March 2008 Archives

The U.S. Supreme Court, by a 6-3 majority in the Medellin v. Texas decision, struck a significant blow for the U.S. Constitution and U.S. sovereignty against the encroaching power of international treaties and U.N. authority upon U.S. law.

Contrary to much of the reporting in the media, the Supreme Court decision in Medellin v. Texas was not primarily either a death penalty case or a decision regarding presidential executive power.

Both Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion (joined by Justices Alito, Kennedy, Scalia and Thomas) and Justice Breyer’s dissent (joined by Justices Souter and Ginsburg) make it clear the justices understood the Medellin case to be about the scope and authority of international law in domestic U.S. courts. Justice Stevens wrote a separate opinion concurring with the majority.

The Medellin Case involved José Medellin, a Mexican citizen who had lived in Texas since childhood and was convicted in 1993 of the brutal murders of two teenage girls and sentenced to death.

Medellin signed a confession, having been read his Miranda rights. However, Medellin was not informed of his rights as a Mexican national under the Vienna Convention to notify Mexican consular officials of his arrest and detention.

In 2005 President George W. Bush ordered the Texas judicial system to comply with a 2004 World Court (the International Court of Justice) decision that would have reopened Medellin’s case.

Justice Roberts, writing for the majority, acknowledged that President Bush’s motivations (to insure reciprocal observance by foreign governments of the Vienna Convention and to protect international relations) were “plainly compelling,” but concluded by saying that, “Such considerations … do not allow us to set aside first principles.” In this case, the “first principles” involved the president’s ability to issue a directive that “reaches deep into the heart of the state’s police powers and compels state courts to reopen final criminal judgments and set aside neutrally applicable state laws.”

The Roberts majority rightly decided that treaty obligations do NOT trump American law. Treaty obligations only trump American law when the Congress of the United States acts legislatively to incorporate them into American jurisprudence through legislative action, thus making the treaty obligations part of American law. As Justice Roberts pointedly concluded, “The primary role in deciding when and how international agreements will be enforced” must be left to the legislative branch of the U.S. government, the American people’s elected representatives.

This Supreme Court-erected “firewall” between international law and American domestic law and sovereignty was much needed and will be the enduring legacy of the Medellin decision.

I was aware that the ascension of Nicolas Sarkozy, known affectionately as “Sarko the American” to his countrymen, to the presidency of France was going to have positive ramifications, but I had no idea just how much difference it would make.

As the world has once again witnessed the thuggish behavior of the septuagenarian and octogenarian totalitarian rulers of the People’s Republic of China toward anyone who rubs their fur the wrong way, President Sarkozy has been among the first of the world’s leaders to speak out in a concrete way to condemn the brutal crackdown on Tibetan dissidents in recent days.

Sarkozy has gone so far as to issue a veiled threat of proposing a boycott of the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics on August 8. This is a threat that will give the Chinese pause. They desperately wanted the Olympics in order to symbolize China’s ascension to the first rank of the world’s nations. If the leaders of the most influential countries in the world were to boycott the opening ceremonies it would be a devastating blow to the Chinese rulers pride and would cause them considerable loss of “face.”

When addressing the subject, President Sarkozy said “Our Chinese friends must understand the worldwide concern that there is about the question of Tibet, and I will adapt my response to the evolutions in the situation that will come, I hope, as rapidly as possible.”

When asked whether he supported a boycott, Mr. Sarkozy pointedly added, he would “not close the door to any possibility.” Kudos to President Sarkozy. When Nicholas Sarkozy was elected, I ended my self-imposed boycott on Perrier. Now, I’m going to start eating Camembert, Brie and Port-Salut cheeses again.

Seriously, I hope Americans will urge President Bush to join French President Sarkozy in making it clear that if the Chinese government does not substantially improve its behavior toward its own, as well as Tibet’s dissidents, there will be a lot of absent leaders at the opening ceremonies of the Olympics.

