In 2010, Michele Bachmann has turned into a conservative cultural icon.  We knew Michele in Minnesota when she was quixotically introducing her Marriage Amendment in the Senate, before she was elected to Congress in 2006 to replace Mark Kennedy. Mark, please come back! All is forgiven.

In these four short years, her stock has risen among the conservatives.  Perhaps I should refer to them as the nouveau conservateurs, those unwashed who think that conservatism is all about “God, guns, and lower taxes.”  The representative has been touted as a possible vice presidential candidate. She is a fundraising force for “Tea Party Conservatives.”

She is an embarrassment to most Minnesotans.  I say “most” Minnesotans, because she does have a large following even here.  The rest of us scratch our heads in wonder at how so many people take her seriously.  We also find it amusing to be accused of sexism when we make fun of her, especially since these accusations made by people who hate feminists.

There is much to mock in Michele Bachmann.  I find it hard to listen to her without laughing at her weird claims and conspiracies, but I also find myself agape at the force with which her supporters defend her.  With that, we at Quiche Moraine have decide to revive yet again, a collection of articles and blog posts noting the weird and wonderful world of the representative from Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District.

To get you warmed up and in the mood, Buzzfeed gives us the top ten craziest Michele Bachmann quotes Photoshopped for your viewing pleasure.

Michele has a fan. He’s an articulate fan, and we know this because he makes up clever 7th-gradish nicknames for people.  I am glad that this person is not a fan of Quiche Moraine:

Okay, so here she is at the historic confrontation. She is a member of the House Financial Services Committee. She is interrogating international swindlers Little Timmy Geithner, pretend Secretary of the Treasury and “Helicopter” Ben Bernanke, chairman of the non-Federal non-Reserve System. This I know you will find hard to believe, but she speaks without a teleprompter. Don’t believe me? See for yourself on You Tube.

She is a tax attorney, but, as she cut these two smirking mountebanks into uniform chunks of smoking stench, I could not help but think of a surgeon. She kept asking them to cite the constitutional authority for each of their actions. Of course they couldn’t do so. They stumbled. Ben refused to say where the money had gone. The farce ended when her time expired and the committee chairman would not allow Little Timmy to say how much money the Treasury would get back from the anonymous banks it had bailed.

I don’t honestly know what to make of Arlen, but I am happy he is not a fan of Quiche Moraine.

The American Spectator takes aim at Bachmann for either being crazy or loving the limelight (they aren’t sure which is the priority). They point out that she has not, in two terms, passed any meaningful legislation in Congress.

Still, Bachman’s headline-grabbing stunts, time spent on talk radio and cable, and even labels from staff and peers would be worth it if she could put her money where her mouth gabbed. This is her second term as a U.S. Congresswoman. She has yet to sponsor and pass any effective legislation at all, let alone any related to the issues that put her in the spotlight — though in her defense she’s outnumbered, and to her credit, she has co-sponsored some good bills.

She’s one of Hannity’s favorite conservatives and she knows how to draw a crowd, but a November Rasmussen poll showed Bachmann’s district may not love her as much as everyone else does. Fifty-one percent of likely voters said they somewhat approve of Bachmann’s job performance and 45% disapprove. That could be more due to the fact that the district has been trending left in recent years, as local Democrats have picked up several state seats, rather than Bachmann’s vocal conservatism.

Bachmann has introduced us to a new way of looking at economics, with the claim that the “private” economy is in the hands of the government. All of that has happened, of course, since Obama took office 14 months ago. And the sista’s are doing it for themselves:

Bachmann’s speech, which included her typical rhetoric about government takeovers of the “private economy” that was previously “100% private,” focused on what she said was President Obama’s weakness on national security weakness. But, she also made gender a theme. “I think I heard somebody say ‘repeal,’” Bachmann said, in reference to the health care bill. “You better believe it, baby. Repeal is what this girl is gonna be all about after November.”

This event was not in Bachmann’s district, but was held at the Minneapolis Convention Center in district of Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison.

In introducing Palin, Bachmann spoke of the admiration they all felt for Palin’s fortitude and determination, and her appeal: “Part of it is that she is so much a one of us. And as absolutely drop-dead gorgeous as this woman is on the outside, I am here to testify she is 20 times more beautiful on the inside.”

In February, she sent out a fundraising letter claiming that Obama is out to “annihilate conservativism:”

Just consider Obama’s ties to the radical group ACORN.

For years Obama worked with, advised, and even trained ACORN and its volunteers in community agitation.

So close is Obama to ACORN that his presidential campaign relied on it for crucial get-out-the-vote drives to win.

But ACORN is a corrupt group, rotten to the core. It’s been investigated for voter fraud in 14 states and its workers have been caught on tape in 5 separate cities willing to help set up brothels for underage illegal alien child prostitutes.

Yet, Obama has used his enormous power as president to funnel millions of dollars into ACORN’s coffers to strengthen this radical group and his base.

Because Obama sees ACORN as his ideological “shock troops” leading his “revolution.”

Obama wants to use ACORN to radicalize America because he isn’t interested merely in defeating conservatives…

…HE WANTS TO ANNIHILATE US!

That’s the purpose behind ObamaCare, too.

The frightening thing is that she has been raising money, a lot of money, and the congressional race in the 2010 elections for the 6th district in Minnesota is going to be expensive. Michele Bachmann’s campaign has reported that she has $1.5 million in donations to her credit in this election cycle. Her chief opponent in the race is Tarryl Clark who has raised $1.1 million. Much of the money for both candidates is coming from outside of the district, owing to the fact that Bachmann has been a nationally-known crazy since 2008 when she invited the press to look into “anti-Americans in Congress” and the “anti-Americans” that are Obama’s friends.

The next day I was campaigning for her opponent, Elwyn Tinklenberg. Most of the people I talked to were extremely embarrassed that their representative had made such a fool of herself, but I knocked at the door of someone who had gotten on to a Democratic list, somehow. She came to the door and saw that I was campaigning against Bachmann and said she was voting for her Congresswoman. I was incredulous and asked her, “Even after what she said on TV last night.” The woman looked me in the eye and told me, “Yes.” Then she shut her door on me.

So, we can all think that only crazy and stupid people will vote for Michele Bachmann this year. If that’s the case, then there are a lot of them in her district. Or we can support the Democratic organizations in the 6th District and the candidate who is running against her in the general election. Quiche Moraine will give you periodic updates on the reasons to help defeat her and get some semblance of sanity back in Minnesota’s 6th District.

