Category: The Dish

The picture of Mark Foley’s compulsive sexual harassment of pages is getting richer and deeper. Here’s more:

A former House page said he witnessed inappropriate contact between former Republican Congressman Mark Foley and another page in the back of the House floor in early 2001. The page, Richard Nguyen, a first-year student at the University’s Gerald Ford School of Public Policy, said he saw Foley pat a male page’s behind… "I wasn’t sure if it was a social norm I wasn’t accustomed to," Nguyen said. "I mean, you see athletes patting each other’s asses all the time on the field."

The use and abuse of religion is at the core of the corruption of the current Republican party. I know I’ve been saying this for a while now, but here’s someone who knows it from the inside. David Kuo worked for the Bush administration’s Office of Faith-Based Initiatives from 2001 to 2003. Like John DiIulio, he realized eventually that it was all about politics and using the faith of evangelicals to maintain the political power of Republicans. Money quote:

[Kuo] says some of the nation’s most prominent evangelical leaders were known in the office of presidential political strategist Karl Rove as ‘the nuts.’

"National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as ‘ridiculous,’ ‘out of control,’ and just plain ‘goofy,’" Kuo writes.

More seriously, Kuo alleges that then-White House political affairs director Ken Mehlman knowingly participated in a scheme to use the office, and taxpayer funds, to mount ostensibly ‘nonpartisan’ events that were, in reality, designed with the intent of mobilizing religious voters in 20 targeted races.

According to Kuo, "Ken loved the idea and gave us our marching orders." Among those marching orders, Kuo says, was Mehlman’s mandate to conceal the true nature of the events.

Kuo quotes Mehlman as saying, "… [I]t can’t come from the campaigns. That would make it look too political. It needs to come from the congressional offices. We’ll take care of that by having our guys call the office [of faith-based initiatives] to request the visit."

Memo to faithful evangelicals: you get entangled with Caesar and you’ll regret it. Conflate politics with religion and you do mortal damage to both.

(Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty.)

"This morning my administration released the budget numbers for fiscal 2006. These budget numbers are not just estimates; these are the actual results for the fiscal year that ended February the 30th," – George W. Bush. You couldn’t make this up.

Libertarians are the new swing vote, according to a new study from the Cato Institute. Here’s the PDF. Money quote:

"Libertarians preferred George W. Bush over Al Gore by 72 percent to 20 percent, but Bush’s margin dropped in 2004 to 59-38 over John Kerry. Congressional voting showed a similar swing from 2002 to 2004," observe David Boaz and David Kirby. In House races, the libertarian vote for Republicans dropped from 73 percent in 2000 to 53 percent in 2004, while the libertarian vote for Democrats increased from 23 to 44 percent. There was a similar swing in Senate races.

"They are a larger share of the electorate than the fabled ‘soccer moms’ and ‘NASCAR dads,’" they write… "Conservatives resist cultural change and personal liberation; liberals resist economic dynamism and globalization. Libertarians embrace both. The political party that comes to terms with than can win the next generation."

I guess I’m not so ronery after all.

A glitch took my book off Amazon’s availability list last night. Sorry for the inconvenience. But they’ve more than made up for it: the discount is now 40 percent off the retail price.  Get the book to close to half the regular price. Here’s the link. Buy now – while the offer lasts. It’ll cost you a mere $15.57, compared to the retail price of $25.95.

A reader complains:

What a nice Glenn Reynolds you pull as you approvingly post a message from a reader stating that "Real atheists lack the humility to understand what they don’t understand." After all, isn’t Glenn Reynolds the best example of linking to a post, and then claiming you don’t support it?

You don’t tolerate mindless and derogatory comments about most, so why do so about atheists? Do you honestly believe that "real atheists lack humility…?" This humanist atheist is a scientist quite comfortable and humble knowing that I don’t understand most of existence. And yet, I have no problems seeing the universe in its sublime beauty – awe, devotion, and worship are possible, even without a god. The universe is too grandiose for any other reaction.

Yes, this atheist worships. The word’s etymology is, basically, "to ascribe worth." I do that every moment I become aware of my breathing – awe, devotion, and worship and complete amazement as to how it all fits together. It simply is. And I believe there is no god, as well.

So stop it with the supportive post of an attack on atheists.

My only support for the post was by saying that I sense more understanding of the need for doubt and humility among evangelicals. I run plenty of emails with which I don’t fully agree. That’s the point.

