INVISIBLE TAIWAN

Not that many in the United States would notice, but February 28 (2-28) is a national holiday in Taiwan. On this day in 1947 an incident occurred in Taipei, which led to the massive slaughter of thousands of Taiwanese at the hands of Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese Nationalist troops.

In 1947 people here were weary and healing from the wounds of World War II. What attention could be mustered on the international scene was focused on the Iron Curtain falling in Europe and the civil war between the Chinese Communists and Chinese Nationalists on the Mainland. Although there were chilling reports by nationally known journalists, Tillman and Peggy Durdin in the New York Times and in The Nation, there was hardly a blip on the radar screen of public awareness outside Taiwan.

Except for the 1950s, 60s and 70s, when Taiwan under Chiang Kai-shek was the darling of America as “Free China,” there haven’t been many other blips on the screen. Since Taiwan became a democracy in the 1990s, the silence has been deafening.

Taiwan is the poster child for rampant double standards toward human rights violations and territorial expansion in Europe and Asia. While the West supported the independence of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithunia, and recently the US made Kosovo independent despite the strong protests of Russia, nothing comparable has done for Taiwan. As Jim Mann observed in The China Fantasy: How Our Leaders Explain Away Chinese Repression (2007), while Soviet dissidents were cool, Chinese [and Taiwanese] democracy activists seem to lack appeal for westerners.

Maybe on this February 28, we might pause for a few minutes from our focus on the presidential primaries and consider one of the most important and least recognized issues that the next administration will face. Our beginning point is the words of Vorkosigan in one of his excellent diaries on DailyKos:

"it is wrong to understand Taiwan as part of China that has become unhinged somehow. Taiwan was never part of China."

Second-guessing geo-political decisions made over sixty years ago is tricky business, but there is no denying that decisions made in ending World War II did not result in liberation for everyone. In fact, those decisions resulted in the enslavement of millions of others. In his address in Latvia on his visit in 2005 President Bush criticized the 1945 treaty signed at Yalta by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Soviet leader Josef Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill that defined postwar zones of control, saying that the decisions followed in the “unjust tradition” of an earlier deal between Stalin and the Nazis. Yalta opened the door to the Soviet occupation of eastern and central Europe, as the President said, “Once again, when powerful governments negotiated, the freedom of small nations was somehow expendable.”

President Bush might have been speaking of Taiwan, an island slightly larger than Maryland and Delaware combined, just slightly smaller than Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia and about about 95 miles off the China coast. Although smaller geographically than the Baltic States, Taiwan’s economy is 17th largest in the world.

The people of Taiwan were also adversely affected by the Yalta agreement. After being a colony of Japan for fifty years, having been ceded by China to Japan at the end of the Sino-Japanese War in 1895, Taiwan was returned to control by Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist Government of China (ROC) at the end of World War II. The matter had been settled at the Cairo Conference in 1943 when President Roosevelt was trying to keep Chiang in the war against the Japanese. Part of the price was Chiang’s being able to occupy Taiwan. The Cairo Declaration called for all territories taken from China by the Japanese to be returned. In the formal San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951 the Japanese gave up all right and title to the island but no beneficiary was named. To this day, the status of Taiwan, as far as international law is concerned, remains undetermined, with our policy being that the two sides of the Strait must agree mutually and peacefully on Taiwan's status, and the people of Taiwan must consent to any such arrangement.

No government on Mainland China made any serious attempt to control and develop Taiwan until the late 19th century. The island was officially declared a province in 1887, a scant eight years before it was ceded to Japan as a result of the Sino-Japanese War. Historically, the most significant characteristic of Taiwan’s relationship with China has been its tenuous contact with the mainland. Although not a government document, Edgar Snow in his book, Red Star Over China, recorded the following statement by Mao Tse-tung in a 1936 interview:

“It is the immediate task of China to regain all our lost territories, not merely to defend our sovereignty below the Great Wall. This means that Manchuria must be regained. We do not, however, include Korea, formerly a Chinese colony, but when we have reestablished the independence of the lost territories of China, and if the Koreans wish to break away from the chains of Japanese imperialism, we will extend them our enthusiastic help in their struggle for independence. The same things applies for Formosa [Taiwan].”[1]

Alas, when Japan was defeated, like the Baltic States, the Yalta Conference set Taiwan’s future. And it wasn’t pretty. When I was in Taiwan, over and over, I heard the old saying, “The Japanese were like dogs and sometimes they bit, but the Chinese came and were like pigs; they just wallowed.” The corrupt and brutal Nationalist Government that lost the war on the mainland with the Chinese Communists were no less corrupt and brutal in their occupation of Taiwan. Few Taiwanese didn’t have a relative or know personally someone who was murdered in the aftermath of the incident on February 28.

During the cold War and the hostility between Communist and non-Communist governments, Taiwan was considered “Free China” because it wasn’t communist. Of course, if you listened to the Taiwanese people, they were quick to tell you that Taiwan was neither “free” nor “China,” and that they had as little inclination to be ruled by Chinese communists as they did the military dictator, Chiang Kai-shek. When I was there, there were still many political prisoners whose only offense had been to disagree with government propaganda. Thousands of other Taiwanese had simply disappeared over the years, never to be heard from again.

While the people of China endured “Red Terror” under the Chinese Communists, the people of Taiwan endured a period of “White Terror”. The period of “White Terror” extended from 1947 to 1987 when martial law was finally repealed. In 1999 the Nationalist Party came under increasing domestic and international pressure to explain what had happened in this period. An investigative report by their own Historical Research Commission estimated that 5,000 people were executed during this time and that 10,000 were imprisoned. Independent sources have estimated that the figure is more likely 90,000 and an undetermined number executed -- that in a country then of only 15 million people.[2]

Against overwhelming odds, Taiwan has become a democracy. A recent article in The Economist subtitled, “In Praise of Taiwan’s Democracy,” marveled at the improbability of it:

In 1987, Chiang Ching-kuo, who was then Taiwan’s president, lifted martial law. The KMT appeared impregnable. Its structure still followed the Leninist principles Soviet advisors had inculcated on the Chinese mainland in the 1920s, though it had become perhaps the world’s richest political party. A mass organisation of some 2.5m members, or nearly 15% of the population, it benefited from a rigged electoral system that ensured a permanent parliamentary majority, and, under martial law, a ban on opposition parties…

Yet of all the people-power revolutions that sprouted and were sometimes savagely uprooted in Asia in the late 1980s and early 1990s—the Philippines in 1986, South Korea in 1987, Burma in 1988, China in 1989 and Thailand in 1992—Taiwan’s, in 1990, was the most low-key and arguably the most successful. The KMT yielded—not without a fight, but without a shot being fired in anger.

While Taiwan may now be the most democratic nation in Asia, freedom and democracy are precious but fragile commodities, which can be lost far easier than attained. The main threat to Taiwan is from across the China Straits in the government of the People’s Republic of China. Like the freedom of the Baltic States, the rest of the free nations of the world have an important stake in the continuing freedom of the people of Taiwan. America’s resolve in this matter may be sorely tested.

Russian President Vladimir Putin considers the dissolution of the Soviet Empire a great catastrophe, but even he has acknowledged, “In effect, these Baltic countries were treated as pawns in world politics. And that is a tragedy for these nations. This must be stated plainly.” Having fought for their freedom from the KMT's authoritarian rule, the people of Taiwan should not be subjected, for geopolitical reasons like the Latvians, Lithuanians, and Estonians were to the Soviets, to the not so tender embrace of the PRC's Chinese Communist Party.

Although you are not likely to find these issues addressed in the presidential primary debates, the Taiwan-China issue is one of the most critical foreign policy issues the new administration will face. And if human rights matter at all, it will require wisdom and courage that hasn’t been seen in previous administrations, Democrat or Republican.

- Milo

[1] Interview with Mao Tse-tung, recorded by Edgar Snow, Red Star Over China (New York: Random House, Inc. 1938

[2] “We Deserve Fair Treatment,” Taipei Times, September 10, 1999. http://www.taiwanheadlines.gov.tw/880910/880910p4-1.htm

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENTS

On Monday, I had lunch with eleven friends. Most of the people at the table have retired at least once and are active as volunteers in serving the community in a variety of ways. We gathered to discuss what we might do to enable seniors—ourselves and others— to stay in our homes longer. We looked at a model in Boston, Beacon Hill Village, doing just that:

Beacon Hill Village helps persons age 50 and older who live on Beacon Hill and in its adjacent neighborhoods enjoy safer, healthier and more independent lives in their own homes–well connected to a familiar and attentive community.

Writing about BHV, the AARP Bulletin put it this way:

Now, they can do that, confident that even as they age they can deal with almost any contingency, large or small, without relying on relatives or friends. To preserve their independence, they can turn to the village, as the nonprofit association is known, which helps its 320 members find virtually any service they need—from 24-hour nursing care to help with a wayward cat, often at a discounted fee.

Their innovation is so appealing that a national expert on aging at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology asserts it could well change the way Americans—and the rest of the world—grow old. "The assisted living and the die-with-a-golf-club-in-your-hand communities had better take notice," says Joseph Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab, a think tank on aging.

******
Any neighborhood resident age 50 or older can join the village. Its members include retirees in their 90s as well as working people in their 50s and 60s.

"The younger ones join because they like the convenience of our services or they need help caring for a parent who lives with them," Willett {a social worker in the Village} says. "They want to support Beacon Hill Village, make sure it will be there as they age."

This and other models are being developed all over the country. This is not a panacea for those with complicated medical needs, but

the approach addresses what experts say can be a premature decision by older people to give up their homes in response to relatively minor problems: No way to get to the grocery store. Tradesmen unwilling to take on small repairs. The isolation of a snowy winter.

“Is this something we can/should replicate here in a city of 70,000 on the high desert of central Oregon?” That was our question at lunch. We went away with a plan to seriously explore the possibility.

If you already know about Beacon Hill Village or a similar effort,
If you follow the links above and read about BHV,
If you or your parents are facing these issues, or
If you are involved with senior services,
I would like to know what you think.

I plan to post stories in the weeks ahead about how our exploration proceeds. I welcome your wisdom as we work at this declaration of independents.

- Milo

PS: Read the instructions for submitting comments on the right lower panel.

THE DEMONIC POWER OF EGO

What do Ralph Nader and Eugene McCarthy have in common? Their presidential candidacies contributed mightily to victories by two of the worst Presidents in the history of the country: George Bush (2000) and Richard Nixon (1968).

Eugene McCarthy’s primary victories pushed Johnson to withdraw from the race, but he was unable to win the nomination. I believe his refusal to support Humphrey in the general election was the aid that gave Nixon victory. I respected McCarthy for his fight against Johnson, but my respect turned to great disappointment and anger when he allowed himself to become the nominee of the anti-war “New Party.” It wasn’t the votes he received in the few states where he was on the ballot, but his failure to support the Democratic nominee.

Only what I call the “demonic power of ego” would lead these two men, who are/were clearly not Republicans, to think so highly of themselves that they risked the nation’s future for self-gratification. Nader’s claim that the 2000 election was stolen by Jeb Bush, the Secretary of State, and the Supreme Court is a feeble defense of the disaster he helped create.

Yes, I was depressed to hear that Nader was entering this year’s presidential race, but in my better moments I told myself that he wouldn’t be the spoiler this year. I would like to know what you think. Let me know.

- Milo

POLAR BEAR POLITICS

Not without good reason is Alaska called the “Great Land,” at least that’s what I thought the first time I drove the Al-Can north toward my new home. Its sheer immensity merits such a designation and makes the human population even paltrier than its numbers (600,000+ people, or about 1 person per square mile, as opposed to that population hotbed of Wyoming with about 5 persons per square mile).

Polar bears are not nearly as numerous as humans, nor do they get to vote. Polar bears occur in two geographical populations: the Southern Beaufort Sea population shared with Canada (about 1,500 bears), and the Chukchi/Bering seas population shared with Russia (about 2000 bears). The best available information concludes that both populations are declining. Just over a year ago, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service – Alaska proposed to protect polar bears by putting them under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

That proposal, still awaiting decision by the federal government, has united the state’s Republican congressional delegation and Republican Governor Sarah Palin in opposition. That’s no small union. Over the last year, Senator Ted Stevens, Senator Lisa Murkowski, and Congressman Don Young have all been fending off corruptions charges and ethics violations. Governor Palin, on the other hand, won the statehouse in 2006 after alienating the state Republican establishment as an anticorruption whistle blower. But they are all together in opposition to putting polar bears under ESA.

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service,

The primary threat to polar bears is the decrease of sea ice coverage. Although some females use snow dens on land for birthing cubs, polar bears are almost completely dependent upon sea ice for their sustenance. Any significant changes in the abundance, distribution, or existence of sea ice will have effects on the number and behavior of these animals and their prey.

