As I was saying earlier. . . .

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in redneck justices of the peace, but in your culture.

THE LATEST from the Gret Stet of Louisiana, courtesy of WAFB television:

A Baton Rouge city prosecutor has been placed on paid leave as part of an FBI probe into Baton Rouge area judicial systems, WAFB's Jim Shannon reports.

City Prosecutor Flitcher Bell was placed on leave Wednesday, said Parish Attorney Mary Roper.

Roper says the offices of the city prosecutor were searched by FBI agents last week who executed a search warrant.

The federal probe, headed up by the FBI, is underway into activities inside the 19th Judicial District Court, Baton Rouge City Court, and the East Baton Rouge Parish Public Defender's Office, sources tell WAFB 9NEWS.

Sources tell Shannon the investigation centers around several issues including the reduction of bail bonds in certain cases and the acceptance of bribes in exchange for dropping charges

It is not clear why Bell is being investigated.

A federal grand jury met to hear testimony in the matter Thursday.

ABANDON ALL HOPE, ye who enter Louisiana.

Omaha: To be young, gifted and white

In one day, in one newspaper, two sections told a tale of two cities.

Both of them were Omaha, and they were as different as black and white.

Yesterday afternoon, I went out to fetch the paper -- yes, the Omaha World-Herald still has an evening edition, and we still take it -- and at the bottom of the Midlands section front, there was this column by Mike Kelly.

HERE'S HOW it started . . . and note, please, that it's just one movement of a long and ongoing symphony of civic self-congratulation:

A U.S. women’s sky-diving champion who has lived on both coasts made a big leap of faith — and moved to Omaha.

After nine months here as as­sociate director of the nonprofit organization Kaneko, she says cosmopolitan Omaha “disrupts preconceived notions” of the Midwest as seen in movies and on TV. And she sees people con­stantly trying to improve the metro area.

“What makes Omaha very special for me,” said Jacquie Scoones, “is that people have such a strong sense of pride in the city — and they don’t just say that, but actually invest in relationships. I don’t think I’ve met anyone yet who doesn’t vol­unteer for something.”

Scoones didn’t parachute into Omaha. She drove from the East Coast in January, arriving eight hours ahead of a snowstorm. But she has come to enjoy an­other kind of local climate.

“Omaha has an extraordinary climate of possibilities that I’m growing to love,” she said Mon­day. “I want to live and grow old in a place where people younger than me are fiercely invested in building a city where their chil­dren will want to live.”

Scoones, 50, said she appreci­ates what previous generations have done for Omaha but sees a fierce community investment by young professionals and oth­ers in their 30s and 40s.

OMAHA: City of Possibilities. That has a nice ring to it.

Cosmopolitan Omaha disrupting preconceived notions of the Midwest as Green Acres writ large. Damn straight! Fly over THAT, coastal America.

It's almost enough to provoke hubris in the modest, practical Midwestern soul.

And it's true -- Omaha is a great place to be now. It's a city "on the move," with a critical mass of creative individuals determined to keep up the momentum.

Dare I say it? The Big O is the place to be, a veritable creative commons . . . for the white, the well-heeled and the well-educated.

BECAUSE ON THE FRONT of the Living section, we got to hear about Cool Omaha's dysfunctional doppelganger. the one that's largely black, bad-off and ill-educated.

The Omaha that leaves some of its citizens behind. The Omaha that doesn't dare make any sudden moves when pulled over by a cop. The Omaha that, when it does go away to college and gets that degree, doesn't come home to where the alienation is.

That's the unheralded, troublesome city that no one writes glowing columns about. But sometimes it finds its way into news stories chronicling the rare instances where folks feel free to speak their minds:

As for the hosts, Tom Hoarty was curious. Race remains such a pressing issue. Take Obama's beer summit a few months ago with the black Harvard professor who had to force his way into his own home after the door jammed and the white Cambridge police officer who arrested him.

