Hello? Hello?

: knock knock : Anybody home in the lefty blogosphere?

Nope, I guess not, they're still all out at the racetrack, eagerly doing all that delegate-counting, primary-predicting, press release hyper-analyzing, horserace political coverage they claim to hate so much.

Meanwhile, the FISA bill is moving through the Senate.

The what? Oh, yeah, the FISA bill. The one that was the central front in the war on civil liberties. The one to which opposition was the linchpin of all that was good and noble. The one we all had to write about, fax about, call about, post about. The FISA bill.

Oh, but why am I going on about that? That was so last week, man! This is the blogosphere! It's today, it's now, it's happening, and we've had Superduper Tuesday to talk about and lots and lots of numbers for crunching and polls for divining.

Yeah, it was last week, and this past week, and the beginning of next week, too. We seem to have forgotten about it, but the forces of GOPper evil and their Dummycrat enablers haven't. Worse, we've not only forgotten it, in some quarters we've come close to dismissing it. Glenn Greenwald noted that in the wake of the agreement on how the debate on the bill was to proceed,

Senate Democratic leadership sources are trying to claim that [the outcome] is some sort of victory for Senate Democrats, and echoing that sentiment, even some of the most insightful and knowledgeable around ... are hailing the agreement as evidence that "Dems didn't cave" and that "they held tough."

In other words, it's all been taken care of, no more worries, so we can go back to arguing over whether it's Hillary or Barack who's "being negative." Unfortunately, as Greenwald points out in that same column,

[t]he essence of the new agreement is that most of the amendments will be subject to a simple up-or-down vote - if they get 50 votes, then they pass - while several of the amendments will require 60 votes to pass (allowing, in essence, the Republicans to filibuster those amendments without actually having to go to the Senate floor and engage in a real filibuster).

The point being that those amendments that were expected to fall short of a majority anyway only need 50 votes to pass, while those that it was thought might get to 50 votes would need 60. It is a procedure designed to have all amendments - including those that would strip telcom immunity - fail. With, that is, one exception: An amendment by Kit Bond would expand the definition of who is an “agent of a foreign power” and thereby expand the range of people subject to warrantless White House wiretapping under the bill. That one, favored (naturally) by the White House, needs only a simple majority.

If that's "holding tough," then jell-o is firm enough for house construction.

And, in fact, the first of some 15 proposed amendments to come to a vote was one by Sen. Ben Cardin, which would have required the bill to sunset in four years instead of six. It lost on Monday, getting only 49 votes of the required 60. On Thursday, two amendments offered by Russ Feingold went down.

The first, designed to give the secret FISA court the option of preventing the government from using information collected on a U.S. person if the procedures for that collection are later deemed illegal, failed, 39-56. The second, intended to definitively block the practice of “reverse targeting” — where the government hypothetically might deem a foreign subject the surveillance target but its true intention is to listen to a U.S. citizen on the other end of the communication — failed, 38-57.

The first of those two was co-sponsored by Chris Dodd, the second by Dodd and Robert Menendez.

As it stands now, debate is to resume on Monday with a series of quick up-or-down votes on amendments and a vote on the final bill on Tuesday. Among the amendments to be voted on are one by Sheldon Whitehouse allowing the FISA court to consider how well the spooks have implemented "minimization" (the process of minimizing the retention of sensitive information incidentally gathered about US citizens in the course of surveillance), one by Feingold and Dodd banning bulk collection of information (i.e., information not based on targeting a particular suspect or suspect facility), one by Feingold, Jim Webb, and Jon Tester that makes a clear distinction between foreign-to-foreign communications and foreign-to-domestic communications (and provides greater protection for the latter), and of course the Dodd-Feingold-Leahy, et al., amendment to strip telcom immunity out of the bill along with its weaker brethren the would turn the matter of immunity over to the FISA court or substitute the federal government for the telcoms as defendants in the civil actions. All are expected to fail.

Which means for all the bluster, for all the "hanging tough," it's expected that Tuesday, the Senate will bring up for final passage the White House-approved, Senate Intelligence Committee version of the bill essentially intact. In the virtual silence that surrounds the bill now, in the pointed, disturbing, distressing absence of the blogosphere chorus calling for support, I wonder if Chris Dodd will have the spirit to follow through on his pledge to filibuster a bill containing immunity, especially in the face of Harry Reid's open antagonism - or will he make just a symbolic gesture, just a way to put an exclamation point to his opposition, before giving it up.

The temporary law is supposed to expire on February 16, just four days later, opening up the horrifying! horrifying! possibility that we might revert to the pre-existing FISA law, the one that's been around since 1978 and never seemed to present any particular barrier before the current crop of power-hungry blood-suckers came along. But since in the world of DC politics, not passing a bill is worse than passing a crappy bill, the members of the House will indeed be under pressure to agree to whatever comes out of the Senate even though the House's own version of the bill, passed in the fall, is clearly superior. Negotiations between the staffs of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees on a joint bill have already started - without, significantly, addressing immunity. Meanwhile, it emerges that

[s]ome House Democrats were prepared to support immunity, regardless. In a Jan. 28 letter, 21 Democrats in the conservative Blue Dog Coalition sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., supporting immunity and listing other provisions that they believed were needed in a FISA bill.

However, all is not lost. For one thing, it still appears that a sizeable portion of the House, quite possibly a majority, remains strongly opposed to telcom immunity and perhaps to other parts of the Senate bill as well. And there has now been some significant push-back: On Friday,

a formidable trio of House Committee Chairmen sent a stern letter to their colleagues urging them to oppose immunity for phone companies that assisted in the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program.

The three, whose positions are important because they involve oversight of telecommunications, are with the House Committee on Energy and Commerce: John Dingell, who chairs the committee; Ed Markey, who chairs the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet; and Bart Stupak, who heads up the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.

"By tying the question of lawsuit immunity to questions of national security and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) reform legislation, the President has created a false choice for Congress," the letter states. "The issue of immunity for phone companies that chose to cooperate with the President's warrantless wiretapping program deserves a separate and more deliberate examination by Congress. No special urgency attaches to the question of immunity other than the present Administration's general eagerness to limit tort liability and its desire to avoid scrutiny of its own actions, by either the courts or the Congress."

Earlier this week, more than two dozen House members sent a letter to the White House announcing their opposition to telecom immunity.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is among those suing telcoms over their illegal assistance given to the government's illegal wiretapping, seconded the letter.

"Senators about to vote on immunity should heed the Chairmen's warning: tying the question of telecom immunity to that of FISA reform is unnecessary and dangerous," [EFF attorney Kevin] Bankston said "But if the Senate complies with the Administration's pleas to cover up its illegal spying and bail out the phone companies, then it's time for the House to step up and block immunity for lawbreaking telecom giants."

The EFF has info and background on domestic spying here and on telcom immunity in particular here; it also has the text of the Dingell-Markey-Stupak letter here in .pdf format.

The letter may have been what prompted Harry Reid to file a bill for another 15-day extension of the life of the current temporary law even though Shrub has said he will not accept another extension. So even as Senate Dems look for a way to back down while still looking - emphasize looking - resolute, the backbones of House Dems might - another word to emphasize - be turning into something at least somewhat closer to bone than cooked spaghetti. Still, I refuse to get my hopes up: We have been disappointed too many times before. So work for the best but don't count on it.

Russ Feingold isn't: In an interview with Newsweek lasst week, he said

We're trying to make a record here, and to show who voted for what. My prediction is this thing will go through; it will be challenged and go through the courts. And eventually a Supreme Court with something like seven Republican-appointed judges will strike down the worst parts of it. This is a long-term battle to protect the rights of the American people.

The cynic in me says that "record" is just for political positioning, but the hoper (a silly-sounding word, but a real one) in me remembers that often enough what once was dissent was later conventional wisdom. It's a matter of surviving the dark time which, I fear will get darker still before it lightens.

Footnote #1: In her blog about US politics at About.com, Kathy Gill notes that four of the top 20 contributors to Senate Intelligence Committee Chair and telcom immunity lover Jay Rockefeller are telcom-related corporations: AT&T is #2; Time-Warner is #5; Verizon, #7; and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, #20.

Footnote #2: The WHS* and their Senate toadies have screeched and stomped about how urgent it is to get the FISA bill passed ASAP because otherwise we will be utterly defenseless against the relentless hordes of dark-skinned, bomb-planting, cellphone-wielding terrorists. Then how come they were so willing to create a "logjam," a "stalemate," that brought movement on the bill to a complete halt this past week in order to get an economic "stimulus" bill passed?

The choices are:
A. To give Shrub something to crow about.
B. To create a time crunch on final passage of the FISA bill to pressure the House Dems into caving on immunity and other issues.
C. Both of the above.
D. Neither of the above.

If you chose D, it would appear you are a lotus-eater rather than a Lotus reader.

*WHS = White House Sociopaths

I must learn to be kinder

I've had a couple of exchanges recently with people who flew off the handle at the prospect of a Ralph Nader run for president in 2008. I already mentioned the one with Tito at The Core 4; the other one was with Fred at Stone Court.

