But in the legit world Kim kept botching things. In the six weeks between leaving her burglar-alarm job and taking the new one, she had applied for emergency food stamps and been denied. [Her neighbor] eventually accompanied her to the welfare office and pleaded her case successfully, but in the meantime Kim bounced several checks to Wal-Mart. Oklahoma penalties for bad checks are stiff, and are a politically popular income-generator for the District Attorney's office. For writing a $12.18 check, she now faced a $114 penalty, including "victim restitution" to Wal-Mart and a fee to the D.A. And then there were two more bounced checks, and, as the letter from the D.A. said, if she didn't come up with $495.53 in ten days, she could face a year-long jail sentence.

[Her neighbor] pointed out that the District Attorney's wife, a plastic surgeon and former Miss Oklahoma, had just pleaded guilty to illegally obtaining narcotics, for which she received community service and permission to resume doing nose jobs. But Kim, who had seen her own father and brother face less forbearing jurists, did not anticipate lenient treatment.

But wait, there is some "good" news. The government isn't completely insensitive to the plight of America's poor. They're willing to lend a hand.

Oklahoma has rarely found itself in the vanguard of antipoverty thinking, but the class to which the two women were heading embodies a vigorous new idea--something known locally, and archly, as "the marriage cure." Traditionally, singleness has been viewed as a symptom of poverty. Today, however, a politically heterodox cadre of academics is arguing that singleness--and, particularly, single parenthood--is one of poverty's primary causes, for which matrimony might be a plausible tonic. For the past few years, the state of Oklahoma has been converting this premise into policy. In an initiative praised by the Bush Administration, which aims to seed marriage-promotion programs nationwide, the state has deputized public-relations firms, community leaders, and preachers (among them the pastor at Holy Temple Baptist Church) to take matrimony's benefits to the people.

What I like most about the article is how well it uses these women's lives to tell the story of poverty in America. Similar to Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed in reportage, it explodes all the Republican-fueled myths about the "welfare queens." Rather, it paints a portrait of women using every bit of their energy and intelligence to try to get by, but who are constantly frustrated by governmental, legal, or commercial barriers. It's incredible stuff. Seriously, go buy a copy.

Cost to visit candidate privately: Bush - $2,000; Dean - $1,000

Attendence at the private visit: Bush - 500+; Dean - 60.

Number who attended candidates' free public speech: Bush - 0; Dean - 3,000-5,000.

Number in attendence at free speech protesting candidates' visit: Bush - 3,000 - 7,000; Dean - none reported.

Current totals raised for campaign (estimated): Bush - $50 million; Dean - $14 million.

Thursday morning, some people living in the University Park neighborhood learned police were serious about securing the streets around the University of Portland. They woke up to find their parked cars had been towed from the street the night before.

Normally, I try to work up a little satire for the Friday blogging. Yesterday my heart just wasn't in it. For just about exactly three years, I've been trying to reconcile George W. Bush--the man, his history, his beliefs, his motivation, and his policies--with the fetishistic support he receives. Because, I mean, on paper, the guy looks pretty shoddy. A failure who bumbled along on his daddy's name—literally--George had distinguished himself at exactly nothing. He wasn't smart, didn't speak well, led a life of aimless privilege, and had a drinking problem. Everything he'd ever run, he'd run into the ground.

Bush arrived at the private campus for the fund-raiser amid heavy security, including police dressed in black body armor. Streets in the neighborhood surrounding the campus were heavily patrolled and protesters were ordered to stay on sidewalks except for a three-block stretch that was cordoned off with temporary fencing.

I didn't start taking him seriously until just a few weeks before the election, when his abysmal showing in debates against Al Gore were hailed as "victories" (never mind that he argued we should follow the Russians' lead on the Bosnia issue). Needless to say, I was astounded when the inexperienced, ignorant, bumbling candidate won. Karl Rove had just pulled off the one of the biggest upsets in political history.

People attending the event arrived at the campus in limousines, luxury cars and three charter buses, using a stretch of North Portsmouth Avenue that was closed to other traffic.

When he passed through town yesterday, the visit was a further exercise of our national schizophrenia. While the President wined and dined and raked in the single-largest windfall of the new campaign ($1.05 million for a 16-minute speech--nice work if you can get it), the City of Portland debated whether to charge him for the visit or not.

Meanwhile, some Portsmouth Avenue homeowners, some of them Bush supporters, were told they couldn't watch the motorcade from the sidewalk. Dressed in red, white and blue, Bernie Verbout clutched a large American flag as he stood on his front lawn with his family. A camera hung from his neck.

After blasting through Portland, Bush headed out on a swing through the rest of the Northwest. In Central Oregon, he told loggers not to fear because, as a friend of the logging industry, he'd be supporting their efforts to thin forests. In case anyone was unclear about his moral clarity on the issue, he described fires he had just flown over as a "holocaust."

Bush spoke at a May 2000 fund-raiser in Oregon that brought in more than $1.3 million for Republican Party accounts that did not have any limits on the size of the donations. Several contributions were in $100,000 checks from timber-industry sources.

