The Alligator

Less than a month after I was born on September 9th, 1957 there was an event that was heralded as world changing- the launch of Sputnik on October 4th, 1957. It was the beginning of the “Space Age”.  As an interesting juxtaposition- Jack Kerouac’s “On The Road” was published just 4 days before I was born- so not only was it the “Space Age” but it was the age of the Beat Generation too.

During the last fifty years there have been a number of events that have forever changed the world: the first man to go into space- Yuri Gagarin; the first man to orbit the earth- John Glenn; the assassination of President Kennedy; the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy; the assassination of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.; Kent State; the Summer of Love; the Viet Nam War; the first man on the Moon; the first heart transplant; Watergate; the resignations of Vice President Agnew and President Nixon; the Iranian hostage crisis; the AIDS pandemic; the eradication of small pox, the invention of the personal computer, the development of the internet; the rise of the radical Christian right in American politics, the mapping of the human genome, the rise of radical Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism; Glasnost and the resulting fall of the Soviet Union and Communism in Eastern Europe; the ongoing struggle for rights by African-Americans, women and gays and lesbians; the recognition of the dangers to the planet by human induced global warming; the domestic terrorist attack in Oklahoma City, the al-Qaeda terrorist attacks of 9/11, and the waging of the first American preemptive war in history- the Invasion of Iraq are just a few of the history changing events that have occurred in my lifetime.

It’s really been an amazing half century. Fifty years ago would anyone have imagined that there would be a woman Speaker of the House or that an African-American, a woman and a Hispanic were all serious candidates for the US Presidency? Would it have been thinkable for the country to be having a debate about gay marriage and have many of the candidates for President supporting gay unions? Could we have imagined that many of us would have computers at home on our desks that are thousands of times more powerful than computers that took up an entire floor of an office building fifty years ago? Would we have imagined a world where we could identify the genetic markers for certain diseases? Would we have imagined that we would have access to an amount of information at our fingertips with the click of a “mouse” that would rival all the information in all the libraries that ever existed in the world?

Conversely could we have imagined that a debate about Darwin and evolution would have erupted 80 years after the Scopes trial in Dayton Tennessee? Could we have imagined a country where our Constitutional freedoms are under attack, its system of checks and balances out of kilter, and the separation of church and state becoming blurred? Could we have imagined in the era of Camelot – that this country would no longer judge itself by how it cares for its most vulnerable but by how it protects it’s most privileged? Could we have imagined that we would be, for all intents and purposes, in a global holy war between Muslims, Christians and Jews not the likes which has been seen since the middle ages? It seems for every leap forward there has also been a leap backwards.

It has been an interesting fifty years indeed. Obviously I don’t have any memory of Sputnik since I was less than 1 month old, but my mother wrote about it in my baby book (which I now have in my possession). I have a vague recollection of John Glenn’s orbit around the Earth- but I can’t be sure if it is my memory or a memory that has been informed by video replay. Probably the first vivid memory I have of world events is the assassination of President Kennedy. I remember being told about the President’s death at school- I was in first grade and we were sent home early. But what I remember the most is the funeral. I was glued to the television and to my child’s mind it seemed that the funeral lasted for a week. When I have seen replays from the funeral it evokes memories of being at a neighbor’s house watching the funeral on TV.

In 1967 at the age of 10 my family went to California for a vacation and we visited the Haight Ashbury during the “Summer of Love” to see the hippies and in 1969, like the rest of the world, I was rivited as I watched grainy images of Neil Armstrong taking man’s first steps on the moon. I remember- I was in summer camp and they set up a television in the mess hall and allowed us to watch this historic event. It was indeed a special moment that I will forever remember.

There are many personal events that have informed the man that I have become at 50 years of age- the divorce of my parents, my mother’s suicide, my family’s reaction to my coming out as a gay man, my internal battles and coming to terms with being gay, being diagnosed with HIV then AIDS then HCV, meeting Lee my partner of 19 years and through our lives together learning what it means to truly love someone are among many profound aspects of my personal journey.

But like all of us there has been an intersection along the way between the events occurring in the world and my own personal journey to become the person that I am today- September 9, 2007. If you had asked me on September 9, 1978- when I turned 21 where I would be at age 50 I am sure that my answer would not have been an accurate predicator of the future. But I know that at age 50, I am happy with the man I have become, what I have accomplished in my life and I truly cherish the life that I have. A great deal of my life’s direction is a result of that intersection of world events and my personal experiences.

I guess I developed a political nature as a child. I remember as a kid being glued to the TV- not to watch “I Dream of Jeannie” but to watch the Republican and Democratic National Conventions. I was fascinated with the political process and my parents allowed me to stay up to the wee hours to watch the nominating conventions.

I was a Republican until a year and a half into Ronald Reagan’s presidency. There are a number of reasons that I left the Republican Party and became an ardent Democrat that will become clear during this article.

During my high school years I paid attention to world events and read the New York Times regularly but the summer in 1974 was a turning point. A number of things intersected for me. I had come out to myself as a gay man earlier in the year, I was exploring religion and the nation was transfixed by Watergate.

Spring break of 1974 I was 16 years old and I took a 10 day trip to France with students and teachers from my school. It was an amazing trip and probably was the seed planted for my lifetime love of France and becoming an ardent Francophile. Many years later Lee and I would spend our 15th anniversary in the South of France on what we think of as our best vacation ever- mornings spent over croissant and planning that day which usually meant exploring a nearby ancient town, visiting amazing wineries and having fabulous and leisurely lunches- returning back to the house we were renting only to take a nap and then find some extraordinary place for a gourmet dinner! Yes that trip in 1974 started a love affair with France but it is also when I recognized that I was in fact gay. I won’t detail the private thoughts I had at the time- but they are detailed in my travel diary and dated March 18, 1974.

During that same period I was exploring various philosophies and religion. I was fascinated with philosophy and was reading Sartre, Camus, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Kierkegaard but after many years being involved in church activities  I also looked at Christianity in a new light. Quite frankly I was alone – knowing I was gay, afraid of what others would think, feeling that if my true self was revealed- everyone including my family would revile me. I felt alone and unloved. The philosophies I was reading really did nothing but validate isolation and at that particular juncture, I needed to feel accepted.

Oddly enough I found that acceptance at a coffee house that was run by some other teenagers – kids who were commonly referred to as “Jesus Freaks”. I was drawn in. I was lonely and was afraid- and I thought maybe God would accept me while being afraid that no one else would. At this time- there was no conservative Christian movement that taught hate and intolerance. “Jesus Freaks” were an offshoot of the Hippie culture and it was all about love and acceptance and I was drawn in. While I never divulged that I was gay (after all it was 1974) I never thought that being gay was inconsistent with having God’s love. It seemed ok. It was during this period though that I began to develop a sense of social justice and recognized the pitfalls inherent in a society that is obsessed with material gain rather than caring for others and being stewards of our society and our planet. It was my belief that Christ cared about the poor and warned about liars, false prophets and those obsessed with amassing personal gain and I think that my immersion in Christianity at the time informed my sense of values.

The third event in 1974 was Watergate. I was horrified by what was happening. I had lost my innocence in one way when I came out earlier that year, but I lost my innocence again when I realized that my nation’s leaders were not necessarily noble leaders that followed in the hallowed footsteps of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln and Roosevelt. While I had lived through Viet Nam, I hadn’t really thought about government corruption until Watergate. I was shocked, disappointed and angry. I had assumed a level of integrity, noble purpose and compassion from government and that fantasy was suddenly ripped out from under me.

I remember distinctly the day that President Nixon left office and President Ford was sworn in. I was working in New York City that summer for my father’s Wall Street firm and during lunch I went to Trinity Church to pray for the nation. Of course that prayer didn’t seem to help since 33 years later we are still wrestling with many of the same problems.

