Election Depression

A few days ago I was philosophically pleased and comfortable with the state of our nation despite its fractious politics.  This morning I'm less pleased.  There are several reasons why.

First, it appears that by about a margin of 53% to 47%, voters in Maine have repealed a same-sex marriage law.  This is a margin similar to California's Proposition 8 a year ago.  Along the way, the backers of the initiative fought tooth and nail to not disclose where the money to pay for their political campaign came from, and once again claimed to be "protecting marriage," "protecting churches," "protecting families," and "protecting children."  Protecting them from what?

It was another campaign based on questionable political tactics and lies, with the goal of enshrining bigotry into law.

Second, the weight of the world was placed on a special election in New York's 23rd Congressional District.  This district, which is very rural, looks on a map a little bit like Canada dropped several gobs of paint on top of New York State, which then oozed down about three-quarters of the way to Albany. It has always been a Republican stronghold; it hasn't sent a Democrat to Congress since before the Civil War.  The Republicans nominated a member of the state legislature and the Democrats found their patsy to stand up for the party, hoping forlornly for something bizarre to happen.  Well, it did; "Tea Party" conservatives found the Republican nominee "too liberal" and ran a political novice against her on the Conservative Party ballot (New York has four political parties, with the Liberal and Conservative parties being used for this purpose often enough to tweak moderates to more extreme positions).  Whether she was "too liberal" because she had voted for tax increases in Albany or because she was pro-choice remains a little bit uncertain in my mind.  But the effect of the split the right-of-center votes was to siphon off enough support from the mainstream GOP candidate that the Democrat appeared to have a plurality.  So then the mainstream Republican withdrew from the race -- and endorsed the Democrat.  Now, it appears that the Democrat has won, although the polls are very close and it's at least mathematically possible that the Conservative could pull it out; I'm not fluent enough in the politics of the area to know whether that's a realistic possibility or not.

In the grand scheme of things, one seat in the House of Representatives switching parties isn't going to matter all that much.  There are two depressing things about this election.  First and foremost, it seems there was thuggery and intimidation at the polls, and the supporters of the insurgent conservative candidate are to blame.  It was depressing when progressives sent out thugs to poll-watch in 2008 and it's depressing to see conservatives do it now.  But while of less immediacy, I find more pernicious in the long run the fact that, even as the Conservative candidate (prematurely?) conceded defeat, the social conservatives have called this race a victory for conservatives over liberal elements in their own party.  They didn't care about winning the election.  They cared about ideological purity within their own party. 


This is not a recipe for political success, as the apparent results in New York demonstrate.  The recipe for success is what happened in Virginia, where the Republican candidate found a way to bridge the gap between the two wings of his party, keep the voters' eyes on the prize -- the promise of good government -- and got a majority of voters behind him.  Or even in New Jersey, where the Republican gubernatorial candidate withstood charges of corruption (and obesity) to promise competent government and defeat the (bald) incumbent.

Deliver good government.  Work change incrementally.  Make room at the table.  Find common causes.  Oh, and duck the bigotry.

I feel like something of a lone wolf howling at the moon on this.  I know I'm not, that other sane Republicans can see an existential threat to our party in this growing schism.  But for the moment, we are being hooted down as "liberals," "traitors," or subject to ad hominem attacks.  Both of the thoughtful and well-written bloggers I linked to in this paragraph have recently been at the receiving end of intramural brawls and efforts to purge them from the "movement."  As for the national party leadership, I've got to conclude that at minimum, the RNC is completely useless in dealing with the schism.  I saw this sort of thing emerging in the California GOP twenty years ago, and just look at the electoral success it's brought us in California ever since.

The trend will continue, with a higher-stakes primary battle in Florida between Governor Charlie Crist, an ally of John McCain, and Tea Partier Marco Rubio for the Republican nomination to the U.S. Senate.  That primary election will probably be the playboard upon which the opening moves of the 2012 Republican Presidential nomination are executed, and right now the likely candidates are looking like Palin, Pawlenty, Huckabee, and Romney; the surprising early leader is Mike Huckabee.  Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised, but I would have thought it would have been Palin or Romney.  Other potential candidates have either self-destructed on the "Appalachian Trail" or exorcised themselves from contention.  Of course, 2012 is a long time in the future in political terms so it's easy to read too much into the maneuvers and polling.

My big point here is that as I had sadly feared, the hard-line conservatives motivated by social issues and unthinking reactionarianism, appear to have taken the upper hand in the struggle for the soul of the GOP.  William F. Buckley described his efforts, back when he helped revive conservatism as a vital, intellectually important force in American politics, as standing athwart history yelling "Stop!"  But it's important to read the entire thing, to understand what Buckley wanted conservatives to do once they got history to pause -- and that was to think carefully about what would happen next, to take the time to understand what's important and good about our country and adapt those ideas to the problems of the day.

I won't say that there are no Tea Party Conservatives or social conservatives who would do that.  Plenty are.  And sometimes I'll agree with them and sometimes I'll disagree with them.  But there doesn't seem to be a lot of thought going on at all over in that camp.  There's a lot of emotion, a lot of passion, a lot of something that smells like fanaticism.  If anyone stopped to think about same-sex marriage, they'd see that it is where the future is and opposition to it is based on nothing but bigotry; it's fanaticism that makes people adhere to that bigotry -- which is why I lump the Maine SSM election results in with the intramural knife fight (aside from the fact that it's a good bet that there is considerable overlap between Tea Partiers rejoicing at the NY-23 results and anti-SSM advocates rejoicing at the Maine results).* 

I have not drunk the Kool-Aid and I find the recent behavior of those who have to be repellent.  It's fanaticism that rejoices in causing a Republican candidate for office to withdraw from a race and endorse a Democrat; it's fanaticism that causes conservatives to think that electing a Democrat to Congress is better than electing a moderate Republican.  And while I can deal with a thoughtful conservative who disagrees with me on individual planks in our party's platform, it's fanaticism that repels me.  There's no room for someone like me in a party of fanatics.


* If you're a Tea Partier who is in favor of same-sex marriage, please comment here so that I can at least know that someone like that even exists.

Intellectual Coccooning Reaches Ridiculous Levels

You get out of your mind only the products of what you put into it. That's why, even if you don't believe everything you read, what you read still has something of an influence on how you think. If you're like me, then that leads you to the conclusion that there's no monopoly on truth, so therefore it's important to sample a diversity of different points of view and to periodically investigate factual claims offered to substantiate a variety of opinions. If you read only liberal stuff, eventually you'll become liberal.  If you read only conservative stuff, eventually you'll become conservative.

We're also all susceptible to confirmation bias -- whether consciously or not, we self-select facts and information that confirms our initial opinions.  So keeping a broad sample on the reading menu is the best way I can think of to come as close as possible to making up your own mind about things rather than be an intellectual sheep.

But, if you are a deeply socially conservative evangelical Christian, a rather significant industry has been created around you, with you as its market, which will provide you with all the necessities and luxuries of life, only "from a Christian perspective."  This way, you can magnify your pro-Christian confirmation bias to the maximum extent possible.  You can insulate your delicate Christian mind from anything that isn't Jesus-approved by:

• Reading the news from a Christian perspective
• Making sure you have a Christian roommate
• Playing a clone of "Guitar Hero" that features only Christian rock music
• Listening to popular music that has been rewritten so that every song has Christian content
• Using a web browser that automatically rewrites web pages to filter out content thought to be not Christian-friendly

And soon, you won't even have to poison your delicate mind with the pernicious liberal influences of ... wait for it...

The Bible.

