The food-stamp diet

This is a pretty good read:

Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) stood before the refrigerated section of the Safeway on Capitol Hill yesterday and looked longingly at the eggs.

At $1.29 for a half-dozen, he couldn't afford them.

Ryan and three other members of Congress have pledged to live for one week on $21 worth of food, the amount the average food stamp recipient receives in federal assistance. That's $3 a day or $1 a meal. They started yesterday.

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) and Rep. Jo Ann Emerson (R-Mo.), co-chairmen of the House Hunger Caucus, called on lawmakers to take the "Food Stamp Challenge" to raise awareness of hunger and what they say are inadequate benefits for food stamp recipients. Only two others, Ryan and Janice Schakowsky (D-Ill.), took them up on it.

Ryan's shopping list for the week:

Yellow cornmeal	$1.43
2 jars strawberry preserves	4.80
1 jar chunky peanut butter	2.48
2 packages angel-hair pasta	1.54
Chock Full o’ Nuts coffee	2.50
3 cans tomato sauce	4.50
2 containers cottage cheese	3.00
1 loaf wheat bread	0.89
1 head of garlic	0.32
Total:	$20.66

He could have added some extra calories by forgoing the coffee; I think he's going to regret that particular choice.

The story also notes the irony of eating poor: that the cheapest foods are also the unhealthiest, which is why the poor have trouble with obesity, cholesterol and other diet-related ills.

"No organic foods, no fresh vegetables, we were looking for the cheapest of everything," McGovern said. "We got spaghetti and hamburger meat that was high in fat -- the fattiest meat on the shelf. I have high cholesterol and always try to get the leanest, but it's expensive. It's almost impossible to make healthy choices on a food stamp diet."

Looking at the politics of it, the stunt -- while compelling -- is still something of a stunt. The $21 a week is an average, for starters; the neediest people get more. Second, food stamps were never intended to cover 100% of food costs; they're a supplement. Third, food stamps aren't the only programs available to the hungry. There are food shelves, local food programs and private charities as well.

In addition, the lawmakers are doing this in hopes of adding $4 billion to the $33 billion food-stamp program -- which would boost that $21 weekly average up to a whopping $23.50 or so.

Still, people do go hungry, even if nobody actually starves. And the healthy-eating challenges deserve to be addressed somehow. A few bucks spent helping the very poor buy fresh vegetables now might prevent far more expensive taxpayer-provided health care down the road.

food stamps, hunger, politics, midtopia

More Republicans call for Gonzales' head

Two more Republican Senators want Alberto Gonzales gone: Chuck Hagel and Pat Roberts.

"The American people deserve an attorney general, the chief law enforcement officer of our country, whose honesty and capability are beyond question," Hagel said in a statement. "Attorney General Gonzales can no longer meet this standard. He has failed this country. He has lost the moral authority to lead."

"When you have to spend more time up here on Capitol Hill instead of running the Justice Department, maybe you ought to think about [resigning]," Roberts told The Associated Press.

Democrats, meanwhile, continued the full-court press. Four Democratic senators sent Gonzales a letter asking him to square Jim Comey's description of a dramatic confrontation over the NSA wiretapping program -- complete with threats to resign -- with Gonzales' February 2006 testimony that there had "not been any serious disagreement" over it.

Rereading the testimony (Part I and Part II), one sees that Gonzales was being very careful in his language:

SCHUMER: There was dissent; is that right?

GONZALES: Of course, Senator. As I indicated, this program implicates some very difficult issues. The war on terror has generated several issues that are very, very complicated.

SCHUMER: Understood.

GONZALES: Lawyers disagree.

SCHUMER: I concede all those points. Let me ask you about some specific reports.

It's been reported by multiple news outlets that the former number two man in the Justice Department, the premier terrorism prosecutor, Jim Comey, expressed grave reservations about the NSA program and at least once refused to give it his blessing. Is that true?

GONZALES: Senator, here's the response that I feel that I can give with respect to recent speculation or stories about disagreements.

There has not been any serious disagreement -- and I think this is accurate -- there has not been any serious disagreement about the program that the president has confirmed. There have been disagreements about other matters regarding operations which I cannot get into.

I will also say...

SCHUMER: But there was some -- I'm sorry to cut you off -- but there was some dissent within the administration. And Jim Comey did express, at some point -- that's all I asked you -- some reservations.

