Catholic League

On Monday, windchills in the Finger Lakes were between minus 15 and minus 25. The temperature without the wind was in the low single digits, and because I like to think of myself as a weather tough-ass, I have tended to discount windchill as not really part of the cold equation. I cannot explain this in any rational fashion. If I look at the thermometer, or pass a bank thermometer, and it reads, say -14, then I'll think, "Ok. That's cold." But let the bank sign in the small town where I live read 7, and I'll think, "Oh, it's not that cold. Don't be a wimp." Even if the car is being blown sideways across the yellow lines.

The only thing I can liken it to is the people around here who insist on distinguishing between "just lake effect" snow and "real" snow. Now, real snow is when some Nor'easter blows up the coast and the system inevitably stalls right over us. At that point, we'll get pounded—10 to 20 to 30 inches of snow that will fall over the course of 24-48 hours. Depending on the rate of snow, schools may or may not be closed. Around here, it's become sort of a point of acceptance that unless a meteorite crashes into the district building, the public schools will not close in Ithaca. They can be closed in every district in the I-81 corridor between Scranton and Watertown; unless the superintendent can't get her car out of her driveway, the rest of us are going to have to drive our kids in, or risk putting them on the busses, because there's no way you're letting your kid get lost in some snowdrift higher than her head. And Cornell? Years ago, when I was a graduate student there, Tompkins County declared a snow emergency and said that anyone caught driving after 12 pm would be arrested. (Snow was falling at a rate of 3-7 inches PER HOUR). Did Cornell close? No. The university stayed open, and I actually had a professor get mad at me because I called to say I could not present a paper at a seminar that afternoon because I didn't want to get arrested. "Well, can't you just walk?" he said. "Um. No. I live 7 miles from the university and it's 17 degrees below zero right now." He hung up on me in a huff.

This is the Catholic patriarch that wants to take down the John Edwards campaign with Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan in tow.

Extra treat? The religious right of America

Still basking in the glow of victory in New York City, a victory that was earned by the feminist-loving, GLBT-positive, new labor rising grassroots of New York state, I was going to hop into an article about John Edwards political courage. Instead I woke up to this :

Edwards’s Bloggers Cross the Line, Critic Says - New York Times:

The Catholic League, a conservative religious group, is demanding that Mr. Edwards dismiss the two, Amanda Marcotte of the Pandagon blog site and Melissa McEwan, who writes on her blog, Shakespeare’s Sister, for expressing anti-Catholic opinions.

Mr. Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, is among the leading Democratic presidential candidates.

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, said in a statement on Tuesday, “John Edwards is a decent man who has had his campaign tarnished by two anti-Catholic vulgar trash-talking bigots.”

Mr. Edwards’s spokeswoman, Jennifer Palmieri, said Tuesday night that the campaign was weighing the fate of the two bloggers.

The Washington Post has the AP arcile that is the obvious "fair and balanced" source the Grey Lady does not acknowledge using for their article.

John Edwards is not new to the dirty tactics of the extreme Republican right in this country. He had a front-row seat to the Swiftboat Veteran's smear campaign of John Kerry, a campaign so out-of-control that it has become a verb and part of the political lexicon of this country.

What is galling about this particular campaign is that it is being done by bashing two of the most courageouly outspoken feminist bloggers in this country : Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon and Melissa McEwan of Shakespeare's Sister.

And make no mistake about it : this controversy has nothing to do with my blog sisters. No. This controversy is being created by extremist religious hypocrites like Bill Donohue of the Catholic League because John Edwards scares them with his political courage.

The Donohues of the extreme right go out of their way to push views on choice and homosexuality that are completely against the mainstream views of their base. They do so because it has been effective in the past to scare politicians into wearing their political leashes.

John Edwards hiring of Marcotte and McEwan sends them a strong message of how he will not wear that leash for the sake of political power.

Especially when it so goes against the mainstream.