Freedom's Fire, Brightly Burning

I want to take a moment to pay tribute to my two wonderful senators, John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, for fighting the uphill battle to filibuster Alito. They fought with conviction, with passion, and I could not possibly be prouder of both of them than I am right now.

They argued forcefully against taking a step backwards towards a country where women have individual rights only after they answer to their husbands. Where a woman does not have the right to decide whether she will or will not bear children. Where the president is czar. Where the right to take their grievances to court is not an option for the little people. Where police can shoot first and say "oops, sorry" later, when it's too late.

You democrats who voted for cloture today may think we'll forget, but I sure as hell won't. And I am not alone. I don't care why you got in line with the republican bullies; what matters is that you got in line. Shame on you, every one of you.

Akaka (HI)
Baucus (MT)
Bingaman (NM)
Byrd (WV)
Cantwell (WA)
Carper (DE)
Dorgan (ND)
Inouye (HI)
Johnson (SD)
Kohl (WI)
Landrieu (LA)
Lieberman (CT)
Lincoln (AR)
Nelson (FL)
Nelson (NE)
Pryor (AR)
Rockefeller (WV)
Salazar (CO)

(cross-posted on ToughEnough.)

GV has put together a really nice video for us at Neptune.com. It's a tribute to those who have stepped up in the last few days to defend democracy here at home:

Filibuster Inspiration
(no login required - click "Enter as guest". But, sigh, Internet Explorer is required. Ah well. The video is worth it, I can tell you.)

And no, it's not over the top to say that calling for filibuster of Samuel Alito is "defending democracy." The more I learn about his extremist views, and his history as a judicial activist - an activist against the rights of individuals, an activist promoting granting more power to the already-powerful, the more I realize that we must fight this nomination with everything we can muster.

Our champions in this fight knew it would be an uphill battle, yet they are standing and fighting for us anyway. Should we fail to block the nomination, we still win - at least our voices will have been heard by a few more people, and a little more debate will have been raised. And perhaps - perhaps - the American people will pay more attention, sooner, on the next nominee.

We should all thank Senators Kerry, Kennedy, and the others who have agreed to join this battle, for taking up the cause of right even though the odds are long. This is what democracy is all about, and they are truly defending our democracy.

Bush nominees for NJ courts include Abramoff prosecutor

WASHINGTON -- President Bush on Wednesday nominated one of the Justice Department's lead prosecutors in the Jack Abramoff corruption probe to a U.S. District Court seat in New Jersey.

Noel Hillman, chief of the department's public integrity section, was nominated for a federal judgeship in New Jersey, where he served in the U.S. Attorney's office under Michael Chertoff, now secretary of Homeland Security...

...White House press officials did not immediately comment on the timing of the nomination.

Oh, REALLY???

Washington Post:

A sophomore asked why officials were cutting student aid by $12.7 billion. "How's that supposed to help our futures?" she asked. Bush seemed perplexed and asked if she meant federal money. "What we did is reform the student loan program," he said. "We're not cutting money out of it. . . . We're not taking people off student loans, we're saving money in the student loan program, because it's inefficient."

It was actually even worse than that. Rachel Maddow played a sound clip of this segment on her radio show this morning, and it was clear from Bush's response that he had no idea what the student was talking about.

Video and actual facts in this Think Progress post. Here's part of the transcript:

Q: My name is Tiffany Cooper. I’m a sophomore here at Kansas State and I was just wanting to get your comments about education. Recently 12.7 billion dollars was cut from education. I was just wondering how is that supposed to help our futures?

Bush: Education budget was cut — say it again. What was cut?

Q: 12.7 billion dollars was cut from education. I’m wanting to know how is that supposed to help our futures?

Bush: At the federal level?

Q: Yes.

Bush: I don’t think we’ve actually — for higher education? Student loans?

Q: Yes, student loans.

Bush: Actually, I think what we did was reform the student loan program. We are not cutting money out of it. In other words, people aren’t going to be cut off the program...

And by the way, the audience, red though it may have been, roared its approval of her question. More from the Carpetbagger here.

How interesting that I happened across this news story while reading the Rude Pundit. Granted, I have been skirting the tv news channels since Osama's latest screed freaked out the commentariat, but still you might think this was a story that would be setting off alarm bells all over the place.

L'ILE-LONGUE, France (AP) -- President Jacques Chirac warned Thursday that France could respond with nuclear weapons to a state-sponsored terrorist attack, broadening the terms of his country's deterrence in the face of emerging threats.

Real men don't need nukes to feel like real men.

In a conference call with supporters tonight, Bob Casey discussed the need for ethics reform in Washington, and the 6-point plan that he introduced last November...long before the Republicans felt it necessary to distract attention from their ethical lapses and violations of existing laws by proposing their own "plan" to change the laws. (so they can break even more of them next time around?)

Bob's 6-point ethics plan is posted on his campaign website here:
http://www.bobcaseyforpa.com/ethics_plan.html

Here are the 6 points. For more details, and links to newspaper coverage, visit the link above.

