Do Philadelphia cops hate Philadelphia?

That's what I said last week in a column at The Philly Post—a column that, coincidentally, published the same day I started a weeklong out-of-state vacation. In the meantime, the column was picked up at Reason.com's blog—they shared my interest in FOP president John McNesby's letter to the Police Advisory Commission, and I received a few letters. I'll excerpt three of them: One correspondent took issue with my contention that police officers are wrong to want to live outside the city they serve:

Most of my career was spent in shift rotations of six days of 4X12, followed by six days of 8X4 and then a big one day off and the next evening you had to report for six days of 12amX8am. Included in this mess was last minute court notices and the average sleep was about two hours a day on that midnight to eight shift. Most officers were in a constant state of sleep deprivation, sometimes reporting for court at 10am and spending all day there until 5PM and were expected back for work in the evening at around 11PM. Sleep? Apparently the city did not account for it. Much work was spent by our union to adjust this situation and eventually a compromise schedule was implemented. During my entire career, I was a captive of the city. The reason the city wanted to keep you localized was to contact you when they wanted.(To the point of sending a patrol car to your door with a note to come in to work) Even when you are on vacation, if there is a perceived “emergency” they call you back from where you are. Only overseas vacations were exempt. I lived in a typical NE row, kept a low profile, acted in several off duty arrests, etc. I had two desires. One was to return to school to acquire the B.A. that I should have had but never had a chance to complete. (I had an old Associate Degree, so two years were left). The other was the idea of moving out of the city to a suburban area just like the Philadelphia TEACHERS were allotted in their contract since the time of Wilson Goode (who rewarded the teacher’s union liberally, and was employed by them as a “consultant” after his terms as Mayor). The Degree could not be worked out despite several attempts, until I was retired. The other was never realized either, until I retired. I should have had the same rights back then as the teacher’s union, why was there discrimination in this capacity? The reason they now have the ability to leave is because a majority of the higher ranking personnel live on the extreme edge of the city. In order to prevent experienced officers from a mass exodus, they needed to have this right to live outside the city or they would lose most of their experienced personnel. That is the real reason why it was granted in the contract.

Another responded to my suggestion that Philadelphia police have "palpable" contempt for the residents they serve:

really? can you blame them? head into any area other than center city (where i happily and safely reside) and see what the hell the cops have to deal with every single day.... not many cats stuck up in trees or crossing little old ladies... just nonstop violence, no witnesses, zero cooperation, NO stop to the cycle of reproducing generations of criminals.....so, should they be dropping "stay in school" to the kids or try to dodge the bullets so one of those kids doesn't get shot? or better yet, run over by an ATV doing 90mph wheelies down allegheny ave? so, the parenting and coddling is up to the po-po, not the mom with the neck tattoos who is on her 5th kid with 5th babydaddy before her 26th birthday? c'mon, cuz..... the problem is DEEP but it ain't the cops fault.... also - so, the people shooting - they're not the fatherless kids (now 18) OF the women in the same neighborhoods that they're shooting up???")... you want to write a cutting piece, expose that saga.....

A similar response from a man identifying himself as a retired police officer:

In the past 20 plus years, respect for any authority, be it the Police, the Clergy, or even Parents and Grand Parents has all but eroded… the mentality is that you can do whatever you want, to whomever you want, with complete impunity. We I grew up if an Officer told you to get off of a corner, you did! If an Officer ever brought me home to my parents, no matter what, I was in trouble. We were taught to respect our elders, now all you ever hear is “not my Johnny, or not my little angel… Parents don’t want to take responsibility for their children’s actions, for the most part, all they want the kids to do is go out and bother ANYONE ELSE but them. Are Police Officers perfect, no, but then again, no one else is perfect; we all make mistakes, But just because you wear a Blue Uniform, and agree to be a target for anyone who wants to strike out at authority, and just because you give up most of your family life to work long hours in all weather, doesn’t automatically make you a bad guy. My challenge to you would be to put on that same Blue Uniform, and go out and drive a police car on Philly’s streets, and see if your attitude changes. But I’ve made that challenge before, and so far, not one journalist has had the stones to take up my challenge. And for the record, all during the time I was a Philadelphia Police Officer, I served as a Boy Scout Leader in my neighborhood for 15 years, served on two Civic Groups, and served in my Church as a member of our Parish’s Music Ministry and on the Parish Council… but then, according to you, I must have hated Philadelphia.

