Streams of Consciousness, Christmas 2010

Terrorists

Although there were dozens of beautifully decorated white Christmas trees in the stately lobby of the recently renovated Mamounia Hotel yesterday, Marrakech is more a place to escape the gaudy, sacrilegious Xmas holidays than to come to celebrate them. (Toon and Mieke brought me a hand-crank, battery-free flashlight as a gift, though, and tonight we may go have dinner at Dar Zellij, although no one thought of it as a Christmas dinner especially.)

So this edition of Streams has only one thing in common with Christmas: December 25. Although I will mention that in the mad scramble for last-minute gifts-- where you are, though not were I am, electronic devices and the wonders of technology are among the most popular and sought-after; 31.1 million consumers, more than 15 percent of Americans, planned to do last-minute shopping-- but it's too late to order a Kindle from Amazon. Wii video games, the motion-detecting console from Microsoft Kinect, PaperJamz, Scrabble Flash, 3-D televisions and Apple's iPad are all going like... well the way sweaters and ties used to.

Don't expect to see any Members of Congress playing Scrabble Flash or PaperJamz during sessions, but obsessively dull tweeter-- and incoming House Speaker-- John Boehner has proposed new rules allowing House Members to play with electronic devices while the House is open for business. Boehner was once caught on the floor of the House handing out bribe checks from Big Tobacco (while the House was voting on tobacco regulation) and said at the time that that kind of practice must stop.

I can easily imagine lobbyists bidding for votes for their special-interest projects via e-mails and IMs from now on. Boehner, of course, says that the electronic devices won't be allowed to impair congressional decorum. Of course, for a man who gets soused on a daily basis and cries publicly and whose idea of decorum means not getting caught handing out bribe checks from lobbyists, this might be very broadly interpreted, especially now that the Republicans are getting rid of Pelosi's independent ethics watchdog mechanism.

The new rule would relax the complete ban on the use of gadgets like the iPad, iPhone or BlackBerry on the floor. Mobile phones, tablet computers and the whole universe of applications that run on them will be officially available to House members as they conduct business.

Members still may not talk on the phone in the chamber and are supposed to use the devices for official business only, according to a spokesman for the soon-to-be speaker, John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio. But as long as the mute switch is on, lawmakers will be free to tap away.

...The decision represents a vivid concession of old-fashioned tradition to new technology. But while the nation’s lawmakers will be fully plugged in, they will also be in danger of tuning one another out.

As the Emily Post etiquette Web site states: “Tapping on a hand-held device is O.K. if it’s related to what’s being discussed, but taking care of personal business is unprofessional. Your associates might think that you were more interested in your gadget than the business at hand.”

Mobile technology has already started to sneak onto the floors of both the House and the Senate. While the rules of the 111th Congress officially banned iPads and other devices from the floor, there has been a “wink and a nod” approach to a lawmaker who takes furtive glances at his BlackBerry, according to a senior Republican aide.

The intent may be to let legislators look at the text of bills being discussed, but come on, we're dealing with a shitload of perverted Republican egomaniacs here, many of whom can be expected to continue their inane tweeting, while others play games, and others... well, just do what Republicans always do when they get into positions of power.

Random Mass Murder Also Big This Christmas Season

In the Taliban mini-state within Pakistan's northwest tribal area, a suicide bomber managed to kill over 40 people lining up for UN food aid packages in the town of Khar today. Unlike anti-Christian attacks in Iraq (and, more subtly, in Saudi Arabia) this is just anti-anyone-at-all.

Local police official Fazal-e-Rabbi said the bomber, dressed in a traditional women's burqa, first lobbed two hand grenades into the crowd gathered at a checkpoint outside the food center in the town of Khar on Saturday.

Rabbi said the attacker, who is believed to be a woman, then detonated an explosive vest. If true, it would be the first time that a woman has carried out a suicide attack in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

"First there were two small explosions and people started running for cover. But within seconds there was a major blast and there were dead bodies scattered everywhere," witness Hussain Ahmed said. "It was very terrifying."

Last night there were bombings in central Nigeria, and at least 11 people were killed. It's an area where Muslims and Christians are fighting over whose God is better.

Although the clashes take place between rivals gangs of Muslims and Christians, observers say the underlying causes are economic and political.

Muslims are generally from the Hausa- or Fulani-speaking communities.

They are often nomadic people who live from rearing animals or petty trade.

The mainly Christian Berom, Anaguta and Afisare groups have traditionally been farmers.

Some Christian farmers feel they are under threat, as Hausa-speaking Muslims come down from the north looking for pasture for their animals.

In a separate development, suspected Islamist sect members attacked a Catholic church during a Christmas Eve service in northern Nigeria, a military spokesman was quoted as saying by the AFP news agency.

Roman anarchists bombed the Swiss and Chilean embassies in that city Thursday, seeking to "destroy the system of domination."

