The Shot Heard Round the World

It might hardly be that dramatic. But make no mistake, the South Dakota legislature intended it be the line drawn in sand to challenge Roe v. Wade. The only question, now, is whether the governor, Mike Rounds, an anti-abortion Republican, will sign it into law next week.

This is no longer attempting to ban abortion by small increments such as parental consent laws, bans on partial birth abortion, or local ordinances that make it difficult to operate an abortion clinic. All those tried and true firebreaks that obstruct a woman’s access to a medically safe abortion, especially in rural areas, without outright banning the procedure are gone.

At least all those obstructions had the benefit of enjoying some public support because they tapped into America’s deep ambivalence over abortion. While polls have remained remarkably consistent for years, showing that the American public supports a woman’s right to choose to terminate a pregnancy, especially in cases of rape, incest, and to protect the mother’s health, support for abortion rights drops off when it’s either a late trimester abortion or when the woman seeking it is a minor.

People are uneasy about granting the same right to make a major medical decision to a minor that they give to an adult woman. And they support parental involvement or, at least, the intervention of a judge or other responsible adult in the decision-making process when it involves an underage girl.

The public is equally uncomfortable with the procedure misnamed partial birth abortion. Indeed, the very description of the procedure is grisly in its details. The anti-abortion right has gained much traction in their fight simply by presenting this procedure as more commonplace than it actually is. In truth, it is dangerous enough that it is performed in only one to five percent of women seeking abortions and usually only when the mother’s health is truly endangered or the fetus has little hope of being born normal. And we are talking here of severe birth defects.

The public’s ambivalence, however, fades rapidly when the issue is the right of a woman of legal age to terminate a pregnancy in the first trimester, when the vast majority of abortions are performed. Opposition to abortion also drops rapidly for victims of rape, incest, or where the fetus is damaged and is unlikely to be born normal or to live at all.

And all of these abortions would be illegal under South Dakota’s new law. This is the harshest legislation on the books since the sixties when abortions first began to be legalized by state legislatures and courts. The only exception to the South Dakota law would be save the life of the mother. That’s it.

Not even to protect her health. And it would make the performance of an abortion a criminal offense for the doctor, who, if charged, could go to jail for up to five years.

This law is a throwback to the days of the double standard for women and could well result in a return to back alley abortions complete with rusty coat hangers, desperation and death for young women “in trouble.”

Of course, the law is also a deliberate challenge to Roe v. Wade brought on by the new make up of the Roberts-Alito Supreme Court. If, indeed, this court challenge succeeds, other states across the South and Midwest will soon follow suit. And while this might not exactly be the shot heard round the world, it will draw enough blood to dramatically alter the landscape of young women’s lives across America.

At the very least, it will wake up a lot of women, and even their male friends, from the complacency that let them think that Roe v. Wade was inviolable. They have long ignored the threat from the social conservatives because, quite simply, they thought their right to choice was safe. It was “settled law.”

Of course, Republican moderates in the senate should have known better. Should the Supreme Court, indeed, uphold the constitutionality of South Dakota’s new law, the blood of every victim of an illegal, back alley abortion will be on the hands of Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins and all those other moderates who led their states’ voters to believe that they were pro-choice and then sold them out for thirty pieces of GOP party discipline.

Get A Rope

As a former and rather repentant Marxist, one of my favorite quotes by Lenin always was “After the revolution, the capitalists will bargain with us for the price of the rope we buy from them to hang them.”

As these two articles, one from the Washington Post , and the other from the New York Times, demonstrate, the greedy mindset of the business class hasn’t changed much since 1917. The international business community, including the clueless free trade supporters at the Washington Post, are trying to write the narrative of the opposition of both Republican and Democratic congressmen and the U.S. public to the Dubai port deal as nativist and tinged with racism rather than a rational or legitimate debate about American security interests.

I don’t want to join a chorus of those who criticize Dubai, which has been an ally of ours. And I have to confess that I am an agnostic about the actual deal. There are some compelling reasons why it is not a security disaster in the making. As has been pointed out, Dubai is a U.S. ally and has cooperated and gone the extra mile in aiding our intelligence efforts. This is less about Dubai than it is about any foreign government-owned company coming in to operate U.S. ports. It’s also part of a larger examination of the problems and perils of outsourcing as well as its many benefits. And there are both perils and benefits involved. That’s why the debate is legitimate.

But one thing that must be challenged is the characterization by some of the eager rope- bargaining free traders that the opposition to this deal is racist. No it’s not!

If it were a company owned by an American citizen of Arab descent that was being blocked from operating an American port, yes that would be blatant racism. And it would be wrong.

However, that’s not what’s at issue here. There is a very real question as to whether it is in America’s security interest to outsource the operation of vulnerable ports to any foreign country. Yes, the fact that it is an Arab country from which two of the 9-11 hijackers came raises extra concern. But the heart of the matter is whether it is appropriate for any foreign governmental entity to own and operate U.S. ports.

The New York Times piece tries to make the case that Europeans, presumably with a more international mentality, are puzzled by the American outpouring of opposition. They consider it simply global capitalism.

But that’s not even an accurate assessment. In fact, when a foreign government owns the company, it’s actually socialism not capitalism. I think I remember that much from Marxism 101 back in college.

Whatever you call it, though; sometimes free trade and better oil prices need to take a backseat to security concerns. There is a point at which reality has to trump ideology and this may be it.

It is faint comfort to many Americans that various U.S. intelligence agencies at Treasury at Homeland Security are vouching for the safety of this deal. Most people are all too aware of this administration’s propensity for cherry picking intelligence it wants to support positions that it already holds. These same intelligence agencies, after all, assured us that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and that ordinary Iraqi citizens would welcome American invaders with flowers. They failed to see that religious extremists in Iraq would rush in to remake a largely secular society into a theocracy. So, how much credence should Americans give to the assurances of intelligence agencies that have been so wrong in their reports in the past? And even more, how much should we believe a proven incompetent, ideologically driven and fact challenged administration that just doesn’t know truth when it sees it.

The opposition to this deal is less about distrusting Dubai and more about distrusting our own government to put America’s best interests first.

The Trouble With Moderates

The major trouble with moderates is that - well - they're moderate. This article, by Peter Slevin, in the February 2, 2006 Washington Post describes former senator and Episcopal priest Jack Danforth's very laudable goal for moderate Republicans to take back their party from the religious right.

However, as this letter to the editor, by Jay Sidebotham, in today's Washington Post questions, where was Danforth, while he was in the Senate, when he had a chance to vote against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas? His was one of the votes that led to the victory of the same right wing Christianist Republican conservatives that he now wants to take on. The Thomas victory was pivotal to the beginning of the Supreme Court's swing right, which is now nearing completion with the confirmations of Roberts and Alito.

And once again, Danforth's moderate Republican colleagues voted for confirmation. It's true that they probably couldn't have stopped either of those nominees from being confirmed, but they should have stood with fellow centrists across the aisle, on the Democratic side, and voted their conscience. Indeed, they should have voted to represent the many pro-choice moderate citizens in their home states who put them in office precisely because they campaigned as pro-choice moderates. Some of these senators had more conservative challengers in their primaries and won office precisely because they weren't that far to the right.

You can't trust Republican moderates when the chips are down. They pick party discipline and party loyalty over loyalty to their constituents, their nation and their own conscience every time.

That's why Democrats need to concentrate on defeating the Northeastern block of Republican moderates more than they need to indulge in party feuds as they are doing in Connecticut. Democratic senatorial challenger Ned Lamont may be a liberal's dream. But he probably won't defeat Joe Lieberman, who has over an 80 percent COPE rating (means he votes pro-labor and liberal that percent of the time). His one egregious mistake (and it is egregious) is that he is pro-Iraqi war. But he voted against both Roberts and Alito. Never mind that he also voted for cloture. So did most Democrats. He voted with the Democratic leadership, unlike Ben Nelson or Robert Byrd both of whom voted for confirmation of Roberts and Alito. (But those two were voting their consciences and their constituents knew where they stood when they elected them. So, while I disagree with their votes, at least, I don't feel betrayed by them. I sorta knew that's what they'd do.)

However, voting for cloture was very different from voting for confirmation. There was simply nothing to be gained at that point for a Democrat to block the nominees from a straight up or down vote. The issue wasn't resonating with the public. Democrats would have risked looking like obstructionists if they had won the vote against cloture and been able to fillibuster.

