[post updated to keep on top] 

As most of my regular readers know, as of late I’ve been kind of lazy when it comes to getting fresh content out there for all the world to see. As such, I would like to extend an open invitation to any political blogger from the right or left to join the team here at The Bulldog Says…. I have extended private invitations to a couple folks in the past and even granted author rights to a couple of them, however, I’m just getting too busy to keep fresh content up. This isn’t a major blog. Hell, it isn’t even a minor blog. With an average of 40 unique visits per day, a third of them mine, I’m not in any kind of shape to influence much of anything. A good half of the hits this site receives are searches for “calvin snowman” which brings a post from January of last year where I made my version of a Calvin and Hobbes snowman.

So anyway, I am requesting “applications” for some additional folks to post here. If you check out most of the major blogs, you’ll see that damn near every one of them is a collaboration of several folks posting. So with that said, let me set some ground rules ahead of time and also list what it is I’m looking for. Here goes:

1. Any potential applicant MUST have, and submit to me, their own site so I can review their previous postings. However, if you do not have your own site and still wish to apply, please be prepared to provide a sampling of your comments on any other site for review.
2. I would prefer that said applicant has been around the blogosphere for at least a year.
3. Applicant must be a political blogger of sorts. Just about any type of post will be allowed, but I mainly want someone who will post pretty regularly on political issues.
4. A blogger from either side of the political aisle is encouraged to apply. Your politics will not determine whether you’re “hired” or not; strictly the content of your previous postings will.
5. I will not tolerate hate-speech period. Swear words in your posts are fine as long as they’re kept in context and not too frequent. Poking fun at the asshats is most definitely allowed, in fact, it’s encouraged. But I will not have any group of people, for whatever reason, bashed. This includes women, GLBT folks, African-Americans, etc.

And that’s about it. Any and all of the rules can and probably will be bent or broken by me if I find the right person to join me here. For you regular readers and commenters, if there’s someone you would like to recommend, let me know in the comments. But please approach that person first. I don’t want to sound like I’m out of my mind when I try to contact them. I will keep this post up for about a month and see what happens.

While stopping by Shakespeare’s Sister, I found a link to a wonderful, heart-warming post over at Pam’s House Blend. It is a tale of love, compassion, contrition, and forgiveness. These are things we just don’t see everyday, especially from evangelical Christians. Brent Childers of faithinamerica.com, wrote a letter to Pam after reading her earlier post on faith. The following is just a snippet of the entire post:

Do you think fundamental religious leaders and their followers will ever acknowledge the harm to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people -like certain denominations have apologized for once condoning racism in America?

[...]

Three years ago, I was in a conversation with a dear family member. As a 43-year-old fundamentalist-leaning Christian, I was railing about how homosexuals were out to destroy America. My mother stopped me mid-sentence with a question: “Was the attitude I held toward gay men and women truly a Christ-like attitude?”

[...]

It’s ironic. After years of wanting to change what I perceived as the hardened hearts of homosexuals, God changed my heart instead.

This inspiring letter will hopefully open the eyes of many more Christians and Christian leaders to love as Jesus loved and forgive as Jesus forgave. Too often those of us on the Left tend to criticize the hypocrisy and hateful words levied at gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people by Christian fundamentalists. In this instance, Mr. Childers shows that our criticism is not warranted in all cases. This is a case where God changed the heart of a man. Let’s hope (and pray) that he opens the hearts and minds of others in the Christian community to be accepting of all people regardless of race, creed, color, gender, sexual orientation, etc.

Thank you Brent Childers. You’re sincere words show that all is NOT lost. You have shown that you can live a Christ-centric life and still love all God’s creatures, even the gay ones.

Pam’s original post is here. Please go there and read the whole letter from Brent. It may even bring you to tears.

I’m going to be honest and say I haven’t really followed the dust-up between Bill Donohue, head of the Catholic League, and the Edwards campaign. However, when I initially heard that Melissa McEwan of Shakespeare’s Sister fame and Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon were hired by John Edwards I was thrilled. I thought to myself “Awesome! People I know (through the intarwebs) are finally making an impact on the national political scene directly!” Well, for most of us on the Left, we are all too familiar with what happened next. Nearly as soon as it was announced, some right-wing fringe group had to start taking pot-shots at the Edwards campaign. In typical right-wing fashion, they attacked the messengers instead of the message. In this particular case, those attacked were Melissa and Amanda instead of Edwards’ campaign platform. Mr. Donohue claims

that they are “anti-Catholic, vulgar, trash talking bigots.”