Yes!  Coming soon, from the people who think Wikipedia is too liberal, is the "Conservative Bible Project."  It's the King James Bible, only with all the references to social justice, common sharing of goods and wealth among Christians, and even  removed!  The Conservative Bible Project promises to take words out of even the mouth of Jesus as he's being crucified to redeem the sins of mankind for all time:

Liberal Falsehood:
The earliest, most authentic manuscripts lack this verse set forth at Luke 23:34:
Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."
Is this a liberal corruption of the original? This does not appear in any other Gospel, and the simple fact is that some of the persecutors of Jesus did know what they were doing. This quotation is a favorite of liberals but should not appear in a conservative Bible.

After all, why should "real" Christians read about, you know, Christ forgiving people for their sins?  What does that have to do with real Christianity?  Tell you what, I'm glad I'm no longer a believer and no longer a member of any identifiable political bloc. Adhering to a party line would be so much work with nonsense like this floating around.  I simply lack the mental energy to sustain cognitive dissonance to such a degree.

You know, on the other hand, this might be a colossal hoax.  A joke.  It has to be.  It certainly is registering on my B.S. meter.  Poe's Law is in full play here; it is difficult to figure these things out sometimes.

Evil Sesame Street

Maybe I am missing out by not having a TV.

Glenn Beck Spews A Densely-Packed Set Of Hysterical Lies

Why has America fallen into such desperate and horrible straits?  Oh, yeah, that's right, it's the atheists' fault.  Or, as Doug Mataconis puts it, "Yea, it has nothing to do with all those religious people who’ve, you know, actually been in charge of the country all these years." But a snappy response is not enough. Beck deserves a thorough takedown for this:

And I'm the guy who's going to give it to him. Glenn Beck, you are a lying, hysterical, fearmongering, pandering liar.  Who lies in order to gain ratings and who lies in order to whip people into a needless and destructive political frenzy and who just plain lies.

1.  "In God We Trust" appears on all the money, you lying sack of shit.  I defy you -- I challenge you to swear to forfeit on that immortal soul that you believe in -- to produce a single piece of U.S. tender in circulation that does not contain, somewhere on it, the phrase "In God We Trust."

2.  The Decalogue is allowed in courthouses.  Sometimes -- when it's part of an artistic display about the law and history.  We are, on our public buildings, allowed to acknowledge the role of the Ten Commandments as part of our cultural and legal history.  When the Decalogue is offered for religious indoctrination, however, that violates something inherently American, specifically, the Establishment Clause of the Constitution.  You should read it sometime.

3. You can pray in school.  You just can't force someone else to pray in school along with you.  Big difference.  You also can't pray in a manner that disrupts normal class activity.  But yes, you can pray in school.

4.  "Can't sing Christmas carols"?  Huh?  What court, what political institution, what police officer, what legislation, what rule, what anything stops you from singing a Christmas Carol where and when you want to?  You're just a crazed, frothing LIAR, Glenn Beck.

5.  Religious "nones" on the rise, meaning more Americans are not identifying with any particular religion -- even becoming outright atheists?  (Note that responding "none" to a demographic survey about religion does not mean one is identifying as an atheist.)  Aren't these Americans who have the Constitutional* right to be atheists if they want?  Why, then, do you object to Americans using their freedom, Glenn Beck?  What is it about liberty that offends you so very much?

6.  To suggest that atheists have a "void" in their lives is condescending in the extreme.  Glenn Beck, it's damn good odds that you do not worship Quezacoatl.  With what do you fill the void left by the absence of worship of the winged moon serpent? You don't feel a void in your life caused by your rejection of the divinity of Osiris.  You and I are exactly alike in that respect -- my list of mythological deities who I do not worship just has one additional name on it than yours.  Trust me, there's no void.  The real question is, with what does Glenn Beck fill the gigantic, gaping void in his ass?  The answer is, "his head, and it's high time he pulled it out."

7. To further suggest that atheists fill the "void" in their lives with "power, career, money, celebrities, politics, government" is even more ridiculous.   I'll grant you that I'm an atheist who is interested in politics -- but most atheists I know aren't.  Almost no atheist I've ever met is is in the least bit concerned about celebrity gossip, by the way -- everyone I've ever met who is deeply interested in celebrity gossip has also been, or at least claimed to be, religious.  "Put your faith in government, not God" is a message no atheist is preaching.  Why?  Atheists who are also politically liberal tend to support the current Administration -- because they are liberal, not because they are atheists.  Atheists who are politically conservative (or, much more likely these days since conservatism has become so identified with religiosity, libertarian) tend to oppose the current Administration -- because they are not liberal, again not because of their religion.  Almost like religious belief and politics have no logical link to one another.  Hmm, makes you think, doesn't it?

8.  "Why do you think we are as powerful as we are, or as we have been?"  Several answers here, Glenn, which need to be examined together.  Exhibit A:  Geography.  It's very difficult to invade the United States because to do so, you'd have to either have a military foothold in Canada or Mexico, or do an amphibious landing on one of two heavily-urbanized coasts.  Exhibit B:  Natural resources.  Our borders contain fertile farmlands, ample mineral resources, petroleum, and at one time, vast stretches of timber.  (If you want to give Jehovah credit for that, fine, but you should also note that He also gave those blessings to places like sub-Saharan Africa, China and Russia which do not enjoy the same levels of power or prosperity we do.)  Exhibit C:  A government founded on Enlightenment principles of republican democracy and individual rights, coupled with a strong political commitment to those ideals throughout our history, creating a sociological environment in which individual prosperity flourishes and collective prosperity flourishes as a result.  Exhibit D:  We won both world wars of the twentieth century -- in part because we weren't invaded through a combination of smart diplomacy, a strong Navy, and the benefits of our geographic isolation from belligerent nations -- and therefore unlike every other nation in the world, did not have our industrial plant and basic infrastructure wiped out by enemy action.  Jehovah, even if He exists, has little to do with any of this -- the ebb and flow of history and the accidents of geography do.

9.  When he asks, "What did we do different than other countries?" Beck cannot be seriously suggesting that other nations throughout history have been irreligious.  European nations fought 150 years of war with one another over religion.  He can't seriously be suggesting that places like Iran are irreligious.  (Oh, right, they're worshiping the wrong God.  Er, that is, they're worshiping the same God but they call Him "Allah" instead of "Jehovah" so that's where they went wrong; they ought to use English because if it was good enough for Jesus, English is good enough for them Iranians too.) 

10.  And that reference to the "Creator" in the Declaration of Independence -- who, exactly would that be?  It's not like Jefferson didn't know about the Christian diety when he wrote it.  T.J. could just as easily have written "All men are endowed by God with certain inalienable rights" but he used the phrase "their Creator" instead.  But even if we were to concede the non-obvious contention that Jefferson was referring to Jehovah, this clause still falls far short of Beck's characterization that it "recognizes the authority of God."  At best, it recognizes that a "Creator" of some sort exists.

11.  Nor does the failure of other countries to adopt some version of this language mean that they necessarily believe that human rights are dispensed by the government.  But they -- like the United States -- recognize that human rights have to be handled and adjudicated by the government, by the courts.  Human rights do not exist in an anarchy.

12.  "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" is, and always was, a song explicitly intended to meld elements of military glory and religious imagery.  Which you can enjoy if you want.  I'll concede that the melody and the meter are well-crafted.  But it's not the national anthem and I'd resist efforts to make it the national anthem.  Question: since the song refers explicitly to Christ and a variety of other New Testament images (like Lilies of the Valley and the millennial apocalypse) does that mean that Jewish people can't enjoy it, too? Perhaps just as important -- do you think atheists were the ones who corrupted this song in this manner? What proof do you have to back that up? Because my money is going to be on the side of the betting table that says the teachers and school officials responsible for that creepy musical interlude were Christians.

