...or do patriot groups think irony is how bullets taste?

Washington D.C. was awash in gun lovers yesterday. They were commemorating: a) the battle of Lexington and Concord, b) the seventeenth anniversary of the assault on the Branch Dividian compound in Waco, c) the fifteenth anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, or d) the 67th anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. (This last commemoration is unlikely given the klanish nature of the groups involved.) Two groups convened around the Capital. One organized in Fort Hunt Park in Alexandria, the other mustered around the Washington Monument. (The First President never expressed a view on gun ownership but the lock and load crowd consider Washington one of them.)

The groups that assembled in the Capital were armed with signs, placards and silly Revolutionary War costumes. Had they arrived with guns,they would have been re-enacting the Boston Massacre with the DCPD in the role of the British. In Virginia the "Don't Tread On Me" brigade was armed to the teeth. The authorization for carrying guns into a national park was recently signed by (irony alert!) Barack Obama. This fact is lost on the "patriots" who are convinced that this President intends to confiscate all their toys. Like the Reagan administration, the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. has made no statement or suggested any legislation on guns, for or against.

Nevertheless every real , red-blooded, God-fearing, (read "white") American knows that a black, well educated, liberal, urban President is just waiting for his opportunity to sneak up on every gun owner in America and pour cement down the barrel of their Remington assault rifle. After all, any elected official willing to risk all of his political capital to guarantee that Americans would be able to secure decent medial care for their families, can't be trusted with anything as sacred as the Second Amendment.

All of this paranoia would be troubling if it weren't so illogical. Gun owners and tea-baggers rail continually about "taking the Country back". From who? Blacks? Liberals? The Elite? Well unless my calendar is faulty, that chance will come in 214 days. Voting for the candidate of your choice would appear more likely to effect change than waving your Smith & Wesson around a park in Alexandria. Gun owners appear ready to shot big holes in the very system of government they wish to preserve. America hasn't been taken over by Hugo Chavez. The current administration was voted into office by a citizenry sick to death of Republican lies and mismanagement. If your team lost, tough. You don't pick up a gun and attempt to manufacture reasons why the President is a socialist, or a fascist, or a Kenyan.


This approach was attempted in 1860 when South Carolina expressed its displeasure with the outcome of a presidential election. Four years and 600,000 dead later the South learned the error of its bellicose ways. (Actually secession was considered briefly in 1812 in of all places New England on the brink of the war with Britain. Nevertheless secession always sounds more likely when spoken with a Texas accent.) Now Oklahoma is considering organizing a militia to defend itself. From what I have no idea.

Everyone understands that frustration is rampant in the land. Many people feel that government is too large and too expensive. Taxes seem high and jobs are elusive. Logical arguments fall flat. Changes, even small changes, are scary. The past feels safe. No one goes to a tea party rally dressed as someone from the future. The old ways seem Comfortable and secure. Older white Americans sense something slipping away. A snake-oil salesman like JD Hayworth in Arizona can propose the "preservation of American Culture" (code for "let's keep the salsa off America's hotdogs")and not be condemned as a blatant racist.

A 240% increase in militia groups and a four-fold increase in gun purchases should tell us something. Take a chill pill, America. Stop helping Glen Beck get rich. Think for yourself. Go to a park...without a gun. If you don't like the direction in which the Country is going, pick up a phone not a weapon. Support a candidate. Standing around the Washington Monument in a tricorn hat with a gaggle of guys who think like you, only makes you look silly...even on Fox News.

...or did the Pope's proclamation in Malta during the volcanic eruption still only amount to a half-ash job?

Pope Benedict XVI flew to the island country of Malta last weekend to celebrate the 1,950th anniversary of Saint Paul's shipwreck in AD 60. Considering the current state of the Catholic Church in the United States and Europe, Benedict appears to be engineering his own shipwreck.

The Pope took the opportunity to visit, at length, with eight people sexually abused by the clergy. In a country roughly half the size of Chicago the Pope was able to find plenty of people who had been molested by his priests. Had he come to America he would have needed Madison Square Garden for the meeting.

