It’s daily. It’s liberal. It’s sudoku, and after a short vacation hiatus it’s back. Today’s daily liberal sudoku puzzle is ready for your pencil, your pen, your quill, or your smoldering charcoal.

As in classic sudoku, the object of liberal sudoku is to fill in a 9×9 grid so that each member of a set of nine symbols appears once and only once in each column, once in each row, and once in each of nine smaller 3×3 sub-boxes. The twist with liberal sudoku is to replace the numbers 1-9 with a set of nine letters. At the bottom of the puzzle is a clue, hinting at a name, a word, or a phrase related to liberalism that appears in one of the rows or columns of the puzzle. Using the clue in combination with rules of logic, you should be able to fill in all the boxes and find the one possible solution.

Today’s clue regards a topic more religious than political: Appearing in this sudoku grid is the name of a practice explicitly permitted and regulated by the Bible in Exodus Chapter 21.

Click here for today’s liberal sudoku, in handy-dandy pdf format.

2005 is almost over, and it’s been a powerful year for political news. It’s traditional for people to offer news reviews and wrap-ups at this time of year. On the other hand, it’s also traditional for people to down for long, slow sips on the egg nog on New Year’s Eve.

In the spirit of reconciliation, I offer this chance for you to help us at Irregular Times bring these two traditions together. Let’s compile a list of the top ten political stories of 2005 together - so that not one of us has to pull all the weight of coming up with ten.

Readers, this means you. I’ll start the list off with a few of my own ideas, but use the comments link at the bottom of this post to offer some of your own ideas too. Then, maybe before the turning of the year, and maybe afterwards, we’ll compile them all into a final list.

Here are few stories I think deserve to be in any top ten list - whether they got the biggest play in the mainstream press or not:

- The failure of Bush’s Social Security Crisis fraud
- Cindy Sheehan and the turning of public opinion about the Iraq War
- America reject George W. Bush after all
- The release of the Downing Street memos
- Revelations of multiple programs by Bush to spy against Americans
- Republican congressional corruption goes public
- Impeachment talk begins
- Global warming gets real
- Oil prices leave Americans feeling slimy about SUVs

That’s nine stories - but still many others I could include. How could I round out the list, or change it to reflect the changes of the last 12 months? What stories would you take off this list, or add to it? Is ten too small a number?

Isthmus n (Divided Family American; late 20th century)

1 Narrow strip of land connecting two larger bodies of land
2 Holiday celebrated by your birth family after visiting your spouse’s birth family for Christmas and before visiting your local bar for New Year’s Eve.

Usage: “Merry Isthmus!” cried Junius, ferrying little Junior into his mother’s arms and hustling to bring the suitcases up the steps. “Alice’s Mom says hello. Should we open presents tomorrow, or on the 28th?”

What is political correctness? The Oxford American dictionary defines political correctness as: “the avoidance, often considered as taken to extremes, of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize or insult groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against”.

Under such a definition of political correctness, h. res. 579 is certainly a contender. As I reported earlier this month, the House of Representatives passed h. res. 579 in order to defend Christmas against what has been described by right wing Christian activist groups as a “war against Christmas”.

What the supposed war against Christmas actually consists of is… prepare yourself for the gruesome violence of it… people saying “Happy Holidays”. Oh no! The Religious Right insists that everyone say “Merry Christmas” at this time of year, and not any other traditional holiday greeting. The Religious Right says that Christians are so persecuted and that Christmas is so beleaguered that everybody in America should go around using special language that makes the super sensitive Christian fundamentalist community feel emotionally secure.

That seems to fit the definition of political correctness pretty well… except for one thing: Political correctness is the use of selective language to protect “groups of people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against”, not groups of people who just think that they are disadvantaged or discriminated against. The obvious truth is that Christians and Christmas in America are no more disadvantaged or discriminated against than sports fans and baseball.

Christmas is everywhere, as widely celebrated as ever. Christian churches are everywhere too, and have expanded their presence onto the radio and across the television spectrum in a way that no other religion has ever managed to do. Only someone who never reads outside the partisan right wing press could imagine a different reality.

So it is that the writers for the right wing site NewsMax accuse the 22 congressional representatives who had the integrity to step out of the crazy “there’s a war against Christmas!” witch hunt and vote against h. res. 579. NewsMax says that these representatives “Hate Christmas”.

NewsMax cites Republican Representative Jo Ann Davis as saying that h. res 579 was necessary to fight against “political correctness run amok.” Yep, you got that straight. People having the freedom to say whatever kind of holiday greeting they want is now “political correctness run amok” according to the right wingers who control the federal government.

