...the Left has no credibility on this issue [separation of church and state], because it’s now the chief American defender of theocracies abroad. It simply amazes me that the Left doesn’t get that the people who attacked us don’t just want God in some pledge; they want to execute "blasphemers," beat women into burqas, stone gays—America was founded by escapees from such theocracies.
--Ron Rosenbaum in this week's New York Observer

In 1998 Physicians for Human Rights did a well-publicized study of Afghan women's health [under the then-current Taliban regime], showing grave depression and suicidal tendencies; Amnesty International has declared the entire female population of Afghanistan prisoners of conscience....

Together with the Feminist Majority Foundation and the National Committee of Women for a Democratic Iran, RAWA [the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan] held a small but vigorous rally in Lafayette Park in front of the White House on April 28, [2000]....Eleanor Smeal spoke eloquently without notes; there were messages of support from Representative Carolyn Maloney [D-N.Y.] and Senator Harry Reid [D-Nev.]...

America...romanticizes as noble freedom fighters thugs and fanatics who throw acid in unveiled women's faces and have no interest in anything but their own power.
--column in The Nation by Katha Pollitt, May 29, 2000, reprinted in her essay collection Subject to Debate

Oh, but I should cut Ron Rosembaum a break, right? After all, he was probably too busy leading the resistance against the jackbooted fascists at Starbucks to notice at the time that virtually all of the righteous anger in this country at the actions of the Taliban was on the left.

Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, who have never stopped touring, recently did 10 days in the Middle East playing for the troops stationed in Afghanistan. In AFGHANISTAN, Joan would come onstage wearing a birkha, which she ripped off and stomped on before blazing through the purest and nastiest rock show ANYWHERE. --from a message posted at JoanJett.com

Ann? Rush? Hitch? Andy? Can we call a momentary truce here and agree that, whatever our political differences may be, this gesture totally rocks?

So right-wingers -- Lucianne Goldberg (scroll down), Boston columnist and radio frother Howie Carr (scroll down), these fine folks -- want to mock Tom Daschle for his height?

Fine, be my guest. It's a free country.

But don't ever, ever turn around and claim, or approvingly quote anyone who claims, that anti-Christian prejudice or anti-Catholic prejudice or anti-male prejudice is "the last socially acceptable form of bigotry."

You want pathetic losers desperate to recapture past glories? I got your pathetic losers desperate to recapture past glories. And not a liberal in the bunch.

I'll be very interested to see the reaction of abstinence advocates and other conservatives to the news that researchers have developed a vaccine that prevents transmission of a form of the human papilloma virus (HPV) known to lead to cervical cancer, and that another group of researchers has developed a vaccine that shows promise in preventing genital herpes in women.

A trump card of the abstinence movement is its assertion that condoms aren't effective in preventing HPV transmission, which, alas, is true; less convincingly, abstinence advocates also insist that condoms aren't very good at preventing herpes transmission (in fact, a 2001 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that condoms offer "significant protection against" herpes infection in women).

If it reduces the risks of sex, religious conservatives are likely to issue dire warnings about it. They are certain that abortion causes breast cancer. They darkly suggest that the Pill causes spontaneous abortions. And they want the government to reconsider its approval of RU-486, the abortion pill -- allegedly on medical grounds. (A leader in that fight is Dr. David Hager, reportedly the Bush administration’s choice to head the FDA's Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee. Hager writes books urging a biblical approach to medicine and, according to two sources who spoke to Time magazine, refuses to prescribe contraception to unmarried women.)

Asked about the study that led to the HPV vaccine, the chief of the gynecologic oncology in the University of Pennsylvania Health System said, "If an effective vaccine comes out of this, one could envision it becoming part of routine childhood immunizations," while the head of the research team that developed herpes vaccine said, "If you did universal vaccination of 11- and 12-year-old women, you would eventually see an impact on the spread of herpes in both men and women." Sounds good -- but it won’t be that simple. If these vaccines are developed, at the very least there will pockets of outraged resistance to the idea that such vaccines should be given to young children (we will be told that the vaccines "encourage promiscuity"). More likely, given the near-inevitability of a second term for George Bush, resistance will be fierce and well organized -- and led from within the federal government.

