Tag: Conservative Values

Last night, the U.S. Senate offered a resolution formally apologizing for its failure to outlaw lynching during the Jim Crow era. It is telling that the (mostly Southern) GOP leadership in the Senate scheduled the formal ceremonies late at night, rather than earlier in the day when the story would have been covered by the news media.

They also set up the resolution so that there was no formal voice vote, so no senator would be on record as opposing the nearly 5,000 lynchings that occured in those dark days.

With no roll call to form a record, senators had to express their support for the resolution by signing on as co-sponsors with Sen. Mary Landrieu, the Louisiana Democrat who was the primary sponsor. The resolution was proposed in February so there was plenty of time to take a stand. At the end of the day yesterday, 78 senators had signed on as co-sponsors.

As an expatriated Southerner, I find it unconscionable that any Southern senator would fail to sign onto this apology. There were, in fact, six of these – all Republicans (pictured above): Sen. Lamar Alexander (TN), Sen. Thad Cochran (MS), Sen. John Cornyn (TX), Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (TX), Sen. Trent Lott (MS) and Sen. Richard Shelby (AL). All together, the 21 senators who did not sign on include 19 Republicans and three Democrats.:

Lamar Alexander (R-TN) – (202) 224-4944
Web Form: alexander.senate.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.Home

Bennett, Robert- (R – UT) – (202) 224-5444
Web Form: bennett.senate.gov/contact/emailmain.html

Bingaman, Jeff- (D – NM) – (202) 224-5521
E-mail: senator_bingaman@bingaman.senate.gov

Thad Cochran (R-MS) – (202) 224-5054
Web Form: cochran.senate.gov/contact.htm

Conrad, Kent- (D – ND) – (202) 224-2043
Web Form: conrad.senate.gov/webform.html

John Cornyn (R-TX) – (202) 224-2934
Web Form: cornyn.senate.gov/contact/index.html

Crapo, Michael- (R – ID) – (202) 224-6142
Web Form: crapo.senate.gov

Enzi, Michael- (R – WY) – (202) 224-3424
Web Form: enzi.senate.gov/email.htm

Grassley, Chuck- (R – IA) – (202) 224-3744
Web Form: grassley.senate.gov/webform.htm

Gregg, Judd- (R – NH) – (202) 224-3324
E-mail: mailbox@gregg.senate.gov

Hatch, Orrin- (R – UT) – (202) 224-5251
Web Form: hatch.senate.gov/index.cfm?Fuseaction=Offices.Contact

Hutchison, Kay- (R – TX) – (202) 224-5922
Web Form: hutchison.senate.gov/e-mail.htm

Kyl, Jon- (R – AZ) – (202) 224-4521
Web Form: kyl.senate.gov/contact.cfm

Trent Lott (R-MS) – (202) 224-6253
E-mail: senatorlott@lott.senate.gov

Murkowski, Lisa- (R – AK) – (202) 224-6665
Web Form: murkowski.senate.gov/contact.html

Reed, Jack- (D – RI) – (202) 224-4642
Web Form: reed.senate.gov/form-opinion.htm

Richard Shelby (R-AL) – (202) 224-5744
E-mail: senator@shelby.senate.gov

Smith, Gordon- (R – OR) – (202) 224-3753
Web Form: gsmith.senate.gov/webform.htm

Sununu, John- (R – NH) – (202) 224-2841
Web Form: www.sununu.senate.gov/webform.html

Thomas, Craig- (R – WY) – (202) 224-6441
Web Form: thomas.senate.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.Home

Voinovich, George- (R – OH) – (202) 224-3353
Web Form: voinovich.senate.gov/

Please get in touch with them and ask them why they support lynching today.

North County Times:

A defense contractor bought Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham’s Del Mar home in November 2003 and sold it nearly nine months later at a $700,000 loss, it was reported today.

At the time, the Republican congressman was supporting Mitchell Wade and his firm MZM Inc. in efforts to win Pentagon contracts, The San Diego Union- Tribune reported.

