In no way does "less nutty than John Ashcroft" make you a good pick. For a short background on why Alberto Gonzales is not the man you want safeguarding the civil liberties of the nation go here. For the long version go here. If the Senate Dems can get their act together after the late unfortunate events, they can really nail Gonzales on this stuff.
Today's must read is the Frank Rich in the NYTimes. The word of the day is values and Rich points out the obvious - Blue State values rule the culture, whatever the vote is:
The blue ascendancy is nearly as strong among Republicans as it is among Democrats. Those whose "moral values" are invested in cultural heroes like the accused loofah fetishist Bill O'Reilly and the self-gratifying drug consumer Rush Limbaugh are surely joking when they turn apoplectic over MTV. William Bennett's name is now as synonymous with Las Vegas as silicone. The Democrats' Ashton Kutcher is trumped by the Republicans' Britney Spears. Excess and vulgarity, as always, enjoy a vast, bipartisan constituency, and in a democracy no political party will ever stamp them out.
...
Values," Mr. Frank writes, "always take a backseat to the needs of money once the elections are won." Under this perennial "trick," as he calls it, Republican politicians promise to stop abortion and force the culture industry "to clean up its act" - until the votes are counted. Then they return to their higher priorities, like cutting capital gains and estate taxes. Mr. Murdoch and his fellow cultural barons - from Sumner Redstone, the Bush-endorsing C.E.O. of Viacom, to Richard Parsons, the Republican C.E.O. of Time Warner, to Jeffrey Immelt, the Bush-contributing C.E.O. of G.E. (NBC Universal) - are about to be rewarded not just with more tax breaks but also with deregulatory goodies increasing their power to market salacious entertainment. It's they, not Susan Sarandon and Bruce Springsteen, who actually set the cultural agenda Gary Bauer and company say they despise.
Blue values are winning. The election did not stop that.
2 comments:
While I'd like to hope for blue values winning out over red, the reality is that red values, like war-mongering and stripping Americans of constitutional rights are winning here. Gays are being denied equal rights in monumental numbers, Bush is trying to block Oregon's assisted suicide law, and they're gonna drill in Alaska's wildlife refuge. Sounds like red values to me.
This is true, but marijuana initiatives did quite well.
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