Author Archives: Sheila

A First Step

If you criticize someone when you think they are wrong, you should be fair enough to applaud them when they do something right. Speaker Brian Bosma has recently done something right, by strongly endorsing HB 1009, Rep. Jerry Torr’s bill to replace gerrymandering with a nonpartisan redistricting process.

 

The way lines are drawn now is for the majority party to draw as many “safe” seats as possible—more for itself, of course, but also for the minority party, because in order to retain control, the winners need to cram as many of the losers into as few districts as possible, and those districts are also safe. Neighborhoods, cities, towns, townships—even precincts—are evaluated solely on the basis of voting history, and then broken up to meet the political needs of mapmakers. Numbers drive the process—not compactness of districts, not communities of interest, and certainly not democratic competitiveness. And computers have made this process very precise. Most state legislative districts in Indiana are safe for one party or the other. In this system, the interests of real communities are secondary.

 

Safe districts facilitate special-interest legislation: if you are guaranteed victory every election, it is less important to listen to constituents; easy to become lazy and arrogant. Party preoccupation with gerrymandering consumes an enormous amount of money and energy that could be better directed, while safe seats allow politicians to scuttle popular measures without fear of retribution.

Lack of competitiveness also makes it impossible to trace campaign donations, since unopposed candidates send their “extra” money to those running in competitive districts. (The current scandals surrounding Tom Delay are a case in point.) The most consequential results, however, are voter apathy (why play when the deck’s been stacked?) and the extremism—left and right—that is produced when elections are won or lost in primaries dominated by both parties’ most fervently ideological voters.

 

HB 1009 is not perfect. It raises legitimate state constitutional issues, and sets arguably incompatible goals. For example, competitive districts are desirable, but it is also important to respect natural community boundaries; if these two goals clash, which is most important? I would argue that an overwhelmingly Republican or Democratic neighborhood or city is entitled to have its majority viewpoint reflected, that the point of redistricting reform should be to move away from districts drawn to achieve political goals, worthy or not. The Torr bill also makes the recommendations of the nonpartisan panel advisory, rather than binding. This was probably an effort to avoid state constitutional issues, but it’s an invitation to partisan wrangling and wheeler-dealing. 

   

Nevertheless, while it will be very important to do this carefully and avoid making the current mess worse, HB 1009 is a welcome step in the right direction.

 

For Hoosiers interested in more detail, including information about what other states are doing, and nonpartisan analyses of HB 1009, a new Indiana nonprofit, the American Values Alliance, has valuable resources on its website (www.valuesalliance.org). This is an issue all citizens should care about.

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Who’s In the Closet?

Recently, a friend of mine was interviewed by the Indianapolis Star’s religion reporter. She is president of a local humanist organization, and the paper was doing a feature story on the group. Most humanists are agnostics or atheists, and she was understandably nervous about how the famously conservative newspaper would report the interview. When it appeared, it was very straightforward and factual, and I emailed her to congratulate her on the coverage.

 

In her reply, she forwarded another message she had received about the article. It came from a small town resident who was on the humanist email list, but had never attended one of their meetings. And it was heartbreaking.

 

The writer began by congratulating her on the article, saying “As you know, most articles about atheists, freethinkers, secular humanists, etc. treat us like aliens from another planet.” He then wrote

 

“It would be nice to be as open about my convictions as you all are. However, I still work for a living in a position which is highly visible in a community which is extremely fundamental. I am a top level leader in my profession, recognized state-wide by my peers as a quality professional, even honored by some for my service and skill. That would all change overnight if I were to ‘come out of the closet’ about my convictions. Regardless how much good I have done, how much skill I have acquired, I would be disowned I’m sure. In fact, a member of the governing board of the organization which employs me came into my office before the last presidential election asking if I were a closet Democrat because I had a bumper sticker on my car, a W with a slash through the center of it…I answered ‘I am not a Republican, not a Democrat, but an American who thinks for himself. I cannot support the current president and I am obviously not in the closet about that. “He was shocked at my response. In the community in which I work, Republican and Christian mean the same thing. So, in his mind, I was displaying disdain for Christ’s little lieutenant, and that translates to lack of support for the Christian Right—a dangerously bold move.’….

 

I am near retirement, and will eventually have nothing to fear from coming out. I look forward to the day when I can comfortably do so. In fact, I plan to come out shortly before retirement. Each retiree is honored for service. By making my convictions public prior to retirement I will force folks to pay homage to a known infidel. I will enjoy the irony of it.”

 

Is there a single gay American who cannot relate to this man’s experience? I doubt it. We face a fundamental issue (no pun intended) today: namely, what sort of an America are we becoming? Are we creating a society where people whose opinions, beliefs, sexual orientations and behaviors are different from those approved by the majority must spend their lives in the closet? It will have to be a very, very big closet.

