Actually, we are not anti-religion around here, but we do realize how dangerous religion and government can be, when enter twined; dogma, ideology...spells really big trouble, if not disaster.
Media Matters - Left Behind: The Skewed Representation of Religion in Major News Media:
It would surprise few people, conservative or progressive, to learn that coverage of the intersection of religion and politics tends to oversimplify both. If this oversimplification occurred to the benefit or detriment of neither side of the political divide, then the weaknesses in coverage of religion would be of only academic interest. But as this study documents, coverage of religion not only over-represents some voices and under-represents others, it does so in a way that is consistently advantageous to conservatives.
As in many areas, the decisions journalists make when deciding which voices to include in their stories have serious consequences. What is the picture of religious opinion? Who is a religious leader? Whose views represent important groups of believers? Every time a journalist writes a story, he or she answers these questions by deciding whom to quote and how to characterize their views.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Crusading Crackpots Taking Over the Military
Mikey Weinstein Tackles the Evangelical Coup in America's Military
Submitted by BuzzFlash on Wed, 06/13/2007 - 5:00pm. Interviews
A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW
Whenever a virulent form of any religion has engaged the machinery of the state -– and by that, I’m talking about the armed forces, where the sticks and stones are that break our bones -- we end up with oceans and oceans of blood. And it’s happening again now.
-- Michael "Mikey" L. Weinstein, President, Military Religious Freedom Foundation
Michael "Mikey" Weinstein represents an extended family of graduates from the U.S. Air Force Academy. As his biography proudly notes: "Mikey comes from a family that has dedicated itself to the service of the United States. One indication of the family’s commitment is its multi-generational association with the nation’s military academies, in particular, the United States Air Force Academy. His father graduated from the United States Naval Academy. Mikey is a graduate of the Air Force Academy, as are his brother-in-law, eldest son and daughter-in-law. His youngest son is currently a cadet at the Air Force Academy.
"Weinstein served for ten years on active duty in the United States Air Force as a Judge Advocate, stationed at military installations in California, New Mexico, Illinois, and Washington, DC. He also served as the Air Force’s first Chief of Telecommunications and Information Systems Procurement Law."
His love of the Air Force and the military is equal to his passion for the Constitution. That is why he is now a man with a mission: to stop the growing evangelical takeover of our military, particularly at the academy level.
Weinstein founded and heads the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. Its mission is to ensure the separation of church and state in our military -- and the right of academy and military members to be free from religious coercion and harassment.
Sounds simple enough, doesn't it?
But under the Bush Administration, the phrase "Onward Christian soldiers" has been taken literally by many in the Pentagon, our military training centers, and the VA system.
Weinstein recently wrote a compelling book, With God on Our Side: One Man's War Against an Evangelical Coup in America's Military, describing the growing evangelical threat to cadets, GIs and veterans who are not fundamentalists.
We talked with Weinstein recently about the dangerous trend of our armed forces becoming shock troops for Jesus, with the missionary zeal coming from the highest levels.
* * *
BuzzFlash: Can you tell us about the personal history that you and your family have with the Air Force Academy and in the Reagan administration?
Michael L. Weinstein: Certainly. My family is a Jewish-American family, so a little bit unique in that we have three consecutive generations of military academy graduates. My youngest son was the sixth member of my family to attend the Academy, including myself. My father is an Annapolis graduate. In my immediate family, we have over 120 years of combined military service to the country, in pretty much every major combat engagement America’s been in from World War I to the current so-called global war on terror.
I am a registered Republican, and I spent over three years in the West Wing of the Reagan White House, initially working for the Office of Management and Budget. Then I moved over to become Assistant General Counsel for the entire White House Office of Administration. There, I was named the committee management officer for the Iran-Contra investigation. The family has a very, very strong military history, and obviously three generations of military academy graduates.
BuzzFlash: Are you an attorney, too?
Michael L. Weinstein: Yes. And I guess for the last 41 months, I’ve become this thing called a civil libertarian/political activist.
BuzzFlash: You wrote a book which we are offering on BuzzFlash.com as a premium. It’s called With God on Our Side: One Man’s War Against an Evangelical Coup in America’s Military. Clearly, you speak from first-hand experience. Why did you write the book?
Michael L. Weinstein: As the new governor in the State of New York, Elliot Spitzer, has stated, you cannot change the world by whispering. The book was an attempt at a private scream.
What I found at the Air Force Academy was nothing short of something that could destroy the republic. An essentially evangelical, fundamentalist, Christian perspective was being imposed on those that were not evangelical fundamentalist Christians, in complete and total disregard of the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights, where the separation of church and state clearly resides.
I know that the religious right fundamentalists believe that separation of church and state is just a myth, like Paul Bunyan or Bigfoot. But we also can go to the body of the Constitution, to Clause 3, Article 6, where the Founding Fathers were so prescient. The framers were careful to make sure that we didn’t have what had befallen Europe, where men of the cloth had been men in political power. Clause 3, Article 6, basically says we’ll never have a religion test for any position in the federal government.
But I guess that didn’t mean the Air Force Academy, or the Air Force, the Marine Corps, Navy, or Army. Indeed, they have prepared Geiger counters that they hold up to all of their members, up and down the chain of command.
We are not at war at all with Christianity, or even Evangelical Christianity. Half of my own family is Christian. We are, however, at war with a small subset of Evangelical Christians who go by the long technical name -- premillenial, dispensational, reconstructionist, dominionist, evangelical, fundamentalist Christians.
The leaders are well known: Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, John Hagee, and the list used to include Ted Haggard, before he had some career issues. Basically, they believe that it’s their inalienable right to push this weaponized gospel of Jesus Christ. Either you’re with us, or if you’re not with us, we or our version of Jesus will eradicate you.
BuzzFlash: How did you become aware of what’s happening there now?
Michael L. Weinstein: I really have to thank Mel Gibson. When Mel came out with his wonderful movie in February of 2004 -- I forget the name -– it was called the "Jesus Chainsaw Massacre," or "Freddie Versus Jesus" -– when that movie came out ["The Passion of the Christ"], I was not contacted by my three children who were at that time at the Academy. I was contacted by non-evangelical Christian members of the faculty. They knew that my wife and I had given a lot of blood, sweat, tears, money, and effort over the years, because we loved the Academy. They wanted to know if I was aware of just how profoundly, how comprehensively, the Academy as an entity was coming down on the cadets and staff to go see this movie.
I was stunned. For three straight days, the cadets were marched into Mitchell Hall, this huge, two-acre dining facility, and General Myers was exhorting them, pressuring them, to go see this thing.
I’m sure there are lots of people that loved the movie. I found it to be a wretched piece of crap, of garbage, and incredibly anti-Semitic, and it deviated from the gospels in so many ways, it had everything in it except for a car chase.
At that point, I thought it was just an anomaly. But as I dug deeper into it, more and more people came to me with evidence and things that were shocking.
For example, it was routine to have brown-bag lunches at the Academy, promoted by flyers that went out saying, “Do not take this flyer down; this is an officially sponsored U.S. Air Force Academy activity in conjunction with the Christian Leadership Ministries.”
Case in point: January of 2005 -- and I know this sounds unbelievable, but I can’t make this stuff up -- a flyer said: "Today’s luncheon topic: Why we cannot let you have your God while we have ours. Our other luncheon topics: Dangerous to the followers of Jesus -- pluralism and secularism." And they go on and on.
The most common joke at the Air Force Academy of 2004 and 2005: "Why do Jews make the best magicians?" Have you heard that one?
BuzzFlash: No, I haven’t.
Michael L. Weinstein: Apparently because Jews have the magical ability to walk into a red brick building and come out the smokestack in a puff of smoke. And then on top of everything, July 12th, 2005, on the front page of the newspaper most reviled by the Pentagon –- and that newspaper would be, of course, The New York Times –- the number-two ranking general in the entire chaplains corp of thousands in the U.S. Air Force, makes the unbelievable statement to the American public and the world, that it is now the U.S. Air Force’s official policy to reserve its right to evangelize anyone it determines to be unchurched. Those are your Geiger counters. If you’re unchurched, we reserve the right to evangelize you.
Well, my wife and I raised our hands and said: Excuse me, Air Force. Having three children within the Air Force, we demand to know, do our children fall in that Richard Nixon-era enemies list of being "unchurched"? And if so, are you or are you not, we demanded, going to exercise your "right" to evangelize our children? Not getting an answer after beating them up in the media for 88 days, we sued them on the 89th day.
BuzzFlash: Is that lawsuit still active?
Michael L. Weinstein: The lawsuit is not active. We lasted well over a year until the judge dismissed the case on technicalities. He said he was not at all reaching any sort of opinion on the merits, and he showed us exactly how to come back in again. We’re very close to going back into federal court again. This time, it’ll be against the entire Pentagon.
BuzzFlash: Is the Evangelical attempt to shape the Air Force Academy cadets into dominionists continuing?
Michael L. Weinstein: I would best describe it as following the flying donkey theory. Have you heard of that one?
BuzzFlash: No.
Michael L. Weinstein: When a donkey flies, you don’t expect it to stay up very long.
We now have about seventeen active cases going on at the Academy. Over forty-two hundred members of the U.S. military -– Marines, sailors, soldiers, airmen, veterans –- have come talk to us, and roughly 96% of them are Christians. About three-fourths would be traditional Protestants such as Presbyterians, Lutherans, Methodists, Episcopalians, Church of Christ, and Baptists. The other one-fourth are primarily Roman Catholic, with the balance being Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, or Wicken.
Basically you have dominionist evangelical Christians pray/preying [P-R-A-Y and P-R-E-Y] -– on non-Evangelical Christians, telling them: You know what? You may think you’re a Christian, but you’re not actually Christian enough. And as a result, you’re going to burn eternally in the fires of hell along with the Jews.
BuzzFlash: On a day-to-day basis, how does this manifest itself?
Michael L. Weinstein: It’s extremely insidious. For the readers of BuzzFlash, the true numbers to remember from this interview are 737 and 132.
We currently have 737 U.S. military installations that the Pentagon acknowledges. It’s actually closer to a thousand military installations scattered around the globe -- in 132 countries. On every one of those military installations, we have something called the Officers' Christian Fellowship, for the officers, and for the enlisted folks, the Christian Military Fellowship.
They have a three-part goal that they are completely unabashed about –- it’s right on their website -– a goal they view as much higher than following the oath they have sworn, to support, defend, protect and preserve the Constitution. Their goals are, A, they want to see a spiritually transformed U.S. military; B, with ambassadors for Christ in uniform; and C, empowered by the Holy Spirit.
How does this manifest itself? It’s everywhere. It’s like gravity. To quote a senior official at West Point who told me the other day that they’re terrified to come forward, it’s like radio and TV waves. It bathes everything.
BuzzFlash: Clearly, this could not happen without approval from the hierarchy in the Pentagon.
Michael L. Weinstein: Actually, it’s happening top-down, I think. And it’s been going on for quite awhile. We think it started in 1972 when the draft ended.
The theory for having a draft was that we were pulling from what we now call blue and red states, conscripting people into the military. Of course, a lot of them were pissed off coming in, and when you’re pissed off, even a spoonful of sugar doesn’t make the Jesus go down. But since we ended the draft, going to the full volunteer force in 1972, now we’re pulling mostly from what we call red states, where there’s a lot of this blending of a virulent form of dominionist Christianity –- essentially predatory Christianity -– with patriotism.
Then, in 1994, with the Gingrich revolution taking over, two years into the Clinton presidency, the politics of polarization really reared its ugly head. Either you’re with us or you don’t really deserve to be an American.
Then, after 9/11, with this complete idiot in the White House, this whole thing went into overdrive. My wife and I have had right-wing talk-show hosts indicate that we’re an embarrassment to the state we live in, New Mexico, and probably don’t even deserve to be Americans.
Do you know that in this country in 1970, we only had ten mega-Evangelical churches, meaning those with 2,000 or more members? But after 9/11, a new mega-Evangelical church has opened up in our country every 48 hours.
That is their right. That’s fine. But when they engage the machinery of the state and the people in the government, that’s when we have a terrible, hideous problem.
And this is coming right down from the Oval Office, up and down the chain of command. And let’s remember, at the Pentagon, we actually have regulations that prohibit military members from even pushing Tupperware, Mary Kay cosmetics, or Amway, for fear of what the Draconian spectre of command influence could force a subordinate to do.
BuzzFlash: They do allow for an atmosphere in which anyone who is not Evangelical is intimidated.
Michael L. Weinstein: The Air Force is saying: Here’s our policy. If we have a religion test, of course, it does violate man’s law, which is just the Constitution, which is clearly subordinated to the higher law of our recognized version of the gospel of Jesus Christ. But if we determine you’re unchurched, and that’s our determination, we do in fact reserve the right to evangelize you.
A couple years ago, the ranking chaplain at the Air Force Academy was exhorting the cadets in his fire-and-brimstone Evangelical dominionist service to go out at the end of the service and seek out the other members of their incoming basic class of 700 who were in the remote combat training area called Jack Valley at the Academy -- which is enormous -- it’s 18,000 acres. Half the class agreed to come to his service. The other half was bivouacked about 40 yards away in camps. He orders his young charges get in the face of their classmates in their tents, demanding of their religious faiths. They were ordered to evangelize the unbelievers on the spot. And if the unbelievers still refused to accept Jesus Christ as their personal lord and savior, they were to be told to their faces that they would burn eternally in the fires of hell.
BuzzFlash: Going back to your credentials, you’re a patriarch. Your family has served for three generations. Your children are following in your footsteps in terms of military careers and military college training. And yet you’re saying that right-wing talk-show hosts attack you as
unpatriotic?
