Lesbian Methodist minister in WA is acquitted

essentially unanimously, too. Don't get me wrong--I think this is extraordinary news of a church being true to its heart--but the article is a little surreal. Everyone, to the pastor who prosecuted and the bishop who filed the complaint, said they were happy with the decision. Everyone also seemed to agree that all that was needed to avow her homosexuality was her, well, admission that she was a lesbian. That, and her recent marriage to her partner after receiving a license in Portland. Yet everyone also seemed OK with ignoring the explicit church rule, declaring that other policies of undefined weight supported social acceptance.

Again, don't misunderstand me; I think this is a good and proper verdict for the church to take, if that's what they want to do. But while the supporters repeatedly expressed concern for the deep division and pain it might cause within the church, I guess the reporter was in the head when all the opponents breezed through. This was the trial without adversary, a most peculiar thing.

Is there some larger context to apply this event to? Maybe. It's a big church. But what are the Baptists going to do about the Methodists? Not much, except take it as another body blow to their worldview. I just find the total willful disregard of church law fascinating here. My next trial, I want Methodists!

Is he or isn't he?

I'm sure most of you know that for a few days now, Pakistani forces have been aggressively searching South Waziristan and fighting tribal radicals in that area near the Afghan border. Speculation suggests that the crackdown was coincidental with Colin Powell's recent visit, and the bestowal of non-NATO economic buddy status on Pakistan--status which, by the way, allows high-tech transfers. This, to the leaky sieve of nuclear technology, the Pakistanis? [this is the war on terror?] But of course the big story has been the possibility that #2 al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri is trapped in the area, which has led to such stiff resistance.

By now I have learned that nothing is so in this war on terror until it is proven so, and today there seems to be quite a bit of confusion whether he's there at all. Look at the different stories in the news bibles this morning:

Fox News leads with the capture of 100 suspects, but advances the theory that the "high value target" is actually a Chechen or Uzbek leader, since he's being attended to by people who speak that language.

USAT quotes the exact same Pakistani general, but only allows that it might not be him, while still theorizing that an Egyptian might be surrounded by Uzbek sycophants (??), and repeating the claims of Musharraf and others from previous statements that it was him based on resistance.

MSNBC runs the same basic story off the AP wire as USAT, but ledes with doubts that it is in fact al-Zawahri.

CBS quotes the very same general, but the story doesn't even hint that maybe it's not him, still holding to the idea that he's believed to be in the area.

NYT is nearly as definitive the other way, saying officials "appear to have backed off earlier claims."

Reuters goes so far as to run the headline "Pakistan Doubts Al Zawahri Among Those Surrounded." They use the most direct quotation from general Hussain, who calls previous statements by others "conjecture."

I can imagine that there is uncertainty about whether its Zawahri, but the way that every story quotes the same guy and comes to a range of reported conclusions is crazy.

Funny ha-ha

Three items of purely juvenile merit:

If you read Wonkette a while ago, or caught wind of the story from the mainstream media, you know that BC04 set up a web process to "roll your own" BC04 campaign poster. Unfortunately, for a good while they left two fields largely open-ended for whatever text you wanted to modify the sign with. My favorite was "Bush-Cheney '04...but Not if You're Gay." The crack web team finally caught on after a couple days, but the damage was done. And now you can make yourself giggle with silly slogans "Don't Think, Just Vote!" at the Fauxganator over at GeorgeWBush.org.

Just what we need--another special disinterest group!

If you're offended by a political barb with heavy sexual overtones, don't look at this amusing poster for the Governator. I laughed, anyway. The best of these are always the unexpected ones.

Have a good Saturday.

237 Deceptions

This was released by the House on Tuesday--a full rundown of a reputed 237 mendacities from the upper levels of the Bush administration on Iraq, including 55 from The Man himself. Ten of them are considered by the Democratic investigative team to be simple falsehoods. The charges of deception were given two independent reviews on the strength of each charge, and were considered misleading only as they reflected facts known at the time statements were made. (Thus automatically throwing out statements like "I believe Saddam has WMD.")

