Having never been particularly adept at story-problems, Republicans seem absolutely vexed as to how they should approach President Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. This goes well beyond the racially tinged spitting-up that has come all week from a full-throated conservative punditry.
Anti-abortion groups immediately sounded the alarm, as they always do, even though Roe v Wade has been decided case law for about 35 years now. This is hardly the most egregious of pro-choice candidates; even groups like NARAL are worried about the fact that Sotomayor would be the sixth Catholic on the Supreme Court.
(Which is preternatural unto itself, given that America has only elected one Catholic president in all its history, that being John F. Kennedy.)
Tracing this judge's legal footsteps doesn't reveal an overt bias one way or the other. As anyone could have guessed, Obama wasn't about to nominate someone who isn't a centrist, a tendency reflected in most of his Cabinet picks. It means nothing to religious conservatives - whose representatives routinely oppose healthcare for children - as they urge their Christian soldiers onward.
Another group of single-issue voters, those who value the Second Amendment above all the others in the Constitution, is incensed by the selection of Sotomayor. They point to several of her opinions (including those expressed while in college) which held that gun ownership is not a states-rights issue, or even necessarily an individual right.
It turns out her findings were based upon law that had since been superceded by the Fourteenth Amendment, so she was indeed wrong, as the Supreme Court summarily ruled. She'd have to recuse herself, the way Antonin Scalia often does, from ruling on any case that had already been before her in the appellate court. Furthermore, the Supremes are not closely divided on the matter; hers would be a lonely point of view among the nine Justices.
Then there are those, like the Judicial Conference Network, who profess concern about Sotomayor's brand of "judicial activism". They act like Terri Schiavo had never lived or died, or had her good name kicked around in the press for weeks, with a bunch of taped-mouth lunatics packed in front of her hospice while Republicans ran from judge to judge in order to keep that poor woman alive - and a vegetable.
This criticism also comes from the same legion of yawning ideologues who did nothing when Judge Thomas Hogan jailed a reporter from TIME magazine, even though he (and they) knew all along that it was the Bush administration that had leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. There's no questioning their insincerity.
One thing has become clear in all of this, early in the game as it may be, and it is an illustrative thing at that: No matter what else happens, no matter who throws what kind of mud, Sotomayor is a lock to get confirmed. Everybody knows that. So what does it teach us?
It teaches us that special-interest groups don't have nearly as much influence, for which they paid millions and millions of dollars over the years, as they believed. In the end, the only thing any U.S. Senator cares about is remaining a U.S. Senator, and they're not about to risk the votes of every Hispanic (regardless of gender) and every woman (regardless of race) in their home states.
It also turns out that none of these wannabe powerbrokers - not the pro-lifers, not the NRA, not whatever anti-judicial-activists might be - none of them represent mainstream issues or ideas. If they did, their Senate servants would go to the mat for them, but in Sotomayor's case they simply won't do it.
This phenomenon may result in a dramatic (and long overdue) calving of these champions of zealotry from the GOP. All that's left, really, is the kicking and the screaming. That's the story, and for Republicans, it's a problem.
pH 5.3o.o9
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Order in the Court
Barack Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court has quickly been acknowledged, by all segments of the political spectrum, as sheer political brilliance. When she is confirmed (and she will be overwhelmingly), it will mark only the third time in American history that a woman holds such a position, and will be the first such occasion for a Hispanic.
Republicans don't dare put up too much of a fight against the nominee. While their national "leaders" would love to see that happen, these Senators have to go home and face their electorates at some point or other. With the odd exception here and there, like Jon Kyl of Arizona, the process should be rather meek.
What opposition has been raised centers not on the usual abortion litmus test but on the idea that Sotomayor would be more of a policy-maker than a jurist. Conservatives also claim to dislike the entire "identity politics" factor in this nomination process - not that such was a concern when Ronald Reagan appointed Sandra Day O'Connor to the bench.
Another soft gripe will be that Sotomayor is not a "strict constructionist". That might hold water had ultra-right-winger Antonin Scalia not made that famous speech in which he actually compared the Constitution to "Plasticman", saying that the document does indeed "morph" before his very eyes.
