Volunteers for a Better America

More on Domestic Spying

America is reeling with Thursday's revelations that Bush authorized domestic spying on Americans that does not conform to the legal requirements under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).  See, as one example, the discussion in the Dec. 20, 2005 New York Times, here. 

This is a frightening moment in America's recent plunge into a world of limited civil liberties and expanding military presence across the globe and domestically.  It is a Constitutional crisis of unprecedented proportions in our recent history--a president who claims that he is above the law in almost any area of contention, and whose military-corporatist chronies (including Cheney and the other neo-cons) are intent on establishing global hegemony and control of resources.

Remember that this new revelation comes on the heels of various situations where Bush already claims that the Constitutional authority as "commander-in-chief" of the armed forces provides extraordinary powers. This president has claimed that the power includes (i) rounding up thousands of people based on their ethnicity and deporting them in the aftermath of the September 11 attack, (ii) picking up American citizens on American soil engaged in ordinary activity and holding them for years in a military brig without access to counsel or family on the say-so of an executive who labels them as an "enemy combatant", (iii) permitting the military, in both Iraq and Afghanistan, to raid homes to gather in individuals, carry them off to prisons and holdthem for months without any due process, in a manner reminiscent of the dictator the military had presumably replaced, (iv) engage in covert propaganda abroad, including "buying" journalists and stories in Iraq (and possibly using those planted stories as justification for activities to people at home in the U.S.), (v) detaining people at Guantanamo as terrorists but offering no process--or, in some cases, only military-run tribunals--to contest the determination, (vi) permitting the military and intelligence agencies to develop a policy of leniency towards torture and murder at Guantanamo and at military prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq, and at "black site" prisons secretetd around the globe and operated outside the purview of Congressional oversight or knowledge of the American people, (vii) engaging in unprecedented instances of "extraordinary rendering" of suspects to foreign governments known for their use of torture for interrogation, upon the mere "promise" that there would be no torture, and (viii) authorizing and encouraging FBI spying on domestic organizations engaged in political dissent, such as Quakers and other anti-war organizations.

The Administration's feeble legal defense of its grab for power is amazingly short on substance.  First, the Administration claims that the power of commander-in-chief of the armed forces authorizes the President to do whatever the person in that office considers necessary to "protect Americans."  This is a bald assertion of dictatorial power.  If the Commander-in-Chief power can be carried to authorize domestic spying on civilians without any judical check to substantiate even mere suspicion of improper activity, then it can authorize almost any action desired to be undertaken as long as there is some "war" involving U.S. forces going on somewhere around the globe.  The purported "war" on terrorism provides a perfect foil for overreaching executive powers.  The Administration has said that it expects the purported "war" on terrorism to be a near-permanent fixture.  Under this analysis, near-dictatorial powers of the presidency would also be a near-permanent fixture, even though terrorists come and go for different reasons, from different states, with different targets. 

Attorney General Gonzales, the person most concerned with protecting our cherished democratic heritage through upholding the laws of the land--including the separation of powers provisions of the Constitution--, has in fact turned out to be the most willing excuser of executive overreach.  He played a role in the development of the "torture memos" that purported to provide legal cover to Administrative excesses in permitting cruel and inhumane treatment of detainees.  Those memos twisted the language of the law to exempt from the definition of torture anything short of lethal injury and claimed that the Geneva Conventions, international law generally, and US law in particular didn't apply to those that the President deems to be "enemy combatants"  on his mere say-so.  Now, Attorney General Gonzales claims that Bush's actions authorizing abrogation of FISA was authorized by Congress because Congress passed a resolution authorizing the invasion of Agfhanistan with a "whereas" clause in the Preamble stating that "all necessary and appropriate force" should be used.  As Senators Feingold, Reed and Levin pointedly noted in a press conference last night (televised on C-Span), this is grasping at straws.  Settled law gives no affirmative legal authority to statutory preambles, and that settled law is even more clearly applicable here, where Congress's intent was clearly to authorize a military invasion of Afghanistan and not warrantless domestic spying on Americans.