...[W]hile there's little doubt the group shares an ideological affinity with violent activists in other parts of the world, it's less certain that their capabilities rise to the level normally associated with international terrorism. The bombs, made from video cassette boxes stuffed with gunpowder and metal shards, were triggered by a nine-volt battery. Officials say they were mailed from within the country, using the Italian postal system. "It is a small group of individuals, not really capable of organizing themselves," says Gianfranco Pasquino, a professor of political science and expert in terrorism at the University of Bologna, adding that the anarchists had few supporters in Italian society. "To throw a bomb or put one in a letter is not that much of a challenge."

And in Uganda, where homophobic Christian fundies under the influence of American far right hate groups like Jim DeMint's and John Ensign's shady Family are terrorizing gay people and invading Somalia, and where a Yellow Fever epidemic is killing more people than terrorism, the burgeoning little fascist state is clamping down hard while the country's genocidal dictator is very much asserting himself domestically and internationally.

And in the U.S., the TSA is now taking a closer look at Thermoses and coffee cups, presumably to make sure no one is smuggling any fingernail clippers onto planes with them.

The Holiday Risk Report says, basically, "You never know."

Just days before Christmas, the White House asked Americans to be vigilant this holiday season, warning of a possible-- though unspecified-- terror threat from Al Qaeda. The caution echoed a week's worth of warnings from law enforcement authorities.

...[White House counter-terrorism chief John] Brennan's warning comes days after Attorney General Eric Holder, the FBI, and Department of Homeland Security also alerted the public to a possible attack, citing a year's worth of thwarted attempts starting with last year's Christmas Day "underwear" plot. It was a year ago that a suspected Al Qaeda operative tried to detonate explosives packed in his underwear, onboard a flight bound from Amsterdam to Detroit.

This week Attorney General Eric Holder told ABC News in an exclusive interview that Americans "have to be prepared for potentially bad news."

"What I am trying to do in this interview is to make people aware of the fact that the threat is real, the threat is different, the threat is constant," he said.

"We are concerned these terrorists may seek to exploit the likely significant psychological impact of an attack targeting mass gatherings in large metropolitan areas during the 2010 holiday season, which has symbolic importance to many in the United States," said the "Security Awareness for the Holiday Season" bulletin released by the FBI and DHS last week.

Terrorizing The Terrorists

Pam's House Blend reports that starting next week Ireland will get civil unions. The country may be going bankrupt but at least the LGBT community will be able to go through that on an equal basis with everyone else. "The Minister for Justice and Law Reform Dermot Ahern TD today signed the Commencement Orders for the Civil Partnership and Certain Rights of Cohabitants Act 2010." Much to the consternation of the Vatican, Ireland is now in line with most of the E.U., where anti-gay discrimination is not tolerated.

Streams Of Consciousness

I like to sit in the steamroom for 10 minutes. So I used to sit shvitzing and counting to 60 ten times... or counting to 120 five times. Sometimes it felt very zen. Other times it felt like I was killing brain cells. So I got a big wall clock out of storage and hung it in the bathroom. Now I can sit shvitzing while I think of tweets... or watch the second hand go around the clock... or avert my eyes from the second hand until I count to 30.

Heath Shuler (D-The Family) To Challenge Pelosi

It's almost cosmic that on the same day Rahm officially declares he's running for mayor of Chicago, his Frankenstein creation, Heath Shuler (Blue Dog-NC), threatens Nancy Pelosi that if she doesn't step aside for a conservative, he'll run against her as Democratic leader. Since Shuler-- a bigoted religious fanatic and member of The Family (yes, he once roomed with DeMint in their C Street cult frat house)-- isn't especially respected or admired by most of his Democratic colleagues, this little tantrum isn't really about him expecting to be elected Minority Leader.

When Shuler appeared on State of the Union this morning he was playing for the hometown audience, especially in Clay, Cherokee, Rutherford and Henderson counties, where he lost-- and really badly in Henderson, the second biggest county in the district-- out to dry cleaner Jeff Miller. In 2008 Shuler was reelected with 62%; this year he only managed 54%. Instead of looking to disaffected Democrats in Asheville, who are bitter about his largely Republican voting record, he thinks it makes more political sense for him to continue to demonize Nancy Pelosi and his own party and to be able to go home in 2012 and tell the voters that he ran against her. He's also offering the few remaining Blue Dogs an opportunity to do the same. Can anyone doubt that the reflexive aisle crossers who weren't obliterated, like Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK), Joe Donnelly (Blue Dog-IN), Mike Ross (Blue Dog-AR), Jason Altmire (Blue Dog-PA) and Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT), will be voting for Shuler? Will anyone else? Remember, of the 40 Democrats who voted more frequently with the Republicans on contentious, substantive matters than with their own party, 30 won't be coming back to the House in January. That's Shuler's constituency.