Putting aside the quaint Garrison Keillor style humor, it is true that Minneapolis is a little scary. It is full of anarchists, of people with deep thoughts, scary federal penitentiarians, scary sushi eaters, and…and…bicycle riders!!11!!

So, I suppose it is quite reasonable that the man chosen by the Republicans to run against Fifth District Congressman Keith Ellison is a firm believer that we are presently in the End Times and that the Antichrist is almost here.

Which makes sense, really. If you are a Republican, Keith Ellison is the Antichrist. He’s black. He’s a Muslim. He’s a Democrat. And…he’s a liberul!!!

So, what’s the story? Associate Pastor Joel Demos will run against the highly popular Congressperson who represents Minneapolis and surrounding territories. And here’s what the Pastor has to say:

“I believe that we are seeing the signs of the times,” he said in a January 2009 sermon at his church, Christian Life Center. “We are seeing things unfold in the world that are opening the door for the new world order which we see in end time prophecy.”

“We may in 2009 witness a new heaven,” he said. “We may witness the very last days of this world in this very year. We don’t know what 2009 will bring in our lives.”

…

“Anti-American hatred is rooted in a distaste of the people of God and because we have been a predominantly Christian nation, we are finding across this globe the spirit of the anti-Christ is on the rise,” he said. “And I believe we are quickly approaching the end of time.”

Demos also said that Satan has been hard at work in [the sleepy Minneapolis suburb of] Golden Valley.

“Folks we are having a revival. The devil might have thought that this was his territory. He might have though he had this area under wraps. He organized and he had a good thing going in Golden Valley, which is central to the western suburbs.”

…

This is going to be a tough decision. Crazy right wing Republican pastor who is pretty sure the Antichrist live in Golden Valley, or the highly regarded, hard-working and intelligent, very capable and responsive, liberal Democrat.

What would you do?

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

There is a very small space that separates the behavior of Michele Bachmann and her supporters and the medieval pheasants lampooned by Monte Python in various skits and the movie Holy Grail. The problem is that the Monte Python characters are fiction, obvious jokes, and utterly unbelievable, while the Teabagging Insurgents are real, don’t get the joke, and are…utterly unbelievable.

It will be interesting to see how the National Democratic Party and its cognate organizations will approach Michele Bachmann as the next election approaches. There is a great risk in going after her and not succeeding in replacing her (which is a distinct possibility). But if an opportunity arises…if she stumbles and bleeds and thus allows her opponents to go in for the kill…it will be hard to resist. However, it will be easy for the Democrats to misjudge a stumble. Her famous call for an investigation of all members of Congress to see whether they have anti-American views, while being interviewed on Hardball, would be considered a stumble by most thinking Democrats or Progressives. But it was not. Well, yes, it was a bumble, as in “bumbling idiot,” but not a stumble. It was more like an accidental double play, in which she got the left to hate her vociferously and the right to love her passionately by being an unmitigated ass. If she does that again and the Dems go after her, the Dems lose. But they may not be able to resist. I know I won’t resist.

It is strange for those of us who have followed Bachmann’s career since back before she was in Congress to come to the point where she is likely to be a key figure in national-level politics. It is strange because she has obtained this position by being a moron. An unmitigated, hateful, radical, unthinking jerk. A hypocrite with no fundamental values except to oppose whatever is suggested by the nearest visible liberal political entities. In other words, the archetypal Republican.

Well, thanks for covering this, Ed. I’m sure we’ll be seeing you around quite a bit over the next couple of years!

A major factor in this was the leap in attendance from the prior years.  The presidential election was the reason that most people showed up that night.  The Democrats’ front-runners had narrowed to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama by that time, and this was the first time in many years that the straw poll at the caucuses was likely to have an influence on how many delegates each candidate would be able to take with them to the National Convention in Denver in August of 2008.

Minnesota doesn’t hold a spring presidential primary, as other states do.  Minnesota’s primary election is in the fall, usually forty-five days before the election, and so it wouldn’t make sense to decide on the ballot for president that late. In place of the presidential primaries, Minnesota uses a “straw poll” from the votes of caucus attendees, and it is not as formal as an official election.  The person who chooses to vote simply fills out a small ballot, and the results are counted and the ballots destroyed.  The results are then called in to the party headquarters, and from that vote, the number of delegates assigned for each candidate to the national convention are determined.  It’s that simple; now, go caucus! Right?

It isn’t that simple, because not many people understand what caucuses do and why Minnesotans are so lucky to have the opportunity to join them.  Caucuses are the way to get in to a party.  It is a populist process, and not all invented by Democrats.  The other parties caucus, as well.  Grace Kelly has a great guide to caucusing at MNBlue:

I found that many people need to feel comfortable to go to the precinct caucuses. So here is a quick guide based on my experience to having fun and being political effective, first time out.

The Process in Steps:

1) Key Action: Go to your caucus! Each party has a caucus, so at least for just this night, you have to pick just one party. Find out where your caucus is by entering your address and picking a party at Secretary of State website or call 651-215-1440. If you choose to go the DFL caucus, the DFL lookup will give you both location and contact people. Mark it on the calendar Feb 2, show up on 6:45 or earlier if possible.

2) If you are early enough, then go find a candidate. Key Action: ask a critical question, or present a critical fact to a candidate.

3) Check what precinct you are in and go to the appropriate room – usually a whole group of precincts meet in one building.

4) Sign in when you walk in. Vote on any paper ballot issues. In the DFL party, at the precinct you do not have to sign the back of a paper ballot. Read literature available. Find the resolution paperwork, and fill one sheet out for each resolution that you plan to propose (don’t try for more than three). Your already written resolutions can just be attached to the resolution form, like this DFL resolution form.

5) Usually the meeting will be started by a “convener”, a person who volunteered to start the meeting. Usually one of the first considerations is to consider whether the convener or another person should run the meeting. People usually approve of the original convener unless that person is known to be unfair. The person running the meeting is then called the chair. Sorry, no one gets to be the “table”.

6) Then rules and agenda is considered. In listening to rules, the important points are a) what percentage is needed for approval b) how many speakers and how long each side gets to speak c) does anything need to be in writing. Changing the rules here only takes a majority vote, a change later takes a 2/3 vote. Changes must also be consistent with party rules.

7) Elected offices and volunteer positions are filled. Raise your hand if you wish to volunteer, here is where you can have a huge impact.

Meeting pauses occasionally so candidates and elected officials can give brief speeches.

