Years ago, before Rick Santorum's primary financial backer joked about aspirin and the inherent immorality of women who use birth control, before the candidate's own remarks on contraception created a controversy, before he became known for bold assertions that Protestants were agents of Satan, before he lost his Senate seat for man-on-dog arguments about homosexuality, the then Senator from Pennsylvania was widely known for attacking a grave threat to Free Enterprise. He went to war against weather reports.

It seems that one night, Senator Santorum stayed up to watch the late news. To his amazed horror, the local television meteorologist put up satellite images and quoted information that came from the National Weather Service. They were using information provided by a government agency, rather than purchasing it from a private business.

Senator Santorum was outraged. He introduced a bill designed to reduce the National Weather Service to issuing reports only after checking to be sure that the same information could not have been produced by private enterprise at fair market profit.

Senator Santorum's interest was not entirely accidental. A major constituent in Pennsylvania was the founder of a major broadcast center for weather predictions, AccuWeather. The Senator made the case for private providers of weather information.

With the support of my colleagues, we can pass this legislation to modernize the description of the National Weather Service’s roles within the national weather enterprise, so that it reflects today’s reality in which the National Weather Service and the commercial weather industry both play important parts in providing weather products and services to the nation.

Some lawmakers responded with incredulity. A United States Senator wanted to privatize the weather? The nation had just gone through several major hurricanes. Warnings had saved lives. Katrina had claimed a major city just a few months before. And Santorum wanted to restrict the public flow of information? There were businesses who could profit buy selling information on developing weather patterns, but this seemed like an idea doomed to bad ending for a lot of folks.

Supporters pointed out that Santorum's proposed law would allow for exemptions when weather patterns grew into situations of clear and present dangers to the public. When weather patterns developed into hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis and other imminent hazards, exceptions could be made. After all, there could be times in which emergency information would not be available for private purchase quickly enough for the market to work. Santorum acknowledged that there was a role for the National Weather Service to play.

All the bill would do would be to protect private companies. It make it against the law for the National Weather Service to providing any information, including marine, public and aviation forecasts, to the public, to schools and colleges, to researchers, to the media, or to emergency management personnel employed by states or local governments, if private businesses could sell similar information for profit.

And severe weather warnings would be an exception.

The bill was generally liked by large corporations like AccuWeather, the Weather Channel, and WeatherBank. Small companies like the Weather Underground opposed it.

In the end, it went pretty much nowhere. You still can see your local weather anchor show satellite images, and charts with fronts and low pressure areas. And if you write and angry letter to your local station about how you just finished shoveling large amounts of partly cloudy from your driveway, you can include the National Weather Service in your complaint. Nobody is perfect, especially regarding the weather. It still is an inexact science.

But lives have been saved. Property has been protected. Rescue efforts have been coordinated in advance. Life has been more convenient. Sometimes they get it real right.

If that is not enough, you can take comfort in knowing that we may soon have a Republican President who will kill such federal intrusions. We can still pay for our satellite photos and five day forecasts. As my tea party friends might point out, free weather is like critical medical care. It is not mentioned in the Constitution.

The decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission was, with apologies to Vice Presidents, a big freaking deal. When the US Supreme Court said corporations can spend unlimited amounts to support politicians, that you can't put limits on the amount corporations use for political campaigns, they relied, in part, on a statement of fact.

When you're changing what it takes to campaign, you're messing with democracy itself. Your reasoning had better be compelling and the facts had better back you up.

The idea behind restrictions on corporate and union campaigning was to combat corruption of democracy. That's pretty compelling.

But a majority of five all agreed on this key finding:

...this Court now concludes that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. That speakers may have influence over or access to elected officials does not mean that those officials are corrupt. And the appearance of influence or access will not cause the electorate to lose faith in this democracy.

This was an extraordinary decision. It overturned enough precedent for Chief Justice John Roberts to defend overturning established law. After all, the minimum wage would be illegal and segregation in schools would still be the law if respect for precedent went to extremes.

But it was the facts on which the case rested that seemed a bit weird. Unlimited anonymous financial backing would not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. That was akin to watching one cigarette executive after another testify before Congress, the American viewing audience, and the Lord God of all, that tobacco is positively not addictive.

It was like the arguments of conservatives that Photo IDs must replace traditional identification in order to prevent massive voter fraud. That such cases, nationwide, number literally in the tens, while the number of legitimate votes who would be denied their right to vote would number in multiple millions is simply not worthy of consideration. So it seemed with the corrupting influence of a tsunami of corporate cash.

There was another case in the courts concerning cash in campaigns. The Montana Supreme Court in the last few days of December looked to its own history and found a set of facts truer than what the US Supreme Court viewed through a glass darkly.

At issue was a Montana law that told corporations they could not use their funds to influence elections by spending on behalf of political campaigns. The law is a hundred years old. The Montana law was challenged, and the state Supreme Court took into consideration a set of facts not considered by the US Supreme Court.

The Montana "Copper Kings" of the gilded age made democracy in Montana into a shell game. Mark Twain once wrote about just one of the small group of wealthy manipulators, William A. Clark.

He is said to have bought legislatures and judges as other men buy food and raiment. By his example he has so excused and so sweetened corruption that in Montana it no longer has has an offensive smell. His history is known to everybody; he is as rotten a human being as can be found anywhere under the flag; he is a shame to the American nation, and no one has helped to send him to the Senate who did not know that his proper place was the penitentiary, with a ball and chain on his legs. To my mind he is the most disgusting creature that the republic has produced since Tweed's time.

Clark eventually went so far as to order his state legislators to elect him to the United States Senate. About a century ago he became Senator Clark.

Two United States Supreme Court Justices last week overruled the Montana Supreme Court. For the first time in a hundred years, corporations in Montana can go back to their old practices. But, as critics of the Montana law pointed out, you can't just ignore established national law, regardless of the facts supporting the logic.

