Dinesh D'Souza in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Accuses President of Loving Terrorists

If you thought that new ownership might mean that Brian Tierney was no longer able to hand out op-ed contracts to right-wing cronies, well, don't celebrate yet. Today's Inky editorial page features Dinesh D'Souza -- the guy behind the "Obama is a Kenyan anti-colonialist" idea that Newt Gingrich spouts. D'Souza is pretty well discredited even on the right; no reason for the Inky not to publish him!

And hey, why not speculate that the president of the United States is happy to see terrorists at work!

If Obama shares his father's anticolonial ideology, this would explain a lot about his eagerness to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. It would also explain his sympathies for the Lockerbie bomber, not because Obama favors the killing of Americans, but because he views Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi as a resister in a noble cause. Since America is the rogue elephant with a mammoth nuclear arsenal, we can understand why Obama seems more eager to reduce America's nuclear stockpile than to prevent Iran from obtaining its first nuclear bomb.

This is just so much crap. Lots of people got mad last week when the Washington Post published a Dinesh D'Souza op-ed, but even the Post didn't let D'Souza expound on Obama's supposed (and entirely made-up) sympathies with anti-American terrorists. (He merely hinted that the president was a communist in that piece.) Do the Inquirer op-ed pages have any standards at all for what they'll publish? This isn't an auspicious start for the new regime.

Intolerance

New York Times:

For weeks now, this bucolic northern Colorado city of just over 60,000, which has a vibrant arts community, has been bitterly divided over the controversial artwork that once sat in the empty display of the Loveland Museum Gallery where the sign now rests.

Some here interpreted the small image, which was part of a lithographic print exhibition by the San Francisco artist Enrique Chagoya, as showing Jesus Christ engaged in a sex act with another man, and demanded its removal.

Last Wednesday, amid heated public debate over the exhibit and daily protests in front of the museum, a 56-year-old Montana truck driver named Kathleen Folden walked into the gallery.

Wearing a T-shirt that read “My Savior Is Tougher Than Nails,” Ms. Folden strode up to the exhibit, took out a crowbar and proceeded to smash the plexiglass casing. To the horror of visitors, she then ripped up the print, just as police officers arrived.

“People were asking her, ‘Why’d you do this?’ ” recalled Mark Michaels, a Colorado art dealer, who witnessed the event and grabbed Ms. Folden. “She said, ‘Because it desecrates my Lord.’ ”

In a slightly different context, these actions would have given rise to a nationwide "Everybody Draw Jesus Having Sex With a Dude Day" and endless lectures about the inability of the Christians to co-exist peacefully in a liberal culture without threats of violence to make the rest of us conform to their practices.

John McNesby Is Why Philadelphia Police Are Broken

It's been a week full of stories about the corruption of Philadelphia police, but none of that disturbed me half as much as this story about an escape attempt by accused cop killer Rasheed Scrugs.

Here's John McNesby, president of the Fraternal Order of Police:

John McNesby, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5, said Scrugs "started to ramp up his antics" earlier this week when he indicated that he didn't want to appear in court.

"He's a savage," McNesby said. "They should have finished him off on the street. Now we have to deal with antics."

I'm just astonished. Not that McNesby would feel that way, but that he -- as one of the highest-profile cops in the city of Philadelphia -- would feel comfortable publicly advocating that police commit street executions in lieu of letting the justice system work. It's horrifying: I have to live in a city full of cops he's encouraging to behave that way.

Thanks to McNesby, of course, Philadelphia cops don't have to live in this city. And though there are frequent stories in this city's media, you generally don't ever hear McNesby decrying corruption in the ranks -- he's usually attacking, even threatening to sue, the Daily News for exposing that corruption.

This surely can't be an easy city to police. There have been more cop killings in the two years I've lived here than I would've thought possible. But the relationship between Philadelphia police and its citizens appears to be broken -- and a good chunk of that is the fault of police. I can't help but think John McNesby, who openly calls for police to circumvent the law and execute suspects, is a very big part of the problem.

* UPDATE: A friend -- uncharitably, I think -- interprets my last paragraph to mean I believe that police have brought cop-killings upon themselves. I do not believe that, I repudiate that idea, and I did not intend to convey it. I included that sentence to convey that I understand that policing Philly is difficult; that doesn't justify the attitude, exemplified by McNesby, that the police are better than the community they deserve, nor that they're entitled to administer justice outside the bounds of the law.

