The Fat Lady Sang

And it's over. The last steak was served. The last toast was raised. And the last beer was drunk. Fran O'Brien's closed.

I was there Friday night. When I first went in, the place was alive with hope. Our waiter, Tony, told us that there was talk of a reprieve. An extension of the lease by a few months to allow Fran's owners, Marty O'Brien and Hal Koster, to find a new location. The four of us in my party were joyful as we raised our glasses of wine and ordered the ribeye for what we never dreamed was going to be our last time. In fact, Tony urged one of our companions to come back - our guests work just blocks away in the AFL-CIO building.

Indeed, besides the veterans who came every Friday night, Fran's was a lunchtime favorite for many in the AFL-CIO. On any given day, you could see John Sweeney, the president of organized labor, holding forth at a table with many of the other labor leaders.

And at the bottom of Fran O'Brien's website it announced, "proud to be a union shop."

And that was the 500 pound gorilla that nobody really wanted to talk about. Besides being embarrassed to have badly wounded and scruffy looking Iraqi veterans in their lobby, the Hilton was resentful that the restaurant served the likes of Sweeney and other labor leaders.

You see, the Hilton is in a battle with the hotel and restaurant employees' union UNITE HERE. They may even go to strike later this year. Indeed, one of the favorite topics of discussion around the AFL building had been what to do about going to Fran's if HERE threw up a picket line.

The ins and outs of the discussion often reached Talmudic proportions in its minute examination of every aspect of the issue before it was finally pronounced "kosher" to enter Fran's from the street entrance. Fran's has a separate entrance from the Hilton and HERE did not plan to picket that entrance, hence it would not be crossing a picket line.

The Hilton has had some pretty nasty dealings with it employees. It's not known in the hotel business as a particularly compassionate company as this report from Mudville Gazette, one of the military blogs, demonstrates:

"Update: Looks like Lisa Cole, the regional director of communications for Hilton quoted above, is a busy gal:

'About a month after an emergency room visit found Nina Kennedy had Stage 4 colon and liver cancer, her supervisors from Hilton Grand Vacations called her with more bad news.

"They told her she was fired," West Palm Beach attorney Charles Thomas said Thursday.
Kennedy had been the manager of the Plantation Beach Club on Hutchinson Island for 2 1/2 years when she was terminated in December after working 13 years with the company.

Regional directors told her she had been fired because she violated company policy, she said. But in a lawsuit filed in Martin Circuit Court Thursday, Kennedy and Thomas said the company hid its reasons behind a much stronger motive.

"They knew that she had a potentially terminal illness, she would have been out for a while and they didn't want to deal with it," Thomas said. <...>Hilton spokeswoman Lisa Cole said she had not seen the lawsuit Thursday and that, as a practice, the company cannot comment on open cases."

These are not nice people. Not only are they not nice to organized labor, whose leaders can, after all, take care of themselves and find another favorite hangout, but they're not nice to their employees, and they'd rather boot out veterans who were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice and who came home limbless just to prove a petty point about being anti-labor.

Oh, and their attitude toward the ill and disabled couldn't be more obvious than by the way they treated their own employee. Funny, when my husband had cancer, years ago, his company rallied round him and did everything they could to make sure he knew he would have a job to come back to and that his wife, me, would have anything she needed for however long we both needed it.

Oh yeah, my husband works for a union, not a Hilton.

But is it really a stretch, after reading that, to believe the charge that the Hilton didn't want severely disabled and disfigured veterans in their lobby?

Anyway, farewell Fran's for now. Hopefully you'll be up at a new location soon. Meanwhile, the Italian embassy has offered it's location for the Friday night dinners to continue and a non-profit charity has been set up. I will provide more details as I hear them.

Capitol Hilton: "We Support Your War - But Keep Your Gimps Out of Our Lobby"

Or, at least, that's the impression the Capitol Hilton, at 16th Street, NW, in Washington, DC is giving the world. Last Saturday, this story, by Petula Dvorak, was carried in the Washington Post about the closing of Fran O'Brien's, a popular steakhouse that feeds wounded veterans from Walter Reed Medical Center and the Bethesda Naval Hospital for free every Friday night.

