May 14

Seeing the human face in mass media

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We are a cynical lot these days. News people feed into that and drive us deeper into identity politics and divisive culture battles and snarky social media communications, and we are willingly complicit. It takes a startling reality check to make us even think about what we’re doing to ourselves and each other.

I had that recently when Immaculee Ilibagiza was my guest on radio, in a powerfully moving hour of testimony to human dignity amidst the drama of war, hatred, violence and brutality. Although it was set in the Rwandan genocide, the story has plenty of similiarities in our so-called civilized, developed, advanced culture.

Immaculee’s family was brutally murdered in the Rwandan genocide and she had to hide out for 91 days in a cramped bathroom of a pastor’s residence with a group of other women while men with machetes hunted her. But the breathtaking story got worse. She eventually had to face one of those men, she told me, who wielded the murderous weapon with blood-red eyes blazing in a surreal face-off which by any other account would have ended her life instantly.

But by her account, she clutched the rosary her father gave her before he was taken, praying as she had for weeks on end, and stared him in the eyes, unblinking. She had hope and faith and compassion and humanity. He had nothing but rage and hatred and a machete. And he blinked first.

The fact that she’s here to share that account firsthand is a witness to human triumph and divine intervention, and her book has one of the most aptly named titles I have ever heard.

She reminded listeners that when we say harsh or angry things to people online or in print or in any form of comments, when we demean or belittle with nasty words, we deny the humanity of the other person and diminish ourselves in the process.

I was reminded of the interview I saw on CNN of the New York Times journalists kidnapped in Libya who lived to tell about it.

Especially the core message that they saved their lives by maintaining fundamental human dignity. Their captors ordered them to lie face down on the ground, and they refused, knowing it would be easier to shoot them in the back than having to face them. One said he knelt, but maintained eye contact with the captors, which made it harder to shoot him because looking a man in the eyes humanized him.

I’ve been thinking about these interviews lately, and the reminder they serve to put a human face on everyone in and behind the stories of daily life. And show everyone the face of dignity ourselves.

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May 12

Motherhood

Culture, Society No Comments »

There may be a force on earth as powerful as the love of a mother. But I doubt it.

You may say it’s the force of love itself, and I’ll give you no quarrel with the power of love. But there’s something universal, timeless, transcendental and inscrutable about Mother love that cranks it up to a high notch.

Scientists do research on the value of a loving, nurting mother and filmmakers do movies about the indomitable power of that love. But the day to day reality of it is beyond reach and grasp.

She’ll do anything for you. The greater your need the more she will try to move the heavens and the earth to answer or eliminate it. If you have an ailment or illness or any sort of pain, she will beg God to give it to her instead, to let her take it from you, but because that’s not how God works she will suffer with you and with an exquisite pain that pierces the heart and tries the soul like iron in the fire.

She may be silent and she may be profusely wordy but she searches for her own way to express what you need to hear. Or what she struggles to understand as your need to hear and her best expression to say, and it’s never right, or good, or good enough.

My friend and radio show guest Dr. Meg Meeker taps into this better than anyone, professionally and personally and poignantly. So this year she presents a Mother’s Day Challenge.

First, write down all of the things that you feel that you should be. You know, like: nicer, more patient, more assertive, less assertive, etc. We all have our own lists. Then, write down all of the things that you should do. Cook better meals, make more money, clean your house more frequently, spend more “quality time” with your kids. Having trouble coming up with your lists? You’re not being honest. Think about the “other woman” who lives in your heads and talks to you every day. You remember her- she’s the version of the mother that you should be. The perfect you, as a mom. Put her down on paper. Really let it out. Write down what she tells you that you should be doing, where you should be going, how much exercise you should be getting (mine’s telling me I should go to the gym as soon as I’m done) and how your kids would be behaving if you were more like her. Now you’re getting it. Spend some time thinking about her. What does she look like, what does she sound like? She speaks so much more nicely than you do- because she never raises her voice.

After you have done this exercise, carefully read over what you have written. I know, your kids should be in a higher reading group. Your daughter would be dancing four times per week if you had the money. Maybe you need a better job to pay for those lessons. That’s what she would do. Read the list over and over and add to it over the next couple of days.

Now- here comes the good part. Drag your pen to the bottom of the page and start scratching things off of the list. Tell her to shrink. You don’t need her in your head. She’s fictitious. She never will exist because she doesn’t need to. Here’s the best news of all: your kids don’t like her and they don’t want her as their Mom. They want you.