During the Papal audience there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth. The Pope was "deeply moved by the stories of the victims and expressed shame and sorrow for their suffering". He has promised to refer all future cases of sexual abuse by priests to the civilian authorities. Benedict, hello...horses?...barn door?

Sadly all of this Papal hand-wringing comes a bit late in the game. The reason that past sins cannot be prosecuted is that bishops, cardinals and popes sat on the complaints until it was too late for the authorities to act. Not that places like Ireland would have acted anyway but at least someone in power in the Church could say they tried. Every decision made prior to last week's announcement was made to prevent any scandalous mud from splattering the white vestments of the Pope.

The world has every right to be suspicious of this ecclesiastical epiphany. There have, thus far, been no outing of pedophile priests; no bishops forced to resign; no cardinals in the stocks. There has been no announcement of a "defrocking list" to be published in Obsarvatore Romano. The first time the Church acts rather than reacts to a complaint of abuse, they might begin to rebuild their credibility. The Pope would do well to remember that in order to receive absolution in the Confessional one must promise to "go and sin no more".

...or do hockey and basketball playoffs take longer than the healthcare debate?

Things that take too long:


Baseball games- especially the televised Yankee v. Red Sox games...of which there are 67. Yankees v. Mets comprise the other 95 on the Yankee schedule. They take too long, too.


Playoffs in hockey and basketball. Playoffs that start in April should not end in June. The fact that there are franchises in cities that have only two traffic lights (Oklahoma City? Columbus? San Jose?)adds to the tedium. These playoffs go on longer than the first Gulf War. Between the NHL and the NBA there are 16 different playoffs in progress. By the time a winner is crowned in either sport, the Supreme Court will have nine judges again; Congress will have recessed and come back eight times and Jay Leno will have left and returned to the Tonight Show...twice.


The pending trial of Rod Blagojevich. Nothing short of a judicial tsunami is going to get this annoying hair-ball off the stage. I'll pay for the trial myself. Just put this creep in a cell.


Tom Hanks' HBO specials. Clearly Mr. Hanks wishes to show us the interminable nature of the War in the Pacific by dragging us through interminable television, one hour at a time. The battle scenes are gripping but the story lines are hard to follow. Using virtually unknown actors has advantages but with everyone wearing helmets, covered in mud and smoking it can be difficult to keep the characters straight. War isn't just hell; it's hell to produce.


The trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Civil trial? Military tribunal? Straight to a firing squad? Hell, try him in front of Judge Judy, just try him! Then we can all sing America the Beautiful and pack this vermin off to Florence, CO where he can occupy the Gotti Suite for the remainder of his life. Also, get him a new mug shot. There are children watching.


The closing of GITMO. There are estimated to be 193 prisoners still in Cuba. Send four to every state. Problem solved.


Healthcare. So we passed the bill, the tea baggers expressed intelligent rebuttal (ensuring that they spelled "nigger" and "Hitler"correctly on their placards) and now; what? No insurance until 2012? Well, I'll see if I can get granny to hold out that long.
The political effects of the healthcare legislation will be the same whether it starts today, tomorrow or in two years so why not roll it out now? At least the morons holding Joker signs on the National Mall would have a chance to see how it works before condemning the congresspeople who voted for its passage. That would, however, require some logic which is tragically incompatible with hysterical spitting and sign waving. Never mind!

...or is Governor McDonnell planning to run on the Jim Crow ticket?

The Party of No appears to be degenerating into the party of No, Really? Thanks to Bob McDonnell, the GOP's newest asshat, Virginia is being transformed from a cosmopolitan urban center to a suburb of Hattiesburg, Mississippi. The new governor is attempting to prove that, even in 2010, it's possible to be an insensitive bigot. Lester Maddox and George Wallace would have been proud.