9) The chair announces the next convention, date and time and asks who would like to be a delegate. Key Action: Raise your hand and sign the sheet as it comes around. If you cannot be a delegate, be an alternate. Alternates become actual delegates when delegates don’t show up, which is very common. Note alternate order matters, so sign up quickly and then you will be assured of being seated as a delegate. Alternates, even when not seated, can actively participate in many ways.

10) The chair announces consideration of resolutions, and asks if anyone has a resolution. Key Action: Raise your hand. When recognized, read your resolution. Then give the first speech, you can read it right off of a sheet if you are nervous. Every consideration and every discussion of good resolutions helps move people toward political action, even though you don’t always win approval!

11) Go home, mark the next convention on your calendar. Come prepared with literature, snacks, drinks and sudoku/crossword puzzles.

People get the impression from the news that the precinct caucuses are just a chance to put in a vote for your presidential candidate, say hello to your neighbors and go home and hope that the Big Chiefs at Party Headquarters pay attention to your vote.  The big turnout and the confusion in 2008 certainly left that impression. There was a call from many quarters to dismiss the precinct caucus system, and move to a straight primary system in Minnesota.  Please, no!

Here’s why I, as a party activist, love that we can still caucus in Minnesota.  I learned on that first night of my first caucus an important lesson about getting involved in my party of choice as a volunteer: Politicians will lend an ear to the volunteers in their party.  They need us to support them, but within structures that can help them.  It is a give-and-take that helps to ameliorate the larger financial donations that people throw at campaigns.

I have had the ear of people who would otherwise never have talked to me other than to say, “I share your concern, and I appreciate your vote in the election.”  From my first caucus, I went to the Senate District DFL convention, and from there to the Congressional District DFL Convention and Ramsey County Convention.  At each level I found new opportunities to volunteer and actually work to enact platform resolutions. I have been able to make a difference in several decisions made for the party in several small, but important, areas.

I started at the caucuses because I wanted to vote for John Kerry in a straw poll, even though he had already secured the nomination.  I then found out what else people do a the caucuses.  We tell the party what we want our elected officials to do.  We select delegates for the convention at the next level. We meet candidates, and ask them questions about why they should be our nominee.  We channel our angst and feel like we are contributing rather than complaining.

I am never more irritated than when I hear people complain about how the caucuses are taken over by the “activists” who don’t reflect the wishes of the majority of the party.  I tell them, “Well, you know there is a way to actually try to influence that swing if you want to do so.  Get active yourself.”  I am not an unusually smart person, a political genius, a mover or a shaker by nature.  I am just a person who at age 44 decided that I was not satisfied with complaining about the way that the party was not working for me.  I realized that in order for the party to work for me, I needed to work for it.

I have been at meetings this November and December to plan the caucuses for the 2010 election.   Watch for announcements, because if you have not been involved in the past at caucuses, this is your in.  This is your time to start focusing your activity and shaping the party that you belong to.  Enter resolutions, discuss them, vote on them, volunteer.  Get excited about getting active.  Meet people who share at least some of your goals.  Be cynical but friendly.  But also be aware that this year the caucuses will be ready for you.  Things will be organized.  People will know what they are doing and, if you have questions, will be able to answer them.

You may find yourself elected a delegate to the next level convention, and from there to the DFL state convention.  Be passionate for your issues, and make sure that people know why you are there, and listen to why they are there.

Just remember this:  I was a lost outsider when I showed up at my first precinct caucus.  I knew nobody who was there.  I voted on resolutions.  I got to know people and some of them have become very good friends.  I can now go to the State Capitol during session and our elected officials know me by name.  And I am not a paid lobbyist.  It’s not magic, it’s just getting involved.

Caucusing in the DFL is a good thing.  Take advantage of it.

“Government should have to be run like a business.  They should have to set a budget and stay within it.  They shouldn’t be borrowing money and raising taxes.  When government runs out of money, they should just cut their spending across the board!”

Whenever I hear people say such things, I shudder.  I work with businesses and their finances and have come to the conclusion that government runs far better than business.  I work with business lending and checking, taking phone calls when business customers need funds transferred, want overdraft fees reversed, make credit payments, complain that they have overdrafts and swear that the banks are just a bunch of crooks.

Here’s a dirty little secret.  Most businesses that I deal with, which are generally small businesses, aren’t run well financially.  Moreover, many of these businesses blame their bank for their financial problems.  I am often amazed at the number of people who start and run businesses but don’t know how to avoid overdrafts, how to best take advantage of the services that banks offer nor how to manage the flow between their credit line and their cash accounts.  They know how to sell and perform their services, but there is a reason that most small businesses fail.

When a customer calls up demanding the reversal of some overdraft fees (because our bank was a recipient of $25 billion in TARP money and we should just be throwing money at our customers because of it), one of the first things I will do is to look at their overdraft history.  I am often amazed to see customers who have had  more than 100 overdrafts or NSFs over the prior  year.  The cost to a small business is enormous, considering that the penalty is $35 per item.  One hundred overdrafts cost the business $3,500, which is an unnecessary expense that definitely could be used elsewhere.

But these are not the only ways that businesses mismanage their funds.  I was talking to a customer the other day who had used her business check card to make a check card purchase for materials from a company in Canada.  Her complaint was that the exchange rate was not what the vendor had quoted her, and the purchase cost $200.00 more than she had budgeted.  Further, Visa charges a 3% currency conversion fee, so the business lost $178.00 and the materials they purchased ended up costing $378.00 more than they had anticipated.  A mistake like this can wipe out the resale profit completely.  I attempted four times to explain to her how the exchange rate that her vendor quoted her was different than the rate charged by Visa, but she wasn’t getting it.  She was convinced that the seller had cheated her.

My company offers services that can be used by customers to wire money to foreign recipients with a small flat fee.  She wasn’t interested in hearing the options and decided against professional advice to go back to mailing checks, which take extra time for her vendors to process (and for which the vendors pay foreign-check processing fees.) It was more important for her to revert to what she considered a “safe” way of handling the issue than taking advantage of a process which would save time and money.  We have a large number of customers who manage their banking the old way, the way in which they find comfort.

I am always surprised when businesses take time to call us for their balances and most recent transactions rather than take advantage of free serviecs such as online banking.   When I suggest online banking and the time saving benefits alone, I have many people who just say, “I don’t trust computers or the internet,” completely cutting off this avenue.