That intersection of being gay, being immersed in a form of Christianity that focused on love, respect and charity and being disappointed by my government were significant influences on another important milestone in life- high school graduation. 

In June 1975, about 10 months after Nixon resigned I graduated top of my class and thus I had the honor of giving the Valedictory address. I still have a copy of that address and recently re-read it. While the language is stilted and obviously written by a high school student, I found that my values and my passions really haven’t changed since that time. Here are some excerpts from the address:

“… The joyous occasion of commencement hardly seems the time to concern ourselves with the harsh realities of our society. However, it is now our time to take the step into the tumultuous world from which we have so long been protected by our families and our school. It is a world filled with crime, disrespect, immorality and hatred. A world in which leaving one’s own home is becoming an increasingly dangerous act. Our “protectors” have tried to shield us so that at times we lose true insight into this society. Nevertheless at the same time that society has deluded itself, hiding under the pretenses of freedom and democracy and the mistaken connotation that our country is a land of opportunity, have we recently been exposed to the truth.”

“… The public scandals of Watergate are only the surface of corruption which seems to exist in all areas of our government, right down to the local law enforcement agencies. Aristotle said “It is better for a city to be governed by good men than by good laws.” Too long have we been a nation under the yoke of good laws but the good men have been lacking. [N.B. Today I think I would celebrate good laws as well as the need for good leadership].”

“… We (society), in our apathy, living in our private microcosms are the ultimate reason for the spirit of corruption…. We have centered our lives selfishly around ourselves. Our words, our thoughts and our deeds can usually find their origins in our selfishness. Many times our relationships have become so demoralized that all we comprehend is our own satisfaction. Our amassing of material wealth has become an obsession. We have sanctioned and even encouraged this material gain for an individual so strongly that we measure personal success by such standards. In our obsession for material wealth and personal gain, our vision along with our identity has been narrowed to the task of climbing the rungs of the social ladder.”

While my thinking and my personal philosophy have matured and been informed by 32 additional years on the planet- I find it striking that many of the seeds of my social and political activism were there in 1975; much of it informed by being gay at a time when being gay was just beginning to be talking about, my need to understand my place in the world and find acceptance, and the sense of betrayal by those entrusted with our welfare thanks to Watergate.  In September of that year I entered Cornell University.  As a side note- I found my acceptance package from Cornell recently among my papers and the tuition for academic year 1975-76 was $3,775; for academic year 2007-08 the tuition is $34,600 (an increase of 912%).

When I was old enough to vote- I registered as a Republican. It seemed that in the 1970s the Republican party still had a soul and actually cared about people and about fairness. There was a history of “liberal Republicans” like Jacob Javits and Nelson Rockefeller. Being a Republican did not seem inconsistent with my sense of social justice.

In 1980 I was a registered Republican and to the chagrin of many of my friends today, I actually campaigned for George H.W. Bush during the Republican primaries. To my credit though I was campaigning against Ronald Reagan. And while I voted for Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election, it was a little less than 2 years later that I changed my party because I was horrified by Reagan’s presidency. There were three reasons I disliked Reagan. First was his economics. In those days it was called “the trickle down theory” which is now called supply side economics. George H.W. Bush rightfully called that economic theory “voodoo econmics”- it doesn’t help the economy- just the wealthy and corporations. Reagan’s administration chalked up astronomical debt- not unlike the current Bush administration. The second was that Ronald Reagan became cozy with an avowed homobphobe and a man that used Christianity as a sword for power and hate rather than a plow to sow charity and love- Jerry Falwell.

But it was what Mr. Reagan didn’t say that infuriated me. In June of 1981 I was just 23 years old and the CDC reported a disease that a year later would be known as AIDS. It was not until September 1985 that President Reagan mentioned AIDS in public. More than 10,000 Americans died within that period. He could have used the bully pulpit of his office to bring the epidemic to light- but he didn’t. I had friends dying and Reagan’s government took no notice and as his party became more beholden to the so called moral majority, my friends and I were villified and my community was dying. Ignorance, intolerance and hatred became the bywords of the Republican party and I could not sit by and watch my friends die.

As it turned out- I was probably infected with HIV during those years where Mr. Reagan remained silent. The HIV/AIDS epidemic became a central part of my life. Before I even knew I was HIV positive, the seeds of my activism were sown. The first fundraising event I ever attended was a performance of Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus in 1983 (2 years before Reagan publicly acknowledged the epidemic) with Leontyne Price singing the national anthem and Leonard Bernstein conducting the orchestra. That event, the first AIDS fundraising gala in the nation, is now legendary.

When I moved from New York City to San Francisco in February of 1988 at the age of 31, I went from one community being devestated by AIDS to another. I decided to get involved directly. I became a volunteer for an organization named Shanti – now 19 years ago- and it literally changed my life. I met Lee, my partner at my volunteer training, I immersed myself in HIV/AIDS work as a volunteer and it eventually became the center of my career and the work I continue to this day. I could not sit still and watch while my community was dying and testing positive made it personal- very personal.

Another event was decisive in sealing my fate as an advocate for my community. It was the candidacy of William Jefferson Clinton for President in 1992. I had abondoned the Republican party a decade earlier and the experience of the Republicans apalling lack of attention to HIV/AIDS and their villifcation of gays and lesbians had already made me an ardent Democrat. But while I was active in community work, I wasn’t politically active yet. That changed thanks to Bill Clinton.

Behind the scenes Clinton was already courting the gay and lesbian community through his gay FOB (Friend of Bill) David Mixner. David Mixner and a handful of others – all of whom I would eventually get to know and work with- put on the first fundraiser within the gay community for a Presidential candidate.

I was hooked and after the Democratic Convention, Lee and I volunteered tirelessly for Clinton. I will never forget election night 1992- we were giddy with the news of a Clinton victory and apparently the entire gay community in San Francsico was giddy too. We decided to walk down from our house to Castro Street where a spontaneous street party had erupted. It was magical. Because of Clinton I got political and I would later go on to serve on the Board of Governors of the Human Rights Campaign (the nation’s largest LGBT advocacy organization with more than 700,000 members) and to be one of the founders of the California Alliance for Pride and Equality- which is now Equality California- California’s LGBT adocacy organization.

In 1997 I was again present for a moment in history. As a member of the HRC Board of Governors, I attended its national dinner where President Clinton was the first sitting President in history to address an LGBT audience. It was an electric evening- I will never forget.

But it was in 1995 at the age of 38 that my career reflected the intersection of political activism and HIV/AIDS community work- it is when I entered the world of HIV/AIDS public policy working for the Public Policy Department of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and found my niche.  I’ve since lobbied at San Francisco City Hall, the California State Capitol and Capitol Hill for HIV/AIDS issues and GLBT civil rights issues and I have dedicated my life to bettering the world for people living with HIV/AIDS through policy work at every level of government. 

In 1997 I was honored to be one of advocates that were the primary architects of developing a statewide coalition that vigorously advocated for increased state funding for California’s AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP), one of the nation’s most comprehensive ADAPs -an effort that led to the first significant increase in state funding for ADAP and paved the road for further substanial funding increases during subsequent years. After my retirement I took out my policy and advocacy skills once again when I became eligible for Medicare. I realized that there was no one in the HIV/AIDS community paying attention to Medicare and became one of the first HIV/AIDS advocates in the nation to work on Medicare issues- more than a year before the debate began on the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 which was one of the biggest changes in the history of the nation’s entitlement programs.

Ironically- it was the passions that I have for the work that forced me to leave the work as a career. Through the stress and strain of the intensity of HIV/AIDS and LGBT policy issues and the battles fought daily, my own HIV got the better of me and I had to retire in the spring of 2000 at age 42 - just as a presidential campaign was about to get going.