But if a moderate, pro-choice Republican had risen to the occasion and made it bi-partisan, then Democrats could have jumped on the bandwagon. But they didn't. Not even Lincoln Chafee, who, at least, did vote against the Alito confirmation - the only Republican to do so.

So, if you want to be mad, be mad at Republicans who claim to be centrists in good times and then let you down. If anybody is going to break the stranglehold of the Republican right, it's going to be Democrats, not Republican moderates, no matter how well-intentioned St. Jack Danforth is. Because, even he wouldn't vote against his own party back when it counted.

The American Taliban

The U.S. Air Force Academy has once again revised its rules on religion according to this Washington Post article. But whether it's an improvement depends on where you sit. It's like the old joke about the man whose son breaks his leg and a neighbor rushes to tell him how bad it is. The man phlegmatically says, "It all depends. It could be bad, it could be good." Turns out that because of the son's broken leg, he's spared from having to go to war, so the neighbor tells him the broken leg was a good thing. But, once again, the father calmly replies, "It could be good; it could be bad." Because the son didn't go to war, he never got a pension or a chance at going to college on the GI Bill. To this the father replies, "it could be good; it could be bad..."

I think you get the point of the joke, which is that whether something is good or bad depends on your perspective.

So, if you're an evangelical Christian, the newly revised Air Force regulations are a good thing, as compared to the original revision, which came in response to investigations into the Air Force Academy's policy of allowing evangelical commanders, coaches, and upperclassmen to proselytize non-Christian students. Groups like Americans United for the Separation of Church and State had charged that undue pressure was being brought on cadets of minority religions or non-believers.

Evangelical groups and conservative Republican members of Congress pressured the Academy to cave into the demands of intolerant Christianists who are really no better than the Taliban. They are the ones who insist that they must force their beliefs on others and who overstep not only the Constitutional boundaries of separation of church and state but also all boundaries of good taste and respect for others' rights.

They insist that their rights, either to free speech or to practice their religion, are being infringed upon whenever they are prevented from forcing their own faith on a captive audience. But more and more that is coming to remind me of a schoolyard bully who demands protection for his Consitutional right to swing his arm freely even if in doing so, his fist lands a punch that gives me a bloody nose.

I am afraid that sensible people are going to have to convince him that his right to swing his arm freely does, in fact end at the tip of my nose and if he swings too far, he might just lose that arm.

Likewise, insist upon walking all over the rights of practitioners of minority religions, and trashing the protection of the Constitution, could lead to a backlash someday. The important thing to remember is that Christianity is not always the majority faith tradition in every location even in the United States. And the same principles of separation of church and state and of religious tolerance that protects non-Christians in Colorado (where the Air Force Academy is) may protect Christians someplace else where they may find themselves the minority faith. Tolerance is a good principle that never hurt anybody. Its opposite, though, has harmed countless numbers of people.

This Just In - Global Warming Is a Threat to the Atlantic and Gulf Coast After All

Dark Syde, at Daily Kos, wonders, in this thoughtful post (scroll about half way down), if we remember the many interviews on cable t.v. shows and news reports last year, when climate scientists stated emphatically that global warming played no part in the 2005 active Atlantic hurricane season.

Well, it turns out that not only may that not be true, but that there may have been a deliberate disinformation campaign by the Bush administration to play down the role of global warming in the recent spate of deadly hurricanes.

The official line of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is that we’ve merely entered into a period of increased storm activity, which occurs every few decades. The effects appear more noticeable because we’ve had an unusually calm Atlantic period for about 40 years. Scientists have claimed that this switch to more active storm seasons is merely a naturally occurring shift.

Perhaps there’s some truth to it. As Dark Syde points out, the increase in the number of tropical storms forming off the coast of Africa may indeed be part of a natural decadal shift; but the fact that those storms travel as far as they do, hold together as well as they do, and increase into well formed and intense hurricanes are all influenced by the fact that the ocean temperature has been rising. It only takes a difference as small as a few degrees to affect the strength and intensity of a tropical storm. Indeed, whether they hold together at all and develop well-formed eyes, which allow them to strengthen into hurricanes, is determined by the temperature of the water. In cold waters, tropical storms fall apart.

It turns out that the majority of scientific opinion may be that global warming is playing a role in the increase in the number of severe hurricanes affecting the U.S. But those scientists working at NOAA who might hold this opinion are being discouraged from speaking to the media about it. NOAA, like all federal agencies, has a policy that all their staff experts must clear statements with their public affairs department before going to the press. And the public affairs departments at most federal agencies are staffed by political appointees. So, the only scientists being encouraged to discuss global warming and its influence on the active storm seasons we’ve been suffering are those whose opinions may actually be in the minority and even outside the mainstream. They don't necessarily represent good science. They may simply be representative of this administration's political policy.

None of this surprises me. I’ve said before that it appears counterintuitive to dismiss global warming as a factor when the storm activity has gone off the charts. Come on, there have been so many Atlantic storms that NOAA ran through the entire alphabet and then started using the Greek alphabet and then simply ran out of letters. Never in my memory has that happened before. And I’m over 50 and track Atlantic storms as a hobby.

And we’ve been getting more “storms of the century” than there have been years in the century. You can’t have a storm of the century in the summer, then a blizzard of the century in the winter practically every year and still call them all “storms of the century.”

Global warming is here. We’re feeling its devastating effects right now. How much more proof do you need than the reality on the ground that you can see with your own eyes?

The problem is that the Bush administration is the most fact-phobic crowd ever to have misgoverned our nation in a century. They’ve been outed by disgruntled NOAA scientists and EPA scientists both. And so has a gullible media that never seems to question the lies these guys put out until after it’s too late.

Buy Danish

No, I don't mean the pastries - although of course you can buy those too. I'm talking about products from the country of Denmark. Most of the Arab world is now boycotting Danish goods because of the controversial cartoons by a Danish cartoonist, which have led to protests, riots, and threats of violence across the Muslim world. There's a great discussion of this over at Andrew Sullivan's blog. In addition, here's a link to a list of goods from Denmark that you can buy, provided by Sullivan. And here's a good discussion on it at Beliefnet.

Yeah, it's about freedom of speech, and the whole Western world seems to be going crazy, falling all over themselves to deny that. Are they that afraid of Islamist terror?

So, buy some Danish cheese, rent a copy of Last Temptation of Christ, and read a BC comic. Be an equal opportunity offender - but support free speech.

Tim Kaine Leads The Way

The other night Tim Kaine became a national figure whose true significance has yet to be completely understood. He is the newly elected governor of Virginia, who gave the Democratic response to Bush’s state of the union address. However, his superb performance on national television isn’t the only reason he has been stirring so much buzz in the media and in the blogosphere.

It’s his religion.

Kaine has been heralded by pundits for being a member of the new breed of Southern Democrats, who are unafraid of standing up for their religious convictions and pushing their party to the right on social and cultural issues. It’s a great media line. Only it’s not quite true.

Make no mistake about it, Tim Kaine is very much a man of deep religious commitment, but his faith and his approach to politics and religion are very different from that of some others who are competing with conservative Republicans to win back the South and rural Midwest. And it’s important to look at the very pronounced way that he is different.

To begin, you need to see how two other Southern politicians are using religion to win voters.

In a January 27, 2007 New York Times story, “Democrats in 2 Southern States Push Bills on Bible Study,” David D. Kirkpatrick writes about two Democrats, from different Southern states, who both support bills that would authorize their school districts to begin teaching from the textbook “The Bible and Its Influence.”

The non-partisan and ecumenical Bible Literacy Project produces the textbook, which simply provides a survey of the Bible’s influence on Western history, literature and art. It’s tone, according to Kirkpatrick’s article, is “academic and detached.” In other words, any course using this particular textbook should simply be a dispassionate look at the Bible’s role in Western history and not a tool to evangelize non-Christian students or make them feel uncomfortable and left out.

In fact, it could be argued that it would be difficult for any student to comprehend much of Western history without understanding the influence of the Bible and religion. How else could you grasp the cause of the conflicts and controversies of Europe from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment? After all, how do you explain the rise of the burghers, the decline of the aristocracy, the beginning of democracy, and the defeat of the monarchies without understanding Martin Luther’s religious objections to the practices of the Catholic Church of his time and the Protestant rebellions that followed from it? How do you comprehend the significance of the Reformation and Counter Reformation, or the Renaissance and Age of Reason without understanding the role religion played in European culture? How could you even appreciate the majority of Western art without knowing its religious context? So, a course on the influence of the Bible on Western civilization is not an irrational idea if you want to understand Western history, culture and art.

