Hey, general Sheehan, Holland just called

I should say, "retired general." He told Congress said Dutch military operations failed because of gay soldiers.  Der Spiegel reports on a story that has gained quite a lot of traction in Europe:

The Netherlands on Friday was quick to react to Sheehan's testimony. Dutch Defense Minister Eimert van Middelkoop issued a statement calling the remarks "outrageous and unworthy of a soldier." He went on to say, "I do not want to waste any more words on the matter."

Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said the remarks were "disgraceful" and "should never have been made. ... It is way off the mark to talk like that about people and the work they do under very difficult circumstances." He added that he would not take up the matter with Obama because Sheehan is retired.

Wim van den Burg, head of the Dutch military union AFMP, called Sheehan's comments "ridiculous" and "out of the realm of fiction."

More, from the Washington Post:

The Netherlands has a long history of accepting homosexuality, and gays have long been welcome in the country's armed forces - which also allow labor unions.

The leader of one such union, Jan Kleian, was incensed by Sheehan's comments.

"The man is crazy," he told Dutch radio. "It sounds hard, but I can't put it any other way."

This is how it's done

SEIU attacks Arcuri. But unlike your average progressive group, they are aiming straight for the neck. And other vulnerable places:

At a time when political courage is needed to transform healthcare in this country, Congressman Arcuri’s failure to see the bigger picture and his refusal to vote for the greater good of all Americans is inexcusable.

Congressman Arcuri’s decision to vote against the healthcare reform bill leaves our leadership and the members we represent with no choice but to withdraw our support for his re-election.

We will work aggressively with the Working Families Party in fielding aprimary or third party challenger who shares our progressive values and can be counted on to deliver for working Americans.

More:

The Working Families Party is on board for this plan, by the way. Its executive director confirmed earlier today it will search for a challenger to Arcuri, telling Ben Smith that “this is the most important vote he will cast in his career.”

With heavy labor backing, Arcuri won last time around by a mere two percent of the vote. Without labor support, he could very well lose reelection. If he faces a labor-backed third-party challenger, his situation becomes even more precarious.

So for all the GOP talk about House Dems contemplating a Yes vote have their career on “life support,” for Arcuri, a No vote could very well be a career-ender, too.

The face of the families the Catholic bishops betrayed

More faces here.  

Help Steve Levy win the GOP nomination!

Yesterday, we previewed Steve "Anchor Baby" Levy's potential entry into the New York governor's race. Today it's official. The  Long Islander will switch parties, he will certainly find the GOP far more hospitable to his long history of Hispanic-bashing and pogrom incitement.  And we should extend our thanks in advance; he's about to do to New York Republicans what Pete Wilson did to California Republicans. Let's look back at this CalNews piece from 2002:

The long slide into political oblivion of the California Republican Party that started 20-years ago when Republicans won the governorship with a bland Long Beach lawyer will be complete this November 5th Election Day.

The slide accelerated when Republican Governor Pete Wilson blithely blamed all immigrants for the state’s budget deficit he inherited from the bland Long Beach lawyer/governor whose name few can remember. It jumped into high speed when the mossbacks Pete Wilson anointed to run the state Republican Party pumped $300,000 into a petition drive that resulted in the illegal proposition 187.

The thrashing of Republican Dan Lungren by Governor Gray Davis in 1998’s election appeared to be as low as California Republicans could sink, but it wasn’t even close. Only one Republican managed to win a statewide race that year. None will probably win this year.

State Democratic Chairman Art Torres infuriated California Republicans when he declared that Proposition 187 (and its Republican Backers) was the “last gasp” of “white (redneck) America.” How true.

Despite spending millions in California, Candidate George W. Bush, hardly improved the disastrous results of the state’s 1998 election and it wasn’t even his fault.

Thank you, Steve Levy!

Tavis Smiley

It is truly remarkable how much this self-professed defender of the black community was willing to kiss Bill Clinton's ample behind. He emceed Bill Clinton's book launch, and was happy to collect cash from the Clintons during the 2008 primary.

There may be a huge scandal brewing for African American activist Tavis Smiley. As MediaTakeOut.com reported to you last week, Tavis ignited a firestorm when he publicly criticized Democratic frontrunner Barack Obama for refusing to stop campaigning and attend his State Of The Black Union conference which is taking place this weekend in New Orleans.

Tavis' uncharacteristic attack on the extraordinarily popular Obama had many African American's scrambling for answers. Some believed Tavis was jealous of Obama's success, other's believed he was angered that Obama didn't ask for his endorsement. But now MediaTakeOut.com has uncovered another possible reason.

MediaTakeOut.com has exclusively learned that Bill Clinton and Tavis Smiley may have a financial relationship. On Tavis' official website, Bill Clinton's book Giving is prominently featured in what appears to be an advertisement.

It is certainly moving to read about Tavis' love for the president under whom black male incarceration boomed, leaving one out of three without the right to vote (Florida's Republican governor Charlie Crist was more progressive in a year on this score than Clinton was in eight).  Here are some of the pesky details Smiley has happily chosen to ignore in exchange for product placement:

Next week, the Justice Policy Institute will release a study that shows that, despite all the legendary cruelty of President Reagan, far more people went to state and federal jails under Clinton than Reagan. In Reagan's eight years, 478,800 prisoners were added to America's jails. In Clinton's eight years, America's prison population increased by 673,000.

Under Clinton, the prison population shot up from 1.4 million to more than 2 million. Fearing being seen as soft on crime, Clinton did nothing to stop the racism of the so-called drug war. Clinton never fought seriously to eliminate the massive disparities in sentencing between crack and powder cocaine even though there was no medical evidence to support such disparities.

Clinton did nothing to stop local police departments from singling out nonviolent black nonusers of drugs, who are easier to snatch off street corners than off half-acre suburban lots. Even though African-Americans consume 13 percent of illegal drugs, roughly our share of the population, we made 74 percent of drug offenders sentenced sent to prison.

Under Clinton, the overall rate of African-Americans going to prison continued to soar. In the Reagan-Bush years, the rate grew from 1,156 prisoners per 100,000 black men to about 2,800 per 100,000. In the Clinton years, the rate grew to 3,620 prisoners per every 100,000 black men.

By the time the Clinton years were done, he had become such a sous chef in helping the Republicans cook the black goose, 14 percent of African-American men had lost the right to vote because of felony convictions. You could even argue that by going along with the recipes that Reagan and Bush set down, Clinton helped cooked his own vice president to a crisp.

So how can Tavis follow up this monumental act of payola-enabled hypocrisy? A conference questioning Obama's commitment to the African American community.

Presumably he takes issue with Obama's largest domestic initiatives, health care reform and jobs.

Obama has said that African Americans would benefit from his broader agenda, which he says is aimed at relieving the burdens saddling all working Americans. His administration's efforts to increase federal financial aid for college, increase funding for impoverished school districts, and to expand access to health care would disproportionately benefit working-class people, many of whom are black, he has said.

"I'm the president of the entire United States," he told American Urban Radio Networks in December. "What I can do is make sure that I am passing laws that help all people, particularly those who are most vulnerable and most in need. That, in turn, is going to help lift up the African American community." 

Smiley's bottom line is hardly controversial:

Smiley also has caused ripples in African American leadership circles with his outspoken insistence that Obama -- like any other president -- be held accountable by black voters.

Every politician, after all, should be held accountable by black voters, beginning with Smiley's hero, superincarcerator Bill Clinton (the impossibly brilliant Ta Nehisi-Coates wrote the last word on Bill Clinton's free pass with the black community way back in 2001).

But who's going to hold Tavis Smiley accountable? Maybe it's time to find out a bit more about his motivations, financial and otherwise, for opposing the president whose agenda has been the friendliest to the black community since Lyndon Johnson.

More coverage of the Vatican

Courtesy of Jon Stewart.

