MAX BLUMENTHAL

Backfire
Bush, down a point after the big speech. From Zogby:

President Bush’s televised address to the nation produced no noticeable bounce in his approval numbers, with his job approval rating slipping a point from a week ago, to 43%, in the latest Zogby International poll. And, in a sign of continuing polarization, more than two-in-five voters (42%) say they would favor impeachment proceedings if it is found the President misled the nation about his reasons for going to war with Iraq.

The Zogby America survey of 905 likely voters, conducted from June 27 through 29, 2005, has a margin of error of +/-3.3 percentage points.

Just one week ago, President Bush’s job approval stood at a previous low of 44%—but it has now slipped another point to 43%, despite a speech to the nation intended to build support for the Administration and the ongoing Iraq War effort. The Zogby America survey includes calls made both before and after the President’s address, and the results show no discernible “bump” in his job approval, with voter approval of his job performance at 45% in the final day of polling.

The 42% approving of impeachment proceedings is also interesting. I don't think 42% approved of the impeachment of Clinton, though I'll have to double-check that.

The Chickenhawk Generation
So, I did make it into the College Republican National Convention after all. And I detailed my experience in the Nation. If I were a reservist preparing to be redeployed to Iraq, these kids would make me very, very angry:

In interviews, more than a dozen conventiongoers explained why it is important that they stay on campus while other, less fortunate people their age wage a bloody war in Iraq. They strongly support the war, they told me, but they also want to enjoy college life and pursue interesting careers. Being a College Republican allows them to do both. It is warfare by other, much safer means.
(...)
Munching on a chicken quesadilla at a table nearby was Edward Hauser, a senior at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas--a liberal school in a liberal town in the ultimate red state of Texas. "Austin is ninety square miles insulated from reality," Hauser said. When I broached the issue of Iraq, he replied, "I support our country. I support our troops." So why isn't he there?

"I know that I'm going to be better staying here and working to convince people why we're there [in Iraq]," Hauser explained, pausing in thought. "I'm a fighter, but with words."
(....)
By the time I encountered Cory Bray, a towering senior from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, the beer was flowing freely. "The people opposed to the war aren't putting their asses on the line," Bray boomed from beside the bar. Then why isn't he putting his ass on the line? "I'm not putting my ass on the line because I had the opportunity to go to the number-one business school in the country," he declared, his voice rising in defensive anger, "and I wasn't going to pass that up."

Bush Stares Into The Abyss
Bush's address last evening contained all the expected outrages. The exploitation of soldiers for an aesthetic effect; the bellicose tone; the myriad falsehoods; the repetitious, Tourette's Syndrome-like delivery -- this stuff never fails to make me cringe. But there was one thing leapt out of the speech like a jack-in-the-box. It was Bush's employment of bin Laden's words not to show how cynical the terrorists are, but to quell his own critics. This is truly disturbing:

Some wonder whether Iraq is a central front in the war on terror. Among the terrorists, there is no debate. Hear the words of Osama Bin Laden: “This Third World War … is raging” in Iraq. “The whole world is watching this war.” He says it will end in “victory and glory or misery and humiliation.”

According to bin Laden's logic, Iraq is a central front in the war on terror. And therefore we must operate under the same reasoning? Unfortunately, Bush thinks so. This is an idea the neo-cons who hover within the administration's orbit impressed have been impressing on Bush since 9/11, and possibly before. Consider how similar the remarks of one of those neocons, James Woolsey, are to those of bin Laden:

I believe we won't know how to win the war on terror unless we take it seriously. I think taking it seriously means regarding it as a world war.

I think The War on Terrorism is in fact, World War Four.

The view of mainstream American society held by Bush and many of the Christian conservatives around him also bears chilling parallels to those espoused by radical Islamic propagandists like Sayyid Qutb, whom Bush implicitly denounced. "The terrorists believe that free societies are essentially corrupt and decadent," Bush declared last night, "and with a few hard blows they can force us to retreat."

Now consider what Nixon hatchet man-cum-born-again Christian Chuck Colson wrote last October for Christianity Today:

We must be careful not to blame innocent Americans for murderous attacks against them. At the same time, let's acknowledge that America's increasing decadence is giving aid and comfort to the enemy. When we tolerate trash on television, permit pornography to invade our homes via the internet, and allow babies to be killed at the point of birth, we are inflaming radical Islam.

Colson serves as an informal advisor to Karl Rove on evangelical issues; Rove tasked him with expanding (or perverting, depending on your perspective) St. Augustine's time-honored Just War theory to include Iraq and the so-called "war on terror." Colson's embrace of radical Islam's dim view of American society is absolutely a reflection of the zeitgeist within the Christian right wing of the White House.

Bush and his minions have been staring into the abyss for a long time. Through Bush's endorsement of a Holy War on bin Laden's terms, we now know they can see their own reflection.

Bush Speech Numbers
Everyone has reported that Bush used the phrase "9/11" five times in his address tonight. I counted six.

And how many times did he use the word "terrorist?" 26. That's right. 26 times.

Compare that to the amount of times he used the word "plan:" two.

Think Progress has more:
References to "September 11?: 5

References to "weapons of mass destruction": 0

References to "freedom": 21

References to "exit strategy": 0

References to "Saddam Hussein": 2

References to "Osama Bin Laden": 2

References to "a mistake": 1 (setting a timetable for withdrawal)

References to "mission": 11

References to "mission accomplished": 0

Gary Bauer, in his "End of Day" email, previews the big Bush speech tonight:

To leave this battle under fire would encourage the Islamofascists, whose goal is to take the war not to Baghdad, but to Peoria.

Is bin-Laden in Illinois? I thought he was on the Supreme Court, controlling four justices with his mind powers. On the other hand, according to Joseph Farah, it could be Robert Mugabe who's controlling the court.
(Apologies to Illinois readers for momentarily confusing your state with Iowa. And vice versa.)

The White House's House Hebrew
More details on the GOP's favorite House Hebrew, "Rabbi" Daniel Lapin, and his dalliances with Jack Abramoff, and even the White House, are emerging, and they're not pretty. Yesterday, Lapin started telling reporters that the following exchange with Abramoff was "tongue in cheek:"

Abramoff, who at one point served on Toward Tradition's board of directors, explained in an e-mail that he had been nominated for membership in the Cosmos Club, an exclusive Washington social group. "Problem for me is that most prospective members have received awards and I have received none" Abramoff said in a Sept. 15, 2000, e-mail to Lapin.

"I was wondering if you thought it possible that I could put that I have received an award from Toward Tradition with a sufficiently academic title, perhaps something like Scholar of Talmudic studies?" Abramoff asked. It would "be even better if it were possible that I received these in years past, if you know what I mean."

Lapin responded: "Let's organize your many prestigious awards so they're ready to 'hang on the wall.'"

The Washington Post's Hanna Rosin (who also has a really good piece on Patrick Henry College in the New Yorker) wrote a hilarious profile of Lapin. This part is classic:

Lapin took that spat one step further in an essay that ran in the Orthodox paper the Jewish Press in January. He complained that Jewish leaders criticized Gibson but ignored Jews such as Howard Stern and the producers of "Meet the Fockers" who were "debasing the culture." He then quoted a section of "Mein Kampf" in which Hitler denounces the "horrible trash" produced by Jewish entertainers in Weimar Germany. Hitler was an "evil megalomaniac," Lapin writes, but what he was saying was "obvious and inescapable."

Lapin is the one rabbi in the world who nodded his head in approval while he read Mein Kampf. No wonder his parroting of the Christian right's bigotry sounds so natural. Rosin also profiles Lapin's brother and con-man in arms, Daniel:

Two years ago, Abramoff persuaded David Lapin to help him open a new Jewish school in Maryland, the Eshkol Academy. Abramoff was unhappy with the local yeshivas and wanted to start a new one for his own children. He made Lapin the dean because they shared an "educational philosophy," says Lapin. He was paid $20,000 a month, according to the e-mails, again through the Capital Athletic Fund.

