Jim Webb for Senate

He's exactly what the Democratic Party needs to woo back, the Reagan Democrats who deserted our party in droves after the Viet Nam War and at the advent of the culture wars. These were the blue collar and lower middle-class Democrats who thought their party was leaving them behind to join the pot-smoking, wine sipping and quiche and brie eating elites. Ok, so that might be an unfair characterization of what was really happening in the Democratic Party. But when the McGovernites took over, with their anti-war rhetoric and affirmative action stance, it seemed to the blue collar, union member, Roman Catholic ethnic groups that had composed the party as part of the Roosevelt coalition that their party was veering off too far to the left.

In the interests of full disclosure, I was a McGovernite and an anti-war activitist at the time. In fact, I was a small-town local leader of an anti-war group. So, I'm not pointing fingers at anybody but myself here. And by the way, if we had to do it all over, I probably would do much the same thing all over again. Because a lot of what we fought for then, in the historic context of the 60s, 70s and early 80s, were actually the right things to do back then. But they did alienate a lot of blue collar allies who were genuinely concerned about national defense and security, cultural mores, and felt that quotas of any sort were harmful to them.

However, the dawn of the 21st Century has seen a sea change and many once-Reagan Democrats are ready to come home. Jim Webb, former Secretary of the Navy in the Reagan Administration, is running for the Senate in Virginia. His Republican opponent, George Allen, was recently described by Stephen Colbert, on the Colbert report, as "dumb as a doorpost." Trust me, that was a spot on observation. The sitting senator from Virginia is both dumb and divisive. When he was governor of Virginia, he once said of Democrats, "I'd like to shove their soft teeth down their whiny, liberal throats."

This is not a man who is going to bring much needed civility back to Congress. Nor is he likely to provide the oversight this country so desperately needs to the White House.

Jim Webb, on the other hand, describes himself as a moderate who is interested in restoring the Constitutional balance of power to Congress. In addition, as a former Marine hero, who has seen combat, his criticism of the Bush Administration's bungling missteps on national security issues is not mere academic theory. He knows the reality on the ground. For a brief interview with him that appeared in lowkell's diary on the March 14th Daily Kos, go here.

The Culture of Death - It's Not Who You Think!

Below is a quote by Andrew Sullivan from a March 9 post on his Daily Dish blog

"The Party of Death

In the latest New Yorker, Michael Specter has a positively chilling story on how theoconservatives and Christianists have waged a quiet war against some critical vaccines, especially against Human papillomavirus or HPV. A vaccine exists against this virus that would drastically reduce the numbers of cervix cancer cases. The religious right opposes it as a mandatory childhood vaccination, because it removes a disincentive to having sex:

'Religious conservatives are unapologetic; not only do they believe that mass use of an HPV vaccine or the availability of emergency contraception will encourage adolescents to engage in unacceptable sexual behavior; some have even stated that they would feel similarly about an H.I.V. vaccine, if one became available. 'We would have to look at that closely,' Reginald Finger, an evangelical Christian and a former medical adviser to the conservative political organization Focus on the Family, said. 'With any vaccine for H.I.V., disinhibition' - a medical term for the absence of fear - 'would certainly be a factor, and it is something we will have to pay attention to with a great deal of care.' Finger sits on the Centers for Disease Control's Immunization Committee, which makes those recommendations.'

Specter has a Q and A about the article here. These people would rather people die of AIDS and cancer than do anything to "encourage" sexuality. And they have the cojones to call the Democrats the "party of death."

The more you read and hear about the religious right and the Republican Party, the harder it is to believe that Sullivan is wrong.

To be sure, as a gay, HIV positive male, he has a dog in this race. However for me, as a female of, shall we say, "a certain age," I have no dogs or ponies in any of the major "culture war" races. You can stop research into an HIV or human papillomavirus vaccine or ban abortion and it probably wouldn't affect me personally. But that still wouldn't make it moral or right or decent.

The New York Times, today, has two pieces, here and here, on South Dakota's abortion ban. In the editorial, the Times points out that South Dakota's argument that it is in favor of banning all abortion except to save the life of the mother is a lot of bunk. South Dakota shows no such admirable concern for the life, safety or human dignity of the fetus once it is born and is a fully viable infant. Indeed, the state ranks as fourth worst in its care for poor babies, and one county with a large Lakota Native American population is dead last.

