About that liberal media bias

Let's review recent examples of liberal media bias shall we? Let's see... the Liberal Media:

thoroughly buried Judy Miller's revelation that a senior White House official leaked intelligence to her in July 2001, indicating advance knowledge that Al Qaeda was planning an attack on American soil; and

quickly suffocated a Boston Globe feature on George W. Bush's unprecedented use of signing statements (750 so far; more than all previous presidents combined) to selectively break laws he finds incovenient (and the Globe's follow-up discovery that Cheney's office specifically screens legislation for provisions it thinks will limit the president's "power"); and

so far ignored the fact that Cheney's office is flagrantly violating the law by not reporting the number of documents he secretly classifies; and

launched another character assassination of Harry Reid (same writer, John Solomon, of the Associated Press), because the first one just didn't do the trick; and to make extra sure this sticks, they've edited subsequent versions to make the story even more misleading (see here, too); and

devoted a week of bloviating to a ridiculous profile of the Clinton marriage (see The Left Coaster on this point, too); and

seems to have successfully shushed up news that the NSA is also reading your email; and

well, you get the idea. This all makes me very tired. But that is precisely the point:

The blogger Billmon writes: "I don't know if it's a byproduct of decades of excessive exposure to television, the state of America's educational system, or something in the water, but the ability of the average journalist -- not to mention the average voter -- to remember things that happened just a few short months ago appears to be slipping into the abyss. "If this keeps up, we're going to end up like the villagers in "One Hundred Years of Solitude," who all contracted a rare form of jungle amnesia, so virulent they were reduced to posting signs on various objects -- 'I AM A COW. MILK ME' or 'I AM A GATE. OPEN ME' -- just so they could get on with their daily lives."

A 1991 science fiction film called Total Recall pictured political amnesia, in the words of Michael Rogin as "an essential aspect of the 'postmodern American empire.'"

A book by Andreas Huyssen takes another tack, arguing, "Rather than blaming amnesia on television or the school, "Twilight Memories" argues that the danger of amnesia is inherent in the information revolution. Our obsessions with cultural memory can be read as re-representing a powerful reaction against the electronic archive, and they mark a shift in the way we live structures of temporality."

But whatever the causes, the consequences are truly frightening. When 63 percent of young people can't find Iraq on a map after three years of war and coverage, you know that the institutions that claim to be informing us are doing everything but.

Read the rest of Danny Schecter's "Political Amnesia is the enemy."

Declare peace!

Readers who were around when the Vietnam war was raging will recall the proposal to end that conflict put forward by commonsensical New Englander George Aiken, senator from Vermont: "Declare victory and withdraw." Sadly, that did not happen and the war continued until the withdrawal happened anyway, along with the loss of more than 58,000 U.S. military lives and perhaps as many as 4 million civilian lives as well.

We now find ourselves in another era of needless and tragic conflict, and we have another opportunity to bring it to an end: The Declaration of Peace. It is a call to end the war, and a commitment to take action to translate the call into a concrete plan for peace. The Declaration is a pledge to take nonviolent steps for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq -- and to engage in peaceful protest if a comprehensive withdrawal plan is not established and begun by September 21, 2006, International Peace Day, just days before Congress adjourns for the fall elections.

People in the Bay Area, and especially those living in the Peninsula/South Bay region, have a wonderful opportunity to hear more about the Declaration of Peace from one of its premier advocates, Father Louis Vitale. Everyone is invited to an evening with Louie on Monday, June 5, in San Mateo. See below for details and check out the website www.declarationofpeace.org for more information.

As I have reflected on this initative (a brainchild of Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service), its necessity has become clear to me. Both as a nation and as a member of the global community we have many challenges, and we will fail to meet any of them until the economic, moral, and spiritual drain of the Iraq occupation has ceased. The Declaration of Peace is that comprehensive and concrete plan that we have been waiting for, and I hope that all peacemakers will respond to the call to support it in whatever way we can. To echo another Vermonter, "You have the power" -- we the people have the power to declare peace, and in the failure of our current political leadership, declare it we must. Join us on June 5th to learn more!


