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I’ve never been a fan of country music, but I bought Taking the Long Way, the new album from the Dixie Chicks. It’s good.

We Americans like to think that we stand up for those rebellious souls who dare to think for themselves, to say what they mean, and to stand their ground when powerful forces try to silence them.

As I said, we like to think we do that. But every few years, it seems, mobs gather across America to toss records into bonfires, or to run a steamroller over a pile of CDs. Every few years, it seems, a few big radio chains declare that they will no longer play some popular artist’s music because that artist said something unpopular. Every few years, it seems, groups pop up to declare a boycott not only of some rebellious soul’s work, but of any business that doesn’t join in banning that rebellious soul’s work.

And every few years, it seems, some of those who dare to speak their minds in America face death threats and worse.

Three years ago, when the Dixie Chicks criticized George W. Bush, the Iraq War had not yet begun. Bush was still saying that war was a last resort, but everyone could see that he wasn’t going to let anything stand in the way of his “cake walk” war.

The war was a popular idea then, and radio chains banned the Dixie Chicks for daring to think for themselves and say what they meant. CDs were plowed under. Death threats came in.

The past three years of the Iraq War and a long list of other Bush fumbles would seem to have validated the Dixie Chicks’ criticism, but many country music stations continue to ban the group from their airwaves.

The Dixie Chicks new album, Taking the Long Way, came out on May 23. Time magazine wrote:

Whether the Dixie Chicks recover their sales luster or not, Taking the Long Way’s existence is designed to thumb its nose at country’s intolerance for ideological hell raising, and buying it or cursing it reveals something about you and your politics — or at least your ability to put a grudge above your listening pleasure. And however you vote, it’s tough to deny that by gambling their careers, three Texas women have the biggest balls in American music.

The verdict is coming in. From Variety:

For the third time in their career, the Dixie Chicks roost on the top of The Billboard 200. The Columbia album “Taking the Long Way” tallied 526,000 copies in its first week of U.S. sales, according to Nielsen SoundScan, the trio’s best-selling week since 2002’s “Home” debuted with 780,000.

And while country radio has remained cool to the group in the wake of a 2003 boycott following comments group member Natalie Maines made about President Bush, “Taking the Long Way” also nabs the No. 1 spot on the Country Albums chart…

At this moment, the album is number 1 in music on Amazon.com, and is the top album in Apple’s iTunes Music Store.

Is it possible that this country is better than the boycotters and record burners?

I quoted Andy Rooney’s comments on Veteran’s Day:

There is more bravery at war than in peace, and it seems wrong that we have so often saved this virtue to use for our least noble activity — war.

Via Crooks and Liars: A 15-year-old named Ava Lowery has a website called Peace Takes Courage. And it does. After she posted this video, called What Would Jesus Do (go watch it!), she started getting hate mail (warning: strong language) and ominously threatening emails. One of the cleaner messages:

You are a TRAITOR to your country and should be executed for treason.

Nice, huh?

I used to believe that we should listen to and respect every person’s opinion. But when you’re trying to bully and intimidate a fifteen-year-old girl just for speaking out against injustice, I suspect even Jesus might lose patience with you.

Andy Rooney on Memorial Day:

For too many Americans, Memorial Day has become just another day off. There’s only so much time any of us can spend remembering those we loved who have died, but the men, boys really, who died in our wars deserve at least a few moments of reflection during which we consider what they did for us.

They died.

We use the phrase “gave their lives,” but they didn’t give their lives. Their lives were taken from them.

There is more bravery at war than in peace, and it seems wrong that we have so often saved this virtue to use for our least noble activity – war. The goal of war is to cause death to other people.

…

Remembering doesn’t do the remembered any good, of course. It’s for ourselves, the living. I wish we could dedicate Memorial Day, not to the memory of those who have died at war, but to the idea of saving the lives of the young people who are going to die in the future if we don’t find some new way – some new religion maybe – that takes war out of our lives.

