The Republic of T.

Happy Anniversary

I can't let the day go by without wishing a happy six year anniversary to Mike (of Prime Time) and E. J. (of ej flavors). After reading both of their anniversary posts, I just wanted to post a little shout out of my own. Goodness knows there's little enough love in the world as it is, and it can be especially hard to find at times. So when and where we find it, we ought to celebrate it.

So, congratulations and happy anniversary, guys! May you have many, many more!

We Get Mail

Ah, the life of a liberal blogger is full of pleasand little surprises. Eric Brian of Just my thoughts... shares an email he received from an irate "ugly American." Upon reading it, one is immediately struck with the realization that some Americans just aren't very bright.

Given that Eric and I link to one another, I can't imagine what email I might be getting if this guy wanders over to this blog.

Gmail To Go

OK. I've got five gmail accounts to give away to the five regular readers who send an email to my gmail address (and who can somehow prove to me they've been reading the blog, or whom I recognize as regular commenters).

I Got Yer "Warm Embrace," Right Here

Kevin Drum of The Washington Monthly writes:

This is a recurring theme, and one I really hate to see. There are lots of "liberal hawks" (and even a few conservative hawks) who are having public second thoughts about having supported the war, and we should warmly embrace them. They are excellent candidates to become opinion leaders who will help persuade other people to see things our way.

However, it sometimes seems as though a mere public reconsideration is not enough: we instead demand an abject, groveling apology and a confession that those who opposed the war were right about every last thing. But human nature being what it is, there's a limit to just how much admission of pigheaded stupidity people are willing to make in public, and "there isn't much excuse for our naivete either" is probably about as much as we can reasonably expect

.

Warmly embrace them? Well, OK, but can we at least give them a much deserved smack upside the head first? Sorry, but their second thoughts are about a day late and a dollar short. What's more, as one of Kevin's commenters pointed out, they maintain an air of superiority to those who opposed the war from the beginning, as if to say "we were right to be wrong at that time."

Huh? These folks made a conscious choice to blind themselves to reasoned arguments against going to war with Iraq. Along with the Bush administration, they chose to ignore intelligence that refuted the justifications the administration offered for going to war. Only now, in what seems to be an unending avalanche of bad news about just how badly the Bush administration mismanaged this affair, are they say "oops, our bad." Yeah. Right. These folks helped empower the Bush administration to do just what it has don so far.

So, in my eyes, they helped make the mess. A "line by line recantation" may not be in order, but neither is the self righteousness that comes mixed with their late, and utterly useless mea culpas.

Steeeeeeeee-rike!

Via John Aravosis at AMERICAblog.

I've never been a baseball fan. Not even when I was living in Georgia, and the Braves went to the World Series. It's always seemed the most boring sport in the world, with long stretches of time where there's absoulutely nothing happening.

But this is enough to make me start thinking about liking it, or at least not disliking it. Dick Cheney got booed at a Yannkee's game.

Cheney, who visited both clubhouses after batting practice, watched part of the game from the box of Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and part from a first-row seat next to the Yankees dugout, where he sat between New York Gov. George Pataki and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Cheney was booed when he was shown on the right-field videoboard during the seventh-inning stretch.

Is that like Yankee fans telling Cheney to go fuck himself?

And with that, I'm going to bed.

One More Reason for Vote for Kerry

From TalkLeft comes one more reason to vote for Kerry that I'm ashamed I didn't thin of today.

The Supreme Court wrapped up its term today and none of the Justices announced retirement plans. That makes it more likely it will be the next President who gets to appoint a new Supreme Court Justice.

My guess is that a couple of the conservatives (and I was going to use a less polite term there) on the court are holding out hope that Bush will win in November, or holding on for dear life in case he needs them to appoint him again. Considering how long we have to live with Supreme Court appointees, that should be reason alone to vote for John Kerry. Too much is at stake to leave the appointment of the next Supreme Court Justice or Justices (that's plural folks, as in more than one, possibly two, maybe three) to George W. Bush.

Bigots Beaten Back

Three cheers for the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejecting an idiotic attempt by conservative groups to stop gay marriages in Massachusetts.

A federal appeals court Tuesday rejected an attempt by conservative groups and state lawmakers to stop gay marriage in Massachusetts.

