What if Senator Craig had tried the truth? Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

HAT TIP Pandagon.

Steve Benen at Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo explores the question: what if Craig had stepped forward and admitted he was gay, instead going with the Roy Cohn "I am not a homosexual" routine.

The libertarian in me thinks intuitively that it might work, but that's because the libertarian in me doesn't get intuitively the unbelievably deep well-spring of anti-gay hostility that is present in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, to which approximately 40% or more a very substantial fraction of Idaho residents belongs (General HAT TIP to LDS-matters consultant, fellow Princeton dissident/graduate '91 and friend of Crab Media Craig Harman, please see comments below.) The libertarian in me thinks that gay people should be as free to enjoy the amazing non-stop joys without responsibilities of parenthood and marriage as we straight breeders do in our hedonistic self-indulgences of ER trips with bleeding children, sorting out money matters (!!?) and the occasionally emitted "@&#^@ you I want a divorce!!" which completely loses its satisfying "oomph" if you are not, in fact, able to get a divorce due to lack of court jurisdiction over a marriage that does not exist in law.

But that's because the libertarian in me is not intuitively acclimated to who votes for what in places like Utah and Idaho. My instincts are perhaps good for moderate-leaning-liberal Maryland, New Jersey, Connecticut and maybe one county in Iowa but no good for Idaho, I am afraid.

There is a libertarian, Goldwater-esque streak in Rocky Mountain conservatism, no doubt, but that probably characterizes Colorado, Wyoming and Montana more than Idaho. Craig would be dead meat in the next primary election, especially since Craig built his own base not on flinty, small-government values but a perma-pander to the religious hard-right and to the Iraq War, neither of which would be practical winners for him.

It would be difficult for him to sponsor legislation as other Senators, Republican and Democratic, would not want to associate their names with him. Every photo of Senator Craig with another Senator becomes a political liability to her or him, including this "Singing Senators" photo with respect to Senator Trent Lott (R-Mississippi) and former Attorney General, now Ashcroft Group founder, John Ashcroft. Nobody wants to take the call of a Senator caught trying to get sex in the toilet.

Tale of a Jilted Tearoom Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

"The American people already know that Bill Clinton is a bad boy - a naughty boy. I’m going to speak out for the citizens of my state, who in the majority think that Bill Clinton is probably even a nasty, bad, naughty boy.” - Senator Larry Craig (Republican-Idaho), 1998

The Republic has withstood the drama, denials and ultimate disgrace of anti-gay, right-wing Republican Larry Craig, who now stands convicted by his own statement under oath that he engaged in the conduct described by a Minnesota police officer who arrested Craig at the Lindbergh (ugh) Terminal I. As usual, The Smoking Gun has links to most of the salient documents. (HAT TIP Zuzu.)

Of greater interest to me is the police interrogation of Craig. Now Craig is over 60 years of age and has been in the Senate for over 15 years, on Capitol Hill since he was 25. So he should have a passing familiarity with the U.S. Constitution, one would hope, which provides an absolute right to remain silent, to say "jack" to the police. The Minnesota constitution does likewise, though one should forgive the "just-passing-through", non-attorney Senator Craig for not knowing that. But the U.S. Constitution which he had taken multiple oaths over multiple decades - he should have known that.

But in case the good Senator forgot, the office read the Senator his 5th Amendment rights, per Dragnet, as can be heard and read here at TPM Muckraker.

At least one witness claims to have had sexual relations in the Washington Union Station mens room with Craig some years back. And it's this bathroom, this neglected tea-room for politicos, lobbyists, para-government anonymous travelers and the presumed wayward tourist to which I turn my attentions.

Union Station is one of the top three or four railroad stations in the U.S. for total passenger volume. (This is not saying much, of course, because the U.S. treats rail shabbily, more shabbily than any European could possibly imagine.) I use this Union Station bathroom infrequently for purposes entirely consistent with the intentions of the architects, civil engineers and D.C. building permit authorities who authorized its construction. It is a disgusting place, 100% of the time, even if one does not dare "gaze" into the cracks between the stalls. I think it is the unlawful permanent residence of several people, and baggage does occasionally crowd the front of a stall, though whether that's a legitimate tactic against baggage theft by a resident or a passer-through, rather than an obscurement of a different violation of the D.C. Code, I cannot say and would rather not contemplate too deeply.