And this atheist reader has a point. Take Sam Harris. "The End of Faith" is not an arrogant or dismissive book as a whole (although he has his moments). It ends with some quite remarkable thoughts about mystery and meditation. Harris is very attracted to Buddhism and has spent long periods in spiritual retreats. I’m a believer; but I profoundly respect non-believers, and even the spiritual experience of atheists. One of my most cherished writers is Albert Camus. In "The Plague"  and in his notebooks, Camus shows how a man resigned to the non-existence of God can still love the earth and the universe, can relish its surprises and pleasures, and – more importantly – do good. Morality is not the exclusive preserve of the religious, and never has been. But Camus’ treatment of Father Paneloux in the book is also full of the generosity that Camus had for true Christians. That mutual respect between believer and non-believer is critical. We need more of it.

Cable is fickle. Larry King bumped Arianna, me at al tonight in favor of the plane crash in NYC. Colbert bumped me onto tomorrow’s show – for a very good reason. (If you read this in time, don’t miss tonight’s Colbert Report, which has a surprise mega-guest.) The Larry King round-table is scheduled for tomorrow night instead. Sorry for the confusion. I just found out myself. The looming book-signings are at Barnes and Noble at 82d Street and Broadway tomorrow night at 7 pm, and at Politics and Prose in DC (5015 Connecticut Avenue), at 6 pm this coming Saturday. I’ll be having a debate/conversation with Bill Moyers at the Bushnell Theatre in Hartford, Connecticut, Friday night at 8 pm, as part of the Connecticut Forum series. I’m also going to be on Jack Cafferty’s CNN show tomorrow afternoon, unless news happens. Which it often does. It’s always great to meet readers of the blog, so maybe I’ll see some of you on the road. More updates as the tour trundles along.

Jerusalem, Israel, 5.30 pm.

A reader writes:

Your reader writes:

"A strong, guiding faith – rather than a blind, unquestioning one – is something I appreciate and even envy, and for those of you who can reconcile reason with religion, I say more power to you."

This does not strike me as a person who could really be considered an atheist. Real atheists lack the humility to understand what they don’t understand (see Sam Harris). So he/she appears more agnostic, perhaps. Clearly there is a spark of curiosity there, if not longing for something more sublime.

And that leads to the real and most important point, especially for those who think all religious souls are mindless followers: faith is not faith unless doubt exists. Light does not exist without the dark, positive without negative, yes without no. They are in relation to one another, necessary for each other. Fundamentalist certainty is something, but it isn’t faith. And so doubt is essential to the true religious journey. And a journey it is. Doubt demands more information, more study, more reflection, more humility. 

This dovetails nicely, I think, with your position on conservatism. And it may also explain the apparent synergy between both that makes conservatism as was formerly practiced, mostly in the GOP, so attractive to people of faith. The religious right hasn’t so much hijacked the GOP as much as the religious right has been hijacked by the religious rightists. And I think this is coming to an end very soon. Most Catholics, for example, found allies with the evangelicals over abortion. And also over the disintegration of the family and ongoing coarsening of our culture. But most now are finding that the differences in how one influences policy versus controlling policy is driving them apart. Even more hopefully, I see evidence that it is also subdividing the evangelicals as well as they begin to find their own faith damaged by the corrupting influences of the political process. I see reason for hope. 

Me too. I was on the Michael Medved show yesterday and all the callers seemed to agree with me.

It is now and always has been the allegation that gays are all potential pedophiles or threats to minors. This kind of smear was once attributed to other despised minorities, esepcially Jews, and their alleged threat to Christian children. Over the last week, because of the gross behavior of Mark Foley, the Christianist right has resurrected this canard as a way of arguing that gay men should have no role in public life, and certainly not in the Republican party. Here’s a serious and scholarly refutation of the libel by Mark Pietrzyk, an expose on how scientific data has been abused by the Christianist right. Money quote:

[T]he very scientists that are cited in support of the contention that gays are more likely to be molesters explicitly reject the idea that homosexuals pose a disproportionate threat to children.  These scientists note that pedophilia is a separate orientation from homosexuality and that the vast majority of molesters who target boys have either no interest in mature males or are heterosexual men who are attracted to the feminine characteristics of pre-pubescent males.

As for the ‘slippery slope’ argument, the biggest mistake many social conservatives make is to assume that the contemporary taboo against sexual relations with children is a longstanding part of the Judeo-Christian tradition, which is only now coming under assault by the left. In fact, the Judeo-Christian tradition and many other religious traditions tolerated and even affirmed pedophilic relationships for centuries. The contemporary taboo against such relationships developed only a little over one hundred years ago, as people became more enlightened about the potentially damaging aspects of sexual relations between persons of unequal maturity and power.