GONZALES: The point I want to make is that, to my knowledge, none of the reservations dealt with the program that we're talking about today. They dealt with operational capabilities that we're not talking about today.

As you can see, Gonzales was very careful to only talk about the then-current iteration of the NSA program -- without mentioning that the program existed in that form only because of the vehement objections described by Comey. So did he lie? No. Did he mislead? Yes. Deliberately? Unclear. He was obviously trying to suggest that the reports about Comey's actions were somehow inaccurate, without coming right out and saying it (which would have been a lie). And it's also clear that he didn't want to openly and candidly discuss the process that led to the NSA program then in operation. But dodging questions isn't the same thing as lying. And some of the blame for the lack of clarity also lies with Schumer, who didn't try to nail Gonzales down on what he meant by "they dealt with operational capabilities that we're not talking about today."

As far as relevance to his continued tenure, however, I'm not sure this has any. Gonzales didn't actually lie, and the underlying history (was there disagreement?) isn't very important, so it's not a legal or moral issue. To the extent that Congress doesn't like having its questions dodged this could be a political issue, but Congress is already mad at him about much worse acts; this isn't going to move the needle much one way or the other in that regard.

Next up: Monica Goodling's immunized testimony a week from now, on May 23. I'm going to try to listen to most of it.

politics, midtopia

Things of note

Items that caught my eye today:

Prince Harry won't be going to Iraq; the British army decided that doing so posed too much danger not just to Cornet Wales but also to those around him, figuring insurgents would move heaven and earth to get their hands on him. I can't fault their reasoning, but it does raise the question of what sort of conflict the military will let him fight in. And if the answer is "none", one wonders what he's doing in the military.

A team of scientists working with the Hubble space telescope think they have directly sighted dark matter. Using gravitational lensing they mapped out the density of a couple of galaxy clusters 5 billion light years away -- and found that the centers of mass didn't correspond to visible objects (you can see the ring of dark matter in the photo). The evidence in favor of dark matter is firming up. All that's left is the pesky matter of explaining what the heck it is.

Paul Wolfowitz is negotiating a deal for his resignation as head of the World Bank. I'm still more interested in the junkets he arranged for his girlfriend when he was with the Pentagon. But while I think he did some good at the World Bank and the calls for his head have more than a little corrupt politicking behind them, it's hard to feel sorry for a figure so central to our misadventure in Iraq. Buh-bye.

dark matter, Hubble, Prince Harry, Wolfowitz, politics, midtopia

Jerry Falwell dies

Mr. Moral Majority meets his Maker.

I'm not going to pretend to miss him. Oh, there was the entertainment value of his blustering, but that hardly made up for the actual damage he did. Although in the long run it's a wash, as the declining influence of he and his kind make clear. He gave people a good look at what the religious right stood for -- and it wasn't pretty.

Still, I'm not big on bashing the dead, so I'll just keep silence. I hope there's an afterlife for you, Mr. Falwell. If there is, I'm curious to know if it's the one you expected.

Falwell, religion, politics, midtopia

Stupid teacher tricks

They don't get much stupider than this.

Staff members of a Murfreesboro elementary school staged a fake gunman attack during a school trip, telling them it was not a drill as children cried and hid under tables.

Usually it's the playground bullies who are responsible for terrorizing kids. I guess they've been put out of business by the teachers.

Assistant Principal Don Bartch, who was present, said the scenario was intended as a learning experience and only lasted five minutes.

Oh, okay; it only lasted five minutes. That makes it all better.

The details:

During the last night of the school trip to Fall Creek Falls, a state park about 130 miles southeast of Nashville, staff members convinced the 69 students that there was a gunman on the loose.

The students were told to lie on the floor or hide underneath tables and stay quiet. After the lights went out, about 20 kids started to cry, said 11-year-old Shay Naylor.

"I was like, 'Oh My God,' " Shay said Saturday. "At first I thought I was going to die. We flipped out. (A teacher) told us, 'We just got a call that there's been a random shooting.' I was freaked out. I thought it was serious."

A teacher, disguised in a hooded sweat shirt, even pulled on locked door and pretended to be suspicious subject....

"The children were in that room in the dark, begging for their lives, because they thought there was someone with a gun after them," said Brandy Cole, whose son went on the trip.

