Pistol envy as public policy

People in Louisiana always have been a little bit nuts.

Sometimes, that's a good thing. When you enter the realm of public policy and self-governance, usually not.

Chalk up this latest news of Louisiana Whack, as reported by The Associated Press, as a definite "not, no, nuh uh":

Former Gov. Mike Foster is featured in an NRA radio ad supporting a constitutional amendment on the Nov. 6 ballot that would set a tougher standard for restricting weapons use and remove a provision that spells out legislative authority to limit concealed handguns. 

Supporters of Amendment No. 2 say the change would guard against possible future Supreme Court rulings that might affect the Second Amendment. 

In the ad, paid for by the lobbying arm of the National Rifle Association, Foster says he's voting for the amendment to "guarantee our rights to own a gun in Louisiana no matter what happens in Washington."

BEHOLD, the breakdown of civil society in Louisiana -- what there ever was of it -- continues apace. This kind of bat-sh*t crazy constitutional amendment is not the sign of a healthy society or culture.

It is the sign of people who believe that civil society is either a) not possible any longer, or b) undesirable. If you were to gauge what there is of the "Louisiana mind" today, you'd probably find that it's a little of both.

That the Legislature sent to voters a measure making it difficult for the state to regulate firearms at all and seemingly all-but-erasing authority for government to regulate the carrying of concealed weapons is a profound loss of faith in, if not the rule of law itself, the ability of the state to maintain order.

Or at least enough order that it wouldn't be considered normal to pack heat -- hidden heat, no less. No, ascendant is the idea of concealed firearms as so crucial to individual freedom and well-being that the state has precious little right to interfere or regulate. Welcome back to the Wild West. And good luck prosecuting gangbangers on gun charges before they actually pull the trigger and cap somebody's ass.

NEVERTHELESS, I bet it passes. Crazy does as crazy is, and if you look at the numbers and the newspapers, you realize that only a bunch of flat-out lunatics could create the monument to dysfunction and delusion that is the Gret Stet.

Louisiana never has been big on the rule of law. Now, however, it threatens to go "all in" on the rule of force. Yeah, that should work out well in America's largest insane asylum.

Iowa don't know my rights!

A guest post by Molly the Dog

They have neber been a mor biger threat to our charish Amerikan ideels then thiss.

It am not souprizeing thet it's comms from Iowa, where peeples is commerniss. And meen.

I wil not go to Iowa no more, bekuz the commerniss thayr wil put me in jayl for being all abowt free x-presshun and thee rite to re-dres greevances kommitd aginst you. I do not like the Iowa kops, bekuz thay are agunts of a repressiv regeeme.

THEE PRUFE of Iowas commernisum is hear in this artikl from thee Asocciated Paws. Uh, Press:

A man accused of urinating on the office chairs of fellow office workers in West Des Moines has surrendered to police.

Raymond Foley, 59, turned himself in Saturday to face a charge of second-degree criminal mischief.

Foley declined to comment Tuesday, other than to acknowledge that he no longer works at the Farm Bureau office in West Des Moines.

Police say some co-workers had complained about stains on their chairs. A security system was installed, and police say it caught Foley in the act.

ME HOPE the Iowas free x-pressur gets a gud lawyer whoo don't like cats. I rekommenn Sadie. She forgets stuf sumtimez, but she can still bite gud.

Tell her the Iowas commerniss kops is skwrruls. Totaliterryun oppressurs is whut thay reely is.

In othur wurds -- skwrruls. Maybe cats, to.

'Now we see the violence inherent in the system!'

Do you think I could get away with it if I said Barack Obama has no rights that any white man is obliged to respect?

Do you think I could get away with it if I added "Help! Help! I'm being repressed!"

No? Really?

I don't understand. That works so well for "progressives" when they're talking about Catholics.

As a matter of fact, if you say that often enough and loud enough about Catholics and other religiously Other-ish people, you not only can get away with it but become a go-to guest on your local NPR station.

Thus we explain Amanda Marcotte's appearance today on No Point On Point, where the first topic was "Help! Help! Women are being repressed by religious fanatics who won't pay for their free birth-control pills!"

Marcotte's main qualification for the guest spot -- and, apparently, her standing gig at Salon, too -- is that she's a pro-abortion radical feminist with a potty mouth and a bigoted streak as wide as the Father of Waters.

YOU GOTTA have somethin' goin' on to A) get hired by, then B) get fired by the presidential campaign of John Edwards, that poster child for sexual liberation in all its "What could go wrong???" glory. Besides, nothing says "thoughtful" and "edifying" like one of Marcotte's anti-Catholic rhetorical flourishes:

Q: What if Mary had taken Plan B after the Lord filled her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit?

A: You’d have to justify your misogyny with another ancient mythology.

OBVIOUSLY, the difference between NPR and your typical AM-radio food fight is its guests are bigoted against all the right people.

How progressive of them.

No, really. This stuff is nothing new. Actually, it's as old as the United States itself, and 20th-century "progressives" picked up right where the Know-Nothings and the Ku Klux Klan left off.

If it makes you feel any better, I read that in a 1997 article in The New York Times:

It has been many years since the poet and essayist Peter Viereck called anti-Catholicism "the anti-Semitism of the intellectuals." For Roman Catholics who encounter hostility, condescension and stereotypes among circles that consider themselves singularly free of prejudice, Mr. Viereck's quip remains the last word on the topic.