In those early months of 2000 who would have guessed that George W. Bush had an iota of a chance to be President?   But thanks to connections and money  this man - who  didn’t seem particularly bright and possessed a minimal amount of public service experience other than 6 years as a Governor of Texas which was not a particularly memorable but did seem to come about due to an array of family connections- lost the national popular vote but won the Electoral College count and became President.

It hadn’t dawned on me that Al Gore would not win the 2000 election. Of course- as far as the popular vote goes, I was right. Due to my health, Lee and I didn’t get involved with the Gore camapign. Actually Lee had made me promise that I would not get involved with any community work for at least 6 months after I retired- and I agreed.

Being one who does my best to keep promises, but one who can’t stand still- even when I am not feeling well,  I joined the Board of Directos of PAWS (Pets Are Wonderful Support) in the autumn of 2000 - mostly due to the inspiration of my beloved beagle Darwin- and in December I was elected its President a position I would hold for 4 years. Lee and I took a wonderful trip to London and Paris in December 2000- I got the word of the PAWS Board election while we were in Paris and we got word of Gore’s consession to Bush while we were having breakfast at our hotel in London. We and a few of the other guests half jokingly talked about not returning to the United States because of the news.

Lee and I both assumed that George W. Bush would not be a good President, but we never could have guessed during breakfast at our hotel in the Bloomsbury section of London that morning what a disaster this presidency would mean for both the country and the world.

Just days 2 after my 44th birthday on September 9, 2001 was of course a date that has become indelidbly etched in every Americans mind- September 11, 2001. It was a day of horror and sadness but somehow the country became united in its grief and its determination. Lee and I had long standing plans for a two week trip to Italy and we left the country on September 20, 2001 for that holiday. Flying to Rome just 9 days after 9/11 seemed crazy to some folks, but we felt two things: 1) Determination not to have 9/11 change our plans and our lives because we felt it would have meant that the terrorists would have succeeded.  2) It was probably safer to fly at that moment in time than perhaps any other time.

During the days following 9/11 there was a sense of unity in the country – it was palpable and one thought that, if harnessed, this unity could be a powerful force for good in the nation. While we were in Italy- we felt compassion and friendship from all those we met because of what our nation had just endured. There was great affection for the United States at that time. Little did we know than that President Bush and his administration would fritter away the unity of our nation and the good will of the world by ignoring the threat of terrorism by turning his attention away from the conflict in Afghanistan in order to pursue his partisan unilateral agenda that had nothing to do with 9/11 and everything to do with neo-conservative idealogy. Through his cynicism Bush would evoke the memory of 9/11 at every opportunity in order to manipulate the American people to support an ill-conceived and immoral war in Iraq.

Lee and I both opposed the Iraq War from the outset. We didn’t have a problem with our country going into Afghanistan after 9/11, but we along with millions of others viewed the war in Iraq as a horrible decision. On the eve of the invasion of Iraq we took part in the February 15, 2003 antiwar protest in San Francisco that was part of a world wide action that day that included 800 cities across the globe.

A year later- as the war entered its second year the country embarked on a presidential campaign. Lee and I, like many others, felt that for the good of our country and of the entire world- it was imperative to get Mr. Bush out of office. But what could we do? We live in San Francsico where campaigning against George W. Bush was truly preaching to the choir.

Lee is active in SEIU and we discussed at length his taking a leave from his job and taking a month to work with the union in its American Coming Together campaign in a swing state. We agreed that he would take a month and go to Wisconsin. It was my job to keep the home fires burning and continue my community work in San Francisco and that allowed Lee to have the freedom to become deeply involved with the effort to defeat Bush. We know thousands and thousands of people worked hard but we like to think that this helped in a small way to put Wisconsin on the blue state map. Ever since Lee and I met in 1988 the support we have given to one another in our community work and activism has tuly made it a family affair.

As it turned out the election ended up hinging on Ohio and that ended up in the red column.

It’s three years later now and it seems that the world is a colossal mess. But I keep plugging along with my policy, planning and advocacy work and while I get frustrated by some of it- I do love it. I have often drawn an anology between my love for this work and a scene in the movie “Patton”. There is a scene where Patton is looking out over the smouldering field where a battle had been raging only hours before. The scene was quiet but it was clear that there was carnage. He whispers to a colleague “I love it, God help me I love it.” That sums up my relationship with policy and advocacy.  What I pray for most is a day where neither I nor anyone else needs to do this work because HIV/AIDS will be a bad memory.

Who knows where the next chapter of my life will lead me or where the world will be a year from now (Heck- I haven’t even made a decision about who I want to support for President).   Technology is changing at light speed and I think that over the coming decade or two we will see remarkable things and we will be provided with incredidble opportunity and potential.  But we run the risk of losing a lot too.  Technology is changing the way we communicate and share information, the information available to us, how we interact in the political sphere, how we treat illnesses and diseases and how we clean up the enviornmental mess that we have created on our planet.  We can use these for good- but we also run the risk of thinking in nothing but sound bites- and that is highly dangerous.  We need to ensure that we listen slowly and that we act with thoughtful diliberation as we take advantage of technology’s enormous gifts. 

It seems that my fifty years have provided me more prospective on life but the essential motivation- compassion, respect and caring for others was there decades ago. At 40 I would not have assumed I would be alive at 50.  I’ve made plenty of mistakes and I know that I can be demanding and short when I am passionate about something. It seems I tolerate fools less as I have gotten older and I also seem to tolerate self congratulatory egos even less.   I hope that I am a good person with a good heart and fair minded. I think I have made some small difference to others through my work and the intersection my life has had with world events, at least I hope I have. I know that I have felt honored and privledged to have touched a number of historic events and am blessed to have good people in my life that I cherish dearly. 

But what I truly hope that I have accomplished in my 50 years on the planet, more than anything else, is to be a good partner, a good friend, a good brother, a good son and to be, at my core, a good person.

Even though there have been some tough challenges and bumps in the road, I’ll be a little cliché and a lot Capraesque and end this by saying “It’s A Wonderful Life”.

Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) is being drummed from office by his party. As I wrote in my last post- there is no doubt in my mind that Craig is a closet case, but I still feel that being arrested for making gestures that are associated with soliciting sex in a rest room but are not necessarily soliciting sex is absurd. Have we suddenly become a society where the thought police can arrest us- because they know what we are thinking? I thought that only the federal government with powers granted to it through the Patriot Act was the only entity that could arrest you for what you are assumed to be thinking. 

I’ve said before that I want the hypocrite to squirm and I am not unhappy to see him go from the Senate although who knows what nut bag yahoo Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter (R-ID) will name as the new Senator. You can bet we won’t be seeing a re-make of “Mr. Smith Goes To Washington”! Otter’s voting record when he was a member of Congress is pretty much what you would expect from an gun totin’ red neck – a loyalist to President Bush. Progressive is not an adjective one would associate with Otter. So- the chances of a decent replacement are pretty slim.

But I don’t think that Craig should have been drummed out of office by his GOP pals. I reiterate- he didn’t do anything that rose to guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Although Craig’s behavior was suspicious- do we arrest people for suspicious behavior? Apparently we do!  But if this had gone to court I don’t think it would have passed the laugh test. In these circumstances the police tend to bully people into pleading- playing on their fears and insecurities. I find this sort of police work reprehensible. I would hope that the police have better things to do with their time than men’s room sting operations unless they assume that a pedophilia ring is operating out of that particular location.

Yet- one after another GOP members of the House and Senate and the party’s presidential candidates called for Craig to resign. Mitt Romney had to come out (no pun intended) and say something, no matter how ill thought out or how inane because he has to position himself as a social conservative. Quite frankly I don’t think Romney has any particular compass to lead him on social issues other than the wind. He’ll say anything he things people want to hear in order to get elected. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) was quick to say that his call for Craig to resign had nothing to do with Craig being gay rather- if a member of a senate pleads guilty to a crime- than he should resign.