I can understand one teacher thinking this was a good idea. It's hard for me to comprehend how all the teachers on the trip came to that conclusion.

The best part is that by crying wolf -- especially the "this is not a drill" part -- the teachers have pretty much ensured that in the event of a real emergency, some students will simply disbelieve their warnings and disregard their instructions. Great work.

One caveat: Almost all of the details in the story come from kids (who aren't necessarily the most reliable witnesses) and their parents (who weren't there). The school is investigating, and perhaps a different picture will emerge. But I don't imagine it will be substantially different. The kids were terrified, that seems clear. Whatever happened, it was misguided at best and downright mean at worst.

education, politics, midtopia

Meet the new war czar

After a month of searching, a "war czar" has been found.

President Bush on Tuesday chose Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, the
Pentagon's director of operations and a former leader of U.S. military forces in the Middle East, to oversee the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan as a war czar.

Lute seems like a fine soldier, but he's way down the administration's wish list for the position. The authority and doability of the job aside, it's unclear whether such a relative unknown will have the personal force and charisma necessary to break logjams and keep everybody moving in the same direction.

There's also the question of whether we should put much trust in anyone who helped oversee combat in Iraq between 2004 and 2006, years in which the situation there spiraled out of control. There's always the question of whether to blame the generals or their political overseers, and Lute wasn't the overall commander in the theater. But at first blush it's not a great recommendation.

Here's what some military folks think of the pick. They think Lute's a fine officer, but wonder how a three-star general is going to order around four-star generals and Cabinet members.

And here's an interview (pdf) Lute did with Charlie Rose in January 2006, when he was director of operations for Centcom.

In it he says Al-Qaeda is weakening and losing support as a result of the war. But the example he gives has nothing to do with Iraq; he cites the bombing of a wedding in Amman, Jordan, and the collapse in AQ support afterward. Is anyone surprised that when AQ attacks Muslim targets, those Muslims don't like it?

He also discusses -- in a sort of premonition of his new job -- the need to fight networks of terrorists with networks of agencies and governments:

The other thing I would point to, Charlie, is the importance of taking this on, not simply as a military fight, but as a multi-agency fight where different arms of the government, the intelligence arm, the military arm for sure, the State Department, diplomatic arm, economic arm, those who bring law and order systems into a post-conflict scenario, that all these arms come together in an integrated networked way.

That's what he's been hired to do. Let's hope he is able -- and allowed -- to do a good job.

Update: Here's the video of part II of Charlie Rose's interview of Lute, conducted a few days after the interview I link to above. The segment with Lute starts around the 38-minute mark.

This time he discusses the strain on the military from our deployment in Iraq, in which he argues that while the soldiers' private lives are strained, most of them want to return to Iraq and, as a long-term upside, we're developing a large core of combat veterans. The first argument is a little bit of "happy talk." Our troops tend to be motivated, but dedication to the mission starts to wane after the third or fourth tour. The second part, while true as far as it goes, assumes those veterans stay in the service.

He also talks up the Iraqi army, a confidence that was proven to be a bit misplaced in the year that followed. He heaped praise on Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad -- a charter member of the neocon club who departed a year later (amid mounting chaos) to become our ambassador to the United Nations, a post about as important to this administration as the embassy in Liechtenstein (which is actually handled by the ambassador to Switzerland). He also discusses the military and political changes needed to succeed in Iraq.

He comes across as smart, but his role as spokesman and obvious cheerleader damages his credibility and doesn't give a true sense of the man.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Lobbying reform runs into hurdles

Attempts are afoot in Congress to weaken the lobbying reforms passed with such fanfare in the first days of the 110th Congress.

The culprits? Democrats.

Now that they are running things, many Democrats want to keep the big campaign donations and lavish parties that lobbyists put together for them. They're also having second thoughts about having to wait an extra year before they can become high-paid lobbyists themselves should they retire or be defeated at the polls.

The growing resistance to several proposed reforms now threatens passage of a bill that once seemed on track to fulfill Democrats' campaign promise of cleaner fundraising and lobbying practices....

They include proposals to:

* Require lobbyists to disclose details about large donations they arrange for politicians.
* Make former lawmakers wait two years, instead of one, before lobbying Congress.
* Bar lobbyists from throwing large parties for lawmakers at national political conventions.

