Democratic Party Politics

Submitted by FreedomDemocrats on Mon, 2008-07-14 05:53.

Some blog posts of interest:

Rojas at The Crossed Pond takes the liberal blogosphere out to the woodshed over Kansas Democratic Senatorial nominee Jim Slattery. The liberal blogosphere is just focusing on "more Democrats" on this race and not on the "better Democrats" that they often parade around as an added slogan when taking on the Joe Liebermans of the party. Slattery won't win, but it does seem like a waste of resources.

Matt Stoller, typically a pretty partisan progressive, takes on the old school in the Democratic Party on the issue of transparency and the internet.

Transparency is one of the few places where there really is a bipartisan alliance. Newt Gingrich created Thomas, the web resources for legislation, and the Republicans do have a history of advocating for open government and new models of communication, including C-Span, direct mail, and web communication. Some progressive Democrats do as well, but the old school top-down Democrats elected under the good government influences of the 1970s tend towards restricting political participation.

. . .

For instance, when all data can move over any wire, it makes no sense to regulate cable TV and telephone wires as if they serve different purposes, as Google lobbyist Rick Whitt argues in his seminal work on modern communications policy. When email is costless, it makes no sense to regulate it as if it is mail. When the cost of political participation drops to near zero, it makes more sense for the government to encourage more participation than try to restrict the participation of labor and corporations. In other words, it's time to reject the entire framework of the 1970s good government groups and their approach to campaign finance reform. These groups are wrong, they always have been wrong, and instances like members of Congress being unable to tweet or use video on their official websites are only the most obvious places where their stupidity and elitism shows itself.

Emphasis added.

Finally, Nevada Democrat Jill Derby comes out in support of the Supreme Court's ruling in Heller. The Nevada state chapter of the ACLU similarly comes out in support of the individual right to bear arms, the first state chapter to do so. Liberal blogs freak out.

Really haven't seen that much liberal freak out over Heller

#6515 On Tue, 2008 07 15 06:11 ka1igu1a said,

I think the Dem Party has pretty much evolved toward acceptance, or at least tolerance, of individual right interpretation of the 2nd Amendment.

As a member of the ACLU, it never really bothered me that National takes a collective view of the 2nd amendment. There are plenty of other organizations geared specifically toward 2nd amendment rights.

In terms of Open Left, it has been fairly clear they take a dim view of government mucking up Hayekian spontaneous orders when it comes to political organization and communication, but they, of course, are incapable of extending that principle to it's logical conclusion. A market is a market, and Price=Information.