Month: December 2006

Reality strikes again:

The founding pastor of the 2,100-member Grace Chapel has resigned after he said he had sexual relations with other men. Paul Barnes, who led the church for 28 years, told his congregation Sunday in a videotaped message that church leaders allowed The Denver Post to view. He and his wife have two adult daughters …

"I have struggled with homosexuality since I was a 5-year-old boy," Barnes, 54, said in the videotaped message. "… I can‚Äôt tell you the number of nights I have cried myself to sleep, begging God to take this away."

Pray for him – and that the church will eventually realize the insanity of its insistence that homosexuality is a "choice".

How the president ruined a great film, "Stalag 17." A brilliant piece of writing from Chris Kelly. Money quote:

While Stalag 17’s [American] prisoners are planning their escapes, and the Germans are trying to stop them, both sides keep referring to this dopey sort of rulebook called "the Geneva Conventions." These appear to be rules about the fair treatment of prisoners – I dunno, not torturing them, for instance – and even the Nazis obey them. Weird, huh?

A lot hinges on them, as a plot gimmick, but the characters seem to take them for granted. Even though it’s a war, there are still things you don’t do. Which, if only for story purposes, explains why the movie isn’t two hours of Otto Preminger holding William Holden’s head under water …

This isn’t supposed to take anything away from the Nazis as the villains of the piece –you can see it in the kommandant’s beady little burgher eyes that he wishes he could get around the Conventions – but the rules are the rules.

Even if the rules are – how did the Attorney General put it? – "quaint."

But here’s the thing. If you accept that the Geneva Conventions are just an annoying formality, like recycling – and I guess we do now – it ruins the whole movie. There’s no drama in it. Because the Third Reich isn’t even trying. The prisoners get mail from home. They get visits from the Red Cross. They aren’t even kept in cages. No one hoods them, or electrocutes them, or pretends to execute them, or places them in a "stress position" or walks them around on a leash. At one of the darkest points in the story, one of them is forced to stand for a few days without sleep. Like that even hurts.

Don’t the guards want their country to win? …

It’s almost like the hippies at MoveOn have it backwards. When it comes to protecting his country, Hitler isn’t George Bush.

Kenny Loggins’ music video for "Top Gun." F**k yeah.

Click here to see the other entries…

Language is the first victim of an attempt to insist on ideology over reality. Orwell memorably described this. Here’s an update.

For the first time, a conservative publication tackles the scandal of the American torture regime. Money quote from James Bovard in the "American Conservative":

The Bush team is exploiting fears on national security to practically guarantee the use of tortured confessions. The Justice Department has asked a federal judge to prohibit defendant Majid Khan, a former Catonsville, Md. resident who was nabbed in Pakistan, from revealing to anyone -even his defense attorney -the interrogation methods he endured. A Justice Department spokeswoman claimed that letting Khan discuss his interrogation with his lawyer “is inadequate to protect unique and potentially highly classified information that is vital to our country’s ability to fight terrorism.” Thus, the feds can use whatever Khan said against him while hiding the methods that made him squeal.

The MCA creates procedural biases akin to a 1938 Moscow show trial. Defense attorneys can ‚Äúchallenge the use of hearsay information obtained through coercive interrogations in distant countries only if they can prove it is unreliable,‚Äù the Washington Post noted.  But it will be almost impossible to disprove an accusation when a defense lawyer is not allowed to question or perhaps even know who made the charge.

One day, Rumsfeld will be as leery of taking vacations in England as Pinochet was.

A reader writes:

I don’t agree with James Baker or Professor Ferguson that the United States can flip Syria by appealing to pan-Sunni identity. The professor states:

"Rather, as he explained to the press this week, it is to ‘flip the Syrians’ by appealing to Sunni solidarity… In other words: get the leaders of all Iraq’s neighbours into the same room and play ‘spot the Shia’."

In reality, although the majority of common Syrians may be Sunni, the top Syrian leadership is dominated by Alawites. The Alawites are a sect of Shia Islam and have no great love for Sunnis. The Alawites claim to be Twelvers and have historically been regarded as extremists. It is no surprise then that the Alawites, including the Assad dictators, have supported Hizb’Allah and Iran during these apocalyptic times (for Shias).

Evangelical Christians in the U.S. military have been appearing in promotional videos for evangelizing groups without a disclaimer that they speak solely for themselves and not for the military as a whole. The military is not immune from outside social pressures, one of which is the new power and intransigence of evangelical Christianity, especially in the South. Among other recent distressing developments have been open proselytizing at the Air Force Academy for evangelical Cristianity in a multi-faith enivronment, and the appalling remarks of General Boykin, a Christianist fanatic who put his own beliefs before his duty to a secular commander-in-chief. The few military officials who backed the Rumsfeld torture policy were also often Christianists. The secular nature of the U.S. military, representing a secular government, is integral to the successful defense of the U.S. The damage is easily reparable, but under this president, the damage has been great.

A withering take-down by Karen Tumulty. Money quote:

"A profile in courage can become a profile in unrestrained ambition," says former Reagan White House chief of staff Ken Duberstein, who was one of the few G.O.P. establishment figures to support McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign. "He has to remember who his friends are and not spend his integrity on one-night stands with those who will never fully trust him."

(Photo: Christopher Morris VII for Time.)

Here’s one:

"I don’t read a lot of books (any actually) that have the words "conservative" or "liberal" on the cover but "The Conservative Soul" is not a fire-breather or a back-slapper or a bunch of anecdotes strung together to mock the other side. [It’s] a f**king book with a capital f**king B.

I think a lot of people in America are going to be better for reading it. I know I am."

That’s from South Park co-creator Matt Stone. Now if one of the Pet Shop Boys emails me with a rave, I can die and go to heaven.

Huntington, New York, 6.35 am.