Later, he told a Northeast Washington audience that he was a friend of hydropower and had restored salmon runs. "We don't need to be breaching no dams that are producing electricity. We've got to make sure we increase the supply and maintain the supply." (That is, of course, an actual quote.) The dam, it turns out, is all about maintaining our power against the terrorists (literally) and (oddly) staying in control of our own food supplies--he didn't mention anything about supporting his cronies in the energy industry, who in the last election gave him $3 million dollars.

(Meanwhile, far from the dams, Coho salmon, and firs of the Great Northwest, the White House was quietly announcing that it was gutting the Clean Air Act and allowing outdated factories to dramatically increase their emissions. So while the President was taking credit for having revived salmon runs, he was handing energy companies a multi-billion dollar bonanza to foul the skies and expedite global warming.)

The president, due at a similar fund-raiser today in Seattle, has raised at least $50 million for his re-election campaign, expected to be the best-financed candidacy in U.S. history. The $1 million raised in Portland -- with a ticket price of $2,000, the maximum allowed under federal law -- was the most collected in the state for an individual candidate's coffers.

The President speaks, brokenly, in the language of morality. For him, issues can be divided into easy compartments of right and wrong. His divisions reflect the divisions in America--current polling puts him at an approval rating of 52%, just above the percent by which he was elected. People's attention seems equally divided: they listen to his words and ignore his actions.

On Thursday the President passed through Portland. Those who supported him paid two grand a head; those who opposed him, or those who supported him but didn't have the extra cash to pay, were cordoned behind barbed wire and treated to the angry glares of black-clad riot police and snipers.

Welcome to Portland, Mr. President.

"I challenge any other candidate to raise a million bucks in this town, in this economy," said Craig Berkman, a former Oregon Republican chairman, who helped sell tickets for the event.

"I loved it," said Paul Mabie, owner of Cascade Auto Body in Vancouver, after shaking Bush's hand at the fund-raiser. "He's reflecting everything I've been for."

_________________________
Sources:
Portland Oregonian, Seattle Times, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"Tomasky claims conservative initiatives like the USA PATRIOT Act and the upper-class tax cut would never have passed if Greens had stayed out of the 2000 presidential contest and allowed Al Gore to carry the election (which he of course did).

But as Tomasky surely knew even when writing that disingenuous passage, those and other hard-right policy schemes were victorious, thanks in large part to congressional Democrats' support.

Problem is, Tomasky's also right when he says the way to affect change is through broad-based support, not through fringe candidates. Where I question Tomasky is in his tactics: the people who will lead America left are exactly those disenfranchised lefties who supported Nader in 2000 (I know, I was one of them). Attacking Nader is the wrong choice: setting a progressive agenda and asking Naderites to contribute is the right strategy.

Dr. Laura: an Orthodox Jew no more. She didn't get enough "warmth" from them, so now she's off to a "smorgasbord of 'very loving, very supportive' Christian faiths." I missed this story. Dustin at One Man's Opinion didn't. He's got a nice post on it.

Something else I missed: Republicans Against Bush. Thanks to the Mad Prophet for pointing it out. You know what? He's making the same point we lefties have been making for months. Nice to see other Republicans agree.

The US? Right where Osama wants us opines Max in a nice bit of analysis:

"In other words, the UN attack fits the profile of what I imagined was the Osama Bin Ladin strategy -- draw the U.S. into a broad, protracted conflict -- the Clash of Civilizations (CoC). The rationale is that it would destroy the U.S. as it did the U.S.S.R. Create conditions for the Islamic world to be ever-more alienated from the U.S. Under this hypothesis, the fundies want the U.S. to stay in Iraq so they can kill more Americans, just as they invited invasion of Afghanistan. Osama may have underestimated U.S. military capabilities, but there's no turning back now."

And finally, Poison Kitchen presents an ode to Ann Coulter made on the BBC's Vogon Poetry Generator. A passage:

Tell me, Ann Coulter do you
Wonder why the wildebeest ignores you?
Why its foobly stare
makes you feel Coultergeisty?

Strong odor of marijuana observed at protest scene
12:24 PM

A KATU News photographer near the scene at Willamette Blvd. and Portsmouth where protesters are assembled reports that there is a strong odor of marijuana in the crowd. Police in riot gear have also doubled their presence outside the center where the president is addressing supporters.

(Of course, I wouldn't be surprised. But there were also a number of people smudging sage, and I doubt seriously if, having smelled burning sage, a KATU reporter could distinguish it from ganja. But either way, best to put it online with a screamer headline...)

More screamer headlines: KATU News crew assaulted by protesters (judge for yourself on this video); Protesters burn American flag (a lot of others were just waving them); Protesters climbing barrier; Protesters now on Willamette Blvd.; Protesters testing police?

They're working hard to make satire obsolete.