But I cannot help feeling that the Union Station "tea room" that this bathroom is said to be, now feels jilted. Larry Craig appears to have plied his tea room trade in, of all places, Minneapolis. Yet Union Station is only 6 blocks from his DC office. So close, and yet so far. The one widely-reported incident in Minneapolis cannot but leave the poor, under-appreciated restroom at Union Station feeling a little miffed. Railroads have lost out in federal funding, support and construction to airlines even though railroads are often more time and energy efficient for medium-distance travel and involve fewer (though NOT zero) security concerns. So of course Union Station will feel slighted.

Washington is a bigger and wealthier city than Minneapolis. So I suspect there is a bit of the resentment of the fallen nobleman jealous of the poorer but, in reality, freer merchant class, giving rise to bitchy snobbishness. Union Station has a statue of civil rights and labor organizer A. Philip Randolph, who was not gay but who associated closely with gay allies. Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport's main terminal is named after a vicious anti-semite and Nazi sympathizer who, in total random coincidence, shot on the same riflery team as the Crab's grandfather at the University of Wisconsin. So it probably burns Union Station's, er, chaps, to lose out in attention to such an unworthy venue. Especially since Washington may now be the largest gay city proportional to population in the country, approaching San Francisco and perhaps surpassing it.

The entire incident has made me more, not less, supportive of gay marriage. I wish that Craig were gay married right now, and had been so three months ago, for several reasons. One is that if Craig were same-sex married, he probably would not be an advocate against same-sex marriage in the halls of Congress. Another would be that he would be less likely to have done what he did, though in fairness plenty of men (and, my divorce attorney colleagues keep reminding me, women, usually with greater discretion) openly married in opposite sex marriages do reckless and brazen things as well.

But no matter what I think, Union Station's feelings will remain tender for some time, no doubt. Show Union Station some love, though I would recommend visiting Sbarro's or the newsrack instead of the john if you have a choice.

Donna Edwards for Congress Facebook Group Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

I have started a Facebook group for supporters of the Donna Edwards in her run for Congress. Neither I nor that Facebook group is affiliated with any campaign or committee. Her district - MD-4 - is sapphire blue and should be represented by a liberal/progressive activist; the incumbent Al Wynn is one of the Republican House Caucus' favorite Democrats and needs to go back to writing real estate deeds for a living. Edwards very nearly unseated Wynn a year ago in a primary challenge despite weak funding and a late organizational start - neither of which will be a problem this round.

Some readers may note that Edwards' positions on some economic issues stand significantly to the left of this blog's perspective, but I will take clean government from someone I partially disagree with over machine politics, lobbyist co-optation of a public trustee and base political thuggery any day.

Keith Ellison (D-MN) Compares 9/11 to the Reichstag Fire Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Keith Ellison sees the Third Reich today; do you?

HAT TIP to Maryland Conservatarian (who blogged about it) and Greg Kline at the Conservative Refuge podcast (who commented about it late in his podcast on July 17th.) I am mildly surprised that both men held back as much as they did.

Keith Ellison speaking to an organization called "Atheists for Human Rights" a couple weeks ago, per the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, July 8, 2007:

On comparing Sept. 11 to the burning of the Reichstag building in Nazi Germany: "It's almost like the Reichstag fire, kind of reminds me of that. After the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the Communists for it and it put the leader of that country [Hitler] in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted. The fact is that I'm not saying [Sept. 11] was a [U.S.] plan, or anything like that because, you know, that's how they put you in the nut-ball box -- dismiss you."

It's pretty miserable when a group of atheists - presumably people with habits of skepticism and possessed of the pedantic but valuable habit of demanding strong evidence for strong propositions - applauds this foolishness.

For those who do not fully know the history of the Reichstag fire, it's pretty simple: a Dutch communist burned the German parliament building. The Nazi blamed the Weimar-era Communist movement for burning it and used the burning as a pretext for seizing broad emergency powers in Germany, banning the Communist Party (which held 17% of the seats in the Reichstag), and arresting and executing major Comintern leaders.

