Do As We Say … But Exempt Us

A whole bunch of Indiana legislators* decided to try to follow Florida’s example and introduced a bill (HB 1007) to require those Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funds to take a drug test. I don’t really want to spend time discussing the merits (or lack thereof) of this bill other than to note that it wound up costing Florida several million dollars (which, gee wiz, went to a company owned by the governor…) and revealed a lower incidence of drug use than among the public at large (how many poor people can really afford drugs, what with trying to eat and have a roof over their heads…). The discussion of whether those receiving government assistance should be obligated to take a drug test is a good discussion for another day (but in thinking about this question, you might ask if CEOs of the auto companies or banks had to take drug tests).

Anyway, what I really wanted to take note of was what happened at today’s hearing on HB1007 at the Indiana General Assembly. An amendment was offered to HB1007 that would also require drug testing for Indiana legislators! After all, if we’re going to require some Hoosiers take take a drug test for receiving government aid, why shouldn’t those on government salaries who decide which Hoosiers must take drug tests to be tested themselves? Surprisingly (at least to me), the amendment passed 54-41 (I’ll be interested to see the party breakdown of those voting for and against the amendment).

But rather than allow that sort of compromise bill to become law, Rep. Jud McMillin (R-Southeast Indiana), the principal author of the bill, withdrew the bill from consideration! Think about that for a second: 55 Indiana legislators were so concerned with possible drug use by those receiving welfare that they introduced a bill to drug test those recipients … but Rep. McMillin was so opposed to having he and his colleagues tested that he decided to withdraw the bill instead. It’s relatively rare (well maybe not so much anymore) to see that kind of hypocrisy so blatantly displayed.

Welcome to Indiana.

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*Here is the list of sponsors of HB1007; note that of the 55 sponsors, only 2 are Democrats: McMillin (R), Noe (R), Bacon (R), Baird (R), Behning (R), Borders (R), Brown (R), Burton (R), Cheatham (D), Clere (R), Crouch (R), Culver (R), Davisson (R), Dermody (R), Dodge (R), Eberhart (R), Ellspermann (R), Espich (R), Foley (R), Friend (R), Frizzell (R), Frye (R), Goodin (D), Gutwein (R), Heaton (R), Heuer (R), Hinkle (R), Kirchhofer (R), Knollman (R), Koch (R), Kubacki (R), Lehe (R), Lehman (R), Leonard (R), Lutz (R), Mahan (R), McNamara (R), Messmer (R), Morris (R), Neese (R), Rhoads (R), Richardson (R), Saunders (R), Smith (R), Speedy (R), Steuerwald (R), Thompson (R), Torr (R), Truitt (R), Turner (R), Wesco (R), Wolkins (R), Yarde (R), Ubelhor (R), VanNatter (R).

The Atlanta Jewish Community Needs to Take Action

Note: I am Jewish. And I consider myself a strong supporter of Israel. Those points are essential background for this post.

Until a few minutes ago, I’d never heard of the Atlanta Jewish Times. Apparently, it is a small community newspaper with a readership of approximately 3,500. The paper was purchased by Andrew Adler in 2009 and he presently serves as Editor and Publisher. While reading some news updates online, I was directed to a January 13 “From the Publisher” column written by Adler entitled “What Would You Do?” (it appears that the column is either not available on the paper’s website or it has been taken down). The column asks readers to pretend that they are Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and to consider what action they might take in response to threats from Iran and Hezbollah. After offering two options for the Prime Minster to take, Adler offers a final, third option. Here is the part of this short column that made my mouth drop and caused me to literally shake with rage and disgust:

Three, give the go-ahead for U.S.-based Mossad agents to take out a president deemed unfriendly to Israel in order for the current vice president to take his place, and forcefully dictate that the United States’ policy includes its helping the Jewish state obliterate its enemies.

Yes, you read “three” correctly. Order a hit on a president in order to preserve Israel’s existence. Think about it. If I have thought of this Tom Clancy-type scenario, don’t you think that this almost unfathomable idea has been discussed in Israel’s most inner circles?

Another way of putting “three” into perspective goes something like this: How far would you go to save a nation comprised of seven million lives … Jews, Christians and Arabs alike?

You have got to believe, like I do, that all options are on the table.

I dispute his entire premise, that President Obama has been unfriendly to Israel. I’ve written about that in the past, and that’s not really the point of this post. But the last thing that will help Israel are columns like this, even mere suggestions like Adler’s. One of the problems facing Israel today is that too many on the left, both Jewish and not, are beginning to become less strong in their ties to Israel, if not actually turning against Israel. How will people who find J-Street’s message persuasive react to columns like Adler’s? Suggestions that “Israel’s most inner circles” are contemplating assassinating President Obama may make for interesting fiction (a Steve Berry novel, perhaps), but it is harmful both to Israel and to American Jews, especially as charges of' “Israel First” and “dual loyalty” are being tossed around with greater and greater frequency.

Now to be clear, Adler has already apologized for this column:

"I very much regret it, I wish I hadn't made reference to it at all," Andrew Adler told JTA on Friday.

He said he would publish an apology in his next edition, and that reaction from readers had been overwhelmingly negative.

But you know what? That’s not good enough. Note that he doesn’t say he was wrong, just that he “regrets it” and wishes that he “hadn’t made reference to it”. And note that he hasn’t put his apology on the Atlanta Jewish Times website; he’s just said that he’ll include it in his next edition.

The people who know Adler, the Atlanta Jewish community, the readers of the Atlanta Jewish Times, and supporters of Israel, need to make it abundantly clear to Adler and others who would make such horrific suggestions that his thoughts are far outside the mainstream, outside the pale of rational thought. Adler and those who share his fetish for thinking about reasons to harm President Obama simply cannot be a part of polite, civil society. We condemn those who seek to kill Americans. We condemn the preacher who prays for President Obama’s death. We must also condemn other Jews who offer such abhorrent viewpoints. They harm Israel and they harm the American Jewish community. The Atlanta Jewish community should find a way to show Adler that, by his actions, he isn’t really a part of that community at all. And he needs to do far more than indicate his “regret”; he needs to show that he understands just how harmful and dangerous his words are. And, even though it is not yet Yom Kippur, he needs to find a way to atone.

Take a minute and let Adler know what you think of his column.

So What Is Mitt Romney Hiding?

In both of South Carolina Republican Presidential nomination debates, one of the issues that seemed to bedevil Mitt Romney was the question of if and when he would release his tax returns. Given that his success at Bain Capital — and the wealth he has accumulated — has become an issue in the campaign (not to mention a general issue as it relates to the Occupy movement and the question of the 99% vs. the 1%), it would seem that the answer to the question “Will you release your tax returns” should be an simple “Of course, because I have nothing to hide.”

But that hasn’t been Romney’s response.

Over the last month or so he first said that he wouldn’t release his tax returns. Then in the first South Carolina debate, Romney said that he was thinking about it and might release them in April. When pressed again in last night’s debate, his answer was somewhat more certain, but he continued to hedge as to when (probably April, after his 2011 returns are done) but said that he probably would not release tax returns for prior years.

Newt Gingrich, who I hate to agree with on anything, asked the right questions: He wanted to know what Romney was hiding and whether Republicans ought to know if there were any surprises in the tax returns before they selected Romney as their candidate. Romney, for his part, suggested that he didn’t want to release old returns and didn’t want to release his new return until April because he didn’t want to give the Democrats ammunition. Of course, that answer makes no sense at all. First, as Gingrich pointed out, what Romney is really doing is denying ammunition to his Republican opponents that they could use now. Whether he releases the tax returns or whether he limits the release to the 2011 return will be no different for the Democrats than for the Republicans. And if he waits to April, he will deny Republicans the ammunition, but Democrats will still have 7½ months to use those returns against Romney.

So why doesn’t Romney want to release his tax returns now. Why doesn’t he want to release old tax returns? Why does he want to wait until April?

What is Romney hiding?

And before you answer, it is worth noting that the three most likely answers can’t really be the reason … because that information is already available.

Romney has already released some financial information that shows that he is really, really rich. Like, as in, he’s got more than enough money to fly first class if he really wants to. Or, said differently, he could easily pay off Gingrich’s account at Tiffany and not even notice. So it seems unlikely that his reluctance to release the tax returns has anything to do with the fact that they will show that he’s rich.

So perhaps he’s trying to hide that he is the poster child for the so-called Buffet Rule (which some are now trying to rebrand as the Romney Rule). The idea behind the Buffet Rule is that those who earn most of their money from investments and not employment, shouldn’t pay a lower effective tax rate than do their secretaries. But Romney got out in front of this issue too (well, out front by a day or two) when he acknowledged earlier this week that his effective tax rate is probably only about 15%, far lower than the 30% or so that many “middle” income earners pay. So, given that we know that he pays at a low tax rate, it seems unlikely that bit of information is behind his reluctance to release his tax returns.

Could it be that he is nervous about people learning that he has stashed deposited millions in offshore bank accounts in the Cayman Islands, a traditional haven for tax shelters for the wealthy? Again, he also acknowledged those accounts a few days ago, though he denies that they are tax shelters. Query, though, if they’re not tax shelters, why is his money in the Cayman Islands instead of, say, Boston. Or Salt Lake City. Or Toledo, Peoria, or Ypsilanti? In any event, again fear of “exposure” of the existence of the offshore accounts wouldn’t seem to be the reason for the reluctance to release the tax returns.

So what is Romney hiding?

If there was nothing in those returns that would have a negative impact, wouldn’t he just release them all now and say, as I’ve suggested, “Look, world, nothing to hide”? But he isn’t releasing them now and he’s refusing to release old tax returns. And his continued refusals and dodges on this simple question have been the cause of some very awkward, very uncomfortable, very telling moments in the recent debates. He was willing to allow last night’s debate audience to boo him on national television as he stood firm in his refusal and reluctance. Why not say, after hearing those boos, “OK, fine, I’ll release them tomorrow”? The crowd would have turned the boos to cheers and Romney would look the part of a hero, responding to the wishes of the electorate. But he didn’t do that.

So once again, I ask, what is Romney hiding?

I have a few ideas, the first of which would explain his reluctance to release the returns now but willingness to do so once he has the Republican nomination.

What if those tax returns showed a charitable donation to Planned Parenthood?

Can you imagine the Republican heads exploding when they saw that? And that isn’t a piece of information that would be of much practical use to Democrats who will already be able to accuse Romney of having changed his position. And how could Democrats even be overly critical of Romney for giving to an organization that Democrats support?

Or what if the tax returns showed charitable donations to pro-polygamy Mormon groups or other Mormon organizations that would make Republicans, especially evangelical Christian Republicans, uncomfortable with Romney’s religion?

What if the tax returns showed political contributions to Democratic candidates? Can you imagine if, after losing the nomination to John McCain in 2008, Romney donated to President Obama’s campaign? Doubtful, but you never know…

Or what if the returns showed donations to NPR or the National Endowment for the Arts or ACORN or any of the other Republican bugaboos?

Perhaps the tax returns would show income from a source that he doesn’t want to talk about, say consulting for the Chinese or Iranians or an investment in Venezuelan oil interests.

Maybe the tax returns would show that Romney stood to earn an enormous fortune if the auto industry had gone bankrupt. Or that he made an enormous fortune because it didn’t. Or what if the returns showed that he’d invested heavily in the housing bubble or bet against the market in those risky transactions that earned billions for certain investors while leading the economy into a near depression?

Obviously, I don’t know what Romney is hiding. But his refusal to release any tax returns until April certainly suggests that there is something that he doesn’t want Republican voters to see until he (presumably) wraps up the nomination. And his refusal to release old returns suggests that there is something he doesn’t want anyone to see. If there’s nothing to hide … why hide it?

