Theodicius
Good. Evil. Bratwurst.

I’ve got some real mixed emotions about the Boucher decision.

I mean, I’m all in favor of the Fifth Amendment. I think it’s necessary to preserve our liberties, especially today when the federal government seems intent on taking them away in the name of security.

I just don’t see any sort of meaningful difference between a password and the key to a locked room/box/safe. If I’m the target of a legally obtained search warrant, I can be forced to provide a key for a strong box. How is that different from a password for an encrypted file?

Even more to the point, the judge can compel me to provide the combination for a safe that might be the legitimate target of a search. Tell me, please, just how that possibly differs from the password for a computer file.

I’m definitely not in favor of giving the government carte blanche to search everyone everywhere. There are specific tests they must meet in order to be granted the right to search, and the warrants have to be specific about what they can find and take away.

But given those measures are satisfied, I’m completely at a loss how any reasonable judge can draw a distinction between the combination to a safe and the password to a computer, saying you have to divulge the one but not the other.

Now this is strange.

I’ll make no secret of this: I’m not one of Jessica McBride’s fans. You want proof? The first line of her comment is disgraceful. I’ve even gone so far as to speculate on when her last remaining synapse might die of loneliness. But there’s a line between disagreement, even strenuously enthusiastic disagreement, and abuse.
(more…)

…and I remembered.

I remembered a man from the past. I remembered a man who entered politics as a young man, but who grew and matured. A man who entered the Department of Justice at a time when that was a scarce commodity. An eager, enthusiastic young man who saw disappointment and loss, and grew. Unlike many politicians of his day (and most politicians of today) he was not afraid to admit mistakes and to learn from them.

The movie was “Bobby.” The man is Robert F Kennedy. Today there’s a lot of myth, caricature, and just plain misinformation about the man. I’m not sure this movie does anything siginificant to dispel any of it, but that’s not the point. If you’re too young to remember Bobby, if you didn’t live those years, this movie may not add much to your understanding. But pay attention, not to the fictionalized parts of it, but rather to the clips from speeches and press reports.

The movie is about Robert F Kennedy’s last day, but it’s only peripherally about Bobby himself, and I think that what he would have wanted. Other people were wounded at the same time he was killed, and the movie centers around their lives, the events of their day that led them to that place and time, that led them to their appointment with a bullet. These people, from a busboy to a hotel manager to socialites and the powerful, mattered also. And Bobby would have been the first to insist they should be the heart of the story, not him.

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Ann Althouse isn’t the only one that’s picked up on this story but I’ll single it out here just because she’s an easier target. (I would have simply added a comment to her blog, but she won’t let me).

In a nutshell, three stupid kids thought it’d be fun to dig up a month-old corpse of a pretty lady and have sex with it. They weren’t able to; they were caught long before it got that far (surprise!) but when the DA charged them under Wisconsin’s sexual assualt laws, the judge in question threw out those charges for the rather amusing reason that the legislators who drafted the law never mentioned the word necrophilia in their debates, and so (this oh-so-clever jurist reasoned) that must mean that when the lawmakers said “This section applies whether a victim is dead or alive at the time of the sexual contact or sexual intercourse” they obviously didn’t want to bar necrophilia.

Is terminal silliness sufficient reason to impeach a judge?

Nan Lee writes about Barack Obama:

With those vote-leaking drawbacks, Obama looks like he’s worth it and could possibly bring it home.

Nope. Not gonna happen. You see, Barack Obama has one very obvious drawback: he’s a Senator.

In races for the White House, Governors rule. In the last century, the only times a Governor has been weak is when he’s campaigning against a sitting prez or veep. No Senator has ever beaten a Governor. A Senator did once manage to beat a sitting veep, but fer cryin’ out loud, it was JFK over Nixon, and even then it was so close some still think Daley rigged the election (more than was customary for Chicago politics, that is).

I’ve said this before: if the dems are serious about the White House, look to the Governors, not the Senators. Senators talk; Governors administrate. The people trust Governors more than Senators. And Barack, if you’re serious about the presidency, look to the State House, not the White House, for your next stop.

There’s a basic flaw in the minimum markup law here.

