I post this for my granddaughters, especially the youngest one. She adores Elmo, while her Dad, like his Dad, is a huge Elvis fan.

I ran across this when looking for the link to Burl’s blog for my last post. Thanks for the heads-up, Burl!

Oh, and for comparison purposes, here’s the original song, from 1977. Sorry I couldn’t find a clip featuring the original studio recording, as the song with Elmo most closely tracks that…

In arguing that Penn State shouldn’t take down a statue of Joe Paterno because Happy Valley should not be allowed “to forget its own compliance in a national crime,” a guest columnist in The New York Times this week drew this comparison:

The need to clean history so that the record might reflect our current values, and not our sordid past, is broad. In Columbia, S.C., there stands a statue of Ben Tillman, the populist South Carolina senator who helped found Clemson University and, in his spare time, defended lynching from his august national offices. For years there have been calls to remove Tillman’s statue, emanating from those who think it a shame to continue to honor him. But in a democracy, memorial statues are not simply comments on their subjects, but comments on their makers. That Americans once saw fit to honor a man who defended terrorism from the Senate floor is a powerful statement about our identity and history.

Whereas Tillman’s most spectacular sins were known at the time of his lionization, Paterno’s only later came to light. And yet the central sin that now haunts Happy Valley has long been in evidence — a tragic myopia….

Ta-Nehisi Coates’ mention of Tillman wasn’t the best way to illustrate his point. After all, Paterno is a man whom this generation idolized, and who has fallen into disgrace at the end of his life, and these people who lived through both the glory and the shame are now forced to reassess what they think of him — or not, as their consciences dictate.

Ben Tillman is a whole other sort of mess.

To begin with, most South Carolinians, I’ll venture, don’t know who Ben Tillman was, or that that statue represents him. Until it became my business to know SC politics inside and out — which involved understanding our history — all I knew about him was that when my grandmother was a little girl, he was her neighbor in the Washington area (her father, my great-grandfather, was an attorney for the Treasury Department). Once, he coaxed her to sit on his lap by offering her an apple from his cellar. She asked to see under his eyepatch, but he declined. Her parents, who were from South Carolina, were later appalled that she had come anywhere near that awful man (I suspect they were of the same political persuasion as the founders of The State, which was established for the purpose of fighting the Tillman machine), but she never understood why.

Generations later, when I learned what Tillman was about, I was pretty horrified that she had gotten near him myself.

But walk through the mall and show a picture of his statue to 100 people, and I’m pretty sure far fewer than 50 will be able to tell you much about him.

I have no opinion about Joe Paterno, but of course the Tillman statue should come down. Mr. Coates notion of what to do with the Paterno statue…

Removing the Paterno statue allows Happy Valley to forget its own compliance in a national crime, to expunge its own culpability in its ruthless pursuit of glory. The statue should remain, and beneath it there should be a full explanation of Sandusky’s crimes, Paterno’s role and some warning to all of us who would turn a pastime into a god and elect a mortal man as its avatar.

… would never, ever happen with the Tillman one. The idea that South Carolinians would a) come to form a strong opinion collectively about Tillman, b) have that consensus opinion be one of condemnation, c) agree generally on wording that criticized, even by implication, their ancestors for having admired him enough to put it up, is pretty much beyond the category of things we should hold our breath while waiting for.

Basically, those of us who know who he was should just take it down, with a minimum of fuss, or with no more than a quiet exorcism ceremony. Of course, we’d have to get the approval of the powers that control the State House grounds.

I’ve spent all these years trying to get the flag — a symbol that most South Carolinians at least think they understand — off the grounds, but hey, I’m game. Let’s go for it.

And while I think it’s worth undertaking, I do feel obliged to warn those who help in this enterprise that we would likely encounter lawmakers who previously knew nothing about Tillman, but who, once they learned about him, would be inspired to rise to his defense…

Just wanted to make sure all of you have seen this, which I first saw yesterday:

John McCain took to the Senate floor on Wednesday to repudiate suggestions by his fellow Republican lawmaker, Michele Bachmann, that the family of a longtime aide to secretary of state Hillary Clinton had ties to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.