Netflix Queue: 'Irma Vep'

When "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace" came out on DVD nearly a decade ago, it had a great, compelling and dramatic movie to offer "Star Wars" fans. Unfortunately, it wasn't "The Phantom Menace." Instead, included among the extras, was an hour-long unnarrated "making of" documentary that proved far more dramatic and engaging in its depiction of George Lucas than anything Lucas managed to put up on the screen himself.

For whatever reason, though, I've never managed to get into movies or shows that purport to depict show business from behind the camera. "30 Rock" is an exception because it's not really about the creation of an SNL-type live comedy show; that just happens to be the workplace of your typical NBC workplace comedy. I can add another entry to my short list of exceptions: "Irma Vep," a 1996 movie from France.

A quick rundown: Hong Kong actress Maggie Cheung -- playing herself, and doing so delightfully -- is brought to Paris to play the lead in the remake of a classic silent film about female vampires. The production proves a mess, undone by the failing powers of its once-great director and the petty jealousies that infect any small group of highly talented, highly competitive people.

Given such a description, "Irma Vep" sounds, perhaps, like one of your run-of-the-mill Christopher Guest mockumentaries. Being French, however, it so much more sensuous -- filled with scenes of driving through Paris streets at night, intensely evoking the bittersweetness of an unrequited crush. At one point, Cheung -- trying to connect to her character in the movie-within-a-movie -- dons a latex catsuit and climbs to the rain-drench rooftop of her hotel. Immediately, the viewer can see how much craft has been brought to the scene -- if only because we earlier saw how badly botched a similar effort was in the movie-within-a-movie. But such cleverness isn't the only thing going on here, because that would be merely cynical.

There's also celebration. Because, honestly: Watching Maggie Chung creep around in a catsuit in the dark rain is the reason movies were invented. The scene -- and the movie -- are unexpectedly beautiful.

John Featherman Responds!

The Republican candidate for Philly mayor responds to my complaints about his lack of specificity. I'll let him have the floor:

Joel,

Thanks for your write-up. I welcome the opportunity to address all of your questions.

First, I appreciate that the Daily News gave me the opportunity to express my views on Nutter as well as generally introduce my campaign to the voters of Philadelphia.

Second, you are correct. With 800 words, I can't offer the level of specificity that you and others need to make an educated judgment about my qualifications for becoming the next mayor. I am more than delighted to get as specific as you like. If you send me questions, I will answer them thoroughly. As an example, when I ran for public office before, I answered quite candidly many bloggers' intriguing questions. One such interview was with "Above Average Jane," and can be seen here: http://aboveavgjane.blogspot.com/2006/02/interview-with-john-featherman.html.

Third, what government does best is govern! That may seem tautological, but it makes sense if you think about it. Government is best at creating tax policies, job initiatives, creating regulations, enforcing zoning issues, etc. Government is best at administering public policy. A concrete example is government deciding to tax people for trash pickup. That is fine, and that is governing. Actually picking up the trash is something that Philadelphia's government is not good at, as evidenced by the need for neighborhood associations to raise money to hire people to clean their streets. So, with respect to trash, Philadelphia "governs" by taxing for the pickup, but would be best suited to "bid out" trash collection to private agencies that do it better and cheaper than the city can ... in such a way that the City can shift the burden of trash worker's pensions to the private sector.

That's an example. There are many more. I'm not suggesting we run a city like a business. I'm suggesting we run a city professionally, farming out items that will allow us to cut out pensions and benefits from our budget. We do not have a choice, as this city is on the cusp of bankrupcy. Don't believe me? Just Google "Harrisburg bankruptcy" and see how they are about to declare Act 47.

As for the online presence, www.featherman.com will be up by this Friday, October 8th. It won't be a fancy site. I just purchased a license to se "Website Tonight" from Godaddy.com, and I'll be managing it myself.

It's not easy, Joel, as I don't have the luxury of being able to campaign on taxpayer dollars. I'm a full time Realtor, and I have to pay the bills at the same time that I'm launching the campaign. I'm going to have to continue showing properties during the day to make a living, but I'm going to devote the rest of my free time to campaigning in a meaningful way.

I don't have the bank accounts that Tom Knox, Sam Katz or Michael Nutter have. If people want to handicap me as a long shot because I'm not a fat cat, so be it. At least they won't be able to claim that I'm such rich egomaniac who is buying a seat.

But please give me consideration. That's all I ask. I'm trying to reform the Philadelphia City Committee -- of which I've been a critic of their ineffectiveness (you can Google that) -- at the same time that I'm attempting to generate constructive ideas to positively turn our city around.

So please be open minded. Be as critical as you like, but keep in consideration that I'm just like you and many others -- an average person who's fed up, who has the courage (to some, perhaps foolishness) to put his name on the line, and who will be a punching bag for a lot of folks.

