Annual Update

My main interest has distilled down to promoting election reform: Campaign Finance, redistricting, ethics, etc. To me it is the reform that optimizes the most reforms.

It is a relatively unglamorous issue that doesn't arouse sustained passion.

Several groups dance around the issue:

The Coalition
In early 2006 the steady stream of national money in politics scandals presented an opportunity for reformers that called for an extraordinary effort and cooperation. The Brennan Center for Justice, Common Cause, Democracy Matters, Public Campaign, Public Citizen, and U.S. PIRG forged a working coalition and launched a campaign, Seize the Moment (STM), with a mission to focus public attention on federal public financing as the best politically viable, constitutionally acceptable, and practical response to the scandals.

When Sens. Durbin and Specter introduced the Fair Elections Now Act in March, they had support from a long list of organizations that represent millions of Americans. Below is the full list of organizations that have endorsed the legislation.

AFL-CIO
AFSCME
Americans for Campaign Reform
Brennan Center for Justice
Campaign for America's Future
Common Cause
Communications Workers of America
Democracy 21
Democracy Matters
Dolores Huerta Foundation
League of Conservation Voters
League of Women Voters
Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund
MoveOn.org
NAACP
National Coalition on Black Civic Participation
National Council of Churches USA
Public Campaign
Public Citizen
SEIU
Sierra Club
US Action
U.S. PIRG

Primaries

In the absence of a major revision of the two-party primary system that tends to weed out moderate candidates prior to the general election, I think the way to improve our choices is to get moderate voters more involved in the party primaries. Every news story I hear asks whether the moderate candidates of either party will be able to appeal to their party's presumed primary voters. The conventional wisdom requires candidates such as Rudi Giuliani to either abandon principled positions and pander to his party's so-called base, or else kiss the nomination goodbye.

Why should we surrender the nominating process to the extremes at either end of the spectrum? Any self-described moderate who laments their lack of choices in November has an obligation to get involved early. Any voter who plans to vote in November has an obligation to help decide the slate of candidates from which they will choose in November. More voters vote in the general elections than in the primaries. Why should we be satisfied with having more voters participate in the process only after there are fewer candidates?

Political exploitation of tragedy

Radio personality Rush Limbaugh has read between the lines of the Virginia Tech killer's writings and proclaimed him a Liberal, due apparently to Mr. Cho's professed animosity toward certain rich individuals for their alleged abuses, real or imagined, toward himself and others.

Mr. Limbaugh pre-emptively complained that the "drive-by" media will pick up on his comments and accuse him of comparing liberals to psychopathic killers. That may not have been the substance or intent of Mr. Limbaugh's comments. But even if one takes pains to appreciate the context and nuances of the remark, the question has to be asked: "What good does it do anybody to guess at the shooter's politics?" Even if he were known to vote one party or the other, what would that have to do with this case that seems fundamentally about untreated mental illness? Hid political affiliations seem about as relevant as the killer's preferred athletic shoe or soft drink. The reflexive calls for and against sticter gun control laws are crass and premature this soon after the tragedy, but at least at some appropriate time they will form the basis of a useful debate. The same cannot be said of Mr. Limbaugh's characterization of Mr. Cho's political leanings.

Mr. Limbaugh makes a comparison to remarks made by president Clinton in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing. President Clinton suggested that the incendiary rhetoric of the right may have played a role in inspiring such crimes, or at the very least fomenting a political culture that facilitated them. Mr. Limbaugh obviously feels the remarks were directed (wrongly) at him, that it would have been wrong to associate his relentless verbal assaults on "big government" with Timothy McVeigh's physical assault on same. The problem with that view is that McVeigh's crime was explicitly a political crime, and McVeigh's politics were explicitly known and explicitly in agreement with Limbaugh's expressed views. McVeigh made no secret of his politics and chose a political target for his attack. Cho Seung-hui did not put himself on one side or another of any political debate, at least not in the process of justifying his crimes. He never identified himself as liberal or conservative, republican or democrat. He said he acted in part to avenge some class of victims, but he never identifies them as victims of big government or big business or any of the standard bogeymen of either political pole. He availed himself of, and defiled, both the First and Second Amendments.

A special shout-out goes to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich for exploiting this tragedy in only a slightly more intelligent way than Limbaugh. Gingrich blames the culture of liberalism of the last 40 years for the rampage, but refrained from aligning Cho with the political forces that created that culture.

Both men have displayed remarkable insensitivity, ignorance, and/or cynicism. I hope both men receive stern rebukes from Virginia governor Tim Kaine, who warned against just this sort of political exploitation in the days following the shooting.

My New Year's Wishes

Whether realistic or not, my hopes for the new year are:

1. a chance, any chance left, that some form of stability can come to a democratic Iraq.

2. a still-divided Congress that chooses compromise over stalemate.

3. more attention paid to regions like Darfur by both this nation and the international community.

4. less attention paid to celebrity couples, celebrity babies, celebrity crazy-talk, celebrity fights, celebrity public nudity, etc.

5. a Texas legislative session that is just slightly less insane than the last two.

A happy New Year to all.

Happy Holidays!

