For the time being...*

Now I've let the blog languish for over a week! I'm afraid this will be typical for the next few weeks. It's the end of the semester, and I have just under 21 days to write four papers, 3 of which are due within a 3-day period. I suspect my internet news surfing will suffer during this time.

For now, just a few things.

Frank Rich is terrific this week, and links to several stories that were sitting on my "to blog" list last week.

George W. Bush is so desperate for allies that his hapless Asian tour took him to Ulan Bator, a first for an American president, so he could mingle with the yaks and give personal thanks for Mongolia's contribution of some 160 soldiers to "the coalition of the willing." Dick Cheney, whose honest-and-ethical poll number hit 29 percent in Newsweek's latest survey, is so radioactive that he vanished into his bunker for weeks at a time during the storms Katrina and Scootergate.

The whole world can see that both men are on the run. Just how much so became clear in the brace of nasty broadsides each delivered this month about Iraq. Neither man engaged the national debate ignited by John Murtha about how our troops might be best redeployed in a recalibrated battle against Islamic radicalism. Neither offered a plan for "victory." Instead, both impugned their critics' patriotism and retreated into the past to defend the origins of the war. In a seasonally appropriate impersonation of the misanthropic Mr. Potter from "It's a Wonderful Life," the vice president went so far as to label critics of the administration's prewar smoke screen both "dishonest and reprehensible" and "corrupt and shameless." He sounded but one epithet away from a defibrillator.

The Washington line has it that the motivation for the Bush-Cheney rage is the need to push back against opponents who have bloodied the White House in the polls. But, Mr. Murtha notwithstanding, the Democrats are too feeble to merit that strong a response. There is more going on here than politics.

Much more...

Pass this column around.

You'll want to read the SF Chronicle's Jon Carroll, too, as he savors the approval ratings map that showed up on Daily Kos last week.

"I was just gonna say that." So, let's see. Joe Biden (don't get me started on this spineless weeny) gets all gutsy and introduces a cautious Iraq pull-out plan (after first publicly disavowing Murtha's call for a pullout and then seeing that Murtha was getting some mighty good press for his principled stand), which is, according to the White House, "remarkably similar" to the one Bush never had until now and was in fact slandering Democrats for suggesting. (See Newsweek's article on Bush's "tipping point.") (Update: I restored the hyperlinks in my puerile Biden rant above.)

Surely you've heard? Michael Brown is going into private sector business as a disaster consultant.

Randy Cunningham's resignation and guilty plea. The growing, growing Abramoff scandal. I'd have to agree with conservative Norman Ornstein:

"I don't think we have had something of this scope, arrogance and sheer venality in our lifetimes," Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, wrote recently. "It is building to an explosion, one that could create immense collateral damage within Congress and in coming elections."

Here is a thoughtful interview with Christian Scharen, who writes this blog, on his upcoming book, One Step Closer: Why U2 Matters to Those Seeking God.

Sister Joan Chittister's column last week was about "American narcissism;" it makes a great companion piece to the WaPo story on our xenophobic president:

For the president, it was a rare moment of fun on an otherwise dreary overseas trip. In five years in the presidency, Bush has proved a decidedly unadventurous traveler, an impression undispelled by the weeklong journey through Asia that wraps up Monday. As he barnstormed through Japan, South Korea and China, with a final stop in Mongolia still to come, Bush visited no museums, tried no restaurants, bought no souvenirs and made no effort to meet ordinary local people...The Bush spirit trickles down to many of his top advisers, who hardly go out of their way to sample the local offerings either. A number of the most senior White House officials on the trip, perhaps seeking the comforts of their Texas homes, chose to skip the kimchi in South Korea to go to dinner at Outback Steakhouse -- twice. (Admittedly, a few unadventurous journalists joined them.)

(*For some reason, I'm reminded that this is a line in WH Auden's For the time being - A Christmas Oratio. Maybe it was the stories of the festive tramplings at various Wal-Marts this past weekend.)

Now we're trying to silence churches

Perhaps you heard about this a couple weeks ago: the IRS is threatening to revoke the tax-exempt status of All Saints Church in Pasadena because a pastor preached an anti-war sermon shortly before the election. The church is fighting back and has a lot of support from both liberal and conservative churches.

