I should probably celebrate but I have too much blogging to do. Of course, I could go to a meeting. Or join CLAWS:
CLAWS (Creating Livable Alternatives to Wage Slavery) was founded by D.J. Swanson in the late 1990s to bring together people who just weren’t that interested in a career. They prefer the term "job-free" to "unemployed," which has too many negative connotations, according to the founder.
Obama goes there at a union event in Iowa. That’s a big deal, it seems to me. Obama isn’t pandering.
A reader writes:
A question for the people who think Libby should have either been pardoned or think it is ok to have his sentence commuted: was Clinton wrong for not commuting Susan McDougal’s sentence? She went to jail to protect the Clintons in a "witch hunt" in which no underlying crime was found. Will these supporters criticize Clinton for not commuting Susan McDougal’s sentence?
Comparing Clinton’s pardons to the Libby issue is disingenuous. But the McDougal case is a direct comparison. The Republican party should be ashamed of itself that it can’t raise itself to a moral standard higher than Clinton.
A Kantian tackles Ron Paul’s constitutionalism. Not for the faint of heart.
Soren Dayton detects evidence that the Dobsonites have begun to wash their hands of the Mormon and warm up to the Tennesseean. More here. Hugh Hewitt, call your office.
A lesbian love-song. All the lesbians I know are either for her or on her staff (or at the Human Rights Campaign, which is the same thing). And she’s got such great skin. And, of course, the honesty of being a woman:
Each other, that is. Here’s a blistering assault on Richard Dawkins from a fellow non-believer, David Sloan Wilson:
Time will tell where Dawkins sits on the bell curve of open-mindedness concerning group selection in general and religion in particular. At the moment, he is just another angry atheist, trading on his reputation as an evolutionist and spokesperson for science to vent his personal opinions about religion.
Ouch. A Science Blogs discussion thread on the piece is here.
Jamie Kirchick describes the prosecution of Scooter Libby’s perjury as a "show-trial meant to prove a political point." That would be John Ashcroft’s political point? Or James Comey’s? Or Patrick Fitzgerald’s? Alan Dershowitz (another FOL) also asserts that the DC Circuit judges who denied Libby’s appeal were also being political. His evidence? He has none, as Orin Kerr notes. The only political point made by Judge Reggie Walton in the sentencing was that Libby’s privilege, money, connections, friends and supporters should not mean a different system of justice. And Walton was put on the federal bench by … drum-roll … George W. Bush! As Todd Gitlin points out,
so were two of the three Appeals Court judges who sustained that decision … one of these political dastards, David Sentelle, was a member of the three-judge panel that installed Ken Starr as Special Inquisitor in 1994.
So an entire inquiry initiated by and staffed by and presided over by Republican appointees was a Democratic political operation? The lengths to which some neocons will go to deny the obvious about the rank corruption of their president and the rank perjury of their friend is absurd.
I might also not that when my friend Jamie refers to "Cassandras" with respect to our constitutional order, he might acknowledge that Cassandra, in Greek mythology, predicted disaster, was ignored, and was proven right. Ahem.
No word on Libby yet. But it’s worth recalling what he once professed:
"All of my life, I have been instructed never to swear an oath to my country in vain. In my former profession, those who violated their sworn oath were punished severely and considered outcasts from our society. I do not hold the President to the same standard that I hold military officers to. I hold him to a higher standard."
But this is Scooter Libby. He’s a friend of ours.
Hagel, Smith, Lugar, Voinovich and now Domenici. The Bush "strategy" in Iraq is coming to an end, thanks to sane Republicans:
"I have carefully studied the Iraq situation, and believe we cannot continue asking our troops to sacrifice indefinitely while the Iraqi government is not making measurable progress to move its country forward. I do not support an immediate withdrawal from Iraq or a reduction in funding for our troops. But I do support a new strategy that will move our troops out of combat operations and on the path to coming home."
