Goldtoe Lemon.Nut

Ed wrote a great post explaining why Obama should be your pick in the primaries. To summarize:

He doesn’t just want to change our government, he wants to change the way that all of us speak about what our government should do.

This is a very good argument. I've been in a lot of arguments about Obama's ability to actually get things done. It's all well and good that folks believe in him, but half the Congress won't. How do you overcome the legislative problem.

The best answer is that you change what people expect of their government. Folks have become used to expecting nothing. We need to change the language around what people think government should do. Obama is the only candidate who can do this.

This also goes to the reason I'm so worried about Clinton as the nominee. Even if she wins - which I feel is unlikely against McCain - the best we can hope for is 4 years of obstructionist government. There will be members of the Republican party calling for her impeachment within the first 100 days.

Ed can't vote because he's a felon (check fraud) an immigrant (Trinidad). Help make his immigrant wishes come true!

• Percentage of Americans who believe the Constitution establishes a Christian nation: 55%


• Number of times "God" "Jesus" "Christ" or "Christian" are mentioned in the Constitution: 0


• Number of times "religion" or "religious" are mentioned in the Constitution: 2


• Percentage of those references constituting limits on Congressional power: 100%

The first statistic comes from a survey from the First Amendment Center. The 55% is the sum of "Strongly agree" (38%) and "Mildly agree" (17%) for the question "The US Constitution establishes a Christian nation." While the 1000 person phone survey is conducted every year, there's unfortunately not historical data for this question.

The other three statistics come from doing a control-F on the text of the US Constitution ... which apparently 55% of Americans should read.

I was looking at the latest Newsweek poll (what's up 26% Bush approval rating!), and noticed a number of questions about how people feel about voting for minority candidates.

For example, 85% say they would vote for a woman if she were nominated by their party to be president. This, compared to 92% for a black candidate, 65% for a Mormon, 80% for a Hispanic.

When asked if they thought "America was ready for a woman president" 58% of respondents said "Yes." This, compared to 59% for a black candidate, 35% for a Mormon, 40% for a Hispanic.

The difference between the two number is interesting to compare. In some sense, you could divide the latter number by the former to come up with a "perceived bigotry" coefficient for each minority. It works out to .68 for women, .64 for blacks, .53 for Mormons and .50 for Hispanics.

What the perceived bigotry coefficient basically means is "however willing people say they are to accept you, you should multiply that value by the PBC to come up with what people believe other people are actually willing to accept."

One result is that even though Mormons have the lowest percentage of people who say America is ready for a Mormon president (35%), it's Hispanics who have the smallest PBC.

An important point is that the PBC is based on what other people perceive ... people don't think they're racist, but suspect others are.

Tony Snow's press briefing included a number of gems today.

Q: There are more than 3,000 current petitions for commutation ... Will all 3,000 of those be held to the same standard that the President applied to Scooter Libby?

MR. SNOW: I don't know.

Yeah, that's a 'no.' It's crazy that they won't even admit to special handling here.

On that point, and in honor of America's birthday, I would like to confess to my own special treatment at the hands of the criminal justice system.

It was twelve years ago, Independence Day 1995. I was sweating out my last few weeks in St. Louis before heading off to college. Aaron F., Andrew A. and I decided to celebrate America with Chinese black powder. So with TLC's Waterfalls on the radio, we headed out to Eureka, MO to buy a bunch of fireworks.

Fireworks are illegal in St. Louis County, so you need to go out to the boonies to buy them. As soon as you cross the county line you can stop at any number of air-conditioned Costco-sized fireworks megastores and load up on some serious artillery.

Well-equipped, we rode back in style to West County in Andrew's LeBaron convertible. And in the massive housing development of Seven Pines, we settled in with our explosives.

Our three lady companions (not girlfriends) were just barely willing to go along with this nonsense. But we had a grand old time setting off roman candles and the like in Andrew's cul-de-sac.

About an hour later, St. Louis County cops came blazing down the street right as we were setting off some bottle rockets. Andrew's crappy neighbors had ratted us out.

I took the lead in talking to the cops ... not that I had a particular negotiating ploy in mind. They informed me that we were busted for fireworks. I said "Ok."

I did manage to get our lady friends off the hook by pleading with him just to ticket us dudes. This blatantly sexist ploy went over well with the municipal employees of St. Louis County.

It looked like this was gonna be a big pain. Andrew, Aaron and I were all headed off to college out of state and we were being summoned to appear before Superior Court in the middle of fall semester.

But it turns out Andrew's uncle is a successful lawyer in St. Louis and he took our case on pro bono.

Over the course of the next couple months, I'd occasionally get type-written letters from his law firm informing me about progress on the case. One stated that he'd negotiated a plea whereby we could plead guilty to either jay-walking or littering (our choice) and get off the hook with a small fine. I wrote back to say that jay-walking was preferred as it seemed less evil.

A few more months passed, a few more notices from the County saying that a continuance had been granted in the case. And then in the spring of my freshman year, a note from the assistant district attorney. All charges had been dropped.

