Saturday, November 10, 2007

Copyright condo

Chicago had the copyrighted park; now comes the copyrighted condo:

Rob sez, "Local Chicago architecture critic and condo board member at the Marina city towers (most of you coasters will recognize the buildings from the cover of Wilco's YHF) covers from the inside the board's desire to copyright all aspects of the building - including the name. He points out that they only own the top 2/3rds of the building, did not design or construct the building, are claiming assertion under state law - it goes on from there. Needless to say even smart people can be dumb sometimes and that part of the fallout of this whole RIAA mess is that people are now of the mind that they can use copyright as some form of supplemental income for something they didn't even make and is wholly within the public sphere." ... Link

Why We Fight: Support the writers strike

Amy Sullivan says Hillary’s a “moral conservative”

Amy Sullivan, not unlike Hillary Clinton, has legions of detractors on the left and on the right. She’s a liberal and a Christian, an oxymoron to some on both sides. Her belief that Hillary Clinton is a “moral conservative,” voiced Thursday on Tucker Carlson’s show, is a shining example of why:

TUCKER CARLSON: What are her core beliefs?

AMY SULLIVAN: On foreign policy, she is a little more hawkish than the rest of the Democratic Party, and certainly more than the primary base is. It seems that on social issues, by which I mean kind of welfare and economic issues [economic issues are social issues?], she’s fairly liberal. But she’s a moral conservative. Which is to say that she also gets behind, you know, things like values issues. She’s endorsed a plan to lower abortion rates that actually just passed through the House and Senate conference committee this week.

TUCKER CARLSON: She also has come out in support of partial-birth abortion, against the vast majority of Americans, at least as measured by poll numbers. So that suggests that’s an issue she really believes in.

SULLIVAN: But she also stood up to the choice community a few years ago and declared that abortion was a tragedy.

CARLSON: Hmm. Well, that’s not, I mean, her husband has said the same thing. That’s not really standing up-

SULLIVAN: "Safe, legal and rare," but she was the one who started it, safe, legal and rare first.

CARLSON: Has she ever suggested placing any restriction of any kind on abortion, limiting for instance abortion for sex selection? Or any restriction, of any kind. Ever? I must have missed it. Has she?

SULLIVAN: I think she’s focused more on preventing unwanted pregnancies and providing support for women who are pregnant and want to have their babies but aren’t sure that they can afford it.

Via Mark Finkelstein, a conservative appalled to find “that she’s been a member of "Faithful Democrats" and the "Progressive Faith Media" where her bio states that she formerly served as an "aid" [sic—at least we hope so] to Senator Tom Daschle.”

I’m an atheist in Sullivan’s camp. And just as spelling-empaired too.

Evangelical opportunity coming for Democrats?

The other day the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission at the Southern Baptist Convention, Dr. Richard Land, said on All Things Considered:

NORRIS: Now, even though that evangelical Christians are often painted as a monolithic bloc, how do Democratic or independent evangelicals fit in this picture?

Dr. LAND: Well, the majority of evangelicals do not identify themselves as either Republicans or Democrats. And let me speak now for the constituency I know best, which is the Southern Baptist constituency, which is 16.4 million folks and 43,700 churches. Most of them did not grow up in Republican homes. Most of them have been voting solidly Republican starting with the 1980 presidential election. But they’ve not been doing so because they see themselves as voting Republican. They see themselves as voting pro-life.

And if the Republicans are foolish enough to take the life issue off the table - that bright-line distinction - then they have given the Democrats the license to go hunting for evangelical and conservative social Catholic voters, because they’re not nearly as convinced that the Republican Party is right when it comes to some economic justice issues. They’re not nearly as convinced that the Republican Party is right when it comes to some environmental issues and they’re not nearly as convinced that the Republicans are right when it comes to some of the racial reconciliation issues.

An absolutely fascinating analysis; I just hadn’t thought of it that way. If you remove abortion from the equation, Baptists may align more with Democrats on race, the environment and economic issues. Wow!