These tips for dating a coder may hit a little too close to home. Not that I’m a coder. Not really. No.

Another post in a similar vein.

I once got in trouble for sending Nathaniel to the gas station down the block for candy. I remember going three blocks away for candy when I was a kid. Is today so much more dangerous or are we more afraid? I was proud of this parent, I think she’s right. Kids need chances to express their independence. My fear is that if we don’t give them reasonable venues to be independent, they will find unreasonable ones.

I am always impressed by politicians who listen to their kids. A story about Pensylvania Sen. Bob Casey’s endorsement of Obama includes this gem:

Casey’s decision was also personal, motivated in part by the enthusiasm his four daughters - Elyse, Caroline, Julia and Marena - have expressed for Obama, the source said. “He thinks we shouldn’t be deaf to the voices of the next generation.”

For those of you Mac OS X Leopard users who want to read or write German every once in a while, maybe for a note to Oma, maybe to translate a bit of theology: check out the BeoLingus Deutsch-Englisch plugins for Apple’s Dictionary program. Super easy to download and install, and free to boot. (Hat tip to Mary for passing this along to me.)

Today Obama responded to charges about his old pastor by publishing an article at the Huffington Post. Obama points out that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who made some inflammatory remarks that Obama has denounced, “has never been my political advisor; he’s been my pastor.”

But then he went on to point out that Wright is retiring and the new pastor of his church is Rev. Otis Moss III. Boy did that bring back memories! You see, the black church I have locked in my memory is the church of III’s father, Rev. Otis Moss Jr., in Cleveland. That’s where I grew up and that church was always a stop for my father on the campaign trail and at other times. How cool is it that his son is now Obama’s pastor! Small world.

My mom says she’s been saying novenas, that’s why Hillary won. The rosary of light. The luminous mysteries. My family in Wyoming asked me “Fighting amongst ourselves helps only the GOP. This is why I hate getting involved, the disappointment kills me. How did she win? Do you think more people voted for her than Barack? From our POV, that’s totally impossible. I’m stunned. WTF?”

You have to remember that two weeks ago Ohio and Texas were both supporting Clinton with margins of over 20%. Yes, people, real people, some of my family, support Hillary, and more people last night than supported Barack. She is a strong candidate and has a strong organization behind her. You cannot count her out. There are real reasons to vote for her too, people who loved the Clintons and the 1990’s (with some good reason).

That said, Obama has built an organization from scratch that nearly matches hers in every way and well exceeds it in some. That organization has had to fight a hard-scrabble fight from state to state for months. It has conceded no corner of the USA, fought hard everywhere. The press made February sound like a cakewalk, it was not. It was hard to win those 11 races. I made phone calls to two states myself, something I have not done in over 20 years. Obama wins with sweat and hard work.

He and we worked hard in Ohio and in Texas, and in Vermont and Rhode Island. That he cut her lead to 4% in Texas and 10% in Ohio is very good news. The media will spin is as terrible, and it was disappointing not to win, but it was a great race on March 4th. Even more remarkable, he probably lost no more than 5 delegates to Clinton last night. 5. Think of who he is, what he has had to build, how far behind he started, and then realize that he can get through a day like yesterday and only lose by 5 out of hundreds of delegates. There is no reason to feel bad about last night.

Obama built his lead in the delegate race (over 100 delegates ahead in all) state by state, race by race, person by person. So now you know that this is not an anointing. It never was and it should never be in this country. This is a fight for the future of the Democratic party and the country. Clinton really cares about that future, she will fight. If we really care, we have to fight too. Respectfully, intelligently, energetically, with our whole heart.

Your turn. I hope you not only get to the caucuses in Wyoming on Saturday, but make sure everyone you know does too. Whoever they support. The real story of this whole season has been turnout. We need to use the opportunity of a live race in the Democratic primary to get people charged up about changing this country. These are batteries we need to charge to get us through a potentially ugly convention, and a certainly ugly general election.

wyoming.barackobama.com

Go for it. Of course you will be hurt. Betrayed even. But is that any reason not to revel in the moment and help build a movement!

I have been humbled for years by the work my sister and brother-in-law do with their law degrees. They are both blessed with wonderfully acute minds and the kind of careful seeing of the world that makes for a gifted lawyer. Yet instead of making the millions easily within their reach they spent years in New Orleans (moving to Cleveland just before Katrina hit) fighting for juvenile justice and those on death row. Ben is still working in Louisiana via a long commute, and he recently brought my attention to another aspect of Clinton’s record that I find disturbing, but unfortunately quite in-character.

The Clintons get elected under the promise of ending discrimination against gays and lesbians in the military, and immediately passed the ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ policy which was progressive only in comparison to the Salem witch trials, and mccarthyism.

When you add this, to Bill Clinton’s signing of the AEDPA (anti-terrorism, effective death penalty act) which effectively gutted the constitutional right to habeas corpus and the role of the federal courts in overseeing the implementation of the 14th amendment (designed to protect blacks in the south from over-racialized prosecutions), to his signature end of welfare, to his signing of the PLRA (prison litigation reform act) which effectively gutted the rights of individuals who are incarcerated from really challenging their conditions of confinement, the experience of Hillary’s tenure in the Whitehouse is a bit desultory for the poor, the downtrodden.

He pointed me to Doug Berman’s blog, where many more details can be found, especially about Sen. Clinton’s recent lonely (well, Bush and the R’s were on her side) opposition to retroactive reform of sentencing to eliminate the crack/cocaine disparity.

I was proud to see my uncle Ted Celeste’s name on a list of Ohio state legislators supporting Obama. Ohio is a wonderful state with something for everyone on the political spectrum. I’m sure that supporting Obama is not without risk for a friend of Ohio’s newly elected Democratic Governor Strickland, who is a Clinton supporter. Bravo, Ted!

We took on the task of explaining Hot Cross Buns to our faith formation group this weekend. Lucky for us we learned from the wikipediea article that a new tradition of chocolate hot cross buns has arisen in Austrailia. That made Nathaniel pretty enthusiastic about our weekend baking duty!