But it is easy to be suspicious that a dispassionate understanding of history is not the real goal of many of those supporting bible courses in public schools. For some, the motivation is mostly pragmatic politics. It’s tough enough to be a Democrat in Georgia or Alabama right now. So, Kasim Reed, a Georgia state Democrat from Atlanta is proposing the new course in Atlanta’s public schools.

This is a change of direction for Democrats, who only a few years earlier opposed a Republican proposal to authorize the teaching of a different bible course in public schools. Without knowing exactly what the difference is between the two courses, it’s difficult to fault the Democrats for inconsistency. There could, after all, be a very legitimate reason for their opposition to the earlier bible course. The difference is whether it had a hidden agenda to proselytize a specific religious faith.

On the other hand, in Alabama, Ken Guin, a state representative from Carbon Hill, is supporting a bill specifically for the purpose of furthering just such a religious agenda. Since Alabama is a deeply religious state where the governor once sang “Give Me That Old Time Religion” at campaign stops, Guin and his fellow Democrats are making no bones about their agenda, which is exactly the same as the Republicans’ game plan. They support prayer in the public school and are happy to aggressively run away from the national Democratic Party on that issue.

Meanwhile, Indiana Democratic legislators are among the leaders of a bi-partisan effort to preserve opening their daily legislative sessions with specifically – and aggressively – Christian prayer in the statehouse. Again, the point is to very visibly favor one religion over others, and also to run away from what Democratic activists on the national level consider one of their core values: secularism.

But does a candidate really have to choose between secularism and an aggressive form of religion that leaves out those of differing – often minority – religions or no religion?

Perhaps not. And here is where Tim Kaine is proving to be a real leader, not just among Southern Democrats. His way should be a model for the national Democratic Party. He is demonstrating exactly the way that those Democrats who are genuinely, and often deeply, religious should incorporate their faith into their politics, in a manner that is not divisive and that does not exclude those who don’t share their religion.

Those, like Tim Kaine, who speak from a place of respect for others’ religious and cultural differences strengthen America. On the other hand, those Democratic politicians, like the ones in Indiana, Georgia, and Alabama, and like their Republican compatriots, who would trample over the religious rights of the minority, weaken the country and cheapen their own religion.

Which Side Are You On, Again?

Ok, ok, so I used this title once already. And yes I know I’m not being very original. Does deep depression over the Supremes matter?

But I’m angry too.

I’m not angry with Democrats who crossed party lines to vote to confirm Alito though. If a Democratic senator is from a conservative state, represents a large constituency of pro-life voters, and won by presenting himself as a fellow conservative right to lifer, I don’t have a quarrel with that senator voting in favor of Alito. He voted his conscience and, indeed, represented the will of the people of his state, exactly as he was supposed to do. That senator put principle before party. And probably put country and constituents before partisan politics too. And that’s also what he is supposed to do.

But what about the so-called moderate Republicans who always run as pro-choice centrists because that is what their constituents are?

Why do liberals always go off on a tear at conservative Democrats in the South and Midwest but give a bye to the moderate Republicans in the Northeast? At least the conservative Southerners are being consistent and honest.

On the other hand, why is the national Democratic Party so eager to recruit more religiously conservative Democrats in areas like Alabama and Kansas instead of targeting moderate and liberal Republicans in Pennsylvania and Maine? Have we learned nothing from our humiliating experience of betrayal by Zell Miller? Do we need to encourage more Millers and invite even worse national embarrassment and treachery?

Listen up folks. I know that we need conservative Democrats if we are ever going to recapture the leadership in the House and Senate. And I’ve always counseled that local politicians need to be able to run their local races in ways that are winnable. And yes the Democratic Party needs diversity of opinion. But that doesn’t mean that we need to have a strategy, at the national level, to give those social conservatives prominence over liberals in the national party. If they need to run away from the national ticket to win locally, let them. But the national party should maintain its core Democratic principles. And yes it should stop trampling over the feelings of its base. Those are the ones who walk through fire for a candidate, and go knocking door-to-door for him in sub-zero weather in Iowa and New Hampshire.

The RNC doesn’t really love Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, and even Arlen Spector and a host of other Northeastern moderates. But they know they need them because a Tom DeLay wouldn’t win in New York, New Jersey, Maine or Vermont. In the same way, Barney Frank, Ted Kennedy, or even Lincoln Chafee (yeah, he’s the one Republican with balls and a conscience to boot) couldn’t win in Texas or Mississippi or Alabama.

However, instead of focusing all our resources on the ridiculous ambition to take back the South or the rural Midwest, how about conceding that those are not, in fact, our natural constituents? Instead, why not try to pick up seats by challenging the Republicans who are posing as moderates in the Northeast or California? Those are places where we could be far more competitive than in the South without twisting our principles into a pretzel.

Right now if I were a woman in Maine or New Hampshire and I had voted for either Snowe or Collins, I’d be feeling mighty betrayed. I might even be looking for a new candidate in the next election. Somebody I could trust to put their principles, their constituents and their country above partisan loyalty. That’s what a true patriot does.

Oh, and I’d even be asking, if I were that Northeastern moderate and pro-choice Republican voter, whatever happened to that big tent that was so prominently displayed during election time? Looks like when the going gets tough, the moderate Republicans in the Senate just fold it up and cave in.

Big thank you to Lincoln Chafee. You deserve to get re-elected. Democrats, cross party lines for that man. And Northeastern Republicans, defeat those who failed to represent you well.

Ransacking the American Dream

Today’s New York Times carries this article, by Eduordo Porter, that gives the following reason that the Labor Movement has been weakened so much over the past half century. Porter claims it's because Big Labor is a victim of its own success. According to his theory, because unions have driven up workers’ wages and benefits packages in whole industries, they are no longer competitive in a global market where trade liberalization has replaced protectionist policies.

Because industries, such as the U.S. auto industry, can no longer compete efficiently in the global marketplace, the percentage of higher wage union jobs is decreasing as the Big Three automakers lose market share to leaner, meaner non-unionized competitors from overseas. And even from non-union carmakers in this country.

Porter suggests, though, that there are areas where unions can grow, such as the public sector because the government has no competition and therefore doesn’t have to worry about higher wages leading to shrinking profits and lost market share. Another industry that wouldn't face competition and pressure from overseas markets is the hospital industry, which means that unions can hope to experience growth there.

And Eduordo Porter ends with the one suggestion that I actually approve of. He suggests that unions take on one large, extremely successful retail giant that already has eliminated virtually all its competition and so isn’t as vulnerable to lost market share. Yeah, he’s saying organize Wal Mart.

Which, by the way, the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) actually is attempting to do. They are already throwing all their resources into the effort to stem the race to the bottom of the wage and benefits barrel by organizing the worst offender. And that is, indeed, Wal Mart.

There are, however, gaps in Porter's logic in this piece. First of all, as much as the U.S. auto industry would like to blame the high price of labor for all its economic woes, that’s only part of the story. The larger reason for its loss of market share is because it has insisted on continuing to push gas-guzzling SUVs while the price of oil has soared. As Jon Stewart cracked on his television show the other night, “What the hell did they expect to happened?”

The Big Three lost market share to foreign cars because they haven’t had an original idea in years. And they ignored reality on the ground. While they induced buyers with zero-interest rate payment plans and huge slashes in prices, foreign carmakers were building hybrids that earned consumers tax breaks and easy access to express car lanes for rush hour commutes. And lower gas prices. So when the price of a barrel of crude oil began hitting $70, which car would you care to guess the consumer purchased? That has as much to do with loss of market share and loss of profit as the alleged millstone around the U.S. auto industry's neck from high priced labor.

The same lack of ability to be competitive because of a poor business model and the inability to give customers the quality of product and service that the competition provides is more to blame for other industries' failures as well.