Gonzales also claims the program is acceptable because it is "limited in scope" since eavesdropping is authorized only on international calls.  The claimed limitation to just "some Americans" (those who make international calls) does nothing to assuage concerns.  This argument is like claiming that residents of California shouldn't be concerned about illegal government searches and abrogation of civil liberties that only take place in, say, Alaska.  It is a crass attempt to get Americans generally to accept loss of civil liberties so long as it appears to be limited to other people or other concerns.   Free speech and free association rights are direly threatened:  once any such unilateral executive power is accepted, it becomes easy to extend the "limited scope" to other groups.

Gonzales and Bush also claim that this action is adequately checked because some selected people in Congress had been informed.  The idea that informing a few pre-selected members of Congress amounts to a proper check on executive power is ludicrous.  Even those few informed (and we do not, of course, have a list but know that a number of members of concerned congressional committees were not informed) did not have enough information to evaluate the program.  John D. Rockefeller IV released a handwritten letter sent to Cheney on July 17, 2003 complaining that he could not assess the program without being able to consult with staff or counsel, "much less endorse these activities."  See id.

The Administration argues that it was necessary to avoid FISA and authorize executive wiretappings of American citizens because of the need for speed in responding to issues.  Bush cited the changes in terrorism in the last few decades that make it necessary to respond to a "two-minute phone call."  But FISA was enacted to expedite warrant  processes through a special court, one that is even authorized to issue after-the-fact warrants in appropriate circumstances. many civil libertarians have complained that the FISA procedures already short-circuit necessary protections of civil liberties.  In the thousands of instances of federal use of FISA authority, the court has only found a handful to be improper.  The Administration made no effort to ask Congress to update FISA to deal with their purported concerns about lack of agility in responding to wiretap needs.  Instead, the Administration decided to act contrary to the law that it is charged with enforcing!  Perhaps the most ominous concept here is the view that the chief executive of the United States can unilaterially decide not to comply with a U.S. law merely because the executive branch considers it to be outdated. 

The Justice Department has developed two legal memoranda outlining its case for the legality of the wiretap authorization.  Id. Not unexpectedly for this highly secretive administration that shuns openness like a vampire shuns sunshine, Attorney General Gonzales refused to release those opinions.  One has to wonder what reason there could be for withholding a well-argued legal opinion for supporting an unprecedented action that threatens to precipitate a Constitutional crisis.  Could it be a suspicion that the arguments will be found by legal scholars around the country to be as flimsy and self-serving as the arguments made in support of contravening the Geneva Conventions on torture?

Domestic Spying

(My apology for the hiatus from posting--regrettably, some technical problems at TypePad prevented viewers from seeing the most recent entries, and "ate up" entries that were in the process of being posted.  Hopefully, the glitches are cured now.)

The past few days have been enormously revealing about this Administration's views towards the powers of the executive and the private lives of Americans.  Bush has admitted authorizing domestic spying on Americans without any kind of warrant required.   This is in direct violation of U.S. laws enacted to prevent an overreaching executive from attempting to stifle dissent through domestic spying and ultimately control of individuals' activities.  It is encouraging, at least, that both Democrats and some moderate Republicans in Congress have realized the gravity of this revelation and are dealing with it as the grave Constitutional crisis that it represents.

Here's what George Miller had to say about these issues, as posted on the DCCC website, here.

An example of the degree to which this domestic spying is being carried is available in this story courtesy of the Standard-Times (a division of Ottoway, a community newspaper subsidiary of Dow Jones).  A student was visited by FBI agents, after asking for a copy of Mao Tse-Tung's "Little Red Book" through an interlibrary loan program for a class project on communism.  The agents came to his home and questioned him on his reasons for wanting the book, which they told him was on a "watch list."  A professor at the university that the student attended was planning to teach a course on terrorism in the next semester, but has decided not to do so because i t might be putting the students who take it into the eye of the FBI spying storm!

