Democrats Walk Tall, Stand up for Ethics, Constitution

Democrats have been walking a little taller the past few days. In the House, Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) and Ethics Committee Chair Doc Hastings (R-WA) recently backed down after Democrats refused to accept their compromise proposal. The Republicans had previously changed the ethics committee rules so that any partisan deadlock over an issue would result in its immediate dismissal. Democrats alleged that this rule change was made to protect embattled House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX). The Democrats refused to convene the Ethics Committee under the new rules.

The Republican compromise proposal allowed for an investigation of DeLay in exchange for the rules change, but the ranking Democrat on the ethics committee, Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV) refused to compromise his principles. It didn’t take much longer for Republicans to back down, agreeing to convene under the old rules that demand an investigation of any member in the face of partisan deadlock. The investigation of DeLay will now go forward.

Republicans Threaten to Break the Rules, Trample Minority Rights

Now the Democrats have another chance to walk tall, this time in the Senate, where the nuclear option issue is quickly coming to a head. During President Bush’s last term, Democrats threatened to filibuster 10 of his most conservative judicial nominees, indefinitely stalling their confirmation process. This term, Bush has re-nominated 8 of these unacceptable judges.

The Democrats have once again threatened to use the filibuster. Republicans have responded by threatening the nuclear option. In this scenario, Frist would break the rule that requires a 2/3 majority to change Senate rules. He would ask for a simple majority to vote to take away the minority’s right to filibuster Bush’s outrageous nominees. This would be a gross violation of the Constitution’s protection of the minority. In the event that this option is used, Senate Democrats have threatened a total shutdown of the legislature.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) has proposed a compromise that would allow 100 hours of debate on judicial nominees, followed by an up-or-down vote on each. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has called this the “slow motion nuclear option.” After 100 hours, the rights of the minority simply disappear. He hasn’t said he’ll scrap the proposal altogether, but his response was chilly at best.

It’s critical that you write your Senators, both Democratic and Republican, and let them know that you don’t support this compromise option. Encourage your Democratic Senators to walk tall with Reid and encourage him not to back down to the majority’s political games. Write your Republican Senators and urge them to take the nuclear option off the table.

We must send a clear message to the White House that far-right judges do not represent the American people, and are not fit to serve on the Federal Judiciary.

You can contact your Senators by CLICKING HERE.

Singing in the Shower

I don’t play the piano anymore. I can still rely on muscle memory. If I don’t think too hard my hands remember the shape of an A, or a G7. But this is all. I don’t really need it anymore.

I used to feel songs getting ready inside of me. Like a bird I would fuss and brood – waiting for lyrics to drop out, an egg into my clever little nest. My hands would form a chord progression that felt natural, like muscle memory only without the remembering.

I can’t remember precisely when I stopped thinking of myself as a musician. It must have been so gradual that I didn’t notice. But the other day, I found myself telling someone that I used to be a professional singer – and it didn’t make me sad. I didn’t really feel like I’d lost anything.

I like to tell people now that I got sick of the pop music scene. This isn’t entirely a lie. I was nearly assaulted by a producer who couldn’t believe I wasn’t willing to sleep with him in exchange for his connections. But it’s not the whole truth either. I don’t feel like I need the attention anymore. And thought I don’t like to admit it, that’s what music was for me. It was a way to get attention. The truth is that I never liked music enough to starve for it.

I still like attention. I’m not afraid to talk to people I’ve just met about politics, or sex. I can cold call anyone. On my resume, the last thing under my “skills” section is “immune to stage fright.” This is what makes me good at public relations. The rush I get from making a connection with a reporter feels every bit as good as the applause of a thousand people.

I still sing to myself, but I don’t ever sing my own songs. I usually pick a jazz standard. Lately it’s been “Teach me Tonight.” Sometimes I burst out with a riff worthy of Christina Aguilera, but mostly I leave that to her. I sometimes think of my talent like a fallow field. Perhaps someday songs will come rushing back to my lips and fingers. But for now I sing other people’s songs in the shower, and I smile while I’m doing it.

Rumors & Truth

As I wrap up my college career, it’s interesting to think of all the rumors I’ve heard about myself. Pomona College is small and incestuous. Everyone is in everyone else’s business. Rumors get started quickly, and get blown wildly out of their original shape as they go along.

I found this quote on someone’s whiteboard the other day:
Q: Do you know Te-te?
A: No, but I know her orgasms.

I guess I might deserve that one ;-). But, to be fair, it’s not easy having a sex life while living in close quarters with your 1,500 closest (and nosiest) friends.

