American values

It’s that time of year: a Tuesday near the end of January. It’s just past another anniversary of the president’s inauguration, and time for the annual tradition, the State of the Union address.

In this case, it’s President Obama’s third anniversary, and tonight he’ll give his third SotU speech. According to the Washington Post, this year’s talk will stress a return to American values.

All right, here it is: I’m sick to death of hearing about values. Values has turned into a codeword for reactionary politics, repression, and censorship. I don’t want to hear a speech about those kinds of values, especially from a president who has done little to fix the overstepping excesses of his predecessor, and, to the contrary, seems to embrace many of them.

American values used to be about freedom and opportunity, not control and rigidity. America was a country that didn’t abuse and arrest people for assembling peacefully. It didn’t arrest people for documenting how the police were handling situations. It didn’t keep political prisoners, detaining people indefinitely with no chance of formal accusation, trial, and defense. It didn’t limit the rights of people because of who they are, it didn’t restrict their access to medicines and medical procedures, it didn’t try to teach children mythology in science class, and it did not march a conservative Christian agenda down the streets everywhere.

You want to return to American values? Demilitarize the police, and get them back to engaging with the communities they serve and protect. Don’t send people off to secret prisons, close Guantánamo, and give everyone there a proper, open trial. Stop using terrorist the way dictatorships have used denunciation, as a way to whisk troublesome people away. When people get angry and want to protest, encourage them and give them a venue, don’t beat them down and throw tear gas at them as they sit non-aggressively. Allow yourself to be held accountable for your actions, and don’t threaten people who want to record what you’re doing. Don’t get involved in people’s private lives and personal decisions. And keep religion out of the government and public education. You can start that by not saying God bless in your speeches. Try it tonight.

Remember that American values came from our flight from having to live under someone else’s values. We can’t just replace the king’s values with those of your family, your church, or any other relatively small subset of Americans. Our values were set up to protect our rights and our freedom — everyone’s — and that is what we need to return to.

Oh, and fix the economy, yeah? Don’t just talk about it.

He had a dream

In honour of today’s remembrance of Martin Luther King, Jr, today’s entry is a pointer to a Fresh Air radio program to air today, a talk with Clarence Jones, who helped write Dr King’s famous I Have a Dream speech.

Text without context, in this case especially, would be quite a loss. One might imagine standing before an audience and read­ing Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech verbatim, but it is a stretch to believe that any such per­formance would sow the seeds of change with, as Dr. King put it that day in Washington, the fierce urgency of now. The vast crowd, the great speaker, the words that shook the world — it all comes as a package deal. We are truly fortunate to have a record.

Considering Wikileaks

Wikileaks, having recently released details of hundreds of thousands of confidential U.S. diplomatic cables, has been tossed into a maelstrom of troubles over the past week. Amazon, which had hosted the web site, terminated that arrangement, reportedly under pressure from the U.S. government. Its DNS registrar, EveryDNS.net, pulled the Wikileaks domain out of the domain name service, prompting them to move to a Swiss domain name. PayPal has blocked donations to Wikileaks by permanently restricting their account, saying that the illegal activity that Wikileaks engages in violates PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy. And on top of all of that, founder Julian Assange is now an international fugitive, as Interpol has backed a Swedish warrant for his arrest (the Swedish charges are unrelated to Wikileaks activities, though Mr Assange says they are yet another attempt to shut Wikileaks down).

I have a mixed opinion of the matter of releasing the confidential documents, as well as about the other things Wikileaks has released in the past.

I’ve worked with classified, proprietary, personal, and otherwise confidential material often during my career, and I well understand that some information should be kept confidential. Even in cases where openness and public scrutiny are important, there’s value in being circumspect about some things. Personnel matters, obviously, fall into this category. Plans often need be kept quiet until they’re carried out. Trade secrets and other confidential company information should be distributed only as there be need to know — and government agencies can have confidential company information as well. We often don’t reveal sources, to avoid discouraging those and future sources from coming forward. The fact that even Wikileaks doesn’t disclose the identities of the leakers is testament enough to that.

We have to balance the benefit that comes from the disclosure of information against the damage caused by that disclosure. Sometimes, it’s easy to see where the balance lies. If we disclose payoffs to a government official that have been feeding a program that serves only to line the pockets of a few, the benefit is clear, and the damage is only to those involved in the corruption. On the other side, if we expose a covert agent, citing a public right to know, there might be no tangible benefit and we may risk the life of the agent and many of his associates.

Sometimes, the determination isn’t as straightforward. With the diplomatic cables, it’s likely that they fell wildly on each side of the balancing point, with many landing too close to it to judge easily.

Whistle blowing is an important part of the checks against corruption and other forms of abuse, and it’s important for us to have a way for people to publicize the sorts of things that need to have light shone on them. At the same time, though, not everything should be so illuminated. The set of diplomatic cables is one case where discretion would have been better. The problem with an arrangement such as Wikileaks is that there’s no one sifting through the items in the set and making intelligent choices about which ones to release and which ones to hold back, at least for now.

