Casting StonesFriday July 4, 2008 @11:49am

General Clark, Senator McCain, and a question of character

By: Dr. Richard Land

Last Sunday (June 29) retired Army General Wesley Clark startled "Face the Nation" host Bob Schieffer by questioning Senator John McCain's military experience as a qualification for the presidency. Schieffer was asking General Clark about his description of Senator McCain as "untested and untried," and when pressed by Schieffer, Clark said, "I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president." While these comments have caused considerable controversy, it is not the first time General Clark has questioned or downgraded Senator McCain's experience.

Last spring, when General Clark was supporting Senator Clinton (before she dropped out of the race), General Clark argued for Senator Clinton's superior credentials and experience (versus Obama and McCain): "If you look at what Hillary Clinton has done during her time as the first lady of the United States, her travel to 80 countries, her representing the U.S. abroad, plus her years in the Senate, I think she's the most experienced and capable person in the race."

Now, according to General Clark on "Face the Nation," experience is trumped by "having good judgment" and "the ability to communicate" and, of course, according to Clark, Senator Obama has "incredible communication skills" and "proven judgment."

While judgment and communication skills are important, the most important and essential trait is character, and while there is no reason to question Senator Obama's character, there is tremendous evidence to affirm Senator McCain's--and the most compelling part of that evidence is his military experience.

Senator McCain, shot down and severely injured while flying a combat mission over North Vietnam, was held captive and brutally tortured for five and a half years. He survived and was considered both a leader and a hero by his fellow P.O.W.'s.

And yet, Senator McCain was offered early release to go home by his captors, once they discovered he was the son of Admiral John McCain, commander of the U.S. Pacific fleet. Senator McCain chose to remain and face years of continued torture and deprivation rather than abandon his fellow prisoners of war.

Surely, such courage and character tell us more than a little about what kind of president a man would be. Senator Obama might possess similar qualities of self sacrifice and courage under fire and torture. However, in Senator McCain's case, we need not speculate. We know.

It is a discredit to General Clark that he would question or downgrade Senator McCain's military experience as an important indicator of how Senator McCain would respond to the pressures that accompany occupancy of the Oval Office.

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Filed Under: casting stones, richard land

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Reformed Chicks BlabbingFriday July 4, 2008 @ 8:11am

Is Obama flip-flopping on flip-flopping on Iraq?

By: Michele McGinty

So, Obama continued moving to the right to attract the general public by stating that after he meets with military commanders he will "continue to refine" his position on Iraq:

"My 16-month timeline, if you examine everything I've said, was always premised on making sure our troops were safe," Obama told reporters as his campaign plane landed in North Dakota, a state no Democratic presidential candidate has carried since 1964. "And my guiding approach continues to be that we've got to make sure that our troops are safe, and that Iraq is stable. And I'm going to continue to gather information to find out whether those conditions still hold."

But then he must have realized he went too far because apparently he adopted McCain's policy :-) so he called a second news conference to make it clear that he didn't want anyone thinking he changed his position on Iraq (even after meeting with the generals and discovering what the conditions are like on the ground he will not listen to them but bring the troops home anyway whether it endangers Iraqis and the remaining troops or not):

In a second, hastily convened news conference, Obama insisted that his policies have not changed, and that he has "not equivocated" or is not "searching for maneuvering room" on Iraq. Consultations with commanders in the coming weeks will be focused more on the size of U.S. forces needed to train and equip Iraqi military and police units, as well as maintaining a "counterterrorism strike force" to prevent al-Qaeda from making a comeback, he said.

"Let me be as clear as I can be: I intend to end this war," he said. "My first day in office, I will bring the Joint Chiefs of Staff in, and I will give them a new mission. That is to end this war, responsibly, deliberately but decisively."

But more importantly, if he really wasn't changing his position, why did he say that he will "continue to refine" his policy? What does that mean? Was he thinking he could slip the word "refine" in there to give himself some wiggle room when he met with commanders but then didn't want the Republicans saying he had changed his position? I think that makes the most sense.

It's going to be a little hard for him to even move a little to the right on this because if he does, the press and the Republicans will be all over it. But I bet after he meets with the commanders, he will start wiggling again. He was unequivocal in his support of Wright until he needed to kick him to the curb and I bet if he has to, he'll do the same to his Iraq policy knowing his base will still vote for him no matter what. I think he'll still say he's bringing the troops home but he'll start framing it in less absolute terms.