Michael L. Weinstein: Yes. In fact, Rush Limbaugh, who I would say is a complete coward, attacked me a couple months ago as being a pacifist, and an aider and abetter to al Qaeda, which I thought was amazing. Of course, he hasn’t spent one second in the military. I don’t know how many exemptions he got. And between Rove and Cheney, they got eleven exemptions, so they never served one second in the military, either.
BuzzFlash: I believe Rush Limbaugh got out of serving in Vietnam by having a doctor certify that he had anal cysts.
Michael L. Weinstein: Exactly -- that complete and total coward. And I hope he reads BuzzFlash, because I would like to challenge him again. I’ll meet him anywhere in a boxing match for three rounds. And I’ll go blindfolded.
BuzzFlash: This is an extremely important point, because you and your family have proven both your commitment to a military education, and military service, and combat, and shown complete loyalty and patriotism to the concept of democracy.
Michael L. Weinstein: Of course.
BuzzFlash: But someone like Rush Limbaugh says you’re unpatriotic because you’re trying to uphold the Constitution.
Michael L. Weinstein: Exactly. This is not a Christian-Jewish issue at all. This is a dominionist Christian versus the Constitution issue.
We have a social contract in our society. In America, if you’re angry at your neighbor next door, you’re not allowed to pick up your fellow citizen and crush their head in. We have laws that are all derived from our U.S. Constitution. When you look at the Bill of Rights, which was passed in December of 1791, it was not at all created for the convenience of the majority. Quite to the contrary –- it was created to prevent the tyranny of the majority over the minority –- an amazing social experiment in America.
Whenever a virulent form of any religion has engaged the machinery of the state -– and by that, I’m talking about the armed forces, where the sticks and stones are that break our bones -- we end up with oceans and oceans of blood. And it’s happening again now. Right now, we have the nuclear weapons.
The train has left the station many times over and over and over again, and it always goes to one town, Slaughterville. Average Americans, docile and supine, need to get off their asses and realize that this is happening. We have to take our country back, which means simply following our Constitution of 200 years -- and Constitutional U.S. Supreme Court case law.
BuzzFlash: Obviously at BuzzFlash, we read reams of links from news coverage every day. We have encountered, in the past couple of years, some coverage about the Air Force Academy and the controversy over the evangelizing of recruits. But there really hasn’t been a lot of mainstream coverage about this. There was a little dust-up, with General Boykin and his crusade for Christ in the military.
Michael L. Weinstein: Right.
BuzzFlash: Why do you think the story is pretty much uncovered by the mainsteam media?
Michael L. Weinstein: Good question, simple answer. We have the illusion of democracy in America. What we really have is an auction, where the most money gets out there.
My wife and I have pretty much self-funded our foundation. I hope your readers know that. Please go to our website, which is www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org. And we probably have about 45 people involved in this fight. We’re a recognized 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Everything that’s donated to us is completely tax deductible.
But that’s what it is. We have the illusion of democracy. We really have an auction. Or as the Machiavellians would say, when you aim at the prince, you’d better kill the prince. Don’t get in his sight. So, there is a war going on. They know it –- the dominionist Christians. And they know that I know it.
You know, they’re making money off of me. They’re saying I’m the big bad wolf. We got to get money to go after Mikey. They’re sending out communications, raising money among their 12.6 percent of the American public who are dominionist Christians. It’s 36 to 38 million people.
BuzzFlash: Just to repeat, because I think this is an important point that gets lost -- you’re of the Jewish faith.
Michael L. Weinstein: Yes, just half my family, and half my family is Christian.
BuzzFlash: And in the Air Force Academy, there are people of many faiths. Ironically, they've just decided to allow Wickens to have grave markers that represent their Wicken faith.
Michael L. Weinstein: Yes.
BuzzFlash: You’re speaking out on behalf of anyone who has a faith that’s other than the dominionist variety of the Evangelical Christian movement. What I think is key, if I’m hearing it right, is that in the United States, we swear allegiance to our nation. What is happening here, if I’m understanding this, is that the dominionists, with the approval of the hierarchy at the Pentagon, are saying that their allegiance to their view of Christianity comes before loyalty to the nation.
Michael L. Weinstein: Absolutely. Their first loyalty is to their lord, which they view as, of course, Jesus Christ. Secondly, their loyalty is to the family, and third to the Constitution.
But we have our democracy because we have our Constitution. What has happened is is that from Bush all the way down the line, we hear this new mantra -– your first loyalty is to the lord, and then comes your family, and then comes your Constitution.
The problem is that in the military, we do not put our hands on the Constitution of the United States to swear to support, defend, protect and preserve a particular Biblical world view of the New Testament. Some people do actually put their hands on a Bible, or a Koran, for that matter, to swear to support, defend, protect and preserve the U.S. Constitution. This is why this country was here.
If you don’t want to have separation of church and state –- and I say this to everyone in the military, all the dominionist Christians in the military and those who are outside it -– I suggest you move to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, because they have no separation there. Perhaps you’ll be happier. Or maybe join Kim Jong-il of North Korea. And please move quickly.
BuzzFlash: We have a Constitution which says the United States is founded as a nation that allows the freedom of worship for anyone. And the defense of that relgious freedom is one reason why people serve in the military, with the patriotism your family has shown over three generations. But you go to the Air Force Academy now and there’s an attempt to impose a faith upon individuals with other faiths.
Michael L. Weinstein: Anyone who’s ever been in the military knows it’s a very Spartan environment – very Spartan. Many of the Constitutional rights of our sailors, soldiers, marines and airmen, noble and honorable as they are, are deliberately truncated and limited so that we can preserve and protect the concept of good order and discipline, which is necessary to have a lethally effective military.
Our U.S. military is technologically the most lethal organization ever created by humankind. And that’s necessary so that they can protect the full panoply of Constitutional rights for the rest of us. When you’re in that Draconian system, up and down, there’s this command structure, and there’s this formidable specter of command influence. If you’re being told by your superiors that the fastest way in their eyes you can go from zero to hero is to accept their dominionist Biblical world view, it’s very hard to say no. And it was George Orwell who said, when you face universal defeat, speaking the truth itself can be a revolutionary act. We just don’t teach our young sailors to be revolutionaries.
BuzzFlash: Here's a quotation from your foundation: “The United States is a nation rooted in respect for religious pluralism, a cherished principle that springs from our democratic ideals. As the United States becomes increasingly religiously diverse, respect for minority beliefs takes on even greater importance in a nation’s ability to withstand assaults on our freedom launched by religious totalitarians.” End of quote from your brochure. Is that the mission of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation?
Michael L. Weinstein: Yes. Our mission is really two-fold. It’s educate, and also litigate. Our mission is to educate both the media and the members of the military on all those far-flung bases around the world and domestically, as to what their Constitutional rights are. Not just the Bill of Rights, but as we mentioned earlier, Clause three, Article 6 –- no religion test.
Some other organizations out there -– the Anti-Defamation League, the ACLU, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Americans United –- they’re all good organizations, but none of them focuses with laser-like precision exactly on where all the weapons are.
And you've got to be able to be nimble. You have to be very quick. If somebody calls the Foundation, they get me live, then, and there. It takes a lot of ocean to turn an aircraft carrier, and at a lot of these organizations, you cannot get through. It took me a year to get through to one of them. We are like a PT boat. We maneuver very quickly. We can turn. We move very quickly. We get to the media quickly.
So our job is to educate and litigate for our active duty and our veterans, because they deserve it. They’re the cherished entities out there that allow us to sit down and even have a great interview like this today on BuzzFlash.
BuzzFlash: Just the other day you went out on short notice to meet a veteran who says that he was denied Kosher food. He was then cut off from prescriptions. He was told that he didn’t need them because his Orthodox faith should take care of his disease. Your book focuses mostly on the Air Force Academy, but according to this veteran, it’s even impacting veterans’ health care.
Michael L. Weinstein: The book focuses on the Air Force Academy because that’s where we found the liver spot that turned out to be malignant for the entire body. We, at that time, did not know that as we pulled the string of the sweater, the whole sweater would come off. It covers the entire hierarchy of the U.S. Air Force, Marine Corp, Navy, Army, and the Veterans’ Administration.
David Miller is a very courageous veteran. We’ve been approached by many, but only one so far has had the guts to come forward publically. Imagine being evangelized when you’re hooked up.
You’re in terrible chronic angina heart pain and with kidney stones. Repeatedly you’re being evangelized by the VA chaplain.
BuzzFlash: This was in Iowa?
Michael L. Weinstein: In Iowa City at the VA Hospital, when he had told them, and filled out the paperwork, and made it clear to them repeatedly, he did not want them in there. At one point, he had to scream for the nurses to get the chaplain out of there. Ultimately when he complains, the hospital management says, you know, you just haven’t been strenuous enough in your complaints. What? You’re supposed to bring Tony Soprano in?
Well, let me tell you something. It’ll be strenuous enough now, because we’re going to file a federal lawsuit. At the end of the day, they told him they were not going to give him pain meds because they decided that they found five new stones in his body, four on the left and one on the right. They looked too small to be really causing him this pain.
By the way, he’s a 100% disabled vet, and he’s had kidney stones for 27 years that are directly attributable to his honorable service in the U.S. Navy. They scarcely looked at him and said, “Well, you’re a religious Jew. We suggest you go home and pray and meditate.” So I guess it’s, "take two Jewish prayers and call me in the morning."
BuzzFlash: What are your next steps?
Michael L. Weinstein: Our next steps include our fund raisng, and we are coming out with a movie at the LA Film Festival on June 24th – a wonderful movie with an Oscar-nominated director named Oren Jacoby, the Hollywood documentary version of the runaway bestseller on The New York Times called Constantine’s Sword, that documented the very bloody 2000-year history between the church and the Jews. My family and I are in that movie significantly.
There’s also a movie based on my book that we’re in the process of shooting. We are just trying to do our best to fund raise. Anyone who reads this, please consider going to www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org. Every dollar you give us is probably worth 15,000 on the other side. And there’s talk now of a second book, with the prospective title, Taking God to Court. But our current book, With God on Our Side, One Man’s War Against an Evangelical Coup in America’s Military is in Border’s, Barnes & Noble, Amazon. It’s certainly available there at BuzzFlash.
BuzzFlash: Mikey, thank you so much for your service to the country, your family’s service to your country, and fighting on behalf of America. And best of luck in keeping the Constitution and the American dream alive.
Michael L. Weinstein: Thank you so much, Mark.
BuzzFlash interview conducted by Mark Karlin.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
Submitted by BuzzFlash on Wed, 06/13/2007 - 5:00pm. Interviews
A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW
Whenever a virulent form of any religion has engaged the machinery of the state -– and by that, I’m talking about the armed forces, where the sticks and stones are that break our bones -- we end up with oceans and oceans of blood. And it’s happening again now.
-- Michael "Mikey" L. Weinstein, President, Military Religious Freedom Foundation
Michael "Mikey" Weinstein represents an extended family of graduates from the U.S. Air Force Academy. As his biography proudly notes: "Mikey comes from a family that has dedicated itself to the service of the United States. One indication of the family’s commitment is its multi-generational association with the nation’s military academies, in particular, the United States Air Force Academy. His father graduated from the United States Naval Academy. Mikey is a graduate of the Air Force Academy, as are his brother-in-law, eldest son and daughter-in-law. His youngest son is currently a cadet at the Air Force Academy.
"Weinstein served for ten years on active duty in the United States Air Force as a Judge Advocate, stationed at military installations in California, New Mexico, Illinois, and Washington, DC. He also served as the Air Force’s first Chief of Telecommunications and Information Systems Procurement Law."
His love of the Air Force and the military is equal to his passion for the Constitution. That is why he is now a man with a mission: to stop the growing evangelical takeover of our military, particularly at the academy level.
Weinstein founded and heads the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. Its mission is to ensure the separation of church and state in our military -- and the right of academy and military members to be free from religious coercion and harassment.
Sounds simple enough, doesn't it?
But under the Bush Administration, the phrase "Onward Christian soldiers" has been taken literally by many in the Pentagon, our military training centers, and the VA system.
Weinstein recently wrote a compelling book, With God on Our Side: One Man's War Against an Evangelical Coup in America's Military, describing the growing evangelical threat to cadets, GIs and veterans who are not fundamentalists.
We talked with Weinstein recently about the dangerous trend of our armed forces becoming shock troops for Jesus, with the missionary zeal coming from the highest levels.
* * *
BuzzFlash: Can you tell us about the personal history that you and your family have with the Air Force Academy and in the Reagan administration?
Michael L. Weinstein: Certainly. My family is a Jewish-American family, so a little bit unique in that we have three consecutive generations of military academy graduates. My youngest son was the sixth member of my family to attend the Academy, including myself. My father is an Annapolis graduate. In my immediate family, we have over 120 years of combined military service to the country, in pretty much every major combat engagement America’s been in from World War I to the current so-called global war on terror.
I am a registered Republican, and I spent over three years in the West Wing of the Reagan White House, initially working for the Office of Management and Budget. Then I moved over to become Assistant General Counsel for the entire White House Office of Administration. There, I was named the committee management officer for the Iran-Contra investigation. The family has a very, very strong military history, and obviously three generations of military academy graduates.
BuzzFlash: Are you an attorney, too?
Michael L. Weinstein: Yes. And I guess for the last 41 months, I’ve become this thing called a civil libertarian/political activist.
BuzzFlash: You wrote a book which we are offering on BuzzFlash.com as a premium. It’s called With God on Our Side: One Man’s War Against an Evangelical Coup in America’s Military. Clearly, you speak from first-hand experience. Why did you write the book?
Michael L. Weinstein: As the new governor in the State of New York, Elliot Spitzer, has stated, you cannot change the world by whispering. The book was an attempt at a private scream.
What I found at the Air Force Academy was nothing short of something that could destroy the republic. An essentially evangelical, fundamentalist, Christian perspective was being imposed on those that were not evangelical fundamentalist Christians, in complete and total disregard of the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights, where the separation of church and state clearly resides.
