Joe Conason does a number on Coulter’s defense of McCarthyism. (It requires a subscription to Salon.)

That we are even discussing why McCarthyism was a bad thing is pretty depressing.

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Gill on Dean

Jock Gill – who is definitely not non-partisan on this topic – writes well about why the Dean campaign is different. (I’ve lightly edited it.)

1] READ THE COMMENTS from the [Dean] blog visitors! This is the best way to understand that the campaign represents a new politics: Connected, Open and Participatory. We are now all becoming PRODUCERS, not merely passive consumers.

2] Dean’s campaign shows the smart mobs, hive minds, have more benefits, power, energy, vitality and adapability than the single mind of any political advisor — Karl Rove comes to mind.

3] As evidenced by the front page story in the NY Times this AM, most folks simply do NOT GET IT! The Dean campaign is the announcement that we are at The End of Broadcast Politics with its base of passive consumers. The NY Times item is all from the point of view of broadcast politics: its about counting money. No! It’s about counting donors. It’s about energized hope, passion, citizens from around the the country who believe in America…<\P>

The Dean campaign is being real smart about the Net and for the right reasons, I believe: they’re viewing the Internet not as a cheap way to reach the masses but as a way to let us talk together. And self-organize. Plus, I love the real voices of the staffers who write the campaign blog.

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So three justices of the United States Supreme Court think that it’s ok for the government to tell us what type of consensual sex we can have with whom.

Scary.

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Matt Prescott says that the Mines Advisory Group reports dozens of children are being killed every day by landmines and unexploded bombs in Iraq. Landmine Action has a petition here.

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From Miles at TinyApps.org:

“He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.”

Thomas Jefferson, in Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 6, H.A. Washington, Ed.,1854, pp. 180-181.

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President Bush, trying again to explain the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, said on Saturday that suspected arms sites had been looted in the waning days of Saddam Hussein’s rule. — Reuters

So, our invasion of Iraq resulted in the uncontrolled distribution of the weapons of mass destruction that we invaded to make ourselves safer from? Oh joy. I continue to feel just safer and safer because of this war.

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After having done absolutely no research beyond reading the papers that I read and then forgetting what they said, it seems to me that the US media in general is neglecting to do investigative reporting of what has to be the biggest story about the current administration: Did Bush lie to us in order to get a war that he wanted?

I get the sense that if the Congress drops the issue, so will the journalists. The media are covering not the issue but the Democratic pursuit of the issue. Investigative journalism, in contrast, would be out trying to track down information on its own.

Is my fact-deprived perception correct? If so, why aren’t there journalists out there digging into this story the way a dog digs into a bowl of fresh Pulitzer Prizes?

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Our local AMC movie theater runs a clip before each movie reminding us that Silence is Golden. Of course, they also slap a “registered trademark” sign on the phrase thusly:

Silence Is Golden®

Oh sure. And I wrote the lyrics to the taunt “Nah nah nah nah nah nah”®. (Mary of Peter, Paul and Mary wrote the music).

Gimme a freakin’ break!

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Sure, Enron’s Ken Lay has escaped indictment for allowing his company to steal billions from its investors and turn its employees into paupers, but after a year of investigations we did manage to nab the pretty lady for selling 4,000 shares on a tip.

Totally irrelevant fact #1: Enron and its executives were the largest single contributors to W’s gubernatorial campaign, chipping in $312,500.

Totally irrelevant fact #2: “Enron was Mr. Bush’s biggest political patron as he headed into the 2000 presidential election.” And after the election, “Enron officials contributed $10,500 to his Florida recount committee, and when the recount was ended, they donated $300,000 for the inaugural celebrations”

Totally irrelevant fact #3: Bush has admitted lying about his relationship to Enron and Ken Lay: “White House officials had more extensive contacts with Enron executives in 2001 than previously disclosed, according to a document released by the Bush administration today in response to a request for information from a Senate committee.”

The Bush Policy initiated so successfully in the “War on Terrorism” has been extended to domestic policy: Villify and Distract.

Sigh.

Here’s a page that does nothing but list articles about corporate scandals from January 2002 on.

Chip points us to a Democratic Flash on how Bush’s tax cuts work out for the rest of us.

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I went to the local monthly get-together for supporters of Howard Dean last night. These real-world meetings are arranged virtually through MeetUp.com. The meetings all take place on the same day in cities across the country, so you feel some sense of solidarity with the other 31,000 Deanies who have signed up with MeetUp.

The event packed the downtown bar where it was held. Of course, any event is packed so long as the room is small enough. In this case, however, it looked like there were 100-200 people there, continuing the event’s growth. Plus, there are now Dean MeetUps taking place in 5-6 cities in Massachusetts.

The brief presentations by the local organizers stressed (boiled down and rephrased): 1. Bush sucks. 2. Diversity rocks. 3. The Internet makes a difference. At least, that’s what I heard.

If Dean gets some traction – things are looking up in New Hampshire and Iowa – then being packed into a room of supporters in June ’03 will be an “I was there when it started” sort of memory (although, of course, it started way before then in much smaller rooms). If his campaign founders, well, it still felt good to be in a real world room with people willing to work for change.

The strength of a group is determined by the entanglement of its links. There’s nothing like the real world for tangling them links quickly and ambiguously.

It also reminded me why I don’t hang out in bars.

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