perfidy

I don't hate Tom Daschle. Really. And never mind what I said before, that was just rhetoric and hyperventilating. I don't hate the guy. Especially seeing as he lost.

I do, however, harbor a profound and comprehensive disgust for the ex Senator of one of the flat states. And now, he is contemplating a run at the presidency. This prospect fills me with joy, knowing that soon I will be able to witness his final humiliation.

Senators don't win Presidential elections. The trend is for governors, though Senators have always had a tough row to hoe. JFK was an exception, and Tom Daschle is about as far from Jack Kennedy as you can possibly be and still be human. Over the last forty years, generally speaking Democrats don't win elections. And the ones they did win, they had help. Carter would never have made it but for Watergate, and Clinton wouldn't have made it but for the sawed-off, flappy-eared madman from Texas.

Not that he'd get that far. Unless the Democrats throw up an even less impressive band of statesmidgets than they have for the last few elections, there is no way that Daschle will stand out in the crowd. He is a colorless, droning white policy wonk from the midwest. His grating nasal tones combined with monotonous yet self-righteous delivery will alienate most of the nation. He'd be John Kerry without the charmless Boston accent and distinguished military career. And what electoral prize will his presence on the ticket (maybe) secure? Nebraska.

Tom says,

"I have received a lot of encouragement."

Good luck, Tom, because you'll need it.

Loyal Reader EDog sends along a story about an actual, real vampire who is running for governor of Minnesota.

Check out the testes on this guy:

"Politics is a cut-throat business," said Jonathan "The Impaler" Sharkey, who said he plans to announce his bid for governor Friday on the ticket of the Vampyres, Witches and Pagans Party.

. . . . .

"I'm a Satanist who doesn't hate Jesus," Sharkey told Reuters. "I just hate God the Father."

However, he claims to respect all religions and if elected, will post "everything from the Ten Commandments to the Wicca Reed" in government buildings.

Sharkey also pledged to execute convicted murders and child molesters personally by impaling them on a wooden pole outside the state capitol.

Sharkey told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that he's a vampire "just like you see in the movies and TV."

"I sink my fangs into the neck of my donor ... and drink their blood," he said, adding that his donor is his wife, Julie.

Well, we are a representative democracy, and Vampir folk as a voting block are under-represented, so... why not? At least he's upfront about his skimming off the top.

I wonder if he'll let Minnesotans pay their state income taxes in pints of A-negative?

You know who should totally run for President?

Oprah freaking Winfrey.

Think about it.

While engaged in a near futile, almost entirely unsucessful attempt to acquire a photograph of the mayor of my hometowan, I discovered this magical place:

The Internet's Most Comprehensive Source of U.S. Political Biography, or, The Web Site That Tells Where the Dead Politicians are Buried

Check it out. Look up your hometown. Enjoy.

Go read Joe Lieberman's oped in the Wall Street Journal. It's a good read. Pulling out of Iraq now - or even declaring a hard timetable for withdrawal - would be stupidity of the worst kind. Those who argue for it constantly proclaim that Iraq is a quagmire, a Vietnam. While simultaneously doing anything in their power to ensure that it does. Remarks like those from DNC Chair Howlin' Mad Dean the other day, saying that there's no way we can win - this on the eve of important elections in Iraq - are, if not treason, colossally defeatist and wrongheaded.

While I was for the libervasion of Iraq from time immemorial, not everyone agreed. That's fine. Even if, like Johno, you are a little iffy on the reasons we went into Iraq, and unsure whether it's all worth it; the only sane way to look at it is that we are there now, and must craft a policy that maximizes our chances of success. As Johno said, "You break it, you bought it." Immediate pullout is the farthest from that ideal as I can imagine. Especially considering that we are closer to success now than at any point since 2003. Withdrawing our troops, and allowing the collapse of the provisional government would sacrifice any credibility we have in international affairs. America's ability to accomplish anything significant, let alone worthwhile, would be gone for the forseeable future. Of course, if that is your goal, then a lot of this posturing makes sense.

Luckily, my email filters aren't over-strong. Otherwise, the subject line alone would have triggered them:

Kinky Talking Action Figure now only $29.95!

And, did I worry? Not at all - the potential double entendre didn't even occur to me, since the most enjoyable "local" political story involves our home-grown rebel, Kinky Friedman. From his website, presently devoted mostly to his political aspirations:

And Kinky realizes the needs of Texans:

As we prepare to battle the millions of bucks the parties are going to throw at us, we need a hero, and here he is. The Kinky Friedman Talking Action Figure stands nearly 13 inches tall, and uses Kinky’s recorded voice to deliver wisdom and wisecracks from a repertoire of 25 of Kinky’s famous sayings.

