The real Christians

-- by Dave

I think growing up a religious minority in a community dominated by one faith (I was raised in a town that was, and I think still is, nearly three-quarters Mormon) must have made it easy for me to understand why we have a First Amendment separation of church and state.

It was always fairly obvious that the main bulwark it creates keeps the people who have the most votes from cramming their religious beliefs down everyone else's throat. And of course, in our town, Mormons were always rubbing up against church-state separation, especially in the schools, and that made me especially grateful. Visions of dress codes requiring us to wear white shirts and ties and ride bicycles danced in our heads.

Of course, if anyone should be sensitive to the matter of religious freedom and the utility of church-state separation, you'd think it would be Mormons, since probably no other modern American faith (besides Judaism) has such a clear history of enduring religious persecution. But I think Mitt Romney's Muslim-bashing of a few months ago revealed just how confused the issue is wherever religious conservatism in general can be found.

The modern religious right, which constantly has placed church-state separation under attack (even claiming, with great frequency, that it's a "myth"), really puts my old hometown Mormons to shame, though. I can't tell you how many times in the ensuing years "born again" Christians I've known, swollen with spiritual pride, have questioned whether or not I and others, mostly on the liberal side of the faith equation, are "real" Christians -- often based on narrow doctrinal standards that actually only exist within their own fairly narrow, cultic fundamentalist belief systems.

And when they do, I've thanked God that they don't have the means to force those beliefs down my throat. Yet.

I was reminded of this when reading about the pastor who is demanding that Barack Obama explain the detail of his faith, evidently still suspicious of his "Muslim background":

For his part, Schenck declared that he has no reason not to take Obama “at his word” regarding his Christianity … and then proceeded to question the legitimacy and depth of his faith, saying “The question becomes: How serious, how profound is the religious commitment that Barack Obama has made" considering that United Church of Christ to which he belongs has strayed dramatically from “historical, Biblical Christianity … from historic, moral Christian instruction.” Schenck also says it is interesting that Obama claims to “pray to Jesus” rather than “pray to God in Jesus’ name” and takes issue with Obama’s claim that his views on topics like civil unions and abortion don’t make him any less of a Christian, saying that “he owes the public a further explanation of that and most certainly religious people.”

Actually, he doesn't owe Schenk or anyone else any more explanation than what he's given. Because faith, in the end, has to be an innately private matter, a question of each person's "walk with God," as it were. And no one but God has the right to judge that.

Even the Mormons I grew up with understood that. After all, it's an article of faith for the Schenks of the world that they're not real Christians either.

But you know, I think they're just projecting again.

A friend in need

-- by Dave

An Idaho blogger I've been reading the past few years, Sara Anderson at F-Words, could really use our help. So I'm sending out the signal flares.

Sara was diagnosed a couple of weeks ago with a brain tumor. She underwent surgery earlier this week, and is now recovering.

As her husband Andy, who's now blogging in her place, puts it, the financial ramifications of these kinds of operations are frightening. Obviously, insurance only begins to cover this sort of thing.

Sara's bright, funny, and smart, and a real asset not just to the blogosphere but the human race. There's a donation button atop her site. Send her some love.

First Adolf, Now Damien

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

If you thought the wingnuts had reached their nadir with the comparisons of Obama to Hitler, it’s important to remember: when it comes to the right, things can always get worse.


So this week we could find CNN’s Glenn Beck, in an interview with religious crackpot John Hagee, wondering aloud if Obama is the Antichrist:

BECK: Let me ask you, and this is — ’cause I got — I get so much email on this, and I think a lot of people do, and I’ve only got a couple of seconds. Then they say "Glenn, you in the media, you’ve got to wake up. Barack Obama’s making people faint and cry and everything else. And he’s drawing people in and — "

There are people — and they said this about Bill Clinton — that actually believe he might be the Antichrist. Odds that Barack Obama is the Antichrist?

Note that Beck somehow manages to not just overlook Hagee’s many outrageous remarks about other faiths, but also lets Hagee misrepresent the reasons that Catholic activists have called him a bigot: "I have criticized the Catholic Church for its past anti-Semitism. But I have also been very critical of the Protestants and their anti-Semitism, especially as led by Martin Luther," he says. "Standing against anti-Semitism does not make me an anti-Catholic."

In reality, Hagee has done much more than just criticize Catholic anti-Semitism. In his latest book, he writes: "The sell-out of Catholicism to Hitler began not with the people but with the Vatican itself."

He also has variously called the church "The Great Whore," an "apostate church," a "false cult system" and … you guessed it … "the "anti-Christ."

I guess that’s why he told Beck that Obama isn’t the anti-Christ. He’s already got some other entity in mind.

Not that an ever-incisive observer like Glenn Beck could be bothered to mention this.

Of course, no one really takes Beck very seriously, except for the CNN poobahs who’ve given him a national megaphone to spew his verbal smegma. But you know how these things work.

In couple of weeks, it’ll be on the tongues of the Village Idiots. Look for Tim Russert to grill Obama at some point about whether or not he has 666 tatooed on his ass.

After all, we were treated this week to the vapid maunderings of Maureen Dowd channeling Steve Sailer by depicting the Obama candidacy as being propelled largely by white guilt. And of course, the "Adolph Obama" theme first could be found out in wingnut territory before it came bubbling up in the mainsteam. Thanks to Beck, we’ve now skipped the fringe step and are broadcasting nutcase ideas to a mainstream national cable TV audience.

Next up: Obama is an alien!

A win for the cetaceans

-- by Dave

I've been trying to monitor the situation involving the Bush administration's attempts to bypass the law and proceed with its cetacean-killing sonar tests along the Pacific Coast.

This week there was an important victory on this front, picked up by Hunter at Random -- a court ruling requiring the Navy to stop with its current plans:

A federal appeals court has ruled that the Navy must protect endangered whales from the potentially lethal effects of underwater sonar during anti-submarine training off the Southern California coast, rejecting President Bush's attempt to exempt the exercises from environmental laws.

In a Friday night ruling rushed into print ahead of the next scheduled exercise on Monday, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld a federal judge's decision that no emergency existed that would justify Bush's intervention.

The Navy is engaged in "long-planned, routine training exercises" and has had ample time to take the steps that the law requires - conduct a thorough review of the environmental consequences and propose effective measures to minimize the harm to whales and other marine mammals, the three-judge panel said.

The court noted that the Navy has been conducting similar exercises for years, has agreed in the past to restrictions like the ones it is now challenging, and was sued by environmental groups in the current case nearly a year ago. The lower-court judge reviewed the evidence and found nothing to support the Navy's claim that the protective measures would interfere with vital training or hamper national security, the court said.

Past rulings have established that "there is no 'national defense exception' " to the National Environmental Policy Act, the court said. That law requires government agencies to review projects that might harm the environment and propose reasonable protective measures.

The best news for Northwesterners is that the court's action will also block similar tests in the waters of Puget Sound and elsewhere:

The ruling sets a precedent for federal courts in California and eight other Western states. One of those states is Hawaii, where a federal judge on Friday ordered similar restrictions on Navy sonar exercises off the Hawaiian islands. The ruling by U.S. District Judge David Ezra includes requirements to reduce sonar when whales are detected within certain distances or when conditions make monitoring difficult.

