That Crazy Boy George

President on Another Planet
By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, August 22, 2006; A15

For a moment there, I was almost encouraged. George W. Bush, the most resolutely incurious and inflexible of presidents, was reported last week to have been surprised at seeing Iraqi citizens -- who ought to be grateful beneficiaries of the American occupation, I mean "liberation" -- demonstrating in support of Hezbollah and against Israel.

Surprise would be a start, since it would mean the Decider was admitting novel facts to his settled base of knowledge and reacting to them. Alas, it seems the door to the presidential mind is still locked tight. "I don't remember being surprised," he said at his news conference yesterday. "I'm not sure what they mean by that."

I'm guessing "they" might mean that when you try to impose your simplistic, black-and-white template on a kaleidoscopic world, and you end up setting the Middle East on fire, either you're surprised or you're not paying attention. But that's just me.

As for George Bush, what on earth is on his mind?

Even conservatives have begun openly assessing the president's intellect, especially its impermeability to new information. Cable television pundit Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, devoted a segment of his MSNBC show to "George Bush's mental weakness," with a legend at the bottom of the screen that impertinently asked: "IS BUSH AN 'IDIOT'?"

It's tempting to go there, but I'm not sure we'd get very far. While we have the president on the couch, I'm more interested in trying to understand his emotional response -- or lack of response -- to the chaos he has spawned.

According to the Iraqi government, 3,438 civilians were killed in July, making it the bloodiest month since the invasion. The president was asked yesterday whether the failure of the U.S.-backed "unity" government to stem the orgy of sectarian carnage disappoints him, and he said that no, it didn't. How, I wonder, is that possible? Does he believe it would be a sign of weakness to admit that the flowering of democracy in Iraq isn't going exactly as planned? Does he believe saying everything's just fine will make it so? Is he in denial? Or do 3,438 deaths really just roll off his back after he's had his workout and a nice bike ride?

"I hear a lot of talk about civil war" in Iraq, he allowed -- much of it apparently from his own generals, who have been increasingly bold in using the once-forbidden phrase -- but all that talk doesn't seem to penetrate very far. To the president, is all the bad news from Iraq just "talk" without objective reality?

Here's another line from the president's news conference: "What's very interesting about the violence in Lebanon and the violence in Iraq and the violence in Gaza is this: These are all groups of terrorists who are trying to stop the advance of democracy."

Now, whatever you think about George Bush's intellect, he knows full well that the Hamas government in Gaza was democratically elected. He also knows full well that Hezbollah participates in the democratically elected government of Lebanon, or what's left of Lebanon. And so he has to know full well that U.S.-backed Israeli assaults on Gaza and Lebanon -- even if you believe they were justified -- had the impact of crippling, if not crushing, two nascent democracies of the kind the Bush administration wants to cultivate throughout the Middle East.

He also knows that the Iraqi government has real sovereignty over only the Green Zone in Baghdad -- a fortress made secure by the presence of U.S. troops -- and assorted other enclaves where American and British troops enforce the peace. He has heard the leader of that nominal government praise Hezbollah and denounce Israel.

So when the president lauds democracy as the magic elixir that will cure the scourge of terrorism, is he really putting faith in his favorite mantra rather than his lying eyes? Is his view of the world so unchangeable that he dismisses actual events the way he dismisses mere "talk''?

Or is he just trying to hold on until January 2009, when all this will become somebody else's problem?

In his news conference, the Decider did make a couple of nods to objective reality. He admitted in plain language that Iraq had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks and possessed no weapons of mass destruction -- in other words, that his rationale for this elective, preemptive war had no substance. And he acknowledged a certain occasional exasperation.

"Frustrated? Sometimes I'm frustrated. Rarely surprised," the president said. "Sometimes I'm happy. This is -- but war is not a time of joy. These aren't joyous times."

No, they're not.

The writer will take questions today at 1 p.m. on www.washingtonpost.com. His e-mail address iseugenerobinson@washpost.com.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

How old is Cheney?

From The Huffington Post:

Dear Oracle:

How do they keep Vice President Cheney alive? Isn't he like 500 years old, or something?

- Denzel Boone, Cooter, Missouri

Dear Denzel:

Your curiosity is not unusual – I've received more letters on this topic in the past year than any other, asking about rumors linking the Vice President to ancient "blood cults," and to prehistoric extinctions blamed in native legend on the "Cha-uh-Nay," a malevolent wind spirit that "set upon the mammoth beasts and devoured them where they stood, so their bones shivered whitely for a moment amidst the meat bees, then rattled to the dirt."

The truth is, Vice President Cheney's exact age is unknown because his father never married his mother. Technically, this makes him a "bastard" – though of course we all know him to be above reproach, the sober Wally Cleaver to President Bush's mischievous Eddie Haskell – and in the unforgiving frontier days when he was born, bastard births were not recorded. (Estimates of the Vice President's age, by an informal panel of experts assembled last night at Gurke's G Spot, a nearby lounge, ranged from 130 to 165.)

We do know that Mr. Cheney was born in what became the Wyoming Territory, to a woman called Deadeye Daisy Cheney, who rose from "varmint plinker" (exterminating prairie dogs with a slingshot) to run a chain of mixed-meat jerky stands along the route of the transcontinental railroad. It was only his mother's hard work and sacrifice that saved Mr. Cheney from the typical fate of a bastard, cleaning spittoons or geeking for medicine shows.

How is the Vice President kept alive through all his heart attacks and other ailments?
With fresh organs from the War on Terror.

The organs are harvested from dying insurgents and terrorists, then flown fresh daily from the Middle East to a secret medical facility in Virginia. There, in a former intensive-care nursery, rows of cribs hold hearts, spleens, livers, etc., ready for implantation.

(Organs not used within 72 hours are picked up by licensed meat scavengers for sale to rendering plants up and down Interstate 95. Coincidentally, the CIA, also based in Virginia, has a "rendition" program that sends terrorists back to the nations that spawned them, so they can get the flaying they deserve.)

Though the transplant program runs with typical Bush administration efficiency, there have been a few screw-ups, like the time the janitor accidentally turned off power to the nursery, and surgeons had to implant the heart of a pig from a nearby farm in the Vice President – alongside the leaking terrorist heart already there – to get him through a televised campaign debate.

That is why the Vice President – renowned for his charming but razor-sharp debating style – was "bedah, bedah, bedahing" like Porky Pig during the debate: his Islamo-fascist heart was rejecting his pork heart.

Luckily, soon after the debate was over, sturdier organs became available when what may have been the last Euphrates crocodile on earth was run over by a speeding Humvee in the marshlands of southern Iraq. The Euphrates crocodile is an ancient creature, with 6 hearts, 7 stomachs and 3 livers, and the Vice President came out of surgery like his old self – full of piss, vinegar and crocodile parts.

- A.O.

What I Wish I'd Known

From I Feel Bad About My Neck and other thoughts on being a woman, by Nora Ephron

People have only one way to be.

Buy, don't rent.

Never marry a man you wouldn't want to be divorced from.

Don't cover a couch with anything that isn't more or less beige.

Don't buy anything that is 100 per cent wool even if it seems to be very soft and not particularly itchy when you try it on in the store.


You can't be friends with people who call after 11 p.m.
Block everyone on your instant mail.

The world's greatest babysitter burns out after two and a half years.

You never know.

The last four years of psychoanalysis are a waste of money.

The plane is not going to crash.

Anything you think is wrong with your body at the age of 35 you will be nostalgic for at the age of 45.

At the age of 55 you will get a saggy roll just above your waist even if you are painfully thin.

This saggy roll just above your waist will be especially visible from the back and will force you to re-evaluate half the clothes in your closet, especially the white shirts.

Write everything down.

Keep a journal.

Take more pictures.

The empty nest is underrated.

You can order more than one dessert.

You can't own too many black turtleneck sweaters.

If the shoe doesn't fit in the shoe store, it's never going to fit.

When your children are teenagers, it's important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you.

Back up your files.

Overinsure everything.

Whenever someone says the words, "Our friendship is more important than this," watch out, because it almost never is.

There's no point in making piecrust from scratch.

The reason you're waking up in the middle of the night is the second glass of wine.

The minute you decide to get divorced, go see a lawyer and file the papers.

Overtip.

Never let them know.

If only one-third of your clothes are mistakes, you're ahead of the game.

If friends ask you to be their child's guardian in case they die in a plane crash, you can say no.

There are no secrets.

Disowning Conservative Politics, Evangelical Pastor Rattles Flock

Finally it seems a movement against right wing politics and the church seems to be going on. Let's hope it spreads like wildfire before the mid-term elections!



July 30, 2006
The New York Times
Disowning Conservative Politics, Evangelical Pastor Rattles Flock

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
MAPLEWOOD, Minn. — Like most pastors who lead thriving evangelical megachurches, the Rev. Gregory A. Boyd was asked frequently to give his blessing — and the church’s — to conservative political candidates and causes.

