Sherry Chandler

From the ACLU:

WASHINGTON – Today, in a blatant assault upon civil liberties and the right to privacy, the Senate passed an unconstitutional domestic spying bill that violates the Fourth Amendment and eliminates any meaningful role for judicial oversight of government surveillance. The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 was approved by a vote of 69 to 28 and is expected to be signed into law by President Bush shortly. This bill essentially legalizes the president’s unlawful warrantless wiretapping program revealed in December 2005 by the New York Times.

“Once again, Congress blinked and succumbed to the president’s fear-mongering. With today’s vote, the government has been given a green light to expand its power to spy on Americans and run roughshod over the Constitution,” said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “This legislation will give the government unfettered and unchecked access to innocent Americans’ international communications without a warrant. This is not only unconstitutional, but absolutely un-American.”

The FISA Amendments Act nearly eviscerates oversight of government surveillance by allowing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to review only general procedures for spying rather than individual warrants. The FISC will not be told any specifics about who will actually be wiretapped, thereby undercutting any meaningful role for the court and violating the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure.

The bill further trivializes court review by authorizing the government to continue a surveillance program even after the government’s general spying procedures are found insufficient or unconstitutional by the FISC. The government has the authority to wiretap through the entire appeals process, and then keep and use whatever information was gathered in the meantime. A provision touted as a major “concession” by proponents of the bill calls for investigations by the inspectors general of four agencies overseeing spying activities. But members of Congress who do not sit on the Judiciary or Intelligence committees will not be guaranteed access to the agencies’ reports.

The bill essentially grants absolute retroactive immunity to telecommunication companies that facilitated the president’s warrantless wiretapping program over the last seven years by ensuring the dismissal of court cases pending against those companies. The test for the companies’ right to immunity is not whether the government certifications they acted on were actually legal – only whether they were issued. Because it is public knowledge that certifications were issued, all of the pending cases will be summarily dismissed. This means Americans may never learn the truth about what the companies and the government did with our private communications.

“With one vote, Congress has strengthened the executive branch, weakened the judiciary and rendered itself irrelevant,” said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “This bill – soon to be law – is a constitutional nightmare. Americans should know that if this legislation is enacted and upheld, what they say on international phone calls or emails is no longer private. The government can listen in without having a specific reason to do so. Our rights as Americans have been curtailed and our privacy can no longer be assumed.”

In advance of the president’s signature, the ACLU announced its plan to challenge the new law in court.

“This fight is not over. We intend to challenge this bill as soon as President Bush signs it into law,” said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project. “The bill allows the warrantless and dragnet surveillance of Americans’ international telephone and email communications. It plainly violates the Fourth Amendment.”

You can donate here.

And then there’s this from the Baltimore Sun:

With Congress on the verge of outlining new parameters for National Security Agency eavesdropping between suspicious foreigners and Americans, lawmakers are leaving largely untouched a host of government programs that critics say involves far more domestic surveillance than the wiretaps they sought to remedy.

These programs - most of them highly classified - are run by an alphabet soup of federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies. They sift, store and analyze the communications, spending habits and travel patterns of U.S. citizens, searching for suspicious activity.

The surveillance includes data-mining programs that allow the NSA and the FBI to sift through large databanks of e-mails, phone calls and other communications, not for selective information, but in search of suspicious patterns.

Other information, like routine bank transactions, is kept in databases similarly monitored by the Central Intelligence Agency.

“There’s virtually no branch of the U.S. government that isn’t in some way involved in monitoring or surveillance,” said Matthew Aid, an intelligence historian and fellow at the National Security Archives at The George Washington University. “We’re operating in a brave new world.”

…

“You don’t have to look far into history to know that when the government, any government, is given secret authorities, that those authorities are ultimately abused,” said Mike German, a former FBI agent who is now policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. “You don’t even have to attribute bad motives to anyone. In an intelligence officer’s zeal to protect the country, they often will overstep their bounds.”

In part to assuage privacy concerns, the Department of Homeland Security has established a privacy czar to ensure that the technologies and programs initiated by the federal agency do not erode privacy laws or violate civil liberties.

Read the rest. Somehow I don’t have a lot of faith that our own little caesar for privacy will have much success.

