The Rainbow Flag in Kansas: Brothers apologize; Phelps sets protest; hotel owner plans party

The Wichita Eagle reports three news items today about the battle in Meade, Kan., over the rainbow flag.

JR and Robin Knight, a heterosexual couple, have been flying the flag -- a symbol of gay rights -- at their Lakeway Hotel. First the flag was stolen and then a brick with the word "fag" was thrown through their window.

The Eagle reports:

Two brothers have apologized publicly for taking down a controversial rainbow flag in Meade, saying they have learned a valuable lesson.

"... Even though we may not agree with what our neighbor is doing, we cannot impose our beliefs on someone else, and we certainly cannot step on their rights," Todd and Joshua Postlewait said in a letter this week to the editor of the Meade County News.

They said they took the flag "to help stop all the arguing" about it.
...

The brothers say they now know it was wrong to take the flag.

"One, we committed a crime by stealing Mr. Knight's property," they wrote. "Two, the people of Meade have been accused of being bigots because practically the whole nation thinks an adult took the flag to make a statement against gay rights. And three, some citizens of Meade took down the flag to get more publicity."

JR Knight said Friday that the apology did not make him feel much better about the controversy. He said he questions whether they took the flag for the reasons they provided.

Meanwhile, Fred Phelps plans to bring Westboro Baptist Church picketers from Topeka to protest at the hotel at noon on Aug. 27. Phelps and his group will also protest against five Meade churches from 9 a.m. to noon on the same day.

MTV plans to be in Meade to film during the same time. The Knights are planning to party.

"We're going to have a party -- kind of 'in your face,' you know," JR Knight said.

He plans to put up a DJ station on a balcony behind where the flag is flying and play loud music during the protest. The Knights also plan fun with bubbles and beach balls.

When MTV initially made plans to come to Meade, Knight said, the protest hadn't yet been announced.

Knight said he thought a crew from the network would be there a few days before the protest and leave the day after.

The protest should be fun, he said.

"We're going to laugh at them big time because you can't do that at a funeral, right?" Knight said, alluding to the church's habit of protesting at military funerals.

In This Moment's past coverage of the Saga of the Flag includes:

A small-town Solution to Kansas vandalism & a bit of revolutionary good news

Kansas Equality Coalition condemns incident at Lakeway Hotel

Block hurled through window of Kansas hotel

Want to protect the US? Defend our civil liberties

By Nancy Jane Moore

It had to happen. Not only are the Republicans saying that Judge Taylor's ruling finding warrantless wiretapping unconstitutional "weakens national security," but according to The Washington Post "[s]ome Republicans sought to tie the ruling to last week's arrests in Britain and Pakistan of alleged conspirators in a plot to blow up airliners bound from London to the United States."

Funny. I thought British intelligence caught those people. And even Bush -- the man who continues to lie about Iraqi ties to September 11 -- hasn't gone so far as to say we wouldn't have stopped the British plot without this program. Of course, he's letting members of Congress do it for him.

This administration continues to insist that they can't keep us safe without violating our due process rights. They play the fear card at every opportunity: We won't be safe unless we give up our civil liberties, stop criticizing the administration, and vote for right wingers.

I guess it depends on what you think is worth protecting. I happen to think protecting our freedom -- our real freedom, as set out in our Constitution and particularly in the Bill of Rights -- trumps everything else.

Yes, we want to prevent terrorist attacks of all kinds, including those planned by native-born extremists like Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph as well as those by al Qaeda and other foreign groups. We'd also like to put a dent in the murder rate and otherwise do something about crime. It would be easier to do all those things by just throwing the Bill of Rights out the window. A lot of innocent people would get locked up, but those of us who managed not to run afoul of the government would be safe.

But if the freedoms guaranteed to us -- to the people -- under the Constitution are taken away, the US becomes as bad as any dictatorship that ever existed. National defense will be a way of protecting our wealth and our resources -- our McMansions and our SUVs -- rather than a way of protecting our principles and our liberties.

The United States will not always be the richest and most powerful nation in the world. Don't believe me? Read some history. No world power ever lasts forever. Ask the Romans. Ask Spain. Ask Britain.

But we do have something more valuable than our wealth and our power -- our core principles: The rule of law, governed by a Constitution that protects against power grabs, coupled with the freedoms codified in the Bill of Rights.

If we don't protect our civil liberties as well as our citizens, the terrorists really will have won.

Here are few more interesting links about Judge Taylor's ruling:

• The New York Times praises it.
• The Washington Post doesn't much like it and even defends the administration's arguments. (The Washington Post editorials have been in sad decline ever since the death of Meg Greenfield. They tend to be wishy-washy at best.)
• Glenn Greenwald provides a good analysis of the decision on Unclaimed Territory.

Banning same-sex marriage hurts people: Yet another example of second-class citizenship

Over and over again opponents of marriage equality argue that no one is hurt when bans prohibiting same-sex marriage or civil unions are put into place. However, the reality is that real people suffer real pain and injury everyday from these unfair laws. Our families aren't protected. Our children aren't protected.

Here's yet another example.

From Newsday:

Linda Saegert and Victoria Sarafino lived together for 18 years, owned a house and a business together, and raised two children together. They were married in a ceremony at a Unitarian church in Freeport.

"We did everything that's the criteria for a nuclear family," said Saegert, a Valley Stream resident, adding that the two women even signed the children's report cards together. "We were a couple as well as any husband and wife."

