Seems the Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell, a Methodist and longtime Bush religious advisor, is a backer of Barack Obama. He presided last night at Jenna Bush’s wedding. From the NY Times:

The wedding, which began at 7:30 p.m., took place on the Bush ranch, before a white limestone altar erected next to a man-made lake. The Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell of Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston officiated at the ceremony. Mr. Caldwell, a longtime religious adviser to Mr. Bush, has endorsed Senator Barack Obama.

Man, to lose the support of even your religious advisor! That’s got to say even more than Bush’s historic disapproval ratings.

The gall of the religious right never ceases to amaze. Time and again, they demonstrate that hypocrisy is an essential element of their ideology. While many of these zealots frequently demonstrate their willingness to preach one thing and do another, their latest endeavor seems determined to take it to a whole new level.

The Alliance Defense Fund, a legal advocate for the right wing, is calling on churches to voice their positions on political candidates en masse on September 28th in order to create the grounds to challenge the constitutionality of the current tax code. As it now stands, the IRS guidelines prohibit churches from directly endorsing or rejecting political candidates in order to maintain their tax exempt status. The ADF wants to overturn the provision on the grounds that it circumvents their First Amendment rights and is therefore unconstitutional.

From The Washington Post:

The Alliance Defense Fund, based in Scottsdale, Ariz., will ask the clergy to deliver a sermon about specific candidates Sept. 28. If the action triggers an IRS investigation, the legal group will sue to overturn the federal rules, which were enacted in 1954.

Under the IRS code, churches can distribute voter guides, run voter registration drives, hold forums on public policy and invite politicians to speak at their congregations.

However, they cannot endorse a candidate, and their political activity cannot be biased for or against a candidate, directly or indirectly.

The Alliance Defense Fund said Friday that the regulations amount to an unconstitutional limit on free speech and government intrusion into religion.

From WorldNetDaily:

“Churches have for too long feared the loss of tax exempt status arising from speech in the pulpit addressing candidates for office,” the ADF’s white paper on the campaign confirmed. “Rather than risk confrontation, pastors have self-censored their speech, ignoring blatant immorality in government and foregoing the opportunities to praise moral government leaders.

“ADF believes that IRS restrictions on religious expression from the pulpit, whenever the IRS characterizes it as ‘political,’ is unconstitutional. After 50 years of threats and intimidation, churches should confront the IRS directly and reclaim the expressive rights guaranteed to them in the United States Constitution,” the group said.

“The intimidation of churches by leftist groups using the IRS has grown to a point that ADF has no choice but to respond,” said Erik Stanley, senior counsel for the ADF. “The number of threats being reported to ADF is growing because of the aggressive campaign to unlawfully silence the church.

Where to begin. First, I doubt the courts would rule in favor of the ADF since churches have always had the option to forego their tax exempt status. The bottom line - they elect their tax status knowing the conditions. I personally believe they shouldn’t be tax exempt and it wouldn’t surprise me if this misguided effort opens the door to discussing that possibility.

Beyond that, the dividing line between church and state is a complex matter that has been addressed numerous times by the courts. I suspect that the ADF believes that the shift to the right in the Supreme Court under the Bush administration may be to their benefit. Regardless, there is ample precedent that would need to be ignored in order for ADF to prevail.

Setting aside the legal argument, I want to focus on some of the inconsistent positions that emanate from the religious right…positions that lead me and many others to decry their penchant for hypocrisy. Two issues jump off the page.

The first is federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. President Bush and his supporters have argued that the government shouldn’t provide funding for such research. The rationale for their objections is predicated upon ethical concerns that have their origin in religious doctrine. At the same time, he and those who support the ban on federal funding loudly note that they aren’t preventing state and private funding for this research.

Hence the inconsistency is revealed. On the one hand, the religious right believes that it is appropriate for the president to deny funding for research that could assist numerous Americans that have no religious objections to the use of embryonic stem cells. They argue that those in favor of doing so can still conduct the research…just without the endorsement (funding) of the federal government. In other words, no one’s rights are being denied so long as the research is allowed to proceed. If you favor it, fund it privately…but your federal government isn’t going to use your money to do so.