To understand where I’m coming from, let me first say I’m in favor of minimum markups, in principal. They attempt to keep giant chains from undercutting local businesses, driving them out, and then raising prices back up. They don’t always succeed in that endeavor, but they succeed often enough that I feel the benefits of the “tax” (in the form of slightly higher prices) is worth the cost.

But Wisconsin’s law has a design flaw that current gas prices have exposed. It’s based on percentages, a measure that only people who have never run a business and had to set price levels would use. (more…)

The shrub is stopping by to promote his pet, Mark Green, for Governor. Which brought to mind the coming election, when I get to choose between a man who’s never seen a deficit he couldn’t support (Green) and a man who’s never seen a bribe, excuse me, campaign contribution, he wouldn’t take (James Doyle).

This is a choice? (more…)

Mayors, I mean. This weekend we lost Frank Zeidler, and the occasion caused me to review the other mayors we’ve had since: Henry Maier, John Norquist, and Tom Barrett.

Zeidler voluntarily walked away from office in 1960, after three four-year terms. It’s easy to lose track of what he accomplished looking through the mists, so let me touch on a few highlights: His record included convincing the UW to open a branch here (UW-M), raising the funds for the Museum, doubling the land size of the city (including purchasing land to be used to build the industrial parks that enriched the tax base and kept the citizens employed). He built nine (9!) new fire stations, imprpoved garbage collection, and doubled the size of the library. He pushed for the creation of Channel 10, the first educational TV station in the state. You may also remember County Stadium and the Braves? Yep, they’re his as well. As was the Milwaukee Arena. He also revamped the city park system. Almost every institution in the city was either begun or greatly enhanced by him.

He was also a champion of public housing: “If it is the philosophy of any that the forces of government should not be used to overcome these conditions, which private enterprise did not overcome, that philosophy borders on the immoral,” he said.

Before there was an Interstate system, there were freeways enabling travel around and through town. He personally would rather have expanded the public transportation system, but the people said they wanted freeways, so he built freeways. He was never a sore loser; his job was to serve the people.

In the forty years of politicians we’ve had sitting in City Hall since he left, we haven’t had as much done to improve conditions in Milwaukee as he did in just 12 years as mayor. And don’t try to excuse their inaction by saying the city is bigger now. It isn’t. In fact, city population has shrunk 20% since Zeidler’s day. The census of 1960 shows Milwaukee as 12th largest city in the nation, so by relative standards, the city Frank presided over was far larger than the one we have today.

Cities can work. Frank showed us that. He worked tirelessly (his reason for not running again was that the job was draining him; he felt always exhausted) for the public good. All the public, not just a small section. He made sure the city had land to support business development, because at an early age he saw what unemployment did to people. He made sure people could afford some sort of secure housing, because he knew what poverty could do.

He wanted to be remembered as a man who tried hard. I wish those who followed had tried even half as hard. He was, in truest sense of the phrase, a mayor for all the people. And they just don’t build ‘em like that anymore.

I’ve rarely agreed with Rep. James Sensenbrenner; I was even upset when he became my congressman through redistricting.

But through his encounters with the Bush White House, I’m gaining some respect for the man. And my respect is harder to earn than my agreement. He voted against his party and his president when he refused to vote for a disaster aid bill because it lacked controls and accountability. And here we are, half a year down the timestream from then, and we’re finding out that the disaster aid money was, indeed, misappropriated, as much as $1.4 Billion (yes, that’s a not million but billion) didn’t go for what it was supposed to. And his insistence on calling a spade a spade (“path to citizenship”? = amnesty) in the illegal immigrant debate is refreshing in the world of spin that passes for political journalism.

I may not agree with you any more frequently, sir, but the next time we’re in the same watering hole, the first round’s on me.

Much has been made of Ann Coulter’s lastest screed. People have e-mailed some of the local talking heads insisting they denounce her. Charlie Sykes bluntly informs us it “isn’t his job”? to do that. Jessica McBride decides to be a bit more honest, and admit that she’s done the same thing to liberal writers, so puts forward an attempt, but just as it starts to sound sincere, she tosses in the inevitable “yeah, but the liberals do it, too.”

I confess I usually don’t have any patience for her kind of spin, but in this case she gets the link because she proves my gran to be correct. One of the things my gran always told me was “Even a stopped watch is right—twice a day!”

