Clinton double talk
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15876218
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Why is Hilary Clinton even taken seriosly in this race? I dont get it.
Many of you have drawn some consternation about the puzzling support for Hilary Clinton as the next Democratic Presidential nominee. Honestly, in my eyes, it really could only be the result of misplace warm feeling for her husbands time in office. Listen to these two in order and I think many of you will see what I'm talking about. In no other universe where she was not first lady would Hilary Clinton ever be perceived as a serious candidate. She brings absolutely nothing new to the table.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15528727
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15528727
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15528727
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15528727
10.10.07, 4:34 am
Any of you who knows me knows that I'm a huge NPR fan. I just listened to this archive episode of Fresh Air with Terry Gross and both stories really opened my eyes.
It really enlightened me on -
A) whats really went on with the lead up to the sup-prime meltdown. and
B) the mispresentation of torture methods in the midst of this debate and how army interrogators in Iraq are getting their point-of-reference from Jack Bauer and "24" more than anywhere else.
Please listen.
http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13&agg=0&prgDate=10-10-2007&view=storyview
Morgenson Sheds Light on Subprime Mortgage Crisis
Pulitzer Prize-winning business columnist Gretchen Morgenson talks about the subprime mortgage crisis and its effects on the markets and on the economy. Morgenson, an assistant business and financial editor for The New York Times, has covered the financial markets for The Times since 1998.
TV Torture Changes Real Interrogation Techniques
This year the Human Rights First Award for Excellence in Television will be given to a show that "depicts torture and interrogation in a nuanced, realistic fashion." TV producer Adam Fierro, intelligence expert Col. Stuart Herrington and human rights advocate David Danzig discuss TV violence.
It really enlightened me on -
A) whats really went on with the lead up to the sup-prime meltdown. and
B) the mispresentation of torture methods in the midst of this debate and how army interrogators in Iraq are getting their point-of-reference from Jack Bauer and "24" more than anywhere else.
Please listen.
http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13&agg=0&prgDate=10-10-2007&view=storyview
Morgenson Sheds Light on Subprime Mortgage Crisis
Pulitzer Prize-winning business columnist Gretchen Morgenson talks about the subprime mortgage crisis and its effects on the markets and on the economy. Morgenson, an assistant business and financial editor for The New York Times, has covered the financial markets for The Times since 1998.
TV Torture Changes Real Interrogation Techniques
This year the Human Rights First Award for Excellence in Television will be given to a show that "depicts torture and interrogation in a nuanced, realistic fashion." TV producer Adam Fierro, intelligence expert Col. Stuart Herrington and human rights advocate David Danzig discuss TV violence.
The Misunderestimated Man
SOMEONE LEFT THIS ARTICLE SITTING BY THE FIREPLACE AT PANERA BREAD CO. THE OTHER DAY AND I THOUGHT I WOULD LOOK IT UP AND POST IT. PERSONALLY, I PREFER TO THINK HE JUST SUFFERS FROM A DEBILITATING BRAIN LESION, BUT WHATEVER.
Slate Magazine
bushisms
The Misunderestimated Man
How Bush chose stupidity.
By Jacob Weisberg
Posted Friday, May 7, 2004, at 9:54 AM ET
Adapted from the introduction to The Deluxe Election-Edition Bushisms, published by Fireside Books/Simon & Schuster. Reprinted with permission; © 2004 Jacob Weisberg.
The question I am most frequently asked about Bushisms is, "Do you really think the president of the United States is dumb?"
The short answer is yes.
The long answer is yes and no.
Quotations collected over the years in Slate may leave the impression that George W. Bush is a dimwit. Let's face it: A man who cannot talk about education without making a humiliating grammatical mistake ("The illiteracy level of our children are appalling"); who cannot keep straight the three branches of government ("It's the executive branch's job to interpret law"); who coins ridiculous words ("Hispanos," "arbolist," "subliminable," "resignate," "transformationed"); who habitually says the opposite of what he intends ("the death tax is good for people from all walks of life!") sounds like a grade-A imbecile.
And if you don't care to pursue the matter any further, that view will suffice. George W. Bush has governed, for the most part, the way any airhead might, undermining the fiscal condition of the nation, squandering the goodwill of the world after Sept. 11, and allowing huge problems (global warming, entitlement spending, AIDS) to metastasize toward catastrophe through a combination of ideology, incomprehension, and indifference. If Bush isn't exactly the moron he sounds, his synaptic misfirings offer a plausible proxy for the idiocy of his presidency.
In reality, however, there's more to it. Bush's assorted malapropisms, solecisms, gaffes, spoonerisms, and truisms tend to imply that his lack of fluency in English is tantamount to an absence of intelligence. But as we all know, the inarticulate can be shrewd, the fluent fatuous. In Bush's case, the symptoms point to a specific malady—some kind of linguistic deficit akin to dyslexia—that does not indicate a lack of mental capacity per se.
Bush also compensates with his non-verbal acumen. As he notes, "Smart comes in all kinds of different ways." The president's way is an aptitude for connecting to people through banter and physicality. He has a powerful memory for names, details, and figures that truly matter to him, such as batting averages from the 1950s. Bush also has a keen political sense, sharpened under the tutelage of Karl Rove.
What's more, calling the president a cretin absolves him of responsibility. Like Reagan, Bush avoids blame for all manner of contradictions, implausible assertions, and outright lies by appearing an amiable dunce. If he knows not what he does, blame goes to the three puppeteers, Cheney, Rove, and Rumsfeld. It also breeds sympathy. We wouldn't laugh at FDR because he couldn't walk. Is it less cruel to laugh at GWB because he can't talk? The soft bigotry of low expectations means Bush is seen to outperform by merely getting by. Finally, elitist condescension, however merited, helps cement Bush's bond to the masses.
But if "numskull" is an imprecise description of the president, it is not altogether inaccurate. Bush may not have been born stupid, but he has achieved stupidity, and now he wears it as a badge of honor. What makes mocking this president fair as well as funny is that Bush is, or at least once was, capable of learning, reading, and thinking. We know he has discipline and can work hard (at least when the goal is reducing his time for a three-mile run). Instead he chose to coast, for most of his life, on name, charm, good looks, and the easy access to capital afforded by family connections.
The most obvious expression of Bush's choice of ignorance is that, at the age of 57, he knows nothing about policy or history. After years of working as his dad's spear-chucker in Washington, he didn't understand the difference between Medicare and Medicaid, the second- and third-largest federal programs. Well into his plans for invading Iraq, Bush still couldn't get down the distinction between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, the key religious divide in a country he was about to occupy. Though he sometimes carries books for show, he either does not read them or doesn't absorb anything from them. Bush's ignorance is so transparent that many of his intimates do not bother to dispute it even in public. Consider the testimony of several who know him well.
Richard Perle, foreign policy adviser: "The first time I met Bush 43 … two things became clear. One, he didn't know very much. The other was that he had the confidence to ask questions that revealed he didn't know very much."
David Frum, former speechwriter: "Bush had a poor memory for facts and figures. … Fire a question at him about the specifics of his administration's policies, and he often appeared uncertain. Nobody would ever enroll him in a quiz show."
Laura Bush, spouse: "George is not an overly introspective person. He has good instincts, and he goes with them. He doesn't need to evaluate and reevaluate a decision. He doesn't try to overthink. He likes action."
Paul O'Neill, former treasury secretary: "The only way I can describe it is that, well, the President is like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people. There is no discernible connection."
A second, more damning aspect of Bush's mind-set is that he doesn't want to know anything in detail, however important. Since college, he has spilled with contempt for knowledge, equating learning with snobbery and making a joke of his own anti-intellectualism. ("[William F. Buckley] wrote a book at Yale; I read one," he quipped at a black-tie event.) By O'Neill's account, Bush could sit through an hourlong presentation about the state of the economy without asking a single question. ("I was bored as hell," the president shot back, ostensibly in jest.)
Closely related to this aggressive ignorance is a third feature of Bush's mentality: laziness. Again, this is a lifelong trait. Bush's college grades were mostly Cs (including a 73 in Introduction to the American Political System). At the start of one term, the star of the Yale football team spotted him in the back row during the shopping period for courses. "Hey! George Bush is in this class!" Calvin Hill shouted to his teammates. "This is the one for us!" As governor of Texas, Bush would take a long break in the middle of his short workday for a run followed by a stretch of video golf or computer solitaire.
A fourth and final quality of Bush's mind is that it does not think. The president can't tolerate debate about issues. Offered an option, he makes up his mind quickly and never reconsiders. At an elementary school, a child once asked him whether it was hard to make decisions as president. "Most of the decisions come pretty easily for me, to be frank with you." By leaping to conclusions based on what he "believes," Bush avoids contemplating even the most obvious basic contradictions: between his policy of tax cuts and reducing the deficit; between his call for a humble foreign policy based on alliances and his unilateral assertion of American power; between his support for in-vitro fertilization (which destroys embryos) and his opposition to fetal stem-cell research (because it destroys embryos).
Why would someone capable of being smart choose to be stupid? To understand, you have to look at W.'s relationship with father. This filial bond involves more tension than meets the eye. Dad was away for much of his oldest son's childhood. Little George grew up closer to his acid-tongued mother and acted out against the absent parent—through adolescent misbehavior, academic failure, dissipation, and basically not accomplishing anything at all until well into his 40s.
Dubya's youthful screw-ups and smart-aleck attitude reflect some combination of protest, plea for attention, and flailing attempt to compete. Until a decade ago, his résumé read like a send-up of his dad's. Bush senior was a star student at Andover and Phi Beta Kappa at Yale, where he was also captain of the baseball team; Junior struggled through with gentleman's C's and, though he loved baseball, couldn't make the college lineup. Père was a bomber pilot in the Pacific; fils sat out 'Nam in the Texas Air National Guard, where he lost flying privileges by not showing up. Dad drove to Texas in 1947 to get rich in the oil business and actually did; Son tried the same in 1975 and drilled dry holes for a decade. Bush the elder got elected to Congress in 1966; Shrub ran in 1978, didn't know what he was talking about, and got clobbered.
Through all this incompetent emulation runs an undercurrent of hostility. In an oft-told anecdote circa 1973, GWB—after getting wasted at a party and driving over a neighbor's trash can in Houston—challenged his dad. "I hear you're lookin' for me," W. told the chairman of the Republican National Committee. "You want to go mano a mano right here?" Some years later at a state dinner, he told the Queen of England he was being seated far away because he was the black sheep of the family.
After half a lifetime of this kind of frustration, Bush decided to straighten up. Nursing a hangover at a 40th-birthday weekend, he gave up Wild Turkey, cold turkey. With the help of Billy Graham, he put himself in the hands of a higher power and began going to church. He became obsessed with punctuality and developed a rigid routine. Thus did Prince Hal molt into an evangelical King Henry. And it worked! Putting together a deal to buy the Texas Rangers, the ne'er-do-well finally tasted success. With success, he grew closer to his father, taking on the role of family avenger. This culminated in his 1994 challenge to Texas Gov. Ann Richards, who had twitted dad at the 1988 Democratic convention*.
Curiously, this late arrival at adulthood did not involve Bush becoming in any way thoughtful. Having chosen stupidity as rebellion, he stuck with it out of conformity. The promise-keeper, reformed-alkie path he chose not only drastically curtailed personal choices he no longer wanted, it also supplied an all-encompassing order, offered guidance on policy, and prevented the need for much actual information. Bush's old answer to hard questions was, "I don't know and, who cares." His new answer was, "Wait a second while I check with Jesus."
A remaining bit of poignancy was his unresolved struggle with his father. "All I ask," he implored a reporter while running for governor in 1994, "is that for once you guys stop seeing me as the son of George Bush." In his campaigns, W. has kept his dad offstage. (In an exceptional appearance on the eve of the 2000 New Hampshire primary, 41 came onstage and called his son "this boy.") While some describe the second Bush presidency as a restoration, it is in at least equal measure a repudiation. The son's harder-edged conservatism explicitly rejects the old man's approach to such issues as abortion, taxes, and relations with Israel.
This Oedipally induced ignorance expresses itself most dangerously in Bush's handling of the war in Iraq. Dubya polished off his old man's greatest enemy, Saddam, but only by lampooning 41's accomplishment of coalition-building in the first Gulf War. Bush led the country to war on false pretenses and neglected to plan the occupation that would inevitably follow. A more knowledgeable and engaged president might have questioned the quality of the evidence about Iraq's supposed weapons programs. One who preferred to be intelligent might have asked about the possibility of an unfriendly reception. Instead, Bush rolled the dice. His budget-busting tax cuts exemplify a similar phenomenon, driven by an alternate set of ideologues.
As the president says, we misunderestimate him. He was not born stupid. He chose stupidity. Bush may look like a well-meaning dolt. On consideration, he's something far more dangerous: a dedicated fool.
Slate Magazine
bushisms
The Misunderestimated Man
How Bush chose stupidity.
By Jacob Weisberg
Posted Friday, May 7, 2004, at 9:54 AM ET
Adapted from the introduction to The Deluxe Election-Edition Bushisms, published by Fireside Books/Simon & Schuster. Reprinted with permission; © 2004 Jacob Weisberg.
The question I am most frequently asked about Bushisms is, "Do you really think the president of the United States is dumb?"
The short answer is yes.
The long answer is yes and no.
Quotations collected over the years in Slate may leave the impression that George W. Bush is a dimwit. Let's face it: A man who cannot talk about education without making a humiliating grammatical mistake ("The illiteracy level of our children are appalling"); who cannot keep straight the three branches of government ("It's the executive branch's job to interpret law"); who coins ridiculous words ("Hispanos," "arbolist," "subliminable," "resignate," "transformationed"); who habitually says the opposite of what he intends ("the death tax is good for people from all walks of life!") sounds like a grade-A imbecile.
And if you don't care to pursue the matter any further, that view will suffice. George W. Bush has governed, for the most part, the way any airhead might, undermining the fiscal condition of the nation, squandering the goodwill of the world after Sept. 11, and allowing huge problems (global warming, entitlement spending, AIDS) to metastasize toward catastrophe through a combination of ideology, incomprehension, and indifference. If Bush isn't exactly the moron he sounds, his synaptic misfirings offer a plausible proxy for the idiocy of his presidency.
In reality, however, there's more to it. Bush's assorted malapropisms, solecisms, gaffes, spoonerisms, and truisms tend to imply that his lack of fluency in English is tantamount to an absence of intelligence. But as we all know, the inarticulate can be shrewd, the fluent fatuous. In Bush's case, the symptoms point to a specific malady—some kind of linguistic deficit akin to dyslexia—that does not indicate a lack of mental capacity per se.
Bush also compensates with his non-verbal acumen. As he notes, "Smart comes in all kinds of different ways." The president's way is an aptitude for connecting to people through banter and physicality. He has a powerful memory for names, details, and figures that truly matter to him, such as batting averages from the 1950s. Bush also has a keen political sense, sharpened under the tutelage of Karl Rove.
What's more, calling the president a cretin absolves him of responsibility. Like Reagan, Bush avoids blame for all manner of contradictions, implausible assertions, and outright lies by appearing an amiable dunce. If he knows not what he does, blame goes to the three puppeteers, Cheney, Rove, and Rumsfeld. It also breeds sympathy. We wouldn't laugh at FDR because he couldn't walk. Is it less cruel to laugh at GWB because he can't talk? The soft bigotry of low expectations means Bush is seen to outperform by merely getting by. Finally, elitist condescension, however merited, helps cement Bush's bond to the masses.
But if "numskull" is an imprecise description of the president, it is not altogether inaccurate. Bush may not have been born stupid, but he has achieved stupidity, and now he wears it as a badge of honor. What makes mocking this president fair as well as funny is that Bush is, or at least once was, capable of learning, reading, and thinking. We know he has discipline and can work hard (at least when the goal is reducing his time for a three-mile run). Instead he chose to coast, for most of his life, on name, charm, good looks, and the easy access to capital afforded by family connections.
