Josh Marshall on the Deadeye Dick flap…

…all available evidence suggests that the Mr. Cheney is a man of deep moral cowardice. Makes a mistake and shoots his friend; blames the friend. Only he won’t do it directly. So he gets underlings to do it for him. Forced to speak out publicly, he appears before a ringer-journalist guaranteed not to press uncomfortable questions.
It’s all of a piece with the man’s record. He’s afraid of accountability. That’s why he’s such a fan of self-protecting secrecy. That’s why he’s big on smearing government whistle-blowers. It’s really just two sides of the same coin. He’s afraid of accountability. It’s the same reason why he’s such a notorious prevaricator — lies to avoid accountability.
These are all the hallmarks of a moral coward.

Last Monday, Jen and I caught sometimes-progressive Clinton Boom era economist Gene Sperling at the Commonwealth Club. He gave a good talk, and I gave him a copy of the high road. But there was one point that rang a little hollow: someone asked about the failure of the Clinton administration to successfully negotiate labor and environmental agreements into their trade agreements. His answer centered on the developing countries feeling that the US is too heavy-handed in it’s approach, whether it’s trade or our militarism. A friend pointed out that this an obvious and transparent dodge: surely their inability to negotiate these had nothing at all to do with multinational corporate campaign contributor’s wishes to avoid these sorts of regulations. Mmhmm.
But giving Mr Sperling the benefit of the doubt and taking his point at face value, the question this raises is about the strength of our convictions. If the leaders of the United States can’t level with other countries and say, look, we want you to develop your internal markets and economies and not screw up your environment so that you won’t have massive health and emigration problems ten years from now, that isn’t leadership. Regardless of where the pressure was coming from, the only right answer would have been to make the case for these kinds of policies and use the power of our tremendous consumer market to move things in the right direction. Markets are tools, not ends in themselves.
The Vice President’s behavior is both far more personally repulsive and an example of the much broader, deeper and scarier problems with this adminstration than any Mr Sperling’s answer, and oddly enough, his answer to my question (“this is great, but how do we move this agenda?”) was excellent and focused on exactly this issue; he talked movingly and at length about the economic vision that President Clinton had been developing for decades before he was elected to run the country. Strength of conviction and moral cowardice lie along the same axis and play out in our every day decisions. We’ve somehow gone from “I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man” to “the guy stepped in front of the barrel of my gun.”

Living in Rep. Pelosi’s congressional district, I don’t bother filling out too many natioanl-focused action alerts. I try to focus on ones that go to folks other than her, like this one from People for the American Way demanding the DOJ appoint a special prosecutor to do it’s job and investigate the President illegally wiretapping his political opponents. The entirety of the response from the DOJ?

Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2006 17:02:28 -0500
From: ASKDOJ 
Subject: Out of Office AutoReply: We demand oversight.
I will be out of the office Friday 17.

Verrry nice.

Matt Smith has a long and meandering look inside some efforts to build progressive infrastructure in today’s SF Weekly. This is a critical storyline and it is fantastic to see so much ink on it! But he didn’t talk to us, and if he had, he might’ve come to some different conclusions. Click to read more…

Continue reading →

Kevin Drum met with candidate for Secretary of State Debra Bowen, and had this to say (in an otherwise very positive report of the interview)…

She explained why legislation to require open source software for voting machines is likely to fail (Microsoft doesn’t like it)…

I’m sure there’s quite a bit more to it than this, but we’re not going to get top-level secure and reliable voting machines because Microsoft doesn’t like it? I think not. I’m not even a Microsoft hater. (chalk it up to reading Galbraith) But they most certainly do not get to decide policy on this. What’s the rest of the story here?

Susan Kennedy, Governor Schwarzenegger’s chief of staff, is now also the head of his political operation. How is this possibly OK? I’m really curious about this – I can’t remember it being done typically, but maybe I’m just not remembering other representatives or Governors doing it.
Jen and I have been away for a week volunteering at a conference. More on this soon.