It seems clear that, while Romney may still be the favorite to win, he just isn’t very well-liked by the electorate. Hiding something damaging won’t help that. But then again, his continued stumbling and bumbling over questions about his tax returns and being loudly booed by the audience on a nationally televised debate, clearly isn’t making him more likable.

Mitt Romney has a problem. Too bad.

Cognitive Dissonance in Action … Again

Note: I wrote this post in early December but apparently never actually posted it.

Readers of this blog may remember my post Cognitive Dissonance in Action published in August 2011. In that post, I talked about the phenomenon of people refusing to modify their own view of events in light of incontrovertible facts or perhaps accepting as “true” a version of facts from a substantially less-qualified source than from a much more obviously qualified and trustworthy source. As I said in the conclusion to that post:

Cognitive dissonance is a problem when it comes to science. It is a problem when it comes to history. And it is really a huge fucking problem when it gets in the way of our political and legal system. How can we have a proper debate about the deficit and debt ceiling if the Tea Party refuses to believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that default would be bad? How can we have rational discussions about energy policy if Republicans, despite almost all evidence to the contrary, refuse to believe in global warming? How can we have a discussion about the proper role of religion in the public sphere or the rights of minority religious views if people like the author of the email that prompted this diatribe post continues to believe that the Founding Fathers said things that they simply did not say?

To once again quote Daniel Patrick Moynihan …: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” So long as we, as a society, cannot come to terms with and agree upon certain basic facts, we will have a really hard time making decisions about the best policies for the future of America.

Saturday night and Sunday, I had another encounter with cognitive dissonance that I thought worth sharing.

This past weekend we had lots of family and friends come to town for my nephew’s bar mitzvah (mazel tov!). Included in that group was one particular very dear family friend. When we’re together (which, unfortunately, isn’t very often anymore), we like to argue discuss politics. Let’s just say that his views and mine are not exactly in sync. But we have fun engaging with one another in these discussions. Let me also just note that he has both a razor sharp wit and intellect. This is a person who, when he says something, even something with which I instinctively disagree, I give due consideration and weight to the ideas that he expresses.

But as it was a celebratory weekend, I decided to try to avoid talking politics (and that went for a relative who one of the subjects of my post The Election Is Over — Now What? the day after the 2008 election). Yeah, I know. Not exactly my nature to shut up about politics. Generally speaking, I’d say I managed to accomplish that goal. I didn’t bring up politics with either of these people though I did get into relatively brief conversations (they both started it … really!) with each of them. And it is one of those conversations that led to this post.

The family friend (who has not lived in Indiana for at least 25 years) was asking about several of the Indiana races in 2008. I think that he was particularly interested in the Lugar-Mourdock race. He also asked about the likelihood that Dan Burton could (finally) be ousted. During the conversation, he commented that he thought Rep. Burton was one of the dumbest members of Congress (a sentiment that I certainly did not disagree with). But then my friend said that another of the dumbest members of Congress was Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Arizona), the Congresswoman who was shot in the head last January. I asked him why he said that and he told me that Rep. Giffords had asked Gen. David Patraeus “whether the United States had done an environmental impact study on the war in Afghanistan.” This was not a claim that I’d ever heard before and so I had no idea how to respond. Thankfully, our discussion moved on to things other than politics.

But this claim, the suggestion that Rep. Giffords thought that we should have performed an environmental impact study on the war, bothered me. I would have to agree with my friend’s general sentiment that such a question was not a very good one (though I’m not sure that I would generalize it to paint Rep. Giffords as one of the dumbest members of Congress). Thus, I kept thinking about that quote. Did she ask that question? If so, in what context? And if not, why did my friend think she had?

So, when I got home, I decided to do a little research. Guess what? That’s right. The query to Gen. Patraeus that my friend attributed to Rep. Giffords isn’t accurate. Here is a clip of Rep. Gifford’s statement and question followed by Gen. Patraeus’ answer:

Transcript of the relevant portion of Rep. Giffords questioning (from Snopes):

There's been a lot of attention back in the United States on what's happening with the BP oil spill, and we all know the largest user of energy on the planet is actually the United States Air Force and the DoD is the largest user of energy in the United States, and I really want to commend the work done on the behalf of DoD and also what's happening in the field with our energy, but it's an area that I just really want to focus on, and I know a lot of questions have been asked, but in the last few years supply lines have been increasingly threatened either by enemy action or through international crises, and in places like Kandahar, where we have a large presence, we've been plugged into a very unsustainable and really an incapable grid system.

We know that a major part of the upcoming Kandahar offensive will include some serious repairs and upgrades to the energy system which will include small-scale solar and hydropower systems and also some solar-powered street lights. I'm just curious whether or not there's plans to utilize any of those same technologies at our bases around Afghanistan, and wouldn't that greatly reduce our need for fuel?

Hmm. That’s a different question she’s asking, isn’t it? Not quite “have we done an environmental impact study?” Both Snopes and Politifact have much more complete explanations of the exchange between Rep. Giffords and Gen. Patraeus together with some information about the charge that Rep. Giffords was asking something other than what she did, in fact, ask. Both pages are worth reading to see just how stories like this one come to be. In fact, it appears that the charge that Rep. Giffords asked about an environmental impact statement (or that we “put more emphasis on less environmentally damaging methods, like stabbing or clubbing enemy forces in order to minimize the carbon output”) came from a satirical post.

So what, I hear you asking (well, not really…) does that have to do with cognitive dissonance?

The next morning, when I saw that family friend again, I explained that what he’d told me about Rep. Giffords just didn’t “feel right” to me and that I therefore stayed up the night before to research the issue. And then I told him what I’d found. His response was … interesting. First, he told me that he too had researched what Rep. Giffords had said (though not the night before) and, he said, he’d watched the video of her asking Gen. Patraeus about an environmental impact study and she did, indeed, ask that question. I told him that I’d also watched the video and that she did not, in fact, ask such a question. I also explained that both Snopes and Politifact had debunked the claim as well as documenting where it came from. His response was that Snopes couldn’t always be trusted (implying, though not saying, that it erred on the side of liberals) and that he’d never heard of Politifact. I suggested that his information might have come by way of a chain email, but he said that he doesn’t read chain emails. I suggested that I’d be happy to send him the information that I’d found (including the video) and he said that he’d send me his information. But then, a few minutes later, he said that we’d just have to each accept our own understanding of the events.

So here we have quite a disconnect … and an example of cognitive dissonance. Somehow, at least in his memory, he recollects having watched the video and having seen something that simply isn’t there. I don’t care how many times you watch that video, you’re not going to find Rep. Giffords asking about an environmental impact study. But compare what he believes that he heard Rep. Giffords say with these excerpts from the text of the chain emails quoted by Snopes and Politifact:

Poster-child for what is wrong in Washington, DC Our Arizona 8th District US Congressional representative, the Hon. Gabrielle Giffords, in a meeting of the House Armed Services Committee, asked General David Petraeus the following question: “General Petraeus, what are you doing to reduce carbon emissions in the war on terror?” Wow. I had to read, and re-read this several times to believe it.

What Google says about Rep. Giffords: Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D-Az) took Afghan Commander, General David Petraeus, to task for what she characterized as “willful disregard of the environmental impact of our war effort.” “There is no policy, no plan to minimize carbon emissions in our military activities,” Giffords charged. “Bombs are dropped and bullets are fired without considering the environmental impact.” Giffords insisted that she was “not demanding an immediate halt to current military operations in the Middle East. I'm just saying that battle plans should include an environmental impact assessment as a regular part of the process before attacks are launched.”

She also suggested that the Army “put more emphasis on less environmentally damaging methods, like stabbing or clubbing enemy forces in order to minimize the carbon output.”

In other words, the question that my friend “heard” Rep. Gifford ask in the video is not in the video at all (because she didn’t ask that question) … but it is in the text of the chain emails that are going around on this issue. Query just what kind of research he could have actually done that would convince him that he had in fact “seen” her ask that question? Maybe he didn’t read the charge in a chain email; perhaps he heard someone make the charge or read it in a different publication. Nevertheless, the point remains that he believes something was said that wasn’t and he believes that he saw and heard said something that wasn’t. Hence cognitive dissonance. He has put aside the fact of what the video actually reveals and replaced that in his memory with the false “facts” and memory that support the worldview that he wants to believe.

Once again, this is but a tiny example on a relatively insignificant issue. But this is a very, very smart man. So you have to wonder what other facts he and others set aside when inconvenient and what false facts replace those in order to confirm an existing understanding of the world or an issue? As I think I’ve repeated … well … repeatedly on this blog, we can’t make good societal and political decisions unless we do so on the basis of facts … real facts … not those that have been skewed to support a particular political argument or point of view. Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

Whether Rep. Giffords is a smart legislator or not isn’t the question; but we can’t criticize her for saying things that she didn’t say. And we can’t make our own decisions on issues of public policy on the basis of things that never happened.

Finally, I don’t know if the friend in question ever reads this blog. If so, I hope he doesn’t take offense at what I’ve written. My goal is not to criticize him; rather, my aim is to point out an endemic problem that manifests in dramatic ways in our political discourse. And, by demonstrating that this problem is not limited to those of lesser intelligence or who don’t pay close attention to issues and the world around them, perhaps we can all recognize that we need to be careful with our perception of the facts upon which we make our decisions. We need to continue to discuss and even argue about the issues and which policies are good or bad, but in so doing we must be sure that facts that we cite are accurate. And when confronted by evidence that what we believed to be a “fact” may be inaccurate, then we need to reexamine our understanding and positions on the issues, rather than dismissing or even changing those inconvenient facts.

Stupidity So Stupid It’s Stupid

Last week I wrote about President Obama’s recess appointment of Richard Cordray to be the first chair of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (Republicans Claim President Obama Arrogantly Circumvents American People … After Republicans Refuse to Consider Any Action Unless They Get Their Way First). In that post, I noted:

I don’t want to spend much time on the issue of whether the recess appointment is valid; the issue comes down to whether the pro forma sessions that Senate Republicans have been holding to prevent recess appointments are sufficient to actually prevent recess appointments. That discussion gets a bit esoteric, even for me. For the record though, here is how “recess” is defined by the Senate (emphasis added): “A temporary interruption of the Senate's proceedings, sometimes within the same day. The Senate may also recess overnight rather than adjourn at the end of the day. Recess also refers to longer breaks, such as the breaks taken during holiday periods.”

Like many Republicans, Rep. Diane Black (R-Tennessee)* was outraged by President Obama’s use of the recess appointment provisions of the Constitution. On Tuesday, she issued a press release that included the following:

“It’s astounding to me that the president is claiming these are recess appointments and within his authority, when Congress was not in fact in recess,” said Black. “These appointments are an affront to the Constitution. No matter how you look at this, it doesn’t pass the smell test. I hope the House considers my resolution as soon as we return to Washington so we can send a message to President Obama.”

(Emphasis, quite obviously, added.) Then, after discussing why the recess appointments were improper (she focuses on the fact that the House did not consent to a Senate recess as required by the Constitution), she says (in relation to President Obama’s recess appointment of two members of the National Labor Relations Board):

Their names were only put forward on December 15th, a mere two days before the Senate recessed for the holiday.

(Emphasis again, quite obviously, added.)

That’s right folks. Congress isn’t actually in recess; they’re just, you know, not in Washington and not able to conduct any business until they return to Washington. But it’s not a recess. Nope. Not even if we call it a recess. Still isn’t one. These aren’t the droids you’re looking for. Move along.

Look, there are issues and questions concerning whether the pro forma sessions of the Senate or the failure of the House to consent to a Senate recess are legitimate ways to prevent a Presidential recess appointment. But I would submit that Rep. Black’s recognition that the House can’t act specifically because House members are out of town is a pretty damning admission that Congress is, in fact, in recess. Add to that her explicit recognition that the Senate was, indeed, recessed, seems to drive the proverbial stake through her argument (hey, if the Senate isn’t in recess, then what’s wrong with the timing of when President Obama submitted the nominees?). And if Congress isn’t in recess, then why aren’t the members of Congress, you know, like, in Washington, working?

