Okay, so I think I said I wouldn't say anything more about Sarah Palin. But this is just too provocative:

The abruptness of her announcement and the mystery surrounding her plans have fed widespread speculation. But Palin attorney Thomas Van Flein on Saturday warned legal action may be taken against bloggers and publications that reprint what he calls fraudulent claims.

"To the extent several websites, most notably liberal Alaska blogger Shannyn Moore, are now claiming as 'fact' that Governor Palin resigned because she is 'under federal investigation' for embezzlement or other criminal wrongdoing, we will be exploring legal options this week to address such defamation," Van Flein said in a statement. "This is to provide notice to Ms. Moore, and those who re-publish the defamation, such as Huffington Post, MSNBC, the New York Times and The Washington Post, that the Palins will not allow them to propagate defamatory material without answering to this in a court of law." [emphasis mine - kevin]

He also told the Anchorage Daily News that Palin wasn't in any criminal legal jeopardy.

Hey, dipshit governor, you're a public official, so we can say whatever we want about you, you goat-blowing megalomaniac, you baby candy stealer, you spokesperson for construction companies who built your home in exchange for political favors, you Satanic messenger of mediocrity and defender of the great intellectual black hole. When you're not kidnapping children in the middle of the night for your coke-crazed Alaskan separatist army, you should take time to look up First Amendment case law on the subject. Bring your so-called "lawyer" with you.

To be fair, the FBI confirms that they are not investigating Palin right now. But it is not as if ethics investigations were irrelevent to the sudden resignation (Pali acknowledged as much in her incoherent speech), so Moore's speculation based on rumors, however irresponsible (it wasn't; she noted that they were rumors), is still reasonable. Van Flein should know better; I suspect he's attempting a "chilling effect" on criticism, about as effective as fighting a house fire with a blow torch.

No one knows anything, yet that never stops political nerds from talking (hello, I am a case in point), a fact of public life that smarter strategists know how to exploit for advantage. Admittedly, I am tempted to suggest that Palin is knowingly playing coy with her motives, leaving enough information gaps and contradictions to keep observers busy with the filling in and the pretzel-logic untwisting games. The publicity certainly can't hurt future book sales, nor can the criticism help but drive her deluded sheep into her flock. Yet the incoherence of her speech bespoke someone just not that clever.

Either way, in the presence of an information vacuum, speculation is a valid activity, even if the speculations themselves are seriously off the mark.

Now: back to the War on (t)Error.

Originally published at mooreroom.

Salon television critic Heather Havrilesky on the Sci Fi Channel's attempt to rebrand:

Of course, nothing makes me more impatient and glib than the news that Sci Fi is changing its name to "Syfy," reportedly to make it clear that the channel includes not just science fiction, but fantasy, the supernatural and the paranormal.

Don't scoff! Branding is important these days. Why, just the other day I was considering changing my name from Heather Havrilesky to SeaDonkia Fleur, to make it clear that I'm not just a TV critic but also a human being, a digital word artist, and a handy disposable wipe. If people see the name "Havrilesky" they might not understand every facet of what my "brand" has to offer, but if they see "SeaDonkia Fleur" they'll know that I'm a complete asshole.

That sums up my feelings about the last 15 years of Internet "identities."

Originally published at mooreroom.

Originally published at mooreroom.

QScribe over at Pam's House Blend takes on charges that criticism of Christianity and its role in homophobia is "uncivil."

Whether people want to admit it or not, the way Fred Phelps and Benedict XVI talk about [lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered] is consistent with the way we've been treated by the Christian church for 2,000 years. Anything pro-LGBT in Christianity is a recent development. I know there are people who are willing to give Christianity a pass on that. Many more of us are not.

It will be argued that "not all Christians are like that" and that "you shouldn't paint Christians with a broad brush." Well, I can't remember ever seeing a comment here (or anywhere else, for that matter) to the effect that every single Christian everywhere is a bad person. We are all perfectly aware that there are "affirming" and "accepting" congregations and a great many fine individual Christians. Comments tend to be about the Christian church at the institutional level and its supporters.

I've pointed out before that of the 30-odd state constitutional amendments banning gay marriage, and the scores of anti-gay ballot initiatives and referenda across the country, every single one of them has been initiated or actively promoted by a Christian group. In contrast, I'm not aware of even one pro-gay measure that has come out of a Christian group. Not one.

Moreover, the "affirming" churches never seem to speak out against the language and behavior of the actively hateful ones. It's all very well for churches to claim to be "affirming," but that affirmation never seems to translate into action. The old phrase "all aid short of help" comes to mind.

