Thought for the Week

You who build these altars now
To sacrifice the children
You must not do it anymore
A scheme is not a vision

--Leonard Cohen, "Story of Isaac"

Loose Canon's Challenge: Name one great thing Jesus didn't do

Gotta feel really bad for LC, who writes:

Do I sometimes detect a soupcon of hostility toward the singular achievements of Western civilization among those who post comments on Loose Canon?

I assume she means on her message boards, where a random reading does reveal considerable hostility. Most of it seems directed at LC herself. But as LC has cast herself as the defender of all things Christian, that is hardly a surprise. Christianity is not having one of its better periods, at least in America, where it has become the captive of people who won't be happy until there's a cross on the White House lawn.

[Let is pass over a comical error that just might be symbolic. LC wants the link in her piece to take us to a "wonderful" book: The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success. Instead it goes to a tortured piece, 'The Left's Coup D'Etat at Harvard,' which argues that Lawrence Summers, who just resigned as president of Harvard, was a bold centrist who was done in by a minority cabal. It's just wonderful to see a complex, nuanced story--a Harvard-level story, if you will--reduced to something that makers sense to the Fox News crowd. So very LC.]

I was about to get slightly serious and crack open Jared Diamond's Gun, Germs, and Steel--winner of the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science for its densely factual, highly original explanation for the dominance of "Christian" cultures--to help me build a response. But then I read a bit more about the Rodney Stark book that makes LC's heart go pitty-pat.

My source isn't the book--I know, I should have exposed what Barbara Bush would call "my beautiful mind" to Stark's brilliance--but Alan Wolfe's review:

Had the followers of Jesus remained an obscure Jewish sect," concludes Rodney Stark in his new book, "most of you would not have learned to read and the rest of you would be reading from hand-copied scrolls." I had always known that Jesus Christ was a pretty important person, but I had not quite realized that were it not for him, there would be no one to buy Rodney Stark's books.

Of course. Stark's book is Religious History for Dummies, in which one religion is responsible for Every Good Thing. So Stark seems to argue that Jews, Romans, and Greeks contributed just about nothing to human knowledge. I didn't know there was anyone outside of a madhouse who made broad-brush arguments like that.

According to Stark, the Spanish Inquisition didn't really happen. Galileo seems to have brought his troubles on himself. Latin America was never a Catholic colony. And the "Dark Ages" are a hoax.

Easy to see why LC clutches this tome to her breast. Triumphalism is her battle cry--she's got the best religion. And you don't. It's that simple. For her, Jesus is the Student Council President and the Prom King and Most Likely to Succeed. He's got the whole world--science, philosophy, economics--in his hands. And all that knowledge leads Jesus to one conclusion: Capitalism rocks. Especially as practiced by the neocons who currently rule Washington.

LC never writes about civil war in Iraq and port security in our country and nukes in Iran. Those topics are...unpleasant. Bring on knights in armor, chaste maidens, saints in hair shirts.

Well, on the theory of "different strokes for different folks," I'd drink to that. But wait! What's LC serving in that chalice--Arab blood?

Good news! Spread the word! The Right isn't winning after all

Why are people on the Christian and political right so angry when they seem to be winning?

That was what I discussed on the phone the other week with Philip Slater, the distinguished sociologist best known for his 1970 classic, The Pursuit of Loneliness. Dr. Slater has clearly taken oddball calls before; he was willing to think aloud with me.

I suggested the Christian right suffered from some sort of twisted sexual rage--their religion limited their sexual expression and that made them jealous of those who felt unfettered by religious constraints.

Slater had another response: The Christian right and the political conservatives are not winning. And they know it. That's what infuriates them.

Slater briefly took me through a line of argument that he explains fully in a dazzlingly upbeat essay, "America is Polarized." In brief, he sees America--and the planet--undergoing "the most revolutionary cultural shift in the history of our species." In response. we tend to join one of two camps: "Control Culture," which clings to rigid, traditional beliefs, and "Connecting Culture," which aims to knock down walls and boundaries.

To read this essay is to be greatly cheered. The spread of democracy, the women's movement, the global economy, the ecology movement, the Internet--everything reasonable people care about is a manifestation of the Connecting Culture. And that culture is growing fast, fueled by technology, global communication, planetary awareness, and what Slater calls "the decreasing utility of war."

Ever since we were blessed with the Bush presidency, I've been searching for a way to look at what's happening in this country that doesn't make me feel sick at heart. Slater may not have the ultimate answer--but he gets you to 30,000 feet fast. From there, you can look around for yourself. At the very least, you can feel the beginning of compassion for those who feel the need to be in "Control"--people so freaked out by change that they fixate on gays and women's rights.

It's hard to feel that the Connecting Culture is winning; when I look out my window, I see only Americans running faster on the hamster wheel. Make change? Who has time to do more than read a few blogs? Slater acknowledges this disconnect. And he reminds us that history moves slowly--while the Control Culture cannot win, it may not "lose" in our lifetime. And that this struggle is not an American one. It's global.

The Slater essay raised my spirits. Please read it.

Video of the Week

Sarah McLachlan. The song is 'World on Fire.' Always liked her. Love her for this. Bet you will too.

Cool Guy of the Week

The guy behind Calling All Wingnuts teaches you to do what he does--call right-wing radio and TV commentators and get on the air.

Very funny stuff. Like this call with Rush Limbaugh:

He never let me ask my other question… which would have been: "You know, Dubya’s a pretty young guy--he’ll have a lot of time left when he leaves office. Do you think he’ll travel the world proselytizing for the Moonies the way his father did? Google it."

I was really looking forward to recording the sounds and fury of the screener after Rush hung up on me…

Is your world empty without me?

Once a week of Swami not enough for you? Even four days a week of Head Butler leaves you wanting...more?

Well, if you're hard-core, this is for you--my new book blog at AARP.com. 500 words a week, published late Friday afternoon. First up: How did the characters in the books I read suddenly get...older? Here's the link.

Thought for the Week

Lehrer: "It's still happening. There are now 2 million people homeless."

Cheney: "Still happening, correct."

Lehrer: "Hundreds of thousands of people have died, and--so you're satisfied the U.S. is doing everything it can do?"