Sorry Senator McCain, I just don’t buy that. I could be wrong- but I think that visiting a prostitute is considered a crime. Senator Vitter (R-LA) admitted to that act- but he wasn’t drummed out of the Senate.  He wasn’t even reprimanded- as was Congressman Barney Frank in 1990 when he admitted to receiving the services of a male prostitute. Although his actions were creepy, technically Representative Tom Foley did nothing illegal- but he too was forced out of office when it was divulged that he had written suggestive messages to Congressional pages and former pages all of whom were older than the age of consent.

If the GOP is drumming out elected officials because they are hypocrites and their personal life is inconsistent with their policy positions – there would be few members of the GOP – but there would certainly have been pressure for Senator Vitter to resign.  If they sought resignation from elected officials for being guilty of a crime- then Vitter should have been terminated as well.  Although he didn’t technically plead guilty to a crime in a court of law or to a police officer, he did admit his guilt to the world  Is there really a difference?

So why is it that Craig must go and Vitter can remain? Two reasons come to mind.

First is that that Republican Party is the party of homophobia. It is okay to have sexual peccadilloes if you are not gay or if you aren’t named Bill Clinton. Just look at the homophobic positions of the GOP presidential candidates. They hate gay people- pure and simple. There is no debate- the GOP does not welcome gay people. I give credit to the Log Cabin Republicans for trying and trying and trying to get an invitation to a club that clearly doesn’t want them (thank you Groucho Marx).

Second is pure politics- cynical ugly politics. Vitter is from a state that has a Governor who is a Democrat. He would likely appoint a Democrat and giving a wider margin of majority to the Dems. Craig is from Idaho where there is no chance in hell that Governor “Butch” will appoint anything but some Republican from the Neanderthal wing of the party.   So there is nothing to lose by asking Craig to go, while there might have been a lot to lose by booting Vitter.

Is any of this surprising? Sadly it isn’t.

Senator Larry E. Craig (R-ID) is guilty of being a hypocrite. There is little doubt in my mind that the man has been picking up men in public restrooms for quite a while. Rumors have swirled around the conservative senator from Idaho for years. “The Idaho Statesman” has been painstakingly researching the veracity of allegations made by gay blogger Mike Rogers before the 2006 midterm elections.

In an interview on May 14, a full month before the Senator was arrested, Craig told “The Idaho Statesman” he’d never engaged in sex with a man or solicited sex with a man. The Craig interview was the culmination of a Statesman investigation that began after Rogers accused Craig of homosexual sex in October. Over five months, the Statesman examined rumors about Craig dating to his college days and his 1982 pre-emptive denial that he had sex with underage congressional pages.

The most serious finding by the Statesman was the report by a professional man with close ties to Republican officials. The 40-year-old man reported having oral sex with Craig at Washington’s Union Station, probably in 2004. The Statesman also spoke with a man who said Craig made a sexual advance toward him at the University of Idaho in 1967 and a man who said Craig “cruised” him for sex in 1994 at the REI store in Boise. The Statesman also explored dozens of allegations that proved untrue, unclear or unverifiable.

Senator Craig’s sexuality would normally be none of my business if it involves two consenting adults. It isn’t my place to peek through the bedroom windows (or in this case under the bathroom stall) of elected officials- if they do their job then I do not care. But when that elected official is deceitfully engaging in a behavior that he is publicly vilifying than his private sex life does become my business. It is completely unconscionable to me that a man who is having gay sex (whether or not he defines himself as gay doesn’t really matter) would support a Constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage AND civil unions. Obviously the man has some deep seated issues- and is a self loathing man with severe internalized homophobia. Whether or not he wants to address those issues with a therapist is up to him- but when his personal self loathing plays out on the stage of politics and policy that is just clearly unacceptable.

I am not someone who is a fan out “outing” people, but when hypocrisy enters the picture- they must be held accountable.

The problem for me is that while I believe that Senator Craig is a self-loathing latent homosexual who clearly hates himself and spills out his self loathing in the public square, I don’t think the man did something for which he should have been arrested. As a gay man – I am very familiar with tea rooms (for those of you who do not have a gay lexicon handy, a tea room is a men’s room where gay men go to pick up other gay men).

Cruising “tea rooms” was common in the days before gay men had other places to go. There were particular men’s rooms that were “notorious” meeting places for gay men (I guess they still exist). Cruising these places was not about picking up straight men or boys- just a place to “hook up” with other gay men. The word got out about which men’s rooms were “active”. Often police knew which ones were active and had sting operations- not unlike the one that got Senator.

There’s an entire ritual or etiquette to picking someone up in a tea room- and foot tapping is in fact part of that etiquette. To be clear – the reason for all of this signaling is to ensure that the party you are cruising is in fact there for the same thing and is also interested. You tap- he taps back… its non verbal communication that says – “yup, I think we are here for the same thing”. But usually this is just the beginning of all the signaling before you actually connect. It’s really all designed about making sure you aren’t trying to connect with someone who isn’t interested.

As much as I would like to see this hypocrite squirm, I honestly don’t think he should have been arrested. If all he did was “signal” that really isn’t something that is an offense that merits arrest. I believe he was cruising- but I don’t think he should have been arrested for this offense. His guilty plea tells me that he was terrified that his life would be outed.

I have known a number of men who cruised tea rooms (heck I did too when I was coming out in my late teens and was terrified of the idea of a gay bar) and they were not there to do anything harmful and they were not interested in engaging in activity with disinterested parties; yet a number of these men were arrested by police stings that entrapped them for behavior that was not in fact illegal but was perceived to have a motive that may be more prurient. It is patently wrong for these men to be arrested for foot tapping or any behavior that the police deem to be moving in the direction of a “public nuisance” infraction. I am long past the age and the fear of being outed as gay to even remotely be interested in a tea room, but if I was sitting in a bathroom stall listening to my iPod and tapping my foot to the beat of the music- could I be arrested? For that matter could any of us be arrested for that? It is absolutely ludicrous.

So yes, Senator Craig’s behavior should be outed because he has projected his internalized homophobia into public policy positions. But Senator Craig never should have been arrested for making gestures that the police deemed suspect.

Folks- there have been more than 100,000 people murdered in this country since September 11, 2001. Don’t the police have anything better to do?

The formation of Madrasahs can probably be traced to the early Islamic custom of meeting in mosques to discuss religious issues. At this early stage, people seeking religious knowledge tended to gather around certain more knowledgable Muslims; these informal teachers later became known as the shaykhs; and these shaykhs began to hold regular religious education sessions and while Madrasahs are not by founding or tradition breeding grounds for terrorism and extremism- many of them have become exactly that.

Due to administrative mishandling, radical political indoctrination of students and adoption of a more conservative view of the simple teachings of Islam, especially in certain Muslim countries such as Pakistan, madrasahs nowadays are frequently deemed as ideological and political training grounds for hatred against the West.

The west has been horrified by these Madrasahs – especially the conservative Christian fundamentalists in the United States. But after watching “Jesus Camp” and exploring the “Kids In Ministry” web site- Becky Fischer and her ministry have created a Christian Madrasah in the worst interpretation of that word. They openly indoctrinate children through fear, emotional manipulation, quashing an open mind and free thinking, and create, to borrow a phrase from Christiane Amanpour, “God’s Christian Warriors”.

A few scenes were absolutely horrifying to me but what struck me the most was the indoctrination of children about abortion. These are children of an age who probably have not been given any education on sex or, given the thinking of their families, never will have adequate sex education. Yet these children were told horrific things about the killing of innocent babies in the wombs of mothers. They were shown plastic figurines that theoretically showed a fetus at various points of development and what was striking was that the fetus did not look any different at age 7 weeks than it did a later stages of development- it was just smaller. A fetus at 7 weeks is about 5-6 mm is length and while there are distinct features to it that may look like a human baby – it hasn’t fully formed those features – and to show it only getting bigger rather than maturing and developing is wildly misleading. Especially for impressionable children who are being horrified and told that they might have a lot of other friends if they hadn’t been murdered in the womb.