Read through the report, and I'll attempt to go more in detail tomorrow. It's pretty eye-opening; something to have on hand when it is claimed that the administration did not lie about the war.

Spy on your neighbors' political spending

Thanks to the delightful My Whim is Law, the handy tool Fundrace. Enter an address, zip code or name, and if they gave $200 or more to a federal candidate for president, there's a decent chance you'll find them there. Try some of the bigger wig names in your town, and see if they come up. Truthfully, the name searcher part of the tool did not yield a lot of hits for me. Perhaps I did not choose the right people to query for. The zip code one is fun, though. Map out your whole neighborhood for the houses to receive tricks and treats three days before the election this year!

There goes that $4 million

It took George Bush (or perhaps Dick Cheney) multiple long evenings of fru-fru banquet menus, and toadying but sensitive donors to raise the money to run the ads of the last week attacking Kerry on defense, and the minions have spent countless hours chatting with reporters and speaking to friendly crowds reinforcing the BC04 slogan for him, "wrong on defense."

All that work, all that sharp timing, and John McCain blows up--perhaps for the campaign's length--the GOP party line that a vote for John Kerry is a vote to have Mullah Omar stay at your house for a week and marry as many daughters as you've got. Having John McCain say you're not weak on defense or a danger to national security, is akin to Paul Prudhomme telling America your gumbo recipe is really tasty. Not only that, imagine that America's perception of you was--until that point--in serious danger of being locked in on "lousy gumbo."

Imagine what the principals are thinking about these comments tonight. Kerry's got to be positively ebullient about his old friend's appearance. When was the last time you heard a candidate get free media from one of his opponent's state chairmen? I know they're friends and all, but McCain gives the double whammy in his comments--not only does he debunk the entire ovearching Kerry meme on foreign policy and defense, but he criticizes the negative campaigning! "Well, Katie, my friend Senator McCain is exactly right--we DO need to stay away from negative attacks and stick to the issues, which is why I propose a series of monthly debates..."

Meanwhile, over at BC04 and in the West Wing there have got to be a few holes in the drywall and some upturned water bottles. What are the two things the Bush phalanx can least abide? Disloyalty and straying off message. I imagine straying off to a disloyal message is double-dutch bad. I suppose it could be worse, but it would take a scenario where George Senior tells Tim Russert that sometimes, you just have to raise taxes.

So I'm pretty sure I know what Kerry's thinking, and I know I know what Bush is thinking...but for the life of me, I still can't figure out what McCain is thinking. This is not a stupid or unsavvy man. John McCain knows exactly what he is doing. It's not like he accidentally showed up on Today and Hardball to mention that John Kerry is not weak on defense and that negative campaigning (which is the best hope BC04 has of tarring Kerry while a third of the country really doesn't know much about him) is bad for the country.

But forget the overt political implications. What is he really saying here? Let's stop bickering and unite against a common enemy, right? How could you really symbolize that kind of bipartisan revolution? What kind of political electoral arrangement would encapsulate a bringing together of the two parties? Hmmmmm....

If I had any command of graphical tools whatsoever, I'd put a Kerry/McCain meter up on the site. Today I'm moving it from 10% to 20% likelihood. I just can't believe that McCain accidentally stumbled on this bouqet of roses for John Kerry. I also can't believe it's just a great chance to take his old adversary Bush down a peg. I don't think old buddy Joe Biden just happened to throw out his endorsement of a Kerry/McCain ticket, either:

I doubt whether John would do it. I doubt whether John McCain would do it. But, you know, we need some unity here, man. The red states and the blue states - we got to have something to coalesce around here.

You gotta love an old establishment guy from Delaware who uses "man" like he's in Easy Rider. It's a long way from evidence or serious speculation, but something just seems afoot, and it's not just Chris Matthews' apparent obsession with the idea. I think there's a genuine buzz about it.

And by the way, I'd support that ticket too. I think the guy's a little scary, frankly, but he really does care about government and fair politics, and Christ--he'd just be vice president. A history making vice president, at a crucial time in our history.

A pretty good campaign ad

This is an effective and illuminating ad that exposes just a little bit of the confident way in which the administration almost seems to enjoy repeating falsehoods, as long as they're not confronted with them.

