This has been bothering me for awhile. You see, the Billionaire’s Club has given Karl Rove a lot of money to run a national campaign. Example is Massachusetts where his Crossroads had been running attack ads against Elizabeth Warren, both candidates got together and asked outside groups to butt out of Massachusetts, and now this typically Rovian media attack on her heritage and parentage as an utter distraction from the issues facing the taxpayers of Massachusetts.

Whether you believe in my ontogeny, the phylogeny is the same: This will be a national race, run from central command and control, using stealth cash. All well and good to debate how wrong this is, and to wonder how the Obama campaign can fare against the hidden Sith Lords of the GOP.

But what about poor Congresswoman Jane Doe, Anytown U.S.A.?

How does SHE compete against the Rovian Hand and near-infinite supplies of cash?

Here is a strategy that will work, and allows Democrats to run a national campaign, while letting local candidates focus on local issues.

Once, a few years ago, when I was still known in Democratic circles, I was at the annual Bish Bash, local journalist Don Bischoff’s fifty-year tradition of a Christmas party that drew the local politicians and the local media folk and movers and shakers and remained bipartisan and communitarian to the end.

And a local politician asked me about his race for the state house of representatives.

He was going up against an incumbent (bad) and a popular woman (bad in Eugene) and yet, as the challenger he was going to have to attack her record and qualification for re-election. (Bad.)

And we were talking about it, and I told him this:

You don’t HAVE to run against her, I said. Because of the iron discipline of the Republican caucus in Salem,

All remembered the recent history of a prominent long-serving Oregon Republican, loved on both sides of the aisle, voted his “conscience” a few years ago on an education bill, and was summarily stripped of his committee assignments and chairmanships, and was left in political Siberia for the remainder of his tenure, able to vote and not much more. When the next election came, he did not run again. And, since then, no Republican legislator is allowed to vote contrary to the Leadership’s position.

So, I went on, instead of running against HER, run against the incredibly unpopular Speaker of the House.

Say, “My opponent is a person of quality,” and ladle on as many honorifics as you want. Kill her with your kindness and consideration. And then say, “But it doesn’t MATTER what she believes. When she gets to the legislature, she will vote exactly as she’s been told to vote by the Speaker, and her record proves that. Well over 90% of the time, she votes the party line. So, if you elect her, you’re ACTUALLY just giving the Speaker her vote.”

Almost impossibly, he actually took my advice, and was elected the following fall.

That is the winning issue for Democrats. Kill your opponents with kindness and run against the Republican congressional leadership, who poll BELOW the miserable approval rating of Congress as a whole. Use their iron discipline as a truncheon to bash them over the head with from now until election day, and the DNC and other out of state groups can provide all the coop and parallel advertising in the world.

That ONE message will focus the election on its national implications, and allow local candidates to run against the National Machine that thinks it far more important to take the Congress than the White House.

If Mitt wins, so much the better, but control of Congress stops pesky investigations and undoes pesky rules. And it allows their investment to pay off in profitable terms. If you doubt this, think of the investment versus gain ratio for those who financed George W. Bush and what each PERSONALLY received in tax cuts over the past eleven years.

No: this is a national cabal and a national conspiracy, partially if not totally run by “The Architect” and paid for by The Usual Suspects.

When we find out who they are, it will be too late, electorially.

But this strategy will win. It makes rational sense, and, as I said, it’s already got a proven track record.

Now, just because I’m not going to charge the DNC and the DSCC and whoever else a $50,000 consulting fee for this bit of political advice, do not for a moment think that it isn’t worth any more than you’ve paid for it.

A word to the wise is sufficient and ten thousand to a fool will not suffice.

But think about it in the terms it’s given to you: sincere advice, based on facts from a citizen who is sincerely concerned about our march to plutocracy and the health of our democracy.

Courage.

====================

A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog

She quietly walked into the classroom from the front and stood there, just inside the door, against a wall.

I continued my lecture, unaware of her presence until my students’ eyes began focusing upon her rather than me.

“Yes?” I asked. Just “yes.” Nothing more.

“You shouldn’t have done it,” she said peacefully. I was confused. So she said it again, this time a little sharper.

“Ma’am,” I began, but she cut me off. I tried to defuse the situation, but couldn’t reason with her. She pulled a gun from her purse and shot me, then quickly left. I recovered immediately.

It took less than a minute.

The scene was an exercise in a newswriting class, unannounced but highly planned. My assignment was for the students to quickly write down everything they could about the incident. What happened. What was said. What she looked like. What she was wearing. Just the facts. Nothing more.

Everyone got some of the information right, but no one got all the facts, even the ones they were absolutely positively sure they saw or heard correctly. And, most interestingly, the “gun” the visitor used and which the students either couldn’t identify or misidentified was in reality a . . . banana; a painted black banana, but a banana nevertheless. The actual gun shot was on tape broadcast by a hidden recorder I activated.

