I wonder if his last words were "Strom Thurmond Lives?"

Previous Independence Day posts here, here, here, here, and from last year, here.

The last one is the funniest, the middle one is the most appropriate, but my favorite is still the first.

Today's apt quote from the Declaration:

A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

(I've posted things like this before, but now I'm tempted to make them a series.)

1. John McCain got Bud Day, one of the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" who spent most of 2004 intentionally lying about John Kerry's service record to prevent Kerry from being elected president, to attack Gen. Wesley Clark and Sen. Jim Webb for mentioning the incredibly obvious facts that:

   • John McCain deserves respect for the enormous sacrifice he made for this country, regardless of why he did it

   • Nonetheless, John McCain's military career was not a stellar one:

     • He graudated in the bottom 0.6% of his Naval Academy class. As Wikipedia puts it (with citations):

       McCain had conflicts with higher-ups, and he was disinclined to obey every rule, which contributed to a low class rank (894 of 899) that he did not aim to improve. McCain did well in academic subjects that interested him, such as literature and history, but studied only enough to pass subjects he disliked, such as math.

       Ignorance of areas he doesn't like and refusal to follow the rules pretty much define McCain's life.

     • After entering full-time naval aviation service, he crashed two planes and ran a third one into power lines.

     • He got shot down over Vietnam in October 1967, but of course that's not a sign of a bad pilot. Unlike other POWs, he received medical care because his father, Admiral John S. McCain, was an important US military leader who, in mid-1968, was named commander of all US forces in the Vietnam theater. While McCain refused an offer of early release for propaganda purposes ("the North Vietnamese … wanted to show other POWs that elites like McCain were willing to be treated preferentially"), he did crack under torture and signed an anti-American "confession" that he would not otherwise have signed:

       McCain slowly wrote, "I am a black criminal and I have performed the deeds of an air pirate. I almost died and the Vietnamese people saved my life, thanks to the doctors."

       This makes McCain's current support for torturing prisoners in US custody all the more repellent.

     • Upon release from Vietnam, McCain turned around an underperforming Navy flight squadron and served as the Navy's liason to the US Senate, but was not going to advance like his father had, as Wikipedia summarizes:

       McCain decided to leave the Navy. He was unlikely to ever make full admiral, as he had poor annual physicals and had been given no major sea command. In early 1981, he was told he would be made rear admiral; he declined the prospect, as he already made plans to run for Congress and said he could "do more good there."

     Most Naval officers never make admiral or read admiral, and their service, like McCain's, is still a great honor to this country and worthy of all the praise it receives. Even a bad soldier deserves his country's respect and support for his willingness to serve and sacrifice, and there's no evidence McCain was a bad servicemember. He just wasn't the stellar kind that would take him to the top. These are facts, not attacks.

2. McCain's decision to enter politics was backed by the finances of his new wife. His first wife, who supported him throughout his captivity, was in a disfiguring car accident in 1969, one McCain never knew about until he was released. He began cheating on his crippled wife in 1976 or 1977, and stared the affair with his current wife, Cindy Lou (Hensley) McCain, before he and his first wife separated and he sought a divorce. McCain takes responsibility for these actions, but I seem to recall that Bill Clinton taking "responsibility" for his in the same way didn't seem to satisfy the media in the slightest.

3. None of this would have worked for McCain had he not been able to get out of his first marriage so he could use his second wife's money to finance his first run for Congress. His divorce attorney, who helped make it all possible, was a fellow former Navy veteran who was also a Vietnam POW, and who saw McCain in the hospital at his lowest point, when they were all convinced he was about to die.

   Who was that attorney and decades-long friend of McCain? George "Bud" Day, the same "Swift Boat" liar that McCain's campaign brought out to claim that stating the facts about McCain's military career, and the fact that being a POW does not automatically qualify you for the presidency, was an attack on McCain.

4. McCain criticized the "Swift Boat" campaign in 2004 and called for it to stop, yet despite his own personal power as an influential member of the US Senate, a former presidential candidate, a media darling, and someone on John Kerry's short list for the Democratic vice-presidential nomination, McCain appears to have done nothing to tell his decades-long friend "Bud" Day to lay off, to stop lying, and to disown the group.

   Either McCain didn't really object to the group's attacks after all, or he was simply unable to exercise any leadership or control over people that he should easily have been able to influence by the threat of public personal denunciation.

