Hall Of Shame

I mentioned yesterday that Rep Jose Serrano was rather upset he's in CodePink's Hall of Shame, and today some of the action I'm missing involves hand-delivering some new certificates to Congresscritters:

Medea's hands are the perfect size for some bloody handprints.

Scores of certificates set out to dry this AM before the gang headed up to the Hill.

While I'd rather be out and about, it was actually kinda fun pretending to grade exams here at the house, watching the hearing on Pakistani elections and seeing my new friends behind Tom Daschle and the other panelists, and texting them about whether I could see their signs and such. Before that I'd gotten a text from Des saying she (and later I learned Gael, too) had been detained yet again in Rayburn. Gael was subsequently barred from Conyers' public hearing because of "dress code violations" that the cop could not specify.

I guess compared to the insult of telling Medea that she'd be arrested if she held up her copy of the Constitution in the freaking JUDICIARY committee hearing it's a minor thing, but it was yet another example of harassment by the apparatus. The incident came after we know all the cops have gotten word that Des does not, in fact, have a stay away order and that Gael always carries a letter from her Congressperson (escapes me at the moment) that gives her permission to be on Capitol grounds.

Do the Pinkers fail to observe the usual rules of decorum sometimes? Absolutely. So the hell what (note: on my personal blog I generally use much "stronger language" that I learned from Dick Cheney)?

Being polite has gotten us nowhere, except to the disastrous point where we now have a criminal Executive fully aided and abetted by a compliant, complicit Legislature. That's juuuuust a tad more impolite than holding up a pink sign or--GASP!--demanding answers and accountability from our government employees.

A funny moment in a Foreign Relations committee hearing over on the House side yesterday morning: Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA46) was talking about how the surge was a huge success and if the American people really wanted out of Iraq, well by golly Congress would've already gotten us out--since Congress hadn't done so, clearly The People want to stay! He then got rather petulant and asked the Chair, Bill Delahunt (D-MA10), to request that the audience refrain from "gesturing" while he spoke, which he said was rude. I admit it could have been my fault because after I heard his load of codswollop I began to scratch my nose in a rather vigorous, exaggerated fashion with one particular finger (note to self: cover Method 30 in this week's 198 Sundays post).

But what is war if not the ultimate rude gesture?

As Ellen noted to me while we waited for resolution of Des' false arrest yesterday, the old AIDS awareness slogan "Silence = Death" really holds true today regarding Iraq. Politeness is just another form of silence, and it equals death for millions of Iraqis and thousands of Americans. It also equals 2 trillion dollars wasted that could be spent on universal healthcare and energy independence. It equals undemocratic government.

So, how will you be impolite today?

ntodd