I’ve also heard that I’ve been given a clinical diagnosis of nymphomania. I think it’s sad that when a guy likes sex he’s a normal guy, but when a woman likes sex she’s a nymphomaniac.

There’s another rumor out there that I wish to correct. Someone has been spreading the idea that I dated a Playboy Bunny. In fact, she was a Hustler model. She was gritty, smart, and had real breasts - I liked her tremendously.

Most disturbing of all is the rumor that I am psycho. I think this comes primarily from an ex who once sprinted away from me at a party for no reason at all. This pissed me off, so I took the mix CD he’d made me for Valentine’s Day, broke it into pieces, and left it outside his door.

Yes, I am intense. I get angry when people let me down or treat me badly. I’m not afraid of confrontation. I stand up for myself. I don’t run away when a fight is worth fighting. And I don’t take things lying down. I’m proud of it, and it doesn’t make me psycho. It makes me strong.

It’s funny how huge a gap there is between what people say about you behind your back and what you really learn about yourself during the college years. I know now that I…
- Love human puzzles, sometimes to my own detriment.
- Am really hard on myself.
- Like antiheroes.
- Know how to keep a secret.
- Sometimes try too hard.

That’s the funny thing about people. The people that love you know the truth, everyone else just knows the rumors.

Filibuster Fracas

I just want to remind everyone, particularly my readers in Maine, Oregon, Nebraska, and Virginia, to call your Senators and let them know that you won’t stand for the Republicans running roughshod over the most fundamental and basic Senate traditions in a mad power grab!

The filibuster exists to protect the rights of the minority. To get rid of it is insane! The NeoConservative wing of the Republican Party is trying to consolidate power in all three branches of government. We need to remind them that the judiciary isn’t supposed to be accountable to “mainstream American values,” they’re supposed to be accountable to the Constitution!

Here is a list of all current US Senators in alphabetical order. You can look yours up and send him/her an e-mail or a phone message.

In your message:
1) Say that you’re a constituent.
2) Tell them you support a minority’s right to filibuster radical conservative judicial nominiees.
3) Tell them that democracy exists to protect the rights of the minority, as well as the majority.
4) Mention that the Republican party blocked just as many of President Clinton’s judicial nominees as the Dems have this time around.
5) Remind them you’re a consitutent and say the address at which you’re registered to vote.

If you are registered in Maine, Oregon, Nebraska or Virginia, this is extremely important because your Senators are potential swing votes on the issue!

Oh Dan!

Daniel Rosenholtz is a hairy, hairy man. One time, he dressed up in a gorilla suit as a prank and he basically looked the same as he normally does. Tonight. we were having dinner at Frary with Michelle and Dan’s girlfriend Molly when this conversation ensued:

Dan: Don’t you remember when Chris put his balls on Maya’s head freshman year?
Molly, Michelle, Me: Not really, when did this happen?
Dan: Chris was singing the “balls on your head” song and then he came up behind Maya and put his balls on her head.
Me: I still think Chris would be a fun guy to go out with, hypothetically of course.
Dan: How about if I just save you the trouble and put my balls on your head?
Me: No thank you! Your hair would probably stick.

Michelle, Dan & Molly all bust up laughing

Dan: It’s not sticky, except after I exercise.

Molly blushes, obviously thinking of other occasions when Dan’s hair is sticky

Me: No, I was thinking we might get all tangled up.
Dan: It’s not like a brillo pad either! Maybe dental floss, but definitely not a brillo pad!

Death: Not So Bad

People often choose to dwell on the inevitability of death when they feel sad. “Life sucks and then you die,” and all that. But death isn’t really all that frightening a prospect. It reminds us that nothing is permanent. It forces us to savor things and to do what we can. Death’s inevitability makes sweet moments sweeter, because we know instinctually that they’re precious.

The other side of the coin is equally relevant. Life can present insurmountable challenges. There are issues we’ll never resolve, wounds that will never heal. There will always be paperwork, moving house, telemarketers, traffic and dust bunnies under the bed. Death offers us a respite from all those things that drive us nuts. Someday, each and every one of us will come to the end - and we’ll never have to file another tax return. That’s almost comorting when you’re swamped with work or stuck on the 10.

You’re probably thinking, “yeah right! She’s 21 years old! She still thinks she’s immortal.” But I really don’t. I know I’m going to die someday. I can imagine being all corpsified and gross. I’m not really bothered by the fact that someday my beauty will fade. I’m determined to take care of myself and enjoy it while I have it.

