Musing's musings

Here's my advice for the pope

In his Palm Sunday homily today, Pope Benedict XVI dismissed critiques of his handling of recent allegations of clergy sexual abuse of minors as the "petty gossip of dominant opinion." Admittedly, Benedict did not explicitly mention the recent scandals, but his remarks were very much in tune with those of his press staff and other official Vatican organs over the last week or two. The reference was egregiously obvious.

Not surprisingly, Benedict continues to display a studied ignorance of the gravity of the situation, coupled with a breathtaking arrogance and an almost complete lack of understanding of how modern forms of communication work (and what they mean for his pontificate). Regrettably, that trend seems likely to continue until such time as the present generation of cardinals passes collectively to its everlasting reward--and even then, there's no guarantee that those who replace them will understand the modern world any better, given how few of them actually seem to be living in it.

For what it's worth, however, I will offer the pontiff a bit of advice on how he should be handling this scandal. First and foremost, when another allegation of abuse is brought to light, the only proper response--from the Vatican on down to the local rectory--is to apologize, profusely and sincerely, as often as it takes. Any other starting point will end in failure.

Second, investigate the allegations as thoroughly and openly as possible, consistent with the need to safeguard the privacy of innocent parties and to be respectful of due process. That means that no one from the hierarchy can be directly involved in carrying out the investigation, the reports can't be sent exclusively to the Curia or the local ordinary, and all interested parties must be publicly enjoined to cooperate frankly and fully with the competent authorities.

Third, when someone is found to have committed an act of abuse, or to have covered one up, that person must be disciplined appropriately within the Church, and also face whatever civil penalties may apply. There can be no exceptions to this rule.

Fourth, stop pretending that this rampant culture of abuse has anything whatsoever to do with sexual orientation. End, immediately, the idiotic ban on openly gay or lesbian individuals taking vows or serving in the Church: it is scapegoating every bit as perniciously wrong as the events we commemorate this week. Until you admit that the problem is with the culture of the Church and not the sexual orientation of persons within it, the problem will persist--and get worse.

To sum up, Your Holiness, you should pray more--a lot more--and preach less. Speak in public about the scandals only to apologize for them or to announce the results of investigations that have been carried out or new directives that actually have some chance of fixing what is quite obviously broken in the Church. Or, to quote the prophet Micah, "Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God." Concentrate particularly on the first and last of those three injunctions.

ARRA: #GOPFail

Pardon me for lapsing into what I understand to be Twitter-speak in the post title. As I was waiting to pay my bill yesterday at lunch, I caught a glimpse of some blowhard on Fixed Noise bloviating about how the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA, better known as the stimulus package) was "full of waste."

The bloviating blowhard even had a few examples. I couldn't write fast enough to get them down, but I did jot down the total. According to this pundit, there's $5.5 billion in "waste" in the ARRA. Oh, noez! Five and a half billion dollars, down the drain! Wow, that's really wasteful!

I'm sure that's the reaction the Republicans and their bought-and-paid-for propaganda outlet were going for. But let's put those numbers into some context. According to Recovery.gov (where anybody who's interested can go and see exactly how much money is being spent on what, in which places: it even has a handy-dandy link where you can report suspected waste or fraud involving ARRA funds--which I suspect might be where the bloviating blowhard got at least some of his numbers), total ARRA funding amounted to $787 billion. According to my back-of-envelope calculations, that means less than 1 percent of the money invested has been pegged as "waste." By Fixed Noise, so take that with a grain of salt, please. (And if it really turns out to be waste, I have little doubt that the federal government will demand that the money be given back, so they can put it to better use somewhere else. I know for a fact that's what the federal granting agencies are telling people--spend it, and spend it wisely, or we'll make you give it back.)