The Navy has completed six of the 14 large-scale training exercises scheduled off Southern California between February 2007 and January 2009. It decided not to conduct a full environmental review before the operations, saying it had already agreed to post lookouts for whales and taken other adequate protective measures.

In an August 2007 ruling, U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper of Los Angeles said the Navy's measures were "woefully ineffectual and inadequate" and would leave nearly 30 species of marine mammals at risk, including five species of endangered whales.

She said the Navy's own research shows that its use of mid-frequency sonar can damage the hearing of whales and dolphins, can interfere with their ability to find food and mate, and has been linked to the beaching of whales.

I'm sure our local killer whales would be relieved to know.

How the Conservatives Got It Right

-- by Sara

As of this week, I'm halfway through my tenure as this quarter's blogger-in-residence over at the Campaign for America's Future. It's been quite a ride.

This week, I've put up Part II of a three-part series that's taking an in-depth look at the basic strategies the conservatives used to win (to the extent that they did win) the culture war. Mainly, it's about how they built their entire movement around the single goal of promoting the conservative worldview, which provides the cognitive foundation for every other program and policy on their agenda. Once we learned to see the world their way and accept their foundational assumptions about how it worked, they knew that getting the rest of their agenda passed would happen far more easily and naturally.

This plan was solidly grounded in the social sciences, and relied on understandings gleaned from social psychology, cognitive psychology, linguistics, and sociology. In other words: it was damned insightful and smart -- and there are a lot of useful lessons progressives can glean from it as we try to pull together a movement that will endure for the long haul.

You're invited to go take a look.

Part I
Part II
Part III will go up next Monday.

The Clinton Rules for the Obamas

-- by Dave

The Boston Globe's Joan Vennochi -- who has a history of clutching her pearls over the thought of Democrats standing up to Republicans, and offering sanctimonious advice that's simultaneously bad -- weighed in this week on Michelle Obama:

If Michelle Obama isn't careful, she could get the Hillary Clinton treatment, circa 1992.

... Bill Clinton may have a tough time trying to define his role as "first laddie," but Michelle Obama also walks a delicate line. Smart, tough political wives like Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush, and Laura Bush are acceptable; in public, they are adjuncts to the husband elected by the voters, even as they wield power behind the scenes. As first lady, Hillary Clinton openly crossed the line into politics and policy, often to harsh reviews.

Michelle Obama can expect more scrutiny from the right, from the sentiments expressed in her senior thesis -- "I will always be a black first and a student second" -- to her push for more African American faculty and students at Harvard Law School. So far, she isn't intimidated.

I hate to burst Vennochi's bubble, but both Obamas are going to get the Clinton treatment. It happened to Al Gore and John Kerry as well. And we've already seen it in action this week. It's really just getting underway now, but expect it to be operating at full tilt by midsummer.

What we're confronted with is a Beltway media mindset that is systemically hostile to Democrats while simultaneously coddling (and propping up) conservatives. It's just a fact of life, and an ugly one. And until self-hating "liberals" come to grips with that reality, they're doomed to irrelevance.

When government is good

-- by Dave

One of the staples of Republican politics since Reagan -- both at the national and the local levels -- has been to bash government as fundamentally "the problem" and to argue for tax cuts, deregulation, and other reductions in the reach of government as the solution to all our ills.

Well, as Rick Perlstein and Co. have been steadily documenting at The Big Con, it's mostly a load of hooey. While any massive bureaucracy is going to have built-in dysfunctions that have to be overcome, the reality of what we've experienced through the cumulative effects of conservative governance has spoken for itself: toxic toys and dead pets, Katrina, mine disasters, Enron, housing foreclosures ... the list of domestic disasters is endless.

And then there is the example of what happens when you get good governance.

Darryl at HorsesAss has a terrific post up about this, using our own Washington state as a prime example. As he explains, the right-wing anti-tax mantra has produced a string of initiatives all built on the notion that we need to cut back on government generally. It's used three basic claims consistently over the past two decades, really:

--The Washington state government performs poorly.

-- The state government hurts the business climate.

-- We are overtaxed for what we get out of our government.

The first two points, in fact, are simply not true:

In February, 2005 we learned just how good we have it government-wise. The Pew-sponsored Government Performance Project (GPP) graded Washington state a B+. From the individual scores, Washington ranked as the third best state government, with only Utah and Virginia doing better. When the report came out, we were in the midst of a contested gubernatorial election. The report seemed largely overlooked.

Last year we learned just how good we have it business-wise, when Forbes’ annual survey ranked Washington state number five in the nation for business climate. And Fortune magazine rated Washington the fourth best state in which to start a business—specifically citing our “low taxes”.

And earlier this week we learned how consistently good we have it government-wise when the 2008 GPP report was released. The 2005 results were not a fluke. Once again, Washington state ranks third behind Utah and Virginia. Our grade improved slightly to an A- overall. Individual grades were A- for money, A- for people, B+ for infrastructure, and A for information (see the full report for what these categories mean and how the grading was done).

Together these four reports strongly suggest that Washington’s government and business climate are near the top in the nation.

Darryl, as it happens, is a good number-cruncher, and he crunches the numbers and finds that Washington actually ranks sixth in national efficiency as far as returning value to its taxpayers -- which flatly contradicts the right-wingers' claims otherwise.

He concludes:

The perpetual whiners in this state who claim that our government is broken, inefficient, poorly performing, bloated, ineffective, incompetent, and expensive are wrong—they don’t know how good they have it. They’ve hunkered down so tightly on the compound that they’ve lost touch with reality.

The facts are plain and can be evaluated objectively…Washington state is one of the greatest values around in state government. And, judging by the recent increases in both the GPP scores and the Forbes rankings, Washington is not only a great value, but has been improving.

I've always thought we had it great here, but government hasn't been part of why I've thought that. Just goes to show how easily we can take these things for granted -- which is part of the problem, electorally speaking.

A different kind of rage

-- by Dave

One of the unpleasant facts about being a journalist is that sooner or later, you're going to be wrong and make mistakes. I've certainly made them here before, and doubtless will again. But as always, when it happens I do what I can to correct.

A couple of weeks ago I popped up a quick post about the rampage by an enraged citizen in the council chambers of Kirkwood, Mo., and suggested that it fit into a pattern of anti-government extremism playing out in a violent spiral as it often has in other locales. Even though the perpetrator was a black man, in most other respects this incident initially resembled those earlier incidents.

But it turns out that the matter is considerably more complex than that.

Brad Hicks has been looking deeper into the case, noting that Kirkwood has a history of being something of a "sundown suburb" (which we've discussed at length previously:

Fortunately, James Kirkwood's experiment had accidentally shown the way out of this dilemma. Kirkwood didn't buy into this idea, much, but all of the suburbs north of Kirkwood, the ones that were unsuccessfully trying to copy James Kirkwood's formula, revamped themselves as working class communities. Then the city of St. Louis not-to-gently encouraged the entire working class population of the north half of St. Louis to evacuate to north and northwest county, to make room for all-black tenements. To this very day, if you're black, and you want to live in a neighborhood that happens to be less than 10% black, good luck getting a realtor anywhere near St. Louis to show you a house, or a landlord to admit that there are any apartments for lease.

