My day at the Polls

I got up before dawn on election day and drove a half hour in the dark to a north east suburb of the Twin Cities. I was a DFL "challenger" though the DFL didn't want us challenging anyone (besides, the law says I would have to have personal knowledge that the person couldn't vote, hard to do when you don't live there). Really I was there to be the eyes and ears of the party and to report back any problems.

I sat myself down in a corner and got ready to spend the day people watching. I sat behind the same-day-registration tables and watched people register and reregister to vote. There were two major themes; the problem with the same-day-registration law, and the wonderful people that came and really really wanted to vote.

First, the problem with the current law. I'm not sure when the law was written, or when it was last updated, but there are some obvious problems. To register a voter has to bring a form of photo ID to prove that they are who they say they are, and a bill with their name and current address. Or they can get a voter registered in that precinct to vouch for them, a staff member of a group home will also work.

So the problem is that only specific bills are accepted and some things that logically should work, don't. Signed leases? Nope. Car payment? No. Medicare payment? Try again. Paystubs? Nope. There were even two different people who thought maybe an alcohol citation would work. They didn't. (Quote of the day: "I was in an accident I wasn't aware I was in.")

The other problem I saw could be addressed if a signed lease could be used; there were at least three couples that had moved on the first of the month. All they had were leases, no bills had come yet.

But here is where I start to feel better about democracy. ALL of the people that had moved came back with someone to vouch for them, or a receipt for a new drivers license. One couple was turned away twice and the second time the guy was talking like he wasn't going to come back. But they did, separately, and both voted. Even the woman who was probably 6 months pregnant. A young man that was registered with his wife earlier in the day, was brought back with a friend to vouch for him and they brought another woman with them. More than that, he realized that he lived down the hall from the couple at the other end of the table and could have vouched for them too.

But the most heart warming thing I saw was a older woman, blind and deaf, with an aid who registered and voted. It must have taken the better part of an hour for them to fingerspell the entire registration form, the entire ballot and her vote.

DEBATE!

The last debate is tonight and McCain has been saying he will utter the name William Ayers at some point, which is probably a guarantee that he wont.

I'm not a drinker, but if McCain says "that one" again, I think we can all agree that you have to finish your drink and blame the person to your right.

Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others.

Study Finds Major Shift in Abortion Demographics

Abortion. THE topic for lighting any social situation on fire. Want to kill a great party? Want to drive a wedge between a new couple? Let's talk about where life starts, the role of the government in utero and watch it all burn.

But many times this is pure speculation; many people who can talk about abortion till they are blue in the face have never had one, I'd guess that fully half will never even get the chance (I'm looking at you gentlemen). So, who is having abortions?

During that period [1974-2004], the proportion of abortions obtained by women younger than 20 dropped steadily, falling from 33 percent in 1974 to 17 percent in 2004. For those younger than 18, it fell from 15 percent of all abortions in 1974 to 6 percent in 2004. At the same time, the proportion of abortions obtained by women in their 20s increased from 50 percent to 57 percent, and the share done for women age 30 and older rose from 18 percent to 27 percent.

Younger women are having fewer abortions, while older women are having more. Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, 35 years ago. The group of women that make up the 30 and older has gone from people born 30 years before Roe v. Wade, to people born right around the same time. The women that were 18 in 1973 were late Baby Boomers; women that were 18 in 2004 were, well, me and my friends.

So what hypothesis are being tossed about to explain these changes?

"A lot of policymakers are stuck 30 years back when most women getting abortions are teenagers and college students, and that isn't so much the case these days." (Rachel Jones, a senior research associate at the Guttmacher Institute.)
.....
"Birth control is the best way to prevent unwanted pregnancies," said Laurie Rubiner, vice president for public policy at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. "Unfortunately there's a large number of uninsured people in this country, and if you are uninsured you are less likely to have access to affordable health care, including affordable birth control."
.....
Michael J. New, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Alabama who works with the Family Research Council, attributed the drop in teenage pregnancies to a combination of factors, including increased contraceptive use, more teenagers delaying sex and state laws requiring parental consent.

"The states with the most active pro-life laws have seen the biggest abortion declines," he said.

