by Betty Friedan. Then came Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem and a consciousness raising group. I dared think I could combine home and career, and I ended up doing it, but with some sacrifices. There are still obstacles for women and we are still fighting for our rights.

Betty Friedan, a pioneer for women’s rights, died at age 85. She wrote after World War II and changed the lives of women everywhere, not just in her home country but all over the world. Her assertion that women needed more than a husband and children was a radical break from the thinking of those times. She encouraged women to develop their own life. She wrote, “A woman has got to be able to say, and not feel guilty, ‘Who am I, and what do I want out of life?' She mustn't feel selfish and neurotic if she wants goals of her own, outside of husband and children.''

(Blogger Marjorie G. is visiting DC and running around with me, and by herself, helping out for a few days. Here are some of her thoughts):

With a few days open in the calendar to help save the world and take stock in the nation’s Capitol, I feel encouraged and radicalized. I was also reminded, though, that an embrace and defense of our Constitution are not extreme positions, and never have they been more important.

Here to help with grunt work for the World Can’t Wait event on Saturday for Bush to Step Down, I also got a better look at how Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) made good on their post-inauguration promise. I saw a press conference of preliminary findings on the Bush administration’s Crimes Against Humanity inquiry, and even got to witness John Kerry receive a Backbone Citation from the Backbone Campaign for taking a lead in the filibuster fight.

What good is Arlen Specter's hearing next week, if he doesn't swear in witnesses and allow subpoena power?

Since there is no place saying that the swearing in of witnesses is required, this could be important. After all, it wasn't too long ago that energy companies were invited to testify but the majority party refused to force them to testify under oath. Furthermore, some may remember last year when called before Congress to testify Attorney General Gonzalez allegedly perjured himself when asked about warrantless wiretaps during his confirmation process.

Senator Feingold wrote to Alberto Gonzalez and demanded to know:

"...why Gonzalez dismissed the senator's question about warrantless eavesdropping as a "hypothetical situation" during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in January 2005. At the hearing, Feingold asked Gonzales where the president's authority ends and whether Gonzales believed the president could, for example, act in contravention of existing criminal laws and spy on U.S. citizens without a warrant."

"Gonzales said that it was impossible to answer such a hypothetical question but that it was "not the policy or the agenda of this president" to authorize actions that conflict with existing law. He added that he would hope to alert Congress if the president ever chose to authorize warrantless surveillance, according to a transcript of the hearing."

If you find this troubling as I do, may I suggest that now would be a great time to call the good Senator Specter.

Another in our series, "Letters To President Bush".

This time, Congressman Jack Murtha writes the LTPB. This first part is from his statement about the letter. The letter itself is reprinted in its entirely below the fold.

The President continues to use labels and rhetoric to define his national defense policy, but it simply isn't working. In his State of the Union Address, the President defended his position to both the American public and the world by saying "we will continue to lead" but this does little to repair the damage done by the President's failed policies.

I am sharing with you this letter that I sent to the President this morning articulating exactly this:

I woke up today thinking about the State of the Union/State of Emergency event last night, Cindy Sheehan, and all of us who stand with her, wherever and whenever. I was sad; sad for our country, for her, and for all of us.

Dick said to me: "But, people were so happy last night". I said, "Why were they so happy?"

So we talked about screaming. Everytime we pick up the paper or listen to the news, and hear another horror story, whether it's the war or New Orleans, or Medicare Part D, you want to scream. But we can't go around screaming all the time, we understand.

Here is what he said to me:

What was powerful last night was that people had a total body experience of coming together to express a collective scream. The experience was through-the-black-hole of the market-driven, capitalist, globalized atomization of community to a fully realized reality of people acting together.

We are living in a world where the structure of our society is designed to reduce each and every one of us to nothing more than a quivering blob, sitting dimly in front of our tvs and computers, or wandering the streets with our little buds in our ears, clutching our credit cards in our hands, and ordering stuff from China, from India, from wherever.

The fierceness of the joy that seized people's hearts at this demonstration came from seeing and hearing what was possible when people stepped out of the consumerist nightmare and showed each other how much they cared about what George Bush is doing to the lives of every single person on this planet.

The tools we used were simple; they are the tools that human beings have used for hundreds of thousands of years: rhythm, music, movement, dance, and the ineffable drive of poetry. Coming home, in casual talk, someone said to Dick what we really needed for the event to have been complete was a fire. Exactly.

From a distance, as he walked toward the event it did appear that our tribe had gathered at a fire in front of the Capitol. A burning spot of light lit up the darkness against the cold and choppy waters of the reflecting pool. Across the freezing wind, he could hear the drums and the pots and the pans, sounds rarely heard in such an august setting.

In the darkness which George Bush has led our country into, it is all too easy for people to yield to the siren song of despair and hopelessness. It does not help when someone says to you that you should not despair, that you should remain hopeful. What was powerful last night was not someone telling us to be hopeful; every person there could FEEL what it felt like to BE hopeful, to come together, to sing the praises of hope against the darkness, standing there bravely in front of the belly of the beast, mere dozens of yards away from the unspeakable foulness of the theatre taking place in the House of Representatives.

Without hope, we have nothing. With hope, we can change the world.

cross-posted at dailykos