Thieves in the Temple.

your New Year's Eve affirmation.

So here we are, at the end of a craptacular decade whose ten thousand humiliations I do not need to recount at any length. So (perhaps in a moment of weakness) I find myself asking how it could have been different -- namely, would it have been any better if Al Gore had won in 2000? In some ways, yes: 9.11 wouldn't have happened, as Mr. Gore would no doubt have carried on with Mr. Clinton's obsession with al-Qaeda. We would have had a slightly better press climate, i.e. one which would have treated Mr. Santorum's man-on-dog-related comments as the ravings of a lunatic, rather than the very serious opinion of a very serious man. But the dot-com bubble still would have burst, the right-wing Democrats in the Senate would have controlled economic policy, the "liberal" media still would have hated on Mr. Gore, and I think Mr. Bush would eventually have ascended to power in 2004, and who would have blamed him if Katrina had arrived on time seven short months later? With goodwill-toward-Bush built, Mr. Bush could have rammed an invasion of Iraq through Congress in 2006 far more easily (and with less fearmongering) than he did in 2002, and Hillary Clinton would have played Bob Dole to his Bill Clinton in 2008. And we wouldn't be having this conversation right now, because we'd still have George W. Bush.

But even if Mr. Gore had somehow managed to fix the economy, get himself re-elected, prevent an invasion of Iraq, and find a historic Northeastern shift against Republicans at his back in 2006, would we, as a nation and as a culture, be better off? I don't think so. I think the elites would have drifted just as far rightward, and the vast majority of citizens not drifting rightward would have felt far more powerless than they've felt over the last ten years -- the rightward shift might even have happened under the radar of the many left-wing blogs that have saved our collective posterior. Instead of the "liberal" media and the Republican Party being virtually alone in moving the mainstream rightward, as they are now, more of us might be complicit. Possibly I'm not giving folks enough credit, but certainly I know I'd be just as muddle-headed a thinker as I was during the 1990s, when I wasn't participating in politics as much as my conscience commanded.

Now, obviously, I'd prefer to have remained a benighted soul if it would have saved the lives of thousands of American soldiers and millions of Iraqi and Afghan civilians. But clearly that was not the cosmic plan. The cosmic plan seems to have called for the annihilation of relatively powerless millions this decade in order to enrich the coffers of George W. Bush's corporate cronies, so that the rest of us, who do have power and who can take action, could be inspired and/or shamed into more fully becoming our better selves. Again, I'm not thankful for anyone's death or suffering, especially at the hands of Halliburton, but I also know that because of these trials I've never felt more sure of who I am and who I'm meant to be, and I also know I've never loved my fellow Americans more than I have over the last decade, so superior has their wisdom obviously been to the thugs and idiots in our elite classes. The "liberal" media may chase after the emptiest wagons in our political discourse (look, Bill O'Reilly says there's a war on Christmas! Ann Coulter says liberalism is a religion! Did Obama bow too deeply to the Japanese Emperor?), but their folly does not reflect at all on the wisdom of Americans as a whole. The vote may be a fairly imprecise tool, but I don't think Republicans went from 55 Senators to 40 in under three calendar years because Americans are as dumb or malicious as their corporate, social, and economic elites obviously are.

So, because I didn't create this world, and because I believe that, with enough patience and work, we can wring goodness and justice even from the most odious circumstances, I raise a toast to this soon-to-be-gone decade, and the multitudinous lessons it taught us. And I summarily demand that this decade get the fuck out of my way, because this coming decade is mine, mine and yours and yours and yours. This coming decade does not belong to the corporatists, the fearmongers, the pedants, the cowards, the nativists, the religious extremists, and all their thugs. This coming decade belongs to those of us who do the right things in the right way. This decade belongs to those of us who reduce our dependence on corporate power, who reduce our impact on the environment we all share, who buy and sell items in a way that doesn't hurt the downtrodden, who build a new infrastructure based on renewable sources of power, who force our government to give its citizens the help and protection we deserve as its owners. This decade belongs to those of us who see different people as people and not vessels of evil, who never feel ashamed of making someone else feel ashamed if they deserve it, who commit to our communities, and to our democracy, absolutely -- to those of us, in short, who do what is right regardless of whether it is expedient, or even pleasurable.

