This just in from the Washington Post:
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"Moderates in Kansas Decide They're Not in GOP Anymore"
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"WICHITA -- Paul Morrison, a career prosecutor who specializes in putting killers behind bars, has the bulletproof résumé and the rugged looks of a law-and-order Republican, which is what he was until last year. That was when he announced he would run for attorney general -- as a Democrat...."
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"As elsewhere, Democrats and moderate Republicans say they are frustrated with policies and practices they trace to Republican leadership, including the Iraq war, ballooning government spending, ethics violations and the influence of social conservatives.
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."A long-standing split among Kansas Republicans has deepened in recent years. One fresh sign came from the Johnson County Sun, which said it would endorse virtually the entire Democratic ticket, including Morrison and Parkinson, after endorsing fewer than a dozen Democrats in the past half-century.
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"So what in the world has happened?" publisher Steve Rose asked in a recent column. "The Republican Party has changed, and it has changed monumentally. "
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Ain't that the truth.
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This year, my wife and I will be voting a straight Democratic ticket.  We have decided to send a message:
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"Freedom-hating neo-fascists, yeah, I mean people like you Chad Vegas, Tom DeLay, Tony Perkins, get the hell out of my party!  I will not vote Republican again until this power-mad, ruthless, fundamentalist neo-Taliban cancer has been deposed from the GOP and sent back into a long and deep remission -- even a total fade into obscurity, back into the 11th century from whence they came."
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The Democratic Party would be well advised to begin planning on how they're going to accommodate us.
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Because here we come.
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One stance that I hold which is decidedly left-wing is my support for Universal Health Care.  However, here comes an argument from what could be considered a conservative angle.  Let me set the stage.
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A few months ago, my wife's individual insurance policy suffered a gouging 28 percent rate increase.  No, she didn't lower her deductible.  No, she didn't cross an age classification boundary.
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This was a pure, gratuitous, bolt-from-the-blue 28 percent rate gouge.  And my wife is by no means alone.  Everyone, it seems, is getting gouged deep and hard at every turn over the last few years.
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Wouldn't you, Joe and Jane Public, like to be able to see the actual accounting, the actual dollar-by-dollar breakdown that supposedly justifies these ridiculously soaring health care costs?
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I sure would.
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Well, a move toward single-payer health coverage -- combined with a highly popular drive for transparent government -- could finally allow the public to see inside the black box of health care costs.  And demand remedies.  And be able to vote for remedies.

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Now, there are certain possibilities that accompany national health care that reeeeeally make me nervous.  One big unsettling factor is who is governing; I sure wouldn't want a James Dobson government deciding what my medical choices are going to be.
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But these runaway costs -- which have far outstripped inflation for as long as I remember -- must be ground to a halt right now.
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Universal health care combined with increased transparency in government could be the key that enables the American public to demand accountability in the health care industry and shine the spotlight on cases of health care gouging.
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With gouging 28 percent rate jumps year after year, there surely is a lot of gravy-training going on somewhere.  Universal health care could be our keys to demand investigations.

I have thought about how I would approach gay marriage and other social issues if I were to run as an actual political candidate, especially in light of my desire to end the caustic divisions that vex our society today.
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The traditional approach by both sides has been to play up the issue up to so momentous a scale that the future of America is seen to hang in the balance.  Which direction bodes the best or worst for America depends, evidently, on whether you agree with gay rights or not.
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Unfortunately, this traditional approach inflames passions and highlights divisions -- an effect exactly counter to my long-term goal of unifying our country again.
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So, why not try the opposite tactic?  Downplay the issue to a tempest in a teapot?
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It could work.
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If I were a candidate, campaigning on healing and unity, I would answer the question "what is your stand on gay marriage" something like this:
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With a rather soft, underwhelmed voice, I'd say with a slight shrug, "we're supposed to be a free country; I don't think they should have to ask our permission" and let that be that.
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Sex education?  Rather than building it up into a titanic clash of values, I might respond with a soft, pragmatic voice, "Sex is a big part of life.  I don't see the reason to hold back information on important aspects of life."
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There.  I've stated a thoroughly progressive view -- without making it sound like a collision of empires.
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Voters on my side of these issues would be more than pleased with my answer.  Voters less sympathetic to my views would, at least, feel less flat-out assaulted by my stance -- since it would lack the adversarial assumptions that current treatment of these issues can't seem to avoid.
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Could that be the answer?  Scale down the issue and pragmatize it rather than confrontationalize and ideologize it?

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Might work.

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The Supreme Court has declined to hear a challenge to a Texas law making it a crime to promote sex toys shaped like sex organs, according to this Dallas Morning News story.
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In more and more districts, when you vote Republican, you're voting for this.  (In our own Senate, indeed: if you vote for Dick Mountjoy rather than for Dianne Feinstein, you are voting for exactly this.  Be forewarned.)
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It's stupid enough that a fair number of Republicans think it's a government interest to criminalize things related to sex toys.  But let's look at the whole picture and think this through:
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The second paragraph of the story reports, "An adult bookstore employee in El Paso, Texas, sued the state after his arrest for showing two undercover officers a device shaped like a penis and telling the female officer the device would arouse and gratify her. "
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This means that Texas law enforcement considers it a wise use of taxpayer money to pay undercover officers to "sting" people who sell sex toys.  This is conservative?
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Five other states have enacted such laws, challenged in court with mixed results -- depending on the state.  This means that Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Georgia, and Mississippi likewise think it's a good use of our tax dollars to police -- and entrap -- people who sell sex toys.
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Had the Supreme Court decided to hear the case, the state of Texas would have continued their defense of the law, squandering still more taxpayer dollars to defend an idiotic law in the halls of the Supreme Court.
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This is conservative?
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You must be kidding.  When I was a kid, conservative meant reducing government spending and less state intrusion into our lives.
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The conservative response should have been to drop the stupid law in the first place, spend taxpayer dollars on more productive things -- and most certainly -- decide that appealing all the way to the Supreme Court over a dildo was not worth Texas' dollars.
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But those days of classical conservatism are long, long gone.

