Asking and Telling and Screaming and Yelling

The Constitution: Affirming Peoples' Right to Exist
Since 1789

          I was going to write the rest of this blog with a Dr. Seussian rhyme sceme, but Lieberman has too many syllables to get a good rhyme scheme going. Anyways.
          First let me begin by saying that I am happy that my lamentation of the apparent ineffectuality of the lame duck session of 2010 has proved false; big changes are indeed being made. Today was a historic day in the realm of politics, as it encompassed the (long-awaited) repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell (yay!), a policy that is obviously as discriminatory as it is unconstitutional.  This day is awesome for a number of reasons: a) gay people can serve openly without fear of being discharged (as the approximately 14000 servicemen were--many of them specialists--in the past 17 years); b) this bill was a rare show of bi-partisanship, as eight of the sixty-five votes for the repeal came from Republicans; c) it is another step in the direction of gay rights.  Sen. Joe Lieberman, an Independent from Connecticut, led the effort for the repeal, helping draft a bill specifically for that purpose and courting some of the Republican opposition to support it.  This bill will definitely be remembered as his legacy, and that of the 111th Congress, which ends in just under a month.
          The DREAM Act, however, wasn't so lucky; it fell just a few votes short of passage, which is, of course, disappointing.  I guess only so many liberal notions can be stomached by Congress at any given time--gives those conservatives a serious case of indigestion or something.  The idea of a path to citizenship for college educated and motivated young immigrants was a great idea, but a heady dose of Nativism proved to be too much for its idealism.  If the time isn't right for such a bill now, it certainly won't be right within the next two years; if anything, the 112th Congress will seek to crack down on immigration, reinforce Bush-era tax cuts and generally do things I don't like. But such is life. However, I can't be  worried about what the future holds, no, today is a day to feel proud of a country that decided to act in favor of a long-suffering minority, this is a day to commend elected officials for doing what it right.

Lame Duck Period: A To Do List

"Rubber Ducky, you're not the one
Rubber Ducky, don't get nothin' done"
~Freely adapted from Sesame Street

          Yep, you guessed it: it's time for another liberal rant--this time maybe with a little less humor and a little more (self?) righteous indignation.  So, dear reader, I apologize in advance. I digress.
          In the upcoming two years, several things are NOT going to happen under the new, more conservative Congress--such as the repeal of DADT, the termination of the Bush Era tax cuts, a more comprehensive (yes, that is possible) health care act (e.g. the revival of the public option), the passage of the DREAM initiative...the list goes on and on.  The time for congressional Democrats to act, therefore, is NOW.
          Lame duck periods are aptly named; the previous one consisted and a president and a Congress quietly trying not to make the burgeoning recession get any worse while simultaneously trying to slink away, tail between they're legs.  That's just fine--it's the norm--but I do not want congressional Democrats to slink (dammit).  I want Obama to take the reigns a little more than he has been accustomed to doing throughout the first two years of his presidency and I want congressional Democrats to make some serious headway before they are replaced by conservatives who will, in all probability, do what I don't want them to (because obviously the center of the political universe is me, myself, and I--that's sarcasm, just in case you didn't pick up on it).  More to the point, the somewhat extreme ultraconservatives that have been elected have grand plans to further stifle LGBT rights and attack the legality of abortions, which has been a precedent since the momentous Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade in 1973.  That would really, to use the vernacular, suck--it would be a major setback to years of crusading for civil rights.
          The lame duck session congress is already proving ineffectual.  It failed to muster enough support for the repeal of DADT--which was intended to pass as a provision of a much needed defense-budget bill--and so was subjected to yet another filibuster.  True, plans exist to write up a bill exclusively for the purpose of ending DADT, but if the Dems don't act fast, they will have lost the historic opportunity to pass some truly meaningful legislation within the context of a lame duck period.  Sounds worthwhile to me.

