perfidy

Although it's probably in bad taste to do so, I get a great deal of pleasure from those sweet times when sanctimonious moralizers are brought low. Bill Bennett, Rush Limbaugh, John Ashcroft, and so on, profess to be good Christians. I'm a Godless Heathen (or at best a Unitarian), and even I remember that thing about the mote in your eye and the splinter in your neighbor's. Or whatever.

John Ashcroft, come on down!

Exhibit A) The legality of medical marijuana use has been upheld in California. That's right, the G-d D-mn Liberals on the Ninth Circuit Court used the pro-Federalism Commerce Clause implications of two recent conservatively-decided SCOTUS cases to decide the Federal Government may not interfere with medical marijuana programs in California. W00t! Seems Federalism is a good idea that the G-d D-mn Liberals can use too.

Thanks to Randy Barnett of the Volokh Conspiracy for the pointer, and kudos to him for being one of the lawers to argue the case in favor of pot before the 9th as well. If I ever see him around Boston, the beers are on me.

Exhibit B) Ashcroft has been rebuked for violating a court-imposed gag order regarding a terrorism trial.

A federal judge in Detroit rebuked Attorney General John Ashcroft yesterday for violating a gag order in the nation's first terrorism trial after the Sept. 11 attacks.

U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen said Ashcroft "exhibited a distressing lack of care" by issuing public statements during the nine-week trial that ended in June, despite a court order prohibiting them. Twice, Ashcroft publicly praised the government's lead witness in the case.

According to Ashcroft, his remarks were "inadvertant." Luckily for him, "inadvertancy" has been long established as a valid defense in American courts. Just try it next time you are caught speeding. "Geez maaan, I didn't mean to!"

Exhibit C) The FEC has slapped Ashcroft for illegally using $110,000 in his unsuccessful Senate campaign in 2000. The funds had originally been donated to a committee he had formed to explore running for President and as such could not be transferred. He should know that. He became the Attorney General not long afterwards.

The Federal Election Commission has determined that Attorney General John D. Ashcroft's unsuccessful 2000 Senate reelection campaign violated election laws by accepting $110,000 in illegal contributions from a committee Ashcroft had established to explore running for president. Additionally, Ashcroft was fined for lending an extensive donor list to one of his committees that had been paid for by the other [Hey! That's illegal!].

In documents released yesterday by the FEC, Garrett M. Lott, treasurer for the two Ashcroft committees, the Spirit of America PAC and Ashcroft 2000, agreed to pay a $37,000 fine for at least four violations of federal campaign law. Lott agreed "not to contest" the charges.

It's probably clear I'm no great friend of Ashcroft's. And while I don't necessarily agree that he's an evil idiot hellbent on destroying the country, I do think he's a sanctimonious putz who's only slightly more qualified to be an Attorney General than an above-average dog would be. Therefore, neener, neener, neener!

[wik] n.b. Extensively edited and cleaned up to follow a better version that appeared on blogcritics.

Via Spoons:

>Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment II
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Amendment III
No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

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

Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Amendment VII
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Amendment VIII
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people Courts.

Gregg Easterbrook sounds off on the lack of positive press coverage of Bush's "environmental initiatives".

I started wandering around the CBO site and the EPA site, trying to get a feel for how the budgets have changed over the past decade or so. It's pretty hard to do -- the budget offices have conveniently changed their categories and document formats, seemingly every year...which makes it really hard to break out a category, such as air quality, and understand it.

EPA gives the 2004 legal services budget as $46 million or so. That sure doesn't seem like much; $46 million to chase after every non-compliant polluter in the country? My understanding is that the EPA is absolutely snowed under -- major polluters are out there that they simply do not have the budget to go after. In some of these cases, there are crimes being committed. The budget just isn't there to pursue it.

My overall impression is that Bush has gutted the enforcement end of the EPA budget. We all know that nothing pisses off a Republican more than some pinko commie environmentalist wanting to save a stupid squirrel or spotted crap-warbler or whatever it is that's currently in front of the bulldozer. Scattered searches have shown me that there's been around a 20% reduction in enforcement manpower over the past two years.

One way to avoid having pollution laws is to stop enforcing them. This is the Bush method.

