More on Ann

For those of you who don't find Ann Coulter offensive, I urge you to check out this post at This Modern World.

The Football, the Judiciary

From David Limbaugh's latest article, comes this statement.

It is laughable that they demand an independent judiciary when what they really want is a judiciary they handpick for the express purpose of implementing policy they can't otherwise achieve through the political branches of government. They see the judiciary as both a high-powered vehicle to thwart the democratic will of the people and as a weapon for their side to use in the Culture War. They view the judiciary as a catalyst for social change, an instrument to supplant traditional values with secular relativism, and all the hedonism and licentiousness it entails.

I have to say I think that good old David Limbaugh is engaging in a little bit of projection here. After all the bulk of President Bush's appointments have been confirmed (see the post below). Truthfully I think it is clear that it is he and his allies that want a judiciary completely under their thumb. They have everything else, so why not that too?

Cal Thomas - Not so Good at Math

Here is what Cal Thomas says in his latest article, on the upcoming Justice Sunday event (in which Tom Delay will participate in a national broadcast that will go to the various churches). "The sponsors of the telecast, a coalition of Christian conservative groups, want a simple majority, improving the likelihood that most of Bush's nominees would be confirmed."

President Bush has put up some 240 judges, 10 of whom has been blocked. President Bush has gotten 95.8% of his nominees. That qualifies as most doesn't it? Of course if you take just his nominees to the appeals courts. President Bush has made 57 nominations, 5 of which didn't come uot of the Republican lead committee, 42 of which were confirmed and 10 of which were blocked by the threat of Democratic Filibuster. That gives him a confirmation rate of 73.7%. Which still seems like most.

Ann Coulter Palooza

Yeah, as many of you know, Ann landed on the cover the latest issue of Time Magazine. Kind of bizarre considering her last book consisted of recycled articles from her weekly column. And she really gets as much flack from her party as support. Anyway here's two good articles on Time's baffling choice. The first is from Media Matters for America.

Cloud [the author of the Time Article] downplays Coulter's history of outrageous comments, unquestioningly quoting Coulter friend Miguel Estrada downplaying her vicious attacks as "a little bit of a polemicist" (Coulter herself sees no need for the qualifier; she told the Sunday Times of London that "I am a polemicist. I am perfectly frank about that") and writing that "Coulter can occasionally be coarse."

"Occasionally" coarse? A "little bit" of a polemicist? This about a "commentator" who claimed that the Democratic Party "supports killing, lying, adultery, thievery, envy"; who said of the idea that the American military were targeting journalists, "Would that it were so!"; who said President Clinton "was a very good rapist"; who insisted that "[l]iberals love America like O.J. loved Nicole"; who said that "I think a baseball bat is the most effective way these days" to talk to liberals; who said it was lucky for former senator Max Cleland's political career that he lost an arm and two legs in Vietnam; who has said her "only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building"; and who wrote that the only real question about Bill Clinton was "whether to impeach or assassinate."

Good to have all of those quotes in one place, just in case you think that Ann Coulter is harmless.

And the second is from Salon Magazine, which goes more into why Time would choose to run this cover story now.

Polemicist pundits like Coulter purposefully drive political discourse into the ground, making a cushy, albeit factually challenged career out of labeling Democrats America-hating traitors. Time magazine stands on the sidelines and cheers, confident it has, for at least another week, placated conservative critics who demand proof that media outlets don't lean left. (And even that didn't work.)

Coming, as Wonkette.com noted, "seven years late," Time's Coulter push feels overly contrived. Her latest book is a five-month-old clip job of recycled columns. She has no full-time, high-profile media platform. Instead, she crisscrosses the country collecting $30,000 speaking-fee checks and shows up on late-night cable talk shows that are watched by the thousands.

Anyway, I guess we are going to a heavy Ann Coulter period, so those of you who love to hate here, get ready.

Good Behaivour

The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office. - Article III, Section 1, United States Constitution.

Apparently Tom Delay is considering looking at the Good Behavior clause and what it entails. "We want to define what good behavior means." I suspect that what good behavior means is ruling the way Tom Delay wants you to rule. But Delay says he needs to get out there and educate people "as to what the checks and balances are." The article doesn't mention whether or not Mr. Delay was laughing when he said that.

Still Mr. Delay isn't talking about impaling judges, so I guess he's a bit of a moderate.

What do Democracies Want?

Kathleen Parker has declared herself a moderate or a centrist in her latest article. I'm not sure I buy that, but since I like the article I'm willing to let it go. Basically she provides a refutation of what Michael Barone was saying earlier in the week. If Mr. Barone is willing to accept ever-increasing partisan hatred, Ms. Parker is not. And she claims a growing number of Americans agree with her.

Apparently, I'm not alone. Indeed, given current trends, we may declare that we have reached a perfect storm of political backlash. Americans who cleave to neither extreme - some 50 percent of whom identify themselves as "moderate" - are fed up with the Ann Coulter/Michael Moore school of debate and are looking for someone to articulate a commonsense, middle path. They may have found their voice in John P. Avlon, chief speechwriter for former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and a New York Sun columnist, whose 2004 book "Independent Nation" has just been released in paperback.

Avlon insists that centrism is the more patriotic political position because it adheres more strictly to American values and founding principles than to ideology. A balance between idealism and realism, centrism is a yin-yang proposition that rejects shrill extremes and embraces reason, decency and a practical perspective. To those who insist that centrism is the death of dissent, Avlon argues that centrism is dissent - from outdated political orthodoxies.

