What happened to the Republican Revolution?

They called it "the Republican Revolution", but revolutions sometimes eat their children.

They promised a new focus on the middle class, yet, adjusted for inflation, the middle class was earning less when Ronald Reagan left office than when he was elected. Today, the middle class earns less in real dollars than they did in 1970, yet the earnings of the top one percent have increased over six hundred percent.

They promised balanced budgets, yet no republican president since world war II ever balanced the national budget. They called the Democrats "Tax and Spend", yet the Republicans had another plan, spend the same or more, but don't raise taxes: not a recipe for success.

George Bush waged two, very expensive wars, but would not relent on his pre-war tax cuts. Math was never his best subject.

Instead of delivering on the things Americans wanted from them, they brought in an agenda nobody asked for. Like making abortion and death penalty laws even more divisive than they already were.

They sought to break down the barrier of church and state that had been so successful for us with prayer in school and revisiting the Scopes Monkey Trial and they maximized the mistakes of an already woefully unsuccessful drug policy that benefited no one but organized crime.

The Republican Revolution came in with great hope and great promise, but we were never able to take delivery of that promise.

It's not like we didn't give them a chance to follow through with their plan. Twenty-Eight of the last forty years saw a Republican President.

For the next two years, the Republicans are completely out of power in two of the three branches of government. Let us hope they use this time for self reflection on how and why they could never deliver on their promises and come back with a new focus on the things that are really important to the American people.

If they can't do that, then let them stay out of power until they do.

What Happened on Proposition 8

The problem with being in a big tent party is that there are so many damn people in the tent and they all want something, usually all at the same time.

One day after a huge and historic victory for the Democratic party and already chinks are showing up in their armor.

At issue is the passing of Proposition 8 in California. Prop 8 amends the California constitution to make gay marriage illegal. The proposition was written by California conservatives with two motives. The first most obvious was to roll back the advances of the gay rights movement, but there was a second, less obvious motive, to encourage right wing voters to the polling booth in an election when John McCain needed all the votes he could get.

The only thing is, it didn't turn out that way. Obama won big in California, but prop 8 won too, by a similarly large margin.

Mathematically, there are only two ways that could have happened. Either a whole bunch of right wing people voted for Prop. 8, but didn't vote for McCain, or, much more likely, an awful lot of people who voted for Obama also voted in favor of Prop. 8.

We've heard before that some race minority Democrats weren't supportive of gay rights issues and this may have been the proof of it. If that's what happened, then Democrats will need to move pretty quickly to close ranks or there could be some problems.

It would be a problem for the party if some people thought they were faithful to the party by voting for Obama, but the party wasn't faithful to them by allowing Prop. 8 to pass in California. Adding similar measures with similar results in Florida and Arizona and the scope of the problem becomes apparent.

It's not just the seven to nine percent of the population who votes for gay rights issues because they themselves are gay that's at stake here. It's the twenty to twenty-five percent of the population who classify themselves as white, educated liberals that also support gay rights issues. Combined, you're looking at fifty to sixty percent of the Democratic party that's understandably upset that members of their own party voted against one of their key issues.

The black church leaders are major players here. If they don't push their faithful to start voting for gay rights issues then this divide in the party could widen.

Right now, there's no where for these people to go. It's not like they can up and join the Republican Party. But what they can do is stop voting for each other's issues, effectively handing whole elections to the Republicans.

If I were Barak Obama, I'd hit this issue pretty hard, pretty early: before the inauguration. If I were Howard Dean, I'd be working pretty hard behind-the-scenes to let these church leaders know what's at stake if they don't close ranks on this issue.

Ronald Reagan used to say the new Golden Rule was "thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican." For the Democrats there might need to be a new Golden Rule as well, "thou shalt not vote against another Democrat's important issues."

Why I didn't Vote For McCain

I've been a McCain supporter for something like twenty years. Yet I didn't vote for him yesterday.

Like most people, I first heard of McCain when he got in trouble as one of the Keating Five. I heard about his remarkable history in Viet Nam and watched him struggle to regain his reputation by fighting like hell against the kind of bad government he himself had been guilty of.

I saw him turn the negative of the scandal into something really remarkable and really positive with the McCain/Feingold Campaign Reform Act.

