This is the reaction we’d expect, given that “Wonkette” is thoroughly trouncing “Confluence” in the polls. While “Confluence” seems to get a 500-vote infusion every day around noon - possibly because they have about 500 readers who each get to vote once per day - it’s not enough to beat Wonkette’s current 3,700 vote lead, even assuming 500 more votes per day. Of course, the PUMAs are partially right, we have recommended cheating, but it’s fairly obvious to anyone who’s watched the polls that the initial “Wonkette” surge was too fast to be cheating-powered.

Just because we’re winning, though, doesn’t mean we can let up. Keep voting for Wonkette: it is a good site, and more importantly, it’s not PUMA. Remember, you can vote once per day… or more, if you have cookie-cleaning tools (wink).

In most cases, racism is not an act but a motivation. As an employer, it’s not racist to pass up a black employee for a more qualified white employee. As a voter, it wouldn’t have been racist to vote for McCain over Obama, if you legitimately preferred McCain’s policies. And as, say, Harry Reid, it’s not racist to bar Burris from the Senate, provided he has a non-racially motivated, objective reason to do so. Blagojevich’s proven track record for dirty politics is more than enough to cast aspersion on Burris: if the Senate should eventually seat him, Reid is right to wonder whether his appointment is on the level, and race need have nothing to do with it.

Curiously, if and when Republicans do cry “racism” over the Senate’s decision to block Burris - oop, Conservapedia just went there, Fox News can’t be far behind - the talking point will place the GOP in the odd position of arguing for something like affirmative action, the idea that, because of his race, the Democrats should have overlooked potential problems in Burris’ nomination. It will just be more proof that, like its stance on feminism (see, e.g. Sarah Palin), the GOP only cares about race when it helps them.

UPDATE: Actually, a Democratic congressman (Rush, D-Ill) went there first.

Afraid of a woman

On December 21, 2008, Iranian police stormed Shirin Ebadi’s home-office, shutting down her Center for the Defense of Human Rights. On December 29 police confiscated client files and computer hard-drives with the lame justification that the center owes taxes (though Ebadi has never earned income from the Center in 15 years).

On January 1, 2009, a mob of young men descended on Ebadi’s home, vandalizing the property, calling for her death, and being watched passively by Iranian police whom Ebadi had frantically called, fearing for her life. The mob’s justification for the riot? Ebadi hadn’t been forceful enough in her condemnation of Israel’s recent military action in Gaza.

Of course, there is nothing Ebadi could have said or done that would have stopped the deluge of harassment. The mullahs who control the Iranian government have made terrorizing Ebadi priority number one.

And why should those big, powerful men be so threatened by one middle-aged woman that they have to resort to hired mobs and obvious abuse of police authority in an attempt to subjugate her and end her lifelong work for justice?

As if it were not obvious enough, the answer below the jump …

The answer is in the question. It is because Ebadi works effectively and tirelessly to expose the cruelty and injustice of Iranian virtue laws and punishments, including the public executions of minors by, among other means, hanging or stoning. There is a quiet revolution taking place in Iran, and the clerics who have controlled the government for nearly 30 years are desperately trying to retain power over a population that is highly educated, one of the youngest globally, and increasingly connected to outside culture, including that of the infidel West. Dominated by youth, today’s Iranians do not have first-hand knowledge of the corruption and cruelty of the Shah’s reign, theoretically ended by the Revolution. They, however, do have first-hand knowledge of the corruption and cruelty of the theocracy in which they live. The mullahs have made themselves grossly wealthy on the backs of Iran’s citizens, and for years there has been dissatisfaction from the public who have to support this righteous, non-working, non-productive class.

Coupled with demographics that do not favor the survival of their absolute authority, the mullahs are having a hard time accepting the political and social capital Ebadi enjoys internationally. In late November 2008, independent U.N. experts testified specifically on Iran’s dismal human rights record, especially concerning women and children, the focus of Ebadi’s work. Her work is widely admired, and she apparently has a direct line to Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary General of the United Nations, who personally referenced a recent report Ebadi’s group submitted after his speech in Geneva to the U.N. Human Rights Council [HRC] on December 13, 2008. Ban’s speech noted that while the HRC is important, its mandate has been lost in the “partisan posturing and regional divides” that ultimately render its authority moot.