The Democratic Party was not only not banned but is thriving, holding both houses of Congress (the Senate by the hair of Joe Lieberman's chinny-chin-chin) and standing poised to win the Presidency in 16 months. Keith Ellison was elected in that take-over effort; maybe he forgot that he won and how he won. George Bush stands a small chance of getting impeached as do a few of his senior advisers, and Bush's popularity is somewhere between Nixon's low-water mark and gonorrhea's high-water mark. The Supreme Court is marginally more conservative than it was 6 years ago but any comparison between the Supreme Court and German "courts" under the Third Reich is offensive in the extreme. There are a large number of troubling civil liberties and corruption issues surrounding the President but we read and blog about them all the time. The PATRIOT ACT subpoenas are very offensive to me, particularly when issues against institutions like public libraries, but no comparison exists.

The Reichstag Fire was not part of a broad Communist plot, according to the evidence. It was one crank's act, not an act of the Comintern or German KPD or similar organizations. The best analogy would be if Timothy McVeigh had registered to vote as a Democrat or Republican and the sitting President assassinated, executed, jailed or placed into concentration camps every Democratic or Republican political operative in the country. The fact that you are reading this blog testifies to the difference; a post-Reichstag Fire chief executive would do to bloggers today what Hitler did to the "loud, obnoxious bloggers" of his day.

9/11 was the plot not of theocratic Baptists or Methodists but theocratic Muslims. Ellison's silence on this point is deafening. It's great that Ellison is willing to step for the civil rights of atheists - about time in the U.S. Congress - but not at the expense of entertaining this sort of historical malpractice.

I like the design of Atheists for Human Rights' website - soft green, light blue. There's a lot on the site that I like in terms of content, including some well-developed video presentations. But I would take a Goldwater-esque conservative skeptic of theocracy over any organization that entertains this sort of foolishness.

The worst part about what Ellison said? He actually took the matter beyond the Reichstag Fire analogy to accuse, then coyly deny accusing, the Bush Administration of executing the 9/11 attacks itself. Ellison's warning about being placed in the "nut-ball box" is too cute by half, and insulting to our intelligence. Deliver your evidence, Ellison, or go home to your nut-ball box unless you can show that Bush operatives, not Muslims from Saudi Arabia, hijacked four planes.

I stepped up hard for Keith Ellison when Dennis Prager lost his mind six months ago over Ellison taking a symbolic, non-functional photo-op oath in his own office on the central Islamic holy text, the Qu'r'an - not from a fear of theocracy creep, mind you. Rather, Prager (who is Jewish) wanted Ellison (who is Muslim) to take an oath on a Christian Bible, and feared for the integrity of the republic were Ellison to hold his own holy book during that photo op pose. I don't know that I called Prager's rants "sacroturf" by proxy; I would today. But I wish I had exerted less effort defending Ellison, now that I know he is both at peace with CAIR's theocrats and, perversely, beloved of some fact-free atheists.

Daylight Atheism: An Incident in the Senate Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

First the facts, then the opinions.

The Hill, July 13, 2007:

Three protesters were arrested in the public gallery of the Senate and charged with unlawful conduct yesterday for shouting down the opening prayer, which for the first time ever was being conducted by a Hindu.

Sen. Bob Casey Jr. (D-Pa.), who was presiding in the chair, had to call on the sergeant at arms repeatedly to restore order as the protesters denounced the presence of Rajan Zed, who was standing on the dais wearing saffron robes.

The three people arrested were Ante Nedlko Pavkovic, Katherine Lynn Pavkovic and Christan Renee Sugar, said Sgt. Kimberly Schneider, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Capitol Police.

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Daylight Atheism, July 14, 2007:

We are a nation of many faiths, and if the Senate session absolutely must be opened with prayer, let us invite representatives of as many different religions as possible, on a rotating basis - the more, the merrier. Jews and Christians should get their fair turn, but let's also bring in Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Baha'is, Native American religions, Taoists, Sikhs, Rastafarians, Wiccans, and anyone else who cares to apply. And let's not overlook one group in particular - the 15% or more of Americans who are not religious, a far larger number than any non-Christian church and most Christian denominations. Let's invite an atheist to open the session with a secular benediction expressing hope that reason and human conscience will guide the decisions of our elected officials.

