cognitive dissident

Bill Moyers’ address to the PBS Annual Meeting l is excellent, especially the section where Moyers laments “how corporate media pollutes the meaning of ‘fair and balanced’ with the pretense that two well-rehearsed sound bites by representatives of self-serving interests constitutes ‘analysis’ of the news:”

I believe in "fair and balanced."

I say let's be more fair than anyone else. Let's be as fair to Main Street as we are to Wall Street - to the working men and women of America as we are to the big corporations, big government, and big investors.

Let's be as fair to poor families as we are to the First Family and the Royal Family (Yes, I looked up one evening, as more deaths were occurring in Iraq, more suffering was being endured on the Gulf Coast, and more Americans were losing their healthcare, and there on my public television screen was a special on "The Royals and their Pets.")

Let's be as fair to the skeptic of official policy as we are to its spokesman, as fair to the commoner as to the celebrity, and as fair to the lived experience of ordinary people as we are to the calculated opinion of think tank experts.

I'm for balance.

Let's balance the spin with the evidence, the rhetoric with the record, and opinion with reporting.

Let's balance what we're told with what we know. […]

Let's balance the view from Washington with the view from the country. […]

We ought to hit close to home, too - no matter who's in power.

Balance?

Let's balance the complaint of ideologues and their patrons in Congress and the press with the unarticulated pain and silent lament of the maid in the hotel room, the waitress in the coffee shop, and the clerk in the shopping mall - all struggling to make ends meet in an economy rigged against them. On second thought, let's give the maid, the waitress, and the clerk a voice. Let's give them a say. They deserve it. Their taxes pay for this system.

And let's balance programs written by the National Mining Association and Boeing with programs underwritten by the United Mine Workers, Consumer's Union, and Citizens for a Fair Economy. If they can't afford the underwriting, let's at least give them a hearing.

(Thanks to Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly for the tip.)

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Philip Slater’s “The Great Fundamentalist Hoax” at HuffPo exposes the selective biblical literalism of the fundies, noting that their preference runs toward verses that reinforce their traditional views of social hierarchy:

It's startling, in fact, how rarely fundamentalist Christians mention the sayings of Jesus. 'Morality' to them means the sexual inhibitions of ancient Middle Eastern patriarchies. […]

The Bible becomes the 'Word of God' when a bigot wants to use it to bludgeon his neighbor, and a mere archaic relic when it would be inconvenient for him to take it seriously. Fundamentalists of all persuasions--Christian, Muslim, Jewish--often manage to find some sort of backing for their hatreds in their sacred texts; for these texts were written in societies that were misogynistic, militaristic, and rigidly authoritarian--written, furthermore, by men who believed the earth was flat.

He ends his post with this passage:

There ought to be a term that would designate those who actually follow the teachings of Jesus, since the word "Christian" has been largely divorced from those teachings, and so polluted by fundamentalists that it has come to connote their polar opposite: intolerance, vindictive hatred, and bigotry.

I think the term he’s looking for is “Christianist,” as Andrew Sullivan has so amply demonstrated.

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I wrote about Sherman Yellen renaming Republicans “Republicants” here, and Thomas Schaller at Gadflyer has begun using the term as well. He suggests that Democrats

begin publicly referring to Republicans as the "Republican't Party." As in: Can't balance the budget; can't stop raising the national debt ceiling; can't manage federal emergencies; can't find Osama bin Laden; can't control our borders; can't stop smearing and leaking; can't answer tough questions from the media; can't find weapons of mass destruction... (I can't spend all day doing this, but you get the point.)

A meme like this can be invaluable, but only if it is propagated.

Spread the word!

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Bruce Schneier’s article in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune, “We’re giving up privacy and getting little in return,” estimates the false-positive and false-negative rates for the NSA telephone data-mining program, and concludes that it is “clearly ridiculous.”

…The New York Times reported that the computers spat out thousands of tips per month. Every one of them turned out to be a false alarm, at enormous cost in money and civil liberties.

Finding terrorism plots is not a problem that lends itself to data mining. It's a needle-in-a-haystack problem, and throwing more hay on the pile doesn't make that problem any easier. We'd be far better off putting people in charge of investigating potential plots and letting them direct the computers, instead of putting the computers in charge and letting them decide who should be investigated.