[Remember, Family Research Council is more aptly called the Patriarchy Research Council]

While I think the first two hypothesis are much smarter than the last one, I think there might be a generational argument to be made. My parents are late Baby Boomers, and the social pressures about sex and abortion have changed drastically from when my mother was my age. I've long believed that the more society represses sex, the less healthy it becomes. The harder you push the line that sex is only for marriage the more pre- and extra-marital sex there is and the more risky it will be.

So as sex has become something its okay to talk about, the safer and healthier it has become. Safer and healthier sex leads to fewer pregnancies and fewer pregnancies lead to fewer abortions. Despite the push of the Patriarchy groups and the Bush administration for Abstinence Only Education, there is more knowledge out there about safe sex than ever before. The youngins can hop on the internet and learn more about sex than their sex-ed teachers could tell them about.

In conclusion, read Dan Savage's column. It is the best sex advice out there paired with the most hilarious kinks out there. 

Babies Everywhere!

So by now we've all heard thatSarah Palin's daughter Bristol is pregnant. This was revealed to quash rumors that Mrs. Palin's youngest son was actually her grandson by Bristol.

The republicans have been trumpeting about how brave the senior Palin was in choosing to continue the pregnancy upon learning that the fetus had Trisomy 21, Downs syndrome. Now they're going on about how great and brave it is for underage Bristol Palin to not terminate her pregnancy.

But hey wait a minute, if Sarah Palin had her way her brave choice would never have existed. There would be no choice to make, brave or otherwise. And I wonder how much of an informed choice young Bristol was really offered.

Before being picked for the VP slot on the Republican ticket, Palin was going to talk at a lunchon here in St. Paul with Phylis Schlafly. Basically two hard working career women talking about how much women need to be at home taking care of the children. As we chanted out side the Xcel Center on Monday, "This is what hypocrisy looks like."

Welcome to the RNC

Authorities raid, search protesters' hub

Cops have raided the meeting site of the RNC Welcoming Committee, an anarchist group long planning to protest the RNC and the Republican warmongers infesting my fair city.

The Pioneer Press did not see the warrant. But witnesses quoted from the warrant, which was read aloud by authorities. They said authorities were looking for "items that could be used for direct action techniques, ranging from computers, Xboxes, Xbox games, Molotov cocktails and matchstick heads."

Okay, I may be 23, but I've never been much into videogames, anybody out there in internet land want to explain to me why the cops would want Xboxes? Did they break their Wii? Has Microsoft released some special tutorials on how to bomb the Xcel center that are only available on Xbox?

In related news, Downtown St. Paul was weird yesterday during lunch. There were more people out, but it wasn't really clear how many of them were cube dwellers gawking and how many were honest to god Republicans. Except for that one woman with really blond hair, really big pearls and a portly husband in a suit jacket and a cowboy hat; they stood out like a sore thumb, looking really confused and haughty.

All the mailboxes were taken out, and the mail in the office can't be over a certain weight and we have to hand it directly to the mail carrier. How exactly sister dearest will get to her coffee slinging job an hour earlier in the heart of the control zone is still being ironed out.

We've seen this before

Ex-EPA Official Says White House Pulled Rank
This is the sort of thing that has become so common under this administration that I don't know if I really have anything more to say on the topic.

Yesterday, however, former EPA deputy associate administrator Jason K. Burnett -- who resigned last month and has since divulged key details about how President Bush and his deputies have influenced the agency's decisions on climate policy -- testified before the committee that Johnson had concluded that California's request was legally justified -- until White House officials ordered him to reverse the decision.

What's that line from that little shit Grover Norquist? Ah yes,

“My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” – The Nation, 10/12/2004

I'm not sure its small enough to be drowned in a bathtub, but I'm pretty sure that its starved and beaten enough that it can't do its job properly. The EPA knuckles under the White House, the FDA can't figure out where the salmonella in the salsa is coming from, and the VA won't (can't?) cover the medical bills for returning vets.