Network of Spiritual Progressives-San Mateo County,
Pax Christi Burlingame, and
Pace e Bene Nonviolence Service present

The Declaration of
Peace

An Evening with

Fr. Louis Vitale
Franciscan Priest and Nonviolent Action Advocate


Monday, June 5, 7:30 pm
Transfiguration Episcopal Church, Parish Hall
3900 Alameda de las Pulgas, San Mateo

The Declaration of Peace is a commitment to take nonviolent steps for a comprehensive, concrete, and rapid end to the war in Iraq. With nearly seventy percent of the people of the United States supporting an end to the war, there is a growing call to bring the troops home now. Together, people of faith and people of conscience have the power to declare a new era of peace and justice.

Join Fr. Louis Vitale to learn more about this proposal for bold, powerful and peaceful steps to help establish a comprehensive withdrawal plan. A longtime social activist, Louie co-founded the Nevada Desert Experience, a movement to end nuclear testing. He served 13 years as pastor of St. Boniface Catholic Church in the Tenderloin and recently completed a six-month sentence for nonviolent action to close the School of the Americas/WHINSEC at Ft. Benning, Georgia.

Freewill offerings to support the Declaration of Peace will be gratefully received.
For more information, contact: Anne Carey, 415-238-0704, http://www.declarationofpeace.org/

Create peace.
Create alternatives.
Create hope.
End the US war in Iraq.

Hamza El Din

I've developed a fascination with oud music in the last couple of years - to the extent that I even bought a beginner's oud on Ebay and found some free online tutorials in the hope that I might learn to play. This year being a little crowded and complicated, I haven't gotten much further than plucking and admiring the instrument, but I look forward to rewarding myself with practice time this summer. (A musician acquaintance says I really should find an oud teacher in order not to develop bad playing habits, but that is definitely not in the budget.) Last year I picked up a used copy of Hamza El Din's CD A Wish and I've played it so often I have all the tunes memorized.

I just learned today that Hamza El Din died this week. Jon Pareles wrote his NY Times obit, a shorter version of which was published in the Long Beach Press Telegram:

He made quite a musical din
By Jon Pareles , The New York Times
(Long Beach Press Telegram)

Hamza El Din, an oud player and composer who reinvented the musical culture of Nubia and carried it worldwide, died Monday in Berkeley. He was 76.

The cause was complications after surgery, said his wife, Nadra.

El Din's austere, hypnotic music was based on his research into the traditions of Nubia, an ancient North African kingdom on the upper Nile, which was a cradle of civilization.

Hamza El Din was born in 1929 in Egypt, in what had been the territory of ancient Nubia, a crossroads of trade that flourished as early as the fourth millennium B.C. Nubia's former territory is now part of Egypt and the Sudan, and El Din's hometown, Toshka, was flooded after the building of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s. He studied electrical engineering and worked for the national railroad in Cairo, Egypt.

But he was drawn to music, first playing the round hand drum called the tar and then taking up the oud, a six-stringed lute.

When he learned about the plans to build the Aswan Dam, which flooded much of ancient Nubia, he grew determined to preserve Nubian culture.

He studied Arabic music at Ibrahim Shafiq's Institute of Music and at the King Fouad Institute for Middle Eastern Music. He also traveled through villages in Egypt by donkey, collecting Nubian songs. With a grant from the Italian government, he studied Western music and classical guitar at the Academy of Santa Cecilia in Rome.

He drew on his studies, and on surviving Nubian traditions, to create music that fused rhythms and inflections from Nubia with Arabic classical elements and a virtuosic approach to the oud, an instrument not traditionally played in Nubia. El Din performed in 1964 at the Newport Folk Festival and recorded two albums for the folk label Vanguard in 1964 and 1965. He moved to the United States, where he was a mentor to musicians, including the guitarist and oud player Sandy Bull. He settled in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 1971 his album "Escalay (The Water Wheel)" was released on the Nonesuch Explorer label.

Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead produced El Din's album "Eclipse" (Rykodisc); El Din helped arrange for the Dead to perform at the Great Pyramids in Egypt in 1978.

El Din also made albums for Lotus Records and Sounds True. His music was used for movie soundtracks and for dance pieces by the Paris Opera Ballet, Maurice Bejart Ballet and the San Francisco Ballet; and he composed music for a version of the Aeschylus play "The Persians," directed by Peter Sellars at the Salzburg Festival.

He had stints teaching ethnomusicology at Ohio University, the University of Washington and the University of Texas. During the 1980s, with a grant from the Japan Foundation to work on a comparative study of the Arabic oud and the biwa, a Japanese plucked lute, he moved to Tokyo, where he lived until the mid-1990s.

El Din collaborated with ensembles including the Kronos Quartet, which recorded an arrangement of "Escalay" in 1992. When he returned to the United States, he resettled in the San Francisco Bay Area.

His most recent album, "A Wish" (Sounds True), was released in 1999, but his wife said that he had recently completed recording a new album.

There's a nice summary of his work here, too. (If you're not familiar with the sound of an oud, listen to a few of the recordings on this site.)

The Religious Left gets a pat on the head from the NYT

I suppose it's possible to write a more condescending article about the "Religious Left" than this one, but I think you'd have to be on the Religious Right to do it.

Political Memo
Religious Left Struggles to Find Unifying Message
By NEELA BANERJEE
WASHINGTON, May 18 — They had come to All Souls Unitarian Church, 1,200 of them from 39 states, to wrest the mantle of moral authority from conservative Christians, and they were finally planning how to take their message to those in power.

After rousing speeches on Wednesday by liberal religious leaders like Rabbi Michael Lerner of the magazine Tikkun and Sister Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun, participants in the new Network of Spiritual Progressives split into small groups to prepare for meetings with members of Congress on Thursday.

Yet at a session on ethical behavior, including sexual behavior, the 50 or so activists talked little about what to tell Congress about abortion or same-sex marriage. Instead, the Rev. Ama Zenya of First Congregational Church in Oakland, Calif., urged them to talk to one another about their spiritual values and "to practice fully our authentic being."

Kimberly Crichton, a Washington lawyer and Quaker, grew impatient. "I think we would be more effective if we focused on specific legislation," Ms. Crichton said. "Are we going to discuss specific policies?"

Ms. Zenya replied: "What we envisioned this time is saying we are a religious voice. More relationship-building, consciousness-raising."

The man in the pew in front of Ms. Crichton translated: "The answer is, no."

Since the last presidential election, liberals of various faiths have talked about taking back religion from the conservative Christians who helped bring President Bush and a Republican Congress to power.

Yet liberal believers have so far been unable to approach, even modestly, the success of the religious right and command the attention of Congress.

Turnout at the Spiritual Activism Conference is high, but if the gathering is any indication, the biggest barrier for liberals may be their regard for pluralism: for letting people say what they want, how they want to, and for trying to include everyone's priorities, rather than choosing two or three issues that could inspire a movement.

"We didn't get on the same page with everyone, and it is about getting on the same page," said the Rev. Tony Campolo, an outspoken liberal Baptist minister from Pennsylvania who once served as a spiritual adviser to President Bill Clinton, and attended the conference. "The thing about the left is that they want everybody to feel good."

Initiatives by liberals have been percolating locally and nationally, from state interfaith alliances in Ohio to counter a powerful conservative Christian movement there to national campaigns to reduce poverty led by liberal evangelicals like the Rev. Jim Wallis.

The Democratic Party itself is wrestling with the best way to shake an image of indifference to religion. Most recently, the party's national chairman, Howard Dean, courted evangelicals by appearing on Pat Robertson's television program, "The 700 Club." In the process, Mr. Dean alienated gay and lesbian supporters of the Democratic Party by misstating the party's platform on same-sex marriage.

