Truespeak

"...they [conservatives] love America the way a four-year-old loves her mommy. Liberals love America like grown-ups. To a four-year-old, everything Mommy does is wonderful and anyone who criticizes Mommy is bad. Grown-up love means actually understanding what you love, taking the good with the bad, and helping your loved one grow. Love takes attention and work and is the best thing in the world."


Al Franken

Hopefully the Democratic party will make good on Al's statement. They could start by making sure that these people get what they deserve.

The sons of a first-term congresswoman and Milwaukee's former acting mayor were among five Democratic activists charged Monday with slashing the tires of vans rented by Republicans to drive voters and monitors to the polls on Election Day.

Sowande Omokunde, son of Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Wis., and Michael Pratt, the son of former Milwaukee acting mayor Marvin Pratt, were among those charged with criminal damage to property, a felony that carries a maximum punishment of 3 1/2 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

The activists are accused of flattening the tires on 25 vehicles rented by the state Republican Party to get out the vote and deliver poll watchers November 2.

Also charged were Lewis Caldwell and Lavelle Mohammad, both from Milwaukee, and Justin Howell of Racine.

The Democratic party needs to get in front of this one. If they hesitate (and by hesistate I mean wait more than twenty-four hours), the Republicans will quickly spin these people into the poster-children for all Democrats. If we want to be the party of the values we claim, we can't tolerate this from anyone, including one of our own. If these people are found to be guilty, I hope they receive the maximum punishment allowable by law. Not only are they breaking the law, but they are besmirching the face of the party they are supposed to be advancing.

And if that wasn't bad enough, there's also this.

A state lawmaker who heads a committee on child welfare has acknowledged that he lives in separate homes with two women whose children he fathered.

Sen. John Ford testified in a Juvenile Court hearing in November as part of his defense in a child support case over increasing his financial support of another child he fathered with a third woman, The Commercial Appeal newspaper of Memphis reported Sunday.

The Memphis Democrat has tried to make use of a law he authored that keeps court-ordered support lower when a father is financially responsible for other children.

In the hearing, Ford said he lives some days with ex-wife Tamara Mitchell-Ford and the three children they had together. On others, he said, he stays with his longtime girlfriend, Connie Mathews, and their two children.

While what he is doing isn't necessarily illegal, it provides fodder for the wingnuts that like to paint liberals as morally corrupt. It's another instance of one of our own shooting us in the foot. If we continue to give the conservatives this type of red meat we are going to find it very difficult to break their hold on the morals issue.

By getting out in front of both of these issues, we can show that we are against any type of amoralistic behavior even when it involves someone from our own party. This is something the Republicans can't claim as long as they are going to try and bend the rules to protect people like Tom DeLay. Their allegience to one of their own based on party affiliation compromises their moralistic claim. By doing what is right in the two aforementioned situations, we can begin to draw a stark contrast between us and them. We believe that everyone should be held to a higher standard of behavior. They believe that they are immune to that standard.

We are, of course the party of higher morals, but we have to start acting like it. It's never too early to start.