Cincinnati paper endorses Hackett, Democrat, for 2nd District Congressional Race

from The Cincinnati Post, "Breath of fresh air":

In terms of their ideology and their approach to issues, Schmidt and Hackett present sharp differences.

Schmidt, from what we can discern, would likely be a dependable vote for the Bush administration, particularly its foreign policy and Iraq.

Hackett, in our view, is a gust of fresh air. If we had to put a label on him, it would be Libertarian Democrat. He doesn't seem to have much use for the orthodoxy, or the partisanship, of either party. He doesn't want government telling him what guns he can own, nor does he want it interfering in family or medical decisions or taking away civil liberties in the name of fighting terror.

If elected, he notes, he would be the only member of Congress with direct military experience in Iraq. He wants us to finish the job in Iraq and get out quickly, and he wants the United States to stop holding hands with Pakistan and to get serious about tracking down those responsible for 9-11.

We like Hackett's candor, are impressed with the freshness of his ideas and believe him to be action-oriented. We endorse Hackett for the 2nd District seat.

yet more hypocrisy

from The New York Times, July 28, by Edmund L. Andrews, "How Cafta Passed House by 2 Votes":

It was just before midnight on Wednesday when Representative Robin Hayes capitulated.

Mr. Hayes, a Republican whose district in North Carolina has lost thousands of textile jobs in the last four years, had defied President Bush and House Republican leaders by voting against the Central American Free Trade Agreement, or Cafta.

But the House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert, told him they needed his vote anyway. If he switched from 'nay' to 'aye,' Mr. Hayes recounted, Mr. Hastert promised to push for whatever steps he felt were necessary to restrict imports of Chinese clothing, which has been flooding into the United States in recent months.

Hmmm...buying votes for "free trade" by promising to restrict trade. Talk about being ethically inconsistent! So if they really don't care about free trade, what is CAFTA all about?

Oh, and I love this one, too:

One of the strangest votes was by Representative Charles H. Taylor, Republican of North Carolina, who had vowed to vote against the pact because of his concerns for textile workers.

But as the minutes ticked by, Mr. Taylor was one of only two members recorded as not voting. By not voting, he gave Republicans a two-vote victory rather than a one-vote margin.

But on Thursday, Mr. Taylor insisted that there had been an error in the electronic voting system and that he had indeed voted against the measure.

"I voted NO," Mr. Taylor announced in a terse statement on Thursday, saying the House clerk's written log showed his vote and that he would seek to have the vote registered as a "no."

Democrats, who have already lined up a potent challenger to Mr. Taylor for the next election, accused him of trying to have it both ways.

"He seemed to find time to vote for procedural motions and legislation that had nothing to do with North Carolina," said Bill Burton, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, "but he couldn't seem to figure out how to squeeze in the time to vote against a trade deal that could cost North Carolina thousands of jobs."

this is outrageous!

from the New York Observer, by Joe Conason:

Circled in a bristling perimeter around the White House, the friends and allies of Mr. Rove can soon be expected to fire their rhetorical mortars at Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor investigating the White House exposure of C.I.A. operative Valerie Wilson. Indeed, the preparations for that assault began months ago in the editorial columns of The Wall Street Journal, which has tarred Mr. Fitzgerald as a “loose cannon” and an “unguided missile.”

Evidently Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, will lead the next foray against the special prosecutor. This week the Senator’s press office announced his plan to hold hearings on the Fitzgerald probe. That means interfering with an “ongoing investigation,” as the White House press secretary might say, but such considerations won’t deter the highly partisan Kansan.
...
There is no partisan issue here. Mr. Fitzgerald is a Republican appointee, named by a Republican Justice Department to investigate alleged misconduct in a Republican administration, at the urging of a Republican President and his C.I.A. director.
...
If only they were candid, the Rove Republicans would say that was then, this is now—and ethical consistency is strictly for losers.

The article also makes some great comparisons between the Starr-Clinton investigation and this one. Let's see...matters of national security vs. bad investments...which one should Congress authorize millions for investigating...which one should they fight for, all the way to the bitter Truth...which one matters to the American people?

