And here is part 3. (Blogs are kind of counter-intuitive, aren't they?)

It's a big of a problem when the way a normal blog is formatted, part 3 comes before part 2 which comes before part 1.

In the last third of the article, Henry Waxman makes what I consider a really important point. I wonder how many people will catch it.

From the Boston Globe, again. I pay to subscribe to the NY Times so I don't think I'm doing too much of a disservice posting the whole articles here.


PART 3: THE MUSLIM WORLD | EXPORTING FAITH

Together, but worlds apart

Christian aid groups raise suspicion in strongholds of Islam

By Susan Milligan, Globe Staff | October 10, 2006

SAHIWAL, Pakistan -- The X-ray machine at the Christian Hospital here is emblazoned with a USAID sticker to promote the US government's donation of top-of-the-line medical equipment. So is the blood bank refrigerator, the auditorium for medical lectures, and the radiology computer -- all sparkling new messages of help for the people of Pakistan, a crucial ally in the war on terrorism.

With a cleanliness and order that are in stark contrast to the crowded and filthy municipal hospital across town, the Christian Hospital, run by the Christian group World Witness with US government assistance, seems an easy choice for the nearly all-Muslim community it offers to serve. The public hospital is understaffed and underequipped, with patients slumped in dirty hallways and anxious parents holding crying, sickly babies awaiting a doctor's attention.

But like many Christian facilities in this Muslim nation, the Christian Hospital is an entity apart. It cares for 14,000 to 15,000 patients a year, compared with 1 million at the municipal hospital, and the neediest patients say they can't afford the few dollars for admission and a few blood tests.

Only a dozen or so patients sat in the waiting room during a recent visit, their traditional Muslim dress looking out of place in a facility with tile crosses in the walls and a New England-style chapel in the courtyard.

A rifle-carrying guard patrols the entrance -- a grim sign of the danger Christian groups face in a nation whose citizens believe their Muslim faith and brethren around the world are under attack by the largely Christian West.

Christian groups are running health care, education, and disaster relief in many Muslim nations, and USAID has awarded about $53 million from 2001-05 to fund projects by Christians in Pakistan, Indonesia, and Afghanistan alone. Both the aid organizations and the US government hope the projects will sow good will in a region growing increasingly wary of the West.

But the war in Iraq and the detention of Muslims at Guantanamo Bay have greatly angered Muslims, and residents are finding it hard to separate the policies they vehemently oppose from the activities of Christian aid groups, said local Islamic leaders.

``People hate America as a whole. People in general think the West, and Bush especially, have a double standard for Muslims. They are killing Muslims," said Ameer-Ul-Azim , secretary of the Jama'at-e-Islami party in Lahore. ``It can come to the point where it can affect the relationship between the Muslim community and the Christian community."

Fighting terror with Christ

While Christian Hospital officials insist they are there to heal, not to proselytize, World Witness's own literature suggests that part of its mission is to spread Christianity.

A brochure for the hospital says ``The Jesus Film" ``is shown to all patients," and goes on to say that ``the hospital and staff feel that through Christ, terrorism will be eliminated in this part of the world," a phrase that offended Muslim leaders who say Islam is about peace, and not violence.

``If I am given such a message, I ask, `Why are you spreading hatred among human beings? What is your agenda?' " said Abdul Rauf Farooqi , a Lahore-based member of the board of the National Religious Schools Council.

Christian groups say that view is mistaken. The Rev. Frank van Dalen , World Witness's executive director, said ``The Jesus Film" is only shown in the waiting room, and not constantly. He winced when he was shown the brochure's reference to eliminating terrorism through Christ.

``That's a dumb thing to say. It doesn't work that way," he said.

Still, critics say, the Bush administration's special efforts to reach out to faith-based providers, the vast majority of whom are Christian, almost can't help but raise suspicions in Muslim countries.

``I think it's important to step back and look at the wisdom of putting faith-based components into a program like this that is operating in a Muslim nation. The last thing we want to do is create the impression in the Muslim world that the US government is funding groups that seek to convert Muslims to Christianity," said Rob Boston , spokesman for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. ``When USAID gives money to religious groups that put Christian symbols in their facilities, and leave evangelical tracts lying around, it's hard to draw any other conclusion [than] that it looks like proselytizing."

Defenders of the Christian groups say religion shouldn't come into play. ``As long as it effectively delivers the good the government offers -- such as medicine -- the organization should not be discriminated against simply because it is motivated by faith," said Ryan Messmore , a religion specialist with the Heritage Foundation.

But far from discriminating, USAID has become a growing source of funds for Christian groups in the Muslim world. USAID spent $57 million from 2001-2005 (out of a total of $390 million to nongovernmental agencies) to fund almost a dozen projects run by faith-based organizations in Pakistan, Indonesia, and Afghanistan, according to records obtained by the Freedom of Information Act. Only 5 percent of that sum went to a Muslim group, the Aga Khan Foundation of the USA, which was given approximately $3.5 million for projects in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

And even that amount is well below what the Aga Khan Foundation received under the Clinton administration, including $4.9 million in fiscal 2000 alone.

In the wake of the devastating 2004 tsunami, no Muslim organization has been awarded a prime USAID award for relief work in Indonesia -- a sore spot among Muslim groups that want to help there.

In fact, of the nearly 160 faith-based organizations that have received prime contracts from USAID in the past five years only two are Muslim.

Mark Ward, USAID's senior deputy assistant administrator for Asia/Near East, speculated that Muslim groups may be disadvantaged because larger, more established groups have mastered the grant-application process.

``We like the diversity it shows in a program if we have a group that is tied to Islam," Ward said, adding that Islamic groups are encouraged to apply.

Bush's faith-based initiative is geared to help faith-based groups navigate the application process. But it has worked mostly for Christian groups, whose share of USAID funding has roughly doubled under Bush and accounts for 98.3 percent of all money to faith-based groups.

For its part, the Pakistani government says it has no problems with Christian aid groups, as long as they do not break laws against blasphemy. But the tension between what is perceived as the largely Christian West and the Muslim East is evident.

``I have never had a problem with any Christian organizations. Charity work has no religion," said Tasmin Aslam , the Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokeswoman. ``It's certainly not like Muslim organizations in the West, who are seeing that they are perceived that if they are collecting money they must be doing it for terrorist purposes."

Christian relief officials say they understand the rules, and know they probably could not survive -- and might even be in physical danger -- if they engaged in proselytizing.

``If the community ever was against us, we would have been out long ago. They could kick us out tomorrow," said van Dalen, a former missionary who has spent 12 years in Pakistan and has mastered the very difficult language of Urdu to communicate directly with locals.

But since 9/11 and the Iraq war, religion has been melded with politics in Pakistan, religious and political officials say, and the Christian groups have been caught up in a virulent anti-American sentiment.

Local newspapers are filled with articles critical of Bush's Middle East policy. A large billboard in Lahore displays a fearsome caricature of the American president with fangs, above a depiction of a crying infant and a man who appears to have been wounded in a bombing. ``Who's Next?" the billboard slogan asks.

Even a visit by actress Angelina Jolie, who has done humanitarian work around the world in her capacity as a special UN envoy, was received with some trepidation because she is American.

Linking US, Christianity

Christians operating in the Muslim world must also contend with local worries that they are only there to spread their religion -- a concern that reflects fears that Western foreign policy has an anti-Islam agenda.

Since Islam is linked with government in Muslim countries, Muslims often have difficulty seeing that religion is officially separate from government in the United States, Boston said. Any activity that could be seen as proselytizing becomes associated with the US government.

Faith-based groups receiving USAID grants may not tie assistance to religious participation, but the symbols and religious tracts are enough to provoke discomfort in many Muslims, who are deeply resistant to conversion.

The tension became lethal for The Christian Hospital Taxila. The facility, located next to a mosque in the northern Pakistan town of Taxila, was attacked in 2002 by Muslim extremists, who killed four nurses and damaged the hospital's chapel. Now, the hospital, which does not receive US funds, is protected by a thick concrete wall and armed security.

Another Christian group, Evangelistic International Ministries, declined even to say where it is operating in Pakistan, citing security concerns. The group, which received a $291,000 USAID grant, but for operations outside Pakistan, has been involved in helping earthquake victims, said the group's president of project development, Michael Goodwin . The group's website states that it has handed out 700 Bibles in Pakistan.

The Christian Hospital in Sahiwal evacuated its staff after Sept. 11, 2001, and doctors have been trickling back since then. Until recently, local police protected the century-old hospital, fearful that the Western staff might be targeted, van Dalen said.

Workers at Christian facilities say they must be careful to accommodate Muslim sensibilities. At Sahiwal hospital, for example, men and women stand in separate lines to collect prescriptions, and are housed in different parts of the hospital.

Another Christian group operating in Muslim countries, World Vision, said it goes so far as to ban its Muslim staff from attending Christian prayer meetings in Pakistan and Afghanistan to make sure no one thinks the group is proselytizing, said spokeswoman Dineen Tupa . World Vision receives USAID funding, but not for projects in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

While the organization's stated mission includes spreading the love of God and Jesus, ``We're not here as evangelicals. For our staff's protection, we don't do it. For our Muslim staff, it could get them killed," said Tupa, World Vision's sub-regional director for Central Asia.

But with tensions simmering between Muslims and the West, local Muslims say they are growing suspicious of what they see as obvious shows of Christianity .

At the Taxila hospital, the walls are dotted with Bible verses, and a book room features tomes on Christianity. Muslim leaders in the town said they are offended by reports that the Christian hospital is handing out religious books at the door.

``Of course, we want them to stop this," said Amir Shahzad , head of the mosque that is right next door to the walled Christian hospital. ``This is a Muslim country. Our feelings are hurt by this."

The Taxila hospital's administrator, Dr. Joseph Lall, said the staff does not proselytize. ``If you don't want to get hit on the head, you don't do it," he said.

In Sahiwal, local mullahs said someone was passing out Christian leaflets near the hospital on Pakistani Independence Day in August; van Dalen said hospital staff had nothing to do with it.

That distinction is lost on some Muslim leaders.

