The Amish show us how true compassion works

By Diane Silver

Less than a week after a gunman killed five Amish girls and wounded five others, dozens of Amish attended the funeral of the man who caused them such horrific pain.

AP reports that about half of the 75 mourners today at the funeral of Charles Carl Roberts IV. were Amish.

"It's the love, the forgiveness, the heartfelt forgiveness they have toward the family. I broke down and cried seeing it displayed," said (Bruce) Porter, who had come to Pennsylvania to offer what help he could. He said (Robert's wife) Marie Roberts was also touched.

"She was absolutely deeply moved, by just the love shown," Porter said. (Porter is a fire department chaplain from Colorado who attended the service.)

These days it seems that all we see in the world is anger and hatred. Sometimes I give into it myself. Lately, as we struggle with war, it sometimes feels as if we are all locked in the death grip of violence and revenge.

But, what an amazing thing these members of the Amish community did today. I don't know if it's possible for someone who hasn't lived through this kind of tragedy to imagine the pain they must feel. In the midst of all that, though, these people had room in their hearts for compassion for the family of the man who hurt them so badly.

How hard it must have been for them to attend that funeral. What a gift they gave to Roberts' grieving family. And, what a loving gift their attendance gave to us all.

They showed us what real compassion looks like.

Poll: Country loses faith in Republicans & Bush

Newsweek writes today:

"Come hell or high water -- ran the conventional wisdom -- Republicans could rely on two issues to win elections: the war on terror and values."

Apparently, we're under water and way beyond hell because the sex scandal surrounding GOP Congressman Mark Foley and the horrors of Iraq are sinking the GOP at an amazing rate, according to a Newsweek poll released today.

President Bush's approval rating has fallen to a new all-time low in this particular poll of 33 percent.

Newsweek also reports:

(T)he Foley fiasco is jeopardizing the party's monopoly on faith and power. For the first time since 2001, the NEWSWEEK poll shows that more Americans trust the Democrats than the GOP on moral values and the war on terror. Fully 53 percent of Americans want the Democrats to win control of Congress next month, including 10 percent of Republicans, compared to just 35 percent who want the GOP to retain power.

Kansas Republican newspaper is furious at GOP & will endorse Democrats

The chairman of The Johnson County Sun in suburban Kansas City says his newspaper plans to turn away from 56 years of tradition and endorse a slate of Democrats this year.

Steve Rose writes that as a life-long Republican he is "shocked" by the shift in his newspaper and in his own thinking. It's not that he agrees with Democrats, Rose says; he just can't stand what the Republican Party has become.

Rose writes that the paper plans to endorse "Kathleen Sebelius for governor and Mark Parkinson for lieutenant governor; Dennis Moore to be re-elected to the U.S. Congress; Paul Morrison for Kansas attorney general; and a slew of local Democratic state legislative candidates."

Rose writes that he can't stomach the new GOP because:

It means anti-public education, though claiming to support it.

It means weak support of our universities, while praising them.

It means anti-stem cell research.

It means ridiculing global warming.

It means gay bashing. Not so much gay marriage, but just bashing gays.

It means immigrant bashing. I'm talking about the viciousness.

It means putting religion in public schools. Not just prayer.

It means mocking evolution and claiming it is not science.

It means denigrating even abstinence-based sex education.

Note, I did not say it means "anti-abortion," because I do not find that position repugnant, at all. I respect that position.

But everything else adds up to priorities that have nothing to do with the Republican Party I once knew.

2nd Kansas newspaper attacks Attorney General Phill Kline over campaign tactic

The Johnson County Sun has joined The Kansas City Star in slamming Phill Kline over his attempt to smear his Democratic opponent.

The Sun's opinion page editor writes:

(I)t is the type of mean-spirited activity that gives politics and politicians a bad name.

The Sun's editor is angry over Kline's attack of Paul Morrison for being a member of a commission, which recommended a law that some people don't like. This was six years ago.

And Kline thinks he can taint Morrison because Morrison was on the Kansas Sentencing Commission when it recommended alternatives, as it should have, to cope with a growing prison population.

Of course, Morrison was only one vote there, but Kline is trying to hang him as the culprit.

It is beyond a stretch to blame Morrison for a piece of legislation that was passed by a Legislature of which he was not a member or could control.

You can find the Kansas City Star editorial here and Kline's reaction here. (Note: Kline found one error in the editorial.)