And that’s why you’ll read neither Repulican/Conservative nor Democratic/Liberal propaganda here. Just look. You have Ann Coulter (she’s got a real brain inside that head, one has wonder why she uses it so seldom, but instead prefers name-calling to conversation) and others like her on the right (She’s the most egregious, so she gets primacy.) Those who dare to disagree with them cannot be sincere; they are eeeeeeviilllllll and must be ridiculed and otherwise made to shut up.

And on the left you have Maureen Dowd and Kos, two people whose track record for the truth is so stellar that if they told me the sun was shining I’d come to the door to check with an umbrella in my hand.

Mrs. McBride is, in fact, correct. The front-row icons from the Left do, in fact, misbehave. So badly that I’m ashamed more often than not to be seen in their company. But the similar icons of the Right aren’t any better. The political scene in this country is so bad that I’m almost afraid to express an opinion for fear I’ll end up agreeing with one of the repulsive icons on one side or the other.

So I have this to say to both sides: Go ahead and pollute the air with your ramblings; it’s a free country. And though I signed my name on the dotted line and suited up for four years (USAF) I’m not going to suggest you thank me for it, because I certainly didn’t do it for you. In fact, if James Madison could see us now, I wonder if he’d revise the wording of the First Amendment, in your honor. But part of the price of Freedom is to have to have your polemics flying about our head, verbal “drive-bys” while the rest of us try to actually do something.

But if the prospects are to fall in line behind either group, I’ll pass. You’re both disgusting. Go lead your parades. And let me know when you’re done, so the rest of us can step gingerly over the sound bites littering the landscape and try to get something done.

OK, I’ll have to weigh in on the Cheney hunting fiasco.

Let’s have some real perspective here. I can’t be the only one who thinks the reason this is such a major story is because the White House Press Corps has a knot in their collective shorts because the story was given first to a local paper. Yes, Cheney could have handled the public disclosure better. No question about it, his team behaved like a bunch of amateurs during the whole mess (and are still behaving that way, for all I can tell). A statement should have been released sooner, they should have realized the only way to have any influence on the coverage would be to get out in front of it, not try to hide from it. As soon as I heard the outrage in the question “Why did you give it to the local paper?” I knew this was going to happen. The pack was offended at being passed over, and was out for punishment.

Hence the snarling wolfpack attacks, and in their bloodlust many other, far more important issues, will be ignored. I mean, who cares about the economy, or dead soldiers, or any of those other issues? We got scooped by a local newspaper, and we’re going to have our revenge.

Cheney himself isn’t blameless. Obviously he’s forgotten everything he might have been taught about hunting safety. At the very least his hunting license should be taken away from him, and he should be barred from getting another until he can show proof he’s taken a refresher course. I’d even be tempted to let that be it, if I thought it’d have any effect, but since he was already hunting without a license, I doubt those measures would be enough.

I think also a criminal investigation should commence. In any hunting accident, the first fact that needs to be determined is that it is, in fact, an accident. Or was there a reason Cheney might have wanted his erstwhile buddy out of the way? Cheney’s part in this accident should be investigated, determined, and treated the same way other such hunting accidents are treated.

And that’s the main point. Once it’s determined whether it actually was an accident, The Vice President’s position should not protect him from whatever consequences an ordinary citizen might get. Hunting accidents aren’t at all rare, we have lots of experience and precedents for how they should be handled. (Don’t believe me? Here are some examples, from my own state.) Celebrities of all stripes have given and received injuries while hunting. (If it hadn’t have been for a hunting accident, Lance Armstrong might still be chasing Greg Lemond to make his mark as most dominant Tour rider. That’s one example that pops immediately to mind. Yes, Armstrong won the Tour after survivng cancer; but remember, Greg Lemond won it while still carying thirty shotgun pellets in his body because it was more dangerous to remove them than to leave them there.)

I just wish the press corps would get over themselves and devote at least some part of the energy they’re wasting on venting their outraged pride on seeing justice is done, that the Veep gets treated the same way as any other hunter involved in a non-fatal incident.

I’ve been watching the political commentators, and I’ve just realized we have a new oxymoron in town.

It used to be the definitive oxymoron was “military intelligence.” (A phrase that still brings a smile to all of us ex-mil types, as we know the oxymoron intimately.) But I think a new one has just appeared: “political dialogue.” I’ve yet to see anyone who uses the term actually engage in it. Instead what they do is synchronous monologues.

