Category Archives: Random Blogging

You’re Fired!

In the wake of the Duck Dynasty dust-up, the Chik-Fil-A controversy and other events triggering “right to free speech” debates, we get this report from Huffington Post:

In the new survey, 45 percent of Americans said the First Amendment does not allow people to be fired from a job for expressing their views, while only 36 percent said such firings are allowed under the Constitution. Twenty percent said they weren’t sure.

Answers to other questions in the poll were equally depressing. The article’s provocative title was “Do You Know More About the First Amendment than Sarah Palin?”–and when the answer to that is “no,” you’ve really hit bottom.

The dismal poll results remind me of the young man who called the ACLU, back when I was Executive Director, and demanded that we sue White Castle for denying him his First Amendment rights. They’d refused to hire him, apparently because he was so heavily tattooed they found it unappetizing. I still remember him insisting “I have a right to free expression!” As I tried to explain, yes, and so does White Castle.

If the City of Indianapolis–or any unit of government–passes a law forbidding you from tattooing your body, then you’ve got yourself a genuine, real-life, rootin’ tootin’ constitutional challenge. When White Castle disapproves, you don’t.

If the government told A & E that it couldn’t suspend Mr. Homophobic Duck Guy, it would be violating A & E’s rights. If a local government refused to zone a Chik-fil-A because its owner is a homophobic jerk, it would violate Chik-fil-A’s rights. (Annoying as it may seem, jerks have constitutional rights too.)

Listen up, Americans! The Bill of Rights restricts what government can do. And one of the things government can’t do is protect you from being fired for shooting off your mouth.

Now was that so hard?

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I Am Not a Crook! Er…Bully!

It doesn’t speak well for me, I’ll admit, but there’s a German word for what I’m feeling: schadenfreude. It means taking pleasure from the misfortune of others.

I’ve disliked Chris Christie ever since he first assumed the office of Governor of New Jersey, and decided to cement his “fiscally conservative” bona fides by refusing to allow the feds to fund a much-needed tunnel under the Hudson River from New Jersey to New York. His decision was all theater, and the effect was to screw up traffic engineering in the whole Tri-State area.

Evidently, screwing up traffic is his preferred modus operandi. 

Between his earlier “look at me, I’m not spending federal dollars” and his more recent “Don’t cross me or I’ll shut down your bridge” episodes, we’ve seen periodic outbursts–yelling at people who question him, crude insults lobbed at hecklers–that gave observers a glimpse into the arrogance of this big bully. If he had a coat of arms, it would say “How dare you cross me? Who do you think you are.”

In his rambling press conference, Christie did what bullies tend to do when they are confronted: throw someone else under the bus. He was shocked–shocked, I tell you–to find that his top aides had engaged in such behavior. He had been betrayed by the people he had hired and mentored. He was the victim.

Anyone who has ever been in politics–for that matter, anyone who has ever worked for someone with a huge ego–knows that subordinates act on the desires and/or orders of their bosses. If you believe that Christie didn’t (directly or tacitly) endorse this bit of petty bullying, I have a different bridge to sell you.

Like I said, schadenfreude.

The truly unanswered question arising out of this abuse of authority is: when will those who work for government figure out that office emails are public and discoverable? Didn’t Tony Bennett’s debacle teach Christie’s folks anything?

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Timely Reminder

I see where some of our none-too-subtle citizens have created a “Lynch Obama” website. Remind me again how criticism of this President is all about public policy…

As appalling as this most recent evidence of racial animus is, we would do well to consider an important point made by Martin Longmont at Political Animal last week– a reminder that sometimes escapes those of us disheartened by the outsize role overt racism plays in criticism of this President.

After reminding readers of the more outrageous accusations thrown at Bill Clinton, he writes

First, the country could elect Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia president and the Republicans would treat the Democrats’ most conservative senator as though he were advocating a communist revolution. This seems to be an essential tool in the GOP’s political tool-kit and it will be used completely irrespectively of how the Democrat actually behaves.

Second, that people blame the president when there is gridlock much more than they blame the people who won’t compromise. This is because most people do not properly understand the limitations on the office of the president’s power. And, so, you will get even somewhat savvy political commentators saying stupid things like the president could get more cooperation if he just invited more of his opponents over for dinner.

Truer words were never written.

As he acknowledges, the election of Obama unleashed a disheartening amount of racism. But the precise amount has to be calculated by subtracting out the usual lunacy and seeing how much unhinged animus remains.

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Republican Evolution

Dana Milbank has an explanation for that recent Pew poll showing a sharp decline in the number of Republicans who accept evolution. Ironically, he suggests that the Grand Old Party is continuing to…well, evolve…into an ever more conservative and religious party.

A survey out this week shows just how far and how fast the GOP has gone toward becoming a collection of older, white, evangelical Christians defined as much by religion as by politics. …..Forget climate-change skepticism: Republicans have turned, suddenly and sharply, against Darwin.

How to explain this most unexpected mutation? Given the stability of views on evolution (Gallup polling has found responses essentially the same over the past quarter-century), it’s unlikely that large numbers of Republicans actually changed their beliefs. More likely is that the type of people willing to identify themselves as Republicans increasingly tend to be a narrow group of conservatives who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible — or partisans who regard evolution as a political question rather than one of science.

Milbank mines the data to describe the current GOP:   86 percent white, and growing steadily older (the number of self-described Republicans ages 50 to 64 and 65 and older climbed seven points and two points, respectively).  The ideological gap between the parties has grown, but–despite the GOP’s desperate efforts to paint all Democrats as leftists moving toward socialism–the data shows that the widening gap is instead a product of Republican movement to the right.

The Republican Party is achieving the seemingly impossible feat of becoming even more theological. Democrats and independents haven’t moved much in their views, while Republicans took a sharp turn toward fundamentalism.

How much farther right can the GOP go? When I left what was then still a reasonably sane albeit ideologically transformed party in 2000, I was convinced that–as the song says–they’d gone about as far as they could go. I was clearly wrong.

The question now is, ironically, Darwinian. As Milbank notes:

As a matter of political Darwinism, the Republicans’ mutation is not likely to help the GOP’s survival. As the country overall becomes more racially diverse and more secular, Republicans are resolutely white and increasingly devout. If current trends persist, it will be only a couple of decades before they join the dodo and the saber-toothed tiger.

The disappearance of what used to be a major political party composed mostly of grown-ups has already occurred, and the country is the worse for it.  We need two sensible political parties. Watching whatever it is that the GOP has become self-destruct may make some partisan Democrats happy, but most Americans recognize it for the sad and dangerous state of affairs that it is.

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Needs No Elaboration

Sometimes, the bare facts speak for themselves.

From a recent Pew polling release: “In 2009, 54% of Republicans and 64% of Democrats said humans have evolved over time, a difference of 10 percentage points. Today, 43% of Republicans and 67% of Democrats say humans have evolved, a 24-point gap.”

There’s evolving, and then there’s regressing.

Tomorrow it will be 2014–and 57% of Republicans and 23% of Democrats reject long-settled science upon which all biology is based.

Happy New Year.

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