But he was there only about once a month and never moved to the area, recalls Robert Whitehill, a Hebrew teacher who is suing Abramoff for three months' pay. "He would come for a day and pontificate about something and leave. He was an absentee dean." The school closed after about two years.

Daniel Lapin helped found Toward Tradition, which has accomplished nothing other than raising money and promoting Christian right figures like Gary Bauer and Jerry Falwell as friends of the Jews. When I inquired about Toward Tradition with Yechiel Eckstein, founder of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews and broker of the evangelical right's partnership with Israel, he scoffed at the notion that Toward Tradition has impacted anything. Eckstein added, "Gary [Bauer] does far more through me than with [Toward Tradition]." Lapin's donors are the usual suspects: Scaife, Carthage, and Vermont's Lenore Broughton. As the old saying goes, scratch a liar, find a thief.

The Seattle Weekly notes that the White House has rewarded Lapin with an appointment to the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad, which helps preserve cemeteries, monuments, and historic buildings in Eastern and Central Europe. What qualifications does Lapin have for this position? None. What the hell does he know about restoring cemetaries in Romania? Nothing. And what has he done in this role? Used it to puff his bio. (The Commission's website is curiously out of service, by the way). Lapin's appointment is pure political patronage and I'm willing to bet Karl Rove's fingerprints are all over it. Indeed, the proximity of Abramoff's cronies to the White House is far closer than Scott McClellan would ever admit. Perhaps that's why the sordid story of Lapin's appointment remains under the radar.

Ralph Reed, Prince of the Pharisees

How does any of this square with Christian values?

Documents released by the committee also shed light on Abramoff's relationship with Reed, currently a candidate for lieutenant governor in Georgia. The committee included Reed in its investigation after learning that Abramoff and Scanlon paid him to lobby the Texas Legislature to close the Tigua tribe's casino in El Paso. The Tigua tribe had paid Scanlon roughly $4 million to help it win back a casino license.

"On the political front, did Ralph spend all the money he was given to fight this _ or does he have some left?" Scanlon asked Abramoff in an e-mail, the subject of which is blacked out on the documents released by the committee.

"That's a silly question! He `spent' it all the moment it arrived in his account. He would NEVER admit he has money left over," Abramoff e-mailed Scanlon. "Would we?

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, Servant of the Pharisees
As I said yesterday about the Powerline blogger, Scott Johnson, Jewish Republicans are a funny lot. None funnier than Daniel Lapin, who would be just another nebish if he weren't the right-wing's House Hebrew:

"I hate to ask you for your help with something so silly but I've been nominated for membership in the Cosmos Club, which is a very distinguished club in Washington, DC, comprised of Nobel Prize winners, etc.," Abramoff wrote. "Problem for me is that most prospective members have received awards and I have received none. I was wondering if you thought it possible that I could put that I have received an award from Toward Tradition with a sufficiently academic title, perhaps something like Scholar of Talmudic Studies?"

There were titters in the audience as Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) read aloud the e-mail, then outright laughter as he continued reading: "Indeed, it would be even better if it were possible that I received these in years past, if you know what I mean."

The rabbi, conservative radio host Daniel Lapin, gave his blessing. "I just need to know what needs to be produced," he wrote. "Letters? Plaques?"

"The point of all of this," Dorgan said, "is there's a lot of deception going on."

By the way, Lapin's brilliant rabbinical analysis of the Ten Commandments is out.

If I make it into the College Republicans' annual conference tomorrow, I'll let you know.

I hear Tom DeLay, Horowitz and Tony "KKK" Perkins will be there, along with one thousand Karl Rove wannabes. They'll be too busy noshing on butter croissants at the prayer breakfast to sign up for duty in Iraq, of course.

Tony Perkins, A Racist's Best Friend
Tony "KKK" Perkins just can't keep himself away from racists. This week, he helped plan a tribute to one of his political heroes, Jesse Helms. From the Washington Times:

A conservative who's who in Washington -- David Keene, Becky Norton Dunlop, Morton Blackwell, Grover Norquist, Ron Robinson and Tony Perkins -- huddled this week with Sen. Richard M. Burr, North Carolina Republican, and the family and office alumni of Jesse Helms, to plan what one dubbed a "long-overdue Washington tribute" to the senator, who retired in 2002.
It was decided that the gala, benefiting the Jesse Helms Center Foundation, will take place Sept. 20 at the Marriott Crystal Gateway. Mr. Burr and North Carolina Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole will be co-chairmen for the event, which is timed to coincide with the release of Mr. Helms' long-anticipated memoir, "Here's Where I Stand."
"This is going to be huge," one attendee says. "I think a lot of folks -- and not just conservatives -- will really look forward to this opportunity to properly honor Senator Helms and his rich legacy here in Washington. The fact that we're able to do it to coincide with the release of his memoir is just icing on the cake."

Which one of Helms' achievements does Perkins think he should be honored for? Was it the way he vanquished the Greek-American Rep. Nick Galifanakis in 1972 with the slogan, "Elect one of us?" Or was it the ad he ran against his 1990 challenger, Harvey Gantt, which showed a black hand snatching away a white man's job? Somehow I doubt Perkins is so enamored with Helms because of his symbolic kibitzing with Bono.

Hillary Don't Play That

Clinton: Mr. Secretary, I want to read you a quote from today's newspaper: Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers. Mr. Secretary, do you agree with that statement by a senior member of this administration?

Rumsfeld: I don't know who made the statement or the context of it and I just got through saying that when one takes a single sentence or single comment out of a longer statement that may have context, I find frequently that it is harmful. I don’t know who said it or what the context was and obviously it's not something I said.

Clinton: I appreciate that. Well, it is a statement by Karl Rove. And it is the kind of statement that is particularly harmful and painful. It is the kind of statement that is unnecessary. It is the kind of statement that pits Americans of good faith, seeking to support the men and women in uniform, seeking to protect them, seeking to support you, despite the fact that we might have serious questions and even disagreements about strategy and tactics. And so it politicizes and turns into a partisan game. Something as serious as the attack on our nation on September 11th and something as deadly as the conflict in which we are currently engaged. So I would hope Mr. Secretary that you and other members of the Administration would immediately repudiate such an insulting comment from a high ranking official in the President's inner circle.

Watch the video here. It's worth seeing.

Powerline Blogger Apologizes For Calling "American Jews" Dumber Than Dogs
Early on the morning of June 20, award-winning blogger and well-heeled Claremont Institute fellow Scott Johnson posted the following on the Powerline blog:

THE WISDOM OF DOGS
If I recall correctly, in book 1 of the Republic, Socrates jokingly observes that dogs are philosophers, because they determine who their friends are based on knowledge. If American Jews were as canny as dogs -- at least if they knew who their friends are -- somewhat less than 70 percent of them would still be voting Democratic. One would think that the presence of Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Cynthia McKinney, John Conyers, Jimmy Carter and their ilk among the honored members of the party, or Michael Moore as the party's intellectual lodestar, would prompt some serious second thoughts...

After receiving a deluge of complaints, Johnson scrubbed his suggestion that "American Jews" are dumber than dogs because they generally vote Democratic. Without noting what exactly the deleted line said, Johnson added a half-hearted apology to his post (which preceded his mockery of Dick Durbin's apology for far less poisonous remarks) then claimed he is Jewish:

THE WISDOM OF DOGS
If I recall correctly, in book 1 of the Republic, Socrates jokingly observes that dogs are philosophers, because they determine who their friends are based on knowledge. If American Jews had a fix on who their friends are, I doubt that 70 percent of them would continue to constitute themselves among the core of the Democratic Party. One would think that the presence of Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Cynthia McKinney, John Conyers, Jimmy Carter and their ilk among the honored members of the party, or Michael Moore as the party's intellectual lodestar, would prompt some serious second thoughts. Richard Baehr picks up the thread with the mock-impeachment hearing over which John Conyers presided last week: "The Democrats sign up with the anti-Semites."

