Saturday, April 16, 2005
Filibuster Busting For Today
ACTIVISM
Hugh Hewitt is leading the charge on the activism front and this post from him yesterday gives some great details and information. Probably the best activist idea to com along originates with this post from Captain' Quarters. -- Not One Dime. As Hugh reports, many are responding by giving $0.09 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Before this came up, the NRSC called me three times this week and I told them they would not get a cent out of me until the nominees were voted upon on the floor of the senate.
Organizations to watch and to support in this fight:
RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY
The left is attmpting to prevail in this issue by casting it as a religious war of some sort. If you have any doubt, read this NYTimes piece of this blog. Even blogs that are on "our side" are worried about using religious arguments.
This is really angering me because now it is not just religiously informed views that are being attacked. Hugh Hewitt is equally, and more loudly incensed than I am. The attack on Frist is not based on him saying something like "Jesus says approve these judges," but rather on his merely associating with religious people and appealing to them as a demographic group. That is pure and simple bigotry. Such attacks are not religious tolerance, or tolerance of any sort, they are pure prejudice.
This is something we cannot stand for, and it it also provides us with a strategy. Rather than argue about needing good judges to correct the wrongs of abortion, or Terri Schiavo, or whatever less than spectacular judicial decision we chose, we argue simply that our opponents are bigots. I realize that most of us on this side of the aisle prefer discussing ideas rather than engaging in personal attack, but I think we can do this without getting too personal. We must simply and incessantly point out how utterly bigoted and hateful are arguments such like those that we have been hearing in the last 24 hours or so.
As a person of religious conviction, I an a citizen of the country and I have a right to vote anyway I see fit. If my religious convictions inform how I choose to vote, then so be it. Your atheistic or agnostic convictions are equally free to inform your vote. If I, and those like me, vote enough to elect officials in sufficient numbers to achieve what we define as our agenda, then that is how it is supposed to work. Losing does not give license for bigotry. Religious faith does not automatically disqualify a viewpoint.
Back to ACTIVISM
Here are the currently identified wobblies. Click there names and get their contact information:
Please, use this information wisely. While you are at it, call John McCain, and tell him to kiss his presidential aspirations good-bye.
UPDATE 9:30 -- Urging activism in the opposite direction, Daily Kos seems to think the venerable Dick Lugar in on the list as well. (HT: Cheat Seeking Missles) I am not surprised, I declared Dick off the reservation on another matter earlier this week. Dick has sat in the Senate too many years, that is the only explanation.
UPDATE Noon -- "Okie on The Lam" has his say this morning. It's a humdinger.UPDATE 2 PM -- Hedgehog Blog has gotten all fired up about comments made by a commenter and laid a few facts on him. Go get 'em Lowell!
