Blacknell.net

Bring Back the Car Tax and/or Raise the Income Tax!

Hey, don’t look at me - Vivian’s the one who proposed it.

Creigh Deeds’ Mailing Lists - Where Are They Coming From?

I received an email today from the Deeds campaign (the Mary Margaret Whipple endorsement).  Actually, I received two.  Getting multiple copies of the same message from politicians is nothing new for me, but since I’ve never signed up for any Deeds info (or contributed to him), I was curious to see what address they’d used.  Well, it seems they’ve gotten ahold of a unique email address I’ve only used once in my life - on a contribution to the Commonwealth Coalition (a now - as best I can tell - defunct organization that tried to fight the anti-gay marriage amendment in Virginia two years ago).

Now, as a matter of principle and email management, every time I ever give an email address to anyone, I opt-out of any sharing.  So I’m sure I did that with the Commonwealth Coalition.  Further, the Commonwealth Coalition - by the nature of its advocacy issues - would surely have had some appreciation of the confidential nature of its contributor lists.   And yet here we are, with Creigh Deeds magically ending up with that email address (those who are familiar with Deeds’ “support” of the Commonwealth Coalition’s position will enjoy the irony, here).   But what really makes me wonder, here, is the fact that this is the *second* time a unique email address specific to an organization with a similar agenda has been used by the Deeds campaign.  When contacted about this, the director of that second organization assured me that they do not ever share email lists.

So.  Where’s Deeds getting his email lists from?

Update: Apparently this needs to be said - I’m not posting this as a personal criticism of Creigh Deeds.  I *am* posting it because I’m interested in an actual answer here.  In case anyone missed it, Virginia is a state in which discrimination has been enshrined in its constitution.  And that discrimination is against exactly the people who are likely to be active supporters of the Commonwealth Coalition (but not necessarily public supporters, for reasons I hope are obvious).   Whoever is responsible for sharing these lists appears not to get the importance of the promise of privacy (among other things).  I’d like to make sure that they do.

Update II: Representatives from all three organizations - the Commonwealth Coalition, Equality Virginia, and the Deeds campaign, have all told me that they have never shared or exchanged lists.  Which means that we’ve got a bit of a mystery going, as the information was (at some point) in the custody of someone who did share the information.  I’m looking forward to finding out who that was, and I’m sure that - given their clear understanding of the importance of the confidentiality of this information - each organization will continue to be helpful in sorting this out.

Chesterfield County Voting Complaint

Sounds like Chesterfield County (just south of Richmond, VA) screwed things up badly enough in the February 12th presidential primary to draw a complaint at the Department of Justice:

The civil-rights complaint says hundreds of Chesterfield residents were deprived of the right to vote, primarily in precincts with the largest black populations. They allege that in nine of 63 precincts, county voting officials failed to provide enough Democratic ballots and told voters to cast ballots on blank scraps of paper, which weren’t counted.

A close-up view of the problem, written not long after the primary at hand, can be found here.  Providing for elections is among the core (and most predictable) functions that government can provide.  Any time a place screws it up this badly, it’s not unreasonable to wonder if it goes beyond incompetence.

Above Arlington

Best when viewed at its original resolution.

Chap Peterson on the VA Transportation Bills

Virginia State Sen. Chap Peterson concisely summarizes the options currently facing the special session down in Richmond.  Earlier this year, I’d had some resolve to better follow and understand the transportation debate.  But then I put it away after the usual GOP clowning over it made it pointless.  If I can find that resolve again (I might have thrown it out), I’ll try and post more about the special session.

Coming to Chantilly: A “Drugstore” That Will Only Serve Some

Next time you need something important, remember to avoid this place:

When DMC Pharmacy opens this summer on Route 50 in Chantilly, [Virginia] the shelves will be stocked with allergy remedies, pain relievers, antiseptic ointments and almost everything else sold in any drugstore. But anyone who wants condoms, birth control pills or the Plan B emergency contraceptive will be turned away.