By allowing the NSA to eavesdrop on us all, we're not trading privacy for security. We're giving up privacy without getting any security in return. [emphasis added]

(Thanks to The Progressive Daily Beacon for the tip.)

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Karen Armstrong’s interview at Salon with Steve Paulsen has something to offend everyone, as Paulsen notes:

It's easy to understand her appeal in today's world of spiritual seekers. As an ex-nun, she resonates with people who've fallen out with organized religion. Armstrong has little patience for literal readings of the Bible, but argues that sacred texts yield profound insights if we read them as myth and poetry. She's especially drawn to the mystical tradition, which -- in her view -- has often been distorted by institutionalized religion. While her books have made her enormously popular, it isn't surprising that she's also managed to raise the ire of both Christian fundamentalists and atheists.

My only real disappointment with the interview was Paulsen’s erroneous assertion that Hitler was “secularist,” despite the fact that he was Catholic. This could have been an opportunity for Armstrong to refute this common misconception, as well as mention the church’s collaboration with genocide, but she let it slide.

(Thanks to Liberal Avenger for the tip.)

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Color me surprised, but Bush lied—just like his father—about not raising taxes. During his first presidential campaign, Bush promised to “oppose and veto any increase in individual or corporate marginal income tax rates or individual or corporate income tax hikes.” As the New York Times observes, the tax cut bill he recently signed hikes taxes on Americans living abroad and on teenagers with college savings.

(Thanks to ThinkProgress for the tip.)

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Star Parker’s diatribe against the “gay agenda” over at TownHall trots out the usual “behavior” boilerplate and wastes ink complaining about increasing social acceptance of the LGBT community: “although the majority of Americans are still opposed to legalization, they are a lot less opposed than they were in the a decade ago.” [sic] Parker then supposes that “Americans are increasingly confusing entitlement and political power with freedom and tolerance.” As much fun as it would be to tear this tissue-thin argument to shreds, Pam Spaulding has already done so here.

This section is the heart of Spaulding’s excellent rebuttal:

Your movement has embraced the bigots, the religious intolerants and socially backward misfits while demonizing gays for political gain and access to power. […]

It doesn’t mean that school choice or private social security accounts don’t hold appeal to gays as issues, they simply cannot be issues of primacy when gays:

can’t serve openly in the military

are threatened with legislation to prevent them from adopting or fostering children

cannot have the same partnership and legal benefits as married couples

can be fired from a job simply for being gay.

You’re not fighting to end that discrimination, Star — you believe in it. When you step up and truly believe gays and lesbians are equal citizens, then we’ll talk. Until then, stop whining about any group seeking political power when your goons on the right have plotted and planned for years to take control. They are not only attempting to legislate rights of gay citizens away, they are attempting to control the reproductive rights of women (from contraception to abortion), and obliterate the privacy rights of everyone.

The social conservatives have had a stranglehold on government, and it’s clear that you feel the folks you have placed your trust in have squandered it because the public has not bought into the social control agenda. That isn’t our problem, that’s your problem. [emphasis added]

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Salon has the text of Bill Moyers’ commencement address at Hamilton College.

His words, as always, are worth reading. That is particularly true of this passage:

Frankly, I'm not sure anyone from my generation should be saying anything to your generation except, "We're sorry. We're really sorry for the mess you're inheriting. We are sorry for the war in Iraq. For the huge debts you will have to pay for without getting a new social infrastructure in return. We're sorry for the polarized country. The corporate scandals. The corrupt politics. Our imperiled democracy. We're sorry for the sprawl and our addiction to oil and for all those toxins in the environment. Sorry about all this, class of 2006. Good luck cleaning it up."

(Thanks to LiberalAvenger for the tip.)

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O’Reilly is convinced that young Americans “have no idea what’s going on” because “they get their news form Jon Stewart” and other entertainers. Actually, Bill, the opposite is true. MediaMatters notes that

studies have shown that viewers of Comedy Central's The Daily Show with John Stewart are consistently better informed about current events than consumers of other media, and Daily Show viewers are considerably better educated than viewers of The O'Reilly Factor. Further, consumers of Fox News in general have been found to be significantly more misinformed about current events than consumers of other mainstream media.

Nielsen Media Research shows that "Stewart's viewers are not only smart, but more educated than O'Reilly's." The Annenberg Public Policy Center observed:

"Daily Show viewers have higher campaign knowledge than national news viewers and newspaper readers -- even when education, party identification, following politics, watching cable news, receiving campaign information online, age, and gender are taken into consideration."