QScribe goes on to discuss the long history of skepticism regarding the existence of God and/or gods, providing several amusing quotes from philosophers, scientists, social critics and at least one Founding Father whom American religious conservatives attempt to co-opt:

Thomas Jefferson: "The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva from the brain of Jupiter."

The main argument is this: religions and the propositions they make about reality, history and morality should not enjoy a special exemption from skeptical inquiry. There's no need to be an asshole, of course, but there is no need to check one's critical thinking cap at the door, either.

One thing QScribe does not address, so I'll add it here, is the role multiculturalism plays in stifling legitimate criticism. By and large I support multiculturalism as a way of respecting the liberties and rights of people in a pluralistic democracy. That includes the right to practice one's religion and to express one's faith openly and publicly with an expectation of respect, even from cranky atheists like me. Yet when such faith is used to deprive people of civil rights and liberties, to persecute them for their very mode of being; or even to impose its view on public school curricula (Intelligent Design, school prayer, etc.), articles of faith become fair game.

However, there is this view that skepticism is a Western construction; that using it to criticize the claims made by non-Western religions is a form of racism or imperialism. Recently Oktar Babuna, a Turkish physician has taken to publicly decrying the theory of evolution as a Western attack on Islam, sending out copies of his book on the subject to schools in Turkey; indeed, he ropes in Judaism and Christianity as allies in defense against this perceived attack on the unique relationship these faiths posit between God and humanity. To be sure, scientists who subscribe to these faiths are appalled. And it should be noted that evolutionary theory itself, pioneered by the devout Christian Charles Darwin, makes no claims on Biblical accounts of Creation or any other religious explanation of human and cosmic origins. It makes its own claims, striving do as all scientific theories to understand external phenomena based on evidence, theory, prediction and falsification. (Please note that last element; the scientific method trains skepticism most intensely on theories proposed in the name of science.) Nonetheless, the Turkish government has banned access to Web sites on evolution and prevented publication of the Darwin issue of its oldest and most respected science magazine. Notably, Babuna derives much of his inspiration from the American Creationist and Intelligent Design movements, which treat evolutionary theory as an assault on its faith. As ever, the assault is really the other way around. Here is Babuna:

These two ir-religious philosophies, Darwinism and materialism, are the foundation of the conflict and corruption going on in the world. Because we all believe, Christians, Jews and Muslims, that God has created the entire universe out of nothing and that he dominates all that exists with his omnipotence.

And his boss, Harun Yahya, who has recently written an 800-page refutation of Darwin, makes these claims:

Im a believer in science. If I had ever found any hard evidence for evolution, in the Koran or in the world, I would accept it. There are millions of fossils, but none of them ever show creatures evolving. Darwinism is nonsense, and dangerous. Despots like Stalin and Hitler used Darwin to justify murdering millions.

The Son of Sam claimed his dog ordered him to go on a serial murderous rampage, but I don't think we should hold the dog accountable, should we? Anyhoo, Babuna and Yahya, as implied by reporter Aaron Schachter, see the strident atheism of the Richard Dawkins school as a direct provocation, deserving of response. Fair enough, Dawkins is not always the most pleasant of critics, and he would claim provocation by the Creationists seeking to eliminate evolution from school curricula and the role of religion in promoting all sorts of nasty violence, for which a link can be made that is more direct than Darwin's role in The Holocaust. Yet for all of this "he started it" playground sniping, the real issue is that a legitimate and working field of scientific theory is constantly under attack from groups who mask their fears of its implications behind characterizations of the scientific method as a kind of aberration of Euro-American thinking, a cognitive blip, an ideological weapon of Western Imperialism.

And, at the risk of seeming "uncivil," that's bullshit. Anthropologists and evolutionary biologists have certainly put forward some crazy racist ideas in the past, yet no one has been harder on them than modern practitioners of these fields; not only because such ideas are abhorrent, but because they are rendered utterly false by scientific skepticism, by testing the claims against reality. You want to drive a scientist crazy? Misuse his or her findings to justify your personal ideology; misuse the scientific method to prop up racism, as anyone who was alive during The Bell Curve controversies should recall with a sense of outrage that inspires the use of uncivil language. To be fair, plenty of people of faith feel a similar degree of anger when co-religionists misuse scripture to promote homophobia or sexism or any other agenda of oppression. Twenty years ago, I worked at a daycare center in a church, where I found someone had stashed a Chick comic book (I think it was this one), an artifact of fundamentalist crackpottery I thought hilarious. The priest I showed it to did not share my amusement: "If you find any more of these, bring them to me right away!" I have never forgotten the look on his face.

I feel more common ground with that priest, certainly, but that doesn't mean I should not criticize the irrational claims of Creationists or of Islamist charlatans like Yahya and Babuna; or, for that matter, refrain from holding the claims of even friendlier strains of the Big Three religions. Critical thinking is not a form of incivility or Western imperialism. It's our most important strategy for survival.

