Pete Lit

Viva California!

California Supreme Court overturns gay marriage ban.

McCain has radical friends, too.

Barack Obama has had to repudiate his past associations with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and former 60s radical Bill Ayers. Rightly so, given that Obama doesn't share either's radical, extremist views. But as Steve Chapman sharply points out in today's Chicago Tribune, the same has not been required of John McCain. As recently as November, McCain said this to G. Gordon Liddy, who has hosted a McCain fundraiser in the past and donated generously to McCain's campaign fund:

"I'm proud of you, I'm proud of your family...It's always a pleasure for me to come on your program, Gordon, and congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great."

Mind you, this man that McCain so effusively admires is a convicted felon who: orchestrated the Watergate break-in which brought down the Nixon Administration, and has repeatedly said that the only thing he regretted about Watergate wasn't his criminal act, but getting caught; advocated kidnapping anti-war activists to prevent them from disrupting the Republican National Convention; planned the murder of an hostile journalist; and advocated the killing of ATF agents who were in the act of serving their official duties.

There is little doubt that Liddy is a radical, and a belligerently unrepentant one. True, he's a radical on the right-wing end of the political spectrum, versus the left-leaning Ayers and Wright. But he's a radical all the same, one who is openly hostile to the Constitution and the rule of law. He's clearly an extremist. So why isn't John McCain expected to repudiate him, just like Obama has done with Ayers and Wright?

Like so many other issues, most of the mainstream media has given McCain a free pass on the subject of Liddy. Shame on them.

I guess it's only fear-mongering if a non-Clinton is doing it.

"It's the toughest job in the world. You need to be ready for anything - especially now, with two wars, oil prices skyrocketing and an economy in crisis. Harry Truman said it best - if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."
- Hillary Clinton campaign advertisement, 2008, which includes images of Osama bin Laden

"If one candidate's trying to scare you and the other one's trying to get you to think; if one candidate's appealing to your fears and the other one's appealing to your hopes, you better vote for the person who wants you to think and hope."
- Bill Clinton, 2004

Indeed, Bill. I'm going with the "think and hope" guy, and not your wife.

Bush approved (and approves of) torture.

And, not at all surprisingly, he doesn't express a single regret. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, the next move is yours.

Just A Few Rogue Cabinet Members

I think there is justification for the impeachment of George Bush, and I don't mean the lies that lead to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. (There's just enough vagueness there to give him an out.) Instead, impeachment is clearly warranted on two counts: first, the Administration's willfull violation of the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act, which forbids spying on U.S. citizens except under strict court-supervised requirements which Bush chose to ignore; and more importantly by the Administration's eager approval of the use of torture of suspected terrorists and enemy combatants at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, in clear violation of international law.

On the one hand, the Administration says it doesn't torture, while admittedly engaging in extreme coercive tactics such as waterboarding that it insists don't qualify as "torture" but which numerous respected authorities, including the U.S. Army itself, say are indeed torture. (The U.S. Army Field Manual, in fact, expressly forbids the use of many of the interrogation tactics which the Bush Administration condones.) But on the other hand, when graphic examples of blatant torture, such as the infamous Abu Ghraib photos, do surface, the Administration dismisses the scandal as the work of just a few low-level "rogue soldiers."

Not that I ever believed those claims, of course. It's never been just rogue soldiers acting on their own. The self-serving justifications for torture set forth by high-level Administration advisers, from Antonio Gonzales to John Yoo, have already been public knowledge for some time. And now comes this:

ABC News reported tonight that President Bush’s most senior and trusted advisers met in “dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House” beginning in 2002 to approve the use of “combined” interrogation techniques (the joint use of harsh interrogation techniques). Those tactics included whether detainees “would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding.”

Members of the National Security Council’s Principals Committee — Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, George Tenet, and John Ashcroft — approved the use of these techniques. “Sources said that at each discussion, all the Principals present approved.”

Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Powell, Tenet, Ashcroft...proof of the Administration's explicit approval of the reprehensible practice of torture just keeps inching higher, and is now just one step from the top. It's only a matter of time before proof of Bush's approval finally surfaces.

If Bush had several years remaining on his term, instead of just nine months, and if the Democrats in Congress had more spine than they've shown during the past seven years (hell, make that ANY spine), I'd fully expect impeachment. But, sadly, I suspect he'll just be allowed to quietly leave office and go off on his merry way.

Earth Hour

In a way it's sad that: a) we have to formally designate sixty minutes as "Earth Hour" to get people to truly reflect on their personal impact on the environment; b) it only lasted sixty minutes; and c) for most people it will be the last thought they ever give to the topic. Still, it's a start. If it gets even a few thousand people to be more aware of what we can do to sustain the Earth, then it's worth it.

At our house Earth Hour was a quietly enjoyable experience. No computers, no Nintendo (since even using a fully charged handheld would have eventually required recharging), no TV - just three people entertaining each other. First it was making shadow puppets on the ceiling with the light from the candle (just like my sister and I did when we were kids, with a flashlight, when camping out with sleeping bags in the living room), then talking about organized labor and the episode of This American Life that Julie just heard (she's convinced John Hodgman is the funniest man alive), then exercise time which showed that Maddie and I need a lot of work on our situps. True, there were several moments of blankly looking at each other and saying "What do we do next?" but those would have been all but eliminated with adequate preparation. We're going to try to do Earth Hour every Saturday night at 8, but from now on we'll definitely have to have some activities laid out in advance.

I encourage everyone to try it, at least once.

Hillary Clinton's "Experience"

Hillary Clinton repeatedly touts her "experience", saying that for 35 years she's been fighting for change. But what she doesn't mention is that the longest portion of that period - 15 years - was spent at Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, representing Arkansas' biggest and most powerful businesses, including Wal-Mart and Tyson Foods. At The American Lawyer, Susan Lehman interestingly reflects on Clinton's legal career and why she's not exactly inspiring the passion amongst voters that Barack Obama is.

This anecdote is particularly telling:

Hillary's ability to assert moral residency on different ideological sides of an issue showed itself soon after she joined the Rose firm. The Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, a group that works on behalf of the poor, had helped pass a local ballot initiative that gave low-income residents a break on utility bills and increased rates for businesses. Wanting to put a quick stop to this handout, the business community called upon its lawyers at the Rose Law Firm and asked them to defeat the ordinance in court.

Hillary soon found herself battling ACORN's founder -- and her close friend -- Wade Rathke in court. Deftly marshaling constitutional theory, she convinced the judge that the ordinance constituted an unlawful taking of property. The law was nullified. Wade Rathke never spoke to Hillary again. For Hillary, though, the matter seemed entirely impersonal: She has maintained strong connections with ACORN and works with them today on minimum wage and election reform issues. She fought with and defeated a friend in court. That's business. That's what lawyers do.

Oh, she's got experience, alright. Experience in helping the establishment gain even more power. Which is not at all the kind of experience we need to overturn the plutocracy and corporation-coddling of the past eight years.

The Bard speaks from the great beyond

"What should the wars do with these jigging fools?"
- William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

(Photo by Charles Dharapak, Associated Press)

We Versus She

Clinton supporters chant "Yes she will." Obama supporters chant "Yes we can." That subtle difference - we versus she, partner versus parent - is why I support Obama, and why he'll be our next President.

Enough.

Well, it's happened again. A gunman opens fire on an unsuspecting and innocent group of people, killing or wounding dozens, and traumatizing hundreds more. This time, it's in DeKalb, Illinois, at Northern Illinois University, but just last week it was a Lane Bryant store in Tinley Park and a city council meeting in suburban St. Louis. Before that it was a Von Maur department store in Omaha, and of course the earlier Virginia Tech and Columbine shootings, along with so many others. The pattern is familiar: shock over the initial news, somber grieving as the victims are laid to rest and, for the millions not directly impacted by the tragedy a gradual forgetting and return to normalcy. That is, until it happens again.

It has happened too many times, and it has to stop. Handguns are simply too plentiful and readily available in this country for any disaffected loner or hardened criminal who wishes, whether for personal enrichment or to pay back society for perceived injustices, to use them to wreak havoc. It's time to greatly curtail the manufacture and sale of guns, and even perhaps to ban them completely.

Again and again we hear the argument from gun advocates that the Second Amendment guarantees our citizens the Constitutional right to bear arms. Keeping their guns, they say, represents a critical freedom. But what about the freedom from fear? There is no freedom of any kind, no liberty, when one lives in fear of being a victim of random violence. Freedom to bear arms benefits several million gun owners, while freedom from fear is the right of every single American - all 300-plus million of us. All human beings do have rights, but the latitude of personal rights ends at the moment at which others' rights are infringed. True, the vast majority of gun owners are law-abiding, upstanding citizens who handle their weapons responsibily. But the responsible behavior of that vast majority is fully and decisively negated by those who use guns to commit violent acts on innocent people. An appropriate analogy is nuclear weapons - countries like the United States argue in favor of their defensive capabilities, but certainly no one is arguing that every country in the world should have them. There's simply too much inherent danger involved in nuclear weapons too allow their widespread deployment - and while guns have a much more limited scope in terms of the number of people they can potentially harm, their impact on the people they do harm is every bit as horrible. Okay, one might argue, the fact that a handful of nations have nuclear weapons and have largely been able to keep them away from rogue nations suggests that the same can be done with guns - keep them with the peacekeepers and away from the baddies. But the advanced technology to develop nuclear weapons ensures that their deployment can be controlled, while guns are so rudimentary and cheaply mass-produced that they easily fall into the hands of those wishing to do harm. So because we can't really control who can buy guns, and thus can't ensure that all gun owners are responsible and law-abiding, we simply have to stop allowing their availability to anyone other than law enforcement authorities.