First, the bill has not been voted on yet. What we're seeing here are the behind-the-scenes disputes about the final language, and how to reconcile it with the Senate version.

That said, let's be clear: If the Democrats fail to deliver on this promise, they will and should be toast in 2008. If there's one thing voters wanted when they voted in November, it was a real clean-up of Washington's money culture. The Democrats promised to do so, and if they back away from key provisions it will simply have been a lie. Maybe all that money is nice now that they're in power; but they won't remain in power long if they don't take steps to lessen the lure of its siren song. And quickly.

ethics, politics, midtopia

Gonzales roundup

Sheesh, I go away for a few days and everything goes bonkers.

Yesterday, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty -- one of the people involved in the U.S. attorney firings -- said he would resign.

He says he always intended to spend no more than two years in the post, and by the time a successor is found he will nearly have hit that milestone. But it seems pretty clear that the prosecutor brouhaha contributed to his decision.

Alberto Gonzales said a lot of nice things.

"Paul is an outstanding public servant and a fine attorney who has been valued here at the department, by me and so many others, as both a colleague and a friend," Gonzales said.

Let me be a little more precise. He said a lot of nice things yesterday. Today, Gonzales wasn't quite so complimentary.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday he relied heavily on his deputy to oversee the firings of U.S. attorneys, appearing to distance himself from his departing second-in-command....

"At the end of the day, the recommendations reflected the views of the deputy attorney general. He signed off on the names," Gonzales told reporters after a speech about Justice Department steps to curb rising violent crime.

"The one person I would care about would be the views of the deputy attorney general, because the deputy attorney general is the direct supervisor of the United States attorneys," Gonzales said.

So after months of Congress asking a simple question -- who ordered the firings? -- Gonzales has finally provided an answer: McNulty.

Except that there's mounds of evidence that the actual driving forces were Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling, and all McNulty did was sign the final list. Plus, if Gonzales was so interested in the opinion of the man who oversaw the prosecutors, why did he never consult Jim Comey?

As House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers put it, "With this Justice Department, the buck always stops somewhere else, and the fall guy is always the last guy out of the door."

Now, that's hardly a failing that's limited to Justice, or Republicans, or the current administration. Lesser mortals always take bullets for top officials. But Gonzales appears prepared to sacrifice the entire top leadership of the department, if necessary -- and he is so not worth it.

Speaking of Jim Comey, he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee today, and dropped this bombshell:

On the night of March 10, 2004, a high-ranking Justice Department official rushed to a Washington hospital to prevent two White House aides from taking advantage of the critically ill Attorney General, John Ashcroft, the official testified today.

One of those aides was Alberto R. Gonzales, who was then White House counsel and eventually succeeded Mr. Ashcroft as Attorney General.

“I was very upset,” said James B. Comey, who was deputy Attorney General at the time, in his testimony today before the Senate Judiciary Committee. “I was angry. I thought I had just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man, who did not have the powers of the attorney general because they had been transferred to me.”

Besides being distasteful, what's the bombshell? This story has been told before.

The New York Times link above lays out the events of the night in gripping detail. But the Washington Post sums up their significance..

The White House three years ago reauthorized a controversial surveillance program, parts of which the Justice Department found to be illegal, overriding the objections of top department officials after failing to get a seriously ill attorney general John D. Ashcroft to sign off on it from his hospital bed, Ashcroft's former deputy told a Senate panel today.

So the White House wanted the Justice Department to say the eavesdropping program was legal. Justice refused. The White House went so far as to send Gonzales to pressure an ailing Ashcroft to sign off on it from his hospital bed, and when both he and Comey refused, the administration decided to reauthorize the program anyway. Only the threat of mass resignations at Justice averted that move.

Justice's approval was not required by law. But its refusal to say the program was legal offers powerful evidence that the program broke the law. Rather than accept the rule of law, the administration ignored the advice of its own lawyers and did what it wanted to do anyway.

The only high-ranking legal mind that decided the program was legal: Alberto Gonzales. The same Gonzales who pressured a sick man to sign a form. The same Gonzales who came up with the legal justification for torture. The same Gonzales who appears to have been almost absent as a manager at Justice, consumed as he was with being a full-time lapdog for Bush. The same Gonzales who lied to Congress, and when confronted with his contradictions retreated into "I don't know" mode about significant departmental events.