The Florida-based Liberty Counsel, which launched the lawsuit, said it would appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The plaintiffs had argued that Massachusetts' high court usurped the power of the Legislature - and thereby violated the U.S. Constitution - when it ruled last year that gay couples are entitled to wed.

…The appeals court said the November 2003 gay-marriage ruling by Massachusetts' Supreme Judicial Court did not violate a clause in the U.S. Constitution that calls for a republican form of government in each state.

The only way a state could run afoul of the clause would be to establish a monarchy or take other action that clearly deviated from the republican form of government, the appeals court said.

It's so…idiotic that I can't even begin to address it. On the basis of the conservative argument, we'd have to do away with the Supreme Court in each state, and on the federal level, and just let everything be decided by majority vote. Is that what we should do? I shudder to think what kind of country we'd then become.

Tell Me Again

Via Blog for America.

Tell me again that Nader can't hurt the Democratic nominee in the presidential race this time around. Tell me again how voting for a third party candidate won't mean throwing a vote away and getting four more years of the Bush administration. Tell me again, because the polls say differently.

President Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry are locked in a very close race in their battle for the 27 electoral votes in Florida, according to a new poll in the essential swing state of 2000.

Bush and Kerry had the backing of 43 percent apiece in a three-way matchup with independent Ralph Nader, who had the support of 5 percent in the telephone poll conducted by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute of Connecticut.

Without Nader, Kerry had 46 percent and Bush 44 percent, within the poll's margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. Voters were evenly split on having a favorable or unfavorable view of both Bush and Kerry, the poll found.

This, this is why I was hoping against hope that Nader would not run, because regardless of what happened in 2000, and regardless of how FUBAR things have gotten under Bush administration, there's always going to be the chance that just enough people will vote for Nader to throw at least one state's election results into question. If it happens again in Florida, we already know the outcome. Bush will get it by default.

My advice to the Kerry campaign might be don't count on Florida's electoral votes. Run as though you already know you aren't going to get Florida. The question is, can Kerry realistically win without counting on Florida's 27 electoral votes?

Keeping the Web Adult Friendly, For Now

Those adults who turn to the web when they need a particular itched tickled and breath a sigh of relief. For the time being at least, what you seek will still be available online when you look for it, thanks to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that a law meant to punish pornographers who peddle dirty pictures to Web-surfing kids is probably an unconstitutional muzzle on free speech.

The high court divided 5-to-4 over a law passed in 1998, signed by then-President Clinton and now backed by the Bush administration. The majority said a lower court was correct to block the law from taking effect because it likely violates the First Amendment.

In considering the issue a third time, the court did not end a long fight, however. The majority voted to send the case back to a lower court for a trial that could give the government a chance to prove the law does not go too far. …The majority, led by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, said there may have been important technological advances in the five years since a federal judge blocked the law.

Holding a new trial will allow discussion of what technology, if any, might allow adults to see and buy material that is legal for them while keeping that material out of the hands of children.

It reminds me of something I used to rant about when I was single and childless, and that still gets a rise out of me now that I've become a parent; the childproofing of nearly everything in our society. From the seconds-long exposure of Janet Jackson's breast (which, judging by the outcry, supposedly scarred for life children who probably see their mothers breastfeed their younger siblings several times in the run of a day) to the ongoing babble about "family friendly" television programming and all the way back to Tipper Gore and the PMRC, it just seems like some people are intent on putting childproof locks on just about everything in our culture, and sometimes those locks are adultproof too.

Now people want to do the same thing to the web. Where exactly does it end? That the law in question is supported by groups like the Family Research Council, only causes me to take an even dimmer view of it.

One COPA supporter said that the court is exceeding its powers. "This is akin to judicial tyranny," said Patrick Trueman, senior legal adviser at the Family Research Council and former chief of the child exploitation unit at the Justice Department's Criminal Division. "The court is dismissing acts of Congress which reflect the will of the people... This decision says to pornographers that you have a green light to distribute material to children."

Don't get me wrong. I'm a parent, and there are certain things I don't want my son seeing and hearing. He watches a couple of different children's shows. If he's in the room when we're watching television, it's on something that's OK for him to see or hear. He's only 20 months old, but I figure we'd better start watching it now.