That would be a Memorial Day worth celebrating.

Over at Crooks and Liars, a blog devoted mostly to politics, they’ve added a daily musical entry. Today they feature one of my favorite songs, George Harrison’s While My Guitar Gently Weeps.

If everything works correctly, you should see an embedded video player below, featuring a performance at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Or you can click here to go to a Youtube.com page featuring several versions of the song.

At the end of the U.S. Civil War, a 71-year-old Virginia secessionist named Edmund Ruffin shot himself, proclaiming in his final diary entry his hatred for “the perfidious, malignant and vile Yankee race” and his wish that all future generations of southerners would feel just the same.

What was he thinking — “I don’t want to live in a world without slavery?”

I thought about old Mr. Ruffin when I saw this story:

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, and senior officials and career prosecutors at the Justice Department told associates this week that they were prepared to quit if the White House directed them to relinquish evidence seized in a bitterly disputed search of a House member’s office, government officials said Friday.

Mr. Gonzales was joined in raising the possibility of resignation by the deputy attorney general, Paul J. McNulty, the officials said. Mr. Gonzales and Mr. McNulty told associates that they had an obligation to protect evidence in a criminal case and would be unwilling to carry out any White House order to return the material to Congress.

The U.S. Constitution was written at a time when kings routinely disbanded legislatures and arrested troublesome legislators. No legislator can be above the law, but as an elected representative of the people, each member of the legislative branch has certain protections against overreaching by the executive branch.

If Rep. William Jefferson is a crook, he’s not the first crook ever to sit in Congress. But never before in the nation’s history has the executive branch broken into and searched a legislator’s office in this way. There’s an established procedure for situations like this — a procedure that may seem like a hopelessly formal and arcane dance. But the dance is designed to protect the legislative branch from a kingly executive. It’s important.

Attorney General Gonzales has been extremely zealous in protecting the powers and privileges of the executive branch from any encroachment by legislature or courts. With his legal advice, the Bush Administration has claimed that the president can order warrantless searches, hold citizens indefinitely without access to attorneys or courts, and ignore laws that don’t suit him.

His devotion to the constitutional separation of powers is a selective thing, however. He sees an executive branch with powers reminiscent of the old days of the Divine Right of Kings, and a legislative branch with no special protections at all. And if that view doesn’t prevail, then, by golly, Gonzales threatens to quit.

Go! Go, Alberto! Resign, please! Go, McNulty! Shoo! Go, Mueller! Get out of here, all of you. Give us a parting curse, and fall on your swords. Resign already, and good riddance to all of you.

A progressive political group called Georgia for Democracy is selling this button. Sure to be a big hit among idealists with the quaint pre-Dubya notion that voting should count for something.

Via CNET: Pamela Slim, a “newly minted rebel” in the corporate world, offers some advice to corporate bigwigs:

I tried for many years as a consultant to YOU to explain the importance of treating your employees with dignity and respect. I encouraged you to speak clearly and to the point, to avoid endless hours of PowerPoint, buzzwords and meaningless jargon like “our employees are our most valuable asset.” I was sincere in my efforts as I coached your managers and explained the importance of providing objective, developmental feedback to employees that was based on observable behavior, not personal generalizations. I encouraged you to be open with your business strategy so that your employees could contribute ideas to grow your company.

After ten years, I give up.

Rebel or not, she offers the big wheels ten suggestions to avoid getting clobbered come la revolución:

1. Teach people how to get rich like you. … the kind of disparity that exists right now between your employees who do the work and you and your senior team who reap the benefits is not only absurd, it is obscene. … It is insulting to tell your managers to look a hard-working employee in the eye and say they only get a 3% raise when you take home more in a quarterly bonus than they make in 10 years.
2. Don’t ask for your employees’ input if you are not going to listen to it. I have facilitated offsite meetings that lasted for days where well-intentioned managers brainstormed and argued and edited and wrote flip charts until their hands turned blue. They sweated over creating something that was relevant and for a brief period of time actually were proud of what they accomplished. Until a month later when I heard that you scrapped the whole thing in favor of a plan cooked up by an outside consulting firm. This does not only completely waste smart people’s time, it guarantees that you will have hostility and resentment the next time you ask for creative input.