That’s because the drugstore, located in a typical shopping plaza featuring a Ruby Tuesday, a Papa John’s and a Kmart, will be a “pro-life pharmacy” — meaning, among other things, that it will eschew all contraceptives.

I wonder if the “pharmacist” will query purchasers about their sexual practices beforehand, and refuse to sell Claritin to someone that had sex the night before, but not for the primary purpose of procreation. WWMPD?

Friday Notes: Still Faster Than the Red Line Edition

I’m a pretty reliable defender of DC’s Metro system. The people that bitch about it either 1) don’t use it, 2) have never used another metro system in the US, or 3) are from NYC. Which means that its critics have no standing, by definition. But that defense got a little harder this week - a couple of near-shutdowns of the Orange line in VA this week, and apparently the Red Line is a complete clusterf(@k at this very moment. And who’s the only person in VA really trying to do something about this? Outgoing Rep. Tom Davis(R). Strange days. C’mon, Jim.

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SciFi site io9 asks William Gibson questions no one else does, and gets interesting answers as a result (imagine that):

None of us ever live in dystopia. That’s an imaginary extreme. They just live in shitty cultures. And these societies [in my books] seem dystopian to middle class white people in North America. They don’t seem dystopian if you live in Rio or anywhere in Africa. Most people in Africa would happily immigrate to the Sprawl.

I don’t think a writer can hit the dystopic key without being misanthropic. I’m actually not misanthropic. I think people are capable of wonderful things. I’m quite fond of them and enjoy their company.

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Speaking of Wonderful Things, the Directory Of pointed us to this gem yesterday:

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The New York Times is running a series on the them of American Exceptionalism, and this article on the near-absolutist take on free speech is excellent. I want to write more about that, but I thought I’d throw up the link now, lest it get lost in the ever-growing pile of drafts around here.

VA Reps. Wolf, Forbes and Goode Not Backing McCain?

This story in The Hill reports that there’s a group of 14 GOP Senators and Representatives that have refused to endorse Sen. McCain’s presidential ambitions. When I first saw the headline, I was imagining that it consisted mostly of Republican reps in otherwise Democratic districts that didn’t want to antagonize their constituency. But then I looked at the list:

Republican members who have not endorsed or publicly backed McCain include Sens. Chuck Hagel (Neb.) and Jeff Sessions (Ala.) and Reps. Jones, Peterson, John Doolittle (Calif.), Randy Forbes (Va.), Wayne Gilchrest (Md.), Virgil Goode (Va.), Tim Murphy (Pa.), Ron Paul (Texas), Ted Poe (Texas), Todd Tiahrt (Kan.), Dave Weldon (Fla.) and Frank Wolf (Va.).

The story doesn’t explain Virgil Goode’s lack of support, but I can only imagine that it has something to do with McCain not calling for the deportation of every Muslim in the country. Wonder what McCain did to Wolf and Forbes, though.

The Choice in the 8th Congressional District

Tomorrow brings us a primary to determine the Democratic and Republican nominees in the 8th Congressional District of Virginia. This seat has been held by Rep. Jim Moran (D) for 17 years, and he’s looking for another term. He’s being challenged by first-time candidate Matthew Famiglietti. We in the 8th CD are all well aware of Rep. Moran’s record, good and bad. He is a reliable voice for many of the important issues of today, though he does have a tendency to undermine this generally excellent public record with poor personal judgments from time to time (which he himself acknowledges, saying in response to a question about the usually-wide margins of his general election victories over the years that sometimes he “goes to extraordinary lengths to make these races competitive.”). Mr. Famiglietti, who is running with a message of more vigorous protection of the Constitution and a firmer stand against the Iraq War, doesn’t appear to have been able to resonate with voters in the 8th CD. While I personally welcome - and agree with - his views on these two points, anyone who hopes to successfully carry such a message in a general election must have a stronger voice. I hope and expect that Mr. Famiglietti will stay involved with these issues past Tuesday. Rep. Jim Moran gets my nod and I expect to be voting for him in November.