Religious leaders at the conference here cautioned that it would take years before liberal believers could match the savvy and strength of conservative Christian groups.

But Rabbi Lerner, the editor of Tikkun, the progressive Jewish magazine, and an organizer of the spiritual progressives' network, rejected the approach that Democrats have so far taken to faith, describing it as window-dressing.

He called on the activists at All Souls Church to define progressive faith, rather than have politicians do it. He said research begun years ago showed that Americans were experiencing a deep spiritual crisis but that only conservative Christians had responded to it, with an agenda that he said "backs the ethos of selfishness and materialism in our society."

"They get away with this because the left isn't even in the relevant ballpark," Rabbi Lerner said.

When people on the left "hear talk of a spiritual crisis, they think it's some kind of New Age flakery or a code word for homophobia, sexism and racism," he said.

He urged participants to offer a real alternative to the ideas that many conservative Christian groups promulgate. But identifying those alternatives proved to be the hard part for many at the conference.

Mr. Campolo, the Baptist minister, explained to the participants in a seminar that many people on Capitol Hill were religious, and that to reach them and to establish authority, liberals should rely on the Bible.

"You have no right to be a spiritual leader if you haven't read Scripture," he told the group.

"People in Congress respect the Book, even if they don't know what it says. If we don't recognize this, we don't know squat."

A young man with long hair and a tunic challenged Mr. Campolo.

"I thought this was a spiritual progressives' conference," he said. "I don't want to play the game of 'the Bible says this or that,' or that we get validation from something other than ourselves. We should be speaking from our hearts."

Carol Gottesman was urged at her group to speak from her heart about her priority, the environment. A 64-year-old nurse from Hubbard, Ohio, and a Conservative Jew, Ms. Gottesman spoke Thursday with her congressman, Tim Ryan, a Democrat. It was one of dozens of meetings the network had set up.

Mr. Ryan, who had read about the network on the Internet, asked Ms. Gottesman if the group was pushing specific policies.

"No, it's more that we want to take caring and generosity and bring it into everything," she said.

Mr. Ryan responded: "Spread love, not hate. Pretty simple. Do you have a little network back home?"

Ms. Gottesman squared her shoulders proudly and said, "I'm it."

I will concede the one point: "the biggest barrier for liberals may be their regard for pluralism: for letting people say what they want, how they want to, and for trying to include everyone's priorities" - and of course the same could be said of progressives in the Democratic party at large. Perhaps it could be said of the whole Democratic party. It is mathematically and in all other ways impossible to address all of our often-conflicting priorities, and we have a notorious tendency to dissolve into territorial bickering while the Right executes their vaunted "message discipline." But the rest of the article strikes me as an exercise in making the participants look as flakey as possible without having to actually publish it on the op-ed page.

Contrast that article with speaker Joan Chittister's reflections on the same event:

To be perfectly honest, I really didn’t expect many people to come. It opened with an early morning session. What’s more, it was a kind of opening before the official opening of a three day event. At a jamboree like that, nobody goes to every session, however committed they may be.

By the time I got there, 30 minutes before the session was to start, the church was packed to the rafters; more than 1,100 people were registered and walk-ins streamed in. It was a conference of “Spiritual Progressives,” almost all of them officially representing an organization rather than simply themselves.

If there is any single phenomenon going on in the world of politics today, it is clearly the proliferation of small religiously inspired groups intent on relating public issues to traditional moral principles.

The only difference between this situation and the national political world of the 2004 election is that this time the groups have a leftist, a liberal or a progressive bent -- depending on whatever euphemism appeals to you. Once caught off-guard by the political sophistication of the religious right -- the breadth and depth of its national organization and its single-issue public agenda -- progressive groups this time are clearly intent on providing another voice, a new accent to the language of religion on the national scene.

Many of the liberal groups are long-established supporters of a traditional populist agenda: Tikkun, Sojourners, Pax Christi, the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Many more are newcomers to the political scene, fresh and intent but small and basically separate from one another in everything but their common concerns about ecology, poverty, the social safety net, peace and U.S. foreign policy.

