Gotta love Keith Olbermann. I can't stand him, actually — except as occasional entertainment when he goes off on one of his rants. But I love this delicious contrast.

In the summer, when non-liberals were protesting the health care plan with rallies and tea party protests, Olbermann was aghast. On his August 7, 2009 program, Olby said this:

"The truth is out about the societal sabotage dressed up as phony protests against health care reform....When Hamas does it or Hezbollah does it, it is called terrorism. Why should Republican lawmakers and the AstroTurf groups organizing on behalf of the health care industry be viewed any differently — especially now that far too many tea party protesters are comparing President Obama and health care reform to Hitler and the Holocaust?"

Got that? Those on the right who wanted to kill the bill in the summer were engaging in "societal sabotage" (whatever that is, exactly). The protests were "phony," a Trojan horse for the "health care industry" (read: insurance companies and drug companies). By God! It was akin to Hamas terrorism!!

Here's Olby on December 17, 2009:

“The Senate Bill with the mandate must be defeated, if not in the Senate, then in the House. Health care reform that benefits the industry at the cost of the people is intolerable and there are no moral constructs in which it can be supported. And if still the bill, and this heinous mandate become law, there is yet further reaction required. I call on all those whose conscience urges them to fight to use the only weapon that will left to us if this bill as currently constituted becomes law. We must not buy federally-mandated insurance, if this cheesy counterfeit of reform is all we can buy. No single payer? No sale. No public option? No sale. No Medicare buy-in? No sale.

I am one of the self-insured, albeit by choice. And I hereby pledge that I will not buy this perversion of health-care reform. Pass this at your peril, senators. And sign it at yours, Mr. President. I will not buy this insurance. Brand me a law-breaker if you choose. Fine me if you will. Jail me if you must. But if the Medicare buy-in goes but the mandate stays, the people who fought so hard and and sincerely to bring sanity to this system must kill this mutated, ugly version of their dream because those elected by us, to act for us, have forgotten what must be the golden rule of healthcare reform. It is the same rule to which physicians are bound by oath: First, do no harm.

Goodnight, and good luck.”

Welcome to the tea party, pal. That last bit about first doing no harm was a major point the tea party protesters, rally attendees and town hall speakers were making. Of course, we were coming from the opposite direction politically, but it is nice to see Olby's now on the same page — even if he's only reading from the left-hand margin. A demand that Americans buy government health insurance? That's OK. A demand that Americans buy private health insurance? That's not OK. Allowing Americans to decide these matters for themselves in a truly free market for health insurance? Also not OK ... except for Olby, who retains his right to buy the insurance he wants.

I find it hilarious that now — at long last, sir! — Olby has decided it's OK for Americans to actively "fight" with the "weapons" they have at their disposal to defeat ObamaCare. Since Olby's such a smart and intellectually honest guy, I'd love him to explain this: If the summer protesters were AstroTurfers doing the bidding of the insurance companies, why are they not now taking to the streets in favor of ObamaCare since (in Olby's view) it would be a sop to those very same insurance companies?

Last I checked, all those summer protesters are still against it.

Perilous TimesIt's the holidays. Hanukkah is just about over and Christmas is just a few more shopping days away. So what do we decide to talk about? Sedition and liberty during wartime, that's what.

Joel and I had the great pleasure of interviewing University of Chicago Law Professor Geoffrey Stone about civil liberties and dissent for the latest podcast. Stone takes us on a brief history of seditious libel law and wartime dissent. He compares and contrasts earlier efforts by the government to bend the Constitution in service of war fighting with recent policies by the Bush and Obama administrations. Stone is author of Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism, War and Liberty: An American Dilemma, and Top Secret: When Our Government Keeps Us in the Dark.

Among the questions we discuss:

• Is it fair to say Fox News is guilty of sedition?
• Is there a difference between seditious speech and seditious action?
• How does Barack Obama's record on civil liberties compare to George W. Bush's?
• Should John Yoo go to jail?
• Should Yoo be fired from Berkeley?
• What does the War on Terrorism have in common with McCarthyism?
• Which is better: Jailing dissenters or wiretapping phones?
• Is the right to privacy doomed?

Music heard in this podcast:

• "Tradition" - Fiddler on the Roof OST
• "For Beginners" - M. Ward
• "Gut Feeling" - Devo
• "I'm Free" - The Rolling Stones
• "Every Breath You Take" - The Bad Plus
• "Freedom of Speech (Watch What You Say)" - Ice T

Well, this is a fine how-do-you-do. Rep. Alan Grayson wants U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to fine and imprison one of the Florida Democrat's Republican critics. The Orlando Sentinel reports (via Politico):

U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson of Orlando took such offense at a parody website aimed at unseating him that the freshman Democrat has asked that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder investigate the Lake County activist who started the anti-Grayson website “mycongressmanisnuts.com.”

Specifically, Grayson accuses Republican activist Angie Langley of lying to federal elections (officials). His four-page complaint highlights the fact that the Clermont resident lives outside his district, but that Langley still uses the term “my” in “mycongressmanisnuts.com.”

“Ms. Langley has deliberately masqueraded as a constituent of mine, in order to try to create the false appearance that she speaks for constituents who don’t support me,” writes Grayson. “[She] has chosen a name for her committee that is utterly tasteless and juvenile.”

Grayson’s office did not respond with comment other than to confirm the letter exists — including its request that Langley be fined and “imprisoned for five years.”

Grayson has a well-deserved reputation as a boor and a blowhard. So some commentators are treating the freshman congressman's complaint as a kind of joke. I don't think it's a joke at all. Not to put too fine a point on it, Alan Grayson is a would-be tyrant and an enemy of the First Amendment. He loves the Constitution so much, he's willing to jail any opponent who says otherwise. He makes Robert Bauer look like Geoffrey Stone.

If I had the income to spare, I would send $100 to mycongressmanisnuts.com, and another $100 to any Democrat with the nerve to challenge Grayson in the primary next year. In a House filled with demagogues, grifters, confidence men, sociopaths and garden-variety liars, Grayson is a particularly noxious presence. He has no business in public office.

