Category Archives: Congress

Demagoguery

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Here’s a YouTube video of Cindy Sheehan (via Mahablog commenter Sachem515) that I actually find a bit alarming.

In this video Sheehan says,

Rahm Emanuel, worked against every anti war candidate that ran in the primaries, and actually some of them that ran in the general elections. Rahm Emanuel, worked against every single one of those people.

Certainly, Emanuel in his capacity as chair of the DCCC ran away from the Iraq War last year. Certainly, he recruited and pushed Dem primary candidates whom he considered “safe” on Iraq — meaning, those who were willing to mouth pablum about staying “until the job is done.” Certainly Emanuel made stupid choices about candidates and races in which to invest DCCC money. Certainly, after the midterms Emanuel took credit that he didn’t deserve. And yes, he’s a back-stabbing ass. But to claim that he worked against any Democrat in the general election is going too far, I think. Let’s not get carried away here. If anyone can alert me to an incident in which Emanuel actually seemed to be trying to undermine a Dem candidate in the general election (claims that he didn’t work hard enough for somebody don’t count), please let me know.

The other part of this video that bothered me was Sheehan’s whining about Nancy Pelosi not including Iraq and impeachment in her “first 100 hours” legislative blitz. Sheehan is being disingenuous, or is misinformed, or is extremely stupid. The issues chosen for the “100 hours” were narrowly focused items to be accomplished in 100 hours. As in, getting bills passed and out the House door within 100 hours. The “100 hours” items were never intended to be the entire Democratic agenda; just a kick-off. The “100 hours” items are:

  • Adopt the recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission, a bipartisan panel created to investigate the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon
  • Increase the federal minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.25
  • Expand the use of federal funds for embryonic stem cell research
  • Require the government to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to reduce prices in the Medicare prescription drug program
  • Cut student loan rates for college undergraduates
  • Foster the development of alternative energy by creating a fund to be financed by the oil industry

    • The “100 hours” amounted to Pelosi’s version of Newt Gingrich’s famous “Contract On With America” from 2004 1994. These items were chosen because they were low-hanging fruit — popular with voters, good items to campaign on, and the House ought to be able to pass the bills within the time limit. A gimmick, yes, but all of the six items are important issues that have been held up by the Republicans lo these many years.

    Even Sheehan ought to be bright enough to know that the House could not whip up bills of impeachment in just 100 hours.

    Regarding impeachment — I’m all for it, but if it’s actually going to be accomplished the issue needs to be handled with great care. The issue is political dynamite, and if the Dems act prematurely — before there is a very strong public consensus in favor — it could blow up in their faces. It’s cheap and easy for Sheehan to demagogue the subject, as her ass isn’t on the line.

    Hearings are a good first step. Congressional hearings in the past have made a huge impact on public opinion. We do need to push the Dems for all the hearings and investigations they can think of. Several are already rarin’ to go. I hope the investigations will make impeachment viable.

    But Sheehan’s whining about the Dems is not helping to make impeachment viable. If she wants to help, she should use her stature as an antiwar activist to bring a serious discussion of impeachment to the public. Pandering to the easy applause of her fawning admirers must be fun, but it’s not going to make a dime’s worth of difference to the Cause.

    Finally, I very much dislike Sheehan’s implication that Iraq was the only issue that mattered with voters, and that antiwar activism was the entire reason the Dems took back the House and Senate, and that Iraq and impeachment are the only issues that matter now. A lot of Americans also care deeply about minimum wage and prescription drug prices and national security issues that don’t involve overseas wars. As important as Iraq is, this is not the time for the Dems to become a one-issue party; nor do I think so many Dems would have been elected had they all been one-issue candidates.

    Many of us have been looking to the day in which real progressivism might make a comeback for many years before George Bush was President. I think we may have a shot. If the Dems blow off progressivism in the next two years, I don’t expect to live long enough to get another shot. Sheehan may not care about progressivism, but some of us do.

    I’m anticipating many comments in support of Saint Cindy. Yes, I’ve gone from being a Sheehan admirer to concern that she’s just a female Ralph Nader. (I used to be an admirer of Ralph Nader, too; the only difference is that it took me thirty years to see the truth about Ralph [Update: see this, too]. I’m either getting quicker, or more jaded.) Note that I agree with a lot of what Sheehan says, and I am not at all opposed to holding Dem feet to fire as needed. But demagoguery is demagoguery, and a lot of what I see in that video looks like demagoguery to me.

    Sweet

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    At his photo-op swearing in, Rep. Keith Ellison will use a copy of the Koran once owned by Thomas Jefferson.

    Jefferson’s copy is an English translation by George Sale published in the 1750s; it survived the 1851 fire that destroyed most of Jefferson’s collection and has his customary initialing on the pages. This isn’t the first historic book used for swearing-in ceremonies — the Library has allowed VIPs to use rare Bibles for inaugurations and other special occasions.

    Ellison will take the official oath of office along with the other incoming members in the House chamber, then use the Koran in his individual, ceremonial oath with new Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “Keith is paying respect not only to the founding fathers’ belief in religious freedom but the Constitution itself,” said Ellison spokesman Rick Jauert.

    Hank Johnson

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    As I’ve said in previous posts, two of the new House Democrats are Buddhists — the first Buddhists ever elected to the U.S. Senate. One of the two, Maizie Hirono of Hawaii, is discssed here. Now let’s crash ahead to the other Buddhist congressperson, who is Hank Johnson of Georgia. Yes, Georgia.