``In general, we feel the NGO [nongovernmental organization] sector is directly trying to spread Christianity in this area," said Qari Tahir Rashidi , a mullah in Sahiwal. And while it is only a few ``fanatics" that have committed deadly attacks on foreign Christians in recent years, moderate Pakistanis are becoming more suspicious of all things Western, he said.

Some urge secular focus

Given the mistrust, some critics wonder why the US government is aiding Christian groups in Muslim nations instead of secular organizations that might draw less controversy.

``The problem with faith-based funding, whether domestically or internationally, is that their orientation is often proselytizing. We may be funding them in one area, but they are using other funds for proselytizing," said California Representative Henry Waxman, senior Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, which does oversight and investigations.

``If it's a Christian hospital in a Christian area, then I think that would be helpful [to the United States] for the public to see us supporting it. But if it's a Christian hospital in a Muslim area and we're not helping the Muslim charities, it's a bit of an insult," Waxman said.

Still, some Muslims do patronize Christian hospitals, saying the quality of care is more important than any religious differences.

Mukhtiar Bibi , a 19-year-old who is learning the Koran by heart, appeared embarrassed when asked why he brought a family member to the Taxila Christian Hospital. ``We have more faith in the care at this hospital," he said.

Patients at the Sahiwal facility said they had heard positive things about the hospital; Alir Rezwan , 34, said he traveled a long distance and spent 300 rupees -- about $7 -- to bring his wife to Sahiwal for treatment of arthritis. ``I have been to many different doctors for this, maybe here, she will be cured," he said.

But for all the good intentions of the hospital staff, the gleaming new equipment paid for by USAID is not benefiting most of the people who need it in the community. One of the radiology machines is not used to its full capacity, a hospital administrator said, because the facility doesn't have a specialist who knows how to use it.

In addition, the cost -- while stunningly inexpensive by Western standards -- is still too much for destitute Pakistanis who desperately need medical care. ``Sure, if it were two rupees, I would go" to the Christian Hospital, said Rani Nazeer , 30, as she awaited her turn at the municipal hospital. Two rupees -- the price of registering at the public hospital -- is less than four cents; a Muslim patient at the Christian Hospital showed that his bill for a blood test was 130 rupees, less than three dollars.

Van Dalen said the Christian hospital does not operate for profit, keeping its prices as low as it can. Further, he said, accident victims are required by law to go to the public hospital, meaning World Witness's doctors can't treat them.

For those who do come to the Christian Hospital, van Dalen promises top-quality care and an environment ``very sensitive" to Muslim customs.

``We have to be very careful that we live out our faith more than we talk about it," van Dalen said. ``I want Muslims to become Christians. But I can't make someone become a Christian. Only God can do that."

Globe correspondent Kevin Baron contributed to this report.

GRRRRR.... More about the $#%%^$^% religious reich from the Boston Globe

Religious right wields clout

Secular groups losing funding amid pressure

By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff | October 9, 2006

For six decades, CARE has been a vital ally to the US government. It supplied the famed CARE packages to Europe's starving masses after World War II, and its work with the poor has been celebrated by US presidents. So the group was thrilled when it received a major contract from the Bush administration to fight AIDS in Africa and Asia.

But this time, instead of accolades came attacks. Religious conservatives contended that the $50 million contract, under which CARE was to distribute money to both secular and faith-based groups, was being guided by an organization out of touch with religious values.

Senator Rick Santorum , a Pennsylvania Republican, charged last year that CARE was ``anti-American" and ``promoted a pro-prostitution agenda." Focus on the Family, the religious group headed by James Dobson , said the agency that delivered the contract, the US Agency for International Development, was a ``liberal cancer."

The complaining paid off. CARE's $50 million contract is being phased out this year; it has been replaced with a $200 million program of grants that is targeted at faith-based providers, and overseen by USAID itself.

The pressure on CARE is emblematic of that facing many other secular groups. President Bush's faith-based initiative has not only increased funding for church groups, but also raised the expectations of the religious right, which has asserted a stronger role in setting policy.

The pattern of outcry by religious conservatives, followed by accommodation by the administration, has been replicated on numerous occasions at USAID, from personnel decisions to choices of who runs humanitarian programs overseas.

In the process, secular groups have seen an overall drop in funding. CARE's USAID dollars declined every year, from $138 million in fiscal 2001 to $96 million in fiscal 2005, the last year for which data is available, according to a Globe survey of prime contractors and grantees in the development arena.

Kristin Kalla , the CARE official overseeing its AIDS contract, said she found herself in the middle of a war over politics, religion, and money.

``There was a lot of resentment, a lot of pressure, from the religious right feeling that they supported Bush, especially for the second term, and they wanted to get paid their dues, they wanted a piece of the pie in terms of foreign assistance," Kalla said.

James Towey , the former head of the White House's faith-based office, acknowledged that he fought hard to shift international aid to faith-based groups, although he denied it was a political payback.

``The fact is [officials at USAID] tended to be left of center and they tended to be more of a secular perspective than a religious one," said Towey, who served as Bush's top faith-based official from 2002 until June 2006. ``There were pockets of extreme hostility to faith-based organizations. There were instances where people had agendas that were very clearly at odds with what President Bush had laid out as his foreign policy agenda. . . . We wanted to see the new groups have a chance."

Under pressure from Dobson, members of Congress, and Towey's office at the White House, USAID officials promoted groups favoring abstinence as the prime means of preventing AIDS. The officials gave funds to one such group despite a review panel's determination it was not suitable, and allegedly stripping money from a group that criticized the administration's emphasis on abstinence.

And USAID required groups to sign an anti-prostitution pledge despite concerns over its constitutionality. The pledge required all organizations receiving USAID money overseas to renounce prostitution, which some groups interpreted as abandoning efforts to prevent prostitutes from spreading AIDS.

The Brazilian government, which has had success in decreasing AIDS by working with prostitutes, refused to sign the pledge and lost a $40 million grant.

In an affidavit for a lawsuit over the matter, Pedro Chequer , director of Brazil's AIDS program, said his country strived to adhere to ``the established principles of the scientific method and not allow theological beliefs and dogma to interfere."

Abstinence vs. condoms

AIDS has been the Bush administration's top overseas health priority, and it consumes about half of the global health budget, much of which is overseen by USAID.

But disagreement has raged for years over how best to prevent AIDS. US policy has long supported condom use. But some religious conservatives say distributing condoms actually increases AIDS by promoting sexual activity. Others say the only sure way to stop AIDS is by teaching abstinence and faithfulness.

With faith-based groups seeking a major share of the anti-AIDS funds, the administration sought to resolve the controversy in 2003 by endorsing a three-pronged strategy of promoting abstinence, faithfulness, and, when appropriate, condoms.

Under a bill approved by Congress and signed by Bush, one third of the administration's $3 billion international AIDS prevention budget must be spent on programs promoting ``abstinence until marriage." Meanwhile, the administration was also buying hundreds of millions of condoms for distribution overseas.

But some leaders of the religious right felt that any program involving condoms is inappropriate, and they focused their anger on USAID.

The dispute erupted in public after a remark in 2002 by then-secretary of state Colin Powell, who had visited Africa and been appalled at the AIDS rate. In a television interview, Powell said that while he respected churches that are opposed to condoms, ``In my own judgment, condoms are a way to prevent infection and, therefore, I support their use."

Dobson blasted back, declaring ``Colin Powell is the secretary of state, not the secretary of health. He is talking about a subject he doesn't understand."

Raised by a Nazarene preacher, Dobson has emerged over the past three decades as one of the nation's top political leaders among religious conservatives. He is known for his strong views against gay marriage and abortion.

Dobson's organization, Focus on the Family, has played a major role in presidential politics, sending out 5 million letters, postcards, and e-mails just before the 2004 election. He is close to Bush and White House adviser Karl Rove .

The administration had hoped to avoid fights with religious conservatives by putting people in charge of USAID with strong faith-based ties: administrator Andrew Natsios and global health director Dr. Anne Peterson .

Natsios is a former Massachusetts legislator who once supervised the Big Dig and has served as vice president of World Vision, the largest evangelical recipient of USAID grants. Peterson, a physician, is an evangelical Christian and former Virginia state health commissioner who has also worked with Christian groups in Africa.

Peterson said in an interview that she assumed she would be embraced by religious conservatives.

She was wrong: Dobson's group singled her out for a series of attacks, since her global health division oversaw AIDS policy.

In September 2004, Peterson boarded a plane for Colorado on a secret and sensitive mission: to try to prevent an all-out assault by Dobson, who had vowed to use his clout with Congress to pressure USAID into giving more funds to faith-based groups.

Peterson spent the day at the Colorado Springs headquarters of Focus on the Family, culminating in a short, terse audience with Dobson himself.

``Where do you stand on condoms?" Dobson asked, according to Peterson.

Peterson replied that, as a physician, she was convinced condoms played an important role in preventing AIDS, along with abstinence and faithfulness. Dobson was displeased, she said.

``It was very clear that I did not budge him on the condom issue," Peterson said. Focus on the Family, meanwhile, prepared a briefing that was critical of Peterson, quoting her as saying that the Bush administration had doubled condom availability in developing nations.

Within months, Peterson had resigned for personal reasons, deeply bruised by the attacks.

``I had not expected to have that from the Christian community," she said. ``I had expected to find more resonance with a broader group of people to find a common ground. This is a core good thing to do, help people to stay healthy. It was disconcerting to find that when money is on the table everybody fights harder to get the piece of it."

Attacks on USAID

Dobson's group, meanwhile, turned its attention to others at USAID and the AIDS contract administered by CARE.

A private briefing on Capitol Hill in January 2005 for 50 congressional staffers prompted more than two dozen members of Congress to sign a letter demanding that more money go to faith-based groups that favored abstinence.

They complained in the letter to Natsios that government funding for faith-based groups was being ``delivered by anti-American, anti-abstinence, pro-prostitution, and pro-drug use groups."

In its printed materials for the briefing, Focus on the Family targeted a USAID official who it claimed was gay and committed to a pro-homosexual agenda.

Natsios, who left his post as USAID administrator earlier this year, said of the attack: ``It was over the top, it was outrageous."

