Thank you very kindly, my friends. As I listened to Ralph Abernathy and his eloquent and generous introduction and then thought about myself, I wondered who he was talking about. It's always good to have your closest friend and associate to say something good about you. And Ralph Abernathy is the best friend that I have in the world. I'm delighted to see each of you here tonight in spite of a storm warning. You reveal that you are determined to go on anyhow.

Something is happening in Memphis; something is happening in our world. And you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of taking a kind of general and panoramic view of the whole of human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, "Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?" I would take my mental flight by Egypt and I would watch God's children in their magnificent trek from the dark dungeons of Egypt through, or rather across the Red Sea, through the wilderness on toward the promised land. And in spite of its magnificence, I wouldn't stop there.

I would move on by Greece and take my mind to Mount Olympus. And I would see Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Euripides and Aristophanes assembled around the Parthenon. And I would watch them around the Parthenon as they discussed the great and eternal issues of reality. But I wouldn't stop there.

I would go on, even to the great heyday of the Roman Empire. And I would see developments around there, through various emperors and leaders. But I wouldn't stop there.

I would even come up to the day of the Renaissance, and get a quick picture of all that the Renaissance did for the cultural and aesthetic life of man. But I wouldn't stop there.
I would even go by the way that the man for whom I am named had his habitat. And I would watch Martin Luther as he tacked his ninety-five theses on the door at the church of Wittenberg. But I wouldn't stop there.

I would come on up even to 1863, and watch a vacillating President by the name of Abraham Lincoln finally come to the conclusion that he had to sign the Emancipation Proclamation. But I wouldn't stop there.

I would even come up to the early thirties, and see a man grappling with the problems of the bankruptcy of his nation. And come with an eloquent cry that we have nothing to fear but "fear itself." But I wouldn't stop there.
Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty, and say, "If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the 20th century, I will be happy."

Now that's a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around. That's a strange statement. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding.

Something is happening in our world. The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today, whether they are in Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Accra, Ghana; New York City; Atlanta, Georgia; Jackson, Mississippi; or Memphis, Tennessee -- the cry is always the same: "We want to be free."

And another reason that I'm happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we are going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands didn't force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today.

And also in the human rights revolution, if something isn't done, and done in a hurry, to bring the colored peoples of the world out of their long years of poverty, their long years of hurt and neglect, the whole world is doomed. Now, I'm just happy that God has allowed me to live in this period to see what is unfolding. And I'm happy that He's allowed me to be in Memphis.

I can remember -- I can remember when Negroes were just going around as Ralph has said, so often, scratching where they didn't itch, and laughing when they were not tickled. But that day is all over. We mean business now, and we are determined to gain our rightful place in God's world.

And that's all this whole thing is about. We aren't engaged in any negative protest and in any negative arguments with anybody. We are saying that we are determined to be men. We are determined to be people. We are saying -- We are saying that we are God's children. And that we are God's children, we don't have to live like we are forced to live.

Now, what does all of this mean in this great period of history? It means that we've got to stay together. We've got to stay together and maintain unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh's court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together, that's the beginning of getting out of slavery. Now let us maintain unity.

Secondly, let us keep the issues where they are. The issue is injustice. The issue is the refusal of Memphis to be fair and honest in its dealings with its public servants, who happen to be sanitation workers. Now, we've got to keep attention on that. That's always the problem with a little violence. You know what happened the other day, and the press dealt only with the window-breaking. I read the articles. They very seldom got around to mentioning the fact that one thousand, three hundred sanitation workers are on strike, and that Memphis is not being fair to them, and that Mayor Loeb is in dire need of a doctor. They didn't get around to that.

Now we're going to march again, and we've got to march again, in order to put the issue where it is supposed to be -- and force everybody to see that there are thirteen hundred of God's children here suffering, sometimes going hungry, going through dark and dreary nights wondering how this thing is going to come out. That's the issue. And we've got to say to the nation: We know how it's coming out. For when people get caught up with that which is right and they are willing to sacrifice for it, there is no stopping point short of victory.
We aren't going to let any mace stop us. We are masters in our nonviolent movement in disarming police forces; they don't know what to do. I've seen them so often.