When citing the Constitution, advocates usually point to the framers' intent in granting specific rights. I find it very hard to imagine the framers ever could have envisioned, let alone condoned, anyone having the right to shoot up a lecture hall full of students or executing female shoppers with bullets to the head. When the framers drafted the Second Amendment, it was during a time of precarious defense of the homeland - we had only just repelled the British, who weren't terribly pleased at losing their prized colony, as the War of 1812 would soon attest to - and the fledgling country had to rely heavily on local militias in the absence of a strong federal military. The country wanted to be sure it could defend itself, which required the arming of everyday citizens. When the Bill of Rights was drafted, our greatest threat was external. But times have changed - today, with a strong federal military and state National Guard, the likelihood of foreign invasion is minimal. And now, thanks to the pervasiveness of guns, our greatest threat is internal.

We have seen the enemy, and they is us. But it doesn't have to be this way, and it shouldn't be.

Make Tuesday particularly Super...

...and cast your Democratic primary ballot for Barack Obama. True, he and Hillary Clinton vary only insignificantly on their policy proposals. But there is a stark difference between the two in the ability to inspire and lead our country forward, and reverse the damage wreaked on our democracy during the past seven years. Clinton is all about partisanship, backbiting and settling old scores, and the anti-Clinton rancor which still festers on the conservative side of Congress casts substantial doubt on her ability to enact any of her policy initiatives.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, represents a fresh start - a candidate who seeks fairness and opportunity for all Americans, not just those blessed with wealth or inside connections; who is willing to cooperate, negotiate and compromise with his political opponents to bring out mutually agreeable solutions; and who is devoted to restoring America's badly tarnished reputation in world affairs. Barack Obama is far and away the best person to lead our country forward, and I hope you'll join me in voting for him on Tuesday or in other upcoming state primaries.

Vote Obama.

Rest in peace, Richard Knerr

(Photo from The Pollack PR Marketing Group.)

Richard Knerr, the co-founder of the great toy company Wham-O, has passed away at age 82. Besides commercializing the Frisbee for the international market, he also helped invent such icons as the Hula Hoop, the Slip 'N Slide, the Superball and Silly String, along with countless other toys. American childhoods since the 1950s would have been immeasurably poorer without him. Thank you, Mr. Knerr.

(Via Boing Boing.)

Shocking? Hardly.

Our political pundits need to pause and take a deep breath. And several of them should also take a long and very cold shower.

Again and again I've heard Hillary Clinton's victory in the New Hampshire primary described as "shocking." As if this slim victory by a deep-pocketed and firmly-entrenched member of the Democratic Party establishment, who just a week ago was considered the front-runner for the nomination, was at all surprising or unprecedented. The presumptive journalists on ABC's "Nightline", particularly the breathlessly giddy George Stephanopolous, fell all over themselves last night basking in Hillary's win. Stephanapolous (whose objective credibility in any matter related to the Clintons, of whom he is a longtime crony, is highly suspect) was particularly enthused, so much so that he probably needed a change of underwear after the broadcast. I heard the word "shocking" used at least half a dozen times during the broadcast's first fifteen minutes, before I finally rolled over and went to sleep.

No, this wasn't at all "shocking." Shocking would have been Hillary winning New Hampshire by 25 points. Shocking would have been Bill Richardson winning the primary by any margin, after his poor showing in Iowa. Shocking would have been John Edwards dropping out of the race and throwing his support behind Ron Paul. Shocking would have been 25% of the Democratic voters even knowing who the hell Mike Gravel is.

An analogy to this would be an imagined Bjorn Borg-John McEnroe tennis match in 1980, during their prime. Borg takes the first set with a particularly strong performance, but McEnroe recovers to win the second set with an equally strong comeback. McEnroe's win wouldn't have been considered shocking or even surprising - instead, it's simply two mighty competitors at the peak of their powers, splitting the first two sets. It's really no different with Obama winning in Iowa and Hillary in New Hampshire - two strong competitors playing it even.

I continue to be amazed at the cheerleading and superficiality that passes for journalism these days. It almost seems like the journalists want there to be "shocking" "upset victories" in the political races - rather than acknowledge reality in characterizing Hillary's New Hampshire win as unsuprising and even predictable - to bring undeserved legitimacy and dignity to their self-appointed roles as prognosticators and sages. It's as is they're saying "The political process is so chaotic and unpredictable that society is truly fortunate that we're around to provide wisdom and perspective."

No, pundits, our society is not so fortunate. For it's that perspective of yours that considered Hillary to be the front-runner for the Democratic nomination just a week ago, but as soon as Obama won in Iowa your perspective careened 180 degrees and King Barack was all but crowned in coronation. And now you profess to have deep insights into how the rest of the long presidential primary season will play out. Those insights, of course, are gleaned almost entirely in the echo chamber of TV studios - the likes of George Stephanopolous and Tim Russert and Donna Brazile all swapping interchangeable notes - and from "scientific" poll results (the same polls, of course, that had Hillary winning Iowa and Obama winning New Hampshire) and the windy ponderings of overpaid political consultants, and not at all from pounding the pavement and talking to everyday people. You know, doing actual journalistic work and communicating with the people who are actually voting in the primaries. Pundits, you might consider trying this approach the next time you want to claim to be any sort of experts.

Just a thought.

The first small step toward a full and healthy recovery.

Yes.

Peace on earth, goodwill to...Ow!

Several individuals have become early entrants on the negative side of Santa's 2008 Nice/Naughty ledger...

Seven hurt in punch-up at Church of the Nativity

Antarctic base staff evacuated after Christmas brawl

It's the holidays, people - can't we at least hold off on the fisticuffs until the New Year?

(Via Boing Boing.)

Man subjects self to waterboarding...

...is horrified by the experience.

It's torture. No question. Terrible terrible torture. To experience it and understand it and then do it to another human being is to leave the realm of sanity and humanity forever. No question in my mind.

The next Bush Administration official who insists that waterboarding isn't torture should be politely asked to submit to the procedure. And if that official, being the good loyal soldier, somehow insists afterward that it isn't that bad, then Bush and Cheney are up next. You know, just to make sure.

(Via Boing Boing.)

How does this man sleep at night?

No, seriously, how does he?

President Vetoes Second Measure to Expand Children’s Health Program
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg, New York Times

WASHINGTON — President Bush vetoed another children’s health bill on Wednesday, effectively killing Democrats’ hopes of expanding a popular government program aimed at providing insurance to youngsters in lower- and middle-income families.

It was the seventh veto of Mr. Bush’s presidency and the second veto of a children’s health bill. Mr. Bush rejected a similar bill in October, despite support from Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Lawmakers sent Mr. Bush the updated version 10 days ago, and he had until Wednesday to reject the bill or let it become law.

“Because the Congress has chosen to send me an essentially identical bill that has the same problems as the flawed bill I previously vetoed, I must veto this legislation, too,” Mr. Bush wrote in a message conveying his decision to the House.

Maybe bullheaded adherence to misguided ideology has some sort of narcoleptic effect.

"...this most modest, most poignant of days..."

"Sitting down to the big meal seems like the crux of Thanksgiving, but it really comes a couple of hours later. The pumpkin pie is gone, the dishes are done, the dogs and overnight guests are napping, and there’s a strange vacancy in the afternoon light. For a moment the year halts, a moment when the wakeful aren’t quite sure what to do with themselves. In that instant, that hollow in time, you find yourself listening to the unnatural stillness of the afternoon, pausing to look closely at the world around you. That’s all the celebration necessary on this most modest, most poignant of days."
- Verlyn Klinkenborg

(Via Patrick Kurp.)

Think Globally, Gorge Locally

As you gorge yourself on turkey and trimmings today, it's worthwhile to pause and think about where that food is coming from. Heifer International - an amazingly worthwhile organization that you should strongly consider supporting - has a thoughtful interview with Barbara Kingsolver about sustainability and eating locally. My wife Julie just read, and loved, Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life and is demanding that I read it as well. This year we've both become much more aware of what we eat, and I think next spring we're finally going to plant the vegetable garden that we've been vowing to plant for years and years.

Fundamentalism, here we come.

The Illinois state legislature has overturned Gov. Blagojevich's veto of "The Silent Reflection and Student Prayer Act", which mandates a moment of silence at the start of the school day in all of Illinois' public schools. Not surprisingly, lawmakers are quick to say this isn't about prayer in schools, when of course that's exactly what it's all about.

Here's the comment I left in the Tribune's discussion forum:

Okay, Springfield lawmakers, read this once again: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." This applies to state lawmakers as well.

