That Old-Time Religion…Again. And Again.

Oh, Mike! You’ve stepped in it again...

Gov. Mike Pence said his administration is looking into objections raised by religious conservatives after the Indiana State Department of Health sent letters to parents who haven’t vaccinated their children for a type of cervical cancer.

The letter was sent to about 305,000 parents of Indiana children with no record of having started the three-dose vaccine for human papilloma virus, or HPV. The letter encourages them to have their children vaccinated.

Indiana culture warrior Micah Clark received one of those letters (having evidently decided not to protect his own 14-year-old daughter against HPV) and immediately sounded the alarm–not against the disease, but against the “intrusiveness” of the Department of Health. How dare they advise about children’s health!

The vaccination prevents the most common types of HPV, a sexually transmitted virus that can cause cancer and genital warts. Indiana ranks 40th in the nation for how many girls between the ages of 13 and 16 have been vaccinated, with about 23 percent having received all three doses of the HPV vaccine.

State Department of Health spokeswoman Jennifer O’Malley said the letters were sent starting the week of Sept. 21 to parents of children with no record of having started the HPV series in the state immunization information system, which is called the Children and Hoosier Immunization Registry Program.

When the vaccine was developed, a number of fundamentalist Christians objected that it would lead young girls to become sexually promiscuous. (Don’t ask me–I don’t get it either.) Our pious Governor previously concluded that the vaccine “is a decision that’s best left to parents in consultation with their doctors.”

It’s hard to see how a reminder letter from health professionals usurps that parental prerogative, but Micah Clark sees a War on Christians behind every tree…or postage stamp.

I don’t know about others, but I am very, very tired of fundamentalists trying to impose bad history and narrow theology on the rest of America.

Recently, USA Today carried a story about something called the Congressional Prayer Caucus. Led by Rep. Randy Forbes (R-VA), the Caucus, which is taxpayer-funded, is part of a  group called the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation, coincidentally headquartered in a building owned by Forbes that also houses his campaign office.

The CPC wants “In God We Trust” signs and Ten Commandments monuments in public places, they want prayer to be part of government activities, and they defend gay-bashing chaplains in the military. The CPC criticized President Obama for referring to E Pluribus Unum as the American motto, and advocates removing Establishment Clause cases from the jurisdiction of federal courts.

It isn’t a small group, either. According to David Niose, at one point the CPC had 100 members.

If that isn’t enough to terrify those of us who reside in the 21st Century, take a look at this recent poll, reported by Dailykos. 

Nationwide, more than a third of Republicans say that Islam should be illegal in the United States, according to a new PPP poll provided exclusively to Daily Kos Elections. Nearly half—a 44 percent plurality—say Christianity should be our official religion.

Those are the Republicans who elected Mike Pence, and those are the voters who will cast their ballots to retain him.

The American Taliban.

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We Should All Listen to Bernie Sanders About This

I do not expect Bernie Sanders to be the Democratic nominee, likable as he is.

But Sanders’ candidacy is more important than his prospects, because he has fearlessly identified many of the issues we Americans should be addressing–and many of them are problems that far too few of us are addressing. As a consequence, he has shaken Hillary Clinton out of her typically cautious–some would say calculating–approach, and made her a far better candidate.

In a recent interview with Jimmy Kimmel, of all people, Sanders said this about what he sees as the “job for Democrats:”

“Our job is not just to defeat Republicans, our job is to revitalize American democracy, bring people who have given up on the political system back into the system, and create a government which represents them rather than large campaign donors.”

I have only one quibble with that. The revitalization of American democracy is not just a job for Democrats. It is a goal that rational Republicans, Independents, Libertarians and members of the Green Party (there are some, right?) should share.

You don’t have to agree with every position Bernie Sanders takes, or even most of them, to endorse this one.

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Hate and Crime and Punishment

Can the law protect members of disfavored groups against hate crimes without running afoul of the First Amendment?

Indiana is one of a very few states that does not currently have a hate crimes statute, and a number of very well-meaning people point to that as evidence that we are condoning acts motivated by animus based upon race, religion, ethnicity or sexual orientation. Although animus may well explain some part of the opposition to such measures, there are legitimate reasons to go slowly when we consider criminalizing “hate.”

The American Constitution differentiates between actions which government is entitled to prohibit and/or punish, and ideas–no matter how harmful or despicable–that government is prohibited from sanctioning. (This distinction escapes too many of us; it is the reason that those “beleaguered” bakers and florists are free to disapprove of same-sex marriage–and to voice that disapproval–but not free to refuse service to same-sex customers.)

That brings us to another misunderstanding–a conflation of criminal intent with motive. 

In order for government to prove that a crime has been committed, a prosecutor must show that the accused actually intended to commit a crime. An affirmative answer to “Did the accused know it was rat poison when he put it in the stew he fed to the deceased?” establishes criminal intent. If the defendant can prove it was an accident–that he thought that tin contained paprika–he can be punished for negligence, but not for a crime.

His motive for putting rat poison in the stew, however, is irrelevant to the punishment.

Many proponents of so-called “hate crimes” legislation want to add punishment for the motive that led to the criminal act.  (For example, if I beat you senseless after we fought over money, I might face a sentence of 2-4 years, but if I beat you senseless because I hate  Episcopalians, the sentence range would increase to 3-5. We’d add a year based upon the motive.)