Moreover, there's evidence of a racial animus at play in the drama that played out last month, Hicks reports:

But unless they can show even one white contractor in Kirkwood who was treated the same way when he didn't immediately pack up his business and leave town, they still have something important left to explain, because the evidence is clear and unambiguous: for a span of roughly one year, the city of Kirkwood, and specifically one of Thornton's targets that night Public Works Director Ken Yost, absolutely was trying to put him out of business in an over-the-top campaign of harassment.

Hicks has done exemplary work on this case, and hopefully he will get answers to some of the questions he raises.

In the meantime, I'm glad to correct the record on this. (And a hat tip to Brennan.)

The hate bubbles up

-- by Dave

If you want to get a good look at the corrosive power of bias crimes within a community, a prime example recently occurred in San Bernardino, where the increasing presence of neo-Nazis and other white supremacists has been noted in recent years:

A Calimesa man will stand trial on a hate crime charge in addition to murder and attempted murder counts, a judge ruled Monday.

Christopher Fulmer, 30, will be tried in the fatal Dec. 4 shooting of Joshua Morales, also 30, of Bermuda Dunes, and the wounding of a second man during a confrontation on a Yucaipa street, San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Brian McCarville decided.

Fulmer's attorney, James Gass, argued that it was not a hate crime and said his client was defending others.

Yeah, right:

On Friday, when Fulmer's preliminary hearing began, Robert Alexander, a San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department homicide detective, testified that Gilbert Aguilar had told him that he was walking alone to a friend's house between 4 and 5 p.m. Dec. 4 when four white men confronted him at California Street and Avenue B.

According to a witness, the men used a racial slur when they saw Aguilar, who later identified one of the men as Fulmer. After exchanging words, Aguilar and the four men parted ways.

On Monday, sheriff's Detective Greg Myler said the four men went to a park where, according to witnesses, they were upset because Aguilar had not backed down, which they thought he should because he's Hispanic. They talked about wanting to beat him up and to teach him a lesson, Myler said. Witnesses described Fulmer as the leader, Myler testified.

Myler said a friend of Fulmer's who was at the park and involved in the confrontation told him they are part of a group that tries to start fights with Hispanics and blacks by making derogatory comments. The only reason the group confronted Aguilar was because he's Hispanic, Myler said, recounting the interview.

Deputy District Attorney Dan Detienne presented a group photo that shows Fulmer and others making a Nazi salute. Fulmer has a swastika tattooed on his chest.

Detienne argued Monday that Aguilar was targeted because he is Hispanic.

As we've been reporting, violent bias crimes against Latinos are rapidly increasing, doubtlessly fueled in large part by the ugly rhetoric of demonization used by both anti-immigrant activists and their media mouthpieces -- not to mention leading right-wing politicians.

Most of the work in dealing with these crimes is going to occur on the local level -- and fortunately, San Bernardino's police responded properly and professionally in dealing with this incident. But there are going to be many more of these coming down the pike, as evidenced by the increasing boldness of the overt white supremacists. Just wait until that prison population of Aryan Brotherhood members starts hitting the streets over the next few years.

It's important to remember that last year's federal Hate Crimes Prevention Act -- which met an untimely death at the hands of spineless Democrats -- was in fact predicated on enhancing the ability of local law enforcement to handle the extra burden that dealing with bias crimes entails.

And as I said at the time:

Let's face it: This legislation was tagged as a "gay issue" -- mainly because the opposition to it arose almost wholly from the inclusion of sexual preference as a category of bias, fueled by the homophobes of the religious right. And gay-rights groups were certainly in the forefront of pushing the bill. However, other progressives, including those directly affected by hate crimes, neglected to join in the fight to any notable extent. Where were the civil-rights groups, the immigrant-rights groups, the labor unions?

How was it possible, for instance, for thousands of African Americans to march on the Justice Department and demand hate-crimes enforcement, as they did last month, and have no one mention the pending hate-crimes law?

After all, the bill specifically addresses the very issue that lies at the heart of the "Jena 6" controversy -- namely, the failures of law enforcement to adequately enforce these laws. The legislation, as I've noted previously, is carefully written to emphasize helping local law enforcement do its job -- provide training, help identify bias crimes, provide funds for strapped prosecutors -- and it specifically defers to local jurisdictions. At the same time it makes it possible for federal authorities to move in when local law enforcement fails to do so, particularly in any of the seven states that have no bias-crime law.

Similarly, it's been hard to find much in the way of serious support for the Shepard bill from Latinos and immigrant-rights organizations. There have been exceptions: The Latino Coalition made an effort to support the bill, and Latino bloggers like Xicanopwr chimed in as well. Nonetheless, the support was surprisingly muted and not particularly broad, in spite of the fact that Latino immigrants have been among the chief victims of the recent spike in hate-crimes nationally reported by the FBI.

One has to hope that in the coming year, when this legislation comes up again, those Latino and African American civil-rights advocates will be linking arms with their allies in the GLBT community to get the job done. Because the cops in places like San Bernardino are going to need all the help they can get.

Another Story about Dick

-- by Sara

I'll step in here and second Dave's recommendation below of Rebecca Solnit's excellent piece on the devastating implications of the ongoing disconnect between arrogant urban environmentalists and (often justly) suspicious locals. I'd also like to offer, by way of example, a tale of how well this can work when it does work, and why it's so important to bridge this gap -- a long-ago episode in which the participation of one smart local gave environmentalists the piece they needed to win a battle that ultimately affected the entire ecosystem of the West Coast.

I grew up not far south of Mono Lake, a vast salt-water lake that's wedged in between Yosemite's eastern Tioga Pass gate and the California-Nevada border. Mono is one the continent's most ancient lakes -- a strange, sere and otherworldy landscape marked by lumpy columns of tufa, water so salty you simply float on it, and more birds than you've ever seen in one place in your life. (High Plains Drifter and Alien Planet were both filmed on Mono's shoreline, which gives you some idea.)

Remote and bizarre as it is, the lake plays a defining role in the life cycle of hundreds of migrating bird species. It's a major north-south migration depot that's relied on by birds migrating all the way from South America to Alaska. It's too salty for fish, but rich with algae, brine shrimp, and brine flies, which the birds rely on to fuel their further flight. Two large islands in the lake's center also served as the predator-free breeding grounds for about a third of California's seagulls (the rest are hatched at the Great Salt Lake -- the only two places these iconic coastal birds breed). An experienced birder could spent a weekend at Mono in June and add 70 or more birds to his or her life list. (I know, because I've done it.)

It was the birds that first brought a quiet young ornithologist, David Gaines, to the lake in the early 1970s. After he finished his degree at UC Davis, he moved to the lakeside town of Lee Vining (pop. about 250 at the time) to settle in and spend his life studying the lake's birds, and the larger ecology that supported them.

Gaines was the first one to notice that the lake was in serious ecological trouble. Millions of humans depend on Mono Lake, too: in 1941, it was appended as the new northern terminus of the long aqueduct system that brings the eastern Sierra's water to the taps of Los Angeles. The city had diverted four of the lake's five feeder streams into the aqueduct, leaving only one to feed the lake. About 15% of LA's water supply came from these four streams.