On the other hand, while I understand the desire to shut Wikileaks down as a result of this, that heavy-handed approach isn’t going to be effective, and probably isn’t the right way to go about it. It would be better to try to establish some sort of liaison that looks for voluntary discretion. Here, too, we have to find that same balance: the benefit of shutting down a system that exposes confidential information indiscriminately, against the damage done by removing a mechanism for safely exposing waste and corruption.

Should we boo him off the stage?

Karl Rove: He was King George’s enabler. Does that make him the devil? Maybe.

Does that mean we shouldn’t be listening to him talk? Maybe. I’m quite sure I wouldn’t go hear him.

Does that mean we should prevent him from talking, prevent others from listening to him?

No.

Protesters heckled Karl Rove, the former political adviser to President George W. Bush, off the stage at a book-signing event on Monday in Beverly Hills. About 100 Rove supporters watched as Jodie Evans, the co-founder of the antiwar group Code Pink, walked toward him with handcuffs, calling him a war criminal and saying she was making a citizen’s arrest. Ten protesters interrupted the talk as he promoted his book, “Courage and Consequence: My Life As a Conservative in the Fight.” There were no arrests.

I like the citizen’s arrest bit — that’s clever and appropriate. And it’s appropriate to protest at his speech. But the protest must not go so far as to stop him from speaking. That’s wrong. That’s not the way we do things.

Now, it doesn’t say what the hecklers did, what the audience did, what the organizers did, or what Mr Rove did. It doesn’t say why he left the stage. If his skin just wasn’t thick enough to push through the protest, that’s his fault.

But if the protesters made it impossible for him to speak, that’s their fault. We need to make our points by having good arguments and being right, not by bullying.

Is this what democracy looks like?

With the passage of the health-insurance reform bill, congressional representatives have a lot of unhappy constituents — some, as I, unhappy because it doesn’t go far enough, and some unhappy because it goes too far. There are many who wanted no change at all.

But that’s the way things work in a representative democracy. Many of us try to influence our legislators by writing to them, by publicly writing about our ideas, by campaigning and protesting. Whether or not we agree with those writing letters and marching in the streets, we support the exercise of our first-amendment rights to petition our government.

We do not, though, petition our government with bricks and with threats.

From the New York Times article:

Democratic lawmakers have received death threats and been the victims of vandalism because of their votes in favor of the health care bill, lawmakers and law enforcement officials said Wednesday, as the Congressional debate over the issue headed toward a bitter and divisive conclusion.

Representative Steny H. Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland and the majority leader, said at least 10 House members had raised concerns about their personal security since Sunday’s climactic vote, and Mr. Hoyer characterized the cases as serious.

And from the Washington Post:

“To all modern Sons of Liberty: THIS is your time. Break their windows. Break them NOW.”

These were the words of Mike Vanderboegh, a 57-year-old former militiaman from Alabama, who took to his blog urging people who opposed the historic health-care reform legislation — he calls it “Nancy Pelosi’s Intolerable Act” — to throw bricks through the windows of Democratic offices nationwide.

And bricks have, indeed, been thrown. Offices — and houses — have been vandalized. At least so far, no one’s been hurt.

Nancy Pelosi reminds us that “these threats have no place in our country,” and that’s absolutely true. The vote doesn’t always go your way, and many of us had eight years to get used to that in the Bush regime. We debated, we wrote, we protested. We took our arguments to our legislators, to the Internet, and to the streets. We urged the impeachment of the president and we campaigned against those who passed laws we didn’t like.

Even in the worst of times, we overthrow our government in the election booth, and we throw our stones by flipping levers and punching holes, and making sure our chad is not hanging nor pregnant.

And we bring change about with words and the sharing of ideas. Not with bricks, or worse.

Teabaggers

I’ve just been led to this site, which we’ll call “LATFT” for short — it stands for “Look At This Teabagger”^[1], and it’s a site full of photos of “Tea Party” protestors and their signs.

Of course, as this is a view of how the other half protests, those of my political persuasion will think them loony, loopy, and ludicrous — not to mention paranoid, because it doesn’t alliterate with the others — and will apply the f-shaped obscene participle to them. But there really is more to it than that.

Look at the pictures, and look at other pictures of last Saturday’s Tea-Party march on Washington. These are people sporting treasonous emblems (Confederate flags); asserting their rights not just to own guns, not just to carry guns, but to threaten people with guns; and saying completely wacky things that have no basis in reality.

My favourite bit in that last regard is their fuming about the “czars” that our current, Nazi president has appointed. They worry that we’re creating real czars in this country — in the true sense of kings, emperors. Some say “More Czars than the U.S.S.R.” Well, that wouldn’t be hard: they had no czars in the U.S.S.R.: part of the point of the Russian revolution that created the U.S.S.R. was to depose them. One sign says that czars are Russian kings, and adds that “Jesus is my king.” They worry that they don’t know who these czars are responsible to, and what power they have.