But now a young Harvard historian has taken another look at the role that Catholicism has played in what he calls "the American intellectual imagination." And his work helps explain some of the intense feelings that surround current issues like abortion and school vouchers, and why American Catholicism and liberalism have seldom been more than uneasy allies.

In a 32-page article to be published in the June issue of The Journal of American History, John T. McGreevy argues that from 1928 to 1960, anxiety about "Catholic power" became a defining factor in the evolution of American liberalism, along with opposition to fascism, Communism and racial segregation.

Dr. McGreevy, the Dunwalke Associate Professor of American History at Harvard, recalls "the most unusual best seller of the late 1940's," Paul Blanshard's "American Freedom and Catholic Power."

"The Catholic problem is still with us," Mr. Blanshard wrote.

In his view, the church posed an international threat to democracy, a threat that, two years later in "Communism, Democracy and Catholic Power," he put on the same plane as that of Soviet Communism. Along the way, Mr. Blanshard characterized nuns as legacies from an era when women "reveled in self-abasement" and he held Catholicism responsible for producing most white criminals.

Today most people might dismiss Mr. Blanshard's books and the fuss they provoked as more of an historical curiosity than a measure of "the American intellectual imagination." But Dr. McGreevy also recalls that in 1949, John Dewey praised Mr. Blanshard for his "exemplary scholarship, good judgment and tact."

McGeorge Bundy called the 1949 book "very useful." Scholarly reviewers hailed its author's "razor keen analysis" as well as his "restraint." Other distinguished intellectuals echoed Mr. Blanshard's parallel between Catholicism and Stalinism. For example, the Protestant theologian Henry Sloane Coffin called the two "equally totalitarian."

IN OTHER WORDS, "Help! Help! We're being repressed by the papists!"

On the other hand, Blanshard, who was an assistant editor at The Nation, at least refrained from nasty quips about holy semen in his book, which began as a series of magazine articles in 1947 and 1948. Of course, his was the world of the 1940s -- one chockablock with stigmas, standards and taboos yet to be torn down or cast aside by folks just like himself:

Nobody knows exactly where the elaborate sexual code of the Catholic Church has come from. It has been developed by accretion over a period of nineteen centuries until, today, it is one of the most conspicuous parts of Catholic moral philosophy. Perhaps it ought to be called an anti-sexual code (even though the Church teaches that "a wife may not without sufficient reason deny herself to her husband") because the primary emphasis has always been upon the negative rather than upon the wholesome aspects.

Austerity was identified with virtue by many leaders of early Christianity. Two Popes, Clement VIII and Paul V, declared that anybody should be denounced to the Inquisitors of the Faith who declared that kissing, touching and embracing for the sake of sexual pleasure were not grievous sins. 1 Father Henry Davis, in his Moral and Pastoral Theology, expresses a contemporary priestly view when he says that "sexual pleasure has no purpose at all except in reference to the sexual act between man and wife... it is grievously sinful in the unmarried deliberately to procure or to accept even the smallest degree of true venereal pleasure."

Freud's wisdom was not available to the Popes and theologians who first imposed celibacy upon a reluctant clergy, and they could scarcely be held responsible for failing to appreciate the gravity of the effects upon human nature of suppressing the basic human instincts.

WHICH, according to Freud, all involve having intercourse with one's mother. Or some such wisdom.

But what do I know? I'm Catholic.

And a threat to truth, justice and the American Way:

These things should be talked about freely because they are too important to be ignored. Yet it must be admitted that millions of Americans are afraid to talk about them frankly and openly. Part of the reluctance to speak comes from fear, fear of Catholic reprisals. As we shall see in this book, the Catholic hierarchy in this country has great power as a pressure group, and no editor, politician, publisher, merchant or motion-picture producer can express defiance openly--or publicize documented facts--without risking his future.

But fear will not entirely explain the current silence on the Catholic issue. Some of the reluctance of Americans to speak is due to a misunderstanding of the nature of tolerance. Tolerance should mean complete charity toward men of all races and creeds, complete open-mindedness toward all ideas, and complete willingness to allow peaceful expression of conflicting views. This is what most Americans think they mean when they say that they believe in tolerance.

When they come to apply tolerance to the world of religion, however, they often forget its affirmative implications and fall back on the negative cliché, "You should never criticize another man's religion." Now, that innocent-sounding doctrine, born of the noblest sentiments, is full of danger to the democratic way of life. It ignores the duty of every good citizen to stand for the truth in every field of thought. It fails to take account of the fact that a large part of what men call religion is also politics, social hygiene and economics. Silence about "another man's religion" may mean acquiescence in second-rate medicine, inferior education and anti-democratic government.

I believe that every American -- Catholic and non-Catholic -- has a duty to speak on the Catholic question, because the issues involved go to the heart of our culture and our citizenship. Plain speaking on this question involves many risks of bitterness, misunderstanding and even fanaticism, but the risks of silence are even greater. Any critic of the policies of the Catholic hierarchy must steel himself to being called "anti-Catholic," because it is part of the hierarchy's strategy of defense to place that brand upon an its opponents; and any critic must also reconcile himself to being called an enemy of the Catholic people, because the hierarchy constantly identifies its clerical ambitions with the supposed wishes of its people.

