On President Obama’s Speaking to Our Kids

To be sure, the obnoxious Right’s relentless hissy-fit about President Obama’s school chit-chat is mean-spirited and cynical. Still, there is a point in reasoning that all political and religious leadership ought to be kept out of the public school classroom. In this case, the imperial presidency rears its ugly head and I want to decapitate it.

I grew up in England, where public school is actually private school. Public school there meant corporal punishment, starched uniforms, polished shoes and the absolute intimidation of the student body by teachers. Please don’t ask me to explain why. I am still recovering from the beatings I took like a champ and the kind of learning by rote that still allows me to remember Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’ now and forever. I do know, however, that the President “has that lean and hungry look.” Anyway, I digress, once, when I was in the common folks’ primary school, our local M.P. came to visit us in the classroom. All I remember about him was that he wore a bow-tie and had a waxed handlebar moustache. In a prissy upper-class voice, he told us all to study hard and stay in school in the most blah, anodyne way. Yawn! Later, four years later, in an attempt to reach into our addled adolescent brains and communicate concepts beyond rote and fear, the Manchester board of education brought in Willie.

Willie’s visit came courtesy of Her Majesty’s Pleasure at Strangeways Prison. About 5’3” with a thick Glasgow Gorbals accent and brilliant blue eyes, he rolled up his sleeves and showed off his tattoos and track marks. Then he rolled his trousers up to the knee and showed off the collapsed veins and tracks all down his calves and feet, even between his toes. This interested us very much. He told us about his service years during World War Two and how he got addicted to painkillers when he was a medic serving with Montgomery in the Western Desert. Finally, he did a Q and A. We asked him what seemed like logical questions to ask a junkie. What was better? White or brown eych? Did he like Methodone? Then he told us about using Preparation H to shrink the kind of scabbed-over wounds and collapsed veins you get from shooting up. Naturally, we knew plenty already about his 'shock' subject matter. So, when talk turned to hints about the do's and don'ts of shooting up between the toes, and, when all other veins fail, in the eye socket, the teacher suddenly got a case of cold feet and prevailed upon Willie's minder to interrupt. At that point Willie's rhetoric turned into the usual usual: Stay in school, work hard, respect and obey your parents and teachers, never challenge authority, and, always, always always remember that dope is for dopes.

“Dinna grow up tae be like me, lads,” Willie said. “He-ruin is thay road tae hell!”

I doubt that I would have ever become a true dope fiend anyway, but, as I remember Willie so vividly, I think the school board was wise.

I’ve been living in the United States for 32 years. England, however, never leaves me. The aftermath of the Philby/Blunt affair and the endless sectarian strife in Northern Ireland lead me to mistrust all authority figures. As with popes, pastors, rabbis, litigators, physicians and politicians in general, I deeply object to the automatic elevation of senators, five-star generals, rich folks and presidents in general to the role of “trusted moral leader.” Consequently, I deeply, humbly wish President Obama and all his advisors and successors will reject and eschew that role, instead of attempting to further the narcissistic, narcotic vanity that is the awful notion of the Imperial Presidency. This was one of the reasons I enjoyed the eight years of the Clinton presidency. You knew he was a hustler. A clever good-ol'-bwoy on the make! Liking Bill Clinton always seemed to be beside the point. He was a first-rate C.E.O., although I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him.

Let’s face it, after Nancy Reagan’s 'Just Say No!' rants and Dubya’s bizarre predilection for abstinence-only ‘education,’ American parents ought to be mistrustful and skeptical about any notion which posits that our children’s behavior can and ought to be influenced by a presidential speech. Unfortunately, there's a small group of folks out there which thinks the notion of the bully pulpit is a reasonable one. Me: I just think that the time the President of the United States' speech takes up would be far better occupied in learning mathematics. Whether the dose of ra-ra is overtly political and self-serving or not, the truth is that President Obama’s speech will be focused around the idea that he’s a role model and life adviser. This is problematic. Is the presidency, in and of itself, presumed to confer his or her superior status as a moral role model, including chats with kids meant to influence their life choices? The Big Macher, Father-in-Chief role is mine in my house. My son doesn’t need another one: I’m it!!!