It's virtually guaranteed to be worth its purchase price, particularly with the wisdom and wisecracks. It's really quite fun to watch the Kinkster's campaign progress, and there was an organizing meeting scheduled here in Houston a couple weeks ago, down in the Heights, a cool "transitional" neighborhood west of downtown. I say "was" because it had to be rescheduled, presumably due to low turnout. Which is a shame - I'd have gone if I'd had the time to spare. Kinky's got a refreshing approach. Workable? Who knows, but when was the last time you saw a campaign slogan for governor of a major state that looks like this:

I'm planning to remain on his (opt-in) email distribution list, and will give him a serious look in the race for governor. The field for governor here in TX is filled with idiots, with Kinky the notable exception. At least there's no Taft on the ballot. And like the man says, how hard could it be?

A coupla days ago the lovely and talented Murdoc called out Dean for peculiar remarks he made on Meet the Press.

What had me keyed up was a minor bit of Dean's larger rant, something he said along the lines of "The Republicans are out to exclude black applicants from law school". I commented on that post, but there was a hang somewhere and it wouldn't take. I cut and kept that response with the thought of posting it here. I thought the idea was, in a word, asinine, that black applicants are excluded from law schools. In two words, absurdly asinine.

In three words, wiggedy wiggedy wack.

So I included some more links, expanded my thoughts, and about 700 words in I began to realize that I'm not the one to write the book about the inequities of law school admissions, that the law schools operate like a cartel, that the ABA is the ultimate source of price-fixing at those schools, and the like. There is an inverse relationship between how hard the establishment claims to wish to include everybody, to how excluded more people are in reality.

I just got so frustrated with it all, it occurred to me that words were not going to convey my feelings. My vocabulary is fair, but it's not going to be enough. And like I said, I'm not going to write a book about it.

Instead, I can only express myself musically. Straight from my guitar to your bones. Soul to soul. Neil Young's lead style seemed the best fit to really communicate my thoughts on this issue, and to convey my final message.

Here goes:

SKREEK.

...

Skronk skronk skronk skronk skronk skronk skronk skronk skronk skronk skronk skronk skronk skronk skronk skronk

BOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGG

...

WEEEEeeeeeeEEEEeeeep. Weep. Weep weepy weep weepity weep weep

skritch-scratch-skritch-scratch-skritch-screech-skritch-scratch-screechy-scratch-skritch-skritch

sritchitchyitchysritchscatchyscreeeeechy...............

boop. boop. boop boop boop boop boop boop booooiiiiiip boop bop bp b p p p p p p p p p p

BOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

....
Tic tacky tacky tic toc toc toc tacky blang blam bong bong bong weeeeoooop weee skrank NAHuhuhNahuhuhuh NAH uh uh NAAAAAH uh uh NAAAAAAAAAAHHH uh uh uh uh uh tic

NOW do you get it?!

... is that "all politics is local." It's true. With a few key exceptions (namely issues like abortion that transcend politics), the important political games play out at the local level. The national scene would not look the way it does, and most House of Representatives seats would not be safe, if local election district boundaries were not so tortuously drawn so as to pry neighbor from neighbor.

Politics is local, which makes heavy breathing about how the Virginia governers' race and the defeat of the Governator's ballot initiatives more than a little silly. Yesterday's elections weren't really about George Bush, except in a vague sense. They were about thing that matter to Virginians, Californians, Jersey Devils, Pennsylvanians, and Mainers. On more hot-button issues, like whether or not to let gays become more than just "butt-buddies" (thanks, South Park!), Maine and Texas voted their local preferences and came out on opposite sides of the issue. In Pennsylvania, a town purged their school board of crypto-creationists, while the state of Kansas opted to embrace the teaching of intelligent design in science classes (sadly, no word on whether the Exalted Spaghetti Monster is part of the curriculum.)

It's almost as if we live in a country made up of a large number of semiautonomous bodies that jealously guard their regional values and identities or something!

All yesterday proved is that Democrats can rule a Republican state well, that people care more about their sidewalks, neighborhoods, and children than they do national agendas, and that the New York Times continues to suck wind.

Over at FARK, folks are working on a series of Magic: the Gathering cards devoted to political and cultural issues.

Some are better than others of course, but a few really shine for me:

Personal fave below the fold:

Bush nominated Sam Alito for the Supreme Court. Conservatives will be happy, as Alito is one of the elect - his name is on the consensus list of acceptable candidates for the court. By nominating Scalito, Bush will bring the wandering sheep back into the fold. We'll have to see whether the Democrats flip their lid over this nomination. Offhand, I don't see how they can, as it seems pretty much everyone is in agreement that the man has the juice for the post. Any opposition will likely be purely ideological.

For my part, I'm cool with this one. From Jonathan Turley on MSNBC:

In addition, Alito has written a very controversial dissent in a case involving the ownership of machine guns, suggesting that a statute prohibiting such things might be unconstitutional.