Easterbrook says "The rub is that existing Clean Air Act power-plant regulations and "state implementation plans," which govern overall airshed quality, have led to runaway litigation, with the typical Clean Air Act rule taking ten years of legal proceedings to finalize, according to a study by Steve Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute. Bush's Clear Skies bill would scrap the litigation-based system and substitute the "cap and trade" approach that has been spectacularly successful at reducing acid rain. "

Makes me wonder if a "cap and trade" system would work for crime. You know, criminals in low-crime communities could buy the right to beat people up or kill people from criminals in high-crime communities. Everybody wins! Crime goes down.

Or, maybe we realize that pollution is a bad thing, and whatever we can do to reduce it is probably a good idea.

Let's remember that Bush is gutting the current legislation, which would have achieved the pollution targets far more aggressively (particularly with regard to mercury -- remember that Bush's EPA suppressed a study on mercury for nine months because they didn't like the scary sounding results), in favor of a much slower approach. The justification is that the current system is "litigation intense". It doesn't make sense to complain on one hand that a system can't litigate fast enough, and then to cut that legal department on the other hand. Bush is essentially creating a problem (or, to be fair, making it worse) by cutting the budget, then pointing at that problem as the reason for scrapping the program.

All I see here is that we could have chosen to enforce the current laws, and air pollution would have been dramatically cleaned up inside of five years. Instead, we're on a 15 year merry-go-round, subject to the whatever the current whims of the energy industry are, as channelled by Bush and Corporation.

Continuing Johno's environmental theme, you really need to read Robert Kennedy's piece detailing what Bush has done. It's pretty scary.

The question I always ask myself when reading these kinds of doom-and-gloom essays is, what motives do the "bad guys" have? In this case it's fairly clear that the motives are financial. Environmental protection is viewed as unnecessary, and stands in the way of profit.

The method of attack is something I've noted before. "We need to study it" is always the last position.

Gregg Easterbrook is having one of his rare moments of supreme lucidity not related to football. At the New Republic's Easterblogg, Easterbrook writes

The latest example of the media standing on its head regarding George W. Bush's environmental policies is the treatment accorded the White House announcement, last week, that Bush would impose a substantial reduction in emissions from Midwestern power plants. Did you even know this happened? Of course not, because news organizations either buried the story or twisted it to make it sound negative.

Here's the picture. Front-page treatment after front-page treatment has been accorded Bush's decision to relax the "new-source review" standard that mainly governs repairs at Midwestern power plants. Bush's NSR decision has been depicted--by beat reporters, Democratic presidential candidates, The New York Times editorial page and Eliot Spitzer, among others--as an astonishing, super-ultra horror, though total emissions from Midwest power plants have declined by 40 percent in the last two decades, and though the worst-case reading of the Bush NSR standard is that it will slow the rate of future declines.

Next, Bush has been widely ridiculed for proposing a "Clear Skies" bill that would require power plants to cut emissions, except greenhouse gas, by about 70 percent. Democrats in the Senate, plus quasi-Democrat James Jeffords, have fought Clear Skies with blazing fury, while editorial cartoonists have scoffed. Why are Democrats opposed to a 70 percent reduction in pollution? Because passage of the bill would give Bush an environmental victory before the 2004 election; Bush-bashing, not air quality, is the essence of the issue. Besides, Democrats know that all forms of air pollution except greenhouse gas are already declining anyway, so the harm done by power plants just isn't that great--though for posturing purposes, Democrats and enviros pretend it is a super-ultra-mega calamity.

Interesting. Anyway, go read the whole thing. Easterbrook is justifiably teed off at media sources who won't cut the President a break, even when he's doing the right thing. I need to look into this further before I decide just what pot is calling what kettle what color here, but between the non-coverage of the antiterrorism riots in Iraq earlier this week, this thing, and the endless and sickening promos for "The Simple Life" at all hours, I'm tempted to give up on TV and get all my news by divining tea leaves and chicken innards.

Jesse at Pandagon, which site I just don't link to enough, has posted his list of the twenty most annoying conservatives of 2003. It's a good list. The President's not on it. 'course, he's not a conservative either. Enjoy!

[wik] In the interest of real, actual fairness and balance, I will note that Right Wing News have responded with a list of the Twenty Most Annoying Liberals. In keeping with John Hawkins' demeanor, it's not as funny as Jesse's list, but it's pretty spot-on about the annoying part.

Dear AL,

Must be great to be you, what with the keeper-of-the-truth T-Shirt you got from God, or wherever. I lost mine a while back. Or, I think I used to own one. I'm not sure.

Let's assume that we're both reasonably intelligent people, capable of figurin' on our own.