Margaret, though, reflected on something more personal: how her childhood friend and next-door neighbor was black, how it was OK that they played together but spending the night at her black friend's house was off-limits.

This sparked a similar memory for Loretté. She was the black girl who invited her white friend for a sleepover in 1969. Her friend couldn't believe a black family's home could be as nice as Loretté's was.

Memories and experiences segued into larger questions.

About the degree to which the news media perpetuate racial stereotypes and the degree of demand for such conflict.

About how stereotypes play out. Valerie being told more than once that “you don't sound like you're black.” Ed being told he's not black enough.

“It's probably not a whole lot different,” he told the five white Catholics, “if someone asks, ‘Are you Catholic? Are you really Catholic?'”

Tom Hoarty noticed who was missing at the table: Latinos.

“We just had a roof put on our house,” he said. “The entire crew was Latino.”

Rita pointed out that you have to go out of your way in Omaha to really mingle with other races and social classes.

“How many African-American professionals do you see?” Ed asked.

Tom Tilden reflected on his job. “There are not many. Not many. There's one, that I know of.”

Valerie: “We just don't have that. When you go to Chicago … you see African-Americans that look like me that are in power-play positions.”

Take D.C. and Baltimore, said Loretté.

“I had a blast. So many people who looked like me. Black people supported one another ...”

Ed: “What's different about Omaha? … We have (four) Fortune 500 companies and no African-Americans reporting to the CEOs.”

Tom Hoarty: “I don't have an answer. … Omaha is a very divided city.”

Margaret: What happens to successful black students who graduate from college?

Valerie: “They vow never to return.”

Ed asked what the two Toms would do if the police pulled them over.
Hoarty said he'd dig for his license and registration. Tilden said he'd demand to know why.

Ed said black men have been warned about making a move for the glove box or appearing mouthy to a cop.

They talked about where black people are missing in Omaha: boardrooms, the College World Series, restaurants.

“Why am I the only black person here?” Valerie said she asks herself when dining out at nicer restaurants.

Loretté got that feeling when she attended a classical music concert at the Holland Center.

They talked about blacks “dumbing down” to be acceptable. About stereotypes they wish would die, about interracial relationships.

Loretté really struggled when her nephew married a white woman, a pattern she felt played out way too frequently among black men. And yet she describes her nephew's wife as “wonderful” and as “my niece.”

LIFE DOES GET complicated, doesn't it? Cities, too. And people? Don't get me started.

I am grateful for the Omaha that's cosmopolitan, creative and forward-looking. I am ashamed that it's mostly for people who are white (and reasonably well educated) like me.

The Omaha I enjoy -- the one attracting all the go-getters to this former "flyover" burg -- is, alas, no reason to gloat.

It would be too easy, and too deadly, to sip martinis in the Old Market and feel so very self-satisfied that we're not like some redneck justice of the peace in Louisiana. Especially when Bad Omaha -- the place where hopes and dreams go to get they ass capped -- lurks just beyond the skyline . . . whispering "j'accuse."

Louisiana's biggest deficit crisis

Deficits are killing Louisiana, which happens to be where I was born, raised and educated (but don't tell anybody).

You have your revenue deficit in these hard times, which has devastated the state budget and lots of things that hardly could stand more devastation -- like education, public-health and social services.

You have your infrastructure deficit, which leaves Louisiana with an above-average amount of crumbling roads, schools, sewers, jails and public facilities.

You have your peace-and-quiet deficit, which manifests itself in astronomical rates of violent crime and murder.

You have your knowledge deficit, which leaves the Gret Stet with a spectacularly underskilled workforce, an abysmal high-school graduation rate and a corresponding lack of residents with college educations.

And, of course, you have your wealth deficit in a state that, ironically, is incredibly rich in natural resources and economic potential. (See DEFICIT, PEACE-AND-QUIET and DEFICIT, KNOWLEDGE above.)

