There will be a quiz: Some indispensible reading matter for the Web: The Green Papers, a brilliant resource site filled with more electoral information -- who, what, where and when -- than you can shake a butterfly ballot at; Leftie political blog MyDD and its excellent set of political links.

 
Left turn at Albuquerque, part two: The Texas Observer has one of the better articles detailing the Texas House's first special session (written from a Democratic point of view).

When I spoke to area mayors and mayoral aides at the Dallas redistricting hearing, I was struck by the unanimity displayed by rural, urban, and suburban political leaders: liberal or conservative, urban or rural, none of them like being subsumed into omnibus districts crossing areas of concern. Fast-growing Denton County didn't want to be yoked to the small towns and rural areas ringing Fort Worth, while the town of Waco feared that the planned redistricting would leave it to the mercy of politicians more interested in the Dallas metro vote. Virtually all of them came prepared with press packets that included everything from open letters to the redistricting committee to economic studies suggesting catastrophic financial effects for affected regions. And this doesn't even include the vast number of enraged Democrats who signed up to speak in front of the committee -- the impression I took away was that the GOP hadn't prepared their grassroots leaders at all for this, leaving the field almost entirely to the Democrats.

Right now, it seems that the Dems have a fairly large reserve of public goodwill (or at least studied neutrality) to draw upon in their opposition. Although I haven't seen any polls taken of the Texas electorate on this issue, my gut feeling is that even two special sessions may have been a bridge too far -- if Perry can't deliver a new map in the current special session, he may have politically crippled himself in a failed bid to gain favor inside the Beltway.

 
Hell no, we all must go! You'd think these folks would be joking, or at least making a mordantly ironic point, but they actually seem to be serious.

I found Roger Sandall's defense of big-C Civilization in the current New Criterion to be overheated (and it felt like a return to Victorian psuedo-evolutionary theories of culture), but when confronted with people who cheerfully advocate the voluntary die-off of us "furless beach apes" for the health of a hypothetical Gaia, I begin to feel a paleocon panic welling up. Thankfully, like some other activist groups, they have a tendency towards being a self-correcting problem. (Link via Blogamy.)

 
Diamond-Dogs of War, Part Two: As Liberian strongman Charles Taylor leaves (or at least appears to be leaving) Liberia for a four-lodge estate prepared for him by Nigerian Cross River State Governor Donald Duke, discussions over the proper role of U.S. forces in that distraught country continue, with some members of the left -- ardent opposition to the war in Iraq, to a man -- suddenly discovering Kipling in their bookshelf and cordite in the air. (Perhaps most amusing is Woollacott's assertion that the "U.S. stands in an essentially similar relationship to Liberia as Britain does to Sierra Leone," evidently forgetting that (A) Britain directly colonized and held rule over Sierra Leone from 1792 to 1961; and, (B), the United States never colonized Liberia, although a few thousand freed slaves sailed -- admittedly, often under duress -- to its shores from the United States.)

Many neocons, on the other hand, fear Liberia could become another Afghanistan. Columnist and former GOP leader Robert George, in an interview with C-SPAN, noted that Liberia under Charles Taylor gave aid and comfort to al'Qaeda forces; a Global Witness report on al'Qaeda's links to international diamond smuggling describes how Taylor opened the door for Islamist terrorists to flood into a region already mortally wounded by civil warfare, banditry, dictatorships and mining-company-backed mercenary forces.

Although many on the left and right oppose U.S. intervention, seeing it as triumphant imperialism or a waste of American lives, perhaps the strangest criticism comes from Pat Robertson, who stands to reap literally billions from a gold-mining operation blessed by Taylor, and whose corporate fortunes may be storm-tossed by an incoming government unlikely to respect a sweetheart deal arranged by the dictator. Robertson has exercised himself to new heights of casuistry defending Taylor, who uses child soldiers and tortures political opponents to death like a mad West African Nero: "This man Taylor is not the monster everybody makes him out to be. Like most African countries, they don't have the same ethics we might have in this country, but at least they're trying to do something."

Condeming the Bush Administration's provision of logistical support for the ECOWAS stabilization force, Robertson told viewers of his popular 700 Club, "How dare the president of the United States say to the duly elected president of another country, 'You've got to step down?' ... We're undermining a Christian, Baptist president to bring in Muslim rebels to take over the country." In an open letter to Secretary of State Powell, Robertson asked

May I respectfully inquire as a taxpayer of the United States and one with significant financial investment in Liberia why the State Department of the United States of America is determined to bring down the President of Liberia who was elected in 1997 as president in elections which the ICG reports that the United Nations, President Jimmy Carter, and all other neutral observers determined were substantially free and fair?

(Regarding the 1997 elections, the State Department has said that "The elections were administratively free and transparent, but were conducted in an atmosphere of intimidation, as most voters believed that Taylor's forces would have resumed fighting if he had lost.")

Robertson certainly isn't leading or shaping Christian opinion on this matter -- indeed, the Southern Baptists themselves have urged the Administration to intervene, worried about increasing bloodshed in a country that has longstanding ties to the Baptist church.