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On the Republican side, we have candidates Mark Ellmore and Amit Singh. As readers of Blacknell.net know, I took an (unexpected) interest in this primary back in March. After interviewing both candidates at length, following their campaigns, and meeting with them several times in the process, I had been looking forward to giving my outsider’s view of the choice this past Friday. Unfortunately for all involved, my coverage of the campaign became part of the the campaign when Ellmore sent out a mailer using Blacknell.net as a source for a charge that turned out to be false and that’s what I spent my available time dealing with, instead. I have little-to-no interest in spending any more time on it other than to say that, prior to this, I would have told you that I had no reason to question the honesty of the Ellmore campaign. Now, well . . . it’s a question of dishonesty or incompetence. And that’s a shame for both campaigns, as there are real and substantive differences on the issues over which they can compete for votes.

When I first met Mark Ellmore, he immediately struck me as someone who’s done this before - and indeed he had, having lost the nomination in 2006 to the ultimately unsuccessful Tom O’Donoghue. He seemed to have learned from that loss, and Ellmore’s campaign started laying the foundation for a second run not too long after his loss. And that looked to be a good strategy for a cruise to the nomination until Amit Singh, unhappy with the policy positions of any of the declared 8th CD candidates, decided to run earlier this year. In doing so, Singh helped create a primary that is as much about the direction that the GOP wants to go as it is about the candidates themselves. Ellmore is fully an establishment Republican, with all the good and bad (and which is which depends on your perspective) that such an appellation implies. He has clearly worked for - and received - the backing of the 8th CD’s Republican structure, and can claim a long list of endorsements. From an electoral perspective, this doesn’t mean much in a district where the last Republican success is a distant memory. However, it does go to show that Ellmore is a clear team player on the Republican side, which may be a plus in the minds of many primary voters. Further, Ellmore has an initial ease with people on the campaign trail that can leave a positive impression in the minds of the voters he meets, an important trait in a district that is generally skeptical about Republicans.

On the issues, Ellmore can check pretty much every box on the George W. Bush Era Republican Principles List. Pro-gun, anti-tax, against embryonic stem cell research, voted for anti-gay marriage amendments, and supports the war in Iraq. To his credit, he seems to be able to do this without the malice that has come to characterize Republican politics. It may be this instinct towards basic decency that has caused him some trouble in the primary, where his entirely decent proposal to give Medicare recipients more latitude - not more dollars - in the health care they receive brought on calls of “socialist!” from the kids in the GOP peanut gallery. In other areas, Ellmore’s instinct collides with the Fortress America wing of his party, resulting in compromises that open him to attacks from all sides. The best example of this is his support for a building a fence - but not a wall - along the US border with Mexico. This, apparently, amounts to apostasy in some quarters of the Republican party (quarters where primary voters reside, I suspect), and opened him up to mockery. The American political conversation has never really had a place for nuance. Despite this, Ellmore has managed to garner significant support amongst local party officials, and can thus be said to represent the establishment consensus.

Amit Singh, on the other hand, is not an establishment Republican. While he identifies as a lifelong Republican (hard to be anything else, I think, when you’re raised in Colonial Heights, Virginia), he hasn’t been active in party politics for very long. Like many other Republicans that I’ve talked to in the past couple of years, Singh has become dissatisfied with his party’s departure from what he sees as core Republican values - limited government, respect for the Constitution, and fiscal conservatism. Further, like most of the country, he has also come to believe that it’s well past time for the United States to get out of Iraq. Taking these positions in private conversation with fellow Republicans is one thing - to run on them is quite another. While it is true that national Republicans like Chuck Hagel and Ron Paul have made it not entirely unheard of for a Republican to oppose the continued American occupation of Iraq, it is still a position that invites swift and strong attacks from fellow Republicans (and unusually personal attacks, at that). That Singh has not only stood by - but vigorously defended - this position is admirable. If the Hear No Withdrawal, See No Withdrawal, Speak No Withdrawal wing of the Republican Party keeps control (and they seem to be on track for that, in nominating McCain), the gap between the American public and Republican Party will widen significantly.