We reach our opinions through a combination of experience, trusted facts/sources, logic, and emotional inclination. Is there a category I missed? Some kind of green misty field that warps truth?

What dismays me about most right-wing debate is the lack of specificity. You use loose words to describe nebulous concepts; you use sweeping generalizations to juxtapose an opinion you don't like with an evil that is unquestioned.

I asked if I'm "Idiotarian" or not. Nobody seems to be answering. Are you just being nice? Or, given a moment to think about it, does the term just seem a little unclear?

Where are the tripwires? What are your issue tests to qualify/disqualify?

Generalizing can be fun. I can start by picking a few groups, like terrorists, anti-abortion militants, Bush's economic advisors, and street drug dealers. A bad lot, all around.

I think I'll call them "Purples", and then I'll wax all axiomatic about how there's a big Purple love-fest going on, with plenty of winking and solidary and people-eating for all. See how it's all part of the same conspiracy?

Which is all ridiculous, of course. And so is...the I-Word. If you can't define it.

Diversity is a beautiful thing.

And to all, a good night...

In this post Aziz Poonawalla said very neatly what I said very clumsily here. Excerpts:

I've been thinking about the GWB visit to Iraq, and found to my surprise that it was difficult to achieve clarity of opinion at first. But I've had some time to think on it and I think that the main thing that should be said about the surprise Thanksgiving visit is: well done.

There's a single reason why it deserves praise. Because for the troops in Iraq, it was an uplifting moment. Regardless of the soldiers' political or religious beliefs, hardships incurred from the long deployment, or problems awaiting them when they return, they are professionals and Bush's visit gave them their due. . . .

[P]hoto ops are nice, but good policy and leadership are better. . . .

The President did a good thing for the troops. Extrapolating it to promote his personal virtue, or his vice, is nonsensical.

Last night I had an opportunity to attend the live broadcast of MSNBC's "Crossfire" at the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government, featuring the smooth vocal stylings of Howard Dean.

I'm pretty wiped out right now and about to commit felonies on co-workers, so how about I merely advertise in this space that I'll write something substantial about this later today, mmmkay?

In the meantime, check out this quickie discussion by brdgt that hits most of the major points.

[wik] ....well, it's later.

Howard Dean came to the Crimson Permanent Assurance yesterday as part of the Chris Matthews "I'm a JOURNALIST, dammit!" Travellin' Jolly Roadshow." I managed to snag a hoi polloi ticket through certain connections (my ibogaine dealer is a Juris Doctor candidate at Harvard Law), and showed up at the appointed hour.

My first thought is that they hold these events in a wildly inappropriate setting. The room they use is an atrium at the Kennedy School that consists of a fairly small main floor and two upper levels looking down. Great for studying, but terrible for affording 500 people sightlines to the action. I know why they chose that room: security is easy to control, the building opens to the street and not to the inner campus, and because a super-damn-packed room looks grrrreat on camera.

My first thought: Chris' Matthews' producer must be hell to work for. Maaaan.

My second thought: Chris Matthews has orange skin. And it's not makeup!

I was seated two levels up from the action, with a clear view of the back of Matthews' and Gov. Dean's heads as well as the VIPS in the front rows. Since I could not see Dean's face, it was hard to tell whether he merely sounded less enraged, or whether he had actually quit doing that terrible smile-grimace that makes him look like Bruce Banner simultaneously trying to Hulk out and pass a peach pit. Brdgt, watching from home, corroborates my conclusion that Dean was more at ease than in past TV appearances. Goody for him. One thing is for sure-- in person he has definite charisma and a prickly charm that doesn't always translate on camera.

My sense is that Dean did himself a pretty good service by appearing on Crossfire. Matthews stuck to some issues that Dean can score pretty easily off of: gay marriage/civil unions; runaway spending, and stayed away from the stuff that could be really bad for him: how he's going to pay for his national health plan; his recent protectionist trade posture. That being said, it's a little scary how Dean doesn't have a dissembling bone in his body. Last night, when pressured, he said: that he was hoping not to get drafted during 'nam; that he would support breaking up media conglomerates; and that he would pursue international solutions to terrorist crises.

I don't think that the Vietnam issue is going to play for Dean's opponents. He went to the draft board; they kicked him free. Whether not he spent the next few years skiing is immaterial-- was he supposed to keep a vigil for all the people that went 'in his place'?