UPDATE: I have revised this post to remove what was intended to be a humorous takeoff on Plato's joke. I happen to be Jewish and am not as sensitive to the slight perceived by some of our readers. I apologize for any offense caused to our usual reades by the previous version of this post.

On the other hand, the sensitivity of alleged slights to Jews professed by our moonbat readers seems misplaced to me. It would be deeply touching if they devoted themselves to dealing with the rot among their friends holding high office, such as Rep. Conyers: "Democrats play House to rally against the war." Until they do, I will consider their alleged concerns to constitute more evidence of their intellectual bad faith.

Sorry, but I've never met a Jew named Johnson. Nor have I ever heard a Jew, anywhere, anytime, suggest that "American Jews" are dumber than dogs, for any reason. I'm not accusing Scott Johnson of lying about his religious background. I'm just saying, Jewish Republicans are a weird, weird lot.

Anti-Chickenhawk Bias
From Newsweek's First Read:

The Washington Post also covers the dust up in the House over Rep. Hostettler’s criticism of the Democratic provision preventing religious proselytizing at the Air Force Academy. "‘Like a moth to a flame, Democrats can't help themselves when it comes to denigrating and demonizing Christians,’ [Hostettler] said… Eventually, Hostettler rose and read a sentence that had been written out for him in large block letters by a young Republican floor aide: ‘Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw the last sentence I spoke.’" Interestingly, the Post notes that the Rep. Obey’s amendment on proselytizing was defeated, 210 to 198.

Viqueira has more on yesterday’s back and forth over religion: After Hostettler made his initial remarks, Obey jumped to his feet and asked that Hostettler's words be "taken down," a reference to a procedure that’s used to censor offensive language from the record. The two sides, Viq adds, huddled to avert further contretemps. But after their huddle, the microphones were mistakenly left open, and Viqueira heard (but could not see) an apparent exchange between Rep. John Spratt (D) and Hostettler. "I’m as good a Christian as you are! You ever been in the military?" said one of them.

"No, but I’ve been a Christian. Is that all right?" replied the other.

From John Spratt's bio:

"[Spratt] won a Marshall Scholarship to Oxford and earned a law degree from Yale. He served as a captain in the Army from 1969-71, and was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal... Active in his community, he was an elder at First Presbyterian Church, president of the Chamber of Commerce and United Way, and chairman of the Board of Divine Saviour Hospital."

From Hostettler's bio:

"Prior to [Hostettler's] service in Congress he was employed as a Power Plant Performance Engineer with Southern Indiana Gas & Electric Company.

Political activism was not a priority for the Hostettlers. In fact, prior to 1994 the Registered Professional Engineer was not involved in politics except to vote. He devoted his time to his growing family, his job and his church. He served as a Deacon at Twelfth Avenue General Baptist Church in Evansville and, along with his wife, ran the church's food pantry for the underprivileged.

Hostettler's interest in politics increased following the election of Bill Clinton in 1992...."

Nothing about military service there.

My latest is out on the Nation's website. It's a profile of Sam Brownback, who's been shamelessly puffed by everyone from Nick Kristof to George Will to the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle. Here's an excerpt:

A soft-spoken farmer's son and former broadcaster who attended auctioneering school, Brownback married the heiress of the Topeka Capitol-Journal and other media properties, including television stations. "While the Kansas conservative style generally features loud, sweaty campaigning at the most energetic and antihierarchical sort of Protestant churches," Thomas Frank writes in What's The Matter With Kansas, "Brownback favors the approach of the unhurried insider, the ultramontane, even." Brownback began his political career in 1986 as Kansas's youngest-ever Agriculture Secretary, a post to which he was appointed under archaic rules by a panel of agribusiness leaders. Among Brownback's most notable accomplishments was the gutting of restrictions on the herbicide atrazine, which has been proven to increase the incidence of lymphoma among residents in areas where it is used. By the time Brownback's appointment to Agriculture Secretary was ruled unconstitutional in December 1994, he had already been elected to the US House.

Two years after winning his House seat, Brownback declared his candidacy to replace then-Senator Bob Dole, who had abandoned his seat to run for President. First Brownback vanquished Dole's chosen replacement, the prochoice Republican Sheila Frahm. Then he ground out a commanding victory in the general election against centrist Democrat Jill Docking, who had made Brownback's far-right views a central theme of her campaign. The race was dead even throughout, but as the two neared the finish line, Brownback suddenly pulled away. He attributed the last-minute surge to a push by Christian right forces. "Pat [Robertson] got me elected in 1996," he recently told Newsweek, It is true that Brownback generated unprecedented support from social conservatives in his victory, but something much darker was also at play, a scheme he remains mum about to this day.

Now read on.

Put Your DVD Remote Down!
Fascinating review from Robert Fisk of Ridley Scott's film about the Crusades, "Kingdom of Heaven." I saw this cinematically hapless movie in Silver Spring, Maryland. My friend fell asleep midway through. I left him there after the credits rolled as a prank. An usher had to wake him. At a theatre in Beirut, Fisk had a much more meaningful experience:

Long live Ridley Scott. I never thought I’d say this. Gladiator had a screenplay that might have come from the Boy’s Own Paper. Black Hawk Down showed the Arabs of Somalia as generically violent animals. But when I left the cinema after seeing Scott’s extraordinary sand-and-sandals epic on the Crusades, Kingdom of Heaven, I was deeply moved - not so much by the film, but by the Muslim audience among whom I watched it in Beirut.
(....)

When the leprous King of Jerusalem - his face covered in a steel mask to spare his followers the ordeal of looking at his decomposition - falls fatally ill after honourably preventing a battle between Crusaders and Saracens, Saladin, played by that wonderful Syrian actor Ghassan Massoud - and thank God the Arabs in the film are played by Arabs - tells his deputies to send his own doctors to look after the Christian king.

At this, there came from the Muslim audience a round of spontaneous applause. They admired this act of mercy from their warrior hero; they wanted to see his kindness to a Christian.
(....)

But at the end of the film, after Balian has surrendered Jerusalem, Saladin enters the city and finds a crucifix lying on the floor of a church, knocked off the altar during the three-day siege. And he carefully picks up the cross and places it reverently back on the altar. And at this point the audience rose to their feet and clapped and shouted their appreciation. They loved that gesture of honour. They wanted Islam to be merciful as well as strong. And they roared their approval above the soundtrack of the film.

So I left the Dunes cinema in Beirut strangely uplifted by this extraordinary performance - of the audience as much as the film. See it if you haven’t. And if you do, remember how the Muslims of Beirut came to realise that even Hollywood can be fair. I came away realising why - despite the murder of Beirut’s bravest journalist on Friday - there probably will not be a civil war here again. So if you see Kingdom of Heaven, when Saladin sets the crucifix back on the altar, remember that deafening applause from the Muslims of Beirut.

I can understand where Fisk is coming from. Only by witnessing the reaction of a theatre in Boston filled with older Jews -- including Holocaust survivors -- to "Schindler's List" was I able to recognize the historical importance of a film which I was tempted to brush off as manipulative. Similarly, seeing Atom Egoyan's masterful "Ararat" in the heart of the Armenian exile community, Glendale, California, helped illuminate for me how insulting Turkey's silence on the Armenian genocide has been. The Glendale Armenians' reaction to images of their blood-soaked past was identitical that of the Jews in Boston: they quietly sobbed. Lost lives can be quantified but the pain of unsutured wounds is limitless. Had I watched these films at home, their cultural resonances would have been lost on me.

On a lighter note, I was the only person laughing in a Berlin, Germany movie theatre during a showing of "The Big Lebowski." If you've seen that one, you know what I'm talking about.

