Below is the email I received from Senator Boxer’s office in response to my email encouraging the continued investigation of the illegal wiretapping programs authorized by Mr. Bush.

Thank you for contacting me regarding recent reports of domestic spying. I appreciate the opportunity to review your comments on this important issue.

On December 16, 2005, the New York Times reported that President Bush had repeatedly authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to eavesdrop on American citizens and others without the necessary approvals from Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Courts. Until this program, which began in 2002, no widespread wiretapping had been conducted within U.S. borders without a court warrant.

I have worked very hard to help provide our law enforcement and intelligence communities with the tools they need to effectively combat terrorism; at the same time, I have fought to protect the civil liberties and privacy protections that define our nation. It is unacceptable that the Bush Administration has sanctioned programs that so blatantly violate this balance.

Many of my colleagues – both Republicans and Democrats – share my shock and disappointment that President Bush went outside the law and subverted the system of checks and balances that is so vital to our democracy. The Senate Judiciary and Intelligence Committees are currently holding hearings on this matter.

Rest assured, I will do all I can to make sure that this matter is fully explored and resolved. The American people should not have to choose to between their security and their liberty.

Again, thank you for writing to me. Please do not hesitate to contact me about this or any other issue of concern to you.

Barbara Boxer
United States Senator

Yes, it’s been a while. My journey of political discovery has been, at times, painful. George W. Bush has continued to grasp on the title of “Worst. President. Ever.” and shows no signs of wanting to let it go.

A lot’s happened since I last wrote here, too much to catch up. But, I expect to be around a bit more often, as 2006 is an important Congressional race, and will define the remainder of Mr. Bush’s term in office, and quite likely determine what happens in 2008.

One item I’ll note is I wrote into my two senators (Boxer and Feinstein). Twice, in fact. The first time was to express my support for continued investigation of the illegal wiretapping programs Mr. Bush has admitted to authorizing; the second was in support of Senator Feingold‘s censure resolution against Mr. Bush for this illegal wiretapping.

I know it’s not much, but I found myself feeling somewhat thrilled by my actions. I don’t expect much to come of these email messages (and in fact only Senator Boxer has responded to either of my messages), but if I can add my voice to a chorus of others, perhaps our elected officials will hear us and take action.

Tonight, George W. Bush announces his nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court. Tonight also marks the start of FUD-flinging season.

What a coinkidink!

Professional FUD-flingers, such as Mr. Bush, Karl Rove, and many in the Republican party and in the media, will converge on Washington, the birthplace of FUD-flinging, in an all-out attempt to declarify and obfuscate the history and politcal leanings of Mr. Bush’s nominee, all the while attempting to convince everyone that this is the biggest story around, and not, say, the Karl-Rove-leaked–a-covert-agent’s-identity story, you know, for example.

Let’s see how the media covers the action….

Supreme
adjective
• very great or intense; extreme

Court
verb [ trans. ]
• pay special attention to (someone) in an attempt to win their support or favor

• go to great lengths to win (favorable attention)

– New Oxford English Dictionary

What, you’ve never heard these definitions before? It’s what George W. Bush has been doing for most of his political career, and what you can expect him to do when selecting a candidate to replace the retiring Sandra Day O’Conner on the United States Supreme Court.

His “base”, those generally wealthy, generally White, generally conservative, generally Christian individuals to whom he generally caters, want someone on the Court who will, among other things, remove the rights of a woman to control her own body, support the imprisonment of American citizens with no access to a lawyer, and agree to continued invasions of personal privacy.

George W. Bush is indebted to this base: they were instrumental in getting him elected, after that long period of courting them, and now they want payback, and you can bet that will come in the form of a candidate who will support their conservative agenda.

This, of course, will be devastating to this country, as the Court already is rather conservative, with O’Conner being the so-called “swing vote”. Replacing O’Conner with a conservative will tip the precarious balance of a supposedly non-partisan deliberative body far enough to the right that it might take decades to reverse the decisions the new Court puts forth, assuming we continue to have the opportunity to do that.

Now is the time to make your voices heard. The choices Bush makes for the Supreme Court (and there will be another, you can be sure of that) will affect our lives for a generation or more, and might forever change the course of this country. Do we want to return to a time where women had to undergo dangerous back alley “medical procedures”? Do we want to live in a country where being a citizen has no meaning, and the right to privacy doesn’t exist?

Stand up. Fight any Bush nominations who make judicial decisions based ideological believes rather than Constitutional convictions.

