Still Getting It Wrong

I just had to post the exerpt Harpers Magazine has online of Bill McKibben's What it means to be Christian in America article. In its' way, it's like listening to The Tonight Show's Jay Walkers talk about the Atlantic Ocean being off the coast of California, and how Australians speak Australian.

The Christian Paradox

How a faithful nation gets Jesus wrong

Posted on Wednesday, July 27, 2005. What it means to be Christian in America. An excerpt. Originally from August 2005. By Bill McKibben.

Sources

Only 40 percent of Americans can name more than four of the Ten Commandments, and a scant half can cite any of the four authors of the Gospels. Twelve percent believe Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. This failure to recall the specifics of our Christian heritage may be further evidence of our nation’s educational decline, but it probably doesn’t matter all that much in spiritual or political terms. Here is a statistic that does matter: Three quarters of Americans believe the Bible teaches that “God helps those who help themselves.” That is, three out of four Americans believe that this uber-American idea, a notion at the core of our current individualist politics and culture, which was in fact uttered by Ben Franklin, actually appears in Holy Scripture. The thing is, not only is Franklin’s wisdom not biblical; it’s counter-biblical. Few ideas could be further from the gospel message, with its radical summons to love of neighbor. On this essential matter, most Americans—most American Christians—are simply wrong, as if 75 percent of American scientists believed that Newton proved gravity causes apples to fly up.

Asking Christians what Christ taught isn’t a trick. When we say we are a Christian nation—and, overwhelmingly, we do—it means something. People who go to church absorb lessons there and make real decisions based on those lessons; increasingly, these lessons inform their politics. (One poll found that 11 percent of U.S. churchgoers were urged by their clergy to vote in a particular way in the 2004 election, up from 6 percent in 2000.) When George Bush says that Jesus Christ is his favorite philosopher, he may or may not be sincere, but he is reflecting the sincere beliefs of the vast majority of Americans.

And therein is the paradox. America is simultaneously the most professedly Christian of the developed nations and the least Christian in its behavior. That paradox—more important, perhaps, than the much touted ability of French women to stay thin on a diet of chocolate and cheese—illuminates the hollow at the core of our boastful, careening culture.

* * *

Ours is among the most spiritually homogenous rich nations on earth. Depending on which poll you look at and how the question is asked, somewhere around 85 percent of us call ourselves Christian. Israel, by way of comparison, is 77 percent Jewish. It is true that a smaller number of Americans—about 75 percent—claim they actually pray to God on a daily basis, and only 33 percent say they manage to get to church every week. Still, even if that 85 percent overstates actual practice, it clearly represents aspiration. In fact, there is nothing else that unites more than four fifths of America. Every other statistic one can cite about American behavior is essentially also a measure of the behavior of professed Christians. That’s what America is: a place saturated in Christian identity.

But is it Christian? This is not a matter of angels dancing on the heads of pins. Christ was pretty specific about what he had in mind for his followers. What if we chose some simple criterion—say, giving aid to the poorest people—as a reasonable proxy for Christian behavior? After all, in the days before his crucifixion, when Jesus summed up his message for his disciples, he said the way you could tell the righteous from the damned was by whether they’d fed the hungry, slaked the thirsty, clothed the naked, welcomed the stranger, and visited the prisoner. What would we find then?

In 2004, as a share of our economy, we ranked second to last, after Italy, among developed countries in government foreign aid. Per capita we each provide fifteen cents a day in official development assistance to poor countries. And it’s not because we were giving to private charities for relief work instead. Such funding increases our average daily donation by just six pennies, to twenty-one cents. It’s also not because Americans were too busy taking care of their own; nearly 18 percent of American children lived in poverty (compared with, say, 8 percent in Sweden). In fact, by pretty much any measure of caring for the least among us you want to propose—childhood nutrition, infant mortality, access to preschool—we come in nearly last among the rich nations, and often by a wide margin. The point is not just that (as everyone already knows) the American nation trails badly in all these categories; it’s that the overwhelmingly Christian American nation trails badly in all these categories, categories to which Jesus paid particular attention. And it’s not as if the numbers are getting better: the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported last year that the number of households that were “food insecure with hunger” had climbed more than 26 percent between 1999 and 2003.