And the loss has been considerable, even in Alaskan terms. According to an AP story released on Friday, between 1970 and 2000 the loss was greater than the combined area of Alaska, Texas, California, and Georgia.

Alaska’s political leadership state their doubts about scientific evidence, but it is hard to take those objections too seriously when the immediate issue appears to be how listing the polar bear would involve a plan to protect the shrinking Arctic sea ice, thus endangering chances for a natural gas pipeline that would tap the North Slope’s vast reserves. Nearly 90% of Alaska’s unrestricted revenue for next year is projected to come from the oil industry.

There is an African proverb that says, “Until lions write history, the hunters will always be the heroes.” In our case, we might paraphrase, “Until polar bears write history, the political leaders will always be the heroes of the oil companies.”

But the concerns about protecting polar bears go far beyond the borders of Alaska. From the Heritage Foundation comes a plea:

The Department of the Interior (DOI), in response to litigation from environmental groups, is considering whether to list the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). For the first time in the history of the ESA, the threat of global warming would be the reason for listing a well-known species. Given the ESA's sweeping powers, such a move would raise energy prices by putting an end to promising new oil and natural gas production in Alaska. Even more troubling, listing the polar bear could be used as a back door to implement global warming policy nationwide by restricting energy production and use throughout the U.S. [bold mine] This would obviously harm the economy and—considering the ESA's poor track record—could also harm the polar bears as well. The President should tell the DOI not to take this highly problematic step.

There you have it: even greater than threatening a gas pipeline, listing the polar bears might trigger implementation of a global warming policy nationwide. That’s the big bugaboo! I must confess that I have heard some environmentalists express such hopes for getting the bears on the list. Isn’t it about time we have a global warming policy? If efforts to protect polar bears give us the push to do what our best scientific minds tell us we must do if we are to survive, why not? It may very well already be too late to save polar bears, but it may not yet be too late for the rest of the planet.

Looking Back: Jared Diamond, author of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2004), wrote an article nine years earlier titled, “Easter Island’s End,” which begins,

In just a few centuries, the people of Easter Island wiped out their forest, drove their plants and animals to extinction, and saw their complex society spiral into chaos and cannibalism. Are we about to follow their lead?

He wonders how it could have happened:

As we try to imagine the decline of Easter's civilization, we ask ourselves, "Why didn't they look around, realize what they were doing, and stop before it was too late? What were they thinking when they cut down the last palm tree?"

I suspect, though, that the disaster happened not with a bang but with a whimper. After all, there are those hundreds of abandoned statues to consider. The forest the islanders depended on for rollers and rope didn't simply disappear one day-it vanished slowly, over decades. Perhaps war interrupted the moving teams; perhaps by the time the carvers had finished their work, the last rope snapped. In the meantime, any islander who tried to warn about the dangers of progressive deforestation would have been overridden by vested interests of carvers, bureaucrats, and chiefs, whose jobs depended on continued deforestation… The changes in forest cover from year to year would have been hard to detect: yes, this year we cleared those woods over there, but trees are starting to grow back again on this abandoned garden site here. Only older people, recollecting their childhoods decades earlier, could have recognized a difference. Their children could no more have comprehended their parents' tales than my eight-year-old sons today can comprehend my wife's and my tales of what Los Angeles was like 30 years ago. Gradually trees became fewer, smaller, and less important. By the time the last fruit-bearing adult palm tree was cut, palms had long since ceased to be of economic significance. That left only smaller and smaller palm saplings to clear each year, along with other bushes and treelets. No one would have noticed the felling of the last small palm.

Alas, we have our own “carvers, bureaucrats, and chiefs”, whose jobs depend on the oil industry. The changes in the sea ice have not been all that difficult to detect, but they denied those at first too, and railed at the scientists who told them.

Will anyone notice when the last polar bear is gone?

- Milo

SAYING GOODBYE TO THE ESKIES

On Thursday afternoon, we loaded eight-week-old Christmas, Noel, and Star in a carrier—heavier because our sense of loss—and took them to the Central Oregon Humane Society. Born the day after Christmas, the three American Eskimo puppies came to us a day later. When Connie picked them up, they weighed 9 and 10 ounces.

The full story is rarely known when kittens and puppies come to foster care givers. We were told that their mom apparently didn’t want to be a mom and ravaged two of the litter. One other died of hypothermia because of no mother body warmth. Some dogs don’t make good mothers and it’s hard to figure, but it happens.

We learned that the American Eskimo is one of the Spitz families of Nordic breeds. First known as “German Spitz” in the U.S., the name was changed during World War I because of anti-German sentiments.

Connie became their mother, bottle feeding them every couple of hours, and then as they grew gradually lengthening the time between feedings and formula. I observed and went out each morning to build a fire in the shop where they were housed. I played with them, but didn’t have the rigorous feeding schedule or clean up responsibilities that Connie took care of.

When we arrived at the shelter Thursday, we were met by the staff. They knew this was not an easy transition for us, nor for the puppies. It never is. Everybody wanted to hold them. Friday, the puppies were spayed and are up for adoption today. We don’t have to worry about their being adopted. While I feel the loss, and I know that Connie feels a pain much deeper than mine, we are both glad the puppies will soon be off to permanent homes.

I felt guilty about my own tears in the presence of the staff and volunteers who love animals so much, who every day have to make hard life and death decisions, and who love and care for the diseased, old and the crippled animals just like they do healthy puppies. I couldn’t do their job, but I am deeply grateful for the way they and the participating vets do it, investing so much of their expertise and compassion on behalf of these creatures.

Jesus probably wasn’t thinking about orphan puppies or kitties when he said the words, “Inasmuch as you have done it (watered, fed, provided shelter, and visited) to the least of these you’ve done it to me,” but St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226) wouldn’t have blinked at their inclusion. That’s good enough for me.

A special visit to your local Humane Society, or other shelter, to thank the staff and volunteers for what they do for “the least of these” and for the rest of us would be in order.

- Milo

Connie’s earlier posts on the puppies: “Fostering Cats, Kittens, and Now Puppies,” January 2, 2008; “Puppy Report, January 21, 2008

ANOTHER REASON WHY WE NEED A DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS

Supreme Court Shields Medical-Device Makers

On Wednesday, by an 8-1 margin, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to protect “the makers of medical devices that have passed the most rigorous federal review standards from lawsuits by consumers who allege that the devices caused them harm.”

The case was brought by the wife of a man who was seriously injured when a balloon catheter burst during an angioplasty in 1996. The man died three years ago. The wife alleged that the device’s design was faulty and its labeling deficient.

Okay, so the reason this case caught my eye was that four months ago I had an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) installed in my chest to keep my heart from beating too fast or too slow. When I read the lead, “Supreme Court Shields Medical-Device Makers,” I didn’t automatically begin to think about how tort lawyers were getting what’s coming to them. My first thoughts were more along this line: what if my ICD malfunctions because of faulty design or construction and I become a vegetable or die because of it? What happens to my family? My device seems to be working fine, but it was more than self-interest that prompted me to pay attention to the decision.

Concern for others might have prompted me to read further because this case has significant implications for the $75 billion-a-year health care technology industry, whose products range from heart valves and ICDs to toothbrushes: "In a recent three-month span, federal regulators responded to over 100 safety problems regarding medical devices."

After my first thought, a second rushed to fill the void and that was despair about what has happened to the Supreme Court in the past eight years. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the majority decision, saying that federal law preempts the imposition of liability under state laws for devices that have undergone the Food and Drug Administration's pre-market approval process, the most rigorous of the FDA's testing procedures. I wonder if Justice Scalia has any idea of how oxymoronic “the most rigorous of FDA’s testing procedures” sounds to many U.S. citizens.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the lone dissenter. She wrote that Congress did not intend the preemption clause “to effect a radical curtailment of state common-law suits seeking compensation for injuries caused by defectively designed or labeled medical device.”

Need I remind you that Ginsburg was first appointed a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals by President Carter in 1980 and in 1993 nominated as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court by President Clinton in 1993? In a Senate made up of 56 Democrats and 44 Republicans, the vote on Ginsburg was 97-3, the three in opposition being Republicans Don Nickles (OK), Robert C. Smith (NH), and Jesse Helms (NC). The vote had everything to do with a nominee who was genuinely qualified.

My third thought was how important it is for us not only to elect a Democrat as President but also increased Democratic majorities in the Senate and House. Ending the war depends on both; re-instituting the rule of law depends on both; restoring confidence in our judicial system and our tattered reputation abroad depends on both; dealing with global warming and other critical environmental issues depend on both; and, yes, manufacturer accountability depends on both.

I’m glad I got that off my chest. I feel better already! That’s good because we have a lot of work to do in the next eight months.

- Milo

OBAMA DELUSION OR VISION?

On Wednesday, Kos showed us how Obama will win the nomination. And he’s probably right, as he usually is. My still unanswered questions are, “Do we have the candidate who can win in November, and do we have the candidate who will make the best President?”

Those two questions have not yet been answered to my satisfaction. Good thing I’m in Oregon where we don’t have our primary until May! Let me tell you where I stand at this moment and maybe some of you will help me with my two questions. I began this primary season—it seems like eons ago—believing that most of the seven or eight Democratic candidates would make good presidents, far better than all of those lined up on the Republican side. I once thought that John McCain would be the best of all bad choices on that side, but I’ve doubts about that now. By election time, he will have so imitated and be so in debt to the right wing of the party that he will always have to try and out-Bush Bush.

But I’m not here to write about Republicans today. As the Democratic race unfolded before Iowa and New Hampshire, I did not consider Obama a serious contender in this election, but rather for the race eight years from now. The primaries, however, have brought him to the fore in a tight race with Hillary Clinton. What a choice, I thought, having the privilege of choosing between two equally qualified candidates, one a woman and one an African American! They have different gifts but still, in my mind, both are equally qualified.

But are they equally qualified a) to win against McCain, and b) to lead the nation back from the disaster wrought internationally and to constitutional government by the Bush administration?

I read two articles today by columnists who are not my mentors, but to whose words I’ve learned to take seriously.

The first was an article by Robert J. Samuelson:

As a journalist, I harbor serious doubt about each of the most likely nominees. But with Sens. Hillary Clinton and John McCain, I feel that I'm dealing with known quantities. They've been in the public arena for years; their views, values and temperaments have received enormous scrutiny. By contrast, newcomer Obama is largely a stage presence defined mostly by his powerful rhetoric. The trouble, at least for me, is the huge and deceptive gap between his captivating oratory and his actual views.

*****

Political candidates routinely indulge in exaggeration, pandering, inconsistency and self-serving obscuration. Clinton and McCain do. The reason for holding Obama to a higher standard is that it's his standard and also his campaign's central theme. He has run on the vague promise of "change," but on issue after issue -- immigration, the economy, global warming -- he has offered boilerplate policies that evade the underlying causes of the stalemates. These issues remain contentious because they involve real conflicts or differences of opinion.

The contrast between his broad rhetoric and his narrow agenda is stark, and yet the media -- preoccupied with the political "horse race" -- have treated his invocation of "change" as a serious idea rather than a shallow campaign slogan. He seems to have hypnotized much of the media and the public with his eloquence and the symbolism of his life story. The result is a mass delusion that Obama is forthrightly engaging the nation's major problems when, so far, he isn't.

The second was a column by David Brooks that was characterized more by sarcasm than erudition, in which he talks about an “Obama Comedown Syndrome.”

Obama says he is practicing a new kind of politics, but why has his PAC sloshed $698,000 to the campaigns of the superdelegates, according to the Center fro Responsive Politics? Is giving Robert Byrd’s campaign $10,000 the kind of change we can believe in?

After the sarcasm and charges that will be daily fair for conservatives in the general election, he comes out at a strange place:

The victims of O.C.S. struggle against Obama-myopia, or the inability to see beyond Election Day. But here’s the fascinating thing: They still like him. They know that most of his hope-mongering is vaporous. They know that he knows it’s vaporous.

But the fact that they can share this dream still means something. After the magic fades and reality sets in, they still know something about his soul, and he knows something about theirs. They figure that any new president is going to face gigantic obstacles. At least this candidate seems likely to want to head in the right direction. Obama’s hype comes from exaggerating his powers and his virtues, not faking them.

For a people so disappointed in an administration—Bush’s approval rating dropped to 17%—having someone ignite dreams does mean something.

In many ways and for many people, Obama reminds people of JFK. I was one of the young people that Kennedy excited and got into the political process, like Obama seems to be doing now. But more was required than JFK was able to deliver, more probably even if he not been assassinated. In the most detailed and documented chronicle of the Civil Rights Movement, a three-volume history of America in the King Years, Taylor Branch tells again and again of the Kennedy administration’s reluctance in the issue of segregation, except with words, and finally to offer up the Civil Rights Act. JFK was, after all, looking to be re-elected to a second term. Branch also tells of the great disappointment of King and other civil rights leaders in Kennedy, because his rhetoric was not matched by deeds.