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Commonweal endorses health care reform

And makes an important point regarding abortion:

Many of the bill’s most prominent critics are lobbyists, and for the purposes of lobbying, a plausible falsehood is often as useful as the truth. But crying wolf is always a dangerous game. If prolife groups raise false alarms to bully politicians and scare up donations, they risk being ignored when a real threat arises. Some of the same groups that are now loudly predicting disaster if health-care reform passes warned that the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) was sure to be passed and signed into law if Barack Obama was elected president. People remember these predictions, and eventually they stop paying attention. If the Senate bill does not pass, conservative lobbying groups, most of which are opposed to reform for other reasons, and the bishops conference, which supports reform in theory, will bear some responsibility for it.

If one wants to claim that no politician who’s really opposed to abortion can support the Senate bill, it’s not enough to show that the bill’s provisions are inferior to the House’s Stupak Amendment; one must also argue that the Senate bill is inferior to the status quo. The government is already subsidizing group plans that cover elective abortion by means of tax breaks for businesses that offer them. Millions of Americans must now choose between accepting such a plan and going without good health insurance; the only other option, a decent individual plan, is now just too expensive for them. The Senate bill would give such people the wherewithal to buy insurance that doesn’t cover elective abortion, which means that, in addition to its many other benefits, it would save millions of Americans from having to choose between their conscience and their health.

National Catholic Reporter endorses

Health care reform:

Congress, and its Catholics, should say yes to health care reform.

We do not reach this conclusion as easily as one might think, given the fact that we have supported universal health care for decades, as have the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Catholic Health Association and other official and non-official organs of the Catholic church. There are, to be sure, grave problems with the bill the House will consider in the next few days. It maintains the squirrelly system of employer-based health care coverage that impedes cost reduction. Its treatment of undocumented workers is shameful. It is unnecessarily complicated, even Byzantine, in some of its provisions. It falls short of providing true universal coverage.

Nonetheless, the choice Congress faces is between the status quo and change -- and the current bill is a profoundly preferable step in the direction of positive change. The legislation will lower costs, not only for individuals and small businesses currently burdened by rising premiums, but for the Medicare and Medicaid programs, which threaten to strangle the federal budget. It will extend health care coverage to 30 million Americans who currently lack it. Finally, a society that covers most of its citizens will be a society more likely to eventually cover everyone -- our immigrant brothers and sisters included.

Much of the focus on the bill in these last days, and not only in the Catholic world, has been on its provisions regarding abortion. All sides agreed to abide by the spirit of the Hyde Amendment, which for more than 30 years has banned federal funding of abortion. But the Hyde Amendment applies to government programs only, and trying to fit its stipulations to a private insurance marketplace is a bit like putting a potato skin on an apple. [...]

That said, the bishops have to be clear that some of their talking points might lead honest observers to question their competence -- or worse. In the past week or so, much has been made of the bill's provision of $7 billion dollars to community health centers. The National Right to Life Committee chimed in that this money could go to pay for abortions at clinics run by Planned Parenthood. Back to Logic 101: All Planned Parenthood clinics may be clinics, but not all health care clinics are Planned Parenthood clinics. The community health centers in question do not, never have, and have no intention of performing abortions, and they are prohibited by statute from doing so. This is a red herring and it was profoundly disappointing to see the USCCB Web site [5] give credence to it.

Bottom line: The current legislation is not "pro-abortion," and there is no, repeat no, federal funding of abortion in the bill.

Meanwhile, writing in The Washington Post last Sunday, T.R. Reid, a first-rate journalist, a Catholic, and author of "The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care." argues persuasively [6] that industrialized countries that achieve universal or near-universal insurance coverage have a demonstrably lower abortion rate than we have in the United States. It should matter to those who believe in the sacredness of all human life that this legislation will not only provide health care to those who don't currently possess it, but will encourage women facing crisis pregnancies to choose life. Given the intractable nature of the abortion debate in the United States, this amounts to a pro-life victory of historic proportions.

You know things are looking good on health care

When purplish red state representatives, including one who is in a tough race for the U.S. Senate back health care reform:

Party leaders are closing in on the 216 votes they will need Sunday and appeared to pick up more support from conservative Democrats Thursday, thanks to the CBO cost estimates.

Reps. Betsy Markey, D-Colo., and Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., announced they would back the bill. Both voted against the more costly House health care legislation last year.

Rep. Baron Hill, D-Ind., who has expressed skepticism about the health care legislation, said Thursday he was moving closer to supporting the bill. "I'm pretty happy about the numbers," Hill said.

And fellow Indiana Rep. Brad Ellsworth, who has been concerned that the Senate bill places too few restrictions on federal funding for abortion, said, "It's not a perfect bill, but there are great things in the bill," he said.

The best analysis of the motivation and strategy behind the vote, as you might as expect, is by Nate Silver.

Hans Küng enters the fray

Oh. My. God.The man who got Ratzinger his job at Tübingen and later became his colleague and (strangely beloved) nemesis now speaks in an essay in the National Catholic Register. It isn't pretty. Küng is as brilliant as Ratzinger, with the added advantage of being more socially aware, since he isn't a black box theologian. But brevity has never been one of his strengths. So read the whole thing, since he's a terrific writer, whether or not you share in his conclusions. I'll just quote a bit from his fourth question. Which, of course, has to have four subquestions.

Is it not time for Pope Benedict XVI himself to acknowledge his share of responsibility, instead of whining about a campaign against his person? No other person in the Church has had to deal with so many cases of abuse crossing his desk. Here some reminders:

• In his eight years as a professor of theology in Regensburg, in close contact with his brother Georg, the capellmeister of the Regensburger Domspatzen, Ratzinger can hardly have been ignorant about what went on in the choir and its boarding--school. This was much more than an occasional slap in the face, there are charges of serious physical violence and even sexual abuse.

• In his five years as Archbishop of Munich, repeated cases of sexual abuse at least by one priest transferred to his Archdiocese have come to light. His loyal Vicar General, my classmate Gerhard Gruber, has taken full responsibility for the handling of this case, but that is hardly an excuse for the Archbishop, who is ultimately responsible for the administration of his diocese.

• In his 24 years as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, from around the world, all cases of grave sexual offences by clerics had to be reported, under strictest secrecy ("secretum pontificum"), to his curial office, which was exclusively responsible for dealing with them. Ratzinger himself, in a letter on "grave sexual crimes" addressed to all the bishops under the date of 18 May, 2001, warned the bishops, under threat of ecclesiastical punishment, to observe "papal secrecy" in such cases.

• In his five years as Pope, Benedict XVI has done nothing to change this practice with all its fateful consequences.

Honesty demands that Joseph Ratzinger himself, the man who for decades has been principally responsible for the worldwide cover-up, at last pronounce his own "mea culpa". 

John Allen, part 2

One more key quote, from his conclusion:

By the time the crisis in Ireland erupted last year, a new Vatican script seemed to be in place. Papal statements of concern were quickly issued, and a summit of Irish bishops and senior Vatican officials was swiftly convened for mid-February. Similarly in Germany, Zollitsch was in the pope's office briefing him on the crisis less than a month after it first blew up.

For anyone who recalled the slow and defensive response to the American situation eight years earlier, the change in Rome seemed almost Copernican. [...]

Therein, however, lies the rub: relatively few people know or care how far the Vatican, or the pope, have come over the past eight years.

John Allen

He wrote the book on Benedict XVI. Literally. In his latest column in the National Catholic Register, he explains just what the stakes are:

In a papacy sometimes marred by scandal and internal confusion, Benedict's handling of the sexual abuse crisis has often been touted as a bright spot -- one case, at least, in which the expectations of the cardinals who elected him for a firmer hand on the rudder seem to have been fulfilled.

That background makes the scandals now engulfing the church in Europe especially explosive, because by putting the pope's all but forgotten tenure as the Archbishop of Munich from May 1977 to February 1982 under a microscope, they threaten to once again make Benedict seem more like part of the problem than the solution.

As of this writing, there's at least one case on the record of a priest accused of abuse who was reassigned in Munich while Ratzinger was in charge, and who went on to commit other acts of abuse. The vicar general at the time has assumed "full responsibility" and insisted that Ratzinger wasn't informed, but it nevertheless happened on his watch. For all anyone knows at the moment, there may be other such cases.