Following his colossally tone-deaf reintroduction of April as Confederacy Month in Virginia, Governor Retro has involved himself in the legislative effort to restore voting rights to non-violent felons. During the 2008 election, in order to persuade a few black people in Norfolk and Hampton Roads to vote for him, McDonnell ran on a promise to restore voting rights to non- violent offenders. Currently Virginia and Kentucky are the only states that don't automatically restore those rights upon completion of sentence. An appeal to and approval of the governor is required.

McDonnell has decided that before you get the right to vote again you will be required to submit an essay on your contribution to society since your release. (If McDonnell were required to submit such a term paper, his right to vote would vaporize.) This Jim Crow-like restriction is being vilified for what it is, a roadblock to the restoration of voting rights to predominately black citizens. Whether you think felons should be allowed to vote or not is irrelevant. What matters is that McDonnell is singlehandedly towing Virginia into the arms of Southern, Conservative, Tea Party rednecks. We get it; Virginia is a Southern State. It's not necessary to segregate water fountains to underscore the point.

But wait...another state is heard from. Haley Barbour, Governor of Mississippi has weighed in (and his weight is considerable) to defend McDonnell. As a bastion of civil rights and progressive thinking, we all need to be taking our cue on equality from Mississippi. Barbour, whose entire exposure to slavery appears to be a slavish devotion to donuts, thinks that ignoring slavery is just fine. Why Southern politicians continue to treat ignorance as a point of pride is a constant wonder.

Anyway, no one should be surprised if Governor McDonnell continues to drag Virginia down this path to antibellum bliss. Remember, Virginia Governors can only serve one term so no reelection worries for Old Bob. How about a poll tax? Hey, we have to balance the budget somehow. Maybe a minstral show in Richmond? Don't be shocked to see Governor McDonnell reintroduce miscegenation laws prohibiting interracial marriage. After all, that law was only changed in 1967. The ink is barely dry.

...or when it comes to coal mine safety, do miners always get the shaft?

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Face it, we never think of the people who do scary, difficult jobs until there is a tragedy. No one worries about the electrical worker climbing a utility pole in a snow storm until one of them is either electrocuted or falls to his death. Police officers and firefighters rarely invade public consciousness until the performance of their duty results in the loss of a life. The same is true of miners. The 29 men killed at the Big Branch Mine in Montcoal, West Virginia would otherwise have lived and died doing a dirty, dangerous unpleasant job in complete anonymity. Now, in the aftermath of a predictable, unnecessary mine explosion, these miners will become symbols of the unsafe and deplorable conditions of the Massey Mining Company's operation. In a week, no one will care...again.

Mine safety is something everyone assumes is a given. Hell, it's 2010. The company store that Tennessee Ernie Ford sang about owing his soul to, is history. Children are no longer sent into the mines to sort coal. Black lung disease isn't the scourge it once was. We don't even endanger canaries anymore, right? Wrong.

Coal mines are not safe. They are not even reasonably safe. Conditions may be better than in 1900 but that is like suggesting that, because the Chinese have stopped chaining factory exit doors, conditions are now tolerable. Coal mines are dangerous because companies like Masey Coal have determined that it's cheaper to protest citations and delay safety improvements than take the costly action necessary to comply with regulations. The penalties for violations are so inconsequential that adhering to safety guidelines is unprofitable and consequently unthinkable. In their black little hearts, they mutter, "what's the big deal? They're just miners. We can always get more."

In a sane world, the fine for permitting unsafe methane build-ups in a coal mine should exceed that for allowing your dog to poop on the streets of New York. If a mechanic knowingly and repeatedly installs faulty brakes or tires on customers' cars, he will be prosecuted. If your neighborhood daycare center encloses their property with barbed wire, the full weight of the legal process will be brought to bear. However, if you run a dangerous business in an area of America where no other employment exists, your workers are prisoners and victims. You can always threaten to shut the mine down leaving your workers with the Hobson's choice of fear of their job or fear of no job. You can hide your unsafe enterprise easily because the New York Times rarely ventures into southern West Virginia. It's the perfect place to exploit people.