The requests came from church members and visitors alike: Would he please announce a rally against gay marriage during services? Would he introduce a politician from the pulpit? Could members set up a table in the lobby promoting their anti-abortion work? Would the church distribute “voters’ guides” that all but endorsed Republican candidates? And with the country at war, please couldn’t the church hang an American flag in the sanctuary?

After refusing each time, Mr. Boyd finally became fed up, he said. Before the last presidential election, he preached six sermons called “The Cross and the Sword” in which he said the church should steer clear of politics, give up moralizing on sexual issues, stop claiming the United States as a “Christian nation” and stop glorifying American military campaigns.

“When the church wins the culture wars, it inevitably loses,” Mr. Boyd preached. “When it conquers the world, it becomes the world. When you put your trust in the sword, you lose the cross.”

Mr. Boyd says he is no liberal. He is opposed to abortion and thinks homosexuality is not God’s ideal. The response from his congregation at Woodland Hills Church here in suburban St. Paul — packed mostly with politically and theologically conservative, middle-class evangelicals — was passionate. Some members walked out of a sermon and never returned. By the time the dust had settled, Woodland Hills, which Mr. Boyd founded in 1992, had lost about 1,000 of its 5,000 members.

But there were also congregants who thanked Mr. Boyd, telling him they were moved to tears to hear him voice concerns they had been too afraid to share.

“Most of my friends are believers,” said Shannon Staiger, a psychotherapist and church member, “and they think if you’re a believer, you’ll vote for Bush. And it’s scary to go against that.”

Sermons like Mr. Boyd’s are hardly typical in today’s evangelical churches. But the upheaval at Woodland Hills is an example of the internal debates now going on in some evangelical colleges, magazines and churches. A common concern is that the Christian message is being compromised by the tendency to tie evangelical Christianity to the Republican Party and American nationalism, especially through the war in Iraq.

At least six books on this theme have been published recently, some by Christian publishing houses. Randall Balmer, a religion professor at Barnard College and an evangelical, has written “Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America — an Evangelical’s Lament.”

And Mr. Boyd has a new book out, “The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church,” which is based on his sermons.

“There is a lot of discontent brewing,” said Brian D. McLaren, the founding pastor at Cedar Ridge Community Church in Gaithersburg, Md., and a leader in the evangelical movement known as the “emerging church,” which is at the forefront of challenging the more politicized evangelical establishment.

“More and more people are saying this has gone too far — the dominance of the evangelical identity by the religious right,” Mr. McLaren said. “You cannot say the word ‘Jesus’ in 2006 without having an awful lot of baggage going along with it. You can’t say the word ‘Christian,’ and you certainly can’t say the word ‘evangelical’ without it now raising connotations and a certain cringe factor in people.

“Because people think, ‘Oh no, what is going to come next is homosexual bashing, or pro-war rhetoric, or complaining about ‘activist judges.’ ”

Mr. Boyd said he had cleared his sermons with the church’s board, but his words left some in his congregation stunned. Some said that he was disrespecting President Bush and the military, that he was soft on abortion or telling them not to vote.

“When we joined years ago, Greg was a conservative speaker,” said William Berggren, a lawyer who joined the church with his wife six years ago. “But we totally disagreed with him on this. You can’t be a Christian and ignore actions that you feel are wrong. A case in point is the abortion issue. If the church were awake when abortion was passed in the 70’s, it wouldn’t have happened. But the church was asleep.”

Mr. Boyd, 49, who preaches in blue jeans and rumpled plaid shirts, leads a church that occupies a squat block-long building that was once a home improvement chain store.

The church grew from 40 members in 12 years, based in no small part on Mr. Boyd’s draw as an electrifying preacher who stuck closely to Scripture. He has degrees from Yale Divinity School and Princeton Theological Seminary, and he taught theology at Bethel College in St. Paul, where he created a controversy a few years ago by questioning whether God fully knew the future. Some pastors in his own denomination, the Baptist General Conference, mounted an effort to evict Mr. Boyd from the denomination and his teaching post, but he won that battle.

He is known among evangelicals for a bestselling book, “Letters From a Skeptic,” based on correspondence with his father, a leftist union organizer and a lifelong agnostic — an exchange that eventually persuaded his father to embrace Christianity.

Mr. Boyd said he never intended his sermons to be taken as merely a critique of the Republican Party or the religious right. He refuses to share his party affiliation, or whether he has one, for that reason. He said there were Christians on both the left and the right who had turned politics and patriotism into “idolatry.”

He said he first became alarmed while visiting another megachurch’s worship service on a Fourth of July years ago. The service finished with the chorus singing “God Bless America” and a video of fighter jets flying over a hill silhouetted with crosses.

“I thought to myself, ‘What just happened? Fighter jets mixed up with the cross?’ ” he said in an interview.

Patriotic displays are still a mainstay in some evangelical churches. Across town from Mr. Boyd’s church, the sanctuary of North Heights Lutheran Church was draped in bunting on the Sunday before the Fourth of July this year for a “freedom celebration.” Military veterans and flag twirlers paraded into the sanctuary, an enormous American flag rose slowly behind the stage, and a Marine major who had served in Afghanistan preached that the military was spending “your hard-earned money” on good causes.

In his six sermons, Mr. Boyd laid out a broad argument that the role of Christians was not to seek “power over” others — by controlling governments, passing legislation or fighting wars. Christians should instead seek to have “power under” others — “winning people’s hearts” by sacrificing for those in need, as Jesus did, Mr. Boyd said.

“America wasn’t founded as a theocracy,” he said. “America was founded by people trying to escape theocracies. Never in history have we had a Christian theocracy where it wasn’t bloody and barbaric. That’s why our Constitution wisely put in a separation of church and state.

“I am sorry to tell you,” he continued, “that America is not the light of the world and the hope of the world. The light of the world and the hope of the world is Jesus Christ.”

Mr. Boyd lambasted the “hypocrisy and pettiness” of Christians who focus on “sexual issues” like homosexuality, abortion or Janet Jackson’s breast-revealing performance at the Super Bowl halftime show. He said Christians these days were constantly outraged about sex and perceived violations of their rights to display their faith in public.

“Those are the two buttons to push if you want to get Christians to act,” he said. “And those are the two buttons Jesus never pushed.”

Some Woodland Hills members said they applauded the sermons because they had resolved their conflicted feelings. David Churchill, a truck driver for U.P.S. and a Teamster for 26 years, said he had been “raised in a religious-right home” but was torn between the Republican expectations of faith and family and the Democratic expectations of his union.

When Mr. Boyd preached his sermons, “it was liberating to me,” Mr. Churchill said.

Mr. Boyd gave his sermons while his church was in the midst of a $7 million fund-raising campaign. But only $4 million came in, and 7 of the more than 50 staff members were laid off, he said.

Mary Van Sickle, the family pastor at Woodland Hills, said she lost 20 volunteers who had been the backbone of the church’s Sunday school.

“They said, ‘You’re not doing what the church is supposed to be doing, which is supporting the Republican way,’ ” she said. “It was some of my best volunteers.”

The Rev. Paul Eddy, a theology professor at Bethel College and the teaching pastor at Woodland Hills, said: “Greg is an anomaly in the megachurch world. He didn’t give a whit about church leadership, never read a book about church growth. His biggest fear is that people will think that all church is is a weekend carnival, with people liking the worship, the music, his speaking, and that’s it.”

In the end, those who left tended to be white, middle-class suburbanites, church staff members said. In their place, the church has added more members who live in the surrounding community — African-Americans, Hispanics and Hmong immigrants from Laos.

This suits Mr. Boyd. His vision for his church is an ethnically and economically diverse congregation that exemplifies Jesus’ teachings by its members’ actions. He, his wife and three other families from the church moved from the suburbs three years ago to a predominantly black neighborhood in St. Paul.

Mr. Boyd now says of the upheaval: “I don’t regret any aspect of it at all. It was a defining moment for us. We let go of something we were never called to be. We just didn’t know the price we were going to pay for doing it.”

His congregation of about 4,000 is still digesting his message. Mr. Boyd arranged a forum on a recent Wednesday night to allow members to sound off on his new book. The reception was warm, but many of the 56 questions submitted in writing were pointed: Isn’t abortion an evil that Christians should prevent? Are you saying Christians should not join the military? How can Christians possibly have “power under” Osama bin Laden? Didn’t the church play an enormously positive role in the civil rights movement?

One woman asked: “So why NOT us? If we contain the wisdom and grace and love and creativity of Jesus, why shouldn’t we be the ones involved in politics and setting laws?”

Mr. Boyd responded: “I don’t think there’s a particular angle we have on society that others lack. All good, decent people want good and order and justice. Just don’t slap the label ‘Christian’ on it.”


Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

red cow avatar

Distracter in Chief

Distracter in Chief
Spinning Phony Crises to Avoid Real Ones
By Eugene Robinson
The Washington Post
Tuesday, June 6, 2006

What uncharted realm lies beyond brazen cynicism? A wasteland of utter shamelessness, perhaps? A vast Sahara of desperation, where principle goes to die? Someday George W. Bush and the Republican right will be able to tell us all about this barren terra incognita, assuming they ever find their way home.