The list of conference supporters itself was a clear reminder to those who substitute demographic dominance for political philosophy that the United States is not “a Christian nation.” It is a nation founded “under God” which, for past historical reasons, is still a nation whose religious majority is predominantly Christian, yes, but even those are split into a myriad of creeds, liturgical rites and spiritual practices.

No surprise then that the list of conference sponsors and affiliates included Buddhist groups, Humanists, the Progressive Muslim Union, the Shambala Sun, Jewish organizations, New Dimensions, the Christian Alliance for Progress, and Pace e Bene. Among a host of others.

Unlike the Rightists, these groups are largely independent of any single or official church body. Translation: They are not being either spearheaded or funded by any religious body.

Nor are they politically defined as either Republican or Democrat. Many, in fact, have given up on both parties and are simply looking for candidates who espouse a moral view of the world that is global in scope and universally just in its intentions.

They are, therefore, largely lay organized but spiritually inspired. The feeling seems to be that it was ministers, priests and bishops who got us the present Administration. Now time has shown us that elections are too important to be trusted to clerical groups. Anybody’s clerical group.

This time, then, they are determined to bring lay theologians, ethicists, activists and professionals to bear on the moral issues of the time rather than trust the soul of the nation to any such single issue groups again.

The next election, the thinking is, has to be about all of the commandments, not just one or two of them. Otherwise the globe, as well as the country, may well be in very serious danger from the moral issues to which we are now paying very little attention at all: peace, education, economic devastation of the working class, the ecological destruction of the globe and life issues of all ilk rather than simply a few.

For that matter, contrast it with the piece in the Washington Post just last weekend (I linked to it here, too). Incidentally, I somehow missed the NYT article so I'm glad sojo.net gave a heads-up.

Quite possibly the most revolting profile you'll ever read

You can thank Atrios for ruining your dinner. He linked to this revolting profile of Bill Frist:

In medical school, Frist cut out a dog's heart and held it in his palm. It continued to beat for a slippery minute.

"Watching it beat, the beauty of it," Frist recalled. "I decided I would spend my life centered around the heart."

"And you didn't say 'I'll take some time off and be a politician' while you were holding the dog heart," Karyn said.

Frist, in a gray suit, picked up his file marked "ZOO" and said, "We've got to be on time to open the Senate."

He climbed into the back of his black SUV; his driver steered toward the zoo. "I gravitate towards insurmountable problems," Frist said, his long legs spilling between the front seats. "I try to use creative solutions." One day, he hopes to cure AIDS or cancer. He sucked on the stem of his glasses: "The typical person around here may not understand."

At the zoo hospital, a team of four veterinarians, three technicians, an animal keeper and a veterinary dentist were wheeling a 350-pound gorilla into surgery as Frist arrived. They would perform an ultrasound of the heart, a root canal and a physical. Frist joined the team, as he had on other mornings, tying on a mask. He unbuttoned his business shirt, revealing jungle-pattern surgical scrubs and a pair of hairy, toned biceps.

"A little bit like Superman," said the dentist, Chuck Williams.

Frist snapped on rubber gloves. He leaned over the operating table, gripping the corners. An oxygen monitor beeped. The patient gagged.

"This is home," Frist said through his mask. "Where I spent 12 hours a day for 20 years." Frist spent so much time in the hospital in Tennessee that when he came home to his wife and three sons he felt like an intruder.

He pressed his stethoscope to the gorilla's chest and narrowed his eyes. Kuja, a silverback patriarch, was breathing isofluorine. He was the Senate majority leader of the gorillas, who negotiated disputes, back-slapped the ape boys and owned exclusive mating rights with the females. When Kuja started to stir, a veterinarian injected more anesthesia. One backhanded swipe could break Frist's neck.

Frist listened to the heart; the gorilla's lub-dub sounded human. "When you're this close, you feel this kind of oneness with them," Frist said. The stink of ape sweat and gorilla testosterone soaked his hair and clothes. "Gorillas, people, men. You look at the people here, a symphonic flow of people pitching in. It's the oneness of humanity."