A dialogue implies that each party listens to and responds to what the other is saying. What political commentators do instead is speak their pre-arranged talking points regardless of what gets said by the other side. This applies to both right and left, and all points between, it seems.

Noel Paul Stookey used to have a routine that went something like this:

“First there was a magazine called Life. It was filled with pictures about everything. It had a very wide scope, all of Life. Then came a new magazine, People. It was still far-ranging, but wasn’t about life, just people. Then came Us. It was still about people, but it was about us, not them. Next will have a magazine, Me, that will be just 27 pages of reflective foil!” (NB, there did soon follow a magazine called Self, but it wasn’t filled with reflective foil, other than metaphorically.)

Yes, he did it for laughs, but there was a point. We as a people were gradually narrowing our focus. We were becoming more and more self-centered, less inclined to listen to anyone.

And that’s happening out on the net. Oh sure, you can find someone writing from every possible point of view out here. But you don’t, and you know it. Instead you look only for those whose point of view echoes your own. It validates and strengthens your own opinion, rather than challenges you to think beyond the box you’ve encased yourself in. And, since you can find other writers on the net who agree with you, you must be right, and anyone who disagrees with you is stupid, moronic, or at least mentally deficient, and you don’t need to think about (or even read) what they write to know that, because all the others who share your point of view say so (also, generally, without thinking).

Just one more factor in the general decline of our civilization.

You want to reverse the tide? Make it a regular practice to read or listen to at least one person who disagrees with your political views. Left-wingers, listen regularly to Limbaugh, Coulter, or Hannity while right-wingers should listen regularly to Franken or Hightower. Don’t try to rebut thier arguments by calling them (or their viewpoint) names, instead try to marshall some actual facts to support your disagreement (and don’t take your facts for granted; both sides play fast and loose with facts). I guarantee you’ll learn something, if you’ll honestly listen and think. If you don’t, then you’ve become so case-hardened in your views that, I’m afraid, there’s no hope for your further intellectual development.

Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “A mind, stretched by a new idea, will never return to its former shape.” That’s both a wonderful and a fearful concept.

God gave you the ability to think; how will you explain your refusal to use such a wonderful gift?

He pulled a George O’Leary. That’s enough.

In 2001, George O’Leary seemed a perfect fit for the job of head football coach at Notre Dame. I mean, forget his coaching ability, what better Irish Catholic name can you possibly come up with? This was a match made in heaven. Then the facts that he didn’t actually have a Master’s and wasn’t really a three-year letterman surfaced, and Notre Dame bid him good-bye.

Mike Brown claimed to be an assistant city manager (he was the city manager’s administrative assistant) and to have authority over the city’s emergency services division (he had no authority over anyone, the city says).

Anyone trying to defend him in the face of that has to answer this question: if people who do this aren’t fit to coach football, how can they possibly be fit to oversee the spending of tax dollars?

Go home now, Mr Brown. It’s time to write your book.

I get tired of a lot of things, but right now I’m just tired of all the clueless bozos jumping up and down on Sensenbrenner for his vote. Now, I’m one of the first to say I don’t agree with many, if not most of his political stands, under normal circumstances. But this time he’s got a point. Even a stopped clock is right, twice a day.

He voted against a bill that shovels $50 billion in tax dollars hopefully at the aftermath of Katrina. On the surface, yes, the “no” vote doesn’t look good. But I’ve never been comfortable with superficial judgements, so let’s dig a little deeper. And when we do, we find it’s not a case of Mean Republican vs Needy People. For example, Henry Waxman (D-California) voiced similar concerns about the bill, so there’s defects in it that are visible to both parties.

What’s the problem? It authorizes a $250K spending limit on single purchases made by governmental employes using government issued credit cards, without oversight. One wonders how many brand new plasma TVs are going to show up. Government audits have already shown the current system (with its $15K limit) is subject to abuse; how many more millions are not going to make it to the people who actually need it now?

It’s axiomatic: “Act in haste, repent at leisure.” It’s exactly this kind of shoot-from-the-hip legislation that brought us the PATRIOT Act and the accompanying loss of liberty. Yes, the legislators meant well with this aid bill. But it needed a few more minutes thought before handing every bureaucrat with a chunk of plastic in his wallet a blank check to draw on my money.

