SmartRemarks

Finally. After six months of tedious delay, Al Franken will be sworn in to the U.S. Senate seat once held by Paul Wellstone. The fact that he beat incumbent Norm Coleman (albeit by the slenderest of margins, roughly 0.01%) was confirmed unanimously by the Minnesota Supreme Court, Coleman finally conceded the inevitable, and Gov. Tim Pawlenty signed the election certificate. Hooray!

Thus the Senate Democratic Caucus will finally have the magic 60-vote margin necessary to defeat obstructionist filibuster attempts by the GOP minority. It’s the highest number of Democratic seats since 1981.

Which leaves one obvious question…

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Tags: Al Franken, Reid, Senate

J. Michael Straczynski, the award-winning writer/creator of Babylon 5 (and a whole lot of other television and movie work as well, e.g., Clint Eastwood’s recent film Changeling), author of a critically hailed seven-year run on Marvel’s Amazing Spider-Man (and a whole lot of other comics as well, including more recently a revival of Thor that brought the character a resurgence in both sales and popularity), and a darned nice guy to boot… is leaving Thor, effective in September. The news broke this week via the latest solicitations from Diamond Comics Distributors.

He has a couple of creator-owned projects coming up at Image Comics, and he’s already several scripts deep into Brave & Bold and “Red Circle” for DC Comics… but the really exciting possibilities that come with this change in workload concern another character entirely. 

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Tags: Babylon 5, DC Comics, J. Michael Straczynski, Marvel Comics, Superman, Thor, writers

Here’s a man-bites-dog story for you:  on Tuesday in Springfield, capital of our fair state, over 5,000 people rallied in support of a tax increase. 

There’s good reason for this. The state income tax is flat (i.e., regressive) and one of the lowest in the country, at only three percent… and has been kept that way for years, placing political advantage over good sense, as the state has run a chronic structural deficit.

The current economic meltdown has exacerbated that situation to the point where it’s no longer possible to ignore or “fix” with accounting shell games. The state was facing an $11.5 billion deficit for FY 2010 alone. That’s nearly as large as California’s, and nearly twice as bad when measured per capita. Thus, Gov. Pat Quinn (the successor to our illustrious indicted Gov. Blagojevich), who as I have written before is a reformer and basically decent guy who therefore could never have made it to the governor’s office through conventional means, has proposed a painful but fair and prudent solution: some budget cuts (about $1.3 billion, including some layoffs and furloughs), accompanied by a modest tax increase—bumping the corporate rate from 4.8 to 7.2 percent, and the personal rate from 3.0 to 4.5 percent (with the automatic exemption increased from $2000 to $6000 per person). 

Now, you might think that with a Democratic governor, a Democratic state senate, a Democratic state assembly, an obvious emergency on their collective hands, and broad public support, it wouldn’t be too hard to get this passed, right? But this is Illinois.

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Tags: Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, Lisa Madigan, Mike Madigan, Pat Quinn, taxes, Todd Stroger

On June 12, even as the election in Iran was happening and sweeping everything else out of the news cycle (a subject on which much digital ink has been spilled, to which I have nothing to add except that it’s nice to see a population care enough about democracy to take to the streets over it; that Obama has been responding to the situation with admirable discretion; and that the conservatives criticizing him are idiots who understand nothing about public diplomacy and would probably still attack him if he released a statement celebrating motherhood and apple pie)… the Obama administration did something unfortunate that produced an incensed reaction from observers in the civil liberties and GLBT communities.

Namely, the Department of Justice submitted a legal motion [pdf] putting this administration on the record defending the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, and arguing to dismiss Smelt v. United States, the first same-sex-marriage related case to reach the federal courts.

This isn’t about the merits of equal marriage per se (which Obama has long been on the record as opposing, unfortunately). It’s a challenge to the validity of DOMA, under which the federal government (and other states) are not obliged to recognize same-sex marriages that are legally constituted in states that allow them (as is the case with these plaintiffs)—never mind that pesky “full faith and credit” clause, among other Constitutional provisions. It is, in short, a law that formally enshrines discrimination.

It was a bad law when Bill Clinton signed it, and it’s a worse one today now that the situation it contemplates is not merely hypothetical. And it’s a law that candidate Obama loudly opposed.

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Tags: Constitution, DOJ, DOMA, equal marriage, GLBT rights, Obama

And the mantra became, “June 12 is the new February 17.” After all the preliminary publicity, it was somewhat annoying to have the conversion from analog to digital TV broadcasting delayed four extra months. But I can see the logic of doing it after the main television viewing season was over… and as it happens, complications along the way have shown that not just viewers but quite a few broadcasters needed the extra time to get their technological ducks in a row.

Offhand, you wouldn’t think I’d be terribly concerned about the switch. I have an HDTV and a DVR with an ATSC (i.e., digital) tuner, so what’s the difference, right?

But as I’ve written before, there are complicating factors… for me and lots of other people. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: digital transition, DVRs, television, TVGOS

Grayson, that is. (What, you thought something else…? Dirty mind. Shame on you.)

Dick Grayson, formerly Nightwing, formerly Robin, has had a strong fan following for years, especially since he grew up and stepped out of the red-and-green costume (and his mentor’s shadow) a quarter-century ago. Now the character has done what in one sense always seemed inevitable and yet in another seemed unlikely ever to see print… he’s become Batman. And it’s exciting.