We've already seen that he's willing to evolve, why wouldn't he do it on this issue as well?

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Filed Under: casting stones, Democrats, McCain, Obama, presidential election

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Steven WaldmanThursday July 3, 2008 @ 4:24pm

The Constitutional Right to Government Dough

By: Steve Waldman

One of the most controversial parts of Obama's faith-based plan - and Bush's - was the question of whether faith-based charities could hire or fire people on the basis of religion. I wroter earlier that there's less here than meets the eye but there are some important principles at stake.

First, there are some points that people actually agree on. A religious group can hire and fire people based on their faith for pretty much whatever they want, if they're not taking government federal money.

Also, a religious group can get government funds and still hire by faith for anything related to "ministerial functions" (i.e. worship, Sunday school etc).

The question is whether that group can discriminate by faith for other functions. A Catholic Church is surely allowed to only hire Catholics to teach the Sunday school - everyone agrees on that -- but can they turn down a protestant who's applied to work at the soup kitchen.

The reason this doesn't come up that often is that most faith-based charities decided that they want to reach as many needy as possible and that for most activities, being of that faith doesn't matter. If the YMCA is helping inner city youth get off the streets, it's not important that the basketball coach be Christian.

But sometimes it is. There are some faith-based programs where religion is central to success. A prison ministry might teach inmates that they can turn around their lives because of Christ's love. It's hard to convey that message without mentioning religion or without having the volunteer be Christian.

"The reality is an Orthodox Jewish group ceases to be Orthodox if they have to hire atheists or Southern Baptists," said Jim Towey, the former head of the program under Bush. "What Senator Obama is saying is groups will have to secularize if they play ball with government and receive federal funding, and that flies in the face of what many small groups want."

I'm sympathetic to the conservative argument on this, up to a point. Some programs really will lose something special if they secularize their approach. Sometimes it's not jsut about the soup; it's also about the Spirit. And if Obama wants especially to help the small groups, aren't these the ones most likely to have faith pretty intertwined with with they do (and least likely to want to hire a lawyer to help them navigate the rules?)

But here's my question: if that's the case, why take the money? Why "play ball" as Towey suggests? What's wrong with having government money go to those that have a secular mission and private money go to those that don't? Why the compulsion to force government into doing what it's not good at and which may do harm?

Conservatives are acting as if it's discriminatory for the government to say, "there are some thing the government shouldn't spend money on." Didn't that used to be the conservative position? I remember that liberals used to argue that if abortion is legal then the federal government had an obligation to fund it through Medicaid. But that never made sense to me. Just because it's allowed doesn't mean it always makes sense to compel taxpayers to fund it.

Here's an example for conservative Christians to ponder: what if a Muslim group had an effective prison ministry program emphasizing prayer and Qur'an study. In fact, they could double the number of prisoners they taught the Qur'an if only they had more money. How do you feel about your tax dollars going to help spread the Muhammad's teachings?

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Filed Under: barack obama, casting stones, faith based, hiring issue, prison ministries

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PontificationsThursday July 3, 2008 @11:43am

The Battle for the Catholic Voter

By: David Gibson

Barack Obama is in a virtual tie with John McCain for the Catholic vote, the "Holy Grail" of the campaign, as Amy Sullivan puts it in her analysis of TIME's latest poll which shows 45 percent of the 47 million Catholic voters--concentrated in key swing states, as TIME's map shows--versus 44 percent for Obama. This is an unexpectedly good showing for Obama. But Sullivan leads with yet another story about Doug Kmiec, the Reaganite Roman Catholic turned Obamacon. How much mileage can we get out of the "Kmiec Catholic," as we must now dub him, as if he were a new discovery like Australopithecus africanus, an elusive missing link. Or is he actually Piltdown Man, an elaborate hoax?

Here is Sullivan:

A new Time poll of Catholic voters reveals that Kmiec is part of a broader pattern. Although Obama was thought to have a "Catholic problem" during the Democratic primaries, in which Hillary Clinton won a majority of Catholic votes, he has pulled even with John McCain among that constituency--Obama now polls 44% to his GOP opponent's 45%.

There are 47 million Catholic voters, and while they are too numerous and varied to speak of as a monolithic Catholic bloc, they have long been a kind of holy grail for presidential candidates. The winner of eight out of the past nine elections has captured a majority of Catholic votes (they voted for Al Gore in 2000), and there are large Catholic concentrations in key states like Florida, Ohio and New Mexico.