The Dow hits a record, but the economy isn't booming

By Nancy Jane Moore

The stock market is on a roll: Last week the Dow-Jones average hit a record high. That's great for big-time investors, but it doesn't mean the overall economy has recovered. This breaking news headline from today's New York Times -- so new it doesn't even link to a story yet -- says it all:

U.S. Economy Adds 51,000 Jobs in September, Far Fewer Than Expected

And a Times story from October 3 adds more information:

The burden of housing costs in nearly every part of the country grew sharply from 2000 to 2005, according to new Census Bureau data being made public today. The numbers vividly illustrate the impact, often distributed unevenly, of the crushing combination of escalating real estate prices and largely stagnant incomes.

New jobs down, increased housing costs, stagnant incomes: that's the economy for most of us. A booming stock market may help those of us who have 401k plans -- assuming that value holds up until we retire -- but it doesn't do much for working folks right now.

As I wrote back in August:

The rich are getting richer, the workers are losing ground, and the poor remain stuck. 37 million people still live below the poverty line in the US -- that's about 12 percent of the population.

I've always looked at the stock market as legalized gambling -- the odds may be better than the lottery and it does appear that if you put your money in something safe and leave it there, you will have more when it comes time to retire, but essentially you're betting that the stock price will go up when you invest.

I don't look on the stock market as a good way to gauge the overall health of the economy. For example, when companies lay off thousands of workers or export jobs to other countries, their stock goes up. Those may be great decisions for the corporation, but they don't do a thing for all those people they put out of jobs.

And when wages start going up, someone always screams "inflation" and the market tanks.

Maybe what's good for General Motors isn't necessary good for the USA. Oh, wait a minute. GM appears to be crashing, too. We need an updated example.

What's good for Halliburton isn't necessary good for the USA.

From Kansas: Who the heck is Fred Phelps?

By Diane Silver

Actually, the true question should be: Who are Fred Phelps and the Westboro Church, and why are they so bent on causing emotional anguish to so many people?

That question seems particularly relevant today given that the Topeka, Kan., family has extorted its way onto Mike Gallagher's national radio program. As the Topeka Capital-Journal Reports, the family will get one hour on air in return for not picketing the funeral of the Amish girls who were killed earlier this week.

I live 30 miles from Phelps, used to cover him as a newspaper reporter, once worked in a political campaign where he was one of our opponents, have been the subject of one of his attacks and have generally bumped into him for the past 20 years.

Oh, and when my life partner died of breast cancer 13 years ago, we received police protection just in case he showed up at her funeral. (That's one of the prices you pay for advocating for fair laws for lesbians and gays in Kansas.) Phelps and his minions, by the way, did not appear.

I can't say I have all the answers, but I do have some.

I first met Phelps about 20 years ago after I arrived in Kansas to cover the Kansas Legislature for The Wichita Eagle newspaper. I was sitting in my office in the Statehouse when Phelps showed up at my door.

In those innocent, pre-9/11 times, the Statehouse was open and often severely disabled mental patients from a nearby hospital would wander through. When I looked up and saw Phelps standing at my door, I honestly thought he was one of them.

People usually laugh at this point in my story. I guess it is funny. Hah, hah, Phelps is so crazy, he even looks crazy, but I'm not making a joke.

To me, the folks from the state hospital always looked sad. They looked lost, and they were in so much pain.That's what I saw when I glanced up from my desk and saw this tall, gangly man in a jogging suit. He clutched a can of diet soda like it was a life preserver and even though he spoke confidently enough, Phelps looked like he was boiling inside. In my entire life, I have never seen anyone as uncomfortable in his own skin as Phelps.

Remember, at that time, I was an unknown to him. I'd only been in Kansas a few months. All he knew about me was that I was a reporter who might be able to get him a story. Our interaction ended that day when he gave me his paper news release (it was 1985, very pre-Internet) and then went on his way.

When I looked at the release in my hand, I saw chaos, pain, screams of anger. Even the layout was chaotic with different sized fonts, pictures cut from newspapers or magazines. Nothing lined up on the page. It was as if an hallucinating Jackson Pollack had thrown Bible verses, furious curses and bizarre photos up in the air and allowed them to land helter skelter on the page.

I don't even remember the object of his fury. At that point in time, though, it was usually about how the federal court, which had just disbarred him, was composed of "fags."

Here's what I think is the bottom line about Fred Phelps: He is a man in enormous pain. He has dealt with his pain by creating a theology of a vengeful, petty God, who looks to me like nothing more than an abusive father. Phelps passed his pain onto his children by allegedly abusing them. The only way he and they have to deal with their pain is to abuse others.That's why they picket funerals.

