I don’t know how to say this: I would feel more comfortable signing a Ballot Petition for decriminalizing Marijuana if the signature-gatherer did not fit the stereotype of a person gathering signatures for that Cause. Maybe a few some gun-toting anti-tax warriors aren’t such a bad thing after all. (Rush — the Ayn Rand loving band — fans are supposed to be in a perpetual haze, after all.)

I also oppose the ballot measure to open Primaries. The movement of a political party and the people it throws up should be decided by people who connect with that political party. Yes, it’s difficult to proclaim yourself a member of Party X, but just because you’re a registered member of Party X does not mean you are hobnobbing with the worst of Party X, or dancing with the Skull And Bones units that are swaying the partys to the… what the hell am I saying?

When the voters out there hear Rancher, and Democrat in the same sentence, they are going to think one thing… Brokeback Mountain.

A comment found here, describing the situation in the Fifth Congressional District of Washington State, home of former House Speaker Tom Foley, The Democratic challenger to the Republican Incumbent… Rancher Peter Goldmark. Either channelign Molly Ivin’s famous quip about “Nobody comes out of the closet to say they’re gay in Texas out of fear that people will think they’re Democrats.”

Spokane’s 3rd Leg. Dist. often has one of the highest Democratic percentages in the state. Ten minutes outside the city it is a different story.

Images of Spokane abound through the Northwest Metropolitan corridors — somewhat correct somewhat false. What’s interesting is that a lot of people place it on parallel track with … say… Yakima… which is an image of “The Edge of the World” and “Hell on Earth”. Well, go Gonzaga anyway.

Finally, (the crowd does the wave) if making enough nuclear weapons to blow up the planet a dozen times over didn’t cost the Tri-Cities it’s “soul”, I kind of doubt a few liberals going to a “chain” restuarant instead of the Tuscany lounge so they can hear each other talk is going to do the trick. But you won’t have to worry about me showing up and trying to shout over the classic rawk.

Comment found here, regarding the Fourth Congressional District of Washington State, home of the Hanford Nuclear Dump, and a whole lot of Radioactive tumble-weeds.

What is interesting is that has now changed. I would rate the political environment for a Democratic challenger the best it has been since Jay Inslee won. That is why I am so disappointed that Richard Wright isn’t raising any money. He has a real chance, and he is letting it slip away.

The nice thing about Congress-critters is they are fairly easy to ignore as you go on your everyday life. But somebody has to be spending large parts of their day focused on Doc, and Richard Wright is as good as anyone for that task.

Oregon’s rural Republican district, home of Representative Greg Walden –has these four campaigning in what’s probably a worst lost cause than even the “defeatist”s of the Fourth District in Washington, and… Tom Foley’s District full of Gay Cowboys. I have to wonder if this comment is a bit of oversensitivity for the part of the Japanese:

Bill Lunch seems to be unaware of the fact that many of the “kamikaze pilots” were actually forced or coerced into becoming them by the Imperial Japan’s navy. Of course, some did in fact were willingly “drawn to lost causes” – all of them of course fascists who to the end defended the conduct and course of their country at the time.

Okay. The Democratic challengers to Greg Walden are not litereally Kamikaze Pilots. After being plastered by a 70 to 30 margin, I believe they will go on with their lives, not dead. Beyond which, I believe most of the Kamikaze Pilots were willing and eager.

