MAX BLUMENTHAL

What's Up With Dobson's Daughter?
James Dobson's daughter, Danae, has cut out a niche for herself as a relationship advisor to teenage evangelicals. Through Focus on the Family's 501 c-3 non-profit wing, her books and books on tape have earned her thousands in profits (though considerably less than her adopted brother, Ryan, and her mother, Shirley, make from their ghostwritten books). Danae also enjoys her dad's aggressive promotion, without which, she would undoubtedly be unknown. Like her brother, a former Family Research Council intern who boasts on his bio of "riding Orange County's top breaks" and cruising around on his Harley, Danae has ostensibly never worked a real job in her life. She likely has no idea what is going on in the mind of a woman her age forced to stand for 8 hours a day at a Walmart cash register or behind a truck-stop diner bar. While her millionaire dad lights up the airwaves with fervid denunciations of cultural elitists, Danae benefits from a form of nepotism mostly commonly associated with African dictators and Latin American oligarchs. Either Focus on the Family's followers are unaware of this, or they view Dobson's family as some sort of spiritual aristocracy deserving of their unquestioning veneration.

Danae's writings are not without their appeal, however. Her father has delegated her with providing what is essentially sexual advice to teens, a nettlesome area for a movement that seems to view sex as inherently destructive. Evangelical teens are the third generation of the Christian right's shock troops. Their grandparents may have been the first wave of the hyper-politicized religious bloc that has seized the reins of the GOP. Whether she knows it or not, Danae is being groomed as a guiding light for this generation. So what does she believe? Much of what she writes is benign, 1950's malt-shop material. Yet when it comes applying the Christian right's worldview to teen culture, Danae can be every bit as intolerant as her father. Take this excerpt from her recent article, "Understanding Her Signals," for Focus on the Family's teen-oriented Breakaway Magazine:

Suppose you have confirmed proof that a girl likes you. Not every female who's interested in you is someone you should be interested in. Before you spend too much time trying to attract a particular girl, it's important to find out whether she is a Christian. By choosing to date only Christian girls, you lesson [sic] the chance of compromising your principles.

Why does it matter? A girl without spiritual conviction can tempt you to go places you don't want to go or do things you know you shouldn't. As 1 Corinthians 15:33 says, “Do not be misled: ‘Bad company corrupts good character.' “ So watch out for the girl who struts around like a TV celebrity. You're too eager for a girlfriend if she can take advantage of you by getting you to do her homework, to keep giving her money or to lie or steal for her.

So in other words, dating outside your religious -- dating Jews, Muslims and Hindus -- will cause you to come under the influence of thieves, liars and primadonnas. That's because Jews, Muslims and Hindus are thieves, liars and primadonnas, don't you know? Danae has basically reframed the Jim Crow clergy's admonitions against interracial dating. Her writing also contains resonances of anti-Semitic propaganda, which invariably accuses Jews of undermining the traditional family structure, and by extension, society, through sexually licentious mass media. Danae might not be much of a political player -- she probably will never be -- but like the Christian right's best propagandists, she has learned that politics is not necessarily the best way to cultivate the mindset of a reactionary political army.

Where Do They Find These People?
The American Family Association's Jane Jimenez discovers the true plague eroding America's foundation: pelvic thrusting. Oh, the horror!

They lick their lips and shoot us sultry glances. She against him, him against her ... and her ... and her. A chorus line of pelvic thrusts, and I suddenly want this song to end.

Was it only half a life ago that Elvis provoked national outrage with one twitch of a nervous leg? Yet, with a career built on body motions, I never remember Elvis doing one pelvic thrust with a babe onstage.

Pelvic thrusts are common fare in America these days. Most people would consider them no big deal. MTV and Internet porn have given us bigger things to worry about. But, if little things don't matter, I wouldn't be here in the MegaGym trying to undo the damage of an extra ten calories. Big things are grown from little things.

Elvis certainly knew what we used to know ... this kind of body motion is a private thing. On stage, performed by a crowd of people we don't know, it degrades the very essence of what makes human beings special.

Customer service needs to hear from us. We need to restore our sense of propriety that has been dulled by years of pelvic thrusts set to music. Reshaping the soul of a nation, like reshaping the body, comes from attending to what matters ... every little thing.

Isn't it a little late to condemn Elvis's hip-shaking? Like 50 years too late? I thought all the White Citizen's Councils would have disbanded by now.

Even Jessica Simpson is wondering what happened to the liberal media:

Jessica Simpson wants to know where missing footage of her and husband Nick Lachey's harrowing trip to Iraq got to - because she thinks Americans would like to see just how bad conditions are there.

The pop singers-turned-reality TV couple travelled to the war-torn nation to visit US troops as part of a recent ABC TV variety special, and they were both left shellshocked by what they saw.

But all the controversial moments and harrowing footage of the trip didn't appear in the fun-filled TV show.

Simpson says, "It was unbelievable. They didn't show a lot of what really went on with the enemy attacks and the shelling. There was so much stuff that went on and somehow the tapes got mysteriously misplaced.

"It put everything in perspective for me. It really did teach me the definition of sacrifice. I can't even fathom being out there right now. I was ready to come home."

A Religious Test?
Referring to a private conversation between Dick Durbin and John Roberts reported in the LA Times, Focus on the Family and C. Boyden Gray's Judicial Confirmation Network have accused Durbin of "embracing a religious test":

Wendy E. Long of the Judicial Confirmation Network said, if true, Durbin's question concerning religious beliefs—even if it was done privately—was wrong.

"Regardless of Senator Durbin's intentions," Long said, "his reported questioning of Judge Roberts smacks of a religious test for judicial office, which is offensive to all Americans—whatever their religious beliefs."

Bruce Hausknecht, judicial analyst for Focus on the Family Action, pointed out that Article VI of the U.S. Constitution says "All executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states shall be bound by oath or affirmation to support this Constitution, but no religious test shall ever be required as qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.

Durbin's crime was asking Roberts what he would do if he had to rule on an issue that conflicted with his Catholicism. The funny thing is, Republican senator John Cornyn -- the darling of the Christian right -- asked Roberts the same damn thing:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Republican senator said on Monday that Supreme Court nominee John Roberts had assured him he would rule on the law without the influence of his Catholic religion, which opposes abortion.

"He recognized that anybody who cannot do that ... is unsuitable for the bench," Sen. John Cornyn (news, bio, voting record) of Texas said after a private meeting with
President Bush's conservative candidate for the high court.

Funny how the right holds its own to a lesser standard.

(By the way, Bush has rewarded his loyal friend C. Boyden Gray by nominating him as US ambassador to the EU. Next to Gray, Bolton looks like Adlai Stevenson.)

Mr. Man-on-Dog: Open Mouth, Shoot Foot
As if his appearance on the Daily Show wasn't bad enough, Santorum really got dogged on Aaron Brown last night. First, he echoed the clerical authoritarian view that there is no right to privacy in the Constitution...

BROWN: Do you think there's a right to privacy in the Constitution?

SANTORUM: No -- well, not the right to privacy as created under Roe v. Wade and all...

BROWN: Do you think there's a right to privacy in the Constitution?

SANTORUM: I think there's a right to unreasonable -- to unreasonable search and seizure...

BROWN: For example, if you'd been a Supreme Court judge in Griswold versus Connecticut, the famous birth control case came up, which centered around whether there was a right to privacy. Do you believe that was correctly decided?

SANTORUM: No, I don't. I write about it in the book. I don't.

...then continued by reiterating his opinion that Boston is an epicenter of sexual deviancy, and by extension, papal pedophilia (Blame it all on Yaztrezemski's sideburns, why dontcha?):

BROWN: I want to talk about the thing you said about Boston for a second.

SANTORUM: OK.

BROWN: OK. I don't know if we have this. We can put it on the screen, but you said "when the culture is sick, every element becomes infected. While it is no excuse, the scandal" -- referring to the priest abuse scandal -- "it is no secret that Boston, the seat of academic, political, cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm."

First of all, wasn't that a little over the top?

SANTORUM: Well, what's over the top is taking a three-year-old article...


BROWN: What's the context?

SANTORUM: And the context was, I was writing about the priest scandal and condemning the priest scandal, condemning the church...

BROWN: Well, of course you were condemning it. No one supports it.

SANTORUM: ... and talking about concrete things we need to do to fix it. I was out there. No other United States senator...

BROWN: Why so -- why Boston?