I’m more worried about the older Americans who get their news from Faux News; they’re the ones who tend to be misinformed.

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Ira Winkler, a former NSA analyst, discusses the NSA domestic spying in this article at ComputerWorld. Winkler states flat-out that “[i]gnoring FISA's rules concerning warrants is illegal,” and observes that:

This scattershot attempt at data mining drags FBI agents away from real investigations, while destroying the NSA’s credibility in the eyes of law enforcement and the public in general.

Although the Right will probably try to slander him as someone who hates the NSA and its mission (due to statements like “The actions taken by the executive branch after 9/11 aren't protecting our freedom. They are usurping it.”), Winkler is not their caricature:

Over the years, I have defended the NSA and its employees as reasonable and law abiding. I was all for invading Afghanistan, deployment of the Clipper Chip and many other controversial government programs. NSA domestic spying is against everything I was ever taught working at the NSA. I might be more for it if there was any credible evidence that this somehow provides useful information that couldn’t otherwise be had. However, the domestic spying program has gotten so massive that the well-established process of getting a warrant cannot be followed -- and quantity most certainly doesn't translate to quality. Quite the opposite.

[…]

I think Sen. Jon Kyl, a strong supporter of the NSA domestic spying program, said it best: "We have got to collect intelligence on the enemy." I fully agree. But the enemy numbers in the hundreds at best. the NSA is collecting data on hundreds of millions of people who are clearly not the enemy. These numbers speak for themselves. [emphasis added]

(Thanks to Bruce Schneier for the tip.)

Glenn Greenwald has a nice piece on the joint Feingold/Specter proposal. Here are its three main provisions:

Re-state that FISA is the exclusive means by which our government can conduct electronic surveillance of U.S. persons on U.S. soil for foreign intelligence purposes;

Prohibit the use of federal funds for any future domestic electronic surveillance that does not fully comply with the law; and

Expressly state that there is no such thing as an “implied” repeal of FISA laws. In other words, no future bill can be interpreted as authorizing an exemption from FISA unless it expressly makes an exception.

When the Busheviks continue to break the law, as they no doubt will, the proposed bill “would also force them to find a way to fund any non-FISA eavesdropping activities notwithstanding a Congressional ban on such funding.” Mush like Reagan’s violations of the Boland amendment in his illegal gun-running escapades in Central America, there is little doubt that Bush will violate the law even if it is made more explicit. When he does so, however, we must not let his felonious administration escape justice under a fog of failures to recall. They must be held to account for what they have done.

The bill is here. (60KB PDF).

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Rob Boston at AU’s “Wall of Separation” has the most detailed piece I’ve seen on Pat Robertson’s latest lie: to boost sales of his protein shake, Robertson claims that he can leg-press 2,000 pounds! Clay Travis writes on CBS SportsLine that:

There is no way on earth Robertson leg presses 2,000 pounds. That would mean a 76-year-old man broke the all-time Florida State University leg press record by 665 pounds over Dan Kendra. 665 pounds. Further, when he set the record, they had to modify the leg press machine to fit 1,335 pounds of weight. Plus, Kendra's capillaries in his eyes burst. Burst. Where in the world did Robertson even find a machine that could hold 2,000 pounds at one time? And how does he still have vision?

Boston rebukes Robertson this way:

Here’s quick reminder to Pat Robertson: The Ten Commandments you so often laud mention lying – and they don’t recommend it.

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How much can economics change the dynamics of the “peak oil” debate? Raymond Learsy (author of Over a Barrel: Breaking the Middle East Oil Cartel) has penned an overview of the situation (“Oil Is Not Scarce”) for HuffPo. He talks about tar sands, oil shale, offshore drilling, and how technology can recover oil that was previously unavailable.

Time will tell if this is the era of “peak oil,” or simply more profiteering.

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The New York Times has published a handy chart of some key GOP scandals in Washington.

Let it be noted that the major only Democratic scandal in Washington (William Jefferson’s bribery, with video evidence) has resulted in calls for his resignation (see here, here, here, and this Salon article by Tim Grieve.) As Jonathan Singer notes at MyDD, Democrats call for ethics investigations of their own members; Republicans give the crooks on their side of the aisle standing ovations. That’s quite a contrast, and one that I hope is remembered in the voting booth come November.