Bureaucracies get a bad rap. When they are good, they are very very good, but when they are bad, they are horrid. And you only remember the time it took 8 hours at the DMV and forget all the times things run smoothly. The EPA needs to be able to do its job without the politicos mucking things up. Sure the politicos are needed so that it can get paid, but its job requires an objective view. And you can't get an objective view with the White House breathing down your neck or choking you with the purse strings.

Thank goodness the 20th of January is approaching (I'm not too worried about the 4th of November.)

Bush administration wont read emails it knows it wont like.

White House Refused to Open Pollutants E-Mail

The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week.

They didn't like what the E.P.A. was going to tell them about greenhouse gases, so they didn't open the email. How juvenille.

The document, which ended up in e-mail limbo, without official status, was the E.P.A.’s answer to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that required it to determine whether greenhouse gases represent a danger to health or the environment, the officials said.

This week, more than six months later, the E.P.A. is set to respond to that order by releasing a watered-down version of the original proposal that offers no conclusion. Instead, the document reviews the legal and economic issues presented by declaring greenhouse gases a pollutant.

In order to get the administration to even read their emails, the E.P.A. has to rework them so that they offer no substance, no oppinion, no scientific fact. The Bush administration wants nothing stronger than white bread reports, since anything more would upset their world view that global warming, although happening, is not the danger we scientists and concerned citizens make it out to be. The reason is the same as it has ever been; aknowledging the dire threat of global warming compels them to do something about it, and that would hurt the big corporations that support the Republican party.

Simultaneously, Mr. Waxman’s committee is weighing its response to the White House’s refusal to turn over subpoenaed documents relating to the E.P.A.’s handling of recent climate-change and air-pollution decisions. The White House, which has turned over other material to the committee, last week asserted a claim of executive privilege over the remaining documents.

In an interview on Sunday, Mr. Fratto, the White House spokesman, said the committee chairmen did not understand the legal precedent underlying executive privilege. “There is a long legal history supporting the principle that the president should have the candid advice of his advisers,” Mr. Fratto said. Emphasis added.

Not that he'll actually listen to it.

The Story of Underfunded Mandates and Tomatoes

F.D.A. Reports Progress in Tracing Salmonella

167 people are sick with a salmonella infection from certain types of raw tomatoes.

The agency warned consumers over the weekend to avoid certain raw red plum, red Roma and red round tomatoes and products containing them. Cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes and those sold with the vine still attached are not associated with the outbreak, officials said.

This pops up from time to time. But with food traveling farther and being spread farther, its harder to pin point things and to regulate them. Think how much more trouble Dr. Snow would have had if the water from Broad Street was being shipped, nearly unregulated throughout Europe.

But the incompetence of the current administration overwhelms even my interest in epidemiology.

In November the food and drug agency released a “food protection plan,” but the Bush administration did not ask for the money to finance parts of it until Monday night. The health and human services secretary, Michael O. Leavitt, said on Monday that he would amend the administration’s budget request by asking for an additional $275 million for next year, $125 million of which would go to food protection.

I feel I might need to kick my cynicism up a notch. Unsurprised is not enough, one must now assume that whatever part of the government was put in place to take care of whatever is falling apart now, is currently massively underfunded.

The political world keeps on spinning.

I supported Hillary Clinton on Super Tuesday, and when I went to my district convention. I still think that she's a wonderful person, a superb Senator and would make a great president. But an absolute inability to admit defeat, to the point of moving the goal posts is a little much.

Neither Senator Obama nor I have won the 2210 delegates required to secure the nomination. And because this race is so close, still separated by less than 200 delegates out of more than 4,400, neither Senator Obama nor I will have reached that magic number when the voting ends on June the 3rd. Source

The talkers on MSNBC last night were saying that this is positioning, that this is a way to make sure that, come the right moment, Clinton can get something in return for bowing out. My father was talking (over the TV talkers) about how Hillary would be good for the VP slot. I'm not 100% sold on that idea, but he was making good arguments.

We are anxious for November around here. We're crunching numbers, looking at maps and graphs, talking over the cable talkers, spinning our own yarns about where this is all going to go. I can barely wait.

Just in case you weren't sure...