I saw him struggle with is own party and be rejected as their presidential nominee in 2000 for being right when his party was wrong and the bitter betrayals in South Carolina that killed McCain's hopes for the nomination and pushed Bush into office.

McCain would have been a great president. I wish to hell he would have been president in 2000 instead of George Bush. Think of how different things might have been.

But none of us knew that in 2008 the Democratic party would offer not one, but two presidential candidates that could, just by getting elected, change the scope of America's future.

The thing is: no matter how remarkable a person John McCain is, no matter how brilliant his record in the senate, no matter how brave or moving his personal history may be, no matter how great he is, there was no way he could give people hope the way Barak Obama did. Not hope because of the man, but hope because of the nation, hope because of us.

There's no way electing John McCain could make people believe that now they too might become the beneficiary of America's promise, that they too are now part of the plan.

No one could say "I've waited all my life to vote for a man like John McCain."

It doesn't really matter what kind of president Barak Obama will become. The day after he's sworn in he goes from being a fundamental paradigm shift in the history of the world to being just another man.

You see, it's not about what McCain did or didn't do and it's not about what Obama can or can't or might do, it's about what we the people did.

It's about us finally being willing to judge a man by the content of his character and not the color of his skin or any other superficial element. It's about us finally taking that last step and fully living up to the promise that all men are created equal, no matter who they are.

McCain was my candidate, but this wasn't my moment. This was a moment for the people who didn't look like me, for the people who didn't grow up the way I did, for the people who never really had a chance before.

I've had many chances to elect people who were like me and I'll have many more, but for the others, for the people who weren't like me, this was their first chance ever and, in the end, I couldn't bring myself to take that away, so I cast my vote with them for Barak Obama.

So What Can We Expect From Obama?

Getting elected the first non-white individual ever to become president of the United States will probably be the most radical thing Barak Obama ever does. Everything is pretty much a let down after that. It's not quite up there with Neil Armstrong as the first human to walk on the moon but it's pretty close.

After that, I think we can expect fairly moderate, measured leadership from him, for a number of reasons. First, he comes from the senate and you don't make it to the senate without being fairly moderate. The real nut cases on both sides are limited to the house if they even make it that far.

Secondly, Obama knows that the country will be slightly on edge with a new kind of person as president, and with the republicans being as strong as they are, if he got too wild and loose with his ideas the house and senate would turn republican pretty quickly and then he'd be a stranded president, unable to get any of his plans made into law.

Don't get me wrong, Obama is a liberal but liberalism covers a pretty broad spectrum these days and among liberals he's more center leaning than many. You hear a lot of wild talk about Obama redistributing the wealth and shutting down the coal industry and on and on, but remember a president can't just talk about something and make it law. Presidents have to work their agenda through congress and the courts before it becomes effective law.

Obama knows this and he's smart enough not to strand himself out on a limb. To get his agenda passed he has to reach out to the center and he's proven he can do that in his campaign against Clinton.

Suppose he really does become unhinged and take all the guns and everybody's money and whatever other crazy idea you've heard about him, then he has to deal with the courts and the courts right now are very conservative. He'd be shut down pretty quickly and then he'd lose whatever credibility he had and would be completely isolated.

During his campaign, Obama was pretty quick to distance himself from radicals, even if they were life-long friends like Reverend Wright. I think we can expect more of that when he's president.

Bill Clinton came to the white house with some pretty radical ideas but found out pretty quickly he had to measure, adjust or abandon them if he were to govern effectivly. I think you'll see Obama go through the same process, but probably more quickly and effectivly than Clinton because I think Obama is a more reflective and calculating person than Clinton who showed himself as impulsive on several occasions.

I could be wrong. We could be well on our way to communism by this time next year, but somehow I just don't think so.

Sarah Palin Forever

Having proven themselves really poor losers over the past several years, the American Democratic Party now shows us how really bad they can be as winners.

Instead of doing a little happy dance when they came out of the convention season ahead of the Republicans and an almost certain shoe-in for the presidential election, they went into full attack mode, not at the Republican nominee, but his vice-presidential pick, Sarah Palin.

Completely unknown six months ago, Palin is now a part of our permanent cultural experience. Stories are coming in from all directions of the offers she's had for national television gigs after the election and she's twice now suggested she might be a candidate for president in 2012.

