President Bush is making class-action and malpractice lawsuit reform a top priority. Yep, I feel like vomiting myself right up to the emergency room.

The very idea that any person of the lower class voted to keep this man in power when his top domestic priority is to take away one of their few pieces of leverage against the rich and powerful is... I mean.... ???

Two things.

First, while I'm very excited about the return of baseball to DC, I don't understand why the city council has to pay for it and why Major League Baseball has to bribe the District into it--- and pretend that it's good for small businesses. Also, the team should have been called The Senators again, not The Nationals.

Second, let's discuss Scott Peterson. While I know very little about the man or the case, I looked through reports yesterday of the evidence and testimony leading to his conviction. So it obviously left me wondering how somebody can be sentenced to the death penalty for a conviction based entirely on circumstantial evidence. You can apparently also get executed for "not showing emotion" during the penalty phase.

I'm sorry, but our criminal justice system is sick.

On election night, I said: if Powell stays and Rumsfeld goes, it's not so bad.

Well, it's pretty bad. Oh, and Chuck Hagel thinks so too.

And by the way, here's what Dean said about the future of the Democratic Party.

Yeah, yeah, it's been a month; get over it.

A lot's happened--- I'm sure you know all about it.

I think the most exciting thing is the re-emergence of Howard Dean. He must become DNC Chair, but if he becomes DNC Chair he can't run for President, which he must also do. He talks a lot about keeping the Democratic Party from running "Republican-Lite" campaigns (like the one we just went through), but sometimes I wonder whether he himself would have succumed to this psychosis had he been the nominee.

Also: you know Bush's plan to save social security? Not so much.

My friend Rob suggested that I toss my name in the hat of people to replace William Safire as columnist for the Times. I thought this was a good idea.

For one thing: My blog has a readership of at least three. I know this for a fact.

Also: I have experience in the newspaper business (okay, well my school newspaper. I once wrote an editoral in which I posited that Dr. Laura was "clinically prescribing hatred upon a society swept up in a frenzy of ant-gay sentiment." Oh yeah, I said it.)

So there you go. Really, the Gray Lady could do worse than to bring me on board. I even have my own typewriter.

If Arlen Specter doesn't get the Judiciary Chairmanship.... I honestly think that'll be a worse statement about politics than Bush getting re-elected.

The fact that Harry Reid is becoming the Democratic Minority Leader and Condi Rice is becoming Secretary of state.... well, that's just a terrible statement about everything.

Tonight my face was the glare in the glasses of the Left's most prominent living intellectual.

Noam Chomsky--- despised by most Americans, or those few who know his name; revered in Europe and the Middle East; the second most quoted person of all time; the academic outlet of anti-war, anti-globalism, anti-imperialism, anti-atrocity activism--- gave a speech tonight at NYU.

His argument outlined the abandonment of "basic moral truisms"--- namely, that the United States must abide by its own international laws. For him, it began in Nuremberg, when the definition of "war crime" came to mean "a crime that you committed and we did not." The U.S. routinely ignores the Geneva Conventions and participates in state-sponsored terrorism--- then it declares war on nations who do the same.

Chomsky says that we accepted Washington's version of what the Iraq war is--- a Messianic crusade to spread democracy. Bush, as a true Christian, simply had to do the moral thing and liberate a victimized people. Never mind the polls that tell us those victims do not quite see it that way. (According to Chomsky, exactly one percent of Iraqis felt that the American military had good intentions, and that was before we killed almost 100,000 of them while torturing their friends in Saddam's former dissident prison.)

It was a delight to see him up close and hear his thoughts; he's always held a strong and steady voice, because for him the human world is always in despair and the leaders of today are always tallying up atrocities to fill the pages of tomorrow's history books.

And: my fucking keyboard stopped working. This entry, in fact, was sponsored by my beautiful boyfriend and his beautiful Presario Notebook. Anybody stopping by Staples with some cash to waste in the near future?

Robert Kuttner of the American Prospect writes
a warning to President Bush. He suggests that the Democrats, overwhelmingly anti-war but politely restrained until election day, will now somehow let loose with Vietnam-like fervor. I doubt it.

The problem this year is that the left buried its ideology in a trunk so that nobody could see the terrible liberal things they really believed in, such as equal access to marriage rights, universal access to healthcare, and safe access to abortion.

95 percent of the delegates at the DNC opposed the war in Iraq. So they nominated a Senator who voted for the war. 75 percent of the delegates at the DNC support marriage rights for gays and lesbians. So they nominated a Senator who opposes marriage rights for gays and lesbians.