The two Justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, pointed out that US law must prevail. But they also took note of the facts that the Montana courts had taken into account. Montana's gilded age corruption seems to be replicating itself across the nation. This year, a year less than two months old, seems already to have borne out the simple observation that the massive tidal amount of anonymous cash does less to inform than it does to deafen. Money is already corrupting democracy.

Sometimes legalese is obscure, considered even by Republicans to be too remote for anyone except a new credit card applicant looking through a finance interest agreement. One suggestion, that the United Supreme Court should revisit the Citizens United case and the facts, produced uncommonly understandable dialogue. Translated into standard English, the response of Justices Ginsburg and Breyer to that suggestion was "Well, duh yeah!"

"Back in my days, they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn't that costly."

- Foster Freiss, interviewed on MSNBC, February 16, 2012

It has been a thunderous few days. Republicans, having vowed to put aside cultural issues to focus on the economy, focused once more on ... well ... you know.

Foster Freiss, THE major financial backer of Rick Santorum, contributes heavily to other causes as well. He is a six figure level donor to Republican Governor Scott Walker's efforts to avoid a recall effort at the hands of outraged constituents in Wisconsin. But mostly he boosts former Senator Santorum. Mitt Romney is forced to battle for conservative souls by raging against any effort to interfere with employers who merely wish to exercise their religious freedom, standing against the immorality of women employees who may want to use birth control.

You would think the latest effort of Foster Freiss on behalf of Santorum, an appearance on MSNBC to joke about the promiscuity of modern women who use birth control, would produce a tidal reaction that would last for weeks. It still might. But, for now, there are other amazing events that eclipse it.

For one thing, the Honorable Darrell E. Issa (R-CA), Chair of the Congressional Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing on the entire contraceptive controversy. You can kind of get the tone by the official title of the hearing: Lines Crossed: Separation of Church and State. Has the Obama Administration Trampled on Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Conscience?

If you wonder toward what opinion the Chairman is disposed, you are just the movie goer to pay top price for the best seats at the premier showing of Rocky 9, just to find out who will win the final round.

Representative Issa had an impressive line of witnesses. Religious leaders and conservative college professors. They all had in common a disdain for the administration compromise that would provide contraceptives to women employees without requiring church related employers to do the providing.

That the witnesses were all men was a fact not lost on Democratic members of the committee. They asked that one lone woman be included. Their prospective counter-witness was a college student prepared to testify about serious health effects among her classmates because of denial of contraceptive coverage. One cancer victim lost an ovary. Contraceptives are a major part of treatment for ovarian cancer.

Issa and other Republican committee members insisted the issue does not concern contraceptives. They narrowed the focus to religious objections by their witnesses to contraceptives for women employees. The woman proposed by Democrats as a witness was turned away. She was not allowed to testify. Several Democrats boycotted the hearing.

Public opinion is so far away from conservatives on this issue Sarah Palin can't see mainstream America from her window at Fox News. It is the political equivalent of The Producers, the Mel Brooks musical about efforts to embezzle financial backing by making a Broadway production fail. "Springtime for Hitler" becomes a shocking hit in the fictional account. This new effort at GOP self-immolation does not seem destined for similar success.

It's like some sort of Mack Sennett silent film. A Republican sets his hair on fire. A conservative supporter helpfully hands him a hammer.

In response to Burr Deming's Religious Freedom and Contraceptives

For conservative legislators, freedom of religion means freedom for financial providers of salaries and benefits. They should control the extent of group benefits. If you want to violate the private beliefs of your employer you ought to pay for it yourself, without the benefit of group membership.

- Burr Deming, February 14, 2012

The question of what health insurance covers should be determined, first and foremost, by its effect on one’s health.

If I belong to a religious sect that teaches that we should not use medicine, but that we should let God treat our children, and then my child falls off a house and dies because I did not call an ambulance, should this be allowed in the name of religious freedom? If so, who else should we kill in the name of religion?

Should any religious fanaticism be a factor when deciding a health matter?

Catholic companies are free to deny their patrons coverage via religious authority. They should not be free to opt out of coverage based on religious doctrine. Their religious authority means they can forbid the use of birth control. Any employee that agrees with the backward concept, will obey, and will not use birth control. Any employee that disagrees with the notion will use her health insurance and will use birth control. She was not bound to Catholicism because she works for company X, so there is no conflict of interest.

Backward Company X did not buy her birth control by providing part of her insurance that provided birth control any more than they would have if they had paid her salary directly and she used her earnings to purchase birth control. There is no difference. Either way Company X provided funds for her birth control.

This entire debate is complete political hypocrisy. The Catholic Church learned a long time ago that the masses that follow it are easily duped, easily told what to think, and easily convinced what not to think. This is what they label “Freedom of Religion.”

What’s next? Should we start drowning witches again?

John Myste also writes for his own site, where religious freedom is more than a label.

Please visit John Myste Responds

Our United States Senator from Missouri, Republican Roy Blunt, moves decisively against President Obama on whether contraceptives should be provided to women.

It's still clear that President Obama does not understand this isn't about cost — it's about who controls the religious views of faith-based institutions

The administration started last week in a bind over mandating Catholic run non-church hospitals and other institutions to allow for contraceptives as part of health care. There was a ton of push-back. The principle at stake was freedom of religion.

From the beginning, religious institutions, like churches, were not required to include contraceptives in health coverage to employees. The problem was not with religious institutions. Not directly. The issue had to do with whether non-religious institutions, like hospitals, that were owned and administered by religious groups could be subject to health insurance requirements, if those requirements were counter to religious teachings.

It pretty much looked like a no-win political situation for the administration.

Women's groups lined up pretty solidly for providing what has become a daily necessity for sexually active women, and even for women who are potentially active. The idea of seeking approval from religious authority for contraceptive use is regarded as medieval. The notion that this would be required by law was greeted with outrage.