Maybe it was the country’s shame at Kennedy’s assassination, but even more it was the legislative savvy and clout of one Lyndon Johnson that got the act passed. Remember the brouhaha about Hillary’s comment giving credit to LBJ for passage of the Civil Rights Act, seeming to disregard King’s role? Understand this, King put the pressure on the country and converted the Vice-President to the necessity of the legislation before the Kennedys. Without LBJ, the legislation didn’t stand a chance. For whatever he did later in Vietnam under the advice of inherited Kennedy advisors, in 1964 he got the Civil Rights Act passed.

Which candidate, Clinton or Obama, has the savvy and vision to end the war in Iraq, undo the damage the Bush administration has done to the rule of law, begin the repair of our international reputation, and at the same time, confront the real threat of terrorism? If, as Kos suggests, the nomination is now a done deal, let us hope that Obama has the soul and strength to face these gigantic obstacles.

LINCOLN, BUSH, AND WAR POLICIES

In Sunday’s diary, “Painful Reflections on Presidents Day,” I was thinking about the war policies of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. I was saddened by an article by Lincoln scholar, Thomas J. DiLorenzo’s article, “Bush’s Lincolnian Assault on Civil Liberties (Or, Al Gore Is Right).”

Tuesday afternoon, two other Lincoln scholars were online discussing their two new books (Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America; and William Lee Miller, President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman). I’m not familiar with the work of Guelzo, but Miller is the author of a study important to me, Arguing About Slavery: John Quincy Adams and the Great Battle in the United States Congress (1998).

The two scholars responded to email queries about Lincoln. Someone sent in a question about Lincoln’s actions during the war and William Lee Miller responded:

All presidents--particularly war presidents, presidents inclined to the imperial presidency--invoke Lincoln as a justification, but they omit these three defenses of Lincoln's strong actions (suspend habeas, blockade, increase army without congress, arrest Maryland legislators, etc etc)

1) the situation he faced was UNIQUE. In his view, the United States was threatened with destruction, ruin, overthrow, perishing (all words that he used) which is not the case for any other president, including the current one.

2) there was specific constitutional provision for emergency measures in the case that he faced--an insurrection--which no other president has faced.

3) He did not contend that his actions were immune from Congressional correction; on the contrary, he specifically said he was acting beyond the present provisions in the expectation that congress would retroactively approve, which they did. He did not say anything like Nixon: if the president does it is legal.

And he did not negate congressional action by "signing statements."

And then there was a question about why Lincoln is held in such high esteem when, as DiLorenzo says in The Real Lincoln, every other Western nation solved its problem of abolishing slavery without violence by “compensated manumission.” Allen Guelzo responded:

What DiLorenzo misses is that the other abolitions were either very limited (as in the liberation of the serfs by Alexander II) or far away from the metropolitan center of those nations (the French and British abolitions were of slavery in the West Indies). What Lincoln had to face was a culturally and politically cohesive bloc of states comprising half the country, refusing to discuss even the limitation of slavery; while he had only the most feeble means of enforcement. The British and the French could do their emancipating at a distance; Lincoln had armed resistance almost literally at his doorstep. And unlike the tsar, he had no enormous army and navy to defend his decree. Bear in mind, also, that the resort to war was not Lincoln's decision, but that of the slave South. Lincoln would have been happy to have solved the slavery problem by compensation -- in fact, drew up a gradual, compensated emancipation plan as early as November, 1861 -- but no slaveholders were willing to go along with it. Mr. DiLorenzo is comparing apples and oranges, and then complaining why they don't make a salad.

Because Guelzo and Miller paint favorable pictures of Lincoln, they have some self-interest in playing down the truth of DiLorenzo’s “Real Lincoln.” I’m not a Lincoln scholar, but I think it is useful to look closely at their statements, especially Miller’s pointed remarks about how “presidents inclined to the imperial presidency--invoke Lincoln as a justification, but goes on to explain how they—and the current President—omit three critical factors.

As a pretender historian, I think that interpretations of Lincoln by all three of these scholars are not simply academic wrangling; I think they throw light on the way this administration has conducted itself and point to issues a new administration will have to address. We can benefit from this discussion as we deal with the present and look toward the future.

DARWIN AND EVOLUTION GO TO CHURCH

Think all people of faith are anti-science? Think again. “Evolution Weekend” was observed two weekends ago in communities of faith all over the country.

Hundreds of US churches and many thousands of religious believers defied the stereotype that American Christianity is a cipher for anti-science creationism last week, as they marked Evolution Weekend with sermons and seminars on the consonance of spiritual and scientific exploration.

Beginning in the fall of 2004, Michael Zimmerman worked with clergy throughout Wisconsin to prepare a statement in support of teaching evolution. They had been called to action by a series of anti-evolution policies passed by the school board in Grantsburg, WI. In a few weeks, nearly 200 clergy signed the statement, which they sent to the school board on December 16, 2004. Groups of educators and scientists sent letters to the Grantsburg School Board and to the Superintendent of Schools protesting these policies. In response to all of this attention, as well as the efforts of others, the Grantsburg School Board retracted their policies.

The outpouring of support from clergy around the country encouraged Michael to make this a nationwide project, now known as the “Clergy Letters Project.” As of February 10, 2008, over 11,000 clergy have signed the petition. “Evolution Weekend” was an outgrowth of the letters project, a teach-in when pastors, theological educators, scientists and lay people join together to mark the birth of Charles Darwin on February 12.

In a report released Saturday by Ekklesia: A New Way of Thinking, clergy and scientists together

are working to combat the influence of creationism and its cousin 'intelligent design', which base their rejection of all or part of evolutionary science on discredited biblical interpretation and a god-of-the-gaps idea that the divine is to be sought in the 'holes' or limits of the natural sciences.

By contrast, mainstream scholars argue that the creativity of God is to be understood in and through the natural, not in conflict with it, though they give different pictures and accounts of the relation between God and the world.

An international panel of scholars gathered under the umbrella of the Cambridge-based International Society for Science and Religion (ISSR) have recently agreed on a statement explaining why 'intelligent design' is both poor theology and faulty science.

Looking Back: There is a common impression today among many Christians and non-Christians alike that until the last two centuries Christians interpreted Genesis 1-3 literally. The ideas that God created the world in six 24-hour days, that there was no death in the world until the fall of Adam, that God introduced all kinds of unpleasantries as punishment for sin, and that all living things were created in their current state have been assumed by many not to have been challenged until the 19th century. That is a false assumption. While Augustine (354-430 A.D.) didn't know about evolution, he saw creation as a continuing and unfolding process, in which the commands of the Creator were fulfilled progressively, not instantaneously. More importantly, he was adamant that the “literal” meaning of Genesis must not stand in contradiction to the kind of knowledge that today we call “scientific”. In his two-volume work, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, written fifteen hundred years before the 19th century and Darwin, Augustine wrote:

“Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for a [non-believer] to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.”

If Christians believe that all truth, from wherever derived, is from God and that truth will set us free, what is there to fear from science? That was the message heard across the country in hundreds of congregations over these past two weekends. For those of us who believe in God, it is a hopeful sign.

PS: Watch for confirmation of a presidential debate on science set for April 18 at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Mike Huckabee have been invited. No RSVPs back yet. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Check out the comments on this article on Daily Kos.

- Milo

CARTER, IRAN, PANAMA, AND FISA

McJoan did me a great service by reminding us that FISA was first enacted thirty years ago under President Jimmy Carter:

Thirty years ago Congress enacted, and President Carter signed, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the outgrowth of the investigations of the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, mercifully much better known as the Church Committee. One of the many ironies of this 30th anniversary of FISA is that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence became a permanent fixture in the wake of these investigations, and it is, of course, the SSCI led by Democrat Jay Rockefeller that is doing its damnedest to help the Bush administration destroy that 30-year old law.

She changed the focus of my Presidents Day reflections from Washington and Lincoln to Carter. In my social circles, Republicans are not the only ones who mention his name with scorn; Democrats are not kind either. He is often dismissed as incompetent in the ways of Washington. That may be true. Some claim to be “outsiders” ready to ride in on a white horse and save the country. Jimmy Carter really was an outsider.

I’m not in a position to evaluate the whole of his presidency, but if integrity matters in the person we have in the White House, he had it. He pledged a more open government to a people who were looking for a change in leadership after the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal, and the resignation of a vice president (Spiro Agnew) and a president (Richard Nixon). After his defeat by Ronald Reagan in 1980, he left with his personal integrity and that of the office he held intact.

There were many things that caused his defeat after only one term in office, the most commonly mentioned was his failure to rescue the U.S. hostages in Iran. I believe that there were two main reasons why he was defeated and they were based on decisions he made knowing that either or both of them would cost him another term as President.

First, President Carter countered decades of "ugly Americanism" by negotiating treaties with Panama for the return of the Canal and then by steering those treaties through the Senate ratification process.

Second, President Carter resisted the cacophony of calls for the invasion of Iran. He made an attempt to rescue the hostages which failed because of a unique set of weather circumstances, not his ineptness. The rage in the United States was for revenge against Iran. His decision was not to do anything that would result in the death of the hostages.

The electorate (that’s us folks) didn’t forgive him for either of those decisions. In 1989, long after he had left office, I took a group of graduate students to have lunch with him in Atlanta. I was able to ask him why he made those two decisions knowing full well that they would cost him the presidency. Without hesitation, he and Rosalynn spoke the same words at the same time: “Because it was the right thing to do.” It wasn’t a sound bite; it was all of the justification either of them needed. I thanked them.

And then came McJoan’s reminder on Sunday about the first FISA legislation being signed into law by President Carter. She included his signing statement:

I am pleased to sign into law today the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. . . . The bill requires, for the first time, a prior judicial warrant for all electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence or counterintelligence purposes in the United States in which communications of U.S. persons might be intercepted. It clarifies the Executive's authority to gather foreign intelligence by electronic surveillance in the United States. It will remove any doubt about the legality of those surveillances which are conducted to protect our country against espionage and international terrorism.

The willingness to transcend one’s own self-interest for a greater good is the mark of a genuine leader. Whatever his failings, we had that in Jimmy Carter. Happy Presidents Day!



PS: This morning, I received these reflections from an old friend:

There was only one at our house. All of the others were impostors.

Eleanor was the champion of the poor and the black and she was our example.

FDR also but not quite so much, but he was the only president ever mentioned in a positive tone.

Except for the also-rans who were defeated by Ike and Tricky Dick.

Presidents are a lot like preachers: some are good, some are bad, most are forgettable.

REFLECTIONS ON PRESIDENTS DAY

“Presidents Day” (“Presidents’ Day” also acceptable) is a federal holiday officially designated as “Washington’s Birthday” and celebrated on the third Monday of February. As the first federal holiday to honor an American citizen, the holiday was celebrated on Washington’s actual birthday, February 22, but in 1971 the federal holiday was shifted to the third Monday by the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. In the late 1980s the theme has expanded the focus of the holiday to honor another President in February, Abraham Lincoln (February 12) and other Presidents of the United States.

Never mind that the main pushers of the holiday are advertisers and retail stores for sales, the day might deserve a blip on our radars as we are engaged in presidential primaries to select a new President. Maybe it is an appropriate time—in between hitting the sales—to remember past Presidents in the midst of our critical reassessment of the role of the Presidency now.

Since the House and Senate have sent a bill to the President requiring that all the government intelligence services follow the Army Field Manual’s restrictions on torture, a bill he says he will veto, I was thinking about Washington and Lincoln on torture as the subject of my reflections this Presidents Day weekend.

George Washington: The first commander-in-chief, the only one to bear that title without simultaneously being president, George Washington’s position was unambiguous. In his charge to the Northern Expeditionary Force, Sept. 14, 1775, he ordered:

“Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner]. . . I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause… for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country.”

After the Battle of Trenton, New Jersey on December 26, 1776, when Washington learned that the Continentals were preparing to run some of the British Empire’s German mercenaries through what they called the “gauntlet.” Washington issued this order:

“Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of the British Army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren who have fallen into their hands."

These firm principles were set down by Washington before America had a Constitution, a Bill of Rights or a Congress—before the institution of the Presidency. What it had was its first surviving institution, which was the Army. And its first commander-in-chief was the great militia veteran of the French and Indian War, a man whose experience in warfare towered over others, George Washington. Maybe our current President so easily disregards Washington’s policies because Washington was a general, the same way Bush has disregarded his generals’ plea—including General David Petraeus—to reject torture.