Or, you could just read Lance, who sees what we’ve all been seeing for a while now, The bad guys are going to get away. The movie isn’t supposed to end like this:

They’re going to ride off into the sunset, their saddle bags stuffed with loot, whooping and hollering and laughing at the marshalls who can’t get their boots in their stirrups to get on their horses to ride after them. They’re going to live out their lives on the other side of the Rio, safe and fat and happy in their haciendas, surrounded by friends and fawning servants and beautiful senoritas with roses in their hair playing the guitar and singing ribald songs about limp-dicked Democrats.

George Bush probably doesn’t even know he’s loathed and despised and he probably won’t ever know. He’ll always be in the company of flatterers and sycophants who will assure him over and over again that he was a great President and he saved the country from the terrorists and children will be singing songs about him for the next three hundred years.

Dick Cheney and Karl Rove know they are hated by all decent people, but they think decent people are chumps and saps and to be hated by them is a sure sign of success.

Update: I received this e-mail from Chris Dodd, entitled “A Heavy Heart”:

Yesterday was a sad day for the United States Senate.

It is my hope that the courts will undo the damage done to the Constitution.

But let us stand tall, knowing that by working together we were able to make wiretapping and retroactive immunity part of the national discourse these last number of months.

We came together – all of you, Senator Feingold, bloggers like Jane Hamsher and Glenn Greenwald, organizations like the EFF and ACLU, and untold hundreds of thousands of Americans who simply wanted to make sure that this one, last insult did not happen with ease.

I’m sorry we weren’t successful.

I just hope I’m lucky enough to have you by my side in the next fight, whatever that may be.

Thanks for all you’ve done.

Chris Dodd

from the Boston Herald:

Professor, peacemaker, penman, publican - Padraig O’Malley is many things to many people.

But today, the 64-year-old UMass-Boston professor is set to cement his status as one of the world’s top unsung peace brokers with the announcement of a historic agreement between warring Iraqi factions.

For the past 10 months, O’Malley has been the driving force behind bringing Shi’ite and Sunni parties together to thrash out a pact to ban militias from operating outside the law in Iraq.

“The move to bring people together and march without violence is his inspiration,” said Peter O’Malley, Padraig’s younger brother. “We grew up in Ireland, which was very fractious. So growing up in that atmosphere and, I would say, the influence of Martin Luther King inspired him.”

King’s inspiration, O’Malley said, pushed his brother to play crucial roles in forging peace deals in both Northern Ireland and South Africa.

The Iraqi agreement - described as a framework to allow further discussion between opposing Iraqis - was hammered out during privately funded reconciliation meetings in Helsinki, Finland, organized by O’Malley.

…

But away from the hotbed of violence, the native Dubliner has more modest roots in the heart of Cambridge where, in 1969, he and his brother opened the now landmark Irish bar, The Plough and Stars. They also co-founded poetry magazine Ploughshares.

Via qarrtsiluni

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
—Oscar Wilde, from The Importance of Being Earnest*

Oscar Wilde’s mother, Jane Francesca Agnes, Lady Wilde (1821-1896), had her own run-ins with the law. She was a fire-brand for Irish independence and women’s rights. Under the pseudonym Speranza, she published poems and commentary in The Nation, a Nationalist newspaper established by the Young Ireland Party. I often see her poetry described as “anti-famine.” Speranza was active in the 1840s; the potato blight struck in 1845.

Up until The Great Hunger, the Young Irelanders had been a nonviolent movement. The famine changed that. When, in 1848, Speranza wrote an article calling for armed rebellion and the paper’s publisher refused to reveal her name, the British government shut the paper down.

The Young Irelander or Famine Rebellion began on July 29, 1848, after the British suspended habeas corpus. It failed rather quickly. One of its leaders, William Smith O’Brien, was found guilty of treason and subsequently sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. Another, Thomas Francis Meagher, found guilty of sedition, was also sentenced to death. Because of “public outcry,” both sentences were commuted to expulsion to Van Diemen’s Land. Meagher later escaped to the United States, where he led the Irish Brigade in the Civil War.

Lady Wilde was widowed at 55 and, discovering that her husband had left her very little, she moved from Dublin to London to live with her older son Willie, who was a journalist. Oscar, of course, was also in London at this time. Lady Wilde eked out a living writing books and articles on Irish folklore.