So Bush's policies are teaching students that dissent or even interest in ideas that the government may disagree with is unAmerican.  And Bush's policies are affecting academic freedom, because professors will have to think twice about what ideas to consider or what courses to teach, if they and their students may be subject to harassment by federal spies.  And Bush policies are affecting the freedom of each of us, because without a true "free market" of ideas, the purportedly "free market" of commercial companies has nothing to do with liberty, freedom, and justice for all.

Religious Bullying (2)

In an earlier posting, here, we reported the effort, fostered by Fox media and others, to create a campaign against a straw-man "war on Christmas."  See information about Fox host John Gibson's book called "The War on Christmas", here, and a Media Matters for America summary of the Fox effort to beat this particular war-drum to produce good Christmas season viewing numbers, here. 

Of course, there's a veritable smorgasbord of conservative-backed groups pushing this "war on Christmas" and using both the mass media and the internet to do so.  It galvanizes the ultra right and it detracts attention from other issues--like the fact that the majority-party tax proposals provide Christmas gifts to the wealthy but bundles of sticks for the poor, or the fact that the Administration has managed to so bungle its occupation of Iraq that two years after the "Mission Accomplished" aircraft carrier landing Americans are dying at increasingly high rates while the Iraqi resistance continues apace. 

For one example of the groups pushing this "war on Christmas," see the WorldNetDaily postings, here.  At the top of the home website is one article after another decrying public schools' neglect of Christian hymns and commercial establishments' decisions not to impose "Merry Christmas" greetings on shoppers who may not in fact celebrate Christmas.  The site also links to a story from "Whistleblower Magazine",  here, that purports to reveal the growing criminalization of Christianity. Joseph Farah (editor and founder of WorldNewsDaily) claims there is a "seasonal witch hunt by the ACLU" and

"The attacks on Christianity in America are alarming. We are witnessing more than religious bigotry now. We are entering the early stages of what could become persecution and outright criminalization of Christianity."  [emphasis added]

Another of the groups active in this creating this pre-emptive war of Christians on minority religions is a conservative Republican group, GOPUSA.  See its mission statement, here.  For an example of GOPUSA's attempt to stir up ire over a fabricated "war on Christmas", see here.  Note not only the featured "I'm offended that you're offended--Merry Christmas, anyway" story repeated from the 2004 holiday season, but also the link at the left for a poll on whether readers are offended by the White House choice of a holiday card. The "I'm Offended" piece is a good example of the conservative right's intolerance of dissent, willingness to use its clear majority status to impose its views on those who disagree with it, and general insensitivity to people in our country who practice a minority religion.  Quoting from the article:

"I'm sorry folks, but the only person I'm concerned about "offending" during this Christmas season is the Lord himself."

[From somewhat further on in the article]: " I cannot be concerned that "Merry Christmas" offends you. If I'm not careful, the day will come when saying I'm a Christian will offend you. I'm offended that you're offended. How about that? "

[And even further on]:"The most recent Newsweek survey shows that 82% of Americans believe that Jesus is the Son of God. So, in trying not to offend a few, you've offended many."

In other words, the writer of the article is literally bragging about imposing her religious views, which she quite explicitly notes represent the views of the vast majority of people in this country, on others that the writer knows do not agree with her and not giving a hoot whether that is offensive to the religious sensibilities of those others or not. 

Another example is the American Family Association--another group claiming to defend families (only traditional Ozzie, Harriet and kids need apply) and Christians from the encroachments of modern multicultural civilization.  On their website you can find various stories, such as the AgapePress story about the Alliance Defense Fund that claims decisions by public schools not to use Christian hymns in their programming during the holiday season is government censorship.  See here.

Invented rationales, bullying use of majority power and damning of those who dissent, my friends, are typical of pre-emptive wars of choice.  Those are the signals that should send up red flags to journalists reporting on this fabricated war (and readers, as well).  Giant warnings should appear:  "Beware!  The views you are about to hear may be white-washed and pre-washed for approval by a self-selected, agreeable constituency.  They may not reflect either reality or the practical necessities of living in a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic world."