On the other hand, those who endorse the logic in the above argument believe the federal government shouldn’t be allowed to prohibit churches from engaging in partisan politicking in exchange for granting them an exemption from taxation. Where does that leave us? Well, it says that these individuals want the government to forego funding research that conflicts with their religious beliefs while also allowing them to use the pulpits of the churches they support to influence the outcome of elections…without those churches ever being required to pay taxation. If that isn’t wanting to have it both ways, what is?

Contrast that with the secular citizen who pays taxes and wants the government to fund research that might save lives and one begins to see the absurdity of the system these religious demagogues favor. Truth be told, many of these religious organizations have already established “arms length” political entities that circumvent the IRS codes. Anyone who doubts their aspirations for the establishment of a theocracy ought to think again. The ADF directive is simply the next step in a well-crafted agenda.

The second item that illuminates the inconsistency in the rationale of the religious right is gay marriage. Proponents of measures to ban same-sex marriages contend that same-sex couples can achieve many of the same benefits that are afforded to married couples by utilizing the appropriate legal documentation. Of course they fail to mention that the lion’s share of benefits cannot be achieved through any means…especially those that relate to taxation.

At the same time, they argue that the preservation of the institution of marriage and it’s religious connotations is reasonable so long as the government isn’t preventing gays from forming the relationships they choose. In other words, it’s reasonable to restrict marriage to one man and one woman so long as the government allows gays to form the relationships they choose. The bottom line message to gays - you elect your tax status knowing the conditions.

When gays assert that this is an unfair system, the religious right is the first to cite those objections as evidence of the militant homosexual agenda and the desire of gays to force society to accept and embrace their alternative lifestyle.

Again, we begin to see the inconsistency. On the one hand, the religious right argues that the government has no obligation to recognize same-sex unions…and those who enter into them do so knowing the precedent conditions. You want a gay spouse, you don’t benefit from the advantageous tax status afforded to recognized marriages. On the other hand, they want the government to recognize religious doctrine in determining whose marriages will receive beneficial treatment while also wanting their churches to receive preferential tax status absent conditions…conditions that are simply intended to uphold the separation of church and state.

Similar arguments can be made with regards to the religious right’s positions on a number of issues. This includes a woman’s right to have an abortion and the rights of an individual or their family members to make end of life decisions. Time and again, the religious right seeks to insert and impose their beliefs on those who do not share them while simultaneously asking the government to adopt a laissez-faire mentality with regards to monitoring the separation of church and state.

I find it amusing that those who routinely point out that the spiritual realm supersedes all else spend so much of their time in the pursuit of all things political and material. Then again, the newly emerging prosperity theology suggests that the attainment of success (wealth and worldly measures) is undoubtedly evidence that one is appropriately aligned with the Lord.

Silly me…why on earth would I conclude that any of the above positions are hypocritical. I just pray that God will help me abandon rational and reasoned thought in favor of the fabrications that come with faith. I need to accept that the teachings of Jesus Christ have nothing to do with today’s Christianity. Come to think of if, maybe that’s the reason the religious right insists that everyone has to be born again.

Image courtesy of TBogg

Cross-posted at Thought Theater

Once upon a time Picher, Oklahoma was a thriving lead and zinc mining town of 20,000. My Dad was raised there in the 20’s and 30’s. Well, we know the health effects of lead now, which they likely didn’t know in Picher’s heyday. They figured it out later, the contaminated groundwater, ruined soil, etc. The townn shrank quite a bit lately. It became a Superfund site a while back, along with 40 square miles of nearby land in Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri. Here’s a bit of the story from the AP wire’s story:

People are leaving, escaping the reality of life in one of the worst environmental nightmares in the country. A voluntary federal buyout is hastening the exodus.

This is a town’s last stand.

“Ol’ Picher is just like the rest of us, she’s 90 years old and on her last legs,” says Orval “Hoppy” Ray, who worked the mines in the 1940s and runs a drafty pool hall in town.

Ray reveals the stubbornness that comes with 82 years of living: He and dozens of other holdouts will not leave, even when there is no city water or police department. No matter how much he’s offered for his property, his place will remain open until he’s dead.

“I don’t think the lights will ever go out,” Ray says, but there’s something in his voice that leaves room for doubt.

His birthplace is the center of the Tar Creek Superfund site, a 40-square-mile area that also takes in portions of Missouri and Kansas.