Oh yes, it gets publicity for their anti-gay cause, but lately the funerals they picket are not those of gays or anyone ever involved in the fight for fair laws. Their picketing seems to be designed for two things. First, get maximum publicity. Second, inflict maximum pain. (Of course, pain + conflict does = news, so maybe it's all one thing.)

The best coverage of the Phelpses can be found at the Topeka Capital-Journal, which did an amazing series on him.

I've also posted frequently about Phelps and his church, and have battled on this blog with a Phelps family member. The core of his philosophy, by the way, is that "you can't understand God's love until you understand God's hate."

Here's more:

Abuse as Theology: Fred Phelps' son tells his father to stop venting his rage

Love and Fred Phelps

Yet another Fred Phelps commentary

Saga of the Rainbow Flag: A note about Fred Phelps & the REAL Kansas

From Kansas: Who are Fred Phelps & the Westboro Baptist Church?

That post was updated and moved to here.

Kansas Politics: Business magazine gives Gov. Kathleen Sebelius its highest rating

Inc, the magazine for entrepreneurs, has given Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius its four-star rating and calls her a "true friend" of business.

The rating means the governor is "a true friend whose policies will benefit businesses over the short and long term." The magazine also notes that this means that Sebelius has "earned the entrepreneurial vote."

The rating came in a story that rated all 26 governors up for re-election. The magazine notes:

During her 2004 State of the State address, Sebelius said, "State government can't create jobs, but it must create a climate in which businesses can flourish." Ask business owners in Kansas and they'll say she has done just that. Riding a wave of popularity that stems from 22 straight months of job growth, Sebelius will probably waltz to a second term.

By all accounts, she's an expert manager. After inheriting a $1.1 billion deficit, Sebelius balanced subsequent budgets without raising taxes. Most famously, she analyzed the pool of government cars and sold 700 deemed extraneous.

She followed that up in 2004 by putting together legislation that outlined strategies to pump new life into the economy. In practice, this has meant creating statewide entrepreneurship centers, establishing a $500 million, 10-year initiative to foster technology transfer at state universities, instituting an angel investment tax credit, and promoting ethanol and bioscience initiatives.

More recently, Sebelius worked with the legislature to eliminate property taxes on machinery and equipment purchased after July 1, 2006, and to raise the exemption for "low-cost" items from $400 to $1,500. "This law was a direct result of the governor reaching out to small businesses for guidance and asking them what is most important to them," says Hal Hudson, state director of the Kansas chapter of the NFIB.

"Kansas is a very entrepreneurial state, but our governors have traditionally not been all that pro-business; it has managed to do well in spite of itself," says Tom Devlin, founder of the Rent-A-Center (NASDAQ:RCII) retail chain and now the principal at a venture capital firm, Devlin Enterprises. "Sebelius is the first one who realizes the value of entrepreneurs."

The ratings ranged from one star -- "policies have negatively affected entrepreneurs" -- to four stars.

Besides the Sebelius rating, it's also worth noting the story's overview discussion of where the best business governors are likely to be found.

Hat tip to Thoughts From Kansas for spotting this first.

Top Headlines: Phill Kline in Kansas & thoughts on Iraq & anguish

It has been a busy couple of weeks at In This Moment. Here are our latest headlines.

Taking Back Kansas:

Kansas Politics: Attorney General Phill Kline's claim to fame is a fraud, says district attorney

Kansas Politics: Attorney General Phill Kline battles newspaper

Kansas City Star slams Phill Kline for "grossly" exaggerating "half-baked half-truths"

Kansas Politics: Endorsements in the evolution election, House & state offices


Learning the Truth about Iraq:

Is the news media telling us what we need to know?

Follow the money redux


Facing the Facts and Anguish of the Military Commissions Act:

Torture, habeas corpus, the detainees bill and the true meaning of patriotism

Am I safe? Pondering hope & despair under the new detainee law

The facts of the Military Commissions Act

Am I alone in this? Today I feel like I am a woman without a country

The Times finds positives in the Democrats' actions on the torture bill. I wish I did

The US adopts the Lex Gabinia

34 Votes

Shameful Day: Senate passes immoral bill on torture & detainees

Millions for an Iraq Victory Party? I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

By Diane Silver

And now from the land of the fantasy-based politician comes news that the Republicans snuck through a line-item appropriation reserving many multiples of millions to celebrate our, ah, victory in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The New York Times reports:

Tucked away in fine print in the military spending bill for this past year was a lump sum of $20 million to pay for a celebration in the nation's capital "for commemoration of success" in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Not surprisingly, the money was not spent.

