Why are conservatives so insufferably whiny?

Someone should call up Gerard Alexander and ask if he wants a little cheese with his whine. The poor dear, he doesn't like it when liberals act like they're right and conservatives are wrong. Gosh, you kinda feel sorry for him, always being wrong all the time and then getting called on it.

This is me being condescending, by the way. Just in case your tiny conservative brain didn't process that.

One wonders if Mr. Alexander has ever listened to Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh. They've done pretty much anything he accuses liberals of doing, but apparently, Mr. Alexander thinks that they're right and therefore not "condescending" at all. Anyway, let's look at Mr. Alexander's "critique" of liberal condescension and see what we can see:

But American liberals, to a degree far surpassing conservatives, appear committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration.

Wait, wait, wait, you're saying that liberals think that they're using logic to reach a conclusion, and that people who don't reach that conclusion must be using faulty logic? Good heavens, what would happen if we all tried to use logic to come to conclusions? Why, the world would end! I assume, by Alexander's association of logic and reason with "condescension," that he thinks conservatives don't use logic then?

Liberals have dismissed conservative thinking for decades, a tendency encapsulated by Lionel Trilling's 1950 remark that conservatives do not "express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas." During the 1950s and '60s, liberals trivialized the nascent conservative movement. Prominent studies and journalistic accounts of right-wing politics at the time stressed paranoia, intolerance and insecurity, rendering conservative thought more a psychiatric disorder than a rival. In 1962, Richard Hofstadter referred to "the Manichaean style of thought, the apocalyptic tendencies, the love of mystification, the intolerance of compromise that are observable in the right-wing mind."

Pardon me, but is any of this false? Right-wing politics in the '50s and '60s did, in fact, make political hay out of paranoia and intolerance, or do I really need to remind you of Joseph McCarthy and the John Birch Society? To a right-winger, the world really was made up of a Manichean "good" and "evil" - and still is, really, as anyone who follows modern conservative thought could tell you. Conservatives shouldn't be insulted by factual portrayals of their positions. Rather, if conservatives think that the world is split into clear "good" and "evil" camps, they ought to own it rather than call such a description condescending. And if conservatives don't believe that, they should tell us why that's wrong, but remember - being wrong isn't the same as being condescending.

The first is the "vast right-wing conspiracy," a narrative made famous by Hillary Rodham Clinton but hardly limited to her. This vision maintains that conservatives win elections and policy debates not because they triumph in the open battle of ideas but because they deploy brilliant and sinister campaign tactics. A dense network of professional political strategists such as Karl Rove, think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and industry groups allegedly manipulate information and mislead the public. Democratic strategist Rob Stein crafted a celebrated PowerPoint presentation during George W. Bush's presidency that traced conservative success to such organizational factors.

Of course, when liberals win elections, it's because ACORN stole it for them. Or because Obama voters are illiterate.

But, if conservative leaders are crass manipulators, then the rank-and-file Americans who support them must be manipulated at best, or stupid at worst. This is the second variety of liberal condescension, exemplified in Thomas Frank's best-selling 2004 book, "What's the Matter With Kansas?" Frank argued that working-class voters were so distracted by issues such as abortion that they were induced into voting against their own economic interests. Then-Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, later chairman of the Democratic National Committee, echoed that theme in his 2004 presidential run, when he said Republicans had succeeded in getting Southern whites to focus on "guns, God and gays" instead of economic redistribution.

OK, this is a good point. Frank's book doesn't take social issues seriously, and so it is kind of condescending. Dean's comment isn't, though - it's acknowledging a fact. Southern white voters tend to care more about social issues than about asking the government to help them out. But it's the Democrats' job to convince these voters that Democratic policies can help them, and that liberal social policies won't hurt them at all. Doing this isn't condescending - it's good politics, just like Republicans trying to convince the same voters of the opposite. In fact, it's the entire friggin' point of politics.

In his 2008 book, "Nixonland," progressive writer Rick Perlstein argued that Richard Nixon created an enduring Republican strategy of mobilizing the ethnic and other resentments of some Americans against others. Similarly, in their 1992 book, "Chain Reaction," Thomas Byrne Edsall and Mary D. Edsall argued that Nixon and Reagan talked up crime control, low taxes and welfare reform to cloak racial animus and help make it mainstream. It is now an article of faith among many liberals that Republicans win elections because they tap into white prejudice against blacks and immigrants.

Again, is there anything here that's false? Nixon and other Republicans did use racism to win elections - no less a conservative leader than former RNC chair Ken Mehlman has said as much. And anyone familiar with Jesse Helms' "white hands" ad can say that racial politics survived at least into the '90s. Of course, it's a little rich to say that liberals are condescending when they say conservatives used to be racist when conservatives are accusing Obama of the same damn thing.

Markos Moulitsas, publisher of the influential progressive Web site Daily Kos, commissioned a poll, which he released this month, designed to show how many rank-and-file Republicans hold odd or conspiratorial beliefs -- including 23 percent who purportedly believe that their states should secede from the Union. Moulitsas concluded that Republicans are "divorced from reality" and that the results show why "it is impossible for elected Republicans to work with Democrats to improve our country." His condescension is superlative: Of the respondents who favored secession, he wonders, "Can we cram them all into the Texas Panhandle, create the state of Dumb-[expletive]-istan, and build a wall around them to keep them from coming into America illegally?"

I have my own issues about that poll. But let's put ourselves in Markos' shoes and take the poll at its word here. You're criticizing him for saying that a good number of Republicans are divorced from reality when he's discussing a poll that shows that significant numbers of Republicans think he wasn't born in the US, that ACORN stole the 2008 election, and that he wants the terrorists to win? Those positions are objectively and demonstrably false. The act of holding beliefs that are objectively untrue is the very definition of being divorced from reality. Criticize the poll, but don't call it condescending. Call it a poorly constructed poll.

These four liberal narratives not only justify the dismissal of conservative thinking as biased or irrelevant -- they insist on it. By no means do all liberals adhere to them, but they are mainstream in left-of-center thinking. Indeed, when the president met with House Republicans in Baltimore recently, he assured them that he considers their ideas, but he then rejected their motives in virtually the same breath.

This is, perhaps, the most telling part of Alexander's column. According to him, it's condescending to tell someone they're wrong. Does Alexander think that all criticism is condescension? Well, it's not. It's criticism. I don't accuse you of condescension when you tell me my beliefs are wrong. Disagreement and criticism is healthy in a political debate - hell, that's what makes it a debate!

Alexander goes on to criticize Jon Stewart, which is equally telling. Stewart serves two roles - calling bullshit, and making fun of people. Is making fun of people condescending? Perhaps, but it's hardly toxic to our political debate. Indeed, when Stewart makes fun of conservative viewpoints he's generally good about including in those jokes why, exactly, Stewart finds those positions worthy of derision. One wonders why conservatives, instead of complaining, don't try to give as good as they get. And conservatives call us humorless? Puh-leez.

Alexander goes on to talk about how previously marginalized conservative ideas turned out to be good ideas, to which I might add previously marginalized liberal ideas like racial equality and a 40-hour work week. But see, we liberals criticize ideas because we think that they're wrong. Conservatives do the same thing, too. It's called the political debate. Sometimes it gets a little unsubstantive, and sometimes - yes - it starts to seem condescending. But we condescend because we think you're wrong. Guess what, Mr. Alexander? So do you. What you call "condescension" is really criticism, and when you blame liberals, you really ought to be blaming yourself for having such a thin skin.

Anyway. If it's real, honest-to-God pointless condescension you seek, Mr. Alexander, just read the first two paragraphs of this post. Otherwise, allow for the fact that people are allowed to tell you that you're wrong and make fun of you, and that this is okay and natural and part of a healthy society. And that when you accuse liberals of something, chances are conservatives are just as guilty of it.

Do It for the Children

Those of you who know me know that I've been involved for the past year or so with a group called Historic Green, which does some historic preservation/green building work to help restore the Lower 9th Ward area of New Orleans post-Katrina. This year we're doing a lot of interesting projects, but the one I'm working on is some playground restoration. We're repairing some of the play structure and hoping to add ground cover and solar-powered lighting to the playground this year. We're eligible for a $5000 grant from the Brighter Planet foundation, but we need your votes to get it.

So click here, register and vote. You can vote three times. As they say in Chicago, vote early and often!