SANTORUM: Because, again, context. What was going on in 2002 -- not 2005, but in 2002 -- that's where the scandal was. It wasn't anywhere else. We weren't talking about it. In 2002, it was the epicenter. We didn't have the report by the bishops conference. We didn't have...

BROWN: So now you wouldn't say that?

SANTORUM: I wouldn't -- well, no, there's a lot of other cities that were involved. But the point is that cultural liberalism and what I talked about is a contributing factor to how people view sexual activity. And I am not the one that says that. Robert Bennett, in the report that he issued on behalf of the bishops conference, called the Bennett report, said exactly my words, except the word Boston wasn't in it.

BROWN: OK. But you wouldn't say that about Boston now. Is that right? Based on what we know about the scandal.

SANTORUM: I said it then, it was the...

BROWN: Not then, now?

SANTORUM: ... yeah, it was the epicenter, and there are many other cities that that would apply.

I'll be live and in person with Santorum on Thursday if everything goes right. Hopefully, he'll be open to my questions.

Freedom, or Clerical Authoritarianism
Tony "Dealing With The Duke" Perkins (and friends) are excited about John Roberts. Here's what he said on the Family Research Council's Washington Watch Weekly:

It's clear President Bush has picked someone in the mold of Scalia and Thomas...

I tell you, in this city, there is an excitement. Think back some time, over the last 45 years, in my entire lifetime, we have seen the courts steadily widdling away at our religious freedoms... We actually have the opportunity to take the jackhammers out of the hands of the court and put them back into their proper role into interpreting the law and allowing the elected representatives across the country and the congress to make laws.

Widdling away at our religious freedoms? What does Perkins mean by that? As Michelle Goldberg demonstrates in her review of Noah Feldman's Rodney Kingesque -- "Can't we all just get along?" -- book on the culture wars, "Divided By God," the Family Research Council has a peculiar understanding of religious freedom:

Consider, for example, how the Family Research Council -- the Washington spinoff of James Dobson's enormously powerful Focus on the Family -- reacted in 2000 when Venkatachalapathi Samuldrala became the first Hindu priest to offer an invocation before Congress. "While it is true that the United States of America was founded on the sacred principle of religious freedom for all, that liberty was never intended to exalt other religions to the level that Christianity holds in our country's heritage," the group said in an apoplectic statement. "Our Founders expected that Christianity -- and no other religion -- would receive support from the government as long as that support did not violate peoples' consciences and their right to worship. They would have found utterly incredible the idea that all religions, including paganism, be treated with equal deference."

Mr. Man-on-Dog On Working Women, Today's Neighborhoods, and Lingerie
During an online forum on the Washington Post's website (the editors of which vetted questions to make sure nothing canine-related got through), Santorum reiterated his mindless and thoroughly pointless criticism of households in which both parents work. I say mindless because while I agree it would be nice for children to be with one or both parents as much as possible, Santorum seems to say that it was okay for both parents to work back in the conservative golden years of the 1950's because "neighborhoods... were far different than now""

Phoenixville, Pa.: Didn't you grow up in a family where both parents worked? Didn't you come out alright?

Senator Rick Santorum: I did grow up in a family where both parents worked but they worked to schedule their time at work to make sure that one of them was home when we were home. My dad would go to work later in the day and my mother would go to work early and be home when we were home from school. One more point: growing up in the 1950's and 1960's was far different from growing up in this decade. The culture, the neighborhoods, the values that were being fed through the popular culture and the educational establishments were far different from now. The world was different and far more nurturing to families. Can you imagine a show today entitled Father Knows Best? It's a a culture that undermines the family as opposed to a culture that supported the family.

There are many things that have changed about neighborhoods from the 1950's through the present. Yet Santorum neglects to specify which changes are so detrimental to the family. So what could he be referring to? The increase in drugs and guns in the inner city? The destructive planning of urban renewal? The racial integration of blue-collar white school districts through busing? The repeal of racist housing policies like red-lining (which kept upwardly mobile blacks locked in big-city ghettoes) and restrictive covenants (which kept blacks and even some Jews out of conservative bastions like La Jolla, California)? The rise of the exurbs, which force white-flighters (Santorum's base) to commute for four hours a day to get to jobs in the city? What's wrong with our neighborhoods? Santorum doesn't say. His grandstanding, which he hsa called "being accountable" for his views, is actually a substitute for delving into the vital, but sometimes boring world of public policy. I guess all that managing society stuff is for pointy-headed liberals.

Santorum's criticism of households in which both parents work is obviously a criticism of women who work. What else could a guy who calls feminists "anti-family" mean? I'm sure there are millions of working women who would love to stay at home and be with their children. And just as many men, too. In Santorum's world, however, only the wealthy would have the financial means to do this. Indeed, a quick glance at Santorum's record shows how he opposed the Family and Medical Leave Act, supported eliminating overtime pay, opposed increases to the minimum wage, and wants to sell off Social Security for the benefit of his donors on Wall Street and in the boardroom of Walmart.

So what does the senator propose to assuage the stress of today's American family? I just watched Santorum on the Daily Show. He entered stage left to tepid applause and a smattering of boos. He nonetheless had an opportunity to disarm some of his foes, if only he could appear slightly humorous and earnest. Instead, Santorum complained about the booing and maintained a defensive posture throughout the taping. His most revealing comment came when Jon Stuart jokingly asked him if he was bothered by commercials depicting lizards shilling for beer. "Actually, I'm more concerned about Victoria's Secret ads," was Santorum's deadpan reply.

Censoring lingerie ads: now there's a way to make life better for the American family.

How insane is it that zero Democrats showed up to grill Karen Hughes during the hearing to confirm her as the State Department's de facto propaganda minister?

From The Sanitarium Files
I guess Santorum likes older, married guys who cheat on their wives for younger women, then choke those younger women half to death. As long as they're loyal Republican congressmen, it's okay:

FOR A GUY who just wrote a stinging book about family values, Sen. Rick Santorum sure sounded mealy-mouthed when asked about U.S. Rep. Don Sherwood’s dalliances.

“I don’t know how it’s going to shake out,” Santorum said Monday during an appearance at the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Plains Township. “All I would suggest is that, again, until we know all the facts and we look at the job that Congressman Sherwood is doing and make decisions based on the facts and the work he’s doing.”

Santorum dodged a reporter’s question about whether the allegations against Sherwood have hurt the Republican Party.

“I think what hurts and helps the Republican Party is what we’re doing in serving the American people,” he said, shifting the focus to the media, which he said likes to focus on racy and scandalous stories.

Mike Tidmus makes a good point:

The radical religious right has recently taken to loudly proclaiming that Christianity is “under attack.” But when a Christian church is actually vandalized and torched, they’re strangely silent. Could it be their sympathies lie with the homophobic arsonists? The United Church of Christ created the controversial ad the networks wouldn’t air, and on 4 July the UCC General Synod approved support for same-sex marriage equality. Five days later St Johns was torched.

Read the rest. Tidmus's posts are always as compelling to see as they are to read.

Somebody Must Be Reading This Shit
Some summertime reading from Focus on the Family's Breakaway Magazine.....

Back then, he had felt strong and athletic. He had always worn clean clothes. Now, however, the black, sweat-stained prison garb was his entire wardrobe. His strength was just a shadow of what it once was. Merely plodding around the cell made him breathe hard. Jacob was barely out of his school years, but he felt older than his age—much older.

We had so much freedom, he thought. But usually my friends and I squandered it. Sure, I went through the motions of going to church, but my heart wasn’t in it. So many people like me—even my parents—were too busy chasing pleasure to worry about the changes in our land. No wonder the atheists were able to seize control.

His grandfather, the one who used to live in Moscow, had wagged a finger in Jacob’s face and warned him not to underestimate ungodly men. “I have known dedicated communists,” the elderly man declared more than once. “A man who turns his back on God has no reason to live a moral life. Even worse, a man who hates God hates God’s people. Such zealots will take over this country if good people sit on their hands and do nothing!”

Jacob sighed. I used to laugh at his predictions, he told himself. But he was right. Not until too late did I open my eyes and realize where our government was headed. Yes, I finally got serious about my faith. But by then it was too late to accomplish much good. Instead, they just arrested me to shut me up. Maybe prison is what we Christians earned for not actively living our faith.

Still pacing, Jacob winced at the memory of the many times he could have shared a word about Jesus with friends or neighbors — but didn’t. He wished he could turn back the clock and live his life differently, not being so self-centered. He also regretted that he had committed so few Scripture verses to memory. But it was too late. The past could not be altered. All he could do now was worship God alone as best he could....