Cunningham used the proceeds from the sale to buy a home in Ranch Santa Fe for about $2.5 million, the newspaper reported.

About the same time, Wade’s company, which had been suffering through a flat period, was awarded tens of millions of dollars in defense and intelligence-related contracts, according to the Union-Tribune.

Cunningham denied anything untoward about the dealings.

“My whole life I’ve lived aboveboard,” he told the newspaper. “I’ve never even smoked a marijuana cigarette. I don’t cheat.”

But others congressional and political watchdog organizations said it just didn’t look right.

“This doesn’t look good at all,” Larry Noble, director of the Center for Responsive Politics, told the Union-Tribune. “It doesn’t look like something that was on the up and up.”

Wade was unavailable for comment last week. Scotty Brumett of MZM Inc. said Wade bought Cunningham’s home to raise the firm’s profile in San Diego.

“We were looking at expanding our company presence in San Diego,” he told the Union-Tribune. “We looked at the property and thought it would work for us. But after we bought it, we realized that it did not meet our security or our corporate needs.”

Cunningham has served on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee since 1997.

The other shoe fell and it wasn’t that bad, although there sure are some wackos out there.

St. Augustine, Florida (the nation’s oldest city) kicked off its annual gay pride celebration early and somewhat unwillingly, after a federal court ruled the city had to fly rainbow flags downtown and across the 1920s landmark Bridge of Lions. The city flew other flags for various events, the court pointed out, without criteria that would eliminate commemoration of such sentiments as gay pride.

St. Augustine Record:

Jason Relph of New York City is a former resident of St. Augustine who flew back here for this event.

“The federal court ruling (on the flags) made news in England, Canada and, for some reason, Iceland,” Relph said. “It’s unusual because this is a Southern, conservative town, and this march says we are not ashamed of who we are. It’s an awakening on some level.”

Jordan Buffaloe of Jacksonville arrived with his partner, Shawn Weiker.

“We want people to look past the rainbow flags and into our expressions,” Buffaloe said. “We want to be recognized as individuals. Look past our sexual orientation.”

The other team (in the Seinfeld sense) was pitifully represented by some scary folks who were mercifully outnumbered.

Anthony Russo, 24, held a sign that said, “I hate queers.”

He said homosexuality was “ungodly and immoral.”

Russo and three friends taunted the marchers.

His father, Doug Russo, held a sign that said homosexuals should “repent or burn.”

Russo said homosexuality has been a crime for 200 years of American history.

“Now all of a sudden, it’s not,” he said. “Sin is a reproach to any nation. I’m trying to prevent them from going to Hell. Is that hate? I think it’s concern.”

Homosexuality, Russo said, is caused by “demon possession.” If homosexuals accepted Jesus, he added, they would be saved.

It’s depressingly obvious concepts like demonic possession can be handed down in families, although there are certainly people who rise above such upbringing. But I wonder what Anthony’s going to be like in middle age.

Doug’s mission from God aside, gay pride organizers promised an even bigger event next year. Instead of closing downtown streets, they will apply to use the city’s special events field. Stay tuned…

In a replay of a Gingrich era attempt to stifle open discourse and to end programs that educate poor children, the House subcommittee on Labor, Health & Human Services and Education voted to de-fund public broadcasting. According to the San Franciso Chronicle:

A House subcommittee voted Thursday to sharply reduce the federal government’s financial support for public broadcasting, including eliminating taxpayer funds that help underwrite such popular children’s educational programs as “Sesame Street” and “Arthur.”

In addition, the subcommittee acted to eliminate within two years all federal money for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — which passes federal funds to public broadcasters — starting with a 25 percent reduction for next year, from $400 million to $300 million.