Dobson declined to comment. The briefing was overseen by the group's chief public policy officer, Peter Brandt . In an interview, Brandt acknowledged that ``that individual should not have been targeted." But he stood by the attacks on USAID and what he called the ``condom cartel."

Peterson was replaced as head of global health by a well-known conservative evangelical leader, Kent Hill . Unlike Peterson, he had no medical degree and no prior experience in public health.

Over his long career, Hill had worked to protect evangelicals in the former Soviet Union, wrote a book stressing the importance of evangelism in the world, and ran into controversy when he became president of Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy and sought to ban non-Christians from teaching positions.

While some liberal groups expressed concern about Hill's record, he has endorsed Peterson's position on condoms, and used his credibility with evangelicals to urge religious leaders to show more civility.

``I can tell you from personal experience that all too many Christians on both the right and the left display an arrogance and self-righteousness about their views," Hill told a conference on faith and international development in Michigan last February. ``Too many Christians are judgmental, black-and-white thinkers who don't do their homework, do not nuance their positions, and on top of that are nasty and mean-spirited to those that they have a disagreement with, and in the end they undermine what they are trying to do. But what is worse, they undermine their faith."

Despite the insistence of senior USAID officials that they were not influenced by Dobson in making grant awards, many secular groups contend that the attacks have had a major impact.

They cite a case in which Natsios overruled his own review panel to provide a grant to Children's AIDS Fund, a group that highlights abstinence.

The fund has ties to both Focus on the Family and the Bush administration. It was cofounded by Shepherd and Anita Smith . Shepherd Smith has worked closely with Dobson and attended the Focus on the Family briefing that attacked USAID. Anita Smith has been the chairwoman of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS.

The Smiths believed that their application was just the kind being sought by the Bush administration. But USAID's technical review panel determined that the grant proposal was ``not suitable for funding." The agency has refused to release the panel's report, leaving it unclear why the proposal was considered unsuitable.

In any case, Natsios wrote a memo on Oct. 21, 2004, urging that Randall Tobias, who was then in charge of the international AIDS program, approve the funding because the group favored abstinence.

``The selection of a `non-suitable' applicant such as [Children's AIDS Fund] . . . is not inconsistent with USAID's grant-making policies," Natsios wrote. Tobias agreed, and funding was granted on Nov. 1, 2004. The grant could reach $10 million over a five-year period.

The memo raises the question of how many other ``nonsuitable" applicants have received money from USAID. Representative Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, wrote to the Bush administration that the approval ``raises questions of political cronyism."

The Smiths said in separate interviews that no political pressure was applied. They said their group is not faith-based, although it distributes money to faith-based groups.

Natsios said his decision was meant to help shore up abstinence work in Uganda, and not ``for the religious right."

But Population Services International, a secular group that failed to get the grant, worries that it lost because of its history of condom distribution.

``If they are faced with giving us a grant and someone else a grant, I think they would rather give it to the other guys because they don't want their careers to be damaged because they would be seen as fellow travelers with us," said Sally Cowal , the group's senior vice president. USAID said in response that the group still receives major contracts.

``The money is so big this is not just about ideology, it is about money," Cowal said. ``Before, the amount of money available for HIV and AIDS internationally was very small so a lot of people weren't interested. Now it is very big. Suddenly people not interested in the million dollars are interested in the billion dollars."

`A political slush fund'

Indeed, one of the biggest sources of money to faith-based groups comes from the Bush administration's AIDS initiative, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), with much of the money having been funneled through USAID.

The total PEPFAR budget is $15 billion over five years, including $3 billion for prevention. Of that amount, about $1 billion must go for ``abstinence-until-marriage" programs.

Some of those who have lost funding under the Bush administration, however, say the huge abstinence budget has been used as a political payout to faith-based supporters of administration policies.

For example, a nonprofit organization called Advocates for Youth, which focuses on AIDS and teen pregnancy, says it lost an $800,000 contract for AIDS prevention among youth in South Africa, Nigeria, and Botswana because it had been critical of the administration's emphasis on abstinence.

``At times it turns into a political slush fund for organizations that are ideologically aligned with the administration rather than public health organizations with a proven track record," said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth. A PEPFAR spokesman said the group's grant expired.

Dr. Mark Dybul , who oversees PEPFAR, said funding decisions are all made on merit . But he added that he considers faith-based groups to be crucial partners: ``Our goal is not the recruitment of faith-based organizations . . . [but] to me, as the coordinator, you cannot achieve those goals without faith- and community-based organizations."

Dybul stressed that he supports Bush's strategy of using abstinence, faithfulness, and condoms to fight AIDS. But he also said that until recently there was too much reliance on condoms.

``Just go to an international meeting and mention the words `abstinence and fidelity,' " Dybul said. ``I've sat in rooms where people snicker."

Kalla, who administered the program of AIDS grants to faith-based and community-based groups for CARE, said the pressure to give money to religious groups was intense.

She cited an example in which she determined that a small faith-based group favored by senior administration officials was not qualified to manage hundreds of thousands of dollars. Kalla said that she was roundly criticized by the officials, and that the administration found another source of money for the group.

Kalla said CARE made special efforts to fund faith-based groups, but she said administration officials sometimes criticized the grants that went to Muslim and Jewish groups.

``We were told repeatedly by staff at USAID directly in meetings that these were not the `right types' of faith-based organizations that the White House faith-based office was looking for," Kalla said. In an effort to placate USAID, she said, CARE awarded a $100,000 grant to Samaritan's Purse, a group run by Bush's friend, Rev. Franklin Graham, for work in Mozambique. She said USAID informed her it was the right type of faith-based group.

The USAID official who oversaw the CARE program said he did not pressure Kalla to favor conservative groups. And Natsios and Hill said that all groups are treated equally in the funding process.

Nonetheless, the pressure on USAID from Christian groups has raised persistent questions about whether Jewish and Muslim organizations are being overshadowed.

The Globe survey of prime contractors and grantees indicated that 98.3 percent of funds to faith-based groups went to Christian-led organizations.

Eugene Lin , a former employee of the office of faith-based programs at USAID, said the office catered mostly to evangelical Christians. He calculated that of 167 organizations invited to discuss potential grants during a 15-month period ending in September 2004, only five were non-Christian.

``I was fairly outspoken in the office, saying it is really unfair we never invite Jewish or Muslim groups to our office, everyone is Christian," Lin said. ``There is no balance whatsoever."

Lin said that he was told by the acting director of the office, Linda Shovlain , that she wanted to have what she described as a ``Come to Jesus" meeting to discuss his work. Lin said he felt intimidated because Shovlain had a 2-foot high crucifix over a conference table in her office.

Lin eventually was fired, and filed a religious-discrimination complaint.

In a deposition, Shovlain said her ``Come to Jesus" remark was misunderstood.

``One day, after I had had to exercise tremendous oversight over [Lin], I told him jokingly that if things continued as they had been that we would have to have a `Come-to-Jesus' meeting, and jokingly added that if we could not come to resolution on his performance I would fire him," Shovlain said in the deposition. ``I very quickly saw he thought this phrase `Come to Jesus' meeting had a religious connotation, and I explained to him that this phrase was an expression for having a meeting where we discussed plainly what needs to change and find resolution."

Shovlain added: ``If I had known he was so sensitive about religion, I wouldn't have used the term. . . . I didn't know until recently he was Jewish or so sensitive about religion."

A USAID panel dismissed Lin's complaint in July. He has filed an appeal.

The panel endorsed Shovlain's right to display the crucifix, quoting from a 1997 federal regulation that a federal employee may display religious art as long as it does not create the impression that the government is ``favoring or disfavoring a particular religion."

Fighting back on pledge

A centerpiece of the religious right's agenda for USAID is a law passed by Congress and signed by Bush in 2003 that requires any US-based group receiving anti-AIDS funds to adopt a policy against prostitution.

The law says funding cannot be given to any group ``that does not have a policy explicitly opposing prostitution and sex trafficking." Supporters said they hoped the legislation would ``eradicate" prostitution and thus curtail the spread of AIDS.

While few, if any, aid groups support prostitution, many expressed concern that the US policy was so broad -- and applied even to their private funds -- that it would obstruct their outreach to sex workers who are at high risk of transmitting the AIDS virus.

In some countries, half of all prostitutes are infected with the AIDS virus, according to congressional testimony. As a result, USAID's leaders originally were sympathetic to groups that resisted the anti-prostitution pledge.

The issue seemed to be resolved when the Justice Department advised USAID that the law was unconstitutional on the grounds that it violated free speech.

But the decision set off a firestorm of protest from the religious right and its allies in Congress, after which Bush's Justice Department reversed itself.

When USAID then started requiring the pledge, some major grant recipients refused to take it -- and suffered.

The Brazilian government, which lost $40 million, said the pledge would undercut one of its most successful anti-AIDS strategies, persuading sex workers to use condoms or other measures to stop spreading the disease.

Chequer, the country's AIDS director, said its work with prostitutes is a major reason why Brazil's infection rate among young adults is only 1 percent.

``We view sex workers as essential partners in our HIV prevention efforts," Chequer said.

The US government disputed that the pledge would suspend the Brazilian AIDS program, but other funding recipients interpreted the pledge the same way as the Brazilians.

American Jewish World Service, one of a handful of non-Christian faith-based groups to get US funds, received a single subgrant of $60,000 for AIDS work in Kenya, provided through the CARE program. The organization reluctantly agreed to sign the anti-prostitution pledge but quickly had second thoughts. The organization tries to stop the spread of AIDS by providing education opportunities for children of prostitutes, which can help mothers leave the brothels.

Julia Greenberg , the group's international aid director, said she believes the anti-prostitution pledge was designed to make grants more accessible to conservative Christian groups. She said her organization has not sought more funds ``because of the politics involved."

Some organizations that refused to sign the pledge have fought back. A company called DKT International says it lost US funds for a $60,000 AIDS program in Vietnam. DKT filed suit against the federal government, saying the pledge violated its First Amendment rights.

A similar lawsuit was brought against USAID by several other groups, including Pathfinder International, a Boston-based humanitarian group, and an aid group founded by billionaire George Soros.