5. This week, John McCain's campaign is attacking Barack Obama's campaign by saying that Obama can't control people he should easily be able to influence.

If the parties were reversed, and the Democratic candidate had this military career (like Kerry did) and the Republicans were the ones saying it wasn't an automatic qualifier for the Oval Office, he would be lambasted on CNN, MSNBC, and especially FOX News, every day, every show, every hour, for the next two months.

Not so much when the Republican candidate does it.

Also, if a Democratic candidate for president made constant mention of his time as a POW in campaign materials and commercials, but then continually let his surrogates claim that he "never talks about it," they'd be having a 24/7 wankfest over that, too. With John McCain, not so much.

Via OutSports Jock Talk Blog, we find this instance of the wingnuts going so absolutely crazy at the use of the word "Gay" that one of their "news" outlets has automatically changed the name of US sprinter Tyson Gay to "Tyson Homosexual."

If you're unaware of this particular psychosis of the bedwetters, John Aravosis explained it about a year ago:

Homosexual is the word the religious right uses expressly and uniquely in an effort to dehumanize gays. Anti-gay religious right activists have said publicly that they will not use the word "gay" - rather, they insist on using "homosexual." Why? Because for some reason or another they figure that the word homosexual helps their cause. And while I don't agree with the religious right on many things, their ability to gay-bash swiftly and effectively is unqestioned. If they think the word gay helps us and the word homosexual hurts us, who am I to argue?

Aravosis, in turn, links to the New York Blade, where it's explained in more depth:

But the distinction between the two terms is important and influential.

Every May since 2001 a Gallup poll asked Americans “In general, do you think homosexuals should or should not have equal rights in terms of job opportunities?”

The yes responses are as follows: 2001: 85 percent; 2002 86 percent; 2003 88 percent; 2004: 89 percent; 2005: 90 percent/87 percent; and 2006: 89 percent.

Note the two percentages given in 2005. That year, Gallup asked half the respondents about equal rights for “gays and lesbians,” resulting in a 3 percent higher approval compared with the Galllup’s typical use of the term “homosexual.”

…Switching the terms “gay” and “homosexual” also influenced the number of people who said they were against equal rights. According to the same Gallup poll mentioned above, in 2005, 7 percent said “gays and lesbians” should not have equal rights in terms of employment. But 11 percent said that “homosexuals” should not have equal rights. That translates to 4 percent change—in favor of LGBT equality—simply because of the terminology.

That's why they change "gay" to "homosexual" on every reference, even to the point of changing Tyson Gay's name. One can only wonder what they'd have done with this paragraph from the San Diego Union-Tribune:

But this is Gay, who breaks records and also breaks the mold of your typical world-class sprinter – the trash-talking, gesture-making, self-promoting, expletive-spewing mass of tattooed muscles. Gay, 25, is a mama's boy from Arkansas who goes to church, watches what he eats and gets to bed on time.

(Reposted 25 hours later because the server ate the original.)

CBS reporter speaks out about trivial, war-ignoring US media coverage.

Rupert Murdoch's media empire responds.

The prodigal Jesse at Pandagon makes this pretty simple (ellipsis mine to reduce TEH STOOPID; read the whle thing if you want more Andrew McCarthyism):

The National Review has been going predictably apeshit over the upholding of habeas corpus since the Supreme Court narrowly affirmed that the Constitution isn’t made of Charmin, but this bit by Andrew McCarthy makes me giggle:

It is difficult to single out the most outrageous aspect of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in the Supreme Court’s cataclysmic Boumediene ruling last Thursday: The reckless vesting of Constitutional rights in aliens whose only connection with our body politic is their bloody jihad against Americans […]

How dare the Supreme Court ask us to do something and then say it’s not good enough?

I do appreciate the idea that the Constitutional considerations embodied in the court’s first request for a better law somehow fly out the window because Congress responds to the request.  The MC Pee Pants Torture and Detainment Act of 2008 isn’t safe?  NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

"The reckless vesting of Constitutional rights in aliens whose only connection with our body politic is their bloody jihad against Americans." That, by the way, is a "bloody jihad" that neither McCarthy nor the entire United States government can prove, and he's wetting his pants because he doesn't want to have to prove it. Locking up TEH MOOSLIMOFASCISTS! for life because some guy in Afghanistan we never met is, somehow, good enough for him. Fortunately, that's not good enough for the Constitution.