So Montcoal, West Virginia will bury their dead and life will continue in the mines. (The irony of spending a week digging the bodies out of the mine so they can be buried is lost on the owners and managers of Massey Coal.) Governor Joe Manchin of West Virginia will be reminded how important the coal industry is to a state where few other industries exist. Coal operators will promise change. State and federal authorities will demand compliance with regulation. The miners will shake their heads, grab their hard hats and return to the pit. In coal country no one's hands are clean for very long.

or does the small type hide the big stories?

America's fifty governors, in their capacity to create joy among their fixated constituents, declare commemorative days, weeks and months all the time. Several states have officially declared Dec. 7th as Pearl Harbor Day. In Illinois, September is Spinal Chord Injury Awareness Month. February is Sweet Potato Month in North Carolina and Fresh Tomato Month in Florida. State legislatures waste countless hours entertaining motions to declare Fluke Fishing Week, Kleptomaniac Awareness Month (Watch your wallet!) or, in places like Alaska, Don't Marry Your Sister Week. Governors sign this drivel to the great joy of the purveyors or fans of whatever is being proclaimed or honored.

If you take him at his word, the newly minted governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, was only trying to promote tourism and respect for the brave soldiers of the Commonwealth when he re-instituted Confederate History Month. Unfortunately, rather than appellations from the Sons of the Confederacy, Governor McDonnell has received a shower of righteous manure from every corner of America. It seems that in his desire to paint the Rebellion of thirteen southern states as the glorious response to Union tyranny, he omitted one teeny tiny aspect of the conflict, namely, the 400 year bondage of millions of black Africans. Slavery may have been an unpleasant, even inconvenient aspect of the Civil War but it is difficult to ignore.

The cynics among us might believe that this wholly unnecessary proclamation was issued entirely to remind Governor McDonnell's conservative base that, in spite of the ethnic circumstance of the current President, Virginia is still the good-ol-boy, red-neck, gun-loving backwater that it was before all those liberals in Fairfax County (Washington's tony suburb) started turning this red state purple. McDonnell has stopped short of declaring Jeff Davis' birthday a state holiday or adding the Stars and Bars of the Confederacy to the state flag but the message of this re-invigoration of honor for the rebellion is unmistakable: Virginia may look progressive and intelligent but we're still as backward as any Mississippi town sheriff.

Governor McDonnell's ham-handed attempt to paint Virginians as shoeless rubes notwithstanding, there remains the delicate issue of how to promote a healthy respect for the actors in the Civil War without glorifying their cause. How do you praise the character of Robert E. Lee and JEB Steuart without justifying the reason for the secession and subsequent conflict? Is it even possible to respect the courage and loyalty shown by thousands of fallen southern soldiers, most of whom never owned a slave? The rules for the conduct of the vanquished in the land of the victorious seem vague. It does, however, appear easy to determine when the rules are broken.

Although Civil War battles were fought from California to Florida to Pennsylvania, most of what Americans know of the Civil War took place in Virginia. The Confederacy established its Capital in Richmond. The first and last major land battles were fought there. Bull Run, Fredericksburg, the Wilderness, Petersburg, and The Crater all happened in The Old Dominion. Even Gettysburg and Antietam took place less than a hour's drive from the Potomac. Virginia was doing just fine as a tourist destination for Civil War enthusiasts before Governor McDonnell decided that, once again, the old wounds should be opened. In point of fact, Virginia was a reluctant partner in the rebellion. Virginia didn't actually secede until after Ft. Sumter and even then the Western counties remained loyal; hence the admission of West Virginia to the Union in June 1863. Virginia doesn't require a new Bill of Secession in order to persuade a few tourists to stop on their way down I-95 toward South of the Border.

Virginia was doing just fine as the neutral epicenter of a tragic episode in American history. The National Park Service maintains several of the battlefields without fanfare or flag-waving. The gift shops sell memorabilia from both sides. The heroism of Stonewall Jackson and the ineptitude of George McClellan are represented as equal parts of the history of America from 1861 -1865. No one needed to be reminded that there are still ignorant knotheads who harbor resentment over the war's outcome. No one with an IQ in two digits ever uttered the phrase "The South Will Rise Again".

