Democrats As Invertebrates...

The Democratic Party displayed again the skeletal structure of a jellyfish and has given King George exactly what he asked for: the ability to spy on anyone he wishes without having to worry about ugly things like laws or warrants. The Congressional Democrats, too afraid that they may appear "weak on security," opted to tug their collective forelocks and kowtow to the president rather than stand on principle and force the administration to obtain wiretapping warrants from the rubber-stamp FISA court.

After all, that wastes precious time.

The Dems are showing (again) that they have no ability to act together and that they'd all rather cover their own asses than to produce legislation that might actually restore some of the damage the current regime has done to privacy, security, and law. They would rather take no chances with their re-election than do what they were elected to do.

Sure, they claim that hey, this is just a six-month stopgap and after this expires, they're going to make real, substantive changes. Honest. Yeah, right. I believe that.

My bet? Six months from now, the Repugs will start howling again about how if this law isn't extended then evil tearists will be crawling out from the sewers and none of us will be safe because of what the awful, nasty Liberals have done. The Dems will moan and shuffle their feet, talk to their precious focus groups and consult with their pollsters, put both hands on their posteriors, and acquiesce.

They're really good at acquiescence, evidently. We should rename them the Acquiescent Party, with a jellyfish as their mascot. This was a litmus test for whether the Democrats actually wanted to roll back the ravages of this administration and stand up to the illegailities of the last six years, or whether their rhetoric was merely a ploy to get themselves elected.

Now we know.

To the Democrats who voted to go ahead with this: shame on you. You voted to protect yourself, not your constituents.

Relaunch of SFNovelists site

The SFNovelists site has just been revamped and relaunched, with new content and links to a great number of the science fiction and fantasy novelists writing today. There will be a daily blog by one of the members, links to everyone's websites, a listing of books out this month by our members, links to free online fiction, podcasts, and other such goodies, and more as we go on. We'd love this to be the site you come to when you're looking for information and entertainment within the science fiction and fantasy genres.

SFNovelists (Science Fiction and Fantasy Novelists) is a relatively new (and growing!) organization specifically for active writers who have already published novels within the genre, a place where we can share information and help each other, where we can talk about the issues specific to the long form of genre fiction. This may sound a bit utopian and far-fetched (What? Competitors actually helping each other? Are you crazy?), but if you think that way, you're missing one of the essences of the field: the concept of paying forward. That's what we're doing here...

So far, I've personally found SFNovelists more helpful to me than SFWA in many ways -- and I'd like to give Tobias Buckell a personal shout-out for all his hard work getting this particular cat-herd up and running.

Check out the site! Let us know what you think!