The question now is whether Ratzinger's past may trump Benedict's present. What weighs more heavily: Benedict's willingness to weed out abusers and to acknowledge the damage they left behind, or the church's inability to enforce similar accountability for bishops who failed to act -- a failure possibly reflected in the pope's own stint as a diocesan leader three decades ago?

That question is certain to put Benedict XVI's entire record on the sexual abuse issue, stretching over more than three decades of leadership in the Catholic church, under new scrutiny.

It isn't just Angela Merkel

Other prominent German politicians, from both sides of the aisle, are speaking out about the pope and the abuse scandal:

Wolfgang Thierse, deputy speaker of the German parliament and a member of the board of the Central Committee of German Catholics told German public television that the credibility of the Church had been severely damaged. And not just any politicians. This one was the former president of the Bundestag.

"An institution with such high moral claims has to be subject to these higher standards itself." [...]

Thierse argued that an institution claiming "such high moral authority" had to apply these same standards to its priests.

"The church has to be more honest and stricter. That, of course, also applies to the pope," Thierse told German public television.

Illinois legislators focusing on the big picture

Great news for evangelical porn starlet and alleged underage "sexter" Carrie Prejean. The Illinois legislature has just passed legislation reducing antics like hers from a felony to a misdemeanor. In her own state of California, however, her antics could have earned her a felony conviction... if she really had been underage. But since it turned out she lied and was actually of age, she did nothing wrong in the first place. Porn is perfectly legal, only a tad hypocritical coming from someone who wants to make up moral rules for the rest of society.

Drip, drip, drip

And now a witness that puts Joseph Ratzinger dangerously close to the scene of the crime.

The German archdiocese led by the future Pope Benedict XVI ignored repeated warnings in the early 1980s by a psychiatrist treating a priest accused of sexually abusing boys that he should not be allowed to work with children, the psychiatrist said.

“I said, ‘For God’s sake, he desperately has to be kept away from working with children,’” the psychiatrist Werner Huth said in an interview Thursday. “I was very unhappy about the entire story.” Dr. Huth said he was concerned enough that he set three conditions for treating the priest, Peter Hullermann: that he stay away from young people and alcohol and be supervised by another priest at all times.

Dr. Huth said he issued the warnings — explicit, both written and oral — before the future pope, then Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, left Germany for the Vatican in 1982. In 1980, following abuse complaints from parents in Essen that the priest did not deny, Archbishop Ratzinger approved a decision to move the priest to Munich for therapy.

Fortunately for the Pope, the consigliere is dead.

The psychiatrist said in an interview he did not have any direct communications with Archbishop Ratzinger and did not know if the archbishop knew about his warnings. Though he said he spoke with several senior church officials, Dr. Huth’s main contact at the time was a bishop, Heinrich Graf von Soden-Fraunhofen, who died in 2000.

As Frank Pentangeli said, "Oh yeah, a buffer. The family had a lot of buffers." Of course, even Frankie Five Angels could be gotten to.

Stupak insults 59,000 Catholic nuns

It's hard to imagine how stupid this guy is. Over half his district, after all, is female.

Congressman Bart Stupak, D-Mich, responded sharply to White House officials touting a letter representing 59,000 nuns that was sent to lawmakers urging them to pass the health care bill.

The conservative Democrat dismissed the action by the White House saying, "When I’m drafting right to life language, I don’t call up the nuns." He says he instead confers with other groups including "leading bishops, Focus on the Family, and The National Right to Life Committee." [emphasis added.]

Connie Saltonstall is Stupak's primary opponent. You can donate to her here.

E.J. Dionne

On yesterday's biggest domestic story: the decision of American nuns to back health care reform:

One of the tragedies of the viciously politicized battle over health-care reform is the defection of the nation's Roman Catholic bishops from a cause they have championed for decades.

Indifferent to political fashions, the bishops were the strongest voices in support of universal health coverage, a position rooted in Catholic social thought that calls for a special solicitude toward the poor.

Yet on the make-or-break roll call that will determine the fate of health-care reform, bishops are urging that the bill be voted down. They are doing so on the basis of a highly tendentious reading of the abortion provisions in the Senate measure. If health reform is defeated, the bishops will have played a major role in its demise. [...]

The provisions they dislike were written by two Democratic senators strongly opposed to abortion, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania. Pro-choice groups condemned the Nelson-Casey language from the start.[...]

Fortunately, major Catholic leaders -- most of them women in religious orders -- have picked up the flag of social justice discarded by a bishops' conference under increasing right-wing influence. [...]

"We as sisters focus on the needs of people," said Sister Simone Campbell, a spokeswoman for the group [representing more than 59,000 nuns]. "When people are suffering, we respond." Sister Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association, loyally refuses to criticize the bishops but argues that their interpretation of the abortion language is simply wrong. She, too, released a forceful statement in support of the Senate bill.

"We looked at the bill. We spent a lot of time with Sens. Casey and Nelson," she said in an interview. "We agreed to support it because we believe it meets the test of no federal funding for abortion. Perhaps the language is not the way I would write it, but it meets the test. . . . I was not going to take a little bit of abortion [in the bill] to get federal funding."

She added: "I can't walk away from extending coverage to more than 30 million people."[...]

House members voting on health care will be representing primarily their positions as Americans and as agents of their constituents, though many will also be influenced by their faith. Those with a special affection for the Roman Catholic Church have an extra reason for voting in favor of the health bill.

By passing it, they would save the bishops from the moral opprobrium that would rightly fall upon them if they succeeded in killing the best chance we have to extend health coverage to 30 million Americans. I suspect that many bishops would be quietly grateful. In their hearts, they know the nuns are right.

About your last name, Mr. Goldberg...

Wow:

In a column in The Atlantic magazine titled “What Obama is Actually Trying to Do in Israel,” [Jeffrey] Goldberg, who is close to Obama, said the president wanted to cause a rupture in Netanyahu’s coalition that would necessitate bringing in Kadima. He said he spoke about the matter with officials in the White House.

“I’ve been on the phone with many of the usual suspects (White House and otherwise), and I think it’s fair to say that Obama is not trying to destroy America’s relations with Israel; he’s trying to organize Tzipi Livni’s campaign for prime minister, or at least for her inclusion in a broad-based centrist government,” Goldberg wrote. [...]

At a Kadima rally in the North on Tuesday night, Livni accused Netanyahu of “weakening Jerusalem” by “acting stupidly.”

“Had the opposition acted in a statesmanlike manner, Israel would not be under such international pressure,” Elkin said. “Israel is a democracy, and only its citizens will decide what our coalition will look like.” [...]

Israel Beiteinu MK David Rotem said Obama should “check how many gangsters he has in his own government.”


He called the prospect of Kadima replacing Israel Beiteinu in the coalition “wishful thinking on the part of the reporter.”

“With all his problems, Obama should be too busy to run our government,” Rotem said.

A Shas official noted Goldberg’s Jewish name and said that “even in Medieval times, Jews were their own worst enemies.”

How popular is Benedict XVI in Ireland?

Going by the first paragraph of Kevin Myers' St. Patrick's Day column in the Irish Independent, not very:

Mbwana minister! All hail from the Emerald Isle, on this, its patron saint's feast day! It is my 10th year here! Any chance of granting me the posting that I sought after my very first week? To somewhere civilised, like North Korea, or Burma, or dear old Liberia? I liked Liberia. Yes, they sometimes kill children there, but that is in war: the highest men in the land raped children at a time of peace in this country, and got away with it. Big men, Mbwana. Important men, with purple hats, and their crimes were covered up by other men with purple hats.

Steve Levy: The anchor baby man

Just when conservative Hispanics seemed to be making headway in New York state politics, the GOP may end up nominating Steve Levy for governor. The Long Island party switcher is best known for his hatred for Hispanic immigrants.