Let me be clear- I am not pro-abortion but I am pro-choice. I know women who have had abortions and in all cases it was a painful decision- but one that they felt was necessary for them.  The rhetoric about using abortions as a regular form of birth control for women is wildly misleading. If young women, especially from low income backgrounds, had accurate sex education as well as information and access to contraception there would be fewer abortions among women who feel that they are not in a position to bring a child into the world. Interestingly enough the same people who would eliminate a woman’s right to choose are the same people who want to make access to contraception for young women impossible and sexual education banned.

But I digress from my point here. How can you talk to children about abortion and not about sex? The answer is that you cannot and that unless Ms. Fischer was conducting a sex ed class before her rants about abortion to her campers, she was doing nothing but brainwashing young minds. Ironically enough- the young girls in this camp- who probably will never get adequate sex education or information and access to contraceptives are the same young women who will probably be the prime candidates for unwanted pregnancies and potential abortions in the future. And of course with the guilt and horror instilled in these young women they will need to be rushed to a therapist too.

The language of war and the political indoctrination of these children was shocking. A phrase oft repeated in the movie “reclaiming the country for Jesus” keeps haunting me. I did not know that Jesus ever “claimed” this country. While the founders may have been men with a deep faith in God they created a country that clearly defined the church and the state and tried to enshrine that among these two never the twain shall meet. To teach children that this country is a Christian nation is to defile the constitution and the tenants of the nation’s founding.

Let’s not forget the scene in the film where the children welcome President Bush and pray over him. Okay – it’s a cardboard cut out, but it sure seems like political indoctrination to me. Maybe a little idol worship thrown in for good measure.

And then there is “speaking in tongues”. For a brief moment in time as a teenager I visited some charismatic ministries and they explained to me that speaking in tongues was letting the Holy Spirit speak through you. OK- I’ll play. But what if I don’t feel God moving my mouth, tongue and vocal chords to make those noises of that Holy language which often eerily sound Semitic? I was informed that it was just fine to start “in the flesh” and the spirit would take over. In other words- start making nonsensical noises sounding like you are reciting Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” and then God will do the rest. That sounded absurd to me as a teenager and sounded absurd again when I heard a similar instruction given to the children in “Jesus Camp”.

The next time any fundamentalist Christian criticizes the indoctrination of Islamic boys in Madrasahs in Pakistan and elsewhere- let them look in their own back yard or even better yet at the “Kids in Ministry” website.

Dear Karl,

You have given us an America that terrorists and other’s that would destroy the American way of life would not need to dismantle because America is becoming the very thing that those who hate America are- hateful, uninterested in individual rights, obsessed with power and on the road to dictatorship.

You have been called Bush’s brain. But you not only take the place of the organ that is supposed to reside in the cranium of the President, you have ensured that the heart of the President, which we were told was that of a compassionate conservative, was transplanted by one that is as healthy as Dick Cheney’s heart- clogged with the cholesterol of hate, fear mongering, partisanship and dismantling of the Constitution. Of course this statement would mean that there was a heart there to begin with- but whatever the case is there is certainly heart damage and the Presidency had cardiac arrest quite a while ago.

You have been the architect of political power achieved through fear and governing through blatant partisan politics. You have been a master of twisting and spinning. Both parties have individuals that are talented in spinning. What you have done is spun with hate and fear.

My dear Karl- you worked for a President that says that he and his administration didn’t listen to polls and governed from a sense of what was right for the country. Whenever you are interviewed- I have never seen anyone so conversant in polling numbers— rather odd if you aren’t paying attention to them! Of course- the sense of what was right was right for the right and not for the rest of us.

Oh Karl- You silly guy. You had so much fun- like a little gossipy school girl whispering to anyone who would listen- exposing a CIA operative. “I know something you don’t know!” Boy that must have been fun. You didn’t just show how important an “insider” you were – but it had the added bonus of hurting the career of the spouse of one of your most ardent critics. You got to gossip and be a bitch too! Wait – I didn’t know you were a teenage girl!

Of course you have tried at every step of the way to discredit Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV and it was successful for a while- but Ambassador Wilson has certainly been proven to be correct.

As a gay man- I want to thank you so much for the strategy that you used in the 2004 election- using the fear of gay marriage to get voters out in every state.  It was a master stroke of wedge politics that vilified an entire group of people, played on ignorance and fear and rallied the troops of those groups that believed that some fantasy “Leave It To Beaver” world once existed and the fantasy was threatened. Should I mention that you and some other far right icons like Senator Jesse Helms and Reverend Jerry Falwell always reminded me of my stereotype of what a child molester looks like?  I probably shouldn’t, but I just did!

Thank you for the work you and Alberto Gonzales have done to politicize the Department of Justice- using the power of US Attorneys like a machete against Democrats and an all access pass to Republicans.

Is there any part of governing that you decided shouldn’t be politicized? I understand that all leaders are politicians but most administrations seem to have enough regard for the Constitution and our nation to realize that there is part of governing that should never be the purview of politics.

This morning on “Meet the Press” you trashed Hillary Rodham Clinton about her vote against the Medicare Modernization Act.  I cheered when she voted against that legislation.

You made it sound like she was not interested in helping elderly and disabled Americans. MMA was nothing but welfare for health insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies. Karl- I was actively involved in policy advocacy around Medicare – and that bill had little to do with helping Medicare beneficiaries- that’s a side bonus (when it happens). If it was meant for people- it would have allowed Medicare to negotiate prices and would not have included some absurd construct called a “Donut Hole”.

AARP begrudgingly signed on to support for that bill because they thought it was better than nothing. Sure it probably was- but be real- it was fatally flawed and as this Congress has found out fatally flawed legislation is difficult to fix. Wait didn’t you use the term “fatally flawed about Senator Clinton’s candidacy?

You and Dick Cheney use 9/11 as an excuse for going into Iraq. When asked about Dick Cheney’s very astute observation in 1994 of what would happen if President George Herbert Walker Bush (41) had overthrown Sadaam in the first Gulf War- you said everything changed after 9/11. WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT??

Mr. Cheney’s analysis in 1994 that there would be chaos and Iraq would be a quagmire had we taken down the regime was dead on. Even if the Bush administration had been right about the WMD argument- which was specious at best- it would have been their duty to reveal the dangers that had been assumed in a post-invasion Iraq. 

This 1994 analysis of going into Iraq was not discussed as part of the lead up to the war- it is simply unconscionable that their was inconvenient amnesia. 

But of course when you say everyone thought that Iraq had WMD’s you are forgetting about one small group that said that Iraq did not have WMDs. Oh those pesky UN Weapons inspectors! Why should we have relied on their “on the ground” information when we could have dummied up satellite imagery?

Thank you for your War on Terrorism. Our approach to terrorism hasn’t been terribly successful has it Karl? We are less safe- we have emboldened terrorists thanks to our arrogance in Iraq and our diversion from Afghanistan.

Why haven’t we taken the lead of two countries that have long histories of dealing with terrorism? The United Kingdom dealt with decades of the Irish Republican Army and of course Israel has become an expert on terrorism. In both cases they treated terrorism as criminal actions. But no- we have to go to a “war footing”. Of course – in WW II a war footing meant that all of our citizens shared some pain. In this “war” we are told to go shopping.

But Karl, I digress. How silly of me to think about adding to the nation’s burden dealing with criminal actions. After all you and your NRA pals have done so much for us to deal with criminal acts! With 100,000 people murdered in this country since 9/11 I guess you guys have done a bang up job.

