Open Thread

Here.

Iraq

Still there. DemFromCT has the update over at Kos's place.. The big news is that Dear Leader is going to make what could be the pivotal decision - whether to blow the hell out of Fallujah.

The Media

Jeanne from Body and Soul writes in:

I agree with 90% of what you said. Christians in this country have no cause to whine about being persecuted. I'm sick to death of Catholics calling every disagreement with them "Catholic bashing." (I lived in the deep South for awhile as a kid. Believe me, I know Catholic bashing, having been seriously bashed by fundies.) I'm as offended by religious posturing by liberal politicians as you are.

But there's a small but significant error in your post that I think it's important to correct. You say, "It's time for moderate and liberal Catholics to take a stand against their Church's assault on Democratic (and only Democratic) politicians who deviate from doctrine." I know this is hard to understand, because the media is so clueless about this, but there really is no "Church" assault on Democratic politicians. People like Nedra Pickler and Katherine Seeleye are trying to frame it that way, but it really isn't happening. Rather, a couple of very ambitious bishops, and a small group of conservative Catholics like Deal Hudson, are trying to force the American Church into sanctioning pro-choice politicians -- something they have very deliberately avoided doing.

What liberal Catholics need to do -- and are doing -- is not bash, or even confront, the Church, which is trying very hard to keep from being used for political purposes, but point out that the people who are doing this are not the Church, and have their own religious and political reasons for what they're doing. Andrew Greeley has made the point that the St. Louis archbishop who got his name in all the papers by saying he wouldn't give Kerry communion is "campaigning for cardinal" (trying to score points with the Vatican, which is far more conservative than the American Church). I made a similar point recently about the Nigerian cardinal who suggested the same thing. He's considered one of the prime candidates for pope, and is obviously campaigning for the office. The American press generally missed that rather important detail.

The Catholic bishops are doing everything in their power to avoid this issue, and a small number of conservatives are trying to force them to take a stand. They're currently working on guidelines for how to deal with Catholic politicians who oppose Church teachings, but everyone expects it to cover a lot more ground than just abortion, and not be useful for bashing one party or another. It was supposed to come out soon, but they've postponed it, probably because it was too likely to be exploited. The conservatives are trying to force their hand early, and on one issue only.

It isn't helpful when the left buys into the Pickler-Seelye story of the Church vs. the liberals. It isn't the Church that's wrong, it's the press's way of framing the story. As usual, Pickler and Seelye -- the prime drivers of this story -- don't know what the hell they're talking about.

I think this is mostly correct - this is more a media issue than a Church issue, though it is of course the latter as well. A couple American Bishops and the Vatican have stated that pro-Choice politicians shouldn't be allowed to receive communion. American Cardinals have been quiet -- this is much more about how the media is presenting the story. The horrible Kelly Wallace on CNN kept saying things like "John Kerry angered some Catholics..." Well, I'm sure he did, but a lot of Catholics are angry at the actions of the Bishops too.

If the media wants to report this story, they should be obligated to note that "pro-Choice politicians" includes more Catholics than John Kerry, and that there are quite a few prominent pro-Choice Republicans. But, they're completely corrupt and would never dare let us in on that little secret.

Monday morning we'll have a little fun calling around to the offices of various Republican pro-choice politicians and asking their people a) if they went to Church on Sunday and b) if they took communion. Clearly, the day to day activities and policy positions of prominent Catholic politicians from all parties must be scrutinized for any deviation from doctrine. The world must know if they have taken the sacraments improperly or not at all. Their confessions should be public information.

We should then examine their reproductive histories and marvel at their miraculous success using the Rhythm Method. Some of these politicians don't have many children. It's possible, I suppose, that they've either been very celibate even in marriage or just very lucky, but one suspects some possible deviation from Church teachings on the subject of contraception.

And, as this is my own fair and balanced news outlet we will only focus on Republican Catholics. Democrats will get a pass, as they should, because God wants Democrats to win no matter what their sins are.

CNN

Call CNN at 404-827-1500 and ask them why they aren't discussing other politicians who shouldn't be receiving communion according to the Vatican, such as Tom Ridge and George Pataki.


Then, you can ask them why they aren't mentioning the fact that the leaders of George Bush's Church opposed the war in Iraq.

...and read this post at Body and Soul which includes this bit by Amy Sullivan.

But this is not just a throw-away point. Does Bush deviate from the teachings of the United Methodist Church? Yes he does, on some crucial political issues. Has he been reprimanded by leaders in his denomination? Yes, particularly on the issue of war in Iraq. And if you want to make this a question of who's the better Christian, then it's fair to ask why President Bush doesn't go to church. You heard me – the man worships at Camp David and every so often wanders across Lafayette Park (although the park is pretty much impassable now what with all of the security construction going on) to attend services at St. John's Episcopal Church. But the man who has staked his domestic policy on the power of civil society and of good Christian individuals to change lives isn't an active member of a congregation – the very kind of organization in which he claims to have so much faith.

