Talking treason

So the Washington Times' Tony Blankley thinks Seymour Hersh should be investigated for espionage for revealing that the Bush administration has been conducting secret military missions inside of Iran:

18 United States Code section 794, subsection (b) prohibits anyone "in time of war, with intent that the same shall be communicated to the enemy [from publishing] any information with respect to the movement, numbers, or disposition of any of the Armed Forces ... of the United States... or supposed plans or conduct of any ... military operations ... or any other information relating to the public defense, which might be useful to the enemy ... [this crime is punishable] by death or by imprisonment for any term of years or for life."

Subsection (a) of that statute prohibits anyone "with ... reason to believe that it is to be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation, communicates ... to any representative, officer, agent, employee, subject, or citizen thereof, either directly or indirectly, any information relating to the national defense, shall be punished by death or by imprisonment for any term of years or for life."

I am not an expert on these federal code sections, but a common-sense reading of their language would suggest, at the least, that federal prosecutors should review the information disclosed by Mr. Hersh to determine whether or not his conduct falls within the proscribed conduct of the statute.

Well, if anyone should know about irresponsibly publishing information that can be used by the enemy in a way that directly harms national security interests, it's the Washington Times.

Recall, if you will, that it was the Washington Times that, back in the fall of 1998, published a little tidbit of information that let Osama bin Laden slip through our grasp.

I've mentioned this a couple of times before, most recently here. As I wrote then, this information appears in Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon's The Age of Sacred Terror:

According to Benjamin and Simon, the turning point when al-Qaeda became America's greatest enemy was not on Sept. 11, 2001, but rather on Aug. 20, 1998 -- the day President Clinton launched missile strikes against Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda operations in Afghanistan and the Sudan, the latter being a pharmaceutical plant at al-Shifa that was being used to develop chemical weapons. First, there's this, on pp. 260-261:

For a brief moment, the operation appeared to be a qualified success. Al-Shifa was destroyed. Six terrorist camps were hit and about sixty people were killed, many of them Pakistani militants training for action in Kashmir. The Tomahawks missed bin Laden and the other senior al-Qaeda leaders by a couple of hours. This in itself was not a great surprise: no one involved has any illusions about the chances of hitting the target at exactly the right time. The White House recognized that the strike would not stop any attacks that were in the pipeline, but it might forestall the initiation of new operations as the organization's leaders went to ground.

The months that followed, however, were a nightmare. The press picked apart the administration's case for striking al-Shifa, and controversy erupted over whether Clinton was trying to "wag the dog," that is, distract the public from the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The Washington Times -- the capital's unabashed right-wing newspaper, which consistently has the best sources in the intelligence world and the least compunction about leaking -- ran a story mentioning that bin Laden "keeps in touch with the world via computers and satellite phones." Bin Laden stopped using the satellite phone instantly. The al-Qaeda leader was not eager to court the fate of Djokar Dudayev, the Chechen insurgent leader who was killed by a Russian air defense suppression missile that homed in on its target using his satellite phone signal. When bin Laden stopped using the phone and let his aides do the calling, the United States lost its best chance to find him.

Now, I'm not an expert on U.S. Code 18, section 794, either. But it certainly strike me that this behavior also fully constitutes disclosing in a way that it can be read by the enemy "supposed plans or conduct of any ... military operations ... or any other information relating to the public defense, which might be useful to the enemy." Call me old-fashioned, but it sounds like treason to me.

For that matter, where was Tony Blankley when it came to the outing of Valerie Plame as an overseas CIA operative by Robert Novak, acting as a conduit for yet-unknown figures inside the White House? Oh, that's right: back in September 2003, he was busy minimizing it, and predicting the scandal would produce a media feeding frenzy that would blow it completely beyond any proportion:

The second rule is to not underestimate how heinous the media and the public will come to regard small, seemingly insignificant, perfectly justifiable facts. Trivial actions or non-actions by good and decent friends and co-workers will take on the proportions of mortal sins. It will seem ludicrously disproportionate to the conduct in question. But it will happen that way. It always does. Read the memoirs. Talk to the old hands.

The search dogs will find not only the fox for which they are hunting, but other assorted game, which will be publicly presented before the dogs have gone to kennel for the night. In other words, the investigative process will stumble on other embarrassing facts and leak it to the press. Count on it.

Good thing we didn't count on it, because those dogs look like they're still sleeping on the porch. Certainly John Kerry never awoke them. But those noted liberal rags, the Washington Post and the New York Times, have hardly uttered a peep about the case since it first erupted.

Of course, that deeply nursed persecution complex that comes with the conservative brain package these days is part of Blankley's complaint against Sy Hersh, too:

The Washington political class is suffering from a bad case of creeping normalcy. We are getting ever more used to ever more egregious government leaks of military secrets.

Gosh, I wonder why.

The meaning of SpongeBob

Sometimes the religious right caricatures itself in a way that you can't help but laugh a little. Like the earlier claim by Jerry Falwell that Tinky Winky was a Trojan horse, so to speak, for homosexual behavior, the recent brouhaha over SpongeBob Squarepants raised by James Dobson of Focus on the Family seems pretty laughable on its face.

Unfortunately, there's a deadly serious undercurrent to it that no one seems to be noticing.

Maybe that's because Dobson's remarks are being largely played as similar to Falwell's -- an attack on SpongeBob for allegedly engaging in gay behaviors. (Well, there is that hand-holding thing with Patrick, after all.)

But that's not what Dobson said, or continues to say. What he's saying is actually a real cause for concern.

Check out the original remarks:

Addressing members of Congress at the "Values Victory Dinner" in Washington, D.C., Tuesday night, Dobson asked the power brokers, "Does anybody here know SpongeBob?"

Dobson went onto decry a toon-town remake of the 1979 Sister Sledge disco hit, "We Are Family," in which the frolicsome Bikini Bottom dweller appears alongside Barney, Big Bird, Clifford and other fictional stars of children's TV.

The music video, produced by the non-profit We Are Family Foundation, is to be distributed on DVD to 61,000 public and private elementary schools on March 11. Its stated aim is to promote diversity; its stated agenda is to have future March 11s declared National We Are Family Day.

But according to the New York Times' accounting of Dobson's remarks, what's unsaid is that the "We Are Family" project is a "pro-homosexual video."

Dobson based his charge on a "tolerance pledge" found on the We Are Family Foundation Website. The two-paragraph statement seeks "respect for people whose abilities, beliefs, culture, race, sexual identity or other characteristics are different from my own."

"...Their inclusion of the reference to 'sexual identity' within their 'tolerance pledge' is not only unnecessary, but it crosses a moral line," a statement from Focus on the Family says.

Over at Focus on the Family's Website, this argument is made clearer:

Dr. Dobson is concerned that these popular animated personalities are being exploited by an organization that's determined to promote the acceptance of homosexuality among our nation's youth.

It's hard to say exactly which organization he's talking about. If you go over to the We Are Family Foundation -- the immediate object of Dobson's wrath -- it's pretty hard to find anything that even remotely mentions homosexuality. Moreover, if you click on the link to the "Tolerance Pledge" that Dobson says is the source of his allegation, you'll see that the pledge is actually the product of Tolerance.org, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

In other words, Dobson appears to be attacking the SPLC by proxy. That should give people a little clearer picture of what we're really talking about here. Dobson isn't just condemning cartoon characters, he's attacking the basic concept of secular tolerance as a democratic cornerstone. That is, he's actively promoting the tolerance of intolerance. There's a simpler word for that: hate.

The form of the argument Dobson and his cohort are making is made clearer in an excellent piece by Bill Berkowitz in Working for Change examining the "SpongeBob controversy":

Lurking beneath an attempt to celebrate diversity amongst young children, Vitagliano has spotted something nefarious: "A short step beneath the surface reveals that one of the differences being celebrated is homosexuality," he writes.

"The [WAFF] website is filled with pro-homosexual materials," Vitagliano charges. "A 'Tolerance Pledge,' for example, created by Tolerance.org, part of the leftist Southern Poverty Law Center, encourages signees to pledge respect for homosexuals and work against 'ignorance, insensitivity and bigotry.'"

Perhaps we should take a step back here. Anyone familiar with the SPLC's work is aware that it is not a specifically "leftist" organization. Its allies, as well as the people who depend upon its work, include not just civil-rights and minority organizations but business and law-enforcement groups, as well as a broad swath of religious interests. Clearly, it is opposed primarily to right-wing extremism; but it counts among its friends and supporters many genuine conservatives.

Moreover, what it combats is hate, in a very specific sense: that is, the violence and fear inflicted upon people who, for whatever reason, are victimized simply for who they are, as an act of terrorism intended to "send a message" of intimidation to all people like them.

We all know about the kinds of people the SPLC works against, because we've all known them since we were little kids ourselves: Bullies. And when they grow up, they become haters.