But a State Supreme Court justice in Nassau County does not agree. Acting New York Supreme Court Judge Daniel Palmieri ruled that Saegert does not qualify as the late Sarafino's legal partner or spouse. Palmieri rejected last week Saegert's attempt to seek wrongful-death damages after Sarafino was killed in a car accident in 2003.

Citing previous court decisions, Palmieri ruled that Saegert was not eligible because of existing law that makes "a legal distinction between same-sex partners and heterosexual spouses." He noted that the state Appellate Division has ruled that "a same-sex partner, as executor, has no standing to sue in wrongful death on the partner's own behalf."
...
"Here in the state of New York, you have different classes of people," said Alphonso David, a staff attorney with Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, a gay-rights organization based in Manhattan. "Same-sex partners are assigned a second-class-citizen badge."

Hat tip to Pam's House Blend.

The Kansas Evolution Election: November vote is crucial, but moderate victories will be tough

Now that moderates have won a 6-4 majority on the state Board of Education, it will be difficult for them to solidfy long-term control of the board, a Washburn University political science professor says.

The victory by moderates came in the Aug. 1 primary -- an election that normally only picks candidates. However, voters in the primary assured the moderate takeover by taking two seats away from anti-evolution conservatives. Voters also gave the nomination to a moderate incumbent who does not face any challenge in the November election.

For more details on the primary, see In This Moment's coverage here.

However, to guarantee that the board doesn't swing back to the control of the Religious Right, moderate Democrats Jack Wempe and and Don Weiss have to defeat Republican anti-evolution incumbents John Bacon and Ken Willard.

Bob Beatty, who watches Kansas politics from the Topeka university, doesn't think defeating Bacon and Willard will be easy.

The Lawrence Journal-World reports:

"The national attention is certainly off, so that will not be as big of a campaign factor," Beatty said.

During the primaries, the challengers framed the debate as a board in crisis that needed to be "retaken," he said.

"Now it is retaken," he said, and it will be more difficult to drum up interest in the campaigns.

Cindy Duckett, a conservative activist from Wichita, told the Journal-World that "The pendulum will swing in two years."

Don Hineman of the Kansas Alliance for Education detailed his group's position.

The bipartisan alliance has targeted two races, endorsing Democrat Jack Wempe, of Lyons, against Willard and Democrat Don Weiss, of Olathe, against Bacon. The alliance will not get involved in election match-ups that pit Shaver against Democrat Charles Kent Runyan or Cauble against Democrat Tim Cruz because, Hineman said, whoever wins those races will provide a moderate perspective to the board.

In two years, Hineman said, five board seats, including three held by moderates, will be up for grabs, so he would like to pad what will be at least a 6-4 moderate majority in hopes a majority can be held through the 2008 election.

"Those seats will be challenged by the conservatives so we want to do what we can now to increase our numbers," Hineman said.

This, friends, is the challenge. The battle for education in Kansas won't be won until moderates can hold the board through, at least, two election cycles. That's why it's important to work for Wempe and Weiss.

Good news for lesbian & gay couples! New pension law provides benefits

By Diane Silver

The Human Rights Campaign reports that the pension bill signed into law by President Bush yesterday helps protect lesbian and gay couples.

HRC says:

The act includes provisions allowing non-spouse beneficiaries to roll over retirement benefits, and adding non-spouse beneficiaries to the retirement plan hardship distribution rules.

In all except for a handful of states, same-sex couples are currently without any kind of legal protections or benefits. That is why this new law IS truly good news -- and signed by Bush, of all people. Will wonders never cease.

HRC said it worked "without fanfare" for three years to get these provisions passed.

You don't suppose Bush's people forgot to read the bill? Actually, what happened is that the new law allows any two people to rollover benefits and add non-spouse beneficiaries. If the bill had just included lesbians and gays, Bush would have undoubtedly vetoed it.

The HRC page includes detailed information on how couples can take advantage of these new benefits and has links to financial experts who can answer your questions.

Justice Department appeals wiretap ruling; Judge allows program to continue

No surprise here. Yesterday's ruling striking down the NSA's warrantless wiretap program has already been appealed by the Bush Administration. The judge has allowed the program to continue until a Sept. 7 hearing on the issue.

And sadly, here is another "no surprise" bit of news. The judge in the case, Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of U. S. District Court in Detroit, is already being attacked by the GOP.

The New York Times reports:

Republicans said the decision was the work of a liberal judge advancing a partisan agenda. Judge Taylor, 73, worked in the civil rights movement, supported Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign and was appointed to the bench by him in 1979. She was the first black woman to serve on the Detroit federal trial court.

On the other hand, Taylor's reputation and judicial record appears to be anything but partisan. The Times reports:

She has ruled for the A.C.L.U. in a lawsuit challenging religious displays on municipal property. But she has also struck down a Detroit ordinance favoring minority contractors. "Her reputation is for being a real by-the-books judge," said Evan H. Caminker, the dean of the University of Michigan Law School.

The warrantless program is an end run around current procedures that allow law enforcement officials to get warrants through a secret court. The court, which was created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or FISA, has granted all but a handful of warrants.

The New York Times article has a graphic explaining the FISA process. Look in the left column, just above the picture of Judge Taylor.

Our commentary on Judge Taylor's ruling includes:

NSA wiretap ruling helps U.S. reclaim its soul

"There are no hereditary kings in America."

