Another conservative murderer, this time just shooting "Liberals."

The shooting at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Tennessee has been all over the news, but look at why Jim D. Adkisson did it. From MSNBC:

Adkisson is being held in lieu of $1 million bail while local police, with the assistance of FBI agents, gather evidence and search his home in a neighboring town. Police say they found a letter in Adkisson’s car which said that he planned the attack, that he couldn’t find a job, and “stated his hatred for the liberal movement.” The church has been active in seeking equal rights for women, minorities and gays, and founded a local chapter of the ACLU.

We all know that being Gay makes a person a target for murderous homophobic conservatives, and those they consider abortionists, but now they are going after members of "Liberal" Churches. The link is conservatism and murderous methods.

More details on the shooting and on Adkisson can be found here. Apparently he was an angry man who couldn't find a job, for which he blamed "Liberals." As a speculation, he would never recognized that it was probably his anger and his own personality that prevented him from finding work.

No doubt the National Rifle Association will be proud of Adkisson for using his Second Amendment gun rights to defend himself against "Liberalism." And any idiot who claims that the congregants should have been carrying guns in church while watching their children put on a play is a fool who is blaming the victims. Adkisson committed this crime and should be blamed for it. According to the second report above,he did not expect to survive the attack, so it is clear that no threat of punishment would have deterred him from his murderous conservative actions. Adkisson killed two and wounded seven others. I wonder if he just couldn't find a mosque close enough to home to go after. Isn't conservative religion and conservatism in general wonderful?

By the way, this is modern American conservatism, not directly related to traditional Burkean conservatism.

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Addendum July 30, 2008 7:10 am CDT
According to WBIR.com,

KPD Chief Sterling Owen said officials are not ready to release the suspect's name or age, but he did say that mental illness is not believed to be a factor in the suspect's actions.

The Knoxville Police Chief is not likely to have been made without consultation with experts. That makes the murders purely political.

American ignorance enforced by religious beliefs

Too many people believe that Creationism and enforced ignorance of Evolution and the Big Bang Theory, the organizing principles of modern biological science and modern physics, are things that exist only in small towns in Tennessee and the Appalachian mountains. Not true. Here is a story from Fort Bend County, Texas, which is a large portion of the Southeast part of the Houston Metropolitan Area, and not coincidently, includes the people who have sent both Representatives Tom DeLay and Ron Paul to Congress. From Nancy Hentschel in Sugar Land, Texas Fort Bend Now:

I taught sixth grade in Texas for three years 2001-2004. During that time, I was absolutely warned to not begin to say the word “evolution” or we would have every preacher in the district, as well as the media, breathing down our necks, and then there would truly be no teaching or learning. Sadly, I needed the position, so I played the “hide the issue and hide the learning” game.

Every time I tell this story, usually at a dinner party, people look at me like I am reliving some ancient past. I remind them that this policy ruled only two years ago – and in their progressive community. Like many issues that are easier to disbelieve than to address, people inevitably choose disbelief.

It is more difficult for me to choose disbelief, but over time, even I can begin to question my experience. So several weeks ago, I decided to test the continued use of this policy. I interviewed with a high school in Fort Bend and asked if I could use current events in the English classroom to explore why real evolution education is often an inoculation against racism and eugenic posturing. The interviewer quickly replied, “We do not challenge the sensitive “beliefs” of our student community.”
Too bad, … our most ill-informed students fall easy prey to eugenic manipulation, intolerance, and gangs because they do not understand real evolution. As can easily be seen in our prisons, it is the most ignorant of our population who are the most susceptible to a twisted understanding of evolution and racism. In more affluent areas, evolution ignorance is commonly twisted into lame justification for oppression.

God forbid that we should teach knowledge over “beliefs.” No wonder our politicians keep repeating the mantra “I believe …this and I believe …that” The “belief” word demands free reign to twist reality without being questioned. It is a true tragedy when believing trumps thinking, especially in our schools.

This isn't some backwoods rural small town. This is the public education system of part of the Houston, Texas metropolitan area. But it spreads through much of Texas politics, supported by Texas' current governor, Rick Perry.

The Texas Education Agency (TEA) as an approval process for textbooks that are used in Texas Public Schools, and the state of Texas will not pay for textbooks which are not approved. Currently the TEA is considering the content of science textbooks for Texas schools. The textbooks that are printed for the massive Texas market are then also sold to school districts across the United States, because it is a lot cheaper to print only one version of a textbook.

