Friday, April 29, 2005

Oddly large burritos

I used to live in the very most southern part of Texas in a town called Roma. The first year I lived there, there was a restaurant about four blocks from the school I taught in that I occassionally visited. I think the food was pretty good, but I'll never know, because I only ever ordered one thing: The Taco Pirata. The Taco Pirata was a taco only in the sense that it contained meat wrapped in a tortilla. The Taco Pirata was, in fact, a cholesterol bomb clothed in a tortilla the size of a baby blanket. It was almost two feet long and filled with about a pound of carne al carbon, a tablespoon of onion and an entire avocado. It was delicious. Since then, I've always cited this as the biggest taco/burrito one might ever happen across. Until today. Today, I read this story and realized that someone has created an even bigger burrito than The Taco Pirata.
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Sanctimonious, but funny

Major props to Jessmerk for pointing out this highly valuable online resource. I hope all of you will post this counter on your desktop to remind yourselves daily to pack sunscreen when you finally take that great cruise across the river Styx.
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More on Bush's Sodomy Security plan

I don't know why I feel like writing about the President's speech yesterday in such vulgar terms. I apologize to you easily-offended readers. Anyway, Kevin Drum has a nice post explaining just what the plan does and who it does it to. I especially like the chart. It's worth a glance.
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Biocentrism, not ecofascism

Erik Loomis at Alterdestiny (an excellent blog) wrote two posts recently (here and here) on a topic he has labeled ecofascism. After a couple of hectic days, I finally have the time to sit down and write a response. I am, however, finding it difficult to marshal my thoughts. Nonetheless, I’m going to address issues raised by his second post, which is pretty much divided between two themes. First, is the idea that activist environmentalists often embrace belief systems that share anti-humanist tendencies with certain right-wing groups. Second, is the idea that a focus on wilderness preservation shares these same anti-humanist tendencies and lacks good utilitarian justifications. I’ll address these separately.

With regards to the first theme, Erik asserts that there are basically two types of environmentalists, donors and activists. Donors give money to big enviro groups, recycle and vote enviro. Activists, on the other hand, might do these things, but they also embrace radical ideologies such as deep ecology and its potentially dangerous corollaries. These are pretty good descriptions of two types of environmentalist, but they do not constitute an exhaustive description of the environmentalist universe.

Having worked with four mainstream environmental organizations and the many fine people who work in and belong to them, I can unequivocally say that there are many environmentalists who are not captured within Erik’s description. I understand that he presents the dichotomy to highlight certain aspects of modern environmentalism, but I think it does a great disservice to many environmentalists. I know many people who have devoted their lives to the environmental movement. They are undoubtedly activists, but they are not radicals. They are devoted to the environment and its preservation, but generally equally devoted to human rights, gender and racial equality, pluralism and democracy. These folks are not perfect, but they are much more than mere bystanders and much better than mere racists. I am sure they harbor the biases and prejudices that all humans do, but I do not think they allow them to govern their lives or the policies they pursue.

This is not to say that there are not people in the environmental movement who have embraced racist or anti-human ideologies. There certainly are. However, I would argue that they are neither a majority nor a threat to the movement. The fact that they are there, of course, represents a potential grounds for a right-wing misinformation campaign (see e.g., attempts to conflate Earth Liberation Front with mainstream groups like Greenpeace and the Sierra Club). It is important to note, I think, that both Sierra Club and Zero Population Growth (now Population Connection) have defeated efforts in the last 10 years by activists (right-wing or otherwise) who wished to make anti-immigration issues part of the groups’ policy platforms.

As an aside, and at the risk of getting off course, I would like to note that I believe it is possible to have a rational discussion about limiting or regulating immigration without being motivated by racist or hyper-nationalist tendencies (click here to read a dissenting argument to this assertion). This is predicated, I think, on the acceptance of the validity of the nation-state and the idea that states may have interests that conflict with the universal human right of movement which is usually invoked to justify immigration. Because so much anti-immigration rhetoric is nationalist and racist in nature, however, such discussions are difficult and require a delicacy that is virtually impossible to find in today’s politics. To that end, I’ll leave that topic alone, and merely note that most anti-immigration rhetoric I hear today (including that from groups like FAIR) does seem to be primarily driven by racial animus. I’ll refer readers to Orcinus for good material on those issues.

In any case, my point is that there are environmental activists who espouse right-wing or anti-humanist theories, but that there are also many environmental activists who do not. I don’t think the former are a significant force within the movement, and I don’t think they represent a threat to the movement. Environmentalists need to be vigilant, as the Sierra Club case suggests, but to fixate on this minimal threat would be a strategic error that would, I think, result in a loss of focus on vital issues such as ecosystem degradation, toxics, habitat loss, etc.

This brings me, I guess, to Erik’s second issue: the role of wilderness preservation in American environmentalism. Basically, Erik seems to argue that wilderness preservation has higher priority in the environmental movement than other, more quality-of-life type issues, and that this represents possible racist, classist tendencies in the movement.

Ultimately, I think whether wilderness preservation actually has a higher priority in the environmental movement is an empirical question. Looking at major groups like NRDC, Environmental Defense, and the Sierra Club, all of them discuss wilderness issues. SC, however, is the only one that is remotely wilderness-centric. This makes sense to me, as it was started by John Muir to preserve the wilderness in the Sierra Nevada. The others, however, really do have a much more pollution-, energy-, sprawl-oriented approach to issues.

The larger issue, and one that Erik broaches, is how do we prioritize wilderness preservation in the list of environmental issues that must be addressed. He rightfully notes that this prioritization requires a value to be given to each environmental goals (e.g. pollution prevention, wilderness preservation, decreased reliance on fossil fuels, etc.). However, he asks for a value based in something other than “New Age language about people’s spirits”. Well goddam. That’s harder than it sounds. In essence, Erik wants to know whether wilderness has an existence value. Moreover, he wants to establish this existence value with no reference to non-material issues. This gives us the question: “Does wilderness have a material existence value to humans?” Erik suggests that it does not, positing one reason: our “protected lands are among the most impoverished ecosystems”.

Offhand, I can think of two responses to Erik’s question about material existence values. First, it may be possible to find an existence value for wilderness through traditional economic theory. Thus, one might employ contingent valuation as a means to determine the value of wilderness. Survey a random sample of Americans and ask them what they would be willing to pay to preserve untrammeled wilderness. This may, of course, capture their spiritual inclinations, but it would provide a value free from any overt spiritual justification. Moreover, because it asks people for an explicit value figure, it defines wilderness in purely anthropocentric terms (dollars are meaningless outside a human context).

Second, and less anthropocentric, is to assess the actual value of ecosystem services that wilderness provides. Erik suggests that American wildernesses are ecologically impoverished, but that, too, is an empirical question. It is likely possible to develop a rough estimate of the ecosystem services for a wilderness by determining whether the wilderness includes ecosystems that extend beyond the boundaries of that wilderness. A good example of this is the Frank Church Wilderness in Idaho. It contains much of the watershed for the Salmon River, which then feeds into the Snake and the Columbia. These rivers provide much of the clean water for Idaho and Eastern Washington/Oregon, and no doubt there is a calculable value to that clean water. Without wilderness protection, this watershed would be open to logging, mining and other extractive industries. Again, this measures the value of the wilderness in terms of its usefulness to humans.

The larger question, as I see it, is whether wilderness (and the environment generally) have value that does not include humans. Erik asserts that it is impossible to separate humans from nature. I vigorously disagree. I understand that humans function within the larger global environment and within regional and local ecosystems, but we often do so with an utter disregard for that environment and those systems. More often than not, I think that human decision making considers the human effects of their actions (if that) and very little else. Thus, while we may be physically within an environment, our decision making occurs regardless of or “outside” of the environment. I would call this anthropocentric and I would call this separate from nature. I’ll give you an example:

My parents have a house near a lake in Georgia. The lake is manmade, and thus located in hilly country. One of my parents’ neighbors recently took a bush hog and scraped the property around his house free of small trees, underbrush and surface cover. Why? Presumably because he felt it was unsightly and he planned on planting grass seed. The result? Erosion has increased, washing away top soil and further denuding the hillside. The lake, meanwhile, now carries a heavier load of nitrates, suspended solids, and whatever else is in the Georgia soil. Now, the question is, what was that man thinking? I would argue, not much. But his concerns were pretty obviously solely anthropocentric. He cared nothing for the water quality of the lake, nothing for the plants themselves, and nothing for the larger ecosystem in which he, my parents, and everything else in the area live.

This sort of disregard for non-human interests is what I think environmentalists are talking about when complain about anthropocentrism. They are not, per Erik’s assertion, trying to assert human control over the environment. Rather they (and me) are asking for people to adopt a more biocentric ethic. This sort of ethic would take into consideration the long-term health of ecosystems, animals, plants, and humans. Yes, long-term benefits would redound for humans within an ecosystem if such an ethic was adopted, but that is not the purpose of doing so. Rather, a biocentric ethic recognizes that all living things benefit from fully functional natural processes, and thus human decisions and actions should seek to minimize negative effects on those processes.

