Truett's 1920 religious liberty speech to be honored in D.C.

DallasNews Religion | Sam Hodges:

“On and on was the struggle waged by our Baptist fathers for religious liberty. ... They pleaded and suffered, they offered their protests and remonstrances and memorials, and, thank God, mighty statesmen were won to their contention. Washington and Jefferson and Madison and Patrick Henry, and many others, until at last it was written into our country’s Constitution that church and state must in this land be forever separate and free, that neither must ever trespass upon the distinctive functions of the other. It was preeminently a Baptist achievement.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

The quote above is from a speech on religious liberty that George W. Truett gave at the US Capitol on May 16, 1920. Truett was pastor of First Baptist Dallas from 1897 until his death in 1944.

My, how times have changed. Less than a century ago, Baptists were not only extolling the virtues of separation of church and state, they were claiming credit for it. Today, the religious right is reinventing history to claim that America was founded as a Christian nation and the separation of church and state is only a myth.

Truett seems willing to join hands with Protestants in promoting liberty, but Jews, Muslims, Hindus, atheists, etc., are ignored. It's Catholicism that is declared to be the exact opposite of the Baptist message. Truett challenges all Protestants to do away with infant baptism and by doing so, he predicts that every last Catholic church on the face of the earth will be wiped away in less than a century. All in all, not a speech that I would pay tribute to as a paean to liberty. More something worth studying in history and noting that it's best left there.

Lutheran Pastor Jailed in Germany

Dallasblog.com | Tom Pauken:

“A German court in Erlangen sentenced a Lutheran pastor to a year in jail last week 'because he compared the killing of the unborn in contemporary Germany to the holocaust' ”

Ed Cognoski responds:

This article about abortion and the Holocaust and Germany's strange (to Americans) slander laws stimulated one Dallas Blog reader to change the subject to his own anti-gay obsession, arguing against America's own hate crime legislation. He professes to not understand why one murder is any different than another.

The premise behind hate crime legislation is that hate crimes are two crimes in one. First, there's the murder itself. The murder is prosecuted, judged and punished like any other murder. Second, there's the intimidation against others of the same class (blacks, gays, Christians, whatever). That intimidation is prosecuted, judged and punished separately, even though it's all done in the same trial. This is similar to many other situations where one criminal act actually breaks several laws.

I used to support hate crime legislation. I'm now neutral, because too many otherwise good people don't understand this and side with the racists and homophobes on the issue, thus unintentionally encouraging the very crimes the legislation is intended to deter.

P.S. Tom Pauken is still blocking me from commenting on Dallas Blog itself.

Fred Thompson Could Replace Cheney as VP

Dallasblog.com | Sam Merten:

“Rumors are running wild about a GOP plan to oust Vice President Dick Cheney and replace him with former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson in an attempt to salvage the end of Bush’s presidency and prep Thompson as Bush’s successor.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

Sounds more like a rumor designed to boost Thompson's chances in the Republican primaries than something that has a snowball's chance in hell of actually happening. The kind of rumor that Dallas Blog would pick up on and give big play to. Like Cheney himself, Dallas Blog doesn't even make a pretense of being fair and balanced. Yesterday, Sam Merten had this to say about another Republican candidate:

"McCain has no shot and should get out of the race. He's a disgrace to the party."

P.S. Tom Pauken is still blocking me from commenting on Dallas Blog itself.

The Hypocrisy of Hillary Clinton and John Edwards

Dallasblog.com | Tom Pauken:

“Leading Democratic candidates for President, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton, have made the growing divide between the rich and the poor in America a major centerpiece of their respective presidential campaigns. Both of them have tried to position themselves as spokespersons for the beleaguered American middle class.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

Mr Pauken buries the lede. After seven long paragraphs of whining that some rich Democrats happen to be running for President, Mr Pauken finally gets to his point, namely that we ought to consider a border-adjusted tax. By that time, most readers probably bailed out.

P.S. True to form, Mr Pauken wields his heavy censor's hand, deleting the above comment from the Dallas Blog story and blocking further comments from me. I guess when you are the reporter, editor and publisher of your own media outlet, you don't have to listen to journalistic suggestions from any quarter, including from your readers. ;-)

Free Speech and the Politician

Dallasblog.com | William Murchison:

“Free speech -- which means, to entirely too many self-styled liberals, 'Speech I agree with' -- won a modest victory this week in the U. S. Supreme Court.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

Mr Murchison highlights one SCOTUS decision, upholding corporate political advertising, and ignores the other two decisions, including the one where the Court ruled against the free speech rights of individual students. To Mr Murchison, free speech apparently means speech he agrees with.