Republicans have a serious problem on their hands, and it’s one of their own creation. While mouthing the long time conservative claim of being for limited government, respecting the Constitution, and hewing to fiscal conservatism, the modern Republican party - when in control of all the levers of government - seems to have been on a special mission to expand government into our personal lives, completely disregard the Constitution, and run up public debt with an extraordinary spending spree. While it took some time for many Americans to see this, the plainness of it is approaching a point where even the most blinkered and partisan among the party faithful are coming to acknowledge that something is seriously wrong. However, that acknowledgment is almost always still done in private, and has thus far had little impact in changing the direction of the Republican party. Unlike most Republicans, Singh has taken his own dissatisfaction public. He has campaigned on a platform based almost exclusively on the principles of limited government and fiscal conservatism, even when they’ve resulted in positions that don’t fit the usual GOP candidate checklist. He will soon find out whether enough of his fellow Republicans are willing to take a public step with him, and make him the nominee for the 8th Congressional District.

While I’m an unabashed Democrat - so you can take this recommendation for what you think it’s worth - I’m also a Democrat who believes that it’s better for everyone when the parties need to worry about strong and principled competition from each other. If 8th CD Republicans would like to see their party become one that can do that, they’d do well to start with Amit Singh.

Friday Notes: Please No More Edition

I’d like to start out this Friday Note with a special go to hell shoutout to whichever sad soul on the planet it was that decided to use spoofed blacknell.net return addresses for what must have been an *enormous* batch of spam.  Starting late Sunday night, I’ve been getting thousands upon thousands of bounce/spam filter messages, through which I have to sift to find my own mail.  I’ve found most of it.  I think.  But anyway - die in a fire, please.  And if anyone reading this is wondering why I ignored your email this week, this is probably why.

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Steve Thurston’s most excellent hyperlocal blog The BuckinghamHeraldTrib is going on hiatus for the summer.  He’s been turning out a quality site for a while now, and I can’t imagine how much time that must have been taking.  A big loss to the rest of us, but we all need breaks sometime.  Thanks, Steve, and I look forward to seeing it pick back up in the fall.  In the meantime, if any of you have ever been tempted to keep a blog focused on your own community, go over and check out what Steve’s done.

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Bruce Schneier, as usual, nails it.  This time it’s about “The War on Photography“:

Since 9/11, there has been an increasing war on photography. Photographers have been harrassed, questioned, detained, arrested or worse, and declared to be unwelcome. We’ve been repeatedly told to watch out for photographers, especially suspicious ones. Clearly any terrorist is going to first photograph his target, so vigilance is required.

Except that it’s nonsense. The 9/11 terrorists didn’t photograph anything. Nor did the London transport bombers, the Madrid subway bombers, or the liquid bombers arrested in 2006. Timothy McVeigh didn’t photograph the Oklahoma City Federal Building. The Unabomber didn’t photograph anything; neither did shoe-bomber Richard Reid. Photographs aren’t being found amongst the papers of Palestinian suicide bombers. The IRA wasn’t known for its photography. Even those manufactured terrorist plots that the US government likes to talk about — the Ft. Dix terrorists, the JFK airport bombers, the Miami 7, the Lackawanna 6 — no photography.

Yep.

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The 1979 published Disco Handbook is now free for all to partake in its wisdom.  From the glossary:

Camp.  An ever-changing measure of hipness. Something so bad it’s funny is camp, but something that tries to hard to be funny and fails, is not.  Going to camp is not camp, but reliving your camp experiences can be.  Camping, as an activity, isn’t camp at all.

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And while we’re talking about amusing, newish cooking blog Veggin‘ explains the vegans’ reaction to the news that Canadian KFC’s will soon be offering a vegan option on its menu.

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Finally, good luck to Gwadzilla and all the other DC locals heading out to race at Big Bear this weekend.  Wish I could be there.