The Dish

"Schumer is a Radical Communist Jew – he is clearly in that part of the Jewish religion that supports Socialism and Communism. They claim to be secularist so they can attack all the other religions and hide their true affiliations. New York is full of these children of Communist immigrants of the early 20th century. FDR used them in very responsible positions during his Presidency to enact his Socialist programs and to get the approval of the Supreme Court, which he packed with Socialist thinkers. At that time Communism was on our side in the war. There are thousands just like Schumer but he is by far the most dangerous–George Soros is a close second. Look for the Radical Communist Jews in the MSM, Hollywood, the ACLU, and in the Judiciary as Judges and Lawyers," – a commenter on Hugh Hewitt’s blog, outraged at some mild words of faint praise for the senator from Mr Hewitt.

Elsewhere in the comments section, Schumer is described as someone in the same class as "Yosip Broz Tito, Nicolai Ceusescu, and other third rate Communist thugs," as a "sick bastard," a "dirty dog," "deceitful slime," and one reader even emotes: "the mear sight of this scum sickens me." In this company, Hewitt really does come off as a moderate.

My Sunday Times column. I’m impressed by Romney’s fiscal conservatism and healthcare initiative. The rest? Not so much.

A reader of The Conservative Soul writes:

It was wonderful to read such a deep statement of a modern Christian faith, and such a profound description of what it means to be a principled conservative.   But as a centrist liberal, I found I was writing a second book in my head as I read yours. The title of this parallel-universe book was, of course, "The Liberal Soul- How We Lost It, How to Get It Back". I started thinking seriously about a liberalism of doubt – what it would be like, and how we can make progress toward it.

If I had to sum up the lesson of your book in one phrase it would be "humility, as Jesus taught it". 

Have we liberals been humble in the spirit of Jesus? In many ways, no, and we would be better liberals if we were.  All too often, liberals have been like a Victorian Lady Bountiful – throwing money at the problems of the poor, but without truly respecting either the poor people we were attempting to benefit or the taxpayer who provided the money.

As a small example, I was against welfare reform in the 1990s, because I was afraid that poor children would go hungry.  But there was a tinge of elitism there.  I would never have settled for life on the dole, since I was a smart person who needed a career –  but it didn’t bother me nearly as much as it should that I expected inner-city single mothers to accept life on the dole. A truly humble person would have seen that was an atrocity.

If we had truly respected the taxpayers we expected to contribute to social programs, we would have instituted ferocious measures of effectiveness – and cut off any program that wasn’t achieving its objectives. Conservatives would still have objected to social programs, but I suspect conservatives of doubt would have objected much less if liberals of doubt were totally committed to effective programs with zero waste.

Liberals of doubt might also wonder if the abortion of an eight month fetus is really a minor event. There’s a lot to be learned on both sides.

Indeed, there is. In the book, some conservative critics who refuse to read it might be surprised by some of my positions. I favor banning abortion in the second and third trimesters (and reversing Roe), and favor the old Christian approach to balancing various goods in deciding when to allow a terminally ill person to die. I truly believe that all procured abortion is a profound moral wrong – I just respect those who sincerely disagree about the moral status of an early embryo and fetus, and see the law as a way for us to be able to live together with varying views, rather than as instrument to impose one view on everybody alike. I think late-term abortion is one of the most grotesque practices in America today, and would have no qualms in voting to criminalize it. All this is in the book. But it is so offensive to the Christianist right that they have vowed not to read or buy it. That tells you something, I think, about how extreme they have become. I am glad that so many liberals appear to have more open minds.

General Karpinski has some credibility as the former commander of all military prisons in Iraq. When she says that Rumsfeld personally signed off on the Abu Ghraib abuses, she is not easily dismissed (although you can expect pro-torture Republicans to do so). The evidence that Rumsfeld was personally involved in the torture of al-Qatani in Gitmo is well documented. He even micro-managed the length of time Qatani was required to stand, chained to the floor. That Rumsfeld sent the Gitmo torture-architect, General Geoffrey Miller, to Abu Ghraib to "Gitmoize" it, is also well documented.

But that he actually signed off on key measures to inflict prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, and to violate the Geneva Conventions by ensuring certain prisoners were never registered (so they could be tortured without a paper trail) is news. All of this needs thorough Congressional investigation, and criminal charges if necessary. There was a reason the Bush administration rushed through the Military Commissions Act before the last election. It was their last chance to give Rumsfeld, Cheney, Gonzales and Bush retroactive legal impunity for their war crimes. They succeeded. But international law can still be brought to bear. And the light of day can still be shed on what these men ordered, and what torture techniques they endorsed and monitored. This is not over.   

It turns out Mitt Romney has indeed addressed the question of whether he wears sacred Mormon religious garments under his own clothes. This is from an Atlantic Monthly profile in 2005 by Sridhar Pappu:

Mitt Romney is not Rick Santorum, who is evidently incapable of being photographed without a Bible in his hand. But after reading about how deeply committed his father was to the faith (for instance, making the decision to run for governor of Michigan only after discussing it with David O. McKay, the president of the Mormon Church, and spending twenty-four hours fasting and praying), I finally asked Romney, "How Mormon are you?"