WIKILEAKS (again)

Hello, my name is NOT Neil Patrick Harris

          I suppose one could say I'm a bit behind the times for posting this, as fresh Wikileaks news arrived very early this week, but I felt compelled to catch up on the topic after posting about it in October.  There has, of course been a great deal of media fracas and Hillary Clinton has been having a field day trying to repair diplomatic ties with nations who discovered mildly unpleasant US remarks and plans thanks to a release of quite a few diplomatic cables earlier this week (yes, ENTIRE governments function like cliques of high school girls if given the chance, weaving webs of intrigue and gossiping behind each others backs).  The release of these cables has been called a "diplomatic disaster" and many have feared that it will destabilize already unstable nations like North Korea (as per the recent attack on South Korea). Seriously?? If a volatile country like that is going to arbitrarily attack, it's just going to, not because some it finds out about Wikileaks...then again, Kim Jong Il sort of acts like a pubescent child sometimes, too.
          I digress. Despite the so-called "disaster," I am not particularly upset at the leaks; I actually think it's pretty cool, a sort of modern-day Pentagon Papers.  I mean, from an objective standpoint (concern for American foreign policy aside), it's kind of cool to watch an agent of chaos (think norse troublemaking god Loki) arrive on the scene and stir the pot, challenge the way in which our government conducts its business behind closed doors, make the American public privy to ideas and documents that it would not ordinarily EVER see.  Such occurrences, if timed right, may challenge complacency.  If I was an optimist, I would say maybe this incident will do for American diplomacy what Upton Sinclair's The Jungle did for the meatpacking industry.
          Unfortunately, I'm not an optimist.  Much of the worries about a catastrophic event as the direct result of the leaked cables and other documents found on Wikileaks and its fellow websites were sensationalized by the media.  What will (undoubtedly) happen is a quiet cleanup on the part of our government, the (at least partial) demolition of the website, and the quiet return to pre-Wikileaks normal American life.  It is already beginning.  While still evading the authorities, Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks will not be free for long.  Sites like Amazon and Paypal which tentatively endorsed Wikileaks have slunk meekly back to their corporate empires, tail between their legs.  And the website itself...well, when I attempted to access it today, it said domain not found.  Thus life returns to equilibrium.
          HOWEVER, there is a rumor--spread by various media sources--that Wikileaks may return triumphant, just in time to perform a huge document dump of top secret information from within Wall Street.  Such an exposé of the banking industry would be timely indeed.

California Prison Reform Claims the National Stage

SO MANY INMATES

         The issue of prison overcrowding, which was an (admittedly small and generally sidestepped) issue of debate between gubernatorial hopeful Meg Whitman and governor-elect Jerry Brown has now been thrust into the national public consciousness thanks to a pair of twin cases that have arrived on the doorstep of the Supreme Court. Both cases, Schwarzenegger v. Plata and Coleman v. Schwarzenegger have to do with the squalid conditions (such as lack of healthcare and adequate sanitation) that plague the California prison system, which is choked to the brim with inmates.  The prisons themselves, which are designed to hold 110,000 inmates at maximum capacity currently hold 147,000 prisoners.
         The lawyers that have been engaged in building their respective cases have primarily cited the Eighth Amendment in their quest to prove the current prison situation in our Great State to be unconstitutional.  Personally, I agree, as the conditions described in various articles I have read are beyond inhumane--some prisons keep their inmates in conditions that would barely befit livestock.  Something obviously needs to be done.
          Although no definitive decision has yet been rendered, the judges on the highest bench are currently divided on rather partisan lines, with one judge wavering in the middle.  The more liberal judges are arguing in favor of a reduction in the numbers of inmates in order to remedy some of the buildup which has lead to the horrible conditions, while the more conservative side is focusing on the problems presented with the release of some 30,000 inmates into the world at large; it should be noted that it has been suggested that the nonviolent criminals in the prison system be shuffled down to the jails.  Personally, I believe that a way to alleviate at least a very small portion of the pressure and overcrowding in the prisons is to eliminate the Three Strikes Law, which has put too many people permanently behind bars.  Whatever the decision, it will be interesting to see how these cases play out, as the issue is all too close to home.