How can we have an "emerging Democratic majority" if Democrats won't vote Democratic? According to this story, Mary Landrieu is trailing in a new poll as her Senate runoff approaches. After November 5, we shouldn't be surprised that she's in trouble -- but what's disturbing is the margin (eight percentage points, twice the margin of error), and this breakdown of the results:

Terrell performed much better with her party base than Landrieu. Terrell received 72% percent of the Republican vote to just 16% percent for Landrieu. Landrieu got only 51% of the Democrat vote while Terrell received a surprising 42%.

Is Landrieu's problem that she's not doing well with black leaders (and thus black Democratic voters) in Louisiana? From up here in the north, I can't be sure. But it's clear that she wants voters to think she's kinda-sorta Republican -- she boasts of voting with Bush 74% of the time -- and she hasn't figured out that this is a recipe for a thoroughly alienated base. Do Democrats still not get this?

"It is extremely important that Democrats not be allowed to characterize GOP support of personal savings accounts as privatization," a GOP strategist wrote during the campaign. (He called the use of the word "Democratic demagoguery.")

Apparently the folks at the online edition of the right-wing magazine Human Events didn't get the memo. Check out the first link in the right-hand column here:

"Social Security Privatization Victorious in 2002 Elections"

Oops.

MANDATE MY ASS, cont'd

Results of a CNN/Time poll conducted by Harris Interactive 11/13 - 11/14/02, as reported at PollingReport.com:

"Next, I'm going to read you the names of some people in the news today. Please tell me whether you have generally favorable or generally unfavorable impressions of each, or whether you are not familiar enough to say one way or another."

"Republicans in Congress":

Favorable: 46% Unfavorable 27% Not Familiar 23% Not Sure 4%

"Democrats in Congress":

Favorable: 43% Unfavorable 31% Not Familiar 22% Not Sure 4%

Difference in favorability rating: 3%. Margin of error: 3.1%.

When he's not putting huge granite Ten Commandments sculptures in public buildings, Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore writes poetry. Here's a dip into his oeuvre:

"America the Beautiful"

"Our American Birthright"

No big surprises here -- America is a Christian nation, abortion and homosexuality are sending the country to hell in a handbasket, you know the drill. Warning: You might want to mute the sound on the second one, unless your taste in music runs to John Philip Sousa played on a cheap synthesizer.

Kudos to ABC News for running this story about slurs against Islam by a number of prominent evangelical preachers ("You know what we ought to do? We ought to take every single Muslim student in every college in this nation and ship them back to where they came from" —Jimmy Swaggart) on last night -- but isn't the criticism of President Bush for not condemning his allies' remarks until after the midterm elections a case of the pot calling the kettle black? ABC, after all, didn't run this story until thirteen days after the polls closed.

It's wonderful that a federal court has ruled against the display in a government building of Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore's tacky, 5280-pound granite Ten Commandments, but am I crazy to think the ruling is going to hurt Mary Landrieu as the Louisiana Senate runoff approaches? I know it's not the same state, and I know there's no direct connection, but hey, a lot of people believe a memorial service in Minnesota doomed Democratic Senate candidates as far away as Colorado and New Hampshire, so why is it so hard to imagine that this will be used (by the GOP, by talk radio) to rile up fundamentalists and conservative Catholics in Louisiana?

Whether or not it affects Landrieu, this is going to get ugly -- Moore has thirty days to take the thing down, which means the deadline is a week before Christmas. The self-righteous howls will be deafening, and I worry about serious civil disobedience if anyone tries to remove the thing by force.

A telling detail about Moore's character, from AP via (who'da thunk?) Fox News:

Moore installed the monument after the building closed on the night of July 31, 2001, without telling any other justices. But he did tell television evangelist D. James Kennedy, who had a crew from his Coral Ridge, Fla., ministry film the installation and offered videotapes of it for a donation of $19.

Moore has appeared numerous times on Kennedy's nationally syndicated religious television show.

GOP OVERREACH WATCH, cont'd

A few days ago, Trent Lott blindsided President Bush by pressing for swift passage of the "partial-birth abortion" bill (and perhaps a wish list of further restrictions on abortion). Yesterday, wingnut GOP back-benchers blindsided their own party's leaders by voting down the bankruptcy bill because it contained a provision unfavorable to anti-abortion protesters. (And again today the pro-lifers failed to achieve a compromise that can pass the Senate.)

Remember, the GOP's Year Zero is a mere ten days old.

These guys are going to be very, very extreme. The only question is how much damage they'll manage to do before they thoroughly alienate the public.

