The Enemy Within

Anonymous Video: "Paint the Town"

2011-01-11T15:32:00.000-05:00

Why Republicans Shouldn't Take Speed

2010-09-10T04:58:00.000-04:00

I Said Nothing (a poem)

2010-07-02T16:31:00.000-04:00

First they killed all the lawyers,and because I wasn't a lawyerI said nothing.
Then they killed all the politicians,and because I wasn't a politicianI said nothing.
Then they killed all the lobbyists,and because I wasn't a lobbyistI said nothing.
Then they killed all the influence peddlers,the partisan hacks, the publicity whores,the vote tamperers,
the war profiteers, the corporate shills, the spin doctors,the sophists, the hypocrites,and I said nothing.
Actually, the world is a much nicer place now

Ronald Reagan, FBI Informant & Scumbag

2010-05-31T17:49:00.001-04:00

In April of 1947, Ronald Reagan became an informant for the FBI. Shortly thereafter, he became president of the Screen Actors Guild, placing him in a valuable position to inform on other actors. In fact, he was so valuable, he had his own code name, “T-10”.

He appeared before the HUAC as a “friendly witness”, meeting with committee counsel before, to discuss his testimony.

Reagan was a traitor to his fellow actors and NEVER showed remorse for the lives that were destroyed by his actions.

Those Republicans who idolize him and “want to be just like Reagan” better remember he started out his career betraying his friends and ended it betraying the entire country by dismantling as much of the social state that had made this country economically powerful as he could. And he did it to reward his few, wealthy friends.

We still suffer form this scumbag’s time in office.

Terrorist Israel and the U.S.

2010-05-31T11:40:00.003-04:00

Today Israel attacked a convoy of ships carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, killing up to 19 people aboard. This occurred in international waters and is only the latest the latest in many of human rights violations by Israel. In fact if it were done by Somalis, they would be termed “pirates”. This was an act of piracy. It was also an act of terrorism in it’s original sense; meant to instill fear and change policies.
Right-wing Christians support Israel at all costs, because they believe Jesus will be coming back soon to the holy land and Israel must be there for him to return. But then the question becomes, if god has set this in motion, why do YOU have to support Israel? Didn’t god promise Israel would be there for the Messiah’s return? Don’t you trust your god???
Of course there is the huge lobbying power of Israel with all it’s money and bribes…
And then there is the whole spying issue; what other “friendly” nation has had so many spies caught passing top secret information to it? None. Israel stands alone; yet we continue not only to maintain diplomatic relations with this ungrateful, secretive, terroristic country, we actively support them with weapons and money.
Israel has long been treated as a special case by the US and we have and are paying the price in the Middle East. The first OPEC oil embargoes in the 1970s were because of our support Israel’s invasion of Egypt and Syria in the Six Day War. That was the price we paid for the support of this country that shows its gratitude for our help by sending spies to ferret out our top secrets.
Since the 70s we have continued to support Israel to point of losing the Muslim world. Bush’s wars were just the icing on the cake. We must start speaking truth to Israel and withholding support in a loud, public way if we wish to ever undo the damage we have created. We must learn to call terrorist acts for what they are, regardless of which state performs them and we must learn to treat each Middle East country equally and not have different standards for Israel.. The rest of the world understands what I am writing; it is America that views Israel through rose-colored glasses.
Here is one of MANY article highlighting the spying problem and the special place Israel has: http://www.alternet.org/world/130891/breaking_the_taboo_on_israel's_spying_efforts_on_the_united_states/?page=entire

Republicans Afraid Tea Party Stoner Will Crush Them

2010-05-28T12:58:00.000-04:00

The North Carolina Republican Party is going after Tea Partycongressional candidateTim D'Annunziobecause he is a druggie, deadbeat dad who once found the Ark of the Covenant (in Arizona). And he is ahead in polls.

The GOP has been steadily courting Tea Party candidates across the country because when you have smug assholes like Eric Cantor as the face of your party, well, you have an image problem. These days they're looking to tap into all of the populist rage that is sweeping across the Heartland by kissing the asses of complete nutjobs. So why is the North Carolina Republican Party attacking Tea Party candidate Tim D'Annunzio? Because he likes to party. And he's fucking crazy. A laundry list of Republican gripes, from the AP:

In Hoke County divorce records, his wife said in 1995 that D'Annunzio had claimed to be the Messiah, had traveled to New Jersey to raise his stepfather from the dead, believed God would drop a 1,000-mile high pyramid as the New Jerusalem on Greenland and found the Ark of the Covenant in Arizona. A doctor's evaluation the following month said D'Annunzio used marijuana almost daily, had been living with another woman for several months, had once been in drug treatment for heroin dependence and was jailed a couple times as a teenager.
The doctor concluded that his religious beliefs were not delusional. A judge wrote in a child support ruling a few years later that D'Annunzio was a self-described "religious zealot" who believed the government was the "Antichrist." The judge said he was willfully failing to make child support payments.

And by crazy, we mean that in the most endearing way. But Tom Fetzer, North Carolina's Republican Party chairman would not agree. To Fetzer, D'Annunzio is bad for the conservative brand. He told the AP that "Mr. D'Annunzio has disqualified himself by his background, his record and his behavior." If that's the new criteria for running as a GOP candidate, then they'll need to use a scorched earth policy this fall.

D'Annunzio says that 16 years ago, religion helped him rise past a "a troubled upbringing," and he's not going to let a bunch of out of touch dickheads ruin his vibe: "The bigger story is that the power brokers in Raleigh and in Washington are willing to go to any length and use any unscrupulous tactic to try to destroy somebody. They think that they're losing their control over the Republican party." Speak truth to power, Tim.

Republican Sex Offenders

2010-05-24T20:48:00.000-04:00

Subject: Long list of Republican sex offenders

Republican County Constable Larry Dale Floyd was arrested on suspicion of soliciting sex with an 8-year old girl. Floyd has repeatedly won elections for Denton County, Texas, constable.
Republican judge Mark Pazuhanich pleaded no contest to fondling a 10-year old girl and was sentenced to 10 years probation.
Republican Party leader Bobby Stumbo was arrested for having sex with a 5-year old boy.
Republican teacher and former city councilman John Collins pleaded guilty to sexually molesting 13 and 14 year old girls.
Republican campaign worker Mark Seidensticker is a convicted child molester.
Republican Mayor Philip Giordano is serving a 37-year sentence in federal prison for sexually abusing 8- and 10-year old girls.
Republican Mayor John Gosek was arrested on charges of soliciting sex from two 15-year old girls.
Republican County Commissioner David Swartz pleaded guilty to molesting two girls under the age of 11 and was sentenced to 8 years in prison.
Republican legislator Edison Misla Aldarondo was sentenced to 10 years in prison for raping his daughter between the ages of 9 and 17.
Republican Committeeman John R. Curtain was charged with molesting a teenage boy and unlawful sexual contact with a minor.
Republican anti-abortion activist Howard Scott Heldreth is a convicted child rapist in Florida.
Republican zoning supervisor, Boy Scout leader and Lutheran church president Dennis L. Rader pleaded guilty to performing a sexual act on an 11-year old girl he murdered.
Republican anti-abortion activist Nicholas Morency pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography on his computer and offering a bounty to anybody who murders an abortion doctor.
Republican campaign consultant Tom Shortridge was sentenced to three years probation for taking nude photographs of a 15-year old girl.
Republican racist pedophile and United States Senator Strom Thurmond had sex with a 15-year old black girl which produced a child.
Republican pastor Mike Hintz, whom George W. Bush commended during the 2004 presidential campaign, surrendered to police after admitting to a sexual affair with a female juvenile.
Republican legislator Peter Dibble pleaded no contest to having an inappropriate relationship with a 13-year-old girl.
Republican advertising consultant Carey Lee Cramer was charged with molesting his 9-year old step-daughter after including her in an anti-Gore television commercial.
Republican activist Lawrence E. King, Jr. organized child sex parties at the White House during the 1980s.
Republican lobbyist Craig J. Spence organized child sex parties at the White House during the 1980s.
Republican Congressman Donald "Buz" Lukens was found guilty of having sex with a female minor and sentenced to one month in jail.
Republican fundraiser Richard A. Delgaudio was found guilty of child porn charges and paying two teenage girls to pose for sexual photos.
Republican activist Mark A. Grethen convicted on six counts of sex crimes involving children.
Republican activist Randal David Ankeney pleaded guilty to attempted sexual assault on a child.
Republican Congressman Dan Crane had sex with a female minor working as a congressional page.
Republican activist and Christian Coalition leader Beverly Russell admitted to an incestuous relationship with his step daughter.
Republican Judge Ronald C. Kline was placed under house arrest for child molestation and possession of child pornography.
Republican congressman and anti-gay activist Robert Bauman was charged with having sex with a 16-year-old boy he picked up at a gay bar.
Republican Committee Chairman Jeffrey Patti was arrested for distributing a video clip of a 5-year-old girl being raped.
Republican activist Marty Glickman (a.k.a. "Republican Marty"), was taken into custody by Florida police on four counts of unlawful sexual activity with an underage girl and one count of delivering the drug LSD.
Republican legislative aide Howard L. Brooks was charged with molesting a 12-year old boy and possession of child pornography.
Republican Senate candidate John Hathaway was accused of having sex with his 12-year old baby sitter and withdrew his candidacy after the allegations were reported in the media.
Republican preacher Stephen White, who demanded a return to traditional values, was sentenced to jail after offering $20 to a 14-year-old boy for permission to perform oral sex on him.
Republican talk show host Jon Matthews pleaded guilty to exposing his genitals to an 11 year old girl.
Republican anti-gay activist Earl "Butch" Kimmerling was sentenced to 40 years in prison for molesting an 8-year old girl after he attempted to stop a gay couple from adopting her.
Republican election board official Kevin Coan was sentenced to two years probation for soliciting sex over the internet from a 14-year old girl.
Republican politician Andrew Buhr was charged with two counts of first degree sodomy with a 13-year old boy.
Republican politician Keith Westmoreland was arrested on seven felony counts of lewd and lascivious exhibition to girls under the age of 16 (i.e. exposing himself to children).
Republican anti-abortion activist John Allen Burt was found guilty of molesting a 15-year old girl.
Republican County Councilman Keola Childs pleaded guilty to molesting a male child.
Republican activist John Butler was charged with criminal sexual assault on a teenage girl.
Republican candidate Richard Gardner admitted to molesting his two daughters.
Republican Councilman and former Marine Jack W. Gardner was convicted of molesting a 13-year old girl.
Republican County Commissioner Merrill Robert Barter pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual contact and assault on a teenage boy.
Republican City Councilman Fred C. Smeltzer, Jr. pleaded no contest to raping a 15 year-old girl and served 6-months in prison.
Republican activist Parker J. Bena pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography on his home computer and was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison and fined $18,000.
Republican parole board officer and former Colorado state representative, Larry Jack Schwarz, was fired after child pornography was found in his possession.
Republican strategist and Citadel Military College graduate Robin Vanderwall was convicted in Virginia on five counts of soliciting sex from boys and girls over the internet.
Republican businessman Jon Grunseth withdrew his candidacy for Minnesota governor after allegations surfaced that he went swimming in the nude with four underage girls, including his daughter.
Republican director of the "Young Republican Federation" Nicholas Elizondo molested his 6-year old daughter and was sentenced to six years in prison.
Republican president of the New York City Housing Development Corp. Russell Harding pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography on his computer.
Republican Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized the rape of children in Iraqi prisons in order to humiliate their parents into providing information about the anti-American insurgency.
Republican serial killer Ted Bundy was hired by the Republican Party
Republican activist Matthew Glavin, who preached family values, was caught masturbating in public and fondling an undercover park ranger
Republican Party Chairman Sam Walls, who is married, was urged to drop his candidacy for Congress when it was found he likes to dress up in women's clothing
Republican Congressman Edward Schrock resigned from Congress after he was caught searching for sex on a gay telephone service
Republican Mayor Jim West Republican voter Timothy McVeigh bombed Oklahoma City championed an anti-gay agenda, but was later found to be gay himself
Republican preacher Jimmy Swaggart preached fidelity, but cheated on his wife with a prostitute
Republican Congressman Bob Livingston was about to vote for impeaching President Clinton for sexual improprieties until it was disclosed he was an adulterer
Republican Congressman Henry Hyde denounced President Clinton's extramarital affair, but was later found to be an adulterer himself
Republican Party leader Paul Ingram pleaded guilty to six counts of raping his daughters and served 14 years in federal prison.
Republican benefactor of conservative Christian groups, Richard A. Dasen Sr., was found guilty of raping a 15-year old girl. Dasen, 62, who is married with grown children and several grandchildren,
has told police that over the past decade he paid more than $1 million to have sex with a large number of young women.
Republican city councilman Mark Harris, who is described as a "good military man" and "church goer," was convicted of repeatedly having sex with an 11-year-old girl and sentenced to 12 years in prison.
Republican anti-abortion activist Howard Scott Heldreth is a convicted child rapist in Florida.
Republican County Commissioner David Swartz pleaded guilty to molesting two girls under the age of 11 and was sentenced to 8 years in prison.
Republican judge Mark Pazuhanich pleaded no contest to fondling a 10-year old girl and was sentenced to 10 years probation.
Republican anti-abortion activist Nicholas Morency pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography on his computer and offering a bounty to anybody who murders an abortion doctor.
Republican legislator Edison Misla Aldarondo was sentenced to 10 years in prison for raping his daughter between the ages of 9 and 17.
Republican Mayor Philip Giordano is serving a 37-year sentence in federal prison for sexually abusing 8- and 10-year old girl.
Republican campaign consultant Tom Shortridge was sentenced to three years probation for taking nude photographs of a 15-year old girl.
Republican racist pedophile and United States Senator Strom Thurmond had sex with a 15-year old black girl which produced a child.
Republican pastor Mike Hintz, whom George W. Bush commended during the 2004 presidential campaign, surrendered to police after admitting to a sexual affair with a female juvenile.
Republican legislator Peter Dibble pleaded no contest to having an inappropriate relationship with a 13-year-old girl.
Republican activist Lawrence E. King, Jr. organized child sex parties at the White House during the 1980s.
Republican lobbyist Craig J. Spence organized child sex parties at the White House during the 1980s.
Republican Congressman Donald "Buz" Lukens was found guilty of having sex with a female minor and sentenced to one month in jail.
Republican fundraiser Richard A. Delgaudio was found guilty of child porn charges and paying two teenage girls to pose for sexual photos.
Republican activist Mark A. Grethen convicted on six counts of sex crimes involving children.
Republican activist Randal David Ankeney pleaded guilty to attempted sexual assault on a child.
Republican Congressman Dan Crane had sex with a female minor working as a congressional page.
Republican activist and Christian Coalition leader Beverly Russell admitted to an incestuous relationship with his step daughter.
Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger allegedly had sex with a 16 year old girl when he was 28.
Republican congressman and anti-gay activist Robert Bauman was charged with having sex with a 16-year-old boy he picked up at a gay bar.
Republican Committee Chairman Jeffrey Patti was arrested for distributing a video clip of a 5-year-old girl being raped.
Republican activist Marty Glickman (a.k.a. "Republican Marty"), was taken into custody by Florida police on four counts of unlawful sexual activity with an underage girl and one count of delivering the drug LSD.
Republican legislative aide Howard L. Brooks was charged with molesting a 12-year old boy and possession of child pornography.
Republican Senate candidate John Hathaway was accused of having sex with his 12-year old baby sitter and withdrew his candidacy after the allegations were reported in the media.
Republican preacher Stephen White, who demanded a return to traditional values, was sentenced to jail after offering $20 to a 14-year-old boy for permission to perform oral sex on him.
Republican talk show host Jon Matthews pleaded guilty to exposing his genitals to an 11 year old girl.
Republican anti-gay activist Earl "Butch" Kimmerling was sentenced to 40 years in prison for molesting an 8-year old girl after he attempted to stop a gay couple from adopting her.
Republican Party leader Paul Ingram pleaded guilty to six counts of raping his daughters and served 14 years in federal prison.
Republican election board official Kevin Coan was sentenced to two years probation for soliciting sex over the internet from a 14-year old girl.
Republican politician Andrew Buhr was charged with two counts of first degree sodomy with a 13-year old boy.
Republican politician Keith Westmoreland was arrested on seven felony counts of lewd and lascivious exhibition to girls under the age of 16 (i.e. exposing himself to children).
Republican anti-abortion activist John Allen Burt was charged with sexual misconduct involving a 15-year old girl.
Republican County Councilman Keola Childs pleaded guilty to molesting a male child.
Republican activist John Butler was charged with criminal sexual assault on a teenage girl.
Republican candidate Richard Gardner admitted to molesting his two daughters.
Republican Councilman and former Marine Jack W. Gardner was convicted of molesting a 13-year old girl.
Republican County Commissioner Merrill Robert Barter pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual contact and assault on a teenage boy.
Republican City Councilman Fred C. Smeltzer, Jr. pleaded no contest to raping a 15 year-old girl and served 6-months in prison.
Republican activist Parker J. Bena pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography on his home computer and was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison and fined $18,000.
Republican parole board officer and former Colorado state representative, Larry Jack Schwarz, was fired after child pornography was found in his possession.
Republican strategist and Citadel Military College graduate Robin Vanderwall was convicted in Virginia on five counts of soliciting sex from boys and girls over the internet.
Republican city councilman Mark Harris, who is described as a "good military man" and "church goer," was convicted of repeatedly having sex with an 11-year-old girl and sentenced to 12 years in prison.
Republican businessman Jon Grunseth withdrew his candidacy for Minnesota governor after allegations surfaced that he went swimming in the nude with four underage girls, including his daughter.
Republican director of the "Young Republican Federation" Nicholas Elizondo molested his 6-year old daughter and was sentenced to six years in prison.
Republican benefactor of conservative Christian groups, Richard A. Dasen Sr., was charged with rape for allegedly paying a 15-year old girl for sex. Dasen, 62, who is married with grown children and several grandchildren, has allegedly told police that over the past decade he paid more than $1 million to have sex with a large number of young women.
Republican Mayor John Gosek, 58, of 275 West 7th Street, Oswego, was arrested for the federal offense of "using a facility in inte-state commerce (a telephone) to knowingly attempt to persuade, induce, entice, and coerce an individual under the age of 18 years to engage in sexual activity for which he could be charged with criminal offenses, that is, rape in the third degree and criminal sexual act in the third degree" in violation of the New York State Penal Code.
Republican racist pedophile and United States Senator Strom Thurmond had sex with a 15-year old black girl which produced a child.
Republican activist Lawrence E. King, Jr. organized child sex parties at the White House during the 1980s.
Republican lobbyist Craig J. Spence organized child sex parties at the White House during the 1980s.
Republican Mayor Philip Giordano is serving a 37-year sentence in federal prison for sexually abusing 8- and 10-year old girls.
Republican Congressman Donald "Buz" Lukens was found guilty of having sex with a minor and sentenced to one month in jail.
Republican fundraiser Richard A. Delgaudio was found guilty of child porn charges.
Republican activist Mark A. Grethen convicted on six counts of sex crimes involving children.
Republican activist Randal David Ankeney pleaded guilty to attempted sexual assault on a child.
Republican Congressman Dan Crane had sex with a minor working as a congressional page.
Republican activist and Christian Coalition leader Beverly Russell admitted to an incestuous relationship with his step daughter.
Republican congressman and anti-gay activist Robert Bauman was charged with having sex with a 16-year-old boy he picked up at a gay bar.
Republican activist Marty Glickman (a.k.a. "Republican Marty"), was taken into custody by Florida police on four counts of unlawful sexual activity with a juvenile and one count of delivering the drug LSD.
Republican legislative aide Howard L. Brooks, an advisor to a California assemblyman, was charged with molesting a 12-year old boy and possession of child pornography.
Republican Senate candidate John Hathaway was accused of having sex with his 12-year old baby sitter and withdrew his candidacy after the allegations were reported in the media.
Republican preacher Stephen White was arrested after allegedly offering $20 to a 14-year-old boy for permission to perform oral sex on him.
Republican talk show host Jon Matthews of Houston was indicted for indecency with a child, including exposing his genitals to a girl under the age of 17.
Republican anti-gay activist Earl "Butch" Kimmerling confessed to molesting an 8-year old girl after he attempted to stop a gay couple from adopting her.
Republican Party leader Paul Ingram of Thurston County, Washington, pleaded guilty to six counts of raping his daughters and served 14 years in federal prison.
Republican St. Louis Election Board official Kevin Coan was arrested and charged with trying to buy sex from a 14-year-old girl whom he met on the Internet.
Republican politician Andrew Buhr, former committeeman for Hadley Township Missouri, was charged with two counts of first degree sodomy with a 13-year old boy.
Republican politician Keith Westmoreland, a Tennessee state representative, was arrested on seven felony counts of lewd and lascivious exhibition to minors under 16 (i.e. exposing himself to children).
Republican anti-abortion activist John Allen Burt was charged with sexual misconduct involving a 15 year old girl.
Republican legislator, Richard Gardner, a Nevada state representative, admitted to molesting his two daughters.
Republican activist Parker J. Bena pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography on his home computer and was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison and fined $18,000.
Republican parole board officer and former Colorado state representative, Larry Jack Schwarz, was fired after child pornography was found in his possession.
Republican strategist and Citadel Military College graduate Robin Vanderwall was convicted in Virginia on five counts of soliciting sex from boys and girls over the internet.
Republican anti-abortion activist Howard Scott Heldreth is a convicted child rapist in Florida.
Republican County Commissioner David Swartz pleaded guilty to molesting two girls under the age of 11 and was sentenced to 8 years in prison.
Republican judge Mark Pazuhanich pleaded no contest to fondling a 10-year old girl and was sentenced to 10 years probation. Of course it's no contest! How could he even get a fair fight against those activist judges!
Republican anti-abortion activist Nicholas Morency pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography on his computer and offering a bounty to anybody who murders an abortion doctor. - That's the culture of life we all know and love!
Defense contractor, Mitchell Wade, admitted that he paid California Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (republican) more than $1 million in bribes in exchange for millions more in government contracts.
Republican legislator Edison Misla Aldarondo sentenced to 10 years in prison for raping his 9 yr old daughter.
Republican Mayor Philip Giordano serving a 37-year sentence for sexually abusing 8- and 10-year old girls.
Republican campaign consultant Tom Shortridge sentenced to 3 years probation for taking nude photographs of a 15-year old girl. I'm sure he had a good explanation.
Republican racist pedophile and esteemed US Senator Strom Thurmond fathered a chiled with a 15-year old black girl.
Republican pastor Mike Hintz, whom George W. Bush commended during the 2004 presidential campaign, surrendered to police after admitting to sexual relations with a juvenile. Praise George!
Republican legislator Peter Dibble pleaded no contest to having inappropriate relations with a 13-year-old girl.
Republican activist Lawrence E King, Jr. organized child sex parties at the White House during the 1980s.
Republican lobbyist Craig J. Spence organized child sex parties at the White House during the 1980s.
Republican Congressman Donald "Buz" Lukens found guilty of sex with a female minor and sentenced to one month in jail.
Republican fundraiser Richard A. Delgaudio found guilty of child porn charges and paying two teenage girls to pose for sexual photos.
Republican activist Mark A. Grethen convicted on 6counts of child sex crimes.
Republican activist Randal David Ankeney pleaded guilty to attempted sexual assault on a child. Look, he didn't actually do anything. He only TRIED! You can't fault a republican for trying!
Republican Congressman Dan Crane had sex with a female minor working as a congressional page.
Republican activist and Christian Coalition leader Beverly Russell admitted to an incestuous relationship with his step daughter. Prai$e the lord!
Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger allegedly had sex with a 16 year old girl when he was 28. I love this country!
Republican congressman and anti-gay activist Robert Bauman was charged with having sex with a 16-year-old boy he picked up at a gay bar. Now I'm sure he can give us a good explanation for this.
Republican Committee Chairman Jeffrey Patti was arrested for distributing a video clip of a 5-year-old girl being raped. Obviously a liberal conspiracy!
Republican activist Marty Glickman (a.k.a. "Republican Marty"), was taken into custody by Florida police on four counts of unlawful sexual activity with an underage girl and one count of delivering the drug LSD. He was obviously trying to help this woman! Do you liberals no shame!Republican legislative aide Howard L. Brooks was charged with molesting a 12-year old boy and possession of child pornography. Look! It was his own son. Geez you liberals are SICK!
Republican Senate candidate John Hathaway accused of having sex with his 12-year old baby sitter and withdrew his candidacy after the allegations were reported in the media. He was trying to explain to her what NOT to do when in a difficult situation!
Republican preacher Stephen White, who demanded a return to traditional values, was sentenced to jail after offering $20 to a 14-year-old boy for permission to perform oral sex on him.
Republican talk show host Jon Matthews pleaded guilty to exposing his genitals to an 11 year old girl. She could have turned away.
Republican anti-gay activist Earl "Butch" Kimmerling was sentenced to 40 years in prison for molesting an 8-year old girl after he attempted to stop a gay couple from adopting her. Liberal jury of course.
Republican Party leader Paul Ingram pleaded guilty to six counts of raping his daughters and served 14 years in federal prison. Now how could anyone rape their daughter 6 times! Can you say Liberal psycologist!
Republican election board official Kevin Coan was sentenced to two years probation for soliciting sex over the internet from a 14-year old girl. Obviously set up by a liberal computer hacker. These hackers no NO SHAME!
Republican politician Andrew Buhr was charged with two counts of first degree sodomy with a 13-year old boy.
Republican politician Keith Westmoreland was arrested on seven felony counts of lewd and lascivious exhibition to girls under the age of 16 (i.e. exposing himself to children). You see, actually he happened to be changing out of his bathing suit when these kids walked by.
Republican anti-abortion activist John Allen Burt was charged with sexual misconduct involving a 15-year old girl.
Republican County Councilman Keola Childs pleaded guilty to molesting a male child. He pleaded guilty only to keep his family out of the liberal media's spotlight.
Republican activist John Butler was charged with criminal sexual assault on a teenage girl. She was eighTEEN. That's still a teenager!
Republican candidate Richard Gardner admitted to molesting his two daughters. He only had their interests in mind. Why don't you liberals see that!
Republican Councilman and former Marine Jack W. Gardner was convicted of molesting a 13-year old girl. No comment.
Republican benefactor of conservative Christian groups, Richard A. Dasen Sr., was charged with rape for allegedly paying a 15-year old girl for sex. Dasen, 62, who is married with grown children and several grandchildren, has allegedly told police that over the past decade he paid more than $1 million to have sex with a large number of young women. Philanthrapy at it's finest!
Republican County Commissioner Merrill Robert Barter pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual contact and assault on a teenage boy. That boy was a liberal trying to corrupt his mind. He did the right thing.
Republican City Councilman Fred C. Smeltzer, Jr. pleaded no contest to raping a 15 year-old girl and served 6-months in prison. He did the honorable thing and did his time.
Republican activist Parker J. Bena pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography on his home computer and was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison and fined $18,000. Lies. Lies! All liberal lies!
Republican parole board officer and former Colorado state representative, Larry Jack Schwarz, was fired after child pornography was found in his possession. Obviously set up by that liberal media!
Republican strategist and Citadel Military College graduate Robin Vanderwall was convicted in Virginia on five counts of soliciting sex from boys and girls over the internet. Who said republicans were sexist!
The deputy press secretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was arrested
Tuesday, April 04, 2006, for using the Internet to seduce what he thought was a teenage
girl, authorities said. Rep. Brian J. Doyle, 55, was arrested in Maryland where he lives
on charges of use of a computer to seduce a child and transmission of harmful material
to a minor. The charges were issued out of Polk County, Fla.
Republican anti-abortion activist Neal Horsley admitted to having sex with a mule.
A judge on Wednesday, 04-05-06, allowed a lawsuit to proceed against Jessica Cutler, the
former Senate aide who posted details of her sex life on the Internet. The case brought
by REPUBLICAN Sen. Mike DeWine's former counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee,
Robert Steinbuch, alleges that Cutler engaged in an invasion of his privacy in 2004
by publishing sexually explicit facts about a relationship with Steinbuch.
REPUBLICAN Otis O'Neal Horsley (born 1944) is an American political figure of the far REPUBLICAN right.
He is the author of christiangallery.com, a website devoted to his advocacy of militant anti-abortion,
secessionist, and anti-gay views. Last night, May 09, 2005, anti-abortion extremist
Neal Horsley was a guest on The Alan Colmes Show, a FOX News radio program. The topic
was an interesting one - whether or not an internet service provider should allow Horsley
to post the names of abortion doctors on his website. Horsley does that as a way of
targeting them and one doctor has been killed. In the course of the interview, however,
Colmes asked Neal Horsley about his background, including a statement that he had admitted to
engaging in homosexual and bestiality sex, including having sex with a MULE!
Republican city councilman Mark Harris, who is described as a "good military man" and "church goer," was convicted of repeatedly having sex with an 11-year-old girl and sentenced to 12 years in prison. If you do the crime, you do the time + 1.
Republican businessman Jon Grunseth withdrew his candidacy for Minnesota governor after allegations surfaced that he went swimming in the nude with four underage girls, including his daughter. He just wanted to keep an eye out for those girls...and his daughter. He even had pictures to prove it!
Republican director of the "Young Republican Federation" Nicholas Elizondo molested his 6-year old daughter and was sentenced to six years in prison.
Rev. C. Stephen White -- better known on Penn's campus as "Brother Stephen" -- will face
trial on charges of soliciting sex from a 14-year-old boy, according to the West Chester
District Attorney's office. At a preliminary hearing held Aug. 12, White pleaded not
guilty to charges of criminal solicitation, criminal attempt to lure a child into a motor
vehicle and corruption of minors. All charges will be held for court, according to West
Chester Assistant District Attorney Kimberly Callahan, who will prosecute the case.
White is married and has three sons and republican fundraiser in the area.
Republican Jack Burkmana reportedly has been caught allegedly offering to pay $1,000 for
sex with two homosexuals ... Republican operative Jack Burkmana former lobbyist for
"Family Research Council" The council and Mr. Burkmana support and donate money to the Bush
administration and the GOP.
(June 28, 2006)--A South Texas jury has found a 44-year-old REPUBLICAN political consultant guilty of
four counts involving the sexual molestation of children. The 44-year-old CARY LEE CRAMER was
convicted of one count of aggravated sexual assault of a child, two of indecency with a
child by contact and one of indecency with a child by exposure. Cramer, who now lives in
Tucson, Ariz., gained national attention during the 2000 presidential election.
His McAllen company created a TV ad accusing the Clinton-Gore administration of giving away
nuclear technology to China in exchange for campaign contributions. Cramer faces a maximum
of 149 years in prison for the four felony charges.
Republican Lou Beres denied sexual-molestation allegations when the Oregonian newspaper first reported them in October.
Beres acknowledged sexually touching a 16- or 17-year-old friend of his daughter in 1976 or 1977.
But a local Police Department report released as part of a lawsuit said Beres "readily admitted sexually touching" one girl when she was 13 or 14 years old.
The longtime leader of the Oregon Christian Coalition and staunch opponent of gay rights
admits in a newly released police report that he sexually touched three underage girls.
August 30, 2006 A Texas pastor accused of raping a church member after telling her she was possessed by a lesbian demon at his house last year has been indicted. Republican, Leonard Ray Owens, 63, who is free on $25,000 bail, is now awaiting trial on a charge of sexual assault, a second-degree felony punishable by two to 20 years in prison. He was arrested in November, 2005.
Police began investigating Owens last year after a 22-year-old woman reported that Owens raped her twice at his Fort Worth home. The woman told police that in July, several months after she began attending the Prayer House of Faith, she went to Owens' home for counseling following a miscarriage. Owens told her that a sex spirit and lesbian demon were inside her and needed to be cast out, police said. The pastor then asked her to lie on the floor and began yelling at her as if she were a demon, saying, "Loose her in the name of Jesus," according to an arrest warrant affidavit.
Christian bookstore owner, cop admit sex with boy
Pittsburgh, PA, August 30, 2006
A former college administrator, a former Christian bookstore owner and a former policeman admitted to sexual misconduct with a teenage boy.They were among five men arrested in March as part of an ongoing investigation of men who meet boys through Internet chat rooms, authorities said.William Gillin, 53, republican and Paul Skiles, 63, republican, both of Johnstown, pleaded guilty yesterday to corruption of minors, indecent assault and unlawful communications with minors. Mr. Gillin is the former alumni relations director at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. Mr. Skiles owned the now-closed B&K Christian Bookstore in Richland Township.Some of the incidents occurred when the boy was 16, prosecutors said. He is now 17.
Donald Lukens, Republican Congressman, was found guilty of having sex with a minor - a girl he was accused of sleeping with since she was 13. Time Article