Do you suppose any corporate leaders will listen, and reform their ways? If so, you haven’t been paying attention.

Jonathan Alter has written The Defining Moment, a new book about Franklin Roosevelt’s first 100 days as president. Last night on The Colbert Report, he talked about Roosevelt and George W. Bush:

Alter: Before they were president, they actually had a lot in common. They both came from these aristocratic families, famous names, relatives who were president. They were both derided with the exact same epithet: lightweight. That’s what they called FDR: Feather Duster Roosevelt. But when they got to office, they responded very differently.

Colbert: Why’d they call him that? Why’d they call him the Feather Duster?

Alter: Because they thought that he didn’t have much upstairs, amazingly enough. We think of him as this marbleized…

Colbert: That’s the first thing I’ve liked about this guy. So you’re saying he didn’t overthink problems?

Alter: No. He absolutely did not overthink them.

Colbert: He went from the gut?

Alter: He went from a combination of the gut — he was very instinctive — but he also was like a vacuum cleaner of information. Unlike Bush, he really wanted to know a lot — he was extremely open-minded, and he was constantly picking people’s brains — that’s what they called the Brain Trust — and finding out whether they could help him make better decisions. The other thing is that, you know, FDR put performance ahead of loyalty, and I think one of President Bush’s problems is he puts loyalty ahead of performance.

Via Buzzwire: This short Washington Post story includes a helpful chart that may make you feel a little better about Vegas, and a lot worse about Washington:

It’s easier to rig an electronic voting machine than a Las Vegas slot machine, says University of Pennsylvania visiting professor Steve Freeman. That’s because Vegas slots are better monitored and regulated than America’s voting machines … Freeman has assembled comparisons that suggest Americans protect their vices more than they guard their rights…

How long will the U.S. military be in Iraq? How about forever?

Don’t count on the U.S. ever withdrawing completely from Iraq, a retired Marine general said Tuesday.

Anthony Zinni, the four-star who commanded U.S. Central Command before retiring in 2000, said when the U.S. commits forces to a country now, it means a long-term commitment. Iraq is no different.

“It isn’t World War I anymore; we don’t come home anymore,” he said.

This is a fairly old story:

President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.

Cartoonist Mark Fiore has a new animation showing how the Decider plays by his own rules.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was on The Colbert Report, promoting her new book, The Mighty and the Almighty:

Albright: When I started writing this book, I thought that George Bush was an anomaly — that he really was different than all of American history — and when I went back andf looked at it all again, you’re actually right. We’re a country that was started by people who wanted to escape religious persecution. They then — whole “Manifest Destiny” and takeover of this continent — forgetting, kind of, that there were some other people here before, and then President McKinley actually said that we had a duty to Christianize the Philippines. So what President Bush talks about is not totally out of character of the United States.

The problem, however, is that he is so certain that everything he believes is right. And the problem with that, when it’s translated into policy, means that if Plan A fails, you don’t have Plan B.

Colbert: But if God’s given you Plan A, do you need a Plan B?

Albright: But we also know that when on this earth, we don’t know everything. There’s some people who may think so, but we do not know everything. And as the Apostle Paul said, “I see through a glass, darkly,” which means you don’t see it all.

…

I think the real problem is, if you’re so sure, as President Bush is, that you know everything, then you don’t listen to alternate plans. Which may explain a little bit of why we’re in such a mess in Iraq.

Welcome to the Alberto Gonzales School of Criminal Justice. Do you have what it takes for a rewarding career in law enforcement? Answer this quick and simple question to find out:

Q: You have been assigned to investigate alleged illegal activity. Some suspects refuse to cooperate with your investigation. What do you do?