The problem with the biocentric ethic I just proposed, of course, is in the application. How does one balance human and non-human interests? If a zero-sum situation arises, who wins? Offhand, I couldn’t say. The key, I think, lies in preserving systems rather than individuals. When I think of an example, I’m drawn to Wendell Berry’s writings on small-scale farming. He clearly has used the land, and used it for human benefit, yet he has not abused it and has, most likely, done no harm. He has benefited, the land has not been harmed, the ecosystem remains. That is biocentric. Application in highly developed areas, might be hard, but not impossible. The question, really, is whether “downstream” effects of human decisions can be mitigated for both human and non-human interests.

On the whole, I think that Erik and I probably agree on a lot of things and that many of our differences may arise out of the limitations of language (and the blogging medium). I hope this is sufficient answer for him, and not too boring for the rest of you. I could probably write for days on the topic. For now, though, I’ll just end here.
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Bush asks middle class to take it in the ass.

Once again, President Bush has taken the bold and innovative step of jamming a very large, very pointy policy proposal directly into the rectum of America's middle class. Embracing his role as Fabricator in Chief, the President proposed a plan last night to cut Social Security benefits for everybody but the working poor, and to raise their benefits ever so slightly in return. Painting this proposal as just another step towards a progressive social policy, the President presented this proposal as a means to "fix" Social Security. Of course, what he really did was provide us with further proof that he's out to destroy the middle class as we know it. I'll point you to this post from Talking Points Memo to put that comment in perspective.
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Thursday, April 28, 2005

Al Gore's speech

Al Gore gave a speech yesterday that is the best written, most beautiful piece of political writing I've read in a long time. I'll provide the link, but I'm going to paste the entire text below. Take some time and read it. It's a powerful attack on the right-wing extremists in this country that skillfully marshals the writings of our founding fathers and juxtaposes them against the ignorance of today's Republican theocrats. It's long, but please, just read it. In fact, read it and then share it. This is something that I think ought to be read more widely than it currently is:

Remarks as prepared by former Vice President Al Gore
Washington, DC.
Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Four years and four months ago, the Supreme Court of the United States, in a bitterly divided 5 to 4 decision, issued an unsigned opinion that the majority cautioned should never be used as a precedent for any subsequent case anywhere in the federal court system.

Their ruling conferred the presidency on a candidate who had lost the popular vote, and it inflamed partisan passions that had already been aroused by the long and hard-fought election campaign. I couldn't have possibly disagreed more strongly with the opinion that I read shortly before midnight that evening, December 12, 2000. But I knew what course of action best served our republic.

Even though many of my supporters said they were unwilling to accept a ruling which they suspected was brazenly partisan in its motivation and simply not entitled to their respect, less than 24 hours later, I went before the American people to reaffirm the bedrock principle that we are a nation of laws, not men. "There is a higher duty than the one we owe to a political party," I said. "This is America and we put country before party." The demonstrators and counter-demonstrators left the streets and the nation moved on -- as it should have -- to accept the inauguration of George W. Bush as our 43rd president.

Having gone through that experience, I can tell you -- without any doubt whatsoever -- that if the justices who formed the majority in Bush v. Gore had not only all been nominated to the Court by a Republican president, but had also been confirmed by only Republican Senators in party-line votes, America would not have accepted that court's decision.

Moreover, if the confirmation of those justices in the majority had been forced through by running roughshod over 200 years of Senate precedents and engineered by a crass partisan decision on a narrow party line vote to break the Senate's rules of procedure then no speech imaginable could have calmed the passions aroused in our country.

As Aristotle once said of virtue, respect for the rule of law is "one thing."

It is indivisible.

And so long as it remains indivisible, so will our country.

But if either major political party is ever so beguiled by a lust for power that it abandons this unifying principle, then the fabric of our democracy will be torn.

The survival of freedom depends upon the rule of law.

The rule of law depends, in turn, upon the respect each generation of Americans has for the integrity with which our laws are written, interpreted and enforced.

That necessary respect depends not only on the representative nature of our legislative branch, but also on the deliberative character of its proceedings. As James Madison envisioned, ours is a "deliberative democracy." Indeed, its deliberative nature is fundamental to the integrity of our social compact. Because the essential alchemy of democracy -- whereby just power is derived from the consent of the governed -- can only occur in a process that is genuinely deliberative.

Moreover, it is the unique role of the Senate, much more than the House, to provide a forum for deliberation, to give adequate and full consideration to the strongly held views of a minority. In this case, the minority is made up of 44 Democratic Senators and 1 Independent.

And it is no accident that our founders gave the Senate the power to pass judgment on the fitness of nominees to the Judicial branch. Because they knew that respect for the law also depends upon the perceived independence and integrity of our judges. And they wanted those qualities to be reviewed by the more reflective body of Congress.

Our founders gave no role to the House of Representatives in confirming federal judges. If they had believed that a simple majority was all that was needed to safeguard the nation against unwise choices by a partisan president, they might well have given the House as well as the Senate the power to vote on judges.

But they gave the power instead to the Senate, a body of equals, each of whom was given a term of office -- 3 times longer than that of a representative -- in order to encourage a reflective frame of mind, a distance from the passions of the voters and a capacity for deliberation. They knew that the judges would serve for life and that, therefore, their confirmation should follow a period of advice and consent in which the Senate was an equal partner with the executive.

Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist # 78, wrote that the "independence of the judges is equally requisite to guard the Constitution and the rights of individuals from the effects of those ill-humors which the arts of designing men... have a tendency, in the meantime, to occasion dangerous innovations in the government, and serious oppressions of the minor party in the community."

When James Madison introduced the Bill of Rights, he explained that "independent tribunals of justice will consider themselves... the guardians of [these] rights, ... an impenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the legislature or executive."

So, it is not as a Democrat but as an American, that I appeal today to the leadership of the majority in the Senate to halt their efforts to break the Senate's rules and instead protect a meaningful role in the confirmation of judges and justices for Senators of both parties. Remember that you will not always be in the majority, but much more importantly, remember what is best for our country regardless of which party is temporarily in power. Many of us know what it feels like to be disappointed with decisions made by the courts. But instead of attacking the judges with whose opinions we disagree, we live by the rule of law and maintain respect for the courts.

I am genuinely dismayed and deeply concerned by the recent actions of some Republican leaders to undermine the rule of law by demanding the Senate be stripped of its right to unlimited debate where the confirmation of judges is concerned, and even to engage in outright threats and intimidation against federal judges with whom they philosophically disagree.

Even after a judge was murdered in Atlanta while presiding in his courtroom, even after the husband and mother of a federal judge were murdered in Chicago in retaliation by a disgruntled party to a failed lawsuit -- even then -- the Republican leader of the House of Representatives responded to rulings in the Terri Schiavo case, by saying ominously: "The time will come for the men responsible for this to pay for their behavior."

When the outrage following this comment worsened Rep. DeLay's problems during the House Ethics scandal, he claimed that his words had been chosen badly, but in the next breath, he issued new threats against the same courts: "We set up the courts. We can unset the courts. We have the power of the purse."

In previous remarks on the subject, DeLay has said, "Judges need to be intimidated," adding that if they don't behave, "we're going to go after them in a big way."

Moreover, a whole host of prominent Republicans have been making similar threats on a regular basis.

A Republican Congressman from Iowa added: "When their budget starts to dry up, we'll get their attention. If we're going to preserve the Constitution, we must get them in line."

A Republican Senator from Texas directly connected the "spate of courthouse violence lately" to his view that unpopular decisions might be the explanation. "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 and builds to the point where some people engage in violence."

One of the best-known conservative political commentators has openly recommended that "liberals should be physically intimidated."

The spokesman for the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee said: "There does seem to be this misunderstanding out there that our system was created with a completely independent judiciary." Misunderstanding?

The Chief of Staff for another Republican senator called for "mass impeachment" by using the bizarre right-wing theory that the president can declare that any judge is no longer exhibiting "good behavior," adding that, "then the judge's term has simply come to an end. The President gives them a call and says: 'Clean out your desk. The Capitol police will be in to help you find your way home.'"

The elected and appointed Republican officials who made these dangerous statements are reflecting an even more broadly-held belief system of grassroots extremist organizations that have made the destruction of judicial independence the centerpiece of their political agenda.

Tony Perkins, leader of the Family Research Council, who hosted a speech by the Senate Majority Leader last Sunday, has said, "There's more than one way to skin a cat, and there's more than one way to take a black robe off the bench." Explaining that during his meeting with Republican leaders, the leaders discussed stripping funding from certain courts, Perkins said, "What they're thinking of is not only the fact of just making these courts go away and recreating them the next day, but also de-funding them." Congress could use its appropriations authority to just "take away the bench, all of its staff, and he's just sitting out there with nothing to do."