I can't even begin to describe what terrible public policy this is. While lawmakers will certainly try to claim there are no religious motives behind this, the very name of the legislation - "The Silent Reflection and Student Prayer Act" - belies that claim. Making the moment of silence mandatory just opens the door for teachers who are religious to suggest, whether subtly or bluntly, that their students spend their quiet time in prayer - most likely of the Christian variety. "Come on," I can hear teachers saying. "You have to be quiet anyway, why not just pray to Jesus?"

This legislation is the most slippery of slopes, and I really don't like what awaits us at the bottom of that hill.

This legislation is the latest in a long line of reasons I'm grateful that my wife is homeschooling our six-year-old daughter, and keeping her as far as possible from the public school system.

Richard Grayson for Congress

I'm assuming this is legitimate (and I wouldn't be at all surprised, since he's tried this once before): my friend and fellow writer Richard Grayson is running for the U.S. House of Representatives, in Arizona's 6th District. With all the big money behind his main opponent, it looks like I'll be buying up a lot of Richard's books to bolster his finances.

Bumper Sticker of the Year

Seen early this morning, on a minivan in Joliet:

BUSH JR.: THE PRESIDENT QUAYLE WE NEVER HAD

Hear, hear!

In a speech in New Hampshire, Mr. Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate from Illinois, called for imposing a national cap on carbon emissions, investing $150 billion over 10 years to develop new energy sources and reducing dependence on foreign oil by 35 percent by 2030.

“No business will be allowed to emit any greenhouse gases for free,” Mr. Obama said in Portsmouth, N.H. “Businesses don’t own the sky, the public does, and if we want them to stop polluting it, we have to put a price on all pollution.”

Obama's thoughtful proposal is in sharp contrast to George Bush, whose endlessly-repeated call for voluntary reductions in emissions willfully and ignorantly ignores the fact that big corporate polluters feel a much greater responsibility to their next earnings report than to the public at large, and thus will only curb pollution if it doesn't cost too much. And, admittedly, reducing emissions is an expensive proposition, so don't expect industry to willfully do so on its own. But fighting global warming is something that must be done, regardless of the cost, and it's those companies that produce the greatest amount of pollution that are going to have to bear much of the financial burden.

Sometimes, corporations and people can't be counted on to do the right thing, and have to be told what to do. And this is one of those times. Mandatory limits on emissions are the way to go, and should have been instituted long ago.

Weekend Multimedia

After all but taking last weekend off, this week's offerings are a veritable cavalcade.

PC dominoes. No comment necessary. (Via Boing Boing.)

Irony of ironies: James Dean on driver safety.

Hüsker Dü's video for "Could You Be The One?" Not exactly from their Zen Arcade or Flip Your Wig heyday, but still far better than most what passes for rock and roll these days. (Via Pitchfork.)

Trailer for the upcoming Silkworm documentary, Couldn't You Wait?. Maybe it's just their demise - longing for what can't be recovered - but I'm appreciating the band more and more as the years go on.

Stephin Merritt, of the Magnetic Fields, doing a Volvo ad. Hey, everybody's grabbing for the brass ring these days, and at least it wasn't one of his own songs being compromised. I had seen that commercial a few times before, but hadn't realized it was Merritt.

Shalom Auslander, whose story collection Beware of God was one of my favorite reads of 2006, is back with a memoir, Foreskin's Lament, the wonderful trailer for which is here. (Via Bookslut.)

And turning to the political, we have a somber reminder of U.S. failures - yes, failures - in Afghanistan, on the sixth anniversary of our "intervention." And on a lighter but no less pointed note, the unseemly, wide-stance relationship of Congress and the agribusiness industry. Oink.

Oh, the hypocrisy!

Compare and contrast:

Bush to seek more war funds
By Julian E. Barnes Tribune Newspapers: Los Angeles Times
September 22, 2007

WASHINGTON - After smothering efforts by war critics in Congress to drastically cut U.S. troop levels in Iraq, President Bush plans to ask lawmakers next week to approve another massive spending measure -- totaling nearly $200 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through 2008, Pentagon officials said.

Bush: Kids' Health Care Will Get Vetoed
By Jennifer Loven, Associated Press Writer
September 22, 2007

WASHINGTON - President Bush again called Democrats "irresponsible" on Saturday for pushing an expansion he opposes to a children's health insurance program.

Hmmm...war is okay and deserves more funding; poor kids' health isn't okay and deserves no more funding. Nice to see that your priorities are firmly in place, Mr. Bush.

Free at last, free at last...

...Paul Krugman is free at last. And castigating Alan Greenspan for his self-serving revisionism about Bush's tax cuts. Nice to have you back, Mr. Krugman.

See the NYT's footnote:

A Note to Our Readers: We have ended TimesSelect. All of our Op-Ed and news columns are now available free of charge. Additionally, The New York Times Archive is available free back to 1987.

The rational and clearheaded Krugman speaking free and unfettered to the online masses during the past several years of Bush Administration atrocities could have done all of us a lot of good. Oh, well, management always has to have some newfangled but misguided business model to play with. Never mind the editorial mission.

Update: Krugman now has a blog (via James Tata.) Sorry, NYT, this in no way absolves you.

Restoring habeas corpus

Alright, Democrats, do you really want to prove you're the party of progressive change? Do you want to make your hard-fought Congressional election victories of 2006 truly meaningful? Then make this happen. Harry Reid, show that you're capable of real leadership and not just a dissenting mouthpiece, and make this happen. Hillary, Barack, Chris Dodd and the rest of you, get the hell off the campaign trail and your narrow, self-interested ambitions and get back to Washington and make this happen.

The Military Commissions Act was one of the worst of the Bush Administration's many harmful initiatives, one which was rammed through Congress by Constitution-shredding Republican majority and a compliant Democratic minority. If you can take a stand on anything, Democrats, then take a stand on this. Show what you're really made of.

All of you, show that there's more to you than just blustery but empty rhetoric. Make this happen.

No solution.

Bush's latest pronouncement of a troop "drawdown" is nothing more than a reversal of the surge he ordered last winter, one which merely diverted the violence in Baghdad to other parts of the country. Baghdad may have become safer, but the rest of the country more dangerous, resulting in zero net impact overall. The "drawdown" will merely restore our troops to their pre-surge level of about 130,000, which was already too high to begin with, and those troops will remain, in the crossfire of a civil war, with no clear objective in place. And now Bush is invoking Korea, where we've had to maintain a substantial military presence for fifty years, one which did little to deter North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

Bush also insisted that future troop drawdowns are possible if sufficient political and security progress is made, using the phrase "return on success." That sounds nice, until one realizes the implied inverse of the idea - if there's no progress, our military occupation will continue in full force. And considering what little genuine progress has been made in bringing peace and democracy in Iraq, it appears that an occupation lasting decades is very likely.

I couldn't help noting Bush's repeated references to the "success" of our counter-insurgency efforts in Anbar Province. That "success" was repeatedly cited as somehow being proof that his strategy is working. Yet he mentioned only in passing that just yesterday, Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, a Sunni Arab sheik who was a leading U.S. ally in the fight against Al Qaeda in Iraq was killed, along with his two bodyguards, by a roadside bomb. So Anbar Province is a big success story, proof that progress is being made in Iraq - and yet even one of the province's leading political figures isn't safe, not even under armed guard.

There's no progress being made, nor is there likely to be any time soon. Time to get out, now.

"America is bigger than the challenge that came to our shores."

Email message from the good Senator (and, yes, my presidential candidate) Barack Obama:

Six years ago, on a bright and beautiful Tuesday morning, a new kind of enemy came to America's shores.

We will never forget the images of that terrible day -- the planes vanishing into buildings, the thick black clouds of smoke, and the haunting pictures of the missing.

On this anniversary, we pause to remember each and every victim of those attacks.

We celebrate the lives that were tragically cut short. We grieve with the families and friends who lost loved ones. We honor the service and sacrifice of the emergency responders who set an example to the whole world that in America we are our brother's keeper and our sister's keeper.

And we pause to honor the brave men and women of the United States military -- and their families -- who have borne such a heavy burden for the last six years.

We also remember how Americans were stirred to a common purpose. On the lines to donate blood or the candlelight vigils that stretched across our country, there was no red America and there was no blue America. We were united in our grief for our fellow citizens. We were united in our resolve to stand with one another and to stand up to terror. We were united as Americans.

Six years later, the threat to America has only grown. Al Qaeda has reconstituted a new safe-haven where it trains recruits and plots attacks. Al Qaeda's top two leaders, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, continue to disseminate their hate-filled propaganda and inspire legions of followers. Like-minded extremists have struck in scores of countries. The war in Iraq continues to fuel terror and extremism. A Taliban insurgency rages on in Afghanistan. In too many disconnected corners of the world, hate is casting a shadow over hope.

Our calling today remains the same as it was on 9/11. We must write a new chapter in American history. We must bring justice to the terrorists who killed on our shores. We must devise new strategies, develop new capabilities, and build new alliances to defeat the threats of the 21st century. We must extend hope to the hopeless corners of the world and reaffirm our core values to counter the hateful message of the extremists. And we must secure a more resilient homeland.

To write that new American story, we must recapture that sense of common purpose that we had on September 11, 2001.