The military blogosphere has been burning up the Internet with stories about the closing of this legendary Washington, DC eatery that has been providing the free steak dinners and limitless drinks.

You can go to these sites for various views and more details about the story:

Mudville Gazette

What the Hell Is Wrong With You

Free Republic

Black Five

In the interst of full disclosure, I should point out that my husband and I are regular customers at Fran O'Brien's. We consider owners, Hal Koster and Marty O'Brien, our friends. We're often there on Friday nights, not because of the soldiers but because it's a few blocks from where we work and it's a great place to go to wait for traffic to die down before we head out for the 14th Street Bridge. But we've seen the limbless, wounded vets many a Friday and it always, always inspires us to see what Marty and Hal are doing for them. So, here's the whole story.

About two years ago, restauranteurs Marty O’Brien, the son of former Redskins offensive lineman Fran O'Brien, who originally opened the restaurant, and partner Hal Koster approached Walter Reed with an offer to feed wounded vets and their families every Friday night. Although the owners of Fran O’Brien’s have sought to keep it low key, several local TV stations have shown up, especially since former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz used to attend the dinners regularly to listen to the soldiers’ experiences, suggestions and complaints. The event intrigued Doonsbury author Gary Trudeau, who made Fran O’Brien’s Steakhouse part of a continuing story line in his cartoon strip. Trudeau still shows up to meet with the vets.

Many of the soldiers who show up have severe wounds, including missing limbs.They are on crutches and in wheel chairs. And to get to Fran’s, which is in the basement of the Capitol Hilton, they have to navigate a steep stairway. Many have to be carried down. Marty and Hal had asked the Hilton to put in an elevator or even a ramp to make their restaurant ADA compliant for the veterans. Since they are renters, it’s not their property and they can’t just do it themselves.

Recently, their lease came due for renewal and Fran’s owners heard nothing from the Hilton, their landlord. They sent emails, made phone calls, etc., and were assured that there were no problems with the lease. Then, suddenly, Fran O’Brien’s received an eviction notice, effective May 1. As has been reported, in the WaPo, and on various military blogs, the Hilton cited a fear of liability issues. They claimed they were afraid they’d be held responsible if one of the already disabled veterans had an accident that led to further injuries on the stairs or in the Hilton lobby. Many, however, believe that the Hilton just doesn’t want a lot of limbless, severely injured veterans being seen in their lobby, especially since their attire is frequently casual and many of the guys don’t look like the stylishly groomed corporate types who usually frequent big city Hiltons.

The Hilton has, of course, denied this. They even claim that they have offered to take over hosting the Friday night dinners at their own restaurant, Twigs, which is at ground floor level.

Well, I’ve seen Twigs. As last Saturday’s WaPo story also points out, the ambience is very different from Fran’s. Fran O’Brien’s is dark, wood paneled, filled with sports paraphernalia and plush leather booths. It has the solid, masculine feel of a hearty steakhouse that caters to people who order ribeyes with scotch or beer. It’s founder, after all, was a Redskins football player. It also has the best steaks I’ve ever had anywhere in the U.S, including Chicago. Better even, my husband claims, than the steaks he’s had in Iowa. In fact, neither of us have ever had a bad meal at all at Fran’s and in addition to steaks, they also serve great seafood and Italian specialties and world-class wine.

I’ve never eaten in Twigs so I can’t comment on their food. But we pass it all the time on our way to Fran’s. It looks like a freaking fern bar. All dainty tables, plants, light wood. It’s a place where you go to get fancy, overpriced tiny portions of frou frou food with white wine, not a good thick, tender steak with a beer. It also doesn’t have the private room where the soldiers can go to let their hair down, relax with their friends and families without being gawked at by the public, and meet with the Pentagon officials who also still show up.

In addition, Hal Koster’s relationship with the veterans goes beyond just throwing together a dinner for them once a week. A Vietnam veteran, himself, he visits them at Walter Reed and Bethesda. He’s given some of them jobs at the restaurant while they’re recovering to ease them back into civilian life. I don’t think the Hilton will do all that.