But they’re serious about this idiocy. They actually, truly don’t seem to get that “czar”, here, is a title used metaphorically, and that no one has created any kings in the U.S. government. They don’t get that the first use of that title was in the Reagan administration, and that George Bush appointed several. They don’t get that these “czars” act as presidential advisors, and have no power beyond that. These czars will not be dismissing congress and starting systematic executions.

Their signs say that “Obama is the Anti-Christ”. They depict the president with Negro caricatures, and with a Hitler mustache. When they’re not calling him a Nazi (or a “Natzy”) they’re calling him a Fascist, a Communist, a Marxist, or a Socialist. (Hm, which is it? They think they’re all the same.) They threaten civil war; they say they came unarmed “this time.”

And now here’s the funny part:

They’re implying that President Obama will preside over “1984”, a totalitarian state in which the government conducted unreasonable surveillance and exerted complete control over the populace. They quote Ronald Reagan as saying, “Man is not free unless government is limited.” They say they will defend the constitution “by any means necessary.”

So, to paraphrase Barney Frank, “On what planet did they spend the previous eight years?” Who was defending the constitution then? Who was defending free people against unlimited government and unfettered surveillance then?

Not the Teabaggers; they were happy. Go figure.
 

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^[1] In much the same way as “RTFM” stands for “Read The Manual”.

We the people say “Yes!” to the Obama agenda

I looked out my office window yesterday, and saw, out of the corner of my eye, this banner that’s been hanging in my office, near the window, for the last four years and a few months:

I got it at the protest march on the Republican National Convention in 2004.

And yesterday, after looking at it and re-hanging it for the photograph, I gently folded it and took it home, happy to think that its need has passed for now — and hoping, optimistically, that its need be gone for good.

 
Oh, and then there’s this item from the New York Times. The RSS-feed blurb says this:

On the White House: On Plane to Texas, Critiques of the Speech

Some on the Bush team thought the inaugural speech took unnecessary shots at the departing administration.

Took shots... ya think? Hardly unnecessary, though. We needed assurance that it will be turned around.

X marks the spot?

Some folks have used public donation information and Google Maps to mark the houses of people who contributed money in support of Proposition 8, the California referendum against same-sex marriage:

It is exactly those arrows that concern supporters of the measure, who say they have been regularly harassed since the election — with threatening e-mail messages and sometimes boycotts of their businesses.

“Some gay activists have organized Web sites to actively encourage people to go after supporters of Proposition 8,” said Frank Schubert, the campaign manager for Protect Marriage, the leading group behind the proposition. “And giving these people a map to your home or office leaves supporters of Proposition 8 feeling especially vulnerable. Really, it is chilling.”

It’s easy for those of us who support the right of everyone to marry to say something like, “And well they should feel vulnerable! They should be held to account for their opposition to civil and human rights.” But look at what’s going on:

It is exactly those arrows that concern supporters of the measure, who say they have been regularly harassed since the election — with threatening e-mail messages and sometimes boycotts of their businesses.

Boycotts are entirely fair: it’s perfectly right to say, “I won’t do business with someone who would limit my rights.” But harassment and threats of harm are not the way to handle this. That sort of thing is the antithesis of what we want: it puts a limit on free speech of others, and it might likely result in an injunction against the reporting regulations, taking away the accountability that we fought hard to put into place.

We are moving forward in steps, despite the efforts of those so mystifyingly opposed to what seems obvious and harmless. Change will come, and we can make it happen. But not by threatening people, violating their privacy, and making them feel unsafe in their homes.

 
Update, 14:50: As noted in the comments, it’s not that these maps have created a pervasive atmosphere of fear, nor that the maps only exist on one side of the issue, nor that threats and vandalism are only happening on one side. As Thom points out, there are jerks on both sides.

Let freedom ring!

Let freedom ring! And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring... when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

With those inspiring words, Martin Luther King ended his most famous speech, about 45 years ago, in Washington, D.C. As we honour Dr King today, we may think about tomorrow, when, some 45 years later, we’ll take one more stride toward the dream he outlined in the speech.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

Tomorrow, on the other side of The Mall, we’ll inaugurate a new president, and a new kind of president: one with darker skin, different facial features, and a different ethnic background from those we’ve been used to before. One we’ve judged, as a nation of voters, not by the colour of his skin, but by the content of his character, and by our trust in him to do the job effectively and with integrity.

We aren’t finished; perhaps we’ll never be finished with our push for equality. But with something that would have been unthinkable in 1963 having come to pass in 2008, we’ve taken another large stride.

Separation of Church and Tax

The New York Times recently had a long-ish article on how churches came together to defeat California’s Proposition 8 — especially the Mormon church, but not just that one:

First approached by the Roman Catholic archbishop of San Francisco a few weeks after the California Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in May, the Mormons were the last major religious group to join the campaign, and the final spice in an unusual stew that included Catholics, evangelical Christians, conservative black and Latino pastors, and myriad smaller ethnic groups with strong religious ties.

