Category: The Dish

A column Bill Safire will never write; and JPod will never read.

The meme won’t quit.

The administration clarifies its position on Mid-East oil imports.

To Cindy Sheehan and Beverly Young. Good. Wearing a t-shirt is not a crime. Nor is political speech. There’s something deeply creepy about the way in which the president is routinely secluded from hecklers, demonstrators or even hostile t-shirts. He’s not a monarch. Even this one.

Don’t worry about the government tracking your Internet surfing. You’re fine. For proof, click here.

The shift of Republicanism from a small government, "leave-us-alone" coalition to big government religious fundamentalism has accelerated in recent years. I don’t think the trend can be reversed until the traditional conservatives fight back not just on the political but also on the religious front. The key issue is not just the role of religion in politics but the kind of religion we believe in. There’s a big spectrum within Christianity, and there’s an holy alliance between an uncomprehending left and a fundamentalist right to define "Christian" as something represented entirely by people like James Dobson and Rick Santorum. There are many other varieties of sincere Christianity and Catholicism: less overtly political, less imbued with a sense of certainty, more tolerant of others, and more humble about what any of us can really know for sure. The most important thing about John Danforth is that his own faith represents this eclipsed, but critical, Christianity. And only a more unapologetic defense of it can hold back the fundamentalist and sectarian take-over.

"[I]t would probably be an overreaction to firebomb these men’s houses. But what they have done is no mistake. It is a calculated strategy," – a posting on the website of Kevin T. Bauder, president of Central Baptist Seminary, on the decision to cast an openly gay actor in an evangelical movie, "End of the Spear."

Richard Posner suggests a few easy fixes to FISA that would solve all problems. Others tell me there’s already a fix for some of it in the Patriot Act. The Congress would be happy to provide a legal framework for the wiretapping. So we’re still stuck with the question of why Dick Cheney and David Addington refused to and still won’t allow Congress to amend the law. We have a few possible answers: a) they really believe that the president has constitutional authority to wire-tap Americans without any legal cover; b) they have something to cover up; c) they began the program without Congressional approval and it was too difficult and embarrassing to revisit the original decision; or d) they want to keep the issue in the air because in the crude way it was exploited by the president Tuesday night, it’s a good campaign ploy. Paranoids will find reasons to worry it’s b) here. Me? I’ve learned that Cheney and Addington will stop at nothing to defend their power and use it in whatever way they see fit. The Congress to them is a contemptible enemy.

Equality looks safe for now.

The jingle! The website!