    Johnson’s bio says he is a graduate of Texas Southern University’s Thurgood Marshall School of Law and practiced law for 25 years. You might remember that Johnson defeated Rep. Cynthia McKinney in the Dem House primaries, so he’ll be taking over her seat. Like Maizie Hirono, Johnson didn’t make a big deal about his religious preferences during his campaign, but Jonathan Tilove of Newhouse News Service reports that “A spokesman for Johnson would only confirm that he became a Buddhist some 30 years ago and is affiliated with Soka Gakkai International.”

    Soka Gakkai International is a lay Buddhist organization with a proclivity for controversy. It has been accused of being a cult, although I don’t believe it is for reasons discussed below. However, I fear that as soon as Rep. Johnson does anything to draw the attention of the Right he’s going to be smeared as a cult follower. Forewarned is forearmed.

    Soka Gakkai (literally, “Society for the Creation of Value”) of Japan was founded in 1930 by Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (1871-1944), an author and educator and follower of the Nichiren school of Buddhism, which I’ll explain in a minute. Makiguchi soon found himself at odds with the militaristic warlords who took control of the Japanese government in the 1930s. SGI literature claims that Makiguchi and his close associate Josei Toda (1900-1958) drew the wrath of the Hideki Tojo administration becase they opposed the war, but other sources say the real issue was that they would not honor Shinto as the official state religion. For whatever reason, the two men were arrested as “thought criminals” in 1943. Makiguchi died in prison in 1944. After the war and his release from prison, Toda rebuilt Soka Gakkai as a lay affiliate of the Nichiren Shoshu Buddhist sect, and through it promoted a program of self-empowerment through socially engaged Buddhism.

    Daisaku Ikeda, then 32 years old, became president of Soka Gakkai in 1960. After that, the story gets weird.

    Under Ikeda’s leadership Soka Gakkai began to act less like a benevolent Buddhist lay organization and more, some say, like a cult. In the 1970s SGI began to employ aggressive proselytizing tactics — proselytizing generally is frowned upon in Buddhism — and developed an intolerance of criticism. In 1975 Ikeda expanded the organization to become Soka Gakkai International (SGI), which has affiliate organizations in 120 countries with an estimated membership of 1.26 million.

    I understand there may have been some Soka Gakkai chapters in America since the end of World War II, and the organization had some supporters within the 1960s counterculture. But in the 1970s and 1980s SGI — then called Nichiren Shoshu of America (NSA) — grew rapidly in the U.S. through well-funded and aggressive recruitment. For a time it looked as if Ikeda was trying to copy some of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s tactics by co-opting American patriotic symbolism to establish itself as a respectable “American” organization. For example, according to Daniel Golden of the Boston Globe (October 15, 1989),

    NSA literature displays congratulatory letters from then-Vice President George Bush, Sen. Edward Kennedy, Mayor Raymond Flynn, and Gov. Mario Cuomo of New York, among other potentates, and Sen. John Kerry was a featured speaker at NSA’s convention in New York City in 1986.

    NSA stole the show at Bush’s inauguration in January by displaying on the Washington Mall the world’s largest chair — a 39-foot-high model of the chair that George Washington sat in as he presided over the Continental Congress. The Guinness Book of World Records has twice cited NSA for assembling the most American flags ever in a parade, although in one mention it misidentified the group as “Nissan Shoshu,” confusing the religious organization with the automaker.

    If you saw the Tina Turner bio-flick “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” you saw a dramatization of Turner’s introduction to SGI. Other celebrity members included “Dallas” TV star Patrick Duffy, who sometime in the 1980s was quoted in a magazine interview (TV Guide, I think) saying that Buddhism was a religion in which people chant to get what they want. This quote detonated in the North American dharmakaya like a bombshell. What Mr. Duffy said was analogous to claiming that the central purpose of Catholicism was helping women get abortions. That, combined with the Nichiren school’s intolerance of other forms of Buddhism, created some tension in the American Buddhist asangha between SGI and everybody else.

    At this point in the story I must explain Nichiren Buddhism. Nichiren (1222–1282) was a Japanese Buddhist monk who concluded that faith in the Lotus Sutra was the only means of salvation. The Lotus Sutra (a.k.a. the Saddharmapundarika-sutra — I just love those old Sanskrit titles) is a perfectly lovely sutra respected by several sects, although it is not recognized as legitimate by all of them. The original Sanskrit text has been lost; the earliest version of it known to exist is a Chinese translation, ca. 225 CE. Like most of the Mahayana sutras, the author(s) and time of composition of the Lotus are unknown. The Lotus contains a number of parables that some suspect were influenced by Christian parables, which if true would mean it was probably written in the 1st century, but that’s speculation. Anyway, Nichiren fixated on the Lotus as the only sutra that counted. He taught his followers to not only study the Lotus Sutra but to venerate it through devotional practices, such as the chanting of Nam Myoho Renge Kyo (yeah, that’s where that came from), which translates roughly as “turning the wheel of the Law.” Nichiren Buddhism is the only form of Buddhism I know of with the attitude that it is the only true Buddhism and all of the other sects are wrong.

    The Rick A. Ross Institute maintains a web archive of articles about Soka Gakkai and its cultlike propensities. And I agree that many of these articles are alarming, such as this BBC transcript from 1995, and Daisaku Ikeda does come across as a scheming megalomaniac. Some believe Ikeda’s real goal has been to use Soka Gakkai as a vehicle for building a political power base in Japan.