Previous posts in this series
I: On the Obama campaign's "Action Wire"
II: On Obama "truth squads" in Missouri
III: More on Obama "truth squads" in Missouri and the censorious Robert Bauer
IV: On Sen. Jeff Bingaman's rationale for the Fairness Doctrine
V: On H.R. 1966, the overly broad anti-cyberbullying bill
VI: On the Obama administration's effort to limit "special interest influence" on the stimulus
VII: On the censorious Robert Bauer's promotion to White House Counsel

Chester JohnsonHere is a possible twist in the story of Jalen Cromwell, the Taunton, Mass., second-grader who made national news for drawing Jesus Christ on the cross and getting psychoanalyzed for his efforts: Jalen's father, part-time janitor Chester Johnson, played story-hungry journalists for saps. That's what Attleboro Sun-Chronicle Editor Mike Kirby thinks.

"It was a story too good to be true -- because it wasn't," Kirby opines in a column published Thursday. He continues:

The father of an 8-year-old Taunton boy tells the local newspaper that his son, a special needs student, was suspended and ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation after the boy makes a crude drawing of a crucifix, with X's for eyes. The boy, the father says, had been asked by a teacher to draw something that reminded him of Christmas.

...

The story, naturally, takes off like wildfire. It seems like another example of the war on Christmas, of political correctness gone mad, of the lack of common sense in our education system, of the left-wing overtaking Americans' Constitutional right to practice their religion.

But the more the father -- who at first hid behind a veil of anonymity -- talks, the sketchier the story sounds. Because it's a story that's just too good to be true.

(Click "Read more" below for the rest of this post.)

The father of Jalen Cromwell holds the drawing of the crucified Christ that has caused so much controversy.

An interesting Q&A with Hentoff, the 84-year-old civil libertarian and jazz maven, by the Rutherford Institute's John Whitehead. The stand-out comment for me:

I am an atheist, although I very much admire and have been influenced by many traditionally religious people. I say this because the Left has taken what passes for their principles as an absolute religion. They don't think anymore. They just react. When they have somebody like Obama whom they put into office, they believed in the religious sense and, of course, that is a large part of the reason for their silence on these issues. They are very hesitant to criticize Obama, but that is beginning to change. Even on the cable network MSNBC, some of the strongest proponents of Obama are now beginning to question, if I may use their words, their "deity."

There is a great deal more, of course.

Hentoff, who spent half a century writing for the Village Voice, is now a fellow of the Cato Institute.

(Hat tip: Reason on Twitter.)

Joel and I do our level best to bum everyone out in what's likely our last Scripps-Howard column for 2009. (Dunno. We might file one more between Christmas and New Year's...)

Sez I: "'Enjoy yourself,' a wise man once advised. 'It's later than you think.' If nothing else, be pessimistically optimistic about 2010."

Sez Joel: "We're going to be OK. Maybe not right away, and maybe not soon enough to suit, well, any of us. But we're going to be OK. We've been through this before and we'll probably go through it again. But please, God, not too soon."

After we filed the column early this morning, I saw the latest poll from Pew Research reaffirming that America remains essentially a 50-50 nation:

Public opinion about President Barack Obama and his major polices continues to be divided as the year comes to a close. His overall approval rating is 49%, which is largely unchanged from November (51%). However, the percentage expressing at least a fair amount of confidence in Obama to do the right thing when it comes to fixing the economy has slipped from 59% in October to 52% currently. Smaller percentages express confidence in Obama on health care reform (44%) and reducing the budget deficit (41%).

The "new politics" is the same as the old politics.

Looking for a comprehensive round-up of news links on climate change skepticism? I just discovered, perusing our referral logs, Tom Nelson's blog. Nelson kindly linked to my snarky little post last night about China's reluctance to sign on to any economy-killing agreements at Copenhagen.

One good turn deserves another, so I encourage you to pay Nelson's site a visit.

It appears that Jalen Cromwell's parents are one step closer to suing the Taunton, Mass., school district over educators' response to the second-grader's drawing of a crucified Christ.

The Taunton Gazette reports today:

A meeting between Taunton School Superintendent Julie Hackett and the family of a boy who drew a picture of Jesus that has caused a national uproar did not materialize Wednesday.

“They did not show, they gave no indication that they were canceling the meeting, and we have not yet rescheduled,” said Hackett, responding to questions e-mailed to her.

Later Wednesday, a civil liberties organization representing the family released a statement, calling the incident in which 8-year-old Maxham Elementary School second-grader Jalen Cromwell’s drawing was deemed inappropriate an “overreaction by school officials.”

The boy’s father, Chester Johnson, stayed inside his Oak Street apartment Wednesday, deferring all media inquiries to a spokesperson at the Rutherford Institute, a nonprofit international civil liberties legal group based in Charlottesville, Va. The group specializes in defending constitutional and religious rights.

In a news release, Rutherford’s President, John Whitehead, asserted the student “was allegedly forced by school officials to undergo psychological evaluations. ... The psychological damage to this family is appalling."

According to the Rutherford Institute's statement:

In a letter to the superintendent of the Taunton Public Schools, Institute attorneys pointed out that the effective suspension of Jalen from school deprived him and his parents of their constitutional rights to due process and punished Jalen for engaging in expressive activity protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In light of the fact that this incident has made Jalen's continued attendance at Maxham School untenable, Institute attorneys have also requested that the school arrange for Jalen to be transferred to an out-of-district school and for his parents to be compensated for the associated transportation costs.

Notice, no "war on Christmas" rhetoric there, or elsewhere in the Institute's press release. So this Kevin Cullen column in the Boston Globe completely misses the point. Although the religious aspect of the controversy is unavoidable, the First Amendment implications are secondary (perhaps that's why it's mentioned second in the paragraph above). The problem is how school officials reacted -- or overreacted.

The story about the Taunton, Mass., 8-year-old "suspended" and subjected to a psychiatric evaluation for drawing Jesus Christ on the cross is more complicated than first reported. I still see the current hullaballoo as a species of zero-tolerance gone too far, but the initial story now demands some revision and further explanation.

Taunton Mayor Charles Crowley on Tuesday spoke out about the row, saying school Superintendent Julie Hackett should apologize to the boy's family and ordering the district to pay the for the psychiatric exam the child had to undergo as a condition of returning to class.

But Hackett pushed back, categorically denying the Maxham Elementary School second grader was ever suspended and saying the father's account of what happened was incomplete at best.