Another influential leader of one of these groups, James Dobson, who heads Focus on the Family, focused his anger on the 9th circuit court of appeals: "Very few people know this, that the Congress can simply disenfranchise a court. They don't have to fire anybody or impeach them or go through that battle. All they have to do is say the 9th circuit doesn't exist anymore, and it's gone."

Edwin Vieira (at the "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith" conference) said his "bottom line" for dealing with the Supreme Court comes from Stalin: "He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him whenever he ran into difficulty: 'no man, no problem.'"

Through their words and threats, these Republicans are creating an atmosphere in which judges may well hesitate to exercise their independence for fear of Congressional retribution, or worse.

It is no accident that this assault on the integrity of our constitutional design has been fueled by a small group claiming special knowledge of God's will in American politics. They even claim that those of us who disagree with their point of view are waging war against "people of faith." How dare they?

Long before our founders met in Philadelphia, their forebears first came to these shores to escape oppression at the hands of despots in the old world who mixed religion with politics and claimed dominion over both their pocketbooks and their souls.

This aggressive new strain of right-wing religious zealotry is actually a throwback to the intolerance that led to the creation of America in the first place.

James Madison warned us in Federalist #10 that sometimes, "A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction."

Unfortunately the virulent faction now committed to changing the basic nature of democracy now wields enough political power within the Republican party to have a major influence over who secures the Republican nomination for president in the 2008 election. It appears painfully obvious that some of those who have their eyes on that nomination are falling all over themselves to curry favor with this faction.

They are the ones demanding the destructive constitutional confrontation now pending in the Senate. They are the ones willfully forcing the Senate leadership to drive democracy to the precipice that now lies before us.

I remember a time not too long ago when Senate leaders in both parties saw it as part of their responsibility to protect the Senate against the destructive designs of demagogues who would subordinate the workings of our democracy to their narrow factional agendas.

Our founders understood that the way you protect and defend people of faith is by preventing any one sect from dominating. Most people of faith I know in both parties have been getting a belly-full of this extremist push to cloak their political agenda in religiosity and mix up their version of religion with their version of right-wing politics and force it on everyone else.

They should learn that religious faith is a precious freedom and not a tool to divide and conquer.

I think it is truly important to expose the fundamental flaw in the arguments of these zealots. The unifying theme now being pushed by this coalition is actually an American heresy -- a highly developed political philosophy that is fundamentally at odds with the founding principles of the United States of America.

We began as a nation with a clear formulation of the basic relationship between God, our rights as individuals, the government we created to secure those rights, and the prerequisites for any power exercised by our government.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident," our founders declared. "That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights..."

But while our rights come from God, as our founders added, "governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just power from the consent of the governed."

So, unlike our inalienable rights, our laws are human creations that derive their moral authority from our consent to their enactment-informed consent given freely within our deliberative processes of self-government.

Any who seek to wield the powers of government without the consent of the people, act unjustly.

Over sixty years ago, in the middle of the Second World War, Justice Jackson wrote: "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion."

His words are no less true today.

The historic vulnerability of religious zealots to subordinate the importance of the rule of law to their ideological fervor was captured best in words given by the author of "A Man for All Seasons" to Sir Thomas More.

When More's zealous son-in-law proposed that he would cut down any law in England that served as an obstacle to his hot pursuit of the devil, More replied: "And when the last law was cut down and the devil turned round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast-man's laws, not God's -- and if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?"

The Senate leaders remind me of More's son-in-law. They are now proposing to cut down a rule that has stood for more than two centuries as a protection for unlimited debate. It has been used for devilish purposes on occasion in American history, but far more frequently, it has been used to protect the right of a minority to make its case.

Indeed it has often been cited as a model for other nations struggling to reconcile the majoritarian features of democracy with a respectful constitutional role for minority rights. Ironically, a Republican freshman Senator who supports the party-line opposition to the filibuster here at home, recently returned from Iraq with an inspiring story about the formation of multi-ethnic democracy there. Reporting that he asked a Kurdish leader there if he worried that the majority Shiites would "overrun" the minority Kurds, this Senator said the Kurdish leader responded "oh no, we have a secret weapon.... [the] filibuster."

The Senate's tradition of unlimited debate has been a secret weapon in our nation's arsenal of democracy as well. It has frequently serves to push the Senate-and the nation as a whole-toward a compromise between conflicting points of view, to breathe life into the ancient advice of the prophet Isaiah: "Come let us reason together"; to illuminate arguments for which the crowded, busy House of Representatives has no time or patience, to afford any Senator an opportunity to stand in the finest American tradition in support of a principle that he or she believes to be important enough to bring to the attention of the nation.

In order to cut down this occasional refuge of a scoundrel, the leadership would cut down the dignity of the Senate itself, diminish the independence of the legislative branch, reduce its power, and accelerate the decline in its stature that is already far advanced.

Two-thirds of the American people reject their argument. The nation is overwhelmingly opposed to this dangerous breaking of the Senate's rules. And, so the leadership and the White House have decided to call it a crisis.

In the last few years, the American people have been told on several occasions that we were facing a dire crisis that required the immediate adoption of an unusual and controversial policy.

In each case, the remedy for the alleged crisis was an initiative that would have been politically implausible at best -- except for the crisis that required the unnatural act they urged upon us.

First, we were told that the nation of Iraq, armed to the teeth as it was said to be with weapons of mass destruction, represented a grave crisis that necessitated a unilateral invasion.

Then, we were told that Social Security was facing an imminent crisis that required its immediate privatization.

Now we are told that the federal judiciary is facing a dire crisis that requires us to break the rules of the Senate and discard the most important guarantee of the deliberative nature of Senate proceedings.

As with the previous "crises" that turned out to be falsely described, this one too cannot survive scrutiny. The truth is that the Senate has confirmed 205 or over 95% of President Bush's nominees. Democrats have held up only ten nominees, less than 5 percent. Compare that with the 60 Clinton nominees who were blocked by Republican obstruction between 1995 and 2000. In fact, under the procedures used by Republicans during the Clinton/ Gore Administration, far fewer than the 41 Senators necessary to sustain a filibuster were able to routinely block the Senate from voting on judges nominated by the president. They allowed Republican Senators to wage shadow filibusters to prevent some nominees from even getting a hearing before the Judiciary Committee. Other nominees were victims of shadow filibusters after receiving a hearing and were not allowed a committee vote. Still others were reported out of committee, and not allowed a vote on the Senate floor.

To put the matter in perspective, when President Clinton left office, there were more than 100 vacant judgeships largely due to Republican obstructionist tactics. Ironically, near the end of the Clinton-Gore administration, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said: "There is no vacancy crisis and a little perspective clearly belies the assertion that 103 vacancies represent a systematic crisis."

Comically, soon after President Bush took office, when the number of vacancies had already been reduced, the same Republican committee chairman sounded a shrill alarm. Because of the outstanding vacancies, he said, "We're reaching a crisis in our federal courts."

Now, the number of vacancies is lower than it has been in many years: 47 vacancies out of 877 judgeships -- and for the majority of those vacancies, the President has not even sent a nominee to the Senate. Yet still, the Republican drive for one-party control leads them to cry over and over again: "Crisis! Crisis in the courts!" It is hypocritical, and it is simply false.

Republicans have also claimed quite disingenuously that the filibustering of judicial nominees is unprecedented. History, however, belies their claim. I served in the Senate for eight of my 16 years in Congress -- and then another 8 years as President of the Senate in my capacity as Vice President. Moreover, my impressions of the Senate date back to earlier decades -- because my father was a Senator when I was growing up.

From that perspective, I have listened with curiosity to some of the statements made during the current debate. For example, I have heard the Senate Majority Leader, who is from my home state and should know better, say that no Court nominee has ever been filibustered before the current president's term. But I vividly remember not only the dozens of nominees sent to the Senate by President Clinton who were denied a vote and filibustered by various means, I also remember in 1968 when my father was the principal sponsor of another Tennessean -- Abe Fortas -- who was nominated to be Chief Justice by President Lyndon Johnson. Fortas was filibustered and denied an up or down vote. The cloture vote was taken on October 1, 1968. When it failed by a vote of 45-43, President Johnson was forced by the filibuster to withdraw the nomination.

My father's Senate colleague and friend from Tennessee, Howard Baker, said during that filibuster, "On any issue, the majority at any given moment is not always right." And no Democrat would take issue with that statement, then or now. It is part of the essence of the U.S. Senate.

This fight is not about responding to a crisis. It is about the desire of the administration and the Senate leadership to stifle debate in order to get what they want when they want it. What is involved here is a power grab -- pure and simple.

