I admit it ... sometimes, something pops up -- like cybersex with members of Congress (never saw that AOL Chat) being covered up -- and I am rather surprised. I have one of those "I can't believe this" moments. Yes, I know, this is silly by this point. I guess it can be partially explained by the fact that our media and the general public (who voted this Republican majority into power again two years ago ... when the evidence was there already to shout that it was a bad thing to do) try to go about their business and try to talk themselves into believing everything is fairly normal, more or less. After all, what else can one do? Vote for different people?
And, that this "normal" is nothing to be "shrill" about, or (horrors) something to drive us to get rid of people like Lieberman (torture/immunity boy*). To be fair, now and again, the media does its job -- reminding us why they are so important. To force us to see the elephant (snicker) in the room. But, my modicum of surprise suggests a bit how these things can go so far. This sort of thing isn't just found in politics, after all. We all can think of examples where some family member or perhaps employer has his/her serious problems pushed under the rug, since the alternative would be too hard to imagine. We just have this accept that sort of thing as a fact of life. A tipping point does approach, but we can accept -- especially while lying to ourselves -- quite a lot before then.
Saying it ran "counter to the tradition of our great nation," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill on Saturday that would have automatically allocated all the state’s 55 electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate received the national popular vote. The bill, which passed the state’s Legislature this summer, was devised by John R. Koza, a computer scientist who envisioned a system in which a series of states holding the number of electoral votes needed to elect a president — 270 — would commit their electors to casting ballots for the winner of the popular vote, regardless of how their individual electorates voted.
Thus, seriously, I fear for November. On the issue of elections, Gov. Arnold (Republican enabler like my own mayor ... a "moderate" sort that advances the interests of the party) vetoed a bill that would allow California to change the way that they allot electoral votes if states with a majority of electoral votes also do so. Apparently, to support it would crush an American tradition ... clearly he is also firmly against proposals to do away with the barrier to non-natural born citizens from running for President. It was a bit interesting really he was so conservative about the thing since, you know, he got into power in the first place via somewhat untraditional means. But, the people wanted a change ... no need to stick to traditional electoral practices, especially since the rules do allow such somewhat hinky approaches.
Anyway, I think we need to teach more civics ... after all, the Electoral College confuses people, but it is an important part of the "tradition of our great nation" (unlike, you know, elections when a governor's term is up) ... in fact, maybe some of its defenders need to be clued in. For instance, what many are really defending is a "winner takes all" system, one where the winner obtains all the electoral votes. But, the EC does not require that by any means; in fact, James Madison once wrote that he favored a district by district system. Still, Jimmy was in effect a Democrat, so what does he know? Heck, he also supported a strong separation of church and state, was wary of needless unlikely to go well wars, and supported judicial review. So, what does he know?
Really now.
---
* Yeah, he was among the senators who voted for the detainee legislation, though come on, he is a member of the Republican caucus. No? But, Republicans are supporting him for Senate, even though there is an actual registered Republican running. It's so confusing. At any rate, BTC News discusses the war crimes immunity aspect of the bill ... Sen. Durbin (h/t Talk Left) had some striking things to say about it in his floor remarks. A taste:
Let's take one example. The bill would revise a law known as the War Crimes Act to give Bush administration officials and those who preceded them, back to 1997, amnesty, amnesty for authorizing illegal interrogation techniques. Think about this for a second. This administration wrote a memo. The author of that memo is a gentleman who is now before us as a potential nominee for the Federal court. In that memo it was recommended that we might use, as part of interrogation techniques, using dogs to threaten and intimidate prisoners. That was in the memo.
To summarize: "Why is the Administration so interested in protecting itself from judicial review? Perhaps it is because the courts have repeatedly ruled that the administration’s policies violate the law."