I’m a supporter of Senator Hillary Clinton, but you wouldn't know it from all the times I’ve had to come to the defense of Barack Obama over these past few weeks.

I like to think of myself as a loyal Clinton supporter. But American politics and the history of race relations in this country being what they are, I’ve not had the luxury of sitting on the sidelines and gleefully watching as Obama scrambles to explain his relationship to the fiery radical preaching of his black pastor back in Chicago to an aghast white America.

As a black ordained clergywoman with a doctorate in Old Testament studies who happens to support Hillary Clinton for president, it pains me to stand by and watch Rev. Wright and Trinity United Church of Christ become collateral damage in the right wing media campaign discredit Barack Obama.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I should admit that I have been a guest in the pulpit at Trinity UCC many times over the years and know Jeremiah Wright, the minister and the man, very well. Trinity has long been a standard bearer for what it means for a church to combine charismatic worship, prophetic preaching, and social justice outreach. The ministry of Wright and Trinity have been demonized and caricatured in recent weeks by the media. To present Dr. Wright’s ministerial legacy within a 15- or 30-second sound bite is an injustice to Dr. Wright’s global ministry as a biblical scholar, theologian and pastor who has intentionally worked as a follower of Jesus Christ to heal broken lives in America and around the globe for almost four decades.

Admittedly, Dr. Wright has a way of saying things that are uniquely his. We’ve all sat there cringing sometimes at the things he’s said or the way he’s said them. But we’ve also admired and respected his courage and honesty.

If the conversation on my own blog about Dr. Wright and Senator Obama’s race speech is any indication, it seems that there are whites who are now defecting in droves from the Obama camp. They can’t believe blacks feel the way that Wright describes. The logic goes something like this: If Obama listened to Wright for 20 years, then he must feel that way, too. Wright is wrong about white people, about me, about America the beautiful, and since Obama listened to that radical preacher, he is likely to be a black radical at heart. The assumption is that Jeremiah Wright probably has some Svengali-type control over Obama.

Here’s what white American doesn’t get because they don’t know, and have never bothered to find out, anything about the black religious experience beyond “those wonderfully moving Negro songs of you people.” The fiery, liberation theology laced preaching of Jeremiah Wright has been around a long time, going all the way back to slavery times. The God blacks worshipped has been different from the God whites have worshipped.

Senator Obama has a problem: the hardening of the American heart, the closing of the American mind, the shriveling of our souls, the shrinking capacity of our imaginations, our jaded senses, the seen-it-all attitude that makes us into sneering voyeurs too mean spirited to save ourselves.

I was a guest on a PRI radio show the day after Obama delivered is historic speech on race. I was a guest along with a person that the host introduced as "most responsible" for making Obama's minister's charged comments into a political football. According to the host's introduction, Republican activist Ronald Kessler used his website to turn Obama's minister 's words into the story the media jumped on.

Kessler had just heard Obama's March, 18 speech on race too. He said it left him unmoved. He was in a sneering mood bristling with ever-so-reasonable middle class certitude of his conservative righteousness. To Kessler the speech was just politics, nothing more. The idea of its truth was of no consequence. To him it was all about tactics.

That night I was listening to Laura Ingraham (a show that I was on several times and where Laura repeatedly called me a "great American" because, as the father of a Marine, I'd written Keeping Faith and then Faith of Our Sons, books that praised and explained the military family.) Laura was sneering at Obama's speech. Her candidate had been Mitt Romney. As Romney's self-described "conservative-conservative" Ingraham had also been routinely mocking McCain. And she hates Clinton. Now she hates Obama more...

Bitterness as a way of life marches forward on the left as well as the right. I read the responses from Clinton supporters (on various websites) also damning Obama's speech as "just words." Some of the Clinton people sounded even more cynical than Kessler and Ingraham.