    But in the 1970s Ikeda and the Nichiren Shoshu priesthood began to butt heads over who really was in control of the sect itself. In 1991 the priests decided it was him or them, so they excommunicated Ikeda and ordered him to disband Soka Gakkai (which he did not do). This meant that Soka Gakkai members were also excommunicated and cut off from the sumptuous temple near Mt. Fuji that their donations had helped to build.

    After this the name of the American organization changed from Nichiren Shoshu of America to SGI-USA, and members were sent revisions to the liturgy. But the parent organization did not tell American members why this was happening at the time. I know this because at the time I was active in several Internet Buddhism forums, and the SGI members fell into disunion as word of the split spread among them. There was a great falling out; some stayed with SGI, some left SGI and joined Nichiren Shoshu, and some split from Buddhism altogether.

    Compared to other forms of Buddhism, SGI-style Buddhism seems, um, odd. The business about chanting to receive material things, mentioned above, is difficult to reconcile with anything the historical Buddha — the guy who founded the religion — taught. The proselytizing and intolerance of other sects also set it apart. The Lotus Sutra’s place of honor is similar to that of the Bible among Christians, as revealed Truth, whereas other sects of Buddhism regard the sutras as useful guides to understanding but not as Enlightenment Itself in book form.

    Yet in spite of these differences, long-time SGI members I have talked to have a remarkably conventional understanding of Buddhism. One SGI-er explained to me that what happens in practice is that, eventually, the desire for material things wears out and is replaced by an interest in the spiritual teachings of the Lotus Sutra (see the story about the student who fell in love with a mysterious lady in this post). Further, SGI members are not encouraged to distance themselves from non-SGI family and friends; nor are they told to stop pursuing individual careers or interests to work for the organization. So it it’s a cult, it’s a loose one. Most of the problems within SGI appear to have come about because of Daisaku Ikeda, who is elderly now and may not be in the picture much longer.

    Beside Tina Turner and Patrick Duffy, other converts to SGI you may have heard of include Mariane Pearl (the widow of Daniel Pearl) and Orlando Bloom. A new Broadway pop musical praised by New York magazine, Spring Awakening, was written and composed by SGI followers Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik (see sidebar at linked article).

    So, although SGI and Nichiren Buddhism generally don’t appeal to me, I’m not concerned that it’s a cult. It may have been on the way to turning into one, but it seems to have pulled back from the edge.

    Update: See also Mumon at DK.

    Mazie Hirono

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    With all the hoohaw about a Muslim in the House hardly anyone has noticed that the new Congress will include the House’s first two Buddhists — Mazie Hirono of Hawaii and Hank Johnson of Georgia, both Democrats.

    As an editorial in yesterday’s Boston Globe observed, “Strangely, Congressman Goode seems unconcerned about the Buddhist threat to American ‘values.'”

    I guess the Buddhist plan to take over America by stealth is working. Excellent.

    Seriously, I thought people might be interested in a little background on these two new Democratic congress critters and their respective sects. So here goes.

    Mazie Hirono was born in Fukushima, Japan, in 1947 and came to America with her mother in 1955. She was raised in Honolulu and has a JD degree from Georgetown University. You can read more about Hirono’s career here.

    Hirono was raised in the Jodo Shu tradition, which in Japan is as mainstream as mainstream gets. According to this story she says she is not a practicing Buddhist today. However,

    She said the Buddhist values of truth, wisdom and peace are part of what led her to public service. Hirono is adamant that there should be separation of church and state.

    “I think that political leaders should not infuse religion as a central part of why they do anything,” Hirono said. “When I serve, I do my best in terms of what is good for the community, what is just, what is fair.”

    There’s some background on Jodo Shu here. Very simply, Jodo Shu is a sect that emerged in Japan through the efforts of Honen (1133-1212), but it is part of the older Pure Land school that can be traced to 4th century China. The appeal of Pure Land is that it offers a devotional practice of Buddhism that is more accessible to laypeople than the more “traditional” sects, many of which demand years of monastic discipline from its followers. Through devotion to the Buddha Amitabha (in Japanese, Amida Butsu), the Jodo Shu Buddhist hopes to be reborn in the Pure Land, where the realization of enlightenment is easier and nirvana “closer” than it is here.

    All together the various Pure Land sects probably are the most popular Buddhist sects in Asia. Outside of Asia they haven’t attracted as many converts as some of the monastic sects, possibly because Pure Land comes across to westerners as an Asian version of Christianity — trust in Amitabha as your savior and you get to go to Buddha Heaven.

    When Maizie Hirono says she is not practicing, I assume she means she no longer chants the nembutsu (in its entirety: “Namu Amida Butsu” — loosely translated “I rely upon the compassion of Amitabha Buddha”) daily. Beyond the nembutsu, Jodo Shu teaches the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, and other foundational Buddhist doctrines. Jodo Shu is often confused with another Buddhist sect, Jodo Shinshu, which I understand is sorta kinda a reformed version of Jodo Shu.

    At this point I want to explain that to many of the other schools of Buddhism such as Theravada or Zen, the notion of being reborn in a Pure Land is absurd on several levels. Japanese Zen folklore (or “monklore”?) contains a number of stories about great masters who were offered entrance into the Pure Land and who refused, either because there is no such place or because the Pure Land is for weenies. On the other hand, I remember an offhand remark by a sure-enough Zen dharma lineage holder to the effect that long-time Pure Land Buddhists tend to be gentle and compassionate, whereas long-time Zennies tend to be snots.