Will guitar-strumming President Michael Newdow and the atheist comsymps win? Read the startling conclusion here.

What's Going On With The Gaza Pullout?
Rebecca Sinderbrand is in Israel and the Occupied Territories, hanging out with right-wing Jewish ultras and the Christian Zionists who have come to help them sabotage the Gaza pullout plan. She's described her experience in a fascinating series for Slate that offers some of the best analysis of this alliance I've seen in a while. Check it out.

Pride and joy:

At another point, Mrs. Bush told her son she was proud of him.

"I was thinking how great you look in your new brown suit," she said.

Bush gave her a long look and said, "You turn 80, and you run out of things to say."

Nominate and Distract
I wonder why the White House ignored Paul Weyrich's advice. Could it have been something to do with the Rove scandal? Of course not. From Agape Press:

Meanwhile, a conservative icon in Washington is worried because the White House rejected his advice regarding the timing of its announcement of Roberts' nomination to the Supreme Court. Free Congress Foundation founder and president Paul Weyrich says opposition groups will now have a month to rally their forces and voice their opinions on Roberts before hearings begin in late August.

"I pleaded with the White House not to make the appointment until the end of August because if it is made now, and Congress then goes out of session, you will have all the left-wing groups screaming about the appointee," Weyrich says. That vocal opposition has already begun.

According to Weyrich, the White House response to his request was lukewarm. "You know, it was just a 'thanks for your input' type of thing," he recalls. "I'm not sure they really comprehend what will happen to their nominee if the nominee's good."

Could Rove and Libby (also) be guilty of perjury?

The crazy notion that Roberts -- a mainstream Catholic who goes to church with Tip O'Neil -- will be attacked on the basis of his religion is so far-fetched it sounds like something only Tony Perkins or James Dobson could have cooked up. It has nonetheless found its way into a memo of Republican talking points prepared in advance of his hearing. This is only a small excerpt; you can find the rest at Swing State Project...

Attack: Roberts is an “extremist” in the mold of Scalia and Thomas.

This is likely to be the most pervasive attack against Roberts, along with his religion, and is the underlying political subtext for all issue-based attacks (see, e.g., Statement of Senator Edward Kennedy on Confirmation of John G. Roberts, Wednesday, April 30, 2003). Support for this allegation will be found in every decision or writing that can reasonably be construed as restraintist or strict constructionist in flavor, or that has Roberts agreeing with Scalia or Thomas, regardless of the reasoning.

Response: See discussion of Tahoe-Sierra Preservation Council v. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency above, where the Court adopted Roberts’ client’s position against the rights of property owners and over the dissent by Scalia, Rehnquist and Thomas. In addition, many of Roberts’ briefs written while in private practice appear to defend federal preemption (see, e.g., State of California et al. v. Dillingham Construction, Inc. et al., 1996 WL 335322 (arguing in favor of federal ERISA preemption); Medtronic Inc. v. Lora Lohr and Michael Lohr, 1996 WL 109618 (arguing in favor of broad federal preemption of states’ product liability laws). But see Jefferson v. City of Tarrant, Alabama, 1997 WL 401190 (arguing against federal common law replacing state law on remedies for deceased or survivors in wrongful death cases).

I point out that Roberts is a mainstream Catholic not to downplay his extremism, but rather to show how irrelevant I think his religious views are to his judicial philosophy. I do think Roberts is more or less, as Kim Gandy said, "A Bork in sheep's clothing." The best evidence of this is that Bush nominated him.

Why Does Schumer Hate Jesus?
If you ask Sen. Orrin Hatch, John Roberts is not only "the greatest guy in the world," he is the second coming of Jesus Christ. And Jewish liberals like Chuck Schumer are "Pharisees" who are "always trying to undermine Jesus Christ." At least, that's what he said on yesterday's edition of Fox's "Dayside:"

MIKE JERRICK: SO SENATOR SCHUMER from the state of NEW YORK SAID THIS IS GOING TO BE A WAR, WE'LL GO TO BATTLE OVER THIS THING HERE. AND HOPEFULLY THE TWO OF YOU can get into another little BATTLE from TWO YEARS AGO, I’m sure you remember, WHEN YOU BROUGHT UP, hey WAIT A MINUTE, SENATOR SCHUMER those are kind of dumb questions DUMB QUESTIONS WHEN JUDGE ROBERTS was GOING THROUGH THE D.C. COURTS. WHAT QUESTIONS ARE OFF LIMITS TO YOU? I THINK SENATOR SCHUMER THREE YEARS ago ASKED THE JUDGE, NAME THREE SUPREME COURT DECISIONS THAT I DON'T AGREE WITH. WHY IS THAT A BAD QUESTION?

ORRIN HATCH: IT'S NOT A BAD QUESTION. He can ask those questions, but THE JUDGE DOESN'T HAVE TO ANSWER THEM. Keep in mind, HE DIDN'T ANSWER THEM BECAUSE HE made his LIVING SPEAKING BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. AND, of course, SCHUMER LIMITED IT TO THE LAST 35 YEARS, I think it was--SOMETHING LIKE THAT. SO IT WOULD HAVE IMPACTED SOME OF THE JUSTICES ON THE COURT. AND SO HE just VERY DISCRETELY SAID, I'M NOT GOING TO ANSWER THAT QUESTION. I THINK SENATORS CAN ASK ANY QUESTIONS THEY WANT, I’ve said, NO MATTER HOW DUMB THE QUESTION MAY BE. BUT THE -- THE NOMINEE doesn’t have TO ANSWER THEM, AND HE SHOULD NOT--UNDER THE CANONS OF JUDICIAL ETHICS--HE SHOULD NOT ANSWER QUESTIONS ON ANY ISSUE THAT POSSIBLY WOULD COME BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. OTHERWISE HE WOULD BE FORETELLING HOW HE WOULD VOTE ON THOSE ISSUES AND then THEY WOULD HOLD THAT AGAINST HIM. SO IT'S A little BIT LIKE BIBLICAL PHARISEES, you know, WHO basically ARE ALWAYS TRYING TO UNDERMINE JESUS CHRIST. IT GOES ON THE SAME WAY. IF THEY CATCH HIM IN SOMETHING that THEY CAN THEN CRITICIZE then THE OUTSIDE GROUPS WOULD GO BESERK. AND that what DRIVES this. People for the American Way, the Alliance for Justice, THE LEADERSHIP CONFERENCES ON CIVIL RIGHTS, THEY'RE AGAINST ANY REPUBLICAN. WE just KNEW, NO MATTER WHO IT WAS--IT COULD BE THE GREATEST PERSON IN THE WORLD--AND ROBERTS IS THAT -- THEY WOULD COME OUT AGAINST HIM.

Fox's Conflict of Interest
I wonder if Fox News will disclose this inconvenient little fact during its coverage of the Roberts nomination fight (I don't really wonder; I know they won't). From Alliance for Justice's report on Roberts:

Roberts also served as the attorney for Fox Television, the network owned
by conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch, in its challenge of
governmental regulations. In Fox Television Stations, Inc. v. Federal
Communications Commission, Fox won its challenge to the federal
government’s ownership and cross-ownership rules. 31 The D.C. Circuit
held that there was insufficient evidence to uphold the use of the rule in
this case, given the lack of proof of a potential for monopoly on Fox’s
part and the federal government’s imprecise definition of the term
“diversity” to justify its need for the rule.

The Dog Wags
I'm not offering any predictions of Bush's announcement tonight, but Gonzales is definitely looking doubtful:

White House officials have assured select conservative leaders that they will not nominate Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to the Supreme Court to replace retiring Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, according to a conservative familiar with the behind-the-scenes discussions.

The message has filtered out to conservative activists that Gonzales, whom many activists believe would be too liberal on abortion and racial preference issues, is no longer a threat to their cause. That could portend a fierce battle in the Senate in September, as Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) has said Gonzales would be a qualified nominee, suggesting that his selection could have achieved bipartisan consensus.

Senior administration officials have told select conservative leaders that President Bush is likely to nominate either Edith Jones or Edith Clement, members of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the conservative source said.

One man's terrorist is another man's....

SAINT AUGUSTINE, Fl., June 22 /Christian Wire Service/-- Today Randall Terry released the following statement announcing his run for the Florida State Senate:

Today is one of the most significant days of my life. It is with great optimism, expectation, and determination that I announce my candidacy for the Florida State Senate.

Over the past month I have met and spoken with dozens of members of the Republican executive committee from all five counties where the eighth district lies. I have been amazed at the commitments already made to me concerning my candidacy and election. I am convinced that we can develop the three-fold chord of momentum, manpower and money necessary to win the Republican primary, and then the general election of 2006.

