Jonathan's blog

From an article of the same title by Kirk Johnson in the NY Times:

On the low rungs of the nation's political system in the state legislatures, Democrats are pushing close to real parity among men and women - a historic threshold that is changing more than mere numbers. The new Democratic women, epitomized by the Woodbury Three, as they are known here, are focused on the bread-and-butter issues of the suburbs, like property taxes, schools and health care. They are the soccer-mom swing-voters of years past, now making the laws themselves, and that could end up changing both parties here and beyond.

While what happened here [Minnesota] was not repeated in Congressional elections, it was echoed in many other states, especially in the Northeast and West, where women made their biggest gains. Nationally, Democrats picked up more than 320 seats in state legislatures - about 140 of them by women - and gained control of 10 chambers, 4 of them here in the Upper Midwest: the Minnesota House, the Wisconsin Senate and both chambers of Iowa General Assembly. Republicans gained control of the Montana House of Representatives. Almost everywhere, women were crucial to those Democratic margins. In the New Hampshire Senate, which swung to Democratic control for the first time since 2000, women outnumber men almost two-to-one in the new majority caucus.

Republican women lost ground and saw their numbers slide everywhere but in parts of the South. There are now only 534 of them out of more than 7,300 party-affiliated state legislators nationwide, compared with 1,187 Democratic women, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, a bipartisan group.

This one's for you, Freeman. Via AmberMac, TechPresident.com:

TechPresident is a new group blog from Personal Democracy Forum that covers how the 2008 presidential candidates are using the web, and vice versa, how content generated by voters is affecting the campaign. The 2008 election will be the first where the Internet will play a central role, not only in terms of how the campaigns use technology, but also in how voter-generated content affects its course. TechPresident.com plans to track all these changes in real-time, covering everything from campaign websites, online advertising and email lists to the postings on YouTube and who's got the fastest growing group of friends on Facebook. Our team of bloggers is made of veterans of the 2004 and 2006 elections, ranging across the political spectrum. Their expertise covers everything from website design to the latest in mobile tools and social networking sites. And we'll look closely not just at what the campaigns are or are not doing, but what voters and activists are doing online to independently affect the election.

The 1/2 Hour News Hour, Fox News' answer to The Daily Show will finally see the light of day at 10 PM on Sunday. According to Variety, the second episode will air at the same time on March 4. The Huffington Post and Slate discuss it today. Here's a clip from YouTube:

Apparently the blogosphere isn't impressed. I thought the BO mag cover was OK. Its time slot creates a bit of a dilemma. It's on at the same time as Extras and Battlestar Galactica, so the adult's dual-tuner DirecTivo is otherwise occupied. Guess it will have to go on the kids' DirecTivo.

From an article of the same title by Neil Steinberg in the Chicago Sun-Times:

A dozen American soldiers are ordered to swim the Atlantic Ocean. Imagine any scenario to explain why: The president wants them to demonstrate the supremacy of our way of life, perhaps. All 12 drown, of course. Was their sacrifice a waste? I would say yes -- a doomed endeavor initiated for a bad purpose by a deluded leader. Does this mean I don't support a strong military? No. Does this mean I don't respect those doomed soldiers, who bravely followed orders and waded into the surf? Not at all. We are allowed to differentiate between individual heroism and a larger pointlessness.

I've seen the moniker "Red Letter Christians" a few times recently (particularly in reference to Shane Claiborne) and wondered about it. Obviously, it's not too hard to guess what it's generally about, but I hadn't seen it defined until I read an article by Tony Campolo from yesterday. An excerpt:

In my book, Letters to a Young Evangelical, I point out that there is an emerging new generation of young evangelicals who are still conservative on their views on homosexual behavior, but refuse to make gay marriage the defining issue that it has become for older Christians. Instead, these young people are more concerned with such issues as poverty, the AIDS crisis, the environment, and war. It is no surprise, therefore, that they take Bono as their model for Christian activism. This rock singer who has raised their consciousness about the crisis in Africa is working hard to eliminate Third World debts. Bono is committed to the causes that young evangelicals deem significant and they are joining with enthusiasm in his crusade to "Make Poverty History." In many instances, those in this new generation are even reluctant to accept being called evangelicals. They sense that the label "evangelical" is commonly thought to be synonymous with right-wing politics and suggests a gay-bashing, anti-environmentalist, anti-feminist, and pro-war mindset. Instead, they are increasingly calling themselves Red Letter Christians. This name, of course, associates them with those verses in scripture that record the words that Jesus spoke, which in many Bibles are printed in red. That I affirm this designation and promote this new label in my book often greatly disturbs my interviewers. They quickly remind me that Jesus never mentioned homosexuality. "That's right!" I respond. "He most likely maintained ancient Jewish laws on the matter, but condemning gays was not on His big-ten hit list, while attacking judgmental religious people was."