I remember in Birmingham, Alabama, when we were in that majestic struggle there, we would move out of the 16th Street Baptist Church day after day; by the hundreds we would move out. And Bull Connor would tell them to send the dogs forth, and they did come; but we just went before the dogs singing, "Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around."

Bull Connor next would say, "Turn the fire hoses on." And as I said to you the other night, Bull Connor didn't know history. He knew a kind of physics that somehow didn't relate to the transphysics that we knew about. And that was the fact that there was a certain kind of fire that no water could put out. And we went before the fire hoses; we had known water. If we were Baptist or some other denominations, we had been immersed. If we were Methodist, and some others, we had been sprinkled, but we knew water. That couldn't stop us.

And we just went on before the dogs and we would look at them; and we'd go on before the water hoses and we would look at it, and we'd just go on singing "Over my head I see freedom in the air." And then we would be thrown in the paddy wagons, and sometimes we were stacked in there like sardines in a can. And they would throw us in, and old Bull would say, "Take 'em off," and they did; and we would just go in the paddy wagon singing, "We Shall Overcome." And every now and then we'd get in jail, and we'd see the jailers looking through the windows being moved by our prayers, and being moved by our words and our songs. And there was a power there which Bull Connor couldn't adjust to; and so we ended up transforming Bull into a steer, and we won our struggle in Birmingham. Now we've got to go on in Memphis just like that. I call upon you to be with us when we go out Monday.

Now about injunctions: We have an injunction and we're going into court tomorrow morning to fight this illegal, unconstitutional injunction. All we say to America is, "Be true to what you said on paper." If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand some of these illegal injunctions. Maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because they hadn't committed themselves to that over there. But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right. And so just as I say, we aren't going to let dogs or water hoses turn us around, we aren't going to let any injunction turn us around. We are going on.

We need all of you. And you know what's beautiful to me is to see all of these ministers of the Gospel. It's a marvelous picture. Who is it that is supposed to articulate the longings and aspirations of the people more than the preacher? Somehow the preacher must have a kind of fire shut up in his bones. And whenever injustice is around he tell it. Somehow the preacher must be an Amos, and saith, "When God speaks who can but prophesy?" Again with Amos, "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." Somehow the preacher must say with Jesus, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me," and he's anointed me to deal with the problems of the poor."

And I want to commend the preachers, under the leadership of these noble men: James Lawson, one who has been in this struggle for many years; he's been to jail for struggling; he's been kicked out of Vanderbilt University for this struggle, but he's still going on, fighting for the rights of his people. Reverend Ralph Jackson, Billy Kiles; I could just go right on down the list, but time will not permit. But I want to thank all of them. And I want you to thank them, because so often, preachers aren't concerned about anything but themselves. And I'm always happy to see a relevant ministry. Read more…

Trust Walt Whitman to know what's important.

Courtesy of Robert Pinsky, a poet himself, and the Boston Globe, with a H/T to BarbinMD at Daily Kos:

ELECTION DAY, NOVEMBER, 1884
If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,

'Twould not be you, Niagara - nor you, ye limitless prairies - nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,

Nor you, Yosemite - nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyserloops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,

Nor Oregon's white cones - nor Huron's belt of mighty lakes - nor Mississippi's stream:

This seething hemisphere's humanity, as now, I'd name - the still small voice vibrating -America's choosing day,

(The heart of it not in the chosen - the act itself the main, the quadrennial choosing,)

The stretch of North and South arous'd - sea-board and inland - Texas to Maine - the Prairie States - Vermont, Virginia, California,

The final ballot-shower from East to West - the paradox and conflict,

The countless snow-flakes falling - (a swordless conflict,

Yet more than all Rome's wars of old, or modern Napoleon's): the peaceful choice of all,

Or good or ill humanity - welcoming the darker odds, the dross:

- Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify - while the heart pants, life glows:

These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,

Swell'd Washington's, Jefferson's, Lincoln's sails. Read more…

It's still not a done deal, folks. But the House is going to vote sometime today, it looks like.

First read another excellent Stirling Newberry piece; this one is much less technical and spells out why this isn't a crisis that has to be met today and only on Bush/Paulson terms. If this is a crisis of confidence, then why aren't our elected officials reassuring us against panic, instead of inducing it.