    On the whole, most of the older sects of Buddhism (note that there are exceptions to everything) have developed an attitude that there’s no salvation to be found in beliefs, because beliefs are unreal. Instead, beliefs and doctrines are understood to be provisional means to wisdom, not absolute truths. This is illustrated by a Japanese folktale about a lazy student who met a beautiful lady and fell madly in love with her. The lady was aloof at first, but took an interest in his studies. So he worked his ass off to impress her. The more learned he became, the more interested she seemed. Eventually he became the most distinguished scholar in the land. He went to his lady tingling with anticipation because now, he thought, she would not refuse him. But this time when he saw her she explained she wasn’t a woman at all but a benevolent spirit, and her goal all along had been to inspire him to reach his potential. Then she disappeared in a puff of smoke.

    According to the story, the student was not disappointed at all but only grateful for what the spirit had done for him. Yeah, right.

    The point is that, although western Buddhists sometimes dismiss Pure Land as too much like a theistic religion and very out of sorts with the historical Buddha’s teachings, it’s still Buddhism.

    Next: Hank Johnson, congressman-elect from Georgia.

    Inalienable Rights

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    Two hundred and seven six years ago, three members of the Danbury Baptists Association composed a letter to President Thomas Jefferson regarding religious discrimination in the state of Connecticut. Connecticut had established Congregationalism as the official state religion, and the Congregational Church was supported by state taxes. Connecticut law provided that people of other faiths could file exemptions to have their religious taxes routed to their own churches, but the exemptions often were not approved.

    Some background: In 1801 Connecticut had not yet adopted a written state constitution, but instead was operating under a government derived from its old colonial charter, received from King Charles II in 1662. Charles’s policies were more tolerant of religious diversity than was often the case in those days, but religious establishment, politics, and government were tightly knotted together in Britain, as illustrated by the history of the Puritans. Charles’s charter assumed the colonists would work diligently to convert the “Natives of the Country to the Knowledge and Obedience of the only true GOD, and He Saviour of Mankind, and the Christian Faith, which in Our Royal Intentions, and the adventurers free Possession, is the only and principal End of this Plantation.”

    The Bill of Rights had been adopted in 1791, but the First Amendment prohibited only the Congress of the United States from establishing religion. It would be many years before the Fourteenth Amendment extended this prohibition to the states.

    Anyway, the Danbury Baptists were pretty fed up with religious discrimination in Connecticut, so they wrote to President Jefferson:

    Our sentiments are uniformly on the side of religious liberty–that religion is at all times and places a matter between God and individuals–that no man ought to suffer in name, person, or effects on account of his religious opinions–that the legitimate power of civil government extends no further than to punish the man who works ill to his neighbors;

    “The legitimate power of civil government extends no further than to punish the man who works ill to his neighbors.” That’s a point we might want to discuss sometime.

    But, sir, our constitution of government is not specific. Our ancient charter together with the law made coincident therewith, were adopted as the basis of our government, at the time of our revolution; and such had been our laws and usages, and such still are; that religion is considered as the first object of legislation; and therefore what religious privileges we enjoy (as a minor part of the state) we enjoy as favors granted, and not as inalienable rights; and these favors we receive at the expense of such degrading acknowledgements as are inconsistent with the rights of freemen.

    I included the historical background about the charter because some right-wing religious historical revisionists have claimed that the “ancient charter” the Danbury Baptists referred to was the U.S. Constitution, even though the Constitution was hardly ancient at the time and had not even been written, much less “adopted as the basis of our government, at the time of our revolution.” The revisionists try to claim that the Baptists were OK with government getting entangled with religion as long as it did so in a non-preferential way.

    But that’s bogus. The Baptists continued,

    It is not to be wondered at therefore; if those who seek after power and gain under the pretense of government and religion should reproach their fellow men–should reproach their order magistrate, as a enemy of religion, law, and good order, because he will not, dare not, assume the prerogatives of Jehovah and make laws to govern the kingdom of Christ.

    Jefferson famously wrote back in 1802:

    Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

    What this exchange amounted to was that the Danbury Baptists wrote Jefferson complaining about legislators in Connecticut who “assume the prerogatives of Jehovah and make laws to govern the kingdom of Christ,” and asking for his assurance that the feds wouldn’t do the same thing. And Jefferson wrote back saying, damn straight we won’t, because the First Amendment doesn’t allow it.

    So now it’s more than two centuries later, and some Americans are still struggling to wrap their heads around the idea that government may not be used to enforce or coerce religious beliefs and practices, and that a person’s religion ain’t none of the Gubmint’s damn business. Such a person is U.S. Rep. Virgil Goode (R-VA) who sent a letter to constituents

    … warning that unless there is an immigration crackdown “many more Muslims” will be elected to public office. And these Muslims, Goode noted, would take the oath of office with a hand resting on the Koran. In a December 7 letter, a copy of which you’ll find below, the Republican congressman warned that if “American citizens don’t wake up” and adopt the “Virgil Goode position on immigration,” there will “likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran.”

    The Congressman actually wrote,

    I fear that in the next century there will be many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America and to prevent our resources from being swamped.

    Alan Dershowitz writes about a Jew, Jacob Henry, who was elected to the North Carolina state legislature in 1808 but was blocked from taking his seat because of a state law that required legislators to accept the divinity of Christ. And now almost two centuries later another Jew, Dennis Prager, is leading a campaign to keep a Muslim elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from being sworn in on a Koran.