Iowans were terrified of nominating Dean because they felt he was too radical, and therefore unelectable. But don't forget the excitement and energy that Dean brought to the race. Why can't Democrats understand that what excites them will excite the American people too?

No, we may not have won the election with Dean this year, but we would have faught hard and stayed true to our convictions. And our issues would have been given a national voice: we proudly support real change in education, health care, and civil rights. We don't want your corporate-run government sitting around with our bosses in secret meetings and arguing over the best way to screw us. We reject bloody, imperialist wars with no goal and no exit plan.

Dean could have gone to South Carolina and said, "Do you know why your state is consistently ranked dead last on education charts? It's not because gays are teaching in your public schools." He could have held study sessions on the flaws in No Child Left Behind and the moral decadence of not funding it.

We could have led movements to legalize same-sex marriage, provide a living wage for all Americans, embrace universal health care as a fundamental right. We didn't do any of that.

I suggest that it's John Kerry's fault--- more that George Bush's--- that we now have 11 states with constitutional amendments outlawing same-sex marriage. The left took a vacation in Pennsylvania, voter registration forms in hand, and we woke up in the morning with a world a little less tolerant and a little less hopeful, with no power to change it.

So I ask you, Democrats: ready to stop lying?

Mike Phillips, a friend and the former President of the NYU College Democrats has a fabulous piece on the recent frenzy of bias accusations in media and academia.

In other news: tonight the fabulous NYU Drama Department (where I am a student) hosted the inaugural event of its series "DramaTalk." It will bring in successful theater artists to discuss their careers--- but without the harsh glare of Bravo cameras and the perpetual drool of James Lipton's mouth.

Tonight belonged to Michael Mayer, a graduate of NYU and a director whose recent Broadway credits include 'night, Mother, After the Fall, Thoroughly Modern Millie, A View From the Bridge. He also just saw the release of his first movie, A Home at the End of the Word.

Though a little too caught up in the glaring light of Corporate Broadway (the venues where his work has been staged are telling: the AOL Time Warner Center, the American Airlines Theater) and a bit stale in his political analysis ("I've never felt as 'Jew in Austria' as I do this week"), he had some good points about working with actors and always finding new aspects of life to convey.

Most important thing he said: when you create, really show up.

Well, they finally published This Week's Frank Rich Column . One of his very best, although I say that every week. It's another analysis of the Blue/Red divide, except this one is actually insightful and inspiring.

I asked my Israeli boyfriend Daniel how Arafat's death will effect things over there. He says it could go either way. I agree with President Bush (oh my, did I just say that?) when he says: "The vision is of two states, a Palestinian state and Israel living side by side, and I think we've got a chance to do that, and I look forward to being involved in that process."

Except I'd change, "we've got a chance to do that," to "there is absolutely no way such a thing will happen in my lifetime," and I'd change "I look forward to being involved in that process" to "my administration has no interest in fostering peace in the middle east, unless it's a byproduct of the U.S.' imperialistic triumphs over helpless civilians."

And: the polar bears are almost extinct.

The Vegetable That Makes Me Cry (Literally.)

You all must check out this week's Onion, which features, among other things, the headline: Nation's Poor Win Election for Nation's Rich.

Just the way we do business 'round here.

Something Just Broke.

The White House has just leaked that Alberto Gonzales, the President's chief lawyer, will succeed Ashcroft as Attorney General.

Yes, the "torture memo" guy.

Fraught. And Fraughter.

Common Dreams published a great piece by Howard Zinn called The Optimism of Uncertainty. This is a good time for some brilliant reactionary left historians.

Also, a group calling itself Patriotic Americans Boycotting Anti-American Hollywood. At first, I thought it was faux-earnest, along the lines of Billionaires for Bush, but a closer look suggests that they're dead serious.

In other news: New York is way too cold.

Generally Speaking.

"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved," writes soon-to-be former Attorney General John Ashcroft, in his resignation letter to President Bush.

Come again?

Ashcroft, perhaps the least competent Attorney General in modern history, leaves the post having accomplished not a single victory in his war on terror (though he's gotten a few in his war on civil liberties.) Anyone who believes the world is any safer now than it was on 9/10/01 should not have a job in Washington.

F-Day.

The attack on Fallujah has begun. U.S. troops invaded a hospital and "secured it in under an hour." Ominous wording, if you ask me.

I just got back from a paper sale with the ISO. We like to engage people in an open and sincere way, and sometimes it translates into sales and contacts; most of the time it doesn't. But I'm always amazed by the number of people who agree with our politics and support our efforts but cannot scrounge up a dollar for a newspaper or sign a contact sheet.

Is it just me?