What does it say about congressional Republicans that, after barely a decade of control, have become far more corrupt than Democrats were after 40 years?

(Thanks to TomPaine for the tip.)

update (2:39pm):
According to ThinkProgress, Pelosi has asked Jefferson to resign from the Ways & Means committee:

Dear Congressman Jefferson:

In the interest of upholding the high ethical standard of the House Democratic Caucus, I am writing to request your immediate resignation from the Ways and Means Committee.

Sincerely,
Nancy Pelosi
Democratic Leader

She should have asked him to give up his congressional seat, pack his bags, and return to his constituents to beg their forgiveness.

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ThinkProgress posted a clip of Bill O’Reilly getting his facts wrong again, and then telling his viewers that “All decent Americans should reject these haters.”

MediaMatters and ThinkProgress aren’t “haters,” Bill; they would just like to see a little truth in advertising from you and your network. If you bill your show as a “No-Spin Zone” on the “Fair and Balanced” network, and claim that “liberal people get just as much time as conservative people on the Fox News Channel, and the commentators are pretty much split down the middle on their ideological bent,” then you should at least attempt to live up to those words. Maybe all your hate for those “left-wing smear sites” is because they expose your double-talk, as MediaMatters did again yesterday.

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Steve Young at HuffPo has posted a great parody, “The Sean Hannity Commencement Speech Liberals Won’t Let Him Give.” It’s a good laugh for everyone who’s ever suffered through his pompous displays of belittling and bombast at Faux News.

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In response to the Wired article I mentioned yesterday about the NSA/AT&T spying nexus, Amanda Marcotte posted a response this morning. Here’s the clincher:

This isn’t just the government or AT&T invading your privacy. This is part of a larger tendency of those in power to refuse to distinguish between corporate and government power. If AT&T has set up a room only for the use of government spies, then not only are they undermining your basic right not to be searched without a warrant but they are basically acting like an arm of the government. I no longer see any reason to refrain from describing a BushCo policy like domestic spying as a fascist policy. [emphasis added]

I would like to be able to disagree with her assessment of fascism, but she’s right. Under Bush, the US is no longer the nation it once was.

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A group called Clergy for Fairness has sent an open letter to Bill Frist and Harry Reid denouncing the Federal [Anti-]Marriage Amendment. It reads, in part, that:

The Marriage Protection Amendment raises alarming constitutional concerns. We do not favor using the constitutional amendment process to resolve the divisive issues of the moment. Loading down the Constitution with such amendments weakens the enormous influence it holds as the key document that binds our nation together.

We are concerned that the Marriage Protection Amendment would mark the first time in history that an amendment to the Constitution would restrict the civil rights of an entire group of Americans. Misusing our nation’s most cherished document for this purpose would tarnish our proud tradition of expanding citizens’ rights by Constitutional amendment, a tradition long supported by America’s faith communities. These concerns alone merit rejection of the Marriage Protection Amendment.

There is also a joint letter from several national religious groups, covering a variety of perspectives from Quakers and Sikhs to Unitarians and the UCC, here.

Although we have differing opinions on rights for same-sex couples, we believe the Federal Marriage Amendment reflects a fundamental disregard for individual civil rights and ignores differences among our nation’s many religious traditions. It should be rejected.

[…]

We are particularly concerned that this proposal to amend the Constitution would, for the first time, restrict the civil rights of millions of Americans. That concern alone merits rejection of the Federal Marriage Amendment.

Saturday’s article in the Washington Post, “Religious liberals gain new visibility,” reminds readers that progressive activism in politics isn’t a new phenomenon, although it has been overshadowed for several decades:

For most of the 20th century -- from the Progressive era through the civil rights movement -- religious involvement in American politics was dominated by the left. That changed in the 1970s, after the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision on abortion rights, the formation of the Rev. Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, and, on the left, "the rise of a secular, liberal, urban elite that was not particularly comfortable with religion," said Will Marshall III, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, a Washington think tank.

It’s heartening to see liberal believers standing up for values like justice and civil rights.

(Thanks to Jeremy Learning at Wall of Separation for the tip.)

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Everyone simply must read this Wired article on the lawsuit against AT&T for their complicity with the NSA’s illegal surveillance. There are related articles here, here, and here. (Technically-minded people might want to download these documents for future reference before they disappear down the memory hole.)