This kind of oneness does not come easily to Frist. Though devoted to matters of the heart, Frist acknowledges that he is aloof, something he traces back to the day he refused to attend kindergarten. He calls it "the Great Wall," an emotional barrier that has kept him from having close friends. It is a wall that could block his connection with voters, some say, and his way to the White House.

But in the operating room there were no walls, only bridges, as one arm reached over another. A veterinarian rotated the ultrasound probe over Kuja's heart. The dentist tweezed out the bloody string of a root canal -- "Isn't this exciting?" And Frist slipped an IV needle into Kuja's vein. His gloves turned red with gorilla blood.

"There's almost a spiritual, poetic component to it," Frist said, his eyes expressing what his surgical mask hid. "This oneness, this wholeness. You can't compare it to the Senate floor. I immerse myself in it. This is my real life."

I just can't bring myself to quote more. Laura Blumenfeld may have a future in truly awful bodice-ripper writing, but for the love of God and all that's sacred, keep her away from political profiles. Is she the editor's high school daughter? Did she win this assignment because she has compromising photos of someone? "Hairy, toned biceps"? "His eyes expressing what his surgical mask hid"??? Maybe it's a joke. Could this be a joke?

I happen to know a bit about this heart disease, having lost a good gorilla friend to it in my animal caretaker days. I also know there IS literature, albeit thin and frustrating. I wish I could say that the fact Frist is working on this problem raises him a notch or two in my estimation, but mostly, I'm scared for the gorillas.

Birdless Feeder Update

Perhaps you recall my lament on the birdless feeder. Well, I'm pleased to report that the feeding population has quadrupled this season: we now FOUR regular avian visitors, and seem to have thwarted the rats, somehow. Or they've simply grown too fat and heavy on birdseed to climb up the feeder posts.

In theory, the thumbnails below are "clickable" - click on each for a larger version. They're all being hosted at Photobucket, which is a terrific free service that - at least this evening - runs rings around Blogger's photo-loading utility.

The mouthy scrub jay, who we call Frank, has begun bringing his partner, Ernestine. They are strapping specimens, and a bit large for the feeders...


So they take their seeds to a fence post and crack them open.


The jays announce themselves with a grating, piercing shriek as they sail into the backyard, and the cats - now thoroughly conditioned to it - race to the window from all over the house to watch them.




We've also had regular visits from a pair of house finches.


And though she doesn't count as a "feeder" (because she came to the front window), a mourning dove stopped on the windowsill a couple of times to check on my thesis progress.


...As one of our Ace Birders snoozed soundly about 3 feet away.


She hasn't returned, however, and I suspect she showed up one day when the cats were all awake, and is presently recovering in a cardiac ICU.

Thanks for indulging me. Now for a real bird photo blog, check out Mike's Birding and Digiscoping Blog or Stokes Birding Blog.

And we're back...

Seems like coming out of hibernation is a good time for a little spring cleaning and redecorating, don't you think? While we "slept," we had our second birthday, and passed the 11,000 mark in our visitor counter! So I spent a few hours this afternoon fussing around testing new templates and creating the new "header" while my brain steadfastly refused to work on revisions to my thesis. (I'm sure my advisor will understand.) The header may be a work-in-progress; is the font hard to read?

My semester officially ended Friday. I wrote and defended my thesis (passed with "minor revisions"), stayed afloat in my three lecture classes and one reading course, and managed not to get fired from my 20-hour/week statistical programming job (which has nothing to do with my degree in ethics, except to make food and shelter possible). If all goes well, revisions will be finished in the next couple of weeks and I can close the books on the MA program. I'll try to squeeze in fulltime hours at work during the summer before starting the doctoral program in the fall. I'll let abc catch you up on her "sabbatical," but I know she has been very busy preparing a very special event she'll be telling you about in the next week or so.

