The Bosque Boys

Can't anybody play this game?

Tax problems, tax problems, tax problems. Obama's process for nominations seems even more incompetent than Jerry Jones on draft day.

Here is another good one: David Ogden for Deputy Attorney General. The man has argued against anti-pornography filters at public libraries and other cases for pornographers, plus pro-abortion advocacy.

Seems to me that Obama needs to raise hell with his vetting group, fire some folks, and bring in competent people for his nominations team.

Wizbang has more.

According to this report in CQ Politics

The director of the Census Bureau will report directly to the White House and not the secretary of Commerce, according to a senior White House official.

The decision came after black and Hispanic leaders raised questions about Commerce Secretary nominee Judd Gregg ’s commitment to funding the census.

What could possibly go wrong in bringing the 2010 Census more under the control of a White House Administration with ties to ACORN?

My guess is that we will see another push to create the decadal census numbers used for Congressional apportionment based on models, rather than hard numbers. In the past the claim has been made that the Census Bureau regularly undercounts urban areas and minorities. To make up for this supposed shortfall, it has been advocated that estimated numbers be used. Here is a PBS NewsHour segment from 2001.

Sounds like a way to strengthen Democrat representation at the state and federal level.

No difference. We could have gotten this Nancy Pelosi stimulus from President Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, or John Edwards. Nothing original about scare tactics and name calling.

It was a wonderful couple of weeks to imagine a new day. It was fun to believe in a post-partisan transformational leader for a fortnight.

I deserve all the clucking coming my way from my conservative friends.

Fact: Barack Obama possesses a world-class intellect and appears to be one of the coolest political operators to ever sit behind a desk in the Oval Office.

Fact: the President has assembled a "best and the brightest" caliber team of economic advisers.

Fact: we face an economic day of reckoning in which government action is undeniably necessary to avoid cataclysm.

Question: how in Heaven's name did Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Charlie Rangel, and the balance of the usual Left Coast liberal suspects draw the assignment to write the trillion-dollar stimulus package?

I have been holding my fire, waiting patiently and confidently for the "miracle in the Upper Chamber," in which the new President quietly goes bipartisan and deftly disposes of the Pelosi abomination. But we are getting a bit close to the edge. The new rhetoric from the White House is a bit scary.

If we come out of here, in the face of this national crisis, with nothing more than an anachronistic big-spending, big-government, 1960s-style liberal appropriations package, with some added anti-Republican class warfare rhetoric as the icing on top, I will be crushed--and mad.

I know this is early--but it is not too soon to assert that President Obama is at a major crossroads. The content of this massive stimulus bill will determine the character of his administration and the future course of the United States of America. Good God, I hope he gets this right.

Millard Fuller, the man who founded Habitat for Humanity and whose name was synonymous with volunteer faith-based efforts to build houses for the poor, died suddenly Tuesday after a brief illness.

Fuller, 74, had suffered from a chest cold in recent weeks, said Holly Chapman, vice president of communications and development of the Fuller Center for Housing in Americus, Ga.

"He just took a turn for the worse last night," she said.

Story here from Christianity Today.

Fuller became a millionaire before he turned 30, then gave up his wealth to joing Koinonia Farm, a Christian communal farm in Georgia. He then created Habitat for Humanity in an effort to house the poor.

One of the things I have admired about Habitat, is that the recipient of the house must also labor, putting in a specified number of hours of "sweat equity." Helping people to help themselves is theologically, biblically, and psychologically, superior to giving people things.

People helping people help themselves; Community created by community, not by government.

The Gallup people are releasing on their web site some 2008 data broken down by state. Included are political party affiliation, and the importance of religion.

Adults esponding positively to the question "Is religion an important part of your daily life?" :

TOP TEN
Mississippi 85%
Alabama 82%
South Carolina 80%
Tennessee 79%
Louisiana 78%
Arkansas 78%
Georgia 76%
North Carolina 76%
Oklahoma 75%
Kentucky, Texas (tie) 74%

BOTTOM TEN
Vermont 42%
New Hampshire 46%
Maine 48%
Massachusetts 48%
Alaska 51%
Washington 52%
Oregon 53%
Rhode Island 53%
Nevada 54%
Connecticut 55%

No real surprises here. I myself put more emphasis on measured behaviors such as church attendance and giving, but I think this poll has value in a general way. One thing that stands out to me is how high the positive responses were in the bottom ten states. By the standard of Western Europe, even Vermont would seem a hotbed of religious fanaticism.

Here are the top and bottom ten Democrat Party states with the Dem party advantage

TOP DEMOCRAT STATES
District of Columbia 75%
Rhode Island 37%
Massachusetts 34%
Hawaii 34%
Vermont 33%
New York 27%
Connecticut 26%
Maryland 26%
Illinois 24%
Delaware 23%

BOTTOM DEMOCRAT STATES (or, top Republican states)
Utah -23%
Wyoming -20%
Idaho -15%
Alaska -11%
Nebraska -7%
Kansas -2%
Alabama -1%
Arizona 0
South Carolina 0
3-way tie 1

No real surprises. Note that the Top and Bottom Ten in each category have a slight correlation. None of the Top Ten states on the importance of religion is a Top Ten Democrat state, and two are Top Ten Republican states. None of the Bottom Ten on the importance of religion is a Top Ten Republican state, and four are Top Ten Democrat states.