I think Andrew's uncle finally made the DA realize that the People's interests would be better served by prosecuting a different crime. Maybe one that wouldn't involve swapping paper for 9 months with a fancy attorney in private practice.

And so I was effectively Libbied - given special treatment because of my connections despite the transparency of the crime committed. But at least I can admit it.

So, Happy Birthday, America and congrats to you, Scooter! As we sang back in that hot summer in St. Louis, "I know that you're gonna have it your way / or nothing at all. / But I think you're moving too fast."

Found out from the Daily Show that Operation: Centaur Rodeo was actually a thing back in Spring 2004 of the Iraq War.

Centaur Rodeo is a righteous name. I can only hope that somewhere a deserving band is considering it as their handle.

Unfortunately, Operation: Centaur Rodeo's track record doesn't look that good on paper: "As of March 30, 2004, coalition forces had seized 3 people and numerous weapons."

I'm no cowboy, but three ponies makes for a pretty sad rodeo.

We're now at the point when John Ashcroft has to be propped up in a hospital bed to serve as the last line of defense against illegal wiretaps. How far off are we from finding out that Donald Rumsfeld was all that stood between us and war with Iran?

Slate on the recent spate of former Bush insiders who are going public with their dissatisfaction:

The only downside to deserting Bush at this late hour is that sooner or later all the best media outlets will be used up. Please note, however, that Slate's dance card is still free. If you are a reasonably visible Bush loyalist who would like to declare the current administration a complete disaster, please e-mail chatterbox@slate.com. You'd better make it good, though. This story's starting to get old.

I worked with Lorna and Michael at the Googs and thought they were a swell bunch of kids.

This past weekend they were all ready to purchase a new car but had to put the kabosh on the whole plan at the very last minute. The dealership has a policy of collecting and keeping buyer thumbprints for a period of 7 years and Lorna and Michael weren't willing to go along with that.

I'm sitting here wearing my EFF t-shirt and even though I know that this policy is totally ridiculous, I'm 75% sure I would have gone along with it. I've got a lot of respect for Mike and Lorna's willingness to walkaway when it didn't feel right.

Except for the allegation that the US Attorney firings were somehow connected to voter fraud investigations, that whole controversy strikes me as one of the least sensational Bush administration scandals.

(Anyone remember when our man in Iraq, Ahmed "You may remember me from such films as: The State of Union 2004" Chalabi got arrested under suspicion of working with the Iranians? Good times.)

But is it really surprising that they'd fire political appointees who didn't agree with administration policy mandates? For crissakes, these are the people that outed a covert agent because they were pissed at her dude.

But given that Congress can't seem to keep us from working on Operation: Tehran, I'm cool with whatever trophies they're able to bring home these days. So the other side gets the perpetual war, amendments I, IV thru VIII, the tax cuts and the personal blessing of God's only begotten son ... we (probably) get the resignation of Alberto Gonzales. Seems fair.

There are other consolation prizes. Like this gem from the White House press briefing last week:

Mr. Snow:Loyalty to the President means doing your job and faithfully carrying out the priorities of the administration. I think I laid it out, when you're talking about U.S. attorneys, that means following the priorities within the Department of Justice; it means doing your job -- doing it faithfully, all.

Q: How about the oath to office?

Mr. Snow: We believe in that, too. Chow time. (Laughter.)

Man's gotta eat.

The anti-war movement's inability to separate the war in Iraq from the occupation of Palestine is analogous to President Bush's inability to separate 9/11 from the invasion of Iraq.

Focus, people.

You know when you're having an arguement and you find yourself saying something that is logically correct but rhetorically brain dead? I just saw a great example of this on CNN about the Pastor Ted scandal.

Ted Haggard's accuser, Mike Jones, has said he came forth about his affair with the evangelical minister because of Pastor Ted's campaign for Colorado's same-sex marriage ban. When an associate pastor at Haggard's New Life Church asked if Ted's support of the amendment constituted hyprocrisy he replied "To my knowledge, Mike Jones has not alleged that Ted asked him to marry him."

Good point, preacher. Unless Pastor Ted actually proposed marriage during his meth-fueled gay romps with Mike Jones it would be unfair to state that he's contradicted his position on gay marriage. You win this round.

The 9/11 conspiracy theories are going mainstream ... or at least they've made the front page of Salon and there's talk of theatrical distribution for the leading alternative history documentary.

I had a number of friends in high school who were really into JFK conspiracies and it kinda fascinated me how a single event, observed by so many, could be interpretted in so many divergent ways. Surely, I thought, if only we had better documentary evidence of the assassination, we could settle the issue once and for all.

The 9/11 conspiracies are a strong rebuttal to that point. Not only do you have arguments about whether the Pentagon was hit by a plane or a cruise missile, but there are even folks who don't believe planes hit the Twin Towers.

We're talking about an event that was witnessed live by millions of people and video taped from numerous angles. And yet, apparently, those arguing on the side of heretofore unknown holographic technology have achieved enough of a foothold that someone needs to write 20-odd pages explaining precisely how preposterous this sounds.

Holograms, for crissakes! Makes the grassy knoll seem pretty pedestrian.