Meanwhile, all this has struck a sour note with veterans all over the country. Even people who’ve never been there – never been to Washington – are incensed over this. And a couple of websites have posted the email addresses of the Hilton corporate officers who are responsible for the decision to boot Fran’s from the Hilton. Readers and bloggers have jammed their inboxes and shut them down. They’ve also jammed the email address of the Hilton honors program causing that to temporarily shut down too. And they’re planning boycotts of the Hilton chain.

I agree with them that this just isn't right, so I’m passing on the email sites and phone numbers so that others besides the military men and women can let the Hilton know what a PR disaster this is for them. Whether you agree with the U.S. foreign policy and the Iraqi War (personally, I don't) or not, it's just wrong to pull the weekly Friday night dinners away from the vets and it's wrong to close Fran O'Brien's, which is actually a beloved restaurant, not just to the vets but to a lot of Washingtonians in search of a great meal in a warm and welcoming atmosphere.

Below is a name, phone number and email address for the New York Hilton's corporate offices:

Dan Boyle 212-838-1558
daniel_a_boyle@hilton.com

And below is the name and phone number of the General Manager of the Capitol Hilton.

Brian Kellaher (202) 393-1000.

Oh, and for good measure, here's the Hilton Website, including a link to their Honors Program.
And the snail mail address for the Capitol Hilton is 10001 16th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036

Write on!

Presidential Dreamin' On Such A Lovely Spring Day

Note: This was originally posted on Raising Kaine as a diary. But I think it also belongs back here on my own blog since it's actually more a national than just a Virginia-oriented post. So, Raising Kaine had it first, but I'm takin'it back here too. Also, I'll admit it's a cheap trick - I got home late and don't have time to do something more original - but I will tomorrow night, promise!

Lowell’s post the other day, on Raising Kaine (scroll part way down), about whether Al Gore would run for president in 2008 got me thinking. First, let me issue the standard disclaimer: It’s way too early to even be thinking about the 2008 presidential race – too early for speculation.

Having said that, I’m going to add, it’s what we junkies do. We speculate, hope, wish and dream long before it’s sensible to so. It’s the nature of the particular substance we choose to abuse. So, on with the speculation.

I’ll stand by what I said in the comment’s section of Lowell’s post. I don’t believe that Gore is going to run again, ever again. It’s wishful thinking to assume that he will. He’s already run for national office three times – most people forget or weren’t old enough to remember that the first time he ran for president was in ’88. He was an up and coming senator then who didn’t have a national reputation. He got favorable treatment in the press and nobody expected him to win, least of all him. Dukakis won the nomination and then got creamed in a landslide to Bush, Sr.

Gore, however, made a credible showing in ’88 and everybody understood that that race was for the name recognition. He would have been one of the frontrunners if he’d chosen to run in 1992. But none of the top tier wanted to risk challenging sitting President George HW Bush, who held a 90 percent approval rating at the time of the first primaries. So Bill Clinton, the long shot, won the Democratic nomination and made Gore his running mate.

The 2000 race was Gore’s second run for president, and I think his final one. Besides Gore’s inability to excite the base in 2002 (with the liberal wing of the Democratic Party being dissatisfied that he was too centrist), the press, for its own reasons, viciously vilified him. And his paid consultants seemed too busy arguing about which earth tones he should wear to let him define himself as a candidate.

When he lost that race, he discovered that there was life after elective office and it was fun. Gore had been the presumptive heir to his father’s legacy. Both Al, Sr., once a respected senator from Tennessee, and Gore’s mother, Pauline, had groomed their only son for presidential politics. But deep down I think that it was always an uneasy fit. Now that he’s discovered the freedom of being John Q. Public Citizen, he’s happy. He can finally say what he really believes without fear of the pollsters and the pundits. He never felt secure enough to do that before, which contributed mightily to the impression that he was stiff. He was. He ran for the Senate as a centrist Democrat from a conservative Southern state, Tennessee. Then he served as Vice President to the man who helped found, and once led, the Democratic Leadership Council – also a centrist organization. But Gore always was a Washington liberal at heart. Now he can finally admit to it. And so can Tipper.