The Dog that Saved Farmers Branch

Dallasblog.com | Brian J. Burns:

“Can a dog really save a city? Well, this one did. In June of 2006, my wife, Robin Bernier, started e-mailing members of the city council of Farmers Branch, Texas. ... She was e-mailing the council about the problems that the city, the state, and the country were having with illegal immigration. She found a friend through a steady sharing of information on the subject with City Councilman Tim O’Hare. Tim also told Robin about a dog in his neighborhood that wasn’t being treated well. His name was Merlin. Since 2002, Tim had watched this animal get very little attention from its masters, and was left out in the extreme heat and cold with very little shelter.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

The story gets even more heartwarming from there. How touching. Two xenophobes, separately working to evict illegal immigrants from their homes in Farmers Branch, are accidentally brought together out of sympathy for a homeless dog. Kudos to Dallas Blog for adding satire. I had to check the masthead to make sure I wasn't reading The Onion.

Obama: Right has 'hijacked' religion

DallasNews Religion | Bruce Tomaso:

“Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, speaking Saturday to the national meeting of the United Church of Christ, said some right-wing evangelical leaders have used religion to cause divisiveness. 'Somehow, somewhere along the way, faith stopped being used to bring us together and faith started being used to drive us apart,' he said.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

I'm puzzled by Obama's remarks. He's running as a new kind of politician, but picking on evangelicals is old left politics. If he gets the nomination, he'll need religious voters of all persuasions, so why pick fights if he doesn't have to?

Maybe this is a sign that he's worried he won't get the nomination unless he starts exploiting some wedge issues that Clinton isn't going to want to touch (for the same reason given above). Maybe he's not a new kind of politician after all. Or maybe he's willing to speak the truth no matter what its impact on his chances. Now that would be a new kind of politician.

AG Obtains Voter Fraud Conviction

Dallasblog.com | Will Lutz:

“During the debate over the voter ID bill, critics claimed that voter fraud was a myth and convictions are uncommon. Atty. Gen. Greg Abbott's office, however, has convinced a Jackson County jury to return a conviction on a voter fraud charge.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

A win for justice. The system works. This case demonstrates that we don't need to make it harder for the rest of us to vote in order to catch the rare bad guy.

Secular viewpoint in newsrooms

DallasMorningViews | Rod Dreher:

“Newsrooms are so overwhelmingly liberal and secular that they perceived liberal secularity as normal. ... I wish journalists would start regarding secularity not as the default worldview, but rather as a worldview just like any other. It would make for more accurate, less biased coverage.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

Secularity may be another worldview, but it is not "just like any other." What Mr Dreher fails to appreciate is that the Founding Fathers of America chose secularity for the official viewpoint of the United States government. It's all well and good for individuals to practice Catholicism or Protestant evangelism or even Islam or Mormonism or any of a hundred other variants of religion, but the United States government was ordered to remain neutral.

It shouldn't be surprising that the popular press, intending to reach a broad audience, might adopt a similar attitude. Bias towards a secular viewpoint may be bias still, but a bias towards secularity is the only bias that gives all the religious-based viewpoints equal access to the public square. News media that choose a secular viewpoint ought to be not only aware of that bias, as Mr Dreher suggests, but proud of it.

Why people don't like us

FrontBurner | Reid Slaughter:

“Those of [Dallas Morning News intern] Matthew Haag's generation have an unprecedented desire for fame and attention (hence, My Space, Facebook, Xanga, etc.). This young reporter, whose heart may be exactly in the right place, doesn't realize how his thrill at a front page by-line is appalling to a public who cares more about the subject than the messenger. The day that journalism becomes more a path to stardom than a vocation of serving one's fellow man is the day we are finished.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

I was with Mr Slaughter until the last few words. I'm a regular reader of Frontburner, and it's never occurred to me that "serving one's fellow man" is on the minds of any of the bloggers there. Snarky has always seemed more descriptive of what they're trying to achieve. I think Trey Garrison was closer to the mark when he hinted that his objection to the DMN interns was based on an urge he just couldn't suppress to "pick on interns because they're all young, stupid and need to get off my lawn."

