Those Packing-A-Suitcase Blues

I'm off to Germany this afternoon. I'll be gone a week, attending and speaking at a conference in Frankfurt.
And I've got the blues, the way I always do when it comes time to pack a suitcase. I'm not sure why this happens. Once I get on the road, I'm rarely blue. It's just the preparation to leave home and family that gets me down. I don't remember it always being this way -- back when we were living in England and before that in Florida, I always enjoyed travelling. Maybe I've just had my fill of travel without my family.
Anyway, I've got to do it. I'm not financially independent, and I'm lucky enough to have a job that pays well and is relatively painless.
But I sure am blue.

Can We Get Our Democracy Back?

There is not a doubt in my mind that both the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections were stolen.
My wife and I have strong reason to believe that we were victims in 2000. As Florida residents and registered Democrats who were living abroad, we made timely requests for absentee ballots, which never were sent to us.
I remember saying to my wife on election day: "If Gore loses by 2 votes, I'll be really pissed off."
The next morning, when I came downstairs and learned about what was going on from my wife (who had stayed up all night watching returns), my words came back to haunt me. And they have done so ever since.
The documentary filmmakers Michael Moore and Robert Greenwald each have made compelling arguments about the stolen election, in "Fahrenheit 9/11" and "Unprecedented," respectively.
And the daily revelations by Brad Blog and others -- such as today's article by Raw Story's Larisa Alexandrovna on the stacking of the Baker-Carter Commission on Federal Election Reform with Republican operatives -- make it seem ever more likely that similar fraud was perpetrated last fall.
On November 3, I wondered aloud to friends why, when the discrepancies between the exit polls and the vote totals surfaced, the press was so quick to blame bad polling. It seemed clear there were two factors at work: The usual laziness coupled with incredulity that the Republicans could have been so brazen in defrauding the electorate (never mind their bait-and-switch game of running Bush/Cheney as moderates and patriots).
But Brad Friedman has done a superb job of unearthing evidence that the Republicans are in possession of computer code that could reverse vote tallies. And he has stuck with the story, to the point where it is now beginning to get some attention in the MSM. Hence today's groundbreaking column by Robert C. Koehler of Tribune Media Services. Here's part of what Mr. Koehler has to say:
Was the election of 2004 stolen? Thus is the question framed by those who don’t want to know the answer. Anyone who says yes is immediately a conspiracy nut, and the listener’s eyeballs roll. So let’s not ask that question.

Let’s simply ask why the lines were so long and the voting machines so few in
Columbus and Cleveland and inner-city and college precincts across the country,
especially in the swing states, causing an estimated one-third of the voters in
these precincts to drop out of line without casting a ballot; why so many
otherwise Democratic ballots, thousands and thousands in Ohio alone, but by no
means only in Ohio, recorded no vote for president (as though people with no
opinion on the presidential race waited in line for three or six or eight hours
out of a fervor to have their say in the race for county commissioner); and why
virtually every voter complaint about electronic voting machine malfunction
indicated an unauthorized vote switch from Kerry to Bush.

Why indeed? These are questions that those of us who are predisposed to believe in the Republican Party's limitless willingness to use whatever means necessary to gain and retain power were asking while the MSM was celebrating Bush's "mandate" and garnering of "political capital."
I have neither the time nor the resources to participate in the ongoing investigations conducted by Mr. Friedman, Ms. Alexandrovna and others. But I want to salute their important work, and to thank Mr. Koehler for giving some mainstream space to the ongoing questions.
There is much here that we still do not know, and our Democracy is suffering daily for the lack of knowledge.