The Decider's decision to whip up a phony crisis over same-sex marriage -- Values under attack! Run for your lives! -- is such a transparent ploy that even conservatives are scratching their heads, wondering if this is the best Karl Rove could come up with. Bush might as well open his next presidential address by giving himself a new title: The Distracter.

Let's check in on what's happening in the real world:

Iraq has become a charnel house for the victims of escalating sectarian slaughter. On Saturday, a car bomb killed 28 people in Shiite-dominated Basra, and hours later gunmen killed nine Sunni worshipers in a mosque. On Sunday, on a road near Baghdad, assassins pulled travelers out of their minivans, sorted them by faith, killed nearly two dozen Shiites and let the Sunnis go. Yesterday, men wearing police uniforms grabbed at least 56 people from bus stations and travel agencies in Baghdad and took them away -- no one knows why, no one knows where.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's new government remains toothless and ineffectual, despite his pledge to end the sectarian violence. On Sunday, he failed yet again to reach agreement on who will run the only two ministries that matter -- the ones in charge of the army and the police. The butcher Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most prominent figure in the armed Sunni insurgency and the most hunted man in Iraq, remains at large and periodically manages to issue messages inspiring his followers to continue their jihad. (Just like his hero, Osama bin Laden.) Yet the president spent his weekend radio address pushing "a constitutional amendment that defines marriage in the United States as the union of a man and woman."

Immigration, the last artificial crisis, at least is a genuine issue. But the president and his allies did such a job of rabble-rousing that the best outcome, at this point, is probably for Congress to deadlock and end up doing nothing. The National Guard is headed for the frontier, apparently under orders not to do much of anything. Immigrants are still marching north, employers are still hiring them and self-appointed sentries are still patrolling the border, where something really bad is bound to happen sooner or later.

Yet the issue of "profound importance" the president urgently wants to highlight is "protecting the institution of marriage."

The diplomatic maneuvering over Iran's nuclear program, which looks like the next crisis, is at a critical point. Defiant words from Iranian leaders on Sunday rattled the world's financial markets yesterday and sent oil prices soaring -- threatening even the modest relief most analysts had predicted from $3-a-gallon prices at the gas pump. Just in time for summer vacation.

The president, however, would rather we all reflect on the fact that "marriage is the most enduring and important human institution." Not satisfied that he had gotten his message across in his Saturday radio address, Bush gave another speech in support of a marriage amendment yesterday.

It's almost surreal. For one thing, the president has no role in amending the Constitution. Proposed amendments must be passed in both the House and Senate by two-thirds majorities, and then they must win approval from the legislatures of three-fourths of the states. The president doesn't have to sign it. He doesn't even have to read it.

People who are close to the president are always telling us what an essentially decent man he is, without a bigoted bone in his body. But that doesn't square with all this demagoguery in support of a measure whose only effect would be to write discrimination against gay men and lesbians into the United States Constitution.

Bigotry, pure and simple.

But of course the president knows that there's essentially no chance an amendment to ban gay marriage will make it out of the Senate -- that in fact it might not even get out of the House. All he can possibly accomplish is to energize activists on the religious right, who otherwise might be tempted to sit out the November midterm elections.

It's risky to raise expectations you have no intention of fulfilling, but maybe enough of the Republican base can be fooled by this charade to make a difference in the fall.

Meanwhile it keeps us from talking about things that are real, and that really matter.

The writer will take questions at 1 p.m. today athttp://www.washingtonpost.com. His e-mail address iseugenerobinson@washpost.com.

Dear Mr President, Pink

This song & lyrics somehow hit home.

Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na
Dear Mr. President, come take a walk with me
Let's pretend, we're just two people and
You're not better than me
I'd like to ask you some questions, if we can speak honestly

What do you feel when you see all the homeless on the street?
Who do you pray for at night before you go to sleep?
What do you feel when you look in the mirror?
Are you proud?

Chorus:
How do you sleep while the rest of us cry?
How do you dream when a mother has no chance to say goodbye?
How do you walk with your head held high?
Can you even look me in the eye, and tell me why?

Dear Mr President
Were you a lonely boy?
Are you a lonely boy?
How can you say, "no child is left behind"
We're not dumb and we're not blind
They're all sitting in your cells
While you pave the road to hell

What kind of father would take his own daughter's rights away?
And what kind of father might hate his own daughter if she were gay?
I can only imagine what the first lady has to say...
You've come a long way, from whiskey and cocaine!

Chrous

Let me tell you 'bout hard work
Minimum wage with a baby on the way
Let me tell you 'bout hard work
Rebuilding your house after the bombs took them away
Let me tell you 'bout hard work
Building a bed out of a cardboard box
Let me tell you 'bout hard work! Hard work! Hard work!
You don't know nothing 'bout hard work! Hard work! Hard work!!!!!!!!

How do you sleep at night?
How do you walk with your head held high?
Dear Mr. President, you'd never take a walk with me
Hmmm, would you?

please help

Goodbye Barb & Jenna LOL

First Family Shakeup
By Ruth Marcus
Monday, April 17, 2006;

Dear Daughters Jenna and Barbara,

This is a difficult letter for me, your Dad, to write. The two of you have been, your mother and I agree, valuable members of my administration. Yes, there have been a few unfortunate moments -- actually, come to think of it, more than a few: the underage drinking bust; the next underage drinking bust; the sticking-out-the-tongue-at-the-photographers thing; the Valley Girl-style convention speech. Next time, please, girls, run it by Grandma, like she told you to in the first place.

Rambling a bit here. What I'd like to say is that all of us at the White House deeply appreciate your service to your family and your country. It can't have been easy for you, posing for Vogue, getting chauffeured by the Secret Service and all. But, as you know, second terms are a time of transition in any administration. And we think it is the right moment, then, to make a change in First Daughters. Time for some fresh blue blood, you might say.

Please, girls, don't take this personally. Andy didn't, and he's been with the family almost as long. Definitely, we will spin this to the press as your decision entirely. You know, needing a break, this job chews you up, exhausted after five long years of late nights at Smith Point, want a chance to spend more time with your ... never mind, we'll go with the need-a-break part. And no one can take away from your achievements: You have been two of the longest-serving presidential daughter twins in history.

Anyway, the Josh-for-Andy swap didn't play quite as big as we hoped. Now, I'm getting killed with this general-a-day drumbeat on Rummy. So Uncle Don and Uncle Dick came up with this idea of replacing you two.

Naturally, Mommy and I were pretty reluctant, at first. But Uncle Don and Uncle Dick can be awfully persuasive -- especially when Uncle Dick's packing heat.

Your Gammy agrees. "Lose the twins," she said. "My 41 ditched Sununu." And you know there's no arguing with the Silver Fox once she's got her mind made up. She asked me to tell you it's nothing personal -- and for Pete's sake stop showing all that cleavage.

Dick wanted to roll this out the usual way: through Scooter. But Scooter's a little preoccupado, right now, you might say. We thought about leaking it to Woodward, but he'd probably just save it for the next book. So we're thinking Dr. Phil. Great female demographic.

You're probably wondering about the replacement. Grandpa had an idea about that. You know how he's been spending so much time hanging out with Bill Clinton lately that I've started calling him "my new brother"? Well, that got grandpa to thinking.

You probably know where this is heading, so I won't dwell too long on the topic of our new First Daughter.

Chelsea has graciously agreed to start on Friday.

Thanks again, girls, for all you've done. Our thoughts and prayers are with you as you start this new, exciting chapter of your lives. Please be sure to stay in touch.

Sincerely,

George W. Bush Dad

P.S. We want you to know it was a hard call whether to lose you or Karl. He really agonized over it.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Ice Queen Rice loves a generous dictator

With Friends Like These . . .
Condoleezza Rice's inglorious moment
Tuesday, April 18, 2006; A18

WITH A LAND mass similar to Maryland's, Equatorial Guinea has the fortune to be Africa's third-largest oil producer. The money from black gold helps to explain how the president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, has bought large homes in France and Morocco, as well as two in Potomac, and how his son and presumed heir bought a Lamborghini and two Bentleys during a shopping spree in South Africa. But oil has done little to help Equatorial Guinea's 540,000 people, some 400,000 of whom suffer from malnutrition. Those who are hungry know better than to complain. According to State Department reports, the president's goons have urinated on prisoners, sliced their ears and smeared them with oil to attract stinging ants.

So it is uncontroversial to observe that Mr. Obiang is no friend to his people. But he is a "good friend" of the United States, at least according to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who met with him last week in Washington. "I'm very pleased to welcome the president," Ms. Rice told reporters after the meeting. "Thank you very much for your presence here." Mr. Obiang purred back: "We are extremely pleased and hopeful that this relationship will continue to grow in friendship and cooperation."