Perhaps Rep. Black is confused; perhaps she think there has to be a playground for there to be a recess. I mean, nothing else would really explain her childlike whining about the process at the same time that she essentially admits that she’s wrong.

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*Oddly, on her official House webpage, Rep. Black is referred to as “Congressman Diane Black” (emphasis added). I checked the webpages of two of the other female Republican members of Congress who I would suggest are at least as dumb as Rep. Black (Rep. Michele Bachmann and Rep. Virginia Foxx); both identify themselves as “Congresswoman”. So either Rep. Black has really bad proofreaders, is in the process or transitioning, or is trying to make some kind of point. I’ll let you be the judge on that score.

Republicans Want to Require Indiana Students to Recite The Lord’s Prayer. Seriously.

Last night while I was watching the most boring football game ever played (and rooting for both teams to lose…), I read a tweet from Indiana blogger Doug Masson (and if you don’t regularly read Doug’s posts, you should…). Each year, Doug (who I believe used to work for Indiana’s Legislative Services Agency) writes brief recaps of new bills introduced in the Indiana General Assembly. The tweet in question directed me to Doug’s newest post on another bill that has been introduced … and my jaw nearly hit the floor.

Doug was writing about Senate Bill 251 which would add the following law to the Indiana Code:

Indiana Code Section 20-30-5-4.6.

(a) In order that each student recognize the importance of spiritual development in establishing character and becoming a good citizen, the governing body of a school corporation or the equivalent authority of a charter school may require the recitation of the Lord's Prayer at the beginning of each school day. The prayer may be recited by a teacher, a student, or the class of students.

(b) If the governing body or equivalent authority requires the recitation of the Lord's Prayer under subsection (a), the governing body or equivalent authority shall determine the version of the Lord's Prayer that will be recited in the school corporation or charter school.

(c) A student is exempt from participation in the prayer if: (1) the student chooses not to participate; or (2) the student's parent chooses to have the student not participate.

Seriously.

Before discussing the specifics of SB251, I want to go ahead and direct you to the Senators responsible for this abomination. Call them. Write them. Email them. Tell them that you’re outraged. Express your disbelief that they clearly don’t understand certain basic concepts of our constitutional framework:

Sen. Dennis Kruse (R-Northeast Indiana [District 14])

Sen. Jim Tomes (R-Southwest Indiana [District 49])

Sen. Travis Holdman (R-Northeast Indiana [District 16])

So let’s start with a simple question: What is the Lord’s Prayer? I admit that all I really knew was that it was a prayer that was commonly recited by Christians. So I immediately turned to the irrefutable authority on all things religious: Wikipedia.

The Lord's Prayer (also called the Pater Noster or Our Father) is a central prayer in Christianity. In the New Testament of the Christian Bible, it appears in two forms: in the Gospel of Matthew as part of the discourse on ostentation in the Sermon on the Mount, and in the Gospel of Luke, which records Jesus being approached by "one of his disciples" with a request to teach them "to pray as John taught his disciples." The prayer concludes with "deliver us from evil" in Matthew, and with "lead us not into temptation" in Luke.

(Footnotes, links, and emphasis deleted.) The basic form of the Lord’s Prayer is:

Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come,

your will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread,

and forgive us our debts,

as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from evil.

Apparently, the appeal to forgive debts is often replaced by an appeal to forgive sins. In all honesty, I was surprised that the Lord’s Prayer didn’t include an explicit reference to Jesus. But given that the prayer was supposedly recited by Jesus as an example, then I guess this makes sense. (I’m told that some Christians append a call to Jesus at the end of this and other prayers, something along the line of “In Jesus’ name we pray” or something similar).

In any event, the issue isn’t really the text of the prayer; rather it is the notion of a prayer mandated by the government (or an entity of the government). Perhaps Sen. Kruse, Sen. Tomes, and Sen. Holdman (who, believe it or not, is an attorney) forgot the words of the First Amendment to the Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

It seems hard to argue that a state statute directing school boards to adopt a specific denominational prayer is a form of impermissible establishment of religion.

And certainly, the Senators appear to have forgotten to text of Article I of the Indiana Constitution:

Section 3. No law shall, in any case whatever, control the free exercise and enjoyment of religious opinions, or interfere with the rights of conscience.

Section 4. No preference shall be given, by law, to any creed, religious society, or mode of worship; and no person shall be compelled to attend, erect, or support, any place of worship, or to maintain any ministry, against his consent.

I would certainly argue that a statute mandating a specific denominational prayer would, at minimum, be an impermissible preference to the Christian mode of worship.

Moreover, these Senators also appear to have missed the fact that the United States Supreme Court ruled on the issue of government-mandated school prayer nearly 50 years ago (in fact, this year is the 50th anniversary of one of the two main cases on the issue of school prayer)! Furthermore, it is worth noting that most of the school prayer cases have dealt with (and found unconstitutional) non-denominational prayers. But these Indiana Senators want to impose a core Christian prayer upon Indiana’s school children.

And don’t for a minute think that this isn’t a Christian prayer. When was the last time that you heard a Jew or a Muslim recite the Lord’s Prayer? Apparently Mormon’s don’t recite the Lord’s Prayer (but then, according to a whole bunch of fundamentalist, evangelical Christians, Mormon’s aren’t “real” Christians anyway…). Nor, I suspect, do Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, or the followers of any of the myriad of other religions practiced in Indiana, recite the Lord’s Prayer. And certainly atheists and others who do not profess to any religious belief would not recite the Lord’s Prayer. The point is, this prayer is derived from instructions in the New Testament and instructs Christians on how to pray. It is a Christian prayer for Christian belief.

One might also think that this bill was “necessary” because of the notion that kids can’t pray in school. That is patently false. First, kids can pray when they wake up. They can pray at the breakfast table with their family. They can pray while they brush their teeth. They can pray on the school bus. They can pray in the school hallways or standing at their locker. They can gather in a group by the flagpole and pray to their heart’s content. They can sit at the homeroom desk and pray. And when the teacher hands out the math test that they didn’t study for (because they were too busy praying), they can pray then as well. The can pray silently or out loud (as long as they don’t disturb others). The only thing that they can’t do is ask the school to make them pray or to direct everyone in prayer. And why, with all of those opportunities for individual prayer, is state-sponsored, coercive prayer, really necessary?

Why do Sen. Kruse, Sen. Tomes, and Sen. Holdman care whether my child prays. And why do they care what prayer my child utters? Perhaps I should be asking them why Christian students aren’t being asked to say a prayer that Jesus probably recited every morning and every evening:

Shema Yisrael Adonai eloheinu Adonai ehad

Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One

I mean, Jesus was a Jew, wasn’t he?

I also want to note the red-herring contained in the SB251. Yes, the bill permits a student or parent to opt-out of saying the prayer. How realistic of a remedy is this? You try being an impressionable school child, burdened by peer pressure, your own insecurities as your learn who you are and what you believe, and the weight of a teacher or school administrator, and raising your hand to say, “No, I don’t want to say the prayer.” My 12-year-old children, who have heard me talk about issues like this since they first started in public school, had a difficult enough time telling their choir teacher that they were uncomfortable singing the Hallelujah Chorus and Silent Night. And that was just for a single performance; it wasn’t something that was going to start each and every school day.

Query further why it is the job of the schools to teach “spiritual development” (isn’t that what parents and houses of worship are for?) or why that is important to “establishing character and becoming a good citizen”. Do these Senators really suggest that atheists or others who don’t have “spiritual development” don’t have character or aren’t good citizens? Are they really implying that the ills of society are tied to a failure to establish good character that would be cured if we just had (Christian) prayer in schools? Let me quote from my Ben Stein post (go back and read that for a much deeper discussion of certain church-state issues):

The email next furthers the foregoing argument by suggesting that America is in trouble because we no longer read the Bible in schools and it is the Bible that teaches “thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself”. I guess, that we are to understand that, if we still taught the Bible in our public schools, we wouldn't kill or steal and we would love each other. First, just because our children don’t read the Bible in public schools doesn’t mean that we can’t (or don’t) teach our children not to kill or steal or can’t or don’t teach them to love one another. [2011 update: Note that it would also appear that the “love your neighbor” admonition only applies if your neighbor is the right kind of neighbor; certainly, you shouldn’t love your Muslim neighbor or your homosexual neighbor, right?] And even when children did read the Bible in public schools, bad things happened: Jim Crow laws prevented blacks from voting or forced them to sit at the back of the bus (and sometimes left them hanging from a tree), but I would be willing to wager that supporters of those laws prayed quite a bit. Murder and burglary did not suddenly start the day that prayers ceased in the public schools; it seems that those societal ills have been with us (and with all of humanity) from the beginning of time, whether or not people prayed (and irrespective of the type of prayer or the deity to which those prayers is offered). It is simply too easy to say that things are bad and to place blame accordingly without empirical evidence supporting the allegation.

Look, I could go on and on, reciting and discussing all of the reasons why prayer in school is inappropriate. I could spend countless pages talking about the basis for the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment or the premises behind the religious freedom clauses in Indiana’s Bill of Rights. But I think that by 2012 these issues really aren’t that difficult anymore. Sure, there are still some open issues (student-initiated prayer at school-sanctioned events, being one of the current hot-button issues). But whether the state can mandate that children pray and mandate the specific prayer that the children must recite (or listen to) is as unconstitutional now as it was when the Supreme Court ruled on this issue in 1962.

The scary thing isn’t the prospect of this law’s passage (though I suspect a lot of Indiana’s legislators would vote for it); I think the courts will have an easy time tossing this on the rubbish heap of other unconstitutional laws. No, the scary thing is that three Indiana Senators think that this law is a good idea (not to mention constitutional). These three think nothing of having the State of Indiana tell Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, atheist, and other children not only that they must pray but that they must offer a specific Christian prayer. What does that say about our society? About tolerance and diversity? To me it says, “Hey, if you’re not a Christian, you’re not a part of ‘real America’, so just fuck off and let our Christian country move backward.” I would just love to see the reaction of these Senators if a school district chose to require children to recite a Jewish prayer or … gasp! … a Muslim prayer. Can you imagine the outcry, horror, and gnashing of teeth? But right now, we need to come to terms with a society that has become so polarized, so afraid of the “other”, so willing to believe in the “War on Christmas” hyped by Bill O’Reilly and Faux News, that legislators are willing to even contemplate, let alone introduce, bills such as SB251.

Welcome to the Theocratic States of America where we make all decisions on the basis of What Would Jesus Do … except, you know, we don’t really pay attention to things that Jesus said. Instead we just force majority religious beliefs on others, discriminate against gays and Muslims in particular (and those with differing beliefs in general), worry incessantly about what’s going on in a woman’s uterus, and grip tightly our God-given guns. And we don’t give a damn about the sick, homeless, and poor. I mean, I’m certainly not a scholar on Christian theology or the teachings of Jesus, but I know that he was far more concerned with guns, gays, and abortion than he was with charity, helping those in need, and, you know, just being a good person. If Jesus had cared about those sorts of things, he probably would have created some kind of golden rule or something, right?

Call Sen. Kruse, Sen. Tomes, and Sen. Holdman (each can be reached at 800/382-9467 or via email). And tell them what you think of their efforts to bring theocracy to Indiana. Oh, and you might also suggest that when they’re done reciting the Lord’s Prayer, they ought to go read Jesus’ thoughts on prayer (from Mathew 6:56):

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men … when thou prayest, enter into thy closet and when thou has shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret…

Sorry if I seem a bit snarky or cranky, but bills like this really, really make me angry. And they remind me that the American Experiment in tolerance, diversity, and religious liberty remains a work in progress.

So Just How Homophobic and Scary Is Rick Santorum?