Something Smells Funny

A lot has been made on the blogosphere and Twitterverse recently about a Research 2000 poll commissioned by Big Orange that polls registered, self-identified Republicans and finds that they're, well, batshit insane. Some of the poll highlights:

39% believe Obama should be impeached; 29% are not sure.

Only 42% believe Obama was born in the U.S.

21% believe ACORN stole the 2008 election; a whopping 55% are "not sure."

Only 8% - that's eight percent - believe that gay and lesbian people should be allowed to teach in the public schools. 19% were not sure; 73% said no.

That's some serious crazy... but color me skeptical. Let's take a look at the "don't ask, don't tell" question, since that's in the news nowadays. The R2K poll has Republican support for allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military at a mere 26%, with 19% not sure and 55% opposed. Problem is, there's a Gallup poll from June that asks the exact same question. The result? Support for allowing openly gay soldiers is at 58% - 32 points higher than in the R2K poll. Even if we account for the fact that Gallup pushes fence-sitters, and we place all those fence-sitters in with the open-service supporters, we get 45% support - 13 points less than Gallup's number, still nothing to sneeze at. What's more, the questions asked were semantically equivalent. Something, somewhere, is horribly wrong.

There are a couple of options. One is that support for gays in the military has tanked between June and now. I find that highly unlikely - the Gallup poll had a trend among Republicans of +6 over the past four years, and even during the recent debate on the subject top military brass - who carry a lot of weight with Republicans - have been almost unanimous in supporting repeal of the DADT policy.

Another is that R2K's poll oversampled cranky old people, which it did - 37% of R2K's sample were over 65. R2K gave us crosstabs by age group, though, and the 18-29-year-olds sampled by R2K gave their support at 31% with 22% fence-sitting - that's 53% maximum support for open service. That 53% number is still below Gallup's number for all Republicans, and 18-29s are among the most likely groups to support allowing LGBT folk to serve openly.

One intriguing option, though, is that questions asked previously by R2K could have triggered a more conservative frame of mind in many respondents. R2K asked their question after they asked several other questions about radical conservative beliefs, including the ACORN question, whether Obama is a socialist or a U.S. citizen, etc. After being asked all these questions, it's easy to imagine that someone would start automatically giving the "conservative" position whether or not they actually agree with that opinion independently. They're not thinking "what do I think" anymore - on a subconscious level, they're thinking, "I'm a conservative, what do conservatives think?" It's a cognitive shortcut that's easy to trigger, and it might explain the discrepancy between the two polls.

Give These People Hugs

Aww, poor little Richypoo Cohen needs a hug:

There is almost nothing the Obama administration does regarding terrorism that makes me feel safer. Whether it is guaranteeing captured terrorists that they will not be waterboarded, reciting terrorists their rights, or the legally meandering and confusing rule that some terrorists will be tried in military tribunals and some in civilian courts, what is missing is a firm recognition that what comes first is not the message sent to America's critics but the message sent to Americans themselves. When, oh when, will this administration wake up?

While we're at it, let's give little Susie Collins a hug too. She looks very, very frightened. Maybe she wants a cookie and some ice cream.

And while we're giving hugs, let's not leave out sweet little Mitchie McConnell:

“This is really dangerous nonsense,” McConnell said of the Obama administration’s policies regarding treatment of alleged terrorists. “We have a way to do it, John,” McConnell told CNN’s John King. “Interrogate them. Detain them and try them in military commissions offshore at Guantanamo from which no one has ever escaped.”

Aww, the poor dears! They're so scared of a relatively minor threat that they're whining about the Constitution applying to everyone! Let's give them all cookies and milk and maybe they'll calm down. There, there, little boys and girls, it's gonna be okay.

Goddamn, I wish my country's leaders would quit acting like they have the emotional maturity of a toddler. The Constitution is what it is. You can't make it optional just because you're a little scared. Grow up, people.

Update: Little Susiepoo is so so so scared that we're not going to get good intelligence out of Captain Underpants since he's in the criminal justice system. There there, little Susiepoo, have a cupcake and some reassurance from the WaPo that we're gathering useful intel. Sleep well!

Couple of Quick Notes

- Lest you think Mike Bloomberg is a pioneer in banning incredibly stupid things, New York - as well as much of the country - once banned pinball. Yes, pinball. In fact, pinball was illegal in much of the country through the '70s, and it was (technically) illegal for kids in Nashville, TN to play pinball until 2004. Kinda makes you look at Tommy a hell of a lot differently, huh?

- Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig, whose First Amendment credentials are generally beyond reproach, criticizes the Citizens United decision. His argument is that the case compares to Rust v. Sullivan, the 1991 case that allowed the government to restrict doctors who receive government funds from discussing abortion. Corporations receive a government benefit in reduced legal liability for shareholders - therefore they are subject to government regulations on speech. And remember my post on the comparison between Morse and Citizens United? Lessig also points out the hypocrisy between the decisions in Rust and Citizens United, noting that Court conservatives were okay with restricting speech they didn't like and allowing speech they considered benign.

That might be worth noting for conservatives - if you support Citizens United, it's awful tough to continue to support either Rust or Morse without trying to claim that corporations actually have more free speech rights than individuals...

- I'm in the process of re-uploading the images for the last two posts. Stay tuned. Anyone know how to save an Excel chart as a JPG?

At Dave's Request

In the comments of the last post, Dave wanted me to crunch some numbers on a proxy for social conservatism. I chose two measures - percentage of a state's residents that attend church, and percentage of a state's vote for McCain in 2008. Neither have much of an effect:

Both correlations are positive, but both trendlines are almost horizontal and both correlation factors are extremely low, especially the McCain one. So I doubt that a state's social conservatism/liberalism has much of an effect on teen pregnancy.

Teen Pregnancy Rate Kerfuffle

Seems the latest Guttmacher Institute report on teen pregnancy has gotten the pundit world in a bit of a tizzy. Teen pregnancies showed an increase in 2006 after a solid decade and a half decline, and the finger pointing is beginning. As this article points out, much of the battle rages over abstinence-only education, and whether federal funding for it is a good idea. Opponents say that abstinence-only education leaves teenagers unprepared for sex, which leads to pregnancies when it inevitably happens. Supporters say that the data support an increase in abstinence-only education to get teenagers to stop having sex (and thus stop getting pregnant).

What I didn't see was anyone who actually looked at the data to see if there was any correlation. So I did. I compared Guttmacher's numbers for pregnancy among 15-19-year-olds to SIECUS' numbers for abstinence-only education funding, divided by the number of pupils in each state's public school system. I threw out DC's outlier numbers. The results (standard correlation-causation caveats apply):

The data show a slight - very slight - positive correlation between abstinence-only funding per pupil and teen pregnancy rate. That would seem to support the case of abstinence-only opponents. It's hard to read much out of such a low correlation number, but let's compare a state's teen pregnancy rate to its median income level - poverty is often cited as a cause of teen pregnancy - and see what we get:

That's the negative correlation we would expect, but it's an even worse correlation.

So what can we conclude? First, we can discard the idea of poverty leading to teen pregnancy, at least as a primary factor. Abstinence-only education is more of a factor, though the low correlation number would suggest that there are either a) other things that are more of a factor or b) a whole host of things that affect teen-pregnancy rates that I didn't graph.

Here's a few more fun tidbits of data:

- The national average for abstinence-only education funding per pupil is $3.73. Only two states in the bottom 15 of teen pregnancy rates - Nebraska (9th lowest) and South Dakota (11th lowest) - spend more than this on abstinence-only education.

- The five states with the lowest rates - New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, Minnesota, and North Dakota - all spend less than a dollar per pupil on abstinence-only.

- Seven states - Vermont, Minnesota, Idaho (!), Montana, Rhode Island, Wyoming, and Delaware - spend no money on abstinence-only education. The first four states on that list are all in the bottom 15. Delaware has the 6th highest rate - Rhode Island and Wyoming are firmly middle-of-the-pack.

- The state that spends the most on abstinence-only, South Dakota, has the 11th lowest teen pregnancy rate. The state that spends the second-most, Mississippi, has the 5th highest.

What's truly weird is that culture doesn't appear to play any role in teen pregnancy either. Generally socially conservative states appear on both sides of the teen pregnancy spectrum, as do generally socially liberal states. (Southern states do appear to concentrate near the top though - Virginia has the lowest rate among Southern states, and it's 20th lowest.)