It's worth remembering that the work of the SPLC's Tolerance.org is aimed primarily at having an effect on people when they are young, before the attitudes that form the basis of so many hate crimes and acts of intolerance become embedded. Nearly the entirety of its work involves providing materials for enhancing curricula and school environments to produce people who are more inclined to tolerate (and indeed celebrate) differences. In many regards, this work is closely associated with the work to prevent school bullying, which should not be a controversial effort.

Indeed, most of its mission should be not only acceptable but embraced by any conservative concerned about the demise of traditional values in our schools, because it actively promotes some of the oldest of these: respect, fair play, fundamental human decency. It focuses on helping educators and communities foster these values among young people.

Fairly typical in this regard is the "Respect Policy" formulated by officials at Mariner High School up the road in Everett, cited by Tolerance.org as a model of its efforts:

"Respect is the cornerstone of all our interactions and behaviors," it begins. "We acknowledge the dignity and worth of one another, and strive never to diminish another by our conduct or our attitudes."

What is happening here, though, is that for some people, "traditional values" are only about respect, fair play, and fundamental human decency for people who are just like themselves. To be fair, this is a "traditional value" of sorts as well, but over our nation's history, it has been responsible for many of our worst atrocities, from slavery to the genocide of Indians to the internment of Japanese Americans.

In this case, religious proscription of homosexuality (scriptural evidence for which is not, incidentally, nearly as abundant as those prohibitions regarding divorce) are being touted as the source of the "traditional values" under attack from the forces of tolerance. This is not terribly surprising. After all, the Scripture has in the past been cited as the source of such "traditional values" as slavery, lynching, and segregation, as well as laws against miscegenation.

In other words, the efforts of secular democratic society to promote its own best interests -- particularly equality of opportunity and participation, enabled by embracing diversity -- have run headlong into an age-old enemy: bigotry wearing the guise of religious belief and claiming the mantle of traditional values.

Of course, if there's anything a bigot hates, it's being identified as a bigot. (That's why the Scripture ruse is so popular.) Thus Donald Wildmon complains (in the Berkowitz piece):

"Most Christians are now aware of what those code words mean," said AFA's chairman Don Wildmon. "If you are a person who accepts the homosexual lifestyle, then you are tolerant," he said. "If you don't, then you are a bigot who is motivated by ignorance and hate."

This is a revealing formulation of the argument, because it is identical in form to the complaints of others who use religious arguments to justify their desire to discriminate freely against members of a minority group. Wildmon's contention is not significantly different than that used by anti-Semites who use Scripture to explain why they hate Jews, or of Christian Identity believers who do likewise to rationalize their bigotry against blacks and other "mud people."

In essence, that argument comes down to the charge that the forces of tolerance are themselves being intolerant of people's legitimate religious beliefs. It is an old argument, made by the likes of Robert Miles and David Duke over the years. The question becomes: Should we tolerate intolerance?

Still, it deserves a fair answer, and there is a simple one: Tolerance and intolerance -- whatever its rationale -- are mutually incompatible. There is no reason why a society that embraces tolerance as an essential value would simultaneously embrace intolerance. Embracing one, by its nature, means rejecting the other.

Now, it's important to understand that tolerance, unlike James Dobson's misapprehension, does not connote promotion. That is, promoting a tolerance of gay and lesbian people no more promotes homosexuality than urging tolerance of blackness or Jews promotes blackness or Judaism. It merely creates the space where they are allowed to participate as full members of society.

That includes, of course, people whose religious beliefs oppose homosexuality, or Judaism, or for that matter nonwhiteness. They're permitted to believe as they see fit. No one is demanding that people's children make friends with gays, if that runs counter to their belief system. What advocates of tolerance insist upon is that their children not beat up on gays and their children, verbally or otherwise, nor actively discriminate against them, just as we insist on the same treatment for Jewish and black children. This shouldn't be too much to ask.

Of course, it's important to recognize and respect people's private religious beliefs. But when those beliefs run counter to the basic mutual respect that makes a democratic society function, then it's incumbent on that society to stand firm. There's no more reason for educators in our schools to "compromise" on tolerance for gays because of individual religious beliefs than for them to do so regarding tolerance for other minorities.

Otherwise, making an exception for one kind of intolerance -- to condone it, for example, in our schools -- simply opens the floodgates for all the other kinds of hatred that are out there making the same kinds of rationalizations. There is, after all, only the thinnest of veneers between one kind of hatred and another. If we go down that road, we begin heading for the morass.

This was driven home the other day on Michael Medved's afternoon talk show on our local right-wing talk shop, KTTH-AM. Medved was discussing the SpongeBob controversy, and defending Dobson (correctly) because much of the ensuing discussion micharacterized what Dobson actually said. However, it didn't seem to occur to Medved that what Dobson actually said was in truth far more troubling than the caricature of it -- that it was an attack not on SpongeBob but on the principles of tolerance and fair play.

That point was made, in a unintentional way, by one of his callers (from, evidently, the Seattle area). The caller accused Medved of not wanting to be upfront about what was really at work in the SpongeBob video -- namely, the secret conspiracy of Talmudic Judaism to destroy Christian America. The caller went on to cite a Portland anti-Semitic preacher named Rev. Ted Pike, whose work has earned plaudits from many other quarters of the white-supremacist universe. Pike's antipathy to hate-crime laws is noteworthy too, since it rests on arguments similar to those raised by Dobson in this case.

Medved dismissed the caller as a conspiracy theorist and moved on. Unfortunately but perhaps predictably, he did not pause to reflect on the similarity of the views of his caller -- whose beef was with Medved, who is Jewish (and thus part of the cover-up, you see), not Dobson -- and those of the people who are attacking Tolerance.org. Because those attacks are not solely against tolerance of gay people but tolerance as a principle.

When you justify one kind of intolerance on religious grounds, you open the field for a regular freak show of haters waiting in line to make the same claims. Medved's caller illustrated this reality rather neatly.

SpongeBob is just a caricature. For Dobson and Co., he's a handy symbol -- not of gays, but the mere concept of tolerating them. And when we no longer have to tolerate gays and lesbians on the basis of religious beliefs, it will only be another half-step before we no longer have to tolerate non-Christians on the basis of religious beliefs. Muslims or Jews: take your pick as to who will be first in line. I'd guess Muslims.

After that, well, there's a long list of People Who Are Not Just Like Us. And an even longer line of haters eager to cross them off.

A little emergency

My 3-year-old daughter Fiona had an appendicitis attack yesterday and had an appendectomy in the early evening. She's recovering well (it wasn't perforated).

I'll be spending most of my time in her hospital room over the next several days. I have no idea whether I'll be able to post, but it may not be easy. So I'll have to ask for everyone's forbearance.

UPDATE: We brought her home this evening [Friday]. She's recovered extremely well, and may even be back in school on Monday. She was their "model patient" on the surgery ward. We're relieved and happy beyond words to have her back home. We'll be spending a quiet weekend at home, so maybe I will get some writing done after all.

Thanks to everyone for your kind thoughts and wishes.

Inaugural prophet

Speaking of the "Christian nation" ...

Listen carefully to President Bush's inauguration speech today. It's nearly certain you'll hear not just the usual effusive references to God and faith, but a distinctive view of the role of religion in politics.

UW communications professor David Domke (whose work I've cited previously) makes an interesting observation about this in an op-ed in the P-I:

No other president since Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933 has mentioned God so often in his Inaugurations or State of the Unions. The closest to Bush's average of six references per each of these addresses is Ronald Reagan, who averaged 4.75 in his comparable speeches. Jimmy Carter, considered as pious as they come among U.S. presidents, had only two mentions of God in four addresses. Other also-rans in total God talk were Roosevelt at 1.69 and Lyndon Johnson at 1.50 references per Inaugurals and State of the Unions.

God talk in these addresses is important because in these ritualized occasions any religious language becomes fused with U.S. identity. This is particularly so since the advent of radio and television, which have facilitated presidents' ability to connect with the U.S. public writ large; indeed, Inaugurals and State of the Unions commonly draw large media audiences.

Bush also talks about God differently than most other modern presidents. Presidents since Roosevelt have commonly spoken as petitioners of God, seeking blessing, favor and guidance. This president positions himself as a prophet, issuing declarations of divine desires for the nation and world. Among modern presidents, only Reagan has spoken in a similar manner -- and he did so far less frequently than has Bush.

Some of my regular commenters have expressed doubt that religiosity like this (or that voiced by Clarence Thomas or right-wing theocrats) represents anything new or troubling. I think they're being taken in by the window dressing and not listening to what's really being said.

Just the facts, ma'am

I've been buried in copy-editing Strawberry Days, but be sure to check out the nifty job of real journalism that Carla at Preemptive Karma has been producing this week regarding the Washington gubernatorial election, following up on her nice job of fact-checking the right-wing blogosphere last week.

She's mostly been debunking the shaky work at Stefan Sharkansky's Sound Politics, most notably with a post further debunking claims of hanky-panky in the mailing of military ballots, as well as an earlier post with more data on the subject.

