From a purely research orientated perspective, the more ways you can parse your data, the better. But when the IRS acquires the ability to segregate tax payers by political party affiliation, all kinds of alarm bells go off. This isn’t right. What next, segregating by religious affiliation or non-affilitaion? From the Tacoma News Tribune:

As it hunted down tax scofflaws, the Internal Revenue Service collected information on the political party affiliations of taxpayers in 20 states.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., a member of an appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the IRS, said the practice was an outrageous violation of the public trust that could undermine the agency”s credibility.

If any agency has to be non-partisan, it is the IRS. Presidents and members of congress have attempted to turn the power of the IRS to their own advantage. To do so does much more than simply undermine the agency’s credibility; it undermines the nation’s credibility.

Thanks to Terry for the tip.

My Soundtrack: Window by Finona Apple on WOXY.

Former Army helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson died of cancer at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Alexandria, Louisana, early Friday. Thompson was the hero of My Lai. Acting in the finest tradtion of the Service, he risked his own life to save the lives of Vietnamese civilians being massacerd by U.S. forces in 1968.

The list is up now of where Jack Abaramoff has been spending his money since 1999. There are quite a few Ohio lawmakers on the list, to no great surprise, but the winners (and hopefully losers) by a huge margin are congressmen John Boehner and Bob Ney. The complete list of Abramoff’s Ohio puppets follows:

Ann Womer Benjamin (R) $3,000
John Boehner (R) $32,500
Steve Chabot (R) $4,000
Mike DeWine (R) $1,000
Dave Hobson (R) $6,067
Bob Ney (R) $31,500
Michael G. Oxley (R) $9,000
Rob Portman (R) $4,000
Deborah Pryce (R) $8,000
Ralph Regula (R) $14,500
Patrick J. Tiberi (R) $2,000
Michael R. Turner (R) $1,000

I’d like to make two observations based on the information I have now. First, missing from this list is the name Senator George Voinovich. He appears to have steered clear of Abramoff, although our other senator did not. Second, while there are many Democrats on the larger list, there is not a single Ohio Democrat to be found.

Both of these facts are subject to change, of course. But for now, I’ll take the good news.

My Soundtrack: Bansee Beat by Animal Collective on WOXY.

I emailed the URL for Tim Hartford’s Starbucks Economics to SuperBarista to see what her reaction will be. I don’t drink cappuccino’s — espresso is my jolt of choice — but if I did, Hartford’s discovery — it’s kind of like finding an easter egg on a DVD — would be eye opening for me. I may actually order a short cappuccino to see what happens.

Hartford writes:

Here’s a little secret that Starbucks doesn’t want you to know: They will serve you a better, stronger cappuccino if you want one, and they will charge you less for it. Ask for it in any Starbucks and the barista will comply without batting an eye. The puzzle is to work out why.

The drink in question is the elusive short cappuccino – at 8 ounces, a third smaller than the smallest size on the official menu, the tall, and dwarfed by what Starbucks calls the customer-preferred size, the Venti, which weighs in at 20 ounces and more than 200 calories before you add the sugar.

For those of you who frequent Starbucks this could save you some money.

For your reading pleasure: a few coffee-related back stories from Slate.

In 2004, Daniel Gross addressed how Starbucks gets away with its high prices – addicts crave its higher caffeine kick per cup. Last month, Michael Idov detailed his brief and bitter stint as the owner of an independent coffee shop. In 1999, James Surowiecki described the (now bygone) stock woes of Starbucks. In 2005, Jack Shafer proposed that Starbucks concoct a signature beverage for Ken Auletta, to accompany the coffee cup emblazoned with his quote, because, [w]ho could resist a bracing milk-based beverage called the Ken Aulatte.

My Soundtrack: Comeback Kid by Silversun Pickups on WOXY.

Ryan Lizza writes today in the online version of The New Republic that the political capital is all spent and that President George Bush and the Republican party aren’t talking about gains in 2006. They’re not even talking about holding onto what they’ve got. Like a corpsman in the heat of battle, they just want to slow the hemoraging.

So what’s driving the new domestic-lite version of Bush? The midterm elections, of course. According to National Journal, the White House has been meeting for weeks with dozens of congressmen to devise an election-year agenda that will minimize GOP losses, especially in the inner suburbs, where the GOP ceded ground last year and where several House seats are vulnerable this year.