The most obvious expression of Bush's choice of ignorance is that, at the age of 57, he knows nothing about policy or history. After years of working as his dad's spear-chucker in Washington, he didn't understand the difference between Medicare and Medicaid, the second- and third-largest federal programs. Well into his plans for invading Iraq, Bush still couldn't get down the distinction between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, the key religious divide in a country he was about to occupy. Though he sometimes carries books for show, he either does not read them or doesn't absorb anything from them. Bush's ignorance is so transparent that many of his intimates do not bother to dispute it even in public. Consider the testimony of several who know him well.
Richard Perle, foreign policy adviser: "The first time I met Bush 43 … two things became clear. One, he didn't know very much. The other was that he had the confidence to ask questions that revealed he didn't know very much."
David Frum, former speechwriter: "Bush had a poor memory for facts and figures. … Fire a question at him about the specifics of his administration's policies, and he often appeared uncertain. Nobody would ever enroll him in a quiz show."
Laura Bush, spouse: "George is not an overly introspective person. He has good instincts, and he goes with them. He doesn't need to evaluate and reevaluate a decision. He doesn't try to overthink. He likes action."
Paul O'Neill, former treasury secretary: "The only way I can describe it is that, well, the President is like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people. There is no discernible connection."
A second, more damning aspect of Bush's mind-set is that he doesn't want to know anything in detail, however important. Since college, he has spilled with contempt for knowledge, equating learning with snobbery and making a joke of his own anti-intellectualism. ("[William F. Buckley] wrote a book at Yale; I read one," he quipped at a black-tie event.) By O'Neill's account, Bush could sit through an hourlong presentation about the state of the economy without asking a single question. ("I was bored as hell," the president shot back, ostensibly in jest.)
Closely related to this aggressive ignorance is a third feature of Bush's mentality: laziness. Again, this is a lifelong trait. Bush's college grades were mostly Cs (including a 73 in Introduction to the American Political System). At the start of one term, the star of the Yale football team spotted him in the back row during the shopping period for courses. "Hey! George Bush is in this class!" Calvin Hill shouted to his teammates. "This is the one for us!" As governor of Texas, Bush would take a long break in the middle of his short workday for a run followed by a stretch of video golf or computer solitaire.
A fourth and final quality of Bush's mind is that it does not think. The president can't tolerate debate about issues. Offered an option, he makes up his mind quickly and never reconsiders. At an elementary school, a child once asked him whether it was hard to make decisions as president. "Most of the decisions come pretty easily for me, to be frank with you." By leaping to conclusions based on what he "believes," Bush avoids contemplating even the most obvious basic contradictions: between his policy of tax cuts and reducing the deficit; between his call for a humble foreign policy based on alliances and his unilateral assertion of American power; between his support for in-vitro fertilization (which destroys embryos) and his opposition to fetal stem-cell research (because it destroys embryos).
Why would someone capable of being smart choose to be stupid? To understand, you have to look at W.'s relationship with father. This filial bond involves more tension than meets the eye. Dad was away for much of his oldest son's childhood. Little George grew up closer to his acid-tongued mother and acted out against the absent parent—through adolescent misbehavior, academic failure, dissipation, and basically not accomplishing anything at all until well into his 40s.
Dubya's youthful screw-ups and smart-aleck attitude reflect some combination of protest, plea for attention, and flailing attempt to compete. Until a decade ago, his résumé read like a send-up of his dad's. Bush senior was a star student at Andover and Phi Beta Kappa at Yale, where he was also captain of the baseball team; Junior struggled through with gentleman's C's and, though he loved baseball, couldn't make the college lineup. Père was a bomber pilot in the Pacific; fils sat out 'Nam in the Texas Air National Guard, where he lost flying privileges by not showing up. Dad drove to Texas in 1947 to get rich in the oil business and actually did; Son tried the same in 1975 and drilled dry holes for a decade. Bush the elder got elected to Congress in 1966; Shrub ran in 1978, didn't know what he was talking about, and got clobbered.
Through all this incompetent emulation runs an undercurrent of hostility. In an oft-told anecdote circa 1973, GWB—after getting wasted at a party and driving over a neighbor's trash can in Houston—challenged his dad. "I hear you're lookin' for me," W. told the chairman of the Republican National Committee. "You want to go mano a mano right here?" Some years later at a state dinner, he told the Queen of England he was being seated far away because he was the black sheep of the family.
After half a lifetime of this kind of frustration, Bush decided to straighten up. Nursing a hangover at a 40th-birthday weekend, he gave up Wild Turkey, cold turkey. With the help of Billy Graham, he put himself in the hands of a higher power and began going to church. He became obsessed with punctuality and developed a rigid routine. Thus did Prince Hal molt into an evangelical King Henry. And it worked! Putting together a deal to buy the Texas Rangers, the ne'er-do-well finally tasted success. With success, he grew closer to his father, taking on the role of family avenger. This culminated in his 1994 challenge to Texas Gov. Ann Richards, who had twitted dad at the 1988 Democratic convention*.
Curiously, this late arrival at adulthood did not involve Bush becoming in any way thoughtful. Having chosen stupidity as rebellion, he stuck with it out of conformity. The promise-keeper, reformed-alkie path he chose not only drastically curtailed personal choices he no longer wanted, it also supplied an all-encompassing order, offered guidance on policy, and prevented the need for much actual information. Bush's old answer to hard questions was, "I don't know and, who cares." His new answer was, "Wait a second while I check with Jesus."
A remaining bit of poignancy was his unresolved struggle with his father. "All I ask," he implored a reporter while running for governor in 1994, "is that for once you guys stop seeing me as the son of George Bush." In his campaigns, W. has kept his dad offstage. (In an exceptional appearance on the eve of the 2000 New Hampshire primary, 41 came onstage and called his son "this boy.") While some describe the second Bush presidency as a restoration, it is in at least equal measure a repudiation. The son's harder-edged conservatism explicitly rejects the old man's approach to such issues as abortion, taxes, and relations with Israel.
This Oedipally induced ignorance expresses itself most dangerously in Bush's handling of the war in Iraq. Dubya polished off his old man's greatest enemy, Saddam, but only by lampooning 41's accomplishment of coalition-building in the first Gulf War. Bush led the country to war on false pretenses and neglected to plan the occupation that would inevitably follow. A more knowledgeable and engaged president might have questioned the quality of the evidence about Iraq's supposed weapons programs. One who preferred to be intelligent might have asked about the possibility of an unfriendly reception. Instead, Bush rolled the dice. His budget-busting tax cuts exemplify a similar phenomenon, driven by an alternate set of ideologues.
As the president says, we misunderestimate him. He was not born stupid. He chose stupidity. Bush may look like a well-meaning dolt. On consideration, he's something far more dangerous: a dedicated fool.
The God Gene?
Are we genetically predisposed to believing in a god as a coping mechanis?
Category: Religion and Philosophy
I had this actual issue for a long while until I let an Athiest friend borrow it and her godless soul lost it or something. Anyway, I thought about it today as I was sitting in church this morning and the guest preacher was just losin the audience all together. It is a very good question and I hope most of you will take the time out to read it and respond.
--> -->--> End Buttons --> --> --> --> Begin Tout1 -->
Sunday, Oct. 17, 2004
Is God in Our Genes?
By Jeffrey Kluger
It's not hard to see the divinity behind the water temples that dot the rice terraces of Bali. It's there in the white-clad high priest presiding in the temple at the summit of a dormant volcano. It's there in the 23 priests serving along with him, selected for their jobs when they were still children by a bevy of virgin priestesses.
It's there in the rituals the priests perform to protect the island's water, which in turn is needed to nurture the island's rice.
If the divine is easy to spot, what's harder to make out is the banal. But it's there too—in the meetings the priests convene to schedule their planting dates and combat the problem of crop pests; in the plans they draw up to maintain aqueducts and police conduits; in the irrigation proposals they consider and approve, the dam proposals they reject or amend. "The religion has a temple at every node in the irrigation system," says David Sloan Wilson, professor of biology and anthropology at Binghamton University in Binghamton, N.Y. "The priests make decisions and enforce the code of both religion and irrigation."
Ask true believers of any faith to describe the most important thing that drives their devotion, and they'll tell you it's not a thing at all but a sense—a feeling of a higher power far beyond us. Western religions can get a bit more doctrinaire: God has handed us laws and lore, and it's for us to learn and practice what they teach. For a hell-raising species like ours, however—with too much intelligence for our own good and too little discipline to know what to do with it—there have always been other, more utilitarian reasons to get religion. Chief among them is survival. Across the eons, the structure that religion provides our lives helps preserve both mind and body. But that, in turn, has raised a provocative question, one that's increasingly debated in the worlds of science and religion: Which came first, God or the need for God? In other words, did humans create religion from cues sent from above, or did evolution instill in us a sense of the divine so that we would gather into the communities essential to keeping the species going?
Just as a hurricane spins off tornadoes, this debate creates its own whirlwind of questions: If some people are more spiritual than others, is it nature or nurture that has made them so? If science has nothing to do with spirituality and it all flows from God, why do some people hear the divine word easily while others remain spiritually tone-deaf? Do such ivied-hall debates about environment, heredity and anthropology have any place at all in more exalted conversations about the nature of God?
Even among people who regard spiritual life as wishful hocus-pocus, there is a growing sense that humans may not be able to survive without it. It's hard enough getting by in a fang-and-claw world in which killing, thieving and cheating pay such rich dividends. It's harder still when there's no moral cop walking the beat to blow the whistle when things get out of control. Best to have a deity on hand to rein in our worst impulses, bring out our best and, not incidentally, give us a sense that there's someone awake in the cosmic house when the lights go out at night and we find ourselves wondering just why we're here in the first place. If a God or even several gods can do all that, fine. And if we sometimes misuse the idea of our gods—and millenniums of holy wars prove that we do—the benefits of being a spiritual species will surely outweigh the bloodshed.
--> -->-->pagebreak-->Far from being an evolutionary luxury then, the need for God may be a crucial trait stamped deeper and deeper into our genome with every passing generation. Humans who developed a spiritual sense thrived and bequeathed that trait to their offspring. Those who didn't risked dying out in chaos and killing. The evolutionary equation is a simple but powerful one.
Nowhere has that idea received a more intriguing going-over than in the recently published book The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired into Our Genes (Doubleday; 256 pages), by molecular biologist Dean Hamer.
Chief of gene structure at the National Cancer Institute, Hamer not only claims that human spirituality is an adaptive trait, but he also says he has located one of the genes responsible, a gene that just happens to also code for production of the neurotransmitters that regulate our moods. Our most profound feelings of spirituality, according to a literal reading of Hamer's work, may be due to little more than an occasional shot of intoxicating brain chemicals governed by our DNA. "I'm a believer that every thought we think and every feeling we feel is the result of activity in the brain," Hamer says.
"I think we follow the basic law of nature, which is that we're a bunch of chemical reactions running around in a bag."
Even for the casually religious, such seeming reductionism can rankle. The very meaning of faith, after all, is to hold fast to something without all the tidy cause and effect that science finds so necessary. Try parsing things the way geneticists do, and you risk parsing them into dust. "God is not something that can be demonstrated logically or rigorously," says Neil Gillman, a professor of Jewish philosophy at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City. "[The idea of a God gene] goes against all my personal theological convictions." John Polkinghorne, a physicist who is also Canon Theologian at England's Liverpool Cathedral, agrees: "You can't cut [faith] down to the lowest common denominator of genetic survival. It shows the poverty of reductionist thinking."
Is Hamer really guilty of such simplification? Could claims for a so-called God gene be merely the thin end of a secular wedge, one that risks prying spirituality away from God altogether? Or, assuming the gene exists at all, could it somehow be embraced by both science and religion, in the same way some evolutionists and creationists—at least the less radicalized ones—accept the idea of a divinely created universe in which evolving life is simply part of the larger plan? Hamer, for one, hopes so. "My findings are agnostic on the existence of God," he says. "If there's a God, there's a God. Just knowing what brain chemicals are involved in acknowledging that is not going to change the fact."
Whatever the merits of Hamer's work, he is clearly the heir of a millenniums-long search for the wellsprings of spirituality. People have been wrestling with the roots of faith since faith itself was first codified into Scripture. "[God has] set eternity in the hearts of men," says the Book of Ecclesiastes, "yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end."
--> -->-->pagebreak-->To theologians in the 3rd century B.C., when Ecclesiastes is thought to have been written, that passage spoke to the idea that while all of us are divinely inspired to look for God, none of us are remotely capable of fully comprehending what we are seeking. Scientists in the 21st century may not disagree, provided that "hearts of men" is replaced with "genes of men." The key for those researchers is finding those genes.
Hamer began looking in 1998, when he was conducting a survey on smoking and addiction for the National Cancer Institute. As part of his study, he recruited more than 1,000 men and women, who agreed to take a standardized, 240-question personality test called the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI). Among the traits the TCI measures is one known as self-transcendence, which consists of three other traits: self-forgetfulness, or the ability to get entirely lost in an experience; transpersonal identification, or a feeling of connectedness to a larger universe; and mysticism, or an openness to things not literally provable. Put them all together, and you come as close as science can to measuring what it feels like to be spiritual.
"This allows us to have the kind of experience described as religious ecstasy," says Robert Cloninger, a psychiatrist at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., and the designer of the self-transcendence portion of the TCI.
Hamer decided to use the data he gathered in the smoking survey to conduct a little spirituality study on the side. First he ranked the participants along Cloninger's self-transcendence scale, placing them on a continuum from least to most spiritually inclined. Then he went poking around in their genes to see if he could find the DNA responsible for the differences. Spelunking in the human genome is not easy, what with 35,000 genes consisting of 3.2 billion chemical bases. To narrow the field, Hamer confined his work to nine specific genes known to play major roles in the production of monoamines—brain chemicals, including serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine, that regulate such fundamental functions as mood and motor control. It's monoamines that are carefully manipulated by Prozac and other antidepressants. It's also monoamines that are not so carefully scrambled by ecstasy, LSD, peyote and other mind-altering drugs—some of which have long been used in religious rituals.
Studying the nine candidate genes in DNA samples provided by his subjects, Hamer quickly hit the genetic jackpot. A variation in a gene known as vmat2—for vesicular monoamine transporter—seemed to be directly related to how the volunteers scored on the self-transcendence test. Those with the nucleic acid cytosine in one particular spot on the gene ranked high. Those with the nucleic acid adenine in the same spot ranked lower. "A single change in a single base in the middle of the gene seemed directly related to the ability to feel self-transcendence," Hamer says. Merely having that feeling did not mean those people would take the next step and translate their transcendence into a belief in—or even a quest for—God. But they seemed likelier to do so than those who never got the feeling at all.
Hamer is careful to point out that the gene he found is by no means the only one that affects spirituality. Even minor human traits can be governed by the interplay of many genes; something as complex as belief in God could involve hundreds or even thousands. "If someone comes to you and says, 'We've found the gene for X,'" says John Burn, medical director of the Institute of Human Genetics at the University of Newcastle in England, "you can stop them before they get to the end of the sentence."
--> -->-->pagebreak-->Hamer also stresses that while he may have located a genetic root for spirituality, that is not the same as a genetic root for religion.
Spirituality is a feeling or a state of mind; religion is the way that state gets codified into law. Our genes don't get directly involved in writing legislation. As Hamer puts it, perhaps understating a bit the emotional connection many have to their religions, "Spirituality is intensely personal; religion is institutional."