The only thing you can actually say about the Christianists, like militant Islamists, is that they are anti-sex. Always were. Always are. And always will be. It's not about saving lives, it's about telling people who don't share their beliefs how to live theirs. And then forcing them to do it.

I sincerely hope that Sullivan is right and that the U.S., at least, is waking up and that there will be blowback for nonsense like this. If the Supreme Court upholds this law, as the Times points out, other states will follow and abortion will no longer be legal, safe and accessible in most of the country. At that point, it will no longer be possible for moderates of either party to weave and bob around the issue. Once the right to a safe abortion is lost, I think it will take center stage again in a way it hasn't for most moderates and independents for a very long time.

The truth is, abortion has only been important to the most partisan and ideological on both sides of the political spectrum. The vast middle has tuned out and concentrated on issues of security, foreign policy, and the economy. They didn't need to refight the cultural wars and were interested in national security and bread and butter issues. As the Times also points out, there was a lot of complacency here. I had one person who has been blithely voting conservative for years because he's a free trader tell me that he didn't think Ronald Reagan (and others) really meant it about outlawing abortion. This person insisted that he just said it to get elected but would never really let it happen.

Might have been true of Reagan. But not so true of our current president, George Bush. Once that right is gone, so will the complacency be. And with his failing record on national security, his one trump card, there may indeed be a backlash against Republicans in general, including the moderates who let this happen. It was their watch too.

Struggling With Faith on the First Sunday of Lent

I don't know if it's the first Sunday in Lent or what, but Andrew Sullivan has some interesting thoughts on Fundamentalism, biblical scholarship and the loss of faith in his blog today. Scroll about half way down, past his post on "Demogogic Democrats" - obviously I'm not going to agree with that - and something else about dogs, to "When Faith Evaborates."

He links to an article in The WashingtonPost about former Evangelical theologian Bart Ehrman whose biblical scholarship took him from fundamentalism to agnoticism. I plan to get Ehrman's new book, "Misquoting Jesus - The Story of Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why."

Sullivan, in his blog, wrestles with the accumulating facts, discrepancies, and contradictions in the Gospels and how to be a believing Christian in the 21st Century in light of what we know today. It's a brave struggle. Like Ehrman, I pretty much lost my faith - if not in a deity, at least, in the God of the Bible, both Old and New Testament. Or to be theologically correct, in the deity of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.

And yet, and yet, atheism leaves too many logical holes to be convincing too. The very same skepticisim that leads me to a critical questioning of the assertions of scripture, leads me to question equally critically the claims of the materialist reductionists.

How do they know that there wasn't some hand in the creation? How did the Big Bang get us from a soup of inorganic material to life? Spontaneous generation as scientific theory has pretty much been dismissed. Life doesn't normally spring from inorganic matter, so how did we get from a bunch of inorganic chemicals to living, breathing humans? To any organic matter? There's a gap there that's not explainable by materialist theory. And there are other gaps in pure materialism. Things that the heart knows, that are intuitive wisdom and that materialism alone just can't account for.

Yet, that doesn't make the Judeo-Christian view of deity particularly satisfying either. Perhaps it requires not an "either-or", but a "both-and solution."

Anyway, for the first Sunday of Lent, and all the Sundays of Lent, remember that the seventh day, besides being the Sabbath, is also the day to fast from fasting. So, have that Chocolate Mousse pie and raise a glass of wine for me.

And if you're ever in the mid-Atlantic area, or anywhere where you can get to hear Celtic music, go see Iona, a wonderful band that I heard tonight at the Old Brogue in Great Falls, Virginia.

Missouri vs the U.S. Constitution

Never mind what's the matter with Kansas. Its neighbor, Missouri, has gone bonkers. According to this report by John Mills of television station KMOV-TV, a CBS affiliate, the Missouri legislature is considering a bill, House Concurrent Resolution 13, to make Christianity the official religion of Missouri.

In addition to naming Christianity the state's official religion, the bill, sponsored by State Representative David Sater of southwestern Missouri, reads that "a greater power exists and only Chistianity receives justified recognition." The bill also would recognize only "the Christian god" and protect the right of the majority to express itself. It would contain no protection for minority religions.