A few thousand anti-Bush demonstrators gathered near the university where the police presence was heavy. One man wore a Bush mask and carried a sign that said "Stop me before I lie again." Along the motorcade route, one group, ringed by police in riot gear, made rude gestures at the entourage with their middle fingers. Several signs, carried by people against the war in Iraq, said: "Killer. Impeach Bush."

Still, the protesting crowd was more peaceful than it was it was in August 2002, when the president attended a Portland fund-raiser. Then, more than 1,000 protesters screamed anti-Bush messages, and police used pepper spray and rubber bullets to control the crowd.

That's a pretty accurate description. The crowd was divided up into two kinds of groups, and I wonder if we don't see in them something of how lefties are responding to things now.

The far larger group was the peaceful contingent, and interestingly, they were in a pretty joyful mood. I've been to a half dozen protests in the last year, and this was the first time I saw anything approaching joy in a crowd. Generally we're a grim lot, out there for something so offensive it seems hard to believe we have to protest it. But if hopelessness marked the earlier gatherings, I saw today a group who smelled blood. People were much more united in their messages, and their messages were good. One fellow standing next to me was hollering out to the police that they should fight the President, who would love to see them become un-unionized, low-pay workers. Another protester was dressed as a scientist and had a chart showing the increase in greenhouse gasses.

If you judge engagement by signs, we've also turned a corner. There were hundreds of hand-made messages, from the usual ("Bush lied, people died") to the personal "Turn Off Your TV--We're All Being Mislead!!") to the weird ("Milk of Human Kindness Project: Breastfeeding for Peace"), with everying in between. (My favorite: Dennis Kucinich Will Heal American Trauma.) A lot of people spent a lot of time thinking up messages and the method of communicating them. That's engagement.


The other group was far smaller (perhaps 5-10% of the crowd): the mad. These people were spitting with fury. As we walked along the side of the University of Portland campus, an older man was screaming at the police on the other side of the chain-link fence, calling them "gestapo," "fascist," and "brownshirts." Others screamed obscene names at Bush, Ashcroft, and the police. My sense is that these folks represent a very real group in America. If anything, the hopeful majority at the protests is probably a minority of liberals and Democrats in the US. They are the folks who see the tipping point of change on the horizon and are out trying to move the date up.

I don't know if today's protest can be generalized to illustrate anything about America. But we are Little Beirut, the most active liberal city in America, and so we bear watching. And today, we were mostly pretty happy.

You're Chile!

You're really skinny, and kind of bumpy in frame, but you're not as rough a person as you used to be. You like long, long, long walks on the beach and avoiding having your rights violated, just like anybody else does. You're even willing to stand up to those with more power and influence than you, trying to bring them to justice. Fight the man!


Take the Country Quiz at the Blue Pyramid

The Bush administration, under increasing criticism over its terrorism policies, is beginning an unusual counteroffensive this week in an effort to shore up support for the prized legislation that grew out of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

The pitchman for the campaign-style initiative is Attorney General John Ashcroft, a politically divisive figure who plans to deliver more than a dozen speeches around the country beginning on Tuesday in defense of the administration's terrorism efforts.

The campaign will take Mr. Ashcroft to states that are considered central to Mr. Bush's 2004 re-election effort and where some political strategists say the administration's tough antiterrorism tactics play well....

"The administration realizes that Ashcroft is a bit of a lightning rod," said a prominent Republican consultant. "He has his down sides, but not in the realm of prosecuting terrorism and protecting national security. He works well in that area."

further evidence to those of us who allege that the President uses fear and terrorism to fuel his political machine.

Unreliable sources report that the Fox suit has inspired Paul Newman, the actor, to file a similar suit in federal court against the Department of Housing and Urban Development, commonly called HUD. Mr. Newman claims piracy of personality and copycat infringement.

In the 1963 film "HUD," for which Mr. Newman was nominated for an Academy Award, the ad campaign was based on the slogan, "Paul Newman is HUD." Mr. Newman claims that the Department of Housing and Urban Development, called HUD, is a fair and balanced institution and that some of its decency and respectability has unfairly rubbed off on his movie character, diluting the rotten, self-important, free-trade, corrupt conservative image that Mr. Newman worked so hard to project in the film. His suit claims that this "innocence by association" has hurt his feelings plus residuals.

Paul Newman, the actor, is also the author.

So here's a fact appropriate for the day: Americans are three times as likely to believe in the Virgin Birth of Jesus (83 percent) as in evolution (28 percent)….

Americans believe, 58 percent to 40 percent, that it is necessary to believe in God to be moral. In contrast, other developed countries overwhelmingly believe that it is not necessary. In France, only 13 percent agree with the U.S. view….

Yet despite the lack of scientific or historical evidence, and despite the doubts of Biblical scholars, America is so pious that not only do 91 percent of Christians say they believe in the Virgin Birth, but so do an astonishing 47 percent of U.S. non-Christians.

Kristof is making the point that there are a number of different kinds of religious beliefs. The one that's on the rise in America, however, is a dogmatic view.