Shortly after receiving the invitation from the San Francisco Archdiocese, the Mormon leadership in Salt Lake City issued a four-paragraph decree to be read to congregations, saying “the formation of families is central to the Creator’s plan,” and urging members to become involved with the cause.

“And they sure did,” Mr. Schubert said.

And, yet, despite the political clout that these churches wield, despite the money they caused to be raised to limit the civil rights of a group of people, despite the obvious activism of church officials, all of these churches enjoy tax-exempt status as religious institutions.

Now, the churches, of course, are well aware of the problem:

Leaders were also acutely conscious of not crossing the line from being a church-based volunteer effort to an actual political organization.

“No work will take place at the church, including no meeting there to hand out precinct walking assignments so as to not even give the appearance of politicking at the church,” one of the documents said.

That, though, is no more than the thinnest veneer of separation; it certainly doesn’t convince me of anything (and the fact that they’re trying to smooth it over that way makes me question their ethics). Churches are clearly involved in political action, and not just on this issue. And it’s only natural that they be so: they are gathering points for groups of people who share common ideals, and, likely, common political views. It makes sense that they would use those gathering points as places to recruit people sympathetic to a political cause.

The problem is that they do that and still enjoy exemption from taxes. That’s abuse of the system.

I don’t agree with the general question of tax exemption in the first place. It is not, in any reasonable sense, state interference to require religious organizations to pay the same sorts of taxes that any other organizations would pay. Property taxes should certainly be levied on church land and buildings.[1] Income taxes should certainly be due on huge profits that are not fed back into charitable works (Lord knows, there are certainly some people making it rich by preaching The Word, whether or not those people stand in front of your particular congregation). It must be fair, of course: their tax bill has to be the same as a non-religious organization’s would be in the same situation.

In fact, quite the opposite: exempting “approved” religious organizations from taxes only serves to give them preference over other religious organizations to which we don’t give our approval. Why would the followers of Martin Luther get the nod, while those of David Koresh or Jim Jones not? If those are too far “out there”, what about Sun-Myung Moon and his Unification Church; what about the Church of Scientology? Scientology’s tax-exempt status in the U.S. is certainly full of controversy, and their status as an accepted “religion” in different countries varies.

The point is that as soon as we decide that her religion gets tax-exempt status and his doesn’t, even if it’s the case that pretty much all of us agree on the relative legitimacy of the two, we have interfered by making that decision.

But even if you accept the concept of exempting religious organizations from paying taxes in order to avoid government interference in religion, how can you accept, at the same time, obvious religious interference in the workings of the government, and in the laws the government creates?
 

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[1] Though, to be realistic, it’s not clear how one assesses the value of some of the massive churches, cathedrals, and temples that are around and about.

Salt Lake City, in three acts

Utah is a beautiful place, but with pluses and minuses. As the seat of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, it’s a very politically conservative place, and very insular in many ways. But the people can also be very friendly and caring. The skiing can’t be beat. And, well, it sure is beautiful country.

And, as it happens, the New York Times had three stories about Utah on Monday. Forthwith, Salt Lake City, in three acts.

Act I: Why you should keep your religious icons in your church

PLEASANT GROVE CITY, Utah — Across the street from City Hall here sits a small park with about a dozen donated buildings and objects — a wishing well, a millstone from the city’s first flour mill and an imposing red granite monument inscribed with the Ten Commandments.

Thirty miles to the north, in Salt Lake City, adherents of a religion called Summum gather in a wood and metal pyramid hard by Interstate 15 to meditate on their Seven Aphorisms, fortified by an alcoholic sacramental nectar they produce and surrounded by mummified animals.

In 2003, the president of the Summum church wrote to the mayor here with a proposal: the church wanted to erect a monument inscribed with the Seven Aphorisms in the city park, “similar in size and nature” to the one devoted to the Ten Commandments.

The city, not surprisingly, said no. The Summums, equally unsurprisingly, sued, and won in federal court on first-amendment grounds. Says a Summum counselor, “They’ve put a basically Judeo-Christian religious text in the park, which we think is great, because people should be exposed to it. But our principles should be exposed as well.”

And now it goes to the U.S. Supreme Court. I expect that this will go against the Summums, the conservative Court being as it is, and I have mixed feelings about that. I absolutely think that if you get to parade your basic principles around, then I get to trot mine out too.

Which brings us to the more important point that we should all keep our preaching where it belongs... and that’s not in the city parks. Neither monument belongs there. And this is the sort of conflict we invite when we ignore that.

Act II: I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this any more

SALT LAKE CITY — Leaders of Utah’s largest group supporting equal rights for gay people announced a proposal on Monday to increase the rights of same-sex couples in the state, saying they saw a silver lining in the passage last week of a same-sex marriage ban in California.

The measure in California stripped away the legality of thousands of same-sex marriages and incited protest rallies and marches against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, one of the ban’s major supporters.

But leaders of the rights group here, Equality Utah, said statements made by Mormon leaders in defense of their actions in California — that the church was not antigay and had no problem with legal protections for gay men and lesbians already on the books in California — were going to be taken as an endorsement to expand legal rights that gay and lesbian couples have never remotely had in Utah, where the church is based.