It was a lesson in observation and truth. Witnesses often get the facts wrong, unable to distinguish events happening on top of each other. Sometimes they even want to “help” the reporter and say what they think the reporter wants to hear.

Reporters are society’s witnesses who record history by interviewing other witnesses, and they all make mistakes not because they want to but because everyone’s experiences and perceptions fog reality.

Of the infinite number of facts and observations that occur during a meeting, reporters must select a few, and then place them in whatever order they think is most important. Which few they select, which thousands they don’t select–and, more important–which facts they don’t even know exist–all make up a news story, usually written under deadline pressure. Thus, it isn’t unusual for readers to wonder how reporters could have been in the same meeting as they were since the published stories didn’t seem to reflect the reality of the meeting.

But there are some facts that are verifiable. We know that a South American country is spelled “Colombia,” not “Columbia.” We know that Theodore Roosevelt was a progressive Republican. And we know that the current World Series champions are the St. Louis Cardinals not, regrettably, the San Diego Padres.

But, for far too many in my profession, facts and the truth are subverted by a process that has become he said/she said journalism. We take notes at meetings, recording who said what. If there are conflicting statements, we try to quote all the opinions, even the dumb ones, believing we are being “fair and balanced.” If  a news source says the world is flat, we write that, and then see if we can find someone who will say that it is round—or maybe square.

When we write features and personality profiles, we tend to take what we are told, craft it into snappy paragraphs, and hope the readers don’t fall asleep. If someone shyly tells us he earned a Silver Star for heroism during the Vietnam War, we don’t demand to see the certificate—or question how a 50 year old, who was wasn’t even in his teens when the war ended, could actually have served during the Vietnam war.

At the local level, although we’re trained to be cynical, we aren’t. If a mayor or police chief tells us something, we attribute the quote, figuring we did our duty. Maybe we ask a couple of questions, but we tend not to pursue them—we have far too many stories to write and far too little time. Besides, if the facts are wrong, we believe we’re “protected,” since it’s not we who said it but someone else. Legally, of course, we’re still responsible for factual error even if someone else said it and we accurately quote that person, but we don’t worry about the technicalities.

Adequate reporters get their facts from people in authority; the great reporters know truth is probably known by the secretaries, custodians, and other workers. We just have to find the right sources, dig out the facts, and verify them.

And now comes another presidential election, and we continue to perpetuate lies by not challenging those who spout them. Rick Santorum says California’s public colleges don’t teach American history—and we write down his lie. Mitt Romney claims he never said the Massachusetts health care plan was a model for the entire country, that Barack Obama never mentioned the deficit during his state of the union or that the President is constantly apologizing for America, and we write that without challenge. Newt Gingrich, like most Republican candidates for president and Congress, wants us to believe he’s an “outsider” and a fiscal conservative, and we go along with the fiction. Barack Obama said he’d be a leader for defending Constitutional rights, yet willingly signed an extension of the PATRIOT Act, which curtails civil liberties. Pick a candidate—any candidate, any party—and we think we’re “fair” because we record what he or she said, even of it’s a lie, a half-truth, an exaggeration, a distortion, or a misconception. Perhaps American politicians have internalized the wisdom of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels who said “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

Quoting people isn’t journalism—it’s clerking. We’re merely taking words, transcribing them, and publishing them. Journalism demands we challenge our sources and find the truth. As one grizzled city editor said in the late 19th century, if your mother claims to be your mother, demand a birth certificate. It was good advice then; it is even better advice now.

[In a 40-year career as a journalist and professor, Dr. Brasch has won more than 200 awards for excellence in journalism in investigative reporting, feature writing, and for his weekly column. His current book is the critically-acclaimed novel Before the First Snow, which helps explain the rise of the Occupy and anti-fracking movements. The book is available in both ebook and hardcover formats.]

Click here to view the embedded video.

SUBGATE: Romney Ryan hand out Subs for Votes in Waukesha

The matter boils down to one simple, yet deeply profound question: Why should I obey the law?

Our government… teaches the whole people by its example.  If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.  ~Louis Brandeis, Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1916 to 1939

For an instant last night, the sheep looked up, saw the plain lawbreaking of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, handing out free submarine sandwiches with the clear expectation that those accepting this bounty were going to go and vote in the primary (or, perhaps NOT vote against Romney).

NO ONE believes that this altered the outcome of the Wisconsin primary. HOWEVER, no one can justify this black-and-white lawbreaking. But they do. And, amidst this sea of pooh-poohing, WHY SHOULD I OBEY THE LAW?  As Jonathan Swift wrote:

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.  ~Jonathan Swift, A Critical Essay upon the Faculties of the Mind, 1707

ABC News cravenly reports:

Apr 3, 2012 3:29pm
Cold-Cut Case? Wisconsin Democrats Accuse Romney of ‘Subs for Votes’

ABC News’ Matthew Jaffe, Emily Friedman and Elizabeth Hartfield report:

PEWAUKEE, Wis. – When GOP front-runner Mitt Romney and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., gathered at a sandwich shop in Waukesha today to drum up support for Romney in the Badger State primary, they might have been engaging in “subs-for-votes” election bribery, according to the state’s Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin issued a complaint of bribery hours after the event, holding a news conference in downtown Milwaukee to air its grievances.