This coming decade is our decade. I guarantee it.

gosh darn librals.

I found the following block-quoted text (once a viral email, I presume, though I never received it) in a comment at ThinkProgress. I believe the original author is one John Gray of Cincinnati, Ohio. Anyway, today seems like a good day to put it up.

Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards. With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised.

All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer’s medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance - now Joe gets it too.

He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Joe’s bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.

In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.

Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for the laws to stop industries from polluting our air.

He walks on the government-provided sidewalk to subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe’s employer pays these standards because Joe’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union.

If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he’ll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some stupid liberal didn’t think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

It is noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe’s deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.

Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime. Joe also forgets that his in addition to his federally subsidized student loans, he attended a state funded university.

Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards to go along with the tax-payer funded roads.

He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers’ Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make rural loans.

The house didn’t have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded rural electrification.

He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn’t have to.

Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn’t mention that the beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day. Joe agrees: “We don’t need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I’m a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have.”

If the Presidential election goes as I expect, I'll have a post of some length up tomorrow. But if it goes as Greg Palast fears, maybe not. Or, maybe, it'll be a bit different. Really, who can say?

your 9.11 affirmation that's better than any I could have written.

Via a guest blogger at Atrios. Includes handy links.

Students of rhetoric: study the parallel constructions!

the Northeast shall rise again! (and let Tha Architekkkt rest in the deep grave.)

From the "all politics is local and all localities are national" department: of the 28 House seats that have changed hands from Republican to Democratic so far, a little over a third (ten) were in the Northeast. It'll be tough for the Republicans to recover those seats, certainly as long as they insist on being the party of greedheads and religious bigots, and Republicans could lose fellows like Chris Shays and Jim Gerlach next time around (plus Rob Simmons, if they haven't already). Two seats changed hands in Arizona, which is becoming (among other things) Florida West for elderly Northeasterners. Two seats changed hands in Iowa, which (unlike Illinois and Texas) has drawn districts so that they're competitive, imagine that. One each changed hands in Colorado and Minnesota, which have never struck me as places that ought to be particularly red. Two changed hands in Florida and one of those was Mark Foley's. One changed hands in California and that'll teach Richard Pombo to try to gut the Endangered Species Act. One changed hands in North Carolina and let's Heath Shuler and I make a deal, OK, in which he can be as pro-life and pro-gun as he wants but he fully explains what his opposition to illegal immigration has to do with an economic policy that helps the little guy? Three changed hands in Indiana and one in Wisconsin and I must confess I don't really understand why. One changed hands in Texas due to Tom DeLay's Law and one changed hands in Ohio due to Bob Ney's Law; I guess the one that changed hands in Kentucky and was due to Anne Northrup's Law. One changed hands in Kansas -- that's right, the state that stars in Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas? -- and, yikes, does that make Jim Ryun the worst House Rep ever?

Mr. Bush can, I suppose, content himself with never having to listen to the Northeast again -- and we can content ourselves with the notion that his kind do poorly in areas with lots of, you know, people in them, like, you know, most of the Northeast, and, like, you know, cities everywhere else. If the Democrats choose to accept this mission, they can build a lasting majority by (as Thomas Schaller suggests here) sealing up the Northeast and then picking off the rest of the country. And, over in the Senate, Bob Casey the Younger and Jim Webb and Jon Tester have taught Democrats how to win in the rest of the country -- i.e., be big-tent on abortion and/or gun control, but without pandering to the worst in Americans like Harold Ford the Younger did.

But regardless of who controls Congress, our work as citizens is the same -- we agitate for what we believe in, and our Representatives either follow suit or earn boatloads of bad karma that will hopefully one day result in, for example, an 18-point loss in a run at a third Senate term. Perhaps it'll be easier with Democrats in charge, or perhaps the organizations that supply me with action alerts will get complacent all at once. I don't really think they will -- it's hard to imagine the ACLU sitting back on warrantless wiretapping, or the EFF taking a breather on network neutrality. And Congress comes back soon to finish its work for the year, and since a bunch of these goofs aren't coming back, they might try to do as much damage as they can. But if good folks do get complacent, I'll just have to work harder. Whatever the fates ask of me, I'll do. But what's coming is certainly not a vacation from our duties.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't take take the time to celebrate the following truisms:

All that fearmongering the last two months failed to expand the Republican majority.

