It takes guts, but some Alaskans are protesting their governor’s campaign. They plan to use their First Amendment Rights while they can.
Description here, at the venerable Mudflats blog. Is it true that this protest against Palin was the largest political rally in Alaska, ever?
Photos of some truly original protest signs here, at Mamadance.
1 Comment | 
Campaigns, Elections, First Amendment, History, Politics, Presidents | Tagged: Campaign, Elections, First Amendment, McCain 2008, Politics, Presidents, Sarah Palin | 
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Posted by Ed Darrell
Scouts and Scouters know the rules: No political campaigning in uniform. It’s such a hard-and-fast rule that even Boy Scouts helping with voter registration or simultaneous food drives sometimes get calls from the local Council to be sure there is no partisan political campaigning going on.
Scouts may be asked to present the colors, the flags of the U.S. and the state, and to lead a political convention in the Pledge of Allegiance. Diligent Scouters, or Scouts, involved in such ceremonies, will retire to remove their uniforms before continuing to participate in the political part of the activities.
Photos of Scouts used by presidential campaigns is among those things prohibited.
So this photo is disturbing. You can see two people in Scout uniforms — one obviously an adult — at a political rally where their placement suggests the campaign officials tried to get them into news and publicity photos. Oddly for real Scouters, there are few insignia of any kind on the uniforms — on the sleeves or pockets — other than what comes with the shirt right out of the box (World Scouting emblem perhaps excepted) — though you can see the edge of an adult leader’s patch on the adult’s left arm. Were these real Scouters flouting the rules, or faux Scouters, actors hired by the campaign to flaunt the uniform, contrary to the rules?
The Scouts in the background -- are they complying with Scout policies that require no politicking in Scout uniform? (photo from Andrew Sullivan's blog)
Below the fold: The rule, as listed on Grand Teton Council’s website.
12 Comments | Boy Scouts of America, Campaigns, Politics | Tagged: Boy Scouts, Campaign 2008, Politics | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Joe Biden it is. I’ve known Biden and watched him since my first turn staffing the Senate, 34 years ago. Day in and day out, he’s a good man. More, he will make a great vice president.
Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., at a Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Iraq (September 11, 2007) - Wikimedia photo
One of the things that has always distinguished Biden to me is his dedication to his family. Shortly after he was elected to the Senate, his wife and infant daughter were killed in a car-train accident, which also injured is two sons, Beau and Hunt. Biden informed Senate leaders he would not leave his children at such a time, and that he’d resign his election. Majority Leader Mike Mansfield and several others worked to persuade Biden to find some way to serve. By the time I joined Mansfield’s office in 1974, Mansfield was glad to have persuaded Biden, since his expertise and cool judgment were needed in the latter days of the Watergate Constitutional crises.
Bill Bradley tells the story, touchingly, in his book Time Present, Time Past, about how Arkansas Sen. John L. McClellan told Biden the best thing he could do would be to serve in the Senate and work hard — McClellan having lost his wife to spinal meningitis while driving back to Arkansas on business, and then one son to the same disease (in Africa, a few years later), and two more sons in an auto crash and an airplane crash.
Biden resolved the problem by commuting every day, from Wilmington, Delaware, to Washington, D.C. Not moving to the capital kept Biden grounded, in a way most senators cannot be.
Beau Briden today is Delaware’s attorney general, and a Captain in the National Guard, deploying to Iraq in October 2008. Hunt is an attorney working in Washington, D.C. Biden remarried in 1977. He and his wife, Jill, have a daughter, Ashley.
Ear worm: For several years while I staffed the Senate, Biden led off the roll call votes. I cannot hear his name without hearing in my head the Clerk of the Senate calling the roll for votes, “Sen. Biden,” and when Biden offered his assent the clerk would quickly intone, “Biden, ‘aye.'” When my phone beeped and I saw it was Biden, I still heard the Clerk’s voice, “Biden, aye.”
Great pick on Obama’s part.
You should check out:
1 Comment | Barack Obama, Campaigns, Government, History, Obama 2008, Politics, Presidents, U.S. Senate | Tagged: Elections 2008, Joe Biden, Obama 2008, Politics | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Got another e-mail today, alleging that Illinois Sen. Barack Obama refuses to salute the U.S. flag or say the Pledge of Allegiance.
I was surprised to discover that the U.S. Senate has added the pledge to their opening exercises — new from when I staffed the Senate. But, what that means, with C-SPAN televising the proceedings, is that there is video evidence of Sen. Obama leading the pledge, if he does, when he substitutes for the presiding officer (the Vice President) in the Senate.
On June 21, 2007, for example, Obama presided over the Senate. See for yourself.