Perhaps Robertson would do well to remember Isaiah 55:1-2 -- "Ho, every one that thirsts, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labor for that which satisfieth not?"

 
I resemble that remark: Here's a piece that I meant to post earlier this month -- Rep Ron Paul's (R-Tx) special-order speech attacking neoconservatives from July 10. Interesting view on how fringe conservatives -- paleocon and libertarians alike -- view the new orthodoxy.

 
Taking a left turn at Albuquerque: Who's gonna blink first? As the Texas Dems spend a financially-draining exile in New Mexico, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst has tried to lure them back by adding other matters, such as school finance, to the legislative slate -- a move which, veteran Texas pol-watcher Dave McNeely notes, tends to raise the question of whether the new items are so important as to convince the Governor to drop redistricting (the short answer: "No." The long answer, as rather indiscreetly provided by Senator Florence Shapiro, is that "Senators don't tell the governor what to do. The governor tells senators what to do").

In the meantime, Perry has hinted that he might call a third special session at the end of August. Since the Governorship, unlike Senate seats, is a full-time job, Perry might be able to win this game of political chicken through financial attrition alone.

 
Around the world in eighty seconds: Nigerian troops are set to arrive in Liberia under ECOWAS aegis, as Nigerian This Day paints a picture of an artillery-scarred country where refugees are reduced to "eating leaves off trees" ...

The same paper reports that ethnic warfare in the Nigerian province of Warri is claiming lives, ruining oil production, and now has resulted in the kidnapping of Chevron employees ...

Legislative clashes between Iranian reformists and old-guard clerics continue, with legislators taking the conservative religion leaders to task ...

While Israeli papers are focused on Sharon's visit to America and clashes along the "security fence," the Knesset is considering a bill to refuse citizenship to Palestinians who marry Israeli citizens ...

Al-Ahram warns that Mahmoud Abbas may be fatally weakened by a perceived lack of Israeli action on the roadmap ...

MEMRI notes that even as the Saudis protest any suspicion of linkages between them and terror organizations, Saudi Prince Amir Muhammad Al-Faisal is writing anti-American screeds for regional papers (the articles are about what you'd expect from a Noam Chomsky or Edward Said, with one odd column managing to allege conspiracies by and against American Jews) ...

As Idi Amin lies dying in a Saudi hospital, the Ugandan press is already lining up to take a whack at the corpse, detailing both his own abuses and asking "what is it about Ugandan society that allowed him to come to power and stay as long as he did?" (transitory link) ...

Russian-Chinese relations reached another milestone as Vladimir Putin met with Deng Xiaoping's daughter, in Russia for a book tour ...

Russian police have begun a crackdown, detaining anyone who looks suspicious -- or, the author darkly hints, anyone who might catch the fancy of Russia's infamously uncontrolled and corrupt police force ...

The Russian YUKOS scandal, where officials of that oil company and powerful oligarchs ("oil-garchs?") Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev have been arrested and indicted, has taken on crisis proportions in Russia, with many seeing the arrests as politically motivated (given fears that Khodorkovsky was maneuvering to bite into Putin's center-right political base), and others seeing it as the metastasizing of the ambivalent neglect shown to the state-corporate relationship under Putin ...

Japan is set to raise tariffs on foreign beef in response to post-mad-cow competition from foreign ranchers ...

Breaking news: Reports from Japan say that gunshots were fired at Chongryon, a Korean residents organization, and a bomb-like object placed at the Korean-owned Hana Credit Union in Niigata, this only days after the 50th anniversary of the Korean cease-fire; both organizations are linked with North Korea, with Chongryon acting effectively as Pyongyang's voice in Japan and, as some reports allege, providing safe harbor for a shadowy DPRK intelligence group (known in Japan as Gakushu-gumi) engaged in intelligence activities against South Korea.

 
Nota Bene: The PAM project, discussed below, was pronounced dead on arrival today by Paul Wolfowitz during his appearance before the Senate.

Tom Walker gives proper credit for the PAM project to one Robin Hanson of, appropriately enough for a market-oriented tool, George Mason University (does this make them Extrophayekians?). A heated thread by Hanson et al. on Senate opposition to PAM is here.

 
Where's the outrage? When you can't find anything else to complain about, nitpick vociferously. Bush Autographs US Flags, cries The Nation's "Daily Outrage" column, snapping that "The US Code is very clear that no one person is supposed to put themselves above the American flag," citing 4 U.S.C. 8 as an authority. (Image of the President signing the miniature flags here.)

Of course, the same statute states that "The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery" (thus covering everything from t-shirts with the flag on it to American flag quilts to, yes, Stars and Stripes boxers), "The flag should never be used for advertising purposes in any manner whatsoever," nor "impressed on ... anything that is designed for temporary use and discard" (Bivens must go into apoplexy every Fourth of July), nor should any "part of the flag ... ever be used as a costume or athletic uniform" (you know who we're talking about).