If you go to their web site they've posted an internal link to the text of Rev. Ed Bacon's rip-roaring good sermon from November 13, 2005, "The IRS Goes To Church."

Faith in action is called politics. Spirituality without action is fruitless and social action without spirituality is heartless. We are boldly political without being partisan. Having a partisan-free place to stand liberates the religious patriot to see clearly, speak courageously, and act daringly.

Go and enjoy.

"Woe to you legislators of infamous laws..."

"...who refuse justice to the unfortunate, who cheat the poor among my people of their rights, who make widows their prey and rob the orphan." (Isaiah 10:1-4; note, that links to the NRSV version.) Yesterday, I received the SojoMail bulletin with Jim Wallis' statement on the Republicans' gleeful attack on the nation's most vulnerable, and it starts with those bracing words. Wallis continues:

Today, I repeat those words. When our legislators put ideology over principle, it is time to sound the trumpets of justice and tell the truth.

It is a moral disgrace to take food from the mouths of hungry children to increase the luxuries of those feasting at a table overflowing with plenty. This is not what America is about, not what the season of Thanksgiving is about, not what loving our neighbor is about, and not what family values are about. There is no moral path our legislators can take to defend a reckless, mean-spirited budget reconciliation bill that diminishes our compassion, as Jesus said, "for the least of these." It is morally unconscionable to hide behind arguments for fiscal responsibility and government efficiency. It is dishonest to stake proud claims to deficit reduction when tax cuts for the wealthy that increase the deficit are the next order of business. It is one more example of an absence of morality in our current political leadership.

Budgets are moral documents that reflect what we care about. Budget and tax bills that increase the deficit put our children's futures in jeopardy - and they hurt the vulnerable right now. The choice to cut supports that help people make it day to day in order to pay for tax cuts for those with plenty goes against everything our religious and moral principles teach us. It says that leaders don't care about people in need. It is a blatant reversal of biblical values - and symbolizes the death of compassionate conservatism.

The faith community is outraged and is drawing a line in the sand against immoral national priorities. It is time to draw that line more forcefully and more visibly.

I applaud those House members who have stood up for better budget priorities and fought hard all year to keep issues of basic fairness at the forefront of this debate. And I thank those on both sides of the aisle who stood up and did the right thing in voting against this bill, despite pressure from the House leadership. These strong voices provide some hope for getting beyond an ideology that disregards the role of government for the common good.

And the House leaders were so pleased with themselves. Can we get some good shots of the back-slapping and celebrating going on in the House of Representatives, please? They will make great Democratic campaign ads in 2006.

Death tolls are lower when you don't count all the dead people

Apparently, officials simply stopped counting and left the remaining bodies in New Orleans' 9th Ward for family members to discover (via Americablog).

...in which I read a Charles Krauthammer column and live to tell about it

Knock me over with a finch feather. Charles Krauthammer has a great column on the "false conflict" that is evolution "versus" intelligent design. I would never have known about it if Americablog hadn't taken the plunge, first.

(Update: I meant to include this - GTU's Ted Peters has a good column, too. Free registration required to get that one.)

"War without rules"

I simply haven't known how to blog even parts of this sickening news. Words fail.

Early last week, Americablog picked up on a story in the Italian media
documenting that white phosphorous had been used on insurgent troops AND Iraqi civilians in the assault on Falluja. CSM then ran the story noting that the US denied the allegations last year, when the rumors started. And the Pentagon continued to deny the Italian stories... until a Daily Kos diarist found an article in AN ARMY PUBLICATION describing the use of White Phosphorous as a weapon! Fascinating - the UK Independent has stayed on the story (also the BBC; a "public relations disaster for the US"? That seems the least of it...). Where is the US press? Did I miss something?

George Monbiot ("War Without Rules"):

We were told that the war with Iraq was necessary for two reasons. Saddam Hussein possessed biological and chemical weapons and might one day use them against another nation. And the Iraqi people needed to be liberated from his oppressive regime, which had, among its other crimes, used chemical weapons to kill them. Tony Blair, Colin Powell, William Shawcross, David Aaronovitch, Nick Cohen, Ann Clwyd and many others referred, in making their case, to Saddam’s gassing of the Kurds in Halabja in 1988. They accused those who opposed the war of caring nothing for the welfare of the Iraqis.