A rotating, non-preferential prayer schedule would serve many valuable purposes. It would be a powerful symbolic reminder that America has no official religion, and that all citizens are equal under the law regardless of their choice of faith. It would reaffirm the freedom of religion guaranteed by the Constitution and show that we are all represented by the government that our votes put into power. And last but not least, it would be a stinging rebuke to the Christian right, and that can only be a good thing. Their impotent, whining temper tantrums make it exceedingly clear that they think they have the god-given right to lord it over everyone else, and the more obvious that is to the American people, the more we can expect people to turn away from their agenda of theocracy and intolerance.

A few comments.

First, many are tempted to consider the Senate prayer as both a trifle and a big deal at the same time, whether in opposition or support. I think that the issue tempts a sort of schizophrenia in which some of us we simultaneously state that it's a petty nothing and a big deal. What the arrestees and the Freedom From Religion Foundation have in common is that they consider the Senate prayer to be an enormous issue, worthy of an arrest for the former and regular harping by the latter.

It stands to reason: if it's no big deal, why not kill the procedure? Why should Roman Catholic legislators have to sit through a prayer offered by the Senate's regular chaplain whose denomination, Seventh-Day Adventist, is infamous for its harsh anti-Catholic views? Why should Methodist or Presbyterian or evangelical Christian legislators have to sit through prayers offered by a hypothetical Catholic priest whose church teaches, as affirmed of late by His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, that the Protestant churches are not only not the true Church but are not even churches, period?

The answer is that the service is a BIG deal to the people who want to claim their religion as the official religion of the United States. That's why those three citizens were willing to get arrested: it is INTOLERABLE to have the wrong minister doing the prayer, even once. For those Christians of whatever church or denomination who got arrested, the message was clear: our church "owns this house" and must "protect this house" from any competing religion daring to stick its head up above water.

Emotionally, my reaction to forced prayer is similar to those of the arrested Christians to the prayer that they did not like from the Hindu minister, though I gather it was his very presence rather than the specific content of his prayer that set the nice folks from Operation Rescue into arrest-begging disorderly conduct. I don't view official prayer in the Senate as a "forced" environment; I would prefer it not occur during official business by official designated Senate "priests" but I hardly view ceremonial prayer by Senators for Senators as a big deal, far down my list of grievances below the failure of the State of Maryland to incarcerate rubberneckers on the west side of the Baltimore Beltway.

Sticking up religious monuments and fixtures in the judicial branch of government, on the other hand, is a much bigger deal because in that case, the monuments are not for the judges but for the citizens who appear at litigants, witnesses and especially criminal defendants, under compulsory process or under pain of prejudice of their rights. In my view, it is as inappropriate for such monuments and fixtures to be put there as it would be to place a picture of such monuments with a "no parking" red slash through them. Both "Worship Jesus" and "Worship Nothing" are inappropriate messages for the government to deliver in a courthouse.

Bush's Balls Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Note: Indecent Content Below the Fold
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If President Bush wanted to pull his ratings and popularity out of the ditch, he could start by following the advice that the Godfather gave to Johnny Fontane when he slapped Johnny across the mouth - "You can act like a man!!"

Bush could stare down the Democrats and waive all executive privilege to get the entire matter of the politicization of the Department of Justice with conservative activists and Republican operatives out in the open. He could command Harrier Miers to go to Capitol Hill to clear this entire mess up. He could then have Rove call Bill Kristol and tell him to make this known as the Bush "Brass Balls Moment" a la the Clinton "Sister Souljah" moment of 14-odd years ago. You know, a cartoon of Bush lecturing the Democratic wimps in a real estate sales office, holding a pair of brass balls "strategically" like Alec Baldwin's character Blake in Glengarry Glen Ross. (NOTE: extreme language in following YouTube clip):



Bush's base would go wild and Kucinich would look like Howdy Doody for filing a motion to impeach.

Bush could but he won't, and his excuses are garbage, just as his explanation of the 33 month sentence for Irving Libby as "excessive" when Libby spent ZERO time in jail was excessive.