Skipping over the advisory and not mandatory "should" that is used in every instance (prompting the grudging admission that signing a flag is "more a faux pas than a crime" -- so it's only slightly a crime? Kinda illegal? Punishable by six months in jail with Martha Stewart?), it's hard to seriously defend Bivens' assertion that Bush, if "a true patriot ... would recoil if offered a flag and asked to scribble his name on it." As Jim Capozzola is wont to say (from the other side of the political divide), this is the Age of Unseriousness.

At the same time, The Nation takes note of a controversial nominee to the DEA whose raids on state-legalized medical marijuana clinics, while valid exercises of the Supremacy Clause, also amount to an ideological violation of states' rights.

 
A random walk down Jaffa Street: The NYT went below-the-fold today with a report on a new DARPA project that lets investors wager on terrorist attacks and other geopolitical events. Democrats call it "morally repugnant," and unnamed "Republican officials in the Senate ... hop[e] that the Pentagon ha[s] a good explanation for it."

As a matter of fact, they do. The basic idea underpinning the Policy Analysis Market (PAM) isn't new, Bayesian analysis having long been used to pull probabilities from conditions of uncertain and imperfect information (including a celebrated Navy project to discover a downed nuclear bomber, which may have inspired this particular foray). Commercially, TradeSports.com lets you bet on everything from entertainment to war, while the University of Iowa runs a futures market on Presidential elections and other events. Although the U-Iowa market was designed for teaching and research purposes, it has proven to be remarkably accurate in forecasting political results. Defense contractor and game-theory incubator RAND Corporation has also held a longstanding interest in the "Delphi method," which aggregates expert opinion and searches for patterns within the polling results.

As a recent paper on this subject noted, "Expert opinions tend to vary widely ... and vary fairly directly with the ideological predisposition of the predictor. Markets aggregate opinions, and by requiring a trader to put 'your money where your mouth is,' they lessen the cheap-talk problem and create incentives for individuals to reveal their true beliefs." Theoretically, PAM will act like an intelligence clearinghouse, a kind of public-access NIE created from the analyses of investors who have a strong stake in being correct.

This doesn't mean that PAM is necessarily going to work, of course. The efficiency of a market is proportional to the amount and homogeneity of information available to individual actors. Thus, markets forecasting the price of crude oil, government bonds, or even horse races tend to remain effective, whereas markets for effectively random or highly-localized events are simply gambling. As a result, PAM cannot be an efficient market or useful predictive tool when the outcomes of covered events, such as terror attacks, are in the hands of small groups that do not divulge information, such as al-Qaeda, or when particularly prescient information is kept from the public eye. Nor should it be considered a tool for forecasting specific events that are not foreordained by legal, political, or economic means; it is one thing to bet on a company's long-term health, but quite another to bet on its stock price over the next eight hours.

Nonetheless, DARPA's new project is a remarkable and inspired gedankenexperiment which, even if not entirely feasible on its own merits, suggests entirely new directions for intelligence analysis and forecasting. Considering the very evident problems that we have recently seen arising from ideological lock-in within the intelligence community, this effort to assimilate global expert opinion should be applauded, not condemned.

 
Stop me if you've heard this one before: Only minutes after Texas Democrats and discontented Republicans shut down the redistricting plans of Governor Rick Perry and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Perry called a second special session. Anticipating the move, Senate Dems hightailed to New Mexico, where friendly Democratic governor Bill Richardson (late of the stalled North Korean negotiations) welcomed them with open arms and a political cordon sanitaire consisting of rhetorical cover and a police guard to stop an undoubtedly mythical phalanx of GOP-hired "bounty hunters."

At issue is a cryptic piece of Senate procedure known as a "blocker bill," an innocuous piece of legislation that sits at the top of the calendar and which is never actually voted on. In order to debate any piece of legislation out of order, a two-thirds majority of the Senate must agree to the change in the calendar -- thus effectively ensuring that a supermajority must be courted to even bring a bill up for consideration. Since the Republicans hold a slim majority in the Texas Senate, only the blocker bill has kept the Dems from losing the redistricting battle outright. Lt. Governor David Dewhurst, who also presides over the state Senate, has announced that he will remove the blocker bill for the second special session, prompting the Democrats to flee and Republican Senator Bill Ratliff to call Dewhurst's move "the most serious mistake he could make." The opposition of Ratliff, one of the most senior and respected figures in Texas political life, was crucial to the failure of the first special session.

It's going to be a long thirty days down here in Texas. But before you condemn us, just remember: California.

 
Strategic pillages: According to Col. David Hogg, commander, 2nd Brigade, 4th ID, extreme measures are demanded by extreme circumstances:

On Wednesday night, [Coalition] troops picked up the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general. They left a note: "If you want your family released, turn yourself in." Such tactics are justified, he said, because, "It's an intelligence operation with detainees, and these people have info." They would have been released in due course, he added later.

The tactic worked. On Friday, he said, the lieutenant general appeared at the front gate of the U.S. base and surrendered.