Commenting in the thread at the previous post, Stefan responded thus:

I know you're a skeptical journalist. Perhaps if you applied the same skepticism to King County government that you apply to others who question it, we'd all learn something.

Skepticism is healthy, especially for journalists or those who attempt to practice it. What's not healthy is leveling charges of criminal behavior against otherwise respected public officials without any evidence to support those accusations (and I'm talking specifically about charges of fraud here). That's not being skeptical. It's being irresponsible.

Extreme right resonance

You know, it's bad enough when media figures and televangelists spout far-right theocratic propaganda as truth, something that happens nowadays with great regularity. But it's really a pretty dire sign when national and state officials start spouting talking points that originate from the extremist right -- and everyone shrugs.

I'm not just talking about Clarence Thomas, though he obviously is a big part of the equation. It goes beyond that.

The incident this time arises around a swearing-in ceremony for Alabama Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker, the protege of Judge Roy Moore, whose campaign to "defend" the Ten Commandments monument he had placed in an Alabama courthouse attracted a bevy of neo-Confederate and other extremist supporters and eventually brought about his removal from the bench.

According to news reports of the ceremony:

Many stood and applauded former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore as he walked to the stage to administer the oath to Parker. Moore's action was ceremonial, since Parker took his formal oath of office Thursday before U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in Washington. Parker said Thomas told him a judge should be evaluated by whether he faithfully upholds his oath to God, not to the people, to the state or to the Constitution.

This is a deeply troubling remark on several levels, all of which indicate it is yet another notch forward for the ongoing stealth campaign to install theocratic rule in America. At least, it indicates that their fundamental tenets are now accepted at the highest levels of government.

Ignatz points out the constitutional problems this position suggests, especially if Justice Thomas indeed holds this view:

But -- if this quote is accurate -- Justice Thomas does not purport to have such a jurisprudential view, but instead he recognizes that there is a difference between a judge's fidelity to God and his or her fidelity to the constitution; that is the meaning of the assertion that you will be evaluated by your performance as to one rather than the other. Which does he choose? I think it fair to assume that a person who says that God will evaluate you on such-and-such, will try to do what he thinks God wants, right? So -- again if this quote is correct -- Justice Thomas has essentially admitted that he will make rulings based not on any view that they are correct as a legal matter, but because they are what God wants.

Beyond the jurisprudential concerns, though, these remarks resonate with an even deeper problem: the spread of extremism into the conservative mainstream, and by extension the corridors of power.

If Justice Thomas indeed endorses such a position -- and it's by no means clear he does -- this is a monumental problem, because it means extremism has taken root at the highest level of federal power. Even if he doesn't, though, it should be noteworthy all in itself that Judge Parker would so clearly endorse such a view.

Of course, it's probably not a surprise. Not only is Parker the protege of Moore, he argued during the just-finished campaign against repealing racist provisions of the state constitution -- a position a majority of the state's voters wound up endorsing.

But Parker is also a Republican in good standing with the national party, and so far no one from the GOP has uttered a peep about these remarks.

The really striking thing about this is that the religious worldview Parker (and supposedly Thomas) wishes to advance, in fact, is a kind of religious right-wing extremism. There is nothing mainstream about this position.

Specifically, Parker's remarks are drawn almost verbatim from a belief system called Theocratic Dominionism, also known as "Christian Reconstruction." These are the people who not only claim that this is a "Christian nation," but that church-state separation is "a myth." More specifically:

Reconstructionism argues that the Bible is to be the governing text for all areas of life--such as government, education, law, and the arts, not merely "social" or "moral" issues like pornography, homosexuality, and abortion. Reconstructionists have formulated a "Biblical world view" and "Biblical principles" by which to examine contemporary matters. Reconstructionist theologian David Chilton succinctly describes this view: "The Christian goal for the world is the universal development of Biblical theocratic republics, in which every area of life is redeemed and placed under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the rule of God's law."

More broadly, Reconstructionists believe that there are three main areas of governance: family government, church government, and civil government. Under God's covenant, the nuclear family is the basic unit. The husband is the head of the family, and wife and children are "in submission" to him. In turn, the husband "submits" to Jesus and to God's laws as detailed in the Old Testament. The church has its own ecclesiastical structure and governance. Civil government exists to implement God's laws. All three institutions are under Biblical Law, the implementation of which is called "theonomy."

Thomas' supposed exhortation to Parker closely mirrors one by reconstruction founder R.J. Rushdoony:

The law is therefore the law for Christian man and Christian society. Nothing is more deadly or more derelict than the notion that the Christian is at liberty with respect to the kind of law he can have.

Jay Rogers, a noted Reconstruction advocate, spells out the agenda even more clearly:

You may ask, In a biblically reconstructed society: Who will be able to vote? Who will be able to rule? Elections will still be determined by popular vote of the people and legislation will still be voted on by representatives. Communities will have been reconstructed through personal regeneration so that the majority of the electorate will be Christian or will hold to a "Christian philosophy." Therefore, the only people qualified to rule will be professing Christians who will uphold the moral law of God. This may be called a "theonomic representative democracy" or a "theocratic republic."

... We recognize that the only standard for civil law is biblical law. Civil law must has some standard: either it is human autonomy (what man sees as right in his own eyes) or it is biblical law (what God declares to be right in His Word). Again, take your pick!

Some have objected that this would lead to the mass stoning of homosexuals and incorrigible children. Reconstructionists must emphasize that what we want is not strong rule by the federal government in determining these matters, but the freedom for individual Christians, families, churches, and local community governments to rule without interference from a centralized state. We believe that Reconstruction is from the ground up. Mass regeneration must precede Reconstruction. As more are converted to Christ, more individuals become self-governing. This leads to stronger families and churches and the ability of local communities to govern their own affairs. Thus the total numbers of cases of sodomy or of uncontrollable children would grow less and less. The state would rule in fewer and fewer cases.

Other forms of right-wing extremism share similar views about the supremacy of "God's law" (especially in contrast to "man's law"), most notably Christian Identity:

Since Identity followers believe that the Bible commands racial segregation, they interpret racial equality as a violation of God's Law. If Christian ministers advocate racial equality, they are advocating breaking God's Law. Identity and the Christian Republic The creation of a white Christian republic in the United States is a shared goal within the white supremacist movement, from the hard-core neo-Nazis of the Aryan Nations to the many Christian Patriot groups. The Identity movement provides a theological justification for this racism and breach of the constitutionally- mandated separation of church and state. For example, William Potter Gale, an influential Identity leader who died shortly after being indicted for conspiracy to kill IRS agents, wrote:

"The Church is composed of the many-membered body of Jesus Christ. This Republic was founded as a Christian Republic. The government is nothing but an expansion of the Christian church! It was founded by a compact...know as the Articles of Confederation, Perpetual which have their source in the Holy Bible. Since the Constitution was lifted from the Articles of Confederation, the source of the Constitution is the Bible."

For all their religiosity, though, the Reconstructionists are openly willing to embrace deception in order to win their war. Specifically, they advocate (among themselves, at least) using the openness of America's democratic institutions -- specifically, the doctrine of religious liberty -- to bring about a regime that in fact ends religious liberty. This was made explicit by another significant Reconstruction figure, Gary North:

So let us be blunt about it: we must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God.

And lest there remain any illusions about their ruthlessness, keep in mind how Jay Rogers explained their end game:

Simply put: either we will have man's law or God's law as a standard for civil legislation. We are not looking for a "voice a the table" nor are we seeking "equal time" with the godless promoters of pornography, abortion, safe-sodomy subsidies, socialism, etc. We want them silenced and punished according to God's Law-Word.

If that sounds fascist to you, it should. Fritz Stern, a famed scholar of European history, recently raised the issue of religion as a key component of fascism in a report from the New York Times' Chris Hedges on an address Stern gave recently at the Leo Baeck Institute:

In his address in November, just after he received a prize presented by the German foreign minister, he told his audience that Hitler saw himself as "the instrument of providence" and fused his "racial dogma with a Germanic Christianity."

"Some people recognized the moral perils of mixing religion and politics," he said of prewar Germany, "but many more were seduced by it. It was the pseudo-religious transfiguration of politics that largely ensured his success, notably in Protestant areas."

... "There was a longing in Europe for fascism before the name was ever invented," he said. "There was a longing for a new authoritarianism with some kind of religious orientation and above all a greater communal belongingness. There are some similarities in the mood then and the mood now, although also significant differences."

HE warns of the danger in an open society of "mass manipulation of public opinion, often mixed with mendacity and forms of intimidation." He is a passionate defender of liberalism as "manifested in the spirit of the Enlightenment and the early years of the American republic."

"The radical right and the radical left see liberalism's appeal to reason and tolerance as the denial of their uniform ideology," he said. "Every democracy needs a liberal fundament, a Bill of Rights enshrined in law and spirit, for this alone gives democracy the chance for self-correction and reform. Without it, the survival of democracy is at risk. Every genuine conservative knows this."

