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The liberal public interest outfits rushed to the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify on the theme that John Ashcroft, Bush's nominee to run the Justice Department, is athwart the national consensus, "too extreme" to be confirmed as U.S. attorney general, as Ralph Neas of People for The American Way put it.

This alleged athwartness is attributed to Ashcroft's Christian fundamentalism, support for the Second Amendment and imputed racism. Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority has taken the same tack: "Women's organizations are justifiably outraged over Bush's appointment of right wing, anti-women's rights extremists. Both Ashcroft and [Wisconsin governor Tommy] Thompson [Bush's nominee to run Health and Human Services (HHS)] want to criminalize abortion and make it a felony."

Among other malfeasances, Ashcroft is charged with the liberals as being the driving force behind "charitable choice," the contracting-out of federal functions to private religious organizations not covered under federal anti-discrimination law.

It was a remarkable comment that passed without notice. After interviewing the new White House chief of staff, a network anchor bade him farewell. "All right, Andy Card," said CNN's Judy Woodruff, "we look forward to working with you, to covering your administration."

If major news outlets were committed to independent journalism, Woodruff's statement on national television Jan.19 would have caused quite a media stir -- as a sign of undue coziness with power brokers in Washington. But it was far from conspicuous.

Woodruff's remark was matter-of-fact. Warm collaboration is routine. Many reporters work closely with each new crew of top government officials.

Leading journalists and spinners in high places are accustomed to mutual reliance. That's good for professional advancement. But the public's right to know is another matter.

Once, back when I was just a young piglet, I lived with my daddy and mommy in the basement of our house on the near eastside. My dad said good-bye to me every morning before he left for work at the community college. I knew he worked there because he took me to visit a couple of times. One time a little boy there saw me and cried “Look, it’s a plig!” and another time, well, I wasn’t used to elevators so I made a little mess. Anyway, one day after the Big Guy left, I found the back basement door open and ran out into the yard. It wasn’t hard to snout the fence open.

Being the adventurous, impulsive pig that I was, I started to follow my daddy’s trail to school. Needless to say, mommy became hysterical when she saw me high-tailing it down the alley and lured me back with some apples. I shiver to think what would have happened to me if I’d become a statistic that day. Unfortunately lots of other animals think they’re doing the right thing when they leave their house, and become lost.

I also heard of a little pot-bellied pig who was wrapped in a blanket and left in field with a note, “Please take care of me.” Now there’s hope for pets in these situations.

When you mention Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan together, people don’t expect to hear the word alliance. In fact, it would be hard to find two well-known people further apart on the political spectrum. Why then talk of alliances?

Ralph Nader controls a virtual empire of interconnected NGOs. Riding the post-Seattle upsurge in activism, one of these groups, Public Citizen has been at the forefront of education and lobbying efforts on “fair-trade” issues around the nation and in Congress.

During the intense lobbying efforts to derail Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PTR) status for China Mike Dolan (Deputy Field Director for Public Citizen) sent an e-mail to Public Citizen’s e-mail listserv entitled “Trade Patriot Buchanan.” Public Citizen coordinated lobbying activities with Buchanan and other right wing forces in a last ditch attempt to keep China out of the WTO.

I do not have personal knowledge of the facts regarding an “alliance” between Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan on trade issues. Since I don’t have anything to offer on the facts of this matter, I won’t try to dispute whether such an alleged alliance actually existed. Even if the “alliance” Mr. Bellow alleges did exist, I offer some thoughts to balance the issue.

Seattle was over a year ago. Since then, Mr. Nader and the Green Party mounted the most-effective third-party campaign for President in the 2000 Campaign. This effort successfully marginalized Mr. Buchanan’s own efforts and prevented him from gaining any kind of media attention for this race. This was the most important anti-Buchanan action of the past year. If Mr. Bellow doubts Ralph Nader’s credentials on “inclusiveness” he should read Nader’s speech to the NAACP from earlier this year - it was an incredible moment.

