The Republic of T.

There’s only thing slightly less shocking than the arrest of nine members of the Hutaree Christian militia for plotting to plotting to kill law enforcement officers (with IEDs).

That’s conservative bloggers coming to their defense. Blue Texan at Firedog lake compiles the responses at the preceding link, but this one in particular jumped out at me.

America’s vigilant Anti-Terror Warriors on the right will certainly be relieved and grateful that the FBI nabbed these guys, right?

…Classical Values sees nothing illegal going on.

Last time I looked, wanting to start a civil war (insane as it is) was not a crime.

Huh? That’s not only a defense of the alleged plot, but it smacks of a justification.

So much for “law and order” conservatism, I guess.

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(Or “CPAC: Sideshow and Snake Oil, Pt. 2″)

The circus sideshow that was CPAC folded its tent and left Washington weeks ago. However, its apparent ringmaster and chief snake oil salesman still sweats, struts, and sobs across the “stage” of conservative media — that medicine show never stops rolling and never stops hawking its “solutions” to Americans who are in desperate need of something to ease their economic aches and pains, and heal their political maladies.

And like the medicine shows of old, Glenn Beck — and others like him — peddle magical “miracle cures” that either poison directly by filling the body politic with toxic bile, or indirectly by distracting us from actual solutions, and aren’t intended to “cure what ails us” so much as to make us think that we feel better even as the illness progresses. Case in point is Beck’s latest attack on the very idea of social justice.

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With reports that of kidnapping and criminal association have been filed in the case of 10 Baptist missionaries from Idaho, accused of kidnapping 33 Haitian children, it seems that several things are — or may be — going on. The news about the background of the groups leader, 40-year-old “businesswoman” Laura Silsby is enough cause for concern.

A CBS News employee who witnessed today’s court proceedings says Silsby told the judge: “We were trying to do what’s best for the children.”

When the judge asked, “Didn’t you know you were committing a crime?” Silsby quietly answered, “We are innocent.”

But CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker reports there are serious questions tonight about Silsby’s motives. The 40-year-old business woman, who convinced members of Idaho’s Central Valley Baptist Church to follow her dream of an orphanage in Haiti, has a troubling financial history.

She’s been the subject of eight civil lawsuits, 14 for unpaid wages, Whitaker reports. Her Meridian, Idaho house is in foreclosure. She’s had at least nine traffic citations in the last 12 years including four for failing to register or insure her car.

It suggests that perhaps Silsby, in convincing the church members to “follow her dream” of an orphanage in Haiti, may have actually have conned them in to becoming accomplices in what sounds more and more like a typical trafficking operation.

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Update: It appears that these children really were rescued — by the people who stopped them from being taken out of the country.

It’s being reported now that the 10 missionaries have been charged with child kidnapping and criminal association. And it sounds like the criminal they’re associating with is group leader Laura Silsby, based on her background:

But CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker reports there are serious questions tonight about Silsby’s motives. The 40-year-old business woman, who convinced members of Idaho’s Central Valley Baptist Church to follow her dream of an orphanage in Haiti, has a troubling financial history.

She’s been the subject of eight civil lawsuits, 14 for unpaid wages, Whitaker reports. Her Meridian, Idaho house is in foreclosure. She’s had at least nine traffic citations in the last 12 years including four for failing to register or insure her car.

The children taken from the group, ranging in age from 2 to 12, were being cared for at the Austrian-run SOS Children’s Village in Port-au-Prince on Wednesday.

…Coq said that nine of the 10 knew nothing about the alleged scheme, or that paperwork for the children was not in order.

“I’m going to do everything I can to get the nine out,” Coq said. That would still leave mission leader Laura Silsby facing charges.

And AlterNet reports:

Several of the parents claimed that the group told them their kids would be attending school in the Dominican Republic, and would be free to return to Haiti to visit their parents. In fact, the group planned to transport the kids to an orphanage in the neighboring country, where they would be in line for adoption.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton weighed in on the case, saying “”It was unfortunate that, whatever the motivation, that this group of Americans took matters into their own hands.” The group had not previously run an orphanage and was not registered as an adoption agency or a non-profit.

It remains to be seen whether Silsby will be found guilty of trafficking, but the accounts so far suggest she was operating exactly the way traffickers in Haiti operate.

