Update:
The Supreme Court Guide for Activists (a project of The American Prospect)
Feel free to add others you find in the comments
Not a Good Day for Innovation, Customer Rights and Free Speech
The Grokster file sharing decision was the most notorious of the ones handed down today. But the court also came down on the wrong side in the so-called “Brand X” matter, saying cable Internet access providers companies don’t have to provide access to third party ISPs. They own the cable, so they get to decide what data gets sent, in what order.
Given that there are only two “broadband” providers in most communities — if that many — this is an invitation to a media consolidation that makes the current one look pale. The decision, which ratifies Congressional and FCC failure to address the open-access question in a way that promotes freedom of speech, is a gift to the cable/phone duopoly. They will abuse their power, because history shows that’s how they work.
Do you care? Or are you a sheep, baa baa, ready to be just a consumer of the crap Hollywood feeds you? Are you willing to let the phone and cable companies dominate tomorrow’s media, having built “their” networks on the backs of monopoly deals with government that they now leverage to capture entirely new markets? Baa baa.
If you care, fight back. Call, and especially write, your member of the U.S. House and U.S. senators. Tell them that the law is now grossly out of balance in the hands of the entertainment cartel and data duopoly. They won’t pay much attention if you’re the only one who calls, but they may begin to wake up if enough people care.
In the Senate, the Escalation of Rhetoric
In the Senate, the Escalation of Rhetoric
By Mark Leibovich
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 17, 2005; C01
As a general rule, the catastrophic fallout from an atomic detonation is not something you want to be associated with. That’s why Senate Republicans are trying to avoid the term “nuclear option.”
The procedure — which the GOP is threatening to exercise to thwart Democratic filibusters of President Bush’s judicial nominees — could be implemented as early as this week. But it won’t be called the “nuclear option,” at least not in the official GOP lexicon. It’s akin to McDonald’s touting the Quarter Pounder With Cheese as “the heart attack option.” Bad marketing, in other words.
Republicans have tried to rechristen “nuclear option” as the “constitutional option,” a less radioactive alternative. “Nuclear option” gives Democrats too many opportunities to portray the Republican position as bellicose, doomsday-bringing and generally unpleasant. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) would soon “pull the trigger” on the nuclear option, while other Democrats have predicted that Frist would “go nuclear,” “start a nuclear war” or “detonate a bomb” on the Senate floor. “We will not negotiate under a nuclear cloud,” Reid declared last month. He said nothing about a “constitutional” cloud.
In the face of Republican complaints, media outlets now qualify references to the nuclear option with caveats such as “so-called” or “what Democrats refer to as . . .” “Constitutional option,” meanwhile, has become a staple in GOP talking points, chat show appearances and news releases. This was not so a few months ago, when Republicans were using “nuclear option” freely. Or, for that matter, two years ago, when the term was coined by Republican Sen. Trent Lott.
“Nuclear option” remains the most commonly used term, and it is not completely anathema to anti-filibuster Republicans. Some revel in its scorched-earth connotations. On “Crossfire,” filibuster opponent the Rev. Jerry Falwell told Ralph Neas of the liberal group People for the American Way that Frist would indeed use “the nuclear option . . . and when that happens you guys are dead in the water, and you ought to be.”
Manuel Miranda, a former aide to Frist who is now chairman of the National Coalition to End Judicial Filibusters, says that “the draconian implications” of “nuclear option” expressed the urgency that filibuster opponents felt. “If these weren’t such ominous and terrible terms, I don’t think it would have exploded in the press,” says Miranda.
Few Americans understand how filibusters work, let alone how Republicans are threatening to circumvent them, or what Democrats might do in response. A filibuster is, essentially, a stalling tactic by which a minority of senators can engage in endless debate until 60 senators vote to end discussion. If GOP leaders move to end filibusters for judicial nominees, Democrats have vowed to effectively halt Senate business.
“The filibuster is a Senate rule that’s been changed many times over the years,” says Bob Stevenson, Frist’s communications director. It wouldn’t be a “nuclear option,” he says, except for the threatened retaliation of Senate Democrats. GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch has said it’s the Democrats who will “blow up the Senate” if Republicans exercise their constitutional right to simply “debate and vote.”
Nuclear vs. Constitutional is just the latest in a series of rhetorical wrestling matches pitting Republicans (purveyors of “personal accounts” for Social Security, foes of “the death tax” and “pro-life” opponents of abortion) against Democrats (foes of Social Security “privatization,” purveyors of the “inheritance tax” and champions of “a woman’s right to choose”).
