We at Irregular Times are happy to announce the opening of a new information resource for political progressives: an interactive, regularly updated database on members of the House of Representatives in the 109th Congress. We provide (in alphabetical order, by state, and ranked by progressive record) lists of all members of Congress, with our rankings of their support for progressive legislative action. When we describe a member of Congress’ legislative record, we provide hyperlinks to relevant bills so you can read up on them and educate yourself. We also include personal pages for each member of Congress, with extensive contact information. Finally, since sometimes action is necessary outside the Congress as well as inside it, we include links to our database of local progressive organizations and information for the area which a particular member of the House represents.

It’s our hope that by presenting regularly-updated reports combining information from a progressive perspective about important legislation, about members’ positions of action or inaction regarding that legislation, and about contacting members of Congress, we’ve made it just a bit easier for you to be the skeeter on your representative’s hindquarters, giving them the educated, informed needling they need to go ahead and do the right thing.

We’re just getting started, with a ranking based on nine crucial pieces of legislation to date in the young 109th Congress. As the 109th Congress continues, we will continue to update our database, and we’ll regularly let you know how your member of Congress is doing in representing your positive, progressive interests.

For the last few months, President Bush has been busy running all across America, flapping his arms in a panic, and warning everybody who will listen that Social Security is in crisis, and the sky is falling. Bush warns that Social Security is doomed, doomed, doomed (without mentioning that the doom will only arrive in 40 or 50 years, and only if there is absolutely no growth in the American economy from then to now). Then, when he has the attention of his audience, Bush whips out a little bottle of snake oil that he calls “private investments”.

Of course, if you look at the snake oil bottle closely, you’ll see that there’s a little disclaimer that declares that these supposedly “private” investments will be largely controlled by the government. A funny thing, that the Republican government would be directing which corporations get immense public investments from the once-secure Social Security trust fund… It’s reminiscent of a small town mayor’s embezzlement scheme, if you think about it.

There’s a whole lot of hooey in President Bush’s Social Security schemes, enough to fill a hefty book in the fantasy fiction aisle of your local library. The particular oddity I want to focus on this morning is Bush’s claim that the only reason that he is proposing his investment scheme is that the Social Security system is in a crisis, and will “go bust” very very soon if we don’t do something now. If this reasoning was genuine, then one should find that Bush opposed any changes to the Social Security system until the supposed “crisis” appeared. According to an article published by the New York Times this weekend, the exact opposite is true. It turns out that George W. Bush has been attacking Social Security as long as he has had a political career.

Way back in 1978, when men wore brown pants and Jimmy Carter was still a fresh face in the White House, George W. Bush was running for a seat in the U.S. Congress, and trying to promote his candidacy by telling people that Social Security was in a crisis. At a country club meeting in the summer of 1978 Dubya “will be bust in 10 years unless there are some changes.”

Yes, that’s right: 27 years ago, Gee W. Bush was telling people that there was a Social Security crisis, and that Social Security would go bust in 1988. In 1988, Bill Cosby was wearing colorful sweaters as Dr. Huxtable on TV. People were singing “Don’t Worry Be Happy”. There had been no changes to the Social Security system to save it in the ten years since Bush predicted it would go bust, but miracle of miracles, Social Security was doing just great.

Some people might liken President Bush to Chicken Little - a good comparison. I think a more apt description is of George W. Bush as a tent revival preacher, roving the countryside and proclaiming that the End Times are upon us, and we all must repent, repent, repent, and give a portion of our Social Security retirement money to big Wall Street financial companies so that they can make a good profit from public money. For almost thirty years, Bush has been preaching that the Social Security End Times are gonna come real soon, and we all need to watch out. It doesn’t matter that the End Times never ever come when Bush says they will. He still gets big audiences full of ordinary folks who are eager to fork over their money every time he says BOO.