I want to wish everyone in the blogosphere the very best this holiday season.

Off-Centered: Redstate on Religion

This is a feature I would like to try out. From time to time I'll post an article from a left- or right-leaning blog with arguments that I either:

a) agree with, or
b) don't necessarily agree with, but believe bring up valid issues for centrists to contemplate.

My first feature falls under the first category. Redstate has an interesting and somewhat amusing take on the nativity scene debacle at the Washington Capitol:

I was sitting browsing sites and stumbled over an Associated Press item quoted in NewsMax.com. This little ditty follows on the heels of the SeaTac Airport kerfuffle over Christmas trees in the terminal. You may recall the flap over a request, later withdrawn, to include a menorah at the airport. The powers that be did what bureaucrats usually do, the wrong thing, removed all the Christmas trees. In any event after the threat of a lawsuit went away, and the public had responded 'vigorously', the trees were replaced.

Read on . . .

So imagine my surprise to find that Governor Christine Gegoire recently began the Hanukkah holiday by lighting the first candle of a menorah in the state capitol building. Seeing the menorah in the capitol a gentlemen of the Christian persuasion requested that a nativity scene be included in the holiday display; his mistake appears to have been in assuming that there was some actual Christian connection to Christmas. He was turned down on the grounds that including a nativity scene might appear to endorse a particular religion. The refusal was ostensibly because the state's legal department had not had an opportunity to consider the matter.

So as I was sitting here chuckling over more stupidity by government, something fairly serious occurred to me. Now I am not Jewish but throughout my life several of my closest friends have been and remain so to this day. It has always been my impression that Hanukkah, while not as important as Yom Kippur, was still like an actual Jewish religious holiday, dude. And that the menorah, as an apparatus of that holiday, was therefore a religious symbol; I know this because it isn't used as a centerpiece when I drop by my Jewish friends' for franks and burgers on Tuesday. The state saw no problem in having a menorah in the capitol and having the governor participate in the lighting ceremony on the first night of Hanukkah; and I don't either. But the incorporation of a nativity scene smacked too much of religion.

So here's where we get to the problem. If the nativity scene is prohibited because it is religious, but the menorah and the Hanukkah ceremony were included then they are clearly not religious. If I were Jewish I think I'd be upset; my holiday doesn't count as religious?

But what do I know, I'm not a government bureaucrat.

Aside from the humor, the article brings up a point - any and all peaceful expressions of religion on public grounds should be welcomed. I have argued before that just because a public entity allows a religious-themed presentation on its grounds, it is not endorsing a particular religion, so long as:

1) it extends the same invitation to set something up to all other religious groups;
2) no person is forced to recognize as truth, pay homage to, etc., the display; and
3) taxpayer dollars do not go toward erecting the display.

Now, if government and not private funds went toward those displays in Washington, then we have a problem, and if anyone knows for sure, please clarify.

In the end, when government officials begin atempting to sort out what constitutes a religious display and what does not, they run into the trouble that Washington did. This holiday season, let's accept, not exclude.

Campaign Finance News

Two developments on the campaign finance reform front:

Panel says issue ads OK during elections
By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - A federal court on Thursday loosened restrictions on corporations, unions and other special interest groups that run political advertising in peak election season.

The 2-1 ruling said groups may mention candidates by name in commercials as long as they are trying to influence public policy, rather than sway an election.

The ruling came in a challenge to the so-called McCain-Feingold law designed to reduce the influence of big money in political campaigns. The law banned groups from using unrestricted money to run advertisements that name candidates two months before a general election or one month before a primary.

Wisconsin Right to Life, an anti-abortion group, has been fighting the law since 2004, when it sought to run an advertisement urging voters to contact Wisconsin Sens. Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl, both Democrats, and ask them not to hold up President Bush's judicial nominees.

Because Feingold was running for re-election in 2004, the ad was prohibited. Wisconsin Right to Life argued that it wasn't trying to influence an election and said the law restricted its constitutional right to petition the government.

While the Right to Life group has a point, there still needs to be some type of regulation on such issue-oriented ads to halt those disingenuous ones that are trying to influence elections. I hope this ruling does not lead to the complete dismantling of the regulation.

The other major event comes from California:

Ca. court: Campaign laws apply to tribes
By DAVID KRAVETS, Associated Press Writer

SAN FRANCISCO - A split California Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Indian tribes, some of the state's biggest political donors, are bound by campaign-finance disclosure rules.

In a 4-3 ruling, the justices upheld a lower court decision that said tribes were subject to campaign-finance enforcement lawsuits from the Fair Political Practices Commission, the state agency that oversees elections.

The case is significant for California's political culture.

The more than 100 tribes in California, some flush with casino revenues, are major campaign donors that have reported giving at least $200 million to candidate and ballot measure campaigns during the past decade. Most already disclose donations of at least $10,000 a year, in compliance with state regulations.

The tribes sued by the California Fair Political Practices Commission for failing to comply with disclosure rules argued they are sovereign governments, immune from most state intervention, including lawsuits to enforce state laws.

I have to agree with this ruling. These tribes may have sovereign status, but if they want to engage in campaign financing, they should have to play by the same rules as everyone else.