“It is a clear violation of Wisconsin election law, cut and dry,” the Democrat Party’s representative in Wisconsin told ABC News.
The group is filing its complaint with the state Government Accountability Board, which oversees the elections and will handle the complaint going forward.

Romney and Ryan’s event at Cousins Subs, billed by the former’s presidential campaign as an “Election Day Lunch,” was attended by a solid crowd on the day of the state’s primary.

The two politicos stood behind the store’s counter, handed out subs to a long line of people in attendance, and urged them to go vote.
“Get out and vote,” Romney urged voters in attendance at the sandwich shop. “If we have a good turnout, then I’ll become the person who receives the Wisconsin delegates that I need to go on to become the nominee and finally take back the White House.”

Poll workers in parts of Wisconsin were urged this year not to accept donuts from candidates, according to the Appleton Post-Crescent, which also reported that the Obama campaign in 2008 could not provide box lunches to election workers in Milwaukee.

The Romney campaign responded to the complaint from Wisconsin Democrats by accusing the president’s campaign of worrying more about refreshments than the economy. But it did not directly address whether the subs might have broken the law.

“President Obama and his allies keep wading in to the Republican primary, whether voting for Mitt Romney’s opponents or absurdly claiming we can’t provide refreshments for volunteers,” Romney spokesman Rick Gorka said. “If President Obama focused half his time worrying about the economy as he does obsessing over Mitt Romney, Americans would be a lot better off.”

It is illegal to distribute anything worth more than $1 “in order to induce any elector to go to or refrain from going to the polls,” according to the Wisconsin state statute.

The subs Romney and Ryan were handing out today, if bought individually from the store, cost more than $1. Sandwiches at Cousins range in price from $4.49 to $5.59.

This creates an astonishing irony as I hear NPR report “Mitt Romney is acting more and more like the Republican presidential nominee …”

Yeah. Nixon.

Or, as Aristotle noted: “The greatest crimes are caused by surfeit, not by want.” (Politics)

No heroes here

There was no reason to break the law, just as there is no reason to MINIMIZE it.

Wise men, learned men, and men of the West have, throughout history, recognized the primacy of the law in maintaining an ordered society. Consider this idiom, still fresh after two millennia and more:

Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.

Prov.The associates of public figures must not even be suspected of wrongdoing. (The ancient Roman Julius Caesar is supposed to have said this when asked why he divorced his wife, Pompeia. Because she was suspected of some wrongdoing, he could not associate with her anymore.)

Clearly, even though they used to watching enslaved men fight to the death for recreation, we seem to have fallen below even the honor of the Romans. When this ancient trope is brought up in public discourse, it is invariably minimized and scoffed at. Even though any careful observation of anybody’s politics will vouchsafe the sheer practicality of the proposition.

If those who make our laws do not themselves obey them, there are no laws, in essence, and people rightly ask:

“Why should I obey the law?”

Because, without law, there will be law. Not the law that we’ve evolved since the Magna Carta, thence to the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and 230 years of modification and adaptation through law of those principles. What principles? Turn, if thou wouldst, to chapter and verse of the Book of Warren:

“It is the spirit and not the form of law that keeps justice alive.”  ~ Chief Justice Earl Warren

No: it will be the law of Chicago in the 1920s, where ruthless men murdered one another to supply the farcically illegal booze to speakeasies all over the Greater Chicago area. Or, worse, the law of the New Mexico Prison Riot of 1980, in which, in less than 48 hours, the veneer of civilization came off, and 33 inmates were killed, another 200 injured, and “none of the 12 officers taken hostage were killed, but seven were treated for injuries caused by beatings and rapes.”

Kill or be killed, survival of the strongest and most ruthless; game of thrones.

Torpedoed by a submarine sandwich

THAT is, presuming civilization could be maintained, with tankers of oil, and electrical lines and power stations, and roads and relative freedom from roaming marauders. Think “Road Warrior.”

Because this magical civilization in which we live is NOT a given. Sorry.

Pull the plug on America and all hell breaks loose within 72 hours. Food spoils. Generators run out of fuel. All electronic gizmos start dying off.

Then what?

Saturn Devours His Children – Goya

The framework that holds it in place is the law, which we commonly agree upon, following the last successful war. In this case, we opted for a representative democracy with three rules: we agree to  self-governance by majority vote. We agree to abide by the results of those elections. And we agree to reach consensus on the laws we elect our representatives to enforce and modify.

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst. ~ Aristotle

Oh, one other rule: we agree to obey those laws passed by the majority consensus. Even “civil disobedience” openly acknowledges that a crime has been committed and agrees to the penalties for breaking that unjust law.

