Text of Gore speech, January 16, 2006

On this particular Martin Luther King Day, it is especially important to recall that for the last several years of his life, Dr. King was illegally wiretapped-one of hundreds of thousands of Americans whose private communications were intercepted by the U.S. government during this period.

The FBI privately called King the "most dangerous and effective negro leader in the country" and vowed to "take him off his pedestal." The government even attempted to destroy his marriage and blackmail him into committing suicide.

At barcamp, there was a kind of doofy guy who was arguing (more for the sake of argument, it seemed) that the G-man had the right to tap all international calls as an extension of the practice of x-raying your luggage or search you at the border. This is not a strong argument for two reasons:

1) There's an important difference between searching good and searching information. Searching information amounts to seizure, especially in a digital context. It's one thing to search a shipping container for drugs or plutonium (something we're currently not doing, BTW). It's quite another to read a letter. The contents of a communication, once searched by a government agent -- whether it's a secretary reading a letter or a server archiving an email -- has effectively been seized. The State is now in posession of that data.

2) You can make a case that this should be allowed, that the State should be a party to all international communications. That can be debated on fundimental merits, but what cannot be debated is the notion that this should be an informal process outside any legal channel without oversight, checks and balances. You cannot sustain a democracy if the State is allowed to secretly monitor the Public's communications with impunity.

Unfortunately, in spite of Al Gore's efforts and everything else, I'm not optimistic about the federal government. The Democratic Party is not an organized enough institution to effectively defeat the GOP, even in their scandal-plagued state. Retaking congress, the only real hope for checking the Bush administration's abuses of power, is unlikely from a mechanical perspective. Furthermore, it's unclear that the individual personalities who would attain positions of authority should such an unlikely event come to pass would have the political will to resist the Bush agenda, much less launch the necessary investigation of past abuses. The performance of the Senate Democrats around the Alito hearings has been extremely dissapointing.

There's still a narrow window of opportunity for things to change, but the lack of any real leadership among the Democratic Party makes it unlikely the institution will focus and act in time to sieze the moment.

Sociologists have speculated endlessly on the adolescense of US culture, the way in which the teen market drives so many consumer product and entertainment choices. It's not really all that weird, then, to notice how politics follows that pattern as well, as Mr. Duncan elocutes here:

Watching the bobblehead coverage of the Alito hearings - and, frankly, just about everything else they cover - one comes away think that to them it just doesn't really matter. Court decisions don't matter. Policy doesn't matter. None of this stuff matters. It's just a game played between rival high school football teams and they're just happy to go to the homecoming dance.

Except, I would add, when something does happen, like fanatics blowing up buildings, at which point the highschoolers freak out and run to the Daddy State to tell them what to do and keep them safe.

And then toss in a Daddy State that's willing to manipulate their fear -- the DC craze for survival kits, anyone? -- and voila!

MoveOn needs to get better at messaging. Their ability to raise money and put ads out there makes them relevant, but their actual kung-fu is a little weak.

Here's what I think it boils down to:

• He'll say anything to get a job: this is an important theme for framing the whole hearing process, but currently muddled in MoveOn's ad with the abortion bit. If there's a pivot from abortion it's:
• Privacy. This has the advantage of being the constitutional issue, and having broader general support than "abortion" in particular. It also has strong resonance with the NSA scandal. It's also a decent pivot to:
• Unchecked Presidential power. Why did Scalito get the nomination instead of any of the other fine conservative activists out there? Maybe because what Bush really wants is a justice who will swing the court to authorize his idea that the President is above the law.

Since the major cost here is airtime, not production, in the future it might be smart create a series of ads which share a common theme ("he plays one on TV" is ok, but not a home run) and address two or three points more directly. Not to provide more information, but to repeat the basic message more. People can find the facts online. On TV you want to repeat stuff that sticks, and then repeat it some more.

So if you were to do three ads, it might go:

1. He'll do anything to get a job. Lied on resume. Lied about recusing himself from cases involving Vanguard. Lied about his membership in CAP. He'll say whatever he thinks people want to hear in an interview to get the job.
2. He doesn't believe in a constitutional right to privacy. You can go to the point of saying his legal writing suggests women are the property of their husbands and fathers, but the essential legal point is whether or not a right to privacy exists. If this is what the debate is about, we win.
3. He believes in unchecked Presidential power. Bush is trying to pack the court so he can remain above the law.

Obviously as the hearings go on, the drama will shift and surge, but it's essential that these basic points be repeated by every advocacy group and political organization. Using literally the same language if possible, especially on TV.

Kos gets permission to repost an article from the DC-insider Hotline (which costs huge amounts of money... kinda weird) about my man Howard Dean, the Chairman.

For those of you who splash around in the pisspool of politics, it's a welcome change. Surprise surprise, he's doing what he set out to do and build a much more comprehensive human infrastructure for the Democratic party, and surprise surprise it's getting people involved.

That's a Good Thing.