Through their obsessive focus on Dick Durbin's comments on Gitmo, right-wing bloggers have attempted to distract from media reports on Bush's torture policy. It's a classic, psy-ops-style information denial strategy. If the right can hone conservative attention on the impolitic statements of some prominent liberal on a subject that would otherwise be uncomfortable for them, they can avoid playing defense. David Neiwert has documented how the right's Durbin distraction has turned into an eliminationist free-for-all, with one conservative radio host going as far as to call for Durbin's assasination:

This man is simply a piece of excrement, a piece of waste that needs to be scraped off the sidewalk and eliminated.

-- KVI's John Carlson, discussing Sen. Dick Durbin, on his Seattle-based talk show Thursday

The right is having a much harder time dealing with the Downing Street Memo. A growing parade of right-wing bloggers, including the eminent Captain's Quarters (winner of 2004's Best Conservative Blog), are alleging that the memo is a fake. CQ writes, "This, in fact, could very well be another case of 'fake but accurate,' where documents get created after the fact to support preconceived notions about what happened in the past." For some odd reason, I don't smell another Rathergate here.

Neither does the right's premier blog, Powerline. (Powerline is actually a front for the Claremont Institute, the West Coast version of the Cato Institute. Claremont is funded primarily by its board member, theocratic millionaire Howard F. Ahmanson Jr. Hinderaker and Scott Johnson are bankrolled as Claremont Fellows). "I very much doubt that the documents are fakes," writes John Hinderaker.

The right-wing blogosphere responded to Hinderaker with outrage. Calling Hinderaker's logic "flawed," All Things Conservative declared:

We are supposed to believe that Bush knew no weapons were in Iraq, but decided to "fix" the intelligence so that he could tell everyone there were weapons. Why would he do that? He would have had to of known that once weapons were not found he would get hammered for it. President Bush is not a stupid politician.

Such a fine writer is undoubtedly an equally astute judge of intelligence -- "He would have had to of..." Sadly, this incredulous line of argument is not isolated on the right. It's appeared on dozens of blogs and will surely work its way into the conservative radio circuit soon, if it already hasn't. And even with Powerline -- which promotes the idea that "we're winning" in Iraq, touting insurgent body counts as evidence -- backing away, the right can fall back on Dana Milbank's lie-ridden take on Conyers' Downing Street hearing, in which he attempted to cast the hearing as a gathering of anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists by focusing on the handful of requisite wackos. The Post gave no coverage to the event other than Milbank's screed.

Meanwhile, as Media Matters has reported, the Weekly Standard actually tried to dispute that the word "fix" was even intended to mean the alteration of intelligence to fit a policy. "'Fix' here is clearly meant in its traditional sense, in the sort of English spoken by Oxbridge dons and MI6 directors -- to make fast, to set in order, to arrange," wrote Tod Lindberg. Taking their cue from the President -- their Dear Leader -- the right-wing's psy-ops brigade fixes the facts around a series of disastrous policies that have been soundly rejected by a majority of Americans, helping Bush to an approval rating best befitting of a corrupt Central American autocrat.

They're Both Psycho

Bill Berkowitz likens the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins to his Hollywood namesake:

While the FRC's Tony Perkins appears to have little in common with the late actor of the same name, who died of pneumonia, brought on by AIDS in 1992, there is a shared flair for the spotlight. The actor Tony Perkins, whose first starring role was as the psychologically troubled Boston Red Sox outfielder Jimmy Piersall in "Fear Strikes Out" in 1957, captured the nation's attention by playing Norman Bates, the demented owner of the Bates Motel in Alfred Hitchcock's film "Psycho" three years later.

Tony Perkins: Dealing With The Duke

I want to take a moment to highlight some of the details of Tony Perkins' financial interactions with David Duke since the Family Research Council is claiming Perkins was innocent of any knowledge of the "Duke connection." Perkins was, contrary to Family Research Council propaganda, aware he was doing business with the former Grand Imperial Wizard and he had no compunction about it. Furthermore, Perkins has yet to come clean about his speech in 2001 to the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white supremacist group which refers to blacks as "a retrograde species of humanity." But I'll leave that for another day. For now, I want to stick to the details of what happened in 1996.
That year, Tony Perkins was working as campaign manager for arch-conservative Woody Jenkins, who was running for US Senate against Mary Landrieu. Perkins purchased David Duke's phone bank list through a shadowy company called Impact Mail. He did so at Jenkins' behest, yet he made the transaction without Jenkins' foreknowledge. We turn now to section 6 of the 1999 conciliation agreement between the Jenkins campaign and the Federal Election Commission, which was signed by Woody Jenkins:

6. After the 1996 primary election in Louisiana, David Duke contacted Woody Jenkins and recommended that he use the services of a computerized phone bank system run by Impact Mail. Jenkins purchased several rounds of calls from Impact Mail. After the first round of calls, Jenkins began hearing complaints that Duke’s name would appear on the caller ID when a phone bank message would arrive. At that point, Jenkins tried to cancel the transaction but was nable to because Tony Perkins, his campaign manager, had signed a contract with Impact Mail. Subsequently, Jenkins instructed Perkins to put a stop payment on the check issued to Impact Mail and directed that Impact Mail be paid through Courtney Communications, the campaign's media finn. The Jenkins Committee issued three 27,500 checks to Courtney. Courtney, in turn, made out three checks in the same amount to Impact Mail. The treasurer of record, Michael A. Tham, states that he was unaware of the specific transactions with Impact Mail when he entered the information on the disclosure report; In the case of the first check, Mr. Tham simply assumed it was for TV advertising.

To summarize, Jenkins told Perkins to purchase Duke's phone list from Impact Mail; both men had full knowledge that Duke was using Impact as a financial conduit. When Jenkins learned that Duke's name would appear on called ID's, he tried to cancel the payment. But an eager, young Perkins had already signed the check. So Jenkins tried to redirect the payment through a third party, Courtney Communications, to cover his tracks. The Federal Election Commission caught him red-handed and fined him in 1999.

The Family Research Council now claims that "an unrelated federal investigation uncovered that David Duke had a financial interest in the company, which he did not report to the IRS, resulting in his conviction on federal tax evasion charges. This connection was not known to Mr. Perkins until 1999."

It is simply impossible that Tony Perkins was unaware of Impact Mail's connection to David Duke. Besides the fact that Perkins was dispatched to make the payment by Woody Jenkins, who attempted to cover his tracks after he realized Duke's name would show up in peoples' called ID's, the Impact/Duke connection was made clear through the controversy that ensued in 1995 when former Louisiana Gov. Mike Foster purchased Duke's phone bank list. Let's turn to 1999 Louisiana Board of Ethics finding against Foster:

In 1995, Foster met with all other potential gubernatorial candidates, including David Duke, to discuss views relative to the campaign. When meeting with Duke, he was informed by Duke that Duke did not intend to seek the governorship. At that meeting, Duke offered to sell Foster the use of his computerized list of conservative voters. It was agreed by Duke and Foster that Foster would pay Duke $100,000 for the one-time use of the list during the 1995 campaign and that if Foster was elected, he would pay Duke an additional $50,000 for the right to use the list in 1999 should Foster seek reelection. Duke advised Foster that he had arranged for the transfer of the computerized list to be made through Impact Mail & Printing, Inc. (Impact Mail), a firm in Metairie, Louisiana. Impact Mail provides bulk mailing services and brokers mailing lists. Duke was neither an owner of nor an employee of Impact Mail....

As was agreed between Duke and Impact Mail, Impact Mail issued to Duke a check for $97,000, payable to “Duke Report,” and the balance of $5,000 was retained by Impact Mail.

Thus, Duke had used Impact as a financial conduit a year before Jenkins' campaign. Where does anyone think Jenkins and Perkins got the idea to purchase Duke's list from?

Perkins' financial dealings with Duke came back to haunt him during his failed 2002 campaign for US Senate. During that campaign, he claimed, in a slightly more qualified denial, that he didn't know "the full Duke connection" until after the 1996 Jenkins campaign was over. The Baton Rouge Advocate hit him with this scathing editorial on July 29, 2002:

No one emerges with credit from association with David Duke. Astonishingly, some of Louisiana's leading politicians were in bed with the former Imperial Wizard.