However, there’s an even bigger question as to how uncompetitive decent wages actually make a company. Most corporations have been reporting record profits except in a few genuinely ailing industries, such as the airline industry. And even there, the lack of quality service and the exorbitant salaries squandered on ineffective CEOs and top executives is as much to blame as for their business failure as high wages and generous pension plans for their workers. After all, one of the most consistently successful airlines has excellent relations with their unions. That would be Southwest, which manages to provide a generous package to employees and still make a profit because people actually enjoy flying with them.

But the high salaries and exorbitant benefits packages and perks paid to CEOs, top corporate executives, and managers can't be ignored as a source of loss of profit share. Those salaries, especially in companies that aren't in financial health, definitely eat into profits every bit as much as generous pensions for ordinary workers. Yet, you virtually never hear a business writer, let alone a corporate board of directors, suggest that maybe a CEO is being paid too much, even when the company is going belly up. Everybody expects accountability from the guy who turns the screw in the widget for $20 an hour. But who holds the executive who makes millions of dollars a year for screwing up and driving the company into bankruptcy?

In fact, as this article, also in today’s New York Times, points out, wealth has increased by as much as almost 54 percent for the nation’s wealthiest 1 percent, who own over 57 percent of corporate wealth. Meanwhile, for every group below that 1 percent, it has decreased. And for the poorest fifth, it has decreased by 57 percent. Americans should be worried about the growing disparity between the wealthiest 1 percent and everybody else. We are losing our middle-class and turning into a nation governed by a tiny aristocracy with a vast class of poor people under them. That can lead not just to economic but also political instability over time.

It's also immoral. In fact, it's the ransacking of the American Dream. Is that the legacy we want to leave to our children?

Which Side Are You On?

It looks like Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito will be confirmed. For better or worse – and yes I do think it’s for worse – the Republicans have the votes. Without a Democratic filibuster Alito will glide by. Even if every Democratic senator votes against him, he will make it. Just do the math. There are 55 Republican votes.

And not every Democrat will vote against him. Ben Nelson, for one, will probably vote with the Republicans on this one. To be sure, a Republican or two, one of the moderates from the Northeast, will cross party lines too. Most likely Lincoln Chaffee. But I expect most of them will hew to the party line. Republicans have that kind of discipline, after all.

I’m not happy with this. There’s no way to put a smiley face or false optimism on it. Sam Alito will tilt the Supreme Court as far to the right as it’s been in my lifetime. This means that the rights of women, minorities, the disabled, prisoners – especially in death penalty cases - and those concerned about the tilt of the balance of power in the executive branch will all take a hit. Unlike some of my more liberal colleagues, I don’t think it’s the end of the Republic as we know it. But it will mean fighting the same battles that we thought we had won in the thirties, forties, fifties and sixties all over again. It’s a major setback, no question about it.

However, it’s also an opportunity.

This is one more chance for Democrats to define themselves and their core values and to contrast themselves with Republicans. And it could resonate across the country.

The true nature of the Republican Party has never been clearer. It’s the party of special interests, cronyism, and the defender of the wealthy at the expense of the middle class and the poor. The Republicans’ draconian budget cuts for programs that benefit ordinary people, their insistence on still more tax cuts for their wealthy benefactors, the Jack Abramoff/Tom Delay “pay to play” lobbying scandal just now making its way into the national consciousness beyond the Beltway, are all throwing into sharp relief where their values really lie.

And Democratic senators should not be afraid to stand up and vocally oppose Alito’s nomination. Although his nomination will be voted out of committee by next week, the next step is a full Senate vote. Democrats should not filibuster. He deserves an up or down vote. But that doesn’t mean that Democrats have to rubber stamp the Republican President’s choice. The role of the Senate is to advise and consent. And that means the Democrats in the Senate are well within their constitutional right to advise “no” and to refuse their consent to this nominee.

The main thing, however, is to have the debate and to explain why they oppose Alito. And at the same time, it’s to explain what they stand for instead. Simple opposition to a candidate isn’t enough. Democrats need to present an alternative vision of what traits and values they’d rather see in a Supreme Court nominee.

Of course, the only people who will be listening to a debate on a Supreme Court nomination are the base. But that’s not a small thing. These are the kinds of issues where you need to stay loyal to your base. The base, after all, are the people who will walk through fire for you. Or, at least, get out and knock on doors for you on a cold, snowy day in New Hampshire and Iowa.

Indeed, politics is the art of satisfying the base while also moving out to embrace the moderates and independents. It’s a delicate balancing act and the Republicans have mastered it far better than Democrats have.

Their base is no less extreme or radical than ours. In fact, at its fringes it’s far more radical. The Democratic left doesn’t even have an equivalent in terms of sheer craziness to the Pat Robertson/James Dobson followers. The organized groups of anarchists on college campuses who show up to protest G-7 meetings don’t participate in Democratic Party politics. They’ve written off the two party system.

However no matter how extreme their rightwing appears, it is more disciplined than even our more moderate leftwing. Sam Alito is the victory they’ve been working toward for years and through at least three Republican presidents. They have mostly held their fire, sucked it in and supported presidents who have alternately ignored them and picked more moderate nominees such as David Souder, who have greatly disappointed them, and championed the Robert Borks only to see them lose in Senate confirmations.

This was the year, though, that their base drew their line in the sand and said no more. This was the victory that they had worked so hard for through all these years and Republican Administrations, and they would not be denied. This was also probably their last shot at finally getting that victory. After Bush’s term ends, they have no guarantee that they will get anybody as conservative as him again or even another Republican who identifies as much as one of them, that is a self-proclaimed born again Christian, again. If to the victor go the spoils, this was their last shot at the spoils that they had worked for so long and so hard.

If hard work, discipline and loyalty make one deserving of a victory, regardless of their nominee’s actual worthiness, they deserve it. They’ve earned it.

When we win, we’ll deserve it too.

And that’s where this becomes an opportunity. Not to block this nomination, no matter how appalling it actually is. Yeah, I’m pretty appalled by it too.

But the opportunity is to use it as the jumping off point for a debate on the direction of our nation. Sometimes, you gotta use tough love. That is, as hard as it is, you have to let people make the mistake and live with the consequences. The thing is to point out why Alito is a bad choice and then every time he tilts the Supreme Court in the wrong direction and it erodes another liberty that we as a nation take for granted, to point it out again. And again, and again. It’s the consequence of voting for somebody as extreme and radical and ideological as George Bush is.

Another thing, to go back to satisfying one’s base. The Democratic Party has spent far too much time losing it’s core values in trying to satisfy conservative Southerners and Midwestern rural voters who will never be our base or our constituency while ignoring Northeasterners who are.

There are many Republicans who win in so-called moderate to socially liberal northern parts of the country – starting with the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Arlen Spector, who have been given a bye for far too long. What about the Spectors, the Susan Collinses, and the Olympia Snowes? These so called moderates win in Northern states specifically by running as pro-choice Republicans. It’s their base, their voters who now need to look at how deeply conservative Sam Alito is and challenge those moderate Republican senators who vote for his confirmation. There’s an old union song with the refrain, “which side are you on.”

“Which side are you on?” is a fair question to ask these moderates. I am angrier with them than I am with Ben Nelson, Nebraska’s Democratic senator. Although the media persists in calling him a moderate, Nelson’s no moderate. He’s a conservative Democrat. That’s what he ran as. That’s what his constituents elected. If he is representing them, I have no quarrel with his crossing party lines to vote his conscience. He is who he is. He also is who he told the voters of Nebraska he is.

But exactly who are the moderate Republicans who told their voters in New England, New York and Pennsylvania that they were pro-choice? If a conservative Democrat can follow his conscience and break rank with his party, why can’t they? What is more important to them, party loyalty or loyalty to America and to their own vision of where America should go?

It’s a question Democrats have to ask in elections in those states. Because another way to take back the leadership in the Senate and the House is to win back seats from moderate Republicans in liberal and swing states. Instead of concentrating only on supporting conservative Democrats down South, as we’ve been doing, our strategy should also be to challenge so-called liberal Republicans up North. To me, that’s a better, more comfortable fit because many of their voters actually already have core Democratic Party values. Perhaps it would be more productive for us to point that out to them by running stronger candidates and giving more Democratic money to those challenges. And to point out that when the chips are down, no matter what those moderate Republicans say about being pro-choice, they have sold their more liberal constituents down the river.

Just a thought on the eve of a sad day in our history.

Requiem for Marion Fernand

It's been a long time since I've posted here. Well over a month, in fact. And a lot has happened in that time.