Latest Headlines: Jimmy Carter talks tough in Spiegel magazine; Judge halts wiretapping; Kansas & more

Jimmy Carter Talks Tough

Jimmy Carter shows you can be a good Christian & reject fundamentalists

Carter talks Bush's un-Americanism, Israel's mistakes & fundamentalists' flaws


Federal Judge Overturns NSA Wiretapping

NSA wiretap ruling helps U.S. reclaim its soul

"There are no hereditary kings in America"

Federal judge pulls plug on NSA's warrantless wiretapping program


Lebanon Horrors

A picture is worth a thousand words

Stupid US-Israeli strategy plays into the hands of Hezbollah


Kansas Insights

"Hope & Politics" debuts in Kansas' Liberty Press

Anti-gay minister Terry Fox to lead new chuch after abruptly leaving his old post

The Rainbow Flag: Small-town solution to Kansas vandalism & a revolutionary bit of good news


November Election

Reading the election tea leaves: Lobbyists bet Democrats will win in November

NSA wiretap ruling helps U.S. reclaim its soul

By Diane Silver

Former President Jimmy Carter and the Hon. Anna Diggs Taylor have much in common. Among the most important things they share is the belief that core American values have nothing to do with torture, imperial leaders who put themselves above the law and a Big Brother approach to government. All of those so-called "values" are continuously endorsed by George W. Bush and company.

Instead, Carter and Taylor share a belief that the core of our country -- our very soul -- is bound to fairness, freedom and the rule of law.

That became clear today when two things occurred almost simultaneously. Taylor ruled that the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program is unconstitutional and ordered it to be halted immediately. At the same time, an interview Carter gave to the German magazine Spiegel tackling similar issues was flashing around the Internet. ( For more on the Carter interview, see here.)

In her ruling, Taylor said the wiretapping program approved by George W. Bush is an attempt to put himself above the Constitution and its prohibition against unreasonable searches. Declaring that this is wrong, she wrote: "There are no hereditary kings in America."

In his interview, Carter was asked if the Bush Administration and the Christian fundamentalists leading the Religious Right are pulling the country in the wrong direction. The interviewer asked if Carter thought the United States was "in danger of losing its core values?"

He answered that "for a while, yes."

Carter added, though, that the United States has a history of correcting its course. Carter said:

As you possibly know, historically, our country has had the capability of self-correcting our own mistakes. This applied to slavery in 1865, it applied to legal racial segregation a hundred years later or so. It applied to the Joe McCarthy era when anti-communism was in a fearsome phase in the country like terrorism now. So we have an ability to correct ourselves and I believe that nowadays there is a self-correction taking place. In my opinion the election results in Connecticut (Eds: The primary loss of war supporter Senator Joseph Lieberman) were an indication that Americans realized very clearly that we made a mistake in going into Iraq and staying there too long.

Taylor's ruling is just one of the many course corrections going on right now in this country.

By the way, the 73-year-old Taylor was appointed to the bench by Carter. (Thank you, Jimmy.)

I can't tell you if Taylor's ruling will stand. The Bush Administration will undoubtedly appeal it. (I have never understood, though, why Bush and company are so keen on on listening in on Americans without first getting warrants. The current FISA law allows the Administration to get warrants RETROACTIVELY if law enforcement officials need to act quickly.)

I can't tell you that all Americans agree with Carter and Taylor. Check out the Technorati listings to see the many blogs where Carter is being bashed. Taylor's ruling has only been out for a few hours and she is already being attacked online.

I can't tell you that Ned Lamont will beat Lieberman in Connecticut as Carter discussed. A recent poll says Lamont is behind because of all the Republican support Lieberman is getting.

I can't even say that the Democratic Party is always the best answer to this nation's problems. Too many Democrats have bowed down to Bush and bought into his policies.

However, I can say that an increasing number of us are waking up. Like Carter and Taylor, we have simply had enough.

Whether we win today or tomorrow or the next day or the day after that, we won't stop fighting. Unlike the lip service Bush pays to creating freedom in Iraq, we really do believe in freedom. We believe in fairness and we believe that no man is above the law.

"There are no hereditary kings in America"

By Nancy Jane Moore

"[T]he public interest is clear, in this matter. It is the upholding of our Constitution." So says federal Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in her ruling that the federal government's telephone surveillance program was unconstitutional. She ends her opinion with a quote from a ruling by the late Chief Justice Earl Warren in a 1967 case, U.S. v. Robel:

Implicit in the term "national defense" is the notion of defending those values and ideas which set this Nation apart. . . . It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of . . . those liberties . . . which make[] the defense of the Nation worthwhile.

Judge Taylor didn't just issue a permanent injunction that prevents the government from conducting its program of eavesdropping without warrants on international telephone and internet communications made by people in the US. And she didn't just rule that the program violates the Separation of Powers doctrine, the Administrative Procedures Act, the First and Fourth Amendments to the United States Constitution, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and Title III of the 1968 Crime Control Act. She also said it would violate the core principles of our nation if the federal government was allowed to trample over civil rights in its supposed defense of the country.

The judge completely rejected the government's argument that the president, as "Commander in Chief," has the "inherent authority" to violate the Constitution and the laws of this country:

We must first note that the Office of the Chief Executive has itself been created, with its powers, by the Constitution. There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution. So all "inherent powers" must derive from that Constitution.

The Washington Post has comments from the ACLU, which brought the suit. The New York Times notes that the government is expected to seek a stay of Judge Taylor's injunction while the ruling is appealed.