2-10-1937: Texas State Senator TJ Holbrook: “It is the purpose of the President to eliminate from the governmental structure one of its foundation stones and to place the Supreme Court under his power. If the plan should be adopted, it would destroy the government and establish a dictatorship equal to that of Hitler or Mussolini. Throughout the ages we have many examples of governments wrecked by these methods.”
……………………
2-9, Letter to the Editor Elmer Davis: The last election may not have been a mandate for any particular alteration of the judiciary, but it certainly was a general mandate to catch up with the times, to make social and industrial reforms which other capitalist democracies made years ago. In the next four years, we have an opportunity for orderly and moderate reform; if they are blocked by technicalities, as orderly and moderate reforms so often were in the later years of the Roman Republic, what happens thereafter may be less moderate and less orderly. Men of property ought to be the first to insist that we do our reforming now.
……………..
A. Lawrence Lowell, President Emeritus of Harvard: “In the Declaration of Independence, one of the charges against George III was that he has made judges dependent on his will alone for tenure of their offices, and by the Constitution our forebears provided that no one should be able to do anything of the kind again in this land of ours, at least they attempted to do so. Are we now to return to the claim of the Stuart Kings that judges should be lions under their throne?”
…………………….
Dean E Clark, Yale Law School: Urging support of amendments proposed by the Liberal Party, he said that President Roosevelt’s plan, while it might have the immediate result of saving a few pieces of legislation, would be at long range only a retirement and pension scheme. Failure to liberalize the Constitution would bring “absolute government” because the way to dictatorship is much more nearly in the way of refusing to change in line with the times than any of the other courses now open.
………………………………….
Herbert Hoover, 2-21: “If Mr Roosevelt can change the constitution to suit his purposes by adding to the members of the Court, any succeeding President can do it to suit his purposes. If a troop of ‘President’s Judges’ can be sent into the halls of justice to capture political power, than his successors with the same device can also send a new troop of ‘President’s Judges’ to capture some new power. That is not judicial power. That is force. In less than a score of years, the courts in a dozen nations have been made subjective to political power, and with this subjection, the people’s securities in those countries have gone out the window. And mark you this: In every instance the persuaders have professed to be acting for the people in the name of progress. As we watch the parade of nations go down that suicide road, every American has cause to be anxious for our Republic.”
……………………
2-12: Governor Earle (D) of Pennsylvania declared tongight that “the cause of human welfare has been advanced beyond calculation by President Roosevelt’s proposal to break the conservative majority on the Supreme Court.”
“Lincoln faced the problem of a Supreme Court assuming more than its rightful powers. He fought it bitterly. He put an additional member on it. The Supreme Court needs change. President Roosevelt is going to do it, and the people are going to support him. I hope hereafter we can maintain not government by one supreme court justice who casts the deciding vote in 5-4 decisions, but government ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people’. This we cannot do with the court of present constituted.”
…………………………………..
2-10: The far seeing men who fashioned our Constitution and established our government 150 years ago provided a system of checks and balances which should insure the perpetuity of the government.[…]
This system worked perfectly until 1933. Then the President demanded and received from Congress extraordinary powers, which he has never surrendered. Congress, because of the overwhelming Democratic majority, ceased to be a deliberative body. The vast majority of members did not even read the bills submitted, much less debate them. It was enought to know the President wanted them, and they were passed without debate, and frequently even without submission to a committee. There remained then but one check upon either the Executive or Congress — The Supreme Court. Now the President proposes to “pack” this court by increasing the number of justices and filling the new vacancies with men of his own way of thinking and removing all justices over the age of 70. Both Congress and the Supreme Court would then become mere Presidential “rubber stamps.”
The function of the Supreme Court is to interpret the law. The law is a good deal older than 70 years, but under a New Deal dispensation the established law is but rightly held and must be bent and twisted to conform to New Deal requirements. Witness within the past few days the Secretary of Labor demanding of Congress that it pass “with all possible haste” an act establishing the legality of “sit down strikes.” Witness too a president demanding of Congress the passage of a certain bill with the instruction “not to be deterred by considerations of its constitutionality.” This is the blackest phrase on the records of this government.
This is the most critical moment in the history of our nation. If the President has his way and is permitted to Emasculate the Supreme Court, the US may classify itself as a nation of puppets. Was it for this that we re-elected Mr. Roosevelt by such an overwhelming majority?
……………………

(#1): As it turned out, Governor Earle, Roosevelt was quite happy with 5-4 decisions, because he dropped the fight once the Supreme Court started making 5-4 rulings on his behalf.
(#2): Congress as a Rubber stamp. Roosevelt had huge majorities in Congress, and won by huge land-slides. What’s the current Republican Party’s (and Democratic opposition’s) excuse?
(#3): Consider Roosevelt’s creation of a Constitutional Crisis, which resolved itself in what seems like an uncomfortable Compromise that the Supreme Court behave itself, in light with the Constitutional Crisis of sorts where the Republicans threatened to get rid of the Democratic Right to Fillibuster Judges, which resolved itself when “The Gang of 14” came out and … um… agreed to behave themselves. History is full of sleights of hands masquerading as Noble Victories.
(#4): Hoover would go on to make a play for the 1940 Republican Nomination, on the basis that Hitler was going to win WWII with the US staying out of it, and he had the Business Credentials to deal with Hitler. So it’s kind of weird to hear Hoover make Hitler Comparisons.

Sandra Day O’Connor, a Republican-appointed judge who retired last month after 24 years on the supreme court, has said the US is in danger of edging towards dictatorship if the party’s rightwingers continue to attack the judiciary.
In a strongly worded speech at Georgetown University, reported by National Public Radio and the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, Ms O’Connor took aim at Republican leaders whose repeated denunciations of the courts for alleged liberal bias could, she said, be contributing to a climate of violence against judges.
Ms O’Connor, nominated by Ronald Reagan as the first woman supreme court justice, declared: “We must be ever-vigilant against those who would strong-arm the judiciary.”
She pointed to autocracies in the developing world and former Communist countries as lessons on where interference with the judiciary might lead. “It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.”

