Small Blawg

No comment on the relationship between the two, except to remind you that Meghan McCain famously said she will not comment about Sarah Palin at all, ever — thus providing a pretty clear comment. And in fact, Ms. McCain tries to squirm out of commenting on a great many things. But before we get into that, I need to share a metaphor I've never heard before, provided by Republican consultant Mark McKinnon on an appearance with Rachel Maddow July 7:

[Palin] may be crazier than an acre of snakes.

Hissssss! He surely has a point. Palin keeps forgetting that erstwhile almost-son-in-law Levi Johnston has access to a national microphone whenever he wants it, and that he lived in her daughter's bedroom for lo, those many months while they were waiting for their child to arrive (something which Palin tries to deny for fear of alienating her berserker moralist base.) Johnston nailed her this week by telling the press precisely why she quit the governorship early: based on what he heard living in her house, she wanted the money for the book, and there's a possible reality show in the offing. And then, showing off her distinctly non-Presidential chops, Palin sent a snarky spokeswoman out to accuse the 19-year-old father of her grandson of engaging in "fiction" and "acting."

Meanwhile, the press has been making much of Republican candidates for governor in New Jersey and Virginia indicating a vigorous disinterest in having her appear on their behalf. What she buys them is far less than what she costs them in the sort of electorate those two states have. Governor Rick Perry of Texas is eager to have her; he shares her husband's secessionist inclinations.

I caught Meghan McCain on Real Time with Bill Maher last night; it was a re-run of the June 19 show. She wants it both ways: at 24, she wants to be taken seriously, and to have the weight to appear with the likes of Paul Begala, also on that night's roster. Maher pressed her several times about the way Palin lied about Letterman's recent joke about Bristol, tagging him as a rapist and child molester, versus the way her own father was lied about by Bush 43's campaign in 2000, being accused of fathering "a black child out of wedlock and crazy from the 'Nam," and she'd chirp at him that she just wants to move on, move on, MOVE ON ALREADY MISTER OLD GUY. Maher said, "Isn't that the same thing, telling lies about somebody?" In a Valley Girl whine, she responded,

I'd love to look forward in politics, and 2009 and the Obama administration. I hate talking about 2000, it was nine years ago, I was in puberty when it happened, like I'd love to move on and talk about my career now, that's what I'd love to do.

She giggled and snickered like a Kathy Najimy character, complete with Najimy's head fakes, inflections, and postures. Maher kept kid-gloving her, as she is, after all, still quite the kid and working hard to maintain that image. Giggle! Snicker! Wiggle!

Paul Begala finally put a smack down. Young McCain was opining that Obama, not yet six months into his administration, needs to quit "completely blaming everything on its predecessor, completely... I'm sick of hearing, 'We were handed this, we were handed this...' I know, everybody knows, but we need to move on." (The press, btw, has made note that Obama does not do this; that he rarely mentions Dubya at all, in any context). Begala said he felt Dubya had not been blamed nearly enough, and remarked that "Ronald Reagan blamed Jimmy Carter every day for eight years." McCain piped up winningly: "Well, I wasn't born yet, so I wouldn't know."

"Well, I wasn't born during the French Revolution, but I know about it," Begala snapped back. She deserved it. Despite her modest self-deprecation in her intro, she seemed to want to be treated as an expert who was literally born yesterday year, someone born full-grown with a blog in the 2008 election, like Venus from the waves or Athena from her father's thigh, who should be permitted to pretend ignorance of all that went before.

Not all of the ignorance is pretense, however. Meghan McCain, youthful and pretty, made a big titillating splash with the weary journalists who'd been covering her septuagenarian papa when she boldly announced some months back that she's not a virgin and the Republican party needs to loosen up about sex. She tried to defend her remarks on Maher's show by explaining that the Party either considers a woman a "pius" "holy virgin" and abstinent, or at least "meant to be abstinent," (a reference to Bristol Palin's leadership of Candie's abstinence campaign after the birth of her son) or a "skank...a perverted sex addict," and that this isn't fair; "unhealthy, especially for young women."

Yes, dear, we know. Don't expect anything else from the Republican party, in which legislators keep mistresses or patronize prostitutes without any political consequences, while staunchly voting against sex ed, birth control, abortion, and gay marriage. Ms. McCain, how did you make it through college without ever hearing about the Madonna-Whore dichotomy? Or did you assume it was just another slam at the singer? How could she make it through the conversation without using the phrase "double standard"? It seems more than passing likely she's never heard either phrase, or understood them if she has. McCain acted the fluffy bunny to the extent that Maher took on a distinctly kind and avuncular role, even literally leaping up to defend her when Begala treated her like a grown-up, as well as gently telling her she'd done well before launching into his concluding monologue.