Last night when I was alone in my library, I studied the faces of three of my heroes: Ronald Reagan, Theodore Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill. I pondered their lives and their public service to three separate generations in three critical eras of history.

Each of them was affable; each of them had an intense love of life, and a great sense of humor. But beyond the fact that they were great men on a personal level, they were all fierce defenders of liberty; they were all unconquerable champions of freedom, truth and justice who loved God and their fellow man.

In their public lives, they were loved by many, and ridiculed by others. Each of them in turn stood for principle even when it put them at odds with other public servants. Likewise, each of them enjoyed and endured a roller coaster relationship with the press of their day. On one day they were lionized, on the next day they were vilified. Such was their lot. But in spite of this see-saw relationship with their colleagues and the press they never wavered from nor abandoned the principles and causes to which they dedicated their lives. And now most of the world holds them as heroes. I know I do; I have named two of my sons after these great men.

In my relationship with the press and the media of the eighth district, thus far I have been treated with respect and evenhandedness, for which I am thankful. However, I know that there are media forces and political forces outside of this district and perhaps within it that will be determined to inject false attacks and malice into this campaign to derail me if at all possible. I fully expect this in our current political climate, and I'm prepared to face it with dignity, honor, good will and humor as God gives me the strength.

I expect to win this election. But I harbor no illusions that this will be an easy race. As I invoke the name and the memory of these great men, my goal is to run, win, and then to serve in such a way that would make each of them proud. And my sincere hope is that should they be looking down on us at this moment of time that they will pray to our Maker that His grace and strength will be our guiding force over the next year and a half. And that by the hard work and dedication of my family, our campaign team, and the dedicated Republican volunteers and voters that will be the driving force of this election, that we will be together again on the first Tuesday of November in the year 2006, celebrating my election to the Florida State Senate.

Thank you and God bless you.

From the Boboland files:

HAMILTON, Ohio - It started with the spray-painted, misspelled "Rapest" on the house of a Hispanic man accused of sexually assaulting a 9-year-old white girl. Then the house went up in flames in a suspected arson.

Confrontations, name-calling and threats against Hispanics followed. Men roamed the streets wearing pillowcases with eye holes, and Ku Klux Klansmen in hoods and robes showed up to pass out pamphlets. There were rumors of assaults and beatings.

Now this small Ohio river city's booming Hispanic population is cowed, the streets in their neighborhoods nearly deserted.

Looks like Blackwell's base has taken back the streets.

From the House Hebrew files:

AUSTIN - Gov. Rick Perry has apologized for inviting a messianic Jewish leader to represent the Jewish faith at a bill signing where the man delivered a prayer in the name of Jesus.

David Stone wore a Jewish prayer shawl when he delivered a benediction at Fort Worth's Calvary Christian Academy where Perry signed a bill that imposes more limits on late-term abortions and requires minor girls to get written parental consent for abortions.

Stone is the leader of Fort Worth's Beth Yeshua congregation, which believes Jesus is the Messiah. Traditional Jews believe that the Messiah has yet to appear and consider Stone's view heretical.

The Beth Yeshua Web site says Stone graduated from a Bible college and was ordained by the Assemblies of God.

That's some Jew you've got there, Rick. Now I'm wondering what monstrosity the planners of Justice Sunday Two will cough up to represent the Chosen (Tony Perkins has said a Jewish "leader" will appear). Any guesses? I'm betting on the ghost of Sammy Davis Jr.

Run, Tom, Run!
This is not anywhere near the craziest thing Tom has said (I could do an entire blog site on the mad mind of Tancredo), but it might have the effect of enraging an untapped ethnic group. Man, I hope this guy runs in 2008:

Rep. Tom Tancredo made his remarks Friday on WFLA-AM in Orlando, Fla. His spokesman stressed he was only speaking hypothetically.

Talk show host Pat Campbell asked the Littleton Republican how the country should respond if terrorists struck several U.S. cities with nuclear weapons.

''Well, what if you said something like -- if this happens in the United States, and we determine that it is the result of extremist, fundamentalist Muslims, you know, you could take out their holy sites,'' Tancredo answered.

''You're talking about bombing Mecca,'' Campbell said.

''Yeah,'' Tancredo responded.

Mr. Yesterday
The Christian right is trying a new line of attack against Al Gonzales. Rather than homing in directly on his stances on social issues, they are arguing that his role as a presidential appointee will cause conflicts of interest if and when he is on the Supreme Court:

But the new line of attack has gained traction because it permits conservatives to reframe their case against Gonzales in terms of his potential inability to advance the president's conservative agenda -- not his supposed differences with that agenda, Republican sources said.

Jan LaRue, chief counsel of Concerned Women for America, a conservative organization, distributed a memo to the group's members yesterday listing six social issues on which Gonzales might have to recuse.

"We don't think it's likely the president will nominate him," LaRue wrote. "It has nothing to do with Gonzales personally, and these recusal concerns are shared by others."

The real story here is not the Christian right's tactics, of course. It's the extent to which the White House has become their easily waggable pet poodle. Even after Bush asserted his loyalty to his friends, he is still being pushed around failed politicians like Tony Perkins and a third-rate "pornography lawyer" named Jan LaRue, who are looking far beyond Bush toward controlling the nominating process in 2008. There is really nothing he can do to shut them up, it seems. Bush looks so yesterday.

Lick My Decals, Karl
If you're looking for a way to support Karl Rove against "the vicious attacks from the left," click here. Proceeds will probably go towards some enterprising cracker rather than Karl's legal defense fund or eventual prison commissary, but it's the thought (or lack thereof) that counts.

I don't see any quote from Tony Perkins in this article specifically stating that he opposes conservative judicial activism, but this should nonetheless be enough to get him on the record as saying so:     

(AgapePress) - One pro-family leader in America's capital says he opposes activist judges -- whether they be liberal or conservative -- because the role of the judiciary is not to craft and impose public policy on U.S. citizens.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, has been keeping close tabs on the nomination and confirmation of judges to the federal bench. And while he concurs with his fellow pro-life advocates that Roe v. Wade should be reversed, he is not pushing specifically for a new Supreme Court justice who will overturn what he describes as a "judicially flowed decision."

Tony Perkins"[O]ur Founders understood that issues of policy were to be decided by the elected representatives of the people -- not un-elected judges," Perkins says on the FRC website. "As long as un-elected judges continue to craft the culture-shaping policies of this nation, there will be conflict in the body politic."

Perkins' remark could be a coded endorsement of Michael Luttig, the most conservative of Bush's potential SCOTUS picks. In fact, Perkins' comment is an echo Luttig's declaration before the 2003 American Constitution Society convention: "There is no such thing as good or defensible judicial activism," Luttig said. "All activism is in defiance of law -- 'law' that is defined as the politics of the people, not the politics of individual, unelected, life-tenured judges."

By the way, I'm on the road so my blogging might be a little lighter than usual until Wednesday.

Sanitarium Goes To Boston
What a great two weeks it's been for Rick Santorum. First, his self-incriminating attempt at a book is released (the alternative cover design above is by Mike Tidmus) then he rehashes divisive comments he made three years ago blaming the culture of Boston for the Catholic church's pedophilia scandal.

I'm lost on this one. I was born in Boston, I've been back to visit countless times and I think it's fair to say Boston is no cauldron of sexual decadence. I mean, when I think of Boston, I think of a bunch of big Irish guys standing around talking about the Red Sox's middle relief corps, or I think about crappy American Revolution re-enactments where nothing happens until the red coats run away. What I don't think about are child sex farms run by latte-sipping liberation theology priests in Fenway Park's bullpen with the consent of the Boston city council. Santorum either knows about a seamy underbelly of Boston I have never encountered, or he's another demagogic, paranoid winger who spends more time demonizing fellow Americans than he does crafting policy to solve their problems. So which is it?

Let's try assuming Santorum is on to something. What was it about Boston culture that got those celibate frock-fathers so hot and bothered, anyway? Was it Joey, the cute one from the New Kids on the Block? Or was it the bad boy of the band, Donnie Wahlberg? Or could it have been Donnie's brother, Mark, who played the well-endowed Dirk Diggler in "Boogie Nights?" Maybe it was the fulsom lips of Aerosmith's Stephen Tyler. Maybe it was the oily drip from Manny Ramirez's jerri-curl. Or the high rate of single men who own dogs in Cambridge. Who knows?