To some conservative faith-based leaders, however, the plaintiffs in both cases are symbolic of what's wrong with US policy. Soros financed groups opposing Bush's re election. DKT is run by Philip D. Harvey, who operates a large mail-order pornography business that is separate from his anti-AIDS organization.

But in both cases, judges sided with the plaintiffs, issuing restraining orders that prohibited USAID from enforcing the anti-prostitution pledge.

Moreover, a judge in the Soros case declared that the Bush administration had altered its stance on the pledge due to political pressure.

US District Judge Victor Marrero noted that Senator Tom Coburn , an Oklahoma Republican, had written a May 19, 2005, letter to Bush blasting USAID for funding programs for prostitutes to attend ``parties and games."

The sponsor of the program mentioned in the letter said that it was a bingo-style program designed to educate prostitutes about AIDS.

The judge found that the pressure had an immediate effect: By June 2005, the Justice Department had reversed its position on the constitutionality of the pledge, and USAID was requiring groups to sign it.

``This shift in position coincided with pressure exerted upon USAID and the President," Marrero wrote.

Enforcing the pledge would do ``irreparable harm" to the aid groups' rights to free speech, Marrero said.

The Bush administration appealed the decision in August.

Globe Correspondent Kevin Baron contributed to this report.

From the Boston Globe and/or NY Times

#$%%^#$%#@$&*(*#$^%^%&^$$#@#!#^*&^%&^
and other cuss words.....


Bush brings faith to foreign aid
As funding rises, Christian groups deliver help -- with a message

October 8, 2006

This story is the first of four parts. It was reported and written by Farah Stockman, Michael Kranish, and Peter S. Canellos of the Globe Staff, and Globe correspondent Kevin Baron.

LAKARTINYA, Kenya -- The herders of this remote mountain village know little about America, but have learned from those who run a US-funded aid program about the American God.

A Christian God.

The US government has given $10.9 million to Food for the Hungry, a faith-based development organization, to reach deep into the arid mountains of northern Kenya to provide training in hygiene, childhood illnesses, and clean water. The group has brought all that, and something else that increasingly accompanies US-funded aid programs: r egular church service and prayer.

President Bush has almost doubled the percentage of US foreign-aid dollars going to faith-based groups such as Food for the Hungry, according to a Globe survey of government data. And in seeking to help such groups obtain more contracts, Bush has systematically eliminated or weakened rules designed to enforce the separation of church and state.

In Lakartinya, a simple hut built with funds from the US government is the first in the area to have a tin roof. It serves as a station for weighing babies, distributing food, teaching health classes -- and, until recently, initiating local people into the rites of Christianity, according to Food for the Hungry staff. Classes begin and end with prayers, and in some cases are followed by Christian services.

For decades, US policy has sought to avoid intermingling government programs and religious proselytizing. The aim is both to abide by the Constitution's prohibition against a state religion and to ensure that aid recipients don't forgo assistance because they don't share the religion of the provider.

Since medical programs are aimed at the most serious illnesses -- AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis -- the decision whether to seek treatment can determine life or death.

But many of those restrictions were removed by Bush in a little-noticed series of executive orders -- a policy change that cleared the way for religious groups to obtain hundreds of millions of dollars in additional government funding. It also helped change the message American aid workers bring to many corners of the world, from emphasizing religious neutrality to touting the healing powers of the Christian God.

Bush's orders altered the longstanding practice that groups preach religion in one space and run government programs in another. The administration said religious organizations can conduct services in the same space as they hand out government aid, so long as the services don't take place while the aid is being delivered. But the rule allows groups to schedule prayers immediately before or after dispensing taxpayer-funded aid.

Bush's orders also reversed longstanding rules forbidding the use of government funds to pay for employees who are required to take an oath to one religion. In addition, the president's orders allowed faith-based groups to keep religious symbols in places where they distribute taxpayer-funded aid.

And in implementing the president's orders, the administration rejected efforts to require groups to inform beneficiaries that they don't have to attend religious services to get the help they need. Instead of a requirement, groups are merely encouraged to make clear to recipients that they don't have to participate in religious activities.

Bush made some of the changes by executive order only after failing to get Congress to approve them; the bill faltered in the Senate, where moderate Republicans joined Democrats in raising concerns about breaking down the barrier between government and religion.

``I got a little frustrated in Washington because I couldn't get the bill passed," Bush told a meeting of faith-based groups in March 2004. ``Congress wouldn't act, so I signed an executive order -- that means I did it on my own."

The legality of Bush's moves is being challenged by a group advocating separation of church and state. The lawsuit, claiming both that Bush overstepped his powers and that the orders violate the Constitution, is inching its way through the federal courts.

Faith-based groups have long delivered humanitarian assistance in distant and dangerous places, marshaling an impressive array of volunteers. But Bush's initiative has put government dollars into faith-based providers in unprecedented fashion. A Globe survey of more than 52,000 awards of contracts, grants, and cooperative agreements from the US Agency for International Development -- which distributes taxpayer-funded assistance overseas -- provides the first comprehensive assessment of the impact of Bush's policies on foreign aid.

The survey of prime contractors and grantees, based on records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, shows a sharp increase in money going to faith-based groups between fiscal 2001, the last budget of the Clinton administration, and fiscal 2005, the last year for which complete figures were available. Faith-based groups accounted for 10.5 percent of USAID dollars to nongovernmental aid organizations in fiscal 2001, and 19.9 percent in 2005.

Boost for Christians
The numbers also show that the faith-based initiative overseas is almost exclusively a Christian initiative: Only two Jewish development groups and two Muslim groups of any type got any grants or contracts between fiscal 2001 and fiscal 2005, and Christians received 98.3 percent of all such funds to religious groups from fiscal 2001 to fiscal 2005.

The prime beneficiaries have been large groups including Catholic Relief Services and evangelical organizations such as World Vision -- the former employer of Bush's longtime USAID director Andrew Natsios -- and Samaritan's Purse, which is led by evangelist Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham, who guided Bush to his own religious rebirth.

Food for the Hungry, which is also evangelical, received its contract to run USAID programs in Lakartinya in fiscal 1999, during the Clinton administration, and it was renewed under Bush. The group's funding jumped from $7 million in fiscal 2001 to $20 million in fiscal 2005. Bush also appointed the group's president, Benjamin Homan, to chair USAID's advisory board.

Robert Snyder, Food for the Hungry's director for Kenya, said that the group seeks to segregate religious activities from aid programs, but that Kenyans don't usually believe in the concept of church-state separation.

``In Kenya, they don't separate things out," he said.

At Food for the Hungry's outpost in Lakartinya, staff members spoke openly of how they preach about Jesus while teaching breast-feeding and nutrition. Over the seven years that the group has been operating there, it has helped convert almost the entire area to Christianity, according to it's own field workers and villagers who participate in the programs.

Sante Dokhe, a 45-year-old mother of five from the Samburu tribe, became one of the health program's first ``contact mothers." She said she used to practice a traditional African religion. Then came her US-funded classes, which impressed her by drastically lowering the infant mortality rate in the village.

``The first time that I changed my mind is when we were learning the health education and our teacher was also talking about God," Dokhe said. ``We used to go to the rivers and pour milk for the god who stays in the mountain. But I learned through our classes that that is a very tiresome god. Now we have known that you don't need to struggle to please God. Now I have learned through health education that God is everywhere."

Christian missionaries have crisscrossed the world for generations, seeking to save souls by converting people.

US foreign-aid programs, however, began after World War II for the purely secular aim of winning friends for the United States. Now, aid packages and equipment purchased with government funds are stamped with the words ``From the American People" so beneficiaries can see the fruits of US generosity.

``The point of foreign assistance is national security," said Harriet Babbitt, who was USAID's second-ranking official during the last years of the Clinton administration.

Foreign aid programs have been criticized by some conservatives as unnecessary -- frittering away money that could be used in the United States. But in the late 1990s, evangelical groups began to focus on AIDS in Africa, and conservative Christian leaders became vocal supporters of government-funded programs.

Clinton's last USAID administrator was Brady Anderson, the president's boyhood friend and an evangelical Christian. Relations between USAID and faith-based organizations were strong, according to Babbitt and Anderson.

Nonetheless, after Bush took office in 2001, he surprised many people by declaring that religious groups had been systematically discriminated against in the awarding of government contracts. His administration issued a report called ``Unlevel Playing Field" that declared that faith-based groups faced too many restrictions. ``Some government rules require faith-based providers to endure something akin to an organizational strip search," the report said.

A push for applicants
To counter the alleged discrimination against churches, Bush used federal funds to hire outreach workers to hold training sessions and attend religious conferences in hopes of getting groups to apply for funds. The initiative, Bush promised, would ``open up billions of dollars in grant money competition to faith-based charities."

USAID workers began fanning out to religious events. They tried to convince skeptics that evangelical groups could follow government guidelines while still spreading the word of the Lord.

Clydette Powell, a doctor in USAID's public-health bureau, staged a workshop on public-private partnerships in tuberculosis at an evangelical conference last year in Louisville, Ky., proclaiming, ``There are tremendous opportunities, actually, for Christians -- and for, frankly, evangelistic purposes -- within a public health strategy such as TB. "

She added: ``I think Christians, who are so much more relational in this thing, have a leg up on, you know, just the regular public system because there is interest in developing a relationship -- in fact, hopefully, a relationship that leads them to know Christ as their savior and their lord in their lives."

When key senators balked at approving Bush's faith-based initiative, he claimed that they, too, were discriminating against churches.

But James Towey, who was director of the White House Office of Faith and Community Based Initiatives from 2002 until June 2006, said the major hang-up was Bush's desire to allow religious groups to reject candidates for government-funded jobs because the workers didn't practice the group's religion.

``The hiring provision gave everybody a lot of indigestion," Towey said.

In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed Executive Order No. 11246, a landmark directive that required all federal contractors to consider applications ``without regard to race, color, religion, sex or national origin."

Frustrated by Congress's refusal to reconsider Johnson's policy, Bush issued his own order in 2002 specifically allowing faith-based groups to discriminate in hiring for government-funded positions.