-John Featherman

john@featherman.com

Karl Rove Calls Kettle Black

As always, Karl Rove's career in punditry requires amnesia to take seriously. He writes about Democrats' poor prospects during the forthcoming midterm election:

Given this dismal picture, Democrats believe they have only one option: a thermonuclear assault on their GOP opponents, which means raising questions about their character, distorting their views, and making outlandish claims.

Such a strategy, he writes, "will further besmirch the reputations of the Democratic Party and its leader, Mr. Obama."

I'm no fan of negative campaigning. But Rove has zero credibility on such matters. You'll remember what he did, prior to his entry in national politics, to an Alabama judge seeking re-election:

Some of (Mark)Kennedy's campaign commercials touted his volunteer work, including one that showed him holding hands with children. "We were trying to counter the positives from that ad," a former Rove staffer told me, explaining that some within the (Rove)camp initiated a whisper campaign that Kennedy was a pedophile. "It was our standard practice to use the University of Alabama Law School to disseminate whisper-campaign information," the staffer went on. "That was a major device we used for the transmission of this stuff. The students at the law school are from all over the state, and that's one of the ways that Karl got the information out—he knew the law students would take it back to their home towns and it would get out." This would create the impression that the lie was in fact common knowledge across the state. "What Rove does," says Joe Perkins, "is try to make something so bad for a family that the candidate will not subject the family to the hardship. Mark is not your typical Alabama macho, beer-drinkin', tobacco-chewin', pickup-drivin' kind of guy. He is a small, well-groomed, well-educated family man, and what they tried to do was make him look like a homosexual pedophile. That was really, really hard to take."

And yet Karl Rove has a cushy gig writing for the Wall Street Journal editorial page. To be fair, though, that's not proof his reputation wasn't besmirched.

Today - And Today Only - I Root For Fred Phelps

The gay-bashing folks of Westboro Baptist Church had their day in the Supreme Court today, contesting a lawsuit that would force them to pay millions of dollars in damages for demonstrating near a military funeral.

The church's actions are distasteful in the extreme. But it's important to note that a number of news organizations -- including the New York Times -- have weighed in on the side of the church. Limiting Fred Phelps' ugly free speech, you see, might have real consequences for the speech the rest of us express and hear.

Respondents were found liable for millions of dollars in damages for intrusion and intentional infliction of emotional distress based solely on their publication of offensive religious and political opinions -- opinions which the Petitioner encountered not at his son's funeral, but only several hours later by watching news reports, and then weeks later after conducting an online search. Imposing tort liability for such speech will chill the activities of all who speak or publish on controversial issues.

In other words, the family didn't actually encounter the Phelpses at the funeral. But they knew the Phelpses were out there, somewhere near -- 1,000 feet away, in compliance with funeral picketing laws -- being offensive. In fact, the family is claiming to have been intruded upon because they found offensive material by searching for it on Westboro's web site. With all due respect to the family, that's a really lousy foundation to start restricting free speech rights: It doesn't really punish the Phelpses for intruding on their privacy, but for expressing repugnant opinions. That's not how it is supposed to work in America.

Either you believe in the First Amendment, in other words, or you don't. Read the whole brief, and you'll get a sense of how silencing Fred Phelps might be a step down the slippery slope to silencing all of us.

John Featherman's Case for a Republican Mayor

John Featherman makes it today in the Daily News. I've previously expressed skepticism that the GOP -- which culturally seems to favor rural areas, and philosophically seems ill-suited to providing the kinds of services that a big city needs just to hang together -- is really equipped to provide municipal leadership here. But it would probably prove useful if Democrats actually had competition for city leadership.

The problem is that John Featherman -- who actually has filed papers to run as a Republican candidate for mayor -- doesn't seem to offer much in the way of competition. Most of his solutions sound familiar: Cut business taxes! Really crack down on corruption! The only problem is, we hear those kinds of promises fairly often from our politicians -- Mayor Nutter said those things when he was a candidate. Why would Featherman or any other Republican be better-positioned to make those things happen?

Featherman gets intriguing, though, with this proposal:

MAKE REAL BUDGET CUTS! Government should stick to what it does best and consider outsourcing everything else. This means bidding out trash, call centers, prisons and administrative services, among others. This means cutting wasteful government jobs, with the mayor focusing exclusively on the needs of our 1.5 million residents. And having the political courage to negotiate the three unresolved municipal contracts and fight for fair concessions - in New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie-like style.

This raises a couple of questions:

* What does municipal government "do best" according to Featherman? After all, his "everything else" seems to cover a pretty wide range of necessary services.