Maher had a nice line to close the show: "Over the last thirty-odd years, Democrats have moved to the right, and the Right has moved into a mental hospital." And that's a nice line to close this post with, as it circles right back 'round to Palin and the acre of snakes.

Now, I loathe the woman as much as I loathe the Republican Party as a whole, which is a whole lot of loathin' goin' on.

However.

It occurs to me that there is one way that Palin can be actually useful in a big way and do her party a huge service: she can quit the party itself.

No, I'm not being rude. I mean it. If Palin quits and tries a third-party candidacy, a lá Ross Perot, the Republican primary could benefit by having her draw off the worst of the hard-core loons — that is, her base.

And if she draws the nutballs out of the Republican primary, the Republicans might actually nominate a person who does not adhere point-by-point to the radical religious right's agenda. This would be bad for the Democrats, though in 2012 at least, the Obama juggernaut should still be good enough to steamroll whomever the goppers prop up.

As far as I'm concerned, though, I'd like the Republicans to continue to nominate candidates who are conspicuously crazy and unfit for the job. I fear "moderate" Republicans (what are those? the ones who want pregnant women seeking abortions just imprisoned instead of executed?) as much as the far right does, but for different reasons. As long as the book-burners and gay-baiters get their way in the primary, I get mine in the general.

Palin admitted in her resignation speech that she's going to trot around the Lower 48 collecting help-me chits from candidates desperate enough to invite her — desperate enough for the support of Palin's core constituency to ignore her significant negatives from all other segments of the party. That serves her well whether she runs as a Republican or as the candidate of the Palin Party.

(If large-eared Texan Perot's symbol ought have been a large-eared Chihuahua perro, can you come up with a good totem for Palin's vanity platform? Maybe a riff on her "dead fish" comment in the resignation; an Alaskan salmon floating belly-up? Because whether the FBI is lying or not — and law enforcement is permitted to lie — there's certainly something fishy about the sudden quit which cannot entirely be explained by her unhappiness over the coincident Vanity Fair article.)

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, if Palin is in the primary, Huckabee can lay low and let Palin attack Romney's religious beliefs all by herself. The Christianists who dominate the Republican primary electorate doom Romney, though everyone pretends not to know it. But if Palin stomps off, taking her nutballs and fruitbats with her? Well, that's another story. It's possible that without Palin's cadre to augment his own faithful, Huckabee won't be able to come up with the numbers to trounce Romney's good looks and money. Romney has the corporatist vote sewn up. If the religious vote is either MIA or divided, that might be enough.

She and husband Todd have shown an interest in fringe politics for years. Though she may not believe it today, the grumpy old men of the Groaty Old Party are not going to touch her with a ten-foot pole after last week's fiasco. Karen Tumulty summed it up: Sarah wins the Iquitarod. She quit four colleges before graduating from a fifth. She spent her last year as mayor running for Lt. Governor. She lost, but was speedily appointed by the new governor to chair the Alaska Oil and Gas Commission. She quit the Commission in her first year. She informally dropped being a full-time governor in 2008 to run for Veep with John McCain, and she officially quit the governorship eight months later (16 months early) because... well, because being an author and speaker makes more money and is more exciting than bein' a dumb ol' governor on a stage which she now feels is too small for her, and which has grown slick with hurled fruit. The sheer freedom of the lame duck status she so despises apparently has not occurred to her. Lame ducks are free to peck and kick and pull feathers, to work for the common good without fear of partisan consequences.

And be damned to everyone who raised money, who gave money, who circulated nomination petitions for her, who knocked on doors for her, who made cold calls for her, who believed her when she said she wanted to be Alaska's governor.

When Newt Gingrich makes his next electoral run, I'm going to call up the Secretary of State or whoever tracks elections down in Georgia and find out what it cost to put on the special election when he quit in a pout just a few weeks after his voters turned out for him, just because the House Republicans didn't want him to be Speaker any more. It was a sum in the millions, I'm certain, all to indulge his tantrum.

Because the internet is so transient a medium, the entirety of the blog entry that led me to this is produced here behind the cut. In short, a judge possibly applying sharia law despite that the Maldives are signatory to the Convention Against Torture and the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture, authorized the torture and possible execution via 100 lashes of an unmarried teen woman who had sex with two men. Though the judge asserts the intention is not to "cause injury," 100 lashes can kill. The woman has already been beaten and taken to the hospital. The men are not being punished. ( Full text behind the cut, with links and thanks to John Pettitt of CarnalNation, and Maldives reporter Maryam Omidi. ) The original July 5 story Pettitt bases his summary upon is by Maryam Omidi here, replete with even sadder details.