I suppose I should note that I’ve got a lithograph on the steps leading up to this loft office of mine depicting Tar Creek. That small tributary runs through much of Ottawa County, OK, and even ran near the house we lived in during the 60’s. Even back then in the 60’s when we’d visit my grandfather in Picher, before he moved to greener pastures in Kansas, the town of Picher was a poverty-stricken place even the mining companies had abandoned. Dad knew how rough it was there — he would hardly let us out of the car.
Today’s odd coincidence? My wife and I hosted her parents for the weekend. On a trip to the New Jersey shore I told a story about how my Dad used to drive 15 miles out of the way to fill up his gas tank. That was back in the 60’s, well before any of us knew the land he drove on was to become such an environmental nightmare.

Why is this interesting? Why is it timely? Yesterday 7 people died in Picher, OK. A tornado came trough town and sent over 150 people to the hospital as well. This is a town devastated by losing all of its history. The High School? Long since closed. The Century Theater? Gone. The mines? Gone. 97% of the population? Gone. Now nature has taken care of the rest. Picher, Oklahoma is no more. It lost its last stand.

In Picher, some homes were reduced to their foundations, others lost several walls. In one home, the tornado knocked down a bedroom wall, but left clothes hanging neatly in a closet.

“People were just wandering up and down the streets. Some had blood on them, some were dazed,” Keheley said.

A Best Western hotel sign was blown miles before coming to rest against a post. At one home, a basketball hoop planted in concrete had its metal support twisted so the rim hung only about 3 feet above ground.

Broken glass was strewn around the inside of 30-year-old Michael Richardson’s home, but a wrapped Mother’s Day gift and a laptop computer were left unscathed on the kitchen counter.

Frank Geasland, Ottawa County’s emergency manager said, a government-sponsored buyout of homes in the town left some residences vacant, and this may have prevented a greater loss of life.

The National Weather Service sent out a tornado warning at 5:26 p.m., 13 minutes before the tornado hit Picher, said David Jankowski, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Tulsa. Tornado sirens warned residents to take shelter.

The twister was the deadliest in Oklahoma since a May 3, 1999 twister that killed 44 people in the Oklahoma City area.

The National Weather Service estimated that at least eight tornadoes had been spawned in Oklahoma along six storm tracks. Three teams were dispatched to assess damage, meteorologist Steve Amburn said.

It is odd. Somehow I feel as if I’ve lost some moorings with this news. It is my father’s childhood hometown, not mine, that was wiped off the face of the earth yesterday, and though my father is seven years dead, nearly, I find it like a piece of the past is missing.

Hey, never fear. President Bush says his government will help make life right for the remaining souls in Picher, OK.

This week’s big scandal for McCain centers around the claim by Arianna Huffington that McCain did not vote for President Bush in 2000. For most of us, that would be a badge of honor, a sign we had marvelously good judgement. But John McCain’s people are claiming Arianna is making it up. She’s making it up that at a party they both attended at Candice Bergen’s house in 2001 McCain, all full of himself, criticized George Bush quite publicly and then stated, loudly, that he did not vote for Bush. Yes, McCain’s people look at that detailed scenario and say it simply didn’t happen.

Indeed, according to the New York Times, McCain’s people are quite dismissive of Ms. Huffington. Here’s their words from the New York Times, along with the accounts of two others who heard McCain at the Bergen Dinner say he did not vote for George Bush:

The McCain campaign swiftly quashed the account and said Ms. Huffington had a book to promote and would make anything up.

“She’s a flake and a poser and an attention-seeking diva,” Mark Salter, one of Mr. McCain’s closest aides, told The Washington Post.

Now two other guests at the same dinner, given by the actress Candice Bergen, at her home in Beverly Hills, say they heard much the same thing as Ms. Huffington. Both of them, the former “West Wing” actors Bradley Whitford and Richard Schiff, were asked by Ms. Huffington to speak to The New York Times. Mr. Whitford said he would be supporting the Democratic nominee and had donated to Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama; Mr. Schiff is supporting Mr. Obama.

