Plead the First

Last week I posted a link to politicalcompass.org, a site with a quiz that expands on the traditional “left vs. rightâ€? political spectrum. Several local Greensboro-area bloggers took the quiz and posted their results. I’ve plotted them on a handy dandy chart to see how everyone compares:

An explanation of the chart can be found at the Political Compass website. If you are a local blogger or blog commenter and would like to be included on the chart, take the quiz and post your results in the comments section.

I was going to make the chart into an image map so that clicking on the names would take you to the associated blog, but I don’t have time to do it at the moment. If anyone wants to write the image map code and send it to me I’ll update the post, otherwise I’ll try to get to making them links eventually. In the meantime, here are some normal text-based links to everyone:

David Boyd, Ginger Bush, Cara Michele, Fecund Stench, Jon Lowder, Sue Polinsky, PotatoStew, Roch Smith, Jeff Sykes

Thanks to David Boyd for helping to compile the results.

Update: The graph is now updated with an image map, so you can click the names on it to visit everyone’s respective site. Thanks to Roch for writing the image map code.

You know, I really didn’t think much of it when I heard about Vice President Cheney’s hunting accident. Accidents happen, and it sounded obvious that that’s all this was. It seemed likely that members of the hunting party weren’t being as careful as they should have been, but that was for them to deal with and learn from. However, what does get my goat is the way some folks have gone out of their way to insist that Cheney couldn’t possibly be at fault here, implying that this is a perfectly routine occurrence, and if you go out quail hunting you should almost expect to come back with some bird shot embedded in your face no matter how safety conscious you are.

Marcus Kindley, Chairman of the Guilford County Republican Party, seems especially eager to absolve Cheney of any possible lapses in hunting safety. His recent blog post on the subject started out bizarrely, yet mostly innocuous, simply contrasting Cheney’s accident with Ted Kennedy’s 1969 Chappaquiddick car accident. I poked some fun at the comparison, making no specific mention of hunting, yet Kindley replied by saying:

just how many Quail Hunting Trips have you been on? Dove Hunts? Just wndering if you have any idea what you are talking about? Just wondering….

Since I don’t have any hunting experience, and Kindley seemed interested in talking about the details of the accident, I provided a link to an article writen by someone who does have hunting experience – Paul Begala:

Read the rest of this entry »

What does it take to be considered a “liberal”? Not that much these days – it’s very easy to qualify. As Glenn Greenwald writes, a large number of self-proclaimed conservatives will bestow the liberal label on someone for nothing more than expressing disagreement with George W. Bush:

It used to be the case that in order to be considered a “liberal” or someone “of the Left,” one had to actually ascribe to liberal views on the important policy issues of the day – social spending, abortion, the death penalty, affirmative action, immigration, “judicial activism,” hate speech laws, gay rights, utopian foreign policies, etc. etc. These days, to be a “liberal,” such views are no longer necessary.

Now, in order to be considered a “liberal,” only one thing is required – a failure to pledge blind loyalty to George W. Bush. The minute one criticizes him is the minute that one becomes a “liberal,” regardless of the ground on which the criticism is based. And the more one criticizes him, by definition, the more “liberal” one is. Whether one is a “liberal” — or, for that matter, a “conservative” — is now no longer a function of one’s actual political views, but is a function purely of one’s personal loyalty to George Bush.

Greenwald provides several specific examples of this cult of personality in action, and talks about how many of Bush’s supporters have seemingly abandoned traditional positions of conservatism in their defense of the President. Read the whole article.

(Via DailyKos)

In the interest of helping Michele solve her ongoing identity labelling crisis, I posted a link to politicalcompass.org over at Ed Cone’s blog.

The Political Compass expands on the traditional “left vs. right” political spectrum and gives a more precise measure of where one stands. Give it a try and post your results if you’d like.

My results?

Economic Left/Right: -2.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.49

I’m slightly to the left on economic issues, and rather libertarian on social issues, which appears to put me just a little to the right of Gandhi and the Dalai Lama.

Greg over at The Talent Show has managed to get his hands on an intercepted Al Qaeda conversation, and he’s posted a transcript for us.

Michele over at Chosen Fast has begun posting results from the Homeless Prevention Coalition of Guilford County’s 2006 Point in Time Count:

1108 individuals were counted on Jan. 25, 2006 who fit the McKinney-Vento definition of homelessness and were counted using HUD’s accepted methodology for the Point in Time Count. This total came from a street/outside count plus the count from homeless shelters and transitional facilities. 1108 is an increase of 36% from the 2005 HUD Count total of 812.