To me it’s creepy if the president uses kids as shills or props, while he tries ever so hard to convince their parents of the sincerity of his educational policies. Consequently, if Obama starts to do this annually, one suspects his successors will carry on his neo-first-day-of-school policy into perpetuity. Couldn’t we all prevent ourselves from embracing trouble if we kept our ideological obsessions away from our children until they’ve had years more of educational opportunity to figure out their political priorities for themselves? If you can't bring in Willie, why bother?

The 2016 Olympics: Little Richard Wants His Tutti Fruti

Yesterday, as International Olympic Committee officials departed Chicago after their evaluation visit, the city’s leaders breathed a sigh of exhausted relief. Having girded their loins and put on their finest smiley faces for six whole days, the mayor, his aldermen, ward healers and hundreds of other concerned groups attached to the nourishing Democratic party teat, having temporarily put aside their class, race and gender differences, are all puffy-eyed and cranky.

This morning, over breakfast, my old friend, the stalwart state congressman Davey Z, was repeatedly rubbing his jaw. “I’m sow-ah from smilin’,” he says in his Bridgeport bray. “But it’ll be wort’ it, if we get it.”

The obsessive it so many of our movers and shakers shimmy to. The dream they all dream of. The pinnacle of the thin-aired precipice they aspire to gaze down on the rest of us powerless proles from.... ? Well, it’s called respect and our leaders insist that We want it. Yes: We!: All of us: The collective We. We, you see, want it! Why do We want it? Well, because We’ve not got it. Nobody respects Chicago, you see. People everywhere respect great cities like Munich, Paris, Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai, London, Milan and New York. But... Chicago? We’re most famous for corruption and gangsters. Actually, I’m okay with that, I come from a city-Manchester-whose name carries an even more ignominious reputation for Victorian oppression of its Catholic masses, cotton mills and street thuggery. Such reputations are meaningless to me. At any rate, I’ve lived here now for 32 years, although my friend, Congressman Davey Z believes that even in me, somewhere, buried deep down in my subconscious, there really is a need for civic pride. We hope our beautiful lakefront parks, the historic architecture of our downtown buildings and a joyous, ethnically diverse population has impressed them enough to win the 2016 Summer Games for our fair city.
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For our Mayor, Richard M. Daley, after nineteen years in office, and never quite being seen or taken quite as seriously as his father, Richard J. Dailey, twenty-one years in the office, known in his time as the American Pharoah, or to be slightly less hyperbolic, the Warwick-the-Kingmaker of the Democratic Party, this visit has been the single most important week of his career. As the Justice Department diligently uses its federal Rico and Shakman Decree laws to slowly erode the power of the city’s Democratic machine, the little gentleman stutters more and more at his press conferences. No longer able to guarantee jobs and opportunities for graft to the relatives and cronies of his once ruthlessly efficient army of aldermen, city employees, park district workers, policemen, firefighters and ward healers, the mayor finds himself slowly becoming marginalized. Getting the Olympics for our city represents a last throw of the dice for a testy little fellow who is bound and determined to leave behind a legacy that transcends late show t.v. standup comedian jokes about the windy city’s relentless graft. Richie--for that’s what we all call him--like some miniaturized, personality-deficient, reverse-negative photograph of his dad, definitely Richard--thinks bringing an Olympiad here will place him on a leadership pantheon, separate and equal to his father.

All the city’s big guns went off before the IOC reps departure. Oprah Winfrey hosted a magnificent ball at the Art Institute. Michael Jordan, having been persuaded and cajoled by Barack, Michelle, Juanita and Oprah, to take up the unofficial position of Chitown ambassador, has been, I’m told, training for this as if it was his third go-around for the Bulls. The Obamas interrupted their European goodwill tour to broadcast some shmoozing for the city live on satellite from Ankara at what is about 4 a.m. Turkey time; and, of course, a veritable crew of major and minor celebrities with Chicago roots, strutted their best shillin’ stuff at Oprah’s Ball. I’m not much into cebrities, per sé, but Davey Z reeled them off. Vince Vaughan, Amy Madigan Lili Taylor, David Schwimmer, Mary Elizabeth Mastroantonio, Jeremy Piven, Jenny McCarthy, Bonnie Hunt, Dennis Farina, Denis Frantz, John Mahoney, George Wendt, Scott Turow, Gary Sinise, William Peterson, John Malkovich, Glenn Headly, David Mamet, Joan Allen: Oprah’s army of unpaid interns must have spent months on the phone.