The 527s are saving Kerry's campaigns, and I'm not hearing much of any substance that suggests that they'll be enjoined from keeping on doing what they're doing. They're going to be unpredictable aids to Kerry, but if they are going to be as effective as this one by MoveON they will provide a significant boost to his chances.

Saving cardiac arrests

I was thumbing through MSNBC's news page and came across this story about the decided lack of automatic external defibrillators, or AEDs, at health clubs and gyms nationwide. I then found this study of health club arrests in the UK. It struck a chord because lately at work* I've been finding myself coming across a lot of material on cardiac arrest save rates, and the relationship between bystander aid and survival. The survival rates for arrests is starting to become a key outcome measure for emergency medical providers like fire departments and ambulance companies, and cities as a whole. Boston has been a leader in dispersing AEDs into public facilities, with a little help from Ted Kennedy and a Congressional hearing. Seattle is also a pioneering city in this area. It's not a piddly amount of events, either--a quarter of a million arrests per year, nationally.

Even though I work 2 floors above a station with not one but 3 AEDs on hand, it seemed like a good idea to keep one upstairs and have everybody on the floor get CPR and AED training for it. I'm glad to say on my suggestion that recently happened. Another idea I'd like to push with the new commissioner in charge of Police Bureau, is the placing of an AED in each patrol car. So I'm feeling a little empowered, and in reading the article on the health clubs I'm intrigued to find out more. Amazingly enough, the Early Defib Law and Policy Center is headquartered right downtown. Another good informational and program site is the National Center for Early Defibrillation. We'll see what Portland's health clubs have to say about their interest in providing AEDs.

If you have not been trained in CPR, please find the time to do so. When you go places, take note whenever you see an AED. You never know when someone will drop to the ground and need help immediately. You're protected by Good Samaritain laws, so don't be afraid to act.



*I do first-responder medical data analysis for a living

More on the Spanish elections

Certainly the blog topic of the day, at least in my little insulated corner of the sphere. I continued a lengthy discussion at Michael Totten's, and most everyone's page I hit upon took time to say something about it.

This came over from WaPo today, a pretty devastating critique of Aznar's infomanipulation starting just hours after the bombing. I think the key moment in the entire week is described here:

On Saturday night -- hours before the polls opened -- the government announced the arrests of three Moroccans and two Indians, and the discovery of a videotape from a purported al Qaeda official asserting responsibility for the attacks. Thousands of Spaniards of responded by taking to the streets, banging pots and pans in protests and denouncing the government.

News Hour had a Spanish anchor and a visiting Spanish researcher this evening, and I think the above quote becomes relevant when matched with this item:

What is interesting to look at the polls from two days ago in Madrid is that Aznar's party support decreased by a little, it only decreased by 700,000 votes. What is very impressive is the increasing total participation, which increased by 8.5 percent, giving Mr. Zapatero the highest support in the history of Spanish democracy -- around 11 million votes.

You can only explain that by people who were going to stay home and decided to vote for Mr. Zapatero considering that they didn't support Mr. Aznar's stance on the war in Iraq.

Two big questions for the US election have been the same since 9/11: will Bush have found Osama, and will there be another attack (followed by: what will be the public's read of that attack? Does the attack galvanize popular support and bind what was divided? Or does it confuse and sever, and lead to angry outbursts of electoral rage?) We'll have to wait for the US's answers, but we know the answer to the last question for Spain now. Both the policy failure and the trust issue were major problems for Aznar and his designee. That undercurrent provided all the tinder for the spark of terror. But even that event did not, by itself, make people get up at night and bang pots, and then get up the next morning and oust a government. It was the credibility issue, sparked by the craven twisting of tragic events for political gain.

As with every story I've done on the Spanish elections, it seems, I ask: stop me when this begins to sound familiar.

Bush finally got off the sidelines a little on it today, which is fine. And frankly he gave a very, dare I say, diplomatically worded response while chatting with the Dutch:

they'll kill innocent people to try to shake our will. That's what they want to do. And they'll never shake the will of the United States. We understand the stakes. And we will work with our friends to bring justice to the terrorists.