America is bigger than the challenge that came to our shores. Let us honor the legacy of those we lost by coming together anew. Let us always mark this day by affirming that hope will triumph over fear, and that a new generation of Americans will seek a safer, freer, and more perfect union.

Barack Obama

"...they are children playing with countries..."

D. Boon, 1984, back when America's overseas meddling efforts were focused primarily on Central America:

Untitled Song for Latin America
The Western hemisphere
and all inside
we know who is murdering the innocent
they are children playing with guns
they are children playing with countries
mining harbors
creating contras
the games they play
the lives they will take
they bank their money in the country
they steal from the innocent
(a colonial trait that is much too old)
the banks, the lives, the profits, the lies
the banks, the profits, the lives, the lies
I would call it genocide
any other word would be a lie

George Bush, October 2000, just a few months before he would have to start keeping his campaign-trail promises:

If we don't have a clear vision of the military, if we don't stop extending our troops all around the world and nation building missions, then we're going to have a serious problem coming down the road, and I'm going to prevent that.

Bush Bails Out Mortgage Industry

Oh, that great populist, George W. Bush.

Bush outlines aid for mortgage holders
By Deb Riechmann, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - President Bush outlined ways the federal government can help troubled borrowers keep their homes Friday in an effort to address rising foreclosures fueled by the mortgage crisis.

The administration's first attempt at dealing with a wave of defaults is not aimed at bailing out lenders, however.

"It's not the government's job to bail out speculators or those who made the decision to buy a home they knew they could never afford," Bush said in the Rose Garden. "Yet there are many American homeowners who could get through this difficult time with a little flexibility from their lenders or a little help from their government."

...

Bush said the Federal Housing Administration, a government agency that provides mortgage insurance to borrowers through lenders in the private sector, would launch in coming days a program called FHA Secure. The program would let homeowners who have good credit histories but can't afford their current mortgage payments to refinance into mortgages insured by the FHA.

You can spin this however you like, but this is indeed a bailout for the mortgage industry - for those "speculators" who foolishly kept selling bad mortgages and betting that defaults and foreclosures could be avoided by interest rates staying low and house values staying high. And now, after so many loans have gone bad, instead of having to write off the loans, record losses and incur the costs of foreclosure and resale of houses, those lenders will see those bad loans refinanced - that is, paid in full by some other lender. The original lender is bailed out, and incurs no penalty for making a bad loan. And the new lender, who apparently was previously unwilling to incur the risk of refinancing a bad mortgage, will now be glad to - but only because of the FHA guaranty. And if that mortgage goes bad, the FHA - the federal government and, ultimately, taxpayers - will have to pay up.

If you want to bail out the mortgage industry, George, that's fine. Just don't pretend that's not precisely what you're doing. Be forthright, as difficult as that may be for you. The mortgage industry employs a lot of people, and our economy relies heavily on the health of the housing market - so intervention isn't necessarily a bad thing. But call a bailout a bailout, and be honest about your motivations.

I rarely, if ever, agree with the neoconservatives at the American Enterprise Institute, but this guy is dead on:

"If you're going to help someone to refinance, you're going to bail out the person who financed him in the first place," Peter Wallison of the American Enterprise Institute said Thursday night. "This will only cause the problem to arise again."

Precisely. And the problem will arise again, as long as profit-hungry lenders know they can keep making questionable loans, because if things get bad enough they can always lobby the government for a bailout. Businesses that don't pay the price for bad business decisions will inevitably make those decisions again in the future. Lenders who recorded fat profits during the good times but don't have to face the consequences during the bad times will never learn their lesson, and will do it all over again once the dust settles from this most recent debacle.

Funny how a free market zealot like Bush suddenly caves in when the free market fails, at which point it's time for the government intervention which he supposedly abhores.

"That’s the price of doing business."

Accepting dangerous goods, from lead-painted toys to toxic pet food, is a price of doing business, the trade-off we must absorb for enjoying affordable merchandise? Funny, but that was the same argument made by the meatpacking industry a hundred years ago against having sanitary standards and worker safeguards imposed by a suddenly activist federal government. Yet the Pure Food and Drug Act was passed into law, and grudgingly absorbed by the industry, and we've long since come to expect our domestic food supply to be safe. Similar standards must now be enacted for imported goods. From today's New York Times:

It is definitely not in America’s interest — economic, political or strategic — to erect a barricade against Chinese imports, which could spark a mutually destructive trade war. American businesses and the Bush administration must send a clear message to Beijing that it has to clean up its act or its export-led boom will falter.

What China needs is an effective and transparent regulatory system to enforce product safety standards. The United States and other countries can help with technical advice and warnings about what would happen if Beijing refuses to take it. But the dangers are too immediate to wait.

These days, many of our goods come not from avaricious domestic manufacturers, but from equally avaricious overseas producers, including China, who are so hellbent on achieving profit and economic growth - not unlike the Swifts and Armours of a hundred years ago - that they will cut any corner to do so, including endangering the lives of their own customers.

Regulatory action, on both the part of the Chinese and American governments, is clearly warranted. But the Times editorial cuts to the heart of the problem:

Unfortunately, the Bush administration, which disdains America’s regulatory system, has cut personnel and squeezed budgets at both the Food and Drug Administration and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, impairing their ability to monitor the quality of products made in China or, indeed, anywhere else.

At a time of ever-rising imports, the F.D.A. has lost hundreds of food scientists and field inspectors. And the White House is proposing cutting the agency’s budget next year, in real terms. The C.P.S.C., which sets safety standards for toys and many other consumer products, must inspect tens of billions of dollars worth of goods sold every year with only about 100 field investigators and compliance personnel. And it has suffered a 10 percent cut in its budget in the last two years.

The corporation-loving Bush Administration is relentlessly obsessed with relying on market-based solutions to many problems which would better be solved with government regulation. "Leave it alone; the market will weed out the bad apples," the administration says again and again. "People can just stop buying products from irresponsible companies, thus giving those companies incentive to do the right thing." We don't need costly inspectors and compliance standards, we are told; the market will take care of it.

If it were only that simple. In the particular instance of toys, decades of conservative economic policies have driven most toy manufacturing overseas, most of it to China, where the industry operates beyond the reach of even our enfeebled regulatory mechanisms. If American parents want to buy toys for their children, particularly those character-emblazoned items that kids so love, they really have no choice but to buy China-made toys, and accept any accompanying health risks.

And there will be health risks, as long as China values economic growth, and Chinese corporations value escalating profits, over safety. For all corporations, whether in China, America or elsewhere, are driven by one thing: the profit motive. They will do whatever they can to boost their profits, even if it means exploiting workers, destroying local economies, or ruining the environment. For too long, corporations have been given too much slack in conducting their affairs by those who blindly believe in free markets; those corporations have proven, time and again, that they are either incapable or uniterested in being responsible corporate citizens. They have proven that they believe profit is paramount, and that once a reasonable profit can be guaranteed then, and only then, can other issues - worker safety, environmental standards - be considered.

I'm not here to bash China. Chinese corporations are no better or worse than their American counterparts; it's just that American corporations operate under regulatory constraints, while Chinese corporations, in terms of dealing with the American consumer, do not. We need regulation of all corporations, regardless of location. And, no, I'm not some wild-eyed socialist. I fully believe in capitalism, but not the unfettered, laissez-faire brand of capitalism. Instead, I believe in controlled capitalism, in which companies may operate and compete as they please, given that they adhere to a specific set of standards and playing rules. Companies should be free to pursue profit, just as long as they don't trample society and the common good in doing so.

Like children, companies often have to be told what to do rather than freely deciding for themselves, or otherwise they will recklessly pursue their own selfish needs. Fortunately, unsupervised children are rarely capable of inflicting significant damage when allowed to do whatever they please; unfortunately, the same cannot be said of corporations.

Take that, Tancredo!

A public library goes out of its way to stock its shelves with Spanish, Polish and Hindi titles, among others.

The library uses a national cooperative that recommends sets of books in different languages, including cataloguing -- which is one of the main hindrances to collecting books in foreign languages. "I can't read Hindi. I don't even know what a popular Hindi title would be," said Michelle Roubal, head of reference and reader services.

"It's not that easy when you're a smaller library to order in foreign languages, because you may not have people on staff who speak those languages and the books have to be cataloged," she said.

Roubal coordinates purchases with area libraries so foreign language titles aren't duplicated. The Homer Township Public Library and Lemont Public Library also collect books in Polish, she said.

The library started its Spanish collection a couple years ago, said Library Administrator Julie Milavec.

"Six, seven years ago (the local Spanish population) was still a tiny percentage, according to our demographics," she said. "It's taken a huge leap over the last five or seven years."

There are more than 1,500 titles for children through adults in Spanish at the library now, and about 100 titles in other foreign languages.

Serving one's constituents regardless of their native language. Why, it's enough to make GOP presidential candidate Tom Tancredo - who once lead a push to purge Denver's libraries of Spanish-language material - absolutely livid. Which to me is a good thing.

Remind me, once again...

...why was the Democrats' retaking of Congress in 2006 such a big deal? Wasn't it the restoration of the system of checks and balances that keeps the President under control? Wasn't it recovering many of the civil liberties which were taken away by the Bush Administration with the help of a compliant Republican Congress? Yeah, that's what I thought, too.