Opponents note that this approach effectively criminalizes the thought–the idea– that prompted the attack.

Proponents argue that these statutes send a message–that they are an important signal of our collective disapproval of bias.

Fortunately, there is a middle way that should satisfy the concerns of both camps.

When a defendant has been found guilty of a crime–murder, battery, vandalism, whatever–the typical statute provides a range of fines or sentences. The Judge decides whether to impose a sentence at the top or the bottom of that range, and s/he makes that determination after taking into account all mitigating and aggravating circumstances.

For example, if a first-time offender is facing 2-4 years, and has exhibited remorse, the Judge may opt for two years; if the defendant is a repeat offender with an “attitude,” the Judge may opt for four years.

There is no reason why the existence of bias cannot be an aggravating circumstance. (I would be surprised if it isn’t already part of the sentencing calculus in most courts.) Such an approach–explicitly used in several jurisdictions–avoids setting a fixed penalty for “bad thoughts” without requiring the criminal justice system to ignore the kinds of hateful influences that we collectively deem socially detrimental and (truly) unAmerican.

Hate crimes legislation is just another example of the cautionary adage: how you do something is every bit as important as what you do.

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Are You SURE You Want Those Emails?

When I read about this the first time, I was sure it was a story from the Onion.

It wasn’t.

As everyone not living on Mars is aware, the Republicans’ six hundredth Benghazi Investigative Committee (okay, so maybe I exaggerate a bit) forced disclosure of emails from Hillary Clinton’s private server. It turned out that some of those emails were from the prior administration, and one of them– from then Secretary of State Colin Powell to President George Bush–confirmed Tony Blair’s promise to sign on to the Iraq conflict a year before the invasion began… a time when Blair and Bush were assuring their respective countrymen that they were taking great care to confirm the presence of weapons of mass destruction and that no definitive decision to invade had been made.

The British press has made much more of this revelation than the American media, but even here, it has been fairly widely reported. If the members of the Benghazi Inquisition were capable of embarrassment, you’d think they’d rethink their approach. But of course, they aren’t.

Then, this week, we had Clinton’s much-anticipated 11 hour testimony, and a whole series of further embarrassments centered on the committee’s obsession with her emails. (For a detailed “take down” of the day’s effort by a Clinton partisan, you can read this diatribe from Kurt Eichenwald, who noted–among many, many other things–the absence of similar expressions of concern over the twenty-two million Bush Administration emails that mysteriously disappeared.)

The continuing revelations about his brother should keep Jeb! quiet, but he weighed in with a tweet to the effect that the security failures at Benghazi were evidence of Clinton’s “incompetent” foreign policy; that prompted a post at Daily Kos “reminding” Jeb! that his brother’s administration had overseen not just 9/11, but deadly attacks on at least thirteen overseas American embassies and consulates as well as numerous other successful attacks against American diplomatic personnel and their staff.

It’s fair to assume that this week’s hearings did little to sway partisans on either side. But I was struck by a Facebook post by a friend who is a well-respected foreign policy expert at another university–someone I know to be a Republican, someone who has previously shared lukewarm-at-best feelings about Clinton, and who reported watching the whole thing.

If there is one truth that has come out of this ridiculous committee hearing for me, it’s that the search for wrongdoing in Benghazi is a tempest in a tea pot. The death of four Americans in a terrorist attack is a tragedy. But I wish the Republicans controlling Congress would have spent 1/10 of the time and energy (and the $4.7 million) investigating the decision to go to war in Iraq and all the decisions made after that that destroyed Iraq, killed over 4,000 American servicemen and over 100,000 Iraqi civilians. Why isn’t that worthy of at least one investigation (let alone eight)?

I think Kevin McCarthy accidentally answered that question.

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The Real Bottom Line

Washington Monthly’s Political Animal blog recently considered the impact of recent revelations that Exxon had covered up–lied about– decades of its own research on climate change.

In a move that echoes similar scandals involving the tobacco industry and cancer research, Exxon conducted research into fossil fuels and global warming, discovered it had a major problem that threatened public safety, and quickly decided to start intentionally misleading the public and peddling doubt and uncertainty rather than confront the problem.

Exxon could have chosen to expose the problems with fossil fuels and become the world’s leading investor in and producer of renewable energies. It would have been risky and reduced short-term profits, but it would potentially have set the company up for massive long-term growth. It would also, of course, have been the right thing to do. But that’s not the path Exxon chose. Exxon chose to lie, cheat, cover up, collude with other oil companies, and bring the entire world to the brink of global climate disruption and destruction.

When does a company’s efforts to protect its bottom line become criminal?

When small businesses engage in fraudulent behaviors–the auto mechanic who lies about the work your car requires, the doctor who performs unneeded procedures, the jeweler who sells you a “gold” necklace that isn’t–we prosecute those responsible.

The powers-that-be have deemed certain financial institutions “too big to fail”– and also, evidently, too big to prosecute. Is “big energy” similarly exempt from the laws that govern the rest of us?

Does the sheer magnitude of the harm they’ve done somehow insulate them?

What’s the real bottom line?

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