As a regular reader and occasional commenter at Melissa’s blog, Shakespeare’s Sister, I can only remark regarding her site. The outrageous claims made by Donohue couldn’t be further from the truth. If being anti-Catholic means standing up for women, women’s reproductive rights, criticizing the “official” role of women in the Church, and calling out the hypocrisy of Church hierarchy, then I guess Melissa is anti-Catholic. But then again, so am I, as are many of us on the Left of the political spectrum. Melissa’s and Amanda’s rants had nothing at all to do with the regular everyday Catholic, but rather everything to do with the Catholic Church’s policies. It’s a damn shame that folks like Bill Donohue can’t see that, but then again, too many right-wing fringe groups think the world is and always was black and white. If you really wanted to get down to brass tacks, Donohue could himself be called an “anti-Jew, vulgar, trash-talking bigot”. But since he’s not on the staff of any candidate’s campaign, I guess his hate-speech is A-OK. [ed. note - you can do your own research on some of things Donohue has said in the past.]

Unfortunately for Edwards and national political discourse as a whole, and as a result of threats made toward both women and the criticism levied by the likes of Bill Donohue, Michelle Malkin, and others, both Amanda and Melissa have resigned from Edwards’s staff. Citing concerns for their own well-being and that of the Edwards campaign, they stepped down; Amanda first and Melissa soon after. Because of this non-issue issue, I question how those of us who consider ourselves political bloggers can influence the political arena directly. It is very unfortunate that the very campaigns political bloggers want to help, on both sides of the political fence, continue to place us on the back burner. We are constantly told, via the media barrage that occurs during campaign years, how much bloggers and the netroots community influence politics as a whole, but when the candidates themselves are called to task for something “offensive” we may have said on our personal blogs, they instantly try to distance themselves from us. Like the old saying goes “Dance with the one that brought you“. Edwards chose not to do that by issuing this statement:

…”the tone and the sentiment of some of Amanda Marcotte’s and Melissa McEwen’s posts personally offended me.”

“It’s not how I talk to people, and it’s not how I expect the people who work for me to talk to people,” Edwards said in a statement.

“But I also believe in giving everyone a fair shake. I’ve talked to Amanda and Melissa; they have both assured me that it was never their intention to malign anyone’s faith, and I take them at their word.”

However politely he worded it, he basically “backed” them without backing them. He acknowledged and affirmed, in a way, what Donohue was saying all along. And that’s what gets me pissed. I like Edwards. I think he’s a pretty stand-up guy who has some great ideas for how to fix what’s broken with this country, but I refuse to relegated to the backroom. I refuse to have my voice stifled because someone may disagree with the particular words I use on my own site. So at this point I don’t know whether I will continue to back Edwards or not. It’s gonna take some time before I make up my mind. However, one thing I will do is add Amanda’s Pandagon to my blogroll. Shakespeare’s Sister is already there and will remain there if not for a show of solidarity, then definitely because I like her style. Melissa, and the other contributors there, have no fear of telling it like it is. Their fearless championing of equality, women’s reproductive rights, and gay rights are something that all of us as lefty bloggers should aspire to.

Ever since Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks spoke her mind about our wonderful president, there has been quite the backlash from country music radio and other country music artists. One of those artists, Toby Keith, had quite the feud going with “the Chicks” over Maines’ comments about Bush and comments about his song “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue”. The feud went on for some time with Toby Keith effectively bowing out by stating he has better things to focus on.

Well, last night, the Dixie Chicks got their revenge. And oh, how sweet it must be. Natalie Maines, Emily Robison, and Martie Maguire were honored with 5 Grammy awards for best album for “Taking the Long Way”, best song for “Not Ready to Make Nice”, and best record of the year for “Not Ready to Make Nice”, along with best country performance by a duo or group with vocal and best country album for “Taking the Long Way”.

