The proposal to amend the Virginia constitution to allow for prayers in public schools and other public forums died in the Senate. The Virginia Progressive has more. Check out the quote in the comment section.
In Congress right now are bills to dramatically increase fines for indecency over the airwaves. The FCC has defended the proposed new fines because it says it has seen a dramatic increase in the number of complaints. In 2001, there were about 400. In 2004, over a million.
Pretty dramatic, huh? But guess what? 99% of the complaints came through one organization: the conservative Parents Television Council.
FCC Chairman Michael Powell’s response: “Hey, it doesn’t matter where these complaints about indecency came from. These are still Americans being outraged.”
Again, the Bush administration manipulates the media through a conservative group.
The Washington Post Ombudsman Mike Getler made the Jeff Gannon affair a secondary issue in his column, but at least he put it there and had a good quote from a reader.
“I don’t understand why The Post has turned the ‘Jeff Gannon’ story into yet another piece about bloggers. The story happened to be broken by bloggers, to their credit. But the story has two serious elements that The Post should report out on its own: 1) How is it that in an era when we have to take our shoes off to get on an airplane, a guy gains access to the White House with an alias on his ID badge? I don’t believe that has yet been answered; 2) To what extent was granting ‘Gannon’ access another form of buying or manipulating the news? These are important questions.” I agree.
Just don’t expect Howard Kurtz to agree with his ombudsman. Note today in his column about scandals in the news biz. Kurtz again makes the story all about bloggers and makes a single reference to the Gannon story.
Web experts helped liberal bloggers reveal former White House reporter Jeff Gannon’s real name and X-rated background.
As if his sexuality and an alias were the real issues. I just wished Kurtz would investigate the story Getler thinks is more important. But maybe Kurtz doesn’t want to go too hard on a Republican administration.
UPDATE: A lot of professionals feel the same way as The Post’s ombudsman.
UPDATE 2: CBS is reporting “Gannon” may have been a Karl Rove plant.
Good article in the Roanoke Times about the impending battle for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriages and civil unions in Virginia. Equality Virginia is “framing” the debate.
“I think it’s imperative that we frame the debate as one of persecution of liberty,” said Molly McClintock of Christiansburg. She’s on the board of Equality Virginia, a lobbying organization for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender concerns.
“We have got to educate everyday Virginians that this is an extremist measure pushed by a minority voice. That there’s no legal need for it since we have laws on the books, and plenty of them, to prevent marriage, civil unions or domestic partnerships” by gays, she said.
McClintock, a court-appointed special advocate representing abused and neglected children, said opponents also must “make our message more clear than we have about the role of government versus the role of the church in relationships between adults.”
Gays and lesbians, she said, want “government protection and recognition of a legal relationship that two adults choose to form. Those governmental bodies have never wanted or been able to tell individual churches or congregations what they must recognize in a religious way.”
The article has quite a few quotes from clergy on both sides of the issue. It will imperative for clergy who believe government has intruded on its turf to be heard loud and clear. They will need to be as engaged as ministers opposing gay marriages.
Jerry Kilgore’s mother may have a legal problem. [Link Fixed] But the intelligentsia doesn’t think it will hurt the likely GOP nominee for governor.
“This campaign would have to get incredibly nasty for mothers to be considered legitimate targets,” said Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist.
“That’s one I believe the Democrats will stay away from,” he said. “The old ‘Your mother wears Army boots’ attack usually backfires. Mothers are special.”
Political analyst and Emory & Henry College president Thomas Morris said he, too, doubted that the investigation would even be raised, much less seen by voters as relevant.
Even if criminal charges were to be filed, Sabato doubted that the news would resonate statewide. “Ninety-five percent of Virginians have never heard of Gate City, and couldn’t find Scott County on a map,” he said.
And assuming voters did hear about the scandal, they might be reluctant to hold it against Jerry Kilgore.
As Sabato put it: “Is he his mother’s keeper?”
Sabato et al may be right — for only one reason: It’s not a mother of a Democrat who is in trouble, in which case I would expect to see the Swift Boat Vets Against Voter Fraud swing into action. Dems shouldn’t be afraid of looking into this because “[t]he Kilgore family, critics say, runs the political machinery of Scott County.”
Not only does the state not grant localities the right to pursue policies their citizens want in local matters, lawmakers also take away rights localities already have.
Have a problem with a city or county government?
Take it to Richmond if the local government doesn’t rule your way.
The gun lobby, of course.
From a Detroit Free Press column on the Jeff Gannon flap:
[A] government that is not scrutinized by an energetic and adversarial press is a government that is not accountable for its actions. A government that is allowed to create its own reality is a government that can get away with anything.
So where is our outrage?
Frankly, the only thing more galling than the brazenness with which the White House abrogates the public’s right to know is the sheep-like docility with which we accept it.
When the history of this era is written, people will wonder why we didn’t challenge its excesses, why we didn’t know the things we should have. If you’re still around, remember the uproar you do not hear right this moment and tell them the truth.