Equality Utah’s chairwoman says, “We are taking the L.D.S. Church at its word.” The L.D.S. Church “declined to comment.”

One message here is, “Don’t piss people off.”

But the real message behind it is that everyone has the same rights, and attempts to hold them back and to stop people from exercising them will ultimately fail... maybe not today, maybe not next year, but ultimately.

Haven’t we spent enough time learning that throughout history?

Act III: People who need people...

SANDY, Utah — For months now, the emotions have welled up whenever Andy Williams has left the field after games. Some of it has come from his desire to lift Real Salt Lake to a new place, the Major League Soccer playoffs. Some from knowing that at 31, he is in the twilight of his career.

Mostly, though, it comes from thinking about his wife, Marcia.

She received a diagnosis this summer of a rare form of leukemia and has struggled to find a donor match for a bone-marrow transplant. Without one, she is likely to leave behind her husband to raise their daughter and hers from a previous relationship, alone.

But not entirely alone, no: the community is backing the Williamses up.

It’s not what they’d expected when they moved to Mormon country.

The community is giving their money and time. The community is looking for bone-marrow donors. The community is giving its full support to Andy and Marcia Williams, and it’s coming from the team, from the businesses, even from the high schools — two high school girls’ teams played a charity match to raise money.

This is the best that people can be.

Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates.

— The Third Aphorism of Summum

Three “guest bloggers”

You know, sometimes it just way easier to let other people do the blogging, especially when they say things so devastatingly well. And so, this Friday I’ll send you to three treatises that are just like that: terrific material well written, giving me more time to be lazy get some work done.

Item one is from a bloke who calls himself Honeybakedham. He writes in response to the McCain/Palin criticism of anyone opposing them as not being “real Americans”. Honeybakedham and others like him, he says, are certainly real Americans:

I believe that any two people, being of different sexes or the same, who are in love and desire to be married, have a fundamental right to be so. And I am an American.

I am opposed to the war in Iraq. And I am an American.

I believe in protecting a woman’s right to reproductive freedom. And I am an American.

[...]

I am a “REAL” American.

And I believe that any aspiring candidate to any high office, regardless of ideology, does not deserve that office if they cannot recognize that we are all Americans, regardless of our own political views or philosophies.

Item two is a personal plea from a friend of mine, Thom Watson, who asks for help from everyone, in and out of California, in defeating Proposition 8 and allowing him and his partner of five years to retain the option to marry:

There is an unfair ballot proposition in California that, if passed, will take away my fundamental rights. This is really important to me. Will you help me defeat Proposition 8?

Jeff and I have been together for five years. We love and support each other in the same way as families all over the country; we share the same joys and the same sorrows, we have the same dreams and the same fears. We intend to spend our lives together, and we hope to be married next year. The California Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that it is unconstitutional in California to deny us the right to marry, just as it was the first court to rule, in 1948, that laws prohibiting interracial marriages also were unconstitutional. It is the constitutional duty of the court, in fact, to safeguard the rights of minorities, and that is what the California Supreme Court did.

California’s Proposition 8, however, now would take away our constitutional right to marry. It would take this right away only for same-sex couples and it would write discrimination directly into the state constitution.

Item three is another post against Proposition 8, this one from a straight woman in California who goes by the moniker Green Yogurt. She doesn’t understand why there’s a problem here; she “doesn’t get it”:

There are a slew of commercials about this. Here’s the gist of them: little pigtailed girl runs up to her mom (who naturally, is in the kitchen), and says, “Hey, guess what I learned in school today! A king can marry a king and when I grow up, I can marry a princess!” Cut to the mom looking horrified.

Probably no surprise to anyone who knows me, that “I don’t get it.” These commercials are aiming to say two things:

1. Children shouldn’t know about gay people.
2. Gay people shouldn’t be allowed to marry.

I understand neither of these. Should children not know about handicapped people? Should white children not know about black children? Should children not know anyone who is in any way different from them? Different religion? Correct me if I’m wrong here, but I thought there was something about stimulating children’s brains by exposing them to different things.

Especially if you live in California, please help my friend Thom, help my other friends out there, help actor George Takei, help all Californians — and, ultimately, help the rest of real America — ensure that any two people who are in love and want to get married... can.

Sunday morning

Keeping books on the shelves

The American Library Association keeps track of complaints from the public, and annually release a list of the most frequently challenged books. Challenges? Complaints? What? OK, here’s what that means:

The ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom received a total of 420 challenges last year. A challenge is defined as a formal, written complaint, filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness. According to Judith F. Krug, director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom, the number of challenges reflects only incidents reported, and for each reported, four or five remain unreported.

And what do “content and appropriateness” mean? Oh, c’mon, do you really have to ask? It’s the usual stuff: references to sex, homosexuality, bad language, ethnic slurs, violence. Fair enough, we know there are people out there who don’t like all that, and so those people should certainly not read books that have it.