There are many things that businesses do to waste time and money, and they make rash decisions with no deliberation.  Too many just spend, without a budgeting process.  I can see it in their transaction histories and the ways that they use their check cards.  No, I don’t think that government should be run like a business for that reason alone.  Businesses are just people, and there is nothing magical about the way that they are run.

The main reason that a government shouldn’t be run like a business is the profit motive.  There is a key point here that the “government should be run like a business” people miss.  The goal of government is decidedly not profit. The purpose of government is to provide services, which includes maintaining a semblance of societal order, providing essential services and, yes, even aiding commerce. But the government itself shouldn’t be looked at as a profitable enterprise because of the decisions that need to me made.  There is no profit in stop signs or traffic lights.  There is no profit in public education that can be measured on a financial statement.  There is no profit even in the government’s conduct of war (except in the cases of corruption, of course.)

Organizations whose goal is profit make decisions through a far different process than entities that don’t, and it is best that way.  As a property-tax payer, I can go to an opening meeting of the local city council and voice my opinion.   Even if I weren’t a property-tax payer, I could do so, because budget meetings for the government entities are open-door proceedings and have time allotted for public comment.  I couldn’t do that at a Medtronics board meeting. I have no influence over the way that Medtronics sets its budget or conducts its business, even if the decisions that they make effect me in some ways.

This is not to say that government is perfect compared to business.  Government has its faults, including one aspect of purchasing that bugs the shit out of me.  That is the concept of “buying up” near the end of the budget cycle so that the budget for a particular department isn’t reduced for the following year.  You’ve heard stories of department managers buying tons of toilet paper that never get used, justifying such decisions because, “If we don’t use the money for this year, we will lose it for next year.”  I know someone who works for MnDOT whose department, he told me, does this every year.  I asked him “If you do this every year, aren’t you just wasting money in order to protect your budget,  which makes such purchases unnecessary for MnDOT’s mission?  He looked at me like I was an alien, and said, “You just have to do it.”

Well, no, you don’t.

I think that government should be run more like government, with oversight and open elections.  Government should be run to serve the people rather than profit from them.  After all, government is the people.  Government is us.

S.1 was a bill introduced into the United State Senate again and again during the 1970s and 1980s, which provided the government with extraordinary powers to investigate, arrest, detain, and prosecute individuals who were vaguely suspected of working against the government. It was a bill that grew every year like fungus from the fertile manure of fear and hatred manufactured by those who controlled most of the resources in the United States and who wanted to make sure that this did not change. Every year the bill would sprout, like the first whiff of mildew you encounter when you revisit a home closed for a period of time, on the restart of Senate business. It was called S.1 because it was the first bill the right wing (mostly Republicans but some Democrats) would introduce into the senate at the start of the season. And of course, it smelled much worse than mildew.

Ted Kennedy and the other liberals, including moderate and liberal Republicans (yes, in those days there were quite a few liberal Republicans), would hurriedly squash the annoying and embarrassing bill, and normal Senate business would continue. Eventually, the yahoos stopped introducing the bill. But it didn’t go away. It did what fungus does. It stayed hidden in the ground, out of sight, invisibly growing and refining and waiting until the right conditions above ground came to be. Hijacked airliners flown into civilian and military targets by crazed fundamentalist Muslims on September 11th, 2001 produced those conditions, and S.1 was introduced again and passed.

You know of it as the Patriot Act.

And many states enacted their own versions of the same bill, and the society we live in now has this as one of its properties: criminal “justice” agencies and police forces around the country have ample funding, legal basis, and legislative and executive encouragement to directly repress individuals and groups who might disagree with the government. They can use spying, coordinated dissemination of illegally obtained information, harassment, home invasion, falsification of evidence, physical intimidation, arrest, and prosecution.

I hope you understand the great irony of all this, which I shall only mention once before moving on. The right wing and libertarian gun nuts and yahoos (and apparently everybody who lives in Texas and Florida) have been fighting all their lives to keep the government from having these very powers, but they did so by using only one, single utterly ineffective tactic: guaranteeing that they (the yahoos) would have the right to bear arms. All other tactics to minimize the ability of the government to control and repress protest, disruption, or even shouting in frustration or producing subversive art were ignored. As a result, the right to bear arms as a means of keeping the government under some sort of control in the political and social arena has been obviated by the Patriot Act. And the Patriot Act exists (here comes the irony) because George W. Bush stole one presidential election and lied his way past another. He was voted and then kept in office by the aforementioned yahoos, Texans, and Floridians. Thus proving that the yahoos and gun nuts are, by and large, morons.

~ ~ ~

I know some people. These people are between 20 and 30 years of age. They dress as postmodern hippies. They are smart and well educated. They are critical thinkers (except about certain things, depending on the individual), and they tend to be activists. They ride bikes, not cars; they eat more organic and less processed; if they smoke, they prefer Indian tobacco; they make zines and volunteer their time for good works; they tend to be atheists; and they hang out in coffee shops. They live all over the place, but most of the ones I know live in South Minneapolis, where they represent the third generation of political activists grown up in this more-radical-than-most-people-realize city. Their parents were all about Hubert Humphrey and Anti Viet Nam, the Utne Reader and the Mother Earth Catalog, Radical Theater and holding the line at the second Red Barn in Dinkytown.

They are the aging youth of a liberal city and I know them (well, some of them) because they found out that I was teaching radical ideas that interested them, so they came to gawk and sometimes talk, and to introduce themselves to me, in some cases to become my dear friends, and sometimes to tell me to fuck off, and sometimes to get inspired.

A subset of these people are more politically active than others, and when the Republican National Convention was planned for Saint Paul last year, they (and by “they,” I mean people from around the country sharing the same Venn diagram) organized protests and modest disruption. They also did something very humorous and intelligent: the production of a low-end, symbolism-rich, faux threat against the authority of the government, the Republicans, the police, and the military. I have it here, and I need you to watch it from beginning to end before you read the rest of this essay.

Did you spot the symbolism? The Molotov cocktail is obvious. The bowling ball may be less so. We will not all agree with the symbolism, but I saw 1984, ablution, anarchists bicycle movement, anarchists of yore and brats on the Weber of more recent times, awakening, the labor union wars, innocence of youth, Kafka, Marathon Man (the movie), more Kafka, Ralph Nader, several references to earlier protest movements in Minneapolis (a sort of “Hi, Mom and Dad!”), the Beaver Cleaver family representing the inured middle class, the Big Lebowski, the coffee shop trope (in several forms), the environmental movement, the holocaust, the local food movement and the old “food not bombs” trope, the more peaceful messages in the Bible, and more. And I laughed the whole time. I love this video. I love the kids who made it. I love the message it gives and the way it is given.

