sorry for the short outage this morning. we had some thunderstorms in D/FW this morning that apparently knocked out power briefly at our web host’s location. *sigh*
oh well, back to bizness. so, what’s on our plate this morning? there’s the nomination of sam alito, scalia clone, to the supreme court. the official white house talking points are floating around already. i received them via email this morning, but you can check them out in their entirety at is that legal?. personally, i’m extremely concerned about this nomination. first, it shows that bush has caved to the radical right wing by nominating a judge who will overturn roe v wade. second, he’s nominated someone who ruled against the Family Medical Leave Act. i mean come on! FMLA was one of the most progressive peices of legislation passed under clinton. i guess alito is objectively anti-family. third, not only is he anti-family, he’s anti-equal rights, anti-women, anti-minority, hell he’s just anti-everything. markos has a succinct rundown of alito’s stances here.
then there’s cheney’s new chief of staff, david addington, or as i like to call him, “some guy you’ve probably never heard of”. addington’s replacement is john hannah, or as i like to call him “the other guy you’ve probably never heard of”. well, if you read the libby indictments on friday, then you have indeed heard of these guys. they are both knee-deep in the cia leak scandal, and both were named in the indictment. i guess people fail upwards in the vice president’s office as well.
then there’s the district sixer blog, which has posted the rest of the interview with david harris, presumed opponent to smokey joe barton in next november’s congressional election. locals will take a lot of interest in that. speaking of elections, the startle-gram has finally posted up all the early voting sites.
and i’ve also gotten some interesting emails from several sources who are skeptical of doreen geiger’s bid to become tarrant county democratic party chair. without going into too much detail, let’s just say that doreen’s democratic bonafides have come into question. while current chair art brender has a decades-long history of democratic party politics, doreen has apparently only voted in two elections. one of them was the republican primary in 2000. her tarrant county voter registration is current, but again, she has a history of only voting in two elections. and color me skeptical, but i can’t see making someone who only recently began exercising their civic duty the new head of the party. as far as volunteer work goes, her website says she’s only been active since may of this year. sorry, but at this point i just don’t think she’s demonstrated a committment to the party. as a precinct chair i’ll get a vote in this, and at this point i don’t see doreen geiger getting my vote. of course, my mind may change with new information, but at this point i’m leaning towards re-electing art.
now i say that with some hesitation. i have been lucky enough to dine with mr. brender back in the heady days of dean, and he is a nice man with his heart in the right place. he made a good impression on me and he obviously knows his way around tarrant county. but i still wonder if art doesn’t get the new grassroots. he doesn’t seem to get the netroots at all, and that bothers me. he’ll listen (believe me i waxed on and on about what can be done on the internet) but i don’t think it sinks in. for three years the TCDP has had discussions about revamping it’s website, updating it’s mailing lists, etc etc. but look at this peice of crap website. it is FUBAR and damned-near useless. my cries about updating the website have fallen on deaf ears and i’m *thisclose* to just registering a domain name of my own and doing it myself. seriously, that should have been done ages ago.
but i’m going to take off my bitchin’ hat for now and leave you with this: Scalito.com. yea yea, i already sent then a note about creating an actual index.html file. but just be aware of that site and keep your eyes on it over the next 24 hours.