At least one faith, according to one of its best-known scholars, formalizes the idea of gene-based spirituality and even puts a pretty spin on it. Buddhists, says Robert Thurman, professor of Buddhist studies at Columbia University, have long entertained the idea that we inherit a spirituality gene from the person we were in a previous life. Smaller than an ordinary gene, it combines with two larger physical genes we inherit from our parents, and together they shape our physical and spiritual profile. Says Thurman: "The spiritual gene helps establish a general trust in the universe, a sense of openness and generosity." Buddhists, he adds, would find Hamer's possible discovery "amusing and fun."
The Buddhist theory has never been put to the scientific test, but other investigations into the biological roots of belief in God were being conducted long before Hamer's efforts—often with intriguing results. In 1979, investigators at the University of Minnesota began their now famous twins study, tracking down 53 pairs of identical twins and 31 pairs of fraternal twins that had been separated at birth and raised apart. The scientists were looking for traits the members of each pair had in common, guessing that the characteristics shared more frequently by identical twins than by fraternal twins would be genetically based, since identical twins carry matching DNA, and those traits for which there was no disparity between the identicals and fraternals would be more environmentally influenced.
As it turned out, the identical twins had plenty of remarkable things in common. In some cases, both suffered from migraine headaches, both had a fear of heights, both were nail biters. Some shared little eccentricities, like flushing the toilet both before and after using it. When quizzed on their religious values and spiritual feelings, the identical twins showed a similar overlap. In general, they were about twice as likely as fraternal twins to believe as much—or as little—about spirituality as their sibling did. Significantly, these numbers did not hold up when the twins were questioned about how faithfully they practiced any organized religion. Clearly, it seemed, the degree to which we observe rituals such as attending services is mostly the stuff of environment and culture. Whether we're drawn to God in the first place is hardwired into our genes. "It completely contradicted my expectations," says University of Minnesota psychologist Thomas Bouchard, one of the researchers involved in the work. Similar results were later found in larger twin studies in Virginia and Australia.
Other researchers have taken the science in a different direction, looking not for the genes that code for spirituality but for how that spirituality plays out in the brain. Neuroscientist Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine has used several types of imaging systems to watch the brains of subjects as they meditate or pray. By measuring blood flow, he determines which regions are responsible for the feelings the volunteers experience.
--> -->-->pagebreak-->The deeper that people descend into meditation or prayer, Newberg found, the more active the frontal lobe and the limbic system become.
The frontal lobe is the seat of concentration and attention; the limbic system is where powerful feelings, including rapture, are processed. More revealing is the fact that at the same time these regions flash to life, another important region—the parietal lobe at the back of the brain—goes dim. It's this lobe that orients the individual in time and space. Take it off-line, and the boundaries of the self fall away, creating the feeling of being at one with the universe. Combine that with what's going on in the other two lobes, and you can put together a profound religious experience.
Even to some within the religious community, this does not come as news. "In India in Buddha's time, there were philosophers who said there was no soul; the mind was just chemistry," says Thurman. "The Buddha disagreed with their extreme materialism but also rejected the 'absolute soul' theologians." Michael Persinger, professor of behavioral neuroscience at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ont., puts the chemistry argument more bluntly. "God," he says, "is an artifact of the brain."
Even if such spiritual deconstructionism is true, some scientists—to say nothing of most theologians—think it takes you only so far, particularly when it comes to trying to determine the very existence of God. Simply understanding the optics and wiring of the eyes, after all, doesn't mean there's no inherent magnificence in the Rembrandts they allow us to see. If human beings were indeed divinely assembled, why wouldn't our list of parts include a genetic chip that would enable us to contemplate our maker?
"Of course, concepts of God reside in the brain. They certainly don't reside in the toe," says Lindon Eaves, director of the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. "The question is, To what is this wiring responsive? Why is it there?"
Says Paul Davies, professor of natural philosophy at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia: "I think a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that if you explain something, you explain it away. I don't see that at all with religious experience."
Those religious believers who are comfortable with the idea that God genes are the work of God should have little trouble making the next leap: that not only are the genes there but they are central to our survival, one of the hinges upon which the very evolution of the human species turned. It's an argument that's not terribly hard to make.
For one thing, God is a concept that appears in human cultures all over the globe, regardless of how geographically isolated they are.
When tribes living in remote areas come up with a concept of God as readily as nations living shoulder to shoulder, it's a fairly strong indication that the idea is preloaded in the genome rather than picked up on the fly. If that's the case, it's an equally strong indication that there are very good reasons it's there.
--> -->-->pagebreak-->One of those reasons might be that, as the sole species—as far as we know—capable of contemplating its own death, we needed something larger than ourselves to make that knowledge tolerable. "Anticipation of our own demise is the price we pay for a highly developed frontal lobe," says Persinger. "In many ways, [a God experience is] a brilliant adaptation. It's a built-in pacifier."
But the most important survival role religion may serve is as the mortar that holds a group together. Worshipping God doesn't have to be a collective thing; it can be done in isolation, disconnected from any organized religion. The overwhelming majority of people, however, congregate to pray, observing the same rituals and heeding the same creeds. Once that congregation is in place, it's only a small step to using the common system of beliefs and practices as the basis for all the secular laws that keep the group functioning.
One of the best examples of religion as social organizer, according to Binghamton University's Wilson, is early Calvinism. John Calvin rose to prominence in 1536 when, as a theologian and religious reformer, he was recruited to help bring order to the fractious city of Geneva. Calvin, perhaps one of the greatest theological minds ever produced by European Christianity, was a lawyer by trade. Wilson speculates that it was Calvin's pragmatic genius to understand that while civil laws alone might not be enough to bring the city's deadbeats and other malefactors into line, divine law might be.
Calvin's catechism included the familiar Ten Commandments—which, with their injunctions against theft, murder, adultery and lying, are themselves effective social organizers. Added to that were admonitions to pay taxes, perform civic duties, behave in a civil manner and submit to the authority of magistrates. "You must understand religions very thoroughly in relation to their environments," says Wilson. "And one problem for Calvin was to make his city function."
The heirs to Calvinism today—Presbyterians, many Baptists and believers in the Reformed tradition in general—see the roots of their faith as something far more divine than merely good civic management. But even some theologians seem to think that a deep belief in the laws of God can coexist with the survival demands of an evolving society. "Calvin had a reverence for the Scriptures, which then became institutionalized," says James Kay, professor of practical theology at the Princeton Theological Seminary. "The Bible is concerned about justice for the poor, equity and fairness, and all of those things were seen to in Calvin's Geneva."
Other struggling cultures have similarly translated godly law into earthly order and in doing so helped ensure their survival. The earliest Christians established a rough institutional structure that allowed them to transmit their ideas within a generation of Christ's death, and as a result succeeded in living through the Roman persecution; the Jews of the Diaspora moved as a cultural whole through the nations of Europe, finding niches wherever they could but maintaining their identity and kinship by observing the same rites.
"All religions become a bit secular," says Wilson. "In order to survive, you have to organize yourselves into a culture."
The downside to all this is that often religious groups gather not into congregations but into camps—and sometimes they're armed camps.
In a culture of Crusades, Holocausts and jihads, where in the world is the survival advantage of religious wars or terrorism? One facile explanation has always been herd culling—an adaptive way of keeping populations down so that resources aren't depleted. But there's little evolutionary upside to wiping out an entire population of breeding-age males, as countries trying to recover from wars repeatedly learn. Why then do we so often let the sweetness of religion curdle into combat?
--> -->-->pagebreak-->The simple answer might be that just because we're given a gift, we don't necessarily always use it wisely. Fire can either light your village or burn down the one next door, depending on your inclination. "Religions represent an attempt to harness innate spirituality for organizational purposes—not always good," says Macquarie University's Davies. And while spiritual contemplation is intuitive, says Washington University's Cloninger, religion is dogmatic; dogma in the wrong hands has always been a risky thing.
Still, for every place in the world that's suffering from religious strife, there are many more where spirituality is doing its uplifting and civilizing work. A God who would equip us with the genes and the smarts to cooperate in such a clever way is a God who ought to be appealing even to religious purists. Nonetheless, sticking points do remain that prevent genetic theory from going down smoothly. One that's particularly troublesome is the question of why Hamer's God gene—or any of the others that may eventually be discovered—is distributed so unevenly among us. Why are some of us spiritual virtuosos, while others can't play a note? Isn't it one of the central tenets of religion that grace is available to everybody? At least a few scientists shrug at the question. "Some get religion, and some don't," says Virginia Commonwealth University's Eaves.
But this seeming inequity may be an important part of the spiritual journey. It would be easy for God simply to program us for reverence; it's more meaningful when the door is opened but you've got to walk through on your own—however hard those steps may be for some. "I have never had a Big Bang conversion experience," says the Jewish Theological Seminary's Gillman. "My sense is that slowly and gradually, out of a rich experience of the world, one builds a faith."
Such experiences may ultimately be at least as important a part of our spiritual tool kit as the genes we're born with. A poor genetic legacy but lucky spiritual circumstances might mean more than good genes and bad experiences. "Fortune includes the possibility of divine grace as well as environmental influences," says Cloninger.
No matter how the two factors balance out, scientists may eventually find that trying to identify the definitive cluster of genes that serves as our spiritual circuit board is simply impossible—like trying to draw a genetic schematic of love. Still, they're likely to keep trying. "I am personally convinced that there is a scheme of things," says Davies of Macquarie University, "that the universe is not just any ragbag of laws." In the end, genes may prove to be a part of that scheme—but clearly one of very many.
Category: Religion and Philosophy
I had this actual issue for a long while until I let an Athiest friend borrow it and her godless soul lost it or something. Anyway, I thought about it today as I was sitting in church this morning and the guest preacher was just losin the audience all together. It is a very good question and I hope most of you will take the time out to read it and respond.
--> -->--> End Buttons --> --> --> --> Begin Tout1 -->
Sunday, Oct. 17, 2004
Is God in Our Genes?
By Jeffrey Kluger
It's not hard to see the divinity behind the water temples that dot the rice terraces of Bali. It's there in the white-clad high priest presiding in the temple at the summit of a dormant volcano. It's there in the 23 priests serving along with him, selected for their jobs when they were still children by a bevy of virgin priestesses.
It's there in the rituals the priests perform to protect the island's water, which in turn is needed to nurture the island's rice.
If the divine is easy to spot, what's harder to make out is the banal. But it's there too—in the meetings the priests convene to schedule their planting dates and combat the problem of crop pests; in the plans they draw up to maintain aqueducts and police conduits; in the irrigation proposals they consider and approve, the dam proposals they reject or amend. "The religion has a temple at every node in the irrigation system," says David Sloan Wilson, professor of biology and anthropology at Binghamton University in Binghamton, N.Y. "The priests make decisions and enforce the code of both religion and irrigation."
Ask true believers of any faith to describe the most important thing that drives their devotion, and they'll tell you it's not a thing at all but a sense—a feeling of a higher power far beyond us. Western religions can get a bit more doctrinaire: God has handed us laws and lore, and it's for us to learn and practice what they teach. For a hell-raising species like ours, however—with too much intelligence for our own good and too little discipline to know what to do with it—there have always been other, more utilitarian reasons to get religion. Chief among them is survival. Across the eons, the structure that religion provides our lives helps preserve both mind and body. But that, in turn, has raised a provocative question, one that's increasingly debated in the worlds of science and religion: Which came first, God or the need for God? In other words, did humans create religion from cues sent from above, or did evolution instill in us a sense of the divine so that we would gather into the communities essential to keeping the species going?
Just as a hurricane spins off tornadoes, this debate creates its own whirlwind of questions: If some people are more spiritual than others, is it nature or nurture that has made them so? If science has nothing to do with spirituality and it all flows from God, why do some people hear the divine word easily while others remain spiritually tone-deaf? Do such ivied-hall debates about environment, heredity and anthropology have any place at all in more exalted conversations about the nature of God?
Even among people who regard spiritual life as wishful hocus-pocus, there is a growing sense that humans may not be able to survive without it. It's hard enough getting by in a fang-and-claw world in which killing, thieving and cheating pay such rich dividends. It's harder still when there's no moral cop walking the beat to blow the whistle when things get out of control. Best to have a deity on hand to rein in our worst impulses, bring out our best and, not incidentally, give us a sense that there's someone awake in the cosmic house when the lights go out at night and we find ourselves wondering just why we're here in the first place. If a God or even several gods can do all that, fine. And if we sometimes misuse the idea of our gods—and millenniums of holy wars prove that we do—the benefits of being a spiritual species will surely outweigh the bloodshed.
--> -->-->pagebreak-->Far from being an evolutionary luxury then, the need for God may be a crucial trait stamped deeper and deeper into our genome with every passing generation. Humans who developed a spiritual sense thrived and bequeathed that trait to their offspring. Those who didn't risked dying out in chaos and killing. The evolutionary equation is a simple but powerful one.
Nowhere has that idea received a more intriguing going-over than in the recently published book The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired into Our Genes (Doubleday; 256 pages), by molecular biologist Dean Hamer.
Chief of gene structure at the National Cancer Institute, Hamer not only claims that human spirituality is an adaptive trait, but he also says he has located one of the genes responsible, a gene that just happens to also code for production of the neurotransmitters that regulate our moods. Our most profound feelings of spirituality, according to a literal reading of Hamer's work, may be due to little more than an occasional shot of intoxicating brain chemicals governed by our DNA. "I'm a believer that every thought we think and every feeling we feel is the result of activity in the brain," Hamer says.
"I think we follow the basic law of nature, which is that we're a bunch of chemical reactions running around in a bag."
Even for the casually religious, such seeming reductionism can rankle. The very meaning of faith, after all, is to hold fast to something without all the tidy cause and effect that science finds so necessary. Try parsing things the way geneticists do, and you risk parsing them into dust. "God is not something that can be demonstrated logically or rigorously," says Neil Gillman, a professor of Jewish philosophy at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City. "[The idea of a God gene] goes against all my personal theological convictions." John Polkinghorne, a physicist who is also Canon Theologian at England's Liverpool Cathedral, agrees: "You can't cut [faith] down to the lowest common denominator of genetic survival. It shows the poverty of reductionist thinking."
Is Hamer really guilty of such simplification? Could claims for a so-called God gene be merely the thin end of a secular wedge, one that risks prying spirituality away from God altogether? Or, assuming the gene exists at all, could it somehow be embraced by both science and religion, in the same way some evolutionists and creationists—at least the less radicalized ones—accept the idea of a divinely created universe in which evolving life is simply part of the larger plan? Hamer, for one, hopes so. "My findings are agnostic on the existence of God," he says. "If there's a God, there's a God. Just knowing what brain chemicals are involved in acknowledging that is not going to change the fact."
Whatever the merits of Hamer's work, he is clearly the heir of a millenniums-long search for the wellsprings of spirituality. People have been wrestling with the roots of faith since faith itself was first codified into Scripture. "[God has] set eternity in the hearts of men," says the Book of Ecclesiastes, "yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end."
--> -->-->pagebreak-->To theologians in the 3rd century B.C., when Ecclesiastes is thought to have been written, that passage spoke to the idea that while all of us are divinely inspired to look for God, none of us are remotely capable of fully comprehending what we are seeking. Scientists in the 21st century may not disagree, provided that "hearts of men" is replaced with "genes of men." The key for those researchers is finding those genes.
Hamer began looking in 1998, when he was conducting a survey on smoking and addiction for the National Cancer Institute. As part of his study, he recruited more than 1,000 men and women, who agreed to take a standardized, 240-question personality test called the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI). Among the traits the TCI measures is one known as self-transcendence, which consists of three other traits: self-forgetfulness, or the ability to get entirely lost in an experience; transpersonal identification, or a feeling of connectedness to a larger universe; and mysticism, or an openness to things not literally provable. Put them all together, and you come as close as science can to measuring what it feels like to be spiritual.
"This allows us to have the kind of experience described as religious ecstasy," says Robert Cloninger, a psychiatrist at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., and the designer of the self-transcendence portion of the TCI.