Other federal courts have addressed this issue recently. Judge Vaughn Walker ruled in July that the government couldn't use the state secrets privilege to get out of a suit against it and AT&T brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation over programs to intercept and review telephone calls. While a federal judge in Chicago upheld the state secrets privilege in a similar suit in federal court there, all suits dealing with that program have now been consolidated before Judge Walker. His ruling is on appeal to the Ninth Circuit.

The plaintiffs in the suit in Judge Taylor's court are scholars, journalists, and lawyers who frequently need to communicate with persons in other countries for purposes of their work. She found they had standing to sue and had been damaged by the government's actions, and she concluded the state secrets act didn't apply because the government had acknowledged the existence of the program.

However, she did dismiss "data mining" claims, finding that the plaintiffs could not prove the existence of such a program without using classified material.

I'm sure the right wingers are already calling Judge Taylor an "activist judge." If upholding our Constitution is an act of "activism," we could use a whole lot more of it.

Federal judge pulls plug on NSA's warrantless wiretapping program

[updated to add judge's profile, quote & links.]

By Diane Silver

George W. Bush is NOT king!

AP just reported that a federal judge ruled today that the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program violates free speech and privacy rights "as well as the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution."

"There are no hereditary kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution," the Hon. Anna Diggs Taylor wrote in the opinion.

AP reports via the Washington Post:

The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit on behalf of journalists, scholars and lawyers who say the program has made it difficult for them to do their jobs. They believe many of their overseas contacts are likely targets of the program, which involves secretly listening to conversations between people in the U.S. and people in other countries.

My thoughts on this development?

YES!!!!! The president is NOT above the Constitution.

If you can get to the Glen Greenwald's site, see his analysis here. The site has been cranky because of all the traffic.

The opinion is here. (in pdf)

A Detroit Free Press profile of the judge is here.

Jimmy Carter shows you can be a good Christian while rejecting the right-wing fundamentalists

By Nancy Jane Moore

Jimmy Carter is a practicing Baptist and someone who gives a great deal of thought to the meaning of Christian teachings. So when he criticizes the fundamentalist Christian right in his interview in Spiegel, he knows what he's talking about.

We quoted his observations at length in an earlier post on In This Moment.

When Carter says that the fundamentalists believe their ideas are God's ideas, he has put his finger on the real danger they present to our country and the world as a whole: These people won't listen to anyone who doesn't buy their ideas hook, line and sinker. They won't negotiate. They won't compromise.

Hmm. The Christian fundamentalists and the Muslim fundamentalists sure have a lot in common.

But the most brilliant part of the Carter interview is when he explains how Bush is applying that fundamentalist mentality in running the US and conducting our foreign policy. He says:

And so this administration, for instance, has a policy of just refusing to talk to someone who is in strong disagreement with them -- which is also a radical departure from past history.

In other words, the go-it-alone, my-way-or-the-highway approach of the Bush administration is yet another example of the negative influence of extremist Christian fundamentalism on this country. The religious right not only work to block the civil rights of gays, to restrict the rights of women, and to perpetuate ignorance in public education, they have also given us a president who refuses to talk with anyone who doesn't buy his distorted view of the world.

And as Carter says:

You never can be certain in advance that negotiations on difficult circumstances will be successful, but you can be certain in advance if you don't negotiate that your problem is going to continue and maybe even get worse.

It never hurts to talk. But more than anything else right now, we need a president who is willing to listen.

Latest Headlines: Carter on Bush, Israel & fundamentalism; Lebanon's woes; & Kansas' bigotry

Featured headline:

• Carter talks about Bush's un-Americanism, Israel's mistakes & fundamentalists' flaws

Other recent headlines:

• Reading the election tea leaves: Lobbyists bet Democrats will win in November
• A picture is worth a thousand words
• "Hope & Politics" debuts in Kansas' Liberty Press
• Stupid US-Israeli strategy plays into the hands of Hezbollah
• Lebanon lost
• Fighting ignorance: why the Kansas evolution election matters
• Rainbow Flag: A small-town solution to Kansas vandalism & a revolutionary bit of good news
• Rainbow Flag: "It's ruined the city" of Meade, but then again, maybe not
• Anti-gay minister Terry Fox to lead new church after abruptly resigning from his old post

Reading the election tea leaves: Lobbyists bet Democrats will win in November

By Diane Silver

Cross your fingers and hold your breath, but there's yet another sign that Democrats might score a significant victory in November. Lobbyists seem to be betting on some kind of Democratic victory.

The Washington Post reports today:

Washington lobbying firms, trade associations and corporate offices are moving to hire more well-connected Democrats in response to rising prospects that the opposition party will wrest control of at least one chamber of Congress from Republicans in the November elections.

In what lobbyists are calling a harbinger of possible upheaval on Capitol Hill, many who make a living influencing government have gone from mostly shunning Democrats to aggressively recruiting them as lobbyists over the past six months or so.

Personally, I'm approaching this election like a jaded Charlie Brown. Like the hapless Charlie of Peanuts comic fame, I feel like Lucy has pulled the football away far too often for me to trust that the ball will be there when I want to kick it, or that Democrats can actually win in November.

The Post article declares that this marks the end the infamous K Street Project, Republican-speak for chilling Democrats out of the lobbying industry. We shall see.

A picture is worth a thousand words

Ann Telnaes says the same thing I said about Lebanon and does it with a couple of pictures and 16 words.