I want to take a brief moment to highlight just how homophobic Rick Santorum really is. Because he was thought of as such a marginal or fringe candidate, he hasn’t generated much attention. But now that Pawlenty, Cain, Bachmann, Perry, and Gingrich have each had their moment in the spotlight before either quitting or flaming out, the spotlight has finally begun to focus on Rick Santorum. And the truth ain’t pretty.

So just how homophobic is Rick Santorum? Well, just a few days ago, he said, “even fathers in jail who had abandoned their kids, were still better than no father at all to have in their childrens’ lives” while allowing gays to raise children was “robbing children of something they need, they deserve, they have right to”. Think about that for a moment. A child is better off with a father, in jail, who had abandoned the child, than two parents of the same sex. I don’t even want to ponder what exactly the “right” to two heterosexual parents really means (can a kid sue to force a parent to be involved in the kid’s life; can a kid use the courts to force his parents to marry?). Or, consider this:

Santorum argued that gay people shouldn’t have the “privilege” of enlisting in the armed forces or marrying because “we decide what’s in the best interest of our national security” and what kind of relationships are best for society. “It’s not discrimination not to grant privileges. It’s discrimination to deny rights,” he explained. “Everyone has a right to live their life, that doesn’t mean that they’re entitled to certain privileges that society gives for certain benefits that society obtains from those relationships.” Santorum has pledged to reinstate Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and annul all same-sex marriages.

I don’t want to get into the weeds of Santorum’s arguments; but query, on the basis of his explanation of the societal good of marriage in regards to kids, why we permit infertile people or those who don’t want to have children to marry? And note the specter of “other kinds” of evils that would be brought about, he suggests, should gays be allowed to marry. I presume that this is an offhand reference to his red-herring fear that same-sex marriage will lead to polygamy, bestiality, and who knows what else (and for those who don’t know, it was his comparison of homosexuality to bestiality back in 2003 that resulted in Santorum’s so-called “Google problem”; if you’re unfamiliar with that problem, try Googling the word “Santorum” but be careful of who is looking over your shoulder…).

Now note that Santorum doesn’t just oppose same-sex marriage. He doesn’t just argue that we should have a Constitutional amendment to stop same-sex marriages (what happened to state’s rights?). Nope. Not good enough. He thinks that the Constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages should also be read to annul existing same-sex marriages recognized by certain states. Now those are family values! And what about the kids of those same-sex marriages? What about their rights?

And a few more quick notes about Santorum’s ideas. He thinks that the way to be economically successful, is simply to graduate from high school, get married, and have kids:

Number one, graduate from high school. Number two, get married. Before you have children," he said. "If you do those two things, you will be successful economically. What does that mean to a society if everybody did that? What that would mean is that poverty would be no more. If you want to have a strong economy, there are two basic things we can do.

He’s even phrased it this way (emphasis added): “There are two things in this country that will assure you of never being poor — graduating from high school and getting married.” Hmm. I think that there are plenty of Americans who graduated from high school and got married but who are still poor. Santorum may have been relying on a 2009 study from the Brookings Institute as the basis of his statements. But guess what? He left out the step between graduating and getting married: acquire a full-time job.

Santorum also believes that we need to cut social security benefits. Now. If you depend on your social security check, how in favor of cutting those benefits would you be? And would your answer change if those who can afford high taxes aren’t asked to pay more?

Finally, the folks over at Think Progress have put together some great lists of outrageous statements by Santorum (I’m including them here just in case the links go bad):

Rick Santorum’s 10 Most Outrageous Campaign Statements

1) ANNUL ALL SAME-SEX MARRIAGES: Arguing that gay relationships “destabilize” society, Santorum wouldn’t offer any legal protections to gay relationships and has pledged to annul all same-sex marriages if elected president. During his 99-country tour of Iowa, Santorum frequently compared same-sex relationships to inanimate objects like trees, basketballs, beer, and paper towels and even tried to blame the economic crisis on gay people. As Santorum explained back in August, religious people have a constitutional right to discriminate against gays: “We have a right the Constitution of religious liberty but now the courts have created a super-right that’s above a right that’s actually in the Constitution, and that’s of sexual liberty. And I think that’s a wrong, that’s a destructive element.”

2) ‘I’M FOR INCOME INEQUALITY’: “They talk about income inequality. I’m for income inequality,” Santorum said during an event in Pella, Iowa in December. “I think some people should make more than other people, because some people work harder and have better ideas and take more risk, and they should be rewarded for it. I have no problem with income inequality.”

3) CONTRACEPTION IS ‘A LICENSE TO DO THINGS’: Santorum has pledged to repeal all federal funding for contraception and allow the states to outlaw birth control, insisting that “it’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”

4) GAY SOLDIERS ‘CAUSE PROBLEMS FOR PEOPLE LIVING IN CLOSE QUARTERS’: During an appearance on Fox News Sunday in October, Santorum defended his support for Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell by arguing that gay soldiers would disrupt the military because “they’re in close quarters, they live with people, they obviously shower with people.” He also suggested that “there are people who were gay and lived the gay lifestyle and aren’t anymore.”

5) OBAMA SHOULD OPPOSE ABORTION BECAUSE HE’S BLACK: During an appearance on Christian television in January, Santorum said he was surprised that President Obama didn’t know when life began — given his skin color. “I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say ‘now we are going to decide who are people and who are not people,” he explained.

6) WE DON’T NEED FOOD STAMPS BECAUSE OBESITY RATES ARE SO HIGH: Speaking in Le Mars, Iowa in December, Santorum promised to significantly reduce federal funding for food stamps, arguing that the nation’s increasing obesity rates render the program unnecessary.

7) ABORTION EXCEPTIONS TO PROTECT WOMEN’S HEALTH ARE ‘PHONY’: While discussing his track record as a champion of the partial birth abortion ban in June, Santorum dismissed exceptions other senators wanted to carve out to protect the life and health of mothers, calling such exceptions “phony.” “They wanted a health exception, which of course is a phony exception which would make the ban ineffective,” he said.

8) HEALTH REFORM WILL KILL MY CHILD: Santorum, who claims that Obamacare motivated him to run for president, told reporters in April that his daughter Bella — who was born with a genetic abnormality — wouldn’t survive in a country with “socialized medicine.” “Children like Bella are not given the treatment that other children are given.”

9) UNINSURED AMERICANS SHOULD SPEND LESS ON CELL-PHONE BILLS: During a meeting with the editorial board of the Des Moines Register in August, Santorum said that people who can’t afford health care should stop whining about the high costs of medical treatments and medications and spend less on non essentials. Answering a question about the uninsured, Santorum explained that health care, like a car, is a luxury resource that is rationed by society and recalled the story of a woman who said she was spending $200 a month on life-saving prescriptions. Santorum told her to stop complaining and instead lower her cable and cell phone bills.

10) INSURERS SHOULD DISCRIMINATE AGAINST PEOPLE WITH PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS: Santorum sounded like a representative from the health insurance industry when he addressed a small group of high school students in Merrimack, New Hampshire in December. The former Pennsylvania senator not only defended insurers for denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, he also argued that individuals who are sick should pay higher premiums because they cost more money to insure.

Rick Santorum’s 12 Most Offensive Statements

GAYS:

1. “In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be….If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything.” [4/2003]

2. “Is anyone saying same-sex couples can’t love each other? I love my children. I love my friends, my brother. Heck, I even love my mother-in-law. Should we call these relationships marriage, too?” [5/22/2008]

3. On repeal of DADT: “I’m worried when many people will stand up and say, ‘well whatever the Generals want.’ I’m not too sure that we haven’t indoctrinated the Officer Corps in this country that they can actually see straight to make the right decisions.” [2/20/2010]

4. On gay adoption: “A lesbian woman came up to me and said, ‘why are you denying me my right?’ I said, ‘well, because it’s not a right.’ It’s a privilege that society recognizes because society sees intrinsic value to that relationship over any other relationship.” [5/3/2011]

5. On teaching history of gay Americans: “I certainly would not approve of [a bill moving through the California legislature compels the state to add gay history to the state education curriculum], but there’s a logical consequence to the courts injecting themselves in creating rights and people attaching their legislative ideas to those rights that in some respects could logically flow from that. So I’m not surprised.” [5/10/2011]

RACE:

6. “I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say ‘now we are going to decide who are people and who are not people’.” [1/19/2011]

7. “Marriage is an institution that’s a bridge too far for too many African-American women and is not desirable among African-American males….I think [Obama] has to realize that flying to New York is…self-indulgent. Go down to the corner bar and have a drink, a shot, and a beer.” [6/2/2009]

WOMEN:

8. “In far too many families with young children, both parents are working, when, if they really took an honest look at the budget, they might find they don’t both need to….The radical feminists succeeded in undermining the traditional family and convincing women that professional accomplishments are the key to happiness“. ['It Takes A Family,' 7/6/2005]

ISLAM:

9. Santorum responded to the Pentagon’s decision rescind its invitation to evangelist Franklin Graham to speak at the upcoming National Day over his statement that Islam is “evil” by saying that Graham’s comment was “a reasonable statement at the time.” [3/23/2010]

10. “I think the Democrats are actually worried [Obama] may go to Indonesia and bow to more Muslims.” [3/23/2010]

11. “The creeping Sharia throughout Europe and here in this country and in Canada. The Islamization of Europe that is already on the way and will visit these shores not too soon is a concern for us and something that we need to identify and we need to talk about and we need to fight with every ounce of our being“. [2/28/2009]

12. “Now we have the Attorney General confirming to Osama bin Laden just bide your time and the effeminate and pampered Americans will cower away.” [2/28/2009]

Oh, and in the interests of full disclosure, apparently there is now some dispute as to whether Santorum’s wife had an abortion in 1996. There is some suggestion that it was merely an induced delivery of a non-viable fetus in order to save his wife’s life. Other’s say that it was a partial-birth abortion. But no matter; Santorum is opposed to abortion under any circumstances. Hmm.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not terribly keen on living in a Santorum theocracy hostile to anyone who looks or thinks differently than he does.

Republicans Claim President Obama Arrogantly Circumvents American People … After Republicans Refuse to Consider Any Action Unless They Get Their Way First

Yesterday, President Obama appointed former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to be the first chair of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Cordray’s appointment was a so-called “recess appointment” made while the Senate was not in session. Not surprisingly, Republicans have been highly critical of President Obama’s decision to make the recess appointment. Their criticisms have focused on several points: First, that the Senate was not actually in recess, and second, that President Obama’s use of the recess appointment option was an arrogant, unprecedented, undemocratic abuse of power.

The requirement that the Senate consent to Presidential appointments can be found in Article II, Section 2, Paragraph 2 of the Constitution:

[The President] shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

Article II, Section 2, Paragraph 3 provides:

The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.

So, with that background out of the way, let’s look at the issues.

I don’t want to spend much time on the issue of whether the recess appointment is valid; the issue comes down to whether the pro forma sessions that Senate Republicans have been holding to prevent recess appointments are sufficient to actually prevent recess appointments. That discussion gets a bit esoteric, even for me. For the record though, here is how “recess” is defined by the Senate (emphasis added): “A temporary interruption of the Senate's proceedings, sometimes within the same day. The Senate may also recess overnight rather than adjourn at the end of the day. Recess also refers to longer breaks, such as the breaks taken during holiday periods.”

Instead, I want to look at the decision to use the recess appointment and whether it is somehow an unprecedented “undemocratic” action or an example of “Chicago-style politics at its worst” (as Mitt Romney claims). As Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) phrased it: “President Obama, in an unprecedented move, has arrogantly circumvented the American people….” Or, in the words of Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio):

This is an extraordinary and entirely unprecedented power grab by President Obama that defies centuries of practice and the legal advice of his own Justice Department… The precedent that would be set by this cavalier action would have a devastating effect on the checks and balances that are enshrined in our Constitution.