The state and the city may be broke, but the city has, nevertheless, been repaving roads, cleaning up parks and getting support from its most famous resident, President Obama. Yet, the Pres is kind of embarrassed that so many of those locals he paid his dues with as a 'grassroots organizer,’ are very much against the Olympics. Protests are planned by many troubled residents who fear the Games could leave Chicago deeper in debt, displace poor people, destroy historic buildings, tear up parks, disturb migratory birds and even ruin summer yachting plans. I, personally, am not really very interested in how yachters really feel. Still, ironically, just as the interested parties with tenuous connective ties to the Democratic party have made common cause to lobby for the Olympics, so too will the groups who benefit from preventing it from ever taking place. Only five months after winning the election, the party’s loyalist machine finds itself up against a lakeshore and north shore green elite it was only recently making love to..

An organization called No Games Chicago, which has drawn sizable crowds to public meetings and other events, protested daily outside the bid committee's office and held a “Bike Ride Against the Games." Still, outside the Muffy and Buffy set, a separate group of community and labor organizations protested also. They are not at all opposed to the Olympics, per sé, they say, but, are, they insist, going to keep making common cause with the Greenies unless leaders of the city and Chicago 2016, the group of civic and business leaders developing the bid, provide “more community benefits.” The City Council's finance committee and Olympic supporters passed legislation meant to satisfy some of those concerns two weeks ago, when a ‘memorandum of understanding’ promised affordable housing, the lion’s share of construction jobs for locals and many more contracts for female and minority-owned firms. Though the legislation didn't go as far as some had hoped, Councilwoman Toni Preckwinkle called it a victory. "I'm grateful we came a long way down this road," she said. "It behooves advocates to savor their victories and focus on the benefits rather than the things they didn't get."

Many of us, however, remain skeptical about such 'behoove your" behavior. Will such agreements actually be honored? Why is it, I wonder, that the full City Council won't vote on the ordinance until late April?

The equally cynical executive director of the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, ,Jay Travis, puts it this way. "As community groups, it's hard for us to trust the outcome. We played by the rules and we were promised we'd have something signed before the IOC visit. Now ne're being told-- just have faith! Just to wait until they leave. You know, but our faith has been strained."

Promises! Promises! Right? Yesterday, having had been introduced to me by Congressman Z, Patrick Sandusky, a Chicago 2016 spokesman, Richie Daley laid on the charm thickly. “Lookit, the Olympics will have both an immediate and long-term benefit for neighborhood residents. It creates investment and jobs and furthers the city's image as an international destination. Investors estimate the Games will create $22.5 billion in economic activity from 2011 through 2021. It will bring Chicago to the global stage and let the world see the city in a way they haven't before," he said. "It will impact the way youth participate in sports in the city. It will create jobs, and it will have lasting benefits for communities that will stay on long after the actual Olympics are gone."

Now, really, folks, can this be taken on faith?. Normally, I really can't help but be dubious about such hyperbole. Admittedly, the beloved one, Obama, has been a big booster for the Games, cutely musing about wanting to walk the family to the opening ceremonies near the end of his second term at a new stadium that would be built in Washington Park, blocks from his Hyde Park home. Obama even taped a catchy message for IOC officials that was played at a November meeting in Istanbul. City officials hope he will make a personal appearance in Copenhagen in October. Indeed, the city's bid book features a full-page photo of Obama's election-night rally in Grant Park, and city leaders hope their successful handling of that event will impress the IOC.

Chicago has projected that the Games would cost $3.3 billion in operating expenses and $1 billion more in infrastructure. These are far lower estimates than those of Madrid, Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro, the other finalists. Estimated security costs, which would be absolutely staggering for Madrid and even more staggering for crime and disease-ridden Rio, would be relatively far lower for Tokyo and Chicago. Still, officials say all funding would be through private investment, though the city has promised $500 million in guarantees for operating cost overruns and about $45 million worth of services. Consequently, many opponents are convinced the city would ultimately be forced to throw more money into the pot.

At this moment, Vancouver and London, hosts of the 2010 Winter and 2012 Summer Olympics, are spending hundreds of millions on Olympic Village construction after private developers were unable to get funds as a result of the credit crisis. Vancouver officials had initially promised only $30 million in government funding, now they will have to look for new loans at higher interest rates..

"Despite the mayor's claims that the taxpayer will not pay a dime, we don't believe him," the actor and No Games spokesman Tom Tresser told me while gesturing a lot, like a sort of political King Lear. "Chicago is notorious for mammoth construction project overrun. No doubt, this will turn into the biggest boondoggle in city history."