The Mainstream View

Sports Illustrated is not, to my knowledge, a publication known for taking outspoken stands in favor of progressive political causes. In fact, if I were to try to name a publication that plays to the non-political "mainstream" in the United States, Sports Illustrated would be a good candidate.
That is why its newly posted survey on attitudes towards homosexuality in sports is particularly interesting. The survey shows a distinct tolerance of homosexuality, in both sports and society. A minority (44 percent) consider homosexuality a sin, and 59 percent believe homosexuals can be as good parents as heterosexuals. Large majorities express support for homosexuals in sports, 61 percent say homosexuality should be accepted by society and 77 percent believe society should put no restrictions on private sexual activity between consenting adults.
I'm surprised the numbers are this big, and pleased that the real mainstream of U.S. society is so tolerant. It's good to see that Americans in general recognize that everyone is entitled to both a measure of happiness and to equal treatment.
It's also interesting that the majority resoundingly rejects stereotyping in answer to questions such as whether lesbians make better athletes than straight women.
Yes, a majority still said that they believe homosexual marriage is in conflict with their religion, but there is actually no question that directly addresses whether they would support homosexual marriage as a matter of law. Given the answers to the questions the survey did ask, that answer might be surprising.
Anyway -- let's not let the rhetoric of the Republican Party and the religious ideologues that drive them fool us. Americans are tolerant. That is the mainstream position.
I hope that this survey gets the attention from the MSM that it deserves. It should -- it was commissioned by their own.
Americans believe in fair play. It is what we are about as a nation.
We must never lose sight of that.

The Power of Video

As reported in The New York Times this morning, almost all of the charges have been dropped against protesters arrested during last summer's Republican convention, and videos that contradict the statements of the arresting officers played a significant role in this.
Not answered by the report is the question of why so many people who had committed no crime were taken into custody. I think a full investigation into the situation is warranted; did the Republican mayor of New York order the overzealous policing? Did the officers' own politics play into it? What kind of pressure did the Republican Party put on the police department?
Of course, what I think and what will be done are worlds apart.
What I really wanted to say here is that this is another illustration of how important video can be in documenting abuses. We all know this from the Rodney King case, even though that horrifying video didn't convince the jury that acquitted the police officers in the case.
Just one recommendation: If you're videotaping something that could play into a legal case, make sure the date/time stamp is turned on. Lack of same was a problem with some of the convention-week videos, especially one that had been edited by the prosecutor's office in a way that made it appear one of those charged was out of control. Fortunately the original, uncut video surfaced, making it apparent that the charges were trumped-up.

"It's a little bit like having Scott Peterson head up a seminar on troubled marriages"

Has Cardinal Bernard Law no sense of shame?
The quote that serves as the title of this post is from Paul Steidler, spokesman for Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. He was a leader of the protests against the Vatican decision to have Cardlinal Law lead a mass in memory of the late Pope.
This terrible decision casts a shadow on the church leadership once again. Does destroying the childhood of thousands not matter? Is Cardinal Law so important a person that it is worth opening this wound once again to give him a role of honor? Why renew the pain?
A truly terrible decision by church leaders.

Farewell, Andrea Dworkin

Andrea Dworkin's death will undoubtedly receive much less attention than did that of Pope John Paul II, or Terri Schiavo, but I believe it leaves a bigger hole in our culture. The pope, for all of his reknown, will be replaced by someone who most likely will carry on with policies and pronouncements very similar to his own. Mrs.. Schiavo, for all the difficult, front-page circumstances of her passing, was not a woman of public accomplishments.
Andrea Dworkin, however, carved out a unique role in our society, as a defender of women's rights to safety and dignity. As such she was, inevitably, demonized as a radical (horrors!) feminist.
The particular cause for which she became famous was her battle against pornography, which she characterized as a civil rights violation against women. Agree or disagree with her -- and there were troubling tendencies toward censorship on evidence in her writings despite her admirable premise -- she was an important voice, and an example of a purpose-driven life.
Farewell.

Bush's Culture of Death and Despair

A couple of items that struck me in this morning's paper:

• "Premiums for family coverage in employer-sponsored [health] plans roce 59 percent between 2001 and 2004, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, compared with a 9.7 percent growth in consumer prices." -- from the North [San Diego] County Times, article by Michael P. Regan of the Associated Press, "Life without health insurance becomes a gamble"
• From the same article: "A study by researchers at UC San Diego, published Tuesday by the policy journal Health Affairs, predicts that 56 million people in the U.S. -- more than one in four American workers -- will be uninsured by 2013."
• From Parade magazine: "This year we will spend $168 million for sexual-abstinence education but only $13 million for adoption awareness."

The numbers are outrageous. The situation is detestable. We must stop tolerating a government that hypocritically promotes a religion-pandering "culture of life" while completely ignoring the needs of the living.

Damn - They've Gone And Made Me Sympathize With Maureen Dowd!

