Month: February 2007

A reader writes:

Your favorite ranting Republican falls into a trap that most Republicans do – they assume that since the Republican Party really does have reporters and newspapers in their pocket, that the Democrats must, too.

This is laughably, lamentably false.

What’s even funnier is the idea of Maureen Dowd carrying water for the Democrats. She wrote a column attacking Hillary because she doesn’t like the Clintons. She won a Pulitzer making nasty, catty cracks about their marriage. She wrote a lazy, superficial, rather mean column on Barack Obama recently that was merely a clutchful of unsupportable observations about what she assumed he had to be feeling. She wrote a series of columns pretending to be Al Gore’s bald spot. She so totally emasculated poor Al that she (and that other liberal water-carrier Frank Rich) made him a joke by the time Election Day came around in 2000.

This is the woman who’s doing the Democratic Party’s dirty work?

Point well taken. I’ve had my ups and downs with MoDo, but this must be said, I think. She was dead right about the Clintons, and was dead right about Bush and Cheney – long before I was. In the heat of the post-9/11 crisis, I couldn’t forgive her for ridiculing the president in wartime. But she was much more perceptive than me. She is no shill for either side. She can grate, and she barely manages any coherent political philosophy. But as an observer of human nature and its centrality in politics, she’s remarkably acute.

(Photo: Amy Sussman/Getty.)

Blogger Matthew Thompson reports on the latest maneuvring on a draconian anti-gay bill that could pass imminently in the Nigerian Senate. One of the provisions:

(1) Registration of Gay Clubs, Societies and organizations by whatever name they are called in institutions from secondary to the tertiary level or other institutions in particular and, in Nigeria generally, by government agencies is hereby prohibited.

(2) Publicity, procession and public show of same-sex amorous relationship through the electronic or print media physically, directly, indirectly or otherwise are prohibited in Nigeria.

(3) Any person who is involved in the registration of gay clubs, societies and organizations, sustenance, procession or meetings, publicity and public show of same sex amorous relationship directly or indirectly in public and in private is guilty of an offence and liable on conviction to a term of 5 years imprisonment.

A leading Muslim opposes the bill as gratuitously homophobic, but Archbishop Akinola, a favorite among American theocons, is all for it. Here’s a helpful summary of this alarming development, as American Episcopalians ally with brutal opponents of human rights.

"I believe [homosexuality] is a vital issue in the life of the church. The hope of wholeness and holiness of life is integral to the Gospel message. Jesus didn’t die on the cross to save us from throwing gum wrappers on the sidewalk or using the wrong fork to eat our tofu, he died to save our deepest selves from our darkest sins. And, because we are created with human bodies full of hormones and fallen psyches full of what my friend Bill Stafford calls "disordered affections," many of those deepest sins will involve our sexuality. We are not given new life and new power in Christ so we can do what we darn well please. We are not our own, we are bought with a price, says St. Paul. Therefore, he says, we are to glorify God with our bodies," – Episcopalian priest, Sam Pascoe, who quit the Episcopal Church over homosexuality and joined the Anglican Mission in America.

Pascoe was stripped of his clerical credentials on Monday, after an "inappropriate relationship" with an adult female parishioner. And the beat goes on.

Matt Yglesias diagnoses what may be behind some support for Giuliani. My own view is that political movements that are primarily motivated by what they are against rather than what they are for … tend to fail in the end. But they can succeed in the short term. Ask Karl Rove. Then think about the netroots left. Kinda similar, aren’t they?

Some analysis from Romney-watcher Liz Mair. The Boston Globe story is here. Money quote from Liz:

This document is going to irk those members of the Base who love George W Bush and revile anyone who calls him stupid.  According to the Globe, "the plan lists two ways Romney can set himself apart from Bush. The first says, simply, ‘Intelligence.’"

The fact that Romney’s campaign staff lend credence to the notion that the President is a blithering idiot is bound to irritate a lot of people.  Which I suppose in sum brings us back to the big, overarching point made in the document: as it stands, Team Romney does not think success is on the cards.  I’m not sure I’d be as dismissive of their candidate’s chances as Romney staffers seem to be, but then again, I’m not in the trenches, so to speak – so maybe things are just that bad.

"Who is losing Afghanistan? George W. Bush, that’s who. His watch. His administration. His incompetence. His arrogance. His failure to learn from failure," – Andrew Stuttaford, NRO. I’m with Andrew on the drug war insanity. You cannot fight drugs and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Pick one or the other. 

The former veep defends himself.

The copy-editing dept, i.e. you, has sent me a memo. "Coup de grace" means a strike that tries to put a victim out of his or her misery. It does not mean what I wanted it to mean in this post. A reader elaborates:

If Cheney had been killed in the attack it might have been the coup de grace to the administration’s policies in the region. The attack may have been a coup de main; it was certainly a coup de theatre.

Obviously not my coup of tea.

The former Chief Justice prevented Hispanic voters from casting ballots in Pheonix in 1962. Newly declassified FBI documents fill in the picture. That much is clear. But was his judicial philosophy also designed to keep minorities from the polls? Here’s a negative view of Rehnquist’s legacy from Legal Times.