4 Comments | Campaigns, Flag ceremony, Flag etiquette, Hoaxes, Obama 2008, Pledge to the flag, Presidents | Tagged: Campaign 2008, Flag etiquette, Hoaxes, Obama, Pledge of Allegiance, US Flag | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
George Santayana is best known as a historian. He’s famous for his observation on the importance of studying history to understand it, and getting it right: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” (See citation in right column of the blog.)
Steve Greenberg is a historian cartoonist whose work is published in the Ventura County (California) Star. He offers a Santayana-esque analysis of economics positions of presidential candidates.
Steve Greenberg, published in the Ventura County Star
Click on the thumbnail for a larger version.
Steve Greenberg, Ventura County Star, via Cagle Comics
Greenberg has compressed into 33 words and 5 images a rather complex argument in this year’s presidential campaign.
Is Greenberg right? Do you see why Boss Tweed feared Thomas Nast’s cartoons more than he feared the reporters and editorial writers?
This election campaign we may be able to get the best analysis and commentary from cartoonists. Same as always. Teachers: Are you stockpiling cartoons for use through the year in government, economics, and history?
Other resources:
Note to Cagle cartoons: I think I’m in fair use bounds on this. In any case, I wish you would create an option for bloggers, and an option for teachers who may reuse cartoons year after year. I’ve tried to contact you to secure rights for cartoons in the past, and I don’t get responses. Complain away in comments if you have a complaint, but let us know how we can expose cartoonists to broader audiences and use these materials in our classrooms for less than our entire teacher salary.
33 Comments | Campaigns, Cartoons, Economics, Elections, History, Political cartoons, Presidents | Tagged: Cartoons, Economics, History, John McCain, Political cartoons, presidential campaign, Steve Greenberg | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
I love the headline: “Anti-science law signed by Louisiana’s exorcist governor.”
Tony Whitson’s quick analysis is good, too.
One might begin to think Louisiana really is cursed. Katrina, Rita, other political troubles — and then they elect the bright, young reformer as governor, and he turns out to be a voodoo history and voodoo science practitioner — heck, maybe he practices just plain old voodoo.
All this comes at a time when it may have saved John McCain from making a mistake that would make George McGovern’s selection of Tom Eagleton look like wisdom of the ages (when news came out that Eagleton had undergone convulsive shock therapy for depression, he was replaced on the ticket by Sargent Shriver, but not after much damage had been done to the credibility and viability of the McGovern campaign — why Nixon thought it necessary to sponsor burglary to defeat this ticket is one of the mysteries of the ages of Shakespearian tragedy come to life in in American politics).
Mind you, I like and respect McGovern, and I found working with Tom Eagleton on the Senate Labor Committee a great joy.
Leave a Comment » | Campaigns, Creationism, Education, Evolution, History, Intelligent Design, Politics, Science, War on Education, War on Science | Tagged: 2008 campaign, Creationism, Education, Evolution, History, Intelligent Design, War on Education | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Hoax complaints against presidential candidates are old ideas. In 1796, Alexander Hamilton paid newspaper editors to print stories saying Thomas Jefferson was atheist. It was a minor theme in that campaign, but after John Adams’ political fortunes foundered on the Alien and Sedition Acts, among other missteps, Hamilton stepped up the attacks in the election of 1800.
Jefferson’s great biographer, Dumas Malone, estimates that by election day, fully half the American electorate believed Jefferson was atheist. Jefferson made a perfect target for such a charge — staunch advocate of religious freedom, he thought it beneath the dignity of a politician to answer such charges at all, so he did not bother to deny them publicly. Ministers in New England told their congregations they would have to hide their Bibles because, as president, Jefferson would send troops to confiscate them.
In a warning to hoaxers, we might hope, Americans elected Jefferson anyway.
Such nefariousness plagues campaigns today, still. Boone Pickens, who helped fund the Swiftboat Veterans’ calumny against war hero John Kerry, has an offer to pay $1 million to anyone who can show the charges false. In a replay of Holocaust denial cases, Pickens refuses to accept any evidence to pay the award, last week turning away the affidavits of the men who were present at the events.
At the Bathtub, we’ve already sampled a crude and steady attempt to brand Hillary Clinton a Marxist with creative editing of a few of her speeches.
The assaults on Barack Obama are already the stuff of legend. The comic strip, “Doonesbury,” is running a story line with a volunteer for the internet rumor stopping part of the campaign, FighttheSmears.com. The smears are real.