A DePaul University study of past Olympics, led by sociologist Dr. Stephen Alexander, found mixed long-term benefits for host cities. Barcelona successfuly used the 1992 Olympics to revitalize many decayed parts of its city, while the 1996 Games meant more debt for Atlanta, although technology and transportation problems were actually less of a problem than the bombing at Centennial Olympic Park which encouraged cancellation by thousands and the ultimate loss of millions. "It's very difficult to study what happened in previous Games to predict what would happen in Chicago," Alexander said.


The IOC considers local support in its decision. Chicago's rivals have also faced strong opposition lately. In Tokyo, many residents fear the Games will cost too much,,displace the city's largest fish market and cause severe traffic gridlock. Still, a study recently commissioned by Chicago 2016 finds public support running at 77 percent. This may run a little high, but even independent polls also find that a majority of residents are definitely in favor of Chicago being the host city. Still, as even my politician friends will admit, the city's planning concepts were widely criticized by residents and councilmen for being secretive and not attempting to incorporate public input. By February, Chicago 2006, as the negative voices grew shrill, Daley responded by tripling the size of the outreach committee to more than 60 members, included critics.

Still, although gentrification and city overspending are the major concerns, there is also opposition on other fronts. One green group, Preservation Chicago fears the demolition of the historic Meigs Field lakefront airport terminal and parts of the shuttered Michael Reese Hospital, the planned site of the Olympic Village. Others fear their parks will be taken over for years. Washington Park, for example, is known for African American family reunions and long-standing cricket matches among West Indian immigrant families.. "They call it a temporary stadium, but when you're housing 80,000 people, just how temporary can that actually be?" Jonathan Fine, the president of Preservation Chicago asked me.

Anyway, let me close with a vision from Monday, April 7, 2009. It's Oprah's Farewell IOC' ball! Very slinky and carefully wrapped in a thick vanilla-ice cream shawl to fight off the night chill, Oprah Winfrey is walking the red carpet in some heels so high that surely her health guru Mehmet Oz, would have a heart attack. Although she's 30 minutes fashionably late, she stops to talk to a wall of underdressed reporters, Hollywood-style, before heading into a gala for visiting international Olympic officials at the Art Institute.

"Oprah,"I say. "You've got that look like it's a done deal. A sure thing."

She winks at me. Lifts up two thumbs. Nodding to about 40 protesters chanting on the other side of Columbus Drive, Our Lady of Eternal Talk and Rectitude says. "It's going to be big. It's huge. It's enormous. I don't understand what they're complaining about. It's only going to be good for everyone."

Bibi On the Brink

This afternoon, the Likud party chairman, Binyamin 'Bibi' Netanyahu finally received President Shimon Peres' official letter of appointment as prime minister. After the failure of his own desperate last-ditch efforts to gather Kadima leader Tzipi Livni's support for a unity government on Friday, Peres formally entrusted Netanyahu with the task of building a coalition.

Netanyahu insisted he had been willing to "go to great lengths" in order to get Kadima to join his government, but, after their meeting yesterday, Livni was in no mood for compromise. Having rejected the president's plea that she reconsider joining a coalition comprised of the three largest parties - Kadima, Likud and Beiteinu - Livni insisted that a "broad coalition is worthless if it is not governed by values."

Netanyahu is caught on the jagged horns of a distinct dilemma. Having insisted repeatedly during the campaign that not forming a national-unity government when he was prime minister from 1996-99 was his worst-ever political mistake, Bibi is desperate to bring Likud on board. How desperate? A source at the Jerusalem Post insists he has offered her five portfolios in his cabinet.

Livni, however, has made her vows to the party faithful. She rejects any notion that she could be a "fig leaf" for a right-wing government. A text message was sent out to 80,000 Kadima loyalists’ cell phones yesterday. "Today, the foundations of a right-wing extremist government under Netanyahu were set. The path of such a government is not our own and we have nothing to look for there. You didn't vote for us in order to provide a kosher certificate for a right-wing government, and we need to provide an alternative of hope from the opposition. We were not elected to legitimize an extreme right government and we must be an alternative of hope and go to opposition"

Livni is not playing coy here. She refuses to sacrifice her ideology, which is far removed from that of the Likud. Netanyahu's Likud came a close second in the elections but was given the opportunity to form a cabinet because of the strong performance in general of right-wing parties in general. He has six weeks to put together a majority coalition. Having failed to seduce Livni, the Likud leader promptly called on his other major rival, Ehud Barak, of Labour to join him in a broad national unity government. Yet, despite his anemic showing in the polls, Barak says he is tired of serving in unity coalitions and insists that he, too, wants to be part of the opposition. Without Livni and Barak, Bibi can put together a coalition of extremists, but it will only have a slim majority and will run into a tidal wave of international criticism.