Amy Sullivan, writing today on his article, takes issue. Her view is revealing and makes Kristof's all that more potent. Sullivan, a Christian liberal and intellectual, argues that Kristof misses the long history of Christian intellectualism.

My initial reaction is, perhaps, pithy but true: The same way that Martin Luther King, Jr., Henri Nouwen, Cornel West, C.S. Lewis, not to mention Copernicus, Descartes, and even Einstein did or do….

Kristof hangs his point on the fact that large numbers of Americans -- both Christian and non-Christian -- say they believe in the virgin birth of Jesus. I really don't know what to say to that except that it doesn't tell me much of anything. Large numbers of Americans also think we've found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

…[I]f he's saying that religious people are poorly educated, easily manipulated stooges (as the Washington Post so famously said a few years ago), then he should make that clear. Bemoaning the fact that "the great intellectual traditions of Catholic and Protestant churches are withering," as he does instead, leaves us nowhere.

That Sullivan misses Kristof's point means its worth a second iteration and perhaps some more context. Kristof (whom I believe is also a Christian) isn't arguing that Christianity is anti-intellectual. He's arguing that Americans are--as they often have in the past--turning away from science and reason and retreating into rigid dogmatism. He sees within this move a grave danger: it's exactly this kind of dogmatism that leads to the certainty of an Osama bin Laden (or a Pat Buchanan).

At the heart of religion is a paradox. On the one hand, the questions with which religions are concerned are those that can't be answered through the scientific process. They require a different kind of insight, one based on (variously) faith, intuition, or experience. Yet on the other hand, in order to avoid the nihilism of uncertainty, religions constantly try to provide some support for sustaining this inquiry. Thus, in the Christian context, one has faith in the answer to the questions without requiring a kind of scientific proof. But that faith can, of course, move toward certainty and dogmatism if the confidence of one's faith leads one to think he's found the answers.

Among the industrialized world, no culture is as deeply steeped in religion as America's. Whether or not one is actively Christian, in America one still holds culturally-sanctioned religious beliefs (we're almost all deists, whether we copt to being Christian or not). Over the course of our history, this has led to moments of great religious ferment--almost always in the "absolute faith" mode. In the 1830s, for example, this kind of grassroots mysticism reached a pitch and religions sprang up throughout the country, all fueled by unwavering faith. It was from this period that Mormonism arose; at the time Joseph Smith was preaching his discovered gospels, he was competing amongst a din of religious leaders. While their teachings differed dramatically, they all shared that characteristic American quality of being highly mystical and experiential.

As with everything there are two sides to this coin. Mysticism can lead individuals to personal transformations. I think it's safe to say that most religious leaders have had experiences of this kind; it informs and guides their beliefs. The most insightful among these leaders are able to hold the questions of religion open. They understand that the value is in the question itself, not the answer.

There's a great danger, however. When people open themselves up to mystical experience, they are extremely vulnerable. There are countless examples of the wreckage of people who, during authentic mystical transformation, opened themselves up to charlatans; followers of Jim Jones, Rajneesh, David Koresh, and on and on speak to this. The danger of mysticism is that there's no safety switch, no circuit breaker--once a person gives himself over to absolute faith, there is nothing to persuade him he's wrong. I think the mistake most mystic-charlatans make is that they allow themselves to answer the questions. Once that's done, there's no action that can't be committed with the confidence it's God's work. Then you have the unyielding views of the religiously dogmatic.

It's Americans' nature to think of ourselves as the ultimate answerers. We put a man on the moon, for crying out loud--we can do anything. Yet there's nothing special about American insight. Dogmatism in our hands is no different than dogmatism in the hands of an Indian Hindu, Iranian Muslim, Israeli Jew, or Burmese Buddhist. Kristof wasn't talking about Christianity. He was talking about dogmatism. As we can see with his numbers, and as we've seen in the rhetoric of our leaders, he's got a point.

"We're supposed to, by Constitution, apportion or redistrict every 10 years. We in Texas have prided ourselves on honor, duty and responsibility. Unfortunately, the Democrats in the state Legislature don't understand honor because they're violating their oath of office to support the United States Constitution."

DeLay, lecturing Democrats on the purpose of the Constitution, is roughly like Idi Amin conducting a seminar on human rights.

Government exists to:

Provide means for the representation of diverse interests;

Offer a forum for reconciling the competing claims of these interests;

Sustain an effective system of law;

Promote the active development of human capital through its core role in the education system;

Foster social peace through control of the means of violence and through the provision of policing;

Create and protect an open public sphere, in which unconstrained debate about policy issues can be carried on;

Provide a diversity of public goods, including forms of collective security and welfare;

Foster regional and transnational alliances and pursue global goals;

Regulate markets in the public interest and foster market competition where monopoly threatens;

Have a directly economic role, as a prime employer, in macro- and microeconomic intervention, plus the provision of infrastructure;

More controversially, have a civilizing aim--government reflects widely held norms and values, but can also help shape them, in the educational system and elsewhere.