These efforts confuse freedom of a religious group (no matter its majority or minority status) to practice the religion of its choice with freedom of a religious majority to impose its particular religious choice on others.  The first is a most sacred right to all Americans:  it is the reason that religions (especially Christianity) flourish throughout the country.  The second is the epitome of bigotry and persecution:  avoiding it was one of the reasons America was established.

For an example of journalists who have been able to see past the subterfuge of the fabricated war on Christmas, you can sample the commentary by Leonard Pitts (Chicago Tribune, Dec. 13, 2005, section 1, page 13).  He uses a dose of good humor and a few apt phrases to say what needs to be said.

"They're putting so much energy into defending Christmas that one feels downright churlish for pointing out that no one's attacking it."

"What's offensive--also surreal and absurd--is the notion that Christianity, a faith claimed by 76 percent of all Americans, is somehow being intimidated into non-existence."

"[T]he  AFA [American Family Association] is feeling persecuted because a salesclerk says "Happy Holidays"?  That's not persecution.  It's a persecution complex."

A number of readers also contributed letters to the editor of the Tribune on the topic as well, in response to earlier letters complaining about "discrimination" against Christians when Christian preferences were not observed by store owners.  They uniformly note that religious freedom is not challenged when a store decides to use one greeting rather than another.  But I like best a letter from Patrick Brennan of Chicago, Chicago Tribune, Dec. 13, 2005, at Section 1, page 12, partially excerpted below (with condensed formatting).

"It is absurd to tie the marketing of material goods to religious freedom.  Perhaps her confusion  [that of Loree Kowalis, the writer of a letter bemoaning discrimination against Christians] would lessen if she reread her letter.  In her closing statement, she recites a litany of the various holidays people observe in December and wishes that gaggle of celebrants good cheer.  While not as verbose, a store that wishes its customers 'happy holidays' is doing the exact same thing."

Pentagon Overreach

MSNBC's Nightly News with Brian Williams featured a story, Is the Pentagon Spying on Americans?, that should make all of us uneasy and should provide even more reason for moderate Representatives and Senators to call a halt to the overreaching powers provided by the so-called "Patriot" Act.

The story discusses a secret database established by the Pentagon, which is combing all available files for information on specific individuals and groups, supposedly in the hunt for domestic "terrorists."   The Pentagon's post-9/11 beefed up domestic monitoring on behalf of "national security" includes a number of peaceful groups organized to protest war and military recruiting.  One such group included in the "suspicious" persons database  is a peace group that met at the Quaker Meeting House in Lake  Worth, Florida, a year ago to plan an activist campaign opposing military recruitment at high schools!

"A secret 400-page Defense Department document obtained by NBC News lists the Lake Worth meeting as a “threat” and one of more than 1,500 “suspicious incidents” across the country over a recent 10-month period."

This database, and the rationales offered to justify it, are forebodingly reminiscent of the types of activities condoned by J. Edgar Hoover and Joe McCarthy at the height of the McCarthy era's attack on civilian dissent.  Freedom of association doesn't exist if the daughter of a friend who happens to be along when someone gets arrested can be strip-searched (Alito supports that approach) and anyone attending a meeting to protest actions of the military-industrial complex is treated as a traitor and enemy of the country (the database suggests this is the basis for the notion of "threats", in line with Ari Fleischer's scary pronouncement shortly after 9/11 that those who didn't support the Administration's militaristic and anti-civil-liberties stance were unpatriotic supporters of the "enemy").

The Pentagon, of course, seldom responds to criticism with open information to allow ordinary Americans to pass judgment on the reasonableness of its action. It operates as a secretive and highly politicized division of the executive branch of government, claiming a right to hold U.S. citizens in its military brigs beyond the reach of press, counsel, or court.  Not unexpectedly, it response to the news about the discovery of the 400 page document revealing its far-flung domestic spying on dissent undermining freedom of speech and association with typical mellifluous claims of acting honorably.  (The military doesn't condone torture, remember--it just does it.)