The move may have been pre-saged by a “Special Report” in the rightwing Unification Church-owned Washington Times last month:

Newt Gingrich famously vowed to “zero out” federal funding for public broadcasting a few weeks before becoming House speaker in 1995, but the Republicans essentially backed down when they were accused of trying to kill Big Bird…

In January, PBS declined to add to its national distribution list an episode of the children’s series “Postcards From Buster” that featured two women in a same-sex union, although some stations chose to air it anyway…

Given the advantage PBS has as a free, over-the-air service, it should do far better, according to [Tim Graham, director of analysis for the Media Research Center, a conservative group that monitors the media for examples of bias].

He cited “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer” as an example. It draws about 3 million viewers a night, but it would do much better if viewers were really interested in its sober approach to news coverage, Mr. Graham said. “They see themselves as ‘spinach TV.’ We will feed you what you don’t want to watch,” he said.

Such thinking is too subjective, said Les Crystal, executive producer of “NewsHour.”

“Do we do some subjects that are spinach? Maybe. One could argue that stories we’ve done on Darfur (in Sudan) are spinach to some people but meat and potatoes to others.”

Sad to say but killing PBS and NPR is better than the other alternative – allowing the Rightwing to turn them into propaganda outlets for the government like Fox News, Clear Channel and the Washington Times.

In an upcoming memoir, former North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms says it was the civil rights movement – not segregationists like himself and the Ku Klux Klan- who incited violence in the 1960’s. Helms who is 83, came to fame in the 1950’s and 1960’s as a racist editorialist on a television station in Raleigh.

CNN reports that in the book Helms says he believed:

…Voluntary racial integration would [have] come about without pressure from the federal government or from civil rights protests that he said sharpened racial antagonisms.

“We will never know how integration might have been achieved in neighborhoods across our land, because the opportunity was snatched away by outside agitators who had their own agendas to advance,” according to the uncorrected proof. “We certainly do know the price paid by the stirring of hatred, the encouragement of violence, the suspicion and distrust.”

Translation: “If the Coloreds had just stayed in their place and not been so uppity, Whites would have eventually allowed them to have better segregated schools, bathrooms and drinking fountains.”

The Charlotte Observer reports that in his book Helms deals with his long history of racial smears and playing the race card to win elections as he always done, by denying involvement:

In 1950, U.S. Sen. Frank Porter Graham faced fellow Democrat Willis Smith in a hotly contested runoff. Helms supported Smith, whose supporters were accused of using racial smears. A handbill purported to show a photo of Graham’s wife dancing with a black man. Smith won, and Helms was often accused of having a role in the tactics…

Charges of racial politics arose again in 1990 when Helms faced former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt. One Helms ad showed a pair of white hands crumpling a job rejection letter as a voice says, “You needed that job, but they had to give it to a minority.”

“There were even some charges that the ad was intended as `racist,’ but that was untrue,” Helms writes. “Minority classifications were not limited to race, and we had no more interest in a race-based vote than we did in race-based jobs. The campaign was never about Mr. Gantt being black; it was always and only about him being liberal.”

Yeah, right.

Helms is an equal opportunity hater. When it became clear he and his segregationist cabal had lost the fight against equality for African Americans, he turned his sights on the gay community, frequently advocating prison sentences for gays and lesbians.

In the book, he admits that he was wrong about AIDS, however.

Helms also was an outspoken opponent of laws to protect homosexuals from discrimination and of funding for AIDS research, but he writes in the book that his views evolved during his final years in the Senate. He cited friendships he developed with North Carolina evangelist Franklin Graham and rock singer Bono, both of whom got him involved in the fight against the AIDS epidemic in Africa.

“Until then,” Helms writes, “it had been my feeling that AIDS was a disease largely spread by reckless and voluntary sexual and drug-abusing behavior, and that it would probably be confined to those in high risk populations. I was wrong.”

Thanks to PR contributor Judy for the tip.

Hate-filled Christianists who follow Kansas preacher Fred “God Hates Fags” Phelps descended on two elementary schools in Massachusetts on June 6, causing administrators at one school to sneak the entire student body into the school by a back entrance so they would not see the obscene signs the Phelps’ group were displaying in front of the school.

At the other school, the children were kept in an assembly all day because their classrooms had a view of another band of Phelps’ protesters carrying obscene pictures and hate-filled epithets.