From the outside, it seems the best answer to correct the ills of the Iranian government would be to end the theocracy and replace it with a true democracy, but that is only half the story. Michael Ross, a political science professor at UCLA, researches the connection between natural resources and poltical development. In February 2008, Ross published a paper contending there is not an inherent quality to Islam that quashes human rights (namely those of women) but rather something inherent in non-diversified oil economies that facilitates dictatorial, patriarchal rule. While Iran performs better than, say, Saudi Arabia on matters such as female suffrage, labor, and politcal representation, greater economic diversification and entry of women into non-traded labor sectors are needed to further improve women’s rights in the country. Ross points out that not all oil-producing countries stifle women’s rights, but these exceptions are based on pre-exisiting conditions (like industrialization) that tempered the effects of oil on social structure.

Iran’s presidential election is coming up in June, and the mullahs are cracking down on activists, sending the clear message they want their puppet, Ahmadinejad, re-elected. Ebadi was a target regardless of her cachet with the U.N., but thankfully her international profile ensures attacks on her and her group do not go without worldwide notice.

How can we do this, you ask? It’s going to be tough, make no mistake: because there are fourteen nominees and only “fake” liberal blog, Confluence can win just by splitting the legitimate liberal vote between the remaining thirteen legitimate blogs. The best way to fight the vote-fracturing potential is for all of us here to settle on one blog to vote for: I recommend Crooks and Liars. So, first things first: when polls open tonight at midnight,

VOTE FOR “WONKETTE”
AT THE WEBLOG AWARDS SITE.

When the polls go live, we’ll have an embeddable voting tool here so you don’t need to go to their site, but in the meantime, be sure to get your vote in ASAP. Now, Confluence is likely to enlist the entire PUMA-sphere to take advantage of the vote fracturing effect, and propel them into first place. In a fair fight, they’d have a good shot at winning. We can’t give them a fair fight. Most web voting software forbids multiple votes but bases its decision on whether or not to forbid your second vote based on a combination of (1) your IP address and (2) cookies in your browser. So, if you’re tech-savvy, to maximize your ability to vote multiple times…

1. Install TOR, an onlyine anonymity tool, and use it to cycle IP addresses to vote.
2. If TOR doesn’t allow you to vote once per IP, clear out your cookies between votes.
3. If that doesn’t work, use your iPhones, mobile networks, any publicly accessible IP addresses, and multiple devices to try to vote for C&L as much as possible.

We can kick Confluence out. May God have mercy on our souls.

Disaster averted?

Attempting to unseat Jimmy Carter in 1980, Ronald Reagan, at the presidential debate, asked America a simple question: are you better off today than you were four years ago? The assumed answer - “no” - powered him to victory over the already unpopular incumbent.. Today, I’ll ask a variant of the same question. Are you safer today than you were seven years ago?

Though I declare the answer today from the safety of my own room, I suggest that the answer is again “no.” By all accounts, the Bush Presidency defined itself, more than anything else, by an obsession with preventing “the next attack.” Certainly we should be glad of their dedication and, with any luck, when President Bush steps down in January, he will have succeeded. But by the same accounts, the administration’s obsession bordered on the unhealthy. Officials at the highest levels of government began their day by reading reports of all reported threats on the homeland in the last 24 hours, creating (even in the minds of true believers) a counterproductive level of paranoia. Top-level obsession with intra-governmental secrecy hobbled key officials, robbed the administration of valuable opportunities for moderating discourse, and permeated trials of alleged terrorists, to the point that men have been detained for five years upon no showing of evidence. We surrendered our moral authority by torturing without need. And, of course, a war of security became a war of nation-building, because the government chose to shoot first and ask questions later. The list goes on.

Of course, our nation remains secure, but the question is whether this security is because of, or in spite of, the Bush administration’s policies. By all accounts, extreme policies like torture have added little. The administration’s only justification for torture - that torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed yielded up the name of dangerous nuclear terrorist Jose Padilla - fell apart when the charges against Padilla turned out to be overblown, and his case began a tortuous course through the criminal courts. It may be that we’ll never know how, or if, the Bush administration’s now-controversial policies saved our lives. But I’ll hazard a guess that we could’ve gotten to where we are today for less.

