Sherry Chandler

This fellow was riding the wind on a dogwood leaf last Sunday morning when I shot this photo through our bedroom window. We have a lot of viceroys around here and I think that’s what this one is, but he wouldn’t open his wings. I don’t blame him. There was a pretty stiff breeze.

You can see artifacts from the window in the top half of the photo.

Speaking of voting for Dennis Kucinich, which I was yesterday in the comments, look what our boy got up to last night:

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who introduced legislation last year to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney, is now aiming higher.

On the House floor this evening, the Ohio Democrat proposed impeaching President Bush. In language similar to that in the articles of impeachment he raised against Cheney, Kucinich sought support for a 35-count indictment charging Bush with misleading Congress and the American people into war with tales of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Democratic House leaders have opposed impeaching Bush or Cheney as an unhelpful distraction. They were nearly embarrassed last year when Republicans voted to take up Kucinich’s effort against Cheney in order to force a debate; they are unlikely to let the matter get so far this time.

Bob Fertik, president of Democrats.com, one of the groups pushing for impeachment congratulated Kucinich on his “historic leadership.”

“We’ve waited seven years to find one Member of Congress brave enough to stand up for our Constitution, for which generations of Americans have fought and died,” Fertik said. “We are thrilled and honored that Dennis Kucinich has chosen to be that one genuine patriot.”

Gotta love him.

I wish I could think this was more than just a Quixotic effort, but I give Kucinich great credit for at least getting this stuff into the record!

Link complements of Sarah at Corrente.

More coverage and C-Span video at Raw Story.

Meanwhile, Melissa is still keeping score: Obama Racism/Muslim/Unpatriotic/Scary Black Dude Watch Part Frigging Fifty

I’ve been trying to wean myself away from election obsession and get a little perspective by reading Ernest Freeberg’s Democracy’s Prisoner: Eugene V. Debs, The Great War, and the Right to Dissent (Harvard University Press, 2008). Not much headway so far but here are some things I’ve learned, besides the fact that this is a period of history I’m woefully ignorant of (as if that didn’t just about take all my knowledge of history):

• When Debs ran for president in 1920 as the Socialist candidate, he ran from Federal prison and his campaign buttons read Vote for Prisoner 9653.
• The American Civil Liberties Union was formed to protest the treatment of conscientious objectors during World War I. (Yes, that was Woodrow Wilson.)
• Debs was a “professional agitator” who financed his campaign and made his living by charging admission to his campaign speeches. (He obviously couldn’t do that in 1920; he wasn’t allowed to even talk to the press. Still he got a million votes.)
• In 1894, when Debs lead an American Railway Union strike against the Pullman Palace Sleeping Car Company, the New York Times called him an “enemy of the human race.” Other major newspapers were not so kind.
• Workers were divided against themselves: “Natives resented immigrants; whites shunned blacks, who in turn often served as strikebreakers.” Sounds a little bit familiar.
• In 1912, Debs got a 29-minute standing ovation from a sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden.

Tell me whose tools you use, and I will tell you whose slave you are.
— Eugene V. Debs