The Dish

The immigration debate is tearing the Republican party apart. The GOP is unable to please its base, and yet its base has succeeded in alienating increasing numbers of Hispanic voters. Money quote:

Ken Strasma, a Democratic strategist who specializes in using demographic data to target potential voters, and the Hispanic Voter Project at Johns Hopkins University conducted a study concluding that, if past voting patterns hold, the growing Hispanic population means that Democrats will increase their 2004 vote totals by nearly half a million votes in 2008.
"The impact is even stronger farther out in the future, as Hispanic vote growth would move two Southwestern battleground states — Nevada and New Mexico — into the Democratic column by 2016, and add Iowa and Ohio by 2020," the study said … A third study of all voters found that conservative white Republicans are the most adamantly opposed of all political and demographic groups to what Bush calls his "rational middle ground" policy toward allowing more undocumented workers to become legal and eventually to become citizens.

And so the Republicans fall into the chasm between the two groups. The Rove strategy of a new Republican coalition is slowly being exposed as a fantasy.

My take here. Money quote:

Maybe Karl Rove will set up a photo-op in October. The president could come to the Arizona border, assemble a crowd of anti-illegal immigrant activists and declaim, in reverse-Reagan mode: "Presidente Fox, build up this wall!"

I must say even I was taken aback by Pat Buchanan’s new book title: "State of Emergency : How Illegal Immigration Is Destroying America." In person yesterday, at Book Expo, I recall him describing the subtitle as: "The Colonization and Third-World Take-Over" of the United States. Maybe he’d had a little too much Starbucks.

(Photo: Denis Poroy/AP.)

Truth-Out staggers toward a non-apology apology on the Rove indictment. I love the expression "getting too far out in front of the news-cycle." We used to call that a scoop. Except when it’s untrue, I guess.

A fascinating exchange in the Senate yesterday between Senator Feinstein and the new CIA director nominee, Michael Hayden. You may recall that a law was passed last year by veto-proof margins banning all "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment of military detainees. It was the McCain Amendment. You may also recall that the president, in signing the amendment into law, issued a statement saying he didn’t have to obey it. I don’t think any serious person can define "waterboarding" as anything but torture; but even those who reserve such a term for applying electricity to people’s testicles will concede that waterboarding is "cruel, inhuman and degrading" under the plain meaning of those words. It involves strapping a human being to a wooden board, tipping the board so that the victim’s face is at a lower level than his feet, putting a cloth over his mouth and nose and pouring water over it to simulate drowning. It was a technique used by the Japanese in the Second World War and, famously, by the French in Algeria. In the old days, before Dick Cheney became vice-president, American soldiers found guilty of such a practice were court-martialed. No longer. Here’s the money quote from a Washington Post editorial today:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) asked the nominee a simple question: Is "waterboarding" an acceptable interrogation technique? Gen. Hayden responded: "Let me defer that to closed session, and I would be happy to discuss it in some detail." That was the wrong answer… [W]hy couldn’t Gen. Hayden say clearly that the technique is now off-limits?

I think we know the answer. The executive branch views itself beyond the law, is committing war-crimes, has endorsed and practised torture and abuse, and refuses to change. I don’t see how any senator can vote for a nominee who can defend that position.

I’ve now read enough to feel confident in saying that the Canada National Post story about Jews in Iran being forced to wear yellow badges is almost certainly bunk. The Jewish delegate in Iran’s pseudo-parliament denies it. A Human Rights Watch activist who has studied the legislation in question writes the following:

[The law] includes only generalities with regard to promoting a national dress code and fashion industry that should be subsidized and supported by the government. It is a troubling development; its main target is most probably Iranian women. But there is absolutely no mention of religious minorities. If the people behind the National Post article have some insider knowledge of how this legislation will be implemented, they should note their sources. Otherwise the legislation itself has nothing in it relating to what is being reported about mandates for religious minorities.

Was this active disinformation? If so, who was behind it? And for what purpose? That seems to me to be the next salient question.

(Photo: Lynsey Addorio/Corbis.)

"How much of the crap sluicing through this book does Raines really believe? All, I’m afraid," – Jack Shafer on Howell’s latest exercise in self-service.

Good news. But, alas, the critical decisions have, even now, yet to be made. Money quote:

But the challenges facing the new government were obvious when al-Maliki was unable to make a final decision about the top three security posts: defense minister, who oversees the Iraqi army; interior minister, who is responsible for police; and minister for national security.
Al-Maliki, a Shiite, said he would be acting interior minister for now, and he made Salam Zikam al-Zubaie, a Sunni Arab, the temporary defense minister. Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh, a Kurd, was made acting minister for national security.
Al-Maliki hopes to fill all three posts with politicians who are independent and have no affiliation with any of Iraq’s militias.

I’m glad to see some progress. But as sectarian violence intensifies, a real government will only be one where the militias and insurgent groups come under some kind of central control or even influence. So far: it’s hard to be optimistic on that score.

A reader writes:

These commencement speeches also seem to have begun the process of lancing a pair of boils: that McCain is too old and too hotheaded to be President. By stressing his half century of service and the manner in which age has matured and moderated his views and tempered his conceit of himself, he presents himself as the wise old man of politics, blessed with experience and the ability to put matters into their proper perspective. He may have more to do to combat these concerns, but these speeches seem to be a more than decent start.