“The report is totally inaccurate,’’ Hackett told the Boston Globe on Tuesday. (Read the Taunton Public School district's official statement here.)

Meantime, Chester Johnson, the 8-year-old's father, elaborated to journalists on what school authorities allegedly told him. GateHouse News Service in Massachusetts reports:

(T)he father of the second-grade student said on Tuesday that school officials were concerned that the 8-year-old boy may have intended to depict himself, rather than Jesus Christ, on the cross.

“They told me there was a kid at Taunton High School who drew a picture of knives and guns, then killed himself,” said Chester Johnson, the boy’s father.

Apparently, the teacher and the school's principal and counselor thought the boy might have been in some sort of distress. But the father tells it differently.

The child initially insisted that the picture depicted Jesus on the cross, but after being questioned for the third time, the boy told school officials that the drawing was of himself asleep on the cross, Johnson said Tuesday. Based on the reactions of the teacher and principal, the boy sensed that he was in trouble for drawing Jesus, but then changed his story in an effort to avoid being disciplined, the father said.

Johnson also told a reporter that "the teacher and principal questioned his son three times about the drawing before notifying a parent." Behavior like that invites lawsuits, which, of course, Johnson is contemplating. (For what it's worth, an ACLU attorney said, "They owe this kid an apology and his family an apology.")

But Superintendent Hackett sent a statement to Taunton city officials and the press that disputes several key points. According to the Boston Globe:

(T)he student was never suspended and that neither he nor other students at the Maxham Elementary School were asked by their teacher to sketch something that reminded them of Christmas or any religious holiday, as the newspaper reported and the father suggested.

She said it was unclear whether the boy -- who put his name above his stick-figure portrait of Christ on the cross -- even drew it in school.

"The inaccuracies in the original media story have resulted in a great deal of criticism and scrutiny of the system that is unwarranted," she said.

She said the boy's drawing was seen as a potential cry for help when the student identified himself, rather than Jesus, as the figure on the cross, which sparked the teacher to alert the school's principal and staff psychologist.

She declined to comment on whether the teacher had reason to believe that the student might be crying out for help.

She added: "Religion had nothing to do with this at all.''

Hackett pointed out that Taunton is known as "The Christmas City." Visitors come from across the region to see the annual lighting on the Taunton green, according to the city's website.

Although many other commentators have played up the religious angle of the story, I was -- and remain -- most interested in the zero-tolerance and therapeutic aspects of the case. Any whiff of deviance is a potential threat. When in doubt, call the shrinks (or the cops). That view is further supported by this story in Wednesday's Boston Herald:

(Johnson) acknowledged that the boy was not suspended, but said he was told the boy could not go back to school until he received counseling, which Johnson said he considers the equivalent of a suspension. He said his son was out Dec. 3 and 4.

The boy was allowed to return to class Dec. 7 after a two-day risk assessment by Taunton licensed social worker Helene Titelbaum reported, “(The boy) does not appear to be a threat to himself or others at this time.”

According to (Melissa Cromwell, the boy's mother) and Johnson, officials at the Lowell M. Maxham School were concerned the boy’s drawing of Jesus nailed to the cross suggested possible violent tendencies.

And I think it comes back to that. It could have been the picture of a crucified Christ, Santa Claus machine-gunning Iraqis, or bunnies with assault rifles. The school would have reacted the same -- with horror and concern -- to any artistic depiction of violence, even though more often than not, the drawings have no relationship to harmful behavior.

(Incidentally, a friend e-mailed in reply to my earlier post: "My sister teaches kindergarten in Cleveland. She had a kid who drew a picture of Jesus with a gun. Jesus was shooting the little children rather than loving them. This kid's dad is in prison for murder. Nothing happened with this kid when my sister went to see the principal to voice her concern." Evidently, public school administrators are latter-day Manichees.)

"It is unfortunate that the actions of our district staff have been classified as 'religious' in nature when, in fact, they were based solely on the well-being of the student," the Taunton district’s statement said.

They're so concerned about the student's well-being that they're willing to traumatize him to keep him "safe."

(Update: See this follow-up post on the school district's push-back against press reports.)

(Updated below with details from the Associated Press, video from New England Cable News, and other commentary.)

Just in time for Christmas, some soulless, bureaucratic automatons at Maxham Elementary in the hamlet of Taunton, Massachusetts suspended a second-grader from school and ordered him to receive a psychiatric evaluation for drawing a picture of Jesus Christ on the cross. Looks like zero-tolerance idiocy strikes again.

Here is the story, according to the Taunton Gazette:

A Taunton father is outraged after his 8-year-old son was sent home from school and required to undergo a psychological evaluation after drawing a stick-figure picture of Jesus Christ on the cross.

The father said he got a call earlier this month from Maxham Elementary School informing him that his son, a second-grade student, had created a violent drawing. The image in question depicted a crucified Jesus with Xs covering his eyes to signify that he had died on the cross. The boy wrote his name above the cross.

“As far as I’m concerned, they’re violating his religion,” the incredulous father said.

He requested that his name and his son’s name be withheld from publication to protect the boy.

The student drew the picture shortly after taking a family trip to see the Christmas display at the National Shrine of Our Lady of La Salette, a Christian retreat site in Attleboro. He made the drawing in class after his teacher asked the children to sketch something that reminded them of Christmas, the father said.

“I think what happened is that because he put Xs in the eyes of Jesus, the teacher was alarmed and they told the parents they thought it was violent,” said Toni Saunders, an educational consultant with the Associated Advocacy Center.

I'm not certain that the school violated the boy's religion, although it wouldn't be the first time a school trampled on a student's First Amendment right to portray religious themes in art. If nothing else, school officials violated common sense.

The drawing supposedly "violated the code of violence in the school handbook," according to the Washington Times. But this wasn't a case of a Cub Scout bringing a camping tool to class or even an older student having a knife locked in his car. This was a picture. Even the "violence" depicted in it is relatively benign. And in any event, school officials make a grave and fundamental mistake when they equate pictures of violence with actual violence. (Interestingly, a number of schools suggest "writing stories or poems or drawing pictures" as a prevention tool. Makes sense. It's cathartic.)

Turns out, the boy is a special education student, but he reportedly has no history of discipline problems. Could that have influenced the school's decision?