Its true, I'm a huge nerd. This graph I made tracks support of the major candidates based upon the Facebook/ABC US Politics application. I record the data using Google documents over my lunch break, but I also have an Excel file on my computer that I update in the evening.

There are a couple things that I find interesting. The first few are in the raw numbers; Obama has a commanding lead, Paul has a strong contingent, and McCain only broke one hundred thousand supporters last week. The next few interesting things are in the change in support from one day to the next. McCain gains more people per day than Clinton. The day after Gravel announced he would seek the Libertarian Party's nomination, he started gaining supporters. For awhile there, the net gain of people for all three Republican candidates was less than McCain's because Huckabee was loosing so many supporters. The next interesting thing is on sheet two, each candidate's daily gain of support as a percentage of the net gain. Obama's daily gain is consistently sixty to seventy five percent of the daily gain. He is gaining more people than everyone else combined every day.

Now the graph of Change in Support will, I think, be more interesting as the sample size increases. But for now I think it just shows that less happens on Sundays.

The thing to keep in mind is that this is far from a representative sample of Americans, and probably not even a great sample of young Americans. Facebook started as a site for college students with a valid .edu email address. While it has become an open site, I don't think it would be unfair to guess that it still skews toward the college student. Plus, the people who have this application and have used it to show support for a particular candidate probably care about national politics a bit more than the general population.

So if this isn't a representative sample, is it really that interesting? I think so and not just because I made it. It does show that there are at least a million people who have gone out of their way (but not terribly far) to show their support for a candidate for president. Will this translate into votes? Votes by young people? I don't think you can tell that from this data. Especially since there really isn't anything like it to compare it to.

How the Youth of Today get their news

Finding Political News Online, the Young Pass It On
Not surprisingly, this article about how the young share news online was emailed to me by a good friend. The general issue of the article isn't new to me, but maybe it is to the journalists. Rather than sitting down and watching the nightly news, or reading the entire paper, the young read articles online, especially ones recommended by friends, and then pass links on to others. There are some interesting lines that really capture the idea.

Ms. Buckingham recalled conducting a focus group where one of her subjects, a college student, said, “If the news is that important, it will find me.”

College students don't have the time to sit down and read the NYT or watch the 5 o'clock news. The news has to get to them, and that comes as emails, link shares on Facebook and instant messenger. But even if its delivered straight to our inbox, most people I know are more likely to read something that has been recommended by someone they know. When you use your friends as a filter, you know what kind of a filter you are getting; George likes stories about China and other Asian countries, Ann only sends stories about abortion and birth control, and Crazy Joe sends stories about Ron Paul with mocking comments. Plus, you automatically have someone you can discuss the piece of news with.

In the days after Mr. Obama’s speech on race last week, for example, links to the transcript and the video were the most popular items posted on Facebook. On The New York Times’s Web site, the transcript of the speech ranked consistently higher on the most e-mailed list than the articles written about the speech.

I think the reason is pretty clear; we are aware that punditry is not real information. "Political analyst" is a term thrown about with so little care and tossed on to so many talking heads on the churning 24 hour news that many don't trust that the "analysis" we're getting. We have seen why we need to go to the source document, and its not because the dust of history has clouded meaning, but because the slime and mud of the pundits has obscured the truth of each action and word.

Maybe we should worry that the "real" news isn't getting through, that people of like minds will filter the news so that we only hear things that confirm what we already believe. Will the college student that only cares about football only get news from other friends that care about football? Maybe, but is that really any worse than the local news that feeds us soft stories from the national feed about rescued puppies rather than the violence is Darfur, Burma and Nepal?

I'm a young adult, and my friends are people I respect and like, and what they find interesting in the news is probably interesting to me too. My friends consistently care about what is going on in the wider world. I can't say the same for some media outlets that report international news with the sigh of a child cleaning her room.

The key is subtlety

Justices Overturn Louisiana Death Sentence
Yes, there is still racism in this country, and no its not just private citizens being idiots. There is still racism entrenched in our justice system, and not just in the drug laws, or the racial profiling by the cops.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday overturned the conviction and death sentence of a Louisiana man who killed his estranged wife in a jealous rage, finding that the trial judge “committed clear error” in excluding black jurors from the trial.

