Letters to the Editor
jdmf
Published Letters: 98 Editor's Choice: 11
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Someone slap her...
[Read the article: Quote of the Day]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Please.
But seriously. Being lectured about the ethics of rumormongering by Judy Miller is like...
being lectured on medical ethics by Bill Frist; or
being accused of plaigerism by Ben Domenech; or
being gay baited by Ken Mehlman; or
oh, think of any GOP hypocrisy...
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Kilgore is 98% wrong
[Read the article: Yes, Democrats do need the South!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I agree with one thread of Kilgore's argument -- progressives should not give ground in any state or region. We need to be in all 50 states all of the time. But other than that, Kilgore's "refutation" of Schaller is wishful thinking at it's most wishful.
Progressives don't have the luxury of wishful thinking. We have to focus on taking back our country and undoing the harm to our republic wrought by the GOP and its unholy alliance of religious zealots and crony capitalists. And to do that, we have to play to our strengths, not our weaknesses.
And we are weakest in the South. And will be for quite a while. It doesn't matter that the South had a progressive tradition: It doesn't have one now. It doesn't matter that the latino population of Texas and Florida is growing: they are still outnumbered by xenophobic, wonder-bread crackers. It doesn't matter that race relations in the South have improved: They started pretty low (Jim Crow, remember?).
Schaller's point, for all the smoke Kilgore blows to obscure it is that progressives need to concentrate where we can make the biggest gains. And we need to have a strategy that doesn't rely on prying a citadel of the former confederacy from the clutches of the bible-beating bigots who will throw their mothers under a bus.
And that is common sense, not regionalism.
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Don't be naive about Lieberman
[Read the article: Lieberman: A surge of buyer's remorse?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It is naive to suggest that somehow Liebrman misunderstood that the positions he is now taking would put him at odds with the majority of his former party. He understood it precisely.
Lieberman is a shrewd but unprincipled operator.
His political gamble last year was whether the Senate would be evenly split. If it was, as it is, he knew quite well that whether he remained nominally a Democrat or not, he would be very likely hold a great deal of power precisely because and he can defect from the Democrats and can switch his vote on the issues and to organize the Senate, and thereby swing the Senate back which ever way he pleases.
Or not.
This is why Democratic and Republican leaders were and are loathe to alienate him. They understood Lieberman's calculus full well.
But in any case, as Senator Hagel showed this weekend, there is no real love for Lieberman on the Republican side of the aisle. After all, who could like or trust a man who turns on his allies and friends so easily? And who really wants to have to cater to such a prima donna?
The only people who seemed not to understand the dynamic at play were Connecticut's voters, who mistakenly put their faith in Lieberman the Democrat (or perhaps in Lieberman the "mensch") and put him back in the Senate.
What is ultimately so disappointing about Lieberman is that he is using his position of power merely to serve his own personal ends and vanity (more power for Lieberman) rather than serving the positions his constituents so strongly support, such as withdrawl from Iraq.
This game cannot serve him well for longer than two years when the balance will shift one way or the other in the Senate, and Lieberman likely will find himself having alienated both sides of the aisle.
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Let's talk hypocrisy
[Read the article: Cheney on the stand, or when a "Washington lawyer" is something more]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Ted Olson is one of the nation's greatest hypocrites, and for him to claim now that Cheney, by virtue of his office, should be spared from giving testimony in the Scooter Libby trial would make me laugh -- if it didn't make me cry first.
Olson spent the better part of his career in the 1990s seeking, by any means possible, to drag another sitting federal executive officer, Presidebt Clinton, into court to testify in the civil legal proceedings that eventually led to his impeachment.
Olson's efforts were documented nowhere better than in Joe Conason's February 6, 2001 piece here in Salon about Olson nomination as Solicitor General of the United States -- a job Olson only relinquished after his wife, Barbara, was killed on 9/11 (a fact that I will refrain from characterizing as "poetic justice"):
1. Olson "secretly coached the lawyers for Paula Jones before their own appearance at the Supreme Court."
2. Olson "was a central figure in the shadowy "Arkansas Project," which funneled more than $2 million through the tax-exempt American Spectator magazine to private investigators digging up anti-Clinton dirt."
3. "Olson agreed to represent David Hale, the corrupt Little Rock judge who eventually became Starr's chief witness against Bill Clinton in the Whitewater case."
4. Despite provisions in her plea agreement that required Monica Lewinsky to obtain permission before any media appearances, she was interviewed by ABC's Barbara Walters after Ken "Starr's friend Olson ended up representing Lewinksy -- for a hefty fee of $25,000, paid by ABC -- when she sought and received Starr's approval of the Walters interview."
It's entirely right of the NY Times to have interviewed Olson on the subject of dragging the ewxecutive branch before the courts to testify. He is the expert in this area (though not as he stated) for keeping Cheney out of court, but for compelling Cheney to testify no matter what the consequences or cost.
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Yet another very, very good reason not to subscribe to the NYT
[Read the article: The "antiwar left" takes over America]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The management of the NYT need look no further than precisely this kind of weak, shoddy journalism to understand the growing financial woes of the company. Why pay money for such garbage?