And what makes it so dangerous for our country is their willingness to do serious damage to our American democracy in order to satisfy their lust for total one-party domination of all three branches of government. They seek nothing less than absolute power. Their grand design is an all-powerful executive using a weakened legislature to fashion a compliant judiciary in its own image. They envision a total breakdown of the separation of powers. And in its place they want to establish a system in which power is unified in the service of a narrow ideology serving a narrow set of interests.

Their coalition of supporters includes both right-wing religious extremists and exceptionally greedy economic special interests. Both groups are seeking more and more power for their own separate purposes. If they were to achieve their ambition -- and exercise the power they seek -- America would face the twin dangers of an economic blueprint that eliminated most all of the safeguards and protections established for middle class families throughout the 20th century and a complete revision of the historic insulation of the rule of law from sectarian dogma. One of the first casualties would be the civil liberties that Americans have come to take for granted.

Indeed, the first nominee they've sent to the on-deck circle has argued throughout her legal career that America's self-government is the root of all social evil. Her radical view of the Social Security system, which she believes to be unconstitutional, is that it has created a situation where, in her words: "Today's senior citizens blithely cannibalize their grandchildren."

This family of 7 judicial fanatics is now being stopped at democracy's gates by 44 Democratic Senators, led by Sen. Harry Reid, and a small but growing number of Republican Senators who have more independence than fear of their party disciplinarians. If the rules of the Senate are broken and if these nominees should ever be confirmed, they would, as a group, intervene in your family's medical decisions and put a narrow version of religious doctrine above, not within, the Constitution. They have shown by their prior records and statements that they would weaken the right to privacy and consistently favor special interests at the expense of middle class America by threatening the minimum wage, worker & consumer protections, the 40-hour workweek, your right to sue your HMO, and your right to clean air and water.

Because of the unique lifetime tenure of federal judges, their legitimacy requires that they be representative of a broad consensus of the American people. Extremist judges so unacceptable to a large minority of the Senate clearly fall outside this consensus.

Yet today's Republicans seem hell-bent on squelching the ability of the minority in this country to express dissent. This is in keeping with other Republican actions to undercut the legislative process.

And in the filibuster fight they are doing it with utter disregard for the rule of law so central to our democracy. There is, of course, a way to change the rules if they so choose -- and that is to follow the rules.

When they decide instead to break the rules and push our democracy into uncharted, uncertain terrain, the results are often not to the liking of the American people.

That's what happened when they broke precedents to pass special legislation in the Terri Schiavo case -- by playing politics with the Schiavo family tragedy. And, the overwhelming majority of Americans in both political parties told the President and the Congress that they strongly disagreed with that extremist approach.

And now, all of the new public opinion polls show an overwhelming majority of the American people are opposed to this current effort to cripple the United States Senate's position in our constitutional framework by destroying the principle of unlimited debate. But, the congressional Republican leadership and the White House are so beholden to the extremists that they feel like they have to do what they say.

One reason that the American people are upset about what the Republican party is doing, is that while they are wasting time on their extremist agenda, they are neglecting issues like the crisis in the cost and availability of health care, the difficulty middle class families are having in making ends meet, etc.

Our founders understood that there is in all human beings a natural instinct for power. The Revolution they led was precisely to defeat the all-encompassing power of a tyrant thousands of miles away.

They knew then what Lord Acton summarized so eloquently a hundred years later: "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." They knew that when the role of deliberative democracy is diminished, passions are less contained, less channeled within the carefully balanced and separated powers of our Constitution, less checked by the safeguards inherent in our founders' design-and the vacuum left is immediately filled by new forms of power more arbitrary in their exercise and derived less from the consent of the governed than from the unbridled passions of ideology, ultra-nationalist sentiments, racist, tribal and sectarian fervor -- and most of all, by those who claim a unique authority granted directly to them by the Almighty.

That is precisely why they established a system of checks and balances to prevent the accretion of power in any one set of hands -- either in one individual or a group because they were wary of what Madison famously called "factions."

Yet today that is precisely what a small group of radical Republicans is trying to do. And they threaten a fundamental break with a system that has served us well for 230 years and has served as a model for the rest of the world.

In the words of columnist George Will, "The filibuster is an important defense of minority rights, enabling democratic government to measure and respect not merely numbers but also intensity in public controversies. Filibusters enable intense minorities to slow the governmental juggernaut. Conservatives, who do not think government is sufficiently inhibited, should cherish this blocking mechanism."

Senator McCain echoed Will's sentiments, reminding his conservative colleagues, "We won't always be in the majority... and do we want a bunch of liberal judges approved by the Senate of the United States with 51 votes if the Democrats are in the majority?"

The rules and traditions of the Senate all derive from this desire to ensure that the voice of the minority could be heard. The filibuster has been at the heart of this tradition for nearly the entire 230 years of the Senate's existence. Yet never before has anyone has felt compelled to try to eliminate it.

The proposal from the Senate majority leader to abolish the right of unlimited debate is a poison pill for America's democracy. It is the stalking horse for a dangerous American heresy that would substitute persuasion on the merits with bullying and an effort at partisan domination.
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Ignorant fucking hicks

South Carolina, apparently, has more than its fair share of them. This article reports on one South Carolina representative's efforts to pass a law making cock fighting a felony and table a law making domestic violence a felony. There may well be procedural or constitutional flaws in the domestic violence law that would justify his actions. I can't say. But, to say something like this to a reporter suggests that the representative is likely motivated by something other than noble constitutional concerns:
"People who compare [cock fighting and domestice violence] are not very smart and if you don't understand the difference, Ms. Gormley, between trying to ban the savage practice of watching chickens trying to kill each other and protecting people rights in CDV statutes, I'll never be able to explain it to you in a 100 years ma'am."

Sheesh. What does this say about the people who elected this guy?
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Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Bible porn

It's not porn, but it is marginally about the Bible. This link will take you to a blog called Killing the Buddha and a post that tells a very interesting story about Bible camp. It's worth a read.
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Pinche blogger

I had a sizeable post about Senate strategy and Harry Reid's tactical prowess. Blogger ate it. Since most of the post was derivative of this post by the Decembrist, I guess that's no great loss. I'll just restate, though, what I originally said before it was taken: let's thank the President for helping get an incompetent, partisan hack elected to lead Senate Republicans.

Since I'm sharing links, though, I'll also direct you to this post by Kevin Drum. Very good discussion of how conservatives have taken radical tendencies formerly held by leftists back in the last century.
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Santorum is a swine

Thanks to Lono for turning me on to a piece of news I hadn't heard before. It seems that Rick Santorum, everybody's favorite cuddly right-winger, has sponsored a bill in the Senate that would prevent the National Weather Service from providing free weather forecasts.

According to Santorum, his bill will make the NWS focus on providing severe weather forecasts to the public. Of course, the NWS already does this. It gathers vast quantities of weather data and then uses that to forecast weather patterns and events. Having completed these forecasts, NWS then makes them and their underlying data available free to the public. The problem, of course, is that this conflicts with atleast two major companies that provide these same services at a fee: Accuweather and the Weather Channel.

Now, far be it from me to impugn the motives of the Honorable Santorum, but think there's any connection between his sponsorship and the fact that Accuweather is based in Pennsylvania?

[Libertarian Everett raises his ugly head]

It seems to me that if the market (which brings us all things good and useful) is going to work efficiently here, then Accuweather and The Weather Channel should compete without legislative help. If they're really so good at what they do, then their products should outshine NWS' and garner them growing profits. If they're really threatened by NWS' work, then I would posit that they suck at what they do and deserve to go bankrupt.
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Why let Rudolph avoid trial?

Orcinus has a good post today querying why the Justice Department let Eric Rudolph plead guilty and avoid trial in return for showing them where some dynamite was hidden. His conclusion, which I generally agree with, is that they may have been motivated to some degree by an unwillingness to contradict the Bush Administration's "terrorism" narrative. In that narrative, terrorists are A-rabs and sand-niggers, and clean cut white boys just don't fit the picture. More importantly, it's A-rabs that do the killin', not good Christian men who espouse the culture of life.
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Treat yourself

Vist the website of Eugene Mirman and listen to him sing the hits. I especially like his version of "Black Dog" by Led Zeppelin. He will rock your world.
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Describe yourself in 50 words or less.

I spent most of last night working on a job application that was four questions long. These questions were obviously written by the same person who prepared this final exam. The question that troubled me most was this:
Outline your written, analytical, and oral communications skills and experiences. Briefly identify and describe the content of one briefing, speech, report, or paper that you have prepared.

Basically, I have to encapsulate 15 years of higher education and professional work on 1/2 page of paper. I understand that this, in itself, is an exercise in effective communication, but really? I struggled with the question of whether they really want a true summary, or whether they want examples. Ultimately, I concluded they want both, but written concisely. Fuckin-A.