In the global rankings of political and civil liberties compiled by Freedom House, only seven countries rate worse than Equatorial Guinea. If President Bush and Ms. Rice want anyone to take their pro-democracy rhetoric seriously, they must stop throwing bouquets to odious dictators. The meeting with Mr. Obiang was presumably a reward for his hospitable treatment of U.S. oil firms, though we cannot be sure since the State Department declined our invitation to comment. But Ms. Rice herself argues that U.S. foreign policy spent too long coddling corruption and autocracy in Arab oil states. Surely she doesn't have a different standard for Africa?

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

The Top 100 Bush Failures That He Should Be Impeached For

Taken from Democrats & liberals Blog from d.a.n.


Since it’s doubtful Bush will resign, I tend to focus my thoughts on how history will look at him. I believe that history will look on the Bush II administration (to distingish him from Bush I, his father) as one one of the most failed presidencies in history, up there with Grant and Hoover.

1. Started and got us bogged down in a pointless war and has already said its the next president’s problem

2. Failed to catch the leader of the group that attacked the U.S. (bin Laden)

3. Failed to pass any significant legislation addressing pressing domestic problems (health care, retirement security, income inequality.)

4. saw the deficit, debt, and trade deficit all explode and did nothing about it.

And I haven’t even begun to talk about the scandals that will be genuinely investigated if the Democrats take back one or both houses of Congress in the elections.

Posted by: Steve K at April 7, 2006 10:22 AM
Libby’s defence is that he was authorized to leak. I doubt this will work for him because he is charged with lying not leaking.
Why doesn’t the President just get the Plame insident behind him before the election. Why doesn’t he just say he authorized the leaking of that womans name and proclaim that the 2nd amendment makes him king during a time of neverending war and not subject to the laws of the United States.

Posted by: jlw at April 7, 2006 10:25 AM
Steve K, Good list.
Let me add to it…

Look at these numerous, collosal failures:
__________________________________
Iraq:

1. Failing to build a real international coalition prior to the Iraq invasion, forcing the US to shoulder the full cost and consequences of the war.

2. Approving the demobilization of the Iraqi Army in May, 2003 �€“ bypassing the Joint Chiefs of Staff and reversing an earlier position, the President left hundreds of thousands of armed Iraqis disgruntled and unemployed, contributing significantly to the massive security problems American troops have faced during occupation.

3. Not equipping troops in Iraq with adequate body armor or armored HUMVEES.

4. Ignoring the advice Gen. Eric Shinseki regarding the need for more troops in Iraq �€“ now Bush is belatedly adding troops, having allowed the security situation to deteriorate in exactly the way Shinseki said it would if there were not enough troops.

5. Ignoring plans drawn up by the Army War College and other war-planning agencies, which predicted most of the worst security and infrastructure problems America faced in the early days of the Iraq occupation.

6. Making a case for war which ignored intelligence that there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.

7. Deriding “nation-building” during the 2000 debates, then engaging American troops in one of the most explicit instances of nation building in American history.

8. Predicting along with others in his administration that US troops would be greeted as liberators in Iraq.

9. Predicting Iraq would pay for its own reconstruction.

10. Wildly underestimating the cost of the war.

11. Trusting Ahmed Chalabi, who has dismissed faulty intelligence he provided the President as necessary for getting the Americans to topple Saddam.

12. Disbanding the Sunni Baathist managers responsible for Iraq’s water, electricity, sewer system and all the other critical parts of that country’s infrastructure.

13. Failing to give UN weapons inspectors enough time to certify if weapons existed in Iraq.

14. Including discredited intelligence concerning Nigerian Yellow Cake in his 2003 State of the Union.

15. Announcing that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended” aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003, below a “Mission Accomplished” banner �€“ more U.S. soldiers have died in combat since Bush’s announcement than before it.

16. Awarding a multi-billion dollar contract to Halliburton in Iraq, which then repeatedly overcharged the government and served troops dirty food.

17. Refusing to cede any control of Post-invasion Iraq to the international community, meaning reconstruction has received limited aid from European allies or the U.N.

18. Failing to convince NATO allies why invading Iraq was important.

19. Having no real plan for the occupation of Iraq.

20. Limiting bidding on Iraq construction projects to “coalition partners,” unnecessarily alienating important allies France, Germany and Russia.

21. Diverting $700 million into Iraq invasion planning without informing Congress.

22. Shutting down an Iraqi newspaper for “inciting violence” �€“ the move, which led in short order to street fighting in Fallujah, incited more violence than the newspaper ever had.

23. Telling Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan about plans to go to war with Iraq before Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Counterterrorism:

24. Allowing several members of the Bin Laden family to leave the country just days after 9/11, some of them without being questioned by the FBI.

25. Focusing on missile defense at the expense of counterterrorism prior to 9/11.

26. Thinking al Qaeda could not attack without state sponsors, and ignoring evidence of a growing threat unassociated with “rogue states” like Iraq or North Korea.

27. Threatening to veto the Homeland Security department �€“ The President now concedes such a department “provides the ability for our agencies to coordinate better and to work together better than it was before.”

28. Opposing the creation of the September 11th commission, which the President now expects “to contain important recommendations for preventing future attacks.”

29. Denying documents to the 9/11 commission, only relenting after the commissioners threatened a subpoena.

30. Failing to pay more attention to an August 6, 2001 PDB entitled “Bin laden Determined to Attack in U.S.”

31. Repeatedly ignoring warnings of terrorists planning to use aircraft before 9/11.

32. Appointing the ultra-secretive Henry Kissinger to head the 9/11 commission �€“ Kissinger stepped down weeks later due to conflicts of interest.

33. Asking for testimony before the 9/11 commission be limited to one hour, a position from which the president later backtracked.

34. Not allowing national Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to testify before the 9/11 commission �€“ Bush changed his mind as pressure mounted.

35. Cutting an FBI request for counterterrorism funds by two-thirds after 9/11.

36. Telling Americans there was a link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.

37. Failing to adequately secure the nation’s nuclear weapons labs.

38. Not feeling a sense of urgency about terrorism or al Qaeda before 9/11.

Afghanistan

39. Reducing resources and troop levels in Afghanistan and out before it was fully secure.

40. Not providing security in Afghanistan outside of Kabul, leaving nearly 80% of the Afghan population unprotected in areas controlled by Feudal warlords and local militias.

41. Committing inadequate resources for the reconstruction of Afghanistan.

42. Counting too heavily on locally trained troops to fill the void in Afghanistan once U.S. forces were relocated to Iraq.

43. Not committing US ground troops to the capture of Osama Bin Laden, when he was cornered in the Tora Bora region of Afghanistan in November, 2001.

44. Allowing opium production to resume on a massive scale after the ouster of the Taliban.

Weapons of Mass Destruction

45. Opposing an independent inquiry into the intelligence failures surrounding WMD �€“ later, upon signing off on just such a commission, Bush claimed he was “determined to make sure that American intelligence is as accurate as possible for every challenge in the future.”

46. Saying: “We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories.”

47. Trusting intelligence gathered by Vice President Cheney’s and Secretary Rumsfeld’s “Office of Special Plans.”

48. Spending $6.5 billion on nuclear weapons this year to develop new nuclear weapons this year �€“ 50% more in real dollars than the average during the cold war �€“ while shortchanging the troops on body armor.

Foreign Policy:

49. Ignoring the importance of the Middle East peace process, which has deteriorated with little oversight or strategy evident in the region.

50. Siding with China in February, 2004 against a democratic referenda proposed by Taiwan, a notable shift from an earlier pledge to stand with “oppressed peoples until the day of their freedom finally arrives.”

51. Undermining the War on Terrorism by preemptively invading Iraq.

52. Failing to develop a specific plan for dealing with North Korea.

53. Abandoning the United States’ traditional role as an evenhanded negotiator in the Middle East peace process.

Economic:

54. Signing a report endorsing outsourcing with thousands of American workers having their jobs shipped overseas.

55. Instituting steel tariffs deemed illegal by the World Trade Organization �€“ Bush repealed them 20-months later when the European Union pledged to impose retaliatory sanctions on up to $2.2 billion in exports from the United States.

56. Promoting economic policies that failed to create new jobs.

57. Promoting economic policies that failed to help small businesses

58. Pledging a “jobs and growth” package would create 1,836,000 new jobs by the end of 2003 and 5.5 million new jobs by 2004�€”so far the president has fallen 1,615,000 jobs short of the mark.

59. Running up a foreign deficit of “such record-breaking proportions that it threatens the financial stability of the global economy.”

60. Issuing inaccurate budget forecasts accompanying proposals to reduce the deficit, omitting the continued costs of Iraq, Afghanistan and elements of Homeland Security.

61. Claiming his 2003 tax cut would give 23 million small business owners an average tax cut of $2,042 when “nearly four out of every five tax filers (79%) with small business income would receive less” than that amount.

62. Passing tax cuts for the wealthy while falsely claiming “people in the 10 percent bracket” were benefiting most.”

63. Passing successive tax cuts largely responsible for turning a projected surplus of $5 trillion into a projected deficit of $4.3 trillion.