I know you are leaving public life. But I do have a suggestion. We, the American people, woke up a little from our slumber and slapped you and Bush around in the 2006 election- you have not been able to dismantle the Constitution as much as you would have liked (although you have made remarkable headway).   As you pointed out on “Meet the Press” this morning- there is a separation of the three branches of government in our Constitution. You forgot the other part of that- “checks and balances”. I know, I know— it is so annoying to have Congress looking down your shoulder and actually doing their “oversight” duty. Boy that Constitution is annoying isn’t it? It’s a damned shame that you weren’t able to fulfill your dream of single party rule for perpetuity. But Karl- never fear, there is a government- and it’s not too far away that believes in changing their constitution at a whim and will soon ensure that it’s leader will have lifetime rule. I’m sure they’d love to have you!

The country- Venezuela; the leader- Hugo Chavez. Viva Rove!

Thanks again!

The American People

I couldn’t be more disgusted by the Democrats than I was when they caved into President Bush on warrantless spying that circumvents the FISA court. As usual the New York Times was correct in the editorial when they stated that it was appalling to watch over the last few days as Congress — now led by Democrats — caved in to yet another unnecessary and dangerous expansion of President Bush’s powers, this time to spy on Americans in violation of basic constitutional rights. Many of the 16 Democrats in the Senate and 41 in the House who voted for the bill said that they had acted in the name of national security, but the only security at play was their job security.

I am embarrassed to be a Democrat right now and I want to slap my Congressional representative- Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Where the heck is the moral compass? Where the heck is that bravado that was at play in the 2006 election? How can I assume that the Democrats can lead the country out of a paper bag if they cannot stand up to a President who has ratings somewhere at sewer level? I gave them a pass when they voted to fund Bush’s war a few months ago- because there was the risk that not approving that funding could have caused harm to men and women serving in our armed forces even if they are in a cesspool of a war that Bush created by his own incompetence. After all- they don’t deserve to suffer, he does. But I never imagined or dreamed that they would cave in on protecting basic civil liberties.

My gosh- they used to talk about Tony Blair being Bush’s poodle. Well it seems that the Capitol Rotunda is nothing more than a marble poodle cut!

The votes in the House and Senate were supposed to fix a genuine glitch in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires the government to obtain a warrant before eavesdropping on electronic communications that involve someone in the United States. The court charged with enforcing that law said the government must also seek a warrant if the people are outside the country, but their communications are routed through data exchanges here — a technological problem that did not exist in 1978.

Instead of just fixing that glitch, the White House and its allies on Capitol Hill railroaded Congress into voting a vast expansion of the president’s powers. They gave the director of national intelligence and the attorney general authority to intercept — without warrant, court supervision or accountability — any telephone call or e-mail message that moves in, out of or through the United States as long as there is a “reasonable belief” that one party is not in the United States. The new law all but eviscerates the 1978 law. The only small saving grace is that the new statute expires in six months.

A New York Times analysis of the Democrats Debacle quoted Caroline Fredrickson, a top lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union. “Ultimately, it was the Democratic leadership on the Hill that rolled over to this demand. Instead of standing strong and standing on principle, they panicked and gave the administration not only what it has been asking for, but more.”
Democratic officials in the House and the Senate say they understand the dismay that greeted the measure’s passage and point out that most Democrats opposed the bill, including the four senators seeking the party’s presidential nomination. But they say that given classified security briefings and the approach of the recess, Democrats had little choice. Isn’t that just so convenient!

When will the Democrats get over their fear of being called wimps on national security?

From the Senate: “Everyone who heard the briefings from the administration agreed that the intelligence community did not have what it needed,” said Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader. “Both Democrats and Republicans alike agreed that going home without addressing this issue was not an option.”

From the House: “We agreed with the administration that there was a problem with FISA that needed to be fixed,” said Brendan Daly, a spokesman for Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California. “We thought we had a bill that protected civil liberties and addressed their problems, but it did not have the votes on its own.”

Are these folks more interested in being in power or in governing? What use is it to have allies in power if they don’t use that power for something positive?

Some are already talking about primary challenges for Democrats whom they consider enablers of Mr. Bush, like moderate Blue Dogs who formed the core of Democratic support for the eavesdropping proposal in the House. On the Web site Open Left, the blogger Matt Stoller accused the Blue Dogs of one of their “standard betrayals.”

“The upside,” Mr. Stoller wrote, “is that organizing is beginning already around fixing the FISA legislation, and a campaign to destroy the brand of the Blue Dogs is not far away.”

Normally I would disagree with the idea of challenges to Democrats from more liberal corners and would view this to be problematic. I am a Democrat but a political pragmatist- so I see the value in not going too far left (see what happened with the Senate race in Connecticut in 2006?) but my pragmatism only goes so far. When political pragmatism compromises moral integrity and the values embedded in our Constitution it is selling out- oure and simple. And for what- fear of being branded a coward by an inept and unpopular President? No, the New York Times got it right- the game is about job security and keeping power- even if you don’t use that power.

It’s time to shake up the Democratic Party.  If you don’t use your power for good- you don’t deserve the power.  

It is a complete disgrace that the Roman Catholic Church has had to settle more than one hundred cases involving clergy sex abuse by paying out more than half a billion dollars in Los Angeles. The victims of these heinous crimes deserve more than the money that they will get and the Roman Catholic Church’s dirty little secret is out— at least for the moment.

But imagine if the church had not needed to settle. Imagine, if you will, a world where instead of paying out money because the Roman Catholic Church was complicit in the commission of child abuse, the church could have directed that money to charity. Imagine what $600 million would do for the sick, the poor and the elderly in Los Angeles? Covering up for priests is obviously a higher priority than caring for the most vulnerable in our society. I guess that makes sense since the pedophile priests seem to prey on the most vulnerable in our society.

In Boston Bernard Cardinal Law resigned because of the cover up in 2002. Roger Cardinal Mahony is getting out of trouble for his role in the cover up by paying more than $1.3 million per victim. The settlement effectively stopped the possibility of him having to take the witness stand and admitting his complicity in covering up child abuse.

Pope Benedict XVI’s record on sex abuse cases, including when he was Cardinal Josef Ratzinger -a Cardinal and the Prelate of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF, the successor to the Roman Inquisition)- is “interesting”- to say the least. Unlike on some issues, like violence in the “evil and inhuman” Islam where the pope has become a blunt lightening rod, the pope has remained subtle with regard to his changes in policies, if any, regarding clergy sexual abuse.

Benedict XVI wrote the infamous exhortation that allegations of clergy sexual abuse must be kept secret upon pain of excommunication, though in his defense, first, this was when he was the cardinal in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and this was a logical extension of Pope John Paul II’s extensive history of denial and secrecy, and second, the imposed secrecy only surrounds the Church’s internal investigation, and separate charges may be filed with the police by the victims.

The Catholic bishops of the United States overwhelmingly approved documents in November 2006 at a meeting of US Bishops exhorting Catholics to refrain from using artificial birth control, describing gay sex as immoral, and saying that anyone who disagrees with key church teachings should not take Communion. What about those celebrating the Communion?

“To be a Catholic is a challenge, and to be a Catholic requires a certain choice, and these are the choices that are consistent with the Gospel of Jesus,” the chairman of the bishops’ doctrine committee, Bishop Arthur J. Serratelli of Paterson, N.J., said during a press conference at the November 2006 meeting.

Challenging? I would say so! It must be quite a challenge to wonder if the priest consecrating the host at your sacrament molested a child that morning.

Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of Kansas City, Kan., also speaking at the press conference, said: “As teachers, we have an obligation to teach, not just about the things people agree with, but the difficult things as well. . . . We have a responsibility to try and help our people understand things that, because of the culture being hostile, aren’t easily accessible to them.” Have you ever heard such bilge water polluted with hypocrisy?

