Category: Old Dish

Lashawn Barber is a “rising star” of the conservative blogosphere, according to Hugh Hewitt. The Powerline guys are “big fans.” Today, Lashawn responds to a story in the Boston Globe where two gay activists say they intend to compile an online list of all those who have signed the petition to remove all legal protections from gay couples in Massachusetts. The activists want to make sure that gay people know which of their friends and neighbors want to remove their rights to form a legal family. Seems like an aggressive but reasonable tactic to me. The information is public; it’s an opportunity for people who favor gay equality to identify and persuade people who don’t, or simply to avoid businesses that favor discrimination, and so on. The first person to be engaged in this way described the activists as “gracious”. Barber has a different idea for a response:

What do all these rabid activists plan to do with the information? Mail letters? Call and harass people who signed the petition? Show up on their doorsteps? There are laws against trespassing, and the last time I checked, it was legal to own a gun in Massachusetts.

Here’s the question: why not mail letters trying to persuade people out of their position? Why not try and persuade people who disagree with you? Besides, wouldn’t you be proud to have signed a petition that bars gay marriage, civil unions, domestic partnerships and the like, if that’s your position? Why wouldn’t you be eager for a dialogue? Why is your first thought about gay activists coming to your door is that you’d be prepared to shoot them? Maybe I don’t want to know the answer to that last question.

“I graduated from Tulane University School of Law in 1987. One of the fondest memories of my time in New Orleans was going to Bennie’s Bar every Thursday night to see Charmaine Neville perform. Bennie’s was a converted shotgun house with a bar in the front entrance that only served Dixie Longnecks for $1 and Bud Longnecks for $1.50. The stage was in the back and there were no chairs. Bennie’s had a $2 cover charge to see great New Orleans rhythm and blues artists like Ms. Neville. The place was always packed. There was no place on the planet like it.

Charmaine Neville was a crowd favorite. She would sing for hours, and always involved the audience. Every night she would perform “hit the road Jack.” She would pull some drunk schnook out of the crowd to play the part of Jack. Charmaine would then tell off the no-good fellow, much to the audience’s amusement. On more than one occasion I got to be Jack. I would ham it up and get on my knees and beg her to take me back only to have her boot me off the stage.

Bennie’s was one of those “only in New Orleans” places, where you didn’t need to have a lot of money to have a good time. A good-natured fun-loving spirit flowed as freely as the music and drink. Charmaine Neville was so much a part of that spirit. You can understand why should couldn’t leave and had to stay and help.

It is heartbreaking to not only hear her story but to watch it on video. Every day my thoughts and feelings are flooded with anger and saddness. America can’t let this great city down again. We need to rebuild New Orleans and restore its charm and history and make it better than ever.” Amen to that. This wasn’t just any city. This was New Orleans. Last night in Ptown, they organized a benefit for the Red Cross. Every drag queen did an act, hosted by the funniest post-drag drag artist I’ve ever seen, Dina Martina. The mood was boozy, brash, boisterous, sad. And all of that fit the city we were still mourning. It will come back. So will America – and a functioning government.

Brown has gone. But he wasn’t quite “fired.” He was “reassigned.” Money quote:

Less than an hour before Brown’s removal came to light, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Brown had not resigned and the president had not asked for his resignation. McClellan did not directly answer a question about whether the president had full confidence in Brown. “We appreciate all those who are working round the clock, and that’s the way I would answer it,” he said.

Still: great news. Thanks to everyone in the blogosphere who helped raise the cry for someone competent to run the federal response to a catastrophe. You helped keep the pressure up. And it worked.

“For the last week the federal government and its state and local counterparts have consistently been behind the curve. The American people overwhelmingly know that the current situation is totally unacceptable,” and for that reason, “it is a mistake to get trapped into defending the systems and processes which clearly failed.” – Newt Gingrich, getting it.

