palewire

If, like me, you’re up keeping an eye on whether Obama might come from behind, I get the feeling you might enjoy the following.

Written, of course, by my fellow Iowan, Meredith Wilson.

I had a little excess energy available tonight while watching Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s appearance on Bill Moyers’ program, so I dumped the transcript of his new statements into Many Eyes and ran it against what the Guardian bills as an “excerpt” of his famous post Sept. 11 sermon.

See anything interesting?

The media circus found its latest entertainment Friday when word of Barack Obama’s allegedly controversial remarks shot across the blogosphere. Unlike previous presidential titillations, this one was set off by The Huffington Post. That alone seems somewhat remarkable, considering how the lefty HuffPost openly apes the practices of the usual outlet for this sort of news: the more rightly Drudge Report.

But, in keeping with the spirit of Dave Berry Barry, may he rest in peace, let’s not take this opportunity to reflect upon what the means for the state of the news media, or even the campaign of one Barack Obama. No, let’s use it to consider which related news headline contains the best potential band name.

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Sources:

• Huffington Post: “Obama: No Surprise That Hard-Pressed Pennsylvanians Turn Bitter”
• Associated Press: “Obama Concedes Remarks Were Ill-Chosen”
• LA Times: “Obama seeks to explain ‘guns or religion’ remark”
• Powerline: “OBAMA ‘SCRAMBLES TO QUELL THE FUROR’”
• NYT: “Obama Says He Mispoke; Clinton Raps Him Hard”
• Daily Kos: “Barack Obama Shows Disrespect For Rural Americans”
• Newsday: “Obama says ‘bitter’ didn’t come out right”
• FoxNews: “Obama on Guns and Religion: ‘I Didn’t Say It as Well as I Should Have.’”
• Washington Post: “Opponents Paint Obama as an Elitist“
• Washington Post: “In Hoosier State, Clinton Ramps Up ‘Bitter’ Talk”

The news out of the political circus yesterday was that Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, had been booed during a speech honoring Martin Luther King Jr. on the 40th anniversary of King’s assassination.

As Steve Benen and others have recorded, McCain has followed a serpentine path on the issue. And I’m not sure I can clearly reconcile their accounts of the candidate’s past actions with his current position.

MLK holiday angst is hardly a new story in American politics (Remember Public Enemy’s “By The Time I Get To Arizona”). What caught my imagination this weekend for the first time was the possibility that we might be one day playing out an identical drama, but in a different color.

Less than a week before the anniversary of King’s death, another notable date passed. March 31 is the birthday of union organizer and Hispanic-American hero Cesar Chavez. With Hispanic participation in the Democratic party vaulting, Sen. Barack Obama took the opportunity to make a point of supporting a national holiday, which dovetails with a fledgling resolution in the House of Representatives offering to make the same idea law. Meanwhile, an array of prominent union organizers have signed on to the lobbying effort.

If the Democratic leadership ever brings the measure to a vote, I wonder if a ‘Nay’ might one day come back to haunt a future presidential candidate, just as McCain’s 1983 vote haunted him yesterday. Voting against Chavez Day might not be so politically beneficial four or five election cycles from now if you’re running for president in an America where Hispanics are a larger, more affluent and more political active segment of the population.

While it was a new thought for me — living only blocks from Los Angeles’ Cesar Chavez Boulevard may be having an effect — the concept of Hispanic demographics as destiny certainly occured to Chavez himself. In the course of kicking around the web this afternoon, I found the following passage from a 1984 Chavez speech that offers a strong prediction. You can read and listen to it here.

I am told these days farm workers should be discouraged and pessimistic. The Republicans control the governor’s office and the White House. There is a conservative trend in the nation. Yet, we are filled with hope and encouragement. We have looked into the future and the future is ours. History and inevitability are on our side. The farm workers and their children and the Hispanics and their children are the future in California, and corporate growers are the past. Those politicians who ally themselves with the corporate growers and against farm workers and the Hispanics are in for a big surprise. They want to make their careers in politics; they want to hold power 20 and 30 years from now. But 20 and 30 years from now, in Modesto, in Salinas, in Fresno, in Bakersfield, in the Imperial Valley and in many of the great cities of California, those communities will be dominated by farm workers and not by growers, by the children and grandchildren of farm workers and not by the children and grandchildren of growers.

…

Like the other immigrant groups, the day will come when we win the economic and political rewards, which are in keeping with our numbers in society. The day will come when the politicians will do the right thing for our people out of political necessity and not out of charity or idealism. That day may not come this year. That day may not come during this decade, but it will come someday. And when that day comes, we shall see the fulfillment of that passage from the Book of Matthew in the New Testament: “The last shall be first, and the first shall be last.” And on that day, our nation shall fulfill its creed, and that fulfillment shall enrich us all. Thank you very much.

It’s a little eerie how closely it mirrors MLK’s famous last speech in Memphis, but with a stronger nod to the virtues of bare-knucked, union-style politics than King’s offer of divine revelation. What do you think of the comparison?

Considering all the hoopla, I can’t be the only one wondering what the hell is actually in a passport file.

