Courage Campaign

You know an election is coming up when the Republicans start looking for a way to throw it. This time they came up with the great idea of making California - the state with the most electoral votes, as they're allocated by population - give up a third of their electoral votes to the Greedy Old Perverts for showing up.

Sure, allocating electoral votes by Congressional district instead of by state would be fair if everyone did it, and if the Congressional districts weren't so gerrymandered that they were safe votes for one party or the other. That the GOP isn't pushing this in Texas and Florida tells me all I need to know about their motives: change the rules to favor themselves.

So what do we do about it? Head on over to the Courage Campaign and find out. They have a conference call coming up on Monday that specifically addresses this issue.

Oh, and Californians, when you see a paid signature gatherer with this petition - and they are out there - don't sign it. Unless there's a solid provision that it goes into effect when a majority of states vote for it - and not until - then all it would do is hand the Republicans another election they didn't earn and don't deserve.

The Week in Review:

Okay - to help me add content to my blog, and to get some kind of schedule established, I'm going to take Sunday mornings to do a Week in Review.

This will probably be a quick intro and a list of links to things I think are important, interesting, or weird that happened in (or that I came across in) the past week.

There may well be random weirdness and pictures of a cat involved.

And, to get practice in doing a weekly series, I'll sacrifice one of my daily diaries at the Daily Kos to languish, unread, bearing this content.

So, the Week in Review:

Because I am what I Am, let's start with the news that Hasbro/WOTC is releasing a Fourth Edition of Dungeons and Dragons - news that I would normally greet with cartwheels of sarcasm and misery, were there such a thing and were I able to do cartwheels.

Nevertheless, I hear that feats and prestige classes are gone which in itself is enough for me to give it a look, even though they're claiming to have simplified it yet again - one wonders if Fifth Edition is going to be printed in cave pictograms and require rocks. Yes, the Geico cavemen can bite me.

Oh, I'm sorry - you want some real primal screams of outrage? Read this article from the Rolling Stone.

Ohh, this is going to go well.

The Democrats are threatening to kick Florida's electors out. Like that's going to happen.

Justice finally comes for two teens murdered before I was born.

Oh, and some idiot is comparing Iraq to Vietnam. God, it's like he's not even trying anymore. I, of course think no national re-exploration of Vietnam is complete without exploring the part that Five Deferments Dick and AWOL the Chimp played in avoiding it personally while demanding that others go to die in their place.

Okay, drop your own tidbits that you've discovered over the week in the comments.

Do-Nothing Feinstein Stands Up

Yes, astounding as it is, California's answer to Joe Lieberman piles on to the attorney purge scandal with this little tidbit (courtesy of McClatchy Washington Bureau via Atrios):

WASHINGTON - Fired San Diego U.S. attorney Carol Lam notified the Justice Department that she intended to execute search warrants on a high-ranking CIA official as part of a corruption probe the day before a Justice Department official sent an e-mail that said Lam needed to be fired, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Sunday.

Feinstein, D-Calif., said the timing of the e-mail suggested that Lam's dismissal may have been connected to the corruption probe.

Like the philosopher said, it don't take a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

Stunned

Yeah, another little hiatus - but now it's time to get back to work.

The Republicans haven't stolen the election - but our electoral system remains dangerously vulnerable. The Patriot Act still stands. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 still stands. We're still losing good soldiers in a bad occupation that the Administration lied to get us into. New Orleans is still a disaster area. There's still the NSA spying on American citizens in direct contravention of FISA. And they're still dealing with the Chimpster's idea of bipartisanship - renominating Bolton and trying to get himself off the hook for wiretapping.

Now we will see if the Democratic Party will pull us back from the brink - or if they're perfectly OK with the shiny new fascism the Republicans instituted. Less netroots candidates won than I would have liked, and more corporatist cronies slipped through than I would have preferred.

The work isn't done yet, in fact it has barely started. But I'm stunned that things have changed this much, this quickly. Perhaps I can allow myself to hope that it's enough.