I visited the Frist Filibuster at Princeton today. I brought my two older kids so that they could be impressed and inspired by the peaceful and creative protest. I think I had to be impressed and inspired enough for all of us. But you never know with kids. A few years from now they could tell me they loved it and were awestruck, which I misread as slightly bored, wet from the rain and very embarrassed by their mom.

If you want to watch the filibuster live, you can do it here via their webcam. I can’t configure them to post here, but I have two photos at my site, which show the support tent the protesters have set up just across a walking path from the podium, where volunteers, who don’t want BushCo to get away with damaging the American tradition of government further, speak.

One of the students, a young man, working in the tent told me that they only got it set up very recently and that the whole protest started with a music stand outside the Frist Center. The jaunty, and very useful tonight, multi-colored umbrella came later. As of several hours ago, they had enough readers signed up to go through Tuesday.

I’m hoping that once the story overcomes the inertia that hobbles all stories about political protests that don’t involve the “culture of life” or missing brides-to-be, the filibuster will start to get some bigger media outlets reporting on it. Also, in the next few weeks, the issue is going to be heating up on the Hill. It would be nice if the idea they started at Princeton had spread to universities all over the country by then. Spread the word.

Cross-posted (sort of) at Fact-esque.

So Condoleeza Rice is wrapping up her five day trip to Latin America and how did mainstream media cover it? Let’s look first at the recent decision on the Secretary General of the Organization of American States.

It’s no secret that the Bush administration was supporting Luis Ernesto Derbez, the Mexican Foreign Minister. Yesterday, however, Derbez withdrew when it appeared that Chilean Foreign Minister Miguel Insulza was going to be confirmed. So, how did two major media outlets handle the story? The Miami Herald headline reads as follows: “Rice seals deal naming new head of the OAS.” The New York Times headline states “O.A.S. to Pick Chile Socialist U.S. Opposed as Its Leader.” I know that the writers do not select the headline, but here is the text from Pablo Bachelet’s article in the Herald relating to the headline:

The agreement, brokered in part by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, made Chile’s socialist Interior Minister José Miguel Insulza virtually certain to win the post of secretary general when the OAS meets Monday in Washington.

[…]

U.S. officials portrayed the deal not as a loss for the U.S.-backed Derbez but as a victory for Rice, saying she worked hard to bring about the deal and worked with Insulza on the wording of his lengthy statement. Rice delayed her departure Friday from Santiago to El Salvador — the next stop in a five-day Latin American swing — by several hours to seal the deal.

Here’s what Larry Rohter’s and Joel Brinkley’s article in the Times says on the same matter:

American officials traveling with Ms. Rice, who was in the Chilean capital, described her as having brokered the deal that allowed Mr. Insulza to claim victory.

But some South American diplomats suggested Friday that the shift in the United States position was a calculated retreat in response to warnings to Ms. Rice in Brazil and Colombia earlier in the week that Washington was risking a potentially embarrassing loss.

Rohter and Brinkley’s article goes on to make several comments that showed they dug into the issue a little deeper:

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld visited South America last month in what was seen as an effort to stitch together an anti-Chávez coalition, but got nowhere. Ms. Rice came to the region this week with much the same mission and received the same chilly reception from governments for whom the principles of nonintervention and sovereignty are nearly sacred.

“It’s counterproductive both to see what she is saying on Venezuela and what they are doing at the O.A.S., but the U.S. just doesn’t seem to get the political and diplomatic reality,” said Riordan Roett, director of the Western Hemisphere program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.

If Washington wants South America to act as an interlocutor with Mr. Chávez, he added, “it would have been easy to drop our support for Derbez and push for a consensus at the O.A.S.”

Indeed, there is ample evidence to indicate that much of Latin America, especially as led by Brazil, is seeking its own path. Brazil has two major victories in the WTO on US agricultural subsidies: one on cotton and one on sugar. Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and Cuba are looking to China for trade opportunities. Brazil in particular, with vast iron reserves and now a very close second to the US in soybean production, is not looking only to China, but also to India. Even The Economist acknowledges in this subscription only article that Brazil “is too big and ambitious in its own right to accept American leadership.” Good for them. What’s wrong with treating this huge nation as an equal on these matters?

On the subject of Hugo Chávez, even though I have said that I don’t like to write about Venezuela much these days, I would like to point out these comments in the Center for International Programs blog, Plan Colombia and Beyond. I am most assuredly not a fan of hers, but these comments by Chávez about Secretary Rice are offensive:

Chavez has saved some of his most biting sarcasm for Rice, whom he refers to as “Condolencia,” which means “condolence.” In speeches, he has called her “pathetic” and illiterate and made oblique sexual references to her. “I cannot marry Condolencia, because I am much too busy,” he said in a recent speech. “I have been told that she dreams about me,” he said on another occasion.

I certainly don’t question Chavez’s legitimacy as elected leader (several times) of Venezuela, but if Bush made the same comment say about Michelle Bachelet or Soledad Alvear, two former cabinet members (and one of whom is the likely presidential candidate) of Chile’s center-left government he would be condemned - and rightfully so. Chávez shouldn’t get a pass for this.

Unfortunately, the Bush administration seems determined to head down the same dead end with Venezuela, no doubt much to Hugo Chávez’s delight.

Now Echidne has finally gone over the edge. What does this topic have to do with American politics? In one sentence: everything and nothing. Sexual politics underlie most other types of politics, and in that sense an orgasm is as important as a filibuster. Can we have them, please? That is, us women. On the other hand, orgasms are like hickups and have no political meaning whatsoever. Except that nobody is interested in hickups.

A silly little story reported by World O’Crap pretends to be a scientific analysis of the female orgasm, but it isn’t, of course. Scientists can speculate and speculate on this interesting topic, but the truth is that it’s all just speculation. Here is a taste of it:

Why, o why? It’s been 52 years since scientists first considered the female orgasm a legitimate object of scrutiny (thank you, Dr. Kinsey). But they still can’t settle on its raison d’être. Theories abound on how this intensely pleasurable pelvic reflex — which is overwhelmingly, though not exclusive