Yesterday I went to the Electronics Entertainment Expo which was pretty disappointing compared to previous years. One of the things that I was really impressed by though was a flyer that was given to every attendee at the registration booths for the IDSA’s Grassroots Program (quote from the flyer) :

While “on the ground” advocacy in Washington, DC is effective, efforts are greatly enhanced when Members of Congress hear directly from their individual and corporate constituents back home.

ISDA’s Legislative Action Center allows you to have the power to take immediate action on issues affecting the computer and video game industry (i.e. I.P. protection, regulating the content of our products, etc.)

This program will not only inform you on these issues, but lead you through a step by step process of composing a letter to your respective Members of Congress on a given issue.

Wouldn’t it be great if the Democratic party had a program like this? The Republicans already do.

Well, their hearts are in the right place :

An attempt to broaden Canada’s hate-crimes laws to include protection for homosexuals has sparked a fierce debate in Parliament over whether the Bible and the Koran could be branded as hate literature.

It centres on a bill from gay Member of Parliament Svend Robinson that would make it a crime, punishable by up to two years in prison, to incite or promote hatred against homosexuals.

But his attempt to end gay-bashing has brought warnings that pastors or imams could be thrown into jail for preaching homosexuality is evil and that their scriptures could be banned or confiscated.

I don’t know much about Canadian laws, but it seems like they’re using some really broad terms here. Shouldn’t their hate crimes law be more concerned with eliminating crimes against homosexuals and not hatred? It would be a shame for a hate crimes law that protects homosexuals to be shot down because they’re afraid of banning the Bible.

The Memory Hole has an archive of some of documents from Congress’s joint inquiry into 9/11 that the Bush Administration is now trying to retroactively classify. Among the findings is that the major failures weren’t with the collection of intelligence, but the analysis of that intelligence :

In short, for a variety of reasons, the Intelligence Community failed to capitalize on both the individual and collective significance of available information that appears relevant to the events of September 11. As a result, the Community missed opportunities to disrupt the September 11th plot by denying entry to or detaining would-be hijackers; to at least try to unravel the plot through surveillance and other investigative work within the United States; and, finally, to generate a heightened state of alert and thus harden the homeland against attack.

No one will ever know what might have happened had more connections been drawn between these disparate pieces of information. We will never definitively know to what extent the Community would have been able and willing to exploit fully all the opportunities that may have emerged. The important point is that the Intelligence Community, for a variety of reasons, did not bring together and fully appreciate a range of information that could have greatly enhanced its chances of uncovering and preventing Usama Bin Ladin?s plan to attack these United States on September 11th, 2001.

Why do we need a PATRIOT Act? By giving the intelligence agencies the ability to collect even more data, aren’t we just adding to the mountain of evidence that that aren’t able to analyze? I can’t help but think all of this is just making us less safe.

Like the Dixie Chicks psuedo-backlash proves, the country music community isn’t all Republican :

Willie Nelson has sent greetings and gifts to the runaway Texas lawmakers.
. . .
A few of the Democrats say they’ve received red bandanas and whiskey from Nelson. The Texas singer also sent them a note saying: “Way to go. Stand your ground.”

Rosskumar made an damn good point in comments for this post that’s worth repeating :

I’ll add that the real problem isn’t being fat. The obesity is merely a symptom. The real problem is that Us Americans want literally to have our cakes and eat them too. We don’t want to be responsible for anything we do.

The social factors that lead us to be so fat are the very same factors that have killed our educational system, allowed lies like Trickle Down theory to be presented as the truth, and have ensured the successful “election” of Bush. They’re the same factors that make us the world’s largest drug consumers, and the world’s foremost supporters of the war on drugs.

Essentially, we’re completely shielded from the consequences of our actions, so completely cut off from the world that we have almost lost something of our humanity.

This reminded me of a quote from Bill Maher’s book :

Americans today confuse freedom with not being asked to sacrifice. The fact that you can’t have everything you want exactly when you want it has somehow become un-American. We’d rather sacrifice virgins than our SUV’s.

“I’ll guzzle as much gas as I want. This isn’t Europe.” Well, sure you can Captain America, but just try to imagine a WW2-era American saying “I’ll use as much damn gas and tin as I want. And while we’re at it, screw your victory garden!” They’d call you “Axis Asshole”.

Somehow, America morphed from a nation that embraced rationing to one that practically impeached Jimmy Carter for having the nerve to suggest we turn down the thermostat and put on a sweater.

Even in the wake of an event so invasive and frightening as September 11th not one person in a leadership position in America has asked anyone to really give up or rethink anything. Pandering to a spoiled citizenry had become so ingrained it remained in place even as buildings and complacencies crumbled.

Yesterday the FAA ordered airlines to raise their weight estimates for passengers and their bags. Considering that this has probably caused at least once plane crash, it’s about time :

Ms. Spitaliere said the airlines conducted surveys after the January crash and some found that passengers ? once clothing and personal items were factored in ? weighed an average of 20.63 pounds more than assumed; carry-on baggage weighed 5.72 extra pounds; and checked bags, 3.81 pounds, a total of 30.16 pounds more than the assumed average.

The weight of checked bags is a separate issue on small planes, where the cargo hold is often behind the passengers, not below them, and thus not only affects the total weight of the plane but also the center of gravity. If the center of gravity is too far back, the pilots may be unable to control the plane’s pitch. This may be what happened in Charlotte, N.C., combined with a problem in the pitch-control system.