McCain praised the work and patriotism of Huma Abedin, a State Department employee who has been a constant presence at Clinton’s side. Without mentioning congresswoman Bachmann by name, McCain described the attacks on Abedin, a Muslim, as an example of ignorance and fear that defames the spirit of the nation.

“Huma represents what is best about America: the daughter of immigrants, who has risen to the highest levels of our government on the basis of her substantial personal merit and her abiding commitment to the American ideals that she embodies so fully.” McCain said. “I am proud to know Huma and to call her my friend.”

Bachmann, a member of the House intelligence committee, made the allegations in a June letter to the state department as well as in a letter Wednesday to fellow Minnesota lawmaker, represenative Keith Ellison, a Democrat…

Please watch the video, if you haven’t already seen it. Watch it all, and let its tone and pacing wash over you.

It’s a testament not only to the respective characters of the speaker and his subject, but a painful reminder of how seldom today we hear such graceful, honorable and high-minded speeches in our hyperpartisan, name-calling public sphere.

It is all the more satisfying to hear my kind of senator so gracefully decry the excesses of a politician who is emblematic of what has happened to his own party.

I’d like to hear someone like John McCain give a speech like this in response to someone like Michele Bachmann every day. It would really bolster my faith in our system.

Interesting footnote: McCain ends by saying “Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.” These are not the days of Daniel Webster. Today, not only are too few senators capable of such a speech as this, most of them won’t even sit and listen to one.

Yesterday’s override votes by the House overrode nothing. It takes a 2/3 vote of both chambers to override a veto. This means the legislative branch’s rejection of the governor’s decision has to be pretty resounding, in the nature of a consensus.

Again, I’m following Adam Beam’s blow-by-blow account, since he’s there and I’m not. Here’s what he’s posted so far:

Adam Beam ‏@adambeam

Senate has 51 vetoes to vote on. Each vote takes about 6 minutes. That’s 5 hours, assuming Senators do not talk in between (yeah, right)

Adam Beam ‏@adambeam

Senate taking up arts veto now. Sen. Hayes points out 70% of arts commission money goes to grants for local arts projects ‪#sctweets

Adam Beam ‏@adambeam

Of course, opponents say the other 30 percent goes to administrative costs.

Adam Beam ‏@adambeam

Some questioning Arts Commission director’s $90,000 annual salary. Sen. Lourie asks: “How much does the governor’s chief of staff make?”

Adam Beam ‏@adambeam

Senate overrides Arts Commission veto, 29-10. ‪#sctweets

Adam Beam ‏@adambeam

Senate sustains Haley’s veto of EPSCOR, 25-15. House initially sustained this yesterday, then changed its mind and overrode it. ‪#sctweets

Adam Beam ‏@adambeam

Senate voting on this: http://bit.ly/OOs012 ‪#sctweets

Adam Beam ‏@adambeam

Senate overrides veto of Sea Grant Consortium, 34-7. Vote means the state agency will continue to exist. ‪#sctweets

Adam Beam ‏@adambeam

Arts Commission veto overridden by four votes. They have one more veto on the agenda: $500,000 in grants for local projects. ‪#sctweets

Adam Beam ‏@adambeam

Four vetoes so far. Senate has overturned two, sustained two. ‪#sctweets

Adam Beam ‏@adambeam

Certificate of Need veto is next. This is the process by which hospitals can expand or build new hospitals ‪#sctweets

Adam Beam ‏@adambeam

Senate (barely) overrode Certificate of Need veto last year.

Adam Beam ‏@adambeam

Supporters of Certificate-of-Need say vetoing the funding — but not the law — would cause chaos ‪#sctweets

Adam Beam ‏@adambeam

So far, Senate has overturned $10 million worth of vetoes. They have sustained $344,075 ‪#sctweets

Adam Beam ‏@adambeam

Certificate-of-Need veto overturned, 36-5. Next up: $10 million in one-time money for teacher pay raises. ‪#sctweets

Adam Beam ‏@adambeam

Teacher pay raise veto overturned, 41-2 ‪#sctweets

Adam Beam ‏@adambeam

You can keep track of each veto here: http://bit.ly/LseSNM ‪#sctweets

Andy Shain ‏@andyshain

Follow Gov. Nikki Haley’s running commentary on the budget vetoes here:http://www.facebook.com/NikkiHaley ‪#sctweets

Retweeted by Adam Beam

Adam Beam ‏@adambeam

Senate now reconsidering earlier vote to sustain Veto No. 2. House did the same thing yesterday ‪#sctweets

Adam Beam ‏@adambeam

Veto No. 2 is the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research. It affects colleges and universities. $161,314. ‪#sctweets

Adam Beam ‏@adambeam

While we were at ‪#scgov @NikkiHaley‘s news conference, the Senate went back and changed their votes on a few vetoes. Sneaky.