Now, the kids singing and chanting about Obama is really creepy, and whoever chose to pirate the sycophantic Obama-worship on traditional American songs thus compounded upon the inherent creepiness of children singing songs to praise to political leaders.  Nor will I defend it or the equally delusional school officials who thought it was a good idea to instruct schoolchildren to do this.  But what that has to do with why atheists are evil, though, I haven't a clue.

If I were in Congress, would I try to take "In God We Trust" off the money?  Yep.  If I were on the Supreme Court, would I vote against public displays of the Decalogue in almost all cases.  Probably (I can't be certain unless I had been briefed on a case).  I say that because a governmental display of religious iconography is inherently the government promoting religion in favor of non-religion, and from my perspective that violates the Establishment Clause.  But to get my way, I'd have to convince other people that I'm right about those ideas -- through the legal or political processes.  That is the nature of the system.  That system of laws is the distilled essence of America.  And it didn't come from God -- it came from a collection of lawyers, steeped in the radical philosophy of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, who rendered very good service indeed to their new nation when they implementing it.

You have a Constitutional* right to vomit all of this nonsense, Glenn Beck.  And I have the Constitutional right to call it what it is: five solid minutes of hateful, fearmongering, bigoted lies.


* Some would even say "God-given" although I say God has nothing to do with the Constitution -- and I have the text of the Constitution itself to support me in that contention.

Holy Crap Will All You People Just Calm The F-- Down?

Ah, politics. Debate and disagreement. Which degenerates into shouting matches and name-calling. Which sometimes then degenerates into fistfights. Well, it's only fun until someone gets their finger bit off.

Look, I have my opinion about health care reform. (I'm moderately in favor of Wyden-Bennett.) You have yours. That's what politics is for. We disagree, we argue, we don't convince each other, then we vote. Then the winner gets his way and the loser gets to go to court.

That's how it's been since 1789 and there is nothing different about today's political disagreements than any of the other disagreements we've had for the past 230 years or so. Except for slavery, and let's not go there over this, okay?

I found it in my heart to live with the passage of California's Proposition 8. No one has actually voted on anything yet for health care reform. So grow the f--- up, people.

Seriously, have we acquired a national case of borderline personality disorder all of a sudden? Is it time to start spiking the public water supply with Ritalin?

While it may seem to some that it's the politically conservative opponents of the pending health care reform proposals who are acting like they were raised by wolves, note well that in this case it was a liberal supporter of health care reform who did the biting in this "incident."

An "incident" which is more than "regrettable," Moveon.org -- you're looking for words like "appalling" or "deplorable." To the author of that astonishingly bland evaluation of a man biting another man's finger off his hand, I suggest you publicy and loudly disown the frothing barbarian who did this, or be prepared to explain why you think this sort of thing ought to be considered part of legitimate political debate.

The point is, lunacy is not something that any party or ideology has a monopoly on. Maybe you're liberal and you think that conservatives are whackjobs for obsessing about birth certificates and bringing assault weapons to political rallies. Maybe you're conservative and don't want union thugs throwing wrenches through your plate-glass windows or having your finger bitten off. But either way, your side is guilty of this sort of thing, too, and there's no excuse for it on anyone's part.

Somehow, there is a surplus of crazy out there in the body politic, unlike anything I've ever seen so far in my nearly forty of citizenship in this nation. It's high time that all of America stopped and took many, many deep breaths before doing anything further. In through the nose for five seconds, hold for five seconds, out through the mouth for five seconds. Repeat until your adrenaline glands shift down from hyperdrive.

Who Do They Think They Are Just Coming Here Looking For Economic Opportunity And Stealing Our Resources, Anyway?

Joe Wurzelbacher spoke at a "tea party" event over this 4th of July weekend. I thought the tea parties were to protest high taxes, high government spending, intrusive regulation of day-to-day activities, and most of all, the ever-accumulating Federal debt. But apparently I missed the part that's about immigration (and not just of the illegal variety, either):

"I believe we need to spend a little more on illegal immigrants get them the (expletive) out of our (expletive) country, and close the borders down," Wurzelbacher said. "We can do it. We’ve got the greatest military in the world and you’re telling me we can’t close our borders- that’s just ridiculous."

I think the guy in the picture to the left would agree.

Jenny Sanford And Rush Limbaugh Blame Gay Marriage For Husband's Infidelity

Wow. Straight out of South Carolina:

“Of course I’m not saying that Mark is gay,” [Ms.] Sanford said, “but he may as well be. The moral decay in this country has claimed another victim and this time it was my family. Our marriage was perfect until these laws started passing around the country. Clearly the slow dissolution of the sanctity of marriage in America seeped into Mark’s psyche until he no longer felt compelled to abide by our vows.”

Social conservatives were quick to show their support for the first lady’s statement.

“It’s finally happened,” said Rush Limbaugh, conservative radio personality. “America, I’ve been warning you for years that gay marriage would destroy the American family and look… there they are, a husband, wife, and four children — destroyed. When is this going to stop America? When will the liberals be satisfied? When all the marriages break up? This wasn’t Mark Sanford’s fault, this was Ted Kennedy’s fault. Sanford didn’t cheapen the value of marriage, he was victimized by the cheapening of marriage.”

IMPORTANT MESSAGE TO THE OBTUSE FOLLOWS, HIGHLIGHT TO READ: It's not from The Onion but yes, the linked article is actually a deliciously deadpan parody and therefore, in its own subversive way, even funnier than the venerable Madison humor institution that consistently puts the Harvard Lampoon to shame. This is a joke, but do you doubt for even a nanosecond that there are actually people who would seriously believe this if they were told it?

Winguttery Central Calls For A Check On Future Wingnuttery

I'm not sure if this is an April Fool's Joke or not, coming as it does from David Horowitz' Frontpage Magazine, usually a good place to go if your fridge is running low on red Kool-Aid.

But if it is not a joke, then I welcome it as a clarion call to the Barack Obama Birthplace Truthers to give up the ghost: "Barack Obama was born in Hawai'i, August 4, 1961 at Kapiolani Medical Center in Honolulu. [¶] Obama’s birth certificate posted online is exactly the same birth certificate everybody in Hawaii gets from the State Department of Health. It is not forged. There is nothing unusual about the design or the texture."

With so many opportunities to criticze the Obama Administration about matters of policy, this sort of thing has always seemed to be a little bit too far out to merit serious consideration -- yet it doesn't seem to go away, and instead is a focus for attention on all sides of the aisle. Frontpage's author is right to point out that this is to the detriment of serious political discusion and that those who continue to push on this issue are doing a disservice to conservatives, Republicans, and anyone else who has substantive concerns not with Barack Obama simply being President but rather with what he is doing with the Presidency.

No Kool Aid For You

Please note for the record:

George W. Bush stepped down today in a peaceful transfer of power. He did not suspend the Constitution or the 22nd Amendment. He did not declare martial law. Army troops in Colorado Springs remain on base, training, and are not assuming command of portions of the state of Colorado.

Osama bin Laden was not captured and produced in an "October surprise" to alter the outcome of the election. Iran has not been attacked. Our only response to the war in Gaza (please note both sides claiming victory; at least one of them is wrong) has been diplomatic.

Bush did not pardon himself for any "war crimes," nor did he pardon former Vice President Cheney or any of his own administration's officials. Yes, he did plenty of damage on his way out, but it's damage that Obama would quite likely have done himself had he been in office.

