In Maryland that was evidently the case, according to an article by Lisa Rein and Josh White in yesterday’s Washington Post. More complete details are now out about the suveillance program conducted by the Maryland State Police, and it is shocking the kinds of citizens groups that agency decided to infiltrate and report on, on the slim rationalization that the groups might be harboring terrorists. This is a mighty report, that’s for sure. Here’s the lead, from the Washington Post:

The Maryland State Police surveillance of advocacy groups was far more extensive than previously acknowledged, with records showing that troopers monitored — and labeled as terrorists — activists devoted to such wide-ranging causes as promoting human rights and establishing bike lanes.

Intelligence officers created a voluminous file on Norfolk-based People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, calling the group a “security threat” because of concerns that members would disrupt the circus. Angry consumers fighting a 72 percent electricity rate increase in 2006 were targeted. The DC Anti-War Network, which opposes the Iraq war, was designated a white supremacist group, without explanation.

One of the possible “crimes” in the file police opened on Amnesty International, a world-renowned human rights group: “civil rights.”

According to hundreds of pages of newly obtained police documents, the groups were swept into a broad surveillance operation that started in 2005 with routine preparations for the scheduled executions of two men on death row.

The operation has been called a “waste of resources” by the current police superintendent and “undemocratic” by the governor.

I’m willing to bet, based on the fearmongering inherent in these actions, and the incompetence the officers showed in choosing who to monitor, that every single one of the officers who hatched this illegal and unconstitutional surveillance program were Republicans. Though he was not implicated in any of this wrongdoing, the Governor of Maryland at the time, Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr., is a Republican. Micheal Steele, current GOPAC Chair and candidate for the Chair of the RNC, was Lietenant Governor of Maryland when these ugly crimes took place. Alas, Republicans will counter that they are not crimes since no charges have been filed, but I value the constitution far more highly than they do.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am a bicycle enthusist, and log ten to forty mile trips quite often throughout the spring and summer. I have even joined an advocacy group here in PA, the Friends of Schuylkill River Park. Thankfully I live in Pennsylvania, and there is no evidence, as yet, that police or others gone wild in their zeal to perform Homeland Security tasks have targeted that organization.

Well, that seems to be one of the conclusions of the research by the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, as reported by FoxNews:

Of those sampled, almost 60 percent had sex and more than 50 percent had oral sex five years later, and more than 80 percent of those who had taken virginity pledges had forgotten they ever did so.

OK, that’s FoxNews, which leads the article with the encouraging, if misleading, headline “Study: Religious Teens More Likely to Abstain from Sex.” The real news can be found in several other articles on the web, but I’ll quote from Psych Central News:

The study found more than half of youths surveyed engaged in sexual activity, regardless of whether they had made a pledge to remain sexually abstinent.

Researchers also discovered something not entirely unexpected — virginity pledgers were 10 percent less likely to use a form of birth control.

. . .

The findings suggest that “virginity pledges” do little to deter teenage sexuality. It also suggests that people who take such pledges are at a slightly increased risk for pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases when they do have sex, due to their decreased use of condoms or other birth control.

I suppose that explains Bristol Palin, eh?

To be serious, the abstinence-only education the Bush Administration has squandered $200MM on is bound to fail, according to scientifically-based criteria, and the reason it will fail is that it depends on a pledge to take over for any notion of rational thought. The girl or boy who takes the pledge is as likely as any other teen to end up in a “romantic” situation, whether on Prom night or while playing pool in the local bar. When the situation gets out of control, the next morning that teen can just blame the moment, and need not blame the lack of responsible planning. That’s the effect of abstinence-only education — it is a program that results in the abnegation of responsibility.

Aw, teens today! They’re not responsible about sex, and thus don’t use condoms, at least if taught the Republican way. No, none of us are surprised that Republicans do not advocate responsibility.

I love this. Ken Blackwell, who is largely responsible as Secretary of State in Ohio in 2004 for George Bush’s win, thus responsible for the continuation of Bush’s disastrous Republican policies, is reaping his reward from the 24%ers who still support George Bush. More particularly, he’s getting the support for RNC Chair from the biggest of the Radical Right Wing Christian Clerics, according to a report by Ben Smith of Politico. Here’s a few of Blackwell’s extremist Christian supporters:

Phyllis Schlafly, President, Eagle Forum (I once met her nephew by marriage. He was so ashamed of Phyllis he called her his “uncle’s wife” and would not refer to her as his aunt.)