Cheney: "I am satisfied we're doing everything we can do."
--- Vice President Dick Cheney, interviewed by Jim Lehrer on the genocide in Darfur

What does 'Brokeback Mountain' have to do with Abu Ghraib?

God bless the blog editor. Instead of letting us putter around in our own playgrounds, she sends e-mail like this to Loose Canon and me:

I would appreciate it if both of you would blog on the latest images from Abu Ghraib. The angles I would like you to explore: The fact that they reveal the depths of sadistic behavior among Iraq's putative liberators; the fact that they add more fuel to the fires of Muslim outrage toward the West. What is the appropriate response among people of conscience?

As many of you know, LC posts every day, I post once a week. So when we get these e-mails, LC usually posts first. I have said it before: This gives me an unfair advantage. That is, I have more time to think. And then too, I have the benefit of LC's off-the-wall responses.

On Abu Ghraib, LC found herself.... inconvenienced by the topic. The pictures are, she begins:

....not new in the sense of being new but new in the sense of being old photos that were not published during the height of the Abu Ghraib scandal.

LC supports "the right to carry these pictures." But she suspects the motives: "Most likely many editors view these pictures as a golden opportunity to show U.S. personnel in Iraq as sadists more than liberators and thereby undermine the whole effort to bring a new way of life to the Middle East." And yes, no doubt about it, we do have a "noble goal in Iraq."

And then she sort of.... dithers off on another topic. But that's okay. She's said enough. If she looked at these pictures at all--and I'm betting she didn't--they bored her. You know: same old same old. Just more noise from America's enemies. Best to go back and knit a scarf.

In her blog, LC asks: Why publish the Abu Ghraib images widely--but not the Danish cartoons?

Good question. I'm going to sidestep it today. Because I see a better question--and another, more urgent point.

Why is LC bothered more by "Brokeback Mountain" than she is by Abu Ghraib? What is it about a man laying a loving hand on another that raises her blood pressure while a man brutalizing another really doesn't? In our own lives, we know there is a deep spiritual connection between sex and love--why does LC see only the sex? And what about the sexuality of the Abu Ghraib photos--why can't LC see both a hatred of homosexuality and a sick attraction to S&M in those pictures?

I'll address these below. First, some facts....then the commentary.

Why hate "Brokeback"? Because it's "Titanic"

The last time Loose Canon wrote about it, "Brokeback Mountain" was winning the Beliefnet poll. But, thank God, it was losing--big-time--in her beloved Red States:

There is good news on the Brokeback front: The movie is not playing in the heartland, according to blogger Mickey Kaus, who has kept an eye on the movie. In posts on "the Brokeback heartland meme," Kaus not only shows that the movie's popularity in red states is a myth--he shows why it is being propagated and who it actually hurts (that's the good news).

Alas, LC is hard of reading. That's not what Kaus said. The movie that "underperformed" in the Midwest was "Fahrenheit 9/11." Kaus then wrote:

Some enterprising reporter should get hold of similar data for Brokeback, once its run is over. Do you want to bet they show the same insular, blue-state dominance? The only difference would be that Fahrenheit 9/11 was much more popular than Brokeback, measured in box office.

In fact, not so. "Brokeback" is doing brisk business across the country. Yes, it opened in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, in just five theaters--but there it earned "the highest per-showing average for any drama in film history." It did well in suburban theaters. Early in January, it was in 483 theaters. In mid-January: 1,194 theaters. It's now in about 2,000 theaters.

With eight Academy Award nominations--Best Picture, Best Director, Best Lead Actor (Heath Ledger), Best Supporting Actor (Jake Gyllenhaal), Best Supporting Actress (Michelle Williams), Best Cinematography, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Original Score--it's cruising toward a domestic gross of $80-100 million. If it wins a few, it could earn much more and become one of the best investments in film history; the budget was just $14 million.

Conservatives of the rabid stripe not wish this weren't so. They insist it's not. On his program, Bill O'Reilly said on December 20, 2005:

"But I don't care about the movie. I'm going to make the prediction. The movie will get a lot of Academy Awards, because again Hollywood is very sympathetic to the gay movement ... But I will submit to you this movie does not do big box office outside the big cities. It won't. They're not going to go see the gay cowboys in Montana. I'm sorry. They're not going to do it."

Wrong again. The Missoulian continues:

Here in Missoula, the film has been a smash hit since it opened at the 1,100-seat Wilma Theatre on Jan. 6. “It's been super every night since we started showing it,” said Bill Emerson, who manages the 85-year-old theater.

Elsewhere in Montana, here's the Helena Independent Record:

“Those numbers are amazing to me,” said Ryan Pliner, distribution coordinator for Focus Features. “Anybody who’s questioning how this movie is playing (outside of big coastal cities) should look at something like this.”The last time this town demonstrated such abundant enthusiasm for a film was when “March of the Penguins” opened at the Wilma. That film ended up screening at the theater for more than six months.

But “Brokeback” isn’t just doing well in this, traditionally the most liberal part of the state. In Kalispell, the film drew 576 willing ticket-buyers over its first weekend. It was the No. 1 draw during opening weekends in Helena and Whitefish, beating out “Big Momma’s House 2,” “Nanny McPhee” and “Underworld” the three top box-office draws nationwide. And guess where the film enjoyed its best opening weekend in Montana? Hint: It wasn’t liberal Missoula. Try Billings.

Okay, to the big question: Why is this film doing so well all across America? Because it's grabbing the "Titanic" audience: women who crave a great love story. And this is a great one indeed--it's a story of forbidden love. Think "Romeo and Juliet." Think "Endless Love."

LC doesn't see the "spiritual" side of the movie because she watched it with her eyes closed. She saw "sex between two guys who rarely make emotional contact with each other." I would have said it's just the other way around: "emotion between two guys who rarely make sexual contact with each other."

And that's the movie's big revelation: Gays bleed too. It's not just anonymous sex in dark clubs. Or the Village People. Or Truman Capote, lisping. It's real guys with real feelings--feelings that bruised just like yours.

There's a brilliant piece about "Brokeback" in The New York Review of Books.

Both narratively and visually, Brokeback Mountain is a tragedy about the specifically gay phenomenon of the "closet"—about the disastrous emotional and moral consequences of erotic self-repression and of the social intolerance that first causes and then exacerbates it. What love story there is occurs early on in the film, and briefly: a summer's idyll herding sheep on a Wyoming mountain, during which two lonely youths, taciturn Ennis and high-spirited Jack, fall into bed, and then in love, with each other.