BUT THE DEFICIT Louisiana perhaps is best known for -- and which, in its own way, directly impacts each of the above deficit categories -- is its integrity deficit. This manifests itself in a certain Pelican State disdain for bourgeois American standards for a functioning civic society . . . and reasonably honest, functional self-government.

Unfortunately, the state has had many opportunities to showcase its glaring integrity deficit over the years, but perhaps none ultimately will prove any more glaring than the sad, racist soap opera playing itself out in Tangipahoa Parish. That's where the morally and judicially pornographic Justice of the Peace Keith Bardwell has been refusing to marry interracial couples for 34 years now . . . and getting away with it.

Of course, if all you had to go on was the superficial coverage in the national and local press, you'd hardly know this. You would know a lot about this or that outraged advocacy group, and you'd know that Bardwell is defending his indefensible bigotry to the last white sheet, and you'd know that Gov. Bobby Jindal and U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu (but not U.S. Sen. David Vitter) have issued pro-forma denunciations of this throwback to Jim Crow, as well as demands for resignation, removal, etc., and so on.

What you wouldn't know -- at least not without a lot of reading between the lines -- is that lots of people (and elected officials) knew about Bardwell's official racism for a long time yet did nothing.

They didn't even complain -- at least not in any way that got anybody's attention.

IT'S THE EVERYDAY, ongoing integrity deficits that set the stage for the really spectacular ones Louisiana occasionally stages to grab the world's attention. (See Edwards, Gov. Edwin and Duke, David. Oh . . . and let's not forget Jefferson, U.S. Rep. William of cold-cash fame.)

What's unusual about the Bardwell case is that this long-term, ordinary travesty of justice and pedestrian (remember, this is the old segregated South we're talking about) offense against common decency somehow morphed into an Edwin Edwards-sized scumbag spectacular. And that the reason for that was how very, very ordinary Bardwell's Jim Crow show was in that corner of Louisiana.

Thirty-four-years-and-running ordinary.

An unrepentant racist being returned to public office unopposed all those years ordinary.

Nobody lifting a finger in favor of Christian decency, fairness and the U.S. Constitution ordinary.

"Hey! Why so upset? What's the big deal, anyway?" ordinary.

THE REST of America, oddly enough, finds it quite extraordinary. Much of the Western world finds it extraordinary, too. We find it extraordinary that virtually no one in the entire state of Louisiana, during this man's decades-long reign of error, ever tried to "do the right thing."

Wow.

We Americans historically have taken a lot of pride in our foundational notion that no man is above the law. And we find it extraordinary that a piss-ant jurist in a piss-ant Louisiana burg somehow got his knickers in a twist about race-mixing, decided that longstanding constitutional law (and the teaching of every major Christian denomination) was full of crap, then set about putting one man's errant opinion above the law.

Call me an N-word lover -- and, trust me, someone in Louisiana will -- but I find that highly offensive, both as a Christian and as an American.

AND THE PREVAILING MEME in Louisiana . . . that is, apart from pro-forma political hand-wringing and the "Booboisie for Bardwell" knuckle-draggers? It's this: You'll have a difficult time getting rid of a backwoods judicial bigot in the Gret Stet.

That integrity deficit is a real killer. You get too far in the integrity hole and you start finding it amazingly easy to dismiss "no man is above the law" as just another quaint Yankee notion.

You start to find all kinds of reasons that Bubba not only should be above the law, but should be able to make it up himself -- especially when it's only black folk and (Negro)-lovers who get screwed over in the process.

And that's the point at which you transcend mere Louisiana Hayride graft and skulduggery and begin to plumb the full depths to which a sociopolitical freak show such as the Gret Stet can sink.

If you have the stomach for it, it's going to be a hell of a show. Literally.

You suin' me? YOU . . . suin' . . . ME???

At long last!

The joyous news is carried unto us by The Associated Press:

The music industry's courtroom campaign against people who share songs online is coming under counterattack.