Duke's political heyday in the state had seemed to be over after he was crunchingly defeated in the 1991 gubernatorial runoff by another self-proclaimed "wizard under the sheets," Edwin W. Edwards. But a raft of politicos were more than happy to pay Duke for his supposed influence with voters on the lunatic fringe.

Six years after the fact, the Federal Elections Commission fined former U.S. Senate candidate Woody Jenkins $3,000 for illegally concealing his 1996 campaign purchase of a phone bank linked to former Ku Klux Klan leader Duke.

The commission also fined the Republican Party of Louisiana $10,000 for improperly disclosing printing costs it paid for the Jenkins campaign and leaving the party's name off pro-Jenkins direct mail that it financed.

Jenkins lost the Senate race by 5,788 votes in a runoff with Democrat Mary Landrieu, who is up for re-election this fall. Jenkins' Senate campaign manager, state Rep. Tony Perkins of Pride, who signed the $82,500 contract for the Duke phone bank, is among three Republicans challenging Landrieu.

Jenkins' use of the Duke phone bank, operated by a company called Impact Mail Ltd., came to light in 1999, when a federal grand jury began investigating Duke's finances. That's when voters learned that Gov. Mike Foster, running his first statewide campaign in 1995, also bought Duke's mailing list for $152,000.

The governor's campaign was eventually fined $20,000 by the state Board of Ethics for concealing the purchase. Arguably, a fairer fine would have been $152,000.

At the FEC, commissioners apparently wanted to fine Jenkins the full amount of the Duke contract, but Jenkins said he could not pay that much. It is a measure of the slow and ineffectual processes of the FEC that it took years to grind out these decisions.

The association with Duke cannot help Perkins in this year's campaign.

Perkins told The Times-Picayune Tuesday that he didn't find out "the complete Duke connection" until after the 1996 Senate campaign. He said Jenkins "handled most of those details" involved in the transaction.

The checks, though, were cut on Perkins' watch. It was a violation of federal election law to route them through the campaign's media firm - Courtney Communications, headed by former newscaster Bob Courtney of Baton Rouge - so that the Duke connection would be concealed from voters.

It is a taint.

Yet such is the shamelessness of Louisiana politicians - and the lack of outrage among Louisiana voters - that politicians have so often risen above ties to an utterly shameless bigot like David Duke.

In a response published in the Advocate on July 31, 2002, Jenkins was unable to deny the crux of the Advocate's charge: that he knew he was doing business with Duke through Impact Mail. All he could muster was the following:

The only "Duke connection" that I was aware of was that this firm had done work for Duke in the primary.... I don't much care what you say about me, but it is unfortunate for you to smear a good man like Rep. Tony Perkins. There is absolutely nothing about this matter that should taint Rep. Perkins. His intentions were entirely honorable, and neither he nor I have ever been "in bed" with David Duke as you so crudely and unjustifiably alleged.

Jenkins' response was especially lame considering he authorized with his own signature the Federal Election Commission finding that he attempted to cover up his Duke connection in 1996.

Now, like his mentor, Perkins is lying to cover his tracks. He claims, despite mountains of evidence, that he was unaware he had any financial dealings with Duke. And he continues to avoid questions of his involvement with other racist groups, like the Council of Conservative Citizens.

I hear from a source in New Orleans that Perkins is mulling a run for US Senate. He would campaign in the shadow of his very dark past. This is only the tip of the iceberg.

(Thanks to the inimitable Mike Tidmus for the image).

Note to Family Research Council sympathizers who commented below: get ready to see what a "pro" I am.

Duke's Puke
In case you're wondering why Congress so studiously ignores the Downing Street Memo, consider for a second the case of Randy "Duke" Cunningham:

In late 2003, Cunningham wanted to sell his house near Del Mar Heights Road, which he bought in 1988. His house, while large, was unspectacular by Del Mar's tony standards.

Mitchell Wade, a Pentagon contractor whose livelihood depended on Cunningham's defense appropriations subcommittee, agreed to buy the house for $1,675,000 in a private, no-commission deal.

Elizabeth Todd, a Del Mar real-estate agent and a faithful donor to Cunningham's campaigns, pulled up some supposed comps and helped suggest a price.

A month later, Wade put the house on the market, initially asking $1,680,000. Months later, despite a white-hot housing market, the sale price fell to $975,000, a $700,000 loss.

Todd received commissions on Wade's sale of the Del Mar Heights house and Cunningham's purchase of a $2.55 million house in the Ranch.

Wade took a bath on the house deal, but his multimillion-dollar Pentagon contracts spiked after the sale.

In other words, Cunningham (yeah, the guy who said Democrats and Vietnam-era protesters should be arrested and shot) took an obvious bribe and gave the contractor a kick-back. He may still go down, but it appears he is trying some DeLay tactics for now (pun intended). Even more bizarre is that this has not been reported as a major story outside Cunningham's district. The Times buried it two days ago.

Operation Iraqi Freedumb Begins Today!
This is a repost of a post I did on this year's CPAC conference. Will it come true? The suspense is killing me...

Friday, February 18, 2005

Lowering the Bar
A friend inside the CPAC conference told me during Ann Coulter's speech on how liberals are lowering the bar on civility in America, she also declared,

"Liberals always cry that they're being opressed, so let's actually oppress them."

I also hear Michael Medved got into a dust-up with Al Franken, who was seated opposite John O'Neill on his radio show, and that a representative from the Alliance for Iranian Freedom (or something like that), an Iranian exile group, claimed June 17th will be the day the Iranian regime is toppled. He said 100,000 Iranians were scheduled to spontaneously pour into the streets, Kiev-style. Let's wait and see.

# posted by max blumenthal @ 9:18 PM

FRC On The Defensive
The Family Research Council has finally moved into damage control now that Tony Perkins' notorious payment to David Duke have resurfaced, thanks to John Aravosis and yours truly. This email was forwarded to me today:
>

X-IronPort-AV: i="3.93,201,1115006400";
> d="scan'208"; a="126301531:sNHT32082088"
>Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2005 20:44:24 -0000 (GMT)
>Subject: Family Research Council Response to My Email
>
>
>Dear Christopher,
>
>Thank you for your inquiry about the blog website making allegations
of
>racial bias regarding FRC President Tony Perkins.
>
>The assertions made in the blog are untrue and a distortion of the
facts.
>Mr. Perkins was the manager of the 1996 U.S. Senate campaign of
Republican
>Woody Jenkins in Louisiana where a company was contracted to make
>pre-recorded telephone calls.
>
>In 1999 an unrelated federal investigation uncovered that David Duke
had a
>financial interest in the company, which he did not report to the IRS,
>resulting in his conviction on federal tax evasion charges. This
>connection was not known to Mr. Perkins until 1999. Mr. Perkins
>profoundly opposes the racial views of Mr. Duke and was profoundly
grieved
>to learn that Duke was a party to the company that had done work for
the
>1996 campaign.
>
>These facts have been widely reported in Louisiana and the reports
>appearing now in various partisan media are not news. In 2003, Mr.
>Jenkins published a letter in the major daily in Baton Rouge
responding to
>a critical article that resurrected the same distortion. "[I]t is
>unfortunate," Jenkins wrote, "for you to smear a good man like [then-]
>Rep. Tony Perkins. There is absolutely nothing about the matter that
>should taint Rep. Perkins. His intentions were entirely honorable,
and
>neither he nor I have ever been 'in bed' with David Duke as you so
crudely
>and unjustifiably allege." A full copy of the Jenkins letter to the
>editor is available on request.
>
>Thank you for asking about this matter and taking the time to verify
the
>truth.
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Your Friends at the Family Research Council

Even if that were true, the FRC has yet to account for Perkins' speech in 2001 before the Council of Conservative Citizens, America's largest white supremacist organization, a group that refers to blacks as "a retrograde species of humanity." How will they spin that one?