Given that they care so much, why has none of these hawks spoken out against the use of unconventional weapons by coalition forces? Ann Clwyd, the Labour MP who turned from peace campaigner to chief apologist for an illegal war, is, as far as I can discover, the only one of these armchair warriors to engage with the issue. In May this year, she wrote to the Guardian to assure us that reports that a “modern form of napalm” has been used by US forces “are completely without foundation. Coalition forces have not used napalm – either during operations in Falluja, or at any other time.”(16) How did she know? The foreign office minister told her. Before the invasion, Ann Clwyd travelled through Iraq to investigate Saddam’s crimes against his people. She told the Commons that what she had discovered moved her to tears. After the invasion, she took the minister’s word at face value, when a thirty-second search on the internet could have told her it was bunkum. It makes you wonder whether she, or any of the other enthusiasts for war, really gave a damn about the people for whom they claimed to be campaigning.

Saddam Hussein, facing a possible death sentence, is accused of mass murder, torture, false imprisonment, the embezzlement of billions and the use of chemical weapons. He is certainly guilty on all counts. So, it now seems, are the people who overthrew him.

(Emphasis mine, because italics catch the eye, and this paragraph needs to be read.)

At long last

(Riley, birding from her "blind" on the window sill this morning.)

Wow - have I ever let this place go 7 days without an update? 'Abc' was out of town, and I've been inundated. But hey, it's not like anything happened this week...

Right-wing dirty novels

They have their own genre. Yes, we've all heard about Lynn Cheney's "bodice ripper", but now we learn (via Lutheranchik, who spotted it on Kos) that Lewis "Scooter" Libby is a member of that elite pantheon of right-wing porn writers:

So, how does Libby stack up against the competition? This question was put to Nancy Sladek, the editor of Britain’s Literary Review, which, each year, holds a contest for bad sex writing in fiction. (In 1998, someone nominated the Starr Report.)

Sladek agreed to review a few passages from Libby. “That’s a bit depraved, isn’t it, this kind of thing about bears and young girls? That’s particularly nasty, and the other ones are just boring,” she said. “God, they’re an odd bunch, these Republicans.”

You can snap up your copy here.

"Supernatural Science"

Christian Hatemonger, Pat Robertson has made it a little harder for Intelligent Design advocates to continue insisting they have no religious agenda:

“I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover. If there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city. And don’t wonder why He hasn’t helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I’m not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that’s the case, don’t ask for His help because he might not be there.”

Because God will be in Kansas. (This piece reminds us of some of Robertson's other gems in recent years. Perhaps he's staying on the air as some kind of public service -- a documentary on advanced dementia?)

Last week, Cardinal Paul Poupard, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture assured followers that the theory of evolution is compatible with the bible:

Cardinal Paul Poupard, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said the Genesis description of how God created the universe and Darwin's theory of evolution were "perfectly compatible" if the Bible were read correctly.

His statement was a clear attack on creationist campaigners in the US, who see evolution and the Genesis account as mutually exclusive.

"The fundamentalists want to give a scientific meaning to words that had no scientific aim," he said at a Vatican press conference. He said the real message in Genesis was that "the universe didn't make itself and had a creator".

A former Council for Culture member, William Rees-Mogg saw this as a promising indicator of the new pope's view:

It is a precautionary statement, distancing the Church from the American attack on Darwinism that Rome considers to be neither good science, nor good theology. It will also be taken as an indication of the priorities of the present Pope Benedict XVI.
[---]
Cardinal Poupard’s statement clarified the acceptance of Darwinism and rightly asserted that religious belief is compatible with the theory of evolution. He also gave a further indication that the mindset of Benedict XVI may be a good deal more modern than had been expected.

Or not. The new pope popped off this week:

Pope Benedict XVI has waded into the evolution debate in the United States, saying the universe was made by an "intelligent project" and criticizing those who in the name of science say its creation was without direction or order.

Benedict made the off-the-cuff comments during his general audience Wednesday. The Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, published the full text of his remarks in its Thursday editions.

How low can he go?

