Least Probable Headline Ever

"Anglican Communion to Restore Nigeria's Glory."

Where to begin? Shall we begin with the concept of "Nigeria's lost glory?" Or go straight to Archbishop Akinola's contempt for both human rights and the position of his communion with regard to those rights? O shall we ... oh, never mind. You get the idea.

Mother Jesus

Episcopal Presiding Bishop-elect Katherine Jefferts Schori has ... brass. Only days after her election, the London Times reports,

Dr Schori signalled her feminist credentials in a sermon that drew on the writings of the 14th-century Julian of Norwich. She said: “Mother Jesus gives birth to a new creation — and you and I are His children. If we’re going to keep on growing into Christ images for the world around us, we’re going to have to give up fear.”

The General Convention has been a parlous affair, its every painful moment reported in the international media, and she in now one of the very few female Anglican primates in a communion that still has great reservations about women priests. You might have thought her sermon would have been something straightforward and unexceptionable, on the order of "Jesus loves me, this I know /For the Bible tells me so." In the ears of many traditionalists, "Mother Jesus" is decidedly exceptionable language.

But should it be?

The Times adds:

Liberals in Britain and America defended her sermon as being in a long tradition of writings by women theologians that use the metaphor of Jesus as mother.

Certainly true -- and Dame Julian is certainly common coin in modern Anglican circles. But the maternal Jesus is not merely the province of female theologians. The same image is used often in medieval writing by men, especially Cistercian monks, and most especially St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Bernard is of such importance to the history of theology that he is sometimes called "the Last of the Fathers." There's a classic essay on how he used "Mother" as a term both for Jesus and for himself as abbot, by Caroline Walker Bynum.

Nor did the tradition die with Bernard. The same images -- of Jesus and the parish pastor as "Mothers" -- were used repeatedly by John Donne, the Dean of St Paul's and a key figure in conservative, high-church Anglicanism of the 17th century. (There is a chapter on this in my STM thesis, available for publication if anybody is interested . . . ).

I saw Bishop Schori bashed a little (okay, a lot) for using this image on a blog today. Even when somebody pointed out the Biblical use of maternal imagery for God, the blogger just kept going. But I suspect he was a Baptist, and may have lacked a keen sense of tradition. Bishop Schori, as an Anglican, is expected to preach with the whole cloud of witnesses around her -- and in this case, she evidently did.

Alas, Poor Rowan

An English writer cheers the US Episcopal Church for refusing to be intimidated by other Anglican provinces, and -- more pointedly -- portrays the Archbishop of Canterbury as a man who has surrendered his ideals.

This may be an oversimplification. PECUSA is a mess right now, and it is hard to cheer much for a mess. And Archbishop Rowan Williams is attempting a task which seems frankly impossible: to hold both the CofE and the Anglican Communion together.

Still, Michael Hampson makes an interesting case. His brief piece includes some things I did not know, especially the Coelkin case (which is somewhere between Mother Angelica vs. Cardinal Mahoney and Lefebvre vs the Vatican). It is worth reading.

Spinning Clergy

So a couple of ministers make a movie about football. It gets a PG rating, which is about what they expected. Then, so far as we can tell, here's what happens:

The MPAA, which rates films, gives Facing the Giants a PG for "mature themes." These are pretty common in pictures about guys pounding the crap out of each other then getting naked and showering together. (See under: North Dallas Forty, or Cruising.)

But somehow, the religious themes of the movie also come up in conversation. So the producers decide that they got their rating based on religious bias, rather than the aforementioned pounding and showering. And they raise a big stink, and are joined by the usual crowd of thugs and morons, by which we mean the US House of Representatives.

Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., sent an angry letter to the MPAA. "If religion creates a warning for parents and kids and violence and bad language don't, this thing appears to me to be heading in the wrong direction, and I think most Americans would agree," Blunt said.