Latest statistics from the department of judicial administration’s website reveal that in 2006, out of 184 lashed for extra-marital sex, 146 were women. * * * * Judge Abdulla said the goal was not to cause injury to the offender and the person administering the punishment was not to raise his arm higher than his shoulder. * * * * Abdulla said public floggings were common in the Maldives, and the last one was carried out on 30 June. Further, around 200 people found guilty of extramarital sex were awaiting the punishment.

If you don't like it, you know what to do. I suspect courteous but passionate snail mail is more likely to be effective than phone calls, faxes, or emails. Mail which denigrates Islam or sharia will make things worse, not better, so choose your words carefully. Please reference the international horror at physical torture, at gender injustice, and at the way their signatory status to the Conventions was disregarded. It is probably unwise to mention any news source that would lead back to Maryam Omdi.

Ambassador Ahmed Khaleel
EMBASSY OF THE REPUBLIC OF MALDIVES
800 Second Avenue, Suite 400-E
New York NY 10017

Telephone: 212-599-6195
Fax: 212-661-6405
Email : info@maldivesembassy.us
Website: http://www.maldivesmission-ny.com/eng/

Possibly obsolete alternate fax: 212-972-3970
Possibly obsolete alternate emails: maldives@un.int    or    maldives@onecommonwealth.org

At the moment, the Republican field for president in 2012 has narrovwed again, with only Romney and Huckabee as major candidates — and given the composition of the Republican primary electorate, Romney cannot beat Huckabee. And Huckabee scares me to death.. More on that some other time; meanwhile, Sarah Palin self-destructed today (and don't you just know that she joins Michael Jackson in Mark Sanford's prayers? That is, if Sanford still has enough sanity to know what to be grateful for. His recent behavior suggests he does not.)

In her resignation speech, she made it clear that her personal agenda is outside Alaska, expressing a strong desire to assist candidates outside the state in order to collect help-me chits for her 2012 run. (No, she didn't phrase it quie that way, but that's what she meant.)

It has to be the presidency or nothing. Quitting halfway-through your term as governor and highlighting your urge to bug out is not the way to give Lisa Murkowski a serious contest in the senatorial election of 2010. Having essentially told the voters of Alaska that they and the state are just too small for her now, and that they bore her, and that the remaining eighteen months of her term would be unbearable tedium and ennui, Palin should not expect to be elected to anything back there for a good long while. And she'd do well to avoid Alaskan veniremen, too, should that become necessary.

But senator is small potatoes to a woman who believes her god has raised her up for a divine purpose, that being to bring to the Oval Office the same stupidity, corruption, venality, greed, and personal vindictiveness she brought to the governor's chambers in Juneau—on the rare occasions she was there.

Perhaps it is an understandable error that she has confused McCain's last-quarter desperation with divine intervention. It had to be one or the other that almost put the petty mayor of a petite rural town a 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency.

Her 18-minute resignation was as poorly delivered as Bobby Jindal's response to Obama's February's joint-session speech (akin to a formal State of the Union address). This is passing strange; Palin's best asset is her ability to delivery lines convincingly, and today she simply could not. The speech was delivered in a high-speed gabble. She was literally gasping for breath, as if she'd just run from the cops.

And perhaps this is what's going on. Senator Ted Steven's bribe-giving friends are Sarah Palin's friends too. Palin has been able to step on the fifteen ethics investigations by controlling what information she will deliver to law enforcement. When that means the state cops, whose director she appoints (and fired one already, for not helping her prosecute a vendetta against her ex-brother-in-law), or the state legislature, which either can't or won't do much to her, she's fairly safe. But when the FBI comes calling, it's another story. Crimson from their loss of Stevens' conviction because of prosecutorial misconduct, the feds could be looking to redeem themselves by bringing another high-profile case (or they equally likely could be fleeing from another high-profile case).

Whether it's the feds, the locals, or merely the Alaskan press that Palin fears, she is clearly afraid. The transcript of today's speech can't possibly convey how nervous and frightened she seemed. Few of her lines were well-written, but those few which did have some rhythm to them were wasted—she fumbled them all. And she was painfully tone-deaf, asserting that "If I have learned one thing: LIFE is about choices!", a phrase which in her mouth is guaranteed to immediately raise the hackles and open the wallets of pro-choice voters.*

She invoked "the politics of personal destruction" to introduce her contention that the ethics investigations have cost her and husband Todd "more than half a million in legal bills, just to set the record straight." Ah, now there's a reference to part of what motivated today's resignation: as Citizen Sarah, she can charge quite a bit for her public appearances and keep every penny. As Governor Palin, she couldn't charge a thing.

Whether she plans to use that money to pay for a criminal defense, or to fill her 2012 campaign hope chest, she needs the money and this is her best chance to make it. The Vanity Fair article released this week which so wounded her feelings probably played a role in the timing of this — she's notoriously thin-skinned — but there's something else here, something that tilted the balance enough to make her willing to give up the power of the mansion in favor of the power to fill her purse. Was it a hope that if she stepped down and left town, whoever is in pursuit will not follow?