One of my son's best friends is in Iraq at this moment. He is supposed to come home this month. We are praying that his return isn't postponed, or that something much worse doesn't happen.

Why in the name of all that's holy couldn't the GOP be spending that money to protect him? Why couldn't they have spent a little of that before the war started to, well, do something ridiculous like plan a bit?

By the way, our not-so-beloved president declared "Mission Accomplished" three years ago.

Hat tip to the Wichita Eagle's WE Blog.

Is the news media telling us what we need to know?

By Nancy Jane Moore

Check out this number: 23,416.

That's how many US soldiers have been killed or wounded in the Iraq War, as of today.

Did you know the number was that high? I didn't. I had a general idea that just short of 3,000 troops had been killed -- Forbes puts the number of dead at 2,729 -- but I didn't have a handle on the wounded.

I'm pretty sure that a large percentage of the wounded have very serious injuries -- modern medicine is saving a lot of soldiers who would have died in earlier wars, even in Vietnam.

Outside the number of dead, US losses in Iraq aren't getting much newspaper coverage. I've seen a few features on brave soldiers learning to deal with their injuries, but I haven't seen any big picture stories detailing how many soldiers we're losing to life-derailing injuries.

Juan Cole points out today that if you want coverage of US casualties, you need to read local papers -- which, of course, tend to focus on individual stories. He goes on to say:

Usually the national cable networks spend hours and hours covering local murder mysteries and emergencies while ignoring vital national and international stories. In this case, they mainly cover Iraq by reporting what the Bush administration says about Iraq, but they almost never cover the local impact of the war or concentrate on the wounded veterans struggling to make their lives.

I realize that the Defense Department is not making it easy to get this information -- remember all the flap about whether journalists could cover the bodies being shipped into to the Dover, Delaware, air force base -- but the news media could do a better job of covering this story. I'd really like to know how many of our troops are going to spend the rest of their lives struggling with a significant disability such as a brain injury.

Which brings us to a detailed report in the Columbia Journalism Review by Eric Umansky on coverage of torture by US soldiers and other officials. Umansky says good reporters like Carlotta Gall of The New York Times were digging out the torture story as early as 2002 during the Afghanistan war -- Gall discovered that some of our prisoners were killed in custody.

But as the CJR reports, The Times dithered over running Gall's story on this matter, only running it eventually, on an inside page, because one editor fought for it and Gall provided very detailed background reporting. The CJR story contrasts The Times' handling of the torture story to the way it covered weapons of mass destruction:

"Compare Judy Miller's WMD stories to Carlotta's story," says [then Times editor for investigative reporting Doug] Frantz. "On a scale of one to ten, Carlotta's story was nailed down to ten. And if it had run on the front page, it would have sent a strong signal not just to the Bush administration but to other news organizations."

Instead, the story ran on page fourteen under the headline "U.S.Military Investigating Death of Afghan in Custody." (It later became clear that the investigation began only as a result of Gall's digging.)

Umansky's article points out the complexities of covering a subject like torture and the difficulty that editors have in deciding whether something is really news. It's not a blame story, but it does point out the weakness in the coverage. Here's one observation he makes that really caught my eye:

There is a final factor that has shaped torture coverage, one that is hard to capture. In most big scandals, such as Watergate, the core question is whether the allegations of illegal behavior are true. Here, the ultimate issue isn't whether the allegations are true, but whether they're significant, whether they should really be considered a scandal.

And he does make clear that part of the problem is that the Bush administration and its tame Congress have made it difficult for journalists to report on this issue:

As a result of the administration's stonewalling, the abuse story has been deprived of the oxygen it needs to move forward and stay in the headlines. There are still occasional revelations, but without the typical next steps -- congressional hearings, investigations, resignations -- the scoops themselves start to lose their pop and the story grows cold.

The result of this is that we the people get the wrong idea -- which is perhaps one reason that the detainee torture bill slid through Congress so easily. Umansky writes:

It is impossible to quantify the effect of congressional inaction and the administration's efforts to quash details about abusive interrogation tactics. But the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press did ask a question in a poll that might give a glimpse. In October 2005 -- eighteen months after the disclosures of memos redefining torture, and after the appearance of official reports concluding that much of the abuse photographed at Abu Ghraib had indeed been based on tactics approved elsewhere in the system -- respondents were asked what they thought caused the "cases of prisoner mistreatment in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay." About a third said it was "mostly the result of official policies." Nearly half said it was "mostly the result of misconduct" by individuals.

There's a saying from the 60s: "If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers." Maybe it should be updated to "If they can get you to believe lies, they don't have to worry about your actions."