Replace the lists you have made with reality, Your kids want you. They want to be with you, laugh with you and do errands with you. They don’t need to be in a higher reading group, dance more, have a nicer bedroom or a cleaner house. And- they don’t really care that much about your cooking. They don’t care whether you buy brownies at the store, make them from a box or even make them from scratch. Those are YOUR issues. They just want to eat the brownie with you.

This Mother’s Day, I want to eat brownies and cookies, have tea or coffee or a toast, with my mother in gratitude for who she is. And with my sons for who they are. What inexpressible gifts.

The Second Vatican Council fathers understood this.

Wives, mothers of families, the first educators of the human race in the intimacy of the family circle, pass on to your sons and your daughters the traditions of your fathers at the same time that you prepare them for an unsearchable future. Always remember that by her children a mother belongs to that future which perhaps she will not see.

But for which she will be watchful and forever grateful.

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May 10

First Lady fashion

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This is not what I normally write about. Not that it’s not interesting to see how some very high profile women in the news dress, from wardrobe to accessories and all. I actually pay attention to that, wondering to myself where some of them get some of these cool clothes, since I want to look my best but hate to shop and have expensive taste and a low budget. But  now the media are writing about these things, and, talk about expensive taste…

They’re looking at Michelle Obama and Ann Romney.

While the political fashionistas had a field day this week with Ann Romney’s nearly $1,000 blouse, she is not the only presidential candidates’ wife with expensive taste. Despite her penchant for more affordable clothing, first lady Michelle Obama also has a pricey wardrobe.

From Balenciaga and Helmut Lang to Michael Kors and Marchesa, the first lady has been known to wear some big-name, and expensive, designer fashions. Last week alone, Mrs. Obama was spotted in two different L’Wren Scott cardigans, priced between $2,000 and $3,000.

What?!

It should be noted, however, that Mrs. Obama is also well-known for boosting sales at the more affordable J. Crew and has been seen shopping at the discount store Target.

Yes, by media given the photo op notice.

But  back to that ABC story…

Mrs. Romney’s decision to wear Reed Krakoff’s silk bird-printed design on morning television raised eyebrows earlier this week. The blouse retails for $990. With the state of the economy a key campaign theme for their husbands, both women’s fashion choices will likely be heavily scrutinized in the run-up to election day.

And there’s the point I want to make. That sentence is key.

With the state of the economy a key concern for voters in the US in this presidential election, which makes it a critical issue in the campaigns of both candidates, the media are focusing on their wives wardrobes. And not only that, assuring us that those wardrobes will probably “be heavily scrutinized in the run-up to election day.” Oh, really?

Are the people as concerned about this as the media? Have the media scrutinized high ticket fundraising dinners commanding about $35,000 a couple? Or is that per ticket? Do the 99 percent pay close attention to these things?

No. The majority of Americans are most concerned these days about jobs and prices and finances and paying their mortgages. Even a chunk of the Occupy movement has directed their focus on the SEC and banks and the federal regulatory process.

There’s an extraordinary amount of attention on women this year, a political calculation and strategy. When the administration announced in late January that it was mandating employer-provided insurance coverage for contraception and sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs, the controversy that erupted over its violation of religious liberty was spun into a ‘war on women,’ was was and is ludicrous.

Few media outlets picked up on this.

Women lost out in the jobs market in March, according to an analysis of the latest government figures.

Male participation in the workforce was up 14,000 while female participation fell 177,000, according to the labor department’s latest figures.

“This recovery has not been great for women,” said Betsey Stevenson, assistant professor of business and public policy at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business school…

“I am concerned about what is happening with female unemployment,” said Stevenson.

I am concerned about what is happening with identity politics, gender and racial politics and class warfare. And now with attention fixed on the vice-president and president declaring their “support for gay marriage,” pollsters are doing a brisk business in predicting who benefits politically and what this may mean to the candidates and their support bases.

This is all being used to distract attention from the impact of the economy and its ramifications on Americans of all styles and stripes. It’s a political fashion.

And I’m not buying it, either.

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May 09

Obama’s unsurprising marriage epiphany

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It may have erupted in the Twitterverse and on MSM sites, but the only possible surprise element may have been the timing. Maybe.

Because President Obama’s was among the most expected and awaited coming out moments in the nation. Which makes you wonder, what was outed, per se?