James C. Dobson, Founder, Chairman and Grand Poobah, Focus on the Family (Didn’t his organization just lay off a whole bunch of workers? Why would anyone want the endorsement of such a failed enterprise?)

Dr. Ronald Godwin, Vice Chancellor, Liberty University, who was instrumental in popularizing Syun Mung Moon in the US — hey, that’s some claim to fame, working for two whack jobs, Moon AND Falwell!

Tony Perkins, President, Family Research Council. (Did they ever get this guy for those serial murders?)

Tim LaHaye, Founder and President, Tim LaHaye Ministries, the man most responsible, probably, for promoting the notion of the “End Times,” and thus responsible, in part, for how that notion helped twist the Bush Administration policies.

Hey, this is a whole bunch of the extremist Christian right wing of the party supporting a black man, Ken Blackwell. Perhaps it is because Blackwell was such a good and obedient soldier in 2004? whatever, the real surprising this is that there are a couple folks one wouldn’t expect to see on this list. Sure, Pat Toomey of Club for Growth pretends to be a fiscal conservative, but he’s a religious whack job from way back. Steve Forbes is the one who seems out of place to me. Hey, the man had a bisexual father, didn’t he, and famously so. How comfortable could Forbes, who has never in the past cozied up to the Christian extremists, be?

Of course, the RNC Chair race isn’t over, but as a Democrat I am pleased to see the Christian whack job wing of the Republican Party coalesce behind Blackwell, who will be the divisive presence, and likely incompetent, too, that we wish on the Republicans.

What’s a “nontroversy?” John Ridley has a list of the top 2008 nontroversies over at Huffington Post, and it seems he’s trying hard to seem nonbiased. Those of us on the reality-based end of the political spectrum know that “nontroversies” are issues started by radical right wing politicians or pundits and are designed to appeal to those folks in this nation far more attuned to the National Enquirer and People magazine than they are to real news. It’s only a few days into 2009, and we’ve already got a candidate for a top nontroversy this year, with an excerpt from Ann Coulter’s latest ugly book. (Hey, maybe she still has her jaw wired shut, but Skeletor can still dish it, can’t she?) This time Ann Coulter hits at a big issue, fashion, and she takes off on Michelle Obama. Found at Huffington Post, but quoted from From the Daily News:

Lashing out at the President-elect’s wife, Coulter wrote, “Her obvious imitation of Jackie O’s style - the flipped-under hair, the sleeveless A-line dresses, the short strands of fake pearls - would have been laughable if done by anyone other than a media-designated saint.”

Coulter said Cindy McCain, the wife of vanquished GOP nominee John McCain, “dressed well without freakishly imitating famous First Ladies in history.”

Coulter facetiously and snidely refers to Michelle Obama as a “saint” and “Mother Teresa” and suggests that her public service career “advanced in lockstep with the political advancement of her husband.”

Now most Americans don’t attack the wives or children of Presidential candidates on such insubstantial grounds. Sure, there was commentary about Cindy McCain and her umpteen homes, but that was factual, and not a matter of taste, which Coulter’s comment certainly is. And there is commentary out there about Sarah Palin’s husband and daughter. But most of that commentary centers around the Palin herself, and how she could possibly aspire to the heights of the Vice Presidency with a redneck such as Todd around, and an unmarried pregnant daughter. (Heck, there’s a lot of controversy brewing about Bristol’s baby daddy as concerns how he got an apprenticeship without a high school diploma.)

Ann Coulter’s carping about Michelle Obama’s sense of style is simply stupid, though. First, it is attacking the spouse of the President, and only the most whacked out of the extremist right wing is going to think that’s a real controversy. Second, Coulter is comparing Michelle Obama to arguably the most stylish First Lady of the 20th Century. Most Americans, even if extremist right wingers, admire the image of Jackie Kennedy, who represented a time when our country was a global power both in military might and in style.

Coulter will reinforce the views of the truly whacked out Republicans, but she’ll not generate any investigation or anything with this “nontroversy.” It is typical of Coulter, though, to be mean-spirited in a completely nonsensical way. It will not be long before Coulter takes off on Malia and Sasha, as sad as that seems. I give it six months until she hits such depths.