More later, as it develops. I have to run out to a reception now. Gotta be a Mad Man.

Not much has happened newswise today, so I’m going to hark back to something else I read in this morning’s papers. This is another item from the WSJ, an opinion piece by John McCain, which begins:

The people of Libya have again confounded their critics. Once dismissed by many as al Qaeda fanatics in a tribal backwater, doomed to despotism or chaos, Libya voted on Saturday with a higher turnout than most mature democracies.

International monitors certified the balloting, which I witnessed first-hand in Tripoli. It now appears that Libyans gave plurality support to a centrist political party headed by a U.S.-educated technocrat, Mahmoud Jibril, who then called for a national unity government….

McCain goes on to make the point that we should deepen and strengthen our relationship with this new Libya:

U.S. support will be critical for Libya’s continued success, and it is in our interest to provide it. Libya is strategically located for global trade. It has skilled fighters and shares many of our counterterrorism interests. It has vast natural economic potential, from energy resources, to a pristine coastline, to billions of dollars in former Moammar Gadhafi assets. And it shares our democratic vision for the broader Middle East. With good governance and U.S. support, Libya could punch far above its weight, akin to U.S. partners such as the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Singapore.

Libyans want America to be their partner of choice, and it is time to take our relationship to the next level, starting with the many legacy issues from last year’s revolution….

Finally, he says that what worked in Libya could also work in Syria:

Libya’s experience holds an important lesson for Syria. Those who once insisted that we did not know, could not trust, and should not support the Libyan people are now saying the same about the Syrian people. The two countries are very different, but the ideals that inspired both revolutions are the same. We did the right thing in Libya, and while there is no guarantee that Libyans will succeed, they have a great chance.

It is every bit in keeping with our democratic ideals—and even more in our national interest—to halt the slaughter in Syria and help the Syrian people gain the same chance to succeed that the Libyan people now have…

As usual when McCain talks foreign policy, I tend to agree.

So far, it’s only bulletins, and responsible news agencies are waiting until they’ve actually read and absorbed it all, as indicated by this notice from The New York Times:

The Supreme Court has ruled on President Obama’s health-care overhaul, and Times reporters and editors are analyzing the decision. Once we are comfortable with its basic meaning, you can expect a torrent of coverage.

But what we have is this: The mandate is upheld, and apparently the rest of the law, except a provision whereby the federal government would dictate to the states what they may do with Medicaid.

It was a 5-4 decision, with Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Alito and Thomas dissenting.

Of course, it should have been 9-0, as the notion that the mandate was unconstitutional was never founded in reality.

If you want to read the decision yourself, here it is.

So here’s the good news: The Constitution, thank goodness, does not stand as a bar to health care reform in this country (a mandate, or some means for getting everyone into the system, being essential to any kind of actual solution).

Obamacare falls far short of being the reform we need (which is single-payer, of course), but at least the pathway is open to real reform as we go forward. And this law is a start.

We can all be thankful for that. And we should be. Many won’t, of course, and that’s a terrible shame, as it is the measure of how terribly divided we are as a country. But at least the hope of a sensible health care system was not destroyed today, whether everyone understands that or not.

This latest solicitation from the DCCC (I get several a day), at least shows some originality in coming up with an excuse to get me to fork over:

Brad —

Today is my 25th anniversary in Congress. I want to take a moment to thank you for your support over the years.

We have made tremendous progress because you have stood with me to ensure that we continue moving America forward.

And now, it’s because of friends and supporters like you that the House Majority is within reach with five months left until Election Day.

On this special anniversary, House Democrats are focused on the 25 seats we need to win the Majority.