So President Obama has come out in favor of same-sex marriage. Now what?

His announcement Wednesday provoked an outpouring of appreciation from the gay community, but it also raised questions about whether and how it would translate into actions. Having made history as the first sitting president to support gay unions, he could leave it at that, turning his attention back to the economic concerns that remain the top priority for American voters.

(Note that sentiment. It’s important.)

But his endorsement has increased hopes among gay rights groups that Obama will take a more forceful stand on gay rights as well as gay marriage, which remains a divisive and emotional subject that could complicate his reelection efforts.

“This is the most LGBT-friendly administration in history, and the things the White House has done and the administrative agencies have done on behalf of [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] people are tremendous,” said Rachel B. Tiven, executive director of Immigration Equality, which advocates for same-sex couples in the immigration system. “And yet, everybody wants full equality, not half equality.”

So this is where I have a question or thought or two. Because everything else involving Vice President Joe Biden setting the stage for this announcement, and the president’s admission which was not exactly breaking news, has received saturation coverage already. Especially as it relates to political strategy, which seems to be the driving force of this evolution.

Especially considering that it came the day after the North Carolina election in which voters again upheld the historical legal definition of marriage as between one man and one woman.

But that’s part of my observation about this issue and very public debate. The language used to debate it.

In almost everything I heard on this issue, it was framed by media as opposition to a good, a right. And who is opposed to it (North Carolina voters being the latest) and who favors the right, such as it is claimed (the vice-president and president  being the latest). One network news commentator declared it as the civil rights issue of our time. Or at least the one I heard, while tuned in.

None of us wants to be on the wrong side of any human rights issue. Which is why it’s so strategic to make this a human rights issue. No wonder the poll numbers are changing, trending towards acceptance or approval of “same sex marriage.” By word control the merchants of ideas and politics are attempting thought control, and it works by casting a whole segment of the population as “opponents” of a “right.” When in fact what we’re talking about is the redefinition of marriage. Which changes the linguisitic calculus.

So let’s do a thought experiment: Instead of being intolerant opponents of same-sex marriage (a negative), majority voters in 32 states now (all the states where it was put to a vote) are actually proponents of the traditional definition of marriage (a positive), and opponents of that tradition are intolerant of anyone who disagrees with their views of legal recognition of marriage. Which members of the Catholic church hold as a sacrament besides a law.

Almost nobody is talking about the rights of children in this battle. Almost. But these folks are.

William B. May, founder and chairman of the San Francisco-based group that promotes Catholic social teaching on society’s common interest….[says]

“Underlying the proposal to redefine marriage, is an assumption that marriage is merely the committed relationship between two loving people…And a lot of us think of marriage in terms of the adult perspective, and the benefit for adults.”

“That’s a private interest – and that’s not what marriage really is.”

“Marriage is more than that. It’s a communion of persons. And when we look at it from the perspective of the child, it’s the heart’s desire of every person – without exception – to be united with, and to know, the man and woman that they came from. That’s part of who we are.”

“What’s happening now, with the redefinition of marriage in the minds of people, is that more and more children are becoming deprived of that experience – which is a human right – to be born into, and raised in, a family with a mother and a father united in marriage.”

Society and culture, May explained, have perennially defined marriage in this manner for the sake of binding men and women to fulfill this duty to their children.

Thus, any redefinition weakens the unique cultural and legal standing of the only institution that secures the integral bond between children and parents.

“The harm is this,” he said. “By redefining marriage as merely the public recognition of a relationship between adults, we essentially ban the promotion of marriage as the only institution that unites a man and a woman with each other and any children born from their union.”

“It creates a conflict with the human rights of the child, to know and be cared for by their mother and father in the union of a marriage.”

May said this conflict would represent a clash between the public interest of all children – in the recognition and promotion of the type of union in which they have a right to be raised – and the private interest of homosexuals involving an essentially different type of relationship.

“To promote the unique value of the union of a man and a woman would then be legally ‘discriminatory’ against homosexuals – because it would be making a statement that one type of relationship has greater value. And it would not be permitted, if marriage is redefined as merely a committed relationship between adults.”

Not only the state, but “every institution in society,” May indicated, would then be “bound under the law” to ignore the most compelling public purpose for marriage, as a safeguard for children’s rights.

As for other ’interest groups’ (since this is a political calculus), Elizabeth Scalia does an interesting roundup here.