Now let's jump into the Wayback Machine, shall we? Set the dial to 2005, when an inspector general's report found a total of $9 billion of U.S. funds unaccounted for under the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. A year later, and another report claimed that as much as $50 billion had been handed out with little or no oversight to various private contractors in Iraq. A year after that, it emerged that our government had flown in nearly $12 billion in cash to Iraq, and could hardly be bothered to keep track of what it then did with those 363 tons of money. (That's how much 281 million greenbacks weigh: almost 400 tons.) Where were the Republicans while all this was happening? Sending college interns, if memory serves, over to Iraq to help hand out that $12 billion--of course making sure that it always went to worthy causes and individuals, naturally.

So the take-home message from the GOP seems to be that anything under $10 billion is "waste," while anything over that amount is "business as usual"--at least as long as it's a Republican in charge of handing it out. As ever, the GOP's rhetoric rings hollow. But I just love it when they make it so easy to fact-check them.

I'd like to make a few suggestions...

...for additions to the "For Dummies" series of books. We can start with The Constitution for Republicans, since it does not appear that many of them have ever actually read it--or if they have, they've failed to retain any of the salient points. As evidence, I present the following, from the peroration to Rush Limbaugh's closing plenary address to the Conservative Political Action Public Asshattery Convention, last Saturday in Washington, D.C., in which he was attempting to argue that President Obama's policies represent a "bastardization" of the Constitution:

We love and revere our founding documents, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. [Applause] We believe that the preamble to the Constitution contains an inarguable truth that we are all endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life. [Applause] Liberty, Freedom. [Applause] And the pursuit of happiness. [Applause]

For the purposes of comparison, I herewith present the actual Preamble to the Constitution:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Sorry, Rush, but of the words you thought were in there, only "Liberty" actually appears--and not in the context you wanted. What you were looking for was the Declaration of Independence, which, of course, you also got wrong. Here's the pertinent passage in the original:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...

"Freedom" is not in there, guys. But note that "Government" is. Ooops. The Limboob, and all the boobettes who stood and mindlessly cheered his pompous pontifications at CPAC should all have to go back and retake high-school civics. Oh, and the leaders of the Republican Party might want to rethink all that groveling at his feet they're doing, lest they embarrass themselves even further than they already have.

"Depart, I say, and let us have done with you!"*

Roland Burris is turning into Rod Blagojevich's gift that keeps on giving--whether or not we want it to. Virtually every leading Democrat in Illinois--and not a few from other states as well--has asked him politely to consider stepping down, but he steadfastly refuses to do so. Even when Dick Durbin, his fellow Illinois senator, urged him to quit, he announced his intention to stay put.

Fine. We'll just have to wait for the Senate to expel him, or for a competent authority to remove him. Or, in the worst-case scenario, we'll just have to wait out the end of his term, which has only a little more than a year and a half left in it. Burris did seem to hint, after his meeting with Durbin yesterday, that he was not considering running for re-election in 2010--which is just as well, given that everyone in Illinois (except, possibly, Roland Burris) knows that he'd get absolutely trounced in the Democratic primary and if, by some miracle, he managed to pull off a victory in the primary, he'd get his ass handed to him in the general.

At this point, I'm less annoyed with Burris (he's just doing what he's always done) than I am with some of his more clueless supporters. The local NPR station this morning ran a story, which I only heard in bits and pieces as I was shaving, about a group of black ministers who are insisting that Burris has done nothing wrong and that he shouldn't have to quit anything. And then there's Danny Davis, who seems to have become Burris's BFF after losing the Senate appointment to him, who seems to feel that the Senate seat formerly held by President Obama is now somehow the property of Illinois's African-Americans. And, since I seem to be on a Brit-quoting kick in this post, I'll borrow from a later British politician (Sir Winston Churchill) and say that's nonsense up with which I will not put.

There are no quotas for Senate seats--or for any other political appointments, for that matter. The idea is unconstitutional on its face, and it's simply ludicrous thereafter. If we're going to divvy up our representation according to the race of Illinoisans, then we need to have 1.422 white senators, 0.294 black senator, 0.292 Latino senator, 0.084 Asian senator, 0.04 Native American senator, 0.164 "other" senator, and 0.03 biracial senator. I won't even attempt to do the parallel calculations for our House delegation, since I'd have to do it by the racial makeup of the various legislative districts. Davis should content himself with getting another Democrat in Obama's old seat--and leave race out of it.