This Christian nation also tends to make personal, as opposed to political, choices that the Bible would seem to frown upon. Despite the Sixth Commandment, we are, of course, the most violent rich nation on earth, with a murder rate four or five times that of our European peers. We have prison populations greater by a factor of six or seven than other rich nations (which at least should give us plenty of opportunity for visiting the prisoners). Having been told to turn the other cheek, we’re the only Western democracy left that executes its citizens, mostly in those states where Christianity is theoretically strongest. Despite Jesus’ strong declarations against divorce, our marriages break up at a rate—just over half—that compares poorly with the European Union’s average of about four in ten. That average may be held down by the fact that Europeans marry less frequently, and by countries, like Italy, where divorce is difficult; still, compare our success with, say, that of the godless Dutch, whose divorce rate is just over 37 percent. Teenage pregnancy? We’re at the top of the charts. Personal self-discipline—like, say, keeping your weight under control? Buying on credit? Running government deficits? Do you need to ask?

"The tyranny of a principal in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy." --Montesquieu, 1748

“The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.” -- John F. Kennedy, 1963

A Vision for the Future I Want to See

Here’s a portion of an article worth sharing. You can find the whole thing here.

It’s about the showdown at the AFL-CIO Convention, but says so much about what unions were created for in the first place, and really, what Democrats are fighting for.

What this author says truly is the anathema of Republicans in power far and wide. They’ve worked long and hard to make ‘union’ into a curse-word in much the same way ‘liberal’ has become. Before you allow misinformation campaigns to cause you to utter some knee-jerk denial for the need for unions, read below. How can this be a bad thing? Would you really rather not have this in your own workplace as well?

Looking into the middle distance, we can perhaps see that new wave of union evolution, gathering strength. Its predominant face is of color, and female. It is Spanish/English bilingual and capable in many languages. It is predicated on dignity, power, and living wages for service work -- our new industrial shop floor -- with an international structure, a non-imperialist culture, and worldwide standards for safety, health, and environmental integrity. And I like to think that, despite the current furor, most of us are eager to catch it, bending the arc of history toward justice.

For me, that means a world in which we all can live in dignity, mutual respect, and peace, sharing equitably in both resources and decision-making -- entitled to good air, food and water, housing, and healthcare from birth to death; a world in which we can grow to our full potential through education and work -- free to think, create, play, free to worship or not, free to sing what we want, and free to love whom we please -- provided we cause the least harm to other people, our planet, or our universe; and a world in which we use more consensus than coercion to accomplish these goals and always stretch ourselves to see that others have the same rights and privileges as we do.

We need to restore poetry to our politics, the meaning that strengthens the muscle. Bread and roses. It may be more than we bargain for, but for progressive labor, it's the real deal.

Not So Shocking News

I'm putting this person's comments below because I feel they so beautifully summarize all that's currently wrong with the Republican party. They also succinctly explain just why Democrats are having as hard a time combatting the blatant corruption as they are. Truthfully, I'm honored to be a part of the party that cares about America and her citizens. However, while still being proud to be an American, I most certainly am ashamed of this administration.

"Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may." ~Mark Twain

Stop letting Fox news tell you what the issues are, and start researching them for yourselves. It's your duty, as citizens, to seek out the truth and not blindly accept what you are told.

This is just a glimpse of another tendril of what we on the left refer to as VRWC, or Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. The breadth and depth of this amoral behavior goes straight to the crux of the neocon philosophy: there is no morality when fighting "enemies". The neocons view their cause as so overridingly just, so paramount to the salvation of the entire country, or the world, that any behavior becomes excusable.

This is "The Prince" writ large, and New Hampshire is only one small example. The pure evil that the neocon machines exhibit while blithely smashing any and every obstacle to their dominance should be a clarion call to all republicans, particularly honorable and moral conservatives, that they are sleeping with Satan and his minions, determined to loose as much misery on the planet as possible for the ultimate purpose of profit of a select few corporations that always profit from human misery, ever since they discovered this in the days leading up to World War Two.