Religious groups, in particular Catholic authorities, objected to being explicitly complicit in a practice that went against long held religious principles. You didn't have to be against contraception to hesitate about requiring something from a religious group that violated a tenet.

Polls came out that clarified things a bit. The proportion of people who supported the requirement was overwhelming. It turned out to be a huge political plus for the Democrats.

Still, the administration seemed to waver. Some folks sensed an impending sell out. Sure enough, an announcement came. there would be a compromise. At the heart of what seemed a settlement was an important fact. The cost of pregnancy is much greater than the cost of prevention. Pregnancy is a financial loser for insurance companies. Insurance providers live by cost-benefit analysis. Insurance company cost turned out to be a key to a proposal that surprised all sides.

Catholic authorities would not have to provide contraceptives.
And the institutions they run would not have to provide contraceptives.
But their insurance companies would have to provide contraceptives.

At least some Catholic officials were happy. Insurance companies were okay with it. Women's groups were enthusiastic. Democrats were great with it.

Even Catholic Bishops cautiously pronounced the modification a step in the right direction. After some deliberation they hardened their hearts. The policy change was "unacceptable and must be corrected." Republicans quickly joined in the opposition.

Which brings us to the Republican alternative. Senator Roy Blunt leads the charge. He proposes legislation forbidding insurance companies from providing contraceptives as part of group coverage if it violates the religious teaching of a church. Or the beliefs of a religious group running an institution. Or the beliefs of an employer who is not a religious group. Or the conscience of an individual owner of a business.

If an employer says he doesn't like it, the insurance company must keep it back. Senator Mitch McConnell, leader of Senate Republicans, is enthusiastic about the Blunt approach. Other Republican legislators are joining in, promising to bring to a vote the new restriction on contraceptive coverage for women.

The heart of the matter is the nature of religious freedom. How far outside of the workplace should an employer's decisions go?

The administration proposes that religion is a matter of individual choice. A woman gets to decide.

For conservative legislators, freedom of religion means freedom for financial providers of salaries and benefits. They should control the extent of group benefits. If you want to violate the private beliefs of your employer you ought to pay for it yourself, without the benefit of group membership. Think of it as a sort of dress code. After hours, you can express yourself at your own expense. During business hours, you had better dress as your boss instructs. Whether casual Fridays are optional will be decided by company policy.

As Senator Blunt almost points out, the issue is about who controls religious views and religious practices: You or your severely conservative boss.

Remember this?

WASHINGTON/ISLAMABAD Jan 19 (Reuters) - A militant who acted as a senior operations organizer for al Qaeda was targeted and killed in one of two U.S. drone strikes launched against targets inside Pakistan last week, a U.S. official said.

It was a one day story, quickly overshadowed by news of a SEAL rescue of hostages in Somalia and a second rescue at sea of Iranian fishermen by the US Navy (the first one was a rescue from pirates).

The al Qaeda death was less newsworthy, not because it was less important. It was simply insufficiently unusual. Terrorist leaders have been dropping like flies. The drone attacks have been increasingly effective. That is not completely a result of technology. Intelligence is improving. The flow of information from local people lets the United States know where dangerous enemies are hiding.

The mood has been decidedly upswing concerning the United States. It is a small symbol, but a telling one. The most popular protest sign during the chaotic Arab Spring has been "Yes We Can". The personal outreach from the President has resulted in terrorist deaths.

Iran is now falling behind in routine payments for imports from trading partners, impressive evidence that US pressure concerning nuclear development is having an effect.

The United States attitude toward the new found worldwide popularity has been careful stewardship combined with decisive use. This has extended to the Pacific.

China has adopted a sporadically bellicose position toward its Asian neighbors, boasting about the economic development its people have been experiencing. They have come out of the global recession much more quickly than most anyone else. This is partly because they have started at a low point. Any movement would have a pretty good chance of being in the direction of gain. But, to a large extent, the cause has been policy. China has applied a surge in Keynesian government economic stimulus that has contrasted with the austerity measures of much of the rest of the world. The surge has dwarfed stimulus efforts in the United States.

But economic resurgence has been accompanied by a triumphalism that has, at times, approached a Khrushchev-like we-will-bury-you jingoism. The United States has been all soft talk and big stick. America is pleased, ever so pleased, welcoming Chinese economic progress. At the same time, the Clinton State Department has been quietly, but publicly, cautioning China about implied military threats.

The approach has helped in the soft might of US popularity in the Pacific rim, and has resulted in some very hard diplomatic triumphs. When the Australian government, a government that came to power as a protest against US Iraqi war policy, agreed last month to increased military cooperation with the United States, there was a little critical press in China and in Indonesia. In Australia, however, the reaction pretty much ranged from approval to a pointed non-reaction.

Here at home, politics no longer stops at the water's edge. Republicans insist that President Obama apologizes for America (he hasn't) or that he fails to express American exceptionalism (he has). But a modified version of their criticism would be correct. The tone of official American rhetoric, Obama rhetoric, has been subdued compared with the former Republican administration, more supportive of the actions of allied forces and local people.

The real conservative objection, outside of hatred-of-all-things-Obama, has been that the administration has not been nearly bombastic enough on the world stage.

More dead terrorists and more diplomatic success would seem to argue that this is not a flaw.

It is a feature.

President John F. Kennedy had presented a massive push into space. "I believe this nation should commit itself, to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the earth." The President had been pushing an economic stimulus program in Congress without much success. There was stiff resistance from conservatives. The American government, they said, should follow the example of American families and tighten its belt, just as they had to do. Living within our means was the mantra.

Kennedy had gotten more cooperation by invoking the Soviet threat. They had put a satellite into space a few years before and the United States needed to catch up. If they could put a piece of metal into orbit, they could do the same with a weapon. It gave them a noticeable military edge. It was an edge that had a potential impact on countries for whose allegiance the US and the USSR were competing.