Naturally, the district superintendent justifies the school's overreaction with the usual butt-blanketing bureaucratic balderdash: "Generally speaking, we have safety protocols in place," Superintendent Julie Hackett told the Taunton Gazette. "If a situation warrants it, we ask for outside safety evaluations if we have particular concerns about a child’s safety. We followed all the protocols in our system."

I believe that is correct -- they followed "all the protocols." Does that not suggest something is very, very wrong with the protocols? And isn't it funny how the protocols almost always exclude or present parents with faits accompli about what needs to be done to their children?

Update: Oh, dear. According to the AP:

Chester Johnson told WBZ-TV that his son made the drawing on Dec. 2 after his second-grade teacher asked children to sketch something that reminded them of the holiday.

Johnson said the teacher became upset when his son said he drew himself on the cross. Johnson, who is black, told WBZ he suspects racism is involved. He said he thinks the school overreacted and wants an apology.

Hard to say, from this distance, whether or how race was a factor in the teacher's response or the school's decision. But certainly the school overreacted in any event. The Associated Press story also fleshes out some details about 8-year-old Johnson's reaction to his circumstances:

The boy was cleared to return to school on Dec. 7 after the evaluation found nothing to indicate that he posed a threat to himself or others. But his father said the boy was traumatized by the incident and the school district has approved the family's request to have the child transferred to another school.

"They owe my family an apology and the kid an apology and they need to work with my son (to) the best of their ability to get him back to where he was before all this happened," Johnson told New England Cable News.

Too late. The school can't undo what it's done. In an effort to play it safe, the school harmed this child. Does anyone think that Chester Johnson's son will ever forget what happened to him when he drew a picture of his savior? So stupid.

Here is the video of the story from New England Cable News.

Update: Ed Morrissey writes:

It’s hard to imagine a more clueless, knee-jerk response than the one given by this school. First, Jesus on a crucifix has been a symbol of Christianity for two millenia. Since Christmas is in fact a Christian holiday, at least nominally, the crucifix in this drawing clearly came from Christian symbolism and not some latent threat of a reenactment of the last scenes of Spartacus from a second grader. How dense or deliberately obtuse must a teacher and administrators be not to understand the symbolism involved in this drawing?

And a commenter at Joanne Jacobs's blog reiterates what I've been saying all along about zero-tolerance rules:

This kind of incident does not enhance the public view of the education establishment and those who inhabit it. There’s a toxic combination of silly, “zero-tolerance” policies and no common sense or judgment in their application. It’s a total cop-out on the part of the perpetrators; a refusal to accept the responsibility to make sensible judgments and accept the consequences. It’s the same mindset that sees bringing an aspirin or a plastic knife as deserving of expulsion.

The Taunton Gazette editorializes:

Why didn’t the teacher just talk to the child when he was drawing the picture and ask what it meant? Couldn’t that have spared everyone the grief?

The child was just doing his assignment. He wasn’t drawing this picture to cause any harm. He was just doing his schoolwork.

Yet the school district has turned this into a major story that is now gaining some national notoriety.

All for a little picture.

(Hat tips: Trent England on Twitter and Michelle Malkin.)

Related posts on school zero-tolerance policies run amok:

• Vindication for Zachary Christie
• No vindication for Matthew Whalen... yet
• Who is George Goodwin?
• Where is the school board on Lansingburgh's insipid, mindless zero-tolerance policy?
• Well, OF COURSE Lansingburgh school administrators overreacted
• Vindication for Matthew Whalen... maybe soon
• On zero-tolerance policies: "Schools' get-tough rules cross the line"
• No vindication for Matthew Whalen

Michael Leahy's Washington Post feature today on the travails of California State Assemblyman Anthony Adams (R-Claremont, and a bunch of other disparate Foothill and High Desert communities that have more to do with the scourge of gerrymandering than fair or rational representation) deserves more than I can give it just now -- which means I'll probably never get back to it.

Leahy seems to think Adams's problems in California say something about the condition of the Republican Party nationally. Well, nuts to that. Happily, Bill Voegeli, who discovered the story by way of John Judis's snarky take at The New Republic's blog, offers his own astute and witty assessment at NoLeftTurns.

Three quick points, however:

• Recalling Adams was always a bad idea. That is not the same as saying that Adams does not deserve to be ousted. I hope he's back manning a cash register in Hesperia come 2011. But the recall should be reserved for the most egregious cases -- malfeasance, fraud, rank incompetence and the like. Bad as Adams' budget vote was, it simply doesn't rise to that level. (I find myself disagreeing here with Rep. Tom McClintock, with whom I agree on just about everything else. So it goes...)

• Note the reason Adams gives Leahy for voting for the budget that will doom him at the ballot box next year: "State people were not getting paychecks. We faced the possibility of paying those people off in IOUs for quite some time...." State people. His concern, in other words, was for the public employees and not the taxpayers who bear the burden of paying the public employees' salaries (to say nothing of their pensions, but that's another matter...)

• Anthony Adams has the worst mother-in-law in the world.

Oh, one more point. Adams mentions, "This Taliban mentality: it's trying to get rid of people in our party. It makes it impossible to grow the party." The absurdity of the former statement undermines the wisdom of the latter.

Put more succinctly: Taliban mentality, my... foot.

Steven Hayward has a short-ish op-ed in Sunday's New York Post that sums up the "Climategate" scandal beautifully.

The piece is a nice abridgment of Hayward's 6,000-word take on the Climate Research Unit e-mail row that appeared last week in the Weekly Standard.

That's an easy one: No, of course not. But Joel takes the question by a Philadelphia City Paper blogger seriously and devises a more qualified answer.

Michael Steele, one of the greatest in a long line of Republican disappointments, had an awkward exchange with the insipid Mike Barnacle on Morning Joe today.

Politico reports on who said what to whom and why:

...Steele got into it with MSNBC’s Mike Barnicle who, in discussing health care, asked, "What are you people for?"

"You people?" Steele asked. "Who are you people?"

"The Republicans, what are you for?" Barnicle responded.

Laughing, Steele -- the first African American chairman of the RNC -- said, "Mike, I just wanted to you define the pronoun baby, that’s all.”

“Oh, come on,” Barnicle responded.