A Harvard Law School professor has launched a constitutional assault against a federal copyright law at the heart of the industry's aggressive strategy, which has wrung payments from thousands of song-swappers since 2003.

The professor, Charles Nesson, has come to the defense of a Boston University graduate student targeted in one of the music industry's lawsuits. By taking on the case, Nesson hopes to challenge the basis for the suit, and all others like it.

Nesson argues that the Digital Theft Deterrence and Copyright Damages Improvement Act of 1999 is unconstitutional because it effectively lets a private group - the Recording Industry Association of America, or RIAA - carry out civil enforcement of a criminal law. He also says the music industry group abused the legal process by brandishing the prospects of lengthy and costly lawsuits in an effort to intimidate people into settling cases out of court.

Nesson, the founder of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, said in an interview that his goal is to "turn the courts away from allowing themselves to be used like a low-grade collection agency."

Nesson is best known for defending the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers and for consulting on the case against chemical companies that was depicted in the film "A Civil Action." His challenge against the music labels, made in U.S. District Court in Boston, is one of the most determined attempts to derail the industry's flurry of litigation.

The initiative has generated more than 30,000 complaints against people accused of sharing songs online. Only one case has gone to trial; nearly everyone else settled out of court to avoid damages and limit the attorney fees and legal costs that escalate over time.

Nesson intervened after a federal judge in Boston asked his office to represent Joel Tenenbaum, who was among dozens of people who appeared in court in RIAA cases without legal help.

The 24-year-old Tenenbaum is a graduate student accused by the RIAA of downloading at least seven songs and making 816 music files available for distribution on the Kazaa file-sharing network in 2004. He offered to settle the case for $500, but music companies rejected that, demanding $12,000.

The Digital Theft Deterrence Act, the law at issue in the case, sets damages of $750 to $30,000 for each infringement, and as much as $150,000 for a willful violation. That means Tenenbaum could be forced to pay $1 million if it is determined that his alleged actions were willful.

A Gideon checked out, and he left it no doubt

This is my pocket Gideon's Bible that I got in December 1971. In my public school in Louisiana.

Then again, second-hand cigarette smoke was legal -- and pervasive -- back then, too.

ISN'T IT WONDERFUL how very advanced we are today? Now, the long arm of the law can grab a Gideon by the scruff of the neck and shake him until every Bible is loosed and swept out of the reach of susceptible grammar schoolers.

This, reports The (Baton Rouge) Advocate, is how a federal court intends to bring "progress" to the Christianist holdout of Tangipahoa Parish:

The Tangipahoa Parish School Board violated the First Amendment by allowing Gideons International to pass out pocket Bibles to Loranger fifth-graders during school hours in May, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

Just hours after the decision became public, the School Board voted 8-0 to seek an appeal to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“We are somewhat surprised, but very disappointed with the judge’s decision,” board attorney Chris Moody said after the vote.

The decision notches another legal victory for the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, which has sued the board seven times over religion-in-schools issues, including the lawsuit that led to this ruling.

Two more suits are pending.

In an 11-page order, U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier wrote the practice cited in the lawsuit is unconstitutional under multiple standards of federal case law designed to test whether government and religion are too closely entangled.

The Bible distribution was “ultimately coercive” on an elementary school child, “a religious activity without a secular purpose” and “amounted to promotion of Christianity by the School Board,” Barbier wrote.

His order granted an ACLU motion for summary judgment and rejected one from the board, court records show.

(snip)

On May 17, the ACLU sued the board on behalf of the unnamed Loranger Middle School fifth-grader and her father.

He was identified only as “John Roe”; the child as “Jane Roe,” records show.

The child and her parents are Roman Catholic. While both Christian, the Roman Catholic and Gideon Bibles have some differences.

Gideons International, which was not a defendant, is “an interdenominational association of Christian business and professional men,” according to its Web site.