Bush did not even attempt to ram through last-minute appointments to judicial or administrative agency positions.

Bush opened Blair House to the Obama family for the traditional five days preceding today's inauguration. He said nice things about Obama taking power and went to some effort himself, and directed his staff to go to some effort, to hand over the reins of power to President Obama.

None of these predictions and gripes of blue-colored Kool-aid drinkers came true. Our democratic republic is thriving and alive. George W. Bush is now Private Citizen Bush, a (wealthy) resident of Crawford, Texas. He has his opinions and beliefs, like the rest of us. To be sure, he has a lot of money and a nice government pension and plenty of political contacts. But he has no more overt political power than do I. He doesn't even get an excuse from jury duty if he's summoned.

Why I Gave Up On Day By Day

Day by Day purports to be a right-leaning political comic strip and has pretentions of being the conservative Doonesbury. Sadly, it is not so good as that. Doonesbury is only about a 4 out of 10 on the funny scale on a good day anymore (that's somewhere between a smirk and a chuckle), and Day by Day is, well, competitive with that.

The problem is, Chris Muir misses more than he's hitting with the political commentary side of things. Garry Trudeau at least is paying attention to what's going on, even if he can only rarely find something funny to say about it. Muir seems to either have a tin ear to political phenomena or is getting his talking points from Red-Colored Kool-Aid Central. Take today's strip, for instance. Now, come on. The Senate's refusal to seat Senator-Designate Burris is quite obviously unrelated to his race. Attempting to paint Harry Reid as a racist for this falls deadly flat. It's not accurate and it's not funny. (If it were accurate, it might be funny.) There are a lot of other things you can criticize Reid for. He's apparently incapable of gracefully handling controversy. He's a partisan blowhard. He's hardly the most effective leader Senate Democrats could have chosen for themselves. He's kind of a dork, or at least dorky-looking. But racist? No, he's not that.

I hadn't followed Day by Day for several months after giving up on it in February, and recently I tried to give it another chance. I figured that with a Democrat coming in to power, there might be more material for him to work with. Muir seems to be focusing on Barack Obama's arrogance and the media's sycopancy of him, which are quickly becoming yesterday's news.

See, the thing of it is that Obama is being humbled -- the Bill Richardson flap, the suggestion that Rahm Emanuel may have been caught up in the Blagojevich corruption, and today, criticism that Leon Panetta may not be a good choice to lead the CIA. He is not being humbled all at once, but that's not how these things work. It's the beginning of the torture of a thousand cuts rather than a sudden disgrace à la Monica Lewinsky. There seems to me to be decent raw material for humor there. Apparently, though, this isn't good enough -- Obama must be brought down completely and immediately, before he is even inaugurated. Maybe Muir is part of a radical pro-Biden splinter group of comic strip authors; that would certainly explain things.

Maybe I'm too tough a crowd. But preachy comedy is rarely funny. And sometimes it takes a while before comedians figure out what's funny about someone. Clinton and Bush the Younger were pretty easy; Saturday Night Live figured out very quickly what made them funny. But what about Bush the Elder? It took nearly a year of his administration before Dana Carvey started hitting the impression just right and found the elements of his personality and mannerisms that were subject to comedic exaggeration. Obama may just be a tougher nut to crack than Bush the Younger or Clinton were. And his arrogance is almost certainly only a small part of it.

Invoke Rule Eleven On The Thomas More Law Center

The closest thing that exists in the world of litigation to a rule or statute banning the filing of frivolous lawsuits is Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11.

The reason that "frivolous lawsuits" are not banned is because that concept is, faced with critical analysis, quite difficult to define and chilling to the Constitutional right of citizens and companies to use the courts to redress their grievances. Many people think, for instance, that the "McDonald's Hot Coffee Lawsuit" is a frivolous lawsuit -- but they haven't bothered to check out what the plaintiff had to say for herself before pronouncing that judgment. You might still side with McDonald's after reading those facts, but any reasonable person hearing the other side of the story would agree that there was something to the claim even if it should have been a loser.

But a lawsuit must still have some merit, as set forth in Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11(b):

By presenting to the court a pleading, written motion, or other paper — whether by signing, filing, submitting, or later advocating it — an attorney or unrepresented party certifies that to the best of the person's knowledge, information, and belief, formed after an inquiry reasonable under the circumstances:

(1) it is not being presented for any improper purpose, such as to harass, cause unnecessary delay, or needlessly increase the cost of litigation;
(2) the claims, defenses, and other legal contentions are warranted by existing law or by a nonfrivolous argument for extending, modifying, or reversing existing law or for establishing new law;
(3) the factual contentions have evidentiary support or, if specifically so identified, will likely have evidentiary support after a reasonable opportunity for further investigation or discovery; and
(4) the denials of factual contentions are warranted on the evidence or, if specifically so identified, are reasonably based on belief or a lack of information.

If you violate this rule, you get one shot to explain yourself to an angry, impatient, and skeptical Federal judge who already thinks you broke the rule about why you didn't. If you fail in this endeavor, you will have to pay a substantial monetary sanction to the court and to the other side in your case. One joke I make to my attorney friends when we discuss how we occasionally have to make arguments that are out of the box is, "Hey, I've been practicing fifteen years and I still haven't had to pay any Rule 11 sanctions!"

I do not believe that attorneys associated with the Thomas More Law Center will be able to make similar jokes in the near future.

The reason I say that is the newly-filed lawsuit of Murray v. Paulson, filed by the Thomas More Law Center, a non-profit law firm and bastion of conservative culture warriors. Although TMLC bills itself as "The Sword and Shield for People of Faith," I would note that it should more properly adopt the motto "The Sword and Shield for People of Christian Faith,"* as this bigoted, misguided, ill-informed, and ultimately sanctionable lawsuit amply demonstrates.

Murray v. Paulson concerns itself with part of the $40 billion that Congress and the President so unwisely have issued in devalued currency to prop up American Insurance Group (AIG). So far, so good. But the objection is not that this is an ill-considered, counter-effective, damage-prolonging, deficit-busting, corporate-welfare boondoggle. Doing so would obviously run afoul of the ban on taxpayer lawsuits and the principles of comity and separation of powers that prevent courts from second-guessing Congress and the President in making budgetary decisions. Indeed, Murray hardly objects to the basic idea behind the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 at all.

Instead, here's what TMLC found to object to:

1. This civil rights action challenges that portion of the “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008” (or “Act”) (12 U.S.C. § 5201 et seq.) enacted by the United States Congress pursuant to Congress’ taxing and spending power that appropriated $40 billion in taxpayer money to fund and financially support the United States government’s majority ownership interest in American International Group, Inc. (“AIG”), which engages in Shariah-based Islamic religious activities that are anti-Christian, anti-Jewish, and anti-American. The use of these taxpayer funds to approve, promote, endorse, support, and fund these Shariah-based Islamic religious activities violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

2.This action also challenges the United States government’s broad policy and practice of approving, endorsing, promoting, funding, and supporting Shariah-compliant financial products and business plans, such as Takaful Insurance. This governmental policy and practice conveys a message of endorsement and promotion of Shariah-based Islam and its religious beliefs and an accompanying message of disfavor of and hostility toward Christianity and Judaism and their religious beliefs in violation of the Establishment Clause.

3. As our history reveals, this Nation was founded upon values that acknowledge the importance of religion, respect for the right of conscience, and respect for the free exercise of religion. These values, which are Christian values, are enshrined in the religion clauses of the First Amendment.