In Defense of the Dallas Morning News

Dallasblog.com | Carolyn Barta:

“As a DMN reporter and editor of election news and, at different times, one who worked for the editorial page, I feel compelled to respond to those who think the news department takes its cue from the editorial endorsements or, in any way, tries to bolster the candidate endorsed. Nothing could be further from the truth. The news department and editorial department work totally separate, and editorial stands do not impact news coverage. ”

Ed Cognoski responds:

If you hire like-minded people, you don't need memos going between the news department and the editorial department for them to reflect similar thinking. That's true whether you are talking DMN, Dallas Blog, or the Ellis County Press.

The news media that stand out are the ones that go out of their way to get diversity of thinking in all departments. But of course, diversity is itself a liberal value, so media that achieve diversity open themselves up to criticism from the right for being... yep, diverse.

D*mned if you do, d*mned if you don't.

Justice Run Amuck

Dallasblog.com | Tara Ross:

“In this country, prosecutors and judges are too often free to wield their power, with impunity, against American citizens.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

No, they aren't. They are all subject to the US Constitution, ultimately interpreted by the Supreme Court, which changes its mind with glacial slowness (although global warming has made that cliche outdated, hasn't it?). Roughly translated, Tara Ross is saying (again) that the US Constitution doesn't always support what she would like to see happen in courts.

P.S. Go read the Dallas Blog to find out what Ms. Ross' whine today is. I can't be bothered analyzing it.

Hicks Rewards Daniels’ Failure

Dallasblog.com | Sam Merten:

“Just one year after finishing 80-82, the Rangers are baseball’s worst team at 26-43, 17 1/2 games behind the Angels in the AL West. ... So it should come as no surprise to Rangers’ fans that owner Tom Hicks handed [Rangers’ second-year GM Jon] Daniels an extension today, keeping him here through the 2009 season.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

OK, so what's the deal? Some owners are starry-eyed and covet championships. Some owners wear green eye-shades and want profits. Do we need a business reporter instead of a sports reporter covering the Rangers to tell us what's really going on? Hicks can't be incompetent on all fronts, can he?

Whose Idea Was This?

Dallasblog.com | Carolyn Barta:

“Invitations have gone out to members of Congress and their families to the annual White House lawn party on Tuesday. Last year it had a Western theme. The kids had pony rides, etc. This year? It's a New Orleans theme. Does that strike anybody besides me as incongruous considering this administration's bungling of Katrina?”

Ed Cognoski responds:

Incongruous? Administration bungling? Whatever do you mean?

Don't you remember what Barbara Bush said about the poor who had lost everything and evacuated New Orleans, "This is working very well for them." This year's annual White House lawn party is a celebration of that major achievement by the Bush Administration.

Just wait until you see the blow-out party next year, when the theme will be bringing democracy to Iraq and the Middle East.

Why not secure the border?

DallasMorningViews | Rod Dreher:

“Since everybody agrees on the necessity of a secure border as part of immigration reform, but nobody agrees on anything else, why not do what we can do now? ... Build a fence, or do whatever's necessary to do what normal countries do, which is to say, establish control over who comes in and goes out of that country, and once the feds can show that we've got border security, any number of further reforms will be relatively easy to accomplish.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

Why not just build a fence? Because many people believe that securing the border without comprehensive immigration reform is a fool's mission.

As long as there are employers with jobs in the US needing to be done and workers in Mexico willing to do those jobs, the two groups will find a way to get together, fence or no fence. Half of the illegal immigrants currently in the US did not come across the border illegally. They entered the country legally and overstayed their visa. A fence might force people to change how they enter the country, but it will not significantly change the total number of illegal immigrants in this country.

Instead, make it easy for temporary workers to work legally in this country and most workers will follow the rules. A fence then becomes almost as easy, cheap and non-controversial as those retractable strap crowd control barriers used in restaurants, stores, theaters, etc.

Enact comprehensive immigration reform and a simple fence becomes affordable and practical. Try to build an impregnable fence without comprehensive immigration reform and the effort becomes both hugely expensive and ineffective.

Yellow Dog Journalism

Dallasblog.com | Gina Parker Ford !:

“The lack of diversity demonstrated by both writers and the writing [in Texas Monthly] may demand that the magazine's owners bring this longstanding work into modern day journalism which demands balance, accountability, and fairness.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

You mean like the balance, accountability and fairness we get in modern day journalism like Dallas Blog?

P.S. Sorry, I forgot to include the exclamation mark Dallas Blog adds to the author's name: "Gina Parker Ford !" And I forgot to mention features like spell checking and editing that modern journalism publications like Dallas Blog do away with that old line journalism was always fussy about.

What goes around...