Originally published at mooreroom.

As if anyone needed further evidence that Sarah Palin misunderstands the fundamental obligations of elected officials like, say, the 30-odd percent of Republicans who drown in the water she walks upon I think Kimberly Krautter zeroes in on why her resignation is so utterly irresponsible and speaks of a low character:

If I were a citizen of Alaska, and especially if I had voted for her, I'd be pissed off. Who cares if she feels she has checked off her personal laundry list of things to do? There remains a long list of responsibilities still yet to be fulfilled as Governor. You don't quit just because you want to pursue a new ambition. The job is bigger and more important than your own personal agenda.

Perhaps the speculation that Palin is fed up with politics and/or is trying to positively spin a potential criminal indictment (however that works in real life); in such cases, her resignation is probably the responsible move. But only by a generous definition of "responsible."

Besides, that's not what she has said (so far.) Bill Kristol may think this is a "shrewd" set-up for a future presidential bid, yet what if Alaska gets hit by an earthquake or a devastating forest fire or a giant meteor? Current Lt. Governor Parnell will no doubt be on the scene to pick up the pieces and flex a "leadership" muscle. Palin will be either in Wasilla (perhaps under a few tons of space debris) or on a book tour in the lower 48. Or in jail. She will not be doing the job Alaskans elected her to do not a strong item on one's resum for the White House.

I want Kristol's drugs. Not for personal use, but their street value could send my kids to college.

Okay, I think that's the last I ever write about this nutjob. Then again, at the turn of this millenium I thought another recent dim-witted governor had no chance at the presidency, so who knows?

Originally published at mooreroom.

Friends of mine will wonder, "Where were you when all this was going on?" I can only answer, "Well, my head was up my ass, you see...."

Jeff Parker and Steve Lieber have launched their first issue of "Underground," a comic book mini-series about a woman attempting to preserve an ancient subterranean cave from the tourist industry. Things go bad quickly, thanks to hasty dynamiting by eager developers, putting lives in jeopardy. Parker is a witty and smart writer, and Lieber draws action-packed scenes with a strong attention to details, both geological and human. Highly recommended.

Read a preview online or download a PDF of the first issue. And give Steve some love: He and his brilliant author-librarian wife Sara Ryan were burgled of their laptops recently a loss that I can only imagine feels like a lobotomy.

Originally published at mooreroom.

Click the cartoon to read it full size.

Unrelated thoughts....
Today I watched several hours of MSNBC and CNN. Don't ask me why. It might be some masochistic streak in my personality. Or I am secretly addicted to non-stop updates on all things Michael Jackson, Sarah Palin, and the endless speculation about the impact of Al Franken becoming a potential 60th vote for Democrats in the Senate (provided Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd are ever well enough to enter the chamber.) Because that is all I got, despite a new show ever hour featuring a new batch of reporters and personalities and pundits. Any mention that 4,000 U.S. troops initiated a full-on assault against the Taliban in Afghanistan today? Not. A. Peep. But I did hear that Sarah Palin challenged President Obama to a jog-off.

Originally published at mooreroom.

Hey, whaddaya know - a new cartoon.



Click the link to make it bigger. And more legible.

I forgot to blog about this when I posted it to the In Contempt site. I've been out of practice for the past 2 months, during which I got sucked into the twitter-facebook warp. They make it really easy to just post links to news stories that get my panties all up in a knot, so it's really addicting. Last week I resumed regular blogging; it exercises my brain enough to come up with a half-way decent cartoon idea. But it got me wondering if we will see a slight reduction in personal blogging in favor of more tweeting and facebooking, much as we have seen the decline of zines in the wake of website and blog creation. Zines are still around, but they are nowhere near the "scene" they used to be prior to the popularization of the Internet.

Originally published at mooreroom.

The Supreme Court refused yesterday to hear a case brought by a student Bible study group against their school district, which refused to charter them as a school club.

The school refused to let the group be chartered as a school club. They cited the group's name, the fact that students would have to pledge to Jesus Christ to vote in the club and that allowing the club in would bring religion into the school. The club's would-be founders then sued the Kent School District, claiming discrimination.

Couldn't this have been more easily resolved? Like, say, drop the pledge to Jesus requirement? Open up the study to anyone interested in the Bible?

After all, it should be pretty obvious that, for better or worse, the Bible is an important literary work in the history of Western Civilization. A lot of claims have been made based on its contents that people have used to justify slavery and its abolition; war and peace; Jim Crow and Civil Rights; Creationism and The Big Bang; monarchy and democracy; burning heretics at the stake and religious tolerance; overthrowing the State and imposing Absolute Rule; etc, etc, etc.

