Let that Pendulum Swing!
At the heart of our ongoing expressions of disgust lies an undying optimism that American leadership can, and certainly will get better. American politics have experienced many pendulum swings throughout her careening trajectory toward greatness and our current tilt toward a plutocratic neo-fascism supports this trend of zig-zaggery. While I continue to mourn the erosion of social systems and the suffering it brings, the willingness to use military force as a first resort in international relations, and the irreparable ecological harm wrought by Bush's policies, I remain confident that the current winds represent only a perverse but temporary detour of the American zeitgeist.

The scorn against Science, the tacit forced conformity of so-called Christian values, the further and deliberate imbalancing of the wealth disequilibrium, the pretense that policies will cure ills they are in fact designed to exacerbate - these initiatives are driven by short term fear and gullibility. As the political response to these childish yearnings age in the open space of public scrutiny and in the reality of our complex culture, they will fall into disfavor. Their discredit will be on the stage of implementation, a harsh contrast to the laboratories of media manipulation and image projection in which they were incubated.

That is why we welcome statements, such as recently ejaculated from the throat of Bill Frist, who claimed that Democratic filibusters to prevent extremist judicial appointments were "an assault on people of faith." We should encourage this foaming-at-the-mouth imagery of a Grand Ol' Party drunk on power and going to any extreme metaphor to discredit a reasonable exercise of minority power. Through the unvarnished display of Senate leadership accusing Democrats of attacking Christians, the swing voters will cringe at the hideous manifestation of its mercurial voting patterns. While some become increasingly fearful of the outwardly spiraling verbiage of hate and demagoguery, we at SOTC welcome it. It may be the only way to break through the consumer driven haze that grips our sound bite starved citizenry with visceral evidence of a trend gone horribly wrong.

Keep 'em coming Fristy!

Anti-Choice Pharmacy
The latest volley in the war against women's reproductive choice is coming to your corner drugstore. There are several different flavors of this battle. The first is whether to allow drugstores to decline to sell the so-called morning after pill. The second is whether to allow individual employees to override store policy and refuse to dispense the pill on the basis of their individual conscience.

I gotta go with the classic libertarian approach on these issues. If a drugstore proprietor wants to not offer a product, for whatever reason, no one should compel them to do so. I know, I know, women's health, reproductive rights, etc... I agree those are important issues, but c'mon, we can't throw around reckless legislation that compels businesses to sell something. That's just nuts. The Capitalist extension of this scenario is for pro-choice and anti-choice advocates to post web information on which drugstores do and don't provide contraceptive products and let the market handle it. As long as there aren't leviathan corporate pharmaceutical interests which stifle local competition (actually, a very real concern), the availability should follow as long as there's consumer-political support. Sorry angry feminists, while I agree with your assessment of the problem and its ramifications, I don't buy this particular cure.

Now, as for those laws that would allow individual drugstore employees to defy company policy on moral grounds: Hell no. The disastrous precedent implications aside, the fact that individual employees could make customer service decisions that run counter to management's position, is nutso. If I work at Wal-Mart (thank God I don't) and somebody wants to buy ammo for their street sweeper, I can't refuse them based on my moral beliefs. They'd fire my ass. How is this issue any different?

The anti-choice forces are battling at every point of contact between women and their free exercise of reproductive right. Let's just be careful not to embrace absurd principles in our fight against those forces.

Without a Hint of Irony
"My personal hope and the hope of the United States is that (the Iraqi government's) judgments will reflect a desire to have highly competent people who are not going to politicize security forces."

Donald Rumsfeld, in a press conference in Kurdistan

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