Somehow, I doubt that Clarence Thomas and Tom Parker were listening.

UPDATE: Atrios has posted the verbatim quote from Parker, and it is considerably different than its garbling by the reporter:

PARKER: "Just moments before I placed my hand on the Holy Scripture, Justice Thomas soberly addressed me and those in attendance. He admonished us to remember that the worth of a justice should be evaluated by one thing, and by one thing alone: whether or not he is faithful to uphold his oath _ an oath which as Justice Thomas pointed out is not to the people; it's not to the state; it's not even to the Constitution, which is one to be supported, but is an oath which is to God Himself."

I agree with Atrios that this largely lets both Parker and Thomas off the hook, since this sentiment is relatively benign. However, I also agree with Atrios as to the continuing relevance of the concern at issue here: Namely, a worldview that exhorts judges to put their religious beliefs before the law -- a worldview with extremist origins -- has been gaining wider acceptance in the right-wing mainstream, including the judiciary.

Ethics indeed

I've been reading about the Kos/myDD dustup with some interest, even though it only affects me peripherally (I only take money for the publication of my work, and decline all ads). I do think the ethics of blogging is an evolving thing, but it might not be bad to establish.

More troubling is that the whole brouhaha reflects yet again the breakdown in ethical standards for the mainstream media -- in this case, the Wall Street Journal, which ran the piece that set off the controversy. It included this paragraph:

A spokeswoman for Mr. Dean said the two bloggers hired by the campaign did nothing unethical because both disclosed their connection to the Dean operation.

Now it turns out that, according to the "spokeswoman" cited here, she said no such thing. According to today's post by Kos that quotes her comments at Dean For America:

Jeanne's colleagues committed a journalistic no-no: they took her background conversation with me and made up a quote from "a Dean spokeswoman". Their fake quote had this spokeswoman apparently admitting that the bloggers were paid for promoting the campaign. They completely mischaracterized our conversation -- and Jeanne was rightly upset about it. I was, and am, too.

Since a distorted version of the conversation has been put in print, I'll tell you what was told to Jeanne when she asked what the story was with the campaign and these bloggers.

I said that, as many media outlets noted at the time and a giant disclaimer on their blog said, these guys were hired as technical consultants. Specifically, they helped the Web team pick a technology platform for the blog (Movable Type) and helped manage Internet advertising (banner ads, Google ads, etc.). They weren't paid to write content -- either for the campaign or on their own blogs. And just in case there was any ambiguity, the campaign made sure they had a notice saying "I am a paid consultant for Howard Dean" right smack on the front of their personal blogs.

The only people the campaign paid to write blog posts were full-time staff at headquarters who wrote the content here on Blog for America. They and the rest of the staff at headquarters were people who quit their jobs and upended their lives to work 100 hours a week for a campaign they believed in -- and frankly, compared to "normal" jobs, the campaign barely even paid them. Had the campaign been throwing around cash to people just to write nice things on blogs, there would have been a mutiny in Burlington.

Ahem. I think the Wall Street Journal needs to convene an independent panel to investigate how this clearly fraudulent quote appeared in print in their newspaper. Any former attorneys general handy?

Betraying the truth

The most striking aspect of the dustup over the CBS News 60 Minutes report on George W. Bush's National Guard service record is what it reveals about the standards of modern journalism -- not just at CBS, but throughout the national media.

Indeed, the reaction so far has been more instructive than any flaws CBS may have uncovered regarding its own practices.

When the Independent Review Panel that was assembled to examine the matter released its report earlier this week, it was clear that CBS' internal standards for reporting had been violated, and dismissing the four executives involved was appropriate. Most astonishing, certainly, was the CBS reporting team's failure to adequately establish the provenance of the so-called Killian memos. As I mentioned previously, this kind of failure is just emblematic of the shoddy standards that have come to prevail throughout the national media.

The same degraded journalism, in fact, has pervaded much of the ensuing discussion of the CBS matter, both before and after the report. As Corey Pein explored at Columbia Journalism Review, the rest of the media's handling of the story, particularly the carefully orchestrated firestorm that erupted on the right side of the blogosphere, was every bit as riddled with shoddy documentation and analysis, groundless conjecture, and politically motivated bias as anything CBS might have contemplated.

Moreover, once CBS broadcast its report and the right-wing-spin-driven brouhaha erupted over the memos, the Beltway press treated the matter of Bush's military records as a tainted story. Any pursuit of the many remaining unanswered questions about Bush's records and the White House's mendacious explanations for them summarily disappeared from the media's radar.

However, the evidence, as I've explained at length, is overwhelming that Bush skipped out on his commitment by failing to take his flight physical and disappearing from duty for the ensuing year or more; the Killian memos, if they had been legitimate, only would have supplemented and shed some fresh light on what was already a mountain of established and confirmed data. As Kos puts it, the bottom line is this: Bush was AWOL, and every independent examination of his record confirms it.

Not only have the national media failed to pursue this, or even acknowledge it, they are now characterizing the CBS panel's report as actually vindicating Bush -- even though it specifically does not. For that matter, it doesn't even make a definitive finding on whether the "Killian memos" were authentic or not.

Media Matters reported on this the other day:

On January 10, CNN host and nationally syndicated columnist Robert Novak and author and WorldNetDaily.com columnist Bob Kohn both falsely suggested that questions about Bush's service rested solely on the flawed 60 Minutes report. January 11 reports in The Washington Post and The Boston Globe relayed erroneous claims by Bush administration officials and other Republicans that the panel report vindicates Bush's assertion that he fulfilled his service and received no preferential treatment, without detailing the vast body of evidence that is completely unrelated to the memos and has not been contradicted or substantively disputed.

Appearing on the January 10 edition of MSNBC's The Abrams Report, Kohn reacted to CBS anchor Dan Rather's September 15 remark that nobody has questioned the "major thrust of our report" by asserting that "There's no story without the documents. ... it's just conjecture without the documents." Earlier that day on CNN's Crossfire, Novak asked why CBS has failed to issue a "formal retraction of George W. Bush ducking National Guard service."

In a January 11 article, The Washington Post reported that conservatives asserted that the panel's findings "would convince Americans that Bush had served honorably during the Vietnam War and received no special treatment," but failed to mention that the panelists explicitly stated (as noted below) that they were not addressing the issue of Bush's service -- not the strength of the evidence against him, nor the credibility of his response. Instead, the Post quoted a remark that made no reference to the panel's findings -- Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie's claim that "[t]he public has made their judgment: They know the president served and was honorably discharged."

Perhaps the rest of the press is eager to sweep the whole affair under CBS' carpet because the entire sorry episode stands as a condemnation of the degraded standards that have come to hold sway throughout the media for the past decade and more.

Atrios commented on this the other day:

[T]he worst Rather has been accused of by sensible people is letting partisanship cloud his judgment. Accepting that as true just for sake of argument, it's still a far less egregious sin than most of the Whitewater-era horseshit which has never been acknowledged as horseshit by the liberal media, even though unlike the Rather incident, much of that horseshit was clearly deliberately manufactured by the producers and reporters. These events were recycled and echoed throuhgout the entire liberal media, with no one calling foul and no one calling for their heads. Without making any statement about what the appropriate consequences for "Rathergate" should be, it's clear that the media attention by that liberal media and the actual consequences have been much greater than dozens of worse incidents involving clear deliberate deception by people in the media.

In his weekly column, Gene Lyons elaborated on this point in more detail:

Amazingly, the CBS team reporting on the president's lost year in the National Guard -- and do let's recall that the suspect memos made a neat fit with other signs that Bush took a powder -- never talked to the purported source of the documents even after Burkett changed his story about who it was.

That's incredible.

Or would be, that is, had Conason and I not documented even worse transgressions in our book, "The Hunting of the President."

During the infamous Whitewater scandals, reporters pursuing Clinton credited the "revelations" of paid sources; edited audio tapes and video clips to make innocent remarks appear suspect; routinely hid exculpatory evidence (my favorite was a Washington Postarticle neglecting to mention that Clinton never endorsed a supposedly suspicious check); intervened with the Justice Department on behalf of an embezzler under indictment; actively assisted prosecutors trying to flip witnesses against the president; hyped stories about nonexistent FBI testimony alleging that the Clintons got $50,000 from a crooked loan; and even gathered information from sources and turned it over to Starr's prosecutors.

Those should have been firing offenses, too. But that was then; this is now. That was Clinton; this is Bush Last week, columnist and TV pundit Armstrong Williams got caught violating the most basic rule of all: He took $240,000 from the White House for touting its education reforms. There was a signed contract; he fulfilled it. Even Pravda did things more subtly.

This failure betrays any ethos of journalism that aspires to be about determining the truth. The vacuum created by the decline of traditional journalistic standards of fact-checking and substantiation is always, in short order, replaced by propaganda.

That in turn means the direction of public discourse will be determined by whoever has the most aggressive spin machine. Over the past decade, that has been the Republicans.