Let’s get something straight. Kidnapping is a crime. Taking a child across state or national borders, without the full knowledge and informed consent of the parents or surviving relatives is kidnapping. Taking a child across state or national borders without following the required legal procedures, and obtaining the necessary documents is kidnapping.

kid⋅nap
–verb (used with object), -napped or -naped, -nap⋅ping or -nap⋅ing. to steal, carry off, or abduct by force or fraud, esp. for use as a hostage or to extract ransom.

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Time and again, I’ve written about how the disastrous consequences of the Bush administration’s HIV/AIDS policy agenda in Africa.

Yes, Bush increased aid to Africa. Yes, the Bush administration’s global AIDS policy has been cited as a redeeming positive piece of his legacy; perhaps, even, the one aspect in which he may have done some good.

I beg to differ.

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I now extend my request for Levi Johnston to these guys.

The Christian side hug, for the unaware, is the Christian version of the standard “full frontal hug,” which is a sinful abonimation and should be avoided until marriage (I am not actually making this up). The side-hug is preferable because it avoids crotch-touching, which Jesus hated. Apparently the standard hug is now mostly for Jews, Muslims, Socialists and probably Unitarians.

Also, did I hear that right? Do they say “You ain’t no Rabbi, you ain’t no Priest, so rise up off me like the [something] with no yeast”? And does that mean that if you were a Rabbi or Priest you could, uh, not rise up off me? I’m uncomfortable and confused.

I also remain unclear on why “Democratic shift in Congress!” is thrown in and why there’s a shout-out to buying babies, but I haven’t read my True Images Bible for Girls in a while so maybe I’m just forgetting that part of the New Testament.

And this guy.

Yet another right wing rapper has shown up on the scene at the tea parties. His name is Hi Caliber and he sucks as bad as all the previous ones.

“Patriotic people throw your hands in the air, and wave them around like you just don’t care.”

Seriously, is that the best he can do? I imagine it is.

Just stop. Please.

Unfortunately, ain’t no rap like right-wing rap ’cause right-wing rap don’t stop.

I’m gonna give ‘em this much. I think the free market will take of this trend. Soon, I hope.

I just have one thing to say about this.

Forget WWJD. The new question is apparently What Would MLK Do? A coalition of politically and theologically conservative Christian leaders, including nine Roman Catholic bishops, who have just signed a declaration saying they will not comply with laws that could require them to recognize same-sex unions or allow their institutions to support abortions are arguing that the move is of a piece with King’s call for civil disobedience during the civil rights movement.

The declaration reads, in part: “We will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other antilife act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent.”

Instead of debating whether these causes belong in the same category as providing equal rights and treatment to racial minorities, the better question may be: Why now?After all, most people agree with the first part of the statement and believe religious institutions and individuals should be protected by conscience provisions that protect them from being compelled to participate in acts like abortion that they believe are murder. And, in fact, they are.

Fine. But if you’re gonna talk that talk, you gotta walk that walk.
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The first time I heard it, I did a double-take, because I thought I heard it wrong. The second time I heard it, I rolled my eyes. The third time I heard Sarah Palin, in her interview with Oprah Winfrey, suggest that women who choose to terminate pregnancies are essentially “taking the easy way out.”

There is much — so much, really — that I object to here, but I’ll start with one really simple point.

I don’t know, and can’t know, what it’s like to decide whether or not to have an abortion. But I can listen — and have listened — to the voices and experiences of women who have. None of the women I’ve known who have faced that choice, based on what they told me, experienced it as an “easy” choice.

Such choices — the ones that have unknown and unknowable, long-term consequences for ourselves and our families — are almost never easy choices to make. As both Republicans and Democrats demonstrate, it’s the choices we make for other people — people who are not “us” — that are the easy choices.

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I often say that there some people who just aren’t wort talking to when it comes to politics and social change, because they are never going to be on your side. But Shannon’s conversation with two right-wing protesters at Atlanta Pride has got me reconsidering that. [Via A World of Progress]

As I was leaving the park, I saw the two men again at the exit.  One was an angry, obese man and the other was a young guy who didn’t seem quite as hate-filled.  I’ll call them Angry and Young.  Angry was still shouting out to people, “You’re WICKED!” and I just decided to speak with them to see if I could get them to embrace their hypocrisy.

… Me: Do you honestly hope to draw anyone here to Jesus Christ with these tactics?  You both embrace the love of law more than you embrace the law of love.  Jesus never did anything like this.