* What does Featherman actually propose to cut? He doesn't actually name a single program or job that needs to go.

Maybe these are questions for which Featherman actually has answers. It's not easy to lay out a detailed governing platform in an 800-word op-ed, after all. Here's the problem, though: John Featherman is running for mayor, and today's piece certainly signals that the campaign has opened. But he has no online presence for his campaign that I can find -- not even a Blogger blog. It's to believe that Republicans are ready to govern Philadelphia if they're not even ready to made the case.

The ACLU and Jonah Goldberg's Assassination Straw Man

Jonah Goldberg's debating partner.

Toward the end of an otherwise-modest column on the government's plan to assassinate an American citizen affiliated with Al Qaeda, Jonah Goldberg stacks the deck:

Some civil libertarians seem to think we can never, ever kill an American citizen without a trial by jury (and perhaps not even then). That would have been silly during the days of conventional warfare. Now it's plain crazy.

Perhaps "some" civil libertarians believe that, but it's not the position of the ACLU, which has brought the lawsuit challenging the government's plan. In its complaint (PDF) asking for an injunction, the organization acknowledges there are times when due process will be skipped:

Outside of armed conflict, both the Constitution and international law
prohibit targeted killing except as a last resort to protect against concrete, specific, and
imminent threats of death or serious physical injury. The summary use of force is lawful
in these narrow circumstances only because the imminence of the threat makes judicial
process infeasible.

In other words, you can kill your enemy on the battlefield, when he's also trying to kill you. Not even the ACLU is against that.

That's not what the government is doing. It is reserving to itself the right to kill an American citizen who -- for all we know -- might be sitting peacefully in a kitchen somewhere in Yemen, presumably able to be captured if he's spotted. And that's where, at the very least, the government wanders into gray area. The ACLU, noting that the "right to life" is fundamental for U.S. citizens under the Constitution, wants that area to be a little less gray.

The government’s refusal to disclose the standard by which it determines
to target U.S. citizens for death independently violates the Constitution: U.S. citizens
have a right to know what conduct may subject them to execution at the hands of their
own government. Due process requires, at a minimum, that citizens be put on notice of
what may cause them to be put to death by the state.

The weird thing is, that's not so different from Goldberg's own conclusion. "So, let's have Congress and the president come up with some clear, public rules," he writes. "Better to start the debate over an easy case than a hard one." Sure. So why knock people who share your position? Can there never be a cease-fire in the war against liberals?

Are the Inky and Daily News Really So Similar?

Philly's two major dailies come under new ownership on Friday, and I couldn't help but notice this quote today from the new guy in charge:

Longer term, (new CEO Gregory J. Osberg) said, he wanted to talk with the editors of the newspapers about making them "more distinct from one another."

"I think today we are asking our consumers to choose one newspaper or the other, the way we're approaching the news," Osberg said.

"If we start to separate the brands, to become more distinct in their editorial missions, there is an opportunity for us to get consumers interested in buying both of the papers on any given day.

I'd love to know what Osberg means by that, because the Inquirer and Daily News couldn't seem more different to me. The Inquirer is the suburban newspaper, with lots of coverage of New Jersey and outlying counties that I -- as a Philly resident -- don't generally find all that useful or interesting. (It also tries too hard, I think, to be a "paper of record" with national and international news, sometimes trumpeting headlines on wire service stories you could find anywhere.) The Daily News is pretty much a Philly-Philly-Philly paper, a bit sassier and more fun, but relentlessly focused on what's going on here.

Now: My residency and biases make me a bit more of a Daily News man, myself. But I also see the value, mostly, of the Inky model. By offering such distinct publications, Philadelphia Media Network is probably already reaching more of the market than it would otherwise. The challenge isn't -- and shouldn't be -- getting Philadelphians to buy two newspapers per day. It's getting them to buy one.

We Must Call Attention To Christine O'Donnell's Idiocy Because Voters Are Idiots

I'm not really comfortable with Mark Schmitt's case for mocking Christine O'Donnell's brand of goofiness:

One problem is that Tea Party extremism is so far out and obscure that it doesn't immediately register as extremism. They want to repeal the 17th Amendment! That sounds odd, but most of us don't know off-hand what the 17th Amendment is. And even after being reminded that it's the one that has to do with direct election of senators, it's still not clear why they want to repeal it, other than the fact that it was passed during the Progressive Era. It takes a lot of explaining, and I still don't quite get it, plus it seems so unlikely to happen that I can't get too worked up about it. (There's also the fact that living in Washington, D.C., without senators, I don't have a vote to lose.)