A black man was convicted and sentenced to die by an all white jury in the south. In 1996. Were talking about stupidity that belongs back in 1954, not in my short lifetime.

Sure the prosecution had some excuse for not seating black jurors, but those excuses hardly hold up in the light of day.

Justice Alito wrote that the prosecutor’s explanation for dismissing Mr. Brooks — that he was worried that Mr. Brooks’s nervousness over his studies would incline him to vote against a death sentence to avoid long deliberations — was not believable.

“The implausibility of this explanation is reinforced by the prosecutor’s acceptance of white jurors who disclosed conflicting obligations that appear to have been at least as serious as Mr. Brooks’s,” Justice Alito wrote, noting that a white juror who had expressed concerns over his wife’s illness and the conduct of his independent contracting business had been seated.

This is the sort of racism whose subtlety has allowed its practitioners to hide behind a shrug of the shoulders and a claim of ignorance. (There is a sexism, closely related, that does the same.) But just because this bigotry doesn't scream on the streets, doesn't mean its any less hurtful, any less ignorant or any more acceptable. So much of the racism and sexism in this country is like neutrinos that pass through every barrier and stream through all of us all day. But unlike neutrinos, these bigoted ideas hurt, cut and kill.

I'm glad that the Court was able to see this for what it is and send a message to all the lower Courts that this is not acceptable. You cannot pack the jury then shrug your shoulders and say "What? That's just coincidence!" Maybe we really can have a legitimate discussion about race in this country. As John Stewart said last night about the coincedentally timed speech by Sen. Obama, "So at 11am on a Tuesday a Politician talked to Americans about race as if they were adults."

Lets talk about this like the adults we are.

Oil companies and Clarence Thomas

Supreme Court Weighs Exxon Valdez Damages

The federal government indicted Exxon on five criminal charges, with potential penalties totaling $5 billion. The company soon agreed to plead guilty to three counts with a fine of $25 million, or less than 1 percent of the total potential criminal fine, plus $900 million in civil fines to be paid over a 10-year period. In addition, the company paid $2.1 billion in cleanup costs, and several hundred million dollars more to fishermen for their lost summer catch. In all, the company would pay $3.4 billion.

But the money that Exxon doesn't want to pay is the punitive damages. The punitive damages are the fines that the court assigns to the defendant in punish them for being stupid and breaking law. Its supposed to discourage the defendant and its peers from doing it again. You can't put a company in jail, but you can fine them lots of money.

And boy, they sure don't want to pay it. Exxon has taken this all the way to the Supreme Court.

But Exxon contends that because this accident occurred at sea and is governed by maritime law, which is the sole province of the federal courts, there should be no punitive damages at all.

Part of me wishes I could know more about the law here, but then I remember that I don't really want to be a lawyer and thats probably what it would take to really understand this.

But I do know one thing about what will happen at the Supreme Court today; Clarence Thomas wont be asking any questions.

Polar Bears and Caucuses

A Cool Dip for a Warming Planet

This is my alma mater and last year I took part in the first polar bear splash. That time it was a cold rainy February day and we never got a fire started. Looks like the weather was a bit better this year. I still know many of the people in the slide show.

In other news, my precinct had a turn out of 178 people where it usually has between 12 and 25. The presidential break down was 98 Obama, 74 Clinton, and 6 others. The school we met at had three other precincts as well and the line to find out which room to go to was out the door. So I grabbed a one of the maps someone had printed out and helped.

Everyone I've talked to said that the turn out at their caucus was amazing too. Even the one person I know who went to the Republican caucus said that they had twice as many people as they had been expecting. An interesting night to say the least. Back to the regular schedule tomorrow.

The Last Stump Speech

Edwards Drops Out of Democratic Race

As you probably already know, John Edwards has dropped out. I was at his last stump speech last night at the Carpenters Union Hall here in St. Paul. The wind chill was hovering around -40 F, but the room was packed and overflowing into the hall. I'm sure now that he knew that it was his last night on the campaign trail. So I wish I could tell you that he told us something, gave us a hint or threw in something new. But I don't think he did.