James at Outside the Beltway links an interesting piece in the Washington Post about a judge right in my backyard. It seems that maverick judge Ian M. O'Flaherty has tossed out as unconstitutional DUI cases that presume the guilt of the alleged. Naturally, the prosecutor in Fairfax county has issues with this sort of interference:

"We've been really racking our brains, trying to come up with some solution to it," said Robert F. Horan Jr. (D), the county's longtime chief prosecutor. "It's a crazy situation. He is, for all practical and legal purposes, the Supreme Court of Virginia in these cases, even though, on the Supreme Court, it would take four of him" to issue a majority opinion invalidating a statute.

The usual cries of endangering public safety have also been leveled at the judge. But some are sympathetic, pointing out that even though the laws allow the accused to rebut the charges, that unfairly shifts the burden of proof to the accused. Other courts have ruled as O'Flaherty has, and University of Richmond criminal law professor Ronald J. Bacigal said, "I think he's exactly right. There are U.S. Supreme Court cases saying you can't relieve the government of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, which is what a presumption does."

"The Fifth Amendment," said O'Flaherty, 59, "is an absolute protection against requiring the defendant to say or do anything in the course of a trial. . . . The Fifth Amendment means the defendant can sit there, not say or do anything, and at the end of the case say, 'Can I go home now?' "

No other judge in Fairfax -- or elsewhere in Virginia, as far as can be determined -- has joined O'Flaherty. But the judge said some other jurists have told him they agree with him. "I had one judge tell me, 'I'd rule that way, but I don't have the guts to,' " O'Flaherty said. "I told him, 'You should be driving a truck.' "

James points out the similarity between these cases and your average traffic stop. However, since most of these are civil cases, not criminal cases, the same standards of proof do not apply. It has always been my view that speed limits and the like are unconstitutional, as they are really a presumption of my incompetence by the government. I've seen plenty of people driving unsafely but under the speed limit. They're free and clear. But a highly skilled nascar driver going five miles over yet in perfect control of his vehicle is breaking the law and creating a public danger.

Another thing that should be ruled unconstitutional is DUI checkpoints. Smacks of fascism, if you ask me.

I think we should nominate O'Flaherty for the Supreme Court.

Okay, so that's an overstatement. I never had any personal animus toward Miers, and I am sure that she is a bright lady who is kind to strangers and small woodland creatures. But I am provisionally glad that she is no longer in the race for a seat at the big kid's table. Provisionally, because I am deeply afeared that Bush, being the stubborn guy he is, will nominate Gonzales just as a personal dry-pop to the uppity conservatives who dissed his first choice. If Bush does the sensible and right thing, he will appoint someone from the long list of highly qualified and respected conservative jurists everyone thought he'd dip into the first time 'round.

What cracked me up was this quote:

Democrats accused him of bowing to the "radical right wing of the Republican Party."

Oh really? First off, it's truly ridiculous to refer to a wing of a conservative party as "radical." Second, the reason Bush picked this chick in the first place was that he thought she'd do exactly everything the Democrats are most afraid a Republican nominee would do on the court. Like overturn Roe v Wade or immantize the eschaton.

It looks like the White House is using Krauthammer's strategy for face saving, claiming that the Senate's desire for at least some documentation on Miers conflicted with executive privilege. Well and good, but we all know why she's ducking out the back door. Let us hope that the next pick will not be Gonzales or Larry Thompson, or we'll go through this mess all over again, and probably worse.

Ms. Miers nomination has certainly stirred up the hornet's nest amongst the "conservative" rank and file. What we can glean from scant information about her centrist notions on affirmative action, RvW, and other "conservative" causes cause consternation or optimism, in accordance with the beholder's eye. Of course, there's that complete lack of any public record that really leaves us all pretty much scratching our heads.

The religious right just can't understand why their payoff isn't the nomination of a prominent judge who loudly agrees with (and even repeats!) their slogans. Someone who doesn't "legislate from the bench", whatever the hell that means -- I have yet to meet a GOP voter who can successfully articulate an instance of this with any level of specificity. What I mostly get is, "you know -- when they write laws and stuff". Yeah, like when? Where?

Most people just don't get what the Supreme Court does, most of the time. The Supreme Court serves as a check on the power of government. The constitution is the only law of this land that tells the government what it may and may not do. When the Supreme Court (or any other court) is interpreting the constitution, the primary reason it is done is to ensure that your freedoms remain intact, despite the "best intentions" of those in power.

Do you seriously want to dissolve the ability of the Supreme Court to enforce constitutional limits on government? That is a notion of stunning foolishness. Should we wait for a four-year election cycle and use our votes as the sole means of checking government power? One look at the democracy-destroying nature of gerrymandering should convince us all of the inefficacy of that.

What good is a constitution if there is no-one to enforce it? What good is a right to vote if the rules of the game are manipulated by a party immune to constitutional review? The only right to a vote you have is that guaranteed to you by the constitution. Enforcement of the constitution is the cornerstone of democracy.

