House Party

The Washington Times reports that Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida, a disgraced former federal judge who was impeached and removed from office in the late 1980s, has been passed over to be the next Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

While the move is certain to create tension between incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Congressional Black Caucus, the real story is the way in which Rep. Hastings responded to the news that he would not be Chairman.

In a sign of the bitterness that has surrounded the debate, Hastings closed his statement by saying: "Sorry, haters, God is not finished with me yet."

Wow, now that's what I call political statesmanship. I'm going to file that one away for the next time I get passed over for a job promotion.

They May Take Our Dice, But They Will Never Take Our THAC0

This morning I was confronted with a sobering reminder of the depths of discrimination that exist in the world today. From YNET News comes the headline "Army Frowns on Dungeons and Dragons."

Thousands of youth and teens in Israel play D&D, fighting dragons and demons using their rich imaginations. The game has also increased in popularity due to the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.

However the IDF does not approve of this unusual hobby and prevents D&D players from being considered for sensitive army positions by labeling them with low security clearance.

"We have discovered that some of them are simply detached from reality," a security source told Ynet.

Oh, the humanity!

Meet the Mormons

With Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney beginning his campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination for 2008, Anthropologists, Sociologists, and interested people watchers are in for a treat. Mr. and Mrs. America, prepare to meet the Mormons.

The 2008 Presidential Campaign will be the first time that such a high profile member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints will have the attention of the media, the bloggers, the You Tube enthusiasts, and the late night hosts.

Over the past two years or so, I have had an opportunity to meet many Mormons in my hometown. I was an investigator in the church for over a year, and when I was through investigating, I continued to meet socially with the missionaries. The Mormons are nice people, generous with their time and resources, and were just as normal and abnormal as any other group of Americans.

That being said, their spiritual and religous beliefs are impossible for me to believe. And before someone attacks me out of ignorance or a knee-jerk need to defend the Mormon faith, let me say for the record that I have a fairly comprehensive understanding of Mormon doctrine and theology and I know more about Mormon doctrine than the average Mormon church-goer.

Now in fairness, I would also say that the spiritual and religious beliefs of Catholics, Tibetan Buddhists, Muslims, and Evangelical Christians, amongst others, are also impossible for me to believe.

My point is that the American people know almost nothing about the Mormon faith and Mormon culture in general, outside of the Church's polygamist past. With Romney running, the Church is going to receive a degree of scrutiny the likes of which it has never seen in this modern era.

As proof of the coming scrutiny and media attention, may I present Exhibit A: The mormon sacred undergarments (from Andrew Sullivan's blog).

Mitt's Monkey Business in Massachusetts

In a few short weeks, Mitt Romney will no longer be the Governor of Massachusetts. This socially conservative Republican will step down in January and then focus on his run for the Republican nomination for US President. But it seems that even before he leaves office, he is trying to get a jump start on courting the religious conservatives he needs to win the nomination.

The New York Times reports that Gov. Romney is suing the Massachusetts Legislature (both houses are controlled by the Democrats) in order to force them to take an up or down vote on an amendment to the State Constitution to prohibit gay marriage. The Legislature decided to end their constitutional convention without taking up the issue.

Let me repeat that last sentence. The Legislature DECIDED to end their constitutional convention without taking up the issue. Gov. Romney, you may not like the decision the Legislature reached, but it is a decision nonetheless.

This is a great illustration of the hypocrisy and dishonesty of many of the opponents of gay marriage in Massachusetts who said that the Court decision that created gay marriage was wrong because the Legislature is the proper body to decide on gay marriage.

Well now the Legislature has decided. They have decided that they don't want this amendment to go any further. They have acted and their actions will kill the amendment for this year.

And if the people of Massachusetts don't like the decision of the Legislature, they can vote them out of office in the next election. That's the way the system works, Gov. Romney. If you don't like politicians being accountable to the voters, maybe you should get out of politics and find another line of work.