Three morals to this story. First, always obey the Bradbury Rule. Second, you can't trust the system, maaaaan! Third, the original was funnier...

(Hat tip: Memeorandum.)

If you peruse Memeorandum, you might have seen this odd post by a blogger named Suzi Gablik titled "Why I'm Not a Liberal Anymore." Right... what's all this then? A Charles Johnson in reverse? Not exactly.

Gablik writes:

The stuff coming out of "progressive" mouths is all too often on a par with Glenn Beck's abusive rants--both sides (right and left wingers) playing thousand-pound national football with the President as the ball--meaning, kick kick kick, until you bust his dick. This truly makes me sick. (It's meant to be the rhyme from hell.)

Yes, there is some wicked rhetoric in the fever swamps of the left-o-sphere. And...? Turns out, Gablik is upset with her friends and fellow travelers on the left-side of the political spectrum who have lost faith in the Hope and Change that Barack Obama promised. If liberals can turn so quickly on the president, Gablik seems to be arguing, then she doesn't want to be a liberal anymore. (I don't think Gablik would be a fan of Joel's, although he clearly hasn't given up on the president altogether yet.)

So, if Gablik isn't a liberal anymore, what is she?

The answer is I'm a Taoist, even though there isn't a political party yet that goes by that name. And now I can add that I'm also "three in the morning"--which means, in considering both sides of a question, I'm willing to follow two different courses at once. And I'm really glad to have a president who is brave enough and willing to do exactly that, too.

Oooooo-kay! I hesitate to step in the middle of an intramural fight on the left, so I'll leave it to Robert Stacy McCain to do the heavy Googling:

Is there anything in Gablik to be admired? Not really. She slams Beck for "abusive rants," yet what did she write last October?

Palin's cultivated malice almost makes the KKK look untutored.

So much for consistency. And who exactly is Gablik? An art critic with a penchant for grandiose abstraction:

A new paradigm of an engaged, participatory and socially relevant art is emerging . . .

Within the modernist paradigm under which I grew up, art has been typically understood as a collection of prestigious objects, existing in museums and galleries, disconnected from ordinary life and action. . . .

Many of the beliefs about art that our culture subscribes to, that the problems of art are purely aesthetic and that art will never change the world, are beliefs that have diminished the capacity of artists for constructive thought and action. . . .

As many artists shift their work arena from the studio to the more public contexts of political, social, and environmental life, we are all being called, in our understanding of what art is, to move beyond the mode of disinterested contemplation to something that is more participatory and engaged. . . .

Verbose nothingness, the familiar incantation of buzzwords -- "paradigm," "socially relevant," "participatory" -- that function primarily as signifiers of membership in the intellectual ranks. And now, because some liberal critics have turned their guns on Obama, she decides that HuffPo is coterminous with liberalism, and therefore she is not liberal.

Remember this next time somebody tells you conservatives are anti-intellectual morons.

On McCain's last point, it's fair to say conservatives have our own crosses to bear. And God knows we've had our share of family squabbles lately. (This is nothing new, of course. Just look at all the people with whom Harry Jaffa has done battle over the decades.)

Our friends on the left, many of whom count themselves as members of something called the "reality-based community," apparently believed all of the things they said about George W. Bush. That was a mistake. I read somewhere that elections have consequences. That they do. One of those consequences is governing. Governing is not the same as campaigning. And although the majority party might wish the vanquished would just step aside, shut up and let the president have his way, that's just not the way it works in a democratic republic. Almost one full year into Obama's presidency, the idealists who saw Hope and Change realize that he is a politician after all, and politics has limits.

Conservatives might do well to remember that, too. For the moment, however, I'm content to sit back and watch if Taoism stages a comeback.

If I had a dime for every time I looked at some boneheaded policy prescription or egregious piece of legislation and asked, "What are those idiots smoking?" I'd be rich enough to run for governor of California.

Turns out, some guy in Lake Arrowhead didn't realize that was a rhetorical question and wrote up a ballot initiative that would require state legislators to submit to annual drug and alcohol tests.

If passed, any lawmaker who tests positive for drugs or "habitual use of alcohol" would need to complete a substance-abuse program before resuming his or her public duties. Failing a second drug test would result in expulsion from the Legislature.

There is no danger that this initiative will pass, however, let alone make the ballot for voters to reject. The Press-Enterprise reports that the measure is "a long ways short of the nearly 434,000 signatures it needs by Thursday's petition deadline to qualify for the 2010 ballot." This despite plenty of favorable publicity from the John and Ken Show on KFI in Los Angeles. (Have these guys lost their touch or what? Did they ever have it?)

According to the P-E:

(Initiative backer Gary) Ellis said he has no proof of chronic substance abuse among the Legislature's 120 members.

Rather, he saw the initiative as an exercise in democracy, getting lawmakers' attention and avoiding the use of paid signature collectors.

It didn't work.

That's direct democracy for you. But it makes me wonder if we shouldn't force some ballot initiative petitioners to submit to drug and alcohol tests instead? Next year is shaping up to be a wild one for kooky ballot measures, even if they fall short on signatures -- from John Marcotte's "satirical" divorce ban to Gene Glen Simmons' initiative that would impose criminal penalties on politicians who "knowingly and intentionally (make) a false statement of material fact."

Honestly. What are these idiots smoking?

Welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, well.

Rasmussen today:

Running under the Tea Party brand may be better in congressional races than being a Republican.

In a three-way Generic Ballot test, the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds Democrats attracting 36% of the vote. The Tea Party candidate picks up 23%, and Republicans finish third at 18%. Another 22% are undecided.

There is much more to it, of course. Rasmussen, who has been tracking what he calls the Political Class/Mainstream divide since the beginning of the year, notes that "Among the Political Class, not a single respondent picked the Tea Party candidate. However, among those with populist or Mainstream views, 31% prefer the Tea Party, and 26% are undecided. Twenty-three percent (23%) pick a Republican candidate, and 19% are for the Democrat."