It is important, therefore, to distinguish between the American Catholic people and their Roman-controlled priests. The Catholic people of the United States fight and die for the same concept of freedom as do other true Americans; they believe in the same fundamental ideals of democracy. If they controlled their own Church, the Catholic problem would soon disappear because, in the atmosphere of American freedom, they would adjust their Church's policies to American realities.

Unfortunately, the Catholic people of the United States are not citizens but subjects in their own religious commonwealth. The secular as well as the religious policies of their Church are made in Rome by an organization that is alien in spirit and control. The American Catholic people themselves have no representatives of their own choosing either in their own local hierarchy or in the Roman high command; and they are compelled by the very nature of their Church's authoritarian structure to accept nonreligious as well as religious policies that have been imposed upon them from abroad.

It is for this reason that I am addressing Catholics fully as much as non-Catholics in this book, American freedom is their freedom, and any curtailment of that freedom by clerical power is an even more serious matter for them than it is for non-Catholics. I know that many Catholics are as deeply disturbed as I am about the social policies of their Church's rulers; and they are finding it increasingly difficult to reconcile their convictions as American democrats with the philosophy of their priests, their hierarchy and their Pope.

SUMMATION: The Catholic Church has no rights that any white man is obliged to respect. . . . Help! Help! We're being repressed!

Or . . . 98 percent of Catholic women have used birth control, so there.

It's an old story, alas. It's also one of America's oldest acceptable prejudices, now that we can't kick the Negroes or the homosexuals around anymore. When you can combine fear of the Other with the ideological outrage of "being un-American," you have bigotry with legs.

What is disappointing is that the mainstream media keeps returning to bigots like Marcotte to reinforce warmed-over paranoia like Blanshard's, which was stolen from the Kluxers and the Know-Nothings, which frankly is so alarmingly WASP, not to mention SWPL. Not only that, it just sounded better coming from a 1940s intellectual rather than your typical postmodern vulgarian.

It's rather like the difference between drinking martinis at the club as you bemoan "the Roman problem" and smoking crystal meth at the Blogosphere Acres trailer park because those motherf***ing Catholic fascist motherf***ers make you want to f***ing kill somebody, and WHERE'S MY MOTHERF***ING PLEDGE-DRIVE, STATION-F***ING LOGO TOTE BAG, BITCH??????

Those people, I swear.

Enlightened America: Yesterday and today

From Facebook on Wednesday, with this commentary by Political Loudmouth:

On the other hand, if you have some little boys we can have sex with, we'd TOTALLY be down with that. Thanks to Being Liberal for this toon.

AND HERE'S the first comment:

I had this discussion recently with a very Catholic friend of mine. (I am a former Catholic) She says that it is "shooing" the baby out. I had to pull out my BASIC level anatomy book and explain how contraception works. That NO BABY IS EVER MADE. You know, I believe these people have their rights to this belief, I even believe they have they should not be forced to dispense if if they are so against it. But, I want it ENFORCED that not one of them EVER engages in pre-marital sex. ENFORCED; check those hymens, bitches!

Thomas Nast (1900)

BUT EVENTUALLY, someone objects:

Okay, I am usually really cool about the stuff you post here, and end up sharing lots of it, but I have to say the bit about "some little boys we can have sex with" is truly tasteless and outrageous.

I am Catholic - a bad Catholic. I am not blind to the faults of my religion but I know many priests and other religious (my older sister is a nun, btw) who've suffered the fallout from the criminal actions of the abusers in the Church, and the poor decisions that were made to cover up their actions by Church administration. Wonderful priests, simply because they wear clerical garb, have been ridiculed and taunted and threatened.

Also, by posting that you discredit yourself and make Political Loudmouth appear just as guilty of ignorance as, say, Fox News.

Pro-Ku Klux Klan cartoon from Klansmen: Guardians of Liberty (1926)

WHICH LEADS to more "tolerance" of the "diversity" that progressives so self-consciously espouse. Except when they don't.

I was raised by Christian Scienteists. They took "no medical treament" really seriously, which should be an illegal thing to do to kids. My parents were not comepetant to make decsions for themselves, let alone me.

Religion: always evil.

********, we're all sorry you're a mind slave of a gigantic coven of child molesters and their enablers, aka The Catholic Church, but that you are enslved by them doesn't erase the Truth. And sqauwking at people for daring to state a Truth you are hiding from just makes you into part of the problem. Everytime you defend a priest, you are enabling a child molester, which makes you as bad as they are.

I SWEAR, if this country gets any more "enlightened," "liberated" and "progressive," Catholics -- and other inconvenient Christians as well -- will have to emigrate to communist China for a little comparative religious liberty.

Not to mention literacy.

No dogs or Catholics allowed

On the edge of living memory, the United States had a president who told the nation "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

Today, the only thing we can't tolerate is tolerance of those we deem insufficiently tolerant. At its heart, I think that's because we never listened to Franklin Roosevelt in the first place.

We fear. Mainly, we fear the truth when we hear it, no matter from whom we hear it.

We fear those who aren't like us. We fear . . . and we hate. Hate is something that feels better inside one's gut than fear does. So we transform our fear into something easier to stomach.