The Burden of Leadership

This New York Times article presents an intersting case study in political leadership and policy making by examining Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut. Senator Dodd will become the Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee when the new Congress convenes in January. He is also considering a run for President in 2008.

This will be an interesting case study because, put simply, his efforts to be an effective Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee may work against his efforts to build a group of campaign donors in a bid for the Presidency.

“Does he become a populist champion on issues that broadly affect the middle class” asked Travis B. Plunkett, the legislative director of the Consumer Federation of America, “or does he shrink from controversial issues that offend huge donors?”

It is a question facing not only Mr. Dodd, but the Democratic Party more generally as it assumes control of Congress.

Politicians know that the easiest time to be ideologically pure and noble is when they have little real power. For most of the Bush Administration, the Democrats have been the minority party in the US Senate. But with their sweep of the midterm elections, comes the responsibilty to lead the Congress.

We shall keep an eye on Senator Dodd as he leads the Senate Banking Committee and as he prepares his campaign to lead the nation as the next President. Will he be successful in balancing the needs of middle class consumers and the financial industries? Time will tell.

Refreshing Accountability

Much has been written about the Rev. Ted Haggard scandal, covering such a wide variety of topics as personal hypocrisy, the psychological dangers of being a closeted homosexual, and the rise of Christian mega-churches. But one aspect of the story that I had not previously encountered was the internal infrastructure that allowed Haggard's New Life Church to quickly and efficiently remove him from his ministry.

The New York Times reports that one of the positive steps that Haggard took, when establishing the New Life Church, was to set up a clear and orderly mechanism for guaranteeing the accountability of the Church leadership.

In many ways, Mr. Haggard had sealed his fate ... by establishing a mechanism for accountability in his church that gave a committee of his peers ultimate authority to remove him. Years ago, Mr. Haggard had asked four of his closest friends, all senior pastors of their own churches, to serve as a board of overseers. They had only one function: if Mr. Haggard was ever accused of immoral conduct, they would act as judge and jury.

Mr. Haggard spelled out his system of checks and balances in bylaws that independent churches in the United States and overseas have adopted as a model. “All of our bylaws are really set up to protect our churches from us,” said Mr. Ware, the senior pastor of Victory Church in Westminster, Colo. “The same bylaws Ted wrote were the same laws by which he was dismissed.”

I do not often have kind words to say about the actions of Christian Fundamentalists in the United States, but in this instance they have performed admirably.

With the Democrats winning control of both houses of Congress in the midterm elections, perhaps now the US Congress will return to its role of oversight of the Executive Branch and bring some long absent accountability to the current administration.

Spitzer and Hevesi

The New York Times has reported that NY Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer will likely seek Comptroller Alan Hevesi's removal from office this January. Hevesi easily won re-election to a second term as NY State Comptroller on November 7, but he has been hounded by scandal amid allegations that he violated state law by using a state employee as a chauffeur for his wife.

The chauffeur issue became public in September after Mr. Hevesi’s Republican opponent, J. Christopher Callaghan, was informed of it by an anonymous tipster. Mr. Hevesi said that he needed a driver for security reasons and because of the failing mental and physical health of his wife, Carol.

The Ethics Commission, though, found that the State Police had identified her as a “low-threat risk,” that her driver had no law enforcement background and was not part of the comptroller’s security team.

The commission also said that the comptroller’s office had failed “to keep any record that would allow for proper reimbursement,” suggesting that “Mr. Hevesi did not intend to reimburse the state.”

In a perfect world, Alan Hevesi would resign from office. If that does not happen, Eliot Spitzer should refer the matter to the State Senate and seek Hevesi's removal from office.

There is nothing for the Democrats to lose in this scenario: if Hevesi resigns, the Legislature will choose a new Democrat to replace him, and if the State Senate removes him from office, the Democrat Governor will choose the replacement.

The sooner Hevesi's gone, the sooner Spitzer can get down to business reforming Albany.