We have never needed good journalism more than we need it today. Blogs are valuable -- I've just pointed you to some information that you won't find in today's paper -- but what we most desperately need are reporters with the support and resources to find the stories and media of all kinds with the will and clout to publish them even in the face of government disapproval.

Unless we know what's really going on, how can we rein in the abuse being done in our name?

Hat tip to the Kansas City Star for featuring In This Moment

By Diane Silver

Well, that's a fun way to start my morning.

Many thanks to the Kansas City Star for featuring a quote from my post "Torture, habeas corpus, the detainees bill and the true meaning of patriotism" in their Blog Bits column. My comment is the top one, entitled "Immature Moves."

You can read all of the post here.

Thanks to Blue Girl for pointing this out.

Kansas Politics: Endorsements in the evolution election, House & state offices

By Diane Silver

MAIN*PAC, the political action committee of the MAINstream Coalition, has endorsed a slate of moderate Democrats and Republicans for the Nov. 7 election.

In red-state Kansas, "moderate" can often be read as folks who will support education, believe in that old-fashioned thing called science and think theocracy is a bad idea.

MAIN*PAC's endorsements for the Kansas House of Representatives are here. Note that it is important not to ignore the Kansas House races. The change of a few votes for either party could have a massive impact on legislation. The change of a handful of votes could, at the very least, keep the worst bits of the far right's agenda from passing the Legislature. The Kansas Senate is not up for election this year.

Among Main*PAC's other picks are:

Governor/Lt. Governor
Kathleen Sebelius -- Mark Parkinson - D

Attorney General
Paul Morrison - D

Commissioner of Insurance
Sandy Praeger - R

The rest of the endorsements are here, including those for the Kansas State Board of Education (which needs more moderates to hold off the anti-evolution forces) and Kansas and Missouri Congressional races.

Kansas Politics: Attorney General Phill Kline's claim to fame is a fraud, says district attorney

Sedgwick County District Attorney Nola Fouston says that Attorney General Phill Kline's claim that his search of private medical records helped convict a criminal is a fraud.

"Kline had absolutely nothing to do with our case -- nothing, zero," she told The Associated Press on Monday.

A darling of the Religious Right, Kline's search of the private records of abortion clinics has been a campaign issue in his re-election battle. AP reports:

Kline has pointed to the case of Robert A. Estrada, who pleaded no contest in July to nine criminal charges stemming from the rape and sexual abuse of two young girls. Kline cites it as an example of how his office uncovered wrongdoing through a broad investigation of sex crimes against children and potentially illegal late-term abortions.

That investigation also led Kline to seek the records of 90 patients held by two abortion clinics, which resisted. The battle over those records has become a key issue as Kline, a Republican, runs for re-election against Democrat Paul Morrison in the Nov. 7 general election....

Sedgwick County District Attorney Nola Foulston, a Democrat, said no abortion records were involved in Estrada's case, only records of live births involving the two girls.

Kline claims that a memo his office sent to Foulston prompted the investigation. AP reports:

Foulston said her office already was investigating Estrada when it received the memo from Kline's office. She said Kline's memo involved 12 instances in which
young girls in Sedgwick County gave birth.

"He didn't have anything to do with this case," she said.

The entire story is worth reading, especially the attempt by Kline's campaign to justify his claims.

Kansas Politics: Attorney General Phill Kline battles newspaper

By Diane Silver

Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline -- in the fight of his political life -- won a point today.

Kline was able to show that Sunday's hard-hitting Kansas City Star editorial slamming him for "half baked, half truths" contained one error. The Star stands by the "general theme" of it's editorial, but admits the error. The editorial was corrected on the paper's web site. The newspaper also invited Kline to write a letter to the editor or a guest column.

The Star reported the story today:

During his campaign for re-election, Kline has cited numerous examples of criminals released from prison early because of a bill passed by the Legislature in 2000 that addressed prison overcrowding by readjusting some sentences.

The editorial cited one of those criminals, Vernon D. Harris, who committed a murder more than four months after his early release from prison. It stated incorrectly that the bill did not result in Harris's early release.

"Quite frankly, the editorial does not meet the standards of a major metropolitan daily newspaper," Kline said during a short news conference in front of The Star's building at 18th Street and Grand Avenue.

Miriam Pepper, The Star's editorial page editor, said the initial information about Harris came from the Kansas Department of Corrections. A department official contacted The Star on Monday to say that the information he provided the newspaper was in error.

This was a stupid mistake by The Star, but it doesn't negate the points made in the editorial. For that reason, I'm quoting the editorial below (emphasis added).