The media breakup question is a tougher one, because it means toughening up antitrust and competitiveness laws that are simultaneously toothless and burdensome. In the actual exchange during the show, it was clear that Dean is not planning on crusading to break up Fox and GE, but (I paraphrase), "if a bill came across my desk to that effect, I would sign it. I'm just not going to push for it." Fair enough.

Dean had many kind words for Colin Powell last night, though he stopped short of promising him a cabinet position in the event he wins. Dean seems committed to pursuing something like the Powell doctrine of international relations, something that could work out well for him as President though it might make it hard to win the actual election. Where he is strongest is in taking the Bush administration to task for squandering the US's goodwill on quixotic tasks, while ignoring the practical, achievable things the government should be doing domestically and abroad to combat terrorism.

Dean's favorite film: A Beautiful Mind. A safe choice.

His favorite musician: Wyclef Jean. A wacky and ill-considered choice. Wyclef's albums are tending more and more to stinky-turd status with every passing year. If he wants to be hip like this, why not tout the genius of Sean Paul, Keb' 'Mo, Robert Randolph, or even Outkast? But, what the hell. Anything, anything to keep Fleetwood Mac away from the White House.

His favorite book: Dean dodged this question to present Chris Matthews with a dedicated copy of his new campaign book, Winning Back America. Funny. During the commercial break, I heard Dean say as an aside to Matthews that he had thought better of citing "Sometimes A Great Notion" instead. Matthews replied "yeah, Kesey, right? That woulda been bad. Drugs." Indeed. Dean then floated the idea that "All The King's Men" would have been a good thing to say. I can get behind this-- Ken Kesey and Robert Penn Warren are hallmarks of a well-rounded mind.

The audience questions were all pretty good with one or two exceptions: one snot-nose from Harvard asked why Dean was too "busy" to meet one-on-one with students. Brdgt's take on this, which I fully endorse: "I feel really sorry for a privileged Harvard student who doesn't get to talk one on one with every presidential candidate - really my heart goes out to you. Really."

One person asked about Dean's sealing certain records from his terms as governer, and the reply was classic: in essence, "everyone does it. If you wrote me a letter as a private citizen, and you had HIV, and you were asking for state HIV research funding, would you want that letter to be public when I leave office?" I'm sure there's more to it than Dean lets on, but the Republicans are going to have to work pretty hard to make this into more than a one-news-cycle story, especially when literally everybody does this.

Someone else asked about Dean's foreign policy experience, and Dean replied that he had as much experience as Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and Bush43 before they became President. QED.

Overall, I came away favorably impressed with Dean's forthrightness (even when it has to be dragged out of him), his clear-headedness, and his seeming willingness to table issues that he won't be qualified to discuss until after he becomes President.

Best quote of the evening: "We have to stop making every election in this country about abortion, god, guns, and gays."

Worst verbal tic: Dean kept saying "Soviet Union" for Russia, in a discussion of the nuclear threats posed by North Korea and Iran.

Dean/Clark: that's my prediction.

On Salon.com today I find this headline about Dubya's Thanksgiving visit to Baghdad: " 'Mission Accomplished' footage is no longer usable, so Karl Rove recalls his cast and crew to shoot a new Bush commercial in Baghdad."

I'm no booster of the President, but give him a little credit, please. First he isn't going to troop funerals, and he's a heartless jerk. Now he's visiting a war zone, and he's an opportunistic SOB. Isn't it possible that once in a while he just remembers to act Presidential? The "left" is going to have to stop demonizing the guy if they're going to make any headway.

Want to get educated on Proportional Representation, which just might be able to fix a lot of the problems we face as a society? Start here:

PR Library

Dean Esmay looks at the definition of liberal, and it's worth reading.

The Liberal I want to be: lib-er-al ( P ) Pronunciation Key (lbr-l, lbrl) adj.

1. Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry.
2. Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded.
3. Of, relating to, or characteristic of liberalism.
4. Liberal Of, designating, or characteristic of a political party founded on or associated with principles of social and political liberalism, especially in Great Britain, Canada, and the United States. 

1. Tending to give freely; generous: a liberal benefactor.
2. Generous in amount; ample: a liberal serving of potatoes.
3. Not strict or literal; loose or approximate: a liberal translation.
4. Of, relating to, or based on the traditional arts and sciences of a college or university curriculum: a liberal education. Somehow I must find a way to become a bigger serving of potatoes, so I can complete my mission.
    

