Dobson and McCain

James Dobson, founder of "Focus on the Family", apparently doesn't like John McCain, saying he has "not reached out to 'pro-family leaders' or changed his views on positions that 'trouble' social conservatives, pointing to the candidate's support for embryonic stem cell research and stance to allow states to set their own definitions of marriage". Dobson also said he disagreed with McCain on calling for "more collaboration with allies, closure of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and a new global warming treaty."

Wait, what? I thought those were the good things about John McCain. Dobson's point is that McCain has "failed to unite the GOP", and thus we can again see why the two-party system is just broken. There are more than two possible points of view, and when so many people have to be pigeon-holed into only two parties, the mentality becomes 'if you aren't with us, you're against us'. It's ridiculous. On that note, I'm reading Chuck Hagel's new book, America: Our Next Chapter, and I hope to have a review up this weekend.

You can't trust Bush with anything...

Not even to be a champion of Second Amendment rights. The case before the Supreme Court right now, District of Columbia v. Heller, on the constitutionality of D.C.'s ban on handguns, has the administration asking that the Court send it back to a lower court:

... brief filed by U.S. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement, who represents the government and the Bush administration before the Supreme Court. Clement said that the court should recognize the individual right but that the lower court's ruling was so broad it could endanger federal gun-control measures, such as a ban on possession of new machine guns. Clement urged the court to send the D.C. law, the strictest in the nation, back to lower courts for further review.

If the Clinton administration had argued the same thing, the Republican party and the NRA would have leapt all over it and shouted about how the liberals want to take our guns away. What is it with people wearing blinders when it comes to the policies of people that supposedly belong to the same party? While this is clearly not the first infringement (understatement?) of civil liberties this administration has helped perpetuate, it is one I would expect the Right to be, well, up in arms about.

Further thoughts on DNC re-voting

I wanted to say add a little to the previous post that I didn't have time for this morning and clarify some things. The plaintiff in this case is arguing from an equal protection standpoint -- but this only applies to how the government must treat people. On the other hand, as I pointed out originally, the First Amendment guarantees that private organizations can restrict their membership and set their own rules. Where this gets interesting is that the state primaries were funded by the state government, and government-funded entities are not allowed to discriminate. But no one was denied participation in the state primary -- they are only being denied access to the national convention, which isn't government funded. And that raises another interesting question that I am unsure of the legality of. If a state primary is funded by the state, on what basis do some state primaries have to restrict access only to party members? It seems there is a Fourteenth amendment problem there. I would be intested in hearing arguments about this. I'd like to see a case removing government funding from these elections.

DNC re-vote insanity

I've actually got a lot of beefs with our current two-party political system, and I'll be making posts on this topic in the future. Probably everyone's aware of the problems with the Democratic primary and Florida and Michigan being stripped of their delegates due to how they scheduled their primaries. Ostensibly, both the Republican and the Democratic parties are private organizations, but in reality, they are so intertwined with the government that I doubt they will ever be dislodged. That's a longer post for another day. But this seems wrong on the face of it. A lawyer is arguing that by depriving the Florida/Michigan Democrats of a say in the Democratic primary, they are being deprived of their 14th Amendment rights. That's a hopelessly wrong argument. The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that private organizations have the right to set their own membership and rules, as the Boy Scouts were allowed to restrict membership to heterosexuals. The DNC lawyer has it right:

Joe Sandler, attorney for the DNC, told the three-judge panel that the committee is a private entity and "is actually exercising its own constitutional right by not seating delegates." "The point we were trying to make in court today is that it's up to the parties themselves to determine the best means of selecting delegates to the convention, and it's not really a matter for a court to resolve," he told reporters later.

On the other hand, the primary votes in both Florida and Michigan were paid for by the state governments. I'm not sure that's directly relevant to what happens on a national level with the DNC though. I don't think the government should provide funding so that an organization (that should be private) can hold an internal election. George Washington would be turning over in his grave about how much the parties are entangled in our government.