I seriously doubt such discussion is what this Bible study group had in mind. (The price of religious fealty for admission gives a clue.) The difficulty we have in even allowing space for such discussions in public education opposition coming from religious zealots and from church-and-state separators alike (though not at all alike, I should add; the latter just want to keep religious indoctrination at bay) speaks volumes about the low level of religious maturity extent in our culture. Just too politically loaded.

Speaking of using the Bible to justify dumb shit, Barry posts an interesting excerpt on the various pro-slavery arguments that Americans used prior to the Civil War. Instructive stuff.

Originally published at mooreroom.

The fundamental flaw of American exceptionalism is it assumes the United States can and should control events in the world. As a wealthy and powerful force in global relations, we certainly have obligations and contributions to make particularly in areas of humanitarian aid, fighting diseases, and assisting developing countries meet technological challenges but the limits of our power are much larger than generally assumed by foreign policy makers and the think tanks who harangue them.

If by now you are rolling your eyes and saying, "duh!" then you may underestimate how powerful is the myth of American power and leadership. Today American combat forces are leaving Iraq, save a contingent of 50,000 troops (thus begging the question, what constitutes "leaving"?), an unstable state in its wake, en route to Pakistan and Afghanistan in hopes of accomplishing a similarly dubious feat. Have we learned anything?

A new CNN poll suggests that at least the taste for direct intervention has soured for most Americans, who deplore the events in Iran, but do not see any constructive role for the U.S. beyond tut-tutting human rights abuses. The Iraq experience has taught us at least this lesson: democracy cannot be imposed from above.

Yet there are so many more lessons to be learned. Look at Honduras. As the NYTimes reports, American responses to the recent coup are highly strained by past support of brutal regimes in Latin America not to mention more recent imperial games:

The United States has long had strong ties to the Honduras military and helps train Honduran military forces. Those close ties have put the Obama administration in a difficult position, opening it up to accusations that it may have turned a blind eye to the pending coup. Administration officials strongly deny the charges, and Mr. Obamas quick response to the Honduran presidents removal has differed sharply from the actions of the Bush administration, which in 2002 offered a rapid, tacit endorsement of a short-lived coup against Mr. Chvez.

...snip...

During a more formal meeting afterward, they discussed Mr. Zelayas plans for a referendum that would have laid the groundwork for an assembly to remake the Constitution, a senior administration official said.

But American officials did not believe that Mr. Zelayas plans for the referendum were in line with the Constitution, and were worried that it would further inflame tensions with the military and other political factions, administration officials said.

Even so, one administration official said that while the United States thought the referendum was a bad idea, it did not justify a coup.

On the one instance, were talking about conducting a survey, a nonbinding survey; in the other instance, were talking about the forcible removal of a president from a country, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity during a teleconference call with reporters.

As the situation in Honduras worsened, Assistant Secretary of State Thomas A. Shannon Jr., along with Hugo Llorens, the American ambassador to Honduras, spoke with Mr. Zelaya, military officials and opposition leaders, administration officials said. Then things reached a boil last Wednesday and Thursday, when Mr. Zelaya fired the leader of the armed forces and the Supreme Court followed up with a declaration that Mr. Zelayas planned referendum was illegal.

The White House and the State Department had Mr. Llorens talk with the parties involved, to tell them, You have to talk your way through this, a senior administration official said Monday. You cant do anything outside the bounds of your constitution.

The take-away lesson here is two-fold: Just as our past military support of anti-democratic forces compromises our credibility in the present, our continued relationships with these forces undermines our better intentions. We cannot control our surrogates; they have their own agendas, and they will use our support for their own ends, which have a tendency to undermine our national interests (however defined.) Surely Saddam Hussein taught us at least that.

Following the more violent failures of the BushAdmin, a more strategic and diplomatic school of American leadership has come forward, as Obama seeks to extend American influence through more cooperative regional relationships. In some respects, this is an improvement over the so-called "neo-con" school of ideological bullying, but it is not much more "realistic" or any less prone to violence against innocent lives caught between their local oppressive regimes and the global interests of more powerful countries.

What is often missing in national debates over foreign policy on the one side, "soft power" liberalism; on the other, "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" is any argument that in most cases we have no role to play whatsoever. That the internal affairs of other countries are simply beyond our control, most often not even our business, although quite often made worse by the covert machinations of our military, diplomatic and intelligence agencies. As both Iran and Honduras demonstrate, our past actions in the Middle East and Latin America have ongoing legacies; the chickens are still coming home to roost, as it were. As our predator drones wreak havoc in the lives of Pakistani villagers, shouldn't we be wary of hatching any more nasty chickens?

Originally published at mooreroom.