After a so-called moderate administration that is responsible for incarcerating the highest amount of marijuana offenders in history, averaging one arrest every 30 seconds, a complete right wing administration takes its place. So, when Bill Clinton made the sweet gesture declaring that marijuana should be decriminalized during his last weeks in office, it was a little too late to get thanks from the movement. Bye Bye Bill, “Exhale to the Chief.” It is unclear how much worse the attack on marijuana and marijuana users can get. Bush and his “Persian Gulf Syndrome” cabinet inheriting the Clinton ground war in Columbia is a definite worry. Their plan is to reduce tons of marijuana imported from Columbia to merely pounds and to contaminate or kill marijuana with new eco destroying biological fungicides and herbicides recently laboratory developed in Montana. The new chemicals are much worse than the paraquat of the 1970’s. With this, domestic production will increase and so will arrests and the amount of prisons. One must wonder (sarcastically) if Bush will deploy thousands of snitch subversives into metro areas or begin smart-bombing grow houses and head shops.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Day Three of the Bush Restoration, and the lights are going out in California. Naturally, the Blame Game is afoot, and many and varied are those who are getting the blame dumped on them for this lollapalooza of a mess. "A stupid bureaucratic decision," one Californian told The New York Times, which is really unfair.

"The idiots in the legislature," said another, which is only partly true.

The right wing already has a nominee for blame: the NIMBY forces -- folks who say "not in my backyard" when their friendly neighborhood power company wants to put a new plant next door. Of course, right-wingers don't like power plants in their neighborhoods either, so this is weak stuff. Their alternative is to blame "the environmentalists," apparently for having opposed building a nuclear power plant on the San Andreas Fault.

Actually, if you would like to get a firm grip on this issue, notice who spent millions and millions of dollars to lobby for utilities deregulation, not only through the California Legislature but around the country. It was -- tah-dah! -- the utilities themselves, of course.

We have just witnessed, in the United States, the massive and wholesale theft of the presidency. Yet the fraudulent political dynamics that propelled loser George W. Bush into the White House have happened before. A political philosopher once observed that history always repeats itself twice—the first time as tragedy, and the second time as farce. The seeds of the current electoral debacle are found in the past.

Back in 1876, the Civil War had been over for only eleven years. Black men had finally won the right to vote, but Southern whites were vigorously attempting to regain their power over their state legislatures. Deep sectional antagonisms still divided the nation, with the industrial and commercial North mostly supporting Republicans, and the White South supporting the Democrats. The Republican presidential candidate in 1876 was Rutherford B. Hayes, the governor of Ohio. Hayes was widely viewed as being handicapped by the governmental scandals and corruption during the administration of two-term President Ulysses S. Grant.

To ring in the new year on Tuesday, January 2, five members of the Columbus School Board passed a New Year’s resolution: to destroy the tradition of free speech at school board meetings. The long-standing practice of open public comments at the board meeting is gone; equally shameful is moving the starting time of the meeting from the traditional 5pm to 3pm to block access by working parents. This same board majority ended the practice of weekly board meetings last year at the insistence of the malevolent and wholly unqualified ex-jock new board member Stephanie Hightower. After $130,000 poured into her school board campaign from Chamber of Commerce types, she’s now assumed the board presidency in her second year.

Bill Moss’ comment that Hightower “doesn’t know goose shit from wild honey” is too generous on her educational insights.

Woe is Gore and Lieberman. Woe on Bush and Cheney. Woe for America and its systems of checks and balances, the electoral process, litigation and finally woe for the Jewish community. What the Hell is going on? Can’t any upstanding Republican admit that the fix was in, in Florida? Come on….old machines that require routine cleaning, that hadn’t been cleaned for three years. Butterfly ballots being used in selected counties. State police blocking the single road to the polls from a Black community. Voter intimidation and further, voting tests, Blacks being required to provide two forms of picture identification in some counties. Whoa!

Did anybody seem to notice that the only place the exit polls were wrong is Florida? Did you notice a kind of self assured cockiness in the voice of guvnah’ Bush when it was suggested that the exit polls had given Gore the state? The guvnah’ stated in clear terms that he “rejects the information provided by the networks because he’d been provided other information that he had or will win the state.” Could George W. be sooo stupid that he tipped his hand?