Congratulations, Dixie Chicks! Thanks for showing the country and country music that you stood up for your principles and weren’t …ready to back down… despite being banned from country radio, receiving death threats, and the financial cost you’ve had to endure since that fateful night in 2003.

Lt. Ehren Watada, whom I’ve written about before, had the case against him declared a mistrial on Tuesday. Coupled with some of the additional information that has come out about the start of the Iraq War, this announcement is a big win to the anti-war movement that was even more galvanized by Watada refusing to deploy back in June of last year.

As I said before, I applaud Lt. Watada for taking the stand he has taken. It takes a big, steel pair to oppose deployment to Iraq. Of course, many of us on the left have our pair already since many of us objected to going to Iraq from the very beginning. The problem with the military’s case against Lt. Watada is that they refused to allow him (read his lawyers) to argue his base point: he refused an illegal order that stemmed from the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. By refusing to allow this point to be argued, there really wasn’t much of a defense that Watada and his lawyers could offer. The stipulation of fact that Watada signed, as described in the article linked to above, basically just acknowledged his refusal to deploy and that he made public remarks about his refusal to deploy. Apparently Judge Head, who presided over the case, felt that by signing the stipulation, Watada was, in effect, admitting guilt to charges that he pleaded not guilty to. The mistrial itself was initiated on behalf of the prosecution, not the defense. That’s what makes this interesting. I suspect, as do many others in the blogosphere, that the government felt its case was unraveling due to a proposed legal instruction by Watada’s lawyer, Eric Seitz:

Since the judge had recently ruled that the order given to Lt. Watada to deploy to Iraq was “legal,” Seitz took the logical next step. Entitled “Reasonable Mistake of Fact/Law,” his new instruction was designed to inform the panel that even if Lt. Watada were “mistaken” in his belief that the order was illegal, a defense to the “missing movement” charge would be viable if the panel made a finding that Lt. Watada’s belief that the order was illegal was “reasonable.”

This fact alone caused the prosecutors in this case to basically tremble in their corfams, since it would still allow Watada to use his original argument that the war is illegal. So the prosecutors requested a mistrial and Judge Head (first name is NOT Richard by the way) granted it.

With the case now declared a mistrial, a couple of points have been raised: Can another trial be brought to court on the same charges? Several articles I’ve read seem to indicate that Watada can NOT be brought up on these same charges of missing movement and conduct unbecoming an officer due to the double jeopardy clause of the 5th Amendment to the Constitution. However, in perusing the Wiki article on double jeopardy, it would appear that a new trial can still go forward:

For example, a second trial held after a mistrial does not violate the double jeopardy clause, because a mistrial ends a trial prematurely without a judgment of guilty or not guilty.

[...]

In the U.S. military, court martials are subject to the same law of double jeopardy, as the U.S Constitution is the supreme law of the military, superceding the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Now I’m not a lawyer, nor have I studied law enough to say I’m anything close to an expert here, but it appears that the retrial of Lt. Watada that has been scheduled for March 19, 2007 will be allowed to go forward regardless of his lawyer’s claims that it would be illegal to do so. The only recourse that Seitz has is having to prove “abuse of discretion”. However, an SFGate.com article concerning the mistrial quotes the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals:

When a mistrial is granted over the defendant’s objections, “retrial is permitted only if there was a ‘manifest necessity’ for a mistrial,” the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in August, quoting an earlier Supreme Court ruling. The court said double jeopardy is violated unless the judge has considered all the alternatives and “properly determined that the defendant would benefit” from halting the trial.

So I’m still kind of undecided on whether the Army will be able to retry Lt. Watada for both the missing movement and conduct unbecoming charges. Hopefully, they’ll just let this one go rather than get into a long, drawn-out fight that seems almost impossible to win for either side. As I stated in my first post on the Watada case, it would have been easier to just allow Lt. Watada to resign his commission or be deployed to Afghanistan as he requested.

Besides the War in Iraq, one of the most talked about issues that will confront us head-on come primary season will be healthcare and what we can do to provide it cheaply, efficiently, safely, and to as many people as possible. Every single candidate running for President of the United States will need to embrace healthcare reform that includes some version of universal coverage. Hillary tried to push for that back in 1994 during Bill’s tenure and it fell flat on its face. Part of the reason for that was that there was not enough buy-in from healthcare providers, the business community, and insurance companies. Well, now we’re beginning to see some companies push for change. On top of that, we have several prominent politicians from both the Republican and Democratic parties rallying around this important issue. Unfortunately, they don’t see eye-to-eye on how to resolve this growing crisis.