Telnaes has won a lot of awards for her editorial cartoons, including the Pulitzer. She posts new cartoons regularly on her website as well as publishing them in a variety of newspapers and magazines. Her take on world events cuts right to the heart of the matter.

Carter talks about Bush's un-Americanism, Israel's mistakes & fundamentalists' flaws

Former President Jimmy Carter says the current administration has led the country into a radical departure from American values.

In a detailed interview in the German magazine Spiegel, Carter also says Israel had neither the "legal nor moral justification" for its actions in Lebanon and discusses the dangers of Christian fundamentalism. Carter was publicizing his book Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis.

The former president described the post-9/11 era as a time of bullying by George W. Bush and cowardice by the news media and politicians. When asked if the United States was "in danger of losing its core values," Carter said: "for a while, yes."

Carter told the magazine:

Under all of its predecessors there was a commitment to peace instead of preemptive war. Our country always had a policy of not going to war unless our own security was directly threatened and now we have a new policy of going to war on a preemptive basis. Another very serious departure from past policies is the separation of church and state, which I describe in the book. This has been a policy since the time of Thomas Jefferson and my own religious beliefs are compatible with this. The other principle that I described in the book is basic justice. We've never had an administration before that so overtly and clearly and consistently passed tax reform bills that were uniquely targeted to benefit the richest people in our country at the expense or the detriment of the working families of America.

On Christian fundamentalism...

SPIEGEL: One main points of your book is the rather strange coalition between Christian fundamentalists and the Republican Party. How can such a coalition of the pious lead to moral catastrophes like the Iraqi prison scandal in Abu Ghraib and torture in Guantanamo?

CARTER: The fundamentalists believe they have a unique relationship with God, and that they and their ideas are God's ideas and God's premises on the particular issue. Therefore, by definition since they are speaking for God anyone who disagrees with them is inherently wrong. And the next step is: Those who disagree with them are inherently inferior, and in extreme cases -- as is the case with some fundamentalists around the world -- it makes your opponents sub-humans, so that their lives are not significant. Another thing is that a fundamentalist can't bring himself or herself to negotiate with people who disagree with them because the negotiating process itself is an indication of implied equality. And so this administration, for instance, has a policy of just refusing to talk to someone who is in strong disagreement with them -- which is also a radical departure from past history. So these are the kinds of things that cause me concern. And, of course, fundamentalists don't believe they can make mistakes, so when we permit the torture of prisoners in Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib, it's just impossible for a fundamentalist to admit that a mistake was made.

On Israel, Carter says...

I don't think that Israel has any legal or moral justification for their massive bombing of the entire nation of Lebanon. What happened is that Israel is holding almost 10,000 prisoners, so when the militants in Lebanon or in Gaza take one or two soldiers, Israel looks upon this as a justification for an attack on the civilian population of Lebanon and Gaza. I do not think that's justified, no.

This interview is well worth reading and includes the kinds of tough questions that, alas, are not often being asked by reporters in this country.

"Hope & Politics" debuts in Kansas' Liberty Press

By Diane Silver

I am pleased to announce that my new column, "Hope and Politics," debuted in the August issue of The Liberty Press, Kansas' monthly lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered newsmagazine.

The column focuses on political issues and events of concern to the LGBT community. I'm covering and commenting on the rising strength of the gay rights movement in Kansas, the upcoming election, the legislative session and more.

You can find The Liberty Press online here. Alas, my column is not a part of the web site. However, you can read me in print by subscribing to The Liberty Press for $18 a year. If you live in Kansas or are passing through, you can pick up a copy of the newsmagazine for free in locations around the state.

Stupid US-Israeli strategy plays into the hands of Hezbollah

By Nancy Jane Moore

Hezbollah may have won the war in Lebanon after all. The New York Times reports this morning that they are already dominating the rebuilding efforts, using money from Iran.

The Times observes:

Hezbollah's reputation as an efficient grass-roots social service network -- as opposed to the Lebanese government, regarded by many here as sleek men in suits doing well -- was in evidence everywhere. Young men with walkie-talkies and clipboards were in the battered Shiite neighborhoods on the southern edge of Bint Jbail, taking notes on the extent of the damage.

So Hezbollah will get credit for rebuilding and Iran's reputation will be solidified, even among Sunnis and Lebanese Christians. The US can't block Iranian aid without looking even more like the bad guy than it does right now.

It's amazing how everyone plays into the hands of a group like Hezbollah. Despite their ability to provide good social services in Lebanon, they are certainly not the good guys. They are religious fundamentalists and they are committed to getting rid of Israel. Their very presence undermines the current government of Lebanon, and I imagine that they make other Lebanese religious groups -- different sects of Muslims as well as Christians -- very nervous indeed.

But Israel is so frightened of them that it rose to their bait and attacked. Hezbollah couldn't have asked for anything better.

I said before and I'll say again: Violence won't solve the conflicts in the Middle East. I notice that David Ignatius of The Washington Post agrees with me:

The Lebanon war was damaging for Israel, the United States and, most of all, Lebanon itself. But it may have taught everyone a lesson that will be immensely important to the future of the Middle East: The solutions to the big problems that afflict the region are not military but political.

His column is headlined "After the Bombs, Politics." But it should have been titled "Instead of Bombs, Politics." The bombs should have been avoided in the first place.

Juan Cole, as usual, has an excellent analysis of just how stupid this war was on today's Informed Comment.