Pat McPherson, Douglas County Election Commissioner. Arrested for fondling a 17-year-old girl. Article

Jon Matthews, Republican talk show host in Houston, was indicted for indecency with a child, including exposing his genitals to a girl under the age of 17. Source: ABC News

Jeff Miller, (R-Cleveland), Senate Republican Caucus Chairman in Tennessee and the sponsor of Tennessee's Marriage Protection act, getting divorced (as of April 2005) because of an affair he was having with an office aid. Miller described the Tennessee Marriage Protection Act as a means of preserving the sanctity of marriage. He opposed an amendment, however, which stated that "Adultery is deemed to be a threat to the institution of marriage and contrary to public policy in Tennessee." <8> <9>

Jim Wesr, Spokane Mayor. Supported a bill, which failed, would have barred gays and lesbians from working in schools, day-care centers and some state agencies. Voted to bar the state from distributing pamphlets telling people how to protect themselves from AIDS. Proposed that "any touching of the sexual or other intimate parts of a person" among teens be criminalized. Had a sexual affair with an 18 year old boy.Source: Spokesman review

Keith Westmoreland, a Tennessee state representative (R), was arrested on seven felony counts of lewd and lascivious exhibition to minors under 16 (i.e. exposing himself to children). Tennesean Article

Stephen White, Republican preacher. Was arrested after allegedly offering $20 to a 14-year-old boy for permission to perform oral sex on him. Daily Pennsylvanian article | Daily yale News Article

Nicholas Morency, Republican anti-abortion activist, pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography on his computer and offering a bounty to anybody who murders an abortion doctor The Dallas Morning News article.

Sue Myrick, Congresswoman (R-NC), describes herself as a "devout Christian." Committed adultery with a married man.

Bill O'Reilly Right-wing conservative talk show host on Fox News, sued for sexual harrassment by his producer.

Bob Packwood, Senator (R-Ore.), resigned in 1995 under a threat of public senate hearings related to 10 female ex-staffers accusing him of sexual harassment.

Jeffrey Patti, Republican Committee Chairman, was arrested for distributing what experts call "some of the most offensive material in the child pornography world" - a video clip of a 5-year-old girl being raped. Daily Record News Article

John Paulk, lied about prowling for gay sex while running a fundamentalist group to cure gays.

Brent Parker Utah State Representetive. Arrested for soliciting sex from an undercover officer posing as a male prostitute. KSL News Article |Deseret News Article

John Peterson, Congressman (R-Pa), accused of sexual harassment and creation of a hostile work environment by six women. Peterson has refused to admit a crime, saying only "I may have been an excessive hugger."

Harvey Pitt, SEC Chief under George W. Bush until he was forced to resign in 2002. Worked for New Frontier Media, a firm which distributed teen sex videos.

Mark Pazuhanich, Republican judge, pleaded no contest to fondling a 10-year old girl and was sentenced to 10 years probation. Pocono Record article

George Roche III, carried on a 19 year affair with his son's wife, while serving as president of Hillsdale College, which "emphasizes the importance of the common moral truths that bind all Americans, while recognizing the importance of religion for the maintenance of a free society."

Beverly Russell, County Chairman of the Christian Coalition, sexually molested his step-daughter, Susan Smith, who later drowned her two children. Herald-Journal Article |Commentary on Newsweek Article

Jack Ryan, 2004 Republican nominee for US Senate from Illinois, pressured his wive, actress Jeri Ryan, to have sex with other men. Tricked her into visiting sex clubs, where he asked her to have sex with him while others watched.<10>

Joe Scarborough, former Republican Congressman, currently a conservative talk show host. Resigned his congressional seat abruptly to spend more time with his family, amidst allegations of an affair. His intern, Lori Klausutis, was soon after found dead in his office. The medical examiner, who had his license revoked in Missouri for falsifying information in an autopsy report, and suspended in florida for six years, ruled the case an accident, after giving conflicting information about her injuries. He said he lied about them because "The last thing we wanted was 40 questions about a head injury."

Ed Schrock, two-term republican congressman, with a 92% approval rating from the Christian Coalition. Cosponsor of the Federal Marriage Amendment, consistently opposed gay rights. Married, with wife and kids. Withdrew his candidacy for a third term after tapes of him soliciting for gay sex were circulated.

Dr. Laura Schlessinger, right wing conservative radio host. Promotes family values, estranged from her mother, opposes birth control, has had her tubes tied, espouses saving oneself for marriage, admits to having had sex before she was married, opposes adultery, has committed adultery while she was married, and has slept with a married man, opposes divorce, is divorced and remarried, has posed for nude photos which are available online.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Republican governor, had sex with a 16 year old when he was 28.

Jean Schmidt, OH-2, though not herself implicated, employed a campaign manager (Joe Braun) in her 2005 election who once wrote an article condemning gay men for running sex ad profiles, and who was then accused of running his own sex profile on Collarme, an S&M sex site. The profile called for "submissives" to wear only a collar and handcuffs and to have hot wax dripped on them. DKOS Diary

John Scmitz, right-wing republican congressman, who had had his committee chairship taken away from him in the California State Senate after issuing a press release attacking Jews, feminists and gays. Forced out of office in 1982 for having an adulterous affair and fathering two children out of wedlock with one of his students. He was caught because his baby was admitted to hospital for having hair tied so tightly around his penis that it was almost severed. His daughter, Mary Kay LeTourneau, was convicted of having an adulterous affair with one of her students, and giving birth to two of his children. Wikipedia article

Larry Jack Schwarz, Republican parole board officer and former Colorado state representative, fired after child pornography was found in his possession. Rocky Mountain News article With his political career over, he went to work in the hard-core pornography industry for Platinum X Pictures, owned by his daughter, porn starlet Jewel De'Nyle (Stephany Schwarz). Wikipedia article

Jim Stelling, Seminole County Republican Party chairman who believes in "family values", as he told a judge. Filed a defamation lawsuit againt Nancy Goettman, a former county GOP executive committee member, for falsely claiming he had been married six times. Stelling has been married 5 times. Article

Don Sherwood, Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Eventually admitted to an affar with a woman 30 years younger than him, after she accused him of physical abuse and attempting to choke her. Post-Gazette article

Tom Shortridge. Republican campaign consultant, was sentenced to three years probation for taking nude photographs of a 15-year old girl. LA Times article

Fred C. Smeltzer, Jr., Republican City Councilman, pleaded no contest to raping a 15 year-old girl and served 6-months in prison. Sex Offender Registry page | Article

Craig J. Spence, Republican lobbyist, organized orgies with child prostitutes in the White House during the 1980s. Full page including Washington Times article Discovery Channel documentary

Jimmy Swaggart, televangelist, said during a sermon "I'm trying to find the correct name for it ... this utter absolute, asinine, idiotic stupidity of men marrying men. ... I've never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry. And I'm gonna be blunt and plain; if one ever looks at me like that, I'm gonna kill him and tell God he died." Had an affair with a prostitute.

David Swartz, Republican County Commissioner, pleaded guilty to molesting two girls under the age of 11 and was sentenced to 8 years in prison. Rocky Mountain News Article

Randall Terry, Right to Life activist, founder of Operation Rescue, involved in the Terri Schiavo protests. Once imprisoned for sending former President Bill Clinton an aborted fetus. His son Jamiel is gay; his daughter Tila had sex outside of marriage, became pregnant, had a miscarriage - she is no longer welcome in his home; his daughter Ebony had 2 children outside of wedlock and became Muslim. He has campaigned against infidelity and birth control, gays and unwed mothers. Terry himself was censured by his church after committing adultery.

Bill Thomas Republican congressman, had an affair with Deborah Steelman, a health care lobbyist who steered huge campaign gifts to Thomas' war chest.

Strom Thurmond, republican senator and racist, raped and impregnanted a 15-year old African American maid. (BBC Article)

Robin Vanderwall, Republican strategist and Citadel Military College graduate, director of Faith & Family Alliance, (a Christian Coalition spin off), former student of Pat Robertson's Regent Universtity, member of Ralph Reed's inner circle who funneled money to from lobbiest Jack Abromoff to Reed <11>, convicted in Virginia for soliticing sex from a 13-year-old-boy<12> and on four other counts of soliciting sex from boys and girls over the internet. Virginian-Pilot Article

J.C. Watts, Representative (R-Oklahoma), loud champion of "moral values." Has out-of-wedlock children.

This list was made before Mark Foley, David Vitter or Larry Craig!

Greenwashing

2010-05-08T11:48:00.000-04:00

Rush Limbaugh Has A Change of Heart!

2010-04-04T15:26:00.000-04:00

OBAMA'S AT IT AGAIN!

2010-03-29T09:59:00.000-04:00

There he is, in Afghanistan, giving the "terrorist fist-bump" to a member of the military! How many members of the military are secret al-Queda members? How many have been co-opted since being assigned there?

We need a new Joe McCarthy to root out these subversives in our military; the terrorists/gays who will be soon openly sleeping and showering next to our patriotic, heterosexual boys in uniform! Watch for those fist-bumps and report them to Republican HomoLand Security!

MADDOW DESTROYS LIZ CHENEY

2010-03-08T07:04:00.000-05:00

And in doing so, parodies the Beck formula to hilarious new heights:

(h/t to Osborne Ink)

Racism and the Myth of a "Victim Mentality"

2010-02-26T08:09:00.003-05:00

By Tim Wise
February 20, 2010

Recently, I received an e-mail from a college professor who shows a video of one of my speeches in her classroom. She explained that she was in need of a citation for a claim I had made in the video, to the effect that although blacks and Latinos are far more likely than whites to be searched by police after a traffic stop, it is whites who are more likely--four times more likely in fact--to be found with drugs or other contraband on us, on the much less frequent occasions when we're the ones searched.

I happily obliged, sending her the web link for a 2005 Department of Justice report, in which the data can be found. Apparently, she was being challenged by one of her white male students, who was certain the claim must be wrong. Of course. Because everybody knows black and brown folks are the ones with all the drugs. Armed with his high school diploma, he felt confident challenging the person who is academically certified to teach him something, as if her years of experience and research counted for nothing, and as if mine (twenty-plus at this point) were irrelevant to the search for truth.

As a side note, and before continuing with the real focus of my remarks, it has always fascinated me how readily people without the slightest bit of knowledge on these subjects will challenge those of us who have spent our lives studying them. And this they do, in a way they would never think to challenge, say, the plumber who came to fix their toilet. In such a case as that, most anyone would recognize and defer to the plumber's specialized knowledge about their craft. But not with a subject that has ideological or political implications. The fact that everyone is entitled to their opinion leads millions to believe that their opinions are actually just as valuable as anyone else's, no matter the yawning chasm between their own expertise on a topic and that of someone else. Thus, we end up with Glenn Beck helping to shape public opinion: a guy who readily admits his lack of education, but whose views we are supposed to take seriously anyway. Or Sarah Palin, whose sub-mediocre academic record is viewed as a badge of honor by conservatives who consider those with substantial academic accomplishments to be elitist snobs.

But anyway, I digress.

What was actually more disturbing about the instructor's e-mail was the part after she asked for the data citation, where she noted that in addition to challenging the facts I'd presented in the video, the white guy had also insisted that even if the claim were true--in other words, even if police really are racially profiling people of color unfairly--we shouldn't talk about it, because to do so will discourage black people from trying hard to achieve. It will, presumably, turn them into permanent victims, whose expectations of mistreatment will make them essentially give up.

The Racist and Ignorant Underpinnings of the Victim Mentality Argument

It's a common argument, made by those who would rather ignore or finesse the problem of racism in America. If you can't argue the facts, never fear, just suggest that certain facts are too dangerous to be spoken. The possibility that persons of color might adopt a victim mentality once they learn the extent of racism, means we simply have to move on, and tell those who are, as a matter of fact, often the victims of injustice not to dwell on their experiences too much, lest their commitment to self-help be vitiated.

That such an argument as this is fundamentally racist should be obvious. First, it presumes that persons of color are too stupid to already know what it is they're experiencing. Those who bemoan the so-called victim mindset appear to believe that no one would think about racism were it not for the constant presence of liberals and leftists raising the issue. Secondly, the argument supposes that black and brown folks are so weak-willed that if they really understood the obstacles in their way, they would crumble like pie crust. As such, the fact that prominent black conservatives like Shelby Steele or Walter Williams are among the most outspoken proponents of this argument--that discussing racism risks the inculcation of a permanent victim mentality--suggests how little they think of their own racial group.

The truth is, folks of color (especially African Americans) are well aware of the negative stereotypes held about their racial group by an early age. Indeed, recent evidence indicates an awareness of these stereotypes by as soon as the third grade, and rarely later than the fifth: around the age of, say, eleven. This awareness--which is not due to liberals bringing it up, but rather, the result of black and brown folks living with the mistreatment that stems from the stereotypes and being exposed to them in media and elsewhere--has been found to dramatically impact academic performance. Even (and especially) among highly capable and motivated students of color, the fear of living down to a stereotype has been shown to generate such anxiety that it can suppress performance, relative to ability, thereby perpetuating the very performance gaps that feed the stereotypes about black intelligence in the first place. In other words, whether or not white racism is discussed, the knowledge of its existence is sufficient to negatively impact black and brown success. Talking about racism isn't the problem: racism itself is.