The race to the bottom is on in West Virginia:

Wal-Mart officials in Cross Lanes told employees on Tuesday they have to start working practically any shift, any day they’re asked, even if they’ve built up years of seniority and can’t arrange child care.

Store management said the policy change is needed to keep enough staff at the busiest hours, but some employees said it appears to be an attempt to force out longer-term, higher-paid workers.

“We have many people with set schedules who aren’t here when we need them for our customers,” said John Knuckles, a manager at the store, which is located in the Nitro Marketplace shopping center and employs more than 400.

Dr. Frist was wrong. Who could have guessed?

Chavez is right.

Edith Is Missing, Too

(This cross was installed at the El Paso-Juarez border crossing by an art collective to commemorate the 100 young women raped, murdered and disappeared in Juarez. Local businesses have lobbied the city for its removal.)

Cable news can't get enough of Natalee Holloway. She's young, pretty, white, and missing -- the perfect human interest story. Geraldo Rivera gets spirited down to Aruba to sip daquiris and follow leads that don't exist; a circus of distraught relatives and a backwoods "investigative psychologist" tell us where they would have gone if they were her. And America, or at least, some sub-mental subset of it, is transfixed. Meanwhile, there are hundreds of important stories that could have been told instead of, or in addition to, Holloway's. Some of them even involve missing women whose disappearances are actually part of a widespread kidnapping epidemic.

Take Edith Aranda. A new arrival to the border megalopolis of Ciudad Juarez, 22-year-old Edith found work as a first grade teacher. But like so many working women in Juarez, she needed another job to make ends meet. So last May, she set off to apply for part-time work at a downtown music shop. That was the last time Edith was seen. Her disappearance was followed by the brutal rape and murder of a 7 and 10 year old girl. In response, 4,000 of Edith's fellow teachers staged a one day work stoppage, filling the streets of Juarez in indignation. Student protests were held outside the state attorney general's office. The anger reached such a fever pitch one man accused by his neighbors of spying on young girls was nearly lynched.

It's a powerful story, isn't it? But that's not all. Over 350 women have been killed in Juarez since 1993, the same year NAFTA was passed. The murders of 100 of these women fit a macabre pattern in which they were raped, strangled and dumped in the desert like pieces of garbage. Many of them had toiled for $5 a day in assembly plants for US multinationals operating under few, if any, labor standards. I went to Juarez in 2002 to cover the femicides for Salon.com. While there, I found that a corrupt government, crooked cops, exploitative US corporations, and a patriarchal culture combined to cultivate an anarchic, cynical atmosphere that literally devoured young women. Since I visited, almost 50 more women have been killed or disappeared. (You can read my report here.)

Edith's story is unique, however. She had a visa allowing her to cross over into the US and according to her father, did not leave it behind when she went searching for work. The father of Edith's daughter lives in New Mexico, though he says he hasn't heard from her. If Edith is alive, there is a real possibility that she is somewhere in the states. Yet despite this US connection, despite the political implications of her disappearance, and despite the enormous coverage she has generated in the Mexican press, this is probably the first time you have heard of Edith. Indeed, her story has been wholly ignored by the US media. Why? After all, she's pretty, young and...oh, I forgot. Edith is not white.

(Thanks to Frontera Norte-Sur for bringing this story to my attention.)

This is cross-posted at the Huffington Post.

The Christian Right's New Race-Baiting
As I said two days ago, the Christian right is eager to resurrect its roots in the anti-integration struggle by introducing a racial aspect to its culture war. The Arlington Group, a network of Christian right policy leaders like Gary Bauer, Richard Land, Don Wildmon and Tony Perkins, has been holding conference calls on illegal immigration. These comments from the American Family Association's Fred Jackson (an employee of Wildmon), delivered during the June 2 broadcast of American Family Radio's "AFA Report," are the product of such discussions:

JACKSON: And one of the signs of what's going on politically is -- I believe -- Los Angeles just elected its first Hispanic mayor and, there's been a lot written about that. And that is a direct result of what's been going on with illegal immigration over the last 20 or 30 years. And they say that scenario that just played out in Los Angeles is going to repeat itself in communities across the United States.

Soon after, Jackson sought to qualify his remark while maintaining his suggestion that Latino politicians will divide the United States into "two nations":

JACKSON: You know, with the Los Angeles situation, I have no problem with a Hispanic mayor being elected. It's not an ethnic issue. But the problem is, like brother Don [Wildmon] said, we don't want to have two nations within our borders that can't communicate with one another and natural hostility will develop.

On the surface, Jackson's comments mirror the rhetoric of secular far-rightists like Tom Tancredo and Peter Brimelow. Compared to comments by Christian right leaders on homosexuals, there's little difference either. Jackson alleges that immigrants from Mexico, like homosexuals, will erode the foundations of "traditional" American culture. And his ominous prediction of Latino mayors getting elected across the US -- oh, the horror! -- sounds a lot like the Christian right's warnings about the "homosexual agenda," a term designed to induce fears of gays infiltrating public institutions from schools to government. White America, beware. And open your pocketbooks.

I caught 20 minutes of pre-millenialist Hal Lindsey's "International Intelligence Briefing" last night. Here's what I managed to transcribe:

There's no such thing as an Arab Palestinian people. And there never was.
Palestine was created in one day in 1967 by terrorist leader Yasser
Arafat... The Arabs were put into concentration camps by their own
governments called refugee camps... They became Palestinians because their
own brothers refused to help them.

(...)

There's no instance of Israeli aggression against another country.

The scary thing is people really believe this shit.

Proving My Point (and some questions for Howard Dean)
A while back I wrote that “the struggle for America’s future is not a conflict between political parties, but between two ideologies. One values individual freedom, the other, clerical authoritarianism. True conservatives should choose sides more carefully.” The Acton Institute, a right-wing Catholic "libertarian" think tank whose president, Robert Sirico, is an informal advisor to Bush on Catholic issues, basically proves my point:

Blumenthal misunderstands the true nature of freedom, ignoring the moral foundation of freedom and lumping it in with “clerical authoritarianism.”

As Lord Acton says, “Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do what we ought.”

Or, in the words of John Milton, "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license.”

Blumenthal’s theological relatives would be something like the antinomians who misconstrued Christian freedom in Christ, and against whom the apostle Paul wrote, “You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other” (Galatians 5:13-15 NIV).

See also Romans 6:18, “You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.”

In other words, man should be free only to do what Christ tells him to do. I guess clerical authoritarianism is freedom, then. That's the kind of framing that puts George Lakoff to shame.

Now, two questions. One, what does Acton mean by my "theological relatives."

And two, instead of demonizing Republicans as a whole (however true his characterizations might be), why doesn't Howard Dean try making the case to moderate Republicans and true conservatives that this isn't their daddy's GOP anymore? Why doesn't he make the case that their party has cloaked itself in a demagogic nationalism to conceal its theocratic -- and decidedly un-conservative -- intentions? Why offer himself to the Republicans as a straw man when George W. Bush is gasping for air? Who is Dean raising money for, anyway? I mean, I got a fundraising email yesterday from Gary Bauer promoting Dean's comments as evidence of the Democrats' "anti-Christian" agenda. I fail to see what Dean accomplished with his remark other than engendering massive amounts of apologia and spin from some liberal bloggers. If he wants to be impolitic, he should get out of politics.

The Christian Right's Race Problem
John Aravosis has an idea: every time Tony Perkins -- or anyone from the Family Research Council, including James Dobson, who is its founder and board members -- steps out of his door, he should be confronted with this:

The Family Research Council's executive director, Tony Perkins, reportedly paid former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke over $80,000 for his who's-who-of-racist-America mailing list in 1996. This should be the death of the Family Research Council, one of the religoius right's lead organizations, and the end of Tony Perkins career....