The result has been an unending litany of reportage in which Republican propaganda has been treated as established fact, daily news budget have become a virtual replica of daily GOP talking points, and editorial news judgment has been driven by the conservative agenda. Atrios and Lyons describe, I think, the ways this has driven political coverage in America.

But it goes beyond politics as well. Most egregiously, it has affected the work of the press corps in covering our government, largely by altering the relationships of journalists to the government. With conservatives in control of every branch, the press has become increasingly a propaganda organ for the government, and in particular the executive branch; simultaneously, its historic watchdog function as a check on abuse of government power has seriously eroded.

As Matt Yglesias says, this could not be more clear than in the instance of the decision to invade Iraq, as well as the continuing occupation of that country. The press was eager to embed itself and remain in the graces of an extraordinarily controlling and punitive administration that had little regard for the truth, and in the process failed to ask the hard questions that might have prevented the nation from entering into an ill-starred conflict whose chief accomplishment appears mostly to have been to kill over a thousand American soldiers, kill thousands more Iraqi civilians, and create conditions certain to only create even more terrorists bent on destroying us.

And now that the weapons of mass destruction which gave the administration its only serious pretext for the invasion have been officially established as not having existed, it can't be any more clear that America was led to war under false pretenses.

But on the day it was announced, that news received far less attention than the relatively meaningless CBS panel report.

Many liberals believe the answer is to create their own aggressive spin machine and think-tank infrastructure. No doubt that would help reverse the swing of public discourse to the right. But it won't solve the problem.

At some point, journalists are going to have rediscover their commitment to the standards of the craft, particularly the old adage: "Get it first, but get it right." At some point, we're going to have to recognize that getting it first without getting it right leads to disaster.

Certainly, the producers at CBS have learned that. Unfortunately, no one else in the media seem to. Indeed, the lesson everyone seems to have gleaned from the whole episode is: "Don't get right-wing bloggers pissed off at you." If that's what everyone comes away with, it'll mean we're only worse off now.

UPDATE: I meant to include a link to Mark Gisleson's excellent analysis of the panel's report over at Norwegianity.

Journalism or disinformation?

Reading Robert Jamieson's admiring column this morning, it's easy to come away with the impression of Stefan Sharkansky of Sound Politics as a kind of crusading truth-finder seeking out anomalies in the just-finished recount of the governor's race in Washington state.

I like Stefan. But I'm not so sure about whether truth is what he and the folks at Sound Politics are after. I think what they're after is for the candidate they rooted for to win -- any way, anyhow.

One of Stefan's more incendiary charges mirrors one made by the loser-out Republican in the race, Dino Rossi, in his lawsuit contesting the election, to wit, military voters were cheated out of a chance to vote by King County elections officials. Sharkansky argues, based on shakily obtained evidence, that these officials obscured the date on which they sent out military ballots and thereby engaged in a "cover-up" (a follow-up post by Brian Crouch charges fraud even more clearly).

However, Carla at Preemptive Karma went a-fact checkin', and found that the claims were not what they seem:

I then contacted Bobbie Egan, the media relations person for the King County Elections Office. Ms Egan knew of the soundpolitics allegations.

Egan informed me that the King County Elections Office doesn't handle the mailing for most of the military ballots directly. They do send emailed and faxed ballots out to those military people who request them. However, King County uses a hired vendor (contractor) to send out military ballots to most APO and US military addresses. King County puts the ballots in the envelopes and addresses them, then hands them off to the vendor who prepares them for the bulk mailings through the US Postal Service. King County's bulk mailing permit isn't used for these ballots. There is a federal permit used for mailing military ballots. Ms. Egan further informed me that they have a paper trail to verify that the mailings were properly sent. I'm hopeful that she will be faxing me copies of this paperwork later today.

I did get a call back from the USPS, but not the supervisor of the Business Mail Entry office in Seattle. I spoke with the media relations person for the region, who is following up on my questions and is set to get back to me later today.

Carla also makes some astute observations about the nature of this kind of "journalism":

If the braintrust at soundpolitics had just made a few phone calls, they could have checked their information. Instead, they published what appears to be dubiously and sloppily sourced material, misleading their readership. This misinformation is being used to prop up some very serious allegations.

Bloggers aren't usually held to the same standard as journalists. It's clear that the kind of sourcing and fact checking usually done by journalists isn't part of the blogosphere, in general. However soundpolitics is making some very serious charges (and working hard to self promote in the wake of these charges). Their readership is whipped up into a frenzy without all of the facts.

This tossing about of serious wrongdoing coupled with dubious sourcing and fact checking is irresponsible.

For what it's worth, the behavior at Sound Politics only mirrors the behavior of the Republican right throughout the recount fight: throw shit on the wall and see what sticks. This is especially true of top Republican officials (notably Rossi and GOP Chairman Chris Vance) as well as right-wing radio, where the word "fraud" rings throughout the airwaves -- a charge that simply has not come even close to being proven.

Indeed, one has to ask: Who's perpetrating the fraud here?

The tsunami T-shirt scam

One of the ways that smears work is that they prey on people's gullibility -- on their willingness, or even desire (depending on your Oxycontin intake), to believe the worst about other people. Especially if it excuses your own lack of human feeling and basic decency.

See, for instance, the far-flung right-wing discussion of the tsunami victims seen wearing Osama bin Laden T-shirts. As Digby noted the other day, a caller to Rush Limbaugh used the photo of a person wearing such a shirt as part of her excuse for not feeling any sympathy for the tsunami victims:

CALLER: (Giggle) Well, I was pretty upset and even getting madder the more coverage I watched, and I was thinking, 'Why am I not feeling so charitable, and I'm seeing all these bodies,' and then I see this picture on the Internet that was sent to me, and it was them carrying a body along in Sri Lanka, it said Galle, G-a-l-l-e, Sri Lanka and they had a crowd of people watching and this guy in the middle is standing there looking at the body wearing an Osama bin Laden T-shirt.

RUSH: I saw that picture.

CALLER: And I thought, it just validated the way I felt and I thought these are the same people that were the cheerleaders on 9/11, and we're going to go rebuild their world for them.

RUSH: Yeah.

This is all part of the right-wing meme blaming the tsunami victims' faiths for the disaster.

However, in at least some instances, something else is at work here as well.

The other day Amy Goodman interviewed the fearless Allan Nairn, who described how, in Indonesia, the bin Laden T-shirts are being used by right-wing miltarists as a propaganda ploy designed to anger Americans:

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, Colin Powell announced that the U.S. would be supplying spare parts for C-130 transport planes ostensibly to help with the relief effort, the Indonesian military transport planes. Within days of Powell making this announcement, it came out that the Indonesian military, which had previously used these planes to transport the goods looted from East Timor, as they were destroying East Timor in 1999 to take thousands of Timorese civilian prisoners out after the 1999 campaign of slaughter in Timor, which previously have been used to drop paratroops over Aceh, were now used just in the past week to bring members of two Bin Laden affiliated Indonesian groups, the FPI and the MMI, the Islamic Defenders Front and the Islamic Mujahadin Council, they flew them up to Aceh, ostensibly to help in the relief effort. These groups were created or – well the FPI was in part created by the Indonesian armed forces, and the MMI has received backing from Indonesian military intelligence at various points. The MMI includes Laskar Jihad a group the went into Malukus and helped spark sectarian fighting between Muslim and Christian peasants, Muslim and Christian militias, in which thousands were killed. This was done to create chaos, which the Indonesian military could then take advantage of. And these groups are openly connected to Bin Laden and espouse that ideology.

AMY GOODMAN: You're saying that the Indonesian military has brought them into Aceh now, actually flown them in?

ALLAN NAIRN: Yes, they brought them into Aceh. Some of them are walking around with Bin Laden T-shirts. They go up to foreign reporters and present themselves as Acehnese even though they are not, and James Kelly of the U.S. State Department just said, there's worry that such militants might attack U.S. troops. Well simultaneously Powell was announcing the U.S. is going to aid the Indonesian military, one of the rationales being the Indonesian military is needed to fight such Bin Laden-style military.

AMY GOODMAN: The Indonesian military brought them as in as a way to galvanize support for the Indonesian military?

ALLAN NAIRN: Apparently so. They have used similar tactics before. It's also seems to be a way of terrorizing the Acehnese population.

Be sure to check out Nairn's blog. I was working MSNBC's international desk during the 1999 East Timor crisis, and came to admire Nairn for his bravery and awesome reporting. Here's a Salon piece looking back on that episode.

[Hat tip to Erin in comments.]

A little talk about hate

I'm scheduled to make a speaking appearance today at Seattle University. I'll be discussing hate crimes and my book, Death on the Fourth of July: The Story of a Killing, a Trial, and Hate Crime in America.

The program is located in the Schafer Auditorium which is in the foyer of the Lemieux Library. I'm scheduled to begin speaking at around noon; I'll talk for about half an hour, then take questions, and then sign books. The program is supposed to last until 1:30 p.m.