“If it comes down to this coming week, and she doesn’t step aside, then I will challenge her," Shuler said.

...Shuler said that Clyburn should remain in a leadership post, but Pelosi needs to go.

“Let’s be realistic about it, there’s very few numbers of (moderates) left, the entire House is being pushed further and further apart in their different viewpoints and the moderates have to bring our country together to move our country forward. I would really hope that [Pelosi] would step aside to allow Steny Hoyer, James Clyburn-- those gentlemen-to step forward in the leadership positions that they held in the majority, to be the leader and to be whip,” Shuler said.

Shuler believes that his party didn't get the message on Election Day when voters kicked Democrats out of majority control of the House if his caucus keeps Pelosi at the top of their leadership team.

"I hope that with so many members that we need to go in a different direction, that we have to be able to recruit or get back those members of Congress that lost, and I just don’t see that path happening if she’s at the top of the Democrats,” Shuler said.

Shuler was hoping for that Chief Deputy Whip position reserved for a Blue Dog, the one retiring John Tanner held and was thought to be going to Allen Boyd before he wound up with a mere 41% of the votes on election day. But why should the Democrats reward the shriveled up Blue Dog Caucus with anything. Xavier Becerra seems like a far more logical choice, which would be ironic given Shuler's virulently anti-immigrant hysteria.

And Tonight's Random John Wayne Quote

Is the Republican fetish for destroying public education tied up in the virulent racism the party of Lincoln fell into in the 1970s? In an interview he gave Playboy in 1971, right-wing icon John Wayne may have given a little something away. "I believe in white supremacy until Blacks are educated to a point of responsibility."

Stupak Stigmata And The Martyrdom Of A Deranged Cultist

Bart sees himself as a martyr now, rather than as an asshole

Michigan mishuganah, Bart Stupak, a putative Democrat from the northernmost reaches of that state-- 1% African-American, less than 1% Hispanic and 0.4% Asian-- joined Washington's most dangerous religious cult, The Family, and flipped out. He then figured out he could sabotage the Democratic Party entirely by wrecking the president's #1 agenda item-- healthcare reform-- by working with fellow C-Street cultist, Joe Pitts (R-PA), to falsely paint the healthcare reform bill as a trick to make abortion opponents pay for poor women's abortions. He's been working directly with the Republicans and right-wing elements to bring down the bill-- and the party-- something applauded Inside-the-Beltway as "bipartisanship."

As you know, anger has been building and building and exploded last week into a primary challenge from Connie Saltonstall. In less than a week, she has already raised over $50,000 online, more than $15,000 of it from Blue America. Stupak is freaking out now and realizes he could actually lose his seat over this.

He's complaining that his life has become a living hell, with his phone lines "jammed" with angry pro-choice and/or pro-health care callers and his wife has become so disconcerted that she's had to disconnect the family phone, an unlisted number, which seems to indicate that even their own friends are calling them to complain about Stupak's nefarious role in the healthcare debate.

“All the phones are unplugged at our house — tired of the obscene calls and threats. She won’t watch TV,” Stupak said during an hourlong interview with The Hill in his Rayburn office. “People saying they’re going to spit on you and all this. That’s just not fun.”

...“How’s it been? Like a living hell,” Stupak said.

The 57-year-old Democrat said he has a history of working behind the scenes with Democratic leaders on abortion.

“In the past, we’ve always been able to work it out,” he said. “This is the first time we’ve not been able to work it out.”

Other anti-abortion-rights Democrats have said they’ll support the Senate bill.

Rep. Dale Kildee, another Democrat from Michigan known for opposing abortion, released a statement on Wednesday supporting the Senate bill, which he said would prevent federal funds from going to abortion services.

But the intensity of the resistance to Stupak’s position has, if anything, stiffened his resolve. He shows no signs of voting for the Senate healthcare bill, which could hit the House floor this week.

“I’m pretty stubborn,” said Stupak, who keeps in his shirt pocket a list of lawmakers who are willing to vote no. The so-called Stupak Dozen met Tuesday morning on Capitol Hill to strategize and exchange stories of the pressure they are under.

Today Stupak tried making a deal with the leadership-- to vote for the bill, in the hope of slowing down the tidal wave of support Connie has been getting for standing up to his shameless bullying, in return-- listen to this-- for them letting him bring up his anti-Choice bill every single year. And he says if they agree, he can deliver useful idiot Marcy Kaptur as well. So far they've told him to go take a hike. We'll see. Meanwhile, please continue to support Connie's campaign. It certainly seems to be having an impact-- and sending the Democrats a message they can understand.