Meet the new boss - same as the old boss.

The Democratic-led Congress, more concerned with protecting its political backside than with safeguarding the privacy of American citizens, left town early yesterday after caving in to administration demands that it allow warrantless surveillance of the phone calls and e-mails of American citizens, with scant judicial supervision and no reporting to Congress about how many communications are being intercepted. To call this legislation ill-considered is to give it too much credit: It was scarcely considered at all.

In case you're wondering, here's the Democrats who voted in favor:

Senate (16 total):
Bayh, Carper, Casey, Conrad, Feinstein, Inouye, Klobuchar, Landrieu, Lincoln, McCaskill, Mikulski, Nelson, Nelson, Pryor, Salazar, Webb.

House (41 total):
Altmire, Barrow, Bean, Boren, Boswell, Boyd, Carney, Chandler, Cooper, Costa, Cramer, Cuellar, Davis, Davis, Donnelly, Edwards, Ellsworth, Etheridge, Gordon, Herseth Sandlin, Higgins, Hill, Lampson, Lipinski, Marshall, Matheson, McIntyre, Melancon, Mitchell, Peterson, Pomeroy, Rodriguez, Ross, Salazar, Shuler, Snyder, Space, Tanner, Taylor, Walz, Wilson.

If your "representative" happens to be on either of these lists, be sure to call them up and give them an earful. Oh, and that also goes for any of them who didn't bother to vote, John Kerry and Barbara Boxer the most prominent among them.

More power for Alberto Gonzales. My, that certainly is comforting. Sweet dreams, America.

Obama and Pakistan

Barack Obama has been taking a lot of heat from liberals (and, in what must be particularly distressing for him, praise from the right-wing Wall Street Journal) for his recent speech about fighting terrorism, in particular his vow to attack al Qaeda targets in Pakistan. The media, not surprisingly, has zeroed in on a single sentence: "If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will." But that sentence really has to be read in context. I encourage you to read the entire speech, but here's the specific passage regarding Pakistan:

Above all, I will send a clear message: we will not repeat the mistake of the past, when we turned our back on Afghanistan following Soviet withdrawal. As 9/11 showed us, the security of Afghanistan and America is shared. And today, that security is most threatened by the al Qaeda and Taliban sanctuary in the tribal regions of northwest Pakistan.

Al Qaeda terrorists train, travel, and maintain global communications in this safe-haven. The Taliban pursues a hit and run strategy, striking in Afghanistan, then skulking across the border to safety.

This is the wild frontier of our globalized world. There are wind-swept deserts and cave-dotted mountains. There are tribes that see borders as nothing more than lines on a map, and governments as forces that come and go. There are blood ties deeper than alliances of convenience, and pockets of extremism that follow religion to violence. It's a tough place.

But that is no excuse. There must be no safe-haven for terrorists who threaten America. We cannot fail to act because action is hard.

As President, I would make the hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid to Pakistan conditional, and I would make our conditions clear: Pakistan must make substantial progress in closing down the training camps, evicting foreign fighters, and preventing the Taliban from using Pakistan as a staging area for attacks in Afghanistan.

I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges. But let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will.

And Pakistan needs more than F-16s to combat extremism. As the Pakistani government increases investment in secular education to counter radical madrasas, my Administration will increase America's commitment. We must help Pakistan invest in the provinces along the Afghan border, so that the extremists' program of hate is met with one of hope. And we must not turn a blind eye to elections that are neither free nor fair -- our goal is not simply an ally in Pakistan, it is a democratic ally.

Reading that, it's obvious that Obama isn't exactly saying "We will invade Pakistan in January 2009, as soon as I take office." Instead, he's putting Musharraf on notice that the Pakistani president has to tighten up control of the country's border regions and root out al Qaeda from its safe havens, and if he doesn't make every effort to do so, the United States reserves the right to take military action on its own. Which is not, of course, the same as saying we're absolutely, positively going to invade - just that it's one of our options.

Taking in the broader context of that passage above, it's clear that Obama is willing to work with Pakistan in combating terrorist extremists. He's willing to continue providing military aid so that Musharraf can tighten up on the border regions with Pakistan's own forces, as well as social aid aimed at reducing the extremists' influence on the people of those regions - although both forms of aid will quite sensibly be conditional on seeing Musharraf make legitimate efforts on his own. Obama would neither hand Pakistan a blank check, nor would he impetuously order an invasion. Obama is all about open dialogue, compromise, negotiation and finding common ground, unlike what we've seen of the either-you're-with-us-or-you're-against-us stance of the Bush Administration during the past seven years.

Despite what the WSJ simplistically insists, Barack Obama has not suddenly become a neocon hawk. I remain confident that as president he will do everything he can to find a peaceful solution to the scourge of terrorism, without mindlessly resorting to militarism.

The public reaps...

...what political conservatives sow.

Minnesota's Republican governor, Tim Pawlenty, reacted to the disaster by calling a press conference and, with a steely determination worthy of Rudy Guiliani, lying to the American people. Pawlenty insisted that inspections in 2005 and 2006 had found no structural problems with the bridge. But the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported that the bridge "was rated as 'structurally deficient' two years ago and possibly in need of replacement." The bridge was borderline -- with a 50 sufficiency rating; if a bridge scores less than 50, it needs to be replaced.

According to the Pioneer Press, the bridge's suspension system was supposed to receive extra attention with inspections every two years, but the last one had been performed in 2003.

The governor had every reason to obfuscate; in 2005, he vetoed a bipartisan transportation package that would have "put more than $8 billion into highways, city and county roads, and transit over the next decade." At the time, he was applauded by many Republicans for his staunch fiscal "conservatism."

Our infrastructure may be collapsing around us but, well, at least we have slightly lower taxes and freedom from "big government."

Dept. of Innovative Criminals

This story is funny, on so many levels.

+ The guy dressed up as a tree to pull a bank heist.
+ The bank was located on Elm Street.
+ The police chief's name is Dick Tracy. (Then again, if you're a policeman with the given name of Richard Tracy, of course you go by the name of Dick, right? I know I would. I mean, what would be the point of being Rick Tracy?)

The only thing that could improve on this story would be if he had left the bank, only to be chased down the street by a ravenous beaver.

(Via Boing Boing.)

Ignorance? Or willful manipulation?

The latest outlandish quote from the source of so many others...

"The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th, and that’s why what happens in Iraq matters to the security here at home."
-George W. Bush, July 12, 2007

No, you clueless simpleton, the two groups are decidedly not the same.

But while American intelligence agencies have pointed to links between leaders of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and the top leadership of the broader Qaeda group, the militant group is in many respects an Iraqi phenomenon. They believe the membership of the group is overwhelmingly Iraqi. Its financing is derived largely indigenously from kidnappings and other criminal activities. And many of its most ardent foes are close at home, namely the Shiite militias and the Iranians who are deemed to support them.

Note to Bush apologists: My use of the term "clueless simpleton" is being exceedingly generous. It implies that he genuinely does not recognize the difference between the two terrorist groups. However, many others might argue that he's fully aware of the sharp distinctions between the two, but is intentionally blurring those distinctions, and talking about the two groups as if they are one and the same, to willfully exploit the country's still-festering resentment and trauma about 9/11 to justify both the invasion of Iraq and its continuing occupation, cynically manipulating the public's fear to legitimatize his failed policies.

But that's what others might argue. That's not what I'm saying. Not here, anyway.

Four Years Too Late

It appears that the guidebook to understanding what American troops would be up against in "winning the hearts and minds" of the Iraqi people was on the Pentagon's bookshelf all along: Instructions for American Servicemen in Iraq during World War II. I wonder if it includes a passage stating: "Sunni and Shia don't particularly like each other. Removal of a secular dictator may very well lead to sectarian violence or civil war."

Regardless, it's too bad this wasn't published in early 2003. But then again, even if the neocons had known about this book at that time they probably would have ignored it anyway. Truths can be so peskily inconvenient when one has an ideology to pursue.

Happy 4th of July from Howard Zinn

I was thinking about re-running last year's 4th of July post for lack of anything new to say this year. But now, thanks to one of our most rational and insightful citizens, Howard Zinn, I don't have to.

National spirit can be benign in a country that is small and lacking both in military power and a hunger for expansion (Switzerland, Norway, Costa Rica and many more). But in a nation like ours -- huge, possessing thousands of weapons of mass destruction -- what might have been harmless pride becomes an arrogant nationalism dangerous to others and to ourselves.

Sobering thoughts, yes, but ones we'd all do well to reflect upon during this celebratory day. I couldn't agree more with Zinn. The idea that America is better than any other country in the world, that we are morally superior to and a shining example for the rest of the world, has caused us, again and again, to inflict our often hypocritical and self-serving way of life on other countries and cultures who mostly just want to be left alone.

An Impeachable Offense?

We've long known about President Bush's signing statements, in which he claims to reserve the right to disregard the very bills he's signing into law. Now an investigation by the Government Accountability Office has revealed that Bush is indeed putting this highly questionable "right" into practice.