I've got to say that this tactic leaves me discomfited, to say the least; shelling the hideout of the sinister Qusay and the sociopathic Uday Hussein is one thing, but taking the wife and child of an opposing officer hostage is a dangerous course to take. Indeed, it's precisely the same tactic we excoriated the Taliban for. ("Amnesty International also reported that the Taliban have taken children hostage in an effort to compel their fathers to surrender ... The families of these children have been told that the children would be released when their fathers surrender to the Taliban.")

The taking of hostages is, of course, a violation of the laws of war, though -- if the military was indeed sincere in stating that (A) the wife and child had valuable intelligence, and, (B), that they were treated humanely and would be released in due course -- these tactics are perhaps technically legal under the "ruses" clause of Hague IV or Protocol I of the Geneva Convention ("[R]uses are acts which are intended to mislead an adversary or to induce him to act recklessly but which infringe no rule of international law applicable in armed conflict and which are not perfidious because they do not invite the confidence of an adversary with respect to protection under that law").

However, since wives and daughters are generally segregated from business, political and military affairs in the Middle East, the military's assertion that the detained civilians are valuable more for what they know than who they are rings hollow; as one Pentagon official told Time, if the wives and daughters of Saddam himself were to appear, "I'd offer them tea."

But even if the arrests were well-intentioned, just because a thing is allowable does not mean that it should be allowed. In a world already come to mistrust the use of American power, we cannot afford to look less the benevolent hegemon. Already gaining a reputation as a country willing to court expediency on the path to justice, we can't afford to be seen as a kidnapper and extortionist as well.

 
Do as I say, not as I ... say? Ann Coulter is too unserious a writer to even bother debunking -- half the time, I'm convinced she's actually a Democratic fifth columnist hired to "heighten the contradictions" and besmirch conservatism. (I've come to believe that about a lot of television pundits lately.)

Nonetheless, her latest column, which basically accuses the liberal loonies in the Army Signal Corps and the Eisenhower Administration with selling "Tailgunner Joe" McCarthy down the river, has one interesting tidbit: Coulter charges the Democrats with having "tricked the American people into entrusting a Democrat [Clinton] with the White House (on a plurality vote)."

It's always fun when Coulter actually tries to make a falsifiable charge (I'm still perusing the recently-declassified transcripts of the closed McCarthy hearings, so more on that later), so let's look at a few other Presidents besides Bill Clinton (1996 -- 49.24%, 1992 -- 43.01%) who "tricked" their way into office:

Richard Nixon (1968 -- 43.42%); John F. Kennedy (1960 -- 49.72%); Harry Truman (1948 -- 49.55%); Woodrow Wilson (1916 -- 49.24%, 1912 -- 41.84%); Grover Cleveland (1892 -- 46.05%, 1884 -- 48.5%); James Garfield (1880 -- 48.27%); James Buchanan (1856 -- 45.28%); Zachary Taylor (1848 -- 47.28%); James K. Polk (1844 -- 49.54%); and, let us not forget, Abraham Lincoln (1860 -- 39.82%). All illegitimate, according to Coulter.

One should also hasten to remember Presidents elected despite losing the popular vote entirely: Rutherford B. Hayes (1876 -- 47.95%, won with 185 electoral votes against Samuel Tilden's 184), and John Quincy Adams (1824 -- 32.2%, lost the electoral votes 84 to Jackson's 99, won in the House with 13 votes against 7).

I seem to recall there being another President who lost the popular vote and won the Electoral College only after a ruling from a bitterly divided Supreme Court ... but I digress.

Off the reservation:
(Via Pandagon) "A Skeptical Blog" reprints a series of racist e-mails from a county-level GOP committee chair.

It goes without saying that this kind of behavior is devastating for the GOP, and it's the sort of thing that local organizations should strictly control (regular readers may recall an unwise e-mail sent by GOP member Bill Back, then running for Chair of the California Republican Party). There's no excuse for racism of any sort, and less so amongst the people elected to guide the party at the ground level.

The committee chair in question seems to have gone off the reservation on at least one other issue: according to his bio (linked above), he's the President of a company called "The Kristina Group" which, I originally assumed from his place on the Technology Committee, would be a tech consulting firm of some sort.

Evidently not. The only Kristina Group I could find has the URL tkg.bz, registered to a Kristina Group in Longwood, FL, part of Seminole County. The e-mail link on the company's page is the same given in the SCREC bio. And what does the Kristina Group sell?

Coca leaf, which, as the pages notes, when "[c]hewed with a pinch of lime ... releases a mild dose of cocaine alkaloid which numbs sensory nerves, dulls hunger and pain and even provides vitamins...."

I'm gonna suggest that this guy doesn't speak for the Republican Party.

Unappealing: The Fourth Circuit has ruled that it currently lacks jurisdiction to hear the government's appeal of an order to produce terrorist Ramzi Bin al'Shibh to the defense in the always-entertaining Moussaoui trial.

All is not lost for the prosecution; the court's discussion of the collateral order doctrine (which creates a governmental authorization under 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1291 to appeal an interlocutory ruling in certain cases) gives the government a chance to re-file its appeal once a penalty for noncompliance is imposed (assuming the Feds refuse to comply with the judge's order).