Are Some Victims are More Valid Than Others?

Naturally, none of the conservatives who worry about blacks adopting a debilitating mindset of victimhood ever fret about the same thing happening to others who have been victimized by injustice. They don't tell Jewish folks to get over the Holocaust, or not to talk about those unhappy matters so much, lest they cripple themselves under the weight of a victim syndrome. They don't warn crime victims against the adoption of a victim mindset. No indeed, the right even praises "victim's rights" groups, as if to suggest that, for these poor souls, victimhood is the highest station of human worth, and even provides special insights when it comes to proper crime control policy. And the right, even as they decry black and brown claims of victimization--all for the best interests of those folks of color, naturally--are quite skilled at proclaiming themselves the victims of all kinds of things: taxes, big government, immigrants, reverse discrimination, secular humanism, gay marriage, "radical Islam," you name it. The right loves victimhood, so long as they're the ones who get to choose which victims count, and so long as they don't have to actually deal with the history of injustice meted out to those who, by and large, are not them.

So why is it acceptable for these other groups' members to focus on their victimization, while it's somehow untoward or even self-destructive for blacks to do so? Keep in mind, there has been a steady push for curricula that addresses the destruction of European Jewry under Hitler, and no one has suggested that teaching the Diary of Anne Frank might be debilitating to Jewish children. Classes on, and special materials on the Jewish Holocaust are ubiquitous in American schools. Meanwhile, discussion of the Holocaust of America's indigenous populations remains largely off-limits, even to the point that the term Holocaust can't be used to describe it, lest we be seen as disrespecting the supposed uniqueness of Jewish suffering. As a Jew myself, I was raised on a steady diet of "never again" rhetoric, and not once was it suggested that such thinking was somehow going to diminish my willingness to work hard. Quite the contrary, it was intended to make damned sure I never allowed my people to be subordinated again. And that, it appears, is the real concern of conservatives. They aren't worried about blacks and other people of color adopting a crippling victim mentality. They are worried about such folks fighting back against the victimization that continues to happen on a daily basis.

Preparation is Not Capitulation to Victimhood

Logic suggests that there is a big difference between being prepared for potential injury of some sort (as those who challenge racism insist one must be) and wallowing in victimhood. When we buy insurance, for instance, we are preparing for the possibility of something bad happening to us--becoming sick, getting in a car accident, or having our house wiped out by a flood or tornado, or broken into by a burglar who then steals our valuables. Yet only the most cynical would say that by thinking about these possibilities (even to the point of paying money to insulate ourselves against them), we were somehow mired in a mentality of perpetual victimization. No indeed, such preparation, and the foresight that precedes it would be taken by most as signs of supreme rationality, level-headedness and maturity. And this is true despite the fact that, statistically speaking, the odds that a person of color will experience racism at some point are far greater than the odds of, say, a catastrophic weather related destruction of one's house, or the likelihood that one will be the victim of a home invasion. Research indicates that people of color will be discriminated against in about one out of every three job searches, as well as a third of the time when looking for housing. Though not clamoring for racism insurance, people of color logically think about the potential of racist injury, and given the possibility of such injury, doing so is no less rational than to contemplate other forms of ill-fortune. It is far more rational, for instance, than buying air traveler's insurance, in the event that one's plane were to crash, and yet many people purchase this kind of thing every year. Are they paranoid? Locked in a victim mentality? Neurotic? No, just cautious. Being prepared does not paralyze you, in these or any other cases.

To put this in terms that are especially easy to understand, let me offer a personal story, which illustrates the difference between being prepared for something and being paralyzed by fear of it. When I was quite a bit younger, I was an accomplished baseball player, especially when it came to hitting. As was my habit, during pre-game preparations, I would pay special attention to the opposing team's pitcher as he warmed up. I would watch to see how fast he threw, his motion, his delivery, and what kind of movement, if any, he was able to put on the ball. I did this even though I knew that sometimes these guys (who were almost always bigger than me and a bit older) were zipping balls into their catchers at over 85 miles an hour, which, to a 5'3" 14 year old, can be intimidating, to say the least. Several others on my team wouldn't watch the pitchers that intently. But I did, religiously. And not only did it not psyche me out or make me less confident of my ability to get on base. If anything, it prepared me for what I'd be facing, and made me more confident.

It's a logic that most any responsible parent would immediately understand. What kind of father would I be, for instance, if I never told my girls about the fact that there are some boys and men who think girls and women are less capable, and that there will be some among these who may treat them unfairly? The answer is, I'd be a damned pitiful one. To tell your kids that they can be anything they want to be if they try hard enough is nice, but unless you warn them about the obstacles in their path, which, unconquered, can derail them on the road to success, you are ill-suiting them for the real world. You are doing them no favors, but rather, are setting them up for a terrible fall, once they come upon the hurdles for which you had failed to prepare them, and as such, equip them to overcome. On the other hand, by discussing those obstacles honestly--and discussing individual and collective strategies of resistance to them--persons who are the targets of unjust treatment can steel themselves against the headwinds in their way, persevere, and accomplish in spite of those headwinds.

Victim Mentality Arguments Ignore History and Common Sense

Frankly, it's stunning that anyone would deny this basic truth, especially given the historic evidence at our disposal to prove its veracity. After all, if you ask most any black person over the age of forty what their parents told them about race when they were younger, you will hear one or another version of the following in reply: that they would have to work twice as hard as white folks. And this they were told, not as some free-floating, de-contextualized notion, but precisely because the system was so profoundly unjust and discrimination so deeply ingrained, that despite their best efforts and talent, they would too often be overlooked for the best jobs and opportunities solely because of the color of their skin.

But does anyone--including, especially the black conservatives who decry the so-called victim mentality--condemn the older African Americans (including, one can safely presume, their own parents) who previously prepared generations of blacks for hard work and success by telling them in no uncertain terms that things were unequal and unfair? Does any conservative suggest these blacks in prior eras were crippling their children with the message that they would need to work harder than whites because of racism? Better still, is there any evidence whatsoever that being told such a thing did in fact cripple black folks, or make them try less hard than they otherwise might have? Of course not. If anything, the exact opposite is true. Knowing the odds, black and brown folk tried even harder, because to do otherwise would all but guarantee defeat. In short, the claim that discussing racism and discrimination creates passive victims out of people of color flies in the face of every bit of empirical evidence on the subject, which suggests that the opposite is true: knowing the truth inspires perseverance and passionate resistance to victimization, not resignation to one's status as a target.

In fact, one could even argue that downplaying the reality of racism and discrimination so as to avoid the inculcation of a victim mindset, and so as to spur greater individual initiative, could backfire. After all, if a person is led to believe that there are no obstacles in their way, and that their hard work, intelligence and ability are all that will matter, they might slack up. They might coast on the assumption that surely all will recognize their potential, and that they won't have to go that extra mile to make a good impression. They may overestimate the extent to which whites will recognize their effort and hard work, or the extent to which that recognition will be sufficient to overcome the implicit (and even explicit) biases that years of research indicates are still very much ingrained in the minds of most white folks. So not only may a "see no evil, speak of no evil" mindset not help folks of color in a society where racism still functions, it could actually do substantial harm.

In the end, there is only one question we need ask: does the truth matter or not? If racism is a problem--and research makes clear that it is--then there is no responsible path forward but to discuss it, to call it out, and to address it directly. To ignore it, or minimize its importance will not make it go away, will not smooth the path for any person of color confronting it, and will only leave folks ill-prepared to deal with it, on those occasions when it rises up to smack them in the face. Surely, anyone who would leave millions of others so unprepared for the world as it is can't be taken seriously when they claim to be compassionate. The right doesn't care about people of color adopting a victim mentality. They simply wish to avoid a discussion of injustice, because such a discussion might lead us to do something about it. And they rather like things the way they are.

Tim Wise is the author of five books on race and racism, including his latest, Colorblind: The Rise of Post-Racial Politics and the Retreat from Racial Equity, to be released in the Spring of 2010 from City Lights Books.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tim-Wise/140254320968?v=app_2347471856&ref=mf

Alaska is the New-New Jersey

2010-02-11T10:24:00.000-05:00

To: The State of Alaska

From: The New Jersey Tourist Bureau

RE: Your dumb state

On behalf of The NJ Tourist Bureau, we want to thank the State of Alaska. For years, we at the New Jersey Tourist Bureau thought it would be impossible for our home state to lose the designation, "most screwed up state in the Union." We've grown tired of jokes about our state being the armpit of America. The mafia jokes, the turnpike quips, the accusations that we smell bad or may have previously spent time as New Jersey's governor before being forced to resign due to corruption. Well, no more.

We write to you to inform you that, thanks to Sarah Palin, you are officially more of a joke than the Garden State. We're as shocked as you are. Our state is pretty screwed up: Newark looks like the setting of one of those Kurt Russel Escape from...movies and our most charming mottos are actually euphemisms for mafia hits. While you're shoveling snow, we're currently trying to deal with the several inches of hairspray that falls on our state nightly.

When people think "Alaska" they think "Sarah Palin," just like when people think "Blimp" they think "Hindenburg." She is Alaska's most famous citizen -- and our tourist industry is thankful for that. Yes, from our humble cottage hotel industry to our glitzy casinos, we're thankful for Sarah Palin's revealing look into the living rooms, igloos, and meth labs of the typical Alaskan family.

The Garden State's shift from being the collective joke of the nation to being the second-most reviled state started last September when Sarah Palin came on the scene. She was folksy, popular, and reminded Americans that Alaska is not governed by caribou, as many of us imagined. Immediately, millions of Americans knew what a "hockey mom" was and that Wasilla should be a model of governance (aside from the meth capital of Alaska thing). Millions of Americans thought of "bridges to nowhere," and didn't associate them with our rampant gangland violence.

New Jersey's wildlife is limited to an area most known by biologists for its extensive collection of exotic mosquitos. Alaska, meanwhile, has some of the last untouched forests in the world. While we have ensured that our state keeps its dismal little preserve, Alaska seems determined to destroy its own. Every time we hear "Drill, baby, drill," we think, "at least they're not doing a human interest story about children who grow up drinking our river water who now have six fingers and glow in the dark."

We feared our polluted beaches and status as a favored dumpsite for cheese metal tours would have kept us in the national spotlight forever, but we only receive brief mentioning these days. The media would rather focus on Alaska's former first family's push for abstinence only education. This of course is headed by Bristol, a girl who very publicly didn't take her own advice. Several in our office noticed that her child is often in pictures with her, which we feel makes the whole affair akin to having an alcoholic lecture kids about temperance while taking a shot of Jagermeister on stage.

After the story broke last year that our state's government is corrupt from the Governorship to the Girl Scouts, we felt certain that we would be the butt of jokes on late night talk shows for months. But thanks to that awkward, rambling speech Ms. Palin gave while resigning as governor last summer, we are fairly certain Americans have collectively forgotten that our former governor gave his male lover a cushy government job. McGreevey who? Palin's on TV!

We recently thought New Jersey would never live down "Jersey Shore," a unique reality show that throws together teenagers that should have been killed off in the early moments of slasher flicks. But then, like our guardian angel, Sarah Palin came to our rescue and directed the spotlight far away from us. She became a regular contributor on Fox News, ensuring her smiling face and her frequent mention of hockey moms (that resemble dogs), traditional Alaskan values (like wolf hunting), and small governance (like the Permanent Fund and collective resourcing) would always be in the national conscious.

Recently, Former Governor Palin called for Rahm Emmanuel to be fired for calling his own party members "retards," a word she deems hateful. When Rush Limbaugh made similar comments while using the offensive word, her very public non-condemnation not only proved that she had the grace of a moose on ice skates, but she'd cling to the spotlight like a Gollum grasping at its precious. When Fox News built her a TV studio in her house in Alaska, even The Boss shed tears of joy. Her public hand wringing and hand note reading is here to stay.

Now, like a formerly shunned nerd in a schoolyard, we look forward to ganging up with the rest of the states and making fun of you, Alaska. We're so excited about this we don't really know where to begin. If we're the (former) armpit of America, could we make light of the fact that your chain of islands makes Alaska look like an unshaven leg? No? Oh! What's the difference between an endangered species and a beautiful woman in Alaska? Only one is killed from helicopters with semi-automatic rifles! Wait, no, we got that wrong. Only one lost all their teeth due to your crippling meth problem! Oh we're no good at this. But we're sure some of the bigger states can give us pointers.

We at the New Jersey Tourist Bureau again thank you, Alaska, for taking over our former title. To celebrate, we've shipped you some of our slutiest Bon Jovi fans stuffed into the backs of stolen Lincoln town cars. Personally, we want to let you know we don't think you're stupid. Don't let the other states get you down, keep your chin up. You're just a little slow on the uptake, like you've just stopped learning and progressing. It's like the entire state is living in a state of arrested development. There's a word for that, begins with an "r", but oh, it'll come to us...

Sincerely,

The New Jersey Tourist Bureau

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-holt/alaska-is-the-new-new-jer_b_456217.html?view=screen

EVEN DUMBER THAN WE THOUGHT

2010-02-10T05:15:00.002-05:00

EVEN DUMBER THAN WE THOUGHT.... Former half-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) once claimed to have valuable foreign policy insights to offer because Vladimir Putin had flown over her state. She wasn't kidding.
Nevertheless, Palin still feels comfortable talking about foreign policy, and even giving advice to the president. Over the weekend, for example, Palin said President Obama would be in much better shape if only he'd initiate a war against Iran. Another U.S. invasion of a Middle Eastern country, she seriously argued, would ensure the president's re-election.

"Say [the president] played, and I got this from [Pat] Buchanan, reading one of his columns the other day. Say he played the war card. Say he decided to declare war on Iran, or decided to really come out and do whatever he could to support Israel, which I would like him to do. But that changes the dynamics in what we can assume is going to happen between now and three years. [...]
"I'm saying, if he did, things would dramatically change if he decided to toughen up and do all that he can to secure our nation and our allies. I think people would perhaps shift their thinking a little bit and decide, well, maybe he's tougher than we think he is today."

Palin "got this" from "reading" one of Pat Buchanan's columns -- apparently this one, headlined, "Will Obama Play The War Card?"
The problem, of course, is that Palin didn't get quite past the headline. Buchanan argued againstgoing to war with Iran. While Daniel Pipes said invading Iran would be a boon to Obama's presidency, Buchanan argued the opposite.
It's a shame mildly-sophisticated foreign policy ideas -- such as who supports which war -- can't fit on the palm of a hand.
Sarah Palin's capacity to be a constant embarrassment to herself is limitless.

Chris Hedges: The Terror-Industrial Complex

2010-02-08T07:27:00.000-05:00

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_terror-industrial_complex_20100208/

Posted on Feb 8, 2010

By Chris Hedges
The conviction of the Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui in New York last week of trying to kill American military officers and FBI agents illustrates that the greatest danger to our security does not come from al-Qaida but the thousands of shadowy mercenaries, kidnappers, killers and torturers our government employs around the globe.
The bizarre story surrounding Siddiqui, 37, who received an undergraduate degree from MIT and a doctorate in neuroscience from Brandeis University, often defies belief. Siddiqui, who could spend 50 years in prison on seven charges when she is sentenced in May, was by her own account abducted in 2003 from her hometown of Karachi, Pakistan, with her three children—two of whom remain missing—and spirited to a secret U.S. prison where she was allegedly tortured and mistreated for five years. The American government has no comment, either about the alleged clandestine detention or the missing children.
Siddiqui was discovered in 2008 disoriented and apparently aggressive and hostile, in Ghazni, Afghanistan, with her oldest son. She allegedly was carrying plans to make explosives, lists of New York landmarks and notes referring to “mass-casualty attacks.” But despite these claims the government prosecutors chose not to charge her with terrorism or links to al-Qaida—the reason for her original appearance on the FBI’s most-wanted list six years ago. Her supporters suggest that the papers she allegedly had in her possession when she was found in Afghanistan, rather than detail coherent plans for terrorist attacks, expose her severe mental deterioration, perhaps the result of years of imprisonment and abuse. This argument was bolstered by some of the pages of the documents shown briefly to the court, including a crude sketch of a gun that was described as a “match gun” that operates by lighting a match.
“Justice was not served,” Tina Foster, executive director of the International Justice Network and the spokesperson for Aafia Siddiqui’s family, told me. “The U.S. government made a decision to label this woman a terrorist, but instead of putting her on trial for the alleged terrorist activity she was put on trial for something else. They tried to convict her of that something else, not with evidence, but because she was a terrorist. She was selectively prosecuted for something that would allow them to only tell their side of the story.”
The government built its entire case instead around disputed events in the 300-square-foot room of the Ghazni police station. It insisted that on July 18, 2008, the diminutive Siddiqui, who had been arrested by local Afghan police the day before, seized an M4 assault rifle that was left unattended and fired at American military and FBI agents. None of the Americans were injured. Siddiqui, however, was gravely wounded, shot twice in the stomach.
No one, other than Siddiqui, has attempted to explain where she was for five years after she vanished in 2003. No one seems to be able to explain why a disoriented Pakistani woman and her son, an American citizen, neither of whom spoke Dari, were discovered by local residents wandering in a public square in Ghazni, where an eyewitness told Harpers Magazine the distraught Siddiqui “was attacking everyone who got close to her.” Had Siddiqui, after years of imprisonment and torture, perhaps been at the U.S. detention center in Bagram and then dumped with one of her three children in Ghazi? And where are the other two children, one of whom also is an American citizen?
Her arrest in Ghazi saw, according to the official complaint, a U.S. Army captain and a warrant officer, two FBI agents and two military interpreters arrive to question Siddiqui at the police headquarters. The Americans and their interpreters were shown to a meeting room that was partitioned by a yellow curtain. “None of the United States personnel were aware,” the complaint states, “that Siddiqui was being held, unsecured, behind the curtain.” The group sat down to talk and “the Warrant Officer placed his United States Army M-4 rifle on the floor to his right next to the curtain, near his right foot.” Siddiqui allegedly reached from behind the curtain and pulled the three-foot rifle to her side. She unlatched the safety. She pulled the curtain “slightly back” and pointed the gun directly at the head of the captain. One of the interpreters saw her. He lunged for the gun. Siddiqui shouted, “Get the fuck out of here!” and fired twice. She hit no one. As the interpreter wrestled her to the ground, the warrant officer drew his sidearm and fired “approximately two rounds” into Siddiqui’s abdomen. She collapsed, still struggling, and then fell unconscious.
But in an article written by Petra Bartosiewicz in the November 2009 Harper’s Magazine, authorities in Afghanistan described a series of events at odds with the official version. The governor of Ghazni province, Usman Usmani, told a local reporter who was hired by Bartosiewicz that the U.S. team had “demanded to take over custody” of Siddiqui. The governor refused. He could not release Siddiqui, he explained, until officials from the counterterrorism department in Kabul arrived to investigate. He proposed a compromise: The U.S. team could interview Siddiqui, but she would remain at the station. In a Reuters interview, however, a “senior Ghazni police officer” suggested that the compromise did not hold. The U.S. team arrived at the police station, he said, and demanded custody of Siddiqui. The Afghan officers refused, and the U.S. team proceeded to disarm them. Then, for reasons unexplained, Siddiqui herself somehow entered the scene. The U.S. team, “thinking that she had explosives and would attack them as a suicide bomber, shot her and took her.”
Siddiqui told a delegation of Pakistani senators who went to Texas to visit her in prison a few months after her arrest that she never touched anyone’s gun, nor did she shout at anyone or make any threats. She simply stood up to see who was on the other side of the curtain and startled the soldiers. One of them shouted, “She is loose,” and then someone shot her. When she regained consciousness she heard someone else say, “We could lose our jobs.”
Siddiqui’s defense team pointed out that there was an absence of bullets, casings or residue from the M4, all of which suggested it had not been fired. They played a video to show that two holes in a wall supposedly caused by the M4 had been there before July 18. They also highlighted inconsistencies in the testimony from the nine government witnesses, who at times gave conflicting accounts of how many people were in the room, where they were sitting or standing and how many shots were fired.
Siddiqui, who took the stand during the trial against the advice of her defense team, called the report that she had fired the unattended M4 assault rifle at the Americans “the biggest lie.” She said she had been trying to flee the police station because she feared being tortured. Siddiqui, whose mental stability often appeared to be in question during the trial, was ejected several times from the Manhattan courtroom for erratic behavior and outbursts.
“It is difficult to get a fair trial in this country if the government wants to accuse you of terrorism,” said Foster. “It is difficult to get a fair trial on any types of charges. The government is allowed to tell the jury you are a terrorist before you have to put on any evidence. The fear factor that has emerged since 9/11 has permeated into the U.S. court system in a profoundly disturbing way. It embraces the idea that we can compromise core principles, for example the presumption of innocence, based on perceived threats that may or may not come to light. We, as a society, have chosen to cave on fear.”
I spent more than a year covering al-Qaida for The New York Times in Europe and the Middle East. The threat posed by Islamic extremists, while real, is also wildly overblown, used to foster a climate of fear and political passivity, as well as pump billions of dollars into the hands of the military, private contractors, intelligence agencies and repressive client governments including that of Pakistan. The leader of one FBI counterterrorism squad told The New York Times that of the 5,500 terrorism-related leads its 21 agents had pursued over the past five years, just 5 percent were credible and not one had foiled an actual terrorist plot. These statistics strike me as emblematic of the entire war on terror.
Terrorism, however, is a very good business. The number of extremists who are planning to carry out terrorist attacks is minuscule, but there are vast departments and legions of ambitious intelligence and military officers who desperately need to strike a tangible blow against terrorism, real or imagined, to promote their careers as well as justify obscene expenditures and a flagrant abuse of power. All this will not make us safer. It will not protect us from terrorist strikes. The more we dispatch brutal forms of power to the Islamic world the more enraged Muslims and terrorists we propel into the ranks of those who oppose us. The same perverted logic saw the Argentine military, when I lived in Buenos Aires, “disappear” 30,000 of the nation’s citizens, the vast majority of whom were innocent. Such logic also fed the drive to root out terrorists in El Salvador, where, when I arrived in 1983, the death squads were killing between 800 and 1,000 people a month. Once you build secret archipelagos of prisons, once you commit huge sums of money and invest your political capital in a ruthless war against subversion, once you empower a network of clandestine killers, operatives and torturers, you fuel the very insecurity and violence you seek to contain.
I do not know whether Siddiqui is innocent or guilty. But I do know that permitting jailers, spies, kidnappers and assassins to operate outside of the rule of law contaminates us with our own bile. Siddiqui is one victim. There are thousands more we do not see. These abuses, justified by the war on terror, have created a system of internal and external state terrorism that is far more dangerous to our security and democracy than the threat posed by Islamic radicals.
AP Photo / Fareed Khan
Mohammad Ahmed, son of Aafia Siddiqui, takes part in a demonstration arranged by Human Rights Network.