My first thought was: what does this mean for the black churches? Back in 2008 it was the black Christian vote that defeated gay marriage in California. African Americans voted for Obama, but while they were there, they voted against gay marriage. It’s one of those stories no one wanted to talk about. Now, things become interesting: do African American churches, hearing the president say that “my Christian beliefs” inform this newly declared viewpoint, simply give up their own beliefs to support his or do they stand for their own? And then, who’s Christian beliefs are right? That’s a whole ball of wax I bet no one wanted to deal with in this election.

But there it is. Forcing the issue to the public arena of ideas and debate. So let it be about that, beliefs and worldviews on economic and foreign and domestic issues, and public policy on social moral issues as well as fiscal issues.

And let it be fair and honest.

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May 06

Overpopulation myths, anti-humanism and Chen Guongcheng

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The Obama administration was involved at the highest levels of diplomacy with China last week to negotiate a deal over the fate of a human rights activist targeted by the Chinese government because he exposed so much abuse tied to China’s population control policy. Big media did a good job driving that story and keeping Chen’s fate a top and prominent focus.

Some of them noted this president’s difficulties with human rights affairs around the world. But since this crisis was tied to China’s one-child policy, their draconian population control response to a perceived global crisis, it presented a particularly gnarly problem for a president whose science adviser is a disciple of the population control guru Paul Ehrlich.

To pick up where the post below left off, on an excerpt from Merchants of Despair…

Until the mid-1960s, American population control programs, both at home and abroad, were largely funded and implemented by private organizations such as the Population Council and Planned Parenthood — groups with deep roots in the eugenics movement…

This situation changed radically in the mid-1960s, when the U.S. Congress, responding to the agitation of overpopulation  ideologues, finally appropriated federal funds to underwrite first domestic and then foreign population control programs. Suddenly, instead of mere millions, there were hundreds of millions and eventually billions of dollars available to fund global campaigns of mass abortion and forced sterilization. The result would be human catastrophe on a worldwide scale.

Population Research Institute’s president Steven Mosher told me that China boasted of addressing perceived overpopulation issues by aborting 400 million babies, which was so breathtaking I asked him to repeat that statement. He said forced abortion has been the policy in China since 1979, after the government there bought into the Club of Rome study ‘Limits to Growth’ purportedly showing that the world would run out of resources if we don’t drastically reduce populations. Although, Mosher quickly added, the study was debunked within two years as a fraud. The voices discrediting the report somehow didn’t reach China.

Fast forward to now, with what Mosher referred to as ‘the most pro-abortion, population control administration in our history’, and here we are.

In Merchants of Despair, Zubrin states:

The human race is not, as later Malthus admirers John Holdren (currently President Obama’s science advisor) and Paul Ehrlich sneered in 1971, so many bacteria in a culture dish, doomed to quick extintion unless our appetites can be controlled by wise overlords wielding sterilants to curb our excessive multiplication.

To be precise, that quote from Global Ecology in 1971 was this:

When a population of organisms grows in a finite environment, sooner or later it will encounter a resource limit. This phenomenon, described by ecologists as reaching the “carrying capacity” of the environment, applies to bacteria on a culture dish, to fruit flies in a jar of agar, and to buffalo on a prairie. It must also apply to man on this finite planet.

To which Zubrin responds:

No: we are creative inventors, and the more of us there are, the better off we are. And the freer we are, the faster we can make the inventions that can advance our condition still further.

China never got that memo, and Congressman Chris Smith told me he pleaded with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to assure Chen Guongcheng’s safety and confront the Chinese government about their brutal policy that has particularly targeted baby girls, called the ‘lost daughters of China’ by human rights activists. “This is the true war on women,” Smith told me, alluding to the politically strategic spin in news cycles lately between Democrats and Republicans. And people in high places have been “indifferent” to China’s forced abortions, causing “tens of millions of aborted baby girls” and many years of women being “denied basic freedoms.”

Congressman Smith was instrumental in Chen’s eventual arrangements for release, tenuous as that remains. Now, he told me, the US and western media are obligated to follow up on Chen’s safe travel with his family, as well as the internal business of securing safety for his extended family and human rights activists who helped him. The media have been nearly heroic exposing this cause, he said. The State Department has its own duty to protect…

and demonstrate to the world that the US stands firm for fundamental human rights and the rule of law.

The world has been watching this drama for the past week. The upside to the tense drama is that maybe now they’ll focus more on the human rights cause at the center of Chen’s activism.