In 2005, Mr. Levy helped orchestrate a highly publicized raid on a house in Brookhaven, where the authorities rounded up dozens of suspected illegal immigrants. He once described foreign women who give birth after moving to the United States as having “anchor babies,” a term often used derisively by anti-immigrant groups. Asked in a recent interview whether he might have chosen his words more carefully, he was unapologetic. “There’s no need to,” he said. “The public is in agreement with me.”

His tendency to say what he believes is what he thinks voters find appealing about him. “I mean, I came out of nowhere for a lot of people,” he said. “And when they started paying attention to what I was saying, it’s like: ‘Wow. This guy is saying what I’ve been thinking for years.’ ”

Still more, from a New York Daily News piece dated August 9, 2009:

Newsday reports that Levy asked someone in the audience, who happened to be a Canadian native, if he was a U.S. citizen. The man answered that he was, to which Levy is reported to have said that was good, because if he wasn't "I'd have to deport you, like the guys back there in the kitchen."

Isn't that funny? The "guys back there in the kitchen" must have been rolling with laughter.

Especially because the jokester was the same person who in 2007 had asked county cops and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to raid homes where illegal immigrants were believed to be living.

Many people were routed from their homes and ordered to disperse without regard for where they went. Orlan Enrique Moreno-Zavala, 22, a Honduran man found dead in February 2007 in the woods near Huntington Station, became a symbol of Levy's abusive policies.

Then, last November, Marcelo Lucero, a 37-year-old Ecuadoran immigrant, was murdered in Patchogue by a gang of teenagers who beat and stabbed him. As you may remember, the killers told Suffolk police they were "out to hunt Mexicans." The assault was classified as a hate crime.

Levy condemned the crime in a news release, but local immigrant leaders said at the time that the anti-immigrant climate he promoted actually had empowered racist mobs.

Levy has certainly picked the right party and should become an icon on talk radio. With teabagger support, he may have a real shot at defeating Rick Lazio for the GOP nomination, though knocking off Andrew Cuomo may be a lot tougher. Best of all, he should keep even the most homophobic, pro-life Hispanics in the Democratic Party for decades to come. Since Hispanics are the state's fastest growing demographic group, all we can say is thank you, Steve Levy!

MoDo goes to Israel

And delivers a rare, albeit unoriginal, contribution to (American) discourse:

For the fundamentalist rabbis who run Israel’s working-class, ultra-Orthodox Sephardic Shas Party, the new houses represent earmarks. But it’s one thing to put earmarks in the budget and another to foment a crisis between Israel and its benefactor over them.

“It’s not entirely clear to me that the Shas Party knows who Joe Biden is or cares,” Jeffrey Goldberg told me.

“They have very narrow theological interests that don’t conform to the theological interests of American Jews,” he continued. “The high-tech entrepreneurs of Tel Aviv relate to the Shas Party about as well as the Jews of the Upper West Side relate to the Tea Party. The Shas Party is not overly attuned to the American-Israel relationship or the peace process.”

Goldberg also points out that “what most right-wing Israelis don’t understand is that even American Jews — especially the nearly 80 percent who voted for Obama — disaggregate what is in the best interest of Israel from what is in the best interest of the settlers.”

Kildee breaks with Stupak

The pro-life Democrat says the Senate language is acceptable.

The announcement by Mr. Kildee that he would support the health care legislation and would not oppose it based on the abortion issue gave a huge lift to House Democratic leaders, who have been working to assure abortion opponents that a vote for the bill would not reflect any change in policy on abortion, including the law known as the Hyde amendment, which prohibits the use of federal money for abortion in most cases.

From the statement:

For those who know me, I have always respected and cherished the sanctity of human life. I spent six years studying to be a priest and was willing to devote my life to God. I came to Congress two years after the Hyde amendment became law. And I have spent the last 34 years casting votes to protect the lives of the unborn. I have stood up to many in my party to defend the right to life and have made no apologies for doing so. I now find myself disagreeing with some of the people and groups I have spent a lifetime working with. I have listened carefully to both sides, sought counsel from my priest, advice from family, friends and constituents, and I have read the Senate abortion language more than a dozen times [...] I am convinced that the Senate language maintains the Hyde amendment, which states that no federal money can be used for abortion.

CATHOLIC NUNS BREAK WITH BISHOPS OVER HEALTH CARE

Huge:

Catholic nuns are urging Congress to pass President Barack Obama's health care plan, in an unusual public break with bishops who say it would subsidize abortion. Some 60 leaders of religious orders representing 59,000 Catholic nuns Wednesday sent lawmakers a letter urging them to pass the Senate health care bill. It contains restrictions on abortion funding that the bishops say don't go far enough.

The letter says that "despite false claims to the contrary, the Senate bill will not provide taxpayer funding for elective abortions." The letter says the legislation also will help support pregnant women and "this is the real pro-life stance."

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Right to Life Committee have denounced the bill as a backdoor subsidy for abortion. But the nuns and the Catholic Health Association — representing some 600 hospitals — say restrictions in the Senate bill would still prevent taxpayer funding for abortion, although the legal mechanism for doing so is different from what the bishops prefer.

"This is politics; this isn't a question of faith and morals," said Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of Network, a national Catholic social activism lobby. "We are the ones who work every day with people who are suffering because they don't have health care. We cannot turn our backs on them, so for us, health care reform is a faith-based response to human need."

More from the letter:

As the heads of major Catholic women’s religious order in the United States, we represent 59,000 Catholic Sisters in the United States who respond to needs of people in many ways. Among our other ministries we are responsible for running many of our nation’s hospital systems as well as free clinics throughout the country.

We have witnessed firsthand the impact of our national health care crisis, particularly its impact on women, children and people who are poor. We see the toll on families who have delayed seeking care due to a lack of health insurance coverage or lack of funds with which to pay high deductibles and co-pays. We have counseled and prayed with men, women and children who have been denied health care coverage by insurance companies. We have witnessed early and avoidable deaths because of delayed medical treatment.

The health care bill that has been passed by the Senate and that will be voted on by the House will expand coverage to over 30 million uninsured Americans. While it is an imperfect measure, it is a crucial next step in realizing health care for all. It will invest in preventative care. It will bar insurers from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions. It will make crucial investments in community health centers that largely serve poor women and children. And despite false claims to the contrary, the Senate bill will not provide taxpayer funding for elective abortions. It will uphold longstanding conscience protections and it will make historic new investments – $250 million – in support of pregnant women. This is the REAL pro-life stance, and we as Catholics are all for it.

Congress must act. We are asking every member of our community to contact their congressional representatives this week. In this Lenten time, we have launched nationwide prayer vigils for health care reform. We are praying for those who currently lack health care. We are praying for the nearly 45,000 who will lose their lives this year if Congress fails to act. We are also praying for you and your fellow Members of Congress as you complete your work in the coming days. For us, this health care reform is a faith mandate for life and dignity of all of our people.

Monserrate loses election

Reader G. beats us to the best part:

The heated rhetoric that characterized the campaign carried over into Election Day. Outside a polling station at Public School 127 in East Elmhurst, a supporter of Mr. Peralta taunted a Monserrate supporter, calling Mr. Monserrate a “wife beater.” The supporter fired back, “It wasn’t his wife.” (Mr. Monserrate was convicted in October of misdemeanor assault after dragging his companion, Karla Giraldo, through the lobby of his apartment building during an argument. On Monday, Ms. Giraldo lent him her support in a video posted on YouTube.)

And that, indeed, was the best defense that could be made for Hiram Monserrate.

Remembering John Paul the Great

Santo Subito!

Right wing Catholic strikes back

Against the libertines who are attacking the Pope.

I don’t understand. You claim to not believe in objective moral standards, then you arbitrarily make up your own.

And what about consenting teenagers? Are consenting teenagers allowed to have sex? Because according to you sexual revolution types, they are, and most of the victims in these cases were teenagers.

Donna Brazile (@donnabrazile) on Twitter

Fun:

GOP lawmakers furious at Speaker. Have they not met Nancy Pelosi? She’s tougher than the Statue of Liberty and that woman is made of metal!