Palin now excuses Limbaugh's use of "retard": "He was satirical in that"

2010-02-08T05:27:00.000-05:00

So we now know the rules for "retard" and "retarded." It's okay if it's satirical.

Well, okay. "Retard" as satire is acceptable.

And did you catch the slam against "political correctness" in there? She's promoting political correctness, while criticizing political correctness. She's utterly clueless.

The Dystopia Conservatives Built

2010-02-05T07:34:00.002-05:00

Judging by Tim Tebow’s much-hyped Super Bowl ad, “choose life” remains conservatives’ favorite abortion shibboleth. But really, the phrase better captures the stakes in the Great Budget Wars of 2010.
Plagued by deficits, communities everywhere must now decide between tax reform and public spending cuts—between economic life and death. And thanks to two Western bellwether states, we know what each choice means.
Choosing death means mimicking Colorado Springs—a Republican red tattoo on Colorado’s purple heart.
As a venue for political experiments, the sprawly GOP enclave is as pristine a conservative laboratory as you’ll find in America. If the city has garnered contemporary notoriety at all, it has achieved infamy for domiciling right-wing groups like Focus on the Family and infecting the world with viruses like Douglas Bruce—the father of draconian initiatives that seek to prohibit governments from raising levies.
When the so-called tea party movement’s anti-tax activists refer to the abstract concept of conservative purity, we can turn to a microcosm like The Springs (as we Coloradoans call it) for a good example of what such purity looks like in practice—and the view isn’t pretty.
Thanks to the city’s rejection of tax increases—and, thus, depleted municipal revenues—The Denver Post reports that “more than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark; the city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops; water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead ... recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools [and] museums will close for good; buses no longer run on evenings and weekends; [and] the city won’t pay for any street paving.”
Meanwhile, even with the Colorado Springs Gazette uncovering tent ghettos of newly homeless residents, the city’s social services are being reduced—all as fat cats aim to punish what remains of a middle class. As just one example, rather than initiating a tax discussion, the CEO of The Springs’ most lavish luxury hotel is pushing city leaders to cut public employee salaries to the $24,000-a-year level he pays his own workforce—a level approaching Colorado’s official poverty line for a family of four.
This is what Reaganites have always meant when they’ve talked of a “shining city on a hill.” They envision a dystopia whose anti-tax fires incinerate social fabric faster than James Dobson can say “family values”—a place like Colorado Springs that is starting to reek of economic death.
Choosing life, by contrast, means doing what Colorado’s governor and state legislature are doing by temporarily suspending corporate tax exemptions and raising revenue for job-sustaining schools and infrastructure. Even more dramatically, it means doing what voters in Oregon did last week.
As deficits threatened their education and public health systems, Oregonians confronted two ballot initiatives—one modestly raising taxes on annual income above $250,000, another hiking the state’s $10 minimum corporate income tax.
Despite these measures exempting 97 percent of taxpayers, conservatives waged a vicious opposition campaign, trotting out billionaire Nike CEO Phil Knight as their celebrity spokesperson. But this time, the right’s greed-is-good mantra failed. In a swing state that had killed every similar initiative since the 1930s, voters backed the tax increases—and chose economic life.
No matter where we live, this same choice will soon face us all in some form. It is a choice embodied in President Obama’s pragmatic initiative to end his predecessor’s high-income tax breaks, a choice for which future local and federal elections will serve as proxies.
Inevitably, anti-tax zealots will attempt to obscure what this choice is about—but the choice is now crystal clear.
Tax reform or draconian cuts, life or death—the decision is ours.

David Sirota is the author of the best-selling books “Hostile Takeover” and “The Uprising.” He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado and blogs at OpenLeft.com. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com or follow him on Twitter @davidsirota.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_dystopia_conservatives_built_20100204/

12 Reasons Why Gay Marriage Should Be Illegal

2010-02-04T06:34:00.002-05:00

Homosexuality is not natural, much like eyeglasses, polyester, and birth control.
Heterosexual marriages are valid because they produce children. Infertile couples and old people can’t legally get married because the world needs more children.
Obviously, gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.
Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage is allowed, since Britney Spears’ 55-hour just-for-fun marriage was meaningful.
Heterosexual marriage has been around a long time and hasn’t changed at all; women are property, blacks can’t marry whites, and divorce is illegal.
Gay marriage should be decided by people, not the courts, because the majority-elected legislatures, not courts, have historically protected the rights of the minorities.
Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That’s why we have only one religion in America.
Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.
Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.
Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That’s why single parents are forbidden to raise children.
Gay marriage will change the foundation of society. Heterosexual marriage has been around for a long time, and we could never adapt to new social norms because we haven’t adapted to things like cars or longer life-spans.
Civil unions, providing most of the same benefits as marriage with a different name are better, because a “separate but equal” institution is always constitutional. Separate schools for African-Americans worked just as well as separate marriages for gays and lesbians will.

A Horrifying Picture of Life With Christians In the Workplace

2010-02-03T17:37:00.000-05:00

Submitted by Kyle on February 3, 2010 - 2:32pm

Want to know why we shouldn't repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell? Because all gays are sexual predators who will immediately attack their fellow soldiers - at least that seems to be the message from the Family Research Council which can barely stomach the "horrifying picture of life with homosexual soldiers":

Under this administration, the new policy seems to be ordering the military to disobey the rule of law--the very thing they've been sworn to protect. Richard Black (U.S. Army-Ret.), former chief of the Army's Criminal Law Division, explains why that's an irresponsible and potentially dangerous decision. In today's Washington Times, Black paints a horrifying picture of life with homosexual soldiers that would only worsen once gays and lesbians are empowered to flaunt their sexuality. "...At Fort Sill, Okla., in 1991, two homosexual recruits caught a lone soldier showering at night. They violently sodomized the soldier, forcing him to submit by strangling him with a bath towel. At the time of trial, the victim was hospitalized under psychiatric care... Recruit training is especially problematic. Male recruits had to physically subdue one homosexual drill instructor at an Army base to keep him from raping a male recruit as that recruit struggled to escape out a second-story window... At Marine Corps Base Quantico, a company gunnery sergeant sexually attacked a young officer candidate who had stayed back at the barracks while his platoon was out training." The other side drones on about "political correctness" but says nothing about the safety forfeited to achieve it.

Apparently, a few isolated, decade-old instances is sufficent proof that all gays are a sexual menace.

And so, using that logic, I hereby demand an end to the practice of allowing Christians to work at Religious Right organizations ...

A former Focus on the Family radio-ministry employee has been sentenced to five years of intensive probation for attempting to lure an underage teen into having sex with him.

... or universities ....

A judge has granted $25,000 bond to a Liberty University professor accused of a sex crime with a student. Joshua Young Moon is charged with object sexual penetration by force.

... because they are all sexual predators:

Court records show the McPhersons manipulated the teens into submitting to fondling, kissing and other sex acts. They cited Bible verses that they said justified the abuse and, afterward, would pray together for God's forgiveness.
On Wednesday, the McPhersons admitted in separate hearings in Virginia Beach Circuit Court to committing the crimes. Stephen McPherson, a former assistant dean at Regent University, pleaded guilty to taking indecent liberties with two of the girls; his wife pleaded guilty to taking indecent liberties with the third.
Stephen McPherson, 40, already is serving a 16-year sentence after being convicted of similar charges in Chesapeake. He pleaded guilty in January to forcible sodomy and object sexual penetration stemming from incidents involving two of the girls in his Chesapeake home.

Clearly, this horrifying picture of life with Christians in the work place will only worsen if we don't act now to end this abomination.

Or would that kind of offensive smear job be wildly unfair?

The General Strikes Again!

2010-02-03T09:23:00.002-05:00

Defending our Prophets Against Whaleofascism

Doug Phillips
Producer for Jesus

Dear Mr. Phillips,

I can't wait to see your documentary, "The Galapagos Whaling Controversy: A Christian Perspective" . From what I'm hearing, it finally exposes the membership of the anti-whaling activist group, Sea Shepherd, for what they truly are--animal-loving, Darwin-worshiping agents of the Lord of Greeness, Satan.

And what a vile group they are. Armed with stink bombs to sicken crewmen and nylon cord to foul propellers, they've spent the last few winters thwarting the will of Japan's finest, the courageous admirals of industry who provide whale flesh to a blubber-hungry public for dining "research."

Now, Sea Shepherd has stepped it up a notch by allowing the Japanese "whaling research" security vessel, the Shonan Maru No. 2, to ram one of their boats as it sat drifting in the water, waiting to be fueled (video).

But as you note in your press release, this is more than a war between ecoslamunistofascism and sushi shintoism. It's a Christian conflict as well. It's another front in the Great Crusade against the UnJesused, a strategic campaign to overcome the dark forces of Darwinism.

I hope your film includes a section describing the genesis of the conflict between Judeo-Christians and whales. It's vital piece of information. Whales are beautiful, majestic creatures of Satan. People will side with them unless they remember that a whale started this war by swallowing Jonah. I like to think of it as the Judeo-Christian Pearl Harbor, a day that will live in infamy, the moment the whale kingdom declared war against Christianity by swallowing a prophet of the Lord.

It's why I never go on a cruise. I suspect the same is true for Dr. Dobson,Rep. Shimkus, Glenn Beck, and other prophets. We don't want to be swallowed up.

Heterosexually yours,

Gen. JC Christian, patriot

Have the terrorists won?

2010-02-02T08:23:00.000-05:00

If the fundamental goal of terrorism is to strike fear into a community and cause a major change in its political system, then indeed terrorism has won. Simply observe the changes in our Constitutional practice since September 11, 2001; extraordinary rendition, GITMO, enemy combatant status, suspension of habeas corpus, expansion of executive powers, torture, the PATRIOT Act, the list goes on.
These changes were assented to because of the fear of the populace and the power-greed of the leaders. The fear-mongering of the Bush-Cheney administration was terrorism built on terrorism.
If Obama is to change this, he MUST recognize the above and demand that Constitutional rights be applied in all cases. Terrorism is defeated easily in a court of law; we have done it as have other countries. By giving no special treatment to terrorists, we deny them the special recognition they crave. Treat them as any other criminal would be treated and watch how quickly they cave.

Things The Religious Right Opposes

2010-02-01T17:12:00.001-05:00

Created Feb 1 2010 - 3:17pm

It never fails to amaze me the types of state-level legislation that local chapters of Religious Right organizations will mobilize to defeat - things like a $10 tax on marriage licenses to fund domestic violence shelters [1]:

A bill that would have made a $10 donation to domestic violence shelters automatic when people apply for a marriage license failed in a House committee vote Monday, after the measure was opposed by the Utah Eagle Forum.
...
Utah Eagle Forum Vice President Dalane England called Johnson's proposal "an undue burden on marriage."

But that is nothing compared to this report [2] on the fact that Religious Right groups are mobilizing in Georgia to fight a bill that seeks to offer young sex trafficking victims therapy instead of prosecuting them as prostitutes:

A state lawmaker and hundreds of child advocates are calling for young girls to be treated as victims and not criminalized as prostitutes.
Sen. Renee Unterman is proposing a bill that would set the minimum age at 16 for prosecuting sex-for-hire ... Unterman says the bill does not decriminalize prostitution but aims to make people aware that young children are not responsible for sexual acts and need rehabilitation and therapy, not jail time.
...
But conservative and Christian groups banned together to oppose the bill. They say it would lead to more prostitution.
"All we would do is be inviting into our state pedophiles and panderers looking for children," says former state Sen. Nancy Schaefer, now president of Eagle Forum of Georgia.
She says correction can also turn a child around and that discipline should not be removed when it comes to children engaging in illegal activity.

For the record, it's not just the Eagle Forum which thinks that the state should be prosecuting 10 year-old sex trade victims because failure to do so would be akin to decriminalization and a boon to pedophiles - so do [3] the Georgia Christian Alliance, the Georgia Christian Coalition, Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition, and the Georgia Baptist Convention.

Source URL: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/things-religious-right-opposes

Links:
[1] http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700006274/Utah-Legislature-Bill-fails-for-automatic-donations-to-help-domestic-violence-shelters.html
[2] http://wsbradio.com/localnews/2010/02/child-prostitution-bill.html
[3] http://blogs.ajc.com/political-insider-jim-galloway/2010/02/01/georgias-christian-right-comes-out-against-bills-aimed-at-child-prostitution/?cxntfid=blogs_political_insider_jim_galloway

NYT: U.S. Examines Whether Blackwater Tried Bribery

2010-02-01T11:06:00.000-05:00

By MARK MAZZETTI and JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is investigating whether officials of Blackwater Worldwide tried to bribe Iraqi government officials in hopes of retaining the firm’s security work in Iraq after a deadly shooting episode in 2007, according to current and former government officials.

The officials said that the Justice Department’s fraud section opened the inquiry late last year to determine whether Blackwater employees violated a federal law banning American corporations from paying bribes to foreign officials.

The inquiry is the latest fallout from the shooting in Nisour Square in Baghdad, which left 17 Iraqis dead and stoked bitter resentment against the United States.

A federal judge in December dismissed criminal charges against five former Blackwater guards implicated in the episode, but Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. recently announced that the Obama administration would appeal that decision.

The investigation, which was confirmed by three current and former officials speaking on condition of anonymity, follows a report in The New York Times in November that top executives at Blackwater had authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials to buy their support after the shooting. The newspaper account said it could not determine whether any bribes were actually paid or identify Iraqi officials who might have received the money.

The Justice Department has obtained two documents from the State Department, which had security contracts with the company, that have raised questions about Blackwater’s efforts to influence Iraqi government officials after the Nisour Square shootings, according to two American officials familiar with the inquiry.

One document, a handwritten note, shows that a Blackwater representative told a senior official at the American Embassy in Baghdad that the company had hired a prominent Iraqi lawyer to help the firm make compensation payments to Iraqi victims of the shootings, a practice encouraged by the State Department.

According to the document, as described by the two government officials, the Blackwater official said the firm had hired the lawyer hoping that the lawyer’s close ties to top Iraqi officials, including Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, would help Blackwater obtain a license to continue operating in Iraq.

Several officials identified the Iraqi lawyer as Jaafar al-Mousawi, who had earlier served as the chief prosecutor in the trial of Saddam Hussein.

The second document is a response from a senior Embassy official, an e-mail message warning Blackwater officials not to bribe the Iraqi government, the officials said. In an interview in Baghdad on Friday, Mr. Mousawi said that in February 2008 he worked with top Blackwater officials to spend up to $1 million to compensate the families of the Nisour Square victims. He said he consulted with Mr. Maliki about the payments.

“He said, ‘Go ahead and help because these are poor people,’ ” Mr. Mousawi said.

Saying that 40 families received a total of about $800,000, he added that he believed that Blackwater hoped the compensation would help “moisten the situation with the Iraqi government to get the license.”

But he said that he was unaware of any efforts by Blackwater executives to bribe Iraqi officials, and that news reports misinterpreted the purpose of the victims’ fund as intended bribes.

Several former Blackwater employees, however, had told The Times that Blackwater’s president at the time, Gary Jackson, authorized about $1 million for payments to Iraqi officials, with only a small portion intended for victims. While the documents apparently do not offer proof that Blackwater paid off any Iraqi officials, the American officials who have reviewed them say they suggest that officials at the United States Embassy in Baghdad were concerned enough about Blackwater’s plans to issue the warning to the company.

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment. Stacey DeLuke, a spokeswoman for Blackwater, now called Xe Services, which is based in Moyock, N.C., did not respond to a request for comment.

The bribery investigation is still in its early stages, according to officials familiar with the inquiry. They said that lawyers in the fraud section at the Justice Department’s Washington headquarters were working with federal prosecutors in North Carolina, where a federal grand jury has been examining Blackwater’s activities for several years. The State Department is also cooperating with the bribery investigation, several officials said.

Securing convictions under the federal antibribery statute, called the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, is often difficult. Steven Tyrrell, who until December ran the Justice Department’s fraud section, said that there was seldom a paper trail of the illegal transactions and that prosecutors usually had to rely on whistle-blowers inside a company to testify about bribery payments.

Under the statute, the prosecutors must prove the “corrupt intent” of those making payments to the foreign officials, and the payment “must be intended to induce the recipient to misuse his official position” according to a statement on the Justice Department Web site. The statement notes that the mere offer or promise of a bribe can violate the statute.

Over the past year, the Justice Department has dramatically expanded its bribery investigations, placing a new emphasis on prosecuting individual executives rather than merely getting companies to pay large fines for paying off foreign officials.

“The fear of jail is more of a deterrent than the fear of having to pay a monetary fine, which many companies might see as the cost of doing business,” Mr. Tyrrell said. He declined to speak about the Justice Department’s inquiry into Blackwater or confirm its existence.

The Nisour Square shooting incited intense anger among Iraqis, and officials in Baghdad threatened to kick Blackwater out of the country. At the time, the security company had contracts in Iraq with the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

Families of the Nisour Square victims have said in interviews that Mr. Mousawi met with them and arranged compensation payments on behalf of Blackwater. The Iraqis said an American described as “Mr. Rich” sometimes joined Mr. Mousawi.

Several American officials have identified the man as Rich Garner, then Blackwater’s Iraq country manager. Former employees have previously said the money authorized for secret payments of Iraqi officials was sent to Mr. Garner in Baghdad from the firm’s office in Amman, Jordan.

Blackwater was able to keep its State Department contract in Iraq for nearly two years without obtaining the operating license Iraqi officials had said would be required.

In May 2009, Blackwater finally lost the deal. The firm still provides diplomatic security for the State Department in Afghanistan.

While the Justice Department’s investigation appears to focus on specific allegations of bribery after the Nisour Square shooting, several former Blackwater officials have said that questionable transfers of cash were frequent at Blackwater.

In interviews, former Blackwater officials described how the company over the years sent millions of dollars in cash into Iraq, usually carried by hand in paper bags, and kept few records of the transfers.

Some of the former employees told the prosecutors that they could not identify the recipients of the money, while others have said the money went to bribe Iraqi officials, according to current and former government officials and outside lawyers familiar with the matter.

The Justice Department’s decision to open an investigation of Blackwater came weeks before the judge in Washington dismissed criminal charges against five Blackwater guards.

They had been charged with manslaughter and related weapons violations in the Nisour Square shootings, but United States District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina threw out the case and harshly criticized prosecutors for relying on statements made by the guards under grants of immunity.

Separately, some Nisour Square victims have dropped a civil lawsuit against Blackwater after reaching a financial settlement with the company.

But the company’s legal troubles persist. Two former guards for a Blackwater subsidiary were charged in January in the deaths of two Afghans and the wounding of another in Afghanistan last year.

Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting from Baghdad.

THE NEW CONSERVATIVES : The Tea Party’s (old) paranoia

2010-01-31T11:06:00.000-05:00

Today’s fervent ideological movement has roots in post-World War II right

By J. Patrick Coolican (contact)

Sunday, Jan. 24, 2010 | 2 a.m.

The federal government, under the guise of helping the mentally ill, is establishing a concentration camp in Alaska to house political opponents — a new step on the path toward totalitarianism.

Dan Smoot and other historical footnotes made the allegation in 1956, and it briefly became an obsessive cause of the right-wing grass roots, with each new allegation topping the last.

Perhaps this episode sounds vaguely familiar. That’s because Fox commentator Glenn Beck said last year he had tried but could not refute claims that the Obama administration was creating FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) camps that would house its political opponents.

Remarking on the camps and his failed attempt to “debunk” the allegation, Beck said: “If you have any kind fear that we might be heading toward a totalitarian state, look out. Buckle up. There is something happening in our country and it ain’t good.”

He would later correct his FEMA camp story, but by then, the myth had implanted itself.

Beck and the Tea Party movement of which he is a central figure are often portrayed as a new and exotic political phenomenon. Pollsters treat the Tea Party movement like a third political party, and indeed, it is especially popular at the moment among unaffiliated voters new to politics.

For voters — most recently in last week’s Massachusetts special election — who believe big government and big business are engaged in a corrupt marriage, the movement feels like a refreshing voice for average people who aren’t in those backrooms and so aren’t getting cut in on the deals, like during health care reform negotiations.

Indeed, Kay Lawrence, a retired art gallery manager who attended a Tea Party event in Las Vegas recently, voices this complaint: “We’re sick of these sweetheart deals.”

For all its apparent freshness, however, the Tea Party movement is neither new nor novel, historians and political scientists say.

It is firmly rooted, in its ideology, rhetoric and — there’s no polite word for it — its paranoia, in the post-World War II American right.

Every few years, usually though not always during a Democratic administration, the movement reappears, with a similar set of grievances: The expansion of government is moving us toward socialism; there’s been a dangerous weakening of the national security apparatus but also, paradoxically, the threat of police state provisions at home; an alien subversive of nefarious intentions, composed of cosmopolitan elites and corrupt “one worlders” has infected the government.

In the 1950s, conservatives were angered when their champion, Ohio Sen. Robert Taft, was shoved aside by Republican elites in favor of the moderate Dwight Eisenhower.

Kathy Olmsted, a University of California, Davis historian of the period, notes that they accused the one-time Supreme Allied Commander of being a communist agent, an allegation made repeatedly by candy tycoon Robert Welch.

Consider the far-right rallying cry during the presidency of Bill Clinton: Jackbooted government thugs were on the loose; American soldiers were fighting under the U.N. flag; the 1993 tax increase — and yet another failed attempt at health care reform — the marks of a closet socialist.

The most fitting parallel, however, may be the early 1960s, when right-wing activists believed the civil rights movement was the work of the Soviets and, as Ronald Reagan alleged, Medicare a push for socialized medicine.

“The tropes, the rhetoric, the cultural profile — there are profound similarities,” says Rick Perlstein, who has completed two books of a trilogy on the history of the conservative movement and is widely viewed by conservatives and liberals alike as its key chronicler.

Like President Barack Obama, John F. Kennedy was a “first” — the first Catholic president in a nation with a long history of anti-Catholic bigotry and conspiracy theories about powerful papists. Like Obama, Kennedy’s administration was staffed with Eastern elites from the best schools and largest corporations, all viewed warily by Sun Belt and rural Americans.

Another parallel, Olmsted says, the Tea Party movement is not unlike a right-wing activist group of the time, The John Birch Society. “The John Birch Society was extreme, but also connected to the Republican Party, and Republican politicians had to make a decision about whether they were with the movement,” she says.

Then there’s the paranoia: Before it was communist plots, now it is “death panels” and the belief that the administration is eager to seize guns.

Gun sales have skyrocketed since Obama’s election. In November 2008, FBI background checks for prospective gun buyers rose 41.6 percent compared with a year earlier, even though Democratic politicians have shown no interest in meaningful gun control in years and have blamed the issue for electoral losses in 1994 and 2000.