The Kennedy program was warmly received.

Two days later, Attorney General Bobby Kennedy was quoted in the New York Times. He had been interviewed on Voice of America, broadcast beyond the Iron Curtain to those enslaved by the Soviet empire. He was asked about violence against the Freedom Riders, touring the south in integrated buses. Several had been hospitalized by rioting segregationists. Kennedy responded with a prediction.

There's no question that in the next thirty or forty years, a Negro can also achieve the same position that my brother has as President of the United States, certainly within that period of time.

That evening, shortly before the President's 44th birthday, the Democratic National Committee hosted a dinner in his honor. Referring in part to the slowing economy, John F. Kennedy entertained the friendly gathering.

I will say on becoming President that the only thing that really surprised us when we got into office was that things were just as bad as we had been saying they were...

The audience laughed. It was a mildly self-deprecating way of slamming the Republican record, just 4 months into the new administration.

By all accounts, the President who took office 48 years after Kennedy was also surprised. President Obama has been tripped up, then tripped up again, then tripped up some more by the escalating economic devastation left to him by the Bush administration. The escalation is not in real time. In real time, the economy has been slowly healing.

The escalation has been in figuring out just how bad the economy really was during the final full quarter of the final year of the final Bush term.

When Obama took office, the new President got grim news. The slow down was not a slow down. It was actual shrinkage. The economy had declined by a staggering annualized rate of 3.8 percent. That was bad. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, and the Federal Reserve were all bringing their own versions of the bad, bad news.

3.8 percent shrinkage. Shrinkage.

The Obama team was told by some economists that a 1.2 trillion dollar stimulus was needed. The team finally turned that down in favor of a substantially smaller program of about two thirds of that, 800 billion dollars. If it produced results and more was needed, they could go back to Congress and get more.

The new President told his economic group to bring back realistic figures on how many jobs would be saved or created. They estimated employment would get as high as 8 percent, then would begin to go down.

Congress cut the stimulus down to 700 billion.

Financial aid directly to state and local governments, hiring teachers, police officers, would have produced a much bigger impact, but that didn't make a lot of sense to policy makers. Not if more modest steps would produce the push that was needed.

But unemployment continued to rise until last year. So much for going back to Congress for an extension of a successful program.

A friend, a close friend from worship service, cornered me a year ago in the parking lot. We were promised a better economy. The new policies are not working. They're just NOT. She was in touch with suffering people and she was getting kind of hot about it. You've got to love someone who is humane and passionate about real people.

Only later did we discovered that the steps that were taken actually did work. They worked, but not at producing a dramatic recovery. They worked at staving off a disaster the size of which nobody, nobody at all realized.

Just a few months after the 3.8 shrinking quarter, the numbers were revised. Economists were stunned. The economy Obama had been about to inherit as he assumed office had not shrunk in that final quarter at a rate of 3.8. The figure was 6.2 percent. Wow. How could it have happened?

The first three quarters of 2008 had experienced a turn back in key indicators. The working assumption had been that the early indicators had to have produced a similar structure as time went on. That would have been true if the 2007 crash that was continuing had been caused by a normal business cycle. But the drop in housing, the bundling games financial institutions had played, the lack of regulation, had produced a genuine crash that went considerably beyond expectations.

Got all that?

Anyway, this was no cycle.

Then, as more data flowed in, another revision. It was as if Rick Perry, not President Bush, had been managing the store. The shrink rate for the economy had not been 3.8 percent or 6.2 percent. It had actually been 6.3 percent.

Oops.

Conservative economists, the ones dealing with actual numbers, quietly put away the models showing how the stimulus had not had any effect. Their comparisons had been way off. But they had not been the only ones with the 2008 4th quarter curse. It wasn't predictions that were off. It was history itself. Measurements. Pictures of the actual real economy were as accurate at the time as a funhouse mirror.

Three words: Dis Tort Ted. Yup. Economic history had been distortured.

The Obama stimulus didn't fail. The starting point was way, way lower than anyone knew.

• The Bureau of Labor Statistics had been wrong.
• The Bureau of Economic Analysis had been wrong.
• The Federal Reserve had been wrong.
• Private analysts were in the same league. Moody’s Analytics, Macroeconomic Advisers, and others were wrong, wrong, and wrong.

Did I say wrong? The famous 2008 4th quarter, the economic quarter that will live in infamy, does not age at all well. How bad was this raging, fire snorting quarter from the pits of Hell?

Final figures, we hope, have been produced at last. In October, red-faced, stammering statisticians handed over the astonishing nail in the coffin revision of where we were headed at the end of 2008.

The Obama administration did not inherit the incredible shrinking economy that was reducing at a rate of 3.8 percent.
Or 6.2 percent.
Or even 6.3 percent.

The economy, as it turns out, was shrinking at an annual rate of 8.9 percent.

THAT was one hell of an economic quarter.

Turns out May 27, 1961 was an interesting day for unintentional prognostication. Robert Kennedy's prediction of an African-American President within 30 to 40 years was off by 7 to 17 years. And President Kennedy's bit of wit presaged a future reality.

Things were not as bad as the Obama campaign had been saying they were.
Things were ever so much worse.

You get some news in the form of public announcements. The right lane will be closed on the expressway next week, but the Department of Transportation will see that it's done after hours. The United Methodist Church Youth will hold a car wash to raise money for the local food pantry. That sort of thing.

But most news comes in two categories. It is news because it contradicts expectations, as when man bites dog. Or it is news because it confirms narrative, as when Mitt Romney insists corporations are people.

This was a story that did both.

Tennessee resident Dorothy Cooper, a 96 year old citizen, gathered up her aging documents put them all in a big envelope, and got a ride with a volunteer. She had heard about a new law that would keep her from voting unless she had photo identification. Most folks have a driver's license, but she doesn't drive. Never has. But the state of Tennessee says a free ID will be made available.