My work as a historian (such as it is) has mainly concerned modes of belonging.

Put in plain english (riiiight), that means I'm interested in the ways that people use the materials available to them to order their worlds into communities that include and exclude them. Practically speaking, I am especially interested in the roots of American citizenship as articulated and spread in the early years of the 19th century and afterwards. The vexed questions of the status of women and freed slaves are especially interesting to me, and there's whole roomfuls of music-history geekery on this question that I won't even begin to elucidate here.

Why do I bring this up? Because, today, the day before Thanksgiving, Republican swine and infantile shitmongers (my non-partisan term of animadversion against Senators) introduced the "No Marriage For Inverts" Constitutional amendment proposal into Congress. [Buckethead: Exhibit A in why I will never again make the mistake of registering Republican.]

At the New Republic, Andrew Sullivan rips the amendment to pieces and demonstrates that it is finely calibrated to deny homosexuals, and only homosexuals, the benefits, rights, priveliges, and pleasures of union of any kind. In fact, he makes the case that it's an attempt to deny homosexuals access to rights enjoyed by every single other citizen of the United States. Would that make gays less than full citizens, you ask? You bet your ass it would!

An excerpt and my analysis is below the fold.

This final clause was inserted by evangelical activist, Charles Colson, according to several reports. It would be the first time that the word "sexual" is inserted into the Constitution of the United States. And what it is apparently designed to do is to reassure people that the second sentence of the amendment does not indeed do what it seems to do, i.e. ban all forms of civil union or domestic partnership. The religious right would, it appears, be willing to allow civil unions between brothers, or an aunt and uncle, or a son and mother, or two college roommates--as long as it was assumed that no sexual activity was implied in the relationship. By this deft move, the amendment would apparently allow gay couples to get civil unions--but only if they pretended that they were not gay couples. Call it the Bert and Ernie amendment.

What it amounts to, however, is a constitutional acceptance of any number of social arrangements short of marriage, as long as those relationships are asexual. . . . It seems, on the face of it, to contradict the second sentence. But it doesn't. It merely underlines the fact that no sexual activity between two people can be a basis for a civilly recognized relationship except heterosexual marriage. It would make civil unions for straight people void as well, if those straight couples had the temerity to be in love or want to have sex.

But it reveals something else about the real motives of those pushing this amendment. They claim to be defending marriage. But in fact the upshot of their Bert and Ernie provision would be effectively condoning all sorts of marriage-lite alternatives (under the pretense that they're not sexual) and expanding their reach and number to an extraordinary degree. If the fundamentalist right actually cared about marriage as such, they wouldn't want to open up any number of alternatives to marriage to heterosexuals. Multiplying "asexual" civil unions is exactly what marriage advocates have feared for years--an easy alternative to marriage that will, in fact, undermine the institution.

But the beauty--indeed the only rationale--of this contraption is that it alone ensures that gay couples get no recognition as gay couples. It's an attempt to push gay people back into civic nothingness, a place where they are invisible, where their emotional and sexual needs are deemed as worthy as the financial arrangements of two asexual roommates. It's a desire to recreate the fantasy that gay people do not exist--in the Constitution itself.

In this sense, it's a perfect product from the religious right. They do indeed want gay people to disappear. They cannot achieve this in reality in a free society. But they can in their own words. Theirs is an America where gay citizens are actually straight citizens in need of either jail or therapy, where gay citizens' loves are a form of sickness, and their relationships a threat. And they want to assert this image of an ideal 1950s-style society up by rewriting the Constitution to reflect it.

This amendment has therefore very little to do with marriage as such; and everything to do with homosexuality. If the social right wanted to shore up marriage, they could propose an amendment tightening divorce laws. They could unveil any number of proposals for ensuring that children have stable two-family homes, that marriage-lite versions of marriage are prevented or discouraged. But they haven't. The amendment is simply--and baldly--an attempt to ostracize a minority of Americans for good. It is an attempt to write them out of their own country. It is an attempt to say that the meaning of America is heterosexual and heterosexual only. It is one of the most divisive amendments ever proposed--an attempt to bring the culture war into the fabric of the very founding document, to create division where we need unity, exclusion where we need inclusion, rigidity where we need flexibility. And you only have to read it to see why.

I can think of two instances when groups were specifically written out of the Constitution. The first was by the inclusion of the three-fifths clause, which of designated slaves as non-citizen ciphers. This clause and the conditions it implied were of course eventually overturned by Amendments XIII-XV to the Constitution.