The bishops' betrayal

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops comes out foursquare against the poor, Hispanics and women. And this in spite of there being no federal funding for abortion. In the end, this wasn't about being pro-life. It was, rather, the last gasp of extremist, rich white, Republican forces in the U.S. Catholic Church. Their days are numbered. Today Catholic bishops made their formal break with Hispanics, by far the fastest growing component of the U.S. Catholic population.   I hope some Protestant Hispanic ministers recognize the opportunity this betrayal represents.

And one more piece on Israel

This one by David Horovitz at the Jerusalem Post:

The Israeli center begins to reassert itself

Yoel Marcus in Haaretz:

When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declares at a cabinet meeting that the media exaggerated in describing the grave crisis with the United States and throws in a few more phrases from the "it'll all be fine" department, it is clear that he has neither learned nor forgotten anything. You didn't have to read Thomas Friedman's devastating column in The New York Times to know that there is a limit to the Americans' patience and their willingness to let us pour mud on their heads and call it rain.

If Bibi genuinely did not know, as he foolishly claims, that 1,600 more homes were being planned for East Jerusalem, he does not deserve to be prime minister. If he did know, and permitted Interior Minister Eli Yishai to announce the plan exactly during the visit of Joe Biden, who is both U.S. vice president and a friend to Israel, then there are two possibilities, each worse than the other: either stupidity or fear of the extremists in his cabinet. Either way, he is playing with fire.

It's not just the personal insult to Biden, our only friend in the White House today. It's the insult to the institution of the presidency, which no American can forgive. The presidency is sacrosanct in American democracy, and when Bibi rolls his eyes and says the incident should not have occurred and that in any event it happened in good faith and "we know how to handle such situations and shall do so calmly and responsibly," he reminds me of the guy in the joke who is looking for the "eye and ear" doctor. No such thing, he is told. "What's your problem?" And he replies, "What I hear is not what I see." [...]

Clinton did not use diplomatic language when she accused Bibi of undermining "trust and confidence in the peace process and in America's interests" by announcing plans to build 1,600 homes just as we came to start proximity talks with the Palestinians. The fury radiating from the White House is so great that were someone to introduce an anti-Israeli resolution in the UN Security Council the United States would join in. [...]

Livni was right when she attacked Bibi on Sunday for placing our national security in Yishai's hands. In retrospect it is clear how right she was to refuse to partner with Yishai in order to become prime minister without elections. America "hand" Zvi Rafiah, a great believer in America's feelings of friendship for Israel, said: "For more than 30 years I have not heard so harsh an American rebuke, and for the first time I fear for the future of our relations with the United States."

This is exactly the kind of piece that centrists in the Obama Administration had hoped for. If the center reassserts itself forcefully enough, Netanyahu may have an excuse to ally with Kadima rather than Shas.

On the other hand, more pieces like this could move things in the opposite direction.

Health care vote count

Reason for cautious optimism.

Will Phillips accepts GLAAD award

Video here. Much as I admire the kid's stance, I am generally queasy about strident kids repeating their parents' political and/or religious views. Haven't we learned anything from Jesus Camp?

That said, it's always tougher to parrot mom and dad's views when you'll be hated for it, and Will certainly was. Not standing up for the pledge of allegiance because of your commitment to gay rights most likely does not go over as well in West Fork, Arkansas as it might in Cambridge. If he's still a true believer a decade from now, I hope he runs for office. Or become a great scientist or something. He certainly does seem capable of rational thought.

Christopher Hitchens on Benedict XVI

So devastating, concise and perfectly written that it really needs to be read in full.

Gerald Ford

On the best, and oldest, justice on the Supreme Court:

For I am prepared to allow history’s judgment of my term in office to rest (if necessary, exclusively) on my nomination thirty years ago of John Paul Stevens to the U.S. Supreme Court.

And he is right. For that appointment alone, the nation is greatly in his debt.

Most telling sections

Q: Was he surprised to see you?

A: Well, what Johnny later told me was, he went to dinner and could not stop thinking about me. [...] And I thought his reaction when he saw me was just so cute. I mean, he looked like a little kid at Christmas. And I just uttered to him, "You're so hot." And he said, "Why, thank you!" And he almost jumped into my arms. Literally. And um, that's how we met. On the corner of 61st and Park Avenue.

Q: The "You're so hot" line was one of those things, when Elizabeth did her book tour, that she seemed very appalled by.

A:Look, I could have said A, B, C, D, and E. [laughs] It didn't matter. And it's funny, because the only reason I said, "You're so hot" is because Tony said, "Oh, he would love to have heard that." And he did love it. Without a doubt. And by the way, he is hot. He is not the two-dimensional geek that I thought he was, by any stretch of the imagination. He is hot. [...]

Q: Did you encourage him earlier to be truthful?

A: Um, once again, in a male-female relationship, you can offer… I mean, the way that I have learned to keep a relationship going is to offer your advice when asked for it, and love unconditionally when it's not taken.

Q: That must be hard to do.

A: It's beyond difficult. To allow a man to be a man. The biggest mistake that I find is that women attempt to make men women. You know, we want them to be like we are. We want them to get it immediately and do things the way that we want them to do them. And men are men. And I love him for being a man. But oh, my God, yes, it's been infuriating so many times. [...]

Q: One thing that jumped out to me from Game Change was that you "flirted outlandishly with every man." Did you?

A: Oh, my god, that is so hilarious to me, because I was so in love with Johnny. Why would I be flirting with anybody else? Men misread this all the time. If you're open and look someone in the eye, they think you're flirting with them! Because, Oh, my God, somebody's listening to me. So a lot of men think that I'm coming on to them if I'm actually just listening to them.

Q: What does that say about men?

A: They're starving for love and attention is what it says.

Best Rielle Hunter line so far

"Who has a cell phone for a one-night stand?"

Watershed in U.S.-Israeli relations

David Petraeus, John McCain's favorite general and a registered Republican, delivers a stunner, as reported in Foreign Policy.

On Jan. 16, two days after a killer earthquake hit Haiti, a team of senior military officers from the U.S. Central Command (responsible for overseeing American security interests in the Middle East), arrived at the Pentagon to brief Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The team had been dispatched by CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus to underline his growing worries at the lack of progress in resolving the issue. The 33-slide, 45-minute PowerPoint briefing stunned Mullen. The briefers reported that there was a growing perception among Arab leaders that the U.S. was incapable of standing up to Israel, that CENTCOM's mostly Arab constituency was losing faith in American promises, that Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region, and that Mitchell himself was (as a senior Pentagon officer later bluntly described it) "too old, too slow ... and too late."

The January Mullen briefing was unprecedented. No previous CENTCOM commander had ever expressed himself on what is essentially a political issue; which is why the briefers were careful to tell Mullen that their conclusions followed from a December 2009 tour of the region where, on Petraeus's instructions, they spoke to senior Arab leaders. "Everywhere they went, the message was pretty humbling," a Pentagon officer familiar with the briefing says. "America was not only viewed as weak, but its military posture in the region was eroding." But Petraeus wasn't finished: two days after the Mullen briefing, Petraeus sent a paper to the White House requesting that the West Bank and Gaza (which, with Israel, is a part of the European Command -- or EUCOM), be made a part of his area of operations. Petraeus's reason was straightforward: with U.S. troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military had to be perceived by Arab leaders as engaged in the region's most troublesome conflict. [...]

The Mullen briefing and Petraeus's request hit the White House like a bombshell. While Petraeus's request that CENTCOM be expanded to include the Palestinians was denied ("it was dead on arrival," a Pentagon officer confirms), the Obama administration decided it would redouble its efforts -- pressing Israel once again on the settlements issue, sending Mitchell on a visit to a number of Arab capitals and dispatching Mullen for a carefully arranged meeting with the chief of the Israeli General Staff, Lt. General Gabi Ashkenazi. While the American press speculated that Mullen's trip focused on Iran, the JCS Chairman actually carried a blunt, and tough, message on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: that Israel had to see its conflict with the Palestinians "in a larger, regional, context" -- as having a direct impact on America's status in the region. Certainly, it was thought, Israel would get the message.