Certainly something I believe in as well. Those things which unite us are greater than those things which divide us. I firmly believe that, with all but the most partisan of conservatives or liberals.

Funny Cartoon

Good This Modern World this week on the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy.

For Those Interested

My first piece over at the Practical Press, Conversation 1, has now been posted. Go and check it out! Also read on down. There are a number of interesting posts up there already.

Let's Count Our Chickens Before they Hatch

Or not. Whatever.

Apparently Byron Williams over at Working for Change thinks we shouldn't. He reviewed all of the Republican Parties recent missteps (Social Security, the Terry Schiavo Case, Tom Delay), but then offers this commentary.

. . . before Democrats start licking their lips in anticipation of the 2006 mid-term elections, they should realize that they have done little to contribute to the recent Republican misfortunes.

I am aware they are the minority party and it is not their responsibility to set the agenda, but they must provide an alternative. They need only look to the 2002 and 2004 election results as evidence to what can happen when the voters do not have a clear alternative.

He's not wrong. I do think it's interesting that he spends 4/5 of his article on the Republicans woes, but I suppose that's to get readers riled up.

Interesting Argument

Star Parker writes on Tom Delay's recent ethics problems with an intriguing argument. Apparently if Mr. Delay did anything wrong, we should blame the government for being too big, rather than Mr. Delay.

If the federal government influenced a tiny fraction of our lives, then few would care if a contractor or businessman wanted to take a favorite congressman or Senator on a golfing trip. But when the federal government consumes one of every four dollars produced by the U.S. economy and congressman and senators significantly influence our social and economic reality, we care what they do.

We have seen many changes in congressional rules on "ethics" over the last quarter century. A couple of House speakers, among others, have been booted out. Yet, who would say that Washington today is a more virtuous, more ethical place than it was 25 years ago? With trillions of dollars at stake and outcomes dependent on the inclinations of politicians, it is a joke to think that arbitrary rules about how much can be accepted from whom and for what will change the game.

This does seem like a complicated way of saying the Democrats made him do it. If only Government were the right size, nobody would try to bribe Tom Delay. Corporations wouldn't need to; they could pretty much do whatever they like.

Still as a defense of Tom Delay, it's pretty weak. It works better as an indictment of the system, because the implication is that Mr. Delay probably is guilty.

Compare and Contrast

". . . we seem to have run through a spate of courthouse violence recently that’s been on the news and I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters on some occasions where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in - engage in violence.” - Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), April 4, 2005

"No one seriously believes the murders were motivated by indiscriminate anger against the judiciary or judicial activism. It's laughable to think the killers were crusaders on a mission to restore the constitutional separation of powers." - David Limbaugh, April 19, 2005

Man bites Dog!

And in other news, a Wichata Falls man is sueing the Republican National Committee for ripping of certain design elements in those W 'O4 stickers you see around.

Is Ann Coulter Good?

Speaking of circuses, let's turn our gaze to Ann Coulter, a psychotic clown for the hard right and the subject of a Time Magazine story entitled "Ms. Right." They are taking her pretty seriously, apparently. There is a poll you can take at the Time Website (you can't read the article without suscribing to Time Magazine) which asks the musical question "Does Ann Coulter make a positive contribution to American political culture?" Go vote if you like (along the left side). Currently with 147,805 votes cast, 77.6% (or 114,696 people) say she doesn't.

Friday's Daily Howler points towards a reason people may not think she's a positive influence.

At present, about twenty percent of American adults identify themselves as "liberal." But according to Coulter, these people - one-fifth of the nation's population - are a group of "traitors" who are "out to destroy the American way of life!" Obviously, this is the view of a raving lunatic, if the view is sincerely held.

. . . Is Coulter sincere - or is she just playing the rubes, separating them from their money? We don't have the slightest idea. (For what it's worth, she has always struck us as the one public figure who may well be mentally ill.) But as almost any sane person can see, that is the work of a screaming nutcase if we assume that Coulter is sincere.

My take, for those who are curious, is that Ann likes money and so acts crazy so as to get more money. But I have no way of knowing, really.

What people want

Do people in a Democracy generally want those things which are conducive to preserving a Democracy?

Robert Heinlein, speaking through the voice of Lazarus Long had something to say on the subject.

Bread and Circuses is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader--the barbarians enter Rome.

Most conservatives and libertarians would interpret that as meaning welfare programs. I've always had trouble with that particular interpretation, as it turns out that lower income people who benefit from said programs don't tend to vote as frequently. We are supposed to think the poor are greedy bastards bleeding us all dry by voting for these programs. But the facts don't really back that up.

I think that Michael Barone's latest article might point to a circus the American people are voting themselves. He notes that this last election saw an uptick in both mean spirited partisan rhetoric (all the Democrats fault of course (whereas in reality, I'd say Republicans are at least as guilty)) and in voting.

The point is that you cannot have all good things at once. Enthusiasm in politics usually contains a large element of hatred. You could see it in 2004 in the rants against George W. Bush and in the surges in turnout in central cities and university towns. You could see it as well in the surges in Republican turnout in exurban and rural counties, surges produced partly by affection for Bush but also by a hatred of cultural liberalism and moral relativism.

Centrism, being an attempt to bring sides together, naturally fails to provide such hatred. Compromise, the lifeblood of a Democracy, saps the enthusiasm of a true partisan. What partisan wants to see compromise?

Of course the question presents itself once again; is such partisan hatred good for Democracy?

New Format, New Quote!

Another week. Another Look. A very old logo. And a new Quotes Page.