People For The American Way Makes The Case For Defeating Conservatives

Yesterday we tried our hand at explaining how the Supreme Court's narrowly partisan decision to void the Voting Rights Act is a catastrophe that is not ameliorated by the nice pat on the head they have the LGBT community the following day. Few organizations have fought harder and as effectively as People For the American Way when it comes to LGBT equality. This week, the organization's president, Michael Keegan, warned about the consequences of the...

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The Supreme Court sends a message to would-be job discriminators: Discriminate away, baby!

The new president signs the Lilly Ledbetter Act in January 2009, with Lilly Ledbetter visible seen behind him and members of Congress looking on.by KenHowie has already called attention to the Roberts Court's extremist coup with its Voting Rights Act slapdown. I suppose it's possible that the five thug-justices really don't understand what they did, but the signs all over the country are that the message has been received by the country's vote suppressors,...

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Sunday Classics: In "The Flying Dutchman" Wagner shows there's more than one way to get from Act I to Act II and from Act II to Act III

by KenIn our earlier post about Wagner's Flying Dutchman we heard the Norwegian sea captain Daland return home from a perilous voyage bringing a guest, none other than the Flying Dutchman to meet (and hopefully entrance) his daughter, Senta. Then we left the two potential lovers alone for their long scene, and I would have liked to return for the end of Act II, as Daland returns. Here is that little fragment.DALAND: Forgive me! My people will stay...

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Digital Dementia-- Is It For Real?

Roland's my closest friend. I call his cell phone at least once a day. But I have no idea what his number is. I press a button on my cell and his phone is automatically "dialed." If I lost my phone, I wouldn't be able to contact him. Oh, wait, I could. All I would have to do is go to my computer and type in the first 3 or 4 letters of his screen name and his e-mail address would come up. If I was at another computer, though, I wouldn't be able to...

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FEC Quarter Ends Today; Should You Care?

Today's the end of the FEC fundraising quarter and I want to refer you to a post yesterday you may have missed about real bipartisanship, bipartisanship based on compromising that genuinely works for both sides, not compromise based on a combination of opportunism, bribery and one side betraying core values.Some Members of Congress-- virtually all the Republicans, all the New Dems and every single Blue Dog for example-- finance their political careers...

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Does Steve Israel Understand How To Make GOP Racism Work Against Them-- Or Is That Not Reptilian Enough For Him?

Like we saw Thursday, now that the Senate has passed comprehensive immigration reform, what's next? The Senate Democrats have already given away every conceivable bargaining chip available before the bill becomes worthless and insupportable. Nothing will ever change the minds of the racists in control in the House. There are two camps of Republicans in the House on this issue-- the majority camp of racists and bigots and then a more mainstream camp...

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TV Watch: I'm going to try again, but I still won't be able to communicate the brilliance of Aaron Sorkin's "Sports Night"

JEREMY [Joshua Molina]: Not fitting in is how qualified people lose jobs.ISAAC [Robert Guillaume]: Yeah, but a lot of the time it's how they end up working here. . . . It's taken me a lot of years, but I've come around to this: If you're dumb, surround yourself with smart people; and if you're smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you. . . . You fit in on your own time. When you come to work for me, you show up to play.-- from...

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Court And Spark

When I was 16 I hitchhiked from Brooklyn to Los Angeles so I could stow away on a ship to Tonga. In Brooklyn there had never been anything like the billboard campaigns along Route 66 in state after state in the middle of the country to impeach Earl Warren. Warren was a moderate Republican Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, appointed by President Eisenhower, and Fred Koch, the money behind the virulently anti-American John Birch Society and the father...

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