Bush explained himself in a speech in New Orleans on Jan. 15, 2004. Standing in front of a huge cross, the president said the federal government used to tell faith-based programs to ``take the cross down from the wall" to get government money.

``The problem is, faith-based programs only conform to one set of rules, and it's bigger than government rules," Bush said.

His rule changes were encouraged by both the Catholic Church, which was already the largest faith-based recipient of government money overseas, and the National Association of Evangelicals, whose leaders say it represents 30 million people.

The Catholic US Conference of Bishops declared, ``It is more important than ever to make sure that all charities, faith-based or secular, have access to the public and private resources they need" to serve the needy.

Robert Cizik, the evangelical association's vice president for governmental affairs, said, ``Without the faith-based service providers, there is no way to begin to stem the tide of AIDS."

He said Bush's rule changes -- including the reversal of Johnson's non-discrimination order -- were needed to give smaller evangelical providers ``an equal shot at the federal pie."

Other churches protest
Yet leaders of many large Christian denominations believe it is wrong for religious groups to discriminate based on religion when using government funds. And while Bush has portrayed many restrictions intended to enforce the separation of church and state as hostile to religion, many religious leaders disagree: They say the separation of church and state has allowed religions to flourish.

Many large Protestant denominations say the administration is catering to the religious right -- particularly evangelical groups seeking funding for missions whose ultimate aim is recruiting new members.

Bishop Frank Griswold, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, the faith in which Bush was raised, said he strongly opposed allowing faith-based contractors to discriminate in hiring. But the bishop said he was unable to express his concerns to Bush.

``I must say it has been very difficult for me -- and I think I can speak for the mainline churches as well -- to have any substantial engagement with the president," Griswold said. He said he has been ``shunted to one side" by the White House, which has been more interested in rewarding the religious right.

``I think it has to do with politics and power," Griswold said. ``It has a great deal to do with what Mr. Bush perceives to be his base."

Criticism also comes from representatives of the faith that Bush now observes -- the United Methodist Church.

James Winkler, general secretary of the church's General Board of Church and Society, compared Bush's claim of discrimination against faith-based organizations to his assertion that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

``We heard all the time that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and we heard all the time that there has been all this discrimination against faith-based groups," Winkler said. ``We kept on saying we haven't noticed any discrimination. The grants are there. This really came from the religious right as political payback for their support for the president."

The Southern Baptist Convention, which is the largest of several Baptist organizations, also has strong reservations about Bush's faith-based initiative, preferring to maintain a separation of church and state.

Richard Land, president of the convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, advises Southern Baptist churches not to take federal money. Noting how some British colonies in America financially supported the Anglican Church while persecuting Baptists, he said Baptists have in their ``genetic code" a dislike of such government funding.

Most Jewish groups have not aggressively sought foreign-aid contracts, some leaders said, because they do not seek to convert people, and a prime motivation for religious groups to be active overseas is to win new converts.

``Jews are not missionaries," said Ruth Messinger , president of the American Jewish World Service. ``The whole concept of proselytization is alien to us. Not only alien, almost offensive to us. Jews just don't do that."

Many Christian groups, however, acknowledge that they aim to convert new members, while denying that they proselytize.

``We would like for everyone to become a Christian, that is part of our faith as Christians," said Mark Howard, general counsel of World Vision.

Nonetheless, neither Natsios, who headed USAID from May 2001 to this year, nor Kent Hill, the assistant administrator for Global Health Programs, said they have ever received complaints of a religious contractor violating rules against proselytizing. But Natsios, at a conference last spring, acknowledged that USAID does not monitor groups for proselytizing.

Outsiders point out that members of the administration -- including the president -- sometimes seem to endorse the use of government funds for religious objectives. Speaking before religious leaders in Los Angeles on March 2, 2004, Bush discussed the difficulties of faith groups.

``I think if you ask them their biggest problem, they'd say, `Well, we need to expand, there's more souls to be saved, we need a little extra space for our rescue mission,' " he said. He then assured the groups: ``The government has got resources."

Robert Tuttle, a George Washington University law professor who has studied USAID policies, said he was dumbfounded that the agency chose not to require that aid recipients be told that they don't have to attend services: ``It is scandalous in the sense that if you really are interested in protecting the religious liberty of beneficiaries, then why not inform them of their rights?"

The government's General Accountability Office this year examined 13 federally funded faith-based organizations in the United States that offer prayer or worship. The agency concluded that four of the 13 ``did not appear to understand the requirement to separate these activities in time or location from their program services."

K. Hollyn Hollman, general counsel for the Baptist Joint Committee, which represents 14 Baptist organizations, said she is alarmed by the administration's policy that a religious group doesn't have to change its ``religious character" when distributing government aid.

Said Hollman: ``If the religious character of my organization involves evangelizing, changing your life through Christian witness, then I will be tempted to do that in a government-funded program."

The Globe's research found that in the absence of clear standards such as a prohibition on running government programs where services are conducted, religious groups feel free to ask recipients to pray, discuss their spiritual needs, and attend services.

Since many groups combine government and private funds, they feel unrestricted about proselytizing so long as they can say they were using private money. For instance, USAID has paid for tens of millions of dollars in equipment for religious hospitals, where patients learn about the Gospel while receiving care. But since the missionaries themselves are not on the government payroll, no rules apply.

Graham, whose Samaritan's Purse receives USAID funding for medical centers in Sudan and Angola, said in an interview: ``Of course you cannot proselytize with tax dollars, and rightfully so. I agree with that. But it doesn't mean that we can't build buildings, we cannot provide housing and buy bricks and mortar. The proselytizing or the preaching or the giving out of Bibles, people give us funds for those."

More Christian converts
In the dusty village of Lakartinya, Lucia Loltome, a 34-year-old nurse employed by Food for the Hungry, says proudly that she begins and ends each health class with a prayer.

Loltome became a Christian when she attended a Catholic high school. Now she is in charge of projects that involve 730 households and 1,300 children. She is proud of how she laces her lessons about typhoid, parasites, and breast-feeding with education about the Christian God.

``Before 1999, these people were not even going to church," she said. Now, all the contact mothers in the program and nearly every family in nearby villages are churchgoers, Loltome said.

A similar story is told three miles away, in an area known as Nkirmat, where Food for the Hungry began a similar project under the same USAID grant. In Nkirmat, contact mothers began learning about health education in 1999 and recently began breeding milk-producing goats. As with Lakartinya, the USAID program here has been accompanied by a wholesale conversion to Christianity, according to Antonella Kupona, the lead mother of the goat project.

``There was a church built here in 1972 but people were not going because of the traditional beliefs," she said. ``But now they are taking it up in great numbers. . . . As we go for the health education, we also learn about God."

What the wise minds at CQ have to say about the Bush speeches

The CQPolitics Forum: Will Bush's Speeches Make Voters Sway His Way?

CQPolitics.com asked its Board of Advisors the following:

President Bush and top administration officials have engaged in a series of speeches — keyed to Monday’s fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — that seek to directly identify Iraq as a crucial battleground in the international war on terror and warn that a U.S. military withdrawal from that nation before “the job is done” will embolden America’s adversaries and increase the likelihood of attacks on U.S. soil.

Have these speeches, aimed at stemming the sharp drop in support for the war in Iraq and Bush’s foreign policy in general that has been seen in public opinion polls, changed the political dynamics of these issues in this midterm election year?

Today, six professional political analysts — David P. Rebovich, Rhodes Cook, Bruce E. Cain, Charles S. Bullock III, Susan A. MacManus and Dotty Lynch — provide their views on these questions.

David P. Rebovich: Polls have long shown that most Americans disagree with the president’s policy toward Iraq and that problems with the war may result in the Democrats gaining a majority in the House and perhaps the U.S. Senate this fall.

So what did President Bush decide to do with Election Day two months away? Rather than try to rationalize, much less apologize for, the slow progress in Iraq, he went on the offense. With the emotional five-year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks approaching, Bush used the bully pulpit to speak optimistically and enthusiastically about his administration’s efforts to fight terrorism abroad and protect the homeland.

The president’s series of speeches had two key purposes. One was to rally Republicans, some of whom are disenchanted with Bush’s and the GOP-controlled Congress’ performance the last few years and are disinclined to show up at the polls on Nov. 7. Turnout by Republican base voters will be especially important in those districts and states — and there are many — where GOP incumbents are in tight races.

Bush’s second purpose was to put the Democrats on the defensive and make them seem like mere complainers while the White House and GOP-controlled Congress wrestle with the complexities of fighting terrorism in Iraq. And, as the president explained in his speeches, while the administration prevented several planned attacks on America since 9/11.

The implications of this approach are clear. The president wants to make the point that electing Democratic majorities in Congress will undermine the war on terrorism abroad and at home, thus jeopardizing the nation’s short- and long-term well-being.

This assertion might have some political bite except for two recent developments. The Senate Intelligence Committee just concluded that, contrary to Bush’s claims, there is no evidence that Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda were connected prior to the American invasion of Iraq. And the Democrats announced that they do, in fact, have some specific alternatives to the administration’s policies.

Last week, the Senate Democrats announced an elaborate plan that they call the Real Security Act of 2006. This plan contains reasonable proposals for changing the course in Iraq, refocusing the war on terror and bringing terrorists to justice, implementing the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations, protecting transportation systems and improving intelligence capabilities. The Democrats’ ideas are worthy of consideration, if hard to put on a bumper sticker, and are subject to the same critical analysis and debate that the president’s policies are.

Thus, Democratic candidates can counter the claim by Republicans that they simply want to “cut and run” on the war in Iraq. However, by trying to demonstrate that they can take the nation in a new and better direction on the war and on anti-terrorism policy, the Democrats may have opened themselves up to criticism on issues that they were already winning in the minds of most voters.

In the final weeks of the campaign, Democratic candidates may find it more difficult and distracting to explain their party’s proposals than simply criticizing the president and the Republicans in Congress. But that is the price of trying to show voters that you can lead and govern effectively.

David P. Rebovich, Ph.D., is the managing director of the Rider University Institute for New Jersey Politics in Lawrenceville, N.J.. He is a columnist for PoliticsNJ.com and New Jersey Lawyer, and a contributor to Campaigns and Elections magazine.