MANDATE MY ASS REDUX

OK, so Gallup has Bush's approval up 5% since the election. So, is that a mandate? No, it's not a mandate. It's a bump. Look at the graph: the trend (a slow but steady decline in approval and increase in disapproval) is unmistakable.

As I said a couple of days ago, Bush's approval decreased in a Newsweek poll taken after the election. I should have been more specific: that poll was taken after the election but before everyone in America was told that Bush is now a god and the Democrats are pathetic, out-of-step dinosaur pinko losers. So that Newsweek poll, in my opinion, is a pretty good reflection of voters' opinions before this conventional wisdom was shouted at them from all corners. And afterward? Well, Bush gets a five-point bump and the Dems take a ten-point hit. It's temporary -- and while I worry that the Democrats won't take sufficient steps to stave off further losses, those losses are preventable, and these are reversible. So right-wing simpletons gloat at their own peril.

HANNITY: We don't want Klan members in our [Republican] party. Thank you very much.

HASTINGS: Oh, and you're telling me you don't have any? You are either naive or stupid!

HANNITY: Wait. Who is it? Wait a minute. Name one Klan member in the Republican Party. Name one.

HASTINGS: I can give you - if you're talking about. Let me -

HANNITY: Name one.

HASTINGS: Do we want to go to Lake Worth and find those militia and Klan people [unintelligible]?

HANNITY: No, no, no. I want to know what representative, what elected official is in the Klan - that are Republican?

HASTINGS: Elected today - a former Klan member?

HANNITY: Who? Who?

HASTINGS: That would be difficult for me to say. But if you give me a day I'll get you a name.

HANNITY: Checkmate again, checkmate.

--from a recent Sean Hannity radio show, on which Democratic congressman Alcee Hastings defended Senator Robert Byrd

David Duke was elected in 1989 and served as a member of the House of Representatives and was a full participating member of the Republican Legislative Delegation. He served on Committees: Health and Welfare, and Judiciary.

Authored landmark conservative legislation, including House Bill 1013 (1990), the first anti-affirmative action challenge passed by a legislative body in America.

He was recently elected to Chairmanship of the Republican Parish Executive Committee of the largest Republican parish (county) in Louisiana. (St. Tammany RPEC, At-Large Representative, term 1996-2000)

--from David Duke Online

Since at no time do you say you mean current officeholders who were in the Klan, you're busted, Sean.

What were you going to say if Hastings had mentioned Duke, Sean? That Duke is an incorrect answer to the question because he's not a current elected Republican, even though he held an elected post in the GOP until a mere two years ago?

Duke, according to his own bio, was in the Klan until 1978. Byrd left the Klan before Sean Hannity was born. Duke went on to found the National Association for the Advancement of White People, which he calls a "civil rights organization," and is now the president of the European-American Unity and Rights Organization, "dedicated to protecting the rights and heritage of people of European descent in America and around the world."

Busted, Sean. Busted.

(Oh and please savor the compassionate conservatism in the Hannity link. In case you haven't clicked on it, it's a Free Republic discussion, and it veers off into a lavishly illustrated digression -- "Tom Daschle -- Man or Midget?" Charming.)

I would understand the outpouring of articles contending that Nancy Pelosi is a bad, out-of-the-mainstream choice for House Minority Leader if it were customary for leaders in the House to hug the center as much as humanly possible. But hello? Excuse me? In the next Congress, the House Majority Leader is going to be Tom Fricking DeLay.

So as you peruse list after list of the noncentrist positions (against the Iraq war resolution, against the Bush tax cut) Pelosi has taken, ask yourself why you’re not reading lists of truly out-of-touch, if not utterly extremist and nutty, positions taken by DeLay:

* In 1996, DeLay introduced a bill that would have made it illegal for states and municipalities to regulate "the pricing, terms, or conditions of service offerings by electric service providers" -- a bill praised by Kenneth Lay on Enron’s Web site (yep, the press release is still up).

* DeLay strongly supports drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.

* DeLay, of course, vehemently opposes campaign finance reform (because it -- stop, you're killing me, Tom -- "prevent[s] average citizens from participating in political debates").

* In 2000, DeLay opposed a phased-in minimum-wage increase from $5.15 an hour to $6.15 ("I hate it").

* DeLay did not want Elián González reunited with his father.