The president is here to help reelect Republicans, Candida Wolff, Bush’s congressional lobbyist, told National Journal. That’s why we are meeting with members, to think through an agenda. The Republican National Committee has reportedly instructed its 231 congressmen up for reelection to ditch the sweeping rhetoric and big ideas that conservatives insist define the Bush era and instead act like federal mayors.

In fact, according to Barnes, suburban Republicans have drawn up a list of 20 poll-tested issues that would make Dick Morris blush, including mandatory Internet filters and background checks for teachers.

Now, if we can just find one or two Democrats who have spines…

My Soundtrack: Shake Shake Tambourine by Beck on WOXY.

Who do the Neocons turn to when they need to get out the vote in support of a particular program or policy? Well, as page 119 of this Senate Packet shows, if you’re Mike Scanlon, former aide to the bugman himself, Tom Delay, you go after the wackos err… Christians who listen to Christian radio and the leaders on the Christian right (Like Pat?).

Jimi Izrael rings in the New Year with Part III of his tales of a writer as an intern. One of the toughest things about being a writer comes after you’ve written. If you want someone other than your grandmother to read your work you have to become a shameless self-promoter. That’s where a lot of people get stuck.

But not Jimi:

If I had”ve stepped to a professional writer in NYC and they gave me love, respect and time to help me hone my craft? I would not be where I am today. I”d probably be six books deep, teaching creative writing and writing essays between dinner parties in the south of France. But they didn”t, and I am better for it. I had to earn this shit — the business, the craft, all of it — the hardest way imaginable.

When I got back home from NYC, I was writing essays and sending them in bulk emails to random names. Don”t cc me on a joke or announcement, because now I was about to blow up everybody on your list with an essay, son. I stepped my game up to where I was giving out clips of my essays in the street to anyone that would take them. Like I was giving out flyers. I applied a club promoter game to getting my name out there, no clips. No hope of clips. No clips on the horizon.

This is a true story.

People would take the stapled papers, look at it and throw them away. I would be right behind them, taking it out the garbage, brushing it off and giving it to the next nigga. Fuck it. I went to the Million Women”s March giving out 1000 copies of a 6″000 word version of “Confessions of a Former Sellout.” Almost got jumped. Fuck it. My shit got out there.

And that’s the way it works.

My Soundtrack: Ocean Breathes Salty by Sun Kil Moon on WOXY.

Ryan Lizza writes today in the online version of The New Republic that the political capital is all spent and that President George Bush and the Republican party aren’t talking about gains in 2006. They’re not even talking about holding onto what they’ve got. Like a corpsman in the heat of battle, they just want to slow the hemorrhaging.

So what’s driving the new domestic-lite version of Bush? The midterm elections, of course. According to National Journal, the White House has been meeting for weeks with dozens of congressmen to devise an election-year agenda that will minimize GOP losses, especially in the inner suburbs, where the GOP ceded ground last year and where several House seats are vulnerable this year.

The president is here to help reelect Republicans, Candida Wolff, Bush’s congressional lobbyist, told National Journal. That’s why we are meeting with members, to think through an agenda. The Republican National Committee has reportedly instructed its 231 congressmen up for reelection to ditch the sweeping rhetoric and big ideas that conservatives insist define the Bush era and instead act like federal mayors.

In fact, according to Barnes, suburban Republicans have drawn up a list of 20 poll-tested issues that would make Dick Morris blush, including mandatory Internet filters and background checks for teachers.

Now, if we can just find one or two Democrats who have spines…

My Soundtrack: Shake Shake Tambourine by Beck on WOXY.

…this feeble minded snake oil huckster gets air time? He has tried to blame every bad event in the past 20 years on people pissing off his personal delusion. What next? The miners were all Satanists? The grass fires in Texas are the result of fornication? And the folks in Dover, Pennsylvania? They’re just fine Pat. Thanks to Tim for the catch.

OK, straight up. Just ignore this and go read something else. Go visit intelligent articulate women like Jill or Terry or Sherry or Tish or Daniella or Molly. You’ll be glad you did. If you don’t, you’re going to be mad at me. I’ll have to hide in the back of the room at the next blogger MeetUp for fear of having a Pulitzer-winning blonde sicked on me.

