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 to get […]

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 […]

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 offensive with […]

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).