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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (10109)	9/30/2003 10:54:21 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793640

it's also the case you get unusual and unexpected heroes and goats. Public character gets redefined. There will be several books written out of the fallout from this. First scandal in the Bush Admin. Took three years. The ones I feel sorry for are any WH or other Admin people indirectly in the line of fire who are going have to spend their life savings on Washington Lawyers.

To: JohnM who wrote (10109)	9/30/2003 10:58:48 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793640

Bad Boys II - The hating of the presidents By Cathy Young REASON In the acidly witty 1999 movie Election, a meek-mannered high school civics teacher becomes consumed with his hatred of an obnoxiously perfectionist, overachieving student—to such an extent that he decides to sabotage her campaign for student body president. When I first saw the film, I wondered if it was meant, to some extent, as a clever metaphor for many Republicans' Clinton obsession, which went far beyond normal political opposition. Now, the much-discussed phenomenon of "Clintonophobia" has a parallel on the other side of the political spectrum. A lot of the criticism directed at President Bush crosses the line into irrational, visceral hatred. The similarities can be quite uncanny. In the most extreme example, both presidents have been accused of murder. In the case of Clinton, there were the whispers about the allegedly suspicious suicide of presidential aide Vincent Foster, as well as allegations that a number of strange deaths in Arkansas were linked to Bill and Hillary Clinton and that Commerce Secretary Ron Brown's death in a plane crash was no accident. Today, Bush-o-phobes on the Internet traffic in similar rumors about the plane crash that killed Senator Paul Wellstone, the Minnesota Democrat. Bush-bashing websites urge that the president be impeached for "treason" and repeat preposterous claims about the Bush family's alleged Nazi connections. In both cases, the wild allegations are circulated on the political fringes—but the bashing spills over into the mainstream as well, including the rhetoric of other prominent politicians. During the Clinton presidency, much of the Republican Party base as well as the Republican House leadership caught the Clinton-hating bug; the Clinton presidency was viewed as not just wrong about specific policy issues but downright evil. Today, Howard Dean's campaign for the Democratic nomination for president relies heavily on stoking the Bush-hating among the Democratic Party faithful. Simon Rosenberg, a political activist from the New Democrat network, has said this sentiment is "beyond normal partisanship": "The feeling in the Democratic base about Bush's presidency is that he's a dangerous leader, as opposed to a bad leader." Why the hatred? Partly, it's the change in the political climate, which has become nastier and more polarized over the past decade. Partly, it's that the Internet and talk radio have made it easier for marginal and extreme voices to be heard (and to affect mainstream discourse). But the phenomenon also has to do with the personalities of Clinton and Bush, and with the circumstances of their rise to power. Both presidents are widely perceived by their political opponents as illegitimate. Clinton got only 43 percent of the popular vote in the 1992 election but nonetheless won the presidency in a three-way race among himself, the first President Bush, and H. Ross Perot. Bush, of course, not only lost the popular vote to Al Gore in 2000 but won the electoral vote after a protracted, bitter election dispute in Florida. Many Democrats, including some who cannot in any way be classified as right-wing extremists, sincerely believe that the election was "stolen" by Bush and his cronies. Another element is the kinship between the two presidents' political strategies. Each has borrowed liberally from the other side's issues and agendas. Clinton ran as a centrist, pro-business, law-and-order Democrat; Bush, as a "compassionate conservative." To the haters, that makes them wolves in sheep's clothing. The hatred is personal as well as political. Clinton was (and still is) seen as "Slick Willie," the artful dodger who gets away with everything, from draft evasion to sexual shenanigans, thanks to his cleverness and lack of scruples. Bush is perceived as the ultimate rich kid who has everything handed to him on a silver platter and gets away with everything because of his privileged status. Finally, on both a personal and political level, the conservatives' revulsion against Clinton and the liberals' revulsion against Bush has to do with the "culture wars." To the conservatives, Bill and Hilary Clinton embodied the ethos of the '60s with its emphasis on personal liberation and its rejection of traditional gender norms, which the right regards as permissive and destructive. To the liberals, Bush embodies the cultural conservatism of "middle America" with its traditional religious and social norms, which the left regards as oppressive and hidebound. In Election, the teacher's irrational hatred of the overachieving student ends up destroying his own career. There may be a lesson there for real-life politicians. The Republicans' Clinton obsession ended up alienating many of their supporters. Today, the Bush-o-phobic Democrats run the same risk. reason.com

