I know Andrew Sullivan isn’t the best source to go to for HRC criticism, but he poses an excellent question – where was the HRC on Prop 8?
Category: Politics Page 29 of 73
Looks like the Senate wanted to get out in front of Obama and be the first to disappoint us. Senate Democrats are rewarding Joe Lieberman for questioning the President-Elect’s most basic intentions, and keeping Lieberman in a chairmanship for which he has demonstrated little interest in actually using for the public good. Great job, guys.
Update: I think Jane Hamsher puts it well:
I hope this puts to rest the notion that this is all some master stroke of kumbayah, of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer.
This is about telling you that you mean nothing. Â That democracy is a nice word, but it should never threaten the entitlement of the most exclusive club in the world.
No matter what Joe Lieberman does, the people who are protecting him hate you much more than they hate him.
TPM highlights an op-ed piece at Defense News, which warns against of a number of bad ideas currently being put into action, not the least of which is:
The uniformed services are trying to lock in the next administration by creating a political cost for holding the line on defense spending. Conservative groups are hoping to ramp up defense spending as a tool to limit options for a Democratic Congress and president to pass new, and potentially costly, social programs, including health care reform.
[ . . . ]
Promoting overspending on defense in order to forestall popular social spending is undemocratic – it creates a false tension between national security and other public policy goals.
The informal alliance between the services and conservative think tanks threatens to further politicize the military. The abuse of national security arguments to win political arguments is both morally suspect and threatens the security of the nation by delinking strategic assessment from public policy.
Dangerous games.
The Washington Post has a press release story about the launch of something called the Future of Privacy Forum:
A group of privacy scholars, lawyers and corporate officials are launching an advocacy group today designed to help shape standards around how companies collect, store and use consumer data for business and advertising.
Well, okay. That’s certainly something that I’d like to see get more attention. But what does this group bring to the discussion that the Center for Democracy & Technology, EPIC, and the EFF don’t already? Oh, here’s the answer:
The group, the Future of Privacy Forum, will be led by Jules Polonetsky, who until this month was in charge of AOL‘s privacy policy, and Chris Wolf, a privacy lawyer for law firm Proskauer Rose [ed. note – and also one of AT&T’s law firms] . They say the organization, which is sponsored by AT&T, aims to develop ways to give consumers more control over how personal information is used for behavioral-targeted advertising.
Because AT&T cares about your privacy.  Also from the press release story:
Mike Zaneis, vice president for public policy for the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which represents online publishers such as Google and Yahoo as well as advertisers such as Verizon, said online privacy issues have long been debated and that “having another voice in this area could help.”
Yup. I think it’s probably a safe bet that we can look forward to this group muddying the waters of most any privacy policy discussion in the near future. That isn’t to say this is an entirely useless voice – it’s expected to generally argue for “opt-in” tracking – but anything they issue should be viewed with the question of how it will benefit AT&T.
Seeing things like this pushback on the BS that is asset forfeiture does my heart good. It’s just a little diary on dKos, to be sure, but it demonstrates an awareness by very partisan Dems that not everything the Democratic Party has backed is good. These next four to eight years should not only be about correcting Republican mistakes, but also Democratic ones. Whether the elected Democrats like it or not.
Reason Magazine has an interesting look at Tor Books, one of the most successful publishers of science fiction in the past 25 years (I have shelves and shelves full of nothing but Tor and Baen books). The author, naturally, takes a particular interest in how Tor’s books have furthered an openness toward the libertarian political philosophy. The piece makes a number of observations that go well beyond that, though:
Patrick Nielsen Hayden, the goateed and bespectacled Tor eminence who edited two of the house’s Prometheus finalists this year, draws a direct line between youthfulness and openness to libertarian ideas. “Young people read fiction to figure out how the world works,†he says, “and science fiction is an extremely effective, quick way of testing your views of how the world works.†Paraphrasing the late novelist and critic Thomas Disch, Hayden says, “Enormous quantities of science fiction and fantasy are about power, and who needs power fantasies more than teenagers, people who have a little bit of power for the first time in their lives and need to think about how power works?â€
Oh, how true that is.
Happy 60th Birthday, Chuck. Now get a job and move out of your parents’ house(s), you twit.
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Speaking of twits and Kings, the King kids are as classy as ever, looking for a piece of the action on t-shirts featuring pictures of Obama and King.
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How’d you like to be in the position of having to buy a new country? The Maldives, who expect their homeland to be submerged by rising sea levels (thanks, Global Warming!) are testing the market.
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So, what did eight years of a Bush Administration – which is all about promoting democracy (with a little dash of By Any Means Necessary, remember) – do for Burma, which suffers from one of the most repressive regimes on the planet? Nothing.
Dear Hillary and Al-
I know I am probably just getting suckered by the usual kids in DC, but just in case there is any truth to the rumours that either/both of you may join the Obama Administration – DON’T! I’m not offering this as some snarky reverse psychology gambit. But as a genuine and honest hope for each of you. Hillary, you were in office before Obama, and you’ll be there after he’s gone. We need you for the long haul. Stay in the Senate. Give Harry Reid a reason to look over his shoulder. Al. Don’t dick around with DC. You’re bigger than that, now. Why throw what you’ve got away for the pettiness of this town? Think big.
Thank you,
MB
Looks like we’ve got an intra-neighborhood race going on for the House of Delegates 47th district seat. The challenger – Miles Grant – is facing a pretty steep climb, though. Just about everyone who’s ever voted in Arlington over the past 20 years knows the incumbent – Al Eisenberg. They also likely have a generally positive – thought not particularly strong – view of Eisenberg. Combine that with no recent Eisenberg missteps or positions out of sync with Arlington, and I think Grant will find himself with a lot of work ahead of him.
Suggestion for the Grant campaign and its supporters: setting the tone like this is generally not how you want to do it.
Also: Miles Grant’s environmentally focused blog, TheGreenMiles.net.