Can you smell the spin here, people? An indie flick about football is pretty ho-hum stuff; but an indie flick about football that's been censored by the evil ratings bureaucracy and defended by a few stalwart people of faith -- well, heck, that's a cause celebre. (Or would be, if Republicans could read French). It's all a crock, of course. That's not why they got the rating. But wouldn't it be cool if it were? Think of the tickets they'd sell, the church-group DVDs, the Hollywood offers. So even though it isn't true, they must have decided, let's just say it is.

And we'll even find a pet Congressman to go in on the gag. (Blunt knows from spin -- he's married to a tobacco lobbyist. Not Aaron Eckhardt, though.)

Here's the funniest part -- and we don't mean ha-ha-funny:

One of the filmmakers said he'd want to be warned if his children were going to see a film with a pro-Islamic message. "But our country wasn't founded on Islamic values," [said producer-star Alex Kendrick.] "It was founded on Judeo-Christian values."

This defender of free speech actually approves of warning moviegoers about religious content, provided it isn't his religion. Yeah, that's the spirit that made America great, isn't it?

Searching the House

You know the story by now: FBI searches the office of a congressman. Congress raises a stink. Bureau chief and Attorney General threaten to resign if search is ruled illegal.

A couple of interesting thoughts present themselves. One is the studious secrecy of the Bush Administration itself. These people claim "executive privilege" at the drop of a hat, even for such basic details as which industry lobbyists the Veep meets with before making policy. Never mind the outright lies that Scott "Pudgie" McClellan used to tell in his effort to stonewall the Plame investigation. So is it just me, or is there a faint aroma of hypocrisy here?

After all, executive privilege exists so that the President and his team can do their work without coercion from the other branches. Although Article 1, Section 6 of the Constitution doesn't specify that a congressman's chambers shall be off-limits to an Executive Branch investigation, it certainly tends in that direction. It exempts them from prosecution, or even questioning, for things they do on the floor of Congress. As with soveriegn or diplomatic immunity, legislators are freed from certain kinds of scrutiny in order to let them function independently. So you can see why Speaker Hastert and Minority Leader Pelosi, strange bedfellows to be sure, are ticked off at the White House.

But let's give the devil his due. Rep. William Jefferson of Louisian is accused of accepting bribes. Does anybody actually doubt his guilt? I mean, the guy's a congressman. From Louisiana. Of course he took the money. So you can also see why he was under investigation in the first place, and why AG Gonzales and FBI Guy Mueller are ready to quit over this. He probably broke the law, they know it, and they want to put him in jail. Rightly so, if only the search were legal.

And oh my stars and garters, will you look at this. President Bush actually arranged a compromise -- a 45-day period for both sides to cool their jets. While it is a pleasant novelty to type the words "Bush" and "compromise" in the same sentence, let's be honest about this. Washington in general, and the House in particular, are places in which a lot of old grudges remain in play, seemingly without terminus. The two parties are still pissed at each other over Vietnam and Watergate, disasters which predate the birth of the average blogger. The Whitewater investigators spent six years looking into allegations that were already a decade old. The power elites have gotten over Teapot Dome, but only just.

So jets are going to cool in six weeks? We think not. This time-out is probably just a chance for both sides to marshall their forces. And remember, the sides in question aren't Republican versus Democrat. They are Executive versus Legislative -- or, it sometimes seems, autocrat versus .

But here's the silver lining: Gonzales and Mueller threatened to resign if they don't get their own way. So if Bush were a really smart politician, this could be a great opportunity. He could simply insist that the privileges of Congress be respected, and the seized documents be returned -- simultaneously striking a blow for the Constitution and forcing out the single most articulate spokesman for the illegal and immoral practice of torture that has helped to taint his administration's place in history and the good name of the United States.

Win-win, Mister President. Win-freaking-win.

Neuhaus Defends Sex Abuser

To its credit, Benedict XVI's Vatican has done what John Paul's dared not: publicly disciplined a highly-placed figure accused of abusing young men under his religious care. Marcial Maciel Degollado, founder of the Legionaries of Christ, has been "invited" to refrain from any public exercise of his priestly office, and turn to a life of "prayer and penitence." (Read the Vatican's press release).

