With his permission, I am below the fold going to post part of the contents of an email Barry Welsh, our netroots candidate in IN-06, sent me early this morning.  Barry is quite optimistic, even though he is running a low-budget campaign.

Let me start by offering some facts about this race.

In 2006 Barry was outspent 1.5 million to 50,000, but still raised the Democratic share from 28% in 2004 to over 40%, by drawing 73,000 votes.

In the primary, Barry drew 94,000 votes, more that twice what Pence drew.  Of greater importance, Barry thinks his elect number is about 127,000, so in a primary he is over 75% of what he needs in the general.

So now, please continue reading below the fold.  And btw, consider making this good news more widely known.

It is Sunday.  I open my Washington Post, B Section, and on the inside is a piece with a long introduction by Josh White, explaining of his long interest in a man originally known as Detainee #261, who tried to kill himself when his lawyer stepped out of the room, whom the U. S. long asserted was a dangerous terrorist who had tried to recruit others and who was arrested in Afghanistan, where he had ostensibly gone to fight for the Taliban.   And yet, despite having been held  at Gitmo since January 2002 and having been subjected to brutal treatment,

Nevertheless, he was never charged with a crime, never admitted any connection to terrorism and was ultimately released to Saudi Arabia in July 2007.

White has stayed in touch with the man, whose real name is Jumah al Dossari.  And the bulk of the piece are his words, and they are entitled I'm Home, but Still Haunted by Guantanamo.  Remember, he was in the custody of our government, held and mistreated by our personnel.  This was done in our name.  And miraculously, he offers no bitterness in his words.

no, I don't mean the elections, although that is also true.  I mean my school year.  Officially it starts on Monday, when teachers report back for four days of meetings. That is deceptive, because for many of us our work has already begun.  

But that is true every year.  So how is this year different?  

It will be the first time I am not coaching soccer.

It will be in the context of a presidential election (although I taught government in 2000 and 2004, so this is not totally new)

We are facing more standardization in what we must do.

My student teacher will actually report to me on Monday.

Let me offer a brief explanation of all of these.

The facts are sobering. About 5,000 Americans have been killed, including military personnel, contractors, and aid workers. Another 30,000 or more are wounded, and estimates of those with post-traumatic stress disorder are as high as 300,000. The financial costs are estimated to reach $3 trillion eventually.

Those are just a few of things that give the lie to the notion that Iraq is a success.  And lest someone, say McCain or a supporter, argue that having expended that much in blood and treasure, we are required to "stay the course" we need to ask, as does the article from which I took those words, What counts as 'success' in Iraq?. John Tirman of MIT writes in the Boston Globe that we need to frame this with two questions, (1) is there a favorable and sustainable outcome due to the "surge," and (2) if there is, can we justify the cost.  The paragraph quoted is only part of the costs. I will explore the article, and more broadly, the situation in which we now find ourselves, which also means exploring Bush - and McCain.

The Rocky Mountain News is reporting that our own Jared Polis has won the primary in the 2nd Congressional District in CO, with his principal opponent conceding.

And in Virginia, there are reports from the Board of elections that 2/3 of the new registrations since January are people under 35, which should bode well for Obama.

Let me get this diary up, and then I will update with more information.

Go below the fold for some more detail

For reasons not directly relevant to this posting, I have been going through a large number of my previous diaries, and encountered one posted 4/12/2006 entitled "Living in a bulls-eye."  As I read it I was somewhat shocked to realize how relevant it still was, given our current dispute with Iran and especially in light of the recent conflict in the Caucasus.

I had not intended to do a diary today - I have many other tasks.  But since this merely requires me to repost, I thought I would, and see if you, like me, still think what I wrote more than two years ago here is still relevant.

BTW - the original was not on the recommended list, but it was part of diary rescue.

Peace.

The most striking characteristics of the policies of the current administration would appear to be a lack of balance and sustainability. The size and distribution of the tax cuts were excessive. The unwillingness to raise any revenue to pay for the heavy cost of the Iraq war pushed the nation to uncomfortably high levels of borrowing. The dramatic expansion of credit created excessive debt and distorted the price of housing. It also weakened the dollar, pushing up oil prices.