Wow! First of all, what a monument to both intolerance and theological ignorance. Last I looked, monotheistic religions believe there's only one God. The idea that Muslims and Jews recognize a different God than Christians do is breathtaking stupidity that is not supported by the theology of any major branch of mainline Christianity, including the Roman Catholic Church. Most Christians believe that God is revealed most fully through Jesus Christ. Catholicism also believes that it has received the fullness of faith. And while one can certainly argue with those propositions, they don't suggest that the God of Islam or Judaism is in any sense false.

But theology aside, establishing an official state religion goes against (to be repetitive and obvious) the Establishment clause of the Constitution. This one's so cut and dried that even Harriet Miers would have no trouble ruling against it if she were a Supreme Court justice.

Update on What Bush Knew and When

I thought I had put this story to bed with The New York Times articles I had linked to earlier. But I saw this in today's Washington Post and it's an even more devastating account of what this administration knew and when. Not only do they refuse to acknowledge their true responsibility for screwing up in New Orleans, but they have been caught red handed lying through their teeth about it.

You know, I can't help but think that if all those Republican claims that Clinton was impeached not because he had sex with an intern (which after all is not against any law) but for his lying, what will it take to get these fabricators out of office? They aren't lying about a breach of personal conduct but about the performance of their official duties and to cover up the devastating effects of their failure on thousands of peoples' lives. For God's sake, when is enough too much?

Da Vinci Code Lawsuit

The lawsuit brought by the authors of the 1982 bestseller, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, is a ludicrous stretch. Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh are suing their own publisher, Random House, which also published Dan Brown’s best selling novel, The Da Vinci Code, for breach of copyright.

Their claim is that Brown used their historical speculation as the basis for his book. For some background, what is being referred to is their central thesis that Jesus Christ was married to Mary Magdalene and the couple produced a royal bloodline that once reigned over France as the Merovingian dynasty.

While it’s true that those ideas figure prominently in Brown’s book as the motive for the murder of the museum official who, because he is the guardian of this secret, is found dead in the first chapter, The Da Vinci Code is so much more than that. It is a thriller that takes its protagonists, Robert Langdon, a professor of art and religious symbolism, and Sophie Neveux, the granddaughter of the murder victim and the leading suspect, on a chase across Paris to flee the police and gather evidence to prove her innocence of the crime. It also pits the duo against a shadowy Opus Dei member who is trying to kill Langdon and Neveux to prevent long guarded Church secrets from being uncovered.

There’s no doubt that all the speculation about Jesus, Magdalene and a holy bloodline contributed to the public’s fascination with Brown’s story. But it’s also a heart-stopping thriller with a zillion plot twists that are original to Brown, the novelist.

Brown is not being sued, his publisher is. However, the question is whether he breached the other authors’ copyrighted material. He’s not accused of lifting out verbatim passages from their work. Rather, the accusation is that he misappropriated their ideas for his book.

There are, at least, three separate objections to this accusation. First, and this seems to be the way the legal defense is leaning, published ideas and speculations of this sort become part of the public domain, so this particular claim of copyright privilege is too broad.

That may be true. After all, if nobody could ever build on another’s ideas and speculation, virtually no new ideas could ever be formed since most of what we think of as original work is really old ideas reformulated in new and startling patterns.

But besides the objection that the plaintiffs are overreaching, a second point of objection is that Brown never made a secret that Baigent’s and Leigh’s earlier work formed the basis for his own speculation. Indeed, Brown seemed determined to give Baigent and Leigh all the credit he could at every turn. He lists them in the book’s bibliography. He has one of his characters, Leigh Tebing, quote their book, with attribution. And he mentions the earlier book in an acknowledgement. You would think that a normal person whose book has been off the bestseller list for ten years would be grateful for such a plug.

However, in still a third point, why pick on Brown when others have been working the same waterfront for more years? Indeed there is a virtual cottage industry of books about exactly the same themes that Baigent, Leigh and Henry Lincoln (who is also a co-author of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, but who declined to join the suit) explored in 1982. Why did these writers never sue Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince whose The Templar Revelation covers much the same ground that their own work did and was non-fiction to boot? Or other non-fiction writers, such as Margaret Starbird, author of The Woman With the Alabaster Jar, or Laurence Gardner, who wrote Bloodline of the Holy Grail and other tomes that also explore the royal dynasty left by Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ?