Programming Note:

The good folks from Political Vindication Radio have invited me to kick around some political issues on their internet radio show (listen here).

Please tune in tonight at 6:00 Pacific. It is always a good time to talk with Frank and Shane.

During some pretty uncomfortable confirmation hearings, when faced with questions of delinquent taxes hurriedly brought current in the face of his impending nomination as Secretary of Treasury, the supporters of Tim Geithner argued that he was supremely and uniquely qualified for the position. That is, with the economy in free fall, the brilliant Robert Rubin-Lawrence Summers acolyte, Bush-appointed chairman of the Fed Bank of New York, and a man who inspired confidence on both sides of the aisle, was the only person suitable for the most critical position during the most precarious financial crossroads since the Great Depression.

For the most part, Republicans held their fire and passed on the opportunity for partisan gain, quietly believing that Geithner was much better than any other choice they could ever expect from an Obama administration. Too much was at stake. Irony be damned, some commentators observed wryly, his nomination was just "too big to fail."

Now, Tom Daschle, nominee for the Department of Health and Human Services secretary, faces some unsavory tax questions of his own.

Just a few days ago, Mr. Daschle amended his 2005-07 tax returns and paid $128,203 in back taxes and $11,964 in interest. The corrected returns reflect additional income for consulting work, the free use of a corporate limousine, and erroneously declared deductions for charitable contributions.

The devastating line that is making the rounds:

"A limousine liberal who refused to pay taxes on his limousine."

Is Tom Daschle too big to fail? Yes and No.

Surely, no one would argue that Mr. Daschle is anything close to "uniquely qualified" to run Health and Human Services, or, for that matter, even that the Department was somehow essential to the health and happiness of our republic. Surely, we can move forward and prosper as a nation--even without the experienced hand and comforting voice of the former senator from South Dakota.

But there is something else. Tom Daschle himself is a big man in politics. He has a lot of powerful friends in high places. The Senate is generally inclined to protect members of its incredibly exclusive club, especially when we recall that Daschle was not just a member, he was club president (one-time Senate Majority Leader).

In addition, Daschle and President Obama enjoy a special relationship. Just as the good people of Illinois were electing a new junior senator back in 2004, the misguided South Dakota electorate was cashiering a Minority Leader. Exercising his uncanny ability to hitch himself to the right star, the outgoing senator insinuated his staff into the office of the incoming senator on the rise. Theirs has been a very close friendship ever since--with Daschle swinging early support over to the insurgent Democratic candidate early on in his quest for the nomination. No question, President Obama is certainly indebted to Daschle.

Not surprisingly, news reports from the White House have the President unequivocally sticking by his man.

Many are asking: what would have been the reaction from the other side, and from the mainstream media, if this had been President Bush's nominee?

I have consciously avoided that brand of question over the last few months. Why? The answer is usually too obvious for a serious reply. But, more importantly, most of us agree that the treatment of President Bush at the hands of his partisan opposition and the mainstream media was unconscionable--and damaging to the American political fabric.

So, it is very important to me that we do not adopt a standard for dealing with this President that we know in our hearts is manifestly disruptive and unconstructive.

A better question: what would we expect from our side? What would we accept as a fair reaction to a Republican president's nominee in similar circumstances.

By that standard, this Daschle situation stretches our sense of charity and offends our sense of fairness. This nomination sends all the wrong signals. Even as the President scolds Wall Street for double-standards, he seeks to raise his tax-evading friend to high office. This nomination--coming as it does on the heels of some other recent ethically murky moves that we have let pass--leaves a bad taste in our mouths.

Tom Daschle: NOT TOO BIG TO FAIL.

Nice man--maybe. Innocent mistake--probably. Nevertheless, at this juncture, the administration should withdraw this nomination. If not withdrawn--the Senate should not confirm.

My word-a-day of forgotten English give me wolfshead for Jan 31.

Citing older dictionaries, the word is defined as "An outlaw, meaning a person who might be killed with impugnity, like a wolf," and "In old English Law, a cry for the pursuit of an outlaw as one to be hunted down like a wolf; an outlaw. Originally found in the phrase 'to cry world's head.'"

Most of us have seen the old Westerns with the "Wanted Dead or Alive" posters.

In earlier posts I have argued that we need to go back to treating outlaws like outlaws: in relation to piracy, in our rules of engagement, and on the feasibility of the U.S. acting in the world according to modern concepts of criminal rights.

What the heaven was the Pope thinking? Such is the reaction in this post and the article it quotes and links to from Newsweek/Washington Post.