All that yelling and screaming about illegal immigration failed to expand the Republican majority.

All those gay marriage votes and flag-burning votes and Estate Tax votes in Congress failed to expand the Republican majority.

All those right-wing knuckleheads on the radio and on TV now have to attack the will of the people directly, instead of using the Democrats as their surrogates.

George Allen sure is Mr. Smooth, isn't he? But his career was ended by a real white man.

Karl Rove will never, ever, ever again be mistaken for a genius. I know, I know, you, too, were thinking "Mozart, Einstein, Rove." This guy ain't even Bismarck, yet the so-called "liberal media" couldn't get enough of him in 2002 and 2004. And what did he do that was so great in 2002 and 2004? He lied his posterior off and pandered to the most emotionally-crippled members of society. This takes genius? Genius requires, at the very least, utility to a community, or an understanding of people's lives as if they're not pawns on your great chessboard. Mr. Rove has never shown me any reason to believe that he understands either one. I'll be more than happy to pray for his redemption. Hey, it happens to the unlikeliest people. But I wouldn't lay money on it.

the river of no return.

Democrats may pick up a lot of seats in Congress in less than a week and then again they may not. If they do, though, it's not exactly cause to celebrate, because American politicians in general are moving right. As a people, Americans aren't moving right, not at all. Where is the widespread enthusiasm for this amazing tax-cut-bred economy, for example? Where are the marchers in the streets denouncing the "unfairness" of the "death tax"? If you answered "nonexistent" and "nonexistent," you see my point. But the most right-wing Americans nonetheless seem to be the most motivated group at the polls. And the Democrats don't have unions to bring out the vote anymore, so now they have to chase corporate money just like Republicans do. You see the problem, of course: in this climate it's easy to scare the most right-wing Americans -- many of whom are just as suspicious of, and angry about, corporate power as I am -- into electing pro-corporate right-wing big-strutters in a game of bait and switch.

Democrats spend too much time and money chasing that vote, instead of motivating the multitudes of voters who usually stay home. People who stay home on Election Day are not evil, and getting them to come out is not a matter of pretending you like NASCAR. Democrats may get 90% of the black vote, for example, but plenty of black folks stay home because they think the Democrats take them for granted. Plenty of other folks don't vote Democrat because they (justifiably) automatically link Democrats with gun control, and they might vote Democrat otherwise. If between 20 and 30 seats switch sides this year, you're not going to have 20 to 30 more liberals in the House. You'll have more folks like Ken Lucas, Jack Davis, and Heath Shuler than you'll have folks like Tony Trupiano, James Wright, and Jeeni Criscenzo. In contrast, when the Republicans stormed back in 1994, you didn't have a lot of moderates taking over those seats; you had a lot of Lindsey Grahams. The Senate might actually take a more leftward lurch than the House, if Bob Casey, Jon Tester, Jim Webb, and Sherrod Brown all win. But are any of these fellows Frank Church? I doubt it.

The job of being Frank Church will fall on the people, as usual. I'm not so nuts that I'll say I relish the challenge -- that's a boast people who watch too much ESPN make. But as an American, I won't refuse it.

your 9.11 affirmation.

Five friggin' years later. What have we learned?

Well, I learned that I'd spent far too much of the previous fifteen years listening to the other side. I wasn't being generous; I'd merely chosen another way of being a coward. Fact is, I was right all along -- all along, I had the compassion and the conscience and the sense of community and the better ideas, and the other side only had whatever dumb argument or selective set of factoids would best justify their complete and willing subjugation to the world's real fascists, the megacorporations. By "the other side" I do not mean conservatives; I've also learned that much. By the other side I mean the bullies and weaklings and emotional cripples that have stolen the mantle "conservative." And I have learned that no amount of reasoning and no amount of compassion can reach them -- indeed, it's a species of arrogance that I would think so. We can't stop folks who've chosen calling me "traitor" as their way of supporting Mr. Bush. We can only choose ways of living (you know, engage with our countryfolk, write Congress, use less energy, eat better food, walk more, drive less) that will inspire more people to be like us.