More importantly, the Tea Party movement's embrace of eccentric constitutionalism and rhetorical libertarianism has had the effect of moving social issues to the background. Most of the Tea Party activists, and all of their candidates, hold the same cluster of not-very-libertarian views on social and cultural issues as their far-right predecessors, usually several degrees more extreme. (Angle, for example, has said that a young teenager who becomes pregnant as a result of rape by her father should "make a lemon situation into lemonade.") But those views are obscured behind a confusing screen of constitutional and economic nonsense.

These social views are the positions that voters, especially the younger voters and suburbanites who turned decisively against Republicans in 2006 and 2008 and who are now wavering, understand. They don't need to find a copy of the Constitution to decipher the extremism. Remember that there were two issues during the Bush years that dramatically illustrated to voters the extremism of the Republican far right at that time. The first was the case of Terry Schiavo, in which congressional leaders sought to intervene in a family's private medical tragedy. The Schiavo intervention, opposed by 70 percent of the public, derailed Congress and the Bush presidency in the early months of 2005, contributing to the subsequent defeat of Social Security privatization.

He concludes: "In an ideal world, it would be as easy to show just that the economic views of the new Republican stars are as extreme and unhinged as their social views. But it's probably too late to start that now."

In other words: Governance is hard and complicated! Rather than make our case to the voters based on the substance of our views and actions, let's do the culture war thing instead so we can signal to them that the other guys are out-of-touch with our "values" in ways that don't have very much to do with governance!

Which, basically, is the left-wing version of this:



I'm not naive: Value-signaling always will be part of democratic politics. But the Schiavo Affair turned off voters because it signaled to them that Republicans had embraced culture-war issues to the exclusion of effective governance. Obsessing about Christine O'Donnell's views of masturbation might do the same thing to Democrats.

Kristol, Fuelner and Brooks' Somewhat Misleading Op-Ed On Defense Spending

Arthur Brooks, Edwin Fuelner and Bill Kristol have an op-ed in today's WSJ, warning fiscal conservatives not to rein in Pentagon spending because, well, defense spending isn't really the reason America is in its current debt-laden state. They make some of the usual arguments -- that defense spending as a share of GDP is actually lower now than it was during the Cold War -- that are fine as far as they go.

The problem is that in making the case that domestic entitlements are the real cause of the deficit, the trio pulls a bit of apples-and-oranges sleight of hand. Here's the offending bit:

Defense spending has increased at a much lower rate than domestic spending in recent years and is not the cause of soaring deficits. Even as the United States has fought two wars, the core defense budget has increased by approximately $220 billion since 2001, about a tenth as much as the government devotes each year to "mandatory" spending: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, lesser entitlements such as food stamps and cash assistance, and interest payments on the debt. These expenditures continue automatically, year after year, without congressional debate.

The comparison here is confusing to the point of misleading. The Trio (as I'll refer to the collective) has to make it seem as though the defense budget is somehow relatively anemic so they compare just the increases in defense spending to the total yearly budgets of the entitlement programs. That's a comparison that makes no sense.*

*And without footnotes, it's hard to be sure what comparison they're making, but it's worth noting that the "core defense budget" has generally not included Afghanistan and Iraq war expenses, which have largely been appropriated through supplemental bills.

It's not easy to track down easy-for-a-layman-such-as-myself-to-understand budget information over time; the best I can find is this Congressional Budget Office table (PDF). What it shows:

* Defense spending more than doubled between 2001 and 2009 -- from $306 billion to $655 billion. (Best I can interpret the CBO data, this includes war-fighting expenses.)The defense budget as a share of GDP rose from 3 percent to 4.6 percent.

* "Mandatory" spending -- including entitlements like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. -- also doubled during this time, from $1.007 trillion to $2.093 trillion. As a collective group, the percentage of the GDP rose from 9.9 percent of GDP to 14.7 percent. That sounds much bigger, but when you break it down by program, you see the increases are generally in line with the Pentagon's: Social Security's share of GDP rose by just 0.6 percent; Medicare rose by 1.2 percent of the GDP; Medicaid rose by 0.5 percent of GDP.

Now you can argue that the costs of those entitlements is still going to prove a drag, and I won't try to counter-argue in this post. But it's clear that -- despite the picture painted by The Trio -- Pentagon spending has been growing, along with the rest of government over the last decade, in robust fashion. It might not be the source of America's deficit issues, but it is certainly a source.

Plus, there's always this chart:

The United States spends 46.5 percent of the world's total military spending. The next closest competitor, China, spends 6.6 percent.