Now that that exercise is over, let's accept that Santorum has equated the population of an entire city -- including its sizable population of conservative Catholics -- with pedophiles, or at least accused them of encouraging an atmosphere friendly to child molestation. Members of Massachusetts' congressional delegation have rightly demanded an apology from Mr. Man on Dog:

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) led a phalanx of Massachusetts politicians yesterday in demanding that the third-ranking Republican in the Senate, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, apologize for blaming the Catholic Church's sex abuse scandal on "liberalism" in Boston.

In an indignant, unusually personal speech on the Senate floor, Kennedy said that "Boston-bashing might be in vogue with some Republicans, but Rick Santorum's statements are beyond the pale."

Other Massachusetts Democrats quickly piled on. Rep. Edward J. Markey said Santorum should apologize for maligning "the courageous Boston parishioners who finally stood up to decades of an international Catholic Church coverup."

Sen. John F. Kerry said the families of Massachusetts soldiers who have died in Iraq "know more about the mainstream American values of Massachusetts than Rick Santorum ever will."

Rep. Barney Frank called Santorum a "jerk."

Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican, said Santorum's remarks were "unfortunate" but stopped short of asking for an apology.

I personally don't care if Santorum apologizes or not. He's only setting himself up for an ass-whooping at the hands of Bob Casey, who is over 10 points ahead of Santorum in every poll so far. And he's likely to flounder in the 2008 primaries once GOP voters start thinking tactically and cast their lot with a less impolitic nutcase.

If anyone owes Boston an apology, it is the Vatican. After Boston's conservative Cardinal Bernard Law sheltered pedophile priests in his diocese, then resigned, the Vatican gave him a major role in Pope John Paul II's funeral. Indeed, it's the Vatican that fosters a pedophile-friendly culture, not Boston.

A "Homicide Attack"
During the height of the Intifada in 2000, a term was introduced by Likudnik propaganda groups like Daniel Pipes' MEMRI to emphasize terrorism's damage to innocent people while downplaying the loss of the attacker's life: "homicide bomber." In describing the London bombings as a "homicide attack" -- and the first one in European history, at that -- Fox News may be the first major media outlet to have replaced the term "suicide bomber" with the arch-Zionist right's PC preference.

Here's Fox on the "homicide attacks:"

New evidence suggests four bombers blew themselves up on the London transportation system last week, killing at least 52 in what could be the first homicide attacks in Western Europe, officials said Tuesday. . . .

Two militant Islamic groups have claimed responsibility for the attacks on three subway trains and on a bus. Police had previously indicated there was no evidence of homicide bombings, suggesting instead that timers were used.

Although police stopped short of calling them homicide attacks, Clarke said "strong forensic and other evidence" suggests one of the suspects was killed in a subway bombing and property belonging to the three others was found at the location of the other blasts. . . .

Jeremy Shapiro, director of research at the center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, said Europeans had been involved in homicide attacks in the Mideast, but he knew of no successful homicide bombings in Western Europe previously.

Fox's use, or mis-use, of the term "homicide attack" is so stupid, even the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto is irked:

Gosh, what about the murder of Theo Van Gogh? Wasn't that a homicide? What about the 200 or so people murdered in Madrid last year? And how could the police have said there was "no evidence of homicide bombings"? What about the scores of blown-up bodies on the trains and the bus? Did the police figure all those people dropped dead of heart attacks seconds before the non-"homicide" bomb went off?

The answer is that Fox, and only Fox, has redefinied homicide to mean "the act of killing oneself"--what the rest of the English-speaking world calls suicide. So Fox would say, for instance, "Hitler committed homicide by shooting himself in his bunker." But what about what Hitler did to his victims? The Fox brain trust will have to get to work on a name for that.

My latest is out. It's a review of ex-convict and discredited British cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken's authorized biography of ex-convict and discredited White House consigliere, Chuck Colson. Here are a few excerpts:

....Upon his release, Colson founded Prison Fellowship, now a multimillion-dollar international organization and the largest prison ministry in the world. With the help of nearly 50,000 volunteers, Prison Fellowship runs Bible studies for more than 150,000 prisoners and matches up 21,000 of them with penpals. Its Angel Tree program sends inmates' children to summer camp and provides them with Christmas gifts. Over the years, Colson has logged countless hours ministering to prisoners, sometimes praying with forgotten inmates in dank solitary-confinement chambers. Some studies suggest Colson's methods reduce recidivism rates. And the former combative partisan has been a peacemaker as well, quelling the occasional prison riot and playing host to former Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver and ex-Ku Klux Klan bomb-maker Tommy Tarrants at a prayer dinner.

If that were the extent of Colson's tale, it would indeed be remarkable. But Aitken does not tell the whole story. The Colson he portrays emerges from prison nearly apolitical, struggling only “to understand what exactly God was calling him to do.” In his search for answers, Colson sought guidance from emerging leaders in the insular evangelical subculture, men like Doug Coe, Francis Schaeffer, and “Jim” Dobson. Their names are dropped into Colson's story without any background information, suggesting not the slightest hint that Colson had integrated himself into an incipient political movement now known as the Christian right.

These men are not your normal man's Bible study partners. Aitken notes that it was Coe who first introduced Colson to evangelical culture through a group with the friendly name of Fellowship House. But he neglects to mention that Fellowship House is a front for “The Family,” a highly secretive, all-male cadre of largely right-wing congressmen, industry chieftains, and members of the military. Jeffrey Sharlet, a journalist who infiltrated The Family for Harper's magazine, has described the goal of The Family to be “an 'invisible' world organization led by Christ.” Similarly, while Aitken writes about the influence of theologian Francis Schaeffer on Colson, he fails to explain that Schaeffer was the chief proponent of a theology known as “Dominionism,” which commands Christians to put the United States under the control of biblical law, not the Constitution.

Perhaps the most egregious of Aitken's omissions involves James Dobson, who appears simply as a nice man who helped Colson get his broadcast career off the ground. Absent is any mention of the evangelical power broker who spoke alongside Colson during the summer of 2004 at a series of stadium rallies against gay marriage and John Kerry. Missing as well is the leader who helped organize last April's Justice Sunday, a national broadcast in support of President Bush's stalled judicial nominees. At the height of the event, Dobson lashed out at the Roe v. Wade decision, comparing it to the Nazi genocide of Jews: “That has now resulted in 44 million deaths, the biggest holocaust in world history, that came out of the Supreme Court....”

Check out the whole thing.

Rescheduling
I'll be on Majority Report TOMORROW at 8:30 PM.

(Re)Read Me, Then Hear Me
There will be a full-page ad in tomorrow's (Tuesday's) Washington Post reprinting, "M Is For Moronic," my article about Ken Tomlinson's unintentionally hilarious, taxpayer-financed study of "liberal bias" at PBS.

I will also be discussing Tomlinson's study on Air America's Majority Report with Janeane Garofalo and Sam Seder at 8:30 PM ET. Find your local stationhere.

The re-publication of my article in WaPo comes on the heels of a characteristically disingenuous testimony by Ken Tomlinson before the Senate today. Broadcasting and Cable was one of the few outlets to cover Tomlinson's appearance. Since the article is sub only, I've reprinted it here in its entirety. It's worth a read:

Ken Tomlinson told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee Monday that the reason he had an outside consultant review other shows--like the Diane Rehm Show--in addition to NOW With Bill Moyers was to show that, unlike NOW, they "reflected diverse political opinions."

Saying he did not "initiate the controversy over balance" in public broadcasting, and that the controversy "has not been good for the health of public broadcasting," CPB President Ken Tomlinson outlined for a Senate appropriations committee what he felt he had done to achieve the diversity, objectivity and balance" required of CPB by Congress.

During tough questioning at the hearing, Democrats took aim at Tomlinson, while Republicans defended him..

Most of the political hot-button issues--the outside consultant, a CPB lobbying effort against changing the composition of the board, Postcards from Buster were brought up and hashed out with Tomlinson.

But both Republicans and Democrats sounded like they would restore most if not all of the missing noncom funding, with one powerful Republican critic of the service saying a warning shot had been fired and it was time to calm down and put the money back.

In testimony prepared for the subcommittee hearing Monday, Tomlinson said he went to the leadership of PBS--he does not name anyone, though Pat Mitchell is president and was at the hearing--in late 2003 and told them NOW With Bill Moyers was "a symbol of our ignoring our mandate to require balance." He says he did not ask that the show be pulled, but that public broadcasting would do well, and the law required it for the sake of balance, to "reflect conservative points of view as it did so eloquently liberal points of view."