Which PRI does constantly.

Stay tuned.

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May 06

Overpopulation myths, pseudo-science and anti-humanism

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That’s a lot to take on, especially about an establishment movement.

But I did a set of interviews with Dr. Robert Zubrin, author of Merchants of Despair on these topics right around Earth Day recently, and found he did just that, with thorough research and historic and scientific references. Which he pursues with passion not just to debunk myths, but to set the record straight on human flourishing  and ethical ecology. It’s stunning to learn the scope and depth and power of the misinformation.

Then, because of the Chen Guoncheng ordeal last week, I got human rights expert Steven Mosher on for a radio interview on the China one child policy and the back story behind it, because there are few experts in the world as knowledgable and experienced in documenting China’s population control as Mosher is.

Congressman Chris Smith gave me an update with astonishing background to the Chen story and the human rights violations record of the Chinese government, based partially but largely on falsified Western studies warning that population control was an urgent necessity to save the planet and its resources from a doomsday crisis.

There’s a crisis alright. But it’s in the human toll of these persistent myths based on the enduring eugenics movement. How can these atrocities continue, with widespread approval or at least acceptance, explicit or implicit, by governments and international organizations?

Through political power, says Zubrin, and the cult of antihumanism.

There is a single ideological current running through a seemingly disparate collection of noxious modern political and scientific movements, ranging from militarism, imperialism, racism, xenophobia, and radical environmentalism, to socialism, Nazism, and totalitarian communism. This is the ideology of antihumanism: the belief that the human race is a horde of vermin whose unconstrained aspirations and appetites endanger the natural order, and that tyrannical measures are necessary to constrain humanity.

Which brings the China one-child policy and Chen Guongcheng into the picture, but more on that in a bit…

The founding prophet of modern antihumanism is Thomas Malthus (1766-1834), who offered a pseudoscientific basis for the idea that human reproduction always outruns available resources. Following this pessimistic and inaccurate assessment of the capacity of human ingenuity to develop new resources, Malthus advocated oppressive policies that led to the starvation of millions in India and Ireland.

Zubrin’s book documents the horrors of how this played out in both lands, and it’s appalling. And totally unnecessary. Which should have been made clear long ago.

However…

While Malthus’s argument that human population growth invariably leads to famine and poverty is plainly at odds with the historical evidence, which shows global living standards rising with population growth, it nonetheless persisted and even gained strength among intellectuals and political leaders in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Its most pernicious manifestation in recent decades has been the doctrine of population control, famously advocated by ecologist Paul Ehrlich, whose bestselling 1968 antihumanist tract The Population Bomb has served as the bible of neo-Malthusianism. In this book, Ehrlich warned of overpopulation and advocated that the American government adopt stringent population control measures, both domestically and for the Third World countries that received American foreign aid. (Ehrlich, it should be noted, is the mentor of and frequent collaborator with John Holdren, President Obama’s science advisor.)

And so it continues.

In the next post.

 

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May 03

National Day of Prayer and ever present politics

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This is a dicey year for the president threatening religious liberty to be issuing a proclamation to honor the day called for national prayer. He chose his words carefully.

Let’s look at President Obama’s proclamation:

Prayer has always been a part of the American story, and today countless Americans rely on prayer for comfort, direction, and strength, praying not only for themselves, but for their communities, their country, and the world.

On this National Day of Prayer, we give thanks for our democracy that respects the beliefs and protects the religious freedom of all people to pray, worship, or abstain according to the dictates of their conscience.

Hold on. Right there. That wording reveals a narrow view of what constitutes religious freedom, specifically that it means people can pray or worship, or not, according to…what?…their conscience. So there it is again, another example of this administration morphing freedom of religion into freedom of worship. Which views the participation of religiously informed people in the public and political arena as something to be defined and restricted by government. While those people are welcome to go behind the doors of their home or worship space and do whatever prayers or services they wish.

And “according to the dictates of their conscience” is peculiar wording for a president whose administration is, through the HHS mandate, requiring individuals and religious institutions to do something that violates their conscience.

Back to the proclamation:

Let us pray for all the citizens of our great Nation, particularly those who are sick, mourning, or without hope, and ask God for the sustenance to meet the challenges we face as a Nation. May we embrace the responsibility we have to each other, and rely on the better angels of our nature in service to one another.