And no, I don't believe the answer is that Pelosi, Dodd & Franks want to giveaway billions to Wall St., and don't believe they are "in the tank." I do believe that they been bamboozled. Read more…

On Friday, I spent some time watching the Senate session on C-Span. More than a few Democratic Senators were taking the time to express, at length, their skepticism regarding the bailout. Specifically, Brian Dorgan, Tom Harkin, Jon Tester, and others.

Several facts became clear. The feedback from home has been overwhelmingly negative. Every Senator I heard talk about the bailout was setting up absolute criteria for what had to be in the bill for them to vote for it, and I doubt that this agreement is going to pass muster with many Senators and Representative. Also, Democratic Senators are paying attention to the blogisphere, and to the economists who are expressing doubts about the entire structure of the bailout. Harkin and Dorgan were entirely aware of Krugman and even of James Galbraith.

In fact, Dorgan had a great line, from his father, who used to remind him of this worthy thought: Never buy anything from a man who is out of breath. NOW, NOW, NOW is being out of breath.

They know this is being rushed through, and they already have doubts that the "crisis on Monday" mentality.

NOW MORE THAN EVER IS THE TIME TO CALL DEMOCRATIC SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES. Read more…

This bailout is not yet a done deal; I don't care what Barney Frank or any other Democrat says.

But it is clear that the administration, which now has McCain on its side, is gunning for the same kind of unconstitutional, unsupervised executive branch power that it did in the Patriot Act and in all of its dealings in and about Iraq.

There is still awareness among Democrats that this bailout is unpopular, despite some confusing polling. Even people convinced there is a real crisis, and let's remember that even someone like Krugman admits there are some very real problems, still hate what is happening. Read more…

Steven Benen has the main points up.

Krugman appears to be at least somewhat impressed.

Chris Bowers at Open Left has the link to the PDF forty page document, plus some analysis that suggests Dodd's version carries some poison pills of it's own that Bush and Paulson will have a hard to impossible time swallowing. To which I say, great, no bailout, then.

A friend tells me that Barney Frank's House version is the better of the two, but I don't have any links on what it contains. Read more…

This post is largely an attempted response in the form of a summation to the long comment thread Lambert"s "Roubini" post of yesterday continues to produce. I have used so many tags because this crisis is the sum total of all the Bush/Republican/Rightwing shit we've lived through for the past eight years, and the similar shit stretching back to Nixon and Reagan.

Across the liberal blogisphere a consensus has been building that what Paulson is asking for is unacceptable. How to frame why it is unacceptable has been the on-going question, and how to best bring some kind of pressure on the congressional Democrats, but also on Obama to show leadership, presidential leadership, right now, when it'sneeded, to keep both the tax payers and liberal progressive ideas from becoming implicated in yet another disaster not of their making.

"Peter" seemed to feel, in that comment thread, that Lambert and others were failing to understand that there is a real problem in the economy.

No one doubts that. In fact, all kinds of progressives have been insisting that no one was paying attention to the fundamental instability which the housing bubble was creating, appeals to sanity which were ignored. In fact, even after the initial bailouts, this administration and Paulson had done nothing to stave off the freezing up of liquidity which happened last week. I believe it took them by surprise. But I also agree with Lambert that their instinctive reaction is precisely the one that Naomi Klein has been pointing out - to use the crisis to continue to advance the same policies that created the crisis. Read more…

[Welcome, BooMan readers, and thanks for your considered opinions. But I think you mean Moran. As here.] Welcome, Digby readers.]

Corrente has been operating for the last month under something of a threat, something in the nature of an implied possibility of legal action that could be taken against us, at least Lambert and myself, as the “owners and managers” of the website, for not exercising “due care,” in that we allowed one of our commentators, “Bringiton,” to publish a post, “Lies, Damnable Lies And Political Commentary,” to which one of its several subjects, Stephen Diamond, took strong exception.

Mr. Diamond is a professor of law and political science and teaches both at Santa Clara University Law School. In addition, he is a practicing labor lawyer and provides council to a variety of labor unions and associated organizations. Professor Diamond also maintains a blog,Global Labor and The Global Economy where you can find his impressive resume in the side bar.