But back to our Ms. Miers. Why Miers? Does Bush just, uh, like her or something? Does he like her more than Laura? Maybe so. Maybe he really was the "best governor ever!". We should see if she ever lived in Arkansas.

But maybe there's something more to this. The crowd currently in control of the White House (I hold out the possibility that Bush is a member) knows that the GOP is based on an unstable amalgam of a number of groups: The Religious Right, the Anti-Democrats, the Business-Firsters, the Establishment Preservationists, the Fuck-You-I'm-A-Winners, and the Xenophobes. What do they all have in common? Each of these has a single issue that overwhelms all other concerns for them. They are all single-issue voters, so if you tell them what they want to hear on their single issue, they'll vote for you even if you're completely screwing them over in every other way.

I’m using common terminology for the Religious Right, but perhaps you are somewhat mystified by my other GOP-voting categories.

I’ll cheerfully and hopefully place my GOP-voting Perfidy colleagues in the “Anti-Democrat” category. Anti-Democrats vote for the GOP because there’s only one thing they know for sure – as bad as the GOP and all that crooked crowd are, the Democrats are worse. Can’t argue with that – it’s a purely subjective take on the political situation, and they’ve got a right to it.

Business-Firsters want deregulation and low business taxes. They’re a very small group, but they have the money and use it to influence the political process. They want deregulation so they can screw over the public at large while avoiding any responsibility for doing so. They want low business taxes so they can make as much money as possible doing it. Long term, they want something even better than deregulation. They want de-de-regulation. That’s when the government says it’s completely legal for them to do what they want, and it’s illegal for their competitors to do the same thing.

Establishment Preservationists, besides being an ass-kicking name for a band, refers to those wealthy families and groups who believe that change is all fine and good right up until it place them or any of their possessions into any form of risk, or opens them up to any kind of competition. For example, civil rights are fine unless there’s too many brown people showing up in the neighborhood. That “changes” the nature of the establishment, and is thus UnAmerican. The most important example is that of preservation of social class – any changes that would jeopardize the social class (derived from economic status) of those currently at the top is an egregious, UnAmerican change. Can’t have those.

Ah, Fuck-You-I’m-A-Winners: Just like kids playing basketball on the playground, they are all utterly convinced that someday they’re going to be playing in the NBA, or on top of the world. And they’re going to do it by following a system: If they have the right attitude, and connect with the right people, they’ll get what they deserve! Of course, when their spiraling credit card debt hits them between the eyes, they whine about their taxes being too high. When they don’t find themselves “on top”, it’s someone else’s fault. They’re dreamers, and schemers, and playing fair isn’t even slightly on their minds. It’s about getting ahead, and about the competition. The GOP has a special pitch for these folks: They tell them they’re the smart guys, that they get it, and that those stupid liberals just don’t understand the fundamental natural laws, the kill-or-be-killed of it all. They tell them they’re on the team, and that’s all the Fuck-Yous need to hear. They’re a part of the winning team. Virtually all Fuck-Yous circle the drain for a while then end up down, out, and confused, but by that time they’ve voted for the GOP often enough that they become automatic Anti-Democrats.

Xenophobes are the special sub-breed that can’t stand the damn foreigners – they’re like Establishment Preservationists who don’t have money as an excuse. In spite of the fact that declining birthrates mean that structures like Social Security are going to be in trouble they figure that permanently shutting the doors to immigration is the solution to their problems. And screw tourism – we don’t need’em. When pressed they are unable to connect immigration to whatever is troubling them in their personal lives, but dammit, you have to hate somebody, and immigrants are the easiest of all targets.

And the Religious Right? They’re single issue people – abortion. They know that doesn’t play all that well so they’ve jumped on the “legislating from the bench” bullshit so they have at least one secular issue they can talk about. But since they don’t know what it means and can’t cite any examples of it, they’re back to what they really care about, which is abortion.

You may notice the unsurprising lack of the “fiscal conservative”. Fiscal conservatives are currently in hibernation. They find themselves largely in the Anti-Democrat category. If in the future the GOP once again establishes any minute form of credibility when it comes to financial issues, they will re-emerge. In the mean time, they are sliding further and further towards the Democrats. They might even vote for one, someday, or even in the next election. Damn, never thought that would happen.

No, really, I’m getting back to Miers this time – I swear. If you’re the political genius in charge of the GOP, you know that you need to find a way to keep this whole darn crazy thing together. If you gave the religious conservatives what they wanted (abortion), you run the risk of having them look at any other issue. And then you’re dealing with the population at large – a significant portion aren’t going to like what they see in the GOP.

So the very best chance the GOP crowd has to stay in power is to do precisely what George Bush always advocates – Stay The Course. Don’t solve the problems, or give anything to any part of the base that will truly satisfy that base. The cultural war must be continued, for that distraction provides the leverage necessary to win elections, while engaging in policies that harm those who vote for you. If you can’t prove you’re right, then for God’s sake, obscure the fact that you’re wrong.