Mr. Whitford, who played Josh Lyman, the deputy White House chief of staff on the NBC series, said in a telephone interview on Thursday that he was sitting across from Mr. McCain and next to Ms. Huffington at the small dinner and that he was startled to hear the senator sharply criticize Mr. Bush. The senator has long blamed the Bush campaign for smear tactics against his family in the 2000 South Carolina primary, but by the end of the campaign Mr. McCain was publicly supporting his rival.

“McCain was just sort of going off on how much he disliked Bush and the horrible things that the Bush campaign had done to his family in South Carolina, and his exasperation with Bush about his ridiculous tax cuts and he really wanted to talk to him about it, but he said the guy doesn’t have the concentration, and you talk for 10 minutes and then the guy wants to talk about baseball,” Mr. Whitford said.

Another guest then asked Mr. McCain, Mr. Whitford recalled, whether he had voted for Mr. Bush. “And he put his finger in front of his mouth and mouthed, ‘No way,’ ” Mr. Whitford said.

Mr. Schiff, who played Toby Ziegler, the White House communications director on “The West Wing,” said he was listening to Mr. McCain from the other of the two tables in the room.

“Someone asked, ‘What do you think of Bush?’ ” Mr. Schiff recalled. “My recollection, and I have to qualify this, because I’m not 100 percent sure he used this word, but my recollection is that McCain said that Bush was dangerous and he didn’t trust him. Then this person said, ‘Why did you support him?’ And McCain said, ‘It was my obligation as a Republican to support the Republican candidate.’ And the person said, ‘Did you vote for him?’ And McCain said, ‘No.’ ”

Now, Mr. McCain couldn’t bring himself to outright call Ariana Huffington a liar, not even in an interview with Bill O’Reilly. (But John McCain sure is denying the story!) So I’m thinking he’s not going to bring himself to calling the other attendees of that dinner liars. I’m here to say, though, that John McCain evidently lied, either in 2001 at the dinner at Candice Bergen’s house, or he is lying right now. Frankly, given that he doesn’t want to piss off the supporters of George Bush (as few as they are they are still a base he can ill afford to piss off), it makes more sense that John McCain, MC Straighttalker himself, is lying now.

Here’s the kicker. Nearly every day someone new is coming out of the woodwork with something derogatory about President Bush that John McCain told them. Here’s Al Meyeroff, who is claiming John McCain told him in 1999 that George Bush is “dumb as a stump.” Again, if McCain said it, he could hold that up to the world as an example of his good judgement. But he needs the Republican base that still loves George Bush, so he’ll deny Meyeroff’s claims, though McCain, who pretends to be a straight talker, will leave it to his campaign people to call Meyeroff a liar.

Yesterday Barack Obama’s people responded to the McCain campaign’s repeated suggerstion that Hamas supports Barack Obama. Of course, these folks ignored the strong words Obama has used to reject everything Hamas stands for. But that’s not the funny thing here. When the Obama people noted that McCain has “lost his bearings” by making the remarks, the McCain machine shot back, SHOCKED, SHOCKED and puffed up with pretend outrage for remarks that talked about their candidate’s age. From the AP wire:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Thursday that Republican John McCain was “losing his bearings” for repeatedly suggesting the Islamic terrorist group Hamas preferred Obama for president.

That brought an angry response from McCain’s campaign, which accused Obama of trying to make an issue of McCain’s age.

Age is a touchy subject for McCain, who turns 72 in August and would be the oldest person to be sworn in as president if elected.

Man, what a bunch of stupid people. When one loses one’s bearings, that means one is lost. If McCain decides to continue and continue to insist that Hamas supports Obama, then that’s ample evidence that McCain is lost. As to the age thing, I’m hoping the McCain campaign continues to whine about that subject constantly. Nobody would have mentioned his ag, indeed nobody did, until the McCain people started to whine. Maybe they should practice some gun control so they don’t shoot themselves in the foot.

Richt Wing News has polled a bunch of conservative bloggers to bring you a list of the most influential Republicans out there. I assume some of the respondents are listing who influences them, while others are listing those who are most influential in the conservative “movement.” I guess that’s neither here nor there, as the results of the poll show just how bankrupt Tepublicans are for leadership. At least four out of the top five of their selections barely qualify as human. Number 1, Rush Limbaugh, is a recovered (maybe) drug abuser whose principles are about as deeply held as as his convictions, which are only about money. Here’s the list, from Right Wing News. There are tie votes, so don’t let them confuse you.