So goes Sandra Day O’Connor, using the word “dictator” in a way that I thought was reserved for events like… well, this weekend’s Anti-War March in Downtown Portland. (I think that’s this weekend. I may or may not wander through it, which is my want.)

She said the court’s marshal, Pamela Talkin, alerted her and O’Connor to a February 28, 2005, Internet chat posting by an unidentified person to his fellow “commandoes” urging a “patriotic assignment.”

According to Ginsburg, the Web author criticized the justices’ prior reference of international laws, saying, “This is a huge threat to our Republic and Constitutional freedom. … If you are what you say you are, and NOT armchair patriots, then those two justices will not live another week.”

I’m pondering the lessons of Roosevelt’s 1937 Supreme Court packing scheme. It’s always been uneasy, particularly since my understanding of the events has always deviated from the official History Textbook explanation. I note for the record a quick look at 1937 New York Times articles on the subject shows early on in the controversy Roosevelt repeatedly prefaced any discussion on the matter with:

“What is really needed is not an alteration of our fundamental law but an increasingly Enlightened View by the Supreme Court reagarding the Constitution.”

Which is to say “Hey! I won every state but Maine and Vermont! Enact my Programs!” At any rate, two of the Justices switched sides practically overnight and thus a 6-3 anti New-Deal Court became a 5-4 pro-New Deal Supreme Court.

Is the FDR Precedent covered under Sandra Day O’Connor’s speech? I leave you with the uneasy feeling that comes with the understanding of the Supreme Court as yet another political unit.

So, the Courts sway with political pressure. Whether vaguely threatening words by elected politicians and overtly threatening words by anonymous in cyber-Message Boards work in that box, I do not know. Try and see! No, don’t.

What type of degree did host alex trebek earn at University of Ottawa? (asked with five different phrasings.)
Philosophy.

my girlfriend sprained her ankle
Sorry to hear about it. Hope she recovers.

who s ted kaczynski
A mathematical genius.

who has more red bool cells?!woman or man!?
What’s a “bool”?

What carpenter tool is spelled the same way forwards and backwords?
Oh Come On! Was this an “NPR Weekedn Edition” Word Quiz or something? You can’t just google up answers — that’s cheating!

pronounce disheveled
I just did. Unfortunately I don’t have the technology to provide you the file to hear me doing so.

byrd alabama popular vote 1960 new york times
Seriously, although Harry Byrd received Alabama’s electoral votes, I do not believe he received a single popular vote. The voter in Alabama and Mississippi had on the ballot a choice between “Democrat: Kennedy – Johnson”, “Republican: Nixon – Lodge”, and “Uncommitted Democratic Slate”. Or at least so is my understanding. I know Mississippi had it that way. The last slate won, and Alabama’s and Mississippi’s delegates then tried to sway the election to Harry Byrd in a historical footnote that has some resonance in that it’s a bump on the way to the transformation of the “Solid South” from Democratic to Republican control.

congressman ciro rodriguez picture with the taliban
Nasty election campaign if indeed such a thing was used. What — is this the new way of opposition research? Try googling “Ciro Rodriguez sex with corpse” next time… maybe your victory will be by a larger margin.

prescott bush blames catholics senate race loss
Yes. Prescott Bush, in his 1950 run for the Senate seat from Connecticut, lost because of a last-minute attack by his opponent over his support for Planned Parenthood — and the Catholic Church policy is against Planned Parenthood.

southern democrats who turned against their party s wet catholic nominee and voted for the republican in 1938
Wrong year. 1928. I’ve covered that one already.

paul hackett shirtless
Sigh. Probably looks better than his political opponent. Either one.

character descriptions in the tales of two cities
I’m not going to do your homework for you.

Why did president bush fall in disfavor with the american republic regarding the port dubai?
He fell in disfavor with the American Republic long before the Port Dubai Deal. Something to do with the word “Republic” and the tango between “Republic” and “Empire” that is always going on with the nation at large.

deadhead sticker
I saw one on a Cadillac the other day.

internaional events that happened when george h w bush was in office
Hm. Soviet Union fell. Gorbachev tried to stop it. Yeltsin jumped atop a tank, which was the last time he showed any type of Stamina. Meanwhile, in the Middle East…

william seward
Good man.

gordon pross
I’ll have the word on his latest election campaign as soon as it comes down the pack. You know, he emailed me once. Corrected a typo.

read write think vinn diagram
I assume “think” would be in the middle?

dead stuffed birds
I saw a dead stuffed bird in the spot (in front of the fur shop) where the PETA type folks protest every Saturday. I didn’t know its significance.

is patrick quinn the third a member of skull and bones
As near as I can tell, yes. But don’t quote me on that just yet.