These, of course, apply only to democratic governments. Furthermore, Giddens, a Briton, reflects some of his own cultural view here; I've rearranged these from their most universal to their most particular senses (and I may be wrong, too). I'd say the first five are not controversial. After that, there may be quibbles.

What I found interesting when I read the list (and this will surprise exactly no one) is that the stated purposes of policy rarely cohere with these larger purposes. And particularly, the White House's policies run directly counter to them in many cases. The way in which the White House governs, moreover, definitely runs against the purposes Giddens identifies.

I wonder if it would be handy to pull these out from time to time and see how well our government is doing fulfilling its purpose?

He's conservative, I tell you:
"Dean's supporters don't believe what they're told. They hear what they want to believe, and Dean provides the strident vagaries that fuel their self-delusion. 'We need to know what the president knew and when he knew it,' he spat when Bush got caught lying about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in his State of the Union address. That reference to the 1974 Nixon impeachment hearings affirmed many Democrats' belief that Bush deserves serious punishment for lying about Iraq, but will President Dean turn over Bush to the International War Crimes Tribunal? Not bloody likely. And how can antiwar types reconcile Dean's support for Bush's invasion of Afghanistan?" (Rall)

Wrong, he's a progressive:
"Since the speech, Dean has consistently spoken out on Iraq and many of the occupation policies. He has called on Bush administration officials to resign for misleading the American public, and continues to criticize those Democrats who voted for the Iraq resolution." (Pitney, AlterNet)

He's conservative, I tell you:
"Clinton played libbies the same way in 1992. The pro-business Arkansas governor promised to stand up for workers--without naming specifics. But when he moved into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Clinton approved pro-corporate, GOP-authored 'free trade' agreements that robbed Americans of millions of high-paying jobs, trashed the environment and did almost zilch to improve employee rights." (Rall)

Wrong, he's a progressive:
"Dean has pledged to renegotiate current trade agreements (including NAFTA) and oppose new trade agreements that do not require the enforcement of internationally recognized workers' rights and environmental standards. He will also 'oppose any further rounds of the World Trade Organization agreements that do not make substantial progress on incorporating' these rights and standards. When asked about policy toward Africa and the Caribbean Basin at the NAACP Presidential Forum, Dean voiced his support for debt forgiveness and remarked that 'we need to get the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank off the backs of these countries.'" (Pitney, AlterNet)

(The point is moot--with press like this, all he has to do is smile.)

Kucinich.
I don't know what to say. If everyone's reading something into the Dean campaign, no one's reading anything into Kucinich's. He's actually getting some press (see the Guardian, Nashua [NH] Telegraph, Akron Beacon Journal, and AlterNet) and based on the grossly unrepresentative Portland supporters, got some populist backing. But he can't quite get over that "unelectable" label, nor the 7th-man-slump. Money ain't everything, but it's the only thing that gets you press. All Kucinich supporters should step up to the plate. Put a Ben Franklin in for Dennis. We've got to start backing him with our dollars, not just our voices.

The Rest of the Crowd.
Rest of the crowd? Aren't they all just talking Dean? The only real news is that Gephardt managed to rally the Teamsters. It still may not be enough to win him Iowa.

Isn't the hatred shown our president just awful, especially when we face such serious challenges to our national security?

One major politician called the administration's policies an "abject national embarrassment."

A former national security official said the president "has squandered American credibility and undermined our preeminence around the world." Another highly respected foreign policy expert said the administration "has not been able to distinguish between professorial concepts and foreign policy."

A key House leader insisted that "the president does not have the divine right of a king." He accused the administration of providing the public with "the spin, the whole spin, and nothing but the spin."

An important senator called the president "a jerk," and a House member said: "He still looks like a small man in a big office and an illegitimate president."

Terrible, terrible stuff. These politicians clearly don't know what the thoughtful conservative writer David Brooks knows: that politics should not take on a "lurid and emotional tone," and that it's self-defeating to indulge "the hypercharged tendency to believe the absolute worst about one's political opponents."

Oh, wait, those were criticisms by Dick Cheney, Jim Baker, Henry Kissinger, Tom DeLay, and Orrin Hatch about the last President. Thus Dionne spanks David Brooks for decrying the "lurid and emotional tone" the Dems have brought to bear on the current Prez. Quick, somebody call the Capitol Hill cops on 'em!

In their letter to Bush, the 11 Democratic senators said the GOP redistricting plan "smacks of blatant racism by Republican leaders" because of its likely impact on minority voters. Democrats charge that the plan would dilute the votes of about 1.4 million black and Hispanic voters by "packing" them into a handful of congressional districts. "Clearly you recognize the increasing significance of the Hispanic and African American vote in national elections because you sought our help in Texas," the senators said. "Early on, you vowed to unite, not divide. Today your Texas successors threaten to divide us as never before in our state's history. This flies in the face of your national Latino outreach programs. With all due respect, Mr. President, you cannot have it both ways...."