According to the State Department’s official blog (yes, the State Department has an official blog), here’s what they keep:

Generally, after the State Department issues a passport, all personal documents are returned to the applicant – the only document kept in the Department’s passport file is the passport application. Passport files do not contain travel information, such as visa and entry stamps, from previous passports. Almost all passport files contain only a passport application form as completed by the applicant.

And, according to Under Secretary of State for Management Patrick F. Kennedy, here’s what the paper trail looks like.

When you send in your passport application, it might go to a State Department office around the country, it might go to a clerk of the court, it might go to a library or a post office. That information is — your application is assembled with others and transmitted via registered mail, via Federal Express — all of it is traceable — to one of our facilities, a facility such as the one that we work with the Department of the Treasury on in Newark, Delaware . And the information then is — the envelopes are opened, the checks are removed so that they can be deposited to the Treasury’s account, and then they are processed for onward transmission to one of the State Department’s facilities that actually print out the passport books in your name (Source).

If you review the passport application form, you’re not going to find much more than what’s printed on your driver’s license. At first blush, that hardly seems like the sort of thing that contains much to get excited about.

But, being good paranoids, we should be sure to note the weasel words in the State Department’s blog post. They are “generally” and “almost all,” which I can only take to mean that while most passport files may only contain the application form, some files contain other documents. What documents those are, it doesn’t say.

On this particularly alarmist segment of The Countdown with Keith Olbermann, the host and his guests seem to think there’s the potential for quite a lot more to be in there. (In a memorable bit of hype, Keith speculates that the file might be of “Watergatian” proportions). On the other hand, the reporting of Time’s Brian Bennett seems more in line with the State Department’s blog.

But hell if I know.

The good news is that we live in a free country, governed by laws, one of the best of which is the Freedom of Information Act (a.k.a FOIA). And, thereby, we all have the right to review government documents pertaining to ourselves.

So, getting to the bottom of this should only be a matter of paperwork and collective effort. Below is a form letter I’ve prepared using the State Department’s FOIA handbook as a guide. I’ve already filled in my own information and will, later today, mail it off as a formal request.

You should feel free to do the same. Just don’t expect a rapid response. The State Department annual report says the median response time on a typical request last year was 212 days. (Though, if you’re willing to pay a little more money, the State Department’s manual suggests you might get your documents quicker if you bypass FOIA law and make your document request with the Passport Services office.)

If you want to share what you get back, drop a comment when the time comes. I’ll be sure to do the same.

[Today's Date]

[Your Name]
[Your Street Address]
[Your City, State and Zipcode]

Office of Information Programs and Services

A/ISS/IPS
Department of State, SA-2
Washington, DC 20522-8001
Re: Freedom of Information Act Request

Dear Sir or Madame:

I am writing to request the release of personal records under the Privacy Act and the Freedom of Information Act.

I, [Your Name], born [Your Place of Birth] on [Your Date of Birth], request the release of any and all documents contained in my passport file. I believe the Department of State is likely to have maintained such records since I am a current passport holder who has traveled abroad.

I further request that the results of your search be forwarded to my current address, detailed above. If the expense required to perform this search is estimated to exceed $25 dollars, I expect notification from your office and the option to reformulate the request as stipulated in your agency’s official policy. If any information is withheld, I request to be notified of the amount of information withheld, the basis for its withholding and my options for appeal, as is my right.

I [declare, certify, verify, of state] under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United

States of America, that the foregoing is true and correct.

If you have any questions or concerns, I can be reached by telephone at [Your Phone Number].

Sincerely,

[Your Signature]

If you’re going to play along, you don’t have to send the exact same letter, but you should be sure to include that line about verifying your own identity under penalty of perjury. Otherwise you’ll either have to have the letter notarized or the government won’t take you on your word that this is a personal request. At least that’s what the manual says.

Pop quiz.

Name the controversial black pastor, once allied with a charismatic young presidential candidate, who called America the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world today,” before decrying how, in a “madness” fed by the “immense profits of overseas investment,” the country “poisoned the international atmosphere” by falling “victim to … deadly Western arrogance” and propping up a foreign government that is “singularly corrupt, inept and without popular support?” He’s also noted concern about America worshipping “the God of Hate” at “the alter of retaliation.”

Maybe you’re thinking of Jeremiah Wright, the Chicago pastor whose provocative sermons have recently caused problems for his highest profile congregant, presidential contender Barack Obama.

Well, that’s wrong. The answer is Martin Luther King Jr., who said all of those things in an April 1967 speech in Riverside, California. You can read and listen to it here.

Now you can start drawing distinctions between King’s form of dissent and the more highly publicized snippets of Wright’s technique. And that’s fine. I could make a list myself. But my point here is that King wasn’t always the meek and mild voice he’s often portrayed to be today. Though I think the way forward pointed to by King, and echoed again last week by Obama, is still well captured by the voice of Langston Hughes, who, grievanced as he was, envisioned the possibility of a more perfect union to come:

O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath– America will be!

The graphic down there is called a word tree. Pop in a word (I’d recommend something simple like “I”) and hit enter. Sort of fun, right?