1-6-1954: But while Senator McCarthy denied any shift in emphasis from Communism to other investigating fields, he did say that Communist issues would not predominat in the next two major investigations he had planned for this year. The next big inquiry, he said, will be of “disturbing” tax settlements made during the Truman Administration. Another, which he refused to identify, will deal with graft, inefficiencies, corruption, and mismanagement with Communism as a minor element, he declared. That one will not be ready for hearings for another six months.

“Just before the elections?” a reporter asked. “You go to Hell,” Senator McCarthy replied with a broad grin. […]

But while Senator McCarthy denied reports that Senator John McClellan, Democrat of Arkansas, was considering reintroducing a five-year old resolution to create a joint House-Senate committee to deal with subversion in place of the three committees now handling the problem: “I have too much respect for McClellan to think he’d be the tool of left-wing elements of his party.” Asked why a joint committee would play into the hands of “left wing elements”: “That’s too obvious to require an answer.”

1-23: The strategy of Democratic leadership in the Senate is to avoid a major clash with Senator McCarthy and allow public attention to focus on the decline in farm prices, the rise in unemployment, and other “pocketbook” issues. On this basis the Democrats figure to win the November election, but it has lead them into an awkward conflict between politics and principles. In private they are the bravest drawing room critics of McCarthy in the city, but in public they say very little and are remarkably casual about their responsibilities as minority representatives of McCarthy’s Permanent SubCommittee on Investigation. […]

They walked out of the subcommittee last July in protest against McCarthy’s dictatorial administration of the committee and they are still out, though they have not carried their complaints to the floor of the Senate, and all three [Democratic Senators of the Subcommittee] have recently voted in favor of giving McCarthy another $200,000 to cary on his work for another year.

2-6-1954: Senator McCarthy called the Democrats “the party of communism, betrayal, and treason” in a fiery speech before McComb County Republicans tonight. He appealed to “all good Democrats to desert the ‘party of betrayal’ and join the Republicans to do the job which is so far from completed.” The Senator linked what he called the “ADAers” and “Adlaiers” […] “Decent Democrats have repudiated ADA because it so often parrots the Communist line.”

[I assume you remember from your history books, or a few blog entries back, that Adlai Stevenson gave a speech calling the Republicans “half Eisenhower — half McCarthy” — a description that describes Richard Nixon perfectly, actually. Consider “McCarthyism” as — at base — the issue of “National Security”, and understand the nature of historical dejavu. As per: Senator Wayne Allard of Colorado sayeth “[Feingold] has time and time again taken on the side of the terrorists that we are dealing with in this conflict.”]

3-7: Some of the leaders attending the dinner expressed privately their belief that Mr. Stevenson’s speech contained political elements for a “parting of the way” among those Democrats who differ strongly on the technique for leveling criticism at the Eisenhower Administration. […] Some Democrats, notably in the South, are said to prefer to base the 1954 and 1956 campaigns on issues other than Senator McCarthy.

3-9: The Senate Democrats dew together today in support of policies that forecast an attempt by them to fight the coming Congressional Campaign almost wholly on economic issues. […] In their first caucus, the Senate Democrats made no move in support of the apparent decision by Adlai Stevenson to make “McCarthyism” and Eisenhower’s alleged tolerance of it a major issue in the fall. […] Instead, they took up a series of positions, sometimes loosely defined, that amounted to an effort to appeal to large farmer and consumer groups.

For what it’s worth, the History books tell us that once Nixon gave the response regarding McCarthy (and the big brohaha was that Eisenhower tapped Nixon to give the “equal time” response and snubbed McCarthy in the process), McCarthy faded into history. The newspaper accounts of the time tell us that Nixon then proceeded, through the Autumn mid-term elections, to call every Democratic Candidate and high profile Politician a traitor and a Communist. Curiously, Nixon was the most powerful vice-president in history up to that point… this since been by-passed by Mondale, Bush I, Gore, and especially Cheney… All this means is that the President of the United States started to give a role and have their vice-president do stuff. Nixon’s role was political hatchet man, so that Eisenhower could remain above the fray. The Demise of McCarthy was simply a passing of the baton on title of Chief-Hatchet Man.

……………….

howie – Adlai the Unusual… I did not vote for him because I thought him to be some kind of mishmosh mouthed nothing. I believe that may have been the first time I ever used the term “an empty suit”, certainly not an original with me but it fit so well I believe I used it in something I wrote at the time. I have to agree with you on the Sainted Adlai, I don’t know what he was either. I do remember the boys in Poly Sci thought he was the best thing to come along since Pepsi Cola, though. His GREATNESS was completely lost on me.

There’s probably a Grocery Store in Peyoria with the same basic premise.

but it is difficult to tell what the context here could possibly be. Frankly, even if you knew the context the photograph still doesn’t make any sense.