Read them now.

It’s that important.

(Thanks to John at AmericaBlog for the tip.)

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PZ Myers at Pharyngula does a great job of demolishing Rabbis Shafran’s response to philosopher Slavoj Zizek’s New York Times piece.

In the face of religiously inspired violence and terrorism, Zizek called atheism “one of Europe’s greatest legacies and perhaps our only chance for peace.” He then repudiated Dostoevsky’s dictum that “if God doesn’t exist, then everything is permitted,” observing that this platitude is a mirror image of reality:

the lesson of today's terrorism is that if God exists, then everything, including blowing up thousands of innocent bystanders, is permitted — at least to those who claim to act directly on behalf of God, since, clearly, a direct link to God justifies the violation of any merely human constraints and considerations. [emphasis added]

This defense did not sit well with Rabbi Shafran, who stated that “atheism qua atheism presents no compelling objection” to “amoral or unethical behavior.” He continued, opining that:

To a true atheist, there can be no more ultimate meaning to good and bad actions than to good or bad weather; no more import to right and wrong than to right and left. To be sure, rationales might be conceived for establishing societal norms, but social contracts are practical tools, not moral imperatives; they are, in the end, artificial. Only an acknowledgement of the Creator can impart true meaning to human life, placing it on a plane above that of mosquitoes.

This statement, however, hinges on his presupposition that “true” and “ultimate” are the exclusive province of religion. The atheist objection to this line of argumentation is that religion’s extravagant claims of ultimate knowledge have borne no substantive proof. In the face of competing religious claims, one would be wise to examine them carefully rather than blindly accepting—as most religionists do—the claims of one’s family or society. This foundational skepticism is a premise of most freethought.

Perhaps most annoying was Shafran’s tired recitation of the “Adolph Hitler was no believer in G-d” canard. I had thought that it has been debunked too many times to waste words on, but Meyers disagrees. He asks:

The Hitler who said, "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so"? Some might say he wasn't a very good Catholic (although the pope at the time didn't seem to have any major objections) and was just playing to the crowd, but it's interesting that he turned to religion when he needed to appeal to the people to support his agenda.

The Rabbi’s use of mafia hitman Richard Kuklinski as an example of atheist amorality was also quickly dismissed by Meyers:

Mr Kuklinski was brought up as a Catholic, and sent his kids to a Catholic school, and he was affiliated with the Mafia, whose members are often (but not necessarily, of course) Catholic. I can't find anything to suggest he was an atheist. He was certainly a despicable character, but I don't see why he would be brought up as an example of the corrupting influence of godlessness. It would be easier, and just as fallacious, to use him as an example of the moral bankruptcy of Catholicism. [emphasis added]

Does the Rabbi know that he has been lbitch-slapped?

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The ACLU has filed complaints in twenty states (Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia and Washington) demanding investigations into the NSA’s wiretapping. Their newspaper announcement is here. Carol Rose, the ACLU’s Executive Director, said:

“It’s time to shed light on this illegal invasion of privacy that could affect everyone in this country. […] The purpose of this effort is not to obstruct legitimate law enforcement activities, but to protect the basic privacy and due process rights of people whose telephone records have been divulged without a warrant, notice or consent.”

Each of us has a dog in this fight; it’s time to start acting like it. This COINTELPRO-on-steroids operation is not just illegal, it’s indefensible.

(Thanks to TalkLeft for the tip.)

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Glenn Greenwald’s post on freedom of the press under the Bush regime describes Alberto Gonzales’ remarks over the weekend:

The administration's assault on a free and vital press took a huge leap forward this weekend, when Attorney General Alberto Gonazles announced on national television that the Bush administration has the power to imprison journalists who publish stories revealing conduct by the President which the administration wants to conceal (such as the warrantless NSA eavesdropping program, which he specifically cited). Gonazles went further and made clear that the administration is actively considering prosecution against journalists who publish such stories. [emphasis added]

For those who would ask why this is so dangerous, Greenwald provides this explanation:

Literally, if George Bush had his way -- if government sources were sufficiently intimidated out of disclosing classified information and journalists were sufficiently intimidated out of writing about it -- we would not know about any of these matters:

* Abu Ghraib * The Bybee Torture Memorandum * The use of torture as an interrogation tool * The illegal eavesdropping on Americans without warrants * The creation of secret gulags in Eastern Europe * The existence of abundant pre-war information undermining and even negating the administration's WMD claims * Policies of rendering prisoners to the worst human rights-abusing countries

[…]

There is not a single instance -- not one -- which reflects any harm to our national security as a result of any of these disclosures. [….] These disclosures trigger public debate over highly controversial matters and, as a result, often harm the President politically. But none of them is an example of gratuitous disclosure of secret information intended to harm national security.