To the pea-brained bed-wetters out there ready to throw the Constitution away over this decision (yeah, like you weren't ready before it, too): Look, this is pretty simple. You can't lock someone up without proving under the law why they need to be locked up. It's that simple. It's the same principle keeping Tom DeLay on your teevee, and that seems to make you happy enough.

Assuming for the moment that your fear of them is not entirely bigoted, you're probably shouting "Prisoners of war! Prisoners of war! They're prisoners of war! We don't let POWs go before the war is over! We never have! That's stupid!"

Sadly, no! First, your side has spent the past six years arguing that these people are not prisoners of war, because if they were, the protections of the Geneva Conventions (against, you know, hideous torture, random beatings, and death) would apply. You argue that because they're not from any "recognized nation-state," they can't be POWs.

Second, even if you gave in and said they wer POWs (which means, you know, that we have to stop torturing them, and we all know how much you love the idea that US soldiers are torturing the islamocommiefascistliberalMSNBCists every day), we'd have to send them home "when the war is over."

But there's been no declaration of war. There are no goals. There isn't even the tiniest smidgen of a glimmer of an idea of what would mean the "War on Terror" is over—which, essentially, means they're locked up for life on nothing more than the word of some Pashtun who collected $25,000 from the US Army for turning in his neighbor who didn't support the Taliban properly.

If they're not POWs, they have the right to challenge why they're being held and make the government prove that they're bad guys, and if they're anywhere near as bad as you say they are, that should take about two hours in any federal court. You're only worried because you know they're not bad guys, or at least weren't before you supported locking them up and torturing them for six years.

If they are POWs, they have Geneva Convention rights, including a clear statement of conflict that says when the war is "over" so they can be released. But President Bush has said that the "War on Terror" will last for decades. Again, and this is easy enough for conservatives to understand, that means these people were captured, imprisoned, and almost always tortured for years, and you want it to be decades, without anyone in the entire world capable of looking at the evidence (if any exists) and saying "no, you're wrong, this guy is not a terrorist."

Even that seems to be too hard for the folks at the Corner or Clown Hall, who are paid very well to make sure they don't understand these things. They're talking about "sovereignty" (the entire point of building the prison at Guantanamo Bay was to have it "not on US soil" so US laws would not apply, the exact position that the Supreme Court demolished in its slim 5-4 decision), or "aliens," or "combatants," or all this stuff. So try this extremely simple "Constitutional Law For TEH STOOPID" version:

The United States goverment, as a whole or through its designated representatives, can never act anywhere in ways prohibited by the Constitution..

The government is created and empowered by the Constitution. It is simply nonsensical to argue that the government is somehow not bound by the Constitution in any of its actions. In foreign lands, US agents (including soldiers) may not be able to guarantee freedom of speech or freedom of assembly to people who are not subject to US law, but those agents themselves must not restrict speech or assembly to those under their direct control.

It is beyond satire to argue that people acting under the auspices of the Constitution, anywhere in the world, can use that power to do things to others that they would not be allowed to do in the United States. If you can't imprison someone for life with no review here, you can't do it in Cuba. If you can't torture people here, you can't torture them in Syria (and you probably can't hand them over to Syria to have them tortured on your behalf).

There were POW camps in this country in World War II. One of them, housing over 1300 German and Japanese POWs, shipped over here from Europe, was right here.

During World War II, an eastern portion, 94 acres, of the Fort Reno lands served as an internment workcamp for German Prisoners of War. Mostly from Gen. Rommel's Afrikakorp, captured in North Africa, over 1,300 Germans were brought to Fort Reno by rail. While imprisoned here, the German POW's were hired as laborers for local farmers and in 1944 built the Chapel located to the north of the Parade Grounds. The west side of the historic military cemetery is where 70 German and Italian Prisoners of War are interred. Most of these men died at other POW camps in Oklahoma and Texas. Only one Fort Reno German POW died while imprisoned at the Fort Reno internment camp.

There are 62 German and 8 Italian Prisoners of War interred at the POW Cemetery added to the west end of the Post Cemetery. A number of Germans and Italians have made special trips to view the resting place of their relatives or friends. Every year a special memorial wreath appears on Veterans' Day in remembrance of those prisoners buried at the Fort Reno cemetery. A German-American Heritage Day is held at Fort Reno in November.