This is a good time to be thinking about those numbers as the temperature finally drops and the weather begins to feel a bit more like winter.

From CNN:

A former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney told a federal grand jury that his superiors authorized him to give secret information to reporters as part of the Bush administration’s defense of intelligence used to justify invading Iraq, according to court papers.

Who are Libby’s superiors? I don’t think he can have that many – Cheney, Bush, maybe Rove and a couple of other officials?

I’ve been trying to think of a witty way to post about this, or some kind of non-lame pun for a headline, but I’m drawing a blank. So, without further ado: Flying Snakes.

Nathan Tabor, “a conservative political activist based in Kernersville, North Carolina,” brings us the latest round of ACLU-bashing with an article on The Conservative Voice entitled The ACLU—Not Looking Out for Your Best Interests. He starts off by listing a few threats to our liberties:

Unfortunately, there are a number of threats to our liberty today. Big government, with its burdensome taxes and extensive regulations, threatens the liberty of small business owners. Corrupt judges threaten the religious liberty of schoolchildren who want to pray in public schools. Violent crime forces the elderly to be virtual prisoners in their own homes—an assault on their liberty. And the list goes on and on.

I wonder if the list that goes “on and on” includes warrantless wiretapping and the Patriot Act? Tabor doesn’t give many specifics, but instead quickly moves on to taking the ACLU to task:

If a public high school student wants to hold a prayer meeting at school, the ACLU is the first in line trying to sabotage the project. In the vocabulary of the ACLU, there is no such thing as religious liberty. Instead, the organization routinely fights for freedom FROM religion—not freedom to exercise religion.

A quick search of the ACLU’s website shows that they defended the rights of a group of Massachusetts students to distribute religiously-themed candy canes, supported a Michigan valedictorian’s right to include Bible verses in her high school yearbook entry, and fought to allow a second grader to sing “Awesome God” at her school talent show. Those are just cases involving religious liberty at schools – there are plenty more where the ACLU supported the religious liberty of individuals and groups in other areas of the public sphere. It’s true that the ACLU has been against school-endorsed religious observances, but they have consistently stood up for the rights of individuals to express and practice their religious beliefs in schools and elsewhere. Claiming that to the ACLU “there is no such thing as religious liberty” is demonstrably false.

If a mayor wants to place a Christmas display on the grounds of City Hall, the ACLU is at the ready to put a stop to it. If a judge wants to post the Ten Commandments in the courthouse, the ACLU is prepared to fight the idea—all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Rightly so, since these activities are against the first amendment. Government entities have no business endorsing any particular religion by erecting displays dedicated to that religion. Would Tabor be so eager to support government-erected religious displays if a mayor wanted to place a Wiccan display on the grounds of City Hall? I suspect not. Again, the important thing to remember is that the instances they fight against are government-established displays. The ACLU often defends the rights of private individuals and groups to use public areas for religious displays and activities, disproving the notion that they are out to remove all religion from the public square.

The article goes on to describe a recent case that the ACLU took part in where they defended the right of a high school boy to wear skirts and kilts to school, calling it “silliness.” I’ll agree that the case is a bit strange, but one of the major purposes of our Constitution is to protect the rights of the minority. By definition, a minority view or behavior is often going to seem “strange” or “silly” to the majority. In this case, the boy in question was simply protesting his school’s no-shorts rule, so while he may not actually have been a “minority” I believe that the principle remains – the fact that an issue may seem “silly” isn’t a valid reason to be dismissive of a case.

Tabor closes with the following:

The only word that adequately describes the ACLU is “extremist.� It is not extreme in the defense of liberty—it is extreme in imposing bizarre attitudes and policies on the rest of us.

That statement itself is bizarre, considering that the ACLU has no power to impose any attitudes or policies on anyone. They can only argue a case before a judge. It is always up to the judge to weigh both sides in light of our laws and Constitution, and then to decide if their argument has merit. If the ACLU is indeed making silly arguments, then Tabor shouldn’t have anything to worry about.

North Carolina House Speaker Jim Black is under some scrutiny right now. Among other things, Black – an optometrist – is taking some heat for his proposal to require full eye exams for all North Carolina kindergartners.