So was President Obama’s decision to make a recess appointment “unprecedented”? And what about checks and balances?

Funny, but I don’t recall Republicans charging that President Bush engaged in a power grab when he used a recess appointment to name John Bolton as the US Ambassador to the United Nations. Perhaps more importantly, take a look at the following graph (from Mother Jones):

Hmm. It would appear that President Reagan, President George H.W. Bush, and President George W. Bush are all more “undemocratic” (arrogant?) than both President Clinton and President Obama. So maybe Republicans protest a wee bit too much on this issue? Can anyone say “hypocrisy”? What about those stones and glass houses?

But the real issue isn’t whether President Obama was being undemocratic or arrogant or acting in an unprecedented way. Instead, we should focus on the conduct of the Republicans. Remember that the Constitution requires the advise and consent of the Senate. However, Senate Republicans have blocked consideration of Cordray’s nomination to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Well, in this day and age, that’s not so unusual. Filibusters and other delaying tactics to prolong votes on unpopular nominees is nothing new.

But that’s not what happened to Cordray’s nomination.

The Senate didn’t reject Cordray because of his views. Republican Senator’s didn’t really object to Cordray. Instead, Republicans objected to the establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. They objected to the fact that, like other federal agencies, it had a chair (instead of a board of directors). And they objected to it having an budget that did not require the Bureau to come back to Congress for new funding each year. You see, Republicans refused to allow Cordray’s nomination to come to a vote unless President Obama agreed to change the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in ways that would weaken the nascent organization. As CNN noted:

[W]ithout a director, for example, the bureau can't regulate financial products from non-banks, including student loan providers, debt collectors, payday lenders and check cashers.

Without a chief, the bureau also can't regulate mortgage originators and servicers, which played a big role in the financial crisis by providing subprime mortgages to families who couldn't afford them.

Just in case you think that I’m being a bit too hyperbolic in my explanation of Republican objections, here’s what Speaker Boehner had to say:

This position had not been filled for one reason: The agency it heads is bad for jobs and bad for the economy. It’s clear the president would rather trample our system of separation of powers than work with Republicans to move the country forward.

Or there is this statement from Sen. McConnell following the recess appointment (emphasis added):

Earlier this year, 44 of my Senate Republican colleagues and I served notice that we will not confirm any nominee as director, regardless of party, until structural changes are made to make the bureau accountable to the American people — and more transparent.

You see? Nothing about Cordray at all. The objection is to the Bureau that Congress created in 2010. Republicans lost that debate but now they’re trying to hold up the President’s right to appoint a nominee, not because they object to the nominee, but because they object to the structure and purpose of the Bureau. Go back to Sen. McConnell’s claim that the recess appointment has “arrogantly circumvented the American people”. I’d argue that refusing to allow a vote, not because of any issue with the nominee, but because Republicans don’t like the nature of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is the real case of “arrogantly circumvent[ing] the American people”.

Just to be clear, the organization that we’re discussing is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It is designed to help protect consumers. But Republicans don’t like that, do they?

How Do Indiana Politicians Avoid Hearing From Those With Different Opinions? By Suppressing Constitutional Rights!

Tomorrow is the first day of the Indiana General Assembly’s 2012 session (a “short session”). If you’ve followed the news at all, I’m sure that you’re aware that Indiana’s Republican legislators have indicated that their top priority is passage of a so-called “right to work” bill (or, as union supporters refer to it, a “right to work for less” bill). This bill, when introduced in the 2011 session, was the principal issue that led to the walkout of the Democratic delegation in the House.

Now, before getting into the primary issue that I want to discuss, there are is one preliminary matter worth discussing, albeit briefly: Query why Indiana’s Republican legislators (and Governor) are so gung-ho for this type of legislation, especially given the public reaction to efforts to target unions in Wisconsin and Ohio. You’d think that the large public outcry against those efforts (successful recall elections in Wisconsin and a public overturning of the law in Ohio) might make Indiana’s legislators consider whether they really have a mandate for this kind of legislation.

(If I have time, I’ll try to write another post at a later date examining the pro and con arguments for the legislation.)

But what I really want to talk about is the apparent fear that the Republican members of the General Assembly have for actually hearing what opponents of “right to work” legislation have to say. Recall that during the 2011 session, unions and others opposed to Republican overreaching staged huge rallies in Indiana (and Wisconsin and elsewhere). One of the great things about American democracy is that people can and do protest against (or for) legislation and engage in peaceful efforts to make their voices heard. It is one thing for a legislator to vote for a particular piece of legislation that will (or may) harm or have a negative impact on some; it is much more difficult to do so when those who may be aggrieved by the legislation are participating in the democratic process and telling the legislator that the legislation is bad.

So how have Indiana’s Republicans decided to avoid having to hear angry protests against their efforts to pass “right to work” legislation? How will they keep members of Indiana’s unions who believe that they will be harmed by this legislation from making their voices heard (or at least heard too much)? Easy. By suppressing constitutional rights for some.

How have constitutional rights been suppressed and why do I say “for some”? Read on.

Last week, just days before the session was to begin and during a shortened holiday week, Indiana released new “Security Policies” for the Indiana Statehouse. Before discussing the content of these security policies, ask yourself the following questions: Why are those policies being implemented now, just days before the new session opens, a session which promises to be extremely contentious with a highly charged partisan issue at the forefront? If you believe that the policies really are about security, then why weren’t those policies implemented two weeks ago, a month ago, over the summer, or any time in the past? Why weren’t they implemented during protests last spring or during previous sessions for which protests were staged? Why now?

So let’s get to some of the policies:

In order to comply with State fire code occupancy limits, assembly will occur in official meeting rooms, offices, or other pre-designated areas as established by Indiana Department of Administration. No congregation in hallways will be permitted which might interfere with pedestrian flow, entry and exit from offices or meeting rooms, or emergency ingress/egress.

On its face, this limitation at first seems fine. But note the lack of specifics concerning fire code occupancy limits. What precisely are the limits for the Statehouse (and when were they adopted). More importantly, how is a member of the public who wants to protest at the Statehouse supposed to “assembl[e]” in a meeting room or office? Do they get to pick the room or office they’d like to use? Why do I doubt that most meeting rooms or offices are available to protestors. For that matter, how effective will a protest be if it’s limited to a meeting room or office. People can also assemble in “pre-designated areas as established by Indiana Department of Administration”. In other words, Gov. Daniels’ administration can designate areas for protesters, like the basement or perhaps a conference room in Government Center South (which connects to the Statehouse via a tunnel but is not near where legislators meet). And do you have any doubt that some groups will get preferential treatment on their “pre-designated area”? If you don’t think that there will be preferential treatment, keep reading… And then the policy goes on to prohibit “congregation in hallways” if it might interfere with pedestrian flow. Well, now. Isn’t that precisely how protests work? Bring hundreds or thousands of people to the Statehouse and make legislators (and others) have to pass through the throngs in order to get to or from the Statehouse or the House or Senate chambers? For that matter, anyone who has ever been to the Statehouse during a legislative session knows that lobbyists and those wishing to see or speak to their legislators congregate in the hallways outside the respective houses in hopes of capturing the attention of a legislator. Are lobbyists now banned from gathering in such a manner?

Exterior steps at all Statehouse doors should remain clear for emergency egress.

Again, this seems fine on its face. Except that the use of both the east and west steps of the Statehouse as a staging point for political speeches has a long and cherished history in Indiana. Politicians use those steps all the time. And so too do protest groups. Funny, but I seriously doubt that legislators will be prevented from giving speeches on the steps while protestors will be charged with violating the security policy.

The south Statehouse lawn has been designated as the exterior assembly and gathering area. The south steps of the Statehouse and adjacent sidewalks are to be kept clear for emergency egress. An additional area for assemblies and gatherings may be designated by the Indiana Department of Administration if the south lawn is not large enough to accommodate an assembly. Gathering and assembly areas elsewhere on the Statehouse grounds may be authorized by the Indiana Department of Administration and Indiana State Police upon approval of the required application and issuance of a permit as long as state fire code restrictions are observed.

First, the south lawn is not a terribly large area, certainly not as large as the plaza on the west of the building. Nor is the south lawn very convenient. And, unlike the west plaza, the south lawn doesn’t have a good speakers podium (i.e., the stairs at the west entrance). In other words, the policy is trying to shove protests off to the least convenient and effective location. Once again the Department of Administration can designate another area for larger protests but only upon approval of an application and issuance of a permit. In other words, in order to gather in particularly large numbers at the Statehouse, groups will now need to apply for a obtain a permit. How many weeks will that take? And how freely will permits be issued? Will some groups be granted permits while other groups are denied? Will some receive permits more quickly than others? And since when is a permit required to protest at the Statehouse? And why? And why now?

The new security policies also now prohibit “Creating a volume of noise that disrupts the work of the executive, judicial or legislative branches of government, or any committee thereof”. Again, though, isn’t that just what a real protest seeks to do? Don’t protestors want to be loud, to make their voices are heard, to try to force the legislators to hear their complaints before voting on the issues? And I know you’re wondering about the First Amendment; we’ll get to that soon enough.

And the new security policies also prohibit “Signage larger than two feet by two feet (sticks to hold up signs are not permitted)”. Um, why? What does a large sign have to do with security? For reference, most standard poster boards are larger than this (usually 22” x 28”). If the issue is safety, then simply prohibit sticks from being used to hit people (I suspect that is already against the law…).

Finally, as has also been reported (though it isn’t stated in the security policy to which I’ve linked), the maximum occupancy of the Statehouse is going to be 3,000 people, including employees. The estimate is that 1,700 people work in the Statehouse, so only 1,300 additional people will be allowed in (though apparently lobbyists will not be included in this count). Furthermore, I’ve seen reports that the protests last spring drew around 8,000 people. Funny, but I don’t recall hearing any safety concerns back then…

(It’s also worth noting that an initial draft of the security policies went so far as to limit the number of guests that legislators could bring with them, would have required 24 hours’ pre-screening of those guests, and would have prohibited audio-video recording devices in the House and Senate galleries. But those restrictions were apparently omitted at the last minute.)

Anyway, as expected, as soon as these policies were posted, people began to complain and argued that the policies violated the First Amendment (emphasis added):

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

While I think that the First Amendment is both applicable and worth noting, I think that an even better point of analysis begins with Indiana’s Constitution, specifically Article 1, Section 31:

No law shall restrain any of the inhabitants of the State from assembling together in a peaceable manner, to consult for their common good; nor from instructing their representatives; nor from applying to the General Assembly for redress of grievances.

In other words, so long as protests are peaceful, the State of Indiana cannot restrain people from assembling, consulting, instructing their representatives, or applying to the General Assembly for redress. And those are precisely the sorts of conduct prohibited by the new security policies.

And finally, before you say, “But, hey, it’s OK because it’s all for safety,” then consider this:

A prayer group is getting special access to the Statehouse for the opening day of the 2012 session.

People attending Capitol Commission Indiana’s prayer day at the Statehouse can show a copy of an email message to skirt an expected large crowd of union members protesting proposed right-to-work laws on the Legislature’s opening day Wednesday. News of the waivers emerged after state safety officials set a new 3,000-person limit on the number of people inside the Statehouse at one time.

Seriously. If you’d like to attend, here’s the email with the necessary waiver (though it’s also worth noting that the email waiver is no longer available on the website of the group sponsoring the prayer day; they deleted it after word of the waiver went public). And it’s worth noting that the sponsors (and participants) in the prayer day are almost exclusively Republican. Do you still think that certain groups won’t be given preferential treatment? You do? Hmm. Then ask yourself this: How did this group know to obtain a waiver (or go about getting a waiver) before the security policies were announced or implemented?