The second example is perhaps more interesting today, concerns the appearance of the word "male" in the XIV amendment. This usage marked the first time what we pointy-heads call gendered speech was included any portion of the Constitution. The word "male" was used to specify that women were exempt the liberalization of voting rights that the amendment was granting all citizens of 21 years of age and older. I repeat: this amendment marked the first time that women were expressly prohibited from voting at the Federal level.

Why did the word "male" appear in Fourteenth Amendment, and not in the original document? Because by the 1860s, challenges by early feminists had begun to crumble the bulwarks of tradition. On the heels of the Seneca Falls Convention of 1845 and follow-up meetings from Maine to Indiana, certain women's-rights crusaders argued that many women met the standards for voting eligibility (e.g. taxpayers, property-owners), and therefore should be granted the right to vote. I will point out that this group was a tiny minority of the women's rights movement at the time, and were widely considered to be moonbats.

Nevertheless, the moonbats made an impression. The clash between women and voting laws was a confrontation centuries in the making, ever since Blackstone enshrined the concept of "coverture" in English law, and established that women had no legal existence whatsoever. Of course, circumstance and frontier improvisation softened Blackstone's hard line in American jurisprudence, and by the late 17th century one can find plenty of cases of women running households, owning property, and otherwise participating in public life in ways that the law officially did not recognize. The pudding hit the fan when public life met voting rights. The first generation of American radical feminists realized that since those women who paid taxes, owned property, etc., met every legal requirement that a voter must meet, and demanded that women's right to vote be made explicit in state Constitutions. This first effort was not well supported and was easily beaten back.

But the damage was done. Women's rights advocates had made lawmakers realize that there was no good legal reason why women shouldn't get the vote, and so they had to go and make one up. Citing women's inferior intelligence, delicate constitutions, and manifest unfitness for the rough-and-tumble of public life, lawmakers hastened to clarify their State laws, and made sure to enshrine their cause in stone at the Constitutional level. The XIV Amendment, along with securing voting rights for former slaves, ensuring due process, nullifying slaveholder debts, etc. etc., was also a backdoor way to fully and completely bar women from full citizenship. That one single word, "male," led to more than a half-century of further work to get women recognized as full citizens of the United States.

Why do I bring this up? No reason. Just to show that twice before the Constitution has been used to exclude specific groups from the rights it grants, and each time it was later overturned.DuToitified conservatives aside, I can't imagine very many people today who think it was a mistake to give women the vote, and the same goes for the demise of slavery. I simply mean to point out that each time the Constitution has been used to exclude specific groups from the full exercise of American citizenship, it has ended up being proven wrong and the exclusion left behind on the losing side of history.

If you want still more, I wrote a paper on this subject a few years ago that I will forward upon request. As if.

Good lord. Last night I read Josh Marshall, and he was reporting that Orrin Hatch had (quite rightly) shelved a staffer or two. If you read this Washington Post article, it seems like it's no big deal. They just "leaked" the memos. CalPundit notes a few other vague mentions.

It turns out that the staffer in question actually hacked in or otherwise circumvented security in these systems and went hunting in the confidential information. He then released it to the press.

A "leak" implies that the leakee had a right to see the information, but did the wrong thing with it. This guy didn't have that right.

Funny, but isn't this a federal crime? There are quite a few hackers around the country who are in jail for exactly this sort of thing.

Plame gets outed, which is a crime. Nobody gives a shit; the story has no legs, and we have criminal in the administration, somewhere, "undetectable". Now a GOP staffer commits standard-issue computer crime, for political advantage...Hatch has done the right thing by benching him, but will the same standards of prosecution apply? Or is this a "special case", because he really didn't "mean" to commit a crime?

All I can say is that if you have a staffer who has committed a federal crime and you want to bury the news, releasing that fact the day before Thanksgiving is probably a great way to do it.

I dunno, doc... I've been having these messed up dreams lately... I have this one where the Terminator dude is governer of Cahl-ee-for-ni-uh... that's how he says it, just like that: "Cahl-ee-for-ni-uh"... and a few years ago I hit my head really hard doing a keg stand and thought Jesse The Body was running, uh... Missouri or Mississippi or something. And I know it's crazy, but I read the papers and it's there, and I watch TV and it's there, and I know it's not real but I can't help it. I'm delusional, doc. And the pills aren't helping.