How the court would treat such an appeal is not clear; as the decision notes, the doctrine requires that a ruling "must conclusively determine the disputed question, resolve an important issue completely separate from the merits of the action, and be effectively unreviewable on appeal from a final judgment" to be considered for a B' 1291 appeal. The court rules on only the first prong -- finding that the ruling being appealed is "a non-final discovery order" and thus cannot be appealed until a penalty is imposed -- and, while it's clear that an order to produce is "effectively unreviewable," there's still a seemingly open question as to whether the national security implications of the ruling make this issue "completely separate" from the merits of the case. (Arguably so, almost certainly not -- but it is the Fourth Circuit, after all. And after the William O. Douglas redux of today's SCOTUS decisions, I'm out of the business of making bets.)

Related: Howard Bashman prints an insightful letter arguing powerfully for the essential incoherence of the decision, saying that it should have first dealt with the lack of any specific statutory grant of authority to appeal under 18 U.S.C. Sec. 3731.

 
A Thorne-y question: Religion, law, and here's religion and law: Mister Thorne sent along his summary of the ever-controversial Newdow case. Of somewhat greater interest (to me, anyway), Thorne notes that religious groups may now discriminate when hiring for federally-funded programs.

29 U.S.C., Secs. 2801-2945 provide funding for jobs and education programs, and places concommitant restrictions upon federally-funded operations. Such programs are specifically required to "provide employment and training opportunities to those who can benefit from, and who are most in need of, such opportunities. In addition, efforts shall be made to develop programs which contribute to occupational development, upward mobility, development of new careers, and opportunities for nontraditional employment."

29 U.S.C. Sec. 2938 states that

No individual shall be excluded from participation in, denied the benefits of, subjected to discrimination under, or denied employment in the administration of or in connection with, any such program or activity because of race, color, religion, sex ... national origin, age, disability, or political affiliation or belief.

HR1261 changes the statute so that the nondiscrimination clause

shall not apply to a recipient of financial assistance under this title that is a religious corporation, association, educational institution, or society, with respect to the employment of individuals of a particular religion to perform work connected with the carrying on by such corporation, association, educational institution, or society of its activities.

Thorne quotes Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) as saying that the statutory changes reassert the "right" of religious groups "to hire people who share their values." (Such a right is well-established; it has not been so when federal monies are accepted.)

The difference between this law and an established partiality to specific religions is a matter of implementation, but so fine a difference is dangerous indeed. There is substantial governmental interest in ensuring that education and jobs training programs are not subject to religious bias or proselytization; there is no valid reason why the operators of such a publicly-funded program should want the ability to select educators according to religious criteria.

 
The Southern (Baptist) strategy: (Via Cold Springs Shops) The Midwest Conservative Journal is not impressed with the Episcopal Church's direction, much preferring the theologically-conservative Nigerian Archbishop. (The contretemps referred to is the decision of the Anglican Diocese of New Westminster to bless same-sex unions, related in part to the decision to ordain a gay Bishop in Britain -- a full list of careful "no comments" can be found here.)

I am an Episcopalian, which is much like Britain and Canada's own Anglicanism, except that many of us believe in God. (I'm exaggerating, of course. Anglicans do hold a certain core set of beliefs. In particular, afternoon tea and the inadvisability of using nuclear weapons come to mind, although only the first is in the catechism.) And, though I tilt towards granting sexual orientation protected-class status for matters such as employment discrimination, I also cherish my inviolate disinterest on the matter of any given religion ordaining homosexuals or blessing same-sex unions.

To really get the flavor of Anglicanism, you only have to look at their ad campaign favorably comparing the Prince of Peace with a brutal neo-Stalinist terrorist; it's a religion whose worldview is shaped primarily by Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals and motivational speakers, with cheerful self-editing to fit modern sensibilities. If they ever got around to rewriting the BCP, I suspect it would read something like:

Our Father (though the use of that term should not be assumed to imply a patriarchal dominance) who may be said to exist, if only mythopoetically, with a reasonable probability in some nebulous realm we ethnocentrically call "Heaven,"



Generally well-regarded be thy name.



Thy kingdom -- in an apolitical sense -- come (metaphorically),



Thy will, or at least that part of it which complies with European standards on human rights and economic cooperation, be enacted by act of Parliament after lengthy and inclusive public debate,



Within those parts of the U.K. understood not to be contested by competing claims from other ethnoreligious groups, as it presumably is within the aforementioned "Heaven."



Give us this day sufficient material support from the parishioners to repair the roof of our leaking rectory,



And forgive us our sins -- or, more properly, please allow us to deal with guilt through nonconfrontational pop therapy,



As we forgive those who do nasty things to us (though we do ask that the former not be contingent upon the latter);



Lead us not into temptation, for we seem to be pretty good at that without your help,



But deliver us from "evil," which is of course a socially-determined cultural concept that can only be understood relative to the beliefs and morals of other societies.