64. Moving to strip millions of overtime pay.

65. Not enforcing corporate tax laws.

66. Backing down from a plan to make CEOs more accountable when “the corporate crowd” protested.

67. Not lobbying oil cartels to change their mind about cutting oil production.

68. Passing tax cuts weighted heavily to help the wealthy.

69. Moving to allow greater media consolidation.

70. Nominating a notorious proponent of outsourcing, Anthony F. Raimondo, to be the new manufacturing Czar�€”Raimondo withdrew his name days later amidst a flurry of harsh criticism.

71. Ignoring calls to extend unemployment benefits with long-term unemployment reaching a twenty-year high

72. Threatening to veto pension legislation that would give companies much needed temporary relief.

Education:

73. Under-funding No Child Left Behind

74. Breaking his campaign pledge to increase the size of Pell grants.

75. Signing off on an FY 2005 budget proposing the smallest increase in education funding in nine years.

76. Under-funding the Title I Program, specifically targeted for disadvantaged kids, by $7.2 billion.

77. Freezing Teacher Quality State Grants, cutting off training opportunities for about 30,000 teachers, and leaving 92,000 less

teachers trained than the president called for in his own No Child Left Behind bill.

78. Freezing funding for English language training programs.

79. Freezing funding for after school programs, potentially eliminating 50,000 children from after-school programs.

Health:

80. Not leveling with Americans about the cost of Medicare �€“ the president told Congress his new Medicare bill would cost $400 billion over ten years despite conclusions by his own analysts the bill would cost upwards of $500 billion over that period.

81. Silencing Medicare actuary Richard Foster when his estimates for the Administration’s Medicare bill were too high.

82. Letting business associate David Halbert, who owns a company which stands to make millions from new discount drug cards, craft key elements of the new Medicare bill.

83. Underfunding health care for troops and veterans.

84. Allowing loopholes to persist in Mad-Cow regulations.

85. Relaxing food labeling restrictions on health claims.

86. Falsely claiming the restrictions on stem cell research would not hamper medical progress.

87. Reducing action against improper drug advertising by 80 percent.

Environment:

88. Abandoning the Kyoto Treaty without offering an alternative for reducing greenhouse effect.

89. Counting on a voluntary program to reduce emissions of harmful gasses�€”so far only a tiny fraction of American companies have signed up.

90. Gutting clean air standards for aging power plants.

91. Weakening energy efficiency standards.

92. Relaxing dumping standards for mountaintop mining, and opening the Florida Everglades and Oregon’s Siskiyou National Forest to mining.

93. Lifting protection for more than 200 million acres of public land.

94. Limiting public challenges to logging projects and increased logging in protected areas, including Alaska’s Tongass National Forest.

95. Weakening environmental standards for snowmobiles and other off-road vehicles while pushing for exemptions for air pollution proposals for five categories of industrial facilities.

96. Opposing legislation that would require greater fuel efficiency for passenger cars.

97. Reducing inspections, penalties for violations, and prosecution of environmental crimes.

98. Misleading the public about the Washington mad cow case and the likely effectiveness of USDA’s weak testing program.

99. Withdrawing public information on chemical plant dangers, previously used to hold facilities accountable for safety improvements.

Other:

100. Cutting grants to state and local governments in FY 2005, forcing states to make massive cuts in job training, education, housing and environment.

A Sane Response to Marriage

How to end the same-sex marriage debate
By Jonathan TurleyMon Apr 3, 6:53 AM ET

With mid-term elections approaching, politicians are once again returning to one of their favorite themes: protecting the sanctity of marriage. When same-sex marriage is raised, citizens quickly forget about rampant corruption in Congress, towering budget deficits, or even the Iraq war. Not surprisingly, therefore, a constitutional amendment has been cited as a legislative priority by both President Bush and Republican leadership. The message is clear: What politics and religion have joined, let no one pull apart.

The fact is that the same-sex marriage fight is one that advocates on both sides would hate to end. Money is pouring in, membership rolls are expanding, and advocates have an issue that borders on obsession for many Americans.

Since 2004, almost two dozen states have passed constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage, and additional proposed amendments are planned for this year in Congress and various states. At the same time, gay rights advocates are pursuing their own legislative efforts and numerous court challenges to establish constitutional protections for the right of same-sex couples to marry.

Before we enter yet another election season of spasmodic referendums and debates over same-sex marriage, one question is worth considering: What if we could end this controversy once and for all?

The real problem with same-sex marriage is not the qualifier but the noun. Religious advocates believe that marriage is a term loaded with moral and religious meaning. Gay advocates want to marry for much the same reason: as a social recognition of their equivalent moral standing. It might be the only political war fought over the proprietary use of a single noun. There is a simple solution: Stop using the word "marriage" in government licensing laws in favor of the more relevant term "civil union."

Where it all began

This battle began centuries ago, when the government was aligned with a particular faith in a struggle for sectarian dominance. In England in the 18th century, the Church of England was given exclusive control over legitimate marriages. Thus, unless you were married by the Church, your marriage was illegitimate - and so were any children that were produced in that marriage.

Even when marriage "reform" was legislated in the Declaration of Rights in 1776, the government still limited its recognition of marriages to couples married by Anglican ministers. In colonies such as Virginia, the government continued this preference for Anglican marriages (requiring special licenses for ministers of other religions).

This parochial use of marriage recognition continues in many countries. Indeed, courts in Israel recognize only Jewish marriages performed in Orthodox Jewish ceremonies.

In the USA, most states make it a crime to marry couples without government licenses, making even purely religious "marriages" a potential crime. Thus, in New York, Unitarian Universalist ministers Kay Greenleaf and Dawn Sangrey were criminally charged for officiating at weddings for same-sex couples who could not get marriage licenses. Even when Jason West married couples as mayor of New Paltz, N.Y., he was also charged criminally. Thus, the government will prevent a religion or civic group from performing a marriage, even if the marriage would have no legal effect without a marriage license.

If the role of government in maintaining "legitimate" forms of marriage doesn't make you uncomfortable, it should. In most other areas, the government steadfastly avoids this type of religious squabble, separating governmental functions from religious faiths. Marriage, however, has always been a conspicuous door placed in the wall of the separation between church and state.

The government's distinction between legitimate and illegitimate marriages takes sides in a controversy that has raged since the formation of the first religions. Many religious groups, which include tens of thousands of Americans, believe in plural marriage or polygamy as a human right and divinely ordained.

Other groups insist on endogamy (marriage within a defined group), while others insist on exogamy (marriage outside of a defined group). While many fundamentalists believe that marriage can only be a union of a man or a woman, other Christians reject this interpretation and embrace same-sex marriage.

The reason that marriage licenses are so valued by advocates is precisely the reason it should be expunged from public documents: It conveys a religious or moral meaning. Conversely, the state interest in marriage concerns its legal meaning. It is the agreement itself, not its inherent religious meaning, that compels the registry of marriages by the government. Once married, the legal rights and obligations of the couple change in areas ranging from taxes to inheritance to personal injury to testimonial privileges.

The government's policing role over legitimate marriages also produces curious contradictions. While the government criminalizes the marriage of same-sex couples without official licenses (denied to them as a matter of policy), it does not police religious practices governing divorces.

For example, Orthodox Jews believe that a woman remains married regardless of any civil divorce until her former husband gives her a "get," or voluntary termination of the marriage. Some women have been left "married" for decades by former husbands refusing to recognize the termination of their marriage. Even so, the government still recognizes that they are indeed divorced because we view a registered divorce as ending their civic obligations to each other.

The civil answer

The same approach should apply to marriages, leaving the moral validity of a marriage to religious organizations. For state purposes, couples would simply sign a civil union agreement that confirms their legal obligations to each other and any progeny. Whether they are married in religious ceremonies would be left entirely to them and their faith. The government's interest and role would be confined to enforcing the civil contract, as it would any other civil agreement.

Consenting adults should be able to assume the obligations of a civil union regardless of how their neighbors view their morality. As in other areas, adults should be able to follow the dictates of their own faith so long as they do not endanger or harm others, particularly minors.

Whether damnation awaits monogamists or polygamists or same-sex couples is a matter between citizens and their respective faiths. The government should address that aspect of marriage that concerns its insular needs: confirming the legal obligations of consenting adults. As for our politicians, there are levees to be rebuilt, corruption to end and wars to win.

Of course, this solution would deprive both sides of the debate of a controversy that has been a political and financial windfall. Nonetheless, the public certification of the moral relationships is not the call of government; it is the call of the faithful. It is time we move beyond moral licensing by the government and return marriage to its proper realm: in the churches, temples, mosques, and the hearts of every citizen.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University, and he is a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.

Copyright © 2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

The Abortion-Rights Side Invokes God, Too

April 3, 2006
The N.Y. Times
Political Memo
The Abortion-Rights Side Invokes God, Too

By NEELA BANERJEE
In any given week, if you walked into one of Washington's big corporate hotels early in the morning, you would find a community of the faithful, quite often conservative Christians, rallying the troops, offering solace and denouncing the opposition at a prayer breakfast.