Reporter Damon Weaver made his first splash interviewing his “homeboy” Joe Biden a while back. (Here’s a YouTube of the interview on Wonkette.) Just look at the determination in that reporter’s eyes as he asks the hard questions. This guy Damon won’t take evasions for an answer, that’s for sure. Well, now Damon wants an interview with Barack Obama, and it’s hard for an independent freelancer like himself to get a one-on-one interview, so he needs our support.

Huffpo is supporting Damon Weaver, and so should we. He made one of their Ten Best Media Moments for that Biden interview. And Damon evidently went on MSNBC to promote his chances for an interview of Barack Obama, a campaign he has been waging since at least late November, with support of the Miami Heat basketball team and fellow members of his class at Kathryn E. Cunningham/Canal Point Elementary in Florida. Yeah, Damon Weaver is ten years old.

I’m thinking Barack Obama ought to give the boy an interview. The kid is co cute it would give even Obama, high in the poll numbers already, a big bump. Or even better, get Damon to interview Malia and Sasha. Imagine Damon leading a tour of the family quarters of the Obama White House for the press, led by the Obama daughters. That would surely be a ratings winner.

Anyway, please spread the word on Damon Weaver, a journalist who has the chance to be other than the stenographers we have in Washington, DC now. Let’s give him some encouragement by boosting his campaign to interview Barack Obama.

Remote undisclosed locations, we wonder?

OK, the Republicans have cerainly been whining since the election. It isn’t just Alberto Gonzales whining over not having a job, or Pat Toomey of the Club for Growth whining about unions (you must need viagra to join, I understand), or Rick Santorum whining about a moderate Republican supporting unions. Heck, we could sit here for days cataloguing the whines, but it is more fun looking at the list of right wing blogger fantasies (read: desperate lies), I suppose.

Still, I’m not the only one noticing the Republican whines. Here’s a bit from Paul Krugman, who notes the Republican whining, but also notes that they should be whining about their decisions over the last 40 years. From the New York Times:

But most of the whining takes the form of claims that the Bush administration’s failure was simply a matter of bad luck — either the bad luck of President Bush himself, who just happened to have disasters happen on his watch, or the bad luck of the G.O.P., which just happened to send the wrong man to the White House.

The fault, however, lies not in Republicans’ stars but in themselves. Forty years ago the G.O.P. decided, in effect, to make itself the party of racial backlash. And everything that has happened in recent years, from the choice of Mr. Bush as the party’s champion, to the Bush administration’s pervasive incompetence, to the party’s shrinking base, is a consequence of that decision.

If the Bush administration became a byword for policy bungles, for government by the unqualified, well, it was just following the advice of leading conservative think tanks: after the 2000 election the Heritage Foundation specifically urged the new team to “make appointments based on loyalty first and expertise second.”

Contempt for expertise, in turn, rested on contempt for government in general. “Government is not the solution to our problem,” declared Ronald Reagan. “Government is the problem.” So why worry about governing well?

. . .

Will the Republicans eventually stage a comeback? Yes, of course. But barring some huge missteps by Mr. Obama, that will not happen until they stop whining and look at what really went wrong. And when they do, they will discover that they need to get in touch with the real “real America,” a country that is more diverse, more tolerant, and more demanding of effective government than is dreamt of in their political philosophy.

That about pegs it. The Republicans took up the banner of the south in the 60’s and have kept blinders on ever since, not recognizing that America is getting more and more diverse, and more and more embracing of that diversity. Until Republicans realize that, they will be wandering in the wilderness, and a few are doing just that on the day of Barack Obama’s inauguration, turning their backs on reality and running for some vacation resort. According to Politico, Republicans will be flying to Vegas and Switzerland and further in order to escape the reality of their loss of power that day. That’s it as I see it, whining and heads in the sand. No, they will not recognize their failed policies for a long, long time.

I recently wrote about Alberto Gonzales whining about not being able to find a job, posing himself as a victim of 9/11. Now another Republican, Bush-appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John G. Roberts is whining, about how much money he is paid. It’s all covered in the Associated Press:

Chief Justice John Roberts said Wednesday that Congress should be as generous to judges as it already has been to itself, by approving an inflation-related increase in their pay.

“I must renew the judiciary’s modest petition: Simply provide cost-of-living increases that have been unfairly denied,” Roberts said in his annual year-end report on the federal judiciary.

