Category: Politics

Taken as a whole, the various Christian faiths comprise the vast majority of Americans today (77%, according to this source). Yet like manipulative children who cry “You don’t love me!” to try to guilt Mommy into giving them yet another piece of candy, various US politicians like to try to pretend that American Christians are nothing more than another embattled minority. For example:

During a debate today surrounding an amendment by Rep. David Obey (D-WI) to fully examine allegations of proselytizing and religious intolerance at the United States Air Force Academy, six-term Republican Rep. John Hostettler (IN) rose to assert that “Democrats can’t help denigrating and demonizing Christians.” Rep. Obey, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, interrupted Hostettler’s deeply disturbing remarks and demanded that they be formally retracted; Hostettler ultimately agreed to retract one sentence from his diatribe.

Earlier in his remarks, Hostettler discussed the drive by Democrats to erase every “vestige” of Christianity from America; he also prefaced his remarks by noting that “The long war on Christianity today continues on the floor of the House of Representatives.” During a meeting of the House Armed Services Committee on May 18th, while debating a similar amendment by Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY), Hostettler referred to “the mythical wall separation (sic) between church and state that’s been erected by the courts.”

It’s insulting and infuriating to watch. These overprivileged asshats have never in their lives known what it’s like to really be a member of a minority. They’ve never experienced discrimination or been demonized the way actual minorities have been. Their combination of ignorance and arrogance is astounding.

People like Rep. Hostettler need a good bitchslapping with the wet towel of reality. But these days, the likelihood of that happening is next to none.

So now we finally know for sure who Deep Throat was. It’s about time.

UPDATE: I watched my DVD of “All The President’s Men” tonight to celebrate. I know it’s impossible to cram even a fraction of a full-length book into a 2 hour movie, but I always get really frustrated that the movie basically ends just when the story is starting to get good.

What was amusing was that in the DVD add-ons there’s a list of possible suspects for “Who Is Deep Throat” and Mark Felt was the first name on the list. Heh.

Given the power inequalities in the situation, and that fact that a number of right wingers seem to be extremely pissed off by the compromise, I think the Demcrats did about as well as could be expected in the Senate Showdown.

Josh Marshall has some good points on the matter:

[the] whole tenor of the Republican ultras on the Hill today is to demand unimpeded power, to push past conventions and limits, to go for everything. And here they got turned back. A sensible Republican party might be satisfied to have gotten three of its nominees — numerically speaking, they did fairly well. But this whole enterprise was based on wanting it all, on not accepting limits, on rejecting government by even a modicum of consensus with a sizeable minority party. They got stopped short. And the senate Republican leadership is undermined.

So this isn’t a pleasant compromise. But precisely because the Republicans — or their leading players — are absolutists in a way the Democrats are not, I think this compromise will batter them more than it will the minority party, which is after all a minority party which nonetheless managed to emerge from this having fought the stronger force to something like a draw.

No, I am not happy three unqualified judges get sent to the federal benches as part of the deal. But at least there is a compromise and there is still hope of more in the future.

I don’t know who was stupid enough to take or release those “Saddam in his underwear” photos, but it’s bad for America. Saddam may not have had many friends in the Middle East, but I suspect plenty of people are going to be pissed off by those photos anyway.

About the only good thing that I see coming from this whole mess is at least it’s driving the whole Newsweek Koran/flushing thing off the radar screen.

A few days late, but Legal Fiction has a good, solid post showing how class and culture and economic all interrelated to produce the 2004 election results. It’s worth a read. Here’s a snippet:

I think national security is, unfortunately, increasingly thought of as a cultural issue (and like the others, it has class undertones). Whether it

Unbelievable. Apparently, per David Brooks, the entire poisonous political climate of today is all Justice Harry Blackmun’s fault, for writing the Roe v Wade opinion.

His “logic” (word used advisedly) seems to be: If a court makes a decision that some people (read: right-wingers) don’t like, then it’s not a ‘legitimate’ ruling. SCOTUS should let the state legislatures decide these controversial issues, because of course nobody has ever disagreed with what a state legislature has tried to pass into law.

Orcinus also has a piece today on the rising tide of nastiness towards the court system. And it’s getting scary. The judicial arm of government was created precisely to act as a check on the legislative and executive arms of government, and this all out assault on the courts strikes me as a sign that the other parts of the system don’t want the inconveniences of balance.

Color me nervous.