Abraham Lincoln: This is not easy for me. I grew up in the Texas Panhandle where, at the time, President Lincoln was not highly regarded. It was hard for me as a kid because I knew that my great grandfather was the only member of his family in Kentucky to fight for the Union. His mother, father, and siblings firmly identified with the Confederacy. So great was my great grandfather’s belief that slavery was wrong that after the war he never again had contact with his family. He came to Texas to start a new life and he didn’t have sympathy for the old South views there either. Even though I tried to fit in with my peers, I knew and was proud of my great grandfather. I was a closet admirer of Lincoln from my earliest days. That’s why reading Thomas J. DiLorenzo’s article, “Bush’s Lincolnian Assault on Civil Liberties (Or, Al Gore is Right!)” reflecting on Lincoln’s war policies makes me uncomfortable.

Gore’s criticisms of the Bush administration are striking in that they reveal that when it comes to waging war and dealing with civil liberties issues, the party has not changed at all since it first became The Republican Party of Lincoln. For example, he posed the rhetorical question of what George Washington would think of the fact that "our current president claims the unilateral right to arrest and imprison American citizens indefinitely without giving them the right to see a lawyer or inform their families of their whereabouts, and without the necessity of even charging them with any crime"?

These were exactly the policies of the Lincoln administration. Habeas corpus was unilaterally (and illegally) suspended by Lincoln and the military, with the help of a secret police bureaucracy operated by William Seward, imprisoned tens of thousands of Northern political opponents. They were thrown into gulags such as Fort Lafayette in New York harbor where they were never charged, had no idea how long they would be held, and their families often had no idea of their whereabouts. (See James Randall, Constitutional Problems Under Lincoln; and Dean Sprague, Freedom Under Lincoln). The Virginia patriot George Washington would have undoubtedly drawn his sword and fought another revolution over such an outrage.

What would Washington think, asked Gore, of our president’s contention that he can "label any citizen an ‘unlawful enemy combatant’ and that will be sufficient to justify taking away that citizen’s liberty – even for the rest of his life, if the president chooses. And there is no appeal"? Again, the hyper-paranoid Lincoln administration, which saw enemies everywhere, labeled virtually anyone who disagreed with its policies as spies and traitors who were therefore subject to military arrest and indefinite imprisonment without due process.

DiLorenzo continues with Gore’s litany of what Jefferson, Franklin, and Madison would think of our current President and his policies. Then, he concludes:

All of this is why the Claremontistas and other neocons are such Lincoln idolaters. They call him a "model statesman" because they favor an executive dictatorship, as opposed to the kind of president the founding fathers had in mind They favor a dictatorial president who will pursue their nationalistic political objectives for them. "National Greatness conservatives" need a dictator to run roughshod over the Constitution – and the public – if they are to achieve their goal of greater glory for The Fatherland. So far, they have been extremely successful in molding the Bush administration in just this way, as Vice President Gore correctly pointed out in his Georgetown speech.

Gore's speech and DiLorenzo's article were both written in 2004 before the revelations on torture authorized by the Bush administration.

Maybe it took someone I respect, like Gore, to make me question the view of Lincoln I grew up cherishing. What I’ve read so far hasn’t changed my view of Bush but it certainly sobers my view of Lincoln. What was it William Faulkner said? “The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past.”

I haven’t read DiLorenzo’s book, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War, but I will. Maybe I’ll go over to the bookstore on Presidents Day and pick up a copy. Maybe I can learn something more about the present.

Honest reflection is never easy. I welcome your Presidents Day thoughts.

- Milo

TALKING FISA WITH FRIENDS

If you haven’t been talking to your friends about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) already, you may have an opportunity over the next few days while Congress is in recess. You may hear something like, "How could they go on recess and leave a measure so critical to the security of our country left hanging?" If your friends don’t raise the issue, perhaps you should. As citizens of what we consider a free country, we need to be talking about this issue among ourselves and with our elected representatives in Washington.

On Valentine’s Day a majority of the members of the House stood up to oppose President Bush’s demand that they pass the Senate’s version of the FISA bill. The Senate’s version provided retroactive immunity for the telecoms who participated in the illegal wiretapping of the administration after 9/11. The House version hadn’t. The President said that failure to pass the bill before it expires at midnight Saturday will result in intelligence gaps that will be exploited by terrorists. He also said he would veto any bill that came to his desk without immunity for the telecoms.

The beginning point of the conversation might be asking whether anything is put at risk by the House's not acting the legislation before it expires Saturday night. The heart of the discussion should focus on "liability protection" and whether that has anything to do with creating a gap in our intelligence collection capability. Consider these three questions in your conversations:

1. Why is the Bush administration so insistent on giving retroactive immunity to the telecoms? Because to them, the "real issue" is not intelligence collection gaps but liability protection for the private sector. Mike McConnell, director of national intelligence, admitted as much in an interview Thursday morning on National Public Radio:

NPR: Mr. McConnell, the Bush administration says that if the Protect America Act isn't made permanent, it will tie your hands, intelligence hands, especially when it comes to new threats. But isn't it true that any surveillance underway does not expire, even if this law isn't renewed by tomorrow?

MCCONNELL: Well, Renee it's a very complex issue. It's true that some of the authorities would carry over to the period they were established for one year. That would put us into the August, September time-frame. However, that's not the real issue. The issue is liability protection for the private sector.

According to standing law, a telcom would already be immune from prosecution/lawsuit if they did not break the law, or were given essentially a warranted request from the gov't to assist. If that's true, what is the immunity in this case and why would Bush veto a bill that didn't have it?" Immunity in this bill would retroactively protect all assistance by telcoms since 9/11 (or whenever exactly, i forget) no matter really how that assistance was obtained. Basically saying if they helped they are immune from civil lawsuit. This blanket protection would prevent any details about their assistance from ever coming to light whereas the current immunity would require court review to determine if a law was broken.

Taking them at their word, George Bush and Mike McConnell are putting the nation at risk in order to insure that AT&T and Verizon do not have to be held accountable in a court of law for having broken the law.

McJoan, one of the most knowledgeable followers of this legislation, says

Twisted and corrupt indeed. But, remember, it's not just so that AT&T and Verison aren't held accountable. It's to prevent legal action going forward that, in the discovery process, would expose the full extent of the administration's illegal activity. This isn't just protecting AT&T and Verizon. It's protecting the Rove/Gonzales/Cheney/Bush cabal.

Friday morning’s Rocky Mountain News, not known as a bastion of liberalism, editorialized,

No immunity:

If immunity is in the final legislation - and Bush has said he'd veto any bill that doesn't include it - it would kill the 40-plus lawsuits that have been filed against telecoms in federal court. The litigation challenges the legality of the program and the actions of telecoms that cooperated with the government.

If the lawsuits don't move forward, we may never learn if some telecoms compromised the privacy of innocent Americans. A grant of immunity could also set a dangerous precedent for other businesses when federal agents or local cops who don't have a court order demand private or confidential information about their customers.

2. Didn’t the President’s illegal wiretapping program begin in response to the panic after 9/11? Not according to the editorial (and confirmed in other sources):

Court documents released in October revealed that Nacchio [Qwest’s CEO at the time] first met with national security officials in February 2001 - six months before the 9/11 attacks. "Nacchio's account," The Washington Post reported, "suggests that the Bush administration was seeking to enlist telecommunications firms in programs without court oversight before the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon."

3. If immunity is not granted will the private sector refuse to cooperate with the government? After all of the speeches Republicans made on Thursday, you might think this was a big deal. It is, but not in the way you may think. The claim is dishonest and the Bush administration knows it. Under the law, telecoms are required to cooperate with legal requests from the government. They don’t have any other option. Without immunity, the telecoms will be reluctant in the future to break the law again, which should be a desirable outcome. It was the Qwest legal team’s opinion that the request was not legal, so they didn’t participate. AT&T and Verizon said that Washington persuaded them that it was legal and so they participated.

What the protests from both the administration and the corporations amount to is one law-breaker telling another law-breaker, “you cover for me and I’ll cover for you.” Or, as the Rocky Mountain News concluded:

Letting this litigation proceed would not, as Bush said Wednesday, punish companies that want to "help America." Businesses that want to help America need to be mindful of the Constitution - and so should the government.

Do you really need convincing that it is important to talk with family and friends about this issue?

- Milo

Previous posts on FISA: Still FISA (February 7); Latest on the FISA Fight (February 6); FISA Fear-Mongering (February 3); Small Victory for Liberty (January 28), More About FISA (January 26), The Battle for Liberty (January 24)

DOMESTIC PARTNERSHIPS AND MARRIAGE

A lesbian couple in Colorado has challenged that state’s ban on same sex marriages passed in 2006:

Earlier this week, Ms. Burns and Ms. Schroeder filed a motion with the court claiming that Amendment 43, which defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman, violated their constitutional right to equal protection. The measure was approved by 55 percent of Colorado voters 15 months ago.

“The American system does not allow for the tyranny of the majority,” said the couple’s lawyer, Mari Newman. “Marriage is a fundamental right, which should be for all Coloradans, not just some Coloradans.”

Nine states and the District of Columbia afford a variety of benefits to gay and lesbian couples, but only Massachusetts allows same-sex marriage. Twenty-six states have constitutional bans on same-sex marriage, whose legality is also being weighed by the highest courts of Connecticut, California and Iowa.

In Oregon, voters approved an amendment to Oregon’s constitution in 2004 banning gay marriage. In 2007 the Oregon legislature passed a domestic partnership bill, called the Oregon Family Fairness Act. The law provides several major rights to same-sex couples that were previously only given to married couples, including the ability to file jointly on insurance forms, hospital visitation rights, and rights relating to the deceased partner.

While January 1, 2008 was the date The statute was supposed to take effect on January 1, 2008, but a court challenge delayed its implementation until a federal judge lifted the ban on February 1. The law went into effect that day and couples have been signing up. The law stops short of full-fledged marriage and offers none of the rights guaranteed to married spouses under federal law.

I talked with two good friends and asked them to say what the passage of this law means to them:

My Partner, Barbara, and I have been together for over 10 years. We first met in 1980 and dated for a year. Then in 1998 something wonderful and exciting happened, we found each other again. And this time it was for good, our love and commitment for one another was stronger than ever! We retired and fulfilled our dreams and moved to Bend. We were guardedly optimist with Bend’s passing of the anti-discrimination laws and with several businesses in the private sector granting us “family” status, which gave us equal rights and benefits as heterosexual couples.

So now in 2008 we are asked, “What domestic partnership in Oregon means to us?” To Barbara and me it’s the final piece to the puzzle. We are from southern California and benefit from our domestic partner status granted us in 2002. Our current and future finances are secured through our California domestic partnership and now we enjoy complete validation with Oregon’s domestic partnership. To have the security of the rights and responsibilities now afford us in the state in which we reside is awesome.

It’s also an emotional journey in life, not being counted equal among your friends, family and neighbors. Not to have your relationship honored and recognized in the eyes of your peers. Not having your lifetime commitment of love to another acknowledged or mean the same as others. This all is now changed and we have the sense of wholeness, thanks to so many that worked so hard. We are elated that Oregon has eliminated discrimination of gays and lesbians, providing us with that missing link in our relationship, a legal validation. This validation not only gives us the sense of wholeness it makes us feel part of society’s main stream living. It’s this support and acknowledgment within the social context that makes us feel complete. As strange as it may seem the legal validation of our love and relationship solidifies the commitment.

In California I was instrumental in getting Los Angeles county employees with domestic partners, parity with legally married couples. Those rights and responsibilities granted to domestic partners provided pension and medical benefits to the employee and their families. The excitement and joys Barbara and I experienced then are relived now and especially for all Oregonians. We are all truly blessed.

Our journey is ended and as you can see Domestic Partnership status in Oregon is definitely the final piece to our puzzle and what a beautiful picture it is!

Congratulations to all, Cathy

Looking Back: At one point, 40 states in this country forbade the marriage of a white person to a person of color. Marriages between whites and persons of color were decried as “immoral” and “unnatural”. A Virginia judge upheld that state’s ban on interracial marriages saying, in language with the same tone as that being used in opposition to gay marriages today:

“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”

In 1948, the California Supreme Court led the way in challenging racial discrimination in marriage and became the fist state high court to declare unconstitutional a ban on interracial marriage. The court pointed out that races don’t marry each other, people do. Restricting who can marry whom on that characteristic alone was therefore race discrimination. It took another 19 years for the U.S. Supreme Court to make the same ruling. Until 1967, in many states, a couple of mixed race could not get a marriage license, and if they went to another state and were married, when they returned home they could be arrested.

The same logic that banned interracial marriages has been used to ban same-sex marriage. In both cases, the appeal is religious. God help us! We’ve a long way to go before we accord truly equal rights to same-sex couples, but we celebrate this victory on the way to that goal.