At about 8 minutes in, Rachel Maddow explains the battle between Stupak and almost 60,000 Catholic nuns. (Earlier she chats with Ezra Klein about the missing CBO numbers which, as you probably know, are no longer missing-- and are awesome, numbers that would even be hard for honest fiscal conservatives to vote against... if there were any. In fact, I watched demented Oklahoma anti-healthcare fanatic Tom Coburn publicly threatening to "get" any Republican in the House who breaks rank with the zombie-army and votes for the bill, regardless of the fact that it would bring the deficit down by $1.3 trillion.



And, in case you missed it yesterday, Stupak's own committeeHouse Commerce and Energy , came out with a review of the impact of the bill on Stupak's constituents, the very people who are now encouraging Connie to run. Highlights of what the bill will achieve in Northern Michigan's first CD:

* Improve coverage for 364,000 residents with health insurance.

* Give tax credits and other assistance to up to 197,000 families and 17,900 small businesses to help
them afford coverage.

* Improve Medicare for 141,000 beneficiaries, including closing the donut hole.

* Extend coverage to 44,000 uninsured residents.

* Guarantee that 10,000 residents with pre-existing conditions can obtain coverage.

* Protect 1,100 families from bankruptcy due to unaffordable health care costs.

* Allow 50,000 young adults to obtain coverage on their parents’ insurance plans.

* Provide millions of dollars in new funding for 41 community health centers.

* Reduce the cost of uncompensated care for hospitals and other health care providers by $102
million annually.

You know about the C Street cult, right?

Conservatives Want To Give Gays A Choice: Get The Cure Or... Get Killed

Do conservatives-- in this country, at this time, Republicans and Blue Dogs-- want to exterminate gay people? You'll have to ask them. I'm sure the Log Cabin Republicans and the GOProud Republicans don't. I doubt Republican closet cases David Dreier and Charlie Crist and Lindsey Graham want to. (I'm not as certain about more tightly closeted Republicans-- and more hysterical closeted Republicans at that-- like Mitch McConnell, Trent Franks, Adrian Smith and Patrick McHenry. And I'm far less certain about what the religio-fascist C-Street cult would like. They're at least partially behind the Kill the Gays legislation in the process of being adopted by Uganda. Last night Rachel Maddow interviewed huckster Richard Cohen, a self-proclaimed psychologist who says he "cures" gays and wrote a book, Coming Out Straight, that has been widely seen as a profitable joke-- until Ugandan right-wingers started using it to justify their anti-gay jihad. Oh-- and speaking of jihads by religious fanatics... Muslims also offer people who think differently than they do an opportunity to "change or die" just before they're killed (or "converted").

Below are both segments of Rachel's interview with Cohen, who may or may not have worked on Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), another "former" gay who now claims to be (mostly) straight.

Dangerous Right Wing Cult, The Family, Involved In Move To Exterminate Gays In Uganda

Headquarters of a lethal cancer in the heart of our nation's capital

If you visit us here at DWT from time to time, you may recall how excited I was earlier in the year about Nanci Griffith's new album, The Loving Kind, especially because I learned all about a Virginia couple, Richard and Mildred Loving, who traveled to Washington, DC in order to get married in June, 1958. It was illegal at the time for black and whites to intermarry. They were dragged out of their bed and thrown into jail cells when they got back to sweet Virginie. Times have changed so drastically since then. Last year 1,959,532 Virginia voters (53% of those who went to the polls), helped elect the offspring of such a marriage. But, in some ways, time has stood still for homosexuals, who are still discriminated against by the same types of bigoted and insecure sociopaths as those who arrested and persecuted Richard and Mildred Loving. On the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that made her marriage legal, a few months before she passed away last year, Mildred, having never spoken out on anything political before has this to say:

Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don't think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the "wrong kind of person" for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people's religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people's civil rights.

I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard's and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That's what Loving, and loving, are all about.

So, I was heartened to read this morning that the Washington DC City Council voted 11-2-- despite threats and blackmail attempts from the Catholic Church and hysteria from right wing political hacks-- to approve legislation that would allow same-sex couples to get married in their city. Forget for a moment that bigoted Mormon fanatic Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) has pledged to the satanic "god" he worships to use Congress to force DC to back away from the kind of equality for gays that was the salvation for mixed-race couples like the Lovings. Instead, let's take a look at something really insidious and dangerous to America that's going on among some of Jason Chaffetz' friends and neighbors, the demented, neo-fascist religious fanatics and sexual predators who live in the C Street House provided to the religious cult known as -- The Family.

Last night, Rachel Maddow did a segment on the relationship between the genuinely dangerous cult, The Family, and plans in Uganda to pass even more stringent anti-gay legislation, including the death penalty. Behind this move is a close political associate of both pop-pastor Rick Warren and the insidious Republicans and Blue Dogs who make up the viciously homophobic Family. Among the hate-filled bigots who make up The Family are Sam Brownback (R-KS), James Inhofe (R-OK), Jim DeMint (R-SC), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), John Ensign (R-NV), Tom Coburn (R-OK), Mark Pryor (DLC-AR), John Thune (R-SD), Mike Enzi (R-WY), Joe Pitts (R-PA), Todd Tiahrt (R-KS), Frank Wolf (R-VA), Zach Wamp (R-TN), Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog-NC), Bart Stupak (anti-choice-MI), and Health Shuler (Blue Dog-NC). Villainous members no longer in public office include John Ashcroft, Dan Quayle, Ed Meese, Strom Thurmond, Jerry Ford and Richard Nixon.