To the Americans who have a penchant for believing in Bush’s End Times sermons, I say this: If you want to trust your money to a scheme developed by a man who has been making wrong financial predictions over a period of four decades, that’s your business. Just don’t ask the rest of us to sacrifice the Social Security system we rely on in times of crisis. Social Security works, and it’s worth defending from hucksters like Mr. Bush. Keep your surefire snake oil to yourselves, please.

About a week ago, we told you about the Virginia state legislature’s vote to make oral sex between a husband and wife a criminal act. It turns out that, in spite of the popular Virginia tourism slogan that declares that Virginia is for lovers, it is not only illegal for people to have sex in Virginia unless they are married, but is also illegal for married people to have sex in ways that the leaders of fundamentalist churches do not approve of. So, if you want to take a romantic vacation in Virginia, you’ll want to be sure to lock the doors, pull the shades down and hope that you’re not being watched by the Virginia sex police.

Since we wrote our article last week, the Virginia state legislature has gone even farther in its efforts to put everyday sex and family life under the authority of big government bureaucrats. Not content to keep lovers from having a good time, the Virginia Republican Party has now taken the first step in amending the Virginia state constitution to make it illegal for gays to get married.

Step aside from the heated evangelical rhetoric about same-sex marriage, and it quickly becomes clear that the Virginia constitutional amendment is completely unnecessary. Even if you accept the Republicans’ position that Virginia society must be defended from the “gay agenda” (which seems to have not been as powerless as it is now since the 1950s), then the constitutional amendment being pushed through the Virginia state legislature is a wasteful exercise in redundancy. The truth is that Republicans have already made it illegal for anyone in Virginia to have any kind of sex at all except for as a heterosexual married couple, vaginally. Legal experts disagree about whether it’s a crime in Virginia if the wife is on top.

If what Republican politicians in Virginia really wanted was to stop gays, then all they’d have to do is send out the police to go arrest all the gay people in Virginia for the crime of having sex. Okay, strictly speaking, all the lonely gays and lesbians would not be put behind bars, but the point would be made. No gays or lesbians in Virginia would even think about getting married. They’d be too busy looking for new jobs after getting let out of jail.

Of course, the Republican politicians in the Virginia state legislature aren’t really interested in protecting the sanctity of marriage, or defending family values, or any such thing. They’re interested in getting re-elected, and receiving lots of big political donations that they can have fun spending. Virginia Republicans are interested in power.

The Virginia Republican Party has learned the lesson that the easiest way to gain political power these days is to please the big fundamentalist churches. Attack sex. Attack gays. Promise to put the Ten Commandments in big neon letters on the front of all government buildings. Shout the words “under God!” whenever you say the Pledge of Allegiance. Say that whenever you have to decide what show on television, you program your set to only receive Christian networks, and then pray on it.

In Virginia these days, Republican politicians are just falling all over themselves to prove how very very very medieval their values are. What’s next? The Virginia Inquisition?

The simple truth that is obscured by the Great Virginia Government Tent Revival of 2005 is that there is no crisis in the lives of real families that merits all of the pseudomoralistic garbage legislation that the state legislature is pushing through. Real families have problems, sure, but they’re not having more problems now than they were a generation ago. The truth that Republicans never tell voters is that the supposedly righteous South, including Virginia, has the highest rate of divorce in the nation. The divorce rate is significantly lower in the most strongly liberal states. In fact, Massachusetts has the lowest rate of divorce in the nation.

If you corner a Republican, and ask how many gay marriages have ever taken place in Virginia to provoke their rush to create a constitutional amendment, the only honest answer that you can get is: NONE. Democratic Virginia state Delegate Albert Pollard has it right when he observed, “This is an issue that needs to be viewed like McCarthyism. We are not threatened by gay marriage. We are threatened by our overreaction to it.”

Under Republican rule, Virginia is not for lovers. Virginia is for fundamentalist prudes.

For the sake of basic honesty, and all our protection from criminal prosecution, Virginia’s tourism advertisements ought to have a consumer advisory placed on them: Warning, being a lover in Virginia may result in large fines and up to 30 days in jail.