Rhodes Cook: I don’t know how much the administration’s renewed focus on the Iraq war and terrorism has changed the dynamic of these issues in this year’s midterm campaign. But the latter issue in particular plays to the Republicans’ strength.

It reminds one of the old football adage that if a play works, keep running it until the other team stops it. Republicans have been running the terrorism “play” since the midterm of 2002, and the Democrats haven’t stopped it yet.

Rhodes Cook, a former CQ senior politics writer who publishes The Rhodes Cook Letter, a bi-monthly political newsletter, and is author of America Votes, a biennial compilation of election data published by CQ Press.

Bruce E. Cain: At this point in the mid-term election, the question is not whether it will at least partially be a mandate on Iraq. It will.

What we do not know is how much of the national swing will be determined by national issues as opposed to local, campaign-specific factors such as incumbency, negative ads, candidate quality etc.

This gives the president two tactical choices. Lie low, stay out of the news, and let the Republican candidates fight on their own terms. Or charge forward, trying to change the frame of reference that voters have when they cast their ballots.

Since it is not in this president’s make-up to sit on the sidelines, it is no surprise that he is attempting to re-link the war in Iraq with the war on terror, and using the anniversary of 9/11 to remind voters of his bold, even if erring, leadership on terror.

The Republicans generally have been more aggressive than the Democrats about shaping the way that voters think. However, this is no easy matter: At some point, the facts have to connect up with the “spin” and national mood.

An atmosphere of palpable fear inclines voters to risk aversion, giving the benefit of the doubt to those who sound confident, strong and determined.

As time has progressed since 9/11, fear has lessened and the hard facts have not supported the president’s arguments. A flurry of speeches will not do the trick if voters have serious doubts about the president’s judgment.

This is the president’s last chance to help his party. If the polls next week indicate that his Iraq speeches and new proposals for handling terrorists have not pushed presidential approval ratings up significantly, President Bush will be doing his own marginal Republicans no favor by trying to repair his own image. His attempts to change the frame of the midterm debate have the byproduct of making national issues more salient.

Sometimes the best leadership is to get out of the way. But not all leaders can do that.

Bruce E. Cain is the director of the University of California Washington Center and longtime director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at University of California, Berkeley.

Charles S. Bullock III: The president continues to get his best ratings from the public on the issue of who is best suited to defend the nation from terrorism. While his recent speeches are designed to remind the public that terrorism remains a threat, the remembrance of the 9/11 attacks do even more to promote the image of President Bush the Defender.

However, it is other aspects of the president’s role on which Bush needs help. The 20 cent per gallon drop in gas prices may do more to help the president in the polls and to bolster GOP fortunes for the fall.

Charles S. Bullock III is the Richard Russell Professor of Political Science and Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Georgia.

Susan A. MacManus: Nothing disgusts average Americans more than the politicization of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

What drove this home to me was tuning in to watch the moment of silence memorial service this morning at Ground Zero, only to have a local television station break to air two strident attack ads from a Democrat and Republican running against each other for a state Senate seat here in Florida.

It reminded me of the blatant disconnect between the public and politicians when it comes to manners and common decency in times of grief. It had the uncomfortable feel of disrespect and poor taste, much like the disruption of a funeral. (And I love politics whereas most Americans do not.)

That said, the public has never stopped believing that America will be attacked again. Polls continue to show that Americans are even willing to give up some of their personal freedoms to make the nation safer.

The fight against terrorism still resonates with many citizens, but the politicization of the issue does not. Yet both political parties continue to use it as a political “weapon” against each other.

One ties the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq together; the other separates the two. One argues the country is safer today than five years ago; the other says “not true.”

What is true is that the public wants to feel safer, and longs for Democrats and Republicans alike to stand side-by-side, working together to solve problems, rather than treating serious issues as a political chess game, where each fights to position itself for victory.

Of course, that will never happen in the midst of a critical election cycle.

Two questions remain insofar as midterm elections. First, which view of the link between the war on terror and the war in Iraq is the most prevalent in each competitive congressional district? It is a question not easily answered with aggregate-level public opinion polls. Attitudes fluctuate depending on how the question is asked and what is happening at home and abroad. President Bush will quite likely get a bounce in the polls from the fifth anniversary of 9/11 … at least in the short term.

Second, are foreign policy concerns really that much bigger than pocketbook issues — jobs (and immigration’s impact on them), health insurance, affordable housing, and rising state and local taxes, especially property taxes?

So far, this election cycle is shaping up to be one that is more focused on Congress’ inability to tackle serious pocketbook-related issues that are stressing out the average taxpayer — and voter. Incumbents beware.

Susan A. MacManus is Distinguished University Professor of Government and International Affairs at University of South Florida and political analyst for NBC affiliate WFLA-TV in Tampa.

Dotty Lynch: I think they may have worked temporarily to change the topic from Iraq to terrorism. The anniversary of 9/11 is obviously a time of heightened attention.

The president and the GOP need to rebuild their image of the party that can keep people safe. An interesting indicator of their problem is in a CBS/New York Times poll released last week. In response to an open-ended question about what they like and dislike about President Bush, only 11 percent named his handling of terrorism as a plus, compared to 38 percent who volunteered Iraq as a negative.

I think that the public still separates Iraq from terrorism. While they give the president negative reviews on Iraq, they are mixed on terrorism.

His “non-political” speech on the evening of 9/11 will be a very high-profile attempt to regain his image on terrorism. The Bush administration has lost ground here, but their bigger problem is the anger toward the war in Iraq. His attempt at linkage will be assessed by a skeptical electorate.

Dotty Lynch is a CBS News political consultant and an Executive in Residence at the American University School of Communication in Washington, D.C.

Can we all now say DUH!

Senate Report Says Hussein Didn't Support Al-Qaeda (Update2)
By William Roberts

Sept. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Declassified U.S. Senate reports said that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein didn't trust al-Qaeda and refused to support it.

“Saddam Hussein was distrustful of al-Qaeda and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime,'' one of the reports said. Hussein refused all requests from al-Qaeda to provide material or operational support, said the report issued in Washington today by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

A second committee report said that Iraq Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress told U.S. officials that Iraq possessed nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, information that later proved inaccurate.

Democrats said the reports show that statements by Bush administration officials before the Iraq war weren't supported by U.S. intelligence known at the time they spoke.

They include statements by Vice President Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice, then Bush's national security adviser, linking Iraq to al-Qaeda, said Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the intelligence committee.

Cheney's statement that an Iraqi intelligence officer met in Prague with Mohammed Atta, a leader of the Sept. 11 hijackers, was “ not substantiated by the intelligence assessments at the time this statement was made by the vice president,'' Rockefeller said.

Rice's statement that “there are lot of tantalizing meetings between Iraq'' and “people who were involved in 9-11'' was “clearly false based upon what was known prior to the war,'' Rockefeller said.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said the reports contain little new information.

“All I can say is been there, done that,'' he told reporters at the daily White House briefing today.

Among the reports' conclusions:

-- "Postwar findings do not support the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate judgment that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.''

-- "False information from the Iraqi National Congress - affiliated sources, was used to support key intelligence community assessments on Iraq and was widely distributed in intelligence products prior to the war.

"The Iraqi National Congress attempted to influence United States policy on Iraq by providing false information through defectors directed at convincing the United States that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and had links to terrorists.''

To contact the reporters on this story: William Roberts in Washington wroberts@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: September 8, 2006 12:48 EDT

The death of CBS news

Not that I watch CBS anymore but still...

From this





The most respected newsman in America, acknowledged even by such diverse people as Abbie Hoffman and Lyndon Baines Johnson, sat at the helm of CBS news through turbulent times, and steered his news broadcast on an even and admirable course.

To this
A pleasant, sweet, fluffy, meaningless model wannabe.

I'd stopped watching network news to begin with but this still depresses me. I worshipped "Uncle Walter." I respected Dan Rather. I found Bob Schieffer interesting enough. But this? This is just embarrassing for all concerned.

All the President's Calories

I kid you not.

He's gained five pounds and is concerned about it, blaming it on recent excessive consumption of birthday cake.

Gosh, I'm glad he's on top of these things. The nation can rest easy, secure in the knowledge that their Commander in Chief is aware of his weight.

/sarcasm

I'm in a mood today, ain't I?

Dammit, I TRY to hate Wal-Mart. I really try!

Okay, I actually am effetely intellectual enough to have the New York Times delivered daily to my front door (the delivery dude is a klutz so if I'm lucky it's on my front sidewalk but you get the idea...) And I read it, although on days I drive to work my reading is less thorough than it is on days I take the train. And I never read the business section unless something grabs my eye in the half second it takes me to glance at it and discard it.

So I think I can be excused for missing the following article until today. Mind you, I'm not so dedicatedly Jewish that it matters a whole helluva lot to me that Wal-Mart has proven supportive of the Jews who work for the Evil Empire. But it's hard to hate any company that not only is supportive of a minority that is really not beloved in Arkansas (when I attended my ex-father in law's funeral my ex pleaded with me to wear makeup to alter my appearance and tell everyone my ancestry was Ukranian and Polish and not mention Jewish at all...) but also holds meetings to promote environmental awareness among its managers and is trying to stock more organics at reasonable prices (okay, that one has clear economic motive and is likely to be executed poorly but at least they're trying!)

The link may not work as the article is in the paid archives so I'm reproducing it below.

BUSINESS/FINANCIAL DESK

In the Hometown of Wal-Mart, Synagogue Is a Sign of Growth

By MICHAEL BARBARO (NYT) 1450 words
Published: June 20, 2006

CORRECTION APPENDED

BENTONVILLE, Ark. - Residents of Benton County, in the northwest corner of Arkansas, are proud citizens of the Bible Belt. At last count, they filled 39 Baptist, 27 United Methodist and 20 Assembly of God churches. For decades, a local hospital has begun meetings with a reading from the New Testament and the library has featured an elaborate Christmas display.

Then the Wal-Mart Jews arrived.