When she got to the license bureau, where she could get that free photo ID, she showed officials her rent receipts, a copy of her lease, her voter registration card, and her birth certificate. They said that wasn't enough and ordered her to go away. She didn't have the marriage certificate, her husband having died so many years before.

The story appeared in the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

She asked the volunteer, the one who gave her a ride, to call and find out what could be done. The volunteer did just that, asking if Dorothy Cooper could obtain and bring back a copy of the marriage certificate and re-apply for the ID that would allow her to vote. The volunteer encountered laughter from the state worker on the phone. The worker could not fathom anyone going through that much trouble just to vote. She said it had never happened before in her experience.

That this voter was willing to continue seeking rides and revisiting offices made it unusual. But then, she was not stopped from voting since she was in her 20s, not even during the Jim Crow era.

What made it part of a narrative is that the roadblock is not at all unusual. News reports have favored elderly women who have voted all their lives. Here's an 83 year old widow in Wisconsin. But those affected include more than retired folks, encompassing the working poor, riding buses or walking to jobs. College students living within walking distance of classes usually have college IDs with photos. Legislators have pointedly excluded school IDs. Minorities are disproportionately affected.

Authoritative studies say as many as 5 million legitimate voters will be turned away this year. That's legitimate. With an L. An exhaustive study pushed by the Bush administration found that over a 5 year period in hundreds of elections around the United States fewer than 2 dozen cases of voter fraud were found that could have been prevented by a photo ID.

2 dozen as opposed to 5 million.

One aspect of the massive voter suppression effort, one that is discouraging to me, is the reaction of some who could have been expected to know better. It seems to me to be part of the unfortunate historical tendency of liberals toward unwarranted conciliation. They (which is a polite way of saying we) too often surrender the rhetorical high ground in the spirit of verbal balance. This would not be more than an annoyance if it did not involve bartering with the rights of others.

Some of those I admire view the entire controversy as entirely political. If you are Republican, you should favor voter suppression. You may defend it as a legitimate defense against voter fraud, but the honest reason is political. Similarly, if you are a Democrat, you should oppose photo ID laws. You may oppose them as a denial of voter rights, but the honest reason is political as well. Nobody wants to lose. Everyone wants to win. End of story.

That the justification for voter suppression is ephemeral is seen as a good debating point. That the deprivation of a basic right is widespread is considered a rhetorical score. That the only real consideration is which politicians benefit is regarded as an immutable truth. The cynicism is regarded as a frank bow toward fairness, a knowing wink toward balance. Nobody is really right. Everyone is in it for pure partisan gain.

It may be part of human nature. It may be a national trait. I suspect it is part of the liberal psyche. We on the left do, after all, enjoy our position of balance, of moderation in all things. And cynicism has it's own attraction.

It is not a conceit confined to this time and place.

After the Civil War, there was a concerted effort in the would-be-Confederacy to put down newly freed slaves. Intimidation went to violence, often deadly violence. The Republican Congress responded with Freedman's Bureaus and laws guaranteeing voting rights. These were eventually overturned with the election in 1876 of Rutherford B. Hayes as President. Black people became fair game.

The conciliators of the 1870s and the historical researchers of a few decades later must have felt a certain compromising satisfaction as they crafted a middle course in national debate. No need for evidence. The truth being in the middle was a premise, not a conclusion. Efforts to keep alive the rights of former slaves after a bloody war became, in the politics of the day, "waving the bloody shirt."

Many decades later, their desire for a balanced approach lived on, long after they were gone from this earthly realm. It infected the textbooks of my youth with misinformation and historical distortion. Republicans became, in the national imagination, Radical Republicans. The laws they passed protecting the rights of former slaves became, in later history, vindictive punishment on the South.

And so, as the torch was passed from one generation to another, then another, we were taught lies in our classrooms.

Today, when an elderly widow, when any legitimate voter, is told she cannot vote for frivolous reasons, we should be outraged on her behalf. That we could count it off as the debatable partisan violation of the rights of some politician to another tick in his election tally is ... well ... unfortunate. That the ostensible reason for this denial of a basic right is to prevent what virtually never happens is not simply "a good point." The likely repetition of this injustice in varying degrees as many as 5 million times is not to be opposed simply as a political calculation.

Post-Civil War Republicans paid a political and popular price for going against the public fatigue about black rights. Nearly a century and a half later, we should be thankful for their courage. We should pray for some similar courage within our ranks today.

Perhaps we can be forgiven for the faint hope that some future generation will see past conciliatory balance and cynical rhetorical barter to what will be clear in retrospect to have been right.

And that, looking back on our lives, they also will have cause to be grateful.

This isn't a Super Bowl economy, at least not yet. But Democrats are posting a chart depicting private sector job losses and gains over 4 years. Hard to blame them.

Clicking on the chart below takes you to the site, where the chart itself becomes interactive, detailing each month. Even here, you can see the pattern.

Red is the last Republican administration.

Blue is the current Democratic administration.

The unemployment rate is at a much lower than expected rate of 8.3% for January. Conservatives are skeptical. The rate does not include those who have stopped looking for work because they are discouraged. The total percentage of unemployed people that includes discouraged workers may be above 15%. Economists chart different "U" lines to account for these varying measurements. But no matter how they are counted it's hard to find a measurement that does not improve. If you discount for population growth or unexpectedly low temperatures over the winter or any number of unusual conflations of luck, the news still comes up looking pretty good. The improvement is more than anticipated for January.

Hope is warranted. The celebration is premature. Thing is, it's just one month. And the factors that we discount now won't be discounted if they turn on us and drive the economy down. People will blame the President. That's just the way things work. More important, suffering will continue.

Mitt Romney is making a very difficult case. Things are improving but, yes, you can argue with success. Things would have been much better than they are if conservative policies had been followed. It is difficult because it involves a comparison between what is - and is eventually measurable, and what might have been and is completely speculative. It is also difficult because what evidence there is indicates he is wrong.