The one remaining creek wasn't enough to sustain the ecosystem, and evaporation did the rest. By the late 1970s, the lake had shrunk by a third. The surface level had dropped 45 feet, exposing a land bridge between the shore and the gulls' main breeding island that allowed coyotes to come across and devastate the chick population. The water doubled in salinity, to the point where it was getting too salty to sustain the algae and the brine shrimp. The hundreds of bird species that depended on the lake as a migration stop were arriving to find there were fewer safe places to rest, and less and less to eat. The loss of those birds would, in turn, affect ecosystems thousands of miles away. Mono Lake, we were learning the hard way, was an essental keystone in the ecology of the entire West.

Gaines formed an environmental organization, The Mono Lake Committee, to raise money for a legal fight to challenge LA's water diversions. The Audubon Society and the Sierra Club lent their support to the battle; and a noted San Francisco law firm volunteered to take on the case pro bono. Environmentalists in both Los Angeles and the San Francisco area went on high alert. Ultimately, the city of Los Angeles was sued for refusing to file the required environmental impact reports, for violating air quality standards (the alkaline dust rising off the exposed shoreline created horrific air pollution), and for whatever else the environmental attorneys could think of. Millions of dollars were raised. State officials were taken on tours of the lake. A public awareness campaign put "Save Mono Lake" bumper stickers on cars all over the west.

But the city of LA, which had gotten its way in the Eastern Sierra for 75 years, fought back hard. They had money, momentum, and nothing but time on their hands. What they didn't reckon -- what nobody on either side reckoned -- was the winter of 1982, which turned into the wettest winter anybody had ever seen.

There was so much water coming down the Sierra's eastern mountainsides that year that the aqueduct couldn't take it all. The LA Department of Water & Power was left with no choice but to let some of it run back down into the four Mono Lake feeder streambeds, none of which had seen anything but trickles in over 40 years. And that -- though nobody realized it at the time -- was the beginning of the end.

My mother, who was the water commissioner for the next county south of the lake (which was also suing the DWP for other reasons) still remembers the meeting. David was there, along with officials from Mono County, attorneys from San Francisco, and various concerned locals. It was their regular public task force meeting to coordinate strategy on all the various lawsuits both counties and the Mono Lake Committee had in play. In the middle of the discussion, one good old boy -- that would be our only Dick, a retired geezer who was a stalwart of the local fishing club -- stood up and asked to be heard.

"We've got 'em where we want 'em now," he declared.

We do? The commissioners, lawyers, and activists looked at him, puzzled and expecting an unnecessary digression from the matters at hand. Dick was known as concerned citizen -- but was not, shall we say, noted for his keen command of the issues.

"Yep. We do. The state fisheries law says you can't turn the water out of a stream if there's fish in it. All four of those creeks have fish in them now. So they can't take that water back out again."

Everybody suddenly woke up. This guy had to be kidding.

"No -- here it is." Dick fished a crumpled piece of folded yellow-pad paper out of his pocket, and read aloud the pertinent piece of an obscure early 1900's state fisheries code -- which he'd copied down, chapter and verse. The San Francisco lawyers scribbled furiously. The commissioners sat, stunned. The activists suppressed huge whoops of glee.

Dick was right. The lawyers went back to their Bay Area offices and quickly confirmed that that old code was still in force; and that there was no legal way the DWP could take the water back out of those streams, ever. The whole direction of the fight was transformed in that moment. From that time forward, the negotiation was not whether or not LA had the right to take the water; but how much water they'd be allowed to divert each year and still maintain the fisheries.

The battle for Mono Lake ground on for another ten years. But those who were involved with it remember the moment that old Dick stood up as the turning point. Until then, the legal argument had turned on enforcing the new bushel of environmental laws passed in the early 1970s. Nobody had thought to research the pertinent fish and wildlife or boating laws, some of which dated back into the 19th century. But those were the legal precedents that ultimately won the fight.

Once they were onto the fish-protection law, the attorneys kept digging -- and soon uncovered a another large body of old "public trust" laws that covered navigable rivers and lakes. In the end, the state Supreme Court ruled that Mono Lake was subject to the public trust laws regarding navigable waters; and that the DWP would also have to maintain and restore the fish habitat. In 1994, the State Water Resources Board ordered the city of Los Angeles to reduce diversions until the lake is returned a sustainable level and the habitats are restored. The lake level is now rising at about a foot a year, and is expected (barring drought) to meet a sustainable level by about 2015. The victory is still fragile, as both LA and other western states try to undermine the laws that supported the state's decisions; but for now, the lake is on track to be saved.

David Gaines didn't live to see that victory. He was killed in a truck accident in January 1988, leaving behind his wife and a baby girl. He was a friend, and I still think of him whenever I see the many birds -- nighthawks, jaegers, buntings, plovers, and wrens -- he taught me to find. But the fight he waged to save Mono Lake ended up saving the local economy as well. It put Lee Vining on the map as a tourist destination drawing photographers, hikers, and birders from all over the world. The town has more than doubled in size thanks to him. There are good jobs to be had in the restaurants, hotels, and interpretive centers -- all of which exist because this shy introvert who was far more comfortable with birds than people took on the monumental task of educating the country about the lake's unique ecological role.

Dave's work was embraced by the locals because his research and interpretive skills gave them a new and broader respect and reverence for a place they already loved. Though he could easily hae been the very kind of evil urban environmentalist that rural towns dread, he proved that this antagonism isn't inevitable. Dave didn't come on like an outsider coming in to show them a better way. His approach was more like that of a young, bookish pastor who made a permanent commitment to the community, and chose the place to be his own home. His job was to win hearts and minds for the preservation of the lake -- and he understood that the first piece of that task was winning over the souls of Lee Vining and Mono County.

That's why Dave would have been the first to give credit for the victory to the locals. He'd have told you about the courageous Mono and Inyo county commissioners who were game to take on LA City Hall, and stayed the course even when the legal fights threatened to drain the finances of those sparsely-populated counties. And he'd have special praise for the fishermen and hunters like Dick, who realized that the fight for the lake was their fight, too -- and then supplied the legal sling and stones that ultimately helped this particular David defeat the biggest Goliath in the country. If it hadn't been for the wider viewpoint provided by these locals, it's quite possible that the legal battle for Mono Lake would still be going on today.

Adieu fair Melanie

-- by Dave

Ah, what a shame. Melanie Morgan is leaving KSFO after 14 years of spewing bile over the northern California airwaves:

“It has truly been an honor for me to work at KSFO for the past 14 years. What I loved most about my time at KSFO was that it allowed me to connect with listeners and take action to make real changes in the world,” said Morgan in a written statement. “We never had a one-way dialogue with our listeners, and we never believed that we had to resolve ourselves to accept the status quo. We got out of our chairs, left our homes and offices, and circulated petitions, rallied for our troops and met with government leaders."

No doubt our friend Spocko should be pleased -- as should we all.

It's hard to tell at this juncture, but you'd have to think it's likely the pressure Spocko and others applied on Morgan's advertisers in fact had an effect. And that may be the best news of all.