Harriet Miers keeps the cultural war alive. She’s one skirmish in a larger war.

...if such indictments even occur, that is.

I've been struck by the blood-in-the-water partisanship this saga has engendered, even as it's seemed clearer and clearer that no crime was committed under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. Yeah, I know, she either was or she wasn't covert, and we can argue about that all day long. Well, you can, because I don't really care. We can also argue about intent to disclose known classified information for the purposes of thwarting the agent's mission, but you'd have trouble finding justification for any assertions of "intent", "known classified" and "thwarting". That, and, well I really don't care about that part either.

The part I do care about is the assumption underlying all this nastiness.

Via an op-ed found in today's Houston Barnacle, which attempts to compare & contrast the role of the press in what the author appears to think are the two defining scandals of our time, the discerning reader can learn that:

The break-in at the Watergate was carried out by a team of burglars hired by a White House operative. The current probe points to a scenario in which the dirty work apparently was done, perhaps unwittingly, by reporters who were fed classified information from officials out to get even with Wilson.

The op-editorialist issues some weasel-like qualifiers and then states with authority what everyone knows, just knows!, about the story, namely that officials were "out to get even with Wilson".

I demur. They weren't trying to get even with him, because it's not like they got Valerie Wilson fired, demoted, or anything else. Absent Administration knowledge of some Joe Wilson peccadillo that relied on the illusion of regular congress with an undercover (or, not, but I still don't care) CIA operative, revenge isn't a credible assertion. Some would call it clarification, some rebuttal, and still others an attempt to discredit Wilson. Sadly, leaving him alone to continue thinking himself crucial and important would have been enough to do that, without any effort on anyone else's part. Wilson, undone by his own yammering cake-hole, would have faded from view many months ago.

There may be indictments, but my guess is that they'd be for obstruction of one sort or another, rather than for a violation of Title 50421 of the US Code. Which is a real shame, because while Joe Wilson is a fatuous fabulist, the world could have found that out with no outside help. And the underlying theme, that revenge somehow played a part in this drama, is hogwash.

Other views exist. But they, too, are focused on everything but the stupidity of the underlying assumption.

The correspondence between Harriet Miers and the President - all of which is sappy cards and birfday notes since that's the only stuff that doesn't land behind some penumbral state sekrit curtain - is both sad and disturbing. Best governer evar! So cool!

You know what? I hope she gets confirmed. I want her sorry ass on the court for the next twenty-odd years. Because either she'll turn out well and we all win (or, anyway, conservatives probably win), or she'll be a quarter-century embarassment, a wet public fart of a Presidential legacy alongside a massive prescription drug benefit, a mind-boggling deficit, the Department of Homeland Security, and the decline of global American soft power. Somebody shat in my Wheaties this morning, and I want that bland cipher to stand for everything that drives people like me up a wall - the cronyism, the exaltation of the average, the notion that religion is a major qualification for public service, fiscal profligacy, the infallibility of the executive, the nannyish social-engineering moral tightassery - all of it, and I want the wing of the Republican party that thinks all that is a dandy way to be an American pants down and crying in the street by 2008.

When the stinkfinger comes, they will all be touched.

Here's yet another view of the Miers nomination, from John Fund of the Opinion Journal. At first Fund was fairly positive about the Miers, but after talking to some people who knew her, he is less sanguine about the likelihood that she will be the staunch conservative that Bush and other Miers boosters claim she is.

The key point that Fund makes is that there are disturbing (for conservatives) parallels between Miers and O'Connor:

What is clear is that her association with George W. Bush has affected her worldview.

David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter, who describes Ms. Miers's role in the White House as largely that of a "bureaucrat who couldn't see the forest for the trees," nonetheless believes that Team Bush is right--but only for a while. He believes she will be remain a conservative justice at least until Mr. Bush leaves office in early 2009. "But then the Bushies will have gone home, and she will develop new friends, and then the inevitable tug to the left may prove irresistible."

A friend of both Mr. Bush and Ms. Miers disagrees. He notes that for eight years Justice O'Connor remained largely true to Ronald Reagan's judicial views, even though she had no personal ties to him. "I think Harriet has morphed her views into those of the president," he told me. "I think she will be pretty much the same justice she starts out being for 10 or 15 years. And she is now 60."

Indeed, in many ways, Ms. Miers resembles the early Sandra Day O'Connor, another elected official who backed some liberal positions during her time in the Arizona Legislature. As Justice O'Connor began drifting to the center she became the crucial swing vote on a host of cases. Legal scholars began referring to the "O'Connor Court." Now, with Ms. Miers slated to take the O'Connor seat it may become the "Miers Court."