Alone among federal employees, judges will not receive a cost-of-living allowance in 2009. Members of Congress are getting a 2.8 percent boost, worth $4,700. But they refused before Christmas to give an identical increase to judges.

Federal trial judges are paid $169,300 a year. Appellate judges make more, ranging up to Roberts’ salary of $217,400. The salaries pale in comparison to what top lawyers earn in private practice.

Roberts also has pointed out that the 678 full-time trial judges who form the backbone of the federal judiciary are paid about half that of deans and senior law professors at top schools.

. . .

“Judges knew what the pay was when they answered the call of public service. But they did not know that Congress would steadily erode that pay in real terms by repeatedly failing over the years to provide even cost-of-living increases,” Roberts said.

The chief justice also lamented Congress’ failure to pass larger salary hikes for judges. Committees in the House and Senate voted nearly 30 percent increases for federal judges, but neither house of Congress acted on the measure.

In prior reports, Roberts has focused on the need for the larger increase, which would take his pay to around $280,000 a year and increase trial judges’ annual salaries to $218,000.

Two years ago, he said pay for federal judges is so inadequate that it threatens to undermine the judiciary’s independence.

OK, there may be merit in paying judges more so we can attract judges to the bench on merit rather than them being able to afford to serve. But we’ve got unemployment going up (NC unemployment highest since 1983, for instance, and the outlook is not good for 2009) and economic crisis of unprecedented proportions, and a government deficit driven by Roberts’ buddy George Bush. This is definitely not the time to ask for a pay raise, not when Roberts’ $217K salary is a mere dream to millions of Americans on unemployment.

I’d call this a lack of judgement on Mr. Roberts’ part. Just as there are real victims of the War on Terror while Alberto Gonzales whines about his victimhood, there are also real victims of this downturn in the economy, and John G. Roberts ain’t one of them.

Mary Ann Akers of the Washington Post writes today about the Barack Obama inauguration. Barack Obama has evidently decided to use his complete name, “Barack Hussein Obama,” in his swearing in. Seems the scripts for the ceremony are using “Barack H. Obama.” I know this is a picky thing, and it’s yet another example of manufactured controversy, at least if Akers’ column gets some play, but I applaud Barack Obama for his choice.

When Barack Obama was born his mother and father likely had a long converstaion as to what they would name the boy. “Obama” was a given, considering that they were married and all. “Barack” means “blessed” in arabic, and is wholly appropriate as a name. (I like that the Hebrew “Barak” means “Lightning,” that it is very close to Obama’s name and a common name for Israeli’s.) The sticky part is “Hussein.” Sure, the last President, the failed George W. Bush, demonized Saddam Hussein, fought a war on false pretenses, and in the process convinced many Americans, Busheviks for the most part, that “Hussein” means “devil.” But I’m thinking Barack Obama’s parents took some time to choose that name, and it is important for all of us to honor our parents, is it not?

“Hussein,” according to about.com, was Barack Obama’s grandfather’s name. OK, I frankly would cringe to have “Herman” or “Clyde” as my middle name, even to honor a grandfather. I might not shrink, though, from my great grandfather’s name “Assam,” or my maternal grandfather’s middle name, “Adeeb.” Regardless, Barack Obama should honor his parents, his grandparents, and all those relatives who helped make him what he is. “Hussein” means “good” or “handsome one,” according to about.com, and that’s a nice thing, I think. But nicer is that Barack Obama has a sense of place, a sense of family, and that the sense of family values includes honoring his name, despite how the previous administration and most Republicans have demonized his middle name. I applaud him.

Republicans have been unable or unwilling to protect their own, and have not found a nice, cushy job for amnesiac and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Poor Alberto Gonzales. He’s whining to the Wall Street Journal about his treatment on Captial Hill and et cetera, and has now decided to write a tell all book. (OK, the jokes about how he could possibly write a book if he “can’t recall” are cheap, if accurate.) Gonzales, famous for tracking down John Ashcroft in order to justify violating the constitution with the NSA domestic surveillance program, is now whining because, as a lawyer charged with knowing the law, he’s got a track record of not recalling how he violated the constitution. But the whiney complaints are good reading, at least when in a Wall Street Journal blog:

Mr. Gonzales has been portrayed by critics both as unqualified for his position and instrumental in laying the groundwork for the administration’s “war on terror.” He was pilloried by Congress in a manner not usually directed toward cabinet officials.