Resign already, Fredo.

McNulty, Comey, Gonzales, politics, midtopia

Iraq and the GOP

Speaking of Iraq, a group of moderate House Republicans have warned President Bush that the Iraq war is deeply damaging the Republican Party, and he cannot count on support from that quarter for too much longer.

The meeting between 11 House Republicans, Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, White House political adviser Karl Rove and presidential press secretary Tony Snow was perhaps the clearest sign yet that patience in the party is running out. The meeting, organized by Rep. Charlie Dent (Pa.), one of the co-chairs of the moderate "Tuesday Group," included Reps. Thomas M. Davis III (Va.), Michael N. Castle (Del.), Todd R. Platts (Pa.), Jim Ramstad (Minn.) and Jo Ann Emerson (Mo.)....

Davis, a former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, also presented Bush dismal polling figures to dramatize just how perilous the party's position is, participants said. Davis would not disclose details, saying the exchange was private. Others warned Bush that his personal credibility on the war is all but gone.

Ya think?

The one thing everyone seems united on -- including Senate Democrats and me -- is that the House war-funding bill, which only provides money through July, is a bad idea, doomed to yet another sustainable presidential veto. Let's hope the House and Senate versions pass quickly, and they toss out the bad stuff in conference committee. That would leave a bill that funds the war through September -- giving us time to assess the "surge" -- while providing timetables that the Iraqi government must meet. Get it passed and to the president's desk in the next two weeks. If he vetoes that, the blame is entirely on his head. Bush seems to recognize that, publicly agreeing to "negotiate" on benchmarks.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Troubles in the Green Zone

The Moderate Voice has a comprehensive post on the political situation in Iraq. The summary:

Not only do Iraq lawmakers plan to surge away from their desks for a looonnnnnng vacation this summer (two months) while American troops fighting in and for their country won’t get similar R&R, but it now turns out that a majority of lawmakers are singing the old familiar song: “Yankee Go Home” — to the tune of a demand for a U.S. withdrawal timetable.

The source: A survey of Iraqi lawmakers that found more than half of Parliament wants a timetable for U.S. withdrawal, the happy talk from the Iraqi national security adviser notwithstanding.

And I must join in touting this essay by Jason Steck on the surge. It, and the comment thread, are purely excellent. I disagree with some of his assessments, but I concur with his explanation of the surge and some of his ideas for assessing its success or failure.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

The distaff side of misogyny

Coyote Angry has a wonderfully funny and barbed post on how sexism really hasn't worked out that well for men. My favorite part:

Another lightbulb moment was seeing a middle eastern woman on television gloating about her wonderful, dearly departed martyr husband and how "Sheik Osama" had sent her a big, fat wad of cash. Beautiful strategy....encourage the men to blow themselves up and you get the payoff AND the love and respect of your community, you're set for life and no annoying male to spoil it for you. The men apparently have not figured this one out yet. Hey martyr guys.....you're being played.

Few people do rants as well as she does. Give it a read.

politics, midtopia

The Book of Mitt

Will the candidacy of Mitt Romney produce -- dare I say it -- a teachable moment?

I've written before about my perspective on the state of Islam, the existence of moderate Muslims and the illogic of people who say "Islam, not Muslims, is the problem."

First, to make such a claim one must ignore all the real-life examples of moderate Muslims -- such as the moderate Muslim who helped the British foil a plot to bomb transatlantic jetliners. If they exist, it stands to reason that there can be moderate interpretations of Koran.

Second, the holy books of most major religions contain violent passages, passages depicting horrific punishments for nonbelievers or outsiders, passages rife with misogynism, racism and fourth-grade ethics. That's what you get from books written between 1,400 and 4,000 years ago.

It makes no sense to point to such passages in the Koran and say all Muslims are violent or evil without applying the same logic to Christians and Jews and Hindus. The latter have (mostly) managed to overcome the violence and tribalism built into their books; it stands to reason that Muslims can, too -- and have.

Which brings us to Romney. Because in his case I'm starting to see the roles reversed: Some liberals/Democrats bashing Mormonism (using sites such as this one) and conservatives/Republicans defending him.