That isn't to say that it was a bad or boring speech, it was a good speech and he knew the crowd. He mentioned Paul Wellstone, talked about universal health care, and getting out of Iraq. The one thing he mentioned that caught my attention was a line about wanting to change the pay-day-loan laws. Thats the sort of thing that speaks to his populism. Pay-day-loans are one of those things that keeps people poor and indebted. Its one of those things keeps sucking people down down down and breaking that cycle could really help people.

There were some people in the crowd that would call out "Shame!" as he talked about the money that the HMO CEO's make while so many people are underinsured. That was an interesting response I've never heard from my usually taciturn fellow Minnesotans. But it caught a bit. People booed and hissed at the right points too. Thats another thing I've not heard much of. My father will hiss at speakers and talking heads, but to hear a whole room hiss, its kinda creepy.

I don't think I'll be able to see Obama when he comes, from what I've read the lines have been absurd. I will try to see Hillary when (if?) she comes.

Huckabee's Theocratic Tendencies

I've been manning the copy machines at my mother's office for the past few days, hence the lack of posts. But there was a comment made by Mike Huckabee recently that everyone should find disturbing.

While Huckabee's people are trying to say that Huckabee was talking only about a marriage amendment and calling a fetus a person. Not that I agree with any of that, but it sounds like so much more than that. He's saying that the laws of this country should change in order to be in line with the laws prescribed in the Bible.

Spin as they might, what Huckabee said is out.

"...and that's what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards."

Whats that line in the Bible about serving two masters? When the choice in Huckabee's mind is between the ever changing (dare I say evolving?) laws of man and the immutable laws of his god, it should come as no surprise that the reverend chooses his god. While its all well and good for him to chose his god's laws so long as they don't run counter to our laws, our laws say that he can't make that choice for the rest of us. But thats what he's saying he would do if given the power; he would chose the laws of his god for all of us.

I shouldn't have to tell you what's wrong with that.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion...

Obama and Huckabee

Another story I shouldn't have to provide a link for; Obama and Huckabee win their respective primaries in Iowa. I'll do some health stuff tomorrow.

I have to admit that I didn't really have a preference among the top three Democrats. Clinton, Edwards and Obama all seemed like good choices. Sure there were differences, but in my mind those different strengths and weaknesses seemed to equal out. The results in Iowa are terribly close between Edwards and Clinton, with 744 and 737 state delegates respectively. As for the number of delegates that will be chosen to go on to Denver, Obama gets 16, Edwards gets 14 and Clinton gets 15. Every where I see is reporting that, but I don't see an explanation for the 14 v 15 numbers.

Huckabee's win is a bit more interesting. The demographics of the win show that much of his support was evangelicals. So the obvious question is how well is that going to work for him in New Hampshire? I don't really know, but the lack of passion for any of their candidates that the Republican voters are showing is probably not a bad thing for the Dems. Besides, Huckabee is kinda nuts. Its like going to the other party's primary and voting for the crazy you know your party can beat, except they did it themselves.

But keeping in mind the post earlier this week questioning how representative the Iowa caucuses and straw poll are, we have to remind ourselves that this is Iowa. While the people there take very seriously their role in the election cycle, it really isn't a very representative sample. No one state can be.

Sit tight, this is just getting good.

PS: I'm still giggling at Wonkette's Merry Fifth Place to Ron Paul.

Oh, Iowa

Caucuses Empower Only Some Iowans

This story is fitting, since I am probably going down to Iowa tonight to volunteer.

Because the caucuses, held in the early evening, do not allow absentee voting, they tend to leave out nearly entire categories of voters: the infirm, soldiers on active duty, medical personnel who cannot leave their patients, parents who do not have baby sitters, restaurant employees on the dinner shift, and many others who work in retail, at gas stations and in other jobs that require evening duty.

I've caucused in my home state of Minnesota before and I went plenty of times as a child with my parents. Its an interesting process if you're old enough to understand whats going on. If you're not, its really fun to run wild in the halls of whatever school its being held in with all the other children. Plus you get stickers.

But its not fun if you're the parent of said child running wild. Thats if you get to go at all. People have long known that the people that vote in the primaries are the people that really care about this sort of thing. That goes double for something as intense and time consuming as a caucus.