Common-sense environmentalism

-- by Dave

I like to consider myself an environmentalist, but I almost never call myself one. Mainly because I really don't want to be associated with a lot of the people who do.

Because environmentalists are usually right about the facts of the issues they attempt to confront: global warming is a reality, the rape of the world's forests is a disaster in the making, corporate pollution is poisoning us, and the extinction of animal species is both an ecological and a human disaster. On the science and on most policy issues, the environmentalists are right.

But on the human front ... they leave a lot to be desired. And this in turn has a lot to do with why their rightness fails to translate into effective action.

The classic case, in my mind, is the way environmentalists in the Northwest have worked to bring a halt to the destruction of old-growth forest in the Lower 48 in the 1980s and '90s, but did so in such a way that they permanently alienated people who should have been allies in that fight: the residents near the forests that were being torn down.

Most of these folks worked in the timber industry, but few of them trusted their corporate bosses much at all. And the reality was that their bosses' rapine behavior -- especially the mass liquidation of forest stocks in the 1980s -- may have meant a short-term uptick in the local economies, but they guaranteed a future where scarcely any cutting or milling would even be possible, because the entire stock of cuttable woods would be gone.

But if you talked to urban environmentalists at the time (and even now), their attitudes about working people in those small towns was strikingly uniform: Those people were just anachronisms, and they should just work up fresh resumes (maybe go back to school) and go get jobs elsewhere. Indeed, a surprising number of them believed that the world would be better off if there just were no timber cutting at all.

It was clear that, as well as they might grasp some of the scientific realities of the issues (and not even those all that well, considering how many of them really believed the nonsense about halting all logging) they had little understanding of the human consequences of their argument. Many people who live in rural areas do so because that's what their ancestors did, and they log because that's how daddy and granddaddy and great-granddaddy made their livings; their family homes are not just dwellings, and they can't and won't just up and move into another one as if it were a condo. People who live in rural areas are often deeply rooted.

A smart approach for the environmentalists would have been to win these people in the true "grassroots" to their side -- arguing for maintaining the long-term viability of working forests by not overcutting, keeping jobs permanent, and requiring better working conditions and pay in the mills, as well as retraining for the sake of modernization. Argue for preserving wildlife habitat because, among other things, it helps improve hunting.

But culturally, they just couldn't do it because too many of those urban environmentalists couldn't help looking down their pert little noses at those poor redneck schlubs in the sticks.

I've seen this play out time and again. In the fight to save the last salmon runs on the Pacific Coast and restore them to a semblance of their historic levels, the environmentalists' obvious allies should and could have been the various fishing interests in the region, both commercial coastal fleets and the many sport fishermen who ply the region's rivers.

But those alliances have been few, rare, and fleeting -- mainly because environmentalists see fishing and hunting as, well, kinda icky things.

And because of that, the political victories likewise have been few and fleeting, and increasingly hard to come by.

Rebecca Solnit at Orion wrote a piece recently that took this problem on, and it should be required reading not just for every environmentalist, but for everyone who calls themselves a progressive or a liberal:

This one is about what happened afterward, when I and the Canadian environmentalists I’d been traveling with arrived at the nearest settlement, a logging town in the far northeast corner of British Columbia consisting of a raw row of buildings on either side of the highway to Alaska.

We were celebrating two weeks of rafting down the central river in that ungulate- and predator-rich paradise at the outpost’s big honky-tonkish nightclub, where the DJ kept playing country songs, to which all the locals would loop around gracefully, clasped together. But my compadres kept making faces of disgust at the music and asking the DJ to put on something else. He’d oblige with reggae, mostly, and we’d wave our limbs vaguely, dancing solo and free-form as white people have danced to rock-and-roll since the mid-1960s. Everyone else would sit down to wait this other music out. It was not a great movement-building exercise. How far were you going to get with a community when you couldn’t stand their music or even be diplomatic about it? I’ve been through dozens of versions of that scene over the years and got reminded of it last year by my letter from Dick.

He really was named Dick. From a return address in the exorbitantly expensive near–San Francisco countryside, he sent me a typewritten note about a section in a recent book of mine. He declared, “The country music parts of the US you love so much are also home of the most racist, reactionary, religiously authoritarian (i.e., Dominionist) people in the country. You don’t have to go far: just look @ voting patterns among rednecks descendants of the white yeomanry, if you wish to be polite) in the Central Valley. They love Bush and are very backward people by the standards of the Enlightenment. The Q might be, what is the correlation between country music and political backwardness, if any?”

What struck me about this was that most of these people, if they were to travel to another country, wouldn't walk into the local cantina and ask if they could listen to something other than those awful corridas or whatever the local music was. Because they'd understand that it was bigoted and arrogant of them to do so. Indeed, most of them would do their best to just absorb and enjoy the local culture. But not so with urban visitors to our rural areas.

As Solnit observes:

I grew up surrounded by liberals and leftists who liked to play the idiot in fake southern accents, make jokes about white trash and trailer trash, and, like the Canadian enviros, made gagging noises whenever they heard Dolly Parton or anything like her. If Okies from Muskogee thought they were being mocked, they were right, in part. This mockery was particularly common during the 1970s and 1980s, but it has yet to evaporate altogether—after all, Dick, who judging by his typewriter was around then, wrote me only last summer. My aged mother continues to make liberal use of the term “redneck” to describe the people I grew up among (though they were just suburban conservatives), and last summer I met a twentysomething from New York at a Nevada campout who told me he too was raised to hate country music. He was happily learning to love it, but late, like me.

This built-in bigotry affects the red-blue state divide in areas well beyond simply environmental issues: it affects how we deal with issues like agriculture and land use, cultural issues like abortion and gay rights and education, and economic issues like immigration.

It's time for this to change, and there are signs that it is. As Solnit concludes:

Fortunately, I think Dick might be a relic. There are particular organizations as well as general tendencies that make me hopeful. Among them are the resurgent interest in where food actually comes from, the growing tendency to condemn less and build coalitions more, and a stronger capacity for thinking systemically. And then climate change is an issue that could unite us in new ways as it makes clear how interdependent everything on this planet is, and the extent to which privilege and consumption are part of the problem. The solutions will involve modesty as well as innovation.

The anti-environmentalist right has shot itself in both feet in the past few years, losing credibility and constituency, and a smart and fast-moving left could make hay out of this, to mix a few fairly rural metaphors. It would mean giving up vindication for victory—that is, giving up on triumphing over the wickedness of one’s enemies and looking at them as unrecruited allies instead. It might mean giving up on the environmental movement as a separate sector and thinking more holistically about what we want to protect and why, including people, places, traditions, and processes outside the wilderness. It might even mean getting over the notion that left and right are useful or even adequate ways to describe who we are and what we long for (or even over the notion of rural and urban, as food gardens proliferate in the latter and sprawl becomes an issue in the former). We must also talk about class again, loudly and clearly, without backing down or forgetting about race. This is the back road down which lie stronger coalitions, genuine justice, a healthier environment, and maybe even a music that everyone can dance to.

This goes beyond environmental issues. Advocates for effective and real change need to understand that we're all in this together, and we can only make the change real by shedding our self-serving prejudices.