Netanyahu's platform has nothing to say concerning the world economic crisis. Obsessed with Iran's nuclear ambitions, and "Iranian terrorism surrounding us from the south and the north" – a reference to Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. His high-pitched rhetoric ratchets up the stakes in middle eastern politics just as Hillary Clinton starts taking baby steps as the U.S. Secretary of State. Cynics say that Bibi's hysteria is for the benefit of Avigdor Lieberman, whose far-right party, having won 15 seats, has turned him into the king maker of these elections.

Goodman and Netanyahu are very different people, but their most extreme positions are mutually shared. Goodman is a religious zealot. He wants to take away all rights for Israeli Arabs and expel them all to some heretofore unnamed place. As the Palestinians of Gaza refuse to reject Hamas, Goodman wants to empty Gaza of all Palestinians. This insane political position is mutually agreed upon by Bibi. The reality of a genocidal war costing tens of thousands of lives seems to touch no ethical nerve in either politician. On the other hand, after participating in a Ma'Ariv poll concerning levels of 'preventitive measures' as well as various other doomsday scenarios, it is a deep cause of concern to me that at least one-third of the Israeli public are so concerned with the intransigence of Iran and its terrorist acolytes that genocide is actually considered a viable alternative.

At the same time, playing into the hands of Goodman and Netanyahu while embarrassing the former foreign minister, Livni, Hamas flatly rejects Israel's demand that it free a captive soldier in return for lifting the blockade of the Gaza Strip. Mousa Abu Marzook, the deputy leader of Hamas, accuses Israel of backtracking over a truce agreement, insisting that Corporal Gilad Shalit will only be released in return for hundreds of Hamas prisoners locked up in Israeli jails. "We will not change our position," he told The Guardian in Damascus yesterday. "This is a moral judgment against Israel. Israel has had moral support and legitimacy since the second world war and its propaganda has described Hamas as a terrorist group. There's been a real change on those two points - but this mass support has not managed to break the blockade of Gaza."

Is Bibi Netanyahu the one who can end conflict in the Middle East? I say, categorically, no!!! Once a handsome, suave, fit, sophisticated man of the world with an M.I.T. education, Netanyahu maneuvered his way into the Israeli corridors of power through his appointment as Israeli ambassador to the U.S, during the years when Menachem Begin was the Likud prime minister. Legendary for his huge penis, sexual staying power and the ability to wine, dine and screw hundreds of Washington women, especially those in the press corps, Bibi was charming on television, and, although slightly hawkish in his politics, he was always amenable to discussing hopes of a Palestinian homeland with the likes of Ted Koppel and Dan Rather on the U.S. networks.

When Menachem Begin stepped down as prime minister after the death of his wife, Netanyahu became the anointed one. Unfortunately, as prime minister, Bibi's penchant for sex and corruption multiplied out of all proportion. Bribery is not frowned upon in Israeli society. All transactions seem to be accompanied by a nod, a wink and a fistful of dollars instead of shekels. Yet, the level of overt greed during Netanyahu's administration rose to unmanageable proportions. No female was safe in the vicinity of Bibi or his hand-picked cabinet. The scandal finally broke in 1997 when Bibi's wife, tired of ever being the cuckold, broke down and contacted her journalist friends. As a result, various kiss-and-tell stories appeared in newspapers around the world, a scandal too specific and too sleazy for even an open-minded cosmopolitan Israeli public to deal with.

Disgraced, Netanyahu stayed out of the public eye and kept a low profile. The Israeli public, however, are very forgiving, particularly in Bibi's case as he was doing what my friend Eli says is "what any Israeli male would do if he was in his position." Nowadays Bibi is fat and sassy. His once conservative rhetoric now skirts the borderline of racism concerning Iran and the Palestinians. There is no doubt that he will be able to form a cabinet. It is, of course, impossible to know if he will be reckless enough to attack Iran's nuclear facilities without the tacit agreement of the new Obama administration. Should he be crazy enough to do this, all bets are off as to what happens next in the Middle East.