This appearance is sponsored by the school's Office of Multicultural Student Affairs. (A PDF of the flyer for the talk is here.)

The public is welcome, so be sure to come down if you have the time.

Montana madness

I mentioned the other day that my recent reconnaissance in Montana and elsewhere had produced some disturbing data, particularly regarding the way right-wing rhetoric is trending.

What I neglected to mention is that Montana in particular is, at the same time, showing signs of hope for rural progressives. This is a winnable fight, if we can ever convince our urban-centric political colleagues to listen up.

Right after the election, I laid out the need for developing a rural strategy if progressives really want to turn the current electoral trend around. Democrats need to become a national party again.

The key, as I said then, is not to surrender on core issues, but to begin fighting back and countering the pervasive right-wing propaganda in rural districts, both by words and by actions. The latter is particularly key, since Republicans have been harming rural dwellers in ways that can be easily demonstrated, particularly by counter-action.

David Sirota recently had a piece in Washington Monthly profiling Brian Schweitzer, the new governor of Montana. He's a Democrat. And he won by adopting precisely that strategy.

The issue that Schweitzer used to drive a wedge between Republicans and their rural base was a simple one: land and stream access for hunters and fishermen. As Sirota explains:

To understand why hunting and fishing is such a big deal in Montana, consider this: The state has a population of 971,000; in 2001, 723,000 of them fished, hunted, or watched wildlife, according to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service survey. Though the state has plenty of land for hunting and fishing, the residents don't take kindly to any effort to restrict their sporting pursuits. Yet throughout the Mountain West, Republicans, working with conservative think tanks, have pushed privatization and property-rights regulations that have the effect of doing just that. In the late '90s, for example, the Montana Republican Party platform, along with Brown's running-mate, Rep. Dave Lewis, tried to restrict the state's treasured Stream Access Law, which demands private landowners allow non-commercial anglers to fish on streams crossing through their property. The legislature also attempted to sell off large chunks of state land, much of it prime hunting territory. Some outdoorsmen became worried that the state's deficit woes would be used as a Republican rationale to reduce spending on public land management programs and sell off even more valuable hunting real estate.

Working with a local outdoorsmen group in Gallatin County, which includes Bozeman, Schweitzer drafted a 9-point plan to protect cherished hunting and fishing access rights on public and private lands. Among other things, Schweitzer called for keeping public lands in the state's hands, for spending more money to maintain them for hunters and anglers, and for using fees from hunting licenses to buy easements from private property owners to give sportsmen easier access to fields and streams. He unveiled this plan at a town hall meeting of conservative hunters and fishermen in Bozeman, to happy applause. Randy Newburg, a Republican who heads the Headwaters Fish and Game Association in Bozeman, effectively endorsed Schweitzer, calling access a "special" issue, and accusing Republicans in Helena of trying to "sell it off to the highest bidder."

The beauty of the access issue was three-fold. First, it helped Schweitzer make inroads with the constituency of outdoorsmen that is normally Democrat-averse.

Second, it let us speak to both left-leaning environmentalists, who wanted public lands and wildlife herds maintained, and right-leaning outdoorsmen, who wanted a place to recreate and a steady population of game to hunt. This was especially important because we did not want to alienate the enviros who would be out in force on election day to vote against an initiative to permit cyanide leach mining. Stern, who had a deft sense of strategy, once pointed out, "Hunters can be some of the biggest environmentalists around, even though they don't think of themselves that way and would never in a million years label themselves that."

Third, it was an issue that would ultimately help us tie Brown in Republican-leaning Gallatin County, one of the fastest growing counties in America. Like other Rocky Mountain exurbs, Gallatin had seen an influx of new residents looking to live in an area with outdoor recreation. Targeting these new residents and making them Democratic voters early were key not only to the election at hand, but also for building a majority for the long haul.

There are similar issues that can be used to dispel the conservative stranglehold on rural political life: the demise of the family farm; corporate timber giants' job-reducing measures and resource mismanagement; the gutting of the rural infrastructure; destruction of hunting and fishing habitat. And that's just for starters. For nearly every rural locale, there is a menu of opportunities.

It is important to remember that this has to be done by candidates who who can demonstrate they share rural dwellers' real values: hard work, honesty, decency, forthrightness, integrity. They also have to be genuine; a few years ago, Idaho Democrats ran as their candidate for the U.S. Senate a man from the East Coast who claimed residence in Sun Valley. Nice fellow, and an avid fly fisherman, but he wasn't from Idaho and gave little sign he had any more than a peripheral connection to the people who live there. He got creamed, of course; but even worse, he underscored the perception in the state of Democrats as the party of urban elites.

Even though Schweitzer is making great strides in Montana, he faces a continuing uphill battle, in no small part because the Republican Party in Montana is so entrenched and remains so powerful. More to the point, the GOP in Montana is becoming increasingly extremist in its orientation.

This has not exactly been a secret in Montana. There have been Republican legislators with militia/Patriot associations, from nearly every part of the state. This strand of GOP politics remains alive and well; take, for instance, the Bozeman legislator who is proposing to require a death certificate be issued for all abortions.

One of the most interesting of these figures is a fellow named Rick Jore, who hails from Ronan, the Mission Mountain/Flathead Valley reservation town where I spent the better part of one summer (in 1988) editing the local weekly paper. Jore's constituency is the extreme right wing whites who tend to form a substantial bloc in western Montana, including the Flathead. (See my previous report on extremist activity in the valley.)

Jore held his seat in the Legislature from 1994 to 2000, always as a Republican. But he maintained associations with Howard Phillips' Constitution Party for several years, and in 2000 announced he was leaving the GOP and running as a Constitution candidate. He promptly lost his seat and hit Phillips' CP speaking circuit.

Jore decided to try running again in 2004. He wound up splitting the right-wing vote, and ended up in a numerical tie with Democrat Jeanne Windham after the final recounts were held: Jore and Windham each had 1,559 votes, while Republican Jack Cross garnered 1,107 votes.

That meant the governor was allowed to make a choice between the two candidates. One big problem with that: the current governor is a Republican, who would be making a choice that would affect the incoming Democratic governor (Schweitzer). Indeed, if Windham were chosen, Democrats would control the state House for the first time in over a decade (in addition to the governorship, they also took the Senate). If Jore, the GOP would maintain its tenuous grip.

Now, outgoing Republican Gov. Judith Martz is perhaps the most unpopular governor in Montana history. (You used to be able to buy a bumper sticker in Montana that proclaimed, "My governor is dumber than your governor.") So unpopular that she decided not to seek re-election after one term. Her ineptitude was a big boost for Schweitzer as well.

Unsurprisingly, Martz picked Jore:

At a press conference, Martz said she studied the election results and found that 63 percent of the House District 12 voters favored the conservative candidates -- either Jore or Cross -- in the three-person race.

"It is my opinion that the people in that community really were looking for a conservative to serve them," she said. "I believe that was the choice of the people and that's why I chose Rick Jore."

In response, Jore said, "I was pleased and privileged that she would express the confidence in me." He said he agrees with Martz that the district ought to have a conservative representative, given how the vote totals came out.

Windham could not be reached for comment but in the past has rejected the notion that more Lake County voters cast their ballots for conservative candidates, a conservative should be appointed.

What's noteworthy about Martz's action was that it explicitly acknowledged an ideological connection between Republicans and the extremists of the Constitution Party. Usually, they are more circumspect.

A voter's lawsuit contested the outcome, though, on the basis of seven ballots that were marked for both Jore and Cross, which according to Montana law rendered their vote invalid for that race, but which were counted for Jore. Eventually, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, and Windham won the seat, which in turn gave the House to Democrats.

Now, you may recall that the Constitution Party sponsored a couple of Montana appearances by Judge Roy Moore, the fellow who raised the ruckus over the Ten Commandments in Alabama. Those appearances were also bolstered by a turnout drive from the Militia of Montana.

Travis McAdam (of the Montana Human Rights Network) explained in detail in a recent op-ed for the Helena Independent Record what the Constitution Party is: among other things, the only party that openly supported the "militia" movement:

Howard Phillips founded the national Constitution Party in 1992, combining Christian Reconstruction with themes of the militia movement. Reconstructionists believe that civil law should mirror Old Testament biblical law, meaning capital punishment should be extended to gays, lesbians, blasphemers, and adulterers. People who are not "Christian enough" could be denied citizenship, or worse, be executed. The party also promotes "New World Order" conspiracy theories similar to those of the militia movement.

(A minor corrective worth noting, incidentally: they originally called themselves the "U.S. Taxpayers Party" and changed the name to "Constitution Party" in 1999 for the 2000 election.)

Even more profound is the significance of Martz's move:

Her decision reverberates with partisan political sentiment. Wanting to keep Republicans in control of the House, Martz provided legitimacy to the Constitution Party, something the party had been unable to do on its own. For short-term political gain, Martz has allowed Montana conservatism to take another gigantic step to the right.

