May 2009 Archives

The murder of abortion provider George Tiller should force a re-assessment of the Department of Homeland Security's maligned report on "right wing extremism."

I was thoroughly dumbfounded at the conservative reaction to that report in April. If you read the report, it was quite clearly aimed a serious, violent, insane extremists. Yet mainstream conservatives took great offense, accusing the Obama administration of chillingly targeting the free-speech of conscientious anti-abortion citizens, veterans and conservatives writ large..

Conservatives should have said, "Here! Here! We applaud the efforts to clamp down on terrorism, crime and extremists." After all, most conservatives have nothing to do with, and deplore, violent extremists. Instead, by saying the report was an attack on conservatism in general, the conservatives -- not the government -- blurred the lines between the violent extremes and the conservative mainstream.

Now, it turns out that the man in custody on suspicion of assassinating Tiller, Scott Roeder, had been arrested back in 1996 on criminal use of explosives and had connections to an extremist anti-government militia group, the Freeman: On April 17, 1996, Associated Press reported:

"Roeder was stopped because his car didn't have a legitimate license plate. Instead, it had a tag indicating the driver was a "sovereign" citizen and immune from Kansas law. The same type of tag is sometimes used by Freemen, whose members in Montana are in the fourth week of a standoff with federal agents.

Roeder's name is included on an FBI list of Freemen, said Shawnee County Sheriff Dave Meneley.

In Roeder's trunk, authorities found fuse cord, a pound of gunpowder and two nine-volt batteries, one wired to a switch - the alleged triggering device. Ammunition and a blasting cap also were found in the car."

In other words, we'll have to wait on the details on both cases but at first glance Roeder seems exactly the sort of person that the DHS warned about.

The report suggested that the bad economy and the election of a black president could stimulate more anger and activity from "violent anti-government groups." Far from attacking anti-abortion activists in general, as many claimed, the report instead noted white supremacists' "longstanding exploitation of social issues such as abortion."

We'll see if Roeder maintained his ties to the militia groups or had shifted his focus to abortion only, but at a minimum, conservatives have to make a new choice: take seriously right wing extremists -- the real ones, not the bloviators -- or run the risk of truly being lumped together.

In a way, conservatives now face a choice similar to what liberals in the late 1960s and early 1970s faced during the hayday of the Weather Underground. Some on the New Left defended them as legitimate-albeit-excitable members of their broad coalition, while other more traditional liberals attacked them as extremists who violated liberal ideals. My sense of the history is that enough on the New Left defended extremists to tar all of liberalism. Will that happen for conservatives now?

Here's an excerpt from Bob Nylen's riveting new book, in part about his experiences in Vietnam. Bob, the co-founder of Beliefnet, died in December 2008:

"For several days, a private in Robert McNamara's breathe-and-you're in Army had played the same grotesque joke. He pulled the pin of a hand grenade, making a distinctive ping, and rolled the grenade toward his mates. The first time he pulled this depraved stunt, his mates scattered, terrified. Nothing happened. He laughed. Before tossing his little present, he'd pulled out the detonator cylinder, rendering the grenade harmless. When his buddies regrouped, the dope showed them that the metal ball was hollow, harmless. Ha ha ha! His goggle-eyed mates pummeled him: "never again, Bozo!"

He played the same trick the next day; this time, his mates beat him harder.

The third day he pulled his idiotic stunt, his mates flinched, sighed, muttered, and kept eating. They wouldn't fall for the lame gag again; but this time, he'd forgotten to pull the rod.

Prone and trembling on the pit's rim, the men didn't look hurt. American grenades don't render flesh as gruesomely as do artillery, claymore mines, or tumbling AK-47 bullets. Each fragmentation grenade expels six hundred tiny wire splinters. If a grenade lands on you, flechettes can rip off your arm. More likely, if it lands close, they'll kill slowly by driving deep into viscera, causing internal bleeding. A grenade is diabolical because it doesn't kill outright: it requires uninjured men to help victims, demobilizing whole units. The wounded men moaned. One died en route to Chu Lai, another died in the MASH unit, fratricide, plain and simple. The third and fourth guys didn't return.

So it went again and again. If they didn't kill us, we killed one another. Friendly fire, accidents, and stupidity caused a third of U.S. casualties. Collateral damage, we call it now when ordnance falls where it shouldn't and hits unintended victims. "FF": shorthand, a sterile euphemism, for slaughter and gore.

"What should we do with this dumb cluck?" Our new CO, a proper captain, thank goodness, posed a rhetorical questions. "I'll court-martial him," the CO said, "unless you have a better punishment."