I know it’s been a long time since I posted last, and this is just a drop-in, but I felt it was important enough to make this available. Here’s a sample of some of the 1000+ Federal privileges denied to same-sex couples because they cannot get married:

• The right to make decisions on a partner’s behalf in a medical emergency. Specifically, the states generally provide that spouses automatically assume this right in an emergency. If an individual is unmarried, the legal “next of kin” automatically assumes this right. This means, for example, that a gay man with a life partner of many years may be forced to accept the financial and medical decisions of a sibling or parent with whom he may have a distant or even hostile relationship.
• The right to take up to 12 weeks of leave from work to care for a seriously ill partner or parent of a partner. The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 permits individuals to take such leave to care for ill spouses, children and parents but not a partner or a partner’s parents.
• The right to petition for same-sex partners to immigrate.
• The right to assume parenting rights and responsibilities when children are brought into a family through birth, adoption, surrogacy or other means. For example, in most states, there is no law providing a noncustodial, non-biological or non-adoptive parent’s right to visit a child – or responsibility to provide financial support for that child – in the event of a breakup.
• The right to share equitably all jointly held property and debt in the event of a breakup, since there are no laws that cover the dissolution of domestic partnerships.
• Family-related Social security benefits, income and estate tax benefits, disability benefits, family-related military and veterans benefits and other important benefits.
• The right to inherit property from a partner in the absence of a will.
• The right to purchase continued health coverage for a domestic partner after the loss of a job.

Think about these the next time you think same-sex marriage is “morally wrong”.

From John Kerry’s latest email:

Tomorrow, members of Congress will meet to certify the results of the 2004 presidential election. I will not be taking part in a formal protest of the Ohio Electors.

Despite widespread reports of irregularities, questionable practices by some election officials and instances of lawful voters being denied the right to vote, our legal teams on the ground have found no evidence that would change the outcome of the election.

[…]

I want every vote counted because Americans have to know that the votes they stood in line for, fought for, and strived so hard to cast in an election, are counted. We must make sure there are no questions or doubts in future elections. It’s critical to our democracy that we investigate and act to prevent voting irregularities and voter intimidation across the country. We can’t stand still as Congressional leaders seek to sweep well-founded voter concerns under the rug.”

Wouldn’t you think it might be helpful in investigating those “well-founded voter concerns” if the person who might be most obviously affected by them “[took] part in a formal protest”?

Stop being such a pussy politician, Mr. Kerry.

Wow. I just finished reading this article at The Independent Weekly, and hoo-boy, it is a doozy. Thing is, I can’t disagree with anything the author says. For example:

In your befuddling concession speech, you actually called for unity and healing. Sounds good, clown, but can’t you even imagine for a second that the people who supported you so zealously for the past five months might just see that insincere gesture of good sportsmanship as a betrayal? See, unlike you pols, we voters actually believe in shit. We believe that George W. Bush and his henchpeople are a real threat to the survival of democracy. We believe that they’re killing people for profit. And we believe that they don’t have a goddamn clue about forfending terrorism on U.S. soil.

That’s not a position gap; that’s an ideological gash.

Now, I might have used less-harsh language, but he’s right. “Unity and healing” aren’t what’s called for, standing up and fighting for what we believe in is what’s necessary, and having the putative leader of our movement basically say “they’re not that bad” is disconcerting.

Clinton opened his presidential library the other day, and, standing in the drenching rain, asked his listeners “Am I the only person in the entire United States of America who likes both George W. Bush and John Kerry? Who believes they’re both good people, who believe they both love our country and they just see the world differently?”

Damn right, Mr. President.

You are.

And the fact that you are suggesting that Mr. Bush is somehow “OK”, and wants the same things for the world that John Kerry wanted is abominable.

John Kerry is no saint, but he’s light-years apart from Mr. Bush. To quote the article above,

Last week [the Bush administration] were the imperialist pigs who misled us into war and you were the savior. Now we’re the goddamn Getalong Gang?! Screw that. Fight back or shut up.

And the people who voted for Mr. Bush, the fundamentalists, the Religious Right which came out in such unexpected numbers that exit polls in key counties were completely wrong, they don’t get that there’s a difference. But then, they don’t see differences where they exist, and imagine tremendous differences where there are none. As the article notes, comparing America’s Christian fundamentalists to Muslim fundamentalists,

[Y]ou both hate the same stuff–homosexuality, pacifism, Jews, education, uppity women, enlightenment, short skirts, gangsta rap, tattoos, infidels.

And each group thinks they have God on their side. Ever think that if both of you can’t be right, perhaps both of you are dead wrong?