Duke Hefland of the L.A. Times has a predictable story today about the American Humanist Association's campaign to promote secularism during this month of religious holidays. I say "predictable" because, of course, such "offbeat" and contrarian features are more likely to get into print than articles about this or that denomination's efforts to minister to the sick, the homeless and the lonely during this season. According to the story:

The group, consisting of atheists and others who say they embrace reason over religion, has launched a national godless holiday campaign, with ads appearing inside or on 250 buses in five U.S. cities, including Los Angeles and San Francisco starting today. The placards depict smiling people wearing red Santa hats with the slogan: "No God? . . . No problem!"

Just as predictably, some religious organizations think the atheists' $40,000, five-city ad campaign amounts to... (sigh)... "an assault on religion." Hefland does his best to sample the reactions of Catholics, Jews and Muslims. I found myself wincing at the Catholic League's Bill Donohue, nodding at Rabbi Elliot Dorff, and feeling my eyes widen at the pronouncements of Imam Muzammil Siddiqi.

Now, Joel and I tackled the "war on Christmas" for the Scripps-Howard column a couple of weeks ago. "All most people want is to say "Merry Christmas" without a bunch of politically correct Grinches and litigious Scrooges getting bent out of shape," I wrote. "We've traveled a long way to reach this absurd point in American life."

Indeed we have. But the American Humanist's ad campaign doesn't bother me one bit. First, because it doesn't seem to be aimed at anyone other than co-relig... er, fellow skepto-agnostic-Americans. They're preaching to the converted, for the most part, and trying to reassure the faithless that doubt is indeed safe. (As if there was any doubt about that.)

Second, because the ads betray a certain insecurity. As the Times story notes, "Humanist leaders say the... ad campaign... is meant to counter a barrage of religious messages during the holiday season, letting free-thinking atheists and agnostics know that they are not alone." Well, no kidding. Is the American Humanist Association worried that 30 days of incessant department store sales, 987 covers of "Jingle Bells" and "Silent Night," and the odd broadcast of "It's a Wonderful Life" will lure their members into the embrace of monkish superstition or evangelical Christianity? Dawkins forbid! Seems like the opposite would be more likely.

Although my own faith isn't what it used to be -- and that may well be an understatement -- I've never understood the weird, embattled sense of entitlement espoused by some atheists and agnostics. Is it the idea that so many people believe "nonsense" that grates? As if secularists aren't prone to irrational flights of fancy. I realize that it's impossible to simply "live and let live," but the Christmas season was so much more pleasant and peaceful when people swallowed their personal grievances for a flawed but nevertheless greater good.

If the holidays are supposed to teach anything, regardless of whether or not you are a person of faith, it's that it isn't about you. If you drop the "faith," you're still left with "hope" and "charity" -- and two out of three ain't bad.

December 7, 1941

Today is the 68th anniversary of Japan's surprise attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor. For decades, "Remember Pearl Harbor" served shorthand for reminding Americans to be ever-vigilant against threats foreign and domestic, to ensure that we would never again be caught off guard by a scheming enemy. That changed on September 11, 2001. The lessons learned -- or not learned -- from both days of infamy haunt us still.

The Detroit Free-Press today publishes a story about the struggle on behalf of the dwindling number of Pearl Harbor veterans to keep the memory of that day alive.

The article, "Another generation's 9/11 lives in infamy," highlights the stories of a few of the men who were there and still live to tell the tale:

Vincent Rosati, 89, of Macomb Township was a Navy gunner's mate aboard the U.S.S. Phoenix, one of several battleships moored on Battleship Row along the southeast shore of Ford Island. A retired Stroh Brewery Co. employee, Rosati said the element of surprise was the most striking similarity between Pearl Harbor and 9/11.

"At Pearl, we should have known better, though," he said. The war had been raging for more than two years by December 1941. "It seems like every generation has to learn the hard way through bloodshed," he said.

"The lessons of Pearl Harbor and 9/11 are that someone's always out to get us and we need to be on the alert," said Francis Rogers, 87, of Westland, a retired donut shop owner who was an Army Air Corps gunner on Oahu that morning.

Nathan Weiser, 93, of Dearborn was an Army Air Corps mechanic and radio operator stationed on Oahu when the attack occurred. A retired owner of an iron and metal business, Weiser said, "I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little concerned about people forgetting about Pearl Harbor."

Bill Muehleib, national vice president of Pearl Harbor Survivors Association, said approximately 4,600 survivors of the Pearl Harbor attack are still alive. Muehleib acknowledged concerns from some veterans that the nation will someday forget, but he said he believes those fears are misplaced.

I'm not quite as optimistic as Muehleib. Constant vigilance is impossible. Memories are short. Ignorance is bliss. War might have been foreseeable in 1941, yet most Americans went about their daily lives largely unconcerned about the bloodshed and conquest on the far shores of Europe and Asia. Most Americans in the 1990s paid little mind to the threat of radical Islam, and few people knew the name Osama bin Laden before 2001.

What's remarkable today -- and what contrasts our 9/11 from their 12/7 -- is how little most Americans know or understand about the war we're in. The effort to link our current enemy to the old one -- "Islamonazis" or "Islamofascists" -- has not resonated beyond the listening audience of certain radio talk show hosts. And the debate about what to do in Afghanistan has only confused the issue further. Who the hell are we fighting and why? Is this war ever going to end? And what does victory look like?

Even more remarkable is the failure to draw the right lessons from the respective attacks. The myth that America had been totally surprised at Pearl Harbor formed the basis of the rationale for creating the Central Intelligence Agency. The failure to "connect the dots" leading up to 9/11 formed the basis for the rationale for creating the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. But more bureaucracy and insularity hasn't protected the country or made its leaders any more intelligent or capable. On the contrary, our foreign policy decisions are as mushy-headed as they have ever been.

There seems to be a lesson in there somewhere, if only our wise statesmen would choose to heed it.

Update: Here is Rick Moran on Pearl Harbor and the "mystic chords of memory":

Where does Pearl Harbor fit into our historical consciousness today? We like to take “lessons” from history but in truth, this is nonsense. The currents and eddies underlying the historical tides on which we are but reluctant passengers are too complex, too obscure to glean what we might commonly refer to as “lessons” to be learned from historical events. In this respect, Pearl Harbor was the culmination of decades of history; the rise of Japan as a westernized imperial power went back to the turn of the century, for instance.And from the moment of the opening of Japan in the middle of the 19th century, the prospect of a collision between their imperialist ambitions, and our own commercial empire building in the Far East was virtually assured.