The sole visual representation of their happiness in love is a single brief shot of the two shirtless youths horsing around in the grass. That shot is eerily—and significantly—silent, voiceless: it turns out that what we are seeing is what the boys' boss is seeing through his binoculars as he spies on them.

After that—because their love for each other can't be fitted into the lives they think they must lead—misery pursues and finally destroys the two men and everyone with whom they come in contact with the relentless thoroughness you associate with Greek tragedy. By the end of the drama, indeed, whole families have been laid waste. Ennis's marriage to a conventional, sweet-natured girl disintegrates, savaging her simple illusions and spoiling the home life of his two daughters; Jack's nervy young wife, Lureen, devolves into a brittle shrew, her increasingly elaborate and artificial hairstyles serving as a visual marker of the ever-growing mendacity that underlies the couple's relationship. Even an appealing young waitress, with whom Ennis after his divorce has a flirtation (an episode much amplified from a bare mention in the original story), is made miserable by her brief contact with a man who is as enigmatic to himself as he is to her. If Jack and Ennis are tainted, it's not because they're gay, but because they pretend not to be; it's the lie that poisons everyone they touch.

The conclusion nails it for me:

The real achievement of Brokeback Mountain is not that it tells a universal love story that happens to have gay characters in it, but that it tells a distinctively gay story that happens to be so well told that any feeling person can be moved by it.

But, hey, there's no reason to read a book about a film. Have you seen the movie? If not, go--trust me, those Oscar nominations weren't because a few softheads got control of the Academy. It's a sorrowful experience, start to finish--these are sad, sad men, whose lives are wasted for no fault of their own. Just look at the TV commercial for the film: the shot where Heath finds two shirts on one hanger in his lover's bedroom. He holds to his face. He inhales his past. And weeps.

Hell, I weep when I see that commercial. Anyone who's seen the film would feel a pang. Except for someone who sees it and immediately thinks: "This is an ad for gay marriage."

It's not, of course. It's a love story. A narrow character piece. Not a political tract. But that's what makes it so threatening for the LCs of our country --it's not porn, it's a love story that, for the grace of God, could be ours. And that's disgraceful to the LC. There oughta be a law!

And, if the LCs have their way, there will be. A Federal Marriage Act. Coming your way soon, if the Republicans have anything to do with it.

Talk about ugly! Talk about twisted! But then we no longer expect sanity about sex from people who see every gay person as a billboard--and as a sinner.

Abu Ghraib: How does a fish smell? Fom the head. The sick heads of our leaders

First, the facts. You want to see the pictures and get the context? Here are the sources:
Warning: Seriously ugly stuff here. If you're easily nauseated, think twice before viewing.
Abu Ghraib: The Sequel.

Why haven't you seen these before? Well, first the government argued in court that these images violated the prisoners' "privacy rights." Then it claimed they'd fuel the insurgency and endanger our soldiers. In September, federal District Court Judge Alvin Hellerstein ruled: "Terrorists do not need pretexts for their barbarism." The government has appealed that ruling.

What do we see and read here? Beatings. Torture. Even killings. From" Salon:

The DVD containing the material includes a June 6, 2004, CID investigation
report written by Special Agent James E. Seigmund. That report includes the
following summary of the material included: "A review of all the computer media
submitted to this office revealed a total of 1,325 images of suspected detainee
abuse, 93 video files of suspected detainee abuse, 660 images of adult
pornography, 546 images of suspected dead Iraqi detainees, 29 images of soldiers
in simulated sexual acts, 20 images of a soldier with a Swastika drawn between
his eyes, 37 images of Military Working dogs being used in abuse of detainees
and 125 images of questionable acts."

The photographs we are showing represent a small fraction of these visual

materials. None, as far as we know, have been published elsewhere. They include:
a naked, handcuffed prisoner in a contorted position; a dead prisoner who had
been severely beaten; a prisoner apparently sodomizing himself with an object;
and a naked, hooded prisoner standing next to an American officer who is blandly
writing a report against a wall. Other photographs depict a bloody cell.

The DVD also includes photographs of guards threatening Iraqi prisoners with
dogs, homemade videotapes depicting hooded prisoners being forced to masturbate,
and a video showing a mentally disturbed prisoner smashing his head against a
door. Oddly, the material also includes numerous photographs of slaughtered
animals and mundane images of soldiers traveling around Iraq.

And it's not just Abu Ghraib. These techniques were first used at Guantanamo. From a new report on that scandal:

The report says that the use of excessive force during transportation,
force-feeding through nasal tubes during hunger strikes and shackling, chaining
and hooding of prisoners, placing them in solitary confinement, subjecting them
naked to severe temperatures and threatening them with dogs amounted to
torture.

One commonality of both prisons: Most of the prisoners are totally innocent. They just had the bad fortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. From The National Journal:
Much of the evidence against the detainees [at Guantanamo] is weak. One prisoner at Guantanamo, for example, has made accusations against more than 60 of his fellow inmates; that's more than 10 percent of Guantanamo's entire prison population. The veracity of this prisoner's accusations is in doubt after a Syrian prisoner, Mohammed al-Tumani, 19, who was arrested in Pakistan, flatly denied to his Combatant Status Review Tribunal that he'd attended the jihadist training camp that the tribunal record said he did.
Tumani's denial was bolstered by his American "personal representative," one of the U.S. military officers--not lawyers--who are tasked with helping prisoners navigate the tribunals. Tumani's enterprising representative looked at the classified evidence against the Syrian youth and found that just one man--the aforementioned accuser--had placed Tumani at the terrorist training camp. And he had placed Tumani there three months before the teenager had even entered Afghanistan. The curious U.S. officer pulled the classified file of the accuser, saw that he had accused 60 men, and, suddenly skeptical, pulled the files of every detainee the accuser had placed at the one training camp. None of the men had been in Afghanistan at the time the accuser said he saw them at the camp.

The tribunal declared Tumani an enemy combatant anyway.

And who's to blame? Well, we're working our way up to two dog handlers. At this rate, we'll indict an officer in 2010. And find it was Rumsfeld's policy all along in, say, 2020.
Meanwhile, we continue to guarantee that we will lose this war (if we haven't already).