Since all of those are non-fiction books that are actually closer to rivaling Holy Blood, Holy Grail than Dan Brown’s novel, it seems suspicious that just now, with a movie version of The Da Vinci Code coming out, that this should land in court.

However, the ideas in dispute were not even original to Leigh and Baigent. The truth is that speculation about Jesus and Mary Magdalene have been floating around since at least the second century Gnostics. In fact, if I were a clever and ambitious lawyer out for a bit of publicity, here’s the lawsuit I’d be drawing up right now: Baigent and Leigh v. the International Brotherhood of Gnostics and Heretics – Local 666.

With Accountability for Some and Justice for None

In the federal community – that is the community of career civil servants – the buzz is all about reforming the Civil Service. The emphasis is on demanding accountability from low-level federal workers and linking their pay raises and promotions to performance measures to achieve that accountability. All in all, not bad reforms if done properly. The question, though, is how to set up a system that spells out clear standards of performance and then measures workers fairly for meeting them? One of the major agencies spearheading the reforms, the Department of Homeland Security, is having their own problems with the performance and accountability of its own top officials.

Indeed if the chief is supposed to lead by example, these reforms are in deep trouble across the federal government. From Katrina to the mining disaster at Sago, accountability standards have flown out the door as the senior most executives moved aggressively to avoid responsibility for their own poor performance.

As this article in today’s New York Times shows, the Mine Safety and Health Administration, the federal agency set up to ensure that safety standards are met at U.S. mines, has been more interested in promoting cooperative relations with mine owners than with protecting workers. Better relationships with the operators trumped worker safety as federal regulators overlooked safety violations and permitted mine operators to pay the lowest amounts allowable for fines, often as low as $460, which is one thousandth of 1 percent of the $110 million profit reported by the owners of the Sago Mine where 12 workers died in an explosion.

In fact, fines are so low that they are considered a cost of doing business. And in some cases, the fines, inexpensive as they are, were never even in collected. Here’s the money quote:

" 'The agency keeps talking about issuing more fines, but it doesn't matter much,' said Bruce Dial, a former inspector for the mine safety agency. 'The number of citations means nothing when the citations are small, negotiable and most often uncollected.' "

Furthermore, while the Mine Safety and Health Administration is failing to protect American miners, the Department of Homeland Security is apparently failing to protect everybody else.

This new video transcript, described in today’s New York Times, shows clueless top federal and state officials were praising each other’s performance just hours before the levees in New Orleans were breached last August.

The video transcript also helps vindicate Michael Brown, the FEMA director who, it turns out, took the heat for his boss Michael Chertoff’s inattention to the true dimensions of the disaster. And it certainly gives credibility to Brown’s claim that he had been warning Chertoff for 3 years that budget cuts and bureaucracy were hurting FEMA’s ability to respond to disasters.

But the real level of disengagement by top Bush Administration officials first came to light in this February 9, New York Times article which showed that FEMA official, Marty Bohamonde, reported the true extent of the disaster, including the breaching of the levees and the flooding, directly to Chertoff’s office while Brown was also reporting it to an equally disengaged White House.
The level of inattentiveness to this dire situation even disturbed some of Bush's staunchest supporters in Congress. Here's the money quote:

"But the seriousness of the situation did not register at the highest levels of the Administration. Representative Thomas M. Davis III, Republican of Virginia, chairman of the special House committee investigating the hurricane response, said the only government agency that performed well was the National Weather Service, which correctly predicted the force of the storm. 'But no one heeded the message,' he said.

'The president is still at his ranch, the vice president is still fly-fishing in Wyoming, the president's chief of staff is in Maine,' Mr. Davis said. 'In retrospect, don't you think it would have been better to pull together? They should have had better leadership. It is disengagement.' "

Yet in a true example of crap rolling downhill, Michael Brown was the one fired for the government’s poor performance in this disaster. Everybody above him remains unscathed by their failures and unwilling to even admit any responsibility for failure to act.

From bureaucratic bungling to inadequate funding, FEMA took a hit that can only be blamed on the shortsightedness of a disengaged and incompetent administration more intent on protecting its friends than measuring their performance by the same standards it demands from lower level workers. Meanwhile the Mine Safety and Health Administration is more interested in winning friends and influencing big Republican donors who happen to own mining companies in West Virginia than in protecting worker safety as they are tasked to do. Oh, and the reason for FEMA's inadequate funding is probably due to the federal government's across the board budget cuts to pay for the burgeoning deficits – all because big millionaire Republican donors need their tax cuts more than Americans need a functioning, adequately funded government to protect them.