Had the Democrats reacted to Palin with a shrug as they should have instead of a full court press, the nation would have too. By now she'd be almost forgotten if it weren't for the almost pathological reaction Democrats had to her.

Having run a pretty clean campaign up to that point, Obama supporters will now go down in the history books as really a bunch of jerks for the way they attacked Palin instead of the fairly obvious choice, McCain, the actual Republican nominee.

Oh and let's not forget the pain we Democrat sympathisers felt when the possibility of the dream ticket hung in the balance, Obama announced Joe Biden of all people as his own choice for veep. Biden? Really? Biden?

It's not just the real Sarah Palin we'll have to put up with for the next twenty years, it's all the false Palins too. The Palin impersonators on SNL, YouTube, Political Cartoons, Halloween Costumes and more. The doctored photo of Sarah Palin in a Bikini and the real pictures of Sarah Palin as a beauty queen will hang around forever like painful mementos from that bad weekend trip to TiaJuana when you were in college.

So, thanks very much Democrats. Thanks to you we'll be living with this women for the rest of our natural lives: assholes.

If Obama Can Do It

It looks like the next president will be a Democrat. I'm pretty much OK with that. The parties are so polarized now that we really need to change colors once in a while so that one administration can check and repair the excesses of the previous administration.

In case you haven't noticed, Obama is a pretty liberal guy. The problem with liberals, is that most of what they want, if it were that easy, would have been done a long time ago. It's much easier for conservatives. Most of what they want is to remove restraints from the rich which is pretty easy to do. Liberals however have to try and figure out a way to make their big ideas work and often that's not so easy.

For instance: Bill Clinton ran for president on the promise of national health care, and he spent the first few years of his presidency trying to get national health care, but in the end, there were so many obstacles and so many challenges to the idea that he eventually had to give it up.

All of those problems with making national health care will be waiting for Obama once he takes office. Problems like that tend to stick around. We could use national health care though, if they can figure out how to make it work.

Jimmy Carter ran on a platform of peace in the middle east, but by the time he was done, Anwar Sedat was dead and our embassy in Iran was under siege. Obama has similar goals, lets hope he has better luck.

Carter also wanted to improve housing for the poor and working class. It's pretty hard to be against that idea. After twenty years though, his plan for improving housing evolved into the sub-prime mortgage disaster. It was a great goal, we were just on the wrong path for getting there.

Lyndon Johnson ran on the idea of a "war on poverty". Who could be against such an idea? It's not like somebody was going to come out and say they were for poverty.

Forty-five years later, a lot of people blame Johnson for creating a near-permanent welfare class that's almost impossible to evolve out of. It took another Democrat, Bill Clinton to go in and roll back a lot of what Johnson tried to do.

One of Obama's plans is to re-strengthen the unions. He says we were a better country when the unions were strong. That may be so, but I don't know how you're going to strengthen the unions without bringing back manufacturing and I don't see how you're going to bring back manufacturing without weakening the unions. So, if Obama wants to bring back the unions, I'm all for it, I just don't see how he's going to do it.

I hope it doesn't sound like I'm bagging on the liberals needlessly. What they want to do, we need as a nation. It's just that they face a lot more obstacles to their goals than just the opposition party.

There's only one way to achieve these goals though, and that's to keep trying, from administration to administration, through the years until we eventually do get what we need.

Some of the efforts towards these goals will be misguided though, and in four years or eight or twelve, we'll elect a republican president to roll back Obama's mistakes, just like Obama will roll back the mistakes of George Bush.

That's how our system works. Checks and balances. It's the promise of Democracy and we'll rock along toward the future, even if it is three steps forward and two steps back sometimes.

The Natural Cycle

There has been bad news about the economy lately and, in times like these, many people are worried and afraid. Don't be too afraid though, a lot of what we're going through is natural. We've been through it many times in the past and we always came back stronger.

The economy behaves like a living thing because it is made up of millions of living things and like any living thing, it goes through cycles of expansion and contraction.

Contraction is a disturbing process, but everything I read tells me we are doing the right things to come back form this strong and healthy.

We'd like to think the economy would grow forever and on the news and among economists we tend to call an economy that grows from one quarter to the next "good" but one that doesn't grow or declines "bad".