But the members of the TEA are elected, in down-ballot but statewide elections that are of interest only to a few very committed political junkies and a whole lot of Texas religious nuts and Creationists. (Think Mike Huckabee, thought he comes from that small and mostly rural state north of Texas.) The Press does not cover elections to the TEA, so the candidates are not questioned regarding their policies or beliefs. also, the religiuos fundamentalists took complete control of the Texas Republican Party over two decades ago.

The result is that as long as the Press does not find a smoking gun issue that is can report on, the religious fundamentalists effectively appoint the members of the TEA, who then carefully craft the Texas textbooks to meet the demands of their religion. That means anti-science science textbooks, as well as pro-free market nationalist and nativist history texts. And remember, these same textbooks are offered cheap around the U.S.

That's the background behind the recent firing of the Texas Education Agency’s director of science, Christine Castillo Comer. What did she do to get fired? She emailed - without recommendation - information to likely participants regarding time and location of a talk to be given by a highly respected science educator who was also known as an opponent of Intelligent Design.

The TEA religious yahoos do not want good science information to be presented to children, because when they are ignorant they are easier to convert to Yahooism. They want the government to forbid science and teach only religion.

Mike Huckabee is a supreme religious Yahoo - with a great smile. He's a Dominionist This is another part of the Constitution that he wants to change because it conflicts with his definition of "God's standards."

Here is what is wrong with Ron Paul

Dr. and Congressman Ron Paul has been getting a lot of favorable press recently as he stands up and tells Republicans that America should get out of Iraq. OK. Even a blind hog finds an occasional acorn. Dave, over at Orcinus lists many of the most extreme bills he has submitted in the house. What they demonstrate is a man who

• Is an antiabortion and anti birth control extremist.
  
• Wants the definition of human being attached to a zyugote from the moment of conception.
  
• Wants to deny Federal court system from providing redress to people who are discriminated against because of their religious beliefs or sexual orientation.
  
• Wants to stop the use of federal money in enforcing the right to an abortion.
  
• Wants to criminalize the burning or destruction of an American flag, even if you own it yourself. He has proposed a Constitutional amendment to this effect.
  
• Wants to repeal the Occupational health and safety Act.
  
• Wants to decertify unions.
  
• Opposes the minimum wage.
  
• Wants to repeal the Davis-Bacon Act and the Copeland Act which make kickbacks on federal contracts illegal and which mandates that government contracts pay workers the prevailing wage.
  
• Wants to make the Social Security system optional and to freeze benefits.
  
• Wants to repeal the Motor Voter law that has made it easier for voters to be registered (typical Republican voter repression activity) and supports the Electoral College.
  
• Wants to repeal Anti-Trust Laws.
  
• Wants to eliminate federal regulatory agencies and require Congress to pass new law every time a different case is addressed.
  
• Wants to promote greater ethnic and racial discrimination.
  
• Wants to amend the 14th Amendment to the Constitution so that people born in the U.S. are not automatically citizens, and make it easier to revoke the citizenship of anyone the government declares undesirable.
  
• Wants to limit or repeal most environmental laws.
  
• Wants to encourage more off-shore oil drilling, more mining on federal lands, and construct more refineries. Note how this will work with the elimination of federal environmental regulation and the elimination of unions. It would make China's environment something Americans would wish for.
  
• Wanted prevent the ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty.
  
• Wanted to prohibit the dismantling of the missile silos as was done in 2002.
  
• Opposes the International Criminal Court.
  
• Wants to prohibit even consideration of how other nations (except England) apply laws when the Supreme Court deliberates.
  
• Wants to end U.S. participation in the U.N.
  
• Wants to to block U.S. membership in the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.
  
• Wants the U.S. to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
  
• Wants to prevent U.S. soldiers from ever wearing the insignia of the UN or any foreign nation.
  
• Wants to reoccupy the Panama Canal and declare U.S. sovereignty over the Canal Zone again.
  
• Wants to eliminate limitations on gun ownership and where anyone can carry guns. This includes allowing criminals to own and carry weapons, repeal the 1968 gun law, and allow guns to be carried in national parks and in school zones. It also includes using federal law to override all state laws that regulate guns.
  
• Wants to abolish personal income, estate, and gift taxes. If he can't get that, he wants to eliminate withholding and make everyone pay taxes every month.
  
• Wants to repeal the power of the Federal Reserve to Print money, replacing paper money with gold and silver coins.
  
• Wants to abolish the Federal Reserve.
  
• Wants the use of corporal punishment reinstated, wants all parents notified if their children request birth control (even the parents who are molesting their children) and wants churches which run social serviced to be permitted to discriminate on the basis of religion and race among other things.
  