If you could not treat caputured "enemy" that way here, then you can't do it there. There ain't nothing in the Constitution that gives any part of the US Government the power to ignore the Constitution at any time. The government can never act anywhere in ways prohibited by the Constitution.

The right wing welfare machine is probably going to have to give these people a raise. It's not paying them enough to make sure they can't understand this simple and fundamental concept. Those of you on the conservative side should be looking out for the fundraising letters any day now.

It is possible to both respect a man and strongly criticize his work. That's how I felt about Tim Russert, who collapsed at his desk early this afternoon and died.

Earlier this week, I told my friend Faye that rolled my eyes at Russert's insistence that he be introduced as "NBC News Washington bureau chief and moderator of Meet The Press," because the word "moderator" gave his work a distinction I felt it did not deserve. In its original context, Meet the Press was exactly that: a television forum where news makers faced a panel of experienced reporters and answered their questions on live TV. Good reporters will pursue a topic that a subject wants to dodge, but that could go on for a full hour at times, and a moderator has to make sure that everyone gets a turn to speak and respond, and that the discussion doesn't get stuck on one topic when there should be more to cover.

Russert's Meet the Press hasn't been like that—he asks the questions, alone, and the candidate responds. And too often, Russert was willing to let them provide incomplete or false answers and then move on. He tended to latch onto narratives and then resist being shaken from them, like that Republicans are strong on national security, Guiliani was the strongest GOP candidate, and that John McCain is a "maverick" whose motives are beyond question.

Media Matters for America has documented plenty of instances of Russert asking tough "gotcha" questions of Democrats, but not pursuing the same tenacity towards Republicans, and of ignoring subjects the GOP would prefer not be brought up. And in today's hagiographies, you'll probably not hear much about his failure of journalism as exposed in the CIA leak scandal: it was revealed that Dick Cheney's office often chose to put their people on Meet the Press because it was their "best format" to "control [the] message." That was partially true because, as Russert testified (in Dan Froomkin's paraphrase), "when any senior government official calls him, they are presumptively off the record."

(To NBC News's credit, they did not shy away from this as much as you might expect. Their slideshow of Russert's career includes a courtroom sketch of him testifying in the Scooter Libby trial, image #6.)

Russert's insistence on being the "moderator" of Meet the Press deflected his own blame in these failings, because it invokes the image of a lofty guardian of a news tradition instead of admitting the truth: Russert was "the press" on Meet the Press more often than not, and Meet Tim Russert doesn't have the same ring to it.

Maybe that was because he was trained as a lawyer and was actually a member of the bar in both New York and Washington, D.C., and didn't want to have background conversations that would produce stuff that, as a reporter, he would feel obliged to use on the air immediately. As foreign as that seems, I understand it.

I try to commit journalism in my profession from time to time, but I also have off-the-record discussions with people in the know to help me understand the bigger picture. We write code for internal use and are members of Apple's developer programs, which involves non-disclosure agreements for unreleased products. In pure journalism, I would never agree to that because a pure reporter never agrees to acquire information he can't use in a report. I still question whether it's a good idea or not, but I know that without NDAs (and new product embargos, in which reporters agree not to mention news until a specific date and time), I'd be far far behind on new technologies when they were released. I try to justify it with "that's just how it's done," but it's difficult when unreleased information (like from a WWDC) gives you an understanding that you can't share. Do you get the bigger picture together so you're ready to talk when you can, or do you stay in the dark and try to pry it out of people who've agreed not to talk and risk not knowing anything before the new technology hits the streets? For Russert, I imagine that it was more like, "Do I talk to these people and understand their plans and philosophies, or do I remain purely reactive when I'm supposed to be explaining these things to millions of people?"

The risk, of course, is getting spun: the belated realization that what you learned privately was not the truth that couldn't be told yet, but spin (or lies) designed to make you believe an agenda was more pure than it was, and Russert seems to have fallen for that more than once.

Nonetheless, I have no doubts that, unlike an O'Reilly or a Limbaugh or a Hannity (or even Chris Wallace), Tim Russert always tried to find and report the truth, even if his own limitations or blinders failed him at times. He was a trustee of the Newseum. and according to the NBC and MSNBC anchors and reporters remembering him as I write this, was the driving figure in getting the interactive museum of news from its Arlington, VA home to a plum $450 million new home on Pennsylvania Avenue at Sixth Street NW in Washington, DC. He exhorted his colleagues every day to go out and get the story, whatever the story was. And this is to say nothing about the strong family life he maintained, in public, which is something a lot of less-visible reporters with cushy jobs can't manage to do.