Final notes: Ms. Palin, never ever say "John McCain tapped me" in front of a camera or microphone ever again. It doesn't matter how you finish that statement; no woman in public life can afford to structure a sentence that way.

And Ms. Palin, if you think the press in Alaska is too hard and hot to handle, you really weren't paying attention last year, were you? You thought Katie Couric was being mean when she asked you what you like to read and you couldn't answer. You of all people should know the difference between throwing an unpacked snowball and firing an automatic weapon from a helicopter. That was the unpacked snowball. Show your twitching nose down here in election season and our press corps will teach you how Alaska's outmatched wolves feel when they hear you whirling overhead. Vanity Fair just lightly scratched at a brief few months of your life. If you run for president, they'll be back, and since you compliantly bled all over the water today, they won't be alone.

*The Post apparently punctuated its version to try to show her emphases; Alaska's official website is written more plainly (though heavy on the exclamation points).

I'm not much for quoting Scripture (well, actually, I am, now that I think about it) but Mark Sanford has made an entire public career about being a Bible-based Christian. I saw someone else publish Isaiah 59:11-14 to chide Obama about not being more forthcoming regarding the torture policies of the Bush Administration, but for me, they resonate for Sanford's situation, Verse 10 in particular.

Sanford's highly public, highly narcissistic soul-baring keeps him maundering on about how his god this and his god that, so here's a few words from the instruction manual. Skip the bits about blood and violence; he ain't that bad (though in the torture context, Dubya and Cheney are).

What Sanford is, is a man whose life is so far out of sync with his putative beliefs that it would take a harder heart than mine not to feel some pity as well as rage. Again, Verse 10.

Isaiah 59 (King James Version)

1 Behold, the LORD's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear:

2 But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.

3 For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue hath muttered perverseness.

4 None calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth: they trust in vanity, and speak lies; they conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity.

5 They hatch cockatrice' eggs, and weave the spider's web: he that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper.

6 Their webs shall not become garments, neither shall they cover themselves with their works: their works are works of iniquity, and the act of violence is in their hands.

7 Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood: their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths.

8 The way of peace they know not; and there is no judgment in their goings: they have made them crooked paths: whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace.

9 Therefore is judgment far from us, neither doth justice overtake us: we wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness.

10 We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes: we stumble at noon day as in the night; we are in desolate places as dead men.

11 We roar all like bears, and mourn sore like doves: we look for judgment, but there is none; for salvation, but it is far off from us.

12 For our transgressions are multiplied before thee, and our sins testify against us: for our transgressions are with us; and as for our iniquities, we know them;

13 In transgressing and lying against the LORD, and departing away from our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood.

14 And judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter.

Truth is surely fallen in the street; Sanford is now revealed as lying about his earlier lies, due to his confession yesterday about it being "a handful" of women with whom he crossed the fidelity line* instead of the just single-instance, totally-unique, one-and-only, true-love soulmate he claimed when The Star's reporter presented him with the hotmails at the airport as he slunk back into the country.

The Colbert Report did a lovely piece on Sanford last night from minutes 5:58-9:00 on this link. He was following up on Peggy Noonan claiming that Sanford's fall from fidelity was somehow due to "a new devilishness" which Bill Clinton loosed upon the land back in the mid-1990s. (A few days earlier, Rush Limbaugh alleged Sanford's promiscuity was Obama's fault.)

Colbert (as Rachel Maddow did last week) used the clip of Sanford self-righteously speaking about how lying is a great sin against democracy itself. Mmmhmm. Colbert then did a whole riff on the "Clinton Curse," playing clips of Clinton's persecutors mouthing platitudes about fidelity and then following it with how each of them was forced to resign or abase themselves because of their own adulteries. Featured: Bob Livingston, David Vitter, Larry Craig, Mark Foley, Mark Sanford.

More lies on lies: South Carolina law enforcement, the head of which is appointed by, oh, golly, Mark Sanford! came out today mumbling that Mark Sanford didn't improperly spend government money to support his affair. The hell you say. He snatched a state car for the drive to the Atlanta airport and let it sit there the whole time he was gone. That alone would get a normal state employee slapped with charges which could include grand theft auto. Unanswered: the cost of the phone calls, the $7K, 8K, 9K (estimates vary) spent to add a useless Argentine leg** to a state economic development trip, and whatever was improperly spent to get him up to meet her in New York.

For cryin' out loud, Carolina: fire this guy. Any other employee who absconded with a car and didn't show up for work for five days in a row, with no word on his location, would have been terminated for cause, if not arrested. I don't care what kind of creep you have in line to take his place, Sanford needs to go.

