June 26, 2009 – Capitol Hill Blue

July 4th Has a Vivid Memory

June 26, 2009

The Freedom We Won is Still the Freedom We Must Continue to Fight For

July 4th 1776 is the victorious celebration of the American Revolution, when the King of England’s oppressive rule was overthrown by American colonists.

Today it’s good for Americans to remember that time period and the real reason we broke away from such an autocratic ruler:
“No taxation without representation” means you can’t be taxed without fair representation and agreeing to it

Freedom of speech

Freedom of religion

The passing of Michael Jackson raises the question: was he a castrato counter tenor?

June 26, 2009

I have been watching the intense coverage during the last 18 hours of Michael Jackson’s career offered in honor of his untimely passing. As I watch the images I am struck over and over again by how feminine his voice was, how feminine his face was–or what was left of it after so much knife work–even how lacking of male secondary sexual characteristics he seemed to be.

I am forced to remember the castratos of Italian opera whose amazing young voices were preserved by the now taboo procedure of castration producing the counter tenor voice of the castrati.

Climate Change Activists Dismayed by Some of Bill’s Provisions

June 26, 2009

Today ought to be a joyful day for environmental groups, with a first-ever bill to cap greenhouse gas emissions on the floor in the House of Representatives.

Democrats Hopeful for Narrow Victory on Climate Bill

June 26, 2009

The House headed for a cliffhanger vote today on behemoth legislation aiming to limit greenhouse gas emissions, with Democrats still hopeful they would eke out a narrow victory on a critical piece of President Obama’s agenda.

President Obama Holds a News Conference With German Chancellor Angela Merkel

June 26, 2009

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Willkommen. It’s my pleasure to welcome Chancellor Merkel to the White House. We had a very productive discussion in the Oval Office, and our meetings will continue this afternoon.

A shouting and shoving match in Congress

June 26, 2009

Two volatile members of Congress got into a shouting and shoving match on the House floor Thursday.

Rep. David Obey, the powerful chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, and Rep. Maxine Waters, the California Democrat known for her vocal outbursts to anyone who doesn’t agree with her, went at each other in a disagreement over some pork barrel legislation Waters wanted for an employment center that just happens to bear her name.

Advice for philandering politicians

June 26, 2009

Really, there should be a template for politicians who hold press conferences to confess to sexual dalliances.

We’ve run the gamut from former President Clinton’s defiant "I-did-not-have-sex-with-that-woman" mantra in the Roosevelt Room of the White House and belabored parsing of "it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is" to South Carolina Republican Gov. Mark Sanford’s weird "I-spent-the-last-five-days-of-my-life-crying-in-Argentina" confession in the Columbia state capitol.

Mark Sanford’s real screwup

June 26, 2009

And another one bites the dust — a promising Republican, that is. Except it turns out this one, the governor of South Carolina wasn’t so promising after all. In fact, Mark Sanford, the strongly religious wayfaring social conservative, was more interested in knowing a woman in the biblical sense than he was in dealing with the affairs of his state.

Remembering an unlikely martyr

June 26, 2009

I cannot get Neda out of my mind. Neda Agha-Soltan, to be precise. Neda is the woman the world watched die on videotape that was uploaded last weekend to the Internet. She was the woman slaughtered, apparently, by Iranian government gunfire last Saturday during anti-government protests and riots in Tehran.

If you’ve been online since last weekend, and you’ve been following the brave Iranian protests against that country’s all-but-certainly stolen national elections, you know exactly who Neda is.

Is there hope for Iran?

June 26, 2009

A blatantly fraudulent election may have been the spark that ignited Iran’s current rebellion but don’t be misled: Iran has never had free and fair elections.

I was in Iran 30 years ago for the first elections held under the gaze of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the dourly militant leader of Iran’s Islamist revolution. I was a young and inexperienced foreign correspondent unconvinced by older and more experienced foreign correspondents that Khomeini and his followers intended to transform Iran into a freer and more just society, rather than one that would be brutally oppressive at home and threatening abroad.