Tell you what else I've learned, though: Americans are a lot smarter than their Congressfolk. Some two-thirds of said Congressional idiots passed a resolution over the summer declaring that the Iraq war is an essential part of the war on terror so-called, but some three-fifths of Americans, judging by recent polls, think the Iraq war and the war on terror so-called are completely separate issues. Almost 80% of America's Senators -- including John Kerry who thought he so beautifully timed his change of heart and Chuck Hagel whose speech explaining his yes vote sounded an awful lot like a speech explaining a no vote -- gave Mr. Bush the authority to take Mr. Hussein out. But American sentiment about the war never varied very far from 50-50 during the run-up to war. Right-wingers love to bust out the 70% support figure taken during the week Saddam's statue fell, but as I recall that 70% figure included 15 percentage points of folks saying they were against the war but supported Mr. Bush, which means that, again, real support for the war wasn't far from 50-50. If that was the best Mr. Bush could do against a tyrant quite possibly unloved even by his own mother, with the "liberal media" basically regurgitating whatever Mr. Bush wanted them to, then Americans must be a pretty good bunch.

I wish it translated into more action too. But our great enemy, corporate greed, is not exactly a pushover. And our failures have been mostly tactical, and I don't mean just casting our lot in with the aforementioned John Kerry when he didn't have what it took to win. Mainly we've failed to realize that this "base" they keep saying Republicans have isn't a base at all, but a wedge. 51% of the people, it seems, voted for Mr. Bush, but I couldn't live here if I thought 51% of Americans were crazy. I'd say, at most, only about 30% of Americans are crazy (said figure representing Mr. Bush's low approval rating). We may be up against a lot of fellow-Americans who don't change, who don't listen, and who don't reason. But they can't beat the other 70% in a fair fight, or a fair election.

There's no alchemical formula for "reaching independents," no matter how much cash the Democratic Party spends trying to discover one. But I know that "reaching out" without standing your ground means you'll fall. The only way to reach anyone, at any time, is to be yourself, to be honest about your feelings and your thoughts. That's what I do here, for better or worse. I don't care whether it produces a Democratic majority in the House and Senate in two months. I care whether it helps produce a better America. I have faith that it does.

your Labor Day affirmation.

Happy Labor Day, all y'all!

Like Paul falling off his horse, I've suddenly realized that I can't go on blaming the inability of labor to regain traction in America on our relative affluence as a culture.  Sure we have bread and we have circuses, and these things do distract us from more important work.  But if that were the sole reason that labor unions' share of the workforce has fallen from around 33% to around 12% over the last 25 years, then Italy's labor movement, which claims some 40% of the workforce, would never have withstood Mr. Berlusconi's rule, let alone help end it, and we would never have seen a million French workers in the streets protesting laws stripping workers of protections American workers don't even have.

No, the problem is two-fold.  For one thing, the American government has been openly hostile to labor since President Reagan broke the air traffic controllers' union.  Electing Democrats ain't a panacea for that, either -- President Clinton's years weren't that much better, as he and his cronies frequently exhorted labor to "adjust to changing times" and "work as a partner with management" yadda yadda yadda.

For another thing, we Americans are too damn selfish.  The Reagan economy "unleashed the power of business" to make money, certainly, though not to make better products or services though that was the line, and the Clinton economy refined and amplified that delusion, so we grew up thinking we could all be rich without doing very much work.  Powerful stuff, that.  I don't have all the steel of a monk, you know.  But before we thought that when we grew up we'd serve our communities in some way -- through becoming doctors or lawyers, or just good families and good neighbors.  And now most of us seem to spend our free time plotting to avoid work through other delusions, like managing stocks or becoming famous.  Again, I certainly don't exclude myself from this accusation.