Brian Schweitzer, to his credit, appears poised to take advantage of this creeping extremism by making hay with it. His national peers might be wise to follow his example.

Blogiversary

I really am bad at this sort of thing, but I suppose I should have noted that yesterday was my second anniversary operating Orcinus. (Here's my first post.)

The only reason it's worth noting is that every now and then I like to stop and say thank you to the people who keep reading and linking to this little corner of the blogging world. I consider myself incredibly fortunate in this regard. It's every writer's dream to have a kind of ongoing conversation with so many thoughtful people. I've tried to keep the blog a real writer's journal where I work out writing ideas, so attracting this kind of readership is extremely gratifying (not to mention edifying).

Here's to many more years.

Brain dead indeed

The ever-on-the-spot John Ray at Dissecting Liberalism posted this today:

There is a pompous Leftist ass (as in donkey) called Steve Kangas who claims to have all the answers to why Leftists are right and others are wrong. I guess he has convinced himself but convincing others will be harder. I have shown here how far-Left and quite stupid is his treatment of one topic at least. He starts out by defining socialism in such a way that only Communists can be socialists and then defines socialism in a way that would exclude Stalin from being one! So is ANYBODY a socialist according to Kangas? Only Mr Brain-dead Kangas himself, I guess.

Obviously John Ray is as well informed as he is a deep thinker. Because on the left side of the Web, it's very well known that Steve Kangas has been dead since Feb. 8, 1999, the day he was found in the men's restrooms of Richard Mellon Scaife's offices.

The circumstances were mysterious at best, and though Kangas' death was officially ruled a suicide, it has formed the basis of several theories that he was murdered for his outspoken views, and especially his ongoing criticism of Scaife (see here, here, and here). I have no idea whether these theories hold any water, not having examined any of them thoroughly. But there is little doubt that Kangas has been, uh, brain dead for five years now, a fact that takes only a little googling to ascertain.

I think John Ray wonders why none of the people he "dissects" (including yours truly) take his work seriously. Really, now.

[Via The Daou Report.]

White like me

Here's a disturbing piece out of Portland, from Willamette Week:

Dreaming of a White New Year: "Ghost skins" plan to descend on Southwest Portland in the next month.
Portland supremacists

White supremacists have been seeking to mainstream themselves for years, particularly as the younger generation of former skinheads has aged and melted into larger society. The militia movement of the 1990s was a form of this mainstreaming, but it entailed stripping out the overtly racist and anti-Semitic content of the belief system, leaving it to revolve around conspiracy and monetary theories as the chief drivers of its political agenda.

If this story is accurate, then they're trying out a new strategy that keeps intact these more noxious elements and presents them in a guise of seeming social normalcy:

Ramm, a Tualatin resident, is the national director of the Tualatin Valley Skins and, in some ways, the new face of intolerance. He and his fellow supremacists are self-described "ghost skins." They don't shave their heads, commit crimes or duck-step around town in boots and braces. While their identities remain murky, their goals are crystal-clear.

"We seek to enlighten the public on racial truths the media, schools and government are afraid to promote," says Ramm.

To perform this duty, he and an unknown number of like-minded Aryans are staging a "flyer outreach contest" Jan. 8 in Gabriel Park. Sometime after 1 pm, they will disperse through the surrounding Hayhurst, Maplewood and Multnomah neighborhoods armed with hate-promoting handbills. These are rubber-banded around rocks, stuffed into plastic baggies and lobbed onto the lawns and driveways of pre-assigned targets.

Ramm says judges will be manning a police scanner and the team who generates the most complaints wins 1,000 white-power songs, two racist DVDs and a 17-inch swastika.

According to the TVS website, the contest is a perfectly legal opportunity to "just say NO to the Oregon cesspool of Niggers, Spics, Kikes, Faggots, Ragheads, Chinks, Gooks, Roaches & leftist communist swine."

One of the aspects of right-wing extremism that is most frequently overlooked is its ability to blend into the landscape and present itself as normal. My encounters with various members and camp followers of the Aryan Nations, and my personal encounters with avowed neo-Nazis as well as Freemen and militiamen, made me realize that the stereotype was wrong: For the most part, many of these people passed as least nominally normal. They held jobs, paid taxes, took part in the PTA and local clubs, went to barbecues with their neighbors and went fishing with their coworkers.

James Aho discussed this in depth in his landmark 1992 study The Politics of Righteousness: Idaho Christian Patriotism. Aho compiled an extensive dataset on a large number of members of far-right "Patriot" groups and found that, by and large, they were better educated and better employed than the average American, contrary to the stereotype. (He did observe a particular trend in their education patterns; they hardly ever came from fields involving the humanities, and had an emphasis on technical, engineering and business fields.) For the most part, their lifestyles were indistinguishable from that of their neighbors.

It was this realization, concurrent with the recognition that what I was dealing with was genuine fascism, that sparked my long interest in fascism studies. It's one of the reasons I continue to insist that fascism is not such a distant phenomenon for we Americans.

If the "ghost skins" of Portland enjoy any success, it will signal a more deeply disturbing trend: a receptivity to this tactic, the object of which is "normalizing" white supremacist beliefs. Given the current political environment and latent intolerance, it seems likely they'll at least pick up some numbers on the margins; the bigger picture rests on their ability to actually mainstream themselves and gain acceptance.

Here's hoping the people in Portland who are standing up to them -- including the nonprofit Southwest Neighborhoods -- have some success as well.

Beyond the pale

The hatemongers of the right-wing pundit class are always pushing the envelope, trying to top each other with fresh outrages that continually redefine the boundaries of acceptable public discourse, grossly distorting that discourse along the way.

Every now and then, one of them will tread well over that line. Think of Ann Coulter's remark about wishing Tim McVeigh had blown up the New York Times building. Not only the remark, but people's reactions to it, become telling. They tell us a lot about the real characters of the people who would condone such filth, let alone utter it.

Michael Savage, who has had many such moments, has finally topped himself. Media Matters reports that he said the following on his Dec. 31 radio show:

SAVAGE: It is the Savage Nation out here on the West Coast. We've had rain for five days. We have another five days of it. I need some aid right now. International aid. Because I may be suffering from seasonal affective disorder if this keeps up. Maybe I should go to the U.N. [United Nations] and see if I can get some special psychotherapy and sun lamps.

[...]

We shouldn't be sending as much as we're sending. Bush has a lot of gall writing a check for 135 million dollars. This is more a UNICEF deal, it's a U.N. deal, it's a Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, George Soros, Bill Clinton bleeding-heart-liberal deal. I don't want to send them any money. You know, a few airplanes with some medical supplies and a little lip service would have been fine for me.

[...]

You could take the argument that it's God's will, it's too bad and let's move on. And then let others help them. They're not in our sphere of interest. Primarily, they hate our guts in plain English. All right, well, the argument is, well, if you send them money, they're gonna like us, show 'em we're not anti-Muslim. That is such rubbish. That is such rubbish. They're gonna hate you anyhow, no matter what we ever do.

[...]

It's not a tragedy. I wouldn't call it a tragedy. It's a human disaster. It's not a tragedy in that sense. But, the issue is, theological questions suddenly arise. ... Now, for you atheists, you have no questions about this. It's a pure accident of nature. You don't ask yourself, "Was it God's hand?"

Apparently, Savage has now joined the Fred Phelps school of compassionate conservatism.

But as unconscionably inhuman as these remarks were, he was only getting started. In fact, what followed was genuinely dangerous:

If you are a God-believing, God-fearing person, I am sure at some point you ask yourself, wait a minute. The epicenter of this earthquake and the resulting tidal wave was adjacent to the sex trade island of Phuket, Thailand ... and then it knocked out many, many regions of Indonesia, some of which are the most vicious recruiting grounds for Islamic terrorists. That's a fact of reality. Then going the other way, it hit Sri Lanka, ex-Ceylon. And as you well know, Sri Lanka is a viciously anti-Western nation, the home of the Tamil Tigers, who are not only separatists but anti-Westerners, anti-Christians, etc. You could argue, maybe this is God's hand, because some of their brethren struck Christian America. Maybe God speaks the truth but waits. Seeks the truth and waits. I don't know. You could argue: God struck them. Now, I don't argue that because I'm not a theologian. Nor do I believe that God is omnipotent. I believe God is omnipresent. But I don't think God has control over every act because there would be no free will and I don't believe in that. ... But then again, who knows? I'm one man amongst billions of people, with one man's opinion.

[...]

Many of the countries and the areas in these countries that were hit by these tidal waves were hotbeds of radical Islam. Why should we be helping them destroy us? ... I think what we're doing is feeding our own demise. ... I truthfully don't believe in foreign aid.

[...]

We shouldn't be spending a nickel on this, as far as I'm concerned. ... I don't want one nickel of my money going over there. ... I am sick of being bled to death by every damn incident on the earth.

If Michael Savage ever were perceived as the voice of America, we'd all be in big trouble. The rest of the world would see us as monsters, and they'd be right.