Recruited from around the country as workers for Wal-Mart or one of its suppliers, hundreds of which have opened offices near the retailer's headquarters here, a growing number of Jewish families have become increasingly vocal proponents of religious neutrality in the county. They have asked school principals to rename Christmas vacation as winter break (many have) and lobbied the mayor's office to put a menorah on the town square (it did).

Wal-Mart has transformed small towns across America, but perhaps its greatest impact has been on Bentonville, where the migration of executives from cities like New York, Boston and Atlanta has turned this sedate rural community into a teeming mini-metropolis populated by Hindus, Muslims and Jews.

It is the Jews of Benton County, however, who have asserted themselves most. Two years ago, they opened the county's first synagogue and, ever since, its roughly 100 members have become eager spokesmen and women for a religion that remains a mystery to most people here.

When the synagogue celebrated its first bar mitzvah, the boy's father -- Scott Winchester, whose company sells propane tanks to Wal-Mart -- invited two local radio D.J.'s, who broadcast the event across the county, even though, by their own admission, they had only a vague idea of what a bar mitzvah was.

''Jesus was Jewish,'' one D.J. noted in a dispatch from the reception at a local hotel. The other remarked, ''I love Seinfeld.''

Shortly after he moved to the area, Tom Douglass, a member of the synagogue who works in Wal-Mart's logistics department, made a presentation about Hanukkah to his son's kindergarten class. The lesson, complete with an explanation of how to play with a spinning dreidel and compete for chocolate coins, imported from New York, proved so popular that the school's librarian taped it for future classes.

Then there is Ron Haberman, a doctor and synagogue member, who has introduced Jewish cuisine to the county. His new restaurant, Eat This, next door to a new 140,000-square-foot glass-enclosed Baptist church, serves knishes, matzo ball soup and latkes. To guide the uninitiated, the menu explains that it is pronounced ''LOT-kuz.''

Not everyone is ordering the knishes, but Christians throughout Benton County are slowly learning the complexities of Jewish life. Gary Compton, the superintendent of schools in Bentonville and a member of a Methodist church in town, has learned not to schedule PTA meetings the night before Jewish holidays, which begin at sundown, and has encouraged the high school choir to incorporate Jewish songs into a largely Christian lineup.

''We need to get better at some things,'' he said. ''You just don't go from being noninclusive to being inclusive overnight.''

Surrounded by Christian neighbors, Bible study groups, 100-foot-tall crucifixes and free copies of the book ''The Truth About Mary Magdalene'' left in the seating area of the Bentonville IHOP, the Jews of Benton County say they have become more observant in -- and protective of -- their faith than ever before.

Marcy Winchester, the mother of the synagogue's first bar mitzvah, said, ''You have to try harder to be Jewish down here.''

Which may explain why what began as a dozen families, almost all of them tied to Wal-Mart and almost all of them sharing only a passing familiarity with one another, managed to create a free-standing synagogue in just under a year. Tired of being asked which church they attended, they decided to build the answer.

For several years, many of them had attended a small synagogue attached to the University of Arkansas about 30 miles south of Bentonville. But the drive was long and the university temple, a converted fraternity house, never felt like home.

So in 2004, the families -- most of them like-minded transplants from big cities largely in their 30's -- decided it was time to create a permanent Jewish community in Benton County. They bought a former Hispanic Assembly of God church a few blocks from the first five-and-dime store operated by Sam Walton, Wal-Mart's founder, and renamed it Congregation Etz Chaim, or Tree of Life.

A dozen families quickly turned into 20 families, then 40.

There were, for example, Betsy and Marc Rosen, who moved to Benton County from Chicago in 2000 after Mr. Rosen was offered a job in Wal-Mart's technology department. The family did not attend a synagogue in Chicago because, Mrs. Rosen said, ''you didn't need a synagogue to have a Jewish identity.'' There were Jewish neighbors, Jewish friends, Jewish family.

But not in Bentonville, where her daughter brought home from day care a picture of Jesus to color in. Suddenly, a synagogue did not seem like a luxury anymore, but a necessity to preserve her family's Jewish heritage.

The Jewish community here is a demographic anomaly. For decades, the Jewish population has plunged in small Southern towns like Bentonville, as young Jews have been lured to big cities like Atlanta and Houston. The Jewish population in Arkansas was 1,700 in 2001, down from 6,500 in 1937, according to the most recent numbers available from the American Jewish Yearbook, forcing synagogues in towns like Blytheville and Helena to close their doors.

''Bentonville is the exception,'' said Stuart Rockoff, a historian at the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life, a nonprofit group that supports synagogues like Etz Chaim.

But as Etz Chaim nears its second anniversary, Benton County's only synagogue -- and by extension, its fledgling Jewish community -- faces several unexpected challenges.

The members of the congregation come from observant religious families in Connecticut, reform synagogues in Kansas City, Mo., and everything in between. Though they agreed to share one roof, they are struggling to reconcile varied backgrounds and traditions, which has made for hours-long debates over, among other things, whether congregants can take photos inside the synagogue on the Sabbath. (The answer is yes, but only with the flash turned off.)

Then there is the pressure from the outside. Eager to gain a foothold in what they consider a fast-growing Jewish community, several major Jewish movements have begun wooing the synagogue. In the last year, representatives from the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements have all visited the temple.

After learning there was a sizable Jewish population in the area, a rabbi from the strictly observant Chabad-Lubavitch movement moved to town, creating a potential competitor to Etz Chaim. The rabbi has had some success offering residents prayer services in his home -- which has its own Torah -- and a hard-to-find amenity in these parts: a kosher meal.

Members of the synagogue's board said they were in no rush to pick a religious affiliation but conceded the decision was inevitable.

Turnover has also proved to be a problem. Wal-Mart's suppliers like Procter & Gamble and Walt Disney, which set up satellite offices to be closer to their largest retail client, replace their Wal-Mart teams every few years, so Etz Chaim has already lost some founding members.

David Hoodis, the synagogue's president and an executive in Wal-Mart's operations department, said he expected to lose two to three families a year, forcing the temple to recruit aggressively. Members of the congregation are encouraged to invite new Wal-Mart employees over for dinner on the Sabbath to talk to them about Etz Chaim. And, to build the congregation, the synagogue has created associate memberships, with lower dues, for businesspeople who make frequent overnight trips here to visit Wal-Mart.

''I still think we are fragile,'' Mr. Hoodis said.

But the synagogue's roots are deepening. It recently celebrated its first renewal-of-wedding-vows ceremony. It received a Torah from a temple seven hours away in El Dorado, Ark., that closed because of a dwindling congregation. And after relying on borrowed rabbis, it has hired one of its own, a member of a Conservative temple, who travels to Bentonville once a month from Tulsa, Okla., with his wife, a singer who serves as Etz Chaim's cantor.

With its purple carpet and orange pews, both vestiges of the Assembly of God church it once was, Etz Chaim is not the synagogue that all of its members envisioned growing old in. But in a short time it has become the center of the Jewish community here -- and has begun to weave its way into this overwhelmingly Christian community.

This year a prominent local faith-based charity, consisting exclusively of churches, invited Etz Chaim to join. The charity promptly reworded it mission statement, replacing ''churches'' with ''congregations.''

Correction: June 23, 2006, Friday A front-page article on Tuesday about the growth and influence of the Jewish community and other religious faiths in Bentonville, Ark., because of the expansion of Wal-Mart's headquarters there, referred imprecisely to the name of one Christian denomination with several churches in the area. It is the Assemblies of God, not Assembly of God. The article also, misstated the location of the IHOP restaurant where free copies of the book ''The Truth About Mary Magdalene'' are available. It is in Rogers, Ark., not Bentonville.

Boy, when even Congressional Quarterly sees it...

When the normally extremely non-partisan Congressional Quarterly has an article essentially bitching about Pres. El Nino's hypocrisy on the issue of leaks from the administration, you know it's gotten bad out there.

In an article entitled "Indignation, Full of Holes," in this week's CQ Weekly, NBC/CBS' Craig Crawford writes:

"It’s a given that presidents relish leaks to the news media when it serves their purposes, and that they act outraged at leaks that do not make them look good. But George W. Bush’s relativism on this score is like watching a roller coaster on acid."

(read the rest at the link above.)

The State of the Nation is....Forgiving?

This Alternet story about the traffic in slaves was thought-provoking and horrifying. This U.S. State Department report from 2005 has the same effect.

But the Tier List, taken from the above mentioned State Department report, made me look twice. Look at who's on Tier 3, which is the worst offenders. Do you recognize the names of any of the United States' "good, strong allies" there? How about the ones on the Tier 2 Watch List (the ones heading to Tier 3 if they don't clean up their acts.)

If that were a United Nations report, I could almost understand how the State Department justified our alliances. After all, our present administration dislikes and mistrusts the U.N. in the first place. But this is an internal report, one done at the behest (well, officially at the behest, although it probably wasn't her idea to begin with) of Condi Rice, the Secretary of Helmet Hair and State.

We clearly forgive our allies for sins many of us cannot forgive ourselves. While our government tries to come to terms with African American descendants of slaves asking for restitution on behalf of their ancestors, it is silently permitting its wealthy allies to keep human beings, many of them extremely young children, in conditions of involuntary servitude that would have offended many of the most hard-hearted slave masters in American history.

Tipped by a story on Alternet.

Fallen Soldier Gets a Bronze Star but No Pagan Star

What more should we expect, considering Our Fearless Leader (pictured at left) has stated that he doesn't consider Wicca a religion?

DISPATCH FROM THE CEMETERY

Fallen Soldier Gets a Bronze Star but No Pagan Star

By Alan Cooperman

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday, July 4, 2006; Page A02

At the Veterans Memorial Cemetery in the small town of Fernley, Nev., there is a wall of brass plaques for local heroes. But one space is blank. There is no memorial for Sgt. Patrick D. Stewart.

That's because Stewart was a Wiccan, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has refused to allow a symbol of the Wicca religion -- a five-pointed star within a circle, called a pentacle -- to be inscribed on U.S. military memorials or grave markers.

(click link above for the whole story.)

