Desert Rat Democrat

Cheerleaders and Con Artists.

I've really been meaning to put the convictions of Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling into a broader context for over a week now, and a combination of other interests, burnout, work load, and family have pretty much killed it. But its been running through my head for a week, and I think it is time to record my thoughts.

The Lay and Skilling convictions were pretty much the last act in a series of high profile trials of the robber barons of the last decade of the 20th Century. Like the Rigas Family (Adelphia), Bernie Ebbers and Company (MCI/Worldcom), every individual charged was ultimately convicted.

But there's so much more to this story that really ought to be examined, because it was really only in the culture of the late 1990's that this could have happened.

If there was any variable that enabled Ken Lay, Bernie Ebbers, etc. to bilk ordinary investors on a scale that would have made the robber barons blush, it was the rise of internet-based stock trading. Like the Roaring 20's saw a lot of Americans enter the stock market who had absolutely no idea what they were doing, the 1990's saw the rise of the Internet, both as a target of big dollars in venture capital, and also with lots of money chasing it in the markets. Most of the frenzy was driven by small traders making stupid trades. The money didn't get any smarter anytime soon.

This led to the creation of two things that really were new. The massive phenomenon that was CNBC, which was to the late 1990's internet trading boom what CNN was to the first Iraq war. While Desert Storm made Wolf Blitzer a star, the internet boom, and CNBCs hunger for ratings made Wall Street Analysts like Henry Blodgett into stars. Markets hung on their very words, and that word, even when the Internet boom was long over, was always buy. Blodgett is gone now, along with a host of others who essemtially acted as highly-paid publicists for a whole host of companies with questionable viability, business plans, and even worse management. All this is well documented fact.

CNBC in the late 1990's was little more than pornography for the terminally greedy, and particularly the greedy that were terminally stupid. interviews with an analyst pumping whatever stock his company had just signed an investment banking deal with in the morning, followed by more such analysts at noon, followed by recaps of all the money people had made, all of it on paper, of course, in the evening. CNBC had the kind of ratings no business news program had ever enjoyed, or willl ever enjoy again. Frankly, I blame Jack Welch almost as much as I blame the Ken Lay's of the world for the fraud and corruption on Wall Street in the 1990s.

The third part of this perverted triangle of naked greed was the Republican Congress and Democratic President at the time. Bill Clinton, for all the Republican gnashing of teeth, was essentially a moderate Democrat on social issues, and pretty much dead center to center right on economics (Exhibit A: Signing NAFTA). While this certainly made him a lot better than the economic tyros who've sat in the White House as bookends (Bush I & Bush II), it also meant that he wasn't all that concerned about investors or workers as long as big business kept cutting those checks to the DLC every month.

And from 1994 onward, to make matters worse, he had to deal with the current nut job Republican Congress, who saw nothing but dollar signs as far as the eye could see. For over a decade, this Republican Congress has gleefully cut enforcement funding for the SEC. To make matters worse, when things started to melt down in 2001, the Bush Administration didn't exactly pursue the investigations with enthusiasm. It took a Democratic New York Attorney General, Elliot Spitzer, to really start to look at the financial services industry and shame the SEC into action.

But the truth of this is that there are a lot more Ken Lays out there, who were never caught, who slipped under the radar, and still lurk. It's something worth remembering. Because Enron operated for close to a year under the Bush Administration when the warning signs were abundantly clear. They bankrolled his travel for the 2000 campaign. They encouraged the White House to leave the citizens of California in the dark of rolling blackouts. They almost certainly played a role in the Bush Administrations largely successful efforts to shape energy policy to the benefit of the coal, oil and gas industries.

And they did all of this under the nose of a Republican Congress that was uninterested in funding enforcement efforts, and a Republican President who himself was once the subject of insider trading allegations (Harkin Energy) and a Republican Vice President who still draws bonuses from an oil service company (Halliburton).

Corruption doesn't happen in a vacuum. This one didn't. And the political conditions for that corruption, with the same Republican Congress and President as that of 2001, if anything, are more ideal now than they were in the late 1990s.

Something to think about as we continue to read stories of this case going through the appeals process, I think.

Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room Under Lockdown In Cell Block H

If you drop the soap, Ken, probably just best leave it there, ok?

Ken Lay, dirtbag Chairman and Jeffrey Skilling, dirtbag CEO, whose actions stole the retirement money of tons of Enron employees, defrauded millions of investors, felled a state government, and plunged millions of Californians into the living hell of rolling blackouts for two years, are about to undergo a change of address.

HOUSTON (CNNMoney.com) - Enron former chief executive Jeffrey Skilling and founder Kenneth Lay were both found guilty Thursday of conspiracy and fraud in the granddaddy of all corporate fraud cases.

On the sixth day of deliberations, a jury of eight women and four men convicted the former executives of misleading the public about the true financial health of Enron, whose collapse in late 2001 symbolized the wave of corporate fraud that swept the United States early this decade.

Skilling was found guilty on 19 counts of conspiracy, fraud, false statements and insider trading. He was found not guilty on nine counts of insider trading.

Lay was found guilty on all six counts of conspiracy and fraud. In a separate bench trial, Judge Sim Lake ruled Lay was guilty of four counts of fraud and false statements. (Click here for the defendants' reactions)

Both Lay and Skilling could face 20 to 30 years in prison, legal experts say. And Lay will also face an additional hefty term in prison for his conviction in the bank fraud case.

As somebody who knew a number of people touched in a number of ways by the disgusting actions of these two scumbags, I can only hope both son of a bitches die in prison. It'd be a small price to pay for the things they did to this country over the years.

And if our lazy, somnambulent press could stop its pathological desire to run its fingers through the silk and satin-clad items in Hillary Clinton's lingerie drawer for a minute, perhaps they might want to ask the President a couple of tough questions?

1. Mr. President. How does it feel to know that most of the travel costs of your 2000 campaign were ultimately financed by defrauded investors, taxpayers, little old ladies in California, and tens of thousands of Enron employees across the country?

2. Mr. Cheney. Just exactly what did you discuss with two felons during Energy Task Force meetings in 2001?

And while you're at it, I'd like a pony. A big pink one. I figure it has at least as good a chance of happening.

Clifton Bennett & Kyle Wheeler Case: They Write Letters

The following, from ShrinkinSF (name withheld by request) crossed my email transom last night. It's apparently the text of a letter sent to Sheila Polk, Yavapai County Attorney, Terry Goddard, Arizona Attorney General, Thomas W. O'Toole, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge, Albert Choules Jr, Mesa, AZ LDS Temple President, and Gary Grado of the East Valley Tribune.

The complete text of the letter is below. It's well worth the read. The only thing I've done is taken the liberty of hyperlinking the referenced URLs in the footnotes.

Yavapei County Attorney

255 E. Gurley Street
Prescott, AZ 86301-3868

Dear Ms. Polk,

April 9, 2006

I am a psychologist in Northern California who has closely followed the case of State V. Wheeler & State V. Bennett. I frequently function as an expert for the courts in Alameda and Contra Costa County, and have served as faculty for AOC/CJER. As the treating therapist of several sexually assaulted children I read closely your press release, the police reports and the news descriptions. I appreciate the transparency and candor you have used in clarifying the reasons your decisions. It is clear that in forming your response to these crimes you relied on your understanding of sexual intent, as well as the specific details of the assaults. Unfortunately, these antiquated ideas fail to adequately protect our children. They are not even reflective of your own state’s writings on sexual assault[1].

The National Center for Victims of Crime[2] writes “/Persons who commit sexual assault do so out of a need to control, dominate, abuse and humiliate. Sexual assault is the articulation of aggression through sex, and has little to do with passion, lust, desire, or sexual arousal./” Several authors have addressed the role of shame and humiliation in sexual assault and even described it as the supreme motivation in these attacks[3]. For the perpetrator to feel their own sense of power and mastery, the victim needs to be frightened, shamed and humiliated. Consider Bennett’s own statement here “/I was aware of and intended to insult them by subjecting them to an indignity, embarrassment, or humiliation*[4]*./”

US Code Title 42 13031.5 describes sexually explicit conduct with children to include real or simulated acts “/whether between persons of the same or of opposite sex; sexual contact means the intentional touching, either directly or through clothing, of the genitalia, anus, groin, breast, inner thigh, or buttocks of any person with an intent to abuse, humiliate, harass, degrade, or arouse or gratify sexual desire of any person”/

This statute is relevant for a number of reasons. First because it specifically clarifies that contact through clothing is still considered exploitive. Second because it demonstrates clearly that whether or not the assault is real or simulated is irrelevant to the crime. And finally because it clarifies that the perpetrator’s intent can be to humiliate or to arouse any person associated with the crime, and may in fact be both.