"Your continued silence [on the Texas dispute] is being interpreted by thoughtful Americans as complicity or as tacit approval," the senators wrote on special stationery bearing the title "The Texas 11."

Of course it worked: the President was forced to play the "ain't-my-bidnez" card.

A White House spokesman said in reply yesterday: "While the president always maintains an interest in Texas, he currently is concentrating on governing all of America." When White House spokesman Scott McClellan was asked about the dispute last Monday, he called it "a matter that the state of Texas is addressing."

But in fact, with the House Majority Leader and federal agencies directly involved, the President can't really call it a Texas issue. His own party has made it a national issue. Demanding the President get involved sheds some light on Republican tactics and keeps the heat on. In California, piqued Republicans used the recall technique to accomplish what they could not do through the ballot box. (It takes 51% of Californians to elect a Governor, but it only takes 2.3% to demand a recall--and then possibly as little as 25% to elect a Republican.) Republicans in the House recently called the cops on their Democratic colleagues because the Dems were unruly--that is to say, not dancing to the right goose step. This is not a party particularly charmed by the virtue of democratic process.

Oh, and let's not forget that the President himself was elected by a margin of just a single vote--when a different group of Republicans decided they liked him better than Al Gore.

On July 21, Judge George Caram Steeh of Federal District Court in Detroit issued a preliminary ruling in her favor, saying the state had probably engaged in religious discrimination. Judge Steeh ordered the state to put her scholarship money in escrow until there is a final court ruling.

A case much like Ms. Becker's from Washington State will be decided by the United States Supreme Court in its next term. A trial in Ms. Becker's case has not been scheduled and may never be needed; the Supreme Court case will probably effectively decide hers as well....

The Washington case is in some ways the narrower one. The State Supreme Court interpreted theology to mean "instruction that resembles worship and manifests a devotion to religion and religious principles in thought, feeling, belief and conduct."

In Washington, then, teaching about religion as an academic subject, as opposed to religious teaching meant to inspire devotion, is fine.

As a graduate with a B.A. in religious studies, I have some interest in this case. I think Washington's interpration is right on. The discipline of religious studies is a pedogogically accepted one, and a legitimate part of the humanities. Like the other departments in the humanities, religion is a filter. From my alma mater, the department's description:

...the study of religion is defined as a field of investigation distinct from religious practice. The program gives students the opportunity for critical reflection on a variety of religious traditions in the world, including their own. Students read the texts and examine the practices of both Western and Eastern religious traditions in the social and historical context in which they originated and in which they are now practiced. The field of religion is broad in content, not only because of the variety of religious traditions in the world, but also because religion has pervaded nearly everything else in human experience. Linkages with these other dimensions of human experience are systematically explored in order to understand the role religion has played and continues to play in every society.

The study of theology, on the other hand, necessarily involves supporting and promoting a particular religion. From the Harvard Divinity School mission:

Its purpose is to educate women and men for service as leaders in religious life and thought--as ministers and teachers, and in other professions enriched by theological study.

The argument can be mad (and, obviously, has) that state or federal money given to a student to study theology violates the "establishment clause" of the First Amendment. I'm not totally sold on that point, but I can definitely see the argument. To identify religious studies as an establishment of religion, however, is to misunderstand what the instruction is. No doubt I'll be writing more about this.

An investigation by the Environmental Protection Agency's inspector general into official statements about air quality after the collapse of the World Trade Center has found that White House officials instructed the agency to be less alarming and more reassuring to the public in the first few days after the attack.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon apparently met secretly with the middleman from the Iran-Contra scandal.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld confirmed Friday that Pentagon officials met secretly and discussed Iran with a controversial and discredited figure in the Iran-contra scandal.

But Rumsfeld said the talks "went nowhere...."

cynical (adj).
1. Believing or showing the belief that people are motivated chiefly by base or selfish concerns; skeptical of the motives of others: a cynical dismissal of the politician's promise to reform the campaign finance system.
2. Selfishly or callously calculating: showed a cynical disregard for the safety of his troops in his efforts to advance his reputation.

At the heart of a brazenly cynical White House is one of the most cynical figures I've ever encountered. I am referring, of course, to Condi Rice. You want cynical? How about this:

"We've heard that argument before, and we more than any should be ready to reject it," Rice told about 1,200 people at the National Association of Black Journalists.

"The view was wrong in 1963 in Birmingham, and it is wrong in 2003 in Baghdad and in the rest of the Middle East," she said.

"We should not let our voices waver in speaking out for people seeking freedom and never, never indulge in the condescending voices who say that some people in Africa or the Middle East are just not interested in freedom -- culturally just not ready for freedom," she said.

Right, because the Klan are the ones who oppose the war now, just like they opposed the Civil Rights movement. Or because they're like the Klan. Yeah, that must be it. Those who oppose the war are morallly similar to those who lynched black Americans.

Anyone want to defend this?

PORTLAND — Maher “Mike” Hawash, one of seven Portland-area suspects charged with terrorism related crimes, pleaded guilty today to conspiring to provide services to the Taliban, but will not face other charges in exchange for testimony against other suspects.