They'll also despise her, even as her confirmation sails through the Senate, for not being a corporate robot like the two Justices installed by George W. Bush and the GOP, John Roberts and Samuel Alito. Her less-than-priveleged upbringing will add a slice of common sensibility that has been absent for far too long in our highest court.
Other than all of that, it's not much of a story, and that is the beauty of Obama. He has just taken the most daunting task that any president faces in domestic politics - the nomination of a Supreme Court Justice - and reduced it to about the same degree of difficulty as baking cookies.
He is as formidable a political figure as we have ever known. Thank God he's on the side of the American people, unlike those conservatives who still think they have a place at the ideological table, a concept that grows more laughable with each passing week.
pH 5.28.o9
Republicans don't dare put up too much of a fight against the nominee. While their national "leaders" would love to see that happen, these Senators have to go home and face their electorates at some point or other. With the odd exception here and there, like Jon Kyl of Arizona, the process should be rather meek.
What opposition has been raised centers not on the usual abortion litmus test but on the idea that Sotomayor would be more of a policy-maker than a jurist. Conservatives also claim to dislike the entire "identity politics" factor in this nomination process - not that such was a concern when Ronald Reagan appointed Sandra Day O'Connor to the bench.
Another soft gripe will be that Sotomayor is not a "strict constructionist". That might hold water had ultra-right-winger Antonin Scalia not made that famous speech in which he actually compared the Constitution to "Plasticman", saying that the document does indeed "morph" before his very eyes.
They'll also despise her, even as her confirmation sails through the Senate, for not being a corporate robot like the two Justices installed by George W. Bush and the GOP, John Roberts and Samuel Alito. Her less-than-priveleged upbringing will add a slice of common sensibility that has been absent for far too long in our highest court.
Other than all of that, it's not much of a story, and that is the beauty of Obama. He has just taken the most daunting task that any president faces in domestic politics - the nomination of a Supreme Court Justice - and reduced it to about the same degree of difficulty as baking cookies.
He is as formidable a political figure as we have ever known. Thank God he's on the side of the American people, unlike those conservatives who still think they have a place at the ideological table, a concept that grows more laughable with each passing week.
pH 5.28.o9
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
'Til Death Do Us Part
Thou shalt not kill. (Anonymous)
This week the Arizona Department of Corrections, at its Perryville Prison, violated perhaps the most important of the Ten Commandments. The state killed an inmate, and for once, they did it in the light of day. Straight from the local radio station's website:
PHOENIX (AP) Arizona corrections officials are investigating the death of a female inmate who collapsed after spending nearly four hours in an outdoor holding cell on a day when the temperature hit 103. Marcia Powell, who was serving a 27-month sentence for prostitution, was put in the uncovered chain-link cell at a state prison in Goodyear about 11 a.m. Tuesday. She collapsed about 2:30 p.m. Tuesday and died at a Phoenix-area hospital early Wednesday.
Never mind how much sense it makes to incarcerate someone for more than two years for prostitution. Is ADOC in some kind of twisted competition with uber-sadist Joe Arpaio, the killer Sheriff of Maricopa County, in whose custody too many inmates have turned up deceased? He's only cost the taxpayers about $14 million in wrongful-death payouts... so far.
How many times do we citizens have to read about these horrors? Sometimes it's children who die. Ask the relatives of Nicholaus Contreraz. He was just 16 when he collapsed and expired in the tender care of the state-run Arizona Boys Ranch in 1998. At the time, he was being forced to carry a bucket of his own vomit.
Of course, sometimes law enforcement (or what passes for it around here) doesn't even wait to place a subject in custody before rendering him a corpse. Nothing can really justify the 24 bullet wounds that brought down another teenager, Julio Valerio, in 1996 - not the meth in his system, not even the bloody knife in his hand. Or the 30 shots that struck Rudy Buchanan, out of the 89 that were fired, just the year before.
Prior to those cases, the gold standard was that of Edward Mallet in 1994, a double-amputee who was strangled to death in the street by Phoenix Department of Public Safety officers. That only cost the city $45 million.
How lucky, then, was Ray Krone? That poor guy was convicted of a murder he did not commit. He was scheduled for capital punishment when DNA absolved him of the crime and he was set free in 2002, the 100th American since 1973 to experience such a thing, after ten years and four months on death row. It sure beats dying like a dog in an outdoor kennel in the sweltering desert heat.
