American Values Alliance | Practical voice for progressive valuesAmerican Values Alliance | Practical voice for progressive valuesAnyone who knows me will know I was pleased with today's Supreme Court decision striking down the over-restrictive Washington DC gun law. The court was clear: this does not mean states and cities have no ability to regulate firearm ownership and use. It means only that they cannot enact "blanket" bans because people DO have an individual right to bear arms.
A Texas appeals court ruled unanimously that the state of Texas overstepped its bounds by seizing 468 children from the "polygamist compound" of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints. The court was right: Texas Family and Protective services overstepped their bounds.
As Andy Rooney might say, “Did you ever wonder how far out of the mainstream your own views were? “
Try this: Sixty-five percent of Americans believe that the nation's founders intended the U.S. to be a Christian nation and 55% believe that the Constitution establishes a Christian nation.
That comes directly from a report by the First Amendment Center based on their own survey. Think it through. More than half of Americans think the Constitution establishes Christianity and two-thirds think this is what the Founders intended.
So if you’re reading this, or if you ever find yourself nodding in agreement with Sheila Kennedy, it’s important to remember that you’re pushing a square rock up a hill.
Fred Thompson has entered the Republican presidential primary with a deep commitment to saying all the shibboleths. I can’t decide whether that’s mostly a good or a bad thing.
As a middle-aged professor and father of teenagers, I’ve abandoned the illusion that everyone—especially anyone younger than 30—always understands what I’m talking about. So let me say right up front that “shibboleths” are words capable of separating “us” from “them.” “Shibboleth” comes from an old Hebrew word containing the “sh” sound the Gileadites could make but their enemies, the Ephraimites, could not. It was good for gate-keeping. The sentry could demand, “say Shibboleth”. If you could, you were in. If not, well, you probably got a stern talking-to.
Now that property taxes are off the front page, we can turn our focus back to Indiana’s long, steady decline. The headline in my edition of Tuesday’s Star said, “Indiana still in Top 10 of fat states.” Wednesday’s headlines were a double-header: “No good news’ in Hoosier state’s latest SAT scores” and “In Indiana, 37,500 sink into poverty.”
Let’s reflect:
Did you know people were leaving Britain in droves? I don’t have a strong editorial opinion about this, but it seems like something worth discussing. It’s kind of like the American mass-migration to the Sunbelt, only in this case the “sunbelt” is in other countries, notably Spain and Australia.
I lived in Britain from 2000-2002 and I can tell you, it’s probably not what you think. England is terribly crowded, though Wales and Scotland less so (and I’ve never been to Northern Ireland). Litter is awful. Petty crime, especially car and home burglaries, is terrible. Admittedly, your odds of being shot there are way, way lower than here. But when my wife left her laptop in the backseat of the car and had her window smashed out, the universal response was “oh, you shouldn’t have left it there.”
If you’re a progressive or a communitarian—and I think the majority of readers of this website are both—you may find this blog a little obvious. Feel free to say “duh” under your breath. But it’s a big deal for me.
I strongly prefer that social interactions of all kinds be handled privately. That is, I don’t want the government, at any level, managing and regulating any process unless there is a very, very strong argument that something must be done and it is clear that individuals or smaller, private groups cannot do it for themselves.
I believe the smallest, simplest, most local, most efficient solution is probably best. If you want to see the medieval precedent for this, check out the idea of Occam’s Razor.
I don’t usually read Indiana news first in the New York Times; things tend to percolate in our local media for days before they make national news, if indeed they ever do. But apparently Indiana is embroiled in an environmental controversy that has not received much coverage in the Star or in my local paper, The Republic (Columbus).
The claim is that Indiana is allowing a refinery to put more pollution into Lake Michigan than other states would allow. I’m generally pro-development, so I’m not rushing to judgment on this because I surely don’t know all the facts. But the article itself cannot be good for the Hoosier state, especially in light of the 387 to 26 vote in the U.S. House asking Indiana to reconsider. Not good if outsiders view Indiana as the third-world state where corporations can skirt environmental standards if they build just over the line on our property.
I’m hoping Governor Daniels and the BP folks are telling the truth about their plans being well within national standards. I’m hoping the environmentalists are being overzealous. But if the city of Chicago is concerned and the U.S. House is concerned, then I have to be at least a little concerned too. I want Indiana to be pro-jobs, but I don’t want us to be a safe haven for corporations seeking environmental relief.
According to a federal court ruling, Mississippi voters will now have to register as Republican or Democrat. Now, I admit I’m just learning about this, so I’ll try to get it right, or at least not to screw it up too bad, if you promise to follow along.
In Mississippi, as in many southern states, many white people vote Democratic in local elections but vote Republican in statewide or national ones. So Mississippi went heavily for President Bush twice and has a Republican governor and a narrowly-Republican state Senate, but it also has a heavily Democratic state House and a plurality of local Democratic office-holders, such as sheriffs.
If you read the op-ed page or the comics, you know Vice-President Cheney thinks the Executive Branch is above the law. Or, perhaps better, is a law unto itself. Sheila Kennedy has been hammering this point for years. Doonesbury and Candorville have been ripping it recently on the comics page. And an excellent New York Times editorial by Princeton’s Sean Wilentz drives the point home.