Please contribute $3 or more right now to ensure House Democrats have important resources to support strong Democratic candidates and Members facing tough challenges for re-election and hold Republicans accountable for their misguided agenda.

President Obama needs a strong Democratic Majority in Congress and your support will bring us closer to returning the gavel to Democrats who will focus on the people’s interests instead of the special interests.

You are the backbone of our party and we will win in November because of your tireless support and determination.

Can you chip in today?

Onward to victory,

Nancy [Pelosi — she just wants me to think that she thinks of me on a first-name basis]

But it still doesn’t work.

Continuing with our Star Trek theme today, I’m going to bend the acceptable-language rules a trifle to share the above, which George Takei himself posted on Facebook earlier today. I think he got it from here…

The title, of course, is only a slight rewording of Ms. Rand’s classic treatise, The Virtue of Selfishness.

Randians kept reminding us that “Atlas Shrugged” Still Flying Off Shelves!

I’ll bet this title would sell as well. I might buy a copy, just to be seen on my bookshelf.

I’m not all that much of a Bruce Springsteen fan, or a golf fan, either. (I like to play golf. I have no interest in watching other people play golf, or in following their doings on or off the course.)

But I enjoyed this story, which I was turned onto by Twitter:

SUMMIT, N.J. — Bruce Springsteen had fired him in 1974, and as he stood outside the Canoe Brook Country Club, stood there as a caddie who helped his man qualify for the U.S. Open, Vini Lopez did not blink when asked why he was banished by the Boss.

“I’m not a sheep,” he said. “I didn’t blindly follow Bruce. In fact, the only person I’ve ever blindly followed in my life is standing right there.”

The original drummer and founding father of the E Street Band was pointing at Mark McCormick, a 49-year-old club pro from New Jersey who needed to throw down some Advil during a morning rain delay to temper the arthritis flaring up in his right knee and to somehow make it through 36 all-or-nothing holes.

McCormick had never played in a Grand Slam event. He said this was his fifth and final crack at a sectional qualifier, his last shot at playing in an Open, and he brought with him a 63-year-old caddie who could’ve been the biggest star in the field.

Vini “Mad Dog” Lopez met Springsteen in the late ’60s, played with him in a band called Steel Mill, and later with what would become an iconic American act. Lopez ended up in a dispute with Springsteen’s manager, and a year before “Born to Run” became the game changer for the E Street Band, Bruce decided he needed a new drummer.

“He did it face to face,” Lopez said. “Bruce just said, ‘You’re out,’ and there weren’t going to be any second chances.”…

You should read the whole thing.

I know who Max Weinberg is — in fact, I know his daughter. Never heard of Vini Lopez, though. Translating it into terms I might better understand, I guess Vini is sort of Pete Best to Max’s Ringo Starr. (Except that the Beatles didn’t have the nerve to fire Pete — they made Brian Epstein do it.)

I’ve always felt bad for Pete Best. But how cool would it be to learn, decades later, that Pete had been doing something else for all these years, and had done it so effectively that he was about to hit the big time doing that? Very cool, actually.

Have you followed the case out of Rutgers that led earlier this week to the sentencing of a former student accused of spying on his roommate, who later committed suicide? I hadn’t followed it closely, but I did follow this suggestion on Twitter:

The New Yorker (@NewYorker)
5/21/12 1:15 PM
Revisit Ian Paker’s in-depth piece on the Clementi case in the wake of Dharun Ravi’s sentencing: nyr.kr/y3umI3#ravi #clementi

It took awhile. I read it in short bits now and then over the last couple of days. Because it really, truly is “in-depth.” And fascinating. And depressing. (And these few reflections took me some time, too. I wrote most of this post late yesterday, and am only finishing it up now.)