But we must know that our elected representatives are lawful. And we must know that those who are hired by those representatives to ENFORCE that law are, themselves, lawful.

Anything less, no matter how benevolent-seeming, is an inevitable descent into savagery and blood-feud.

It is NOT a small matter that a man who aspires to the highest office in the land breaks the law, and if he didn’t know he was breaking the law, surely Paul Ryan must have known, and Romney’s aides and Wisconsin GOP allies must have known. Now, the “defense” is that it’s not important.

NOT IMPORTANT?

Yeah. Consider the sniggering tone of the headline — knowing that merely saying “Democrats accuse” in the passive, rather than the quasi-journalistic, “DID Mitt Romney break election law?” will automatically make null and void all words following said phrase to 40% of any general readership, so partisan and poisonous has the climate been:

Cold-Cut Case? Wisconsin Democrats Accuse Romney of ‘Subs for Votes’

What a funny pun! Ha ha hah ahhhahahahahah.

Which is to say: THIS STORY IS NOT IMPORTANT.

And then “Wisconsin Democrats Accuse”

Which is to say: OH THIS IS JUST MORE SILLY BICKERING.

Less tongue and less ham, please.

To which I’d like to say, if the law is so unimportant to you, what funny headline will you come up with when you get back home and suddenly experience that existential rape: your door is off your hinges; stuff is missing, clearly. OH MY GOD! My (special irreplaceable thing) is GONE/BROKEN! Etcetera.

Will it be funny that a law was broken? Or are you just a bunch of coprophageous bottom feeders, slithering under the soft white underbelly of whatever sludge you can suck up and feed to your “audience”?

Well, when a man who aspires to the presidency has pulled this crap before, and again, you have to wonder if his fingers would be crossed when he pledges to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” so help him whatever he preys too.

You know there’s a goddam good reason for anti-corruption voting laws. And the continual irregularities of this electoral season OUGHT to scare the living hell out of you, if you give a damn about your country, and aren’t just masturbating to your fantasy of what the “Founding Fathers” had in mind.

Because it represents a FUNDAMENTAL scoffing at the very idea of democracy. We “bribe” the voters to get out and vote for us, and scoff that nobody can be bought that cheap.

(I don’t know, ABC News. They bought you pretty cheap, if that story is any indication.)

piss and vinegar doesn’t cut the mustard, pal

Besides, the Wisconsin Republicans know ALL ABOUT illegal electioneering. Here’s from a Milwaukee “News Radio” station on August 5, 2011 (if this were a stock or securities sale, Mitt, it would legally be a short term sale):

… The Republican Party of Wisconsin and Media Trackers, a conservative non-profit, non-partisan investigative watchdog, filed complaints about the block parties.  According to Media Trackers,

On August 1, a source who wishes to remain anonymous attended a Wisconsin Jobs Now! “block party” and witnessed a number of illegal activities firsthand. Upon checking in, the source was given a free meal ticket and a raffle ticket for a prize drawing before being whisked away in a white van to Milwaukee City Hall. At Milwaukee City Hall, personnel wearing Wisconsin Jobs Now! t-shirts explained the ballot and assisted voters with registration forms all from inside the Milwaukee Election Commission office, a polling location.

The Media Trackers complaint alleged Wisconsin Jobs Now! violated two sections of Chapter 12 of the Wisconsin statutes: those covering election bribery and electioneering at a polling place.

Earlier this week, Peter Pickett of the Government Accountability Board told the MacIver News Service it would be illegal to give people anything of value before giving them rides to the polls. It is also illegal to combine giveaways with transportation to the polls.

“If they walk in with a sticker that says ‘I voted ‘that’s one thing, but if they eat before they vote that’s a problem,” Pickett said. “It’s still a questionable practice on way or the other.” [...]

(I’ve covered Wisconsin’s “MacIver News Service” before, BTW. See “Water, Tea or Koch?” 20 February 2011)

If the law was important then, it is important now. And, in EITHER case, the law is the law until you change it. You don’t get to just “ignore it” when it’s inconvenient. (Unless you’re Mitt Romney and have returned to Massachusetts from Utah and want to change your residency. Or you’re Dick Cheney and want to change your residency from Texas, where you’ve lived for years, to Wyoming so as to get around the Constitutional requirement that no President and Vice-President may be from the same state. Having let them break that law, how’d that work out for the USA?)

This is not a partisan issue. It is an American issue.

And Mitt Romney just made a mockery of the very laws of elections — the PRIME source of all law and governance. What was committed was, by Wisconsin law, a felony.

And the law must either be enforced, else

WHY SHOULD I OBEY THE LAW?

When those who would lead us show no inclination to do so.

Dance down this broad, good-intentionally paved road.

But remember. At the end of that road, the New Mexico Prison Riot of 1980 is waiting for you.

If that’s what you want.

Or, you could have some foul-mouthed hillbilly from Wasilla, Alaska stand on your stage with her bastard grandson in the womb of her loose daughter, with the supposed-shotgun-wedding “groom-to-be” and yammer on about how moral and upstanding you are, and claim it’s about “country first.”