Bringiton’s post appeared on our front page on 6/11/08. Professor Diamond published a response, on his own blog, also dated 6/11/08, which was cross-posted at No Quarter and Rezco Watch, where his work often appears.
The next day, 6/12/08, Professor Diamond sent Lambert an email requesting that we take down the offending post, the entire comment thread that it generated, any follow-up posts, and that we issue a correction and retraction. Lambert had connectivity problems for several days, and we didn’t get the email until June 15th. By that time, Professor Diamond had published the email on his own site as an update to his original response, and the email was also featured at No Quarter and Rezko Watch.

In view of its previous public circulation, we assume that Mr. Diamond will not object to our posting his original email as it arrived in Lambert’s Inbox.

UPDATE; I apologize for the failure of several links, especially those to Professor Diamond's blog. They are now fixed. Read more…

Dr. Sardonicus has been our friend and commentator since the the first days of Corrente, when it still had a blogspot as part of it's URL.

On his own blog he has announced the following:

My wife Peggy, known as Mrs. S. in these parts, passed away in her sleep late this afternoon. She was only 48 years old.

Peggy had little use for the internets, except for Netflix, but she always appreciated the kind words of encouragement and support you gave her here. As I have said, I don't have the most readers in the blogosphere, but I have the best.

Activities at Pole Hill are suspended for the time being. I will return to blogging as I am able.

The post is dated last Wednesday.

Mrs. S. illness had a history, much of which is chronicled at Dr. Sardonicus' blog, Pole Hill Sanitarium". He managed to weave in this personal struggle with his regularly posting. Go read. He's a wonderful blogger.

What to say in the face of the death of someone who was only 48 years old. There are no words. But leave a message of support for him on his blog anyway.

I know I do speak for everyone at Corrente when I say, Dr. Sardonicus, you are in our thoughts and our hearts. Read more…

I'm jumping on this announcement by candidate Obama, because I hope to subvert the impulses of some of my fellow Fellows and some of our readers to make of this moment a chance to accuse Barack Obama of being a liar, breaking a promise, not really being about reform, undermining efforts to reform our increasingly broken system of elections, and other ways not to like Obama that I'm not clever enough to even think of.

You don't need to go there; the VRWC is way ahead of you. As Roy notes, there is high comedy to be had in the deep disappointment of the McCain campaign, the Republican Party, and their right-winger supporters, most of whom have bellowed long and hard against any sort of limitations on the financing of political campaigns. Of course that was when they were the ones rolling in money.

Yes, I know, McCain has been an advocate, of sorts, and a sponsor, of sorts, of campaign finance reform, but when Obama states, as he does in the video message in which he announced his decision, that the entire system, including the so-called reforms of it, by which we finance our elections is "broken," he's right.

Here is as much of what Obama says on the video that I could get off the story as it appears in the NYTimes and Reuters: Read more…

The Supreme Court by a vote of 5 to 4 has just handed down a ruling that prisoners at Guantanamo do have a right under the U.S. Constitution, and in particular, the ruling restores habeas corpus to them, giving them the right to challenge their detention in U.S. courts. It does not specifically invalidate the entirety of the odious MCA as far as I can tell.

Need I tell you who the five and who the four were? Read more…

For those of you who insist on believing that Joe Lieberman is still something other than a Senatorial colleague of Barack Obama, that he continues to be some kind of mentor to Senator Obama, welcome news that Obama isn't afraid to call Lieberman on his Joementum.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, the self-described "Independent Democrat" who caucuses with the Democratic party in the Senate even though he has endorsed Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz, got some tough talk from Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, yesterday about his advocacy for the presumptive Republican presidential candidate and the general tone of the campaign, Democratic sources tell ABC News.

Returning to the Senate after his securing the Democratic presidential nomination, Obama and Lieberman greeted each on the Senate floor in the Well as they were voting on the budget resolution.

