Roy Moore is thinking about running for President. That makes Bush’s decision to hold tight on a marriage amendment all the more risky. There’s no guarantee that the radical right will vote for Bush if there’s a more attractive fringe candidate out there. (Via Oliver Willis.)
George Bush, of course, got an honorable discharge from the National Guard, which should erase any question of wrongdoing while he was in the Guard. Sorta like John Muhammad (original), who was court-martialed twice (once for hitting a non-com), and later got an honorable discharge (original). The Fox News story says the honorable discharge can’t be confirmed, but the AP story and the ABC News story linked above both claim to have a source for that portion of the tale. ...
Saith Rex Hammock, upon meeting the President (original): He is definitely not a wonk, but he knows clearly what he believes needs to happen for the country and its eocnomy to prosper. I don’t think the circular arguments regarding “what ifs” and “what abouts” interest him. Rexblog (original) is kind of neat, actually — he’s a small business owner in the magazine industry. I like the focused special interest blogs that never get any attention most of the time. And I like publishing. ...
The media that has convinced many people that John Kerry is a dull and boring campaigner is the exact same media that convinced a lot of people that Dean was a dangerous scary angry man. Kerry did not win Iowa by accident; he won Iowa by having a kick-ass machine on the ground and by campaigning his heart out and by attracting people on his own merits. It wasn’t media. The media wrote him off as dead. The media storyline challenger for Dean was Clark. ...
Huh, my predictions weren’t too bad. Kerry took 40% of the votes in Wisconsin; Edwards took 34%, and Dean took 18%. I underestimated the Edwards surge again. The undecided voters went for Edwards in a big way. This is no doubt energizing for the Edwards campaign; he’ll be in at least until March 10th. Super Tuesday will tell us a lot. He’s not going to take on Dean as his Vice President, and if he does he’ll lose — you don’t want a VP who’s going to draw controversy and in some ways outshine you. Dean will also have more influence if he converts his campaign into a 527 and becomes a political center for grassroots populism, so I’m not sure Dean would bite on that either. ...
Wisconsin is voting today. Kerry was polling (original) way high. Figure in the Edwards surge, and Kerry wins with Edwards coming in second by a decent margin (I’d say he beats Dean by around 5 percentage points). Edwards sticks in the race till Super Tuesday to see if he can beat Kerry head to head. It wouldn’t surprise me if Edwards wins Georgia, but that’s the only Southern state on March 2nd. If Edwards wins Georgia and still has money flowing, he may keep it going till March 9th to take advantage of a Southern slate of primaries. If Edwards surprises everyone, which is possible, he could catch fire. ...
Warning: the post ahead touches upon devil’s advocacy regarding recent gay rights events in San Francisco. Dan Gillmor wonders whether the Mayor of San Francisco should be ordering city clerks to disobey the law. Larry Lessig chimes in (original). His argument is that the executive branch has a duty to disobey unconstitutional laws. I find myself pensive. Ashcroft and Bush no doubt feel that it is unconstitutional to force them to provide counsel to Jose Padillo. ...
The Fog of War blew me away. Unexpected, revelatory, all that good stuff. Mostly just plain compelling. Errol Morris got Robert McNamara (original) to open up about a lot of his life, albeit not as much as one might like about Vietnam, and it’s really just a gripping picture of a man who was under immense pressure and who made mistakes. I can’t say it answered many questions. MacNamara comes about this close to saying he screwed up Vietnam, but he doesn’t really get deeply into the matter — which is interesting, considering that he flat out says he acted immorally in World War II. Vietnam is closer to him, for some reason. It framed some questions for me: was MacNamara a man with a finely developed ethical sense who acted against that sense out of loyalty to Johnson and Kennedy? Was he a man with a finely developed ethical sense who had an easy time ignoring that ethical sense in order to achieve the desired goals? ...
It’s still my opinion that The Passion of the Christ is going to bring the fanatics out of the woodwork. It looks as though it may also enable David Neiwert’s transmission process (original). Over on Ain’t It Cool News, Harry printed a defense of The Passion by Rabbi Daniel Lapin, who he describes as “a well known zealot type is known to do some pretty wild right wing things that I completely do not approve of.” ...
Most amusing quote so far in the Massachusetts legislature gay marriage debate: ”God destroyed a whole city over this issue. We’re trying to save our city, our state. They see the gays and lesbians out here voicing their opinions and they know it’s wrong and we want them to know that we stood up for what’s right.” Beware, Boston! What happened to Sodom and Gomorrah could happen to you!