I also don’t think that Hillary will run. She’s a realist and she’s already been in the White House. She knows her baggage. She knows her negatives. I do think she’s shrewd enough to leverage the interest in her candidacy into the role of an effective and influential participant in the nominating process. Through her fundraising ability and the loyal support she’s earned, she’ll definitely be a player in helping to shape the party and pick the candidate. But it won’t be her.

I also don’t think it’s going to be Mark Warner. If he runs, I’ll support him as a favorite son. There is the hometown pride. And I like him. But I think his advisers, who sold him a bill of goods that he shouldn’t run for the Senate, were dead wrong. The conventional wisdom was that governors win the White House and those who served in the Senate have too much baggage because of all the votes they’ve cast, the positions they’ve changed, and the compromises they’ve reached. Because of all that, they’re too vulnerable to the charge of flip-flopping. It’s the paper trail.

However, governors leave a paper trail too. They leave positions they’ve taken, vetoes they’ve cast, budgets they’ve submitted and all the speeches they’ve made, not to mention the compromises they’ve had to make to get legislation passed too. And of course their records.

Warner has a great record. He was arguably one of the most effective governors, not just in Virginia, but nationwide. However, the dynamics that created the conventional wisdom have changed mightily. And Warner doesn’t look ready for prime time. The reason is that the debacle in Iraq, the intelligence screw-ups, and the complexity of foreign affairs have all turned the conventional wisdom on its head.

A really good case can be made that we are in this mess in Iraq because Bush, another Southern governor, had no foreign policy experience. He listened to bad advice and couldn’t discern good and accurate intelligence from a con job. After Bush’s abysmal incompetence, next time a candidate is going to need more than just one term as the governor of a relatively modest Southern state.

Ironically, the model of the ideal candidate, in terms of resume, would be someone like former Florida senator Bob Graham. He was a successful governor in the 80s, when Florida was in an economic slump and he led it out of the doldrums. He proved to be an able administrator who could govern a state effectively. Then, in the Senate, he chaired the Foreign Relations committee. He was also a leading critic against going to war Iraq. He had the well- rounded resume that somebody running in 2008 is going to need. Unfortunately, he’s retired from elective office and probably just wants to enjoy his grandchildren. He’s entitled. So, don’t look for him to run again.

Somebody who looks promising to me is John Edwards. He has a credible shot at the nomination. He’s incredibly charismatic and anybody who tells you that that doesn’t matter is either very naïve about politics or is lying. His “two Americas” message will resonate even more this time because the middle class has lost even more ground while the wealthy have continued to increase their wealth. The arrogance and cronyism of the rich have grown astoundingly blatant. Meanwhile, the average American is fearful of losing his job, his wages are flat, and he’s losing his pension and health care coverage.

Yet Edwards has more than an angry message. He has an optimistic vision. He doesn’t just whip up anger and demagoguery. Instead he appeals to what’s best in America, our idealism and ability to dream about being a better America for all.

And he now has the foreign affairs gravitas that he lacked a few years ago. I heard him on one of the Sunday morning talk shows a few weeks ago. He had come out against the war in Iraq and he was asked to explain why he had voted for it in the Senate. He came right out and said that he had been wrong. He also said that, at the time, his vote was based on information that we all now know was inaccurate. But he insisted that it had been his mistake and that he had a moral obligation to take responsibility for it. That’s not a flip-flop, folks. That’s having the integrity to be willing to be held accountable for his errors. However, he also strikes me as a man who learns from his mistakes and who doesn’t repeat them. So because he was lied to once, I doubt he’ll be as credulous again.

Now, I’m going to go way out on a limb and pick a real long shot. And one that completely reverses everything I just said about the new dynamic not favoring governors. The one governor, if he indeed wins the governor’s race in 2006, who might make an interesting run for the presidency, is Elliot Spitzer from New York.

I know, I know, it’s crazy. But I’ve been talking to relatives in states as diverse as Tennessee, Florida, Virginia, New Jersey and New York and one thing that comes across is that Spitzer is identified in the public mind with combating corporate crime and special interests. He’s viewed as the fighting prosecutor who is not afraid to take on the biggest boys. And most of the white-collar crime that he prosecutes is incredibly complex. To unwind the schemes, plots, and creative accounting designs takes an analytical mind; so even though he’s slim on foreign policy experience, he could still use that same incisive intellect to cut through the bullshit if he was given bad foreign intelligence. This is a man who has dealt with crooks and liars before. He could probably take on ourNSA, DIA, CIA and FBI and figure out who was lying and who was giving him good solid evidence before he acted.