The Times article gives details, but the bottom line is that at least nine former seminarians claim Maciel molested them. He denies the claims, as do his supporters -- well, of course he does. It seems John Paul was believed those denials. And Benedict, as a cardinal, had personally ended a 1999 proceeding against Maciel.

But as the monstrous reality of Rome's coverup culture has become more apparent, Cardinal Ratzinger re-opened the Maciel case, and talked about getting rid of "filth" in the Church. The Vatican statement expressly stated that, due to his age and ill-health, Maciel would be spared a trial -- but the implication is clearly that a trial might otherwise be forthcoming.

To be sure, some people don't think Benedict has gone far enough. "They have negotiated with a criminal," says one former priest. Well, yes. But district attorneys do that every time they offer a plea bargain -- and the guilty still get punished.

Here's the part that kills us, though. Maciel has a number of prominent defenders in the Catholic neo-con camp: think George Weigel, Bill Bennett, Mary Anne Glendon. (Where is Michael "Warmonger" Novak, we wonder?) One of these is Richard John Neuhaus, who seems to be getting a little weirder in his old age. Here are the money quotes:

On Friday, Father Neuhaus . . . said he still believed that the charges against Father Maciel were unfounded. "There is nothing in the Vatican statement that suggests that the word penance is meant as a punitive measure," he said.

Asked why the Vatican would take any action, he said, "It wouldn't be the first time that an innocent and indeed holy person was unfairly treated by church authority."

A little disingenuous, don't you think?

First, let's remember what penance is: turning to God and asking forgiveness. For what? For sins. The Vatican doesn't specify which sins -- nor would we ask it to -- but the invitation to penance is clearly offered as the result of an investigation and the alternative to a trial. So yes, there is something in the statement which suggests a punitive measure, even if it doesn't make such a claim expressly.

And second, if we are going to extend charity toward our neighbors, should we not begin by assuming that nine men are less likely to lie than a single one, and to assume that the Pope knows something about his own affairs?

Giuliani Proves Shakespeare Wrong

Rudy Giuliani, in a campaign speech for Ralph Reed, declared heterosexual marriage to be "inviolate." Oy, vey. Where to begin?

First: As the Times notes, Giuliani was finessing his long-standing support for gay civil unions. One has to assume that Reed's conservative supporters will see through this pretty quickly. And in a just world, support for Reed would alienate Giuliani's own moderate base.

Second: Giuliani is selling his soul by supporting Reed's homophobic Christianist campaign in Georgia. No surprise there; as we ramp up for the '08 Presidential campaign, souls are going for cheap. Anybody remember McCain's little visit to Liberty U.?

But here's where the rubber hits the road, people --

Third: Inviolate? What does this guy know about keeping marriage inviolate? Let's review.

(a) Giuliani's first marriage was to his second cousin, Regina Peruggi. Under canon law, this is grounds for an annullment, which he sought and received. Not right away, mind you, but after fourteen years together. Fourteen years. And -- key concept here -- he "learned" about the blood relationship and got the annullment while he was in the middle of an adulterous affair with TV personality Donna Hanover, whom he later married.

(b) Giuliani's second marriage, to Ms. Hanover, was an ugly thing. During his tenure as Mayor of New York, he was generally believed to be engaged in an affair with one of his subordinates, press secretary Crystyne Lategano, who later got a plum political appointment. They denied it all, to be sure, but nobody believed them. So there -- if the speculation is true -- we have adultery coupled with abuse of power coupled with nepotism and topped with an icing of lies.

(c) Even if the first affair isn't certain, the second is. While still married to Hanover, and still mayor, Giuliani started sleeping with Judith Nathan. (They marched in the St. Patrick's Day Parade together, for crying out loud -- the way normal mayors usually do with their wives. Oh, and he later married her.) Giuliani and Hanover had an ugly, public squabble over who could live in Gracie Mansion -- and of course, their kids got caught in the middle. In the divorce proceedings, he accused her of "cruel and inhuman treatment," while she accused him of "open and notorious adultery." Which argument was more convincing? Well, she gets a million dollars a year in alimony.