What would I do in response? How about make sure the entire audience knows about Perkins' support for Duke and affinity for racists at EVERY event he attends. How about informing the black media and black churches about this tie between racists and the religious right. How about asking supposed religious right "black" leaders why they don't speak out against the FRC and its executive director's affinity for white supremacists. How about demanding that the other religious right groups speak out against Tony Perkins and his enabling of black-hating racists.

The source of Aravosis's figure is my article for the Nation, "Justice Sunday Preachers." To be sure, Duke's mailing list was left over from his run for governor of Louisiana, not from his Klan days. Nevertheless, the list was a who's who of Louisiana racists, who comprised a good chunk of Tony Perkins (and his mentor, Woody Jenkins's) constituency. Perkins helped enrich Duke, who is up to his old tricks again, Jew-baiting, black-bashing, etc. Upon his release from prison last year, Duke declared, "It's time to go after the Jews." Aravosis also mentions, citing my article, that Perkins spoke before the Council of Conservative Citizens, America's largest white supremacist group, which has referred to blacks as "a retrograde species of humanity." The CCC is known in the South as "the uptown Klan."

So does this make Tony Perkins a racist? Sort of. Perkins probably has no problem having black friends (though he seems like the kind of character who is privately grossed out by interracial relationships). He hangs out with Bishop Harry Jackson all the time. But that's not the point. The point is, Perkins's associations reflect the seamy underbelly of the Christian right. I mean, is it any surprise that a decade after the civil rights movement consolidated its victories in the South, the Christian right magically materialized? The Christian right is simply a sophisticated reincarnation of anti-integration forces. And they're smart enough to use wedge issues like gay marriage to bring in any opportunistic black folks (Jackson, Rogers-Brown) they can.

I agree with Aravosis that Bishop Jackson should be put on the spot for his association with Perkins. And Perkins should be forced to answer for his association with racist groups. But I wouldn't expect the Christian right to begin eating its young. After all, this is, at its very core, a racist movement that has managed to channel its historic anti-black position into attacks on secular Jews, devout Muslims, sexually liberated single women, and especially gays, since a whopping majority of Americans are still afraid or unwilling to embrace gay rights.

On a related note, I learned today that the Arlington Group, which includes Gary Bauer, Richard Land, and Don Wildmon, has been holding conference call meetings on the topic of immigration. Specifically, they are plotting ways to incorporate the anti-immigrant position of the secular far-right into their arsenal of culture war issues. I'll have more on this one soon.

So this explains it.

Dobson sez:

As a member of the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, I listened to testimony by those who thought they could jazz up their sex lives by viewing obscene materials. They discovered that the stuff they were watching quickly seemed tame and even boring. That led them to seek racier, ever more violent depictions. And then they journeyed down the road toward harder and more violent materials. For some, not all, it became an obsession that filled their world with perversion and sickness. They lusted after sex with animals, molestation of children, urinating and defecation, sadomasochism, mutilation of genitals, and incest. And how did it happen? The door was quietly opened to obscenity, and a monster came charging out.

Suddenly, Mr. Man-on-Dog Santorum seems old-fashioned.

Is this any way for a moralistic theocrat to behave?

A Heritage of Hate
Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt has apparently sided with the descendants of his state's border ruffians and pukes:

HIGGINSVILLE, Mo. - As the rebel battle flag flapped above the Confederate
Memorial Historic Site in Higginsville for the first time in more than two
years, Lonnie Miller watched Sunday's ceremony with pride.

"It's not a symbol of racism to me," said Miller, 62, of Kirkwood, whose
great-grandfather, Alonzo W. Slayback, was a Confederate officer and whose
daughter-in-law, Berryl, is black. "It's a horrible period of history and it
needs to be remembered like any other period of history."

Miller was one of hundreds of people at the afternoon graveside service at the
cemetery Sunday, two days after Gov. Matt Blunt gave permission for the
Confederate flag to fly for one day - at the annual Confederate memorial
service. Missouri does not have an official Confederate Memorial Day.

The flag has been banned from the cemetery's main flagpole since being ordered
down by the administration of former Gov. Bob Holden in January 2003.

If Not Multiculturalism, Then What?
Have you ever noticed that when conservatives denounce the "multicultural agenda," they almost always fail to explain what they would like to replace multiculturalism with.

Following the lead of the Republican party -- "the party of ideas" -- which has designated Scott "Chopping" Bloch to gut government anti-discrimination policies, a group of Michigan conservatives has taken the logical next step.

A "Next" Conservatism?
While the media focuses on the progressive movement's effort to rebuild and redefine itself, a phenomenon on prominent display at last week's Campaign for America's Future conference, conservative luminary Paul Weyrich is contending that the right is poised for its own re-construction as soon as George W. Bush departs the White House. Confined to a wheel-chair and in failing health, Weyrich has promised a 12 week series on the "Next Conservatism." In introducing his series, Weyrich hints that the movement's new strategy could include taking on big-business (a tactic I assume will be couched in anti-immigrant rhetoric) and the Patriot Act. This is the key passage:

Will everyone like what I have to say? No, my recommendations are intended to spark debate and discussion. Big-government advocates will hate the next conservatism because I stress that so-called "big- government conservatism" is not conservatism at all. Modern-day Wilsonians won't be thrilled with this framework either.

The "next conservatism" takes on many interests - even big business. It will cover subjects which conservatives seldom discuss, such as cities and farms.

I thought carefully and at length about this series. I don't expect the movement simply to adopt and apply every position. But I would remind folks that in the mid-1980s the Free Congress Foundation introduced "cultural conservatism." We audaciously suggested that economics was not at the heart of conservatism. We suggested that, in fact, good economics could not succeed in a failed culture.

At first we were labeled as traitors to the conservative movement. Staffers from one prominent conservative organization independently chose to call the trustees of the Free Congress Foundation to suggest that they leave our Board. Thank goodness they did not. Now our position is accepted by many in the conservative movement. Even Libertarians argue that what changes they want in government and economics will not happen in a dysfunctional culture.

Weyrich has certainly paid his dues this year. He's rallied his rear-guard behind the nuclear option and he delivered an ode to Tom DeLay at a dinner for the ethically-challenged House Majority Leader. His arguments have earned their audience. It will be interesting to see whether they are heeded by the movement he helped to create from scratch.

The Turner Crybaby Diaries
In response to my article, "Hannity's Soul-Mate of Hate," Neo-Nazi shortwave radio host Hal Turner admits to his past friendship with Sean Hannity. Turner also takes a short break from calling for the mass murder of gays, blacks and immigrants to prove that he is a clean-cut, pure-hearted heterosexual -- despite allusions he made in an AOL chatroom in 1998 to his past homosexual encounters and cocaine problem. (Is Hal Turner an "ex-gay?")

From Turner's website:

The Hal Turner - Sean Hannity Connection:
There is none.

Yesterday, June 3, 2005, a very well known radical, left-wing, jew released an "article" on an internet "magazine" site about me and my former friendship with talk radio host and TV personality Sean Hannity. The article attempts to smear Hannity for being friendly with me more than five years ago, then goes on to attack me, claiming I am a hateful, racist, bigoted, drug-using, homosexual, nazi! WOW! Gee Whiz; I didn't know. Do you think I should tell my wife (of 13 years) and our 10 year old son?

For the record: There is no friendship, business or professional relationship between me and Sean Hannity and there hasn't been for at least 5 years. Also for the record, I am not gay and do not use drugs. Besides, if I was gay or did use drugs, wouldn't the left-wing LOVE me? Had the author of the article bothered to contact me at all, I could have told him as much. Sadly, this irresponsible author did not contact me; which ought to give you a clue about the real reason for his "story" -- It's a smear job. A hit piece. It is a first-class example of manufacturing "news" when there is no news.

As for me being hateful, racist, bigoted . . . . . . I tell the truth and they hate hearing it!

The lefties pulled this same smear-stunt (hate, nazi, gay) years ago against Rush Limbaugh. It's what they do to anyone who effectively argues against their politically-correct social agenda. I am obviously effective because as of today, this web site has garnered ONE MILLION visitors in less than 7 months! This time, they're going after both Sean Hannity and me with the same nonsense. It failed with Limbaugh and will fail now.