    As they say — the more things change, the more they stay the same.

    I already wrote about Dennis Prager and how he hates America, here. Since then I’ve heard from a number of people that U.S. Representatives don’t put their hands on anything when they are being officially sworn in, but sometimes pose with Bibles at photo-op swearings-in at another time. So this whole swearing-in controversy is bogus on several levels.

    (However, during my recent detention at the Westchester County Supreme Court as a jurist for the Dumbest Trial of the Century, I observed a whole lot of swearing-in of witnesses on the Bible, and I have some thoughts about that I want to put into another post soon. And since two of our new congress critters are Buddhists, I want to explain why the practice of swearing on sacred books of any sort is problematic for Buddhists.)

    I’m pleased to report that not everyone on the Right agrees with Rep. Goode’s letter. For example, blogger Rick Moran of Right Wing Nut House wrote,

    But beyond the shameless, shallow pandering by Goode is a revealed truth; that too often Republican politicians are using this “traditional values” theme to capitalize on some unimagined fear as in the case of Goode and his phantom Muslims. We also see other individual groups like gays targeted as somehow being in conflict with traditional American values – as if these values are practiced by people solely as a result of their religion, sexual orientation, ethnic heritage, or any other qualifier that a politician seeks to use to drive a wedge between us….

    …I’m all for controlling our borders. I’m all for enforcing the law. But I am also in favor of increasing legal immigration. If someone wishes to go through the bureaucratic rigmarole that it takes to get here legally and then work toward citizenship, that alone should denote a person’s interest in the “traditional values” of America. There are plenty of Muslims here today – second and third generation Muslims – who embrace the same values you and I do and are no more a threat to those values than my pet cat Snowball.

    For Goode to posit the notion that Muslims are incapable of adopting and embracing traditional values not only flies in the face of history and everything we know about immigrants but also bespeaks a shallow and corrupt mind, incapable of grasping the shining truth about America as a melting pot that embraces all cultures and ethnic groups.

    And that may be the most traditional of all American values.

    Probably the last thing Mr. Moran wants is praise from me, but I’ll say it, anyway … Amen.

    On the other hand, there are plenty of righties who live down to our expectations. The blogger of Riehl World View writes,

    Founded, to a degree by Deists, or not – American tradition and the root of her social values is Judeo-Christian belief. That is a fact and no amount of protestation is going to change it. Though certainly a large influx of, say a Muslim or Hindu population most certainly would.

    Which takes us back to Mr. Jefferson, who wrote in his autobiography of the adoption of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom:

    The bill for establishing religious freedom, the principles of which had, to a certain degree, been enacted before, I had drawn in all the latitude of reason & right. It still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved that it’s protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word “Jesus Christ,” so that it should read “a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion.” The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of it’s protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.

    Heh. But blogger Riehl is less worried about religious liberty and inalienable rights than he is about preserving our “social values.” The fact is that our “social values” have already changed enormously since Jefferson’s time — slaves were freed, women got the vote, the Irish became respectable, etc. If we could go fetch Mr. Jefferson in a time machine and bring him here, he’d be shocked out of his stockings. So many of the social values of Jefferson’s time have disappeared that the nation would be as alien to Mr. Jefferson as Mars. And social values will continue to change whether large numbers of Muslims move to America or not, because that’s the nature of human society.

    That said, I would insist that Muslims or anyone else who move here be advised of the Wall of Separation and warned not to try to tear it down. It protects us all from the likes of Rep. Goode.

    Another Update

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    I am sorry to be out of the loop today, but I am still reporting to the courthouse for jury duty. I have to show up again tomorrow.

    So I rushed home to catch up on the news. On Memeorandum there was a stack of headlines that seemed to tell a story:

    Sen. Johnson in Critical Condition After Surgery

    Should Johnson be unable to continue to serve …

    Fox News Speculates How Officials Could ‘Declare’ Sen. Johnson ‘Incapacitated’

    Sen. Johnson recovering after brain surgery

    In a nutshell: Elements of the Righty (notably Faux Nooz) are salivating over the possibility of keeping the Senate, even as they feign shock that anyone is even talking about what might happen if poor Senator Johnson leaves the Senate. And they are dumping on the Left for … well, whatever. For breathing. The usual stuff. Anyway, as I keyboard the most recent news is that Senator Johnson is still critical, but recovering. There won’t be a long-term prognosis for a couple of days.

    CNN reported this afternoon     that

    The Democrats’ slight hold on power in the Senate is largely safe despite South Dakota Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson’s health scare, Senate Historian Don Richie tells CNN. As stipulated by Senate rules, Johnson could retain his seat even if he is incapacitated, unable to vote, and not even able to show up to work.

    Moreover, the Senate does not have the power to forcefully remove Johnson unless he committed a crime.

    Such a scenario has even occurred in Johnson’s home state of South Dakota. After South Dakota Sen. Karl Earle Mundt had a stroke in 1969 he remained in office until his term expired in 1973 without casting another vote after the governor refused Mundt’s wish of appointing his wife to the post.

    A state governor has the power to appoint a new senator only if the current senator dies in office or resigns his seat.

    There is “little or no precedent for forcibly unseating a member of Congress due to illness or other incapacitation,” writes Jonathan Singer at MyDD.

    Senator Johnson Update

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    Senator Johnson underwent surgery last night, although no one is saying what made him ill. If they’re operating on him, I assume the doctors have a theory.