He also said he would be willing to debate Moyers on air, though he said that both he and Moyers felt the controversy wasn't good for public broadcasting.

When PBS leadership asserted the show was balanced, Tomlinson said he asked a consultant to review six months of the show, then other programs like Rehm's.

That consultant drew fire when Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) two weeks ago produced some of his work product, including labeling NOW segments "anti-Bush" or "anti-Tom Delay" (House Majority Leader).

Tomlinson said he did not keep the consultant a secret, but did not pass it by the CPB board either, saying that he had "never known CPB board members to be involved in approving contracts with consultants."

Mitchell in her opening statement defended PBS programming as "free of bias."

The hearing was scheduled in advance of a markup on an appropriations bill that would cut funding for noncommercial TV and radio. Tomlinson, Mitchell, and new CPB President/CEO Patricia Harrison (in her sixth day on the job) argued for the restoration for that funding, with Tomlinson arguing that PBS needed to do fewer cartoon shows and more educational shows.

John Lawson, head of the Association for Public Television Stations, argued particularly for the restoration of funds for the conversion of DTV, and the satellite interconnection system that allows local stations to share programming.

He also argued for the restoration of funds for the Ready to Learn kids TV initiative, which was zeroed out in the House.

David Boaz of the Cato Institute argued that everybody is suffering budget cuts, and that noncommercial broadcasting can survive without any federal tax dollars, saying there shouldn't be goverment run radio or TV.

Mitchell took issue with the premise, saying the 15% of the PBS budget that comes from the government is hugely important as seed money for other funds.

Lawson said he didn't think public broadcasting represented a goverment-run TV or radio service. He said it was all about local station control. He also said that the federal seed money is the foundation of those stations.

Boaz said he thought it was impossible to avoid some kind of bias in noncommercial broadcasting with a government-funded system.

Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) said he thought the PBS funding cuts should be restored, but also said that there are "unfortunate trends" to take on political issues that demonstrates a bias. "I deplore the fact that some people want to exercise their bias in the system," he said.

Stevens said that some of the stations in Alaska could not survive without the federal money. "Members of the Congress ought to calm down. this is an essential service and needs our support."

"Our job is to put the money back. There has been a wake-up call," on the bias issue, Stevens said.

Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) also said he supports full funding.

Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, said Tomlinson was way off-base with NOW. "In his prepared testimony today, once again Mr. Tomlinson fails to comprehend serious electronic journalism. NOW With Bill Moyers did contain personal commentary. But the majority of the programming featured some of the finest investigative journalism on U.S. TV in decades. It's not 'political advocacy broadcasting,' as he describes it. It's called serious news."

Common Cause President Chellie Pingree thought Tomlinson was too worried about NOW: "One would expect that the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, testifying before a Senate subcommittee considering the CPB’s 2006 budget, would focus on the reasons for supporting its full budget allocation, rather than assailing the “bias” of a journalist who no longer moderates the news program with which Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson seems obsessed. "

Saying Tomlinson had been subject to a "withering rebuke from a bipartisan inquiry," Free Press renewed its calls for Tomlinson's resignation.

Great Moments in Christian Broadcasting
Here's one featuring super-lawyer Jay Sekulow of the Pat Robertson-founded American Center for Law and Justice and a member of The Base:

CALLER: Jay, I realize you have our back. And I’d like to thank you for it. But also, Jay, there is no mystery as to this war on terrorism. It will end when Christ the Messiah comes back with a sword, and he slays the enemy, uh, his enemies. So to think that we’re gonna legislate these people or as the president says, and I support him, that we’re gonna…

SEKULOW: Well he’s not saying that we’re going to legislate these people, but look the obligation of the president under the constitution is to defend the country and that includes, if you’re country’s been attacked, you attack back and you try to defeat the enemy. And I understand what you’re talking about from a theological perspective but in the here and now we have to deal with, this is a war.

You just knew Karl Rove's lawyer had a sordid past.

Hitchens and "Four Small Bombs"
This is the text of an email from Reba Shimansky, a New York Democrat, to Rick Kaplan and Christopher Hitchens, who responded with characteristic Tory civility. Take it away, Reba...

A.My EMail to Rick Kaplan with a CC to Christopher Hitchens

"1. I strongly object to the constant use of Christopher Hitchens as a so called pundit. He is a repugnant individual. On the 7/8 program "Connected-Coast-Coast" Mr. Hitchens said that England would not withdraw from Iraq because of 4 small bombs. Well tell that to the families who lost loved ones and those who are seriously injured.
Also on Scarborough Country when asked to comment on something something Hillary Clinton said-he gratuitously commented that "He could not stand looking at her." That was mean and unnecssary.
I know MSNBC has him on because he says outrageous things. However in fact he is a pompous ass who does not know what the hell he is talking about. He is also well known for being an out of control drunk-is that the kind of person want on MSBC?

2. Also I would like Ron Reagan to be replaced by someone more partisan. Mr. Reagan is too mild mannered to be paired for a foot soldier of the radical right like Monica Crowley.
Joe Conason would be a good replacement."

B. Christopher Hitchens Reply

"You are quite right. Joe Conason would be the perfect pundit to soothe and reinforce your own mediocrity.
You are idiotic even in your own limited terms when you invite me to "tell that" to the victims and their families. I am obviously doing so, and have done so additionally in print in the London press. Do you imagine that I am talking only to you when I appear on TV? You probably do. Check your fillings.
A related delusion overtakes you when you assert that I am on MSNBC all the time. It might seem like that to a person who sits in front of the set playing with his needle-dick and plotting a later email complaint, but I have appeared perhaps a dozen times on the network in the whole course of this year.
It must be awful to have your life. Try and keep your lonely misery to yourself, though. Nobody else is interested."

One Of The Strangest Gov't Documents Ever Produced
Last year, Corporation for Public Broadcasting chairman and right-wing hack Ken Tomlinson secretly paid taxpayer money to a veteran conservative operative, Fred Mann, to monitor PBS's programming for liberal bias. The results of this study were so bizarre, so sub-literate, and so off-base that Tomlinson tried to cover up its existence. When it was finally released last week, I pored over all of the document's 100 pages or so and, after laughing my ass off, reviewed the Mann Report for the Nation. Here is an excerpt:

The Mann report reads as if dictated by Cookie Monster while chewing on a mouthful of lead paint chips. Names of famous political figures and celebrities are chronically misspelled. PBS guests are categorized by labels--"anti-DeLay," "neutral," "x"--for often bewildering reasons. Mann appears to have spent endless hours monitoring programs with no political content, gathering such insights as that Ray Charles was blind.
(...)
Another Rehm guest, Washington Post reporter Robin Wright, earned her "L" by articulating an analytical point Mann apparently had not heard expressed before. "Ms. Wright's viewpoint was that U.S. intelligence was geared to fight the Cold War and did not adapt to the new threat of terrorism," Mann writes, describing why he put the "L" word beside her name. For investigating three of Tom DeLay's associates for illegal fundraising in Travis County, Texas, District Attorney Ronnie Earle, who was interviewed on NOW, was dubbed "anti-DeLay." Dr. Arthur Bodette was slapped with an "L" after discussing on Diane Rehm's show "the unlimited possibilities of new advances in DNA chips to screen for birth defects, cystic fibrosis, and mental retardation."
Another unintentionally hilarious aspect of the Mann report is its sloppy typos. Apparently Tomlinson's budget didn't include a proofreader. Former Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr appears as "Ken Staff," former Assistant Secretary of Defense Dov Zakheim as "Doug Zukheim" and former Congressman Newt Gingrich as "Next Gingrich...."

Read the whole article here.

Where The One-Eyed Man Is King
By now, it's pretty clear that the bombs that ripped dozens of Londoners to shreds and maimed hundreds more were constructed locally by people with little more technical know-how than the Weather Underground. You don't need a faux terror "expert" like Stephen Emerson to tell you that that might mean the attacks were also planned locally. Despite mounting evidence supporting the local angle, an anonymous "senior counterterrorism official," either from the State Department or the Pentagon, is trying to spin journalists with ominous suggestions of a Zarqawi hand in the bombing plot -- and doing so without offering any evidence. I'll get to this disinformation campaign later. For now, read on.