Now, depending on your vision of America's role in the world, maybe that's entirely appropriate. (I'm ... dubious.) Our military bestrides the world; China, at this point, seems to want to dominate the Pacific. What that chart suggests, however, is that the American defense establishment is hardly underresourced. Let's figure out the proper balance of America's defense needs and America's resources and go from there.

Why Am I A Liberal?

I talk about that in the latest Ben and Joel Podcast.

What's Wrong With The Democrats?

Ben and I talk about the "enthusiasm gap" among Democratic voters in our Scripps Howard column this week. My take:

You almost can't blame President Obama for being frustrated. He's gotten more big things done -- a health care bill, the stimulus, financial reform -- than any Democratic president since Lyndon Johnson, and he's done it in only two years. So why all the complaining from his liberal base? Because it hasn't been enough. And what has been done hasn't been done well.

Yes, the longtime progressive dream of a universal health care bill passed -- but in a messy form that, with its mandate on American citizens to buy their own health insurance or face penalties, seems designed to alienate as many voters as it serves. The stimulus probably averted a Depression-like disaster for the American economy, but liberals believe it probably needed to be bigger in order to lower a still-horrendous unemployment rate. Financial reform took too long to pass and was watered down by the very institutions that must be regulated.

That doesn't even include the president's actions in the War on Terror, where his moves have been barely distinguishable from President Bush. Sure Obama ordered an end to torture. But Gitmo is still open, there are still troops fighting in Iraq and the Afghanistan War appears to be a deepening quagmire. Civil libertarians and gay rights advocates, meanwhile, also have a long list of reasons to be frustrated with the president.

Is all this letting the perfect be the enemy of the good? Maybe.

Certainly, it is difficult to believe many liberals would be happier if John McCain had been president the last two years. But President Obama and his surrogates don't generate enthusiasm when they criticize and mock their most fervent supporters. It's time they stopped complaining and started persuading their liberal critics -- and the rest of the nation -- that the actions they've taken are the right ones.

Barack Obama, Tyrant?

I am profoundly disappointed by the Obama Administration's decision that it can order the killing of an American citizen without due process -- and that it can furthermore evade any accountability for that order by invoking "state secrets" to shut down any court challenges. (Adam Serwer describes the administration's position here.)I'm also disappointed by its effort to require tech providers to build their systems to enable the government to spy on its citizens -- which seems to me somewhat akin to requiring homebuilders to add a secret room in every home where your government watcher can monitor you.

Before Barack Obama's election, I wrote an essay suggesting these kinds of problems might be on the horizon. I think it's worth quoting myself at length:

What do we know about Barack Obama and the presidency that makes me fearful for him?

• He’s made compromises already. If our nation’s decision to torture terror suspects ranks as the Bush Administration’s chief betrayal of American values during the last eight years, then the “warrantless wiretapping” program ranks second. The administration decided to ignore existing wiretapping law — scratch that, broke the law — so that it could listen into private telephone conversations involving Americans. And one of the reasons it did so is because it wanted to prove it could, that there was no check or balance provided by Congress and the courts that presidential power couldn’t override.

When it came time to let participants be punished, or give them retroactive immunity and the power to continue the program — well, Barack Obama voted for the second option. It’s easy to understand why: He didn’t want a “soft on terror” vote (which would’ve been a bogus charge) following him around this campaign.

And let’s not forget that Barack Obama promised to take public financing for his campaign, only to back down when it became less advantageous for him to do so. This makes him a smart politician probably, but it also means that Obama is not a being of pure light. Which leads us to point No. 2.

• Presidential power doesn’t contract itself. The last eight years have seen the Bush Administration repeatedly assert its authority to act as it pleases, without limits from Congress and the courts. The courts have been more effective than Congress in pushing back, but the presidency holds more unilateral power in governmental decision-making than it did when Bill Clinton left office.

And here’s something fundamental about human nature: Presidents don’t tend to give power away. Somebody has to take it away. Congress did a lot of this in the post-Vietnam era, and a lot of those safeguards stood (though they eroded a bit) until the current presidency. Barack Obama has promised to live by the older, less dictatorial limits, but he would be an extraordinary president if he didn’t claim some of the authority the Bush Administration has grabbed for itself. Seems unlikely to me.

And, well, it's kind of worked out that way, hasn't it?

Radley Balko at Reason calls Obama's position "tyranny," and I'm not sure I disagree:

If there’s more tyrannical power a president could possibly claim than the power to execute the citizens of his country at his sole discretion, with no oversight, no due process, and no ability for anyone to question the execution even after the fact . . . I can’t think of it. This is horrifying.