Greenwald then poses several questions:

Why were we able to defend our national security throughout the 20th Century without imprisoning journalists? Why have we suddenly reached a point where our Government is too weak to defend our country without trying to stifle a free press by threatening journalists with imprisonment? Why can't George Bush defend the country without destroying almost every traditional institution and practice in our country to which presidential administrations of both parties have, for decades if not longer, managed to adhere?

Why, indeed?

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Bruce Schneier’s article at Wired, “The Eternal Value of Privacy,” recognizes privacy as “a basic human need.” Schneier concludes:

Too many wrongly characterize the debate as "security versus privacy." The real choice is liberty versus control. Tyranny, whether it arises under threat of foreign physical attack or under constant domestic authoritative scrutiny, is still tyranny. Liberty requires security without intrusion, security plus privacy. Widespread police surveillance is the very definition of a police state. And that's why we should champion privacy even when we have nothing to hide. [emphasis added]

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A senior honors thesis at the University of Illinois, “Uncovering the Rationales for the War on Iraq,” details the 27 different reasons the Bush administration gave for invading Iraq. As the university describes, student Devon Largio:

not only identified the rationales offered for going to war, but also established when they emerged and who promoted them. She also charted the appearance of critical keywords such as Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and Iraq to trace the administration’s shift in interest from the al Qaeda leader to the Iraqi despot, and the news media’s response to that shift.

It’s a long study, 212 pages, but it’s excellent work. As her professor, Scott Althaus, observed:

“It is first-rate research…the best senior thesis I have ever seen – thoroughly documented and elaborately detailed. Her methodology is first-rate.”

(Here are links to the abstract and TOC, the executive summary, and the thesis.)

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This BuzzFlash interview with author Eric Boehlert discusses his new book Lapdogs, about the media’s largely deferential treatment of Bush’s scandals. Boehlert refers to Bob Woodward, once a journalist, as “the ultimate symbol” of the media’s transformation “from watchdog to lapdog.” This comparison is telling:

The press has been extraordinarily timid with Bush. If you just look back at the same press corps during the Clinton Administration you see that a titanic shift took place on inauguration day in 2001.

During the Clinton years there was this mindset that we can print anything we want – any half-baked allegation – as long as it’s leaked from either a prosecutor or Republicans on the Hill. And two and three months later, when nothing pans out and it turns out to be complete fantasy, A, we don’t write about it again, or B, we pretend it wasn’t fantasy and we just keep writing about it as if it were a fact. That was the mindset during the Clinton era, and the mindset during the Bush era is the complete opposite. The mindset did a complete 180.

Now you have just as unsettling and damaging a mindset as during the Clinton years. It’s a completely different standard that they have set down for the Bush Administration.

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Jonathan Rauch’s “Stoking the Beast” from the latest issue of The Atlantic demolishes Reagan’s “cut his allowance” tax-cutting mentality under which our nation’s deficit has grown to such obscene proportions. Rauch talks to Cato’s William Niskanen, who notes that—contrary to supply-side dogma—cutting taxes does not reduce government spending:

judging by the last twenty-five years (plenty of time for a fair test), a tax cut of 1 percent of the GDP increases the rate of spending growth by about 0.15 percent of the GDP a year. A comparable tax hike reduces spending growth by the same amount.

After noting that the sweet spot appears to be 19% of GDP (currently 17.8% due to Bush’s tax cuts), Rauch observes that:

conservatives who are serious about halting or reversing the dizzying Bush-era expansion of government—if there are any such conservatives, something of an open question these days—should stop defending Bush’s tax cuts. Instead, they should be talking about raising taxes to at least 19 percent of the GDP. Voters will not shrink Big Government until they feel the pinch of its true cost.

Restoring fiscal sanity to Washington will be quite and endeavor, requiring some long-overdue House-cleaning.