That we cannot and will not fight back with our own brand of evil is at once our saving grace and our downfall. The left is happy with the moral high ground, but the result is that we end up prepared to play a spirited game of football while our enemies are preparing to kill us off in battle.

It's not about merely winning and gaining territory to these types, it's about complete elmination of the left's viewpoint from human thought by whatever means necessary. - by MikeHickerson on Jul 21, 2005 -- 01:45:31 PM EST

GOP Declares Any Sexual Positions Other Than Missionary Unconstitutional

Catchy headline, isn’t it? Think it’s impossible? Think it can’t happen here in America? Think again. This is what our Senators are saying, and what they intend for you.

Senator Rick Santorum’s got some opinions to share, and I think it’s time you listen up and pay attention – before it’s too late.

How did this all start? Several “strands” of major Supreme Court decisions, bound together, have dismantled older constitutional understandings and enshrined the new morality. On the questions of marriage, family, and sex, that string begins with the 1965 Griswold decision. In that case, a Connecticut law that outlawed the use of contraceptives, even by married couples, was ruled unconstitutional. Now, before you jump to conclusions, let me clearly state that this law was badly written, and I would not have supported it or its intent. Nonetheless, it is in this case that the Court “discovered” a “right to privacy” in the U.S. Constitution. Of course, such a right does not appear anywhere in the text of the Constitution. Rather, the Court’s majority discovered — or invented — such a right from the “emanations” and “penumbras” of rights found in the First, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments.

It is significant that what seems to have been decisive in the minds of some of the justices in the Griswold majority was actually something quite traditional in the common law: the notion that marriage was a privileged institution into which law should not interfere. The case involved Planned Parenthood dispensing contraceptives to a married couple, and throughout the decision, it was marital privacy that was discussed. So, an aspect of the traditional moral view was a motivation for the Court’s majority decision: But the jurisprudential novelty it established — the right to privacy — would quickly become a constitutional wrecking ball.

Justices Stewart and Black were scathing in dissent, observing that while both disagreed with the law personally (as do I), they could find nothing in the U.S. Constitution that prevented the Connecticut legislature from making such a law (which had been on the books in the state since 1879). The dissenting justices mocked the reasoning of the majority, which in some cases based itself not on the Constitution’s text, but rather on the “traditions and [collective] conscience of our people.” How, asked the dissenters, could the Court know the conscience of the people better than legislators? Did not such reliance lead only to the substitution of judges’ “personal and private notions” for the decisions of legislatures? “Use of any such broad, unbounded judicial authority would make of this Court’s members a day-to-day constitutional convention,” warned Justice Black. And so it has been! Finally, Justice Black observed that “privacy” is a “broad, abstract and ambiguous concept,” lacking the specificity of a genuinely constitutional rule. However traditional it may appear in the guise of marital privacy, which as a legislator I support, this novel right was bound to do harm in our jurisprudence.

And so it was and so it did. Just seven years later, in Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972), the Court struck down a Massachusetts law that made contraception legal only for married persons. The distinction between the married and unmarried was breached, and the “right of privacy” became unhinged, essentially protecting (heterosexual) sex, as such, from any moral regulation.

Again, although I disagree with the Massachusetts law and its intent, the Court’s solution to the problem presented by such a law was neither judicious nor prudent: The Court in effect codified the sexual revolution then underway — with the supremely powerful protection of a constitutional right. Marital privacy had now morphed into “the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child.” The arguably traditional marital dimension upon which the Court had discovered the new “privacy right” was simply dropped with respect to having heterosexual intercourse. Rather than encouraging the legislature to repeal an outdated law, the Court expanded further the ungrounded right to privacy.

The next step, of course, was Roe v. Wade, the abortion decision of 1973. Today, most honest constitutional experts agree that as constitutional law, this decision is a monstrosity, a pure act of judicial legislating with no warrant in the Constitution’s text. Having invented a “right to privacy,” a right with a special emphasis on sexual matters, the Court was driven by its new moral logic to extend protection to what was all too often the result of the new sexual ethic: unwanted pregnancies and their “termination.”