(Photo from Newsweek. What did we do to deserve it?) 36% approve of the job the president is doing. In case you're inclined to dismiss that as a mainstream media blip, Fox News Poll, puts him at 36% too. (Newsweek bizarrely describes Bush as "a leader who rode comfortably to reelection just a year ago." Comfortably? 51% Bush to 49% Kerry, with suspicious results in the state that determined the election?)

But the burning question is, how low can he go? Pollwise, suggests Kung Fu Monkey (via Slacktivist) he really hasn't hit bottom, yet...

John: Hey, Bush is now at 37 percent approval. I feel much less like Kevin McCarthy screaming in traffic. But I wonder what his base is --

Tyrone: 27 percent.

John: ... you said that immmediately, and with some authority.

Tyrone: Obama vs. Alan Keyes. Keyes was from out of state, so you can eliminate any established political base; both candidates were black, so you can factor out racism; and Keyes was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. Batshit crazy. Head-trauma crazy. But 27 percent of the population of Illinois voted for him. They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever ahead of rational judgement. Hell, even like 5 percent of Democrats voted for him. That's crazy behaviour. I think you have to assume a 27 percent Crazification Factor in any population.

But indecency-wise, he really can't get lower or more desperate:

"These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will. As our troops fight a ruthless enemy determined to destroy our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected leaders who voted to send them to war continue to stand behind them."

Yes, the man who harbors a known traitor in the White House accuses his critics of treason. But this was the tough new offensive we heard about last week -- Bush was going to "hit back" at his critics (Steve Soto calls this the Lying Bastards Tour):

In a Veterans Day speech at an Army depot here, Mr. Bush made his most aggressive effort to date to counter the charge that he had justified taking the United States to war by twisting or exaggerating prewar intelligence.

OK, but he gave the same speech he gave last month (via Atrios), adding only a few new accusations that have been completely decimated in the last 24 hours, first by the reliable Think Progress and then by the Washington Post.

President Bush and his national security adviser have answered critics of the Iraq war in recent days with a two-pronged argument: that Congress saw the same intelligence the administration did before the war, and that independent commissions have determined that the administration did not misrepresent the intelligence.

Neither assertion is wholly accurate.

I'll be interested to hear how this plays out on Meet the Press, etc., tomorrow, but I won't have the stomach to listen to it myself.

Reasons to celebrate

HOORAY! "GOP Moderates" (so hard to get one's head around that, anymore, but apparently they exist) forced ANWR drilling off the House budget measure! I wonder if Tuesday's electoral disasters sobered them up?

For those readers still unable to distinguish between the 2 bloggers now contributing this site, 'abc' is the one who can be counted on for thoughtful, instructive posts like this one and this one. 'Mizm' (that's me) is the one who is increasingly unable to put a full sentence together, and must rely on snarky bullet lists, like the one I'm posting now...

So, about those Tuesday electoral disasters...

All of California's statewide propositions, including and especially those championed by Arnold, were defeated

The pro-ID Dover (PA) School Board was swept out (also here)

Red Virginia went blue

Blue New Jersey stayed that way

St. Paul replaced its Bush-loving Democratic mayor with a different Democratic mayor

and Americans are showing signs of awakening from their long sleep

all of which gives me a measure of hope for midterm elections

What's the matter with this house -- oops, I mean deck -- of cards?

In the company of many other seekers of wisdom, I spent much of the past weekend at the Robert McAfee Brown Lectures in Palo Alto. This year's lecturer was Walter Wink, longtime teacher at Auburn Seminary and author of the provocative and compelling trilogy on the Powers. I've read only one and a half of his books so am no expert on his work. Others in attendance observed that they heard no new ideas in the lectures but that simply being in the presence of this creative intellect was inspiration enough. I'd certainly agree with the latter half of that observation.

Wink described a psychological study that I hadn't heard about before (but have now learned is a classic in the field): the anomaly of the "red ace of spades." In a paper published in 1949, Jerome Bruner and Leo Postman conducted an experiment "to observe the behavior of intact, normal organisms [that would be 28 students at Harvard and Radcliffe] faced with incongruous situations."