Hamer decided to use the data he gathered in the smoking survey to conduct a little spirituality study on the side. First he ranked the participants along Cloninger's self-transcendence scale, placing them on a continuum from least to most spiritually inclined. Then he went poking around in their genes to see if he could find the DNA responsible for the differences. Spelunking in the human genome is not easy, what with 35,000 genes consisting of 3.2 billion chemical bases. To narrow the field, Hamer confined his work to nine specific genes known to play major roles in the production of monoamines—brain chemicals, including serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine, that regulate such fundamental functions as mood and motor control. It's monoamines that are carefully manipulated by Prozac and other antidepressants. It's also monoamines that are not so carefully scrambled by ecstasy, LSD, peyote and other mind-altering drugs—some of which have long been used in religious rituals.
Studying the nine candidate genes in DNA samples provided by his subjects, Hamer quickly hit the genetic jackpot. A variation in a gene known as vmat2—for vesicular monoamine transporter—seemed to be directly related to how the volunteers scored on the self-transcendence test. Those with the nucleic acid cytosine in one particular spot on the gene ranked high. Those with the nucleic acid adenine in the same spot ranked lower. "A single change in a single base in the middle of the gene seemed directly related to the ability to feel self-transcendence," Hamer says. Merely having that feeling did not mean those people would take the next step and translate their transcendence into a belief in—or even a quest for—God. But they seemed likelier to do so than those who never got the feeling at all.
Hamer is careful to point out that the gene he found is by no means the only one that affects spirituality. Even minor human traits can be governed by the interplay of many genes; something as complex as belief in God could involve hundreds or even thousands. "If someone comes to you and says, 'We've found the gene for X,'" says John Burn, medical director of the Institute of Human Genetics at the University of Newcastle in England, "you can stop them before they get to the end of the sentence."
--> -->-->pagebreak-->Hamer also stresses that while he may have located a genetic root for spirituality, that is not the same as a genetic root for religion.
Spirituality is a feeling or a state of mind; religion is the way that state gets codified into law. Our genes don't get directly involved in writing legislation. As Hamer puts it, perhaps understating a bit the emotional connection many have to their religions, "Spirituality is intensely personal; religion is institutional."
At least one faith, according to one of its best-known scholars, formalizes the idea of gene-based spirituality and even puts a pretty spin on it. Buddhists, says Robert Thurman, professor of Buddhist studies at Columbia University, have long entertained the idea that we inherit a spirituality gene from the person we were in a previous life. Smaller than an ordinary gene, it combines with two larger physical genes we inherit from our parents, and together they shape our physical and spiritual profile. Says Thurman: "The spiritual gene helps establish a general trust in the universe, a sense of openness and generosity." Buddhists, he adds, would find Hamer's possible discovery "amusing and fun."
The Buddhist theory has never been put to the scientific test, but other investigations into the biological roots of belief in God were being conducted long before Hamer's efforts—often with intriguing results. In 1979, investigators at the University of Minnesota began their now famous twins study, tracking down 53 pairs of identical twins and 31 pairs of fraternal twins that had been separated at birth and raised apart. The scientists were looking for traits the members of each pair had in common, guessing that the characteristics shared more frequently by identical twins than by fraternal twins would be genetically based, since identical twins carry matching DNA, and those traits for which there was no disparity between the identicals and fraternals would be more environmentally influenced.
As it turned out, the identical twins had plenty of remarkable things in common. In some cases, both suffered from migraine headaches, both had a fear of heights, both were nail biters. Some shared little eccentricities, like flushing the toilet both before and after using it. When quizzed on their religious values and spiritual feelings, the identical twins showed a similar overlap. In general, they were about twice as likely as fraternal twins to believe as much—or as little—about spirituality as their sibling did. Significantly, these numbers did not hold up when the twins were questioned about how faithfully they practiced any organized religion. Clearly, it seemed, the degree to which we observe rituals such as attending services is mostly the stuff of environment and culture. Whether we're drawn to God in the first place is hardwired into our genes. "It completely contradicted my expectations," says University of Minnesota psychologist Thomas Bouchard, one of the researchers involved in the work. Similar results were later found in larger twin studies in Virginia and Australia.
Other researchers have taken the science in a different direction, looking not for the genes that code for spirituality but for how that spirituality plays out in the brain. Neuroscientist Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine has used several types of imaging systems to watch the brains of subjects as they meditate or pray. By measuring blood flow, he determines which regions are responsible for the feelings the volunteers experience.
--> -->-->pagebreak-->The deeper that people descend into meditation or prayer, Newberg found, the more active the frontal lobe and the limbic system become.
The frontal lobe is the seat of concentration and attention; the limbic system is where powerful feelings, including rapture, are processed. More revealing is the fact that at the same time these regions flash to life, another important region—the parietal lobe at the back of the brain—goes dim. It's this lobe that orients the individual in time and space. Take it off-line, and the boundaries of the self fall away, creating the feeling of being at one with the universe. Combine that with what's going on in the other two lobes, and you can put together a profound religious experience.
Even to some within the religious community, this does not come as news. "In India in Buddha's time, there were philosophers who said there was no soul; the mind was just chemistry," says Thurman. "The Buddha disagreed with their extreme materialism but also rejected the 'absolute soul' theologians." Michael Persinger, professor of behavioral neuroscience at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ont., puts the chemistry argument more bluntly. "God," he says, "is an artifact of the brain."
Even if such spiritual deconstructionism is true, some scientists—to say nothing of most theologians—think it takes you only so far, particularly when it comes to trying to determine the very existence of God. Simply understanding the optics and wiring of the eyes, after all, doesn't mean there's no inherent magnificence in the Rembrandts they allow us to see. If human beings were indeed divinely assembled, why wouldn't our list of parts include a genetic chip that would enable us to contemplate our maker?
"Of course, concepts of God reside in the brain. They certainly don't reside in the toe," says Lindon Eaves, director of the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. "The question is, To what is this wiring responsive? Why is it there?"
Says Paul Davies, professor of natural philosophy at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia: "I think a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that if you explain something, you explain it away. I don't see that at all with religious experience."
Those religious believers who are comfortable with the idea that God genes are the work of God should have little trouble making the next leap: that not only are the genes there but they are central to our survival, one of the hinges upon which the very evolution of the human species turned. It's an argument that's not terribly hard to make.
For one thing, God is a concept that appears in human cultures all over the globe, regardless of how geographically isolated they are.
When tribes living in remote areas come up with a concept of God as readily as nations living shoulder to shoulder, it's a fairly strong indication that the idea is preloaded in the genome rather than picked up on the fly. If that's the case, it's an equally strong indication that there are very good reasons it's there.
--> -->-->pagebreak-->One of those reasons might be that, as the sole species—as far as we know—capable of contemplating its own death, we needed something larger than ourselves to make that knowledge tolerable. "Anticipation of our own demise is the price we pay for a highly developed frontal lobe," says Persinger. "In many ways, [a God experience is] a brilliant adaptation. It's a built-in pacifier."
But the most important survival role religion may serve is as the mortar that holds a group together. Worshipping God doesn't have to be a collective thing; it can be done in isolation, disconnected from any organized religion. The overwhelming majority of people, however, congregate to pray, observing the same rituals and heeding the same creeds. Once that congregation is in place, it's only a small step to using the common system of beliefs and practices as the basis for all the secular laws that keep the group functioning.
One of the best examples of religion as social organizer, according to Binghamton University's Wilson, is early Calvinism. John Calvin rose to prominence in 1536 when, as a theologian and religious reformer, he was recruited to help bring order to the fractious city of Geneva. Calvin, perhaps one of the greatest theological minds ever produced by European Christianity, was a lawyer by trade. Wilson speculates that it was Calvin's pragmatic genius to understand that while civil laws alone might not be enough to bring the city's deadbeats and other malefactors into line, divine law might be.
Calvin's catechism included the familiar Ten Commandments—which, with their injunctions against theft, murder, adultery and lying, are themselves effective social organizers. Added to that were admonitions to pay taxes, perform civic duties, behave in a civil manner and submit to the authority of magistrates. "You must understand religions very thoroughly in relation to their environments," says Wilson. "And one problem for Calvin was to make his city function."
The heirs to Calvinism today—Presbyterians, many Baptists and believers in the Reformed tradition in general—see the roots of their faith as something far more divine than merely good civic management. But even some theologians seem to think that a deep belief in the laws of God can coexist with the survival demands of an evolving society. "Calvin had a reverence for the Scriptures, which then became institutionalized," says James Kay, professor of practical theology at the Princeton Theological Seminary. "The Bible is concerned about justice for the poor, equity and fairness, and all of those things were seen to in Calvin's Geneva."
Other struggling cultures have similarly translated godly law into earthly order and in doing so helped ensure their survival. The earliest Christians established a rough institutional structure that allowed them to transmit their ideas within a generation of Christ's death, and as a result succeeded in living through the Roman persecution; the Jews of the Diaspora moved as a cultural whole through the nations of Europe, finding niches wherever they could but maintaining their identity and kinship by observing the same rites.
"All religions become a bit secular," says Wilson. "In order to survive, you have to organize yourselves into a culture."
The downside to all this is that often religious groups gather not into congregations but into camps—and sometimes they're armed camps.
In a culture of Crusades, Holocausts and jihads, where in the world is the survival advantage of religious wars or terrorism? One facile explanation has always been herd culling—an adaptive way of keeping populations down so that resources aren't depleted. But there's little evolutionary upside to wiping out an entire population of breeding-age males, as countries trying to recover from wars repeatedly learn. Why then do we so often let the sweetness of religion curdle into combat?
--> -->-->pagebreak-->The simple answer might be that just because we're given a gift, we don't necessarily always use it wisely. Fire can either light your village or burn down the one next door, depending on your inclination. "Religions represent an attempt to harness innate spirituality for organizational purposes—not always good," says Macquarie University's Davies. And while spiritual contemplation is intuitive, says Washington University's Cloninger, religion is dogmatic; dogma in the wrong hands has always been a risky thing.
Still, for every place in the world that's suffering from religious strife, there are many more where spirituality is doing its uplifting and civilizing work. A God who would equip us with the genes and the smarts to cooperate in such a clever way is a God who ought to be appealing even to religious purists. Nonetheless, sticking points do remain that prevent genetic theory from going down smoothly. One that's particularly troublesome is the question of why Hamer's God gene—or any of the others that may eventually be discovered—is distributed so unevenly among us. Why are some of us spiritual virtuosos, while others can't play a note? Isn't it one of the central tenets of religion that grace is available to everybody? At least a few scientists shrug at the question. "Some get religion, and some don't," says Virginia Commonwealth University's Eaves.
But this seeming inequity may be an important part of the spiritual journey. It would be easy for God simply to program us for reverence; it's more meaningful when the door is opened but you've got to walk through on your own—however hard those steps may be for some. "I have never had a Big Bang conversion experience," says the Jewish Theological Seminary's Gillman. "My sense is that slowly and gradually, out of a rich experience of the world, one builds a faith."
Such experiences may ultimately be at least as important a part of our spiritual tool kit as the genes we're born with. A poor genetic legacy but lucky spiritual circumstances might mean more than good genes and bad experiences. "Fortune includes the possibility of divine grace as well as environmental influences," says Cloninger.
No matter how the two factors balance out, scientists may eventually find that trying to identify the definitive cluster of genes that serves as our spiritual circuit board is simply impossible—like trying to draw a genetic schematic of love. Still, they're likely to keep trying. "I am personally convinced that there is a scheme of things," says Davies of Macquarie University, "that the universe is not just any ragbag of laws." In the end, genes may prove to be a part of that scheme—but clearly one of very many.
Now thats Just Damn Sweet
Ala. Couple Celebrate 80th Anniversary
(AP Photo/The Huntsville Times, David Brewer) :: AlonzoSims, 97, kisses his wife, Beulah, 94, Thursday, Sept. 27, 2007. The Jackson County couple will celebrated their 80th wedding anniversary Sunday at 2 p.m. at Cloverdale Manor nursing home in Scottsboro, Ala. Without their families' approval, the two teens married in 1927, when he was working at a farm, plowing fields with a mule and picking cotton for 50 cents a day.
By Associated Press
Updated: 10/2/2007
SCOTTSBORO, Ala.
A Scottboro couple recently celebrated their 80th wedding anniversary, one of the longest marriages among living people when compared to reports in the 2007 Guinness Book of World Records.
Alonzo, 97, and Beulah Sims, 94, celebrated their anniversary a day early Sunday at the nursing home where they have lived since May 2002.
Without their families' approval, the two teens married in 1927, when he was working at a farm, plowing fields with a mule and picking cotton for 50 cents a day.
The couple, who raised six children, credit their long lives to hard farm work and eating lots of vegetables. They moved frequently to find farm work, going from Paint Rock Valley near Garth to Atchley Bottom in Madison County and then to Woodville in the 1960s.
They said their eight decades of marriage have been virtually free of fussing.
''We've been too busy to fight,'' Beulah Sims said.
Alonzo Sims retired from farming in 1966 and did janitorial work at Redstone Arsenal until 1972. They also operated service stations in Paint Rock and Woodville for a few years. Now, they spend their time visiting other residents at the nursing home, listening to gospel music, and playing bingo.
''After all these years,'' he said, ''I still enjoy being with her.''
(AP Photo/The Huntsville Times, David Brewer) :: AlonzoSims, 97, kisses his wife, Beulah, 94, Thursday, Sept. 27, 2007. The Jackson County couple will celebrated their 80th wedding anniversary Sunday at 2 p.m. at Cloverdale Manor nursing home in Scottsboro, Ala. Without their families' approval, the two teens married in 1927, when he was working at a farm, plowing fields with a mule and picking cotton for 50 cents a day.
By Associated Press
Updated: 10/2/2007
SCOTTSBORO, Ala.
A Scottboro couple recently celebrated their 80th wedding anniversary, one of the longest marriages among living people when compared to reports in the 2007 Guinness Book of World Records.
Alonzo, 97, and Beulah Sims, 94, celebrated their anniversary a day early Sunday at the nursing home where they have lived since May 2002.
Without their families' approval, the two teens married in 1927, when he was working at a farm, plowing fields with a mule and picking cotton for 50 cents a day.
The couple, who raised six children, credit their long lives to hard farm work and eating lots of vegetables. They moved frequently to find farm work, going from Paint Rock Valley near Garth to Atchley Bottom in Madison County and then to Woodville in the 1960s.
They said their eight decades of marriage have been virtually free of fussing.
''We've been too busy to fight,'' Beulah Sims said.
Alonzo Sims retired from farming in 1966 and did janitorial work at Redstone Arsenal until 1972. They also operated service stations in Paint Rock and Woodville for a few years. Now, they spend their time visiting other residents at the nursing home, listening to gospel music, and playing bingo.
''After all these years,'' he said, ''I still enjoy being with her.''
To the Beautiful People...
The following is actually a letter sent a friend of mine and professional model. In no way would I hope that anyone reading this to mistake her for the stereotypical Zoolanderesque model contrivance. She is in fact a wholly well rounded person both inside and out. But after sending her this letter I thought maybe it would be good to ask everyone. Surely, we all like to think of ourselves as contributing to bringing sexy back, but how many of us actually can get paid for it?
If any of you have seen this show or know enough to comment, please do.
PS: SUBSCRIBE TO MY BLOG
K,
ok, now i know i enjoy taking an opportunity to give you a good ribbing about being one of the "beautiful" people and being a model and all, but thats simply because I know without question that you're indeed a complete person both inside and out. BUT, I just watched this show and I really need to know who is the exception and who is the rule.
To fully grasp what I'm talking about let me share what an alien from Mars would come to believe had it never encounteredd humanity before catching this show on VH1.
a) There is unanimous concensus that there are 52 states in the Union.
b) Lance Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon, and
c) As a gift of friendship from France to America, we received either caviar and wine or, ahem, herpes.