Even reasonable Tea Party activists, such as some from the recent Las Vegas event interviewed by the Sun, take it as given that Obama is a socialist. It hardly seems to matter that a significant chunk of the stimulus was a tax cut, or that his chief economist is centrist Larry Summers, or that the bailouts of the auto and banking industries began under President George W. Bush, or that Reagan favored the bailout of Chrysler in 1980, or that Reagan raised taxes to save Social Security.

Obama is a socialist, if he’s not a fascist, a Nazi, or a totalitarian.

Like the Tea Party movement, this paranoia is not new, nor is it confined to the right.

In 2005, as the left pulled at its hair over imagined Bush conspiracies, conservative columnist David Brooks recalled Richard Hofstadter’s seminal 1964 essay, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.”

“The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms — he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values,” Hofstadter wrote. “He is always manning the barricades of civilization.”

As for the enemy, “He makes crises, starts runs on banks, causes depressions, manufactures disasters, and then enjoys and profits from the misery he has produced.”

And, “He is a perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman — sinister, ubiquitous, powerful ...”

David Brown, a Hofstadter biographer and historian at Elizabethtown College, notes that Hofstadter places the populist right in the context of America’s long tradition of paranoid political movements that effectively “magnify the opposition.”

The use of the clinical term “paranoid” to describe the president’s opponents is surely condescending.

“It’s condescending, but it also happens to be true,” says Michael Munger, a Duke University political scientist who is a libertarian and has been a keynote speaker at a number of Tea Party rallies.

He says we’ve reached a tipping point of paranoia and conspiracy mongering, fed by two trends: loss of credibility of official sources culminating, as far as conservatives are concerned, with this administration; and the profusion of media outlets that feed on conspiracy and paranoia.

Indeed, there are differences between the current Tea Party movement and its ancestors, especially in the media.

Whereas there were once a handful of powerful media voices, now there are thousands.

Perlstein notes that establishment media of the early 1960s acted as a filter against extremism. Walter Cronkite, for instance, would never countenance the likes of Orly Taitz, a leader of the movement to prove Obama was born in Kenya. And, yet, there she is on the cable networks.

As Olmsted notes, “With cable, there’s an endless appetite for feeding the monster. And with Fox, it’s made to order.”

There was another check on the extremism of the early 1960s — the conservative movement itself. As conservative historian Sam Tanenhaus and Perlstein have noted, the godfather of the conservative movement, William F. Buckley, acted as de facto disciplinarian, casting out the Birch Society and the radical libertarian Ayn Rand.

Buckley is dead, and there are no voices of such singular influence who could play the same role.

Also different: The Republican Party of the early 1960s had a strong contingent of moderates or “Rockefeller Republicans” who favored civil rights and opposed the destruction of the New Deal.

They are gone now, as much a relic as Brylcreem, which makes “purifying” the party an ever more extreme proposition.

What is unknown at this point is whether the Tea Party will have the same lasting success as the conservatives of the early 1960s.

Whatever their now-discredited views about Medicare and the civil rights movement, conservative activists were effective — they overthrew the Republican Party’s Eastern establishment and nominated then-Sen. Barry M. Goldwater in 1964.

The Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of Kennedy and Goldwater’s own rhetoric — “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice!” — scared voters and led to a landslide for Democrats in 1964.

But Goldwater’s “The Conscience of a Conservative” remained a founding text of the modern movement, a work of elegant prose and cogent argument, while a speech Reagan gave just before the 1964 defeat would live on like a Homeric poem.

And just 16 years later, the Reagan Revolution was on.

Zinn Called War on Terror "Largest Lie"

2010-01-30T07:56:00.000-05:00

By Sherwood Ross (about the author)

The "largest lie," wrote hisorian Howard Zinn who died Wednesday at age 87, is that "everything the United States does is to be pardoned because we are engaged in a "war on terrorism.'"
"This ignores the fact that war is itself terrorism, that the barging into people's homes and taking away family members and subjecting them to torture, that is terrorism, that invading and bombing other countries does not give us more security but less security."
In an article published previously in "The Long Term View" magazine of the Massachusetts School of Law, Zinn said that in the Fallujah area of Iraq Knight Ridder reporters found there was no Ba'athist or Sunni conspiracy against the U.S., "only people ready to fight because their relatives had been hurt or killed, or they themselves had been humiliated by home searches and road stops."

Zinn, popularly known as the people's historian, pointed out that the U.S. may have liberated Iraq from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein but afterwards it became Iraq's occupier. He noted this is the same fate that befell Cuba after the U.S. liberated it from Spain in 1898. In both nations, the U.S. established military bases and U.S. corporations moved in to profit from the upheaval.
Zinn recalled the words of then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld before the NATO ministers in Brussels in June, 2002, "the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" of weapons of mass destruction. "That explains why this government, not knowing exactly where to find the criminals of September 11, will just go ahead and invade and bomb Afghanistan, killing thousands of people, driving hundreds of thousands from their homes, and still not know where the criminals are," Zinn wrote.
"This explains why the government, not really knowing what weapons Saddam Hussein is hiding, will invade and bomb Iraq, to the horror of most of the world, killing thousands of civilians and soldiers and terrorizing the population," he continued.
The historian pointed out that even if the U.S. experienced few battle casualties in its invasion of Iraq, casualties would mount afterwards in the occupying army from sickness and trauma, which took a high toll both in Viet Nam and after the Gulf War. In the 10 years after the Gulf War, 8,000 veterans died and 200,000 veterans filed complaints about illnesses incurred "from the weapons our government used in the war."
Zinn predicted accurately that once the American public realized President Bush had lied to them about Iraq they would turn against the government. "When it loses its legitimacy in the eyes of its people, its days are numbered," he said of the Bush administration.
Writing of his personal feelings, Zinn said, "I wake up in the morning, read the newspaper, and feel that we are an occupied country, that some alien group has taken over" I wake up thinking this country is in the grip of a President (George W. Bush) who was not elected, who has surrounded himself with thugs in suits who care nothing about human life abroad or here, who care nothing about freedom abroad or here, who care nothing about what happens to the earth, the water, the air. And I wonder what kind of world our children and grandchildren will inherit."
Zinn called on his readers "to engage in whatever nonviolent actions appeal to us. There is no act too small, no act too bold. The history of social change is the history of millions of actions, small and large, coming together at critical points to create a power that governments cannot suppress. We find ourselves today at one of those critical points."

The Massachusetts School of Law at Andover is a non-profit law school purposefully dedicated to the education of students from minority, immigrant, and low-income households who would otherwise not have the opportunity to obtain a legal education. Zinn's article in The Long Term View first appeared in The Progressive magazine.

Soldiers Are Being Forced to Choose Between Their Children And the Military, And They're Paying the Price In Jailtime

2010-01-26T07:29:00.002-05:00

By Dahr Jamail, AlterNet
Posted on January 26, 2010, Printed on January 26, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145397/

In January, U.S. Army officials announced four separate court-martial charges against Specialist Alexis Hutchinson, a single mother who missed her deployment to Afghanistan in early November 2009 when her childcare plans for her infant son, Kamani, fell through at the last minute. Hutchinson was jailed and threatened with a court-martial if she did not agree to deploy to Afghanistan. Kamani was placed into a county foster care system.

Hutchinson, in accordance with the family care plan of the U.S. Army, had been allowed to fly to Oakland, California to leave her son with her mother, Angelique Hughes. However, after a week, Hughes realized she couldn't care for Kamani along with her other duties of caring for a daughter with special needs, her ailing mother, and an ailing sister. She told Hutchinson and her commander, Captain Gassant and the Army granted a Hutchinson an extension so that she could find someone else to care for Kamani. In the meantime, the boy came back to Georgia to be with his mother.

But only a few days before Hutchinson's original deployment date, she was told by the Army she would not get the time extension after all, and would have to deploy despite the fact that her son had nowhere to go. Faced with this choice, Specialist Hutchinson chose not to show up for her plane to Afghanistan. The military arrested her and placed her child in the county foster care system.

"I think they didn't believe her that she was unable to find someone to care for her infant," Hutchinson's civilian lawyer, Rai Sue Sussman, said at the time. "They think she's just trying to get out of her deployment. But she's just trying to find someone she can trust to take care of her baby. She has never intended to get out of her deployment."

The Army put Hutchinson in the position of having to choose between caring for her infant son or deploying to Afghanistan. She chose to care for her son, and is paying the price. Currently, she remains assigned to Hunter Army Airfield near Savannah, Georgia, where she has been posted since February 2008.

Hutchinson is not unique in facing unthinkable choices when it comes to having to choose between family obligations and the U.S. military. While Sussman explained that she has not heard of another case identical to Hutchinson's, where the military arrested a mother and placed her child in foster care, "I've spoken with many soldiers who have told me that that was the choice they were given [to place their child in foster care and deploy, or face court martial]. I spoke with someone yesterday who knew someone who had to place their child with a distant relative to avoid having them being placed in foster care by the military." A soldier in the Florida Coast Guard had just contacted her over a similar situation addition, Sussman said.

"If We Wanted You to Have a Family, There Would Have Been One In Your Duffle Bag."

Army regulations exist to deal specifically with soldiers who have children. "If a soldier can't find adequate childcare, they are supposed to be discharged honorably, according to Army Regulation 635-200," says Sussman, "The regulation in this, Chapter 5, is separation for convenience of the government, deals with this, and 5-8 is the discharge, which is involuntary separation due to parenthood. This is considered a punishment to people in the Army, because the assumption is that people want to stay in the Army, but this is for times when it's not a fit."

"The military is aware that these things happen, and I believe the regulations anticipate child-care plans sometimes falling through, and there are sometimes no alternatives," Sussman added, "They [U.S. Military] recognize the parent does have a duty to care for their child if they can't find a backup for when they are deployed. The military doesn't want people deployed who are distraught about their children."

Kathleen Gilberd, co-chair of the Military Law Task Force, part of the National Lawyers Guild, agrees.

"There is a pregnancy discharge, a parenthood discharge for sole-parents who can't find someone to give total care to their kids, there's a hardship discharge where an unusual family problem that requires the soldier to be with a family in financial crisis or a family member who has a severe mental health problem," Gilberd explains. "But, despite regulations existing to deal with these problems, these are typically ignored by the military. The military will typically say, 'Well, we looked at it, but we can't help you with this.'"

Gilberd says there are common phrases in the military that speak to this: "If we wanted you to have a family, there would have been one in your duffle bag." Or, "If we wanted you to have a wife, we would have issued you one."

"Family is subsidiary to military needs," she adds. "Soldiers hear this from the beginning."

Gilberd is currently working on a case similar to Hutchinson's, but her client is not ready to go public yet. Gilberd says, "The military isn't going to be forthcoming about the reasons soldiers refuse to deploy or go AWOL, but I certainly run into many cases of soldiers struggling with the military while they try to care for their children, or sick family members."

"Helping Children Cope"?

The U.S. Military has, via a large and ongoing propaganda effort, attempted to sell itself as being "family friendly" in an attempt to lure recruits with families to join.

On the U.S. Army's primary recruiting website, goarmy.com, a section titled "Army Families" has sections for health care, finances, family services, and even a section on relocating with a sub-section titled "Helping Children Cope." A small paragraph addresses the stress on children whose military parent(s), faced with moving on a regular basis, feel the stress. A sentence states, "If you have young children, their first move can be challenging and maybe even downright scary."

But moving is not the most frightening proposition faced by children whose parents are in the military today. Rather, it is the unwillingness by the military to accommodate the needs of their parents.

When Sergeant Heath Carter returned from the invasion of Iraq, he discovered that his daughter, Sierra, was living in an unsafe environment in Arkansas under the care of his first wife, who had full custody of the child. Heath and his new wife, Teresa, started consulting attorneys in order to secure custody of Sierra, who also suffered from a life-threatening medical condition. Precisely during this time, the military chose to keep changing Carter's duty station from Fort Polk, Louisiana, to Fort Huachuca, Arizona, then to Fort Stewart, Georgia. Not only did these constant transfers make it difficult for Carter to see his daughter, they also reduced his chances of gaining custody of Sierra. Convinced that this was a matter of life and death for his daughter, he requested compassionate reassignment to Fort Leavenworth, Missouri, about two hours from his first wife's home in Arkansas.

His appeals to the military command, the legal department, a military chaplain, and even to his congressman failed, and the military insisted that he remain in Georgia. Having run out of all available avenues, in May 2007 he went AWOL from Fort Stewart and headed home to Arkansas where he fought for and won custody of Sierra, and was able to literally save her life by obtaining for her the medical care she needed.

But on January 25, 2009, Carter was arrested at his home by military police, who flew him back to Fort Stewart where he has been awaiting charges since then. Initially, his commander told him it would take a month and a half for him to be sent home. Instead, several months later, it was decided he would receive a court-martial.

"Now I have to wait for the court martial," Carter explained in an interview last fall. "It's taken this long for them to decide. If we had known it would take this long, my family could have moved down here. Every time I ask when I'll have a trial, they say it is only going to be another two weeks. I get the feeling they are lying."

His ordeal has forced Carter to reflect on the wars. He admits that, although his original reason for going AWOL was personal and he had otherwise been proud of his missions, he sees things in Iraq differently today. "I don't think there is any reason for us to be there except for oil."

To add insult to injury, Sergeant Carter's command even offered him a deployment to Afghanistan amid his struggles.

An equally shocking story is that of Army Specialist Leo Church.

Shortly after Church completed his Basic Training, he received a call from his partner and mother of his two children, informing him that they were homeless and living in a van. Church asked his commander for permission to leave Fort Hood and go get his family, but permission was denied.

"Seeing that I had no other choice I left to pick up my children and then immediately returned to Ft. Hood, back to my company," Church wrote of his experience in a statement from September 1, 2009. "When I returned I was charged for leaving without permission and given an Article 15, and my pay was cut in half. Things only got worse from there."

Church's captain suggested that he have his children live with him, and Church could take them to work with him, except there was a six-month wait for this to be approved. "Knowing that I was not allowed to have them in my room overnight and it being inappropriate to take them to my company to work, I left to take my children to Amarillo, Texas so I could find them a safe place to live," Church wrote of the situation, "Having only my mother to turn to, but knowing that she could not keep them 24 hours a day for me to be able to return to Ft. Hood, I stayed and found myself a civilian job. I knew my obligation was to the Army and my company, but my children were my obligation long before I ever considered enlisting and they needed their father."

Church was picked up for being AWOL in 2007 and flown back to Fort Hood where he was returned to his company, and threatened with 15-20 years in prison for having gone AWOL, despite the fact that it was to take care of his children. His partner left him during this time as well.

"So, again I found myself leaving, this time not for my children, but for me," Church added, "I was scared and alone, and had no one to help me as it had been since the first day I arrived at Ft. Hood."

This time Church "started to build the foundation for my life," adding, "a beautiful home, an excellent job, a wonderful wife, Amanda, and my only son on the way, I could not have been happier. But, my desertion charge had been discovered and I was once more picked up and returned to Ft. Hood."

Church was unable to find anyone to support his wife and children, and the Army refused to assist him, so he and his wife were forced to give their newborn son, Austin, for adoption. Meanwhile, Church was court-martialed and spent several months in the brig at Fort Lewis in Washington State. Of that time he wrote: "I have lost so much because of the Army; I don't have custody of my daughters and I had to give up my son for adoption, all because of the Army. My wife is struggling to make ends meet now without me." On December 9, 2009, Church was released from the stockade, and discharged from the Army.

According to Gilberd, Church's story is not unique.

"When there's a parent dying who wants their son or daughter home with them, or there is a child with special needs who needs intensive parent support, or some other family emergency, the military is not willing to provide that support," she explained. "Military regulations say there should be assistance available to the soldiers, and superiors are supposed to help with this, but soldiers find that the opposite happens."

After remembering an incident during the first Gulf War, when "there were reservist mothers who were breastfeeding who were ordered to active duty," Gilberd shared another story.

"Jose Crespa came home from an Iraq deployment. He went home on leave and found his sister had developed schizophrenia. His mom was unable to deal with the situation, which was complicated by the fact that his sister had a child to care for. He went AWOL for a month [late 2007] to help them, then went back to Fort Carson and let the military know what was going on. They threatened him with a general court martial, and it took attorney intervention and his Article 138 Complaint (A Redress of Grievance procedure for when soldiers are wronged by their command) to get him out."

Crespa was lucky to have good attorneys, as he was discharged without any disciplinary action and with an honorable discharge. However, things usually don't turn out this way.

"I wish I could say that's a common outcome," was Gilberd's comment on Crespa's case.

The Pentagon tracks hard numbers of soldiers going AWOL, and since October 2001, more than 50,000 soldiers have done so. But the military does not keep track of the reasons why soldiers go AWOL, or get hardship discharges, including when the reasons are those like Hutchinson's, Carter's, Church's, or Crespa's, or if the soldier has PTSD, or other mitigating circumstances.

According to Gilberd, cases like Crespa's "get lost in the shuffle," and added, "To most folks, this is just one more AWOL, or one more hardship discharge. There's no way to know how many soldiers are going AWOL and are trying to apply for hardship discharges, but counselors run across these cases often."

"Looking at these reasons would not reflect well on the military, but there are lots of these," Gilberd continued, "And to me, the irony is that there are procedures that should be available to these folks to get out, but the problem is that the command is not willing to follow the procedures. And it's all part of that "there's no family in your duffle bag" mindset. So it's all about keeping the numbers up, and having enough deployable service-members, and not letting too many people go."

As the military now finds itself preparing to deploy 30,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan and maintains more than 120,000 in Iraq, it is under tremendous pressure to maintain personnel in the ranks, which only exacerbates these problems.

"When a division is seen as having too many discharges or disciplinary problems, pressure comes down on them to not let so many people go," said Gilberd, "So the lower command gets subtle pressure for them to stop [losing personnel], and ultimately people become disposable. And not just the soldier, but their kids, or their mother, father, sister, or infant."

Dahr Jamail is an independent journalist and author of Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq, and The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight In Iraq and Afghanistan.

Gotta See This!

2010-01-25T06:52:00.002-05:00

John Dean: A Supreme Victory for Special Interests

2010-01-24T08:26:00.001-05:00

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/a_supreme_victory_for_special_interests_20100121/

Posted on Jan 21, 2010

By John Dean
The conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court has given a monumental victory to special interests—i.e., the big money corporations, the folks who already dominate Washington politics—with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Chief Justice John Roberts, along with Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy (who wrote the court’s opinion), have gone out of their way to further obliterate serious efforts to reform out-of-control campaign spending—spending that conspicuously distorts democracy in favor of those who can buy political influence. This ruling is of the same judical activism ilk that produced Bush v. Gore, not to mention the ensuing eight years of a disastrous Bush/Cheney presidency from which the nation has yet to recover. Understandably, President Obama is flummoxed.
This decision is long, at 183 pages. It includes a powerful dissent by the four centrist justices (there are no liberals on this court). And the ruling is chock full of nuanced information that spells out what Congress can and cannot do to reform our dysfunctional and money-hungry election system. This is not a ruling that lends itself to instant analysis. Those who follow this subject far closer than I do will be figuring it out for days, if not months. However, I would recommend the following sites for a quick take on the ruling: Slate(good overview), SCOTUSBLOG(which has followed the case closely), and, in particular, The Brennan Center(which filed an amicus brief in the case and will be leading the way in sorting out the full meaning). To understand what the court majority did, scroll down to about Page 88 of your .pdf reader and read the dissent written by Justice John Paul Stevens, and joined by Justices Ruth Ginsburg, Steven Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor. It is an eye-opener.
Aside from the fact that the majority ruling reeks of conservative politics, what I find most striking about conservative judicial activism typified by this ruling is the fact that the justices involved are totally out of touch with reality. None of the men involved in this historic decision have been elected to anything, ever. They have no idea how difficult it is for elected officials to deal in the contemporary money-flooded milieu of Washington. The work experience of those who have further opened the floodgates for money in politics is restricted to the executive branch, high-priced law firms, or the chambers of the lower federal appellate courts. Not since the late Justice Hugo Black, a former U.S. senator who retired in 1971, has the court had a member of Congress on its bench, someone who can explain the real world to the other justices. These conservative justices live in a bubble, and they have little true understanding of what they have done, other than, of course, to know that they have taken care of conservatives, the so-called Citizens Unitedwho filed this lawsuit. (Yes, David N. Bossie, the president of Citizens United, is the same fellow who worked overtime to impeach President Bill Clinton.)
After I fully digest this decision and speak with friends in Washington who have long been concerned that the Bush/Cheney legacy that now controls the high court might do as they have in fact done, I will share further thoughts about the damage this ruling will bring, and what can and will be done. For this ruling has the potential of being even more pernicious than Bush v. Gore, since it reaches not merely the presidency but every elective office in the United States. Conservatives may not know how to govern when they are in power, but they sure know how to make certain that centrists, progressives and liberals are not given a sustained opportunity to work their will.

John Dean served as Richard M. Nixon’s White House lawyer for 1,000 days and is the author of several books, including “Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush” and ” Conservatives Without Conscience.”

Money Isn't Speech and Corporations Aren't People

2010-01-24T08:23:00.000-05:00

The misguided theories behind the Supreme Court's ruling on campaign finance reform.