May we embrace the responsibility we have to each other? Who constitutes each other? Who is excluded from the class of those worthy of such protection or provision of care? Of course, it’s the unborn, every human being already in existence but not yet completely through the birth canal at delivery. Who in the abortion industry or among its supporters is listening to ‘the better angels’ that by human nature, we all surely have?

Let us be humble in our convictions, and courageous in our virtue.

Yes, let’s.

Let us pray for those who are suffering around the world, and let us be open to opportunities to ease that suffering.

Without attaching to such relief the condition that contraception and abortion be part of the package of aid.

Let us also pay tribute to the men and women of our Armed Forces who have answered our country’s call to serve with honor in the pursuit of peace. Our grateful Nation is humbled by the sacrifices made to protect and defend our security and freedom. Let us pray for the continued strength and safety of our service members and their families. While we pause to honor those who have made the ultimate sacrifice defending liberty, let us remember and lend our voices to the principles for which they fought — unity, human dignity, and the pursuit of justice.

Yes, let us remember and honor human dignity. And the pursuit of justice. And be unified in our defense of the liberty to do so in private and in public.

Amen to that.

UPDATE: Religious freedom expert interprets Obama’s prayer proclamation.

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Apr 30

Obama’s awkward bragging campaign

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He has used other bluffs to their fullest extent. Now the president and his team are playing his  ’killed Osama bin Laden’ card for all it’s worth. Is it a gamble?

I think so. For many reasons. But first, let me just say I’m very uncomfortable with the president of the United States ‘gloating‘ over this or any other killing, even though this one took out a deadly public enemy who eluded allied forces for about a decade.

With the May 1 anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s killing upon us, the White House is going to great lengths to remind everyone all about it. For starters, there’s Joe Biden’s new stock phrase: “Bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive.” Then there’s the ad suggesting that Mitt Romney wouldn’t have had the guts to approve the raid. And it culminates with an interview of President Obama by NBC’s Brian Williams that airs next week from the White House Situation Room, notes Politico. That’s where the now-iconic photo was taken of top officials watching the raid.

“Few presidents have talked about the killing of an individual enemy in such an expansive way,” says the New York Times in a story today about the strategy. It could be a risky one.

It started with a weird and, I think, unpresidential ‘victory lap’ a year ago, as Saturday Night Live captured in a ripe parody. Lately, it’s been ramping up as a campaign boast, and that gets us up to speed, sort of. As much as I don’t want us to be ‘at speed’ with this one.

Senior Obama campaign adviser Robert Gibbs defended the campaign’s use of the event in a recent Web video and in a speech from Vice President Joe Biden. Meanwhile, senior Romney adviser Ed Gillespie characterized the political steps surrounding the death as a “bridge too far.”

Which is the exact term I used when Obama took the already controversial ‘individual mandate’ in his healthcare law (with government requiring citizens to purchase something) to a new level with the HHS mandate (with government requiring citizens to purchase something that violates their conscience).

But I digress…

Team Obama released a video on Friday, partially narrated by former President Bill Clinton, that praised the president’s decision to order the killing of the al Qaeda chief one year from Tuesday and questioned whether Romney would have made the same choice. Biden similarly questioned the former Massachusetts governor in a campaign-style speech on Thursday.

When I first saw it, I found it hard to take seriously or even hard to believe that the president’s team thought it worthy of presidential politics. What would Mitt do? Seriously? You are campaigning on that?

Okay, back to the principled thinking here.

Gillespie, a former aide to former President George W. Bush and former chairman of the Republican National Committee, said utilizing the raid for political purposes is one of the reasons Obama has “become one of the most divisive presidents in American history.”

“He took something that was a unifying event for all Americans, and he’s managed to turn it into a divisive, partisan political attack,” Gillespie said in a separate interview on the same NBC program. “I think most Americans will see it as a sign of a desperate campaign.”

The campaign video received criticism from Republicans, including from 2008 Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain. On Friday, he called the minute-long spot “a cheap political attack ad.”

Nonetheless…

Biden teed off what will likely remain a talking point from Team Obama through the election in a Thursday address that previewed a potential 2012 slogan.

“If you are looking for a bumper sticker to sum up how President Obama has handled what we inherited, it’s pretty simple: Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive,” Biden said during a speech at New York University, lines Gibbs echoed on Sunday.

The president will pick up the message with what the campaign has billed as the president’s re-election kick-off on Saturday.

So it appears we’ll hear plenty about who and what Obama has killed and allowed to live. An inauspicious strategy, but an unsurprising one, for a campaign used to running on bumper sticker slogans.