That's not a very practical way to think of a living thing though. All living things have times when they must pull back to mend wounds and correct mistakes and prepare for the next cycle of growth.

We made mistakes with the housing market and sub-prime mortgages and now our economy needs to pull back to mend wounds and correct mistakes. This is natural and nothing to be afraid of. You could even say it was a necessary thing.

Even in declining times, living things always seek a means to grow and thrive, so will our economy. Even now, people all across the nation are making plans to grow again. We will come back stronger and better than before. We always have.

Have faith in God and nature and believe in each other and we'll come through this healthy and strong.

I hate Voter Registration Drives

I hate voter registration drives.

To be perfectly honest, if you have to go out like a door-to-door salesman and harass people into registering to vote, then I'd kind of rather those people didn't vote.

It smacks of the days when Richard J. Daley had teams going out to register drunks and dead people in Chicago.

Everything should be done to protect people's right to vote, but if they're not going to actually take the steps to do it of their own accord, I say just leave them out. They don't deserve to vote.

Years ago, I actually did this for the Democratic party. Here's how it went.

Knock, Knock, Knock

ME: Hello sir, we're out registering people to vote so you can exercise your precious right to determine your future. Brave men and women fought and died to give you this right. Do you have a few minutes to fill out these forms?

UN-REGISTERED VOTER: Yeah dude, just leave the papers and I'll do it later, I'm watching People's Court now though.

Are you kidding me? That guy should never vote. Ever.

National Abortion Amendment

We require an amendment to the constitution describing precisely our national abortion policy.

Currently, we have left the issue up to the courts to decide, but that is insufficient. It's beyond the scope and design of the court to make these decisions.

Likewise, the issue is too sensitive and contains too many human rights' issues to govern on a state-to-state basis.

The reason we don't already have a constitutional amendment on abortion is because both extremes know they don't have the votes to get everything they want out of an amendment so they're satisfied trying to manipulate the courts instead.

This is not good government. The onus of good government is that we consciously decide what we think is best and right and proceed with it, not allowing ourselves to be controlled by special interest groups of either extreme.

The obvious solution is a compromise between both extremes.

Here is what I propose: A normal pregnancy can be divided into three trimesters.

For the first trimester: allow no state to enact a law that prohibits or limits a woman's right to a safe abortion for any reason. This way, the state doesn't force anyone to be pregnant who doesn't wish to be. Women may decide to abort and the state has no say in their decision.

There is some pressure for women to make their decision quickly, but that pressure exists anyway. This also prohibits states from trying to eliminate abortions by putting unreasonable restrictions on abortion providers.

For the second trimester: abortions are only allowed on the recommendation of a licensed physician based only on the mother's physical health. This addresses those cases where abortion is more of an issue of health than one of choice--and it puts the decision in the hand of those we entrust to make those health decisions in other matters.

At this stage, we begin to give the fetus some human rights, but the focus remains on the health of the mother if not her preferences. There will be some physicians who "rubber stamp" all abortion requests, but medical ethics is really more an issue of peer evaluation and licensing than one of statutory law.

For the third trimester: every effort must be made to deliver the fetus alive. No state may allow an abortion during this period unless proscribed by both a physician and a judge.

During the third trimester, the fetus has a growing chance of surviving premature birth, therefore the full focus of the law is on the civil rights of the fetus.

Certainly there is room for discussion on each of these stages, but with my proposal, neither side gets everything they want but we get everything we need to know we did our best to govern wisely.

Frantic Financial Chatter

Just like hurricanes, storms on Wall St. may seem like the end of the world, but they're not.

They're saying this is the worst financial crisis since the great depression, and I suppose in some ways it technically is, but, it's a long, long way from being as bad as the great depression.

This started twenty-five years ago with Ronald Reagan and Alan Greenspan when they de-regulated the financial sector and began artificially stimulating the economy by manipulating the fed funds rate. It's the primary reason I'll never agree with the people who call Reagan a great president.

The good news is, that like with hurricanes, we are strong enough to recover from this and we are wise enough to learn from these experiences and take measures to prevent them in the future.

You'll hear a lot of frantic chatter over the next several days, but don't lose heart. The basic economy is fundamentally sound, even if these ancillary financial groups are not.