Digby the other day caught Rush Limbaugh playing footsie with the same kind of sentiments:

CALLER: (Giggle) Well, I was pretty upset and even getting madder the more coverage I watched, and I was thinking, 'Why am I not feeling so charitable, and I'm seeing all these bodies,' and then I see this picture on the Internet that was sent to me, and it was them carrying a body along in Sri Lanka, it said Galle, G-a-l-l-e, Sri Lanka and they had a crowd of people watching and this guy in the middle is standing there looking at the body wearing an Osama bin Laden T-shirt.

RUSH: I saw that picture.

CALLER: And I thought, it just validated the way I felt and I thought these are the same people that were the cheerleaders on 9/11, and we're going to go rebuild their world for them.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: Now, I love President Bush. I respect him. I voted for him, but when I saw him come out and I realized they were asking for more money --

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: -- I got even madder, and I thought, 'I don't think we should be asked to give any more.'

Later in the show, a Sri Lankan man called in to correct the woman's misimpressions:

CALLER: Yeah, Rush, hi. I wanted to answer the lady called earlier regarding to the guy is wearing a T-shirt. I don't know he was a dead guy or not. I'm from Sri Lanka. I've been listening to you for a long time. Sri Lanka is not a Muslim nation. Sri Lanka is 68% Singhalese people, that influence all the Catholics and the majority is Buddhist.

RUSH: Yes, yes.

CALLER: There are Muslims around that, you know, probably hate America, but we don't hate United States of America. The Singhalese people do not hate America. I just want to tell you that because we have our own problem for years with Tamil, and Muslim people. I just wanted to tell you that.

RUSH: That woman was calling from Pennsylvania, and there's picture going around the Internet, and I've seen it. Some aid is arriving while a body is being carted away, and there's a kid, a young man watching it all with a bin Laden t-shirt. She said the picture is from Sri Lanka. I don't know that it is. I don't know the picture is from Sri Lanka, but you have to understand the power of pictures. You know, there are going to be some Americans who are just going to recoil at the thought that we are bailing out and helping people who swear an oath of loyalty to Osama bin Laden, whether it's in Sri Lanka or not. I don't think her comment was actually aimed at Sri Lanka per se, specifically. It was just in reaction to that picture she saw. What are the Muslim nations that were affected by this tsunami, if not Sri Lanka?

The ignorance that abounds here really is astonishing in both the Limbaugh and Savage transcripts. The epicenter of the quake was near Sumatra, one of the islands of Indonesia, a largely Muslim nation. (In case anyone has forgotten, it was also a noteworthy victim of an Al Qaeda attack, namely, the bombing in Bali.) Most of the rest of the victim nations are Hindu or Buddhist.

What's dangerous about these remarks is the way they play right into the hands of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. As I long ago remarked, people who make all of Islam out to be our Enemy are furthering bin Laden's hopes, which is to draw us into an all-out global religious conflict pitting Islam against the West.

Savage has been playing this theme for a long time, but rarely has he stooped to such vicious and monstrous depths. These remarks, if repeated in the Muslim world as representative of American beliefs, have the potential to cause serious long-term damage.

Fortunately, no one really takes Savage that seriously. He remains firmly embedded in the public mind as a representative of far-right conservatism.

The flip side of this caveat is the fact that he's the third-most popular talk-show host on right-wing radio. If he's on the fringe, it's become a mighty big damned fringe.

Worst of all, you'll find all kinds of supposedly "mainstream" conservatives defending him, a la Limbaugh, as just an "entertainer."

Actually, Savage is a right-wing propagandist. He belongs to, and is a major spokesman for, the conservative movement.

And these remarks, it should be clear, place him well beyond the pale of what should be acceptable public discourse. He is a hate-monger and an unreconstructed bigot who deserves not even a scintilla of credibility. Any right-winger who refuses to renounce him -- let alone who condones him or supports him -- is making clear that they stand shoulder to shoulder with Savage in his bottomless moral abyss.

Savage's remarks should be a benchmark: Either repudiate them, and the man who spoke them, or stand confirmed as a moral wretch. It's a simple test. Let's see who passes.

America Haters

This cartoon is titled "America Haters." Talk about your classic case of projection. You've gotta love how the liberal antiwar type is waving from atop a heap of corpses. Doesn't get much more inflammatory than that, does it? (It can be found in the Jewish World Review.)

Of course, I just mentioned the increasing inclination by people on the rank-and-file right to talk loosely about rounding up and executing liberals. A lot of this is fueled, I think, by the pervasive identification of liberals (and the "liberal media") with the Enemy, that is, with terrorists. This cartoon fits precisely into this trend.

Another interesting recent example of this is the (I think) current edition of the NRA magazine America's 1st Freedom (though strangely, it isn't available online). The cover story, titled "Media Terror," is all about how the "liberal media elite" undermines our "freedom" and the "war on terror." The cover illustration features a terrorist-looking dark-clad figure (who just might be a journalist) strangling an eagle in his hand. Nothing like subtlety, huh?

[I saw this magazine during my trip to Idaho, and it belonged to someone else. If anyone knows how to obtain a copy for my files, I'd appreciate a note in my e-mail.]

Well, I think we're getting the message. The rabid right wingers don't hate America. They just hate their fellow Americans.

Brave new media, my ass

Remember how everyone was certain the blogosphere had blown Dan Rather out of the water by "proving" that the so-called "Killian memos" it displayed in its story on George W. Bush's military career were "fraudulent"? Wasn't that the basis for Time naming PowerLine "blog of the year"?

Not so fast, please. As Corey Pein explains in the latest Columbia Journalism Review, what those self-anointed "new journalists" of the blogosphere achieved was something well below even the crudest of journalistic standards in terms of getting to the truth of the matter. Mainly because their work was so bereft of factual basis:

But CBS's critics are guilty of many of the very same sins. First, much of the bloggers' vaunted fact-checking was seriously warped. Their driving assumptions were often drawn from flawed information or based on faulty logic. Personal attacks passed for analysis. Second, and worse, the reviled MSM often followed the bloggers' lead. As mainstream media critics of CBS piled on, rumors shaped the news and conventions of sourcing and skepticism fell by the wayside. Dan Rather is not alone on this one; respected journalists made mistakes all around.

Of special note is the way the memos were "debunked":

Haste explains the rapid spread of thinly supported theories and flawed critiques, which moved from partisan blogs to the nation’s television sets. For example, the morning after CBS's September 8 report, the conservative blog Little Green Footballs posted a do-it-yourself experiment that supposedly proved that the documents were produced on a computer. On September 11, a self-proclaimed typography expert, Joseph Newcomer, copied the experiment, and posted the results on his personal Web site. Little Green Footballs delighted in the "authoritative and definitive" validation, and posted a link to Newcomer's report on September 12. Two days later, Newcomer -- who was "100 percent" certain that the memos were forged -- figured high in a Washington Post report. The Post's mention of Newcomer came up that night on Fox, MSNBC, and CNN, and on September 15, he was a guest on Fox News's Hannity & Colmes.

Newcomer gave the press what it wanted: a definite answer. The problem is, his proof turns out to be far less than that. Newcomer's résumé -- boasting a Ph.D. in computer science and a role in creating electronic typesetting -- seemed impressive. His conclusions came out quickly, and were bold bordering on hyperbolic. The accompanying analysis was long and technical, discouraging close examination. Still, his method was simple to replicate, and the results were easy to understand:

Based on the fact that I was able, in less than five minutes . . . to type in the text of the 01-August-1972 memo into Microsoft Word and get a document so close that you can hold my document in front of the 'authentic' document and see virtually no errors, I can assert without any doubt (as have many others) that this document is a modern forgery. Any other position is indefensible.

Red flags wave here, or should have. Newcomer begins with the presumption that the documents are forgeries, and as evidence submits that he can create a very similar document on his computer. This proves nothing -- you could make a replica of almost any document using Word. Yet Newcomer's aggressive conclusion is based on this logical error.

Many of the typographic critiques were similarly flawed. Would-be gumshoes typed up documents on their computers and fooled around with the images in Photoshop until their creation matched the originals. Someone remembered something his ex-military uncle told him, others recalled the quirks of an IBM typewriter not seen for twenty years. There was little new evidence and lots of pure speculation. But the speculation framed the story for the working press.

Pein goes on to mention the case of Utah State professor David Hailey, who was sucked into the blog controversy because of journalistically irresponsible behavior on the part the right-wing blog WizBang (described in detail here and here). Hailey himself has now published a response to the controversy.

Of course, I've been saying all along that these self-proclaimed "new journalists" had better learn that they're going to have face the same reality that was part and parcel of the world of "old journalism": Credibility is the coin of the realm, and you won't have it very long if you don't engage in fact-checking and testing your pet theses. If PowerLine, Little Green Footballs, and WizBang represent the future of blogging, we might as well give up now.

In any event, the blue-ribbon panel investigating the CBS memos is supposed to release its report soon. Popcorn, anyone?