As in years past, voters must present themselves in person, at a specified hour, and stay for as long as two. And if these caucuses are anything like prior ones, only a tiny percentage of Iowans will participate.

Its not a quick process and its not something that I think I could explain to any of you in a post. There is a lot of running around talking to the people near you and getting them to support your group of people on an issue or a politician. There is a certain number of people that need to get together in order to send a person to the next level and then the next level meets to decide who will go to the next level and what they will support. If I'm not explaining it well I wouldn't be the first or the last.

“There is no incentive for Iowa to change this at all,” said Mr. Issacharoff, of N.Y.U. “It corresponds to what Iowa wants, which is candidates spending time and resources in Iowa,” in order to win supporters dedicated enough to conquer the obstacles to voting.

This could be said about any of the early primary states. Its not in the people's own self interest that the state wait to vote. The earlier they vote the more their voice counts for. Its not fair to the other states and ideas about changing the entire primary system have been floating around for awhile. But I think it would take someone from the outside, promoting something truly equal for everyone to change the primary system.

If I don't post tomorrow, it means my friends and I decided to go and I'll post on Friday.

Texas kills more people than every other state combined.

At 60% of Total, Texas is Bucking Execution Trend

Of the 42 executions in the last year, 26 were in Texas. The remaining 16 were spread across nine other states, none of which executed more than three people. Many legal experts say the trend will probably continue.

Now, one could argue that Texas is a big state and its murder rate is slightly higher than the national average. But 61.9% of all executions in the nation? There has been a de facto moratorium on executions since the Supreme Court decided to hear Baze v Rees which will decide if the most commonly used cocktail of drugs used for lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment. That has lead to a lower total this year than would have been expected otherwise.

There is reason to think that the number of death sentences in the state will fall farther, given the introduction of life without the possibility of parole as a sentencing option in capital cases in Texas in 2005. While a substantial majority of the public supports the death penalty, that support drops significantly when life without parole is included as an alternative.

You mean it wasn't before? Before 2005 in Texas, capital cases could either be life with a chance of parole or death? Jebus. I would think that life without parole as an option would be obvious. But then I'm not from that end of I-35. I'm from the end where the death penalty was made illegal 96 years ago and the Governor's talk about reinstating it was dead in the water three years ago.

Killing people as punishment for killing people is stupid and hypocritical. Gandhi summed it up better than I can; "An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind." Vengeance is not the business of the state. People can be removed from society because of their misdeeds, but that need not mean that they have to die.

I hate to assume the worst, but...

Bush Lawyers Discussed Fate of C.I.A. Tapes
Of course they did. I mean, did we really think that the CIA would do this without talking to someone in the White House first? We see the crap coming out of Washington and we are schooled enough in the vileness of this administration to recognize their particular style of crap when we see it. Whenever its got something to do with the torture of people who may or may not have anything to do with terrorism, its a damn safe bet that the White House was in there somewhere.

At least four top White House lawyers took part in discussions with the Central Intelligence Agency between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes showing the secret interrogations of two operatives from Al Qaeda, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials.

Guess who is on that list; Harriet Miers, John Bellinger, Alberto Gonzales and David Addington. Some of those names ring a bell, don't you agree?

Some other officials assert that no one at the White House advocated destroying the tapes. Those officials acknowledged, however, that no White House lawyer gave a direct order to preserve the tapes or advised that destroying them would be illegal.

I'm picturing lots of winking and nodding and knowing looks and in the end there very probably wont be anything solid other than the distinct impression that they all knew damn well what they were up to.

Ms. Perino’s statement said that other than President Bush’s comment that he had not known about the tapes, White House officials have declined to discuss the matter because of pending investigations by the Department of Justice and the C.I.A. inspector general.

Dur. Of course Bush didn't know about it, he doesn't seem to know about anything. This is like seeing a friend with a set of lock picks, seven cans of spray paint and a face mask and saying to yourself "I really don't want to have to lie about this later, so I'm just not going to ask."

Except in this case people were tortured. Thats a much bigger sin than tagging up some billboards.