This may be of interest to some--a letter written by Idaho Republican Representative Butch Otter...

***

July 30, 2003

Mr. Jason Clark

Dear Jason,

Thank you for contacting me regarding the "Patriot Act." I appreciate hearing from you and having the benefit of your views.

The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on our country demonstrated that our country's defenses were inadequate for the new threats we face. President Bush and Attorney General Ashcroft asked the Congress for new powers to interdict and prosecute the increasingly de-centralized terrorist networks operating in our country. I agreed that some of the new powers they requested were necessary, and supported large parts of the Patriot Act, which was passed during the 107th Congress.

Some of the provisions of this legislation, however, could not be justified-even in the face of the current threats. For instance, the Patriot Act authorizes no-knock searches of private residences. These "sneak and peak" searches would give the government the power to repeatedly search a private residence without ever informing the residents that they were the targets of an investigation. Section 215 of this bill authorized the government, with the permission of a secret court, to seize the business records of any business establishment in the country, then order the proprietor not to inform anyone that the records had been seized. This extraordinary provision would make every business an adjunct of the government and threaten the 1st Amendment rights of their employees. Section 220 authorized any federal judge to issue search warrants for anywhere in the United States if any terrorist activity whatsoever occurred within his jurisdiction. This places the rights of all Americans at the whim of judges who don't have any connection with the areas which they are issuing warrants for.

Perhaps the worst provision of this legislation is Section 203, which authorizes the unlimited sharing of information between intelligence agencies and federal law enforcement. There are no restrictions on what kind of intelligence may be received or which agencies may receive it. This projects the CIA, NSA, and other such agencies into law enforcement. Giving federal law enforcement agencies access to the almost unlimited collection apparatus of our intelligence organizations is granting a blank check to the federal government.

During the debate on the Patriot Act, I rose on the House floor to remind my colleagues that secret courts, no-knock searches, and nationwide warrants were all things our founding fathers had fought to gain their freedom from. While my colleagues voted by a margin of 357-66 to pass the bill into law, and the Senate voted by a margin of 98-1, I could not vote to abrogate the constitutional rights of my constituents.

In retrospect, many Members of Congress have recognized that the Patriot Act was passed in haste during the emotional few months following September 11, 2001. There seems to be a growing sentiment to roll back some provisions of the Patriot Act and to restore some our of lost liberties-even among my colleagues who supported the legislation when it came before the House. As you may know, I recently offered an amendment to H.R. 2799, the Commerce, Justice, State and Judiciary Appropriations Act of 2003, which targeted the so-called "sneak-and-peek" provisions of the Patriot Act. That this amendment passed overwhelmingly by a vote of 309-118 speaks to the fact that many Americans, Members of Congress and private citizens alike, are demanding a reconsideration of this controversial legislation.

This amendment is just the first step in restoring the fundamental rights and liberties we compromised in the USA PATRIOT Act. I have also joined with Representatives Bernie Sanders and Ron Paul to sponsor another such effort, H.R. 1157, the Freedom to Read Protection Act of 2003. I will continue working with my colleagues-Republicans and Democrats alike-on legislation that will bring balance back to the equation of protecting our rights and providing for our homeland security. In the meantime, you can be confident that I will adamantly oppose any legislation that expands or strengthens the dangerous provisions of the Patriot Act and will use my good office to work with citizens and groups from around the country to protect our freedoms.

Thank you once again for contacting me.

As always, "Idaho - Esto Perpetua"
?
C.L."Butch" Otter
Member of Congress

CLO/mmj
posted by Mike B. at 10:48 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, July 29, 2003

Thinking more about about that whole McCarthy thing: if politics is just an expression of naked self-interest (and if you dig Coulter, it probably is), then it makes more sense than it would appear on first incredulous blush. I mean, carrying out a witch hunt ruins the viability of the opposition and, no matter how cynical, would seem to benefit the McCarthyites.

Then again, that whole thing ended up...well, in the 60's. And I know conservatives hate the 60's, but it was kind of a bad time for them.

So witch hunt away, kids! Maybe you could start with Joe Lieberman? I hear he's Jeeeeeewish...

posted by Mike B. at 12:55 PM 0 comments

I was thinking last night about the present-day equivalent of Madonna's mainstream controversiality (there's a word for you), and I realized that the person espousing a moderate response to speech codes, as I've wondered about before, would be...