Still, it is difficult to fault him. A conservative Republican pretty much has to accept as a matter of faith that Hoover-economics really does work. On the comparison between what is and what might have been, well, President Obama had pretty much the same problem for quite a while, and may have again. The comparison then was between the horrible state of an economy in which really people are suffering, families losing homes, children going hungry, with a hypothetical-never-happened economy that would have had half the country selling apples on street corners to survive.

Economists slice and dice such things in bewildering displays of mathematical formulae. We always end up relying on some expert. But we can find ways to verify some aspects and then form opinions on overall credibility. If we discover that mathematician has been counting snowflakes as volcanic ash, we are justified in doubting his entirely separate analysis of Amazon rainfall. If we can't evaluate the numbers, we can sometimes evaluate the number cruncher.

One number that is demonstrably bogus, but that has been floating about anyway, landing in reports and punditry, is 1.2 million. The number of discouraged workers, those who have stopped looking for work, is counted 1.2 million. I heard it again yesterday on a replay of NBC's Meet the Press. It went unchallenged in that discussion. The source is the Bureau of labor Statistics.

The number is right. It sure enough is 1.2 million. But there are two things wrong with it.

• It does not represent those who dropped out of the work force. It represents the total increase in population. That includes children too young to work and those who reached the age of retirement and, you know, retired. Both groups increased dramatically in recent years. The comparison is between population growth and unemployment.

• The number does not represent an increase for January. And it is calculated and added by the Bureau every January for the entire previous year. Hear that? The whole year is added all at once in one month.

January just happens to be the month the entire year is applied to. That is because population growth is hard to calculate more frequently. It is derived by census data, and the numbers are put together by actual count, not by formula. Democrats have tried to bring that up to date, using technology and well known mathematical models, but their efforts have been frustrated year after year by Republicans.

Life is hard for those out of work, and for those affected less directly. We owe them some regard for reality, some good faith effort at discovering what actually works.

• So we should look with skepticism at the figure 1.2 million for discouraged workers.

• And we should look with complete disbelief upon charts that show a mysterious and sudden uptick of those discouraged workers for the month of January.

These folks are ... not to put too fine point on it ... mistaken.

Sometimes public policy makers, writers, even ordinary people, forget that their opinions are about actual people.

It might be a forest and trees thing. Individuals make a deeper impression than people in the aggregate. When Mitt Romney told CNN's Soledad O'Brien "I'm not concerned about the very poor" he was attempting, albeit in a clumsy way, to express with urgency that the real crisis in America involves the middle class.

He has been hammered about the way he accumulated his immense wealth, and the coupon cutting income that that wealth generates. He has gone beyond growing wealth through shrewd risk-taking. A thousand becomes a million through nerve and work. A hundred million becomes a billion through the inevitability that comes with size. A shining star can devolve into a black hole through sheer force of gravity. Romney is seen by many as having become Thurston Romney the Third, letting his billions gather unto him as he clips his morning coupons.

Mitt is not unaware. He knows the image. He tries to distance himself from the notion that he identifies more with fellow travelers on the golden streets of extreme wealth than with ordinary folk.

This time, once more, his I'm-on-your-side attempt fell flat.

I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs a repair , I'll fix it. I'm not concerned about the very rich.... I'm concerned about the very heart of America, the 90-95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling.

The intent was empathy: that Mitt may not be of you but he is with you. Instead, he came across as cold and uncaring, the villain in the story of the Good Samaritan. He became the Levite in the parable of Jesus who left the ancient victim lying along the road. I'm not concerned about the very poor. Did he say something after that?

O'Brien did try to give him a chance to clarify. And he did try to revive his intended direction. But his don't-group-me-with-the-rich message once more got lost.

We will hear from the Democrat party, the plight of the poor.... You can focus on the very poor, that's not my focus.... The middle income Americans, they're the folks that are really struggling right now and they need someone that can help get this economy going for them.

It reminded me of a remark by President Ford's Press Secretary. Jerald terHorst later said of his onetime boss, "if he saw a school kid in front of the White House who needed clothing, if he was the right size, he’d give him the shirt off his back, literally. Then he’d go right in the White House and veto the school lunch bill."

You can make a Newt Gingrich sort of conservative case for private versus public generosity. The vision most folks agree on, although the means differ, is that those in need do need something beyond a net. People who are down can use way out, a way up. Policy deals with that availability, and whether a way up must be with a weakened net or no net at all.

But terHorst was talking about something deeper than policy. He was describing a way of seeing larger groups of people as abstractions. Although terHorst was talking about one public figure he knew close up, it seems to me he described a limitation of vision that afflicts most of us in varying degrees.

Saul Bellow, I think, once contrived a fictional conversation involving a scientist working on some nuclear device of mass destruction. The conversation was about a neighborhood maniac who, in a rage, had wiped out a family. The scientist hears the news and marvels at the savagery. He asks, in horrified wonderment, who could possibly even consider the killing of five strangers. Then he goes back to his weaponry work.

The Mitt quote seems to have political implications. Newt Gingrich reacts. CBS provides the quote.

"I am fed up with politicians in either party dividing Americans against each other," Gingrich said. "I am running to be president of all of the American people, and I am concerned about all of the American people."

Newt's motivations seem as transparent as mountain air. But the Mitt message, unintended, is not news about actual policy. Romney embraces the Paul Ryan plan to slash the safety net he says he will strengthen as needed. Health care through Medicaid will be slashed. Programs for education, food, and housing will be dramatically reduced. Such necessities are the heart of the safety net which Mitt promises to slash, burn, save, strengthen, depending on the audience.

But all of that has been known about the Mitt program for months, with barely a ripple on the surface of America's political waters. An insensitive remark intending to emphasize the middle class produces a mini-tsunami. Tropical storm Mitt.