March for Women's Lives

Is today tomorrow. Obviously I'm not there I won't be there.. But now would be a good time to send a little cash to your favorite women's reproductive rights organizations.

One of my advertisers, Planned Parenthood, is a good choice though feel free to choose your favorite.

...official website here.

More

George Pataki and Rudolph Giuliani are pro-Choice Catholic politicians.

Discuss.

Roger is right - those on the political Right calling for Kerry's excommunication are religious frauds and charlatans. They care nothing for the beliefs they profess to have, they only care about achieving and obtaining power. It's disgusting.


Email Peter Robinson and ask him why he isn't calling for the excommunication of Pataki, Ridge, Giuliani, and Ahnuld, as he is for Kerry.
RbnsEggBlu@aol.com

You can send him to this handy website which gives us Tom Ridge's voting record on abortion when he was in Congress.

Pennsylvania Primary

Jesse has a good post on the whole Specter/Toomey race. He makes an obvious point which has been largely overlooked -- a lot of conservatives really really want Toomey to win, even though George Bush wants Specter to win. As Jesse notes, if Specter loses it means that an endorsement by George W. Augustus Bush doesn't mean a damn thing.


But, anyway, Joe Hoeffel needs money!

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Arnold Schwarzenegger is a pro-Choice Catholic Politician.

Discuss.

...Renato makes a good point:

In 1960, Republicans insinuated that a Catholic, Democratic candidate with the initials JFK, was unfit for the Presidency because he would do the Pope's bidding as President.

In 2004, Republicans (with the aid of the buttinsky Vatican) are insinuating that a Catholic, Democratic candidate with the initials JFK, is unfit for the Presidency because he won't do the Pope's bidding as President.

We've come a long way in 44 years, haven't we?

Buh-Bye

Last dance for Chalabi? At least someone is telling the Post that:

The United States and the top U.N. envoy to Iraq have decided to exclude the majority of the Iraqi politicians the U.S.-led coalition has relied on over the past year when they select an Iraqi government to assume power on June 30, U.S. and U.N. officials said yesterday.

The latest shift in policy comes as the U.S.-led coalition has to resolve some contentious and long-standing issues before the transfer takes place. Earlier this week, the coalition moved to allow former Baath Party members and military officers to return to government jobs.

At the top of the list of those likely to be jettisoned is Ahmed Chalabi, a Shiite politician who for years was a favorite of the Pentagon and the office of Vice President Cheney, and who was once expected to assume a powerful role after the ouster of Saddam Hussein, U.S. officials acknowledged.

Chalabi has increasingly alienated the Bush administration, including President Bush, in recent months, U.S. officials said. He generated anger in Washington yesterday when he said a new U.S. plan to allow some former officials of Hussein's ruling Baath Party and military to return to office is the equivalent of returning Nazis to power in Germany after World War II.

Chalabi has headed the committee in charge of removing former Baathist officials. In a nationwide address yesterday designed to promote national reconciliation, U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer said complaints that the program is "unevenly and unjustly" administered are "legitimate" and that the overall program has been "poorly implemented."

That criticism may curtail Chalabi's influence over the removal of former officials -- and his power over the employment and income prospects of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

Washington is also seriously considering cutting off the $340,000 monthly stipend to Chalabi's party, the Iraqi National Congress, according to a senior administration official familiar with the discussions. This would be a major change, because the INC has received millions of dollars in U.S. aid over the past decade as the primary vehicle for supporting the Iraqi opposition.

Religion

I'll try to resist posting too much about this. But, I do want to say that as a member of one of the two major religious groups (agnostic/atheist and Muslims) about which it's generally acceptable to say all manner of horrible things I have little sympathy for the tender sensibilities of members of dominant religions. Give me a call when the President of the United States says about Christians what one said about atheists:

No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots.

No one finds it particularly troubling when it's pointed out that an "out" atheist couldn't get elected dog catcher in most of this country, let alone to Congress. I'm actually not complaining really - I'm not trying to establish some sort of new victim group here. But, nonetheless, I'm a bit sick and tired of White Christian Males pretending that they're the persecuted ones.

In addition, I'm a bit fed up with people hand-wringing about anti-religious sentiment from "the Left." First of all, "the Left" which has any clout or power in this country is explicitly "pro-religion" to a degree which disturbs me. My retinas still burn with the image of the members of Congress on the steps of the Capitol screeching out "UNDER GOD" while performing the pledge of allegiance. Left-leaning people with strongly held religious views need to stop worrying about what some comedian says on some radio show and need to start worrying that the public faces of their religion are people who, if they had their way, would establish their own flavor of theocracy and revoke our right to worship as we please (or not at all).

