Year: 2007

If ‘Immorality’ Is the Military Standard, Why Are Adulterers Allowed to Serve?

Jon Ponder

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Peter Pace equated gay people with adulterers in his now infamous statement in which he described homosexuality as immoral:

Here is another example of the mad mix of cynicism and hypocrisy that is the hallmark of the Bush era. Enlistments are down, so the military is “allowing” its gay members to serve. When enlistments are back up — or the war ends — they’ll start the persecutions again.

“I believe homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts,” Pace said in a wide-ranging discussion with Tribune editors and reporters in Chicago. “I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way.

“As an individual, I would not want [acceptance of gay behavior] to be our policy, just like I would not want it to be our policy that if we were to find out that so-and-so was sleeping with somebody else’s wife, that we would just look the other way, which we do not. We prosecute that kind of immoral behavior,” Pace said.

The difference, of course, is that adulterers are not routinely prevented from serving in the military.

Adding salt in the wound, new figures out today suggest that the military is not persecuting gay service members as agressively as they have in the past:

According to preliminary Pentagon data, 612 homosexuals were discharged in fiscal 2006, fewer than half the 1,227 who were discharged in 2001. On average, more than 1,000 service members were discharged each year from 1997 to 2001, but in the past five years that average has fallen below 730.

Here is another example of the mad mix of cynicism and hypocrisy that is the hallmark of the Bush era. Enlistments are down, so the military is “allowing” its gay members to serve. When enlistments are back up — or the war ends — they’ll start the persecutions again.

Privacy: The Newest Battle Cry of Republicans Seeking to Revoke the Constitution

Trish

There is no right to privacy in the Constitution, abortion foes like to remind us. To them, it’s a constitutional stretch to say that a woman has the right to make up her mind about her body, all by herself, without government assistance.

But there will be more privacy than you can shake a very big stick at in Florida if a state lawmaker gets his way. Personnel records of public workers, such as teachers and elections officials, as well as arrest records, civil suits, and just about everything else formerly “public” will forever more be “private.”

In an extreme case, a newspaper could be prevented from printing the name of a killer unless the killer gave permission for the personal information to be disclosed.

The bill requires that personal identification information should always remain private, even when collected legally.

It would give people the option of choosing whether to have personal identification information released to the public when requested by a state agency to supply such information.

Personal identification information is defined as a person’s name and any information that may be used to identify an individual, including an address, telephone number, social security number, date of birth or mother’s maiden name.

The bill is one of the three labeled most egregious by the First Amendment Foundation, a Florida open-government advocacy group made up of newspaper reporters, broadcasters, and other members of the press. The same state representative, William Proctor (R-St. Augustine), made the list twice.

His second (HB 1211) would make it a misdemeanor to distribute personal identification information about someone without first receiving permission from that person, even if the distributors legally acquired the information from public records.

The framers of the Constitution, as we all know but apparently need to be reminded, wanted us to be able to keep a very close eye on the courts, since they alone have the power to deprive us of our liberty. Without knowing who’s been arrested or tried for what by whom, we can’t possibly exercise the oversight a free society requires.

“It would just close the door to a whole host of records that we use regularly to oversee our government,” said Adria Harper, the director of the Florida’s First Amendment Foundation.

In an extreme case, Harper said, a newspaper could be prevented from printing the name of a killer unless the killer gave permission for the personal information to be disclosed.

These same Republicans want us to know the addresses, license numbers, and blood types of sex offenders. How these two initiatives will coexist is an interesting question. Proctor’s explanation of what he is trying to accomplish is, at best, lame.

“The basic question is to what level of privacy is a person entitled,” Proctor said. “There is the problem of identity theft. That’s not a small problem.”

It is and it isn’t. Identity theft, like online child pornography, is being pumped up and used as a rallying cry to either unconstitutionally hide us or unconstitutionally snoop on us. Either way, it’s bad law.

Unpatriotic: Halliburton Is Moving Its Corporate HQ to Dubai

Jon Ponder

Un-American: Remember when conservatives went ballistic after it was revealed that the Bush Administration planned to hand over management of major U.S. ports to a company based in Dubai? The Republican base was outraged because the government of Dubai, which was a part owner in the ports-management firm, gave money to terrorists groups. You have to wonder why these same people are silent in the wake of news that Halliburton, Cheney’s old company (from which he still gets a monthly check), is moving is headquarters to Dubai:

Reincorporating in Dubai would mean that Halliburton will be paying less taxes to the U.S. Treasury, even as it collects billions from government contracts.