The C Street clubhouse: the place for self-absorbed "Christian" pols on the make to do it all -- to fellowship, pray, talk about Jesus, and eat

If Jenny Sanford had been a more traditionally subservient "barefoot and obedient" Christian wife, might her scumbag husband have gotten away with his "Argentine adventure"? True, he was getting idiotically indiscreet, and now he seems to have turned into a babbling buffoon, but maybe that's 'cause he got caught?

"We'd fellowship, we'd pray, we'd talk about Jesus, and we'd eat. In the headiness of Washington, D.C., it's trying to make sure you keep your head screwed on straight."

-- Michigan Rep. "Crazy Pete" Hoekstra, making public

his previously unknown connection with the Family,

which he stressed ended two years ago

"Recently, an unscrupulous author has implied that I am involved in meetings or am even a resident at what is called the C Street House located in Washington, D.C. To be clear, I have never lived at the C Street House nor have I participated in any regular Bible studies or so-called counseling sessions there. Over the past decade, I have attended a few luncheons at the house involving ambassadors and other members of Congress. While there, I had conversations with those in attendance. Other than these few visits at the house, I have had no membership or involvement in meetings at the house."

-- Kansas Rep. Todd Tiahrt, in a statement issued to KWCH Wichita, whose reporter Kim Wilhelm did a report on the Family Sunday

"Their idea is to identify politicians who are in positions of power, placed there not so much by voters but by God. The Family helps polish them up -- become more sophisticated leaders so they can better serve this ‘vision of the kingdom' as they put it. So they can do good things, they can do bad things, it doesn't matter. They're chosen for power. And the Family believes it's their job to help them stay in power."

-- Jeff Sharlet, in KWCH Wichita's report on the Family

by Ken

All of that, plus . . . it's Christian!

When last we visited the now-famous house on C Street that houses the kook Christian power cult called the Family, I believe it was former Mississippi Rep. Chip Pickering's turn at the GOP Adultery Flogging Post. (These days you really have to book ahead.) Our Chip, you'll recall, who left Congress in 2007, ostensibly to spend more time with his actual family, meaning wife Leisha and their five sons, turns out to have been having yet another of these tediously humiliating affairs, this one apparently conducted at least in part within the sacred walls of the Family's C Street clubhouse. And they are sacred, because --

SHH! DON'T MENTION THIS TO THE IRS!

To its best knowledge, the building is in fact a church. Expansive as the IRS traditionally is in interpreting what constitutes a church, given our country's traditional -- not to mention constitutional -- commitment to separation of church and state, in the face of all that we've learned about the Family and the C Street clubhouse, somebody at the IRS could think that at least a few questions might be in order.

Ironically, the type of pol drawn to the Family tends to be publicly, dare I say righteously, scornful of the whole concept of separation of church and state. The Family itself doesn't even pay lip service to the idea.

An interesting wrinkle in the case of Chip Pickering, you'll recall, is that, as Max Blumenthal reported for The Daily Beast, Leisha Pickering's divorce filing revealed that her guy "recorded details of his exploits in a secret diary, including the dates and locations of his adulterous encounters." What's more, Chip's sex diary "reveals the identities of several men who enabled his adulterous trysts and helped him cover his tracks."

OOH, A SEX DIARY? AW-RIGHT! WHERE
IS IT? WE WANNA SEE THE SEX DIARY!

According to Max Blumenthal: "Thanks to heavily politicized local courts and an aggressive damage-control campaign waged by Pickering and his powerful Republican allies, the diary, which is said to contain the answers to these questions, is locked away in a courtroom in Mississippi. And if Pickering has his way, it will stay there indefinitely." Sorry!

Now don't forget about that diary. (Like as if you're thinking about anything else! Except maybe wondering if there's also video.) We're going to come back to it. And while you're remembering, note -- in the "Crazy Pete" Hoekstra quote at the top of this post -- the Crazyman's emphasis on the fact that his association with the Family ended two years ago. It's just possible that these two details could be connected!

Anyway, since our last visit, so much has happened on the C Street front that it's hard to take it all in. To be honest, I've kind of tuned out. We've already learned plenty about the heady mixture of Bible-thumping and power-mongering concocted by Family patriarch Doug Coe and his chip-off-the-old-block son David. In the time since our giddy discovery of the embarrassing and rather alarming links between the Family and the marital follies of putative presidential pretenders Nevada Sen. John Ensign and South Carolina Gov. (and, importantly, former U.S. Rep.) Mark Sanford, it's all had kind of a same-old, same-old ring.