There's nothing new about "Rove Republicans" going after someone who dares argue with them or offer a differing account of reality. When the target is one of their own, however, it's even more sad and outrageous.

on the road again

After being on the road for almost two weeks, and being completely cut-off from the news during that time, I have to admit my surprise that the very first topic of conversation on talk radio I encountered was none other than the Rove Plame-Out/Flame-Out. And some poor schmuck at Faux News / Fox Skews (can't decide which nickname I like better) had to spend hours of his life going through every speech, side-comment, joke, and likely sleep-talk Pres. Bush has made since the leak occurred to find the one time that he didn't promise to fire those involved. Nevermind the countless times that he or someone in his administration made it very clear that a) Rove, Libby, and other important administration figures were not involved in this (the leak) and b) that whoever is involved would be fired "at a minimum." There's only one word that I can think that fits this situation: Liars. I try not to use the word lightly, but there it is.

In other news, I was excited to see Lance Armstrong had won his 7th Tour de France. It was almost a foregone conclusion before I left, but one never knows. He and his team are, once again, an inspiration. And now he offers renewed hope through his selfless pledge to turn his focus and drive toward winning a new battle - waged against cancer. It would be easy enough for him to retire to a life of ease on past winnings and future celebrity endorsements. I applaud him for his decision.

I also returned home to discover that Pres. Bush has made a nomination to the Supreme Court. I was surprised to hear that Sandra Day O'Connor has endorsed the man (I didn't know ex-justices did that?). So far I have personally read only a little about him, enough to say simply that I am nervous without being able to give much detail. The fact that Pat Robertson endorses him 100% is just one source of my nervousness. The fact that he has such a limited public record is another.

A quick side note: the comment I wanted to make about my previous absence (see around July 5) relates here. While on a Mission Trip, I had the unexpected opportunity to visit the office of the Senate Chaplain and then sit in on proceedings in the Senate chamber. After listening for some time to one of my own senators (Sen. DeWine) prattle on for a while, I was shocked when Sen. John McCain entered the chambers to announce that Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was stepping down from the Supreme Court. Overall, his remarks were good and appropriate to the occasion, offering thanks and praise for her work. I was disappointed, then, by Sen. Ted Kennedy, who followed McCain, and missed his opportunity to make a really fine speech. Instead of following McCain's lead, finding ways to thank and praise Justice O'Connor for her years of dedicated service, his speech largely focused on the President's need to consult with the Democrats in his selection to replace her. There has been ample time for such positioning, and Democratic leadership has used it to such ends; that moment more rightfully should have been about O'Connor, her work, and some non-partisan thanks and praise.

Finally, I would add my condolences to the growing list of those who have lost loved ones through senseless acts of terrorism. That, sadly, also did not change while I was away. It will be a great day indeed when my prayers are not filled with such remembrances.

God give us perspective and direct us in paths that unite us, paths of love, paths toward a peaceful future.

The Smash of Civilizations

As a person who believes in general in the high respect that should be afforded other cultures, as a former student of anthropology who believes that we learn more about our self and our common humanity by studying other cultures, and as a Christian who believes that learning our history informs, shapes, and enriches faith today, I find this story absolutely appalling. I had heard some of this before, but this article goes into more detail about the destruction and looting of important Iraqi sites and the failure of the U.S. military to safeguard any of them despite frequent requests, pleas, and warnings. Get a modern map of the Middle East and one from the era of the Jewish/Christian/Muslim patriarchs and matriarchs. Now read the Old Testament, and see just how important the geography of present-day Iraq is to the heritage of these faiths. As the article excerpted here explains, there is (or was) still much to be explored, excavated, and discovered.

from The Smash of Civilizations (emphasis added):

As we now know, the American forces made no effort to prevent the looting of the great cultural institutions of Iraq, its soldiers simply watching vandals enter and torch the buildings. Said Arjomand, an editor of the journal Studies on Persianate Societies and a professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, wrote, "Our troops, who have been proudly guarding the Oil Ministry, where no window is broken, deliberately condoned these horrendous events." American commanders claim that, to the contrary, they were too busy fighting and had too few troops to protect the museum and libraries. However, this seems to be an unlikely explanation. During the battle for Baghdad, the U.S. military was perfectly willing to dispatch some 2,000 troops to secure northern Iraq's oilfields, and their record on antiquities did not improve when the fighting subsided. At the 6,000-year-old Sumerian city of Ur with its massive ziggurat, or stepped temple-tower (built in the period 2112 - 2095 B.C. and restored by Nebuchadnezzar II in the sixth century B.C.), the Marines spray-painted their motto, "Semper Fi" (semper fidelis, always faithful) onto its walls. The military then made the monument "off limits" to everyone in order to disguise the desecration that had occurred there, including the looting by U.S. soldiers of clay bricks used in the construction of the ancient buildings.