For what it's worth, I have some sympathy for some of what I find in these letters. Philadelphia Police could do everything right, and this town would still be an incredible, and often-dangerous, challenge to those officers.

On the other hand, I think plenty of officers—led by FOP president John McNesby—use those challenges as a shield to deflect criticism and avoid introspection about how they might do better, much less examine their own (partial) culpability in creating the culture they despise. "It's tough out there! You can't possibly understand!" I can acknowledge those challenges are considerable, but still expect better from my police department. And I do.

Kansas and sharia law

In this week's column, Ben and I tackle Kansas' new law banning sharia law. My take:

Sam Brownback and Kansas Republicans are hypocrites, through and through. In 2008, then-U.S. Sen. Brownback introduced a resolution in the Senate that designated the first weekend of May as "Ten Commandments Weekend." A few years before that, Brownback was out front urging that the Pledge of Allegiance retain its mention of "one nation under God," saying: "There is nothing more American than the Pledge of Allegiance and an acknowledgement of God is at the heart of our founding principles and is our nation's motto." The examples don't end there. Along with former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, Brownback has been one of America's most aggressive and unapologetic politicians in advocating for religion's role in America's public and governmental life. Islam is the exception to this rule. Brownback and Kansas Republicans are vigorous defenders of the separation of church and state only when non-Christians are involved. Supporters of the law point to places like Europe, where "hate speech" codes can make it illegal -- or, at least, inadvisable -- to criticize Islam. "That could happen here!" they cry, but no, it probably couldn't: Europe doesn't have America's First Amendment traditions or law that vigorously defend freedom of speech and freedom of religion. The bill's supporters never showed that Islamic law actually was distorting or affecting Kansas jurisprudence. They never had evidence on their side, only demagoguery and fear. So the law is a solution in search of a problem -- the kind of thing conservatives disdain, unless Muslims are involved. All the law really does, then, is signal to the state's Muslims that they are second-class citizens. Kansas has a proud civil rights history. It fought to be a free state before the Civil War; it was where the Brown v. Board of Education ruling delivered the first stunning blow against desegregation. The new law betrays that heritage. But it does highlight Sam Brownback's hypocrisy.

Ben, on the other hand, warns of the dangers of "creeping sharia":

Examples of "creeping Shariah" abound. A few years ago, Muslim cabbies in Minneapolis refused to pick up passengers carrying alcohol or dogs, even service dogs for the disabled. Islamic law says dogs and booze are unclean and forbidden, anti-discrimination laws notwithstanding. A judge in New Jersey in 2010 accepted a Muslim man's defense against sexual assault, saying his supposed religious beliefs mitigated his crime. (That ruling was later overturned.)

The second example shows how weak the "threat" is: A bad court decision was overturned, after all. And the former example is very interesting. Conservatives fight all the time for pharmacists to refuse to dispense birth control in the name of "religious freedom." I'm not sure how it's different from cabbies refusing to carry alcohol, except for simple chauvinism. Which is, really, what the Kansas' new law is all about.

The debate over the Bush tax cuts is over. The tax cuts won.

Today's New York Times:

It is a maxim in Congress these days: If high-profile legislation affecting millions of Americans is about to expire, deal with it at the last possible second, preferably with rancor. 

But a major exception is in the offing with the Bush-era tax cuts, which are set to lapse on Jan 1. Both parties in the House and the Senate are eager, perhaps even giddy, at the prospect of voting for their respective versions of an extension of the cuts this summer, well before the due date.

Now, the piece goes on to say that the Democratic package would drop the cuts for high earners and keep them for the middle class. But with a divided Congress and this president in charge, does anybody expect the Democratic preference will become law? Anybody?

(Crickets.)

Right. We've already seen this movie before. So maybe it's time to end the debate, make the tax rates permanent rather than dickering with them every two years, and start planning for a budget within those revenue limits. Politicians of every stripe and party should be clear with the public: You're going to keep your current tax rates, but you're not going to keep your current services. Something has to give.

The debate over the revenue side is over, and Democrats have lost. The sooner they and their allies admit it, the sooner they can prepare to shape the government that results from the revenue limitations. And the sooner they can decide what, exactly, they can live without.

Michael Barone's cocoon: Just for liberals?