I got it done, but when I finally crawled into bed at 1:30 this morning, I wasn't sure whether it was any good. When I woke up this morning at 6:30, I read over my work. I'm still not sure it's any good. Oh well. Perhaps the Seattle City Council will recognize my application as an unpolished gem, hire me, and fire up the old rock tumbler to grind me into shape...
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Tuesday, April 26, 2005

A winning strategy?

Driftglass has a great analogy to describe President Bush's decision to extend his 60-days tour. He also does a fine job of outlining just how the President won the last election. Pundits and political scientists can bullshit all they want about 2004, but the President utlimately won using the strategies and tactics that Driftglass so ably describes.
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Do Not Follow This Link

This link will take you to a blog so rude, so obscene, that even the Rude Pundit felt that it was rude. If you are faint of heart, easily disgusted, or in the very least bit prudish, do not click this link. This link will expose you to descriptions of the most vile, depraved acts you can possibly imagine. This link, by all measures of decency and morality, should not be on this blog. Nonetheless, I am providing you with this link.

Why? I'm not really sure.
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Opportunity costs

This morning, instead of riding my bicycle to work, I opted to take the Metro. Given that I'm an unabashed bicycle lunatic, this is odd; given that it was a beautiful, sunny morning, this is downright disturbing. Why would I give up a great riding opportunity to sit in a crowded train in some dank tunnel? Well, first off, most of the metro ride to Silver Spring is outside, so it's not in a tunnel. Secondly, riding the Metro does give me opportunity to read. Thus, I basically traded my bike ride for the chance to read and notate Erik Loomis' blog post. Apparently, I'm reaching the age (or laziness level) where intellectual exercise can be more enticing than physical exercise. Look out potbelly, here I come!
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Ecofascism redux

Erik Loomis over at Alterdestiny has another long post outlining his thoughts on ecofascism, environmentalism and the growing influence of right-wing and anti-humanist ideologies on the environmental movement. Unfortunately, I spent the evening working on job applications, so I have not had time to comment. I apologize to both Erik and to interested readers. I'll try to get something substantive written tonight, as I don't feel that a 15-minute blurb written during my lunch hour would do the subject justice.
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Monday, April 25, 2005

Flensing a whale

CNN has an interesting article on conducting a necropsy on a beached whale. It's kind of graphic for you weak-stomached, but worth the read. I like that the author notes the relatively high frequency with which whale-ship collisions occur. A little bit more on how to prevent that might have been interesting, but overall a very good article on an aspect of marine science I've never thought about before.
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Calling all thinking enviros

Alterdestiny has a thought-provoking and, I think, somewhat flawed post on ecofascism. I need to sit and think about it before writing a response; however, I'll make the initial point that I think his dichotomy between humanists and environmentalists is flawed. This dichotomy allows him to paint environmentalists in a very stark light when. I think there is a real split in the environmental movement between "deep ecologists" and more moderate humanist types. In any case, any smart folk out there want to comment on this post and save me the trouble? If not, I'll try writing more later. In the meantime, if you consider yourself an environmentalist, I suggest you read the post.
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Evil seed

Driftglass has quite the effective post this morning. As soon as I read it, I thought back to the best book I've read in years, The Book of the Dun Cow. I found it at The Strand on the $1 shelf outside the store. I'm not sure why, given its remarkable quality.

The book is a moving, occasionally frightening, parable of good, evil, and earthly sacrifice played out in a world of coops where roosters govern (mostly kindly) and animals talk. The story begins when a proud and aging rooster, Senex I believe, is fooled into laying an egg that contains Cockatrice. This half snake/half rooster kills Senex and begins systematically raping the hens in Senex's coop, thus populating the Earth with evil basilisks. The animals in the Senex's coop rise up too late, and are overcome by this evil.

The parallels between this story and Driftglass' post are obvious. But, I would argue that moderate Republicans are more like the rooster Senex rather than the obsequious hens. It's not just a matter of them bowing to radicalism in their party. They, in their vainness and driven by a desire to be part of a ruling party (?), are in fact parenting, giving birth to the allegorical snakes of radical Republicanism. Christy Todd Whitman claims it's her party too. Is that right? I think not. To the radicals she's a RINO, and ultimately just as unworthy as you or I for continued political existence. However, for the time being she's a nice, moderate face to hide the scaly, reptilian nature of the fundy radicals seizing power. Given them time, give them power, and they'll drop the mask of moderation. I think it's just a matter of time, just like Driftglass suggests.
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Saturday, April 23, 2005

Justices and their clerks

I came across this article in Legal Affairs magazine online. If you are at all interested in how Supreme Court opinions are considered and written, it provides some insight into that process. In particular the article, which is based on Justice Harry Blackmun's recently released records, looks at the role of judicial clerks. I would note, however, that if you read only this article, you may get a jaundiced view of what clerks do and how they relate to the judges and justices they work for. Thus, I would also recommend that you read this post and this post from Jack Balkin's blog. They provide some counterbalance to Garrow's conclusion that judicial clerks are too partisan and too involved in opinion writing. Personally, I don't have an opinion on the matter, primarily because I don't know enough. Read for yourself and decide, though.
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Friday, April 22, 2005

EARTH DAY 2005

Today is April 22nd, Earth Day. In this era of right-wing dominance, oil addiction, and anti-scientific religiosity, that doesn't mean as much as it used to. Nonetheless, as an environmentalist, a soon-to-be father, and a human being who has to live on this Earth (with any luck) for another 50+ years, I want to highlight the fact that we live on an amazingly rich and beautiful planet and that it is incumbent upon us, as the primary sentient species, to preserve it for all its residents. Thus, I urge all my readers to take this day (and hopefully all the others) to think about the consequences of your actions and inactions on our natural environment, and contemplate what you can do to mitigate the adverse affects that flow therefrom.
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Bike Dork Alert!!!

I am a bike dork. Big time. I love bikes. I love to ride them, I love to fix them, I love to look at them. Some people like baseball, others like television, I like bicycles. Thus, whereas those other people might be interested in baseball players or television stars, I'm interested in bicycle stars. Thus, imagine my pleasure when Large Fella on a Bike began a series of interviews with custom bicycle builders. They're not really interviews mind you, they're actually questionnaires. Nonetheless, they provide a fascinating (mostly) look into the mind of some of today's greatest framebuilders. Click here, if you're a bike dork and want to read some of those interviews, too.
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More environmental stuff

The Economist has a cover story, not surprisingly, on how market forces can save environmentalism. It's pretty short and a good read. Though I disagree with the article's premise, I do agree that market tools can be very successful in achieving economically efficient pollution reductions (e.g. SOx trading). What the article does not address is the difficulty of setting proper pollution levels. Trading markets function when the government establishes pollutant levels within which an industry (and traders) can function. It is this setting of pollution levels which engenders so much debate in the United States (and elsewhere). Cost-benefit analysis can provide you with a decisionmaking guide, a range of choices with associated costs, but the decision ultimately is made at the political level. For example, how much are we, as a society, willing to pay for lives improved or saved through reductions in mercury emissions from power plants? This decision point is where Economist's model fails. Greens fight the way they do, because they realize that for all the "scientific precision" we might bring to environmental decisions, there is an intangible moral/political element that will be the ultimate deciding factor.
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Thursday, April 21, 2005

...and David Brooks is a miserable hack

I must have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed today, because I really have nothing positive to say about what I've seen in the papers today. This may be, in part, because I made the mistake of reading David Brooks. I think Brooks has some interesting stuff to say occasionally, but the incredible congruence between his opinions and the Republican party line is becoming increasingly tiresome. Moreover, his willingness to spout partisan crap that is patently and obviously false or baseless is just plain stupid.

Consider today's commentary in which he argues that Roe v. Wade must be overturned in order to save America from itself. Jesus H. Christ on a popsical stick! According to Brooks, after Roe:
Religious conservatives became alienated from their own government, feeling that their democratic rights had been usurped by robed elitists. Liberals lost touch with working-class Americans because they never had to have a conversation about values with those voters; they could just rely on the courts to impose their views.

Read this paragraph and compare it to the currently popular narrative conservatives use to describe American politics. According to that narrative, conservative Americans are maligned and ignored by liberals who, by definition apparently, are not working class and who use the judicial system to impose their worldview on the country. By Brooks' theory, Roe arose spontaneously and ahistorically out of the mind of Harry Blackmun and "invented the right to an abortion", thus poisoning the well of American politics.

Right. And the Barry Goldwaters, Richard Mellon-Scaifes and other assorted lunatics who have constituted and funded the paranoid and radical right-wing in this country since at least the late 1950s have NOTHING to do with this?