“In general, Republicans have perfected the art of associative naming,” says Deborah Tannen, a Georgetown University linguistics professor who has studied word choices in public discourse. Associative naming refers to linking products or ideas to pleasant or virtuous-sounding words, or unpleasant ones if you are against them. The term “partial-birth abortion,” for example, constitutes a masterstroke in this regard, she says. As soon as opponents of this late-term abortion procedure injected the word “birth” into the debate, they won, Tannen says.
But the nuclear option has proven trickier for Republicans, almost from the time Lott first uttered the phrase during the successful Democratic filibuster against Miguel Estrada, whom Bush had nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. “Nuclear option” instantly became the de facto term of art. Miranda, who resigned as a Frist aide last year amid allegations that he accessed Democratic e-mail memos on judicial nominees, says, “Until the last few weeks, the Democrats owned the field in terms of language.” The media only had “the Democratic language” to use, he says.
“The implication of ‘nuclear option’ is way too hot and extreme,” says GOP pollster Frank Luntz, an expert on political phraseology. Words define the debate in politics, he says. “Someone comes up with a cute phrase, like ‘nuclear option,’ and all of a sudden the debate is named.
“This is an example of how cute phrases can kill.” He means this figuratively.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
LiberalOasis makes the progressive case against the Nuclear Option deal made yesterday by a coalition of Senators.
As I write this, the Senate is confirming Owens. So, I imagine that after a good night’s sleep, the as-good-as co-opted liberals are facing the new reality: FINO (filibuster in name only). Like free speech in this country, we can fight wars for it, but don’t you dare actually try to practice it.)
There were myriad unwise words said today in the Senate. These undoubtedly were the unwisest:
On the same day that a federal judge whose family was assassinated testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee about courthouse safety, Sen. Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) described Democratic efforts opposing some of President Bush’s judicial nominees as “leadership-led use of Cloture vote to kill, to defeat, to assassinate these nominees.”
Unbelievable! I just wrote Sen. Frist via his web form. I doubt anyone will ever read it, but I feel somewhat better for having raged at him.
You spoke the following words in the Senate today:
THE ISSUE IS NOT CLOTURE VOTES PER SE. IT’S THE PARTISAN LEADERSHIP-LED USE OF CLOTURE VOTE TO KILL, TO DEFEAT, TO ASSASSINATE THESE NOMINEES. AND THAT’S THE DIFFERENCE.
Senator Durbin seemed willing to give you the benefit of the doubt about your words; I’m not. An apology to all judges, regardless of political persuasion, and to all Americans, regardless of political persuasion, is in order, and sooner rather than later.
You need to take a deep breath, sir, and collect yourself, because you have surely lost your grounding in rationality and perspective. Based on what I heard today,
I should have added:
“Have you no shame, sir?” echoing the words that finally ended the McCarthy madness in the 50s. But of course, they are long past shamelessness.
Meanwhile, Judge Urges End to Verbal Attacks. Judge Lefkow asked lawmakers to “publicly and persistently repudiate gratuitous attacks on the judiciary.”
To their credit, the AP story includes this:
In recent months, several Republican members of Congress have lashed out at judges involved in the Terri Schiavo case and others. Schiavo, a brain-damaged Florida woman, died after her feeding tube was removed, her parents’ legal challenges unsuccessful.
Sen. Rick Santorum (news, bio, voting record) of Pennsylvania said, “The actions on the part of the Florida court and the U.S. Supreme Court are unconscionable.”
“This loss happened because our legal system did not protect the people who need protection most, and that will change,” House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said. “The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior.”
Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition and head of the Christian Broadcasting Network, appeared on ABC’s “This Week” this month and criticized the federal courts. Robertson said, “The gradual erosion of the consensus that’s held our country together is probably more serious than a few bearded terrorists who fly into buildings.”
Lefkow said that kind of “harsh rhetoric is truly dangerous.”
Thankfully, many Democratic senators, such as Durbin, are speaking up. But power-hungry cretins like Frist are not about to. Wouldn’t want to upset those who will be bringing all those “religious” voters to the polls. That word needs about a million quote marks around it when referring to anyone who would give the time of day to Robertson, Dobson, et. al.
“Filibuster Frist” @ Princeton University
Update: wayback machine link (script causes page to refresh, which loads the dead link).
Contemporary coverage by Daily Princetonian.