Please tell me television has simply gone awry once more and that the majority of the Hoteratti are down to earth and fairly intelligent so that I might hope that a full package of good genes are past on to the next generation. Good genes like your own, Ashton Kutchers, or my own dear wifes.
Signed,
Dumber for Having Watched This Show in Full
If any of you have seen this show or know enough to comment, please do.
PS: SUBSCRIBE TO MY BLOG
K,
ok, now i know i enjoy taking an opportunity to give you a good ribbing about being one of the "beautiful" people and being a model and all, but thats simply because I know without question that you're indeed a complete person both inside and out. BUT, I just watched this show and I really need to know who is the exception and who is the rule.
To fully grasp what I'm talking about let me share what an alien from Mars would come to believe had it never encounteredd humanity before catching this show on VH1.
a) There is unanimous concensus that there are 52 states in the Union.
b) Lance Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon, and
c) As a gift of friendship from France to America, we received either caviar and wine or, ahem, herpes.
Please tell me television has simply gone awry once more and that the majority of the Hoteratti are down to earth and fairly intelligent so that I might hope that a full package of good genes are past on to the next generation. Good genes like your own, Ashton Kutchers, or my own dear wifes.
Signed,
Dumber for Having Watched This Show in Full
Man! I am so glad that we as a nation decided that "changing horses midstream" was a bad idea
That Republican mantra of the 2004 campaign was on point. "You don't change horses midstream". Surely, if John Kerry had won in that election the real work of the President would never have been fully realized. George W. Bush had a job to do, and dammit he's doing that work with every last bit of strength the Dark Lord Satan can channel into him.
Could we have had an Executive that would actually veto expanding healthcare for needy children under a successful heart surgeon turned successful governor like Howard Dean? NO. SCHIP would be some kind of damned safeguard against promoting dead children. If you're afraid to die and go up (or down) to meet his Creator than you don't deserve to live anyway Timmy!
Could we truly have known the shame and disgrace that comes with being the last remaining superpower, yet still willing to torture detainees in secret prisons located the world over in some distopian like nightmare? Under decorated veterans or staunch anti-war activists like John Kerry or dare I say... Dennis Kuchinich, could we? War is now what it has always been. The business of privelaged draft dodgers who were stoned out of their minds when it came time for them to actually do some fighting. How much coke did he snort again?
What about politicizing the Department of Justice? Who else could have taken it to the hole like but Dubya? To the point that the entire American citizenry no longer can rest easily knowing that justice in this nation were truly blind? Would a successful 'trial lawyer' like John Edwards had the balls to do what the President did? Two words: "I object!!" Pussy.
And let's not forget stacking a government with so many hacks and cronies that it makes Tamany Hall look like a meritocracy for the ages. A strategy that brought you the all time salutable faces of former horse breeder turned FEMA head Michael Brown, eco-terrorist turned EPA head Christy Todd Whitman, and legal aces like John Ashcroft (a payback appointment to the conservative right) and Alberto Gonzalez and attempted SCOTUS appointee Harriet "Lucy Number 9" Meirs. For further details on this administations high esteem for merit read my blog entry "The Bush Hackocracy".
No, America. Changing horses midstream would have been a bad idea. A better idea would have been shooting the horse with the bum leg in the head before you even got out there in the first place. Instead we should have stuck with the horse associated with the previous eight years of good fortune and stabilty. You know, the horse that really won and not the horse that was appointed by the Supreme Court in a Florida recount. Yeah, that horse. Giddy up, America. We're goin back to Crawford; where the cowboys are all hat and no cattle.
Could we have had an Executive that would actually veto expanding healthcare for needy children under a successful heart surgeon turned successful governor like Howard Dean? NO. SCHIP would be some kind of damned safeguard against promoting dead children. If you're afraid to die and go up (or down) to meet his Creator than you don't deserve to live anyway Timmy!
Could we truly have known the shame and disgrace that comes with being the last remaining superpower, yet still willing to torture detainees in secret prisons located the world over in some distopian like nightmare? Under decorated veterans or staunch anti-war activists like John Kerry or dare I say... Dennis Kuchinich, could we? War is now what it has always been. The business of privelaged draft dodgers who were stoned out of their minds when it came time for them to actually do some fighting. How much coke did he snort again?
What about politicizing the Department of Justice? Who else could have taken it to the hole like but Dubya? To the point that the entire American citizenry no longer can rest easily knowing that justice in this nation were truly blind? Would a successful 'trial lawyer' like John Edwards had the balls to do what the President did? Two words: "I object!!" Pussy.
And let's not forget stacking a government with so many hacks and cronies that it makes Tamany Hall look like a meritocracy for the ages. A strategy that brought you the all time salutable faces of former horse breeder turned FEMA head Michael Brown, eco-terrorist turned EPA head Christy Todd Whitman, and legal aces like John Ashcroft (a payback appointment to the conservative right) and Alberto Gonzalez and attempted SCOTUS appointee Harriet "Lucy Number 9" Meirs. For further details on this administations high esteem for merit read my blog entry "The Bush Hackocracy".
No, America. Changing horses midstream would have been a bad idea. A better idea would have been shooting the horse with the bum leg in the head before you even got out there in the first place. Instead we should have stuck with the horse associated with the previous eight years of good fortune and stabilty. You know, the horse that really won and not the horse that was appointed by the Supreme Court in a Florida recount. Yeah, that horse. Giddy up, America. We're goin back to Crawford; where the cowboys are all hat and no cattle.
If Anyone from the Onion is Reading This...
Bush Administration Announces Plans to Begin Outsourcing U.S. Military Personnel to Iraq from India.
While making rounds on the usual Sunday morning news circuit today, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced plans to begin the outsourcing of U.S. military operations to Iraq from Bangalore, India and neighboring provinces. Said Gates, "The President has heard Congress' complaints about the escalating cost of the freedom in Iraq." He's decided the best way to reduce those costs and expand corporate tax cuts is to contract out the majority of combat operations. Transportation and fuel costs alone will be reduced 70% due to the proximity of the two locations to one another." White House spokesperson Dana Perino confirmed that the $670 billion dollar annual savings will allow the U.S. to continue to fight Al Quaeda in Iraq for an additional twenty years if neccessary, but emphasized that American presence in Iraq has never been open ended. During his weekly radio address, the President dismissed intelligence reports stating that Osama Bin Laden is hiding in the mountainous regions of Pakistan and says he is actually still in Iraq planning the next 9/11. Said the Giuliani campaign, "Late next October, if possible"
Democratic critics of the Presidents plan have stated that the president is simply looking for a way to reduce the size of the military obligation without actually being accountable for victory in Iraq. Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) rebuked the plan by saying Indian forces won't receive any better training than the Iraqi police have. Internal documents leaked by an anonymous official within the Office of Management and Budget confirmed suspicions when they revealed that armored tank orders were decreased fifty percent while future orders for curry spices and flag draped coffins had been dramatically increased.
Contract bids have already poured in from several Indian outsource firms. The Mumbai based firm Can-Do Hindu! is projected to be awarded the most bids with its average per capita monthly expense of only $6 per soldier. In exchange, Indian officials will mandate that more Indian firms establish more of their corporate call centers in Middle America. Speaking this morning through an interpreter, Indian industrialist and steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal said that he cannot wait to visit his new call centers in Kenosha, WI and North Platte, NE.
While making rounds on the usual Sunday morning news circuit today, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced plans to begin the outsourcing of U.S. military operations to Iraq from Bangalore, India and neighboring provinces. Said Gates, "The President has heard Congress' complaints about the escalating cost of the freedom in Iraq." He's decided the best way to reduce those costs and expand corporate tax cuts is to contract out the majority of combat operations. Transportation and fuel costs alone will be reduced 70% due to the proximity of the two locations to one another." White House spokesperson Dana Perino confirmed that the $670 billion dollar annual savings will allow the U.S. to continue to fight Al Quaeda in Iraq for an additional twenty years if neccessary, but emphasized that American presence in Iraq has never been open ended. During his weekly radio address, the President dismissed intelligence reports stating that Osama Bin Laden is hiding in the mountainous regions of Pakistan and says he is actually still in Iraq planning the next 9/11. Said the Giuliani campaign, "Late next October, if possible"
Democratic critics of the Presidents plan have stated that the president is simply looking for a way to reduce the size of the military obligation without actually being accountable for victory in Iraq. Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) rebuked the plan by saying Indian forces won't receive any better training than the Iraqi police have. Internal documents leaked by an anonymous official within the Office of Management and Budget confirmed suspicions when they revealed that armored tank orders were decreased fifty percent while future orders for curry spices and flag draped coffins had been dramatically increased.
Contract bids have already poured in from several Indian outsource firms. The Mumbai based firm Can-Do Hindu! is projected to be awarded the most bids with its average per capita monthly expense of only $6 per soldier. In exchange, Indian officials will mandate that more Indian firms establish more of their corporate call centers in Middle America. Speaking this morning through an interpreter, Indian industrialist and steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal said that he cannot wait to visit his new call centers in Kenosha, WI and North Platte, NE.
Seriously, WTF is Someone Always Ready to Die for Islam
Alright, I read this several days ago and really did not want to write about it. But it's been in the back of my mind for several days now. I don't get it. The fervent zeal behind the militant islamists is alarming. These aren't males ready to blow shit up. Its women now. Islam is still advocating a form if zealotry I don't think exists in any other mainstream religions today. I don't f'in get it. I've never heard "man, I hope I make it through the day so I can practice Islam tomorrow." No! Its always ready to die this, and in the name of Allah that.
I'm pretty well informed. So if I'm not gettin it, I know theres probably a good chunk of mofos out there that aren't getting it either.
I've heard the arguments that these sorts of militants don't really understand Islam. Ok, but if thats the case, how can sooooo many people be in the dark? Maybe we should be engaged in jihad. There already engaged in it against us. It makes no damn sense. And be aware, this story in no way involves the US. This is a strictly at home in Pakistan matter. For once since after 9/11, we didn't do something to bring this upon ourselves like we did with Al Quaeda in Iraq.
Thursday, Jul. 05, 2007
Postcard From Islamabad
By Aryn Baker
Pakistan's very future seems to be on the line at Lal Masjid (the Red Mosque), in the capital city of Islamabad. For months students and teachers at the mosque's madrasahs, or seminaries, have been taking the law into their own hands, launching vigilante raids on video and music shops for promoting "un-Islamic behavior." Twice they abducted women--including six Chinese masseuses--for alleged prostitution.
For months the government of general turned President Pervez Musharraf has been threatening to crack down against the madrasahs' radicals but has held back for fear of a conservative backlash. I was inside the mosque compound on July 3 when the assault finally came.
The day began quietly. I was on hand to interview the headmistress of the women's madrasah and got into a discussion with her translator, Umma Aman, 22, a pretty seminary student. Aman talked about the source of the students' anger, saying that if the government wouldn't cleanse the capital of sin, they would. "A man goes to medical school and becomes a doctor," says Aman. "We go to a madrasah, so we must practice Islam. We must act on God's will."
She tells me she's prepared to die for God. It's the kind of rhetoric I've come to expect from students here; I am not expecting an immediate demonstration of her faith. But as we speak, government rangers, a kind of paramilitary force, are moving in, trying to cordon off the compound with razor wire. Students will soon be forced to put their lives on the line to defend their beliefs.
Outside, male students are battling the rangers. "Emergency!" the seminary's headmistress, Umma Hassan, declares, and she leaps to her feet. Students and teachers don battle gear over their tunics and pants: dark, floor-length robes and headscarves that show only their eyes. Stout bamboo staffs appear out of nowhere. A Sten gun flashes from beneath Hassan's robe.
"Come on. We are going out to protest," says Aman. I recognize her only by the glasses on the outside of her burqa mask. I follow her outside, where a hundred or so black-robed women chant in unison against Musharraf and his ally President George W. Bush. There's a crack, a small explosion, and then a cloud of acrid tear gas drifts our way. I run back to the gate, losing Aman in a sea of panicking black robes. More explosions, more tear gas. And then gunshots--first from the mosque, then in retaliation from the rangers. We are caught in a narrow corridor, bullets slicing through the thick smoke on either side of us. A canister of tear gas rolls past my feet, spewing cottony clouds that claw at my eyes and tear at my lungs. Someone from the second floor above the gate pours a bucket of water on us. Blissful reprieve, if just for a few seconds. Coughing, choking, we scrabble at the front door, battling to get through the narrow passageway, back into the madrasah, to safety.
The firing slows, and Hassan strides into the courtyard triumphant. "Good news," she says. "Our boys stole four guns from the rangers." The atmosphere is electric. Aman eventually finds me. She wants to go back out to help her comrades. I realize that the head-to-toe shrouds serve another purpose: sopping wet, they provide excellent protection against tear gas. Aman's eyes, though bloodshot, are exultant. "We are never afraid," she says. "One day all lives will end, and if this is the case, then why not give our life to Islam?" The battle lasts six hours and claims the lives of four students (Aman survives), a policeman and several bystanders. At one stage, I take advantage of a lull to slip out the back to the street. Another young student, Amma Adeem, speaks to me at the gate: "Tell them how angry we are. Write in your story how willing we are to die for our cause." It doesn't sound like rhetoric anymore. It sounds like a promise.
I'm pretty well informed. So if I'm not gettin it, I know theres probably a good chunk of mofos out there that aren't getting it either.
I've heard the arguments that these sorts of militants don't really understand Islam. Ok, but if thats the case, how can sooooo many people be in the dark? Maybe we should be engaged in jihad. There already engaged in it against us. It makes no damn sense. And be aware, this story in no way involves the US. This is a strictly at home in Pakistan matter. For once since after 9/11, we didn't do something to bring this upon ourselves like we did with Al Quaeda in Iraq.
Thursday, Jul. 05, 2007
Postcard From Islamabad
By Aryn Baker
Pakistan's very future seems to be on the line at Lal Masjid (the Red Mosque), in the capital city of Islamabad. For months students and teachers at the mosque's madrasahs, or seminaries, have been taking the law into their own hands, launching vigilante raids on video and music shops for promoting "un-Islamic behavior." Twice they abducted women--including six Chinese masseuses--for alleged prostitution.
For months the government of general turned President Pervez Musharraf has been threatening to crack down against the madrasahs' radicals but has held back for fear of a conservative backlash. I was inside the mosque compound on July 3 when the assault finally came.
The day began quietly. I was on hand to interview the headmistress of the women's madrasah and got into a discussion with her translator, Umma Aman, 22, a pretty seminary student. Aman talked about the source of the students' anger, saying that if the government wouldn't cleanse the capital of sin, they would. "A man goes to medical school and becomes a doctor," says Aman. "We go to a madrasah, so we must practice Islam. We must act on God's will."
She tells me she's prepared to die for God. It's the kind of rhetoric I've come to expect from students here; I am not expecting an immediate demonstration of her faith. But as we speak, government rangers, a kind of paramilitary force, are moving in, trying to cordon off the compound with razor wire. Students will soon be forced to put their lives on the line to defend their beliefs.
Outside, male students are battling the rangers. "Emergency!" the seminary's headmistress, Umma Hassan, declares, and she leaps to her feet. Students and teachers don battle gear over their tunics and pants: dark, floor-length robes and headscarves that show only their eyes. Stout bamboo staffs appear out of nowhere. A Sten gun flashes from beneath Hassan's robe.
"Come on. We are going out to protest," says Aman. I recognize her only by the glasses on the outside of her burqa mask. I follow her outside, where a hundred or so black-robed women chant in unison against Musharraf and his ally President George W. Bush. There's a crack, a small explosion, and then a cloud of acrid tear gas drifts our way. I run back to the gate, losing Aman in a sea of panicking black robes. More explosions, more tear gas. And then gunshots--first from the mosque, then in retaliation from the rangers. We are caught in a narrow corridor, bullets slicing through the thick smoke on either side of us. A canister of tear gas rolls past my feet, spewing cottony clouds that claw at my eyes and tear at my lungs. Someone from the second floor above the gate pours a bucket of water on us. Blissful reprieve, if just for a few seconds. Coughing, choking, we scrabble at the front door, battling to get through the narrow passageway, back into the madrasah, to safety.