The expanded OpEd pages in today's edition of The New York Times are a great read -- I spent more time with the Week In Review section today than I have in quite a while. I like the idea of increasing the space for opinion. The long editorial on the flaws in the Patriot Act was right on target. I enjoyed reading Nicholas Kristof's column on the Catholic priesthood alongside Frank Rich's piece on how George W. Bush and the MSM have created a "culture of death" in the United States alongside Daniel Okrent's column on the danger of the "scoop" mentality among journalists and Paul Davies' piece on the origins of life.
But there was one big flaw. Instead of Maureen Dowd's column was an appreciation of Saul Bellow that would have been laughable if it weren't so boring, written by the Times' least talented columnist, the useless David Brooks. For the record, Mr. Brooks makes the specious argument that American artists no longer are learning much from the Europeans. He's wrong and he's a fool, but that's not my point.
My point is that, looking at the Times' new publication schedule for its columnists, we see that Maureen Dowd has been consigned to the Saturday ghetto spot formerly occupied -- appropriately -- by Mr. Brooks.
I'm not a fan of Ms. Dowd. I didn't have a lot of sympathy for her much-publicized whining last month about being the only women on the OpEd page. Had Flora Lewis made that complaint back in the day, I would have championed her view, but Ms. Dowd has been too quick to abandon principle for the sake of a catty remark. She's like Rosalind Russell in old movies -- entertainingly quick on the draw with a snide comment, but pretty much a charicature of the "career girl," small-minded and gossipy with less accomplishment than attitude.
Still, the fact that the expanded OpEd page has no room for a regular woman columnist is disturbing. Yes, the Editoral Page Editor is a woman, Gail Collins, as is the managing editor, Jill Abramson. And that is important. But it's also important to hear the direct voice of a diverse cross-section. I assume that is why the conservative Mr. Brooks is there (although he really is just living proof that the best of conservative intellect is nothing to brag about). Why not Ms. Dowd? Did the Times feel that the page wasn't big enough for the double dose of snideness (is that a word?) that Ms. Dowd and Mr. Rich, also not a big favorite of mine, would have constituted?
Whatever the reason, I think it's a mistake. I hate having to support a journalist that I don't have a lot of respect for, but I think Ms. Dowd belongs back in the Sunday lineup.

The Red And The Blue

Conservatives love to point out that the color-coded political map of the United States appears to show a lot more red than blue. Do those people understand that most of the red space is empty? Fifty-one percent is not a mandate. Those of us who live in the habitable parts of the country matter too.

Triangle of Death

Protesters by the thousands took to the streets of Baghdad to mark the second anniversary of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and what did they chant: "No, No to America!"
Right-wingers will either lambaste those ungrateful Iraqis or claim that they are a small minority of trouble-makers whose presence has been vastly overstated by the "liberal" media (CNN liberal?! News to me. But even the Faux News website acknowledges there were tens of thousands of protesters)
Whom did the protesters collectively call the "Triangle of Death"? Saddam Hussein, George W. Bush and Tony Blair. Yes, in the minds of the Iraqi people, these three are moral equivalents. How could this be?
Unlike the Bush administration and its right wing-nut slavies, the Iraqi populace is smart enough to know that replacing an illegitimate despot with an illegitimate military occupation is no cause for celebration, and not a model for democratization.
As Jimmy Carter so aptly said:

"It was false to state that Saddam Hussein had a vast store of weapons of mass
destruction or that Iraq was a direct threat to the security of the United
States. The war has been unnecessary. And now I think we've reached a point in
Iraq that it's become a quagmire – very similar to what we experienced in
Vietnam. There's no real extrication for us to accomplish the goals that we had
when we went in. I think a lot of the violence in Iraq now is directly
attributable to the fact that U.S. forces are there. And there's no clear
concept at any early stage of when they will be withdrawn. I personally do not
believe they're going to be ready for the election in January. But I think we
should go through the election and as soon as there's some tangible semblance of
a democratic government in Iraq, get us out of there.”

Yes, I know there were elections. No, I do not believe they accomplished a lot. Iraq is still a quagmire. George W. Bush and his band of idiots have no idea how to extricate the United States and stop the bloodshed. I'd love to be proven wrong, but screaming at me and calling me a traitor won't convince me.