Remember the hanging and beating of an Afghan prisoner at Bagram, while his knees were pummeled to a pulp until he died? The second soldier implicated has just been acquitted. The bottom line in the AP story is the following: “No one has been charged with the detainee’s death.” As one of the other soldiers said in a previous investigation: “I just don’t understand how, if we were given training to do this, you can say that we were wrong and should have known better.” The shame deepens. They’re not even scape-goating any more. No one is accountable for the U.S. military torturing someone to death. And, yes, the victim was hooded at the time he was beaten. It’s the American way now.

“The war in Iraq has been poorly planned and executed from the beginning, and now, like a hurricane over warm water, the insurgency is in a position to take immense energy from the fundamental divisions in that nation. The rise of Chinese military power, although lately noted, has met with no response. America’s borders are open, its cities vulnerable, its civil defense nonexistent, its armies stretched thin. We have taken only deeply inadequate steps to prepare for and forestall a viral pandemic that by the testimony of experts is a high probability and could kill scores of millions in this country alone. That we do not see relatively simple and necessary courses of action, and are not led and inspired to them, represents a catastrophic failure of leadership that bridges party lines.
Perhaps this and previous administrations have had an effective policy just too difficult to comprehend because they have ingeniously sheltered it under the pretense of their incompetence. But failing that, the legacy of this generation’s presidents will be promiscuous declarations and alliances, badly defined war aims, opportunities inexplicably forgone, ill-supported troops sent into the field, a country at risk without adequate civil protections, and a military shaped to fight neither the last war nor this one nor the next.” – Mark Helprin, today. A very astute piece, I’d say. It amounts to an indictment of Clinton’s negligence, Bush’s incompetence, and Rumsfeld’s misjudgment. We need better.

A fascinating photo slide-show from a New Orleans survivor. It’s a useful reminder of the timeline. And of how many New Orleanians were actually optimistic on Day 2, after the hurricane had first passed. The guy got out before the real carnage, though. Thank God. If you’re a photo-journalist or photo-blogger and have unique images you want to share, email me with the link. Oprah did an amazing job of bringing home some of the reality. But people on the ground are the best recorders of history.

“Schwarzenegger may even be doing the right thing in turning back the bill that’s been sent to him — it’s difficult to say just what the Legislature’s powers are in this case, given California’s odd experiment with mixed, sort-of-representative-sort-of-direct democracy.
Yet it’s crystal clear where public opinion is headed, both in California and nationwide. The younger the demographic polled, the more support is found for gay marriage and civil unions.
Really, what gay marriage opponents are looking to do is write anti-gay provisions into as many state constitutions as possible — and maybe even into the federal Constitution — before the people invested in the so-called “defense of marriage” all die off.
And, well, while we may not have a Living Constitution, constitutions govern the living. A last gasp of anti-gay animus threatens to rule us from the grave, but its time is running out.” – Ryan Sager, a next generation conservative, on TCS.

Lawrence Kaplan makes the case.

Glenn Reynolds pulls a MoDo. From this entire piece, he quotes governor Blanco as saying: “Nobody told me that I had to request that.” The full quote is:

“I need everything you have got,” Governor Blanco said she told Mr. Bush last Tuesday, when New Orleans flooded. In an interview, she acknowledged that she did not specify what sorts of soldiers. “Nobody told me that I had to request that. I thought that I had requested everything they had,” she said.

It seems to me that the context and the full quote are important. The context shows that both president Bush and governor Blanco screwed up in equal measure. And while I’m in the category of desperate denial, this one at NRO defies parody: “MICHAEL BROWN, CONFIRMED BY DEMOCRATS.” Who was the guy who nominated him, again? The name escapes me …

BAD NEWS FOR MOST EVANGELICALS: Humans are still evolving – and at quite a brisk pace, according to new research. Bad news for liberals: at the rate research is going, you will soon have to choose between believing in evolution and denying any subtle, genetic differences between broad racial groups.