"How Mormon am I?" he said. "You know, the principles and values taught to me by faith are values I aspire to live by and are as American as motherhood and apple pie. My faith believes in family, believes in Jesus Christ. It believes in serving one’s neighbor and one’s community. It believes in military service. It believes in patriotism; it actually believes this nation had an inspired founding. It is in some respects a quintessentially American faith, and those values are values I aspire to live by. And I’m not perfect, but I’m one aspiring to be a good person as defined by the biblical Judeo-Christian standards that our society would recognize."

"Do you wear the temple garments?" I asked uncomfortably, referring to the special undergarments worn by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. (The underwear has markings denoting the covenants of the Mormon faith, and is meant to serve as a reminder of the high standards Mormons are expected to uphold. The rules governing its wear and disposal seem as complex as those pertaining to, say, the American flag.)

He answered, "I’ll just say those sorts of things I’ll keep private."

He may have to say more than that in a national campaign. People will want to know about secret handshakes, secret rituals, tithing, and so on. Would part of his presidential salary go to the LDS church, for example? Does he tithe already?

For my part, I’m uninterested in Romney’s personal religious practices. But I am concerned that Romney believes that America had a "divine founding". When? Does he mean the Declaration of Independence? Does he mean the period when Mormons believe Jesus arrived in America and hung out for a while shortly after the resurrection? Or when exactly? A person’s private faith is irrelevant to me. But if it means he holds that one country on earth has a special divine founding, then that has serious ramifications for foreign policy, at the very least. Could someone fill me in on what Romney may mean by America’s "divine founding"? Obviously Washington and Jefferson weren’t gods (although Mormons believe they now could be, right?) So what role did the Mormon God play in founding America? This is an important question for understanding a potential president’s political philosophy. And since the theocons believe in bringing religious doctrine into the public square as a basis for political decisions, and Romney is the theocon candidate, how can they object to the dialogue?

(Photo: Paul Sancya/AP.)

A key AIDS activist disappears after meeting with China’s police – a week before World AIDS Day. Figures.

A reader corrects me:

I admit that I am one of those people who cringes when I see a misspelled word and normally I let it go. In this instance, however, I feel compelled to say something because it impacts the definition of the word. You and a reader debated whether it was "sacreligious" to post pictures of Mormon undergarments.  This spelling is incorrect and clearly implies a religious connection in the word itself.  The correct spelling is "sacrilegious" and is derived from the words "sacer," meaning sacred and "legere," meaning to take away. 

I believe you and your reader both made the mistake of assuming that sacrilege is an act of disrespecting something religious. But it isn’t – it’s the act of disrespecting something sacred. Not everything religious is sacred. And certainly some non-religious ideas (conservatism?) can be considered sacred. I can’t speak for Mormons, but frankly, I hope they don’t consider their undergarments sacred, even if they are mandated by their religion.

From several Mormon readers, the answer seems to be: yes, their undies are sacred. I apologize for the bad spelling and have fixed it.

Nora Springs, Iowa, 7.45 am.

I’m not a conspiracy theorist but the simple facts in the Sarasota, Florida, congressional race seem to indicate obvious machine malfunction or malfeasance, rather than the will of the voters. On many ballots in one district, there was a strange absence of votes for Congress. This is the critical fact:

About 15 percent of ballots cast on Sarasota’s touch-screen machines registered no choice in the bitterly fought congressional race. That percentage was about six times greater than the undervote in the rest of the House district, which spreads into four other counties.

[My italics]. What evidence do we have that those missing votes might have gone to the Democrat rather than the Republican? Money quote:

The Sentinel reviewed records of 17,846 touch-screen ballots that included no vote in the tightly contested 13th District congressional race to determine whom voters selected in other major races. The analysis of the so-called "undervotes" examined the races for U.S. Senate, governor, attorney general, chief financial officer and agriculture commissioner.

The results showed that the undervoted ballots skewed Democratic in all of those races, even in the three races in which the county as a whole went Republican. In the governor’s race, for example, Republican Charlie Crist won handily in Sarasota, easily beating Democrat Jim Davis. But on the undervoted ballots, Davis finished ahead by almost 7 percentage points.

In the agriculture commissioner’s race, Republican Charles Bronson beat Copeland by a double-digit margin among all voters. But on the undervoted ballots, Copeland won by about 3 percentage points.

So what are the chances that strongly Democratic voters would have a position on the agriculture commisioner’s race, but not the Congressional seat? These machines either malfunctioned or were rigged. We need a federal investigation to find out which.

That was Hugh Hewitt’s first question to me on his radio show. So you’d think he might have some issues with Mitt Romney, wouldn’t you? Naah. He’s already on the case, with an upcoming book aiming to sell Romney to the evangelical right. Hewitt’s abiding faith – in Republican power for ever – never falters. I should add that on two key issues – fiscal restraint and healthcare policy – I find Romney an appealing candidate. If he were not running as an explicitly religious candidate to a sectarian base, and was less draconian on abortion and marriage, I’d like him a lot. His faith is irrelevant to me  if he were running as a secular politician. But, in the GOP primaries, he isn’t.