Nothing is ever as easy as it appears as far as history is concerned. And that’s why it is easy to fall into a “false” historical consciousness when it comes to events like 9/11 or even Pearl Harbor. Rather than history teaching us anything, it is far better to have it inform us, animate our spirit, and act as an undergird to our most closely held beliefs and values.

Sarah Palin on Thursday told radio talk show host Rusty Humphries that the provenance of Barack Obama's birth certificate is "a fair question, just like I think past associations and past voting record — all of that is fair game."

Well... ain't that a gas? AllahPundit at Hot Air writes: "Something for (almost) everyone here: For the left, smoking-gun proof that she’s a fringe character, and for Birthers, smoking-gun proof that their concerns are mainstream."

And how. Joel Mathis is so upset, in fact, he's threatened to eat some baronial linen fine art paper.

Moments before, responding to the question of whether she would "make the birth certificate an issue" if she ran, Palin said: "I think the public, rightfully, is still making it an issue. I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t know if I would have to bother to make it an issue ’cause I think there are enough members of the electorate who still want answers."

Allah again: "It’s the same thing as Truthers saying that all they’re doing is 'asking questions.' The answers have already been provided; they just reject them because they’re married to their conspiracies."

Meantime, Pajamas Media's Rick Moran, whose work I'm liking more and more lately, utterly destroys Palin's assertions:

No, it is not a “fair question.” It is a silly, stupid, ignorant question. No, “the public” is not making this an issue — only looney tune numbskulls are pursuing it. No, there aren’t “enough (whatever that means) members of the electorate who still want answers.” Only a small subset of the entire electorate cares.

By even entertaining the question the way she did, Palin has lent some mainstream legitimacy to a fringe theory. Doing so doesn't help her chances at anything other than winning the goodwill of nutters. And, indeed, her stake puts every Republican elected official on defense. Writes Moran:

(S)he is now going to force every GOP candidate for the House and Senate to come out and declare whether they are birther nuts or not. Even if they’re not, being forced to answer in the first place makes the party look even kookier than it has to this point in time. You can bet Democratic opponents of Republican candidates will be asking whether they agree with Palin or not — and they will do it every chance they get. The press will gleefully repeat the question, no matter how many times the GOP candidate answers it.

That is correct.

Joel and I dispensed with the Birther business in a Scripps-Howard column in August. I wrote:

Every calorie burned and every neuron fired on the subject of President Obama's birthplace -- yes, contrary to what you might have heard Alan Keyes say, he is president -- is energy better spent elsewhere.

It is energy not spent opposing the president's very real policies. Congress is busy debating a $1 trillion health-reform bill that would fundamentally change the way Americans get medical care, and yet some Americans would rather argue over Obama's certification of live birth.

Why? Because of the fallacy of "if only." If only we can show that Obama is constitutionally unqualified to be president, it would all just go away -- the crazy socialized medicine schemes, the cap and tax energy legislation, the suicidal debt increases, the ridiculous posturing to Iran, Russia, and Venezuela, all of it.

If only politics were so simple. Forget the fringe. Obama isn't going anywhere. But his agenda presents conservatives with real opportunities to craft and articulate sound alternatives. Conspiracy theories, like the poor, will always be with us. But they don't win elections.

For her own part, Palin revised and extended her remarks on Facebook under the headline "Stupid Conspiracies":

Voters have every right to ask candidates for information if they so choose. I’ve pointed out that it was seemingly fair game during the 2008 election for many on the left to badger my doctor and lawyer for proof that Trig is in fact my child. Conspiracy-minded reporters and voters had a right to ask... which they have repeatedly. But at no point – not during the campaign, and not during recent interviews – have I asked the president to produce his birth certificate or suggested that he was not born in the United States.

If the conspiracy theories are as stupid as Palin says, she ought not do her part to fuel them. By the way, notice how well parsed her last sentence is. Very deft. And who could be against regular folks asking questions...?

My former employer, The Washington Times, has announced a 40 percent staff reduction — and just in time for Christmas! The paper, which will be distributed for free, will reportedly only concentrate on national coverage now — meaning, it seems, the end of the Metro, Sports, and Business sections ... for starters.

Makes me glad I'm a former employee. But this is a sad day. I still have many friends at that paper, which even The Washington Post's Howie Kurtz admitted often "punched above its weight class." Indeed. We were out-staffed and out-resourced by at least a factor of 5 (if not 10) by our rivals, but rattled The Post and The New York Times — often making them follow our coverage.

I will forever be grateful for the opportunity TWT gave me to practice newspapering at the highest levels and beats — Congress and The White House. I don't want this post to be the beginning of a eulogy ... but it sure feels like it.

A friend there emails his lack of immense worry: "The cuts will all be people we never heard of, upstairs."

Another (very veteran reporter) is more nervous, emailing: "I'm not sure what the future holds and whether I'm in or out. Problem is, I don't think the managers know yet either who to keep and who to send packing. I can't imagine the product they envision, but there are few places to go if I don't like it."

Joel tweets: "It's fun to watch the media ponder 'the meaning' of Tiger's transgressions, as though it had any meaning at all."

Yep. I've done my level best to avoid the "coverage" of this "story." (Could I possibly work any more sneer quotes into this post? We'll "see.") I just can't get worked up about it. Until a few moments ago, I could barely muster even an iota of amusement.

But then Jonah Goldberg posted this video of a Chinese TV news story, complete with computer reenactments of the events leading up to the "accident."

It's a "riot."

When I was co-moderating RedBlueAmerica.com, I had an excellent intern/editorial assistant/researcher by the name of Charles Johnson. Charlie -- or Chas, or Chuck -- is an industrious and entrepreneurial student at Claremont McKenna College who blogs at the Claremont Conservative. Though a man of the right, Charlie interned for Alan Dershowitz... in high school. In his short but illustrious career, Carlito has worked for Scripps-Howard, Amity Shlaes, the Kauffmann Foundation, and the Claremont Institute. I told Chuck not too long ago that I'd be working for him some day, and I wasn't kidding. He's going places.

My Charles Johnson, in other words, shouldn't be mistaken for this Charles Johnson. He's not going anywhere.