Outside of journalism, Russert is probably best known for his devotion to his father, "Big Russ," a prominent player in his 2004 biography Big Russ and Me. He followed that with Wisdom of Our Fathers: Lessons and Letters from Daughters and Sons. Family, and especially father-child relationships, were a major focus of Russert's life: he had just returned to NBC News in Washington from a vacation with his family in Italy to celebrate his son's graduation from college. His wife and son were still there earlier today—Russert had come back to Washington for his weekend duties. He had already taped this weekend's episode of The Tim Russert Show for MSNBC, and I imagine it will air as scheduled at 11 AM CDT tomorrow, as tape stopped just a few hours before his passing. According to NBC News, he was recording a voice-over promo for this Sunday's Meet the Press when he collapsed and died—two days before Fathers Day.

When I look at a lot of these guys who have news blinders in specific areas, I want them off the air in favor of better reporters. Russert is one of those that, like Olbermann, I just wanted to get better. Once you get on the inside of anything, it's more difficult than you can imagine to get those blinders off. I'm not even close to suggesting I always can, or that I usually even come close, despite trying. But you can tell that Russert valued, above all else, the presentation and explanation of facts to the American people, particularly about government, how it works, who makes the decisions, and why they decide what they do.

It's easy for me to sit in the middle of nowhere, having had my ego destroyed rather thoroughly, and criticize others for letting their own egos get in the way when it still happens to me at times (probably more times than I know). Timothy John Russert, Jr. was imperfect, and didn't see some of the big things he should have seen. Yet, in a lot of ways, it's that the rest of his work was so good that made us ache for him to fix all the flaws, that in knowing and understanding more we might be—we could be—a more perfect union.

Tim Russert was 58.

After yesterday's latest Danborenocentric view of the universe, a friend asked me, "How does Oklahoma keep picking such crappy leaders?" He was referring not just to Boren but also to Inhofe, Coburn, and Sally Kern. We seem to have more than our fair share of stupidity-bigotry eruptions.

I told him that I don't think it's as much of a voter failure as it is a massive media failure. Most of it leads back to The Oklahoman and its coverage over the past 30 years under E.L. Gaylord. His father, E.K. Gaylord, was actually a newspaperman. E.K. had definite political leanings, but reporting the news still came first. Not so with E.L., who quite openly and proudly declared his intent to use the newspaper to promote his extreme right-wing political beliefs. Under E.L. Gaylord, pushing the right-wing agenda was the first and main purpose of the "newspaper." Reporting the news came in second on a good day, but usually somewhere around fourth. It's extensively documented, and resulted in the famous 1999 article in which the Columbia Journalism Review declared The Oklahoman to be The Worst Newspaper In America.

E.L. died a few years ago, and the paper has improved slightly, but not much in its politics. The old rules still apply: the paper extensively covers "good" things that Republicans do and "bad" things that Democrats do, but never the other way around unless it absolutely, positively cannot be avoided, and even then, it's minimized. For better or worse, the Oklahoma City television stations follow this model, probably to avoid the 150 shrieking harpies who'd call the stations 24/7 if they tried to report real news to their market that's actually more than 4000 times larger.

Take today, for example. When Jim Inhofe does something profoundly stupid, like pay big money to air a re-election commercial touting his many "fact-finding" trips on the taxpayer dime that have not changed one single sentence of Inhofe's pre-ordained right-wing policy, one that also says Inhofe believes Iraq is in Africa, it simply gets no coverage in The Oklahoman.

What does get into the paper? As the campaign for State Senator Andrew Rice, Inhofe's main challenger, points out, it's "nearly half a page of letters attacking Andrew Rice and dismissing the energy crunch that most Oklahomans are feeling."

All this in response to Rice's letter last week saying that we need real leadership to decrease our dependence on oil and develop alternative energies, which would benefit Oklahoma in a multitude of ways.

One of the letters garnered the headline, "Rice dangerous." The gentleman who wrote the letter asked, "Does it not make sense that the God who created the universe can take care of His creation? It's hard to believe that anyone wouldn't want to drill for America's oil."

Another, with the header "Rice lacks sense," was apparently shocked when Andrew stated that drilling in ANWR won't break our dependence on foreign oil.