Overheard on the train

On my trip home last night (the train's air conditioning was not working, btw) I chanced to eavesdrop on the conversation being held behind me by three young men with unkempt hair and chips on their shoulders. I can't reproduce it word for word because I wasn't really paying attention initially, plus I can't use the word "fuck" with nearly their alacrity, but the gist of it was that they were discussing how to acquire enough explosives to do something exciting. I do recall that one of them said that one would have to be a signator to the Geneva Convention (I'm actually making it more grammatically correct than he was) in order to get one kind and another had to be avoided because the government puts some kind of indestructible identification in it so they could find out who'd used it. Okay, I thought, either they're complete morons or they're trying to get someone to start a fight on the train. If that latter, no one bit. Someone joined them and asked what they'd been up to. "Blowing up fucking A-rabs," said one, followed by gutteral noises no doubt intended to make fun of the Arabic language. The three (or four, I really wasn't looking) howled with laughter. Another fellow got on the train. As he took his seat just ahead of me, one of the guys behind me called out to him by name. He recognized them and they started to chat, all talk of blowing things or people up left behind. I started to pay attention, I don't know why. And it gradually came out that all four had served together in the Army. Recently. One of the young men behind me kept saying, "Fuck you, man, I EARNED my freedom!" They discussed the skanky girls they'd ogled at some strip club outside of Fort Lewis. They discussed the weather in terms of how hot it was in Iraq. (Sorry, EYE-rack...) The last guy got off the train a few stops later, and one of the young men behind me spotted a girl he thought looked "fine, man." (She did, but that's beside the point and doesn't excuse the way they were talking about her.) They started gesturing wildly for the guy who'd gotten off the train to talk to her. One of the three remaining guys jumped off the train and I lost sight of him. The train doors closed, the train started to move, and the cell phone of one of the young men trilled. He repeated, for his friend's benefit, "She waited and caught the red line behind us." "Well, let's get to it!" said the other, and they hopped off the train at the next stop, presumably to get on the train the "fine" looking girl was on.

When they left, I realized that perhaps I am in serious error judging American soldiers by arkham4269's standard. And if these men are a true example of the kind of men we have fighting to defend our freedom, I truly do fear for our nation. I acknowledge that just coming back from combat might have made them louder and less genteel and polite than most people riding Max at rush hour are accustomed to, but the way they seemed to take naturally to stalking the girl (she was maybe 19) they found attractive made me queasy and their loud, racist, violent conversation may have been intended for its shock value but it was said with enough conviction that I believed they were speaking their true beliefs (albeit most certainly not their true activities.)

I always like to share the surreal in the news

The Da Vinci Senator

By Bob Geiger, AlterNet
Posted on June 19, 2006, Printed on June 19, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/37668/

The United States Senate is often called "the greatest deliberative body in the world," which usually raises the bar on the tenor and intellectual content of speeches given on the floor, if not for the official record.

Not so for Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., who took to the Senate floor last week to deliver a strident push for the bigoted "Marriage Protection Amendment." Alongside the typical massive distortions of the issue was an argument that was based almost solely on the opinion of a little-known conservative think tank affiliated with the Roman Catholic organization Opus Dei.

"The problem we have in front of us is the institution of marriage has been weakened, and the effort to redefine it on this vast social experiment that we have going on, redefining marriage differently than it has ever been defined before," the Kansas senator grimly intoned last week. "This effort of this vast social experiment, the early data that we see from other places, harms the institution of the family, the raising of the next generation. And it is harmful to the future of the republic."

Brownback then went on to give figures for how various states have shown their hatred of gay people with their own prohibitions on same-sex marriage and used that as his rationale for a similar amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

But Brownback really hit his stride when he described a paper called "Ten Principles on Marriage and the Public Good," published by a fairly new and extremely conservative group at Princeton University. According to Brownback, the paper is an "important statement of principles from top American scholars [to] be considered carefully by my colleagues." He then added that the sentiments expressed in the nonscientific treatise were so vital to our national dialog that they should "… help guide our debate on this issue."

The paper, sponsored by the Witherspoon Institute at Princeton, makes a case for banning same-sex marriage altogether. What's extraordinary is the idea of a United States senator attempting to sway opinion on an amendment that would have altered our Constitution (had it not been defeated last Wednesday) by using a paper from an organization linked to Opus Dei, a strict religious group that some former members have described as a cult.

Brownback spent a good part of his lengthy Senate speech last week citing the study and attributing it to "this Princeton group of scholars," while never mentioning that all of the findings were based on the ultraconservative Witherspoon Institute bolstered by the involvement -- directly or indirectly -- of a nonprofit, tax-exempt religious organization in Opus Dei.

So what exactly is the Witherspoon Institute, whose paper formed the foundation of Brownback's anti-gay argument?

The institute, which has only been around since 2003, has close ties to Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council, but is also tightly aligned with Opus Dei. Indeed, Luis Tellez, the president of the Witherspoon Institute is also the director and lead cleric of Opus Dei in Princeton.

Since its founding in 1928, Opus Dei has been known for its traditionalist values and right-wing political stances. And critics in academia -- which include former members who sometimes go through "deprogramming" upon exiting Opus Dei -- charge that organizations like the Witherspoon Institute are just veiled attempts by Opus Dei to spread its influence in top-tier academic circles.

So why then, is a U.S. senator offering to Congress "research" linked to Opus Dei on something as vital as amending the Constitution? It turns out that Brownback, who was formerly an evangelical Protestant, converted to Catholicism by way of Opus Dei in 2002 and was sponsored in that conversion by Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Penn., a vocal Opus Dei advocate.

Tellez, the leader of Opus Dei in Princeton, is a "numerary," considered the most conservative of the sect's members -- they are unmarried, celibate, devote every aspect of their lives to their spiritual beliefs and turn over their salaries from secular jobs to Opus Dei.

Again, it bears repeating that Tellez is also the head of the Witherspoon Institute, the group Brownback cited at great length as his primary argument against gay marriage.

And remember, it is Brownback, as an Opus Dei convert, who also leads the charge on Capitol Hill against abortion and stem cell research and who, along with Santorum, is seen by the Religious Right as a point man on "culture war" issues.

The other central figure in the Witherspoon orbit is Dr. Robert George, a Princeton professor and a board member in the institute who, not coincidentally, helped draft the federal gay-marriage ban that was just defeated in the Senate. George chaired a meeting of religious leaders in late 2005 that included Dr. James Dobson and other members of the extreme Religious Right. In fact, in addition to his pivotal role in the Witherspoon Institute, George is also a board member at Perkins' Family Research Council, a group known for its bigoted positions on the gay community.

And, via Brownback, all of this is ultimately finding its way into the halls of Congress.

While it may not be technically illegal for Brownback to be so clearly mixing hard-right religious ideology -- and faux-academic papers promoted by religious organizations like Opus Dei -- with debate on the Senate floor, it should certainly raise some eyebrows. In a country where strict separation of church and state is mandated, it seems Brownback is freely blending the two, attempting to use religious dogma to influence public policy -- all the while not disclosing to his Senate colleagues the background sources of the research he is citing.

But this should not be surprising coming from Brownback.

In a January 2006 Rolling Stone article, "God's Senator," Brownback is described as a religious zealot with a view for America's future that could almost be described as medieval.

"In his dream, America, the one he believes both the Bible and the Constitution promise, the state will simply wither away. In its place will be a country so suffused with God and the free market that the social fabric of the last hundred years -- schools, Social Security, welfare -- will be privatized or simply done away with," reads the article. "There will be no abortions; sex will be confined to heterosexual marriage. Men will lead families, mothers will tend children, and big business and the church will take care of all."

After all, it was Brownback, who came to Congress in 1994 and refused to sign Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America" because he felt it wasn't conservative enough. Even then, as a newcomer to the House of Representatives, Brownback believed that the vast majority of what he saw as Big Government should simply be eliminated, including the departments of education, energy and commerce.

And, yes, it was also Brownback who was so outraged at the split-second glimpse of Janet Jackson's nipple during the 2004 Super Bowl, that he introduced the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act, which substantially raised fines for such simple on-air displays of nudity.

Finally, in addition to being brought into Catholicism by the likes of Opus Dei and using laundered research by an affiliated group on the Senate floor, Brownback chairs a meeting every Tuesday night with the "Values Action Team," consisting of religious leaders like Dobson who help the senator formulate his thoughts on public policy issues.

According to Time magazine, Opus Dei has assets in the neighborhood of $2.8 billion and, with John McCain unlikely to significantly rouse the Religious Right in 2008, look for Brownback to be the guy that Opus Dei, Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council turn to as their presidential candidate.

And make no mistake about it: Brownback wants to run. So if you think his views for a new America, as viewed from the Senate floor, are scary, think of what he'll be like sitting at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

In his mind, it may already be ordained.

© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/37668/

Where are the demonstrations?

I've been listening to the news almost compulsively for years now. And I'm awestruck...and not in a good way...by the lack of public protest against the war in Iraq. Has the anti-war movement really been castrated by the Internet? Yeah, there was a memorial vigil tonight. Yeah, there's a weekly peace vigil in Beaverton. But where are the protest rallies? Where are the people taking to the streets?

I have to quote Arlo Guthrie, and that scares me. "If you wanna end the war and stuff, you gotta sing loud."

(I feel better having typed that.)

As the American death toll reaches 2,500 in Iraq

here is how our government is safeguarding the freedoms they say the terrorists and insurgents hate so much.

Alito Vote Loosens Limits on Evidence
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Supreme Court ruled, 5-4, that police can use evidence collected with a warrant even if officers fail to knock before rushing into a home.

Flag-burning amendment heads to Senate floor

By Andy Sullivan

Reuters
Thursday, June 15, 2006; 2:50 PM

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A measure that would change the U.S. Constitution to let Congress ban burning the American flag was sent to the Senate floor on Thursday, setting up an election-year debate.

All this within a week of trying to pass the anti-gay marriage amendment.

I posted this on today's Marc Maron Show blog.

To protect our freedom, it appears the Shrub Pack are going to put it somewhere safe. Can't have just anybody exercise freedom. Might be a terrorist, you know. The little people might lose it. Better to lock it up in a vault somewhere and let the people who know what to do with it, like corporations and politicians, be the only ones allowed to have it.

Sadly, I'm afraid I might not be entirely wrong.