She was among those who urged Oscar to stick in London and fight his conviction.

At age 75, she contracted bronchitis, and knowing that she was dying, she asked permission to visit Oscar in prison. The permission was denied. She died on February 3, 1896. Oscar paid for her funeral but could not afford a tombstone so she was buried anonymously in common ground.

The Victorian Women Writers Project has an online copy of Poems by Speranza, 2nd edition, published about 1871. I find them the worst kind of patriotic doggerel, the kind of thing Wilfred Owen later condemned in “Dulce et Decorum Est.” Given Lady Wilde’s circumstances, the excessive ardor for heroes might be understood, but that still can’t make her a great poet by modern standards. The example below is the most palatable one I could find.

Her Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland, posted by Library Ireland, is a lot more fun.

There was a man, also, equally dreaded on account of the strange, fatal power of his glance; and so many accidents and misfortunes were traced to his presence that finally the neighbours insisted that he should wear a black patch over the Evil Eye, not to be removed unless by request; for learned gentlemen, curious in such things, sometimes came to him to ask for a proof of his power, and he would try it for a wager while drinking with his friends.

One day, near an old ruin of a castle, he met a boy weeping in great grief for his pet pigeon, which had got up to the very top of the ruin, and could not be coaxed down.

“What will you give me,” asked the man, “if I bring it down for you?”

“I have nothing to give,” said the boy, “but I will pray to God for you. Only get me back my pigeon, and I shall be happy.”

Then the man took off the black patch and looked up steadfastly at the bird; when all of a sudden it fell to the ground and lay motionless, as if stunned; but there was no harm done to it, and the boy took it up and went his way, rejoicing.

Lady Wilde’s poem. I’ve no idea who the traitor is. Tone and Fitzgerald were players in the Rebellion of 1798:

A LAMENT.

I.

GONE from us–dead to us–he whom we worshipped so!
      Low lies the altar we raised to his name;
Madly his own hand hath shattered and laid it low–
      Madly his own breath hath blasted his fame.
He whose proud bosom once raged with humanity,
      He whose broad forehead was circled with might,
Sunk to a time-serving, driv’lling inanity–
      God! Why not spare our loved country the sight?

II.

Was it the gold of the stranger that tempted him?
      Ah! we’d have pledged to him body and soul;
Toiled for him–fought for him–starved for him–died for him–
      Smiled, tho’ our graves were the steps to his goal.
Breathed he one word in his deep, earnest whispering,
      Wealth, crown, and kingdom, were laid at his feet;
Raised he his right hand, the millions would round him cling–
      Hush! ’tis the Sassenach ally you greet.

III.

Leaders have fallen–we wept, but we triumphed, too–
      Patriot blood never sinks in the sod;
He falls, and the jeers of the nation he bent to sue
      Rise like accusing weird spirits to God.
Weep for him–weep for him–deep is the tragedy–
      Angels themselves now might doubt of God’s truth;
Souls from their bloody graves, shuddering, rise to see
      How he avenges their lost, murdered youth.

IV.

Tone, and Fitzgerald, and the pale-brow’d enthusiast–
      He whose heart broke, but shrank not from the strife;
Davis, the latest loved–he who in glory passed,
      Kindling Hope’s lamp with the chrism of life.
Well may they wail for him–power and might were his–
      Loved as no mortal was loved in the land–
What has he sold them for? Sorrow and shame it is,
      Fair words and false from a recreant band.

V.

Time’s shade was on him; what matter? we loved him yet;
      Aye, would have torn the veins with our teeth,
Made him a bath of our young blood to pay the debt–
      Purchased his life, tho’ we bought it by death.
Pray for him–pray: an archangel has fallen low;
      There’s a throne less in Heaven, there is sorrow on earth.
Weep, angels–laugh, demons! When his hand could strike the blow,
      Where shall we seek for truth, honour, or worth?

— Lady Jane Wilde, from Poems
Transcribed and encoded by Carolyn C. Sherayko
Edited by Perry Willett
TEI formatted filesize uncompressed: approx. 339 kbytes
Library Electronic Text Resource Service (LETRS), Indiana University
Bloomington, IN
July 31, 1996

____________
*I found this quote as a head note to Seamus Heaney’s lecture “Speranza in Reading: On ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’” in The Redress of Poetry (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1995). A tidbit from that essay: according to Heaney, Lady Wilde traced her maiden name, Elgee, to Alighieri, and so considered herself a descendant of Dante.