We know how scared lots of tea-party types have been these last few years. The forces of "tolerance" are quick -- and often correct -- to point that out.

Now, however, we see what Enlightened America fears -- and hates. No. 1 on the list is God. No. 2 are people who take God seriously -- or, rather, those who take seriously the God, as opposed whatever more convenient one we concoct out of the depths of our fear.

Quickie Mart God don't tolerate no Catholics . . . or their inconvenient scruples. That's true in Washington. It's even true in Green Bay, Wis., where the local brownskirts of Planned Parenthood are giving a local Catholic food bank the Susan G. Komen treatment.

AND IT'S TRUE in Denver, as revealed in this Catholic News Agency report:

The Archdiocese of Denver's Theology on Tap program was compelled to seek a new venue after a lecture on religious liberty by Auxiliary Bishop James D. Conley reportedly caused controversy among some patrons and staff.

“This was a misunderstanding and we hope to be able to work with the group again in the future,” Stoney’s Bar and Grill owner Stoney Jesseph told CNA on Feb. 10.

On Jan. 26 Bishop Conley spoke to hundreds of young adults at the bar, which is less than five blocks from Denver’s Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. His topic was “Atheocracy and the Battle for Religious Liberty in America.”

Shortly after the talk, however, organizers were told to find a different location for the program because of its “controversial” content and the fact that that some of the bar staff said they would refuse to work the event again.

“It’s ironic that the talk itself pertains so well to what happened,” said Chris Stefanick, director of the archdiocese’s office for youth, young adults and campus ministry who helps run the event.

Stefanick said he was surprised to hear Jesseph's desire to work with Theology on Tap in the future given that the archdiocese was told by the restaurant that the gathering was “too controversial.”

“Those were the words they used,” he said.

But he suggested that Jesseph’s business partners may have had a role in the decision. “I don’t think it was all on Stoney’s shoulders. Frankly, if it was just up to Stoney, this never would have happened.”

However, for “whatever reason,” he added, “I think the establishment has made it clear that they’d rather not have a public, Catholic event there.”

Theology on Tap is an ongoing outreach program of the archdiocese. It meets in a bar, Stefanick explained, because it intends to provide “a non-threatening place to gather with friends” for Catholics to “draw people into the faith.”

“It’s also a great social connecting point for people to realize they’re not alone.”

The January event was in a section of the bar where other patrons wouldn’t be able to hear what the bishop was saying, added Stefanick, who thought it was only the appearance of a man in a Roman collar that provoked a reaction.

One bar patron, who Stefanick believes was not in a position to hear the talk, shouted obscenities at the bishop.

“The people at the talk couldn’t hear, because the way the amplifiers were set, but the bishop heard him and I heard him.”

A PISS-ANT sports bar in Denver is perfectly free to refuse to play host to Catholics talking about theology because people’s feelings get hurt. Yes, that’s the bar owners’ right.

On the other hand, those who object to Catholics merely talking about religious freedom and contraception hold that the Catholic Church and its affiliates do not have the right to refuse to pay to supply non-chancery employees with something church doctrine holds as profoundly morally objectionable. In other words, "the First Amendment, my ass!"

In what manner does this dichotomy not demonstrate that such anti-Catholic attitudes (and such a willingness to deny certain religious believers basic freedoms) possess all the nobility of those held by the Nazis toward, say, the Jews? Or Custer toward the Sioux? Or Bull Conner toward African-Americans in Birmingham, Ala.?

This is where we stand today: “Unenlightened” Catholics and evangelicals must be legally compelled to affirm and enable all manner of things which offend their beliefs, yet their “betters” in our postmodern society can’t be bothered even to merely tolerate Catholics and evangelicals — or that such actually might possess constitutional rights.

That must be a powerful lot of fear that brings on such a powerful outbreak of bigotry.

HAT TIP: Rod Dreher.

Police-state tactics for all seasons

Forty-three words.

A faceless bureaucrat cowering in a cubicle can crush fundamental human rights in 43 words. One long sentence -- embedded in one relatively short paragraph -- can present a sixth-grade girl with a dilemma not unlike that of St. Thomas More.

So far, the consequences are a bit less dire than faced by the English jurist and Catholic martyr, but once we "cut a great road through the law to get after the devil," I'm sure we'd have little problem beheading a 12-year-old for just cause.

Today, just cause for cutting down "every law in England" -- or small-town Nebraska -- to "get after the devil" begins with what have become, in these days nearer the end of the world, among the most feared words in the king's English: "We have received confirmation from the (fill in the blank) Police Department that. . . ."

SUNDAY NIGHT, KETV television in Omaha reported on a schoolhouse anti-Rosary crusade in Fremont, Neb., with what amounted to a journalistic Gallic shrug. The people in the story recounted events with a beaten-down Gallic shrug that might accompany an unspoken "But the police said! What'cha gonna do?"

A sixth-grade girl said she was told that she can't wear a necklace that resembles a rosary because it violates the dress code at the Fremont Public Schools.

Elizabeth Carey, 12, said the school adopted a policy last year banning the necklaces.

"The principal said I couldn't wear my necklace at all because gangsters were wearing it," she said.

She said the necklace is part of an outfit that she hopes expresses her faith.