If there's a conclusion to be drawn here, it's that abstinence-only education has been a factor - but hardly the only factor, or even the most important one - in increasing teen pregnancy rates. Comprehensive sex education can decrease teen pregnancy rates somewhat, but it isn't the cure-all for pregnancy rates that supporters often portray it as. But most importantly, teen pregnancy is a phenomenon whose many causes are not well understood - well, except for the direct cause, of course.

The other option, of course, is that the two are so lightly correlated that there can be no causative link, and that the two are independent phenomena. From looking at these data, there's a good argument to be made that the level of sex education doesn't really affect whether or not teens get pregnant. Either way, though, abstinence-only advocates like to push their programs as a cure for teen pregnancy. We can conclude that that's clearly not the case - as our data show, there's no possibility that abstinence-only education funding could decrease teen pregnancy rates.

A Bad Excuse for Murder

Ben, didn't you write a paper about this back in law school?

Barack Obama, like George Bush before him, has claimed the authority to order American citizens murdered based solely on the unverified, uncharged, unchecked claim that they are associated with Terrorism and pose "a continuing and imminent threat to U.S. persons and interests." They're entitled to no charges, no trial, no ability to contest the accusations. Amazingly, the Bush administration's policy of merely imprisoning foreign nationals (along with a couple of American citizens) without charges -- based solely on the President's claim that they were Terrorists -- produced intense controversy for years. That, one will recall, was a grave assault on the Constitution. Shouldn't Obama's policy of ordering American citizens assassinated without any due process or checks of any kind -- not imprisoned, but killed -- produce at least as much controversy?

The danger here, as I see it, is that we're not dealing with an actual defined "enemy" here. We're dealing with people who could just as easily be tried in the U.S. for actual crimes. We're too busy thinking about al-Qaeda nutbags as "soldiers" when in reality they're just standard-issue thugs that we ought to treat as such. I've argued before that the difference between al-Qaeda and the Mafia is merely one of degree (though the Mafia tends to be far more well-organized). I don't get why we need to create a whole new legal framework that involves presidentially-ordered killings and indefinite detention when the trial-by-jury one we already have works just fine.

And in fact, creating this new legal framework has only served to confuse the issue of terrorism and the issue of POWs from Afghanistan and Iraq (people who were caught while engaging in hostilities against American troops). A legal framework already exists to deal with both situations - the criminal justice system for terrorists and the Geneva Conventions for POWs. I can think of no person detained by the U.S. that could not be placed in either. Why did we need to create a new one and lump terrorists and POWs all together?

Tweedledee and Tweedledum Meet the Constitution

The Supreme Court was recently asked to decide a free speech case. The speech in question was corrupting and often misleading. If it overturned the government's law and allowed the speech, many people could be led astray by similar speech. It would have a corrupting effect on our culture and our government.

I'm referring to the Citizens United v. FEC case that recently overturned the McCain-Feingold restrictions on corporate and union political contributions, of course. But I could just as easily have been referring to Morse v. Frederick, the 2006 case where the Court allowed an Alaska school to suspend a student for unfurling a "Bong Hits for Jesus" banner at a non-school-related event.

As someone who believes in the First Amendment, I support the former decision and oppose the latter. I do not believe the "compelling state interest" doctrine has any place in determining whether the government should respect enumerated rights. (There is a place for "compelling state interest" in unenumerated rights, but even there it should be restricted heavily. And don't get me started on the intellectually bankrupt "rational basis" test.) The "compelling state interest" argument essentially gives the right to restrict speech, imprison people without cause, and otherwise violate Constitutional rights to any government official with a slick lawyer capable of convincing five justices that their "interest" is "compelling." It's what leads to the Fourth Amendment being eroded in the age of terrorism. It's why Morse v. Frederick exists in the "war on drugs" era.

In his defense of Citizens United, Greenwald (not exactly a corporatist conservative) writes:

The "rule of law," however, means that if the Constitution or other laws bar X, then X is not allowed regardless of how many good outcomes can be achieved by X. That was true for the "crisis" of Terrorism, and it's just as true for the crisis of corporate influence over our political process. Whatever solutions are to be found for either problem, they cannot be ones that the Constitution explicitly prohibits. That's what "the rule of law" means.

The famous quotes from Voltaire ("I disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it") and Mencken (the whole "defense of scoundrels" thing) also apply. But what's clear to me is that most people - both liberal and conservative - will gladly abandon constitutionalism when they're scared of something. Conservatives are afraid of terrorism, so they'll support lawless detention policies that are clearly unconstitutional. Conservatives and some liberals are afraid of drugs, so we get Morse. Liberals and moderates are afraid of corporate influence in elections, so we got, for a time, McCain-Feingold (though liberals are also free-speech fans, so as it turns out the Citizens United decision has the support of 62% of Democrats - it's independents that are lukewarm about the decision).

The idea that a desired legislative outcome is constitutional (and an undesirable one is unconstitutional) is situational constitutionalism, and while common citizens only passingly versed in constitutional law would be expected to confuse the two, one would expect experienced jurists like the Supreme Court justices to resist that temptation. But as it turns out, that's not the case. Of the eight justices who ruled in both Morse and Citizens United, seven switched sides - this, despite the fact that the two cases ruled on essentially the same constitutional question*. The eighth, Stephen Breyer, was with the bad guys on both cases (though his concurrence in Morse was partial). The conservatives hate drugs and like corporations, and voted like it. The liberals are okay with drugs and hate corporations, and voted like it. It's pretty clear to me that the constitutional justification for their rulings came after their minds had been made up.

Also worth a read: Brayton discusses why Citizens United doesn't really change anything.

*Scalia, Kennedy, and Stevens also ruled in 1989's Texas v. Johnson, which overturned a Texas law against flag-burning and is thus addressing this same question. The former two sided with free speech, while the latter opposed it.

Banditos Theorem Proven Yet Again

From Balko's Twitter feed comes this fun little item, where Oregon Democrats attempted to sneak this little gem into a tax law that was likely going to be defeated by the voters:

A measure referred to the people by referendum petition may not be adopted unless it receives an affirmative majority of the total votes cast on the measure rejecting the measure. For purposes of this subsection, a measure is considered adopted if it is rejected by the people.

The perfect confluence of cynicism and stupidity. Although really, I just wanted an excuse to post this song, linked because I can't embed.

Never Been One to Take My Chances

Of all the varying analyses of the Massachusetts special election that ended in victory for Republican Scott Brown, Conor Friersdorf's is by far the best:

It is particularly amusing to see folks call the outcome stunning in one breath and aver in the next that they can explain why it happened mere hours after the fact, without any new data save the result. This is especially grating when it’s so obvious that the election turned on all the issues that were most important to me, that the outcome so clearly vindicates my world view, and that the wisest course in light of the results is for both parties to do exactly what I’ve been advocating for all along.

Only a partisan hack could deny that all aspects of this election bolstering my analysis happened to be most significant, whereas factors that cut against my thesis were ultimately irrelevant to the outcome. Let this be a lesson to my political and ideological opponents in future contested elections — insofar as it is advantages my policy preferences, what happened in Massachusetts is a harbinger of things to come in the 2010 midterms, and even in 2012. Meanwhile all precedents seemingly at odds with my national political proclivities were unique, and should be ignored.

Commenter ken b. responded:

What an ignorant post. It’s obvious to anyone with half a brain that my views were vindicated, while yours were completely demolished.

Funny, but there's a point here. Elections are capricious things that turn on any number of issues, big and small, local and national. Governing majorities aren't going to last forever, especially not with an electorate as split down the middle as ours. Treating a majority as if it had any permanence is stupid - remember that "permanent Republican majority" of DeLay's? - and that makes selling yourself out to hold on to power absolutely foolish, because your time out of power will come whether you want it to or not, and whatever machinations you might see fit to pull will eventually be for naught. Furthermore, once you're on top there's only one place to go. Procrastinating on your legislative agenda in order to gain political advantage just doesn't work.

One party in Washington understands this. The Republicans have been admirable in sticking to their guns even when it cost them elections. The Democrats have been selling themselves out in a futile attempt to hold on to power, and the liberal wing of the party has basically let itself be swamped. We haven't seen accountability and the rule of law restored to our terrorism policy, the health care bill basically turned into corporate welfare once the public option was dropped, and there has been no movement on civil rights for LGBT folks at all. Instead, the Democrats have lived in fear of Republican attacks that they think might take away their power.