All of which, with luck, gives us an opportunity to pause and think. Liberals should realize that by adopting the tactics of Islamaphobes, they become no better than those they oppose. Conservatives should realize that if the tactic is illegitimate when directed at Romney, it's also illegitimate when directed at Muslims.

Some bloggers point to time as an important distinction: Christianity's violence is in its past, while Islam's is in the present. They are right, but that still does not make Islam the problem; the problem is certain medieval interpretations of Islam that still hold sway in some areas. Instead of attacking Islam as a whole, we should be attacking those vile interpretations. That way we get to be intellectually consistent, logically correct, and as a practical matter it minimizes the number of enemies we have to deal with (some Muslims instead of all Muslims).

As for Romney, he's not in my top five list of candidates I would vote for. I find his new-found conservative views both wrong and a fine example of gross pandering. But who the heck cares if he's a Mormon? Even if he was deadset on creating a Mormon version of Sharia law, does anyone seriously think he could do so? You think the distinctly non-Mormon Congress and courts would go along with him, not to mention the American populace and those trial lawyers that Republicans love to hate? I have yet to see any plausible scenario wherein Romney's faith could have any meaningful impact on his presidency, and thus be a legitimate factor in his presidential campaign.

If we can absorb that lesson in tolerance (and the limits of power) and then transfer it to other religions, Romney's campaign will have performed a public service, win or lose.

religion, Romney, politics, midtopia

Student, school district reach settlement over proselytizing

The saga of Kearny high school student Matthew LaClair is over for now.

The Kearny Board of Education in New Jersey and the parents of Matthew LaClair, a 17-year-old junior at Kearny High School, settled their dispute on Tuesday night about a teacher who proselytized in class.

The settlement will include training for teachers and students about the separation of church and state and a public statement by the board praising Matthew for bringing the matter to its attention.

The training was already in the works, so mostly what happened here is the district agreed to recognize Matthew's actions as proper, not troublemaking. Which you'd think would be obvious, but bureaucracies act in reflexively self-protective ways sometimes.

So another educational kerfuffle appears to be over. Or is it? There is at least one loose end still hanging:

The settlement does not address the status of Mr. Paszkiewicz, 39, who has remained a history teacher at the high school. Mr. Paszkiewicz, who is also a Baptist youth pastor, had his classes switched in the middle of the school year so as not to have Matthew as a student.

Paszkiewicz's lawyer, commenting on the settlement, said, "there are people who think my client is the victim." In addition, it's not clear if the school's "no recording" rule remains in effect. So perhaps there's another chapter or two yet to come. But for now, common sense has prevailed.

religion, education, New Jersey, politics, midtopia

Iranian weapons in Iraq update

Pajamas Media has a 12-minute video from Iraq, interviewing an ordnance disposal officer on the origin of various weapons discovered in Iraq. The point of the video: they're Iranian.

But PM then goes on to misrepresent its own video, calling it proof of Iranian involvement in Iraq.

I like the video, although the reporter asks some (to me) cringingly ignorant questions. The EOD officer is polite, informative and clear. But he doesn't shed any new light on the subject of Iranian involvement.

The mere presence of Iranian-made weaponry in Iraq does not say anything about how it got there. It could have been bought on the black market, for instance. (And if it were, that would, conversely, not be evidence that Iran wasn't involved: countries routinely use the black market to disguise what are essentially arms transfers).

Nor does it get at how much weaponry is Iranian. As the major noted, Iraq is awash in unfathomably huge amounts of leftover ordnance. At a minimum, it's highly unlikely that Shiite Iran is arming Sunni insurgents. So even if Iran stopped sending weapons tomorrow, it wouldn't seriously hamper the ongoing violence.

I will be vastly unsurprised if it turns out Iran is arming Shiite groups in Iraq. But proving Iranian involvement is going to be very tough indeed, unless they're caught in the act of delivering it.
(h/t: Central Sanity)

Iran, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Hezbollah opens South American branch

In yet another example of how Iraq isn't helping stop the spread of terrorism, Hezbollah (who we're not fighting at the moment) now has a cell in South America.

From its Western base in a remote region divided by the borders of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina known as the Tri-border, or the Triple Frontier, Hezbollah has mined the frustrations of many Muslims among about 25,000 Arab residents whose families immigrated mainly from Lebanon in two waves, after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and after the 1985 Lebanese civil war.