So. Rudy Giuliani is a serial adulterer, a liar, a man who doesn't mind dragging his kids through the mud that he creates with his disdain for marriage vows. And, since Rome won't annull his second marriage, he is also presumably unwelcome to receive communion in his own church.

So maybe this guy should keep his big mouth shut on the subject of making marriage "inviolate." In any case, his speech in Georgia proves that Shakespeare is wrong -- conscience doth NOT make cowards of us all. Or does that only work if you have a conscience?

"Code" Encourages Interfaith Cooperation

Three cheers for "The Da Vinci Code!"

Sure, it's a crock of lies packaged as trashy fiction. Sure, the "Priory of Sion" doesn't exist, despite Dan Brown's claims. Sure, Opus Dei -- dubious though it may be -- is nothing like the organization the book depicts. Sure, albino monks all over the world feel personally discriminated against. And sure, I'll never again walk through the front door of a Gothic church without squirming.

But the book manages to tick off not only the usual Christian crowd -- the Catholic League, TV preachers, etc. -- but also a fair sample of the moderate mainline. By uniting the extremists and the moderates, it strikes a blow for Christian unity.

And better yet, it also ticks off Muslims. (Remember, Jesus PBUH is a prophet.) And we all know what Muslims do when they get angry, don't we? Hide your ambassadors and intelligence attaches -- embassies will burn.

In fact, with the respect for freedom we have come to expect from our Asian neighbors, there are loud calls to ban the movie version in India and Korea. What tickles the Egg is that these calls come both from Christians and from Muslims "in support of our Christian brothers."

As Isaiah says, the lion shall burn embassies with the lamb.

So let's hear it for the Code -- a media product so objectionable it can turn age-old enemies into riot-prone enemies of free speech.

Two Dumb Complaints

A Sri Lankan bishop postpones his trip to Britain because he believes that being fingerprinted at the embassy is "humiliating" and "discriminatory." Get real. At various foreign borders, I have been searched, probed, detained, lied to, denied a passport stamp, held at gunpoint, and robbed. Friends have had drugs planted in their baggage so that they could be forced to pay a bribe (the Peruvian police take credit cards). Those were humiliating and discriminatory. But offering my fingerprints in an effort to make international travel safer strikes me as the least a person of good consciece can do in these parlous times. Or, put bluntly: Wake up and smell the terrorism, Your Grace.

A Navy chaplain complains of religious persecution. He argues that the Navy wants to discipline him for praying in uniform. But this is disingenuous; he happened to pray while appearing in uniform at a politically-motivated press conference. And -- as the Right has recently taking to reminding retired generals -- there are strict rules governing the involvment of the military in civilian political affairs. (The difference being that the said generals have returned to civilian life, while Lt. Klingenschmitt remains on active duty. For now.)

Oh, and be alert: Friends in military chaplaincy have been worrying for years about the grpwing dominance of fundmentalists with a a hard-right political agenda. (See under: Air Force Academy). Klingenschmitt is a symptom, not the problem.

Episcopalians Dodge Bullet.

For now.

The California Diocese elected Mark Andrus as its next bishop. There were seven candidates; of those, two were gay men and one was a lesbian. One of the men was black. So this was, as these things go, a very diverse slate.

[Note to self: Aren't you sick of using "diverse" so superficially? For all I know, the whole group held the precise same social and theological views, exercised the same leadership in the same way, and so forth. There are other kinds of diversity than race, sex and nookie -- but mainline American Christianity doesn't care about anything else anymore.]

Anyway, the Spirit moved the diocese to choose Andrus, thereby postponing -- sorry, I meant averting -- a schism in the Anglican Communion. That was, surely, not the purpose of the vote -- the people needed a bishop, and sought the best person for the job. Averting schism was just a happy side effect. (Which is why, sooner or later, there will be a schism.)