And you know what? They're right. Those Republican attacks might well succeed. But guess what? That's politics for you. On top one year, on the bottom the next. If you can't stand up to attacks from the other side and do what you want to do, why the hell are you in this business? If there's one thing to be learned from the Massachusetts special election, it's that there's no reward in changing who you are. You'll win some, you'll lose some, so if you're going to go down anyway you might as well go down swinging.

One final thing. A lot of conservadems and Republicans are saying that "the Left" is somehow responsible for this election defeat. Riiiight. I can think of no occasion during this presidency when "the Left" has gotten something significant that it wanted. Obama has ignored or antagonized "the Left" on terrorism policy, the war in Afghanistan, economic policy, gay rights, and health care. Sullivan writes:

But if one had traveled to Mars and back this past year and read this statement, what would you assume had happened? I would assume that the banks had been nationalized, the stimulus was twice as large, that single-payer healthcare had been pushed through on narrow majority votes, that card-check had passed, that an immigration amnesty had been legislated, that prosecutions of Bush and Cheney for war crimes would be underway, that withdrawal from Afghanistan would be commencing, that no troops would be left in Iraq, that Larry Tribe was on the Supreme Court, that DADT and DOMA would be repealed, and so on.

Grouse about "the Left" all you want, but not only can I not think of a significant leftist victory under Obama, I can't think a significant leftist victory during my lifetime (I was born in 1981). If you think "the Left" has any power in Washington, you're plain nuts.

Anyway, the tenor of this post reminded me of this song. There are literally no good videos for it (odd considering it's not all that obscure), so here it is set to some random trippy movie scenes:

Posts on Citizens United and the Gitmo murders to come. Stay tuned.

Earthquake Donations

For those of you who want to help Haitians deal with the horrifying earthquake that happened there yesterday, and whose death toll is estimated by some to be in the hundreds of thousands, here's a few links:

UNICEF

Doctors Without Borders

Red Cross - though apparently you can donate via text message by texting HAITI to 90999.

That'll get a list started. Comment if you know of any other reputable organizations helping the relief efforts down there.

Update: Partners in Health's relief efforts.

Also try Hope for Haiti

Update II Beth points out that Raleighites can drop items at Beleza in Cameron Village - they'll channel their aid through the United Methodist Church, which apparently has a pretty good operation going.

Also, the Union for Reform Judaism has a donation site here. It claims to be overhead-free, which is a plus, though I don't think URJ has much of an established operation there right now.

Bad Law! Bad!

There are some stupid laws out there. Most of them are of the "it's illegal to carry an open umbrella in Hot Springs" or "it's illegal to have sex with your socks on in Virginia" variety - ridiculous, but generally harmless. After all, who's going to enforce those laws?

Then there are laws like this. Apparently in DC, New York, and San Francisco, if you're a woman and you're carrying three or more condoms, you'll be thrown in jail for prostitution.

Now forget whether or not you think prostitution should be illegal. Most people do, and that's fine. Even so, the stupidity involved here is all but impossible to fathom. Do they think that only prostitutes go out thinking they might get laid that night? Three condoms is a pretty good number to have on you, and while one would expect most men to have condoms on them when they go out, it's generally foolish to rely on others for that sort of thing. Most women who carry condoms on them when they go out aren't prostitutes - they're responsible adults.

So what are the effects of this law? One is to hassle sexually active young women and reinforce goofy gender norms - one can't help but note that men can presumably carry an entire case of condoms around and not be arrested for solicitation. The second is to encourage unwanted pregnancies and the spread of STDs - after all, you're not going to stop people from having sex (paid or unpaid) just by outlawing excessive condom carrying. Third is that the burden of the DC law at least is going to fall mostly on poor women. The DC law can only be enforced within "Prostitution Free Zones," which are delineated by the DC police. The last one was in Near Northeast, which, while gentrifying, is mostly a working-class neighborhood. Any chance one of these gets declared in Georgetown or Cleveland Park? No. So while middle-class and wealthy women can go out responsibly in Georgetown with no fear of police harassment, working-class women in an arbitrarily defined "Prostitution-Free Zone" in a poor neighborhood cannot.

Anyway, it's stupid, and proof that people who make laws often do so out of panic. There's no way this policy was well-thought-out before it was passed.

Update: Apparently New York City, despite their anti-condom law, passes out free official condoms. The foolishness of lawmakers never ceases to amaze.

Nostalgia and Munroe's Law

The Daily Show's incomparable John Oliver explores some of the nostalgia coming from conservatives:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
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Nostalgia is a powerful drug. Even I find myself nostalgic for the '90s sometimes (which I associate with my youth more than the '80s, despite having been born in 1981). In the back of my mind I realize that tolerance for gay people has increased since then, violent crime was much higher then, and barriers for women and minorities that existed then are being steadily eroded, not to mention the fact that the Internet has opened up countless entertainment and communication possibilities and has made being an informed citizen easier than ever before... but dude, Nirvana is way better than this Nickelback shit.

I'm not gonna go around like Candide and say that we live in the best of all possible worlds here, of course. I liked politics without all the senseless fearmongering over terrorism. I liked the fact that we weren't involved in two major wars. I liked the balanced budget.

Nostalgia, like all drugs, isn't necessarily bad if used properly. Returning to happy childhood memories can have a great calming effect. But in the end, as I mentioned a few posts ago, when we force government to indulge our childish fantasies we're bound to have a problem. In a way, the Beck clip Oliver shows at the beginning of his segment has a point: when we ask government to return us to some nebulous state that may have existed only in our own imaginations, we're causing more problems than we solve. Sadly, Beck pays no mind to his own warning - by agitating for a larger role for the executive in terrorism issues and government control over private decisions, he's consistently doing exactly what he warns against.

Munroe's Law, based on this comic, states that "more harm has been done by people panicked over societal decline than societal decline ever did." This is because the idea of societal decline is tied in heavily with nostalgia. If we have some sugar-coated view of the era of our childhood, of course any change from that era is going to look like decline whether or not it's actually bad... so we often oppose beneficial change because, under the influence of nostalgia, we view it as decline. And we often support harmful or interventionist reactionary policies because we view them as reversing decline.

The lesson here, I guess, is to grapple with change on its own terms, and to do that requires us to stop idealizing our childhood eras and applying this idealization to politics. When we accept that some things about the era we grew up in weren't so great, we can start to look at the actual effects of changes and embrace or fight them based on that.

Anyway, I guess this is a long, drawn-out way of saying that I'm nostalgic for the 2006 college football championship game. Why, when I was that age, Mack Brown didn't call a timeout so he could call an ill-conceived shovel pass before halftime...

Does Brit Hume Deserve a Rummy?

I don't know if I've mentioned it on the blog before, but occasionally I give out Rummy Awards to people who say something perfectly reasonable that sounds kind of odd and then get unfairly lampooned for it in the media. Its original inspiration was Donald Rumsfeld's "unknown unknown" speech, which was made fun of by seemingly everyone despite conveying the sensible notion that unforseen circumstances and problems will exist. Other past winners include John Kerry (for "I voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it," referring to the difference between substantive procedural votes and protest votes) and Janet Napolitano ("The system worked," which referred to what happened after Captain Underpants got on the plane). Anyway, I'm mulling over giving a Rummy to Brit Hume.

Brit Hume, as you probably know by now, is the Fox News anchor who said that Tiger Woods should ditch Buddhism for Christianity so he can gain forgiveness for his adulterous behavior. The chorus of voices ripping Hume has grown since then.

Now I don't think much of Hume as a newsman, but in this case I fail to see the problem with Hume's statement. Hume is, presumably, a Christian, and Christianity states that forgiveness for sins is only possible through belief in Jesus as the Savior. To Christians, then, Buddhism doesn't offer forgiveness in the same way as Christianity because it doesn't involve Christ. So to Hume, Tiger is not just a sinner - we're all sinners, after all - but he's not forgiven for his sins because he doesn't believe in Jesus. So of course Hume would say that Buddhism doesn't offer forgiveness for Tiger's sins while Christianity does, because that's a basic tenet of Christianity.