Yeah, cronyism doesn’t get any better than this.

What's Wrong with the Dubai Ports Deal?

Actually, nothing.

The United Arab Emirate, which owns Dubai Ports World, is a moderate Middle Eastern regime. They are a valuable ally. The American military has used their deep water port to dock ships and off load supplies and personnel. We've also used their airstrips to send planes to Iraq and Afghanistan. And the UAE has shared in intelligence operations against terrorists. They can't be blamed for the fact that two of the 9-11 hijackers came from there any more than Britain can be blamed for the fact that shoe bomber Richard Reed was a British citizen.

The uproar over the proposed purchase by Dubai Ports World of the right to operate five major U.S. ports is a mixture of pure political pay back and public naivete. Firstly, most people don't focus much on our ports. They may have read something about holes in the security of the ports. And they may have some vague idea of that being a threat. But most people were never particularly focused on the fact that most of the world's ports are, in fact, run by large corporations, many of whom are foreigners, regardless of which country the port is in. Operating ports is a huge multi-national business. And in the case of Dubai Ports World, the corporation is owned by the United Arab Emirate.

That's freaked a lot of Americans. I still say it's not because they are xenophoic, anti-Muslim racists. The issue isn't an American company whose owners happen to U.S. citizens of Arab descent. I don't think that would have grabbed as much attention or raised the opposition this has. Call me naive, myself but I honestly believe it's not the fact that this is an Arab or Muslim owned corporation that is fueling the opposition as much as the fact that it is a foreign owned company.

Yes, the fact that the company's point of origin is the Middle East is part of the problem. When a British company owned the operating rights, nobody paid much attention. But Americans had the same reaction of horror when the Chinese government tried to buy Unocol. And even when the Japanese purchased Rockefeller Center a few years ago, many Americans had mixed feelings. Again, we're not talking about Americans who happen to have Japanese ancestry or Chinese ancestry arousing these objections. It's not the race or nationality, it's the fact that these are not American citizens that is causing the conflict.

This is especially true when the companies involved are actually government owned. It may be free trade but I'm not sure you can really defend it as either Capitalism or a level playing field. Our government declines to run American ports but privatizes them and then lets companies that are really government entities do it for us. Many U.S. citizens are rightfully asking what gives?

And the Democrats, of course, are playing it for all it's worth.

After being browbeaten through two election cycles by Bush's strategy of claiming the mantle as the security president, they are rightfully having a field day with this. Let's face it, many soccer moms turned into security moms. And this Administration, with it's every changing color codes - remember orange alerts and yellow alerts? - played on our fears like a master violinist plays a Stradivarius. They were so skilled at stoking our paranoia about Arab terrorists.

And any Democrat who dared to question their Middle East policy or to criticize their handling of the war in Iraq was practically accused of treason. To suggest that Iraq was not going well or that we needed a time limit and an exit strategy was to have a "pre-9-11 mindset" or to be "anti-military" or to be unpatriotic.

The Republicans wrapped themselves in the mantle of strength, competence and resoluteness. They were the only ones who were tough minded enough to keep us safe in a scary new world.

Then, Katrina blew away the illusion of their competence. And now the Dubai World Ports deal is blowing up the last shred of their credibility. That's the blowback when you've fanned the flames of fear and irrationality.

It's something about those who live by the sword will die by it.

A Church Can't Fly Without It's Left Wing Too

I first stumbled across this while I was browsing through Andrew Sullivan's blog.

A majority of Roman Catholic Democrats in the House of Representatives signed this statement of principles. The effort was spearheaded by Representative Rosa DeLaura and some of the signers are among the most prominent Catholic Democratic members of the House. Fifty-five of them signed on to what may be one of the finest statements of Catholic social justice teachings that I've read. Bravo to them for standing up to the theocrats and their Christianist agenda, which is hijacking both the Church and our country.

As Sullivan states (and he is by no means the only one - I've heard many, many other Catholics say the same thing), "it's our church too." And, I might add, it's our country too.

It's time for us to take them both back.

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.