I've seem similar reactions the the existence of a Nader exploratory committee other places, some considerably worse than those above. I didn't get into more arguments, but I did say at one site that I sometimes think Nader has put his name out there just for the fun of watching the Democrats foam at the mouth, shudder, twitch violently, and otherwise go bonkers in response.

A significant amount of the vituperation revolved, as it always does, around the claim that Nader is actually a GOPper stalking horse, supported by the right wing for the sole purpose of electing Republicans. That always struck me as a nutso argument supported by the thinnest possible evidence. It still does. However, I should likely be kinder to those who make the argument because it seems Nader isn't the only one getting that treatment. A reader of Talking Points Memo, in the middle of a lengthy screed about the horrors of an Obama (rather than a Clinton) nomination, said that

[i]t's obvious that the Obama base relies heavily on right wing help, and launders stuff through them and their proxies.

So perhaps it is just endemic to a style of hyperventilating politics driven by, in Carl Jung's famous phrase, "the evil which one does not see in one’s own bosom but always in somebody else’s," as a certain great political philosopher has already pointed out.

:sigh: We are so screwed.

Footnote: If you really want to check it out, this is a link to the Nader Exploratory Committee website. But let me make it clear right here and right now that Ralph Nader lost me with his bizarre, last-minute injection of himself into the Terri Schiavo tragedy with a statement that called for the forcible continuation of her feeding tube. There is no way in hell I will support him in 2008.

My hope is to be able to support the nominee of the Green Party, possibly Cynthia McKinney. But if that nominee turns out to be Nader, I will vote for other Green candidates, but not for him.

Untucked

(Cross-posted to the Out of Iraq Bloggers Caucus.)

I have said oh so many times that it's the little things, the little things that go seemingly unnoticed that get me. In this case, the thing itself is by no means little but the fact that it seems to have passed unnoticed is some degree of qualification. And by any measure it is a great example of a classic I. F. Stone "shirttail," the good stuff at the tail end of an article.

Omar Khadr is a Canadian citizen captured after a firefight in Afghanistan in 2002. He has been at Gitmo ever since and is now facing a military tribunal there on a boatload of charges relating to the accusation that he threw a hand grenade that killed a US solider in that fight. However, he was 15 at the time, so, Reuters reported, he

should not be tried as a war criminal because he was a child soldier for al Qaeda, too young to voluntarily join its forces, his military defense lawyer told a U.S. war court on Monday.

Navy Lt. William Kuebler asked a military judge to throw out the charges....

"He is a victim of al Qaeda, not a member of al Qaeda," Kuebler said.

It certainly is a story worth knowing if only because it's another case of people having been held for years without trial or even charges. The fact that he was a child soldier and the questions that surround it add to its worth. However, that's not actually the part I'm concerned with. This is the end of that same article:

The court released documents describing the battle in which Khadr was captured. U.S. forces entered the suspected al Qaeda compound after an aerial bombing and were fired upon with a rifle and with the grenade that killed [Sgt. Christopher] Speer, it said.

An unidentified witness, who is apparently a member of the U.S. armed forces, said he found two wounded people still alive inside - a man lying near an AK-47 assault rifle, whom he shot in the head and killed, and Khadr, who was seated on the ground facing away.

The witness said he shot Khadr twice in the back and that Khadr replied repeatedly in English, "Kill me."

Khadr was instead given medical treatment and sent to Guantanamo.

The Miami Herald says the revelation was unintentional and casts doubt on the prosecution's claims.

At issue is, with the revelation that another person was alive and fighting inside the compound, how the military can be certain that Khadr threw a grenade that killed

Sgt. Speer? Yes, that certainly is an issue for the trial. But it's not the issue that struck me hard, one that neither of these articles nor any of the (admittedly few) others I checked addressed:

By the military's own account, a US soldier summarily executed a wounded fighter and shot another wounded, unresisting fighter in the back - twice.

God fucking damn it, these are war crimes! Why isn't that soldier in the dock? Why isn't he in chains in some dark cell somewhere awaiting a trial that maybe will happen someday? More disturbingly, why didn't any account find what he did worthy of notice? And even more disturbingly, even frighteningly, is it because it simply didn't occur to them to question the actions of a US soldier?

And I don't want to hear one bleeping bit of a defense that "maybe they were faking" or "maybe one of them was hiding another grenade" or whatever. By that argument you are saying you are comfortable with a scorched Earth policy or with soldiers going down streets just shooting down everyone they see, because - and you can't deny it - any one of those people "might" have a hidden gun or a grenade. (By the way, if "anything goes" is not right for "them," it's not right for "us." So neither will I accept any defense along the lines of "if you'd even been in combat" unless you're an avowed pacifist arguing that war destroys all vestiges of humanity in its participants and so should not be engaged in by anyone.)

It's been said to death that "9/11 changed everything." But of course it didn't. And contrary to the development of nuclear weapons, which, Einstein said, "has changed everything except our way of thinking," 9/11 actually changed nothing - except our way of thinking, especially regarding the level of decency we expect from ourselves.

Believe it - not

Those of you who bother to look at such things may have noticed that the newest addition to the right-hand column is a big letter “A.” That A carries a double meaning. One, of course, is a reference to the scarlet letter, the brand of infamy. The other is what the A stands for: atheist.

I’m an atheist. I am what I guess you could call a quiet atheist in that it’s not something I make a habit of proclaiming and usually only bring up if asked. It’s a position I came to gradually but in a more or less straight progression over a period of about a decade, in a process that had a consistent thread to it, one which will become obvious in a short time. It’s a position in which I deeply believe and which is in accord with my best understanding of - you’ll pardon the term - reality and how it works.

I was brought up Roman Catholic. I went to catechism, learned the drill, said the prayers. I remember the white clothes and the white armband for my first communion. (I also remember making up sins for my first confession because who the hell could remember what and everything you’d done wrong in your whole life up until then?) It was ingrained enough that I did rather well on a Baltimore Catechism quiz I took the other day.

There was a point in my youth when I got very serious about my religion. I went to confession and communion every week, followed the mass in my missal, even in the Latin, as it still was then. Unlike some, I never considered the priesthood, but I was disappointed that my folks couldn’t afford to send me to the Catholic high school my older brother attended.

But that passion proved to be not a lasting one and actually sowed the seeds of my later development, because it involved looking deeply at my faith and realizing just how far the institutional church had moved from the words of Jesus as described in the New Testament and that in fact church dogma was based far more on Paul than on Jesus. I remember saying at some point that the church should be called Paulist, not Christian. The institution of the church not only seemed unnecessary, it was a hindrance.

Pulling away from the Catholic Church, I moved to a sort of undifferentiated Christianity that looked to an understanding of what Jesus actually taught regardless of (indeed, ignoring) the strictures of any formal church. But the very process of doing that undermined what remained of anything that could be called traditional Christian faith: It struck me, for example, that in the synoptic gospels, Jesus never once refers to himself as divine and even cagily avoids directly acknowledging the assertion from others. Ultimately, belief in the divinity of Jesus was simply unnecessary for gaining anything from the wisdom to be found in his teachings and so gradually dissolved. (I will note that I do find wisdom in the gospels, the wisdom of the rabbi, the teacher.)

By the time I hit college I was a deist, a believer in an ultimate being that created the universe but takes no part in its day-to-day existence; a being to be respected, even admired, but certainly not to be worshipped.

But why, I came to think, would a conscious entity be required? We don't think a conscious choice is involved in operating according to the laws of nature, why should a conscious choice have to be involved in establishing them? Again stripping away the unnecessary, which any sort of God-like being certainly appeared to be, I moved rather quickly through agnosticism and wound up, finally, by my early 20s, an atheist.

So that was it, a process of gradually removing what seemed unnecessary to an understanding of life, the universe, and everything until what’s left is the laws of nature themselves. Ultimately, it just makes more sense. I’ve been known to explain it by saying that we are faced with two choices: In one case, we struggle to explain the nature of existence and how it came to be ex nihilo. That is, we can’t explain*, at least not yet, where the universe “came from.” In the other, we have a universe whose origins we can’t explain so we do it by postulating it was created out of nothing by an all-powerful being, who we then define as unknowable. Same result - the ultimate cause is beyond our explanation - but in the latter case we have added complexity without adding clarity. What’s more, in the first case we may yet find an answer while in the second we’ve defined it out of existence. I have one - just one - root conviction is this regard, which is that nature, existence, is not unnecessarily complicated. God is precisely that sort of complication. Or, as I put it to an email friend a few years ago,

[t]here is much I do not understand about the universe, about existence, about life and thought and consciousness; a tiny fraction of what I don’t understand, no one understands; a tiny fraction of what no one understands may perhaps never be understood. But to be honest, I’m not moved to explain what is currently (even what may remain) inexplicable by postulating the existence of something beyond what we can know, a something which is then defined as inexplicable. The universe is wonder enough for me.

Because yes, contrary to what theists of various stripes have told me upon hearing of my atheism, not believing in God does not remove wonder from the world. If anything, it adds to it. As I wrote to that same friend on another occasion,

understanding does not deny wonder.