Halliburton, the oil services company once run by Dick Cheney, the US vice-president, on Sunday provided further evidence that the focus of many big US companies is shifting overseas by announcing plans to move its chief executive to Dubai.

Dave Lesar, Halliburton’s chairman and chief executive, said his decision to relocate reflected the faster growth in oil exploration and production in the eastern hemisphere.

Where is the outrage over the fact that as a corporate citizen of Dubai, taxes paid by Halliburton — the majority of which will be derived from the billions it receives from its U.S. government contracts — will also presumably be given to these same terrorist groups?

And there is the question of motive. Of course, moving the headquarters closer to the action makes sense, but maybe Halliburton has other reasons for leaving the United States:

Is this about tax breaks? Getting beyond the reach of congressional subpoenas? And what about all that sensitive information that Halliburton has had access to? At a minimum, reincorporating in Dubai would mean that Halliburton will be paying less taxes to the U.S. Treasury, even as it collects billions from government contracts.

The right likes to question the patriotism of people who question the president’s motives for taking the country to war in Iraq. But I can’t imagine a better example of unpatriotic than this huge company that has made billions for investors from taxpayer dollars moving its headquarters overseas.

Rep. Henry Waxman has an announced an investigation and hearings. Here’s a question: what did Cheney know about the move, and when did he know it?

McCain Supports Military’s Permanent Gay Purge

Jon Ponder

Remind me why this guy is called a maverick — all I see is a George Bush clone, only older:

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) claims that “military leaders” he’s talked to about the ban on gay servicemembers say, “‘Generally, overall, it’s working.’ … And right now we’ve got the best military we’ve ever had – the most professional, best trained, equipped and the bravest. And so I think it’s logical to leave this issue alone. I really do.” Currently, the U.S. Army’s readiness for war “has eroded to levels not witnessed by our country in decades,” and since Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell went into effect, the Pentagon has dismissed more than 11,000 servicemembers, many in key specialty skills such as training in Arabic.

GOP Base Pins Last Hopes on former Sen. Fred Thompson in ’08

Jon Ponder

It sucks to be a Republican right now. The party that foisted George W. Bush on the country twice has fielded the weakest, most problematic slate of presidential candidates in memory. The Christian nationalist wing is unhappy with the three frontrunners, who have all been labled “moderates” — the GOP code word for “liberal” — in the past. Worse, each one has a ding in his bio that the christianists find unappetizing: two of them are admitted adulterers who have been married more than once, and the other is a Mormon.

Republicans, especially the rank and file, yearn for another Ronald Reagan now the way Democrats used to hope for another JFK.

The talibangelists’ restlessness is what prompted former Speaker Newton Leroy Gingrich to float a trial balloon last week, when he confessed to committing adultery while married to his second wife. (Even though Gingrich was sleeping with a much-younger congressional staffer while leading the charge to impeach Pres. Clinton over a sex lie about his affair with a former intern, Newt refused to cop to the additional sin of hypocrisy.)

As a Democrat, I hope Gingrich runs. While he is supposedly a brilliant strategist, and is what passes on the right for a big thinker, he would be abysmal as the face of the Republican Party. For starters, he is very unpopular. As House Speaker, America came to see him as a petty, tyrannical, pontificating stuffed shirt. By the time his party forced him out of office in 1998, Gingrich’s approval was at 28 percent. (Nixon’s was 25 percent when he resigned.) In a recent Fox News poll, 64 percent said they would never vote for him under any circumstances, as did 40 percent of Republicans.

Judging by calls from Republicans this morning on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal,” Newt’s trial balloon has scared the bejesus out of the party’s base. One name that came up repeatedly was that of “Law & Order” star, and former Sen. Fred Thompson.

Thompson gets bonus points out the gate because he has a quality exalted beyond all others in the GOP: He’s “Reaganesque.” Like Reagan, he is an actor — a better actor than Reagan, actually. And like Reagan, he has been married twice. Unlike Reagan, Thompson is a lawyer and he made a name for himself in the political sphere before going Hollywood — he was the Republicans’ co-counsel during Senate Watergate hearings in the 1970s. He has been in the news lately because of his friendship and support of Scooter Libby, the former senior presidential aide who was convicted on multiple counts of perjury last week.

Thompson appears to have less baggage than the current frontrunners. Still, his Senate resume was not stellar, and while he’s been on a few vice presidential short lists, he has never been battle-tested in a national contest. And who knows if he even has the the belly fire to enter the race, especially knowing that when he does all three frontrunners will turn their guns on him.