Ignorance was easier.
By the time Loudoun Republican Del. Dick Black’s bill [Disclosure] got the Senate, it was already not quite eviscerated but toned down. He wanted to ban gays from adopting. The House settled for giving prospective adoptive parents the third degree. “Have you now or ever been a card carrying gay?” Well, actually, the language was concerned with current homosexual activity, whatever that is.
The Senate Courts of Justice Committee killed it on a voice vote — a loud one, according to some reports. Only one story said three GOPers voted for it but didn’t identify them, and as a voice vote it wasn’t recorded. I’d venture they included Cuccinelli and Obenshain. Anybody know?
It is incredible the misinformation Dick Black will spread. And the backtracking. After all, his original bill specifically banned homosexuals from adopting.
Black argued that it was not aimed at homosexuals; his only interest was the welfare of the adopted child. Virginia has long recognized the stable benefits of a home with a mother and father, he said.
Homosexuals have a higher history of depression, alcoholism and suicide, he said.
…Black’s chief witness, Paul Cameron, chairman of the Family Research Institute in Colorado, said research shows that homosexuals, drug users and prostitutes disrupt society and have a much shorter life span.
He lumps gays in with drug users and prostitutes. It’s embarrassing that our state lawmakers will even give this guy a hearing. No, on second thought, giving them enough rope is probably a good idea.
Also testifying for Black’s bill was Robert H. Knight, director of the Culture and Family Institute in Washington.
“Who among us could say that our father could be replaced by a lesbian and this would not have made any difference in our lives?” he asked.
Earth to Knight: The kids being adopted don’t have a father or mother willing to care for them. Is that better for them than gay parents?
Kudos to Sen. Janet Howell (D-Reston)
Sen. Janet Howell, D-Fairfax, pounced.
Are you saying depressed people shouldn’t be allowed to adopt? she asked.
“Yes,” Black responded.
Do you know how many straight people are clinically depressed?
“I would imagine lots,” he responded.
Sen. Thomas K. Norment Jr., R-James City, said he has handled thousands of adoption cases as a lawyer and has never seen a child placed with an adult who wasn’t recommended as able to provide a secure, loving environment, regardless of sexual orientation. As a result, he said, the bill wasn’t needed.
The most hostile attacks during an hourlong hearing were levied at Black’s main witness – the author of a highly criticized study that purports to show that gays and lesbians are 34 percent more likely to molest their adopted children than are straight parents.
The author of that study, Paul Cameron, who bills himself as a sociologist, also told the committee that gays and lesbians are more likely to die younger, most around age 50, and that’s not good for any children they adopt.
On questioning, Cameron admitted his life-span analysis was based on reading the obituary pages of the Washington Blade, a gay and lesbian newspaper, and that his molestation statistics had been dismissed by some sociologists as scientifically suspect, based on numerous errors.
He also admitted, under harsh questioning by Howell, that he was kicked out of the American Psychological Association on ethics charges in 1983, and that in 1986 the American Sociological Association passed a resolution denying that Cameron was a sociologist and condemning his “consistent misrepresentation of sociological research.”
Then we have Virginia Cobb perpetuating the myth that all homosexuals are promiscuous.
Victoria Cobb, the executive director of the Family Foundation of Virginia, expressed disappointment with the committee’s vote, saying the state “has a responsibility to ensure that children are adopted in the most stable environments possible, including reviewing the promiscuity of anyone desiring to adopt.”
Black’s language, however, never had anything in it about promiscuity; it asked about sexual preferences.
Kudos to Sen. Dick Saslaw (D-Fairfax) — for his restraint.
“This thing comes awfully close to being pretty bigoted.”
Christopher Newport University political-science professor Quentin Kidd has a perspective on this and other anti-gay legislation. It may sound familiar to regular readers of this blog in two ways. He reflects some of my views as well as those who’ve commented here that liberals also “legislate morals.”
“One of the untold and most profound stories related to the Republican takeover in Virginia has to do with the increased efforts that we’ve been seeing in recent years to increase regulations on people’s personal lives,” Kidd told the [Augusta Free Press]. “It’s not something that you’re hearing a lot about in the press, but it is something that makes liberal Democrats, to borrow from the Republican terminology, look like civil libertarians who never had the first thought about trying to legislate mores at all.”
Kidd said that while the Republican charge against the gay-rights sector “is clearly in line with the interests of the majority of Virginians electorally,” at the same time, “perhaps people need to step back and say, how does it benefit us to try to use the weight of public policy to prevent individuals from being individuals?”
“Progressives, liberals, however you want to say it, try to use government to empower individuals who have been left behind by the system. But government these days does not seem to seek to empower people. It restricts them. People ought to be troubled by that,” Kidd said. “No matter if you hate gays or don’t approve of the gay lifestyle, you have to ask, is it right for government to restrict people from being able to live their lives the way they see fit?”
A good read.