Two seconds of thought will tell you that all we are doing at Abu Ghraib is running a college--innocents enter, insurgents leave. Wouldn't it be that way for you? What, after all, is more radicalizing than a mock-drowning experience when you committed no crime?

But we don't care that we're creating insurgents by the thousands. Because we're not playing for "hearts and minds" in Iraq. We're playing "kill the enemy"--a wrongheaded game that the wily insurgents have turned into a crazy version of Whack a Mole. If the people who were running our government were not complete fools, they would open the prison gates, give each detainee a written apology and $100,000--and blow the place up.

Now that would send a message.

Instead, we send another. Sexual degradation of Iraqi men--fine with us. Torturing boys to make their fathers confess? No problem. As deed. As policy.

I don't know why more people don't care. Maybe they do but feel powerless--our government does have an anti-Viagra effect on its citizens. My dark suspicion is that all the Bible-thumping on the right only makes believers more fixated on sex, and that their obsessions become twisted, sick, and violent. And that our soldiers act this out. As deed. As policy.

There is no surer way to lose a guerrilla war than to consistently increase the number of people who hate you. Then the only solution is "kill 'em all." One gets the feeling that wouldn't bother LC--and the Christian Right--at all.

Kill for peace. Die for love. Abu Ghraib and "Brokeback." Two sides of an American coin. Both deeply tragic.

Dick Cheney: A shot in the arm for George Bush

When last we left off, it looked as if there'd be no congressional hearings on the Bush administration's illegal and unconstitutional wiretapping of civilians.

And the White House, unhappy with a certain democratic election in the Middle East, was deciding how best to get Hamas out of power.

And the head of Homeland Security was getting his butt kicked for his role in the government's disgraceful response to Hurricane Katrina--while 11,000 temporary houses sit, useless, in an Arkansas field.

And the kid who had to quit NASA because he lied about his college record was giving interviews badmouthing a scientist who has enough advanced degrees to use up half the alphabet.

There are new pictures from Abu Ghraib, and reports that the prison has been a huge success--as a recruitment center for the insurgents.

American journalist Jill Carroll is days away from being killed by her kidnappers in Iraq because our government wants to look "tough" and refuse to release female Iraqi prisoners.

These stories? Banished. Flushed. Forgotten. All because Dick Cheney may have knocked back a few drinks before he blasted his gun into the setting sun.

Now everyone is mad at Dick Cheney. Where is his human feeling? What does he think--that he's above the law?

Mad? Everyone hates Dick Cheney. He's the walking embodiment of everything wrong with this administration.

Wow! Dick Cheney just swept all the bad news off the front page. Like Janet Jackson's boob and Paris Hilton's porno tape, he's the Only Story in America.

Sunday. Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Four days now. You can't buy coverage like that.

Oh yeah, Bush's staff is fuming. The bloggers are working overtime. And the press, in full investigative mode, is trying to figure out how that pellet got into the victim's heart.

Cheney? He's laughing. He thinks we're fools. And guess what? We're proving, yet again, that we are.

Thought for the Week

I knew what I was supposed to have said, as a progressive Christian: that it's all very complicated and painful, and that Jim was right in saying that the abortion rate in America is way too high for a caring and compassionate society.

But I did the only thing I could think to do: plunge on, and tell my truth. I said that this is the most intimate decision a woman makes, and she makes it all alone, in her deepest heart of hearts, sometimes with the man by whom she is pregnant, with her dearest friends or with her doctor—but without the personal opinion of say, Tom DeLay or Karl Rove.

I said I could not believe that men committed to equality and civil rights were still challenging the basic rights of women. I thought about all the photo-ops at which President Bush had signed legislation limiting abortion rights, surrounded by 10 or so white, self-righteous married men, who have forced God knows how many girlfriends into doing God knows what. I thought of the time Bush appeared on stage with children born from frozen embryos, children he calls "snowflake babies," and of the embryos themselves, which he calls the youngest and most vulnerable Americans.

And somehow, as I was answering, I got louder and maybe even more emphatic than I actually felt, and said it was not a morally ambiguous issue for me at all. I said that fetuses are not babies yet; that there was actually a real difference between pro-abortion people, like me, and Klaus Barbie.

Then I said that a woman's right to choose was nobody else's goddamn business. This got their attention.

--- Ann Lamott, The Rights of the Born

Pharmacists and Conscience: Where does it end?

A week or so ago, Loose Canon wrote an entry that began:

The totalitarians at Planned Parenthood are waging a war against men and women of conscience who work in pharmacies and, because of religious beliefs, refuse to fill prescriptions for the abortion-inducing RU486.

There was a very large problem with that statement. (Well, two, if you take issue with the use of "totalitarians" to describe an organization committed to protecting choice for women.) That problem was that it was factually wrong--like a lot of "facts" about reproduction and reproductive freedom that you hear on LC's side of the aisle.

RU-486 is an abortion pill. It is NOT available at pharmacies. You must go to an abortion provider to get it.

What you can get at a pharmacy: the "morning-after" pill (Preven, or Plan B).

The difference is vast.

You choose RU-486 when the egg and sperm have joined and the embryo has implanted. By the most rigid definition, "life" has begun. Thus, the pill starts an abortion process.

You choose Plan B to prevent ovulation and/or fertilization. The issue is thus one of prevention--of birth control. (In theory, Plan B could prevent implantation; there's no unequivocal evidence here.)

It's actually a more complicated issue, both biologically and ethically. Fertility doctors will tell you that around 50 percent of fertilized eggs are flushed out of a woman's body every month. That means: sperm and egg have joined, but not yet implanted. To religious extremists who define that fertilized egg as "life," half the population of heaven was never more than a few cells old.

Wal-Mart was being sued because its pharmacists--citing their "conscience" and their religious beliefs--refused to fill prescriptions for Plan B.

LC later corrected her post, acknowledging that she confused RU-486 and Plan B. But she went on to write:

How can you take a morning-after pill and regard it as an ounce of prevention? I don't know, but supporters of the pill argue that it is an ounce of prevention after the fact.

This is willful ignorance of Plan B and her own biological process. If you want factual information--LC is allergic to it--here you go: About Plan B.)