But being a parent doesn't mean that I want all the entertainment I enjoy or absorb to be kid-friendly. As an adult, some of the things I find interesting and compelling aren't appropriate for kids, but I still want access to them. When it comes to television, it means I wait until the kid goes to bed to watch certain things. It means that I pay attention to what my kid watches, both now and when he's old enough to express a preference for what he'd like to watch. And when he's old enough to surf the web, it will be my responsibility to monitor that as well.

John Morris, staff counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington-based technology policy think tank, said that technology has advanced since COPA became law, but "the ability of a Web site to insure that a minor is not surfing to [a pornographic] Web site has not fundamentally changed." He predicted that the case would spend several more years at the appeals level and eventually come back to the Supreme Court. Morris said that instead of restricting access, parents should educate themselves about the Internet and teach children "how to comport themselves online." [emphasis mine]

I've spent enough time online to know exactly what's out there, and there's much of it that I won't want my son exposed to. My partner and I even talked about it, and agreed our kid will not have televisions in their rooms (as I did when I was growing up) nor will they have computers with Internet access in their rooms. Those will be accessed in family areas of the house, where they can be monitored. Of course, I can't control web surfing outside of the home, but there should already be sufficient policies in place to guard against that.

While the Supreme Court has several times rejected attempts to limit what kind of material is available in cyberspace, it did uphold a law in June 2003 that withholds federal funds from schools and libraries unless they install software filters on their computers to block pornographic Web sites.

But even the things that are in place, like software filters, aren't perfect. Some have a tendency to block access to website that are not pornographic in nature but that do have information about sex and other topics; like websites about HIV/AIDS education, or websites containing information about gay and lesbian issues, or even breast cancer.

The problem is, there doesn't seem to be a way of restricting children's access, without also restricting adults' access somewhat too. You cant' take it away from the kids without taking it away from the grownups too. It seems like that's the basic point of the Supreme Court decision today: go back to the drawing board until you figure out how to protect kids without restricting adult access.

Folks, let's not become so kid-friendly, that we become adult unfriendly. Some of us still want access to adult-appropriate entertainment after the kids go to bed.

Exit Stage Right

It is, so to speak, the end of an era. William F. Buckley is giving up his controlling interest in The National Review—a leading conservative
magazine.

Tonight, however, Mr. Buckley, 78, is giving up control. In an interview, he said he planned to relinquish his shares today to a board of trustees he had selected. Among them are his son, the humorist Christopher Buckley; the magazine's president, Thomas L. Rhodes; and Austin Bramwell, a 2000 graduate of Yale and one of the magazine's youngest current contributors.

Mr. Buckley's "divestiture," as he calls it, represents the exit of one of the forefathers of modern conservatism. It is also the latest step in the gradual quieting of one of the most distinctive voices in the business of cultural and political commentary, the writer and editor who founded his magazine on a promise to stand "athwart history, yelling 'Stop,' at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who urge it."

…"The question is choose some point to quit or die onstage, and there wouldn't be any point in that," Mr. Buckley said, recalling his retirement from his television program "Firing Line" a few years ago. "Thought was given and plans were made to proceed with divestiture."

I've never been a fan of Mr. Buckley's. In fact, he's been known on occasion to set my teeth on edge. So much of his conservatism seems to come from the perspective of a member of a priviledged class arguing for the continuance of that priviledge and of its exclusivity. To paraphrase his quote above, Mr. Buckley positioned himself "athwart history" somewhere around the time he started the National Review, back in 1954, and has always given the impression that it would have been perfectly fine with him had social progress stopped right about then. (As a white, heterosexual, Protestant male, I can imagine he wood. Those were very good times to be all the things he is.) I can't help but think that if the world were as Buckley would have it, I—being pretty much the opposite of everything Buckley is—wouldn't have the life I now enjoy, had time stopped about when he seems to have wanted it to.

Someone else puts it better than I can:

Not everyone shares this assessment of Mr. Buckley's work. Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of The New Republic, called Mr. Buckley's sometimes baroque style "genially ridiculous."

Mr. Wieseltier added: "It is a kind of antimodern pretense, but of course he is in fact a completely modern man. His thinking and his writing have all the disadvantages of a happy man. The troubling thing about Bill Buckley's work is how singularly untroubled it is by things."

Still, I'll give Buckley this much; he's head an shoulders above some of the more popular conservative writers and commentators today. I'd take him over Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, or Sean Hannity any day of the week. He may be just as insulting to those who stand to the left of his own positions, but at least his insults are elegantly phrased.