London has a burgeoning community of radical Islamists. Most of them are followers of, or are sympathetic to, one-eyed cleric Abu Hamza Al-Masri. Al-Masri cut his teeth (and lost his hand) in Afghanistan in the 1980's fighting alongside Osama and a entire generation of future jihadi leaders. His Finsbury Park mosque has been a favorite stop of shoe bomber Richard Reid and Zacharias Moussaoui. To be sure, the majority of the mosque's attendees reject the radical, politicized version of Islam espoused by al-Qaida's leadership. On Friday, Finsbury Park Mosque played host to one of the Muslim community's fiercest denunciations of the attacks. Al-Masri has nonetheless been under scrutiny since 1999, when Scotland Yard questioned him about terror-related activities. Soon after, Yemen unsuccessfully requested his extradition for plotting bombings there.

Now Al-Masri is on trial for inciting violence. He faces a maximum sentence of life. And he could be extradicted to the US after his conviction. Al-Masri's trial was set to begin on Tuesday -- two days before the terror attacks in London. Could the bombings be related to his prosecution? Undoubtedly. Unfortunately, a "senior counterterrorism official" is trying to spin reporters with the claim that Zarqawi planned the attacks. (The claim is also discussed here.) This looks, smells and quacks like a Pentagon/State Department disinformation campaign designed to reinforce the notion of Iraq as a "central battlefield in the war on terror." Zarqawi's involvement in the London attacks would also bolster his profile among the American public, fulfilling a PR goal the White House established once they essentially gave up on capturing bin Laden.

It appears British intelligence has rejected the Pentagon's misinformation. As the New York Times reports:

Investigators have concluded that the bombs that ripped through three subway trains and a bus on Thursday were relatively crude devices containing less than 10 pounds of explosives each. That finding supports a theory gaining momentum among the authorities that the plot was carried out by a sleeper cell of homegrown extremists rather than highly trained terrorists exported to Britain.

As long as the Bush administration's disinformation is accepted at face value, we are living in the land of the blind, a place where, as Bob Dylan reminded us, the one-eyed man is king.

Fox's Blood Money
Fox takes stock of terror and tragedy:
"My first thought when I heard - just on a personal basis, when I heard
there had been this attack and I saw the futures this morning, which
were really in the tank, I thought, 'Hmmm, time to buy.'"
- Brit Hume, Fox News, 7/7/05

The Kansas school board is likely to affirm a theory holding that life is so complex, only God could have created it. Soon, high schoolers will learn that Adam may have walked with Brontosaurases a la Fred Flinstone.

It's the 80th anniversary of the Scopes monkey trial, and supporters of the teaching of evolution note in a press release that "at least 16 states have proposed curtailing" it.  At 1:30 pm today, educators who advocate the teaching of evolution in Kansas and Georgia will hold a press conference call -- Kansas, because the state school board there is considering altering science education standards to include the teaching of intelligent design; and Georgia, because textbooks containing information about evolution were until recently required to bear labels saying that evolution "is a theory, not a fact."  Polls continue to show majorities of Americans believe that the origin of human life lies in intelligent design theories.

Will Anti-Immigrant Politics Go National?
A few weeks ago, I mentioned that the Arlington Group -- the informal conference of leading right-wing evangelicals -- had adopted immigrant baiting into their culture war arsenal. Bashing undocumented Mexicans plays well among the base, especially in the Midwest, where the demand for cheap farm labor is eroding cultural homogeneity and politics as usual. Anti-immigrant groups like the Federation for American Immigration Reform and Numbers USA -- with the help of local white supremacist trolls, as the Center for New Community documented -- have been cultivating states like Iowa with anti-immigrant road signs, commercials and grassroots politicking. While right-wing legislators like Rep. Steve King (a Christian right favorite) advance the anti-immigrant agenda, major GOP figures with presidential aspirations like Bill Frist, Sam Brownback and Rick Santorum have avoided it like the plague. As the illegal immigration issue garners increasing appeal from the base, the door swings wide open an anti-immigrant candidate in 2008.

That candidate will almost certainly be congress's most active racist, a Republican who prefers to parade around as the leader of the "immigration reform movement," and someone Michelle Malkin and the Council of Conservative Citizens drool over: Rep. Tom Tancredo. This week, the congressman from Columbine went to Iowa with his likely campaign manager, Bay Buchanan. The Christian Coalition provided a sympathetic audience. And Rocky Mountain News provided a crappy write-up:

Through Saturday, Tancredo is scheduled to appear at small receptions hosted by the Christian Coalition of Iowa in homes in Davenport, Cedar Rapids, Cedar Falls and Dubuque. In between, he plans to do interviews with the state's largest Christian radio outlet and others, and to meet with the man who once managed the presidential candidacy of Pat Buchanan.

The trip is being coordinated by Buchanan's sister, Angela "Bay" Buchanan, who leads the Team America PAC that Tancredo founded to advance tougher enforcement of immigration laws.

Bay Buchanan, a veteran political operative, said that one way or another, "We will have somebody who is committed to the (immigration) issue" on the presidential ballot in 2008.

"There'll be either a groundswell that will make Tom feel this is a possibility . . . or it could be a big name like (Virginia Senator) George Allen (who) becomes a champion on this issue," Bay Buchanan said before the trip.

So far, though, she does not think Allen or any other likely contender has shown a serious commitment to make fighting illegal immigration a priority. "I am always afraid of campaign converts," she said.

In 2004, Tancredo laughed when a group in Tennessee started a write-in campaign for him.

"A lot of people think my politics are crazy, but I'm not delusional," Tancredo told a reporter at the time. "I don't think I'm going to be president of the United States."

As Christian Coalition volunteers led Tancredo on an afternoon tour of the Davenport River Walk area, he was asked if he still believed in that 2004 statement.

"At the moment I said it, it was true, and I still think it's a . . . longshot," Tancredo said.

Mostly, Tancredo tried to dodge the 2008 question: "I'm just a traveler, hanging on for the ride," he said at one point.

Still, everywhere he went - from a round of radio interviews to an evening reception in a posh neighborhood - curious Iowans wanted to know if he plans to seek the presidency. "It's in God's hands," Tancredo said.

But Bay Buchanan thinks he might be underestimating himself, considering all the attention he has brought to immigration.

"I suspect Tom is an extremely effective candidate - more so than he realizes," she said.

That "group in Tennessee" which initiated a write-in campaign for Tancredo in 2004 was led by self-avowed "racial separationist" Virginia Abernethy, a leader of the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens. Tancredo is exactly the kind of guy the Republican party doesn't want to run. Unfortunately for them, he's exactly what the base wants.

Where Are You When We Need You, Lincoln?
A friend sent me this passage from James McPherson's "Battle Cry of Freedom." Draw your own conclusions about its relevance:

“Mr. Polk’s war evoked opposition from Whigs in Congress, who voted against the resolution affirming a state of war with Mexico in May 1846.  After the Democratic majority passed this resolution, however, most Whigs supported appropriations for the armies confronting enemy forces. Having witnessed the disappearance of the Federalist party after it opposed the War of 1812, a Whig congressman said sardonically that he now favored ‘war, pestilence and famine.’  Nevertheless, Whigs continued to accuse Polk of having provoked the conflict by sending American troops into territory claimed by Mexico.  They sniped at the administration’s conduct of the war…Encouraged by the elections of 1846 and 1847, in which they picked up 38 seats and gined control of the House, Whigs intensified their attacks on Polk.  One of these new Whig congressman, a lanky, craggy Illinoisian with gray eyes, disheveled black hair and ill-fitting clothes introduced resolutions calling for information about the exact spot where Mexicans had shed American blood to start the war.  Though the House tabled Abraham Lincoln’s resolutions, it did pass one…declaring that the war had been ‘unnecessarily and unconstitutionally begun by the President.’

Freepers love Luttig.

Rehnquist Rumors
I hear from someone who has sources on the Senate Judiciary Committee that Republicans have been told to hold everything -- Rehnquist will make a statement around 10-11 AM Eastern time. That doesn't sound good, does it?

Self-Incrimination
The contents of Rick Santorum's new book "It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good," are possibly more destructive to his political future than a million dollars of attack ads. With his eye on the Republican presidential nomination, he seems to have given up on returning to the Senate in 2006. Now take it away Rick...

By asking the right question, we can see that when it comes to socialization, mass education is really the aberration, not homeschooling. Never before in human history have a majority of children spent at least half their waking hours in the presence of 25 to 35 unrelated children of exactly the same age (and usually the same socio-economic status), with only one adult to keep order and provide basic mentoring. Never before and never again after their years of mass education will any person live and work in such a radically narrow, age-segregated environment. It's amazing that so many kids turn out to be fairly normal, considering the weird socialization they get in public schools" (It Takes a Family, P. 386)

I'm planning to attend a Santorum book signing in town later this month. If I make it in, I'll let you know what it was like.