4. The Shariah-based Islamic religious practices and activities that the government-owned AIG engages in—activities that are funded and financially supported by American taxpayers,including Plaintiff, who is forced to contribute to them—are antithetical to our Nation’s values, customs, and traditions with regard to religious liberty, religious tolerance, and the proscriptions of the First Amendment. These government-funded activities not only convey a message of disfavor of and hostility toward Christians, Jews, and those who do not follow or abide by Islamic law based on the Quran or the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed, but they also embody actual commercial practices which are pervasively sectarian and which disfavor Christians, Jews, and other “infidels,” including Americans.

5. The Act and the policies, practices, and actions of Defendants with regard to Shariah-compliant finance as set forth in this Complaint send a message to those who are non-adherents to Shariah-based Islam that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message to those who are adherents to Shariah-based Islam that they are insiders, favored members of the political community.

Oh, well, I take it back. I guess it is a taxpayer standing lawsuit.

Now, bear in mind that they lose for that reason alone. As taxpayers, we cannot object to the government spending our tax dollars. That's what we elect the government to do. The taxpayer's remedy is to vote for different public officials who will make different decisions in the future.

But more to the point is the overt anti-Islamicism readily apparent in the pleadings. Any mention of or accommodation to Islam is "anti-American" and therefore unconstitutional. Christianity, enjoying special status in the First Amendment, is different -- it is apparently entitled to special treatment from the government.

Are these guys reading the same First Amendment that I am? Because my copy of it reads:

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.

I don't see any particular religion named or singled out for special treatment here -- either favorable or unfavorable.

The lawsuit does not challenge the AIG subsidy itself, but rather complains that by assuming operational control of AIG, and tolerating the Islamic-friendly investment and insurance products offered by one of the several hundred AIG companies, the government is endorsing, ratifying, and promoting Islam, and criticizing and attacking Christianity.

Does anyone really think that? Really? That doesn't even pass the giggle test.

And why, can you explain to me, does the logic of paragraph 5 not apply to displays of Christian religious symbology on governmental buildings -- like, for instance, a Nativity scene on the lawn of City Hall? Does that not "send a message to those who are non-adherents to [Christianity] that they are outsiders, not full members of the political community" and also send "an accompanying message to those who are adherents to [Christianity] that they are insiders, favored members of the political community"?

Now, I'll grant that the government owning and operating an insurance company is inherently problematic for a lot of reasons. But this is not one of them. Given that the government is going to be involved in this activity at all, the government has to do commercially reasonable things with the asset that it now controls. That means selling products that cater to specific niches in the market. Like Muslims. Or Jews. Or Christians.

But TMLC has no apparent objection to financial products and services like this, but they do have an objection to the functionally identical product being offered to Muslims. In fact, a Christian-friendly investment vehicle will buy and sell functionally the same sorts of stocks and other securities that a Muslim-friendly investment vehicle will -- it will refrain from investing in alcohol manufacturers, purveyors of sexually explicit magazines, maybe tobacco companies, and (hopefully) companies that capitalize on slave or child labor.

Well, what's wrong with that? Why would a good Christian object to those sorts of things?†

Well, for starters, it acknowledges the tolerated existence of Islam within America, as if Islam were inherently any worse than any other religion, and provides something to accommodate Muslim customers of the now government-run insurance and financial firm that faces such difficult monetary challenges in these troubled times who take the ethical and religious restrictions of their religion seriously -- in other words, it enables Muslims to practice Islam in a meaningful way.

Bear in mind, I think Islam is every bit as full of nonsense, contradictions, antiscience, and outright moral danger as Christianity. So my only problem with the government continuing to offer a product like this is that AIG was not doing such a great job on its own before the government took over, so for the government to simply continue AIG's former policies blindly may not be such a swift idea. I'd hope that the managers sent in by Secretary Paulson are trying to shake things up a little bit. Maybe this product doesn't attract enough investors or provide sufficient return on investment to generate profit. I don't know. But if it is a profitable product, then AIG should keep on selling it whether the government is on the Board of Directors or not.

Bear in mind, to call someone "Muslim" is to say virtually nothing about their moral worth. Sharia is not inherently evil; many Muslim legal and religious teachings are objectively quite praiseworthy. Evil is done in the name of Sharia, to be sure. But good is done in the name of Sharia at least as often. Other parts of Sharia are subject to reasonable debate between enlightened and well-meaning people about their moral worth. Still other parts of Sharia are indeed questionable, but every religion suffers from questionable passages in their holy works. Consider, for instance, Exodus 34:11-14, or Deuteronomy 7:2, or Joshua 10:40, all of which glorify and provide divine sanction for acts that can only be described as genocide. So if the argument is that "Islam is an immoral religion," the Judeo-Christians out there should not be throwing any stones.

Regardless, I can think of no credible argument that the First Amendment embodies "Christian" principles. The Bible teaches government by autocracy and theocracy; democracy is virtually unknown as a governmental device anywhere in the Bible. Jesus explicitly commands his followers to submit to military dictatorship in Mark 12:17.

Christianity, at least as manifested by TMLC's own pleadings, appears to be remarkably intolerant (again, see Exodus 34:11-14 for an expression of Judeo-Christian tolerance) and the First Amendment is among the most powerful injunctions to religious tolerance in Anglo-American law. Nor would I list "tolerance of other religions" as a Christian virtue.

(Religious tolerance is hardly an Islamic virtue, either. In many parts of the world, being anything but a Muslim is a good way to get yourself quite dead. I'm not arguing that Islam is, in practice, any better than Christianity when it comes to tolerance. But the U.S. Constitution is a religiously tolerant document and the government it creates is, in practice, generally pretty religiously tolerant, which is one reason why I'm such a fan of it. And I'm not talking about Muslim legal activists here, either.)

Now, I can think of no credible argument that the government lacks the power to take over a troubled insurance and financial services company. I can think of plenty of arguments for why it's a terrible idea to do it, but that doesn't mean the government lacks the power to make that decision in the first place.

And given that the government has taken over AIG, the government therefore also has the power to sell the same sorts of products that AIG was selling prior to the takeover. That includes investment vehicles that are tailored to be compliant with the demands of particular categories of investors, and to engage in marketing activities intended to attract investors to those products. Why? Because that's what a financial services company does.

If a bankruptcy court took over a kosher meat packer, it would find itself continuing to run and administer the day-to-day business of the meat packer, which would include observing Kosher rules about how to slaughter and bleed the animals, and hiring a rabbi to bless the meat products and certify that they were kosher. Otherwise, the products produced by the meat-packer would not be kosher and the market for those products would not buy them. This does not violate the Establishment Clause because no one could possibly confuse a receivership for permanent operation; the Court is not becoming identified with the Jewish faith by imposing the receivership. In theory, the takeover of AIG is to be an impermanent state of affairs (we'll see about that); certainly the public as a whole does not think of AIG and the U.S. Government as the same thing and the idea that the U.S. Government, which is still under the direction of President Bush, would use AIG to try to encourage people to become Muslims is to have drunk very deeply of a strong batch of Kool-Aid.

No safe harbor here. This lawsuit is bad on so many levels, it bothers me that allegedly competent attorneys put their names on it. It is bigoted against Muslims and seeks to paint all Muslims as the equivalent of the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. It presupposes the truth of the blatantly incorrect "Christian Nation" theory of American history.‡ It blatantly asks for sympathy for the plaintiff because he is a combat veteran. And because it is so obviously wrong and incorrect, it is clearly cannon fodder in the cultural war, intended to become another brick in the wall of "the courts are anti-Christian" that the religious right seeks to build around itself as if Christians are somehow an oppressed minority in the United States.