Incidentally, the NRA was in town last week, holding a convention that drew tens of thousands of concerned Arizonans. I don't subscribe to the paranoia about the gub'ment wanting to take away our guns - that's just unadulterated right-wing nonsense.
They do have a point, though, that the citizenry needs to keep and bear arms. I get it. To defend ourselves against the bad guys. Of course, everyone knows that when the Founding Fathers hammered out the Second Amendment, they considered "the bad guys" to be agents of tyranny - authority gone bad.
Now, we're all left to scratch our heads and wonder, what's wrong with the State of Arizona? It seems we're dying to find out.
pH 5.2o.o9
This week the Arizona Department of Corrections, at its Perryville Prison, violated perhaps the most important of the Ten Commandments. The state killed an inmate, and for once, they did it in the light of day. Straight from the local radio station's website:
PHOENIX (AP) Arizona corrections officials are investigating the death of a female inmate who collapsed after spending nearly four hours in an outdoor holding cell on a day when the temperature hit 103. Marcia Powell, who was serving a 27-month sentence for prostitution, was put in the uncovered chain-link cell at a state prison in Goodyear about 11 a.m. Tuesday. She collapsed about 2:30 p.m. Tuesday and died at a Phoenix-area hospital early Wednesday.
Never mind how much sense it makes to incarcerate someone for more than two years for prostitution. Is ADOC in some kind of twisted competition with uber-sadist Joe Arpaio, the killer Sheriff of Maricopa County, in whose custody too many inmates have turned up deceased? He's only cost the taxpayers about $14 million in wrongful-death payouts... so far.
How many times do we citizens have to read about these horrors? Sometimes it's children who die. Ask the relatives of Nicholaus Contreraz. He was just 16 when he collapsed and expired in the tender care of the state-run Arizona Boys Ranch in 1998. At the time, he was being forced to carry a bucket of his own vomit.
Of course, sometimes law enforcement (or what passes for it around here) doesn't even wait to place a subject in custody before rendering him a corpse. Nothing can really justify the 24 bullet wounds that brought down another teenager, Julio Valerio, in 1996 - not the meth in his system, not even the bloody knife in his hand. Or the 30 shots that struck Rudy Buchanan, out of the 89 that were fired, just the year before.
Prior to those cases, the gold standard was that of Edward Mallet in 1994, a double-amputee who was strangled to death in the street by Phoenix Department of Public Safety officers. That only cost the city $45 million.
How lucky, then, was Ray Krone? That poor guy was convicted of a murder he did not commit. He was scheduled for capital punishment when DNA absolved him of the crime and he was set free in 2002, the 100th American since 1973 to experience such a thing, after ten years and four months on death row. It sure beats dying like a dog in an outdoor kennel in the sweltering desert heat.
Incidentally, the NRA was in town last week, holding a convention that drew tens of thousands of concerned Arizonans. I don't subscribe to the paranoia about the gub'ment wanting to take away our guns - that's just unadulterated right-wing nonsense.
They do have a point, though, that the citizenry needs to keep and bear arms. I get it. To defend ourselves against the bad guys. Of course, everyone knows that when the Founding Fathers hammered out the Second Amendment, they considered "the bad guys" to be agents of tyranny - authority gone bad.
Now, we're all left to scratch our heads and wonder, what's wrong with the State of Arizona? It seems we're dying to find out.
pH 5.2o.o9
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground
With the knowledge that it's been said before, honestly, I might have to hang up my spurs. The Republican Party, after failing for so many years now to connect with the majority of Americans, is now hanging its battered fedora on a most ridiculous peg. They're trying to pin the Bush administration's torture policies on Democrats.
Specifically, they're asking the very tired question of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, "What did she know and when did she know it?" Pelosi has fired back in a fit of anger. Her flypaper story is that the CIA told her that "enhanced interrogation techniques" had been used on detainees, but that waterboarding was not one of those techniques.