Meanwhile, the Anglicans in Canada have come out against the proposed Nigerian law that would restrict basic human rights not only for gay people but for churches that serve them and newspaers that write about them. They "disassociated" themselves from the Church of Nigeria, which supports the law. Oh, yeah. There's a schism coming.

David Blain is an Idiot.

There. It had to be said.

How "Opal Mehta" Got Published, Got Revealed, and Got Yanked Off the Shelves

By now you've heard about 19-year-old Kaavya Viswanathan and her novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life. The big news is that Viswanathan plagiarized sections of her book from another writer, Megan McCafferty. Now it turns out she also lifted a few chunks from Sophie Kinsella's The Princess Diaries and Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories.

That's the big news. But let's talk about the smaller, but still interesting, parts of the story.

First, money. Her publishers paid Viswanathan something like $500,000 as an advance. She's 19 years old. There are some very, very good writers in this country who never earn a dollar for their work, and many of the best never make a living at it. So whose bright idea was it to ante up half a million dollars for a teenager's first novel?

Second, Harvard's literary standards. I hope her English professors take note of the fact that she's ripping off crap. (Not you, Salman.) If you're going to steal, baby, why not steal from Flaubert?

Third, Harvard's ethical standards. (And everybody else's.) I recently taught course at an up-and-coming third-tier private college. Two sections, 25 students each. I had four cases of plagiarism. In each case, the boneheads had simply pasted in material they copied from the Internet -- Wikipedia, mostly, and one Wiccan site. (Something about that "wick" sound, I guess). They cried crocodile tears when I gave them "D"s, not seeming to understand (despite my rather stern comments and repeated references to both Turabian and the student handbook) that the normal punishment for plagiarism on a college term paper is expulsion. Or at least it was when I was a young 'un.

"What do you expect from these kids," I said to myself. "They're studying at Party U.; it's not like this place is ... I dunno ... Harvard." Except it turns out that it IS as though that place were Harvard, with less money.

My students claimed, without exception, that nobody had ever explained to them why it is wrong to take credit for things that somebody else has written. They had, by the way, gone to good high schools, several of them church-affiliated. So from the middle of American higher education to the top, it appears that there is a student culture which takes for granted what we old fogeys still call plagiarism. Call it hommagerie, or the age of sampling. Call it by the polite Biblical-studies term of pseudepigrapha. But either way, look for many sequels to Opal Mehta.

Nigerian Bishop Hates Sin AND Sinner

"Hate the sin, love the sinner." That was the mantra of my conservative seminary classmates, tossed around so blithely in discussions of homosexuality that it came to induce instant nausea. And yet, let's be honest, it does describe a defensible position, in discussions far more wide-ranging than those of mere sexual morality.

The anti-gay crowd has hewn to this line in the debates which are slowly dividing worldwide Anglicanism (here's the New Yorker's take, reasonably good by secular-press standards). They have inisted that while they consider homesexuality sinful, they continue to care pastorally for gay people, and object to any legal or civil institutions which "victimize or diminish" them.

Or at least they did. Seems that Nigerian archbishop Peter Akinola, a leader of the anti-gay forces, "recently threw his prestige and resources behind a new law that would criminalize same-sex marriage in his country and deny gay citizens the freedoms to assemble and petition their government. The law would also infringe upon press and religious freedom by authorizing Nigeria's government to prosecute newspapers that publicize same-sex associations and religious organizations that permit same-sex unions."

The quotation is from an op-ed piece by Bishop Chane of Washington, which has appeared in the WashPost and on the Episcopal Life website.

Apparently, the man who has become the living symbol of the global south's position on sexual morality is also happy to associate himself with the global south's endemic contempt for human rights. I hope that conservatives within America's Episcopal Church think long and hard about whether Akinola is somebody they want to, er, climb into bed with. Even proverbially.

Outraged Christians Burn Embassies

Not really. And that's the point.