So you might be forgiven for thinking that such a group was in attendance on Friday in a ballroom of the Washington Hilton. People wearing clerical collars and small crucifixes were wedged at tables laden with muffins, bowing their heads in prayer. Seminarians were welcomed. Scripture was cited. But the name of the sponsor cast everything in a new light: the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

To its critics, Planned Parenthood is the godless super-merchant of abortion. To its supporters, it is the dependably secular defender of abortion rights. But at this breakfast, God was everywhere, easily invoked by believers of various stripes.

"We are here this morning because, through our collective efforts, we are agents in bringing our fragile world ever closer to the promise of redemption," Rabbi Dennis S. Ross, director of Concerned Clergy for Choice, told the audience. "As clergy from an array of denominations, we say yes to the call before us. Please join me in prayer: We praise you, God, ruler of time and space, for challenging us to bring healing and comfort to your world."

"Amen," the audience responded.

The Interfaith Prayer Breakfast has been part of Planned Parenthood's annual convention for four years. Most ministers and rabbis at the breakfast have known the group far longer.

Margaret Sanger, founder of the organization that became Planned Parenthood, drew clergy members in the early 20th century by relating the suffering of women who endured successive pregnancies that ravaged their health and sought illegal abortions in their desperation, said the Rev. Thomas R. Davis of the United Church of Christ, in his book "Sacred Work, Planned Parenthood and Its Clergy Alliances."

In the 1930's, Jewish and mainline Protestant groups began to voice their support for birth control. In 1962, a Maryland clergy coalition successfully pressed the state to permit the disbursal of contraception. In the late 1960's, some 2,000 ministers and rabbis across the country banded together to give women information about abortion providers and to lobby for the repeal of anti-abortion laws.

"The clergy could open that door because the clergy had a certain moral authority," said Mr. Davis, who is chairman of Planned Parenthood's clergy advisory board but whose book is not sponsored by the group. "They balanced the moral authority of the critics."

As the scrape of silverware quieted at the breakfast, the Rev. W. Stewart MacColl told the audience how a Presbyterian church in Houston that he had led and several others had worked with Planned Parenthood to start a family planning center. Protesters visited his church. Yet his 900 parishioners drove through picket lines every week to attend services. One Sunday, he and his wife, Jane, took refreshments to the protesters out of respect for their understanding of faith, he said.

Mr. MacColl said a parishioner called him the next day to comment: "That's all very well for you to say, but you don't drive to church with a 4-year-old in the back seat of your car and have to try to explain to him when a woman holds up a picture of a dead baby and screams through the window, 'Your church believes in killing babies.' "

Mr. MacColl said of the abortion protester: "She would, I suspect, count herself a lover of life, a lover of the unborn, a lover of God. And yet she spoke in harshness, hatred and frightened a little child."

Mr. MacColl quoted the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr: " 'Sometimes the worst evil is done by good people who do not know that they are not good.' "

The crowd murmured its assent.

Then Mr. MacColl challenged them. "The trouble is, I find myself reflected in that woman," he said. "Because I can get trapped in self-righteousness and paint those who oppose me in dark colors they do not deserve. Is that, at times, true of you, as well?"

This time, people were silent.

It is not lost on Mr. Davis how the passion of the Christian right in its effort to abolish abortion and curtail access to birth control now mirrors the efforts of clergy members 40 years ago to do the opposite.

"They're a religious tradition, too, and they are moved by Scripture," he said, although the Bible says nothing explicit about abortion. "When we understood the suffering in these kinds of situations that women were in, we understood that for reasons of justice, we had to act. We're doing it for theological and Biblical reasons."

A perception may exist that the denominations supporting abortion rights are outnumbered and out-shouted by their more conservative brethren. But that worried Mr. Davis little, he said, for he and other like-minded clergy members were in the minority in the 1960's, too.

Still, some clergy members could barely contain their outrage. "The more we are able to cultivate the capacity in every person — women and men — to make informed ethical judgments both in ourselves and our society, the more we are coming into relationship with the transcendent, with God," said the Rev. Susan Thistlethwaite, president of Chicago Theological Seminary.

"Human existence as a materialistic quest for power and dominance, a crass manipulation of fear and intolerance for political gain, drives us apart both from one another and from God," she said. "For what does it profit you to gain the whole world and lose your soul?"


Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

The power of prayer could make matters worse

Study tests the power of prayer and finds it could make matters worse
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
Published: 01 April 2006

"We are praying for you ... you will be in my prayers." In this ostentatiously religious country, such phrases drop routinely from the lips of presidents, politicians and ordinary people when wishing someone well before an operation. But do prayers make any difference? If a major scientific study here is to be believed, the answer is, no. Indeed, if a patient knows there is organised prayer on his or her behalf, such intercession might actually make matters worse.

These are the main, if highly tentative, findings of one of the most ambitious exercises yet to evaluate the power of therapeutic prayer. The $2.5m (£1.4m) study was done over a decade at six major US medical centres and involved 1,800 patients who had heart bypass surgery.

The patients - 65 per cent of whom said they believed in the power of prayer - were split into three groups. Two were prayed for, the third was not. Of those who were prayed for, one group was told so, and the others were told merely that they may or may not be prayed for. Three congregations were recruited to do the praying, one Protestant and two from Catholic monasteries, and given the names of patients.

Prayers began the night before surgery, and continued for two weeks after, using the same intercession, for "a successful surgery and a quick healthy recovery with no complications". After 30 days, researchers went through the results, or lack of them. There was no significant difference between the groups, they found.

This study is no more likely than its many predecessors to resolve the issue. Indeed, sceptics and believers in the power of prayer claim prayer is a supernatural force, beyond the reach of science. Thus, even the most scrupulous research is ultimately pointless.

"God must be smiling broadly," said Sister Carol Rennie, the prioress of St Paul's Monastery in St Paul, Minnesota, one of three praying congregations. "It [the study] tells me frankly that God's way of working with people is a mystery, and that technology can't determine the effects of prayer."

But it has raised intriguing questions about whether people should be told others are praying for them. A slightly higher proportion of whose who knew they were the subject of prayers suffered complications than those who did not.

The difference was very small - 59 per cent compared to 51 per cent - but researchers wonder if the problems among those who knew they were being prayed for reflected in part a "performance anxiety," said Charles Bethea, an Oklahoma cardiologist and an author of the study. "It may have made them uncertain, wondering, 'Am I so sick they had to call in a prayer team?'"

That is conjecture. But two things are certain. A study supposed to be the last word on the subject will be followed by others. And, whether or not it works, Americans will keep on praying.

A moral battleground, a civil discourse

A moral battleground, a civil discourse
By Charles C. HaynesMon Mar 20, 6:44 AM ET

Tragically, public schools have become front lines in the culture war over homosexuality - and the biggest losers are the kids caught in the crossfire of incendiary rhetoric and bitter lawsuits.

In school districts across the nation, escalating conflicts involving sexual orientation in the curriculum, student clubs, speech codes and other areas of school life are undermining the educational mission of our schools. Media stories in the past two months alone have spotlighted bitter fights over these issues in Utah, Pennsylvania, Kansas, California, Idaho and Florida. Any notion of the public interest is often lost in the clash of world views across seemingly unbridgeable distances.

When people are this far apart, every act by one side is seen as a hostile move by the other. A "Day of Silence" to protest treatment of gays and lesbians is now followed by a "Day of Truth" to promote conservative religious views of homosexuality. A T-shirt proclaiming "Straight Pride" is worn to counter one professing "Gay Pride." These differences are deep and difficult to negotiate.

Can we do better? If we care about education - and the future of the nation - we must. That's why the First Amendment Center asked Wayne Jacobsen of BridgeBuilders, an organization that helps communities find common ground on religious issues, to help me create a road map for winning the peace in the fight over sexual orientation in schools. The drafting committee also included representatives from the Christian Educators Association International and the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, two groups with widely divergent views on homosexuality, but with a shared commitment to civil discourse.

It took eight months to hammer out a statement of principles we could all support. But finally, on March 9, we released "Public Schools and Sexual Orientation: A First Amendment framework for finding common ground." Two major educational organizations, the American Association of School Administrators and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, have endorsed the document. The guide does not prescribe a particular outcome, but rather proposes a process for reaching an agreement that all sides can support. All of the sponsoring groups have agreed to disseminate the guidelines widely and encourage schools to address these issues proactively.

Fairness is a two-way street

For the process to work, school officials must be fair, honest brokers of a dialogue that involves all stakeholders. That means, first and foremost, that school leaders must refrain from choosing sides in the culture-war debate over homosexuality. If schools are going to find agreement on policies and practices that bring the community together, it won't be by taking a side and coercing others to accept it.

Consider the case a few years ago of Thomas McLaughlin, a junior high school student in Pulaski County, Ark. Thomas complained that because he refused to keep quiet about being gay, school officials harassed and punished him - forcing him at one point to read aloud Bible verses and prayers. After a lawsuit was filed, the school district settled by paying damages and apologizing to the student.

On the other side of the spectrum, Betsy Hansen, a high school student in Ann Arbor, Mich., challenged her district in 2002 for censoring her religious views in opposition to homosexuality. During a "diversity week" program, school officials prevented Betsy from delivering a speech she was asked to give because they claimed her Roman Catholic views on homosexuality were "negative." Betsy also sued - and she won when a judge ruled that her free speech rights had been violated.