Known for distributing free Bibles, the group this year marks its 100th year of placing Bibles in hotel and motel rooms.

The original suit alleges that on May 9, students were allowed to leave class to pick up Bibles from Gideons International representatives in front of the Principal’s Office, but were given the option to stay behind if they did not want one.

Barbier noted Principal Andre Pellerin notified fifth-grade teachers in an e-mail about the Gideons but told them to stress to students “they DO NOT have to get a (B)ible.”

Still, Barbier found the child was pressured to take a Bible, noting the special care courts have recognized schools must take with impressionable elementary schoolchildren.

WHILE I CAN appreciate the "separation of church and state," at what point does slavish devotion to that nebulous principle become a repressive state-mandated quest to separate the vast majority of people in places like Loranger, La., from their faith and from their cultural patrimony? After all, if one cannot be exposed to ideas or culture in a public school, where, pray tell, is education going to be committed?

The Gideons were handing out Bibles at Loranger Middle School, and not even in the classroom at that. No child had to take one.

Yet that is considered "coercive" by the courts. I wonder whether the American Civil Liberties Union and the federal judge would analyze the facts of the case differently if the Gideons had been handing out condoms.

I wonder, too, whether the ruling might have been different if -- as part of a world-geography lesson -- an imam had spoken to a class about Islam and what Muslims believe, then handed out pocket Korans to the children as a gift.

ALMOST 40 YEARS AGO, when I received my first Gideons Bible as a fifth grader at Villa del Rey Elementary in Baton Rouge, it truly was a learning experience for a kid who had only the most tenuous -- not to mention warped -- acquaintance with Christianity as properly understood.

For all intents and purposes, I was being raised as a pagan, though not an intentional pagan. That first Gideons Bible wasn't so much an act of proselytism as it was a broadening of a 10-year-old kid's horizons.

The next year, not only did we get another Gideons New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs, but we also got led in daily devotions by our devoutly Baptist sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Horn. What we did was read the Psalms. Out loud. In class.

Times were different then . . . obviously. And I will grant that what Mrs. Horn did was pretty blatantly unconstitutional.

Still, looking back on that political incorrectness run amok -- if only we had known what political incorrectness was in 1972 -- I'm so very happy that my teacher, a prison chaplain's wife, violated my constitutional rights.

Objectively, I learned something important about one of the foundational books of Western civilization. Subjectively, I developed a love for the Psalms.

And on an evangelistic level. those seeds planted by Mrs. Horn would begin to sprout nearly 20 years later, added as they were to the seeds sown via the quiet example of my devoutly Catholic aunt and uncle.

That education stuff, it's a dangerous thing. It takes on many forms, and you never know exactly where you're going to end up once it takes off.

UNLESS, of course, you ideologically scour all the education right out of those places it used to thrive. When our schools become intellectual, cultural and religious wastelands in the guise of some neo-Puritan "constitutional correctness," we know exactly where we -- and our children -- will be going.

Nowhere.

And in this corner . . . insanity

I stumbled across this piece of right-wing, paranoid sludge from some outfit by the name of Louisiana Conservative.com. What's more troubling, however, is that I can't dismiss this as the fascist rantings -- and this is modern-day American fascism on display -- of some crackpot on the lunatic fringe, high as a kite on swamp gas.

No, this -- ahem -- stuff is far too "mainstream conservative" (or at least what passes for it nowadays) to be on the fringe of anything, except that of human decency.

What's really rich is that "Avman" can't see the total contradiction -- not to mention irony -- of being pissed at Sen. John McCain, the new frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination, for not being willing to do the full Hitler in prosecuting the War on Terror and for not being pro-life enough.

Really, by "Avman's" own standards, we ought to send the ghost of Curtis LeMay to nuke Louisiana, because the War on Ignorance is nothing to screw around with. Look at this stuff. I mean, really:

Many of my conservative friends remain staunchly behind the war in Iraq and I am with them in such a cause. Like them, I understand that we fight this war today so that our children, our grandchildren, and so on won’t have to. We fight this war today because we want to live in peace.