After ten weeks in country, by defualt, I was the tenured company officer, not its most senior. I had status as a counselor, not a decision maker. The perp was just a kid, and a dope. He sat forlorn, dull eyes glazed, alone with self-centered, incoherent thoughts. His life would never be the same, I hoped, nor should it be.

Don't court-martial him, I said. You send him to Long Binh Prison, he goes on trial, we send witnesses, lose manpower. The court finds him guilty. He goes to Fort Leavenworth and serves ten years for manslaughter. He's in Kansas! We aren't. He has a toilet; we don't. He can exercise and watch TV, if he behaves. Then he gets a dishonorable discharge. B.F.D. He's free.

No, keep him here. Make him live with us. Every cherry will hear his pathetic story the day he jumps off the chopper. Give him the worst duty you can think of - walking point, carrying the base plate. Serves him right. Make him burn our sh---ers when we're lucky enough to have them. Maybe he'll get shot. Maybe he'll die. Who cares? That works for me.

My solution appealed to the COO. After all, one military punishment was closed to us: we couldn't send him to Vietnam."

To buy the book click here; more from Bob Nylen here.

I wonder how many times I've walked past scenes like this and not even noticed.

Conservative Catholic activist Bill Donohue shocked me this morning by saying he will "quietly root for" the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor. During an email exchange, he wrote:

"I like the fact that she is not brandishing her religion. I do not want Catholic judges to rule as Catholics but as judges. I am all for Catholic legislators having a Catholic-informed opinion, but a judge has a different charge. Unless something pops that we don't know about, I am not going to oppose her. Indeed, the experiences I had working with the Puerto Rican community lead me to quietly root for her."

Donohue is the head of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, and a longtime critic of liberal cafeteria Catholics, pro-choice Catholic politicians and anti-Catholic bias in the media. He's an honorary member of the "religious right" so his comments are sure to stir conversation among religious conservatives.

The first part of the comment is interesting, as it mirrors what Justice Antonin Scalia has himself said: that Catholic judges have no obligation to bring to bear their religion in deciding matters on the court. It signals that I may have been wrong in predicting full out Catholic church campaign against her. Of course, it may be easier for Donohue -- and the Catholic hierarchy -- to stomach Sotomayor because she doesn't, so far, seem to be a down-the-line pro-choicer.

Whatever the reason, Donohue's statement is a signal that, at a minimum, there is not a united front among religious conservatives.

Bob Nylen's just-released book, "Guts," has to be one of the most honest war memoirs written about Vietnam. It has none of the usual agendas, either glorifying the pristine heroism of the soldiers or, alternately, showing them to be just imperialist murderers. His agenda, as usual, was candor and storytelling: the comrade who blew up his brothers by horsing around with a grenade, the decisions he made that resulted in the death of his men, the things no war movie has ever captured, and his own heroism.

Bob co-founded Beliefnet in 1999 but until reading his memoir (mostly about his military service and recent bout with cancer), I hadn't the slightest idea what he'd been through in Vietnam. Normally voluble, he didn't volunteer much on his experience as a soldier in the late 1960s and I felt bashful about asking. I regret that. Bob died soon after turning in the manuscript. How I wished I could have him back for a few hours to go over this incredible book line by line!

The book's full name is Guts: Combat, Hell-raising, Cancer, Business Start-ups, and Undying Love: One American Guy's Reckless, Lucky Life. Bob meant the name to ironic, in part because he didn't think he was heroic and in part because he died of colon cancer. It's a very Bob sort of joke. But of course he did have guts, and this book conveys heroism in its truest sense - as a mix of instinct, accident, lizard-brain reaction, genuine valor and sleep walking.

Consider the story of Bob recuperating at a Navy hospital recovering from wounds when another patient erupts:

"In the ward's far corner, an EM was ranting "motherfuckers!" he said. "Get back, you bastards!" Branding a big black pistol, the kid whose cherubic face, wispy mustache, and pale complexion signified desk jockey, cook, bottle washer, held nurses at bay.

Weapons were banned in hospitals. How'd he smuggle this one in? A mystery. This kid had a mouth, a grudge, and a substance abuse problem. But combat had inured me to danger. This moron was sitting on clean cotton sheets for which he should have been thanking his stars, bars, and stripes. He made no sense. "Get away, bitch! I'll kill you," he told a supplicating nurse.

Someone walked up to the young man and calmly requested his pistol. Just like that the kid shut up and handed over the pistol, butt end first, as you'd do on a target practice range. He's seen bad shit out there. He said. It had fucked him up.