*Sanford's claim he didn't "cross the sex line" sounds creepily reminiscent of Clinton and Chuck Robb, to whom oral sex wasn't "real" sex. Wikipedia doesn't mention it, but when aggressively questioned at a public appearance, Robb was squeezed into obliquely admitting that the nude massage included fellatio. As even marital fellatio was a crime in Virginia at the time, this "but it wasn't real sex" story had an extra-special layer of absurdity. Robb was not prosecuted, and the Washington Post let him off the hook.
**Make your own jokes here.

It's summer, and there's too much going on to spend much time blogging, though heaven knows I'd love to roll in the sex scandal muck for a while, or chastise Dana Milbank for his silly attack on Obama's willingness to take questions relayed from Iran at a press conference, or give Obama a swift kick in the briefs (legal briefs, that is) for his DOJ's vicious anti-gay support of Dubya's position on gay marriage in the Smelt case, spitefully delivered just a couple of weeks before the 40th anniversary of Stonewall. Nope, no time for any of that today while the sun is shining and the flowers are blooming, bees buzzing, and oh, look out, if I'm seriouslyl hitting the birds and the bees already I'll start babbling about Mark Sanford in no time.

So instead, may I direct your attention to an extensive profile of Sarah "Slippery" Palin, presidential prospect and all-around loon? Nine thousand and eight hundred words, according to one count, by Todd S. Purdom in August's Vanity Fair, already online here:

What does it say about the nature of modern American politics that a public official who often seems proud of what she does not know is not only accepted but applauded? What does her prominence say about the importance of having (or lacking) a record of achievement in public life? Why did so many skilled veterans of the Republican Party—long regarded as the more adroit team in presidential politics—keep loyally working for her election even after they privately realized she was casual about the truth and totally unfit for the vice-presidency? Perhaps most painful, how could John McCain, one of the cagiest survivors in contemporary politics—with a fine appreciation of life’s injustices and absurdities, a love for the sweep of history, and an overdeveloped sense of his own integrity and honor—ever have picked a person whose utter shortage of qualification for her proposed job all but disqualified him for his?

Thanks to Politico for the heads-up.

In 2004, Senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada, went to the floor of the Senate to defend "the sanctity of traditional marriage."

This year, he's admitted to adultery from 2007-2008 with a married campaign aide, married, in fact, to a man who works for him. He says her husband was his friend. Heckuva guy, Johnny. Went to Iowa this month to set up a 2012 run for president, says Chris Matthews on Hardball tonight.

Senator "As I Say, Not As I Do" Ensign also has a solid anti-choice record, and would deny legal abortions to all women if he could.

Except, presumably, the married woman he was sleeping with, had she become pregnant by him. Former Congressman Bob Barr, Republican of Florida, was voting staunchly anti-choice until the day he got his wife pregnant at a time he was already planning to divorce her and marry his mistress. Barr drove his wife to the clinic, paid for the abortion, and drove her home, yet tried to maintain the pretense that he opposes abortion, really, nevermind that he found it convenient to procure one for his wife to get out of paying child support for the fruit of that particular pregnancy. He still tries, though fortunately he's out of Congress and can't vote to limit reproductive rights for the rest of us any more.

Adulterer Barr is best known for his frothing condemnations of Bill Clinton's in-office affair; he was one of several Republican adulterers who couldn't resist taking that bait while presuming their own peccadilloes would not become public. Barr's also on-topic in this post for being the author of the foul 1996 "Defense of Hetero Supremacy Marriage Act" which is discussed below.

Ensign joins the long line of Republican adulterers who pretend to be "pro-family" and anti-choice in public while arranging their own marriages the "traditional" way: a wife for the public, a mistress for himself, and whatever it takes to prevent their promiscuity from becoming parenthood.

Who can forget Henry Hyde, R-Illinois, who worked so hard to deny abortions to women in the military and women in other nations, as well as women here at home, while breaking up his mistress's marriage and leaving her three children fatherless, and neglecting his own four kids to spend time and money with her instead of his wife? Any doubt what he would have done, or perhaps did, had his mistress become pregnant during their years-long affair? How many women died overseas because of Hyde's "pro-life" hypocrisy?

Before you ask — Democrat John Edwards is an adulterer but has not tried to deny women the right to determine their own reproductive futures, so his behavior doesn't qualify him for inclusion in this particular roster of shame.

GAY MARRIAGE

If you are angry at Obama, you should be. His Attorney General, Eric Holder, disgraced himself and his boss last week when he permitted some leftover goon from the Bush Administration to file a brief on behalf of the U.S. government — that is, on behalf of the Obama Administration — attempting to dismiss a suit by two gay men married in California who wish to be treated as married under federal law, particularly federal tax law.