Conservatives say otherwise, intimating that Pelosi understood fully that people were being tortured, so Bush was cleared on this. Never mind that Pelosi's Party lost the Senate in a matter of weeks following her debriefing. Never mind that the Bush torture policies continued through the next six years (as did wiretapping). All that matters is that Pelosi knew.
If she did, and if she approved of such un-American activities, then she should be driven from her Speakership if not from the Congress altogether. And she can take the monstrous Jane Harman with her. Pelosi hasn't been reliable since committing her first public sin in 2oo6 when she refused to consider impeaching Bush, Cheney et al for any number of Constitutional crimes.
In the meantime, GOP attack dogs like Michael Steele (not to mention the circus clowns of right-wing media) have continued to flail away at President Obama, making the same failed arguments that lost them the last election. They are the Party of panic; when they're not beset by it, they're instilling it in others.
Looking at the nation through reality-colored glasses one realizes that so many things have not happened in the past six months since the election. The Democrats didn't take our guns away. They haven't dined with terrorists. They didn't reinstate the draft. They didn't blow our taxes through the ceiling - they didn't even rescind the Bush tax cuts.
Republicans, although they did try to suck the life out of this country, are not one-hundred-percent vampires. Their fangs have been extracted by a public that took way too long to become concerned. Could they come back? Absent due vigilance on our part, sure, they could.
So could I?
Absolutely.
pH 5.19.o9
Specifically, they're asking the very tired question of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, "What did she know and when did she know it?" Pelosi has fired back in a fit of anger. Her flypaper story is that the CIA told her that "enhanced interrogation techniques" had been used on detainees, but that waterboarding was not one of those techniques.
Conservatives say otherwise, intimating that Pelosi understood fully that people were being tortured, so Bush was cleared on this. Never mind that Pelosi's Party lost the Senate in a matter of weeks following her debriefing. Never mind that the Bush torture policies continued through the next six years (as did wiretapping). All that matters is that Pelosi knew.
If she did, and if she approved of such un-American activities, then she should be driven from her Speakership if not from the Congress altogether. And she can take the monstrous Jane Harman with her. Pelosi hasn't been reliable since committing her first public sin in 2oo6 when she refused to consider impeaching Bush, Cheney et al for any number of Constitutional crimes.
In the meantime, GOP attack dogs like Michael Steele (not to mention the circus clowns of right-wing media) have continued to flail away at President Obama, making the same failed arguments that lost them the last election. They are the Party of panic; when they're not beset by it, they're instilling it in others.
Looking at the nation through reality-colored glasses one realizes that so many things have not happened in the past six months since the election. The Democrats didn't take our guns away. They haven't dined with terrorists. They didn't reinstate the draft. They didn't blow our taxes through the ceiling - they didn't even rescind the Bush tax cuts.
Republicans, although they did try to suck the life out of this country, are not one-hundred-percent vampires. Their fangs have been extracted by a public that took way too long to become concerned. Could they come back? Absent due vigilance on our part, sure, they could.
So could I?
Absolutely.
pH 5.19.o9
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
One Flu Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Out of all the things that have cost America plenty, tops on the list would have to be the 24-hour news cycle. One of the most precious items that has been strip-mined from our national conscience is the ability, or even the desire, to say, "Let me sleep on it."
First it was the war in Iraq. Then it was your mortgage. Later on came the bank bailouts. Now it's the swine flu.
Hospitals and clinics are bracing themselves for the onslaught of a brand new virus, the likes of which hasn't afflicted this country since the Spanish Flu in 1918. Schools are being closed. The disease has broken containment from Mexico, where it began, and is now considered a global threat.
It's a big deal, worthy of a massive government response, right? C'mon, right? Yesterday, this was cause for quite some concern. Rather than fading into the next day's fare, however, I found it came out of an overnight gestation with something of a cynical twist.
Having slept on it, I conclude, bring it on. I grew up in Michigan, where you exchange bodily fluids with about five thousand insects each week during the summer. I've been immersed in - have swallowed - Great Lakes water with its varying degrees of mercury and atomic slurry. I ate cafeteria food, for two years, at Milwood Junior High School.
So, then, influenza. Something that comes around every year, we're in a fit of panic over that, the flu? People, our enemies are watching, and carefully. They study our every move, and ask themselves, what can we do that will really freak the Americans out this time? Now they know.