Palin Sideshow Dominates The Election

Palin bashing from the media and from the democrats shows no signs of diminishing. Just the opposite, it's growing to a furious din that's drowning out everything else.

Maybe she deserves it. Maybe she doesn't. This late in the election, it just doesn't matter.

I'm worried that the national discussion these first two weeks of September has been almost exclusively about Palin and almost nothing about McCain or Obama. Poor Joe Biden has just about completely fallen off the radar.

I don't think the republicans are smart enough to have done this on purpose, but I'm really worried that it's going to work in their favor if we make this election a question of "Do you think Palin is crazy?"

For the record: I think Palin probably is too crazy for my taste. Have you ever seen a moose? They're like a brontosaurus with horns and she hunts them for fun, food and profit.

As for the rest of it, who cares? She's Dan Qualye in a miniskirt and she's seriously distracting us from the real issues of this election.

Until August, this election cycle was so grand and so good and so made me proud to be an American in the way both parties confronted the real issues that face us, and now, we're seriously ruining it with all this Palin bullshit.

Obama and Reagan

In a strange way, the 2008 presidential election is a mirror image of the 1980 presidential election. By mirror image, I mean everything is the same but in reverse.

In 1980, the democrats (Carter) held the presidency, but were blamed for economic troubles including rampant inflation beginning with an uncontrolled rise in the price of oil and disturbing turmoil in the financial sector arising from troubles with the interest rate. Ditto 2008, except the republicans (Bush) held the presidency.

In 1980, the Republican Nominee (Reagan) was known as a populist and known for his ability to draw from the uncommitted. Ditto Obama.

Reagan was known for his remarkable speeches, Obama is known for his remarkable speeches.

In 1980, the democrats were blamed for an ongoing situation in the middle east (the Iranian hostage crisis). In 2008, the republicans are blamed for an on-going situation in the middle east (Iraq).

Reagan drew strong support from young republicans, the unions and baby boomers. Obama draws strong support from young democrats, the unions and baby boomers.

Reagan made it cool to be white again. Obama makes it cool to be black again.

In 1980, the republicans were one president away from one of their own who faced impeachment for something stupid (Nixon). In 2008, the democrats are one president away from one of their own who faced impeachment for something stupid (Clinton).

In 1980, Carter was known as a bellicose political outsider. In 2008, McCain is known as a bellicose political outsider.

Reagan was popular for his foreign policy ideas even though he had zero foreign policy experience. Obama is popular for his foreign policy ideas even though he has zero foreign policy experience.

In 1980, Reagan won by a landslide. Will the same hold true for Obama? Only time will tell.

For the record, although loved by millions, Reagan was not my favorite president of the 20th century. He wasn't even my favorite republican, Nixon was--but that's a story for another day.

Pick your Targets

A lot of times, it just doesn't pay to go after your political opponents on anything other than policy.

Remember, back in the day, when the Republicans used to go after Bill Clinton on everything they could think of? Remember how, no matter what, they never really could "get him" on anything?

There even came a time when the republicans had enough evidence to impeach Clinton, but then they couldn't get the votes to convict him, even though he had gone on national television and basically said "yeah, I did it".

Boy those were the days, huh? The Republicans looked like belligerent jerks, Clinton looked like a victim and MTV called Monica Lewenski the most powerful young person in America.

Even today, Ken Starr wanders around his garden in a dirty bathrobe saying: "I had him! He was soooo close! I had him!"

The Democrats are already getting dangerously close to this with Sarah Palin and they've only been aware of her existence for two weeks.

Although they hate her, Palin's popularity is growing by leaps and bounds. But what about all the crazy stuff she's done?

Let's look a the craziest thing she's accused of and follow it through logically. I mean this business of her supposedly saying she's the mother of her daughter's baby.

Let's suppose for a minute that it really is true, and the Democrats have absolute proof. What's she really guilty of? Was somebody hurt? somebody cheated?

The very last thing Democrats want is to force Palin to have to go on television and say "yeah, I did it---and I did it to help my daughter and my grandchild".

If she does that, then the Democrats will look like the biggest heels in the world. They successfully outed a mother protecting her child. It could even create a wave that pushes Mccain-Palin into office.