Eminem.

Hmm.

I'm kind of interested in running down Eminem's policy positions, as it were, to see how he manages to be controversial while still being widely supported and not regarded as whiny. (I'd also be interested in seeing what vaguely controversial positions non-right-wing talk show hosts espouse--the usual "look at these people being stupid" kind of thing you hear on morning zoo shows.) Madonna, for instance, embraced pro-sex women's lib (pro-choice, pro-personal expression, pro-orgasm) in a way that allowed her to fully enrage one segment of the population (xtians, conservatives) while getting embraced by another segment (women, libby men). Eminem pisses off the right by talking about sex and violence a lot, and just by being a rapper; he gets the left by being working-class (well, used to be) and anti-racist but taking enough contrary stances that they can still respect him in the morning. Of course, Em's stuff seems way more personal and way less political than Madonna, although admittedly she was working in a pesonal-is-political kinda field. But maybe I'm selling him short. So lessee...

- Anti-gay but pro-gay marriage ("There's no reason that a man and another man can't elope (eww)") - kind of enlightened Santorumism
- Anti-corporate ("There's a million of us just like me, we could be working at Burger King, spitting on your onion rings, doing circles in the parking lot, screaming 'Just don't give a fuck' with the windows down and the system up" - if I got that one right)
- Anti-mainstream culture ("Trying to decide which Spice Girl to impregnate") while being happily mainstream himself
- Anti-media-focusing-on-unimportant-issues (i.e., his personal life)
- A, um, complicated relationship with women's issues (a punk-rock one, if Travis Morrison is to be believed--Well, she said, it was really awesome, a couple of guys from our crew noticed that he was hitting on me and went over and got in his face and they got in a fight and they totally creamed the guy. I was speechless. This was awesome? This is the “punk” scene that rejected false suburban values? It sounds like the damn 1950’s to me.). He, you know, likes women, but he kind of distrusts them. Maybe this is appealing because it implies an express powerlessness?

That's all I got. Of course, the standard line on Eminem is that he's just expressing things white males think but shouldn't say in public, and from this rundown I'm not sure how true that is, politics-wise, but it's important (and oft-overlooked) that he says it in a real funny way. And from there...

posted by Mike B. at 11:58 AM 0 comments

Just how much faith do neocons have in the free market?

The Pentagon office that proposed spying electronically on Americans to monitor potential terrorists has a new experiment. It is an online futures trading market, disclosed today by critics, in which anonymous speculators would bet on forecasting terrorist attacks, assassinations and coups. Traders bullish on a biological attack on Israel or bearish on the chances of a North Korean missile strike would have the opportunity to bet on the likelihood of such events on a new Internet site established by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency...

The Pentagon, in defending the program, said such futures trading had proven effective in predicting other events like oil prices, elections and movie ticket sales.

"Research indicates that markets are extremely efficient, effective and timely aggregators of dispersed and even hidden information," the Defense Department said in a statement. "Futures markets have proven themselves to be good at predicting such things as elections results; they are often better than expert opinions."

That right there: that's faith for you. Blinding.

posted by Mike B. at 11:15 AM 0 comments

Monday, July 28, 2003

Some days, you know, it doesn't bother me. But other days I think about the fact that Joe McCarthy is being regarded as a pretty good guy, idea-wise, and I get really, really pissed off.

The fact that he has any traction instead of being regarded as a perfect example of the evil that goverment can produce is just sickening. Yikes.

posted by Mike B. at 6:21 PM 0 comments

My friend Phil has a blog called Kicking Puppies, and this is a pretty cool post, even beyond the fact that it uses the term "prohomo."

posted by Mike B. at 3:57 PM 0 comments

Reading this Salon story about a College Republican conference, I couldn't help but think: man, I wish Hunter S. Thompson wrote this. There's some good tidbits in there, but overall, the general tone of sneering condescension--"their faces hard and triumphant atop blue suits and evening gowns as they belted out the letters" etc.--was, I think, less useful than Thompson's usual one of shocked disbelief and willing intervention.

Anyway, excerpts:

"As conservatives, we don't hate America," Erickson told his young audience. "The life of a liberal is hell. It is not possible to have a debate, a discussion, with someone who at their root, at their core, hates everything this country stands for but doesn't hate it enough to leave."