My political leanings definitely aren’t with the current administration, but this frenzy of demonizing everything remotely conected with them is brainless, idiotic, and unproductive. I find nothing more comforting about yellow-dog Democrats than about yellow-dog Republicans. Both attitudes should be stomped out.

Recently we celebrated Independence Day. I was distracted by other problems from doing my usual bit in honor of the day. (My sincere apologies, milady Liberty; I may yet get back to it, albeit late.) But as I was doing my annual bit of reflection on this land I love so much, London was bombed (again). And then Paretsky’s book dropped by for a visit. And I have to do this. I don’t have a choice.

It is a time of war, that is certain. It is also a time of national crisis, that much is also certain. But the two are only peripherally related. The war is on foreign soil, the crisis is on our own.

We are engaged in struggle over Liberty; whether in fact Liberty is worth defending, or whether we should give it up, piece by piece, We were hurt, and we lashed out; we acted then, through pain, in haste. But we no longer have that excuse.

The actions of our current leaders give voice to the question: Do we stil believe in Liberty? Do we still believe that everyone has the right to speak, the right to practice any religion, the right to think? Make no mistake about it, for that is the road we are currently traveling down.

Do I have the right to draw up detailed plans and schemes on how to kill a person, or a thousand people, so long as I not act upon it? Do I have the right to make such plans and schemes public, to talk about them with other people? I know there are those within the range of my keyboard who would say no, and would denounce me as a terrorist.

But before you slap the cuffs on me and cart me off to prison, realize that I have also described Tom Clancy, reading any one of his early books during a publicity tour. Or an unknown author, writing his first book and showing it to friends. Or a gamer, creating a world for himself and his friends to play in.

There’s a reason why the laws the designers of our freedom created punished actions, not thoughts. Because until we act, there is still time to recant, to repent, to call it off. Until the trigger is pulled, no harm has been done, no matter how detailed the plan. Oh, but these people are different, you cry. They won’t back down.

So what? Even if they are different, we aren’t. We’re still the same people who were committed to the idea that thoughts are free.

Or are we? Have we come so far from the time of tyranny that we no longer recognize its visage? Is it possible that we no longer recognize our sworn enemy? Have we really descended so far? As recently as 40 years ago, Walt Kelly’s possum could still recognize the enemy; Pogo shouted his warning then, and it still applies today: “We have met the enemy, and he is us!” We all want to remain secure and comfortable, and we don’t like to be reminded that Liberty is inconsistent with either condition, so we all bring tyranny to the party. This is why we need all the more to recognize its ascendence and resist it.

Let me state it bluntly. If you, Mr. Ashcroft, believe you are entitled to know the title of every book in my library, then you, sir, are my enemy. If you, Mr. President, believe that you are entitled to make people disappear into a fortress without trial, without their being able to face their accusers, then you, sir, are my enemy. If you, Mr. Chertoff, believe you are entilted to tap my phone simply because of where I worship, then you, sir, are my enemy. Liberty may scare you (I know she sure scares me at times) but that’s no reason to show her the door. Her absence scares me even more.

It’s popular among today’s pudding-headed pundits to pompously pronounce that anyone who dares utter words like the above hates America and all it stands for. Some even call it treason. Where’s your DD214, Ms Coulter? I signed up; I love this country, and the gift of Liberty given to me through it, so much that I gave up four years, and volunteered, if necessary, to give up the entirety of my life itself, in its defense. And to defend your right to call me names. I’ve already paid that much, and stand ready to pay more, if such is demanded of me. I’m not asking you to be quiet; I’m not even asking for thanks. Just reminding you of something you’ve probably forgotten while you recline in your padded chair thinking about who to smear next, and how much money you can make doing it.

Bold words? Perhaps. But freedom demands boldness; half-hearted attempts at it are doomed to failure. Barry Goldwater once said, “Extremism in the defense of Liberty is no vice.” You go, Barry. And, before anyone suggests it, the PATRIOT Act doesn’t qualify. It doesn’t defend Liberty; it gives it up without a struggle, hoping to obtain a little security in return.