But in his desire to be president, John McCain misunderstands the conservative position on Iraq. When John McCain stated that being in Iraq for 100 years would be “fine with me.” he grossly misunderstands why conservatives want our troops in Iraq to begin with. Being in Iraq for 100 years means we are committing our children, grand-children, and even their grand children to war that we fight… so our kids won’t have to. If our intentions are to be in Iraq for the next 100 years, let’s go ahead and get out of Iraq now.

I believe it is John McCain’s position to be in Iraq for another one hundred years because I don’t believe he’s willing to do what it takes to win in Iraq, especially when he’d rather trust and team up with the ACLU than to listen to our military advisors.. What I mean is that war isn’t pretty, it isn’t compassionate, it isn’t anything but death and destruction, the best war is won quickly. We can try to water it down by refusing to torture our enemies, as McCain would have us do, but if we aren’t willing to do certain things to our enemies, especially when our enemies are willing to do those very things to us, then we as a nation are not ready for war.

A compassionate war is a war that’s won quickly and our men and women serving are brought home as soon as it’s over, not over the course of a hundred years, as John McCain would have it go. I am for the war in Iraq, I’m for us doing what is necessary to annihilate our enemies. I’m for sending a message to the world that starting a war with the United States is a grave mistake.

And let’s not forget that John McCain is so pro military, that when Bill Clinton was down sizings the military, John McCain… Well, John McCain didn’t stand up against the downsizing. He was Missing In Action, no pun intended. Come to think of it, where was John McCain during the build up to the Iraq war, other than saying what an easy task it would be?

(snip)

In 1999, John McCain stated very clearly that “In the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe vs. Wade, which would then force X number of women in American to undergo illegal and dangerous operations.”. Today, John McCain is clearly pro-life, finding this position recently while running for President. John McCain’s many statements on abortions and Roe V Wade also shows that he has a misunderstanding of what Roe V Wade would do if it were overturned. Though he now supports overturning Roe V Wade, he would keep abortion legal in cases of rape and incest, however, if Roe V Wade were to be overturned, that decision would fall into the hands of the fifty individual states, not in the hands of the President, 100 Senators, and the representatives.

So whether it’s been on issues regarding the national defense such as illegal immigration, on economic issues such as Bush’s tax cuts, or on social issues like gun ownership, abortion, and embryonic stem cell research, John McCain’s conservativism makes Hillary Clinton look like an ideal candidate instead of the bane of he Right.

While many of us in the Republican Party have gone into a fanatical anti Ron Paul rage, we’ve quickly surrendered our principles and are on the verge of electing a RINO as our Presidential nominee. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying John McCain doesn’t deserve to win his party’s nomination, it’s just that his party is truly the Democrat party.

I THOUGHT conservatives sought to . . . well, conserve things like the rule of law and human dignity. You know, all that stuff like "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

The rule of American law, the moral law and international law says torture is wrong. Period. Likewise, the law -- a highly "conservative" concept, to be sure -- says neither America nor any other country gets to blow any other country to Kingdom Come just to show the world we're bad asses who aren't to be screwed with.

Obviously, some "conservatives" have forgotten all that.

So get out the brown shirts, boys. 'Cause some right-wing clown in Louisiana has just shown his -- and your -- true colors.

Oh, for God's sake!

Thank you, March for Life people, for making my point for me.

If you want to know why -- despite being dedicated to sticking up for the most vulnerable and powerless humans that ever were or ever will be -- the pro-life movement has accomplished squat over the past 35 years, you need read no further than this from the Catholic News Service:

Among the speakers on the stage, Rep. Christopher Smith, R-N.J., headed a long string of politicians who took to the microphone to make sure participants saw the fight against abortion in political terms. He warned that "America's liberal elites" were "empathy-deficient" when it comes to the unborn, turning around a phrase about Americans made by Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., in remarks on the presidential campaign trail a few days earlier.