[emphasis mine as I heard it while watching the video]

By the way, look at what Balkenende--the Dutch guy--said about Holland's committment to Iraq after the July 1 handover:

It's good to add that we did not talk about the situation after the half of July. That is the responsible of the Dutch government and Dutch parliament and we'll talk about it, as I made it clear already, earlier.

So what he's saying here is that after the handover, all bets are off. Although Zapatero makes clear that he won't be renewing the service plan with Bush, neither man is shirking obligations through the handover period, and neither is making any promises afterward. It's supposed to be a handover, right? So why does Zapatero get the grief, and Belkenende gets a "good job"--literally--from the President?

Colin Powell gives very calming responses to the appeasement media hype. Every now and again you see flashes of the old Colin. I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop when Rumsfeld opens his mouth with some poetry about doing and not doing, and sometimes what not doing makes you have to do. For now, McClellan is the attack dog:

I'm not the one who does the analysis of elections. But I will point out the facts. And it is the wrong message to let terrorists think that they can influence policy, that they can influence policy. Terrorists will not prevail, and we must stand together and show resolve and strength in the face of these kind of brutal attacks on innocent men, women and children. We will not be intimidated. An attack on one country is an attack on all of the civilized world. And the civilized world must continue to stand together. You simply cannot make peace with terrorists.

He also says something that I think is correct, and makes the appeasement framing pretty moot and thus defeats it:

Terrorists want to spread fear and chaos. They have no regard for innocent life. It doesn't matter who and when and where they strike, they simply want to strike and spread fear and chaos and intimidate us.

It doesn't matter when and where they strike, they simply want to strike and spread fear and chaos and intimidate us. Exactly right. So taking actions based on what you hope or think al-Qaeda will get out of it as a message, misses the point entirely--they don't care. They will find something to get angry and bomb you about, whether you bomb them back or send them flowers. It's just damn rude of the US to be telling Spain how to deal with terrorism, when they actually have a terrorist group LIVING there.

Tre Arrow goes down

It strikes me as somewhat odd that neither Communique nor WWPablo have mentioned a peep about the snaring of Tre Arrow nee Michael Scarpitti in BC yesterday. Dude was apparently trying to steal boltcutters under the name Joshua Murray. His FBI prints popped up, and that was the end of that.

I'm certainly no glorifier of people who think it's radically cute to blow up other people's stuff. But that was a new step for Arrow (of whom it must be said is merely a suspect and (was) a fugitive, not a convicted felon). Before that he had earned a rather Mighty Quinn-eque reputation as a local outlaw hero. Click on Tre Arrow up there and see the bio for his Congressional run against Blumenauer (no chance, of course). Folk Hero of the West, they--OK, one guy--called him. He was profiled and interviewed in green media. And his signature moment came when he stood on the ledge of the US Forest Service/BLM building downtown to protest the Eagle Creek logging sale. That's about two blocks from my work, and it's funny to look at the pictures and imagine the scene. It made the national wires, as I recall.

He certainly had the establishment on his back (he even pissed off the fur people), and if he didn't spur a group of college kids to set fire to Ross Island trucks, he mostly didn't deserve it. As it stands, he should be thinking about a stay in federal PMITA* prison. I'm sure ecoterrorists are above cannibals, molestors, snitches and mmmmm...litterers.

Not to trivialize a man's freedom on trial, but it should be an interesting thing to see.



*not a federal acronym, more of a colloquial description of life in such a prison...

Book of the Buddy Christ

Hat tip to Chesh, via my buddy Mike Green, with tangents over to the Wombat File on this one. As Chesh notes, far more interesting than art imitating life is when life imitates art. "Revolve" is clearly the Bible George Carlin's Buddy Christ would hand out. Thumbsup!

PS--both Mike and Wombat make more serious and useful points regarding the Spanish elections today. Mike references Juan Cole, who is always a good source to seek on these types of issues.

On Spanish "appeasement"

This developed from commentary at Michael Totten's page over two threads on the Spanish elections.