Until April 2003, the area around Ur, in the environs of Nasiriyah, was remote and sacrosanct. However, the U.S. military chose the land immediately adjacent to the ziggurat to build its huge Tallil Air Base with two runways measuring 12,000 and 9,700 feet respectively and four satellite camps. In the process, military engineers moved more than 9,500 truckloads of dirt in order to build 350,000 square feet of hangars and other facilities for aircraft and Predator unmanned drones. They completely ruined the area, the literal heartland of human civilization, for any further archaeological research or future tourism. On October 24, 2003, according to the Global Security Organization, the Army and Air Force built its own modern ziggurat. It "opened its second Burger King at Tallil. The new facility, co-located with [a] . . . Pizza Hut, provides another Burger King restaurant so that more service men and women serving in Iraq can, if only for a moment, forget about the task at hand in the desert and get a whiff of that familiar scent that takes them back home."
...
President Bush's supporters have talked endlessly about his global war on terrorism as a "clash of civilizations." But the civilization we are in the process of destroying in Iraq is part of our own heritage. It is also part of the world's patrimony. Before our invasion of Afghanistan, we condemned the Taliban for their dynamiting of the monumental third century A.D. Buddhist statues at Bamiyan in March, 2001. Those were two gigantic statues of remarkable historical value and the barbarism involved in their destruction blazed in headlines and horrified commentaries in our country. Today, our own government is guilty of far greater crimes when it comes to the destruction of a whole universe of antiquity, and few here, when they consider Iraqi attitudes toward the American occupation, even take that into consideration.

wise words

Writing on the environment in A Voice for the Wilderness, Derrick Z. Jackson of the Boston Globe quotes President Eisenhower:

As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

It's called selfishness. The theological term is idolatry. By giving up any thought or regard for the future, we become focused only on the present. And in such a narrow focus, where only 'now' matters, we become focused only on our limited worldview, limited entirely to our self. As such, we have placed our self at the center of the universe. Nothing else matters except what's in it for me: I have supplanted God. Living for today is to give up on the future and it is to give up on God. Living for today is sinful, and the wages of sin is death. We can only hope that the death that this way of living imposes is not spread too wide.

NYTimes puts it straight

A Few Thoughts on Karl Rove - New York Times:

Far be it for us to denounce leaks. Newspapers have relied on countless government officials to divulge vital information that their bosses want to be kept secret. There is even value in the sanctioned leak, such as when the White House, say, lets out information that it wants known but does not want to announce.

But it is something else entirely when officials peddle disinformation for propaganda purposes or to harm a political adversary. And Karl Rove seems to have been playing that unsavory game with the C.I.A. officer Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband, Joseph Wilson IV, a career diplomat who ran afoul of President Bush's efforts to justify the invasion of Iraq.
...
Mr. Cooper's e-mail note does not say that Mr. Rove mentioned the name of Mr. Wilson's wife, which later appeared in a column by Robert Novak. White House supporters are emphasizing that fact in an effort to argue that Mr. Rove did not illegally unmask a covert officer. We don't need to judge that here. But there remains the issue of whether the White House used Mr. Wilson's wife for political reasons, and it's obvious that Mr. Rove did.

The White House has painted itself into a corner. More than a year ago, Mr. Bush vowed to fire the leaker. Then Scott McClellan, the president's spokesman, repeatedly assured everyone that the leaker was not Mr. Rove, on whom the president is so dependent intellectually that he calls Mr. Rove "the architect."
...
Mr. Rove could clear all this up quickly. All he has to do is call a press conference and tell everyone what conversations he had and with whom. While we like government officials who are willing to whisper vital information, we like even more government officials who tell the truth in public.