As the outcome of these cases makes clear, school officials can't impose one religious view of homosexuality, but neither can they censor the religious convictions of students.

First Amendment ground rules

To avoid divisive fights and lawsuits, educators and parents must agree on civic ground rules to ensure fairness for all sides. After all, public schools belong to everyone. However deeply we disagree about homosexuality, the vast majority of us want schools to uphold the rights of all students in a safe learning environment. It isn't possible for us to reach ideological or religious consensus, but it is possible - and necessary - to reach civic consensus on civil dialogue.

School districts divided about how to handle issues concerning sexual orientation should take a step back from the debate and find agreement on First Amendment principles. Most Americans can agree that freedom of religion and speech are inherent rights for all. Starting with an acknowledgement of inalienable rights immediately levels the playing field, helping to ensure that everyone has a right to speak - and everyone's claim of conscience is taken seriously.

More challenging, but still attainable, is an agreement that we all have a civic responsibility to guard the rights of others, including those with whom we disagree. And, finally, people must agree to debate one another without resorting to personal attacks, ridicule, false characterizations of opposing positions and similar tactics.

In the guide, we call this commitment to the principles of rights, responsibilities and respect "First Amendment ground rules." Using this framework, people with deep differences are able to come to the table ready to engage in constructive dialogue.

Finding common ground

With civic ground rules in place, school districts should consider creating a permanent "common ground task force" that fully represents the range of perspectives in the community. Given time and opportunity, people with opposing views learn to trust and respect one another. And that trust and respect can then translate into shared recommendations on safe schools, balanced curricula, appropriate student expression and other issues.

When they begin to listen to one another, most educators, parents and students discover that they want the same thing: public schools that are safe and free for all students. As we say in the guide: "A safe school is free of bullying and harassment. And a free school is safe for student speech even about issues that divide us." Once these shared goals are identified, people are ready to tackle other contentious issues such as gay student clubs and the treatment of sexual orientation in the curriculum.

Winning the peace isn't easy - it takes commitment and courage. But if people on all sides uphold the rights and responsibilities of the First Amendment, they can agree on policies and practices that serve the common good.

Charles C. Haynes is the co-author of Finding Common Ground: A Guide to Religious Liberty in Public Schoolsand senior scholar at the First Amendment Center in Arlington, Va.

Copyright © 2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

The White House statement on medicare (wrong)

Patients our top priority
By Mark McClellanThu Mar 16, 6:39 AM ET

The Medicare program is taking unprecedented steps to improve quality and to support Americans in getting the best care at the lowest cost. We are providing the most important new benefits in Medicare's history, including drug coverage and preventive care. We are providing consumers with vital information on the quality of care at almost all of the nation's hospitals and nursing homes. We are taking steps to pay more for better care, not just more services.

The Institute of Medicine found that quality of care is improving. Still, more progress remains our top priority. Medicare's Quality Improvement Organization program is an important element of this effort to get the right care for every person, every time. QIOs are making a positive difference in such areas as preventing surgical infections and reducing the use of restraints in nursing homes.

But we agree that the program can be even better, and we have already taken steps to get more bang for the buck. The QIOs have increased efforts to help health care providers measure and improve their performance.

And to help make sure beneficiaries know about their ability to file complaints and get them addressed promptly, we have increased our outreach efforts through our publications and our website. We are engaged in an ambitious outreach campaign, have improved the service on our 1-800-MEDICARE toll-free phone line, and have established an ombudsman's office to assist people with Medicare-related problems.

The Institute recommended building on these efforts by having specific organizations specialize in handling complaints, and we will take steps to implement this to the maximum extent possible under the law.

Many of the recommendations require legislative changes and funding that are not currently available to us. So we look forward to continuing to work with Congress, health professionals, and our valued partners and stakeholders to make further progress in improving care for Medicare beneficiaries and all Americans.

Together, we can get more benefits from what the Institute refers to as "a potentially valuable nationwide infrastructure dedicated to promoting quality health care."

Mark McClellan is administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Copyright © 2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

USA Today statement on Medicare (more accurate)

Got a Medicare complaint? Don't count on relief
Thu Mar 16, 6:39 AM ET

About $300 million of your federal tax dollars go each year to something called "quality improvement organizations." These are private groups in every state that are supposed to investigate complaints from Medicare patients and work with health providers to improve care. Yet it's highly questionable whether you're getting your money's worth.

Say you think doctors misdiagnosed a relative's condition. Even if you know where to complain to, you might never learn what went wrong, or why. Archaic laws prevent the organizations from telling you much of anything, unless your physicians grant permission.

Consider the case of David Shipp of Louisville, whose wife died of colon cancer in 1999. After a four-year battle, a federal judge ordered Health Care Excel, the organization that investigated Shipp's complaint, to reveal that his wife had received substandard care. But that's all he was able to learn.

The complaint process is badly broken. The Institute of Medicine, the government's health advisory body, and Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Iowa Republican who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, are calling for a major overhaul in the 25-year-old program. While Medicare administrator Mark McClellan acknowledges shortcomings, his agency has been slow to fix them.

Among the deficiencies:

• Low awareness. McClellan's agency does a poor job of informing patients of their rights. As a result, the private groups review about 2,500 complaints a year. That's about one for every 17,000 Medicare recipients.

• Weak sanctions. The quality improvement groups are loath to suggest punishing doctors. Only five health providers have been recommended for sanctions since 2003. Not surprisingly, the organizations are dominated by physicians and health executives.

• Lack of results. Hospitals that participate with the groups aren't any more likely to demonstrate improvements in quality than hospitals that don't, a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found last June.

• No-bid contracts. Only six of the 53 contracts nationwide over the past three years were subject to competitive bidding.

• High living. Trustees of the groups have traveled to expensive resorts in Colorado Springs and Cape Cod for executive retreats, according to Grassley.

Quality Improvement Organizations do have potential to improve care by working directly with doctors and others, particularly in rural areas, to meet national standards.

To fix the system, Congress should allow the organizations to reveal to patients the results of investigations and to publicize performance records of health providers.

Permitting more patients to join the boards would send a message that patients are the client, not the health industry. And requiring competitive bids for contracts could also improve performance.

Americans spend more per person on health care than do people of any other developed country, including $294 billion this year on Medicare alone. What are we buying for all that money? It's time for serious answers, plus a guarantee that patients know that their complaints will be heard - and answered.

Copyright © 2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

Secrecy hides accountability

Secrecy hides accountability
Tue Mar 14, 6:56 AM ET

In the movies, government confidentiality is typically depicted by documents stamped "Top Secret." In real life, much of what's kept under wraps has little or nothing to do with national security or the war on terror.

Instead, it can involve muzzling critics, covering up corruption and incompetence, or simply mindless bureaucracy. Phone numbers, policy papers, contracting details, historical documents, whistle-blower allegations - they're all disappearing from public view. By one estimate, government papers are being classified at the rate of 125 a minute.

To those in power, keeping facts hidden makes life easier; the probability of oversight drops. But those who believe the sunshine of disclosure makes democracy stronger are denied the tools of accountability.

Examples abound:

Environmental secrecy Like virtually all top climate experts, NASA's James Hansen thinks global warming is an urgent problem.

But Hansen's view doesn't line up with the White House's wait-and-see position. Recently, NASA's public affairs officials leaned on him to curtail media contacts and speeches. His message is one they'd rather not hear discussed.

Fortunately for Hansen, his high profile insulated him from dismissal or other retribution. "We live in a free country and work for the taxpayer," he told The New York Times last month. "We should provide useful information, not propaganda." For scientists with a lower profile, though, speaking out against the party line can endanger their job security.

Another environmental secrecy debate has emerged over the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on 9/11. It's likely that federal officials downplayed the impact of toxic gases, a federal judge concluded recently as she allowed a lawsuit to proceed against former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Christine Whitman. Residents moved back into the lower Manhattan area after the EPA assured them there was no risk from pollutants such as asbestos dust.

Many of the federal advisory committees - established to provide unvarnished scientific and technical advice to government - meet in secret. Nearly two-thirds of the more than 7,000 meetings in 2004 were closed to the public. It's hard to see special interests at work when the doors are closed.

Contracting secrecy Each year, the government hands out about $300 billion in contracts. Yet there's no requirement that it collect and publish information on criminal, civil and administrative actions involving contractors. Industry lobbyists for the largest contractors have no trouble foiling efforts by shoestring-budget public interest groups to force the government to reveal those details.

What doesn't get published doesn't get reviewed. For instance, important details about reconstruction contracts in Iraq and the Gulf Coast never make it into public view.

Companies winning work despite having skeletons in their closets need not worry about exposure. The "administrative agreements" and waivers that government agencies routinely issue to contractors neatly cover those up: They're secret.