The trick is figuring out what Catholics want...

Indeed.

PS: Check out the nifty graphics.

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Casting StonesThursday July 3, 2008 @11:38am

The Second Amendment, guns, and the Supreme Court

By: Dr. Richard Land

The verdict is now in from the U.S. Supreme Court--the Second Amendment means what it says. In a historic 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller that no government entity--local, state, or federal--can totally ban handguns from law-abiding, local citizens.

As Associate Justice Scalia stated in his majority opinion, "The enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table. Those include the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home."

Scalia's majority opinion is a masterpiece of jurisprudence and sound legal reasoning. In the future, when anyone asks what someone means when they say they want federal judges who are "strict constructionist, original intent jurists," one need simply refer them to Justice Scalia's opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller as the prime example of what such a jurist's opinions will look like.

The delight of those who believe that the Second Amendment does guarantee the individual right to "keep and bear arms" is tempered by the fact that four justices (Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer) disagreed vehemently with the majority (Scalia, Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito). The stark reality is the individual right to "keep and bear arms" rests currently on the fragile foundation of a single Supreme Court justice's vote.

The next president could quite possibly nominate judges who fill up to three Supreme Court vacancies--yet one more issue for American voters to ponder as they prepare to cast their ballots for the 44th president of the United States this November.

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Filed Under: casting stones, richard land, supreme court

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Reformed Chicks BlabbingThursday July 3, 2008 @ 8:04am

Is the Christian right ready to unite behind McCain?

By: Michele McGinty

Looks like Obama has scared the Christian right into uniting behind McCain:

At a meeting Tuesday in Denver, about 100 conservative Christian leaders from around the country agreed to unite behind the candidacy of John McCain, a politician they have long distrusted, marking the latest in a string of movements that bode well for McCain's general election prospects among the Republican base.

[...]

A second person who attended the event, but asked not to be named, said that the group was motivated principally by a desire to defeat Barack Obama. "None of these people want to meet their maker knowing that they didn't do everything they could to keep Barack Obama from being president," the participant said. "You've got these two people running for president. One of them is going to become president. That's the perspective. That that's the whole discussion."

Even though the Evangelical vote is fractured this year between those who oppose abortion and gay marriage and those who want to focus on the poor and the environment, the support of the Christian right leaders could actually help McCain if they can energize their organizations as well. Their organizations are a good source of grassroots support, which were used by the Bush campaign to get Evangelicals to the poll and they are also a good source of campaign workers, working the phones and going door to door. When they're energized and working to get someone they believe in elected, they will work diligently. But I'm not sure they will be able to get behind McCain the way they got behind Bush given McCain's treatment of them and their issues. I guess the way they'll energize the base is in opposition to Obama, not really support of McCain (that's what Dobson did).

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out in November, won't it?

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Filed Under: casting stones, Christian right, McCain, presidential election, Republicans

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Windows & DoorsThursday July 3, 2008 @ 7:00am

Obama Unnerves Liberals and Conservatives with Faith-Based Plan

By: Brad Hirschfield

How do you get a single item to both shrink and grow at the same time? Ask Barack Obama, who did exactly that when he suggested that the Bush initiatives didn't go far enough. The expansion comes in his commitment to investing more dollars in faith-based institutions addressing big social and environmental issues.

"The challenges we face today -- from saving our planet to ending poverty -- are simply too big for government to solve alone," Mr. Obama said outside a community center here. "We need an all-hands-on-deck approach."

» Continue Reading This Post

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Filed Under: casting stones, Christian, Conservative, Faith-Based Initiatives, Jewish, Liberal, Obama, Richard Cizik, Richard Land

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Steven WaldmanWednesday July 2, 2008 @ 5:18pm

The Great Secret About Faith-Based Hiring

By: Steve Waldman

The most disconcerting part of Obama's faith initiative is that they didn't seem to be aware of the volatile politics of one provision: whether faith-based groups can hire and fire according to someone's religion. "Any religious organization that does not want to comply with that requirement simply doesn't have to take the money," said law professor and Obama advisor Martha Minnow. "I don't think there's anything too controversial about that."

Not controversial, eh? Writing that Obama's proposal was a "fraud," the Catholic League's Bill Donohue declared, "If a customer walked into a New York deli and said, 'Let me have a hot dog on a roll--hold the frankfurter'--he'd likely be thrown out. That's what the public should do to Obama's faith-based initiative: since he wants to gut the faith from his faith-based programs, he should be told to junk it."