When the ward was quiet, a nurse thanked me for disarming the young man. Me? No. No way. Couldn't prove it by me. This out-of-body experience was no more connected to my festering sunburned, hard-of-hearing self than it was to Saint Peter, Captain Kangaroo, Senator John Stennis, or George Custer's moldering corpse. After the kid was taken to the brig, I returned to my bed and fell asleep. When I awoke, I remembered the kids terrible reign, but not how he'd been disarmed, nor by whom.

The nurse retold the story twice, thanking me. In her third telling, the incident came back: bam. I shook. How incredibly foolish! What a crazy jerk I'd become...a wild-eyed would-be martyr, just asking for it, somehow surviving despite myself.

It's an extraordinary book. Buy it here.

I suggested yesterday that pro-choice and pro-life activists had jumped the gun by assuming Sonia Sotomayor to be an ardent pro-choicer. Today comes this email from Nancy Keenan, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. It doesn't exactly sound like Keenan...

It took me a few seconds to notice the man in this very sad scene....

One of the message board posters, Rev. Martin Fox, took me to task for suggesting that the Bishops might criticize Sonia Sotomayor for being a pro-choice (maybe) Catholic. "Mr. Waldman's post misunderstands, or fails to appreciate, the distinctions the...

After the announcement of Sonia Sotomayor's selection, abortion groups lined up predictably, pro-life groups expressing outrage and pro-choice offering praise. Everyone seems to be assuming she's ardently pro-choice, if for no other reason than that Obama's appointed her. But there's...

I'm slightly surprised that the White House press office gave out this image, from her 1976 Princeton yearbook, in which she quotes Norman Thomas. Norman Thomas was, of course, the leading American Socialist politician of the 20th century. Perhaps they...

Evidence of Sonia Sotomayer's religion has been hard to come by, but a White House official just confirmed to me that she, in fact, Catholic. UPDATE 2:10 pm.: Another White House official elaborated slightly, "Judge Sotomayor was raised as a...

One has to assume Obama wouldn't have appointed Sonia Sotomayor without some indication that she's pro-choice but -- based on very, very little information -- I wonder if she might not end up being an abortion centrist....

In Amnesty America v. Town of West Hartford, anti-abortion protestors argued that the police had used excessive force against them. A lower court had ruled that the police had not used excessive force. She ruled that "a reasonable jury could...

Interestingly, in the one abortion-related case she ruled on as a court of appeals judge, Sonia Sotomayor ruled against the pro-choice group. She rejected arguments from pro-choice advocates that their Constitutional rights were being restrained by the Bush's administration's policy...

First published May 5, 2009 From a raw political point of view, it's hard to top Sonia Sotomayor to be Obama's appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. She's Hispanic, a key group that Obama won over and must keep. She's...

I'm no expert on the Nemenhah Band, the spiritual group to which Colleen Hauser belongs and whose teachings she cites in refusing chemotherapy for her cancer-stricken son. But poking around their website, it seems to me the group actually gives...

About that Pentagon study reporting that 14% of detainees released from Guantanamo "returned to terrorism or militant activity." Two reactions: Given that ALL of the people we picked up were supposed to be terrorists, what should we make of the...

Nemenhah Band and Native American Traditional Organization An Educational Auxiliary of The Oklevueha Native American Church of Sanpete Declaration of Good Conscience and Practice, Constitution, and Establishment of a Native American Traditional Organization beginning in this State of Utah, in...

Rep. Paul Braun (R-Ga) wants 2010 to be "The Year of the Bible." His Congressional resolution would encourage the President: "to issue a proclamation calling upon citizens of all faiths to rediscover and apply the priceless, timeless message of the...

By Michael Kress By now, you've heard of the foiled plot to blow up two synagogues in the Riverdale section of the Bronx-- my neighborhood, my home, my community. Thankfully, the explosives they were caught planting were fakes, sold to...

Nick Kristoff of The New York Times reports: Jackie [who is 7-years-old] is too young to remember the 14-year civil war in Liberia, from 1989 to 2003, when as many as three-fourths of women were raped. Jackie's world is one...

Something horrible has happened. For the last five mornings I've desparately wanted to watch a video of the "We Are the World" song. It all started after 30 Rock did their "Milton Green Needs a Kidney" celebrity fundraising song. My...

Did those Bible verses at the top of the intelligence briefings make us less safe? Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld put Bible verses on the top of the "Worldwide Intelligence Update" presented to President Bush, Robert Draper reports in GQ....

Can you spot how I snuck in the "safe, legal, early" reference?...

Advocates of abortion "common ground" seem to believe that reasonable debate would eschew infammatory tactics such as displaying huge photos of aborted fetuses (as we saw aplenty at the Notre Dame commencement). But if you believe most abortions ought to...

Watching the Notre Dame speech I was reminded: this man has been blessed with good enemies Instead of people focusing almost entirely on the remarkable fact that the head of the US Catholic Bishops Conference opposed the invitation, the media...