But the Saint Paul Police Department saw it differently.

We now know, because of the release of previously secreted information and some excellent reporting at MinnPost, that this video was the primary piece of evidence used by the police to argue before judges, city officials, state officials, and federal authorities that they needed funding, warrants, and overall administrative support as well as coordination at the federal and state level to spend $300,000 invading several homes, harassing several people, confiscating truckloads of stuff that police claimed was either evidence or dangerous materials, and ultimately arresting over 800 people.

OK, have you stopped laughing? Have you stopped screaming? Have you cleared the tears from your eyes? Yes, it is true. This video scared the authorities into spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to carry out dozens of blatantly unconstitutional acts and hundreds of inappropriate activities. Thousands of law enforcement officials were involved. It was almost like a municipally organized pogrom pitting the police against the populous. The mayor of Saint Paul and the chief of police saw this video, shat in their pants, and the smell is still ripe.

The vast majority of the arrests were the sort of arrests that happen at protests, where protesters are carted off to prison for a few hours or a day and released. But many arrests stemmed from pre-Republican National Convention raids on homes (or other places) in which, it was thought, the ring leaders of a movement that would “destroy the city” of Saint Paul were jailed and charged.

Almost every single charge against almost every single individual has been dropped because there was no case. The vast majority of the confiscated evidence has been shown irrelevant. A very small number of individuals, who are now known as the Saint Paul 8, are still charged with a reduced number of crimes. These charges are likely to be further reduced or dropped. In addition, several quite viable lawsuits are now in play against the police and the city of Saint Paul.

The culture of citizen criticism, positive collective action, and thoughtful radicalism that defined this subculture within Minneapolis has always scared the authorities. Especially the authorities in Saint Paul. The restless spirit of Minneapolis has been used, rather than repressed, by the city itself more often than not, and brought to bear to solve many social problems. But this subculture has always frightened the more conservative, the less informed, and frankly, the less intelligent. When the national movement teamed up with the local to move on the Republicans, it was not enough, apparently, to put up some extra defenses. What had to happen is that this spirit had to be crushed. The free thinkers had to be punished. Those who dared to question the very questionable authority of a rogue political party and a pretender president needed to be labeled as the same ilk as “Al Qaeda” and silenced, even at the cost of our national sense of liberty, and even by a Democratic mayor.

Below I provide a list of resources for those interested in catching up on what happened, what is now known about what happened, and what is ongoing. The Saint Paul 8 have their next hearing in court scheduled in about a month. The prosecuting authorities seem to keep putting it off as though…as though they just want the whole problem to go away. It is widely accepted these days that the highly effective and very repressive actions taken against the RNC protesters (and journalists, and others who were unrelated to any of this) were by and large illegal, inappropriate, retrospectively embarrassing, un-American, and just plain wrong. Almost no one believes that what was done was in any way okay.

At the same time, it has also been said that these activities by the police have put a damper on future protests and broken the spirit of those who might think again about disruption and civil disobedience against an oppressive government.

This, I doubt with every fiber of my being.

News and Resources

Two-part article from MinnPost. This is a must read. Start here.

Part I: Assessing RNC police tactics: missteps, poor judgments and inappropriate detentions
Part II: Looking back at GOP convention: Police kicked into ‘disruption mode’

Details on the Joint Analysis Center: What’s the Minnesota Joint Analysis Center?

Defend the RNC 8 Web Site

Democracy Now reporting on the charges:

Journalist from above report getting busted by the cops in Saint Paul:

Just for fun: Watch Naomi Wolf use the word “permiticization”…but seriously, this is interesting:

She was saying this in sight of a nurse giving out free flu shots. Which was funny, because she also said that she would never get a flu shot because all you need to do to not die from the flu is to “eat healthy” and take lots of vitamins. If you eat healthy and take lots of vitamins and get the flu, your lymph nodes will swell up a little but that’s all.

I think I get it.

People who are sick did something wrong to get sick. Maybe they didn’t eat right or take enough vitamins. Or maybe they were just poor, and that’s why they got sick, but it is still their fault because they are probably poor because of some decisions they made along the way. It is not society’s responsibility to fix them or to pay for fixing them. If each person takes care of themselves, they won’t get sick and everything will be fine. If each person takes care of the land they live on, there is no need for an Environmental Protection Agency, and if each person is moderately well armed, and can thus take are of any suspicious behavior that happens in their vicinity, there is no need for a police force. If each person does not do anything stupid with matches, there is really no need for a fire department. If your house burns down, it is pretty much your own fault. Why should anyone else be paying for your protection from your own stupidity?

Those people who live in California, whose houses are burning down in the brush fires, moved to those hills knowing full well what would happen. The rest of us should not have our insurance rates go up just because they are stupid.

Addicts totally made their own decision to become addicted and then become thieves because they needed a fix. If I have to exercise my constitutional rights and shoot this addict breaking into my home, then so be it. That is not my problem.

Whenever everyone gets together and organizes some kind of thing…a service or facility or whatever, like a community center with a pool or a fire department or a homeless shelter or even a grocery store…they screw it up. Organized = corrupted. Nothing should be organized, and any kind of variation that exists between people in something they have or something they need is the result of people’s personal decisions and personal activities, and should be left the way it is.

That applies to so-called pre-existing conditions, too. If you are sick, it is pretty much your own fault, so why should an insurance company take on your problems? Do you think that is their job? Hardly.

I’m tired of people always insisting that other people should help them. By helping another person, you are always hurting them, and yourself. Halfway through helping them, they will just take the rest of your stuff and stab you in the back. Then you will have to shoot them, and then there is all that hassle when that happens. That’s what happens when you help someone. You end up having to shoot them.

Of course, there may be more than one way to look at this sort of thing …

Get the background on this video here.

P.S. The libertarian right wing logic…it slithers so easily off the tongue once you start, don’t it?

In a few days from now, I’m sure we’ll start seeing the inside commentary from the town hall visitation squads…the videos shot while the groups are meeting in private before an attack, where we hear about Obama the Jungle Monkey or where we here about Keeping America White or where we hear about some specific threat of violence. There will be a few of those videos, just like there were over-the-top videos of McCain/Palin supporters during the last election.

When that happens, the press and the people running the moderate and liberal talk shows will not be able to allow the fair-looking, but in truth absurd, reporting of the busted town halls and gun-toting protesters.

