Politics

Heck, I’ll take a shot at this one (original). First off: media whore is a pejorative term. Yes? Yes. Second: Erick Erickson didn’t call Cindy Sheehan a whore. He did call her a media whore. We can hopefully pretty much stop pretending he didn’t mean to be insulting, right? Third: if there’s something wrong with Cindy Sheehan using her access to media outlets to promote a particular commercial or ideological message, then there are a lot of people from all sides of the political spectrum who ought to be condemned. ...

Robin Cook died Saturday. I’m… sadder than I can really express. So, for the third time, I’ll link to his March 18th anti-war speech, which only becomes more prescient with each revelation about the Iraq War. What has come to trouble me most over past weeks is the suspicion that if the hanging chads in Florida had gone the other way and Al Gore had been elected, we would not now be about to commit British troops. ...

Hopefully nobody actually listens to me about politics. I kinda think McCain’s busy running for President. Frist was too, but now he’s out of it; he needed that religious right support and he failed them. The field’s fairly wide open now. The hard right (original) hates it (original). Tacitus, as is often the case, is fairly sensible.

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.” ...