A new movie has outraged Indian Christians with its depiction of a nun who falls in love and whose "attempts to flee the convent supposedly create hilarious situations." The poster is a sort of hommage to the Seven-Year Itch, and it has Indian Christians, especially priest and nuns, pretty hot under the collar (or wimple).

Well, okay, I admit it: we in the West have become inured to this sort of petty insult. Naughty nuns were a staple of Reformation-era polemic literature. More recently, we've put up with singing nuns and flying nuns, albeit pretty decorous ones; but also nuns on the run, nunsense, Sister Mary Ignatius, Whoopie Goldberg (twice). And there's a lot worse out there -- nuns having sex, nuns possessed by demons, nuns and abortions. I won't tell you where to find it 'cuz that stuff is gross, but you all know how Google works. And even though every nun I've ever known personally was in late middle age and dressed like a second-grade teacher, the TV and movie nuns are nearly all smoking hot and dressed in pre-Vatican habits. But with heels.

The mind reels. The people who make nun movies have, so far as I can tell, never met an actual nun.

Anyway, inured or not, let's make no mistake: a lot of this stuff isn't just irreverent, it's insulting. To Catholics, to Christians, to common sense. So, even if we can't get too very excited about it, the Egg certainly does understand the restiveness among Indian Christians. They're ticked, and they deserve to be. This is an insult to some of their mostl deeply held beliefs and most deeply revered figures.

But guess what? No embassies burning. No movie studios in flames. No kidnap videos, or assassinations. And I'm going to go out on a limb, and wager that there aren't going to be any, not over this. And that, gentle reader, tells a great deal about the difference between outraged Christians and outraged Muslims. Doesn't it?

Pastor Kills Girl

Terrible story from Kennewick, Washington: Randall Foos, an ELCA pastor, was driving his car and hit a bicylist. Her name was Sara Casey, she was 19 years old, and she died. Pastor Foos has been arraigned on charges of second-degree manslaughter.

This is an awful thing, but we all know that traffic accidents happen. Here's the part that ticks us off at the Egg: the accident took place in 2003. Foos has only just been charged because of new evidence that, three years ago, he couldn't see well enough to drive.

This raises some questions. First: Did anybody test his vision after the accident? Police, insurance companies, anybody? And second, which is more to our point: Don't Christian ethics -- which are more stringent than state traffic laws -- require a blind driver to admit that his blindness has resulted in a young woman's death?

Now, the jury is still out -- literally, figuratively, whatever. Maybe the "new evidence" is misleading. Prosecutors have been known to suffer an excess of zeal. Maybe the guy's vision was better than the state will argue. Maybe the bicylist was pedalling recklessly, without the right reflectors, and a person with 20-20 eyes would have hit her just as easily.

But here's the part that makes me shudder: If this man is guilty, how has he lived with himself these past three years?

Pro-Life & Pro-Choice Sides Agree!

After years of bitter debate, pro-choice and pro-life activists have agreed to bury the hatchet -- in Britney Spears.

Or anyway, in a sculpture that shows her giving birth, naked, on a bear-skin rug. The sculpture, "Monument to Pro-Life: The Birth of Sean Preston," was made by Daniel Edwards, whose resume includes a bust of Ted Williams' severed head.

The Brooklyn gallery where it is to be displayed has been pounded with emails from concerned political extremists. The pro-choice side doesn't like the name, the pro-life side doesn't like the subject. (Remember, they're the same power bloc that draped a nude statue in the Justice Department. A far more decourous nude sculpture, too.)

The sculptor doesn't care. Doesn't side with either party on this. He just wants to be rich and famous. And here's the Egg, helping him toward that lofty goal.

A Tale of Two Converts

The first is a fellow in Afghanistan. You know, "free," post-Taliban Afghanistan. Abdul Rahman converts from Islam to Christianity, and now prosecutors are calling for the death penalty.