In terms of actual abortion policy, the key phrase in Obama's Notre Dame speech (full text here) was not inspiring or poetic. It was his specific call to "reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies." In...

Thank you, Father Jenkins, for that generous introduction. You are doing an outstanding job as president of this fine institution, and your continued and courageous commitment to honest, thoughtful dialogue is an inspiration to us all. Good afternoon, Father Hesburgh,...

One of the frustrating things about the Notre Dame controvesy is that we've settled back into the same terms of debate we've had for years: whether one is "pro-life" is determined entirely by one's position on the legality of abortion....

In his explosive essay on torture, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson made this comment in passing: "More Americans were killed by terrorists on Cheney's watch than on any other leader's watch in US history. So his constant...

Diane Winston of the USC Media and Religion program asks this about the Carrie Prejean controversy: "How do more modestly clad Southern Baptists feel about having a piece of Donald Trump arm-candy cast as the spokesperson for their movement?" And......

In response to my "In Defense of 'Fundagelicals'" post, two former "fundagelicals" have told their stories: Excerpts from New Age Cowboy: I grew up "Fundagelical". My father and two older siblings are the remaining Fundagelicals in my immediate family. My...

Whether American officials violated the law to justify torture is a hugely important moral issue. Whether American officials launched a war under false pretenses is a hugely important moral issue. What if it turns out that the two are connected,...

Will Saletan at Slate responded to my latest "Safe, Legal, Early" defense: "Morally, my feelings differ from Steve's. I'm more uncomfortable with early abortions than he is. At the same time, I'm more uncomfortable with government interference in late abortions...

One of you asked what I was getting at with the thought experiment pitting 500 zygotes against one baby. (If you were in a burning medical building, which would you save?) I've argued that some pro-choice leaders are slightly out...

Slate's very wise "Human Nature" columnist, Will Saletan, gave me the honor of thoroughly critiquing my "Safe, Legal and Early" essay. He suggests that my proposal by itself is politically impractical because it's too complicated and because, "people won't take...

At the end of my post yesterday about the National Day of Prayer, I included a clip from the festivities last year (?) in Tacoma, Washington (see above). I said it was,"lovely, warm and very evangelical." Rob the Rev...

Conservative religious groups are criticizing President Obama for what the Associated Press called his "muted" observance of National Prayer Day. "At this time in our country's history, we would hope our President would recognize more fully the importance of prayer,"...

I'm not going to harp on the obvious irony of Bristol Palin leading a campaign against teen pregnancy. Nor am I going to wonder how Tripp Palin will feel when he grows up and watches the videos of mom...

NATIONAL DAY OF PRAYER, 2009 BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA A PROCLAMATION Throughout our Nation's history, Americans have come together in moments of great challenge and uncertainty to humble themselves in prayer. In 1775, as the...

"One of the fundamental things for me would be honesty, transparency," he said, unironically, in this Preachers and Teachers video. (Father Cutie is the Catholic Priest-turned-TV-star who recently caught smooching with a lady on the beach)...

Danny and Bertie ask for prayers: "Our families are spent. We have applied for dozens of jobs. We will be on the street soon if nothing happens. We have a small child,."...

Patricia Carl and Son: "This is a cry for help by a single parent who has done all she can to keep her head above water and keep a roof over me and my sons head. I lost my job...

In an interview in Christianity Today by Sarah Pulliam, Samuel Wurzelbacher says he likes James Dobson, John Eldridge, and Sarah Palin -- and criticizes the Republican Party for not standing up for evangelicals enough. "They use God as a punch...

Having challenged pro-lifers with this ethical riddle, I'd like to now hear from pro-choicers on a particular aspect of the moral dilemma. Let's assume that abortion is fully legal, right up until the point of birth. Would you feel morally...

Kansas State University researchers have mapped the concentration of different sin "hot spots." Note how lust, pride and wrath are concentrated in the south, while greed seems strangely focused in the Northeast and California. As for gluttony, it appears to...

Responding to the Safe, Legal, Early essay, Albert the Abstainer, in the comments box, offers this interesting challenge to pro-lifers: Consider the following ethical question: You are running out of a burning hospital and can run into the fertility...

Andrew Sullivan powerful post on why support for torture seems to correlate with the intensity of one's Christian faith. The more devout you are, the more likely you are to support torture. Brilliantly, Sullivan illustrates the post with a trailer...

Though it's crucial for the country to get our hands around the fact that the government authorized simulated drowning (waterboarding), I'm puzzled by the emphasis. One hundred detainees have experienced death of the non-simulated variety, including 27 who have already...