- Milo

GRATITUDE, FISA, AND HR 2082

Tuesday was a hard day for me. After the FISA debacle in the Senate, I wanted to scream and cry. I knew I was going to have a hard time practicing what had become a daily routine.

Some months ago I added a new discipline. For years I have kept a journal of the previous day’s activities, writing on the morning after because I don’t feel creative at the end of the day. From an article in a popular magazine I was looking at while waiting for my wife in the doctor’s office, I decided to write a paragraph in my account of each day that contained those things for which I had felt gratitude the day before.

The list is not profound. It is an earnest effort to remember the things for which I actually felt grateful—our Manx cat, who came to us as a feral kitten to foster that we couldn’t give up, now waiting outside my bedroom door every morning to be petted as I come out; the irrepressible enthusiasm of the three American Eskimo puppies orphaned at birth that my wife has fostered since they were two days old; the gesture of my wife for something unexpected, like saying that she was going to cook a special Valentine’s Day dinner for me and what did I want; a dinner of fellowship with good friends; and you name it.

What I discovered is that the discipline was a buffer against all of the crap and negative stuff that goes on in the world every day. Simplistic? Maybe, but it is a daily reminder that I am in debt to so many others and that I stand on the shoulders of many, named and unnamed, who have gone before me.

It has not been difficult to find things which happened the day before for which I was grateful.

Not until yesterday when I read McJoan’s report (posted at 10:49a PST), about how eighteen Democrats “who were willing to sell out your Constitutional rights to protect the telcos.” Then, she listed them. To say that I was angry at the vote would be a gross understatement. I was enraged! It occurred to me that for the first time since the week after Thanksgiving, I was going to have a hard time with my gratitude list.

Then, at 2:49p McJoan posted her report, “Final Vote.” She wrote:

Despite the bitter disappointment many of us feel tonight, take a bit of heart in this--we could have lost everything in December, if Chris Dodd hadn't mobilized a massive grassroots effort against it. And in view of that, here are the 31 Senate heroes who have stood with Dodd on telco amnesty, and who will continue to. Thank you, Senators.

And then she named all thirty-one. My anger at the eighteen who crossed over wasn’t asuaged, nor was my sadness for our country mitigated, but McJoan reminded me of the importance of gratitude for those who stood fast.

That wasn’t the only thing for which I was grateful on Tuesday. On Sunday, I had written about how the debate in the Senate on FISA was a place where our two Democratic presidential candidates should be demonstrating leadership. I am grateful that on primary day in Virginia, Maryland, and D.C. Obama chose to be present and voted on the amendments. He was not present for the final vote on cloture, but by then the issue had been decided. Unfortunately, Clinton was on her way to Texas and absent for all of the votes.

McJoan updated her report with the final vote, 68-29, or as she called it, “dereliction of duty by 69 senators.”

Today, my attention has been on HR 2082 and Section 327 (the anti-torture provision). How could any member of Congress not vote to forbid torture? 45 of them did, including one of the original voices against torture, John McCain. But 51 voted for the Conference Report that included Section 327. I am grateful for those 51 senators, even though a bunch of them were among those who failed to stand up on FISA. I’m also grateful that President Bush will have to decide if he wants to veto this bill, instead of having his mineons in the Senate do his dirty work—although, goodness knows, enough of them tried. I’m grateful that Senator Smith was one of the five Republicans who crossed over to vote against torture along with our other Senator, Wyden.

This evening I learned that 222 House members rejected a Republican attempt to substitute the Senate’s FISA bill for their own. The proposal for a 21-day extension failed, but a press release from Speaker Pelosi’s office saying that she was willing for the current bill to expire on Friday. We’ll see what happens, but I am grateful for all of the Senators and Representatives who stood up yesterday and today.

My thanks to McJoan for reminding me to be grateful!

- Milo

TORTURE AND RELIGION

The National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT) has issued an alert that the Senate will vote on H.R. 2082 Wednesday. Some Republican Senators have threatened to obstruct passage of H.R. 2082 as long as it contains Section 327 (the anti-torture provision).This is what they said:

The Senate will decide whether we stop the CIA's use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" -- or as we would call them, torture. Section 327 of the Intelligence Authorization Conference Report (H.R. 2082), would prohibit the CIA from using abusive interrogation techniques (such as waterboarding) by requiring the CIA to comply with the Army Field Manual while conducting interrogations. The Army Field Manual prohibits torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.

The memo urged us to call our Senators urging them to support Section 327. I did that. This vote should be a no-brainer and a no-consciencer, but after today’s debacle on FISA when eighteen Democrats traded our constitutional rights to protect the telecomms, I’m not sure. (More on the FISA disaster later!)

The presidential candidates have taken starkly different positions on the practice of waterboarding. Some have condemned it as torture; others have refused to condemn if in an extreme case millions of American lives might be saved. Are there situations in which waterboarding and other practices may be justified?

On Friday, William Schweiker, Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor of Theological Ethics at the University of Chicago Divinity School, and director of the Martin Marty Center, wrote:

The argument for possible justification turns on several assumptions: that we could infallibly know that someone had vital information that would in fact save millions; that torture would extract this information without distortion; and, finally, that if the information was secured truthfully and infallibly, it could be put to use in good time.

None of these assumptions is warranted. Expert opinion and empirical evidence concur that torture is an ineffective means to gain reliable information. The scenario of the lone knower of the facts whose torture would save millions of lives is the stuff of bad spy movies and bad exam questions in ethics courses.

If you don’t like his conclusion, take the word of thirty-one retired generals, who on December 12, 2007, wrote a letter to the chairs of the House and Senate committees on intelligence expressing their strong unanimous support for Section 327 requiring intelligence agents of the U.S. government to adhere to the standards of prisoner treatment and interrogation contained in the U.S. Army Field Manual on Human Collector Operations (the Army Field Manual).

Ah, you say, they are retired. What more can you expect? In their letter they quote from an open letter to the troops last May from none other than General David Petraeus, who is not retired and who is Commanding General in Iraq, President Bush’s chosen leader for the new strategy in Iraq:

What sets us apart from our enemies in this fight. . . . is how we behave. In everything we do, we must observe the standards and values that dictate that we treat noncombatants and detainees with dignity and respect…. Some may argue that we would be more effective if we sanctioned torture or other expedient methods to obtain information from the enemy. They would be wrong. Beyond the basic fact that such actions are illegal, history shows that they also are frequently neither useful nor necessary. Certainly, extreme physical action can make someone “talk;” however, what the individual says may be of questionable value. In fact, our experience in applying the interrogation standards laid out in the Army Field Manual (2-22.3) on Human Intelligence Collector Operations that was published last year shows that the techniques in the manual work effectively and humanely in eliciting information from detainees.

Cited above, Professor Schweiker said true things that could have been said by many others, but in his article titled, “Baptism by water torture,” he reminds us of how religious practices have often been tied to violence and torture, often hidden in public discourse:

Less often observed is that the practice of waterboarding has roots in the Spanish Inquisition and parallels the persecution of Anabaptists during the Protestant Reformation and the Roman Catholic Counter Reformation. Why did practices similar to waterboarding develop as a way to torture heretics—whether the heretics were Anabaptists or, in the Inquisition, Protestants of any stripe as well as Jews and witches and others?

Roman Catholics and Protestants alike persecuted the Anabaptists or "re-baptizers" since these people denied compulsory infant baptism in favor of adult [believer's] baptism. The use of torture and physical abuse was meant to stem the movement and also to bring salvation to heretics. It had been held—at least since St Augustine—that punishment, even lethal in form, could be an act of mercy meant to keep a sinner from continuing in sin, either by repentance of heresy or by death.

King Ferdinand declared that drowning—called the third baptism—was a suitable response to Anabaptists. Water as a form of torture was an inversion of the waters of baptism under the (grotesque) belief that it could deliver the heretic from his or her sins.

In the Inquisition, the practice was not drowning as such, but the threat of drowning, and the symbolic threat of baptism. The tortura del agua or toca entailed forcing the victim to ingest water poured into a cloth stuffed into the mouth in order to give the impression of drowning.

So what does this history have to do with the present? Schweiker wonders in a way that might give us all chills:

Is it the purpose of the United State nowadays to seek the conversion, repentance, and purity of supposed terrorists and thus to take on the trappings of a religious rite? The question is so buried behind public discourse that its full import is hardly recognized.

In the light of these religious meanings and background to waterboarding, US citizens can decide to reject any claim by the government to have the right to use this or other forms of torture, especially given connections to the most woeful expressions of Christianity; conversely, they can fall prey to fear and questionable reasoning and thus continue to support an unjust and vile practice that demeans the nation's highest political and moral ideals even as it desecrates one of the most important practices and symbols of Christian faith.

I judge that it is time for repentance, the affirmation of new life, and the humane expression of religious convictions.

There is good reason for the National Religious Campaign Against Torture to call for an end to this torture with religious roots.

Call the Senate switchboard at 202-224-3121. Don’t wait! You may miss the vote.

- Milo

SMU Bush-Wacked - Part 2

In yesterday’s diary I reported on the George W. Bush Foundation’s attempt to place a library, museum, and think-tank at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. One of my sources was a letter and press release from one of the proposal’s opponents. Because it was not located on a website anywhere, I asked for a copy from its author and am including it in this blog.

On January 30, 2008, Andrew J. Weaver sent “An Open Letter to SMU Petition Signers.” Weaver organized and maintains the petition opposing the Bush proposal to build a library and partisan think tank at Southern Methodist University. A graduate of SMU, Weaver is an ordained United Methodist minister and research psychologist living in New York City. So far, there are over 11,200 petition signers representing every state, including 28 United Methodist bishops, several hundred graduates of SMU and thousands of clergy, church members, and people of conscience.

On January 31, the "Open Letter" was sent by five members of the South Central Jurisdiction to the George W. Bush Foundation. To date, there has been no response. The letter has been making its way through cyber space to United Methodists and friends all over the country. Here's the appeal:

Below is a press release about the current situation regarding the Bush proposal to build a library and partisan think tank at Southern Methodist University. We need your help to get this story to everyone you know. We need you to contact the UMC bishops, especially those in the South Central Jurisdiction. State your concern in a courteous but firm manner that elected delegates have a right to vote under church law.

PRESS RELEASE

George W. Bush Foundation tries to bypass church law to build presidential library at Southern Methodist University

January 30, 2008
For immediate release

In a conference call held on January 9, 2008, the eleven active United Methodist bishops in the South Central Jurisdiction were asked to issue an interpretation of United Methodist church law that would circumvent a vote by lay and clergy delegates and permit the immediate establishment of a partisan Bush institute at Southern Methodist University (SMU) along with the planned Bush presidential library. The request to the bishops came from the George W. Bush Foundation.

The controversial institute, dedicated to promoting the domestic and international views of George W. Bush, would not be under the supervision of SMU and would hire without regard to university policy. No other university with a presidential library has permitted such an institute on its campus.

Bishop Kenneth W. Hicks of Little Rock, Arkansas, said, “My reason, conscience, and experience tell me that the bishops do not have authority to circumvent the right of the 290 delegates to the Jurisdictional Conference to vote on a 99-year proposal for land use of this nature. I encourage my fellow bishops to honor the voting rights of the Jurisdictional delegates.”

The South Central Jurisdiction of The United Methodist Church owns SMU and has the final say about the use of university property. In addition to the Bush presidential library, the Bush Foundation is seeking to establish at the university a controversial partisan institute devoted to “promoting the views of George W. Bush on international and domestic matters,” as stated by Marvin Bush, the president’s brother. The Foundation acknowledges that the institute would not be under the supervision of the university and that hiring would be without regard to university policy.

In the conference call, the eleven active bishops were asked to interpret church law to declare that the decision of the Mission Council, a 21-member interim body which approved the use of SMU land for the institute after heavy lobbying by a 10-4 vote in March, 2007, is final. This would permit the Bush Foundation to avoid submitting the matter to the 290 Jurisdictional Conference delegates meeting in Dallas in July, 2008, where the outcome of such a vote is in doubt.

The delegates represent 1.83 million United Methodists living in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Arkansas, and Louisiana. If a majority vote against leasing university property for a partisan Bush institute, it cannot be built at SMU. The Foundation hopes to rely on the bishops’ interpretation in order to break ground for the institute before the delegates meet this summer.

However, Reverend David Severe, Director of Mission and Administration for the South Central Jurisdiction, wrote to an SMU professor on October 6, 2007, that “All actions taken by the Mission Council interim the Jurisdictional Conference must be ratified by the next Jurisdictional Conference session.”

He cited church law from the 2004 Jurisdictional Journal: “The Council shall be subject to the following and specific limitations of authority: All actions taken by The Council shall be valid and in full effect within the South Central Jurisdiction until the next regular session of the (Jurisdictional) Conference.... The chairperson of the Council shall submit to each regular quadrennial meeting of the Conference a written report of all actions taken by the Council during the quadrennium.”