Since Thanksgiving, I have spent a lot of time shuttling back and forth between Northern Virginia and Fort Lauderdale, where my parents live. Where one still lives.

After a bittersweet visit at Thanksgiving, when I saw my mother visibly growing more frail by the day, I returned home only to find out that a week later she had contracted pneumonia. At that time, my husband and I just had a gut feeling that she was not going to recover from this.

I have never been a pessimist. Less so my husband. And it would always be a mistake to count my mom out. She had more heart and more fight than anybody I have ever known and had recovered from more adversity than many. But I had seen this situation happen to the elderly parents of other friends. Indeed, as this unfolded it reminded me so much of the mother of one of my husband's best friends who had similarly passed away from pneumonia. Husband and I both knew that it was usually pneumonia or another secondary opportunistic infection rather than the original disease that kills.

And so it was with my mom. She was hospitalized in early December. I went down to Florida to see her in the hospital. At that time, my father too had caught pneumonia. He had been caring for her since her stroke in May. That had entailed 24/7 care with the help of a home health care aide who came for only a few hours daily. The bulk of the responsibility had fallen on my 92 year old father. Sometimes he was getting up eight times a night to help my mother. And the strain finally caught up with him.

One night, while I was in Florida, I was on the phone with my husband and I began to cry, "I knew when I came down that I might be losing my mother but I think - I'm afraid - I may be losing my father too."

Fortunately, his infection was caught very early and a strong antibiotic cured it. Other than exhaustion, there was no underlying cause for his pneumonia. But my mom's health problems were simply beyond mere medication. In her case, the pneumonia was just one more deadly complication in a host of problems including the linger effects of the stroke and congestive heart failure.

While I was down there, my father and I placed my mom in hospice care. It was the best decision we both ever made and I cannot say enough good things about this wonderful organization. At some point, I will write more about them. Helping others to know about the incredibly compassionate work that they do is the very least that I can do to repay their excellent care of my mom in her final days.

On Saturday, December 17, 2005, at 3:30 in the morning, I received a phone call from hospice that my mom had passed away peacefully in her sleep.

I was scheduled to return to Florida to be with her only two days later. But she could no longer hang on. She was just two weeks shy of her 91st birthday.

My mom will be missed by the many people whose lives she impacted. I shall miss her for the rest of my life.

Rest in peace, Marion Fernand. You have lived your life well and faithfully. And you will remain in the memory and hearts of those you have left behind.

Short Takes

I am writing from on the road. So, I'm just going to post some links with a few comments.

First of all, this piece, from The New York Times, on Judge Samuel Alito. If ever there was a nomination that Senate Democrats should filibuster - yes even if it does draw down the "nuclear option", this is the one. As most of my readers may remember, I urged caution on Justice Roberts' nomination. Although he was a Conservative, he was well-qualified, moderate in temperment and there just wasn't anything so beyond the mainstream that justified all out warfare. And he was replacing another judge who was just as conservative as he was.

That's not true with Sam Alito. He would be replacing a centrist who was often the swing vote on a divided court. Also, Alito's whole record - and unlike Roberts, he has a long paper trail - is one that has favored a corporate status quo over the interests of women and minorities. His decisions make it harder to prove discrimination and make it easier for schools, businesses and even the government to discriminate. He has voted for decisions that lessen the rights of ordinary employees and strengthened business privilege at their expense. And he has sided with police even when some of their activities have violated suspects' rights. And what's more, many of Alito's decisions have been overturned by higher courts, including the Supreme Court.

And now, it turns out that he was involved with an ultra-conservative alumni group at Princeton University, the Concerned Alumni, that openly opposed Princeton's affirmative action program while, at the same time, defending favored treatment of legacy students. Concerned Alumni also defended snobbish eating clubs and other Princeton institutions that encouraged snobbery and segregation.

Samuel Alito is not a man who should serve on the Supreme Court. Period. If the Democrats don't oppose him, it's going to be hard for them to convince anybody that they stand for anything. However, opposition cannot, just cannot simply be based on his position on Roe v. Wade. That's what the media wants to make it about. That's what Republicans hope the debate turns on. But it has to be based on an across the board opposition to all of this man's stands. And it must be a carefully laid out debate on why those views hurt ordinary people from all walks of life.

And while we're on the topic of policies that hurt people from all walks of life, let's get to why academic economists are so reluctant to serve the Bush Administration This article, also from the NY Times, describes how many of Academia's most respected and highly credentialed economists just don't want to be part of this administration. Although the article doesn't come out and say it directly, it could be for the same reason that many scientists are so reluctant to leave professorships at prestigious institutions to come work in Washington, DC. This administration practices junk science, junk intelligence and junk economics. It's never about the facts or about respecting what these disciplines can actually teach us. It's all about defending the ideology of the base. And that is impacting important policy decisions from addressing the problem of global warming to fixing Social Security for future generations (and no, the President's privatization plan wasn't a fix, it was gift to Wall Street)

What Did They Know and When Did They Know It?

Former Senator Bob Graham, who was chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has disputed the Bush Administration's claim that over 100 senators had the same intelligence as Bush did when the Senate voted to authorize him to go to war with Iraq.

Basically, Senator Graham calls Bush a liar in this essay from Sunday's Washington Post "Outlook" section.

Here's the money quote:

"As chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, and the run-up to the Iraq war, I probably had as much access to the intelligence on which the war was predicated as any other member of Congress.
I, too, presumed the president was being truthful -- until a series of events undercut that confidence.

In February 2002, after a briefing on the status of the war in Afghanistan, the commanding officer, Gen. Tommy Franks, told me the war was being compromised as specialized personnel and equipment were being shifted from Afghanistan to prepare for the war in Iraq -- a war more than a year away. Even at this early date, the White House was signaling that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was of such urgency that it had priority over the crushing of al Qaeda.

In the early fall of 2002, a joint House-Senate intelligence inquiry committee, which I co-chaired, was in the final stages of its investigation of what happened before Sept. 11. As the unclassified final report of the inquiry documented, several failures of intelligence contributed to the tragedy. But as of October 2002, 13 months later, the administration was resisting initiating any substantial action to understand, much less fix, those problems.

At a meeting of the Senate intelligence committee on Sept. 5, 2002, CIA Director George Tenet was asked what the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) provided as the rationale for a preemptive war in Iraq. An NIE is the product of the entire intelligence community, and its most comprehensive assessment. I was stunned when Tenet said that no NIE had been requested by the White House and none had been prepared. Invoking our rarely used senatorial authority, I directed the completion of an NIE.

Tenet objected, saying that his people were too committed to other assignments to analyze Saddam Hussein's capabilities and will to use chemical, biological and possibly nuclear weapons. We insisted, and three weeks later the community produced a classified NIE.

There were troubling aspects to this 90-page document. While slanted toward the conclusion that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction stored or produced at 550 sites, it contained vigorous dissents on key parts of the information, especially by the departments of State and Energy. Particular skepticism was raised about aluminum tubes that were offered as evidence Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. As to Hussein's will to use whatever weapons he might have, the estimate indicated he would not do so unless he was first attacked.

Under questioning, Tenet added that the information in the NIE had not been independently verified by an operative responsible to the United States. In fact, no such person was inside Iraq. Most of the alleged intelligence came from Iraqi exiles or third countries, all of which had an interest in the United States' removing Hussein, by force if necessary."

The thing about Bob Graham is that he once considered a run for president back in the 90s and was mentioned for vice president in 2000. The press at the time, and many voters, thought there was something strange and obsessive about the fact that he kept these extremely detailed diaries. I mean, he'd record what he ate for breakfast, what he said to his wife, Adele, and when. It made the public sort of queasy, became the object of jokes, and pretty much killed off Graham's presidential and vice presidential aspirations.

But the thing about those diaries and Bob Graham's obsessive nature is that if he claimed he had a conversation with Tommy Franks or asked George Tenet about something, it's bound to be absolutely accurate. Unless you're prepared to call him a liar, and Graham also has a spotless record of honesty. But you cannot accuse him of not remembering what happened. Because, everything Bob Graham ever did he recorded in those weird little diaries of his. And he's known for it. If Bob Graham said that Tommy Franks said the war effort in Afghanistan was being compromised back in February 2002, by God, he told it to Sen. Graham in February 2002. You can take that to the bank.