Now let's move on to the larger issue: Those Wal-Mart pharmacists--they refused to fill prescriptions for Plan B, and, in the interest of consistency, refused also to fill prescriptions for birth-control pills? Really? I doubt it. So you have to wonder: Did anyone tell them that Plan B is nothing but a super-sized dose of birth control?

(For that matter, does LC understand this? If she does, does she support a pharmacist's right to refuse to fill birth-control prescriptions? My bet: She'd vote with the "conscientious" pharmacists who will have nothing to do with birth-control in any form--because from where she sits, isn't birth control murder? Naturally, she doesn't say this. Why? Because you'd think she's some kind of hard-core wingnut woman-hater, and you'd never pay attention to her again.)

I would wager that Wal-Mart would not be sympathetic to pharmacists who refuse to fork over birth-control pills. "Conscience" is one thing. Business is another. Very few women come in with scripts for Plan B; many come in for birth control. Do the math--Wal-Mart usually does.

Now let's look deeper into the "moral" issue: At what point does the pharmacist with "issues" slide down a slippery slope? "I won't fill Plan B script--and, by the way, the Bible condemns homosexuality, so I won't help customers seeking drugs to treat HIV/AIDS." Does that work for Wal-Mart? For LC? For you?

And why stop at the pharmacist? Doesn't the ambulance attendant have rights? If he/she believes gays are pawns of the devil, why force him/her to treat patients with HIV/AIDS? For that matter, can a "Christian" doctor refuse to help a bleeding woman who obviously had an illegal abortion?

Here's my view: You take a job at Wal-Mart, you're obligated to help customers buy any item in stock. You have a problem with that? Find a place to work where you're among like-minded people. And put a big sign up on the window: NO PLAN B HERE. Or: GOT HIV/AIDS? NO MEDICINE FOR YOU HERE. Or even: WE DO NOT SELL CONTRACEPTIVES OR BIRTH-CONTROL PRODUCTS. Test the appeal of your ideals in the free market--it's the American way.

Who knows? There may be a fortune to be made from women who want no part of our sick, secular society--and the men who believe you should never have sex if you don't want to have a baby. I don't know any men and women like that myself. But the White House insists there are millions and millions.

Looking for a new business idea? Here you go. Feel free to invite me to the grand opening.

What could stop our shameless leaders? Oprah & Emerson

The news that Tom DeLay--disgraced, if-there's-a-God-he'll-go-to-jail Tom DeLay--will be in charge of the congressional committee that oversees the Justice Department was a stunner, wasn't it? But only for those, like me, who can still get a jolt from this crew. For the rest of America--well, the White House has taken the temperature of the country and decided that our brains are as flash-frozen as Ted Williams'. Hey, the Winter Olympics are on. And 'American Idol.' Who cares if the fox guards the hen house?

This monumental disrespect for propriety goes right along with contempt for the rule of law--and the fear of God. But then, even the government officials who aren't born again act as if they were. Saved, you know. And saved in a way that should make Catholics envious. No confessions needed here--once you've accepted Jesus, you can rape, pillage, lie, and cheat. Because you're in the Elect. On Judgment Day--excuse me: when the Rapture comes--you float up to Heaven. As I hear it, you even get the body you had when you were, like, 20. Hey, bring on those 70 virgins. (Ooops, wrong "elect.")

For those who hibernated last week, DeLay was just the capper. Other news revealed excess in every corner of the administration: Scooter Libby's testimony that he'd been "authorized" to leak classified information; the CIA agent in charge of intelligence on Iraq telling us that the White House only wanted justification for an invasion; Michael Brown insisting the White House knew right away that the New Orleans levees had been breached; the President's laughable explanation of an attack on Los Angeles that called for a terrorist to blow open a jet's cockpit door (and, presumably, his leg) with a shoe bomb; the revelation that Bush sneaked Social Security privatization into the budget; the Attorney General's cheerful comparison of the surveillance methods of George Bush and George Washington; the first of the Abramoff/Bush pictures, which is sure to end with a shot of Bush spinning the dreidl with Jack's kids; and the ultimate, the possibility that the Espionage Act will be used against journalists.

Any normal person connected to this government--that is, any person with a modicum of shame, any person who'd been Raised Right, any person who didn't wear earplugs during church--would look at what went down last week and say, "Yeah, we blew it. We're cooked."

But that government employee would, as it turns out, be wrong if he/she felt shame. For while you and I may think it's the beginning of the end for Bush, and Democratic candidates for Congress may know Bush is finished, and Republican officeholders and party officials may be not-so-secretly terrified, Bush doesn't know it.

And that denial makes him dangerous. No matter that he's sunk in the polls, that even the famously conservative pollsters on AOL think Abramoff is more credible than the President, that his State of the Union address was classic lame duck. When cornered, this administration doesn't defend itself--it attacks.

Say there's another terrorist attack. (The reason there hasn't been, we may reasonably conclude, has nothing to do with any "protection" this administration has provided us.) What would be tragedy for us would be opportunity for Bush--in the aftermath, you just know the White House would try to extend its powers. And in that moment, because the White House has already planted the idea that liberals are traitors who send coded messages to bin Laden in the editorials of The New York Times, it would prevail.

Got that? A President only beloved by his hard-core "base"--hardline conservatives and religious "purists" who would happily burn Darwin at the stake--could soon have dictatorial powers.

I find this terrifying. I know: I have been writing about this for 18 months. (And when I started, I really thought I'd been writing about "spirituality." Oh well.) But the drumbeats are getting louder now. The moves are more overt. It's like: They know 90 percent of the population will put up with anything, so why take the trouble to sugarcoat it? They want power. They want money. And they want no backtalk. So far, they're two-for-three.

Naturally, I spend my idle (ha!) moments thinking up ways to short-circuit the next power-grab.

Not by traditional discourse--the White House is deaf. And not by conventional politics--the White House doesn't acknowledge Democrats and has told its own kind that any deviation from total loyalty means no financing support at election time.

My big idea (for this week): Oprah. With a book. On television.

Oprah, because her takedown of the publishing industry whetted our appetite for more. Oprah, because no one else with a national platform can get away with it. Oprah, because she knows what she's talking about--she reads the damn books.

The book I want her to read--and choose for her book club--is Emerson's Essays. Yes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the dominant American philosopher of the 19th century and, arguably, our country's most readable thinker. Give Emerson a sentence; he'll give you an aphorism.