A couple of weeks ago was a prime time in the northern hemisphere for seeing “Earthshine,” the phenomena where part of the shadowed disk of a crescent Moon is dimly visible. It’s being lit by sunlight reflected from the Earth to the Moon. I know what it is, I know how and why it happens, I know how far away the Moon is and what it’s made of, I can explain the Moon’s effect on the tides and how and why phases of the Moon occur, I can talk about solar and lunar eclipses, about how the Moon is “gravitationally locked” and about how and why it’s slowly moving further and further away from the Earth. I know all that, I understand all that. But do you think I wasn’t out there looking at Earthshine, smiling with enjoyment at how, yes, I could see some of the shadowed areas? If anything, thinking about the journey that light made from the depths of the Sun, across millions of miles of space, to the Earth, to the Moon, and back to the Earth to my eyes, made the experience even more amazing.

Trying to fully conceive of that journey in every detail is mind-boggling. (If you have some understanding of physics and anatomy, I invite you to try it for yourself.)

I regard myself as a spiritual person in that I embrace an awareness of life and of an underlying unity of life, indeed of existence. I used to wonder how, if my body, my skin, the hair on my arms, could actually be seen at a molecular level, the viewer could tell where I stopped and the air around me began. I’ve pondered the almost unfathomable meaning of the fact that by our best current understanding spacetime itself, the very fabric of existence, is on the most basic level a sort of seething foam with bits constantly popping into and out of existence. (And indeed, what then does it mean to “exist?”) I’ve thought about language, about the creation of a thought at a particular moment in a particular person’s mind, about the miracle - if I can use that term to describe something that would remain wondrous to behold even if it were to be explained - of consciousness. I have been aware of how irrelevant we are to the universe, which got along quite well before we appeared and will continue on its merry way for unimaginable eons after we vanish.

The last point also seems to speak against God, or at the very least label the traditional Judeo-Christian God (who created us to know him, love him, and be happy with him in heaven - the Baltimore Catechism strikes again) as incredibly inefficient.

The bottom line is that the concept of God is unnecessary to an understanding of the universe and embracing that concept may - may - inhibit that understanding by discouraging questioning beyond a certain point and making unknowns into just something that “God did and that's good enough for me” rather than something to be investigated and understood.

By logic, by conviction, by understanding, by embrace of wonder and most especially the wonder of discovery and learning, I am an atheist.

But let me be clear: I do not believe. But, unlike some of my compatriots, I do not condemn religion. (In fact, I find the preference of some atheists to call themselves “freethinkers” with the implication that theists do not think for themselves, rather offensive.) I have known too many people for who their religious faith provided a foundation for a life of justice and courage to ever deny it can be a path for some. And I mean not only people like Dan and Phil Berrigan and Dorothy Day but people I have known personally. However, beyond the clear history of devastation that can be laid at the doorstep of religious dogma, I have also seem too many people - again including people I have known personally - who were trapped by their religion, not liberated by it, to even begin to accept it as a path for everyone.

As a general rule, I regard beliefs about Ultimate Truth to be philosophical and personal. As long as they remain so - that is, as long as they are not used as a basis for formulating public policy - they don’t concern me as a citizen. But when that line, and despite some claims, it’s a pretty bright one, is crossed, we take a step toward theocracy, and that does concern me, greatly. The point is, it’s the public policies, not the private beliefs, that matter to me. As an example, I had no problem with Robert Drinan. As another, I have no problem with Mitt Romney being a Mormon; it’s the policies he advocates that I reject. As a third, when Mike Huckabee says he’s against same-sex marriage, he’s being repugnant - but the repugnance lies not in his conservative Christianity but in his bigotry. On the other hand, when he says we should change the Constitution because of what God “says,” he is not only being repugnant, he has gone beyond the bounds of democracy itself.

I seem to have gotten a bit off my track, but I really haven’t, because the role of religion in public life is a directly related topic. Last May I mentioned a poll that asked people “If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president who happened to be [fill in the blank], would you vote for that person?” They inquired about 10 separate characteristics: Catholic, Jewish, Mormon, black, female, Hispanic, married for the third time, seventy-two years old, homosexual, and atheist. In the case of atheist and only in the case of atheist, a majority of those polled said they would not vote for that person. Certainly, in each case the “no” figure was lower than it is actually is in real life (since the question is asking people to confess to a prejudice), but that only serves to emphasize that a prejudice against nonbelievers in public affairs is very real and very deep. (I don’t have the info to link to it, but not that long ago there was a survey done of Congress which could find only one member who would admit even to being agnostic.)

The thing is, according to various surveys, somewhere between 3% and 9% of Americans are atheists (depending on how tightly you define the term). Ask around. You probably know one - or even more.

So I suppose that really is why this quiet atheist, who I expect will remain a quiet atheist, has plastered the scarlet letter on his blog: Consider it a declaration of equal citizenship.


*I am aware of the general agreement that the universe we observe was born of a random fluctuation in the quantum vacuum. It fits what we know and what is derived from that. What I am unsatisfied with are the explanations of what gave rise to that quantum vacuum, some of which, such as the assertion that the energy level of the universe is actually zero so it didn’t “come from” anywhere, strike me as just mathematical tricks rather than explanations.

Better late - never mind, just late

I'm late to this party, too. It seems to be my condition of the past few weeks, always running behind.

In any case, Dave at Orcinus is doing his annual fundraiser. I think Orcinus is one of the most important blogs out there exposing and combatting the hate-filled rhetoric and barely-concealed (and occasionally unconcealed) blood lust of the wacko right from white supremacists to Ann Coulter to Jonah Goldberg.

So if you got some scratch to spare, drop by there and drop something in the bucket.

Bleh

Okay, the deal here is that I am miserably and I mean miserably sick. Diarrhea, nausea, the whole nine yards. There is no way I'm up to writing a big piece tonight. I will try to be back tomorrow, but I can't make any promises.

To tide you over, I thought I'd refer you to a few comments I've made other places over the last day or two, comments which unfortunately took all the energy I had to spare. Still, you might find something of interest.

-At The Core 4, Tito and I got into a back-and-forth about Ralph Nader and the 2000 election.

-At Lean Left, I had a few thoughts about voter ID laws. (Scroll down in comments.) Of course, if you've been reading here the past couple of weeks, you already know what I think.

- Also at Lean Left, there was an exchange about evolution and creationism. Again, I came in toward the end, so scroll down. Much the same thing got hashed out a few days earlier, and again as usual I'm late to the party.

Noted in passing

I gave up following AmericaBlog a while back. It started two years ago when chief wanker John Aravosis slashed John Kerry for saying he would filibuster the nomination of Sam Alito to the Supreme Court. JohnA, as I commented at the time,

says [he] wants Alito to "go down in flames" but refuses to use the one tool now available to try to light the fire, instead melting into a fetid puddle of trembling goo at the first breath of the word "obstructionist."

In his post, he demanded to know how the attempt to filibuster Alito would benefit the Democrats. Besides regarding that consideration as "amoral," I said it would do so

[b]y showing they stand for something, dammit! By showing some backbone. By showing there are some things they will go to the mat for instead of walking away from the fight, muttering yet again "wait until next time."

Despite initial appearances, this excursion into what might seem ancient history actually is relevant. Y'see, I do still check out AmericaBlog from time to time and in doing so today, I discovered that this very model of an inside-the-Beltway blogger had just had a serious Aha! moment. Responding to Bush's assertion that he was going to ignore the Congressional prohibition against establishing permanent bases in Iraq, JohnA said:

Why don't we all just go home now. ... So seriously, why are we here? If you guys aren't going to defend yourselves, how can we count on you to defend the country? ...

And they wonder why they keep getting screwed. Oh yeah, it's because we don't have 60 votes in the Senate. Uh huh. Does anyone really believe that once we get 60 Democratic Senators in the Senate suddenly the Dems will grow a spine? Please. Come back next year when the Republicans still filibuster, still offer horrendous legislation taking away our most basic and most sacred rights, and the Dems still join them. Then they'll tell us if we just had 70 Democratic Senators...

Well, welcome to the real world, JohnA, the one where some of us have been complaining about spinelessness for some time. I don't expect you to stay long since it's a place where $75,000 a year ain't chump change, but you're welcome back any time.

Failure 101

Oops! I sign on tonight and discover that I completely forgot to post yesterday's piece! Speaking of failures.... Oh my, I need to keep writing myself notes or something. Since I had the chance, I slightly rewrote this; the Footnote is an addition.

We have failed. And we have been failed.

I mean we, us, the broad we, the peace (or, if you prefer, antiwar) movement we, the social justice movement we. I don’t necessarily mean on any particular issue or any particular bill, but overall. We have failed through lack of courage and love of comfort, by preferring accommodation to action and concession to contention. Even in “victory,” the underlying failure is visible.

As you may realize, I’m referring in that last sentence to the debate, if you can call it that, over the Protect America Act, or PAA (an appropriate acronym, one pronounced "pah", defined as an interjection “used to express disgust or irritation”). That’s the debate that saw the Really Big Victory of Senate Democrats shooting down a GOPper cloture motion designed to block any discussion of any amendments. Yes, Victory! Hooray! Cake and ice cream all around!