It is not surprising that you have received a massive response for your involvement in this case, or that the parents of these young victims have been outraged. What is surprising is that you have done so little to inform yourself on the current literature and thinking in these matters. Your observation that this was not trauma because it was not practiced in secret and that “photos were taken” demonstrates not only blindness to the literature but ignorance of vast current events as well (such as recent military abuses).

I offer only a final thought based my reading of the April 4th East Valley Tribune article, which noted a particular incident in which all the boys were lined up and “broomed” because a toilet had been clogged. Young men suffering sexual abuse often hold their stools as a response to the trauma, causing constipation. It is not at all surprising that 18 boys humiliated in this way could clog the toilets.

Cc: Hon. Thomas W. O’Toole

Maricopa County Superior Court

101 W Jefferson

7th Floor, Phoenix, AZ

85003-2202

Terry Goddard
Office of the Attorney General
1275 West Washington Street
Phoenix, AZ 85007

Albert Choules Jr.

Mesa LDS Temple President

101 S LeSueur St
Mesa, AZ 85204

Lynne Cadigan

504 S Stone Ave
Tucson, AZ

85701-2308

Gary Grado

East Valley Tribune

120 W. First Avenue
Mesa, AZ 85210

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States

As a service to my many readers, Independent, Democratic, Libertarian, and particularly my slower-witted Republican readers, and since both the Attorney General, and the Heinrich Himmler look-alike who heads the largest electronic surveillance intelligence gathering organizaiton on the planet are too-dull witted or nefarious to understand the single biggest law that governs their conduct, here is the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, in its entirety:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Allow the Bush Administration, or any administration for that matter, to defy the Fourth Amendment, or conveniently ignore the "probable cause" language, as Michael Hayden and Alberto Gonzalez have done in the last 48 hours, and we are no longer a functioning democratic (small d) government.

It's that simple. That's what's at stake here. And it's a hell of a lot more important than the party in power in the White House, or Congress.

A Pre-1776 Mentality

The following diary was published by Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin) on Daily Kos this morning. It sums up some of the thinking I've been doing recently, but best of all, it's said by a Senator that I have ever growing respect for, both as a principled man, as a consistent leader, and as somebody who embraces many of the core values that make this country great. I've taken the liberty of quoting it in full:

I've seen some strange things in my life, but I cannot describe the feeling I had, sitting on the House floor during Tuesday's State of the Union speech, listening to the President assert that his executive power is, basically, absolute, and watching several members of Congress stand up and cheer him on. It was surreal and disrespectful to our system of government and to the oath that as elected officials we have all sworn to uphold. Cheering? Clapping? Applause? All for violating the law?

The President and his administration continue their spin and media blitz in attempts to defend the fact that they broke, and continue to break, the law. Their weak and shifting justifications for doing so continue. The latest from the President seems to be that basically the FISA law, passed in 1978, is out of date. His decision that he can apparently disregard "old law" fits the pattern with the President and his administration. He's decided to disregard a statute (FISA) and the Constitution (the 4th Amendment) by continuing to wiretap Americans' phone calls and emails without the required warrant, while at the same time claiming powers of the presidency that do not exist. (Perhaps he feels the Constitution is too "old," as well.) This administration reacts to any questions about spying on American citizens by saying that those of us who stand up for our rights and freedoms are somehow living in a "pre-September 11th, 2001 world."

In fact, the President is living in a pre-1776 world.