I should point out here that the campaign is polite enough not to mention that the source for this gentleman's outrage is a column by Cal Thomas, who is kind of like Robert Novak without as much credibility or charm. Thomas is the kind of opinion writer the Oklahoman this is relevant and on the cutting edge. (Update: For an example, see this article deconstructing Thomas's recent column in which he appointed himself God and decides, based on his own beliefs, that Barack Obama is not a Christian.) Continuing:

Like Inhofe, this gentleman seems to be looking to point fingers of blame rather than find real solutions; he wrote, "Voters should learn who's to blame for this crisis. Which political party has blocked all attempts to address the problem in a practical, short-term way? The Democrats! It's not about one individual. It's about philosophy. Americans aren't ready to throw in the towel."

Andrew Rice is pushing for a more responsible energy future for our country, one that will lead the way toward a new energy economy worldwide. Reducing our dependence on oil is not defeatist—it's hopeful. Sen. Rice is looking out for our future and working to alleviate the energy crisis of today with sensible solutions, not easy and shallow promises that will bring no real relief. The economic opportunities that lie before us with creating new energy solutions are tremendous, and blocking them in the interests of maintaining the status quo is the real defeatist attitude.

So who's more dangerous—Oklahoma's senior Senator, who blocks good legislation and pushes more drilling to keep the special-interest oil money flowing into his pocket, or Andrew Rice, who's seeking to create responsible energy policies to protect our future?

As of three months ago, Inhofe's lobby-fed and oil-fed campaign purse was significantly larger than Rice's, even though Rice is one of the best funded and most energizing candidates against Inhofe since he pushed his way into office in 1994 by preaching hatred against everyone not like Inhofe. If you want to take Inhofe off the national teat and airwaves and put sane people (who know where Iraq is) back in control of our national policy, donate to Andrew Rice and make the baby Inhofe cry.

Rep. Dan Boren (D-OK2), 10 June 2008, explaining why he won't endorse his own party's nominee for President of the United States this year:

"I still remain very concerned about the (Obama) voting record being the most liberal of the United States Senate," said Boren, a superdelegate to this summer's national Democratic convention in Denver.

He expressed support for what he described as a "centrist" agenda, adding his party's presumptive nominee's record does not reflect that approach.

"Having said that, I am voting for Democrats this year," Boren said.

"I think it is very important that we have a change of direction in this country because we cannot afford the policies of George Bush to keep moving."

Rep. Dan Boren (D-OK2), 3 Mar 2006, rewarded for being a loyal Democrat (emphasis added):

U.S. Rep. Dan Boren, who opposed his party more often than any other U.S. House member last year, is part of the Democratic team of "whips" that tracks votes on key issues. Boren, of Muskogee, announced Wednesday he has been named an assistant whip.

"I will use my position on the Democratic whip team to continue my work for Oklahoma's priorities," the freshman congressman said. "We all have to come together to protect our borders, provide affordable health care, create jobs and address our nation's energy problems."

A study released this year by Congressional Quarterly showed Boren voted against the House Democratic Party's position 41 percent of the time in 2005, giving him the lowest "party unity" score of any House member of either party. Boren also sided with President Bush, a Republican, 65 percent of the time, the second-most of any House Democrat.

But House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland called Boren "a young, energetic member of Congress, and someone who is truly in touch with the values of America's heartland."

Rep. Dan Boren (D-OK2), 11 May 2006, lecturing other Democrats on how to win a majority in the US Congress:

Boren said Thursday, "I cannot move to where (Democratic leaders) want me to be. If I were to do the things the (Democratic) caucus wanted me to do, I would be unelectable in Oklahoma. If (Democrats) want to be in the majority, they're going to have to try electing people like myself."

So, yeah, I'm sure that Barack Obama and his 700 billion donors are really concerned about being on the wrong side of Dan Boren's political judgement.

Remember how I said that the problem with Sally Kern was that she wanted to enact her anti-gay agenda while pretending it was really everyone else who was trying to enact an agenda, but not sweet little Sally? (Well, that and enacting laws to enforce her religious beliefs upon all Oklahomans, while pretending that failure to do so was discriminating against her?)

Here we go again. Former nutcase state representative Bill Graves, who, thanks to a complete lack of critical thinking by someone somewhere is now a district judge in Oklahoma, is "upset over proposed changes in Oklahoma's Code of Judicial Conduct:"

The changes are modeled on wording in the American Bar Association code.