I'm tired of liberalish Christians telling me it's my job to reach out to Christian moderates who feel that "the Left" is hostile to them. Screw that. It's time for liberalish Christians to tell their slightly more right-leaning brethren that those of us who fight to maintain the separation between Church and State do it to protect freedom of religion - not destroy it. It's time for moderate and liberal Catholics to take a stand against their Church's assault on Democratic (and only Democratic) politicians who deviate from doctrine.

I'm not hostile to religion. I'm hostile to those who cloak their hate in bigotry in religion. I'm hostile to those who want to impose their religion on me and everyone else. I'm hostile to those who have no understanding where their freedoms come from, and why they're important. I'm hostile to Christian Exceptionalists who believe that simply by being religious they're immune from all criticism.


...couple comments. Of course there are moderate and liberal Christians/Catholics who are fighting to save their religion from being taken over by less tolerant folk. But, currently there seems to be this general notion floating around that if only the "secular left" would be a bit nicer to people who are trying to put prayer in their schools and take control of their daughters' uterus then more people would vote for Democrats. As Jon Stewart would say.... WUUUUUH? See, for example, human scum Nick Kristof, who wants me to hug an Evangelical. Screw you Kristof - damn straight I'm intolerant of people who are intolerant. And, yes, I know that doesn't include all Christians or all Evangelical Christians (I don't think Kristof has yet to really understand what ECs are anyway), but sure as hell includes anyone tangentially associated with the Christian Right.

The issue is not religion - it's religion and politics. As long as religions aren't too coercive of their members, I'm happy for people to do what they want. But, once religion gets involved in politics I have no need to be tolerant or nice about it. I can be tolerant of your religion without being tolerant of your politics. That's the issue.

Pink Bits

Reader j writes in with an idea:

Wanted to run this past you. For the post June 30 situation, we need someone who has experience being a ceremonial figurehead, not commanding armed forces and not enacting new laws. Are you thinking of the same person I am? Um-hmm, the Queen of England. Think about it: Iraq gets an experienced figurehead, we prop up Tony Blair, and foist Iraq onto Britain as part of their empire.

God Save the Queen!

Open Thread

Enjoy.

Tom Ridge

Tom Ridge is a pro-choice Catholic politician.

Discuss.

Viceroy Jerry

Paul Bremer had a few harsh words for the Bush administration back in 2001...

On February 26, 2001, the Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation opened a three-day conference on the theme "Terrorism: Informing the Public" at Cantigny, the colonel's estate in Wheaton. Bremer, who gave the keynote speech, recalled his work on the National Commission on Terrorism.

"We concluded that the general terrorist threat is increasing," Bremer said, "particularly because of a change in the motives of terrorist groups. . . . We have seen a move from narrow political motivation to a broader ideological, religious, or apocalyptic motive for many terrorist groups -- groups that are not attacking because they are trying to find a broader audience, but are acting out of revenge or hatred, or simply out of an apocalyptic belief that the end of the world is near." The new terrorists, he said, weren't interested in killing just enough innocent people to get noticed. For them it was the more dead the better.

The Bush administration had been in power just about a month at this point, but Bremer had already seen enough to draw some conclusions about it. He told the many journalists invited to the Cantigny conference to hold the White House's feet to the fire: "It is the media's responsibility, and an important one, though very uncomfortable for people in government, to put a very strong spotlight on the government's policies and practices on terrorism, especially given the current disorganization of the federal government's fight against terrorism. In this area, the federal government is in complete disarray. There's been remarkably little attention to the major recommendation the Gilmore Commission made for a substantial reorganization of the government's approach to terrorism. Journalists shouldn't let politicians get away with that.

"The new administration seems to be paying no attention to the problem of terrorism. What they will do is stagger along until there's a major incident and then suddenly say, 'Oh, my God, shouldn't we be organized to deal with this?' That's too bad. They've been given a window of opportunity with very little terrorism now, and they're not taking advantage of it. Maybe the folks in the press ought to be pushing a little bit."

Bremer's remarks, somewhat abridged, survive in Terrorism: Informing the Public, the McCormick Tribune Foundation's book-length report on the conference. By the time it was published, in 2002, that window of opportunity had slammed shut.

...from the WaPo, 12/24/2000:

L. Paul Bremer, who succeeded Oakley as ambassador for counterterrorism and who recently chaired the National Commission on Terrorism, said Clarke and the Clinton administration have their resources "correctly focused on bin Laden."

But he faulted the administration for not making more of an issue of Iran's continuing sponsorship of terrorist groups throughout the Middle East.

Liberal Media

According to Drudge, Stern's ratings are way up since he turned against Bush.


I know I've started listening again.