What I think is at work here is that this particular Christian belief is an uncomfortable one for those who want to put a happy-face on all religion and pretend that it's all about everyone getting along all the time. I'll admit, too, that those people aren't all barking up the wrong tree in their desire to make religion about that. It's a noble goal. But Christianity isn't just about "be nice to one another" - it's also about salvation and the afterlife and God and Jesus and all that other stuff I just mentioned. So when someone wants to give voice to those other aspects of Christianity, it doesn't really fit into the "be nice to each other" narrative, and so those who subscribe to that narrative react viscerally and want to shut down the expression of that part of the faith.

I should know about such reactions - as Ben can attest, I've been down that road. But I don't think it's appropriate to ask a Christian like Hume to hold back on his religious views just because some people might find those views disagreeable or laughable. He has the right to voice his opinions, we non-Christians have a right to disagree, but his opinions are hardly ridiculous - rather, they're consistent with mainstream Christian belief. This doesn't mean Hume's beliefs are above criticism, just that Hume's statement is hardly the out-there crazy missive it seems to be portrayed as in the media.

Hume's Rummy for flagrant and inconvenient Christianity wouldn't be unprecedented - Rev. Jerry Falwell, for whom long-time readers know I had absolutely no love, got a belated Rummy for his statement about the anti-Christ being Jewish*. Of course, I'm not a Christian, so I might have this all wrong. That's why I'm not pulling the trigger on the Rummy yet. If any of you Christian readers care to weigh in and tell me if I've got this fouled up, let me know.

* An injudicious statement, perhaps, but one which is backed up by sound millenarian Christian theology and thus isn't really anti-Semitic at all. John from Truth Before Dishonor has a summary of the theology here.

Update: Michael Gerson has taken up residence in my head. Spend too long up there, Gerson, and you'll become a moonbat like me...

One note: Gerson attributes the criticism of Hume to intolerance of strong belief. I don't necessarily buy that - I don't think most of the people reacting negatively to Hume are intolerant of strong belief; rather, they're merely naive. That is, they simply don't understand what strong religious belief entails. I can see where Gerson would get this idea, and calling it intolerance tells part of the story, but it doesn't tell the whole story in my opinion.

You Have The Right To Remain Geeky

All I can say after reading this: there must not be any real crime in Howard County, because damn, the police there are bored.

Cancel That Trip to Dublin

Speaking of nanny states: since it's very rare for me to go a full day without saying something blasphemous, I guess I should avoid Ireland from now on. They've just passed a law making blasphemy illegal. In response, some hilarious Irish atheists published a list of quotes that would be considered blasphemous under the new law. They include pearls of wisdom from Jesus, Muhammad, and the minister who proposed the law in the first place.

Bonus - the political party currently in charge in Ireland is called "Fianna Fail." I'm not making that up.

Mother, Mother

The idea of the "nanny state" is a frequent focus of libertarian attacks. By "nanny state," libertarians generally mean rules and regulations passed by the government that seek to control personal behavior - bans on smoking and drug usage are a good example. If you want a sample of libertarian anti-nanny state activism, Jacob at Eternal Recurrence Liquidity Preference does a good job of attacking nanny state laws against smoking, drinking, and various forms of food, and Nobody's Business has some good posts decrying random regulatory madness.

I generally find myself in agreement with the anti-nanny state people, but I think there's a little bit more to this nanny state idea than batty regulations and restrictions on personal freedom. So I was interested when the blind mouse that is David Brooks found the cheese with this column about the Underpants Bomber:

Now we seem to expect perfection from government and then throw temper tantrums when it is not achieved. We seem to be in the position of young adolescents — who believe mommy and daddy can take care of everything, and then grow angry and cynical when it becomes clear they can’t.

snip

In a mature nation, President Obama could go on TV and say, “Listen, we’re doing the best we can, but some terrorists are bound to get through.” But this is apparently a country that must be spoken to in childish ways. The original line out of the White House was that the system worked. Don’t worry, little Johnny.

When that didn’t work the official line went to the other extreme. “I consider that totally unacceptable,” Obama said. I’m really mad, Johnny. But don’t worry, I’ll make it all better.

Meanwhile, the Transportation Security Administration has to be seen doing something, so it added another layer to its stage play, “Security Theater” — more baggage regulations, more in-flight restrictions.

Is the nanny state mentality leaking into the so-called "War on Terror"? Greenwald has more:

This is what inevitably happens to a citizenry that is fed a steady diet of fear and terror for years. It regresses into pure childhood. The 5-year-old laying awake in bed, frightened by monsters in the closet, who then crawls into his parents' bed to feel Protected and Safe, is the same as a citizenry planted in front of the television, petrified by endless imagery of scary Muslim monsters, who then collectively crawl to Government and demand that they take more power and control in order to keep them Protected and Safe. A citizenry drowning in fear and fixated on Safety to the exclusion of other competing values can only be degraded and depraved.

And so we get security theater from the TSA, which can easily be seen as nanny state. But when we're running to the government saying "mommy, mommy, protect me from the scary terrorists," we also get warrantless wiretapping, abuses of the state secrets privilege, extralegal detention programs, "enemy combatants," and - well - basically every excess of the Bush and Obama administrations' anti-terrorism policy.

It's all nanny state. It's all predicated in the foolish belief that our government should be able to keep the rest of the world at bay. Like children, we run to government offering to give up everything in order to protect us - from ourselves, from the terrorists, from whoever. Our principles of personal liberty and the rule of law suddenly become malleable when faced with the big scary monster in the closet. We need government to Do Something. We need the president to reassure us that everything is okay and we freak the fuck out when he doesn't. (Seriously, the Republican attacks on Obama in the wake of the Underpants Bomber Fail remind me of nothing more than the way my 22-month-old daughter reacts if she's watching the Backyardigans episode with the giant scary-looking robot and I'm not holding her at the time the robot shows up.)

I don't know about you, but I don't need a president to kiss me on the head and tuck me in at night. I'm an adult, for heaven's sake, with principles and morals and a perspective on the actual danger posed by terror attacks. I don't need reassurance, I need competence, and I'm not selling myself out for the illusion of safety. There are rational, positive steps we can take to fight terror, but we don't need to lose our heads, go overboard, and sacrifice our principles. Let's take an honest assessment of the threat and react accordingly. We can and should work to patch the holes in the intelligence gathering system, but we don't need a whole new legal framework to deal with terror crimes, we don't need to torture or maim anyone or imprison anyone without cause, and we don't need to fight long, protracted wars over it. Terrorism isn't even close to being an existential threat to America. We shouldn't lose our heads and treat it as such.

And another thing. Parents know that when their kid is scared and freaking out, the absolute last thing that they should do is show panic and overreact. Kids will overreact, but when the kid sees her parent calm and collected, they calm down and start to feel better. However, if the kid sees the parent scared or panicking, they'll just get even more agitated and hysterical. But the hallmark of the nanny state is to panic and overreact to some perceived threat with ridiculous, pointlessly intrusive government action. So in a fit of immaturity we run to the nanny state - but it turns out that the nanny state is just as immature as us. Perhaps if we're all going to act like children about the threat du jour - and according to Greenwald, some 58% of our childish nation wants to waterboard the Underpants Bomber, for reasons that remain unclear - we should at least elect adults to run the place.

This song seemed appropriate:

Update:"This one retarded Nigerian crispy penis airplane man who may or may not have been involved with a sub-division of Al Qaeda has officially freaked out an entire nation and rewritten the Obama Adminstration’s agenda, forever. It’s a good thing Terrorists never expect a whiny titty baby nation to comically overreact to every attempted plot they pretend to undertake, right?" Awesome, Wonkette.

Communism FAIL

Yes, kids, that's an Aston Martin DB9 - which, according to Motor Trend, will put you out $186,000 and change. Workers of the world, unite... pooling your money is the only way you'd be able to afford one of those things.

Aden Comfort

As if killing 49 innocent Yemeni civilians wasn't bad enough from both a strategic and moral perspective, Joe Lieberman now wants us to bomb the entire damn country. Because if there's anything better than fighting two wars at once, it's fighting three wars at once.

Nigerian Scam

Bollocks to the song quotes for a while.

Here's a few thoughts on the recent terrorfail over the Christmas holiday...