And I think he fits the fighting populist mold that may be popular in 2008. Again it’s part of the new dynamic. People are angry about the ground they’ve lost. They are looking for somebody to fight for their interests.

But again, that’s a major long shot and not without pitfalls. He still has to win in New York and he may not even want to make a run for national office only two years after that election. To do so could also get him pegged an opportunist fast. And of course, by 2008, that dynamic could change yet again.

And of course, in the end, I could be completely wrong and Gore could run. I don’t think he’d want to. I think the press would dog him again. But the truth is he’d make a great president. He’s had the experience in the White House, he knows the foreign policy terrain and he could put together a good domestic program that would bring jobs back and get our economy going and not just for the wealthiest one percent. In fact, if he just brought former Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin back, I’d follow Gore through fire and over a cliff.

As I said in the comments section of Lowell’s post, if I see Peter Knight signing on to a Gore campaign, I’m so outta here to help.

The Perfect Virginia Storm

I am becoming more and more convinced that supporting James Webb for the Senate this year could be the smartest thing Virginia Democrats could do. And backing Harris Miller, by contrast, might be one of the dumbest things they could do.

I don’t mean to trash Miller. I really don’t, and it bothers me greatly that Democrats are getting into a nasty brawl over this because the one thing we are going to need to beat Allen, whoever wins the primary, is unity. And this is getting very personal. And very passionate. And, unfortunately, very nasty. But strong emotions bring out unkindness in all of us, including me.

But there are real and pragmatic reasons to consider Webb the stronger candidate this time. Let me admit that Miller may be a great human being. He’s inspired the loyalty of many of the Democratic leaders that I’ve admired and whose victories I’ve worked for and even whose defeats have made me cry long into the night. So, the strong feelings, the criticism, even the nastiness should be seen as the result of intense zeal and an even stronger desire to win. And here’s the reason why I feel so strongly that this is the Democrats' year.

This election season, there is a series of convergences all speeding together to create the perfect storm. For the first time in years pundits and politicos are seriously thinking the Democrats could take back one of the houses of Congress. Or both.

It’s not a sure thing. The races are competitive and if the Democrats succeed it will be by a hairbreadth victory. And it’s a very big IF.

But that it’s even being dreamed of, let alone talked about out loud, is something.

And if it’s really that close – the difference of a seat or two – right here in Virginia, we could make a difference and have a national impact.

Here are the elements of the perfect storm that are rushing together to create the momentum for a Democratic takeover.

This is the year of the disgruntled veteran disillusioned with the Republican Party. When, for years, has that ever been the case? Democrats had all but ceded the military vote to the Republicans and with good reason: the military is a very conservative and traditional culture. Even women in the military frequently identify more with Republican values such as traditional and orthodox religious beliefs and a strong defense policy. If anybody believes in spending a lot on the military, including fighter jets, missile shields and other hardware, it’s military men and women. They’ve often viewed the Democrats as soft on national security and not sympathetic to their concerns and values.

But this is the year that a bunch of veterans have returned from Iraq, where they endured having to fight a guerrilla war with inadequate armor, an arrogant civilian government that ignored their concerns, and the sight of the cronies and buddies of that same arrogant government making literal blood money off the war with their lucrative contracts. Indeed, Iraq is the war that has been contracted out like never before – it’s not so much a war, in fact, as it is a business opportunity for Halliburton and its subsidiaries.

All this has led to a profound disillusionment in the military. As if to underscore this, according the New York Times and Washington Post, an all-star cast of generals has come out against the Bush Administration’s handling of the war. Not all of these commanders are opposed to the war in Iraq. Some do feel that it was unnecessary to invade Iraq in order to fight against terrorism. But others still believe that it was right to go in and take out Hussein. All, however, are united in their opinion that Donald Rumsfeld has botched the war effort with his arrogant and incompetent theories and his refusal to listen to any dissenting voices. These are not second string malcontents. These commanders were the major players and the recognized heroes of the war effort. And they represent the tip of the iceberg. The reason they are coming forward is because those still serving cannot speak up. Basically, they are confirming John Murtha’s contentions about the demoralization of the military.