Here is the full text of Hillary Clinton’s speech today, in which she thanked her supporters and endorsed Barack Obama.

It was an excellent speech that made it amply clear why so many people have voted for her this year.

Some clips are floating around but they only pull out the endorsement. I think you need to watch or read the whole thing, not the sound bite.

It was more than just a necessary endorsement of Barack Obama, though it contained that. It was a statement of principle. It was a concession, but there was not much of defeat in it.

To describe it, I yield to one more eloquent than I, Big Tent Democrat:

Hillary Clinton did something that is very difficult in my opinion, she made a great speech out of a concession endorsement speech. Why?

Because she conceded nothing on the issues nor in any way discounted what she and her supporters accomplished. And then she endorsed him, but the endorsement was not the standard stump endorsement. It was an intelligent, rational, respectful argument to her supporters for why she was endorsing Barack Obama. she would speak to the issues and punctuate her line with “and that is why we must elect Barack Obama President.”

She then recognized the historic nature of this election. As I wrote last Tuesday night, while a dream was realized when the Democratic Party nominated an African American as our Presidential candidate, a dream was thwarted also, that of a woman nominee. Hillary Clinton honored BOTH moments in this speech.

It was one of the best speeches I have ever seen.

I watched it on CSPAN, which I hear will re-run it later today.

Thanks to JimT:

Read also Rebecca Traister: Hillary’s Final Curtain

These national discussions just keep coming at us, don’t they?

Clinton Bloc Becomes the Prize for Election Day (I supply emphasis):

…Even the Democratic National Committee chairman is avidly trying to make up for accusations that he allowed sexism in the race to pass unchallenged.

“The wounds of sexism need to be the subject of a national discussion,” the chairman, Howard Dean, said in an interview. “Many of the most prominent people on TV behaved like middle schoolers” toward Mrs. Clinton.

…

Former Gov. Madeleine M. Kunin of Vermont suggested in an interview that Mr. Obama promise to appoint women to half his cabinet positions.

Ms. Steinem advised that Mr. Obama deliver the same sort of ambitious speech about sex that he did on race. An aide said the campaign was considering such an address.

Jenny Backus, a Democratic consultant unaffiliated with either campaign, wondered whether Mr. Obama might give Chelsea Clinton a prominent role in his efforts.

When Mr. Dean reached out to Cynthia Ruccia, who started an organization of female Clinton swing-state voters threatening to vote for Mr. McCain, Ms. Ruccia asked that the Democratic convention include a symbolic first ballot for Mrs. Clinton’s delegates. Mr. Dean discouraged the idea on the grounds of unity.

He has belatedly recognized the cries of sexism, Mr. Dean said, particularly when a friend showed him a video compilation of broadcasters’ comments about Mrs. Clinton.

“We all get over it when our candidates don’t win,” he said. “What you don’t get over is feeling like you’ve been insulted by some of the leading institutions in America and no one said anything about it.”

…

The Obama campaign will fight back, after waiting a respectful beat or two. In conversations with Mr. Obama and his aides, “I’ve tried to make sure that everyone understood that these women have a right to feel frustrated and angry,” said Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, an important ally who is one of his leading emissaries to women. “To try to make that less than real is a huge mistake.”

As he declared himself the nominee on Tuesday, Mr. Obama cut a particularly woman-friendly figure on stage, dedicating his speech to his grandmother and affectionately bumping fists with his wife, Michelle.

Indeed, descriptions of those women, along with his mother and daughters, will be regular features of Mr. Obama’s speeches, Ms. Sebelius said. Women will ultimately choose Mr. Obama not because of symbolic overtures, she added, but because of his stances on health care, the economy and education, areas where his positions closely resemble Mrs. Clinton’s.

The key, Ms. McCaskill said, is approaching Mrs. Clinton’s supporters with utmost humility. And, Ms. Backus added, that is not always the strongest suit of the young people who are some of Mr. Obama’s most enthusiastic supporters.

“Not nyeh nyeh nyeh nyeh,” Ms. McCaskill said, making a taunting sound. “We need them very, very badly, and we shouldn’t be able to be afraid to say that we need them.”