What’s scary, though, is that even in 2007, people still think it’s appropriate to make formal complaints and to demand the removal of the books from library shelves, so no one else can read them either. And that one of them is reasonably likely to become the Vice President of the United States.

And this week is Banned Book Week, a week meant to highlight the problem and to light a fire under the free thinkers among us. Those of us who, whether or not we personally want to read specific books, insist that all books be allowed a place, must make sure our voices are as loud as those who would burn them.

But here: would we want to read these particular books? Oh, yes, look at the list; this it not fringe material, not quasi-porn nor doggerel that few would actually want to pick up. We’re talking about mainstream reading, including classics and wildly popular current writings. Have a look at the ten most challenged books from 2000 to 2005, and the 100 most challenged of the 1990s.The lists include these:

• the “Harry Potter” series (witchcraft!)
• “Of Mice and Men”, John Steinbeck’s classic
• Maya Angelou’s acclaimed “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”
• “Huckleberry Finn”, with references to slavery and a bad word for slaves
• “The Color Purple”
• “The Handmaid’s Tale”, Margaret Atwood’s excellent portrayal of the subjugation of women in a totalitarian theocracy
• “To Kill a Mockingbird”, on my list of three indispensable books, the story of a white southern lawyer defending an unjustly accused black man

...along with many, many others, “Beloved”, “Flowers for Algernon”, “Brave New World”, “James and the Giant Peach”, “Lord of the Flies”. And, yes, “Heather Has Two Mommies”, of course.

How sad it is that the beliefs and morality of some are teetering on such a brink that they’re threatened by books that challenge them... so threatened that they seek to hide those books and prevent anyone from reading them.

I almost have pity for them, but that I find the concept so vile.

[Hat tip to Les, at Stupid Evil Bastard.]

Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act of 2008 (S.3325)

Yesterday, I sent the following to my Senators, Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton, about the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act of 2008, currently up before the Senate as S.3325:

Senator,

I’m writing about pending legislation, S.3325, “To enhance remedies for violations of intellectual property laws, and for other purposes.”

It’s section 506a with which I take exception:

“the Attorney General may commence a civil action”: The Department of Justice should not be in the business of suing in civil court on behalf of copyright owners. It’s the copyright owner alone who should be responsible for that, as is currently specified.

Allowing the Department of Justice to file civil copyright-infringement suits does not provide protection for the small copyright owners (on whose behalf the DoJ will not likely be working), and opens the door to influence by large industry, which can press the executive branch to do its job for it — a job that it has already proven that it can do on its own.

“Imposition of a civil penalty under this section does not preclude any other criminal [...] remedy”: This amounts to a form of double jeopardy, wherein the Attorney General pursues a civil action and then takes criminal action as well. This is all the more reason that the AG should stick to the criminal side, and it should be left to the copyright owners to bring civil suit.

This bill is supported by some of the “good guys”; it was introduced by Democratic Senators Patrick Leahy (VT), Evan Bayh (IN), and Dianne Feinstein (CA), as well as Republicans Spector (PA), Voinovich (OH), and Cornyn (TX), from whom I’d expect to see this sort of thing, and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Ben Cardin (D-MD), and Orrin Hatch (R-UT) have signed on as sponsors.

The rest of the bill, which increases penalties and the like, is fine, but the part that allows the Justice Department to get involved in civil suits on behalf of the RIAA and its kin is misguided.

Senator Clinton, on DHS and civil liberties

While we’re talking about Hillary Clinton (well, we were yesterday):

I wrote my senators about the TSA’s policy on laptop searches, in the aftermath of the senate hearings. The other day, I received her (canned, of course) response. Here it is:

Dear Mr. Leiba:

Thank you for taking the time to write to me about your concerns regarding the protection of civil liberties.

As part of the war on terror, I supported our efforts to remove the Taliban and Al-Qaeda from Afghanistan. I also voted for the legislation that created the Department of Homeland Security because this legislation was designed to improve coordination among various federal agencies charged with security responsibilities and to create a stronger and safer America.

At the same time, however, I recognize the importance of being ever vigilant in protecting the civil liberties of all Americans. It is our civil liberties that help to make America the great country that it is. I am committed to doing all I can to protect the civil liberties of all our nation’s citizens while also fighting terrorism. We can, and must, do both. Although finding the proper balance is not easy, I am committed to doing all I can to pursue that goal and will weigh individual proposals carefully. Hearing from you reinforces this commitment.

Please check my website http://clinton.senate.gov for regular updates on this and other issues being debated before the United States Senate. Thank you again for sharing your concerns with me.

Sincerely,

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton

In other words: “We have to protect ourselves, and we have to maintain civil liberties, and we can’t always do both at the same time. And which side I come down on for this particular issue is not something I’m going to talk about here. Thank you for sharing.”

Actually, it seems that this is just her standard “civil liberties vs DHS” response, and isn’t directly related to the laptop-search issue.

On the other hand, Senator Schumer’s office hasn’t responded at all (other than to acknowledge receipt). But that’s consistent; I don’t recall ever getting a detailed response from Senator Schumer.