If you gave a damn about your country you would at least pay attention.

And if the Fifth Estate (or is that fourth column?) gave a damn about you, they’d not sneer and spit on the story, as did ABC this day.

And ask yourself: “Why should I obey the law?” and “If I obey the law, why shouldn’t Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney?”

Law is nothing unless close behind it stands a warm living public opinion.  ~Wendell Phillips

Wendell Phillips by Matthew Brady

And ask yourself why Sarah Palin guesting on NBC’s Today (Toady?) Show is getting exponentially MORE press coverage than this story?

Courage.
======================

A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog.

The controversy over Trayvon Martin’s death continues as his father Tracy Martin, described “the police version of events in a meeting Wednesday with Washington Post reporters and editors,” and he told them “he did not believe the official account, which was conveyed to him two days after his 17-year-old son was killed Feb. 26.”

From his new Wrecking Ball tour, Bruce Springsteen is performing an updated version of “American Skin (41 Shots)”. “This is for Trayvon,” Springsteen said last night in Philly…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Via David Remnick on The New Yorker…

Suddenly, the mood went sombre and Springsteen said, “This is for Trayvon.” I first heard “American Skin (41 Shots),” at Madison Square Garden a dozen years ago, but now the lament, as the circumstances changed from the shooting of Amadou Diallo, in New York, to Trayvon Martin, in Florida, was less subdued, far tougher, as if to underline the outrage. Like “Born in the U.S.A.” and the new “We Take Care of Our Own,” “American Skin” belies its easy reading; it attempts to get at the complexity as well as the grief and fury of its subject.

Last night a police video of Zimmerman taken after Trayvon was killed was released casting doubt on Zimmerman’s “I was attacked” defense. But, Zimmerman’s defense team continues to double down, with his father now doing an interview.

America is still waiting for answers and justice…

I’m a white woman from a small town in Massachusetts, but I spent 19 years living in Los Angeles. I raised my only child, my white daughter in inner city L.A. schools where she was a minority. Many of her school friends were black, many of my friends in L.A. are black with black sons, and every time I read another piece on Trayvon Martin, my heart breaks a little more.

We lived in L.A. during the Rodney King riots… I’ve seen up close and personal the way black men were targeted in the inner city by white cops. I abhore racism. I abhore gun violence. And I abhore laws that allow guns in the hands of the wrong people. I get the whole 2nd amendment argument, but I don’t get organizations pushing laws like Stand Your Ground, in states like Florida and other states pushing for similar legislation. Where does it stop?

Charles Pierce said in Esquire:

We executed children in this country until long after the rest of the world — except Iran — thought that was a good idea. Almost six million children live in poverty in this country. Almost six million of them are without health insurance of any kind, and that’s reckoned to be an improvement. None of this is accidental. These children are expendable because the people we elect make policy decisions of which we approve — or, at least, of which we do not disapprove. The Republicans in Congress — behind the “leadership” of zombie-eyed granny-starver Paul Ryan — would like to zero out the SCHIP children’s health-care program. If they do that, it will not be done by accident. The Florida legislature, behind the leadership of the National Rifle Association, passed the “stand your ground” law, despite the fact that even police and prosecutors were warning that it amounted to a hunting license for anyone who had both a gun, and the ability to concoct a good story. Trayvon Martin is not dead by accident.

Charles Pierce is right, “Trayvon Martin is not dead by accident,” and by now everyone should know that. The outrage that Zimmerman has not been charged with a crime is beyond palable, yet we wait to see if he will be charged. And in the meantime so many of us feel the pain, the frustration, the heart break and the sick feeling in our guts that things are so dreafully wrong in our country:

I am sick to death of people who celebrate “the family” making excuses about why other people’s children are expendable. I am sick to death of politicians who are more concerned about protecting zygotes than about the teenagers on whom they seek to balance their budgets and advance their careers. (Barney Frank’s line about conservatives’s believing that life “begins at conception and ends at birth” was not entirely a joke, although it’s always been treated as one.) I am sick to death of opportunistic yahoos who can look at this country’s unhealthy attachment to firearms and declare that the actions of George Zimmerman, while unfortunate, were pretty much what the Founders had in mind. I am sick to death of the steady drip-drip-drip of all the topical anesthetics we mix up whenever something like this happens. Had Emmett Till been killed in 2012, there’d be at least three people sitting in the CNN Green Room right now — and probably 15 of them sitting offstage at Fox — waiting to explain how unfortunate it was that the lad so transgressed against local custom that circumstances dictated that he be beaten to a pulp and tossed into the river tied to a cotton-gin fan. I am sick to death about how we can argue about anything simply to argue about it, and then move along to the next argument, as though anything at all has been settled.

Trayvon’s tragic death has become a political football in the midst of election season that clearly draws lines in the sand showing the racial discord in America. Our President speaks out and says, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” and shortly after, Republican Newt Gingrich is verbally assaulting Obama calling his comments “disgraceful.”