What disturbs me the most is the free ride that most Roman Catholics are giving the Church hierarchy. During a television interview I heard a parishioner leaving a church in Los Angeles say that now the victims need to put this experience behind them. And the Boston Globe quoted another good Catholic- “I wish it would go away. Really, I do wish it would go away,” said Claire Hogan, 64, as she emerged from Sunday Mass at 136-year-old Saint Columbkille’s Church in Boston’s Brighton neighborhood.

The hypocrisy and the shame of the Catholic Church makes me sick to my stomach. What shakes my soul are the Catholics who consider being gay and birth control to be mortal sins and who would rather see millions die in Africa rather than provide condoms but just want this “icky priest thing” to go away. I am sure that $600 million will make a lot of it go away. Too bad we can’t say the same thing about taking care of poverty and disease.

Happy Bastille Day! I have to admit to being an ardent Francophile. I love French food, French wine, French philosophy, Paris, the Languedoc, and the French people. So I do not understand why folks dislike the French. France is the land of the American Revolutionary hero Lafayette and was the country to present us with a gift that has become an icon in the United States-The Statue of Liberty.

Let me be clear about my personal experience. The French like American people, they dislike and distrust the American government. Odd that we would resent the French for disliking our government when both the President and the Congress have appallingly low poll numbers among our own citizenry. 

It seems rather bizarre to me that the French can seperate their dislike of our government from their affection for Americans but conservative Americans can’t.  These Americans seem to say to the world- “If you disagree with our government we hate you.”  It seems just a tad juvenile to me…. somewhat like a bully in a schoolyard fight.

After we invaded Iraq and President Bush did not get the support he expected to get from the French, I heard more vitriol from conservatives- or what I call the radical “wrong”- about the French than ever. The French were tarred in the New York Post, among others, as the leaders of the “Axis of Weasel.” National Review’s Jonah Goldberg made “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”—a Groundskeeper Willie line from an episode of The Simpsons—the rallying cry of Francophobes.  It is interesting that after former Secretary of State Colin Powell made President Bush’s case to invade Iraq at the United Nations the French ambassador said that “military intervention in Iraq would be the worst possible solution.” It seems that he was spot on in his assessment!

It seems that the dislike of the French is related to World War II and the assumption that France just rolled over for the Nazis and hasn’t been genuflecting enough to the American government ever since the end of the war.

Let’s address the issue of France surrendering to the Nazis. It seems odd to me that Americans hate the French and like the Germans- after all weren’t the Germans the Nazis? It also seems odd to me that Poland is not accused of being a nation of weaklings. It took the Nazis about the same amount of time to take Poland as it took them to take France. Many Polish were as much if not more supportive of the Nazis as was the Vichy government in France. Both Poland and France had active resistance movements and there were French and Polish heroes for the struggle against the Nazis and the Fascists in Italy. Anti-Semitism was present in both Poland and France but it flourished in Poland making it a country that was complicit in the Holocaust.

Why do we not hate the Polish? Maybe it is because they owed their liberation to the Soviet Union and not the United States so Americans don’t see them as being beholden to us. But I don’t think that’s it. There are more Americans that are within a generation or two from Poland than from France which is why conservative Americans don’t saddle Poland with the same “surrender-monkey” moniker that they give to the French.

Quite frankly it is a little arrogant of the United States to take full credit for the liberation of France. Yes- Dwight D. Eisenhower was the Chief of Allied Forces- but those forces included not just Americans but British and Free French and were facilitated by the French Resistance.

What about the Treaty of Versailles after World War I? President Wilson brokered a peace that would have stabilized the world. Ultimately the United States Congress reneged on some of the key provisions of the Treaty and one might contend that because of this it was easier for Nazi Germany to gain power.

In 1939 the French were still reeling from a war that was mostly fought on their soil – World War I. When I was in the Languedoc a few years ago I was struck that every small village had a World War I memorial with the names of the native sons lost during that conflict. After seeing a few of these memorials it was clear that the toll that World War I had on the French was massive. After the horror of a war conculded only a little less than two decades earlier it is understandable why the French were unable and, in some cases, unwilling to engage in a bloody conflict so soon again.

After the United States reneged on various provisions of the Treaty of Versailles it would be understandable for France to assume that the United States “owed” them, but they didn’t. The French greeted the United States and the other allies as liberators. Didn’t the very conservatives that mock the French say that we were supposed to be greeted as liberators in Iraq? Ironic isn’t it.

No - there are really only three basic reasons that the American Conservatives dislike the French and they are pretty distasteful reasons in my book.

1. France is liberal. The dirty little secret is that this liberal country has a better quality of life for its people than the conservatives have provided in the United States. What an embarrassment to the conservatives in the U S of A!

2.  The French have an adamantly secular government and conservative Americans seem to have an aversion to what Bill O’Reilly disdainfully refers to as “secular progressives”.  Someone needs to tell me what the problem is with the concept of being a secular progressive- I rather like being one!  Besides aren’t we told that the government of Iran is evil- a government that is decidely conservative and religious?

3. The French dislike war.  American conservatives like to have a little swagger to their walk and have that “bring it on” attitude of President George W. Bush. Anyone that doesn’t share that macho spirit must be a wuss!

My final word on this is that conservative Americans need to realize the similarity between the tripartite motto “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” and “liberté, égalité, fraternité”. Happy Bastille Day!

Is it cheesy for me to jump on the “Live Earth” bandwagon today by writing a piece about gloabal warming? Hell no. It is critical, it is essential, it is vital, it is life and death for our planet. Did my redundancy get your attention yet?

We know that the earth has become warmer over the last century. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group established by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), reports that the average surface temperature of the earth has increased during the twentieth century by about 0.6° ± 0.2°C. (The ± 0.2°C means that the increase might be as small as 0.4°C or as great as 0.8°C.)

This may seem like a small shift, but although regional and short-term temperatures do fluctuate over a wide range, global temperatures are generally quite stable. In fact, the difference between today’s average global temperature and the average global temperature during the last Ice Age is only about 5 degrees C. Indeed, it’s warmer today around the world than at any time during the past 1000 years, and the warmest years of the previous century have occurred within the past decade.

We also know that human activities—primarily the burning of fossil fuels—have increased the greenhouse gas content of the earth’s atmosphere significantly over the same period. Carbon dioxide is one of the most important greenhouse gases, which trap heat near the planet’s surface.

The vast majority of climate researchers agree with these overall findings. The scientific disagreements that do still exist primarily concern detailed aspects of the processes that make up these largely accepted general themes.

Climate change is one of the most complex issues that the world will face in this century.  Concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have already reached unprecedented levels, causing changes in global temperature and observable impacts throughout the world, and these changes are happening more quickly than expected.  Stabilizing greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations will require a fundamental shift in our energy system, but this transition will have other benefits as well, including improved competitiveness, security, air quality, public health, and job creation. This transition will not be easy, but it is crucial to begin now.

In February 2006 The Pew Center on Climate Change issued an “Agenda for Climate Action”. The Pew Center on Global Climate Change was established by the Pew Charitable Trusts to bring a new cooperative approach and critical scientific, economic, and technological expertise to the global climate change debate. We intend to inform this debate through wide-ranging analyses that will add new facts and perspectives in four areas: policy (domestic and international), economics, environment, and solutions.

This Pew Center’s Agenda attempts to articulate a responsible course of action for addressing climate change. It identifies 15 actions that should be started now, including U.S. domestic reductions and engagement in the international negotiation process. While reductions across sectors and sources of emissions is key, the steps listed here are not likely to happen simultaneously, nor without costs. However, these recommendations have been designed to be both cost-effective and comprehensive.

I big caveat here- I am not a scientist and I have never done a lot of research on global climate change outside of news articles and visiting some of the websites on both sides of this debate and of course I saw “An Unconveniant Truth. Thanks to the internet to we all have amazing access to research and information on every side of this issue- although I really don’t think that there are many sides to this issue anymore –on one side you have science and on the other side you have— I don’t know what to call them—- NUTS?

