moving backward

Colorado's secretary of state, Scott Gessler, is our chief elections officer, so you might think he would be encouraging more voters to cast ballots on election day.
Isn't that the American way? Isn't that what democracy does?
Not necessarily. Scott Gessler favors passage of a law that could, at least marginally, keep some voters away -- voters who lack what he considers proper credentials.
Being properly registered in the precinct poll book wouldn't be enough. Gessler would require that every voter, in order to get a ballot, would also have to show some sort of formal photo identity to election judges. Like a government-issued photo ID.
No picture? No ballot.
Well, you say, that's not such a big deal. The voter could simply whip out his driver's license.
That could work. But, surprising as it may seem to the average person. there are quite a few people in Colorado -- people who are qualified and registered to vote -- who don't have a current driver's license. Or any other official or semi-official photo credential.
Maybe they just don't drive. Or maybe their licenses have been revoked. But even if they've been barred from driving, they can still vote. Picture-IDs aren't required or needed for that.
Yet.
Actually, this initiative of Scott Gessler"s isn't just a local thing. Under the phony banner of "preventing vote fraud," it has spread to more than dozen states (which, like us, really have had no problem with fraud)..
What is this really about? It is simply a devious campaign to keep certain classes of Democratically-inclined voters away from the polls -- like the young, the elderly, blacks, Latinos.
Why do Republicans want it so much? Because Republicans, as a group, consider themselves more righteous and capable than Democrats, better fitted in every way to take charge on election day. And so they have rammed the photo-ID and other needless protections through legislatures in more than a dozen Republican-dominated states.
In commenting on the issue, Gessler told the Denver Post that the Colorado voter-photo initiative is his own idea, not a GOP project, that he is "too full of piss and vinegar to be taking marching orders from other people."
He's full of something..

blockheads

If President Obama found a cure for the common cold, Republicans would oppose it.
Donna Brazile......Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee

NEWT

Would-be president Newt Gingrich is a fount of weird ideas. Thus it is no surprise that he is seeking to impose some extra-constitutional discipline on federal judges -- judges he considers to be overly "active."
What does he mean? He means they hand down decisions he doesn't like.
If he had his way, Gingrich would haul them up before Congress to explain their "activist" rulings -- sort of like sending them to the principal's office, I guess.
Well, of course, in our beloved land, sharp and sometimes angry criticism of the courts isn't new. It's as old as the nation. It's a permanent thread in the fabric of our society..
And I expect right now there are millions of boneheads who are cheering Gingrich on. Fortunately, opposing them -- always opposing them, thank God -- are the constitution, two centuries of precedent and an utterly overwhelming majority of sensible, open-minded citizens who think such ideas are cuckoo.

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FDR

Having survived Jean Edward Smith's "FDR," a biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (636 pages of text, 134 of notes), I want to recommend it to those who have (and will make) time to read it. Most especially those who are fascinated by politics and seniors who actually lived through the momentous Roosevelt years.'The book is indeed ponderous in bulk, but not in style or spirit. If you tackle it, you could find yourself reading well beyond the intervals you've set aside for it. And you could find yourself grinning -- even, on occasion, laughing out loud. It's a lulu.

A few samples:

Item: Shortly after Pearl Harbor, Winston Churchill braved the deadly threat of Nazi U-boats to sail to America to confer with FDR in Washington. Winnie bunked at the White House.
He took time to instruct FDR's butler, Alonzo Fields, thus: "One, I don't like talking outside my quarters. Two, I hate whistling in the corridors. And three, I must have a tumbler of sherry in my room before breakfast, a couple of glasses of scotch before lunch, and French champagne and well-aged brandy before I go to sleep at night."

Item: "One morning FDR wheeled himself into Churchill's bedroom just as the prime minister emerged from his bathroom stark naked and gleaming pink from a hot bath. Roosevelt apologized and turned about, but Churchill protested, 'the Prime Minister of Great Britain has nothing to conceal from the President of the United States'."

Item: In the Roosevelt years, even staunchly progressive and sensitive politicians were not as careful about racial and ethnic references as they may be now, at least in private communication. In 1913, FDR wrote to his wife, Eleanor, that "the Secretary and I worked like niggers all day." The reference is to Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels; (Roosevelt was an assistant secretary.)
Eleanor once reported, after a social event, that "the Jew party was appalling. I never wish to hear money, jewels, and sables mentioned again." In a letter, she once wrote that she had found Harvard professor Felix Frankfurter to be "an interesting little man," but "very Jew."

Item: Political campaigning in the 1930s in the redneck backwoods really got lowdown dirty sometimes. In a primary contest in 1938, Florida senator Claude Pepper was accused by his opponent of "having been guilty of celibacy before marriage and addicted to monogamy ever since."
In 1950 Pepper was defeated by a rival who informed voters that Pepper's sister, an actress, was "a practicing thespian living in New York's Greenwich Village."

Item: "In the first years of the twentieth century, Prohibitionist sentiment was such that battleships named for dry states (e.g. Mississippi) were christened with lemonade rather than champagne."

Item: In 1916, FDR began an intimate relationship with Lucy Mercer, his wife's part-time social secretary. The relationship continued quietly and privately until his death, at which she was present, in Warm Springs, Georgia, in 1945.
Over the years, this affair was an open secret among political insiders and even elements of the press. But that was a very different time from now, and such private behavior was commonly sheltered from public view. There was no public disclosure of the Mercer affair until the 1960s.

shill

He did it again today. Wednesday. Chris Matthews, the newsman, TV pundit, historian and author, blatantly promoted his own book on his regular weekday news show. He told his regular viewers like me at some length, once more, how good and popular his book is -- and how buyers are flocking to stores to get it.
He hinted strongly that listeners do the same. He did all this in the middle of his hour-long network show, the day's news coming fore and aft.
To me, Chris Matthews thus is mixing personal gelt with his news. It's something a shill might do, but not a careful and serious news person.
I know that television hosts routinely expect guest authors to plug current books, even display their fancy covers. But I've never before seen a news professional indulge in such a prolonged, shabby, purely-commercial self-promotion.
The book? Well, it's a biography of a hero of mine, titled "Jack Kennedy," and it may be very good. I happen to have a copy, the gift of a relative.
I haven't read it yet. I surely will, but for right now, the bloom is off.

slow learner

Herman Cain says his wife and family come first with him. Only took 13 or 14 years and a nationwide scandal for him to find out.