You can stop your head from spinning now. If we don’t take back Congress from right wing control in 2006, we’ll all have to get used to a weird alternative reality in which the freedom to say what you want is attacked as political correctness, and campaigns that claim to be against political correctness declare that only language that makes right wing extremists feel safe is acceptable.

They call it white collar crime, but that white collar is looking awfully stained and frayed these days, connected more than ever with efforts to purchase influence over government at the local, state, and federal level.

At the same time that a new culture of corruption is running rampant through the corporate world, Congress, and the executive branch of the federal government, there are new signs that Republicans in government are going easy on corporations that have broken the law. At the state and federal level, corporations are increasingly being let off the hook. In fact, under George W. Bush, the Department of Justice has developed a special policy that ensures that major corporations are not prosecuted, even when there is ample evidence that the corporations have committed serious crimes.

This information comes to us from Corporate Crime Reporter, a fantastic resource for anyone who is worried about the increasing influence of corporate power over public life. Think of it as a perp walk for all those executive creeps who squeeze money out of workers’ sweat, cheat investors, and bribe our democracy into ruin.

Now, in the time between Yule and New Year’s Day, there is an awkward lull in the ordinary forward movement of life. Even those of us who return to our offices do so without a feeling of particular need, and the rushing demands of life fall on deaf ears. It is the time when death meets life, and news grows old.

There are other irregular times of the year, but none more irregular than this week of Midwinter.

Who can predict what will happen this week, or what may cross your mind? Not I.

And so, it seems most appropriate this morning to, instead of announcing some particular fact, idea or link to you, to offer up this open thread, where those of you who have bothered to get online can explain what it is that you’re looking for, what you’ve heard of, and what is otherwise on your mind.

I will not demean myself by reminding you that sharing is caring.

As one of our readers has commented, it is now clear that President George W. Bush is under credible suspicion of some serious violations of the law. The question that matters for 2006 is: What will Congress do about it? Will Congress investigate the alleged crimes, or will Congress just sit on its hands and pretend that there is no problem?

The issue is not a partisan one. It has become to most Republicans that George W. Bush is no asset to the Republican Party. President Bush brings discredibility to every issue he touches, even the Republican ones, by consistently favoring the interests of power over the interests of sincere idealism.

Furthermore, many Democrats have stood with the Republicans to allow investigations into illegal activity by the Bush Administration. For example, in spite of the showboating in the autumn of 2005, h. res. 635, a resolution that would establish an independent investigation into illegal activities by the Bush Administration, and bring recommendations regarding impeachment to the House of Representatives.

Let’s call them the Investigating Eight - after all, the rest of Congress is making no move to investigate Bush whatsoever. The Investigating Eight are:

Representative John Conyers
Representative Lois Capps
Representative Shiela Jackson-Lee
Representative Zoe Lofgren
Representative Donald Payne
Representative Charles Rangel
Representative Maxine Waters
Representative Lynn Woolsey

These names deserve to be remembered. While others just looked the other way while the rule of law was under attack from the power-hungry Bush White House, these representatives did their duty and defended the Constitution from its domestic enemies.

Others in Congress ought to be standing with the Investigating Eight. Off the top of my head, I can think of 57 other members of the House of Representatives who ought to be co-sponsors - the 57 members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus who have not yet signed their names to h. res 635. These are representatives like Barbara Lee and Dennis Kucinich, people who have no business sitting on the sidelines during this struggle to defend the Bill of Rights. Come the opening day of Congress in January, I expect to see all their names added as co-sponsors, and will demand answers of those who don’t.

Word is out that MoveOn is targeting the following six Republicans in the House of Representatives because they are regarded as the most politically vulnerable among all the House Republicans to challengers in the 2006 election season.

It was only a matter of time. When one faith meets another faith, the interaction usually results in the height of human silliness.

A case in point when a Christian fundamentalist reader of ours encountered our Irregular Times articles about Buddhist marathon meditator Ram Bomjon, he wrote the comment that you see in blockquote below.

Ram Bomjon is a teenage boy in Nepal, who, according to his followers, has been meditating for something like seven months now without moving, with eating or drinking, and without going to the bathroom. Ram Bomjon’s inner circle says he just sat down at the base of a pipal tree, and hasn’t moved since, in spite of the fact that he has been bitten by a snake.

Skeptics of Ram Bomjon point out that no outsider has been allowed to get closer than 15 feet to the boy, and that Ram Bomjon is often hidden from public view by a series of barriers erected by his inner cadre of fellow teenagers. They note the great financial benefits that Ram Bomjon’s village has received from the publicity surrounding the meditation marathon, and the money received by the local Buddhist monks as well, from pilgrims eager to buy Ram Bomjon souvenirs. We’ve pointed out that photographs prove that Ram Bomjon has moved, in spite of believers’ claims to the contrary.