Israel didn't. When Vice President Joe Biden was embarrassed by an Israeli announcement that the Netanyahu government was building 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem, the administration reacted. But no one was more outraged than Biden who, according to the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, engaged in a private, and angry, exchange with the Israeli Prime Minister. Not surprisingly, what Biden told Netanyahu reflected the importance the administration attached to Petraeus's Mullen briefing: "This is starting to get dangerous for us," Biden reportedly told Netanyahu. "What you're doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace." Yedioth Ahronoth went on to report: "The vice president told his Israeli hosts that since many people in the Muslim world perceived a connection between Israel's actions and US policy, any decision about construction that undermines Palestinian rights in East Jerusalem could have an impact on the personal safety of American troops fighting against Islamic terrorism." The message couldn't be plainer: Israel's intransigence could cost American lives.

AIPAC brought out its heavy artillery this weekend, condemning the Obama administration for daring to take issue with Bibi Netanyahu's extremist coalition. But as Spencer Ackerman notes, Petraeus' move changes everything:

Foreign Policy’s reporter on the piece, Mark Perry, places Petraeus’ briefing in the context of the message from Vice President Biden and Secretary Clinton that Israeli recklessness and intransigence over settlement expansion is both humiliating and actively dangerous for the United States. I have no idea how Perry got this piece. But the sheer fact that it appears this weekend will be interpreted as an “or else” by the Israelis. That is, Israel will view the Obama team telling them: "If you keep this shit up, you might find themselves getting crosswise with Gen. Petraeus, who might in turn suddenly find himself with a train-and-equip mission in the West Bank and who knows what next. How far do you want to push us? And if you think about counter-pressuring us, ask yourself: who’s a stronger force in American politics– AIPAC or the U.S. military? I don’t think it’s in either of our interests to put this to the test."

Israel is a solid American ally, but a handful of extreme religious parties that represent just 20% of Israel's electorate simply do not have the right to determine U.S. foreign policy. AIPAC was unwise to align itself with a small minority of Israel's polity, against the U.S. military.

Tom Friedman notes:

The vice president missed a chance to send a powerful public signal: He should have snapped his notebook shut, gotten right back on Air Force Two, flown home and left the following scribbled note behind: “Message from America to the Israeli government: Friends don’t let friends drive drunk. And right now, you’re driving drunk. You think you can embarrass your only true ally in the world, to satisfy some domestic political need, with no consequences? You have lost total contact with reality. Call us when you’re serious. We need to focus on building our country.”

Biden, it turned out, didn't need to. As Ackerman notes: "You can also just let your mind reel at the cognitive dissonance Petraeus’ (alleged!) move will cause on the right." Indeed. That unified voice from the right, center (Hillary) and center-left (Biden) of the world of U.S. security policy is what made this week in US-Israeli relations one of the most pivotal in years.

UPDATE: The real question, of course, is whether the Obama Administration will succeed in getting Bibi to ditch the religious parties in favor of a national unity coalition with Kadima, which would permit him some flexibility in international relations and the ability to just say no on new religious settlments. If the Petraeus/Clinton/Biden trio forces his hand, this would be one of the hugest foreign policy victories for an American government since God knows when.

This isn't over

An Andrew Sullivan reader translates an editorial from the Süddeutsche Zeitung:

"The crisis of confidence affecting the church has not occurred because the church is an association of abusers. The church is in crisis precisely because, confronted with undeniable evidence of abuse, it expresses concern for itself instead of offering to help the victims of the abuse, by offering compensation, for instance. This crisis results from the church's refusal to admit that the priesthood and religious orders are attractive to men with sexual identity issues."

The reader adds:

There must be more than 10,000 words on the child abuse scandal in the A section, many jarring details, maps show how these problems were recurrent all over the country, especially in schools for young boys. These scandals progressed in America and we read about them, a reporter writes, but it turns out that exactly the same thing was going on all over Germany--but the German church was better able to keep it all under wraps. [...]

This can't go on for ever. And the responses that come out of the Vatican and the Germany prelacies show that its instincts are still to insist that it's the victim and attack those who pursue the evidence of abuse.

Ask yourself: what business does Benedict have lecturing to the Irish in view of his own role in the scandal in Bavaria?

Indeed. The Vatican's claim that the Pope was the true victim of the sex abuse that he helped cause seems to be a pretty tough sell in Germany.

Synergy

From an AOL news headline, entitled "Secretive Catholic Order Founded by Accused Pedophile Under Fire."

The sordid story of the Legion of Christ, whose late founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, was a close ally of Pope John Paul II before being forcibly retired by the Vatican in 2006, is a microcosm of the crisis currently enveloping the church. [...]

The controversy over the Legion, which is now barred or severely restricted from operating in six U.S. dioceses, is especially awkward for Benedict because he wants to have John Paul, a staunch defender of the order, canonized.

"Maciel was a sexual criminal of epic proportions who gained the trust of John Paul II and created a movement that is as close to a cult as anything we've seen in the church," said author Jason Berry, one of two reporters who broke the Maciel story in 1997 and who directed a 2008 documentary about the priest called "Vows of Silence."

"But he got away with it for years and still in a sense he's getting away with it."

The Vatican ordered a worldwide investigation into the Legion, founded in Mexico in 1941, last year. But its response to decades of allegations involving Maciel has been as slow and often reluctant as its reaction to the long-festering sex abuse scandals now erupting in Ireland, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. [...]

With a leader said to be a manipulative monster who built a shadowy but powerful organization for elite, wealthy Catholics with schools in 22 countries – and a tradition of grooming handsome, clean-cut priests who all wear their hair parted on the left and black double-breasted suits -- the Legion of Christ sounds straight out of a Dan Brown novel.

But while Opus Dei, the other controversial conservative Catholic order, was made famous in Brown's "The Da Vinci Code," the Legion of Christ is virtually unknown to most Americans – at least on the surface.

The Legionaries and Marcial Maciel, Opus Dei, Benedict XVI, John Paul II. Their names and activities are presently linked. But will they be linked forever?

Credit the Vatican and its conservative allies worldwide for realizing the risk: there was a strong pushback this weekend aimed at European media, who bring news to donor nations, many of who se governments deliver cash to the Vatican (Italian taxpayers alone, for example, deliver over $5 billion a year) and Spain's may deliver even more). They were smart enough to say it was a media witch hunt against the Pope, even though that flies in the face of years of European media inaction on the matter, at least outside of Ireland.

It was a smart second move. An even smarter third move would be an open, strong condemnation of Macial. The odds remain on the side of the Church and the papacy. The media's attention span is fleeting, and unless more documents are uncovered or key witnesses come forward, chances are that Benedict XVI's connection to Munich abuse and John Paul II's elevation and sanctification of Legionary founder Macial, who didn't just abuse seminarians but his own out-of-wedlock sons, will be slowly forgotten.

Is this a 7.0 earthquake or a 9.5?

I honestly can't tell:

The Vatican said that Mgr Gruber had taken “full responsibility” for the priest’s move back into pastoral work but did not comment further.

Mgr Gruber said that the Pope, who was made a cardinal in 1977, had not been not aware of his decision because there were 1,000 priests in the diocese at the time and he had left many decisions to lower-level officials. “The cardinal could not deal with everything,” he said. “The repeated employment of H in pastoral duties was a serious mistake ... I deeply regret that this decision led to offences against youths. I apologise to all those who were harmed.” He did not indicate whether the convicted paedophile would be allowed to continue working in the church.

Poor Benedict XVI. He lacks not only John Paul II's and Ronald Reagan's acting experience but their stage presence. His popularity, therefore, is far broader than it is deep. That, in turn, will make him an easy target for the media firestorm that's about to erupt. And erupt it likely will, since the Vatican's damage control operation has verged on the catastrophic.

Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, the head of Germany’s Catholic bishops, apologised yesterday to the victims of clerical sex abuse after meeting Pope Benedict. He said that the German-born Pope had expressed “great dismay” over the scandals and had encouraged him to take “decisive and courageous steps” to tackle the problem.