President Bush is notorious for issuing statements taking exception to hundreds of bills as he signs them. This week, we learned that in a shocking number of cases, the Bush administration has refused to enact those laws. Congress should use its powers to insist that its laws are obeyed.

The Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan arm of Congress, investigated 19 provisions to which Mr. Bush objected. It found that six of them, or nearly a third, have not been implemented as the law requires. The G.A.O. did not investigate some of the most infamous signing statements, like the challenge to a ban on torture. But the ones it looked into are disturbing enough.

But never mind the specifics of the laws the Bush is refusing to enforce. Instead, let's look at the bigger picture, and see what the United States Constitution has to say about a President's powers and, more importantly, responsibilities. Here's Article II, Section 3:

He shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in case of disagreement between them, with respect to the time of adjournment, he may adjourn them to such time as he shall think proper; he shall receive ambassadors and other public ministers; he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed, and shall commission all the officers of the United States.

Pretty straightforward, right? Among other duties, the President is required to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Congress passes bills, in accordance with the Constitution, and the President signs those bills into law and then has the responsibility of executing, or enforcing, those laws. But Bush isn't doing so, instead claiming an executive prerogative, one which the Constitution doesn't allow and which the Founding Fathers, in deep distrust of the absolute power of monarchy, surely never intended any President to have.

In short, Bush isn't doing his job, in direct violation of the Constitution which is the legal foundation for all of American society. Directly and willfully violating the Constitution... doesn't that sound like it would be considered, at the very least, a misdemeanor, and probably a crime? Again from the Constitution, Article II, Section 4:

The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

Enough said.

Thank you for having a conscience.

H.R. 2206 (U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans' Care, Katrina Recovery, and Iraq Accountability Appropriations Act, 2007)

NAYs -- 14
Boxer (D-CA), Burr (R-NC), Clinton (D-NY), Coburn (R-OK), Dodd (D-CT), Enzi (R-WY), Feingold (D-WI), Kennedy (D-MA), Kerry (D-MA), Leahy (D-VT), Obama (D-IL), Sanders (I-VT), Whitehouse (D-RI), Wyden (D-OR)

The rest of you Senators should be ashamed of yourselves. I hope for your sake that you're able to eventually wash the blood off your hands.

"Bringing the Troops Home"

(Note: I wrote this piece several weeks ago, and submitted to the op-ed desk of a leading area newspaper. With no response from them, it's safe to assume they won't be running the piece. Though I would have preferred a much broader audience for this than my humble blog enjoys, I've decided to go ahead and run it here. The thoughts expressed herein are far too important to me to leave them unsaid.)

Bringing the Troops Home
by Peter Anderson

Recently I caught a few moments of a very moving scene on a television news program. A young soldier surprised his equally young son at school, in the middle of the day. The boy ran across the classroom and into his father's arms, his face streaming with tears and his mouth opened wide in an anguished howl. I hoist up my daughter in much the same way when I come home from work every day, but she and I are all quiet smiles, for I have only returned from a comfortable office, an easy train ride and a short drive. The young soldier, in his beige desert camouflage fatigues, had returned from Iraq. The boy's overwrought emotion, which soon turned to smiles and laughter, was clearly shock and then relief at the sight of his father, whom the boy must have believed he might never see again.

And yet, despite the obvious sorrow endured during his father's absence, that young boy was one of the lucky ones. His father came home. The families of more than three thousand American soldiers aren't as fortunate.

For the past several years I have believed that George Bush sees war as mere abstraction, and soldiers as nothing more than pawns, convenient means to a hoped-for but illusory end. Having never fought in a war himself, never feared for his own life or seen his buddies die horrifically before his eyes, never longed for his family on the other side of the world, he lacks the personal experience which might have otherwise dampened his enthusiasm to declare war, and to perpetuate it. He sits comfortably in the Oval Office, or on Air Force One, or on his ranch in Crawford, listening to the suggestions of his senior advisers and the briefings of his generals as he directs the war's continued path, never truly appreciating its human cost. He even refuses to attend military funerals, perhaps wanting to spare himself the sight of the tears and anguish and loss which are the direct result of his policies.

In contrast, veterans like John Kerry or Wesley Clark, while by no means perfect presidential candidates themselves, know what it's like to be a soldier on the ground, with shells exploding overhead and an armed enemy potentially behind every tree or corner. With this remembrance vividly in mind, a veteran would have been very reluctant to put troops in harm's way for a military solution to a political conflict. Before going to war, either Kerry or Clark, or even Colin Powell for that matter, would have wanted incontrovertible proof that Saddam Hussein and Iraq posed a direct threat to the United States. They would have demanded more than a few satellite photographs, a bureaucrat's theoretical projections of Saddam's potential arsenal, an opportunist expatriate's grim assessments, or unsubstantiated rumors of uranium purchases in Niger or meetings with al Qaeda in Prague. They would have demanded overwhelming proof of a threat, and not mere conjecture.

But conjecture will suffice when one's actions are driven by ideology instead of pragmatism, or by abstraction instead of reality. George Bush settled for conjecture, and eagerly and defiantly declared war. The toppling of Saddam was swift and relatively easy, which was hardly surprising given the huge strength disparity between the coalition forces and Saddam's army. But now, due to an inexplicable lack of foresight -- or perhaps willful ignorance -- Bush finds himself and his military in the middle of a civil war between two factions who are fueled by centuries of mutual resentment and hostility, with no clear way out. Bush continues to insist that training new Iraqi security forces -- many of whom are more loyal to those sectarian factions than the artificial construct that is "Iraq" -- and someday turning over control to them will bring peace to Iraq. Yet the violence continues to escalate, despite our military's continued efforts. And with the restoring of order being Bush's stated prerequisite for withdrawing troops, the likelihood of either event occurring seems more remote with each passing day.

It's over, and now is the time for George Bush to admit it. He must now finally concede defeat, admit the limitations of American military power, and acknowledge that not every conflict can be resolved by sending in troops and dropping bombs. Despite the claims of war supporters, talk of withdrawal by no means undermines our troops, nor shows disloyalty to them. Rather, withdrawal is the ultimate show of support for the troops, as it will safely remove them from a conflict which we have little chance of winning, an intractable struggle which the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds of Iraq will ultimately have to resolve on their own.

For consolation, Bush can always point to the success of Saddam being permanently removed from power, and hope that history will forgive him for the ensuing ethnic strife that was subsequently unleashed. At this point, that's probably the best he can expect.

Unfortunately, Bush doesn't appear to agree. In the wake of his 20,000-troop surge to quell violence in Baghdad, which has had only modest success, now comes word that another 13,000 National Guard troops are being shipped overseas to Iraq, and tours of duty are being extended. And that the vice president is still claiming a pre-war link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. And that the defense secretary insists the withdrawal of troops from Iraq will inevitably result in ethnic cleansing, as if that wasn't already happening despite our ongoing military presence. But rather than face unpleasant reality, George Bush and his administration are digging in their heels, staying the course and perpetuating this unjustified, misguided and fruitless war.

Thinking back to those televised images, I can't help but fear that the young boy's joy will be short-lived, and that his daddy, the soldier, will soon be returning to Iraq. Along with thousands of fathers and mothers just like him.

Copyright©2007 Peter Anderson

Support the Red Cross

My family's hearts go out to the unfortunate people of the Plains states whose lives have been devastated by the weekend's tornadoes, and especially to Greensburg, Kansas, which was all but wiped off the map. As always during disasters like these, the Red Cross is on the scene, providing relief and assistance. I strongly encourage you to donate to the Red Cross to support their laudable efforts.

Whose Freedom?

First off, my heartfelt condolences to the Virginia Tech shooting victims and their families. None of you deserved such a fate -- in fact, no one does.

The coming days will undoubtedly include a renewed call for tighter gun controls -- if not an outright ban, then much greater restrictions on gun acquisition and use. This call happens every time a mass shooting like Virginia Tech or Columbine occurs. People get outraged for a while, and then the furor fades away again, as we move on to more immediate concerns and tell ourselves that such a thing can't happen to us. But it can happen to anybody, especially as long as we have such lax controls on firearms. The general indifference of our population, as well as exceedingly weak-willed politicians who are unwilling to stand up to the mighty gun lobby, essentially ensures that chronic gun violence will continue to plague our country for the indefinite future.

The coming days will undoubtedly also include the gun lobby defending its Consitutional right to bear arms, as spelled out in the 2nd Amendment:

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Gun owners insist they have the right to own and use a gun to defend themselves, and any gun control legislation restricts their freedom. I don't know how many gun owners there are in America, but I'd guess it's far less than a majority of the population. So a minority of the population thinks gun control restricts their freedom. Legally, that minority has an arguable point.

But what about the freedom of every single person in America? What about the freedom from danger, the freedom from fear? Don't we all have the right to safely and quietly go about our daily lives without the fear of being gunned down in a random act of gun violence? Unfortunately, unlike the 2nd Amendment's more explicit grant, such a right to safety was not specifically granted in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.