Except -

Except that as Glenn Greenwald rather forcibly pointed out,

[t]he only reason Democrats were able to hold their caucus together today to filibuster is because The Senators were offended that their inalienable Senatorial Right to vote on amendments was deprived by the GOP's premature Cloture Motion.

That is, this had nothing to do with concern over telcom immunity or spying on citizens or justifying criminality after the fact or any reluctance to put more and more power in BushCo.’s hands or any other reasonable or worthy cause. It was a fit of pique. If cloture had not been filed “prematurely,” Harry “I really am opposed to immunity, I swear” Reid likely would have had a quick series of up-or-down votes on various amendments which in each case majorities of Senators would happily vote down in an attempt to push through a Bush-pleasing bill as quickly as possible.

To be clear: A majority of the Senate is prepared to give the WHS* everything they want and the Democratic “leadership” is prepared to let it happen, indeed to enable it (by having made the Intelligence Committee bill instead of the Judiciary Committee bill the primary one), all so long as their egos get stroked the right way and their procedural prerogatives are not disturbed.

This is not a victory except insofar as a short stay of execution is a victory.

So, as has been asked before and I’m sure will be asked again, where is the outrage? Where is the indignation over what the Senate appears entirely prepared to do? Where is the furor over untrammeled authority to intrude, invade, and impact without oversight of any meaningful sort, over the casual intention to shield corporate criminality?

I don’t mean to denigrate the work that various people have put in on this and I don’t in any way intend to dismiss the outpouring of support for Senator Dodd’s declared intention to filibuster final passage if the bill contains telcom immunity, even less to dismiss his own efforts. (I noted here some of the contacts I made on just that point, so I would be trivializing my own efforts if I was dismissive now.) But the fact remains that in the face of the hard reality that the Senate appears entirely willing to fold yet again, there is almost no reaction, no outrage - and more importantly, no serious attempt to generate any among the “leaders” in our not-worth-the-name “movement.” And no, pushing for phone calls and email petitions is not “generating outrage.” Organizing sit-ins in the offices of Harry Reid and John Rockefeller would come a lot closer, but bluntly there is no chance the “leading” organizations - and here I specifically include those who agreed to back off on efforts to end funding for the Iraq war - would push for any such thing. Rather, they would oppose them. And in that refusal, in that opposition, is the meaning and the measure of our failure.

I see one of the purposes, one of the basic reasons for the existence, of any peace or justice movement as trying to push beyond, whether in the issues we address, the tactics we employ, or even the analysis we present, where society is already willing to go and that where government has agreements with us, our position shouldn’t be “yes,” it should be “yes, but....” We have an obligation to say the things that otherwise wouldn’t be said, to raise the issues that otherwise wouldn’t be raised, to agitate and educate in ways that otherwise wouldn’t be used for agitation and education. We have an obligation to be what others aren’t yet willing to be, to perpetually say “We can do better.” That's what we exist for. The result of that obligation, I believe, is that to the extent a peace or justice movement settles comfortably into its political surroundings, to the extent it ceases to be a creative irritant, a moral and logical gadfly, to those in power, no matter who that might be, to that extent it fails its responsibilities. And by that standard, this movement is clearly failing.

In a real sense, the essence of any peace or justice movement is to lose - not to fail, but to lose. Because once any victory is won, it’s time to move on. I recall that it was supposedly e. e. cummings who wrote something to the effect that “the wise man always fights for the lost cause, knowing that all else is merely effect.” (Completely irrelevant but interesting sidebar: There are those who argue that it should be written E. E. Cummings unless used as the signature on a poem. The folks at the E. E. Cummings Society have expended considerable effort on this point. Personally, I can't see where it's that damned important.)

I guess I imagine a movement, ideally, as cycling through four stages: In Stage One, we press our view with the public and those in power, arguing, informing, educating, gesticulating. In Stage Two, we’ve won public support and instead of pressing our case to those in power and the public, we can legitimately claim to be pressing it to those in power on behalf of the public. Stage Three, when the public has raised its own voice and those in power are responding, either willingly or, more likely, as the result of political force, should generate Stage Four - which is when the movement cycles back to Stage One either on a new issue or a more radical perspective on the same issue. But what we see now is a movement that went off the rails somewhere between Stages One and Two and instead of pressing the case to those in power, it pressed a case on behalf of those who wanted power and with whose interests it had come to identify itself - the "those" here being, as I know you realize, the Democrats.

So instead of the activist, energetic, aggressive peace and justice movement for which I feel there is a great need (both locally and nationally), we have the increasingly-jacketed-and-tied mien of movement “leaders” who think that the cause is best advanced by prowling the halls of power and seem to regard their new-found (and marginal) access there as proof of their importance and now find boisterous, blustering, disheveled, and (“Still Crazy After All These Years”) sometimes hairy demonstrations - that is, the very kinds of actions that pried open the gates of power through which they’ve passed - vaguely distasteful.

More than distasteful, in fact, just plain bad. Demonstrations have been labeled "chaotic," inefficient, pointless wastes of time, just a means of "self-expression" unrelated to effective political action. Before the 2004 Democratic convention, one top blogger wondered in all seriousness why there were going to be protests there and suggested only "the usual loonies" and "the crazies" would protest the Democrats. Demonstrations during the GOPper convention that same year were discouraged on the grounds that they would be seen as "disrespectful" of Bush. These same leading lights also discouraged the counter-inaugurals in January 2005 because "they will make us look like sore losers," thereby openly acknowledging their identification of "advancing justice" with "electing Democrats." And the September 2005 rally was denounced before the fact on the grounds that the involvement of groups like ANSWER would be "divisive" and the action would damage all efforts to do many many good things - and, bizarrely, denounced (albeit at a lower volume) after the fact on much the same grounds even though it had come off without a hitch.

All this was done in the interest of being seen as "serious," as players, as involved, as insiders. That, we've been told, is the goal, the grail, what it's all about. Let me disillusion you bozos: You are not players, you are not insiders, and contrary to your burnished self-interested image in your fund appeals, you have no power. You have been co-opted, exploited, used, turned into party hacks and shills good for another round of fundraisers and little else. You think you have power because they return your calls, but here's some news: Power is not when you call them and they call back, power is when they call you.

I have written about this before, about how too much of our "movement"

is too god damned concerned with its own image. Too god damned concerned with being "respectable," with being seen as "serious," as truly "pro-American." Too god damned concerned with politics over praxis, with positioning over protest. As a result, it has surrendered tactical decisions to the leadership of the Democratic Party and moral leadership to a crew of inside-the-Beltway wannabes both on- and offline who have mocked demonstrations and made Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi the arbiters of the acceptable limits of debate. ...

[Well,] screw "respectability." Screw "seriousness." Screw "a seat at the table." And screw right down through the floor the fear that drives us to attack and isolate our own real and potential comrades because some right wing flakes and their media hack ass-lickers call them names.

Screw, that is, the self-deluding cowardice that has throttled our voices and hamstrung our efforts. I have said this omigosh I don't know how many times but I will keep on saying it: The movement for peace and social justice in this country has been at its strongest and most influential when it has spoken the truth without giving a flying damn if anyone was “offended” or not. We didn’t build a movement against the Indochina War by harping on the “shortcomings of both sides” but by blasting it for what it was, a monstrously immoral and evil enterprise which should be stopped immediately. We didn’t build movements for civil rights, women’s equality, or a cleaner environment by worrying about how we’d be received by bigots, sexists, or greedy corporate bosses - or how we’d “look” or who we’d “turn off” if we labeled the discriminators and despoilers for what they were. And we didn't do it by worrying about how we were going to impact the electoral chances of the Democrats!

But oh, these folks did worry. They worried, they worked, and they got their Democratic Congress in on pledges to end the war and stop the undermining of our civil liberties. And now, a year-plus later, there are more US troops in Iraq, hundreds of billions of dollars more have been approved, the big claimed achievement is that the rate of death and destruction is down to the peace-filled days of 2005 (a reduction due in significant part to a cease-fire by the Sadrists and the large-scale "success" of various drives for ethnic cleansing), GOPper candidates talk openly of a decades-long occupation and Dem candidates dither and dodge over whether troops would be out by the end of their first term, four or five years down the road - all happening while we have become less secure in our freedoms as our civil liberties come under increased pressure.

Our, and I do use the term advisedly, movement is afflicted with "leaders" so eager to be part of the “mainstream” (which we’ve let the right wing define - a right wing which in turn includes much of what passes for "liberal Democrats" these days), so eager to avoid “isolation,” so eager to be seen as “serious,” so tremblingly terrified of not being seen as 110% American, of being accused of being "soft on terrorism" or "risking national security," that we’ve been ready to trade real truth for rudimentary tolerance - and in so doing have become profound failures. Jim Hightower is fond of saying that “the only things found in the middle of the road are yellow lines and dead armadillos.” The "leaders" of the present US peace and justice movement, again both on- and offline, appear to bear the characteristics of both.

Do I overstate? Do I ignore the energetic activism that can been seen on any number of issues in any number of local communities? Am I overlooking the individual commitment shown by folks like Ashley Casale and Michael Israel, folks like John Nirenberg, omitting the dynamism of such as Code Pink and the organizing efforts of such as United for Peace and Justice? Am I unfair? In order: Probably. Yes and yes. But no, not to those I am describing, because none of that activism, that commitment, that dynamism, that organizing, is coming as a result of those "leaders." It is coming in spite of them.