They shook hands. But Obama didn’t let go, leading Lieberman - cordially - by the hand across the room into a corner on the Democratic side, where Democratic sources tell ABC News he delivered some tough words for the junior senator from Connecticut, who had just minutes before hammered Obama's speech before the pro-Israel group AIPAC in a conference call arranged by the McCain campaign.  Read more…

MoveOn recently allowed members to sign a virtual get well, be well card to be delivered to Senator Kennedy that contained the message that the entire liberal/progressive community was with him in his battle against the recently diagnosed cancer he will fighting.

Today he is in surgery doing just that.

The MoveOn card allowed members to add a personal word of their own, and I decided mine would be a simple one line quote - the last line of the speech the Senator had given to the deeply divided Democratic Convention in 1980. To make sure I remembered correctly, I consulted the speech.

Reading the speech again, one of many times I've turned back to it, it's relevance to the divisive primary we are currently living through fairly shouted at me. Read more…

In November of 2006, Bill Moyers was asked to give the Sol Feinstone Lecture on The Meaning of Freedom, an endowed serial event for the men and women cadets of West Point.

It is an amazing speech to read, and it should warm the hearts of all liberals that West Pointers are being exposed to material like that Bill Moyers chose to honor them with.

I suppose I could, and perhaps should, leave the link and let you go and read it, but I've decided to highlight certain aspects of Moyers' lecture, although you should still go and read the extended excerpt published at TOM PAINE from which I am working. Read more…

On Wednesday, Joe Lieberman published a piece on the opinion pages of WSJ which essentially accused the entirety of foreign policy positions held by the current Democratic Party of being essentially a stab in the back to the entirety of foreign policy positions of the Democratic Party of FDR, Truman, and JFK. Interestingly, LBJ wasn't included in the litany of Democratic golden oldies. Joe may have succeeded in performing a lobotomy on himself, resulting in a weird sort of frontal stupidity, but that doesn't mean he isn't still wily.

Today, Joe Biden, has a superb answer to Lieberman, also in the pages of the WSJ, one in which Biden touches all the right bases, not more, not less, and then heads confidently for home plate, leaving that other Joe in the dust. Read more…

How on earth did this Op Ed get published? That is what I want to know.

Here is Edward Luttwak, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a member in good standing of the Washington foreign policy establishment, all dues paid up, (which probably answers my opening question), speculating in this morning's New York Times about the security implications of an Obama presidency, for Obama himself and for the country, unembarrassed to tell us that Obama's conversion to Christianity makes him ripe for punishment by beheading, no less, or at best, by stoning or by hanging. Read more…

Frankly, I don't find all that much to get upset about in the Chris Bowers Open Left post to which Lambert refers here. Okay, the post has a slightly condescending tinge to its tone, but why shouldn't Democrats be proud that now more than ever the Democratic base looks like America? Bill Clinton himself once noted the same, and pledged that his administration would too, one pledge among many, many that Clinton kept.

While I'm on this subject, I want to remind everyone that neither any particular African-American nor the African-American community as a whole needs to apologize for voting for an African-American candidate for President, or any other office, for that matter. Black folks have been voting for white folks for decades now. And it isn't as if Obama got their support automatically. It was only when he convinced many of them that he was viable, and presented a vision they obviously found inspiring, as is true for a large swathe of the electorate, that they have flocked to him. So, we are not talking about identity politics here. Remember, it was Obama who has been running as a post-racial candidate, for which many of us here at Corrente criticized him, rightly so, in my opinion.

Back to Bowers. It's this stunning post that should be the focus of our incredulous ire, although I do realize that in Lambert's majestic takedown, of Matt Stoller's chilling foray into Obama triumphalism, this Bowers post is mentioned along with the fact that Bowers starts with an admiring nod to the Stoller post.

In his post, Bowers is imagining/predicting what kind of changes in Democratic governance we might be seeing from an Obama presidency. Fasten your seat belts.

Cultural Shift: Out with Bubbas, up with Creatives: There should be a major cultural shift in the party, where the southern Dems and Liebercrat elite will be largely replaced by rising creative class types. Obama has all the markers of a creative class background, from his community organizing, to his Unitarianism, to being an academic, to living in Hyde Park to shopping at Whole Foods and drinking PBR. These will be the type of people running the Democratic Party now, and it will be a big cultural shift from the white working class focus of earlier decades. Given the demographics of the blogosphere, in all likelihood, this is a socioeconomic and cultural demographic into which you fit. Culturally, the Democratic Party will feel pretty normal to netroots types. It will consistently send out cultural signals designed to appeal primarily to the creative class instead of rich donors and the white working class.