He claims he is preserving executive privilege for his successors, but that makes no sense. He could get a promise from the House committee issuing the subpoenas that his waiver would be "without prejudice" as to future presidents' invocations, but that promise would mean nothing. Why? The next Congress can do what it pleases. Similarly, the actions of President Bush in waiving or failing to invoke privilege likewise mean nothing to future presidents. Neither Congress nor Bush is capable of acting with prejudice as to future Congresses or Presidents. The transparency of this claims is patent from Bush's failure to attempt to negotiate with Congress for future presidents' privileges; both Bush and Congress understand that this is a ruse, a faux bauble at which stupid people including the Washington J-School stenographers may gawk.

Since the next president is likely to be a Democrat, one would think that Bush's top priority would not be keeping the post-Nixon executive privilege precedents and customs safely for a Democratic president who will win that office by slamming a wing-tip or high-heel-shaped imprint on Bush's buttocks for the next 16 months. Does Bush really have Obama's back the next time President Obama decides to protect himself from, er, himself? And Hillary?? One thinks that Schadenfreude at their hypothetical future slow roasting would be a more likely result.

If you are male, some other male probably did you a kindness in your early youth by teaching you to block your groin from a punch, kick or missile. If you still have a groin, that teaching is part of the reason that you do still have a "groin" now. If no one taught you, you learned by experience, sorry fella.

Bush is blocking his groin from the boomerangs he threw. Bush is blocking his groin because he knows that his are not made of brass.

Cleveland Plain Dealer: Kucinich Facing Primary Challenge for House Seat Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Cleveland Plain Dealer, "Openers", June 20, 2007:

Rosemary Palmer, an anti-war activist whose son died in the war in Iraq in 2005, announced her candidacy for [Democratic Presidential candidate and Congressman Dennis] Kucinich's 10th District seat.

...

"We need a full-time congressman for this area whose interests lie in developing this district," Palmer said during a short news conference before addressing the war issue.

...

"Standing on principle doesn't mean standing in cement," she said.

FOX NEWS: They all look alike to us Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Representative John Conyers' bio, including his 21 consecutive terms in Congress, his Chairmanship of the House Judiciary Committee and his service in the Army Corps of Engineers in the Korean War, is available here. Conyers probably started serving in Congress before the video tech who produced this Fox footage was even conceived. His is among the most widely recognized faces and personalities on Capitol Hill among non-Fox flunkies.

It's boneheads like Fox that give the Congressional Black Caucus pause before bringing down the doom on somebody like William Jefferson, whom I believe to be completely corrupt. Nobody keeps $70,000+ in green money in the freezer for a bona fide purpose. But when your critics cannot tell a black Congressman fishing out frozen greenbacks during Katrina with the borrowed help of first responders from a war veteran and civil rights hero like Chairman Conyers, you start leaning more on proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Not that that's the standard for expelling a House member, but that's going to be the standard to which the CBC will hearken when it's FOX news beating the racist war drum again and again. Frankly, I wonder whether this event will get the CBC out of sponsoring a debate with an enemy political institution. It's like asking Katrina vanden Heuvel of the Nation to moderate a Republican presidential debate.

HAT TIP Josh Marshall via Oliver Willis.

Baltimore Sun: Parren Mitchell, 1922-2007 Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Baltimore Sun, May 29, 2007:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who grew up in Little Italy, said, "The Mitchell family was revered in my home."

With the death of Parren J. Mitchell, the first African-American elected to Congress from Maryland, Pelosi said, "Baltimore has lost one of its favorite sons."

...

During his eight terms in Congress, the slight, bespectacled, soft-spoken man fought successfully for minority set-asides on federal contracts; vigorously opposed the "supply-side" and "trickle-down" economics of the Reagan administration of the 1980s and promoted minority ownership as head of the House Small Business Committee.

...

Mitchell graduated from Frederick Douglass High School and what is now Morgan State University, and earned a masters degree in sociology from the University of Maryland. He was a member of a prominent Baltimore family that played key roles in the national and local civil rights battle. In 1970, Mitchell was elected to the House of Representatives after heading the city's anti-poverty agency.

Mitchell said he believed that the anti-poverty agency's policies should be aimed at helping to rebuild black family units that had been weakened by generations of poverty. "Slavery," he once said, had "prevented Negro families from forming, and for the century since then, the tradition hung on."

R.I.P. and condolences to all members of the Mitchell family. I worked next-door to a great-niece of Congressman Mitchell for a little more than a year.