Liberty costs. Freedom isn’t free. And neither Liberty nor Freedom are ever purchased. They are only rented, and the rental price is paid in blood; no other currency is valuable enough to make the exchange. If you want to live free, you have to know right up front that others will hate you for it, and you have to let them. That’s the key; if they are not free to work against you, then you are not truly free yourself.

The people of London know this. That’s why the Monday after the bombs went off, the subways and busses were filled. They refused to give in to the fear, and stood strong and tall. They refused to give in. You want to see heroes defending Liberty? They aren’t all on the battlefields, in precinct houses or fire stations; look in the subways of London. To stand up without a weapon and say “You can take my life, but not my freedom”, that, truly, is heroism.

Once a young firebrand, in the midst of a national crisis, took pen in hand and wrote these words (in “The American Crisis”): “These are the times that try men’s souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country but he that stands it NOW, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain, too cheap, we esteem too lightly: — ‘Tis dearness only that gives every thing its value.”

Young Tom Paine knew whereof he spoke. Today, there’s a panic mob running amok, and it wants to deprive us of some of our Liberty. (This is the way it happens; Liberty is never lost all at once, but rather dies the death of a thousand cuts, as piece by bloody piece she is sliced up and traded away.) To stand up to that mob will mean to risk losing something. But we owe it to those who have died renewing our lease on Liberty to take that risk. We have to stand beside Liberty during these hard times, so that she may stand beside us later, in our own time of peril.

We are, in the words of Lincoln, a nation dedicated to the proposition that all are created equal. And once again we are engaged in a battle to test whether such a nation can long endure. Many have paid with their blood to get us to this point; can anyone possibly think we owe them no less? We need to continue the job, no matter the price.

“…we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Sara Paretsky has a way.

She has a way of creating characters you enjoy being around, and a way of creating characters you want to avoid being around. She has a way of making them speak as if they were in the room with you. She has a way with plotting, and a way with pacing, that keep you interested, keep you turning pages.

But that’s not what I meant. I’ve been holding off on writing this because it’s going to link to something else; I know it. but here goes.

Sara Paretsky has a way of pulling topical happenings into her books, and making abstract things seem more real for doing it.

In Blacklist, the topicality is provided by the PATRIOT Act. The subplot is about a boy at a private school who happens to be the wrong ethnic group, and has the wrong place of worship, who attracts blame for all sorts of things for no other reason than that. And it’s about what rights the US Government has taken away from us so it can hunt down anyone it so chooses to hunt, regardless of the facts in the matter.

The story is good, but I have to admit she didn’t “palm the ace” quite as deftly as she usually does. One of the breathtaking revelations in this novel was so painfully obvious to me the moment it first appeared that I began to lose some respect for Ms Warshawski when she didn’t immediately reach the same conclusion. It seemed to me that Paretsky intentionally dumbed down our intrepid heroine in a weak attempt to sneak one by the reader. I don’t mind it when an author tries to sneak one past me, but I feel cheated when she doesn’t put her heart into the effort; almost insulted by the lack of respect she is showing for my attention.

But the major point here is the side effects of the nefarious Act, and how much it requires us to trust that our government will only do good things and only has good intentions. To one who has lived through Watergate, and all the subsequent “gates” (schemes from both parties, I’m an equal-opportunity mistruster) this indeed seems like we’ve slid through the looking glass. I’m supposed to trust people I wouldn’t buy a used car from? Oh, there are individuals in government that I feel I can trust, but just give a blank check to anyone in a uniform? Come on, get real. I’ve spent time in a uniform myself. I know the kind of heroes who wear one, and I know that villains can wear one, too. (Remind me sometime to tell you why I left the military; I met some fine people there, but I also met some real scum. And the scum was winning.)

I’m sure I’l soon launch into some more analysis on the political side of this, but suffice it to say this is a good read, if you’re sane enough to be able to stand the politics.

The previous entry was to provide a historical background for some of the following conclusions about the current brew-up over the judicial appointments.

1) The statement “Filibustering judicial nominees is unprecendented” is patently false. The nomination of Abe Fortas to Chief Justice was filibustered, and in fact the nomination failed its cloture vote and was subsequently withdrawn. It was, in fact, quite possible that even had the confirmation vote been taken the nomination would have been rejected, but all we have for that is conjecture, because the vote was, in fact, never taken.