An investigation by Telemundo and NBC News has uncovered details of an extensive smuggling network run by Hezbollah, a Shiite Muslim group founded in Lebanon in 1982 that the United States has labeled an international terrorist organization. The operation funnels large sums of money to militia leaders in the Middle East and finances training camps, propaganda operations and bomb attacks in South America, according to U.S. and South American officials.

There's a lot of reliance on anonymous sources in this report, and it's a big step from operating in a lawless region of South America to being able to mount attacks on the United States. So the warnings and predictions should be taken with large grains of salt. Plus there simply aren't that many radical Muslims (or Muslims, period) in the region. Hezbollah's presence seems to be more of a smuggling and finance operation than a serious military effort.

But such spin-off operations are exactly what we should be confronting in our war on terror, and demonstrate why Iraq is an expensive drain on resources better used elsewhere. We should go where the terrorists are and confront them there, not invade an unrelated country and then find ourselves battling a smattering of jihadists amid a much larger native insurgency and a brewing civil war. All the latter approach does is waste mind-blowing amounts of money and create unnecessary enemies.

terrorism, South America, Hezbollah, politics, midtopia

Iraq: politics and reality

President Bush says he would veto the House version of a war-funding bill if it comes to his desk. No surprise there: July is simply too short a timeframe. What will be interesting is if the Senate bill passes, with some of the same restrictions but a longer funding period. He will have a harder time vetoing that one.

Meanwhile, Dick Cheney states the obvious (while drawing no actual lessons from doing so) and the U.S. Embassy deals with the current reality. The last item, in particular, is a bit of bad news for the surge, although arguably it's easier to lob mortar rounds during a still-unfolding crackdown than it is to mount more direct and bloody attacks. Once again, the verdict on the surge is still out.

Update: This isn't good news for the surge, either:

Christians are fleeing in droves from the southern Baghdad district of Dora after Sunni insurgents told them they would be killed unless they converted to Islam or left, according to Christian leaders and families who fled.

Similar episodes of what has become known as sectarian cleansing raged through Baghdad neighborhoods last year as Sunnis drove Shiites from Sunni areas and Shiites drove Sunnis from Shiite ones, but this marks the first apparent attempt to empty an entire Baghdad neighborhood of Christians, the Christians say.

The article goes on to note that more than half of Iraq's prewar Christian population now lives outside the country.

What makes this particularly hard to fathom is that Dora is a known insurgent stronghold. So why have we ignored it thus far? One possible explanation is that we're securing the easy stuff first, so that the insurgents will have no place to go when we finally crack down on the hard cases. Still, I'd like to see an explanation of that.

Another thing to note is that Iraqi Christian groups blame Al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadists for such cleansings. They're there because we're there, and they're only tolerated by Iraqis because we're there. So mark this down to another little piece of joy our presence has brought to the country. The expulsions themselves are not our fault, but they are at least partly our responsibility.

Iraq, politics, midtopia

Atheist sets up post-Rapture postal system

Okay, this is both funny and practical. It's the Post-Rapture Post.

For as little as $4.99, Witter offers to deliver your letters to friends and loved ones left behind after the Rapture, when some Christians believe they will be whisked up to heaven while everyone else — the "Left Behind" of the popular book series — suffers a series of tribulations.

As Witter sees it, it will fall to the unsaved to serve as the postmen of the Apocalypse.

It's a joke, of course, but he actually provides the service -- although he has only 11 takers so far. He also gets a lot of hate mail -- which seems a bit unChristian, but is perfectly understandable from a human point of view.

(h/t: Sad-Sav)

humor, religion, politics, midtopia

What would you do?

O.J. Simpson walks into your restaurant with a bunch of friends. Do you serve him?

A Kentucky restaurant owner didn't.

Ruby -- who owns restaurants in Cincinnati, Ohio. Louisville, Kentucky, and Belterra, Indiana, -- said Simpson, who was in town for the Derby on Saturday, came in with a group of about 12 Friday night and was seated at a table in the back. A customer came up to Ruby and was "giddy" about seeing Simpson, Ruby said.

"I didn't want that experience in my restaurant," Ruby said, later adding that seeing Simpson get so much attention "makes me sick to my stomach."

He said he went to Simpson's table and said, "I'm not serving you." Ruby said when Simpson didn't respond, he repeated himself and left the room.