UPDATE: HAT TIP to P. Kenneth Burns of Maryland Politics Today, who caught my headline typo of 1992 in place of 1922 as the birth year of the late Congressman, and who has a much more developed post on his life. Many thanks, Kenny. In general, if you are reading CMW for coverage of Maryland, you should definitely check out Maryland Politics Today as Kenny Burns tends to drill deep and has a quicker turnaround time on many Maryland issues than I do.

How to Cross-Examine a Witness Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Brutal.



The Hatch Act bars the use of on-the-clock government personnel or government assets in the pursuit of partisan political operations. The statute predates World War II, and was signed approximately 19 years before the witness, GSA Administrator Lurita Doan, was born in 1958.

But even more importantly, what does winning the House and Senate for the GOP have to do with the GSA? Even if the Hatch Act did not prohibit it? The legitimate business of the GSA is government building maintenance and repair, not helping Ken Mehlman win elections in Pennsylvania or Ohio or Maryland. It's like expecting U.S. Attorneys to stop prosecuting cases by the book and instead use their offices to help their party's friends and ruin their political opponents. Thank goodness that went out with Nixon. Oh, wait....

I think she's lying, but that's my opinion of her demeanor and the reasonableness of her responses. She remembers the meeting, but knows that the questions will be more likely to go away if she doesn't feed them anything. Attending a meeting where the Hatch Act gets violated and further violations are solicited is something you would remember. Unless it's routine, which would be more damning. She may regret not pursuing Renaissance Literature more fully when all is said and done.

Rove should be great on the stand. He probably cannot claim executive privilege if the reports about him using RNC email accounts are accurate; no matter what Bush thinks, this is not a one party state in which the party is the government. The RNC is not the government and communications on its server are not what executive privilege protects. This explanation of the hazards of using non-White House email accounts to conduct White House business was helpful.

Virgil Goode (R-VA) Worried About "In Mohammed We Trust" On Greenbacks Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Rep. Virgil Goode on House floor, February 15, 2007 (transcript from Think Progress):

When the commentary begins in the Middle East, in no way do I want to comfort and encourage the radical Muslims who want to destroy our country and who want to wipe the so-called infidels like myself and many of you from the face of the Earth. In no way do I want to aid and assist the Islamic jihadists who want the crescent and star to wave over the Capitol of the United States and over the White House of this country. I fear that radical Muslims who want to control the Middle East and ultimately the world would love to see "In God We Trust" stricken from our money and replaced with "In Muhammad We Trust."

While Crablaw is entirely prepared to believe that Virgil Goode (remember, the good Virginian one who freaked out that a Muslim Congressman would symbolically swear his oath on the holy text of his religion) is an uneducated dumbass, surely he must know that Muslims - liberal, moderate, conservative, radical - would never claim that it is in "Mohammed" in whom they trust. Muslims trust in God, which word in Arabic is spelled and pronounced "Allah" for Christian and Muslim Arabs alike. (The word is cognate in its linguistic root to the Hebrew and Aramaic "Eloh", "El" and "Elaha.") Muslims revere Mohammed as an outstanding example of human character, leadership and piety, comparable to the way that Jews and Christians (and Muslims) would revere Moses or Abraham. But they do not "trust in" Mohammed any more than Christians and Jews "trust in" Abraham. The very concept would probably be offensive to Muslims as dangerously close to shirk or associating anything or anyone with God.

To the more general point, I am not at all convinced that "radical Muslims" will take our discussion of withdrawal from Iraq as a sign of weakness. The less radical of the radicals will look forward to the cessation of our occupation, as our presence is a cactus in the ass of every self-respecting Iraqi, just as an Iraqi or French or Brazilian army occupying the Mall and Potomac Waterfront in a walled-off compound and running patrols up and down Reisterstown Road in Baltimore and similar roads in many cities around the country would be a national humiliation for the U.S., growing stronger every week. The most extreme radical Muslims would view our presence as a happy, useful fact, an obnoxious irritant helpful in fomenting violent extremism.