“To not protect their right to vote on the use of land by the George W. Bush Foundation is a violation of the democratic and open processes of our church,” said Bishop Hicks. “I am worried that the disenfranchisement of Jurisdictional Conference delegates will undermine our ministry together as a church.”

“I can understand why the George W. Bush Foundation does not want the Jurisdictional Conference to vote on this issue," said Andrew Weaver, a United Methodist pastor and graduate of SMU. "In recent months, colleagues and I have spoken to dozens of delegates who are increasingly questioning the wisdom of placing a partisan think tank on the grounds of a United Methodist institution. The George W. Bush Foundation wants to prevent the vote because it fears the outcome. It appears that the Bush Foundation has no respect for the laws and procedures of the president's own denomination."

"The placement of a partisan institute to promote the policies of George W. Bush at Southern Methodist University would be a tragedy," said retired Bishop C. Joseph Sprague of London, Ohio. "The policies of the Bush administration are in direct conflict with the Social Principles of The United Methodist Church on issues of war and peace, civil liberties and human rights, care for the environment, and health care. Our United Methodist identity and its moral authority would be seriously compromised were it to be identified with the policies of George W. Bush in this way."

Schubert M. Ogden, University Distinguished Professor of Theology Emeritus at Southern Methodist University, observes: “While the wisdom of establishing a library and a museum is debatable, establishing a partisan think-tank will unquestionably damage the integrity and the reputation of SMU. The partisan mission of the proposed institute is profoundly incompatible with SMU's own mission as a university and could be made a part of it only by damaging it and soiling its good-standing in the academic community. In any case, The United Methodist Church has the right to an open, honest debate on the issue, and the elected delegates to the South Central Jurisdiction should in no way be deprived of their legal right to vote.”

George Henson, who teaches Spanish at SMU, stated, "It does not surprise me that the Bush Foundation is attempting to circumvent United Methodist law in order to place the Bush library and institute at SMU. A highly partisan think tank like the one planned for SMU, which exists completely outside the purview of normal academic controls and practices, is bad enough. The fact that United Methodist bishops are being asked to collaborate with Bush's representatives to circumvent the approval process is disgraceful. I am worried about the message this sends to our students."

This press release answers some of the questions you asked yesterday, but it raises others: Do the Jurisdictional Conference members have authority to override the decision of ten of the eleven bishops of the jurisdiction who approved the proposal? Apparently, at no time in the past have jurisdictional members overridden a decision made by the bishops between the quadrennial meetings of the jurisdiction. Would they this time? Will the university wait until July when the South Central Jurisdictional Conference meets before it begins construction?

If you are a United Methodist contact the South Central Jurisdictional members to make the point that elected delegates have a right to vote on this issue. If you are not United Methodist and don’t care to get involved in the church law question, I suggest you express your concern about the Foundation’s proposal and its acceptance by SMU and the ten bishops.

- Milo

SMU BUSH-WACKED?

What’s the big deal about President Bush establishing his presidential library at Southern Methodist University in Dallas? After all, he claims to be United Methodist and his wife, Laura, is a trustee at SMU. Well, for starters, an article titled “Tempest in a Texas Teapot” in U.S. News & World Report last week put it this way:

The plan to include a partisan think tank in the proposed George W. Bush presidential library at Southern Methodist University has provoked an outcry from many SMU faculty and alumni as well as concerned United Methodist clergy and laypeople from around the country. In a press release circulated last week, some of those critics charged that the proposal of the George W. Bush Foundation was approved without being put through procedures required by United Methodist church law.

But wait, there’s more. According to the press release by Andrew Weaver, an SMU alum and the initiator of a petition against having the institute at the university,

"The controversial institute, dedicated to promoting the domestic and international views of George W. Bush, would not be under the supervision of SMU and would hire without regard to university policy. No other university with a presidential library has permitted such an institute on its campus.”

Last October, Media Transparency got into the act:

Opponents are "question[ing] the educational value of the Bush complex" given that earlier in his administration Bush issued Executive Order 13233, "which," the press release notes, "provides former Presidents with virtually unlimited powers to deny or grant access to documents generated under their administrations." The Executive Order extends these powers to a president's heirs.

Recently, SB 866, the Presidential Records Act Amendments of 2007, a bill sponsored by Democratic Sen. Jeff Bingaman, which would rescind Bush's Executive Order 13233, was assigned a number, made its way to the Senate floor and has since been stalled by Republican Sen. Jim Bunning.

"Professors within the history department at Southern Methodist University, the future home of the George W. Bush Presidential Library, may not all agree on the benefits or legitimacy of the library, museum and institute. However, they unanimously agree about SB 866 and the need to rescind the presidential order," Laray Polkfor recently wrote in the Dallas Morning News.

Was SMU Bush-wacked? If it was, he had a lot of help from SMU. I’m not surprised that a foundation operating in George W. Bush’s name would act in ways that resemble the way this President has conducted himself in office—an obsession about keeping his own secrets (an obsession that does not extend protecting the privacy of citizens) and a disregard for the law. As an SMU alum and UMC minister, what does causes me great dismay is that the university president, the trustees, and ten bishops have endorsed the plan for an institute at the university that would not have any accountability to the academic standards of the university and unquestioningly accept the president’s unlimited powers to deny or grant access to documents generated under their administrations.

These folks who are supposed to be guardians of academic integrity apparently don’t see a problem here. That bothers me. I don’t know the intricacies of church law enough to know whether the action of the ten bishops is legal or not. That ten of eleven bishops of the South Central Jurisdiction failed to see the larger issue when they gave their approval is what grieves me.

The good news is that there are professors, administrators, bishops, clergy and laity who clearly see what is at stake here both for the university and the church. If you are so inclined (I was) you can sign the petition. As a meteorologist friend of mine says after every forecast, “We’ll see what happens.”

In the meantime, I am back to watching the still-in-office president continue to “Bush- wack” the American people trying to protect his illegal wire-tapping actions by granting immunity to the telecomms in the FISA legislation before the Senate.

- Milo

DEBATE THE WAR - PART 2

[Note: Since Thursday, with some fear and trembling I began posting my blogs on Daily Kos, one of the world's most viewed political weblogs. I have ventured out into this world—and boy has it been a steep learning curve!—because I want to reach more people with my concerns about the Iraq war and civil liberties. Milo’s Janus Outlook will, of course, continue to be my primary point of expression. Sometimes, like today with John Quincy Adams, when I am writing for Kos on a subject I have written about earlier on Janus, I will be using historical material that I’ve used in earlier blogs. You can skip those parts. But, be careful because I may be using them in a new way. Thanks for your patience! It was your encouragement that gave me confidence to put my stuff out for wider view.]

The response to yesterday’s post, “Debate the War,” was sobering. Am I whistling in the dark hoping for a serious debate on the war in Iraq? I say, “Is there a John Quincy Adams in the House (or Senate)?”

The sobering part was a comment from Snud with a link to an article by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stones, titled “The Chicken Doves”. The first paragraph makes clear where he is going:

Quietly, while Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been inspiring Democrats everywhere with their rolling bitchfest, congressional superduo Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have completed one of the most awesome political collapses since Neville Chamberlain. At long last, the Democratic leaders of Congress have publicly surrendered on the Iraq War, just one year after being swept into power with a firm mandate to end it.

Taibbi charges the Dems with systematically taking over the anti-war movement, packing it with party consultants more interested in attacking the GOP than ending the war. I don’t know about the truth of that charge, but there reason to take seriously his conclusion:

The really tragic thing about the Democratic surrender on Iraq is that it's now all but guaranteed that the war will be off the table during the presidential campaign. Once again — it happened in 2002, 2004 and 2006 — the Democrats have essentially decided to rely on the voters to give them credit for being anti-war, despite the fact that, for all the noise they've made to the contrary, in the end they've done nothing but vote for war and cough up every dime they've been asked to give, every step of the way.

Taibbi’s conclusion was echoed by orionwest in his comment on my piece. He said that Obama and Clinton’s voting records are exactly the same to continue the war. He rejects the argument that Obama has given—he could also have included Clinton—that they were afraid Bush would let the troops starve and so voted for funding.

Matt Browner Hamlin offered another perspective in his diary “Stopping Sexism vs Stopping Retroactive Immunity”. He spoke of his efforts over the last four and a half months to pressure the major Democratic presidential candidates to use their platform to speak out forcefully against retroactive immunity for telecom companies and the expansion of executive powers sought by the Bush administration. He argues that leadership from these candidates could set the tone for the FISA debate and raise retro-immunity to the level of presidential politics.

He points to an example of the power a presidential campaign has to impact the media. On Thursday night, MSNBC’s David Shuster made a shocking sexist comment about Chelsea Clinton’s role as a surrogate in her mother’s campaign. The response from the Clinton campaign was swift: the Clinton campaign “pushed back as hard as they could and made sure that MSNBC got the message.” On Friday NBC News responded and suspended Schuster.

Hamlin agreed with the Clinton response and went on:

But what would it look like to see the Clinton campaign put on a full court press to get the traditional media to recognize the critical importance of what is happening in the Senate? What if in addition to fighting sexism in the media, the Clinton campaign started to demand the media report on the state of the Constitution and the rule of law?

What better way could Obama and Clinton (and McCain, for that matter) demonstrate their leadership capabilities to the country than as Senators at this critical time in history? It would be real-world leadership instead of virtual-world sound-bites on the stump.

Reading the responses to my post today reminded me of another time in our history, when our nation’s leaders refused to talk about the most critical issue of their time. Slavery was so deeply entrenched and so great was the fear that the issue would result in the breakup of the United States, the subject could not even be discussed in Congress.

While the members of Congress could agree not to discuss such a distasteful matter, they had a harder time deciding what to do with the anti-slavery petitions that flooded in from groups all over the North. Congress could—and did—agree not to initiate any legislation themselves about the matter, but what about the right of citizens to petition their government? Many of the petitions came from women’s groups, their only voice to the government because they didn’t have the right to vote or to hold elected office. Congress enacted a “gag rule” to insure that these anti-slavery petitions would be summarily rejected without any action or even discussion.

How could it be that the Congress refused even to debate the issue that was tearing the country apart? John Quincy Adams didn’t accept the Congressional consensus. Adams was President for one term (1825-1829) who came back to Congress as a member of the Massachusetts delegation until his death (1831-1848). The story is told in a little known book by eminent historian, William Lee, Miller, Arguing about Slavery: John Quincy Adams and the Great Battle in the United States Congress. For nine years Adams labored to get the issue of slavery into national debate by Congress. Almost single-handedly – with little support from his colleagues, northern or southern -- he defied gag orders, accusations of treason, and assassination threats, until he succeeded. His campaign to get slavery discussed has been called by some historians “the Pearl Harbor of the slavery controversy.” It was the beginning of the end of slave-holding in the United States.Where is our “John Quincy Adams”?

It is easy to whip up on our presidential candidates and members of Congress. We are more inclined to let ourselves off the hook for our failure to press the issue in our communities and among our friends. John Quincy Adams had not only his conscience to sustain him in his nine year fight; he had hundreds of thousands of petitions pouring into Washington demanding an end to slavery. We need to insure that Congress has the equivalent from us in the hinterland. Hats off to all of you who have been doing it for years! But that is not enough. Each of us has circles of friends and groups where we can push the issue in the way we are asking members of Congress to do there. Let’s hold our ourselves to the same standard we are asking of our leaders. Let the debate commence!

- Milo

DEBATE THE WAR

I know, it is four days after Super Tuesday, but the significance of the vote on Tuesday wasn’t clear to me right away. It didn’t take that long for Connie. Bright and early Wednesday morning she wrote letters to both Clinton and Obama with this message:

Now that Super Tuesday is past and some of that excitement is dispelled the rest of the election campaign intensity, I'm assuming, will escalate. My suggestion is, "please, Hillary/Barak, do not succumb to anymore mud throwing toward or with Obama/Clinton." We have lost so much dignity as a nation because of arrogant and aggressive personal affront that our potential representatives need to regain some dignity by being professional and objective. It is so important to me and I believe millions of other Americans how as a person you represent us. Getting into "personal" verbal combat with an opponent is not what I want to see. I need to see the respect you hold for your opponent, not your disdain.

I think she’s right. Those two have bigger fish to fry.

One thing Super Tuesday did was to make clear that Mitt Romney was not going to be the nominee for the Republican Party. He revealed his decision during a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C. I don’t know if the symbolism of Thursday being the “third day” after his defeat, but this seems to be the day that he sought to “resurrect” himself as the candidate for 2012, or possibly a spot on the ticket with McCain. What struck me was the reason he gave for withdrawing:

"If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win," he said. "And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror."