Above all, however, McCain seems to be stating one obvious, but frequently over-looked, truth. You need not agree with me on every issue to support me. It’s laughable to suppose otherwise, yet that’s where we seem to be as any deviation form party orthodoxy is treated as an act of excommunicable heresy. That’s crazy and childish. If McCain can change that dynamic then he’ll have done his country yet another service. After all, that’s how most people actually think and feel.

Above all, perhaps, McCain is interesting – and not just to journalists. He’s not perfect, but nor does he pretend to be and that is another plus. But he does seem to have an honesty that allows him to gently, and politely, rebuke Falwell et al for their intolerance of dissent even while trying to reach out to voters who might be sceptical of his intentions. Since politics does require one to engage with folk with whom we disagree I should have thought McCain’s willingness to speak anywhere, to any audience is a matter for celebration not regret. I’m not sure it counts as pandering.

Whether he can win with this strategy remains to be seen of course. It would be nice to think he could though, no?

Yes, it would. And if he continues in this vein, I’ll do what I can to support him. And I have a feeling I won’t be alone.

Theocon-in-chief, Richard John Neuhaus, has a problem on his hands. No one has gone so far out on a limb defending Father Maciel from charges of rampant abuse and rape of minors. Neuhaus smeared the reporters who helped bring Maciel’s abuse to light, and declared his innocence was a "moral certainty." Yesterday, we got two messages from Neuhaus. One is in the New York Times today, where Neuhaus refuses to budge from his previous position, and essentially says that Benedict XVI is wrong to discipline Maciel:

On Friday, Father Neuhaus, editor of First Things, an ecumenical magazine based in New York, said he still believed that the charges against Father Maciel were unfounded. "There is nothing in the Vatican statement that suggests that the word penance is meant as a punitive measure," he said. Asked why the Vatican would take any action, he said, "It wouldn’t be the first time that an innocent and indeed holy person was unfairly treated by church authority."

On his blog, the clearly rattled Neuhaus says something else entirely. Not that he has the decency to apologize to the reporters he smeared. But there is the most minimal concession as to the evidence for Maciel’s long and documented history of sexual abuse:

Since there was no canonical hearing, there is no canonical judgment regarding his guilt or innocence of the alleged wrongdoings … I do not know all that the CDF and the Holy Father know, and am not privy to the considerations that led to their decision. It is reasonable to believe that they think Fr. Maciel did do something wrong.

Something wrong? He is accused of sexual predation and molestation. Then Neuhaus cites John Paul II for leading him astray:

It was hardly the only factor, but one of the many factors that entered into my moral certainty regarding Fr. Maciel’s innocence was my great respect for John Paul II and his repeated statements of support for Fr. Maciel. With similar respect for the office and person of Pope Benedict, I do not protest this directive implying that Fr. Maciel is guilty of wrongdoing. It is obvious that CDF and the Holy Father know more than I know with respect to evidence supporting the guilt or innocence of Fr. Maciel.

So Neuhaus exonerated a man of sexual abuse with unsubstantiated "moral certainty" – and attacked the credibility of the victims of the abuse and the reporters who exposed it – because the former Pope supported Maciel. If the pope said someone was innocent, that was good enough for Neuhaus. Evidence and testimony be damned. There you have a central theme of theoconservatism: the abdication of rational judgment to ecclesiastical authority. That mindset is partly what enabled the sexual abuse crisis in the first place and the cover-up that continued for decades. It was sadly perpetuated by some of the most doctrinally conservative men in the Vatican. In the Maciel case, there can no longer be any doubt that among them was Pope John Paul II. The last Pope, and his enabler, the current Pope, were directly implicated in covering up minor abuse in order to protect one of their powerful friends. That’s the bottom line.

They represent a Who’s Who of American theoconservatives. Money quotes:

"The recent revival of long discredited allegations against Father Maciel would come as a surprise were it not for the fact that the U.S. is currently experiencing a resurgence of anti-Catholicism. One would have thought that Father Neuhaus’s meticulous analysis of the evidence in First Things had put the matter to rest once and for all. As one who sat near Father Maciel for several weeks during the Synod for America, I simply cannot reconcile those old stories with the man’s radiant holiness.

The most powerful refutation, however, comes from the spiritual vibrancy of the great organization he founded, and the thousands of lives that have been touched and transformed by the men and women he has inspired. As Our Lord has told us, "By their fruits ye shall know them." That irresponsible journalists keep dredging up old slanders is perhaps best viewed as a tribute to the success of Regnum Christi and the Legionaries of Christ in advancing the New Evangelization," – Mary Ann Glendon.

Bill Donohue came to Maciel’s defense in this letter to the Hartford Courant:

The headline story of February 23 on the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, Father Marcial, might have been more persuasive if you didn’t expect your readers to be so gullible. After all, what am I to make of the third paragraph: "Several [of the accusers] said Maciel told them he had permission from Pope Pius XII to seek them out sexually for relief of physical pain." To think that any priest would tell some other priest that the pope gave him the thumbs up to have sex with another priest ‚Äî all for the purpose of relieving the poor fellow of some malady ‚Äî is the kind of balderdash that wouldn’t convince the most unscrupulous editor at any of the weekly tabloids. The wonder is why this newspaper found merit enough to print it.

Bill Bennett also backed the Legion against the claims of the victims of teen molestation. Duh.