So what should you be doing? For the immediate moment on the FISA bill, probably not much beyond what you're already doing because time is so short that organizing more is at best problematical. But you could tell your reps in Congress that, as I said a few days ago, their stand on the FISA deform bill (that's spelled right) can be a deal-breaker: "Fall short on this and I will not work for you, I will not contribute to you, and I will not vote for you." You could even tell them - and mean it - that this applies if after all is said and done there are either fewer restrictions on wiretapping or less oversight than existed last summer. "Our loss of civil liberties, the attack on the Fourth Amendment in particular, has gone far enough," you could say. "Not one step further."

More to the point, for one simple thing for starters, you could join Code Pink's pledge to refuse to pay that portion of your federal income taxes going to the Iraq War (about 7% by common estimate) if by April 5, 100,000 others pledge to do the same. Since they've gotten 710 names in six weeks, that goal seems out of reach to me so if you're ready to take that step or an even bigger one, you might check out the website of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (NWTRCC).

And you can damn well be ready to take to the streets on March 19.

By the way, have any of the Big Blogs mentioned either of these, the tax resistance or the demonstrations? Perhaps they have, but I haven't seen it. Have any of you? And what, if I'm right about their silence, does that say?

Footnote: Just to be complete, the situation about the FISA deform bill is more complex than what happens in the Senate over the next few days. The House has passed a two-week extension of the current PAA and Senate GOPpers, again with studied disingenuousness, have agreed to the same - provided that the Senate pass a White House-approved version of the bill this week. The intention, apparently, is to push the burden on the House, which has already passed a version containing more oversight than the Bushites want (ignoring for the moment that any oversight is more than they want) and no telcom immunity. It appears to me that the calculation of the troglodytes now is that if they can stampede the Senate into a quick surrender, they can use that as leverage against the House.

You might check here to see the sort of fear-mongering the conservative creeps and cretins are peddling.

*WHS = White House Sociopaths

The mouse bares its teeth to the cat

The Huffington Post reported yesterday that in a speech to the National Press Club,

Majority Leader Harry Reid issued a dramatic ultimatum to President Bush: either sign an extension of the Protect America Act (which sets conditions for the administration's warrantless surveillance) or "there will be no wiretapping."

He said if Bush charged the Senate was refusing to move the bill, "it's disingenuous, and it's not true." He also blamed Senate GOPpers for blocking majority-supported amendments to the FISA "reform" bill, amendments which would improve it or more exactly make it less bad. (I said that last part, not Reid.)

So even though the bill should be killed, not amended, I'd still say good for him for showing some backbone and it's about time and hooray and all that except for one thing: We've been down this road more than once and we've always crashed into the same wall. The Dems talk tough, they say "accept this or else," they bluster and fume, but when King George says "forget it," they get red in the face, shuffle their feet, and mumble "okay."

So pardon me for being skeptical, but if once burned is twice shy, then repeatedly burned is I'm not enough of an idiot to touch that again until after its been thoroughly doused with water.

On our own? You betcha!

Something that too easily slips away in the discussion about the FISA debate is a simple but vital point: First, consider that the House bill is, overall, better than the Senate bill. But don't stop there. Assume we could take the best parts of the House bill, the best parts of the Senate Judiciary Committee bill, and the best parts (if there are any) of the Senate Intelligence Committee bill and combine them into the best bill that could possibly come out of this. That bill would still provide more power for, and less oversight of, electronic surveillance by the White House than existed last August when this whole mess started with the "temporary" FISA "reform."

Keep that in mind in whatever follows with this debate: Add a Democratic majority in the House lead by the "liberal" Nancy Pelosi to a Democratic majority in the Senate lead by the "moderate" Harry Reid and the best we can do is be somewhat worse off than we were before. The only question is how much worse.

That seems to be the pattern, at least on matters of privacy, Constitutional rights, and foreign policy, as the Dimcrats go limp like a cheap candle under a sunlamp the instant anyone in the White House mutters the words "national security" or "terrorism." what's even more frustrating, better yet infuriating, is that the Dums barely even pretend to be doing anything about it, satisfying themselves with trying to boast of toughness by refusing to give Bush every little detail he wants - that is, before they do it anyway.

Which means that when in the previous post I mentioned failures of organization, power, leadership, and nerve, I left out the most important failure, left it out because it's one that need not be demonstrated by the debate over the current FISA bill because it already has been: a failure - or rather an utter lack - of principle. Note that I said the White House so desperately wants telcom immunity in order to hide its own criminality and that the lawsuits the provision would block are "now the only practical means available" to prevent that. They are that because the real means to bring out that criminality, the real means of holding the thugs responsible for their actions, the real means of restoring Constitutional limits on the Executive Branch, that is, the I-word, has been ruled out of bounds, beyond consideration, "off the table," as recently as a few days ago:

U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she’s drawing heat from fellow Democratic lawmakers as well as people across the nation for refusing to move to impeach President George W. Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney. ...

But the California Democrat said she is sticking to her position that trying to remove Bush or Cheney would be divisive, and she added, most likely unsuccessful. ...

“It was my belief that an impeachment of the Vice President or the President … would be very divisive in our country, and that is what I believed then,” Pelosi said. “It should have come to no surprise when I became Speaker I said it again, and I continue to hold that view.”

Well, guess what, Nance, I don't think anyone was surprised. They just think you're driving the getaway car for the Bushites' theft of the Constitution. Or, less flippantly, by refusing to even try to hold the Shrub gang accountable for their lies, their crimes (including obstruction of justice and destruction of evidence), their declaration of virtually unlimited power to spy, to imprison, to torture, their insistence that they can (through "signing statements") exempt themselves from any law at will, their dismissal of the rightful powers of Congress (via refused testimony, ignored subpoenas, etc.), indeed their utter contempt for anything other than their own sense of entitlement to power and domination, by not even trying to hold them accountable, you are setting not just a bad but a thoroughly dangerous precedent for all future presidents who can and assuredly will justify their own power-grabs in much the same way the GOPpers initially did (until you proved by your inaction that even this excuse was unnecessary): They will take "Clinton did it" and simply substitute, with considerably greater accuracy, "Bush."

I admit I have not been terribly vocal about impeachment; it's not a subject I have returned to on a lot of occasions. Moreoever, early on I was not particularly interested in it. I saw it as a diversion, something that would soak up a lot of energy without advancing our real causes. That is, not wrong but a tactical mistake. At the same time, I was glad that there were others pushing for it because, as I said somewhere or another, I wanted the idea to be constantly bubbling in the background in case something provoked an outcry that would bring it to the fore, already primed, in the way the "Saturday night massacre" did. What changed it for me was the Downing Street memos, which were publicly-available, documented evidence of Bush, et. al., having lied in the runup to the Iraq invasion, indeed well before it in planning to make it happen. In which case, I said in May of '05,

why in the flaming hell is there no resolution of impeachment? I don't give two shits - or even one, for that matter - about "it wouldn't do any good." I don't give a damn if it has no chance! Some things you just do because they are right. Because the point is not even "can we win" but "how can we not try?" Any member of Congress - and I mean any member of Congress - who at this point is not willing to stand up and be counted is a disgrace to their office, a disgrace to their Constitutional duties, and a disgrace to this country.

But no, it was not to be, not even the attempt. It was "off the table" because, no matter the merits, no matter the facts, Bush had to be given a free pass because not being (or, more honestly, not being seen as) "divisive" was more important than maintaining the rule of law and the Constitution and because, oh the piteous whine that has become the hallmark, the interval signal, of the democrats, "we don't have the votes."

"We don't have the votes." How many times have we heard that same sad song, that same lame excuse not only for failure but for the failure to even make an attempt? We can't impeach, we don't have the votes. We can't overcome filibusters, we don't have the votes. We can't get legislation passed, we don't have the votes. And most frequently and most piteous-whiningly, we can't stop the war because we don't have the votes.

Over and over again we've heard it. Constituents of Ron Wyden (D-OR) heard it just this month. Hillary Clinton said it to the Guardian in October. That same month, Arianna Huffington quoted Henry Waxman as having shrugged it to Politico. In fact, we've heard it from almost the very start: Way back in March, less than two months after the sparkling-new Democratic Congress has opened on a pledge to end the war,

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) berated a woman who approached him in a Congressional corridor, claiming that “idiot liberals” don’t understand the war supplemental spending bill process. ...

Asked about passing a resolution to end the war, Obey screamed that they did not have the votes.

“We don’t have the votes to pass [a resolution],” he yelled. “We couldn’t even get the votes to pass a non-binding resolution one week ago. How the hell do you think we’re going to get the votes to cut off the war?”

(Brackets in original.)

It's been the excuse for failure all along. At the first sign of resistance, the slogan changed from "holding the president to account" to "don't have the votes," the attitude went from "look out, here we come" to "pity poor us," the cheer shifted from "rah, rah" to "wah, wah." "We don't have the votes" was and remains an excuse for timidity, for cowardly refusal on the part of the misleadership to, you'll pardon the expression, bite the bullet and flatly cut off funding for the war by refusing to bring to the floor bills containing funds for it. In fact, they didn't even have to be that brave: As several people, including me, argued, Congress could pass a funding bill with enforceable restrictions and in the wake of a veto, pass the same bill again: "Hey, Mr. Prez, if you want the money, you agree to these terms. No agreement, no moolah." But even that was beyond them.