Californians voted to make Arnold Schwarzenegger their governor not too long ago. Their reasoning was that Schwarzenegger had lots of experience… um… spouting off one-liners written by other people while pretending to pump bodies full of bullets.

In politics, the voters get what they ask for, even if they never bothered to stop and consider their request for very long. So, if California really wanted another actor for governor, it shouldn’t be surprised that Arnold Schwarzenegger regards the governorship as little more than a walk-on part.

This weekend, Schwarzenegger’s office explained to the people of California that Governor Arnold would probably be unable to represent California at the meeting of the National Governor’s Association because he had a more important commitment: He has to dress up in a tuxedo and attend the Oscars.

Someone ought to explain to Governor Schwarzenegger that, unlike his part as a killer robot in the Terminator movies, the role of Governor of California requires you to audition all over again if you want to star in a sequel. Schwarzenegger faces his next audition in 2006, and the polls suggest that Californians are beginning to weary of his cute little action star antics.

But never fear, everything will be all right again. Once Schwarzenegger gets on television saying “Hasta la vista, baby” about something, all the little details of the state government will just take care of themselves, and everybody in California will fall in love with steroid-driven politics all over again.

Over here, we’ve got a first draft of our information center for members of Congress… with capability for our own home-grown legislative rankings included.

It’s in very rough form. As we get ready to polish it up, we’d appreciate your comments and suggestions.

Many of you have noticed that Irregular News is down. Thanks for getting in touch regarding this — we’re aware of the problem. This is a technical issue with our service providers, and they’ve promised to get to work on it to have everything restored as soon as possible.

On a more positive note, we should have something nifty to announce in an hour or two…

[Update: Irregular News is back up.]

Mother Davis flips through her book on etiquette as she relates,

This week in the Colorado House of Representatives, a Republican legislator from Colorado Springs demonstrated exactly how the Republican Party is standing up for traditional moral values in American government. When he was contradicted by Val Vigil, a Democratic colleague, Republican Bill Cadman shouted, “If you try that again, I’ll ram my fist up your ass.”

Is that proper parliamentary procedure? Since Cadman made his shrill threat to commit unwelcome sodomy, he has stubbornly refused to apologize. Cadman says that he shouldn’t have to apologize because the Democrat he threatened “started it”. Well, that makes sense, I suppose… if you’re in the 3rd grade.

What strikes me most about Bill Cadman’s angry outburst is its homosexual nature. There’s something about Republican politicians who support gay-bashing legislation that leads them to come up with some very homoerotic language when they get aggressive. Oh, they mask the sexual content with indignant Republican rage, but it’s there nonetheless.

Like Freud said a long time ago, our deepest desires are revealed at our most out of control moments, and they’re expressed in funny little ways. Mr. Cadman, it looks like you just need some special understanding, and an environment in which you can explore his alternative sexuality in a non-threatening way. We understand that Colorado Springs isn’t very gay-friendly, so why not take a vacation - maybe a Caribbean pleasure cruise?

Then, Mr. Cadman, when you return to the Colorado House of Representatives, maybe you can take Val Vigil out for a nice cup of coffee, and be a gentleman about the whole thing. No one wants a fist rammed up their ass, but there are other possibilities for intimacy with a man that are less violent. You never know - maybe Mr. Vigil secretly feels the same way about you.

Planning on wearing a tight pair of pants whenever she visits Colorado Springs in the meantime,
Mother Davis

Place this one in the category of Republican State Legislators Who Miss The Point: In Pennsylvania, Republican State Senator James Rhoades has introduced a bill that would make it mandatory for schoolchildren to recite the Pledge of Allegiance every morning.

Now, let me go on the record as saying that some level of allegiance to one’s country is a good thing. I also think that American students ought to be encouraged to appreciate how a democratic system of government benefits them.

That said, I have to ask what in the world makes Republican politicians like James Rhoades think that the best way to encourage a feeling of allegiance to the nation is to force children to recite the Pledge of Allegiance by rote, whether they want to or not? This method of promoting patriotism is about as likely to succeed as a father’s attempt to earn the love of his children by forcing them to tell him they love him every morning before they can eat breakfast.