Michael Barone says that liberals only listen to liberal arguments, but conservatives have a more varied diet of ideas because they're forced to be exposed to liberal media culture. The result is that liberals only know how to preach to the choir.

Liberals can protect themselves better against assaults from outside their cocoon. They can stay out of megachurches and make sure their remote controls never click on Fox News. They can stay off the AM radio dial so they will never hear Rush Limbaugh. 

The problem is that this leaves them unprepared to make the best case for their side in public debate. They are too often not aware of holes in arguments that sound plausible when bandied between confreres entirely disposed to agree.

I'm not sure that liberals are uniquely vulnerable to the malady of ideological isolation. Conor Friedersdorf notes the topics that dominate conservative media these days:

In addition to taxes and spending, the rank and file currently spends a lot of time obsessing over trivial nonsense: for example, an imaginary race war against white people; The New Black Panther Party; and a liberal schoolteacher abusing her position somewhere in America. Those are but three stories in conservative news right now, alongside the constant obsessions with liberal media bias, anything involving "God, guns, and gays," statements by Janeane Garofalo-style celebrities, and ginned-up kerfuffles we can't even presently imagine.

 I'm not sure this really helps conservatives make better arguments than liberals, but if Barone wants to think so, perhaps he's indulging in a little cocooning himself.

Politics makes hypocrites of us all

In this week's Scripps column, I argue that Mitt Romney's religious beliefs have some bearing on the presidential campaign—and Ben argues that the issues are more important. Four years ago, we staked out almost precisely the opposite territory:

Ben then:

Yet Obama still insists that what he heard from Wright this week was unlike anything he heard over the past two decades. That simply defies belief. Obama chose Wright. His choice was unwise. His choice should tell voters something important about Obama that his position papers on the Iraq war and health care cannot.

Me then:

But the job of the next president will not be to pick a national clergyman. Instead, the president will have to decide what to do about Iraq, health care and the economy, among other issues. Barack Obama has an argument to make that he'll end the war, extend care to more Americans and save a few of their homes from foreclosure. Given the mood of Americans these days, that could well be a winning argument.

I'm not entirely sure what to do with this; I'm really not interested in being a hack—but there's some evidence here that maybe I am. The only way I can mitigate it is to acknowledge it.

Does Mitt Romney's Mormonism matter?

That's the the topic of my column with Ben Boychuk for Scripps Howard this week. I answer in the kind-of-affirmative:

Let's give thanks for progress: A black man and a Mormon will compete for the presidency this November. More people from more backgrounds than ever can fully participate in our politics -- thanks largely to the efforts of American liberals. 

Romney doesn't get a free pass for his faith, however. 

Don't misunderstand: If you vote for a candidate based on the Nicene Creed, say, then you're being silly and maybe a little un-American. We're electing a president, not a pope. 

But a candidate's policies are fair game, as is the worldview that shapes those policies. Faith often shapes a candidate's worldview. Romney's opposition to abortion reportedly springs from the teachings of his church: That's a topic that can't and shouldn't be avoided in a presidential campaign. 

Other issues in which Romney's faith may be a factor: 

-- Race: Until 1978, the Mormon church refused to ordain black men into the priesthood. Romney was a 31-year-old adviser to the leader of the Boston church when the policy changed: What was his view of it, and how might it affect how he governs a multiracial America? 

-- Feminism: The church long discouraged mothers from working outside the home -- and Romney reportedly refused to help a couple adopt a child until the mother was able to quit her job. How would that viewpoint affect Romney policies on workplace discrimination or child-care tax credits? 

-- Same-sex marriage: Romney's opposition to marriage equality reportedly springs from his faith, and Mormons were big contributors to the campaign for California's Proposition 8 banning gay marriages. Now there are questions about whether Romney would even permit gays to adopt. 

Church membership isn't an immutable characteristic. It's a choice. 

Certainly, Republicans feel that way when the church is led by Jeremiah Wright. The election isn't about Romney's theology -- but it is about his beliefs. Americans deserve a chance to understand them.

Ben, in his response, says that presidents don't set adoption policies, which are the province of the state. True, but only so true: The federal government offers adoption tax credits that gay couples already have a hard time claiming. For better or worse, the feds have a role in the issue—which makes Romney's recent waffling all the more troubling.

This is the song in my head today

Ah, early 1980s country music.....