Hawash, a software engineer who worked for Intel, had initially pleaded innocent to charges of conspiracy to wage war against the United States, conspiracy to provide material support to al-Qaida and conspiracy to contribute services to al-Qaida and the Taliban.

In exchange for testimony, federal prosecutors agreed to drop charges of conspiring to levy war against the U.S. and conspiring to provide material support for terrorism. Hawash pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide services to the Taliban.

He will serve a minimum of seven years in federal prison under the deal, which was approved by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Of course, no one knew whether Hawash was guilty or not. We'll be hearing a constant flood of "I-told-you-sos" from the conservative lock-em-up right. So let's all keep our heads about us: none of the Portland protesters ever said he was innocent. We protested the fact that he was locked up for 80-odd days without being charged. We protested because the US government felt it was necessary to suspend his Constitutional rights to build a case against him.

That Hawash is guilty doesn't mean John Ashcroft has been exonerated.

The [Treasury] agency's analysts find that they are no longer helping to formulate policy; instead, their job is to rationalize decisions that have already been made. And more and more, they find that they are expected to play up evidence, however weak, that seems to support the administration's case, while suppressing evidence that doesn't....

Here's the story: Treasury has an elaborate computer model designed to evaluate who benefits and who loses from any proposed change in tax laws. For example, the model can be used to estimate how much families in the middle of the income distribution will gain from a tax cut, or the share of that tax cut that goes to the top 1 percent of families. In the 1990's the results of such analyses were routinely made public.

But since George W. Bush came into power, the department has suppressed most of that information, releasing only partial, misleading tables. The purpose of this suppression, of course, is to conceal the extent to which Mr. Bush's tax cuts concentrate their bounty on families with very high incomes. In a stinging recent article in Tax Notes, the veteran tax analyst Martin Sullivan writes of the debate over the 2001 cut that "Treasury's analysis was so embarrassingly poor and so biased, we thought we had seen the last of its kind." But worse was to come.

For his June 22 interview with Howard Dean, Tim Russert asked the Treasury Department to prepare examples showing how repealing the Bush tax cuts would affect ordinary families. Presumably Mr. Russert thought Treasury would provide a representative selection — that is, like many in the media, he doesn't yet understand the extent to which Treasury has become an arm of the White House political machine.

In any case, the examples Treasury provided to Mr. Russert and others in the media were wildly unrepresentative. To give you a sense: the Treasury's example of a "lower income" elderly household was one receiving $2,000 a year in dividend income. In fact, only about one elderly household in four receives any dividend income, and only one in eight receives as much as $2,000. Not surprisingly, the "Russert families" gained far more from the Bush tax cuts than a representative sample. As Mr. Sullivan put it, "If this continues, the Treasury's Office of Tax Policy may have to change its name to the Office of Tax Propaganda."

What I enjoy almost as much as reading Krugman's latest article is reading the response at Just One Minute. But yesterday's column went curiously un-rebutted. Bulletproof?

[Update. Well, hard to call it a rebuttal, but Tom got around to waxing snarky about the good professor after all.]

"The liberal papers criticized the Clinton administration 30% of the time. By contrast, the conservative papers criticized the Bush administration just 7% of the time.

The liberal papers praised the Clinton administration only 36% of the time (the balance were mixed). The conservative papers, on the other hand, praised the Bush administration 77% of the time.

The liberal papers criticized Bush 67% of the time. The conservative papers criticized Clinton 89% of the time."

Put another way, the liberal papers praised, criticized, and gave mixed press to Clinton in roughly thirds. The conservative papers praised Bush three-quarters of the time, criticized him once in twenty times, and the balance was mixed. Remind me again, who's fair and balanced?

But wait, you ain't seen nothin' yet. Working from the numbers Kurtz quotes, here's some startling percentages. In the first years of each of the last two Attorney Generals, the Washington Post and NY Times both ran 47 editorials. For Janet Reno, 26% were positive, 30% were mixed, and 45% were negative. For John Ashcroft, they were a little more negative, but not much: 17% positive, 28% mixed, and 55% negative. The two liberal papers were 10% more negative about Ashcroft than Reno.

With the Wall Street Journal and Washington Times, however, it was night and day. Janet Reno rated one positive review between them (3%), 18% were mixed, and 79% were negative. Johnny, however, they love. He gets 76% positive, 12% mixed, and 12% negative. The two conservative papers were 67% more negative about Reno than Ashcroft.

There are similar findings about the administrations. Kurtz writes:

When Hillary's health care task force was sued in 1993 to open its records, the NYT wrote four editorials, all negative toward the Clintons. The WP had one mixed. The WSJ wrote eight, all negative. The WT had seven, all negative.

The New York Times, for example, called the Clinton secrecy "unseemly, possibly illegal and wrong." The Washington Times said that "if ever there was a situation that demanded that all ethics regulations be followed down to the last dot on the last 'i' and the last cross on the last 't' it is the doings of the health care task force."