(Sidebar: The supplemental bill Obey said the "idiot liberals" didn't understand provided $100 billion for the war and set a deadline of August 31, 2008 for having most troops out. It didn't survive what I call a "gentlemen's filibuster" in the Senate, one of those Harry Reid/Mitch McConnell deals where the GOPpers declare an intent to filibuster but never actually have to do it because a cloture vote is scheduled immediately and upon first failure the measure is withdrawn. Showing its iron will in seeking an end to the carnage, the House responded by passing the cash minus the restrictions, leaving floating the question of just who really are the "idiots.")

Oh, they still like to talk tough, they still like to proclaim how much they hate the war, how much they want to end it, but the truth is they have given up even the pretense of doing anything about it. Because they "don't have the votes."

Bullshit. Of course they have the votes. If Nancy Pelosi was as stubborn about ending the war as she is about quashing impeachment, if she showed as much willingness to use muscle against the Blue Dog Democrats as she was last spring in pressuring supporters of the Lee Amendment to drop the idea, I have no doubt - zero - that she could engineer a majority to stiffly oppose funding the war. In the Senate, filibusters work both ways and it would take only 41 Senators to block any funding bill. So yes, they have the votes.

But they keep puling, keep hiding behind what Huffington quotes David Sirota as aptly calling the "Innocent Bystander Fable." Still, even fables can have their believers, and the Democratic Party caucus of the antiwar movement has bought into this one. Politico reported last week that

[a]fter a series of legislative defeats in 2007 that saw the year end with more U.S. troops in Iraq than when it began, a coalition of anti-war groups is backing away from its multimillion-dollar drive to cut funding for the war and force Congress to pass timelines for bringing U.S. troops home.

In recognition of hard political reality, the groups instead will lower their sights and push for legislation to prevent President Bush from entering into a long-term agreement with the Iraqi government that could keep significant numbers of troops in Iraq for years to come.

[John] Isaacs[, executive director of Council for a Livable World,] said he thought the meeting would be a difficult one, with an adamant faction pressing for continued focus on timelines and funding. It wasn’t to be.

“We got our heads together and decided to go a different way,” Isaacs said. “The consensus was not to keep beating our heads against the wall trying to block every funding bill - not because we don’t agree with it, but because we don’t have the votes.” [emphasis added]

(Thanks to James at The Mahatma X Files for the link.)

Among other groups present were MoveOn.org, Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, and Win Without War, and yes, this is the Democratic Party caucus of the antiwar movement: It was openly asserted by people at the meeting that the shift in focus will serve to "draw clear distinctions between anti-war Democrats and pro-war Republicans" and will help Democrats in the upcoming elections.

Which brings me to the end by bringing me back to the beginning: What has been revealed over these last months is a lack of principle. Or, I guess to be completely accurate, I should say there is a principle, but it is not a moral one or an ethical one and it does not focus on ending the war or undoing the assaults on the Constitution, on the rule of law, and on human decency. It is, rather, a political one and the principle is elect Democrats. That's what all the posturing is about. That's why the Dimcrats were willing to pass "antiwar" legislation they knew would be vetoed only to refuse to stand by it when it was: They wanted to look like they were trying to end the war without having to take any political risk to do it.

I said it in March (more than once), I said it in August, I said it in October, I will say it again now: The Democrats are not serious about ending the war, they are not serious about opposing Bush. What they are serious about is positioning for the 2008 elections and who gives a damn about the lives, American (and allied) and even more Iraqi, ruined in the meantime.

It goes beyond the war. Surely, a big reason for the failures, backtracking, and wimping out by the Dumcrats on wiretapping and similar issues is a crawling fear that ooh, some GOPper might call them bad names in the fall, so better to let Shrub run riot than risk being labeled "soft on national security." And David Swanson of AfterDowningStreet.org (and several other outfits), writing in the November/December issue of The Humanist, after noting that polls show clear majorities of Americans favor impeachment of both Bush and Cheney (and this is, of course, before hearings that would focus attention on their offenses), writes

the Democratic leadership in Congress believes it to be of the utmost importance to keep Bush and Cheney around, the theory being that this will help Democrats in the November 2008 elections.

I'm not so sure about that, since I can't imagine that having the GOPpers being viewed as a party of crooked, reactionary, lying, slimebuckets (in short, fairly) would not be helpful to Pelosi-Reid, Inc. On the other hand, I would not be the first to have a suspicion that among the reasons that the Dummycrats have not challenged Bush with true rigor is that they actually would not mind having those same powers in the hands of one of their own and would willingly embrace the precedent when the opportunity arises - and therefore want to be very cautious about impugning it. Certainly the lack of both moral principles and ethical backbone they have shown thus far on some of the central issues of our time generates no degree of doubt on that score. And if you would still deny even the possibility, remember that this is the party that has declared impeachment is "off the table" but additional power for the Executive and additional blood money for occupation and death is very much on it and ask yourself again.

Didn't I tell you?

Didn't I? Haven't I been saying all along that we are on our own? Today's Washington Post says that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-WobblyKnees)

said he is personally opposed to granting legal protections to the communications companies, but he has designated the intelligence committee's bill as the starting point for Senate debate[, which beings today]. Given the Senate's composition, that decision means that opponents would effectively need 60 votes to strip immunity from the bill; Democratic aides concede they do not appear to have the votes to meet that threshold.

The Intelligence Committes's version of the bill includes telcom immunity; the competing Judiciary Committee version does not. Yet Reid chose to present the Intelligence Committee version, the one with the provision he "personally opposes" and which those involved expect will not be removed, with Intelligence Committee Chair John Rockefeller (D-MyBallsAreAsBigAsYourBallsReallyIMeanIt) saying his committee's version "will prevail."

The reason for the 60-vote requirement, as I expect you know but is worth mentioning if only to point out that these articles never seem to explain it, is that the GOPpers will simply threaten to filibuster any amendment to strip immunity from the bill and the Dums will immediately fold. What Reid could do in response would be to say "Fine, filibuster," schedule a cloture vote for every single day it continued and every time one failed go out (and I mean go out in front of the cameras, no "issued a statement") and say "Republicans are blocking consideration of this bill in order to protect corporate criminals."

But he won't. He won't because he and the rest of the Dimcratic "leadership" are a bunch of gutless wimps who run screaming from the mere possibility of being called "soft on terrorism" by people like "The Big" Dick Cheney, who

said in a speech yesterday that Congress "must act now" to renew the expiring surveillance law....

"Those who assist the government in tracking terrorists should not be punished with lawsuits," Cheney said at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

Of course, the Dims could respond by saying "We're aware that Mr. Cheney believes that his friends in government (:cough: Scooter Libby) and among corporations (:cough: Halliburton) and most of all the White House - at least when Republicans are occupying it - should be free to ignore the law at their pleasure, but that's not the way our system of government works." The chances of that are rather less than zero - especially considering that the conscious intent of the entire bill itself is to legalize the illegal White House domestic spying program that began in 2001.

Even given all that, there is yet another way Reid could act.

Once the Senate acts, the bill would go to a conference committee that includes members of the House, which has approved a bill that lacks immunity provisions and would increase oversight of the government's spying activities. In the end, a final Senate bill is unlikely to be approved until next week, leaving little time for negotiations with House lawmakers, legislative aides said.

Reid chooses the Senate conferees. He could just pick people who oppose immunity and will agree to adopt the House language on it (and on oversight); he could even insist (with a straight face) to all and sundry that it's the White House that insists that passage of a final bill is urgently needed to "protect the nation" and he's actively cooperating with that demand by avoiding having the bill bogged down in last-minute negotiations.

Of course, the idea of Reid doing any such thing is laughable. Equally if not more laughable is the idea of his having pursued the actual best course, which would have been to not bring up the bill at all, letting it die and reverting to the old FISA law, which had its drawbacks but was clearly superior to what's being pushed now. Just how laughable that is can be seen from the fact that the Washington Post article describes Reid as

pleading with the White House for more time to consider the issue,

that is, more or less begging the Shrub gang for permission to do his damn job.

There is still Chris Dodd's threat to filibuster any version of a FISA bill which includes immunity and that effort deserves clear support. For my part, I've called both my Senators as well as Clinton's and Obama's offices and campaign HQs and told them that as far as I'm concerned, this is a deal-breaker. Fail on this and I will not work for you, I will not contribute to you, and I will not vote for you. Period. (Not that I necessarily would have anyway, but they don't know that.) There is, however, a real question of whether or not Dodd's effort can succeed: First is the fact that when Dodd did this the last time, Harry "I'm personally opposed to immunity" Reid was clearly not happy about it and I wouldn't be the least surprised if this time Dodd was told by the "leadership" (which has shown so little of it, it probably should be called the "followership") that "You've made your point, now shut up."