- Terrorists are stupid. Apparently this guy thought that attaching an incendiary device - not an explosive, mind you, but an incendiary device, which is something that just makes fire - to his underpants was going to take down a plane. It's not. Only thing it'll do is catch your crotch on fire. Because it's a freaking incendiary device. Word has it this guy was an engineer... obviously a bad one.

- A commenter/contributor at the excellent conservablog Common Sense Political Thought points me to this interesting profile of the mad Nigerian bomber. Of note: the guy's own father had reported him to the authorities, and he was on a terror watch list. And he was allowed to fly to the U.S. why? We'll keep Cat Stevens out, but not a guy whose own father thinks he's a terrorist? What's wrong with this picture? Also, I thought the Department of Homeland Security and the new Directorate of National Intelligence were supposed to facilitate such information sharing. Looks like information sharing is just as bad as it used to be before 9/11. Speaking of the DHS being useless...

- The airplane security people have apparently decided that now everyone needs to stay in their seats for the last hour of a flight. Remember, the fire was set by a guy who was sitting down at the time. The TSA thinks this will help because... um... um... um... what the fuck are they thinking? See, this is the problem with the "OMG THE GOVERNMENT HAS TO DO SOMETHING" attitude. It leads to this kind of naked showmanship on the part of the bureaucracy that doesn't actually do anything and makes our lives that much more miserable. Better intelligence gathering and sharing is the only effective way to fight terrorism, people. All the rest is just window dressing. Yes, that includes wars and drone attacks on so-called "leaders."

(Sidebar: does anyone think that attacking so-called "al-Qaeda leaders" - and killing civilians in the process - would actually do any good? al-Qaeda is an amorphous group full of loosely affiliated individuals. Terrorists for al-Qaeda aren't foot soldiers being directed by some shadowy organization but individuals who are seeking help in carrying out their nefarious plans. Even killing bin Laden or Zawahiri won't stop Joey Jihad from trying to kill us. We ought to be concentrating on making sure the Muslim world produces more people who view America as benign and less Joey Jihads. And killing civilians is absolutely NOT the way to do that.)

In other news:

- The length of this list ought to be a comfort to anyone nursing a little Islamophobia.

- It's A Wonderful Iranian Life.

- Here's the news article for that last item. One wonders where all the conservatives' green website themes went. Perhaps showing solidarity with Muslims being abused by the Iranian regime is less politically correct right after a (poorly) attempted terror attack?

Thought About the Army

Still working on that Hanukkah post. Yes, I know the holiday is over. I'll post something on it later, maybe during that other holiday that celebrates the birth of that false messiah :-P

Anyway, I'm noticing that the health care debate has kinda drowned out every other important issue out there. I don't think that's a good thing. For example, if we all weren't obsessed with the health care endgame (with good reason, to some extent) then someone besides Matt Taibbi and Winslow Wheeler would have noticed this:

Unlike the HASC and SASC (House and Senate armed services committees), the appropriations porkers have not changed their squiggly little tails; they have continued to raid the Military Personnel and O&M accounts to pay for their pork.

What I see is the following:

$1.9 billion in gross reductions to the Military Personnel (pay) account based on the arbitrary justification that there was need for an "undistributed adjustment," or in some cases "reimbursables."

$2.1 billion in net reductions from the O&M account in the base bill; $1.4 billion of that reduction was based on phony justifications (indirectly based on some flimsy GAO analysis never made public), such as "historic underexecution." (If you want to review my analysis of this flimsy GAO analysis , see it at http://www.cdi.org/friendlyversion/printversion.cfm?documentID=4535.)

The House and Senate Appropriations Committees also raided the direct war fighting O&M account in Title IX of the bill by $1.5 billion.

Total O&M raids, thus, amount to $3.6 billion.

Taxpayers for Common Sense tallied up the 1,720 earmarks in the bill costing $4.2 billion, but as TCS stated, that's just the earmarks they will admit to. Not counted in that tally are the 10 C-17s for $2.5 billion, nine F-18s for a half a billion dollars (in the war funding part of the bill), plus the added $465 million for the GE engine, plus ???

Taibbi explains:

What most people don’t understand about earmarks is that they are not achieved by simply adding to the top number for the whole federal budget. Earmarks have to come out of the approved number for that particular appropriations bill. So if you want a highway earmark, the money has to come out of some other highway program.

In the defense bill, it usually works like this: Congress sticks in a few extra airplanes or ships as a handout to this or that member, usually in exchange for his vote somewhere else on some other issue. To pay for those earmarks, the favored targets for cutting are usually two parts of the defense bill: Personnel (i.e. military pay) and Operations and Maintenance (which includes such things as body armor, equipment, food, training, and fuel). Those of you who wondered over the years how it could be that soldiers in Iraq could somehow be left without body armor, well, here’s your explanation. They usually took the armor off those kids in order to pay off some congressman with an extra helicopter or two.

Okay, so we're cutting the money we have available for soldiers' pay and basic equipment so we can pay for a bunch of pet projects for fancy weaponry we won't be using anytime soon because we're in a freaking asymmetrical war with a bunch of people who live in caves and hide out among civilians in towns. And if that's not enough, might I remind you of the massive fraud that occurs every day in defense contracts. Throw in the scandals around veterans' health care, including the Walter Reed debacle a few years ago, and it's absolutely disgusting the way the people in power (of whatever party) treat our troops. These men and women are putting their lives on the line for us, and you'd be forgiven for thinking Congress and the contractors treat them like they're a nothing more than a nuisance.

What gets me is this. Our Congress and the contractors we entrust with some important logistical tasks for our armed forces are systematically stealing from our troops, which affects morale and readiness. I agree with Taibbi - where are the flag-waving, supposedly armed forces-loving conservatives on this? You'd think the people who are so cavalier with accusations of treason that they'd accuse people who oppose a war of it would certainly throw such terms around when it comes to actively picking the pockets of our soldiers and preventing needed supplies from reaching the front lines. Maybe it's so far under the radar that most conservatives simply don't notice it (though Taxpayers for Common Sense, a conservative group, apparently caught it)? Whatever it is, I'd hope things like this would catch fire if we weren't all concentrating all our energy on health care. But I'm not going to hold my breath.

A Game of Give and Take

There's a fascinating Supreme Court case on the horizon now. The Court recently approved cert for Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, a case that deals with whether a public university - in this case, the University of California's Hastings School of Law - can require a student group to accept all students who wish to join as a requirement of receiving funding from the school. The Ninth Circuit recently ruled that Hastings can enforce its policy if the group in question is receiving student funding. A similar case in the Seventh Circuit involving Southern Illinois University's law school went the exact opposite way. This split essentially forced the Supremes' hand.

In both cases, the CLS is seeking the right to deny membership - or at least leadership positions - to gay students who don't conform to their view of Christianity. Both universities do not allow such discrimination from their student groups.

There are a bunch of legal issues to deal with in this case. The CLS claims that the school is infringing on their First Amendment right to free association. But the CLS' position is somewhat convoluted - they think that the school's anti-bias regulation is okay, but they want an exception for religious groups. Hastings, unsurprisingly, sees that as giving religious groups special treatment - which would be strictly forbidden, of course.

Public universities are clearly required to extend First Amendment protections to all their students. Realistically, we're talking about whether any student groups - founded and administered by students - can choose to discriminate and still receive funding. (Note that the group's right to meet under its own terms is not at issue here. The funding is the issue.) CLS points out that the Court, in the 1972 case Healy v. James, ruled that refusing to recognize a student group was a violation of the group's First Amendment rights (ironically, the student group in question in Healy was the antiwar group Students for a Democratic Society, making this perhaps the only time in recorded history conservatives have ever supported SDS).

On top of this are the myriad anti-discrimination laws that put the University in kind of a catch-22. On one hand, their policies say that they can't allow discrimination against gay people, so they can't fund CLS. But they can't discriminate against a group for its religious beliefs, so they have to fund CLS. Without Court guidance, then, they're stuck in permanent Vizzini mode, clearly unable to choose either glass of wine.

Predictably, Americans United is stumping for the universities here, arguing that colleges should have the right to refuse public subsidies to groups that discriminate. Brayton disagrees, saying that groups' right to self-determination and free association ought to be preserved.