"A spokesman said that all domestic intelligence information is 'properly collected' and involves 'protection of Defense Department installations, interests and personnel.' "

Of course, the notion that the military can collect whatever domestic intelligence it wants so long as its purpose is to protect "Defense Department ...interests" is a broad one indeed.  The Defense Department has already shown that it doesn't like dissent.  Rumsfeld and Cheney have openly attacked dissent as unpatriotic.  Mr. Bush has proclaimed that we Americans should view him first and foremost as a "War President" and suggested that label gives him unprecedented powers over us and our rights to know and to dissent.  If domestic spying were acceptable so long as the Defense Department believes it is protecting its OWN interests and not the interests of the American people, then a database on every single American who has ever voiced criticism of military installations, recruitment, strategies and actions would be legitimate and free speech would be essentially a dead letter of the law.

This Pentagon view of dissent as a "threat" is typical of dictatorships like Saddam Hussein's, not democracies.  Democracy is, in fact, not sustainable without an informed and active government opposition that constantly brings pressure on government officials to act for the public good rather than for the special interests of the few, the rich, and the connected.

Groups like our own VoBA are, in fact, the quintessential feature of a real democracy--local, grassroots efforts to be informed and to inform others about the issues that matter in sustaining our values, our environment, and most of all our cherished liberties.  VoBA members have participated in anti-war rallies, protested media consolidation, informed each other and our local community about excess corporate greed, rallied in support of military families left suffering an unfathomable loss because of a pre-emptive war of choice, protested the despicable, pervasive military and intelligence use of torture, highlighted the untoward treatment of the poor by federal agencies, decried corrupt cronyism that threatens the core values of democracy, and objected strenuously to White House and Defense propaganda that intends to pull a curtain down over truthtelling in American and international media.  If that is a threat to the military, then the military itself is a threat to American democracy.

Why "Some" Torture Can't Work

Senator McCain has proposed legislation that would ban any cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment by any U.S. persons of any U.S. prisoners anywhere around the globe at any time.  But inside the Beltway has been abuzz with rumors of a "compromise" with the Cheney-Bush position that torture is sometimes ok, at least if it's done by the CIA. 

Our view is clear--there can be no compromise here.  If we participate in, arrange for, or make possible treatment of prisoners that involves "waterboarding", naked pyramid schemes, dog baiting, shackling from the ceiling in untenable positions for hours on end, starving or other treatment that degrades humans, we have not only violated international and U.S. law but we have betrayed the very essence of the values we stand for. 

Surely John McCain knows this, after his time as a torture victim.  Surely he will not yield to the demands of the likes of Dick Cheney, who said he had "more important things to do" than go to war in Vietnam, or George Bush, who managed to convert a cushy job in the national guard into an even cushier political job and legacy appointment.

The military and intelligence forces' abusive practices under the Bush Administration are something we will be ashamed of as a nation for decades to come.  Think of the way we've used the power of the state against individuals since 9/11.  Thousands of immigrants were held in New York prisons for months without process and then deported, without process.  Thousands of people were (and are) detained in Iraq and Afghanistan, in much the same way that Saddam's forces had detained people in the past, by entering their homes and taking them in the middle of the night to prisons where their relatives might eventually locate them, or not, months later.  Thousands of those declared by one prone-to-error person, George W. Bush, to be "enemy combatants" were shipped to wire enclosures on the island of Cuba and held there for years without due process.  Korans were desecrated.  Deaths took place in suspicious circumstances; beatings, shacklings, waterboarding and other techniques were approved.  The practices developed at Guantanamo were shipped to Iraq, and Abu Ghraib was one result.  The military has acknowledged at least 29 murders of detainees, and of course we have no way to know how many more there may have been.  We know that at least two U.S. citizens were held in military brigs as "enemy combatants" without any of the rights to which citizens are entitled under the Constitution.  Do we know for sure that no other citizens are being held incognito, without access to counsel, in a military brig or "black site" somewhere around the globe?  Can we trust anything this administration tells us about the treatment it provides to any detainee anywhere, given this administration's awful track record on forthrightness?  Two years after Abu Ghraib, we continue to practice "extraordinary rendering" of suspected terrorists--they are merely suspects, and at least some of them have proven to be entirely innocent.  We maintain secret "black sites" around the globe where U.S. personnel may well be committing war crimes of the most grievous nature against suspected terrorists (also not proven guilty through any legitimate process).   