Pope Benedict's decision to undo the excommunication of Bishop Richard Williamson, an unrepentant Holocaust denier, has been met with wall to wall condemnation. Short of the launch of a new Crusade, it is hard to imagine how the Pope could have ignited such outrage with one decision.

Yet there is an even greater crisis waiting in the wings that will soon be picked up by world media. Williamson's fellow travelers -- the entire network of the breakaway Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) -- are vocal enthusiasts of a medieval religious anti-Semitism that gives the Islamist imams in Pakistan some serious competition.

The papal move to re-embrace SSPX was carefully negotiated. And if Pope Benedict was expecting any cosmetic changes in SSPX's Jew-hatred he was dead wrong. True ideologues in their hatred, their group's website remains unchanged. Jews, it tells us, are directly responsible for the crucifixion. Jews are cursed with the "blindness to the things of G-d and eternity." As a people, they stand "in entire opposition with the Catholic Church." "Christendom and Jewry are designed inevitably to meet everywhere without reconciliation or mixing."

So who or what is the Society of Saint Pius X? Characterizing them simply as raving antisemites is mistaken. They are a group of Catholic dissidents who think that Vatican 2 made a serious mistake in modernizing the Roman Catholic Church. If they are "medieval" they are so in the same way pre-Vatican 2 Roman Catholicism was, which is to say--not exactly. Here is their website.

What is their view regarding Jews? In their own words

However, in what does that curse consist. Surely it cannot be that there is a collective guilt of the Jewish race for the sin of deicide. For only those individuals are responsible for the sin who knowingly and willingly brought it about. Jews of today are manifestly not responsible for that sin. The curse is of a different nature, and corresponds to the greatness of the vocation of the Jewish people as a preparation for the Messias, to the superiority of their election, which makes them first in the order of grace. Just as the true Israelites, who accept the Messias, are the first to receive "glory, honor and peace to every one that worketh good, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek" (Rm. 2:10), so also are the first to receive the punishment of their refusal of the Messias: "Tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that worketh evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Greek" (Rm. 2:9). The curse is then the punishment for the hardhearted rebelliousness of a people that has refused the time of its visitation, that has refused to convert and to live a moral, spiritual life, directed towards heaven. This curse is the punishment of blindness to the things of God and eternity, of deafness to the call of conscience and to the love of good and hatred of evil which is the basis of all moral life, of spiritual paralysis, of total preoccupation with an earthly kingdom. It is this that sets them as a people in entire opposition with the Catholic Church and its supernatural plan for the salvation of souls. Fr. Denis Fahey in The Kingship of Christ and Organized Naturalism explains this radical opposition. He describes "the Naturalism of the Jewish Nation" and the "age-long struggle of the Jewish Nation against the supernatural life of the Mystical Body of Our Lord Jesus Christ" (p. 42) He goes on to explain that "we must distinguish accurately between opposition to the domination of Jewish Naturalism in society and hostility to the Jews as a race" which latter form of opposition "is what is designated by the term, ‘Antisemitism,’ and has been more than once condemned by the Church. The former opposition is incumbent on every Catholic and on every true lover of his native land." (ibid. p. 43)

Certainly distressing to modern ears. But, the difficulty is deeper than pre-Vatican 2 Roman Catholicism. The New Testament itself speaks of a curse on the Jews, and of a blindness placed on those Jews who reject Jesus as the Messiah. Saint Paul in Romans 9-11 gives the most sustained attention found in the New Testament to the place and role of the Jews in God's plan.

It is the influence of the late Father Fahey, an Irish priest and academic, that proves most troublesome about SSPX. Fahey wrote and taught that God intends to reestablish Order on earth through the Holy Catholic Church, bringing all of human life and society into conformity with God's will: the creation of a truly Catholic culture. I myself am sympathetic to some aspects of Fahey's thought, such as that ownership of land should be as widespread as possible, most men should be farmers, family life is sacramental, both Individualism and Collectivism are devilish, and Capitalism --the "money manipulators"--are anti-God. The chief difficulty I find in Fahey's thought is his portrayal of those who oppose the establishment of God's Order: Naturalists. For him a Naturalist is someone who, prompted by Satan, opposes the Supernatural Order of Grace. Fahey thought that two main groups of organized naturalists existed who were enemies of the Roman Catholic church, and therefore of God: Masons and Jews. He believed that the "catastrophe" of modernism with its immorality and bloody revolutions was the result of the efforts of these two groups, working secretly behind the scenes.

So, what is Pope Benedict XVI doing? Is he embracing antisemitism? No. The Pope is reaching out to a group of dissident Catholics, hoping to heal a division that resulted from the changes of Vatican 2. Are some aspects of that group problematic in the modern age? Absolutely. But, as the Shepherd of a large and varied flock, it seems to me he is doing the right thing in his outreach. The official statement regarding the Pope's actions are on the Vatican website, but are not yet translated into English.