It is in that light that I understand Murray v. Paulson -- this is grist for the mill intended to make Christians distrust the courts. Of course the courts are going to rule against these kinds of "Christian legal theories," because the theories are so very, very silly that a first-year law student wouldn't offer them without experiencing some level of humiliation.

The lawsuit fails every prong of the Rule 11(b) test:

(1) it is not being presented for any improper purpose, such as to harass, cause unnecessary delay, or needlessly increase the cost of litigation;

This lawsuit is presented for an improper purpose. It is presented to 1) effect an Establishment of religion, enshrining Christianity as the officially-favored religion of the United States and Islam as an officially-disfavored religion of the United States, and 2) to cast the judicial system of the United States into disrepute with a particular segment of the population. For that reason alone, it violates Rule 11(b).

(2) the claims, defenses, and other legal contentions are warranted by existing law or by a nonfrivolous argument for extending, modifying, or reversing existing law or for establishing new law;

No nonfrivolous legal or factual theory enshrining a special place for Christianity in the government's treatment of religion can be advanced in the face of the First Amendment. No nonfrivolous legal theory exists that Congress exceeded its authority in passing the law that led tot he takeover of AIG. Debatably, Secretary Paulson exceeded his authority in what amounts to a stock purchase of AIG rather than purchasing troubled assets out of AIG's stable, but this lawsuit does not make that contention. Because the lawsuit instead makes an incredible claim flatly contradicted by the plain language of the First Amendment, the complaint violates Rule 11(b).

(3) the factual contentions have evidentiary support or, if specifically so identified, will likely have evidentiary support after a reasonable opportunity for further investigation or discovery.

No substantial evidentiary support exists for the risible proposition that America is a "Christian Nation" in any sense other than irrelevant demographics.‡ The Constitution is a secular document, it mentions no religion and explicitly disclaims an Establishment of an official religion. Further, no substantial evidentiary support exists or can exist for the proposition that by taking over AIG, the government is endorsing Islam. The government is trying, with debatable wisdom, to stabilize a deteriorating economy -- not to encourage people to convert to Islam. These claims are so far beyond the realm of common sense and the limits of admissible evidence that they, too, constitute a violation of Rule 11(b).

The TMLC should be ashamed of itself and should withdraw the lawsuit immediately. Failing that, the United States Attorney's office should file a Rule 12(b)(6) motion in this case and bitch-slap the TMLC into a Rule 11 hearing for tens of thousands of dollars' worth of monetary sanctions and a review of the TMLC's 501(c)(3) status.

See also more condemnations of this misuse of the civil justice system from the rightward but nonreligious side of the blogosphere at Secular Right and Volokh Conspiracy.


* In so doing, I would draw scarce objection from TMLC itself, which describes itself as "...dedicated to the defense and promotion of the religious freedom of Christians, time-honored family values, and the sanctity of human life."

† Maybe the problem is that these otherwise morally-defensible decisions about how to invest money come with an Arabic-sounding name attached to them. Perhaps all the government needs to do is have AIG rename it the "St. Thomas More Fund."

‡ Now, that's not to say that Christianity has not been of powerful cultural significance in our history. Of course it has, and many (although not all) of its influences have been positive and morally praiseworthy. It's one thing to say that historically, most Americans have been Christians. It's something else to say that the Constitution of the United States creates a Christian form of government, and it is only to that last proposition that I object.

Very Sore Losers

Today, the Supreme Court contemplated something about a petition that includes a claim that Barack Obama was not born in the United States and therefore is unable to assume the office of President -- but please note, that does not mean that even in the very small chance that the Supremes take the case, they will be interested in briefing that issue. That didn't stop a dozen or so people from having a prayer circle to protest Obama's imminent assumption of the Presidency.

Now, while I think Hillary Clinton is incurably ineligible to be Secretary of State, I also have to accept that this is not something that I, as an ordinary citizen or taxpayer, have standing to challenge. It's a "political question" and so is the issue of Obama's citizenship; Congress will "fix" Clinton's salary and that, according to historical if not necessarily legal precedent, is enough to render her eligible. Ultimately, it is the Senate who has to judge the qualifications of a potential President when counting the votes of the Electoral College.

Although I should point out that if someone has filed a lawsuit against someone else, the plaintiff is the one who carries the burden of proof. The kool-aid drinkers must prove, by a preponderance of the evidence, that Obama was not a natural-born citizen. That means more than a failure of a state official to produce an original birth certificate. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Carrying the burden of proof in a case like this means someone else must produce an original Kenyan birth certificate -- a document that, all indications are, does not exist.

Amazing Poll Result

Nine out of thirty-one Readers actually believe Obama can deliver a tax cut?

Seriously?

You must also believe in Santa Claus and homeopathy and that lawsuits are profitable for people other than the lawyers and that if all the little children of the world could only join hands and sing a song together love would conquer all and all that Detroit needs to turn around is a good mayor and some rush-blocking.

To Where Will Right Winger Deserters Flee?

"Oh, man, if Bush gets re-elected, I'm going to Canada."

"If McCain gets elected over Obama, man, the fix is in. I'm outta here, I'll go to the Netherlands."

I've heard more of that kind of crap from left-wing kool-aid drinkers over the years than I care to remember. I guess it hearkens back to the glory days of Vietnam War protesters dodging the draft by fleeing to Canada or Switzerland or somewhere like that. As if that were somehow glamorous or righteous.

But now, that worm has turned around completely. Barack Hussein Obama has been elected President. Nancy Pelosi is Speaker of the House of Representatives with a commanding majority. The Democrats have tossed out Ted Stevens from the Senate, for Chrissake, and are a hairs' breath away from a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. There is nothing -- nothing -- to stop the party that harbors and encourages the sort of policies that many on the right once dared call "treason" from having their way with us.

Of course, our children will all now be taught to be gay in second grade, ownership of a firearm will be an imprisonable offense, and we will all need to learn Spanish in order to vote. George Washington's birthday will no longer be a holiday and Cesar Chavez will replace him on the $1.00 bill. Or, rather, the $1.00 coin because the Democrats are going to take our money away.

So it's natural to think that right-wing kool-aid drinkers are going to feel an impulse to leave. For instance, check out comment #5 on this post about a blogbuddy returning to the United States after a sojourn abroad:

Italy will be better off without you.You’re just like all the folks who come here and expect US to accommodate all their needs,speak their language, adjust to their culture. Welcome home…enjoy your success and your new leader and maybe you’ll not get taxed out of existence. I can’t wait to get the hell out of here. Not my America any more. -- cas

Oh, really, cas? So where, exactly, do you intend on going? Where is this right-wing fantasyland where men can be men and own huge arsenals of big, deadly guns and the government will tolerate it? Maybe you're thinking Iraq? No problem owning lots of guns there. But somehow I doubt that an Arabic-speaking country dominated by Muslims and still susceptible to urban terrorism is going to be terribly appealing to cas and others like him who prefer the red kool-aid to the blue, even with the decidedly permissive de facto rules about owning weapons there.

Maybe to that mecca of free-market capitalism, Japan. If he can somehow persuade the government of that famously xenophobic nation into giving a gaijin like him a residency visa. He may have to promise to shower four times a day. And forget about owning any land, even if he could afford it. So, I guess that's out.

Now, you can have some weapons in Russia -- hey, сказать привет моему другу мало! And, for the time being, the Russians are overtly capitalists. But you've pretty much got to have tons of dough if you want to live anywhere decent, like Moscow or Petersburg. And Putin is pretty much turning into the Enemy again, so cas probably isn't thinking real seriously about Russia.