I am not a psychologist; I've had lots of experience on the client end of psychotherapy and counseling, but the closest coursework was a semester of pastoral counseling in divinity school. So I commend readers who want to know more to the original paper. Here's a three-sentence summary:

The students were shown, at increasing length of exposure, a series of playing cards in which one or more cards were reversed in color and suit, and were asked to identify the cards. Not surprisingly, the recognition threshold for the incongruous cards was found to be significantly higher than that for normal cards. And once there was recognition of one incongruous card, the subjects took progressively less time to recognize subsequent incongruities.

Most interesting, for Wink, was Bruner & Postman's observation as follows:

In the perception of the incongruous stimuli, the recognition process is temporarily thwarted and exhibits characteristics which are generally not observable in the recognition of more conventional stimuli.

One specific way in which the recognition process is affected by the thwarting of well-established expectations is the emergence of a "sense of wrongness." The subject may either, even while "dominance" and "compromise" responses are continuing, suddenly or gradually begin to report that there is something wrong with the stimulus without being able to specify what it is that is wrong. It is not infrequent after such a report to witness the onset of perceptual disruption. But at the same time, such a "sense of wrongness" may also turn out to be a prelude to veridical recognition, for it often has the effect of making the subject change his hypotheses or give up his previous expectation about the nature of the stimulus.

Wink even asserted that this sense of something being wrong was accompanied by physical manifestation of increased sweating of hands. I haven't yet been able to document this; Bruner & Postman didn't include this measurement in their study design. Maybe an alert reader knows about follow-up studies.

So why go into all this at such length? Well, first, because I found the image of the red ace of spades quite arresting. Second, because Wink says we need to look for these anomalies in the Gospels. What gives the reader/hearer that sense of "wrongness" [i.e., what is contrary to convention] in the parables of Jesus, in the healings he performed, in the stories of his table fellowship, in his treatment of women? Where do we find the red ace of spades there? And finally, it seems to me that this understanding of perception can help answer, at least in part, the question about what is the matter with Kansas. It could be that yesterday's election results around the country are demonstrating at last the beginning recognition of the red ace of spades that has been flashed before the nation's collective eyesight for too many years now. We can only hope.

WaPo has given us two bone-chilling reports on the Patriot Act. The first, a couple weeks ago:

By Dan Eggen, Washington Post|October 24, 2005

WASHINGTON -- The FBI has conducted clandestine surveillance on some US residents for as long as 18 months at a time without proper paperwork or oversight, according to classified documents scheduled to be released today.

Records turned over as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit also indicated that the FBI has investigated hundreds of potential violations related to its secret surveillance operations, which have been stepped up dramatically after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, but which are largely hidden from public view.

In one case, FBI agents kept an unidentified target under surveillance for at least five years, including more than 15 months without notifying Justice Department lawyers after the subject had moved from New York to Detroit.

An FBI investigation found that the delay was a violation of Justice Department and prevented the department "from exercising its responsibility for oversight and approval of a foreign counterintelligence investigation of a US person."

In other cases, agents obtained e-mail messages after a warrant expired, seized bank records without authority, and conducted an improper "unconsented physical search," according to the documents.

Although heavily censored, the documents provide a glimpse into domestic spying, which is governed by a secret court and overseen by a presidential board that does not publicize its deliberations. The records also emerge as the House and Senate battle over whether to put new restrictions on the controversial USA Patriot Act, which made it easier for the government to conduct searches and surveillance but has come under attack from civil liberties groups.

The records were provided to the Washington Post by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group that has sued the Justice Department for records relating to the Patriot Act.

David Sobel, the advocacy group's general counsel, said that the documents raised questions about the extent of possible misconduct in counterintelligence investigations, and that they underscore the need for greater congressional oversight of clandestine surveillance within the United States.

"We're seeing what might be the tip of the iceberg at the FBI and across the intelligence community," Sobel said.

FBI officials disagreed, saying that none of the cases have involved major violations, and that most amount to administrative errors. The officials also said any information obtained from improper searches or eavesdropping is eventually destroyed.

"Every investigator wants to make sure that their investigation is handled appropriately, because they're not going to be allowed to keep information that they didn't have the proper authority to obtain," said one senior FBI official, who declined to be identified by name because of the ongoing litigation. ''But that is a relatively uncommon occurrence."