The wars in Lebanon and Iraq are both prime examples of how trying to resolve complex problems with brute force is bad strategy. Unfortunately, such mistakes are not only unsuccessful, but the repercussions from them will haunt us all for years to come.

Lebanon lost

By Nancy Jane Moore

As the world held its collective breath about the fragile cease-fire in Lebanon, President Bush proclaimed that Israel had won. The Israeli government made similar pronouncements, though this morning's Washington Post says that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert acknowledged "failings and shortcomings."

However, Hezbollah also thinks it won. On Informed Comment, Juan Cole reports that the group's "leader Hasan Nasrallah said his organization had won a historic and unprecedented victory against Israel." Cole says of Hezbollah's claim:

This is the sort of victory where a nerd goes up against a heav[]y weight champion in the ring and comes out of it alive, even if stomped on pretty badly. But it is closer to the truth than Olmert and Bush's pronouncements that Hizbullah's state within a state was just gone, now.

I don't know who won, if anyone did. But one thing is clear: Lebanon lost. Many innocent civilians are dead. Homes and businesses are destroyed. In some places the infrastructure is in tatters. The government is exposed as weak -- unable to deal with either Hezbollah or the Israelis. One hopes the country can rebuild and survive.

In an article that originally appeared in The New York Times, Daoud Kuttab, a Palestinian Christian and journalist, expresses his concern about the influence of the Christian Zionists -- extreme Christian fundamentalists who want to see the war in Lebanon continue. He writes:

A small minority of evangelical Christians have entered the Middle East political arena with some of the most un-Christian statements I have ever heard. The latest gems come from people like Pat Robertson, the founder and chairman of the Christian Broadcasting Network, and Rev. John Hagee of Christians United for Israel. Hagee, a popular televangelist who leads the 18,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, ratcheted up his rhetoric this year with the publication of his book, "Jerusalem Countdown," in which he argues that a confrontation with Iran is a necessary precondition for Armageddon (which will mean the death of most Jews, in his eyes) and the Second Coming of Christ.

Kuttab rejects this insanity in Christian terms:

For the time being, I, as a Christian Palestinian, prefer to follow the words of Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount. "Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called the sons of God."

Seymour Hersh, in another excellent report in The New Yorker, says that the Bush administration was very involved in the Israeli campaign in Lebanon. He writes:

President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah's heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel's security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preemptive attack to destroy Iran's nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground.

Ah, yes: The Bush administration, which failed to capture Osama bin Laden, left Afghanistan adrift, and completely botched an unnecessary war in Iraq, is now apparently interested in starting another war in Iran.

Meanwhile you can't even carry your hand lotion or bottled water on an airplane and a whole lot of Lebanese now see the US and Israel as their enemies.

This is making us safer how?

Fighting ignorance: why the Kansas evolution election matters

By Nancy Jane Moore

If you wondered why In This Moment paid so much attention to the Kansas School Board primary elections, take a look at these survey results summarized in the Science Times section of today's New York Times.

In surveys on public acceptance of evolution conducted in the U.S., Japan, and Europe, the U.S. ranked next to the bottom, with less than 50 percent of the population believing in education. The only country with a lower level of belief is Turkey; in Iceland, 85 percent accept evolution.

The study was published in the August 11 issue of Science Magazine. Click on this link to download a PDF of the supporting materials or purchase a copy of the entire report.

Today's Science Times also includes an essay by Lawrence Krauss entitled "How to Make Sure Children Are Scientifically Illiterate." While Krauss applauds the victories of Kansas moderates, he observes:

But perhaps more worrisome than a political movement against science is plain old ignorance. The people determining the curriculum of our children in many states remain scientifically illiterate. And Kansas is a good case in point.

He points out that the Kansas school board chairman, Dr. Steve Abrams, is a strict creationist who believes God created the Earth 6500 hundred years ago.

Krauss goes on to say:

I have recently been criticized by some for strenuously objecting in print to what I believe are scientifically inappropriate attempts by some scientists to discredit the religious faith of others. However, the age of the earth, and the universe, is no more a matter of religious faith than is the question of whether or not the earth is flat.

It is a matter of overwhelming scientific evidence. To maintain a belief in a 6,000-year-old earth requires a denial of essentially all the results of modern physics, chemistry, astronomy, biology and geology. It is to imply that airplanes and automobiles work by divine magic, rather than by empirically testable laws.

Krauss, a physicist who frequently writes on science for the lay audience, has posted here on his website an interesting article he wrote on the conflict between science and the religious intelligent design movement. It provides a good analysis of the intelligent design movement's strategy and emphasizes the importance of good science education. This article is a valuable tool for those who are struggling to make sure that their schools are doing a decent job of educating the children.

Rainbow Flag: A small-town solution to Kansas vandalism & a revolutionary bit of good news

By Diane Silver

When you are a lesbian and your most basic rights are constantly under attack, it is easy to miss the importance of tiny events. Building up over time, though, these small incidents -- call them nuggets of good news -- can be more important than a judge's decision. They can signal the real sea changes in our lives.

One such event has just occurred in the controversy over a hotel's effort to fly a rainbow flag in Meade, Kan.

Since they first hoisted the flag, The Lakeway Hotel has been subjected to two incidents of vandalism. The first occurred in early morning of July 31 when someone cut down the first rainbow flag flown by JR and Robin Knight, a heterosexual couple who own the hotel. In the second incident Thursday, a brick with the word "fag" was thrown through a hotel window.