My gut instinct is to side with Brayton and CLS here. It's important to note that the university isn't doing the discriminating here - the students are. These are essentially private clubs and the members of these clubs ought to have the right to admit who they want and keep out who they want. As for the funding issue, I'm hesitant to allow universities to deny funding based on the ideology of a particular student group. As Brayton points out:

I agree that this means some students are compelled to support clubs that won't admit them, I just don't think this is a big deal. In fact, it's true of any student club that is based on a common set of ideas. By the usual funding arrangements for student groups -- usually a small amount of money is given to each club out of student activity fees or some other similar fund -- Democratic students are "compelled" to support Republican student groups and vice versa; white students are "compelled" to support Hispanic and Asian student groups; anti-environmentalists are "compelled" to support student environmental clubs; and so forth.

All student groups that are formed on the basis of a common set of beliefs -- whether they advocate environmentalism, a political party, an ideological position like Students Against Sweatshops, etc -- are allowed to restrict their membership to those who share those beliefs. I see no reason to treat religious students groups any differently.

The best policy, of course, would be to abolish activity fees for the students and have students donate to the groups they wish to support. If the university does choose to do the disbursing itself, though, the next best solution is one that ideally disburses funds based on need alone, and not based on ideology. That said, I don't necessarily blame the university for pursuing this litigation - they'll lose, but the Court ruling will give the University the plausible deniability it needs to say "we're not supporting discrimination, the Court made us do it."

One interesting note, though. The conservative position boils down to this: ideological restrictions on money disbursement are wrong. Put differently, you can't complain if money goes to things with which you don't agree. If followed consistently, doesn't that position completely nuke the motivation behind amendments currently in Congress that would deny federal funding to anyone who buys an insurance plan that covers abortion?

My Old School

Hooray for my old high school, which just got another #1 ranking from a meaningless "top high schools" list!

Although personally, I went for the sports.

Hanukkah, O Hanukkah

So Hanukkah, everyone's favorite exceedingly minor Jewish holiday, is coming up (I'll be doing a fun little history post on Hanukkah during the holiday). Which means it's time to bust out the tunes. Pardon me for saying, though, but the stable of Hanukkah songs is getting a bit... stale. There's the Adam Sandler songs, of course, and Peter Yarrow's classic "Light One Candle," but that's about it for Hanukkah songs this century.

What's that you say? You want a Hanukkah song written by the Mormon senior senator from Utah, put to music written by a Jewish writer of contemporary Christian music, and sung by a Syrian woman from Indiana? I got that right here:

Eight Days of Hanukkah from Tablet Magazine on Vimeo.

Surprisingly, it's not half bad. Read the story behind the video here - it's actually really interesting. The Legend of Orrin Hatch grows.

The comments are kinda entertaining. Special shout-out to the guy who dyslexically made reference to the "LSD Church." Mormons - man, y'all didn't tell me you took hallucinogens at church!

Or perhaps you'd like some sexy R&B music that'll get you in the mood to light the candles and "fry up some latkes," if you know what I mean? Well, wait no longer:

Sadly missing: "I'll rock you for ages, baby." Or "I know how to make your dreidel spin." Or... OK, I'll stop.

Dirty Laundry

Anybody else read about this:

The testy exchange was sparked by [American Urban Radio reporter April] Ryan's insistent questioning of White House social secretary Desiree Rogers' role at the recent state dinner, which has been in the headlines because of the fallout from Tareq and Michaele Salahi's "party crashing."

Ryan claimed that there have been whispers around Washington insinuating that Rogers had overstepped the traditional role of her title at the event to become the "belle of the ball," thus "overshadowing the first lady." Frustrated by Ryan's tabloid-y line of questioning, Gibbs instructed her to "calm down" and to take a deep breath," adding "I do this with my son and that's what happens."

As the press corps cringed, murmured and chuckled at Gibbs' chastising, Ryan shot back: "Don't play with me."

and think of this (fast-forward to 1:45)?

In Gibbs' defense, I totally agree with him and think dispensing with Ryan in that way was completely appropriate. But I'm not a press secretary.

Everything You Know Is Wrong

In the words of Mike, zuh?

First, though, [former TV personality Lou] Dobbs is working to repair what a spokesman conceded is a glaring flaw: His reputation for antipathy toward Latino immigrants. In a little-noticed interview Friday, Mr. Dobbs told Spanish-language network Telemundo he now supports a plan to legalize millions of undocumented workers, a stance he long lambasted as an unfair "amnesty."

OK, what? Word has it that Dobbs wants to run for the Senate in New Jersey, which would involve his campaigning against the Senate's lone Hispanic member, Robert Menendez (D), but wow. Talk about a transparently political 180. This is a guy who was accusing illegal Latino immigrants of spreading crime and leprosy everywhere they went barely three months ago, and now he's a champion of a path to legalization for millions of undocumented workers? WTF?

Lovers in a Dangerous Time, Part 2

I've blogged previously about an odious new proposed law in Uganda that would make Idi Amin proud. It would provide for the execution of all gay people with AIDS and place anyone who supports gay rights or refuses to turn over a gay person to the authorities behind bars. The bill, despite its obvious insanity, has the apparent support of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and thus seems likely to pass. What I didn't note were some American connections that the bill has that are downright chilling.

David Bahati, the bill's main sponsor, is (according to Jeff Sharlet) a member of the Family, a fundamentalist group most famous for evangelizing to American politicians. It counts North Carolina representatives Heath Shuler and Mike McIntyre (both Democrats) among its members, as well as anti-abortion amendment guy Bart Stupak. The Family has also had connections with Museveni in the past. It's unclear whether the Americans who run the Family are supporting Museveni and Bahati in their ridiculousness; in fact, I doubt it. It is, however, worth noting that the ideologies that support this insane bill are influenced by American conservative evangelicalism, and as such, it falls to American conservative evangelicals to denounce the legislation since doing so might actually have an effect.

I currently have no idea whether or not most of the American conservative evangelical movement's leaders have even been confronted with this legislation and forced to take a stand on it. One conservative evangelical leader has, though: Saddleback Church pastor Rick Warren. When asked about the law - Warren is fairly involved in Uganda - he replied in a disappointing manner that generally implies his desire to remain neutral on the issue:

The fundamental dignity of every person, our right to be free, and the freedom to make moral choices are gifts endowed by God, our creator. However, it is not my personal calling as a pastor in America to comment or interfere in the political process of other nations.

You can't comment? A mass murder is about to take place in a country you're deeply involved in and you can't be bothered to comment about it? Indifference in the face of mass murder is a sin, of course, but it's not as bad as tacit approval. If Warren had been actively opposed to other mass murders overseas but not this one, then we'd have an issue.

Oh, wait, what's that, Twitter?

Mmmhmmm. So it's horrible, HORRIBLE, that Christians are being killed overseas*, but when it's happening to gays? Can't comment. I now have no respect for Rick Warren. This attitude of "I'll only comment on genocide committed against my particular identity group" is dangerous and what enables genocides to occur.

*Of course, I am just as opposed to people killing Christians because they're Christian as I am to people killing gays because they're gay. Warren's right on the spirit of this tweet - genocide committed against Christians doesn't get anywhere near the press it deserves in this country outside of evangelical circles. However, he's wrong on the substance - many non-Christian human rights groups speak out against such killings daily. Governments that encourage the slaughter of Christians should be criticized too, and I doubt Warren would have any qualms about doing so.

Send Lawyers, Guns, and Money

Last night I watched Obama's speech on Afghanistan (at a bar... yes, the bar I was at played Obama's speech on their big projector TV. It's that kind of place). Seems like everyone's talking about that 18-month deadline, especially conservatives who are busy with their "OMG it's a road map for the Taliban!!!!1!1!1" bullshit.

Here's the thing about that deadline, though - it's not going to be a hard-and-fast limit. Does anyone seriously think that Obama's going to start pulling troops out if we're making progress against the Taliban and another few months will make us safer? I doubt it. Obama's already proven with the health care thing that deadlines are more suggestions to him. Why should this be any different?

What the deadline does, however, is signal to the Afghan people that we're not there indefinitely. That's a good move, in my opinion. We've been there for eight years, and no doubt Obama realizes that some of the increase in support for the Taliban comes from the worry that America is intending to be an occupying power. Obama said as much during the speech, telling Afghans that we're there to be their friends, not their patrons.