The attorney general says now the Legislature should have paid for more prison space. But Kline had been a champion of tax cuts in the 1990s that left the state without enough money to even contemplate a major prison construction program.

If Kline objects to abbreviated probation and parole terms, he's certainly had ample opportunity to do something about them himself. As attorney general, he has a seat on the sentencing commission. But except during campaign season, he can't seem to work up much interest in the commission's activities. In nearly four years, Kline has never attended one of its meetings.

Kline deceptively claims in his campaigns that the Legislature and sentencing commission freed hundreds of criminals to commit violent crimes.

In reality, the authors of Senate Bill 323 took pains not to shorten the length of any inmate's original prison sentence. And Kline's attempts to blame the legislation for criminal recidivism are grossly exaggerated. Kline apparently hopes he can slide by, bemoaning crimes without ever explaining how the state should realistically deal with its burgeoning prison population.

This six-year-old bill was passed by a Republican legislature, and won the votes of the GOP candidates for governor and lieutenant governor. The real issue isn't an attempt to solve this problem, but what caused it in the first place.

Torture, habeas corpus, the detainees bill and the true meaning of patriotism

By Diane Silver

Last week I got angry, really, REALLY angry when Congress passed the Military Commissions Act, dumping habeas corpus, condoning torture and generally mucking up the U.S. Constitution.

I wrote a post entitled: "Am I alone? Today I feel like a woman without a country," and I received some interesting comments in reply. These included a few that noted that us darn liberals were never going to win an election if we keep -- as thse folks said -- dumping on our country. What ensued was a fairly mannerly discussion about what it means to be a patriot. I want to bring the discussion to the front of the blog and answer in more detail here.

For the record, here are some of the comments. (The full comments are available here.)

In part, Snoop wrote:

As long as you liberals continue to voice their contempt for this country, you will lose elections.

El borak, in part, wrote a bit later (emphasis added):

Now I realize perfectly well that liberals are here at a disadvantage, that loving America seems inextricably entwined with wanting to see it kick everyone else's ass. We live in an age of nationalism, and most voters are interested in national greatness. If they want to win elections, liberals have to harness that desire while perhaps diverting it to something a little more constructive than the conservatives have. But they have to recognize that it is and that it drives politics.

If that seems unfair to liberals I can only offer a choice: you can strike at the voters through contemptuous emotional symbolism and continue to lose or you can play the game by the rules and accept the gift of a speaker's gavel that the GOP is offering through its incompetence and myopia.

Many thanks to Snoop and el borak for helping me clarify my thinking, and I actually mean that sincerely.

I would suspect -- or at least hope -- that snoop, el borak, the members of Congress who voted for this hideous act share one characteristic with me, I would hope that we all love this nation, and that we want to do what's best for it. The issue then becomes how can we be a great nation and still protect ourselves?

Personally, I think national greatness is about much more than the ability to "kick everyone else's ass."

National greatness is about the freedom and ideals that led the Widow Silver and her sons to undergo a difficult voyage to this country just 60 years after the Mayflower. (A relative researched this remarkable woman.)

National greatness is about the freedom and ideals that made my great grandmother and great grandfather come here from Austria in the early 1900s.

Above all, national greatness is not about kicking anyone's ass or having the biggest stick or the biggest military in the world.

A nationalism that focuses on kicking ass reminds me of junior high. That's when -- as 13-year-olds and 14-year-olds -- we lived and died on the fortunes of our football team. Don't get me wrong. I love cheering a team on. I live near Kansas City and took absolute, cheerful and loud delight in seeing the Kansas City Chiefs smash the San Francisco 49ers 41 to zip on Sunday.

But that was a game. In a game, it's OK to root for one side to "kick everyone else's ass." In life, and most decidedly in foreign policy, that is a childish idea that leads to the kinds of messes we have in Iraq. That kind of immaturity also leads to the mess that's been made of fighting terrorists.

To protect ourselves in a dangerous world, we need mature analysis of the situation and reasoned use of the military and diplomacy. (And no, I don't want to debate Iraq or the best response to terrorism right now. That's a discussion for another day. This post is already long enough.)

Here's the money quote: I'm not going to debate you about elections. That's turning what should be a serious discussion into a me-win/you-lose game once again. I have something much more important to discuss, and that's the fate of my nation.

A true patriot is a person who believes not only in her country, but in the ideals that created it.

Losing an election isn't half as worrisome as seeing the United States and its government lose its way. When that happens, it is the duty of every patriot to stand up and speak the truth -- no matter how unpleasant that truth may be.