The firing slows, and Hassan strides into the courtyard triumphant. "Good news," she says. "Our boys stole four guns from the rangers." The atmosphere is electric. Aman eventually finds me. She wants to go back out to help her comrades. I realize that the head-to-toe shrouds serve another purpose: sopping wet, they provide excellent protection against tear gas. Aman's eyes, though bloodshot, are exultant. "We are never afraid," she says. "One day all lives will end, and if this is the case, then why not give our life to Islam?" The battle lasts six hours and claims the lives of four students (Aman survives), a policeman and several bystanders. At one stage, I take advantage of a lull to slip out the back to the street. Another young student, Amma Adeem, speaks to me at the gate: "Tell them how angry we are. Write in your story how willing we are to die for our cause." It doesn't sound like rhetoric anymore. It sounds like a promise.
Cornell West is dropping a edutainment hip-hop album? Right on! Ya dig!?
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11476647
The Bush Hackocracy
I thought this was a great article from TNR.
Welcome to the Hackocracy
The events of the past months have awakened the press to the true nature of the Bush administration. It is overrun with hacks--that is, government officials with waifish resumés padded like the Michelin man, whose political connections have won them important national responsibilities. But, in the face of this rush to flay the Bush hacks, we should consider their achievements.
To fully appreciate the virtues of this administration, we must first recall the administration that came before. Back in the 1990s, Bill Clinton recruited a small army of Arkansans and Rhodes scholars to the West Wing. Although there was the occasional kindergarten buddy who was out of his depth, most of these FOBs (friends of Bill) were insufferable wonks who never let you forget their dense resumés. President Bush put his finger on the smug mindset of these Clinton meritocrats when he said, "They're all of a sudden smarter than the average person because they happen to have an Ivy League degree."
Now we can consider this problem solved. The Bush era has taken government out of the hands of the hyper-qualified and given it back to the common man. This new breed may not have what the credentialists sneeringly call "relevant experience." Their alma maters may not always be "accredited." But they have something the intellectual snobs of yore never had: loyalty. If not loyalty to country, then at least loyalty to party and to the guy who got them the job. And their loyalty has been rewarded: Even if they fail, they know they can move up the chain until they find a job they can succeed in or until a major American city is destroyed, whichever comes first.
The hackocracy, of course, reflects the virtues of its architect, George W. Bush. Like Michael Brown and lesser known hacks, the president hasn't allowed personal setbacks to stymie him. The old-fashioned values of fortitude and family have given him the strength to rebound from a doomed oil company called Arbusto, a doomed congressional candidacy, and catastrophic failures at Harken Energy. That may be why, while cronies populate every presidency, no administration has etched the principles of hackocracy into its governing philosophy as deeply as this one. If there's an underappreciated corner of the bureaucracy to fill, it has found just the crony (or college roommate of a crony), party operative (or cousin of a party operative) to fill it. To honor this achievement, we've drawn up a list of the 15 biggest Bush administration hacks--from the highest levels of government to the civil servant rank and file. The tnr 15 is a diverse group--from the assistant secretary of commerce who started his career by supplying Bush with Altoids to the Republican National Committee chair-turned-Veterans Affairs secretary who forgot about wounded Iraq war vets--but they all share two things: responsibility and inexperience.
Although he could not possibly have envisioned what Bush has accomplished, Theodore Roosevelt delivered the single most poetic appreciation of this hackocratic style: "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again...."
Bush, who may or may not be familiar with the Bull Moose, has lived and governed by this dictum. Never before have we so rewarded the valiant striver who comes up short by placing the fate of the nation in his hands. Never before have so many gotten so far with so little.
15: Israel Hernandez
Assistant Secretary for Trade Promotion and Director General of the United States and Foreign Commercial Service, Department of Commerce (confirmation pending)
Fresh out of college and seeking a job on George W. Bush's 1994 Texas gubernatorial campaign, Israel Hernandez showed up an hour early for his interview with the candidate. Impressed by his punctuality, Bush hired Hernandez within days and eventually invited him to live with the Bush family in their Dallas home, where Hernandez reportedly became like an older brother to Jenna and Barbara Bush. Serving as Bush's travel aide for the next few years, "He was always there with the Altoids, the speech box, the schedule, whatever I needed," Bush later wrote in his autobiography. After getting a master's degree at (where else?) the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M (named after H.W.), Hernandez--or, as Bush called him, "Altoid Boy"--joined Bush's 2000 presidential campaign and later worked in the White House as an assistant to Karl Rove. There, he helped choreograph Bush's events and was once made part of the first lady's official delegation on a trip to Europe so that he could keep an eye on Jenna. All of which, apparently, was good preparation for managing more than 1,800 employees in more than 80 countries, because, earlier this year, Bush nominated the 35-year-old Hernandez to serve as an assistant secretary of Commerce and to run the United States and Foreign Commercial Service, the federal government's key export promotion agency.
14: Andrew Maner
Chief Financial Officer, Department of Homeland Security
Andrew Maner comes to his job with unimpeachable credentials--not in finance or accounting, admittedly, but as a dues-payer in the Bush family empire. In the first Bush administration, Maner helped to plan presidential travel and served as a junior press aide. ..Later, he followed the defeated George H.W. Bush back to Texas to be a spokesman and political fixer for the ex-president. After several private sector years working in information technology and procurement, he took over the U.S. Customs Office of Trade Relations, whose mission is to foster "positive relationships with the international trade community." Billing himself as a trade expert, Maner called the Customs gig a "logical next step in [my] career." Less logical, however, was his leap (after a short stint as chief of staff to the Customs commissioner) to managing DHS's sprawling $40 billion budget. Given his slim management background, it's convenient that Maner landed the only Cabinet department CFO slot that doesn't require Senate confirmation. Perhaps it also explains why, when DHS officials recently unveiled a revamped organizational chart, Maner's office was accidentally omitted. (Hack bonus: "Of all the things we do in the Department, charts may not be our strength," said the Department's undersecretary for management, Janet Hale.)
13: Claire Buchan
Chief of Staff, Department of Commerce
As deputy press secretary at the White House, Claire Buchan gained a reputation as a kept-in-the-dark spokesbot who was often relegated to baby-sitting reporters on long trips. But all that changed last spring, when Buchan was promoted to chief of staff at the Commerce Department, where she now helps the secretary oversee a $6.3 billion budget and some 38,000 employees. Buchan owes this stroke of good fortune to her years in the Bush family trenches. Previously, she served as a public affairs underling for the Treasury Department under former President Bush, a flack for the Republican National Committee, and (during the Clinton years) an image czar for the lawn care, extermination, and appliance repair company ServiceMaster. Some of Buchan's erstwhile colleagues in the White House press corps were left speechless when her new assignment was announced in February. One White House reporter who worked closely with Buchan for five years called her "the most useless in a Bush universe of enforced uselessness. She took empty banality to a new low."
12: Paul Hoffman
Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks, Department of the Interior
Paul Hoffman is an avid angler, hunter, skier, and horseman. So it was only natural to tap this former chief of the Chamber of Commerce in Cody, Wyoming, (population 9,000) to help run the National Park Service. Sure, Hoffman had no parks experience other than recreating in them and, as head of the Cody Chamber, advocating for more snowmobiles in nearby Yellowstone National Park. But he had spent four years in the 1980s working as the state director for then-Wyoming Representative Dick Cheney. Since arriving at the Interior Department in 2002, Hoffman has demonstrated a knack for thinking outside the box. In April 2003, he went against the wishes of the staff of Yellowstone and asked the U.N. World Heritage Committee to remove the park from its "In Danger List." Last year, he overruled geologists at the Grand Canyon National Park and instructed the park's visitor centers to stock a creationist book that explained how God made the canyon 6,000 years ago, ordering up a flood to wipe out "the wickedness of man." And, this year, Hoffman pushed for wholesale revisions to the Park Service's management policies. Instead of giving priority to protecting natural resources, Hoffman proposed that managers emphasize multiple uses for their parks--including snowmobiling, Jet-Skiing, grazing, drilling, and mining. After Hoffman's proposed reforms set off a firestorm of criticism from Park Service employees and members of Congress--"The inmates are in charge of the asylum," one Park Service retiree complained--the Bush administration claimed that Hoffman's suggestions were "no longer in play" and that he had merely been playing "devil's advocate."
11: Patrick Rhode
Acting Deputy Director Federal Emergency Management Agency
As acting deputy director of fema, 36-year-old Patrick Rhode had, until recently, the unenviable job of backstopping the hapless Michael Brown, a man who needed much backstopping. ..Unfortunately, it's not clear that Rhode is much more qualified than Brown to be managing the nation's worst disasters. Before joining fema, the biggest disaster he had helped manage was the Small Business Administration (see Hector Barreto)--and even that was something of a stretch. Rhode entered federal government in 2001 as deputy director of advance operations for the Bush White House, a job he had also held for Bush's 2000 campaign. Never fear, though: Rhode has covered disasters--as a TV anchor for local network affiliates in Alabama and Arkansas, in which capacity he developed "an acute interest in what responders do in times of crises." Perhaps not acute enough. He recently said that >fema's response to Katrina was "probably one of the most efficient and effective responses in the country's history."
10: Steven Law
Deputy Secretary, Department of Labor
Since 2004, Steven Law has helped run a department with 17,000 employees and an annual budget of over $50 billion. Pretty good for a guy who started out as a lowly Capitol Hill legislative aide. In 1990, Law's boss, Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, tapped him to serve as campaign manager for his reelection race. Law didn't disappoint, running a notably nasty campaign that insinuated McConnell's Democratic opponent was both mentally ill and a drug addict. Law returned to Washington as McConnell's chief of staff, and, six years later, when McConnell was chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, he made Law the group's executive director, relying on him for help in vacuuming up campaign contributions for Republican Senate candidates and thwarting campaign finance reform legislation. In each job he did for McConnell, Law proved to be an unusually dedicated--and worshipful--worker. Asked once by Campaigns & Elections to name his political heroes, Law answered: "Ronald Reagan, for his vision of America; Abraham Lincoln, for his moral statesmanship; and Mitch McConnell, for his principle and tenacity." It was little wonder, then, that, in 2001, the newly appointed Labor Secretary Elaine Chao--who happens to be McConnell's wife--hired Law as her chief of staff, a stepping stone to his current position; after all, once you've found such loyal help, you want to keep it in the family.
9: Hal Stratton
Chairman, Consumer Product Safety Commission
A former state representative and attorney general in New Mexico, Hal Stratton never asked for his current job, protecting American citizens from such dangers as lead-laced toy jewelry and flammable Halloween costumes. ..Instead, the former geology major who went on to co-chair the local Lawyers for Bush during the 2000 campaign initially wanted a job in the Interior Department. "That didn't work out," he told the Albuquerque Journal, "but I told them, 'Don't count me out' ... and they came up with this." "This" being the not-unimportant position of deciding which of 15,000 types of consumer products pose a health risk and might need to be recalled. Shortly before Stratton's confirmation hearing, Senator Ron Wyden expressed concern that Stratton "has no demonstrable track record on public safety." (Bill Clinton's cpsc chief, Ann Brown, spent 20 years as a consumer advocate and served as vice president of the Consumer Federation of America.) But now he does have a track record: rare public hearings and a paucity of new safety regulations, as well as regular (often industry-sponsored) travels to such destinations as China, Costa Rica, Belgium, Spain, and Mexico. But at least Stratton won't let personal bias influence him: Despite saying that he wouldn't let his own daughters play with water yo-yos--rubber toys that are outlawed in several countries because of concerns that children could be strangled by them--he refused to ban them in the United States.
8: Mark McKinnon
Member, Broadcasting Board of Governors (confirmation pending)
The Broadcasting Board of Governors oversees Voice of America and other U.S. media beamed to the Middle East; and, in the spirit of accurately representing the United States, it reserves seats for members of both major political parties. For one of the four Democratic slots, President Bush recently nominated Mark McKinnon, or "M-Cat" as he affectionately calls him. M-Cat's Democratic credentials, however, are somewhat wanting. McKinnon's career highlights include overseeing media strategy for Bush's two presidential bids, in which capacity he masterminded a spot predicting that John Kerry would "Weaken [the] Fight Against Terrorists." And, in last year's campaign, his company, Maverick Media, accepted over $177 million in fees from Bush and the Republican National Committee--money we assume was not intended to help return the Democrats to power.
7: Stewart Simonson
Assistant Secretary for Public Health and Emergency Preparedness, Department of Health and Human Services
According to his official biography, Stewart Simonson is the Health and Human Services Department's point man "on matters related to bioterrorism and other public health emergencies." Hopefully, he has taken crash courses on smallpox and avian flu, because, prior to joining HHS in 2001, Simonson's background was not in public health, but ... public transit. He'd previously been a top official at the delay-plagued, money-hemorrhaging passenger rail company Amtrak. Before that, he was an adviser to Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson, specializing in crime and prison policy. When Thompson became HHS secretary in 2001, he hired Simonson as a legal adviser and promoted him to his current post shortly before leaving the Department last year. Simonson's biography boasts that he "supervised policy development for Project BioShield," a program designed to speed the manufacture of crucial vaccines and antidotes. "That effort, however, has by most accounts bogged down and shown few results," The Washington Post reported last month.
6: Hector Barreto
Administrator, Small Business Administration
No one can accuse Hector Barreto of being unfamiliar with small business. His Los Angeles firm, Barreto Insurance & Financial Services Company, had only ten employees. ..Alas, now that he is in charge of a bigger operation--the Small Business Administration (SBA) has over 3,000 employees, a budget of about $600 million, and a portfolio of loans totaling $45 billion--Barreto is struggling. Last year, the SBA failed to notify Congress that it needed additional funding for its largest and most popular loan program and was forced to temporarily shutter it because, as Barreto's spokesperson explained, it was "out of money." Meanwhile, the SBA was doing such a poor job managing the $5 billion in loans the government set aside to help small businesses recover from September 11 that, according to an Associated Press investigation, the vast majority of the money went to businesses not affected by the terrorist attacks--including a South Dakota country radio station, a Utah dog boutique, and more than 100 Dunkin' Donuts and Subway sandwich shops. Last month, the Senate Small Business Committee, prompted by complaints from Gulf Coast small-business owners, held hearings on the SBA's response to Hurricane Katrina. Barreto pledged that his agency would approve Katrina-related loans in days, not months, but a SBA deputy conceded in late September that, out of 12,000 loan applications from small businesses affected by the hurricane, the SBA had so far approved only 76.
5: David Wilkins
American Ambassador to Canada
An unspoken rule dictates that politically appointed ambassadors should be seen and not heard--or, at the very least, not heard provoking international incidents with close U.S. allies. But David Wilkins--a former South Carolina legislator whose chief contribution to world affairs before this year was raising $200,000 for President Bush's 2004 campaign--is not one to stand on ceremony. Though he'd only been to Canada once (Niagara Falls) prior to his nomination in April, the Bush Ranger assured Congress that "I won't be afraid to talk about the tough issues." ..A man of his word, Wilkins promptly escalated the two countries' dispute over softwood lumber by accusing Canadians of being overly emotional and by threatening an all-out trade war that would have affected multiple industries, from broadcasting to eggs. The Canadian government fought back, however, and, although generally disinclined toward mea culpas--"You talking about regrets by the United States?" he asked a Canadian reporter with incredulity--Wilkins eventually admitted his approach to the lumber dispute had been flawed. "My attempt to bring the emotion down increased the emotion," he said. To demonstrate his diplomatic sensitivity, he continues to open speeches with a jolly, "Bonjour, y'all!"