JR says the first incident of vandalism has been resolved, and in a hometown Kansas way that gives me great hope.

The Hutchinson News reports today:

The disappearance (of the first rainbow flag) had remained a mystery, but the father of two local boys brought them to the Lakeway on Friday and they owned up to their involvement.

"They apologized and said they'd replace it," J.R. Knight said. He didn't name the boys, and Meade County Sheriff Michael Cox said only that officials are investigating.

These seems like such a tiny thing -- a father marching his sons over to apologize to a neighbor and make restitution. However, I think this tiny event is actually huge.

This father could have just as easily ignored the whole thing -- after all, the rainbow flag is a symbol of gay rights. He could have said: Who cares about a bunch of queers? He could have even scolded his sons, punished them in some way and told them never to do it again, but kept them away from the Lakeway Hotel and the Knights. The attitude could have been: Boys will be boys after all, and no one should be flying a queer flag in this town anyway.

This unnamed father didn't do any of that. He forced his sons to be respectful to people who openly support gay rights.

This honorable fellow may never vote in favor of a single fair law for lesbians and gays, but he has just given the Knights and every lesbian, gay and bisexual person in Kansas the most important gift of all.

Think of the scene in the movie Brokeback Mountain where Ennis' father takes him to see the body of a fellow who had been beaten to death for being gay. The lesson that fictional father gave that day was that being gay deserved death.

With a population of only 1,600 and located in the ranching country of southwestern Kansas, Meade, superficially, looks like the same kind of country portrayed in the movie.

However, think about what just happened in Meade where a father forced his sons to acknowledge that vandalism in the name of protesting gay rights is not right. This father forced his sons to acknowledge that all Kansans -- even queers -- deserve respect.

That's huge. That's the stuff of revolutions.

[The 2nd paragraph about Brokeback Mountain was revised 8/24/06 to clarify my meaning.]

Rainbow Flag: "It's ruined the city" of Meade, but then again, maybe not

The Wichita Eagle has a nice overview today of the battle in the southwestern Kansas town of Meade over flying a rainbow flag.

In This Moment previously reported on the controversy over the Lakeway Hotel's flag here and here and here, among other places.

The Lakeway is owned by a heterosexual couple, JR and Robin Knight, who first flew the flag because it was a gift from their 12-year-old son. The flag was meant to be a symbol of Kansas being over the rainbow. However, they decided to keep flying a rainbow flag in solidarity with lesbians and gays after the first flag was cut down and a brick with threats inked on it was thrown through their window.

The Eagle's story seems fair and does a good job of highlighting some of the prejudice lesbians and gays face. The only thing I'd quibble with in the story is the size of the town. (This is a real nitpick.) The population estimates I saw for 2005 set the population at 1,600 not "near 2000."

The quotes in the story are classic. Somehow the very existence of a symbol of fair laws and equal rights can ruin a city. Of course, there's the ever popular idea that queers are OK as long as we don't "push it" (i.e. be ourselves and as open as any heterosexual). The comment section of the online story also highlights some "interesting" ideas, but more on that at the bottom of this post.

The Eagle reports:

"I don't go for it," lifelong Meade resident Bob Mabery, 73, said Monday, sipping coffee. "It's ruined the city of Meade."

Meade, he said, was a "respectful little town, but this has practically destroyed it."

When asked how a flag has destroyed a town, Mabery said it's just gotten everybody's ire up.

For a while he was so upset he quit going to the Chuck Wagon Restaurant for his coffee.

"No one's going to go around that place," Mabery said of the Lakeway. But he doesn't hate gay people, he quickly added.

"I guess I'm just one who thinks it belongs in the closet."

Sitting at a table near him, Beverly Bennett said she's not upset about the flag so much as she is about JR Knight coming into town with his "California ways."

"He bellyaches about a lot of stuff" at City Council meetings, she said.

The flag issue isn't the real problem, she said. It's the Knights' attitude.

"I've known some gay people, and they don't bother me a bit as long as they don't push it on me," she said.

Officials from the state's largest gay rights group, Kansas Equality Coalition, say these attitudes are a problem, but that not everyone in the area agrees with them.

Anne Mitchell, the coalition's southwest Kansas representative, said her job takes her to Meade a couple of times a month, and she's found most of the townspeople to be "hardworking, caring and decent folks."

"I just feel like it (the flag flap) is the isolated actions of a few people who got fired up and are acting out," she said.

One of the most fascinating bits of the story is in the online comment section. One poster noted:

This has opened up a whole new can of worms. Too many freedoms in our country... everything is allowable.

Flying a flag is horrible? Gosh, what will we think of next!

Anti-gay minister Terry Fox to lead new church after abruptly resigning from his old post

By Diane Silver

Terry Fox is setting himself up with a new church just seven days after he stood up in a Sunday service and stunned the congregation he had lead for 10 years by resigning -- effective that instant.

Fox's resignation from Wichita's Immanuel Baptist Church left many folks in his congregation and the city scratching their heads. Although Fox has tried to portray his resignation as being a normal evolution of his political ambitions, others have noted that it probably was not based on "love and understanding." I also blogged about the oddities of Fox's departure, which didn't follow the normal procedure for a minister leaving a post. Lay leaders of Fox's old church have remained silent on the reasons he left.