I know that the religious right fundamentalists believe that separation of church and state is just a myth, like Paul Bunyan or Bigfoot. But we also can go to the body of the Constitution, to Clause 3, Article 6, where the Founding Fathers were so prescient. The framers were careful to make sure that we didn’t have what had befallen Europe, where men of the cloth had been men in political power. Clause 3, Article 6, basically says we’ll never have a religion test for any position in the federal government.
But I guess that didn’t mean the Air Force Academy, or the Air Force, the Marine Corps, Navy, or Army. Indeed, they have prepared Geiger counters that they hold up to all of their members, up and down the chain of command.
We are not at war at all with Christianity, or even Evangelical Christianity. Half of my own family is Christian. We are, however, at war with a small subset of Evangelical Christians who go by the long technical name -- premillenial, dispensational, reconstructionist, dominionist, evangelical, fundamentalist Christians.
The leaders are well known: Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, John Hagee, and the list used to include Ted Haggard, before he had some career issues. Basically, they believe that it’s their inalienable right to push this weaponized gospel of Jesus Christ. Either you’re with us, or if you’re not with us, we or our version of Jesus will eradicate you.
BuzzFlash: How did you become aware of what’s happening there now?
Michael L. Weinstein: I really have to thank Mel Gibson. When Mel came out with his wonderful movie in February of 2004 -- I forget the name -– it was called the "Jesus Chainsaw Massacre," or "Freddie Versus Jesus" -– when that movie came out ["The Passion of the Christ"], I was not contacted by my three children who were at that time at the Academy. I was contacted by non-evangelical Christian members of the faculty. They knew that my wife and I had given a lot of blood, sweat, tears, money, and effort over the years, because we loved the Academy. They wanted to know if I was aware of just how profoundly, how comprehensively, the Academy as an entity was coming down on the cadets and staff to go see this movie.
I was stunned. For three straight days, the cadets were marched into Mitchell Hall, this huge, two-acre dining facility, and General Myers was exhorting them, pressuring them, to go see this thing.
I’m sure there are lots of people that loved the movie. I found it to be a wretched piece of crap, of garbage, and incredibly anti-Semitic, and it deviated from the gospels in so many ways, it had everything in it except for a car chase.
At that point, I thought it was just an anomaly. But as I dug deeper into it, more and more people came to me with evidence and things that were shocking.
For example, it was routine to have brown-bag lunches at the Academy, promoted by flyers that went out saying, “Do not take this flyer down; this is an officially sponsored U.S. Air Force Academy activity in conjunction with the Christian Leadership Ministries.”
Case in point: January of 2005 -- and I know this sounds unbelievable, but I can’t make this stuff up -- a flyer said: "Today’s luncheon topic: Why we cannot let you have your God while we have ours. Our other luncheon topics: Dangerous to the followers of Jesus -- pluralism and secularism." And they go on and on.
The most common joke at the Air Force Academy of 2004 and 2005: "Why do Jews make the best magicians?" Have you heard that one?
BuzzFlash: No, I haven’t.
Michael L. Weinstein: Apparently because Jews have the magical ability to walk into a red brick building and come out the smokestack in a puff of smoke. And then on top of everything, July 12th, 2005, on the front page of the newspaper most reviled by the Pentagon –- and that newspaper would be, of course, The New York Times –- the number-two ranking general in the entire chaplains corp of thousands in the U.S. Air Force, makes the unbelievable statement to the American public and the world, that it is now the U.S. Air Force’s official policy to reserve its right to evangelize anyone it determines to be unchurched. Those are your Geiger counters. If you’re unchurched, we reserve the right to evangelize you.
Well, my wife and I raised our hands and said: Excuse me, Air Force. Having three children within the Air Force, we demand to know, do our children fall in that Richard Nixon-era enemies list of being "unchurched"? And if so, are you or are you not, we demanded, going to exercise your "right" to evangelize our children? Not getting an answer after beating them up in the media for 88 days, we sued them on the 89th day.
BuzzFlash: Is that lawsuit still active?
Michael L. Weinstein: The lawsuit is not active. We lasted well over a year until the judge dismissed the case on technicalities. He said he was not at all reaching any sort of opinion on the merits, and he showed us exactly how to come back in again. We’re very close to going back into federal court again. This time, it’ll be against the entire Pentagon.
BuzzFlash: Is the Evangelical attempt to shape the Air Force Academy cadets into dominionists continuing?
Michael L. Weinstein: I would best describe it as following the flying donkey theory. Have you heard of that one?
BuzzFlash: No.
Michael L. Weinstein: When a donkey flies, you don’t expect it to stay up very long.
We now have about seventeen active cases going on at the Academy. Over forty-two hundred members of the U.S. military -– Marines, sailors, soldiers, airmen, veterans –- have come talk to us, and roughly 96% of them are Christians. About three-fourths would be traditional Protestants such as Presbyterians, Lutherans, Methodists, Episcopalians, Church of Christ, and Baptists. The other one-fourth are primarily Roman Catholic, with the balance being Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, or Wicken.
Basically you have dominionist evangelical Christians pray/preying [P-R-A-Y and P-R-E-Y] -– on non-Evangelical Christians, telling them: You know what? You may think you’re a Christian, but you’re not actually Christian enough. And as a result, you’re going to burn eternally in the fires of hell along with the Jews.
BuzzFlash: On a day-to-day basis, how does this manifest itself?
Michael L. Weinstein: It’s extremely insidious. For the readers of BuzzFlash, the true numbers to remember from this interview are 737 and 132.
We currently have 737 U.S. military installations that the Pentagon acknowledges. It’s actually closer to a thousand military installations scattered around the globe -- in 132 countries. On every one of those military installations, we have something called the Officers' Christian Fellowship, for the officers, and for the enlisted folks, the Christian Military Fellowship.
They have a three-part goal that they are completely unabashed about –- it’s right on their website -– a goal they view as much higher than following the oath they have sworn, to support, defend, protect and preserve the Constitution. Their goals are, A, they want to see a spiritually transformed U.S. military; B, with ambassadors for Christ in uniform; and C, empowered by the Holy Spirit.
How does this manifest itself? It’s everywhere. It’s like gravity. To quote a senior official at West Point who told me the other day that they’re terrified to come forward, it’s like radio and TV waves. It bathes everything.
BuzzFlash: Clearly, this could not happen without approval from the hierarchy in the Pentagon.
Michael L. Weinstein: Actually, it’s happening top-down, I think. And it’s been going on for quite awhile. We think it started in 1972 when the draft ended.
The theory for having a draft was that we were pulling from what we now call blue and red states, conscripting people into the military. Of course, a lot of them were pissed off coming in, and when you’re pissed off, even a spoonful of sugar doesn’t make the Jesus go down. But since we ended the draft, going to the full volunteer force in 1972, now we’re pulling mostly from what we call red states, where there’s a lot of this blending of a virulent form of dominionist Christianity –- essentially predatory Christianity -– with patriotism.
Then, in 1994, with the Gingrich revolution taking over, two years into the Clinton presidency, the politics of polarization really reared its ugly head. Either you’re with us or you don’t really deserve to be an American.
Then, after 9/11, with this complete idiot in the White House, this whole thing went into overdrive. My wife and I have had right-wing talk-show hosts indicate that we’re an embarrassment to the state we live in, New Mexico, and probably don’t even deserve to be Americans.
Do you know that in this country in 1970, we only had ten mega-Evangelical churches, meaning those with 2,000 or more members? But after 9/11, a new mega-Evangelical church has opened up in our country every 48 hours.
That is their right. That’s fine. But when they engage the machinery of the state and the people in the government, that’s when we have a terrible, hideous problem.
And this is coming right down from the Oval Office, up and down the chain of command. And let’s remember, at the Pentagon, we actually have regulations that prohibit military members from even pushing Tupperware, Mary Kay cosmetics, or Amway, for fear of what the Draconian spectre of command influence could force a subordinate to do.
BuzzFlash: They do allow for an atmosphere in which anyone who is not Evangelical is intimidated.
Michael L. Weinstein: The Air Force is saying: Here’s our policy. If we have a religion test, of course, it does violate man’s law, which is just the Constitution, which is clearly subordinated to the higher law of our recognized version of the gospel of Jesus Christ. But if we determine you’re unchurched, and that’s our determination, we do in fact reserve the right to evangelize you.
A couple years ago, the ranking chaplain at the Air Force Academy was exhorting the cadets in his fire-and-brimstone Evangelical dominionist service to go out at the end of the service and seek out the other members of their incoming basic class of 700 who were in the remote combat training area called Jack Valley at the Academy -- which is enormous -- it’s 18,000 acres. Half the class agreed to come to his service. The other half was bivouacked about 40 yards away in camps. He orders his young charges get in the face of their classmates in their tents, demanding of their religious faiths. They were ordered to evangelize the unbelievers on the spot. And if the unbelievers still refused to accept Jesus Christ as their personal lord and savior, they were to be told to their faces that they would burn eternally in the fires of hell.
BuzzFlash: Going back to your credentials, you’re a patriarch. Your family has served for three generations. Your children are following in your footsteps in terms of military careers and military college training. And yet you’re saying that right-wing talk-show hosts attack you as
unpatriotic?
Michael L. Weinstein: Yes. In fact, Rush Limbaugh, who I would say is a complete coward, attacked me a couple months ago as being a pacifist, and an aider and abetter to al Qaeda, which I thought was amazing. Of course, he hasn’t spent one second in the military. I don’t know how many exemptions he got. And between Rove and Cheney, they got eleven exemptions, so they never served one second in the military, either.
BuzzFlash: I believe Rush Limbaugh got out of serving in Vietnam by having a doctor certify that he had anal cysts.
Michael L. Weinstein: Exactly -- that complete and total coward. And I hope he reads BuzzFlash, because I would like to challenge him again. I’ll meet him anywhere in a boxing match for three rounds. And I’ll go blindfolded.
BuzzFlash: This is an extremely important point, because you and your family have proven both your commitment to a military education, and military service, and combat, and shown complete loyalty and patriotism to the concept of democracy.
Michael L. Weinstein: Of course.
BuzzFlash: But someone like Rush Limbaugh says you’re unpatriotic because you’re trying to uphold the Constitution.
Michael L. Weinstein: Exactly. This is not a Christian-Jewish issue at all. This is a dominionist Christian versus the Constitution issue.
We have a social contract in our society. In America, if you’re angry at your neighbor next door, you’re not allowed to pick up your fellow citizen and crush their head in. We have laws that are all derived from our U.S. Constitution. When you look at the Bill of Rights, which was passed in December of 1791, it was not at all created for the convenience of the majority. Quite to the contrary –- it was created to prevent the tyranny of the majority over the minority –- an amazing social experiment in America.
Whenever a virulent form of any religion has engaged the machinery of the state -– and by that, I’m talking about the armed forces, where the sticks and stones are that break our bones -- we end up with oceans and oceans of blood. And it’s happening again now. Right now, we have the nuclear weapons.
The train has left the station many times over and over and over again, and it always goes to one town, Slaughterville. Average Americans, docile and supine, need to get off their asses and realize that this is happening. We have to take our country back, which means simply following our Constitution of 200 years -- and Constitutional U.S. Supreme Court case law.
BuzzFlash: Obviously at BuzzFlash, we read reams of links from news coverage every day. We have encountered, in the past couple of years, some coverage about the Air Force Academy and the controversy over the evangelizing of recruits. But there really hasn’t been a lot of mainstream coverage about this. There was a little dust-up, with General Boykin and his crusade for Christ in the military.
Michael L. Weinstein: Right.
BuzzFlash: Why do you think the story is pretty much uncovered by the mainsteam media?
Michael L. Weinstein: Good question, simple answer. We have the illusion of democracy in America. What we really have is an auction, where the most money gets out there.
My wife and I have pretty much self-funded our foundation. I hope your readers know that. Please go to our website, which is www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org. And we probably have about 45 people involved in this fight. We’re a recognized 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Everything that’s donated to us is completely tax deductible.
But that’s what it is. We have the illusion of democracy. We really have an auction. Or as the Machiavellians would say, when you aim at the prince, you’d better kill the prince. Don’t get in his sight. So, there is a war going on. They know it –- the dominionist Christians. And they know that I know it.
You know, they’re making money off of me. They’re saying I’m the big bad wolf. We got to get money to go after Mikey. They’re sending out communications, raising money among their 12.6 percent of the American public who are dominionist Christians. It’s 36 to 38 million people.
BuzzFlash: Just to repeat, because I think this is an important point that gets lost -- you’re of the Jewish faith.
Michael L. Weinstein: Yes, just half my family, and half my family is Christian.
BuzzFlash: And in the Air Force Academy, there are people of many faiths. Ironically, they've just decided to allow Wickens to have grave markers that represent their Wicken faith.
Michael L. Weinstein: Yes.
BuzzFlash: You’re speaking out on behalf of anyone who has a faith that’s other than the dominionist variety of the Evangelical Christian movement. What I think is key, if I’m hearing it right, is that in the United States, we swear allegiance to our nation. What is happening here, if I’m understanding this, is that the dominionists, with the approval of the hierarchy at the Pentagon, are saying that their allegiance to their view of Christianity comes before loyalty to the nation.
Michael L. Weinstein: Absolutely. Their first loyalty is to their lord, which they view as, of course, Jesus Christ. Secondly, their loyalty is to the family, and third to the Constitution.
But we have our democracy because we have our Constitution. What has happened is is that from Bush all the way down the line, we hear this new mantra -– your first loyalty is to the lord, and then comes your family, and then comes your Constitution.
The problem is that in the military, we do not put our hands on the Constitution of the United States to swear to support, defend, protect and preserve a particular Biblical world view of the New Testament. Some people do actually put their hands on a Bible, or a Koran, for that matter, to swear to support, defend, protect and preserve the U.S. Constitution. This is why this country was here.