So, Ram Bomjon may be a huckster. But does that make him the antichrist? Well, according to our Christian fundamentalist reader, yes. A reader calling himself THE GOD SQUAD, whom I suspect is employed by the company that makes the Caps Lock key for computer keyboards, left the following amusing comment about Ram Bomjon’s vigil:

““Little Buddha” First of all he is NOT GOD!!! Anti Christ maybe? The Anti Christ(Satan)will deceive the whole world, and every religon except the born again Jews and Christians, by saying that he’s “GOD” and those of you who don’t read,and study your bible will most likely follow the Anti Christ.The second coming of Christ Jesus will happen after SATAN deceives the whole world FIRST by saying that he’s “GOD” and forceing his mark on you,or off with your HEAD!!! by the way satan’s mark (THE MARK OF THE BEAST) is most likely a computer micro chip!!! THAT boy is a FAKE or MAYBE the ANTICHIRST! But GOD!!! NEVER that BOY does’nt hold a candle compare to GOD. By the way GOD’S son is JEWISH!!!! May the REAL GOD who is in HEAVEN as we speak shed some LIGHT on YOU!!! May CHRIST be with you!! Merry CHRISTmas!!! “

I am not convinced by THE GOD SQUAD that Ram Bomjon is the antichrist, but I am convinced that the road to high humor is traced through comments about microchips and the mark of the Beast. Are we to believe that Satan has been travelling the foothills of the Himalayas, inspiring teenage boys to sit down by trees in order to inspire the earth into triggering the End Times? Well, I don’t have firsthand experience with Ram Bomjon and his tree sitting show, but I suspect that he has more in common with Elmer Gantry than with Damien in The Omen.

This morning’s New York Times sends me searching for the following quote of Senator Frank Church, who investigated the abuses of government power to suppress the civil rights movement, black power movement, and blackmail countless Americans in the 1960s and 1970s. Senator Church warns us from the distance of thirty years’ time about the dangerous powers of the National Security Agency, and the dangers of those politicians who would use the NSA without legal restraint:

That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology …

I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.

Two months ago, I wrote an article sounding the alarm to an unsexy, yet urgent, threat to American democracy: The terrible slowness with which the Library of Congress makes legislation under consideration by Congress available for average American citizens to read.

Since I wrote that article, the Library of Congress has received an overhaul. That overhaul gives the Library of Congress spiffy new graphics, which gives the appearance of competence. When it comes to actual substance, however, the Library of Congress is unimproved, providing the same excruciatingly slow transfer of legislation to a form that’s available for public review.

As the blog Imprison Bush pointed out a couple of days ago, the treatment of H. Res. 635 is a glaring example of what’s wrong with the Library of Congress. H. Res. 635 was introduced to the floor of the House of Representatives on Tuesday. It’s now Sunday, and I discover that the Library of Congress still reports that H. Res. 635 has not been received and so is unavailable to be read.

What I didn’t expect is that if you browse the legislation introduced by different members of Congress, H. Res 635 is right there, in the list of legislation sponsored by John Conyers. By clicking on that link, I was able to get to what promised to be the entire text and information about H. Res 635. Unfortunately, the links for the text of H. Res 635, and to the information about the legislation’s seven co-sponsors, are dead. That’s strange to me, because H. Res. 642, introduced by Barbara Lee after H. Res 635, is fully available.

H. Res. 635 turns out to be a very important piece of legislation. It’s a resolution in the House of Representatives, introduced by Representative John Conyers, to create an independent commission to investigate President George W. Bush for possible violations of the law, and to make recommendations regarding the impeachment of President Bush.

Whether you’re for or against impeaching Bush, this legislation is very serious. Every American deserves the ability to find out exactly what H. Res. 635 says, which members of the House of Representatives are supporting it, and which members are withholding their support. We deserve to have a system for finding this information that works consistently and logically. I should not be turned away by the Library of Congress when asking for H. Res. 635 from John Conyers, but then be able to find H. Res 635 from John Conyers on a more casual browse.

We have, for many years now, been living in the Age of Computers. There is no excuse for this kind of delay and obfuscation in systems of governmental information. The complete transfer of new legislation into the official, online, public record of the Library of Congress should require nothing more than a few simple keystrokes on a computer keyboard.