Why? Because, even though the new, USA-approved Afghan constitution claims to recognize international conventions regarding human rights, it also lets shariah prevail when there is any conflict. And under shariah, as we all know too well, apostasy is punishable by death. Oh, and if the court doesn't kill him, senior Afghan clerics have promised to incite mob violence that will.

(The guy may get off the hook because he's insane. The judge certainly hopes he will. Go ahead, my secular humanist friends, make your obvious jokes about Christianity. But remember that Stalin classified a lot of people as insane when they disagreed whith his party line, too.)

The second fellow is Phillippe Troussier, a French soccer coach (or "le football," as they say). He and his wife have converted from Christianity to Islam. Nobody is calling for much of anything. Certainly not death. Why? Because France is actually a free country, in which basic human rights (such as freedom of religion) are protected by law.

Yes, yes, I know: the French won't let schoolchildren wear burkahs or crosses in class, which to American ears doesn't sound like freedom. But it is, in a convoluted Gallic way, because it keeps religious symbols, and any bias based on them, out of state schools.

Darkly funny remark from Islam Online, quoted in the article: "thousands of French revert to Islam every year in France, but not all of them declare their new faith outright, fearing discrimination at home or work and a stereotypical view that reverts tilt towards extremism."

Poor babies. They're afraid of job discrimination. And why is it that Muslim converts to Christianity, even in Western countries, often keep silent? Are they afraid of job discrimination, too? Oh, right: they're afraid of being murdered.

How Bad Is It?

Sandra Day O'Connor thinks the United States is slipping toward dictatorship.

The recently-retired Supreme Court Justice cites the increasing numbers of death threats directed toward judges, and -- in particular -- efforts by the other branches of government to interfere with the independence of the judiciary.

The money quote is:

"We must be ever-vigilant against those who would strongarm the judiciary into adopting their preferred policies. It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings."

Good God, this is scary stuff. Paranoiacs of both left and right have always warned about an American dictatorship, going back at least as far as the Jefferson presidency.

But Sandra Day O'Connor, a Reagan appointee whose departure is mourned most by Democrats, is not the Mel Gibson character in "Conspiracy Theory." Nor is she a politico on the hustings, seeking to motivate voters by the application of fear. She is the opposite of all these things: a an elder stateswoman, one of the longerst-serving of the nation's living leaders -- and a retiree from what is, in any case, the most circumspect of the three branches. These people aren't glib, they aren't facile, they aren't alarmist.

So ask yourself:

How bad do things have to get for a retired Supreme to warn us about dictatorship? And how bad does that mean things already are?

Motley Fool Opines on NY Senate Race

The New York senate race is shaping up to be another high point in the saga of democracy.

The Democratic candidate is the incumbent, Hillary Clinton. For reasons that elude the Egg, she makes conservative blood boil like nobody's business. This despite the fact -- or perhaps because of it -- that she has proven to be a pretty good senator.

So you might think the Republicans would throw their heavy artillery at her: Pataki. Giuliani. Well, not those guys of course -- they both want to run for President. But somebody like that.

Instead, the first challenger was Westchester DA Jeannine Pirro. She's a pretty good DA. She wasn't much of a candidate, though. She made a fool of herself in her first press conference, and things went downhill from there. And her husband seems to be a crook, which is generally not the way to atttract "law & order" votes. They pulled her before the embarrassment could get much worse.

So now comes John Spencer -- not the late lamented actor who played Leo McGarry, but a former mayor of Yonkers. Lovely town, Yonkers, if you can just get past the town. Spencer's a soi-disant "Reagan Republican," which doesn't necessarily mean he's a low-IQ ideologue who switched parties, divorced his wife, advertised cigarettes as a health aid, and told "personal stories" that were really plots from old movies. It does mean he takes the standard hard-right positions: anti-immigrant, anti-abortion, pro-gun.

He also comes up with gems like this: that Sen. Clinton "aids and abets" America's enemies with her criticism of President Bush's handling of the Iraq war. (That despite Bush's own statement that "it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my ... conduct of the war.")