The biggest reason I voted for Barack Obama in 2008 was my deep frustration and anger with a Bush Administration that believed in untrammeled, undemocratic assertions of executive authority. And when Obama took office, he gave me hope -- immediately signing a prohibition on torture. I was optimistic, despite my pre-election warnings.

But in court filings since then, it has become clear that the Obama Administration may think that torture is bad -- but it is also willing to defend the president's prerogative to order torture. It's not defending the actions of the Bush Administration, necessarily, but it is defending the (again, undemocratic) underlying theory that made those actions possible.

Tyranny? Not quite. But we may be on the road.

To be clear, though, I'm not about to join the Tea Party. I don't believe that returning to Clinton-era tax rates is tyranny. (Or else Dwight Eisenhower was history's worst monster.) I don't think making sure that many more Americans have health coverage is tyranny -- though the current method of forcing people to buy insurance instead of providing it through a single-payer system will, I think, feel intrusive to people. As I've said before: It embarrasses me for Tea Party folks that they can see tyranny in such actions but remain silent on a president's ability to imprison people without due process.

But just because the Tea Partiers are wrong about why Barack Obama is a danger to our rights doesn't mean they're wrong about the conclusion, I guess. But he represents a bipartisan danger; it's clear now that both Democratic and Republican presidents will defend the idea of unlimited executive power.

And this leaves me wondering about 2012. I think John McCain would've been a much worse president for this country; for all the problems we have now, I do believe that the Obama Administration has actually mitigated them to a great extent. So the question is: Do I vote for the lesser evil in 2012? Or do I decide the whole system is so rotten that neither major party deserves my vote? And if that's the case, what effective action can I take to rein in a runaway government?

Mr. Mom Chronicles: Working At Home

I'm in the middle of typing out an e-mail to a source on a story when my two-year-old boy climbs up into my lap with a book, "Put Me in the Zoo."

"Booky?" he asks.

This is slightly annoying -- I've got work to do. But the boy is part of my work, too. If I'm going to be a stay-at-home-dad-slash-freelance-writer, then I can't neglect the dad part of the equation. Even if doing so would make the writing part of that equation much easier.

So I read the book. Tobias climbs down, retrieves another tome and brings it to me. "Booky?"

"No, son. I've read you one, and I've got to get this done. Can you read it to yourself?"

Tobias doesn't like the idea. He raises the book high over his head, then slams it down to the ground. Then he toddles off.

We're one week into this experiment -- ok, we're a week into my new way of living life -- and it's clear that this is the battle I'm going to have to fight every day. I've got to write enough to bring in my (desperately needed) share of the family income. But I've also got to give the boy attention and nurturing.

When I'm writing, he wants to play with me. When I'm making a phone call he wants to play with his sound-making toys -- or he wants to play with my phone. This would all be much easier if he would just take a goddamned nap, but that's only happened once this week.(Which I deserve: I drove my mom insane by never once taking a nap after 18 months.)

I've tried putting him in his room behind a baby gate. Sometimes he'll take it. Sometimes he won't. I've had to dump him in his crib for 10 minutes at one point just so I could finish writing a piece with a clear head. I feel bad about this. I'm home with him! I'm the parent! I don't really want to shuttle him off to day care -- and I couldn't afford it now, even if I did.

But always, the work is calling. I don't think I'm going to solve this problem. I think that's simply the way it is.

John Yoo and the Tea Party

John Yoo believes that during wartime there's virtually no limit -- legal, constitutional, treaty or otherwise -- on a president's power. He can suspend the First Amendment. He can order the testicles of a small child crushed. It was his legal advice that helped pave the way for the American torture regime.

So, of course: John Yoo is a featured speaker at Tea Party events.

Now: There are undoubtedly many fine and sincere Tea Party participants who legitimately want to see government restrained and fitted for a Constitutional straightjacket. That's fine. But even now, it's easy for me to believe that there's also a sizable chunk of people who didn't mind expanding deficits and tyrannical government overreach as long as a Republican is president. Tea Partiers who turn out for a John Yoo speech? Almost certainly in the latter group.

Deborah Solomon Versus: Phil Collins

Rest assured, Deborah Solomon will
always ask personal questions
about money.

Rather than repeat my litany of gripes against Deborah Solomon's stewardship of the Q&A section of the New York Times Magazine, I'm going to start a (almost assuredly) weekly feature: A look at how she focuses relentlessly on money -- without it being at all enlightening about the interview subject. This week's money gotcha: Phill Collins:

Did I read somewhere that your divorce settlement was $50 million and, at the time, the largest paid by an entertainer in British history?
I think Paul McCartney’s was the largest.