It’s a little hard to briefly explain what I got out of the piece. But I quote the following just to make the point that what was found was probably not exactly what anyone would have expected the author to find:

Clementi’s death became an international news story, fusing parental anxieties about the hidden worlds of teen-age computing, teen-age sex, and teen-age unkindness. ABC News and others reported that a sex tape had been posted on the Internet. CNN claimed that Clementi’s room had “become a prison” to him in the days before his death. Next Media Animation, the Taiwanese company that turns tabloid stories into cartoons, depicted Ravi and Wei reeling from the sight of Clementi having sex under a blanket. Ellen DeGeneres declared that Clementi had been “outed as being gay on the Internet and he killed himself. Something must be done.”…

It became widely understood that a closeted student at Rutgers had committed suicide after video of him having sex with a man was secretly shot and posted online. In fact, there was no posting, no observed sex, and no closet. But last spring, shortly before Molly Wei made a deal with prosecutors, Ravi was indicted on charges of invasion of privacy (sex crimes), bias intimidation (hate crimes), witness tampering, and evidence tampering. Bias intimidation is a sentence-booster that attaches itself to an underlying crime — usually, a violent one. Here the allegation, linked to snooping, is either that Ravi intended to harass Clementi because he was gay or that Clementi felt he’d been harassed for being gay. Ravi is not charged in connection with Clementi’s death, but he faces a possible sentence of ten years in jail. As he sat in the courtroom, his chin propped awkwardly on his fist, his predicament could be seen either as a state’s admirably muscular response to the abusive treatment of a vulnerable young man or as an attempt to criminalize teen-age odiousness by using statutes aimed at people more easily recognizable as hate-mongers and perverts….

What follows is a long, appallingly detailed account of several young people’s trek through a latter-day Heart of Darkness.

I say “appallingly detailed” because it makes clear the fact that we now live in a time in which the private thoughts of people who are not makers of history or even (until the tragedy of Tyler Clementi’s death) newsmakers can be strip-mined and laid out in a detail that rivals anything that has been compiled about the thoughts and communications and actions of kings and presidents and generals in the past.

Even when they’re kids. Even when they are lost, confused kids staggering through a world that no longer offers standards or guideposts, social or otherwise, or at least none that they consider to be relevant. Offhand, careless, only semi-articulate bull sessions between adolescents are recorded, rather than being mercifully forgotten, and set in virtual stone like the carefully considered edicts of monarchs and parliaments.

To the extent that the story has a chronological beginning, it starts when high school graduate Dharun Ravi, who I guess we could say is a not atypical teenager (excuse the double negative, but it seemed more accurate than the more direct “typical”), learns the partial name of his roommate-to-be, and decides to research him on the web, and discuss what he finds with friends online. We are exposed to the most trivial, casually cruel, contradictory, insecure, stream-of-consciousness examination over every thought and half-thought and emotion that he experiences as he tries to decide what he will make of this stranger. This goes on for hours and hours in the initial session — much of which is spent discussing the wrong person. About the only thing that is determined in this search is that the roommate is gay.

Ravi’s attitude about that particular piece of knowledge reflects the contradictions of his generation, a generation that contemptuously dismisses any reservations that some older people may have about, say, same-sex marriage, but does not hesitate to use “that’s so gay” as a pejorative. The typical kid of this generation is both more open and accepting toward homosexuality, and yet more willing to say dismissive things about it, than a kid in the 1950s (or at least as willing — certainly more open and candid about it). It is never clearly established what Ravi’s attitude is, at least not in the simplistic terms of “tolerant” or “supportive,” or “homophobic.” He’s all of the above.

The boy who killed himself left a similar record of his thoughts and actions, although not quite as exhaustive, as he wasn’t as technology-adept. But he leaves enough that it is positively stunning that there is no clear, cause-and-effect explanation of why he killed himself. Even with all this data, the sequence of events is circumstantial.

Does that make Ravi innocent? No way. No one is innocent in this appalling narrative, in any sense other than, perhaps, cluelessness. Real innocence has long ago been burned out of any of these kids.

I went to college during the alleged sexual revolution, but I find overwhelming the utter lack of a sense of boundaries that afflicts the existence of these kids. It’s one thing to act on one’s sexual urges, or even to have curiosity about those of others. It’s another to discuss such acts and urges in such exhaustive detail, in writing, for publication, for everyone you know and everyone you don’t know, to read in real time and forever after. There are seemingly no boundaries for these kids, either regarding what to do, or what to say about it or whom to say it to or how to say it. They are lost, drifting in a universe without any sort of social norms.