That is just one of the elements of the convergence of forces that could signal that this is the Democrats’ year to take back one or both of the houses of Congress.

Another is on the home front. America has anguished while watching jobs being deported to China and India. Outsourcing is the background music to America’s discontent and angst. And if there is background music, then the main event on the movie screen is the Jack Abramoff lobbying and corruption scandal that is reaching into the highest levels of Congress and even the White House. Abramoff’s and DeLay’s pay to play schemes have confirmed the worst suspicions of the average American that the deck is truly stacked against them and there really is a class war waging just as surely at home as the military war is raging in the streets of Baghdad. Corporatism has taken over a government composed of privileged frat brothers and sorority sisters dedicated to the idea that the economy is a game with winners and losers. And they believe the winners are entitled to take all.

So here we have the intersection of a botched war effort, a depressed job market and stagnating wages fueled by outsourcing, and corruption and cronyism among the privileged. Nothing rings more true today than John Edwards’ populist message of two America’s. There’s the America of the wealthy investor and the well-connected CEO, both enjoying record wealth. And there’s the America of the average wage earner, who is battling to preserve his job and his middle class status.

For a Democrat, this would be a good time to be a former military man who can credibly criticize the Republicans for weakening American security. It would also be a very good time for a populist candidate, in the Edwards mold, who can speak to the yearnings and aspirations of ordinary Americans about saving the American Dream by stemming the tide of outsourcing through policies that reward and encourage greater job development at home. Here, I’m not talking about draconian, punitive measures against corporations but innovative ways to encourage cooperation in the U.S. to grow jobs and provide decent health care and pension plans – maybe through tax breaks and other incentives. Perhaps instead of giving huge tax breaks to millionaires, who don’t need them and who don’t really plow the money back into the economy, it would be better to take the same tax break and provide it as an incentive to businesses to keep industry in the U.S. There are many carrots the government can use but the people who make up the government have to be willing and creative. I think Jim Webb, a credible critic of Rumsfeld's policies, also has the creativity and willingness to look for ways to fight to get jobs back to Virginia. At least, he realizes there's a problem here. And we can't just educate ourselves out of it. The jobs being lost are the high tech ones that people went back to school and retrained for. What else is there on the horizon?

On the other hand, this would not be a good time, for either the Democratic or Republican Party, to have a former lobbyist at the top of the ticket this November. In fact there’s a reason that most people become lobbyists after leaving Congress rather than before they run for elected office. Not many people, even in the best of times, actually trust lobbyists to be their representatives. And believe me, these aren’t the best of times for the reputation of lobbyists, whether it’s fair or not. And to be the lobbyist who worked for greater outsourcing and guest worker programs is really about as big a deal breaker as it gets.

In fact, this statement from the AFL-CIO, about the former lobbyist, Harris Miller, running in Virginia, about says it all. They have labeled him anti-worker.

This is an especially bad time – if ever there would be a good time for it – to kick the major part of your base in its collective teeth. It’s a mistake that Karl Rove would never make. Republicans may be lousy at governing but they have been successful at winning elections. And they do it by catering to their base not bludgeoning it. And compared to James Dobson and Jerry Falwell, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney is a voice of reason and moderation. And Virginia labor is far more moderate than Sweeney. Danny LeBlanc, Virginia AFL-CIO President, was a staunch supporter of both Mark Warner and Tim Kaine. And while Virginia's labor movement isn’t about to back Allen; if Miller gets the Democratic nomination, they could and probably will unofficially sit this one out. And it will be a signal to other Virginia progressives to do the same.

But even more than organized labor, the base and other activists, a race between Miller and Allen would be a yawner. Miller’s major platform position appears to be that Allen is really interested in running for president in 2008, while he, Miller, just wants to be a humble senator. Believe it or not, that’s not a platform that’s ever been successful. Americans viscerally don’t begrudge people having ambition and higher aspirations. And some Virginians might actually be tickled that a fellow Virginian might become a presidential candidate. It’s called hometown pride. It could actually help Allen to keep his Senate seat and get the citizens of Virginia rooting for him in a primary rather than making them resent him. In other words, criticizing somebody from Virginia for wanting to be president isn’t a platform, it’s a dumb strategy.