Death under the radar is a bane on modern society. When the bodies drop like water from a leaky facet, we just don’t notice. When more than 200,000 died in the Tsunami the United States went nuts. When the death toll in Darfur approaches 400,000 we don’t even notice. What will it take to stop the 21st century’s first genocide?

For Mike, see Comment No. 5 below.
There has been more buzz of late attempting to help America’s chickenhawks dodge yet a few more bullets by pointing fingers at liberal icons who did not serve in our country’s armed forces during time of war. The latest crop of waggling digits point to Virginian patriot and politician Patrick Henry.

Henry became a target after blogger Markos Moulitsas invoked him in an attack on Neo/Theocons in which he wrote: These blowhards pretend they are macho even as they piddle on themselves in abject terror from every boo! that comes out of Osama Bin Laden’s mouth.

Back in November when I posted about U.S. Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), one of my readers took me to task for the use of the term Chickenhawk and wrote:

So our VP joins his fellow Chickenhawks Abe Lincoln (3 months in the Illinois militia, did not see combat in Chief Black Hawk”s Rebellion), Thomas Jefferson (In spite of his accomplishments, he did not take up arms during our Revolution.), and FDR (He contracted polio in 1921, so is a WWI Chickenhawk).

To that list of names I’ll add Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Henry from the comments to Captain Ed Morrissey’s post. None of these men meet my standard for the label Chickenhawk. And what is my standard?

A chickenhawk is an individual who made use of personal or family influence and wealth to avoid personal danger during the Vietnam War, but who now advocates the aggressive use of our country’s military might.

Why do I single out the period of the Vietnam War? The draft. The draft changes everything. When service is a choice, the chickenhawk label is meaningless.

For the record, I did not then and do not now think the Vietnam War was a just war and in the best interests of the United States. While I am technically a Vietnam-era veteran, I did not serve in the war and the last Vietnam Era draft came months before my 18th birthday. Yet I enlisted in 1974 and served in the Navy and the Ohio Army National Guard until 1986.

What then about the attempt to drape the chickenhawk label on Franklin, Adams, Henry, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt?

Franklin was born in 1706 and was 70 years old in 1776. He was a most unlikely candidate for military service in the American Revolution.

Adams was born in 1735, Henry a year later and Jefferson in 1743. That made them 41, 40 and 33 years old, respectively, in 1776. Not too old for service, but all three were established political leaders and arguably better served our fledgling nation in that role than they might have as military commanders.

Lincoln was born in 1809 and enlisted twice in our military in 1832 when he was 23. He first enlisted during the Black Hawk war and was elected Captain of his rifle company. He re-enlisted as a private after the company was disbanded. He served a total of three months but did not fight in a battle.

Finally, Roosevelt was born in 1882 and was 17 in 1898 when his older cousin volunteered for service in the Spanish American War. By 1917, when we entered the Great War — later renamed World War I — Roosevelt was 35 and already serving as Secretary of the Navy in President Woodrow Wilson’s administration.

Of the candidates, Roosevelt comes the closest because he did not follow cousin Teddy up San Juan hill, but since I’m not aware that he ever advocated an aggressive use of our military prior to the last declaration of war issued by Congress, I think the label slides away.

But compare, as Rep. Murtha did, the records of these patriots to that of Vice President Dick Cheney. No amount of talking points can keep the chickenhawk label from sticking to our Dick.

My Soundtrack: Neverending Math Equation by Sun Ki Moon on WOXY.

When a movie begins and ends with a speech, it is not a good sign. I went to see George Clooney’s Good Night, And Good Luck last night and I was underwhelmed. The movie is barely two-dimensional in its association of President George Bush’s exploitation of terrorism with Senator Joesph McCarthy’s own of Communism.

I, of course, agree with Clooney’s thesis that our President’s use of the threat of terrorism to further his own power grab is shameful. But, George, George, George, you’re no Costa-Garvas.