The Wichita Eagle reports today:

After he (Fox) announced his resignation, he said he received between 200 and 300 calls from people -- many from Immanuel -- who wanted him to stay in Wichita
and continue to preach on Sundays.

He said he and his wife, Barbara, agreed to take on the new church late Friday night with the uderstanding that he would continue to travel many weeks during the year to work on the issues he wants to address.

"That's the only way I agreed to do this," he said by telephone Sunday night, "because I didn't want to change what I feel God has called me to do."

Fox is best known for his successful campaign to ban same-sex couples in Kansas from marriage, civil unions and any other legal right that married couples enjoy.

The Rainbow Flag: Phelps folds while Kansas Equality Coalition meets in Meade

The Southwest Kansas Chapter of the Kansas Equality Coalition met Sunday at the embattled Lakeway Hotel in Meade to show support for the bed and breakfast's fight to fly the rainbow flag.

Members of Fred Phelps' anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church said they were going to picket, but canceled because of rain.

KBSD-TV in Dodge City reported on the meeting.

"I think it's important for us to speak out against bigotry when many people in these small communities can't do that for themselves," says Anne Mitchell, of the southwest chapter of the Kansas Equality Coalition.
...
However, not everyone in Meade is happy to play host to this event.

"I think it's a bunch of crap. This guy just comes in here from California and screws up our town. Now everyone thinks our town is a piece of crap," says Meade resident C.J. Thomas.

Kyle Ross also lives in Meade and does not agree with the group's message. "They have a right to do it I guess, but it just really doesn't stand for something good," says Ross.

For more information on the battle over the hotel's right to fly the rainbow flag, see here and here.

Memo to Homeland Security: Stop fighting the last war

By Nancy Jane Moore

Martial arts training provides us with a valuable guideline in setting up security programs: Deal with the attack that happens, not the one you think is going to happen.

You can see this very obviously in sparring matches. You think your opponent is going to hit you in the head, so you raise your arms and she kicks you in the stomach. By anticipating the attack, you left yourself open for something else.

The principle is simple. You respond when your opponent has committed himself, but before the attack can harm you. This requires patience, timing, awareness, being relaxed and calm, and being able to quickly read a situation. All these skills can be acquired through training and are, frankly, more important than any particular technique you might master.

The same principle applies to developing security programs. There is no possible way to set up a physical defense or screening system against every possible attack -- even if such a blockade is successful, it will imprison the defender even as it protects against the attacker. More likely, the attackers will find a way inside the blocks, and unless you left that hole open on purpose, to draw them -- a valuable strategy in and of itself -- people will die.

Another important point: You can't defend against the last attack, anymore than you can re-fight the last war. One thing about human beings -- all human beings, including terrorists -- they are problem solvers with active imaginations. Whatever you protect against, they'll come up with something new. Bruce Schneier makes this point well in his op-ed in Sunday's Minneapolis Star Tribune:

It's easy to defend against what the terrorists planned last time, but it's shortsighted. If we spend billions fielding liquid-analysis machines in airports and the terrorists use solid explosives, we've wasted our money. If they target shopping malls, we've wasted our money. Focusing on tactics simply forces the terrorists to make a minor modification in their plans. There are too many targets -- stadiums, schools, theaters, churches, the long line of densely packed people before airport security -- and too many ways to kill people.

Security measures that require us to guess correctly don't work, because invariably we will guess wrong. It's not security, it's security theater: measures designed to make us feel safer but not actually safer.

From reading articles such as one in Saturday's New York Times, I've gathered that the US security agencies have erred in several crucial ways:

• They haven't focused enough resources on risk analysis and creative thinking about all the possibilities.
• There has been too much turnover of experts -- unfortunately, the government, like most major corporations, seems to think individual employees are interchangeable, and discounts the knowledge gained from years of experience.
• They don't know enough about the enemies out there -- our intelligence is still inadequate.
• There is too little cooperation among security agencies -- in the martial arts we call that "ego."
• And all too often, as Ron Suskind makes clear in his book The One Percent Doctrine, the people at the top are only interested in analysis and intelligence that supports their ideas, not in a true picture of what is happening.

The Times article quotes Michael Jackson, deputy secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, as saying:

I am impatient. I don't think we have gotten as far as we need to go. We can do more, and we can do better. And we must.

Certainly he's right that they haven't done what they need to do, but let's focus on that first sentence, "I am impatient." That's part of the problem here. Patience is not a US virtue. We always want everything done yesterday.

Doing things quickly is fine, if you know what you're doing. But we don't. We need more intelligence, more analysis, more creative thinking. Those things take time, and we need to approach them with patience.

Something else we need: Greater involvement of the people. Informed involvement, not just the announcements we hear regularly on the subway loudspeakers to "report suspicious bags."

We need training programs for volunteer first responders of all kinds. You can draw on martial artists -- for example -- to become the eyes and ears of the community. Martial artists already have a grounding in how to pay attention and evaluate situations. Long time residents are ideal candidates to serve as neighborhood block captains -- people who can organize their neighbors in the event of an emergency. Expanded first aid training and other skills common to volunteer fire departments could be quite useful.

This sort of program has the advantage of being useful in the event of natural disasters and dealing with crime as well. And in the US -- and probably in other countries -- we have a history that shows that people will rally to such programs. Most people like to be useful and to be involved in their communities. Look at all the people who train in search and rescue or who join volunteer fire departments even in areas where local governments hire professionals.

The people want to help keep our country safe. Let them. Let us.