So, why on earth would Fairfax County's Democratic insiders tie both hands behind their backs and run a lobbyist whose major effort was encouraging outsourcing against a former military hero with great national security credentials who doesn't have that other baggage? I don’t know, maybe because they haven’t gotten the memo yet. You know, the one that says beating George Allen is actually a good thing and it’s possible.

Until they do, I’ll keep nagging. It’s still James Webb. He’s the one who can beat Allen this November, not Miller. Miller has baggage. Webb has the perfect storm at his back, pushing the momentum his way.

Being Republican Means Never Having To Say Your Sorry

So, Tom DeLay resigned today. For the good of the party and all, because all those nasty liberals were out to get him and unfairly slandered him by linking him to Jack Abramoff. Tony Rudy, one of his top aides, conducted business out of DeLay's office like it was the back of a truck loaded with hot VCRs. Now, Rudy and Michael Scanlon, another DeLay operative, have both pleaded guilty to corruption charges and they are naming names. It's too early to tell whether they'll actually implicate DeLay or even how involved DeLay is (I know, I know, we all want it to be true - but even he's innocent until proven guilty).

But considering that the State of Texas has a Republican governor, a Republican legislature, and a majority of Republican voters (so far) and considering that the White House, the Congress and the Supreme Court are all in Republican hands, it's pretty much a stretch to claim that the Democrats could bring a man as powerful as DeLay down that easily. They had to have some help - like evidence and a good case.

And in the latest bizarre narrative twist, last week in Washington, DC, a group of so-called Christian rightwingers lionized DeLay as a latter-day martyr who was being persecuted by the liberals for his Christian beliefs. According to them and him, his troubles had nothing to do with his own deals with Abramoff, his support for legalized gambling for certain Indian tribes, his trip to London and the very prestigious St. Andrew's golf course (paid for by Abramoff), or the K Street Lobbying Project.

And these are the same people who lecture impoverished black youths in inner-cities, challenged by substandard schools, broken homes, gangs, drug dealers, and drive by shootings, to take personal responsibility for their actions?

It seems if you're young, black, and poor in America, Republicans demand that you to take personal responsibility but if you're old, rich, white and powerful, you never have to say you're sorry.

No, He Won't Be Swift Boated

The Richmond Democrat ran this open letter from Jim Webb's campaign, answering the very nasty charge that the Harris Miller campaign made recently. Miller has been trying to tar Webb with the racism charge because of quotes taken out of context from Webb's book, Born Fighting.
Webb was simply trying to describe the mindset of some of the Scots-Irish who settled the South - among them my husband's ancsestors. There is no denying the history of slavery or racism in the South. However, it's unfair to accuse modern descendants of the Scots-Irish settlers of racism today. Nobody in my husband's family is racist. You can take that to the bank. And neither is Jim Webb.

Anyway, Webb set the record straight with this open letter. I know he wants his to be a positive campaign, but he's wise to answer any negative remarks thrown his way.

Remember when Tim Kaine was hit with a very nasty ad about his stand on the death penalty, the most effective thing he did was stand up, look the camera in the eye (and it had the effect of looking the viewer in the eye) and tell the truth. And that's what James Webb is doing now.

Setting the record straight, giving a strong response and telling the truth is how the good guys win.

Do the Fairfax Democrats Know They Could Win?

It's a good question. At least, you've got to wonder about the insiders and party regulars. By their choice of candidate, Harris Miller, it almost looks like a kamikaze desire to re-elect conservative Republican George Allen to the Senate and seal his presidential nomination in 2008.

You know, even if Harris Miller didn't morally offend me by his support for outsourcing at a time when American jobs and our whole standard of living are in serious peril, I would still argue from a strictly cold-blooded, objective, and rational point of view that he is strategically a dumb choice for the Fairfax County Democratic Party to support.