All of this comes from the Bills Dr. Paul has introduced in Congress. Does anyone really wonder why I call him a Fruitcake?

Wall Street Journal doesn't like Huckabee

John fund from the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page published a hit-piece on Mike Huckabee today. I'm not sure whether that says more about Huckabee or about the position of the WSJ.

Fund makes the point that the candidates are taking two different tracks to try to win the nomination. Giuliani is running as a hard right economic conservative (Fund does not mention Rudy's strong militaristic and pro-war position) but Rudy is not running away from his socially liberal views. Huckabee, on the other side, is running as a hard right social conservative but economically as a liberal-populist. Thus ends the analysis (first three paragraphs) followed by the hit piece on Huckabee.

Huckabee is described as

• not the "consistent conservative" he now claims to be.
• Betsy Hagan, Arkansas director of the conservative Eagle Forum and a key backer of his early runs for office, was once "his No. 1 fan." She was bitterly disappointed with his record.
  
• Phyllis Schlafly, president of the national Eagle Forum, is even more blunt. "He destroyed the conservative movement in Arkansas, and left the Republican Party a shambles,"
  
• Free-market advocates are skeptical. "He has zero intellectual underpinnings in the conservative movement," says Blant Hurt, a former part owner of, and columnist for, Arkansas Business magazine. "He's hostile to free trade, hiked sales and grocery taxes, backed sales taxes on Internet purchases, and presided over state spending going up more than twice the inflation rate."
  
• The Club for Growth notes that only a handful of the 33 current GOP state legislators back their former governor.
  
• "He fought my efforts to reform the National Governors Association and always took fiscal positions to my left," former Colorado Gov. Bill Owens, a supporter of Mitt Romney
  
• Mr. Huckabee's reluctance to surround himself with conservatives was evident as governor, when he kept many agency heads appointed by Bill Clinton.
  
• "He's just like Bill Clinton in that he practices management by news cycle," a former top Huckabee aide told me. "As with Clinton there was no long-term planning, just putting out fires on a daily basis. One thing I'll guarantee is that won't lead to competent conservative governance."
  

So Fund, writing for the economic ultra right-wing Wall Street Journal, has searched for and found every conservative he could locate who would knock Huckabee. Mike raises taxes, fails to surround himself with hardline conservatives, and is backed by only a handfull of current GOP Arkansas state legislators.

This suspicion of his economic conservative credentials and lack of hardline conservative consistency may explain his lack of fundraising abilities during this pre-primary fundraising primary. But John fund's attack piece suggests that Huckabee is gaining traction in the Republican Party in ways the economic conservatives (Club for Growth, Eagle Forum, WSJ itself) find disquieting.

The social conservatives and religious right have been making noises that if the Republican Nominee for President is insufficiently solid on such things as abortion and is not a good "Christian" as the evangelists and Biblical Inerrantists define Christian then they will bolt the party and start a third party. This article - a WSJ hit piece on the most pure of the social conservative candidates - is a message back from the economic conservatives saying that they will go after a social conservative candidate who is insufficiently "pure" as an economically conservative.

This article appears to be a public notice of the parameters the economic conservatives will accept in the negotiations to keep both the economic conservatives and the social conservatives in their alliance within the Republican Party.

The complete absence of any discussion of the war in Iraq is also notable. I'd guess that this means the WSJ will take any nominee, no matter what his position on Iraq. All that really matters to Fund and his publication is the candidate's position on taxes. This looks to me like movement away from Bush as a failed President and conservative, with his failure centered on the War in Iraq. This is my tentative opinion regarding what the absence of discussion of Iraq might mean.

Anyway, I think this WSJ article is more of a message to the Social Conservatives from the economic conservatives than it is a description of Mike Huckabee. Huckabee is just the convenient target used to carry the message.

Christian Right will not abandon the Republicans - just sink them in 2008

The Christian Right is extremely unhappy with the current range of Republican candidates for the Presidential nomination. They are talking about breaking away and starting a third party for 2008.

It's all talk. Digby explains. The Christian Right has no hope that the Republicans will with the Presidency in 2008. What they are doing is flexing their muscle within the Republican Party. They will do to Romney or Giuliani what they did to Bob Dole in 1996 - they will hang an extreme social right-wing platform on whoever the candidate is, and watch him go down to destruction.

They don't want the Presidency in 2008 anyway. The recession is coming, and whoever gets the election will also have to clean up the Iraq mess. Both are going to make it very unlikely that whoever gets the Presidency in 2008 will be extremely vulnerable in 2012.