Meanwhile, the Iraqis have picked up where Uncle Sam and Dictator Saddam left off.  In mid-November, a secret prison was discovered in the Interior Ministry building in Baghdad with 169 badly treated "inmates" victims of the "new" "democratic" "Iraqi" regime.  Now we learn about another secret torture center in Iraq with more than six hundred poorly treated detainees.  Read the Knight Ridder story here.  A sampling of the information from the report follows.

Former Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi:  "People are doing the same thing as Saddam's time and worse."  Allawi has indicated that these are primarily Shiite death squads who have taken up the activities formerly handled by Saddam's Sunni henchmen.

An unnamed interrogator who "punched several people in front of the reporter":  "Don't talk to me about human rights.  When security settles down, we'll talk about human rights.  Right now, I need confessions."

Gen. Al-Samaraaee, formerly of the Interior Ministry, "said torture and extrajudicial killings were rampant while he was at the ministry" and "secret prisons ... are run by militia groups."

Abu Saad, a prisoner, showed a fingernail that had been torn off and said he had been hung upside down, blindfolded for 40 days, allowed to use a toilet only once every three days, and saw seven other detainees die.

Is this the legacy of freedom and democracy that thousands of young Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis are dying for?   

Pentagon Propaganda (2)

As more information comes out about the Pentagon's efforts to control the news in Iraq, it is leading Americans to question further the claims made about the war and the pre-war intelligence.  See this latest Chicago Tribune story on buying access to news in Iraq.

After the domestic propaganda episodes and the revelations of the White House attempts to manipulate the press in the Plame story, the information about the Pentagon's use of tax money to plant stories in the Iraq press creates even more difficulty in separating PR spin from truth.  These planted stories may well have been picked up in U.S. newspapers and broadcast media on the assumption that they reflect true Iraqi sentiment.   Has Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld or Bush relied on a planted story about Iraq to bolster their case for the "success" of the Iraqi war effort?  Can we trust anything that comes out of the White House or Pentagon now?

There is an old saying:  once bitten, twice shy.   

Eugene McCarthy

Saturday marked the death of a "gentle" Senator who became the conscience of the nation, Eugene McCarthy, 1916-2005, reported here and here.  Eugene McCarthy was a quixotic figure who was both erudite and down to earth, a sometimes stirring speaker and an often reluctant politician. 

He did two extraordinarily brave things during his career.  In 1952, he stood up to Joe McCarthy, the Senator from Wisconsin who terrorized most of the country with his fake communist-hunting investigations in which he brandished empty pages or old data as a sword to cut people from their careers, their friends, their families, and sometimes their lives.  Eugene McCarthy met him head-on in a debate on foreign policy that should have shown the nation Joe McCarthy's lack of substance. The debate was months before Edward R. Murrow would run his first show exposing McCarthy, depicted superbly by David Strathairn in Good Night, and Good Luck.  It was several years before Joe Welch would finally bring McCarthy down with his famous "Have you no shame" line at the investigative hearings (a film clip of which is seen in the movie).

In 1968, Gene McCarthy galvanized the youth of the nation in an anti-war movement that tried to speak truth to power.   We were in college and we were frightened by the draft that could take fathers, friends and brothers away.   Unlike this war of choice where the journalists are "embedded" with the military and where there are so few independent reporters who dare to explore the world beyond their computer, in that war journalists ventured all to bring pictures of the war into people's homes.  We saw the photographs on television on the news every night--flaming helicopters, "advisers" dropped into a war zone.  Johnson withdrew his candidacy for the presidency after McCarthy's campaign began, and Robert Kennedy took up the campaign only after McCarthy had shown the possibility.  Although the war killed on for seven more violent years of napalmed children, blazing monks, and agent-oranged jungles under Nixon, McCarthy had brought it to front and center stage and forced everyone to think about this commitment to a winless war in a place that did not want us for a cause that didn't exist in a manner that stole the life out of a country, a people and our own nation.

