Houston Democrats

Just a few days ago, Washington Post media reporter and CNN's host of "Reliable Sources," Howard Kurtz, rushed to legitimize the rightwing bloggers' assertion that the Shiavo memo was a Democratic "dirty trick," drawing comparisons to Dan Rather and the TANG documents. Now that Republican Senator Mel Martinez's staffer has admitted authorship of the memo, I notice that Mr. Kurtz does not seem quite as vociferous in correcting the record. I hope that some of you will join me in following Marc's link to the Washington Post and registering a complaint about the continuing bias of Mr. Kurtz's coverage.

I hope I'm not being too much of a "Johnny-One-Note," but I saw another article today about the Shiavo debacle and Tom DeLay, etc., which blames the Democrats for a failure of democracy! This one is by Joe Klein in Time Magazine. Here is my letter to the editors of Time. I think I got a little too hot and longwinded! Maybe some of my fellow Dems out there might read the article and write a better, more succinct letter to Time:

Time Editors:

In his column entitled "A New Idea for Democrats: Democracy," Mr. Joe Klein displays little understanding of the Constitution. I suggest that he spend less of his free time rereading the faintly amusing but profoundly trivial Primary Colors and try curling up with a copy of the Constitution and the Federalist Papers (each is available at Half Price Books for under $2). Mr. Madison has some extremely interesting things to say about the separation of powers and the three branches of government, as well as the federal system.

Moreover, does Mr. Klein not realize the mind-boggling irony of the title of his column? The Democrats need to try democracy? Excuse my faulty memory, but I thought it was the Republicans who called in the energy industry lobbyists to write the energy legislation and the credit card predators to write the bankruptcy legislation, not to mention the pharmaceutical companies to write the Medicare prescription drug legislation. Of course, being born and reared right here in the great state of Texas, I also believe it was Republican Governor George W. Bush who signed the Texas Futile Care Law (with the health care industry writing the legislation), thus "erring on the side of life," unless perchance the family in question lacks the ability to pay: yes, that was a stellar example of democracy at work. In fact, that Texas law led to the death of a six-month-old baby here in Houston, contrary to his mother's wishes, while Bush, DeLay, and Frist were busily bloviating in the halls of the federal government about the Shiavo family tragedy, in direct opposition to the convictions of the democratic (small "d") majority in this nation.

While accusing Democrats of dropping the ball on democracy, Mr. Klein totally ignores the complicity of journalists of his ilk in the greatest failure of democracy in this new century. Mr. Klein and his colleagues could not beat the Republican drums of war fast enough, even though a clear democratic majority in this country was initially in disagreement with Bush's plans for a pre-emptive war in Iraq. (Our homegrown Houston journalist Mickey Herskowitz revealed that Bush had discussed plans to garner "political capital" with a "little war" against Saddam Hussein long before the 2000 election; why couldn't someone with the journalistic resources of Joe Klein or Judith Miller pursue this lead?) Klein and the intimidated and/or beholden journalistic pack could not bother themselves to inform the American public of the reality behind Bush's overblown threats of WMDs and Iraqi ties to Osama Bin Laden. That a large percentage of the American public still believes that WMDs were actually found and that Iraqis were directly involved in 9/11 -- and that these same Americans participated in the democratic process, basing life and death decisions on this misinformation --I lay this at the feet of Mr. Klein's craven cohort of journalists and pundits.

And one more thing, as a Democrat, I feel that my party is much more consistent in its support of a full range of culture of life issues than the hypocritical, grandstanding Republicans. Nor do I see any inherent contradiction between the culture of life and the culture of law. Laws are made by democratically elected legislatures, and we expect these laws to flow from the moral values of the people. One part of this lawmaking process is the filibuster, a time-honored tradition of the Senate, a legislative body whose mission is to allow careful deliberation before passing laws that deeply affect people's lives. Mr. Klein wants Democrats to ignore the Constitution. For all the wrong reasons, he opines that Democrats should listen to thoughtful conservatives. Yet, for all the right reasons, that is exactly what the Democrats were doing when they listened to the conservative Republican judges who repeatedly ruled on the laws involved in the Shiavo case. This was a confirmation of laws made by the people's representatives to deal with "vexing social issues." It was also a confirmation of the state vs. national checks and balances that our Constitution provides, not a failure of democracy.