Because social norms have not caught up with the technology. The village had its rules about what should be said and when and to whom. This world does not. And the human animal is a long, long way from having evolved quickly enough to cope with it.

And these kids are lost in it — every one of them, not just the two main protagonists in this tragedy.

I mean, set aside the homosexuality angle — especially since everyone in the story is so ambivalent about it. Imagine that we’re talking about a situation in which Clementi brought a girl to his room. The shocking thing then becomes that no one treats this encounter between apparent strangers as anything deserving of any kind of discretion or privacy or respect, much less censure. It is an open topic, as everyone in the dorm, and everyone within reach of the various actors’ Twitter and Facebook feeds, is a participant in a convulsive, confused, on-and-off, half-hearted form of voyeurism.

What happens, briefly, in the saga’s critical episode, is that Clementi was going to have a guest in his room, and asked his roommate to make himself scarce. Ravi obliged, but left his computer set to automatically receive a videoconferencing request, and with the camera pointed toward Clementi’s bed. Then he went to the room of a girl he knew from high school, and activated the link. They watched for a few seconds, saw the two guys kissing (fully clothed), and then had a reaction on the level of “Ewwwww” and shut off the link.

The girl later said, ““At first, we were both, like, ‘Oh, my gosh, we can’t tell anybody about this, we’re just going to pretend this never happened.’ ”

For Ravi, that resolution last three or four minutes, before he Tweeted, “Roommate asked for the room till midnight. I went into molly’s room and turned on my webcam. I saw him making out with a dude. Yay.”

Later, there was an abortive plan to spy on Clementi on another occasion, with a larger audience, but that didn’t happen — apparently because Clementi realized what was happening (how could he not? he had read the Tweet) and disconnected Ravi’s power strip.

Clementi wondered online to a friend what to do about what his roommate had done, although at no time did he seem freaked out about it. He wrote things like, “When I first read the tweet I defs felt violated but then when I remembered what actually happened . . .
idk… doesn’t seem soooo bad lol…”

He wonders whether to complain, or request another roommate. He never quite makes up his mind.

What does not happen, what never seems to happen, is any sort of real communication between the two roommates. The wasted opportunities for it are tragic. For instance, we read an online exchange, before any of these incidents, that Clementi has with a friend about how to initiate a conversation with new roommate Ravi… with Ravi sitting right there.

Again, the thing that strikes me is how crippled these kids seem to be when it comes to normal human interaction, and how utterly unfettered their online communications are — communications that do damage that they are not equipped to repair. (I say unfettered… but there is evasion, and obfuscation, and false bravado… for instance, “lol” is used repeatedly in a context that suggests it’s more of a nervous giggle of insecurity than a belly laugh.)

The dysfunction is profound. And there are no capabilities in these kids’ nervous systems (evolution can’t keep up) or in our social mores and etiquette for setting things right.

When I first started communicating with people electronically, in the early 80s, I was an adult, with all sorts of social skills to fall back on. I quickly learned the ways that electronic communications were different, and the pitfalls that they contained. Not that I don’t frequently misstep to this day, on this blog and elsewhere.

But these kids, they’re just in a dark void, clueless as to how to cope constructively with other humans, at a time when it is easier than ever (theoretically) to communicate.

And it’s a deep, dark tragedy.

This just goes to show you what peer pressure can do to you.

Phil Bailey, Wesley Donehue’s co-host on “Pub Politics,” has always been an easy-going, reasonable guy who gets along with everybody — even his opposite number, Wesley. (Phil works for SC Senate Democrats, Wesley for the Republicans in that same body.) You couldn’t ask for a nicer guy. (Well, maybe you could, but who’d listen?)

Then a video surfaces showing him listening to Jake Knotts ooze ethnic intolerance all over him (“She is a sheik, and tryin’ to be a Methodist…”) — and Wesley, and the impressionable young Boyd Brown, and the elegant Anne Peterson Hutto (at least, I think that’s who everybody was; the picture was blurry).

And now… Phil is in all sorts of trouble for having called Nikki Haley a… let me get this right… a “Sikh Jesus.” From The State‘s story. No, not “sweet Jesus;” that’s something your grandpa used to say when he was deeply moved and grandma wasn’t around:

Phil Bailey, the S.C. Senate Democratic Caucus political director, was reprimanded and told to take down his Twitter feed after calling Gov. Nikki Haley a “Sikh Jesus” in tweets, a Senate leader said.