The brief contains all the old canards comparing gay marriage to incest, etc. and on page 37 helpfully points out that granting gay widowers federal survivors' benefits under, e.g., Social Security, would cost money, and saving money by cheating the bereaved out of their benefits is a legitimate grounds for Congress to deny gay and bi people equality under the law.

You can email Attorney General Holder, or send him a letter on paper, or — even better — both.

AskDOJ@usdoj.gov

Attorney General Eric Holder
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001

Letters to Congress and major Administration officials arrive in such quantity they are merely counted "for" and "against," not actually read for content, so don't wear yourself out composing something poignant and personal. If you want to say something of substance on the issue, do a letter to the editor of your largest local paper instead.

RE: Smelt, et al v. The United States of America

Dear Attorney General Holder:

I cannot believe that the brief recently submitted in the SMELT gay marriage case received your informed approval.

I respectfully request that you withdraw the brief immediately.

I also request that you consider dropping DOJ's Motion to Dismiss completely.

Your current position of advocating for the Defense of Marriage Act on the grounds that it is "law on the books" is untenable. DOMA is unconstitutional, discriminatory, and oppressive. It should not be defended under any circumstances, including these.

Sincerely,

Lisa Small, Esq.
(street address)

An elderly white man used his handicapped parking permit to leave his vehicle near the entrance to DC's Holocaust Museum, approaching the entrance with a shotgun. He got one security guard before he himself was shot. Described so far as a "long gun," I'm guessing it wasn't sawed off.

As I write, it has just been announced that the security guard has died. The Museum will be closed tomorrow in honor of Officer Stephen Tyrone Johns, who gave his life to protect the staff and the eighty visitors who were present. The Museum's flag will be at half-mast.

There was going to be a play there tonight to commemorate the 80th birthday? of Anne Frank. The playwright and her husband were already at the Museum -- her husband being former Defense Secretary William Cohen. The play is one act, a conversation between Anne Frank, murdered by the Nazis, and Emmett Till, murdered by southern white men for whistling a white woman. He was from Chicago and his mom sent him south to be safe.

Police have identified the shooter, James von Brunn, as an 88-year-old all-purpose bigot, who wrote a piece containing this line: Today, on the World stage, Whitemen are LAUGHED AT, their women bred by stronger men.

In Against Our Will,* Susan Brownmiller attributed much of racism to sexual fear by the males of the dominant ethnic group, and as a young woman, I thought she was reaching. But as I got older, and started listening to racist rhetoric with a more educated ear... not that you need any great level of erudition to deconstruct the statement above. Inevitably, racists are natalists and anti-abortion extremists, at least for women of their favorite ethnic designation.

This is apparently the shooter's own personal hate site, but it's getting hammered and I can't get in. That's the URL to get past the intro, which is here, playing taps and pretending to be patriotic until you get inside. MSNBC says he's upset about Jews, Catholics, black people, etc.

The Museum was premiering a one-act play tonight by Janet Langhart Cohen, an African-American newscaster who is married to former Secretary of Defense William Cohen. They were both there but were uninjured and went almost immediately to CNN to tell what they had seen and confront the racism of the killer. Her play had been written up in the Washington Post a week ago, and the murderer may felt incited by that. Honoring the 80th anniversary of Anne Frank's birthday, the play imagines a conversation between Frank and Emmett Till, a Chicago teen sent to the deep South by his mother to keep him "safe" — where he was murdered for whistling at a white woman. As Langhart pointed out this afternoon, in response to Wolf Blitzer's query about people who deny the existence of slavery as well as of the Holocaust, as recently as June of 1967, she and Cohen could not have been married to each other in Virginia.

Following on the murder of Dr. George Tiller May 31, this attack underlines that the mindset for the past eight years has been too much directed at foreign terrorists rather than those we raise right here.

The newsies on MSNBC have an expert (Jack Levin) who's talking about how perceived "losses" -- Obama's election, his visit to Buchenwald, other signs of racial progress -- may have inspired this man, and future shooters, to strike out because they feel they are losing their war. No one has mentioned yet that he may have been inspired by the recent "win" -- the slaughter of Dr. Tiller, whose family announced yesterday that his clinic will not re-open.

I've hardly been able to start mourning for Dr. Tiller yet, and now it's already time to start mourning another brave man, Officer Johns.

*Writing in 1975, even such a staunch feminist leader as Brownmiller either couldn't get the publisher to agree to the subtitle to read "Women, Men, and Rape," or didn't think of it. I've always wondered which. As it is, though putting women first would even make more grammatical sense as well as political sense, the subtitle leads off with "Men."

There will be time to grieve Dr. George Tiller, a good and brave man, later.

Tonight, in haste, here is what is being said about Scott Philip Roeder, the man arrested for his murder — and a concluding note on John McCain's encounter with (and obedience to?) supporters of the previous person who made an attempt on Dr. Tiller's life.