Obama is the chef who opens a new restaurant and serves honest good and beautifully prepared food made of the most wholesome ingredients only to have the food critic pan his offerings as "all too ordinary." "Where," asks the seen-it-all jaded bored critic, "are the calf's brains marinated in truffle-soaked baby duck's testicles?"

Whenever Americans discuss the issue of race, there are always ghosts in the room with us—the ghosts of racial sins and racial hurts from our shared and tragic past.

Race has always been the serpent in the American Eden, the birth defect in our historic genetic code.

Senator Obama’s speech earlier this week used one of my favorite quotes from William Faulkner: “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past,” to make this point. Living in Mississippi, Faulkner understood the “Ghosts of Mississippi” always present in the room and part of every racial interaction. And that’s true of not just Mississippi, but the entire nation as well.

That is precisely why so many people have invested so much hope in Senator Obama—a candidate who is “black,” but not the black candidate—a man who has empathy for the hurt of all sides of our American racial tragedies.

What other American politician who is African-American could, or would, have the courage to articulate the frustrations of working-class whites as Sen. Obama did in his speech. Senator Obama acknowledged with empathy those millions of white Americans who:

“don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race” and when such Americans “hear that an African-American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.”

When Senator Obama acknowledges and understands such feelings, he is performing a healing act for the entire nation. Also, there is no question Senator Obama “feels the pain” of those generations of African-Americans who have been victims of extreme prejudice and destructive discrimination.

Senator Obama is absolutely right that we need to have a productive and constructive conversation about the past, the present and the future of race in this country. That is the only pathway toward the post-racial future which many hope Senator Obama represents—a country in which people truly will “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

We must talk about these things honestly, openly, and with great intentionality. I am reminded of a scene in Walk the Line, the 2006 film biography of John and June Cash. He asks her to marry him, and she reminds him of the obstacles in their path:

June: “Well how’s it gonna work, John? Where we gonna live? What about my girls? What about your girls? What about your parents, John? Your daddy won’t even look at me.”

John: “June, that stuff will just work itself out.”

June: “No, it does not work itself out! People work it out for you and you think it works itself out.”

We, as Americans, must work these things out. If we don’t, others with less hopeful and constructive agendas will work them out for us in less healing and far more hurtful ways.

And in working these things out on our journey to a post-racial future, Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s hateful, hurtful statements must be recognized as echoes of the ghosts of the past that we must overcome in order to go where the vast majority of our nation, “red, yellow, black and white” and every combination in between earnestly desires to go.

That’s the dream that can truly dispel the ghosts forever.

The California Second District Court of Appeals ruled Feb. 28 that parents who do not hold a “teaching certificate” but continue to educate their children at home can be found guilty of breaking the law. This is an outrageous decision....

Barack Obama called us to our better selves yesterday. Never mind that! Here's the latest new outrage from Obama's pastor! FOX NEWS, CNN, MSNBC are all about to start playing new secret footage of Rev. Wright screaming: "If you lust...

As Prepared for Delivery “We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.” Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these...

When Senator Obama's preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father--Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer--denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with...

Geraldine Ferraro, a trailblazer for women as the first woman on a major party national ticket (Walter Mondale’s presidential running mate in 1984), said the following about Senator Barack Obama: “If Obama was a white man, he would not be...

Of all the sad and pathetic aspects of the fall of Gov. Eliot Spitzer, when his almost decade-long use of prostitutes was uncovered, the most pathetic was Prof. Alan Dershowitz’s assertion that prostitution was a “victimless crime.” A vicious and...

David Kuo argues that Obama will benefit from casting Hillary Clinton's Kumbaya talk about possibly choosing him as her presidential running mate: [A]s these things often do, this will backfire. She has given Sen. Obama the thing he didn't have...

The news reports of the recent election in Pakistan emphasized the decisive defeat of President Musharraf. Unfortunately, not enough attention has been paid to the dramatic defeat of the radical Islamist parties. The parties sympathetic to al Qaeda and the...