For thine is the Kingdom, in the same sense that it is also the Queen's;



Also, what we assume to be the Power, which we ask that you not exercise until we can hold a debate on the matter;



And the Glory, which, to be honest, we're not so keen about taking on faith alone.



Forever and &c.,



Amen.

Of course, the Episcopal Church of America isn't terribly different (at least not if you worshipped in Newark under John Spong), but the fractures tearing apart liberal quasi-secular and conservative quasi-evangelical congregations have been more intense; entire dioceses have split off in America, seeking to join the Greek Orthodox Church or forming their own brand of the Episcopal faith. Where the Anglicans have to go to Nigeria to find fierce opposition to their policies, Americans often simply have to go to the church next door.

So, as that hackneyed piece of editorial bombast goes, whither the Church? Taking the problem as purely a political one, neither road seems particularly attractive: if it continues in its current track, it will surely lose a large number of highly-religious, highly-committed individuals to other faiths, and wreak havoc on its attempts to further proselytize in socially-conservative developing nations. However, the Church has staked its domestic (the U.K. in particular, but also Canada and America to some degree) future on essentially being the Green Party of God, trying to attract immigrants and the youth through a liberal and expansionist interpretation of the Bible.

Both strategies suffer from an inability to develop a distinguishable identity for the Church. Until culture-war cracks began fissuring, the Anglican Church was able to trade on legacy worshippers and its reputation as a reasonably progressive but historically-sound faith ("Catholic Lite! All of the ritual, none of the guilt -- now Pope free!"). But the rise of the evangelical mainstream in America and the general secularization of Europe have conspired to make that a losing strategy.

Consider, for example, the case of the Bush family. George H.W. Bush exemplifies the prudent, cautious Episcopalian, for whom God and golf are equal contestants for time on Sunday. George W. Bush, however, is an evangelical convert, having gone through a conversion experience after spending much of his life as an irreligious legacy worshipper. Having used religion to change his personal life, he has brought that same zeal to his work in the public sphere, with mixed results. What has happened in that political dynasty is no more than a mirror of similar experiences across America: the younger parishoners have abandoned an irrelevant church or embraced a far more visceral faith.

If the Church moves to the left, it will become a marginalized part of the secular realm, little more than a philosophy seminar with cheap wine and a donations box. On the other hand, should it move to the right, it must contest with Catholic, evangelical, and conservative Protestant groups that have already staked their claim, gathered their flocks, and developed a brand identity. Other than, "Like the Catholics, but with background-checked priests," it's hard to see how a newly-conservative Anglican Church could fit in. Finally, if the Church remains simply paralyzed with indecision, then it will have little more than an aging congregation and rows of dusty pews.

For the primates of the Church, it must be getting a bit hot under those collars.

 
Deep in the heart of Texas: Texas Governor Rick Perry has managed to get a budget to his desk, albeit at the cost of some deep cuts to higher education (other educational entities not having much left to cut at all), and a surprise axing of the Aircraft Pooling Board, which owns and operates several state planes. The Wildlife Damage Management Service was also a last-minute casualty of the budget-cutting moves.

Perry also signed into law a bill implementing a federal mandate for the state to seize and sell the homes of Medicaid patients after they die in order to recoup nursing home costs. This long-standing political landmine, loved by no one, was pushed through by two Democrats and passed with no debate in order to protect billions of dollars in federal Medicaid funding. Want to know why Texans hate the federal government? Try the fact that in Texas, where you can't seize the home of a billionaire who's gone into strategic bankruptcy, the only vulnerable segment of society is the poor and the dead. (How's that for a "death tax?")

Completely unrelated, but typical for Texas politics, is the news that two employees of the Texas Association of Business have been jailed for refusing to testify in a grand jury investigation over allegations that a $1.9 million political ad campaign violated a state law banning the use of corporate money for electioneering. The case began shortly after the 2002 elections, when TAB President Bill Hammond -- once again proving that a smart power-broker is a silent power-broker -- boasted that the TAB ad blitz was responsible for the GOP sweep of the Legislature. The Association, supported by the ACLU, has refused to disclose any information about its donors, a tactic that has landed two of its employees in jail. The courts have yet to rule on whether the ads, which explicitly support or oppose political candidates but do not specifically discuss the election itself, violate the state law.

Speaking of the ACLU, they made some friends on the other side of the aisle this session when they joined forces with national conservative groups to defeat SB945, a bill that authorized the collection and dissemination of "any biometric identifier specified by the [D]epartment [of Public Safety]," paid for by an extra $15 DL fee ($38 if you need a motorcycle license). The bill, supported by the GOP machine, was ardently opposed by rank-and-file members, who had been hit up by the ACLU, the Eagle Forum, and the Liberty Caucus.

With the Texas Dems ruling out any interest in another quorum-busting walkout, the state's simply waiting for the second go-round, which starts next week. In the meantime, the Houston Chron has come out harshly against the revivial of the redistricting issue, investigating donations made to Tom DeLay's political machine and saying that "[President] Bush has discovered that there is something better than bipartisanship for meeting Republican goals, and that is the removal of Democrats from office."

