Our Fearless Leader and Dick Cheney have conclusively proven that they really have nothing to hide at all, cross their hearts hope to die, in the Enron debacle, by refusing to turn over documents from secret meetings with Enron executives during Dick Cheney’s energy task force proceedings [New York Times]. Quod Fearless Leader:

We’re not going to let the ability for us to discuss matters between ourselves to become eroded, the president said this afternoon at a session with reporters. It’s not only important for us, for this administration, it’s an important principle for future administrations.

George, I hate to break it to ya, but not only is this just making you look like you’re dirty as hell, but it’s also offensive to basic principles of democratic governance. As a private citizen you have every right to secretive, closed-door meetings. As the President of the United States, however, you have a responsibility to conduct your affairs openly, under complete public scrutiny. Your ability to conduct meetings in smoke-filled rooms with your big-time campaign contributors is not more important than the American people’s right to open and democratic governance.

I can’t believe these idiots are probably going to waste the Supreme Court’s valuable time over this idiocy. If G.W. seriously thinks he’s going to avoid dirt coming out on his administration because of this, I have a few hundred documents in Houston I’d like him to shred.

The award for best summary of the Enron debacle and the administration’s stonewalling goes to Gary Trudeau of Doonesbury:

I did not have political relations with that man!

Scott Reents and Thomas Hill have written an interesting article on why political sites fail, and what they can do about it [Democracy Project]. Bottom line: political sites fail because they are based on the one-way model of traditional campaign media. As the authors put it:

In particular, current political sites are failing to adhere to the new rules of the "citizen-centric" Internet. Because the Internet puts citizens in control over the information they access, it requires that political organizations think and act as service providers to, rather than as mobilizers of online constituents. A citizen-centric campaign recognizes that it is most powerful when it practices the enlightened self-interest of true cooperation, ceding control to citizens as the most effective way to accomplish shared goals.

It’s worth noting that the most continually successful politically-oriented sites on the web are services such as Independent Media Center and Free Republic, Feminist Majority Foundation Choices Campus Community, and innumerable e-mail listservs all over the Internet, which center around forums for user-contributed content.

My hope is that the trends exemplified by Internet users here will successfully drive political candidates and groups more and more towards bottom-up, participatory democracy as the primary form of web interaction, that the mood of the Internet user will force them to adopt this strategy in order to survive. The Internet as it stands if full of limitations – we need to work hard at making Internet access and resources more available to people in poverty, making it a less toxic space for women, and developing software and hardware that empower users apart from mega-corps like AOHell-Time Warner and Microsoft and Netscape). But I hope and believe that it can also be opening up a horizon for truly democratic spaces in ways that traditional media have systematically ruled out. We have a great hope of winning this one, if we fight.

For further reading:

• GT 6/09/01 Misogyny of Internet Culture Betrays Promise of Democratic Spaces Online
• GT 5/30/01 Baltimore government expands Internet access to people in poverty
• GT 5/29/01 The Battle for a Grassroots Internet Experience
• Building a Global Grassroots Infrastructure by George Salzman

For any readers I may have in Michigan: A while ago I ran across the page for Women Outraged by Michigan Bureaucracy (WOMB), an active pro-choice group spearheaded by Flint feminists. They’re doing work around the Michigan state government’s hostility towards abortion access, as well as general feminist organizing. Check them out!

In West Virginia, a fifteen year old young woman, Katie Sierra was suspended from her high school for promoting an anarchist club and for wearing t-shirts with anti-war slogans. The Circuit Court upheld the suspension, but Sierra promises she will pursue the dispute [Salon]. I don’t know that this story needs to be commented on so much as just pointed to; we cannot tolerate this kind of silencing of dissent in the name of wartime security or unity — indeed, in times of war, dissent must be guarded and held sacred more than ever, since the moral debate is no longer about laws but rather about profound moral crises, about tanks and dropping bombs, about the lives of women and men, both civilians and military. You’re damn right that anarchism and anti-war protest is a disruption — and that is precisely why we must defend to the death the right to express it.

For further reading:

• Tom Tomorrow on civil liberties in a time of crisis
• GT 2001-09-17: Fears of Domestic Fascism

Tom Tomorrow welcomes back Biff for a commentary on civil liberties in this time of crisis.

Read the rest of Biff’s Back …