IN THIS crumbling American empire, receiving "confirmation" that some scumbag somewhere is wearing something to signify "Scum!" is reason enough to wreck the ordinarily innocuous for everybody. And in Fremont -- a bucolic backwater that already has cut straight to corn-fed Stalinism "to get after" undocumented Mexicans -- official word from Barney Fife is enough to impinge upon the right of Catholics to freely identify with, and practice, their faith in public schools.

Forty-three words is all it took.

We have received confirmation from the Fremont Police Department that there have been documented cases of gang activity in the Fremont community and that the wearing of a rosary as jewelry can be considered a gang symbol or a sign of gang affiliation.

THE ACTUAL cutting down of all the Bill of Rights to get after the homeboys takes just 35 words:

The wearing of rosaries as jewelry at school, at a school function, or in a vehicle used for school purposes is prohibited. Please be advised that students are subject to the various disciplinary consequences and procedures.

OF COURSE, gang bangers will be as plentiful in the Fremont public schools as they ever were . . . just without their rosary necklaces. This Franciscan friar, however, probably would be tackled and handcuffed at the door.

What the hell are we supposed to do -- "give the devil the benefit of the law?"

Superintendent Steve Sexton said the policy is for student safety.

"We had information from law enforcement that there were documented instances of gang activity in the area and we had information that states that the rosary was being used as a symbol of gang affiliation," Sexton said.

He said rosaries have been used as gang-identification symbols in Oregon, Arizona and Texas.

Omaha Catholic Archdiocese Chancellor [sic -- the former chancellor] Rev. Joseph Taphorn said it's disheartening.

"I don't think Christians should have to forfeit what is the symbol for the love of Christ because a few people want to misuse that symbol," he said.

He said the corruption of something as beloved as the rosary disgusts the church.

"One ought to be able to figure out whether she's trying to promote a gang," Taphorn said. "If she's not, why would she be punished for her right of religious freedom and religious expression?"

Carey said she doesn't even know what a gang is. She said it makes her upset that she was punished for wearing what she thought was a necklace.

"It makes me feel like I want to scream really bad," she said.

KEEP your mouth shut, kid.

I'm sure that Fremont Middle School has "received confirmation from the Fremont Police Department" that there have been documented cases of gang members screaming in the Fremont community and that screaming can be "considered a sign of gang affiliation."

'Kill! Kiilll! Kiiilllll!'

Too bad there's not a Group W bench for governors.

And it's too bad you can't send them there for disrespecting constitutional governance.

I know Nebraska's "pro-life" chief execute-ive, "Lethal" Dave Heineman, thinks it's too bad the statehouse isn't the Army induction center in Alice's Restaurant, and that the U.S. Constitution doesn't hand out gold stars for political bloodlust.

BUT THERE he is, and there we are, and the Lincoln Journal-Star is there to report on the latest unseemly spectacle put on by a guy who's against abortion for all the white, er right, babies but fairly enthusiastic about the Grim Reaper otherwise:

Gov. Dave Heineman said Wednesday he is more determined than ever that the state execute the men on Nebraska's death row.

Heineman made the comment in a conference call with reporters after being asked about the state's difficulty in obtaining one of the three drugs called for in Nebraska's lethal injection protocol.

"At the end of the day, we need to find a way to carry out the death sentences that are appropriate for these first-degree murderers," he said.

The Department of Correctional Services has had trouble finding a supply of sodium thiopental, which has been in short supply since last year, when the only U.S. manufacturer, Hospira Inc., said it was ending production because of death-penalty opposition overseas.

(snip)

Meanwhile, an attorney for Carey Dean Moore plans to ask for Moore's death sentence to be vacated because he was subjected to cruel and unusual punishment by being allowed to believe he might be executed, even though prison officials knew the drug they bought earlier could not be used.

"I find it frustrating, and it makes me more than a bit angry that we are worried about the cruel and unusual punishment regarding these criminals who ... were involved in first-degree murders," Heineman said.

He said he strongly supports the death penalty.

"I haven't heard them express any remorse for their victims or their families. It's not going to bring back their son or daughter, their mom or dad," Heineman said. "So no, I'm more determined than ever" to make sure the executions are carried out.

IN OTHER WORDS, "Kill! Kiilll! Kiiilllll!"

I would say "Lord, have mercy!" at this point, but I think we're done with that. The Good Lord is, I am fairly certain, in the process of letting us have exactly what we want. Good and hard, as H.L. Mencken once said.

The president's new clothes

So . . . the Obama Administration literally is taking the law into its own hands and decreeing heterosexual marriage, in effect, discriminatory.

Meanwhile, 6,000 years of civilization just texted to ask "WTF?" as America's cultural war just "kicked it up a notch."

Probably a big notch.

The details come in this report from NPR:

The decision announced Wednesday represents a big victory for gay rights activists.

Obama's Justice Department has been arguing to preserve the Defense of Marriage Act for two years in courts all over the nation. Government lawyers said they were acting out of a sense of legal precedent, not moral obligation.

Everything changed Wednesday when Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress that Obama had determined that the administration can no longer defend the federal law that defines marriage as only between a man and a woman.

"After careful consideration, including a review of my recommendation, the president has concluded that given a number of factors, including a documented history of discrimination, classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to a more heightened standard of scrutiny," Holder said in a statement released Wednesday.