Cut to Dick Cheney's energy task force keeping its records secret. The NYT, as it had with Hillary, wrote five editorials, all negative. The WP wrote one, mixed. The WSJ wrote one positive, and the WT wrote one positive, one mixed and one negative.

Said the Journal: "This purely political lawsuit was [John Dingell and Henry Waxman's] attempted end-run around the Constitution's tedious separation of powers."

The Washington Times compared the Hillary and Cheney situations, saying: "Perhaps the most important difference between the two task forces is that no one on the Bush team is channeling policy from Eleanor Roosevelt."

I'd love to see Bernie Goldberg spin these findings.

Over 11 years, he restrained spending growth to turn a large budget deficit into a surplus, cut taxes, forced many on welfare to go to work, abandoned a sweeping approach to health-care reform in favor of more incremental measures, antagonized environmentalists, won the top rating from the National Rifle Association and consistently embraced business interests.

But it conceals a greater coherence to his plan, one that looks pretty good:

He inherited a state budget deficit of about 11 percent, the highest income taxes in the country and the lowest bond rating in New England.

To the dismay of liberals in the Legislature who wanted to expand social and environmental programs, Dr. Dean and his chief economic adviser, Harlan Sylvester, a conservative stockbroker and investment banker, stuck with the Snelling budget-cutting plan. Helped by a booming economy, the state's finances improved sharply. Dr. Dean lowered income tax rates by 30 percent and put away millions in a rainy day fund. Vermont's bond rating became the highest in the Northeast.

In his last term, Dr. Dean won a change in law so that Vermont taxes were not automatically lowered by Mr. Bush's cut in federal income taxes, and Vermont had a comfortable surplus this spring when most other states faced crippling budget shortfalls. On the stump, he blames the federal deficit for the weak economy and derides Mr. Bush for running "a borrow-and-spend credit-card presidency." Mr. Bush's tax cuts, he say, are a gift to "the president's friends like Ken Lay," referring to the former chief executive of Enron....

When he entered office, Dr. Dean was determined to provide health insurance to everyone in the state in one fell swoop. Despite support from liberal lawmakers, his plan failed, along with a similar initiative by the Clinton administration.

So Dr. Dean changed tactics and managed to accomplish much of his goal incrementally. Vermont now offers the nation's most generous health benefits to children, low-income adults and elderly residents of modest means. Almost all children in the state have full medical insurance, and more than a third of Vermont residents on Medicare get state help in paying for prescription drugs.

Then there's Kucinich, who offers one of the most liberal visions we've seen from a national candidate in a long time. He's the eloquent dreamer, the hopeful idealist. He offers an almost evangelical form of liberalism:

I offer these brief remarks today as a prayer for our country, with love of democracy, as a celebration of our country. With love for our country. With hope for our country. With a belief that the light of freedom cannot be extinguished as long as it is inside of us. With a belief that freedom rings resoundingly in a democracy each time we speak freely. With the understanding that freedom stirs the human heart and fear stills it. With the belief that a free people cannot walk in fear and faith at the same time.

With the understanding that there is a deeper truth expressed in the unity of the United States. That implicate in the union of our country is the union of all people. That all people are essentially one. That the world is interconnected not only on the material level of economics, trade, communication, and transportation, but interconnected through human consciousness, through the human heart, through the heart of the world, through the simply expressed impulse and yearning to be and to breathe free.

Say Amen, brothers and sisters!

Which One?
There are strengths and disadvantages to both approaches. Let's assume both candidates are sincere in their vision. The Dean model has the advantage of appearance. Americans are never flustered by pragmatism; I think that's why most identify themselves as essentially "moderate" on the political spectrum. Doc Dean seems like a legitimate candidate. And in terms of passing the agenda, it also seems to make sense that change is easier achieved in small steps.

On the other hand, the incremental approach is a long road. The danger is compromising yourself right out of your vision (many, including me, felt this was Clinton's ultimate legacy). It takes a strong, visionary leader to continue to plod along and make the change.

The big picture candidate is the inspirational candidate. By inspiring people to imagine things larger than they would have considered, a candidate like Kucinich (or FDR or even the current President) can make dramatic changes happen quickly. In fact, this is how dramatic change almost always happens. People on the left always associate this approach with McGovern's failure, forgetting that FDR and JFK both ran on big-vision platforms and inspired a nation to join them. McGovern ran at the end of a long period of liberal dominance; Kucinich is running, like FDR, at the end of a period of conservative dominance.

The disadvantages are obvious with the big picture candidate. It's the hardest road. If the big picture fails--like Clinton's health care plan--where do you turn? Democrats are especially leery about the prospect of high-profile failure. The don't want destroy a nascent return to liberalism.

There are other discussions within the Democratic party. For the liberal wing, though, I think this is the central one. Over the course of the next few months, we'll be talking again and again about how to inspire our moderate friends with our vision. The whole kielbasa or pragmatic baby steps--which will be the winner?