Now, then... I can't tell you how hard it has been to sit on my blogging hands during these four months, while the White House and GOP self-destruct and try to take us all down with them. But for the most part, I'm going to pick things up in the here and now and will indulge in historical snark only when appropriate. So here are just a few items while we get up to speed.

The Washington Post rediscovers the Religious Left!

Religious Liberals Gain New Visibility
A Different List Of Moral Issues

By Caryle Murphy and Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, May 20, 2006; A01

The religious left is back.

Long overshadowed by the Christian right, religious liberals across a wide swath of denominations are engaged today in their most intensive bout of political organizing and alliance-building since the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements of the 1960s, according to scholars, politicians and clergy members.

In large part, the revival of the religious left is a reaction against conservatives' success in the 2004 elections in equating moral values with opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage.

Religious liberals say their faith compels them to emphasize such issues as poverty, affordable health care and global warming. Disillusionment with the war in Iraq and opposition to Bush administration policies on secret prisons and torture have also fueled the movement.

"The wind is changing. Folks -- not just leaders -- are fed up with what is being portrayed as Christian values," said the Rev. Tim Ahrens, senior minister of First Congregational Church of Columbus, Ohio, and a founder of We Believe Ohio, a statewide clergy group established to ensure that the religious right is "not the only one holding a megaphone" in the public square.

"As religious people we're offended by the idea that if you're not with the religious right, you're not moral, you're not religious," said Linda Gustitus, who attends Bethesda's River Road Unitarian Church and is a founder of the new Washington Region Religious Campaign Against Torture. "I mean there's a whole universe out there [with views] different from the religious right. . . . People closer to the middle of the political spectrum who are religious want their voices heard."

Recently, there has been an increase in books and Web sites by religious liberals, national and regional conferences, church-based discussion groups, and new faith-oriented political organizations. "Organizationally speaking, strategically speaking, the religious left is now in the strongest position it's been in since the Vietnam era," said Clemson University political scientist Laura R. Olson...

It's a sweeping and simplistic overview, but nice to see. Christy at Firedoglake, and DarkSyde at Daily Kos both have thoughtful reflections on the topic.

Yet another deadly mine accident. Still no congressional action on tightening mine safety restrictions weakened by the current administration, but then they've been very busy protecting the English language.

Kevin Phillips excerpts his new book, American Theocracy at The Nation.

As a great power, a large heterogeneous nation like the United States goes about as far in a theocratic direction as it can when it meets the unfortunate criteria on display in George W. Bush's Washington: an elected leader who believes himself in some way to be speaking for God; a ruling party that represents religious true believers and seeks to mobilize the nation's churches; the conviction of many rank-and-file Republicans that government should be guided by religion and religious leaders; and White House implementation of domestic and international political agendas that seem to be driven by religious motivations and biblical worldviews.

It's a long article, but he's always worth it.

Not only is the NSA tracking more calls than the president has admitted, they're listening to them, too. (Kind of a "must read.")

I only read him when I can get past the first two paragraphs without throwing things... This column passed that test: George Will admits that the left can have "values voters," too!

An aggressively annoying new phrase in America's political lexicon is "values voters." It is used proudly by social conservatives, and carelessly by the media to denote such conservatives.

This phrase diminishes our understanding of politics. It also is arrogant on the part of social conservatives and insulting to everyone else because it implies that only social conservatives vote to advance their values and everyone else votes to... well, it is unclear what they supposedly think they are doing with their ballots.

On Sunday a Los Angeles Times article on the possibility of a presidential run by Florida Gov. Jeb Bush reported:

"The Family Research Council, an influential evangelical activist group, has invited Gov. Bush to appear at a fall conference of 'values voters.' " On Monday the Wall Street Journal quoted a pastor who is president of a Texas-based organization, Vision America, that mobilizes conservative pastors: "Values voters see their vote as a sacred trust."

The phrase "values voters," which has become ubiquitous, subtracts from social comity by suggesting that one group has cornered the market on moral seriousness.

It's actually fairly even-handed.