If you don’t want to have separation of church and state –- and I say this to everyone in the military, all the dominionist Christians in the military and those who are outside it -– I suggest you move to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, because they have no separation there. Perhaps you’ll be happier. Or maybe join Kim Jong-il of North Korea. And please move quickly.
BuzzFlash: We have a Constitution which says the United States is founded as a nation that allows the freedom of worship for anyone. And the defense of that relgious freedom is one reason why people serve in the military, with the patriotism your family has shown over three generations. But you go to the Air Force Academy now and there’s an attempt to impose a faith upon individuals with other faiths.
Michael L. Weinstein: Anyone who’s ever been in the military knows it’s a very Spartan environment – very Spartan. Many of the Constitutional rights of our sailors, soldiers, marines and airmen, noble and honorable as they are, are deliberately truncated and limited so that we can preserve and protect the concept of good order and discipline, which is necessary to have a lethally effective military.
Our U.S. military is technologically the most lethal organization ever created by humankind. And that’s necessary so that they can protect the full panoply of Constitutional rights for the rest of us. When you’re in that Draconian system, up and down, there’s this command structure, and there’s this formidable specter of command influence. If you’re being told by your superiors that the fastest way in their eyes you can go from zero to hero is to accept their dominionist Biblical world view, it’s very hard to say no. And it was George Orwell who said, when you face universal defeat, speaking the truth itself can be a revolutionary act. We just don’t teach our young sailors to be revolutionaries.
BuzzFlash: Here's a quotation from your foundation: “The United States is a nation rooted in respect for religious pluralism, a cherished principle that springs from our democratic ideals. As the United States becomes increasingly religiously diverse, respect for minority beliefs takes on even greater importance in a nation’s ability to withstand assaults on our freedom launched by religious totalitarians.” End of quote from your brochure. Is that the mission of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation?
Michael L. Weinstein: Yes. Our mission is really two-fold. It’s educate, and also litigate. Our mission is to educate both the media and the members of the military on all those far-flung bases around the world and domestically, as to what their Constitutional rights are. Not just the Bill of Rights, but as we mentioned earlier, Clause three, Article 6 –- no religion test.
Some other organizations out there -– the Anti-Defamation League, the ACLU, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Americans United –- they’re all good organizations, but none of them focuses with laser-like precision exactly on where all the weapons are.
And you've got to be able to be nimble. You have to be very quick. If somebody calls the Foundation, they get me live, then, and there. It takes a lot of ocean to turn an aircraft carrier, and at a lot of these organizations, you cannot get through. It took me a year to get through to one of them. We are like a PT boat. We maneuver very quickly. We can turn. We move very quickly. We get to the media quickly.
So our job is to educate and litigate for our active duty and our veterans, because they deserve it. They’re the cherished entities out there that allow us to sit down and even have a great interview like this today on BuzzFlash.
BuzzFlash: Just the other day you went out on short notice to meet a veteran who says that he was denied Kosher food. He was then cut off from prescriptions. He was told that he didn’t need them because his Orthodox faith should take care of his disease. Your book focuses mostly on the Air Force Academy, but according to this veteran, it’s even impacting veterans’ health care.
Michael L. Weinstein: The book focuses on the Air Force Academy because that’s where we found the liver spot that turned out to be malignant for the entire body. We, at that time, did not know that as we pulled the string of the sweater, the whole sweater would come off. It covers the entire hierarchy of the U.S. Air Force, Marine Corp, Navy, Army, and the Veterans’ Administration.
David Miller is a very courageous veteran. We’ve been approached by many, but only one so far has had the guts to come forward publically. Imagine being evangelized when you’re hooked up.
You’re in terrible chronic angina heart pain and with kidney stones. Repeatedly you’re being evangelized by the VA chaplain.
BuzzFlash: This was in Iowa?
Michael L. Weinstein: In Iowa City at the VA Hospital, when he had told them, and filled out the paperwork, and made it clear to them repeatedly, he did not want them in there. At one point, he had to scream for the nurses to get the chaplain out of there. Ultimately when he complains, the hospital management says, you know, you just haven’t been strenuous enough in your complaints. What? You’re supposed to bring Tony Soprano in?
Well, let me tell you something. It’ll be strenuous enough now, because we’re going to file a federal lawsuit. At the end of the day, they told him they were not going to give him pain meds because they decided that they found five new stones in his body, four on the left and one on the right. They looked too small to be really causing him this pain.
By the way, he’s a 100% disabled vet, and he’s had kidney stones for 27 years that are directly attributable to his honorable service in the U.S. Navy. They scarcely looked at him and said, “Well, you’re a religious Jew. We suggest you go home and pray and meditate.” So I guess it’s, "take two Jewish prayers and call me in the morning."
BuzzFlash: What are your next steps?
Michael L. Weinstein: Our next steps include our fund raisng, and we are coming out with a movie at the LA Film Festival on June 24th – a wonderful movie with an Oscar-nominated director named Oren Jacoby, the Hollywood documentary version of the runaway bestseller on The New York Times called Constantine’s Sword, that documented the very bloody 2000-year history between the church and the Jews. My family and I are in that movie significantly.
There’s also a movie based on my book that we’re in the process of shooting. We are just trying to do our best to fund raise. Anyone who reads this, please consider going to www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org. Every dollar you give us is probably worth 15,000 on the other side. And there’s talk now of a second book, with the prospective title, Taking God to Court. But our current book, With God on Our Side, One Man’s War Against an Evangelical Coup in America’s Military is in Border’s, Barnes & Noble, Amazon. It’s certainly available there at BuzzFlash.
BuzzFlash: Mikey, thank you so much for your service to the country, your family’s service to your country, and fighting on behalf of America. And best of luck in keeping the Constitution and the American dream alive.
Michael L. Weinstein: Thank you so much, Mark.
BuzzFlash interview conducted by Mark Karlin.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
Crusading Crackpots Taking over the DOJ
This is an extremely dangerous situation.
Having a Justice Department that functions on dogma and extreme ideology, instead of the Constitution will destroy this nation.
June 14, 2007
Justice Dept. Reshapes Its Civil Rights Mission
By NEIL A. LEWIS
WASHINGTON, June 13 — In recent years, the Bush administration has recast the federal government’s role in civil rights by aggressively pursuing religion-oriented cases while significantly diminishing its involvement in the traditional area of race.
Paralleling concerns of many conservative groups, the Justice Department has successfully argued in a number of cases that government agencies, employers or private organizations have improperly suppressed religious expression in situations that the Constitution’s drafters did not mean to restrict.
The shift at the Justice Department has significantly altered the government’s civil rights mission, said Brian K. Landsberg, a law professor at the University of the Pacific and a former Justice Department lawyer under both Republican and Democratic administrations.
“Not until recently has anyone in the department considered religious discrimination such a high priority,” Professor Landsberg said. “No one had ever considered it to be of the same magnitude as race or national origin.”
Cynthia Magnuson, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said in a statement that the agency had “worked diligently to enforce the federal laws that prohibit discrimination based on religion.”
The changes are evident in a variety of actions:
*Intervening in federal court cases on behalf of religion-based groups like the Salvation Army that assert they have the right to discriminate in hiring in favor of people who share their beliefs even though they are running charitable programs with federal money.
*Supporting groups that want to send home religious literature with schoolchildren; in one case, the government helped win the right of a group in Massachusetts to distribute candy canes as part of a religious message that the red stripes represented the blood of Christ.
*Vigorously enforcing a law enacted by Congress in 2000 that allows churches and other places of worship to be free of some local zoning restrictions. The division has brought more than two dozen lawsuits on behalf of churches, synagogues and mosques.
*Taking on far fewer hate crimes and cases in which local law enforcement officers may have violated someone’s civil rights. The resources for these traditional cases have instead been used to investigate trafficking cases, typically involving foreign women used in the sex trade, a favored issue of the religious right.
*Sharply reducing the complex lawsuits that challenge voting plans that might dilute the strength of black voters. The department initiated only one such case through the early part of this year, compared with eight in a comparable period in the Clinton administration.
Along with its changed civil rights mission, the department has also tried to overhaul the roster of government lawyers who deal with civil rights. The agency has transferred or demoted some experienced civil rights litigators while bringing in lawyers, including graduates of religious-affiliated law schools and some people vocal about their faith, who favor the new priorities. That has created some unease, with some career lawyers disdainfully referring to the newcomers as “holy hires.”
The department’s emphasis has been embraced by some groups representing Muslims, Jews and especially Christian conservatives, who have long complained that the federal government ignored their grievances about discrimination.
“We live in a society that is becoming more religiously diverse, even by the hour,” said Kevin Seamus Hasson, who founded the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty 12 years ago. “So it’s entirely appropriate and slightly overdue that the Justice Department is paying more attention to the various frictions that increasing religious diversity is causing in the society.”
Combating racism remains an important mission, Mr. Hasson said, but one that has changed over the years. “We can now deal with the problems of racism more effectively on a more local level,” he argued. “We don’t always need the federal government to come riding over the hill.”
Some religious figures, though, are more wary about the changes at the Justice Department.
Robert Edgar, president of the National Council of Churches, a liberal-leaning group, agreed that it was important to take on issues like religious discrimination and human trafficking.
But the problems of race and poverty in America “still require the highest caliber of attention,” said Mr. Edgar, who cited the flawed government response to New Orleans and its mostly poor, black population after Hurricane Katrina. He said he was distrustful of the Justice Department’s leadership to make appropriate decisions as to the nation’s civil rights priorities.
A New Mission
Some critics say that many of the Justice Department’s religious-oriented initiatives are outside its mandate from Congress. While statutes prohibit religious discrimination in areas like employment and housing, no laws address some of the issues in which the department has become involved.
“They are engaging in freewheeling social engineering,” said Ayesha Khan, counsel for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and “using the power of the federal government to put in place an ideological, not constitutional agenda.”
The department declined to make available for interviews Assistant Attorney General Wan J. Kim, who heads the civil rights division, or Eric Treene, who holds the newly created position of special counsel for religious discrimination.
Ms. Magnuson, the Justice Department spokeswoman, said it was justified in devoting so much attention to the issue because Congress has demonstrated its interest by including religion in the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and enacting the 2000 law involving zoning restrictions, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.
Ms. Magnuson also said the department had not diminished its interest in enforcing racial and national origin discrimination cases. The changes at the Justice Department began under Attorney General John Ashcroft, but have accelerated under Alberto R. Gonzales, his successor.
Mr. Gonzales has increasingly cited his agency’s record on behalf of religious causes as among his most important accomplishments, often noting the successful intervention in cases on behalf of people who had suffered discrimination for wearing Muslim head coverings. In speeches, he routinely says that religious freedom is the nation’s “first freedom because our founders saw fit to place it first in the Bill of Rights.”
President Bush has also talked of the department’s religion-related activities in appearances before religious conservatives, an important element of his support. Aside from any political benefit of satisfying conservative groups, the Justice Department’s shift has brought a more subtle dividend: a defense to the criticism leveled at past Republican administrations that they were half-hearted about civil rights enforcement.
Changing Mission
The Bush administration has avoided that problem by changing the civil rights mission to something its Justice Department can take on with enthusiasm.
The department has prevailed in many, if not most of the cases in which it has become involved. It has, in effect, duplicated in the religious arena its past success in cases involving race and national origin.
At the same time, the department has sharply reduced its efforts to combat voting rights plans that may dilute black electoral strength.
Ms. Magnuson, the department spokeswoman, said that the civil rights division had brought more voting rights lawsuits under Mr. Bush than had been brought in the Clinton administration.
But an examination of the Justice Department’s Web site listing of the cases brought through early 2007 shows that many of them involved a different part of the law, one that requires voting materials be available in languages other than English in places with high concentrations of Asian and Hispanic voters.
Joseph D. Rich, who recently stepped down as head of the voting rights section after a 37-year career at Justice, said that only the federal government had the resources to bring voting dilution cases, while private groups have been able to bring the language cases. The civil rights division also brought the first case ever on behalf of white voters, alleging in 2005 that a black political leader in Noxubee County, Miss., was intimidating whites at the polls.
The shift in priorities at the criminal section of the civil rights division has been especially stark. The criminal section — which previously had mostly focused on hate crimes or lawsuits against police officers who may have violated someone’s civil rights — began taking on human trafficking cases that had previously been handled elsewhere.
During Mr. Bush’s second term, the section brought dozens of cases against people charged under a new law with bringing women into the country to work in brothels. The new employees with religious backgrounds were enthusiastic about such cases, seeing them akin to combating slavery, a former career lawyer in the division said.
Pursuing trafficking cases, rather than those involving hate crimes or police abuse, was seen as important to moving ahead in the department, current and former career officials said. They added that political appointees in supervisory positions frequently vetoed proposed hate crime investigations or questioned them to death.
“You only needed for that to happen a few times and people got the message they shouldn’t be eager to send up such cases,” said one lawyer who would talk only on condition of anonymity.
Rigel C. Oliveri, a law professor at the University of Missouri who worked in the civil rights division during the Clinton and early Bush years, said it became increasingly frustrating to bring what she said were worthy civil rights cases, because the political appointees would not act on them. “It was like a black hole,” she said.
Whatever cases may have been slowed or ignored, some religious leaders said they were grateful for actions the department had taken.
The Rev. N. J. L’Heureux, the executive director of the Queens Federation of Churches in New York, said the department had helped several Christian, Muslim and Jewish congregations deal with local governments trying to block houses of worship in neighborhoods. In Hollywood, Fla., for example, the department successfully sued the city for denying a permit to an Orthodox synagogue.
Sometimes, Mr. L’Heureux said, an inquiry from Mr. Treene, the special religious affairs counsel, had been enough to encourage local governments to drop their resistance. The civil rights division favorably resolved 16 of 26 zoning investigations simply by expressing interest in them, according to the Justice Department.
