An Uplifting Story

I'm sorry - I was up late last night and am a bit spaced out. Normally that wouldn't stop me, but today I am having a hard time getting the old angriness. So here's something positive instead. E. J. Dionne has written an article on Ohio and how what was once a Republican Stronghold is now quite a bit more divided. Very heartwarming.

My interview with Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland was delayed for a reason that explains why this Democrat is so popular in a state that was once considered a Republican bastion.

In the course of his travels on Saturday, Strickland discovered that a farm in a heavily Republican area near Cincinnati was celebrating its 200th anniversary as a family-run operation. The governor decided that he had to drop by and chat with some folks who probably didn't vote for him. Strickland is one Democrat who tries to leave no Republican behind.

At a moment of festering polarization in national politics, Strickland is Mr. Consensus. He doesn't hide his progressive views -- he calls himself "pro-choice, pro-labor and pro-universal health care" -- and yet just about everyone thinks of this ordained Methodist minister as a moderate because he spends a lot of time in places where Democrats don't dare venture, offering soothing sentiments you're unlikely to run into on talk radio or the Internet.

Good article.

Hannity and Dionne

Caught a bit of the Hannity radio show last night while driving home from work and getting stuck in traffic. He got a call from a lady who noted that all Christians have sinned and therefore we should forgive Vitter, because he's been a good representative. Kind of all over the place there.

Oddly enough, Hannity quoted a recent article by E.J.Dionne on why this isn't a viable response.

My defense of Vitter is qualified because I believe that married guys have a moral obligation not to seek the pleasures of "escort services."

Nor do I like hypocrisy. During the battle over the impeachment of Bill Clinton, Vitter wrote in the New Orleans Times-Picayune that if no "meaningful action" were taken against the president, "his leadership will only further drain any sense of values left to our political culture." Vitter, then a state representative, suggested that Clinton was "morally unfit to govern."

Of course it was fascinating to hear this woman, who frankly sounded pretty nasty, explain why this extension of Christian forgiveness was not applicable in the Clinton case. Naturally enough they don't count as Christians and so don't get treated as Christians.

And that in a nutshell is exactly how much the American Conservative Christian has stripped herself of any decorum or dignity.

Hannity, to his credit, wasn't having any.

The E.J. Dionne piece goes on to say that for Dionne's part he would like to see our nation and particularly our media culture move past needing to report on every stupid sex scandal that comes along. Unfortunately, I don't think that's very likely.

Australia

There is an interesting article by E. J. Dionne Jr. over at Working for Change on the current Australian Prime Minister, John Howard.

It concerns a current move by the Prime Minister to examine how history is taught. Apparently history has been combined into a generic social sciences course (also covering economics, geography, sociology, psychology and so on and so forth). Like Dionne I think the Prime Minister has a point. I would argue that students should take both history and also get exposed to these other fields, but that you shouldn't short change one in favor of the other.

That said I don't find Dionne completely convincing in his suggestion that this model might be valuable to American Conservatives. I don't think it would. For one thing today's conservatives aren't interested in building collations with Democrats - they are interested in defeating them.

More on Making English our National Language

E. J. Dionne has written a solid article on this subject.

There is no point to this amendment except to say to members of our currently large Spanish-speaking population that they will be legally and formally disrespected in a way that earlier generations of immigrants from -- this is just a partial list -- Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia, Norway, Sweden, France, Hungary, Greece, China, Japan, Finland, Lithuania, Lebanon, Syria, Bohemia, Slovakia, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia were not.

Immigrants from all these places honored their origins, built an ethnic press and usually worshiped in the languages of their ancestors. But they also learned English because they knew that advancement in our country required them to do so.

Here's a question for you to consider. Why, in the middle of a debate on reforming illegal immigration, are we stopping to discuss this? Will this make our borders more secure? Seems unlikely.

No Low To Which They Will Not Stoop

For those of you wondering if there as any other Democratic veteran who was as big a liar as Senator Kerry, well, here's your chance to trash another American hero for partisan gain.

E.J. Dionne Jr. has the details.

Reality Used to be a Friend of Mine

E. J. Dionne hits it out of the park today, picking apart the parsing Conservatives have been doing over Karl Rove's comments.

In the ensuing controversy, Rove's defenders cleverly sought to pretend that there was nothing partisan about Rove's speech. "Karl didn't say 'the Democratic Party,' " insisted Ken Mehlman, the Republican national chairman. "He said 'liberals.' " It must have been purely accidental that one of the "liberals" mentioned was the Democratic national chairman and another was the Senate Democratic whip. It must also have been accidental that both of them, like most other liberals, supported the war in Afghanistan, not therapy. At the time, Durbin called the war "essential."

On Friday White House spokesman Scott McClellan narrowed the Rove attack even more. McClellan found it "puzzling" that Democrats were "coming to the defense of liberal organizations like MoveOn.org and people like Michael Moore," when in fact Democrats were coming to their own defense. McClellan also ignored what Mehlman had conceded the day before -- and what the text of Rove's remarks plainly shows: that Rove was attacking liberals generally, not just these two targets.

That's how guilt by association works. Make a charge and then -- once your attack is out there -- pretend that your words have been misinterpreted. Split your opponents. Put them on the defensive. Force them to say things like: "No, we're not soft on terrorism," or, "I'm not that kind of liberal." Once this happens, the attacker has already won.

Right on.

You see this kind of thing happening even here at Make me a Commentator!!! Management would like to see me apologize for a simple mistake made last week. But what they don't realize is that they are also asking me to apologize for being a Liberal and presenting a Liberal view. And I will never do that.