UPDATE: Arianna Huffington calls the president’s ‘bin Laden ad’ despicable.

UPDATE II: SEALs slam Obama for using them in election campaign.

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Apr 29

Liberals sometimes want bishops to speak up

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Until they don’t. Depends on the issue.

But it’s interesting to juxtapose reactions to the US bishops speaking out on different issues.

Like former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s flip-flopping (popular term in politics) from wanting the bishops to stay out of politics when it comes to matters of faith and morals and Catholic politicians, to wanting the bishops to speak from the pulpit actively engaging Catholics to support a measure she backed and felt they should, too. That time, it was immigration reform.

But a big talking point for liberal Catholic Democrats in Congress who disagree with Church teaching and vote for measures according to their own lights, is the primacy of conscience.

Which the Vatican took up as the focus of a conference on the whole issue of conscience, after it got batted about with no small amount of confusion.

So because these legislators have so emphatically insisted on the preeminent primacy of conscience, I’m wondering why the the legislation authored by Congressman Jeff Fortenberry, Respect for Rights of Conscience Act failed in the Senate as the Blunt-Fortenberry bill, and why it’s not getting more support in the House.

“We have come together to say it’s time to act to protect Americans’ most basic rights – our religious freedom and rights of conscience,” Fortenberry said. “I am very pleased to stand with House and Senate colleagues of both parties to call for swift action on this bill.” 

Yes, it’s bipartisan. It’s about the fundamental human right to conscience protection. But it’s received no primacy of attention, or any at all, from those liberal Catholic politicians and precious little from moderates and even conservatives. Because it’s political kryptonite for ambitious senators and congressmen.

In early March, Cong. Fortenberry told me he had 220 co-sponsors and he was hopeful more members of Congress would sign on since the recently announced HHS mandate posed unprecedented federal threats to conscience rights and religious liberty. Last week, Cong. Fortenberry told me he has 224 co-sponsors. That’s shameful, for a lot of people.

The bishops are speaking out alright, more unified than they’ve ever been before. This is their Magna Carta.

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Apr 26

Meanwhile, Ron Paul

Abortion, Culture, Law, Politics, Society 1 Comment »

He shouldn’t be an ‘also ran’ or even an afterthought. And he’s not being taken as one, at least by those who realize the importance and strength of the candidate’s following.

I’ve been saying for a while now that whoever wins the GOP nomination had better take Ron Paul and his followers, more like a movement, seriously. I’m staring to hear news pundits say something similar. Like the political analyst on one of the networks who noted “Ron Paul’s campaign is about $2 million in the black. And he’ll probably have a role in the convention on the platform.” Good for him. He deserves it.

All the GOP contenders should have a voice in hammering out the platform and policies on the issues, social and fiscal, domestic and foreign.

But Ron Paul is that sure and steady candidate still actively campaigning in order to keep his message in the forum. And it’s being heard.

If forcing his philosophy into the mainstream is the benchmark, Paul can claim victory. Listening to his rivals in the Republican debates demand that the Fed be audited and the Departments of Energy and Education be shuttered, it’s clear that many of Paul’s positions, once considered extreme, are now Republican talking points. Paul’s influence outweighs his low poll rankings and back-of-the-pack primary returns.

“Our time has come,” says Paul, tempering the display of optimism. “It’s still going to be a knock-down, dragged-out fight.”

Paul leaves behind a small army of brawlers itching to take up the battle in his name. This election year, at least 65 of his supporters are campaigning for local, state, or national office in 23 states. They join more than a dozen Paul acolytes who won elections in 2010…

Usually, “when a candidate drops out, the followers go too,” says Aaron Libby, a 29-year-old Maine blueberry farmer and Paul die-hard who was elected to the state legislature in 2010. “They were following a candidate; we are following a movement.”

And he keeps going, consistent in his views and positively persistent in his determination to make a difference not just in politics, but mainly in government.

“He has very fresh ideas and I think it’s easier, as you build your own philosophy, to accept those things,” Gonzalez said. “I can only speak for myself and my chapter members. We really like the fact that Ron Paul is just a really down to earth and honest man. That is so rare in politics.”

I interviewed Dr. Paul recently and appreciated his frank and sincere views on the unquestionable beginning of human life at conception, and the human rights of each life. That noble simplicity has, or should have, a role in his party’s future.

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