Category: The Dish

The NPR series of personal credos in less than five minutes is now available on DVD. My own contribution, "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" is included. It’s also playable online. John McCain has one. So do Studs Terkel and Isabelle Allende.

The group of former generals calling for Rumsfeld to resign keeps growing in number.

The disturbing story of an Iraqi cameraman thrown in Abu Ghraib by U.S. soldiers as a terrorist suspect, and ultimately cleared, after a year, because there was not a shred of evidence against him. The Pentagon had first given off-the-record briefings accusing him of being a terrorist. There must be better ways to win hearts and minds.

Have I offended everyone sufficiently? But I kid you not.

… To watch South Park tonight. Till the very end of the episode.

"It was an enormous mistake for us to try to occupy that country after June of 2003. We have to pull back, and we have to recognize it,"  Newt Gingrich, yesterday.

The Pew survey that dissects both Democrats and Republicans into separate groups and polls them on different issues is a fascinating insight into our current politics. It divides Republicans into three groups: "Enterprisers", "Social Conservatives" and "Pro-Government Conservatives." (On that map, I’d be an "enterpriser.") On several issues – the role of government, the power of big business, government regulation, the environment, government’s moralizing role – enterprisers are alone, and in opposition to "social cons" and "pro-gov cons." But on immigration, the enterprisers and pro-gov cons agree with the proposition that "the growing number of newcomers from other countries strengthens American society." Enterprisers back this by a margin of 53 to 38 percent; pro-gov cons back it by an even bigger margin of 62 to 31 percent. But social conservatives believe that growing immigration "threatens traditional American customs and values" by a margin of 68 to 21 percent. If you think of the Bush-Rove years as an attempt to build up the pro-government and social conservatives against the enterprisers, then immigration is a big problem for them. It unravels the Rove coalition. The more heated the debate, the more the Republicans divide. The Democrats are divided too. But because they aren’t in power, the effect is more muted.

(Photo: Dave Einsel/Getty Images)

Israel gets singled out for discrimination. Tom Gross explains.

Here’s another reader confession:

"I am descended (as are thousands of other Americans) from an illegal immigrant named Moses Cleaveland. According to the family history, his activities on behalf of Mr. Cromwell made him unpopular with the authorities and he could not get permission to come to America. He stowed away on a ship. Moses Jr, who spelled his name slightly differently, founded the city of Cleveland, OH.  Another one of his descendants, Grover Cleveland, was President of the United States. I have a more recent ancestor that was forced into Napoleon’s army. He escaped illegally to America, and avoided dying like his friends in the invasion of Russia. A more upright and law-abiding family than the one he started could not be found.
Most of the illustrious Puritan ministers could not get permission to come. They bought tickets in other people’s names, traveled supposedly separately from their families, often with disguises. George Bush himself is descended from at least one of these illegal immigrants, as are most people with colonial New England ancestry.
Before we mistreat illegal aliens, we need to look in the mirror."

Ah, yes. And in the mirror, illegal immigration is closer than it sometimes appears.

On the other hand, when you have an institution that proudly declares it will expell any gay students, regardless of their abilities, then the government clearly shouldn’t be giving that college or institution any public funding. The University of the Cumberlands is asociated with the Southern Baptist Comnvention, a group that came into being in part to defend slavery as an integral part of Christianity. Its current discriminatory policies – this time against gays, not blacks – are a continuation of that Christianist tradition and form part of its distinct character. And if a private school wants to discriminate, I believe it should be free to do so. But it should not expect the broader public to subsidize it. The fact that it is receiving state subsidies while it discriminates is intolerable.