If weight is a big enough factor that it’s causing plane crashes, why are they assuming anything? Shouldn’t they be weighing the passengers and bags before takeoff to make sure they aren’t overloaded? I guess we should expect this kind of negligence from the people who spent years assuming that most checked bags don’t have bombs.

Political State Report has done a great job following the story of the Texas Democrats who have fled to Oklahoma. Considering how much I normally like their site, I found it even more confusing when one of their posts ended with this :

It isn’t right to deny a quorum solely because your side lacks the votes to prevail. In fact, doing so is thwarting democracy. The majority of Texans elected Republican state representatives in the last election. The Democrats are trying to prevent the will of the majority, expressed at the ballot box, from being enacted by the people’s chosen representatives.

Some have found it fashionable to praise the AWOL legislators, as if their actions represent some “new kind of filibuster,” as one blogger put it. That’s hogwash. The Texas Democrats who have fled the state rather than come into session are seeking to thwart democracy. They should not be praised. They should be arrested, forced to sit in the House chamber to create a quorum, and then the majority should vote the legislation up or down.

Well you can add my voice to the chorus of those who find it “fashionable to praise the AWOL legislators”. They’re not thwarting democracy, they’re defending it against the tyrannical behavior of a majority party who’s seeking to undermine the wills of their constituents in the name of an unabashed political power grab. Regardless of which party is doing it, gerrymandering is wrong. Posting in the comments at Pol State, Kevin from leanleft.com put it in perspective :

The whole point of gerrymandering - especially the bizarre maps that the Texas Repub. have drawn up - is to skew representation by arranging the map so that the voting power of the other party is minimized. If 40% of a state is party A and 60% is party B, and a gerrymander produces a delegation that is 80% party B and 20% party A, how is that democracy? They also produce “safe districts”, districts in which a significant minority of voters can be ignored, so the Rep does not have to even pretend to represent all the members of the district. How is that democracy?

Things like quorums and filibusters are one more check on the tyranny of the majority. Without those checks, there is no democracy. The Texas Dems are using appropriate means to keep the Texas Repub. from arranging to under-represent Texas Dems in Congress.

And what does Kevin mean by “bizarre maps”? Calpundit (another Kevin) has a description of one of the proposed new districts as well as a map :

In a ploy audacious even by the standards of Texas politics, one of the GOP’s new congressional districts would be composed of two Republican-leaning areas, one north of Austin and one in the Rio Grande Valley ? 300 miles away. The two areas would be connected by a mile-wide ribbon of land and have been dubbed a “community of interest.”

So who’s the one “seeking to thwart democracy” here?

Bush shouldn’t pat himself on the back so hard, he might end up hurting himself :

“Anytime anybody attacks our homeland, or our fellow citizens, we will be on the hunt,” he added. “We will bring them to justice.”

“Just ask the Taliban,” Bush added, recalling the U.S. victory over the Taliban government of Afghanistan.

If you’d like to ask the Taliban, they can be found “in the mountains of eastern Paktia province and just over the border in Pakistan”.

That goddamn “liberal media” is at it again :

The local branch of cable provider Cox Communications has refused to air a television commercial critical of President Bush’s tax cut plan that re-enacts a blood plasma drive held to help pay a teacher’s salary.

The spot was turned down because Cox officials in Phoenix found the commercial “in poor taste,” said Andrea Katsenes, company spokeswoman.

The ad recreates an event in Eugene, Ore., last month in which 50 parents lined up outside a clinic to sell their blood plasma to help pay a teacher’s salary.

“George Bush’s tax cuts for the rich” are to blame for shortfalls in education funding, the commercial contends.

Personally I think gutting school funding so much that parents are forced to give their blood in order for their children to get a better education is “in poor taste”. You can view the banned commercial here.

Whoah, the Texas Republicans weren’t kidding when they said the threatened to arrest the senate legislators who fled :

The Texas Department of Public Safety is asking the public for assistance in locating 53 Texas legislators who have disappeared. Anyone who has information regarding the current whereabouts of the legislators listed below is asked to call 1-800-525-5555.

Under the Texas Constitution, the majority of members present in session in the House can vote to compel the presence of enough members to make a quorum. Members of the House did so this morning and directed the Sergeant-at-Arms of the House and the DPS to locate the absent members and bring them back to Austin.

It looks like they’ve scared a few into coming back :

Bob Richter, a spokesman for House Speaker Tom Craddick, said four of the chamber’s 62 Democrats attended Monday’s session. At least two more have shown up at the Capitol since then, and a third was expected later Tuesday.

“We think we’re up around 97 members. We need 100 to have a quorum,” Richter said.

Ultimately, I think enough Dems will stay away long enough to kill this redistricting plan for now. Political State Report has a great summary of where things stand right now :

The Democrats are pretty much committed here. If they return without assurance that redistricting is a dead issue, then their walkout had no purpose. Everything positive they’ve gotten so far - sympathy from newspaper editorial boards, a fired-up voter base, recognition for having actual cojones - would not only disappear, it would be thrown back at them with vicious fury. They’ve given the GOP a slap across the cheek with their glove, so they cannot be seen to run away from the duel. In short, they started it and they’d better finish it.