Doubletalk on Darfur

Everyone knows that the George W. Bush administration excels at doubletalk and all manner of hypocritical posturing. That's what keeps the left-wing blogs alive. But a post today at Watching the Watchers provides one of the best examples I've seen of the art of doubletalk as practiced by Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice:

QUESTION: Dr. Rice, why should citizens of Sudan, which I believe is not a
signatory to the Rome statute, be subject to the jurisdiction of the ICC
[International Criminal Court], when you argue that American citizens should not
be subject to it precisely because the United States is not party to the treaty?
SECRETARY RICE: Well, we do believe that as a matter of principle it is
important to uphold the principle that non-parties to a treaty are indeed
non-parties to a treaty. Sudan is an extraordinary circumstance. I believe that
it was Secretary Powell who talked about the fact that we believe a genocide is
being committed in Sudan. Whatever you want to call it, there are clearly crimes
against humanity being committed in Sudan and there are people who have to be
held accountable for those crimes.

I would note that this comes through Security Council resolution, which does
give some protection, I think, to non-parties to the treaty. But Sudan is an
extraordinary circumstance. I would like to just note that we have also achieved
for—through the Security Council the passage of a peacekeeping resolution so
that we can get peace keepers on the ground to reinforce the North-South
agreement that was concluded at Naivasha and we believe that that North-South
agreement will be an important part of helping to resolve the Darfur
difficulty.
It is also the case that we have a sanctions resolution that has
just passed and we will be able to employ those tools. But the international
community has to act on Darfur. It has to act with great speed. It is a
humanitarian crisis, it is a moral crisis, and it is a crisis that is
extraordinary in its scope and in its potential for even greater damage to those
populations. So I think this is a different situation, frankly.

Read the whole post. The genocide in Darfur is one of those stories that is too "boring" for the MSM to cover when we have Terri Schiavo, John Paul II and other dead bodies to gaze at. But it's time for the rest of us to refocus on that boring thing called the state of the world.

Judge Not, Lest Ye Be Judged

Being a judge has suddenly become one of the most dangerous and frightening jobs in the United States. Not only are criminals committing horrifying acts of violence against judges and their families, the radical right-wing elite has now joined in the cause, urging their crazed followers onto violence.
Inspired by the remarkably consistent series of rulings handed down in the Terri Schiavo case by jurists from the right, center and left, as well as by the Supreme Court decision last month declaring state execution of children to be unconstitutional, the lunatic fringe that has become the voice of the Republican Party is now calling on their neo-Nazi allies to take down judges.
At yesterday's Washington, D.C., conference on "Confronting the Judicial War On Faith," the crazed hag Phyllis Schafly, a reliable source of vitriol, was the voice of moderation, calling only for impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy because he dared to oppose government execution of minors.
The truly scary one was Edwin Vieira, the anti-union, anti-Federal Reserve nutcase lawyer, who cited Josef Stalin (Stalin!?!?!?!) in proposing achilling solution for troublesome judges: "No man, no problem."
Now remember that this is the same conference that the reptilian House Majority Leader Tom "Fly Me, Buy Me" DeLay was supposed to address before he decided to travel to the Vatican to shed more of his crocodile tears over the Pope's death. Does anyone believe that this walking, breathing trash heap has a sincere molecule in his being? Mr. DeLay, of course, famously threatened the judiciary after Mrs. Schiavo's death last week: "We will look at an arrogant, out of control, unaccountable judiciary that thumbed their nose at the Congress and president when given jurisdiction to hear this case anew and look at all the facts ... The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior, but not today."
Add to that his fellow Texan Sen. John Cornyn's thinly veiled threats to activist judges on Thursday: "I don't know if there is a cause-and-effect connection, but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country... And I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters, on some occasions, where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in, engage in violence. Certainly without any justification, but a concern that I have."
Collectively, these barbarous men have declared open season on judges. They think they are being subtle, of course. To them, anything short of a rifle pointed in one's face may be a comment or a suggestion, rather than a threat. But I would bet that most of us wouldn't see it that way if these comments were directed at us or our profession.
The legal profession has been a favorite whipping boy of the radical right-wing elite, many of whom -- like Schlafly and Vieira -- are lawyers themselves. These lunatics can't abide the rule of law because it doesn't always work in their favor -- and lately, as they have boldly crossed the line from conservativism to fascism, the judiciary has been one of our only protections against the excesses of these terrorists and the Bush administration they put in place.
I realize this post is over-the-top, but I believe the current situation is sufficiently frightening to pull out all the stops in protest. Liberals who believe in the ideals of the U.S. Constitution have got to work to halt this movement, which threatens the very founding principles of our government system.
The right wing has become the violent threat to democracy that we always worried it would be.