Our Founders lived in dangerous times, and they risked everything for freedom. Patrick Henry said, "Give me liberty or give me death." The President's pre-1776 mentality is hurting America and fracturing the foundation on which our country has stood for 230 years. The President can't just bypass two branches of government, and obey only those laws he wants to obey. Deciding unilaterally which of our freedoms still apply in the fight against terrorism is unacceptable and needs to be stopped immediately.

Many of you saw this week's story in the Washington Post on the exchange Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and I had during his confirmation hearing in January of last year. Mr. Gonzales misled me and the Senate Judiciary Committee under oath about whether the President could spy on Americans without a warrant. (Many of you blogged about it when the story first broke and I thank you for getting the word out.) That exchange is extremely telling about the depths to which this administration will go to grab power. I look forward to a little more honesty from the Attorney General when he testifies about the spying program before the Judiciary Committee on Monday.

I don't have to tell you how important this issue is. It gets to the core of what we as a country are all about. We all agree that we must defeat the terrorists who threaten the safety and security of our families and loved ones. Why does this President feel we must sacrifice our freedoms to fight terrorism? This is a gut check moment for members of Congress. Do we sacrifice our liberty? Do we bow to those who try to use security issues for political gain? Do we stand and applaud when the President places himself above the law? Or, do we say enough?

Stop the power grab, stop the politics, stop breaking the law.

It's time to stand up - not to cheer, but to fight back.

This is not, and should not, be a partisan issue. If George Bush is doing it now, a Democratic President could wiretap average citizens without a warrant in 2009. I would view both with equal suspicion. It's easy to obtain a warrant. The Bush administration has obtained over 10,000 of them since 2001. Legally.

It's a matter of following the law, and protecting the rights of average citizens.

Bipartisan Senate Hearings on the wiretap scandal begin next Monday. I will be watching. Will you?

We Get More Letters. The PFAW Follies Continue

Yesterday, of course, I tore into the worthless roles played by People For the American Way, the Alliance For Justice, and NARAL Pro-Choice America during the Alito confirmation process. Then, People For The American Way made the mistake of sending me an email last night, which I promptly tore apart.

But like a punch-drunk fighter who has been knocked down twice, has a broken nose, and one eye swelled firmly shut, People For The American Way sent another email today, inviting me to slap them silly again:

Dear Desert Rat,

Tuesday night, President Bush told America that the "State of the Union is strong" and said we will "renew the defining moral commitments of this land."

But the President's brazenness cannot change what Americans have seen with their own eyes. President Bush and his Congressional allies have fought hard for the power to torture detainees, to spy illegally on American citizens, to pass a budget that cuts working families off from needed health and educational services, and to roll back 70 years of social progress by installing right-wing Supreme Court justices.

And we fought back. After all, it was a really well-written position paper.

Since the President's last State of the Union address, People For activists have fought the Bush agenda on almost every front. Although the Senate yesterday confirmed Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, your work inspired progressive senators to mount a filibuster in defiance of pundits and defeatists in an attempt to avert this constitutional catastrophe. For months, we have helped hold off Republican efforts to cut 40 billion dollars in health care, education, and food assistance. And we successfully fought for a filibuster of the PATRIOT Act reauthorization that left some of its worst provisions unchanged.

(Emphasis Added).

Apart from that minor disturbance in the second act, I thought it was fabulous play, Mrs. Lincoln.

Especially after Tuesday's confirmation of Samuel Alito, the real signs of hope may not provide much comfort. While the progressive movement is reviving, it is clear that the most important way to protect America's future is to change Washington. The 2006 election cycle is already in full swing.

As PFAW continues to fight for our values in Washington's hostile environment, our affiliated political action committee, the PFAW Voters Alliance, will be redoubling its efforts in preparation for November's elections. One-third of senators will face voters, and all members of the House are up for reelection.

Erm, no. I'd rather hand money locally to the Democratic Party, directly to candidates I like, or to the DNC. Hand money to an organization that just committed two abject failures (Roberts and Alito) on the single issue that is their only reason for existing? Um, not so much.

2006 is expected to bring the most earth-shaking midterm elections since the "Republican Revolution" of 1994, and we want you to be a full part of PFAW Voters Alliance efforts. Federal election law only allows us to fully inform individuals who have made certain kinds of donations to People For the American Way in the past two years about the Voters Alliance's activities. Become a contributing member with a donation of as little as $25 today.