This will be the mantra attack on either Clinton or Obama in the general election: the Democratic candidate will “surrender to terror” by abandoning Iraq.

I hope Clinton and Obama insist on debating the war with McCain, not just in the general election but in the months left of the primary season. The Republicans don’t want a real debate about the war and in Congress they have done everything they can do to keep it from happening. We had a debate around the 2006 election and in the early months of the new Congress, but the debate has stalled. We also have Democrats who run for cover whenever the Republicans mention “terrorists,” and don’t want the debate either. The leadership in the House and Senate need to find new ways to get and keep the issue before Congress. But Hillary and Barack must set the example, not because the issue is politically advantageous, but because the war in Iraq is one of the greatest foreign policy catastrophes in our history. How the war is dealt with will define the presidency of whoever is elected in November. It may also define who we are as a people.

Many Americans understand this. Despite the glowing reports of the success of “the Surge” the majority of Americans want us out of Iraq. SusanG reported this evening on the latest AP poll:

The heck with Congress' big stimulus bill. The way to get the country out of recession -- and most people think we're in one -- is to get the country out of Iraq, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll.

Pulling out of the war ranked first among proposed remedies in the survey, followed by spending more on domestic programs, cutting taxes and, at the bottom end, giving rebates to poor people in hopes they'll spend the economy into recovery.

Last night as I watched Ann Coulter address a gathering of young Republicans, I was amazed by her hatred—yes, “hatred” is the word she used—of McCain. Over and over again she came back to his opposition to waterboarding and his stated intent to close Guantanamo. She went to great lengths to explain how waterboarding wasn't torture. I wonder if she would be willing to have it demonstrated on her. Then, she could tell us again how it wasn't torture.

Coulter reminded me that there are significant differences between McCain and Bush. But those differences pale in contrast to McCain’s identification with Bush’s war policy. VoteVets has released a detailed record of Senator McCain on the Iraq war, and it isn’t pretty.

Senator John McCain presents himself as a maverick and a critic of the Iraq war. But a close read of his record indicates that his position on the Iraq war has consistently matched President George W. Bush’s.

At every point between now and the election, Senator McCain should have to answer the American people for his identification with President Bush.

From Clinton and Obama, I shouldn’t have to hear any more nitpicking about what they did or didn’t do at the beginning of the war. What I should hear from them are challenges to McCain, his record, and intentions. What I should also hear from them are straight answers to questions that go beyond their scripted sound-bites. The main-stream media has failed miserably at asking hard questions about the war. McJoan has compiled a list of questions that are at the heart of the debate to be. I have re-stated them because I share them, but they were inspired by her:

Will you renounce the doctrine of preemptive war?

Will you get our troops out of Iraq before the end of your first term in office, without leaving permanent bases?

Will you find bin Laden, take seriously the threat that al Qaeda still poses, and know where and how to fight them?

Will you take care of the men and women who gave their all for us in Iraq and Afghanistan, end the shameful lack of funding, services, and treatment these brave men and women face when they come home, and ensure they get the help that they not only need, but deserve?

Will you unequivocally renounce the use of torture and agree to abide by the Geneva Conventions and international treaties on the treatment of prisoners of war?

Will you shut Guantanamo and every secret prison down as soon as humanly possible, and accord the detainees genuine due process of law?

Will you end the warrantless and illegal surveillance of American citizens by our intelligence agencies?

Will you hold any corporation that aided government in illegally spying on American citizens accountable to the rule of law?

Let the debate among the presidential candidates, in Congress, and in our communities, commence!

- Milo

STILL FISA

“Still FISA?” I can hear some of my friends saying. “Why are you giving this so much attention?” I am doing it because I believe this may be one of those little-acknowledged “hinges of history” that will shape our nations commitment to rule by law and civil liberties. I recall the words the words often attributed to Benjamin Franklin but which were probably first said by Richard Jackson and then published by Franklin: Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

So what happened today? Most of the Senate’s day was taken up Thursday with the Recovery Rebates and Economic Stimulus legislation. The House version was passed (81-16) by the Senate with the addition of senior citizens and disabled veterans.

On FISA, two Feingold amendments were voted on and rejected. The first was one that places flexible limits on the use of information obtained using unlawful procedures. The second was one that prohibits reverse targeting and protects the rights of Americans who are communicating with people abroad. For details, click on the link above for the U.S. Congress Votes Database.

If I understood Majority Leader Reed this afternoon the next votes on the other amendments, including the one on immunity for the telecoms, will not take place until Tuesday morning. I don’t know what the Senate will be doing tomorrow and Monday.

For more information on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) click on one or more of my earlier postings on this issue: Latest on the FISA Fight (February 6); FISA Fear-Mongering (February 3); Small Victory for Liberty (January 28), More About FISA (January 26), The Battle for Liberty (January 24)

Stay tuned into this issue! If you haven’t called your Senators yet you still have time. You’ll find their phone numbers on the February 6 posting.

- Milo

LATEST ON THE FISA FIGHT

Some of you have been asking for updates on where we are with the FISA legislation in the Senate. I’m attaching Jane McCarter’s (McJoan) update posted on Daily Kos just twenty minutes ago. There is still time for you to call your Senators!

FISA Fight: White House temper tantrum
by mcjoan
Wed Feb 06, 2008 at 09:13:17 AM PST

The Republican shenanigans on filibustering the stimulus package in order to delay consideration of the FISA fix now seems to have been orchestrated from the White House, if you could judge by a letter (pdf) AG Mukasey and DNI McConnell sent to Reid yesterday. The letter stresses that it's critical that the Protect America Act not be allowed to expire, while at the same time the White House's lackeys in the Senate were doing everything in their power to gum up the works.

Mukasey and McConnell also wrote to stress that just about every pending Democratic amendment to the bill would ensure a veto. Those provisions include:

* Feingold's S 3979, which prevents communication collection if the government knows beforehand that communication is to or from a person believed to be in the U.S.

* Feingold's reverse targeting, S 3913, which prohibits the government from getting around FISA's court order requirement by wiretapping an individual overseas when it is really interested in a person in the U.S. with whom that supposed foreign target is communicating.

* Feingold's Specific Individual Target test, S 3912, which prohibits bulk collection and requires the government to certify to the FISA Court that it is collecting communications of targets for whom there is a foreign intelligence interest.

* Feingold's Use Limits, S 3915: gives the FISA Court discretion to impose restrictions on the use of information about Americans that is acquired through procedures later determined to be illegal by the FISA court.

* Dodd/Feingold's S 3907, which strips telco amnesty from the bill.

* Whitehouse/Specter's substitution, S 3927 which substitutes the government for telcos being sued for their participation in the warrantless wiretapping program, but only if the company is first determined by the FISA Court to have cooperated with the Bush Administration reasonably and in good faith.

* Feinstein's S 3919, which would allow FISC to review the AG's declaration that the telcos acted in good faith before they get their immunity.

The amendments that the White House doesn't like but would live with are Cardin's four year sunset of the law (S 3930) and Whitehouse's amendment on minimization (S 3920), the process of weeding out data obtained about U.S. persons and destroying it. This amendment would grant the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court the discretionary authority to not only approve minimization rules but to review their implementation.

The debate has resumed on the Senate floor on these amendments. It is critical that as many as these amendments as possible pass--all of the veto-worthy amendments would pass on a simple majority vote (a majority of Senators voting, not a 50-vote threshold). Whitehouse's minimization amendment, which apparently would be acceptable to the White House, would actually strengthen the bill significantly, and would be a good focus for our efforts.

But again, getting every vote possible for the basic amendments, including no telco amnesty, in the Senate will make the House's defense of their version of the bill easier when it comes to conference. Keep the pressure up on those Dems. Contact your own Senators and also this list of Senators likely to be persuadable.

Tell them
(1) NO on telco amnesty,
(2) NO basket warrants or reverse targeting,
(3) sequestration of illegally harvested evidence,
(4) make FISA the exclusive means of surveillance, and
(5) vote for a 4 year sunset.

Bayh (202) 224-5623 phone, (202) 228-1377 fax
Byrd (202) 224-3954 phone, (202) 228-0002 fax
Carper (202) 224-2441 phone, (202) 228-2190 fax
Feinstein (202) 224-3841 phone, (202) 228-3954 fax
Inouye (202) 224-3934 phone, (202) 224-6747 fax
Johnson (202) 224-5842 phone, (605) 341-2207 fax
Kohl (202) 224-5653 (202) 224-9787
Landrieu (202)224-5824 phone, (202) 224-9735 fax
Lincoln (202) 224-4843 phone, (202) 228-1371 fax
McCaskill (202) 224-6154 phone, (202) 228-6326 fax
Mikulski (202) 224-4654 phone, (202) 224-8858 fax
Nelson (FL) (202) 224-5274 phone, (202) 228-2183 fax
Nelson (NE) (202) 224-6551 phone, (202) 228-0012 fax
Pryor (202) 224-2353 phone, (202) 228-0908 fax
Rockefeller, (202) 224-6472 phone, (202) 224-7665 fax
Salazar (202) 224-5852 phone, (202) 228-5036 fax
Stabenow (202) 224-4822 phone, (202) 228-0325 fax
Chambliss (202) 224-3521 phone, (202) 224-0103 fax
Coleman (202) 224-5641 phone, (202) 224-1152 fax
Collins (202) 224-2523 phone, (202) 224-2693 fax
Dole (202) 224-6342 phone, (202) 224-1100 fax
Graham (202) 224-5972 phone, (202) 224-3808 fax
Lieberman (202) 224-4041 phone, (202) 224-9750 fax
McCain (202) 224-2235 phone, (202) 228-2862 fax
Smith (202) 224-3753 phone, (202) 228-3997 fax
Snowe (202) 224-5344 phone, (202) 224-1946 fax
Sununu (202) 224-2841 phone, (202) 228-4131 fax
Warner (202) 224-2023 phone, (202) 224-6295 fax

If this is your first visit to my blog you may want to check out my earlier postings on this issue: FISA Fear-Mongering (February 3); Small Victory for Liberty (January 28), More About FISA (January 26), The Battle for Liberty (January 24)

- Milo

SAYING GOODBYE TO PAX AMERICANA?

What is your view of the U.S. role in the world?

The geo-political ideology that shaped President Bush’s foreign policy imagined a world where the U.S. was the supreme power (economic, political, and military), free do pretty much as it wanted. For many, this ideology has been reality-tested by the invasion of Iraq and found wanting. Would it be accurate to say that there has been a decline of U.S. power and influence during President Bush’s administration?

In his lengthy article, “Waving Goodbye to Hegemony”, Parag Khanna, a senior research fellow in the American Strategy Program of the New America Foundation, puts the issue this way:

Turn on the TV today, and you could be forgiven for thinking it’s 1999. Democrats and Republicans are bickering about where and how to intervene, whether to do it alone or with allies and what kind of world America should lead. Democrats believe they can hit a reset button, and Republicans believe muscular moralism is the way to go. It’s as if the first decade of the 21st century didn’t happen — and almost as if history itself doesn’t happen. But the distribution of power in the world has fundamentally altered over the two presidential terms of George W. Bush, both because of his policies and, more significant, despite them.

Before we look at Khanna’s vision of the present and future, we need to look back at the origins of the ideology that shaped President Bush’s foreign policy.

Looking Back:

On September 23, 2003 an article appeared in the Christian Science Monitor under the title, “A Bush Vision of Pax Americana,” reporting on the just released “National Security Strategy” by the Bush administration. The 31-page document asserted American dominance as the lone superpower – a status no rival power would be allowed to challenge. That article was followed five days later by Jay Bookman in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution titled, “The President’s Real Goal in Iraq,” showing how the new strategy lays out a plan for permanent U.S. military and economic domination of every region on the globe, unfettered by international treaty or concern. And to make that plan a reality, it envisions a stark expansion of our global military presence.

When he was running for President in 1999, now President Bush didn’t campaign on a Pax Americana foreign policy. In his foreign policy debate with Al Gore, Bush pointedly advocated a more humble foreign policy, a position calculated to appeal to voters leery of military intervention.

After 9/11, the attacks were used to justify the new policy; but it had been shaped by persons who had become influential staff in the Bush Administration well before the Trade Towers and the Pentagon were attacked. The views can be found in much the same language in a report issued in September 2000 by the Project for the New American Century, a group of conservative interventionists outraged by the thought that the United States might be forfeiting its chance at a global empire.

Bookman wrote: The 2000 report directly acknowledges its debt to a still earlier document, drafted in 1992 by the Defence Department. That document had also envisioned the United States as a colossus astride the world, imposing its will and keeping world peace through military and economic power. When leaked in final draft form, however, the proposal drew so much criticism that it was hastily withdrawn and repudiated by the first President Bush.