So, let’s sum up. The week before a highly contentious session of the Indiana General Assembly is scheduled to commence, new “security policies” are implemented that target (anticipated) protests at the Statehouse in violation of both the United States and Indiana Constitutions. The security policies are supposedly aimed at security, not content, but a prayer group is given a waiver to the access rules for the same day that perhaps thousands are expected to show up to protest.

Thus, I think that the conclusion that I drew in the title to this post is accurate: How Do Indiana Politicians Avoid Hearing From Those With Different Opinions? By Suppressing Constitutional Rights!

Whether “right-to-work” is a good idea or bad idea isn’t the issue; rather, the issue is whether the government of the State of Indiana can use “security policies” to try to prevent legislators from having to hear the voices of those who will be aggrieved by their actions. The Founding Fathers in 1789 and Indiana’s Constitutional Framers in 1851 both recognized the core value and importance of permitting protest speech. Now is not the time to decide that the right of people to be heard, to instruct their representatives, to peacefully assemble, and to apply for redress of grievances are simply quaint ideals of the past that can’t stand up to modern safety guidelines, especially when the use of “safety” appears to be nothing more than a pretext.

Back From Vacation

So I’m back from vacation, though not quite as rested as I’d like (and the nasty head cold and hacking cough don’t help).

I have several things that I hope to start writing about in the next few days, though it’s doubtful that I’ll have anything to post until after New Year.

One article that I’m working on is a long-ish examination of Ron Paul. Too many liberals have been seduced by his anti-war position but have completely ignored (or missed) his racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, white supremacist, nativistic, survivalist, anti-government, conspiracy positions … or the fact that he appears to be a liar. So I’ve been collecting all kinds of bits and pieces of information about Paul that I’m working on bringing together into a single post that will hopefully be a sort of one-stop shopping place to go for all sorts of reasons of why Paul should be avoided.

And, I’m sure that as the primaries heat up (well, if they heat up; if Romney does well in Iowa and/or South Carolina, it could be over…) I’ll have more to say.

In the meantime, is there any subject that you’d like to see me address?

Until then, Happy New Year.

Vacation Time!

I’m going to be on vacation for a little while so there won’t be any new posts for a bit. Hopefully, by the time I’m back, my batteries will be recharged and I can gear up for a year of frequent (and meaningful) blogging (especially as the GOP primaries get going and general election looms ever nearer).

So, until then, Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays & Ben Stein Chain Emails (Redux)

Way back in December 2008, I posted a very long, two-part essay about a the use of the phrase “Happy Holidays”, a chain email about something that Ben Stein said, and the so-called “War on Christmas”. Well, here it is, mid-December, and like clockwork I’ve received my first annual copy of the Ben Stein chain email (I usually receive 2-3 copies each year, normally starting in the week or so after Thanksgiving) and have already been subjected to several complaints about the “War on Christmas”. So, I decided to repost my original essay. I’ve cleaned up some typos and formatting errors and combined the two parts into one very long post (if you’re interested, here a links to the original posts: Ben Stein, Chain Emails, & "Happy Holidays" (Part 1) and Ben Stein, Chain Emails, & "Happy Holidays" (Part 2)). You’ve been warned. I’ve put new 2011 additions in purple. I’d hoped to check all of the external links to be sure that they were still active and correct but … well, I do have a job and a family…

But I would really love to hear back from people with their thoughts on the “War on Christmas”, the use of “Happy Holidays” and the general notion of respecting one another.

---

Part 1

Let me apologize in advance for the length of this post and of Part 2 (which I'm actually posting at the same time). Unfortunately, to do justice to the subject, I found that I had to write even more than my usual relatively-lengthy posts. Sorry. And with that, away we go...

First a little background. I’m sure that you've received numerous chain emails on a whole host of different topics. Usually, I just hit the delete key and move on, but every now and then one of these chain emails either interests me or offends me or both. I participate in a number of mailing lists related to various subjects. One of these mailing lists pertains to certain health care matters and is supposed to be limited to that topic. Nevertheless, one particular poster frequently feels the need to send cute little jokes and inspirational messages that I ignore (the jokes aren’t funny and the messages aren’t inspirational). She has also been prone to sending chain emails to the mailing list and, on more than one occasion, these chain emails have been untrue (hoax virus warnings, the crying baby on the doorstep urban legend, and other similar things that have been debunked by Snopes and others). When I receive these messages, I often send her (or others from whom I receive similar messages) a private email noting that the chain email is a hoax or urban legend and offering some suggestions on how to identify hoaxes in the future. Again, this may be an annoyance, but it isn’t really harmful.

But then one day, she posted a message that got me angry (I’ll discuss the subject matter in a minute). After reading the message several times, I started doing a little online research of my own. I found that part of the message was a mostly accurate transcript of an original commentary but that it had been combined with a number of other bits and pieces without proper attribution and which were incorrect. Moreover, even ignoring the numerous errors in the message, I found the subject matter and the conclusions reached by the authors to be highly objectionable. So I decided to write a response. Over the course of a number of lunch hours I drafted my response. I wrote and tweaked and edited until I was happy with my response. My only real concern was that the tone of my response was much harsher than the tone I usually use, but I felt that the circumstances warranted that tone. Finally, before I posted my response, I sent it to my wife to review. She told me that it was a well-written message that did an excellent job of addressing the issues; however, she told me that if I posted the message she would have to kill me. All I would accomplish, she explained, would be the creation of a flame war on the mailing list (in which she is a frequent participant). We argued, but eventually I relented and decided to hold my tongue. I tucked my post away in my drafts folder where it has stayed for quite some time.

In the two years following, I received that same email several times. A few months ago, when the election was heating up, I received the objectionable email from a close family friend (who I think secretly hopes that he can drag me over to the political right). And then, unsurprisingly, here shortly before Christmas, I’ve received yet another copy of the message. Each of the versions of the email that I’ve received are virtually identical with only little bits and pieces changing from one to the next. An online search will reveal several versions of the same general chain message. However, all of the versions of the chain email have warped and expanded the original commentary on which they are based and which they quote.

So finally we get to the actual content of the original commentary and the chain email that it spawned. In late 2005, actor/game show host (and now advocate for creationism and the position that belief in evolution was a root cause of the Holocaust) Ben Stein gave a commentary on CBS Sunday Morning about Nick & Jessica [2011 edit: That would be Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson for those who can’t remember 2005…] and Christmas (sorry the video cannot be embedded). Mr. Stein posted a version of that commentary on his website (it is worth noting that the commentary on the website is subtly different from that which he gave on CBS Sunday Morning, but the differences are essentially non-substantive). Here is the full text of the commentary as posted on Mr. Stein’s website:

Herewith at this happy time of year, a few confessions from my beating heart:

I have no freaking clue who Nick and Jessica are. I see them on the cover of People and Us constantly when I am buying my dog biscuits and kitty litter. I often ask the checkers at the grocery stores. They never know who Nick and Jessica are either. Who are they? Will it change my life if I know who they are and why they have broken up? Why are they so important? I don’t know who Lindsay Lohan is, either, and I do not care at all about Tom Cruise’s wife.

Am I going to be called before a Senate committee and asked if I am a subversive? Maybe, but I just have no clue who Nick and Jessica are. Is this what it means to be no longer young. It’s not so bad.

Next confession: I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don’t feel threatened. I don’t feel discriminated against. That’s what they are: Christmas trees. It doesn’t bother me a bit when people say, “Merry Christmas” to me. I don’t think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn’t bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu. If people want a creche, it’s just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don’t like getting pushed around for being a Jew and I don’t think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can’t find it in the Constitution and I don’t like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship Nick and Jessica and we aren’t allowed to worship God as we understand Him?

I guess that’s a sign that I’m getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where Nick and Jessica came from and where the America we knew went to.

I disagree with some of Mr. Stein’s thoughts (though not about Nick and Jessica or Tom Cruise…), but don’t really care what he has to say. If those comments were the extent of the chain email I would probably have just hit the delete key. Unfortunately, someone, somewhere, decided to embellish Mr. Stein’s comments and tried to make them into much more than they really were. As embellished, Mr. Stein’s comments are then used to try to advance both the simple position that Mr. Stein was commenting about but also to advocate on behalf of prayer in public schools and to attack those of us who support separation of church and state. And, as I mentioned previously, not only are many of the additional points not from Mr. Stein; they are also factually inaccurate. Yet because they appear to have the imprimatur of being spoken by an “expert” (or at least a third-rate celebrity; some people seem to have trouble telling the difference), they are taken at face value. (I find it troubling that Mr. Stein has not added an addendum to the page with his original commentary noting that he is not responsible for the additional thoughts attributed to him that are so readily found floating around the Internet.) Moreover, and more importantly, because Mr. Stein is Jewish (and “confesses” as much in his commentary), his comments (including the embellished additions) are used as a club against Jews (like me) who have a different viewpoint.

So, below is the full text of the chain email that caused me to become so exercised in the first place. As you will see, it is fairly lengthy. Thus, my response (the one that I’ve kept in my drafts folder for two years now), with some minor corrections and edits, but with the original tone largely intact, will be in Part 2 of this post. It is also worth noting that some versions of the chain email completely omit the portions that I've posted in green (and change the subsequent reference to “Nick and Jessica” to “celebrities” [2011 edit: I’m actually surprised that I haven’t received a version of the chain email replacing Nick and Jessica with some kind of Kardashian reference] while others add the portion that I’ve posted in blue.

Something not to laugh about.

If they know of him at all, many folks think Ben Stein is just a quirky actor/comedian who talks in a monotone. He’s also a very intelligent attorney who knows how to put ideas and words together in such a way as to sway juries and make people think clearly.

The following was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on CBS Sunday Morning Commentary.

Herewith at this happy time of year, a few confessions from my beating heart: I have no freaking clue who Nick and Jessica are. I see them on the cover of People and Us constantly when I am buying my dog biscuits and kitty litter. I often ask the checkers at the grocery stores. They never know who Nick and Jessica are either. Who are they? Will it change my life if I know who they are and why they have broken up? Why are they so important?

I don’t know who Lindsay Lohan is either, and I do not care at all about Tom Cruise's wife.

Am I going to be called before a Senate committee and asked if I am a subversive? Maybe, but I just have no clue who Nick and Jessica are.

If this is what it means to be no longer young. It’s not so bad.

Next confession: I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don’t feel threatened. I don’t feel discriminated against. That’s what they are: Christmas trees.

It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, “Merry Christmas” to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn’t bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu. If people want a crèche, it’s just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don’t like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don’t think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can’t find it in the Constitution, and I don’t like it being shoved down my throat.

Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship Nick and Jessica [alternately: celebrities] and we aren’t allowed to worship God as we understand Him?

I guess that’s a sign that I'm getting old, too.

But there are a lot of us who are wondering where Nick and Jessica came from and where the America we knew went to.

In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it’s not funny, it’s intended to get you thinking.

Billy Graham’s daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her “How could God let something like this Happen?” (regarding Katrina)

Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, “I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we’ve been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?”

In light of recent events … terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O’Hare (she was murdered, her body found recently) complained she didn’t want prayer in our schools, and we said OK.

Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school. The Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn’t spank our children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock’s son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he’s talking about and we said OK.

Then someone said teachers and principals better not discipline our children when they misbehave. The school administrators said no faculty member in this school better touch a student when they misbehave because we don’t want any bad publicity, and we surely don’t want to be sued (there’s a big difference between disciplining, touching, beating, smacking, humiliating, kicking, etc.). And we said OK.

Then someone said, let’s let our daughters have abortions if they want, and they won’t even have to tell their parents. And we said OK.

Then some wise school board member said, since boys will be boys and they’re going to do it anyway, let’s give our sons all the condoms they want so they can have all the fun they desire, and we won’t have to tell their parents they got them at school. And we said OK.

Then some of our top elected officials said it doesn't matter what we do in private as long as we do our jobs. Agreeing with them, we said it doesn’t matter to me what anyone, including the President, does in private as long as I have a job and the economy is good.