Of course, if organizational failures like PFAW continue to behave in the same manner, we stand a good chance of losing seats in the midterms. $25? I wouldn't hand PFAW a quarter at this point.

We must have you with us to win this fight.

Ralph G. Neas
President

Whatever.

Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake chronicles a similar set of emotions regarding NARAL and its problem of having endorsed Lincolin "I voted for it before I voted against it" Chafee.

Matt Stoller has a beautiful post up chronicling what a successful fight against Alito would have looked like, using the takedown of Social Security Privatization last year as a model.

Both are definitely worth the read.

We Get Letters

In the old inbox tonight, as the State of the Union was winding down, a totally useless email from People for the American Way:

Dear Desert Rat,

We are, of course, deeply disappointed that the Senate voted to confirm Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court moments ago.

(It's important to understand that this is the ONLY email I received since the start of the Senate Judiciary Committee Hearings on Alito began). Noted without further comment.

But we are heartened by the fact that despite overwhelming odds from the beginning, PFAW activists never gave up. You sent over 600,000 faxes and emails to the Senate in the last five days alone! Thank you for all your hard work!

We, as in PFAW and I, didn't do shit. Again, this is the only email I received from PFAW in three weeks. Heck of a job, PFAW. Way to keep in contact, morons. We, as in the liberal blogosphere, including I, who sent quite a few faxes and emails, at the request of a pair of Massachusetts Senators, accomplished a lot.

PFAW? They wrote a 150 page position paper.

We fought hard up until the final vote, convincing 42 senators to vote against Alito's confirmation. We even helped inspire 25 progressive senators to stand on principle and attempt a filibuster even though the odds were against them.

What's this we stuff? Again, what did you do, PFAW, with all of your millions, and all of your infrastructure? Oh, that's right. You sent an email after the fight was over, and wrote a position paper that nobody read. Nice money, if you can get it.

Now that the fight is over, it's important to let the senators who fought Alito know you appreciated their standing up for our rights -- when the next fight comes, they'll be in a stronger position to lead if they're confident they'll have our support. Also let senators who voted to confirm Alito know that you'll remember their votes when they're up for reelection.

Jeez. If I waited for you, I wouldn't have these things out in time for Christmas.

Here's how senators voted on the filibuster and on the final vote. Call your senators and let them hear your appreciation or disappointment.

Share your thoughts on your calls by visiting http://www.SaveTheCourt.org/CallReport.

(List of Senators omitted for brevity's sake).

Once again, I ask you. Why are you sending your money to People For American Way? Why not send it to one of the 25 Democratic Senators who actually stood up and fought this thing, or to a Democratic candidate who will stand for what you believe in instead? It will be money that is far, far better spent.

Alito Post-Mortem 2: Worse Than Useless

Yes, Alito was confirmed and sworn in today. Yes 42 Senators voted against him. I'm also sure 42 Senators could probably agree to call out for pizza, given the opportunity. I won't give Democrats who voted for Alito before they voted against him. Frankly, I could give a rat's a** whether Fox News Democrat Joe Leiberman, voted yes, no, abstained, or fell asleep at his desk and forgot to vote at all today. He wasn't with us yesterday, nor were any of the other Senators who voted for cloture. We will remember them. All of them. Their names will be up on the left sidebar along with those who voted for the bankruptcy bill soon enough.

And frankly, the Democrats on the Judicial Committee did a poor job of questioning Alito. Opposition research was poor, follow up questions, and pointed questions to make this guy defend his record more vigorously were conspicuously absent. Instead of putting together a disjointed theme.

But 25 Senators fought for us, and voted against this guy. That was after a week of phone calls, and begging, basically organized by a number of passionate bloggers.

And that, my friends, is precisely the problem.

Alito's record was terrible. He has a record of judicial decisions and opinions that undercut worker safety (remember the mining accidents), the rights of workers, civil rights, the rights of women, and the rights of individuals.

Sounds like something a coordinated effort to sell the public on this guy could have stopped.