• Kansas State Official Criminal Record regarding his 1996 conviction for having bomb materials. Full name, birthdate, physical description, disciplinary report, release date. No photo. FreeStateDem posted this info on the DailyKos, which is where I got it; thank you, FSD.


• The Anti-Defamation League has a report about Scott Roeder here describing his 1997 parole violation after his 1996 conviction. Thanks to kckc at Democratic Underground for the link.


• CNN began their 10 pm report today saying his name had not been released, but concluded their report by stating "the suspect" had been described by the FBI as a member of the Freemen. The conviction was overturned due to a Fourth Amendment violation in the search of his vehicle. CNN concluded the first part of their 10 pm report by wondering aloud if this would affect the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor. When they began the second part of the report, CNN anchor Don Lemon speculated that Tiller's assassination might create a pro-choice backlash, and quoted Randall Terry's maunderings about how he fears Obama's reaction. Terry said nothing about Roeder's possible connection to the organization Terry started, the so-called "Operation Rescue," nor did Terry condemn the assassination.


• "OR" was always called "Operation Oppress-You" by feminists when we'd have competing picket lines and demonstrations. Terry has asserted that he legally "owns" the name OR. He founded the group in 1986. There have been organizational paroxysms of re-definition and re-naming since he left the group, and his original group has been known since 1999 as "Operation Save America" (and they really hate his guts, apparently; they published Terry's church's letter censuring him for adultery in 2000.) Managed by Flip Benham since 1991, OSA has expanded its anti-choice mission to include activism against Islam, pornography, and homosexuality.


• When mainstream press sources quote "Operation Rescue," they mean a splinter group which was formerly the western division of Terry's original organization, managed from California in the 1990s and from Kansas now. This group, once called "Operation Rescue West," is using the name "Operation Rescue" in Kansas and has feuded with "Operation Save America" over the question of who should be named what, and what their agenda should be. The current OR is run by Troy Newman, who dropped the "West" from the group's name and moved it to Kansas in 2002 specifically to concentrate on Dr. Tiller. Because the site is down, it's hard to say how the website www.operationrescue.org fits into all this. Since Roeder, a Kansas local, was posting on their boards, it is probably the website for the Kansas group rather than for the original OR, now OSA.


WEBSITE ACTIVITY:


• Roeder left at least one message on a board run by operationrescue.org. In his 2007 post, he suggests that Dr. Tiller should be stalked at his church, and that church members and officials should be harassed about him. See it here at Democratic Underground, because the OR site has been down since the murder first hit the news.


• OR has been running a Tiller Watch page for years. It also has been down since the murder was reported.


• Here is Google's cache copy of OR's page outlining their May, 2007 protest harassing Tiller. Thanks to PGHBaldy for their comment at Free Republic providing the cache link.


• Abortion-related terrorism was something the Reagan and Bush 41 administrations pretty much just winked at in the 1980s and early 90s. Feminist organizations begged the DOJ — unsuccessfully — during those years to do serious investigations, instead of making empty gestures of window-dressing. The terrorist support structure was permitted to flourish while Republican administrations wasted time sending Red Squads after environmentalists and peace groups — who haven't ever killed anybody.


• This history of neglect is part of why the Clinton Administration bungled the Richard Jewell scandal, in which law enforcement accused a heroic security guard of bombing the 1996 Olympics because he was chubby, which was proof he must have been maladjusted... finally naming the guilty party as a person of interest in 1998, after Jewell's life had been ruined. Anti-abortion terrorist Eric Rudolph used those two years to bomb a gay bar and two abortion clinics, altogether killing two people and injuring about 150.


• During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama was being drubbed hourly for being on the same charitable board as a man — a man with no arrests or convictions — who had been a violent activist in the 1960s, when Obama was nine years old. Other than Keith Olbermann, almost no major cable, network, or print reports focused on John McCain's August, 1993 appearance at a meeting of the Oregon Citizens' Alliance, a notorious anti-gay, anti-choice group. (McCain was 57 at the time — not a child.) McCain had been warned in advance about the purpose of the gathering, but chose to attend regardless and sat silently while speaker Marylin Shannon praised long-time clinic vandal Shelley Shannon for her attempt,only eleven days earlier, to murder...Dr. George Tiller. Shelley Shannon tried to kill Tiller and succeeded in shooting him in both arms. She will be in federal prison until 2018. Marylin Shannon, Shelley's groupie but otherwise no relation, was a Bush delegate in 2004... and a McCain delegate in 2008. The year after listening to would-be murderess Shelley Shannon be praised for her attempt on Tiller's life, McCain voted with extreme-right senators against the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which made a federal crime to bomb or blockade abortion clinics or to attack abortion doctors. Will some mainstream reporter kindly ask John McCain on the record how he feels about this now?