At the White House, spokesman Jay Carney said Obama himself is still "grappling" with his personal view of gay marriage but has always personally opposed the Defense of Marriage Act as "unnecessary and unfair."

From now on, the Justice Department will no longer fight to support the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act in court. But the government will continue to enforce the law across the executive branch unless Congress repeals it or a federal judge throws it out.

I REALIZE I'm not a constitutional lawyer, and I don't play one on the Internet, but what the hell does the definition of marriage have to do with not throwing gays out of the military?

The definition of marriage predates not only the constitution of the United States but also western civilization itself, leading me to wonder whether this has more to do with the king's new clothes than civil rights and constitutional order.

As much as the nekkid-as-a-jaybird monarch wanted to believe he had a fine new outfit, it just wasn't so. There is a difference between delusion and reality -- one which "progressives" think they can wish away just as facilely as they do the normative definition of matrimony.

Legally, if the administration unilaterally decides that a law that has been on the books for 15 years -- one which it has been defending for all that time -- suddenly is constitutionally indefensible merely because times have changed and the law is slave to societal whimsy, shouldn't it, logically, be asking what other laws are invalid because they make distinctions based on gender or "conventional" notions about the right role of sexuality?

Shouldn't Holder's Justice Department be filing civil-rights lawsuits against every local jurisdiction that allows men to go topless but forbids women to? Shouldn't we be eliminating the legal tyranny of laws based on what may well be outdated concepts of "underage" sex?

And don't we owe fundamentalist Mormons and traditional Muslims a big apology and a legal free pass to marry however many women as they will?

THE ONLY WAY out of this, I fear, is just getting the state the hell out of the marriage business altogether. Give any two consenting adults a civil union if they want one, and leave marriage as a religious matter.

Barring any reassertion of authority by society's dwindling cadre of "grown-ups," America will not end well, though end it will.

Frankly, I don't know why Glenn Beck is all head up about the pending global takeover by the coming Islamic caliphate. If and when it arrives on our shores, I predict we'll be about ready to embrace a little order -- any kind of order -- to make the mayhem stop.

America 2010: A tragedy in four acts

Sorry, Glenn. In this case, "puppetmaster" George Soros was right.

"A 1957 movie -- made by a communist, appropriately" -- Soros' alleged "gift" for Glenn Beck. That is, according to Beck. You see, Soros thinks the Fox News Channel's resident paranoiac is the real-life "Lonesome" Rhodes from A Face in the Crowd, Elia Kazan's 1957 "communist" classic.

According to Beck.

Well, heck. It must be true, the John Birch Society's magazine is picking up Beck's "exposé" of Soros and running with it.


OK, DOES Andy Griffith's character remind you of anyone here? Anyone at all?

Substitute Goldline for Vitajex, Lonesome's sponsor in the film. Anything come to mind now?


THANK GOD that the ultimate faith of "Lonesome" Beck's followers rests in the United States Constitution -- not a TV host. At least if Beck starts to steer them astray, the foundational document of our democratic republic -- and Tea Party America's exhaustive knowledge of it -- will be there to steer them (and us) away from the brink of something really nasty.


OH, S***.

'Patriots' and their sympathy for the devil

Here's all you need to know about America and her "patriots" today, in three simple video clips.

Above, we see that "patriots" today are so offended by Muslims building a mosque blocks from Ground Zero in New York that they're willing to give offense to the most precious principles of American constitutional law, as enshrined in the First Amendment.


AND THEN we see that Republican "patriots" in Congress and elsewhere are so upset about illegal immigration, they are chomping at the bit to undo the 14th Amendment, undoing some foundational principles of their own party in the process and once again leaving the question "Who is an American?" up to the political whims and prejudices of the moment.


LET'S ASK St. Thomas More, as depicted by Paul Scofield in A Man for All Seasons, how that's going to work out for them.

Has anyone considered that it's better to give the devil his due than to give him the whole bloody country, something our American "patriots" seem hell-bent on doing?

As feds move in, snitches get . . . sued?

If not for the tireless efforts of the U.S. Department of Justice, Louisiana would. . . .

Sorry, finishing that lede would take my imagination to places no man's imagination should have to go. The U.S. State Department would have to issue urgent "travel advisories."

So, without scaring ourselves by speculating on a Gret Stet without ongoing, massive intervention by the feds, let's just say the dance card of Justice lawyers and FBI agents just picked up one more two-step. And it all has to do with the "proactive policing" Baton Rouge cops engaged in after Hurricane Katrina.

NATURALLY, the locals have taken offense at the offense taken by New Mexico and Michigan troopers over Baton Rouge cops' "law enforcement" practices after the storm, accounts of which -- more than four years later -- have led to the federal civil-rights investigation. Today's story in The Advocate has this choice passage:

Asked why law enforcement officers from other states would lie about what they saw Baton Rouge police doing, LeDuff has said he suspects the troopers wanted to be where the action was.

“Everybody who came here wanted to be in New Orleans, where all of this was going on, to rescue, to stop the looting, to stop the people from shooting at helicopters,” he has said. “I don’t think people wanted to come to Baton Rouge. We weren’t the story.