Many of Emerson's essays shine. The one I want Oprah to focus on is "Compensation." )You can read it online, at no charge, here.) In this essay, Emerson banishes the idea of rewards for goodness in some angel-filled heaven--he sees our lives on this planet as a real-time karmic test. Everything is connected. Every act is balanced by another. The world is thus maintained in perfect equilibrium.

Emerson writes: "For every grain of wit there is a grain of folly. For every thing you have missed, you have gained something else; and for every thing you gain, you lose something. If riches increase, they are increased that use them. If the gatherer gathers too much, nature takes out of the man what she puts into his chest; swells the estate, but kills the owner."

And then, the zinger to the heart of this empire-drunk administration: "Nature hates monopolies and exceptions."

This is not a metaphor. It's personal: "The farmer imagines power and place are fine things. But the President has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne."

Those masters, I would contend, are not lobbyists and donors. They're the Good--people who live in harmony with the earth and their fellow men and women. They know what the powerful do not: "Men seek to be great; they would have offices, wealth, power, and fame. They think that to be great is to possess one side of nature --the sweet, without the other side--the bitter. In nature nothing can be given, all things are sold."

"Compensation," as sweet a hymn to Buddhism as an American has ever written, contains a blunt warning. The world is alive, and the world is ultimately fair. "Persons and events may stand for a time between you and justice, but it is only a postponement. You must pay at last your own debt."

The idea of a reckoning is hateful to this administration--Bush cheerfully bequeaths a ruined economy and a hothouse climate to our children. The idea of a reckoning is hateful to the rest of us as well--but unlike the White House, we are willing to do whatever's needed to avoid it. And it is on the level of ideas--not politics--that we can isolate the White House, and reveal it for the barren thing it has become.

In the end, people live and die for ideas. The administration is out of them. Emerson had many, and they're the classic American ones: self-reliance, heroism, love. By pushing those ideas into our national conversation, Oprah could give Emerson the power he once had--the power to shift the paradigm.

If this works, suddenly there's a new idea in our lives. Its optimism is based on values that mean something. As one nation, we find ourselves looking beyond our present leaders--we find leaders everywhere. The President? Old news. We've moved on. He can talk, but nobody's listening. He's no longer legitimate.

Which, perhaps, is how the end really begins for George Bush.

The Beauty Part

Herbie Mann was born Herbert Jay Solomon in 1930. He was a music-obsessed kid who picked up a sax at 9. By l4, he was in a band that played resorts in the Catskills. In the Army, he carried an instrument instead of a gun.

In l953, a stroke of luck: A friend told him that a jazz band needed a flute player. Mann volunteered--although he'd never played a flute. At the audition, he played sax. His flute, he said, was being repaired. Only when he got the job did he take a crash course in jazz flute.

By the late '50s, he had his own band and was getting somewhere. Again, good fortune: A friend suggested that he add a conga player. His music changed; he was, suddenly, among the first to draw on international sounds and play what is now known as World Music.

And then, in 1962, his band rocked the Village Vanguard. "Comin' Home Baby" was the hit--as a single, it moved high up the charts. "Summertime" and "It Ain't Necessarily So" show how far you can take Gershwin. Three songs, one of them indelible. Half a million copies sold in the first year or so.

Someone has said there are only three "cool" jazz records from the late '50s and early '60s that you absolutely must have: "Kind of Blue" by Miles Davis, "Time Out" by Dave Brubeck, and Herbie Mann At the Village Gate. Just so.

Thought for the Week

We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds: we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use?

--- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "After Ten Years," in Letters and Papers from Prison.

Cindy Sheehan & Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Two of a kind

Our editor sent Loose Canon and me a note last Thursday, asking us to write for posting on February 6--that's today--about Cindy Sheehan's arrest at the State of the Union Speech and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, born a century ago today. A clever connection, as a lot of research came to reveal--and as I shall soon share with you.

LC couldn't wait to be done with the assignment. She posted that very day. This gave me not only the last word, but time to ruminate. I would say this is an unfair advantage, but hey--LC, for whatever reason, decided to hand it to me. Anyway, I'm quite sure LC couldn't care what I think. (If she does, she can always call someone at Homeland Security and have me investigated for...oh, I don't know....is "independent thought" a crime yet?)

Let me summarize LC's points:

l) Cindy Sheehan's arrest: "Cindy Sheehan, arrested for wearing what was clearly a protest T-shirt." And: "Although the Capitol police have dropped charges against Ms. Sheehan and said the arrest was a mistake, I'm not convinced. Why on earth wasn't it correct for the Capitol police to arrest her?" And: "Common sense told the officers that Sheehan was a protester." And: "The Capitol cops were right to arrest her."

2) Sheehan's arrest (and harsh treatment) compared with the near-simultaneous removal of the wife of a Republican Congressman (who was wearing a t-shirt that said: "support the troops"): "The arrest is being compared to the detaining of the wife of a Republican legislator who wore a shirt supporting the troops to the SOTU. The two are not equivalent."

3) Cindy Sheehan in general: "It is sad that she dishonors her soldier son's death, the death of a hero who chose to be part of a volunteer army in a just war, with such cheap, tawdry, publicity-seeking antics."

4) Bonhoeffer: "Somebody mentioned to me that we celebrate the life and witness of Dietrich Bonhoeffer on the centenary of his birthday (Feb. 4) with the implicit comparison of Sheehan and Bonhoeffer. But Bonhoeffer was executed by the Nazis for his witness. Ms. Sheehan gets tons of admiring publicity."

Let's take LC's points, such as they are, in order.

First: Is wearing a T-shirt with a slogan in the House of Representatives breaking the law? No. The law could not be clearer: In 1971, the Supreme Court (I know, those activist judges, even then) said it was unconstitutional to arrest a man who wore an anti-draft T-shirt into a courthouse. The decision is known as Cohen v. California:

Appellant was convicted of violating that part of Cal. Penal Code § 415 which prohibits "maliciously and willfully disturb[ing] the peace or quiet of any neighborhood or person . . . by . . . offensive conduct," for wearing a jacket bearing the words "Fuck the Draft" in a corridor of the Los Angeles Courthouse. The Court of Appeal held that "offensive conduct" means "behavior which has a tendency to provoke others to acts of violence or to in turn disturb the peace," and affirmed the conviction. Held: Absent a more particularized and compelling reason for its actions, the State may not, consistently with the First and Fourteenth Amendments, make the simple public display of this single four-letter expletive a criminal offense. Pp. 22-26.