Some wonderful antismoking news!

It seems that Bill Gates is adding $125 million to $350 million from Michael Bloomberg, the $500 million to go to worldwide antismoking campaigns over the next four or five years:

The $500 million would be spent on a multipronged campaign — nicknamed Mpower — that Mr. Bloomberg and Dr. Margaret Chan, director of the health organization, outlined in February. It coordinates efforts by the Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use, the health organization, the World Lung Foundation, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Foundation and the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

The campaign will urge governments to sharply raise tobacco taxes, outlaw smoking in public places, outlaw advertising to children and free giveaways of cigarettes, start antismoking advertising campaigns and offer their citizens nicotine patches or other help quitting. Third world health officials, consumer groups, journalists, tax officers and others will be brought to the United States for workshops on topics like lobbying, public service advertising, catching cigarette smugglers and running telephone hot lines for smokers wanting to quit. A list of grants is at tobaccocontrolgrants.org.

The campaign will concentrate on five countries where most of the world’s smokers live: China, India, Indonesia, Russia and Bangladesh.

I barely need to say it: this is fantastic news. The tobacco companies, faced with strong antismoking campaigns stateside, along with a number of lawsuits, settlements, and regulations, have long been targeting folks in other countries with their... um... product. Not that there hasn’t been a propensity for smoking in some of those places anyway, of course, but targeted marketing has made it worse, especially among women.

This will go a good way toward counteracting that. And it will include funding for helping people quit. That, coupled with plenty of pressure for cultural change — making it less normal, natural, and desirable to smoke — should really make a difference.

Thank you, Messrs Bloomberg and Gates, for putting your money into such an important effort.

Put your money where your principles are

I have some political donation money to spend.

Let’s see:

1. Barack Obama, whom I supported in the primary election, voted for the Presidential Spying Bill, in the end. One might argue that it was going to pass anyway, and he was just avoiding political trouble with a vote that didn’t matter anyway. But it did matter: one stands on one’s principles, or one falls.
2. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have, since the bill was signed into law, filed suit to challenge it.

   The ACLU contends those blanket powers to grab international communications of Americans without specific court orders violate the Fourth Amendment and would stymie journalists who often speak to confidential sources outside the country.

   That’s standing on principles — the principles this country was founded on.

So....

Where do you think my donation money will go now? To Senator Obama? Or to the ACLU and the EFF?

Hmm....

John Hall responds about impeachment

When Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) made his latest proposal of articles of impeachment against King George, I wrote my congressman, John Hall (D-NY). Representative Hall’s office responded fairly quickly (within a day or two), with a detailed reply. It’s canned, to be sure — a staffer surely scanned my message, said, “Ah, pro-impeachment,” and, with a couple of mouse clicks, sent me their standard pro-impeachment response.

Still, I’m pleased to have gotten a response, and I’m pleased that they have taken the trouble to have a detailed response ready to send. I might have gotten a content-free “Thank you for participating in the democratic process,” message, which I’ve received from members of congress in the past. (And, while I also sent a message to Nancy Pelosi’s Speaker-of-the-House mailbox, I’ve seen no reply from her office at all.)

Here is Representative Hall’s reply:

June 13, 2008

Dear Mr. Leiba,

Thank you for contacting me regarding your desire to see impeachment charges brought against Members of the Bush Administration. I appreciate hearing your thoughts on this important Constitutional issue.

The Bush-Cheney Administration has led our country in the wrong direction and it will take years for us to recover from the damage it has done to our country and to our reputation around the world. The list of its transgressions and mistakes is a long one. The Bush-Cheney Administration took us into a devastating war in Iraq based on misleading statements and false information, has undermined the criminal justice system, weakened Constitutional protections for U.S. citizens, and created staggering federal deficits with its misplaced priorities and reckless federal spending. It has condoned the use of torture and illegal wiretapping, and attacked the Constitutional separation of powers.

Congress has a responsibility to hold the Bush-Cheney Administration accountable and to investigate the Administration’s abuses of power and their root sources. We must thoroughly look into the process leading up to the invasion of Iraq and the way in which the American people and the Congress were misled.

To these ends, I have co-sponsored the following legislation since I came to the House of Representatives in January 2007:

—H. Res. 417 to express no confidence in former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

—H. Res. 530 to censure President Bush for his role in revealing the identity of a covert CIA employee and for commuting the sentence of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby.

—H. Res. 625 to censure President Bush and Vice President Cheney for misleading the American people about the basis for war in Iraq.

—H. Res. 626 to censure President Bush and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for ignoring federal statute, the Constitution, and undermining the separation of powers.

—H. Res. 689 to call on the President to urge full cooperation from former political appointees in ongoing Congressional investigations.

—H.R. 3045 to void any signing statements by the President.

—I strongly support Chairman Conyers’ effort to hold former Administration officials in contempt for refusing to testify in ongoing Congressional hearings.