Donald Kagan, a professor of classical Greek history at Yale and an influential advocate of a more aggressive foreign policy—he served as co-chairman of the 2000 New Century project—summed up the ideology: "You saw the movie 'High Noon'? he asks. "We're Gary Cooper." Accepting the Cooper role represented an historic change in who we were as a nation, and in how we operated in the international arena.

Looking Ahead:

Things haven’t worked out for our role as “Gary Cooper”. That self-image we so much wanted was seen by many in the world more like Gene Hackman in his role as the ruthless sheriff in "The Quick and the Dead." Khanna doesn't go for the cinematic images, but he accurately describes what has happened over the last eight years:

Many saw the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as the symbols of a global American imperialism; in fact, they were signs of imperial overstretch. Every expenditure has weakened America’s armed forces, and each assertion of power has awakened resistance in the form of terrorist networks, insurgent groups and “asymmetric” weapons like suicide bombers. America’s unipolar moment has inspired diplomatic and financial countermovements to block American bullying and construct an alternate world order.

Khanna says that by the end of eight years of whoever is elected in November, there will be a new geo-political reality:

[A] new global order has arrived, and there is precious little Clinton or McCain or Obama could do to resist its growth.

So now, rather than bestriding the globe, we are competing — and losing — in a geopolitical marketplace alongside the world’s other superpowers: the European Union and China. This is geopolitics in the 21st century: the new Big Three. Not Russia, an increasingly depopulated expanse run by Gazprom.gov; not an incoherent Islam embroiled in internal wars; and not India, lagging decades behind China in both development and strategic appetite. The Big Three make the rules — their own rules — without any one of them dominating. And the others are left to choose their suitors in this post-American world.

******
The Big Three are the ultimate “Frenemies.” Twenty-first-century geopolitics will resemble nothing more than Orwell’s 1984, but instead of three world powers (Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia), we have three hemispheric pan-regions, longitudinal zones dominated by America, Europe and China. As the early 20th-century European scholars of geopolitics realized, because a vertically organized region contains all climatic zones year-round, each pan-region can be self-sufficient and build a power base from which to intrude in others’ terrain. But in a globalized and shrinking world, no geography is sacrosanct. So in various ways, both overtly and under the radar, China and Europe will meddle in America’s backyard, America and China will compete for African resources in Europe’s southern periphery and America and Europe will seek to profit from the rapid economic growth of countries within China’s growing sphere of influence. Globalization is the weapon of choice. The main battlefield is what I call “the second world.”

*****

To really understand how quickly American power is in decline around the world, I’ve spent the past two years traveling in some 40 countries in the five most strategic regions of the planet — the countries of the second world. They are not in the first-world core of the global economy, nor in its third-world periphery. Lying alongside and between the Big Three, second-world countries are the swing states that will determine which of the superpowers has the upper hand for the next generation of geopolitics. From Venezuela to Vietnam and Morocco to Malaysia, the new reality of global affairs is that there is not one way to win allies and influence countries but three: America’s coalition (as in “coalition of the willing”), Europe’s consensus and China’s consultative styles. The geopolitical marketplace will decide which will lead the 21st century.

Khamma suggests five steps that could renew America’s competitiveness in the emerging geopolitical world. You’ll have to read his article to see what they are. He concludes: We need pragmatic incremental steps like the above to deliver tangible gains to people beyond our shores, repair our reputation, maintain harmony among the Big Three, keep the second world stable and neutral and protect our common planet. Let’s hope whoever is sworn in as the next American president understands this.

What do you think? Is Khanna right about the future? Which presidential candidates do you think understand the new world we are entering?

- Milo

FISA FEAR-MONGERING

I don’t know if this is a good time to make this post, but I’m doing it anyway. In about three hours Super Bowl XLII will begin. Some of you will have the good sense to be doing more constructive things; I won’t be among you. I’ll be watching the game. But during the interminable pre-game hoopla, maybe during the breaks—Oh, I almost forgot, this is the game when you watch the commercials even if you don’t watch the game—or maybe when you are coming down after the game is over, you’ll see this post about a real-world struggle about to “kickoff” in Washington tomorrow.

Do you remember Richard A. Clarke? He is former head of counterterrorism at the National Security Council. He wrote this Op-Ed piece for the Philadelphia Inquirer on Friday in response to President Bush’s state of the union address.

When I left the Bush administration in 2003, it was clear to me that its strategy for defeating terrorism was leaving our nation more vulnerable and our people in a perilous place. Not only did its policies misappropriate resources, weaken the moral standing of America, and threaten long-standing legal and constitutional provisions, but the president also employed misleading and reckless rhetoric to perpetuate his agenda....

Besides overstating successes in Afghanistan, painting a rosy future for Iraq, and touting unfinished domestic objectives, he again used his favorite tactic - fear - as a tool to scare Congress and the American people. On one issue in particular - FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) - the president misconstrued the truth and manipulated the facts....

So it is no surprise that in one of Bush's last acts of relevance, he once again played the fear card. While he has failed in spreading democracy, stemming global terrorism, and leaving the country better off than when he took power, he did achieve one thing: successfully perpetuating fear for political gain.

Sadly, it may be one of the only achievements of his presidency.

One of the savviest analysts I’ve discovered on the FISA controversy, mcjoan, called attention to the Clarke article in her Daily Kos article Saturday night, saying that she hoped the Democratic Senators would keep it in mind as they approach the debate on the new surveillance bill on Monday.

The Dems in the Senate did at least manage to push back on the fear card long enough to get us to where we're at now--an actual debate to happen on the Senate floor over important amendments, some of which will even get a simple up or down vote.

It's an old theme for us, unfortunately; Democrats so afraid that they'll be labeled weak in the face of terror that they'll roll over for any legislative tragedy should someone whisper "terror" in their collective ear. As disastrous as their capitulation to it was in taking us to war in Iraq, their bowing to it in respects to warrantless wiretapping is just as dangerous for the long term health of the Constitution and its inherent checks and balances.

Since Eric Lichtblau and James Risen broke the story of warrantless wiretaps in December, 2005, we've learned enough about the program to know that national security in the wake of 9/11 had little to do with.

The revelations that the NSA actually began negotiation with AT&T as early as February, 2001 and that at least one of these "critical" wiretaps lapsed because the government didn't pay its bill should be proof enough to even the most tremulous of Democrats that Bush and the Republicans have been playing them for years.

But they don't have to take a crazed blogger's word for it. A national security expert just told them so.

On Monday morning, the day after the Super Bowl, I hope you will call your two U.S. Senators to register your concern that they not cave in to the administration’s fear-mongering on the FISA legislation and that you oppose granting immunity to the telecom companies who participated. If enough of you call, we may win this one. Make your voice heard!

Need more information? Check out my earlier blogs: Small Victory for Liberty (January 28), More About FISA (January 26), The Battle for Liberty (January 24)

- Milo

CIVIL UNIONS IN OREGON BACK ON TRACK

As a result of a federal judge’s ruling on Friday, same-sex couples may begin registering as domestic partners in Oregon, obtaining some of benefits comparable to marriage. County clerks across the state expect a rush of applicants on Monday morning.

The law was initially scheduled to go into effect on January 2, but a group opposed to the law wanted to force a referendum vote and on December 28 got an injunction to block the new domestic partnership law.

The judge’s decision was a major victory for gay-rights advocates, who have fought for years to gain the rights and protections that married couples enjoy, including the ability to file joint state tax returns, to automatically inherit a partner’s property, to adopt and jointly parent children, and to visit family members in the hospital.

The law stops short of full-fledged marriage and offers none of the rights guaranteed to married spouses under federal law.

We’ve a long way to go before we accord truly equal rights to same-sex couples, but we celebrate this victory on the way to that goal.

Looking Back: At one point, 40 states in this country forbade the marriage of a white person to a person of color. Marriages between whites and persons of color were decried as “immoral” and “unnatural”. A Virginia judge upheld that state’s ban on interracial marriages saying, in language with the same tone as that being used in opposition to gay marriages today:

“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”

In 1948, the California Supreme Court led the way in challenging racial discrimination in marriage and became the fist state high court to declare unconstitutional a ban on interracial marriage. The court pointed out that races don’t marry each other, people do. Restricting who can marry whom on that characteristic alone was therefore race discrimination. It took another 19 years for the U.S. Supreme Court to make the same ruling. Until 1967, in many states, a couple of mixed race could not get a marriage license, and if they went to another state and were married, when they returned home they could be arrested.

The same logic that banned interracial marriages has been used to ban same-sex marriage. In both cases, the appeal is religious. God help us!

- Milo

REFLECTIONS ON WAKING UP IN A DIFFERENT WORLD

On January 23rd, Tammy told her story here about “waking up in a different world,” having to come to terms with her realization that, although married with children and a member of a church that condemned homosexuality, she was lesbian. Daniel offers these reflections on her story.

A few people know who they are right from the get go. Secure and confidentin their beliefs, they sail right on through life and are often mystifiedby the majority of us who struggle to answer the question, "who and whatam I."

These questions occupy all sorts of spaces in our hearts and minds. Theyare about values, lifestyles, careers, spouses, sexual orientations, etc.,all seeking peace with the various bits and pieces of ourselves.

For the more introspective of us, this is a life long journey of discoveryand change. And as time passes we often surprise ourselves with thediscoveries we make and the changes we choose. What we think we arechanges with time, experience and the willingness to look deeper as webecome more courageous.

Waking up to a different world makes great sense to me. For most of us,this journey starts out trying to fit in, and to be like others. And wecan trick ourselves into believing that we can will our differences away.Then one morning we wake up and realize we are who we are and willing, nomatter how strong, is not going to change something fundamental.

Waking up is reconciling with who we are, as we are.

My rancher friends are not surprised with this story. They see a fewcattle and sheep strongly attracted to their own sex and laugh at theirclumsy attempts to woo those who will not be wooed. They realize thatpeople are just the same.

So I think this is a simple aspect of God's creation, that some of us arecreated interested in our own sex and this poses awkward situations thatwe have to reconcile. But if we look at the fullness of creation andappreciate its diversity in its beauty and mystery, then attractions tothe same sex is just another way of having the same kind of fun.

What I hope we all discover in the journey of relationships is true loveof each person's essence and commitment shared by two people. Those whofind it receive one of the greatest gifts on earth. And if we see God aslove, then perhaps we have touched and experienced one essence of God.

Thanks, Daniel!

SOLDIER SUICIDES AT RECORD LEVEL

Suicides among active-duty soldiers in 2007 reached their highest level since the Army began keeping such records in 1980, according to Dana Priest’s Thursday article in the Washington Post that was based on an Army internal study.

Last year, 121 soldiers took their own lives, nearly 20 percent more than in 2006.
At the same time, the number of attempted suicides or self-inflicted injuries in the Army has jumped sixfold since the Iraq war began. Last year, about 2,100 soldiers injured themselves or attempted suicide, compared with about 350 in 2002, according to the U.S. Army Medical Command Suicide Prevention Action Plan.

According to my calculations, those numbers mean over two suicides each week, as well as forty self-inflicted wounds or attempted suicides each week!

The Army was unprepared for the high number of suicides and cases of post-traumatic stress disorder among its troops, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have continued far longer than anticipated. Many Army posts still do not offer enough individual counseling and some soldiers suffering psychological problems complain that they are stigmatized by commanders. Over the past year, four high-level commissions have recommended reforms and Congress has given the military hundreds of millions of dollars to improve its mental health care, but critics charge that significant progress has not been made.

The report also notes that, historically, suicide rates tend to decrease when soldiers are in conflicts overseas, but that trend has now reversed.

From a suicide rate of 9.8 per 100,000 active-duty soldiers in 2001 -- the lowest rate on record -- the Army reached an all-time high of 17.5 suicides per 100,000 active-duty soldiers in 2006.

Colonel Elspeth Cameron Ritchie, the Army’s top psychiatrist and author of the study, said that suicides and attempted suicides “are continuing to rise despite a lot of things we’re doing now and have been doing.”

Ritchie's team conducted more than 200 interviews in the United States and overseas, and found that the common factors in suicides and attempted suicides include failed personal relationships; legal, financial or occupational problems; and the frequency and length of overseas deployments. She said the Army must do a better job of making sure that soldiers in distress receive mental health services. "We need to know what to do when we're concerned about one of our fellows."

The psychic and physical damage done to the soldiers is one of the incalculable tragic consequences of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, an “incalculable” that increases exponentially when you consider the impact on their families and communities. We are still coping with the damage done to a generation who fought in Vietnam. And, of course, this doesn’t even touch the damage to untold generations of men, women, and children in the war zones. Thinking about it makes me sad; it also makes me angry about the decisions that put these young women and men into a senseless war—the one factor not mentioned in the study.

- Milo