4: Jim Nicholson
Secretary, Department of Veterans Affairs
In contrast to the four most recent VA heads--who had previously held leadership positions with Disabled American Veterans, the Department of Defense, a state-level VA department, and VA itself--Jim Nicholson brings a refreshing lack of experience to veterans' advocacy. Although he is one of the country's 25 million military veterans, Nicholson--who, after Vietnam, went into real-estate law and development in Colorado--is best known as a campaign veteran. He chaired the Republican National Committee from 1997 to 2000, raising close to $380 million for the 2000 cycle. In Bush's first term, Nicholson was rewarded with the ambassadorship to the Holy See. But he traded vespers for vets last February, joining his brother John, who was already head of the National Cemetery Administration. In June, he admitted that VA had underestimated the number of veterans who would be seeking medical treatment this year by nearly 80,000 because it had failed to take into account the surge in enrollment by veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts--13,700 of whom have suffered blown-off limbs, bullet wounds, and the like. The miscalculation was a surprise to Congress, since Nicholson had written on April 5: "I can assure you that VA does not need [additional money] to continue to provide timely, quality service." Republican House Appropriations Committee Chair Jerry Lewis said VA's failure to identify the problem and notify Congress earlier "borders on stupidity."
3: Rear Admiral Cristina Beato
Acting Assistant Secretary for Health, Department of Health and Human Services
In June 2004, Cristina Beato admitted to her hometown newspaper that she hadn't paid much attention to the details of her resumé. That's too bad, because those silly little details seem to have stalled her confirmation for assistant secretary for health for over two years now. Beato said she earned a master's of public health in occupational medicine from the University of Wisconsin (but the university doesn't even offer that degree). She claimed to be "one of the principal leaders who revolutionized medical education in American universities by implementing the Problem Based learning curriculum" (but the curriculum was developed while Beato was still a medical student). She listed "medical attaché" to the American Embassy in Turkey as a job she held in 1986 (but that position didn't exist until 1995). She also boasted that she had "established" the University of New Mexico's occupational health clinic (but the clinic existed before she was hired, and there was even another medical director before her). For her part, Beato has offered a simple explanation: English is her third language, after French and her native Spanish, and sometimes the language barrier is just too much to handle. How does one say "pants on fire" in Spanish?
2: John Pennington
Director, Region Ten, Federal Emergency Management Agency
The Pacific Northwest is a catastrophe-prone area-- from tsunamis and volcanic eruptions in Washington and Oregon to wildfires in Idaho and oil pipeline ruptures in Alaska. ..That's why former Washington Representative Jennifer Dunn knew that fema needed "a natural" to head its disaster response efforts in the region. And that's exactly what Dunn said she found in 38-year-old John Pennington. Pennington would have to be a natural, given his utter lack of disaster-relief experience. A former state representative who ran a coffee business with his wife in rural Washington, Pennington served as Cowlitz County co-chairman of the Bush campaign in 2000. Dunn, who had been the Bush campaign's state chairperson, approached Pennington about the fema post, to which he was appointed in 2001. Alas, in the wake of former fema Director Michael Brown's resignation, Pennington's disaster of a resumé has come under increasing scrutiny. Last month, The Seattle Times reported that, just before he was appointed to his fema post, Pennington received his bachelor's degree from an unaccredited California correspondence school that federal investigators later described as a "diploma mill." Pennington's defenders have responded to questions about his qualifications by arguing that he has surrounded himself with competent staff.
1: Harriet Miers
White House Counsel, Nominee for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court
When we started researching this guide to the Bush hackocracy, nobody was sure who would wind up as number one. Competition was fierce. From under every bureaucratic rock, out scurried a Bush buddy. But we endeavored to be fair. There was spirited debate over the nuances between merely mediocre officials blindly loyal to the president and those with a demonstrated history of incompetence. (Alas, Andrew Card wound up on the cutting room floor.) Some argued that, by our own strict criteria, the president himself should be judged the number-one hack, but our deference to the wisdom of the electorate kept him off the list.
Truth be told, Harriet Miers could have easily slipped through quality control. But fate intervened. On Monday, Bush nominated Miers, the personal lawyer who fixed the paperwork on his fishing cabin, to the Supreme Court of the United States. Suddenly, it was no longer a competition. "I picked the best person I could find," Bush said Tuesday. And so have we.
We'd like to think that our process was slightly less arbitrary than the president's. ..Judging such matters is admittedly subjective, but if one were to express hackishness as a formula, it would look something like the adjacent equation.
Miers's croniness quotient is high. After all, the president has given her five jobs over the past eleven years. And senior White House aides have repeatedly remarked about her devotion to Bush. A Bush official's Danger to the Republic factor can generally be gleaned by the importance of his or her new job. And, while we grant that some unqualified candidates have turned out to be capable justices (see Jeffrey Rosen, "Judge Not,"), Miers's lifetime appointment to the highest position Bush is authorized to fill is like winning the hack lotto.
What, then, about Miers's qualifications? This is where she left the competition in the dust. Take, for example, her two-year stint on the Dallas City Council. Although she may not have been guided by any awe-inspiring understanding of constitutional law, she is credited with calming down a crowd of protesters after a county commissioner punched a police officer.
In announcing his choice, Bush pointed to her storied career as chairman of the Texas Lottery Commission. Although the Commission has historically not produced many Supreme Court justices, Bush has reason to be pleased with her lottery service. Miers may not have dealt with issues like civil rights or the death penalty, but she dealt with bingo. As chairman, she opined that she wanted all bingo-related games "to look and feel and smell like the game of bingo," which seems like a reasonable position.
Miers's solid job at the Lottery Commission and her other work for Bush catapulted her into the upper ranks of the White House. After three years as staff secretary, she beat out Brett M. Kavanaugh, a bright conservative lawyer with a John Roberts-like resumé, for the job of White House counsel. It was this job that positioned her to lead Bush's search for a court nominee.
This is quite a resumé, even before getting to some of Miers's legal writings. A search of the Nexis news database returns three articles by Miers. One is an opinion piece urging legislative calm in the wake of a string of deadly shootings. The second reveals Miers, who ran the corporate law firm of Locke Liddell & Sapp, to be an expert on a legal issue of great importance to the American people: managing the merger of two firms. The final article is a 1996 ABA Journal piece advertising the American Bar Association's new telephone seminars. "If you have heard any of the buzzwords of product promotions lately," she writes cheerfully, "we hope you will spot 'ABA Connection.'"
In hindsight, Harriet Miers was always the obvious choice for the Supreme Court. She is the logical conclusion of the unchecked Bush administration hackocracy. Bush's case for Miers actually rests on her being a crony. "Because of our closeness," he said Tuesday, "I know the character of the person."
In Federalist No. 76, Alexander Hamilton warned that, in presenting nominations to the Senate, a president "would be both ashamed and afraid" to nominate cronies--or, as Hamilton called them, "obsequious instruments of his pleasure." Maybe politics was different back in the 1780s, but we have watched Bush appoint many obsequious instruments of his pleasure. It may be his legacy: George W. Bush--he took the shame and fear out of cronyism.
Welcome to the Hackocracy
The events of the past months have awakened the press to the true nature of the Bush administration. It is overrun with hacks--that is, government officials with waifish resumés padded like the Michelin man, whose political connections have won them important national responsibilities. But, in the face of this rush to flay the Bush hacks, we should consider their achievements.
To fully appreciate the virtues of this administration, we must first recall the administration that came before. Back in the 1990s, Bill Clinton recruited a small army of Arkansans and Rhodes scholars to the West Wing. Although there was the occasional kindergarten buddy who was out of his depth, most of these FOBs (friends of Bill) were insufferable wonks who never let you forget their dense resumés. President Bush put his finger on the smug mindset of these Clinton meritocrats when he said, "They're all of a sudden smarter than the average person because they happen to have an Ivy League degree."
Now we can consider this problem solved. The Bush era has taken government out of the hands of the hyper-qualified and given it back to the common man. This new breed may not have what the credentialists sneeringly call "relevant experience." Their alma maters may not always be "accredited." But they have something the intellectual snobs of yore never had: loyalty. If not loyalty to country, then at least loyalty to party and to the guy who got them the job. And their loyalty has been rewarded: Even if they fail, they know they can move up the chain until they find a job they can succeed in or until a major American city is destroyed, whichever comes first.
The hackocracy, of course, reflects the virtues of its architect, George W. Bush. Like Michael Brown and lesser known hacks, the president hasn't allowed personal setbacks to stymie him. The old-fashioned values of fortitude and family have given him the strength to rebound from a doomed oil company called Arbusto, a doomed congressional candidacy, and catastrophic failures at Harken Energy. That may be why, while cronies populate every presidency, no administration has etched the principles of hackocracy into its governing philosophy as deeply as this one. If there's an underappreciated corner of the bureaucracy to fill, it has found just the crony (or college roommate of a crony), party operative (or cousin of a party operative) to fill it. To honor this achievement, we've drawn up a list of the 15 biggest Bush administration hacks--from the highest levels of government to the civil servant rank and file. The tnr 15 is a diverse group--from the assistant secretary of commerce who started his career by supplying Bush with Altoids to the Republican National Committee chair-turned-Veterans Affairs secretary who forgot about wounded Iraq war vets--but they all share two things: responsibility and inexperience.
Although he could not possibly have envisioned what Bush has accomplished, Theodore Roosevelt delivered the single most poetic appreciation of this hackocratic style: "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again...."
Bush, who may or may not be familiar with the Bull Moose, has lived and governed by this dictum. Never before have we so rewarded the valiant striver who comes up short by placing the fate of the nation in his hands. Never before have so many gotten so far with so little.
15: Israel Hernandez
Assistant Secretary for Trade Promotion and Director General of the United States and Foreign Commercial Service, Department of Commerce (confirmation pending)
Fresh out of college and seeking a job on George W. Bush's 1994 Texas gubernatorial campaign, Israel Hernandez showed up an hour early for his interview with the candidate. Impressed by his punctuality, Bush hired Hernandez within days and eventually invited him to live with the Bush family in their Dallas home, where Hernandez reportedly became like an older brother to Jenna and Barbara Bush. Serving as Bush's travel aide for the next few years, "He was always there with the Altoids, the speech box, the schedule, whatever I needed," Bush later wrote in his autobiography. After getting a master's degree at (where else?) the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M (named after H.W.), Hernandez--or, as Bush called him, "Altoid Boy"--joined Bush's 2000 presidential campaign and later worked in the White House as an assistant to Karl Rove. There, he helped choreograph Bush's events and was once made part of the first lady's official delegation on a trip to Europe so that he could keep an eye on Jenna. All of which, apparently, was good preparation for managing more than 1,800 employees in more than 80 countries, because, earlier this year, Bush nominated the 35-year-old Hernandez to serve as an assistant secretary of Commerce and to run the United States and Foreign Commercial Service, the federal government's key export promotion agency.
14: Andrew Maner
Chief Financial Officer, Department of Homeland Security
Andrew Maner comes to his job with unimpeachable credentials--not in finance or accounting, admittedly, but as a dues-payer in the Bush family empire. In the first Bush administration, Maner helped to plan presidential travel and served as a junior press aide. ..Later, he followed the defeated George H.W. Bush back to Texas to be a spokesman and political fixer for the ex-president. After several private sector years working in information technology and procurement, he took over the U.S. Customs Office of Trade Relations, whose mission is to foster "positive relationships with the international trade community." Billing himself as a trade expert, Maner called the Customs gig a "logical next step in [my] career." Less logical, however, was his leap (after a short stint as chief of staff to the Customs commissioner) to managing DHS's sprawling $40 billion budget. Given his slim management background, it's convenient that Maner landed the only Cabinet department CFO slot that doesn't require Senate confirmation. Perhaps it also explains why, when DHS officials recently unveiled a revamped organizational chart, Maner's office was accidentally omitted. (Hack bonus: "Of all the things we do in the Department, charts may not be our strength," said the Department's undersecretary for management, Janet Hale.)
13: Claire Buchan
Chief of Staff, Department of Commerce
As deputy press secretary at the White House, Claire Buchan gained a reputation as a kept-in-the-dark spokesbot who was often relegated to baby-sitting reporters on long trips. But all that changed last spring, when Buchan was promoted to chief of staff at the Commerce Department, where she now helps the secretary oversee a $6.3 billion budget and some 38,000 employees. Buchan owes this stroke of good fortune to her years in the Bush family trenches. Previously, she served as a public affairs underling for the Treasury Department under former President Bush, a flack for the Republican National Committee, and (during the Clinton years) an image czar for the lawn care, extermination, and appliance repair company ServiceMaster. Some of Buchan's erstwhile colleagues in the White House press corps were left speechless when her new assignment was announced in February. One White House reporter who worked closely with Buchan for five years called her "the most useless in a Bush universe of enforced uselessness. She took empty banality to a new low."
12: Paul Hoffman
Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks, Department of the Interior
Paul Hoffman is an avid angler, hunter, skier, and horseman. So it was only natural to tap this former chief of the Chamber of Commerce in Cody, Wyoming, (population 9,000) to help run the National Park Service. Sure, Hoffman had no parks experience other than recreating in them and, as head of the Cody Chamber, advocating for more snowmobiles in nearby Yellowstone National Park. But he had spent four years in the 1980s working as the state director for then-Wyoming Representative Dick Cheney. Since arriving at the Interior Department in 2002, Hoffman has demonstrated a knack for thinking outside the box. In April 2003, he went against the wishes of the staff of Yellowstone and asked the U.N. World Heritage Committee to remove the park from its "In Danger List." Last year, he overruled geologists at the Grand Canyon National Park and instructed the park's visitor centers to stock a creationist book that explained how God made the canyon 6,000 years ago, ordering up a flood to wipe out "the wickedness of man." And, this year, Hoffman pushed for wholesale revisions to the Park Service's management policies. Instead of giving priority to protecting natural resources, Hoffman proposed that managers emphasize multiple uses for their parks--including snowmobiling, Jet-Skiing, grazing, drilling, and mining. After Hoffman's proposed reforms set off a firestorm of criticism from Park Service employees and members of Congress--"The inmates are in charge of the asylum," one Park Service retiree complained--the Bush administration claimed that Hoffman's suggestions were "no longer in play" and that he had merely been playing "devil's advocate."
11: Patrick Rhode
Acting Deputy Director Federal Emergency Management Agency
As acting deputy director of fema, 36-year-old Patrick Rhode had, until recently, the unenviable job of backstopping the hapless Michael Brown, a man who needed much backstopping. ..Unfortunately, it's not clear that Rhode is much more qualified than Brown to be managing the nation's worst disasters. Before joining fema, the biggest disaster he had helped manage was the Small Business Administration (see Hector Barreto)--and even that was something of a stretch. Rhode entered federal government in 2001 as deputy director of advance operations for the Bush White House, a job he had also held for Bush's 2000 campaign. Never fear, though: Rhode has covered disasters--as a TV anchor for local network affiliates in Alabama and Arkansas, in which capacity he developed "an acute interest in what responders do in times of crises." Perhaps not acute enough. He recently said that >fema's response to Katrina was "probably one of the most efficient and effective responses in the country's history."
10: Steven Law
Deputy Secretary, Department of Labor
Since 2004, Steven Law has helped run a department with 17,000 employees and an annual budget of over $50 billion. Pretty good for a guy who started out as a lowly Capitol Hill legislative aide. In 1990, Law's boss, Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, tapped him to serve as campaign manager for his reelection race. Law didn't disappoint, running a notably nasty campaign that insinuated McConnell's Democratic opponent was both mentally ill and a drug addict. Law returned to Washington as McConnell's chief of staff, and, six years later, when McConnell was chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, he made Law the group's executive director, relying on him for help in vacuuming up campaign contributions for Republican Senate candidates and thwarting campaign finance reform legislation. In each job he did for McConnell, Law proved to be an unusually dedicated--and worshipful--worker. Asked once by Campaigns & Elections to name his political heroes, Law answered: "Ronald Reagan, for his vision of America; Abraham Lincoln, for his moral statesmanship; and Mitch McConnell, for his principle and tenacity." It was little wonder, then, that, in 2001, the newly appointed Labor Secretary Elaine Chao--who happens to be McConnell's wife--hired Law as her chief of staff, a stepping stone to his current position; after all, once you've found such loyal help, you want to keep it in the family.