For his part, Simpson showed some class:

Ruby said Simpson soon came up to him and said he understood and would gather the rest of his party to leave.

Far more class than his lawyer:

Simpson's attorney, Yale Galanter, said the incident was about race, and he intended to pursue the matter and possibly go after the restaurant's liquor license.

"He screwed with the wrong guy, he really did," Galanter said by telephone Tuesday night.

But this isn't a celebrity blog. My interest is more philosphical. What would you do in such a case?

I think I would have done what Ruby did. It has always seemed clear to me that Simpson got away with murder. While I respect the verdict of the judicial system and do not advocate harassing him or the like, neither do I have to tolerate his presence in my private place of business. Especially given winking stunts like his "If I Did It" book deal.

But I'm interested in hearing other viewpoints -- both what you would do, and comments on the ethics/legality of what Ruby did.

(h/t: Munko)

Simpson, politics, midtopia

Sharpton slams Mormons?

That's the gist of the YouTube snippet above, and an AP story about it.

During a debate on religion with atheist Christopher Hitchens, Sharpton said: "As for the one Mormon running for office, those who really believe in God will defeat him anyways, so don't worry about that; that's a temporary situation."

Sharpton says he wasn't questioning Romney's faith, but was instead contrasting himself with Hitchens.

His words came to light in a New York Times blog entry that provides a little context to the remark, noting that Hitchens first referred to past Mormon support for racial segregation. So that was what Sharpton was responding to.

It still leaves open the question of who he was contrasting himself to with his "those who really believe in God" comment. The word "really" is the key: It's hard to read that as referring to anyone other than Romney and Mormons, since it wouldn't be necessary to use the word "really" when referring to atheists.

That said, I really hate controversies that revolve around careful parsing of single words, especially words spoken off the cuff at a live event. "Really" could have been verbal filler, unneeded emphasis -- the kind of lazy grammar and word patterns that differentiate spoken words from written.

Further, Sharpton's tone is jocular. So while it certainly appears to be a slam on Romney, it feels more political than religious and there's no heat to it. Arguably he's joking, like a sectarian version of "Your mama" insults.

I have little use for Al -- I consider him largely a publicity seeking bomb-thrower. So let's just agree that if he was slamming Romney's religion as somehow "inferior" to his own, he was wrong. And if he was joking, he was still wrong -- not for the joke, but for his lame excuse afterward.

Curiously, though, such a "my religion is the One True Religion" stance parrots that of many on the religious right. Which leads us to the most interesting thing about Sharpton's debate with Hitchens: Much of what he said during it could just as easily have been spoken by a conservative Christian.

Mr. Sharpton, who had listened to Mr. Hitchens’s presentation with a sober expression, offered a calm response.

“You made a very interesting analysis of how people use or misuse God, but you made no argument about God Himself,” Mr. Sharpton said. “And attacking the quote-wicked-unquote use of God does not at all address the existence of God or nonexistence of God.”...

Mr. Sharpton offered two other arguments in defense of religious belief. He argued – as he would throughout the evening – that without God, all is morally relative.

“If there is no God and if there is no supreme mechanism that governs the world, what makes right right and what makes wrong wrong?” Mr. Sharpton asked. “Why don’t we just go by whoever is the strongest in any period in history?”

He added, “On one hand, we’re going to argue God doesn’t exist; on the other hand we’re going to call people wicked. Wicked according to whom, and according to what? It would be based on whoever has power at that time.”

Further, Mr. Sharpton suggested that the marvel of human creation – including evolution – implies the existence of a divine creator.

Something tells me you won't hear many of Sharpton's detractors pointing that out.

The debate itself is far more interesting than the brouhaha over Sharpton's comment. I encourage you to give it a read. Hitchens is quite well-spoken, and while I'm not sure I would have picked Sharpton to defend the believer's side, he does well enough. If you want to listen to the whole thing, you can find the audio here.

Update: A writethru to clarify some points above, and some pointers in the audio. At around the 24:30 mark Hitchens starts discussing church actions, and around 25:00 brings up Mormonism. Sharpton starts responding at 28:10, and makes his Romney comment around 32:00.

politics, midtopia

Ripping RedState

This is fun: Dyre Portents tears Red State a new one for mocking a bill they don't understand.

Good times.

politics, midtopia