Angry:  “Yes he did!  He went on an angry rampage!”

Me: He did go on an angry rampage at the temple because they had allowed it to become a money machine where people were selling goods for worship and price-gouging people who had to come from afar to pray and offer sacrifices.  He was disgusted by how the priests allowed it to become a business, not a house of worship and praise.  His anger was directed towards the church, and I have a sneaking suspicion he feels the same way about it today.”

Young: The Bible says that…

Me: The Bible says, in James, that true religion is this: to visit the widows and orphans in the time of their affliction.  When was the last time that either of you visited widows or orphans in the time of their affliction?  And be honest because God will hold you accountable for every word that you utter on judgment day.

Angry: (crickets)

Young: What do you mean?

Maybe it’s just a question of how you talk to them. I’m not sure I’d have been cool-headed enough to pull this off. Read the rest. It’s well worth it!

I swear, if I could find an app like this, I’d buy it.

But, then again, if you read blogs on your iPhone — particularly progressive blogs — you kind of have this app already.

[From Now This is a Republican iPhone App : Dispatches from the Culture Wars]

As a former Sunday School teacher, I’ve often looked at the antics of today’s religious conservatives as they wave the Bible around and pound others over the head with it and wondered: Have they actually read that thing? Because I couldn’t see how they could reconcile their politics if they had.

Well, apparently, they read it and didn’t like everything they read. So, they’ve decided to change it, rather than change themselves.

It’s a day most progressives never thought they’d see, but here it is: according to a group of conservatives, the Bible has become too liberal. And, naturally, this same group has taken it upon themselves to edit it.

The Conservative Bible Project, a new wiki-style website brought to our attention by HuffPost, Andrew Sullivan and Beliefnet, aims to bring the Bible back to what they see as its conservative roots.

Though the site itself is currently not working for us, conservative writer Ron Dreher at Beliefnet notes that they’ve come up with ten guidelines to which a “fully conservative translation” of the Bible should adhere. They are as follows:

It gets better.

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Being a parent of a small child — who is apparently entering the “terrible twos” a few months early — I tend to put things in that context sometimes.

You’ve been warned about the “terrible twos,” but you may be unprepared for this rite of passage if your child has been cooperative up until now. The stage doesn’t always begin exactly on your child’s second birthday. Development experts say it can strike as early as 18 months and as late as 30 months (though some angelic children never go through this phase). How do you know if you’re in the midst of the TTs? Look for new signs of assertiveness from your toddler. Hallmark behaviors to watch for: He may insist on doing exactly what you’ve told him not to do or throw himself down on the floor in a fit of temper if he doesn’t get his way. His demands may alternately frustrate and amuse you. At times, for example, he’ll likely ask for something that he doesn’t even want, just to see if he has enough power to get it.

What we’re seeing from the health care town halls, what we’ve seen from the “birthers” and what we saw during the campaign is essentially what I call “Tyranny of the Tantrum.”

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In the previous post, I wrote that neither posthumous abortion rights icon Gerri Santoro or the anonymous nine-year-old raped and impregnated by her father are representative of the women who sought Dr. Tiller’s services, or who seek late-term abortion in general. It’ safe to presume that neither of them wanted to be pregnant, each for her own reasons. Opponents of legalized abortion in all case would have both of them give birth.

There’s no way I know of to come up with exact numbers, but many of the women who sought Dr. Tiller’s services, and who seek late-term abortion in general, seem to be women who very much want to be pregnant, but found out well into their pregnancies that there were severe complications, as Dr. Tiller himself pointed out in a 1991 interview.

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This is something I’ve been wanting to say something about for a while, because it comes up so often, but never think to bring it up. So, I have to thank Pat Robertson for giving me the opportunity this time.

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(WARNING: IMAGES BELOW FOLD NSFW, DISTURBING, POTENTIAL TRIGGER.)

In the previous post, I wrote:

What is the saying? “When God closes a door, he opens a window”? How many windows are there?

…The Doctors Tiller — father and son — like Hearn and others, are in the business of keeping a window open, up against people who are dedicated to eliminating windows.

What the politics of the right means is a life without windows for many of us. Just as they drive people like Dr. Hearn away from windows, their politics drives them to board up the windows that might otherwise be available when life closes other doors, for those of us whose lives don’t fit into the narrow opening they leave — the narrow window they leave open, after boarding up all the others.