A man who considers Robert Stacy McCain to be a "fascist" doesn't know what fascism is. (Update: McCain replies to Johnson.) A man who believes opposing abortion is akin "throwing women back into the Dark Ages" doesn't understand history or the present. A man who believes Hot Air and Ace of Spades are redoubts for "raging hate speech" debases the language. A man who conflates the tea party movement with the birther conspiracy has parted ways with his judgment and taken leave of his senses.

But this is old news.

I don't begrudge Johnson his success, his reach or his influence. Then again, until I saw his post linked from Memeorandum earlier tonight, I hadn't read his site in months.

These are strange, unsettled times in our politics. The Republicans are struggling and the Democrats are dispirited and confused. The old left-right, conservative-liberal paradigm no longer seems adequate to the task of explaining or understanding where we stand or why vote the way we do. But I would not recommend conflating or confusing Johnson's peculiar prejudices, eccentricities and self-absorption with the political independence many Americans now embrace. His constituency is a cult. Once you understand that, it's easier to see the service Johnson has done explaining why he's "parted ways with the right."

Put another way: I wouldn't go to the wall for Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin or a particular Charles Johnson.

Joel and I tackle the so-called "War on Christmas" in this week's Scripps-Howard column. Joel thinks the whole business is a construct of the theocon-Fox News-Industrial Complex, and urges everyone to chill out. I think the whole business is a construct of ACLU provocateurs abetted by lily-livered bureaucrats, and urge everyone to chill out.

It's the least plausible column we've done in quite some time.

Here is Edward Skidelsky writing about "words that think for us" in Prospect:

As a society, we strive to eradicate moral language, hoping to eliminate the intolerance that often accompanies it. But intolerance has not been eliminated, merely thrust underground. "Inappropriate" and "unacceptable" are the catchwords of a moralism that dare not speak its name. They hide all measure of righteous fury behind the mask of bureaucratic neutrality. For the sake of our own humanity, we should strike them from our vocabulary.

There's more. It's brief, and well worth reading.

(Hat tip: Arts & Letters Daily)

Now, another politician's famous and controversial...er,... accessory is blogging.

Matthew Whalen, the Lansingburgh, NY, Eagle Scout and aspiring West Point cadet who was suspended from school for 20 days last month for having a small knife in his car, will not have his punishment expunged from his permanent record, the Troy Record reports.
Matthew Whalen
The news, although disappointing, is not surprising. The Record reported last week that the board had made a decision but neither side would discuss the outcome. That was a bad sign.

Whalen's parents say they plan to appeal the local school board's decision to the state board of education. But it's unlikely that young Whalen will have any satisfaction before he heads off to college. From the Troy Record story:

"This could take up to one year, so it may be a moot point by time a decision is made by the state, but it’s about the principle of the matter," said Bryan Whalen, Matthew’s father, regarding the appeals process with the state Education Department. The family plans to file the appeal by next week.

About 170 appeals cases were decided on by the state last year on various topics, though there were 30 related to knives from the past 17 years, said spokesman Tom Dunn.

"It is not uncommon for the commissioner to receive appeals regarding the appropriateness of a school district’s actions," he said, adding that many are thrown out.

The Whalen story is stranger and somewhat less clear-cut than that of Zachary Christie, the Delaware first-grader who was suspended and nearly sent to reform school for bringing a Cub Scout camping tool to school. That was clearly a dumb decision by school officials, and the school board was right to change district policy to ensure such a farce wouldn't be repeated.

I think the Whalen case as reported should lead one to essentially the same conclusion. (Here's the Albany Times-Union's story about the board's decision.) One interpretation of the Lansingburgh board's decision might be that members didn't want to appear to cave to public or media pressure -- Fox News flogged the story for a couple of weeks, don't forget. Rules are rules and zero tolerance means just that. And it doesn't matter whether Whalen is a good kid or if he wants to go to West Point; we need to maintain order, by God! George Goodwin, Lansingburgh's mindless bureaucratic automaton of a superintendent, made noises along those lines to the press before retreating into his office, barring the door and shuttering the windows.

As it happens, another Lansingburgh High School student, a 14-year-old girl, was arrested Monday and charged with misdemeanor criminal possession of a weapon for bringing a knife to school. There are significant differences between her story and Whalen's. From the Record story:

The 14-year-old female student, whose name was not released, allegedly brought a folding knife blade in her jeans pocket "in anticipation of a fight," according to a police incident report.

The blade, which was not attached to a handle, was found in her pocket after she was involved in an altercation around 1:20 p.m. Monday, according to the report. It does not appear that anyone was injured.

Sounds reasonable. By contrast, Whalen's knife was smaller, he wasn't carrying it and he was not involved in a fight at the time; it was in his car and he seems to have been minding his own business when confronted by his vice principal. And although school officials did call the police, Whalen wasn't arrested or charged with any crime because New York State law doesn't consider a knife under 2-1/2 inches to be a weapon.

But one odd, recent detail about Whalen's story gives me pause and begs for further explanation: "One of his schoolmates, an alleged gang member with the Goonies, was purportedly the one who notified school security about the knife..." I made fun of the gang's name in a previous post. But what I don't understand is what precipitated this so-called gangster's revelation to school officials. Did Whalen have a run in with this gang, assuming it really is a gang and not a bunch of goofballs screwing around? Did that play a role in the superintendent's decision to extend Whalen's punishment from five days to 20 and the board's vote to affirm the suspension?

I still believe that Whalen likely got rolled by an idiotic bureaucracy divorced from common sense. But nobody should confuse opposing mindless, insipid zero-tolerance policies with opposing order and discipline in schools. As I wrote in my Sacramento Bee op-ed about the Whalen case and the idiocy of zero-tolerance policies in general, "students and teachers shouldn't have to wonder whether the kid in the back of the class is packing heat.... But zero-tolerance rules shouldn't serve as an excuse for officials to absolve themselves from using their intelligence. If nothing else, it's a terrible lesson and a poor example for kids."

The lesson still holds.

Earlier posts on Matthew Whalen and zero-tolerance:

• Vindication for Zachary Christie
• No vindication for Matthew Whalen... yet
• Who is George Goodwin?
• Where is the school board on Lansingburgh's insipid, mindless zero-tolerance policy?
• Well, OF COURSE Lansingburgh school administrators overreacted
• Vindication for Matthew Whalen... maybe soon