Matthew Most of the Washington Post wrote a lengthy piece in yesterday’s paper, “An attack that came out of the ether,” on the research done by a woman at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, on the origins of the internet hoax that Barack Obama is a Muslim — a rumor so potent that Georgetown University Prof. Edward Luttwak repeated it in a New York Times op-ed article, without the fact checkers catching it (the Times consulted five scholars of Islam who all agreed the foundation for the claim is incorrect).
Danielle Allen has tracked the rumor back to its sources, in a failed campaign against Obama in Illinois and a candidate who admittedly was looking for mud, and one constant sniper at FreeRepublic.com. It’s impressive sleuthing, and the article would be a good departure for study of how media affect campaigns in a government or civics class.
The “how to” list is really very short:
According to the Post story: [A] search showed that the first mention of the e-mail on the Internet had come more than a year earlier. A participant on the conservative Web site FreeRepublic.com posted a copy of the e-mail on Jan. 8, 2007, and added this line at the end: “Don’t know who the original author is, but this email should be sent out to family and friends.”
Allen discovered that theories about Obama’s religious background had circulated for many years on the Internet. And that the man who takes credit for posting the first article to assert that the Illinois senator was a Muslim is Andy Martin.
Martin, a former political opponent of Obama’s, is the publisher of an Internet newspaper who sends e-mails to his mailing list almost daily. He said in an interview that he first began questioning Obama’s religious background after hearing his famous keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.
The story is well worth reading. It can help educate us to how to avoid being victims of such rumors in the future.
Tip of the old scrub brush to e-mail correspondent MicahBrown.
3 Comments | Accuracy, Barack Obama, Campaigns, Cartoons, Education, Free press, Free speech, History, Hoaxes, Obama 2008, Politics, Technology | Tagged: 2008 campaign, Barack Obama, Campaign Technology, Education, Elections, History, Hoaxes, How to, Media, Politics | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Who are these guys?
Who are these guys in the pool? Can you identify them?
Can they swim?
(Answers below the fold.)
1 Comment | Abraham Lincoln, Campaigns, Elections, Famous quotes, History, History images, History video sources, Politics, Slavery, Technology, Television | Tagged: Campaigns, Illinois, Lincoln Douglas Debates, Midwest floods 2008 | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
For the mind: Encephalon 47 is up at Channel N. Lots of videos this time, eating disorders, rembrances of lunches past, and a lot, lot more.
For the soul: Carnival of the Liberals #66 at The OtherWhirled. Ten good items there, including a response to the bizarre claim running on conservative blogs and minds that Obama is a Marxist.
2008 is going to be one of those years when we need to keep our minds sharp and our emotional banks with sufficient funds. I hope we can.
Leave a Comment » | Campaigns, Politics, Presidents, psychology, Science, Weblogs | Tagged: blog carnivals, Obama, Politics, psychology | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
George W. Bush was famously untravelled as a candidate for the U.S. Presidency. He had spent more time hanging out in bars just over the border in Juarez than hanging with diplomats anywhere. In 2000, conservatives found this lack of care about foreign nations, U.S. interventions, and foreign people to be “charming,” sort of a poke-in-the-eye to the Rhodes scholar-rich Democratic Party who worried about things like peace in Palestine and getting the North Koreans to agree to stop building nuclear devices (who could be afraid of a bad-hair guy like Kim Jong-Il anyway?).
That was then. Now they desperately have to find something about Barack Obama to complain about. Never mind that Obama has spent more time overseas and in Iraq than George W. Bush, still. While John McCain can get his information in a one-day, flack-jacketed, armored personnel-carrier tour of Iraq, Obama’s two days isn’t enough to please Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit nor Jim Geraghty at National Review Online.
Observation: Conservatives are really, really desperate to find mud on a nice guy; Reynolds and others really are losing badly on issues, to make so much of so little. Also, William F. Buckley has been dead for just over three months, and NR has already gone to hell, deteriorating to a barking-dog cutout of its former intellectual heft.
Leave a Comment » | Campaigns, Elections, History, Iraq, Politics, Presidents, Travel, Uncomposted Organic Fertilizer, War on Terrorism, Weblogs, World history | Tagged: Desperation among Conservatives, Iraq, Obama, Politics | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Stumbled into this post, “McCain’s YouTube Problem Just Became a Nightmare.”
To now, I’ve just had policy differences with McCain, and much admiration for his having gone through his prison experiences while maintaining a high degree of balance. The video is damning. Is it accurate?
Any McCain defenders out there who can make the case against what the video seems to say?
1 Comment | Campaigns, Elections, Ethics, Politics, Presidents | Tagged: 2008, McCain, Politics, presidential campaign, Veracity Issues | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Franklin Pierce and Millard Fillmore to sell Japanese cars.
Ulysses S Grant has gotten in on the trend to former presidents making ad pitches.