Once we identify the problem, though, we can set our minds to solutions.  It ain't enough to say "let's elect a Democratic President," so he/she can appoint some human beings to the National Labor Relations Board.  We have to demand, of all prospective candidates of all parties, that they'll protect the worker from corporate predators.  We have to demand of our media that they'll do better than call French protestors "reactionaries," or we'll create our own damn media.  Just today I see Newsweek's international edition taking Mr. Ahmedinejad to task for failing to keep his promise to distribute oil revenues more fairly among his populace.  Iran, you may know, has a per capita of something ridiculous like $250 per year, and still has 40% of its people living in poverty.  And I must ask:  where's Newsweek's outrage every time Rick Santorum calls the Estate Tax "the death tax" though only the richest 1.2% of Americans pay it and it is therefore not now nor will ever be a freakin' death tax?

And, ironically enough, we belong to communities whether we like it or not -- it's just that corporations determine the makeup of those communities more than they have since the early 20th century.  So we must oppose corporate power in our purchasing decisions as much as we can.  I don't want to get Antonin Scalia all tingly inside by saying that your dollar is your vote.  But your dollar is a fairly precise tool for change.  Today, buy the organic veggies, or the veggies that were grown locally.  Put compact fluourescent bulbs in your light sockets.  Unplug the damn TV when you're not watching it.  Hell, don't watch the damn TV at all, 'cause there ain't nothing on TV anyway except maybe on HBO.  Make the cable company come out and block the Fox News Channel.  Don't use any Microsoft products on your home computer.  Next week or next month or next year, learn to grow your own food, sew your own clothes, and get your power from the sun and wind.  The more independence you have from corporations in just living day-to-day, the less power they'll have over you, and the more you can dictate the terms on which you'll build and nurture communities.  And labor unions (thought I'd forgotten, didn't you?) aren't going to regain traction until we take back our ability to create communities -- or, I'll admit, unless we face another economic disaster the size of the Great Depression.

And don't ever worry that you're not pure enough.  Right-wingers love to imagine that any crack in our program is evidence of irremediable weakness, as if we're hypocrites because we're not God and we only live in a world that was made before we got here.  Just do more today than you did yesterday, and do more tomorrow than you did today.  Because even if it's a small act, it'll make a difference, and even if we die and the world is still screwed-up, which I'll admit seems awfully likely, our example will inspire others, and their example will inspire others after them.

As Arundhati Roy says, the corporations need us more than we need them.

your Independence Day affirmation.

Today, as we celebrate the long-ago launch of this great experiment in freedom, let us consider a quotation from the Declaration of Independence:

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."

Yeah, that quotation. Mr. Jefferson (whose Francophilic tendencies would no doubt be the butt of Bill O'Reilly "jokes" in these times) does of course understand human nature, but he almost certainly did not foresee how "sufferable" the citizenry would find evils to be in 2006. Even by the standards of Bismarck's "sausage factory," Tha Bush Mobb's legislative priorities (and the Democratic leadership's all-too-frequent acquiescence) mock our great experiment in self-government more than at any time in recent American history. The late TV sci-fi writer Terry Nation came closer to foreseeing the difficulty of radical change in modern times, in the 1978-81 BBC series Blakes 7, which started with a population walking around in a drug-induced stupor. Even that's not what's happening now: fluoridated water hasn't made us a nation of zombies, but McDonald's, PlayStation, and on-demand cable sure have. Against the ease of excessive calorie consumption or the excitement of the release of the new Grand Theft Auto or a new episode of Lost or CSI: Jim Thorpe, it's hard to get people excited about Mr. Bush's flagrant violations of the Fourth Amendment; today's zombies have enough bread (dull and lacking in nourishment though it is) and far too many circuses. Sometimes I get frustrated that I don't have the magic pill that snaps them out of it. But I must remind myself that having the magic pill isn't the point; being there for other people is the point, engaging with your fellow humans is the point, taking your government, our government, as our birthright is the point. And engagement doesn't always snap people out of it immediately, but it does have more of an effect than withdrawing into one's castle. This works both ways: every time I've thought I was really alone in what I believed, I found out that not only wasn't I really alone, but I didn't have to go very far to find that out. This knowledge should not make us complacent. But it should make us hopeful, and last I looked hope was the only thing that kept us going.

