http://www.andrewhalcro.com/lawmakers_to_issue_subpoenas_in_troopergate

"This week, seven key witnesses informed Mr. Branchflower through their attorneys that they would not provide depositions.  Their depositions, which had been agreed to and scheduled earlier with Mr. Branchflower, were cancelled within the last 72 hours.  Additionally, the Governor’s lawyer has stated that he represents the Governor and the Governor’s office, and has forbidden any contact by Mr. Branchflower with any member of that office.  Mr. Branchflower wishes to depose some of those employees.  The issuance of the subpoenas is intended to get at the truth and to expedite the completion of his report to the public."

This is absolutely remarkable.  Seven witnesses now refusing to honor  agreements to provide depositions, and at the instructions of the Governor's office?

Where there is smoke there is fire in these matters. 

"But, the sad truth is, the Republicans don’t seek the authority to govern, they are happy with the ability they have to keep the majority from governing.

The Republicans are encouraged in this view by a press corps that treats their values as equal to those of the majority – even though they aren’t. (That’s labeled “fairness”). This insulates the GOP from the moral criticism that they should be subject to: that they are undemocratic."

--Bill Cavala

The choice by Senator John S McCain of Palin as his vice-president designate, really confirms the judgement that many people in our Democratic party have: that the Republicans are very unconcerned about policies or governance,  they really want instead to keep the government from interposing its power between private economic power and the people.  So they try to disable the government when they are in power, both by underfunding and corrupting the administration of policy through the agencies.  When they are not in power, they try to deadlock the government.  Witness the Clinton era, and the 2006-2008 Senate. 

So currently they are the fat man in the doorway to the engine room.  They won't fix the ailing machinery, nor will they allow us to get in to fix it ourselves.  They are braced in the doorway, and it is an urgent necessity that we pry them out and hurl them to the floor.

Plus ca change....

Palin and the Republican Convention.  We could be back in Chicago 1896 or 1900 or Denver 1908 and its Bryan and the Democratic Convention.  Yet the philosophy of Bryan  is turned on its head. His idealism is perverted to militarism. His isolationism changed to militaristic interventionism. His distrust of corporations turned to an uncritical admiration. Only the evangelical side emerges unscathed.

The only similarity is the base both Palin and Bryan seem to appeal to most strongly.  Rural, untrusting and inimical to elites, self-consciously proud of native roots, uncritically patriotic,  anti-intellectual, fundamentalist protestant, deeply distrustful of government.

So Bryan is gone, but his base has come back to cast its weight in American politics once more.

Sandy Levinson at Balkinization has these interesting observations on the choice of Palin as vice-president:

"John McCain's pick of Sarah Palin is spectacularly irresponsible. No sane person could believe that she is equipped to be President of the United States at the present time. (If Ms. Palin doubts this, then she is just another political megalomiac, who may, for all we know, believe that it is God's will that she become our President). She is minimally educated, without any significant relevant experience in thinking about or responding to the great issues of the day, and incredibly parochial, for starters. But she will be nominated, because we begin treating even our presidential candidates as the equivalent of monarchs who are free to engage in all sorts of indefensible decisions. No respectable political party would even be thinking of nominating Ms. Palin, but, of course, that is irrelevant. She is the equivalent of Caligula's horse, and if Caligula could get the nomination of a major party, then it would simply acquiesce to the horse's nomination, because that is just the prerogative of the candidate. That is not the fault of our Constitution, but it does speak to our incredibly degraded informal "constitutional culture," which treats selecting a vice president as a frivolous sport, based on the most short-term of political calculations about "battleground states" or assuaging some particular interest group whose votes must be bought (in this case, presumably, members of the Religious Right)."

Indeed.  This was a historically poor choice and if nothing else, shows how beholden McCain is to the powers over him that dictate his decisions (his own choice was Lieberman so we are told).

If McCain is elected, then those powers that foisted Palin on us, will be the true leaders of this country.

http://www.gopplatform2008.com/2008Platform.pdf

Makes for interesting reading. Global Warming, Social Security, Constitutionalist Judges, it is all here.

Is found here:

http://www.gopplatform2008.com/2008Platform.pdf

Makes for interesting reading. Global Warming, Social Security, Constitutionalist Judges, it is all here.