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Art Spiegelman’s “Drawing Blood: Outrageous cartoons and the art of outrage” (it’s not online yet, but it’s from the latest issue of Harper’s) is the most comprehensive piece on the infamous Muhammad cartoons that I’ve seen. Spiegelman even analyzes the twelve original cartoons and rates them on a four-bomb scale, indicating their likelihood to draw violent attention to their makers. His attention to historical detail has been missing from both the gutless media who refused to print the cartoons and the wingnut commentators whose knees jerked at the chance to express their hatred of Islam.

(As an aside, Borders is apparently carrying this issue of Harper’s. This is somewhat of a surprise, since they (along with WaldenBooks) refused to stock a recent issue of Free Inquiry for publishing the same cartoons. One could cynically assume that sales of the higher-circulation Harper’s meant more than the principle of “the safety and security of our customers and employees.” One would also, however, have to note that the conservative rag Weekly Standard also published the cartoons, but was not pulled from newsstands in fear.

That’s bias, but it’s certainly not liberal.

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There’s a new Human Rights Campaign ad, urging resistance to the proposed Federal [Anti-]Marriage Amendment. (The HRC’s campaign webpage is here, the ad is here, and the text of the proposed amendment is here.)The Senate will vote on the proposed amendment is scheduled for 5 June, so there isn’t much time left to make your voice heard.

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Billmon at WhiskeyBar has posted another blue/red map. The blue areas are labeled “Reality” and the red ones “Bushlandia.” Check it out if you need a chuckle.

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David Neiwert’s long post on Christianism reveals some of the history of the term. In one of the quoted posts, Neiwert notes that our “culture war”

is often presented as "secular vs. Christian," but that's patently false. The fundamentalists have managed to distort the public debate to the point that fundamentalist beliefs are identified in the media as "Christian" -- ignoring entirely the fact that there are large numbers of Christians who don't believe the same way as the conservatives.

Read the whole piece; it’s well worth it.

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Salon has an interview with intelligence historian Matthew Aid. He discusses the surveillance programs Echelon and Carnivore, and makes observations about the current NSA phone scandal:

The fact that the federal government has my phone records scares the living daylights out of me. They won't learn much from them other than I like ordering pizza on Friday night and I don't call my mother as often as I should. But it should scare the living daylights out of everybody, even if you're willing to permit the government certain leeways to conduct the war on terrorism.

We should be terrified that Congress has not been doing its job and because all of the checks and balances put in place to prevent this have been deliberately obviated. In order to get this done, the NSA and White House went around all of the checks and balances. I'm convinced that 20 years from now we, as historians, will be looking back at this as one of the darkest eras in American history. And we're just beginning to sort of peel back the first layers of the onion. We're hoping against hope that it's not as bad as I suspect it will be, but reality sets in every time a new article is published and the first thing the Bush administration tries to do is quash the story.

[…]

It's all coming out now in dribs and drabs, but when it all becomes clear, we'll find out that the key oversight functions -- those functions that were put in place to protect the rights of Americans -- were deliberately circumvented. Key components of the Justice Department that would have rightly objected to this were never consulted or told about the program. [emphasis added]

Aid knows whereof he speaks; the first volume of his three-book history of the NSA goes to press next year. (Thanks to georgia10 at DailyKos for the tip.)

Noted Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe has a blistering article in the Boston Globe about the NSA program’s danger to the Fourth Amendment:

Privacy apart, this president's defiance of statutes by the dozens is constitutionally alarming. But the matter goes deeper still. Even if Congress were to repeal the laws securing telephone privacy, or if phone companies found loopholes to slip through when pressured by government, the Constitution's Fourth Amendment shield for ''the right of the people to be secure" from ''unreasonable searches" is a shield for all seasons, one that a lawless president, a spineless Congress, and a complacent majority of citizens -- who are conditioned to a government operating under a shroud of secrecy while individuals live out their lives in fishbowls -- cannot be permitted to destroy, for the rest of us and our children. [emphasis added]

(Thanks to TalkLeft for the tip.)

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AlterNet has reprinted Laura Sheahen’s interview with Sam Harris from BeliefNet. After a comment from Harris about Old Testament barbarism, they had this exchange:

LS: Doesn't the evidence show that people take their sacred texts with a grain of salt?