Bob Graham was also one of the few senators who did not vote to invade Iraq. In fact, he made a second brief run for the presidency largely just to oppose Bush's war effort. Although he doesn't go into this in the above article, he implied, during that brief run in 2004, that Iraq was not only not a security threat to us, but another country likely was. Citing the fact that he had access to classified material and therefore couldn't discuss it without compromising his security clearance and possibily going to jail, he refused to discuss the details or to name the country. But it was generally believed that he was referring to Saudi Arabia.

Given that several prominent Saudis, including the wife of Prince Bandahar, were caught red handed donating money to charities that were known as fronts for terrorist organizations and that so many of the hijackers and members of al Qaeda were Saudi citizens, this was not a leap. Also, much of the money that funded the Islamic religious schools around the world that served as recruitment centers for the terrorists came from Saudis as did the clerics who taught in those schools. In fact, even the religious ideology that fuels the terrorist cause comes from Wahhabiism, an extreme and puritanical brand of Islam founded and practiced almost exclusively in Saudi Arabia.

Yet in a breathtaking game of political three card monte, the Bush administration managed to divert us from going after Osama bin Laden or the Taliban in Afghanistan and kept our attention off the genuine threat of extremism and terrorism coming from Saudi Arabia. The truth is we will never win the war against terrorism until we go to its spiritual home, which is precisely Saudi Arabia. Something Bob Graham can't come out and say, but which he tried so hard make us aware of indirectly in the 2004 primaries. And something that we will never be able to do as long as all of our money, our men and women and our resources are going into Iraq, which was never a threat until we got there. Now it is one more danger. If we pull out now, yes it could well be overrun by terrorists who will launch attacks from there. But that wasn't the situation we went in there to fix. It's the one we created when there was no threat.

This is not the blame game. Many defenders of the Bush administration want you to think that rehashing the past is useless and that we've got to concentrate on what to do now. But that's bogus.

As has been quoted before, those who don't remember the past are doomed to recreate it. It is important to know what went wrong. And the main reason this administration doesn't want us to examine it is because if we do, we'll discover that it wasn't entirely an accidental misreading of botched intelligence but a concerted effort to go after Iraq and to make the facts fit. Paul O'Neill and Richard Clark both told us so in their books in 2004.

We've got to do more than just find a solution to the present problem in Iraq. We do have to know why it happened and who is culpable so that there will be no more Iraqs, just as for many years there were no new Vietnams. We didn't dare bungle into a country and a ten year commitment with no exit strategy because for years we had learned not to. We have to relearn that hard lesson again. So, yes we do need to examine what happened, how it happened and who knew what before it happened. It's called history. It can teach you something.

How The Good Guys Won In Virginia

This is the story I’ve been waiting to write for a month now.

As anybody who reads a newspaper knows, Virginia just elected its second consecutive Democratic governor. And this is one of the most reliably red states around. It handed Bush a 12-point victory state wide in 2004. In fact, the last time Virginia voted Democratic in a presidential election was back in Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 landslide.

However, Virginians gave its present Democratic governor, Mark Warner, high marks for performance. He now enjoys a 70 percent approval rating. And he threw his support and prestige on the line for Tim Kaine, who just became governor-elect on Tuesday. I guess Mark had some political capital and he spent it.

But, here’s the real story in this election.

It’s that Jerry Kilgore, the Republican gubernatorial candidate, ran a series of negative attack ads put together by the same team that crafted and produced the Swift Boat ads against John Kerry, and this time their efforts failed. Not only did they fail, they produced a voter backlash against Kilgore.

The actual ads were visually stunning. The first one showed a young, pretty widow sitting on a stool in a stark setting, talking about her policeman husband, who was murdered in the line of duty. The widow, with her long blond hair and a tear rolling down her cheek, said that the person who took her husband’s life deserved the death penalty and she just didn’t trust Tim Kaine to administer it. Powerful stuff in a state that favors the death penalty and has some of the harshest laws on the books. Virginia carries out more executions than any other state except Texas.

A second ad with the same stark power depicted a father talking about his son and daughter-in-law being murdered and condemned Tim Kaine for working as the defense lawyer for the person accused of the murders. The father ended with a statement that Tim Kaine would even defend Adolph Hitler.

And that’s when the trouble started for Jerry Kilgore. Firstly, although the father who made the statement was himself Jewish, Jewish groups from the B’nai Brith Anti-Defamation League to local synagogue groups decried the Hitler statement. Kilgore defiantly stood by it, stating that it was the father’s own words not his. Still, the ad was condemned for trivializing Hitler’s genocide and for displaying insensitivity to Holocaust victims. You know, all the stuff Republicans complained about when Dick Durbin likened Abu Gharib to Hitler’s concentration camps. It seems that Republicans are so used to operating with a double standard, complaining when they are slandered but feeling free to do worse to their opponents, that it never occurred to them that they’d be called on it by people who said they couldn’t have it both ways and so they too should leave Hitler out of it.

But then it got worse. The newspapers weighed in with editorials faulting the second commercial. As the editorial boards pointed out in newspapers from all over the state, and of varying political stripes, Tim Kaine, in that particular case, was providing pro bono services which all lawyers are required to do. He was assigned this case to fulfill a professional obligation. The newspapers piled on Kilgore because, as an attorney general, nobody should know this better than him.

And then it got even worse. Within a day or two, Tim Kaine responded with his own ad. He looked into the camera, said, “I’m Tim Kaine and I approved this ad (all candidates in Virginia have to “stand by their ad” which is the name of the law requiring them to do so). Kaine further stated that he is indeed against the death penalty because of his religious convictions but, as governor, he would carry out death sentences because “that’s the law in Virginia.”

In this ad, Tim Kaine sat behind a desk and looked straight into the camera when he said these things. The thing of it is that it looked like he was looking you straight in the eye and talking to you from his heart. And it was the most effective ad he ran. It turned around the campaign.

People turned against Kilgore in droves, citing his negative ads. In poll after poll, moderates and independents told pollsters they thought Kilgore had unfairly attacked Tim Kaine for his religious beliefs. They also said they thought Kilgore was dishonest and would say anything to get elected. And even where they disagreed with Kaine, they found him likeable and honest.

Many pundits are now writing that negative ads did not work and that they turned off voters. But that’s only partly true.

As Bush and others have proved many times over, negative ads can work powerfully. They can deliver an election to a candidate. But if the candidate using a negative ad is discovered to have lied, it can backfire powerfully too and that’s what happened here.

Once voters discerned that Kilgore had distorted Kaine’s record, they never trusted him again.

Compare this to what happened to John Kerry when he was faced with the Swift Boat ads. The reason they worked so well was because Kerry never stood in front of the camera and looked his audience in the eye and called his accusers liars. He never said, "This is not true; here are my Bronze Star, my Medal of Honor, my Purple Heart, and my Silver Star. Here is my official record."

Of course, newspapers eventually pointed all this out. But if Kerry would have stood up with quiet dignity and told the truth and called the liars on their fabrications, the effect would have deflated the accusations like a defective balloon leaking hot air.

The public does not want negative and dishonest attack ads. But it will listen to them, believe them, and be influenced by them unless the victim of the ad stands up and defends himself. And the most powerful defense, as Tim Kaine taught us, is truth. He stood up, looked straight into the TV camera, told his story, and challenged Kilgore’s lies. And that is always how the good guys win elections.

Democrats Grow a Back Bone

Here's a delightful piece from the Washington Post. It seems that Harry Reid and the Democrats closed the Senate for about an hour or two today, invoking a rarely used Rule 21, to demand that Senate Republicans take some responsibility for governmental oversight by investigating the Adminsitration's use of intelligence in taking us into war with Iraq.

Read this account and enjoy. Listen, any time you can get a Republican mad at you and disrupt their power grabs in Congress, it's a good day.

Really.

Let the Debate Begin

This brief look at the highlights of some of Judge Samuel Alito's decisions, from today's Washington Post, presents a troubling picture. Firstly, Judge Alito's dissents from his colleagues on the 3rd Circuit of the Federal Appeals Court have always been to take the most conservative view (admittedly, the 3rd Circuit is probably the among the most liberal in the nation). In addition, the pattern of his opinions illustrates a legal mind that usually sides against the interests of ordinary men and women in ways that constrict their rights and narrow their lives. In decisions involving death penalty appeals, the Family Medical Leave Act, abortion rights, the right of religious minorities, Judge Alito usually sides with those who would limit civil liberties, the right to privacy, separation of church and state and even the right of those accused of crimes to a vigorous defense when their very lives are at stake.