Already?
Joshua Frank is reporting this as just a rumor, so calm down:

Occasionally I get emails from Washington folks who work on the Hill claiming to possess juicy insider digs on our public servants and their corporate paymasters. I usually delete said emails, as I don't want to be responsible for propagating dirty rumors or false information that can't be corroborated. I'd rather let Judith Miller and the New York Times do that. Nonetheless, in the past 24 hours I have been contacted by three separate Congressional Democrats in Washington, and a Justice Department official, first by email and later phone, who all say the same thing: Karl Rove is about to be indicted.

Frog March
No matter what Judy D'Arc does or doesn't do, Rove is in real trouble. And I thought Scooter Libby would fall on his sword for Rove.

Its legal appeals exhausted, Time magazine agreed last week to turn over reporter Matthew Cooper's e-mails and computer notes to a special prosecutor investigating the leak of an undercover CIA agent's identity. The case has been the subject of press controversy for two years. Saying "we are not above the law," Time Inc. Editor in Chief Norman Pearlstine decided to comply with a grand-jury subpoena to turn over documents related to the leak. But Cooper (and a New York Times reporter, Judith Miller) is still refusing to testify and faces jail this week.

At issue is the story of a CIA-sponsored trip taken by former ambassador (and White House critic) Joseph Wilson to investigate reports that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium from the African country of Niger. "Some government officials have noted to Time in interviews... that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction," said Cooper's July 2003 Time online article.

Now the story may be about to take another turn. The e-mails surrendered by Time Inc., which are largely between Cooper and his editors, show that one of Cooper's sources was White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, according to two lawyers who asked not to be identified because they are representing witnesses sympathetic to the White House. Cooper and a Time spokeswoman declined to comment. But in an interview with NEWSWEEK, Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed that Rove had been interviewed by Cooper for the article. It is unclear, however, what passed between Cooper and Rove.
(...)
Initially, Fitzgerald's focus was on Novak's sourcing, since Novak was the first to out Plame. But according to Luskin, Rove's lawyer, Rove spoke to Cooper three or four days before Novak's column appeared. Luskin told NEWSWEEK that Rove "never knowingly disclosed classified information" and that "he did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA." Luskin declined, however, to discuss any other details. He did say that Rove himself had testified before the grand jury "two or three times" and signed a waiver authorizing reporters to testify about their conversations with him. "He has answered every question that has been put to him about his conversations with Cooper and anybody else," Luskin said. But one of the two lawyers representing a witness sympathetic to the White House told NEWSWEEK that there was growing "concern" in the White House that the prosecutor is interested in Rove. Fitzgerald declined to comment.

Above The Law
Karl Rove isn't the only Washington winger in deep shit for allegedly attacking a woman he'd never met:

It began as a shouting match on a busy Capitol Hill street corner during the frenetic morning commute, a bike-vs.-car incident not uncommon in a big city.

But then the silver-haired, retired Navy lieutenant got out of his car, approached the red-headed ballet dancer riding a bike and allegedly shoved her to the ground, authorities said. He got back into his car and, as bystanders followed him, drove down the block to his nearby office, the bicyclist said.

The man was identified as Ted E. Schelenski, 64, vice president for finance and operations at the Heritage Foundation, a think tank that promotes conservative policies. He pleaded not guilty this week to a charge of simple assault.

The bicyclist, Kristin Hall, 23, said the trouble began about 8:30 a.m. June 14. She was riding on the sidewalk, about to turn onto the 300 block of Massachusetts Avenue NE, when a car stopped in front of her, blocking her path, she said. She stopped her bike and asked the man to move his silver Acura, she said.

But Schelenski wouldn't move, and the two yelled at one another, she said in an interview yesterday.

"It was some kind of road-rage nonsense," Hall said. "When he got out of the car, I told him: 'You're crazy! Get back in the car!' "

But Schelenski came at the 105-pound, communications assistant at the Academy for Educational Development and shoved her to the ground while she was still straddled on her bicycle, she said.

"I was pretty scraped up and bruised," Hall said. "And he just got back into his car and floored it. He took off."

There were several bystanders....

Besides reflecting the crude sense of extra-judicial entitlement that permeates the culture of Washington conservatives, this instance reflects just how much they hate DC. If conservatives had their way, the nation's capitol would move to their bland suburban redoubt of Northern Virginia, in close proximity to their beloved designer malls, gated communities, chemically treated front lawns, McMansions, and mega-churches. No longer would they have to share precious space with liberal, eco-friendly bicyclists and all those black people whom they quietly grumble about.

ABC and Disney Sign Merger With The KKK
The same entertainment conglomerate that refused to distribute Fahrenheit 9/11 is employing a man whose Hal Turner impersonations are second to none. From FAIR:

Disney/ABC radio personality Paul Harvey, one of the most widely listened to commentators in the United States, presented his listeners on June 23 with an endorsement of genocide and racism that would have been right at home on a white supremacist shortwave broadcast.

Harvey's commentary began by lamenting the decline of American wartime aggression. "We're standing there dying, daring to do nothing decisive because we've declared ourselves to be better than our terrorist enemies--more moral, more civilized," he said. Drawing a contrast with what he cast as the praiseworthy nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II, Harvey lamented that "we sent men with rifles into Afghanistan and Iraq and kept our best weapons in their silos"--suggesting that America should have used its nuclear arsenal in its invasions of both countries.

Harvey concluded:

"We didn't come this far because we're made of sugar candy. Once upon a time, we elbowed our way onto and across this continent by giving smallpox-infected blankets to Native Americans. That was biological warfare. And we used every other weapon we could get our hands on to grab this land from whomever.

"And we grew prosperous. And yes, we greased the skids with the sweat of slaves. So it goes with most great nation-states, which--feeling guilty about their savage pasts--eventually civilize themselves out of business and wind up invaded and ultimately dominated by the lean, hungry up-and-coming who are not made of sugar candy."


Harvey's evident approval of slavery, genocide and nuclear and biological warfare would seem to put him at odds with Disney's family-friendly image. The media conglomerate syndicates Harvey to more than 1,000 radio stations, where he reaches an estimated 18 million listeners. Disney recently signed a 10-year, $100 million contract with the 86-year-old Harvey.

ABC Radio Networks
I only publish contact numbers when they're not available anywhere else (as when ABC ran Focus on the Family ads after rejected an ad from the United Church of Christ). But you can find ABC/Disney's contact info through the FAIR link.

Check these numbers out. As John Aravosis says, "Honey, I shrunk the hate groups."

The Executioner
If conservative favorite, J. Michael Luttig of the 4th circuit court of appeals, is nominated to replace O'Connor, the story of his controversial role in the execution of Napolean Beazley should figure prominently in the hearings that will follow. I think this says a lot about Luttig's judicial philosophy:

Napolean Beazley and 2 friends spotted John Luttig's Mercedes Benz on
the night of April 19, 1994, and followed it to the Luttig home in an
affluent neighborhood of this East Texas city of 75,000.

The plan was to steal the car and sell it to a Dallas "chop shop."

Luttig pulled into his garage and got out of the car. Beazley shot the
63-year-old man twice in the head with a .45-caliber handgun. Bobbie
Luttig dropped face down on the garage floor to hide. She could see her
husband bleeding on the pavement. She thought she was going to die.

Speeding from the Luttigs' home, Beazley damaged the car and abandoned it
on a nearby street. The 3 men, Beazley and brothers Cedrick and Donald
Coleman, fled back to their home town of Grapeland, about 70 miles
southwest of Tyler.

A year later, the Colemans were in prison and Beazley was on death row.

The Luttigs' son helped put them there.

"Words seem trite in describing what follows when your . . . father is
stripped away from your life: the despair, the chaos, the confusion, the
sense -- perhaps temporary, perhaps not -- that one's life has no further
purpose," his son, J. Michael Luttig, said at the Colemans' trial.

He would give similar, lengthy testimony in Beazley's capital murder
trial.

It might have just been another mid-'90s carjacking turned deadly if
Michael Luttig was not one of the most influential judges on one of the
most influential federal appeals courts in the country -- and one of the
toughest appeals court when it comes to death penalty cases.

Sitting on the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals since
1991, Luttig is apparently the only living federal judge whose father
had been slain.

Although he eloquently described how the slaying affected him as a son
during the trials of the killers, how the slaying affected him as a
judge -- if at all -- is another question.

Both before his father's death and since, according to critics, Luttig
never ruled