Clooney’s use of three characters — Joe Wershba (Robert Downey Jr.), Shirley Wershba (Patricia Clarkson) and Don Hollenbeck (Ray Wise) — to interject some sense of conflict and emotion flops. His own portrayal of Murrow’s producer Fred Friendly was so deadpan as to render even Clooney nearly invisible.

Going in Clooney faced much the same problem as Alan Pakula. The audience knows very well how the movie ends, so how do you make it interesting? Pakula, and even, I’m ashamed to admit it, James Cameron, get it right. Clooney doesn’t.

What we get, instead, is much the same as Clooney staring into the camera for 93 minutes and repeating: Bush Bad…

Yes, George, he is. Now go back to making movies instead of agitprop.

My Soundtrack: Do What You Wanna Do by Acid House Kings on WOXY.

I haven’t seen the new Narnia movie yet. While I own a complete — including the book that came before The Witch The Lion And The Wardrobe — annotated set of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia tales, I was never very excited about the stories. Lord Of The Rings was my cup of Earl Grey. Amy Loves Books and she did see it.

So, when asked what I thought, I simply said that I thought it was missing the soul of the stories. The details were there, but the deep magic was not.

As I’ve thought about it, I think I’ve realized what the problem is. The movie is not really about Aslan at all; it is about the children. As you watch, you get the message that the children are the important thing. The witch wants to kill the children, the beavers must take the children to Aslan. There is never any sense that the children need Aslan — it’s as if Aslan needs the children. Aslan’s sacrifice is cheapened, and this is why I did not cry.

That in of itself is insightful, but what she writes afterwards really nailed it for me.

Last night, my mother called to ask how the movie was. I’d thought it through by then, and I told her about that the movie was not really about Aslan at all. I mentioned the whole megachurch theater-renting outreach, and I said that I didn’t think people would watch the film and be spiritually moved by it. “Not if it isn’t about Aslan”, she agreed.

Then I commented that, ironically, the same churches that are renting the theaters are the ones that have decided to cancel church on Christmas morning. In the end, maybe Narnia is a better metaphor for the current state and message of mainstream Christianity than I realized or want to admit. The Children, The Witch, and The Wardrobe – with a lion thrown in and then quickly forgotten once the children are on the throne.

Sounds about right to me.

My Soundtrack: Push & Pull by Nikka Costa on WOXY.

Don’t Panic. I’m talking about two of the conservative blogs on my blog roll: the M.A.W.B. Squad and Pike Speak. While the team of women M.A.W.B. Squad haven’t made any official announcement, their latest post was made on 9 December. John Pike, however, is upfront with his shuttering. He’s moving on to other things.

This leaves me with a couple of important holes in my blog roll that I need to fill. I’ve been reading conservative blogs the last couple of days and I’m having a really hard time finding any that even approach what I would call reasoned conversations.

Anybody got any suggestions?

My Soundtrack: Medication by Queens Of The Stone Age on WOXY.

when a man who’s got the green stops,
an executive wearing a crisp white
shirt and shiny red tie, and he raises
his palm to gesture me safely across,
making all the cars behind him wait while
I walk, and together at rush hour that
man and I redeem the whole human race.

From Urban Law by Alison Hawthorne Deming.

With nine candles blazing in my window I marvel at what a miracle fire is. In Judaism we perform the Havdalah ceremony at the end of each Shabbat to mark the transition from the sacred to mundane. The amazing thing for me in this ceremony is that the candle is extinguished. An act of tremendous faith.

I once wrote a Midrash about Adam and Eve and how they might have felt watching their first sunset. Having never experienced a sunrise, they had no faith that the Sun would return. The cold and the dark could be with them forever. Similarly, our ancestors at this time of the year tracked the shortening of the days and the dwindling light.

In response they built bonfires and lit torches to entice the Sun back into their lives.

In our lives we also deal with a kind of dwindling light, a light of liberty and freedom and justice. And we are called upon to light our own candles, so as to not let the light go out.

Light one candle for the Maccabee children
With thanks that their light didn’t die
Light one candle for the pain they endured
When their right to exist was denied
Light one candle for the terrible sacrifice
Justice and freedom demand
But light one candle for the wisdom to know
When the peacemaker’s time is at hand…

Happy Hanukah…

My Soundtrack: Korean Dogwood by Devendra Banhart on WOXY.