Translation: A shirt with writing, however offensive, is not protest. It is free speech. For those who are foggy about this--and who can blame them?--here's a reminder:

U.S. Constitution: First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The Capitol police belatedly acknowledged that "we screwed up." From MSNBC:

The officers made a good faith, but mistaken effort to enforce an old unwritten interpretation of the prohibitions about demonstrating in the Capitol,” Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer said in a statement late Wednesday. “The policy and procedures were too vague,” he added. “The failure to adequately prepare the officers is mine.”

Got that? Sheehan (and Rep. Bill Young's wife) broke an "unwritten" law. (Unlike the President, who prefers to break real laws.) So one might ask LC: Do you support the enforcement of unwritten laws? If so, which other ones do you endorse? Or maybe this: Have we reached a point in our history where legality is of no real interest to people who feel as LC does and all power should reside in the President or his minions? Or is this one of those childish pouts people fall into when it's clear they can't have their way--like Scarlett O'Hara stamping her feet in "Gone with the Wind"?

2) Sheehan and the congressman's wife: From the constitutional, legal perspective, the cases are exactly the same. As Beverly Young noted:

“They said I was protesting,” Young told the St. Petersburg Times. “I said, ‘Read my shirt, it is not a protest.’ They said, ‘We consider that a protest.’ I said, ‘Then you are an idiot.”

3) Sheehan's son and the "just" war: LC is entitled to her opinion about Cindy Sheehan. (For the record, I find Sheehan annoying and some of her appearances--as with Venezuela's president Chavez--ill-advised. But then, I've never lost a child, especially in a war built on lies.) As for the facts, however, LC's opinion is shocking.

Why so? Because LC is a Catholic. And as such, she most certainly knows the position of her Church on this war. From a Catholic journal:

John Paul II stated before the 2003 war that this war would be a defeat for humanity which could not be morally or legally justified....

John Paul II sent his personal representative, Cardinal Pio Laghi, a friend of the Bush family, to remonstrate with the U.S. President before the war began. Pio Laghi said such a war would be illegal and unjust. The message was clear: God is not on your side if you invade Iraq....

The election of Benedict XVI as pope brings hope for the continuation of peacemaking as central to the papacy. Just as John Paul II cried out again and again to the world, "War never again!" the new pope has taken the name of the one who first made that cry, Benedict XV, commonly known as "the peace pope."

The name is no coincidence. In fact, Cardinal Justin Rigali, Archbishop of Philadelphia said Tuesday that the new pope told the cardinals he was selecting Benedict because "he is desirous to continue the efforts of Benedict XV on behalf of peace ... throughout the world."

As a Cardinal, the new pope was a staunch critic of the U.S. led invasion of Iraq. On one occasion before the war, he was asked whether it would be just. "Certainly not," he said, and explained that the situation led him to conclude that "the damage would be greater than the values one hopes to save."

"Just war" theory is a religious formulation, not a political assessment. Perhaps LC could explain the hierarchy of her church. Is she...above the Pope? It would seem so. If so, damn nice of her to give her time to such small-potatoes enterprises as a blog on Beliefnet.

I'm a sporting guy, with nothing to bet on until the Oscars. Maybe we can do something good for humanity here. I'll give $1,000 to a charity of LC's choice if she can produce a reputable source (that leaves out everyone on her blogroll) affirming two things: l) Pope Benedict has condemned the position he and John Paul had about the Iraq war and 2) Pope Benedict enthusiastically praises Bush's efforts in Iraq. On the flip side, if LC can't find a law under which Cindy Sheehan could be legitimately charged at the State of the Union speech, she ponies up $1,000 to a charity of my choice. Whadya say, LC.? Let's lively up these debates with some real skin in the game.

4) Bonhoeffer and Sheehan. Too bad LC hates Sheehan so much. There are interesting parallels. From an online profile:

A group called the Deutsche Christen ("German Christians") became the voice of Nazi ideology within the Evangelical Church, even advocating the removal of the Old Testament from the Bible. In the summer of 1933, citing the state Aryan laws that barred all "non-Aryans" from the civil service, the Deutsche Christen proposed a church "Aryan paragraph" to prevent "non-Aryans" from becoming ministers or religious teachers.

Bonhoeffer bitterly opposed the Aryan paragraph, arguing that its ratification surrendered Christian precepts to political ideology. If "non-Aryans" were banned from the ministry, he argued, then their colleagues should resign in solidarity, even if this meant the establishment of a new church—a "confessing" church that would remain free of Nazi influence. This was a minority view; most German bishops wanted to avoid antagonizing the Nazi regime and to keep their regional churches together.

Bonhoeffer was explicit about the church's obligations to fight political injustice. The church, he wrote, must fight evil in three stages: The first was to question state injustice and call the state to responsibility; the second was to help the victims of injustice, whether they were church members or not. Ultimately, however, the church might find itself called "not only to help the victims who have fallen under the wheel, but to fall into the spokes of the wheel itself" in order to halt the machinery of injustice.

Readers with memories of recent unjust wars will be thrilled by these words. They take the church out of the business of sticking its head in the sand in times of national crisis. And not only do they call for activism--they call for absolute moral activism, giving no compromise. Compare Bonhoeffer to one of the heroes of the anti-war movement. Here's Mario Savio's greatest speech, at Berkeley, in 1964:

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!

See? Same idea. Now...this is very inconvenient stuff. It forces you to declare your loyalties. Are you on the side of secret spying, and torture, and "collateral damage" in the service of "liberating" a country that only seems to want us to leave? Then stand over there. Do you believe in the Constitution and due process and a government not entirely operated for the benefit of evangelical Christians and major corporations? Then stand over here. But no more equivocating, no more middle ground, no more pretending that the folks on the "right" side are like us, just with strange opinions. Because it's getting very very late....