Kareem W. Shora, the executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said that Mr. Treene had also intervened in cases the group brought to him about Arab prison inmates having access to prayer opportunities.
In so-called equal-access cases, the department has mostly won court rulings allowing religious organizations like the Child Evangelism Fellowship to have the same access to public school students as nonreligious groups, a principle generally approved by a divided Supreme Court in 2001.
In the candy cane case, for example, school officials in Westfield, Mass., had suspended students for handing out candy canes with religious messages, saying it was disruptive and lurid. The students said that the “J” shape represented Jesus and the red stripes his blood, the white his purity. In a pending case from San Diego, the government defended the city’s campground lease to the Boy Scouts, which had been challenged because of the group’s religious tenets. The department has also challenged so-called Blaine amendments, which are state constitutional provisions enforcing separation of church and state more rigidly than does the United States Constitution. The federal government sued because the amendments could impede Mr. Bush’s religion-based initiative, which provides money to religious groups for social programs.
Reshaping the Staff
As it has reoriented its priorities, the department has also tried to remake the cast of government lawyers who enforce civil rights. A number of career lawyers who served as section heads or deputies in the civil rights division have been replaced.
In Congressional testimony in March, Mr. Rich said seven managers had been removed or marginalized for what he characterized as political reasons or perceived disloyalty. Department officials acknowledge the changes, but dispute the reasons.
In addition, Mr. Ashcroft arranged for the agency’s senior political appointees to take over the decades-old system used to hire recent law school graduates for entry-level career jobs that are supposed to be nonpartisan.
Under the system, known as the honors program, nonpolitical career lawyers had screened applicants. Those selected were almost exclusively graduates of top-ranked law schools and often had had prestigious judicial clerkships or other relevant experience.
Monica M. Goodling, a former senior aide to Mr. Gonzales, testified to a House committee last month that she had improperly used politics to hire some people as assistant federal prosecutors and for other civil service jobs, a possible violation of federal employment laws.
But the pattern of hiring on an ideological basis was more widespread than what Ms. Goodling described, according to interviews and department statistics.
Figures provided by the department show that from 2003 through 2006, there was a notable increase of hirings from religious-affiliated institutions like Regent University and Ave Maria University. The department hired eight from those two schools in that period, compared to 50 from Harvard and 13 from Yale.
Several career lawyers said that some political appointees favored the religious-oriented employees, intervening to steer $1,000 to $4,000 annual merit bonuses to them.
Ms. Oliveri and several other law professors said placement officers and faculty at their schools found that graduates seeking work at the Justice Department had a better chance by cleansing their résumés of liberal affiliations while emphasizing ties to the Federalist Society, a Washington conservative group, or membership in a religious fellowship.
Ms. Oliveri recalled that when she was hired in 2000 by the Justice Department, she was impressed by the accomplishments of her peers. But once the political appointees controlled the hiring, she said, “The change in the quality of people who were chosen was very pronounced.”
When the front office sent around the résumés of those newly hired for the honors program, she said, “It was obvious what they had: conservative and religious bona fides.”
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
Having a Justice Department that functions on dogma and extreme ideology, instead of the Constitution will destroy this nation.
June 14, 2007
Justice Dept. Reshapes Its Civil Rights Mission
By NEIL A. LEWIS
WASHINGTON, June 13 — In recent years, the Bush administration has recast the federal government’s role in civil rights by aggressively pursuing religion-oriented cases while significantly diminishing its involvement in the traditional area of race.
Paralleling concerns of many conservative groups, the Justice Department has successfully argued in a number of cases that government agencies, employers or private organizations have improperly suppressed religious expression in situations that the Constitution’s drafters did not mean to restrict.
The shift at the Justice Department has significantly altered the government’s civil rights mission, said Brian K. Landsberg, a law professor at the University of the Pacific and a former Justice Department lawyer under both Republican and Democratic administrations.
“Not until recently has anyone in the department considered religious discrimination such a high priority,” Professor Landsberg said. “No one had ever considered it to be of the same magnitude as race or national origin.”
Cynthia Magnuson, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said in a statement that the agency had “worked diligently to enforce the federal laws that prohibit discrimination based on religion.”
The changes are evident in a variety of actions:
*Intervening in federal court cases on behalf of religion-based groups like the Salvation Army that assert they have the right to discriminate in hiring in favor of people who share their beliefs even though they are running charitable programs with federal money.
*Supporting groups that want to send home religious literature with schoolchildren; in one case, the government helped win the right of a group in Massachusetts to distribute candy canes as part of a religious message that the red stripes represented the blood of Christ.
*Vigorously enforcing a law enacted by Congress in 2000 that allows churches and other places of worship to be free of some local zoning restrictions. The division has brought more than two dozen lawsuits on behalf of churches, synagogues and mosques.
*Taking on far fewer hate crimes and cases in which local law enforcement officers may have violated someone’s civil rights. The resources for these traditional cases have instead been used to investigate trafficking cases, typically involving foreign women used in the sex trade, a favored issue of the religious right.
*Sharply reducing the complex lawsuits that challenge voting plans that might dilute the strength of black voters. The department initiated only one such case through the early part of this year, compared with eight in a comparable period in the Clinton administration.
Along with its changed civil rights mission, the department has also tried to overhaul the roster of government lawyers who deal with civil rights. The agency has transferred or demoted some experienced civil rights litigators while bringing in lawyers, including graduates of religious-affiliated law schools and some people vocal about their faith, who favor the new priorities. That has created some unease, with some career lawyers disdainfully referring to the newcomers as “holy hires.”
The department’s emphasis has been embraced by some groups representing Muslims, Jews and especially Christian conservatives, who have long complained that the federal government ignored their grievances about discrimination.
“We live in a society that is becoming more religiously diverse, even by the hour,” said Kevin Seamus Hasson, who founded the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty 12 years ago. “So it’s entirely appropriate and slightly overdue that the Justice Department is paying more attention to the various frictions that increasing religious diversity is causing in the society.”
Combating racism remains an important mission, Mr. Hasson said, but one that has changed over the years. “We can now deal with the problems of racism more effectively on a more local level,” he argued. “We don’t always need the federal government to come riding over the hill.”
Some religious figures, though, are more wary about the changes at the Justice Department.
Robert Edgar, president of the National Council of Churches, a liberal-leaning group, agreed that it was important to take on issues like religious discrimination and human trafficking.
But the problems of race and poverty in America “still require the highest caliber of attention,” said Mr. Edgar, who cited the flawed government response to New Orleans and its mostly poor, black population after Hurricane Katrina. He said he was distrustful of the Justice Department’s leadership to make appropriate decisions as to the nation’s civil rights priorities.
A New Mission
Some critics say that many of the Justice Department’s religious-oriented initiatives are outside its mandate from Congress. While statutes prohibit religious discrimination in areas like employment and housing, no laws address some of the issues in which the department has become involved.
“They are engaging in freewheeling social engineering,” said Ayesha Khan, counsel for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and “using the power of the federal government to put in place an ideological, not constitutional agenda.”
The department declined to make available for interviews Assistant Attorney General Wan J. Kim, who heads the civil rights division, or Eric Treene, who holds the newly created position of special counsel for religious discrimination.
Ms. Magnuson, the Justice Department spokeswoman, said it was justified in devoting so much attention to the issue because Congress has demonstrated its interest by including religion in the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and enacting the 2000 law involving zoning restrictions, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.
Ms. Magnuson also said the department had not diminished its interest in enforcing racial and national origin discrimination cases. The changes at the Justice Department began under Attorney General John Ashcroft, but have accelerated under Alberto R. Gonzales, his successor.
Mr. Gonzales has increasingly cited his agency’s record on behalf of religious causes as among his most important accomplishments, often noting the successful intervention in cases on behalf of people who had suffered discrimination for wearing Muslim head coverings. In speeches, he routinely says that religious freedom is the nation’s “first freedom because our founders saw fit to place it first in the Bill of Rights.”
President Bush has also talked of the department’s religion-related activities in appearances before religious conservatives, an important element of his support. Aside from any political benefit of satisfying conservative groups, the Justice Department’s shift has brought a more subtle dividend: a defense to the criticism leveled at past Republican administrations that they were half-hearted about civil rights enforcement.
Changing Mission
The Bush administration has avoided that problem by changing the civil rights mission to something its Justice Department can take on with enthusiasm.
The department has prevailed in many, if not most of the cases in which it has become involved. It has, in effect, duplicated in the religious arena its past success in cases involving race and national origin.
At the same time, the department has sharply reduced its efforts to combat voting rights plans that may dilute black electoral strength.
Ms. Magnuson, the department spokeswoman, said that the civil rights division had brought more voting rights lawsuits under Mr. Bush than had been brought in the Clinton administration.
But an examination of the Justice Department’s Web site listing of the cases brought through early 2007 shows that many of them involved a different part of the law, one that requires voting materials be available in languages other than English in places with high concentrations of Asian and Hispanic voters.
Joseph D. Rich, who recently stepped down as head of the voting rights section after a 37-year career at Justice, said that only the federal government had the resources to bring voting dilution cases, while private groups have been able to bring the language cases. The civil rights division also brought the first case ever on behalf of white voters, alleging in 2005 that a black political leader in Noxubee County, Miss., was intimidating whites at the polls.
The shift in priorities at the criminal section of the civil rights division has been especially stark. The criminal section — which previously had mostly focused on hate crimes or lawsuits against police officers who may have violated someone’s civil rights — began taking on human trafficking cases that had previously been handled elsewhere.
During Mr. Bush’s second term, the section brought dozens of cases against people charged under a new law with bringing women into the country to work in brothels. The new employees with religious backgrounds were enthusiastic about such cases, seeing them akin to combating slavery, a former career lawyer in the division said.
Pursuing trafficking cases, rather than those involving hate crimes or police abuse, was seen as important to moving ahead in the department, current and former career officials said. They added that political appointees in supervisory positions frequently vetoed proposed hate crime investigations or questioned them to death.
“You only needed for that to happen a few times and people got the message they shouldn’t be eager to send up such cases,” said one lawyer who would talk only on condition of anonymity.
Rigel C. Oliveri, a law professor at the University of Missouri who worked in the civil rights division during the Clinton and early Bush years, said it became increasingly frustrating to bring what she said were worthy civil rights cases, because the political appointees would not act on them. “It was like a black hole,” she said.
Whatever cases may have been slowed or ignored, some religious leaders said they were grateful for actions the department had taken.
The Rev. N. J. L’Heureux, the executive director of the Queens Federation of Churches in New York, said the department had helped several Christian, Muslim and Jewish congregations deal with local governments trying to block houses of worship in neighborhoods. In Hollywood, Fla., for example, the department successfully sued the city for denying a permit to an Orthodox synagogue.
Sometimes, Mr. L’Heureux said, an inquiry from Mr. Treene, the special religious affairs counsel, had been enough to encourage local governments to drop their resistance. The civil rights division favorably resolved 16 of 26 zoning investigations simply by expressing interest in them, according to the Justice Department.
Kareem W. Shora, the executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said that Mr. Treene had also intervened in cases the group brought to him about Arab prison inmates having access to prayer opportunities.
In so-called equal-access cases, the department has mostly won court rulings allowing religious organizations like the Child Evangelism Fellowship to have the same access to public school students as nonreligious groups, a principle generally approved by a divided Supreme Court in 2001.
In the candy cane case, for example, school officials in Westfield, Mass., had suspended students for handing out candy canes with religious messages, saying it was disruptive and lurid. The students said that the “J” shape represented Jesus and the red stripes his blood, the white his purity. In a pending case from San Diego, the government defended the city’s campground lease to the Boy Scouts, which had been challenged because of the group’s religious tenets. The department has also challenged so-called Blaine amendments, which are state constitutional provisions enforcing separation of church and state more rigidly than does the United States Constitution. The federal government sued because the amendments could impede Mr. Bush’s religion-based initiative, which provides money to religious groups for social programs.
Reshaping the Staff
As it has reoriented its priorities, the department has also tried to remake the cast of government lawyers who enforce civil rights. A number of career lawyers who served as section heads or deputies in the civil rights division have been replaced.
In Congressional testimony in March, Mr. Rich said seven managers had been removed or marginalized for what he characterized as political reasons or perceived disloyalty. Department officials acknowledge the changes, but dispute the reasons.
In addition, Mr. Ashcroft arranged for the agency’s senior political appointees to take over the decades-old system used to hire recent law school graduates for entry-level career jobs that are supposed to be nonpartisan.
Under the system, known as the honors program, nonpolitical career lawyers had screened applicants. Those selected were almost exclusively graduates of top-ranked law schools and often had had prestigious judicial clerkships or other relevant experience.
Monica M. Goodling, a former senior aide to Mr. Gonzales, testified to a House committee last month that she had improperly used politics to hire some people as assistant federal prosecutors and for other civil service jobs, a possible violation of federal employment laws.
But the pattern of hiring on an ideological basis was more widespread than what Ms. Goodling described, according to interviews and department statistics.
Figures provided by the department show that from 2003 through 2006, there was a notable increase of hirings from religious-affiliated institutions like Regent University and Ave Maria University. The department hired eight from those two schools in that period, compared to 50 from Harvard and 13 from Yale.
Several career lawyers said that some political appointees favored the religious-oriented employees, intervening to steer $1,000 to $4,000 annual merit bonuses to them.
Ms. Oliveri and several other law professors said placement officers and faculty at their schools found that graduates seeking work at the Justice Department had a better chance by cleansing their résumés of liberal affiliations while emphasizing ties to the Federalist Society, a Washington conservative group, or membership in a religious fellowship.
Ms. Oliveri recalled that when she was hired in 2000 by the Justice Department, she was impressed by the accomplishments of her peers. But once the political appointees controlled the hiring, she said, “The change in the quality of people who were chosen was very pronounced.”
