Democracy Now has been doing some excellent coverage of the republican convention as well as the protests surrounding the republican convention — this is the news as it should be reported!!!

Now “that’s”:http://www.axisofeve.org/ what I’m talkin’ about! Anyone who creates “Panties with a Purpose”:http://www.axisofeve.org/collection.php is all right by me.

Perhaps they should coordinate with Barlow’s “DanceMob”:http://barlow.typepad.com/barlowfriendz/2004/08/new_york_during.html and really shake things up. So to speak.

As cynical as I am about the post-PATRIOT government, I was still shocked to hear that “the Justice Department redacted this line”:http://www.thememoryhole.org/feds/justice_redaction.htm from an ACLU court filing:

_”The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect ‘domestic security.’ Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent.”_

So, they abused “domestic security” privileges to remove a Supreme Court statement condemning the very same abuse of privilege.

I have no response to that…

Rant: Why has no one done anything with this Nov. 20, 2002 George W. Bush quotation? Bob Woodward used it in his book and the Washington Post, and I heard Bush saying it on 60 Minutes (It was what turned my lifelong Republican mom against Bush!). I think someone like MoveOn needs to just run an ad with a photo of Bush and his following statement: “I’m the commander, I do not need to explain why I say things. That’s the interesting thing about being the President. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don’t feel like I owe anybody an explanation….” Any idea how to get this idea to the right organization?

Phil Agre has written an excellent article on Conservatism, both defining what it is and illustrating its opposition to democracy and equality.

Liberals in the United States have been losing political debates to conservatives for a quarter century. In order to start winning again, liberals must answer two simple questions: what is conservatism, and what is wrong with it? As it happens, the answers to these questions are also simple…

UPDATE August 2006:  I’m adding the keyword “aristocracy” to this, because that’s the real crux of Agre’s argument.