Christian Leftist

Actually, I loved CBS’s montage of the Inauguration Day as well, but they cut off Aretha Franklin’s last note on that one for Katie Couric to say goodnight. WTH? Do it like Brian did, only do a longer version, people. Hello!

I tried to watch and tape all three of the major network’s evening news broadcasts yesterday. I think the best overall was NBC’s, which makes me angry because I only taped half of ABC’s and all of CBS’s. Once again. I picked the wrong network to record. D’oh. Anyway, here’s a clip from an amazing day.

Obama just won the presidential election.

I think I’m crying, but it’s all kind of a blur at this point, as I’m a bit tipsy, exhausted and disbelieving all at once. I just can’t believe it.

Our national nightmare is finally over. Now comes the dawn.

At long last, we are ready to meet it.

You’d think that any politician convicted of seven criminal felony charges and facing significant jail time, possibly for the rest of his natural life, would quit while he was behind and call it a day.

But this is not just any old politician. This isn’t even any old senator.

Oh no. This is Senator Ted Stevens of the “Alaska Is Always First!” persuasion we’re talking about, and Sen. Stevens is the kind of guy who would rise from the dead just so he could shoot at noisy neighborhood kids to scare them off his lawn.

Now that the longest-serving Republican senator ever is a seven-time convicted felon, he’s decided not only to appeal the conviction, on which he has several legitimate reasons to do so, he’s also refusing to drop out of his senate race to re-election.

Before the conviction announcement by the jury yesterday, Stevens was in a virtual dead heat with Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich last week according to a poll done there. It’s unclear whether Sen. Stevens will win re-election, considering he is only the fifth U.S. Senator to ever be convicted of a felony while in office.

The verdict was a huge blow to Stevens, who had pushed through his lawyers for a speedy trial (and what he hoped was a speedy acquittal) before Election Day. Now, with seven days left before November 4th, there isn’t enough time to have an appeal approved before voters go to the polls to decide his fate.

Just this past Sunday, Stevens’s attorneys were expressing impatience and frustration at the dismissal and replacement of one juror with an alternate after the juror’s mother died and she cut off contact with the judge. They were concerned that the verdict would not arrive soon enough. With the results the opposite of what Stevens’s team had wanted, one can assume they are regretting the decision to request a speedy trial.

The real kicker? Today, the press announced that Alaska Governor and GOP Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin has disavowed his actions, Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell is too worried about losing his own seat in a re-election bid to care much, and even Arizona Senator and GOP Presidential Candidate John McCain says Stevens should resign.

You know it’s going to be a bad week when the head of your party and that party’s presidential candidate says you should call it a day and go home.

To top off the ludicrousness of the situation, Stevens probably can’t even vote for himself in the election. That’s right: Alaska law says that convicted felons cannot vote until their sentences are served and completed.

However, there’s apparently no law that says convicted felons can’t run for Congress. Irony, pinch me, please. I think my brain just left the building, and I want it back.

Bring On the Fashion Police

My advice to voters in this election is this: if you wear campaign buttons, stickers or t-shirts on November 4th, bring a change of clothes. In general, ‘passive electioneering’ is legal on a county-by-county basis. Although the Supreme Court would probably overturn an outright ban on personal opinions covering one’s person, your knowledge of the law won’t help you to vote if poll officials deem you to be disturbing the peace or disrupting the political process. It’s great to make a legal stand — but the chances of winning a court case on civil rights may well depend on who you elect as our next president, so weigh your priorities carefully.

In Pennsylvania, for example, there is pending litigation on ‘passive’ and ‘active electioneering.’ Two poll workers filed a lawsuit against PA state because they want labels, pins, logos and slogans promoting specific campaigns to fall under the label of ‘passive electioneering’ and therefore be prohibited, even though that practice is not technically illegal if people wearing signs or advertisements make no efforts to influence peole inside the polls other than wearing political items. This follows an earlier decision by the PA State Supreme Court that says that poll works should use discretion and decide in each county what constitutes ‘active electioneering.’ The poll workers feel that the vague language forces them to be fashion police.

Hey, poll workers? Before you start yanking people’s pins off their lapels, you might want to enforce the law by keeping all of those taped yard signs off of the front of the church where I votes, because I know that’s within a hundred feet of the voting booths, and no one is standing there wearing them all day.

Voter Suppression

In Lake County, Indiana, voters might have had drive more than an hour to get to the polls early if it weren’t for a federal court appeal that lost on October 6th. Early voting is normally only allowed in a caounty clerk’s office. Around the county center, Crown Point, there are three suburbs along Lake Erie with more than 40 percent of the county’s total population that are more than an hour’s driving distance from that office. Although voters were allowed to go to “satellite” voting offices during the primaries, on Septermber 24th, two Republican election board officials voted against opening up satellite voting centers. The measure passed 3-2, but the county Republican Party argued that state law requires a unanimous vote to approve satellite voting, and they vowed to sue. The county Democratic Party responded that voting centers located in a county clerk’s office don’t fall under such jurisdiction. It was one big mess until a judge in federal court ruled that the early satellite voting could take place.

WINNERS: early voters.