Graves says they are not based on state or federal law "but on proposals of the liberal, pro-homosexual American Bar Association."

He specifically objects to a proposed rule prohibiting judges from being members of groups that discriminate on the basis of race, age, sex, gender, religion, national origin, ethnicity or sexual orientation.

First, the AP headline goes way too far in Graves's favor. Something like "lunatic judge demands right to discriminate from the bench" would be just as accurate without the false implication of reasonableness that AP's headline provides.

Second, if you're a civil libertarian like me, your first thought might be, "Well, what business is it of the court's what a judge does in his spare time? He's got the right to free speech and free association just like everyone else."

This is true, of course, which is why Graves didn't link to the actual proposed changes to the Oklahoma Code of Judicial Conduct [PDF], where the changes are extensively explained and annotated.

Search for "orientation" (as in "sexual orientation") and you'll discover that the existing Code of Judicial Conduct says:

A judge should perform judicial duties without bias or prejudice. A judge should not, in the performance of judicial duties, by words or conduct manifest bias or prejudice, including but not limited to bias or prejudice based upon race, sex. religion, national origin, disability, age, sexual orientation or socioeconomic status, and should not permit staff, court officials and others subject to the judge’s direction and control to do so.

But Graves isn't objecting to that, because it's hard to prove that a judge was biased in the exercise of his official duties. The current code also tells judges not to let attorneys in his court advocate discrimination on any of those grounds unless they are a legitimate part of the case at bar.

This is one of the new sections that Graves objects to:

Discriminatory actions and expressions of bias or prejudice by a judge, even outside the judge’s official or judicial actions, are likely to appear to a reasonable person to call into question the judge’s integrity and impartiality. Examples include jokes or other remarks that demean individuals based upon their race, sex, gender, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, age, sexual orientation, or socioeconomic status. See Rule 3.6.

Graves's entire legislative history is "remarks that demean individuals," especially based upon their religion (if it's not his), national origin (damn immigrants), or sexual orientation. This would require him to, you know, stop being his bigoted self to stay on the bench.

But again, it would require proof that Graves has recently said these things to get him removed from a case or from the bench, and in the good ol' boy network, that can be hard to produce. That's why Graves specifically objects to this proposed new rule:

A judge shall not hold membership in any organization that practices invidious discrimination on the basis of race, sex, gender, religion, national origin, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.

That would be easy to prove and use against him, potentially costing him his cushy taxpayer-funded perch that he uses to discriminate against gay people since term limits (a Republican idea, I remind you) forced him to stop doing it in the legislature. Why add this restriction on a judge's outside conduct? A comment in the proposed code clarifies:

A judge’s public manifestation of approval of invidious discrimination on any basis gives rise to the appearance of impropriety and diminishes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary. A judge’s membership in an organization that practices invidious discrimination creates the perception that the judge’s impartiality is impaired.

In case you're wondering if this is all about hating the gays, Graves clarified that too in his letter, as reported by the AP:

[Graves] also says the new proposal could forbid judges from refusing to award children in custody and adoption cases because a person is homosexual.

He says studies have shown that is detrimental to children.

Well, no, they haven't. In fact, studies show exactly the opposite. You can download the book for free and read it yourself, something Graves will never do because it interferes with his hate, but here are the bullet points from the appropriate chapter:

• The sexual orientation of parents does not affect the psychological well-being of children.

• The sexual orientation of parents does not affect children's social development.

• The sexual orientation of parents does not affect children's cognitive development.

• The parenting skills of lesbian and gay parents are at least as good as those of heterosexual parents.

• The sexual orientation of parents does not affect the quality of their relationships with their children.

• Parents' mental health does not differ based on their sexual orientation.

• The quality of the couple relationship between the parents does not differ based on sexual orientation.

• Parents' sexual orientation has no impact on children's gender identity.

• Children raised by lesbian parents may fel less constrained by sex stereotypes than children raised by heterosexual parents. [Graves would likely think this is a bad thing.]

• Parents' sexual orientation does not determine the sexual orientation of their children.

And since Graves is probably referring to Paul Cameron's "studies," there's an entire sidebar pointing out his scientific dishonesty and biased research, just for extra fun.