The Roe decision established an elaborate system of “trimesters” of pregnancy and delimited when the states might and might not have a “compelling interest” in protecting the life of the unborn, “balanced” against the “privacy right” of the mother. In immediately subsequent decisions, however, this elaborate system quickly became meaningless, a dead letter. By the Supreme Court’s lights, no legislative regulation of abortion was permissible, for abortion was, after all, a “fundamental right.” What could possible count as a legitimate weight in the balance against a “fundamental right”? In effect, Roe created a private license to kill a certain category of Americans, the unborn, and raised this license to a constitutional principle.

The strands of these Court cases had made the rope thick. The legal reasoning continued to evolve, and the right to (sexual) privacy approached its terminal point. In the 1992 case, Planned Parenthood of Southeast Pennsylvania v. Casey, the Court handed down a complex ruling on a Pennsylvania state law that sought to reduce the number of abortions by a whole set of restrictive measures. The Casey decision actually stepped back from some of the most extreme Court decisions that followed Roe: Certain measures to ensure “informed consent” are now ruled constitutional, for example. But finally, the Court would not allow any legislation in America that would actually prevent a woman from procuring an abortion she desired. That is the bottom line. And the reason for this is found in the so-called “mystery passage.” It formed the basis of the ruling: “At the heart of liberty,” Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority, “is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” The privacy right had now been expanded to its philosophical extreme.

Moral capital involves shared moral aspirations and norms, which for most of our founders was our human, legislative effort to approximate a transcendent moral order. I have been arguing that such moral capital is part of the common good. Here, however, the court tells us that liberty must mean that there is no common good: Each of us is locked in the prison of our own self-created moral universe. We are, each of us, lords of the world, divine legislators. There is no transcendent truth, no common truth, just myriad individual truths.

Where does the right to privacy go from here? As our culture continues to “progress” and old inhibitions are cast off, what boundaries — what guardrails — will be left? In his 1995 book Rethinking Life and Death, Princeton professor Peter Singer liberates moral theory and practice from any truths that pose an obstacle to our will to power and control. In that book he champions “neonaticide” — that is, the legal destruction of newborn human beings with physical handicaps up through the 28th day after birth. Singer has been dubbed by his critics “Professor Death” — but he professes his views from a tenured chair at Princeton.

Is Singer alone in promoting such a radical “concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life”? Unfortunately, he is not. Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard, suggests that

we need a clear boundary to confer personhood on a human being and grant it a right to life. . . . [T]he right to life must come . . . from morally significant traits that we humans happen to possess. One such trait is having a sequence of experiences that defines us as individuals and connects us to other people. Other traits include an ability to reflect on ourselves as a continuous locus of consciousness, to form and savor plans for the future, to dread death and to express the choice not to die.

Under his definition a newborn is not human, and therefore the reality Pinker constructs would allow for neonaticide as well. Pinker points to that conclusion himself: “[S]everal moral philosophers have concluded that neonates are not persons . . . and thus neonaticide should not be classified as murder.”

How long will it be before the Supreme Court “discovers” that voices like Singer’s and Pinker’s, coming as they do from some of our most elite educational institutions, represent the evolving “[collective] conscience of our people” and bring us yet another expansion of the right to privacy?

(bold and underline emphasis mine).

Are you getting the picture yet? He doesn’t just oppose abortion - he opposes birth control. He opposes the fundamental right to privacy between a man and a woman. These zealots have no problem intruding into your life and trying to force their own religious beliefs upon you, whether you agree with them or not. This isn’t an exaggeration.

What more needs to be said? They won’t stop at abortion. This is about a woman’s fundamental right to choose *when* it is the right time for her to have a family, and it is clear that to these people, the woman should have no say at all.

Now partner that thought with the new ‘abstinence only sex education’ Bush is desperate to push on our children, and the picture gets even uglier. They don’t want our children to know how to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancies, STDs, and AIDS.

That being said, I’d like to point out the dark truth of who these zealots really are. They *know* unwanted pregnancies are going to happen. They want them to. And as long as there are unwanted pregnancies, there will always be women desperate enough, or in dire enough circumstances to consider seeking out an abortion, whether it is illegal or not. These religious monsters don’t *care* that a woman’s life is at risk for being forced to go to an unsanitary, back-street butcher instead of a licensed medical doctor.