Perhaps the most interesting development has been what we might call "The Flight from the Family," which is to say the growing number of Family-style pols who have suddenly become shy about celebrating their Christianity, something they were once prepared to do anytime they found themselves within range of a camera. Now they either refuse to comment on reputed ties to the Family or deny them outright, sort of. "Outright" denial seems a bit of a reach for them, and so we're getting a fascinating assortment of indignant denials of involvement beyond certain carefully delimited points. Which brings us to the Kansas and Michigan connections.

THE KANSAS AND MICHIGAN CONNECTIONS

Sunday night KWCH-TV Wichita's Kim Wilhelm did a nearly four-minute report on the Family, drawing on Jeff Sharlet's book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, including excerpts from Jeff's appearances with Rachel Maddow and a phone interview of her own. You have to give both the reporter the station credit. It doesn't seem likely that Wichita folk had heard much about the subject. And as the piece makes clear, there are Kansas connections to the Family. The written version of the report (which is similar to but not a trasncript of the TV version) notes:

The group rents out rooms to members of Congress. Kansas Congressman Jerry Moran's staff confirms he stays at C Street. His office refused to answer questions or comment further. Sharlet's book has no mention of Moran, but it does list Senator Sam Brownback and Congressman Todd Tiahrt as members.

Congressman Tiahrt (that's pronounced "Tea-heart," as in "teabag"), as we've already noted up top, could hardly be more vehement in his denial of "membership" or much of any real association with the Family. At the same time, if you were to parse his statement closely, you could find any number of ways in which it could represent careful weaseling, and in the event that documentary evidence should begin turning up, one wonders whether those "few visits" might not grow the way, say, Jack Abramoff's few visits to the White House eventually did.

Our Todd, by the way, is probably most famous for his recent contribution to the House health care debate, shown in the KWCH report, where he made the case against allowing government funding of abortions, which of course his deep religious convictions lead him to oppose, thusly:

If you think of it in human terms, there is a financial incentive that will be put in place, paid for by tax dollars, that will encourage women who are -- single parents, living below the poverty level, to have the opportunity for a free abortion. If you take that scenario and apply it to many of the great minds we have today, who would we have been deprived of? Our president grew up in a similar circumstance. If that financial incentive was in place, is it possible that his mother may have taken advantage of it? Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court Justice, if those circumstances were in place, is it possible that we would be denied his great mind?

Let me just say here that this speech seems to me all-but-irrefutable proof of the non-existence of a god, or at least one with any self-respect, who could hardly fail to respond with a prompt smiting. Working in mysterious ways is all well and good, but surely there are limits.

Now as to the Michigan connection, what most struck Emptywheel's Marcy Wheeler, a veteran watcher of the congressman whom she calls, possibly affectionately, "Crazy Pete" Hoekstra (only she doesn't use quotation marks), was the mere fact that he "preemptively" announced his connection to the Family: "Frankly, I hadn't even realized Crazy Pete was a member of this group, and I could swear I've checked once (he is definitely their 'type.' So it surprises me a bit to see Crazy Pete offering up his ties to the group."

"Crazy Pete," by the way, is probably best remembered for his shockingly inept, dishonest, Bush-abetting performance as a member and then chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Actually, Wikipedia reminds us of what's probably the next-most-distinctive aspect of his nine-terms-and-counting career: that it was made possible in good part by beating up on 13-term GOP powerhouse Guy Vander Jagt for having been in Congress so long. That's why primary insurgent Hoekstra pledged to serve no more than six terms, and already-expansive concept of term limits which Congressman Hoekstra seems to have found intolerably restrictive when it came time to run for term number seven.

"Crazy Pete," as you may have heard, is looking seriously at a race for governor of Michigan. Marcy, while acknowledging that it's pure speculation on her part, speculated in that Sunday post about a possible link between his separation from the Family and the famous Chip Pickering sex diary:

Pickering resigned in August 2007, just under two years ago. If the diary precipitated the divorce, then it may end about two years ago.

So if someone like Crazy Pete knew that his involvement in yet another hypocritical affair might become public, he might be able to say that he ended his relationship with the group two years ago, setting up a very convenient story just in case anything became public between now and when he tried to run for Governor.

I have no idea whether Pickering's diary time bomb is the reason for Crazy Pete's pre-emptive admission of ties with C Street. But the timing does make me want to see Pickering's diary all the more.

Before we leave "Crazy Pete," I think we need to pay some sort of tribute to a man who: (a) has shown us, by using it in a sentence, how to use "fellowship" as a verb, and (b) has so tidily summed up the Family agenda as a bunch of good Christian men getting together to keep their heads screwed on straight by means of the Big Four: fellowshiping, praying, talking about Jesus, and eating. Strangely, there is no mention of having affairs and counseling one another on said affairs while keeping them totally secret from everyone else, including spouses.