But all of these stimulative policies were necessary because of the extraordinary transfer of wealth that took place between ordinary households and the extremely well-to- do, and the effort by this administration to address the consequences of that problem without addressing the root cause. That transfer drained the American consumer of the resources needed to keep the economy humming, and we have been able to sustain it only by borrowing from future prosperity and weakening our long-term capacity for growth. Ultimately we will have to relearn the lesson of Henry Ford: lasting prosperity is shared prosperity.

Those are the last two paragraphs of a document you should read.  Why and by whom will be explained below.

¶The United States has more musicians in its military bands than it has diplomats.

¶This year alone, the United States Army will add about 7,000 soldiers to its total; that’s more people than in the entire American Foreign Service.

¶More than 1,000 American diplomatic positions are vacant because the Foreign Service is so short-staffed, but a myopic Congress is refusing to finance even modest new hiring. Some 1,100 could be hired for the cost of a single C-17 military cargo plane.

The quotes are from a column with the same title as this diary, written by Nick Kristof and appearing in today's New York Times  In this piece. Kristof argues that we overinvest in military toolsand underinvest in diplomatic tools, which results in a foreign policy which is often ineffective and unnecessarily antagonizes the rest of the world.

And he relies upon the words of our Secretary of Defense to bolster his argument.

That is the title of this featured essay in tomorrow's NY Times Magazine.   Written by Matt Bai (yeah, him). it is an examination of the generational divide among black politicians.  Let me offer one early quote:

"Here we are, all of a sudden, in the 60th year after Strom Thurmond bolting the Democratic Party over a simple thing, something almost unheard of — because he did not want the armed forces to be integrated," Clyburn said slowly. "Here we are 45 years after the ‘I have a dream’ speech. Forty years after the assassinations of Kennedy and King. And this party that I have been a part of for so long, this party that has been accused of taking black people for granted, is about to deliver the nomination for the nation’s highest office to an African-American. How do you describe that? All those days in jail cells, wondering if anything you were doing was even going to have an impact." He shook his head silently.

I will explore below the fold why I think you should read the article.

My life flows in endless song, above the earth's lamentation.
I hear the real though far-off hum that hails a new creation.

Chorus:
No storm can shake my inmost calm while to that rock I'm clinging.
Since love is lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?

Through all the tumult and the strife, I hear that music ringing;
It sounds and echoes in my soul; how can I keep from singing?

Chorus

The peace of Christ makes fresh my heart, a fountain ever springing.
All things are mine since I am his; how can I keep from singing?

Chorus

It is a Quaker hymn.  We actually have those.  But it was at the end of a Catholic Mass of Christian Burial, with music from Taize, and Amazing Grace and a Navajo chant at the graveside.  And although I knew the words, I found I could not sing this Quaker hymn because of weeping, as Greg's body left the church.

No matter how strong the evidence presented by the Justice Department -- and at first blush, it appears damning -- it is an ex parte presentation and will never be subject to the scrutiny and challenge of the other side.

Such evidence, even when seemingly overwhelming and conclusive, is the very sort of circumstantial argument that pegged Richard Jewell as the Atlanta bomber, that linked Oregon attorney Brandon Mayfield to the Madrid bombings, that fingered Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee as a spy, and that cast biodefense expert Steven Hatfill as the original anthrax suspect. In each of those investigations, the news media were largely complicit, conveying incriminating details of the government's case as if they were the gospel.

  The words are those of Ted Gup, a journalism professor at Case Western Reserve University and author of Nation of Secrets, and they appear today in a Washington Post op ed entitled The Anthrax Case: Solved(?) But Unresolved  I want to use the quoted words as an illustration of the broader issue of whether we can trust our government.

Ron Neitzke, noblest of American diplomats, handing me his excoriation of the U.S. government and State Department for "repeatedly and gratuitously dishonoring the Bosnians in the very hour of their genocide" and urging future Foreign Service officers to be "guided by the belief that a policy fundamentally at odds with our national conscience cannot endure indefinitely — if that conscience is well and truthfully informed."

As I write it is late Tuesday afternoon.  The quote, from which my title is taken, comes from a column by Roger Cohen about which I wrote July 24, in I am so tempted to violate copyright  

Our traditional media has failed miserably in informing the American public about policy fundamentally at odds with our national conscience and so such policies have endured.  Today I propose to remind myself, and those who choose to read this diary, of policies fundamentally at odds with our national conscience.  That is, they should be, because if they are not, if they are acceptable, then we are lost already and there is no point in our being here.