"This is the most closely divided court in history," says Jay Sekulow , a conservative legal activist who backs Ms. Miers. "Everybody knows what is at stake here." With such high stakes, it should disappoint everyone that the Senate will now have to debate the confirmation of a nominee who, when it comes to Constitutional law, resembles a secret agent more than a scholar.

Despite the at times intense grumbling from the right, I don't think that Miers will be yanked. President Bush is renowned and reviled for his stubborness and loyalty. These factors will not predispose him to pulling support unless research reveals some hidden, fatal flaw in Miers. Short of some evil-doing in her past, she will go before the Senate. And Senate Republicans are unlikely in the extreme to vote against her.

This is something that has always fascinated me. Constitutional Amendments. There's the constitution over their, writ in stone. It’s the law we live by. Yet, by jumping through some (admittedly rather high up in the air) hoops, we can change that constitution, and rewrite the operating code for our nation. There have been 33 amendments passed by Congress and sent to the states. Twenty-seven of those have been adopted. (This process has actually happened only seventeen times, though. The first through tenth, twenty-seventh, and one of the pending amendments were all submitted at once. You could even argue that the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth were so close together that they were in effect one process, like the Bill of Rights.)

Here's what happened to the six that didn't make it in (yet).

There are four pending amendments, which, having been proposed by the required majorities in both houses of Congress were submitted to the states. Unlike more recent amendments, none of these included expiration dates so theoretically they could be adopted at any point provided enough state legislatures voted yea. They are:

• Article I of the twelve initially proposed amendments in 1789 (1st Congress), ten of which became the Bill of Rights in 1791, and one of which became Amendment XXVII more than 200 years later in 1992. The unratified Article I would have regulated the size of the United States House of Representatives and is still technically pending before, and subject to, ratification by the state legislatures. It became moot, however when the population of the United States exceeded ten million people, and an additional 26 states would need to approve it.
• The Titles of Nobility amendment proposed in 1810 (the second session of the 11th Congress) came extremely close to being ratified by the legislatures of the requisite number of states. Its provisions would have stripped the citizenship of any American citizen who accepted a title of nobility from a foreign nation. It remains pending before, and subject to, ratification by the state legislatures. Like Amendment I, it would require another 26 state approvals to take effect.
• The Corwin amendment, proposed in 1861, sought to prevent future amendments that would have permitted Congress to interfere with the practice of slavery:
  

  "No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State."

  Interestingly, this measure passed the Congress through, in part, the lobbying of President Elect Lincoln, and despite the fact that seven states had already seceded from the Union and were no longer represented in Congress at all. From the Wikipedia:

  Today, with 50 states in the Union, ratification by the legislatures of 38 states is required for a proposed amendment to find its way into the Constitution—and with specific regard to the Corwin Amendment, 36 more in addition to those two whose previous ratifications remain valid. Because the amendment uses the term "domestic institutions," and because that term is quite broad, a belated ratification of the Corwin Amendment in modern times might not pertain to slavery at all.

• A Child labor amendment proposed in 1924 would grant Congress exclusive authority to legislate on the subject of child labor and to force state law to yield to federal law. This is rather a moot point since the Feds already have that power thanks to a broad reading of the Commerce Clause. This proposed amendment led to the later use of deadlines amendment language when several states that had earlier balked at approving the amendment later reconsidered. The case Coleman v. Miller established that unless amendments have a deadline, they come into effect whenever ¾ of the states approve it. Even if, as in the case of the 27th amendment, that is more than two centuries after it was proposed.

Beyond the those still considered "active," only two others have been passed by the Congress and submitted to the states. These two had expiration dates that have passed without gaining the required number of state approvals. One was the arguably redundant Equal Rights Amendment, the other the DC voting rights amendment that would have granted DC representation in the US Congress as if it were a state. (Interestingly, it would also be counted as a state for purposes of Article V, amending the constitution, even though DC has no legislature.)

But beyond that, there is the vast field of amendments that have been suggested but never passed by Congress, or sometimes never even got out of committee. And, sometimes not even into committee. Over ten thousand have been introduced in Congress, and sometimes hundreds in a given session. Some are proposed repeatedly, year after year, like the Flag Burning Amendment. (Which sounds as though it's for flag burning when you say it that way.)

Some of the recent, or at least more interesting amendment proposals include:

• A Continuity of Government Amendment that would provide for replacing large numbers of Congressmen or other officials in the event of terrorist attack or natural disaster wiping out Congress. You know, like in Mars Attacks.
• In 2004, Zell Miller proposed repealing the 17th Amendment that provided for direct election of Senators.
• Someone's always proposing repealing the 22nd, for Presidential Term Limits.
• There's the Schwarzenegger Amendment, which would allow foreign born citizens to become President.
• Perennial favorites also include Marriage Amendments, Anti-Flag Desecration Amendments, and School Prayer Amendment.
• A Balanced Budget Amendment might be a good idea. Of course, they'd have to include a lot of text defining what a budget is.
• A Human Life amendment would give fetuses the protection of the fifth and fourteenth amendments.
• The Bricker Amendment would limit the powers of treaties with foreign powers to affect US law.
• Victim's rights amendments have also been proposed to limit the liberal-squishiness of the justice system.