The unfortunate Romney phrasing is considered a gaffe. That's the word we see in headlines.

Gaffe.

Politico, CBS, the Huffington Post, CNN, and others use the word in headlines and stories.

Implicit in that coverage, even in the word "gaffe", is a political question. What will be the effect on politics? The effect on policy, and the effect of that policy on real men, women, and children in desperate circumstance, is not part of the reaction of much of anyone. Those who struggle for sustenance and shelter are too numerous to be individuals. They have become numbers, statistics, rounded percentages. Boring.

The coverage goes, as always, to what is interesting, to politics. What about that gaffe!

Mitt Romney is far from alone. We remain with him in spirit.

If I was a Republican, I'd vote for Dave Spence for Missouri Governor.

In. A. Heartbeat.

I admit that's a little like explaining what sort of tree I would be, if I was forced by a cosmic joke to make a choice. Okay, okay. If it comes down to it, I'll be an Oak. I don't think Paul Simon was actually advocating a literal choice when he said he'd rather be a hammer than a nail, but you can still get his point, so to speak.

I confess I like Dave Spence. His problem is he's being managed into the ground.

This was once a guy everyone said was no good at much of anything. He studied at college, but his grades were so bad the University of Missouri told him he could only have a diploma in Home Economics. He became embarrassed about it. For years, when asked, he would tell folks the degree was in economics. It was literally true. It let him focus on what he turned out to have a talent for.

That's the real story.

After he graduated, he wrangled a Small Business loan and started his own company. Three decades later, his firm is world famous. Any one of over 800 people will say "Yes sir, I sure am" when he asks if they're doing okay. That's 800 folks with jobs created by Dave Spence. That's not some Mitt Romney count-the-pluses-not-the-minuses math trick. That's 800 jobs.

It's a wonderful story. And it kind of goes like this:

Okay, folks. You got him. He got a little embarrassed over the years by his low grades, and the fact that he had a silly sounding degree. But it turns out the big bad mega-University that told him he wasn't qualified for anything else, and those who still laugh at him today, were ... and are ... a little on the dark side of the curve. He came from behind and won. Big.

The young inept guy was not inept at all. In fact he was REAL ept.

So let's all laugh.
Ha ha ha. Home Economics. And he managed to do WHAT?!?

Of course his campaign is being run by unmitigated boobs. Instead of making this into the wonder story it could be, they have gone defensive, insisting Home Economics really is the same as Economics, if you look at it while wearing the right spectacles. Besides, if you want to get technical, the college program was long ago renamed "Consumer Economics." Which makes him a Consumer Economist.

Seriously. That's what they're saying.

All of which amplifies howls of derision. I know this fellow is a Republican, but this is way too much.

Now another laugh has begun. Seems that he was being interviewed on the radio, taking phoned in comments. A few callers made disparaging remarks about President Obama's stimulus package. Remember that waste of taxpayer's money that never created a job anywhere? The socialist program gone bad?

Those callers are kind of like bloggers whose balloon thinking I don't much mind witnessing as it is popped with ... you know ... facts. But I wouldn't want to face this fellow in a debate without a lot of preparation. He uses a brutal tactic that public conservatives seldom realize is available to them. He's honest.

I've wondered how a conservative might criticize Obama in a way that did not deny little details like reality. I've thought of a few approaches, but few of them would work in the real political world. Conservatives are hammered by inconvenient truths. Obviously, the life-and-death economic crisis began before the President took office. It did get worse in his first six months, before his hasty, emergency policies could go into effect. Things are getting better. If it hadn't been for Obama's quick actions, a huge part of the United States would be standing on street corners selling apples to survive. That's a fact, Jack.

If you are a conservative, and honest, you could still make the case.
You could say the stimulus was expensive. It was
You could say that the root problems remain in place, unresolved, waiting to happen again.
They do, they are, and they might.
You could make the case for a bright conservative future.

You could try the way Dave Spence went at it.

You know, we've taken in close to four billion dollars in stimulus funds in the last three years.

It has masked the problem.

And it is over, the gravy train is over. The depression started in the first place, but the Obama administration jammed it down everybody's throat.

And it saved our bacon to tell you the truth. However, that's over.

Wow.

Everybody is calling it a gaffe. But huge doors can open for someone who acknowledges the truth, then pushes past bare facts to future implications. His approach is quick and incisive:

Government financed prosperity can't continue. It isn't sustainable. We have to move on, we have to adopt sensible policies, conservative, conservative, conservative. Onward toward heaven and Reagan.

Yeah, the approach is mistaken. And yeah, we can find good rebuttals. But this guy put a cogent case together off-the-cuff, did it without substantial factual distortion. He did it in under 20 seconds. He would be a conservative Elizabeth Warren except for one dependable part of his current life. Thank you, Lord, for that one factor.

The same white knuckle campaign staff that blew away the story of his amazing comeback is blowing this as well:
Spence Campaign Says Stimulus 'Saved Our Bacon' Clip is Out of Context.

These guys aren't trying to win. They're just trying not to lose.

Next worship service we should pray to our Redeemer for the continued health of Missouri Republican managers. And in our trembling liberal hearts, we should realize this fellow may have a very large political future if he fires just a few of them.

If I was a conservative Republican, I would vote for Dave Spence.
I'd rather be a hammer than a nail.

In response to T. Paine's Do Not Invalidate the Sacrament of Marriage

To broaden the term “marriage” to include any other iterations of involved people in the ceremony is to invalidate the meaning of the word and the sacrament that the word describes.

- T. Paine, January 27, 2012

I think some readers may not appreciate the wisdom of T. Paine’s message. Just in case, I wish to ally myself with his opinion, and clarify it, lest any ambiguity remain.

I have to agree with T. Paine about the “backwardness or unenlightened thinking” of the anti-gay marriage movement. However, backward and unthinking though it be, I and T. Paine are still on board.