Good God, the din from people shouting "appeasement" has becoming deafening. Spain has apparently placed a large "Bomb Me" sign on the front door of the country by asserting that Iraq was not a good war for them to get into, and has had negative repercussions that have got to stop. In a dramatic bit of international reframing, voting out unpopular leadership has become a sop to world terrorism, an admission that Spain hopes running away will protect them.

It's absolutely true that the bombings impacted the elections. But that's not at all the same thing as Spaniards "voting for appeasement." I have yet to see a single Spaniard, government rep or civilian, say that they voted in order to make peace with al Qaeda and afford them their gains. That's what appeasement is. Giving away a country to an aggressor in hopes they won't ask for more later. There has to at least be some kind of concession involved for there to be an appeasement. What is the concession Spain is giving to al-Qaeda? That 1,300 troops are no longer going to be harrassing the couple hundred "foreign fighters" in Iraq? Spain has given nothing to al-Qaeda--10 million Spaniards marching tells me that. That doesn't look like a nation riven; that looks like a nation determined. If the question is failed policy and misdirected energies, then what Aznar's defeat suggests as much as anything is that resources being spent in Iraq were seen as a diversion from the true tasks at hand--a view not unlike that of the anti-war groups in the US. For Spain's action to be a capitulation to terrorism, the voters' belief had to be that Iraq was about fighting terrorism--a view that I don't believe Spaniards largely hold. If Iraq was not seen as pivotal to the fight against terror, how is the withdrawl of troops from there seen as related to their war on terror? Again, where's the concession?

And really, be serious here: this story about Spain is not about Spain. The code here for "al-Qaeda won today" is "US policy lost." People don't honestly give a rat's ass about Spain's participation in Iraq. OK, that's overstated for effect, but the level of help they were providing was not exactly mission-critical, and the support of the Spanish government in our war is not something the American people and media appear to have given much thought to. This is not about Spain's fight against terrorism, it's about OUR fight, and how our way of fighting it took a symbolic blow. While reading the election as a direct turban tip to terrorism is frankly a pretty cloudy conclusion, there is no doubt that it's a big middle finger to George Bush. And that, IMO, is a big reason why much of the frothy right has been frothing in this vein over the last 24 hrs. To Bush's personal credit, he has handled the early transition with class rather than alarm, which is certainly what he must be feeling.

I'd say the appeasement had already taken place--the Spaniards decided they had had enough of it, and ordered up a government that wouldn't respond to fear by shrinking away and going along to get along. Thus US appeasement was ended.

The Unraveling

A top notch investigative post for b!x at Communique explains the mysterious suppleness of certain counsels' legal invective against the case for same-sex marriage: they know they're doomed. Both Hardy Myers and Kelly Clark filed amicus briefs for the government in an Oregon case called Division v. Rogue Valley Youth for Christ. In that case, the Supreme Court held:

"If a statute tells an agency to do something that a constitution forbids, the agency should not do it."

The precedent cited? Cooper v. Eugene School District No. 41--the same case Serena Cruz cited in defense of her protective actions.

As b!x notes, that pretty much explains why Myers recommended they follow state law, but he didn't order it--he knew that Cooper v Eugene was on the books, and he probably knew that Serena Cruz knew it too.

And it probably also explained why Kelly Clark was left to huff and puff about what the proper question was, instead of what an outrage it was for the MC4 to rebuff state law like they did.

If you are part of the Oregon evangelical right, you had better get on your horse immediately. Barriers to recognition of same-sex marriage in the state continue to fall away, leaving a firmer consensus that any denial of full marriage rights is going to have to be a repeal of them--because the chance that Multnomah's "pending" licenses will be upheld at the Supreme level is looking better and better.

Multnomah to continue issuing same-sex licenses

The county's press release is here.

This certainly is the less politic of the possible options. I must confess that I assumed the MC4 would welcome the chance to back away from process-worries among the electorate, covering their behinds from licensing supporters by saying, "Hey, we're just following the AG's advice on this one until the courts can rule." Another option that might have done the same thing would have been to simply close up shop and not offer any new licenses, same- OR opposite-sex. However, in my view that would simply have left the county open to additional suits from heteros denied licenses (although under totally different statutorial rationale).