 

For that matter, do the theocrats really represent the majority? Or does their current dominance in the discourse of our times reflect the fact that reasonable, tolerant people are less likely to be militant? Unlike the shrill thought police, we are less sure that our opinions are universally valid, more likely to subscribe to a “live and let live” philosophy, less likely to “make waves” or “rock the boat.”

 

The first gays who came out were unbelievably courageous. They also changed the terms of the debate in ways that made the lives of their successors immeasurably better. How many other people are still in the closet for fear that their deviations from the prescribed orthodoxy will generate reprisals?

 

Maybe, if all of the people with unapproved ideas, unorthodox beliefs, different sexual orientations and/or minority political views came out of the closet together, we could reclaim America.

 

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Best Case, Worst Case

I am usually a very optimistic person, but I think only the willfully blind could be optimistic about America’s prospects right now. And no, I haven’t been drinking; I’ve just been reading the news. So if you are looking for a “happy talk” blog entry, be warned. This isn’t it.
Here’s what I see as the best and worst case scenarios.
In the best case, the theocrats who control the GOP will self-destruct, and even the carefully engineered gerrymandering that has allowed them to maintain a stranglehold on Congress won’t be enough to save them. The Democrats—despite their fecklessness—will retake one house or both in 2008. The political pendulum will gradually return to the center, and we will begin to repair the incredible damage to our democratic institutions, our economic health, our relations with other countries and our social fabric. Old farts like me will die off, and younger Americans who grew up with Will and Grace and gay friends who were out, and who poll pro-equality by large majorities, will take over. This will take a very long time, but eventually there will once again be an America we would all recognize.
In the worst case, which keeps looking both worse and more likely, George W. Bush will complete his presidency presiding over a Republican-controlled Congress with the endorsement of a reactionary Supreme Court. His “legacy” will be a presidency so powerful that it will, in reality, be an elected monarchy. Citizens will still be able to vote, but they’ll be voting for an elected emperor; Congress will be an “advisory” body (which is the way Bush treats it now.) Americans won’t have rights that government must respect, they’ll have privileges—so long as the President doesn’t feel those privileges “threaten our security.” The 4th Amendment will be a forgotten phrase from a forgotten document called the Bill of Rights.
The war in Iraq will have done more than simply de-stabilize what is already the most volatile part of the world—it will have impoverished us in too many ways to count: financially, in the eyes of the world community, and—ironically—in our ability to fight terrorism. If Iran or any other country proves to be an actual threat, we will not have the resources or manpower to do anything about it.
Our shortsighted energy policies will hasten the day—already imminent—when there is no longer enough oil to satisfy world demand. Bush’s fiscal irresponsibility, and the huge national debt he bequeathed us, will make it impossible to withstand the economic shock of dramatically escalating energy costs, and depression will not be too strong a word to describe the results. (We are already up to our eyeballs in hock to China; if that country calls the loan, we’re fiscal toast. Can we spell “banana republic”?)
Our arrogant refusal to believe in global warming will further hasten the melting of the polar icecap, which is already disappearing at a frightening rate, and will precipitate natural disasters that will make Katrina look like a pleasant rain shower. Our contempt for science, which has already caused stem-cell researchers to leave for more enlightened countries, will continue to erode our leadership in medicine, technology and communications, among many other fields. (Maybe the Intelligent Designer will save us.)
Okay. I could go on, but you get the picture.
None of this is to suggest that George W. Bush isn’t “sincere.” Whether he is doing the best he can (a terrifying thought, but certainly possible) is not the point. This isn’t about personality or character; it is about breathtaking incompetence and policies based exclusively on religion and ideology, created by people for whom evidence and logic are at best irrelevant and at worse threatening.
I’ve lived a lot of years—through the civil rights movement, McCarthyism, Watergate and many other difficult times. I’ve been angry, sorrowful, even embarrassed for our country in the past. But I’ve never before gotten to the point where I didn’t believe we’d get over it. I never got to the point where I worried about the world my grandchildren will inhabit.
I’ve never before thought we were losing America.

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How a Bill Doesn’t Really Become a Law

 

Remember high-school government class, and the textbook explanation of how a bill becomes law? Congress drafts legislation which it sends to the President. If the President vetoes it, it fails, unless Congress has enough votes to override the veto. If the President signs the legislation, he issues a press release, hands out commemorative pens, and the bill becomes law.

 

Or maybe not.

 

As the media often notes, President Bush has never used his veto. As it turns out, his administration has instead acted upon advice given to then-President Reagan by a young lawyer named Samuel Alito, and simply avoided that pesky “checks and balances” thing that the Founders were so hung up on. They have used something called a “signing statement,” and it works like this: when Congress passes a bill the President doesn’t like, he goes ahead and signs it. But along with the usual (publicly distributed) press release, he issues his own “constitutional interpretation” of the legislation.