Mgr Zollitsch, Archbishop of Freiburg, said that the German Church would investigate abuse allegations and take measures to prevent a recurrence. He said that the Pope had been “deeply moved” by his report of sex abuse cases in Germany, and had praised the naming of a bishop to act as a clerical sex-abuse watchdog. He added that paedophilia was not confined to the Roman Catholic Church.

Mgr Gerhard Müller, the Bishop of Regensburg, said there was “not even a minimal link” between paedophilia and priestly celibacy, which would “not be modified”.

Really? That's your response? The pope has been accused of a sex abuse coverup!  Your sole reaction simply cannot be that celibacy must remain sacrosanct!

Sadly, this pathetic attempt at messaging seems to have come from the top. According to Der Spiegel, that was the Pope's message of the day, delivered in Rome at an international conference sponsored by the Congregation for Clergy.

This is a huge story in Germany. The question, to me, is whether this will blow up in 1) major Catholic nations like France, Spain, and Italy and 2) fellow German-speaking nations Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Lichtenstein. France and Spain have population, wealth and influence, both within Europe and throughout the nations of their former empires. The Germanic nations, by virtue of sharing a language, can add more investigative reporters to the mix.

I would ordinarily say that the United States, whose media is completely ignorant of religious politics, would have nothing to add to this story. But this is a special case: there are some pretty powerful people in the American Church who have felt slighted by the way the Vatican dealt (or didn't deal) with the abuse crisis here at home. They have bided their time. And now, two decades of resentments going back to John Paul II's papacy are coming out:

To many observers, the situation in Europe looked unsettlingly similar to that in the United States a decade ago, when a trickle of isolated abuse cases steadily grew into a widespread phenomenon that upended — and bankrupted — many American dioceses.

But in Europe, unlike in common-law countries like the United States, Canada and Australia, defendants cannot sue the church for negligence.

“When this first started to break in the United States in the mid-to-late ’80s and our bishops went to Rome for help in dealing with it, they were basically told, ‘This is an American problem,’ ” said Nicholas Cafardi, a canon law expert and emeritus dean of the Duquesne University School of Law.

Benedict's problem is that plausible deniability isn't working for him:

An American group, Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said it “boggles the mind to hear a German Catholic official claim that a credibly accused paedophile priest was reassigned to parish work without the knowledge of his boss, then-Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger”. Any expulsion of a priest from the Church, however, must go through the Vatican.

This time, survivors and the American laity, who never had voice in the Church during Cardinal Law's and John Paul II's coverups, aren't alone. Statements like Thomas Doyle's are truly devastating.

The former vicar general took full responsibility for the decision to reinstate the priest to pastoral work. “I deeply regret that this decision resulted in offenses against youths and apologize to all who were harmed by it,” he said, according to a statement posted on the archdiocese’s Web site.

There was immediate skepticism that Benedict, as archbishop, would not have known of the details of the case.

The Rev. Thomas P. Doyle, who once worked at the Vatican Embassy in Washington and became an early and well-known whistle-blower on sexual abuse in the church, said the vicar general’s claim was not credible.

“Nonsense,” said Father Doyle, who has served as an expert witness in sexual abuse lawsuits. “Pope Benedict is a micromanager. He’s the old style. Anything like that would necessarily have been brought to his attention. Tell the vicar general to find a better line. What he’s trying to do, obviously, is protect the pope.”

So where does the story go from here? I have no idea. At a minimum, this papacy is permanently tarnished. It's already a 7.0 quake when major commentators like David Gibson say stuff like this:

“What is at stake, and at great risk, is Benedict’s central project for the ‘re-Christianization’ of Christendom, his desire to have Europe return to its Christian roots,” said David Gibson, the author of a biography of Benedict and a religion commentator for Politicsdaily.com. “But if the root itself is seen as rotten, then his influence will be badly compromised.”

If, however, there was a coverup, and if any evidence appears that the Pope lied regarding the degree of his involvement, it is very hard to see how this papacy can retain its legitimacy, particularly given the recent explosion of abuse claims in Europe. It's equally hard to see how the entire conservative Catholic project begun by John Paul II retains its hold on the Catholic imagination (and history books) if child sexual abuse becomes its best known legacy. That holds doubly if it results in the first papal resignation in six centuries. I am not saying that will happen. A 9.5 quake and its concomitant tsunami are events that occur but once every few centuries.

But I don't think this is a 7.0, either.

"Why Avatar lost"

While, the University of Florida professor displays an extraordinary ignorance of Hollywood politics, his critique of The Hurt Locker is spot on:

In The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow provided a terrifying depiction of efforts by US soldiers to survive while fighting insurgents and disarming bombs in Iraq. Their battle was both against an evil enemy and to retain their sanity and humanity.

As is typical in Hollywood war films, The Hurt Locker carried a subtle anti-war message compatible with patriotic sensibilities. Underscoring her own patriotism, when accepting the best picture and best director awards, Bigelow dedicated them to the “women and men in the military who risk their lives daily to keep us safe.” With these words and in the film, Bigelow reminds us that war is hell, while reassuring us of our good intentions.

For all the terror it depicted, the message was predictable and safe.

In Avatar, director James Cameron told the emotionally wrenching tale of the Na’vi, the aboriginal inhabitants of a distant world, defending themselves against an invading human army. The film was obviously a metaphor for the long war between large-scale civilizations and the small foraging societies that they supplant.

Because most of Earth’s people are citizens of such civilizations, Avatar’s message was anything but safe. [...]

When we root for nature in the film, at least subconsciously, most of us are committing emotional treason against our own civilizations.

This unlikely event is possible because feelings of belonging and connection to nature are part of our emotional repertoire. We evolved here and find biologically intact ecosystems beautiful because, when we are drawn to and protect such places, we flourish.

This affinity for nature may exaplain the global appeal of Avatar but not why it ran second in the Oscar competition. Ironically, in the battle between these cinematic epics, The Hurt Locker was portrayed as countercultural, when it actually pandered to patriotic convention. Meanwhile, Avatar was cast as technologically radical while few commented on its radical critique of a militarized technological civilization, or on its countercultural religious vision. These are things some Academy voters, little doubt, found too radical to support.

All true. But if there's one takeaway for James Cameron, it's the same lesson George Lucas will never learn: dialogue matters. When you spend $300 million to make a movie, spend that extra $500,000 on a script doctor; even the greatest gearhead can't be good at everything.

Kucinich

Markos is done with him.

In an appearance on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Moulitsas conveyed pointed frustration with the Ohio Democrat's pledge to oppose reform on grounds that it doesn't go far enough. He said Kucinich was practicing a "very Ralph Nader-esque approach" to politics.

"The fact is this is a good first step and he is elected not to run for president, which he seems to do every four years," he said. "[Kucinich] is not elected to grandstand and to give us this ideal utopian society. He is elected to represent the people of his district and he is not representing the uninsured constituents in his district by pretending to take the high ground here." [...]

"What he is doing is undermining this reform," he added. "He is making common cause with Republicans. And I think that is a perfect excuse and a rational one for a primary challenge."

More from Steve Benen's piece:

Markos said that Kucinich's willingness to deny help to those who need it is "completely reprehensible." Markos added, "I don't think he gets a pass; I don't care what his excuse is."

Watching Kucinich vow to vote with right-wing opponents of reform, it occurs to me that he almost certainly would have voted against FDR's Social Security plan, which was thin and weak when it was signed into law. He also would have rejected Medicare, because it wasn't ambitious at all when it passed.

Fortunately for all of us, lawmakers from those eras saw a value in establishing a strong foundation and then building on it in future years. In other words, fortunately for all of us, Social Security and Medicare weren't dependent on lawmakers like Dennis Kucinich.

