Politics

Note: the cloture vote for the current debate on Priscilla Owens’ judicial nomination is scheduled for Tuesday. Barring a compromise over the weekend, the cloture vote will fail and Senator Frist will begin declaring the Senate rules on filibusters unconstitutional. The compromise is very unlikely. The key religious right lobby wants all the controversial judges confirmed, and a compromise would result in some rejections. We’ll find out, I dunno, Tuesday or Wednesday? One of those. We’ll find out then whether or not 50 Senators will vote to eliminate the judicial filibuster.

Sometimes it’s hard to believe that there’s some sort of white supremacist conspiracy that means to stealthily advance its views into the mainstream. We should believe it. They’re targeting the Sierra Club right now. “Latin Americans have shown a positive disregard for environmentalism as evidenced by their tendency toward littering and driving smog-belching old junkers.” (Steve Sailer, “Green Gag.”) The leaders of several anti-immigration organizations funded by Richard Mellon Scaife have put together a slate of six candidates for the Sierra Club Board of Directors. The Sierra Club is a target because, as a liberal group, it provides a path for expressing racist views in a manner that doesn’t set off alarm bells. From John Tanton (original), one of the people behind this effort, in a 1986 memo (original): ...

Ladies and gentlemen, Iraq has a government. Took a while, but they got there. I’m happy about that. I find myself concerned that Chalabi is the acting oil minister, since he’s not exactly a beacon of shining moral integrity. I’m also rather bemused that the Prime Minister is the acting defense minister. Having the head of state also be the head of the armed forces has not traditionally been a sign of democratic process, but at least it’s temporary. ...

We’re a step closer to the showdown on judicial filibusters. I kinda figured Harry Reid would force the issue. The short version of what’s going on: you can prevent a vote from occurring in the Senate by filibustering it. It requires 60 votes to end a filibuster. Senator Frist is threatening to change the Senate rules in order to require only 50 votes to end a filibuster. However, changing Senate rules has always taken a 2/3rds majority vote. How’s Frist gonna get around that? ...

Eric Rudolph has made his statement (original). Read it carefully; understand what lies behind it. Look past the claim that he’s only upset about abortion. He asserts that he only kills government agents because they defend abortion; recognize that a few paragraphs later he’s talking about his plans to kill government agents investigating the bombing of a gay club. Take note of his hatred for the Olympics. Consider his xenophobia. Most people who say things like “Practiced by consenting adults within the confines of their own private lives, homosexuality is not a threat to society” are not going to go out and bomb nightclubs. But that kind of language provides easy cover for the fanatics who do. Or, more commonly, for the fanatics who beat people up for wearing buttons with a pink triangle on them. Most people who say things like “The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior” aren’t going to go out and plot a murder (original). However, that kind of language provides cover — and encouragement — for people who do want judges dead. ...

Hallo, Eschaton readers! Thanks for dropping by, hope you find the carpets to your liking, and so on. I’m writing more about culture and film these days than I used to, because I’m fairly burned out on politics, but you’ll still find the occasional political post if you happen to stick around. Also: hope you like Asian cinema. Hm. Back then, I was not so subtly making the point that Eric Rudolph was a terrorist and wondering why Fox News would forgive those who supported him. The point still holds. I’m pretty gratified to see CNN calling it like it is today: ...

Mitt Romney still isn’t going to be the Republican Presidential nominee in 2008. I know he’s the trendy choice, but barring a significant shift in the party, he doesn’t stand a chance of getting past the primaries. He’s got to tack too far to the left in order to effectively govern in Massachusetts, and that’s On the way into work this morning, I heard a commercial from Mitt about stem cell research (original). This is a very topical issue in Massachusetts right now; our House and Senate just passed bills concerning this research which explicitly allow both embryonic stem cell research and something called “ somatic cell nuclear transfer.” ...

A few months ago, Ryan of the Dead Parrot Society debunked the claim that certain photographs of an execution on Haifa Street, in Baghdad, were taken from close range. Ryan is the online producer for a Washington State newspaper; he has experience with news photography and the ability to ask real photographers questions. So he did. He found out that the photos in question were almost certainly taken from a distance. This hasn’t stopped Powerline and Michelle Malkin from continuing to perpetuate the myth that the photographers were standing right next to the execution. ...

Pym Fortuyn’s party is collapsing, which is no great surprise when you get right down to it. Fortuyn himself was assassinated this summer, right before the Dutch elections, which did not prevent his party from becoming the second largest party in the Dutch government. But without Fortuyn at the center of the party, it’s dissolved into squabbles and factionalism. What this says to me is that Fortuyn was never a politician. He was a charismatic figure who was able to assemble a coalition by force of personality, but he wasn’t a politician. His party had no strength at the core, no ability to function without him. ...

Now, that’s pretty close to being a government. Good news. It’ll be interesting to see who winds up in the cabinet. More specifically, it’ll be interesting to see who gets to be the oil minister. The Kurds want it, but they probably got the right to have their own independent army (people keep saying militia. It’s got tanks and artillery (original); it’s an army in my book), so maybe they gave up the ministry. And what happens to Kirkuk?