Nevermind that it's kind of creepy because Bree on Desperate Housewives tried to do the same thing. Stick to discussions of policy and everything will be fine, but if democrats keep pushing it on all this bullshit stuff with Palin, it could really backfire.

Is this how mothers should act?

I should probably shut-up about this, but those gentle-folk over at MADD piss me off so I'm writing about it, again.

Back in elementary school, we all learned there were two ways to pass a law. The first was by representation: we elect a guy by democratic means and he goes to a thing called a "congress" where they vote by democratic means and make laws. Pretty straight forward, there's no problem there.

The second way to pass a law is by direct action: we put an issue on a ballot and we each vote "yay" or "nay" and the law passes or it doesn't. Again, very straight forward, no problem.

We actually have two chances to do this. First at the state level, then again at the federal level. That's how it's supposed to work. That's called Democracy and that's how it actually does work for everybody, except Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

There actually is no national drinking age, because it's a state issue. MADD couldn't get the job done that way though. They couldn't get even conservative, anti-drinking states like Mississippi to raise their drinking age by accepted, democratic means...so MADD came up with another plan.

Hold on there big fella, are you saying that MADD consciously circumvented our beloved democratic process to get their law passed? You win or lose! Fair is Fair, Right? NOBODY gets around the process, not even the communists! ...And yet, that's exactly what MADD did.

Unable to get their law passed at the state level, and unwilling to accept defeat, MADD made a deal in congress where lawmakers made it mandatory that any state who wished to receive federal highway funds, MUST raise their state drinking age to twenty-one. Otherwise, they would be federally mandated to maintain their interstate highways without the benefit of federal funding.

See--that way, federal lawmakers aren't directly responsible for the law. They pass the buck on down to the state level. At the state level, lawmakers were obliged to change the law, but could avoid taking responsibility for it by blaming the federal highway fund mandate.

In other words, nobody faced this issue directly and voted yes or no in a way we the people could hold them responsible for it. MADD crapped all over our beloved constitution and democratic ideal so they could have their way--is this how mothers should act? Only if you use the word "mother" immediately followed by the word "fucker".

Recently, The Amethyst Initiative lost two of its original signers due to pressure from MADD. When I say pressure, I mean real pressure. Signers of the initiative report getting hundreds of MADD sponsored emails, demanding they change their position. Laura Dean-Mooney, the president of MADD sent out untold thousands of printed letters and email asking parents to withdraw their children from colleges where the dean or chancelor signed the Amethyst Initiative.

The good news is, our side lost two members, but gained fifteen. The count now stands at one hundred twenty-three signers of the Amethyst Initiative and about a zillion people cheering them on. Including me. Go TEAM!

Mad at MADD

Don't let the name fool you. Mothers Against Drunk Driving is just another faceless, self-perpetuating lobbying agency, determined to separate you from your civil liberties.

In the beginning MADD, really was women who had suffered loss from drunk driving, but that was a long time ago. In the beginning, they did fairly obvious sane stuff, like educating people about the dangers of drunk driving and lobbying the states to increase and enforce drunk driving laws.

They crossed the line pretty quickly though, and started pushing to prohibit the sale of alcohol by pushing back the legal drinking age and empowering vulture and pirate personal injury lawyers by making everybody but the person actually doing the drinking financially responsible for whatever damages the drunk causes.

Because people are not young very long, there was no substantial counter-lobby to MADD's efforts to raise the drinking age. Besides, who would dare go against them when they had positioned themselves as the wrathful, bereaved mothers of bloody, dismembered children--when in fact they were just another lobby, ran by professional lobbyists and professional fund-raisers with the bulk of their support coming from, you guessed it, the reactionary far right.

Recently, over one hundred American college and university presidents (including Francis Lucas from our own Millsaps College) sent a letter to congress asking that the legal drinking age be, again, lowered to eighteen. Called "The Amethyst Initiative", the letter suggests that problem drinking and the problems associated with drinking are easier to deal with if drinking is legal.

Lets be clear here: the statutory prohibition of intoxicating substances does not work, never has worked, and never will work.

In the first part of the twentieth century we tried to prohibit alcohol sales by constitutional amendment and it was a horrible failure, not only failing to deal with the issues of alcoholism, but also giving rise to national and international organized crime that still exists today, long after the original amendment was repealed. In other words, it was a colossal screw-up.