It’s worth noting that Tiller’s murder took place just a week shy of the 45th anniversary of the death of a woman for whom all windows and doors out of her desperate situation were firmly closed.

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Lately, I’ve become interested in timelines, and their usefulness in helping to create a kind of narrative. So, when I saw the AP list of abortion-related violence, after Dr. Tiller’s murder, I thought it would make a good timeline.

But then it seemed to be missing something.

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A couple of years ago, I’d never heard of Dr. George Tiller, but I posted a couple of times about late-term abortion, and some of the reasons why some women seek a medical professional who’s willing and able to do the procedure. Later, I posted about the stories of two women with difficult, even tragic late-term pregnancies, and the different choices they made.

I thought about those stories in the days after Dr. Tiller’s murder, and went back to read them again. And then I read more stories of women who found themselves in need of Dr. Tiller’s services, and the circumstances under which he provided it to them. I read stories of women who weren’t patients of Dr. Tiller, but met with desperate circumstances and even disastrous news late into pregnancies they had wanted very much.

I realized, then, that Dr. Tiller’s story was really one about a man of conscience.

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I’ve been working on a post about the murder of Dr. George Tiller for most of the week, and since it isn’t a four-paragraphs-a-link-and-a-blockquote kind of post, it’s taken that long. Then in the middle of it, the shooting at the Holocaust Museum here in D.C. happens. And my thoughts turn to the connections between the two. At least, as I see them.

I’ll finish up that post, including the Holocaust shooting, on Monday. But in the meantime, while researching stuff for that post, I came across this CNN article about hate groups being "riled up" these days, and something in it sounded familiar.

President Obama’s election has been a huge issue with white supremacist groups, in part because he represents in their minds a demographic shift in which the white majority in the United States is becoming slimmer, Levin added.

"Interracial marriage and interracial children are the worst thing in their world, so [the demographic shift] is a big deal for them," Levin said.

Popular opinion surveys indicate the United States is less racist than it was 20 years ago, and social change in this and other areas, including issues relating to gender and sexual orientation, have "radically changed what our culture looks like in a short period of time," Blazak said.

"If you’re not on board with the social change, then you’re increasingly alienated," Blazak said. "A lot of the hate movement is about slowing history down or turning it back."

Well, yeah. I have unwritten blog post in my brain about the economy and the changing demographics of the country, and how they played out before the election and will continue to play out during the Obama administration. It will probably stay unwritten, because I’m sure somebody else has written it already.

But the above reminded me of something I wrote after the VA Tech shooting.

I’ve joked, on occasion, that the great complaint of the last 20 years or so of American politics boils down to the reality that being white, male, and heterosexual (throw in Christian or Protestant here, too, if you like) just doesn’t come with as many privileges it used to. If I were to make a sweeping generalization, I’d say that a good bit of conservative politics these days, boiled down to gravy, adds up to not much more than that.

And this.

Think about where we are now and how far from the birth of this country, when its promises were reserved for a narrow portion of its population. Yet, its principles provided the basis for ever progressive movement that had as its goal the extension of those promises to the full spectrum of the population.

And yes, they were progressive movements. By the very nature of their work, they could hardly be otherwise.

pro-gres-sive
/prəˈgrɛsɪv/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [pruh-gres-iv] Show IPA Pronunciation
–adjective
1.     favoring or advocating progress, change, improvement, or reform, as opposed to wishing to maintain things as they are, esp. in political matters

From the abolitionists movement, to the labor movement, to the suffragists movement, to the civil rights movement, to the feminist movement, to the LGBT movement; every progressive movement that has advocated for change “as opposed to wishing to maintain things as they are.”

They were and are driven by individuals lending their strength and their hearts to bending the arc of the universe towards justice, because they are comprised of people for whom the status quo is the opposite of justice and people for whom injustice — even though visited upon others, and even though it afforded them some privileges — is intolerable.

And in each case they were opposed by people for whom the status quo and its injustices were and had to be the natural order. People who were (and yes, I love to pick on this quote) standing athwart history yelling “Stop!”

They were yelling “Stop!” as every progressive movement above marched forward, pushing the envelope of change and expanding the the qualifications for full citizenship in this country and full membership in the human family. They were yelling “Stop!” as every one of those movements marched passed them towards freedom, enfranchisement, and equality.

