One of those mocking, derisive but ultimately silly attacks made by both Giuliani and Palin yesterday had to do with mocking Obama’s time as a community organizers. I’ve read many different posts today defending the work community organizers do but Obama, as you might expect, puts the right perspective on the issue. Steve Benen has more background.
(he slightly misspeaks at the start — it was 20 years ago, not 3).
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Another must read from Bruce Schneier.
I love this quote from Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale:
There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don’t underrate it.
I found the quote on a post talking about keeping women, British Seaman Faye Turney, out of the military. A simple expression of Rousseau’s Social Contract, if you will. Of course, the fun is in balancing the tradeoffs. Some are ruled by their fears and their annoyances. Others, by their independence.
I’ll have to ask Heidi about the book. I think they teach Atwood at school.
(found the original post via Atrios)
Excerpt:
KILMEADE: And guess what? What would you rather have? The Japanese knowing that we broke their code or a decision saying that journalists are allowed to write anything they can or want to write because they think the public needs to know. See, I’m more into the ends justifying the means. And what they do is you can sunset this, Judge. The same way they have the Patriot Act sunsetted. You put up the Office of Censorship. You get a consensus to journalists to analyze and then you realize what FDR realized early. Winning is everything. Freedom is — you don’t have any freedom if the Nazis are the victors. You have no one to trade with if Western Europe falls. That’s the reality. You’re in love with the law, but I’m in love with survival.
A political ploy by Republicans to blame the Times for disclosing what the world already knew is now leading to this type of silliness.
excerpt:
Arethas isn’t the only student to be disciplined for what he posted to his MySpace profile. The past few years have seen an explosion in the number of schools taking to the Web to find out what students are saying and doing. And punishment has followed, from a Pennsylvania school that suspended one student for creating a parody MySpace profile of his principal to a California school that suspended 20 students simply for viewing one student’s MySpace profile, which contained threats against another student. And some public school systems, like Illinois’ Community High School District 128, are even taking steps to monitor everything their students say on sites like MySpace. According to the Chicago Tribune, under new guidelines, students who participate in extra-curricular activities will need to sign a pledge in which they agree that the school can discipline them if it finds evidence that they have posted any “illegal or inappropriate” material online. Even some police are beginning to patrol MySpace, seeing the site as an effective tool for catching teenage criminals.
