I’ll be interested in hearing how Keith’s MoveOn.org event went. While Keith chose a Supreme Court party in his neighborhood, I went to one in the white wine and quiche section of the People’s Republic of Montgomery County.
DNC Vice Chair, Susan Turnbull was there, along with a yacht-load of high-priced DC attorneys. Politically aware, deeply angry at the Bush administration, refreshingly good at organizational skills, and not ones to take an activist anti-stare decisis judicial nominee.
We talked about Alberto Gonzales, reponsible for the newspeak equation of torture=fighting terrorism, as well as his questionable role in Texas Death Penalty review (good writeup here, by the way). And he’s the least objectionable candidate.
I know that when people outside of the DC area think of Maryland (and most likely, they don’t) they get images of what Dean euphamistically referred to as Nascar dads in pickup trucks. They are blissfully unaware of the grand socialist experiment of Montgomery County. Unlike most of the country, Montgomery County has a small city government, and a powerful County government. The result is a uniformly good public school system, arts and theater programs, a community college system, and a parks and recreation program unparalleled in my experience.
After a short meeting where we organized rapid response teams for an eventual Supreme Court nominee, we pigged out big time (or at least I did), trashed the Bushies, and watched the Pelican Brief.
Basically, my idea of a good time.
Mine was a bit different: Woodley Park, apartment of a Bryn Mawr student working in DC for the summer, age range roughly 20 to perhaps close to 70, a surprising number of people from Virginia, beer, Jesse from DCDL (he and I told people about our group), chips, pie, cookies, talk about issues, talk about current attempts in the media to paint Torturin’ Al Gonzales as an acceptable “moderate” candidate, organization of an e-mail alert list, discussion of letters to the editor and to senators (perhaps hand-delivering letters from actual constituents we know or can find through MoveOn), belated introductions, appearance of a Post reporter (no sign of an article yet), Outfoxed.
—Keith • 7:26 pm
That sounds pretty interesting. I’ll be the first to say that “Outfoxed” is a better choice than the “Pelican Brief.”
As far as the Post reporter goes, the goal is to have a story when the petitions get signed. I don’t think you’ll see anything before that. Though, on the other hand, a story about how the opposition is geared up might happen.
—AltHippo • 8:20 pm
The story appeared today. The party I was at was the “Progressive Love Fest”.
—Keith • 11:38 am, July 11
I just read the Post article. My impression was that they were taking the “liberals are hippies” viewpoint. Note the selective use of quotes:
Fazio gives it a try himself: “We have to send out, you know, what are they called? You know those things you sign?”
“Petitions!” someone yells out.
“Yeah! Go around and do the petition thing. Call 224-3121 and say, ‘Can I have Senator Warner’s office’ and then say, ‘Senator Warner, I’m against extremism.’ I’ve always found an intern will pick up the phone, and they’ll log it in. It’s a small thing but . . . “
—AltHippo • 12:12 pm, July 11