Why? Because when the press does not ignore or condemn the madmen, they are aligning themselves with the madmen. Normally that is not a big problem. The press normally aligns with all the parties in the argument. It is fair to do so. But then you get parties in the argument who are trying to sell you Bigfoot, or locking young women in the basement, or shooting up the people in the shopping malls, or whatever, the press does not align itself with them.

The teabaggers and birthers and town-hall busters are all, in truth, in the category that the press should report about but not in concert with. So, I’m waiting for the secretly taken videos to leak out onto YouTube. When the madmen are speaking freely among themselves, they will say things that will realign the way they are regarded, even by conservative press.

By week’s end next week, I’m guessing.

Question: “How many feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb?”

Answer: “That’s not funny!”

Sometimes when I’m writing on my blog, I’m speaking to every reader. Sometimes I’m speaking to a subset of readers. Sometimes I’m speaking to just one or two people, and sometimes I’m talking to myself. This is not unusual. All writers do this.

Sometimes what I’m writing is really written for one person, but I can make it interesting, in a subtle way that is not always palpable, to many other readers. So when I posted Monica’s joke (which is not really her joke but rather one on which she is carrying out a feminist analysis as part of her academic studies) on my blog, I was writing for a select audience, and that audience appreciated it.

A few other people decided that I was ruining The Internet and entered into a campaign to discredit me and take my voice away. It worked.

For about five seconds. Because most people got the meaning of the joke and the post about the joke, even though it was not meant for them.

And a small part of the more thoughtful, positive, and non-stupid audience subsequently organized to form a blog and a blog community known as Quiche Moraine, and last night we had our launch party (months after the actual start of the blog) and eventually we had a conversation about how that joke…Monica’s joke…had really started it all. What I want to do now is tell you a bit about the party, but really, this is not about the party. It is about the people who were at the party and what I think about them and how they relate to me. So hold on to your seats; this could get pretty scandalous.

Sometimes you know two or three or four people who are important to you for various reasons, but they don’t know each other. Last night a handful of people whom I’ve known for anywhere from many months to many years and who are very important to me met each other for the first time. Sometimes one has anxiety when that sort of thing happens. I didn’t. And it went fine.

John Funk was there, whom I only barely know, but I know his blog and some of his photojournalism work. He is actually one of the few people who have ever been allowed in the Blog Cave…well, actually, he snuck past the guards with his press pass. Last night, it was interesting to get to know him better, and to see how he interacted with Ben, because they both are into similar things such as cameras.

Ben was there, and photography did come up quite a few times. But oddly he didn’t take any pictures. There are some people who are photographers and some people who take pictures all the time. Ben is a photographer. He’s also a geek, so there was quite a bit of conversation about the new iPhone stuff. I think Ben may have been jealous of John’s iPhone.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I should really talk about dinner first. To do this, I have to go back in time a few years to the very year that Azia, the restaurant where some of us stopped before the party, opened. Azia was then a new restaurant, opened in a location that had previously spawned many failures, but as I recall, everyone who knew anyone or anything believed correctly that the owners of Azia had the necessary magic touch, and that Azia would be a success.

There was a person who had become a friend in the academic context, but with whom I had never gotten together outside of that context, who wanted to meet with me to talk about important things going on in her life. I’m referring to Analiese Miller, whom many of you know via the blogosphere. So this one afternoon on a weekday, Ana and I got together at Azia to talk about important stuff and have our first drinks and food together. And that, by and large, has been the nature of our face-to-face relationship ever since: Talk about important stuff, eat, and drink. Sometimes we skip the food. But occasionally there must be cookies.

The reason I mention this at all is because back at that first meal, we ordered and shared a special seafood dinner kind of thing that you get for two or more people. We gorged ourselves on that, and we took home piles of extra scallops and shrimp and squid. Ana has not forgotten that meal, and she mentions it now and then, so I know it made a very positive impression on her, and here I speak of the seafood dinner, not the conversation.

So last night, when Ben and Stephanie and I got to Azia and were expecting Ana, but she was running late, I suggested that we order that dish as well as some organic wine if they had any on the wine list. This way Ana would be taken care of when she arrived, and we would not have to mess around. I am so incredibly thoughtful that I can’t even believe it sometimes.

It turns out that Azia no longer serves this dish, but that did not matter. Our waiter, who was excellent, simply arranged for the dish to be made and for a proper organic wine (I should mention that Ana prefers organic wine) to be uncorked. The dish was significantly larger than I remembered it, several feet in diameter (or so it seemed) and teeming with what looked like the day’s catch from a medium-sized trawler (but with no turtles). We were about halfway through when Ana arrived, and I know she appreciated the fact that we had arranged the dinner in her honor, even if we had already eaten most of it.

This was not the first time Ben and Ana had met because, it turns out, they went to the same grade school and knew each other there. Strange? Maybe, but I think Ben might be a member of the Conicidenti. (People to whom coincidences happen more often than…can be explained by probability theory. By coincidence of course.)

I also have hysterically funny internal thoughts about Ben and Ana in grade school. In my imagination they are identical to how they look now but very small and somewhat bewildered as little children usually are. This makes me laugh.

Anyway, this was the first time Stephanie and Ana had met, even though they have worked together quite a bit on Quiche Moraine, and I think this was a very comfortable first meeting because of that.

Near the end of dinner, Amanda came by. Remarkably, this was the first time Amanda has met Ana, and that was to me a fairly momentous occasion. You have to understand that at the time Amanda and I first met, there were three or four people in my life who had actually “been there for me” as the saying goes (and I for them as well) over the previous somewhat tumultuous year. If I came into Amanda’s life as not-too-damaged goods, it was because of Ana and a few other people being thoughtful of me, sometimes just amusing me, always listening to me, and occasionally telling me what to do.

And it was appropriate that we all met at Azia, because this is where Amanda and I had our first date.

It was actually part two of our first date. We had originally met in a professional setting, and I think we found each other interesting. We worked together (but in a group) for a couple of weeks, and at the end of that time, we both felt that we had unfinished business, things to talk about. So we had a brief conversation about that, and I suggested we meet in a day or two and talk. Since the weather that year was being spectacularly good (as has happened now and then in the Twin Cities), I suggested a walk around the lake. That would be Lake Calhoun.

