with our names scribbled all over it. It would be hilarious if someone walking by knew what it referred to! Pedinska, omooex, adnoto, Retired Military Patriot, Timothy 3, bystander, Presumptuous Insect, Bill Owen, Kitt, Jim White, Titonwan, coram nobis, rrheard, Little Brother, Iokannan in the Well, bamage, Associative Individualist, jebbie, sysprog, Gator90, heru-ur, London Lad, and many more. Woot!

From Public Citizen:

The Supreme Court on September 9 hears a case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, that reopens the question of unlimited corporate money in our elections. In a stunning move, the Court will reach back and reconsider two other pivotal campaign finance cases settled long ago. The potential result? A century-old pillar of campaign finance doctrine could be swept away.

Sound like a good idea? Sounds so very last, last century — except this time it wouldn’t be the robber barons — it would be the giant, multinational corporations buying our politicians outright.

Why is SCOTUS even hearing this argument? Unbelievable. Protest site at sig.

Adnoto, I was not including you in my comment. I automatically assume that you're going to be too busy manning street barricades, burning tires, and throwing rocks at the armored personnel carriers.

god knows that's more than what should be expected of you. I frankly don't know how you do it.

Truly! I really don't know how this absolute model of an active citizen has any time at all to spend the time reading every single blog Glenn ever writes and, more, to spend hours every single day telling us all that our puny efforts will never amount to anything. He must be super human.

I am more grateful than I can ever express that he is out there engaging in acts of civil disobedience. And he is so modest that he never tells us about any of these specific acts. And I never see these acts in the news, but I am sure he is making a greater impact on our political culture than anyone in the 21st century.

Right, but a vast majority wants socialized health care.

It does not necessarily follow from the fact that rightwing corporations control most of the discourse that the people they are yapping at every day have the same interests or believe what they want them to believe.

In what universe can Obama accurately be described as an "antiwar" president? Absurd and insufferable.

Oh, snap!

Btw, on dropping out of the D party as protest, in my state, all the primaries are open to everyone, so I can't drop out of a party. I am not sure how many states are like that, though. But I can send a bag of poop to Bayh or something.

No, not farfetched at all, imo.

You may have seen Matt Taibbi's report on the Democratic Convention protests for Real Time. The officials had designated an area far away from all the action as a so-called free speech zone. There were just a few people there. It was both comical and horrifying to see Matt standing there in an almost empty parking lot area, where there should have been vibrant signs of dissent.

A Bachmann crowd booed that??

However, if there is ANY institution in American life that could be said to be truly left, truly progressive, it is the academy. The indoctrination of undergraduates into the progressive worldview is well-documented and overwhelming.

So, so wrong. As someone who has been learning and teaching in that milieu for some time, I can tell you that our universities have been captured by corporate money and the corporate mentality for some time. When Bush was in power, we actually got emails from the provost about reining in anything "political," the subtext being, don't be critical of war or the administration, don't be controversial, etc. Students now see themselves as "customers," who often demand a narrow curriculum that doesn't disturb their world view.

I may have told this story before, but in the aftermath of 9/11, students were particularly suspicious of faculty who were not deemed patriotic enough. There was one story that was spreading around campus about an English TA who supposedly "blamed America for the Trade Center attacks." I had an assistantship at the IT group at our University at the time. One morning, when I entered a large meeting with the whole group, I was assaulted with this demand: "I heard that an English TA said the the US was to blame for 911. Was that you?" WTF.

And I have not seen any shift back to a pre-911 openness. So I feel that the university is no longer a space that is open to dissent. I should also add that the academic labor market is also in horrendous decline, with tenure becoming a thing of the past, and temp-like jobs becoming more and more the norm. This does not encourage fearless truth-telling.

Whenever I see anonymous sources like this, I think of Mike Barnicle, who used to write these hokey, maudlin man-on-the-street human interest stories for the Boston Globe.

It turns out, many of the stories about these salt-of-the-earth types turned out to be something pulled right out of Barnicle's ass. Someone tried to track down the people Barnicle had been writing about and found they didn't exist.

It was a big scandal then, but of course that is all forgotten and Barnicle shows up all over the tv screen now.

But when I see anyone using anonymous sources, I always think it's a Barnicle ass-pulling scam.

--only painful to the dignity of the Boston Globe!

just STFU, because your strategery isn't working. Now go put food on your family and coexist peacefully with some fish and then go encourage your local OB-GYNs to practice their love with women. Mmmkay?