H/t Big Tent Democrat

But they didn’t need us last week. Weren’t too worried about those adolescent commentators then either.

I wonder how many women are going to see this sort of Damascus Road conversion as conveniently timed? Sort of an “I’m sorry honey. I’ll never do it again.”

They might want to polish up that humble rhetoric too. To quote Paul Lukasiak, “these women have a right to feel frustrated and angry” is not the same as “women have a reason to be angry.”

While I’m not a woman, this “right to be” language is the equivalent of an “I’m sorry that you were offended”, faux-apology — its a failure to acknowledge that the anger is legitimate, and that its not just the media that is at fault, but the candidate and the party itself.

Paul thinks this is all misdirection to distract us from the corruption of the DNC.

And, after all, it is not just women who voted for Senator Clinton over Senator Obama. There’s the question of the “Appalachia problem.”

Speaking of Appalachia, I still want policy specifics. In Bristol, Virginia on Thursday, Senator Obama got an enthusiastic response to promises that he’d provide everybody with health care but he didn’t say how he plans to do that.

Gail Collins is relatively clear-eyed about what Clinton accomplished:

Here’s where the sexism does come in. If Barack had failed in his attempt to make history by becoming the first African-American presidential nominee, you can bet we’d have treated his defeat with the dignity it deserved. Even if he went over the deep end at the finale and found it hard to get around to a graceful concession. [Ed. note: I wish people would get over this meme. The timing of Clinton's concession is well within the tradition and will be perfectly graceful. See Anglachel.]

For a long time, Obama supporters have seen party unity as something that Hillary could provide by capitulating. It also requires the Democrats to acknowledge what she’s achieved. If that makes them feel like wimps, let them take it out on John McCain.

…

Over the past months, Clinton has seemed haunted by the image of the “nice girl” who gives up the fight because she’s afraid the boys will be angry if they don’t get their way. She told people she would never, ever say: “I’m the girl, I give up.” She would never let her daughter, or anybody else’s daughter, think that she quit because things got too tough.

And she never did. Nobody is ever again going to question whether it’s possible for a woman to go toe-to-toe with the toughest male candidate in a race for president of the United States. Or whether a woman could be strong enough to serve as commander in chief.

Her campaign didn’t resolve whether a woman who seems tough enough to run the military can also seem likable enough to get elected. But she helped pave the way. So many battles against prejudice are won when people get used to seeing women and minorities in roles that only white men had held before. By the end of those 54 primaries and caucuses, Hillary had made a woman running for president seem normal.

…

For all her vaunting ambition, she was never a candidate who ran for president just because it’s the presidency. She thought about winning in terms of the things she could accomplish, and she never forgot the women’s issues she had championed all her life — repair of the social safety net, children’s rights, support for working mothers.

It’s not the same as winning the White House. But it’s a lot.

This one’s for Larry, or his alter-ego Slemp, who thanks Africa for the banjo and seems to think both that he knows a lot of women in need of veiling (har har) and that our government needs a purgative. After the hi-jinx of the week-end, I’d say the Democratic party anyway has had a purge.

For full documentation of the atrocities, see Dana Milbank. Iphie saw it a bit differently.

The best version of this song is done by Uncle Dave Macon. This one by Lew Dite is the best I could find on YouTube.

Full lyrics:

I’se gwine down town for to buy me a sack of flour
Gwine cook it every hour
Keep my skillet good and greasy all the time, time, time
Keep my skillet good and greasy all the time

I’se chickens in my sack, bloodhounds on my track
I’m pullin’ for my shanty home, home, home
I’m pullin’ for my shanty home

If they beat me to the door, I’ll put ‘em under the floor
Keep my skillet good and greasy all the time, time, time
Keep my skillet good and greasy all the time

I’se a-walking down the street and I stoled a ham of meat
Got my skillet good and greasy all the time, time, time
Got my skillet good and greasy all the time

I’se gwine to the hills for to buy me a jug of brandy
Gwine give it all to Mandy
Keep her good and drunk and boozy all the time, time, time
Keep her good and drunk and boozy all the time

Honey, if you say so, I’ll never work-a no more
I’ll lay round your shanty all the time, time, time
I’ll lay round your shanty all the time

And if you’ve got this far, you might be interested in this item from the Lexington Herald-Leader:

Kentucky Democrats in Tuesday’s primary vote sent a clear message — by 35 percentage points — that they wanted U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to be their party’s presidential nominee.

