Still on vacation in Australia.  The above Aboriginal paintings are from Kakadu National Park, about three hours outside of Darwin, and depict Creation Ancestors Namondjok (top center), his wife Barrginj (center left, below Namondjok’s leg), and Namarrgon, the Lightning Man (top right).

Over at Andrew Sullivan’s blog, a reader writes that he believes Obama is unlikely to prosecute former Bush Administration officials for war crimes, and cites Abraham Lincoln to make his case:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

This analysis bothers me, because it implies there could only be one motive — vengeance — for enforcing our nation’s laws.

I think Obama urgently needs to prosecute lawbreaking members of the Bush Administration: Not as payback, but as a critical step in restoring the rule of law. As a step toward preventing the next generation of Nixonistas from romping into the Oval Office and violating laws with impunity, relying on Obama’s precedent that “bipartisan outreach” means forgiving the other party’s crimes.

I don’t want vengeance. I want the law enforced without regard to party affiliation, which would be a welcome change from what the party of Rove and Gonzales has wrought these past eight years. Instead of heeding Lincoln’s call to forgiveness, Obama’s Justice Department should follow a more recent creed: There are no Republican criminals and no Democratic criminals. There are just criminals.

Last night we booked our flights — this year we’ll be in Australia for Christmas and New Year’s. Every year we spend Thanksgiving with my parents and Christmas in Australia, since the Aussies don’t celebrate the American holiday (expats notwithstanding) — but this is the first time since ’05 that we’ll be Down Under for New Year’s.

Two observations, after watching Barack Obama’s first post-election press conference:

• It is, as others have noted, a genuine pleasure — after eight long painful years — to hear our new President speaking in complete sentences and giving intelligent answers to unscripted questions.
• My expectations for Obama have always been realistic: I thought he was the right candidate at the right time,1 and I supported him from day one, but I didn’t think he would lead us to the Promised Land or anything.

  That said, I’m starting to get the impression that we’ve all misunderstood — or underestimated — what Obama meant when he called himself a community organizer. At first I thought this meant merely that Obama had done hard yards in urban neighborhoods, had worked to bring jobs to communities, pull together voter registration drives, and so on: Good work, necessary work, but not an unusual activity or a sign of exceptional talent.

  Now I’m starting to think Obama meant community organizer as “a person who organizes communities” — that is, a person who recognizes (or creates) a shared purpose, and then organizes a community to achieve it. And, I’m starting to think, Obama has Einstein-level talent at this type of organizing: He’s rolling straight from the best-organized presidential campaign we’ve ever seen to the best-organized transition team we’ve ever seen, and shows no signs of stopping there.

  And this is Obama’s hidden talent. When all is said and done, Obama’s speech-making skills will be measured against Churchill and King and Lincoln — and I think people underestimate Obama because they pigeonhole him as a great public speaker, and assume his organizing skills are a secondary talent. In fact, the opposite is true: Obama’s soaring speeches are a gateway talent, and Obama’s real strength is that he’s devastatingly efficient at turning inspiration into action.

(Via Talking Points Memo.)

1. Specifically, I thought he was the first vote-with-your-heart candidate the Democrats had put forward in a long time, as opposed to vote-with-your-head candidates like John Kerry and the 2000 edition of Al Gore. [↩]

Listen to this excerpt from Barack Obama’s latest speech, in particular his choice of words at 0:52:

…and then read this:

¹² For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

That’s Ephesians 6:12. When Obama talks about powers and principalities dividing us, and says it’s “the oldest trick in the book,” he’s talking about the Book, and he’s paraphrasing Scripture.

(Via Andrew Sullivan.)

Ever wonder what would have happened if Luke had said yes when Vader offered to make him co-Emperor?

I think John McCain is finding out this week. I’m not sure where Obama fits into this analogy (though I suspect Obama’s Star Wars name actually is “Barack Obama”), but my impression of McCain has gone this route.

…just because I can.

In 2004 I got off the sidelines and volunteered for the Howard Dean presidential campaign, and then for Democrats Abroad in Australia. I spent a lot of time volunteering, but kept my employer and my co-workers in the dark about what I did after hours. 1

In 2006 I did a little volunteering for Steve Young‘s congressional campaign, in California’s 48th District (which, unfortunately, was an hour’s drive from where I lived), and did some phone-banking against anti-union propositions on the California ballot that year. I didn’t do enough to attract anyone’s attention, so my politicking passed unnoticed by my colleagues. (Some of them found out later, after the company shut down our project and we all parted ways, but they didn’t know at the time.)

This year I was a delegate to the Washington State Democratic Convention in Spokane, so I took a day off work to attend; I didn’t really keep secret where I was going and why, and so — for the first time in my career — some of the co-workers around me became aware that I’m politically active.

And then this happened.

I happened to be volunteering at Darcy Burner‘s campaign office the day she was shooting “stock footage” for commercials — Darcy sitting with a crowd, Darcy walking down the street, etc. — so there are now several ads, airing on local television, in which Darcy Burner is walking down the street talking to… me. (I’m the guy walking next to her at the 0:16 mark.)

This did not escape the attention of my co-workers.

So, for better or worse, it’s now common knowledge at work that I’m a Democrat, and that I do Democratic things during the off hours. I’ve always tried to separate work and politics, in part because I don’t want to make any co-workers uncomfortable,2 and in part because of horror stories about people who find out their CEO is a vindictive McCain bundler or something, but this year I’m a Democrat even at the office.

1. My Australian employer barely noticed what I did during work hours, much less afterwards, which was one of the reasons why we parted ways in 2005. [↩]
2. …which hasn’t happened yet, as far as I know, since my colleagues are all passing around Palin jokes (is that a redundant phrase?) and if anything seem supportive. [↩]

I’ve lost count of how many times I decided to start blogging again, installed WordPress, and then digressed into fiddling with themes and plugins and never actually got around to writing anything. So, let’s try this: A relatively vanilla WP install, one lousy theme, and no excuses.