Greenwald fleshes out this idea a little bit more, saying that it's a good thing that Obama didn't try to turn this into some humanitarian issue and instead kept the focus on our narrow interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan. While there are many of us who might want to see Afghanistan become a beacon of human rights, I don't think we can force that on them by the use of military force. Afghans recognize that sort of rhetoric as empty and as justification for overstaying our welcome. We could say "spread human rights to Afghans" but the Afghans would just hear "subjugate and occupy Afghanistan."

So now the Afghans know that we're not there on some ill-defined humanitarian mission and that we'll be out as soon as we've neutralized the Taliban and al-Qaeda. McChrystal has the surge he needs to get the job done. Americans have a clear objective and an assurance that the whole thing will be over soon. Obama chose the best of a bunch of bad options here.

One more thing on the war: quit calling Afghanistan "Obama's war." He inherited this war from Bush. It's not "Obama's war" any more than Vietnam was Nixon's war or Korea was Eisenhower's war. It's a bullshit meme and it needs to stop.

In other news...

- The War on Hanukkah is back. Why do these people hate Hanukkah so much, not to mention New Year's Day?

- New York is debating and voting on marriage equality. If it's passed, citizen initiatives cannot overturn it. More on that as it happens.

- Tiger Woods did something. No one actually cares except the news networks, who apparently don't want to actually go out and look for real news.

- World Cup draw is Friday. Again, more on that as it occurs.

- Swiss voters, apparently trying to do an impression of a hyper-douchey HOA, voted to ban minarets from the entire country. Next on the ballot - pink flamingoes. Or maybe they could join us North Carolinians and ban clotheslines.

If you hear the phrase "Should the government ban..." and your default response isn't to scream NO! at the top of your lungs, I'm in favor of banning you from voting. Sure, some bans can actually do some good, but banning should be reserved for cases when the safety and liberty of others is seriously, and involuntarily, put at risk. No other situations warrant a ban.

A Thought

Regarding newly-minted conservative community organizer Glenn Beck's 100-year plan for America:

If five-year plans are bad, aren't 100-year plans 20 times as bad? So is Beck 20 times worse than a communist?

Now I'm not saying I believe this or anything. But isn't it interesting?

Jon Stewart's Beck parody here. Worth a click if you haven't seen it yet.

Happy With No Teeth

The Get Off My Lawn Lobby strikes again, this time wanting to ban the hallucinogenic herb Salvia just because... well, the reasons they present aren't exactly coherent. So I'll just assume it's because it's weird and new and icky and anything weird and new and icky must be banned.

It's this same stupid mentality that we should ban everything we find bizarre or distasteful or offensive, and - yes - in my experience, it's mostly held by old people. New rule: a ban cannot go into effect unless over 50% of those aged 18-29 support the ban, and if 50% of those aged 18-29 support removing a ban, it's gone. Old people have no right to control the behavior of young adults.

You See Dimensions in Two

The New York Times reveals that Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) claims that in 2007, the Catholic bishop of Providence, Thomas Tobin, told priests under his authority to not administer communion to Kennedy. Tobin doesn't remember barring priests from administering communion, but says that Kennedy shouldn't be taking it. Tobin claims that Kennedy's geographical quasi-excommunication is related to his support for abortion rights.

I used to be bothered by this sort of thing, but as of now, I have no opinion one way or another on whether it's right or wrong for a Catholic bishop or priest to deny communion to someone because of their political beliefs. I'm not Catholic, and I don't come from a religious tradition that values hierarchy, so the whole thing is just kinda weird to me. But just to make sure Tobin's acting in earnest here, let's check on a few facts. The diocese of Providence consists of the state of Rhode Island, which sends four people to national office - Kennedy, Rep. James Langevin, and Sens. Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse. Whitehouse is Episcopalian, but Langevin and Reed are both Catholics, neither of which appear to have been denied communion or chewed out by Tobin. Langevin is legitimately pro-life, but Reed? The Wikioracle speaks:

He is strongly pro-choice, and he has rejected proposals to limit late-term abortion, such procedures from occurring on military installations, and the ability of minors to cross state lines to obtain abortions.

Tweeeeeet! Inconsistent application of principles, Bishop Tobin of the Church. Fifteen yard penalty, replay third mass. Whatever this fight is about, it's clear that there's one thing it's definitely not about - abortion.

The Times article has an interesting passage that might tell us why:

Their dispute began in October when Kennedy criticized the nation's Catholic bishops for threatening to oppose an overhaul of the nation's health care system unless lawmakers included tighter restrictions on abortion, which have since been added to the House version of the bill. Tobin said he felt Kennedy made an unprovoked attack on the church and demanded an apology.

Since then, their feud has played out in public. Tobin, who has said he might have gone into politics were he not ordained, has written sharp public letters questioning Kennedy's faith and saying his position is scandalous and unacceptable to the church. Kennedy has said his disagreement with the church hierarchy does not make him any less of a Catholic.

Two weeks ago, after a planned meeting between the two fell through, Kennedy said he wanted to stop discussing his faith in public. But then he told The Providence Journal in a story published Sunday that Tobin instructed him not to receive Communion. He also claimed the bishop had told diocesan priests not to give him Communion.

Ah. So Kennedy started a food fight with Tobin, and Tobin's escalating it. A lay Catholic is challenging the Church hierarchy, and the bishop feels the need to put him in his place. How quaint, in that 13th-century sort of way.

I don't know that I would completely rule out the ambition of Tobin here though. Tobin claims in the article that he would have run for political office if he hadn't gone into the clergy. Seems to me that Tobin is understandably distraught that Catholic clergymen have been left behind by the political Christianity that has been ascendant in the past few decades. By engaging in a highly public culture-war fight with a high-profile liberal, he's aspiring to a more powerful role for himself and his fellow clergymen in a culture war debate that has so far been dominated by Protestant clergy and lay Christians.

(I have no evidence for that assertion, of course, so it's kind of a Glenn Beck-style "isn't it interesting" conjecture. Take this theory with a grain of salt - or a whole shaker.)

Question for y'all, though - is there any inconsistency in kicking someone out for voting in favor of abortion rights but not for supporting other political positions that the Church opposes?

What Is It Good For?

The NY Times quotes Orrin Hatch on health care:

Republicans have vowed to fight the legislation at every turn, saying it represents a dangerous expansion in the role of government that would increase taxes and insurance costs for millions of people. “It’s going to be a holy war,” said Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah.

Oh, Orrin. You especially should know that there's already one Holy War scheduled for this month. There can't be two holy wars in such a short period of time - it'd just be unseemly. Perhaps a "holy police action"?

Say It Right...

One more quick moment of hilarity: according to the literal wording of Texas' anti-gay marriage amendment, there's no such thing as marriage in Texas, period. Of course no court would ever actually read the amendment that way, its intent being pretty crystal-clear... but it's still really, really funny.

It's All In Your Head

Here's another story I missed this weekend. Several anti-gay preachers decided to attempt to get arrested by... preaching on the corner of 10th and Pennsylvania. The predictable failarity ensued.

Turns out, if you want to perpetrate an act of civil disobedience, you have to do something illegal. And preaching on a street corner isn't illegal! Imagine that - in America, it's legal to say something on a street corner! It's almost as if there's some bedrock Constitutional concept that allows people to speak freely, some sort of "free speech" thing...

The preachers were trying to protest the new hate crimes law, which puts the preachers in a bind vis-a-vis their attempt at civil disobedience. See, the point of civil disobedience is to protest an unjust law by breaking that law and portraying yourself as a sympathetic lawbreaker. But to break the hate crimes law, the preachers would have had to commit an actual hate crime - like beating up a gay guy while screaming Bible verses at him or something. Which, yeah, doesn't exactly make you sympathetic. Future conservative preachers, perhaps, might want to learn the law before they try to challenge it.

Bonus fail points: at one point toward the end of the event, the podium got hijacked by some of the pro-gay rights counterprotesters. So not only did the preachers completely misunderstand the law and fail at getting arrested, they gave their opponents a soapbox while they were at it.

Bonuser bonus fail points: Oh, and the guy they hired to do the sound donated the fee for the podium to the gay rights activists. So not only did they fail at getting arrested, not only did they give gay rights activists a platform to speak, but they also paid gay rights activists for the opportunity to do so. (Dayenu?)

Facepalms all around.

And a link to the video for the song mentioned in the post title, featuring Martin Sheen as an eccentric preacher.