$700 Million

David Sirota discusses the legal and important constitutional issues surrounding the $700 million the Bush administration illegally siphons off. He correctly argues that congress cannot abdicate its reponsibility to investigate this situation. Otherwise, future governments will feel unencumbered by pesky things like "the constitution" or "laws."

This story is astounding. What's more astounding is the fact that there is been no outrage from the op-ed pages or from the TV bobbleheads. Let me try and explain it to them very carefully.

After 9/11, we went to war in Afghanistan to punish those responsible as well as to remove support for the al Qaeda network more generally. We didn't put enough troops on the ground either finish the job of rounding up the terrorists or to rebuild and install a stable governmenment. The consequence of this is that Bin Laden and many other al Qaeda members were allowed to escape, and much of Afghanistan has reverted to their Taliban-era existence. We know now that part of the reason was that the Bush administration was diverting resources allocated to that purpose in order to attack a country which posed no threat to us or its neighbors. They stole money allocated to make us safer, and used it to make us less safe.

Shame on them. Shame on Republicans in Congress for not being outraged. Shame on our media for not being outraged.

This administration always says that everything after 9/11 changed. What changed is that they decided they could do anything they wanted to, in violation of law and Constitution, and the media wouldn't hold them accountable. So far, they've mostly been right.

Not a Chickenhawk

Former Arizona Cardinal Pat Tillman, who left behind a lucrative contract to sign up for the military, died in Afghanistan.

Kelley vs. Blair

I've made this point over and over and over again. But, let's remember that Howard Kurtz rushed home from his honeymoon so he could write about that nasty Negro at the New York Times and then mused that the Kelley story at USA Today really just wasn't interesting because... you know, Blair is black!

KURTZ: But isn't there also the question of race? I mean, there was a whole affirmative action debate about Jayson Blair?

LORCH: There could be, probably. I mean, its just been -- Jack Kelley has been swept under the rug. If I talk to people who aren't journalists, they haven't even heard about him.

KURTZ: Because it doesn't get much coverage on television.

LORCH: No.

KURTZ: It certainly got a lot of coverage...

LANE: No, I think you're right. The race angle gave it a little bit extra energy, that story.

Kelley's fabrications are widespread and important. They influenced public policy and inflamed racial and ethnic tensions. Blair mostly just sat at home, watched CNN, and then typed up copy with a few additional details which really weren't important.

Among the stories now disavowed by USA Today are Kelley's reports "that he found diaries alongside the corpses of Iraqi soldiers in 1991; traveled to a village in Somalia to interview an aid worker in 1992; discovered matches made from napalm that could burn through glass ashtrays in 1993; trekked into the mountains of Yugoslavia with the Kosovo Liberation Army in 1999; listened to a tape that captured the downing of a missionary flight over Peru in 2000; visited with Elian Gonzalez's father inside the father's house in Cuba in 2000; visited Osama bin Laden terrorist camps in Afghanistan in 2001; and spent time near the cave complexes of Tora Bora in 2001."

In addition, "there appears to be no basis for a 2002 Kelley story that said U.S. forces in Afghanistan found evidence linking two Chicago-based Islamic charities to al-Qaeda."

Our Press

How low they've sunk:

The Web site, the Memory Hole (www.thememoryhole.org), had filed a Freedom of Information Act request last year, seeking any pictures of coffins arriving from Iraq at the Dover base in Delaware, the destination for most of the bodies. The Pentagon yesterday labeled the Air Force Air Mobility Command's decision to grant the request a mistake, but news organizations quickly used a selection of the 361 images taken by Defense Department photographers.

The release of the photographs came one day after a contractor working for the Pentagon fired a woman who had taken photographs of coffins being loaded onto a transport plane in Kuwait. Her husband, a co-worker, was also fired after the pictures appeared in The Seattle Times on Sunday. The contractor, Maytag Aircraft, said the woman, Tami Silicio of Seattle, and her husband, David Landry, had "violated Department of Defense and company policies."

The firing underscored the strictness with which the Pentagon and the Bush administration have pursued a policy of forbidding news organizations to showing images of the homecomings of the war dead at military bases. They have argued that the policy was put in place during the first war in Iraq, and that it is simply an effort to protect the sensitivities of military families.

Executives at news organizations, many of whom have protested the policy, said last night that they had not known that the Defense Department itself was taking photographs of the coffins arriving home, a fact that came to light only when Russ Kick, the operator of The Memory Hole, filed his request.

"We were not aware at all that these photos were being taken," said Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times.

John Banner, the executive producer of ABC's "World News Tonight," said, "We did not file a F.O.I.A. request ourselves, because this was the first we had known that the military was shooting these pictures."

Uh, guys, maybe you could have asked?

Krugman

Link:

The mess in Iraq was created by officials who believed what they wanted to believe, and ignored awkward facts. It seems they have learned nothing.