Right now, there are anti-abortion groups (some even funded by Bush) that masquerade as 'crisis pregnancy' centers. They pretend to be a women's health clinic but deliver heavy-handed anti-abortion messages and frequently outright lie when giving 'medical' information. They often use stall tactics to try to fool women into thinking they have more time to make their decisions than they really do.

Pharmacists are turning away rape victims from having access to emergency contraceptives and refusing to give their prescriptions back. All emergency contraceptives do is prevent ovulation or fertilization. They're refusing to even fill birth control prescriptions.

In February, another Texas pharmacist at an Eckerd drug store in Denton wouldn't give contraceptives to a woman who was said to be a rape victim. In the Madison case, pharmacist Neil Noesen, 30, after refusing to refill a birth-control prescription, did not transfer it to another pharmacist or return it to the woman. She was able to get her prescription refilled two days later at the same pharmacy, but she missed a pill because of the delay.

How is this the 'Christian' thing to do?

Considering the evidence I've presented above, who truly is the monster here? The woman who, when faced with the choice, tries to make the best decision for herself and her family, or the religious zealots who would rather their own children die of AIDS rather than use contraceptives? Fanatics who would rather a young girl bleed to death trying to get an illegal abortion rather than bear her father's child or the young girl herself?

A zygote matters more to these people than the woman who carries it.

It's that bad out there. You need to be paying attention. Remember all those sayings you used to hear? "A woman's place is in the kitchen." "All women should be barefoot and pregnant."

There are a powerful group of fanatics out there who have the ear of the president. They hold the highest political offices in this country - and they want those statements to be made true.

I've always advocated freedom of religion. It truly is a founding principle for America. Only now can I truly appreciate Jefferson's emphasis on freedom *from* religion as well. As the bumper sticker says, "God save me from your 'true believers'".

Definition of the Day

Bush league

n : Anyone in league with the Bush administration. This means while claiming to be Republicans, George Bush and affiliates pursue a more self-serving agenda - at the rest of America's expense. Those identified as being in the 'Bush league' can be easily identified by their fervent desire to squelch dissenting voices at any cost.

Those in the 'Bush leagues' fall into three separate, yet distinct categories: a) Those who want what they want when they want it, and don't care who they have to hurt to get it; b) Those who wish to force their own oppressive religous beliefs on the populace, whether it wants it or not and; c) Companies and corporations willing to shell out the bucks to buy off public figureheads to become their personal advocates in affairs of the state.

[syn: robber baron]

A Blast from the Past

This article was written in September of 2003 as a possible explanation for why Ambassador Wilson's wife was 'outed' for being a CIA operative. It's as plausible a reason as any I've read, and chilling enough to be worth reprinting in its' entirety.

The Truth is Puttin’ on its Shoes: An Inquiry Into the "Innocent" Mr. Rove

A BUZZFLASH GUEST COMMENTARY
by James C. Moore, Co-Author of "Bush’s Brain," The Political History of Karl Rove

"A lie can travel around the world
while the truth is just putting on its shoes."
Mark Twain

I am very tired of writing about Karl Rove. Lately, though, I have felt a kind of moral obligation, and almost a patriotic duty to remind people of the man who really runs the White House. Politically, and strategically, nothing has happened in the Bush Administration without Rove’s imprimatur. Reporters have discovered Rove’s steely control in the form of what they call a "leak proof" White House. Nothing comes out of the Bush White House without Rove’s approval. Generally, that means nothing comes out of the White House.

Until Karl Rove wants something to leak.

Rove’s temper has always been his weak spot. He cannot seem to control his anger. When Ambassador Joseph Wilson wrote in the New York Times that there was no truth to the allegations that Iraq had tried to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger, Rove is said to have gone "ballistic." No one who has known Rove for any period of time doubts that Rove was the one who orchestrated the leak, which "outed" Ambassador Wilson’s wife as a CIA agent. Rove has always made sure that his enemies knew he will strike back, and swing with deadly power.