* According to Time magazine, DeLay has asserted that day care, birth control and the teaching of evolution are the cause of Columbine-style youth violence. "Guns have little or nothing to do with juvenile violence," DeLay, a fervent opponent of gun control, has said.

* DeLay has insulted Jews, Muslims, practitioners of all other faiths, and atheists by saying, "Only Christianity offers a comprehensive worldview that covers all areas of life and thought, every aspect of creation. Only Christianity offers a way to live in response to the realities that we find in this world -- only Christianity."

* DeLay denounced Baylor University and Texas A&M University for, among other things, failing to teach creationism.

I'm sorry -- which one of these leaders did you say is out of the mainstream?

Update: D'oh -- Joe Conason's latest column in The New York Observer also makes this comparison. Well, it bears repeating.

"Americans aged 18 to 29 back US military action by a 3-to-1 margin (69 percent to 23 percent). In contrast, support falls to 51 percent among those aged 65 or older, 31 percent of whom oppose a war against Iraq, according to three surveys by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press." -- Christian Science Monitor, November 6, 2002

I hate to keep harping on The Emerging Democratic Majority, but this is yet another sign that we're not going to be able to just kick back for a few years and wait for Democrat Nation to, well, emerge. The GOP could very well be developing brand loyalty in a young generation that, if typical age-related voting patterns hold, will start voting in significant numbers relatively soon. At the same time, the people who have some skepticism about Bush are the ones who, to be blunt, don't have a whole lot of years of voting left. Folks, we need to worry about this now.

Large amounts of gratitude to Cursor.org ("Mandate? My ass") and TBOGG for linking to this site.

GOP OVERREACH WATCH

All human cloning could be outlawed in the US as early as next year, driving a key area of medical research offshore, Senate supporters of a ban said on Tuesday.

Senator Sam Brownback plans to introduce legislation early next year and believes it stands a good chance of success following Republican gains in last week’s mid-term elections....

President George W.Bush has signalled he would back another attempt to push through legislation that was passed by the House of Representatives last year but stalled in the Senate....

A total ban would include “therapeutic cloning”, which might be used to grow replacement tissue in the body, as well as “reproductive cloning”, which would be used to make babies....

--Financial Times, November 12, 2002

Republicans on one side, Michael J. Fox and Christopher Reeve on the other. Gosh, I thought it was NASCAR-averse pointy-headed liberals who were out of touch with the average American.

We all know that those stinky old Democrats put partisanship before the national interest in a time of terrorism by not acceding to anti-union provisions in the bill to create a Department of Homeland Security, right? Well, apparently putting partisanship before the national interest in a time of terrorism is, as they say, OK if you're a Republican. From today's New York Times (emphasis mine):

Because of disputes over spending levels, Congress has cleared only 2 of the 13 appropriations bills for the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1....

Members of the appropriations committees had hoped to use the lame-duck session to pass at least a few of the spending measures. They were overruled by Republican leaders, who would prefer to wrap up the session in a matter of days and wait to confront the spending fight when they are firmly in control.

That decision, aides in both parties pointed out, means that billions of dollars for a variety of security initiatives and other programs will not be immediately available. Among the temporary casualties, they said, are more than $3 billion in grants for local emergency teams, $500 million for the Coast Guard and other spending related to stepped-up domestic security.

A couple of letters I sent yesterday, with added links:

To the Editor:

In today's New York Times, Richard W. Stevenson claims that conservatives have "always been skeptical" about the usefulness of balancing the federal budget.

Really? Then why has every Republican presidential candidate since 1980 -- including George W. Bush in 2000 -- run on a platform that called for a constitutional amendment to put the budget in balance? And why did a constitutional amendment to balance the budget make it to the Senate floor in 1997, where it received the vote of every member of the GOP?

Current Republican policies virtually guarantee large deficits for the foreseeable future. Thus, it is understandable that the party would like voters to forget its past statements on the subject of deficit spending. The Times, however, should be careful not to aid the party in this effort to rewrite history.

******

To the Editor:

Howard Kurtz writes today that "Bill Clinton showed you could win a presidential election on alderman-type issues -- school uniforms, community policing." Has Kurtz forgotten the successful 1988 campaign of the elder George Bush? The most prominent issues of that campaign were the Pledge of Allegiance and a furlough granted to one murderer. Maybe Bill Clinton did play "small ball," as Kurtz puts it, but he did not introduce it to our national campaigns.