Disgraceful? What is “disgraceful,” is Newt Gingrich’s lack of respect, respect for our president and respect for Trayvon’s family.

I am sick to death, as Charles Pierce is, that this country does nothing but argue and those agruments somehow lead to the death of innocent children.

When will it end.

Actor, activist George Clooney was arrested and handcuffed a short time ago, outside of the Sudanese embassy in Washington, D.C. for protesting Sudan’s blockage of “food and aid from entering the Nuba Mountains area of the country, as well as its treatment of its people.”

Clooney’s father, journalist Nick Clooney, 78, was with him and was also arrested, as were Martin Luther King III, NAACP President Ben Jealous, Rep Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) and Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) and former Rep. Tom Andrews (D-Mass.). They were taken away in a Secret Service van.

Speaking before the large crowd that gathered to watch the protest, Clooney said the group wanted “the (Sudanese) government in Khartoum to stop randomly killing its own innocent men, women and children. Stop raping them, and stop starving them.”

Clooney has been in Washington. D.C. over the past few days in effort to bring more awareness to the situation in Sudan:

On Thursday, the actor testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about what he saw in Sudan; then met with Secretary Hillary Clinton and President Obama in the Oval Office. The Washington Post later reported that Clooney said Obama promised to push China’s president to aid in forcing Sudan to open its southern region to relief effots.

He later told reporters that “people turn on the news and see an awful lot of bad stories,” but added that the United States “is still the most generous country in the world and truly the most compassionate.”

On Wednesday, Clooney appeared on TODAY with Ann Curry and discussed how he came under rocket fire in the Sudan on a recent trip there.

Clooney had announced his protest at the Sudanese embassy in advance and no doubt, intended to be arrested.

I really admire Clooney’s dedication to bringing awareness and help to the people of the Sudan.

Kerry swipes Romney again today over Iran foreign policy…

I have little interest in inserting myself, as a former nominee of my party, into this presidential campaign season. But as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which has a vital role in issues of national security, I feel compelled to respond to the ways that, in pursuit of the Republican nomination, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has put himself front and center in debates that have serious consequences.

And on “CBS This Morning” today, Senator John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic nominee for president,  said that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the Republican front-runner for nomination, was “‘behaving like a irresponsible candidate’ in criticizing the president’s Iran policy.”

Senator Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee talked with Charlie Rose “about a Washington Post column in which he rebuts a Romney op-ed published earlier in the week.”

Although Kerry wrote that Mr. Obama was already doing what Romney proposed to do to Iran, he wouldn’t say the two men’s views were similar.

“I see a profound difference,” said Kerry. “The difference is President Obama is acting like a president, a commander in chief and like a, a statesperson, and Mitt Romney is behaving like a irresponsible candidate, frankly, because everything that he laid out in his op-ed President Obama is already doing.”

Kerry dismissed Mitt Romney’s attacks on the Obama administration’s Iran foreign policy as “election-year politics.” 

“What he’s doing is setting up straw men, basically trying to just argue a case, say, ‘I’m strong, you’re weak,’ without any evidence supporting it whatsoever, Charlie,” said Kerry. “I mean, everything that Mitt Romney laid out that he said he might do President Obama has done or is in the middle of expanding.”

Two days ago Kerry rebutted Romney’s OP/ED on Iran on the Senate floor. Kerry’s OP/ED in the WaPo and appearance on “CBS This Morning,” mark Kerry’s second swing at Romney on Iran foreign policy.

Jessica Winter debates in TIME Ideas: Are Women People?

Winter says, “in the past couple of months, certain powerful figures in media and politics have cracked open that certitude,” that “women are fully autonomous human citizens—who vote, even.”

I can fully understand the questions Winter is posing given the recent increase in the War On Women, by members of the Republican Party and Clergy.

In her article, Winters recapps “recent instances of powerful men from the fields of law, politics and literature tackling the question that has captured America’s imagination: Are Women People?”

It’s a must read on this International Women’s Day.

Iran has been the hot topic of the day with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney beating the Iran war drum with an OP/ED today titled: “How I would check Iran’s nuclear ambition“.

Note Romney’s closing statement in which he beats the drum harder…

My foreign policy plan to avert this catastrophe is plain: Either the ayatollahs will get the message, or they will learn some very painful lessons about the meaning of American resolve.

Senator John Kerry, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, took to the Senate floor today to deliver remarks on Iran and took time to rebut Romney’s OP/ED in his floor statement: 

“We’re going to have a bruising election season. And so we should. That’s how we decide big issues in the United States. We always have. But let’s have an honest debate, not a contrived one. Governor Romney can debate the man in the White House instead of inventing straw men on the op-ed pages. He should be armed with facts instead of empty rhetoric. And if we are to succeed as the American people want us to in order to avoid a nuclear Iran, then at some point we must all act like statesmen, not candidates. We must be clear-eyed about what we have accomplished and what we have yet to do. That’s what Americans expect from their Commander in Chief, and they deserve no less.”