(snip)

Ann Coulter's latest book, "Treason," which tarred virtually all Democrats as traitors, may have been denounced by conservative intellectuals, but its message has pervaded the party. Gene McDonald, who sold "No Muslims = No Terrorists" bumper stickers at the Conservative Political Action Conference in January, was doing a brisk trade in "Bring Back the Blacklist" T-shirts, mugs and mouse pads.

(snip)

The room filled up again, though, when Warrior, an ex-WWF wrestler who has built a second career as a mascot for the right, took the stage that afternoon. Warrior -- that's his full legal name -- spoke at the Conservative Political Action conference in January, and has been one of the most requested speakers among conservative organizations ever since.

Dressed in a blue pinstriped suit, his long, dirty-blond hair pulled into a ponytail, Warrior explained why he'd left the world of wrestling. "When it became degenerate and perverted," he said, "I dismissed myself from pursuing it as a career anymore."

The speech that followed contained references to thinkers from Socrates to Tom Paine, and perhaps it would require a scholar of the classics to discern its meaning. "America was founded on that primary premise, that America would survive only as long as its people live up to their means," Warrior thundered.

(snip)

One message that was clear was a hatred of nuance or ambivalence. To defeat the "pervasive degeneracy, ignorance and destruction of soul" that prevails today, he said, "you must live to judge and be ready to be judged ... extremism in defense of moral behavior is no vice." [note: quote of the day.] The saying "there are two sides to every story," he told his audience, "brings your loved ones closer and closer to tyranny and outright annihilation."

(snip)

If Bush and his successors remain in power for the next decade, Cole believes, we'll have a world "where leaders say what they mean and follow it up ... millions and millions will enjoy the freedoms that our forefathers fought for. Democracy will spread across the world. Iraq was a phenomenal start. In Africa, the United States is helping Liberia and giving AIDS relief. Soon, they'll be back on the economic track. People now living in squalor will experience a home-owning boom like that following World War II. Look at how Staten Island was developed ..."

(snip)

Alexandre Pesey, a 28-year-old French conservative writing a Ph.D. thesis on the conservative movement in America, England and Germany, admires Bush's honesty and was pleased with the reception his American comrades had given him. But "some are a bit simple," he mused. "You can find strange people with American-flag ties." The bellicose religiosity of the event, with group prayers before every meal, also puzzled him. "That we cannot understand," he says. "Religion is private."

(snip)

Sibeni, who had spiky hair, glasses and a long face, is high-strung and given to rash pronouncements. He denounced assassinated civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. for "dividing the country" and trying to help African-Americans "advance over the white society," and defended American support of the brutal Augusto Pinochet regime in Chile. Chen, who went to high school with Sibeni in Great Neck, Long Island...Chen seemed so mild and centrist that at one point I called him a closet Democrat. Taken aback, he replied: "How am I a closet Democrat? I'm racist, I love guns and I hate welfare."

He wasn't kidding. "I'm racist against anybody who doesn't work for a living," said Chen, whose family comes from Taiwan. "We're in Washington D.C. You can guess who that is." He's no fan of religion, but says he's less bothered about paying tax dollars to faith-based programs than to "crack whores who have eight kids because it's easier than working."

"I wish there could be racial equality," said Sibeni, who, while in high school, refused to attend Martin Luther King Day celebrations. "The number one reason there's racial inequality is because of hip-hop."

(snip)

All four of them believe they have lost opportunities to affirmative action. "I applied to NYU and I didn't get in," says Sibeni. "My SAT scores weren't the greatest ..."

"You were just another white guy from Long Island," says Ferruggia. "The only person you can really discriminate against anymore is white men."

Ferruggia, the daughter of a pharmaceutical salesman, was valedictorian of her Southwest Florida high school. "I had the highest SAT scores in between five and 10 years" at her school, she says, and feels affirmative action cheated her out of scholarships. "I watched minority after minority after minority accept these awards ... I'm tired of people whining that I'm taking away from them."

"A lot of poor white people in the trenches of Appalachia, they don't complain, they go out and work," said Ferruggia's blond friend, who sat quietly next to her for most of the evening. "Black people have been given a lot of chances ..."