A: You abandon the investigation.

The government has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers security clearance.

The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, or OPR, sent a fax Wednesday to Democratic Rep. Maurice Hinchey of New York saying it was closing its inquiry because without clearance it could not examine department lawyers’ role in the program.

Sorry, if you thought you should continue to pursue the investigation, you just don’t fit in here at the Alberto Gonzales School of Criminal Justice — where Justice is truly Criminal.

If you haven’t read George Orwell’s novel 1984, go read it now. Go to the library, go to the bookstore, go to Amazon.com, go to this website — but read Orwell’s nightmarish vision of a world without privacy, thinking, while you read, about the world we live in today.

From USA Today:

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren’t suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

“It’s the largest database ever assembled in the world,” said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA’s activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency’s goal is “to create a database of every call ever made” within the nation’s borders, this person added.

For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.

…

The NSA’s domestic program, as described by sources, is far more expansive than what the White House has acknowledged. Last year, Bush said he had authorized the NSA to eavesdrop — without warrants — on international calls and international e-mails of people suspected of having links to terrorists when one party to the communication is in the USA. Warrants have also not been used in the NSA’s efforts to create a national call database.

In defending the previously disclosed program, Bush insisted that the NSA was focused exclusively on international calls. “In other words,” Bush explained, “one end of the communication must be outside the United States.”

As a result, domestic call records — those of calls that originate and terminate within U.S. borders — were believed to be private.

Sources, however, say that is not the case. With access to records of billions of domestic calls, the NSA has gained a secret window into the communications habits of millions of Americans. Customers’ names, street addresses and other personal information are not being handed over as part of NSA’s domestic program, the sources said. But the phone numbers the NSA collects can easily be cross-checked with other databases to obtain that information.

…

One major telecommunications company declined to participate in the program: Qwest.

According to sources familiar with the events, Qwest’s CEO at the time, Joe Nacchio, was deeply troubled by the NSA’s assertion that Qwest didn’t need a court order — or approval under FISA — to proceed. Adding to the tension, Qwest was unclear about who, exactly, would have access to its customers’ information and how that information might be used.

…

Unable to get comfortable with what NSA was proposing, Qwest’s lawyers asked NSA to take its proposal to the FISA court. According to the sources, the agency refused.

The NSA’s explanation did little to satisfy Qwest’s lawyers. “They told (Qwest) they didn’t want to do that because FISA might not agree with them,” one person recalled. For similar reasons, this person said, NSA rejected Qwest’s suggestion of getting a letter of authorization from the U.S. attorney general’s office. A second person confirmed this version of events.

Bush responded:

President Bush today defended his administration’s decision to collect information on tens of millions of domestic phone calls, saying the National Security Agency program was legal, protects the privacy of Americans and helps guard the nation against terrorist attacks.

“We’re not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans,” he said. Instead, the NSA’s efforts “strictly target al-Qaeda and their known affiliates.”

When George W. Bush says “Trust me,” the only appropriate answer is a loud and unambiguous “No!” Emphatic epithets are optional.

If you believe George Lucas isn’t yet rich enough, you’re going to be pleased in September, when you’ll have yet another opportunity to buy Star Wars movies on DVD.

If you believe Lucas has plenty of money already, thank you, but, like me, you prefer the original Star Wars movies to the tarted-up “special editions” currently available on DVD, you may wind up making him richer in spite of yourself. From starwars.com:

In response to overwhelming demand, Lucasfilm Ltd. and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment will release attractively priced individual two-disc releases of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Each release includes the 2004 digitally remastered version of the movie and, as bonus material, the theatrical edition of the film. That means you’ll be able to enjoy Star Wars as it first appeared in 1977, Empire in 1980, and Jedi in 1983.

This is good news. Next year, perhaps we’ll be able to buy the movies again, on hi-def DVD. Maybe with a bonus documentary showing George Lucas morphing from Obi-Wan Kenobi into Jabba the Hutt.