When the front office sent around the résumés of those newly hired for the honors program, she said, “It was obvious what they had: conservative and religious bona fides.”
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
The Declining Dollar
Published on Wednesday, June 13, 2007 by The Nation
Wall Street, Iraq and the Declining Dollar
by Ken Miller
The disastrous impact on the economy of George W. Bush’s response to the attacks of September 2001 is still being measured. On Friday of last week the Bush Administration announced that it would not renominate Gen. Peter Pace as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Administration’s decision to throw a loyal supporter overboard avoids a messy confirmation hearing that would have further focused a war-weary nation’s attention on the past. But sometimes looking backward can help us anticipate the future.
In February of this year, Rep. Henry Waxman’s Committee on Oversight and Government Reform revealed fresh details of how the Coalition Provisional Authority dumped $12 billion in cash–in $100 bills–into Iraq in 2004. Multiple flights of huge C-130 transport planes were required to deliver 363 tons of greenbacks–a modest portion of the $510 billion we have spent so far in Iraq and Afghanistan. By certain measures, this may not be America’s most expensive war. But the worst economic effects are yet to come.
No matter how the Iraq War ends, it is clear that the United States is incapable of militarily securing territory against the wishes of a hostile population. And the Iraq War is at the heart of two alarming trends that are likely to have a negative impact on America’s position in the world: The demand for oil is rising while the supply is declining, and the demand for the US dollar is declining while the supply of dollars is rising.
In the four years since the toppling of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi oilfields and associated infrastructure have sustained 400 attacks. And because of the situation on the ground, Iraqi oil production, at 1.95 barrels per day during the first quarter of 2007, was far short of the government’s goal of 2.5 million barrels per day and the previous peak of 3.7 million under Saddam. In this asymmetrical war, our enemies are spending a fraction of our costs on improvised explosive devices, chlorine gas and suicide bombers, while we invest heavily in noneffective weapons systems and force structures.
US oil and gas production peaked in the early ’70s, and we are now by far the world’s largest energy importer. The largest oilfields in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, Syria, Yemen and Oman are in decline, as are most oilfields in the former Soviet Union, Canada, Central and South America, and on-shore Africa. New fields will be discovered and new technologies brought to bear, but costs of production will be higher than in the past and will require more expensive investments in equipment and technology.
Even as existing fields age, the new economies of India and China require more and more oil to fuel their impressive growth. Although a worldwide depression might result in a temporary drop in the price of oil and other commodities, the long-term imbalance between growing demand and declining supply will eventually reassert itself, creating price increases over time.
Contemporaneously with the supply/demand imbalance in oil and other hard commodities, the Bush Administration’s response to 9/11 has weakened the position of the dollar in the world. The President’s request that Americans continue to spend has struck an all-too-sympathetic chord with the American people. The trade deficits caused by that spending have created a current account deficit equal to 6.2 percent of GDP, sending trillions of dollars into the hands of foreigners.
While we continue to import goods of much greater value than those we export, thus flooding the world with dollars, Bush has pursued a policy of what some have dubbed “military Keynesianism”–that is, the combination of low taxes and high military expenditures. This dynamic forces the Federal Reserve to print money and foster easy credit policies, which will eventually result in higher interest rates, inflation or both.
So the printing presses are spewing out more dollars, which are being collected by China, Japan and others. And those countries are showing signs of concern that they have too much of their foreign exchange reserves tied up in our currency. Likewise, certain other nations are evidencing a declining interest in accepting the dollar as a medium of exchange. It was in October 2000 that Saddam insisted that Iraq’s oil be paid for in euros. But now Russia wants payment for the energy it exports in rubles. Venezuela and Iran insist on euros. Kuwait has recently unpegged its dinar from the dollar in favor of a basket of currencies.
The dollar has indeed shown symptoms of its decline in popularity during the Bush years. The dollar has weakened against the euro, gold, copper and other hard assets and currencies. When Bush came in to office, for example, you could get .987 euros for every dollar. Now you can only get .75. You could say that at $65 per barrel, oil is getting more valuable… or you could say the value of the dollar has declined as measured by oil.
Mainstream economists seem to agree that best-case, the dollar will continue a stately decline, but in a world where the United States has lost so much respect, where we continue to flood the world with dollars and borrow to finance our consumer habit, we could find that one of those sharp, depression-inducing discontinuities occurs–like, say, a run on the dollar.
We are continuing to import 60 percent of the 20.6 million barrels of oil we use daily. And though the size and stability of our economy is likely to insure a demand for the dollar at some level, oil that anyone can buy for hard currency may be getting scarcer. Governments have begun to do deals aimed at taking oil off the market for their own account–deals like the ones China has done with Angola, Brazil, Iran, Nigeria, Venezuela and Sudan. South Korea has just announced it will follow suit.
If our military cannot secure oil by force, and if oil is destined to cost us more and more of a declining currency to buy what is available, then “brand USA” is in trouble. When Bush leaves office, this country will have to begin the difficult task of reversing some very bad trends in the military, fiscal, monetary and energy areas. The pollution of his legacy transcends mere politics.
Ken Miller is chairman and CEO of Ken Miller Capital LLC in New York.
© 2007 The Nation
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers
Congress Must Act Now, To Stop Bush on Iran
Why does Congress not enact the resolution Nancy Pelosi pulled down, which declares that nothing in present law authorizes President Bush to launch a pre-emptive strike or preventive war on Iran – and before launching any such attack, he must get prior approval from both houses of Congress?If we are going to war, is it not imperative that, this time, we know exactly why we must go to war, what exactly the threat is from Iran, what are the likely consequences of a US attack on a third Islamic country and what are the alternatives to war?
-Pat Buchanan
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
-Pat Buchanan
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
Watch List, so big it's useless.
Wonder how many antiwar activists names are on the list?
By Justin Rood
ABC News
Wednesday 13 June 2007
A terrorist watch list compiled by the FBI has apparently swelled to include more than half a million names.
Privacy and civil liberties advocates say the list is growing uncontrollably, threatening its usefulness in the war on terror.
The bureau says the number of names on its terrorist watch list is classified.
A portion of the FBI's unclassified 2008 budget request posted to the Department of Justice Web site, however, refers to "the entire watch list of 509,000 names," which is utilized by its Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force.
A spokesman for the interagency National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which maintains the government's list of all suspected terrorists with links to international organizations, said they had 465,000 names covering 350,000 individuals. Many names are different versions of the same identity - "Usama bin Laden" and "Osama bin Laden" for the al Qaeda chief, for example.
In addition to the NCTC list, the FBI keeps a list of U.S. persons who are believed to be domestic terrorists - abortion clinic bombers, for example, or firebombing environmental extremists, who have no known tie to an international terrorist group.
Combined, the NCTC and FBI compendia comprise the watch list used by federal security screening personnel on the lookout for terrorists.
While the NCTC has made no secret of its terrorist tally, the FBI has consistently declined to tell the public how many names are on its list. Because the number is classified, an FBI spokesman told the Blotter on ABCNews.com, he was unable to comment for this story.
"It grows seemingly without control or limitation," said ACLU senior legislative counsel Tim Sparapani of the terrorism watch list. Sparapani called the 509,000 figure "stunning."
"If we have 509,000 names on that list, the watch list is virtually useless," he told ABC News. "You'll be capturing innocent individuals with no connection to crime or terror."
U.S. lawmakers and their spouses have been detained because their names were on the watch list.
Reporters who have reviewed versions of the list found it included the names of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, at the time he was alive but in custody in Iraq; imprisoned al Qaeda plotter Zacarias Moussaoui; and 14 of the 19 Sept. 11, 2001 hijackers, all of whom perished in the attacks.
"There's a reason the FBI has a '10 Most Wanted' list, right? We need to focus the government's efforts on the greatest threats. When the watch list grows to this level, it's useless as an anti-terror tool," Sparapani said.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
Sicko Goopers
The GOP is a sick party of sick people.
Nasty, mean-spirited and delusional, it blames its favorite phantom menace, liberals, for all our nation's woes though liberals have not wielded real power since the New Deal. How rational, therefore, is this perpetual, tiresome GOP jihad?
Republicans may very well be "nuts" but that misstates the situation. What we are witnessing from outside America's increasingly radical, imperialist party is the ugly puss that oozes from an open sore: Republicanism, desperately seeking scapegoats.
Bush's tar baby, Iraq, has become the GOP tar baby, not easily scraped off. Thus the GOP is the party of monumental failure, a party that will most surely preside over the dissolution, the fall, the complete collapse of the "great" American empire.
It is no wonder that Republicans now blame one another and the Democrats. The GOP will try to suck democrats into the quagmire. That is to be expected; it is the nature of evil that it tries to compromise its opposition. Still - a murderer bears more responsibility than those who merely fail to stop him.
Democratic regimes, moderate to a fault, have provided little relief from right wing oppression and orthodoxy that has all but killed America. The myriad of sins heaped on "liberals" and "secular humanists" by goppers is most certainly a deliberate campaign of frauds and lies -the kind we come to expect from the party of George W. Bush, Alberto Gonzales[See: Senate Conservatives Refuse To Put Gonzales Under Oath], Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich and Jack Abramoff.
But what, I want to know, is the GOP still pissed about?
The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
W.H. Rebuke DOJ Officials Over Rover
U.S. ATTORNEYS
Officials rebuked for disclosing Rove's connection to firing of U.S. attorney
By Margaret Talev and Marisa Taylor
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON - The White House's former political director was furious at Justice Department officials for disclosing to Congress that the administration had forced out the U.S. attorney in Little Rock, Ark., to make way for a protege of Karl Rove, President Bush's political adviser, according to documents released late Tuesday.
Then-White House political affairs director Sara Taylor spelled out her frustrations in a Feb. 16 e-mail to Kyle Sampson, then the chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
She sent the message after Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty told the Senate that unlike other federal prosecutors, U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins wasn't fired for performance reasons, but to make way for former Republican political operative Tim Griffin. Griffin, serving as the interim U.S. attorney, then announced that he wouldn't seek confirmation to the Arkansas post, but would remain until the Senate confirmed someone else. Griffin has since resigned.
"Tim was put in a horrible position; hung out to dry w/ no heads up," Taylor lashed out in the e-mail, which was sent from a Republican Party account rather than from her White House e-mail address. "This is not good for his long-term career."
The Taylor e-mail was among 46 pages of documents that the Justice Department turned over to Congress Tuesday as part of the investigation into the firings of at least nine U.S. attorneys.
The Democratic chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees said the documents showed greater White House involvement in the firings than previously known.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said the documents "provide further evidence that White House officials like former political director Sara Taylor were deeply involved in the mass firings of well-performing prosecutors."
The White House disputed those characterizations, saying the e-mails deal only with the aftermath of the firings, not what led up to them, and that there was nothing inappropriate about wanting to promote Griffin, whom the administration considered "exceptionally" qualified.
"I know this is becoming terribly frustrating for Democrats, but once again documents show no wrongdoing in the decision to replace U.S. attorneys," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto.
Fratto said some documents also undercut Democrats' assertions that the White House wanted to abuse a change in federal law to keep interim U.S. attorneys in place without Senate confirmation.
In an e-mail exchange from early January, then-White House Counsel Harriet Miers asked Sampson how the department wanted to handle replacement candidates. Sampson replied that "in no case" did he want to use the new law unilaterally to "jam senators" because "that will only result in the Congress taking that authority away from us."
The newly released e-mails also showed that:
-The White House counsel's office thought in January that the ousted prosecutors had "disloyally stirred up the senators" but argued against criticizing them publicly because they hadn't "fired any shots" at the administration.
-Taylor called Cummins "lazy" and said that was "why we got rid of him in the first place." Cummins, reached Tuesday, said, "I don't know how Sara Taylor would have any information about my work ethic."
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ON THE WEB
To read the latest e-mails, go to the bottom of the page at: www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/special_packages/usattorneys/
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
Officials rebuked for disclosing Rove's connection to firing of U.S. attorney
By Margaret Talev and Marisa Taylor
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON - The White House's former political director was furious at Justice Department officials for disclosing to Congress that the administration had forced out the U.S. attorney in Little Rock, Ark., to make way for a protege of Karl Rove, President Bush's political adviser, according to documents released late Tuesday.
Then-White House political affairs director Sara Taylor spelled out her frustrations in a Feb. 16 e-mail to Kyle Sampson, then the chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
She sent the message after Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty told the Senate that unlike other federal prosecutors, U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins wasn't fired for performance reasons, but to make way for former Republican political operative Tim Griffin. Griffin, serving as the interim U.S. attorney, then announced that he wouldn't seek confirmation to the Arkansas post, but would remain until the Senate confirmed someone else. Griffin has since resigned.
"Tim was put in a horrible position; hung out to dry w/ no heads up," Taylor lashed out in the e-mail, which was sent from a Republican Party account rather than from her White House e-mail address. "This is not good for his long-term career."
The Taylor e-mail was among 46 pages of documents that the Justice Department turned over to Congress Tuesday as part of the investigation into the firings of at least nine U.S. attorneys.
The Democratic chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees said the documents showed greater White House involvement in the firings than previously known.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said the documents "provide further evidence that White House officials like former political director Sara Taylor were deeply involved in the mass firings of well-performing prosecutors."
The White House disputed those characterizations, saying the e-mails deal only with the aftermath of the firings, not what led up to them, and that there was nothing inappropriate about wanting to promote Griffin, whom the administration considered "exceptionally" qualified.
"I know this is becoming terribly frustrating for Democrats, but once again documents show no wrongdoing in the decision to replace U.S. attorneys," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto.
Fratto said some documents also undercut Democrats' assertions that the White House wanted to abuse a change in federal law to keep interim U.S. attorneys in place without Senate confirmation.