    More on Senator Johnson from today’s New York Times:

    An unassuming fourth-generation South Dakotan, Mr. Johnson was first elected to the Senate in 1996, after serving 10 years in the House, where he had replaced Tom Daschle, a fellow Democrat who ran for the Senate and ultimately became the majority leader.

    Mr. Johnson faced a tough race in 2002 against John Thune, a Republican. With the state suffering billions of dollars in losses from a severe drought, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Daschle promised $5 billion in drought relief, and Mr. Johnson won narrowly after President Bush visited the state for Mr. Thune and declined to announce that he would support the relief. (Mr. Thune went on to beat Mr. Daschle in 2004.)

    Mr. Johnson is up for re-election in 2008. His oldest son, Brooks, served in Afghanistan and is serving in Iraq.

    Click here for Senator Johnson’s biography on his web site.

    My understanding is that if the Senator survives he is under no obligation to resign from the Senate, even if he is impaired. Back to the New York Times:

    He is the second senator known to become ill since the November elections. Senator Craig Thomas of Wyoming, a Republican, is being treated for leukemia, but has been at work.

    According to information from the Senate historian cited on CQ.com, at least nine senators have taken extended absences from the Senate for health reasons since 1942. Robert F. Wagner, Democrat of New York, was unable to attend any sessions of the 80th or 81st Congress from 1947 to 1949 because of a heart ailment. Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, missed about seven months in 1988 after surgery for a brain aneurysm. And David Pryor, Democrat of Arkansas, suffered a heart attack in April 1991 and returned to the Senate in September that year.

    The Right has decided it’s indelicate to even mention the significant political consequences of losing Senator Johnson. In fact, posts about Senator Johnson on rightie blogs this morning are so consistently conciliatory about the Senator one wonders if they were all on the same conference call with someone from the RNC.

    It is of course quite possible to be genuinely concerned about the Senator as a person and worried about the political consequences of his death or resignation at the same time. This is especially true for those of us who fear that if the Senate stays in Republican control our country will be significantly impaired. Here’s another New York Times story about something that won’t happen if the GOP stays in charge, for example. If it’s indelicate to be gravely concerned about the future of the United States of America, then I will be indelicate.

    The Twilight Zone II

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    Jonathan Chait begins his Los Angeles Times column this way:

    THERE IS a famous “Twilight Zone” episode about a little boy in a small town who has fantastical powers. Through the misuse of his powers, the little boy has ruined the lives of everybody in the town — for instance, teleporting them into a cornfield, or summoning a snowstorm that destroys their crops. Because anyone who thinks an unhappy thought will be banished, the adults around him can do nothing but cheerfully praise his decisions while they try to nudge him in a less destructive direction.

    This episode kept popping into my head when I was reading about President Bush and the Baker-Hamilton commission. Bush is the president of the United States, which therefore gives him enormous power, but he is treated by everybody around him as if he were a child.

    I’ve been thinking of that same episode. I think a lot of people are thinking about that same episode.

    Chait continues,

    Consider a story in the latest Time magazine, recounting the efforts — before the commission was approved by Congress — of three supporters to enlist Condoleezza Rice to win the administration’s approval for the panel. Here is how Time reports it:

    “As the trio departed, a Rice aide asked one of her suitors not to inform anyone at the Pentagon that chairmen had been chosen and the study group was moving forward. If Rumsfeld was alerted to the study group’s potential impact, the aide said, he would quickly tell Cheney, who could, with a few words, scuttle the whole thing. Rice got through to Bush the next day, arguing that the thing was going to happen anyway, so he might as well get on board. To his credit, the President agreed.”

    The article treats this exchange in a matter-of-fact way, but, what it suggests is completely horrifying. Rice apparently believed that Bush would simply follow the advice of whoever he spoke with. Therefore the one factor determining whether Bush would support the commission was whether Cheney or Rice managed to get to him first.

    The GOP still has plenty of apparatchiks to appear on the cable television politics talk shows and explain to us solemnly that this president is thinking this or considering that or wants some other thing, blah blah blah, and you know it’s a farce, and I assume they know it’s a farce, yet the GOP propaganda machine continues to play pretend that this president is actually doing the job of president and is not, in effect, spending his days in search of a missing quart of strawberries.

    Chait continues,

    And now that the Baker-Hamilton report is out, the commissioners are carefully patronizing the commander in chief. As this newspaper reported, “Members of the commission said they were pleased that Bush gave them as much attention as he did, a full hour’s worth. ‘He could have scheduled us for 20 minutes plus 10 minutes for the cameras,’ said former Atty. Gen. Edwin M. Meese III.” Wow, a commission devoted hundreds or thousands of man-hours to addressing the central conundrum of U.S. foreign policy, and the president gave them a whole hour of his time!

    Buried near the bottom of Dana Milbank’s account of the meeting —

    Leon Panetta counseled Bush to “look at the realities of what’s taking place.” Eagleburger said after the event that when the group met with Bush, “I don’t recall, seriously, that he asked any questions.”

    No questions?

    For a moment let’s skip over to a Eleanor Clift web commentary at Newsweek. She writes (emphasis added),

    It’s a statement of the obvious, but when you have a collection of Washington wise men, plus retired Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor (perhaps doing penance for her vote that put Bush in the White House during the disputed 2000 race), it’s the equivalent of last rites for Bush’s Iraq policy, along with his presidency. It’s not a plan for victory because that doesn’t exist except in Bush’s fantasy. The recommendations Baker and company offer—of more international engagement and shifting U.S. troops to a backup role to Iraqi forces—may help the administration manage and mask defeat. Even so, that may be hard for Bush to accept. His body language when receiving the report, while polite, was dismissive, thanking the eminences assembled for breakfast at the White House for dropping off a copy.