There is nothing more sinister in American politics than pandering to the evil angels of our nature cloaked in the high-minded innocence of a well-intentioned mistake. Governor McDonnell knew exactly whose ass he was kissing when he issued his proclamation on Confederacy Month and it wasn't the hot dog vendor at the Bull Run Battlefield. McDonnell was reminding Virginians and the rest of the South that the days of Democratic Governors and blue state flirtations are over. Virginia is a Southern State, with all the racist, backward, tea-party assumptions that entails. Virginia may have elected the first black governor in 1990 but damn it, it's still the capital of the Confederacy...and we're not just whisltin' Dixie.

...or has The Wall Street Journal discovered the real criminal in the Catholic Church scandal?

Thank you Rupert Murdoch! Because of your tireless editorial contributors at The Wall Street Journal we now know where the real trouble with the Roman Church can be found. It's not the hundreds of pedophile priests roaming the sacristies of America and Germany (so far). It's not the institutional torture and abuse of generations of children in Ireland. It's not the bishops and cardinals who looked the other way to protect Mother Church from repeated accusations. It's certainly not Our Holy Father in Rome (bless yourself here) who showed compassion for a predator priest rather than the deaf children he mistreated. No, my friends, the real villain in the piece is...The New York Times.


As a result of a nifty bit of misdirection, William McGurn, sometime writer for the WSJ and full- time conservative abuse denier, has determined that the reporting of the Times is biased (well they're owned by Jews, be Jesus) and unfair to the Church he loves. He contends that Laurie Goldstein (note the name) left several inconvenient facts out of her report of the case of Father Murphy and the 200 abused, deaf children in the archdiocese of Milwaukee. Ms. Goldstein failed to report that the lawyer for the abused children has been suing the cassocks off the Catholic Church since these abuse allegations began to surface. I guess one man's crusader for justice is another man's ambulance (or possibly Popemobile) chaser. I'm not sure how Father Murphy's heinous crimes become less vile because his victims' lawyer has profited from RCC misdeeds.


McGurn also contends that, because Rome got the case thirty years after the fact, prosecution would have been difficult. Really? If The Vatican had a statute of limitations on crime, why are they still sneering at the Jews for killing Christ? Besides, it takes thirty years to do anything in the Catholic Church. Don't believe it? Ask someone trying to annul a marriage.


None of this matters worth a damn. The Church failed to act in the case of Father Murphy out of self preservation, period. Mr. McGurn can rearrange the deck chairs any way he likes, it won't change the destiny of the Church's ship. Rome has handled this mess shamefully. Given the opportunity to purge itself of this stain it has chosen instead to obfuscate and misdirect.


Rome's last/best hope to reclaim the moral high ground involves a Reverend Joseph Jeyapaul. Father Jeyapaul has been charged with two counts of first degree criminal sexual conduct in Greenbush, Minn. in 2004-2005 in connection with the alleged abuse of a 15 year-old girl. Father Jeyapaul is currently serving in Ootacamund, India and has no intention of returning to America to answer the charges. To keep Mr. McGurn happy, it should be noted that the plaintiff in the case is represented by Jeff Anderson, the lawyer involved in many of the other abuse cases.



If the Vatican is serious about its desire to reverse hundreds of years of ignored abuse, they will box Father Jeyapaul in a nice FedEx package and deliver him to Minnesota before you can say Pentecost Sunday. Rev. Jeyapaul may or may not be guilty but if the civil authorities in Greenbush are satisfied enough to indict, the Catholic Church must acquiesce. If Rome obstructs, you should expect a flood of indictments extending all the way back to the Chair of Peter. The Church would do well not to confuse infallibility with immunity.

...or should the internet slow down so I can catch up?

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Jesse James has checked himself into a treatment center. Well, I for one am thrilled. Maybe now he'll get the help he needs. Just one question...Who the ----is Jesse James? OK, I know he's married to Sandra Bullock and he fixes motorcycles on Spike TV (viewership skewing to the incarcerated) but since when did Hollywood infidelity rate so much ink? If extra-marital groping among celebrities was this newsworthy, Charlie Sheen would have his own daily newspaper.

