The Dish

Another gay American, standing up for honesty and integrity. More, please. You know who you are.

(Photo: Getty Images.)

The theocon Pope gets modernity totally wrong:

The troubling truth is that on the most pressing issue currently facing the democratic governments of the West – how they should respond to the formidable challenge posed by militant Islam at home and abroad – Pope Benedict gets things exactly backward. Abandoning liberalism in favor of the strictly orthodox Catholicism favored by the Pope is the last thing Europe needs today. Such a development would almost certainly lead the continent back to a world of religiously inspired social and political strife – a world from which it only recently managed to extricate itself – while diminishing the chances that pluralism could ever make significant inroads in the Muslim world.

That Europe’s remarkable political and economic achievements over the past 60 years have been made possible in large part by its belated embrace of liberal ideals – including the ideal of public secularism – is something that Benedict seems not to appreciate or even comprehend. Luckily, his fellow Europeans appear to know better – to recognize that, far from being the source of our most intractable problems, liberalism remains our best hope for a solution.

And by liberalism, Damon Linker means freedom – of thought, conscience, speech and moral choices in private matters like heterosexual sex, first-trimester abortion, and the painful decisions families have to make about the end of life.

I go into hand-to-hand logical combat with the theocons on abortion, heterosexual sex and  end-of-life theology in Chapter Three of "The Conservative Soul."

Haggard on a secret gay life – to his own congregation. The man is in pain.

It’s slowly prevailing over Christianism and the poison of political power. Listen to Tony Campolo, a moderate evangelical leader. He gets it. The Christian response to Haggard must not be demonization of him. It must be to reach out to this damaged soul and to help heal the terrible damage done to his family. (The kids were in the car during that interview!)

Please: Don’t exculpate him. But don’t demonize him either. He is human; and our calling as Christians is to understand, help and love. That’s hard, so hard. The Christian calling is to love one another. Not to pass laws or elect parties. Do we understand how hard it is to simply love one another? Isn’t that enough for Christians? Isn’t that enough to fill our lives, without politicizing the world?

Listen to this. And pray.

According to sources, the Army Times is about to run an astonishing editorial, openly calling for Rumsfeld to resign mere days before an election. That’s how desperate the military now is. Here it is in full:

Time for Rumsfeld to go

"So long as our government requires the backing of an aroused and informed public opinion … it is necessary to tell the hard bruising truth."

That statement was written by Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent Marguerite Higgins more than a half-century ago during the Korean War.

But until recently, the "hard bruising" truth about the Iraq war has been difficult to come by from leaders in Washington. One rosy reassurance after another has been handed down by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: "mission accomplished," the insurgency is "in its last throes," and "back off," we know what we’re doing, are a few choice examples.

Military leaders generally toed the line, although a few retired generals eventually spoke out from the safety of the sidelines, inciting criticism equally from anti-war types, who thought they should have spoken out while still in uniform, and pro-war foes, who thought the generals should have kept their critiques behind closed doors.

Now, however, a new chorus of criticism is beginning to resonate. Active-duty military leaders are starting to voice misgivings about the war’s planning, execution and dimming prospects for success.

Army Gen. John Abizaid, chief of U.S. Central Command, told a Senate Armed Services Committee in September: "I believe that the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I’ve seen it … and that if not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move towards civil war."

Last week, someone leaked to The New York Times a Central Command briefing slide showing an assessment that the civil conflict in Iraq now borders on "critical" and has been sliding toward "chaos" for most of the past year. The strategy in Iraq has been to train an Iraqi army and police force that could gradually take over for U.S. troops in providing for the security of their new government and their nation.

But despite the best efforts of American trainers, the problem of molding a viciously sectarian population into anything resembling a force for national unity has become a losing proposition.

For two years, American sergeants, captains and majors training the Iraqis have told their bosses that Iraqi troops have no sense of national identity, are only in it for the money, don’t show up for duty and cannot sustain themselves.

Meanwhile, colonels and generals have asked their bosses for more troops. Service chiefs have asked for more money.