That the Republicans who have controlled Congress since 1994 have failed so miserably to update the technology that makes the Library of Congress work speaks very poorly of their ability to lead the United States of America with any degree of competence. The standards of 1994 are not good enough. I want a new Congress, with a new Contract With America, to unclog the arteries of government information, and make the public information of government public in accordance with the high standards that present day democratic activism requires.

Will nobody stand up to Senator Ben Nelson?

This year, Ben Nelson has been an embarrassment to the name of Democrat.

Ben Nelson has a zero percent progressive voting record, but has voted for 86 percent of the right wing legislation we’ve tracked.

Most recently, Ben Nelson voted to end the filibuster against the infamous Patriot Act, in effect voting to make the most controversial anti-liberty provisions legislation permanent. What’s more, Ben Nelson made this awful vote in the very same week that three different serious abuses of the Patriot Act’s powers by the Bush Administration were discovered - three different programs that the Bush Administration developed to spy against law-abiding American citizens. One of these programs took advantage of the political cover provided by the Patriot Act to go even further than the Patriot Act allows in spying on the private conversations of American citizens without a search warrant.

Ben Nelson has supported the worst attacks against freedom by the Bush Administration, treating George W. Bush like a king instead of the leader of a democracy. George W. Bush has called Ben Nelson “my kind of Democrat”. Well, pardon me, but the last thing that the Democratic Party needs is more politicians of the kind that get George W. Bush’s approval.

In spite of the appallingly craven record of Senator Ben Nelson, there isn’t a single Democrat in Nebraska with enough spine to stand up to Nelson and tell the truth: Mr. Nelson, you don’t speak for us. Nebraska deserves a real Democrat as a representative in the Senate, not just a spineless politician who wears the label of Democrat because it’s convenient.

Nebraska Democrats, America would be better off having no Democratic Senator from Nebraska at all than having a Senator like Ben Nelson. If you can’t find someone to take on Ben Nelson in the Democratic primary in 2006, you’re not only depriving the Democrats of Nebraska of the right to choose their own nominee. You’ll also attract the contempt of Democrats from around the nation - and deservedly so.

2006 is the year for Democrats to be Democrats, or stand aside for others who have the integrity to stand up for what’s right.

On December 18, Representative Barbara Lee from California introduced the following resolution to the floor of the House of Representatives. This resolution requests that the Bush White House share information relevant to the trip of Condoleeza Rice to Europe in order to mollify leaders there about revelations of secret American black site prisons in Europe where prisoners have been held outside the law and without Red Cross notification, with serious allegations of systematic use of torture.

With this resolution introduced to Congress, the question now becomes: Will George W. Bush allow Congress to exercise its right to oversight of the activities of the executive branch, or will it keep this information secret from Congress. If the Bush Adminstration chooses to keep this information secret, then what it is trying to hide from Congress?

109th CONGRESS 1st Session
H. RES. 642

Requesting the President and directing the Secretary of State to provide to the House of Representatives certain documents in their possession relating to the Secretary of State’s trip to Europe in December 2005.
____________________________________________________________________

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
December 18, 2005
Ms. Lee submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on International Relations
_______________________________________________________________________

RESOLUTION

Requesting the President and directing the Secretary of State to provide to the House of Representatives certain documents in their possession relating to the Secretary of State’s trip to Europe in December 2005.

Resolved, That the President is requested and the Secretary of State is directed to provide to the House of Representatives, not later than 14 days after the date of adoption of this resolution, all documents, including telephone and electronic mail records, logs, calendars, minutes, memoranda, and advisory legal opinions, in the possession of the President or the Secretary of State, respectively, from the Department of State provided to the Executive Office of the President in preparation for and during the Secretary of State’s trip to Germany, Belgium, Romania, and Ukraine in December 2005, relating
to–
(1) United States policies under the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or
Degrading Treatment or Punishment toward individuals captured by or transferred to the United States or detained in United States custody; and
(2) United States policies regarding any facility outside of the territory of the United States for the detention of individuals captured by or transferred to the United States or detained in United States custody.

Let us pray.

I’m visiting for a few days and don’t have regular internet access, so I’ll have to put Daily Liberal Sudoku on the back burner. Look for it to come on back before the new year.

In the meantime, I wanted to share a fact that made me go “hmmmm.” It turns out that Sudoku is not a puzzle of Japanese origin. The name is Japanese, but the source is a fellow who wrote for Dell Puzzles in the states a few years back. When he came up with the puzzles and put them in a Dell puzzle book (one of those you see at the supermarket), they just didn’t catch on. But the Japanese noticed them, gave them the name Sudoku, and released them in Japan to wide popularity. Only then did they make it back here to the United States. That’s globalization for you.