Or, from Family Research Council's Tony Perkins: "Obama's interpretation would be a body blow to religious groups that apply for federal funds."

Worst of all for Obama, Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals -- a moderate -- said, "That's extremely disappointing."

In a later post I'm going to dive into the actual law but here I want to simply draw attention to a portion of Tempting Faith, the book by my Beliefnet colleague David Kuo, who was the deputy director of the White House Office of Faith Based Initiatives under Bush. He describes how the Bush White House wanted to make a big deal about federal rules preventing programs from hiring on the basis of faith. They instructed the staff to find outrageous examples of religious charities being forced to abandon their principles:

"There was only onne problem. Hundreds of calls were made and not one additional example was found."

Why? Because "most of the faith-based groups that did contract with the federal government were large and well lawyered" and therefore skillful at working around the law so they could get the money.

Kuo tried to convince his colleagues that it was a minor issue and that downplaying it could help them forge a consensus. But, it turned out, building consensus really wasn't the goal. "Jim [Towey, the office's director] was fully engaged in West Wing politics and smart enough to know how best to tickle political fancies. The religious hiring issues was polarizing... More action on the same subject would mean more attention for Jim's efforts. Therefore the religious hiring issue was good."

In other words, the religious hiring issue is one of these classic Washington creatures that interest groups care more about than those on the ground. Liberals loved it when Bush moved the line because they could claim he was gutting separation of church and state. Conservative activists love it that Obama has taken his position because they can claim he's gutting faith.

The reality is that the rule - though dealing with some interesting and important principles -- affects few groups in the real world. The test for Obama will be whether he can keep this particular red herring from blocking real progress that would help the poor.

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Filed Under: barack obama, casting stones, church and state, david kuo, faith based

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Windows & DoorsWednesday July 2, 2008 @11:45am

Who's A Terrorist

By: Brad Hirschfield

Something is really off when everyone from CNN (look down to the World section) to the news on the AOL homepage (see the Top News) describe the attack on public bus in Jerusalem as the work of a "terrorist", using quotes because of their apparent discomfort with calling this an act of terror and labeling this murderer, a terrorist. If that is not terror, what is? And yes, I already imagine the litany of description of Israeli military activity that this question invites. And I have no interest in that debate right now. I want to understand why, even for those who would make such counter charges about Israel, what this man did is not terror.

And the BBC is even worse. Check out the clip that they posted as the news broke, and you will see something disgusting. Not disgusting because of blood and guts, which are happily not to be seen (even this murderer has a family and the pain that they will feel at his loss, should shape the images the press will use). It's because of their choice to open their video coverage with the smiling face of a bearded skull cap-wearing man with a pistol. They have zero coverage of the damage done, and like all the press this morning, are placing quote marks around the word terrorist when describing the driver who rolled the bus and killed at least three civilians.

I am the last to cry "anti-Semites", and am not even doing so now. But something here is very wrong and I hope you think so too, whatever your politics may be.

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Filed Under: anti-Semitism, aol news, bbc news, casting stones, cnn news, Israel, jerusalem terror attack, moral equivalency, news coverage of terror, terrorism

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Reformed Chicks BlabbingWednesday July 2, 2008 @ 8:57am

Obama's move to the right

By: Michele McGinty

Is not going over well in the left side of the blogosphere. Kos has decided not to send him any money:

[T]here is a line between "moving to the center" and stabbing your allies in the back out of fear of being criticized. And, of late, he's been doing a lot of unecessary [sic] stabbing, betraying his claims of being a new kind of politician. Not that I ever bought it, but Obama is now clearly not looking much different than every other Democratic politician who has ever turned his or her back on the base in order to prove centrist bona fides. That's not an indictment, just an observation.

[...]

Ultimately, he's currently saying that he doesn't need people like me to win this thing, and he's right. He doesn't. If they've got polling or whatnot that says that this is his best path to victory, so much the better. I want him to win big. But when the Obama campaign makes those calculations, they have to realize that they're going to necessarily lose some intensity of support. It's not all upside. And for me, that is reflected in a lack of interest in making that contribution.

So don't despair Obamanites, Obama still stands with you on these issues he just has to pretend for awhile that he doesn't. He knows you'll understand. He knows, like Kos, you never really fell for all that "new kind of politician" crap.

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Filed Under: casting stones, Democrats, derisive, Obama, presidential election

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