Spencer's primary opponent, as of recently, is a Kathleen Troia McFarland, a more traditional New York Republican -- Park Avenue blue-blood with liberal social views. (Never forget: this combination brought us Nelson A. Rockefeller, of blessed memory).

So here's where the fun starts. The Post quotes McFarland's self-description in a pre-campaign memorandum: "I believe in a woman's right to choose, stem-cell research and full civil rights for gays. Our family worships in the Episcopal Church, but we are not evangelical."

Well. To hear the Rev. Duane Motley tell it, she has -- by simply describing herself -- issued a fatwa against all "Evangelicals." (The word has been misappropriated, but never mind...) Per Motley, "She's saying, 'I'm a Rockefeller Republican, I'm not one of those religious wackos over there on the right . . . she's insinuating that evangelicals are the religious right and they're controlling things in the country. Well, evangelicals are not running the country, I wish they were, but they're not."

Defensive much, Duane? She's saying no such thing, obviously -- however much one might wish it were true. But Motley doesn't hear what she's actually saying; he hears an entirely different speech, one directed against him. This is what family-systems therapists call a reaction against self-differentiation. In other words, simply by saying "Here's who I am," McFarland has earned the sputtering rage of Duane Motley, who can't live with the fact she is different from himself. This is scary stuff. It is a sleazy kind of religious bigotry. Put bluntly, in the new world of American politics, candidates no longer have the right to announce their religious views, whatever those may be -- they are required to claim at least token allegiance to the militant Christianists.

Meanwhile, Spencer is calling McFarland "a Clinton pawn," and so forth. Sure she is, John. Because I'm sure she'd prefer to fight a long, hard battle against a classic made-for-New York Republican who shares many of her social views but (a) is aligned with the ruling party and (b) lacks her many negatives. Rather, that is, than crush you like a bug, and Duane Motley with you.

But here, for my money, is the kicker: McFarland was a Pentagon official during the Reagan era. Unlike Spencer, who claims the mantle, she actually worked for President Reagan. On defense and security issues. So if you're a knee-jerk right winger, ask yourself: Who in this primary combines authentic Gipper bona fides with a legitimate chance of winning? And if you're not, then ask yourself: Who in this race combines traditional New York Republican values and genuine Defense Department national-security experience?

And who's just blowing demagogue smoke?

Disappointment of the Week

You don't have to click -- the Times headline tells all: "Advisers Say Discontent Hasn't Discouraged Bush."

Of course it hasn't. Why should it? Losing the 2000 election didn't discourage him. His own witless failure to read the PDB warnings about bin Laden didn't discourage him. Letting bin Laden escape at Tora Bora didn't discourage him. When Daddy's point man Unca Brent warned him that Iraq would be a bad move, it didn't discourage him. Forcing Colin Powell to lie to the UN about WMDs didn't discourage him. The Downing Street Memo that proves he knew about the lies doesn't discourage him. The steady stream of former staff members who either say outright (Richard Clarke, Anthony Zinni) or imply by their silence (Powell) that he combines a frightening zeal for war with a stunning lack of aptitude for fighting it hasn't discouraged him. Squandering the surplus and creating a gazillion-dollar deficit that will be paid off by our great-grandchildren doesn't discourage him. The evident need to keep changing rationales for a pre-emptive war that defies both international law and the traditions of the faith he so vocally espouses didn't discourage him. Having his torturers and secret prisons revealed to the world didn't discourage him. Having his administration called "Worse Than Watergate" by one of the Watergate conspirators (!) didn't discourage him.

The man is positively undiscourageable.

Not to mention shameless. Not to mention unimpeachable, no matter how much Garrison Keillor and I might wish it otherwise.

Or, to put it another way: He doesn't care about the facts. He doesn't care about the will of the voters. He doesn't care about the good of the Republic, now or in the years to come. Why on earth should anybody expect him to care about a few rebellious voices in a party so ferociously disciplined that it will easily silence them before they can actually do any good?