Allegiance, like love, cannot be forced. When allegiance is required, it becomes meaningless. Forcing children to say something over and over again is more likely to breed resentment than true allegiance.

Perhaps James Rhoades is one of those Republicans that doesn’t like the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, but one would hope that he is aware that one of the primary reasons that American children are taught that the American government is worthy of allegiance is that the First Amendment guarantees the right to free speech. Forcing children to make political statements that they do not believe in will contradict every lesson they receive about the Bill of Rights.

The fact is that many children come from families that have a tradition of not saying the Pledge of Allegiance. Some come from deeply religious families who observe a sacred commandment not to utter oaths. Others come from families that have a serious commitment to the ideals of a secular society, and resent the relatively recent changes to the Pledge of Allegiance to add the words “under God” to the oath.

A particular galling part of the bill that Rhoades and other Republicans in the Pennsylvania State Senate are supporting is that in order for a child to opt out of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, the child must stand before his or her classmates every single morning, and tell them that he or she is refusing to go along with the group. Senator Rhoades must certainly be aware that such a task is socially impossible for most children. Such repeated public exposure to group ridicule looks like an intentional punishment for nonconformity.

If passed, the impact of the Pennsylvania Pledge Compulsion Bill will be to promote the Republican Party’s nationalist agenda. The lesson that the forced pledge will teach is that, in America, people are not supposed to learn to think for themselves, and when people don’t agree with the majority, they should keep their ideas to themselves, and do what they’re told to do - or else.

“Hey Hey, Ho Ho, Social Security’s Got to Go.” (video)

– College Republicans chanting as Republican Senator Rick Santorum arrives for a speaking event in Philadephia, PA on February 22.

During last year’s elections, the standard line of Democratic politicians was that the No Child Left Behind law pushed by President Bush to overhaul public education in America was a good law, but that President Bush had not bothered to provide the money that he promised for it, even as it increased education costs for states and local school districts. This week, a new bipartisan report on the No Child Left Behind law from the National Conference of State Legislatures demolishes the credibility of this argument. (How bipartisan is the NCSL? Well, its members include 3,656 Democrats and 3,657 Republicans.)

A panel of Democrats and Republicans has concluded that No Child Left Behind is not only underfunded, but that it’s also a load of garbage too. Well, to be fair, the panel’s report did not use the word “garbage” to describe No Child Left Behind. Instead, they referred to No Child Left Behind as flawed, convoluted and unconstitutional.

Apparently, No Child Left Behind has actually caused a great deal of damage to the cause of educational reform by scuttling local reform initiatives that were already underway when George W. Bush decided that he knew what was best for everybody.

I’m particularly interested in one sentence from the report: “Under N.C.L.B. [No Child Left Behind], the federal government’s role has become excessively intrusive in the day-to-day operations of public education.” You see, there’s even something for Republicans to complain about with No Child Left Behind. Republicans claim that they just hate hate hate big government - and according to this report, the Republican Party’s own educational plan has made the federal government “excessively intrusive”. I’ll translate that phrase for Young Republicans: It means BIG.

Reacting to the report, a representative from the Bush Administration announced that “we will not reverse course”. That kind of response has become sadly typical of the Bush Administration. When the evidence comes in, and it’s found that a Bush policy doesn’t work, is dangerous, or is against the law, President Bush refuses to consider any alternative to his original plans. That stubborn refusal to pay attention to the facts in itself shows that President Bush has a very bad attitude when it comes to education.

Usually, the nationalist insanity of the nutty Republican fringe frightens me, but sometimes it’s just plain funny.

Take, for instance, the latest advertising effort of the people at USA Next, the Republican attack organization with direct ties to the Bush White House. The image you see to the left is one that they have created in their attempt to help Bush attack the integrity of Social Security.