Talking immigration

-- by Dave The progressive conversation on immigration I've been hoping to spark has been inching forward, I think, thanks in part to Kyle de Beausset's response (also carried at Culture Kitchen). I think Kyle's right that there has been a component missing from the conversation so far: a global one, as opposed to simply a pan-American one (in the broadest sense of the term). Part of the reason I've avoided it is that it introduces an exponential level of complexity to the question -- but obviously, it needs to be discussed. And I hope to take up the matter in a few days. But today I'm wondering if the conversation isn't about to take a step or three backwards, due to a Huffington Post report from Sam Stein outlining a change in framing being considered by Democrats:

Democrats may soon be taking a tougher public position on immigration, according to a confidential study put together by key think tanks close to the party leadership. The study urges Democrats to adopt more rigid rhetoric when discussing immigration by encouraging office-holders to emphasize "requiring immigrants to become legal" rather than stressing border enforcement and the opening of a path to legalization for the undocumented already here. Implicit in the report is the notion that Democrats can win wider public support for immigration reform by framing the issue in harsher-sound verbiage and, perhaps, policy.

This message places the focus where voters want it, on what's best for the United States, not what we can/should do for illegal immigrants.

Titled "Winning The Immigration Debate," the study was put together by the Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform and the Center for American Progress. Its findings, which have been sent to Capitol Hill and have been part of briefing sessions in both the House and the Senate, are based off of polling conducted by Peter Hart Research Associates. Taken as a whole, the report presents a new prism through which the Democrats should approach the immigration debate. "It is unacceptable to have 12 million people in our country who are outside the system," it reads. "We must require illegal immigrants to become legal, and reform the laws so this can happen." Polling for the study revealed that a larger swath of the public was supportive of "requiring" undocumented immigrants already in the country to normalize their status than there was for only offering them legalization as an option. In addition, the report pushes Democrats to argue that immigrants should be required to pay taxes, learn English, and pass criminal background checks to remain in the country. Those who have a criminal record should be deported. All of these policies were included in last year's immigration reform compromise legislation, which ultimately failed.

I'm sure these polling results are accurate as far as they go. But there are principles at stake here which go well beyond reading the public's mood. One can sell one's soul for the sake of short-term gain, and there's a risk that liberals in general will be doing so if they pursue this course en toto. The worst aspect of it is that this framing reinforces the themes about the criminality of undocumented immigrants and the whole "toughness" approach manufactured by both the nativist and the corporate right. If Democrats are going to play this game, they're going to be feeding directly into the same xenophobic anti-immigrant language of hate, constructed by the right, that has dominated the debate. If progressives truly want to win this debate, they need to fundamentally change the language around it -- not reinforce the old right-wing frames. As Stein notes, the report has already raised some concern within party circles:

"There has been no consensus around the Democratic rhetoric in regard to immigration," said one party official who had knowledge of the report. "But it has usually been framed around opportunity, and it was less framed around this punishment rhetoric. We are going to require these people to become legal or we are going to deport [them]? It doesn't challenge the immigrant scapegoating direction of the conversation. It plays right into it."

It's perhaps useful for Democrats to remember what John McCain's position on immigration is:

"Q: Will you pledge to veto any immigration bill that involves amnesty? A: Yes, of course, and we never proposed amnesty. But then you've still got two other aspects of this issue that have to be resolved as well. We need to sit down as Americans and recognize these are God's children as well. And they need some protection under the law; they need some of our love and compassion. I want to assure you that I'll enforce the borders first. We'll solve this immigration problem."

Do Democrats really want to come out positioning themselves to the right of McCain on immigration? Is that where progressive think tanks want to wind up? In a lot of respects, McCain frames the issue correctly: Yes, let's enforce the borders, let's enforce the laws, and let's get people on a path to citizenship. But most of all, let's not do it in a way that demonizes or belittles or criminalizes them. This is all about making Amerioa stronger and better, and making American democratic values work. There isn't actually anything in the specifics of the proposed platform on immigration that Stein describes that I object to: Indeed, talking about requiring immigrants to either take the path to citizenship offered them or to take other steps to obtain legal status is consistent with the rule-of-law approach I've discussed previously too. But if it's going to be a point of emphasis, it simply has to be accompanied by a powerful dose of repudiation of the old right-wing frames -- a frank and serious discussion of the right-wing popular delusions about immigration, as well as an open embrace of Latinos' cultural contributions. Making law enforcement the primary focus distorts the conversation and the debate. Progressives need to step back and think bigger on this.

When Wingnuts Attack … Each Other

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

I think it’s telling that the Tim Russerts of the world seem far more preoccupied with the supposed extremism of Barack Obama’s pastor than with the very real spread of far-right extremism among supposed mainstream Republicans — reflected, as Glenn Greenwald adroitly suggests, in the embrace of Pastor John Hagee by the pro-war wing of the Republican Party, most notably John McCain, the GOP’s designated presidential nominee.


Just how far out on the fringe is Hagee? He’s so deeply enmeshed in the Apocalypse Now! contingent that even other right-wing xenophobes are calling him out — specifically, Catholic League president Bill Donohue, who earlier today blasted McCain for embracing Hagee’s endorsement (though as we’ll see, we may have the liberal blogosphere to thank for this):

"Senator Obama has repudiated the endorsement of Louis Farrakhan, another bigot. McCain should follow suit and retract his embrace of Hagee," Donohue said.

As Greenwald notes:

McCain said he was "very honored" to receive this endorsement and, when asked about some of Hagee’s more twisted views, responded: "all I can tell you is that I am very proud to have Pastor John Hagee’s support."

Hagee, you’ll recall, is the Apocalyptic preacher with high-level connections — which included a keynote appearance before last year’s AIPAC conference — with a fondness for wanting Armageddon to take place in Israel:

Hagee covers much of his eagerness to promote Jews as apocalyptic martyrs with unusually strong preachments regarding the place that Jews enjoy in the holy order of things — at one point, he even taught that Jews enjoyed special dispensation from God that relieved them of the need to believe in Jesus as the Savior in order to reach heaven (though he now disavows such teaching). His purpose in proposing aggressive military action in the Middle East, though, is his belief that it will bring about the End of Days …

Bruce Wilson at Talk2Action and Sarah Posner at Alternet both explored this in some detail awhile back. And the indispensable Max Blumenthal attended last summer’s Christians United for Israel confab featuring Hagee and provided a video report that’s both unsettling and amusing.

But it isn’t just Hagee. Ezra Klein has the goods on how far and widely McCain is spreading the electoral love to various other players in the far religious right. McCain has also campaigned with an anti-gay "Patriot" pastor who has declared among other things, that hate-crimes legislation is a “deceptive ploy of [the] liberal, homosexual agenda"; that we should prosecute adulters as criminals; that Planned Parenthood is comparable to the Nazis; and who addressed a "War on Christians" conference with the admonition: “I came to incite a riot! Man your battle stations! Ready your weapons! Lock and load!”

Donohue, in his interview with Greenwald, is in fact exactly right:

"Hagee is far more powerful than Farrakhan is today. . . . Hagee is a major player. There’s no end to his money. He has an empire down there."