Today, there's more:

The FBI came calling in Windsor, Conn., this summer with a document marked for delivery by hand. On Matianuk Avenue, across from the tennis courts, two special agents found their man. They gave George Christian the letter, which warned him to tell no one, ever, what it said.

Under the shield and stars of the FBI crest, the letter directed Christian to surrender "all subscriber information, billing information and access logs of any person" who used a specific computer at a library branch some distance away. Christian, who manages digital records for three dozen Connecticut libraries, said in an affidavit that he configures his system for privacy. But the vendors of the software he operates said their databases can reveal the Web sites that visitors browse, the e-mail accounts they open and the books they borrow.

Christian refused to hand over those records, and his employer, Library Connection Inc., filed suit for the right to protest the FBI demand in public. The Washington Post established their identities -- still under seal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit -- by comparing unsealed portions of the file with public records and information gleaned from people who had no knowledge of the FBI demand.

The Connecticut case affords a rare glimpse of an exponentially growing practice of domestic surveillance under the USA Patriot Act, which marked its fourth anniversary on Oct. 26. "National security letters," created in the 1970s for espionage and terrorism investigations, originated as narrow exceptions in consumer privacy law, enabling the FBI to review in secret the customer records of suspected foreign agents. The Patriot Act, and Bush administration guidelines for its use, transformed those letters by permitting clandestine scrutiny of U.S. residents and visitors who are not alleged to be terrorists or spies.

The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year, according to government sources, a hundredfold increase over historic norms. The letters -- one of which can be used to sweep up the records of many people -- are extending the bureau's reach as never before into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of ordinary Americans.

Issued by FBI field supervisors, national security letters do not need the imprimatur of a prosecutor, grand jury or judge. They receive no review after the fact by the Justice Department or Congress. The executive branch maintains only statistics, which are incomplete and confined to classified reports. The Bush administration defeated legislation and a lawsuit to require a public accounting, and has offered no example in which the use of a national security letter helped disrupt a terrorist plot.

The burgeoning use of national security letters coincides with an unannounced decision to deposit all the information they yield into government data banks -- and to share those private records widely, in the federal government and beyond. In late 2003, the Bush administration reversed a long-standing policy requiring agents to destroy their files on innocent American citizens, companies and residents when investigations closed. Late last month, President Bush signed Executive Order 13388, expanding access to those files for "state, local and tribal" governments and for "appropriate private sector entities," which are not defined....

Note:

A national security letter cannot be used to authorize eavesdropping or to read the contents of e-mail. But it does permit investigators to trace revealing paths through the private affairs of a modern digital citizen. The records it yields describe where a person makes and spends money, with whom he lives and lived before, how much he gambles, what he buys online, what he pawns and borrows, where he travels, how he invests, what he searches for and reads on the Web, and who telephones or e-mails him at home and at work.

Please read it. There are some good editorials here, here and here.

Bill Moyers discussed the state of the nation and its press at a fundraiser for the might Texas Observer. Here's a good excerpt:

For Texas is run by the rich and the righteous, and the result is a state of piracy and piety that puts the medieval papacy to shame.

There was your governor a few weeks ago, surrounded by cheering God-folk in Fort Worth, holding a pep rally in behalf of punishing people on account of sex. Who was the main speaker? None other than the Reverend Rod Parsley of Ohio. Look out for Reverend Parsley. He heads a $40 million a year televangelist ministry based in Columbus with access worldwide to 400 TV stations and cable affiliates. Although he describes himself as neither Republican nor Democrat but a “Christo-crat” – a gladiator for God marching against “the very hordes of hell in our society” – he nonetheless shows up with so many Republicans in Washington and elsewhere that he has been publicly described as the Republican Party’s “spiritual advisor.”

And what does he advise them? He tells them “the god of Islam and the god of Christianity are not the same being.” He tells them that “the separation of church and state is a lie perpetrated on Americans – especially on believers in Jesus Christ.” But his main message is the scapegoating of gay people – a message so full of lies, distortions, and loathing that you cannot help but think of the 1930s when the powerful and the pious in Germany demonized Jews and homosexuals in order to arouse and manipulate public passions. In 1938 Himmler even organized a special section of the Gestapo to deal with homosexuality and abortion and on October 11 of that year he declared in a speech: “Germany’s forebears knew what to do with homosexuals. They drowned them in bags.” You know Governor Perry can’t even imagine such horrors, much less condone such horrors, but you want to grab him by the lapels and shake him and tell him that preaching hate is the first spark to the kindling of evil.