Then someone said let’s print magazines with pictures of nude women and call it wholesome, down-to-earth appreciation for the beauty of the female body. And we said OK.

And then someone else took that appreciation a step further and published pictures of nude children and then further again by making them available on the Internet. And we said OK, they’re entitled to free speech.

Then the entertainment industry said, let’s make TV shows and movies that promote profanity, violence, and illicit sex. Let’s record music that encourages rape, drugs, murder, suicide, and satanic themes. And we said it’s just entertainment, it has no adverse effect, nobody takes it seriously anyway, so go right ahead.

Now we’re asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don’t know right from wrong, and why it doesn’t bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves. Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with “WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.”

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world’s going to hell.

Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says.

Funny how you can send ‘jokes’ through email and they spread like wildfire but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing.

Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Are you laughing?

Funny how when you forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you’re not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for sending it.

Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.

Pass it on if you think it has merit. If not then just discard it … no one will know you did. But, if you discard this thought process, don’t sit back and complain about what bad shape the world is in.

Before moving on to my response (in Part 2), take a moment and comment on Mr. Stein's original commentary and the embellished thoughts attributed to him.

Part 2

Now that you’ve had a chance to read (in Part 1 of this post) the original commentary and embellished chain email, it is time to turn to my response. Some of my friends and family have already read this, but after receiving yet another version of the Ben Stein chain email, I decided that it was finally time to share. As you will see, my response was written as a direct response to the woman who first posted the chain email to the mailing list. Rather than try to rewrite my response, I’ve simply removed specific references to her but left the overall tone and message intact.

°°°

I have a number of grave problems with the “Ben Stein this is great…” (some versions are entitled “Ben Stein Food for thought”) email that is being circulated. On most days, I might have just brushed my concerns aside and not worried about it. But at the time that I first read this email, I was trying to figure out how to answer the concerns of my very sensitive then-7-year old daughter [2011 update: She’s now 12 going on 19…] who was upset that she had to listen to “Santa stories” in her public school classroom [2011 update: And who is now upset about being required to sing overtly religious songs in her school’s choir class] and who didn't want to make a Christmas stocking in art class (and ironically, the same week that I’m posting this response, I’ve had to deal with concerns from that same daughter, now 9, who was upset that she was being made to draw images of Jesus, Joseph, Mary, and the Three Wise Men in her elementary school Spanish class). It was in this frame of mind that I first received the email bemoaning the absence of God from our schools and public life. Thus, I experienced a visceral response that prompted my original drafting of this essay.

As you will see, the separation of church and state is a major issue for me; perhaps it is simply because I am a part of a religious minority or because I have been on the receiving end of proselytization and religious bigotry. In any event, I have long been an advocate for the separation of church and state and even lobby the Indiana General Assembly on behalf of the Jewish community of Indianapolis on church-state issues (and let me reiterate again that what I say on this blog and in this essay in particular I am saying for myself and am not speaking on behalf of anyone else or any agency with whom I am affiliate). I have no problem with people expressing their faith. Nor do I have a problem if a business elects to follow a religious path or erect a religious symbol. And obviously, I have no problem with a church or other house of worship taking steps to foster its religious viewpoint.

However, I do have a problem when the government becomes enmeshed in religion, especially when the government — my government — tries to tell me that I must pray, how or to whom I must pray, or which religious holidays or religious beliefs meet with “official” approval (or, conversely, chooses to ignore other equally valued religious beliefs). I have a problem when others are not satisfied with prayer in their homes, churches, or other private places and, instead, feel the need to force their prayer upon me, whether or not I agree with their religious beliefs, especially when they want to force their prayer and religious beliefs upon me through the government. And I really have a problem when people want to force those religious viewpoints upon my children in the public schools. I am old enough to make my own religious decisions; I know enough about religion to know what I do and don’t believe; I am not worried about peer pressure; and I am confident enough in myself to stand up and so “no” when asked to do that which violates my sincerely held beliefs. But my now 9-year-old twins should never have to bow down to public pressure to believe a certain way, be made to feel different or an outsider, or be forced to consider their own religious beliefs all because someone else is not satisfied with prayer in their own home or church. I’m curious to know how comfortable you are that your children would be able to handle proselytization from another religious faith, especially if your child were confronted by questions or accusations that go to the core of your religious beliefs or involved questions of religious understanding to which your child had not yet been exposed.

Before delving further into some of the issues raised in the email, however, there are few important preliminary points that must be addressed:

First, the email begins by attributing the text to Ben Stein (and, I must say, that it is getting somewhat tiring having the opinions of a single Jew thrown in my face, almost as if because one Jew believes a certain way, those of us who disagree must be wrong; I suspect that many Christians would take offense if I were to pick and choose the words of a few particular Christians and use those words to paint broadly the viewpoint of all Christians or to challenge the legitimacy of contrary opinions held by other Christians [2011 update: The tactic of offering the minority opinion expressed by a single Jew has become very common both in church-state issues and matters pertaining to Israel and is often referred to by the “as a Jew” sobriquet [as in, “as a Jew, my opinion on issue X…”]). Anyway, while Mr. Stein did, indeed, make some of the comments attributed to him in the email, his comments end before the paragraph that begins with “In light of the many jokes…” See Mr. Stein’s website (or above) for the full text of his comments (which, by the way, differ slightly from those that he actually gave on CBS Sunday Morning).

The email then goes on with a series of other statements and quotations (without recognizing that these statements or quotations were not made or quoted by Mr. Stein). The first of these references an interview between Jane Clayson and Rev. Billy Graham’s daughter Anne Graham (Lotz). The email suggests that this interview and Ms. Lotz’s response were “regarding Katrina”. However, considering the fact that the interview took place on September 13, 2001, it obviously was not in reference to Katrina (and, just as obviously, was in reference to the events of September 11, 2001). Moreover, the statements the email attributes to Ms. Lotz, while close in substance, are not accurate and include far more than what she actually stated (in particular the numerous additional statements noted in blue in Part 1). For additional information, see She Said He Said at BreakTheChain. One of the dangers of the Internet is the ease with which people can be misquoted, quotations taken out of context, or entire quotations fabricated, and then those mistakes are given a life of their own. Before attributing statements, we owe it both to those whom we are quoting and to those whom we want to influence to check the source material for accuracy. Similarly, before forwarding a chain letter (or email), it behooves us all to check the accuracy of the statements therein; after all, when we send that email we are, in essence, putting our name and reputation behind the content of that which we distribute.

The email also goes on to suggest that “recent events” (such as terrorist attacks and school shootings) began when Madeleine Murray O’Hare (her name is actually spelled Madalyn Murray O’Hair) complained that she didn't want “prayer in our schools”. For information on Ms. O’Hair, see the entry for her at Wikipedia (I know, I know, but it is a decent starting point…). In fact, Ms. O’Hair complained of coercive prayer in public schools in the early 1960s! And, by an 8–1 majority, the United States Supreme Court agreed that it was improper for coercive prayer or bible study in public schools. More information on the decisions can be found on the Wikipedia pages discussing Abbington School District v. Schempp and Engel v. Vitale. It is worth noting that four of the Justices on the Supreme Court that decided those cases were appointed by a Republican President. Yet Ms. O’Hair is somehow being blamed for Islamic terrorists attacking America. Timothy McVeigh, perhaps … but the lack of coercive Christian prayer in American public schools does not seem to be one of the things that has sparked fundamentalist Islamic terrorists to attack America. Generally speaking, we Jews don’t believe in prayer in public schools, yet I haven’t seen many Jewish children engaging in school shootings or terrorist attacks; nor, for that matter, have I seen adherents to other religious faiths behind the trigger in school shootings, either.

The email next furthers the foregoing argument by suggesting that America is in trouble because we no longer read the Bible in schools and it is the Bible that teaches “thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself”. I guess, that we are to understand that, if we still taught the Bible in our public schools, we wouldn't kill or steal and we would love each other. First, just because our children don’t read the Bible in public schools doesn’t mean that we can’t (or don’t) teach our children not to kill or steal or can’t or don’t teach them to love one another. [2011 update: Note that it would also appear that the “love your neighbor” admonition only applies if your neighbor is the right kind of neighbor; certainly, you shouldn’t love your Muslim neighbor or your homosexual neighbor, right?] And even when children did read the Bible in public schools, bad things happened: Jim Crow laws prevented blacks from voting or forced them to sit at the back of the bus (and sometimes left them hanging from a tree), but I would be willing to wager that supporters of those laws prayed quite a bit. Murder and burglary did not suddenly start the day that prayers ceased in the public schools; it seems that those societal ills have been with us (and with all of humanity) from the beginning of time, whether or not people prayed (and irrespective of the type of prayer or the deity to which those prayers is offered). It is simply too easy to say that things are bad and to place blame accordingly without empirical evidence supporting the allegation.

Next the email implies that people have been wrong to follow the advice of Dr. Benjamin Spock and appears to ridicule Dr. Spock’s advice because, according to the email, Dr. Spock’s son committed suicide (as if to suggest that if Dr. Spock’s own son committed suicide, then Dr. Spock’s child-rearing advice must have been wrong). While this suggestion is, itself, almost certainly unfair, it is wholly misplaced given that Dr. Spock’s son did not kill himself. Rather, Dr. Spock’s grandson killed himself after a long battle with mental illness (for more information, see Doctored Spock and the entry for Dr. Spock on Wikipedia).

[I added this paragraph after receiving some of the alternate versions of the chain email that added the text that was not in the original version.] Some versions of the email then proceed through a litany of social issues in the buildup to the general premise that the “world is going to hell” as a result of American society’s decisions on those social issues. The authors of the email want us to believe America is in danger and that God is angry because we oppose corporal punishment of our children by teachers and principals, because we support a woman’s right to choose and oppose certain restrictions on that right, because we support giving condoms so that kids who are sexually active don’t become pregnant or get sexually transmitted diseases, because we support the notion of privacy, especially within the confines of our own bedrooms, because we allow pornography to exist, because we allow child pornography (I’m stumped by this one given that child pornography is not only illegal, but it is not protected by the First Amendment and mere possession of child porn is punishable), and because some segments of the entertainment industry espouse viewpoints that may not conform to mainstream beliefs and practices. I could just as easily turn the entire discussion around and argue that America is in danger and God is angry because we don’t take care to properly feed the poor and house the homeless, because we allow children to go without proper health care and make some of the elderly choose between food or medication, because we glorify greed and allow the rich to get richer while the poor get poorer, because we use violence rather than diplomacy and include torture as an accepted way of getting information, because we don’t uphold our own democratic traditions and allow our civil rights to be trampled, because we are willing to discriminate against people on the basis of their religious beliefs or their skin color or their national origin or their sexual orientation, because we use the airwaves to espouse hate and bigotry and to talk about our political opponents as the enemy, because we allow our environment (“God's green earth?”) to be polluted, and because we are egotistical and/or stupid enough to suggest that natural disasters have anything whatsoever to do with human thought.

Finally, the email offers a number of statements that repeat the general allegation that the “world is going to hell” because “public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace”.

Which leads me back to the main point. Those of us who feel strongly about the separation of church and state do not suggest, not even for a moment, that children are not or should not be allowed to pray in public schools. Nor do we argue against public “discussion” of God, gods, or religion. Rather, we argue against public prayer. We argue against government sponsorship or endorsement of particular religions or particular religious viewpoints. We argue that our children should not be compelled to pray in public schools and that the government should not compel a person to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. If a child wants to pray in school, he or she can do so any time, whether on the bus, at recess, at lunch, or even quietly seated at his or her desk. But the government should not tell my child (or your child, for that matter) that the child must pray (and certainly not with a particular prayer or to a particular deity).