Instead, we had worthlessnes. Blog for Choice day, and an opinion paper from NARAL Pro-Choice America. One was ignored, the other led to a message so disjointed that it didn't present the ope voice so desperately needed. Why wasn't NARAL leaning on Democrats. Why did they give Lincoln Chafee tacit permission to vote for cloture without threatening to pull their endorsement. Why did they not pull out all the stops they could to fight for the issue (women's reproductive freedom and the right to privacy) that frankly is their only reason to exist.

Frankly, the efforts of People For the American Way and the Alliance For Justice were even worse. Now, I'm not a highly paid political consultant, but I've got a few common sense notions about what tactics might not work so well in a world where most ordinarily people just don't have the time to read long position papers.

Here's a few ideas that probably don't work so well.

* A 150 page document and a web site are not good opposition tactics to fight a judicial nominee. Frankly, publishing such a document, while important for those who need to research this stuff, such as Senate staffers, is not an opposition strategy to fight a judicial nominee. I skimmed PFAW's document, but frankly, I'd have rather had my toenails ripped out than read the thing in detail. As for reading three of them, one from NARAL, one from PFAW, and one from AFJ, you've got to be kidding. And I'm a political junkie. This stuff interests me. But I have a family, a job, and, believe it or not, actually like a little leisure time.

* When, exactly, are NARAL, AFJ, or PFAW going to be ready to fight a nominee. They sat on their hands through John Roberts, they sat on their hands. Fair enough, he was a bit of a cipher. Not so Alito. But frankly, PFAW & AFJ published a position paper nobody read, and AFJ did a lousy push-poll last week that underwhelmed the lovely and talented Mrs. Rat. That was their total opposition? Where were the exhortations for a phone, fax, and email campaign? Why did it come down to a single Senator, literally at the eleventh hour, begging in a post on Daily Kos, for somebody to mobilize such an effort.

Why are people still giving these organizations (and countless other allegedly-liberal single issue organizations I haven't mentioned by name) money, when they basically just curled up and died at a time when their pet issues were at such risk?

Now, I don't presume to tell you what to do. I give to specific Democratic candidates, I've given to the Howard Dean led DNC. I am a member of the ACLU (and no, I'm not completely happy with their performance on Alito either), but frankly, I will tell you this. I'd have to see a lot of changes in an organization like PFAW, or NARAL, before I'd give them the time of day, let alone, my hard-earned dollars.

You may want to consider the same.

I'll have more on Alito tomorrow, including a positive message of hope, but it's about 30 minutes before the speech. I need to eat some left over jambalaya (homemade), and down a couple of beers, because if you think I'm going to listen to El Presidente without suitable lubrication, you're dreaming.

FYI. MyDD has all your State of the Union resources in one handy place. Kudos to Matt Stoller.

Taking Our Lumps

By the time I got home this afternoon, it was all over except for the post-mortems, which I'm sure are flying fast and furious across the blogosphere this evening. For what it's worth, we've lost this battle, but frankly, we will win the war.

Final tally was 72-25 on the cloture vote. Sadly, I'm sure the White House is rewriting the State of the Union Address to gleefully include a gloating paragraph from the strategically shaved monkey in a suit to speak about tomorrow night, after he's voted in on something closer to a party line vote tomorrow.

Here, courtesy of Firedoglake, is the list of Democratic Senators who voted to end debate.

Akaka, Daniel K. (D-HI) Yes
Baucus, Max (D-MT) Yes
Bingaman, Jeff (D-NM) Yes
Byrd, Robert C. (D-WV) Yes
Cantwell, Maria (D-WA) Yes
Carper, Thomas R. (D-DE) Yes
Conrad, Kent (D-ND) Yes
Dayton, Mark (D-MN) No
Dorgan, Byron L. (D-ND) Yes
Inouye, Daniel K. (D-HI) Yes
Johnson, Tim (D-SD) Yes
Kohl, Herb (D-WI) Yes
Landrieu, Mary L. (D-LA) Yes
Lieberman, Joseph I. (D-CT) Yes
Lincoln, Blanche L. (D-AR) Yes
Nelson, Bill (D-FL) Yes
Nelson, E. Benjamin (D-NE) Yes
Pryor, Mark L. (D-AR) Yes
Rockefeller, John D., IV (D-WV) Yes
Salazar, Ken (D-CO) Yes