I'm not even sure what that means. Who the hell are the creative class? Read more…

And surely, what is helping to make this primary season so hellish are all the attempts to close it down.

In case you haven't heard, and assuming I get this up before anyone else posts on it, a superdelegate Bill Clinton once chose to head the DNC and was up-to-now a declared Hillary-supporter, has just announced today that he is switching his support to Obama, and urging all Hoosier voters to do likewise in order to end the primary process in its tracks after next Tuesday. As part of this strategy, he is also urging his fellow superdelegates to wait no longer to declare their preferences, so we can all unite behind Barack and begin to do battle with McSame.

Joe Andrew may not be a household name, but he is from Indiana and he made his statement in the state, and in a letter published on the Huffington Post. Read more…

No, I'm not talking about the Klan, or even the Republicans "southern strategy."

But I do want to place this post in the context of much of the back and forth that is going on here at Corrente and through-out the liberal blogisphere about race and racism, what is it, when is it, and who is playing with it.

Mary-Beth at Wampum reminds us of an even wider perspective that liberals have as much difficulty even remembering exists as do right-wingers.

For anyone who doesn't understand why the national discussion of race needs to address more than just African-American concerns, here's exhibit one, from today's LA Times editorial page:

Are the Tibetans doomed to go the way of the American Indians? Will they be reduced to being little more than a tourist attraction, peddling cheap mementos of what was once a great culture? In Tibet itself, that sad fate is looking more and more likely.

What makes it all the more remarkable is that aside from its placement in a major American newspaper, the piece in question is by Ian Buruma, a regular contributer at the NYRB, and as Mary-Beth points out, "the Henry R. Luce Professor of Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College."

Here's a question I'd like to ask our readers. Have you already been able to spot what it is in this quote that deserves to be considered within our discussions of American racism?

For those of you who might be distracted by Buruma's tip of the hat to the "once great culture" of native Americans, which, in fact, was actually multi-cultural and multi-lingual, Mary-Beth has a second post up today that will help you see through these apparently innocent bows to a conception of Native American past greatness.

You see, it seems there was another writer/journalist back in the 19th century who bemoaned the tragedy of exactly that past greatness, in terms remarkably similar to Buruma's take today. Read more…

What follows is a post I wrote some time ago, shortly after Bush's 2nd Inaugural. I thought it might be worth reposting on this particular day, since it includes a comparison of both Lincoln and Truman to Bush, and seeks to discuss political rhetoric and its discontents. I also thought it might be a pleasant respite from our current obsession with the Democratic Presidential primary, as well as offering a frame for contemplating the ruin Bush's second terms has wrecked not only on the country, but on his own likely historical reputation.

Dubya's Dubious Second Inaugural:The Bad Faith Of George W. Bush

Four years ago, at the time of Bush's 1st Inaugural Address, despite the bitterness left behind by the manner in which the 2000 presidential election was decided, despite the "winner's" inability to find a graceful way to acknowledge the extraordinary circumstances that had brought him to the Presidency, or even an ungraceful way, swept up in the grandeur of that peaceful transfer of power without which no democratic republic can long endure, I was able to acknowledge the surprising power of some of Bush's rhetoric, and to feel some hope that he actually meant some tiny fraction of what he was saying.

Nunca mas, as they have had occasion to say in Argentina.

Bush made it easy last Thursday; everything about his second inaugural address, its grandiosity, its simple-minded diction and biblical intimations, the insistent refusal to acknowledge complexity, its wildly overstated and pitifully under-defined ambitions, its ahistorical smugness, struck me as downright preposterous, which will explain my amazement at the credulity with which the speech was received; yes, there were some reservations expressed at the practical implications and applicability of such a pure statement of American idealism, but rather less comment willing to point out that the speech's efficacy as a statement of policy could be measured in inverse proportion to its almost demented insistence that ideas exist in some ethereal space untouched by anything as gritty and unpleasant as a fact.