“The fact of the matter is that marriage was intended for procreation and the perpetuation of our species in the most stable form possible.”

I agree with T. Paine that we should not allow women over the age of 50 to marry. Like T. Paine, I think it’s perverted, almost nasty.

“To broaden the term 'marriage' to include any other iterations of involved people in the CEREMONY is to invalidate the meaning of the word.”

Right. We are mostly talking about ceremony, or rather, the protection of a word that describes a ceremony. With more words becoming endangered every day, it is time for someone to stand up and say enough! Protect words, for God’s sake. If oppression of homosexuals is the cost of our preservation efforts, then so be it. It is a small price for me to pay.

It is true that the poor embattled term “marriage” has both a secular (legal) and a scared (my God’s) meaning. We should not commit a fallacy of complex question by marrying the discussion of one with the other. The right to marry that some seek is the right to participate in a legal marriage, first and foremost. I do accept that if homosexuals want a right to participate in a marriage granted by my God, they must petition my God, not the U.S. government, for that. However, like T. Paine, I think that the right I define as My God’s, should supersede, and wholly consume, the legal question. My God’s law is paramount.

If I were a homo, my first concern, and my only concern until it is addressed, would be for legal secular marriage. Obviously, if my God prohibits homosexuality, He would prohibit marriage between homosexuals. However, I would like to note that my God would prohibit marriage between homosexuals, not just to save the endangered word, as T. Paine’s article suggests, but because my God thinks it is immoral to engage in homosexuality, and marrying a homosexual comes perilously close to violating my God’s rule.

T. Paine and I think “It should be left up to houses of faith to marry folks.” However, we both realize that this refers to my God’s marriage, not a government contract. The legal secular question is irrelevant, and a poor excuse for violating my God’s law.

I and T. Paine say:

“My [our] Catholic faith is one that can ONLY be fulfilled by the union of one woman and one man together under God. It is a matter of natural law and God's law.”

Let me paraphrase for clarity:

“Homosexuals, like natural law, are bound to my Catholic faith, just as God Himself is, and I don’t want homosexuals to marry.”

Do you hear that homosexuals? Do you hear that God? Good. I don’t want to have to tell you/You again!

John Myste also writes for his own site, where Natural Law has been successfully amended to allow Gay Marriage.

Please visit John Myste Responds

In response to Burr Deming's Gay Marriage Opponent from Missouri

Those of us of a certain age grew up in an anti-gay environment so pervasive it never occurred to anyone that it was anti-gay. Gay rights were not considered controversial then. They were not considered at all.

When the issue was eventually raised, the response of many was the equivalent of sputtering incoherence. Of course the rankest perversion should segregated from the rest of society. How could anyone challenge such a basic idea?

- Burr Deming, January 26, 2012

I have never heard an intelligent argument for restricting the rights of gays to marry. They are all fraught with named fallacies and other explanations that defy reason and common sense.

This issue, in a very few years, will become tantamount to the slavery discussion, the right of white males to suppress women’s rights discussion, to the rights to decide what color one’s skin must be in order to cast a vote in America discussion.

Those who stay with the far right and continue to embrace obvious discrimination for this reason or that, will leave documented records of shame behind.

Robert Bork opposed the Civil Rights Act denouncing it as "an unwanted intrusion on the right of individuals to choose with whom to associate." He openly declared that barbers should not lose their rights to put up “Whites Only” signs in the Aryan windows of their own establishments.

You can still make a weak argument defending Bork’s stance today, but notice, I did not say “defending Associate Supreme Court Justice Bork’s stance.”

Those who openly embrace prejudice of any kind should be careful of the footprints they leave. Some of those trails will still be there for all to see, long after the oppression of gays is no longer considered enlightened and has otherwise vanished. We will remember the horror of a backward generation. And to remind us we will have the written words of traditional conservatives, sources of pride when written, and opinions they will wish to keep in the closet, but it will be too late, once the matter is settled. The information age will carry their message forward and show it to the next the generation: the general public, potential employers, their children, and whatever on-looking God they happen to embrace.

If I am wrong, just remember this: no one was ever shamed for renouncing prejudice.

John Myste also writes for his own site, where no one is shamed for renouncing prejudice. Please visit John Myste Responds

In response to Burr Deming's Gay Marriage Opponent from Missouri

Eventually, the argument against tolerance of gays was lost. The struggle turned to gay marriage. The astonished indignation at the very idea still spawns a stream of incoherence. It's hard for opponents to get past the how-dare-you stage into any sort of cogent presentation.

- Burr Deming, January 26, 2012

It is my humble opinion that the government really should not be involved in issuing or denying marriage licenses to ANYONE. It should be left up to houses of faith to marry folks, even when some various Christian faiths have found a way to justify the marrying of homosexual couples somewhere in the scriptures or their traditions. For those good folk that don’t proclaim a faith, I suppose a civil union can be enacted just like any other legal contract would be.

My personal take on the issue is that in this day and age many folks may argue the point with pseudo-legalities and pop-culture attitudes towards the subject, but that doesn't in any way change the FACT that marriage is supposed to be a sacrament, and as such in my Catholic faith it is one that can ONLY be fulfilled by the union of one woman and one man together under God. It is a matter of natural law and God's law.

To misappropriate the term “marriage” for such non-sacramental unions only further cheapens the meaning of the word and further deteriorates our language.

People can decry my backwardness or unenlightened thinking on the topic if they wish, but the fact of the matter is that marriage was intended for procreation and the perpetuation of our species in the most stable form possible. To broaden the term “marriage” to include any other iterations of involved people in the ceremony is to invalidate the meaning of the word and the sacrament that the word describes.

T. Paine occasionally contributes to FairAndUNbalanced.com in valiant but hopeless attempts to catch up with and correct Burr Deming's various liberal errors.

Although retired from his own conservative site, he remains well known as an opinion leader in his own right.