 
A Very Inhuman Humanist:

Lauro Martines, April Blood (Oxford University Press, 292 pp., $26.00)

At the end of the 1460s, Lorenzo de'Medici tallied the fortune of his departed father and found it to total 237,988 florins, a vast trove of wealth in a time when an upper-class civil servant could earn a comfortable 300 florins per year. Furthermore, he later wrote in one of those ledger books-cum-journals that exemplified Renaissance Florence, he had summed the previous 37 years of Medici expenditures for the state -- "for alms, buildings, and taxes, let alone other expenditures" -- and found an "incredible" amount of 663,755 florins. Small wonder then, as Lauro Martines writes, that Lorenzo felt that he was entitled to all the wealth, and power, that Florence could offer. And no wonder at all that the political and financial opponents of the Medici, in particular the Pazzi family and it Papal allies, should bristle at the iron rule exercised by Lorenzo, who brilliantly consolidated and reaped the power gathered by father and grandfather.

This rage came to a conspiratorial head in 1478, when an admixture of frustrated power-brokers, angry republican idealists, and conniving Papal legates (who had been dispatched by Pope Sixtus himself, embroiled in a power struggle with the Medici and their banks) hatched a plot to kill Lorenzo and his brother, Giuliano. But, as Martines lovingly details, the conspiracy fell apart under its own strains and, when the would-be assassins met under Brunelleschi's cathedral dome, they only managed to finalize their own collective doom. As Giuliano lay prostrate and bleeding on the cathedral floor, Lorenzo fled for safety and rallied his own troops to forestall the nascent coup d'etat.

It is the aftermath of the Pazzi Conspiracy (as generations of unkind historians have dubbed it) that falls heavily upon Florentine history: the entire city reeling from the violent and sacrilegious terrorist attack, Lorenzo manipulated public fear and private debts to turn the Florentine Republic into a Medicean kleptocracy, a republican shell with a tyrannic worm in the middle. Martines does not flinch in detailing the parade of horrors Lorenzo inflicted upon his political enemies, many of whom had tenuous or frankly nonexistent ties to his brother's death: the would-be killers were flung, naked and bleeding, to hang from the windows of the chancery Lorenzo had taken refuge in; political exiles who had hoped to profit from Lorenzo's death were located and literally rent from limb to limb; the entourage of Cardinal Riario, a teenager suspected of being Pope Sixtus' son, was mobbed by an angry crowd, which "murdered, brutally disfigured, and then stripped naked" innocent priests and pages. The families of the conspirators, extending out to distant cousins, were murdered, imprisoned, and exiled.

But it was for the Pazzi that Lorenzo saved his cold ire. Using every ounce of political acumen, he not only exiled the family, but dispossessed it of all its wealth and had every trace expunged, from its coat of arms to portraits of its members to even a street bearing the Pazzi name. So complete was this destruction -- not repealed until after the Republic reasserted itself following the capitulation of Lorenzo's son Piero to the Emperor of France -- that today not a single portrait of an adult Pazzi is known to exist.

The security state that revealed itself under Lorenzo ignored every check and balance the old Republic had enacted. The Medicis created their own political councils, staffing them with sycophants and yes-men; looted the Florentine coffers, stealing for their private use and keeping mercenary armies on retainer for their own protection; and held secret trials on the basis of "secret and anonymous denunciation[s] of thieves, enemies of the regime, homosexuals, clandestine prostitutes, tax dodgers [especially ironic, given the Medicean skill at hiding its own assets from the state], and other wrongdoers" placed in tamburi, a kind of suggestion box for blockleiters. Medici control over Florence was to wane after Lorenzo's death, when his violent and blockheaded son, Piero, fled a republican coup, but by then Lorenzo's friendship with Pope Sixtus' successor had broken a barrier that had remained tantalizingly out of reach, placing two Medici sons into the church. One, the son of Lorenzo whose ascension to the cardinalate at 14 was only the first step towards his eventual place as Pope Leo X; the other, the son of the murdered Giuliano, was to retake Florence for the Medici as Pope Clement VII. From the blood on the cathedral floor was to spring a phoenix of Medicean power that would brood over Italy for years.

Martines, an acknowledged expert in the history of Renaissance Italy, writes a good story, showing the great maestros of Florence to be as much Godfather as gonfalonier, and he takes great pleasure in showing each political move and countermove made in the power games of the day. (As he notes in his prologue, modern historiography of Renaissance Italy has tended to ignore the political battles of high personages, even though our best commentator of the day, Niccolo Machiavelli, was obsessed with little else.) However, the book presupposes an at least glancing knowledge of Florentine history, and its pacing is often awkward, especially in one chapter comparing religious mortification of the flesh with the torture and violent executions that marked criminal justice of the day. Nonetheless, his jaundiced view of both sides lends a welcome dispassion to a subject for whom our period sources are notoriously partisan, either filled with rage at the Medici tyranny, or (more often) obsequiously written to appeal to the resurgent Medici. Even the hardheaded Machiavelli had to be careful in writing his Florentine Histories, commissioned by none other than Clement VII.