Ad from the Pew Charitable Trust’s campaign for mine law reform.
3 Comments | Campaigns, Environmental protection, History, Natural resources, Politics | Tagged: advertising, Environmental protection, Media, Mining Law Reform, Politics, Presidents | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Funniest thing I’ve seen all day: Obama supporters wearing name tags co-opting Barack Obama’s middle name.
Things like:
“Bob Hussein Smith.”
“Janet Hussein Finklestein.”Good Times.
— Karen Brooks, at Moody Coliseum at Southern Methodist University, the site of the convention.
As blog reports go, the newspaper’s reporters got some snark, but the blog reports are remarkably bare of information. The stories this morning are a bit better, but missing much.
My reports in a bit — if I can figure out how to download the Pentax photos to this computer.
Clinton’s challenges at our district (Royce West’s Senate District 23) picked up 22 delegates for Clinton. That’s about 1% of those still standing after 9 hours of credentials wrangling.
Not worth it in District 23. The Obama people spent the day converting a few Clinton delegates, but mostly making hard plans to dominate the state convention. It became an 8-hour planning session for Democrats to win Texas, sure, but mainly for Obama to beat Clinton. This was not from the Obama campaign, mind you, but spontaneous work by mostly first-time delegates.
My recollection is that four years ago we had about 600 people at this convention, and 400 two years ago. More than 5,000 this year. An increase of roughly 10 times in participation.
Is John Cornyn scared yet?
7 Comments | Campaigns, Capturing history, Citizenship, Current History, Democracy in action, Elections, Freedom - Political, Political conventions, Politics | Tagged: 2008 Election, Campaigns, Capturing history, Clinton, Obama, Politics | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Sane members of the Texas State Board of Education hold a slim majority over scripture-at-any-cost-in-science-books creationists.
Creationists are hammering away to defeat at least two incumbent board members to tip the balance, in classic stealth campaigns where they hide their intentions and spend oodles of money hoping to do evil by catching most voters asleep. The creationists are campaigning to beat conservative, religious Baptists, because the Baptists are “too liberal” on evolution.
Dallas Morning News columnist Steve Blow presents the facts in the State Education District 11 race, where a secretive urologist who patterns his campaign tactics after Kim Jong Il is outspending the sane incumbent at least $12 to $1. The entire column is below the fold.
District 11 includes most of Tarrant County (Fort Worth), and Parker, Ellis and Johnson counties.
Social studies is also at risk here: The stealth candidate, Barney Maddox, is making false claims against Texas social studies teachers and Texas social studies books, especially history books. The guy looks like an ill-informed nutcase, and he has a good chance of winning.
For example, the campaign flier says: “Barney Maddox believes social studies textbooks should devote more space to American presidents than Marilyn Monroe and that the vicious attack of 9-11 should be portrayed as an aggressive act by terrorists, not an American conspiracy.”
Marilyn Monroe makes no appearance in some books; presidents get 100 times more space in any book you choose. No book portrays 9-11 as an American conspiracy. The man campaigns like your standard, wild-eyed nutcase.
Call, write and e-mail everyone you know in Texas to warn them to vote against Barney Maddox, and for Pat Hardy, in the District 11 State School Board race. Your friends may not live in that district, but they should know. There are other racess with similar problems.
Early voting in this primary ends tomorrow night at 7:00 p.m. Tuesday, March 4, is election day.
Blow’s column, below the fold.
While you’re working at making the world safe for science, wander over to the Texas Freedom Network’s site, and sign the petition saying you’ll stand up for science. Tell ’em Ed sent you.
20 Comments | Accuracy, Campaigns, Creationism, Ethics, Politics, TAKS, Texas, Textbooks, War on Education, War on Science | Tagged: 2008, Barney Maddox, Creationism, Pat Hardy, state board of education, Texas, War on Science | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Barack Obama came to Duncanville today. Bill Clinton was two miles away, at Mountain View Community College, yesterday. Texas hasn’t seen this level of attention from presidential candidates since we’ve been in the state (since 1987).
I had tickets to see Obama, but we had a called faculty meeting that ran long; they gave away my seat!
We’ll have to await reports from younger son James, who will be voting for his first time in the primary.
Older son Kenny, and Kathryn, caught Obama downtown, last week.
I think I’m the only one in the family who hasn’t committed to Obama. It’s a phenomenal campaign. More observations later tonight, I hope — off to symphony rehearsal.
Leave a Comment » | Campaigns, Capturing history, Politics, Presidents | Tagged: 2008 campaign, Obama, Politics | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
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Ed Darrell on Texas's Colorado River
Come on in, the water's fine. Come often: Cleanliness is next to godliness.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