Indeed, last week Crooks and Liars cited Roll Call in suggesting that Dodd had become "very isolated" within the Democratic caucus, noting the magazine had quoted an unnamed "senior Democratic aide" as saying there may be "hard feelings" in the wake of Dodd's presidential campaign and these could be "a key few months for him" for reingratiating - excuse me, "reintegrating" - himself with the caucus.

For those not fluent in DC passive-aggressive speak[, Crooks and Liars said], allow me to translate the “anonymous Democratic aide” for you: “okay, we know you needed to do something to stand out from the pack during your campaign, but now you need to get in line, or you’ll find yourself at odds with your caucus.”

Or, more directly, "You've made your point, now shut up."

Second is the fact that the same Harry "I'm personally opposed, I really am!" Reid said yesterday that any filibusters would have to be the old-fashioned stand-up-and-talk kind, not the wink-and-a-nudge kind the GOPpers have been allowed to engage in. Now, in fairness, I have to note that today, Reid indicated that this applied to all such attempts - which means that a move to filibuster the Dodd-Feingold amendment, which would strip the immunity provision, would also have to be a stand-and-talk kind. That increases the chance that the amendment would pass - but it also means that should it fail, blocking the final bill is made much harder.

Again, this is, or at least should be, a deal-breaker. Failure on this, on something so basic as insisting that corporations obey the law, would be a failure not of Harry Reid or John Rockefeller or any of the rest of them as individuals, but of the Democratic Party as an institution. A failure at organizing, a failure at the use of power, a failure of leadership, a failure, ultimately, of nerve. The former pair being especially true and the latter pair especially important because the lawsuits that the telcoms face are now the only practical means available for forcing into the public sphere any details of the White House's criminality in its illegal spying operations. Which, of course, is why, beyond its natural affection for its corporate cronies, the Shrub gang is so eager for immunity: They're protecting themselves as well as the telcoms.

If Dodd does succeed, if there is some improvement, it will have happened only because one person, to the astonishment of his own party and contrary to the cynical contentions of pundits who said it was just a campaign stunt, actually decided to stand on a principle and, much more importantly, it generated a chorus of public support in the form not only of blog posts but letters, emails, petitions, and phone calls (leading to, I can say of today, some jammed phone lines and at least one staffer clearly irritated with having to field yet another call on the same topic).

Put another way, we are indeed on our own. That, however, does not mean we are powerless. Not completely, anyway.

I believe

So it seems that for the second time in a row, I have at the last minute dropped what I was intending to write about for my twice-a-week effort and started on something else. No matter; my original topic, which had to do with the uselessness of looking to the Dummycrats for salvation and my frustration with those who, despite all the evidence to the contrary, continue to do so, will keep for another time.

What prompted the change is that today, Monday, is of course Martin Luther King day. So instead of another session of grousing and griping, denouncing and decrying, I thought I would try to be positive for once, even if it required raiding some of my old writings. In my very first post here, a bit over four years ago, I referred to a conversation I'd just had with a friend in which I said

"The truth is, my hope is nearly gone. My anger is the only thing that keeps me going."

So now I have an outlet to express that anger, to discuss what I'm angry about, why I'm angry, and, in my calmer moments, to try to rediscover that hope and offer a different vision of what we as a people, a nation, a culture, might do, might be, might become.

I haven't done as much of that rediscovering as I should, at least not overtly. Still, as I said a long time ago,

[e]ven many professional grouches (like me) are actually unregenerate romantics whose sharp words are honed on the inexplicable, indefensible, yet utterly unshakable conviction that things not only can be but must be better than they are.

What's more, quoting yet another thing I wrote a long time ago and quoting as accurately as I can from memory, "our strongest, surest beliefs are those we don't even know we have until we find them within us." That is, our deepest, most abiding beliefs and commitments are not born consciously of careful philosophical argumentation and reasoned analysis but grow naturally from our root moral and ethical convictions. That argumentation, those analyses, can give form to those convictions, they can provide them with substance and weight, but they do not drive them - rather, they are driven by them.

So despite my tendency to intellectualization, to try to argue my points rationally with facts and figures and references, still it's important - for me if not for my listeners - to drop away on occasion from "here's the data, here's the logic, here's the conclusion" to the fundamental, baseline, radical place where I can say, simply, I believe.

I believe that life is our highest good and advancing life is our highest ideal. I believe whatever advances life, improves life, is an expression of that special crystal-glitter quality “human,” that self-awareness, that capacity for love, that reach for hope that separates us from other animals. I believe that which opposes life, which advances hunger, oppression, and violence, are a rejection of that quality, a rejection of our humanity. I believe that to be human is to reach for life, for our potential, to reject death and all that advances death.

I believe in family, a broad, deep sense of family, of family as based on commitment, not on ceremonies, based on ties the heart, not on ties of the blood. I believe we must reach beyond the personal to the public; beyond self to others; beyond us and them to we; beyond the individual to the community. I believe we have social obligations, moral commitments to a type of extended family that includes strangers, people who we'll never see, never meet, never have any contact with, but with who we share a mutual obligation, a mutual moral duty, a community extending even to the community of humanity.

I believe we must ultimately reject the right of so few to have so much when so many have so little, the power of so few to control so much when so many control so little. I believe in the right of every human being to a decent life free of hunger, fear, and oppression and in the duty of society to strive to guarantee that right. I believe that while we should have no desire to place a ceiling over anyone’s aspirations, we should desire to put a floor under everyone’s needs.

I believe, ultimately, in justice: not in perfection or idealized utopias, but in simple human justice, a justice that rejects the ascendancy of bombs over bread, of private greed over public good, of profits over people. A justice that centers on the preciousness of life and will fight to maintain and even expand that preciousness. A justice that embraces the economic, the social, and the political. And finally, I believe in the indivisibility of that justice: It must be justice for “them” as well as for “us,” for enemy the same as for friend, or it’s not justice at all but mere favoritism.

As for the application of all that, I'll quote a speech I gave when I ran for Congress - again, it was some years back.

Now I may sound like a philosopher, but the fact is that what I’m interested in is change: not slogans, not philosophies, but getting-the-job-done type change. That means being hard-nosed, practical, and factual in our programs. It was the Italian pacifist Danilo Dolci who said “Faith does not move mountains. Work, exacting work, moves mountains.”

But when I say “practical,” I don’t mean practical in the sense of the neoliberals, those people who lower their sights, harden their hearts, darken their vision, and then congratulate themselves on their “realism.” No, I mean something different. You know the saying “I dream dreams of things that never were and ask ‘Why not?’” What we have to do is dream dreams of things that never were and ask “How?” How? What are the practical steps we can take right now, today? We have to approach the world with steel in our eyes.

But at the same time we can’t let the steel in our eyes cloud the dream in our hearts. We have to hold to the vision of what we as a people, what we as a nation, can do, what we can be, and not settle, as so many do, for the mere hope that it will get no worse. So that’s what I call on you to be: steely-eyed dreamers, people who know the hard, factual work to be done but never forget just where that work is supposed to take them.

In that same speech I said that achieving wide-ranging justice "will not be easy, cheap, or convenient - but it is possible" and pledged I would never give up on that dream.

In the years since I've tried to be a steely-eyed dreamer with varying degrees of success; as I said in a different way at the top, usually it was if anything a little long on the steel and a little short on the dream, a position that makes unnecessary compromise a little too easy and risk a little too - well, risky.

I've come to a point in my life when I've begun to slow down; I know it, I can feel it. I haven't spent as much time on the streets as I did in earlier years (nor as much as I'd like to) and my energy level simply isn't what it was. I find it harder to keep my spirits up and many discouraged days I don't regret that I won't live to experience the world I see coming at such times.

But goddam it, despite it all, despite all logic, despite a mountain of evidence, and without any good damn reason, I still believe that things can be, must be, better than they are, that it is possible. I just do. And will.

And the beat goes on

The US is certainly not the only nation that has databases of citizens and others. In fact, the UK is worse in that regard and several European countries gather a lot of data. At the same time, though, those countries tend to have much better privacy protection, so it's a mixed bag. But like all such databases, the bigger they are, the more information they sweep up, the bigger a threat to privacy they become. And we're about to create a doozy. The Guardian (UK) had the word last week:

Senior British police officials are talking to the FBI about an international database to hunt for major criminals and terrorists.

The US-initiated programme, "Server in the Sky", would take cooperation between the police forces way beyond the current faxing of fingerprints across the Atlantic. Allies in the "war against terror" - the US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand - have formed a working group, the International Information Consortium, to plan their strategy.

Biometric measurements, irises or palm prints as well as fingerprints, and other personal information are likely to be exchanged across the network. ... The database could hold details of millions of criminals and suspects. ...

The FBI told the Guardian: "Server in the Sky is an FBI initiative designed to foster the advanced search and exchange of biometric information on a global scale. While it is currently in the concept and design stages, once complete it will provide a technical forum for member nations to submit biometric search requests to other nations. It will maintain a core holding of the world's 'worst of the worst' individuals. Any identifications of these people will be sent as a priority message to the requesting nation."