In an e-mail exchange from early January, then-White House Counsel Harriet Miers asked Sampson how the department wanted to handle replacement candidates. Sampson replied that "in no case" did he want to use the new law unilaterally to "jam senators" because "that will only result in the Congress taking that authority away from us."
The newly released e-mails also showed that:
-The White House counsel's office thought in January that the ousted prosecutors had "disloyally stirred up the senators" but argued against criticizing them publicly because they hadn't "fired any shots" at the administration.
-Taylor called Cummins "lazy" and said that was "why we got rid of him in the first place." Cummins, reached Tuesday, said, "I don't know how Sara Taylor would have any information about my work ethic."
---
ON THE WEB
To read the latest e-mails, go to the bottom of the page at: www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/special_packages/usattorneys/
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
Bush High Corruption Continues With Thompson
Timothy Griffin, the Karl Rove protégé at the center of the federal prosecutor scandal, is negotiating for a senior position on Fred Thompson’s Republican presidential campaign, another sign that the actor and former senator is positioning himself as the reddest of red-meat candidates appealing to the right-wing base.
A litmus test among devoted followers of George W. Bush remains an instinctive rejection of all scandals considered important by liberals, from the deceptive intelligence behind the Iraq War to the torture of terror suspects to the exposure of CIA officer Valerie Plame to the politicization of the U.S. Attorneys.
If the liberals think it’s a scandal, Bush’s followers know the talking points from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and other right-wing media outlets explaining why it isn’t.
Thompson is courting those votes by making himself the stick-it-in-your-ear candidate, the guy who doesn’t give a hoot what the New York Times editorial page says.
While other Republican presidential contenders also may vouch for the rightness of the Iraq War and defend torture (with a couple of exceptions), Thompson has jumped out front demanding a pardon for convicted White House aide I. Lewis Libby.
Now Thompson’s consideration of Griffin for a top job is a sign of what Law & Order’s fictional D.A. thinks about the prosecutor scandal.
By letting it be known that Griffin is under consideration for a senior campaign post, Thompson’s nascent campaign is signaling to the Republican base that Thompson won’t shy away from Republicans under fire.
“I can tell you I’ve had discussions with my good friend Tim Griffin,” Thompson’s spokesman Mark Corallo told me.
Corallo also made clear that the Thompson campaign was not fazed by allegations implicating Griffin in so-called “caging” operations to disqualify black voters or by charges that Griffin inflated his résumé as a prosecutor.
The 38-year-old Griffin was appointed interim U.S. Attorney in Little Rock, Arkansas, in December 2006 after former U.S. Attorney H.E. “Bud” Cummins was one of nine regional federal prosecutors pushed out of their jobs to make room for “loyal Bushies.”
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales put Griffin in the job by using emergency powers that were slipped into the USA Patriot Act, thus evading the normal confirmation process before the U.S. Senate.
Exaggerated Experience
Despite the unusual appointment, the Bush administration and its political allies touted Griffin’s supposedly strong experience as both a civilian and military prosecutor. Under inspection, however, Griffin’s prosecutorial record looks less than impressive – and indeed his résumé appears misleading.
For instance, Griffin’s official Web site claimed that he had prosecuted 40 cases while stationed for nine months at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky. But Army records showed him serving as an assistant on only three, all of which were settled with guilty pleas.
Republican supporters also appear to have exaggerated Griffin’s experience during another nine-month stint as an assistant U.S. attorney in Little Rock.
Though the federal case tracking system lists Griffin as having secured 25 indictments, there is no evidence that he took any of them to trial before quitting to go to work on the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign. I learned from Griffin’s former colleagues that some of his cases needed corrections (or superceding indictments) before other prosecutors could take them to trial.
Griffin didn’t agree to be interviewed, but his spokeswoman Cherith Beck suggested that Griffin’s higher number on the Ft. Campbell cases might refer to all prosecutions that he worked on in any capacity.
“Just wanted to clarify, make sure you had an understanding that prosecuted means it’s a case he handled while he was there; it doesn’t mean that it went to trial necessarily,” Beck said. “Prosecuted means he handled those cases in one form or another.”
However, I could find no evidence that Griffin tried either a civilian or military case; no examples of him presenting a case to a jury, like the prosecutors do on "Law & Order," the TV series in which Thompson plays a crusty New York district attorney. [For more on Griffin’s legal experience, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Did Rove Protégé Puff Up His Resume?”]
Though perhaps light on prosecutorial experience, Griffin impressed Bush’s chief political adviser Karl Rove with his campaign skills.
In September 1999, Griffin joined the Bush-Cheney campaign as deputy research director handling what’s known in the Washington political world as “oppo” or opposition research, digging up dirt on political opponents. He also worked as a legal adviser in the Florida recount battle that gained Bush the White House in December 2000.
As research director and deputy communication director for the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign, Griffin’s initiatives included the use of a technique known as “caging” to identify suspect voters. Griffin’s team sent letters to newly registered voters in envelopes barring any forwarding, so they would be returned if a voter wasn’t at that address.
BBC investigative reporter Greg Palast uncovered Griffin’s role in this practice that proved especially effective in “caging” African-Americans who lived in low-income areas or who were in the U.S. military. “Caged” voters would then be challenged by Republican lawyers when they arrived at the polls or cast absentee ballots.
Quick Rise
After Bush secured a second term, Griffin joined the White House staff as deputy director for political affairs under Rove. Over the next two years, White House and Justice Department officials collaborated to oust Little Rock U.S. Attorney Cummins, a well-respected Republican, so a vacancy could be created for Griffin.
Although the Justice Department initially denied knowing “of Karl Rove playing any role in the decision to appoint Griffin,” an e-mail by Gonzales’s chief of staff Kyle Sampson revealed that Griffin’s appointment was “important to Harriet, Karl, etc.,” in a reference to then-White House counsel Harriet Miers and Karl Rove.
Griffin got the U.S. Attorney’s job in December 2006, but his interim appointment soon was caught up in the scandal over the firing of nine prosecutors. He quit the job abruptly on June 1, as House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers began collecting evidence on the Bush-Cheney “caging” operations.
Despite Griffin’s baggage, Thompson is reportedly considering giving Griffin an important job on the campaign. When I asked what role Griffin might play in the campaign, spokesman Corallo answered, “that’s something that’s still under discussion.”
Thompson has been out front, too, in urging President Bush to pardon Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff who was convicted of obstruction of justice in the investigation into who leaked the identity of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame.
Thompson, a member of an advisory committee for Libby’s defense, called Libby’s conviction and 30-month sentence “tragic” and said he “absolutely” should be pardoned.
In a June 5 appearance on Fox’s Hannity & Colmes, Thompson reiterated the chief pro-Libby talking points that have become articles for faith for the Republican base.
"What they were looking at didn’t constitute a crime,” Thompson said, arguing that Plame was not a covert CIA officer as defined by the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. “Scooter Libby didn’t leak her [Plame’s] name. … They picked him out to bring the burden of this entire political witch-hunt on him.”
Talking Points
All Thompson’s comments on Plamegate are treasured Republican talking points, but not necessarily accurate.
Though it’s true that prosecutors faced a difficult challenge in charging senior administration officials of illegally divulging the identity of a covert agent (especially since President Bush was involved in the broader operation), the willful leaking of such sensitive classified information is often treated as a crime. Attorney General Gonzales himself has suggested using the Espionage Act to punish other leaks of classified material.
Also, despite claims by right-wing lawyers that Plame was not a “covert” agent, the CIA confirmed that she was and Plame testified before Congress that she had served abroad in the past five years, meaning that she would have come under the protection of the agents identities act.
Contrary to another Thompson assertion, Libby did leak Plame’s identity to at least two reporters, although it turned out that another journalist, Robert Novak, who had received the information from Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Rove, published the leak first.
Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald presented an ironclad case proving that Libby had lied about his role in peddling Plame’s identity, which was done with the goal of discrediting her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who was challenging Bush’s use of bogus intelligence about Iraq seeking uranium from Africa.
But Thompson’s eagerness to embrace Libby and Griffin, as well as his support of controversial actions by the Bush administration, suggests that he doesn’t see these scandals as political liabilities but rather as a way to burnish his bona fides with the hard-right base of the Republican Party.
Richard L. Fricker is a Tulsa, Oklahoma-based freelance reporter/writer and two-time winner of the American Business Press Editors Award for Investigative Journalism. He writes regularly for the Swiss newsweekly Sonntags Blick and Consortiumnews.com. Fricker can be reached at rlfricker@hotmail.com .
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
A litmus test among devoted followers of George W. Bush remains an instinctive rejection of all scandals considered important by liberals, from the deceptive intelligence behind the Iraq War to the torture of terror suspects to the exposure of CIA officer Valerie Plame to the politicization of the U.S. Attorneys.
If the liberals think it’s a scandal, Bush’s followers know the talking points from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and other right-wing media outlets explaining why it isn’t.
Thompson is courting those votes by making himself the stick-it-in-your-ear candidate, the guy who doesn’t give a hoot what the New York Times editorial page says.
While other Republican presidential contenders also may vouch for the rightness of the Iraq War and defend torture (with a couple of exceptions), Thompson has jumped out front demanding a pardon for convicted White House aide I. Lewis Libby.
Now Thompson’s consideration of Griffin for a top job is a sign of what Law & Order’s fictional D.A. thinks about the prosecutor scandal.
By letting it be known that Griffin is under consideration for a senior campaign post, Thompson’s nascent campaign is signaling to the Republican base that Thompson won’t shy away from Republicans under fire.
“I can tell you I’ve had discussions with my good friend Tim Griffin,” Thompson’s spokesman Mark Corallo told me.
Corallo also made clear that the Thompson campaign was not fazed by allegations implicating Griffin in so-called “caging” operations to disqualify black voters or by charges that Griffin inflated his résumé as a prosecutor.
The 38-year-old Griffin was appointed interim U.S. Attorney in Little Rock, Arkansas, in December 2006 after former U.S. Attorney H.E. “Bud” Cummins was one of nine regional federal prosecutors pushed out of their jobs to make room for “loyal Bushies.”
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales put Griffin in the job by using emergency powers that were slipped into the USA Patriot Act, thus evading the normal confirmation process before the U.S. Senate.
Exaggerated Experience
Despite the unusual appointment, the Bush administration and its political allies touted Griffin’s supposedly strong experience as both a civilian and military prosecutor. Under inspection, however, Griffin’s prosecutorial record looks less than impressive – and indeed his résumé appears misleading.
For instance, Griffin’s official Web site claimed that he had prosecuted 40 cases while stationed for nine months at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky. But Army records showed him serving as an assistant on only three, all of which were settled with guilty pleas.
Republican supporters also appear to have exaggerated Griffin’s experience during another nine-month stint as an assistant U.S. attorney in Little Rock.
Though the federal case tracking system lists Griffin as having secured 25 indictments, there is no evidence that he took any of them to trial before quitting to go to work on the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign. I learned from Griffin’s former colleagues that some of his cases needed corrections (or superceding indictments) before other prosecutors could take them to trial.
Griffin didn’t agree to be interviewed, but his spokeswoman Cherith Beck suggested that Griffin’s higher number on the Ft. Campbell cases might refer to all prosecutions that he worked on in any capacity.
“Just wanted to clarify, make sure you had an understanding that prosecuted means it’s a case he handled while he was there; it doesn’t mean that it went to trial necessarily,” Beck said. “Prosecuted means he handled those cases in one form or another.”
However, I could find no evidence that Griffin tried either a civilian or military case; no examples of him presenting a case to a jury, like the prosecutors do on "Law & Order," the TV series in which Thompson plays a crusty New York district attorney. [For more on Griffin’s legal experience, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Did Rove Protégé Puff Up His Resume?”]
Though perhaps light on prosecutorial experience, Griffin impressed Bush’s chief political adviser Karl Rove with his campaign skills.
In September 1999, Griffin joined the Bush-Cheney campaign as deputy research director handling what’s known in the Washington political world as “oppo” or opposition research, digging up dirt on political opponents. He also worked as a legal adviser in the Florida recount battle that gained Bush the White House in December 2000.
As research director and deputy communication director for the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign, Griffin’s initiatives included the use of a technique known as “caging” to identify suspect voters. Griffin’s team sent letters to newly registered voters in envelopes barring any forwarding, so they would be returned if a voter wasn’t at that address.
BBC investigative reporter Greg Palast uncovered Griffin’s role in this practice that proved especially effective in “caging” African-Americans who lived in low-income areas or who were in the U.S. military. “Caged” voters would then be challenged by Republican lawyers when they arrived at the polls or cast absentee ballots.
Quick Rise
After Bush secured a second term, Griffin joined the White House staff as deputy director for political affairs under Rove. Over the next two years, White House and Justice Department officials collaborated to oust Little Rock U.S. Attorney Cummins, a well-respected Republican, so a vacancy could be created for Griffin.
Although the Justice Department initially denied knowing “of Karl Rove playing any role in the decision to appoint Griffin,” an e-mail by Gonzales’s chief of staff Kyle Sampson revealed that Griffin’s appointment was “important to Harriet, Karl, etc.,” in a reference to then-White House counsel Harriet Miers and Karl Rove.
Griffin got the U.S. Attorney’s job in December 2006, but his interim appointment soon was caught up in the scandal over the firing of nine prosecutors. He quit the job abruptly on June 1, as House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers began collecting evidence on the Bush-Cheney “caging” operations.
Despite Griffin’s baggage, Thompson is reportedly considering giving Griffin an important job on the campaign. When I asked what role Griffin might play in the campaign, spokesman Corallo answered, “that’s something that’s still under discussion.”
Thompson has been out front, too, in urging President Bush to pardon Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff who was convicted of obstruction of justice in the investigation into who leaked the identity of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame.
Thompson, a member of an advisory committee for Libby’s defense, called Libby’s conviction and 30-month sentence “tragic” and said he “absolutely” should be pardoned.