Anyway, according to Brooks, the self-destruct protocol that is Roe has culminated in the current showdown in the Senate over judicial appointments. Thus, every debate over judicial nominees boils down to their stance on abortion, and the 10 nominees the Democrats have blocked by filibuster were treated this way because they were pro-life. (Sure Dave, and the nominees' unwillingness to answer questions about their judicial approaches, their belief in constitutional literalism, or their citation of the Bible as binding precedent had NOTHING to do with those filibusters.) As a result of this abuse of the filibuster, Republicans are now forced to consider doing away with the filibuster altogether.

And now, Brooks reaches around and plunges his arm deep into his ass to pull out a reason why doing away with the filibuster would be bad. According to Brooks,
Those who believe in smaller government would suffer most. Minority rights have been used frequently to stop expansions of federal power, but if those minority rights were weakened, the federal role would grow and grow - especially when Democrats regained the majority.


What? Sure, the filibuster has been used to protect minority interests. It's also been used to "protect" majority interests (see Strom Thurmond). This protective mechanism, anti-democratic as it is, probably is a good reason to keep the filibuster alive. But what's this about federal growth? Perhaps the pressure of his elbow hitting his colon was making David feel woozy. What else could it be? That's the only reasonable explanation I can find for him asserting that the current Democratic party is especially good at making government grow. Hey Dave, your boys have been in control for pretty much five years now. Total control. Who's been growing government? Not those pesky democrats and their pesky filibusters, that's for sure.

Anyway, this is a long, snarky, and not especially enlightening post, so I'll end it here. David Brooks and Sam Brownback should do the following:

Hug A Root.

Update: The Rude Pundit has something to say on this topic as well.
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Brownback barebacks DC

Yesterday, when I opened the Metro section in the Post, I saw this article which explained that DC is going to allow gay couple who got married in Massachusetts last year to file their taxes jointly. This is, of course, significant, because it means that the city is extending rights previously reserved solely for heterosexual couples to gay couples. Moreover, as one of DC's gay residents points out in the column, it also means that gay couples are taking on additional responsibilities. Regardless, the decision was made by our Attorney General after consulting DC law, and I applaud the decision.

This morning, when I opened the Post, I saw this article. Sam Brownback, Senator from the state of Kansas, has once again decided to play politics with the lives of people in DC and pander to the mouth-breathing neanderthals who populate his state and, as it turns out, this country. Not content to allow me and the voters of DC to decide whether we like the policies established by our political leaders, Mr. Brownback has decided that he, "will deal with something in D.C. now."

Why? Because he cares so much about the people of DC that he has to protect us from the scourge of gay marriage. You know, after reading that article yesterday, my marriage did feel a little bit weaker. Who knows, I might have filed for divorce today at lunch if I hadn't read that Brownback had stepped in to save the day. And all you naysaying liberals can hug a root. The causal chain between extending tax filing privileges to gay couples and the strength of my marriage is just SO CLEAR!

Articles like that make me livid. Brownback's utter disregard for democratic values, his willingness to subvert policies established by elected officials, his utter contempt for the people of DC enrage me. He's just another totalitarian right-wing Christian and goddamit it just isn't right. Fuck you and your religion Brownback.

UPDATE: I take the religion part back. For all I care, someone can bugger Brownback with a summer squash, but I'm not willing to insult Christians generally or Christianity. There are, obviously, many misguided and downright evil Christians, but, and I need to remind myself this, they probably occur in the same proportion as they do in the general populace. Why blame an entire religion for the sins of the many misguided (or evil) Christians who have managed to get elected as Republicans?
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Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Follow up to MTMB post

This morning, I pointed you toward a post on Mike the Mad Biologists blog. This afternoon, I'll point you to This Modern World's take on the same issue. Being Tom Tomorrow, it's funny to boot!
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The Great Circle of Blog

Mike the Mad Biologist has a great post today in which he draws a distinction between modern liberals and modern conservatives based not on their party affiliation, but based on whether they fight for political power and domination (conservative) or justice and morality (liberal). I think it's an interesting way to parse many of the current debates, but fails in as much as it can't explain why moderates like Lincoln Chafee or Olympia Snowe continue to support their radical counterparts in Congress. Anyway, it's a good read.
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More thoughts on the Times Magazine article

I thought I had posted a link to this past weekend's New York Times magazine article on the Constitution in Exile. Going back through the archives, it appears I did not. So, if you don't read anything else in the next few days, take the time to print out and read The Unregulated Offensive by Jeffrey Rosen. It's a very clear, very succinct discussion of the current players and status in the so-called Constitution in Exile (CIE) movement.

I re-read it last night and took some notes while reading. When I got done, it occurred to me that the article broadly hints at the reason why, despite certain inclinations I might have in that direction, I can never become a libertarian. Namely, I'm convinced that unregulated markets (or societies) invariably lead to concentrations of power and concentrated power leads to abuse of those without power (i.e. most individuals). The article highlights the fact that proponents of the CIE disagree with this and somehow think that doing away with our current system won't have massive negative effects on people and the environment. The best description of this belief comes on page 11:
If they win -- if, years from now, the Constitution is brought back from its decades of arguable exile -- and federal environmental laws are struck down, the movement's loyalists do not expect the levels of air and water pollution to rise catastrophically. They are confident that local regulations and private contracts between businesses and neighbors will determine the pollution levels that each region demands. Nor do they expect vulnerable workers to be exploited in sweatshops if labor unions are weakened: they anticipate that entrepreneurial workers in a mobile economy will bargain for the working conditions that their talents deserve. Historic districts, as they see it, will not be eviscerated if zoning laws are scaled back, but they do imagine there will be fewer brownstones and more McMansions. In exchange for these trade-offs, they insist, individual liberty -- the indispensable guarantee of self-fulfillment and happiness -- would flourish far more extensively than it does today.

Now, Richard Epstein might be a smart guy, very likely far smarter than me, but does he (and the rest of the movement) really believe that things will just work out? For example, does he really think that businesses and neighbors have enough information and expertise to determine optimum pollution levels? Does he really think that the average working American has sufficient mobility, information and economic wherewithal to find and bargain for job opportunities with big employers? Can he be so obtuse?

Consider for a second the environmental example. Suppose the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Drinking Water Act, CERCLA, and RCRA have all been done away with. Suppose, then, that an energy company seeks to build an oil refinery next to a river in a small, economically-depressed town. Without a federal or state regulatory framework, the town council and its citizens will be left to bargain with the corporation to establish acceptible pollution levels. This alone, is problematic, in as much as the chances are basically nil that the town will know what pollutants such plant might release and what effect they might have on the commmunity. In illustration, do you know what an oil refinery releases, how much it releases and how those releases might affect your health or welfare? I certainly don't. The fact is, most towns and localities lack the resources to obtain the sort of information required to make the CIE model work.

The federal government is more than just a regulatory entity these days. The federal government is a neutral information source and a neutral arbiter. Environmentalists, industry and a whole variety of related interest groups may rent-seek through the administrative agencies, but at some basic level the environmental data the government collects is fairly accurate, mostly comprehensive and not open to easy manipulation. Take this resource away, and you're left with an informational vacuum. Where would towns and localities go to get information on pollution and its effects if federal agencies stop collecting it? Non-profits? Funded by whom? Could localities be sure the non-profit data source is neutral or the data accurate? American business has shown great skill at setting up phony advocacy groups and disseminating information that, at its best, omits salient facts. In a fully-deregulated country, I suspect such organizations would multiply, not decline. Likewise, even if environmental groups offered their own information, how would localities know to between many options? Thus, the information barrier to effective local decision making seems quite high. Without the sort of guaranteed information that the federal governmetn provides under our current system, I doubt that towns or localities would be able to identify pollution levels they consider "optimal".

Perhaps more importantly, even if a town can make informed decisions as to the degree of pollution they feel is optimaly, how would they be able to enforce agreements they might reach with a business? Will corporations sign individual contracts with localities? If they do, will normal contract rules apply? Currently, most (all?) states allow courts to negate contracts that violate public policy, but the term "public policy" is vague and courts lack expertise in establishing what the public policy may be in regards to specific pollution levels.

Additionally, there is the question of whether an optimal pollution level can ever be determined through bargaining. Even if a town begins bargaining with full knowledge and the backing of the courts, there remains the fact that the company will bargain as a monopsony. In other words, there is only one business offering to build the plant, but presumably the town is one among many potential sites. In this situation, the company can use its position to bargain down the "optimal" level of pollution. If the target town has an optimal level in mind, the plant can threaten to move to a different town where they may have less information or a different optimal level. This is the classic race to the bottom situation, except there may well be no racing, just the threat.

There are other problems, as well, with this idea of towns and localities contracting for optimal pollution levels: these include the problems posed by cross-boundary pollutants, the potential divergence between economic and environmental optimality, and the risk of backroom political deals. For the sake of brevity (does it matter at this point?), however, I'll stop here.