When the drinking age was raised to 21 back in the 1980's, MADD couldn't get the states to go along with it, so their lobbyists conspired with congress to extort state support for MADD's initiative by making the twenty-one drinking age a requirement to receive federal highway funding. How crappy is that? MADD extorted their will on a nation of free people, and we let it happen.

MADD's tactics haven't changed much over the years. In response to the Amethyst Initiative letter, MADD sent out a letter of their own, listing those who signed the letter and suggesting to parents that their children might be better off going somewhere else to school if the signers didn't withdraw their name--again, MADD uses tactics of extortion to enforce their will.

Even now, MADD lists all the signers on their website with easy to use forms so you can harass them by email into withdrawing their name from the list. Their claim is that the signers are using the initiative to rid themselves of the responsibility to police campuses to enforce drinking laws.

That's just bullshit. It's not the legal drinking age that forces college and university presidents to patrol the campuses to prevent drinking, it's the threat of civil litigation empowered by MADD and their vulture and pirate personal injury lawyers who look for the deepest pockets they can find when a student causes problems by their own decision to drink.

No college or university in this nation facilitates an atmosphere conducive to irresponsible drinking. That's an invention of the personal injury lawyers looking to make a buck off the situation and empowered by MADD.

The kids do this themselves--and the only way to deal with it is by dealing with the kids with honesty and integrity which you cannot do when you take away their legal right to drink.

People over the age of twenty-one are still just as likely to have problems with drinking and cause problems by drinking, but the deep pockets are no longer there since they are out of college and on their own, usually not making very much money. So, with nobody left to sue, MADD has most graciously allowed us to start drinking at the age of twenty-one.

Yet again, MADD does not seek to change public policy by intellectual discourse or education, but by bald-faced aggression and extortion.

Don't get me wrong. I HATE alcoholism and alcoholics. It has caused real problems in my life and in the lives of people I care about--but, right is right and what these people are doing is just wrong. There are better ways of dealing with alcohol than the MADD Gestapo.

The Amethyst Initiative is correct. The problems of alcohol are much easier dealt with when the consumption of alcohol is legal.

So, what can you do? How do we fight these people?

You can start by supporting the Amethyst Initiative here.

I know most of my readers are graduates and students at Millsaps College, so contact Dr. Lucas and let her know you support the Amethyst Initiative.

Ignore the Polls: Obama Wins

Normally political polls are valuable and accurate because Republicans and Democrats are equally likely to actually get out and vote when the polls open.

In that way, whatever opinions they give to pollsters before the election are just about equally likely to turn into real votes when the time comes.

That's normally, but the 2008 presidential election is far from normal because Barak Obama is half black.

Polls today show Obama, the democrat, and McCain, the republican, more or less neck-and-neck in votes. That's not unusual, Americans have a sort of yin and yang thing going on as far as considering themselves conservative or liberal and the two forces are just about equally divided.

Although I consider myself a liberal, I also think it's good we're equally divided on these issues because both sides are just about equally likely to be right and just about equally likely to be wrong and with both sides just about equally popular, we have a fair chance that both sides will correct the other's mistakes, while preserving the things they do right.

I suspect Obama will win the November election by a landslide because I can't imagine any black American who is able not getting out to vote for him, and their sheer numbers will overwhelm the republicans who will probably vote at about the same rate as they always do.

Black people have had a pretty tough time in these United States over the last three hundred years, and Barak Obama's candidacy represents a watershed change in all that. So much so, that even if they're not liberal like Obama, I just don't know what to think about a black person who doesn't physically get out and pull the lever to elect him.

That being said, I like John McCain a lot. I supported McCain long before I'd ever heard of Barak Obama, but, lets face it, McCain isn't the most popular guy among the rank-and-file republicans and I just can't see them being all that motivated to stand in line and vote for him.

No matter what the polls say, it's who actually stands in line to pull the lever that decides elections, and in November that will be Obama.

Jesse Jackson's Gaff

The key to Barak Obama's campaign is making people believe he represents all Americans, not just black Americans.

As evidenced by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy, the greatest threat to Obama's support among white people may be any perceived association with sixties and seventies era "blame white people" civil rights activists.