To: JohnM who wrote (10109)	10/1/2003 12:33:46 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793640

O'Connor's Special Role By David S. Broder Wednesday, October 1, 2003; Page A23 The start of another Supreme Court term Monday reminds us that the most influential single public official in this land may not be anyone in elective office but Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Holding the swing vote on the nine-person Supreme Court, she can and does set more policy than President Bush or all 100 members of the Senate, 435 representatives or 50 governors. Her special role was exemplified when the court last month assembled a month ahead of schedule to hear four hours of oral arguments on the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. The advocates on both sides, representing key figures in the executive and legislative branches, directed most of their efforts toward O'Connor, knowing that she is probably the one whose vote will swing the case. The heavy weight this 73-year-old Arizonan carries stems in part from the ideological balance of the other eight jurists, with four to her right and four to her left. But it also reflects the skill and tact with which she has fortified her position in her 22 years on the high court. O'Connor is a great one for finding the center, not just of legal disputes but of the political spectrum. The only justice who previously held elective office -- as Republican majority leader of the Arizona state Senate -- she can navigate her way through the most ticklish of situations, even if it requires splitting the difference. She did that last term in the celebrated University of Michigan affirmative action case. O'Connor wrote the 5-4 majority opinion upholding the principle that racial diversity is an important value in higher education and therefore can be a factor in deciding admission to law school. But then she turned around and joined a different coalition striking down the mathematical point system Michigan used to rate applicants to its undergraduate student body. O'Connor is not predictably an ally of the court's liberal bloc or its opposition. In two 5-4 decisions, she wrote opinions upholding the application of California's "three strikes" law -- one of the toughest criminal statutes in the land. In one case, the defendant was sentenced to life in prison, with no possibility of parole, after stealing $153 worth of videotapes from a Kmart. In the other case, the crime that triggered a similar punishment was theft of three golf clubs valued at $1,200. Defense counsel argued that lifetime imprisonment for such minor crimes constituted "cruel and unusual punishment" forbidden by the Constitution. But O'Connor ruled that California was within its rights to insist that a pattern of criminal behavior justified such a punishment and that nothing in the Constitution forbade it. Over the years, she has almost singlehandedly constructed the code that legislatures must follow for redistricting plans to survive judicial scrutiny. An essay by Erwin Chemerinsky, a professor of law at the University of Southern California, in the latest issue of the Green Bag, aptly described as "an entertaining journal of law" by its publisher, George Mason University, focuses on O'Connor's extraordinary role in many other areas of law. "The October 2002 Supreme Court term ended dramatically," he wrote. "In the last week of June, the Supreme Court upheld affirmative action programs by colleges and universities; invalidated a state law prohibiting private consensual homosexual activity; overturned a death sentence because of ineffective assistance of counsel; upheld a federal law requiring libraries that received federal funds to install Internet filters; and declared unconstitutional a California law that retroactively extended the statute of limitations for sex offenders." Earlier in the term, among other things, the court allowed state governments to be sued for violating the Family and Medical Leave Act and ruled that noncitizens facing deportation for illegal activity could be held without due process. All of these decisions, plus the two California cases, "had one common characteristic," Chemerinsky wrote. "Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was in the majority. Indeed, she was the only justice in the majority in every one of these cases." At the end of the last term, in June, there was speculation that O'Connor might retire in order to give President Bush an opportunity to name someone to the court. She did not, and given the prospect of a major partisan battle if a vacancy were to occur in 2004, she is probably going to remain in place at least this term and next. And why not? No one else in America has more authority in more areas of domestic policy than she does. And no one calculates her use of power more carefully. washingtonpost.com

To: JohnM who wrote (10109)	10/1/2003 7:43:25 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793640