But that's not all. Here's a buttload more amendment proposals from usconstitution.net:

• To specifically permit prayer at school meetings and ceremonies
• To allow non-natural born citizens to become President if they have been a citizen for 20 years
• To specifically allow Congress to regulate the amount of personal funds a candidate to public office can expend in a campaign
• To ensure that apportionment of Representatives be set by counting only citizens
• To make the filibuster in the Senate a part of the Constitution
• To provide for continuity of government in case of a catastrophic event
• To lower the age restriction on Representatives and Senators from 30 and 25 respectively to 21
• To ensure that citizens of U.S. territories and commonwealths can vote in presidential elections
• To guarantee the right to use the word "God" in the Pledge of Allegiance and the national motto
• To restrict marriage in all states to be between a man and a woman
• To remove any protection any court may find for child pornography
• To allow Congress to pass laws for emergency replenishment of its membership should more than a quarter of either house be killed
• To place Presidential nominees immediately into position, providing the Senate with 120 days to reject the nominee before the appointment is automatically permanent
• Calling for the repeal of the 8th Amendment and its replacement with wording prohibiting incarceration for minor traffic offenses
• To specify that progressive income taxes must be used
• To specify a right to "equal high quality" health care
• To limit pardons granted between October 1 and January 21 of any presidential election year
• To require a balanced budget without use of Social Security Trust Fund monies
• To allow for any person who has been a citizen of the United States for twenty years or more to be eligible for the Presidency
• To force the members of Congress and the President to forfeit their salary, on a per diem basis, for every day past the end of the fiscal year that a budget for that year remains unpassed
• To provide a new method for proposing amendments to the Constitution, where two-thirds of all state legislatures could start the process
• To allow Congress to enact campaign spending limits on federal elections
• To allow Congress to enact campaign spending limits on state elections
• To declare that life begins at conception and that the 5th and 14th amendments apply to unborn children
• To prohibit courts from instructing any state or lower government to levy or raise taxes
• To force a national referendum for any deficit spending
• To provide for the reconfirmation of federal judges every 12 years
• To prohibit the early release of convicted criminals
• To establish the right to a home
• To define the legal effect of international treaties
• To clarify that the Constitution neither prohibits nor requires school prayer
• To establish judicial terms of office
• To clarify the meaning of the 2nd Amendment
• To provide for the reconfirmation of federal judges every 6 years
• To force a two-thirds vote for any bill that raises taxes
• To repeal the 16th Amendment and specifically prohibit an income tax
• To provide for removal of any officer of the U.S. convicted of a felony
• To permit the States to set term limits for their Representatives and Senators
• To allow a Presidential pardon of an individual only after said individual has been tried and convicted of a crime
• To allow Congress to pass legislation to allow the Supreme Court to remove federal judges from office
• To provide for the reconfirmation of federal judges every 10 years
• To provide for the recall of Representatives and Senators
• To remove automatic citizenship of children born in the U.S. to non-resident parents
• To enable or repeal laws by popular vote
• To define a process to allow amendments to the Constitution be proposed by a popular ("grass-roots") effort
• To force a three-fifths vote for any bill that raises taxes
• To prohibit retroactive taxation
• To provide for run-off Presidential elections if no one candidate receives more than 50% of the vote
• To prohibit abortion
• To bar imposition on the States of unfunded federal mandates
• To disallow the desecration of the U.S. Flag
• To allow a line-item veto in appropriations bills
• To expand the term of Representatives to four years
• To provide for direct election of the President and Vice-President (eliminating the Electoral College)
• To force a balanced budget
• To prohibit involuntary bussing of students
• To make English the official language of the United States
• To set term limits on Representatives and Senators
• To repeal the 22nd Amendment (removing Presidential term limits)
• To guarantee a right to employment opportunity for all citizens
• To grant protections to unborn children
• To provide for "moments of silence" in public schools
• To allow Congress to regulate expenditures for and contributions to political campaigns
• To provide for the rights of crime victims
• To provide for access to medical care for all citizens
• To repeal the 2nd Amendment (right to bear arms)
• To prohibit the death penalty
• To protect the environment
• To repeal the 26th Amendment (granting the vote to 18-year olds) and granting the right to vote to 16-year olds
• To provide equal rights to men and women

I also remember suggestions for amendments to establish a ten year sunset for all US laws, and to establish a general line-item veto.

And I'm sure there's plenty more out there. More information, and more links than I was willing to include here can be found at the wikipedia and at the wikipedia. Also, at the wikipedia.