Cpl. Cleveland Thomas, one of the officers disciplined because of the troopers’ complaints, told Police Department investigators the allegations lodged against him were false and the New Mexico officer made them because he was “scared and wanted to go home.”

Olson, the New Mexico spokesman, said Thursday he found the comments in the newspaper’s story “very disturbing” and “that clearly is not the case.”

He said his officers volunteered to leave their families and jobs to come help the people of Louisiana and that “it’s difficult when baseless accusations like that are made.”

Olson said he hopes the U.S. Justice Department has a “thorough and successful” investigation.

He added he’s heard from various Baton Rouge media outlets that the Baton Rouge Union of Police Local 237 is considering filing a lawsuit against his agency because of the complaints it filed against the Police Department.

Chris Stewart, president of the police union, said during the March 24 “Jim Engster Show” on WRKF radio that the union is “researching every possible avenue that we can pursue in order to clear the names of our officers.”

“If it involves a lawsuit, then we are going to do that,” Stewart said on the radio show. “We are waiting now for our attorneys to come back with some decisions or opinions.”

Stewart told WAFB-TV on March 23 that “to be called racist and just rogue cops and all the allegations that were made, it’s offensive to us to be called this. We needed to clear the air with the public as best we can.”

BASICALLY, what we have here is the bizarre confluence of a total breakdown in "Southern hospitality" and Baton Rouge cops internalizing the ghetto code of "snitches get stitches." Being that a) the Yankee cops went home long ago and b) the feds are watching, the locals are considering trying to, alternatively, just shake down the "snitches" in a court of law.

Or what passes for one in the Gret Stet.

After reading the Advocate piece, my wife and I were discussing our shared incredulity at Baton Rouge's official incredulity that outsiders might say awful things about how its Bubbas in blue roll down there on the bayou.

That's when it occurred to me that my wife's incredulity stems from being a native Midwesterner, and that mine stems from, after 20-plus years up here, having turned into one myself. "My God," I told her, "they think they're normal!"

OF COURSE they do. They think it's not only normal to harass and "beat down" whom they please when they please -- and, to be fair, this isn't a Louisiana-only cop pathology -- but that it's absolutely incredible that anyone would take exception, which pretty much is a Bayou State pathology.

And, hell, that might be absolutely normal-- in a Caribbean, banana republic-y kind of way -- except for that little Louisiana Purchase thing a couple of centuries back. But this ain't Haiti, and it ain't In the Heat of the Night, either.

It's the United States. It's 2010. And, God willing, the Justice Department will be pointing out to the special-ed students of constitutional democracy -- yet again -- that's just not how we Americans roll nowadays.

America's next great bad reputation

Click on pictures for documents

What is it that people say about never having a second chance to make a good first impression?

Yeah, Baton Rouge never heard that one. Or much about the Constitution of the United States.


AND JUST from a pure public-relations perspective -- forget basic issues of police practice, justice, race relations or jurisprudence -- what I'm sure has happened in the case of Baton Rouge officials' "Wyatt Earp meets David Duke" fetish is that New Mexico and Michigan state troopers who witnessed this stuff told some people.

Who told some people.

Who told some people.

Who told some people.

Who told some people about what redneck mongoloids the people were in Baton Rouge, La. And what abject racists. And how you don't want to go there.

Especially if you're of the Not White persuasion. Or the Not From Around Here persuasion.

And then the newspaper in Baton Rouge finally got a hold of the Michigan and New Mexico troopers official reports . . . which Baton Rouge police officials found myriad reasons not to do much about.

And then -- especially in the wake of the FBI getting to the bottom of the post-Katrina Danziger Bridge massacre perpetrated by New Orleans cops -- some national news outlet (or outlets) are going to pick up on the Baton Rouge incidents as a nice sidebar to the main atrocity in the Big Easy.

And they're going to tell their readers and viewers.

Who are going to tell some people.

Who are going to tell some people.

Let me know how that's going to be working out for America's Next Great City (TM).

America's next great banana republic

Was it embarrassment over their ugly cop cars?

Were Baton Rouge's finest just having a bad hurricane-hair day?

Or are basic tenets of U.S. constitutional law just foreign concepts in America's next great banana republic?

Whatever it was that caused Baton Rouge cops to get so out of line in the wake of Hurricane Katrina that more than a few out-of-state counterparts recoiled in horror as they rode shotgun with the locals, apparently none of it was so horrible that official Baton Rouge couldn't offer up embarrassingly lame excuses. As only officials in banana republics can.

TAKE THESE incidents uncovered by The Advocate newspaper after a four-year legal battle to obtain reports filed with the Baton Rouge Police Department by officers from New Mexico and Michigan. Here's what police from New Mexico alleged:

New Mexico state police Agent Nathan Lucero said he saw “subjects being stopped for no reason, searches being performed with no probable cause and people’s civil rights being violated.”

Lucero said he also “witnessed officers referring to African Americans as animals and that they needed to be beaten down.”

Lucero said one officer told him that after the hurricane, police had gone into black neighborhoods and “beaten them down.”

That officer, Lucero said, would point a spotlight in black people’s faces during the patrols and say: “What are you doing standing in the road? Are you stupid? Get out of the road.”

“The black civilians were on the sidewalks and were not bothering anyone,” Lucero added.