Boston, Cambridge and Somerville: Call to action

Josh Marshall reports that Rep. Michael Capuano is thinking of voting "No" on health care reform. No telling whether this is some kind of ploy or not, but those of you in his district, which includes Boston, Cambridge, Chelsea and Somerville, call his office Friday morning at 202-225-5111 or his district office at 617-621-6208 and let him know what you think. It's one thing to lose a vote in a Republican district. To lose a vote from a district in which Republicans come in third or fourth is simply outrageous.

If he votes no, there are plenty of candidates in that politician-heavy area who would be willing to launch a primary bid against him.

My gut feeling is that this is a negotiation tactic of some kind, maybe to improve the bill, maybe to win some other concession. I can't believe that Capuano, who has a decent shot at graduating to the Senate in 2012, would want to end a promising political career, no matter how insincere his populist, progressive credentials.

UPDATE: That didn't take long. A potential primary contender came forward this evening!

Time for a Catholic Tea Party movement!

Finally, finally, someone has come forward! It's time to take on the bishops' conference for its insincerity on immigration reform, health care for all, and its obsession with sex to the detriment of all other concerns.

There's only problem. The calls for change are coming from the right!

Catholic Advocate, a group recently founded by Deal Hudson, who led the 2000 and 2004 Bush campaign outreach to Catholics before being ousted over a sexual misconduct scandal, is pushing a Catholic tea party to counter the USCCB, which Catholic Advocate claims is too liberal. Hudson (who has been described as the "Catholic Karl Rove") brought his idea to last month's Conservative Political Action Conference, where his Catholic tea party break-out session even attracted a brief appearance by tea party favorite Marco Rubio, who is running against Florida governor Charlie Crist in the Republican Senate primary.

There are, of course, plenty of sane Catholics out there. Indeed, they represent at least half of the Catholic laity and, given present demographic trends, that percentage can only increase over time. Here's one:

Bryan Cones at U.S. Catholic, reacting to Hudson's attack on the bishops and tea party clarion call, sardonically observed: 

Can we just be honest here? Deal Hudson is a Republican. He thinks everyone should be a Republican, and he thinks if you're a Catholic, you should be a Republican because the only issues you should ever cast a vote on are abortion and gay marriage (as if the GOP is really pure in practice on either of those issues). Abortion and gay marriage are, after all, why Jesus came to earth.

The tragedy for American Catholicism is that the craziest 10% of the American Catholics contribute 90% of the money. Yet 55-60% of American Catholics, and probably 80% of non-white Catholics, are free of the extremism and obsession with sexuality that characterizes the post-John Paul II church. This silent majority, never realizing its power, and because it was never all that passionate or knowledgeable about religion in the first places, never revolted. As a result the sanity of the American Church was slowly, irretrievably lost.

Meanwhile, the American media, including, sadly, even the best known "moderate" Catholic bloggers, doesn't examine the Church with the savvy that Italian newspapers do. The result is that the silent majority is also an ignorant majority, which permits the extremist faction to change Church policy and get away with the Big Lie: "this is how it's always been."

A tragedy all round, but extremist religious in every tradition have long used the Big Traditionalist Lie to their advantage.

Ignorance, legalism, and the mountain of ill-begotten cash with which they bribe American and Roman hierarchs, are Republican Catholics' greatest weapons. Sadly,  there is no true tea party on its way to challenge them.

Eric Massa

Last night I wrote a post on Eric Massa, complete with the Village People's "In the Navy" video. I posted it, then took it down after a few minutes to give myself time to study him a bit more. After reading Joshua Green's piece over at the Atlantic, I'm convinced the guy is a bully and has some serious psychological problems.

At the same time, it's worth remembering Massa was firmly in support of gay rights. He was one of the most forceful advocates for the repeal of the ban on gays in the military. Now it turns out, he was also Exhibit A for why "Don't Ask Don't Tell" don't work.

He was on the correct, informed side of the battle on any number of issues; even his opposition to the health care bill came (allegedly) from his support for single payer. He was not a corporatist Democrat; in fact, he was one of the most forceful advocates out there for American consumers and against predatory banks.

And, crucially, given present circumstances, he wasn't a homophobe. His pathologies, however, as Howie Klein points out so movingly today, are partly an outcome of homophobia during a very unfriendly time.

If he sexually harassed someone, he should be sued and/or bounced out of Congress for it, by his voters unlike Senators Ensign and Vitter and the long list of fellow Republican sex offenders, whose sexual shenanigans were also criminal. Eric Massa may have been a repressed bully and a bit of a psycho, but he wasn't a bad congressman.

So no "In the Navy" video from me. It isn't even the Village People's greatest song. Eric Massa, a rare fighter among Democrats, at least on a handful of issues, deserves their best song. Especially on a day that the left, whose battles Massa left the GOP in order to fight, is taking a cheap, collective dump on him.

And because we could all use a laugh.


Village People - Macho Man

It's the gender, stupid

The primary front in religious conservatives' battles, be they Christianists, Islamists, or "traditionalists" comes down to gender. Corollary: the one thing that matters to them more than sending homosexuals to the ovens is crushing women. Recent events in India provide confirmation:

The upper house of India’s Parliament passed a bill Tuesday that would amend the Constitution to reserve one-third of the seats in India’s national and state legislatures for women, after the measure stirred two days of political chaos that could whittle the governing coalition’s majority to a dangerously thin margin.

The vote, which is an early step in the process of amending the Constitution, brought pandemonium to the floor of the Parliament, as a small group of regional caste-based parties waged a fierce fight to block it, arguing that it would diminish their influence.

The parties, allies of the governing coalition led by the Congress Party, have threatened to withdraw their support, which would reduce the coalition’s voting majority to single digits and jeopardize crucial legislation like India’s budget, which was just introduced. The chaos surrounding the bill threatens to undermine what has been an otherwise stable coalition government, analysts said. [...]

Critics of the amendment say that it will only worsen what is already a big problem — powerful men substituting their daughters, wives and sisters as proxies in political office.

The amendment would effectively make nearly half of the seats in the lower house of Parliament reserved, which would only heighten the competition for the remaining, unrestricted seats. Muslim politicians said they would suffer under the bill as well. Syed Shahabuddin, a former member of Parliament, said in a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that the amendment would cut Muslim representation in half.

Now, I will admit that having women serve as proxies for powerful men is a problem. But proxy voting in democracies is hardly unique to India. What are John Roberts and Clarence Thomas and 40 Republican U.S. Senators if not proxies for multinational corporations, their foreign shareholders, and the Council of Conservative Citizens?

Women live longer anyway. As their overfed husbands' carcasses drop off, these widows and daughters can accumulate tremendous political power. Sonia and Indira Gandhi are themselves proof of the unprecedented power that can come to women by way of dead men: they are without question the two most powerful figures, of any gender, in Indian politics since the founding of the republic. So, incidentally, were wives and daughters like Corazón Aquino, Benazir Bhutto, and so many others, particularly in Catholic and South Asian countries. Nepotism, again, is hardly unique to the Third World: what was the second Bush presidency? What was the Jeb Bush-controlled 2000 recount process in Florida if not a triumph of nepotism? And finally, nepotism isn't always tragic: our democracy would have been far poorer without Ted Kennedy, the greatest, most consequential, senator in American history.

It's not as if Muslims would suddenly go from 20% of India's population to 5% by virtue of this change in the cconstitution. Muslims' power in the voting booths would be unchanged. The only difference is that they would be forced to vote for women, something they are not accustomed to and something their religious leaders are paid to oppose on principle, thanks to the Saudi funding that the Republican Party helps provide through its opposition to American energy independence.

Well, guess what. Muslims and Indian caste "traditionalists" need to be dragged into the 16th century, no matter how much they may kick and scream. The mere existence of women Muslim members of parliament in the second (or third) largest Muslim nation in the world will be of huge importance to humanity, a simply monumental change in Islam's modern socioreligious history.

Indian Muslims will have to choose between having representation of any sort and having a few women MP's. When the choice is presented to them this starkly, they will choose the latter option. The rules of the game matter: they will structure future history. Permanent women legislators will constitute a huge  blow to social, political and religious patriarchy in India. But the whole world will benefit.