James Carville is as slimy and repulsive a character as we've had to endure lurking around the orifices of our body politic in a long time. He's slimier than Karl Rove, and has a stupendously grating manner of speaking. Nevertheless, he is an acknowledged expert on Democratic politics. Over the last few years, since his patron was unceremoniously removed from power by the 22nd amendment, Carville has been increasingly, well, forceful in his advice to his fellow democrats.

Witness:

The problem with Democrat campaign speeches is "litany," and they need more narrative like Winnie the Pooh stories, political consultant and pundit James Carville said. ...Democratic candidates can’t succeed by shouting out to every group in a crowd. Instead candidates should tell stories with the three elements of any good story — setup, conflict and resolution.

"No Kumbayah crap," Carville said.

... In addition to breaking away from a laundry list of special interests, Carville said, Democrats need to learn that a candidate who can’t campaign can't succeed. "If you’re not competent in campaigns, you don’t have a chance to be competent in government," he said. Using Al Gore as an example, Carville said being a smart candidate is not enough.

...Democrats need to bring their causes together and work for them actively, he said. For example, the political consultant suggested taking the specific issue of racial affirmative action and helping those of all races with income-based affirmative action. If Democrats try to single out every issue, they’re back to litany, Carville said. He also said Democrats just can't say "no" to causes from gay rights to abortion to the poor.

"Sometimes the problem with being a Democrat is being a Democrat," he said.

That's not bad advice, and I hope that someone is listening.

Two more conservative heavyweights have, uh, weighed in on the Miers nomination. On both sides.

Newt Gingrich tells us to trust the President. For liberals, this presents something of a conundrum. They already don't trust the President, so does that mean the nominee will be a Souter or an Anti-Souter? Fear or relief? For conservatives, the problem is less stark, but still a problem. The core of Gingrich's argument is this: Bush ran as a conservative, and has held true to that over the last five years. He assembled a team of conservatives. He said that he'd appoint conservative judges, and has consistently done so to the dismay of many liberals. Miers is the one who helped him do this, and he's known Miers for years. Trust George. As far as the conservative judges go, 'ol Newt has a point. But Bush has not been consistently conservative, though I'll buy mostly conservative. But the spectre of steel tariffs, the prescription drug entitlement and other misteps haunts.

So far, this is the strongest argument I have seen in favor of Miers, aside from Patton's point that the Constitution says that the President can pick whomever he damn well pleases.

Charles Krauthammer has a rather different take. In an essay entitled, "Withdraw this nominee," the Kraut says - and I quote at length:

There are 1,084,504 lawyers in the United States. What distinguishes Harriet Miers from any of them, other than her connection with the president? To have selected her, when conservative jurisprudence has J. Harvie Wilkinson, Michael Luttig, Michael McConnell and at least a dozen others on a bench deeper than that of the New York Yankees, is scandalous.

It will be argued that this criticism is elitist. But this is not about the Ivy League. The issue is not the venue of Miers's constitutional scholarship, experience and engagement. The issue is their nonexistence.

Moreover, the Supreme Court is an elite institution. It is not one of the "popular" branches of government. That is the reason Sen. Roman Hruska achieved such unsought immortality when he declared, in support of an undistinguished Nixon nominee to the court, that, yes, G. Harrold Carswell is a mediocrity but mediocre Americans deserve representation on the court as well.

To serve in Congress, or even as president, there is no requirement for scholarship and brilliance. For good reason. It is not needed. It can even be a hindrance, as we learned from our experience with Woodrow Wilson, the most intellectually accomplished president of the 20th century and also the worst.

But constitutional jurisprudence is different. It is, by definition, an exercise of intellect steeped in scholarship. Otherwise it is nothing but raw politics. And is it not the conservative complaint that liberals have abused the courts by having them exercise raw super-legislative power, the most egregious example of which is the court's most intellectually bankrupt ruling, Roe v. Wade?

The President has a right to choose the nominee. But I have a right to carp and whinge that it is not a good choice. And I don't think that this one is a winner, not when there are so many other clearly distinguished candidates.

Peggy Noonan on a larger issue hidden in the littler issue:

The headline lately is that conservatives are stiffing the president. They're in uproar over Ms. Miers, in rebellion over spending, critical over cronyism. But the real story continues to be that the president feels so free to stiff conservatives. The White House is not full of stupid people. They knew conservatives would be disappointed that the president chose his lawyer for the high court. They knew conservatives would eventually awaken over spending. They knew someone would tag them on putting friends in high places. They knew conservatives would not like the big-government impulses revealed in the response to Hurricane Katrina. The headline is not that this White House endlessly bows to the right but that it is not at all afraid of the right. Why? This strikes me as the most interesting question.

Peggy offers some possible answers, but I fear that it might be the last one, "Maybe he's totally blowing it with his base, and in so doing endangering the present meaning and future prospects of his party."