The Republican administrations of the past have shown much more enthusiasm for raging against terrorists from other nations and cultures than they have for tracking down the domestic terrorists who come from their own extremist fringe. Clinton's FBI was hapless in the Jewell matter. Here's hoping Obama can do better.

And here, without haste, is the start of the long slow mourning for Dr. George Tiller, that good and brave and irreplaceable man.

There is an advantage to recording the Sunday talk shows for later consumption.

Today, I'm finally watching the May 17 episode of State of the Union with John King on CNN. The guests are James Carville and Bill "Gambling Is Not A Vice" Bennett.

The first topic is Nancy Pelosi, and Bennett declares that she has lied, lied, lied about the CIA lying to her, yes she has, oh my, but let's not have a truth commission to find out for sure. No mention whatsoever of the people who came forward to point out that their written records and recollections show that the schedule of meetings that CIA Director Leon Panetta published are inaccurate and incomplete. Bennett claims that Panetta "slapped her back so hard. She's in bad shape on this" — when in fact, Panetta said only that he could produce Bush-era records from the time period in question, long prior to his tenure, but that Congress would have to decide if the records were accurate.

Bennett's enthusiastic venom is almost quaint in retrospect, since both pundits and the mainstream press have entirely forgotten this squabble about Pelosi now that they have Sonia Sotomayor to chew on. I'm writing on May 29. I don't remember hearing a word about this issue since Obama announced Sotomayor's selection as Justice-Designate on May 26. So the "Nancy Pelosi Lied" slander was only a nine-days-wonder for the Republicans, literally.

Carville pointed out that no one is going to be able to clear up who said what in an meeting seven years ago for which there is no transcript, and that what Pelosi knew is beside the point of whether torture is illegal.

The program moved on to Obama's speech at Notre Dame, which he had not yet given. Bennett launches into a "Obama's the most pro-abortion president ever" diatribe. Carville, however, takes an approach I hadn't heard before, and it's excellent. ( Carville argues that if Catholic protesters are serious, they'd purge the Notre Dame law and science faculties of anyone who supports Roe; transcript behind the cut. )

I have nothing but kind words for Notre Dame President John Jenkins, who endured endless vitriolage for his decision to invite the first black president of the United States and to maintain that invitation despite fury from the "purists" who wanted to ban Obama while, as Carville pointed out, not raising a single question about purging the actual teaching staff.

And that raises the unpleasant question: if the protesters aren't really about purifying Notre Dame, what were they about? The simple answer is attention and money; the infamous adulterer Randall Terry was there, trying to reclaim his lost prominence in the anti-choice movement. But as to the rank-and-file, why attack Obama and not the law school faculty? There are two possible answers to that. The most innocent is that he's a high-value target, being President. But that raises the second, less innocent, question of why the protesters are so comfortable attacking this president, far more than other pro-choice presidents such as Bill Clinton.

For that, we turn to Arizona State University, which withheld an honorary degree from Obama this year (and didn't he make them look like fools), on the grounds that the first black president and one of our youngest presidents ever hadn't accomplished much. Claims that he didn't have a sufficient "academic body of work" fail — first black president of the Harvard Law review, and ten years as a Constitutional Law professor at the University of Chicago. But before accusing ASU of plain old-fashioned racism, let's look at other recipients of their honorary degrees. Let's see... Doug Wilder of Virginia, the first black governor in the country, got an honorary degree and delivered the commencement address in 2004; Wilder had no academic body of work whatsoever. And back in 1992, Californian Cesar Chavez, the Chicano labor and civil rights activist, also no academic body of work. So ASU can bring itself to give a person of color an honorary degree, but not this one. What's up with that? Is he too "big" for you, ASU? Too big and too close?*

ASU itself says, on the page announcing the Obama Scholars program,

President Barack Obama represents outstanding academic achievement, thoughtfulness, a long record of service to others, inspired leadership and a commitment to building strong communities across this country. He has set new standards for what is possible in America, and encouraged people around the world to pursue their dreams.

Presented in the press as if this were a new program with new funding that ASU was giving Obama in lieu of a worthless piece of paper, in fact, it's an existing program which was merely renamed. The important change (which was presumably in the works long before the Obama insult) is that the renamed "ASU Advantage" program will grow this year from 500 students to 1600 members of the incoming Class of 2013 who start this fall. So, instead of Obama getting a piece of paper named for ASU, eleven hundred kids extra get a get a scholarship named for Obama. Not a bad trade, and when added to ASU getting so gracefully but so thoroughly schooled by Obama at the speech itself, the deal is extra-sweet.

*Political comedian and black civil rights activist Dick Gregory often said, "Down South they don't care how close you get, so long as you don't get too big; up North they don't care how big you get, so long as you don't get too close."