MORE IMPORTANT THAN SEX???

Notice how we keep coming back to the sex scandals, which always make for the juiciest, not to mention attention-gettingest, copy. It's been clear ever since the Family got dragged into the spotlight in connection with the Ensign and Sanford high jinks, that Jeff Sharlet, in his capacity as reigning outside expert on the Family (at this point he's become Rachel Maddow's virtual cohost, on a broadcast that might be renamed The Rachel Maddow Show, featuring Jeff Sharlet on the Family), thought and thinks there's something more important than sex scandal to the story. While I wouldn't presume to speak for Jeff, I think what he's trying to call attention to is neatly summed up in the quote he gave KWCH, up top. I think it's worth a replay:

Their idea is to identify politicians who are in positions of power, placed there not so much by voters but by God. The Family helps polish them up -- become more sophisticated leaders so they can better serve this ‘vision of the kingdom' as they put it. So they can do good things, they can do bad things, it doesn't matter. They're chosen for power. And the Family believes it's their job to help them stay in power.

I realize it will be a serious comedown for tabloid-trained news consumers if it turns out that the really important story about the family is nothing sexier than a cult master's clever fusion of religion with power, all built on a bedrock of Christian hypocrisy. That's not all that sexy, is it?

Well, there are those who might disagree, like for example Leisha Pickering and Jenny Sanford. I'm a bit surprised myself tp find that in the end this is where my thoughts are gravitating. Because neither Chip Pickering nor Mark Sanford seems to have chosen the traditionally subservient barefoot-and-obedient Christian wife who exists for no purpose greater than to serve her master. Both Leisha and Jenny appear to be seriously bright women who were at least as responsible for their husbands' career successes as the possibly less-bright men.

Here are those old sweethearts Chip and Leisha Pickering. What a handsome couple, no? It's not hard to understand that Chip would have given up his seat in Congress to spend more time with Leisha and their five boys. 

Of course we don't know what went on behind the scenes with the Pickerings all those years. Leisha doesn't seem to have had any insupportable problem with Chip's ambitions when he was a rising star in God's Own Party. At some point, though, she seems to have become noticeably less enthusiastic about Doug Coe's "you can have it all, hornyboy" Family program. The apparently not-very-discreet affair seems to have exhausted such tolerance as she may once have had.

There are marriages that can handle that, and there are marriages that can't. Mrs. Pickering, however, made the unusual choice, for a good Republican wife, of not going quietly.

Poor Mark Sanford seems to have run into a similar sort of wifely uppitiness. A man of his, er, appetites should probably have had a proper wife of the barefoot-obedient sort, the sort who would know her place. (What was it Jimmy Carter was just saying about male religious leaders who have "overwhelmingly chosen" to "subjugate" rather than "exalt" women?)

To his credit, our Mark doesn't seem ever to have been looking for that sort of mate. Oh, Jenny comes from serious money, which would certainly have helped qualify her as a suitable Christian wife for a good Christian pol under the old standards. But she sure seems like someone who knows how to take care of herself -- and, when it came to it, her children. But when she met Mark, she was a player on Wall Street. They met in the Hamptons, you'll recall, not at a church social. She spent six years as a vice president (mergers and acquisitions) at the investment bank Lazard Freres. When the Sanfords moved south and Mark launched his political career, she seems to have worked at it if anything harder than he did. Until recently she was usually described as his top adviser.

Even after the doody hit the fan, Mark, when asked how he was handling his wife's discovery of his affair,, was still burbling stuff like, "This goes into the personal zone. I'd simply say that Jenny has been absolutely magnanimous and gracious as a wonderful Christian woman in this process."

As a matter of fact, Jenny seems to have been prepared to do whatever it took to save the marriage, if only for the sake of the kids. She "knew" for a long time without revealing anything publicly. She had stumbled across a love letter in Mark's files. It was, we're told, quite a shock. ("I didn't think he had it in him.")

If Mark had had the good Christian sense to marry the kind of woman toads of his sort traditionally did, or turned their wimminfolk into, then when it came to crunch time -- you know, when he "went hiking the Appalachian Trail" -- she might have covered for him. Not Jenny, though, who you'll recall helped fan the flames of intrigue by making it absolutely clear that she had no idea where her the father of their four sons was on Fathers' Day.

She had her reasons. It turns out that lovelorn Mark had actually begged her for permission to, um, pop down to Argentina to, er, visit the sights! Astoundingly, unlike that good Christian wife he should have had, Jenny said no! Or as she tells it, "I said absolutely not. It's one thing to forgive adultery. It's another thing to condone it." We can guess that as the drama unfolded, Jenny, being as far as she is from the model of the barefoot-and-obedient wife, didn't respond at all well to the growing inklings that the Atlanta airport, not the Appalachian Trail, was where Mark had headed.