SH: That's the point: in the West, we have delivered the salt. Obviously, people are no longer burning heretics alive in our public squares and that's a good thing. We in the West have suffered a sufficient confrontation with modernity, secular politics, and scientific culture so that even fundamentalist Christians and Orthodox Jews can't really live by the letter of their religious texts. [emphasis added]

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Michelle Goldberg’s “Saving secular society” at In These Times is another excerpt from her book Kingdom Coming. Here’s the money quote:

It makes no sense to fight religious authoritarianism abroad while letting it take over at home. The grinding, brutal war between modern and medieval values has spread chaos, fear, and misery across our poor planet. Far worse than the conflicts we're experiencing today, however, would be a world torn between competing fundamentalisms. Our side, America's side, must be the side of freedom and Enlightenment, of liberation from stale constricting dogmas. It must be the side that elevates reason above the commands of holy books and human solidarity above religious supremacism.

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Leesburg2day.com has a wealth of detail on the Patrick Henry story. As one of the departing professors stated, “I’ve been told there are things I cannot teach. There are things I cannot ask.” A disappointed student is quoted as saying, “I didn’t come here to go to Bible school. I came here for a liberal arts education from a Christian perspective,” Morgan said. “I feel like I’ve been cheated.”

That doesn’t sound like an environment that is very congenial to learning.

(Thanks to for the tip.)

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This editorial by John Bice notes that “many readers equate my criticisms of Christianity with religious intolerance or dislike of Christians” and asks rhetorically, “Why have I focused on Christianity?” He answers this way:

When any religion becomes thoroughly entangled with politics and social policy, as Christianity has, it becomes a fair target for criticism.

Unfortunately, candid religious criticism is often met with shock and anger. Christianity is so prevalent in America, and its core myths so widely accepted, Christians are often blind to how absurd their beliefs appear to nonbelievers.

[…]

Rationalists tend to see Christians, Muslims, Mormons, Hindus and assorted faithful as otherwise reasonable people with an odd penchant for the epistemological and ontological equivalents of the Tinfoil Beanie Brigade. We certainly don't "get it," but if believing makes people happy, who cares?

However, when faith-based beliefs become a basis for public policy decisions we should have no qualms whatsoever in criticizing them and calling them what they truly are: wholly unsupported by evidence and irrational. [emphasis added]

(Thanks to vjack at Atheist Revolution for the tip.)

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Chris Bowers at MyDD nails the whole red-state-blue-state-map issue in this “Blue nation” post. Everyone who was subjected to the flawed analyses of the “Red America” 2004 election maps should enjoy these new maps immensely.

update (1:53pm):
David Corn cracks wise in “Not time to move” http://www.davidcorn.com/archives/2006/05/not_time_to_mov.php that:

I used to joke that Democrats in Blue State areas ought to consider secession. But these days it seems like they might want to shift gears and contemplate expulsion.

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According to this LA Times article, Patrick Henry College has lost five of its sixteen faculty members (one firing and four resignations) over an article in the college magazine that supported the value of truth:

"There is much wisdom to be gained from Parmenides and Plato, as well Machiavelli and Marx. […] When we examine the writings of any author, professed Christian or otherwise, the proper question is not, 'Was this man a Christian?' but 'Is this true?' "

That, in a nutshell, demonstrates the difference between liberal education and conservative indoctrination. For those of us in the reality-based community, the truth is paramount; for them, belief is more important than truth.

(Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for the tip.)

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The text of McCain’s commencement address at Liberty University is here. McCain reiterated his support for the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, but took pains to stress the caveat that “Only a fool or a fraud sentimentalizes war. Americans should argue about this war.” He then came out forcefully for dissent:

Americans deserve more than tolerance from one another, we deserve each other’s respect, whether we think each other right or wrong in our views, as long as our character and our sincerity merit respect, and as long as we share, for all our differences, for all the noisy debates that enliven our politics, a mutual devotion to the sublime idea that this nation was conceived in – that freedom is the inalienable right of mankind, and in accord with the laws of nature and nature’s Creator.

With barely a hint of pandering, except for his very presence at Falwell U, McCain has mostly acquitted himself for his visit to the belly of the fundamentalist beast. I wish he had been more pointed in his remarks, but instead he chose the unobjectionable moderate territory. Time will tell if this turns out to be a wise move for him and his presidential campaign.

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