If we were in a movie, the leading role would more likely be played by Dustin Hoffman, or maybe Rick Moranis, than say Clint Eastwood or John Wayne. Was this subject not covered on an episode of Leave it to Beaver? Or was it Family Affair? Was it even remotely alarming back then - when we were CHILDREN?
More worrisome than the bug itself is the fact that Janet Napolitano, formerly the governor of Arizona, is now the head of Homeland Security. Given a full-blown pandemic, something on the scale of 1918, could she quarantine entire cities such as Tucson or Phoenix?
Sure she could. But so far all she's told us to do is wash our hands and cover our mouths when we cough or sneeze. (Translation: We're already dead.) And she sees no point in closing the border, noting with an official shrug that this strain has been identified everywhere from Canada to New Zealand.
Even in Mexico, where there have been nearly 200 deaths already, the response is just a bit surreal. Thousands of drug-related homicides last year didn't faze those poor people, but the flu has emptied the streets.
Anyway. The point is that a person can often get a better - or least a different - perspective on the big issues if he or she takes the time to sleep off the initial emotion. Letting the dust settle, however you make time for doing so, can be a good thing...
So tomorrow would be a much better day to tell you what I really think of Arlen Specter.
pH 4.28.o9
First it was the war in Iraq. Then it was your mortgage. Later on came the bank bailouts. Now it's the swine flu.
Hospitals and clinics are bracing themselves for the onslaught of a brand new virus, the likes of which hasn't afflicted this country since the Spanish Flu in 1918. Schools are being closed. The disease has broken containment from Mexico, where it began, and is now considered a global threat.
It's a big deal, worthy of a massive government response, right? C'mon, right? Yesterday, this was cause for quite some concern. Rather than fading into the next day's fare, however, I found it came out of an overnight gestation with something of a cynical twist.
Having slept on it, I conclude, bring it on. I grew up in Michigan, where you exchange bodily fluids with about five thousand insects each week during the summer. I've been immersed in - have swallowed - Great Lakes water with its varying degrees of mercury and atomic slurry. I ate cafeteria food, for two years, at Milwood Junior High School.
So, then, influenza. Something that comes around every year, we're in a fit of panic over that, the flu? People, our enemies are watching, and carefully. They study our every move, and ask themselves, what can we do that will really freak the Americans out this time? Now they know.
If we were in a movie, the leading role would more likely be played by Dustin Hoffman, or maybe Rick Moranis, than say Clint Eastwood or John Wayne. Was this subject not covered on an episode of Leave it to Beaver? Or was it Family Affair? Was it even remotely alarming back then - when we were CHILDREN?
More worrisome than the bug itself is the fact that Janet Napolitano, formerly the governor of Arizona, is now the head of Homeland Security. Given a full-blown pandemic, something on the scale of 1918, could she quarantine entire cities such as Tucson or Phoenix?
Sure she could. But so far all she's told us to do is wash our hands and cover our mouths when we cough or sneeze. (Translation: We're already dead.) And she sees no point in closing the border, noting with an official shrug that this strain has been identified everywhere from Canada to New Zealand.
Even in Mexico, where there have been nearly 200 deaths already, the response is just a bit surreal. Thousands of drug-related homicides last year didn't faze those poor people, but the flu has emptied the streets.
Anyway. The point is that a person can often get a better - or least a different - perspective on the big issues if he or she takes the time to sleep off the initial emotion. Letting the dust settle, however you make time for doing so, can be a good thing...
So tomorrow would be a much better day to tell you what I really think of Arlen Specter.
pH 4.28.o9
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Seceding Hairline Fracture
The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past. - William Faulkner
***
Did you notice the so-called Tea Parties held across the country on April 15th? Or were you too busy filing to care? In some locations, thousands of Americans responded to the sirens of conservative media... In other places it was more like dozens.
These folks were protesting things like federal spending, big government and (of course) taxation. Never mind that the corporate tax rate is today what it was in the 1950s, or that the Bush regime spent us into the largest expansion of government in history. It's not sense they're looking for.
That puts them in a peculiar category, and at long last it must be said: The Republican Party is the Confederacy, geographically, demographically and practically. This would be a particularly intense perversion given that Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican.