McCarthy must have wondered at the twists of fate that have brought us to our present circumstances.  In response to a real danger, we have a context of smear and fear that has taken away civil rights for everyone, resulted in detentions and deportations of thousands on mere suspicion or association or dissent, and permitted military imprisonment of American citizens without due process yet has done very little to address the muddled intelligence that continues to threaten our ability to deal with real terrorism.  At the same time, we have an imperialistic war of choice that is again gobbling young lives and in which we are again dropping hundreds of thousands of pounds of ordinance on villagers and maiming old men and young children.

It is thus with great sadness that I note the passing of Gene McCarthy.  There are few people who have the courage to speak against power.  He did so, and he helped to bring understanding, for a while, to an entire nation.

Religious Bullying

The media is picking up the bullhorns on another pet issue--the claim that political correctness is taking "Christmas" out of the holidays, from Target's use of "Happy Holidays" as a greeting to the Bush's sending a "Happy Holidays" card to their hundreds of contacts, made most directly and often by Bill O'Reilly on Fox. Let's examine this for what it really is.

First, Christmas is by no means a dirty word either commercially or on the public square.  Christmas trees, Christmas lights and other Christmas symbols are everywhere in every store, on every street and in almost every public office.  Ruth Marcus does a good job of debunking the claim of the banishment of Christmas from mall and square in her Washington Post editorial, here.

Second, those Christians who are answering Bill O'Reilly and Pat Robertson's calls to arms in this so-called "war against Christmas" should perhaps stop to consider the proper relationship between church and state.  Christians should be the ones most concerned about government use of Christian religious symbols and most eager not to have any sect's particular religious beliefs adopted by the state.  Most persecution of religious sects comes when a government is identified with one sect and uses the power of government to discriminate against other sects.  That was the fate of Christians for many years in countries with established, non-Christian religions.  That is one of the problems at the core of undemocratic countries in the Middle East that apply religious muslim law instead of secular law.

Third, the celebration of Christmas--candlelights, trees, reindeer, and Santa--has become so prevalent that even those who practice different religions now often celebrate the holiday, to the extent possible without betraying their own religious underpinnings, in order to prevent their children from feeling excluded from the social life around them.  It is entirely appropriate that commercial establshments like Target and Wal-Mart should try to reach out to this group by being all inclusive rather than excluding them in the way they handle the holidays.  Having greeters say "Happy Holidays" includes Christians and Jews, Muslims and agnostics, Kwanzaa-celebrators and non-believers.  Having greeters say "Merry Christmas" excludes everyone but Christians.  Isn't the former better, especially for a commercial establishment that sells goods related to events for all those faiths?

Fourth, the  secular "holiday" part of the Christmas holidays is something we can all share and enjoy without worrying that it is taking away from the sacred "Christmas" part of Christmas, which is something much more personal and spiritual and non-commercial.  We should be thankful that stores realize they cannot be the locus for Christmas, and that there is a difference between the commercial "holiday" and the religious "Christmas" celebration.  See this column by Charles Madigan, here, in the "Can you believe it" perspective of Sunday's Chicago Tribune.  Madigan notes that "the last thing in the world I want is for somebody to imply that Christ will be happy if I use my credit card to buy some dandy power tools for my sons."

Why, then, this concerted attack on the attempt to make public parts of holiday celebrations more inclusive and less religio-specific?  The claim that it is necessary because Christians are the victims of religious prejudice in this country is simply wrong. It is really an attempt to impose a religious majority's own religious views on all aspects of commercial transactions.  Plainly said, it appears to be an un-Christian bit of bullying. 