Or wasn't it? Check out the less-noticed but no less legally valid 9th Amendment:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Gun owners have the legal right to keep and bear arms. But the 9th Amendment checks this, as its wording can be reasonably interpreted to prevent those taking advantage of gun rights to "deny or disparage" the rights "retained by the people." And surely one right retained by the people is the inherent right to safety -- a right which is routinely denied and disparaged by the millions of guns floating around which are readily available to opportunisitic criminals, or to anyone just looking to settle an argument or correct a grievance.

An individual's rights are all well and good, just as long as they don't infringe the rights of others. And private gun ownership infringes the rights of all us.

Chocolate-Free Chocolate?

One thing my wife Julie takes very seriously is chocolate. She's become quite the connoisseur over the past few years, regularly reviewing high-end goods on The Chocolate Blog, and scouring the Web for new product discoveries. (She even browses the chocolate selections at Hannah's via cellphone every time I stop in there for lunch.)

At the moment she's a bit steamed about the chocolate industry's efforts to relax the definition of chocolate to such a degree that products with zero cocoa butter will still qualify for the designation. (Read her entire post here.) It's a ludicrous premise, one which is becoming all too common in American industry's relentless rush to the bottom in its never-ending quest to cut costs.

If you agree that this is an outrage, you can voice your complaint to the FDA. In the meantime, you might also limit your chocolate purchases to the high-end producers of the product who want no part in such shenanigans.

Poor Little Rich Criminal

I haven't been following the Conrad Black trial very closely (as long as he gets strung up by his thumbs, like he deserves, that's all I need to know), but I was struck by Naomi Klein's excellent column in The Nation which relates the trial's jury selection proceedings. Klein passes along a chorus of discontent from potential jurors (all common folk, to Black's considerable chagrin) about this latest example of corporate executive malfeasance. This paragraph is particularly telling:

Regardless of what else happens in the Black saga, the jury-selection process has already provided an extraordinary window onto the way regular Americans, randomly selected, view their elites--not as heroes but as thieves. As far as Black is concerned, this is all terribly unfair--he is being "thrown to the mobs" because of rage at the system and, unlike American billionaires, he doesn't "dress in corduroy trousers" or donate his fortune to AIDS charities. Black's lawyers even argued (unsuccessfully) that their client could not get a fair trial because the average Chicagoan "does not reside in more than one residence, employ servants or a chauffeur, enjoy lavish furniture, or host expensive parties."

Sorry, Lord Black, but I doubt you'll ever truly find a jury of your peers because there are, mercifully, very few people like you. And what few of you there are either buy or finagle their way out of jury duty, lest they sully themselves by associating with the unwashed, corduroy-wearing hordes.

I guess you'll just have to settle for being judged by twelve everyday people -- the kind of people you've built your fortune on the backs of, either as the rank-and-file of your companies or the readers of your crappy papers.

Ask Not For Whom The Bell's Tolls

Left: Going.
Right: Gone.

Absent a road trip, this will be the last Bell's I consume for quite a while. Au revoir.

Message from Obama

Hear, hear!

Dear Friend,

Today, we sadly find ourselves at the very point in Iraq I feared most when I opposed giving the President the open-ended authority to wage this war in 2002 – an occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences in the midst of a country torn by civil war.

We have waited and we have been patient. We have given chance after chance for a resolution that has not come, and, more importantly, watched with horror and grief the tragic loss of thousands of brave young Americans.

The time for waiting in Iraq is over. The days of our open-ended commitment must come to a close. And the need to bring this war to an end is here.

That is why today, I’m introducing the Iraq War De-escalation Act of 2007. This plan would not only place a cap on the number of troops in Iraq and stop the escalation, it would begin a phased redeployment of U.S. forces with the goal of removing of all U.S. combat forces from Iraq by March 31st, 2008 – consistent with the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group that the President ignored.

The redeployment of troops to the United States, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in the region would begin no later than May 1st of this year, toward the end of the timeframe I first proposed in a speech more than two months ago. In a civil war where no military solution exists, this redeployment remains our best leverage to pressure the Iraqi government to achieve the political settlement between its warring factions that can slow the bloodshed and promote stability.

The U.S. military has performed valiantly and brilliantly in Iraq. Our troops have done all we have asked them to do and more. But no amount of American soldiers can solve the political differences at the heart of somebody else’s civil war, nor settle the grievances in the hearts of the combatants.

When it comes to the war in Iraq, the time for promises and assurances, for waiting and patience, is over. Too many lives have been lost and too many billions have been spent for us to trust the President on another tried and failed policy opposed by generals and experts, Democrats and Republicans, Americans and even the Iraqis themselves.

It is time to change our policy.

It is time to give Iraqis their country back.

And it is time to refocus America ’s efforts on the challenges we face at home and the wider struggle against terror yet to be won.

Sincerely,

U.S. Senator Barack Obama

Another Zealot for Bush

Chicago novelist Sara Paretsky has a passionate and thoughtful op-ed piece in today's Tribune about Eric Keroack, Bush's latest morality-zealot nominee for an important public health post, heading the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Population Affairs. Among Keroack's steadfast beliefs are that abstinence is the only appropriate topic for sex education, that women who have sex outside of marriage (those trollops!) "use up their 'bonding' hormone, oxytocin, and are unable to form lasting relationships", that premarital sex is a form of "germ warfare," and that contraception "demeans women...degrades human sexuality and is adverse to human health."

Little girls, Bush and Keroack are telling us, you must have our permission for anything you do in the privacy of your beds and doctors' offices. And if you do what you want without our permission, we will see that you are punished: We will force you to become pregnant -- because we will deny you access to contraception -- or we will tell you to risk death if you want to end a pregnancy.

Normally I don't speculate about the sexual and contraceptive choices of any woman, whether she's the first lady or the lady next door. But when the lady's husband is prying into those choices for the rest of the world -- deciding whether my goddaughters can have abortions, whether my nieces can have access to contraception and whether my granddaughter can learn that her boyfriend's condom can protect her from STDs -- I am understandably curious about the First Marriage.

Laura Bush has carried only one pregnancy to term in her 29 years of marriage. Has she "demeaned" her body by using contraception? Has she terminated a pregnancy? Has she chosen "the only moral course" and been abstinent?

Once again, middle-aged white men well past their child-spawning years dictating how women should conduct their personal lives. Once again, Bush picking an advisor whose views conform almost perfectly to his hypocritical own. Once again, the Republican Party, which otherwise insists that government shouldn't meddle in peoples' lives, arguing in favor of controlling uteruses across America and the world.

(Tribune site requires its typically insidious registration. Use "bugmenot@gmail.com" for the user name, "bugmenot" for the password. Thanks, as always, to bugmenot.com.)

Coolest. Thing. EVER.

Those of you who over-indulged on New Year's Eve and slept through the Tournament of Roses Parade missed out on seeing the culmination of the childhood dreams of myself and anyone else who grew up during the Apollo era of space exploration.

Ladies and gentlemen, introducing the jet pack.

Oh, sure, the fuel only allows for a 30-second flight, but how many of us would kill, kill for that 30 seconds?

A Heartwarming Holiday Wish

To me, nothing quite embraces the holiday spirit like this classic Charles Addams image of the Addams Family preparing to pour what appears to be boiling oil onto a group of unsuspecting and innocent carolers.

Which begs the question -- do people still carol door-to-door any more? My family did it a few times when I was very young, but that's over thirty years ago already. Well, anyway, even if that old tradition has fallen by the wayside, Maddie, Julie and I would like to wish you and yours a happy and safe holiday season, and a healthy and prosperous 2007.

(Image via Patricia.)

Candidates for Man of the Year

If these photos have already hit your email inbox, my apologies, but in case not I just had to pass along these priceless examples of the modern, enlightened, sensitive male. Cast your vote in the comments, and indicate what you (dis)liked most about your candidate of choice!

Candidate #1 - The Biker:

Candidate #2 - The Boater:

Candidate #3 - The Drinker:

Thoughts After the Elections

I'm certainly encouraged by yesterday's election results, and the clear direction this country is moving. I feel a hell of a lot better than I did two years ago, when I woke up the morning after the elections in something close to despondency, with Barack Obama's convincing Senate win being one of the few causes for hope. Sure, yesterday's results are partly caused by the natural right-to-left-and-back-again swing of our national mindset, but I think there's also a fundamental change going on.

I think more and more people are seeing through Republican deceptions and dubious priorities -- that invading Iraq was outright wrong; that "staying the course" there isn't a strategy at all, but blind stasis; that the physical health of everyday citizens is far more important than the fiscal health of pharmaceutical and insurance companies; that protecting our environment isn't a luxury, but something critical to the planet's survival; and that we need a more level playing field between consumers and corporations. I believe we're moving in that direction -- we haven't gotten there yet, but I believe we're on our way.

Specifics from yesterday:

Though I was disappointed to see John Pavich, a genuinely good, thoughtful and caring man, lose the Illinois 11th District race for the U.S. Senate, I was encouraged by the strength of his showing. He gained 45% of the vote, including 47% in Will County, the largest in the district, giving five-term incumbent Jerry Weller his worst showing since 1996. I think Pavich's performance showed that Weller is quite vulnerable, and will become even more so during two more years of loyalty to the lame-duck Bush Administration. I'm hoping the Democratic Party agrees, and will funnel much more money into the campaign of Pavich (who I hope will run again) or whomever gets the nomination. The Dems' money in Illinois went mostly to Melissa Bean and Tammy Duckworth this year, but I'm hoping they spread the wealth a bit more next time. Weller can be beaten.