 

Fair enough; the President takes an oath to uphold the constitution, and if he believes legislation is unconstitutional, he is certainly entitled to say so. In the past, lacking a line-item veto, Presidents have used signing statements when a questionable measure has been attached to an otherwise important bill. More recently, such statements have been used as a not-so-subtle signal to federal agencies about how their boss, the President, wants the law to be interpreted and applied. But it took George W. Bush to take signing statements to a whole new level. He has used them to justify his intention to simply ignore provisions he dislikes, turning the statements into functional equivalents of line-item vetoes—albeit with some nifty added political benefits: the tactic deprives Congress of its constitutional right to override, and keeps most voters from ever noticing.

 

During his first term, Bush issued such statements 108 times. As Philip Cooper, an expert on presidential powers, has written “This tour de force has been carried out in such a systematic and careful fashion that few in Congress, the media, or the scholarly community are aware that anything has happened at all.”

 

We probably still wouldn’t have caught on, but the bill triggering the most recent use of this tactic was the high-profile McCain Amendment, outlawing torture of detainees and strenuously opposed by the Administration. When Bush signed it, he expressed his intent to “construe” the act in a manner consistent with his preferred interpretations of both presidential authority to “protect the American people” and “limits on judicial power.” In other words, he served notice that he will obey the law when—in his sole opinion—it doesn’t get in his way.

 

This is the grown-up version of kids crossing their fingers behind their backs while making a promise. “My fingers were crossed, so it didn’t count!”

 

In America, no one is above the law. Just as basketball players don’t get to decide for themselves whether they’ve committed a foul, even Presidents must obey referees and follow the rules of the game.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

  

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It’s All About Power

You may think that the recent revelations about domestic spying by the Bush Administration have little to do with equal rights for gays, or for that matter, with the lawful behaviors of most American citizens.

You would be wrong.

Put aside the fact that gay rights groups in some parts of the country have been targeted for “monitoring” (along with Quakers, animal rights activists and other suspicious types) as presumed “terrorist threats.” Put aside the personalities and policy preferences of this particular White House. The Administration’s effort to exert and vastly expand unchecked executive power would be both dangerous and un-American no matter who was in office and no matter what the agenda.

Let’s review what we know: the Administration has been “mining” enormous amounts of data, obtained by “monitoring” (i.e. listening and reading) vast numbers of telephone calls and emails, without going to the trouble of obtaining a warrant. As a former lawyer for the CIA put it in a recent op-ed in the Washington Post, “it is clear that the courts did not have any role in reviewing this assertion of executive authority…[instead] an NSA shift supervisor was able to sign off on the warrantless surveillance of Americans. That’s neither a check nor a balance.”

When speed and secrecy are concerns, government officials needing authorization for domestic spying can go to the special Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court set up by Congress in 1978 for just this purpose. That court can approve eavesdropping in hours, even minutes, if necessary. In fact, the law specifically allows the government to eavesdrop on its own in a pinch, and justify its action to the court retroactively. The FISA court has certainly not been picky; since 1979, out of tens of thousands of requests, it has denied exactly four.  Congress’ purpose in establishing this semi-secret court was to ensure that federal power would not be misused, that it would not be deployed against political enemies or dissenters who simply disagreed with government policies. (Think Richard Nixon, or J. Edgar Hoover’s surveillance of “domestic enemies” like Martin Luther King.)

The Administration argues that it should not have to incur the “burdensome” task of complying with the Fourth Amendment.  Indeed, the administration has complained bitterly that even the FISA process demands too much: that it describe a target (the name is not required) and give a reason to spy on it. As one government official recently put it, “For FISA, they had to put down a written justification for the wiretap. They couldn’t dream one up.” (“Because I say so, that’s why” doesn’t constitute a justification.)

As we all learned in high school government class, our entire constitutional system is built on checks and balances. The founders had very good reasons for establishing a system that did not require citizens to simply trust that unlimited power would be exercised responsibly, and those reasons are—if anything—more compelling today. The issue is not whether we agree with any particular decision made, or action taken; the issue is whether the decision or action was legitimate, whether the applicable rules were followed. If the President is above the law, if—as Bush asserts—he has “inherent power” to do anything he and he alone decides is “necessary,” there is no law.

Let’s put this in less abstract terms. As Larry Johnson has recently written, under the logic of the Administration’s argument, if the President were to decide that pedophilia is necessary to save the nation, he would have “inherent authority” to engage in it. If you think that is absurd, it is; but just try to explain how it is logically different—and why.

Bush’s assertion that he has the power to do whatever he wants, whether there are existing laws against it or not, without the interference of those pesky courts and/or Congress, is no different from the arbitrary actions of innumerable law enforcement officers who decided before Lawrence v. Texas to enforce anti-sodomy laws against some people but not against others, or the decisions of southern sheriffs to turn a blind eye to evidence that “Bubba” was involved in that lynching down the road. As they used to say in the old Westerns, “I’m the law in these parts, fella.”

In a country without respect for individual rights and the rule of law, marginalized groups are always the first to suffer. But they aren’t the last.

  

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