I read that he paid $49 million to Heather Mills.
It’s only money. Of course, only people with money will say, “It’s only money.”

Nice line by Phil, but it tells us something we already knew: He's rich.

That's Deborah Solomon for you: Asking questions that are rude for no real purpose. She's gaucheriffic!

Letter to a Christian Friend

As some readers may know, I grew up Christian, mostly among Mennonites in the Midwest. I even attended a Mennonite Bretheren college, and count many of my friends from that time as dear friends still. But I no longer share their faith.

Some friends still gently nudge me toward faith. And I understand the good intent of their efforts, even if it makes me somewhat uncomfortable. I received one of those nudges today -- and I responded thus. The letter is lightly modified to omit unnecessary details:

Hi Friend:

It's true that I'm not too enamored of how many, perhaps most, Christians choose to live their faith. It seems at odds -- to me -- with the ethic of Jesus that I find in the Bible. But that's not the fundamental reason I'm in my current rather faithless state.

I think the best way to describe me now is "apathetic agnostic." That is: I simply don't know whether there is a God or not. And it seems to me that if there is a God, that God has chosen to reveal himself (I'll skip gender-neutral language here for the sake of simplicity) at something of a distance from my own 2010 existence. Because of that, it seems to me that time spent trying to deduce the details of God and God's wishes is akin to debating the number of angels who can dance on the head of a pin. (The answer is 19, by the way.) I feel -- at this point in my life -- that my time is better served facing the solid facts of the real life that I live.

And I've made something of a reverse Pascal's Wager along these lines. Pascal decided to go with Christianity because if it was right, he guaranteed himself an afterlife and if it was wrong, well, no harm done. My wager: If there IS a God -- as big and amazing as all the religions would have us believe -- then that God probably isn't going to be particularly concerned with the particulars of my belief system and wouldn't punish me anyway.

And if there is a God, and that God decided to punish me because I didn't love HIM, or because I didn't have precisely the correct way of understanding him or obeying him -- even though our last overtly direct communication with him came over 2,000 years ago -- perhaps that God isn't worth worshipping. Powerful abusers are still abusers.

Now: I know you'll disagree with the details of this. A couple of thoughts:

* My current way of thinking isn't the result of not having a good understanding of the Bible or the church. I spent 30 years of my life immersed in both. I understand the arguments that might be made against the scenario I just presented -- at one time, I made those arguments.

* I don't explain myself here in an attempt to persuade you. I still feel a keen responsibility not to cause my brother to stumble; I have no interest in undermining anybody's faith -- though I will challenge them if I feel their faith is used for sinister ends. But I do want to explain to you my thinking.

Now, all of this might be temporary. I've gone from being a fervent Christian to an agnostic in the span of 20 years, and I cannot discount the possibility of a return trip. I know there are many people who pray for just such an event -- and I appreciate the spirit of their intent, even if the action causes me some discomfort.

But: This is who I am right now.

With respect and affection,
Joel

Barack Obama, Bob Woodward, and the War in Afghanistan

Our Scripps Howard column this week is about Bob Woodward's new book, "Obama's Wars." My take:

Bob Woodward's new book reminds us of an important proposition: American democracy and long-term war are a bad mix.

It's certainly bad for democracy. One of the most disturbing revelations is the lengths that President Obama went to in order to ensure the military obeyed his orders in Afghanistan -- dictating a six-page single-spaced document dictating the terms of 2009's surge of 40,000 troops to that country. Why the detail? Because the president felt sure his generals and admirals would find "wiggle room" to violate the spirit of the order setting a 2011 deadline to begin drawing down troops there.

The American Constitution is clear: The president is the commander-in-chief. He makes the country's big decisions about how we fight war. Generals and admirals give their best military advice, and then execute the decisions the president has made. But top military officials clearly see themselves as political players in the process, lobbying the president and circumventing his orders. Woodward reports Gen. David Petraeus told his staff Obama was "(messing) with the wrong man." Such reports should concern anybody concerned with Constitutional order.

But if war is bad for democracy, democracy can also be bad for war. If it goes on too long, the politicians in charge can take their eyes off the bottom line -- what can be done to enhance American security -- and start factoring partisan politics into the mix. Obama tells Woodward in the book that he set the 2011 withdrawal deadline because "I can't lose the whole Democratic Party." That is, even from a liberal viewpoint, a chilling admission.

"Obama's War" affirms that at this point, there's little America can gain -- and a whole lot it can lose -- from continued large-scale fighting in Afghanistan. We can't fix that country. The longer we stay there, though, the more we might find our own democracy in need of repair.