I say that as someone who has served as a press secretary in a statewide campaign (Democratic candidate for governor in Kansas in the 1990s). I also ran communications for a statewide issues campaign. I know about politics. I know the way you're supposed to talk, and frankly, such talk just hurts this nation.

True national greatness is what the United States has touched on and off throughout its history. The way we have lived and welcomed others and struggled with our problems has made us the envy of the world. The way we have treated people with dignity and have respected their rights is what makes America great. The free air of this nation is what's great -- not destroying civil rights, not condoning any form of torture, and certainly not ignoring the Constitution that created us.

True national greatness is hard.

It takes maturity and the willingness to see what's really happening in the world. It takes a willingness to hear the truth.

In the dangerous world we live in today, we will not survive unless we can throw off our childish impulses. America has to grow up, and that means each of us has to be willing to see patriotism as more than rooting for the home team.

Am I safe? Pondering hope & despair under the new detainee law

By Pamela K. Taylor

As I watched with incredulity as our government legalized what most of us would consider torture, strip habeas corpus rights from "enemy combatants" who could be American citizens, allow hearsay, coerced testimony, secret evidence (in which a defendant does not know the evidence, or perhaps even the charge, against him), indefinite detentions with no trial, I wavered between disbelief and despair.

I have real fears that the government may go on a spree, rounding up whoever they like, without any of us having the right to challenge that imprisonment.

Am I safe?

Before 9-11, my husband and I had been supporting an orphan through an organization that turned out to be siphoning the funds to terrorist groups in Afghanistan. (So says our government, but after Iraq and the elusive Weapons of Mass Destruction, I don't even know if I should believe that contention.) After we recovered from our fear of donating to Islamic charities, we picked an organization that had supposedly been cleared by Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, but only months later was shut down.

Will the fact that we picked poorly twice be seen as a pattern? Proof of nefarious intentions?

Will my outspoken opposition to many of America's foreign policies be used as an excuse to claim I'm giving comfort to terrorists? Will they pick me up, along with other folks who spoke at peace demonstrations?

I have young children, what would happen to them? Would relatives step up and take care of them, or would the courts appoint guardians from the foster care system? Would I have any say over who they go to?

It is a depressing thought, indeed.

The only lantern of hope I hold out is to consider the history of the 18th Amendment, creating the prohibition against alcohol. The amendment was a mistake, and a few years later, our elected officials realized that and repealed it. With any luck, in a few years (or even better a few months) our elected officials will pass a new law repealing the Military Commisions Act. Or, perhaps, the Supreme Court will strike it down as unconstitutional.

I have great hope that we won't continue down the path of increasing executive branch authority, decreasing checks and balances, and that we won't let fear gut the rights and liberties enshrined in the Constitution.

We have taken wrong turns before -- the shameful treatment of the native population, slavery, the internment of the Japanese, the McCarthy era. Sometimes it took only a few years to realize our mistake, and sometimes it took a lot longer. Hopefuly this one will take less time, rather than more.

Kansas City Star slams Phill Kline for "grossly" exaggerating "half-baked half-truths"

A Kansas City Star editorial did a good job today of uncovering the truth about Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline's attempt to smear his Democratic opponent. Apparently, the truth is that there isn't much in anything Kline said about Democrat Paul Morrison.

A darling of the Religious Right, Kline is fighting for his political life right now.

Go to the editorial to read the whole story, but here I'll just note that Kline's charge has to do with a certain piece of legislation.

The Star writes:

Kline's attempts to blame the legislation for criminal recidivism are grossly exaggerated and, in many cases, outright wrong...

Frightening the public with half-baked half-truths is undignified and disrespectful of the voters. A champion of justice for the state of Kansas should hold himself to much higher standards.

Just for good measure, the Star notes that even Republicans are disgusted.

Kansas Sen. John Vratil of Leawood -- like Kline, a Republican -- called the attorney general's campaign approach "demagogic."

Follow the money redux

By Nancy Jane Moore

It's all about the oil. And I don't just mean the unnecessary wars and the deals with repressive regimes.

The detainee torture bill is all about oil. Here's how Juan Cole ties it together today on Informed Comment:

Why is the Bush administration so attached to torturing people that it would pressure a supine Congress into raping the US constitution by explicitly permitting some torture techniques and abolishing habeas corpus for certain categories of prisoners?

Boys and girls, it is because torture is what provides evidence for large important networks of terrorists where there aren't really any, or aren't very many, or aren't enough to justify 800 military bases and a $500 billion military budget.