Amen.

this is disgraceful...

from Yahoo! News: CIA Leak Quotes

By The Associated Press Mon Jul 11, 5:26 PM ET

Some of the denials, other comments, at media briefings by White House spokesman Scott McClellan when asked by reporters whether President Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, was involved in the leak of a CIA officer's identity:

Sept. 29, 2003

Q: You said this morning, quote, 'The president knows that Karl Rove wasn't involved.' How does he know that?

A: Well, I've made it very clear that it was a ridiculous suggestion in the first place. ... I've said that it's not true. ... And I have spoken with Karl Rove.

Q: It doesn't take much for the president to ask a senior official working for him, to just lay the question out for a few people and end this controversy today.

A: Do you have specific information to bring to our attention? ... Are we supposed to chase down every anonymous report in the newspaper? We'd spend all our time doing that.'

Q: When you talked to Mr. Rove, did you discuss, 'Did you ever have this information?'

A: I've made it very clear, he was not involved, that there's no truth to the suggestion that he was."

This is just the beginning of past comments made by McClellan; he's said plenty in the past (see the link for more). So, for that matter, has Pres. Bush in his defense of Rove, et al.

The question now is: who was ignorant of the facts, and who was lying?

The reaction is already intense and growing, as it should be. Lying from the White House is nothing new; that doesn't mean it should be tolerated. The stonewalling from the White House in recent days is a sad shame of silence. David Gregory, reporting for NBC, put it directly to Scott McClellan:

Scott, I mean, just -- I mean, this is ridiculous. The notion that you're going to stand before us after having commented with that level of detail and tell people watching this that somehow you decided not to talk. You've got a public record out there. Do you stand by your remarks from that podium, or not?

Getting no comment (except a very redundant "I remember well what I said"), Gregory then asked:

Was [Rove] involved, or was he not? Because, contrary to what you told the American people, he did, indeed, talk about [Joe Wilson's] wife, didn't he?

Dan Froomkin provies a good description of yesterday's press briefing, where this exchange took place. Froomkin also compiles reactions from other corporate media outlets, from which we learn that McClellan refused to answer 35 questions!, and offers his own analysis (he calls it "astonishing"). One of the unanswered questions was: "Does the President have confidence in his Chief of Staff?" Froomkin also provides a link to the text & video of the briefing. It's quite a show.

Wow - just to add a little levity - or maybe I should find out who the reporter asking the question is - but someone asked if Pres. Bush would consider nominating "former Law School Professor Bill Clinton" to the Supreme Court!

Finished watching the briefing. Sad. Outrageous. And insulting.
A short summary of McClellan's answer to all questions about Karl Rove leaking top secret information: "Again, you're asking me to comment on an on-going investigation and I'm not going to do that."
He sounded like a broken record. Funny, he didn't mind responding when the investigation was on-going over the past 2 years, when he could lie and get away with it.

Chomolungma, "Mother Goddess of the World," in trouble

from Reuters JOHANNESBURG, July 11:

First man up Everest says UN must act to save it

Global warming is melting glaciers around Mount Everest, threatening the environment and local people, the first man to climb the world's tallest peak said on Monday as he called on the United Nations to act.

Sir Edmund Hillary, who reached Everest's summit with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in 1953, said he was backing calls by pressure groups such as Friends of the Earth for the U.N. cultural body UNESCO to place the mountain on its endangered list.

I have been to Nepal and seen the abject poverty of its people, and also their beauty, and the imposing grandeur of Mt. Everest. I guess we could say that global warming has reached new heights: and that is a sad, sad joke. I'm reminded of a Simpson's episode where Bart & Lisa go on a school field trip to see, I think, the Springfield Glacier, only to be shown a lake on top of a mountain. The reaction of the (cartoon) park guide, utter denial, was frighteningly similar to a story that I had just come across about anti-science publications that were quietly being slipped onto the shelves of tourist shops at the Grand Canyon. That propaganda tried to deny everything that we know about geology and earth sciences, instead claiming that God had created the Grand Canyon simply to appear as if it had been formed over millions of years. I'll have to see if I can find a link to that story. The base of it, though, comes back to Everest in this way: it is sad how a particularly slanted religious world-view (in this case, the denial of scientific findings based on a poor understanding of the Bible) dumbs people down to the present dangers we face and makes them easily manipulated by corporate hacks (see my comments on Exxon from a few weeks ago). Very sad.

simply unbelievable...

from Media Matters for America: "In their own words: How Fox News hosts and reporters reacted to the London attacks"

The site lays out fuller quotes and links to the video clips. But here's a part of what was said on Fox Skews in response to the bombings in London. The comments range from calculating...