Bailey’s tweet on Wednesday came after Haley spoke to the S.C. GOP executive committee before the group voted to certify Katrina Shealy to run in the Republican primary against Sen. Jake Knotts of Lexington. Shealy was among more than 180 candidates punted from the ballot after the state Supreme Court ruled office seekers needed to file a paper copy of their statement of economic interest.

Bailey tweeted: “@nikkihaley is the Sikh Jesus. She can resurrect an unlawful campaign from the dead by simply appearing at a @SCGOP hearing,” according to a report from BuzzFeed. He used the term “Sikh Jesus” in another tweet…

Now what that tells me is that Phil was as flabbergasted as I was at what the state GOP presumed to do in the Shealy case. Only I, being older and more courtly, was not so shocked as to engage in blasphemy.

This got Phil in so much trouble that he was forbidden to play on the interwebs. For how long, I don’t know. Surely not for long. Not even the state Democratic Party, as clueless and out of the swim of things as it is, could think that a guy could represent it effectively in 2012 without a Twitter feed. Heck, even Cindi Scoppe’s got a Twitter feed these day.

Anyway, I hope Jake really is sorry for what he started…

So I read the lede story in The State this morning, and said, “What the…huh?!?”

How could the executive committee of the state Republican Party, after a session in which that party’s governor emoted all over it, overthrow the decision of the state Supreme Court and say, hey, Katrina, you can be on the ballot? How could anyone think for a second that the party had the power to do that? Like the professional valet parking guy said, “What country do you think this is?”

And that was the first thing I was going to blog about this morning. Only I didn’t have time to blog this morning. By the time I was able to turn to it, late this afternoon, the state Election Commission had stated what should have been obvious:

The South Carolina Elections Commission said today that Katrina Shealy’s name cannot appear on the June 12 primary ballot despite being certified by the state GOP executive committee on Wednesday.

The commission said the ballots became official with the names submitted May 4. Shealy had been decertified along with more than 180 other candidates who county parities found had not submitted copies of their statements of economic interest when they filed for office.

But then, just in case that double-double back didn’t throw your neck out of joint, Ms. Shealy promised to do her best to jerk it back in the other direction yet again:

A spokesman for Shealy’s campaign referred comments to the state GOP.

“The State Executive Committee is examining its legal options in light of today’s State Election Commission statement,” the S.C. GOP said in a statement.

Oh, and get this from the governor (in fact, go read the whole story, most of which I’ve reproduced here):

Haley said today that the elections commission should not squash voters’ rights: “Under no circumstances should a government bureaucracy stand in the way of a free and fair election in South Carolina. The people of our state deserve to have their voices heard.”

You see, the duly constituted official authorities — along with the Supreme Court — are “bureaucrats.” Apparently, the decisions about who appears on the ballot should be left up to Nikki Haley, and the state party, if it agrees with her.

Look, I think it’s lousy that all these people got booted from the ballot, too. And Ms. Shealy no more and no less than any other candidate so affected, if they acted in good faith. But you don’t get to make an exception in one instance to the Supreme Court’s matter-of-fact ruling that the law says what it says, even if the governor really, really, really wants you to, with sugar on top.

Of course, one can hardly blame the governor being confused about all this rule-of-law stuff. I’ll confess to being pretty confused about various aspects of this situation. For instance, I need to ask Todd Kincannon, next time I see him, to ‘splain to me how a case about trying to be on the ballot turned into a case about… military absentee votes? Whabba-who? Homina-homina?

There’s just all kinds of bad craziness going on.

OK, so maybe that’s a bit snide. After all, the real UnParty hasn’t even tried to pick a candidate — for anything, much less president. At least Americans Elect gave it a go.

But it didn’t work out, according to Politico:

Americans Elect, the deep-pocketed nonprofit group that set out to nominate a centrist third-party presidential ticket, admitted early Tuesday that its ballyhooed online nominating process had failed.