As soon as possible.
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Recently, a new blogger asked me why I want to see the Bush presidency terminated by any lawful means.  As I pointed out at that time, none of my reasons are connected to the Iraq war.
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He must be removed because he, his adminstration, and the Republican leadership whose agenda his office empowers him to rubber-stamp, are waging an all-out, all fronts war on the Constitution of the United States and the rights and freedoms that it guarantees.  
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And his administration and political advisors have shown their perfect willingness to divide America to do it.  In grossly un-American fashion, these people have no qualms whatsoever about turning Americans at one another's throats -- perhaps even pushing America to the brink of civil war, if not straight into it -- to strengthen their power and achieve these goals.
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And Bush and his administration have been waging this war not since Iraq, not since 9/11, but from the very first day he took office.
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Why?  Because that is exactly what roughly one third of his constituency sent him there to do.  And he is keeping his faith to that one third of his constitutency, or about 13 percent of the voting-age populace.  He is not our President.  He is the President of about 13 percent of America -- and he will cater to them before anyone else.
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The first front of this war has received almost zero publicity from the (nonexistent) "liberal media."  Only the political fire fights that it has created have been reported: the media's constant depiction of Senate Democrats as "obstructionists" to Bush's nominees to the federal courts.
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The Bush Administration, and that one third of Republicans who sent him to Washington to destroy our Constitutional freedoms, want to see him appoint judges like Antonin Scalia and Robert Bork to the federal courts.  They want Bush to use these men as role models because their contempt for our Constitutional rights is total:  Depending on the context and on the person, the views they want sent to the federal bench range from recognizing almost no Constitutional rights, to recognizing no Constitutional rights at all.
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And Bush has done his treasonous best to fulfill this mission, appointing corrupt, Constitutionally blind judges who will look the other way when the most basic of human rights are being stomped on.  And when Senate Democrats succeeded in blocking his most dangerous nominees, he has tried every trick in the book to appoint them anyway, whether through recess appointments or by just renominating and renominating the same candidates.  This is deliberate.
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Antonin Scalia has written, in the legally significant body of Supreme Court rulings, that:
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*  The federal courts should have no power at all to overturn unconstitutional laws (Chicago v. Morales, 1999)
*  The First Amendment does not apply if a lawmaking body feels that something is "immoral" (Erie v. Pap's A.M., 2000)
*  The Constitution does not apply if a community deems something immoral (Lawrence v. Texas, 2003)
*  Violating Constitutional rights is perfectly acceptable if it has been traditionally done in the past (i.e. "we have always done it this way")  (Lawrence, and others)
*  Literally nullified any meaningful protection in the "free exercise of religion" clause in the First Amendment (Oregon Employment Division v. Smith, 1990) -- a ruling that led to passage of the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act -- which was itself struck down mainly by the right wing of the Supreme Court.
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Robert Bork and/or others in the far right judicial mold, have opined that:
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*  State governments should be free of ignore the Bill of Rights
*  Local majorities should enjoy virtually unlimited lawmaking power, regardless of one's human rights
*  The definition of "freedom" itself is not freedom to choose your life and pursue happiness, but the "freedom" of elected governments to exert power over others.
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The second front in this war on the Constitution is to cripple the courts' ability to protect our Constitutional rights.
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Far right groups have directly advocated stripping the federal courts of their power to uphold the Bill of Rights against state and local governments.  The Conservative Caucus, whose views are well represented among Bush's advisors and in the GOP leadership, asks in a candidate questionnaire:
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"20. As a member of Congress, would you vote to terminate the jurisdiction of the Federal judiciary with respect to appeals relating to alleged violations of the Bill of Rights by state and local government? "
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You can't get any plainer than that.
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Toward this end, the far right wing in Congress has worked diligently.  In the infuriatingly falsely titled "Constitution Restoration Act," the right wing of Congress attempted to strip the courts of any power to hear cases that would impinge upon the "Federal, State, or local government, or against an officer or agent of Federal, State, or local government (whether or not acting in official or personal capacity), concerning that entity's, officer's, or agent's acknowledgment of God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government."
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You can't get any plainer than that.  They tried to strip the courts of their power to prevent an illegal theocracy in the United States.  This is a direct attempt to remove our access to the redress of grievances, a right guaranteed by the First Amendment.
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And on September 19, 2006, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 2679 which, according to the Washington Post, provides that "attorneys who successfully challenge government actions as violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment shall not be entitled to recover attorneys fees. The bill has only one purpose: to prevent suits challenging unconstitutional government actions advancing religion."
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All Americans, not just liberals or libertarians, should be rioting in the streets about this!  And when liberals spend 95 percent of their effort fretting about the Iraq war, or oil, or the Florida and Ohio vote counts of 2000, they are missing the single gigantic issue that could drive this administration out of power overnight!  Wake up and smell the burning flesh of witches, liberals!!!
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This war on our Constitution is no accident.  Our "Republican" leaders, including our President, who have sworn to uphold our Constitution, are instead mounting a sustained, unrelenting campaign to destroy that same document.  By anyone's definition, this is treason -- not just by the current administration, but by the bigger part of an entire political party's leadership.
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This is an impeachable offense.