Set aside, if you will, your concern that VP Cheney and President Bush are bad guys. Forget the content and just focus on the form. We have created an Executive Branch with an incredible amount of power. In essence, the Executive Branch runs foreign policy almost by itself. We’re finding out right now where the limits, if any, might be.
Unfortunately, Americans like the idea. It as if the President “is” the government and Congress exists to advise and consent. This is undoubtedly true in foreign policy, but is somewhat true in domestic policy as well. Take fiscal discipline. Many would give the Executive Branch even MORE power by providing for a line-item veto. As much as I like the idea of fiscal restraint, I do not favor a more powerful Presidency.
The scope of executive power is incredible and it’s everywhere. The majority who sent a Democratic legislature to Washington ask, “why aren’t they turning the Iraq situation around?” But it is amazingly difficult to do. Be honest: Representative Pelosi and Senator Reid look very small and ineffective next to the President. When Speaker Pelosi went to the Middle East, she was ridiculed for overstepping her authority. Next to the President, the Speaker of the House is an inconsequential figure.
Do you watch the local television news? Me neither, as we say in Southern Indiana. It is nothing but sound-bytes, all of which could be absorbed during a 2-minute glance at the internet. Analysis in The Indianapolis Star may seem thin, but it’s like The Economist compared to local tv news.
The superficiality is not the worst of it, though. Television news panders to the worst in us. It focuses on stories that have an emotional hook, not on things we need to know. Is it any wonder people are afraid of shark attacks or air plane crashes—where the odds are millions to one—but are insufficiently concerned about real risks to their safety?
This point was driven home to me Tuesday as I drove down Washington Street to have lunch with my daughter in downtown Columbus. The corner around 8th Street was swarming with television crews and their enormous trucks. They weren’t here to report news, but to peer in on the funeral of Chelsea Porter, the 14 year old girl who was stabbed to death in our town a week earlier.
The headline said, “Young Americans Are Leaning Left, New Poll Finds”. Maybe. But it looks like these 17-29 year olds are leaning toward responsible freedom—away from moral conservatism, to be sure (and thank you Jesus), but maybe not toward either big government or anarchy.
More of them describe themselves as liberal—28% versus 20% in the total population—and fewer describe themselves as conservative—27% compared to 32%--but that is not exactly a sea change. And incidentally, it still only comes to 55%, so close to half don’t even choose to identify themselves in those terms.
The majority of Republicans don’t believe in evolution? I don’t even know where to start.
A very recent Gallup poll, reported on June 11, says that 68% of Republicans do not believe in evolution. Now I know some Republicans would like to nuance that response, as you may have seen in my last post about Senator Sam Brownback.
Senator Brownback’s position—that God created humans uniquely but micro-evolution does occur—may be more widely held than I realized. Gallup says when you break it down, 41% believe creationism is true and evolution is false, 28% believe evolution is true and creationism is false but, startlingly, 24% say they believe both theories are true, which is apparently the sort of thing Senator Brownback believes.
My concern is not in the nuance, however, but in political parsing of the numbers. And here it gets a little stark. I repeat, 68% of Republicans do not believe in evolution. By contrast, 37% of Independents and 40% of Democrats do not believe in evolution. Those are still big numbers but that’s to be expected, I guess. I mean, 2/3 of the whole country believes in creationism, so those people have to be somewhere.
I no longer have a license plate plugging my college, but I had to stand firm to avoid having “In God We Trust” plates instead. I am not making a word of this up.
I tried to renew-by-mail last March, but my entire package was returned because I failed to send the authorization form for my college plate. Clearly my fault. .
I dug through my files and found a form from my college. I sent the whole package back, but in three weeks it was returned again. This time it contained a handwritten post-it note from D.A. in Winchester, IN, explaining that my form needed an official signature and stamp. It even said “2nd time sent back!” with an exclamation point.
I didn’t really want to bother asking my college for a new form—and my plates were expired by now—so I went to my local license branch with all the paperwork, including the post-it note, and a letter from my college thanking me for my 2007 donation. Still no good. They got me in quick--my BMV branch runs very efficiently—but the friendly and polite clerk was adamant that I needed the signature and stamp.
I said, “well, I don’t want to mess with it any more. Please just give me a regular plate for that car.” She then asked, “Do you want one of the old plates or the new ones that say, “In God We Trust?” I was taken aback, but just wanted to get done. I said, “Regular please.”
The she asked, “Do you just want 08 stickers for your other plates or do you want the new “In God We Trust” for those?” I said, “Definitely regular on all of them.”
Then she asked, “Are you sure? The ‘In God We Trust’ plates don’t cost any extra.” I said, “No thank you. Absolutely, definitely, regular plates please.” I had the same feeling you get at McDonald’s when they ask, “do you want fries with that?” She gave me my plate and stickers and I left.
So what happened here?
3 hours 10 min ago
4 hours 14 min ago
5 hours 50 min ago
9 hours 4 min ago
1 day 2 hours ago
1 day 21 hours ago
1 day 21 hours ago
1 day 21 hours ago
1 day 21 hours ago
1 day 21 hours ago