1. Close the K Street Project

Members of Congress and their staff should be prohibited from using threats or coercion to influence the hiring decisions of lobbying firms, interest groups, or other private entities.


2. Slow the Revolving Door

Increase to two years the "cooling off period" before former Members and senior aides can lobby their former colleagues. Also, they should be barred from drafting lobbying strategy and indirectly lobbying.


3. Improve Reporting

Ensure timely release of information by requiring lobbying disclosures to be filed quarterly rather than semi-annually.

4. Same-Day Disclosure

Lobbyists should be required to report every substantive conversation they have with a Member of Congress. They should disclose the date and issue area discussed in each conversation. These meetings would be disclosed on the Internet on the same day that the meeting occurs.


5. Ground Special Interest Flights

It is too easy for corporate special interests to give favors to Members of Congress by flying them on their private jets. These trips, their itineraries, and the people on board the plane should be fully disclosed. And the price paid for these flights should be increased to more accurately reflect their value. Politicians are now only required to reimburse corporations for the price of a first class ticket. The ticket price should be increased to that of a chartered plane.

6. Blind Trusts Should Be Blind

The Ethics Committees should ensure that Members who have a blind trust to avoid conflicts of interest do in fact have no knowledge of their holdings.

Well okay, I'm about ten days late on this. Lame excuses coming up. But first, let me thank my three friends who are going to be joining me on this blog: GV, Diane, and Tay. We all post in various other spots in the blogosphere (part of the reason for some of the gaps in posting here), and we basically met at Democratic Underground. Although I knew Diane from another blog first, come to think of it, and I think I saw GV once in awhile, a long time ago, at that orangish-colored site that is the scourge of the liberal blogosphere (we all have erred in our youth).

We also shared the experience of having a beer with John Kerry. (Woo-hoo! Yowza!! Okay. Calm now.) Just the fact that we ended up in that place at that time was an indicator of some shared core values, so it's natural for us to team up on this blog. Of course we haven't set a schedule or anything, so we may all post on the same day one week and then go two weeks without any of us posting. Thems the breaks.

Okay I promised lame excuses, so here they are. Really this is "what I've been up to." Well for Democratic Party activists, which I am when I get my act together, 2006 is shaping up to be a barn burner of a year. Particularly in my neck of the woods, where we have one of the headliner Senate races (Casey to evict Santorum, yay), an interesting US House race, and a few other things going on as well. And my township is red turning to blue and the local party is just starting to find enough people to actually do anything. So I am election inspector and committeeperson for my precinct. Not to mention being webmaster of the Township Committee site which frankly, I update less often than I've been blogging here. (It has a "contact" link. It's better than nothing.) Well, now that I'm finished school, I just joined a Casey grassroots team, and I promised to set up a knowledge base for them. Then the county asked me to also head up a Voting Rights Task Force (which also needs a knowledge base, believe me). And oh yeah, would I mind taking over as webmaster for the county site?

So you get the idea. I'm glad GV, Diane, and Tay have decided to help with the blog from time to time. Looks like we'll need them. And I think it will be nice to have a few different voices in the mix here.

So, welcome GV, Diane, and Tay! Please post some more soon. :-)

Highlights of the Alito confirmation hearings, Day 1:

ORRIN HATCH: ...We do not evaluate an umpire's performance based on which team won the game but on how that umpire applied the rules inning after inning. We do not hire umpires by showing them the roster for the upcoming season and demanding to know which teams they will favor before those teams even take the field...

CHARLES GRASSLEY: ...Those 54 opinions say a lot about Judge Alito and his approach to judicial function. Like Chief Justice Roberts, it appears that Judge Alito tries to act like an umpire, calling the balls and strikes, rather than advocating a particular outcome...

CHUCK SCHUMER: ...If the records showed that an umpire repeatedly called 95 percent of pitches strikes when one team's players were up and repeatedly called 95 percent of pitches balls when the other team's players were up, one would naturally ask whether the umpire was being impartial and fair...

SAMUEL ALITO: ...I attended the public schools. In my spare time, I played baseball and other sports with my friends...

To quote Stephanie Miller, "...thanks for playing really bad analogy..."

I'm no legal eagle but I'm betting – no one.

Twelve Americans are dead. If the headline was "foreign terrorists kill 12 Americans", our government would be considering which country to bomb or invade. If the headline was "12 killed in botched robbery attempt", the law-and-order crowd would be screaming for the death penalty.

But in this case the murderer is a corporation - International Coal Group Inc. (Or is it? The Sago mine was purchased by International only two months ago, from Anker West Virginia Mining Co. So maybe International only drove the getaway car.)

Why "murder"? Because the Sago mine had racked up 208 federal safety violations in the last year, including 21 citations last year for a build-up of combustible materials. (Yet, " The largest individual fine last year was $440; the citations for combustible materials carried fines of $60." ) Clearly there was a pattern of disregard for safety at this mine. One also wonders if the current head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration came to his job in a similar manner as ex-FEMA head Michael Brown (David G. Dye; apparently not). According to this op-ed in the Miami Herald, MSHA has the power to shut down an unsafe mine. So why was Sago even online with this kind of safety record?