So we met at the lake and walked around it a couple of times and talked. Mostly we talked about Amanda’s future. One of the things we talked about was her graduate prospects, and that conversation played a large role in Amanda’s decision to get a master’s degree, a degree that she is finishing even as I write this. So it is interesting to recollect that conversation between two people who did not know what was going to happen between them, and to realize that not only did that plan come to fruition, but that I ended up being part of it.

Nothing was mentioned at the time of Amanda having my child. But who knows, perhaps it was on our minds somewhere….

Anyway, at the end of the first walk around the lake, we felt we needed more, so we took another walk around the lake. At the end of that, we felt we needed even more, so we went to Azia for a beer. I will now confess something to all of you. At this point on that sunny afternoon, I was well along the route of being, as we say in primatology, “interested” in Amanda. So when we stopped at my car before going to her car to drive over to Azia, I grabbed something that I had stashed in the glove compartment, just in case, because one never knows, and put it in my pocket. One must always be prepared.

So we sat down at a table in Azia, and the waitress came over to take our order. I suggested the bow tie pasta with chicken to share. (At some later time, Amanda would discover Azia’s green curry and that would become her favorite.) I asked Amanda a question or two about her preferences and ordered her beer for her. We sat and talked and things were going quite well. After the food was done and the plates taken away and the beer mostly gone, I felt pretty good about how we were relating and finally had the confidence to show her what I had taken from the glove compartment and secreted in my pocket, knowing, hoping, that she would be…”interested.”

“Look at this,” I said as I opened my hand and showed her the object that rested on my palm.

“Oh, what is that?” was her reply, a bit of nervousness in her voice, possibly because no one had ever showed her something like this before, in a crowded restaurant on a first date.

“It’s a wildebeest tooth,” was my reply.

“Really? Like a ‘gnu’? Cool!”

“Not only that,” I said, now swaggering a bit, I admit. “It’s about two million years old!”

“Really!” Amanda’s eyes sprang wide open.

“It’s a fossil. I was bringing it into the lab to check for ancient phytoliths that might tell us about the evolution of diet. It’s from my excavation in Africa.”

Never has that line worked so well. She was hooked, I was hooked, and the trusty old fossil was put away never to be used again.¹

Well, that was the story of our first date, but let’s get back to last night’s party. When we finally got over to the Black Forest, we were a bit late, as is the tradition. Monica was there, as were Brian and John Funk. We managed to get a set of adjoined tables.

The conversation wafted and waned and wandered. Every now and then the people at the table would fall silent, as four or five individuals pulled out their devices and Tweeted. Every now and then some question would arise and two or three people would pull out their devices and Google it. I’ve never quite seen that happen before. It is, indeed, a whole new world.

Lizzie came to the party.

There are a lot of crazy people in this world, and I have no problem with that. But some people’s neurosis seems to be to make life hard for other people (on purpose), or their particular craziness just has that side effect. I can characterize my own life over the last several years (well, actually, since as far back as I can remember) in terms of which crazy people were annoying me, when they were doing it, and in what manner. And every now and then one of the crazy people goes away (or I go away), and my heart lightens and I gain happiness.

(The above statement is not meant to imply that I am not one of the crazy people.)

So Lizzie was at the party, and last night I realized something about her regarding craziness. If you pay any attention to my blogging, you’ll know that I write about Lizzie now and then. In fact, sometimes Lizzie is my main audience, although I don’t think she knows that. Lizzie met Ben, Ana, John and Brian for the first time last night, and she’s met Stephanie and Mike only once or twice each. Of course she knows Amanda.

So, why do I mention crazy people and Lizzie in the same set of thoughts? Lizzie and I get together now and then, and I ask her what is going on in her life, and I love to listen to her describe what’s up. She asks me about my life, and I tell her stuff. We do not do this by phone or email, only in person. Our lives have very few overlaps (though the ones that exist are clearly the work of the Coincidenti, like the link that goes back 15 years connecting Amanda to Lizzie).

The point is we have no complexities in our relationship. We just care about each other. And we have a common interest in rodents. But what is interesting to me, as I’ve come to realize, is that I’m pretty sure that Lizzie and I have exactly the same perspective on what is crazy and what is not, and I’m absolutely certain that she is not even a little crazy. She and Amanda share that. They are both perfectly normal with the most harmless and innocuous neuroses imaginable. This is probably related to the fact that they are both very quiet in groups. So when Lizzie came in (long after Amanda had gone home and as people were starting to file out), I sat aside with her and we caught each other up, and Lizzie gave me the gift she always gives me: a sense of calm and comfort. A sane sense of calm and comfort.

Stephanie was, of course, the other focal point (besides myself and Mike, as we are the Three Blogoteers that make up the core of Quiche Moraine) of the evening. But Stephanie is never a focal point by herself when she is with Ben (they are a couple). The two of them have at least fifty running conversations that are so spread out and complex that I have seen the two of them discover new things about each other three or four times in a given evening as their umbilical banter turns on and off with the broader conversation waxing and waning. Which is often quite entertaining.

I’ve spoken of Ana and Lizzie, both of whom I’ve known many years and with whom I share many (different kinds of) politics, intimacies, proclivities, dislikes, likes and the odd friend or two. (Well, they’re not all that odd….) But in many ways, I feel just as close to Stephanie and, to some extent, her partner Ben, even though I’ve known them for just about a year (or so). Stephanie knows some of my darkest secrets, and I hers (my only regret being that they are not more scandalous, but that is the writer in me talking), and I think we have come to trust, and increasingly to make use of, each other’s reasoning and thought process. I think we get along so well because she is a very scary person and I’m not scared by much. It also helps that we have slightly overlapping but largely complementary knowledge bases but with very similar sensibilities and, for lack of a better term, world views. That makes for interesting conversation, and this conversation plays out in the blogosphere in ways that I think many readers cannot imagine. When I write with Stephanie as my audience, as when I wrote with Monica as my audience (see beginning of essay, above), I usually get into a lot of trouble.

Mike came late and had to leave a bit early, and I kind of saw him in a new light last night. Although I’ve run into him a couple of times over the last month, those were in contexts that were very impersonal and artificial and may as well have not happened with respect to our friendship or work together on the blog. So I can somewhat artificially but still truthfully say that I’ve not really seen Mike since his blogging about the gubernatorial candidates had developed to the extent that is has. When Mike came in and sat down, I imagined him as a 1940s-style, very well-connected reporter who we may presume spent the day in private conversations with powerful people, digging up the scoop. I think that Mike’s essays are going to keep opening doors for him because they are well done and insightful, respectful and important, and (BTW) very well edited by Stephanie (and sometimes me). People are going to look back on his Quiche Moraine posts of this year (and probably next) as a way of grounding some of the conversations that are going to happen as we pick our next Governor next year.