In a June 5 appearance on Fox’s Hannity & Colmes, Thompson reiterated the chief pro-Libby talking points that have become articles for faith for the Republican base.
"What they were looking at didn’t constitute a crime,” Thompson said, arguing that Plame was not a covert CIA officer as defined by the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. “Scooter Libby didn’t leak her [Plame’s] name. … They picked him out to bring the burden of this entire political witch-hunt on him.”
Talking Points
All Thompson’s comments on Plamegate are treasured Republican talking points, but not necessarily accurate.
Though it’s true that prosecutors faced a difficult challenge in charging senior administration officials of illegally divulging the identity of a covert agent (especially since President Bush was involved in the broader operation), the willful leaking of such sensitive classified information is often treated as a crime. Attorney General Gonzales himself has suggested using the Espionage Act to punish other leaks of classified material.
Also, despite claims by right-wing lawyers that Plame was not a “covert” agent, the CIA confirmed that she was and Plame testified before Congress that she had served abroad in the past five years, meaning that she would have come under the protection of the agents identities act.
Contrary to another Thompson assertion, Libby did leak Plame’s identity to at least two reporters, although it turned out that another journalist, Robert Novak, who had received the information from Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Rove, published the leak first.
Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald presented an ironclad case proving that Libby had lied about his role in peddling Plame’s identity, which was done with the goal of discrediting her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who was challenging Bush’s use of bogus intelligence about Iraq seeking uranium from Africa.
But Thompson’s eagerness to embrace Libby and Griffin, as well as his support of controversial actions by the Bush administration, suggests that he doesn’t see these scandals as political liabilities but rather as a way to burnish his bona fides with the hard-right base of the Republican Party.
Richard L. Fricker is a Tulsa, Oklahoma-based freelance reporter/writer and two-time winner of the American Business Press Editors Award for Investigative Journalism. He writes regularly for the Swiss newsweekly Sonntags Blick and Consortiumnews.com. Fricker can be reached at rlfricker@hotmail.com .
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
Crusading Crackpots In The Military Promote Anti-semitism
Fort Leavenworth Chaplains Accused of Anti-Semitic Publishing
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t Report
Monday 11 June 2007
At the Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Army base, military chaplains have been holding Bible classes for US soldiers using study guides that appear to be anti-Semitic.
The Fort Leavenworth chaplains have posted these lesson plans on the Internet under a web address that is maintained by the federal government, giving off the appearance that the religious materials in question are endorsed by the Pentagon. Moreover, disseminating the ideology via a government funded web site may violate the law mandating the separation between church and state.
The nonprofit watchdog group, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an organization that seeks to enforce the law mandating the separation between church and state in the US military, discovered the documents late last week. The anti-Semitic materials are posted as PDF files at the web site, Command Chaplain Bible Studies, which is maintained by the US Army's Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth.
The Officers Christian Fellowship Neighborhood Study Guides quote portions of the New Testament and were written by Major George Kuykendall, the leader of Fort Leavenworth's Officer's Christian Fellowship (OCF) who died in 1998, according to Chris Rodda, a senior researcher at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. Rodda said, "The study guides also encourage soldiers to engage in an unconstitutional level of proselytizing to fellow military personnel in the Fort Leavenworth Community."
In one of the study guides, Galatians, posted on the Fort Leavenworth chaplain web site, the materials refer to Jews as "Judaizers" - persons who without being Jews follow in whole or in part the Jewish religion or claim to be Jews - and claim that "the Judaizers were zealous people much like the zealous Moslems have become today."
The 34-page Galatians study guide deals primarily with "Paul," who the Jews "persecuted," according to the study guide.
"Why did the Jews persecute Paul? Because of his teachings," the study guide says. "The cross was an offense to the Jews. Jesus had victory over the cross (death)."
The study guide then says that anyone who turns from Christianity to Judaism "should be condemned to spiritual death and hell."
"The Judaizers attempted to destroy the two foundations of the Christian religion: a. The Grace of God, and b. The Death of Christ," the Galtatian study guide says, adding that Judaism is a religion of "bondage" and Christianity a religion of "freedom."
In discussing modern day Jerusalem, chaplains ask soldiers to provide an answer to the following question: "How does the present Jerusalem represent slavery?"
A person who answered the telephone at the Fort Leavenworth chaplains' office refused to disclose his name when contacted for comment. The individual, a male, said there have not been prior complaints to the Bible study guides and that "I would not characterize the material as anti-Semitic."
"I guess if you're Jewish you may see it that way, but we're discussing the gospels as it appears in the New Testament," this person said, who added that there was no plan to remove the study guides from the web site. Messages left at the public affairs office at Fort Leavenworth were not returned. Calls to a Pentagon spokesperson were also not returned.
But for Mikey Weinstein, the founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, the religious teachings are not only blatantly anti-Semitic, but he believes disseminating it over the Internet tramples upon the Constitution.
"It's illegal for an arm of the federal government to push this ideology," Weinstein, who is Jewish, said in an interview. "This is the official web site of the US Army, and this is here for everyone to see. Anyone would easily come away with the belief that the US Army endorses these teachings. The last time someone talked about a Jewish problem the way these chaplains are talking about it was in Europe in the 1930s. What these Bible teachings say to me or to anyone participating in these classes is that the US government loves the military but Jews are bad."
Weinstein said he intends to file a lawsuit against the US Army alleging Constitutional violations.
"I'm sick of writing letters," Weinstein said. "This type of fundamentalism needs to stop. This particular violation propagates every vile and wretched stereotype of the Jewish faith."
Weinstein, a former White House counsel who defended the Reagan administration during the Iran-Contra probe, has been waging a one-man war against the Department of Defense for what he says is a blatant disregard of the Constitution. He recently published a book on the issue: "With God on Our Side: One Man's War Against an Evangelical Coup in America's Military." Weinstein is also an Air Force veteran and a graduate of the Air Force Academy. Three generations of his family have attended US military academies.
Since he launched his watchdog organization 18 months ago, Weinstein said he has been contacted by more than 4,000 active duty and retired soldiers, many of whom served or serve in Iraq, who told Weinstein that they were pressured by their commanding officers to convert to Christianity.
Weinstein said a right-wing fundamentalist Christian agenda under President Bush has hijacked the military.
"The rise of evangelical Christianity inside the military went on steroids after 9/11 under this administration and this White House," Weinstein said in an interview. "This administration has turned the entire Department of Defense into a faith-based initiative."
Over Memorial Day weekend, Weinstein lashed out at the Air Force for co-sponsoring, along with evangelical Christian organizations, a three-day event celebrating the Air Force's 60th anniversary.
The event, sponsored by Task Force Patriot USA, an evangelical organization, and LifeWay Christian Resources, the publishing house of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), was described by the official publication of the Robins Air Force Base as "an official US Air Force 60th Anniversary event." The paper stated that the religious groups and the United States Air Force "have joined together to create a three-day celebration...."
Plans for the event prompted a forceful response from watchdog groups. In a letter to Air Force Secretary Michael W. Wynne and Acting Secretary of the Army Peter Geren, the Reverend Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU), called the event "a stunning display of the federal government using vast resources to trumpet a religious celebration."
Lynn added: "Military personnel and veterans come from many religious traditions and no religion at all. So it is wholly disingenuous for the organizers of this evangelical Christian gathering to promote it as a salute to all our troops. It is anything but."
Weinstein is quick to point out that the issues his organization is tackling are not about "Christianity versus Judaism." Rather, they're about keeping rampant fundamentalism out of the military.
But the Biblical teachings at Fort Leavenworth certainly appear to lean heavily on an anti-Semitic and pro-Christian agenda.
In the 14-page study guide Nehemiah, chaplains discuss a portion of the Sanballat, the first high priest of the temple at Samaria, who, according to the Bible study, had to deal with a "Jewish problem." He mocked the Jews' efforts to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem in the hopes that they would give up.
The study guide then poses the following questions for soldiers: "How do you interpret Sanballat's reaction to the Jews progress? Anxiety and fear? In light of what we know about the Jews performance today, were his fears reasonable?"
Another question in the same study guide asks soldiers to offer suggestions on a title for the portion of the scripture discussing Nehemiah.
"How would you short-title this portion of scripture?" the study guide asks. "Jews take advantage of Jews?"
Jason Leopold is a former Los Angeles bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswire. He has written over 2,000 stories on the California energy crisis and received the Dow Jones Journalist of the Year Award in 2001 for his coverage on the issue as well as a Project Censored award in 2004. Leopold also reported extensively on Enron's downfall and was the first journalist to land an interview with former Enron president Jeffrey Skilling following Enron's bankruptcy filing in December 2001. Leopold has appeared on CNBC and National Public Radio as an expert on energy policy and has also been the keynote speaker at more than two dozen energy industry conferences around the country.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
5 Scooter Myths
By Carol D. LeonnigSunday, June 10, 2007; B03
Judge Reggie B. Walton, who sentenced I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby to 30 months in prison last week for lying to federal investigators about his role in the leak of a CIA officer's identity, received 373 pages of letters about the high-profile convict whose fate he had to decide. Many argued for leniency on behalf of Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, whom former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld called a "dedicated public servant" and "strong family man." But some less famous writers were outraged about the example Libby set; one letter from "An Angry Citizen" demanded the longest prison term possible.
Around here, I'm the one who gets both kinds of letters. While covering this case for The Washington Post from the beginning of Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald's investigation in December 2003, I've received a steady stream of mail, most of it fuming -- some because the writers think a tireless patriot is being persecuted by a runaway prosecutor, others because they think a ruthless traitor is getting off easy after jeopardizing national security.
In fact, neither caricature is fair -- let alone accurate. But even now, four years after Valerie Plame's name hit the papers, the public still has some startling misconceptions about this fascinating, thorny case.
1. Valerie Plame wasn't a covert operative.
Wrong. She was.
Granted, this wasn't so clear at the start of Fitzgerald's grand jury investigation, so Libby's allies argued that the beans he spilled weren't that important to begin with. In fact, many of the officials who knew about her classified CIA status kept mum, which let Libby's pals jump to assert that she wasn't an undercover operative at the time of the leak.
But a CIA "unclassified summary" of Plame's career, released in court filings before Libby's June 5 sentencing, puts this one to rest: The CIA considered her covert at the time her identity was leaked to the media. The CIA report said that Plame had worked overseas in the previous five years and that the agency had been taking "affirmative measures" to conceal her CIA employment. That echoes the language used in the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which makes it a crime to reveal the identities of covert CIA officers.
When Libby was convicted, some conservative pundits complained that Fitzgerald had presented no compelling evidence at trial that Plame was covert. But that wasn't for lack of evidence; it was because Libby's lawyers convinced the court to bar any mention of her status during the trial, arguing that evidence suggesting that her job was classified would have been "unfairly prejudicial" to their client.
The CIA isn't famous for its clarity, but it's being pretty blunt on this issue: Langley says she was covert. Which other spook bureaucracy do you need to ask?
2. Karl Rove would have been indicted in the Plame case if it hadn't been for all the destroyed evidence.
You'll find this conspiracy theory all over left-wing blogs. The main cause of the hyperventilating is a series of missing White House e-mails, supposedly containing marching orders from President Bush's top political adviser in which Rove told his troops to out Plame and punish her husband, former ambassador Joseph I. Wilson IV, for having poured cold water over reports that Saddam Hussein had sought uranium in Africa.
Those e-mails may contain interesting stuff, but for now, it's rank speculation to suggest that they hold information about the Plame case or would have pushed Fitzgerald to charge Rove with perjury. Fitzgerald told the court just that. He was exercising standard prosecutorial discretion when he decided not to charge Rove, according to sources close to the investigation. He didn't think he had a strong enough case to prove that Rove had intentionally lied to investigators (though some FBI agents disagreed).
3. Libby didn't leak Plame's identity.
Oh brother am I tired of this one. Libby wasn't charged with leaking information about Plame; he was charged with lying to investigators. But the overwhelming weight of the evidence at the trial -- including reporters' notes of their interviews with Libby -- showed that Libby had indeed leaked classified information about Plame's identity, even though that wasn't what put him in the dock. The jury agreed that Libby lied when he said that he'd been telling reporters only what other reporters had told him about Plame's role at the CIA.
What is unclear is whether Libby knew she was a covert CIA agent at the time he discussed her with reporters -- a key point in determining whether this was an illegal leak. But Walton said that Libby "had a unique and special obligation" to keep such secrets, well, secret.
4. Bad press doesn't get under Cheney's skin.
The most powerful vice president in U.S. history is usually described as a tough customer who shrugs off media criticism. But if he had been that immune to (as one of his predecessors put it) "the nattering nabobs of negativism," he never would have told his top aide to talk about Joe Wilson, and none of this would have happened.
After all, did you hear Cathie Martin describe at trial what it was like to be the vice president's communications director during the spring and summer of 2003? Twice, Cheney dictated talking points for her about how to bat down Wilson's allegations that the administration had twisted the intelligence about Iraq's nuclear ambitions. Cheney also ordered her to start monitoring all television reports on the Niger controversy and arranged a luncheon for conservative columnists to help get out his take on everything.
And that's not all. According to Libby's testimony, Cheney arranged to have Bush declassify passages from the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons programs -- the first time Libby had ever heard of such a thing happening -- and pass them to Judith Miller, a New York Times reporter whom the administration saw as sympathetic.
5. The White House would fire any administration official who leaked classified information about Plame.
When the investigation began, the president said he hated leaks and would hold leakers of classified information accountable. But he has not sacked anyone over the case.
Libby resigned the day he was indicted in October 2005. Two other officials who gave reporters information about Plame, former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage and former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, left government before Fitzgerald's inquiry concluded. And Rove, who first told Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper about Plame's CIA identity, remains in the White House.
leonnigc@washpost.com
Carol D. Leonnig covers federal courts for
The Washington Post.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
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