Lucero said police working in Tigerland near LSU, an area he described as “white and wealthy,” were much more congenial. The officers would say things like “Hello and how are you” or “Have a good night and be careful,” he said.

Lucero did not name any of the officers.

New Mexico state police Agent Patrick Oakley said Baton Rouge Police Officer Tim Browning used the term “heathens” to describe a group of black men they encountered.

“Officer Browning made contact with these subjects with no reasonable suspicion or probable cause, performed pat downs and extracted items from the pockets of these individuals,” Oakley said.

New Mexico state police Officer Gregory Hall said he rode with Baton Rouge Police Officer Chad King on two occasions.

“King is a good officer but seems to handle black people differently than he would a pretty Caucasian woman,” Hall wrote. “Each time Officer King would make contact with a Caucasian person he would be friendly and pleasant. But when he spoke to a black person he was very loud, rude and demeaning.”

Hall said that while he believes most of the Baton Rouge officers are good, he perceived a racial bias among many.

“I do feel that most of the night officers that I had contact with had some type of comment or attitude towards black people in general,” he said.

OR PERHAPS you could take a look at these eyewitness reports by police from Michigan on Katrina duty in Louisiana's capital city:

Michigan State Trooper Jeffrey Werda said officers offered to let him beat a prisoner as a thank you for helping out with relief efforts.

“I was told that I could go ahead and beat someone down or bitch slap them and they would do the report,” Werda said. “I was told this was my gift from them for helping with the hurricane relief efforts.”

Werda reported seeing several incidents of excessive force.

One man walking down a street ran into his house after seeing a patrol unit, Werda said. The Baton Rouge officer chased the man into the house and arrested him, then forced him onto the hood of the patrol unit, the trooper said.

“The officer then began telling him that the next time he runs from the police, he will get beat down,” Werda said.

The man complained his wrist was hurting, Werda said. Another Baton Rouge officer bent the man’s wrist and threatened to break it if he didn’t shut his mouth, Werda wrote.

Werda said he asked the man why he ran if he was not doing anything wrong, and the reply was that “he did not want to get his ass kicked by the police, as this has occurred to him before.”

In another incident, Werda said, police were called to a bar near LSU because of a fight. He said the fight was over and everything was calm when an officer approached a man and “suddenly hit the subject in the side of the head with his forearm and took him to the ground in a head lock. “

“I observed this subject the entire time and at no time did he pose as a threat or mouth off at the officers,” Werda said. “In fact, he was so intoxicated he could barely stand up on his own.”

Werda did not name the officers involved in any of the incidents he reported.

AND YOU THOUGHT stuff like this only happened in the movies. Or in Juarez.

What in the world could the police chief say about his department in the wake of such allegations from sworn officers from two other states? Well, this:

Baton Rouge Police Chief Jeff LeDuff defends his department’s performance after Katrina, noting that the city was full of evacuees and rife with stories of looting and shooting in New Orleans.

“We had a charge to hold the line and balance this city and keep it from being overrun and looted and fired upon,” he said.

He denied giving orders to run evacuees out of town, noting he had family members staying in his own home.

Asked why law enforcement officers from other states would lie about what they saw Baton Rouge police doing, LeDuff said he suspects the troopers wanted to be where the action was.

“Everybody who came here wanted to be in New Orleans where all of this was going on, to rescue, to stop the looting, to stop the people from shooting at helicopters,” he said. “I don’t think people wanted to come to Baton Rouge. We weren’t the story.”

NO, I WOULDN'T believe this s*** either if I weren't from there. But really . . . believe it.

Officialdom in Baton Rouge not only believes you, the rest of America, will buy the load they're trying to sell, but -- on some warped level --they actually believe it themselves. And except for the unfortunates who got their faces slammed into the hood of one of Baton Rouge's ugly-ass cop cars for no good reason, Louisianians will believe it, too.

After all, a state doesn't work its way to the top of all the bad lists and the bottom of all the good ones without being able to believe "as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

Take Mayor-President Kip Holden, for example. Every morning, he gets up and tells himself that his stagnant, middling Southern capital is "America's next great city." This amid a crumbling school system, an astronomical murder rate, endemic poverty, crumbling infrastructure and an ongoing brain drain.

Then, after he tells himself that, he tells The Advocate this:

East Baton Rouge Parish Mayor-President Kip Holden denied ordering police to run people out of town, though he acknowledged wanting them to be aggressive.

“I was not going to let Baton Rouge be overrun by some people from New Orleans who were hell-bent on committing crimes,” he said in an interview last week.

He said his message to those “thugs who are robbing, raping and looting in New Orleans” was that he would provide them shelter, but “it will not be at the Red Cross — it’s going to be in jail.”

“If there’s a blame to be placed on aggressive enforcement, blame it on me,” he added.

YEAH, YOU RIGHT, CAP. It's the s***s when da slums a Noo Orluns escape, well . . . da slums a Noo Orluns.

If Holden had been any more proactive, he would have directed all the New Orleans-to-Baton Rouge vehicle traffic to facilities where the evacuees could take "showers."

But the bottom line you, the rest of America, need to remember is this: Both the mayor-president and the police chief are African-Americans. And when a city's black folk can be just as big a bunch of rednecks as your average Bubba. . . .