According to Donohue, Hagee has "made a lot of money off bashing the Catholic Church and blames Catholics for the Holocaust."

But let’s also be clear about Bill Donohue: He is not exactly the person to be throwing stones when it comes to bigotry. In fact, he has himself a long history of indulging anti-Semitism in the name of "conservative Catholicism," most notably in his ardent defense of Mel Gibson for his execrable The Passion of the Christ. And let’s not forget Donohue’s ugly role in attacking John Edwards’ campaign bloggers early last year as well. He is himself quite a piece of work.

In fact, as I and others noted at the time, while Donohue was overeager to sniff out supposed anti-Catholic extremism on the left, he was strangely silent on the anti-Catholic bigotry that people like Hagee were spewing.

It seems as though, for once, he actually heard that criticism and acted on it.

Would that Russert and the rest of the Village Idiots could be so inclined.

ICE and the far right

-- by Dave

The infiltration of the ranks of law-enforcement officers with closet members of racist hate groups and other far-right extremists is always a cause for concern, largely because the likelihood of them abusing their position of authority on behalf of an extremist agenda is great.

The last thing any public law agency wants is to allow the public to have any reason to believe it is not enforcing the law fairly, even-handedly, and equitably. That's why membership in such groups is grounds for immediate disqualification.

It's especially acute when Immigration and Customs Enforcement -- an agency involved in the handling of millions of nonwhite immigrants -- is involved.

XicanoPowr today brings us the story of an ICE agent who died under very peculiar circumstances -- and with a roomful of evidence suggesting he was involved with white-supremacist hate groups.

It all began when deputies in Grand Prairie, Texas, went to his apartment -- along with some fellow ICE officers -- to check on his well-being:

Grand Prairie police said they evacuated parts of an apartment complex after a man started shooting through the walls overnight.

Police said they went to the Windridge Apartments in the 2300 block of Avenue H at about 7 p.m. Tuesday to check Mark Juvette, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who hadn’t been to work in a few days.

Officers knocked and then tried to get in with help from management when Juvette didn’t answer the door. Police said Juvette then started shooting at the officers through the door.

Police said Juvette started shooting randomly from inside his apartment. Police said they evacuated the area when he began firing into his neighbors’ apartments.

“You don’t see this every day in Grand Prairie,” witness Emanuel Valdez-Pino said.

After several hours, police said they fired tear gas into the apartment. When they went in, they said they found that Juvette had killed himself.

And then, when they went inside:

Officers processing the scene said they found a large canvas suitcase full of pornographic magazines in the bedroom and a red flag with a black swastika hung in a closet with a few older style military jackets.

They recovered a shotgun, semiautomatic rifle, a revolver, two semiautomatic pistols and other weapons from the home, according to a police report.

There were other materials as well, accompanied by the usual caveat in these cases:

Officers who searched the home found books about Adolf Hitler, along with a red flag with a black swastika hung in a closet, but police said they had no indication, including from one of his close work partners, that Mr. Juvette was involved in any racist groups.

"We're not accusing this guy or saying that he was involved with any skinhead or Nazi organization or anything like that," Detective Brimmer said. "He could have been a memorabilia collector. A lot of people collect stuff from World War II and they specialize in German things."

Well, someone needs to find out whether he was involved or not, and to what extent he compromised ICE operations in Texas if he did.

I know it will be the preference of many of his colleagues to sweep this under the rug. For the public's sake, we need not to.

As XicanoPowr says:

One does have to wonder how many of World War II memorabilia collector’s have a red flag with a black swastika hanging in their closet? Or a suitcase full of pornographic magazines? Or a whole arsenal? Just because he was not involved in a known white supremacists groups mean, he rejects their views.

It is, in fact, most likely that he was involved on some level, if merely as a closeted -- literally -- subscriber to Nazi beliefs. It will be worth determining if this ideology was related to his bizarre behavior in his final hours, and if it affected his behavior as an officer at all.

Most of all, the public deserves to know the truth -- and whether cases like this are more common than we know.

Vetting their pastors

-- by Dave

Musing over Tim Russert's brandishing of the Farrakhan card at last night's presidential debate, one couldn't help be amazed at the classic guilt-by-association game that Russert played. In observing this, one of Josh Marshall's readers gives us the following breakdown of the logic:

I think that breaking down Russert's Wright/Farrakhan questioning helps illuminate how truly bizarre it is:
1. The title of Obama's book, "The Audacity of Hope," came from a sermon delivered by Jeremiah Wright. Wright is Obama's pastor.

2. Wright is the "head" of United Trinity Church.

3. Wright said that Louis Farrakhan "epitomizes greatness."

4. Wright went with Farrakhan in 1984 to visit Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.

5. Farrakhan has said that Judaism is a "gutter religion."

6. Wright said that when Obama's political opponents found out about the Libya visit, Obama's Jewish support would dry up "faster than a snowball in Hell."

I'm especially struck by how much weight Russert gives to the views of Obama's pastor. This obviously introduces a new standard for judging our presidential candidates -- the pastor connection.

Clearly, any candidate aspiring to the presidency must henceforth prove that his pastor has never said or done anything undesirable, because those pastors, as we know, control the minds of their entire congregations.

In the future, I trust that all other candidates' pastors will be as thoroughly vetted. Next up on Russert's list, no doubt: North Phoenix Baptist Church, where John McCain is a congregant.

Big (Doofus) Brother

-- by Dave

Jonah Goldberg:

It’s time to admit that “diversity” is code for racism.

Sure, we can do that.

And while we're at it, we can go with some corrolaries:

"War" is code for peace.

"Ignorance" is code for strength.

"Fascism" is code for liberalism.

'Cuz we're just doing a Newspeak exercise here, aren't we?

It's perhaps always helpful to remember that multiculturalism has always been a response to white supremacism, created as its antithesis. But then, Jonah's history on these matters, as we've noted, is a bit confused.

Not only is multiculturalism intended to overcome racism, it's the only approach to a multiethnic society that even makes the attempt. And as I've also noted, its critics are very good at pointing out its flaws, none of them are forthcoming about what they'd replace it with.

Because the only thing on the horizon that could replace it is the old system of white supremacy, which always hid under such rubrics as "separate but equal" and the notion that merit is purely an individual matter -- even though the means of testing merit are built around a system of white privilege. It's all part of the "new racism," which has as it founding tenet the idea that multiculturalism has failed.

Obviously, Goldberg enjoys tossing plenty of fresh logs onto that particular bonfire.

Thanks, Darryl

-- by Dave

When I was down in L.A. a couple of years ago to do a book signing for Strawberry Days, I was pleasantly surprised when Darryl Pearce, who'd been a commenter here for years, came by to meet me. At my urging, he hung around at the signing and we had a nice long conversation.

Darryl has always been one of my smarter and fuinnier commenters, and he was very much that way in person. It was one of my better-spent hours in LA.

So I was deeply saddened to read, via Thers at Eschaton, that Darryl had -- on a midday jog -- suffered a heart attack or aneurysm and died very suddenly.

There's a note at his LiveJournal site from the family. As you can see, they're asking friends to donate in Darryl's name to help Raise the Sails, an outfit based up here in Grays Harbor. Darryl, himself a Civil War reenactor, was a history nut and a devotee of the tall ships that the fund will benefit.

