Striking at the Empire in Cyberspace

This weekend a titanic political battle is being joined. On Monday, the U.S. Senate will debate the lifetime appointment of Alito to the current swing seat on the Supreme Court, an appointment likely to affect interpretation of Americans' constitutional rights for a generation or more. The Republican-dominated Senate has scheduled a vote to end debate for Monday evening. Their schedule calls for Alito to be confirmed in time to sit in clear camera range for Bush's state of the union speech on Tuesday.

To suspend debate requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate. Last week, Senators Kerry and Kennedy began an attempt to rally Senators to prevent "cloture," the end of debate leading to confirmation, and essentially organize a fillibuster. News media immediately characterized this as a doomed, quixotic effort, and wondered why Senators would risk the label of "obstructionists" in future elections.

Kerry and Kennedy began in a highly interesting way. Apart from the usual means, Kerry sought support from his formidable e-mail army, and both Kerry and Kennedy made direct appeals to the Southpaw blogosphere, especially Daily Kos. Both have posted there, and Kennedy held a conference call with bloggers of the major sites. Kerry has an on-line petition to register opposition to Alito's appointment.

A number of "netroots" and other political organizations have joined the fight, arming thousands with the phone numbers, fax numbers and email addresses of target Senators. All these efforts had enough success (one of my Senators, Dianne Feinstein, announced she was against the filibuster before she announced she was for it) that this weekend is crucial, and what seemed a frustrating exercise is within reach of success. Especially since the Senate's Democratic leader Harry Reid joined it.

The strategy of this fight is significant in that it shows that major Democrats have recognized that the usual news media are no longer a mixed bag of ideological partisanship,and subconscious partisanship towards both parties; plus laziness, ambition and incompetence within a basic structure and tradition of sound journalism based on sound journalistic principles.

They are recognizing that television news is now openly partisan against them, through ideology-driven management and management devoted only to profit, with no respect for sound journalistic principles or practice; plus fearful, subtly corrupt, ambitious, incompetent, pack-and-camp following, richly cynical, intellectually dim and professionally lazy reporters and editors. Print journalism is not far behind.

So they have appealed to the public through the Internet, during this time when the Internet is free. I don't expect it to be in any sense free in the near future, but for now, it offers some political counterbalance to the Empire.

There are partisan political reasons to support the fillibuster, if only to sour The Big Smirk's smirk on Tuesday night, when he can't point to his new Supreme Court pet purring next to his wife. But for all the emphasis on partisan politics in the blogosphere, individuals who participate are often driven by principles and ideals. They are upset at the prospect of Alito changing the Court dynamic to favor expanded totalitiarian power, further decimating rights of non-wealthy, non-corporate Americans, allowing even greater environmental destruction, and overturning Roe v Wade, among other searing issues.

As of today, this is still an uphill battle. So among the exhortations, there is this from Senator Kennedy in his conference call, "You don't ever lose fighting for principle, for what is decent and right. You don't ever lose when you have the power, the force of being correct." This is not idle rhetoric--it comes from a veteran Senator who has endured many slanders and many defeats defending and asserting principled positions. For instance, he has championed universal health care well before any other major political figure still in the fight. Kennedy was virtually a lone voice in the 1980s, and eventually he was instrumental in getting some incremental help for some Americans.

And at Daily Kos, frontpager Armando---whose speciality is law and Supreme Court matters, and who has often returned to precedents and principles in the Lincoln presidency--offers this quote from Abraham Lincoln:

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.

It's a great day when Lincoln can inspire again.