If we leave, there will probably be a surge of violence in Iraq, let's not fool ourselves. But once we are gone, a lot of Iraqi who now bear arms will be more interested in feeding their families, their cousins, nieces and nephews in this very tribal society than in war. They will not be singing "Kum Ba Ya" but will be focusing on survival and taking care of their families, instead of coping with the dirty disgrace of a massive armed force squatting in the center of their country. The men whom al-Sadr and his Sunni counterparts now rely on to fight their fighting will look more to the government not as some civil model described by a former resident of Rep. Goode's district Thomas Jefferson, but as the tool to stabilize the country and for the distribution of funds, payoffs, and crude, corrupt stability once our comprehensively unnatural and hated presence has ended.

Now some will say that I am too optimistic, that greed and family needs and the hope not for good government, but for fairly bad but stable government won't take over once we are gone. But those people of good will who disagree with pulling out deserve a better advocate for their position than the likes of Muslim-baiter Virgil Goode.

MD Conservatarian on Symbolic Bills Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

On net, I agree with Maryland Conservatarian re: Rep. Rangel's re-introduction of bill to institute a military draft that Rangel, apparently, does not support.

I am of mixed feelings about the draft or continuing conscription as a policy (as opposed to politics) concept. On the one hand, my libertarian instincts recoil violently at forced servitude, which of course is what a draft or conscription is. On the other hand, a non-volunteer force may actually discourage wars of foolishness and adventure, in contradiction to the instincts of the Founders who feared standing armies (though more out of fear of domestic tyranny.) The inequitable burden of the Iraq War as noted in the refrain of the "Ballad of the Yellow Berets":

Chicken wings suit me just fine
They go so well with my yellow spine
The poor man’s born to join the fray
I was born rich, I’ll get an MBA

is too serious a matter to handle in this manner.

I also question the politics of a bad faith introduction of a draft as an administrative matter. If this goes forward, we may see the introduction of a multiplicity of "toilet paper bills," e.g. bills mandating abortions for pregnant one-eyed grandfathers, banning the raising of the American flag in daylight, explicitly legalizing adultery, banning apple pie, etc. Some have praised Rangel for his political ju-jitsu on this matter, but to me it's more like Hong Kong Phooey.

Baltimore Sun: Via Nancy D'Alessandro Pelosi Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

Baltimore Sun, December 27, 2006 (HAT TIP to Andy Kujan, who caught the story first from another source):

She grew up at 245 Albemarle St. in Little Italy, the daughter of Baltimore's legendary mayor, Thomas J. D'Alesandro Jr.

Now incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's name will be permanently etched into the streets of her native neighborhood as the city intends to formally rename the 200 block of Albemarle St. "Via Nancy D'Alesandro Pelosi."

...

"I think it's great that we're able to honor someone from Little Italy who's been raised here," said Christopher Mazzulli, 33, a resident and business owner. "She's become very successful and has the ability to help so many. That's what it's means to come from an Italian, Catholic neighborhood like ours.

For readers outside the Baltimore area, Baltimore's Little Italy is tight and fairly small. Houses change hands rarely in the neighborhood. It is tightly packed with Italian restaurants of variable quality. In my experience, cheaper is better there, not just better value - better outright.

About a year ago, Sunday and I went into a Little Italy restaurant that, out of charity, I won't name now. It looked like a place where men with mistresses and too much cash would go for a high dollar "romantic" rendezvous, yet it was surprisingly rough around the edges. When I saw the $2,800.00 bottle of wine on the menu, we left. We ate at a very casual place for, I think, 30 dollars and had a blast.

But the neighborhood is great. We love Vaccaro's pastry and dessert shop, one of the best easy-going nights out.

Good on Nancy Pelosi. Maybe remembering a little of the old-school Baltimore political hardball will help this term.

Breitbart: Former Congressman Bob Barr Ditches GOP for Libertarian Party! Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

From the Associated Press via Breitbart, December 15, 2006 (HAT TIP to Drudge Report:

Bob Barr, who served eight years as a Republican congressman before losing his seat in 2002, announced Friday that he is now a "proud, card-carrying Libertarian." And he encouraged others to join him.

"It's something that's been bothering me for quite some time, the direction in which the party has been going more and more toward big government and disregard toward privacy and civil liberties," said Barr, 58, a lawyer and consultant living in Atlanta. "In terms of where the country needs to be going to get back to our constitutional roots ... I've come to the conclusion that the only way to do that is to work with a party that practices what it preaches, and that is the Libertarian Party."

Wow.