"Worst of the worst?" Wasn't that what the prisoners at Guantanamo were, according to then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumplestiltskin? Yeah, that was them, the prisoners at Guantanamo - half of who have been released and 90% of who ultimately will be, say US officials. That hardly inspires confidence in this latest list, particularly when the current database used by Customs and Border Protection to screen passangers has generated a 95% false hit rate and no terrorism-related arrests. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic,

the UK database [holds] 7m sets of fingerprints and other biometric details used by police forces to search for matches from scenes of crimes. Many of the prints are either from a person with no criminal record, or have yet to be matched to a named individual.

Yes, I feel much safer now.

By the way, the other day I said that

[c]ertainly its easy to understand how, say, something done openly on the street would not be considered "private" in a legal sense.

I want to emphasize that that was, again, in a legal sense. While it may be legal to observe and record whatever you do in public, the increasing use of spy cameras are a threat to our cultural sense of privacy, the sense that even in public there is a certain field of privacy, of anonymity, around you unless you actively draw attention to yourself. Losing that sense of anonymity, creating a sense that you are being watched all the time, can be very intimidating and inhibiting to free expression and even, through that, to expressing freedom.

Oh, and another thing

Just a few quick reminders pulled from my files that invasions of personal privacy come in a variety of forms and the perpetrators are not always agents of the federal government.

- From the LA Times for last July 29:

Looking for new ways to trim the fat and boost workers' health, some employers are starting to make overweight employees pay if they don't slim down. ...

Starting in 2009, Clarian Health Partners[, an Indiana-based hospital chain,] will charge employees as much as $30 every two weeks unless they meet weight, cholesterol and blood-pressure guidelines that the company deems healthy. ...

Critics of the lose-it-or-pay trend say that companies that charge overweight employees more for their medical coverage are turning the healthcare system into a police state and, just as worrisome, are working off of a false assumption that it's easy for people who are obese and have other health issues to change their situations.

According to a 2005 Stanford University study, obese people with health coverage may already be punished on the job. Those surveyed were paid an average of $1.20 less per hour than non-obese workers, perhaps because employers intentionally adjust their wages to account for healthcare costs.

Oh, please. The existence of

[c]lear and consistent stigmatization, and in some cases discrimination, [against obese people] can be documented in three important areas of living: employment, education, and health care....

In fact, it's reasonably safe to say that

[o]besity is one of the last forms of "acceptable discrimination." We have all probably been witness to people who find themselves the target of jokes or discrimination in a variety of settings,

including on supposedly "progressive" blogs: Just consider, for example, the frequency of fat jokes about Rush Limbaugh and Jonah Goldberg, as if it was their appearance that undermined their ideas, rather than the inherent inanity of them. So I do not imagine for a single moment that the pay differential is the result of some kind of conscious decision to adjust for health insurance costs rather than simple bias.

But getting back to the main point, this business of penalizing people based on health care statistics is a clear affront to personal privacy and to worker dignity. It treats employees like serfs on a feudal estate, whose entire lives, not just their worktime, are subject to the demands and requirements of the lord of the manor.

- From Switched.com for January 3:

If you've signed up to receive e-mails from Sears, and then clicked on to join the retailer's "My SHC Community," it's likely you've been providing more information to more people than you thought. Even more troubling, it turns out that you're not just sharing information with Sears, but also with a company called comScore, which tracks and aggregates Internet browsing habits.

Installing the software also installs spyware called VoiceFive, which provides data to Comscore, which tracks the web activity of potentially millions of users, few of who know it's even happening. What's more, Switched.com notes, in order to sign up for the Sears program, you must agree to a privacy statement which has this buried in the middle:

Once you install our application, it monitors all of the Internet behavior that occurs on the computer on which you install the application, including both your normal web browsing and the activity that you undertake during secure sessions, such as filling a shopping basket, completing an application form or checking your online accounts, which may include personal financial or health information.

Switched.com calls that statement "scary," which seems if anything an understatement since it essentially empowers Sears to gather and record everything you do online, including any information you provide to or access from any site anywhere on the Web. No wonder the provision is well-hidden. Maybe a little too well-hidden, in fact: Switched.com says that according to BetaNews, it may run afoul of

FTC regulations that require companies to make such spyware inclusion very clearly apparent. Many would agree that burying it in the middle of a multi-page privacy statement doesn't do much for clarity.

I can certainly go with that. One of my major sources of frustration is reading so-called "privacy notices" only to discover they are chock full of loopholes and exceptions that render them for all practical purposes meaningless. Three of my favorites are:

- pledging to share "your important personal data" only with other companies that "pledge" to keep it as confidential as the original company but giving no hint that there could or would be any sanctions against those other companies if they broke that pledge nor how the original company would know if they did;

- stating information would be released upon "lawful request" - not, please note, subpoena, but request - of any law enforcement agency; and, my real favorite,

- assuring you that your information will not be released except under such-and-such circumstances "or as otherwise permitted by law," thereby authorizing the company to use your personal information in any way in any way it wants, for any reason it wants, and release it to anyone it wants, unless that particular use is specifically illegal - that is, the "guarantee" comes down to "we won't break the law, we promise."

- From AFP for January 8:

Four Texas teens were suspended from school Tuesday for refusing to get their hair cut over the Christmas break, school officials said.

The students had been warned that the district was cracking down on dress code violators after they repeatedly let their locks loose on school grounds.

"Our policy states that the hair (on male students) cannot extend beyond the collar in the back," said Kevin Stanford, superintendent of the Kerens Independent School District. ...

Students at Kerens high school are also prohibited from wearing sleeveless shirts, excessively tight or baggy pants, mismatched socks, "disruptive hair styles" and "unnatural" hair colors, according to an 86-page student handbook.

"The Kerens ISD dress code promotes the effective personal presentation skills which contribute significantly to successful living in adult society," the handbook explained. "The district's dress code is established to teach hygiene, instill discipline, prevent disruption, avoid safety hazards, and teach respect for authority."

In short, beyond the assertion that having long hair or baggy pants is inherently dirtier than other fashions, the purpose of the dress code is to teach kids how to just shut up, do what they're told, and be just like everyone else - this being the secret to "successful living in adult society." I had thought this kind of crap had been dealt with decades ago. Apparently, Texas is thirty years behind the rest of the country in a lot more ways that one.

Footnote to the preceding

Updated Something I wanted to include but which didn't comfortably fit. RFID (Radio Frequency ID) chips, known as "tags," are tiny computer chips containing information about whatever it is they're attached to. There are two sorts: One is a passive kind that reacts to a scanner by emitting its information, using power provided by the scanning beam. The active, or "always-on," type has its own power source and broadcasts the information, enabling the scanner to be further away.

All US passports issued after January 1, 2008 contain always-on RFID chips. These chips contain information about you and what's on your passport. A few years ago, when this was first being pushed, I quoted security expert Bruce Schneier, who wrote:

Think about what that means for a minute. It means that passport holders are continuously broadcasting their name, nationality, age, address and whatever else is on the RFID chip. It means that anyone with a reader can learn that information, without the passport holder's knowledge or consent. It means that pickpockets, kidnappers and terrorists can easily--and surreptitiously--pick Americans or nationals of other participating countries out of a crowd.

In tests, RFID chips have been read by receivers 20 meters away.

What's more, as the folks at Ars Technica noted back in March 2006, contrary to the prevailing assumption, the chips are potentially vulnerable to viruses. A research team had developed a method which used a maliciously-designed tag, which infected a scanner that read it. The scanner then infects other tags.

So whether the use of such chips in passports is an outgrowth of a sinister Big Brother plan or simple incompetence intended to make it easier for a customs agent to read a passport's RFID without having to bother making sure it's close to the scanner, this still seems like a really, really bad idea.

Fortunately, the tags being used in passports are an improvement over those originally proposed: The info on the tag is encrypted and because of shielding, the tag can't be read if the passport is closed. While that reduces the risk of your information being stolen, it does not eliminate it and in fact undermines the very basis for the tags as opposed to a smart-card system, where there is direct contact between the tag and the reader (as, for example, when you swipe a credit card): The tags were supposed to speed processing by allowing passports to just be waved at a scanner, but if each passport now must be individually opened and the data decrypted, it's hard to see the gain.

If broadcasting your personal info disturbs you, there is something you can do about it, says Wired from a year ago:

1) RFID-tagged passports have a distinctive logo on the front cover; the chip is embedded in the back.

2) Sorry, “accidentally” leaving your passport in the jeans you just put in the washer won’t work. You’re more likely to ruin the passport itself than the chip.

3) Forget about nuking it in the microwave – the chip could burst into flames, leaving telltale scorch marks. Besides, have you ever smelled burnt passport?

4) The best approach? Hammer time. Hitting the chip with a blunt, hard object should disable it. A nonworking RFID doesn’t invalidate the passport, so you can still use it.

On the other hand, messing with a passport carries a penalty of up to 25 years in prison. If you find that a deterrent, a better choice might be to investigate the RFID Guardian Project, which is working on a system where the tags wouldn't work unless turned on by the passport holder. You might also want to check out the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and its page on RFID to keep up with news about the wider privacy implications of RFIDs as used by the government and, much more widely, by private corporations.

Updated to correct numerous typos, grammatical errors, and unclear passages. It seems I was a lot more tired than I realized when I wrote this.