Now, I'm going to hazard a guess here and suggest that cas and his fellow right-wingers are probably not super-fluent in non-English languages and can't be bothered to learn them. It's very likely that cas is an English-is-the-official-language sort of guy. That might be a stretch. But I don't feel like it's a big one. So that limits the choices to only a few options, countries where English is the primary language. Maybe he can go to India or Pakistan and teach English to successive generations of tech support specialists and learn to love ghat and curry.

Canada, of course, is not an option; they're a bunch of peacenik socialists and gun-grabbers, and they have the most open immigration policy of any nation on Earth so the whole place is a gigantic security risk. Of the remaining English-speaking countries, you need to be ultra-loaded to emigrate to the UK, and you can't have a gun there. Or in Ireland. Or in the urban parts of Australia or anywhere in New Zealand. Or (now) Hong Kong -- the PRC is in charge there now, not Her Majesty's Government, and they don't like people they don't know having weapons.

South Africa? English is a secondary language there -- so maybe cas could use his English to get started while he brushes up on his Afrikaans and Swahili. Of course, you've got racial tensions, a seriously declining economy, and restrictions on firearms again, but that's not so different from here, really. And the climate is a lot like Southern California, just upside-down.

Maybe cas is Jewish and can exercise Aliyah. Then, he could go to Israel. There is gun control, but he could have a military-grade weapon in his kibbutz as long as he was part of the IDF Reserves, which I bet cas would think was cool. English isn't the primary language there, but it would be enough to get him started, and if cas is Jewish he may know some Hebrew. Yeah, they're pretty much socialists there but there is private enterprise. So, if you're in the Tribe, cas, massel tov. But if you're not Jewish, I think you're pretty much looking at Jo-burg.

What You Can Do To Fight Unhinged Religious Hysteria

P.Z. Myers is a well-known biologist and outspoken critic of intelligent design theory. And a second-tier light in the godless blogosphere. Two days ago, he wrote about a number of Catholics becoming upset when a nutcase held a consecrated communion wafer hostage, in a post entitled "It's a Frackin' Cracker!" Death threats were levied against the kid who stole the wafer, which is what set Prof. Myers off on a rant, which included an immoderate language in which he indicated a willingness to desecrate a consecrated communion wafer himself.

Now, I bear in mind that to a very devout Catholic, that wafer stops being an unappetizing, stale cracker and literally becomes the very body of Jesus Christ, which is then literally eaten by the Catholic in a ritual called "Holy Communion." I myself have participated in this ritual back when I practiced Catholicism but even then I had a real, real hard time with the literalness of the ritual. It just plain was obviously not human flesh that I was eating, it was quite obviously a piece of flat, stale bread. The heels-dug-into-the-ground insistence of the priests that no, my senses deceived me and that was indeed the flesh of Jesus, was probably one of the first things that really got me doubting what all those religious folks were trying to tell me. And I wasn't really very keen on the idea of eating human flesh anyway, so the immense mental strain of convincing myself through the exercise of "faith" that this bit of stale bread was really a bloody lump of human muscle tissue seems like a decidedly disadvantageous effort-reward proposition.

So I'm a little bit sympathetic to Prof. Myers' point of view that death threats are more than a little bit out of proportion for stealing a cracker. (It's not even really "stealing" the cracker, since the priest gave it to the guy who subsequently held it hostage.) The right reaction to this would have been to ignore it. "Oh, go ahead and destroy the body of Christ. Won't be any worse than what the Romans did, and we'll just make more the next time we say Mass; besides, the bakery rolls these things out by the gross every couple of minutes."

But such cavalier and indeed sacreligious remarks will likely get me condemned by Bill Donohue, President of the Catholic League, the same way he condemned Prof. Myers. So maybe I should take them back. Especially because Donohue's minions have not contended themselves with pressuring the University of Minnesota to fire Prof. Myers (who has tenure, as far as I know) for his remarks but they have taken it upon themselves to issue death threats to him, too.

I'm not particularly worried about Prof. Myers' life. (Although you never know, and Prof. Myers should be consider exercising his Constitutional right to pack heat for his own self-defense if he's going to be as outspoken as he is.) But I think there may be cause for some concern (moderate, because he has tenure) for his job. University administrators are an astonishingly weak-spined subspecies of humanity and they have been known to take the easy way out of politically heated disputes. So, I hope that all of you will join me in writing to the President of the University of Minnesota letters not unlike this one:

President Robert H. Bruininks
202 Morrill Hall
100 Church Street S.E.
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN 55455

Dear President Bruininks,

I have recently read about the threats against one of your professors, P.Z. Myers, made in response to some remarks Prof. Myers has made on his personal blog concerning a bizarre incident that seems to have offended a number of people. I trust that by now, you have read Prof. Myers’ original remarks as well as the various complaints.

The only thing Prof. Myers can even remotely be said to be guilty of is hyperbole – and his accusers are hardly innocent of rhetorical excess themselves, having (among other things) actually threatened Prof. Myers’ life. While some people react to strongly-worded arguments with distaste, even immoderate remarks are part of what moves social debate forward, particularly in a nation and a profession that values the liberty of speaking one’s mind and academic freedom. Even if Prof. Myers had shared his thoughts in a university classroom while lecturing students, he would be well within his rights to express his opinion on the issue.

I urge you to resist calls to discipline or otherwise take adverse action against Prof. Myers. He is well-known in his field of study and is a popularizer of science of no small repute; it is a credit to your university that a member of your faculty has obtained such prestige. While it is clear that Prof. Myers was expressing views that were solely his own and no reasonable person could interpret him as claiming to speak for the university, it will be to your institution’s further credit for you to position the prestige of your office behind Prof. Myers’ right to express his opinions rather than give in to the short-term pressure of an easily-offended and immoderate group of professional victims.

Sincerely,

Seriously, I think a number of letters would do a lot of good here. Especially if you are Catholic and can see past the immediate religious controversy to understand why it's important to have members of the academy given some license to be critical of social practices (like, say, abortion?) that they find worthy of criticism, without fear of losing their tenured positions -- or their lives.

Gayonnaise

The concept: Heinz' mayonnaise is so good, you'll think your wife turned in to a New York deli man. The pitch: A housewife who actually looks and talks like a New York deli man. The result: censorship by the UK crown for airing "pornography" in the following controversial commerical aired for two days in Britain, containing the most safe-for-work gay porn you'll ever see in your life:

Seriously, this is controversial? I think it's kind of a weak joke. But enough people (about 200) howled in protest about this that the commercial that the BBC pulled it. I guess in England, like here in the States, there are people who are just plain that sensitive to even the idea that there might be gay people out there, being all, you know, gay and stuff.

Hat tip to Skepchick, who points out "What else could they do? They’re just one multi-billion dollar corporation vs. almost a quarter of a thousand people." Her entire description of the imbroglio (including the title, blatantly plagarized for the title of this post) is funnier than the advertisement itself.

Obama Waffles

Obamamania has been pretty silly for a while now.

But really, does it get any sillier than auctioning off the remains of the man's half-eaten breakfast? That's what someone in Pittsburgh is doing today. You too can put in a bid for about a third of a leftover Belgian waffle and a half of a decent-sized sausage link that Barack Obama himself had eaten. There, to the left, is the photograph from eBay, showing the remnants of Obama's breakfast this morning. As of the time I linked to the site, the top bid was $10,100.00 for the detritus of the Obama Waffle.