Even with support for Sally Kern, hating on the homos isn't as socially acceptable as it used to be, so Graves is forced to go back to the old lie that if he's required to treat all people equally no matter who they sleep with, it will be "detrimental to children." The only real detriment to children of gay parents is from discrimination against their parents, which Graves has advocated all his career, currently enforces from the courthouse, and wants to make sure he can continue to do no matter how many children (or adults) it harms.

I hope he's up for re-election this year, and that his district gets as much of an earful of this as Sally Kern's district did about her view that the law must prohibit people acting against her religious beliefs or she's being "discriminated against."

Except the part about having a preference for Sen. Clinton, that is:

This primary season has to have dispelled the myth of the objective blogosphere that doesn't drink the kool-aid. If it hasn't, it certainly should have. The majority of the blogosphere became pro-Obama and savagely so, so much so that many major bloggers will tell you with a straight face that nothing misogynistic has ever come from the Obama campaign. (For example, nothing like Jesse Jackson saying that Clinton only cries for her looks, not for blacks who lost everything in Katrina.)

A much smaller, but nonetheless vocal part of the blogosphere clustered into a few enclaves to represent the other side, with at least a couple blogs becoming the mirror of what Corrente likes to call "Clinton Derangement Syndrome." The pure visceral contempt poured out by many pro-Obama bloggers was matched and returned.

That loathing has become so ingrained after months of attacks on the fundamental character of both candidates (she's fundamentally a racist southern cracker, he's a misogynist empty suit, according to the most rabid supporters of either side) that at all of these blogs one can regularly hear the commenters, and on the diary sites, even front paged posts saying they would never vote for the other candidate. In the early months you'd hear it more from the Obama side, but of late, as it's become clear that Obama was the strong favorite to win, it came more and more from Clinton's supporters.

Now I'm no sweet disinterested observer. I have a preference, and it's for Clinton. I've even defended her, being one of the few not firmly at one of the Clinton-blogs willing to come out swinging on her behalf when she was, in my opinion, ludicrously accused of staying in the nomination battle in hopes of Obama being assassinated. It was an odd accusation, because even if Clinton had stepped out of the nomination battle and then Obama had been assassinated, it was unthinkable that anyone but her would be nominated. I can't think of any scenario in which the second place finisher who received almost 50% of the vote, wouldn't have received the nod. Clinton didn't need to stay in the nomination battle to be the nominee in such a scenario. It made less than no sense.

Bloggers pride themselves in somehow "not drinking the kool-aid". But for the past few months too many of them have acted like the worst members of the media pack. Whoever their candidate is can do no harm, and anything the opposing candidate done is spun in whatever way it can be read worse. Rezko is a corrupt bagman and Obama knew everything. Clinton is so stupid and evil that the only reason she's staying in the race is in hopes of Obama being killed. Obama is a misogynistic jerk and his wife hates America. Clinton is personally racist and her husband is so racist he essentially a southern cracker, not the president who liked African-Americans so much he set up his office in Harlem.

And yet, I'm here to tell you that on most major issues, there isn't a huge amount of sunlight between Clinton and Obama. Oh, there are places where there's some difference. Clinton's health care plan is universal, Obama's is not. But neither are that progressive, neither is, say, "single payer". Obama's telecom plan is better than Clinton's. Clinton's economic stimulus plan was slightly more progressive than Obama's. (You might argue that. You would be proving my point at how little light there is between them.) Obama's key economic advisers are Chicago School economists—guys who are essentially acolytes of Milton Friedman, the Republican icon. Clinton's aren't quite that bad, but they sure aren't progressive.

And the actual voting records of Obama and Clinton, their actions, which are supposed to speak louder than their words, indicate that they are centrist Democrats, not progressives.

Despite the fact that neither of them, on their actual records, is a progressive and the fact that their actual policy proposals are pretty similar to each other, the "progressive" blogosphere has been acting as if this is a battle which matters a great deal. It has acted as if the difference between Obama and Clinton is night and day, and that one of them (usually Obama, but sometimes Clinton) is so much better than the other one that it isn't even close.

Not only is it close, but the differences are minor. Folks like Dodd and Kucinich, and to a lesser extent Edwards, who actually made a somewhat radical critique of what is wrong with America, aren't in this fight anymore.

As the line runs about academia, the fight has been so vicious because so little is at stake.

As I like to say instead of "me too," go read the whole thing. (Via Firedoglake.)