By David Kairys

Go back almost a century, to the time when the modern corporation was created, and you'll find laws that prohibit or limit the use of corporate money in elections. And yet this week, a 5-4 Supreme Court struck down the limits that Congress passed in 2002 in this tradition in the case Citizens United v. FEC.
The majority's ruling unleashes a new wave of campaign cash and adds to the already considerable power of corporations. The court's main rationale is that limits on using corporate treasuries for campaigns are a "classic example of censorship," as Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority. To get there, Kennedy depends on two legal theories that blossomed as constitutional principles in the mid-1970s: money is speech and corporations are people. Both theories are strange, if not simply wrongheaded—why, according to the Constitution or common sense, would money be speech or corporations be people? The court has also employed theories not uniformly but, rather, as constitutional cover for dominance of the electoral system by corporations and by the wealthy.
The first theory appeared in a 1976 decision, Buckley v. Valeo, which invalidated some campaign-finance reforms that came out of Watergate. The Court concluded that most limits on campaign expenditures, and some limits on donations, are unconstitutional because money is itself speech and the "quantity of expression"—the amounts of money—can't be limited.
But in subsequent cases, the conservative justices who had emphatically embraced the money-is-speech principle didn't apply it to money solicited by speakers of ordinary means. For example, the courtlimited the First Amendment rights of Hare Krishna leafleters soliciting donations in airports to support their own leafleting. The leafleting drew no money-is-speech analysis. To the contrary, the conservative justices, led by Chief Justice Rehnquist, found that by asking for money for leafleting—their form of speech—the Hare Krishnas were being "disruptive" and posing an "inconvenience" to others. In other words, in the court's view, some people's money is speech; others' money is annoying. And the conservative justices have raised no objection to other limits on the quantity of speech, such as limits on the number of picketers.
The money-is-speech theory turns out to be a rhetorical device used exclusively to provide First Amendment protection for all money that wealthy people and businesses want to give to, or to spend, on campaigns. It also doesn't make sense under long established free-speech law. Spending or donating money to support or facilitate speech is expressive and deserves some protection. But money simply doesn't make it into the category of things that are and embody speech, such as books, films, or blogs. Traditional speech-law analysis would separate the speech from the conduct (or "nonspeech") elements of campaign spending and donation and allow considerable leeway to regulate the latter. Even as to "pure" speech, "compelling" government interests are overriding. And spending and donating money seem, among the traditional speech-law categories, a "manner" of speaking that the court has said usually can be "reasonably regulated."
The other basic theory supporting the ruling in Citizens United—the court's claim that, for some purposes, corporations are constitutionally, if not actually, people—comes out of the long history of the development of corporations. But the extension of corporate personhood to campaign speech is a controversial innovation of the conservative justices over the last few decades.
Corporations needed some rights usually reserved for people to function as legal entities, so that they could, for instance, make enforceable contracts and sue or be sued. But despite the common cultural personification of corporations—we can easily say "GM was embarrassed today"—they obviously don't and shouldn't have all the rights of people. For example, they don't have the right to vote.
In Citizens United, Justice Kennedy discusses business corporations as if they were clubs or political associations with political viewpoints and elected leaders. But corporate managers don't function as representatives or employees of shareholders, who have no say, no shared political views, and no expectation that their investments will be used for political ends. In the wake of the court's ruling this week, will some corporations pick a party or politics while others channel unheard of amounts of money to both major parties? Will investors be influenced by a corporation's political portfolio?
The Citizens United decision will make it harder to achieve reforms opposed by major corporations and change business as well as politics. Increasing the constitutional rights of corporations beyond their business purposes is really about increasing the rights and power of corporate managers. Government has enabled corporate managers to control huge accumulations of wealth without any personal risk—an arrangement that contributes to wild, bubble-producing economic swings and collapses. Citizens United invites that arrangement directly into politics and elections.
Both of these theories—that money is speech and that corporations are people—have an easier time than they should in courts and with the public, too, because they are posed as counters to censorship. Many of us, including me, haven't seen a free-speech argument we don't like, at least initially.
But some perspective: We limit speech—when it has nothing to do with wealthy people spending money—in many ways. (It wasn't protected at all until the mid-1930s.) You famously can't shout fire in a theater. You not-so-famously can't break the theater's rules, including rules about speaking, because you don't really have any First Amendment rights in a privately owned theater or at work. The First Amendment limits only government. And even where it is fully protected, free speech has not been absolute; it's subject to regulation when it undermines basic societal interests and functions, like voting and democracy. In the last few decades, the conservative justices dominating the court have also limited speech rights for demonstrators, students, and whistle blowers. They have restricted speech at shopping malls and transit terminals. Taken as a whole, the conservative court's First Amendment jurisprudence has enlarged the speech rights available to wealthy people and corporations and restricted the speech rights available to people of ordinary means and to dissenters.
In a largely unnoticed rewriting of speech law, the conservative justices have applied their theories and doctrines inconsistently and selectively, as they have money-is-speech. Some of the conservatives' recent innovations would seem to validate campaign finance laws. The "secondary effects" doctrine, for example, allows government to restrict speech if government can suggest a general, non-speech-related purpose, even if the real purpose is speech-related. The court ignored this doctrine in Citizens' United and other campaign finance cases—even though campaign finance reform is aimed not at speech itself, but at large amounts of money that skew, corrupt, and undermine elections.
The court's invalidation of campaign finance reforms over the last few decades isn't about censorship or suppressed speakers or viewpoints. At its core, this line of cases is about dominance of the political and electoral system by wealthy people and corporations and about legitimizing a political and electoral system that is unrepresentative, money-driven, corrupt, outmoded, and dysfunctional. Wealthy people and corporate managers shouldn't dominate politics or have more and better speech rights than the rest of us. That seems like an obvious truth. And yet the Supreme Court's recent decisions move us away from it.
David Kairys, a law professor at Temple University and a leading civil rights lawyer, is the author of Philadelphia Freedom, Memoir of a Civil Rights Lawyer.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2242210/

My God is a Serious God

2010-01-14T11:27:00.000-05:00

Thursday, January 14, 2010

From Jesus' General

Reports from Haiti say hundreds of thousands were killed in the earthquake. Tens of thousands more may join them in the aftermath as disease, hunger, and exposure take their toll on the impoverished and weakened survivors.

All this because a slave made a pact with the devil almost 206 years ago. That's the verdict from Pat Robertson. According to him, the nation of Haiti was founded on a voodoo curse that expelled the French colonial government. Now God is getting payback by slaughtering hundreds of thousands of children.

Yes, the vengeful God of Abraham is back, and He's going to kick some black baby ass. That's just the way he rolls.

My God is a God of action. Add the Book of "24" to the Bible, because He's a serious God who isn't afraid to do what it takes to prevent new voodoo curses from being cast against good, white, Christian nations.

I'm sure we all take great comfort in that.

Not Many Left To Debate The Issue...

2010-01-12T12:36:00.000-05:00

Open Bar

Same Sex Marriage: Just Shut Up, You

by Andrew Cohen

January 12, 2010, 9:30 AM

If we are going to have a meaningful, honest national debate over same-sex marriage, and we want that fight to be fair, we ought to agree at the outset to a few stipulations now that the big Proposition 8 trial has geared up in earnest in San Francisco.

No. 1: Any divorced person in America hereby automatically forfeits his or her right to comment upon the sin, legal or otherwise, of same-sex marriage. Having failed with our own marriages, who the hell are we to tell a same-sex couple that they don’t have a right to at least try to do better than we did? Imagine how different the debate would be if all us hypocritical, judgmental divorcees stayed quiet.

No. 2: Any person who has or who is at this very moment committing adultery, or any other action which directly undermines the “traditions” associated with marriage, also hereby forfeits the right to tell same-sex couples that they can’t try to stay loyal and honest in their relationship. These liars, cheats and scoundrels (of both sexes) have done more to undermine marriage over the centuries than any two men kissing could ever dream of doing.

No. 3: Any person in a loving, committed long-term relationship who has not had the courage to get married hereby forfeits the right to let others be more courageous. Any person who has ever left anyone else at the Alter (or close by) is also hereby banned from blocking those willing to go through it. Any person who has gone too far at a bachelor or bachelorette party ought to hush up as well.

No. 4: Any person who already has been divorced from a same-sex marriage (yes, it’s happening all over) hereby has the obligation to come forward, and to be sworn, and to testify under oath to the American people just how similar their marital miseries were to the rest of us. Nothing would make the “we’re just like you” argument more than that, right?

No. 5: Religious organizations? Stay out of it. None of this has anything to do with your ceremonies and don’t forget a good many of your followers already are on the hook for Nos. 1 and 2 above. What the same-sex marriage legal debate is about is getting the certificate at City Hall. Also, there’s a reason the first amendment was made the first amendment.

We take all those people out of the equation and then we can have a debate between and among people who still have a right to discuss the matter. That debate would be a lot softer, and a lot quieter, with tens of millions of Americans sitting on the sideline, mute with shame about defending marriage’s “traditions” after ignoring them.

Like Lott? Please ...

2010-01-12T05:57:00.002-05:00

Josh Marshall | January 10, 2010

I'll leave to others to decide what the Reid remark/apology is. But it's pretty clearly nothing that the incident that brought down then-Majority Leader Trent Lott, notwithstanding a lot of folks fairly tendentiously trying to suggest otherwise. Reid's was an offensive remark -- using race-tinged and now archaic phrases to make a point that is really not all that controversial in itself. He apologized. And now we'll have to see what the consequences turn out to be.

What happened with Lott was altogether different.

Two things in tandem ended Lott's career in the senate leadership. First, Lott had a long history of support for and association with segregationist and white supremacist groups in the South. Not in some distant past but in the year's just before his downfall. (He was also a staunch opponent of virtually all civil rights legislation. But that actually didn't distinguish him that much for many other Southern Republicans of his generation.) To a lot of us at the time it was always a bit of a mystery how someone with his record could have risen as high as he had. This was all widely known in Washington, DC but it was by common agreement overlooked and excused. (In many ways, because of this, it was a scandal of official Washington -- as much as Lott.)

Then one day, Lott said this remarkable thing -- if only the candidate of segregation (Strom Thurmond) had been elected president in 1948, we'd have avoided all the problems we've had in recent decades.

Most other politicians could have walked away from this remark with the claim that they just hadn't thought through the implications of the statement. The problem for Lott was that almost everything from his past suggested that he knew the implications exactly and believed them deeply. To put it more baldly, too many past statements and actions made it clear he was a supporter of white supremacist politics and segregation. Suddenly what official Washington had always ignored was open to intense scrutiny and his days were numbered.

Folks can make an argument for Reid's punishment on its own terms; but the Lott analogy is laughable.

The Terrorists' Man in Washington

2010-01-11T06:18:00.000-05:00

Before Congressman Peter King was calling Obama soft in terror, he was championing terrorists in Ireland. Alex Massie on America’s worst congressman.

Ladies and gentleman of America, meet the worst member of your Congress: Peter King, the Republican who represents New York's 3rd Congressional District and who for reasons that, as we shall see, are almost laughably inappropriate, is the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee.

King has been on a tear since the attempted Christmas Day bombing, attacking the Obama administration at every turn. Earlier this week, he was asked what more President Obama could do to reassure Americans in the aftermath of the failed Christmas Day bomb plot. King's response? "I think one main thing would be to—just himself to use the word ‘terrorism’ more often." Even by the standards of the House of Representatives, this is impressively bone-headed.

For decades, King was one of the keenest, most reliable American voices supporting the Irish Republican Army during its long and murderous campaign.

Still, many members of Congress are stupid and the people, bless them, seem quite unconcerned by that. What's more galling is that King presents himself as a hawk on security issues who, like so many so-called conservatives, is an enthusiastic supporter of torture and, should it prove necessary, nuclear weapons. Listening to King talk about al Qaeda, you could be forgiven for thinking that he's the terrorists’ most implacable enemy.

Which would be funny if it weren't such a sour joke. For years, King, who represents a chunk of New York's Long Island, was in fact the terrorists' best friend. King wasn't merely an apologist for terrorism, he was an enthusiastic supporter of terrorism.

Of course it was Irish, not Islamic terrorism that King championed. So that'sdifferent. Right? For decades, King was one of the keenest, most reliable American voices supporting the Irish Republican Army during its long and murderous campaign.

According to King, the terrorist movement was "the legitimate voice of occupied Ireland."

In Northern Ireland, the conflict was drily referred to as "The Troubles." But that understatement hides the brutal nature of an ugly, squalid conflict during which more than 3,600 people were killed. Republican terrorists were responsible for more than 2,000 of these deaths. The scale of the carnage was such that, on a per-capita basis, a comparable conflict in the United States would kill 700,000 Americans.

And King was at the heart of it: In the 1980s, he was a prominent fundraiser for Noraid, the Irish-American organization that raised money for the IRA and was suspected of running guns to Ulster, too. Indeed, King's rise to prominence within the Irish-American movement was predicated upon his support for the IRA at a time when New Yorkers were softer on terrorism than they are now. Noraid helped win King his seat in Congress, making him, in some respects, the terrorists' Man in Washington.

On his travels to Northern Ireland, King would stay with members of the IRA and spend his evenings in IRA drinking clubs, soaking up the atmosphere and, I dare say, enjoying the craic.

In 1982 he told a pro-IRA rally in Nassau County, New York, that "We must pledge ourselves to support those brave men and women who this very moment are carrying forth the struggle against British imperialism in the streets of Belfast and Derry." That same year, an IRA bomb killed eight people in London's Hyde Park. Two years later, the IRA almost succeeded in murdering the British prime minister. Only good fortune saved Margaret Thatcher's life. In 1987, an IRA bomb murdered 11 civilians in Enniskillen during the annual Remembrance Day service. These are merely some of the more infamous IRA atrocities. There isn't space here to list them all.

King was such a well-known figure in Northern Ireland that one judge presiding over a murder case in which the accused were members of the IRA, threw King out of his Belfast courtroom because, as the judge put it, "he was an obvious collaborator with the IRA."

Nor was King ever apparently concerned by the links the IRA forged with countries hostile to the United States, such as Libya and Cuba. In 2002—after September 11, mind you—King condemned as "irresponsible" congressional hearings investigating links between the IRA and the Colombian terrorist-group FARC. King claimed that the hearings were rigged and subject to a "pre-ordained agenda" despite ample evidence demonstrating that the IRA was offering bomb-making and explosives training to the FARC.

As recently as 2005, King told me that "we shouldn't rush to be too sanctimonious" about the murder of Robert McCartney in a Belfast pub. Although the killing was witnessed by dozens of drinkers, IRA intimidation ensured that none came forward. A re-enactment of the murder shown on Irish television showed the Republicans involved returning to Magennis's bar to mop up blood and remove CCTV evidence while warning customers "This is IRA business." But, according to King, all the media attention devoted to the case was a whole lot of fuss about nothing much—even though the case revealed how the IRA continued to run rackets and pervert the course of justice.

Alas, fairness demands that one recognize that King did eventually break with the IRA later that year, demanding at long last that the organization fold its tent and disband. But he did so less because of the IRA's failings and more because he had become annoyed by what he termed Irish "begrudgery" and "anti-Americanism" after the Iraq War.

By that stage, the "Peace Process" had been going on for a dozen years—years in which King was a consistent apologist for the Republican movement's persistent disinclination to honor the promises it had made. That others were also happy to make excuses for Sinn Fein and the IRA does nothing to exculpate King's own willingness to turn a blind eye toward Sinn Fein's repeated bad faith.

Under the circumstances then, you may agree that it's just a bit rich to be lectured on terrorism by the likes of Peter King. It remains a mystery to me that his support for terrorism is mentioned so rarely by the American media when it is by far and away the most pertinent fact in Rep. King's sadly long career.

Happily there may be good news around the corner. New York is likely to lose a congressional seat once this year's Census results are confirmed. That means another bout of redistricting and King, one of just two Republicans New Yorkers send to Washington, is an obvious target to be mapped out of existence.

At the very least, this would give someone else a chance to inherit the title of America' Worst Congressman.

Alex Massie is a former Washington correspondent for The Scotsman and The Daily Telegraph. He writes for The Spectator and blogs atwww.spectator.co.uk/alexmassie.

Blackwater Murder Charge Dismissal Has Lessons

2010-01-11T05:51:00.000-05:00

Fro the New York Times

January 11, 2010

EDITORIAL

Privatized War, and Its Price

A federal judge in Washington, Ricardo Urbina, has provided another compelling argument against the outsourcing of war to gunslingers from the private sector. In throwing out charges against Blackwater agents who killed 17 Iraqis in Baghdad’s Nisour Square in September 2007, Judge Urbina highlighted the government’s inability to hold mercenaries accountable for crimes they commit.

Judge Urbina correctly ruled that the government violated the Blackwater agents’ protection against self-incrimination. He sketched an inept prosecution that relied on compelled statements made by the agents to officials of the State Department, who employed the North Carolina security firm to protect convoys and staff in Iraq. That, he said, amounted to a “reckless violation of the defendants’ constitutional rights.”

During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton competed over who would take the toughest line against mercenaries. It is clear that the only way for President Obama to make good on the rhetoric is to get rid of the thousands of private gunmen still deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The killings in Nisour Square were hardly the first misdeeds by hired guns in Iraq, or the last. The army has said contractors from firms like CACI International Inc. were involved in more than a third of the proven incidents of abuse in 2003 and 2004 in the Abu Ghraib prison. Guards from Blackwater — which has renamed itself Xe Services — and other security firms, like Triple Canopy, have been involved in other wanton shootings.

On Jan. 7, two former Blackwater guards were arrested on murder charges stemming from a shooting in Afghanistan last May that left two Afghans dead.

Still, the government has failed to hold armed contractors accountable. When its formal occupation of Iraq ended in 2004, the Bush administration demanded that Baghdad grant legal immunity to private contractors.

Congress has tried to cover such crimes with American law. The Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act extends civilian law to contractors supporting military operations overseas, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice was broadened in 2006 to cover contractors.

But the government has not prosecuted a single successful case for killings by armed contractors overseas. An Iraqi lawsuit against American military contractors by Iraqi victims of torture at Abu Ghraib was dismissed by a federal appeals court that said the companies had immunity as government contractors.

Furious that the Nisour Square case was dismissed, the Iraqi government said it might file civil suits in the United States and Iraq against Xe. But its chances of success are not considered great. The families of many of the victims of the rampage accepted a settlement from Xe last week, worried that had they pursued their civil suit they might have gotten nothing.

There are many reasons to oppose the privatization of war. Reliance on contractors allows the government to work under the radar of public scrutiny. And freewheeling contractors can be at cross purposes with the armed forces. Blackwater’s undersupervised guards undermined the effort to win Iraqi support.

But most fundamental is that the government cannot — or will not — keep a legal handle on its freelance gunmen. A nation of laws cannot go to war like that.

Lessons We NJ Marriage Equality Supporters Must Learn

2010-01-10T08:58:00.000-05:00

Taken from Blue Jersey:

But the three biggest lessons I learned yesterday is that never should members of our community donate money to, volunteer for, and vote for members of either party who do not pass one simple acid test: Do you commit publicly to the principle that lesbians and gay men are entitled to the full range of citizenship in our state including the right to the protections and responsibilities afforded by civil marriage in name and in fact?
The second lesson is that we must each commit to supporting any challenger to the sitting members of the legislature who have, whether by voting no or by abstaining or by professing opposition to us (in the case of the assembly, which will not vote on this bill), by donating money to, canvasing on behalf of, and voting for those challengers so long as they are on our side. We must demonstrate that our resources, which for too long have gone to support candidates who do not support us or are cause, can be brought to bear against those who oppose us.
Finally, I can't help but think of how the concerns of women and African Americans and Latinos and so many other disadvantaged parts of our society didn't get addressed in fundamental ways until leaders from those same communities rose up, spoke out, and began to take positions of responsibility in the community at large and in government. There are still precious few out members of the LGBT community in prominent positions in government. We need to be everywhere in the public sphere. And that includes in all levels of government, from dog catcher all the way up to the executive. That begins with running for office. I heard one gentleman at our post-vote reception, say he would take that challenge. We all need to take an active role, even if it means volunteering on a municipal committee to start out. We can't be passive observers of the political process any longer.

The Skies Are as Friendly as Ever: 9/11, Al Qaeda Obscure Statistics on Airline Safety

2010-01-05T06:00:00.001-05:00

The Skies Are as Friendly as Ever: 9/11, Al Qaeda Obscure Statistics on Airline Safety

When your favorite air carrier tells you to arrive at the airport three hours before an international flight, they're not playing around. Flying home to New York from Montreal yesterday, it took me nearly three hours to proceed from the door at Trudeau Airport to my gate. In the interim I experienced:

-- A passport and credit-card swipe at the automated check-in machine;
-- Being routed back to the check-in line after I was told that there were no carry-on bags permitted except for laptop bags and purses;
-- A 75-minute wait at said check-in line, and then a 10-minute wait to get my checked baggage scanned;
-- Being routed back yet again to the check-in counter after a traveling companion was told he couldn't carry his laptop bag on board because it didn't actually contain a laptop;
-- An ID and boarding pass check after clearing everything up and finally being allowed to proceed to the metal detectors;
-- Another ID and boarding pass check upon exiting the metal detectors and heading to customs;
-- A passport and boarding pass check by the customs agent;
-- A boarding pass scan upon leaving customs;
-- A full pat-down and hand examination of my luggage upon exiting customs and entering the departure terminal, as is apparently now given to all US-bound customers.

Fortunately my flight, which I would probably have missed had been on time, turned out to be late. Until it wasn't late any more ... it magically disappeared from the departure monitors. About $729.24 in iPhone international roaming charges later, I found out it had been canceled. A semi-helpful Delta gate agent re-routed us onto Air Canada into LaGuardia, although only after we pointed out emphatically that Delta is not the only airline and JFK is not the only NYC-area airport. The Air Canada flight was delayed, delayed again, and then canceled, after it turned out the delay had bumped the pilot out of his duty window. Then there was another delay after Air Canada searched for a big enough plane to accommodate the bumped passengers -- notwithstanding that all the cancellations had turned Montreal Trudeau International Airport into Airbus International Parking Lot. Finally, at about 9:15 -- eight hours after I'd arrived at the airport -- we were permitted to board, and a de-icing, a very bumpy landing, and a 30-minute taxi into the arrival gate later, we had made it home.

Not all of this, certainly, had to do with the security situation -- it was, rather, a veritable perfect storm of security issues, inclement weather, red tape, a notoriously disorganized airport, and a busy travel weekend. But, seeing as how it now takes almost as much time to travel home from Montreal as it does from Los Angeles, it left me wondering once again about the costs and benefits of "enhanced" airport security.

Last week, I wrote an article that detailed just how exceedingly rare terrorist incidents aboard commercial airlines are. What I didn't do is to compare the current situation to that of previous eras. Fortunately, there is quite a lot of data on this subject, particularly from the matter-of-factly named website PlaneCrashInfo.com. From their database, I compiled the number of passenger fatalities resulting in each decade from three types of incidents: sabotage (i.e. bombings), hijackings, and pilot shootings (which are much rarer than the other two types; just three in the database). Collectively, I term these Violent Passenger Incidents or VPIs; they are the things we might hope to prevent via tighter airport security.

In the 2000s, a total of 469 passengers (including crew and terrorists) were killed worldwide as the result of Violent Passenger Incidents, 265 of which were on 9/11 itself. No fatal incidents have occurred since nearly simultaneous bombings of two Russian aircraft on 8/24/2004; this makes for the longest streak without a fatal incident since World War II. The overall death toll during the 2000s is about the same as it was during the 1960s, and substantially less than in the 1970s and 1980s, when violent incidents peaked. The worst individual years were 1985, 1988 and 1989, in that order; 2001 ranks fourth.

Of course, there is a lot more air travel now than there was a couple of decades ago. Although worldwide data is difficult to obtain, U.S. air travel generally expanded at rates of 10-15% per year from the 1930s through 9/11. If we assume that U.S. air traffic represents about a third of the worldwide total (the U.S. share of global GDP, which is probably a reasonable proxy, has fairly consistently been between 26-28% during this period), we can estimate the number of deaths from Violent Passenger Incidents per one billion passenger boardings. By this measure, the 2000s tied the 1990s for being the safest on record, each of which were about six times safer than any previous decade. About 22 passengers per one billion enplanements were killed as the result of VPIs during the 2000s; this compares with a rate of about 191 deaths per billion enplanements during the 1960s.

But 9/11, of course, did not just kill people on the planes. Rather, nearly 3,000 of our citizens were murdered, the vast majority of whom were literally just going about their business in New York City or Arlington. If we include ground deaths in the total, we get a rather different picture, with the 2000s in fact being the worst decade on record.