And all along, Rumsfeld has assured us that things are well in hand.

Now, the president says he’ll stick with Rumsfeld for the balance of his term in the White House.

This is a mistake.

It is one thing for the majority of Americans to think Rumsfeld has failed. But when the nation’s current military leaders start to break publicly with their defense secretary, then it is clear that he is losing control of the institution he ostensibly leads.

These officers have been loyal public promoters of a war policy many privately feared would fail. They have kept their counsel private, adhering to more than two centuries of American tradition of subordination of the military to civilian authority.

And although that tradition, and the officers’ deep sense of honor, prevent them from saying this publicly, more and more of them believe it.

Rumsfeld has lost credibility with the uniformed leadership, with the troops, with Congress and with the public at large. His strategy has failed, and his ability to lead is compromised. And although the blame for our failures in Iraq rests with the secretary, it will be the troops who bear its brunt.

This is not about the midterm elections. Regardless of which party wins Nov. 7, the time has come, Mr. President, to face the hard bruising truth:

Donald Rumsfeld must go.

(Photo: Haraz Ghanbari/AFP/Getty.)

I didn’t realize he was featured in "Jesus Camp," the disturbing documentary about scaring children into rigid fundamentalism:

Haggard put out the word to evangelical groups to avoid the film. In it, he is seen telling a crowd, "We don’t have to have a debate about what we think about homosexual activity. It’s written in the Bible." Shortly after that, Haggard looks mockingly into the camera to say, "I think I know what you did last night. If you send me a thousand dollars, I won’t tell your wife." The crowd responds with peals of laughter. Then he says with a wide smile, "If you use any of this, I’ll sue you."

Kent Lemburg, a gay massage therapist, says he knows Jones. "He’d always advertise himself in the back of Out Front," a local publication that is a directory and guide to the local gay scene. "He’s a body builder. He definitely is an escort."

Clinical. And sad.

(Photo: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty.)

Jon Rauch makes, as usual, a superb case for having different parties control different parts of gvoernment. If one party rules, both parties suffer. Here’s what happens when one party dominates:

In September, Congress was very, very busy not passing appropriations bills. It managed to pass only two fiscal 2007 appropriations bills on time. This was partly because it was busy passing a ban on online gambling -=- a pre-election gift to the casino industry and Christian populists, one of Washington’s least endearing coalitions. (Jack Abramoff, call your office.) It was also busy passing the Student and Teacher Safety Act of 2006, which requires schools throughout the country to allow random searches of students for weapons and narcotics, on pain of losing federal dollars.

Not content with trashing freedom and federalism in separate bills, the House efficiently trashed both together by voting to make it a federal crime to slaughter horses for human consumption. The American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act would effectively shut down three slaughterhouses. It was reportedly brought to the floor as a favor to Rep. John Sweeney, R-N.Y., whose district, according to National Journal’s CongressDaily, "includes the Saratoga racetrack and a strong horse community."

You want more of these priorities? Vote Republican again. You want reform? Vote Democratic. And I’d say exactly the same if the parties were in opposite places. One party hegemony produces corruption and unaccountability. You now have a chance to end it.

It’s a beaut:

"MAUREEN DOWD: A fake news show, "The Daily Show," spawned a fake commentator, Colbert, who makes his own fake reality defending the fake reality of a real president, and has government officials on who know the joke but are still willing to be mocked by someone fake. Your shows are like mirrors within mirrors, using a cycle of fakery to get to the truth. You’ve tapped into a sense in society that nothing, from reality shows to Bushworld, is real anymore. Do you guys ever get confused by your hall of mirrors?

JON STEWART: I didn’t know we were going to have to be high to do this interview."

From Rolling Stone.

An astonishing YouTube clip. Watch it through to the end, where Haggard loses it. I should add I don’t share Dawkins’ scientism and I don’t share Haggard’s fundamentalism. My book is an attempt to explain that there is a third option.

"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you," – Nietzsche.

(Photo: J. Scott Applewhite/AP.)