Christy Hardin Smith

In case anyone is wondering, this is how we get more and better Democrats -- better educated voters, found and nurtured one at a time, registered and ready to vote. People who, through the magic of human contact and a spark of inspiration from talking to someone else who is willing to put themselves on the line for a cause greater than themselves....

10:07 pm ET 47% of votes tallied: -- Hillary Clinton 65% -- Barack Obama 28% Now that the media has spent the last couple of hours flogging the WV primary results, I've reached a conclusion: it's really all about the media hearing themselves talk, no matter what idiocy drips out.

All the cable news networks -- CNN, MSNBC, and FOX -- just called the WV primary for Hillary Clinton. While this falls under the heading of "didn't we expect this to happen?", the big question of the evening will be "by how much?" Polls closed here in WV at 7:30 pm ET, so it will be a little while before all the ballots are tallied in all the counties.

WV primary day. Yeah baby, feel the power, the beauty...the rube-ery? Occupying a swathe of the Appalachian Mountains on the threshold between the Bible Belt and the Rust Belt, West Virginia is a swing state that voted twice for George W. Bush but backed Democrats in six of the eight prior presidential elections....

Oh, look whose lobbyist crony connections have come home to roost. Welcome to the spotlight, Sen. McCain:

Campaign Money Watch has a new petition up:

John McCain’s campaign relies on well-heeled Washington lobbyists to run and raise money for his White House bid. In fact, he’s relying on at least 112 lobbyists as staff or fundraisers, including at least ten who represent brutal dictators, human rights abusers, and other unsavory foreign interests...

...I have been waiting to say that this whole damned primary season. We finally get our moment in the sun and, despite Bloomberg calling us "so unimportant," the Mountain State is going to milk every last minute of it. Because, dammit, we are the only primary going today. Boo yah! According to just about every talking head out there, Sen. Clinton is likely to win in WV today. The question is by how much -- and who gets what portion of WV's 18 delegates....

Can America afford a presidential candidate who has to bring along an economic adviser in order to be coherent on the subject? Not after the last few years of Bush Administration arrogance in the face of failures, it can't. Especially when that adviser (and rumored to be a leading contender for a McCain Treasury Secretary spot) is former TX Senator Phil Gramm, whose out of touch tendencies led to many a Molly Ivins ribbing back in the day? Not after the last few years of Bush Administration arrogance in the face of failures, it can't....And it seems that most Americans understand that all too well...

At a time when the top DOD adviser to military commissions has been barred from participation in hearings at Gitmo, questions are being asked -- and ought to be -- about the propriety, legality, and politicization of what should have been a whole host of decisions founded in the rule of law and in pursuit of justice. That this is no longer the first expectation when examining the record is testament to how far we have fallen in the last few years. Last week, several policy experts testified before the House Judiciary Committee regarding torture and the betrayal of American values and the rule of law. One of the experts was Philippe Sands, human rights lawyer and author of Torture Team, whose preview in Vanity Fair exposed a whole new level of depravity within the Bush Administration for throwing aside prior restraint and morality and, instead, turning to the very actions we once officially reviled.

Bill Moyers had an extraordinary interview with Philippe Sands recently that deserves a much wider viewing....

In Nietzche's Beyond Good and Evil, Chapter 4, entitled Epigrams and Interludes, contains one of my favorite philosophical musings: "In music, the passions enjoy themselves."

One of my political philosophy professors -- who also happened to have helped train and run resistance operations during WWII and afterward -- told me once over coffee that one of his greatest means of recruiting an asset was not at the end of gun barrel, by terrifying someone into cooperation, or by some form of bribery. It was opening their mind to the possibility of something better, something more...something new and beyond their previous imagining of their own possibilities, for themselves and, more importantly, for their families. And that the greatest weapon he wielded in doing so, first against the Nazis and then against the spread of communism, was the copies of American jazz recordings that he brought along on his travels....

Sometimes, I catch myself running full steam through my life without stopping to notice the beautiful details along the way. Yesterday, as I was pulling in our driveway, I noticed our rhododendron are blooming and, in the morning sunshine, they were absolutely gorgeous. It's the little things, isn't it?...