What had the children at these schools done to bring down the wrath of these rabid homophobes? According to the Boston Herald, in Dracut, a student wrote an essay about talkshow host Ellen Degeneris. In Lexington, a parent’s demand to know when his child was being taught about gay lifestyles had generated headlines.

The protestors also stopped at Lexington High School and Tsongas Arena, where they encountered about 85 counterprotesters, many of whom carried signs informing the Phelpsists that ” $5.95 would be donated to local gay-rights groups for every minute the Westboro group spends protesting.”

The Phelps group recently protested in Durham, NC. Later, three crosses were burned in Durham, causing many to suspect that Christian extremists burned the crosses, hoping blame would be assigned to their co-extremists in the Ku Klux Klan.

Photo Source: Ward Stewart

Texas Governor Rick Perry is in some political hot water. Conventional wisdom is that Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson is coming home to run against him in the primaries next year. And a few months ago, there were pesky rumors that Perry was having an affair – with a man! All of that may explain why he’s coming on strong as an unrepentant homophobe:

Local NBC Anchor: “Among the protesters were gay veterans and their partners. We asked the governor about his take on gay veterans, many of whom may one day have fewer rights than everyone else.”

Rick Perry: “Texans made a decision about marriage and if there’s a state that has more lenient views than Texas, then maybe that’s a better place for them to live.”

If you are reading this and you are a Texan, you should be hopping mad! Go vent – http://www.governor.state.tx.us/contact.

Yasith Chhun, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Cambodia, was arrested on June 1, 2005, in California on charges related to the activities of the antigovernment group he heads, the Cambodian Freedom Fighters. In 2001, the U.S. State Dept. declared the group to be a terrorist organization.

He was taken into custody Wednesday without incident at his residence in Long Beach… [He] was arrested pursuant to two indictments. The first charges him with conspiracy to kill in a foreign country, conspiracy to damage or destroy property in a foreign country, and engaging in a military expedition against a friendly nation. The second indictment charges him with running a fraudulent tax-preparation business.

The reason the government might backpedal from the terrorism label in this case is that some powerful Republicans, notably Rep. Dana Rohrabacher from California’s Orange County, support Chhun’s group in its resistance to Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, who is accused of using strongarm tactics to stay in power. There is a complication, however. Hun Sen is democratically elected. He heads the Cambodian People’s Party, which controls the National Assembly in coalition with the royalist FUNCINPEC party.

Like a lot of Cambodian Americans, Chhun has been an active supporter of the GOP. In 2004, he attended the annual meeting of the Business Advisory Council of the National Republican Congressional Committee in Washington, DC. A spokesman for the group claims they didn’t know Chhun was a terrorist.

“At this point, the gentleman hasn’t been convicted of anything,” [NRCC spokesman Carl] Forti said. If he is a terrorist, “it’s something we need to look at. Clearly, we wouldn’t want any leader of a terrorist organization being members of our business advisory council.”

[But] Chhun… has never made a secret of his role in the 2000 attack on several government buildings in the capital, Phnom Penh. He spoke openly about it to newspapers and magazines, where he was portrayed as a would-be revolutionary who ran his resistance movement out of his tax office in Long Beach.

This case proves the lie of the whole ginned-up, GOP “War on Terror” marketing scheme. We are no more “at war” with the Cambodian Freedom Fighters than we are with the Irish Republican Army or the Shining Path. Our conflict is with radical fundamentalists in Islam. If we are to prevail, Job One is to understand who our enemies are and why they oppose us. Bush and his party have deliberately fuzzied up both the nature of the conflict and the identities of our enemies in order to rally their simple-minded base.

This fuzziness ought to render the GOP vulnerable when one of their own gets nabbed. But with the news media super-busy covering this crucial juncture in the Michael Jackson trial, the Republicans needn’t worry about blowback from the arrest of a terrorist member of their party.