2) The statement “Filibustering judicial nominees is rarely done” is equally patently true. There are many other ways to table nominations, and all them have been used recently. Every Senator is given the courtesy of putting a “hold” on a nominee, stating the nominee is personally offensive to him, and that statement is honored. It’s an extreme case, and is used seldom, but has been used. Most often, the nomination is either never taken up in committee, or if taken up, never reported out from committe. This was the practice used, for example, by Jesse Helms to derail many of Bill Clinton’s judicial nominees.

3) The “Nuclear Option”/”Constitutional Option” is neither nuclear nor constitutional. It has been invoked on at least two occasions in the past by Robert Byrd (a Senator with a reputation for knowing parliamentary procedure rules so well that it was joked he was the “Robert” in “Robert’s Rules of Order”). The right to filibuster is not mentioned in the Constitution, nor is any prohibition to allowing it mentioned.

4) Protests about “changing the rules in the middle of the game” are also moot, because the rules have been changed many times in the past. Filibusters were created in 1806, limited in 1917, again in 1959, again in 1975. And, considering the Senate was established 200+ years ago, when are we not in the “middle of the game?”

Where do I stand? I can’t say I’m in favor of filibustering the appointment of these particular judges, but I will also say I am not in favor of confirming every nomination a president makes. The Senate has a duty to take into account the minority views in all its actions, and the President should, also. Every president has, at one point or another, nominated people that were not high on their list as far as politcal views go. So rather than try and ram everything down the Senate’s throat, a better solution would have been to back off on a couple of the nominees in favor of choices more amenable to the other side of the aisle. But it’s too late for that, now. Both sides have escalated this into a game of “Chicken,” and we know that kids never back down in that game. The result will be a steeper divide between the aisles, more anger and resentment, no matter what the outcome is, and even less civility in Civil Government.

So, we all lose.

Anyone else out there getting tired of the irrational spin (from both sides of the aisle) over the art of the filibuster? Let’s let some air in.

Filibusters have long been a part of Senate history. The House did away with them completely as it grew, but the Senate chose to retain the possibility of them, in no small part because the Senate itself is the house of Congress dedicated to protecting the rights of the minority (in the Senate, Rhode Island and Wyoming have as many votes as California and New York).

For over a century, there was no way to end debate on a topic. A single senator, if the topic was important enough to him, could stall legislation. A minority of one could prevent the Senate from acting.
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Yes, I blog about some politics. But when I think about blogging and politics, I have to chuckle. For example:

Mark Glaser writes about something called BlogNashville, apparently a kind of blogger conference started by a conservative who found too many liberals at the previous blogger conference. And there is a bit of a brew-up going on about the lack of civility in the discussions there.

A lack of civility in a discussion between internet bloggers? What a surprise. Next thing you’ll be telling me is that there’s a lot of water in the oceans on this planet.

Seriously, those two statements do rank pretty closely on the credibility scale. I mean, just why would you think that people who have grown accustomed to belittling and abusing folks would stop doing it simply because the targets were physically present in the room? I suppose if you come from the point of view that they were basically hypocrites, and were only talking the way they were because the other person wasn’t in view you might be surprised.

But that’s the problem. They’re not hypocrites, they’re perfectly sincere.
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Now I note the darling of the talk radio jocks (I need hardly preface that with “right-wing”, do I? It seems redundant these days to do so) for AG is under investigation for misconduct.

The same Jocks, when the current AG screwed up, went on the warpath for weeks, even months. A good case could be made for their boy’s screwup being worse than the one they were complaining about, but even if you don’t buy into that, there’s still a burning question to ask:

Why the silence? Can you say “Double Standard?” None of them have had the guts to stand up and say, “I was wrong for supporting him for AG. He would have been a bad choice.” And what’s worse, no one’s called them on it.

Charlie (your silence bothers me the most; I’ve always respected you even when I disagreed with you), Jeff, Mark: Next time you want to start raising your voices in outrage at misconduct in office, I have three words for you: Pot. Kettle. Black.

(Disclosure time: I am acquainted with the current AG, before she became AG, through her son, whom I’d often meet at chess tournaments. The acquaintenceship, however, probably only goes the one way; I doubt she could pick me out of a lineup. And this acquaintenceship did not keep me from agreeing that she screwed up.)