Blogs like mine really depend on people like Darryl for their lifeblood: occasional commenters, but regular readers. And when he did comment, it was always worth reading. He was a kind, generous, and thoughtful man, and his loss not only leaves this little blogging community poorer, but the world as well.

Thanks, Darryl. We'll carry on in your memory.

It's Laura's turn

-- by Dave

You all remember last August when the Preznit paid a campaign visit to our neck of the woods to campaign for Rep. Dave Reichert, and he wound up inspiring a monumental fund-raising campaign for Darcy Burner in the process.

Indeed, on the strength of that netroots backing, Burner outperformed Reichert that quarter, and continues to do so even today.

Now we're getting another White House visit on Reichert's behalf, but this time -- no doubt realizing that the Preznit's presence actually inspires so much animosity that he hurts more than he helps -- they're sending out First Lady Laura Bush instead.

So there's a followup fund-raiser for Darcy to counter her appearance.

And if you needed any further incentive to back Darcy, let me replay that video from her 2006 debate with Reichert that I discussed when Bush was here last year:

The question arises -- because pharmacists have made it a legal issue -- whether pharmacists should be required to fill prescriptions that run counter to their personal religious beliefs. It's a real minefield of an issue, and the response of the typical triangulating Democrat in such situations is to offer up some kind of middle ground and namby-pamby their way around the issue.

But Burner doesn't mess around. "No," she insists, and then lays out clearly exactly why pharmacists have no business making moral decisions regarding the health of a patient because that's a decision for her doctor to be making -- someone who knows her medical history; indeed, someone who may be prescribing birth control mediciations for reasons (often hormonal) unrelated to contraception.

It's clear, direct, easy to understand, and a perfectly ethical position to stake out -- nor easy to answer. It's also heartfelt; you can see she is speaking as a woman, like most women, with some experience in this issue. Which may be why Reichert responds as he does.

First we see Reichert, early in the video, interrupt Burner, declaring "Yes!" loudly when she says "No," forcing her to wait to finish her response. Then, after her erudite reply, he has to ask: "Jim, what was the question again?"

The moderator, James Veseley of the Seattle Times, rereads it: "Do you think it is OK for a pharmacist to refuse to fill birth-control prescriptions for religious or moral reasons?"

Reichert again answers only: "Yes."

And that's it.

The paternalistic arrogance of that reply -- a simple insistence without any accompanying logic or reason -- really put Reichert's approach to minority issues, including most importantly women's issues -- on stark display. Just give 'em the ol' authoritative "yes" from the sheriff, and don't bother with explaining yourself. It's the John Wayne style of governance.

I have made a point of showing this video to a number of friends. The educated men I know laugh knowingly; but the response from women has been more interesting -- more visceral, more angry. They all know men like the sheriff. He reminds them of bad old bosses or bad boyfriends or divorced husbands.

Which, of course, fits rather perfectly with Monday's visit on Reichert's behalf by President George W. Bush -- who also tends to remind people of soiled relationships gone by.

Laura's visit is a de facto recognition by Republican campaign strategists that this is even more the case now. Reichert has been making gestures aimed at softening the reality-based image he's developed of being a Bush lapdog; and Laura lets him get the White House imprimatur without soiling him with the Deciderer's very messy actual presence.

It would be nice to make clear that it isn't helping.

They love to hate

-- by Dave

I'm not sure how this story slipped past my radar a couple of weeks ago, but this report from The Stranger is disturbing, to say the least:

Two teachers at Snoqualmie's Mount Si High School are planning to take legal action after they were formally disciplined for protesting Pastor Ken Hutcherson's appearance at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day assembly in January. Last week, the school's principal, Randy Taylor, met with Dr. George Potratz and Kit McCormick—both English teachers at Mount Si—and presented them with letters admonishing them for their behavior during the assembly.

During a student-planned assembly on January 17, Potratz booed Hutcherson—famous for his virulently antigay lobbying and rhetoric—and McCormick, an adviser to the school's Gay/Straight Alliance club, asked the pastor to explain how his speech about equality related to his public stance against gay rights.

I especially noted the principal's rationale:

Taylor claims the teachers—who were protesting Hutcherson's presence at an assembly about equality—acted in an "unprofessional" manner, and, in his letter to McCormick, suggested she should have, among other things, submitted an editorial to the school's newspaper in advance of Hutcherson's appearance, rather than speak up at the assembly.

I can understand how booing would be considered unprofessional, but it is simply beyond my ken why standing up and asking a question that not only is perfectly appropriate, but absolutely necessary in a setting in which students are being asked to consider various sides of an issue.

Because Hutcherson, frankly, has never been able to answer that question adequately. It is an important one, as we've noted before:

We've heard this line before. Because being gay is a "chosen behavior," it is undeserving of civil rights protections.

It's the same reason given by many evangelicals -- and particularly black and minority evangelicals, and people who claim they support civil rights -- for not supporting gays and lesbians in hate-crime protections: "You can't compare being gay to being black. One's immutable, one's chosen."

Well, yes, this is true when it comes to race. And even ethnicity. These are, after all, two of the three main legs of anti-discrimination and hate-crimes laws.

But it's not true of the third leg of these laws: religion. Last I checked, this too was a "chosen behavior."

People like Hutcherson who are arguing that discrimination on the basis of a "chosen behavior" is acceptable are arguing in favor of religious discrimination as well -- and it's important for these students to understand that.

You have to wonder why Hutcherson was invited to speak in the first place. As the SPLC's Hatewatch notes, Hutcherson in recent years has been stepping up the virulent nature of his anti-gay rhetoric, including his recent declarations of "war" against gays and his prominent role promoting the violently anti-gay Watchmen on the Walls organization here in the Northwest.

More recently, Hutcherson said this in one of his sermons:

“God hates soft men … God hates effeminate men … If I was in a drugstore and some guy opened the door for me, I’d rip his arm off and beat him with the wet end.”

As the Rev. Anthony Robinson observes:

"That was a joke," Hutcherson said Friday, when I asked him about the comment. But it's not really funny, is it?

What it sounds like are the kinds of words that have paved the way for atrocities in such places as Serbia, Kosovo and Rwanda. You have to dehumanize somebody before you beat them up. Labeling some men as "soft" and "effeminate" and saying "God hates them" does that.

Yet strangely, so far the officials in this school district seem have been listening mostly to Hutcherson, who wants the teachers fired. He also wants the school's gay students club disbanded.

Black pastors like Hutcherson -- people who preach "civil rights for me, but not for thee" -- really ought to be ashamed of themselves. As I noted previously:

The odd thing about hearing this kind of lame rationale from Hutcherson is that he is an African American man. As it happens, I've listened to a sermon that used nearly identical logic -- that discrimination isn't about hate if God commands it in the Bible -- at least once before. It was delivered by the late Rev. Richard Butler at an annual Aryan Nations Congress in Hayden Lake, Idaho. And he was talking about black people.

Hutcherson is a hatemonger hiding behind his robes and his race. It's past time he was called on it, especially when he's preaching before a bunch of students on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Teachers who do so should be lauded, not punished.