DallasNews Religion | Bruce Tomaso:

“Manya Brachear of the Chicago Tribune ... discusses a study by economists and psychologists at the University of Oregon who found that donating to charity 'stimulates primitive sources of pleasure in the brain.'”

Homo sapiens is a social animal whose own chances of survival are enhanced through altruism and cooperation with other members of the tribe. Thus, individuals who receive immediate gratification ("thank you", "you're welcome ... mmmm, that makes me feel good") from such behavior are more likely to survive and propagate their genes, thus strengthening the trait in the population as a whole. So, indeed, the pleasure is even more primitive than we can imagine.

Report from Rome

FrontBurner | Reid Slaughter:

“Just returned from Italy where I had drinks Tuesday with Francis Rooney, the U.S. Ambassador to The Holy See. ... [Rooney notes] there is simply no other world leader like the Pope. 'Remember that every other leader is a politician with hidden agendas and vast arrays of constituents they must answer to,' said Rooney. 'The Pope answers only to God. He is not swayed by polls or popular opinion. His is a pure voice.' What's more, on every issue, The Pope advocates not what is the politically expedient course, 'but what is moral, and right.' ”

Ed Cognoski responds:

I don't know what's worse, a US ambassador who presents this myth as fact or a reporter who repeats it. The Pope may not be subject to democratic elections, but to believe he has no agendas and no constituents is naive. The US Supreme Court doesn't have to answer to any constituency either, but there's an old saying that "The Court follows the election returns." The Pope, too, knows just how far his influence carries. There is a vast, worldwide Church that is held together not by the power of the state, not by armies and police forces, but solely by moral suasion, by appeal to authority, by promise of salvation and threat of damnation. The Church doesn't have the power to tax. It must convince millions of believers to empty their pocketbooks willingly to keep the Vatican's coffers full. It takes a skilled politician and marketer indeed to maintain the Church's power in the world. It's utter nonsense to believe that Vatican power has been maintained for two millennia by ignoring the politically expedient course.

Either Ambassador Rooney finds it in the current US national interest to suck up to the Pope or he has "gone native" and ought to be recalled by the President. My hope is the former. The FrontBurner reporter, who gave the ambassador a free pass to spread the Vatican propaganda, might be a name dropper who knows how to suck up to an ambassador to keep his connections. The reporter being associated with Park Cities People certainly suggests that explanation.

Caution: Hazardous Multiculturalism Ahead!

Dallasblog.com | Caroline Walker

Caroline Walker is busy bashing public schools and American culture in three separate Dallas Blog articles today.

In the first, she recounts an old news story out of San Diego where a new teacher claims she was given a lesson plan that included an hour for Muslim prayer, led by a teacher's aide. In Ms Walker's headline, she describes this as "Dangerous Multiculturalism". I infer that she's opposed not to school prayer, but to Muslims, but who knows. In other words, maybe she thinks Christian prayer is OK because it helps assimilate the minority into the majority religion, but Muslim prayer is not OK because it fosters multiculturalism.

If the whistleblower's account is accurate, the school program is illegal.

If what happened instead was that students on their own prayed during recess, as the school maintains, then it would be legal. In fact, it would be illegal for the school to prevent them from doing it. The ACLU would defend the students if they sought legal help.

And if what happened was a principal gave a student a microphone and that student led a prayer during morning announcements, and all this happened in Texas instead of California, the school might be complying with the recently passed legislation in Texas, legislation certainly to be tested in court.

Somehow Ms Walker thinks this whole story is an argument in favor of school vouchers, ignoring the fact that this Arabic language program was originally started as a charter school. That school failed just before the start of this school year and was reabsorbed into the public school system too late to integrate it for this year. Charter schools provide the choice that Ms Walker says she wants. In this case, it led to the "multiculturalism" she doesn't want. So which is it to be? Choice or assimilation?

In the second article, titled, "Get Your Law of Inverse Proportion Right Here!", Ms Walker tells us that Utah doesn't spend much money on public schools but still has the highest high school graduation rate. She implies it's because Utah is a voucher state.

Hmm... Utah is also a Mormon state. Maybe Texans should cut public school spending AND convert from Baptists to Mormons. Get your Law of Cause and Effect right here! Wait. Dallas Blog doesn't stock it.

For the record, Utah is not a voucher state. At least none of those 2007 high school graduates were voucher recipients. Whether Utah's just passed voucher program survives a November referendum remains to be seen.

Finally, in the third article, Ms Walker reports a poll that indicates most Texans favor school vouchers.