This could explain why right-wingers have become so intensely agitated by the presidency of Barack Obama. This comes after the South actually did rise again - but said resurrection only lasted for eight years (about as long as the Third Reich).
In all of modern New England - the cradle of our nation and the place where our freedom was won - and in nearly all the original Colonies, nary a conservative lawmaker exists. To find them you have to go to places where the Stars and Bars once were, and sometimes still are, flown.
Look at where the Republican Party resides today. In the South. Across the Mountain West - Texas, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Arizona, the Dakotas. That's the Trail of Fears trod by the Rebel diaspora who could not stand to remain in the South during the horrors of Reconstruction.
Remember George Allen, with his "real Virginia" remarks aimed at "Macaca", a person of Central Asian descent who happened to work for Jim Webb (who won the election)? Look and listen; the mantra of the GOP today is precisely what the mantra of the Confederacy was 145 years ago.
Secede. That sharp word was proudly uttered in a recent public speech made by Texas Governor Rick Perry. It all but oozes out of the ground in Alaska where Sarah Palin's husband was, for years, a card-holding member of a party dedicated to secession from the United States.
What has changed? Instead of bombing Union railways or Black churches, Southern nut-cases like Eric Rudolph turned their deadly habits upon abortion clinics. What would inspire someone to commit such acts of terrorism?
Same thing that was used to justify slavery not so many generations ago, that staple of GOP fundraising, the Bible. Clearly this proclivity for twisting existing doctrine (such as a major political Party or the Constitution) is nothing new.
It's glaring in our history. We've dealt with it before. But that sure as Hell doesn't mean it's past.
pH 4.22.o9
***
Did you notice the so-called Tea Parties held across the country on April 15th? Or were you too busy filing to care? In some locations, thousands of Americans responded to the sirens of conservative media... In other places it was more like dozens.
These folks were protesting things like federal spending, big government and (of course) taxation. Never mind that the corporate tax rate is today what it was in the 1950s, or that the Bush regime spent us into the largest expansion of government in history. It's not sense they're looking for.
That puts them in a peculiar category, and at long last it must be said: The Republican Party is the Confederacy, geographically, demographically and practically. This would be a particularly intense perversion given that Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican.
This could explain why right-wingers have become so intensely agitated by the presidency of Barack Obama. This comes after the South actually did rise again - but said resurrection only lasted for eight years (about as long as the Third Reich).
In all of modern New England - the cradle of our nation and the place where our freedom was won - and in nearly all the original Colonies, nary a conservative lawmaker exists. To find them you have to go to places where the Stars and Bars once were, and sometimes still are, flown.
Look at where the Republican Party resides today. In the South. Across the Mountain West - Texas, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Arizona, the Dakotas. That's the Trail of Fears trod by the Rebel diaspora who could not stand to remain in the South during the horrors of Reconstruction.
Remember George Allen, with his "real Virginia" remarks aimed at "Macaca", a person of Central Asian descent who happened to work for Jim Webb (who won the election)? Look and listen; the mantra of the GOP today is precisely what the mantra of the Confederacy was 145 years ago.
Secede. That sharp word was proudly uttered in a recent public speech made by Texas Governor Rick Perry. It all but oozes out of the ground in Alaska where Sarah Palin's husband was, for years, a card-holding member of a party dedicated to secession from the United States.
What has changed? Instead of bombing Union railways or Black churches, Southern nut-cases like Eric Rudolph turned their deadly habits upon abortion clinics. What would inspire someone to commit such acts of terrorism?
Same thing that was used to justify slavery not so many generations ago, that staple of GOP fundraising, the Bible. Clearly this proclivity for twisting existing doctrine (such as a major political Party or the Constitution) is nothing new.
It's glaring in our history. We've dealt with it before. But that sure as Hell doesn't mean it's past.
pH 4.22.o9
Friday, April 17, 2009
Franken Buries Coleman
Hey, Minnesota, have you had enough yet? Truly, can there be any greater assault on the manhood of a State than to say, "You've only got one nut (in the Senate)"? I bet that stings almost as much as the fleeting memory of a certain Little Brown Jug.