Brit Hume: "I mean, my first thought when I heard -- just on a personal basis, when I heard there had been this attack and I saw the futures this morning, which were really in the tank, I thought, 'Hmmm, time to buy.'"

to callous...

John Gibson: The day before the attacks, he said, "By the way, just wanted to tell you people, we missed -- the International Olympic Committee missed a golden opportunity today. If they had picked France ... to hold the Olympics, it would have been the one time we could look forward to where we didn't worry about terrorism. They'd blow up Paris, and who cares?"

The day of the attacks, he echoed his remarks. "This is why I thought the Brits should let the French have the Olympics -- let somebody else be worried about guys with backpack bombs for a while."

to racist...

Simon Marks: "[T]hese people are, if necessary, prepared to spill Arab blood in addition to the blood of regular -- of non-Arab people living in London."

but this guy takes the cake:

Brain Kilmeade: "[British Prime Minister Tony Blair] made the statement ... at the G8 summit, where their topic Number 1 --believe it or not-- was global warming, the second was African aid. And that was the first time since 9-11 when they should know, and they do know now, that terrorism should be Number 1. But it's important for them all to be together. I think that works to our advantage, in the Western world's advantage, for people to experience something like this together, just 500 miles from where the attacks have happened."

Did you take advantage of the drop in the future's market? Lucky for you Paris wasn't attacked; the markets, along with the rest of the world, apparently wouldn't have cared. Oh, and what an amazing insight, to separate Arab Londoners from non-Arab Londoners and recognize that terrorists are willing to kill both! I guess the Western World caught a break with all the leaders of the Group of 8 together just 500 miles away. The murder of 40 (or more?) innocent people ought to do the trick, distracting our world leaders from issues such as global warming and crushing African debt. We all know those aren't important, after all, and "they do know now," too.

We can also summarize these Fox correspondents' statements in an equation (where > is taken to be 'is/are more important than'):
the stock market > non-Arab Londoners lives > Arab Londoners lives > African lives > the environment > French lives

been away awhile...

I was on the road all of last week, and pretty busy this past week catching up with stuff. Have a few things from that experience that I want to post, but first things first: the terrorist bombings in London was an horrific act of violence that deeply saddens and angers me. It does not shake my faith in humanity or God. It does raise my awareness of the presence of evil in the hearts of men. Our response to such evil must be continued faithfulness and renewed efforts to stop it from spreading; those who are already infected must be stopped.

One way to understand terrorist actions such as the London bombings is to see them as violations of the unwritten social contract that allows people all over the world to live together in (relative) peace. We are able to live together because we hold to basic values, including individual freedom, the right to self-determination, and respect for each other and all of life. Terrorists reject these values for others. Terrorists must be stopped by going after the rotten plant of terror itself - the branches who commit acts of terror, the roots who are the masterminds behind such plotting - and by correcting the festering soil in which terror breeds, fertilizing it with freedom, education, and opportunity, the conditions that lead people to choose to live within the guidelines of the social contract on which we all depend. We must bring light to the darkness and stop the dark peddlers of evil. Those who recognize the value of human life and dignity must respond to such terrorist attacks with resolve not to give up or give in to the terror but to stop the terror at its root; our response must also be one of sympathy and aid for those affected by terrorist's actions. In this wider understanding of human relationships, people divide into two categories: those who choose to live within the contract of interdependence and respect for all people; and those who choose to disregard these basic values of humanity and life. The world must be united together against the latter; it must also work to save those who haven't yet made up their minds or who are in danger of slipping into the terrorist's ways: the cost of failure is too high, as the bombings in London have shown.

My heart and prayers go out to all who were affected by this latest act of cowardice and terror.

The scriptural foundation for such thinking is wide: obvious texts on humanity's unity include Genesis 1:26-31 and John 3:14-21, the key verse being John 3:17; for the need to care for each other, see the prophets, e.g. Amos 8:4-14 and Micah 6-7.