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A look at U.S. Senator John Kyl, Arizona (from an e-mail I received):

Worst anti-choice votes
- Twice co-sponsored amendments to the Constitution to outlaw abortion in almost all circumstances, including rape and incest.
- Voted to deny women in the military the right to use their own private funds for abortion care at their base hospital.

Home state facts
- Arizona has not repealed its pre-Roe abortion ban, which is unconstitutional and unenforceable.
- 80% of Arizona counties have no abortion provider.
- Arizona has the 2nd-highest teenage pregnancy rate of any state.

Why is it that the people who take the most extremist positions have the most worst record when it comes to educating, providing for, and protecting those most at risk ... like underage girls? Sen. Kyl could do far more good by working to address the teenage pregnancy crisis his state faces. But why would he do that? There's no electoral edge in it, no easy money generated for future campaigns. And whose fault is that? Ours. Because we voters don't pay enough attention. After all, 'hot button issues' are so named because they are singular issues that do get our attention and, more importantly, generate a response. If voters were not so emotionally driven, we would see through the facade of people like Sen. Kyl and demand that they actually do something substantive to help, not just wail and bluster. Come on people! Take a minute and think things through - then demand real action aimed at building consensus and doing the most good.

a contrast of visions

From Yes! Magazine:

By what name will future generations know our time?

Will they speak in anger and frustration of the time of the Great Unraveling, when profligate consumption exceeded Earth’s capacity to sustain and led to an accelerating wave of collapsing environmental systems, violent competition for what remained of the planet’s resources, and a dramatic dieback of the human population? Or will they look back in joyful celebration on the time of the Great Turning, when their forebears embraced the higher-order potential of their human nature, turned crisis into opportunity, and learned to live in creative partnership with one another and Earth?

I love that opening question. Of course, one could even make the case that there will be no future generations if we do not act to save humanity from the double threat, as suggested, of Global War and Environmental Collapse... Will this generation be remembered as the one which blindly pursued a path of not just self- but global-destruction? Or will it be remembered as the one which courageously found a better way?

Bush blocked probe into spying

What a surprise! From MSNBC.com:

WASHINGTON - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday that President Bush personally blocked Justice Department lawyers from pursuing an internal probe of the warrantless eavesdropping program that monitors AmericansÂ’ international calls and e-mails when terrorism is suspected.

The departmentÂ’s Office of Professional Responsibility announced earlier this year it could not pursue an investigation into the role of Justice lawyers in crafting the program, under which the National Security Agency intercepts some telephone calls and e-mail without court approval.

At the time, the office said it could not obtain security clearance to examine the classified program.

Under sharp questioning from Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter, Gonzales said that the president would not grant the access needed to allow the probe to move forward. "It was highly classified, very important and many other lawyers had access. Why not OPR?" asked Specter, R-Pa., referring to the Office of Professional Responsibility.

"“The president of the United States makes the decision,"” Gonzales told the committee hearing, during which he was strongly criticized on a range of national security issues by Specter and Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, the panelÂ’s senior Democrat.

In a book I recently read by Dan Brown (not The Davinci Code), the question is asked several times that can paraphrased slightly: "Who will guard the guardians?" ... "Who will watch the watchers?" ... "Who will spy on the spies?" Most of what the current administration does is secret. When they get caught, they lie about it. The NSA spying is a perfect case in point: there was outrage, and rightly so, when it was first exposed. To which Bush said, Trust me: We're only spying on international terrorists and their national contacts. Then it came out that he was spying on calls that were not international in nature. To which Bush said, Trust me: We're only spying on terrorists wherever they are hiding. Then it came out that he was spying on peace groups and religious organizations, unions and political opponents. To which Bush said, Trust me: We're only spying to protect you.

It should come as no surprise that the Administration, and President Bush himself, has constantly worked to keep secret what they are actually doing. We need to wake up to the fact that Bush is simply a handy abbreviation for BUllSHit, because that describes perfectly the lies that Administration officials, again, including the President, continue to feed the American people.

Who will guard the guardians? The open secret that is key to the USA's success, identity, and, yes, even security is that the public are the best guardians of all; that the people deserve to and ought to know the truth; that the citizens should be entrusted with the right and benefit of having all the information possible before them and then deciding for themselves. Are there matters of national security that should be kept from the general public? Absolutely. Are the details of this or any President's personal war on the Constitution an example of privileged information? Hell no!

Happy Birthday to Us

Okay, so I'm a week late. I just came across this thought, from Douglas McBain and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

America, in its heart and soul, is little more than an idea. Any state, of whatever stripe, can have defined borders, an army, a currency and the machinery of government -- but America was born of something more than this sort of prosaic chemistry of nations. At its beginning, America was a dream made by dreamers -- that man can govern himself and order his affairs according to an ethos that recognizes the fundamental dignity of his fellow man and entrusts to each of its citizens the responsibility to see that such dignity is ensured to all.

It's ironic that the government that should be serving this great purpose is instead working, at the hands of those who have no learning or regard for their own origins, to dismantle and destroy, under the guise of national security and ownership society, so much that was so painstakingly created over a span of more than 200 years.

When the commonweal is so threatened, when our form of government is so assaulted from within, what responsibility do we have to act? This is a question to ask ourselves, not in the abstract but in the most concrete and immediate terms. The threat to our democracy, to our way of life, and to the simple human values on which this country was so courageously founded, is not hypothetical -- it is all too real -- read about it in the headlines of this newspaper.

What has happened to our sense of moral right, our sense of public responsibility, our commitment to human dignity? What has happened to our own self-respect?