Month: November 2009

Rev. Walter E. Fauntroy, DC's first delegate to Congress, spoke out against marriage equality for the District last week by saying, in part, "I have some brilliant friends who are gay, and it bothers me that they're not going to pass those genes on." Dan Savage scratches his head:

I'm sure your gay friends, who can pass their genes on now by doing surrogacy or co-parenting with lesbians, appreciate your concern for their DNA, Rev. Fauntroy. But gay people who can't legally marry each other typically don't marry opposite-sex partners instead. We're still going to fuck each other and shack up with each other and we're starting families with each other even in the absence of legal marriage rights. And we really shouldn't be encouraged to marry opposite-sex partners for the sake of appearances or to pass on our genes. Am I right, Mrs. Craig? Can I get an amen, Mrs. Haggard? Care to share your feelings on the subject, Mrs. McGreevey?

Robert McCartney recorded some other colorful characters at last week's hearing:

"Once you became a homosexual, you gave up your rights," Leroy Swailes told the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics. He is the founder of Tears for Children, whose Web site says it's a Maryland nonprofit group that opposes gay activists on children's issues. He wore a T-shirt saying "Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender morals are worse than animals."

Janet Boynes, who testified that she was a lesbian for 14 years before repenting and founding a ministry to convert others to heterosexuality, said, "They chose to go into it, and they have to decide they want to go out."

The intolerance at the core of the opponents' message — and gay groups' success in focusing the public's attention on it — helps explain why same-sex marriage has advanced as much as it has.

The DailyKos poll is interesting for what it tells us about the general public view of the two parties. Both have slumped since the beginning of the year (although the Dems do seem to be experiencing a mild recovery since September). But here’s the thing: the Dems have gone from a +10 favorable rating in January to a – 10 right now; but the Republicans have sunk from a -30 to -60. However loathed Pelosi and Reid are (I get it, I really do), Boehner and McConnell are in worse straits. Pollster’s assessment of party i.d. this year:

Jon Krakauer explains:

After Tillman died, the most important thing to know is that within–instantly, within 24 hours certainly, everybody on the ground, everyone intimately involved knew it was friendly fire. There's never any doubt it was friendly fire. McChrystal was told within 24 hours it was friendly fire. Also, immediately they started this paperwork to give Tillman a Silver Star. And the Silver Star ended up being at the center of the cover-up. So McChrystal–Tillman faced this devastating fire from his own guys, and he tried to protect a young private by exposing himself to this, this fire. That's why he was killed and the private wasn't. Without friendly fire there's no valor, there's no Silver Star. There was no enemy fire, yet McChrystal authored, he closely supervised over a number of days this fraudulent medal recommendation that talked about devastating enemy fire.

The only thing less credible is McChrystal's disavowal of his responsibility for some of the worst abuse and torture of detainees in Iraq.

That’s Foster Kamer’s take on Mr Johnston’s latest interview with the Guardian, noted by the Dish on Friday. Listen to the audio and make up your own mind. Kamer homes in on the critical section:

It’s startin’ to get bad again. They’re making it kind of a pain in the ass again (to see Trip). I know I’m gonna end up (going to court). There’re a lot of secrets and a lot of things that I haven’t put out there that are bad…so I don’t know if I want to.

Some of the stuff I got, kept in, would either really hurt her or really get her in trouble. So, I really don’t want to say anything else. I’m not that kind of person, no matter how much she pisses me off. I don’t want to leak anything huge on her.

Now, if we had actual non-deferential, out-for-the-truth MSM reporters, they’d be knocking on Levi’s door asking what he could possibly mean by secrets that he has that “would either really hurt her or really get her in trouble.” Johnston, of course, has said he won’t divulge such material – which is, in Levi’s eyes, more damaging to Palin than anything revealed so far. As for the privacy angle, look: she’s not a regular person able to keep some things secret. She’s potentially the next Republican nominee, the most powerful force in her own party right now, and a former vice-presidential nominee. She has repeatedly insisted that her life is an open book. She has repeatedly thrust her own family into the klieg-lights, including an infant and a teenage daughter. Her family narrative is a central plank of her political appeal. It is not illegitimate to ask her factual questions about it, and follow up with requests for proof.

Now recall especially what Johnston told Vanity Fair, when he says he was retaliating against Palin’s refusal to give him full access to his son. This was his idea of a warning shot:

Sarah told me she had a great idea: we would keep it a secret—nobody would know that Bristol was pregnant. She told me that once Bristol had the baby she and Todd would adopt him. That way, she said, Bristol and I didn’t have to worry about anything. Sarah kept mentioning this plan. She was nagging—she wouldn’t give up. She would say, “So, are you gonna let me adopt him?” We both kept telling her we were definitely not going to let her adopt the baby. I think Sarah wanted to make Bristol look good, and she didn’t want people to know that her 17-year-old daughter was going to have a kid.

Whatever Johnston is now insinuating is clearly worse, in his eyes, than trying to pass off her daughter’s baby, Tripp, as her own. Of course, Johnston may be lying about all this. He has a motive: to get access to his son, and to make lots of money.

But, again, in reviewing the competing stories from both Johnston and Palin, all I can say is: Johnston seems far less artful and contrived than the former governor of Alaska. She too has a motive: to make lots of money and to seek political power through a compelling narrative. What we need are reporters to get to the bottom of this “he-said-she-said” back and forth. And  what are the actual odds of MSM follow-through on this? One word: zero.

Still, some of you non-journalist types may be interested, so here’s some of the transcript, via Gawker:

On Sarah Palin’s Vice President nomination: “Didn’t mean anything to me. I didn’t care. I didn’t think it was that huge. I’m just gonna sit here and not say a word.”