You see, the Bush White House and USA Next are furious at AARP, once known as the American Association of Retired Persons, because the AARP is rightfully resisting President Bush’s attempt to rip the guts out of the Social Security system and leave it to bleed to death. So, what’s the natural Republican response? It’s a shrill screech that the AARP part of the secret global gay agenda, and hates American soldiers.

As if that weren’t extreme enough, the USA Next web site has run material that actually suggests that AARP is a communist organization. Boy, that’s going back in history a bit. Why not go back further, and accuse the AARP of being Nazi sympathizers, or pro-monarchy Tories, or members of the Mongol Golden Horde, poised to destroy Europe at any minute?

When I hear the Republicans are now claiming that the AARP is opposing attacks on Social Security because “the REAL AARP agenda” is to force men to kiss each other, put big red Xes on American soldiers, and advance a secret communist plot to take over the world, the first words that come to mind are “conspiracy theory”. What other interesting theories will the Bush White House and USA Next collaborate on in the coming months?

Thanks to Norm over at Imprison Bush for highlighting a glaring gap in reality in the strange world that exists in Bill O’Reilly’s head. Norm notes that Bill O’Reilly, in one of his more recent rants for Fox News, declares that ” the continuing reportage of the torture allegations is putting lives in danger.”

This claim by O’Reilly spins so fast that it’s warping the space-time continuum. Just consider this for a second, folks. Bill O’Reilly seriously wants us to believe that when American reporters say anything about the rapidly increasing number of incidents of torture (that’s right, still increasing - hundreds more new incidents were revealed by Freedom of Information Act just a few days ago) by American soldiers in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, human lives are somehow, somewhere endangered.

On the other hand, O’Reilly seems to have completely overlooked the fact that when people are electrocuted, beaten, forced to jump off bridges, shoved headfirst underwater, starved and left without water, deprived of medical treatment, shoved into tiny, airtight metal boxes for hours on end, or are subjected to the many other methods of torture that have been reported as used by agents of the American government in recent years, human lives are very literally put at risk. O’Reilly just can’t seem to recall that scores of prisoners have actually died while being tortured by the American government. If that’s not “in danger”, I don’t know what is.

So, let’s review: On the one hand, we have toture and murder. On the other hand, we have reporting about torture and murder. Guess which one, in Bill O’Reilly’s twisted world, puts more lives in danger?

Bill O’Reilly’s kinky perspective on morality is strikingly reminiscent of Bush’s own moral code, as most recently reflected in the audio tapes in which Bush admitted to smoking pot, but explained that he wanted to keep that fact secret from the American people (while at the same time using Al Gore’s marijuana use against him in the campaign): Doing something wrong is not a big problem - it’s letting anyone know that you’ve done something wrong that’s the problem. For both Bush and O’Reilly, blatant dishonesty is more moral than owning up to mistakes and trying to make them right.

From top to bottom, Republican politicians all over America are using their power to place themselves above the law. At the top, there’s the infamous example of now-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales declaring that President Bush does not need to follow the law if he doesn’t regard doing so as necessary. This week, we’re brought a new example of Republican lawlessness from the Texas legislature, where Republicans are considering a new measure that would allow well-connected Republicans to break election laws and get away with it.

The bill, which is being pushed through by allies of Republican congressman Tom DeLay, would grant the Texas Elections Commission the power to stop any prosecution of any politician accused of violating election laws. No appeals, no vote counts, no chance for justice - the power of the law would be overturned just like that.

Now, just who do you think has the power to appoint people to the Texas Elections Commission? That’s right - it’s the Texas Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Speaker of the Texas House. All three of these positions are held by Republicans. So, guess who is sitting on the Texas Elections Commission? That’s right - they’re all Republicans, and every single one of them is on the record as supporting Tom DeLay’s fight to prevent his prosecution for breaking election laws in 2002.

The immediate effect of the new Texas law would be to let Tom DeLay off the hook, protecting him from paying the legal consequences for breaking election laws in his hungry climb to power. In a longer view, however, the impact of the law that DeLay’s Republican allies have proposed would be to end democracy in Texas.