This decision is logically consistent with the initial ruling, and while it does have a surface view of the MC4 thumbing their noses at jurisprudence's slow march, I think in the end it strengthens the original argument: not to issue same-sex licenses is to court legal action, action which all legal experts so far have opined as likely to be adverse to the county's interests. By refusing to take the easy way out for now, and framing the issue in the same terms as before, the commissioners appear to have taken a principled stand.

Portland, as far as I know, now is the only city in America where same-sex licenses are being issued without serious threat to their termination.

update: Communique follows up with Serena Cruz's statement (unlinked that I could see). She cites Eugene v Cooper as evidence that, contrary to the AG's opinion, the MC4 are duly charged with the responsibility to uphold the state constitution, and that interpretation may be required in order to do so.

OregonLive's AP wire story confirms that Portland is it when it comes to offering the licenses, currently.

Spanish backlash

A quick tour through the sphere on the Democratic Socialist victory today in Spain:

I'll be keen to see tomorrow's version of El Pais, which is helpfully pdf'ed every day in English. This was today's front page. Notice the right hand story essentially plays the bombing as al-Qaeda; the main story underneath the picture highlights the popular sense that Aznar's government sought to downplay the al-Qaeda connection before the elections. The bottom story also spins the massive protests on Friday as a search for answers from the government on how such a tragedy could have happened.

Page 2 features an editorial that zooms in on the manipulation question:

The arrests and the turnaround of Acebes pose new and serious doubts about the Spanish government's management of information on the attacks. The prime minister gave his personal word to representatives of the Spanish news media so that they would present the attack as the work of ETA.

Serious charge. Page 3 backs up that last sentence with a story about foreign journalists echoing the sentiment--that the government pushed hard to establish ETA as the culprits, trying their damndest to stick to the story as new information continued to develop. By the by, the International Herald Tribune does yeoman's work trying to provide English translations of some of the world's dailies, at least in part. Also on the side tip, here's a Basque weblink. To all my friends in the US, British or Australian governments who are now reading my blog because I linked to a Basque website, welcome aboard. I am not, nor have I ever been, a member of the Communist Party.

So it seems fairly clear to me that the depostion of the PP is a mass popular reaction to the effect of, "Jeeeezus--we've been had." Aznar led the Spanish to back Bush's policies on Iraq at great political risk, and the bombing is not so much a fearful reaction to terrorism, but a rebuke of the government's approach to it and--most pointedly--its attempts to drive debate in a certain direction by keeping developing facts subservient to the official party line.

Which make the howling reactions from the right all the more obnoxious. I'm ashamed of Sullivan; he's gotten shrill on this issue, and in the grand tradition of Charles Winchester, M*A*S*H poker player, "He whistles louder when he has nothing." I can barely parse his bizarre rationale for al-Qaeda attacking Madrid, as if al-Qaeda picks a dog in the hunt and starts campaign-bombing for electoral victory. Why does al-Qaeda target Spain? Because it seeks turmoil and confusion. It wishes for power vacuums and paradigm shifts. Nothing sows turmoil like a terrorist attack the week before an election. No one suspects that the Socialists won because Spain supported the war in Afghanistan; it's because of Aznar's support in Iraq that the country turned on him. It's not a vote for appeasement based on fear; it's clearly a rejection of fear-based attacks that are viewed primarily as incitements to terrorism.

Unfortunately for Ellisblog, he reads the 8 Million Spaniard March as a sign that Europe won't stand for terrorism any longer, now that it's hit home. That may well be the case, but it doesn't appear that supporting the current plans for eradicating it, is washing with the great unwashed.

Juan Cole, as usual, appears to get it right: significant numbrs of Spaniards are horrified and feel lied to in their raw and emotional state. They feel manipulated by the response to the tragedy. They feel that evidence favorable to the administration was hyped, and evidence not favorable was suppressed. They mobilized quickly, used the Internet to spread information and create visible protest, and showed high interest in the political elections, voting in record numbers.

Stop me when this begins to sound a little familiar.