On Palin’s personal interaction nature: “You can catch her in a lie a lot of the time. She don’t read the newspaper. A lot of the things she’s sayin’, I know she’s lying.”

On the outdoorsmen nature of the Palin family: “I’d say (Sarah’s) definitely stretchin’ it big time. They’re not a big hunting family.”

On racism in the Palin household: “No, not (Sarah Palin)..no. She never said anything like that. She’s not the racist type.”

On Palin’s loss: “After the election, she didn’t want us to get married, really. You could tell that they’re all sad about everything. I don’t know, just her attitude towards everything was pretty down. I don’t think she had much care for anything for a while. She hung around in her room a lot. I think she just wanted to be left alone for a while. She just went through a big depression, I think. She was bummed out bad.”

On his breakup with Bristol: “There’s no one to blame for it. I mean, if it didn’t work, it didn’t work.”

On what he thinks of Sarah Palin now: “I still don’t think bad about her. But…You know, just some of the shit she pulled on me—encouraging Bristol not to let me see the kid and everything else, from her acting like she liked me for four or five plus years, and then going on saying that stuff, is just ridiculous how fake they are…it’s just ridiculous.”

Yep, the Palin drama is ridiculous. As is the political party that seems to be taking it seriously.

(Photos: Levi, Bristol and Trig at the GOP Convention last year, and Sarah Palin, posing with son Trig for Runner’s World.)

A reader writes:

Charles Franklin seems to think that Democrats should want Owens to win in NY. I'm not sure why. I'm rooting for Hoffman; as a partisan Dem, I want nothing more than for the emboldened teabaggers to primary every moderate Republican.

A now familiar but still remarkable fact about 21st Century America:

Obama's favorability-unfavorability rating in the South is 28-67, while it is 68-23 in the rest of the country.

America is not just two countries right now; it sometimes feels like two universes.

My London column today is on the dramatically shifting landscape for marijuana in the US, with growing acceptance of medical cannabis, growing numbers of states allowing it, California's consideration of outright legalization and taxation, and the Obama Justice Department's decision to let states govern themselves on the question, without federal interference. It comes after the Labour government has actually tried to increase penalties for pot – against the advice of its own chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). The wonderfully named Professor David Nutt was fired by the government after he noted certain quite obvious facts:

Professor Nutt had become a thorn in the side of ministers with his criticisms of drugs policy. He clashed with former home secretary Jacqui Smith when he suggested ecstasy, which causes 30 deaths a year, was less dangerous than horse-riding, which causes 100 deaths a year. He also argued that, to prevent one episode of schizophrenia linked to cannabis use, it would be necessary to "stop 5,000 men aged 20 to 25 from ever using" the drug…

The Home Secretary asked him to consider his position after a recent lecture in which attacked what he called the "artificial" separation of alcohol and tobacco from other, illegal, drugs. Last night Professor Nutt said he stood by his comments. "My view is policy should be based on evidence. It's a bit odd to make policy that goes in the face of evidence. The danger is they are misleading us."

"The scientific evidence is there: it's in all the reports we published. Our judgements about the classification of drugs like cannabis and ecstasy have been based on a great deal of very detailed scientific appraisal.

"Gordon Brown makes completely irrational statements about cannabis being 'lethal', which it is not. I'm not prepared to mislead the public about the harmfulness of drugs like cannabis and ecstasy. I think most scientists will see this as an example of the Luddite attitude of governments towards science."

He repeated his view that cannabis was "not that harmful" and that parents should be more worried about alcohol.

They should. Alcohol is far more dangerous to the individual and to society than marijuana. Brits, of all people, should know this. If pubs served pot rather than beer, violent crime in Britain would plummet. Mercifully, the science establishment is fighting back against the firing of someone for telling the scientific truth. Two other scientific advisers have now quit in protest.

(Photo: Various types of marijuana are on display at Private Organic Therapy (P.O.T.), a non-profit co-operative medical marijuana dispensary, on October 19, 2009 in Los Angeles, California. The city of LA has been slow to come to agreement on how to regulate its 800 to 1,000 dispensaries. Californians voted to allow sick people with referrals from doctors to consume cannabis with the passage of state ballot Proposition 215 in 1996 and a total of 14 states now allow the medicinal use of marijuana. By David McNew/Getty Images.)

Beutler explains. Money quote:

If it's just a separate, but unequal insurance plan for people who need a lot of medical care, and won't put downward pressure on premiums in the private market, what's the point? Well, it's possible that without the public option, these same, sick people would be paying yet more still. Additionally, as the insurance exchanges grow to include a broader, healthier segment of the population, the mix of people will be healthier, and the public plan's negotiating power will increase. But it's certainly a weaker animal than it could have been.

"HRC might, one day, have a hand in enacting the remaining types of gay rights legislation, like ENDA, UAFA, and killing DOMA and DADT. But their delays and weak pressure increasingly appear to be based more on the organization's commitment to having a purpose in the coming decades than on ensuring gays have their rights right now," – Queerty.

Marc Lynch has a new article in The National on Islamic groups' participation in democracy and how certain governments have discouraged them. The current lull may be misleading:

The Jordanian, Egyptian and American governments may see all this as something of a success story: the influence of the Islamists has been curbed, both in formal politics and in the social sector, and the restraint exercised by the Brotherhood leadership has meant the states have not faced a backlash. But this is dangerously short-sighted. The campaigns against Islamists weaken the foundations of democracy as a whole, not just the appeal of one movement, and have had a corrosive effect on public freedoms, transparency and accountability. Regardless of the fortunes of the movements themselves, the crackdown on the Islamists contributes to the wider corruption of public life. The growing frustration within moderate Islamist groups with democratic participation cannot help but affect their future ideological trajectory.