It's nice to see that the political forum is open to all viewers and contributors once again, after the abortive "closed-shop" policy which was instituted during the previous, election, year.   Such a policy, I think, is more suited to the organizers of President Bush's public appearances, --at which only Bush's supporters are allowed to attend--, than it is to an ostensibly non-partisan website with no affiliations to the folks at Crawford, --but no doubt such a "member's-only" policy will be implemented here once election time rolls around once again.

GDC

 "There are no hereditary kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution."--US District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in her ruling against the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program

"My French is poor, but my heart is rich.  I love France- the art-making, art-loving, and art-supporting people of France." -David Lynch

Um. Maybe you missed the explanation we posted in 2004 when we set the political forum to private view. We did that because we had complaints that the political forum was bleeding into other areas of the board and to prove our point that it wasn't due to the forum, we set it to private group only. I mean, seriously, anyone on the board could join it. We didn't care. We just hid the forum from regular view. Don't read too deeply into it. You'll ruin your eyesight. And try not to sprain anything jumping to conclusions.

And honestly, two-fifths of the moderators at the TPG aren't Republican. Jordan and Kelly are extremely fair and gracious in allowing all the mods to have a say in what goes down with changes such as the above stated, and all five of us together decided that the forum should be privatized. So this had nothing to do with party lines. It's so damn silly to claim that this is what ails things around here. Dear lord, if people aren't whining about someone's political affiliations, they're whining about someone's religious affiliations or national affiliations, or a whole other bevy of things that we can use to segregate ourselves into factions. I guess it's just human nature to want to find a section of the population to dislike in some form.

...and this is where Amanda pledges her feverishly undying love for JVSCant...

~ Amanda

"Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave..."

Jordan .

GDC,

I do have to add in that to me there was no bump in the road at all with the old gazette when politics was switched to members only.  Really, everyone was allowed to be a member if they wanted to, there was no excusive list or anything so it was a very inclusive board.  Now I'm off to Montreal to find Jamie and have a smoke.

"We cannot allow a mine shaft gap"

     
“Half a truth is often a great lie.”

Ben Franklin

~ Amanda

"Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave..."