(*Oliver Cromwell, dismissing the Rump Parliament, 1653: "You have sat too long for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!")

Sorry, Roland

The best possible spin I can put on the mess that is rising up around Roland Burris's neck is that perhaps he thought that he could "revise and extend" sworn testimony in just the same way that legislators can do with their remarks on the floor of Congress. It's a fairly common tactic in legislative debate, where time is usually pretty strictly rationed--to the extent that most of what any given legislator wants to say exceeds the time in which she has to say it by about a factor of five.

As the man I am at least temporarily forced to call my junior senator is finding out, however, the same privilege does not extend to sworn testimony. Doesn't matter whether the testimony was taken (or involved) a court of law, a legislative body, or whatever. Once you raise your right hand to God and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, that's what you do--or else you're subject at the very least to legal penalties for your lack of honesty. My faith teaches me that there are other consequences to worry about as well, but I'll leave those for the competent Court.

As for me, I'm with the editorial boards of the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Post. Roland Burris should resign from the Senate seat that I and others argued he should neither have been offered nor accepted in the first place.

I readily concede the possibility that Mr. Burris is entirely innocent of any wrongdoing in this matter whatsoever. That is irrelevant outside of a court of law. In the court of public opinion, and in the game of politics as it is played on this level in this country, perception is the only thing that matters. Burris's appointment was smelly, his acceptance of that appointment was smelly, and his insistence on defying the sound advice that was given to him by everyone in the Democratic Party from President Obama on down was smelly. That stench has now been magnified and amplified by the revelation that Burris was apparently less than fully truthful in his testimony before the committee in the Illinois General Assembly that was debating whether or not to impeach former Governor Blagojevich. That's at least two strikes against Burris, and in politics, unlike baseball, it only takes one before you're out.

It is certainly within the realm of possibility (and, given the size of Roland Burris's ego, I'd have to say I consider it quite likely) that Burris will absolutely refuse to do the honorable thing and resign quietly. And, given the political tenor at the moment, neither can I exclude from the realm of possibility the chance that the General Assembly, the U.S. Senate, or some other competent body will do to Roland Burris exactly what the Illinois legislature did to the man that appointed him to the office, and kick him out if he won't go of his own volition.

That would be an unfortunate eventuality for all concerned. It would absolutely doom Roland Burris, for the rest of his life, to being a late-night talk show joke. It would strip from him his dignity and, perhaps more importantly to Burris, any chance whatsoever of his being able to re-enter Illinois politics. As things stood before these latest revelations came out, it was looking increasingly likely that Burris would be primaried in 2010 and that he would lose. That's looking more and more like a certainty now.

And while I'm not a lawyer and I don't even play one on TV, I don't like Burris's chances of making this "it's OK as long as I didn't actually raise any money" schtick stick. I'm pretty sure that acts in furtherance of a crime or a criminal conspiracy are, themselves, still criminal. And I'm also pretty sure that the applicable Illinois law makes it a crime even to offer to exchange something of value (such as campaign contributions) in return for a political favor from a state official, even if the exchange of considerations never actually takes place. In fact, unless I totally miss my guess, that's one of the provisions of one of the first (and perhaps the only) good laws that Rod Blagojevich managed to get through the legislature during his first term in office: the State Officials and Employees Ethics Act.

Among the growing number of things that Roland Burris and Rod Blagojevich have in common is that neither one of them seems to be familiar with that particular piece of legislation. Not that that will in any way protect them from being prosecuted under its terms, if the facts warrant.

Blagojevich removed

The Illinois Senate has just unanimously removed Rod Blagojevich as the governor of Illinois.

They'll be voting next to determine whether or not he will be barred from ever holding public office in Illinois again.