I have done a little investigating and find that the Pew Agenda is probably the most thoughtful and sound report I could find without spending months, if not years, reading every report posted on the web with an agenda for climate change. I have Pew for other research for pieces on this blog and have found their information to be nonpartisan, based in science and most importantly upheld by many other sources.

Here is a synopsis of the Pew Report’s 15 reccomendations in its Agenda for Climate Action.

Invest in science and technology research.

1. Ensure a robust research program through the Climate Change Science Program.

2. Offer long-term, stable funds—in the form of a reverse auction—to GHG-related technology research and development.

Establish mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions and harness market mechanisms for economy-wide reductions

3. Create a mandatory GHG reporting system as a basis for an economy-wide emissions trading program.

4. Implement a large-source, economy-wide cap-and trade program for greenhouse gases.

Stimulate innovation across key economic sectors.

5. Transportation: Convert the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) program into strengthened, tradable corporate average emissions standards. Support biofuels, hydrogen, and other low-GHG fuel alternatives.

6. Manufacturing: Provide outreach and incentives to manufacturers for improvements in industrial efficiency and low-GHG technologies, and support the production of low-GHG products.

7. Agriculture: Raise the priority and funding levels for Farm Bill programs and other federal initiatives on carbon sequestration.

Drive the energy system toward greater efficiency, lower-carbon fuels and carbon capture technologies.

8. Coal and Carbon Sequestration: Provide funding for tests of geologic carbon sequestration and for research, development and demonstration (RD&D) projects on separation and capture technologies, in combination with advanced generation coal plants. Establish an appropriate regulatory framework for carbon storage.

9. Natural Gas: Expand natural gas transportation infrastructure and production.

10. Renewables: Significantly “ramp up” renewables for electricity and fuels, including an extension/expansion of the production tax credit, a uniform system for tracking renewable energy credits, and increased emphasis on biomass.

11. Nuclear Power: Provide opportunities for nuclear power to play a continuing role in a future low carbon electricity sector.

12. Efficient Energy Production and Distribution: Support the development and use of combined heat and power installations, distributed generation technologies, and test beds for an upgraded electricity grid.

13. Efficient Energy Usage: Reduce energy consumption through policies that spur efficiency, including appliance/equipment standards, building R&D and codes, and consumer education.

Begin now to adapt to the inevitable consequences of climate change.

14. Develop a national adaptation strategy through the Climate Change Science Program and Climate Change Technology Program, and fund development of early-warning systems for related threats.

Engage in negotiations to strengthen the international climate effort.

15. Review options for a new or modified agreement to ensure fair and timely action by all major emitting countries, and participate in negotiations to establish binding climate commitments consistent with domestic interests.

While these fifteen recommendations are not the only means of achieving a lower carbon future, but taken together, they chart a climate-friendly path for the United States. Putting the Agenda into practice will take political will and policy action. All recommendations require government leadership and private sector commitment and time. Nonetheless, the details of specific recommendations in this Agenda are less critical than the compelling need to get started. Further delay will only make the challenge before us more daunting and costly.

If you want to know what you can do- and to make a commitment and take a pledge to do what you can do personally go to www.liveearth.org  

Pardon me boys, but is that the Libby Commuter train on track 49? Sigh - No it’s just the President of the United States switching roles from being the Decider to being the Commuter. Let’s be clear the President had the Constitutional authority to commute Mr. Libby’s sentence, but there is no moral authority in that action.

There is so much hypocrisy associated with this commutation that I can scarcely find a place to begin. But I guess- as Maria von Trapp suggested- it’s best to start at the very beginning.

After Valerie Plame’s name was leaked and an investigation began, Mr. Bush stated unequivocally on September 30,th 2003 “[that] if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of”. I think we all expected ‘being taken care of” mean that offenders would be punished. I don’t think anyone expected that this person would be “taken care of” like a child is taken care of by his mother negotiating with a principal to give a student detention rather than suspension. “Please don’t punish my boy Scooter!”

Bill Kristol and his fellow wrong wing pundits who have a rather casual relationship with history and the facts have pointed out that Mr. Libby was not the leaker but instead it was Richard Armitage who spoke to Robert Novak and therefore any case against Mr. Libby was absurd and moot. I am sure that Mr. Kristol knows that Mr. Libby (I can’t call him Scooter- any person older than 13 should not have the name Scooter) was not convicted for being a leaker but for being someone who stonewalled the investigation into the leak by committing perjury and obstructing justice.

The last time that I checked committing perjury and obstructing justice particularly related to an investigation that is wrapped around the Administration’s lies about the causus belli in Iraq is not a petty matter.

Remember this whole thing started because Ambassador Joe Wilson dared to impugn the President’s statements about “uranium in Africa”. He needed to be punished and that punishment came out in the form of outing Mr. Wilson’s wife Valerie Plame as a CIA covert operative (a very grievous crime). Independent Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald was brought in by the Bush Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute anyone associated with this who committed a crime.

Quite simply Mr. Libby committed perjury and obstructed justice so the investigation would be stalled. Mr. Libby’s actions made it impossible for Mr. Fitzgerald to ascertain how far up the administration’s food chain this whole debacle went. Mr. Wilson and others have been very vocal in their assumptions that Mr. Libby was falling on his sword to protect Vice President Cheney. We do not know that for sure, and now we will never know. Maybe Mr. Libby could have removed a cloud of suspicion that surrounds the Vice President by being open and honest if there was nothing to hide- a logical person would assume that Mr. Libby would have been forthright if there was nothing sinister afoot and thus assumptions are made that the Vice President is at the vortex of this whole mess- Darth Vader at the center of the Death Star.

But I digress from my first argument of hypocrisy. The “wrong wing” pundits continue to say that Mr. Libby’s transgressions were not worthy of a conviction let alone a jail sentence. These are the same people who were screaming for President William J. Clinton to be impeached (which he was) and convicted in the Senate (which he was not) for perjury.

I will be the first person to say that President Clinton was a fool and did himself and the Presidency damage by lying under oath. But let’s be honest lying about extramarital infidelity in an investigation that was nothing more than a fishing expedition about White Water and does not even approach to lying about events surrounding a campaign of half truths, exaggerations and probably out right lies to take this country into war.

There is absolutely no comparison and I marvel at the audacity – the chutzpah- that Kristol and others have in defending Mr. Libby and the President’s decision. They say that the investigation was about the leak and Mr. Libby wasn’t the leaker and his case had nothing to do with him being the leaker. Well – Kenneth Starr was investigating White Water and there was nothing there so they went after him for lying about having sex with Monica Lewinsky and they all wanted Clinton’s blood. Isn’t there something odd about this? Am I the only one who sees that there is a double standard? Sure Clinton lied- and he was punished- he cannot practice law and he was impeached- but this was about a private marital issue. Mr. Libby lied and it had to do with National Security.

Is the message conservatives want to send? If you lie about sex you should be drawn and quartered, but if you lie about issues related to an investigation on national security- eh – it’s not so bad.

The second matter of hypocrisy is related to Mr. Bush’s statement that the sentence was too severe. CNN Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin was left shaking his head at this statement. For his entire Presidency Mr. Bush has stated that he believed that federal judges should adhere to federal sentencing guidelines and he has clearly stated that judges who go beyond those parameters are wrong. In this case Judge Reggie Walton adhered to the federal sentencing guidelines but the President thought that the sentence was to excessive and intervened. Talk about hypocrisy!

The Bush administration and their pundit pals never cease to amaze me. They believe that they are accountable to no one and they have treated the Constitution like a piece of used Kleenex. If you thought that this country is less safe because of Bush’s dangerous folly in Iraq, their dismantling of the Constitution could do more long term damage than I dare myself to imagine.