James appears to be of particular interest because 1) he's married to a recent academy award winner and 2) the woman he was canoodling has more writing on her body than the walls of a Spanish Harlem bodega.


I'm not a fan of tattoos. Presumably, a small discreet butterfly or a coyly placed rose is harmless enough but people who have turned their bodies into a LeRoy Neiman painting creep me out. Like excessive piercings, I just don't get it. The woman Mr. James is accused of shtupping is actually a walking billboard for tattoos...literally. Michelle McGee bills herself as a tattoo model. Presumably Jesse was just admiring the painting and wanted to get the full effect. After all, you don't look at the Mona Lisa with a thong across the lower half, do you?


I suppose it's unfair to judge a person merely because they have permanently turned their body into a billboard but ask yourself: do you want your heart surgeon to display the entire White House Rose Garden on his chest? Would you be freaked out by your child's second grade teacher if he had the New York Yankee team from 1927 inked across his back? Folks with elaborate tattoos are screaming "Look at Me. I'm strange. I like being stuck with inky needles by a person who needs to check the sign over the door avoid misspelling 'tattoo". So ask yourself: Do you want this freaky guy married to America's sweetheart? or Do you want this freak fixing your carburetor?


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Sarah Palin has a TV show. Boy, no one saw that coming. The show, called Real American Stories is apparently designed to distinguish itself from the Real Housewives of Wherever. None of those "fake" stories about people dying without healthcare for Sarah. (What do you want to bet that one of her "stories" involves a gun?) The plan is to highlight American Exceptionalism because as we all know, there are no exceptional Frenchmen or Dutchmen. The very idea of exceptional Russians or Chinese is laughable. Naturally, the show will appear on the Fox News Channel after such "exceptional" Americans as Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck. The motto of Fox News is "We Distort. You Decide".


Norman Podhoretz wrote a scary column in The Wall Street Journal this week comparing Sister Sarah to Ronald Reagan...favorably. Podhoretz describes Reagan as an unfocused, intellectual light-weight who became (according to Podhoretz) the second coming of George Washington. Reagan was, as history tells us, introduced to millions of Americans as host of Death Valley Days on TV in the 50's. It therefore seems only correct that Sarah Palin host a TV show to remind Americans that the uneducated, platitude-driven, amateurish, unqualified, dim-witted people of the country need a champion too. (Like Beck wasn't already doing that job.)

Although people are invited to "log on and tell their stories", it appears unlikely that the show will air the tale of a young boy, educated in Indonesia who, despite bi-racial parents and modest means, was able to work his way through Columbia University and Harvard Law to become a U.S. Senator and President of the United States. After all, the show is called "Real American Stories" and, well, you know, there is that birth certificate thing...
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Representative Paul Broun, a Georgia Republican (express shock here!) introduced a bill that would establish "Ten Commandments Weekend". Seriously, this man actually drafted a law which would "acknowledge that the U.S.'s national character was shaped by The Ten Commandments". The proposed law has run into a few roadblocks on the road to passage. Several Republicans, including David Vetter and John Ensign, object to the inclusion of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments as too restrictive and an affront to freedom. Several Democrats are troubled by the Seventh Commandment. Representative Charlie Rengal demands a broader definition of "steal". Several Texas congressmen want the Fifth Commandment altered to include the phrase "unless a gun is involved". More than one Conservative Congressman is troubled by "keeping holy the Lord's day" as a possible excuse for additional union-sponsored holidays. Even Sarah Palin, who hasn't let her lack of standing as an elected official stop her from bombarding us with her opinion, has an objection. "Well golly shucks, coveting your neighbor's goods is what made America great. Our capitalist system only exists because we want what our neighbors have...and more of it. Any other idea is just plain socialism."


Muttering in dismay, Representative Broun plans to withdraw his legislation in favor of a bill to install a plaque inscribed with the Second Amendment in every inner-city emergency room in America.