A Dem with spine in Alabama

This just made my day:

The survey by the Christian Coalition of Alabama also wants to know where candidates stand on a host of other issues including prayer in school.

Democrats are accusing the coalition of attempting to gather the information and then skew it to favor their opponents.

One Democrat, Alvin Holmes (D-Montgomery) (pictured), has sent Coalition President John Giles a letter saying he would gladly answer the 75 question poll if Giles would answer questions showing the source of the Christian Coalition's money.

Giles in the past has refused to divulge the information and is currently not required to. Holmes is supporting legislation that would force the coalition and other nonprofit groups to disclose the source of money used to run ads to influence a legislative issue or a referendum such as the gay marriage ban.

"Until you answer those three questions, go straight to hell," Holmes said in the letter to Giles.

The next best thing in this day and age

Someone noticed one of those "sleds" in their neighborhood, you know, those things that tell you how fast you're going to shame you into actually following the speed limit. And someone thought, wow, it would be a funny bit of political theatre to cover up the "Your Speed" with something else. Someone figured it would be easy to do -- just take measurements and get some posterboard and put the doctored sign on top of the regular one. But then, someone thought it might be a bad idea. First off, there's a legitimate safety issue, namely that people might be distracted by it from laughing or from being confused. And so the local police might not like that and might come after someone. But moreover, someone worried that maybe an even bigger deal of it might be made given the particular message, and that a federal case might be made of it, and someone might be in an even bigger amount of trouble. Someone adores the Freeway Blogger and is pleased to see locals following that person's lead, but someone is worried that authorities might not take as kindly to temporarily altering a sled. So, someone had to settle for the next best thing in this day and age, a photo edited to put in the message that someone wished were on the sled. Knowing of someone's plight, I took pity on someone and am publishing the edited picture here. (Apologies for any formatting oddities it causes. Someone is an amateur at editing photos.)

Lose Chafee

The Lincoln Chafee re-election campaign has signs and stickers around with the slogan "Keep Chafee." What a lot of people don't realize is that it's a throwback to one of his father's previous campaigns. I don't have a link, but when he was running six years ago, he mentioned in a news story that some (mostly elderly) people came up to him and gave him old buttons from his father's campaign with that slogan on it. So it's somewhat clever for him to be using the same slogan this time around. I don't necessarily think that any voters around here have forgotten that his father is dead (unlike in Knoxville, where I'm not sure if voters realize that Rep. John Duncan Sr. died something like 18 years ago, and his son Jr. is in the seat now.) But it reminds some people of the goodwill that his father earned (and that he himself, in my opinion, has not.)

Anyway, the signs and stickers are becoming more numerous (in Warwick, even ubiquitous) as the primary approaches. At the same time, some people on both ends of the political spectrum are sick of him. So, on a comment thread on the RI's Future blog, someone suggested that someone needed to make a "Dump Chafee" sticker. Another person rose to the challenge although changed the slogan a bit. So now those who are interested can buy "Lose Chafee" stickers. I am not affiliated with (and don't even know) the person selling them, and I probably won't buy one myself, but I am impressed with his taking the initiative. It's amazing what can be done in the age of the Internet.

If I Wrote the Headlines, 7 August 2006

In today's ProJo: Republican Statewide Candidates Ignore Dominican Community. Subheadline: Chafee, desperate for crossover primary votes, is lone exception.

In fairness, this is of course assuming that the ProJo's article is accurate. Would the reporter know the down-ticket Republican statewide candidates by sight? Well, Sue Stenhouse is easy to spot due to her resemblance to local drag queen Miss Kitty Litter (yeah, I know, I know, but I just couldn't resist. And why do you assume it's an insult? Kitty is a friend of mine), and they might recognize Centracchio. And Laffey's mouth is hard to miss. But the others? Maybe not.