As former Saturnday Night Live! comedian and duly elected representative Al Franken waits for the will of Minnesotans to be put into full effect, Republicans everywhere are wailing and gnashing their teeth, and they don't mean to stop anytime soon.
Even with the Minnesota Supreme Court validating the election results, other odious members of the GOP continue to push former Senator Norm Coleman to take his fight to the U.S. Supreme Court. In their wild-eyed desperation, they're also leaning on Governor Tim Pawlenty not to certify the election results - never mind his aspirations for national office.
Conservatives mask their raw obstructionism by invoking the rights of every voter to cast, and have counted, a ballot. Such concern was nowhere to be found shortly after the election. Back then, with an apparent lead, Coleman called on Franken to concede in order to save the taxpayers the cost of a recount even though such was mandated by state law.
Coleman lucked into that seat anyway, as he stood little chance against incumbent Democrat Paul Wellstone in 2oo2, but Wellstone died in a plane crash just weeks before the election and the Democrats inexplicably countered with Walter Mondale. Since he didn't exactly arrive with a mandate, getting dumped for Franken shouldn't be so shocking.
Whenever Franken gets seated (the opposition threatens to somehow filibuster even that) the Democrats will have little need of Republican support in order to pass any sort of legislation they like. Conservatives have thus abandoned all manner of pride in this venture. They realize this is embarrassing but they can't afford to care.
Neither, then, can the good people of Minnesota. Recent polls tell us that nearly two-thirds of them want Coleman to concede already and get this past election over with before the next one begins. They're probably not very happy with Pawlenty's mime act, either.
Keep in mind, based on the weather alone, that these are not fickle people in Minnesota. Remember Jesse Ventura? Don't laugh; save it for your first encounter with Michelle Bachmann.
Eventually this current charade will come to a halt, and Norm "God Wants Me To Serve" Coleman will be tossed out with the rest of the of 'o8 Republicans. So Minnesotans can take solace in two things. One is that Barack Obama genuinely wants to avoid any further bridge collapses in your state (and every other).
Better yet is this: At least you're not... quite... Alaska.
pH 4.17.o9
As former Saturnday Night Live! comedian and duly elected representative Al Franken waits for the will of Minnesotans to be put into full effect, Republicans everywhere are wailing and gnashing their teeth, and they don't mean to stop anytime soon.
Even with the Minnesota Supreme Court validating the election results, other odious members of the GOP continue to push former Senator Norm Coleman to take his fight to the U.S. Supreme Court. In their wild-eyed desperation, they're also leaning on Governor Tim Pawlenty not to certify the election results - never mind his aspirations for national office.
Conservatives mask their raw obstructionism by invoking the rights of every voter to cast, and have counted, a ballot. Such concern was nowhere to be found shortly after the election. Back then, with an apparent lead, Coleman called on Franken to concede in order to save the taxpayers the cost of a recount even though such was mandated by state law.
Coleman lucked into that seat anyway, as he stood little chance against incumbent Democrat Paul Wellstone in 2oo2, but Wellstone died in a plane crash just weeks before the election and the Democrats inexplicably countered with Walter Mondale. Since he didn't exactly arrive with a mandate, getting dumped for Franken shouldn't be so shocking.
Whenever Franken gets seated (the opposition threatens to somehow filibuster even that) the Democrats will have little need of Republican support in order to pass any sort of legislation they like. Conservatives have thus abandoned all manner of pride in this venture. They realize this is embarrassing but they can't afford to care.
Neither, then, can the good people of Minnesota. Recent polls tell us that nearly two-thirds of them want Coleman to concede already and get this past election over with before the next one begins. They're probably not very happy with Pawlenty's mime act, either.
Keep in mind, based on the weather alone, that these are not fickle people in Minnesota. Remember Jesse Ventura? Don't laugh; save it for your first encounter with Michelle Bachmann.
Eventually this current charade will come to a halt, and Norm "God Wants Me To Serve" Coleman will be tossed out with the rest of the of 'o8 Republicans. So Minnesotans can take solace in two things. One is that Barack Obama genuinely wants to avoid any further bridge collapses in your state (and every other).
Better yet is this: At least you're not... quite... Alaska.
pH 4.17.o9
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