    This president has lost all capacity to lead. Eleven American servicemen died in Iraq on the day Bush was presented the report, which calls the situation there “grave and deteriorating.” Events on the ground threaten to overtake even this grim assessment. And we’re left to analyze Bush’s tender ego and whether he can reverse course on the folly that is killing and maiming countless Iraqis along with U.S. troops.

    My only quibble with Clift is that when she says “This president has lost all capacity to lead,” she implies that he had a capacity to lead at some point in the past.

    This is from William Douglas and Margaret Talev of McClatchy Newspapers (emphasis added):

    Bush said he talked about “the need for a new way forward in Iraq” in his morning session with leaders from both parties and chambers of Congress, “and we talked about the need to work together on this important subject.”

    But some Democrats came away unconvinced that major changes were coming.

    “I just didn’t feel there today, the president in his words or his demeanor, that he is going to do anything right away to change things drastically,” Senate Majority Leader-elect Harry Reid, D-Nev., said following the Oval Office meeting. “He is tepid in what he talks about doing. Someone has to get the message to this man that there have to be significant changes.”

    Instead, Bush began his talk by comparing himself to President Harry S Truman, who launched the Truman Doctrine to fight communism, got bogged down in the Korean War and left office unpopular.

    Bush said that “in years to come they realized he was right and then his doctrine became the standard for America,” recalled Senate Majority Whip-elect Richard Durbin, D-Ill. “He’s trying to position himself in history and to justify those who continue to stand by him, saying sometimes if you’re right you’re unpopular, and be prepared for criticism.”

    Durbin said he challenged Bush’s analogy, reminding him that Truman had the NATO alliance behind him and negotiated with his enemies at the United Nations. Durbin said that’s what the Iraq Study Group is recommending that Bush do now – work more with allies and negotiate with adversaries on Iraq.

    Bush, Durbin said, “reacted very strongly. He got very animated in his response” and emphasized that he is “the commander in chief.”

    Let’s see — Bush is not interested enough in the ISG report to ask questions, but don’t you dare tell him he’s not Harry Truman or he goes postal. What does that tell us about this president’s priorities?

    Most analysis of the ISG report that I’ve seen says pretty plainly that it gives the President about as much butt covering — a way to exit Iraq without looking like a flipflopper — as he is likely to get. In fact, it’s obvious that the report was crafted more as a political gift to Bush than an actual Best Possible Plan for getting out of Iraq (clearly, it isn’t). I can’t think of any president in American history who has been given such a gift when he’s been in trouble.

    As Jonathan Chait explains,

    In return for these considerations, the commission generously avoided revisiting the whole question of who got us into this fiasco and how. As the Washington Post put it, “The panel appeared to steer away from language that might inflame the Bush administration.” Of course, “inflame” is a word typically associated with street mobs or other irrational actors. The fact that the president can be “inflamed” is no longer considered surprising enough to merit comment.

    If Bush had more smarts than he has narcissism he’d find a way to embrace the ISG report and work with what supporters in Congress he still has. Instead, it’s obvious he’s going to blow it off and continue to do whatever it is he’s doing.

    A few days before the midterm elections I predicted that Bush would ignore the ISG report recommendations, whatever they were. I also predicted that Congress and the rest of the nation, including most Republicans, would not be willing to sit on their hands for two years while Bush continues his disastrous “course” in Iraq. Sure enough, John Broder and Robin Toner report in today’s New York Times that the Baker report has revealed a rift in the GOP over Iraq. I expect that, once the new Congress goes to work in January, more and more Republicans are going to be moving away from Bush and toward a plan for withdrawal.

    In fact, I won’t be surprised if there’s a bipartisan congressional majority agreement on a withdrawal plan before May 1 (Mission Accomplished Day).

    The federal government is facing a constitutional crisis. The original idea behind the separation of powers is that Congress sets war (and other) policy and the President executes it. The Founders worked out a plan for governance that was supposed to prevent any one individual from wielding the power that Bush has assumed. Now it’s up to Congress to take back the powers it rightly has.

    And if he resists — impeach the bastard. And his veep, too.

    The Twilight Zone

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    Be sure to read Paul Krugman’s column today, brought to you by the brave folks at Welcome to Pottersville. He begins by noting the famous “How’s your boy?” exchange between James Webb and George Bush, then continues,

    We need people in Washington who are willing to stand up to the bully in chief. Unfortunately, and somewhat mysteriously, they’re still in short supply.

    You can understand, if not condone, the way the political and media establishment let itself be browbeaten by Mr. Bush in his post-9/11 political prime. What’s amazing is the extent to which insiders still cringe before a lame duck with a 60 percent disapproval rating.

    Look at what seems to have happened to the Iraq Study Group, whose mission statement says that it would provide an “independent assessment.” If press reports are correct, the group did nothing of the sort. Instead, it watered down its conclusions and recommendations, trying to come up with something Mr. Bush wouldn’t reject out of hand.

    In particular, says Newsweek, the report “will set no timetables or call for any troop reductions.” All it will do is “suggest that the president could, not should, begin to withdraw forces in the vaguely defined future.”