They are still yelling. And we are passing them by, on our way to the same destinations. We may not all  have reached all of them yet, but we’re closer than we were, and some of them are already in sight.

They’re still yelling "Stop!" alright. And sometimes "Stop, or I’ll shoot!" Even that’s not new. They’ve done it before. Von Brunn was yelling "Stop!" George Tiller’s murderer was yelling "Stop!" Jim Adkisson was yelling "Stop!"

They will keep yelling "Stop!" because we are are passing them by. They will keep yelling "Stop!", but we can’t stop and they (apparently) can’t come with us. What they can’t "Stop!" through legitimate means, they will attempt to "Stop!" through terror and fear.

They always have. But they’ve always failed in the long run, because … well, look at where we are now compared to where we were on gender equality, racial equality, and LGBT equality before.

And they’re still with us, yelling "Stop!"

So, do they come with us whether they want to or not? Or do they self-destruct?

In other words, if we don’t "Stop!", do we take them with us or do they self-destruct and take us with them?

Again, look at where we are. If they’re still yelling "Stop!", that means we’ve made progress. We haven’t stopped and they haven’t stopped us. But they’re still yelling "Stop!"

And they’ll yell louder as we get close to our destination.

i

Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.

~ Martin Luther King Jr.

The morning of November 5th, 2008, was bittersweet. I awoke that morning, after Barack Obama’s historic, with a sense of hope diminished by a nagging despair following the passage of Proposition 8 in California, which attempted to snatch away the equality that that the state Supreme Court granted to same-sex couples just months ago. The Obama campaign slogan, “Yes we can,” was transformed into “Yes we did,” by revelers in the streets of D.C. and in other locations across the country and around the world. I couldn’t honestly join in the celebration without also reminding myself that “No, we didn’t.”

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OK. Rob Thomas was never all that hard to like. (At least not as far as I’m concerned. He’s easy on the eyes, and many of his songs work quite well for my voice, on the occasional karaoke night).

But then he goes and writes stuff like this, and makes it even easier to like him.

I am a person who believes that people are born gay. I don’t think you have any control over what moves you or to whom you’re attracted. That’s why it’s called an attraction and not a choice.

I believe that America is a great nation of even greater people. I also believe that anyone who says that this is a “Christian nation” has RHS, or revisionist history syndrome, and doesn’t realize that most of our founding fathers were either atheist or at least could see, even in the 1700s, that all through Europe at the time, religion was the cause of so much persecution that they needed to put into their brand new constitution a SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE so that the ideals of a group of people could never be forced onto the whole. (I also find it funny when people point out to me that it says “one nation under god” in our pledge of allegiance, not realizing that this was an addition made in 1954 during the communism scare of the McCarthy era. It’s not surprising, however, knowing that these same people would punch me in the mouth if I called Jesus a Jew.)

I believe the fact that an atheist, who doesn’t believe in God at all, is allowed to enter into the holy land of marriage while a gay Christian is not, shows that this law is arbitrary. Are we to believe that anyone who doesn’t live their life according to the King James Bible isn’t protected by the same laws that protect those who do? Using the same argument that I’ve seen on the 700 Club, that would mean that Jewish, Hindu, or Muslim weddings are also null and void.

I believe that to deny this right to the gay population is to say to them, “this god is not your god and he doesn’t love you.” There isn’t one person who is against gay marriage that can give me a reason why it shouldn’t be legal without bringing God or their religion into it. Still, I’m amazed at the audacity of a small, misdirected group of the ultra-conservative Christian right wing, to spend millions of dollars, in a recession, on advertisements to stop two men or women who love each other from being able to be married, but when you present any opposition to them, they accuse you of attacking their religion. Isn’t it funny that the people who are the quickest to take someone’s basic rights to happiness are always the loudest to scream when someone attacks their right to do so?

But this isn’t a paper about religion. How could it be? Since we clearly have a separation of church and state, how could a conversation about laws have anything to do with religion at all? I’m writing about basic civil rights. We’ve been here before, fighting for the rights of African Americans or women to vote, or the rights of Jewish Americans to worship as they see fit. And, just as whites fought for African Americans or Christians for Jewish Americans, straight people must stand up and be a voice for gay people.

Talented, good looking, and a straight-guy-who-gets-it?

I long ago gave up getting serious crushes on straight guys. But guys like this one have my respect and admiration.