Putting Your Tax Dollars To Work -- Against You!

An excellent post on Sirotablog discusses the cost of George W. Bush's "town hall" meetings to promote his scheme to dismantle Social Security. Thanks to Wonkette for publicizing David Sirota's post.
The outrages perpetrated in the name of Social Security privatization continue to mount. The Bush crew not only try to dismantle the most successful safety-net program in the history of the U.S. government in order to benefit Wall Street brokers, they lie about the finances, then they further deplete our already crisis-bound budget in order to build support for their anti-American scheme.
And in an interview a few days ago, Vice President Dick says that some Democrats are privately coming around to the president's position.
It is time to step up the protests. And while a few weeks ago I was prepared to defend Joe Lieberman on the basis of the numbers the Democratic Party needs to win back control of the Senate, today I think that if he cannot find the strength of character to oppose Bush on this issue, he needs to go.

The Pope's Death Is Not News Anymore. Okay?

Yes, it's an important event for the Catholic faith and even for Western Culture, but it happened more than 48 hours ago, and you would think nothing else was of import was going on anywhere in the world.
Thirty years ago, Saturday Night Live had a running joke on its "Weekend Update" sketch, to the effect that, "Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead." That's how I feel about the TV networks' non-stop diet of all Pope, all the time.
The election of a new Pope will be news. It will meet all of the requirements of a great story: It's important to the world, the process is suspenseful as well as solemn, and it will mark the rise of a new global leader.
But the conclave won't happen for more than a week after the funeral.
I realize that wherever large crowds gather, there is the possibility of something exciting and/or dangerous happening. But so far there has been nothing unexpected or even particularly interesting about the coverage of the Pope's passing.
He's still dead. No disrespect intended, just wishing someone would spare a thought or two for the living. I know I sound like a broken record lately, but the media's force-feeding of death on the public is wearing me down.
Thank goodness there are a few blogs out there covering something besides the dead Pope. Like Brad Blog, for instance. And oyster over at Your Right Hand Thief. Thanks for having a broader perspective on the world than I do this week.