If I can stop laughing about this long enough, I'll post a more detailed reply on this site later today!!

Since there's been no "more detailed reply" from Turner, I guess he's still laughing in spite of himself.

By the way, another neo-Nazi, Bill White, has attempted to debunk my article.

I've concluded my dust-up with Hitchens at the Huffington Post with the following entry:

Hitchens proves himself unable to refute any of the instances I detailed of his enabling of Holocaust deniers. (I've compiled the entire back-and-forth here). Instead, he links me to Kissinger, calls me a "young skunk," and advises everyone to just read his articles and books and accept on faith that his hands are clean. He has also ignored my demand that he publicly call for the release of the audio tape of him and Faurisson's confrontation with former Holocaust Research Institute director Michael Berenbaum. With such an impotent response from a notorious bloviator, Hitchens has essentially conceded that each and every account of his enabling of the morally repugnant work of Irving and Faurisson is true.

Hitchens, it's last call. And you just got served.

I almost forgot, my long-awaited piece on Sean Hannity's past partnership with one of today's most vocal neo-Nazis, Hal Turner, is finally on the Nation's homepage. Here's a clip:

This year a man named Hal Turner sat before his computer at his suburban home in North Bergen, New Jersey, posting bomb-making tips on his website, hailing the firebombing of an apartment containing "Savage Negroes" and calling for the murder of immigrants. "When enough illegal aliens get killed they will stop coming to the country!" Turner wrote.

Turner was once a prominent activist in New Jersey's Republican Party. To area conservatives, he was best known by his moniker for call-ins to the Sean Hannity Show, "Hal from North Bergen." For years, Hannity offered his top-rated radio show as a regular forum for Turner's occasionally racist, always over-the-top rants. Hannity also chatted with him off-air, allegedly offering encouragement to Turner as he struggled to overcome a cocaine habit and homosexual leanings. Turner has boasted that Hannity once invited Turner and his son on to the set of Fox News's Hannity and Colmes. Today, Turner lurks on the fringes of the far right, spouting hate-laced tirades on his webcast radio show. Hannity, meanwhile, remains mum about his former alliance with the neo-Nazi, homing in instead on the supposed racism of black and Latino Democrats.

Read the rest, in which I describe how Hannity has exploited race in his rise to the top.

Some Half-Formed Thoughts on the CAF Conference
I spent a little time at the Campaign for America's Future conference last week. I'm not used to going to conferences and finding liberal...uh, I mean, progressives there. I'm used to rubbing shoulders with minor-league theocrats talking about "reclaiming America" all day. This was something different. First of all, the women there were actually attractive and smartly dressed. I'll never forget the nauseating sight of Andrea Lafferty's (Lou Sheldon's daughter) leopard-print suit jacket at the "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith" conference six weeks ago. I should do a separate blog about the fashion crisis that is the Christian right.

As far as any broad critique of the conference, I'm not going to offer one. The fact is, I have to deal with these people on a personal basis and frankly, I'm not into talking shit about fellow left-wingers. (Hitchens doesn't count and Marc Cooper doesn't matter). The one thing I can say is I liked the speakers' emphasis on economic justice, though I would have liked to have heard more on CAFTA.

I don't write about economics because I have no background in the field, but free trade is as upsetting to me as any of the other issues I usually bemoan. Sure, voters in so-called red states -- especially in the West -- might turn on these kind of issues if only Democrats could turn their backs on their corporate donors. But besides all the political considerations, opposing CAFTA is as much a values issue as any that were discussed at the conference. I've seen the effect of NAFTA, CAFTA's predecessor, on both sides of the border. Rich people got rich, and working people, like the most female, unionized Levi's employees in El Paso, got screwed. Their jobs went to Juarez, where more than a few working women were killed. A few years ago I had the chance to search for bodies of young, female maquiladora workers with their parents. I hoped that malignant death scheme wouldn't expand any further. Two weeks ago I stood in disbelief as a young "progressive" explained to me that the failure to pass CAFTA would slow "economic growth."

Jesse Jackson was one of the few non-union leaders to attack CAFTA, speak up for immigrant rights -- "Jesus did not speak English" -- and one of the only to denounce three-strikes laws, which keep pizza slice thieves in prison for life. And Kim Gandy boldly criticized the Democratic party for attempting to ally with an artificially manufactured "religious left" at the expense of women's rights. (She also cited one of my articles about Tony Perkins). Neither Jackson or Gandy are perfect, but they are authentic movement leaders. These Johnny-come-lately consultant-types that the DNC has brought in to teach liberals how to speak to middle America are nothing but symptoms of the apocalyptic attitude that has gripped the party since the election. Anyone who says that Democrats shouldn't use the word "abortion" in public, as one (deliberately unnamed) speaker said, should be framed out of the picture.

One more thing about Human Events's list of the most dangerous books of the 19th and 20th century: why isn't the Protocols of the Elders of Zion among their choices? Margaret Meade is there, but not the book that inspired the Pogroms and the Holocaust. Amazing.

In case you're wondering why I haven't weighed in on the disclosure of Deep Throat's identity, I will, in a review of an upcoming biography about Chuck Colson for the next Washington Monthly. Until then, Joe Conason's piece on Deep Throat is more than enough to subsist on. Here is his key passage:

...But the cannier figures on the right no longer seek to expunge Nixon's crimes. Consider a certain politician who got his start back then as a young activist running the College Republicans.

That budding pol spent the summer of 1974 in Washington, according to historian David Greenberg, circulating pro-Nixon memos from a phony grass-roots group called Americans for the Presidency, and fighting what he thought of as "the lynch-mob atmosphere created in this city by the Washington Post and other parts of the Nixon-hating media." He had worked so closely with the Nixon campaign's dirty tricksters, and become so immersed in their style of politics, that he briefly drew the attention of the Watergate prosecutors. Indeed, his reputation was so grimy that George Herbert Walker Bush, then the chairman of the Republican National Committee, had him investigated -- and then dismissed the accusations despite strong taped evidence against him.

That man is named Karl Rove, and he is now the White House deputy chief of staff, the unofficial boss of the Republican Party and the most powerful political figure in the nation aside from the president himself. He may well agree with Liddy and Buchanan, but such stale polemics cannot engage his attention. He is too busy wreaking Nixon's revenge on the rest of us.

Indeed, Rove has learned from the best of the worst.

The Human Events Anti-Book Club
I could see how Mein Kampf could make a list of the Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries." But Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique? Or John Maynard Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money? Clearly the editors of Human Events are itching for a Brownshirted book burning.

Blackwell's Plot
Need I say any more?

A member of my church gave to me a copy of the Ohio Restoration Project. This project is led by so-called Christians who have a plan for Ohio. The project will target 2,000 pastors throughout the state to become "patriot pastors." These patriot pastors will be briefed on a specific political agenda and asked to submit names of their parishioners in order to increase a database to 300,000 names. These pastors will be asked to place voter guides in their church pews.

Ken Blackwell, Ohio's secretary of state and a governor hopeful, is named throughout the document. Blackwell will be featured on 30-second radio ads promoting this group's agenda and supporting the "Ohio for Jesus" rally set for the spring of 2006. At the end of the document are the words, "America has a mission to share a living savior with a dying world."

This is not America's mission. This is frightening, diabolical stuff for non-Christians and Christians alike. It is blasphemous to claim that any earthly kingdom is God's kingdom. The theological foundations of this movement are vacuous. They are set on the sands of opportunism, self-righteousness and greed.

It is time for the citizens of Ohio to wake up. This group and those like it will stop at nothing in making America a theocracy shaped by one very limited interpretation of scripture.

The media must investigate and show this movement for what it is. Courageous preachers must help their congregations understand what is at stake. Silence is not an option.

by the Rev. Dr. John Lentz, Cleveland Heights. Lentz is pastor of Forest Hill Presbyterian Church.