There have been times in my life where I’ve contemplated suicide. I used to think about driving my car over the edge of a steep cliffside highway in the San Gabriels. But when I fantasized about driving over that edge, I realized that the second it was too late to turn back, I would want to live. That specter of death was all the kick in the ass I needed. I might still have been sad, but at least I knew that ending it was not the answer.

So when it’s my time - I’ll try to go with as much dignity as I can muster. I hope that in my life, I won’t lose sight of the things that death reminds us to cherish. I hope that I’ll go into death the same way I went into life: as an adventure worth having.

Silicone Implants, Emergency Contraception, Pope Ratzinger & Backstreet’s Back!

You know what gets me steamed? The FDA will lift the ban on sillicone breast implants, which have been widely demonstrated to cause lupus and autoimmune disease in women. But they won’t make emergency contraception - which has been demonstrated to be safe and effective - available over the counter. I guess big breasts are more important than letting women control our own reproductivity. Jesus Christ!

An Open Letter to a Pair of Fuckers

Dear Messeurs Frist & DeLay,

The separation of powers exists for a reason: so that power-hungry idiots like you cannot control the judiciary. They are not SUPPOSED to be accountable to you. That’s their constitutional function!

The separation of church and state exists for a reason: so that religious fundamentalist nutbags like you cannot control the government. Your faith is not SUPPOSED to play a role in the government. That’s the constitutional function of the first ammendment.

The fillibuster exists for a reason: so that majority leaders like you cannot undermine the rights of the minority. Democracy exists to protect the minority as well as the majority.

The founders are turning over in their graves! Keep your religion out of my government! Keep your self-righteousness out of my Congress! Keep your nose out of my judiciary! Keep your laws off my body!

Very Truly Yours,
Teresa Valdez Klein

Accomplishments & Goals

Rock climbing, my new favorite way to get an awesome workout, is all about accomplishments and goals. The second you get to the top of one climb, you start thinking about the next one. It’s so fucking exhilarating!

Today, I made it up this badass, windy black 5.8 that goes up along the side of this chasm-like edge in the rock. I had to twist and turn a lot to make it to the top, but I did it! Then I did this grey climb that’s a little windy and keeps you off balance. It’s not hard enough to be a 5.8 except for the top part, where you go under this completely horizontal underhang before you get to the top. I made it under the underhang, but the grips are so slippery that I couldn’t quite make it to the top. Next time!

That’s what I mean, you have an accomplishment, and then you turn around and set another goal.

A Way Out

The postcard is made of two pieces of paper. They are layered, one on top of the other. The bottom leaf is simple stock. The top is art paper. A sketch of two towers smolders on its surface. They’re textured against the dimpled eggshell sky. Billows of pointillist smoke encircle them like a halo. The top edge of the artist’s paper has been burned away leaving ragged sepia edges that blend with the smoke. A corner of white stock peeks out from beneath the burned portion. Someone has written on it in copperplate letters, “Everyone who knew me before 9/11 believes I’m dead.”

People send Frank Warren secrets written on postcards all the time. They become part of PostSecret.com – his interactive online art project. “I’ve received over 100 of these and I don’t believe they’re all true, he once told NPR’s Michele Norris. “There are some that I pray aren’t true.”

I assume that this is one of the secrets he’s prayed about. It’s a simple thing, yet it invites endless speculation. I don’t want to believe it’s true either. At first, it seems too melodramatic to possibly be real. But the drawing has gravity. It’s more than just the work of a prankster. The person who drew it saw those towers as a gateway between two lives. I have to conclude that it’s real. One of those 2,973 people isn’t really dead.

I’m not sure why, but when I look at that postcard I start thinking about Professor Jackson. I took his Ancient Greek Religion class my freshman year of college. Last summer, he murdered his friend with multiple shotgun blasts to the abdomen. Then he killed himself.

The details of the murder-suicide trickled out slowly through the media. Jennifer Grasmick, 31, had been a friend of Professor Jackson’s for ten years. She was a roving artist, and she often stayed with him for long periods of time. She had accepted money he could ill afford to give on more than one occasion. She told her father that Professor Jackson was in love with her, but that she wasn’t interested.

What did this woman think she was doing? You didn’t need to know Howard Jackson for ten years to see that he was unstable. She knew that he was in love with her, and she took monetary advantage of his feelings. She didn’t deserve to die, but what did she expect?

I liked Professor Jackson. He was real. He wasn’t afraid to say that life – and love – had hurt him terribly. So many people act like they’re immune to the big problems and frustrating minutiae that make life feel like a constant series of little failures. They keep their pain a secret. They think they should be happy, so they pretend to be. Professor Jackson didn’t do that.