Rove wasn’t just trying to intimidate Ambassador Wilson. If, as many believe, he is responsible for the leak, Rove wanted to send a message to everyone in the intelligence community that they all needed to keep their mouths shut. As the war was being sold, intelligence cooked, and the media spun, Rove and the White House had informed intelligence operatives and scientists that they were not to publicly repudiate the phony claims about aluminum tubes, which the White House falsely argued were part of an Iraqi gas centrifuge to make enriched uranium. One national reporter told me that calls to scientists and intelligence operatives to ask about the aluminum tubes, which turned out to be rocket bodies, yielded the confession the scientists and intelligence agents had been ordered to say nothing.

"We are not having this conversation," the reporter was told.

But if he leaked Ambassador Wilson’s wife’s name, Rove was clearly trying to tell everyone in the intelligence community that they needed to toe the line, or they might also end up living at risk. This, of course, is a scurrilous, cowardly, and unpatriotic act. To believe that Karl Rove had no knowledge of this leak, or that he was not involved, it is necessary to ignore his absolute control of all things political in the White House, his Machiavellian nature, and attention to every sparrow flying under the Bush sun.

But how did it happen?

There are a few ways Rove might have planned to exact his revenge. He could have made calls himself, to high profile reporters, or ordered staffers and political intermediaries to contact journalists with the authorization that they were speaking for "senior White House officials." Not surprisingly, "senior White House official" is Rove’s nickname among many reporters because Rove asks that the description be used virtually every time he talks to a reporter. It enables him to get out his perspective, and White House spin, without giving away his identity, and self-serving agenda. Historically, Rove has been very adept at keeping a layer of denial, and other operatives, between himself and his political misdeeds. This means there is a strong possibility that a lower-level staffer will end up taking the blame for the leak.

In this case, though, there are some telltale signs that Rove was still at the controls. Because Robert Novak wrote the original story about Ambassador Wilson’s wife, those of us who know how Rove has leaked to Novak for years became immediately suspicious. Novak has denied that "White House officials called me with a leak." When this language is parsed, it becomes clear that Rove may have managed to get a tip to his friend Novak through an intermediary, and then the columnist called Rove for confirmation. According to the Washington Post, a half dozen reporters got phone calls about the Ambassador’s wife, and, yet, it was only Rove’s friend, Robert Novak, who wrote a story. The rationale for the story, a specious motivation, was that Ambassador Wilson got the assignment to go to Niger because his wife was a CIA agent, and she made the recommendation. Is that an important enough piece of information to justify blowing the cover of a CIA agent?

Rove’s relationship with Novak is widely known in the Washington press corps. During the presidential campaign, when the chorus of questions was being asked about Mr. Bush, and the Texas Air National Guard, reporters wanted to know where Mr. Bush went during his time on assignment in Alabama. His commander said the future president had never shown up for duty. Rove told the campaign reporters that they were "making too much of a few missed meetings." In 48 hours, the exact language was used on network television by Novak, who described the controversy of Mr. Bush’s missing years as "a few missed meetings." Novak was not on the press plane to hear Rove’s original comments.

An uncontrolled temper may be Rove’s only weakness as a political counsel. In Ron Susskind’s Esquire Magazine article on Rove, he described sitting outside the presidential advisor’s White House office hearing Rove scream into the phone, "Tell him we’ll f**k him. We’ll f**k him like nobody ever has." During the presidential campaign, Rove lost his cool in front of a few hundred people on the tarmac in Manchester, New Hampshire, as I stood and watched while Rove screamed at my colleague Wayne Slater about an innocuous story of mostly recycled information.

No one, though, knows Rove’s vindictiveness better than John Weaver. Were it not for Karl Rove, Weaver might still be a leading Republican political consultant. In Texas, Rove and Weaver had been successful partners, until Weaver chose to go out on his own and build a client list. A few months later, Weaver hired an employee away from Rove. Before too long, as competition grew between Rove and Weaver, disgusting rumors began to circulate about Weaver’s personal life, and reporters and potential clients wondered about Weaver’s judgment. The stories, which many reporters have said originated with Rove, dried up Weaver’s business, and he left Texas. Eventually, Weaver became the lead political strategist to Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign. After McCain lost the bitter primary battle, Weaver discovered he was squeezed out of party work by Rove, who was now in charge of all things Republican. Weaver became a Democrat, an advisor to the Democratic National Committee, simply because Rove was never content to leave him alone.