Think about it: If every single member of the Texas Elections Commission is a loyal Republican, appointed and removed from the commission at the whim of the leadership of the Texas Republican Party, then the Texas Elections Commission effectively is nothing more than a branch of the Texas Republican Party. If the Texas Elections Commission is given the power to provide immunity from prosecution to anyone who breaks election laws, then Texas election laws will only apply to those candidates that the Texas Elections Commission, and the Texas Republican Party, do not approve of.

The ultimate effect of the bill that Texas Republicans are proposing is that election laws in Texas would only apply to non-Republicans. Republican candidates would be given free reign to engage in all kinds of illegal campaign practices in order to defeat their opponents. With the Republicans now in control of all branches of government in Texas, there would be no real opportunity for Democrats, or any other political party, to ever challenge the Republicans’ grip on power. Texas would become a one-party state.

Some Republicans may argue that the Republican Texas Elections Commission would never really allow such a thing to occur, but really, that doesn’t matter. The most important difference between a democracy and a totalitarian regime is that in a democracy, government is accountable to the people. In order for this to happen, the law cannot be enforced only when it pleases the whims of those in power. The law must apply to all people all of the time, regardless of political considerations.

Unfortunately, equal protection under the law is a principle of democracy that the Republican Party seems to have little patience for these days. Let’s not forget George W. Bush’s promise - he wants to do for America what he’s done for Texas. Look out, America.

Mother Davis searches for the word “fuck” in a pile of bloody corpses as she comments,

The public broadcasting world is offering an interesting lesson in the true nature of obscenity this week. It has to do with the Frontline documentary on PBS this week, called A Company of Soldiers, which provides footage of American soldiers in Iraq, and information about their activities.

Not everyone in America will be seeing the same documentary. You see, most stations, out of fear of the strict Republican censors of the Federal Communications Commission, will be showing their viewers a “clean” version of the documentary. Only a few cities will attempt to air the “raw” version of the documentary.

What’s the difference between the “clean” and “raw” versions of A Company of Soldiers? You might guess that the difference has something to do with graphic footage of violence - perhaps the bodies of Iraqi children that have been killed in the war, or American soldiers shooting someone dead, or videotape of the torture taking place at American prisons like Abu Ghraib. In truth, only difference between the two versions is that in the “raw” documentary, viewers can hear American soldiers using expletives, like “shit” or “fuck”.

In a war that America started, in which well over one hundred thousand Iraqis have been killed, in which Americans have been torturing their prisoners, in which billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money has gone mysteriously “missing”, and which has caused a budget crisis so severe that funding for children’s hospitals is being cut, the only thing that the FCC would consider indecent or obscene is that a soldier in a life or death situation gets frustrated and says “damn”. I call that ironic.

This comes just after a weekend in which we learned of an audio tape on which George W. Bush claims that he is hiding a history of smoking marijuana because he doesn’t want to children to get the wrong idea. It’s telling that the same man who justifies covering up his own mistakes out of fear for America’s children sees no problem with launching an unprovoked war while America’s children are watching. What kind of moral lesson are children supposed to learn when they see that adults are more concerned about naughty poo-poo words than they are about the torture of people that is taking place in their names?

At a time when the Bush Administration has made a widespread practice of sexually humiliating the people it holds as prisoners, what business does the FCC have of wagging its finger in outrage when people on the radio talk about sex in an explicit way? It is a symptom of a deeply immoral government when people are fined large amounts of money and thrown off the airwaves as result of mild verbal vulgarity, but the people who have organized the killing and torture of people around the planet are allowed to conduct their filthy and illegal business without so much as an hour of community service as punishment.

I suppose we should expect more censorship like this in the future. In a country where the law is applied so arbitrarily, it is only natural for people to fear arbitrary punishment for superficial indecencies. And so we all will learn, as Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer infamously commanded, to watch what we say and watch what we do.

Washing her mouth out with soap,
Mother Davis