A brief roar of agreement greeted a warning by Sen. David Vitter, R-La., that electing Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., or Obama as president would mean nominees for federal judgeships would be less pro-life than those nominated under President George W. Bush, so "we need to elect a pro-life president."

Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, himself a candidate for president, downplayed those ambitions to emphasize his experience as an obstetrician, helping bring 4,000 babies into the world. Dozens of "Ron Paul for President" banners held high above the crowd made a point of his political ambitions for him.

In his remarks recorded at a White House breakfast earlier that morning and replayed at the rally, Bush lauded those who work for "a culture of life where a woman with an unplanned pregnancy knows there are caring people who will support her; where a pregnant teen can carry her child and complete her education; where the dignity of both the mother and child is honored and cherished."

IF I WERE Chris Smith, I'd be worried less about the "empathy" deficiency of "America's liberal elites" and worried more about the dumbass sufficiency of America's right-to-life elites.

(And, as a Catholic, I'd worry about the utter Pravdaesque "report no evil" incompetence of the Catholic News Service -- but that's a matter for another post someday.)

See, here's what the irony-insensitive CNS report failed to tell you. And, sadly, what CNS failed to tell you is pretty much all the context you need to know why the pro-life movement, as it's presently constituted, is a doomed proposition.

Let's start with Sen. David Vitter, R.-La.

Sen. Vitter, you see, likes nookie. And, during his political career -- both back in the Bayou State and in Washington -- he has liked nookie so much he's been willing to pay top dollar for it.

From women not Mrs. Vitter.

That is called soliciting prostitution, making Vitter a "john," even though his name is David. This activity is quite illegal in 49 of the 50 states. That's why it was so big a deal when Vitter's number turned up in the phone records of the "D.C. Madam."

And it's why it was such a big deal when the working girl who "loved" him back in New Orleans started blabbing to Penthouse publisher Larry Flynt. Some folks back in Louisiana thought Vitter ought to resign his seat or be kicked out of the U.S. Senate for having engaged in criminal acts.

Those people, however, were prudes. Not like the March for Life organizers.

Then there is the slight problem of Vitter being the Southern regional chair for the Rudy Giuliani campaign while spouting lines like "we need to elect a pro-life president."

You'd think most folks, after hearing such from a backer of the pro-choice Giuliani, would figure their intelligence had just been insulted. And, in fact, most would. They probably would become angry and start booing and throwing things.

But this was a crowd of pro-life activists and their politicized leaders. And David Vitter -- veteran politician and connoisseur of the world's oldest profession that he is -- can read an audience.

HAVING FIGURED OUT there's not fun in holding the moral high ground if you can't cede it, the March for Life organizers then invited Rep. Ron Paul to the microphone.

The long-shot GOP presidential candidate has had his public-relations problems of late, after it came out that a newsletter written in his name had for years contained the worst kind of race-baiting, paranoid, whack-job claptrap.

Paul, however, didn't want to talk about politics (I wonder why). He wanted to talk about the 4,000 babies he brought into the world as an obstetrician.

"Dozens of 'Ron Paul for President' banners held high above the crowd made a point of his political ambitions for him," as the CNS story put it. Yep, there's nothing quite like throwing away moral superiority to scream to the world "I'm a Racist Conspiracy Nut for Life!"

FINALLY, we come to the prerecorded address by President George W. Bush.

Nothing says "I support the vulnerable" like "pro-life" marchers standing there, listening to supportive bromides from a man who lied his nation into a disastrous, unjustified and unjust war in Iraq . . . that is, when he wasn't subverting the United States government to justify, then carry out, the torture of "illegal enemy combatants" in violation of both U.S. and international law.

One march.

Three strikes.

And America's unborn babies are s*** out of luck.