#25: Mark Levin: 6
#21) Hugh Hewitt: 7
#21) George Will: 7
#21) John Roberts: 7
#21) Ronald Reagan: 7
#20) Victor David Hanson: 8
#19) Antonin Scalia: 9
#18) John McCain: 10
#14) Glenn Beck: 11
#14) George W. Bush: 11
#14) Glenn Reynolds: 11
#14) Matt Drudge: 11
#13) Bill Kristol: 12
#10) Charles Krauthammer: 13
#10) Thomas Sowell: 13
#10) Laura Ingraham: 13
#9) Karl Rove: 14
#8) Jonah Goldberg: 15
#7) Bill O’Reilly: 17
#5) Newt Gingrich: 21
#5) Ann Coulter: 21
#3) Mark Steyn: 23
#3) Sean Hannity: 23
#2) Michelle Malkin: 24
#1) Rush Limbaugh: 49

One more comment from me before you folks have at it. How pathetic is it that Ronald Reagan dominated the Republican Primary debates, yet is ranked so low. And how pathetic is it that he’s been dead so long and still ranks at all? Dubya and McCain are pretty low on the list as well. I suppose this says something about the strength of the Republican Party, and also about the aspirations and dreams of those pathetic bloggers on the right who voted in this contest.

Hey, this guy’s in a blue state. Go figure. Representative Vita Fossella is from New York. Today he admitted to having an affair and a child out of wedlock. Oh my! Here’s a bit of the story from CNN:

Rep. Vito Fossella of New York acknowledged on Thursday that he fathered a child from an extramarital affair, answering questions that arose from his arrest on drunken driving charges last week.

“My personal failings and imperfections have caused enormous pain to the people I love and I am truly sorry,” said Fossella, a Republican, who has three children with his wife in Staten Island,
N.Y.

Fossella’s private life came under scrutiny after he was arrested last week in the Virginia suburbs of Washington. Police said his blood-alcohol level was twice the legal limit, and he could face a mandatory five days in jail if convicted.

When Fossella was pulled over, police said he told officers that he was going to see his daughter in the area. That prompted questions about who the daughter was.

“I have had a relationship with Laura Fay, with whom I have a 3-year-old daughter,” Fossella said in his statement. It was Fay who got him out of jail after the arrest.

The disclosure clouds Fossella’s political future. He faced a surprisingly tough re-election challenge in 2006, and Democrats were hoping to unseat him this year.

“While I understand that there will be many questions, including those about my political future, making any political decisions right now are furthest from my mind. Over the coming weeks and months, I will continue to do my job and I will work hard to heal the deep wounds I have caused,” he said.

Yeah, man, it’s time to heal those deep wounds. I’m sure your radical Republican constituency is going to be happier that you are merely dallying with a woman than trolling bathrooms, as other Republicans do, but I’m thinking that isn’t going to help you in the long run.

One more Republican with weak moral fiber. That’s my take on it. I hope Rep. Fossella and his family is OK after this disruption he’s caused. But he’s surely not a good candidate for high office, is he?

That title sounds like a Hardy Boys title, eh? Ricky is that juvenile and simplistic. No offense to the Hardy Boys.

The worst columnist in America returned to his obsession today. Rick Santorum returned to his obsession with Islamofascists, and he also wagged his finger at the Bush Administration for not using the term. Little Ricky, who has been on this Islamofascist kick for a few years now, so much that we may as well call him a “one trick pony,” is the Philadelphia Inquirer’s shame writ large whenever he produces his “Elephant in the Room” column. (With Ricky’s extreme current obsessiveness about Islamofascism and his previous obsession with gay sex, I’m tempted to suggest they rename the column “Pink Elephant in the Room.) Anyway, here’s the column, and a couple excerpts which I will try to discuss without retching at Santorum’s lapses of logic, history and sanity.

First, here’s Ricky’s criticism that President Bush didn’t listen to him close enough about using the right words when discussing the War on Terror:

At a White House meeting after my press club remarks, I handed the president my speech and told him I thought that we were more apt to lose this war in the streets of America than on the streets of Baghdad. We had to start winning the communications battle at home, and part of that involved coming clean with Americans about whom precisely we are fighting. I suggested, for example, that he abandon the word terror and replace it with Islamic fascism.