The full text of Chairman Kerry’s floor statement, as delivered, is below:

Mr. President, several of us here in the Senate have run for President. Two of us have been our Party’s nominees. Dozens of others have played major roles in tough campaigns. None of us are strangers to the rough and tumble of politics. I think we all understand on a personal level what the humorist said at the turn of the century when he wrote, “politics ain’t beanbag.” You have to have a thick skin and a strong backbone to survive in this business. You have to be able to take a punch. We all understand that.

So it is not as an innocent that I say I was troubled to read an op-ed in this morning’s Washington Post by the likely Republican nominee for President, Mitt Romney – an attack on the Administration’s Iran policy as inaccurate as it was aggressive.

Every candidate for the Oval Office has the right to criticize the President. But, particularly this week, while Prime Minster Netanyahu is in Washington meeting with the Administration to chart a path forward, we should all remember that the nuclear issue with Iran is deadly serious business that should invite sobriety and serious-minded solutions, not sloganeering and sound bites. This can’t become just another applause line on the Republican presidential stump. Talk has consequences, and idle talk of war only helps Iran by spooking the tight oil market and increasing the price of the Iranian crude that pays for its nuclear program. And to create false differences with the President just to score political points does nothing to move Iran off a dangerous nuclear course. Worst of all, Governor Romney’s op-ed does not even do readers the courtesy of describing how a President Romney would do anything different from what the Obama administration has already done.

If we’re going to disagree, let’s do so responsibly – and honestly.

Just look at this op-ed. From his opening paragraphs, Romney garbles history. Going back to the Iranian revolution, he calls President Carter “feckless,” saying he did nothing for over a year while Iranian revolutionaries held Americans captive. In fact—it was the months of President Carter’s negotiations and the all-night session before the inauguration on January 20, 1981 that freed the hostages.

But I bring the hostage crisis up for another reason — because when those helicopters went down in the desert during the failed rescue attempt in 1980, the United States not only lost an opportunity to get our people back sooner, President Carter lost any chance he had at reelection. And yet, President Obama, whom Governor Romney calls “the most feckless president since Carter,” threw that lesson out the window and authorized the gutsy and dangerous raid in Pakistan that finally killed Osama bin Laden.

Despite everything that could have gone wrong with that raid, the mission was ordered with confidence, executed with courage, and the man who plotted the September 11 attacks was finally held accountable for the murder of thousands of Americans. George W. Bush may have said “Wanted: Dead or Alive,” but President Obama delivered. I don’t know if Governor Romney has checked the definition of the word “feckless” lately, but that ain’t it.

The rest of Romney’s argument doesn’t get any better.

In fact, he goes on to propose action after action that President Obama has already taken. Look, this is not just my analysis. Let me read you the first sentences from an article in today’s New York Times:

“To rein in Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, Mitt Romney says he would conduct naval exercises in the Persian Gulf…. He would try to ratchet up Security Council sanctions on Iran, targeting its Revolutionary Guards, and the country’s central bank and other financial institutions. And if Russia and China do not go along, he says, the United States should team up with other willing governments to put such punitive measures in place. As it turns out, that amounts to what President Obama is doing.”

Ambassador Nick Burns, President Bush’s lead negotiator on Iran, said, “The attacks on Obama basically say, ‘He’s weak and we’re strong.’ But when you look at the specifics, you don’t see any difference.”

So let’s go point by point through the Romney plan.

He writes that he would proceed with missile defenses to protect against Iran. He ignores the fact that one of the first things that the Obama administration did was to issue its plans for the Phased Adaptive Approach—so that we would be able to sooner protect our friends and allies against the Iranian missile threat and to provide increasing levels of capability as the technology advances. During the debate over the New START treaty, the Senate heard in great detail—including from the commander of Strategic Command and the director of the Missile Defense Agency—how this system would work and how the administration planned to proceed with it. In fact, the president sent the Senate a letter affirming his commitment to missile defense, and over the past year he has stuck by that promise.

Then Romney goes on to say that President Obama doesn’t understand the seriousness of the threat from nuclear terrorism. Again, just look at the record: For the first time, the President set as a national goal securing all vulnerable nuclear material around the world in four years. He won international endorsement of that effort at the 2010 Nuclear Security Summit. Last year alone, the Department of Energy removed or eliminated over 250 kilograms of highly enriched uranium from places like Ukraine, Belarus, Serbia, and Kazakhstan. And in the budget request before Congress, the Administration plans to remove or eliminate highly enriched uranium from 9 countries, including Vietnam, Ukraine, and Mexico.