As much as anything, however, this speaks to the tragic uniqueness of 9/11. Since the beginning of commercial air travel, a total of about 6,500 people have been killed as the result of Violent Passenger Incidents -- nearly half of those, or 2,995, came on 9/11 itself.

Without necessarily wanting to render any "predictions", it seems to me that the loss of life that occurred on the ground on 9/11 would be very hard for Al Qaeda or any other terrorist group to replicate. The reason is that the last line of defense against the terrorists has also proven to be the best, and that is the passengers. Brave passengers thwarted the hijacking attempts aboard United 93 and Qantas 173, and sabotage attempts aboard NWA 253 and AA 63 (the Shoe Bomber incident). In addition, the innovation of secure cockpit doors and increased scrutiny of suspicious persons at flight school make a literal repeat of 9/11 unlikely -- and if worse came to absolute worse, the domestic air defense system could also be scrambled.

I don't mean to be glib about the risk to the passengers on the jets themselves, but 12 out of every 13 innocent deaths on 9/11 were to people on the ground. And even if the deaths at the WTC and the Pentagon are included, the rate of deaths from Violent Passenger Incidents during the 2000s qualifies as relatively "normal", comparable to or slightly lower than the death rates in the 1940s through the 1980s. In fact, with the exception of the 1930s, when there wasn't really enough commercial air travel to provide for a sufficient sample size, and the 1990s, a decade which was a positive outlier in so many ways, the death rate from VPIs has been remarkably constant from decade to decade.

This is not necessarily meant to be interpreted as a call for laxer airport security. The mitigation of deaths from Violent Passenger Incidents can just as easily be read as a success story, of sorts -- although just as clearly some of the latest "innovations", like taking off our sneakers, or permitting passengers to carry on a bag if it contains a laptop but not if it doesn't -- are theatrical, ineffectual, and otherwise asinine.

It does seem to me, however, the singular focus on Al Qaeda is obscuring an understanding of the bigger picture. From the very dawn of commercial air travel, it was inevitable that some idiots -- whether acting alone or in concert -- might think it a bright idea to hijack or detonate passenger jets. We might not think of all such villains as "terrorists". There are a number of stories from the 1950s and the 1960s, believe it or not, of people blowing up commercial jets to collect life insurance. These people were profoundly evil, but would meet no reasonable definition of terrorism.

Fortunately, they have been exceedingly very few in number. They are arguably becoming rarer rather than more common -- and they are arguably becoming easier to detect. Airline security inherently involves trade-offs, and one is not likely to win very many arguments in Washington complaining about inconvenienced travelers, or reduced tourism to Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto. But let's at least analyze these trade-offs rationally, and not let the terrorists terrorize us any more than we must.

NYT: Americans’ Role Seen in Uganda Anti-Gay Push

2010-01-04T19:27:00.000-05:00

January 4, 2010

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

KAMPALA, Uganda — Last March, three American evangelical Christians, whose teachings about “curing” homosexuals have been widely discredited in the United States, arrived here in Uganda’s capital to give a series of talks.

The theme of the event, according to Stephen Langa, its Ugandan organizer, was “the gay agenda — that whole hidden and dark agenda” — and the threat homosexuals posed to Bible-based values and the traditional African family.

For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened raptly to the Americans, who were presented as experts on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” whose goal is “to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.”

Now the three Americans are finding themselves on the defensive, saying they had no intention of helping stoke the kind of anger that could lead to what came next: a bill to impose a death sentence for homosexual behavior.

One month after the conference, a previously unknown Ugandan politician, who boasts of having evangelical friends in the American government, introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009, which threatens to hang homosexuals, and, as a result, has put Uganda on a collision course with Western nations.

Donor countries, including the United States, are demanding that Uganda’s government drop the proposed law, saying it violates human rights, though Uganda’s minister of ethics and integrity (who previously tried to ban miniskirts) recently said, “Homosexuals can forget about human rights.”

The Ugandan government, facing the prospect of losing millions in foreign aid, is now indicating that it will back down, slightly, and change the death penalty provision to life in prison for some homosexuals. But the battle is far from over.

Instead, Uganda seems to have become a far-flung front line in the American culture wars, with American groups on both sides, the Christian right and gay activists, pouring in support and money as they get involved in the broader debate over homosexuality in Africa.

“It’s a fight for their lives,” said Mai Kiang, a director at the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, a New York-based group that has channeled nearly $75,000 to Ugandan gay rights activists and expects that amount to grow.

The three Americans who spoke at the conference — Scott Lively, a missionary who has written several books against homosexuality, including “7 Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child”; Caleb Lee Brundidge, a self-described former gay man who leads “healing seminars”; and Don Schmierer, a board member of Exodus International, whose mission is “mobilizing the body of Christ to minister grace and truth to a world impacted by homosexuality” — are now trying to distance themselves from the bill.

“I feel duped,” Mr. Schmierer said, arguing that he had been invited to speak on “parenting skills” for families with gay children. He acknowledged telling audiences how homosexuals could be converted into heterosexuals, but he said he had no idea some Ugandans were contemplating the death penalty for homosexuality.

“That’s horrible, absolutely horrible,” he said. “Some of the nicest people I have ever met are gay people.”

Mr. Lively and Mr. Brundidge have made similar remarks in interviews or statements issued by their organizations. But the Ugandan organizers of the conference admit helping draft the bill, and Mr. Lively has acknowledged meeting with Ugandan lawmakers to discuss it. He even wrote on his blog in March that someone had likened their campaign to “a nuclear bomb against the gay agenda in Uganda.” Later, when confronted with criticism, Mr. Lively said he was very disappointed that the legislation was so harsh.

Human rights advocates in Uganda say the visit by the three Americans helped set in motion what could be a very dangerous cycle. Gay Ugandans already describe a world of beatings, blackmail, death threats like “Die Sodomite!” scrawled on their homes, constant harassment and even so-called correctional rape.

“Now we really have to go undercover,” said Stosh Mugisha, a gay rights activist who said she was pinned down in a guava orchard and raped by a farmhand who wanted to cure her of her attraction to girls. She said that she was impregnated and infected with H.I.V., but that her grandmother’s reaction was simply, “ ‘You are too stubborn.’ ”

Despite such attacks, many gay men and lesbians here said things had been getting better for them before the bill, at least enough to hold news conferences and publicly advocate for their rights. Now they worry that the bill could encourage lynchings. Already, mobs beat people to death for infractions as minor as stealing shoes.

“What these people have done is set the fire they can’t quench,” said the Rev. Kapya Kaoma, a Zambian who went undercover for six months to chronicle the relationship between the African anti-homosexual movement and American evangelicals.

Mr. Kaoma was at the conference and said that the three Americans “underestimated the homophobia in Uganda” and “what it means to Africans when you speak about a certain group trying to destroy their children and their families.”

“When you speak like that,” he said, “Africans will fight to the death.”

Uganda is an exceptionally lush, mostly rural country where conservative Christian groups wield enormous influence. This is, after all, the land of proposed virginity scholarships, songs about Jesus playing in the airport, “Uganda is Blessed” bumper stickers on Parliament office doors and a suggestion by the president’s wife that a virginity census could be a way to fight AIDS.

During the Bush administration, American officials praised Uganda’s family-values policies and steered millions of dollars into abstinence programs.

Uganda has also become a magnet for American evangelical groups. Some of the best known Christian personalities have recently passed through here, often bringing with them anti-homosexuality messages, including the Rev. Rick Warren, who visited in 2008 and has compared homosexuality to pedophilia. (Mr. Warren recently condemned the anti-homosexuality bill, seeking to correct what he called “lies and errors and false reports” that he played a role in it.)

Many Africans view homosexuality as an immoral Western import, and the continent is full of harsh homophobic laws. In northern Nigeria, gay men can face death by stoning. Beyond Africa, a handful of Muslim countries, like Iran and Yemen, also have the death penalty for homosexuals. But many Ugandans said they thought that was going too far. A few even spoke out in support of gay people.

“I can defend them,” said Haj Medih, a Muslim taxi driver with many homosexual customers. “But I fear the what? The police, the government. They can arrest you and put you in the safe house, and for me, I don’t have any lawyer who can help me.”

NJ Clergy Want Marriage Equality As A Matter of Religious Freedom

2010-01-04T11:27:00.001-05:00

From Blue Jersey:

A new Marriage Equality letter - from 120 clergy in 19 NJ faiths

by: Rosi Efthim

Mon Jan 04, 2010 at 09:09:10 AM EST

During the historic 7 hours of testimony on marriage equality in December, most if not all of the testimony against reforming our laws on marriage were religious arguments. They said, in essence:

I believe this, so therefore, your rights should be limited, because my belief tradition tells me they should.

News coverage focused on those people (even though plenty clergy in favor showed up), who while they feel strongly, were trying to apply private beliefs to public civic questions, claiming equality would endanger their religious freedom. In fact the reverse is true; clergy who are accepting and ready to perform marriage for same-sex couples cannot do that now. And opponents are only a slice of where New Jersey's faith community is on marriage equality. A letter - with a far broader representation New Jersey's religious leaders - in strong support of marriage equality, and signed by 120 clergy from 19 faiths, was sent today to Senate President Dick Codey and Speaker Joe Roberts. The letter asks that both leaders put the marriage equality bill to a vote before their full respective houses in this legislative session, without precondition.
It's a good letter; tough and direct. It points out that New Jersey's current marriage law is not religiously neutral but reflects the beliefs of leaders of a particular religion opposing marriage equality. And stands behind Republican Senator Bill Baroni's amendment to even further strengthen strong protections for religious freedom - ensuring no religious organization or facility can be sued because it follows its own conscience in which marriages it will accommodate, and which it will not. That America has never let one religious doctrine determine secular law, pointing out - as Asm Reed Gusciora did in his Dec. 7 testimony - that the state provides for divorce even though some traditions find it impermissible, and that New Jersey would never ban civil divorce.
And then it gently asks the state to "get out of our sanctuaries and uphold our religious freedom as clergy to marry whom we wish, or don't wish, under State law."

Is your family's faith tradition on this list? Or its leaders?

Monday, January 4, 2010

Senate President Richard J. Codey
Assembly Speaker Joseph J. Roberts, Jr.
The State House
Trenton, New Jersey 08625
Dear Governor Codey and Speaker Roberts:
We are 120 clergy members across New Jersey from 19 faiths and denominations. We are but a sample of New Jersey clergy who support marriage equality and wish to marry same-sex couples legally.
We are Baptist, Buddhist, Episcopal, Ethical Culture Society, Interfaith, Jewish Conservative, Jewish Reconstructionist, Jewish Reform, Lutheran, Metropolitan Community Church, Methodist, Presbyterian, Reformed Church of America, Sankey Tribe, St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church, Unitarian Universalist, United Church of Christ and Unity Fellowship Church. Among us are members of the Religious Society of Friends, the Quakers, who do not have clergy.
We 120 clergy members ask you to put the marriage equality bill to a vote in your respective houses - without precondition - before the end of the current legislative session.
In our nation founded on the separation of church and state, the State of New Jersey should not be in the business of telling faiths and clergy whom we can or cannot legally marry. We take issue with the State's current marriage law, which is not religiously neutral but reflects the beliefs of leaders of a particular faith community which opposes marriage equality.
We 120 clergy members support the freedom of religion embodied by the U.S. Constitution, the New Jersey Constitution and the marriage equality bill now before the New Jersey legislature, the Freedom of Religion and Equality in Civil Marriage Act. Language in the bill underscores the right of every religion and every clergy member to decide whom to marry and not to marry.
Furthermore, an amendment to the bill passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee last month would codify the nation's strongest protections for religious freedom in matters of marriage. The amendment ensures that no religious organization or religious facility in New Jersey can be sued because it has followed its conscience in which marriages it chooses to accommodate, or not accommodate.
There cannot be a better guarantor of religious freedom than the version of the Freedom of Religion and Equality in Civil Marriage Act now before you.
We are proud that our nation has never allowed any one religious doctrine to determine secular law. New Jersey law provides for divorce, for example, though some find divorce religiously impermissible. Indeed, the idea of New Jersey's banning civil divorce would be unthinkable. Our state would not stand for favoring the convictions of any one religion over another.
As 120 clergy across New Jersey from 19 faiths and denominations, we urgently ask you to put the marriage equality bill to a vote in your respective houses - without precondition - before the end of the current legislative session. The State must get out of our sanctuaries and uphold our religious freedom as clergy to marry whom we wish, or don't wish, under State law.
We appreciate your thoughtful consideration.
Sincerely,
Rabbi Joel Abraham, Jewish Reform
Rabbi Victor Appell, Jewish Reform
Rev. Meg Barnhouse, Unitarian Universalist
Bishop Mark Beckwith, Episcopal
Leader Rafaela Billini, Buddhist
Rev. Fred Blanken, Sankey Tribe
Rev. David C. Bocock, United Church of Christ
Rev. Dr. Thomas Bohache, Metropolitan Community Church
Rabbi Neal Borovitz, Jewish Reform
Rabbi Andrew Bossov, Jewish Reform
Rabbi Kenneth L. Brickman, Jewish Reform
Rev. Christopher Bruesehoff, Lutheran
Rev. Rene Colson Hudson, American Baptist
Dr. Joseph C. Chuman, Ethical Culture Society
Rev. Matthew Cimorelli, Lutheran
Rev. Diana Clark, Episcopal
Rev. Susan Nelson-Colaneri, Lutheran
Rabbi Faith Joy Dantowitz, Jewish Reform
Rev. Bruce Davidson, Lutheran
Michael Dawson, Religious Society of Friends (the Quakers)
Rev. Peter DeFranco, Lutheran
Rev. David DeSmith, Episcopal
Rabbi Stephanie Dickstein, Jewish Conservative
Rev. Robert Janis-Dillon, Unitarian Universalist
Rev. Thomas Dorsey, Lutheran
Rev. Wayne Dreyman, Lutheran
Rev. L.L. DuBreuil, United Church of Christ
Rev. Dr. Jeffrey C. Eaton, Lutheran
Rev. Rusty Eidmann-Hicks, United Church of Christ
Rabbi Paula Feldstein, Jewish Reform
Rev. Mary Forrell, Lutheran
Rev. Bryan Franzen, Presbyterian
Rabbi Elyse Frishman, Jewish Reform
Rev. Maristella Freiberg, Episcopal
Rev. Anahi Galante, Interfaith
Rev. Debra Given, Presbyterian
Rev. John Graf, Interfaith
Cantor Meredith Greenberg, Jewish Conservative
Rabbi Jarah Greenfield, Jewish Reconstructionist
Rabbi David Greenstein, Jewish Conservative
Rev. Carol Haag, Unitarian Universalist
Rabbi Debra R. Hachen, Jewish Reform
Rev. Dr. Betsey Hall, Presbyterian
Rabbi Richard Hammerman, Jewish Conservative
Rev. Rose Hardy, Liberation in Truth Unity Fellowship Church
Rev. Rose Hassan, Episcopal
Father Joseph A. Harmon, Episcopal
Rev. Margaret Hayes, Lutheran
Rev. Alicia Heath-Toby, Liberation in Truth Unity Fellowship Church
Rev. Margaret Herz-Lane, Lutheran
Bishop Jacquelyn Holland, Unity Fellowship Church
Rev. Janyce Jackson, Liberation in Truth Unity Fellowship Church
Rev. Seth Kaper-Dale, Reformed Church in America
Catherine Karsten, Religious Society of Friends (the Quakers)
Rev. Katherine G. Killebrew, Presbyterian
Rabbi Donna Kirschbaum, Jewish Reconstructionist
Rev. Robert Kriesat, Lutheran
Teacher Peter Kurczynski, Buddhist
Rabbi Alfred Landsberg, Jewish Reform
Rev. Gary C. LeCroy, Lutheran
Rabbi Darby Jared Leigh, Jewish Reconstructionist
Rev. Fred Lentz, Lutheran
Rabbi Ellen Lewis, Jewish Reform
Rabbi David C. Levy, Jewish Reform
Rabbi Adina Lewittes, Jewish Conservative
Cantor Erica J. Lippitz, Jewish Conservative
Rabbi Sharon Litwin, Jewish Reform
Bishop George Lucey, St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church
Rev. Murdoch MacPherson, Lutheran
Rabbi Randall Mark, Jewish Conservative
Rev. Alison B. Miller, Unitarian Universalist
Rabbi Jordan Millstein, Jewish Reform
Rev. Manish Mishra, Unitarian Universalist
Rev. Rob Morris, Presbyterian
Rabbi Leana Moritt, Jewish Renewal
Rev. William C. Moser, Lutheran
Rabbi Robin Nafshi, Jewish Reform
Rev. Julie Newhall, Unitarian Universalist
Rev. Tiina Nummela, Lutheran
Rev. Clark Olson-Smith, Lutheran
Rev. Sara Olson-Smith, Lutheran
Rev. Charles Bluestein Ortman, Unitarian Universalist
Rev. Michelle Owings-Christian, Sankey Tribe
Rev. Fairbairn Powers, Episcopal
Rev. Dr. Susan Veronica Rak, Unitarian Universalist
Rev. Ann Ralosky, United Church of Christ
Rev. Donald R. Ransom, Unity Fellowship Church
Rabbi Esther Reed, Jewish Conservative
Rev. Christine Regan, Episcopal
Rev. Elsie Rhodes, Presbyterian
Rabbi Jonathan Roos, Jewish Reform
Rabbi Francine Roston, Jewish Conservative
Rev. Dr. Charles T. Rush, United Church of Christ
Rev. Leah Doberne-Schor, Jewish Reform
Rev. Marshall Shelly, Episcopal
Rabbi Rebecca Sirbu, Jewish Conservative
Rabbi Steven Sirbu, Jewish Reform
Rev. Carlton Elliott Smith, Unitarian Universalist
Rev. Vanessa Southern, Unitarian Universalist
Cantor Kerith Spencer-Shapiro, Jewish Reform
Rabbi Cy Stanway, Reform Judaism
Rev. Randy Steinman, Lutheran
Rev. Charles Stephens, Unitarian Universalist
Rev. Douglas Stivison, United Church of Christ
Rev. David L. Stoner, Lutheran
Thomas Swain, Religious Society of Friends (the Quakers)
Rebecca Sylvan, Religious Society of Friends (the Quakers)
Elder Rev. Kevin E. Taylor, Unity Fellowship Church
Rabbi Elliott Tepperman, Jewish Reconstructionist
Rev. Matt A. Thiringer, Lutheran
Rev. Charles N. Thompson, Presbyterian
Rev. Mary Tiebout, United Church of Christ
Rev. Ray VandeGiessen, Presbyterian
Rev. Gus Vinajeras, Lutheran
Rev. Paul Walker, Episcopal
Rev. Moacir Weirich, United Church of Christ
Rev. Dr. Traci C. West, United Methodist
Rev. David Wolf, Episcopal
Rev. Jeffrey B. Ziegler, Lutheran
Rabbi Ruth A. Zlotnick, Jewish Reform

The war on terror has been about scaring people, not protecting them

2010-01-04T06:52:00.000-05:00

The ease with which the plane bomber could operate exposes the vacuity and recklessness at the heart of the US response to 9/11

- Gary Younge
- guardian.co.uk, Sunday 3 January 2010 21.00 GMT

So there was no ticking time bomb. No urgent need ever arose to torture anybody who was withholding crucial details, so that civilisation as we know it could be saved in the nick of time. No wires had to be tapped, special prisons erected or international accords violated. No innocent people had to be grabbed off the street in their home country, transported across the globe and waterboarded. Drones, daisy-cutters, invasions, occupations were, it has transpired, not necessary.

Indeed, when it actually came down to it, to forestall a near-calamitous terrorist atrocity in the US the authorities didn't even have to go in search of information or informants. The alleged terrorist's father came to the US embassy in Nigeria of his own free will and warned them that his son, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had disappeared and could be in the company of Yemeni terrorists.

Meanwhile the National Security Agency had heard that al-Qaida in Yemen was planning to use an unnamed Nigerian in an attack on the US. If that were not enough, then came Abdulmutallab himself, a 23-year-old Nigerian bound for Detroit who bought his ticket in cash, checked in no bags and left no contact information. For seven years the American state manipulated the public with its multicoloured terror alerts. But when all the warning lights were flashing red, it did nothing.

To brand this near miss a "systemic failure", as Barack Obama has done, is both true and inadequate. It reduces the moral vacuity, political malevolence and enduring strategic recklessness that has been the enduring response to the 9/11 attacks to a question of managerial competence.

"Terror is first of all the terror of the next attack," explains Arjun Appadurai in Fear of Small Numbers. During the Bush years that terror was routinely leveraged for the purposes of social control, military mobilisation and electoral advantage. Meanwhile, the administrative processes that might prevent the next attack were tragically lacking. In short, Bush's anti-terror strategy was not about protecting people but about scaring them.

To galvanise the nation for war abroad and sedate it for repression at home, the previous administration constructed a terror threat that was ubiquitous in character, apocalyptic in scale and imminent in nature. Only then could they counterpose human rights against security as though they were not only contradictory but mutually exclusive.

Al-Qaida was only too happy to oblige. In such a state of perpetual crisis both terrorists and reactionaries thrive. Terrorists successfully create a climate of fear; governments successfully exploit that fear to extend their own powers.

"I'm absolutely convinced that the threat we face now, the idea of a terrorist in the middle of one of our cities with a nuclear weapon, is very real and that we have to use extraordinary measures to deal with it," said former vice-president Dick Cheney.

The trouble is that even by their own shabby standards, none of these "extraordinary measures" have ever worked. No new laws were necessary to stop 9/11. If the immigration services, the FBI and the CIA had been doing their jobs properly, the attacks could have been prevented.

Nonetheless, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 the US government undertook the "preventative detention" of about 5,000 men on the basis of their birthplace and later sought a further 19,000 "voluntary interviews". Over the next year, more than 170,000 men from 24 predominantly Muslim countries and North Korea were fingerprinted and interviewed in a programme of "special registration". None of these produced a single terrorism conviction.

This set the pattern for the years to come: wiretapping, rendition, torture, secrecy. Those who otherwise rail against the inefficiency of government argued for more extensive, intrusive state power even as it produced little in the way of results. When confronted with this lamentable record, their only defence was the threat of the next attack. "The next time, the smoking gun could be a mushroom cloud" said Condoleezza Rice, adding. "They only have to be right once. We have to be right every time." Over the last week even once in a while would have looked good.

There are precious few partisan points to be made here. Responsibility for Abdulmutallab lies with Obama. He has been in power longer than Bush was when he received the FBI memo entitled "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the US". The Bush administration may have been more alarmist and belligerent, but, despite his more emollient tone, Obama has kept most of the repressive apparatus that Bush constructed intact. Obama has expressed his support for trying Guantánamo prisoners under military commissions, while his CIA chief has expressed his desire to keep extraordinary rendition. Meanwhile, photographs of torture and documents describing videos of these "enhanced interrogations" remain under lock and key.