A few weeks later, Bush was responding to an impromptu question about a thwarted terror plot in England. For the first time, he described the enemy as Islamic fascists. Then came the backlash - in the media, the Muslim world, and, most important, the State Department. Sources told me that the bureaucracies rose up as one and persuaded the president to never use that term again. He never has.

The assumption here is that Bush’s language, his reticence at using the words “Islamofascists,” or “Islamic Fascism,” has both inhibited the President’s prosecution of the War on Terror and inhibited the public support of that war. Santorum is wrong on both points. Bush and his Keystone Kops prosecution of the war, along with his violation, time and time again, of civil liberties and tenets of international law are truly what have limited his prosectuion of the War on Terror. The Bush Administration ADHD approach of going after Osama, then shifting focus to bogus reasons for invading Iraq and leading our troops into a quagmire, are not timid moves on Bush’s part. His lack of use of Santorum’s pet terminology haven’t hindered Mr. Bush at all. Would that it had been the case. And the lack of use of those words have not chased the public away from supporting the President — the President’s FAILURES have moved the public towards record disapproval ratings for Bush. Santorum thinks some kind of insistence on “political correctness” is why the public no longer supports Bush. Nope, you’ve got it wrong, Ricky. You’re following the right-wing radical playbook well, but you’ve let the facts of disastrous policy escape your obsession with “Islamofascist and the radical right-wing playbook. Look to the facts, Ricky, instead of your obsessions.

This is to say little about Rick Santorum’s casting himself in the role of ignored hero. Man, someone surely can psychoanalyze that, huh? But how about this other tidbit from Ricky’s column today:

In speeches I give across the country, I ask basic questions about the ideology and motivation of the enemy. The response? Blank stares. Seven years into this war, that’s an indictment of our government rather than the intelligence of the public. Why should we learn about radical Muslims if they are not the problem?

This little paragraph is the funniest in the whole “Elephant in the Room” column. The reason Rick Santorum is met with blank stares is not because people aren’t aware of the reasons for terrorism. It’s because people like Rick Santorum have been wrong so often and so long that people are tuning him out. So many promises by the Bush Administration and those that back them, people like Rick Santorum, have failed, that these folks are skeptical of the words of Rick Santorum. Heck, people should be skeptical of Rick Santorum for one other reason — he suffered the biggest loss by an incumbent Senator in dozens of years. Why? Rick Santorum no longer has answers Americans want to hear. Indeed, Rick Santorum is just plain, flat out wrong.

Rick Santorum, the Pink Elephant in the Room, stands as the symbol of Republican incompetence in the early part of this century. The Philadelphia Inquirer should be shamed to carry his column.

Hey, why is nobody discussing the really big story from Tuesday. While the TV talking heads are whining about Limbaugh’s boost to one Democratic campaign or another, or camped out on the Hillary Concession Watch, they’ve ignored the big story. John McCain, after having all his opponents concede weeks and weeks ago, won the North Carolina Republican Primary in a LANDSLIDE! He got 74% of the vote. Here are those results from ABCNews:

Republican Primary ResultsTuesday, May 6
Real-time Race Results: Updated May 7, 2008 - 7:20 PM (all times Eastern Standard)
Precincts Reporting 100%
Candidate Votes Vote % Delegates Projected Winner
McCain 381,616 74%
Huckabee 62,798 12%
Paul 37,132 7%
No Preference 20,527 4%
Keyes 13,562 3%

The story here is that John McCain didn’t win 95% of the vote or more. He came 20% short of that total. Seems Mike Huckabee still has some following, and you can expect the 7% or so for Ron Paul, the last whack job standing. But check out that Alan Keyes! I’m thinking that might be some kind of Democratic crossover vote of people hoping to see a Keyes/Obama rematch — some Democrat who wants utter slaughter in November. Seriously, after John McCain has been on the campaign trail for practically three years, after numerous other candidates and far too many Republican debates, it is amazing to me that 4% of the North Carolina electorate chose “no preference.”

This is not the unanimous vote that McCain needs. Indeed, this vote is far from it. Yet nobody in the mainstream media has said a thing on the subject.