Funny. I only check three out of the top ten. "National Review" and "Time," and "Salon." ________________________________________________________________________________________________ The 125 Most Popular Political Websites On The Net by John Hawkins (Blog) Back in January, I put together a list of the, "The 100 Most Popular Political Websites On The Net". It got some attention, more than a few links, and it was lot of fun to put together. Fast forward to today. I have once again decided to rank the most popular websites using Alexa.com. But, I think you'll find their have been some significant improvements. Nine of months of experience has allowed me to do a more thorough job of finding websites that may have been left off of the original list. Furthermore, as a bonus, I decided to toss in 25 more websites than last time. Last but not least, not only do I show the Alexa Rank of all pages that are listed, I show how many spots they've moved up or down since the last time I put this together. Do keep in mind that... 1) While I think this is a fairly comprehensive list, I'm sure some pages were probably left out. That wasn't intentional, it's just something that is going to happen when you try to take on an undertaking as massive as this one. 2) For a variety of reasons, I did not include websites run by either the Republican or Democratic party, newspapers, or pages run by the networks. Also, it goes without saying that sometimes I had to make judgement calls about whether certain pages that don't necessarily exclusively cover politics were going to make the list. 3) Alexa can't properly read all the Blog*spot pages so they all receive the same rank. Because of that, none of them could be included. 4) Last but not least, Alexa sometimes cannot distinguish between the main page and secondary page of a website. For example, Alexa gives Eric Alterman's blog the same ranking as MSNBC which meant I had to leave out a few blogs of interest that were hosted on much larger pages. All 125 websites are listed with their Alexa rank following their link. So for example, a "1" would mean the page was the most popular website on the net. A "50,000" would mean the 50,000th most popular page on the net. The number following in parentheses is the number of spots the page has moved up or down since January. A + indicates the number of spots the page went up, a minus indicates the rank dropped, and a (N/A) means the page wasn't ranking on the original list. With that being said, let's go ahead and take a look at the rankings. 1) The Drudge Report: 210 (+128) 2) World Net Daily: 390 (+583) 3) Lew Rockwell: 483 (N/A) 4) Newsmax: 664 (+694) 5) TownHall: 712 (+3,338) 6) Time: 832 (-30) 7) Salon: 865 (-111) 8) Free Republic: 931 (+899) 9) National Review: 1644 (+1,345) 10) Antiwar.com: 1699 (+3,996) 11) The Rush Limbaugh Show: 1749 (+897) 12) The Economist: 1819 (N/A) 13) Periodicals of the Ludwig von Mises Institute: 2168 (N/A) 14) The Christian Science Monitor: 2269 (+943) 15) U.S. News & World Report: 2290 (+912) 16) Opinion Journal: 2351 (+1,695) 17) Common Dreams: 2848 (+5,254) 18) IndyMedia: 2906 (+260) 19) Lucianne: 2971 (+3,141) 20) The Village Voice: 3807 (-232) 21) Jewish World Review: 3815 (+1,890) 22) Howard Dean for America 4035 (N/A) 23) Counterpunch: 4135 (+6,886) 24) The Democratic Underground: 4185 (+5,922) 25) Front Page Magazine: 4582 (+2,704) 26) Newsfilter: 4,820 (+26,018) 27) Alternet: 5020 (+5,821) 28) Reason: 5307 (+9,141) 29) The Weekly Standard: 5359 (+8,132) 30) Vdare: 5513 (+4,931) 31) What Really Happened: 5646 (+1,916) 32) Cybercast News Service: 6605 (+7,702) 33) Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish: 6726 (+6,164) 34) Buzzflash: 6934 (+8,682) 35) Instapundit: 7,084 (+12,394) 36) The Nation: 7162 (+3,920) 37) Anti-State.com: 7805 (N/A) 38) The Cato Journal: 8159 (+6,795) 39) Neal Boortz: 8252 (+4,983) 40) Strike The Root: 8665 (N/A) 41) Etherzone: 9494 (-529) 42) World Socialist Website: 9559 (+6,196) 43) Poynter Online 9815 (N/A) 44) The Atlantic Online 9,828 (N/A) 45) American Conservative: 10,564 (+13,476) 46) Ann Coulter 10,597 (+9,976) 47) James Lileks: 10,987 (+12,573) 48) Zmag: 11,328 (+2,879) 49) New