As for Tzipi Livni, the possibility of decades in power awaits her if she waits patiently for Netanyahu to hang himself. The vegetarian daughter of two Polish-born Irgun freedom fighters, she is a bootstrap Sabra. Educated at Bir-Zeit University, after doing her military service, Livni spent more than a decade as a Mossad officer, working underground for two years in Lebanon during the civil war. The Mossad is the ultimate boys' club in a macho country. Yet she succeeded. Consequently, to succeed in both the Mossad and the ruthless cauldron that is the Knesset before being picked out for her brilliance by the former prime minister, Ariel Sharon, and made foreign minister, means Tzipporah Malka Livni is made of the right stuff. Benyamin Netanyahu is intellectually overmatched by her.

At this moment, the Israeli public still refuses to accept the intransigence of Hamas and feels the last Olmert government should not have made its two short wars and subsequent truces so easily. The detritus of any new conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah will see Israel face a lose/lose scenario, no matter what. A right-wing coalition, according to some conservative fantasies, especially the likes of Elliot Abrams and Richard Perle in the U.S., might be just the ticket to intimidate Hamas to sit down at the table. Having eaten our collective humble pie after 9/11 and two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Americans ought to show due diligence and tread lightly in the Negev. Provided Netanyahu is not insane enough to attack Iran and turn Israel into the world's Typhoid Mary. If anyone can sit down at a table with Mousa Abu Marzook, Khaled Mashael, Ismael Haniyah and Mahmoud Zahar, the leadership of Hamas, and then, ultimately, their mullah masters in Tehran, it's her. For now Tzipi just has to out wait Bibi's fat ass.

Dubya Wanna Beism

This week in San Francisco you’ll be hard pressed to discern the Obama administration from its predecessor. This case involves five men suing a Boeing subsidiary, Jeppesen Data Plan, claiming that it was instrumental for their extraordinary rendition and repeated torture during the Bush administration. Directly after the suit was filed, the Bush Justice Department invoked the state secrets privilege, arguing that the case needed to be dismissed because of its risk to national security. A lower court judge agreed. Naturally, the plaintiffs appealed.

Arguments were heard before a panel of the San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. Surprisingly, lawyers from the Obama Justice Department said they were adhering to the state-secrets defense. Shrill howls of condemnation from civil liberties advocates are already being heard loud and clear. In the course of the campaign, President Obama had pledged to undo the Bush administration's secretive policies; yet, given his first opportunity to reverse policy, the President has embraced his predecessor's approach. The Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. and the Justice Department decided that no part of the case could be litigated without risking a national security leak. They could actually be right, but who can say because all of the case’s relevant issues are based on classified information. Consequently, if the executive branch institutionally errs on the side of nondisclosure then the judicial review in such cases becomes so circumscribed that it is impossible for justice to be done.

Thank God for Teddy Kennedy, my friends. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) has reintroduced legislation that will theoretically protect the president's authority to defend national security interests while giving plaintiffs a fighting chance in court. This bill will allow judges to privately review information which the government asserts is too sensitive for publication or public dissemination. A judge would also own the ability to appoint a specialist with the security clearance and intelligence expertise to perform the review. This would allow a plaintiff's lawyer (once again with appropriate security clearances) to review information the court deemed not having fallen under the state-secrets claim. Material considered too sensitive for direct review could, Senator Kennedy believes, be made available in an unclassified summary. At the same time, judges could still choose to exclude evidence or dismiss the case. Both sides would then have the right to immediately appeal.

The issues surrounding rendition and torture are too numerous to discuss here. Too many errors of omission and arrogance were committed by the previous administration in the name of Homeland Security. I am not one of those whose mouths froth at the idea of torture utilized as an instrument of statecraft. Complex issues ought not to be discussed in the foggy gray haze of battle between black and white absolutes. I will not, however, stand by while any administration attempts to abrogate citizen rights without due process.

It will serve the public for us all to keep up our vigilance. Mr. Holder animatedly insisted that he would carefully review the executive branch's use of the state-secrets doctrine to ensure that it was being invoked in accordance with law during his confirmation hearings. The democratic process needs to be kept in action. The Obama administration has to walk its talk and not attempt any sleight of hand to mask or hide any unsavory episodes from the public. We trust that Mr. Holder will not be as knee-jerk or blithe about invoking the shield as previous administrations. Trust in matters as important as this one will not be easily forthcoming from any concerned side.