And all those military bases are at strategic places in the Middle East. Cole's analysis comes from a talk by the former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray at the Central Eurasian Studies Society last night. According to Cole, Murray showed how the US distribution of forces ties in with oil reserves:

He explained what is really behind the new "lily pad" doctrine of US bases, [w]hereby the US is seeking to encompass the "Greater Middle East" with small bases, each with 1,000 to 3,000 personnel. In emergencies, these bases could quickly swell to 40,000. Like a lily pad, they can "open up" and accommodate a landing frog. Murray said that the US documents are quite open as to why they are seeking the network of lily pad bases around the Middle East. It is because that is where the oil and gas are. If you include the Caspian region, Tengiz, and the gas reserves in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan along with what is in the Persian Gulf, the vast majority of proven oil and gas reserves are in this circle of crisis.

We wrote about Murray's experiences with the "democratic" government in Uzbekistan back in September in a post that provided links to an earlier oil-related analysis by Cole. Today, Cole explains that torture is key to making this strategy work because it is part of the larger campaign to convince everyone that there really is a huge terror threat:

The Bush administration needs the Terror/ al-Qaeda bogeyman to justify the military occupation of strategic countries that have or are near to major oil and gas reserves. It needs al-Qaeda to justify the lily pad bases in Kyrgyzstan etc.

But the problem is that we now know that serious al-Qaeda is probably only a few hundred men now, and at most a few thousand. Look at who exactly did the London subway bombing. A few guys in a gym in Leeds. That magnitude of threat just would not keep a "War on Terror" in business. The embassy bombings, the Cole, and September 11 itself were done by tiny poorly funded cells that functioned as terror boutiques to accomplish a specific spectacular operation. They don't prove a worldwide, large organization. They prove tiny effective cells. Most of what the Pentagon does and can do is irrelevant to that kind of threat. You'd be better off with some good FBI agents.

So how do you prove to yourself and others a big terror threat that requires a National Security State and turn toward a praetorian society? You torture people into alleging it.

Cole's perspective, informed by Murray's experiences in the region, ties together what otherwise looks like bumbling policy. I always knew that money -- represented by oil in this case -- had to be at the root of the matter. Leaders scream about terrorism and hint at religious wars to inflame the populace, but they go to war for economic reasons.

Under this scenario, it is imperative that the US stay in Iraq -- and I'd even speculate that it doesn't really matter whether the current civil war continues.

Cole's insight tying the detainee torture bill into this big picture is nothing short of brilliant. You won't get this perspective elsewhere -- while The New York Times has come out forcefully against the bill and criticized the Bush foreign policy generally, it has not provided this kind of analysis.

Even The New Yorker hasn't gone this far, though their articles on the shenanigans within the Bush administration have provided the most astute reporting on the US government. Both The Times and The New Yorker have far outshone The Washington Post, which today has a magazine analysis piece on how Colin Powell "fell on his sword" to do the administration's work even though he knew they were wrong. As this story demonstrates, The Post has confined itself to reporting on the political angle -- useful from a Washington-insider point of view, but not the whole story, or even the real story.

While many activists on the left have assumed that oil somehow underlies the Iraq War, the analysis has been pretty superficial. That is, we all knew oil was involved somehow, but the whole picture never quite made sense. And there were so many different issues here for the left to jump on: the use of September 11 to justify invading Iraq; the insults to Muslims; the assault on our civil liberties.

No one but Cole has tied the aggregation of executive power -- we might as well not have a Congress and as former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor points out, the current war on judges could spell doom for the judicial branch -- the destruction of US civil liberties, the willingness to flout the Geneva Conventions and other international agreements, and the "Global War on Terror" to the big picture of making the world safe for Big Oil.

We're not giving up our civil liberties for safety; we're giving them up for oil company profit.

You might also say we're giving up our civil liberties for energy. I fear many Americans are willing to give up their rights to free speech and due process in exchange for their rights to McMansions and SUVs. If your conception of freedom is the ability to buy whatever you want, maybe it looks like a good trade.

But consider this: Big Oil is international. Right now it's tied to the US, because we're the biggest energy consumer and many big companies are headquartered here. But they don't have to be.

One reason -- from the point of view of energy greed -- to make sure the US controls Middle East oil is to keep the Chinese from doing the same thing. Only I can't see any reason why Big Oil won't make deals with the Chinese, too. China is also a huge energy consumer and their need for oil is growing by leaps and bounds, as is their economy. Big Oil is not tied to any one country; they're tied to making money.

That is, we can sell our soul for our SUVs and still end up with nothing. That's the trouble with selling your soul; you rarely get a very good price.