    And all this self-abasement is for naught. Senior Bush aides, Newsweek tells us, are “dismissive, even condescending” toward James Baker, the Bush family consigliere who is the dominant force in the study group, and the report. Of course they are. That’s how bullies always treat their hangers-on.

    That’s pretty much what I was saying here. Everyone in Washington is still tip-toeing around His Majesty in fear of … something. The Iraq Study groups was supposed to provide an independent evaluation of how to handle Iraq. Instead, it was working on how to handle George W. Bush.

    The Reptile writes in today’s Washington Post:

    The notion bruited about Washington that James A. Baker is a deus ex machina imposed by President Bush to resolve the entangled Iraqi plot is nonsense. The Iraq Study Group, co-chaired by former secretary of state Baker and former representative Lee Hamilton, is out of the White House sphere of influence. The White House certainly did not ask Congress for help by creating this commission. Baker has made sure that the report, though leaked in part to the press, has not gone to the White House.

    As a creature of Congress (an institution that Bush dislikes), Baker’s group spells trouble for Bush when it releases its report Wednesday. It will propose, however muted its tone, gradual withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from Iraq before the president is ready for it. The hope is that Baker will nuance the report’s words sufficiently and hedge calls for withdrawal in such a way that Bush can say that is what he has been doing anyway.

    Remember the Twilight Zone episode about the six-year-old boy who held a town in terror because he could change or destroy anything at will? Washington is starting to remind me of that. Even the Reptile frames his column around what kind of problems the ISG might cause Bush, not whether it will provide a good plan for Iraq. He continues,

    Bush has not stepped back from the decisions he has made on Iraq. At the core of Bush’s Iraq dilemma is the fact, still denied at the White House, that the president has lost his political base on the overriding issue of the war. In contact mainly with fawning campaign contributors, Bush may not appreciate the steady decline in support of his war policy that I have seen deepening among Republicans in the past year.

    And those Republicans haven’t marched into the Oval Office to explain this to the President … why, exactly?

    This New York Times editorial     offers more testimony that the whole bleeping planet is being held hostage to George Bush’s ego.

    Commission members say they concluded that Mr. Bush’s strategy so far has created an expectation that the United States will always be there to hold Iraq together. Breaking that culture of dependency, they concluded, is the key to making the long-discussed “Iraqification” of the country’s security a reality. But they are uncertain whether they can persuade a famously stubborn president to adopt that view.

    “Is George Bush ready to hear that?” one commission member asked over the weekend. “I don’t think any of us really know. I don’t know if the president himself knows.”

    There is much flapping around about how George W. Bush is the “commander in chief,” meaning he’s the only one who can make decisions about war. But earlier in our nation’s history it was understood by most that the power to declare and conduct war belonged to Congress (see Findlaw’s annotations to Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution). My reading of the authorities granted to Congress and the President say that Congress is responsible for the political decision to make war, not the President. The “commander in chief” powers granted the president in Article II (again, see Findlaw for further discussion) originally were understood to be “supreme command and direction of the Military and naval forces, as first general and admiral,” according to Alexander Hamilton. In other words, he was supposed to be responsible only for the conduct of military campaigns.

    Through the years there has been considerable tension between Congress and the President on these matters, and on the question of when a President may act without the express permission of Congress. Little by little, the “war power” trickled from Congress to the President. And now all of Washington is tip-toeing around some petty martinet who thinks he’s Napoleon, and everyone is afraid to tell him, um, you know that war you started? Well, we’ve decided it’s turning out badly, and we’d like you to wind it up now.

    I don’t think this is how the Founders intended the government to function.

    Don’t think even Republicans aren’t stewing about this. George Will wrote today,

    Sen. John Warner put down a marker.

    Four months ago the Virginia Republican said that Congress must “examine very carefully” what it authorized the president to do in 2002 when it authorized military action against Iraq. Warner wondered whether, if there is an “all-out civil war,” the president must “come back to the Congress to get further indication of support.”

    Yet there is faint hope. Walter Pincus writes that a pack of House Democrats who opposed the war all along are about to move into key positions.

    Although given little public credit at the time, or since, many of the 126 House Democrats who spoke out and voted against the October 2002 resolution that gave President Bush authority to wage war against Iraq have turned out to be correct in their warnings about the problems a war would create.

    With the Democrats taking over control of the House next January, the views that some voiced during two days of debate four years ago are worth recalling, since many of those lawmakers will move into positions of power. They include not only members of the new House leadership but also the incoming chairmen of the Appropriations, Armed Services, Budget and Judiciary committees and the Select Committee on Intelligence.

    Notice, these are Dems who had the spines to say no to war before saying no to war was cool. You’ll want to read this article; it will cheer you up.

    Anyway, I believe Congress would be within its constitutional authority to order Bush to end the war, whether he wants to or not. They probably don’t want to do this, because Bush would certainly refuse, and who’s going to make the commander-in-chief of the U.S. military, Justice Department, and various espionage agencies obey? Congress’s only recourse would be impeachment.

    Heh.

    By the way, here’s how Krugman’s column ends:

    Well, here’s a question for those who might be tempted, yet again, to shy away from a confrontation with Mr. Bush over Iraq: How do you ask a man to be the last to die for a bully’s ego?


    See also:     Today’s Dan Froomkin column; in Salon, “Dems Gear Up for Oversight“; in Newsweek, Eleanor Clift writes about Jim Webb.

    Update: Evan Thomas, “So Now What, Mr. President?”