Hard Work and Fair Play

These two phrases have been volleying around in my mind lately.
I've been planning to write something along the lines of "Democracy Is Hard Work" for a few weeks now, ever since a commenter on this blog raised the question of how we can battle the co-opting of the press by the political right.
The concept of "Fair Play" has been and remains my favorite way of characterizing the aims of the left wing in American politics, in a way that I think could have some resonance with the public.
And this morning, for no particular reason but for many reasons in general, it strikes me that "easy" and "unfair" are two suitable ways of characterizing the aims of the political right in this country. The right, I think, is prone to easy answers that don't really fit the facts of the situations they are supposedly addressing. Furthermore, I think this easiness typically comes at the expense of any effort to play fair with the citizenry of the United States.
Fair play is a concept we all can understand. Our kids understand it. Every parent has had to try to uphold principles in the face of a disappointed and outraged child shouting, "That's not fair!" in situations where we know that we have done our level best to be fair.
Fairness is difficult almost by definition: In order to be fair, you have to understand and offer something to all sides. And in the same way, to be fair you generally have to deny something to all sides. The reason Republican answers often seem simple compared to Democratic ones is that quite often they are "fair" to only one group -- the Republicans' opposition to gay marriage may seem fair to religious conservatives, but it is obscenely unfair to gay men and women denied the right to sit at hospital with their dying loved ones, or to receive health benefits from their partner's employer, or to adopt children. To be told, "You don't count," is to be excluded from society's graces in fundamental ways.
Explaining why we need to assure the rights and privileges of citizenship to those whose lifestyles or opinions we may find distateful is hard work. And we often fail at it. The demonization of the American Civil Liberties Union over the past 20 years or so has been based on pointing fingers at some of the "outrageous" individuals and groups whose rights the ACLU has defended. It's hard to explain why it is so important that somebody take up these causes, why our own rights and privileges depend on preserving the rights and privileges of those with whom we thoroughly disagree. It depends on being able to get across the notion that what is being defended is the right to hold an opinion at all.
Monday morning's national edition of The New York Times includes two good pieces that illustrate what I am talking about when I go on about fair play and hard work. One article discusses lawsuits filed by gay couples over the new Michigan law denying spousal health benefits to gay partners of state employees. Below it is a piece on efforts to keep open public libraries in Salinas, California, in the face of budget shortages brought on by voters' refusal to increase taxes.
What I like about these stories is that they illustrate the personal consequences of political acts. The couples interviewed in the first piece are paying taxes, raising children, educating students and serving the public in other ways, and yet are denied the benefits given to their heterosexual colleagues because of the anti-gay marriage measure passed in that state last November. In fact, partner benefits they had previously received are now being taken away from them under the new law. The latter piece touches on the difficulties that will be experienced by low-income residents of Salinas if the libraries -- which are often their only access to books and educational materials -- are shut down. Was this consequence worth a refusal to pay a higher property tax?
Republicans around the country crowed on November 3 after they passed referendums against gay marriage in 11 states. Did the people who voted for these measures understand that there are real people whose lives they would be disrupting? Did they understand that their vote would lead to benefits being taken away from people who had previously received them -- children, partners with health conditions? Maybe, but I wonder how many people got beyond the simplistic Republican message and really considered the real-life consequences. Same with the Salinas libraries. Nobody likes to pay taxes: The Republican anti-tax fervor is bound to have an emotional appeal. But did people really want the libraries to close when they voted against taxes?
Looking around, looking ahead, explaining consequences and pointing out injustices is hard work. It would be nice to fall back on simple answers. But that goes against the grain of everything liberals stand for. If we are to have any hope of steering the country in a positive direction, each of us needs to realize that we will spend a lot of time talking, writing, volunteering and working our butts off to open people's eyes to the danger of simple answers.
But the alternative -- continued and growing unfairness in our society -- is too difficult to bear.

Death On Parade

So we finish up the Terri Schiavo death watch only to be plunged into the Pope John Paul II death watch. On cable, the "news" channels are offering a menu of all death, all the time.
With Prince Rainier possibly waiting in the wings to take over when the Pope expires, we seem to be in for a full season of celebrity mortality.
Meanwhile, I wonder how many children around the world have gone hungry while Americans' attention has been focused on the Pope's deathbed? How many elderly have suffered without medication? How many homeless people slept on sidewalks last night? How many political prisoners languished? How many were tortured?
Something tells me that the Pope would rather we be focused on these issues than on his bedside.

Food Magnets

Last night, Pat Buchanan was doused with salad dressing during a speech at Western Michigan University, becoming the third major right-wing pundit in the past 6 months to be baptised with foodstuffs while spewing bile in university settings. Last October, Ann Coulter was targeted with a pie at the University of Arizona (the fleet-footed devil-woman managed to duck and run) and just this Tuesday, Bill Kristol got a full-on pie facial at Earlham University in Indiana.
What is it about these right-wingers that attracts flying food? Given the well-known physical phenomenon of opposites attracting, I can understand that sugary desserts might fly off their plates towards Ms. Coulter's sour visage. But surely it's not possible that Mr. Buchanan needs to be any oilier or more vinegary. And if the idea was to match the topping to the main fare -- well, he's certainly not healthy and green; nobody could argue that he's good for you.
All theory aside, what it looks like is that people are getting tired of listening to these people lie. And while the particular responses may be juvenile, it's good to see people on the left acting on their anger.
We're shut out of taxpayer-funded "town hall meetings" on the president's evil antisocial schemes -- which means we should be turning up en masse whenever one is held, and forcing the Bush goons to keep us out. In front of the media's cameras if possible -- now that there may be a few that aren't pointed day and night toward a hospice in Pinellas Park, Florida.
It's time for a renewal of civil disobedience. I do mean civil -- in opposition to the violence that seems to spring up naturally on the right. I wouldn't want even Ann Coulter to feel her life is endangered if she speaks her mind -- but I wouldn't mind at all if she were forever coated in cream sauce.