Edit: I was remiss in not noting that McCain also won a landslide in Indiana, with 78% of the vote. Yes, fully 22% of the Republican electorate in that state voted for someone other than McCain, the nominee. Meanwhile, 11% of Republican voters crossed over and voted Democratic in Indiana.

With the passage of the Patriot Act, the potential for the government to abuse its newfound authority to snoop on its citizens was expanded. Unfortunately, along with that expansion came the ability to prevent those who contest such inquiries…and succeed…from discussing the details of the case in question.

Hence, the FBI and other agencies have no deterrent to pushing the limits of their authority. In fact, recent successes in preventing such inquiries have all been met with the same strategy…a sudden withdrawal of the request accompanied by a gag order on the party served.

From Wired.com:

The Internet Archive, a project to create a digital library of the web for posterity, successfully fought a secret government Patriot Act order for records about one of its patrons and won the right to make the order public, civil liberties groups announced Wednesday morning.

On November 26, 2007, the FBI served a controversial National Security Letter on the Internet Archive’s founder Brewster Kahle, asking for records about one of the library’s registered users, asking for the user’s name, address and activity on the site.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Internet Archive’s lawyers, fought the NSL, challenging its constitutionality in a December 14 complaint to a federal court in San Francisco. The FBI agreed on April 21 to withdraw the letter and unseal the court case, making some of the documents available to the public.

The Patriot Act greatly expanded the reach of NSLs, which are subpoenas for documents such as billing records and telephone records that the FBI can issue in terrorism investigations without a judge’s approval. Nearly all NSLs come with gag orders forbidding the recipient from ever speaking of the subpoena, except to a lawyer.

Brewster Kahle called the gag order “horrendous,” saying he couldn’t talk about the case with his board members, wife or staff, but said that his stand was part of a time-honored tradition of librarians protecting the rights of their patrons.

Though FBI guidelines on using NSLs warned of overusing them, two Congressionally ordered audits revealed that the FBI had issued hundreds of illegal requests for student health records, telephone records and credit reports. The reports also found that the FBI had issued hundreds of thousands of NSLs since 2001, but failed to track their use. In a letter to Congress last week, the FBI admitted it can only estimate how many NSLs it has issued.

The Internet Archive’s case is only the third known court challenge to an NSL, all of which ended with the FBI rescinding the NSL, according to the ACLU’s Melissa Goodman.

“That makes you wonder about the the hundreds of thousands of NSLs that haven’t been challenged,” Goodman said, suggesting that the FBI had collected sensitive information on innocent Americans.

The settlement with the government puts an end to that challenge and still keeps Kahle and his lawers from discussing — even in the most general terms — what the FBI was after and what public information the Internet Archive turned over to the FBI. For instance, the lawyers declined to say what kind of information the target was looking at or uploading — such as animal rights information or Muslim literature.

[…] The Internet Archive case is only the second time the courts allowed the recipient of a Patriot Act National Security Letter to reveal his or her identity.

The history of such efforts to surveil Americans was altered in the aftermath of the Nixon presidency and the events surrounding Watergate. At the time, the ability of the government to conduct such operations was curtailed and virtually eliminated. With 9/11 and the passage of the Patriot Act, the floodgates of federal snooping were reopened…and the evidence suggests that some of the same abuses that facilitated the ban in the past have reemerged under the new guidelines.

Unfortunately, the latest foray allows the government to silence those who may have been compelled to participate in committing the abuse. Under the auspices of national security, questionable activity isn’t allowed to reach the public’s view - thereby preventing any of the accountability that would naturally be driven by public outrage with any revealed improprieties.

A program of this nature, when coupled with an administration that is prone to misguiding voters and utilizing the mechanisms of government for political advantage, has the potential to trigger abuses that far exceed those committed under the Nixon administration.

With George Bush’s disapproval numbers surpassing those of all the presidencies previously measured, one can’t help but wonder if the unknown abuses also exceed those of his predecessors…especially those of Richard Nixon…who found himself in the unenviable position of being forced to make an early exit from the White House.

9/11 was a defining moment in American history. Sadly, we may never know the degree to which the current administration used it to restrict and/or remove our civil liberties. That possibility makes it difficult to endorse the efforts George Bush tells us are designed to protect our way of life from the terrorists. Preserving freedom and liberty at the expense of both should never be optional.

Cross-posted at Thought Theater