My Page: Joan McCarter
Diary of a Mad Voter: Joan McCarter
On Not Winning the Pulitzer
It's not that the Idaho Statesman didn't do a public service by investigating the private life of Sen. Larry Craig, sending the paper's key political columnist on a wild goose chase for several months last year, through Washington D.C.'s gay bars, armed with a mug shot of the Senator.
And it had to have been a bitter blow to that columnist, Dan Popkey, to have his months of solid work spiked by his editors and then to be scooped by a D.C. insider paper when the Senator, of all things, decided to secretly plead guilty after getting caught in a sex sting in a men's room in a Minneapolis airport. So, while I do respect Dan Popkey for the yeoman's work he did in that investigation, and I'm glad that his work did finally see the light of day, I'm just a little bit relieved for all of us that the Statesman was just a runner up this year for that vaunted prize. If for nothing else than for the 144 year-old Statesman itself.
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Diary of a Mad Voter: Joan McCarter
Life in a Surveillance Society
In 1759, Ben Franklin may or may not have written "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." There's some dispute over whether he penned those lines or borrowed them for a publication. But there's no disputing that this concept of individual liberty balanced with collective security was at the very foundation of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
It's a balancing act that's been more than put to the test in post-9/11 America, and the balance has most definitely shifted away from personal liberty.
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Diary of a Mad Voter: Joan McCarter
Real ID? Just Say No
There's a deadline looming for us, one that seems tedious and bureaucratic--something for our legislatures and governors to be dealing with and not bothering us. But a few governors, and a few legislatures, want us to start thinking about it. They're right.
On March 31, all states are supposed to tell the government whether they are going to comply with Real ID, an unfunded mandate program that requires states to replace drivers licenses with what are essentially a national identification card. That card would have a chip including, at a minimum, name, birth date, sex, ID number, a digital photograph, address, and a "common machine-readable technology" that Homeland Security will decide on. That's at a minimum.
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Diary of a Mad Voter: Joan McCarter
Pharmaceutical Report Begs the Question ‘What’s in Your Water?’
A few weeks ago I wrote on the always hot-button issue of water politics in the West, and a framework developed by Western Progress for divvying up the precious resource. They need to go back to the drawing board and figure in a new problem in the whole configuration -- how to make that water safe.
Editor's note: Joan McCarter's weekly blogs are part of NewWest.Net/Politics' "Diary of a Mad Voter" feature, a group blog, published in partnership with the Denver Post's Politics WestFor more columns check in with www.newwest.net/madvoter.
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Diary of a Mad Voter: Joan McCarter
Demopalooza in Boise
Following on the heels of Boise's record breaking Democratic caucus, Saturday's Frank Church Banquet was a sold-out success, and so sold-out that an overflow room had to be set up to meet the demand. Chatting with a young couple after the event, it was encouraging to hear that the excitement of the massive Obama rally (well, massive by Idaho standards) on February 3rd, then the crush of the caucus on February 5th, nudged them to actually declare themselves Democrats and pony up $75 for the ticket. These twenty-somethings might also have been curious to see what blogger Markos Moulitsas could have to say about Idaho.
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Diary of a Mad Voter: Joan McCarter
Water Politics from the Ground Up
Water in the West has become like the weather, everybody talks about it but nobody does much about it. The political hot potato has become no less cool, though definitely less violent, since farmers and ranchers squared off over a century ago.
Into the breach step the folks at Western Progress with a new agenda for water in the Mountain West. They’ve issued a report [pdf] authored by water law experts Denise Fort and Lawrence MacDonnell and informed by a bevy of water and policy experts.
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Diary of a Mad Voter: Joan McCarter
It Takes a Westerner
A healthy distrust of government is one of the things that has been most lacking in the long years of the Bush administration. The last time we saw a president with imperial aims, it was the 1970s and we had a Western senator willing to stand up to a government that overstepped its bounds. It's time to rekindle a little of that rebellious spirit in the name of the Constitution.
Editor's note: Joan McCarter's weekly blogs are part of NewWest.Net/Politics' "Diary of a Mad Voter" feature, a group blog, published in partnership with the Denver Post's Politics West intended give a glimpse into the hearts and minds of several independent-minded voters and thinkers in the Rocky Mountain West in the '08 election cycle. For more columns check in with www.newwest.net/madvoter. And for more information on each of the bloggers, click here.
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Diary of a Mad Voter: Joan McCarter
What Does Idaho’s Super Tuesday Mean?
In last week's Democrats-only caucus 21,224 Idahoans turned out. In 2004, 4,920 caucused. This is possibly the first time in Idaho history that there was a Democratic caucus in every one of Idaho's 44 counties. What's going on?
Editor's note: Joan McCarter's weekly blogs are part of NewWest.Net/Politics' "Diary of a Mad Voter" feature, a group blog, published in partnership with the Denver Post's Politics West intended give a glimpse into the hearts and minds of several independent-minded voters and thinkers in the Rocky Mountain West in the '08 election cycle. For more columns check in with www.newwest.net/madvoter. And for more information on each of the bloggers, click here.
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Diary of a Mad Voter: Joan McCarter
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Tuesday in the non-California West
This is a helluva way to pick a president. A handful of people in largely irrelevant states (not that I don't love you, Iowa and New Hampshire, but sheesh) are pandered to for months on end. The candidates move in, steeping themselves in every nuance of these states' local concerns. Then comes the insanity of Super Tuesday, this year even more insane than usual with 22 states weighing in, when these candidates who have only been tested by a bunch of frozen northerners and a national media with short attention spans and the inability to grasp nuance. So a narrative shaped by those handful of voters gets forced on the rest of us.
Unless you're California. The giganticness of California's delegate count alone means that they'll get plenty of face time with the candidates and their surrogates, while the rest of us get scraps of attention. For the Mountain West, that's particularly true. Understandable, to an extent, since the regular delegate (as opposed to super delegate) count in these states is relatively insignificant--246 at stake for the Democrats, 189 for the Republicans. California is the western state that counts (though the rest of the West doesn't really claim it--it's an entity unto itself) and the state out here that gets the lion's share of attention once those cold states are dispensed with.
So that could be why the two candidates who actually paid attention to us out here will likely end up winning the West today.
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Diary of a Mad Voter: Joan McCarter
Public Lands Tag Sale
Get ready, folks. It's finally the waning year of the Bush administration, and they're going to go out in style. No oil field shall go untapped. No roadless area undisturbed. No threatened or endangered species unmolested. They've got just 11 short months to put their mark on what's left of the nation's wilderness, and they're coming for it.
Editor's note: Joan McCarter's weekly blogs are part of NewWest.Net/Politics' "Diary of a Mad Voter" feature, a group blog, published in partnership with the Denver Post's Politics West intended give a glimpse into the hearts and minds of several independent-minded voters and thinkers in the Rocky Mountain West in the '08 election cycle. For more columns check in with www.newwest.net/madvoter. And for more information on each of the bloggers, click here.
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