Anyway, instead of bombing the "terrorists" or charging the apparent culprits with capital murder, the U.S. Government (via Dye) has announced that it will "begin an in-depth investigation of the accident." That's nice. Hopefully the fine will be a little more than $440 this time, at least.

I am reminded of when I once worked for a large defense contractor. Believe it or not, an expression occasionally heard there was "no I can't do that – I could go to jail." I'm not joking – many of us actually believed, back then, that certain types of malfeasance at our jobs could actually land us in jail.

Maybe that's a fear that ought to be a little more prevalent around coal mines, and the companies that operate them.


Links:

Mine Safety and Health Administration
MSHA information page for Sago mine explosion

Press Release, Dec. 20th 2005 (okay, so I'm slow - hat tip to LiberalOasis)

(click the link and scroll to bottom for some background info pdf's)

December 20th, 2005

Contact Info:
Cat Lazaroff, 202-667-4500 x 213
John McManus, 510-550-6707

Washington DC-- Today, Earthjustice joined four other national environmental groups in announcing formal opposition to the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito Jr. to a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court. This is the first time in nearly 20 years that Earthjustice has opposed a Supreme Court nominee.

“America depends upon Supreme Court justices to uphold and enforce our nation's environmental safeguards and to protect the rights of all Americans. We cannot afford to have someone like Judge Alito deciding which rights will be protected, and which will be thrown out,” said Buck Parker, Executive Director of Earthjustice. “After a careful consideration of Judge Alito’s record, we believe that, if confirmed to the Supreme Court, he would vote to roll back key protections for public health and the environment.”

The last Supreme Court nominee to be opposed by Earthjustice and other national environmental groups was Robert Bork, nominated in 1987. Earthjustice did not oppose any of the eight Supreme Court nominees between Judge Bork and Judge Alito.

Like Judge Bork, Judge Alito has an extreme record on issues that are central to fundamental legal safeguards for public health and our environment, including the scope of the Commerce Clause, which is the constitutional basis for most federal environmental laws. Judge Alito’s positions also threaten the ability of average Americans and government agencies to ensure that these laws are enforced.

For example, one of his dissenting opinions concluded that a Congressional ban on possession and transfer of machine guns was unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause, contradicting many circuit courts of appeal decisions. Alito’s views indicate that he would support Commerce Clause challenges by polluters and developers to public health and environmental laws that Americans have relied upon for decades, including the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act the Endangered Species Act, and the Safe Drinking Water Act.

In other cases, Alito provided the deciding vote in favor of polluters to overturn pro-environmental actions by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). One of these cases overturned an EPA emergency Safe Drinking Water Act clean-up order that protected drinking water for 180,000 people from toxic pollution. Alito also joined another 2-1 Clean Water Act decision that unfairly barred average Americans from court, by creating constitutional barriers that were later essentially overruled by the Supreme Court.

“Judge Alito’s record indicates that he would pursue his own extreme legal theories to create new barriers that prevent the enactment and enforcement of national laws that protect families and communities from pollution,” said Glenn Sugameli, Earthjustice Senior Judicial Counsel. “There is too much at stake; Judge Alito’s nomination must be defeated.”

Great post by Steve Clemons at The Washington Note:

President Bush: Please Define "Democracy"

(snip)

As reported in the Washington Post today, Bush said:

"This is a limited program designed to prevent attacks on the United States of America, and I repeat limited," Bush said before flying back to Washington after six days cloistered on his ranch in Crawford, Tex. "I think most Americans understand the need to find out what the enemy's thinking.

"If somebody from al Qaeda is calling you, we'd like to know why."

We'd like to know why a Court would not authorize you to listen to that phone call or read that email, Mr. President. Why do you -- as President of the United States -- think that it is OK to systematically circumvent the American justice system? That is the question at hand.

(snip)

Do you know what a democracy is, Mr. Bush? Do you know what checks-and-balances means?

(snip)

You've taken this country into the Orwellian nightmare that we all accused the Soviet Union of promulgating -- and now that has become us. We are spying on ourselves without Constitutional protections and judicial regulation.

That is NOT democracy, though I'm sure that those in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East who are allegedly "learning democracy" from us are taking notes.

-- Steve Clemons

What is scariest to me is that polls are showing that many Americans are okay with being spyed on. (I know, I need to post links to those polls. When I find them I will.)

I want to wish all my readers a happy, healthy and productive year in 2006. I hope we will work together to bring real, positive change to America and to our nation's role in the world.

There is much to be done, but it will be rewarding work. Two inspiring quotes come to mind:

Margaret Mead:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

John Kerry:

There is no more important word in the American language, other than love, than citizen.

Let's make 2006 the Year of the Citizen.

Updated to add: we can take back our government this year, we can make significant strides in taking back the media, and we can start to revitalize the notion of citizenship in this country.

It's on us to make it happen.