I mean, it's okay to like the guy and to think he's the best choice for President and to think maybe he's something a little different than what we've seen before. Personally, I've come to believe that he's really just another politician, albeit a preternaturally skilled and eloquent one. I think he's overpromised and won't be able to deliver; I think his platform is more than the country can afford. But if you're more enthusiastic about him than me, that's cool.

But buying his leftover waffle? People. Get a grip.

UPDATE: eBay has taken the auction down; the link above is no longer good. But that is the picture of The Waffle. Someone kept their wits about them. And the Fish Wrapper reports that no, Obama had pancakes in Pittsburgh, not a waffle. Has it literally come to this -- bickering about what a candidate eats for breakfast?

Torturing Tariq

I’ve tried to not get drawn in to lengthy arguments on the Internets. You rarely convince anyone of anything that they didn’t already agree with you on. What I look for, though, are well-argued positions and every once in a while, a truly new take on a subject. These are, unfortunately, rare, so I tend to only look for these things deeply on an issue that seems really worthy of the time and intellectual analysis involved in delving down into the comments section of a blog or a news story.

But I did make a comment at Right Wing Nuthouse last night, because like RWN, I too am absolutely appalled at the reflexive justifications offered to support the Bush Administration trying to legalize torture in the name of national security. Predictably, when RWN condemned the recently-released Yoo Memos, a chorus of so-called “conservatives,” claiming that the very survival of Western civilization is somehow at stake, stepped up to offer their thanks and praise for the people who are torturing the bad guys for information – or alternatively, they aren’t actually torturing prisoners, but it would be okay if they did.

The argument that there is a moral imperative to torture is the most disquieting to me. The “ticking time bomb” scenario is by now familiar to anyone who’s looked at the subject – “Tariq the Terrorist is captured and he reveals that his associates have planted a nuclear bomb in New York City, which will go off in less than 24 hours, but he won’t say where in New York the bomb is. Torturing Tariq to get the information, and thus save millions of innocent lives, is justifiable under those circumstances, and therefore we cannot categorically criminalize torturing prisoners.” What’s weird is that the people who advance this argument act as though there really are ticking time bombs ready to go off everywhere and guys like Jack Bauer from that great documentary on Fox is only doing what he has to do to save innocent lives. They’re heroes, not villains and anyone who says otherwise is a liberal pansy who may as well be inviting scimitar-wielding madmen to set up shop in the Lincoln Bedroom. You must torture, the argument goes, because otherwise innocent people, and eventually all of western civilization, will be killed by these madmen.

By itself, this argument is not laughable, although I think it is incorrect because it proposes a falsely limited range of choices and it can only be morally acceptable from the point of view of a rather narrow reading of basic utilitarian ethics. But, in reading the comments advancing this argument (or a variant of it), it seems to me that many of its proponents seem not just willing but eager to torture their hypothetical victims. They’re salivating at the prospect of imposing pain on people they think are their enemies – or perhaps more precisely, on their enemies who they do not think of as “people” at all.

Read the comments to the RWN article and tell me that I’m wrong. Some of these people are quite simply perverted in their desire to torture Tariq; you’d have to hold a lottery between some of these guys to see who would get the honor of dumping the first bucket of water on his face. There isn’t even a hint of reluctance or hesitation to do these things on their part, and they view the fact that someone else might even entertain doubts that this is the right thing to do as a sign of weakness and vulnerability. They’re not wrestling with the moral issue at all, because for them it’s not a moral dilemma but instead an opportunity to do something they’d really like to do anyway.

These people are sadists, not conservatives.

I’m tempted to offer a counter-scenario to the ticking time bomb: “Tariq the Terrorist is in the interrogation room and you confront him with the fact that you know that he and his associates have planted a nuclear device somewhere in midtown Manhattan. You know the device will detonate at some point this afternoon. Tariq says to you, ‘If you want me to tell you where the bomb is, you’ll have to [perform fellatio on me]. And I mean you, personally.’” My suspicion is that this in this hypo, Tariq is not all that unlikely to make such a proposition. But the Kool-aid drinker (who was chomping at the bit to torture Tariq) is likely to hesitate when confronted with the equally false choice of getting semen in his mouth and letting innocents die. After all, if it’s morally justifiable to strap electrodes on Tariq to find out where the bomb is, then surely anyone could forgive a little man-love. I suspect, though, that the Kool-aid drinkers would quickly challenge the premise of the hypothetical, desperately looking for some way, any way, to avoid dick-in-the-mouth and still save the day.

Now, you just might get a guy who’ll say, “If innocent lives were at stake, not only would I do it, I’d swallow, too,” but even if so, it very likely would take only minimal prodding to get him to admit that he’d look for other ways to get the information rather than doing that. And at that point, you’ve won the argument, because you’ve demonstrated that you ought to search, very hard, for an alternative to torturing Tariq – even under the most extreme of circumstances – because gay oral sex is surely a less morally grave act than torture, and look how hard the torture advocate is tap-dancing to avoid having to perform gay oral sex.

But all the same, sure, maybe the would-be torturer is okay with performing a gay sex act to save millions of lives and maybe he would rhetorically indicate that he would be willing to so debase himself. But Tariq need not stop there; I just picked gay oral sex as the starting point for shock value. The hypo can be changed endlessly – so long as the price to be paid for the information is personal to the torturer, and not for the prisoner. Convert to Islam. Assassinate some beloved national hero. Let Tariq bugger the torturer’s young son. The President must convert to Islam during a live press conference and urge all Americans to do the same. Have the torturer torture an innocent child or even kill one of his own children. At some point, as you escalate the level of evil to the torturer’s sense of morality, the interrogator is going to decide that what Tariq is asking is simply too abhorrent to do and eventually, he’ll resort to other means to save the city rather than give in to Tariq’s demands. But I think that you’ll start getting some questioning of the premise right away with the oral sex hypo, and the real goal of the exercise is to get the "torture" advocate to question the premise.

Happily, real life is almost never so dramatic as television shows or internet hypothetical scenarios. I’ve a good friend who served for a year in the National Guard at Camp X-Ray, serving as an interrogator. He finished his stint there about six months ago. A very honest, very morally upright guy. All he ever did was sit across from the prisoner at a card table and talk with a camcorder running. If he’d ever been out of line to the prisoners, he’d have been written up. To get information, he’d offer the prisoner better food than the prison rations; apparently, the Filet O’ Fish sandwich from the on-base McDonald’s was the most effective bribe. The reality of it is that if Tariq has been handled correctly by his captors, he’s as likely give up the location of the bomb in exchange for a vanilla shake as he is to demand a blowjob or, more to the point, require waterboarding. So to keep things in perspective, it doesn’t seem to me that we’re talking about anything that actually happens very often. If at all.

But if torture is happening, once is too many times. And more to the point, the government going to such lengths to actually justify the unjustifiable is morally reprehensible. And bigoted sadists masquearading as conservatives need to be called on the carpet for what they would have America do.

Obama Advertising On Rush Limbaugh

In Texas, at least. And why not? Limbuagh and his ilk have done little but to bad-mouth McCain since he took ascendancy, and there are no viable Republican alterantives to him. And Limbaugh listeners will never be convinced to vote for Hillary Clinton, who they've heard demonized on that show for the past sixteen years.

So that leaves them nowhere else to go but to Obama (or to stay home). And despite being unabashedly liberal, Obama's charisma seems to transcend even ideology; even conservatives look at the the guy and think, "Yeah, I kind of like him." So there may be some votes to be got for Obama even amongst the family of Limbaugh listeners, given the bizarre new world emerging from this election.