On June 26, 2008, the governor’s office announced that Jindal had signed the Louisiana Science Education Act into law. Why all the fuss? On its face, the law looks innocuous: it directs the state board of education to “allow and assist teachers, principals, and other school administrators to create and foster an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories being studied,” which includes providing “support and guidance for teachers regarding effective ways to help students understand, analyze, critique, and objectively review scientific theories being studied.” What’s not to like? Aren’t critical thinking, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion exactly what science education aims to promote?

As always in the contentious history of evolution education in the U.S., the devil is in the details. The law explicitly targets evolution, which is unsurprising—for lurking in the background of the law is creationism, the rejection of a scientific explanation of the history of life in favor of a supernatural account involving a personal creator. Indeed, to mutate Dobzhansky’s dictum, nothing about the Louisiana law makes sense except in the light of creationism.

NY Times, “Early Test of Obama View on Power Over Detainees”: the Grey Lady finally caught up with our site, and it only took a month. Last December, I argued that, when Obama takes over the Bush administration’s legal liability as the defendant in Pucciarelli v. Al-Marri, the new administration should take the chance to settle the dispute before oral arguments, or use its briefs in the case to repudiate Bush’s favorable view of indefinite detention. In its article, the Times notes that Obama will have to decide by February 20th - and, hopefully, will err towards civil libertarianism.

Enjoy!

That’s right. What they really want to do is write … or act … or direct.

And why not? Investment banking as an industry helped ram the economy down the toilet; doing the same to American entertainment will be a comparative breeze, considering the job is perpetually half done.

After leaving his job as a vice president at Goldman Sachs in August, [Benjamin Cox, 33] immediately began incubating his plans to work on his screenplay — he calls it a cross between “Swingers” and “Annie Hall” — and start a production company.

Oh, lordy.

If lawmakers push to seat Mr. Franken, who holds a 49-vote lead over Mr. Coleman, Mr. Cornyn said on Friday the move would leave the Senate with a “reputation for chaos.” [. . .] The Coleman campaign said that as it stands, Mr. Franken’s lead is artificial, and lawyers for the Republican senator have threatened to challenge the results in court.

Here’s the thing: for the past eight years, and especially almost exactly eight years ago, we Democrats heard continually from the Republicans about the dangers of an overly litigious culture, and how suing over elections is a sign of being a “sore loser,” nothing more. Remember these?

But oh, how the times have changed. A majority of the American public, finally tired of Bush now that it no longer matters, looks back on the end of the 2000 election with shame and regret. The Onion was part right: at least one of the Supreme Court justices who formed the majority in Bush v. Gore is among them (here’s looking at you, Justice O’Connor). And, now that Republicans across the nation are confronting the reality of defeat, litigation doesn’t look so much like a last-ditch, loser’s option anymore. I wonder if that lesson will take.

Worth fighting?

A founding premise of this blog is the idea that political symbols have value - “myth, power, value,” as a professor of mine used to say - both as campaign tools and as methods of molding the national consciousness. As a result, political symbols are worth fighting over, not just as a battle in the culture war, but as a means of political expression. However, sometimes a symbol is just a symbol - or, fighting over it just isn’t worth the price.

This is a lesson that Michael Newdow hasn’t learned. Newdow, perennial atheist litigant, filed late last year (ha!), demanding that the White House & the Obama transition team purge any reference to God from the official, state-sanctioned elements of the inaugural ceremonies:

According to the complaint, the plaintiffs “have no objection at this time” if President-elect Barack Obama chooses to add the words himself. “The president, like all other individuals, has Free Exercise rights, which might permit such an alteration.” But, the complaint adds, “no such free exercise rights come into play on the part of the individual administering the oath to the President.”

Newdow - who is likely to lose his case, just like he did in 2001 and 2005 - needs to pick his battles. Certainly there are times when jousting over political symbols is worthwhile, but expunging God wholesale from the political discourse is neither a tenable goal, nor desirable. Where God enters the public discourse simply because that’s the way it’s always been, rather than out of an attempt to proselytize or increase public religiosity, we should balk at fighting history, and save our resources for the fights that matter. Even if Newdow could hope to secure a victory, it would be less than Pyrrhic, inviting a public backlash that would drown Establishment Clause litigation for years to come. I don’t like those odds, and I don’t know why Newdow does.