"Leon Panetta has been captured by the people who were the ideological drivers for the interrogation program in the first place," a former CIA officer told the Washington Post. Casting the escalation of the Afghanistan war as a central front in the war on terror is a potent illustration of how this delusion has continued. Al-Qaida is now more likely to be found in Pakistan, an American ally, than in Afghanistan and the latest threat came via Yemen. Terrorism is a strategy, not a place – attempts to carpet-bomb it or occupy it or conquer it will inevitably fail.

Given the nature of terrorism another attack can be predicted with grim certainty. Before 9/11 there was Oklahoma City and before that there was the World Trade Centre. In a nation where the shooting of innocents in schools, colleges, churches and coffee shops is relatively commonplace, it goes without saying that one disturbed individual, with a lethal weapon and with or without an agenda, can inflict a substantial amount of human carnage. If they are working in a team and well resourced, the damage could be huge. All the state can reasonably expect to do is limit the odds.

The US has actually done the opposite. Thanks to war and torture it has swelled the number of people who might want to do it harm. Much has been made of Abdulmutallab's radicalisation in London. But there had to be something to radicalise him with. In Abu Ghraib, Haditha, Fallujah and elsewhere, the US has provided plenty of material.

Meanwhile the institutional stasis within the agencies that are supposed to combat terrorism means that when a potential terrorist actually does rear their head they appear on every radar and yet somehow, all too often, go undetected.

So instead of reducing the odds politicians instead invoke them. "If there's a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaida build or develop a nuclear weapon," Cheney once said, "we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. It's not about our analysis ... It's about our response". But it's precisely because their analysis has been so deeply flawed that their response has been so faulty. Until things improve there is a much higher chance that America's anti-terror efforts will repeat themselves: first as farce and then as human tragedy.

The Attack Warning That Wasn't

2010-01-04T06:39:00.000-05:00

From the Washington Monthly :

THAT 'HIGH-LEVEL BRIEFING'.... The Newsweek headline late on Friday certainly seemed provocative enough: "Exclusive: Obama Got Pre-Christmas Intelligence Briefing About Terror Threats to 'Homeland.'" The article notes that three days before the failed Christmas-day plot, President Obama "received a high-level briefing" that reviewed a report on "key homeland threats."
We obviously don't know the details of the still-classified report, but Newsweek's sources for the article noted that the document made no reference to Yemen, a Christmas-day plot, or an imminent attack. But that didn't stop White House detractors from pouncing on the Newsweekpiece as evidence of ... something.
Mike Allen did a nice job of explaining why the article may not be quite as exciting as conservative activists would like to believe.

Did the President have a briefing on December 22 on holiday threats? You bet he did. He demanded it. The holidays are traditionally a time of increased threat reporting and the President wanted to be sure his team was on top of that reporting -- doing the fine work it had done, for example, on the Zazi and Headley cases earlier in the year.
In fact, the President demands regular counterterrorism and homeland security briefings that bring together the whole team representing the heads of the government agencies charged with intell and homeland security. Did the December 22 briefing include a warning of an attack? No. It did not. And despite the provocative headline on his story, the Newsweek reporter does not report that there was one. Because he couldn't. Because there wasn't.

About a month before 9/11, George W. Bush was briefed on the threat posed by al Qaeda, bin Laden's intentions, etc.* The Bush White House responded by doing very little. I get the sense conservatives are still a little sensitive on this point, and would like a comparable situation with Obama.
This isn't it.

The degrading effects of terrorism fears

2010-01-03T15:46:00.000-05:00

The expectation that government provide absolute safety is both dangerous and irrational

Glenn Greenwald

Jan. 02, 2010 |

I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but David Brooks actually had an excellent column in yesterday's New York Times that makes several insightful and important points. Brooks documents how "childish, contemptuous and hysterical" the national reaction has been to this latest terrorist episode, egged on -- as usual -- by the always-hysterical American media. The citizenry has been trained to expect that our Powerful Daddies and Mommies in government will -- in that most cringe-inducing, child-like formulation -- Keep Us Safe. Whenever the Government fails to do so, the reaction -- just as we saw this week -- is an ugly combination of petulant, adolescent rage and increasingly unhinged cries that More Be Done to ensure that nothing bad in the world ever happens. Demands that genuinely inept government officials be held accountable are necessary and wise, but demands that political leaders ensure that we can live in womb-like Absolute Safety are delusional and destructive. Yet this is what the citizenry screams out every time something threatening happens: please, take more of our privacy away; monitor more of our communications; ban more of us from flying; engage in rituals to create the illusion of Strength; imprison more people without charges; take more and more control and power so you can Keep Us Safe.

This is what inevitably happens to a citizenry that is fed a steady diet of fear and terror for years. It regresses into pure childhood. The 5-year-old laying awake in bed, frightened by monsters in the closet, who then crawls into his parents' bed to feel Protected and Safe, is the same as a citizenry planted in front of the television, petrified by endless imagery of scary Muslim monsters, who then collectively crawl to Government and demand that they take more power and control in order to keep them Protected and Safe. A citizenry drowning in fear and fixated on Safety to the exclusion of other competing values can only be degraded and depraved. John Adams, in his 1776 Thoughts on Government, put it this way:

Fear is the foundation of most governments; but it is so sordid and brutal a passion, and renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable, that Americans will not be likely to approve of any political institution which is founded on it.

As Adams noted, political leaders possess an inherent interest in maximizing fear levels, as that is what maximizes their power. For a variety of reasons, nobody aids this process more than our establishment media, motivated by their own interests in ratcheting up fear and Terrorism melodrama as high as possible. The result is a citizenry far more terrorized by our own institutions than foreign Terrorists could ever dream of achieving on their own. For that reason, a risk that is completely dwarfed by numerous others -- the risk of death from Islamic Terrorism -- dominates our discourse, paralyzes us with fear, leads us to destroy our economic security and eradicate countless lives in more and more foreign wars, and causes us to beg and plead and demand that our political leaders invade more of our privacy, seize more of our freedom, and radically alter the system of government we were supposed to have. The one thing we don't do is ask whether we ourselves are doing anything to fuel this problem and whether we should stop doing it. As Adams said: fear "renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable."

What makes all of this most ironic is that the American Founding was predicated on exactly the opposite mindset. The Constitution is grounded in the premise that there are other values and priorities more important than mere Safety. Even though they knew that doing so would help murderers and other dangerous and vile criminals evade capture, the Framers banned the Government from searching homes without probable cause, prohibited compelled self-incrimination, double jeopardy and convictions based on hearsay, and outlawed cruel and unusual punishment. That's because certain values -- privacy, due process, limiting the potential for abuse of government power -- were more important than mere survival and safety. A central calculation of the Constitution was that we insist upon privacy, liberty and restraints on government power even when doing so means we live with less safety and a heightened risk of danger and death. And, of course, the Revolutionary War against the then-greatest empire on earth was waged by people who risked their lives and their fortunes in pursuit of liberty, precisely because there are other values that outweigh mere survival and safety.

These are the calculations that are now virtually impossible to find in our political discourse. It is fear, and only fear, that predominates. No other competing values are recognized. We have Chris Matthewsrunning around shrieking that he's scared of kung-fu-wielding Terrorists. Michael Chertoff is demanding that we stop listening to "privacy ideologues" -- i.e., that there should be no limits on Government's power to invade and monitor and scrutinize. Republican leaders have spent the decade preaching that only Government-provided Safety, not the Constitution, matters. All in response to this week's single failed terrorist attack, there are -- as always -- hysterical calls that we start more wars, initiate racial profiling, imprison innocent people indefinitely, and torture even more indiscriminately. These are the by-products of the weakness and panic and paralyzing fear that Americans have been fed in the name of Terrorism, continuously for a full decade now.

Ever since I began writing in late 2005 about this fear-addicted dynamic, the point on which Brooks focused yesterday is the one I've thought most important. What matters most about this blinding fear of Terrorism is not the specific policies that are implemented as a result. Policies can always be changed. What matters most is the radical transformation of the national character of the United States. Reducing the citizenry to a frightened puddle of passivity, hysteria and a child-like expectation of Absolute Safety is irrevocable and far more consequential than any specific new laws. Fear is always the enabling force of authoritarianism: the desire to vest unlimited power in political authority in exchange for promises of protection. This is what I wrote about that back in early 2006 in How Would a Patriot Act?:

The president's embrace of radical theories of presidential power threatens to change the system of government we have. But worse still, his administration's relentless, never-ending attempts to keep the nation in a state of fear can also change the kind of nation we are.

This isn't exactly new: many of America's most serious historical transgressions -- the internment of Japanese-Americans, McCarthyite witch hunts, World War I censorship laws, the Alien and Sedition Act -- have been the result of fear-driven, over-reaction to external threats, not under-reaction. Fear is a degrading toxin, and there's no doubt that it has been the primary fuel over the last decade. As the events of the last week demonstrate, it continues to spread rapidly, and it produces exactly the kind of citizenry about which John Adams long ago warned.

UPDATE: Talking to one's friends and co-workers is not a reliable way of gauging public opinion on an issue. Those who want to claim that the media's hysteria over this incident is not matched by the general public's are going to have to explain this:

Fifty-eight percent (58%) of U.S. voters say waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques should be used to gain information from the terrorist who attempted to bomb an airliner on Christmas Day. . . . Seventy-one percent (71%) of all voters think the attempt by the Nigerian Muslim to blow up the airliner as it landed in Detroit should be investigated by military authorities as a terrorist act. Only 22% say it should be handled by civilian authorities as a criminal act, as is currently the case.

Does that sound like a calm and sober citizenry?

UPDATE II: On Fox News yesterday, Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney (ret.) announces that he wants to strip search all Muslim males between the ages of 18-28, and explains that "political correctness" -- the only possible reason one might have to object to such a proposal -- is going to result in our mass slaughter at the hands of jihadists. It's hard to overstate -- or even fathom -- what happens to people who have sat there for years and ingested this sort of ugliness and panic.

One Day We'll All Be Terrorists

2010-01-03T15:28:00.000-05:00

By Chris Hedges, Truthdig

Posted on December 29, 2009, Printed on January 3, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/144833/

This article first appeared on TruthDig.
Syed Fahad Hashmi can tell you about the dark heart of America. He knows that our First Amendment rights have become a joke, that habeas corpus no longer exists and that we torture, not only in black sites such as those at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or at Guantánamo Bay, but also at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Lower Manhattan. Hashmi is a U.S. citizen of Muslim descent imprisoned on two counts of providing and conspiring to provide material support and two counts of making and conspiring to make a contribution of goods or services to al-Qaida. As his case prepares for trial, his plight illustrates that the gravest threat we face is not from Islamic extremists, but the codification of draconian procedures that deny Americans basic civil liberties and due process. Hashmi would be a better person to tell you this, but he is not allowed to speak.
This corruption of our legal system, if history is any guide, will not be reserved by the state for suspected terrorists, or even Muslim Americans. In the coming turmoil and economic collapse, it will be used to silence all who are branded as disruptive or subversive. Hashmi endures what many others, who are not Muslim, will endure later. Radical activists in the environmental, globalization, anti-nuclear, sustainable agriculture and anarchist movements—who are already being placed by the state in special detention facilities with Muslims charged with terrorism—have discovered that his fate is their fate. Courageous groups have organized protests, including vigils outside the Manhattan detention facility. They can be found at www.educatorsforcivilliberties.org or www.freefahad.com. On Martin Luther King Day, this Jan. 18 at 6 p.m. EST, protesters will hold a large vigil in front of the MCC on 150 Park Row in Lower Manhattan to call for a return of our constitutional rights. Join them if you can.
The case against Hashmi, like most of the terrorist cases launched by the Bush administration, is appallingly weak and built on flimsy circumstantial evidence. This may be the reason the state has set up parallel legal and penal codes to railroad those it charges with links to terrorism. If it were a matter of evidence, activists like Hashmi, who is accused of facilitating the delivery of socks to al-Qaida, would probably never be brought to trial.
Hashmi, who if convicted could face up to 70 years in prison, has been held in solitary confinement for more than 2½ years. Special administrative measures, known as SAMs, have been imposed by the attorney general to prevent or severely restrict communication with other prisoners, attorneys, family, the media and people outside the jail. He also is denied access to the news and other reading material. Hashmi is not allowed to attend group prayer. He is subject to 24-hour electronic monitoring and 23-hour lockdown. He must shower and go to the bathroom on camera. He can write one letter a week to a single member of his family, but he cannot use more than three pieces of paper. He has no access to fresh air and must take his one hour of daily recreation in a cage. His “proclivity for violence” is cited as the reason for these measures although he has never been charged or convicted with committing an act of violence.
“My brother was an activist,” Hashmi’s brother, Faisal, told me by phone from his home in Queens. “He spoke out on Muslim issues, especially those dealing with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His arrest and torture have nothing to do with providing ponchos and socks to al-Qaida, as has been charged, but the manipulation of the law to suppress activists and scare the Muslim American community. My brother is an example. His treatment is meant to show Muslims what will happen to them if they speak about the plight of Muslims. We have lost every single motion to preserve my brother’s humanity and remove the special administrative measures. These measures are designed solely to break the psyche of prisoners and terrorize the Muslim community. These measures exemplify the malice towards Muslims at home and the malice towards the millions of Muslims who are considered as non-humans in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
The extreme sensory deprivation used on Hashmi is a form of psychological torture, far more effective in breaking and disorienting detainees. It is torture as science. In Germany, the Gestapo broke bones while its successor, the communist East German Stasi, broke souls. We are like the Stasi. We have refined the art of psychological disintegration and drag bewildered suspects into secretive courts when they no longer have the mental and psychological capability to defend themselves.
“Hashmi’s right to a fair trial has been abridged,” said Michael Ratner, the president of theCenter for Constitutional Rights. “Much of the evidence in the case has been classified under CIPA, and thus Hashmi has not been allowed to review it. The prosecution only recently turned over a significant portion of evidence to the defense. Hashmi may not communicate with the news media, either directly or through his attorneys. The conditions of his detention have impacted his mental state and ability to participate in his own defense.
“The prosecution’s case against Hashmi, an outspoken activist within the Muslim community, abridges his First Amendment rights and threatens the First Amendment rights of others,” Ratner added. “While Hashmi’s political and religious beliefs, speech and associations are constitutionally protected, the government has been given wide latitude by the court to use them as evidence of his frame of mind and, by extension, intent. The material support charges against him depend on criminalization of association. This could have a chilling effect on the First Amendment rights of others, particularly in activist and Muslim communities.”
Constitutionally protected statements, beliefs and associations can now become a crime. Dissidents, even those who break no laws, can be stripped of their rights and imprisoned without due process. It is the legal equivalent of preemptive war. The state can detain and prosecute people not for what they have done, or even for what they are planning to do, but for holding religious or political beliefs that the state deems seditious. The first of those targeted have been observant Muslims, but they will not be the last.
“Most of the evidence is classified,” Jeanne Theoharis, an associate professor of political science at Brooklyn College who taught Hashmi, told me, “but Hashmi is not allowed to see it. He is an American citizen. But in America you can now go to trial and all the evidence collected against you cannot be reviewed. You can spend 2½ years in solitary confinement before you are convicted of anything. There has been attention paid to extraordinary rendition, Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib with this false idea that if people are tried in the United States things will be fair. But what allowed Guantánamo to happen was the devolution of the rule of law here at home, and this is not only happening to Hashmi.”
Hashmi was, like so many of those arrested during the Bush years, briefly a poster child in the “war on terror.” He was apprehended in Britain on June 6, 2006, on a U.S. warrant. His arrest was the top story on the CBS and NBC nightly news programs, which used graphics that read “Terror Trail” and “Web of Terror.” He was held for 11 months at Belmarsh Prison in London and then became the first U.S. citizen to be extradited by Britain. The year before his arrest, Hashmi, a graduate of Brooklyn College, had completed his master’s degree in international relations at London Metropolitan University. His case has no more substance than the one against the seven men arrested on suspicion of plotting to blow up the Sears Tower, a case where, even though there were five convictions after two mistrials, an FBI deputy director acknowledged that the plan was more “aspirational rather than operational.” And it mirrors the older case of the Palestinian activist Sami Al-Arian, now under house arrest in Virginia, who has been hounded by the Justice Department although he should legally have been freed. Judge Leonie Brinkema, currently handling the Al-Arian case, in early March, questioned the U.S. attorney’s actions in Al-Arian’s plea agreement saying curtly: “I think there’s something more important here, and that’s the integrity of the Justice Department.”
The case against Hashmi revolves around the testimony of Junaid Babar, also an American citizen. Babar, in early 2004, stayed with Hashmi at his London apartment for two weeks. In his luggage, the government alleges, Babar had raincoats, ponchos and waterproof socks, which Babar later delivered to a member of al-Qaida in south Waziristan, Pakistan. It was alleged that Hashmi allowed Babar to use his cell phone to call conspirators in other terror plots.
“Hashmi grew up here, was well known here, was very outspoken, very charismatic and very political,” said Theoharis. “This is really a message being sent to American Muslims about the cost of being politically active. It is not about delivering alleged socks and ponchos and rain gear. Do you think al-Qaida can’t get socks and ponchos in Pakistan? The government is planning to introduce tapes of Hashmi’s political talks while he was at Brooklyn College at the trial. Why are we willing to let this happen? Is it because they are Muslims, and we think it will not affect us? People who care about First Amendment rights should be terrified. This is one of the crucial civil rights issues of our time. We ignore this at our own peril.”
Babar, who was arrested in 2004 and has pleaded guilty to five counts of material support for al-Qaida, also faces up to 70 years in prison. But he has agreed to serve as a government witness and has already testified for the government in terror trials in Britain and Canada. Babar will receive a reduced sentence for his services, and many speculate he will be set free after the Hashmi trial. Since there is very little evidence to link Hashmi to terrorist activity, the government will rely on Babar to prove intent. This intent will revolve around alleged conversations and statements Hashmi made in Babar’s presence. Hashmi, who was a member of the New York political group Al Muhajiroun as a student at Brooklyn College, has made provocative statements, including calling America “the biggest terrorist in the world,” but Al Muhajiroun is not defined by the government as a terrorist organization. Membership in the group is not illegal. And our complicity in acts of state terror is a historical fact.
There will be more Hashmis, and the Justice Department, planning for future detentions, set up in 2006 a segregated facility, the Communication Management Unit, at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind. Nearly all the inmates transferred to Terre Haute are Muslims. A second facility has been set up at Marion, Ill., where the inmates again are mostly Muslim but also include a sprinkling of animal rights and environmental activists, among them Daniel McGowan, who was charged with two arsons at logging operations in Oregon. His sentence was given “terrorism enhancements” under the Patriot Act. Amnesty International has called the Marion prison facility “inhumane.” All calls and mail—although communication customarily is off-limits to prison officials—are monitored in these two Communication Management Units. Communication among prisoners is required to be only in English. The highest-level terrorists are housed at the Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility, known as Supermax, in Florence, Colo., where prisoners have almost no human interaction, physical exercise or mental stimulation, replicating the conditions for most of those held at Guantánamo. If detainees are transferred from Guantánamo to the prison in Thomson, Ill., they will find little change. They will endure Guantánamo-like conditions in colder weather.
Our descent is the familiar disease of decaying empires. The tyranny we impose on others we finally impose on ourselves. The influx of non-Muslim American activists into these facilities is another ominous development. It presages the continued dismantling of the rule of law, the widening of a system where prisoners are psychologically broken by sensory deprivation, extreme isolation and secretive kangaroo courts where suspects are sentenced on rumors and innuendo and denied the right to view the evidence against them. Dissent is no longer the duty of the engaged citizen but is becoming an act of terrorism.

Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer prize-winning reporter, is a Senior Fellow at the Nation Institute. He writes a regular column for TruthDig every Monday. His latest book isEmpire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.

Limbaugh Lauds (Socialist) Medical Care in Hawaii

2010-01-03T12:51:00.000-05:00

"but I think the most likely reason of all was the Grinch had a heart two sizes too small" ("How the Grinch Stole Christmas," Dr. Seuss).

According to Rush Limbaugh, the health care reform that may be passed by Congress is socialism. Yet, it bears a striking resemblance to the universal healthcare system that just treated him in Hawaii that prompted his remark: "there is nothing wrong with the American health care system. I received no special treatment."

Yes, Rush. That's the point! American medicine is superb--for those who can get it. And, in Hawaii, no one gets special treatment, because everyone can get it.

[Er, by the way, just to help you out, Rush, a fair percentage of your listeners do not know Hawaii is part of the United States, so clarify that for them...otherwise, they will wonder about you]

By accepting socialist medical treatment in Hawaii, therefore, Rush Limbaugh has shown that, when one is ill, what matters is the availability of quality health care, even if it is socialist.

Rush follows a long litany of conservatives, such as all Members of Congress that have a medical office paid for by taxpayers available in the Capitol, by Dick Cheney who had socialist pacemakers implanted paid for by the government, and George W who had a government-paid socialist colonoscopy while in office. Members of Congress over 65 get single-payer socialist medical care from Medicare.

Hawaii has had nearly-universal employer-mandated health insurance since 1974. Although its Pacific Island location makes the costs of everything--from gasoline to milk to ice cream to housing--the highest in the nation, health care premiums in Hawaii, for comprehensive care with small co-pays and deductibles, are nearly the lowest and their costs per medicare beneficiary are the lowest in the nation.

Why? There are a variety of reasons, most traceable to universality. With everyone covered by primary care, emergency room visits tend to be for real emergencies, not the non-emergent care mainland ERs dispense for people without coverage. That reduces the costs of ERs and the costs of non-emergent medicine since patients can be handled less expensively and more effectively by their primary docs. Hospitals have not overbuilt, acquiring expensive machines to compete with their neighbors for patients. Insurance companies have instituted screening and other measures to improve wellness among their covered populations.

We can all be pleased that Rush appears to have survived his encounter with socialist medical care. He seems to be very happy himself, commenting on the results of a socialist angiogram that showed no disease in the arteries that feed his heart muscle.

Now, of course, Rush does not live in Hawaii and so his costs are not covered by the Hawaiian insurance system, but having that "socialist" system for more than 3 decades has not reduced the quality of the care he received. Who would have thunk it!

If Hawaii-style medical care is good enough for Rush Limbaugh, it is good enough for me.

Thanks Rush, and with it my hopes that your medical insurance covers all your costs and that the greatest country in the world can make that same care available to everyone.

Happy New Year!

from Huffington Post

Thought For the Day

2010-01-02T17:39:00.000-05:00

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Limbaugh Lauds (Socialist) Medical Care in Hawaii

Thought For the Day

By Dahr Jamail, AlterNet
Posted on January 26, 2010, Printed on January 26, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145397/

Posted on December 29, 2009, Printed on January 3, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/144833/