And George Will opines in this Washington Post column that liberals are in an untenable position in trying to stop Alito's nomination. According Will, they will be unable to counter the conservative wing's principled argument in favor of a strict constructionist approach to interpreting law. Will seems think that the liberals' only arguments are that it's unfair to pick a conservative like Alito to replace a moderate like O'Connor or simply that they wouldn't like the outcome of his decisions. And Will is right that the arguments he cites would be specious debating points at that.

However, he fails to consider that there is a very good argument that the Democrats can make, based every bit as much on judicial principle as any conservative argument.

A credible dissent can be made that there are other approaches to interpretation of the law that have nothing to do with attaining a preferred political outcome at any cost of principle. Democrats and liberals can counter the conservatives by stating that the Constitution is a living document that is meant to be interpreted in light of 21st Century realities which our founding fathers might never have considered. Also, too strict an emphasis on a literal interpretation can actually constrict even the intended meaning of those founding fathers. For example, you can argue, as conservatives have tried, that there is no right to individual privacy, laudable as such a right might be, guaranteed in the Constitution because there is no specific language in that document stating it clearly. However, a cursory understanding of the our founding fathers, the historical context in which they operated, and their other writings would convince others, less literal minded, that the intention of a right to privacy is indeed presumred throughout the Constitution, especially in the Bill of Rights.

Taking a more expansive view of interpretation of the law is both a legitimate and principledview that can be argued successfully.

And one thing I do agree with George Will about is that it is indeed time this country had that argument. Debating how we view the Constitution and how we interpret it, in light of the 21st Century, is long overdue. I join him in saying "let the debate begin."

We are not afraid of it.

Bring It On

The classic definition of chutzpah is the person who kills his parents and then throws himself on the mercy of the courts because he's an orphan.

But soon there'll be a new definition of chutzpah: the conservative Republican who derails Harriet Miers' Supreme Court nomination and then insists that the Democrats owe Bush's second nominee, Samuel Alito, an up or down vote and threatens them with the so-called nuclear option over it. Yeah, you gotta love 'em.

The Republicans have always been an interesting study in double standard politics. They're for states' rights, except when Oregon voted for an assisted suicide law. Then they wanted to federalize the issue to strike down the decision of Oregon voters. Likewise, they were for the rights of the state except when state judges upheld Michael Schiavo's right to terminate his wife's life support or when a state makes abortion easier. In other words, they're for states' rights until any individual state comes into conflict with their wacky rightwing social agenda. Just as they are for limiting government, except when it comes to a woman's right to choice or a gay couple's right to have the same legal protections as hetrosexual married people do. In fact, whenever it comes to an individual's right to privacy, the right suddenly discovers how valuable big government is. It's only their buddies in large corporations who need protection from big intrusive government, the better to price gouge and rack up obscene profits while underpaying workers and gutting pensions.

But the the conservatives' social agenda and their need to tell everybody else how to live their lives always trumps the Bill of Rights and the privacy of the individual.

Only not this time.

I don't think the Republicans can claim with a straight face that Democrats have an obligation to give Justice Alito an up or down vote. Not after the way they behaved when they felt that Harriet Miers was not ideologically pure enough for them.

To be sure, they stood on principle. And I applauded them for it.

But they also opened the door for others to do the same. And they simply can't close it again.

If Harriet Miers wasn't good enough for them because they weren't assured that she'd oppose a woman's right to choice (even though the White House did give assurances that she was pro-life), then Democrats have a right to push back and oppose a nominee who is anti-abortion. After all, senators are elected to represent their constitutents. They would be derelict in their duties if they didn't do that. And most of the Democrats in the Senate were elected because they were pro-choice.

In fact, most Americans still do support a woman's right to choose. And even among those who are ambivelent about on-demand abortion, a large majority would oppose restricting the right of a rape or incest victim or a woman whose life and health were at risk from obtaining an abortion. So it's perfectly fair to argue that Alito and his supporters are out of step with mainstream Americans.

Democrats have to make clear that this fight is not about the culture war. It's Republicans who are waging a culture war to force their religious values on everybody else. Democrats who oppose Alito are simply standing up for what they and most Americans believe. Democratic senators must cast themselves as fighting to defend the rights of the ordinary citizens they represent.

They have to point out that Justice Alito has already made rulings that most Americans wouldn't support. He has ruled that a woman seeking an abortion had to first get her husband's permission, a decision that was struck down by the Supreme Court. He also has ruled against the Family Leave Act, calling it unconsitutional. That too was overturned.

His rulings will affect not only a woman's right to choose but also the rights of workers, minorities, and those seeking justice in the courts from large corporations. He will have the power of life or death decisions in death penalty cases too. He is a hard right ideologue and if the Democrats do not oppose him, even with the filibuster, they are not doing their jobs.

As for the Republicans. Let them invoke the nuclear option. Meanwhile, let's remind people that these were the same people who took up special legislation to interfere with a grieving family's private end-of-life tragedy and intruded where they didn't belong and they are the same people who themselves derailed a Supreme Court nominee because they didn't find her ideologically pure enough. Let them have a temper tantrum that destroys the Senate's comity.

And then let the American people vote in 2006 on whether, like Newt Gingrich and the Republican Congress that shut down the govenrment in 1994, this Republican Administration has gone to far in their extremism.

It's Hard Times at the White House

This has not been the best of weeks for the Bush Administration. In fact, it could be argued that this has been the worst week the White House has experienced in a grueling year of setbacks.

Firstly, the fighting in Iraq is going badly and demonstrators all over the country just observed a gruesome benchmark, the 2,000th casualty of that conflict. The vast majority of Americans no longer support the military effort in Iraq. Furthermore, in poll after poll, they express no confidence in Bush’s handling of the war. Indeed, Bush is still experiencing his worst approval ratings, which now seem to be in a free fall.

And FEMAs dismal handling of various domestic disasters has pushed approval ratings even lower. As has the discovery of how many truly unqualified political appointees now hold high-ranking positions in the government. To Bush, cronyism always trumps actual competence.

And Bush’s latest pick for the Supreme Court only highlighted this. Harriet Miers just withdrew her name under pressure from Bush’s base, to whom he usually caters. Principled conservatives were enraged that the President picked somebody based more on personal friendship than qualifications.

Other Republicans are also in trouble. Tom DeLay and his Texas colleagues have been indicted on charges of money laundering and making illegal donations to Texas campaigns. DeLay’s friend and ally, Jack Abramoff, a well-heeled Washington lobbyist, is facing corruption charges for his work on behalf of an Indian tribe and gambling interests. And even Bill Frist, the Senate Majority Leader, is under a cloud of suspicion pertaining to the timing of when he sold stock in his family’s business and whether he had inside information that caused him to sell it when he did.

And now on top of all these other troubles, Vice President Cheney’s top aide has been indicted for lying to prosecutors, the FBI and the grand jury about whether he outed the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson.

As the indictment makes clear, because of Libby’s alleged lies, the cover up of the actual release of this information was successful. Because he lied, prosecutors can’t discover whether Libby or anybody else in the Administration was responsible for releasing Mrs. Wilson’s identity.

So, although he might be found guilty of perjury, we’ll never know whether Libby also violated federal law and released the identity of a covert CIA agent. Also, we may never know whether Karl Rove, Dick Cheney or anybody else also was responsible for this act.

However, whoever did make this information public was not only guilty of breaking federal law. They also violated the public’s trust. These all are people with the very highest top-secret security clearances. They broke all kinds of vows just to retaliate against a political foe.

In addition, they not only risked the life of a CIA agent, compromised her cover and ruined her career (quite a bit actually), but they also risked the lives of any covert contacts who might have aided her. To my mind, they are guilty, at least morally, of high treason.

Mark Twain once observed that patriotism was the last refuge of a scoundrel. And unfortunately, this White House and the Republican Party have had more than their fair share of genuine scoundrels in places of trust and responsibility. So, if it’s a tough week for the White House, it’s an even harder one for those who entrusted this Administration to do the right thing.