Which brings me to Jim. Jim, a former student, worked for the Ashwin Madia campaign last year (as a staffer, not a mere volunteer as I did). From the moment I met Jim a couple of years ago, I liked him. He is a very serious, dedicated, totally-in-the-blood, grassroots, Democratic Party activist. This is what he does, essentially, for a living. He thinks and breathes politics. Over the next couple of years, I predict that Jim will become one of those people that politicians feel lucky to get to run their campaigns. By the way, Jim will have a series of guest posts on his role in the Madia campaign, coming up soon, on Quiche Moraine.

As usual, the evening ended with a whimper. Amanda had already left, as had Mike and Monica. We wandered out into the street, and John darted off in one direction and Stephanie and Ben in another. I made a quick plan with Lizzie to make contact later in the week for some business we have, and she rode off into the night on her bike. Ana and I walked to her car and promised to meet next week so she could take the next steps in writing regular posts for Quiche Moraine.

When I picked up my car in the parking lot at Azia, where I had carelessly left it when we walked down to the Black Forest, I thought about my old neighborhood, the new buildings that had been built here, the restaurants that were once new but have now become established. I thought about the centrality of the corner of Nicollet and 26th as a point of geography in my own experience. I have told you, over several essays, only a portion of the things that happened to me within a few hundred meters of where I stood unlocking my car. Some of it I can’t tell you because it is rather too painful to discuss. Some of it I have to tell you, because I can’t keep those moments to myself.

Stay tuned.

1. All kidding aside, it is absolutely true that I never showed my fossil to anyone other than Amanda.

The Quiet Coup

The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time.

The Atlantic

Administration Seeks an Out On Bailout Rules for Firms

Administration officials have concluded that this approach is vital for persuading firms to participate in programs funded by the $700 billion financial rescue package.

The administration believes it can sidestep the rules because, in many cases, it has decided not to provide federal aid directly to financial companies, the sources said. Instead, the government has set up special entities that act as middlemen, channeling the bailout funds to the firms and, via this two-step process, stripping away the requirement that the restrictions be imposed, according to officials.

Washington Post

Bailout Watchdog: Treasury’s stonewalling

Elizabeth Warren, the law professor appointed as Congress’s oversight czar on bank bailouts, blasted the Treasury Department — saying new legislation might be needed to give the House and Senate more access to details of the $700 billion rescue program.

Warren, testifying before the Senate Finance Committee Tuesday morning, said keeping Congress in the loop isn’t a “priority” of Secretary Tim Geithner — and suggested a possible “next step” would be to pass legislation that would “require [Treasury] to consult” with her.

Glenn Thrush

Where Wall Street Trades in Political Currency

With sweeping reforms coming, the Wall Street-Washington connection may be more important than ever, and political connections may be the new currency for deal makers.

Below is a matrix of Wall Street chiefs and private-equity bosses, as well as their personal contributions to politicians in 2007 and 2008, as recorded by the Center for Responsive Politics. The list, which gives politicians’ titles at the time, also illustrates the political action committee money given by each chief’s firm and its employees.

NY Times

The Definition of Insanity

A few months ago, I did some posts and TV appearances discussing some of the problems that would inevitably occur with the appointment of Goldman Sachs lobbyist Mark Patterson as the chief of staff at the Treasury Department. As Mother Jones subsequently reported, we’ve already seen some of those problems happen.

Open Left

Mr. Taleb Goes to Washington

Nassim Taleb is an unlikely choice to play the Jimmy Stewart role in a 21st-century remake of the Depression-era classic Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. But the tale of a naive do-gooder who tries to remind a corrupt political class of its obligations was re-enacted this week when Taleb attended the Wall Street Journal’s Future of Finance conference in Washington, D.C.

The Big Money

Was Eliot Spitzer Taken Out Because He Was Going to Bust AIG?

Eliot Spitzer is back and he’s talking. The thought of this, no doubt, brings a small shiver to the boardrooms of some of the perps walking around trying to figure out how to hide the money this week. Today Edward Liddy testified that there have been death threats made to or about executives who received bonuses, so no names will be put on the record, but these anonymous players must know that the jig is up in the land of easy-money. Isn’t what to do a no-brainer for these great Americans?

AlterNet

Specter Announces His Intention To Vote Against Employee Free Choice Act

Today on the Senate floor, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) announced his intention to vote against cloture on the Employee Free Choice Act. Specter was the only Republican to vote for cloture when the measure was last considered in 2007. During his announcement, Specter noted his previous support for EFCA, but suggested that the current condition of the economy makes “this a particularly bad time to enact employee’s choice legislation”

Think Progress

Recruited to Serve and Sniff — Again

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan aren’t just forcing thousands of soldiers and Marines to deploy for two and three tours. The sacrifice is being shared by a key, and growing, part of the U.S. military: highly trained German shepherds and Belgian Malinois. In a war with no front lines, they have become valuable at sniffing out makeshift bombs, which cause most U.S. casualties.

Washington Post

Around the Country, Calls for Lawmakers to Address “Real Problems, Not Imaginary Ones”

As several states enter critical phases in their legislative sessions, the debate for one of the most controversial election reforms continues to dominate headlines and legislative hearings. This year, more than 26 states introduced legislation to go above and beyond federal election law relating to voter ID, despite near consensus among voting rights advocates that it hurts the process far more than it helps. Last week, the hysteria around voter ID reached an all time high in six states, evoking public concern from advocates and citizens alike.

Open Left

The Woman Who Could Nail Bush: Are the Worst of the Torture Memos Still to Come?

On March 19, the nomination of Indiana University law professor Dawn Johnsen to head the OLC was endorsed by the Judiciary Committee with every Republican voting against her and Sen. Arlen Spector (R-PA) abstaining. The nomination was to have been brought to the Senate floor for a vote on Monday and then again on Wednesday, but it has been held back. Republican leaders, it appears, are playing with the notion of making Johnsen the target of their first filibuster.

AlterNet

Insurers shun those taking certain meds

Trying to buy health insurance on your own and have gallstones? You’ll automatically be denied coverage. Rheumatoid arthritis? Automatic denial. Severe acne? Probably denied. Do you take metformin, a popular drug for diabetes? Denied. Use the anti-clotting drug Plavix or Seroquel, prescribed for anti-psychotic or sleep problems? Forget about it.

Miami Herald