Though Tammy Duckworth fell short against Peter Roskam in the 6th District, she did so by less than 5,000 votes, an amazing showing in one of the most staunchly Republican districts in the country. The 6th District is there for the taking, as well, although Roskam will be more formidable next time, given the natural advantages of incumbency.

And on a even brighter note:

Rod Blagojevich easily won re-election as Illinois governor, despite the well-publicized legal troubles of his administration and cronies. He even fared extremely well with voters who considered ethics and political corruption to be the most important issue of the campaign, which tells me one of two things: either a) Illinois voters like his progressive policies so much that they're willing to overlook substantial ethical lapses; or b) voters considered his opponent, the longtime Springfield insider Judy Baar Topinka, to be no better in the ethics department.

Nationally, the Democrats taking over the U.S. House, six governorships (including the key electoral state of Ohio) and at least four Senate seats (adios, Rick Santorum!) is extremely promising. Besides the welcomed shift in political power -- which should effectively neuter Bush for the remainder of his term -- the Democrats victory should teach them that it's okay, and even politically lucrative, to oppose the Iraq war, to promote diversity and tolerance, to challenge Bush's positions on executive authority, civil liberties, economic equality, energy and environmental policy.

In other words, it's okay to have backbone, and be a true opposition party, and not just be a meeker version of the GOP.

VOTE!

If you're already done so, then good for you.

If you haven't, there's still plenty of time.

John Pavich for Congress

(Pardon me for sending this through your RSS reader again. This is important enough to me to say it again, once more for emphasis.)

John Pavich is getting my vote for the U.S. House of Representatives, 11th District. On the vital issues, here are his top priorities:

• Demanding more accountability from the administration on the prosecution of the Iraq war, and working towards a responsible, phased withdrawal and redployment of our troops.

• Strengthening our national security by appropriately funding our soldiers and enabling our intelligence services to do the job they have been given.

• Restoring fiscal responsibility to the federal budget by reducing, and eventually eliminating, the budget deficit.

• Demanding accountability from energy corporations regarding price gouging, raising fuel efficiency standards, and making hybrid and E-85 vehicles more accessible to all Americans.

• Fighting to protect the environment by supporting and funding research into alternative energy sources, such as wind, solar and ethanol power.

• Working to solve the serious fiscal problems that affect Medicare and Medicaid.

• Properly funding education programs in this country so that our children receive the education they need to succeed in this ever-changing world.

• Working to secure federal funding for stem cell research, and overriding the Bush veto (and Weller's vote) against stem cells.

• Working to bring jobs back to the 11th district by eliminating tax breaks to companies that outsource our jobs.

Although I don't agree with all of his views, particularly his opposition to a troop drawdown timetable in Iraq and his support for the Patriot Act, he's an infinitely superior choice than the incumbent Jerry Weller (he of the staunch allegiance to President Bush, questionable lobbyist dealings, secret real estate deals and tolerance for dictators).

The Peoria Journal Star agrees with me, giving Pavich their endorsement.

John Pavich is the superior choice for the 11th district, a fresh voice who will help bring much-needed change to Washington.

He Cares A Lot

In fact, he cares so much, frets so incessantly, that sometimes he gets less than eight hours of sleep per night.

Concerned about her young daughter's brain cancer and the public-health impact of a nuclear power plant near her Minooka home, Cynthia Sauer in early 2004 reached out to U.S. Rep. Jerry Weller.

After four telephone calls to his office, she received a "dear friend" letter from Weller (R-Ill.) in February 2004. Weller--whose 11th Congressional District includes three nuclear plants, more than any other in the United States--thanked Sauer for contacting him "regarding the environment" and listed his efforts in that area.

Of course, it's the corporate interests in his district that he frets about.

"I think it's another example of his misplaced priorities," Pavich said, noting that Weller has received more than $20,000 in contributions from Exelon Corp., which owns the nuclear plants in the district. "He puts the interests of his business clients, his largest contributors, above those of his constituents."

What about the corporations? Would someone please think about the corporations?

What Liberals Believe

Like Skimble, I'm publishing this excellent list here, verbatim, because it's far too important to be kept hidden behind the Tribune's registration wall. Per University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey R. Stone:

1. Liberals believe individuals should doubt their own truths and consider fairly and open-mindedly the truths of others. This is at the very heart of liberalism. Liberals understand, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once observed, that "time has upset many fighting faiths." Liberals are skeptical of censorship and celebrate free and open debate.

2. Liberals believe individuals should be tolerant and respectful of difference. It is liberals who have supported and continue to support the civil rights movement, affirmative action, the Equal Rights Amendment and the rights of gays and lesbians. (Note that a conflict between propositions 1 and 2 leads to divisions among liberals on issues like pornography and hate speech.)

3. Liberals believe individuals have a right and a responsibility to participate in public debate. It is liberals who have championed and continue to champion expansion of the franchise; the elimination of obstacles to voting; "one person, one vote;" limits on partisan gerrymandering; campaign-finance reform; and a more vibrant freedom of speech. They believe, with Justice Louis Brandeis, that "the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people."

4. Liberals believe "we the people" are the governors and not the subjects of government, and that government must treat each person with that in mind. It is liberals who have defended and continue to defend the freedom of the press to investigate and challenge the government, the protection of individual privacy from overbearing government monitoring, and the right of individuals to reproductive freedom. (Note that libertarians, often thought of as "conservatives," share this value with liberals.)

5. Liberals believe government must respect and affirmatively safeguard the liberty, equality and dignity of each individual. It is liberals who have championed and continue to champion the rights of racial, religious and ethnic minorities, political dissidents, persons accused of crime and the outcasts of society. It is liberals who have insisted on the right to counsel, a broad application of the right to due process of law and the principle of equal protection for all people.

6. Liberals believe government has a fundamental responsibility to help those who are less fortunate. It is liberals who have supported and continue to support government programs to improve health care, education, social security, job training and welfare for the neediest members of society. It is liberals who maintain that a national community is like a family and that government exists in part to "promote the general welfare."

7. Liberals believe government should never act on the basis of sectarian faith. It is liberals who have opposed and continue to oppose school prayer and the teaching of creationism in public schools and who support government funding for stem-cell research, the rights of gays and lesbians and the freedom of choice for women.

8. Liberals believe courts have a special responsibility to protect individual liberties. It is principally liberal judges and justices who have preserved and continue to preserve freedom of expression, individual privacy, freedom of religion and due process of law. (Conservative judges and justices more often wield judicial authority to protect property rights and the interests of corporations, commercial advertisers and the wealthy.)

9. Liberals believe government must protect the safety and security of the people, for without such protection liberalism is impossible. This, of course, is less a tenet of liberalism than a reply to those who attack liberalism. The accusation that liberals are unwilling to protect the nation from internal and external dangers is false. Because liberals respect competing values, such as procedural fairness and individual dignity, they weigh more carefully particular exercises of government power (such as the use of secret evidence, hearsay and torture), but they are no less willing to use government authority in other forms (such as expanded police forces and international diplomacy) to protect the nation and its citizens.

10. Liberals believe government must protect the safety and security of the people, without unnecessarily sacrificing constitutional values. It is liberals who have demanded and continue to demand legal protections to avoid the conviction of innocent people in the criminal justice system, reasonable restraints on government surveillance of American citizens, and fair procedures to ensure that alleged enemy combatants are in fact enemy combatants. Liberals adhere to the view expressed by Brandeis some 80 years ago: "Those who won our independence ... did not exalt order at the cost of liberty."

You might as well just go ahead and fit me for a scarlet letter "L", because I believe strongly in everything on Stone's list.

From this day forward...

Love.
Respect.
Tolerate.
See beyond differences.
Compromise.

Never hate.

Krugman Fans, Rejoice!

In an analogue to MP3 blogs which wantonly post MP3s as a means of subverting the evil clutches of the record industry, this site wantonly posts Paul Krugman's columns as a means of subverting the evil clutches of the NYT's subscription-only online content. (Frank Rich, Maureen Dowd, Bob Herbert and others are in there as well.) Krugman's one of our most insightful politcal and economic commentators, and you owe it to yourself to read his columns if you aren't doing so already.

I also recommend Krugman's collection of columns, The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century, which is very good indeed.

In today's Wingnut Gazette...

Katherine Harris:

(W)e have to have elected officials in government and we have to have the faithful in government and over time, that lie we have been told, the separation of church and state, people have internalized, thinking that they needed to avoid politics and that is so wrong because God is the one who chooses our rulers. And if we are the ones not actively involved in electing those godly men and women and if people aren’t involved in helping godly men in getting elected than we’re going to have a nation of secular laws. That’s not what our founding fathers intended and that’s certainly isn’t what God intended.

(Emphasis added.)

Er, you probably ought to read your Constitution again, Ms. Harris. It's not a lie at all, but in fact it's right there in the Bill of Rights, and smack dab on top:

Amendment I - Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Remember, freedom of religion also means freedom from religion, particularly the brand that you'd like to impose on the rest of the country. And as for the