Instead, once again we were asked to wonder at the poetic eloquence of Michael Gerson's prose, and if we happened to be liberals, admonished not to get too picky about the fathoms-deep divide between Bush's rhetoric and the reality of his policies, lest we peg ourselves, once again, as outside the great and grand ideas upon which our republic stands.

Chris Suellentrop, for instance, writing in Slate, parses the speech to bolster his own praise for it as a wonderful piece of oratory, credits it with announcing a second Bush doctrine, (the first, preemptive war, this second, the peaceful pursuit of democracy everywhere, and nary a hint the two doctrines might contradict one another), then proceeds to question the validity of the speech's central thesis, which strikes Chris as being as simple-minded as the formulation by "some" on the left, that 9/11 was caused by poverty, and then finishes by warning liberals -- well, unlike Mr. Suellentrop, I shall let him speak for himself: Read more…

The joke in that title belongs entirely to Professor Bérubé whose endorsement of Barack Obama at TPMCafe you should read as much for its wit as its wisdom, even though I don't quite share his Clinton fatigue.

Let me start by discussing all the talked-about reasons for choosing Obama over Clinton that did not, I repeat, did not influence my decision.

I do not believe that Hillary, or her ex-president husband, have run a Rovian smear campaign against Obama.

I do not believe they played the race card.

I do not believe that either Hillary or Bill will say anything or do anything to get elected.

I don't believe that what either or both Clintons' careers in politics and governance have always been about is themselves.

I don't believe Bill Clinton has a pathological need to hog the political spotlight, nor do I believe Hillary's would be a co-presidency, nor that "Bill" would be rattling around the White House with nothing to do. Clearly, he would resume the work he has been doing with his foundation, his Presidential library and the graduate school of public service he has founded at the U of Arkansas, that is also part of the library.

I do not believe, as William Greider, a writer whose work I have admired and probably will again, would have it in The Nation, that "...the Clintons play dirty when they feel threatened. But we knew that, didn't we?"

No, some of us didn't and we still don't.

Greider continues:

The recent roughing-up of Barack Obama was in the trademark style of the Clinton years in the White House. High-minded and self-important on the surface, smarmily duplicitous underneath, meanwhile jabbing hard to the groin area. They are a slippery pair and come as a package."

The thought of the Clintons back in the White House makes Greider "queasy." :

The one-two style of Clintons, however, is as informative as low-life street fighters. Mr. Bill punches Obama in the kidney and from the rear. When Obama whirls around to strike back, there stands Mrs. Clinton, looking like a prim Sunday School teacher and citing goody-goody lessons she learned from her 135 years in government.

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The style is very familiar to official Washington, not just among the Clintons' partisan adversaries, but among their supporters. The man lied to his friends. All the time. They got used to it. They came to expect it. I observe a good many old hands among the Senate Democrats are getting behind Obama. It would be good to know more about why they declined to make the more obvious choice of endorsing the power couple.

Reading Mr. Geider's unsourced assertions made me queasy, and not about the Clintons. Read more…

[Welcome, Digby readers!]

Nothing became John Edward's campaign for the Presidency more than the manner of his leaving it.

As noted by Lambert, that was some damn speech.

Let me note, in response to some of the comments in that thread, I don't think his talk of "one America" was any kind of sop to Obama.

More likely it was meant to make clear that one of his central campaign themes, the fight for economic justice, is a unifying one for all liberal/progressives, (sorry, but I refuse to stop calling myself a liberal), the middle class, the working class, the working poor, and those too poor and marginalized to find employment, as well as being a reference to Michael Harrington's formulation of "the other America," which JFK made part of his campaign in 1960, especially in those visits to West Virginia, where grinding poverty was on such conspicuous display.

It wasn't just the speech, though, the theatrics were perfect in their multiple meanings - NOLA, the Ninth Ward, Habitat For Humanity, Elizabeth at his side, surrounded by family and friends, new ones and old ones, and the meaningful symbolism of their commitment as a family, right after the speech, to join in with a community dedicated to raising up housing out of the watery ruins of New Orleans, a gesture that said, yes a candidacy was ending but not the movement whose values and ideas that candidacy was meant to embody.