The group had qualified for the general election ballot in 27 states, and had generated concern among Democrats and Republicans alike that it could wreak havoc on a close election between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.

But just after a midnight deadline Monday, the group acknowledged that its complicated online nominating process had failed to generate sufficient interest to push any of the candidates who had declared an interest in its nomination over the threshold in its rules.

“Because of this, under the rules that AE delegates ratified, the primary process would end today,” said the group’s Kahlil Byrd in a statement issued at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday. He seemed to leave the door open for proceeding outside the original process, however, adding, “There is, however, an almost universal desire among delegates, leadership and millions of Americans who have supported AE to see a credible candidate emerge from this process.”…

When I first heard about Americans Elect sometime last year, I was briefly excited about it. I even spent an hour or so answering the seemingly never-ending questionnaire about my political attitudes that I found on the group’s website.

But before I could even get around to writing about it on the blog, I started having my doubts, and decided to sit back, wait and see.

What gave me pause was the online process itself.

The Web is an awesome tool for many purposes. It beats snail mail all hollow. It’s a great way to shop (as long as you don’t want to examine the merchandise closely). And it enables us to do all sorts of things we couldn’t do before — such as share videos — with a wide audience. And it can be used effectively in the service of many political aims — the first serious step in any campaign is the establishment of a Web presence.

But I worry when we start using it as a substitute for analog participation. I especially don’t like the idea of online voting — or any type of voting that makes the process too easy. Perhaps I should say, too facile. I believe excessive ease breeds carelessness, and we have enough careless voting going on right now. People should have to think about how they’re going to vote, and go to a certain amount of trouble to go cast their votes.

As for forming a political movement from scratch… well, I think maybe “Ivy Day in the Committee Room” might be a better approach than an Ollie-Ollie In Come Free online invitation. If you’re trying to forge a Third Way movement, it seems like you need maximum interaction among people committed to the ideas upon which your movement is based, honing the principles involved and deciding upon standard-bearers — then turning to the public for input.

Or so it seems. Admittedly, I’m sort of thinking out loud here, and I welcome your input.

In any case, the approach that Americans Elect chose was doomed to fail. With the process wide open, it was predictable that what happened would happen — the group ended up with Ron Paul as its top vote-getter. As I’ve noted in the past, one of the best ways to boost readership of a blog is to put “Ron Paul” in a headline. Paulistas love them some Interwebs.

The main two problems with that result were 1) Rep. Paul is far on the outer fringe of one of the parties, the very opposite of the kind of centrist candidate the group was seeking, and 2) He didn’t want the group’s nomination anyway.

What the group wanted was someone of the ilk of Joe Lieberman or Lamar Alexander — either one of which could have persuaded me to vote for the ticket. But sensible guys like that do not get spontaneously nominated by a mob. You have to put them forward deliberately, and promote them in a concerted manner.

This is the first release I remember getting from Occupy Columbia in awhile:

Rep. Boyd Brown, Fairfield, discovered a (de)regulation, on Thursday, which specifically exempts ALEC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALEC) from lobbying restrictions. This section was added in 2003. Free Times Staff Writer, Corey Hutchins wrote on Thursday:

“Funded largely by the libertarian Koch brothers, ALEC creates model legislation for state legislatures to adopt, such as Voter ID laws and other controversial bills like the Stand Your Ground self-defense law. It deals with everything from health care to immigration to energy policy. ALEC bills are drawn up on behalf of corporate interests and introduced in states where lawmakers are members. The group holds conferences and treats its lawmaker members to vacations. It has 2,000 legislative members and 300 corporate members, according to a report on the group in The Nation.

It is such retreats where ALEC is exempt in the state’s lobbying laws. While other special interest groups would have to extend convention invitations to a discernible group from the Legislative Manual for lawmakers to accept them, ALEC does not — the group is specifically exempted by name.

“If you’re there (at an ALEC conference) then you don’t have adhere to the group invitation rule,” says State Ethics Commission general counsel Cathy Hazelwood.

On Thursday, 3 May, 2012, there will be a rally on the north side of the SC State House to protest this exemption. The rally will take place from 11:30 am to 2:30 pm.

So I guess they’re back. At least on an ad hoc basis. Rather than as a permanent fixture.