Stone Court

I have nothing to say about the Britney Spears statue, but apparently, if you want to know about the "britney spears statute", Yahoo! says Stone Court is the (#6) place to go....

UPDATE: And #2 if you want the Britney statute to be pregnant.

UPDATE 2: As of right now, we're #1 on Google.

It's been a bad week for Duke. The apparent gang rape of two women by the Duke Lacrosse Team has been well covered elsewhere. And today it was announced that they spent $2.4 million proving that having strangers pray for you won't cure your heart disease.

Via Feministing, "A pro-choice Wisconsin group, Basic-Abortion-Rights Network of Waukesha, has filed paperwork that would put South Dakota’s sweeping abortion ban on the November ballot." Planned Parenthood is reportedly skeptical, which makes sense given that (a) a judicial strategy may make more sense; and (b) if a referendum strategy makes sense, there is no reason to muddy the waters by having the referendum sponsored by an outside group (Tom Daschle would likely have held onto his seat but for the flap about reporting D.C. as his primary residence).

But before quibbling about strategy, I'd like to know who is the Basic-Abortion-Rights Network ("BARN") of Waukesha? Google searches of "Basic-Abortion-Rights Network" and "Basic Abortion Rights Network" (with quote marks) yield zero hits. It does not appear on a search of Wisconsin corporations. An Alternet commenter from a reproductive rights organization has never heard of BARN. It has a goofy acronym. Its representative, Noah Beck Hahn-Walter, also comes up empty on a Google search.

Best case, BARN is Noah Beck Hahn-Walter, a pro-choice activist in a log cabin somewhere in Wisconsin. Just as likely, BARN is (a) a childish hoax; (b) a nefarious hoax; or (c) a childish and nefarious hoax.

More evidence that Feingold's censure resolution is about Hillary Clinton (who reportedly went all Cheney on Feingold over campaign finance reform) more than about George Bush:

I’m amazed at Democrats, cowering with this president’s numbers so low. The administration just has to raise the specter of the war and the Democrats run and hide. … Too many Democrats are going to do the same thing they did in 2000 and 2004. In the face of this, they’ll say we’d better just focus on domestic issues. … [Democrats shouldn’t] cower to the argument, that whatever you do, if you question the administration, you’re helping the terrorists. (Emphasis added.)

On Fox, no less.

And while we're checking for consistency with the Clinton impeachment, let's also remember that Feingold was the only Democrat to vote against summarily dismissing the charges. Not even Lieberman did that. He did ultimately vote to acquit, but explained, "the Presidential conduct in this case, in my view, does come perilously close to justifying that extreme remedy". If he believed that, he cannot plausibly believe that Bush's conduct doesn't justify impeachment -- in which case he should be working to build a consensus supporting impeachment, not hawking a do-nothing, go-nowhere censure resolution.

Related Post: Hold the Phone

I'm not calling my Senators to urge them to support Russ Feingold's censure resolution.

The Constitution provides one means of punishing a President -- impeachment.* Impeachment is partially about the legal question of whether the President has committed a "high crime or misdemeanor". Repeatedly authorizing a massive covert illegal spying program easily qualifies. But is also about the political question of whether he should be removed from office. No one wants that, there being this little problem that it would make Dick Cheney President.

Censure, then, is nothing more than a statement that the Senate thinks the President did something wrong, and that it's not going to do anything about it. What is the point of that? If anything, it emphasizes that the President can as a practical matter do whatever he wants. I guess it encourages public debate as to whether the President did something wrong (or attention to the fact that he did something wrong). That's a good thing, to a point. However, it's not clear why it does that more than demanding investigation, legislation, etc. In particular, as the minority party, the Dems. are going to have little or no say in the agenda, so they need to either find an approach that picks off a few Republicans (censure surely won't) or, at a minimum, that is part of a coordinated strategy that makes the twin points that the spying is illegal and that it is not necessary for national security.

Unfortunately, Feingold's resolution seems to be the opposite of a coordinated media strategy. According to Raw Story, Senate Dems had little or no prior warning that it was coming. If true, that is a devastating indictment of Feingold's strategy. Even if untrue, it is indisputable that the resolution was not part of any coordinated Democratic message.

Feingold's resolution, in my view, is nothing more than posturing for 2008. Its target is less George Bush than it is Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. Consider me unimpressed.

UPDATE: Liberal Oasis takes the diametrically opposite view, relying heavily on the fact that about half of the current Democratic Senators supported censure for Bill Clinton in 1998. This argument misses the mark. The entire point of the censure resolution was to say that, while what Clinton did might have been wrong, Clinton's wrong was not bad enough to justify punishment. That is, I think, the exact opposite of what Feingold is doing. Feingold is not saying "censure and move on" -- or at least I hope that's not what he's saying. Feingold is saying censure is too little, but the Senate Dems are so hopeless that our only hope of even this empty resolution is to embarrass them publicly and hope the press and public follow along. I don't buy it.

*Yes, I know Andrew Jackson was censured, but Constitutional scholars are still debating the constitutionality of censure. My view is that censure is constitutional, but only so long as it has no penalties attached.

Why don't you get yourself some tea and cookies too and join me?

Seduced by the majestic beauty of his accomplishments, I have in the past been a defender of Barry Bonds.

But the forthcoming Game of Shadows, excerpted in depth at Sports Illustrated, paints an extraordinary, and depressing, picture of Bonds's criminality. Beyond the widely supsected fact that Bonds violated the law by taking performance-enhancing drugs, and beyond the merely despicable conduct chronicled in the book (e.g., "In 1996, he decided [his longtime girlfriend] should have breast augmentation surgery, and a check arrived from the Beverly Hills Sports Council, Bonds's agent, to pay for it."; hiding trysts with, and payments to, his girlfriend from his wife; buying drugs indirectly from AIDS victims willing to trade medically-necessary drugs for cash), the lengthy excerpt lists a shockingly wide variety of crimes committed by Barry Bonds:

* Violent assault and battery against his then-girlfriend.

* Multiple death threats directed toward his girlfriend.

* Tax evasion by failing to report cash income from memorabilia sales. (This is what landed Pete Rose in jail.)

* Perjury to a federal grand jury concerning his use of performance-enhancing drugs.

* Large scale cash gifts to his girlfriend that I suspect Bonds did not file gift tax returns for.

I'd like to be self-righteously angry, but mostly I'm just sad.

Related Post: You Gotta Lotta Bawls, Barry Bonds Edition

Feministing reports that NARAL's former President, Kate Michelman, is considering an independent run for Senate in Pennsylvania.

I was pleased last month when Michelman distanced herself from current NARAL leadership and announced her support for Democrat Matt Brown over nominally pro-choice Republican Lincoln Chafee.

But splitting the left and left-center vote in Pennsylvania is nothing but a ticket to getting Rick Santorum, the Senate's most vulnerable Republican (and one of its most pernicious), re-elected. If Michelman wants to run for Senate and challenge Casey's anti-choice position, she should run in the Democratic primary. If it's too late for that, she should lay the groundwork now for running for Specter's seat in 2010.

But helping re-elect the hateful Rick Santorum -- not OK, not OK at all.

UPDATE: As of 3:25 EST, Pennsylvania is the only Senate race as to which the Dems are losing ground today on Intrade.

... but shackling female prisoners during labor seems like a bad idea.