HAT TIP: Your Right Hand Thief.

An old warrior does his political duty

Agree with George McGovern or not, the man belongs to the old school of politics -- one that recognizes that the ideals of service and duty are indispensable in carrying out the people's business.

In fact, former Sen. McGovern, one could argue, belongs to a dying breed of politicians . . . those who actually believe the governance of the United States really is the people's business. So, here we have the old Democratic warrior -- the long-retired senator from South Dakota who flew bombers during World War II -- emerging from retirement at age 85 to tell his Congressional successors to do their duty.

No matter how much they don't want to.

That duty? That the House should impeach President Bush and Vice-President Cheney, and that the Senate ought to find more than enough grounds to convict. An excerpt from McGovern's Washington Post op-ed column Sunday:

Impeachment is unlikely, of course. But we must still urge Congress to act. Impeachment, quite simply, is the procedure written into the Constitution to deal with presidents who violate the Constitution and the laws of the land. It is also a way to signal to the American people and the world that some of us feel strongly enough about the present drift of our country to support the impeachment of the false prophets who have led us astray. This, I believe, is the rightful course for an American patriot.

As former representative Elizabeth Holtzman, who played a key role in the Nixon impeachment proceedings, wrote two years ago, "it wasn't until the most recent revelations that President Bush directed the wiretapping of hundreds, possibly thousands, of Americans, in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) -- and argued that, as Commander in Chief, he had the right in the interests of national security to override our country's laws -- that I felt the same sinking feeling in my stomach as I did during Watergate. . . . A President, any President, who maintains that he is above the law -- and repeatedly violates the law -- thereby commits high crimes and misdemeanors."

I believe we have a chance to heal the wounds the nation has suffered in the opening decade of the 21st century. This recovery may take a generation and will depend on the election of a series of rational presidents and Congresses. At age 85, I won't be around to witness the completion of the difficult rebuilding of our sorely damaged country, but I'd like to hold on long enough to see the healing begin.

Amen to that.

A republic . . . if you can keep it.

From the New York Times, which the usual suspects will trash as being partisan and unreliable, somehow working the name Jason Blair into the rant no more than three sentences in:

At least four top White House lawyers took part in discussions with the Central Intelligence Agency between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes showing the secret interrogations of two operatives from Al Qaeda, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials.

The accounts indicate that the involvement of White House officials in the discussions before the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was more extensive than Bush administration officials have acknowledged.

Those who took part, the officials said, included Alberto R. Gonzales, who served as White House counsel until early 2005; David S. Addington, who was the counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney and is now his chief of staff; John B. Bellinger III, who until January 2005 was the senior lawyer at the National Security Council; and Harriet E. Miers, who succeeded Mr. Gonzales as White House counsel.

It was previously reported that some administration officials had advised against destroying the tapes, but the emerging picture of White House involvement is more complex. In interviews, several administration and intelligence officials provided conflicting accounts as to whether anyone at the White House expressed support for the idea that the tapes should be destroyed.

One former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said there had been “vigorous sentiment” among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes. The former official did not specify which White House officials took this position, but he said that some believed in 2005 that any disclosure of the tapes could have been particularly damaging after revelations a year earlier of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Some other officials assert that no one at the White House advocated destroying the tapes. Those officials acknowledged, however, that no White House lawyer gave a direct order to preserve the tapes or advised that destroying them would be illegal.

The destruction of the tapes is being investigated by the Justice Department, and the officials would not agree to be quoted by name while that inquiry is under way.

Spokesmen for the White House, the vice president’s office and the C.I.A. declined to comment for this article, also citing the inquiry.

The new information came to light as a federal judge on Tuesday ordered a hearing into whether the tapes’ destruction violated an order to preserve evidence in a lawsuit brought on behalf of 16 prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The tapes documented harsh interrogation methods used in 2002 on Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, two Qaeda suspects in C.I.A. custody.