What is it, precisely, that you as a person (and by extension we as a nation) stand for and believe in, and what will you ‘stand for’—or tolerate as we attempt to allay (and sometimes) stoke the fears that we collectively face.

It should come as little surprise that this administration’s first veto is used to stymie science. The administration has had a bone to pick with any science that brushes up against its own notions of morality and sense of manifest destiny from climate change to evolution to biology in the classroom.

In perhaps the most stunningly stupid move since the Trojans said—hey, cool horse, let’s bring it inside the gates!, Michael Chertoff has decided that the DOHS (pronounced Doh!–like Homer Simpson) doesn’t really need to defend New York.

Privacy—in and of itself—is a fundamental right. It is our right, and our inherent birth right as Americans. You don’t watch citizens—you watch criminals and mostly only convicted criminals at that.

Cynics would see this speech tonight as a diversion—pragmatists as further incompetence. Perhaps both. I find it somewhat ironic that those so obsessed with ‘securing the borders’ and protecting ‘our way of life’ care so little for their own boundaries and the decisions that actually undermine that way of life in far more subtle and effective ways.

Remember, remember always that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists. –Franklin D. Roosevelt I happened to be in LA on Monday for the demonstrations—in fact one of my meetings was canceled because it was close to the downtown courthouse (near the demonstrations)and I wouldn’t have been able [...]

The current staff moves of McClellan and Rove are a fig leaf for an increasingly concerned Republican majority facing re-election and a desperate attempt the change the subject away form Rumsfeld’s fate. It’s not sufficient to the task and the disorder won’t be sufficient to placate Americans or focus the attention off of the lack [...]

Our nation has been living in a fearful somnolence, drunk on a wine of vengeance of our own making, and like most drunks we are angry, fearful, incoherent in our rants and short sighted in our objectives. Worse, we willingly surrender our principles, our essential freedoms, our dignity, our character and any real meaningful action for another nip of the draught that has become the focal point of our lives.

If you reveal your secrets to the wind you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees. —Kahlil Gibran Google’s decision to fight the Bush administration’s subpoena insisting that the company turn over its database information comes at the same time that Rove and the administration have decided to go on the [...]

Bush is feeling a bit like Napoleon after Waterloo and needs to be cheered up by Turdblossom about as much (Sure, it hurts to be defeated by a guy with a first name like “Beef”, but now you can take that vacation on a nice secluded island, now you won’t have to listen to any more short jokes, now you can stop wearing that ridiculous hat, NOW comes Miller time).

More than the levee was breached this week. The social contract that binds us was breached this week. The obligation we have as a nation to secure all citizens and the protection we purchase by restricting our actions in exchange for the benefits of civil society were both breached this week. The patina of civil rights and of equality of access were breached this week. The illusion that the government has done anything more than talk about security or preparedness or that security is even a priority, was breached this week.

We, as a nation, have spent much of the past several years living the simple life, river like content with surface ripples and the path of least resistance. It’s about as effective as having Paris Hilton run the farm, without the comedy. (New administration motto: That’s hot!—‘Bring ‘em on’ was proving alarmingly effective)…

Don’t probe, don’t examine too closely, because when you do superficial glaze fails us. When we focus on the question instead of the simplest answer, then we have to notice the difference between death tolls and ‘last throes’, between bringing democracy and freedom and loss of civil liberties under the ‘patriot act’, between the claims of success and the reality of enemies wanted ‘dead or alive’ at large four years later. We like our realities simple.

We are easily shocked by crimes which appear at once in their full magnitude, but the gradual growth of our own wickedness, endeared by interest, and palliated by all the artifices of self-deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favor. —Samuel Johnson The clearest indication that there is a sea change—a political [...]

Respect for the word is the first commandment in the discipline by which a man (or woman) can be educated to maturity…Respect for the word—to employ it with scrupulous care and an incorruptible heartfelt love of truth—is essential if there is to be any growth in a society or in the human race. To misuse [...]

I can’t help but wonder when we will, as Londoners apparently understood, adopt the notion that it’s a question of when—not if—and start planning and acting accordingly. Because the truth is what we’re doing now, regardless of the reason or ideology behind it, is deploying our limited resources poorly—it’s not the best bang for the buck.

And that’s cold comfort on the #5 Express from Bowling Green at night.

Opinions, like showers, are generated in high places, but they invariably descend into lower ones, and ultimately flow down to the people as rain unto the sea. —Charles Caleb Colton Bush’s Tuesday night speech was, as many have noted, long on platitudes and short on substance. This shouldn’t come as a surprise—the administration has a [...]

We want the facts to fit the preconceptions. When they don’t it is easier to ignore the facts than to change the preconceptions. –Jessamyn West I watch with increasing dismay the way that we consistently see the triumph of style over substance on the issues. The thing that bothers me the most about this is [...]

Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us. –Eric Hoffer In the wake of a compromise cut by the Senate moderates and the Minority leader that curiously cut out majority leader Frist, the House passed legislation to expand federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. Bush, for his [...]