The most famous example of that kind of public figure has to be Jesse Jackson. Even though his son is Obama's campaign co-chair, you rarely see Obama and Jackson linked in any way.

Recently, Jackson was caught on video criticizing Obama when he thought his microphone was off. Jackson immediately apologized and the Obama camp, including Jackson's son, immediately distanced themselves from Jackson.

My question is: was this real or was it staged?

Certainly, people are sometimes caught saying things they wish they hadn't when they thought the microphone was off, but the timing of Jackson's gaff makes me suspicious.

By now, Jesse Jackson has been attached to a microphone in a television news studio a few hundred times. He knows how it works and it's unlikely that he, all of a sudden, forgot that his lapel microphone picks up everything he says, even whispers.

I have to think that Barak Obama's campaign represents something really significant in Jessie Jackson's life's work. Does that mean he would make himself look bad to benefit Obama? We will probably never know for sure, but if I were Jesse Jackson I'd do it, and do it again if need be.

The Michael Jackson Rule

When it comes to Frank Melton and his summer jobs program for teens, I'm afraid it's time to invoke the Michael Jackson Rule.

The Michael Jackson Rule is this: Michael might be innocent of all the terrible things people say about him, but a prudent person won't let their children anywhere near him, just in case.

I don't know what's the deal with Frank Melton and teenage boys. Some people say he's running his own private, Boys Town. Some people say he's more like Oliver Twist's Fagin or worse.

It's disturbing when the police go looking for someone in connection with violent crime and we find out they are or were living at the Mayor's house and it's even more disturbing when he takes them out for a night of vigilante crack house demolition.

Melton might be on the Up and Up, I hope he is, but this summer jobs program is completely under planned and under funded and pushing it through by raising a mob of kids and parents looking for a summer paycheck is just irresponsible enough to make a reasonable parent think twice about wanting to have anything to do with it.

Where have you gone, Atticus Finch

Mississippi turns it's lonely eyes to you.

This business with Dickie Scruggs breaks my heart and who knows where all the tentacles of this debacle will end.

The story emerging from this case is one of a pin-striped gang of street thugs, running Mississippi like their own private turf, extorting millions, both legally and illegally from anyone stupid enough to do business in Mississippi.

It would make a great plot for a John Grisham novel. Don't expect one though, John's pretty friendly with the principals.

One thing that particularly bothers me is that I really admired Ed Peters and Bobby DeLaughter before learning that Scruggs and his cohorts lured them into their web.

The thing these guys don't seem to get is that we mere mortals depend, desperately depend on the law to be true and honest and most of all, just. For us, for "we the people", the law is much more than just an opportunity to make millions like a football star. It is the whisper thin barrier between our simple lives and abject chaos.

What they did, what we have to suspect they have been doing for thirty years, is very close to treason. Robin Hood and Atticus Finch never made a billion dollars.

Charlie Ross Exploits Soldier's Misfortune

Charlie Ross is running for a seat in the US House of Representatives from Mississippi.

His latest television commercial features a young marine expressing his support for Ross and his position on the military. The spot opens with a broad shot of the marine from head to foot, wearing a USMC t-shirt and shorts. I mention the shorts because in particular you notice the young man's prosthetic leg. Presumably he lost it in Iraq.

Ross is a conservative and himself a veteran of the Gulf War so he has good reason to show his support for the military, but I question how he goes about it with this ad. The way the ad is shot, expressly showing the Marine's prosthetic leg, boarders on the exploitation of a wounded vet.

If they didn't want to emphasize the prosthetic leg, then why dress the marine in shorts? Why not have him in uniform? Why begin and end the commercial with long shots showing the prosthesis? Why not let the soldier's message stand on its own without drawing attention to his wounds?

The marine is well-spoken and has a message worth listening to. He never mentions his leg or being wounded, but it's hard not to notice. He's a good looking young man and clearly sincere about his service to his country. Anyone of good conscious will feel sympathy for his loss and pride for his courage.

Ross is known as a very aggressive politician and this ad is aggressive, too much so for my taste. I felt manipulated by the ad and angry at the Ross campaign for the way they made it. For me, it was shocking, disrespectful and unnecessary.