I won’t spoil it for you, but when you figure it out, you’ll never look at the subject quite the same…
Archive for May, 2008
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard the nicely alliterated “Culture of Corruption” in casual conversation. To be sure, the GOP did plenty to deserve this moniker on a national level. Indeed, by 3,562 votes Montanans visited the sins of the Party on Senator Conrad Burns.
Montana always bucks the national trends. Culture of Corruption, while somewhat appropriate in the face of national scandals. was misappropriated to describe the Montana GOP. Conrad Burns was exonerated. Outside the court of public opinion, he didn’t do anything wrong.
Interestingly enough, in the 2006 Montana Senate election cycle, only the Democrat candidates broke the law. Senator Jon Tester and John Morrison, in the early days of his campaign, broke Montana law by enlisting the help of robots to call Montanans to ask them for money. Turns out those robo-calls are as illegal as they are annoying.
Now, I’d be willing to write this off as a simple mistake perpetuated by a fledgling campaign, but for the fact that Tester later justified his action as if he hadn’t done anything wrong.
Both candidates admitted Thursday they were using message systems. And both said they were doing so because they believe the law banning them is unconstitutional.
“It’s a free speech issue,” said Tester, who also is president of the Montana Senate.
That’s not a person’s decision to make, said Chuck Denowh, executive director of the Montana Republican Party. You may think the speed limit is unconstitutional, but that doesn’t give you the right to break it.
“It’s the law,” he said. “They should follow the law, and you should respect the law.”
Now, yes, this happened years ago, and before anyone accuses me of resurrecting old skeletons for no reason, I do so for a larger point. The Culture of Corruption tag that was so effectively attached to the national GOP in 2006 ought to find itself a comfortable home right here with the Montana Democrats. Their candidates - their leaders - have only as much respect for the rule of law - laws that they pass - as they expect there to be political fallout for breaking them.
Are there aliens? I don’t know. But neither does anyone else. So I have to take exception to Carter over at The Hardliner for taking AG Candidate Lee Bruner to the wood-shed for contributing a small portion of his unused computing capability to SETI. Certainly putting this on par with a candidate who wants to abolish the U.S. Constitution and another one with a federal warrant for his arrest is going a bit too far. What Lee is doing is actually kind of cool… in a very nerdy way.
Yeah, I like me some sci-fi. I grew up with Star Trek: The Next Generation, Ender’s Game is one of my favorite books and I currently can’t get enough of Stargate: Atlantis. I like sci-fi because it unleashes the imagination to give real science direction. Clamshell cell phones existed in the 1960s and they were called Communicators.