And before you say, “but without prayer in public schools, our country has gone to hell”, just consider for a moment what you are really saying: Either, you are saying that we, as parents, have failed at teaching values to our children (because, if the schools aren’t teaching values and children aren’t learning those values, then who else is there to blame but the parents who are not properly teaching and raising their children?) or you are saying that the U.S. should be a religious country in which minority religions are merely tolerated. As to this latter point, remember that the U.S. was initially settled by many people looking to escape religious persecution and bigotry. More importantly, which religious viewpoint should be the dominant one? Assuming that Christianity would be the “national” religion, would that be from a Catholic, Methodist, Lutheran, Baptist, or other viewpoint? Who’s interpretation of scripture would be correct? Who would get to pick which prayers are to be said in our public schools?

For that matter, which Bible would we be using? The Jewish Bible (the Old Testament)? The Catholic Bible? The King James Bible? It is worth noting that the different versions of the Bible have very different texts and meanings. Just consider the Ten Commandments, about which so much has been made recently. Many people want the Ten Commandments posted in the schools and courts. But which version would that be? A simple Google search will reveal a number of examples of different versions of the Ten Commandments. Consider simply the commandment quoted in the email that “Thou shalt not kill”. The use of the word “kill” finds its way into certain translations, while other translations (in particular those that do not go through an intervening Greek and/or Latin translation) usually use the word “murder” instead (and just consider the difference in meaning between those terms). Or, consider that some versions of the Ten Commandments do not include a prohibition against graven images. Even the Bible itself has several versions of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5). For more discussion of the differences and meanings, see the Wikipedia entry on the Ten Commandments.

And which Biblical lessons would we be teaching? I suppose that we should teach how to place a proper monetary value upon our daughters when we sell them into slavery (as permitted by Exodus 21:7). We should teach men how to recognize when a woman is having her menstrual cycle so that we can avoid touching them (as prohibited by Leviticus 15:1924). Perhaps we will need to revisit our teaching of the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Civil Rights movement; after all, Leviticus 25:44 states that we may possess slaves. We will also need to settle once and for all whether Friday, Saturday, or Sunday is the true Sabbath (just when exactly did God tell Christians to move the Sabbath from Saturday [the last day of the week on every calendar that I’ve looked at recently] to Sunday [the first day of the week]; after all, I thought God rested after finishing creation not before getting started)? Why is this important? Because Exodus 35:2 requires that we put to death those who work on the Sabbath. It seems best that we know which day not to work on and schools would be a good place to teach that. We will also have to be sure that our schools don’t serve any kind of shellfish as eating it is an abomination (Leviticus 11:10). I guess, too, that the hippie movement will be forced to make a comeback as our schools should probably teach that trimming a man’s hair, especially around the temples, is forbidden (Leviticus 19:27). I am worried about forcing schools to stop playing football, but given that touching the skin of a dead pig makes a person unclean (Leviticus 11:68) it would seem, at bare minimum, to require that we switch to a synthetic ball. For that matter, ham sandwiches and hot dogs will certainly have to go (Leviticus 11:68) and cheeseburgers will be a thing of the past (Exodus 23:19). And I can’t wait to see how school dress codes are modified to take into consideration the prohibition against wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread; alas, no more cotton/polyester blends (Leviticus 19:19). And I’m particularly looking forward to the part of the curriculum that deals with the proper way to make animal sacrifices.

And before you say that we don’t need to follow all of those commandments from the Bible, please tell me just who it is, precisely, that gets to decide which commandments we keep and which ones we ignore; which commandments still have a place in the modern world and which should be relegated to the past? [2011 update: It seems that this has become even more relevant in recent years as we hear point point to the Bible to support their belief that homosexuality and abortion are sins but ignore other sins described with even greater clarity.] I don’t recall God saying that we get to pick and choose the rules that we want to follow. But then I guess that will be part of the school curriculum as well.

And how are we to reconcile all of this with Jesus’ own prescriptions against public prayer:

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men … when thou prayest, enter into thy closet and when thou has shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret…

(Mathew 6:56). It would seem to me that coercive (or even optional, but organized) prayer in the public schools would violate this admonition. But maybe our new Biblical public school curriculum will include proper instruction on how and where and to whom to pray, too.

Perhaps we can settle these questions in the civilized way that Europeans have used over the millennia: War. Consider, for a moment, the Thirty Years War (1618–1648) in which all of Europe was embroiled in a war over competing versions of Christianity (Catholics v. Lutherans v. Calvinists). By some estimates, millions of people died during this particularly bloody war. European history is filled with examples of war over religious doctrine and dogma. The Spanish Inquisition was a particularly pleasant way of addressing religious differences. And don’t forget Henry VIII who created an entirely new church just because he wanted a divorce. More recently, Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants have seen fit to blow each other up. Christians aren’t alone in their use of violence to resolve religious disputes. Just look at the violence between Muslims and Hindus over Kashmir, between Muslims, Catholics, and Greek Orthodox in the Balkans, not to mention the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Of course, if we were to decide that blowing each other up was the best way to resolve our own petty religious differences, then we wouldn’t be much different from the Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims presently engaged in their own conflict in Iraq in which wholesale kidnapping, torture, and slaughter is apparently an acceptable way to address religious differences.

Consider the following statement from ReligiousTolerance:

Religion is a unique force in society. It motivates individuals to do both good and evil. Historically, it has promoted: an end to slavery, racial integration, equal rights for women, and equal rights for gays and lesbians. It has motivated individuals to create massive support services for the poor, the sick, the hurting, and the broken. Conversely, it has been used to justify slavery, racial segregation, oppression of women, discrimination against homosexuals, genocides, exterminations of minorities, and other horrendous evils.

Religion motivates some to dedicate their lives to help the poor and needy. (e.g. Gandhi, Albert Schweitzer, Mother Teresa.) It drives others to exterminate as many “heretics” as they can. Consider the mass murders and genocides in Bosnia, East Timor, Indonesia, India, Kosovo, the Middle East, Northern Ireland, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Tibet, etc.

Religion has the capability to generate unselfish love in some people, and vicious, raw hatred in others.

Americans love to stand up and say how proud they are of their country and the freedoms and liberties that America stands for. Yet, when those freedoms and liberties challenge us, how many of us are still ready to stand up and support the rights of those with whom they disagree? You pray the way you want, I’ll pray the way I want (if I want), and we’ll leave the schools to teach our children about math and reading and science (and let’s not even get started on the whole issue of creationism or “intelligent design”).

Do we honestly believe that simply offering a public prayer that conforms to a particular religious viewpoint will suddenly cause all children to be good, that burglars and murderers will suddenly repent, that terrorists will leave us alone, and hurricanes will limit their destruction to Mexico or Cuba? Just think about it: Canada allows gay marriage, but it doesn’t appear that God has punished Canada. For that matter Massachusetts also allows gay marriage, but Hurricane Katrina landed far to the south of Boston. [2011 update: And Iowa hasn’t disappeared into a giant sinkhole but Texas has been hit by terrible drought and fires.] So maybe, just maybe, the fact that we don’t allow prayer in public schools has little or nothing to do with how God views our country. Or, perhaps, if God is angry at the U.S., it is because we have not lived up to the challenge of always acting as we should when we support dictators, don’t give enough money to help impoverished nations, continue to allow the environment to be destroyed, rely upon torture to obtain information, and continue to use God and religion as an excuse for political viewpoints that demonize those with whom we disagree. Or maybe, God just wants us to allow gays to marry.

Just consider my own childhood in which the principal at my public elementary school used a derogatory term to describe my mother after I (a somewhat precocious 5th-grader) expressed discomfort at singing “Silent Night” in the school’s Christmas program. When I asked the music teacher if I could simply remain silent during that song, I was given the choice of singing (and not just “mumbling”, I was reminded) or quitting the choir. Or consider that Good Friday was a recognized absence for the Catholic children, but Jews had to call in “sick” to be excused for Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah. Or consider that every student at our public high school had to sit through a performance of Handel's “Messiah” by the school choir (and rise at the appropriate moment). I was told that if I did not attend the performance, I would be suspended. When I later asked the music teacher why that particular piece of music was chosen, she claimed that it was due to the beautiful harmonies and not for its religious content. So, I asked her why it was not included in the spring music program and she replied that it “would lose its meaning”. I could go on and on with examples of the government, through the public school system, attempting to impose a particular religious viewpoint upon me. It was clear to me, as I grew up, that because I was not Christian, I was different and something less than a full participant in my own country. That is wrong. That is not American. I am no more a guest here than any other citizen, whether a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Shinto, Wiccan, or any of the myriad other religions that make up America. And an atheist is no less a citizen than any believer. I am not a guest and my country should not make me feel that I am anything less than on equal footing with every other citizen, no matter my religion (or lack thereof).

And finally, back to Ben Stein. I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Stein that it doesn’t bother me when people refer to Christmas trees as such. Nor am I particularly bothered if someone wishes me a “Merry Christmas”. My wife even likes to listen to some Christmas music (I have allegedly been caught humming “Frosty the Snowman”) and our family will occasionally drive around and look at our neighbors’ Christmas lights. However, while I am not offended, I do wonder what is so wrong with saying “Happy Holidays” as that term is fully inclusive of all people, of whatever religion (or none; the phrase includes New Year’s Day and Thanksgiving and maybe even the winter solstice) rather than being exclusive. So, while I have no problem with Wal-Mart deciding that its greeters should say “Merry Christmas” (can anybody explain why Wal-Mart needs to greet me?), I also have no problem giving my business to Target where diversity is welcomed and inclusiveness is valued [2011 update: well, except of course, diversity or inclusiveness involving … gasp … gays]. That said, I am offended when someone who knows me says “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Hanukkah” or “Happy Holidays” because that tells me that the person doesn’t care enough to be considerate toward me. If I know that someone is Christian, I will try to remember to say “Merry Christmas”. Otherwise, I usually say “Happy Holidays”; I want to be inclusive and be sure that my greeting is appropriate for everyone (but, I’ll acknowledge that when an acquaintance who knows that I’m Jewish wishes me a “Merry Christmas” I am likely to respond with “Happy Hanukkah” if I’m in a bah humbug sort of mood).

Like Mr. Stein, I am not offended by a manger scene. The church on the corner near my home has a lovely living nativity each year. I am, however, offended, when my government chooses to erect a manger scene or allows one to be erected on public property. Why exactly does the government need to erect a manger or to celebrate the birth of Jesus? Don’t churches and private homeowners (not to mention stores and businesses) do a sufficient job of that? The hue and cry about the “attack” on Christmas would make one think that those of us who favor the separation of church and state want to prohibit churches and individuals from showing their faith and devotion when that simply is not the case at all. By all means, hang up your Christmas lights, decorate your tree, erect your crèche. Just do it at your home or at your business or at your church and not on government land and do it without government tax dollars. Is that really too much to ask?

I also agree with Mr. Stein that America is not an “explicitly atheist country”. I am unfamiliar with that claim. Instead, I believe that America is a country that is (or should be) neutral toward religion. America is not atheist any more than it is Christian or Jewish or Muslim or tied to the earth and ancestor spirit faiths of Native Americans. America is all of those things. America is made up of hundreds of different religions (and of those who have either no particular faith or who don’t believe in a god or gods), each of which may be a valuable contribution to the fabric that makes our country (and each of which may also have negative influences as well). But that does not mean that America — as a country and through its institutions — should show favoritism toward any particular religious belief or form of worship (or lack thereof). To exclude coercive prayer from public life, to recognize that not everyone shares the same religious views and beliefs, to value diversity (and the rewards and challenges that diversity can bring) is not “atheist”. But it is American.

Happy Holidays.

°°°

Well, I did warn you that this would be long. If you’ve stayed with me the whole way, thanks. If not … well, I guess that you wouldn’t be reading this would you? Anyway, as I’m sure you can tell by now, the issues that I discussed above are very important to me and about which I tend to get very exercised.