What?! Another stinkin' repeat?

Yeah, sorry. I just finished a rather large project last week, and was out of town over the weekend for a friend's wedding. So, cranking out a new cartoon was simply beyond my capabilities.

The next one will kick ass, I promise.

July 25, 2005 cartoon

The Kirkpatrick Sale article I refer to is here.

Roberts

I think what I find most concerning about him is not his stance on abortion (which Media Matters points out may not be what the media says it is), it's the fact that he co-wrote the amicus brief on behalf of the government in Lee v. Weisman (1991). Roberts argued that it did not violate the First Amendment's Establishment Clause for a public school to sponsor a prayer at graduation ceremonies, in part because the ceremony was voluntary. The Court disagreed, and correctly found that the prayer was not "voluntary" in any real sense, and that the practice was coercive.

O'Connor sided with the majority opinion, and was a swing vote in that decision.

Bush has given every indication up to this point that he intends to only pick people who will be dutiful soldiers in his Evangelical crusade, who will do whatever it takes to further blur the distinction between our Jeffersonian democracy and government by theocracy.

"George W. Strangelove"

Dubya's approach to checking nuclear proliferation around the globe? Encouraging it:

President Bush agreed yesterday to share civilian nuclear technology with India, reversing decades of U.S. policies designed to discourage countries from developing nuclear weapons.

Norman Solomon points out that this makes it difficult for us to convincingly question the merits of nuclear fundamentalism in Iran, and reminds us:

A civil atomic pact, signed in 1957, initiated nuclear assistance from the United States to Iran. In 1972, President Richard Nixon urged the Shah to build nuclear power plants. The Shah fell in 1979, but after many delays the Islamic Republic resumed work on the nuclear plant near Bushehr, a project that is currently being denounced in Washington.

Now it gets messy...

While The NY Times reports that it was Novak who told Rove that Plame was with the CIA, and Novak says all his sources came to him, E&P says we are now into "what did the President know and when did he know it" territory.

Of course, we've been there with about 4 or 5 Bush administration scandals already, so who knows if anybody will actually be held accountable.

Mallard Fillmore

Apparently, the creator of this unfunny piece of crap just realized there was a parody of his cartoon in Jon Stewart's book, America, and he's out for payback. His response? Drawing Jon Stewart with a giant Jewish-charicature hook nose.

The kids at Comics Journal Message Board have a pretty good thread going about this.

I wish I could get away with drawing a cute little propaganda-spewing duck over and over, with a lame joke at the end that only a 5 year-old could appreciate... but I guess I have higher expectations of myself.

Rover

As the Wall Street Journal dutifully strains to spin the Rove scandal (like a good little mouthpiece), the LA Times reminds us that Rove was fired from George H.W. Bush's second presidential campaign because of suspicions that he leaked information to Robert Novak.

The Times article supplies additional fascinating backstory:

But Rove developed an increasingly close relationship with the president's son George — a relationship that began on a spring day in 1973, when the elder Bush asked Rove to pick up his son at Washington's Union Station to give the visiting Harvard Business School student the keys to the family car. By Rove's own description, young Karl Rove was awed at first sight.

Sometimes these cartoons just write themselves...

Upcoming Pub's

I haven't had a chance to update my "About" information recently, but I've confirmed that Fighting Words will be seen in at least two coming anthologies. The one that will probably appear first is called the "Weird Illustrated" (published by Rubber Chicken Funnies), a collection of comics that are, well, "weird." While I don't consider my cartoons inherently weird, I do think they are subversive, which I suppose is good enough.

The other collection is Ted Rall's third installment of the Attitude series, which should be big for me. I believe the first two installments had a pretty wide circulation, and they featured all the familiar names in alternative political cartooning -- Tom Tomorrow, Jen Sorensen, Lloyd Dangle, Ruben Bolling, Andy Singer, David Rees, Keith Knight, Aaron Magruder... and, of course, Ted himself.

Attitude 3 will probably start appearing on shelves in the Spring of 2006.

Disgraceful

Bush, Blair Deadlocked on Global Warming:

Bush today refused to budge, warning that such mandatory standards could cripple the U.S. economy and prove feckless if big polluters like China and India are not included, which they are not under Kyoto.

...

If a consensus is not reach by 2012, when the Kyoto agreement expires, "then we've got a real problem for the future," Blair warned. The prime minister's decision to talk about concrete solutions next decade represents a setback to Blair and others who believe scientists warning of a dangerous rise in the earth's temperature are right.

Those "others who believe" would be the 94 percent of Americans who say we need to curb greenhouse gas emissions now.

Meanwhile, China and India have lined up behind Kyoto, leaving just us (or rather, just Bush).

Judith Miller

The judge makes a great point:

(Chief U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan) said Miller was mistaken in her belief that she was defending a free press. He stressed that the government source she "alleges she is protecting" had already waived her promise of confidentiality. He said her source may have been providing information not to shed light on government secrets but to try to discredit an administration critic."This is not a case of a whistle-blower" revealing secret information to Miller about "dangers at a nuclear power plant," Hogan said. "It's a case in which the information she was given and her potential use of it was a crime. . . . This is very different than a whistle-blower outing government misconduct."

Karl Rove (assuming it was him) wasn't doing anything more noble or righteous than engaging in a personal attack against Joe Wilson and his wife. He violated federal law for the purpose of political payback.

So, if a serial killer phones up a reporter, gives his name and address, and says he is about to claim another victim, that reporter can't be expected to divulge his source? I don't think the courts have ever acknowledged that level of professional confidentiality, not even for doctors or lawyers.

Plus, Judith Miller is certainly no paragon of journalistic integrity.

Pseudo-Fascism

This has been out for a while, but Seattle-area writer David Neiwert recently did an excellent six-part series, titled "The Rise of Pseudo Fascism."

As I recall, this piece was what originally inspired me to do the "Fuzzy Bunny" series.

July 4, 2005 cartoon

Because my cartoon is so literary, sometimes I get a little nervous about providing sufficient attribution when I directly quote someone else's writing. It is a cartoon, however, so this can be a little difficult. I am usually presenting the quote in the context of a conversation between two characters, which I would like to read and sound... conversational. At the same time, it's not exactly practical to footnote a comic strip.

I'm guessing the blog might be able to help me here, in terms of full disclosure. In today's strip, the "one author" I am referring to is Bill Moyers, of whom I am a huge fan. The Owl character is loosely based on him (I'm hoping he wouldn't be too upset about the word "old"... that doesn't refer specifically to him, it just sounded right for the character). I went to see Moyers speak at the Paramount Theater in Seattle a few weeks ago, and the quotes and basic argument came out of some notes I took. He is an outstanding public speaker... if he is giving a presentation in your area, I highly recommend seeing it.

The idea of "identifying up" came from a good article from a couple weeks ago by Arlie Hochschild.

O'Connor resigning

Slate has a list of possible Bush nominees, while Atrios suggests this guy.