McCain: Listen to What I Say But Ignore What I Did

Trish

As each of the Republican front runners in the 2008 presidential campaign competes for the favor of evangelicals — and falls short of their harsh, parochial judgement — we hear the same sanctimonious defense: “But my private life doesn’t influence my public service.”

John McCain is the only the latest in a string of GOP hypocrites that includes Rudy Guiliani and Newt Gingrich.

John McCain, who remarried one month after his 1980 divorce, said Friday that the personal lives of White House hopefuls shouldn’t become an issue in the 2008 campaign

Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who remarried one month after his 1980 divorce, said Friday that the personal lives of White House hopefuls shouldn’t become an issue in the 2008 campaign.

“I would like to see this campaign conducted on past record and ambition for the future,” McCain told reporters after a fundraising luncheon in Charlotte, N.C. “I would hope that gossip — or, quote, ‘family issues’ — would not enter into this campaign.”

Well golly, straight talkin’ John, that sounds good. Almost as good as you sounded when you voted to convict Pres. Clinton on impeachment charges for attempting to hide an extramarital affair back in 1999.

The President’s offenses were committed to cover up private not public misconduct. Therefore, if he thwarted justice he did so for the perfectly understandable and forgivable purpose of keeping hidden an embarrassing personal shortcoming that, were it discovered, would harm only his family and his reputation, but would not impair our system of government.

This, too, is an appealing rationalization for acquittal. But it is just that, a rationalization…

The President’s defenders want to know how can I be certain that the offenses, even if true, warrant removal from office. They are not expressly mentioned in the Constitution as impeachable offenses. Nor did the founders identify perjury or obstruction as high crimes or high misdemeanors. Were an ordinary citizen accused of perjury in a civil proceeding he or she would in all likelihood not be prosecuted or forced out of political necessity into a perjury trap.

No, an ordinary citizen would not be treated as the President has been treated. But ordinary citizens don’t enforce the laws for the rest of us…

Presidents are not ordinary citizens. They are extraordinary, in that they are vested with so much more authority and power than the rest of us…And accordingly, regretfully, I must vote to convict the President, and urge my colleagues to do the same.’

Gee Johnny, here you’ve been living all ordinary and stuff, and now you want us to elevate you to superhuman perfection with our votes. No wonder cousin Jon calls you — derisively — “St. McCain.”

Schism: Young Evangelicals Turn Away from Christian Nationalist Agenda

Jon Ponder

The number of liberal evangelicals appears to be growing and this has the Christianists who run the religous wing of the Republican Party ready to howl:

“Are the only really ‘great moral issues’ those concerning abortion, gay marriage and the teaching of sexual abstinence?”

A new generation of pastors has expanded the definition of moral issues to include not only global warming, but an array of causes. Quoting Scripture and invoking Jesus, they’re calling for citizenship for illegal immigrants, universal healthcare and caps on carbon emissions.

The best-known champion of such causes, the Rev. Jim Wallis, this week challenged conservative crusader James C. Dobson, the chairman of Focus on the Family, to a debate on evangelical priorities.

“Are the only really ‘great moral issues’ those concerning abortion, gay marriage and the teaching of sexual abstinence?” Wallis asked in his challenge. “How about the reality of 3 billion of God’s children living on less than $2 per day? — What about pandemics like HIV/AIDS — [and] disastrous wars like Iraq?”

Not surprisingly, the liberal bent of this new movement has the talibangelists up in arms. Three leaders of the Christian right — professional homophobes Dobson of Focus on the Family, Don Wildmon of the American Family Assn. and Paul Weyrich of American Values — have written a letter that is highly critical of evangelicals who do not follow their strict rightwing political agenda.

The letter took particular aim at the Rev. Richard Cizik, a prominent evangelical lobbyist who has promoted environmental protection as a moral imperative. Citing the creation story in the Book of Genesis, he has called the fight against global warming a directive “straight from the word of God — no doubt about it.”

The letter accused Cizik of “dividing and demoralizing” Christians by pushing this agenda and called on his employer, the National Assn. of Evangelicals, to silence him or to demand his resignation.

Fighting gay civil rights has generated millions of dollars for these religious-political groups, so it is not surprising that they are up in arms.

Rev. Wallis says that his congegants aren’t ready to become Democrats but that younger members are put off by the old evangelical agenda.

He told the Times that during a recent visit to an evangelical college, students were “furious” at Rev. Jerry Falwell because he had recently described global warming as a satanic plot to divert Christians from more pressing moral issues, such as spreading the Gospel.

“James Dobson and the religious right are outside the evangelical mainstream. That’s just a fact,” Wallis told the paper. “That doesn’t mean they have no power. But their monologue is over. Their control of the agenda is over.”