The portrait of Mark that emerges -- and of Chip too, for that matter -- is of a greedy, self-absorbed young pol who knows how to think big, a horny toad on the make in every sense. For the Family, it would appear, Bible-thumping is optional at the outset. If you've got a horny enough young toad who can sling a little "family values" lingo, we can teach him enough Jesus to hornswoggle all those needy folks out there who crave a proper Christian tongue-lashing.

If it's any consolation to Leisha and Jenny, the guys were bums. I feel bad for them, and for their combined nine boys, who you have to hope don't grow up to be bums like their dads.

"Family values" indeed.

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Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann dig deeper into the "Family" connections of Sen. John Ensign

I've added a "Saturday Update" to my post last night about the power-mongering religious cult the Family, which included Rachel Maddow's riveting Thursday-night segment, with guest Jeff Sharlet, who literally wrote the book on the subject.

Rachel herself was so overwhelmed by the subject that she felt compelled to do a follow-up segment last night, with Jeff Sharlet back, focusing on the weird system of "life coaching" apparently practiced among the members. She's especially taken with the newly revealed tale of Sen. John Ensign being browbeaten by his Family coaches (including, most famously, OK nutjob Sen. Tom Coburn) to break off his affair, even forcing him to write a letter to his heartthrob breaking it off and then dragging him to FedEx to send it -- except that the wily adulterer managed to sneak off to a telephone to call the lovely Cindy to tell her to pay no attention to the letter, and flew out to, um, "be" with her.

Come to think of it, Keith Olbermann also went wild over this story, and was in fact driven to a new installment of his, er, legendary Puppet Theater (there's also a follow-up with interview with Margaret Carlson on the political ramifications, which she thinks will now be dire):



Here's what I'm wondering: Do you think "Shut up, Coburn" is going to be the next big catch phrase?

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We think of them as crazies, but you know, the people who wander in and out of the Family's lodge house on C Street have clout in D.C.

A lot of jaws dropped last night when Rachel Maddow presented this segment on the fundamentalist sect The Family, which turns out to provide a creepy linking factor between those princes of "family values" NV Sen. John Ensign and SC Gov. Mark Sanford -- and that curious, cranky, and crazy loon and noodge, OK Sen. Tom Coburn.

by Ken

Even though the Family isn't totally unknown, I know a lot of people whose eyes were popping out during this segment about its connections to the Ensign and Sanford scandals. Among Rachel's guests was Jeff Sharlet, a contributing editor for Harper's and Rolling Stone who actually infiltrated the Family and literally wrote the book on it, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, now out in paperback.

The Family, first published last year, is yet another of those books from recent years that are by all accounts utterly splendid, which I've forlornly added to the "must read" list that I know I'll never get to. By way of summary, Jeff posted the jacket copy on his blog when the book was published, in February 2008:

They are the Family—fundamentalism’s avant-garde, waging spiritual war in the halls of American power and around the globe. They consider themselves the new chosen, congressmen, generals, and foreign dictators who meet in confidential cells, to pray and plan for a “leadership led by God,” to be won not by force but through “quiet diplomacy.” Their base is a leafy estate overlooking the Potomac in Arlington, Virginia, and Jeff Sharlet is the only journalist to have written from inside its walls.

The Family is about the other half of American fundamentalist power—not its angry masses, but its sophisticated elites. Sharlet follows the story back to Abraham Vereide, an immigrant preacher who in 1935 organized a small group of businessmen sympathetic to European fascism, fusing the Far Right with his own polite but authoritarian faith. From that core, Vereide built an international network of fundamentalists who spoke the language of establishment power, a “family” that thrives to this day. In public, they host prayer breakfasts; in private they preach a gospel of “biblical capitalism,” military might, and American empire. Citing Hitler, Lenin, and Mao, the Family's leader declares, "We work with power where we can, build new power where we can't."

Sharlet’s discoveries dramatically challenge conventional wisdom about American fundamentalism, revealing its crucial role in the unraveling of the New Deal, the waging of the Cold War, and the no-holds-barred economics of globalization. The question Sharlet believes we must ask is not “What do fundamentalists want?” but “What have they already done?”

With regard to the political connections popping out now, our esteemed colleague Marcy Wheeler has been exploring the Ensign and Sanford ties to the Family lodge house on C Street: "Did the Ensign Confrontation over His Affair Take Place at a 'Family' Gathering?" (June 19), "Did 'the Family' Force Sanford to Ditch His Mistress?" (June 24), and "WaPo Discovers C Street" (June 26).

The infamous Family house on C Street

SATURDAY UPDATE: RACHEL DOES ANOTHER SEGMENT
ON THE FAMILY, WITH JEFF SHARLET RETURNING

And it turns out that what I've been calling the Family's C Street "lodge house" is actually . . . a church!

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