Imagine the media circus that would have erupted if the names Clinton or Kennedy, rather than Rohrabacher, had been associated with a known terrorist. The Jackson trial would become a mere sideshow.

This brings to mind another non-story in which a Republican activist was arrested here in Calfiornia for spying. Katrina Leung was charged with “illegally obtaining secret documents to the advantage of a foreign power,” namely Communist Red China. She was arrested along with her boyfriend, who happened to be married – and also happened to be an FBI agent. He was charged with making false statements to federal agents by concealing his “improper intimate relationship with an FBI asset” who he was charged with handling.

From the June 1 White House press briefing with Scott McClellan:

Q: Since the President is scheduled to attend a Republican fundraiser on June the 14th, which will also be attended by California gubernatorial candidate and porn star Mary Carey, what guarantee does the White House have that she will do nothing pornographic at this event? What will be done if she does?

MR. McCLELLAN: Les, I haven’t looked that far ahead on the President’s schedule.

Q: But it’s important — it’s only two weeks from now. You must have some plan —

MR. McCLELLAN: Les, that’s another one — that’s another one I’m just not going to get into dignifying.

Speaking of dignity, so much for the dignity Bush supposedly brings to the office. Bill Clinton did a lot of things but as far as we know, he never partied with porn stars.

Wingnut Bush point-men like the Rev. O’Neal Dozier pose the next problem for those of us who prefer religion stay in our hearts and not in our courthouses. They also represent a new political animal: black Republicans.

From a recent South Florida Sun-Sentinel:

The Rev. O’Neal Dozier, pastor of the Worldwide Christian Center in Pompano Beach, is one of the Bush Administration’s “go-to” African-Americans.

Dozier belongs to a growing trend of black ministers who promote conservative values on such issues as same-sex marriage and abortion. President Bush and his brother, Gov. Jeb Bush, made an effort to reach out to ministers like Dozier during the last presidential campaign.

Jeb Bush appointed Dozier to the 17th Judicial Nominating Commission in 2001. Gov. Bush reappointed him in 2003 and spoke at Dozier’s church on Martin Luther King Jr. Day that same year.

When President Bush campaigned at the Office Depot Center last fall, Dozier gave the invocation.

The president invited him to the White House in February as part of a delegation of 24 black preachers and business-owners to discuss Social Security.

Well, isn’t that nice? The Bushes are finally broadening their circle of friends. And what a prince they’ve found this time.

From the blog, goodasyou.org:

In November of 2003 Dozier referred to homosexuality as “something so nasty and disgusting that it makes God want to vomit,” and was quoted as saying: “Why is it one of the paramount of sins? Well, it is a very bad kind of sin because it really hurts society in so many ways. God, however, found a way to punish the homosexuals through HIV-AIDS. It is a type of judgment for such a sin as this one, homosexuality.” [11/27/03 NewsTimesBPB.com]

Horror over Dozier isn’t confined to the blogosphere. Back in January, 2004, he grilled judicial nominees in South Florida as to their religious beliefs, church activity, how they would rule on sodomy issues, whether they would post the Ten Commandments in the courthouse, and for females, a bonus question: how would they raise their children while on the bench?

Even the Orlando Business Journal was appalled.

Far be it from us to suggest that the process of choosing state judges is politicized’

Nor will we remind you that, only last year in Orlando, Gov. Bush told those folks he appointed to choose state judges that, “I’m looking for people who share my philosophy.”

Which brings us to the Right Rev. O’Neal Dozier.

The reverend is among nine folks who select judicial candidates to serve on the South Florida bench. We don’t know if he shares Gov. Bush’s philosophy on law, but we do know that he does not share that of the U.S. Constitution. This is how we know: “There is no such animal as separation of church and state in the Constitution,” he told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

in a statement designed to set George Washington’s wooden teeth a-chattering, the good reverend tells us “I don’t believe the developers of the Constitution would want us to compromise our Christian values.”

Gov. Bush has no more right to insist judges share his ideology than Rev. Dozier has the right to insist that they share his religious practices.

You said it, but they sure aren’t listening.