FAITH, NO MORE

Barack Obama made a firm campaign promise. He pledged to keep up President Bush’s faith-based office in the White House, but with a caveat. Any group receiving federal money would no longer be allowed the option of discriminating in hiring on the basis of religion. Yesterday, however, as he disclosed the details of his 'brand-new' initiative, it became clear that has left the whole Bush policy in place.

I am very angry. I really don’t want to think of myself as a card-carrying Civil Libertarian. I am what I like to call a gray-area democrat. I’m always open to an exchange of ideas, but I strongly felt that Dubya’s executive order of 2002 took the public goodwill he owned at the time because of 9/11 a step too far. Let’s not pussyfoot around this, Barack. Tell me how it is ever okay to discriminate? Are you offended by the very idea of discrimination or are you not? Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's. When everybody piled on you about the Reverend Jeremiah A.Wright and his notion of racial and religious apartheid, I stood by you. You were not him, I insisted. Unless you chose to jump in the fire holding his hand. Well, metaphorically at least, you just went and did it!

Thursday’s speech pleased many of the religious conservatives who owned George Bush. “I am very excited about this,” said the former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, Frank Page. Page is one of 24 cherry-picked religious leaders chosen as an advice council for the White House. He put it this way: “I know he was struggling with this particular issue. But this will allow religious groups to be true to themselves.”

At the same time, executing some very fancy footwork, Obama insisted that he would seek counsel from the Justice Department if questions arose about the legal standing of individual grant recipients. Essentially, Obama’s executive order, which never once mentions discrimination in specific terms, allows the White House the chance to hum and ha over every specific grant, wet its collective finger, hold up that finger and see which way the breeze is blowing. In other words, Obama’s administration is keeping Bush’s policy 100% in place.

Of course, the White House spokeswoman, Jennifer Psaki, charmingly rejected any notion that the President was reversing himself on a campaign promise. The new executive order, according to Ms. Psaki, “strengthens the constitutional and legal footing of the faith-based office and helps provide a mechanism to address difficult legal issues. On contentious issues like hiring, the president found that one of the problems of the previous initiative was that tough questions were decided without appropriate consultation.”

Religious groups such as Catholic Charities and Salvation Army have long received government money, but Bush’s credo was that the faith-based office was meant to direct federal dollars to smaller religious organizations, charities and churches. Any fool knows that the Bush initiative was a tool to flirt with and court influential pastors in important states. The hiring issue was a bitterly fought point of conflict between Bush and the Democrats. Thus, in 2002, Bush’s executive order allowed the award of multiple federal grants to organizations which hired only people of like-minded religions. Supporters, of course, defended Bush’s policy by vehemently arguing that supporters of any religious group could not operate according to its tenets if it were forced to hire non-believers.

Yet, in July, Obama himself singled out the policy in a speech. "If you get a federal grant, you can't use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can't discriminate against them -- or against the people you hire -- on the basis of their religion." Unfortunately, having won the election, Obama and his transition team were instantaneously lobbied by an army of religious conservatives. Well, there was that, of course, but there's also the reality that Barack's campaign was driven by hundreds of thousands of individual donations like never before. The logical extension of this, naturally, is the potential millions that can be raised for the 2012 war chest from individual churchgoers as a byproduct of shmoozing tens of millions of believers.

The Reverend Joshua DuBois, who led religious outreach efforts for Obama's campaign, has refused to discuss whether the new administration will retain Bush's executive order. Along with the well organized Southern Baptist Convention, the marine corps of the Right, one of the other major power brokers is Richard Stearns, president of World Vision, a Christian service organization based in Washington state. They’ve been quiet in public so far, but another powerful council member, the Rev. Jim Wallis, head of the liberal evangelical group Sojourners, and a strong supporter of the Bush policy, said the faith leaders were told on Thursday by Obama that "there would not be significant changes in the near term."

I believe that the President Obama has erred in not revoking the Bush policy. Doesn’t it seem deeply ironic that the first black president is cynically keeping in place a policy that embraces discrimination? We would all be wise to recall Aldous Huxley's ringing admonition: History reveals the Church and the State as a pair of indispenable Molochs. They protect their worshipping subjects, only to enslave and destroy them.