Ultimately, the issue at hand extends beyond merely environmental concerns. I believe the CIE folk, whether out of a groundless faith in free markets or for some other reason, are trying to create a system in which pre-existing inequities in our society and economy can be exacerbated and exploited by those individuals and entities with the means to do so. The Constitution, as a Supreme Court justice once said (and the right-wing has repeated ad nauseum since 9/11), is not a suicide pact. It may have been written by propertied elites, but it was not intended to be and should not used as a means to centralize economic and political power in the hands of a tiny segment of American society.
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Tuesday, April 19, 2005

A beautiful day

The Catholic Church embraces orthodoxy by promoting an undead German (see the post picture) to Pope. This act has, remarkably enough, created the world's first infallible zombie. George Romero would be proud.

The sun shines on Mt. St. Helens.

Evangelicals in Ohio begin to wake up to the fact that they're a bunch of fucking gullible chumps and the Prezdint is taking them for a ride.

Yuppies in California pummel each other for a house in an increasingly rare, excellent California school district. Defeated, 99.9% of them go home to their original houses in piss-poor school districts and thank their lucky stars that at least they don't live in Connecticut, where they'd have to pay high property taxes.
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My decrepit corpus

So yesterday, after nearly a 2 year hiatus, I played soccer. It was, as always, great fun. My team, Mom's, is full of really nice people and good soccer players to boot. The evening was beautiful, we all played really well, and Mom's ended up winning. All in all, it was an excellent time. Now, fast forward to today.

My back hurts where I tweaked it, my legs are sore, and I've got a giant bruise on my arm from falling (I think). As I am constantly reminded these days, I'm no longer 22 and I can no longer play with impunity. My decrepit corpus isn't necessarily failing me, but it ain't the well-oiled machine it once was either. Discovering these things gives me new respect for the folks on my team who are in their late 30s and early 40s and still playing full-tilt soccer. It's very impressive and I hope that 6 years from now, I'm still playing half as well as they do.
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Integrity, what's that?

The Washington Post provides further evidence that conservative think tanks, and the Heritage Foundation in particular, are nothing but a bunch of money-grubbing intellectual whores who wouldn't know what a principle was if it bit them on the ass (unless, of course, the principle was "If it pays well, do it").

Get this quote from Heritage concerning their pro-Malaysian message shift that occurred after accepting money from Malaysian businesses:
"The Heritage Foundation has and always will call it like we see it."

Hmmmm... It must be those green bankers' shades blocking their view.
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Why do I even blog?

The Decembrist pretty much says everything I want to say, and does it better. Read this commentary on the NYT Magazine's article on the Constitution in Exile. He makes the very good point that even if there is no such coordinated movement among conservative jurists, it's a great way to encapsulate the general consensus among that crowd that Lochner was a good decision and substantive due process should be protecting contract rights rather than civil liberties. I mean, there's more to it than that, but if the public comes to understand that the Constitution in Exile means the gutting of the regulatory state and many of the protections we as consumers and citizens have come to take for granted, perhaps they will view fights over the judiciary differently.
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A little science is good for your circulation

Mike the Mad Biologist has an interesting critique of creationist denials that bacteria can evolve resistance to anti-biotics. I'm no scientist, of course, but I enjoyed reading what he has to say. We all owe big thanks to folks like Mike who, in their free time, battle the lies, ignorance and mis-information that right-wingers seek to spread. I wonder if there's anybody doing this in scientific journals, or if the creationist folk are just ignored?
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Right of conscience my ass.

Pharmicists are nothing but glorified retailers with a little bit of science background. I'll say it again, being a pharmacist ain't so special. If a doctor writes a valid prescription, than some moralizing pharmacist should not have the right, whether it's a right of conscience or otherwise, to deny a patient that prescription. It's as simple as that. You want to be a pharmacist, you fill the goddamn prescriptions. Why the fuck else did you get into the biz, if you don't want to help people's health and well-being? You want to be a moralizing prick, go to divinity school, not pharmacy school.

Goddamn stinking fucking right-wingers. This isthe article the piqued my ire. I refuse to recognize a "right of conscience" when the health, safety, or well-being of a person is at stake. So maybe someone had unprotected sex, or the condom broke, or maybe they're just a prostitute. I could give a flying fuck about why they need or want the morning after pill. Fact is, the pill is legal and it should be given.

You want a similar example: me. I won't apply for a job at a giant law firm like Baker Botts, and I won't apply for public defender jobs. Why? Because I abhor the thought of defending big polluting industries, and I have no desire to defend murders and drug dealers who can't afford counsel. I don't apply for those sorts of job because I recognize that I would be faced with situations that I find to be morally and personally compromising. Nonetheless, I recognize that both sorts of parties must have access to legal counsel. Thus, other folks of a different mien will fill those jobs. Is that any different from the pharmacists who is opposed to birth control. No. And thus, they should just stay out of the business if they can't stomach their duties.
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Monday, April 18, 2005

Tracking frat-boys

I'm no conspiracy theorists and I don't wear Abercrombie & Fitch, but this webpage is a bit freaky. I understand that RFID tags would be used by retailers initially to forestall theft, but we all know that the information they could provide would be irresistable. Given time and resources, retailers and marketers could use these RFID to track and collect customers' habits, patterns and travel, and use that information to target them even more specifically. Imagine, as in the movie "Minority Report", advertisements that know who you are and can address you specifically.

More ominous, in my opinion, are the tiny RFID tags discussed in this CNET article which can be high-powered and nearly invisible to the eye. These are being developed with virtually no input from the public and with what appears to be limited regulation. There's no stopping technological advancement, but it'd be nice to have a say in how it's employed.
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Voltaire drank 50 cups

And I know why. The afternoon espresso bee is buzzing around my head and I'm liking it. Walked outside at lunch today to blue skies and the first truly warm day this spring. It's probably 80 degrees out and a little breezy. Staying inside would have been criminal, so I traipsed over to Mayorga and got myself an iced espresso. And thus came the buzzy little bee. So, if you've had a similar experience today and are mulling over the pleasures of coffee, try your hand at this quiz.
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Morality and choice

The American Prospect online has a very long, very detailed article, about the history of the abortion debate in this country. I highly recommend reading it. The author basically suggests that the debate needs to be re-framed by pro-choice advocates in a way that acknowledges the moral complexity of abortion and the choices women make in having one. I don't know whether that will ultimately be a successful strategy, but I don't think it can hurt. Suggesting that abortion should be legal solely as a matter of female autonomy (which I believe is sufficient justification, by the way) clearly is not compelling for many Americans. Perhaps talking less about the act and more about the painful moral and personal considerations that underly the decision to get an abortion will show anti-choicers that access to abortions is not about libertinism, but about preserving and promoting life in all its aspects.
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Hot dog buns

Check out this site to discover the absolute and unchallenged power of the profit motive. Gasp in wonder at this mysterious force as it drives people to address niche markets you didn't even know existed.

Then, once you've pulled yourself together, go here to read the answer one of the deepest and most mystifying questions of the universe.
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Speaking of faith

Grrr... I had a sizable post written up when, in searching for a particular link, my Explorer froze up. Pinche fucking spyware sites, pinche fucking explorer.

Anyway, I was writing that one of the best shows on radio (or TV) these days is Speaking of Faith. It's a thoughtful, intelligent program that provides the most interesting and well-reasoned discussions of faith, religion and politics in America you are likely to find. The host, Krista Tippett, has a remarkable grasp on religious concepts and issues, and it shows through in the quality of the programming.

This weekend's program (listen here) was on religion and the death penalty in the US. One of the interviewees was Sister Helen Prejean, who wrote Dead Man Walking. She made a comment which raised issues abou the death penalty I had never previously considered. Roughly paraphrasing, she said that by sentencing people to death we freeze them in the moment of time when they comment their crime. In effect, society denies the potential for personal redemption or growth and instead elevates the values of retribution, restriction and deterrence.

I think that's right. Moreover, as a secular observer, I think it's what the death penalty ought to be doing. History shows us, of course, that people can and do change while on death row. Carla Fay Tucker's conversion from murderous drug addict to born-again prison preacher is a good example. Nonetheless, I would argue that post-conviction conversions have no bearing on the original crime and punishment. Ultimately, the death penalty is about retribution. There is no proof to suggest that the death penalty deters violent murders, and life imprisonment is equally effective at restricting murderers' actions. The sole remaining reason for state-sponsored killing is retribution. I, for one, have no problem with that justification. Retribution isn't necessarily civilized and it certainly isn't pretty, but if states settle on that as a proper punishment, then I can accept that.

My problem with the death penalty stems from the problems of uncertainty and bias. If the state is going to exercise its powers of coercion to execute people, than it damn well better do it with the highest degree of neutrality and accuracy possible. And that, my friends, near to impossible. Prosecutors, police, juries and judges are all flawed. Bias runs rampant in our society, including bias against race, religion and economic class. The fact that most people on death row in America are poor, black males is NOT indicative of innate tendencies in those people, but of innate biases in our system. And that reason alone, should be sufficient to render the death penalty invalid. Until we can create a criminal justice system that doesn't just aspire to neutrality and accuracy, but can actually achieve it, I don't think we ought to be executing anyone.