Cindy Sheehan is guilty of having a lousy personality. Her tactics sometimes make me uncomfortable. But I think Dietrich Bonhoeffer would be happy to sit next to her at dinner. I think he would look at what is going on in Washington and understand her sense of urgency--her sense of emergency. I'll go further: I think he would absolutely adore Cindy Sheehan. From another online bio:

Declaring that it was impossible to know the objective truth about Christ's real nature and essence, Bonhoeffer proclaimed that God was dead. Moreover, Bonhoeffer believed that the true Christian was the confessing believer who totally immersed his life in the secular world, becoming a secular Christian. Rejecting the objective unalterable moral standards of the Bible, Bonhoeffer proclaimed a situational ethics--that right and wrong are determined solely by the "loving obligations of the moment."

Sorry, LC, but the "loving obligation" of this moment is a T-shirt with the ever-growing number of our war dead on it. And I'm just so so sorry Cindy almost ruined the President's night. But you know--it's about time someone did.

The Beauty Part

It starts with 71 seconds of silence--one for each year of Johnny Cash's life. And then with his voice: "Rosanne, c'mon." And then these lyrics: "It was a black Cadillac/that drove you away." The black keeps coming. "It was a black Cadillac/like you used to drive." And "it's a black heart of pain that I'm wearing." Happily, the music chugs along in a jauntier gear, first guitars, then organ, then horns. Experts say there's a quote from "Ring of Fire"--one of Johnny's big hits--toward the end. But it's the words that hammer the point of loss home: "It's a lonely world/I guess it always was/minus you/minus blood."

In "Black Cadillac," a woman who doesn't know what to believe in--an impatient, questioning woman who has no respect for easy answers and pre-packaged formulas--swallows a mountain of loss. And processes it. And comes out--astonishingly --on the side of faith and love and a longing for connection so great it defeats death.

The way out is the way through. "God is in the roses--and the thorns." "When it all falls apart, there is love." Rosanne Cash places her bet firmly on "the world unseen." She's going to "sail off on the Good Intent." That's a lot of belief for a woman who has no religion.

I hesitate to say that "Black Cadillac" is the best thing Rosanne Cash has ever done--what came before is nothing to scoff at. So let's put it this way: "Black Cadilac" is about a thousand times better than the best thing a lot of other singer-songwriters have done. And no one could have done it but Rosanne Cash.

The State of the Union: You can't handle the truth

Well, what did you expect--an Oprah confessional?

The biggest fabulist to set foot in the White House since Walt Disney went to Washington to collect the Medal of Freedom in 1964 was not about to tell you anything like the truth.

Start here: America's addicted to oil. He'd know--he's the oil president. Made his first money getting bailed out of a failed company. Never crossed his Texas brethren. Had Cheney assemble the oil boys in an Energy Task Force so secret no lawsuit has been able to pry their names--and their recommendations--loose. Took us to war against a country that just happens to be oil rich. Got $2.6 million in campaign contributions from the gas/oil industry in '04.

You bet we're addicted. If the rest of the world ate and farmed as the United States does, all known global fossil-fuel reserves would be exhausted in 7 years. That's crazy! But hey, that's a scientist talking--in Bush terms, he's lower on the scale of knowledge than the lowest Republican foot soldier. So, let's change the classification of SUVs from cars to trucks so they can legally get away with their crummy gas mileage. Keep the price of gas low so Detroit can build bigger--that is, more profitable--cars. And that's just the tip of what Bush has done to prolong and intensify the addiction.

The day after Exxon reports record profits, the President discovers we're addicted to gas? A howler. But then, consider the verb. And then consider the speaker. The addict is always the last to know.

This disconnect between rhetoric and reality--this breathtaking screw-you to the facts and logic and history and common sense--would be shocking if it were not the very hallmark of this administration. It's reflex, really. They lie about everything. They lie even when they don't have to. (Alternative theory: His aides craft lies and tell Bush they're the truth, and he's so stupid and/or lazy he buys it and goes out and sells their nonsense with total conviction.)

Why does this White House lie? In part because it's full of ideologues. Big picture guys. Spinners of tall tales, dreamers of big dreams, banging on about "freedom" while--just out of camera range--their pals are getting filthy rich. But it's also because they disrespect their fellow citizens in fundamental ways. And why not: Half of us read at the 8th-grade level. Half--the same half, I say--doesn't buy evolution. We're children. We can't handle the truth.

So the words flow by, the finger points, Chris Matthews (and, no doubt, Loose Canon) is thrilled anew by the way he leans into the lectern. Well, parse this, suckers;

Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research, human cloning in all its forms, creating or implanting embryos for experiments, creating human-animal hybrids, and buying, selling, or patenting human embryos.

Did you catch that? Human-animal hybrids. Terrible idea! A half-man, half-ape would shed all over the couch. And have mad crazy dreams. Like equal rights. Soon these hybrids would have the Dems proposing legislation that would allow human-animal/human marriage. Think of it--an ape-by-proxy going horizontal with your sister. Hold the line, George!

Small point: Can you name the scientist who is speaking in favor of human-animal hybrids? Me neither.

But there I go, taking him seriously, getting riled up. This is Year 6. I should know better. The boy in the bubble is a cartoon president, with a bubble over his head: Believe this at your peril.

Here's what Bush might have said, had he wanted to tell us the truth: In order to save Republicans from defeat in the fall elections, there will be a major troop withdrawal from Iraq in September and October. (Cause for concern: American troops having to fight their way from the Green Zone to the airport might not look like triumph.) The cupboard is bare. We're broke. If we have to fight a war on a second front, we'll be calling for firemen and cops. We can't stop another 9/11, so we've teed it up for the Fox crowd to believe that the terrorists get their marching orders from coded messages in New York Times editorials.

The truth is even worse, really: The President who used 9/11 as Santa Claus--well, what didn't he get from Congress?--could use another infusion of terror. His approval rating is stuck at 39%. The liberal blogosphere forced 25 senators to vote to filibuster the Alito Supreme Court nomination--anything he sends to Congress now is doomed. On the evidence of his speech last night, he has no realistic initiatives he thinks he can sell us. A "commission" on health care? DOA.

But another terror attack! With one bomb, one grand bit of Al-Qaeda theatrics, the most divisive president in our history could assume near-dictatorial powers. I'm not saying he prays for this attack--that's obscene. But you damn well know the plans have been drawn up what to do if and when. And, of course, who to blame.

Blame. That's the key word. Hold it ever in mind. Because if you're reading this and nodding agreement in any way....that finger's eventually go