It's happening more these days, too, doc. Just this weekend I ate a bunch of oysters and slammed a bottle of Moet et Chandon and when I woke up I was sicker than dog puke and positive I'd heard that the bassist dude from Nirvana was campaigning for proportional representation in Washington State.

I mean, what the hell... Nirvana? In politics? I can't even imagine how that would look...

Can you help me? Because the way I feel I can't help but think this is actually a really, really good idea.

Here's a bit of analysis of the proposed FMA.

"Conservatives" say that this is nothing more than an attempt to ensure that states don't have to recognize gay marriages performed in other states. In other words, they want to be able to continue to discriminate against whoever they feel is the target group of the week.

Next time somebody says it, ask if Vermont can stop recognizing straight marriages performed between sufficiently close-minded religious conservatives from, say, Alabama.

Yeah, I didn't think so.

If a marriage from Vermont isn't recognized in Alabama, I'd say that ex-Alabamans in Vermont might want to consider their legal position carefully.

It's a great example of what I call "telling other people what to do with their lives" hypocrisy.

Matthew Yglesias gives a tight summarization of some basic facts about medical care and costs.

Note the conclusions: Government health care is cheaper than private health care, and delivers better service. It's pretty easy to see why this is so.

The cash flow in the medical system goes something like this: Government pays doctors. Patients pay co-pays to doctors, and insurance premiums to insurance companies. Insurance companies pay (sometimes) doctors absurdly low amounts for services. Doctors pay massive amounts for malpractice to insurance companies. Insurance companies pay out roughly 25% of that in claims.

So, while bitching endlessly about the spiralling costs of medical care (which they pass on to patients, resulting in the world's most expensive health care system), insurance companies are quietly pocketing a big chunk of the money on the back end.

US health spending per capita is $4287. Canadian spending is $2433. Using lifespan as a measure of basic health system efficacy (which seems quite reasonable), the Canadian system delivers better results for around 56% of the money.

Our Minister of Supply-Side Economics, Buckethead, has maintained over and over that the US system is just better. By what measure? The tired saw of "access to health care" comes out over and over again. Yes, if you are a wealthy person, your access to health care is better here. And I've said over and over again that if the Canadian system spent anywhere near what the US system spends, there would be limousines to pick patients up and bring them to the hospitals.

The real question here is why the American system is so shitty, given the rather incredible levels of funding. It's time for a sober dollars-in, dollars-out analysis. Exactly how much of our health care dollars are being siphoned out of the system by lawyers and insurance companies? They are responsible for the situation. They bleat and whine about the benefits of "private medicine", while they hold guns to the heads of sick and dying people all over this country, denying every benefit they can in a pure expression of one of the sickest forms of profitability.

Let's summarize; the American health care system:

1. Delivers poor results, relative to other countries.
2. Is dramatically more expensive.
3. Is ANTI-BUSINESS. Why should a small business have to provide health insurance to its employees? That's just stupid.
4. Is full of insurance-company corruption. Ask any doctor.

If this goes on much longer it will be a serious impediment to the competitiveness of this country. If you want to make the American worker more productive in a global economy, you have to make health care more efficient. The current system is utterly broken.

Thought-provoking commentary from Matthew. Here's my take:

1. Catastrophic insurance universally. Paid for out of the general government fund.

2. To encourage preventative care, qualifying preventative visits would be pair for, on a sliding scale, based on income, on a fixed government price scale. So if you're real poor, you can get preventative care that will save the government money on the catastrophic stuff.

3. Likewise, a sliding scale for a drug plan.

4. Late-life health care costs are accrued against a senior's estate. The government can step in and take back a percentage of the health care cost. How's that for evil? ;)

5. Generic, across-the-board exemptions for all doctors from any form of medical malpractice suit. The appropriate mechanism for these complaints is the revocation of license, not the payment of damages. We can sweep the whole stupid problem away if we do this.

President Bush, on the Great Gay Marriage Flapdoodle:

"Marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman. Today's decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court violates this important principle. I will work with congressional leaders and others to do what is legally necessary to defend the sanctity of marriage."

Against... what? A state-level initiative?

And don't give me that "full faith and credit" hooey.

The Spoons Experience uncover a nasty bit of disinformation in Fox News' coverage of the Great Gay Flapdoodle of 2003. To wit, Fox is claiming that all states will now have to honor gay marriages performed in Massachusetts as of today. From everything I've read, that's not only wrong but mendaciously false.