One of our biggest issues right now should be the connection of convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff to Tom DeLay and his closest operatives Tony Rudy and Mike Scanlon, both of whom pleaded guilty to corruption charges and are planning to testify and name names in Congress. The Washington lobbying scandal is not only not going to go away, it's just starting to heat up.

And while I don't mean to suggest that Harris Miller is any where near as corrupt as they are (in fact, I have absolutely no reason to think he is anything less than honest), at a time when Democrats should be out there with both fists swinging at corruption and lobbying abuses, Harris Miller just can't do that. He may be deserving of a shot at a Senate seat, but this isn't the year for it.

If timing is everything, the timing for his candidacy just isn't now. Why would the Democrats pick him when it would be shooting themselves in both knees and handicapping one of their best issues, which is precisely cleaning up a corrupt Congress that has become beholden to lobbyists run amuck and special interests?

Personally I don't believe that all lobbyists are the bad guys. Point of disclosure, I've been a lobbyist. When I went to visit my Congressman in Washington to get him to oppose the war in Vietnam years ago, I was lobbying him. When I went with church social action groups to lobby for support for programs that aid poor people, for affordable housing, and for a living wage, I was doing just what a professional lobbyist does. I was trying to influence my elected officials on behalf of a cause.

True, I didn't throw around millions of dollars or lavish skyboxes at Nationals and Redskins games on them. And that's where the problem lies. It's not in the legitimate lobbying activities, which are, after all, every citizens' rights, it's in all that money that appears to buy access. And quid pro quo.

And even though the vast majority of lobbyists don't approach the level of an Abramoff, this is just not the year for a lobbyist - and one who lobbied for Diebold at that - to run for office.

In addition, with so many Americans being laid off, this is not a time to run a candidate who was the poster child for both outsourcing and guest worker programs. Miller was a big supporter of the H-IB program, which brings over 60,000 highly skilled computer programmers, technicians, and other high tech employees into this country each year. Back in the 90s the argument was made that this program was needed because there was a huge shortage of skilled high tech employees, which was threatening the economy and the ability of businesses to expand. Miller, lobbying for the tech industry, claimed that jobs were going vacant due to lack to qualified applicants.

And in the heady years of the high tech bubble it might have been true. But that bubble burst years ago. Many high tech jobs are no longer also high paying jobs. Many in that industry have faced several layoffs and despite the fact that large corporations like Microsoft have gotten back on their feet, a glut of skilled workers in this field has led to lower wages - it's simple market economics, the supply of highly qualified workers exceeds the demand for them. So, importing even more workers makes no sense unless it's because you want to keep wages depressed. And guess who would benefit from an overcrowded market of workers and lower wages and cutbacks in benefits for workers? Yup, investors and corporations. H-IB is nothing more than a cost cutting scheme by greedy businesses that care more about their record profits than about paying a decent wage.

With layoffs of companies from the airline industry to GM and Delphi to the continuing stagnation of wages even in highly profitable industries, outsourcing and guest worker programs are another natural Democratic issue. And Democrats usually do come out on the side of protecting workers' interests. Unfortunately, this is another issues that Miller can't use to his advantage. And it already shows.

At a Fairfax County annual St. Patrick's Day party, held by Chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, Gerry Connolly, Miller lost a straw poll to James Webb, his challenger in the primary.

Although Miller, a former chairman of the Fairfax County Democratic Committee (FCDC), had the support of all the party insiders, including many normally progressive state senators and delegates, the grassroots activists gave overwhelming support to Webb, much to the consternation of the insiders.

That's because they just don't get it. This is not the year for a Democrat to support a lobbyist whose primary efforts have been to lobby for outsourcing and guest worker programs and also one who has been a supporter of the war in Iraq but who never served in the military himself.

That's another issue. Many people believe that the Republicans have far too many chicken hawks in their ranks, who think it's fine to send somebody else's child to die for a war of choice. Here we could have a decorated military man, a former Secretary of the Navy who turned his back on the Republican Party because he's disgusted with their mismanagement of the war in Iraq and the economy. Instead, Fairfax's Democratic insiders want to pick somebody who is virtually indistinguishable from those Republicans?

Geesh, where's Bob Shrum when you need him? Even he's smarter than that.

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.