But Kentucky Republicans, on the day after the primary, sent their own signals that they’d be pleased to have the Democrats nominate U.S. Sen. Barack Obama.

“The results speak for themselves,” said GOP U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, who is up for re-election this fall. “He outspent Hillary Clinton and lost our state 2-to-1 — 65 percent to 30 — and carried only two counties, Jefferson County and Fayette County. That’s not an indication of great appeal to Kentucky voters.”

McConnell, in fact, immediately linked his Democratic opponent in the November race, Bruce Lunsford, to Obama in a statement on election night and the next day to reporters. Expect him to use the phrase “Obama-Lunsford agenda” often this fall.

and less of “women will wake up to reality once Obama is the nominee,” a paraphrase of a comment I saw at TalkLeft and an attitude that has seemed endemic.

From Obama’s Memorial Day speech:

We’re going to have hundreds of thousands of new veterans coming in, many of them who suffer post-traumatic stress disorder. They are not being diagnosed quickly enough, they’re not getting the services that they need quickly enough.

And, sadly, the group of veterans that are probably being most neglected in this area are women veterans. We’ve got to do a better job of creating facilities…. specifically for women veterans.

And part of what we need is to recognize that oftentimes our women servicemembers are more prone to post-traumatic stress disorder partly because they — there’s a sad, but real, problem of sexual harassment and sexual abuse for women veterans, and that makes them much more prone, then, to have post-traumatic stress disorder.

Maybe a a bit patronizing. Obviously pandering, but I’m ready to be pandered to, big time.

He also made a quick promise to stop protests at military funerals, a thing that needs to be done.

Now how about some promises to protect Social Security and work hard for universal health care??

You can watch the speech at YouTube here.

Every time I say to myself that I have cast my vote and I am through with this election, ready to step back and watch events develop, some new madness crops up and I feel as though I have to speak out.

I am, of course, referring to the “uproar,” largely manufactured by political partisans, over Hillary Clinton’s remarks about the Robert Kennedy primary campaign of 1968.

For the media and/or political partisans to accuse one candidate of calling for the physical assassination of another is not only character assassination but also very unwise. Such tactics are not just divisive, they are incendiary.

And the whole incident makes me very sad. I just want to weep for our country that it has come to this.

I will leave you with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr’s remarks:

I’ve heard her make that argument before,” Mr. Kennedy said, speaking on his cell phone as he drove to the family compound in Hyannis for the holiday weekend. “It sounds like she was invoking a familiar historical circumstance in support of her argument for continuing her campaign.” . . . [H]is support of Mrs. Clinton has not wavered.

…

I have heard her make this reference before, also citing her husband’s 1992 race, both of which were hard fought through June. I understand how highly charged the atmosphere is, but I think it is a mistake for people to take offense.”

_______________

Updated May 25: Here’s an addendum from the ever wise Melissa McEwan (emphasis added):

Briefly, my opinion is that it was an ill-considered statement that warranted an apology, irrespective of intent. FWIW, I don’t think she intended to suggest anything nefarious, but it was not a particularly sensitive example to use to make her point, and careless in its disregard of the history of violence against black leaders. It was inevitable, and of course not unreasonable, that people would consider her competitor Obama within the frame she built, to upsetting results, even if she didn’t specifically mention him.

As I’ve said before, an apology after erring is not about the original intent; it’s about the result. It’s about making amends. When I step on someone’s foot unintentionally, I still say “I’m sorry.”

UPDATE: Also, I want to quickly note, when I step on someone’s foot unintentionally and say I’m sorry, that doesn’t give them license to premeditatedly punch me in the nose and claim I deserved it. Clearly, the usual suspects are seeking to deliberately misconstrue Clinton’s statement for maximum outrage-ginning, and I don’t guess I need to give you my opinion on that.

__________

Updating the Update: In response to Melissa McEwan, Six Degrees of Obama

So the new rule is Hillary (and Bill, her surrogates, etc.) cannot mention anything that someone might possibly, in some bizarre fashion, connect in some offensive way to Barack Obama within six degrees of separation?

…

The first player takes quote out of any statement by Hillary, Bill, or any Hillary staff member or prominent supporter, and the second player has to link a word from it to Barack Obama in an offensive way within six links.