Maybe that’s why the postcard brings him to mind. The person who sent it once looked at an atrocity and saw a chance. He wasn’t capable of simply pretending to be happy with the life he was supposed to want. Maybe he was trapped in a loveless relationship. Maybe someone was taking advantage of him. What he did was wrong – but it was human. He saw a way out.

He took it.

Where’s the Love?

“Father, Father, Father help us, send some guidance from above. These people got me, got me questioning, where is the love?”
- Black Eyed Peas

There are no bounds to my frustration with our society. The United States is the most materialistic nation on the planet. Americans barely think about the environmental or social impact of our many luxuries. We throw away food while people starve. We intrude on the sovereignty of other nations to quench our thirst for oil. In the midst of this hedonism, we hold incongruously ascetic values when it comes to sex. The American ideal reserves sex for procreation within a marriage between a man and a woman. Social conservatives have been using this attitude to their political advantage. It’s getting to the point where our reflexive response to “sexual immorality” is to legislate against it.

This is why I was upset, but not terribly surprised to learn that Kansas’ voters approved an amendment to their state constitution banning gay marriage this week. Kansas isn’t exactly a bastion of sex-positivity. It wasn’t hard for the “compassionate” conservatives who use homophobia for their own political benefit to gain a foothold there. The news wouldn’t be so upsetting if this amendment were a mere radical outlier on the spectrum of political activity. But many of this week’s news stories further underscore the fact that Americans are deeply embroiled in a crisis of sex, religion, and politics.

In Texas, the state legislature has taken up the issue of expanding the state’s conscience clause to include pharmacists. This would allow pharmacists to opt out of dispensing drugs whose uses go against their religious beliefs. Birth control pills and the morning after pill are among those medications that could be dispensed only to married patients, or withheld altogether based solely on the religious disposition of the pharmacist at the counter. So far, nobody has mentioned Viagra. The law is expected to pass without much trouble.

In Ohio, the anti-gay marriage amendment to the state’s constitution is so broad that Ohio courts can no longer enforce domestic violence laws in cases where victim and abuser are not husband and wife. The situation has become desperate for unwed women whose batterers have been set free on bail after being charged with mere assault instead of domestic abuse. The amendment’s original proponents admit that they never foresaw this consequence. But they still won’t go so far as to suggest amending the amendment. That, they say, would weaken the affirmation of traditional marriage that Ohioans approved on November 2, 2004.

All of this is frustrating, but what really gets me riled up is the far right’s so-called compromise position that would ban abortion except in cases of rape or incest. On the surface, it sounds like their standard abortion ban with one minor political concession. But if you think about it for a minute, you’ll see that the real motivation behind this policy is not to protect life. It’s to punish women for having sex.

If for the sake of argument, life really does begin when a sperm meets an egg, then a child borne of rape or incest is just as deserving of life as anyone else. The only difference between a fetus conceived during rape and one conceived through an act of consensual sex is that in the latter case, the woman was willing. In the eyes of these anti-abortionists, she sinned. She gave in to her unholy, unwomanly urges. She’s a slut and she deserves to carry the baby to term and be saddled with lifelong scars. When Eve gave into temptation, God punished her with the curse of painful childbirth. Under the guise of protecting innocent life, these anti-abortion activists seek to violate the separation of church and state by involving our justice system in the enforcement of this highly suspect Biblical doctrine.

In her treatise on the erotic, Audre Lorde wrote that humans tend to be afraid of anything that gives us the power to overcome our own mediocrity. The acknowledgment and acceptance of sexual desire lies squarely under that heading. When we are sexually satisfied, we begin to long for the fulfillment of other needs. For women, this can mean a cry for equality and freedom. Our Puritan ancestors feared this acutely. Their response was to create a religion so sex-negative that even now – hundreds of years later – we are still unable to escape it. It has left its unfortunate mark on our national psyche; making us a nation of sexual neurotics. The remedy to this problem can lie only in the withdrawal of religious fanaticism from the affairs of state. Without this basic check on the power of religion we cannot maintain equal rights and reproductive justice.

This I Believe

Here is my essay for NPR’s ressurection of the 1950’s radio program This I Believe

Insert Something Profound Here

Holy shit! I have 6 weeks left of college.

I wish I had it all to do over again - I’d make the same mistakes, and I’d take more risks. I’d do more barbaric yawping.

How do you sieze a day that’s almost over?