My title comes from this exchange:

First, wanderindiana asked

Who will undo it?

    And how can we be sure that damage will be undone when our current elected officials have contributed to that damage?

I responded

good question
         
     but not only who, also how

and finally wanderindiana responded back
         
Someone else, another day...

That exchange took place in the thread on my diary yesterday, entitled If cruelty is no longer declared unlawful . . .

Perhaps the answer should be All of us, starting right now

"To my mind, there's no moral or practical distinction," he said. "If cruelty is no longer declared unlawful, but instead is applied as a matter of policy, it alters the fundamental relationship of man to government. It destroys the whole notion of individual rights.  The Constitution recognizes that man has an inherent right, not bestowed by the state of laws, to personal dignity, including the right to be free of cruelty.  It applies to all human beings not just in American - even those designated as 'unlawful enemy combatants.' If you make this exception, the whole Constitution crumbles.  It's a transformative issue."

Those of the words of Alberto Mora, quoted on p. 219 of Jane Mayer's The Dark Side.  And the issue is so important, and to my mind has been overlooked in our discussions of whether or not the government has sanctioned torture.  By its own admission, it has sanctioned cruelty, even if it asserts that it has not sanctioned torture.  I want to explore this further.

I will not quote a single word.  But I want to warn you.  I am going to insist that if you do nothing else today you need to follow the link I am about to give you.  It is the lead story in today's Boston Globe.  It is about a boy only a bit younger than the student whose death on Friday inspired me to write my diary yesterday.  

And why do I warn you?  Because the story will and should trouble you.  You are going to be affected, if you still have a heart.

Only after you have read it should you consider going below the fold to read anything additional I might have to offer.  And doing so, or recommending this, or commenting, are totally unnecessary, although I will welcome you if you proceed.

But now, please, I insist.  Follow this link, being sure to read the entire article.

The email was entitled "Sorry to have to tell you this" and was from one of my students who came to Austin to be on the panel with me.  When I opened it up I found out that one of his classmates, a young man who had been in the same AP Government class with him, had passed away that morning.  And the effect on me was immediate and profound.  I knew he had not been the picture of perfect health, often missing school, and that his family had sought out appropriate medical treatment.  It was a family I knew well, having dealt with his Dad in his professional capacity, and having taught his older sister and written her college recommendations.

Certainly my sorrow pales next to that of his family, and it is not why I am writing this.  Perhaps it is because at age 62, with both of my parents long dead, with learning each year of the deaths of more high school and college acquaintances, I ponder death a bit more often.  When I wrote on June 1 about the oncoming death of our College's long-time athletic director, someone who is my age contemporary wrote "Ah. We've reached the age, you and I, when so many of those we knew are on their deathbeds."   So forgive me, but I want to ponder death this morning.  

William Worthy isn't worthy to enter our door
Went down to Cuba, he's not American anymore
But somehow it is strange to hear the State Department say
You are living in the free world, in the free world you must stay

The words above are from the chorus of a song entitled Ballad of William Worthy by the late, great protest singer Phil Ochs, about a journalist who lost his passport because he visited Cuba after that became illegal.

And while there is no firm policy quite like that today, even for Cuba, in as sense we are now all trapped, at least if we wish to maintain any privacy.  And for those of us who use technology it is especially frightening to consider the implications of how the 4th Amendment has been erased, especially by the Department of Homeland Security, an abomination whose creation needs to be erased, and whose accumulation of powers without oversight needs to be rolled back as much as do the assertions of the unlimited power of the unitary executive.  And on this subject, I think even Russ Feingold is too deferential.

In a world in which animal rights are gaining ground, barbecue season should make me feel guilty. My hunch is that in a century or two, our descendants will look back on our factory farms with uncomprehending revulsion. But in the meantime, I love a good burger.

So begins a column entitled A Farm Boy Reflects.   It is today's NY Times offering by Nicholas Kristof, written from Yamhill OR, where he grew up on a family farm.  And his next paragraph explains WHY he is writing it:

This comes up because the most important election this November that you’ve never heard of is a referendum on animal rights in California, the vanguard state for social movements. Proposition 2 would ban factory farms from raising chickens, calves or hogs in small pens or cages.

  Perhaps it takes someone who eats meat but grew up on a family farm himself raising animals to be slaughtered for meat,  to take on the question of animal rights.

Please read his column.  Then perhaps come back to this diary.