Yorker: 11,864 (+5,809) 50) The Heritage Foundation: 12,044 (+9,631) 51) Tom Paine: 12,293 (+20,937) 52) The New Republic: 12,448 (+14,836) 53) Tech Central Station: 12,635 (+51,655) 54) Mother Jones: 13,263 (+4,943) 55) Little Green Footballs: 13,834 (+17,695) 56) Real Clear Politics: 14,159 (+7,818) 57) Daily Kos: 14,968 (+62,798) 58) Sean Hannity 15,188 (N/A) 59) Talking Points Memo: 16,742 (+15,779) 60) Free-Market.Net: 17,405 (N/A) 61) The American Spectator: 17,459 (+78,199) 62) The American Prospect: 18,219 (+11,065) 63) The Smirking Chimp: 18,790 (+28,068) 64) Dick Gephardt for President 19,634 (N/A) 65) Insight Magazine: 20,195 (+19,642) 66) The Hill: 20,233 (+40,691) 67) Draft Wesley Clark For President: 20,519 (N/A) 68) Michael Moore 20,615 (+940) 69) Draft Clark For President 2004: 22,031 (N/A) 70) Too Good Reports: 24,641 (+16,958) 71) Bartcop: 25,827 (+15,112) 72) Bush Cheney '04: 20,834 (N/A) 73) Media Research Center: 26,040 (+8,764) 74) The Volokh Conspiracy 27,468 (N/A) 75) John Kerry For President 29,341 (N/A) 76) Right Wing News: 31,079 (+20,499) 77) The Obscure Reading Room: 31,768 (+4,689) 78) The USS Clueless: 32,092 (+51,810) 79) Politics 1 33,306 (N/A) 80) Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting: 33,682 (N/A) 81) The Federalist: 34,687 (N/A) 82) Calpundit 35,267 (N/A) 83) This Modern World: 35,351 (+12,272) 84) Human Events Online: 35,720 (+69,879) 85) Middle East Media Research Institute: 35,760 (-371) 86) ChronWatch: 36,900 (N/A) 87) Media Whores Online: 37,185 (+32,382) 88) Scrappleface 37,840 (N/A) 89) Political Wire: 39,000 (+48,152) 90) Congressional Quarterly: 39,294 (N/A) 91) The Washington Monthly: 41,937 (+30,523) 92) Dennis Kucinich For President: 44,260 (N/A) 93) The Agonist: 42,264 (N/A) 94) Spin Sanity 42,372 (N/A) 95) Infoshop -- Your Online Anarchist Community: 44,317 (-2,551) 96) Accuracy In Media: 44,399 (N/A) 97) The Truth Laid Bear 44,851 (N/A) 98) American Patrol: 45,325 (N/A) 99) The Semi-Daily Journal of Economist Brad DeLong 45,804 (N/A) 100) The Progressive: 46,549 (+4,771) 101) Enter Stage Right: 46,567 (+50,800) 102) A Small Victory: 47,060 (+33,845) 103) The American Enterprise Institute: 47,421 (N/A) 104) Laura Ingraham 47,488 (N/A) 105) General Wesley Clark For President: 47,817 (N/A) 106) Roll Call: 48,494 (-32,268) 107) Dean's World 48,865 (N/A) 108) Capital Hill Blue: 51,153 (-35,143) 109) The Progressive Review: 51,349 (N/A) 110) The Daily Howler: 51,477 (+29,518) 111) Matthew Yglesias 51,588 (N/A) 112) Democrats.com: 53,133 (+2,423) 113) Hugh Hewitt 53,412 (N/A) 114) Intellectual Conservative: 53,719 (N/A) 115) Open Democracy 54,249 (N/A) 116) Day By Day: 55,027 (N/A) 117) City Journal: 55,315 (N/A) 118) Maxspeak: 58,731 (N/A) 119) Talk Left: 60,136 (+96,486) 120) Rachel Lucas: 60,935 (+59,729) 121) L.T. Smash: 61,179 (N/A) 122) Samizdata: 61,343 (+66,062) 123) Virginia Postrel's 'The Dynamist': 61,363 (+67,898) 124) Winds Of Change: 64,168 (N/A) 125) Asymmetrcial Information: 65,821 (+119,537) rightwingnews.com

To: JohnM who wrote (10109)	10/1/2003 8:59:31 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793640

John, we have posted many times about the split in this country between the people and Academia. But I read some numbers today that really brought it home. Victor Davis Hanson kicked off a new "Education" section in NRO today with an article called, " Topsy Turvy," exploring the vast chasm that has opened up between our Universities and the rest of the country. He starts off by citing the fact that 70% of the people in California backed taking out Saddam. Yet the USCB Faculty Senate voted 84-5 condemning the war. Santa Cruz voted 58-0 and Chico 43-0. What a striking difference! Hanson goes on at length about his personal experiences as a Classics Prof. It is too long to post. For anybody interested, it is at ads.nationalreview.com But the reason I bring this up is that it is a very good example of this Intellectuals/masses split. I don't know of any country in History where the Intellectuals disliked their own Society so much. Of course, other Intellectuals will criticize their Society. But they rally around it in time of crisis. Not ours.