Secrecy for the sake of secrecy. This is the most perplexing and insidious of all the secrecy excesses. Recently, scholars researching history lessons involving the Korean and Vietnam wars noticed that documents once available had disappeared. Half-century-old intelligence analysis from the Korean War, for example, went from open files to closed ones.

A program to reclassify declassified documents at the National Archives began nearly seven years ago - the result of a backlash from intelligence officials who believed the declassifying had gone too far. But much of that program, involving as many as 55,000 pages, appears to involve documents of interest only to historians.

The irony of secrecy for the sake of secrecy is that it can make the nation less safe. Thomas Kean, the former New Jersey governor who co-chaired the 9/11 Commission, said lack of communication among government agencies, which ranged from senseless turf wars to legal impediments, hindered efforts to uncover the 9/11 plots.

As a symbolic gesture, the commission suggested, the government should start releasing the budgets of the nation's intelligence agencies. Terrorists aren't likely to care whether the number is $20 billion or $30 billion. But taxpayers deserve to find out whether their money is being well-spent.

Open government isn't about partisan politics or journalists' rights. It's about your right to know what your government is doing with your money. Especially when national security is not involved, secrecy should be the rare exception, not the rule.

Copyright © 2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

The liberal baby bust

The liberal baby bust
By Phillip LongmanTue Mar 14, 6:56 AM ET

What's the difference between Seattle and Salt Lake City? There are many differences, of course, but here's one you might not know. In Seattle, there are nearly 45% more dogs than children. In Salt Lake City, there are nearly 19% more kids than dogs.

This curious fact might at first seem trivial, but it reflects a much broader and little-noticed demographic trend that has deep implications for the future of global culture and politics. It's not that people in a progressive city such as Seattle are so much fonder of dogs than are people in a conservative city such as Salt Lake City. It's that progressives are so much less likely to have children.

It's a pattern found throughout the world, and it augers a far more conservative future - one in which patriarchy and other traditional values make a comeback, if only by default. Childlessness and small families are increasingly the norm today among progressive secularists. As a consequence, an increasing share of all children born into the world are descended from a share of the population whose conservative values have led them to raise large families.

Today, fertility correlates strongly with a wide range of political, cultural and religious attitudes. In the USA, for example, 47% of people who attend church weekly say their ideal family size is three or more children. By contrast, 27% of those who seldom attend church want that many kids.

In Utah, where more than two-thirds of residents are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 92 children are born each year for every 1,000 women, the highest fertility rate in the nation. By contrast Vermont - the first to embrace gay unions - has the nation's lowest rate, producing 51 children per 1,000 women.

Similarly, in Europe today, the people least likely to have children are those most likely to hold progressive views of the world. For instance, do you distrust the army and other institutions and are you prone to demonstrate against them? Then, according to polling data assembled by demographers Ron Lesthaeghe and Johan Surkyn, you are less likely to be married and have kids or ever to get married and have kids. Do you find soft drugs, homosexuality and euthanasia acceptable? Do you seldom, if ever, attend church? Europeans who answer affirmatively to such questions are far more likely to live alone or be in childless, cohabiting unions than are those who answer negatively.

This correlation between secularism, individualism and low fertility portends a vast change in modern societies. In the USA, for example, nearly 20% of women born in the late 1950s are reaching the end of their reproductive lives without having children. The greatly expanded childless segment of contemporary society, whose members are drawn disproportionately from the feminist and countercultural movements of the 1960s and '70s, will leave no genetic legacy. Nor will their emotional or psychological influence on the next generation compare with that of people who did raise children.

Single-child factor

Meanwhile, single-child families are prone to extinction. A single child replaces one of his or her parents, but not both. Consequently, a segment of society in which single-child families are the norm will decline in population by at least 50% per generation and quite quickly disappear. In the USA, the 17.4% of baby boomer women who had one child account for a mere 9.2% of kids produced by their generation. But among children of the baby boom, nearly a quarter descend from the mere 10% of baby boomer women who had four or more kids.

This dynamic helps explain the gradual drift of American culture toward religious fundamentalism and social conservatism. Among states that voted for President Bush in 2004, the average fertility rate is more than 11% higher than the rate of states for Sen. John Kerry.

It might also help to explain the popular resistance among rank-and-file Europeans to such crown jewels of secular liberalism as the European Union. It turns out that Europeans who are most likely to identify themselves as "world citizens" are also less likely to have children.

Rewriting history?

Why couldn't tomorrow's Americans and Europeans, even if they are disproportionately raised in patriarchal, religiously minded households, turn out to be another generation of '68? The key difference is that during the post-World War II era, nearly all segments of society married and had children. Some had more than others, but there was much more conformity in family size between the religious and the secular. Meanwhile, thanks mostly to improvements in social conditions, there is no longer much difference in survival rates for children born into large families and those who have few if any siblings.

Tomorrow's children, therefore, unlike members of the postwar baby boom generation, will be for the most part descendants of a comparatively narrow and culturally conservative segment of society. To be sure, some members of the rising generation may reject their parents' values, as often happens. But when they look for fellow secularists with whom to make common cause, they will find that most of their would-be fellow travelers were quite literally never born.

Many will celebrate these developments. Others will view them as the death of the Enlightenment. Either way, they will find themselves living through another great cycle of history.

Phillip Longman is a fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of The Empty Cradle: How Falling Birthrates Threaten World Prosperity and What to Do About It. This essay is adapted from his cover story in the current issue of Foreign Policy magazine.

Copyright © 2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

The president's tin ear & this from the Washington Times Bush ass kisser)

The president's tin ear

By Barry Casselma
Published March 10, 2006
The Washington Times

Once again, President Bush's popularity has gone down, this time to near its previous bottom. His friends and supporters are dismayed, especially since the economic and other news is not that bad. It is certainly not as bad as it has been, or as it might be.
The intensity and duration of this unpopularity is not unique. Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton aroused similar emotions. Only Nixon did not recover from this after his presidency (although his foreign policy skill has been vindicated).
What did Presidents Truman, Reagan and Clinton have in common? They were good communicators, and they had an ear for what the American public thought and felt (although they often went against what political pundits told them was what Americans thought and felt). The worst thing an American politician can have is a tin ear.
This is not about public policy. I have defended Mr. Bush's policies in the Middle East and his long-term vision, and I continue to do so. His attempts to reform Social Security and create health-savings accounts are on the right track.
Although I think his proposals so far are not enough, he is right to try to reform education and health care. I applaud his new efforts to reduce American dependency on foreign oil imports, and in insisting on drastic U.N. reform
What is not commendable is a pattern of personal unwillingness to engage and include the American public in building support for his own policies.
There are some obvious reasons for this. Mr. Bush, who is quite capable of being charming, likeable and effective to small, friendly audiences, apparently does not enjoy his role as communicator in chief to the nation, a role that is as much part of the job as commander in chief of the armed forces. This role is not specified in the Constitution, but it has been a necessary part of the job since the first president, George Washington.
Much of the national media opposes Mr. Bush, and makes no secret of it. Many of his loudest critics make no effort to evaluate what he says and does fairly. Those in the entertainment industry, who are often badly informed, have relentlessly made fun of him. Sometimes satire was deserved, and no one denies the inherent role of the media to be critical. But there has been a venom in the media/cultural left for Mr. Bush, who has apparently long mistrusted the media, and from his 2000 campaign on has kept it at arm's length. His first press secretary, Ari Fleischer, was skillful, but his assignment was not to be forthcoming. His current press secretary, Scott McLellan, is neither skillful nor forthcoming. It is a formula for a communication disaster.
The latest flap is over a deal to allow an Arab-owned company to manage six American ports. This is a large company which is already managing several world ports, and doing it well. They submitted the best bid. The fact that this company is owned by an Arab ally raises a question of political sensitivity to our allies and to the Arab world at large. But it is a tin ear that does not realize how this would be received by not only opponents and the media, but also by supporters and the public at large. This is the same political ear that nominated Harriet Myers for the supreme court and avoided going to New Orleans right after Hurricane Katrina.
This suggests that the kind of advice the president received during his first term is no longer reaching him in his second. Some explain that this is because Mr. Bush's penchant to replace outgoing cabinet and sub-cabinet officers, and his personal staff, with their juniors is a compulsive resistance to counsel from outside. (This should not be confused with the president's stubborn adherence to his foreign and domestic policy vision and ideas, which remain valid and laudable.)
This is about implementation, strategy and communication, which are the other half of the executive equation. As the first U.S. president with an M.B.A., Mr. Bush is inexcusably performing only half the job when he places loyalty and self-imposed isolation above good management.
Even more egregious is the president's timing for this executive muddle. The mid-term elections will soon enter their final campaign months, and the president risks hitherto safe margins of control of both houses of Congress. Where is Karl Rove? A contrarian political trend which began only a few months ago, giving the Republican Party unexpected opportunities in national races, e.g., in Maryland, New Jersey, Minnesota, Ohio, Washington and elsewhere, would evaporate if a tidal wave against the administration were to develop.
It's one thing to be loyal, and another matter to be loyal to those who do not appear to be really up to the job.

Barry Casselman writes about national politics for Preludium News Service.




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