The governor’s pal Rod Parsley is a master of mass psychology. He sees the church as a sleeping giant that has the ability and the anointing from God to transform America. And the giant is stirring. At a rally in July Reverend Parsley worked the crowd into a lather as he proclaimed: “Let the Revolution begin!” And the congregation responded: “Let the Revolution begin.”

This is the man your governor wanted to help him make a television commercial. The governor seems right at home with people like this. He had them to Austin earlier this month for a “Pastors’ Policy Briefing” sponsored by the Texas Restoration Project. Pay attention to this outfit; there’s an Ohio Restoration Project and a Pennsylvania Restoration Party and I suspect by the next election there will be restoration projects in every state of the union. Their goal is to sign up “Patriot Pastors” who will call on their congregations to vote the Lord’s will on Election Day. Aided and abetted, no doubt, by a little loose change from Karl Rove’s faith-based slush fund!

By the way, one of the speakers at that “Pastors’ Policy Briefing” here in Austin was Ohio’s secretary of state, Ken Blackwell, who oversaw the election process in Ohio last year when a surge of conservative Christian voters narrowly carried Bush to victory there. Blackwell has modestly acknowledged that “God wanted him as secretary of state in 2004” because it was such a critical election. Now he’s the divinely designated candidate for governor in 2006. Wouldn’t you like to know what he and Governor Perry talked about at that Pastor’s briefing? Unfortunately, you can’t find out, because the praying and the preaching were closed to the press and public, as befits the stealth salvation they are plotting for you. You can be confident that they agree on God being an American, but it’s possible they may have disagreed over whether the Lord’s primary voting residence is Ohio or Texas.

Neither will you find out who put up the estimated half-a-million dollars to pay for that politically religious rally here in Austin. It’s a secret, too. Two of your noted Texas oligarchs were spotted there – James Leininger and Bo Pilgrim – and they may have dropped something into the offering plate. But it’s not known where the half million shekels came from to bring the good brethren to town where clearly they dined on more than a few loaves and fishes. God only knows who picked up the tab. But between you and me, I suspect She’s got a surprise in store for these holy warriors. America is not yet a theocracy but Texas almost is and the Republican Party already is, and I suspect God just might be pissed off at the presumption that GOP now stands for God’s Own Party.

Here’s the point: the classicist William Arrowsmith once described in these pages the “worst of Texas attitudes” – “the rock-bottom conviction, expressed in stone throughout the state and in the hearts of politicians, that what counts is always and only wealth, that everything is for sale and can be bought.” Including, now, the Rock of Ages.

The phenomenon of our time is how the religious, political, and corporate right, under the cloak of ‘moral values,’ has forged a mighty coalition for the looting of America. With one hand they stretch upward for the pearly gates, and with the other they reach down and behind your back to pick your pocket or your purse...

(Update: I shortened this "excerpt;" read the rest here!)

Why is Tom "rampant lesbianism" Coburn on Meet the Press? Among other things, he appears to be telling Tim Russert that his training as a physician allows him to make perceptive judgements about character, based on physiological cues and body language, and that he uses these skills when meeting with Supreme Court candidates. (Did I get that right? I'll post the transcript when I find it.) How can I get him off the television when the remote is here?...(Gives a whole new meaning to "remote control" doesn't it?) Update: here's the transcript:

MR. RUSSERT: Let me ask about something else, and this intrigued me when I watched you during the John Roberts confirmation hearing when you were explaining how you came to make a decision and you used your skills as a doctor. Let's watch.

(Videotape, September 14, 2005):

SEN. COBURN: I've tried to use my medical skills of observation of body language to ascertain your uncomfortableness and ill at ease with questions and responses. I will tell you that I am very pleased both in my observational capabilities as a physician to know that your answers have been honest and forthright as I watch the rest of your body respond to the stress that you're under.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe as a physician you can tell whether a candidate for the Supreme Court is telling the truth?