Thus, to get back to my original intention with this post, if you can, listen to Speaking of Faith. I think you will find it to be rewarding and thought-provoking.
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Roosevelt's 2nd Bill of Rights

Bob Herbert's commentary in the New York Times today draws some nice contrasts between today's politics and those of the FDR's time. In particular, Herbert quotes extensively from FDR's Second Bill of Rights, which he outlined in his State of the Union address in 1944. Even if you don't read Herbert's article, do go and read FDR's text.

Given how politics has progressed in this country over the last thirty years, it's stunning to think that a sitting President actually elucidated such a set of ideas to Congress and the public. However, in my opinion, what's even more stunning, is the fact that the public has never acted on those ideals. By this I mean, since the end of World War II, our nation and our political leaders have made only the most tentative steps towards creating policies that might achieve Roosevelt's goals. Sure, we have some programs that address some of the rights Roosevelt outlined, but we have never attempted anything like a concerted effort to provide universal health care, full employment and affordable housing for all. The question is, why?

No doubt, in the 50s, the spectre of communism frightened many away from "socialist" type programs. But in the 1980s, the 1990s, today? What stops us now? I don't know. Certainly there's plenty of poor, working class and even middle class folks struggling to make a decent living in this country. There's millions of folks without healthcare, and millions more spending 50% or more on housing. Why is there no popular movement to address these needs? I'm not saying that government needs to provide them, but in many instances we won't (or can't) even have a reasoned discussion about policies that might address these social needs.

Are the American people that devoted to the idea of bootstrapping, has our civil discourse become entirely dominated and manipulated by interests opposed to programs to help the middle and lower classes, or is there some other reason?
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Friday, April 15, 2005

Abstinence Only!

For all my faith-based readers who are preserving their chastity until marriage, I provide you with this link. No doubt, the enlightenment you receive will harden your resolve.
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Links for a busy day

Ladies and germs, I'm in the midst of a busy day today. I'd like to post something erudite and entertaining, but why break precedent now? Instead, I'll provide you with the four following links for your reading pleasure:

Our first link of the day is a comprehensive website outlining the vast and greasy web that Tom Delay has woven during his tenure in Congress.

Our second link of the day, which comes courtesy of Lambo, is an analysis of Pres. Bush's "fix" for the tax system. Kind of reminds me of getting my cat "fixed".

Our third link of the day highlights the mortal danger we face if the estate tax is not repealed post haste: undead, flesh-eating, billionaire zombies.

Our fourth and final link, which comes courtesy of Russell, is a handy primer to becoming Republican. Disclaimer: no stereotype was hurt in the production of this primer.
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Reason and liberalism

I've been reading John Rawls' A Theory of Justice. I've been doing it slowly, mostly because I'm little slow on the comprehension side methinks. Anyway, last night, my friend Bryant and I sat down for our first discussion on the first 60 pages of the book. These are the pages which lay out the groundwork for the rest, including introducing the reader to Rawls' two principles of justice.

In the course of our discussion, we hit on the point that the idea that the two principles give no guidance for addressing contentious moral and political issues such as abortion. Given that I have little experience reading philosophy apart from a couple of introductory classes in college, I wondered whether my inability to apply the principles to such issues might be indicative of my own intellectual shortcomings, rather than the theory's. Imagine my relief, then, when I Googled "john rawls" and "abortion" and came across this article from the Wilson Quarterly. Turns out, other folks, including Rawls himself, find it difficult to resolve moral questions by solely relying on the theory of justice. Perhaps I'm not a total philosophical dunce!

Regardless of my intellectual capacities, the article is pretty dang interesting and relevant even if you've never read (or tried reading) Rawls. For those of you looking for an intro into the key texts of modern liberalism (and I know there's tons of you...), this might be a nice start.

Update: Oh yeah, and the article discusses the role of religion and reason in liberalism, a topic that seems to come up with relative frequency on this blog.
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Thursday, April 14, 2005

On fire!

The Rude Pundit, that is. Holy cow, today's post is absolutely stunning in its vulgar brilliance. I think the Rude Pundit is the only person I've seen who has pointed out that Tom DeLay's apology for his comments about retribution against federal judges wansn't much of an apology at all. Apologizing for one's choice of words is a far cry from apologizing for the substantive content of the statement.
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Responding to Doc Shlomo

In the comments to my last post, Doc Shlomo suggests that conservative Republicans' plans to limit federal court jurisdiction or even do away with courts is nothing but a power grab and that this violates the fundamental separation of powers that the Founders sought to establish. I was going to write a response in the comments section, but it got so long I'm moving it here.

I wrote a paper in law school on this topic. My harddrive crashed last year and I lost it (stupido!), but the gist of it was that there is a movement among conservatives jurists to limit not just courts but Congress' power as well. I based the paper on a series of quotes I found from Antonin Scalia. He basically said that Congress has far exceeded its constitutional powers, and the courts have only a minor role in enforcement and interpretation. I don't know if he has ever come right out and say it, but if you neuter the judicial and legislative branches who picks up the slack in governance? The executive.

Of course, the other option is that government shrinks and gives up much of its role in providing services and support to citizens. Does anybody really see that happening? Hell no! Americans would have a fucking shitfit if, suddenly, the federal government stopped doing stuff like regulating water quality, building roads, funding health care, etc. The federal government will never shrink becuase we won't let it.

So what's the conservative alternative, then? Sink vast amounts of governing power into the executive and then do everything you can short of outright murder to win that seat. The question, as I see it, is "Is that really conservative?" Of course not! What it is, ultimately, is pro-industry. Try this on for size:

The business community in American has vast wealth, and many members of that community have become exceedingly adept at rent-seeking. The easiest way to rent-seek, arguably, is through the administrative state, which can be readily manipulated through the executive power. America's corporate interests have spent years focusing on this goal. They've established "think tanks" like AEI, Heritage and Cato and given them huges sums of money to spend on research and advocacy. Sure, Cato might hew to the libertarian/small-government line (mostly), but AEI and Heritage are ALL about justifying and fighting for shifts in government focus and spending. They don't want to shrink government, they want to make it an arm of industry and, increasingly, cultural conservative interests.

Some folks might point out that Congress couldn't possibly want this to happen. Partly true, but if Congress and the President are of the same party, then there's more incentive to cooperate. If the President can generate huge sums of cash and some popular support, he can make re-election pretty easy. This suggests to me that, to a great degree, Congresspeople have ALSO mastered the art of rent-seeking. Tom DeLay might want to establish a theocratic state, but he's mostly in government for the money. Perhaps he's an extreme example. Nonetheless, I suspect that there are some in Congress who don't buy into the separation of powers arguments and would willingly cede power to the executive if it could guarantee easy passage of their personal and legislative agendas.

To summarize: Conservative Republicans seek to completely dominate government. They reject the idea of separation of powers and, instead, seek to put in place a unitary executive with few limits on his power. In doing so, they can provide for the interests of their corporate backers. There focus on cultural issues is, ultimately, secondary to these concerns.

I know, it's not especially well thought out, but perhaps I can elaborate later.
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Doing away with federal courts

There's been some rumbles among the rightwingers about going beyond yanking jurisdiction from federal courts over particular issues to actually getting rid of or re-constituting the district court system. I intended to write a longer post on this issue (and I will soon), but for the time being, I'll let you mull over the portions of the Constitution that may or may not grant Congress that power. The question is, given the power to "ordain and establish", do they have the power to destroy as well?

Article I, Sect. 8: [Congress shall have the power] to constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court.

Article III, Sect. 1: 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.

Sect. 2: In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction. In all the other cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.
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Wednesday, April 13, 2005

The downside of blogging

The downside of blogging is this: you develop a web presence. If, like me, you choose to write your blog openly, then suddenly your web presence is linked with your name. Thus, if someone goes to Google and types in "Everett Volk", the first link they get is your (my) blogger profile. The second link is to one of my postings.

Now, this doesn't really bother me. I'm optimistic that people won't judge me solely on the basis of my blog postings. Moreover, I'm hopeful that even if they do, they won't necessarily come away with a bad impression. They might conclude that I'm an environmentalist, that I'm a democrat, and that I distrust right-wing extremists, but I don't they would conclude that I'm an irrational idealogue or total weirdo. I guess I could be wrong, though...

In any case, I've noticed an uptick in the number of people linking to my website after googling my name. If you're reading this after googling my name, especially if you're an employer considering offering me a high-paying position with fantastic benefits and cushy office with a view:

I'm not an idealogue or a weirdo.

:)
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