Oct. 28, 2006

I spent the last eight days of Israeli-Lebanon war, Aug. 7-14, in Beirut, Lebanon’s capital. I had traveled there as part of a peace delegation from the United States. Our aim was to express solidarity with the people of Lebanon.

Karl Rove, the political vampire of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, surely wishes he could reschedule Halloween to Nov. 7, turning the day we cast our ballots in the midterm elections into a ghoulish orgy of Republican tricks, dirty tricks.

From door-knockers to phone bankers to families sitting around the kitchen table, pre-election conversation reflects a deep unease with the economy.

War questions
Bring them home
Slavery’s legacy
Help still needed
Oops, should have been Hoosiers

On Sept. 23, some 700 people marched on the White House, demanding freedom for the so-called Cuban Five, and over the past few weeks, meetings have been held around the country with the same demand.

Barring an October surprise, the Republican ultra-right is staring at a potential historic defeat on Election Day, one that will create a more favorable environment for labor and its allies to wage the fight for a new agenda. The Republican Party is in emergency mode to save what seats it can.

It is Pat’s birthday on Nov. 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military.

Tomato workers order justice from McDonald’s
Historians hold teach-ins on Iraq war
Illinois schools plan to dump Coke
Law students defend youth against ‘Cocaine’

The right is fond of invoking the views of “the founding fathers,” but on church-state issues they run into a problem: The founding fathers themselves inserted language into the Constitution that prohibited any “religious test” for persons holding federal office, and later added the famous language in the First Amendment forbidding the “establishment of religion.”