The media participation in rallying this victimless cry of victimization may be an effort to spur a mass movement based on emotional reactions (that come, no doubt, from heartfelt beliefs) to detract attention from other issues.  We saw that in connection with the 2004 elections--pitting people who believe in the traditional family against the many different faces of family life today, pitting people who want the right to own guns against families worried about the danger to their children in communities where assault weapons are more numerous than pets, pitting people who believe that conception should be treated as marking the onset of a separate, rational life against people who believe that viability is that point.

This emotional use of deepfelt values issues detracts from real conversations we should be having about poverty, racism, violence, and the actions our current government is taking to change the boundaries between government action and private action, between church and state.   It is another example of an area where the corporate-owned media have failed in both the issues they bring to attention and the way the issues are discussed.

Clean Elections, Voting Rights and American Justice

Volunteers for a Better America has consistently fought for clean elections at the local, state and national level.  We need voting machines that provide an auditable record that can be verified by the voter.   We need politicians who are beholden to the voters in the aggregate rather than to particular fat cats or corporate coffers.  In particular, we need restrictions on campaign financing by corporate interests that are essentially buying future legislation in their favor.

We will not achieve such clean elections by merely standing by and letting state legislatures hand contracts for voting equipment over to cronies or the lowest bidder.  We cannot continue to stand by and let money so taint elections that the voice of the people gets lost.  We need a concerted effort across each state, from hamlet to hamlet, county to county and city to city, to clean up the election process.  If the politicians can't get with the agenda, then we should kick them all out and start over again until they get the message.

There is a "clean elections" campaign going on now across the country.  The goal is to have states enact legislation that uses public funding at reasonable levels to finance all state-wide offices so that politicians can spend their time campaigning and talking about the issues that face the state rather than sitting in smoke-filled back rooms with big-money donors talking about their agendas.

This means we won't stand for continued dirty tricks during elections.  Remember the Bush campaign (and one time Republican National Committee) person who jammed phones in order to prevent Democratic get-out-the-vote drives?  Read the story here.  Those are the kinds of dirty tricks that cannot be tolerated.  Let's hope Mr. Tobin goes to jail, as a good lesson for future dirty tricksters. And let's hope that states like Illinois pass a "Clean Elections" law to ensure that state offices are not sold to the highest bidder.

It also means that we need a Justice Department that considers its charge to protect civil rights, including the right to a vote that counts, as one of its most sacred duties.  Sadly, that is quite clearly not the case in the current department headed by Attorney General Gonzalez. 

The Washington Post carries a story, here, about the politicization of the Civil Rights division of the Justice Department.  Historically, the analysis of career civil rights attorneys has been a highly regarded input into the decision process as to the position to be taken by the Justice Department.  No more.   In the Texas redistricting case, career attorneys interested in protecting the one person-one vote rule unanimously agreed, in a written memorandum, that the DeLay redistricting plan amounted to a plan to ride roughshod over voters and discriminate against minorities.  Political appointees in the department ignored that advise and supported the plan anyway.  Similarly, in the Georgia case requiring photo ID that for the predominantly poor black voters amounts to a modern-day version of the banned poll tax, career attorneys objected that it was a discriminatory provision that should not be allowed under the Voting Rights Act.  Again, political appointees overruled. 

Now we learn that Justice has nixed such analysis to ensure that political hacks can make their partisan decisions without the annoyance of sound legal analysis concerned with the protection of civil rights.  This is not justice.  This is politicization of the most important cabinet department in the line of fire protecting the civil rights of individual American citizens.   

Are you on the list?

Here is a little something not much covered in the U.S. media--the growth of the terrorist watch list since 2001.  In pre-9/11 days, there were fewer than two dozen names on the list.  Today's length?  80,000 names.  Read more about it here.

Should we be concerned at the number of names on the list?  Each of these people will be subject to more intensive searches or may be refused access to airline travel.  It is not clear what evidence exists, if any, to support these governmental restrictions on movement.  What is clear is that the names are being added at an extraordinarily rapid pace, and could easily be subject to human error and intelligence error. 

It would be a story worth reading to see how names are added to this list and how those individuals are treated at airports and elsewhere.  Maybe a real journalist will look into it someday.