Utah has a statewide referendum scheduled for November on its voucher program. Polls show a small majority opposing vouchers. We'll see then what the voters themselves in that state have to say.

What's behind the curious battles that Bush picks?

Dallas Morning News | Mark Davis:

“My immigration plan is at least a four-liner:

1. Secure the borders, with a wall if necessary.
2. Deport the illegals we find, swiftly and without apology.
3. Punish businesses that knowingly hire them.
4. Formulate a tamper-proof ID to end the workplace kabuki dance that got us into this mess in the first place.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

Mark Davis' plan is deceptively simple and, in the end, wanting.

1. Millions of the illegal aliens in this country did not cross the border illegally. They entered legally and overstayed the duration of their entry permit. Even a perfect fence or wall will do nothing to prevent this from continuing.
2. With 12 million illegal aliens already here, it would take a massive police roundup to make a dent in the problem. Doing so would inevitably ensnare legal residents and US citizens, too, who would be burdened with long, expensive legal processes to obtain justice. Even when such dragnets capture illegals, the resulting family disruptions, where, say, father is illegal but children are American citizens, will impose a huge human cost. Americans' perception of themselves as not only a law-abiding, but a decent society as well, will suffer, no matter how hard a heart Mr Davis' himself may possess.
3. Mr Davis' plan would deputize every hiring manager in the United States into an immigration official. Get it wrong and go to jail. So much safer to just not hire anyone with a Spanish surname, legal or not.
4. A national ID card, not just for immigrants and visitors, but for all citizens, is absolutely essential for Mr Davis' other suggestions. Traditionally, it's been the advocates of civil liberties on both the right and left who have opposed such Big Brother schemes. The potential for abuse is huge.

Note how Mr Davis himself is personally immune from most of the obvious unintended consequences of his plan. Not entirely a coincidence, I think.

In the end, Mr Davis' plan is wanting because it fails to recognize the basic economics underlying the problem. There are jobs needing to be done. There are workers willing to do them. Supply and demand are separated by an arbitrary line in the sand on the southern border of the United States. Mr Davis concentrates on creating more and more elaborate and harsh schemes to keep supply and demand out of balance. History is filled with failures where people have used government to interfere with the marketplace. Mr Davis' suggestions would have no better fate.

The Good, the Bad, and the Gay

Dallasblog.com | Scott Bennett:

“I have had too many conversations with people who could care less about anyone’s sex life, are basically liberal, but who were planning to vote for Leppert on a one-off issue related to gayness. A Dallas socialite, who raises money for DIFFA and the Turtle Creek Chorale, loathes the religious right and supports gay marriage and who knows and likes Oakley confided that she had voted early for Leppert. Why? She didn’t want headlines around the world proclaiming that Dallas had elected an openly gay Mayor. 'I don’t want us to become San Francisco,' she said.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

Excuse me, but someone who would vote against a gay candidate because he is gay, or because he is openly gay, or because the press reports that he is openly gay, is not by any means "basically liberal" or someone who couldn't care less about anyone's sex life. She is a closet bigot, someone who pretends to be non-discriminatory, but only as long as gays and lesbians don't openly show their sexual orientation. Sorry, but "don't ask, don't tell" is not a liberal position. For Scott Bennett not to call her on it indicates Dallas Blog itself is guilty of the same bigoted beliefs.

Why Can't a GOP Legislature Act the Part?

Dallasblog.com | William Murchison:

“Where were the conservatives? Where were the Republicans? ... Why didn't property tax revenue caps and appraisal caps pass? ... Legislative restraints on the ability of local government to take advantage of rising home sale prices should have been a key priority for a conservative-dominated legislature.”

Ed Cognoski responds:

If local government is "taking advantage" of rising home sale prices, voters already have a proven remedy — vote the rascals out. Conservatives always claim they want less government, but when in power they are just as willing as liberals to use government power to interfere with market forces to get what they want.

In this case, it's appraisal caps. Conservatives want us to pretend that real estate prices aren't rising. Let's lock in property taxes at current appraisals. Who benefits the most? Those lucky enough to own houses in fast-growing exurbs and wealthy enclaves. Who benefits the least? The middle-class and lower who live in slowly decaying cities and older suburbs where property values rise more slowly. Where do the conservatives suggest the lost property taxes be made up? In sales taxes, a largely regressive tax that hits lower income citizens hardest.

Legislators who resisted the deceptive attempt to shift the tax burden from the wealthy to the middle class under the banner of appraisal reform deserve our praise, not our criticism.