Similar stories are innumerable in Rove’s political march to power. Anyone who has watched Rove’s rise in presidential politics, and has reported on his machinations, is not surprised to learn that Ambassador Wilson suspects Rove as being the source of the leak, or, as a minimum, a senior administration official who condoned the leak. Washington reporters, who have learned of Rove’s political discipline, are also immediately suspicious of the presidential advisor. It fits his historical pattern of behavior.

The circumstantial evidence is already in. And it points at Karl Rove.

And if the Bush Administration is serious about protecting this country, if Rove committed this treasonous act, he needs to be prosecuted under the Patriot Act he has so ardently supported.

Do NOT let this happen to you!

Subject: An addict's story

An addict's story

It started out innocently enough.

I began to think at parties now and then -- to
loosen up. Inevitably, though, one thought led to
another, and soon I was more than just a social
thinker. I began to think alone -- "to relax," I
told myself -- but I knew it wasn't true.

Thinking became more and more important to me, and
finally I was thinking all the time. That was when
things began to sour at home.

One evening I had turned off the TV and asked my
wife about the meaning of life. She spent that
night at her mother's. I began to think on the
job. I knew that thinking and employment don't
mix, but I couldn't stop myself.

I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so I could
read Thoreau and Kafka. I would return to the
office dizzied and confused, asking,
"What is it exactly we are doing here?"

One day the boss called me in. He said, "Listen,
I like you, and it hurts me to say this, but your
thinking has become a real problem. If you don't
stop thinking on the job, you'll have to find
another job."

This gave me a lot to think about. I came home
early after my conversation with the boss.

"Honey," I confessed, "I've been thinking..."

"I know you've been thinking," she said, "and I want
a divorce!"

"But Honey, surely it's not that serious."

"It is serious," she said, lower lip aquiver. "You
think as much as college professors, and college
professors don't make any money, so if you keep on
thinking, we won't have any money!"

"That's a faulty syllogism," I said impatiently.

She exploded in tears of rage and frustration, but
I was in no mood to deal with the emotional drama.
"I'm going to the library," I snarled as I stomped
out the door.

I headed for the library, in the mood for some
Nietzsche. I roared into the parking lot with
NPR on the radio and ran up to the big glass
doors...

They didn't open. The library was closed.
To this day, I believe that a Higher Power was
looking out for me that night. Leaning on the
unfeeling glass, whimpering for Zarathustra,
a poster caught my eye.

"Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?"
it asked.

You probably recognize that line. It comes from
the standard Thinker's Anonymous poster. Which is
why I am what I am today: a recovering thinker.
I never miss a TA meeting. At each meeting we
watch a non-educational video; last week it was
"Porky's."

Then we share experiences about how we avoided
thinking since the last meeting. I still have
my job, and things are a lot better at home.

Life just seemed... easier, somehow, as soon as
I stopped thinking. I believe the road to
recovery is nearly complete for me.

Today, I registered to vote as a Republican.

Quote of the Day

Recent quote from the Sunday Oregonian’s

[Quote:]

“Other than telling us how to live, think, marry, pray, vote, invest, educate our children and die, I think the Republicans have done a fine job of getting government out of our personal lives.”

–Craig Carter

Bravo!

Welcome aboard, born again Democrat! As the bumper sticker says, "If you're not horrified, you haven't been paying attention."

Sandra Day O'Connor

So there you have it. It's official. The battle for the Supreme Court is on. I'm posting this link now for quick and easy reference.

Now is not the time to stay on the sidelines. Rehnquist is next. If you give a damn for women's reproductive rights, you need to get involved and stay involved.

As I read in a post, and I heartily agree with: "I'm too busy" doesn't fly.

It's Game On, ladies and gentlemen. The other guys have been making their voices heard, above our own, for entirely too long. It's time we show them we care just as much, and that we won't give up our freedoms without a fight.

It used to be America stood for freedom of religion. In these dark times, it's time to also add "Freedom FROM Religion" to the roster. A woman's right to choose is not religious, it's personal.