"And they always screw it up," said Sibeni.

posted by Mike B. at 3:07 PM 0 comments

More:

***
To: "Catherine Lewis"
Sent: Monday, July 28, 2003 12:17 PM
Subject: Re: argh

Catherine-

Fair enough about the draught, but like I say, I think the way you folks handle the negative letters you do receive may have an effect on that. But maybe not.

Good to know that you need to be cc'ed on letters to the writers if they're gonna get published--you may want to put something to that effect on the staff or contact page, as I was actually unaware.

Incidentally, while I've got you: there was this odd phenomenon where Brent's "official" response to my and someone else's White Stripes letters, published on April 7--a response which was odd enough in that it was in the third person and kind of un-parsable--was taken down the next day. Any memory of what was up with that?

Thanks for the reply.

***

From: "Catherine Lewis"
Sent: Monday, July 28, 2003 1:04 PM
Subject: Re: argh


> Good to know that you need to be cc'ed on letters to the writers if they're
> gonna get published--you may want to put something to that effect on the staff
> or contact page, as I was actually unaware.

Yeah, I'm thinking about how to handle that....

> Incidentally, while I've got you: there was this odd phenomenon where Brent's
> "official" response to my and someone else's White Stripes letters, published on
> April 7--a response which was odd enough in that it was in the third person and
> kind of un-parsable--was taken down the next day. Any memory of what was up
> with that?

Yeah.... it wasn't really from Brent. I thought it was, based on the tone and the return address, but it wasn't, so I took it down rather than changing the headline, etc. I'm sorry about the confusion on that (although I must admit, I was as confused as everyone else :)

***

Well, that clears up something I've been wondering about for a while.

posted by Mike B. at 1:23 PM 0 comments

I wrote me a letter to PF.

***

To:
Sent: Monday, July 28, 2003 11:20 AM
Subject: argh

Catherine:

You write-

As far as the deranged fan-of-the-week mail: As the one who sorts through most of those letters and picks which ones appear on the site, I can tell you they start to sound very formulaic after a while ("Dear Pitchfork, I disagree with your review of ___, therefore you have bad writing, therefore you sukkk. PS -can I write for you sometime?"). Sometimes it feels like indie-rock MadLibs...

Iee. Look, I understand how demonstrating that the people who disagree with you are stupider than you can be entertaining for the Pitchfork partisans, and loath would be I to stand in the way of such entertainment. But please don't pretend like that's the only kind of negative mail you get. I know for a fact that some pretty intelligent, non-Mad Libby criticism gets sent to you guys, and you publish way, way less of that than of the inarticulate fanboy rantings. (The ratio's about 1:20 by my count, and even when that 1 goes go up there, it's with a snarky headline.) So don't complain about the quality of discourse on the letters page when you give people the distinct impression that the only way their critical opinion is going to get published is if it's misspelled and illogical, and when you don't publish the intelligent criticism that you do get, because--heaven forfend--it might make y'all look wrong.

I know this is the internet and whatnot, but c'mon now.

***

And I got me a response:

***

Mike, I LOVE the well-written criticisms. I love it even more when the writer responds back. And I can say that a large majority of those that I receive DO get published (notable exception is when there's a lot of back-and-forth between the writer & the fan, or when the writer has composed several responses to a certain review -- I do have to pick-and-choose in that case. Which is why your dialogue about the Liz Phair review never got published, fyi.)

Honestly, I haven't gotten that much mail recently. I can't tell if that's because people don't care any more, or if readers don't know to send it to me, or if there's a lot getting sent to the writers that isn't getting passed along to me. In hopes that it's the latter, I've sent a reminder note out to the reviewers, so we'll see if that rounds up some good critiques.

Thank you for writing,
Catherine.

***

More in a bit.

posted by Mike B. at 12:07 PM 0 comments

Worst. Logic. Ever.

"The state's run like a zoo," said Rob Fleming, 43, a truck driver and registered Democrat, as he stood outside the Department of Motor Vehicles in Hollywood on a recent afternoon. He called the fee increases taxation without representation.

"That's why I'm going to go with the Terminator on this one," he said, referring to Mr. Schwarzenegger by one of his movie roles. "He's already got the money. He's not looking to line his pockets. Maybe he's honest. Maybe he's for the people."

Yeah, when you're trying to find someone not interested in making money, look for a rich person. Sigh.

posted by Mike B. at 12:03 PM 0 comments