This article stirred up my anger all over again, a good effect, I say. A co-worker remarked that “it makes me wish I had the energy to be angry anymore”.

Read the article. Find the energy. Be angry.

It’s important.

The new budget passed this weekend (344-51 in the House, and 65-30 in the Senate). Included in that budget, along with all the necessary items like paying for Social Security and “funding” the No Child Left Behind initiative, were several items of, shall we say, dubious need. Among them,”$2 million for the government to buy back the presidential yacht USS Sequoia, sold in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter to demonstrate frugality.”

Yes, our “fiscally conservative” President and Congress have spent $2 million to buy a boat.

But wait, that’s not the end of the story, as USA Today notes. The budget includes a total of 11,772 “special projects” totaling $15.8 billion in extra spending. Some highlights? From that USA Today article:

• $25,000 for the study of mariachi music in Nevada’s Clark County School District.
  $225,000 for the National Wild Turkey Federation in South Carolina.
  $1 million for the Missouri Pork Producers Federation to convert animal waste into energy.
  $75,000 for renovating the Merry Go Round Playhouse in Auburn, N.Y.
  $100,000 for a weather museum in Punxsutawney, Pa.
  $800,000 for “soybean rust research” in Ames, Iowa.
  $75,000 for “hides and leather research” in Wyndmoor, Pa.
  $1,593 for potato storage in Madison, Wis.
  $1 million for a world birding center, Texas.
  $150,000 to pay for beaver management and damage in Wisconsin.
  $200,000 for the American Cotton Museum in Greenville, Texas.
  $100,000 for a swimming pool in Ottawa, Kan.
  $70,000 for a “Paper Industry International Hall of Fame” in Appleton, Wis.
  $1.5 million for the Rep. Richard Gephardt Archive at the Missouri Historical Society.

$1 million to convert hog waste into energy in Missouri?

Talk about your pork.

A friend pointed me to this article at The New Republic. It talks about the undecided voter:

Undecided voters aren’t as rational as you think. Members of the political class may disparage undecided voters, but we at least tend to impute to them a basic rationality. We’re giving them too much credit. I met voters who told me they were voting for Bush, but who named their most important issue as the environment. One man told me he voted for Bush in 2000 because he thought that with Cheney, an oilman, on the ticket, the administration would finally be able to make us independent from foreign oil. A colleague spoke to a voter who had been a big Howard Dean fan, but had switched to supporting Bush after Dean lost the nomination. After half an hour in the man’s house, she still couldn’t make sense of his decision. Then there was the woman who called our office a few weeks before the election to tell us that though she had signed up to volunteer for Kerry she had now decided to back Bush. Why? Because the president supported stem cell research. The office became quiet as we all stopped what we were doing to listen to one of our fellow organizers try, nobly, to disabuse her of this notion. Despite having the facts on her side, the organizer didn’t have much luck.

The level of amazement I felt as I read this article can’t be properly put into words (at least, not while I’m in this state). And yet, while I’m amazed, I’m not truly surprised. I’ve always felt that if you’re paying even the least bit of attention, and care even the tiniest amount about how politics affects your life, you have a basic idea of how you want to vote. You might not be sure that’s the right vote to make, but you aren’t “undecided” in the sense of not knowing who you’d like to vote for.

This country is filled with these “undecideds”, and they’re the ones who are making the difference in our lives. By not caring enough to care, those of us who do have to work that much harder to ensure their vote isn’t the deciding vote.

That borders on the absurdly unacceptable.

The elections are over, and George W. Bush was (re-) elected to the presidency. Despite the increased turnout for John Kerry, and more votes for Kerry than any other presidential candidate before him, Bush managed an even greater turnout and over three million more votes than Kerry.

The electoral map shows a huge swath of red across this country. Seeing that makes me think this country is doomed.

But step back for a moment. Take a look at this map, from the New York Times [interactive version on their site]:

What this map tells me is Bush gets his support from many small counties across the country, while Kerry overwhelmingly wins in the few large counties across the country.

Even in staunch Bush country, like Orange County, CA, Bush manages to win only by 155,010 votes (his largest margin of victory by some 42,000 votes). Meanwhile, Kerry’s largest margin of victory comes from Cook County, IL (Chicago, basically), where he won by 805,857 votes.

This country isn’t divided by Red States and Blue States. No. It’s divided by Big Cities and Rural Counties. It’s not which state do I live in, it’s what city.

For example, you won’t see me moving to the O.C. anytime soon….