Hillary says* “This is all a big kabuki dance”

Dance - racial sterotype of black people being good dancers - Obama is black - Obama danced with Ellen Degeneres on her show - Hillary is saying Obama is a good dancer because he’s black.

___________

Update to the update of the update: From the Argus Leader, where Hillary Clinton was being interviewed:

The Argus Leader’s Executive Editor Randell Beck issued the following statement today:

“The context of the question and answer with Sen. Clinton was whether her continued candidacy jeopardized party unity this close to the Democratic convention. Her reference to Mr. Kennedy’s assassination appeared to focus on the timeline of his primary candidacy and not the assassination itself.”

_________

One more: Commenter talex at TalkLeft:

What you won’t read on the blogs:

People are also ignoring the historical reference to Kennedy. Via Wikipedia:

“At the time of his death, [Bobby] Kennedy was significantly behind Vice President Hubert Humphrey in convention delegate support”

So you see, Bobby was still in the race in June even though he was running behind Humphrey in convention delegate support.

So the parallels with RFK are all Clinton’s: Senator from New York and underdog

Watch at YouTube

I have made the happy discovery that Appalshop has a YouTube channel, and because all three candidates are talking about clean coal, I thought it might be instructive to take a look at how we get the coal to begin with.

Yet.

Though I’m told I’ll probably be the last to know.

And that was in the day before agribusiness gifted us with Mad Cow Disease.

Squirrel and rabbit could be called the “soul food” of poor white southerners. Certainly they made a protein supplement when times were hard. My mother could shoot a squirrel out of a tree with a 22 rifle, and I’ve eaten a many, as we say, but it was a right smart while ago. I’m more inclined to buy my protein shrink-wrapped in plastic these days.

Squirrel brains are considered a delicacy. There’s a knack to cooking them and to eating them. My Daddy taught me how to do it and how to suck the marrow from a bone. I won’t go into it here. Some are squeamish. But I could do it if times got hard. Dress a chicken, too, and butcher a cow.

Though I do wonder why squirrel brains and not rabbit brains. Rebecca?

Anyway, to get to the point, the Lexington Herald-Leader endorses Barack Obama but, I’m glad to say, they aren’t just cheerleaders for their golden boy. Here are some wise words from their editorial today, and many thanks to the correspondent who pointed me toward them (emphasis added):

On the heels of his drubbings in Kentucky and West Virginia, we have two words for Sen. Barack Obama: road trip.

Once he has sealed the Democratic nomination, he should enlist one or both of the Clintons to show him around the states he lost so decisively.

Former President Bill Clinton has traveled enough Kentucky backroads this spring that he probably wouldn’t need a guide. And if actor George Clooney joined in, they’d have a native along.

What the presumptive nominee and his media entourage would find is that despite the region’s heartbreaking poverty, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s stronghold in the foothills and highlands of central Appalachia is not the exclusive domain of white racists desperate for their next meal of squirrel brains.

The region has been home to anti-slavery abolitionists, some of the American labor movement’s most courageous acts and a strain of Democratic politics that produced such stalwart progressives as the late Rep. Carl D. Perkins.

Obama didn’t contest Kentucky. So it’s not surprising that he lost or that he lost some counties 10 to 1. Kentucky Democrats are loyal to Bill Clinton because his years as president produced measurable improvements in their lives. Poverty declined while more people gained health insurance.

Bill Clinton’s economic expansion really did lift all boats, while the Bush years have been very, very good for a few while leaving many more people bailing furiously to keep afloat.

Obama shouldn’t write off Kentucky and West Virginia to Republican John McCain. But Obama needs to put some meat on his “change” message to reassure voters that, like Hillary Clinton, he’s offering practical solutions, especially for the economy.

…

With the notable exception of African-Americans, Hillary Clinton’s base is the Democratic Party base.

And Kentucky Democrats turned out in record numbers Tuesday. Forty-three percent of Democrats voted; the next highest turnout in a Democratic presidential primary was 31 percent in 1992.

I do not agree with the editor’s presumption that Obama is the Democratic nominee. After all, they said it themselves: Hillary Clinton’s base is the Democratic base.

But when, and if, he is that nominee then he’d better come see us, ya hear.