I vehemently opposed the legislation, S. 1927, passed by both chambers of Congress in August to expand the government’s ability to listen in on foreign conversations, without approval of the special court established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). However, the House has recently passed H.R. 3773 to fix the mistakes in S. 1927-including greater court oversight of wiretapping and improved protections for the rights of Americans.

I believe that I was elected in 2006 by voters who urgently want change in Washington, and an end to the disastrous Bush-Cheney policies. Clearly much remains to be done, however in the past year the House has passed important legislation that includes: A fiscal 2008 budget plan with new controls to ensure fiscal responsibility; homeland security measures proposed by the 9/11 Commission, such as broader screening of cargo bound for the United States, more support for cities at high risk of attack, and improved communications systems for emergency workers so they can better coordinate during an attack or natural disaster; meaningful ethics and lobbying reforms; a far-reaching energy package designed to wean America off its dependence on oil; improvements to child health insurance coverage for low-income families; the first minimum wage increase in a decade; a measure allowing broader stem cell research; and legislation to help students handle soaring college costs and to crack down on misconduct in the student loan industry. I will continue to work as long and hard as it takes to see all of these measures become law despite opposition from the White House.

I understand why many people believe that impeachment of Vice President Cheney or President Bush would be justified, but I do not believe that our country should be put through an impeachment proceeding at this time. Further, it is apparent that no article of impeachment would result in a conviction in the Senate. The process would be extremely disruptive to efforts to pass substantive legislation to block further abuses by the Bush-Cheney Administration and efforts to pass legislation to help solve problems for American families.

On Nov. 6, 2007, I voted with a majority of the House to send H. Res. 799-a resolution outlining articles of impeachment against Vice President Cheney, to the Judiciary Committee to consider. Although I share many Americans’ deep frustration with the actions of the Bush Administration, taking this resolution directly to the House floor bypassed the Judiciary Committee and would have subverted procedures for introducing impeachment findings. I believe this would have created a dangerous precedent for future Congresses. In addition, the resolution itself cited actions which, while outrageous, do not meet the Constitutional standard for impeachment of “treason, high crimes or misdemeanors.”

A number of House Committees including Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform have launched continuing investigations and oversight hearings into the activities of the Bush-Cheney Administration and dramatically increased accountability, which was completely lacking in the previous Republican-led Congress. As these investigations proceed, Congress must take strong action to address illegal conduct.

Again, thank you for contacting me. If I can be of any further assistance in the future please do not hesitate to let me know.

Sincerely,John HallMember of Congress

OK, he spends most of the letter telling what he’s done in the area of reining the administration in. The two key paragraphs, though, are the ones near the end — the one beginning with “I understand why many people believe that impeachment of Vice President Cheney or President Bush would be justified,” and the one after that.

In those paragraphs, Representative Hall makes these significant points:

1. We should not put the country through an impeachment proceeding.
2. It’ll never get through the Senate anyway.
3. It would get in the way of other things that we’re working on to stop the abuses of power.
4. Representative Kucinich didn’t follow the right process. That leaves us open to impeachment abuse in the future.
5. Some of the articles described things that were “outrageous”, but not outrageous enough.

Most of those are red herrings — it’s never a good time to put the country through it, but when it’s needed, it’s needed; even if it fails in the Senate, it will have made the statement that has to be made about accountability and acceptance of abuse of power; the proper process was blocked by the Democratic leadership, and it’s neither unprecedented nor improper for him to take it to the floor; even if not all of the articles are outrageous enough on their own, enough are, and the whole thing is in the aggregate.

But there’s one argument there, number 3, that I put in bold, that has a new spin to me — that is worth thinking about.

Yes, I’ve heard the argument before that impeachment would be a distraction from real work; that’s not what’s new. What’s new is the claim that Congress is doing stuff to address and redress the abuses of power — stuff that will actually succeed, more than any impeachment trial would — and that impeachment proceedings will derail those efforts.

I have to think about that, and look at what it is they’re doing. I’m not yet convinced. But Congressman Hall has given me something new to think about.

For a better world?

Amid protests that are arguably riots, the Olympic athletes from France are making a much calmer, quieter statement: they’re wearing badges that say, “Pour un monde meilleur” — for a better world. And they’re taking flak for that from the International Olympic Committee:

The International Olympic Committee may review whether French athletes broke rules prohibiting political protests at Olympic sites after several members of the national team wore badges with the words “for a better world” at the torch relay in Paris on Monday.

[...]

Rule 51 of the Olympic Charter prohibits athletes from engaging in political demonstrations at Olympic events or sites, although the I.O.C. has said athletes will be free to express their opinions if they are responding to questions from reporters.

“For a better world,” is a political demonstration? Don’t be ridiculous, IOC; to the contrary, it’s the very essence of the Olympic Games. The IOC made a colossal blunder in its attempt to be apolitical, by rewarding the government of China with the opportunity to host the Olympics (not the people of China, which would be laudable; it’s the government that really benefits here). They should not make another blunder by censuring participants for saying that they do this for the dream of a better world.

I also find it ironic that it’s OK to display brand names of sports equipment prominently, but not to carry low-key slogans of peace.