Some of them, undoubtedly will vote against Alito tomorrow afternoon. Don't buy it. It's a cheap political trick. The moment the Senate Republicans got 60 votes, this fight was over. If you believe in safe working conditions, the rights of individuals to seek redress against the abuses of corporations and government, the right to believe or not believe in the manor you see fit, or the right of a woman to control her own body and make her own medical decisions, these Senators (along with every Republican but Chuck Hagel), sold you all down the river.

Remember that. If your Democratic Senator is not on their list, thank them for standing up for you. If they are on this list, remember it. If your Senator is running for reelection this year, and will face a primary challenger, think about whether this is somebody you'd want to vote for again, and vote accordingly.

I'll have more on this later, but I wll tell you this. When Ned Lamont gets his 1000th Connecticut volunteer signed up for a primary run against Joe Leiberman, I've got a hundred dollar bill with his campaign's name on it, with more to come.

We need to take down Joe Leiberman. Because we can. Because he's bad for the Democratic party, and worse for those of us on the left, and because it will send a powerful message to the rest of these Good German Senators who are so afraid of losing elections that they betray their principles. Sell us out for political expediency, and good luck winning elections.

LATE UPDATE (Desert Rat): Mark Dayton voted against cloture. My bad.

FYI. I'll have more on the Alito postmortem this evening. There's reason for hope here.

The War On Sniffles

Like every blogger under the sun, I check Technorati on a daily basis, just to see who, if anybody is linking to me. Today, I discovered a great post of Scott Henson of Grits For Breakfast, who had linked to my Meth & The Law of Unintended Consequences entry:

I'll bet the politicians who passed these ill-conceived laws don't put that quote on their campaign literature. Much of the overhyped political rhetoric surrounding the passage of Texas' law centered on protecting children of meth users. "Don't you care about children exposed to dangerous drugs?," a legislative staffer asked me last year. The implication was that opposition to pseudoephedrine restrictions meant you didn't care about children, but the Times reports that the situation may have actually worsened, and certainly didn't improve, as a result of the new laws:

although child welfare officials say they are removing fewer children from homes where parents are cooking the drug, the number of children being removed from homes where parents are using it has more than made up the difference.

So at best the law was a wash for kids, at worst more kids are exposed to meth use in the home. So what's the solution? It's the same as it ever was: reducing demand. Reducing supply in a vacuum just creates lucrative business opportunities for new suppliers. As one of the Times' sources put it:

"You can't legislate away demand," said Betty Oldenkamp, secretary of human services in South Dakota, where the governor this month proposed tightening a law that last year restricted customers to two packs of pseudoephedrine per store. "The law enforcement aspects are tremendously important, but we also have to do something to address the demand."

Actually it might be possible to "legislate" demand, or at least to legislate programs that help addicts fight their addiction instead of ostracizing and incarcerating them. You can only reduce demand one person at a time, and addicts won't seek help if they think they'll be imprisoned for decades as a result. A commitment to demand reduction would require that the same politicians who brought us the "tuff on crime" approach to the War on Sniffles shift gears, embracing pragmatism and eschewing demagoguery.

For nearly 40 years, we've tried to legislate away supply. At this point, we're doing absurd things in some states like sentencing pot smokers to 10 or 20 year sentences. Obviously, it hasn't worked well, and simple capitalism should illustrate that attempts to cut the supply will never work by themselves.

What might have happened if half of that money had been spent to work on the demand side of the problem, rehabbing drug users?. If some of fhat money was spent on education and research? If that money was spent on prevention programs? If money was spent to truly try to keep kids off of drugs, and to fight the things that lead to drug use (poverty, unstable family situations, etc)?

What's needed are plans to cut supply and demand. The trouble is, it doesn't sound sexy on campaign literature to say you've successfully rehabbed a few thousand drug users instead of jailing them.

Go read the rest of Scott's post, as well as the follow up. They're worth the time.