Martines largely refrains from drawing direct parallels from Florentine history to our own time, but readers of all political persuasions will find echoes worth listening to. The conspirators who sought Lorenzo's life were largely exiles or foreigners from other city-states, and they mistakenly thought that an attempted assassination would bring out a tide of republic discontent to sweep away Medicean power, which some might find reminiscent of the recent attempts to spark an Iraqi revolt against Saddam Hussein before and during the invasion. Certainly, the spectre of a republic handing away its freedoms in exchange for a surcease of fear holds a warning (and some might say a reflection) for us today. And the failure to stop the opportunistic political realignment undertaken by Lorenzo shows, as we have seen so often, that opposition to action can be most loyal in times of greatest strain. This was a lesson that Florence, whether during the Medicean tyranny or the subsequent Savonarolan fever, was to learn many times in its turbulent history.

This review was based on an uncorrected proof.

 
Remember the Alamo (Inn): Texas governor Rick Perry threw down the gauntlet -- again -- to the Dems, calling a special session to vote on the controversial redistricting plan that prompted a quorum-busting walkout last month.

The House Democrats, who earned the sobriquet "The Killer Ds" during their last-minute exodus to Ardmore, Oklahoma, are unlikely to repeat their performance, making the plan's passage in the House almost certain. As a result, the plan will move into the Senate, which consists of only thirty-one Senators and the Lieutenant Governor, Republican David Dewhurst. Nineteen Senators are Republicans, but a two-thirds majority is required to bring a bill to full vote, allowing any eleven Senators to block a bill.

According to press accounts of a Monday-night GOP strategy session in the Governor's House, Dewhurst reluctantly agreed to try and bring the plan to a Senate vote if passed out of the House. Dewhurst, a moderate Republican and sometime foe of Governor Rick Perry, has not been anxious to bring such a divisive issue before the normally clubby Senate.

Governor Perry, in a particularly brutal piece of political infighting, announced that the special session would also take into consideration proposals to fund health centers and medical schools along the border, an issue dear to Democratic Senator Eddie Lucio of Brownsville. Press reports said that Lucio had given his vote to Perry in exchange for health center funding, but, in a bizarre twist, the Senator suffered a heart attack Wednesday while giving a speech in Fort Worth and remains hospitalized. If Lucio is unable to return to the Senate during the special session, only one more Democratic vote will be required to bring the redistricting plan up for a vote.

To further complicate matters, state Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn rejected the state budget passed by the Legislature, saying that the two-year budget fell $200 million short of balancing. This is the first time the Comptroller has not certified a budget for the Governor's approval, and makes it an issue that will have to be dealt with during the special session. The Legislature has had to cope with a $10 billion deficit, slashing funding for the Child Health Insurance Program and spending the entire "rainy day" fund to close the gaps.

The fight to change political boundaries in Texas -- almost never done mid-decade, and thus breaking an informal compact between parties -- is an early step in a much larger White House plan to virtually remake the entire American political system. If the GOP wins the battle in Austin, Democrats will be relegated to a perpetual minority status in much the same way that Republicans were forced out of power in the post-Reconstruction South. Although the risks are great, the payoff is enormous, allowing the White House to undertake a period of sweeping reforms supported at both the national and state level. GOP power broker Grover Norquist, in a recent editorial for the Washington Post, stated the situation simply and concisely:

In crafting its agenda for economic reform, the Bush administration has the luxury of being able to think and plan over a full eight years. This is because the 2002 redistricting gave Republicans a lock on the House of Representatives until 2012 and the Founding Fathers gerrymandered the Senate for Republican control. In the 50-50 election that was 2000, Bush carried 30 states and Al Gore 20. Over time, a reasonably competent Republican Party will tend to 60 Republicans in the Senate. This guarantee of united Republican government has allowed the Bush administration to work and think long-term.

The GOP made sudden gains in Colorado last month, when the Republican legislature created a new political map in the final days of its session, getting it Governor Bill Owens over Democratic objections. In Texas, Perry -- reportedly at the behest of national GOP figures -- is taking a similar but more serious gamble: if the plan is passed in the special session, he risks only partisan wrath but reaps a substantial GOP majority; if the Dems block the plan, Perry will have gained nothing at the cost of much political capital and whatever goodwill he has left in what has been, until this session, been a remarkably collegial Legislature. With Tom DeLay and Karl Rove in touch with Perry's office and individual legislators, Perry must be acutely aware that his performance is being carefully scrutinized by the last governor of Texas, on whose coattails Perry rose to the Governor's House.

Beyond Colorado and Texas, other states are changing districts, often to the detriment of Dems. A Maine proposal, drawn by that state's Supreme Judicial Court, will eliminate a Green-held district and force two Democrats into a race against each other. In Georgia, a Democratic-developed map struck down by the courts had to be replaced with a redistricting plan that gave the GOP control of the state Senate following the defection of several Democratic politicians.