9: Hal Stratton
Chairman, Consumer Product Safety Commission
A former state representative and attorney general in New Mexico, Hal Stratton never asked for his current job, protecting American citizens from such dangers as lead-laced toy jewelry and flammable Halloween costumes. ..Instead, the former geology major who went on to co-chair the local Lawyers for Bush during the 2000 campaign initially wanted a job in the Interior Department. "That didn't work out," he told the Albuquerque Journal, "but I told them, 'Don't count me out' ... and they came up with this." "This" being the not-unimportant position of deciding which of 15,000 types of consumer products pose a health risk and might need to be recalled. Shortly before Stratton's confirmation hearing, Senator Ron Wyden expressed concern that Stratton "has no demonstrable track record on public safety." (Bill Clinton's cpsc chief, Ann Brown, spent 20 years as a consumer advocate and served as vice president of the Consumer Federation of America.) But now he does have a track record: rare public hearings and a paucity of new safety regulations, as well as regular (often industry-sponsored) travels to such destinations as China, Costa Rica, Belgium, Spain, and Mexico. But at least Stratton won't let personal bias influence him: Despite saying that he wouldn't let his own daughters play with water yo-yos--rubber toys that are outlawed in several countries because of concerns that children could be strangled by them--he refused to ban them in the United States.
8: Mark McKinnon
Member, Broadcasting Board of Governors (confirmation pending)
The Broadcasting Board of Governors oversees Voice of America and other U.S. media beamed to the Middle East; and, in the spirit of accurately representing the United States, it reserves seats for members of both major political parties. For one of the four Democratic slots, President Bush recently nominated Mark McKinnon, or "M-Cat" as he affectionately calls him. M-Cat's Democratic credentials, however, are somewhat wanting. McKinnon's career highlights include overseeing media strategy for Bush's two presidential bids, in which capacity he masterminded a spot predicting that John Kerry would "Weaken [the] Fight Against Terrorists." And, in last year's campaign, his company, Maverick Media, accepted over $177 million in fees from Bush and the Republican National Committee--money we assume was not intended to help return the Democrats to power.
7: Stewart Simonson
Assistant Secretary for Public Health and Emergency Preparedness, Department of Health and Human Services
According to his official biography, Stewart Simonson is the Health and Human Services Department's point man "on matters related to bioterrorism and other public health emergencies." Hopefully, he has taken crash courses on smallpox and avian flu, because, prior to joining HHS in 2001, Simonson's background was not in public health, but ... public transit. He'd previously been a top official at the delay-plagued, money-hemorrhaging passenger rail company Amtrak. Before that, he was an adviser to Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson, specializing in crime and prison policy. When Thompson became HHS secretary in 2001, he hired Simonson as a legal adviser and promoted him to his current post shortly before leaving the Department last year. Simonson's biography boasts that he "supervised policy development for Project BioShield," a program designed to speed the manufacture of crucial vaccines and antidotes. "That effort, however, has by most accounts bogged down and shown few results," The Washington Post reported last month.
6: Hector Barreto
Administrator, Small Business Administration
No one can accuse Hector Barreto of being unfamiliar with small business. His Los Angeles firm, Barreto Insurance & Financial Services Company, had only ten employees. ..Alas, now that he is in charge of a bigger operation--the Small Business Administration (SBA) has over 3,000 employees, a budget of about $600 million, and a portfolio of loans totaling $45 billion--Barreto is struggling. Last year, the SBA failed to notify Congress that it needed additional funding for its largest and most popular loan program and was forced to temporarily shutter it because, as Barreto's spokesperson explained, it was "out of money." Meanwhile, the SBA was doing such a poor job managing the $5 billion in loans the government set aside to help small businesses recover from September 11 that, according to an Associated Press investigation, the vast majority of the money went to businesses not affected by the terrorist attacks--including a South Dakota country radio station, a Utah dog boutique, and more than 100 Dunkin' Donuts and Subway sandwich shops. Last month, the Senate Small Business Committee, prompted by complaints from Gulf Coast small-business owners, held hearings on the SBA's response to Hurricane Katrina. Barreto pledged that his agency would approve Katrina-related loans in days, not months, but a SBA deputy conceded in late September that, out of 12,000 loan applications from small businesses affected by the hurricane, the SBA had so far approved only 76.
5: David Wilkins
American Ambassador to Canada
An unspoken rule dictates that politically appointed ambassadors should be seen and not heard--or, at the very least, not heard provoking international incidents with close U.S. allies. But David Wilkins--a former South Carolina legislator whose chief contribution to world affairs before this year was raising $200,000 for President Bush's 2004 campaign--is not one to stand on ceremony. Though he'd only been to Canada once (Niagara Falls) prior to his nomination in April, the Bush Ranger assured Congress that "I won't be afraid to talk about the tough issues." ..A man of his word, Wilkins promptly escalated the two countries' dispute over softwood lumber by accusing Canadians of being overly emotional and by threatening an all-out trade war that would have affected multiple industries, from broadcasting to eggs. The Canadian government fought back, however, and, although generally disinclined toward mea culpas--"You talking about regrets by the United States?" he asked a Canadian reporter with incredulity--Wilkins eventually admitted his approach to the lumber dispute had been flawed. "My attempt to bring the emotion down increased the emotion," he said. To demonstrate his diplomatic sensitivity, he continues to open speeches with a jolly, "Bonjour, y'all!"
4: Jim Nicholson
Secretary, Department of Veterans Affairs
In contrast to the four most recent VA heads--who had previously held leadership positions with Disabled American Veterans, the Department of Defense, a state-level VA department, and VA itself--Jim Nicholson brings a refreshing lack of experience to veterans' advocacy. Although he is one of the country's 25 million military veterans, Nicholson--who, after Vietnam, went into real-estate law and development in Colorado--is best known as a campaign veteran. He chaired the Republican National Committee from 1997 to 2000, raising close to $380 million for the 2000 cycle. In Bush's first term, Nicholson was rewarded with the ambassadorship to the Holy See. But he traded vespers for vets last February, joining his brother John, who was already head of the National Cemetery Administration. In June, he admitted that VA had underestimated the number of veterans who would be seeking medical treatment this year by nearly 80,000 because it had failed to take into account the surge in enrollment by veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts--13,700 of whom have suffered blown-off limbs, bullet wounds, and the like. The miscalculation was a surprise to Congress, since Nicholson had written on April 5: "I can assure you that VA does not need [additional money] to continue to provide timely, quality service." Republican House Appropriations Committee Chair Jerry Lewis said VA's failure to identify the problem and notify Congress earlier "borders on stupidity."
3: Rear Admiral Cristina Beato
Acting Assistant Secretary for Health, Department of Health and Human Services
In June 2004, Cristina Beato admitted to her hometown newspaper that she hadn't paid much attention to the details of her resumé. That's too bad, because those silly little details seem to have stalled her confirmation for assistant secretary for health for over two years now. Beato said she earned a master's of public health in occupational medicine from the University of Wisconsin (but the university doesn't even offer that degree). She claimed to be "one of the principal leaders who revolutionized medical education in American universities by implementing the Problem Based learning curriculum" (but the curriculum was developed while Beato was still a medical student). She listed "medical attaché" to the American Embassy in Turkey as a job she held in 1986 (but that position didn't exist until 1995). She also boasted that she had "established" the University of New Mexico's occupational health clinic (but the clinic existed before she was hired, and there was even another medical director before her). For her part, Beato has offered a simple explanation: English is her third language, after French and her native Spanish, and sometimes the language barrier is just too much to handle. How does one say "pants on fire" in Spanish?
2: John Pennington
Director, Region Ten, Federal Emergency Management Agency
The Pacific Northwest is a catastrophe-prone area-- from tsunamis and volcanic eruptions in Washington and Oregon to wildfires in Idaho and oil pipeline ruptures in Alaska. ..That's why former Washington Representative Jennifer Dunn knew that fema needed "a natural" to head its disaster response efforts in the region. And that's exactly what Dunn said she found in 38-year-old John Pennington. Pennington would have to be a natural, given his utter lack of disaster-relief experience. A former state representative who ran a coffee business with his wife in rural Washington, Pennington served as Cowlitz County co-chairman of the Bush campaign in 2000. Dunn, who had been the Bush campaign's state chairperson, approached Pennington about the fema post, to which he was appointed in 2001. Alas, in the wake of former fema Director Michael Brown's resignation, Pennington's disaster of a resumé has come under increasing scrutiny. Last month, The Seattle Times reported that, just before he was appointed to his fema post, Pennington received his bachelor's degree from an unaccredited California correspondence school that federal investigators later described as a "diploma mill." Pennington's defenders have responded to questions about his qualifications by arguing that he has surrounded himself with competent staff.
1: Harriet Miers
White House Counsel, Nominee for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court
When we started researching this guide to the Bush hackocracy, nobody was sure who would wind up as number one. Competition was fierce. From under every bureaucratic rock, out scurried a Bush buddy. But we endeavored to be fair. There was spirited debate over the nuances between merely mediocre officials blindly loyal to the president and those with a demonstrated history of incompetence. (Alas, Andrew Card wound up on the cutting room floor.) Some argued that, by our own strict criteria, the president himself should be judged the number-one hack, but our deference to the wisdom of the electorate kept him off the list.
Truth be told, Harriet Miers could have easily slipped through quality control. But fate intervened. On Monday, Bush nominated Miers, the personal lawyer who fixed the paperwork on his fishing cabin, to the Supreme Court of the United States. Suddenly, it was no longer a competition. "I picked the best person I could find," Bush said Tuesday. And so have we.
We'd like to think that our process was slightly less arbitrary than the president's. ..Judging such matters is admittedly subjective, but if one were to express hackishness as a formula, it would look something like the adjacent equation.
Miers's croniness quotient is high. After all, the president has given her five jobs over the past eleven years. And senior White House aides have repeatedly remarked about her devotion to Bush. A Bush official's Danger to the Republic factor can generally be gleaned by the importance of his or her new job. And, while we grant that some unqualified candidates have turned out to be capable justices (see Jeffrey Rosen, "Judge Not,"), Miers's lifetime appointment to the highest position Bush is authorized to fill is like winning the hack lotto.
What, then, about Miers's qualifications? This is where she left the competition in the dust. Take, for example, her two-year stint on the Dallas City Council. Although she may not have been guided by any awe-inspiring understanding of constitutional law, she is credited with calming down a crowd of protesters after a county commissioner punched a police officer.
In announcing his choice, Bush pointed to her storied career as chairman of the Texas Lottery Commission. Although the Commission has historically not produced many Supreme Court justices, Bush has reason to be pleased with her lottery service. Miers may not have dealt with issues like civil rights or the death penalty, but she dealt with bingo. As chairman, she opined that she wanted all bingo-related games "to look and feel and smell like the game of bingo," which seems like a reasonable position.
Miers's solid job at the Lottery Commission and her other work for Bush catapulted her into the upper ranks of the White House. After three years as staff secretary, she beat out Brett M. Kavanaugh, a bright conservative lawyer with a John Roberts-like resumé, for the job of White House counsel. It was this job that positioned her to lead Bush's search for a court nominee.
This is quite a resumé, even before getting to some of Miers's legal writings. A search of the Nexis news database returns three articles by Miers. One is an opinion piece urging legislative calm in the wake of a string of deadly shootings. The second reveals Miers, who ran the corporate law firm of Locke Liddell & Sapp, to be an expert on a legal issue of great importance to the American people: managing the merger of two firms. The final article is a 1996 ABA Journal piece advertising the American Bar Association's new telephone seminars. "If you have heard any of the buzzwords of product promotions lately," she writes cheerfully, "we hope you will spot 'ABA Connection.'"
In hindsight, Harriet Miers was always the obvious choice for the Supreme Court. She is the logical conclusion of the unchecked Bush administration hackocracy. Bush's case for Miers actually rests on her being a crony. "Because of our closeness," he said Tuesday, "I know the character of the person."
In Federalist No. 76, Alexander Hamilton warned that, in presenting nominations to the Senate, a president "would be both ashamed and afraid" to nominate cronies--or, as Hamilton called them, "obsequious instruments of his pleasure." Maybe politics was different back in the 1780s, but we have watched Bush appoint many obsequious instruments of his pleasure. It may be his legacy: George W. Bush--he took the shame and fear out of cronyism.
FUUCKKKK!!! I didn't know he was black!?!?! Now I'm really really mad!
First the DC sniper, and now this bullshit! Just fuckin it up for all of us.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/06/25/trouser.trial/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/06/25/trouser.trial/index.html
...And the world just keeps on spinning.
Mother Allegedly Offered 7-Year-Old for Sex
AP
TAYLOR, Mich. (April 1) - A 33-year-old woman faced arraignment Sunday on charges alleging she offered to let an undercover investigator take pornographic photos of her 7-year-old daughter and have sex with the girl, authorities said.
The woman was arrested Friday after taking the girl to a hotel in Romulus, near Detroit Metropolitan Airport, where she had agreed to meet the investigator, the Wayne County sheriff's department said.
Authorities said the woman offered to let the investigator take the photos for a fee and, when she met with him, discussed being paid in exchange for sex with the child, the Detroit Free Press reported.
"This is truly a horrifying case," Sheriff Warren Evans said in a statement. "To think that a woman would offer up her own daughter in this way impossible to comprehend."
The girl and her four siblings, ages 12, 11, 9 and 6, all were in protective custody, Roach said.
The name of the woman, who lives in this Detroit suburb, wasn't being released to avoid identifying the child, the sheriff's department said.
She faced five charges, including child sexually abusive behavior, illegal use of the Internet for child sexually abusive actions or materials and distribution of child sexually abusive material, said department spokesman John Roach.
She also was charged with prostitution, since the department said she propositioned the investigator herself. The department said the woman advertised herself online as a prostitute.
If convicted, she could get up 20 years in prison.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
2007-04-01 14:54:50
AP
TAYLOR, Mich. (April 1) - A 33-year-old woman faced arraignment Sunday on charges alleging she offered to let an undercover investigator take pornographic photos of her 7-year-old daughter and have sex with the girl, authorities said.
The woman was arrested Friday after taking the girl to a hotel in Romulus, near Detroit Metropolitan Airport, where she had agreed to meet the investigator, the Wayne County sheriff's department said.
Authorities said the woman offered to let the investigator take the photos for a fee and, when she met with him, discussed being paid in exchange for sex with the child, the Detroit Free Press reported.
"This is truly a horrifying case," Sheriff Warren Evans said in a statement. "To think that a woman would offer up her own daughter in this way impossible to comprehend."
The girl and her four siblings, ages 12, 11, 9 and 6, all were in protective custody, Roach said.
The name of the woman, who lives in this Detroit suburb, wasn't being released to avoid identifying the child, the sheriff's department said.
She faced five charges, including child sexually abusive behavior, illegal use of the Internet for child sexually abusive actions or materials and distribution of child sexually abusive material, said department spokesman John Roach.
She also was charged with prostitution, since the department said she propositioned the investigator herself. The department said the woman advertised herself online as a prostitute.
If convicted, she could get up 20 years in prison.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
2007-04-01 14:54:50
You're Stupid and You're Black
I was thoroughly pissed, though wholly unsurprised, that BET regards its audience this way.
http://www.sohh.com/articles/article.php/7519
http://www.sohh.com/articles/article.php/7519
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