Take President Bush’s plan for instance. In his plan, he wants to reform the tax code to give many citizens a standard $15,000 deduction for health insurance. While this will ultimately provide a cost savings to many Americans, it will be detrimental to many others by causing them to claim premium employer-paid benefits as income. His plan does not address the root of the problem though. Part of the problem exists because healthcare providers have inflated their costs to consumers in order to turn a profit. In my opinion, quality healthcare should be a right, not just a privelege. When large healthcare conglomerates start to run their business like, well a business that is out to increase profits, then ultimately it’s the patients that suffer. They may get premium level care, but at a premium level price as well. The statistics for the uninsured in this country are just staggering. Another part of the problem is the health insurance industry. Many employer-paid plans have been changed recently to help the company itself lower costs incurred by rising insurance rates. My company, which shall remain nameless to protect my privacy, recently changed our health plan by forcing those of us with spouses who work to drop our spouse from our plan or pay a penalty to keep them covered if they are eligible for coverage through their employer. This idea does nothing to help lower employee-paid costs but rather it just shifts the burden to other employers. It also does nothing to address the high costs of health insurance.

I have not reviewed each of the candidates’ stances on universal healthcare so I really can’t comment on that. I don’t even claim to have a cure-all answer to solving the healthcare problem. However, I know that I would be willing to pay higher taxes (sales, income, gas, etc.) in order to help fund universal coverage for everyone. Healthcare for everyone is not just a pipe dream. I believe it can be accomplished through discussion, debate, and smart planning by our elected officials, the insurance industry, the healthcare community, and us as citizens. We all have an obligation to “the least of these” to take care of them. Like the old axiom that a chain is only as strong as the weakest link, so is our country and community only as strong as its weakest citizens.

I’m interested in hearing your comments and criticisms concerning the healthcare crisis going on in this country and what we can possibly do to alleviate the problem. Some of you (both commenters and occasional readers) will undoubtedly have more experience than I do when it comes to this important issue. I want to hear from you, so please leave a comment. Thanks in advance.

You knew I couldn’t resist this story, didn’t you?

This week’s AOTW Award goes to Lisa Nowak, the Space Shuttle astronaut accused of attempted kidnapping and 1st degree murder. Poor Lisa drove from Houston to Florida, over 900 miles mind you, to confront the woman she thought was also vying for the attention of fellow astronaut and Space Shuttle Commander Bill Oefelein. What makes this truly worthy of the AOTW award is the fact that she was found with

…diapers that Nowak said she used to eliminate stops along the highway…

I could almost hear Nowak’s cries of “But I LOOOOOOVVVEEE him!” This is really too much. Besides Colleen Shipman, the woman Nowak was attempting to “scare” away from Oefelein, the real victims in this bizarre tale of lust, lies, and lascivious behavior are Nowak’s husband and children. According to the CNN article, Nowak is married with 3 kids.

So congratulations, Mrs. Nowak, you are 2007’s second Asshat of the Week Award winner. Perhaps you enjoyed those 900 miles of sitting in your own bodily waste on your trip from Houston to Orlando. I guess it just Depends® on how you look at it.

I know I’m a little lot late to the game on this issue, but I feel it’s important enough to post something on it regardless.

As ALLof you know by know, the FISA Court has now authorized Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program to continue albeit under court supervision. While that should have been done from the very beginning, at this point it’s a little like closing the barn door after the horse got out. Personally, I happy as hell that the FISA Court finally got its wits about itself and did the right thing. However, here’s the problem (you knew thatwas coming didn’t you?):

Just because the program is now subject to the kind of scrutiny that should have been placed on it from the start, DOES NOT MAKE PREVIOUS WIRETAPS SUDDENLY LEGAL! President Bush is trying to circumvent the law once again, although that’s not really hard to believe considering his past actions. Congress needs to make an example of him him by subjecting him to trial over his previous law-breaking on this matter.