The Winter of Their Discontent

If politics breeds strange bedfellows, then Supreme Court nominations - or at least one specific nomination - seems to be breeding the stangest alliance between liberals and conservatives yet. Both sides hate the nomination of Harriet Miers for pretty much the same reason: nobody knows her views on the important and controversial issues of abortion, homosexual rights, and women's rights. Both sides view her as a stealth candidate and nobody trusts George Bush's judgment anymore.

In the wake of the scandal over cronyism, neither the President's opponents nor his allies trust his choices to be qualified for the positions to which they are nominated. Michael Brown was only the most egregious example of Bush's propensity to pick his pals based more on their loyalty to him than on their competence for their jobs.

Certainly that could be said about Ms. Miers. It's not that people question her basic good intentions or even her intelligence or competence as an attorney. However, she has no judicial experience. And worse than that, she has no experience practicing constitutional law.

A nominee could get by with limited experience on the bench, as John Roberts just did. However, it's more damaging when none of that candidate's practice, even as a lawyer, has been in constitutional law. Chief Justice Roberts, while only serving as a judge for a few years, had an extensive career dealing with constitutional questions, both as part of the Reagan inner circle and in private practice, where he, at least, argued cases before the Supreme Court. It didn't hurt, either, that he once served as Chief Justice William Rehnquist's law clerk.

On the other hand, Harriet Miers was the first woman head of the Texas Bar and she practiced corporate law. Her only qualification for this nomination seems to be her loyalty to the Bush Administration. She just has not had the exposure to constitutional law to qualify to become a Supreme Court judge. This is, after all, a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land.

But the worst thing about this nomination is that the Bush Administration is attempting to persuade its conservative base to embrace this nominee by making the argument that Miers would vote the way they like because of her membership in an Evangelical Christian church. They are using a wink and a nod to reassure their base that she is "one of them."

And most serious conservatives, both within and outside the Evangelical wing of the conservative movement, hate that tactic.

They recognize that basing a nomination on the candidate's personal religion rather than known conservative credentials is a horrible tactic. For years they've argued that a nominee's religion or personal views should be irrelevant. All that should matter is the nominee's judicial philosophy. Serious conservatives are looking for judges who embrace their judicial philosophy of strict constructionism, which means attempting to interpret the Constitution narrowly and by what they believe would be the original intent of the its founders.

Conservatives believe that the right to abortion should not be decided by the courts but by state legislatures. For this reason, they feel that in Roe v Wade, the Supreme Court overstepped its authority. That is the official reason they want to to see Roe overturned. Ok, so in truth, most of them just happen to be pro-life too. But it's the judicial philosophy that they state as their official reason for opposing Roe v Wade, not their personal religious or moral views.

Likewise, much of the affirmative action and other civil rights decisions that came from more liberal courts are opposed by these strict constructionists because they oppose activist courts. They believe those decisions should be made by state legislatures not the federal courts.

These conservatives want the debate. They don't want a stealth candidate who will vote their way without understanding the larger philosophical issues. Like their liberal counterparts, many of these people hold sincere ideals and adhere to an ideology which they want to persuade others to embrace. They believe that their movement will grow stronger if they can have a public discussion, and even a public battle, that airs their ideas to the largest number of voters.

Many of the non-Evangelical conservatives, such as Kate O'Beirne, from the National Review, despite their own pro-life credentials, actually don't want to see litmus tests for the court and think that nominating a candidate based on his or her personal religious views is wildly inappropriate. At least, that's what O'Beirne said last Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press.

Indeed, if a Muslim were nominated and promised that all his decisions would be influenced by the Koran and Shari'a law, most Americans would realize that there is a problem here. Likewise, if an Orthodox Jew were nominated and swore that his allegiance to Torah would be the basis of all his judgments, non-Jews would understandably be concerned.

It is just as worrisome, in a pluralistic society, to reassure people that because HarrietMiers is a devout Christian, she is qualified to sit on the Supreme Court because she will vote their way. That's not what most conservatives want precisely because they realize how quickly such logic could blow up in their faces.

They believe that a strict constructionist, with a good grasp of consitutional law, who would hold to a narrow interpretation of the Constitution, would be sufficient to move their aims forward, including possibly overturning Roe v Wade. They want the same outcome as Miers might want. But they want a judge who can carefully defend it in a well worded opinion based on secular law not religion.

And although I disagree with the conservatives' strict constructionist views, I respect that they are at least willing to make their arguments to a broad swath of Americans based on secular law rather than on religious tradition.

Of course, both secular conservatives and Evangelicals also fear that because they don't know Miers and she has no paper trail of judicial views, she will turn out to be like Justice David Souter.

Justice Souter was nominated by George HW Bush on the recommendation of his Chief of Staff, John Sunnunu, a former governor of New Hampshire who had impeccable conservative credentials. Souter was an unknown entity, but based on Sunnunu's approval, conservatives embraced him. Souter turned out to be one of the most moderate members of the Supreme Court, often voting with the liberals. Conservatives still haven't forgiven Bush I or Sunnunu for that pick.

And they are very afraid that Harriet Myers will turn out to be a "David Souter in drag," as one Evangelical so delicately put it.

Right now, after years of working on behalf of conservative politicians, and when they finally have the ability to get a truly conservative Supreme Court nominee on the bench, instead, the foot soldiers and true believers of the conservative wing of the Republican Party, are being asked to be content with a nominee with no credentials in constitutional law and no known adherence to strict constructionism. Rather than a nominee they can embrace with heads held high, they are being asked to accept a wink and a nod that Harriet Miers will be a good crony who will vote their way on the bench. The sad thing is that after all this time, Bush and Rove just don't get it at all. Real conservatives want the discussion and the debate about their ideals because they still want their movement to go forward in the public square. They don't want a cheap and hollow political victory. They are not hacks.

And they will spend a very cold winter in their season of discontent and betrayal.

Naming Demons

There's a theory in some ancient religions that if you knew the name of a deity or a demon, you could control it and get it to do your will. And, in the case of a demon, you could exorcise it. That same theory was the basis of psychoanalysis. If you could name your personal demons - or in popular psychoanalytical language, if you could recognize the root causes of your neuroses - you could overcome them.

In politics, there is a new demon that is threatening democracy, freedom of thought, and the freedom to buy the books that you want to read. It's time to name this very dangerous demon and start exposing it.

There is no greater danger to America's freedoms right now than the Christian Right. They have been emboldened by the Bush Administration. Because they now believe that one of their own is in power and that they are directly responsible for his victory, the gloves have come off.

From the growing scandal of Evangelicals' coercion of minority students at the Air Force Academy in Colorado to their constant attempts to censor books, this is a dangerous group that is growing bolder by the minute.

Here's an article from lawyer and practicing Wiccan, Phyllis Currott. It was originally posted on Witchvox (The Witch's Voice). And it describes the plight of authors who write about minority religions and whose books are losing shelf space in mainstream bookstores.

To a certain extent, this an economic issue. If a book does not sell, Barnes and Noble, Borders, and other major chains will stop carrying it. And Currott admits this. There's not much of an argument you can make to a business person about their choice of which merchandise to carry as long as that decision is based on market factors. After all, a bookstore, like any shop, is in business to make a profit. And if something genuinely isn't selling, a store owner has got to clear the shelf space for something that his customers will buy.

But a lot of times, businesses are just caving in to the pressure of a very determined and vocal minority and removing items from their shelves that might sell well if given the chance. This is not a business decision. This is buckling under pressure and submitting to mob rule. And that has no place in America.

The thing is, today it's Wiccan books that are being attacked and that are being removed from bookshelves. Whose minority religion book will it be tomorrow? Will it be the Koran? The Torah? Will it be books about Buddhism? And what else will be banned. Most of these Christianist religious fanatics also hate The Catcher In the Rye, The Diary of Anne Frank, and Huckleberry Finn to name just a few beloved classics that they have tried to ban from libraries, schools and bookstores.

So in the future, will Barnes and Noble have as much - or as little - literary selection as your local Wal-Mart?

In honor of National Banned Book Month, which just passed, please think about these things. And I'll have more to say in future posts about the religio-political movement that is behind this new and dangerous phenomenon. It's called Dominionism. And it even has many conservative Christians scared.

And you should be scared silly too. I know I am. I'm scared enough to exorcise that demon from American influence through the ballot box and by letting shopkeepers, advertisers, and the media know how I feel about them when they cave into pressure and deny me my right to buy, read and watch what I like.

Care to join me?