In other news, we're off from Congress until Monday, and then it's only one short month until we're off from Congress for another month, as if we needed another reason to love the summertime. In this upcoming month, though, the House will be busy leaving its trail of slime wherever it goes: their "Pledge Protection" Act would "protect" the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance from "liberal" "activist" judges (some of whom, you may recall, were appointed by the famous liberal activist President Richard Nixon). The House also plans to (finally! After all these years!) vote on Todd Tiahrt's "sunset commission" brainchild, which could put almost any federal program on the chopping block. Meanwhile, the Senate plans to act on a House Estate Tax "compromise" passed near the end of June which would, like the Kyl/Baucus/Snowe "compromises," virtually gut the Estate Tax. And word on the street is that Senate Democrats might actually filibuster the new telecom bill unless it includes strong network neutrality provisions -- which, since it would be an unusual stand against corporate power, must be untrue. Last but certainly not least, the Republican-dominated House is dragging its feet on the Voting Rights Act reauthorization -- and why, since said foot-dragging seems to me like weapons-grade PR, are the Democrats not spewing palpable anger about it?

your Memorial Day affirmation.

Today we remember those who have died in the struggle for freedom, and that includes the 2,400-plus American soldiers who have died in Iraq.

The far right, desperate to find some wedge to drive between us and our ideals, will tell us that we are hypocrites to celebrate Memorial Day and yet oppose the war in Iraq. But though our soldiers are held hostage to an incompetent and arrogant commander-in-chief, I proclaim that these deaths in Iraq are just as meaningful as those of any other war. These men and women did not give their lives, it turns out, to defend America from a phantom WMD attack, or to secure freedom and prosperity in a nation now threatening to descend into civil war. And, no, I will certainly not accept that they have given their lives to defend the freedom and prosperity of Bush's crony corporations. These 2,400 men and women, it turns out, have given their lives to remind us of how far wrong we go when we neglect our duties as citizens and do not hold power accountable to truth. They have given their lives to remind us that our ideals do not make us perfect, or even good, unless we live up to those ideals, rather than coast on them. In this sense, these men and women may have made an even greater sacrifice than those who have died in other, more just wars.

May we never forget our pride in them. May we never forget our shame in ourselves. And may we make these feelings a twin engine to ensure that we never fight an unjust war again.

victory in Ohio!

The Ohio Board of Education votes 11-4 to bar "intelligent design" from its school classrooms.  According to the Campaign to Defend the Constitution, the Board received some 30,000 emails protesting the inclusion of ID in science curriculums.  Ohio Citizens for Science also worked with Americans United for the Separation of Church and State to reverse the standard.

Maybe I'm an idiot for not having faith in Ohioans.  We still have to hear from the Religious Right in Ohio, though -- that would be those people who complain they just want "a voice in the public square," when what they mean is that they want the only voice in the public square.

Tom Tomorrow explains it all to you, again.

What I was saying yesterday? Tom Tomorrow says it better in six frames.

your Election Day affirmation.

If anyone has any problems voting today -- said problems may include, but are not limited to, finding the polling place, voter intimidation, accessibility issues, voting machine problems, and provisional ballot issues -- or if anyone witnesses anyone having these or any other problems, the Verifiable Voting Foundation has a toll-free line for you to call. It's 1.866.OUR.VOTE -- or if, like me, mnemonic devices such as "OUR VOTE" actually slow you down considerably when you're trying to dial, that's 1.866.687.8683. Don't be skittish or ashamed about making that call; they're there to help.

Voting, in my opinion, is a citizen's absolute minimum duty in America. This is our government, no matter how little it resembles a good government, and we have the obligation as citizens to make it a good government, first on Election Day and then on every day thereafter. There are only bad reasons for not voting. Negative campaigning is an especially bad one -- you do realize politicians run negative campaigns in order to alienate voters and make them stay home, right? If you stay home, you can't vote against them! And cynicism about the state of the nation is not only a bad reason to stay home, it's a bad reason to do anything. Sure, things get pretty discouraging at times. But I refuse to drink from the cup of cynicism, and I pray that I always have the strength to refuse that cup.