All that said, and swallowing the lump in my throat, what are we to make of Edwards' campaign and its failure to get sufficient traction to take him through Super Tuesday; what can we learn from its strengths and its weaknesses, what worked, what didn't, and why? Read more…

On this day of celebration that we were gifted with the life of Martin Luther King, tragically short as it was, I thought it might be apropos to look back at one of his pre-"I have a dream" speeches. It wasn't one that he orated. He couldn't. He was in jail, the only place to be for a patriot like Dr. King in the Birmingham GA of April, 1963.

It was a written communication, but when you read it you can hear his voice, his early voice, which turns out to be not so different from his later voice, although it is also true that Dr. King grew and changed, became bigger, bolder, as did his view of what issues required the attention of true American patriots determined "to rise up and live out the true meaning..." of our American creeds, even in the face of criticism, of isolation, of backlashes, and of continuing, and even worsening, inequalities.

His "Letter From A Birmingham Jail," was written in response to an open letter to Dr. King signed by a group of white clergyman, mostly Christian and Protestant, although one Rabbi signed his name to it, criticizing the civil rights movement and Dr. King's role in it. Here is how he begins his reply: Read more…

Okay, maybe it's only one cheer.

A provisional cheer at that, although I'm inclined to make that two provisional cheers.

What I'd like to suggest, no doubt to the consternation of most readers, is that Reid's decision to pull the FISA bill Monday evening was pretty much what Reid had in mind the whole time.

What I'm sure of is that the many comments I've read that characterize what happened on the Senate floor on Monday as Reid having been forced to pull the bill by Chris Dodd's threat of a filibuster simply don't match what I saw, via C-Span's live streaming.

Before I proceed, let me make clear that I wish to take nothing from Chris Dodd's role here. He deserves all of the praise he's getting and then some.

His speeches on the Senate floor were magisterial. I've been watching him for more years than most of you and I have never seen him so compelling. And yes, it counts that he left his campaign in Idaho to come back and lead the opposition to a version of the Senate bill that was inadequate to the task of restoring the good sense, the respect for civil liberties and constitutional government, that had fueled the passage of the first FISA legislation in the late 1970s.

As Dodd graciously acknowledges in the video Lambert has posted here, many Democrats contributed to the sense I had, watching the debate on Monday, that I was not looking at a dispirited, disunited, frightened caucus, without a clue about how to oppose the policy of obdurate obstructionism employed so successfully in the past six months by the Bush administration and its enablers in the Republican Senate caucus.

Democrats were on the attack, making compelling, easy-to-understand arguments that have wide-spread appeal among a majority of Americans, and they were ready and able to shoot down the lies and prevarications employed by key Republicans, like Orrin Hatch. Most important, the list of Democratic contributors to this success was long and varied, and included Harry Reid. Read more…

CD updating the update to reflect the latest news: Reid has pulled the bill.

Well, we're into it - a full-throated Senate debate on many of the dearest, in all senses of that word, fundamentals of constitutional government,

The opening, as Lambert has suggested, was a bit confusing.

Dodd gave a passionate analysis of the many strands of this new FISA legislation, meant, mainly on the Democratic side, to correct the excesses of last August's Protect America Act, which more or less gutted the FISA court as a check on the power of the executive branch to secretly ignore the civil liberties of Americans not to be spied upon by their own government.

To talk process for a moment, the thrust of Dodd's first speech was in support of the many and profound reasons why the Senate should not proceed on the matter at hand as long as the Intelligence Committee's version is the basis of the debate and the subsequent voting on the entire issue. In other words, he was arguing against the imposition of cloture, so that the Senate might spend time debating the merits of substituting the Judiciary Bill as the basis for debate and amendment.

It didn't look or sound to me like this was Dodd's attempt to get a genuine filibuster going, and indeed, the vote was lopsided in favor of cloture, all Republicans voting yes, only ten Democrats voting no.

This is not the end of the debate by any means, though, and from what I've seen thus far, do not despair that passage of the Intelligence Committee's version of this new FISA bill is a done deal, including the extending of amnesty to those Telecoms which choose to go along with the administration. Here's why: Read more…