Then, Romney lays out the greatest willful avoidance of the facts in his entire article. He calls for ever-tightening sanctions on Iran. Mr. President, what exactly is it that he thinks we’ve been doing for the past three years? When President Obama took office, Iran was ascendant. As the Vice President used to say when he chaired the Foreign Relations Committee, freedom wasn’t on the march – Iran was on the march. Its reach through proxies like Hezbollah threatened the United States, its allies and the region. The international community was divided; diplomacy—both multilateral and bilateral—was stalled.

But in June 2010, with a decisive push from President Obama, the United Nations put in place the most comprehensive and biting international sanctions the Iranian government has ever faced—imposing restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activities, ballistic missile program, conventional military exports to Iran, Iranian banks and financial transactions, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

What’s more, in coordination with allies such as the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Canada and others, the Obama Administration put in place additional measures, ratcheting up pressure on the country’s petrochemical industry, oil and gas industry, and financial sector. Recently, Europe announced the ban of oil imports from Iran, which will further pressure Iran’s economy.

And that’s just on the multilateral front. President Obama also worked closely with Congress to pass the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act, which strengthened existing U.S. sanctions, and made it harder for the Iranian government to buy refined petroleum and modernize its oil and gas sector. And, recently, we imposed tough new sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran. Don’t take my word for it – Iran’s President Ahmadinejad is the one feeling the pressure. As he said last fall, “our banks cannot make international transactions anymore.”

Today, all of these sanctions are beginning to bite. Iran is now virtually cut off from large parts of the international financial system. Almost $60 billion in energy-related projects in Iran have been put on hold or discontinued. Iran has started to lose oil sales to key customers in Europe and Asia, and those losses could reach up to 40 percent of its daily sales, according to the International Energy Agency. Banking sanctions have prevented several of Iran’s customers from paying for its petroleum products, leaving the Central Bank short of hard currency and driving down the unofficial foreign exchange rate by 40 percent in a single month.

Just yesterday, the deputy chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was quoted as saying: “The regime is at the height of isolation and in the midst of a technological, scientific, and economic siege. We are not in a situation of imaginary threats and sanctions. Threats and sanctions against us are effectively being pursued.”

Iran is also divided internally and isolated diplomatically like never before. Iran’s most important ally, Syria, is facing regime collapse, which a former director of Israel’s Mossad recently said could be a bigger strategic setback for Iran than a military strike against it. And, to talk about Israel for a second, we should all remember that President Obama has provided record amounts of security funding to help Israel maintain its qualitative military edge. Prime Minister Netanyahu has spoken of President Obama’s ironclad commitment to Israel’s security. He said “that our security cooperation is unprecedented… And [that President Obama] has backed those words with deeds.”

So when you add it all up, Mitt Romney is just trying to ignore, twist, and distort the Administration’s policy to drive a wedge in our politics.

Mr. President, let us be crystal clear: we must prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. That is why President Obama, even as he builds pressure for a diplomatic solution, keeps reiterating that all options are on the table. And he’s underscored that – as he said – “I don’t bluff.” And you can ask Osama bin Laden what he means when he says that. Mr. President, we’re going to have tough debates. We’re going to have a bruising election season. And so we should. That’s how we decide big issues in the United States. We always have. But let’s have an honest debate, not a contrived one. Governor Romney can debate the man in the White House instead of inventing straw men on the op-ed pages. He should be armed with facts instead of empty rhetoric. And if we are to succeed as the American people want us to in order to avoid a nuclear Iran, then at some point we must all act like statesmen, not candidates. We must be clear-eyed about what we have accomplished and what we have yet to do. That’s what Americans expect from their Commander in Chief, and they deserve no less.

In related news during his presser today, President Obama spent sometime rebuffing “criticism that he has been weak on Iran,” and he accused his “Republican rivals of “beating the drums of war” amid rising concerns about the prospect of Iran’s developing a nuclear weapon.”

Conservative’s caustic internet mouth-piece Andrew Breitbart died shortly after midnight, this morning, he was 43. He is  “survived by his wife Susannah Bean Breitbart, 41, and four children.”

Breitbart’s Big Journalism website broke the news with this, “With a terrible feeling of pain and loss we announce the passing of Andrew Breitbart.”

Breitbart was loved by the right-wing and reviled by the left, as he often relentlessly picked battle with both politicians and the main-stream media. He was a darling of the Tea Party as well.  

Breitbart was a prolific commentator who founded several websites devoted to covering politics, entertainment and everything in-between. Earlier in his career, he worked for the Drudge Report before breaking off to start his own outlets — including Big Government, Big Hollywood and Breitbart.tv.[...]

The Los Angeles coroner’s office said the preliminary evidence suggests a “cardiac event” led to his death. An autopsy is set for Friday.

Breitbart’s father-in-law actor Orson Bean said he ”was walking near his house in the Brentwood neighborhood shortly after midnight Thursday when he collapsed.”

I’ll choose to stay classy on this one, though many liberal and progressive bloggers are reported not to be and goodness knows Breitbart certainly didn’t apply the “stay classy” rule in his internet reporting. Regardless, it’s not my style to speak ill of the dead… I’ll let others have it…