Three years ago DC’s executive editor Dan DiDio wanted to kill off Dick Grayson as a superfluous character; he backed down in the face of an overwhelming reaction from both creators and fans, and now Dick is at the very center of the Bat-universe. 

I’ve written before with (ahem) less than wholehearted approval of Grant Morrison’s writing on Batman and, for that matter, on Final Crisis… but as erratic as the path may have been getting to this point, I have to give DC Comics credit for taking a fairly bold move. If the overall execution hasn’t been as dramatically compelling as Ed Brubaker’s death of Captain America over at Marvel a couple of years back, still… shuffling Bruce Wayne offstage and having his onetime sidekick take over the cape and cowl is certainly a departure from formula, and it creates the potential for some really fresh perspectives on familiar characters.

Still, as the first “relaunched” Bat-books saw print this past week, I couldn’t help approaching them with some trepidation.

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Tags: Batman, Dan DiDio, DC Comics, Dick Grayson, Grant Morrison, Judd Winick, Robin, super-heroes, writers

My 20th college reunion was last weekend. I was a bit taken aback by this because, first of all, it’s simply impossible:  I certainly haven’t been out of college for two decades. My infallibly accurate internal calendar tells me it’s more like six years, seven max. But twenty? That’s absolutely ridiculous.

Nonetheless, they insisted on holding the event, and I attended. I’ve always had a soft spot for reunions, not least because I’ve never really been the best at keeping in touch with people as time goes by (although Facebook does make that a lot easier these days), and organized reunions provide a great opportunity to “catch up.” 

I hung out with a lot of old friends, new acquaintances, and a few professors, and generally had a terrific time. (The Saturday afternoon wine tasting, ironically one of the least expensive events, was particularly enjoyable.) Still, there was something of a wistful feeling to the whole endeavor that it wasn’t quite possible to shake.

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Tags: Chicago, college, Shoreland, unemployment, University of Chicago

When people look back years from now, they may well mark spring of 2009 as the point when America really changed its attitude toward same-sex marriage. Call it “gay marriage,” call it what you will—I prefer the simple descriptive term “equal marriage”—it seems clear that we’ve passed a tipping point.

At the start of this year, equal marriage laws were on the books in only one state:  trailblazer Massachusetts. Since then the list has grown to include Connecticut (following through on a court order from last year), Iowa (also in response to the state’s high court), then Vermont and Maine and (as of this week) New Hampshire, in each case enacted not by court order but voluntarily by the state legislatures. Meanwhile there are bills working their way through the legislatures of New York and Pennsylvania. On the next tier down, three states (New Jersey, Washington, and Oregon) recognize same-sex civil unions, and Washington, D.C. has recently joined Nevada and California in recognizing slightly more nebulous “domestic partnerships.”

There are still setbacks—notably California’s regrettable Proposition 8, which passed last November and was upheld (on very narrow grounds) by the California Supreme Court—but compared to just five years ago, when the issue seemed like a sure-thing hot-button winner for right-wingers across the country in the 2004 election cycle, the change has been remarkable to behold.

It stuns me to realize, given that I used to work for a GLBT-rights organization, that I haven’t written about this topic before. Then again, perhaps that’s because in the circles I move in, it’s just not a controversial issue. Everyone understands that equal marriage is quite simply the right thing to do, and that those who oppose it are either trogolodytes or politicians trying to appeal to troglodytes. (And yes, this issue is another one of Obama’s shortcomings.) There is, quite simply, no remotely plausible argument against it. 

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Tags: Constitution, equal marriage, GLBT rights, polling, relationships

On the matter of worthy military traditions, and (by implication) their opposite:

“Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner]. . . I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause… for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country.” 

– General George Washington, charge to the Northern Expeditionary Force, Sept. 14, 1775 

Tags: George Washington, military, torture

Where did we leave off? 

I was writing about the difficulty of finding something meaningful to say in the wake of all the full-time, professional political bloggers out there. Too often I feel like I’m just offering a synthesis of what others have said, rather than any new insight.

Perhaps I’m holding myself to an arbitrarily high standard. Posting seems easier on political discussion forums, where I can just spout off some quick impressions of the issue of the day without necessarily worrying about providing proper background and context for everything, and where the ebb and flow of responses from other posters guides the structure and flow of the discussion, rather than having to organize it entirely on my own. Nonetheless, I ramble on… 

Thus:  I was also writing about the political environment in which the Obama administration operates, and the political pressures that have led the president to make some decisions that are very disappointing in the eyes of civil libertarians, and indeed of concerned citizens in general. Which, in the wake of events this past week relating to the disposition of prisoners at Guantanamo and elsewhere, leads us to the perplexing questions:

Why has Barack Obama backtracked so quickly from so many of the progressive policy expectations of his supporters?

and, moreover,

WHY does the mass media keep treating Dick Cheney as a credible public figure?

One of these questions may seem deeply relevant, the other facile… but the answers are connected at a deep level.

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Tags: blogging, climate, Congress, conservatism, Constitution, Dick Cheney, energy, Guantanamo, health care, international, journalism, libertarianism, media, Obama, Reid, Republicans, torture