SEN. COBURN: I think you can certainly tell when they're ill at ease with a subject and sometimes telling the truth or not. I think you can do that. I think you can do that--anybody can be trained to do that--by body language, respiratory avoidance responses. Yeah, I think you can.

MR. RUSSERT: And have you used those skills to make judgments like that?

SEN. COBURN: Mm-hm, I certainly have.

MR. RUSSERT: Has any--have you ever detected someone lying?

SEN. COBURN: Uh-huh, lots of times.

MR. RUSSERT: In your hearings.

SEN. COBURN: Sure.

MR. RUSSERT: Such as?

SEN. COBURN: Well , I'm not going to say that. You know, I'm--in lots of hearings that I've had on federal financial management where we're looking at the $100 billion that we found wasted far this year from 2004, I found lots of times when people were not truthful. Absolutely.

MR. RUSSERT: Based on your skills as a physician.

SEN. COBURN: Yeah. And then what you do is you go then look it up and see where the problem is and all of a sudden you find, wait, this isn't truthful.

I think the best measure of Karl Rove's "distractions" is that Larry Wilkerson is getting away with this stuff. Where are the character assassins?

McCain says he'll attach the torture ban amendment to every bill he touches (via Americablog).

I've got to agree with Arianna on this one. He's getting tiresome.

Now can we start admitting that they're even losing their base?

Image is everything, afterall.

Think Progress reviews the year since Bush earned all that "political capital." Amazing.

My intrepid co-blogger 'abc' is off at a non-violence conference in Palo Alto this weekend; hopefully she'll have some words of wisdom and inspiration to report later.

Dems evolve into vertebrates!

Brilliant, and beautiful to behold. Furthermore, what he said...

With so much happening these past couple weeks, it's frustrating to have so little blog time, but I really have to finish up my paper. But just a couple more things:

It's an exceedingly rare day that you'll ever see me link to David Broder, but today is one of them (various emphases added by me):

President Pushover

By David S. Broder
Wednesday, November 2, 2005; A21

Under other circumstances, President Bush's choice of Judge Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court would have been seen as a bold move by a strong president with a clear policy objective. By choosing a man of superior intellectual heft and an indelible record of conservative views on major social issues, Bush would have been challenging his critics on the Democratic side to test their arguments in an arena where everything favored him: a Republican Senate.

But after the fiasco of the Harriet Miers nomination and the other reversals of recent days and weeks, the Alito nomination inevitably looks like a defensive move, a lunge for the lifeboat by an embattled president to secure what is left of his political base. Instead of a consistent and principled approach to major decision making, Bush's efforts look like off-balance grabs for whatever policy rationales he can find. The president's opponents are emboldened by this performance, and his fellow partisans must increasingly wonder if they can afford to march to his command.

None of this is to suggest that Judge Alito will be -- or should be -- blocked from elevation to the seat of Sandra Day O'Connor. His record entitles him to the serious consideration and questioning he will undoubtedly receive from the Judiciary Committee. But after Bush acquiesced in the conservative movement's uproar denying Miers her chance for an up-or-down Senate vote, or even a hearing in that committee, there is no plausible way the White House can insist that every major judicial nominee deserves such a vote.

That was the rationale behind the threatened "nuclear option" in the Senate, the mid-session rule change that would have banned judicial filibusters. If the mass of Democrats and a few Republicans who may be dismayed by Alito's stands on abortion and other issues can muster the 41 votes needed to sustain a filibuster under current rules, they now have precedent for using their power.

The conservative screamers who shot down Miers can argue that they were fighting only for a "qualified" nominee, though it is plain that many of them wanted more -- a guarantee that Miers would do their bidding and overrule Roe v. Wade. But whatever the rationale, the fact is that they short-circuited the confirmation process by raising hell with Bush. Certainly there can be no greater sin in a sizable bloc of sitting senators using long-standing Senate rules to stymie a nomination than a cabal of outsiders -- a lynching squad of right-wing journalists, self-sanctified religious and moral organizations, and other frustrated power-brokers -- rolling over the president they all ostensibly support.

But the message that has been sent is that this president is surprisingly easy to roll...

Read the rest.

And a Gallup poll shows that Republicans will have to think hard about supporting Alito. (Although they probably love his fondness for machine guns.)

Check out this week's cover on the rightward-leaning US News & World Report...