So the Christian Right is also setting up a process that will give them a Christian social Republican candidate in 2012, one totally beholden to the social Republicans. They are also going to spend the four years from 2009 to November 2012 attacking the Democrat for their actions taken to clean up the economic and military mess made by the Bush administration.

The social Republicans can't run a third party candidate because such a candidate cannot win, while running a third party will lose them power within the Republican Party. They cannot leave the Republican Party, since they have no chance of influencing Democrats. The only vehicle the social conservatives have for continued power at the national level is to retain power within the Republican Party. At the same time, the Republican Party without the social conservatives will be reduced to permanent minority status. What the social conservatives have to do for long-term national political survival is to (grudgingly) remain in the Republican Party, tank the Republican candidate in 2008 and nominate one of their own for 2012.

That's what all the talk of the Christians running a third party candidate of their own is all about. They are trying for a replay of 1996 - 2000.

Gays get out! A call to purge the GOP of homosexuals

The Idaho Values Alliance, a long time supporter of Idaho Republican Sen. Craig, is now asking for his resignation. They start off by saying that he should resign IF he is homosexual, but then they continue

It strains credulity to think that the senator can provide an explanation for his guilty plea if he did nothing more than accidentally brush someone’s foot with his shoe and pick up a piece of paper off the floor.

The Judeo-Christian tradition says that the standard for identifying the truth is that “by the mouth of two or three witnesses every fact is confirmed.” The senator’s guilty plea, when added to the officer’s testimony, satisfies the biblical standard for confirming the essential truth of what happened, and unless the senator can provide a compelling and convincing explanation for his plea, we will need to regretfully accept that the fact of his behavior has been established. It seems unlikely that he can “unring the bell” his guilty plea has sounded.

So - if he is homosexual he should resign, and the evidence as they see it make it extremely unlikely that he is NOT homosexual. But they continue to say

One larger issue must be addressed. The Republican Party platform clearly rejects the agenda of homosexual activists. The Party, in the wake of the Mark Foley incident in particular, can no longer straddle the fence on the issue of homosexual behavior. Even setting Senator Craig’s situation aside, the Party should regard participation in the self-destructive homosexual lifestyle as incompatible with public service on behalf of the GOP.

No member of the Republican Party in the 1860s could represent his party and be a slaveholder at the same time. Nor can the Republican Party of today speak with authority and clarity to the moral issues that confront our society and at the same time send ambivalent messages about sexual behavior. It is time for the Republican Party to be the party that defends the American family in word, deed, and by personal example.

This is a call for the purge from the Republican Party of such people as Sen. Craig, and very likely Ralph Reed or Sen. Lindsay Graham.

So why should they be purged? Because people like the Idaho Values Alliance consider them "Sinners." Says who? Some power-hungry political leaders who use religion as their base of power, that's who.

I strongly suspect that Ralph Reed is gay, and I don't like him. But my dislike is based on his efforts to impose religion on our secular government. I rather respect Lindsay Graham because he is a man who learns on the job and does not seem to demonize his opponents. I objected to his role in the effort to convict Bill Clinton in the Senate impeachment trial, and I dislike his support for a number of Republican policies, but those are political judgments, not judgment on him as a "Sinner."

I very much respect and like Barney Frank from Massachusetts. He is often described as the smartest man in the House of Representatives, and his ability to get off a great quip is legendary. Why should we remove people like Barney Frank and Lindsay Graham from government service just because someone has read a book that answers all questions and rejects them? Biblical Inerrancy, besides being bad religion, is also a rotten way to run a government.

Apparently, however, the people in the Idaho Values Alliance think it is the source of all good government and are willing to destroy the political career of Sen. Craig from Idaho over the issue.

Government is not religion, nor is religion a good basis for government. Religion is too inflexible to be allowed to ever have the power to govern people on any basis. Religion can observe, advise and recommend, but never govern. The result of religious government is always war.

In the meantime, if the GOP conducts a purge of homosexuals, all they will do is drive them deeper into the closet or destroy the careers of some people, occasionally good and occasionally bad (like all the rest of us.) As a Democrat the only good thing I see coming from that is a weakening of the Republican Party and ultimately the rejection of the social conservatives by the rest of that party.

Monica Goodling - an article in Law.com

Law.com has an interesting article on the young "Xtian" lawyer that the Social Conservatives were using to politicize the Department of Justice. She clearly had a lot to do with the firing of the eight U.S. attorneys. Read the article to see why.