“What is it that I did that is so fundamentally wrong, that deserves this kind of response to my service?” he said during an interview Tuesday, offering his most extensive comments since leaving government.

During a lunch meeting two blocks from the White House, where he served under his longtime friend, President George W. Bush, Mr. Gonzales said that “for some reason, I am portrayed as the one who is evil in formulating policies that people disagree with. I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror.”

This is pretty much the most clueless statement I can imagine. The treatment Gonzales received concerned the program of politicizing the department he was in charge of, the Department of Justice. It came after a string of answers which showed Gonzales either didn’t know at all what was happening in his own DOJ, or was purposely misleading Senators with a string of “I do not recall” answers. Gonzales now doesn’t just fail to recall, he fails to understand the enormity of his incometencies. Look for no responsibility taken in this book.

Worse here is that Gonzales compares himself to the real victims in the War on Terror, the men and women who died on 9/11, the soldiers who died because of Bush’s policies, the tens of thousands of Iraqi dead. . . those are victims of the “War on Terror.” Mr. Gonzales is at worst complicit in some of those deaths in that he helped justify some ugly policies. At best, Gonzales is merely a bumbling incompetent, and thus his is not a tragic story. Tragedy requires one fall from great heights, after all, and while Gonzales’ role in the Bush Administration was a high-ranking one, it was still a role in the failed and incompetent Bush Administration.

The interview with the WSJ is a bit pitiful and self-serving, of course. Gonzales is a Republican, after all. Here’s another excerpt:

Among other things, Mr. Gonzales said Tuesday that he didn’t play a central role in drafting the widely criticized legal opinions that allowed the Central Intelligence Agency to use aggressive interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects and expanded the president’s power to hold “unlawful combatants” and terrorism suspects indefinitely. He also said he told the truth to Congress about a classified eavesdropping program authorized by the president, and admitted to making mistakes in handling the U.S. attorney firings while maintaining that he made the right decisions. He says that while he bears responsibility as former Attorney General that “doesn’t absolve other individuals of responsibility.”

Mr. Gonzales, 53 years old, doesn’t have a publisher for his book. He said he is writing it if only “for my sons, so at least they know the story.”

This last bit seems a bit poignant. Gonzales gives excuses about his behavior concerning the NSA program and the torture policies of the Bush Administration, and then cops a little responsibility about the US Attorney scandal. I’m surprised he admits to anything, really. This guy is universally considered a liar and an incompetent, after all. But it is poignant because it appears Gonzales knows that the only ones he can convince about his good name and reputation are his own sons. How far he has fallen.

Let’s not let Alberto Gonzales off the hook, though. He was a lawyer with a degree from Harvard when he was hired by President Bush. He’d worked for Bush in Texas, so likely knew what he was getting himself in for. There are no excuses for the damage he did to our constitution, and while Alberto Gonzales’ sons may indeed believe his accounts, it is unlikely anyone else will. I’m just wondering where the man finds a publisher who will touch the book.

The stellar work here is by Jon Ponder of Pensito Review. Go read his article. Quoting from the LA Times and Fox&Hounds Daily, Pensito the strong case, echoing Republican Tony Quinn, that the Republican Party in California is dead. As Ponder of Pensito notes:

The only bright spot for the state GOP in 2008 was the success of Proposition 8, the anti-gay marriage amendment. They are quick to bask in the glory, but you won’t hear them claiming credit. They were not major players in fundraising or the campaign. It wasn’t that they weren’t eager to join in all the gay-hatin’ fun. (Not hardly.) They couldn’t participate because they are broke.

Anti-gay ballot measures have been highly effective at getting out the Republican vote in most states — the tactic may have helped George Bush win reelection in Ohio in 2004. But Prop 8 had no coattails in California. It didn’t help John McCain, and California Republicans even lost ground in Sacramento, where Democrats added one seat in the Senate and two in the Assembly to their majorities.

So even in a time when a ballot measure whipped the conservatives in California into such a frenzy that they took away rights from gays, the Republicans lost ground electorally. Why? The Republican party in California is run by the anti-gay, anti-abortion religious crowd. They simply won’t allow a candidate who can’t pass the religious litmus tests to run, and California, despite the vote on Proposition 8, is a pretty accepting place.

I’m particularly encouraged by Tony Quinn’s words, that the California Republican Party is a “dying party of geriatric voters.” That says almost all that Quinn needs to say.