I really appreciate Marshall Ganz highlighting the importance of civic organizing and, particularly, introducng Saul Alinsky to new folks, since Alinsky was an early bible for me when I first became a political activist twenty years ago.

I do think Alinsky himself might not fully recognize himself in the context of Ganz's invocations of Tocquevillian community-- I mean, Alinsky was the man who gloried in tales of threatening to organize a "shit-in" where poor Chicagoans would protest neglect by taking over all the toilets at O'Hare airport.

Alinsky was not about the virtue of community, but the assertion of the pragmatic power that even the disgarded and poor could wield.

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Some folks have noted that the prosecutors scandal means that the plan to push Gonzales onto the Supreme Court has been undone. But what's incredible is that this corrupt guy was ever even under consideration. Partially, he owed his theoretical viability to the idea that he was more liberal than other people Bush might appoint.

But I take a certain perverse satisfaction in long hating Gonzales as embodying the corruption that would be the Bush administration. From a Common Dreams piece I wrote in December 2000:

it is shocking that he would appoint as White House Counsel a man embroiled in controversy for taking contributions from Bush's Vice President's firm and favoring that company in judicial decisions. Bush has a history of using the courts to favor his corporate supporters and the appointment of Gonzales shows that he has no attention of abandoning that tradition he established in Texas.

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