Update 16:55. A motion to bar Blagojevich from holding office has been made and seconded, and the vote is now being taken. Thus far, we're at 24 yeas, so it looks like this one will pass as well.

Update 16:57. There are now more than 40 yea votes, which is the constitutional threshold. Blagojevich will be ineligible to hold public office ever again in Illinois.

Update 16:58. The vote to disqualify Blagojevich from future public office was unanimous. The chief justice has just pronounced the judgement of disqualification against Blagojevich.

Update 18:25. Pat Quinn was sworn in as the 41st governor of Illinois at 5:40 p.m. And I love that they've already updated the state website. I wonder how long it will take to get all those signs extolling the former governor's munificence in bringing us "open-road tolling" taken down or changed along all the miles and miles of tollway, and at the airports and state welcome centers.

Roland and Rod, sittin' in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g

OK, not really. And I apologize to all of my readers who may now find it difficult to get that image out of their heads. I sympathize, it's not one I want in my head, either.

But it looks as if we're going to be stuck with it for at least the next couple of years. And it looks as if I can add Roland Burris to the growing list of politicians I once had at least some respect for and who are now anathema to me.

Rod Blagojevich desperately wanted to change the subject away from all of his legal woes, and maintain a façade of normality while waiting for the General Assembly to get around to dropping the other shoe and impeaching him. Getting to appoint someone to fill Barack Obama's seat in the U.S. Senate allowed him to do that. But he couldn't appoint himself (or his wife), as he had been rumored to be considering. Neither could he appoint anybody who owed him favors, as that would just make his situation worse. Ditto for anybody he might be perceived as "getting rid of" by sending them off to Washington and out of Illinois for a couple of years. No self-respecting Democrat would take a phone call from him or accept an appointment from his hands.

And then along came Roland Burris. After wandering in the political wilderness of former politicians who've been down on their electoral luck for the last 13 years, Burris desperately wanted a chance to matter again. And he took the governor's phone call--and the appointment it offered.

Two men with monumental egos and equally monumental contempt for the wishes of the voters of Illinois, the wishes of the party of which they claim to be members in good standing, the wishes of the U.S. Senate, and yes, the wishes of our next president, who used to sit in that very seat in the Senate. A match made somewhere, but surely not in heaven.

Which of these two is not like the other?

Rod Blagojevich was arrested by the FBI and has had a criminal complaint lodged against him by the cognizant U.S. Attorney. Subsequent to both of those developments, the Illinois General Assembly has initiated impeachment proceedings against him. Doggedly proclaiming his innocence, despite a mountain of fairly immutable and unimpeachable evidence against him and contained within the aforementioned criminal complaint, Blagojevich continues to pretend that nothing is wrong and that he is entitled to all the perquisites and privileges of his position. He has repeatedly refused to step down, even temporarily, despite pressure for him to do so from politicians in both parties at all levels of the political hierarchy--from our president-elect on downward.

Bill Richardson, on the other hand, has neither been arrested nor charged with anything. A New Mexico grand jury is allegedly looking into allegations that there may have been an improper connection between contributions made by a California company to two political committees Richardson ran (neither of which was to benefit him personally, in distinct contrast to the Blagojevich mess) and the awarding of a state contract. Faced with that investigation, the merest suggestion that something might be amiss, Richardson graciously withdrew his name from consideration as Obama's secretary of commerce, despite some pressure from the transition team to stay the course.

That, Mr. Blagojevich, is what a public servant (as opposed to a politician or a political hack) does when there is even a suggestion of wrongdoing attached to his/her name. The contrast between Richardson's decision and yours is palpable. What a pity you wouldn't do the same favor for the voters of Illinois (and the Obama transition team). But of course your galactic-sized ego would never permit that.

One can only hope that the General Assembly will decide to impeach you post-haste, and that the Senate will convict with the same celerity. Unfortunately, I'm not holding my breath on either count, given the petty pace at which the GA has historically crept whenever there were serious or timely issues demanding their attention. On the other hand, the one good thing you've done for us is in managing to unite both Democrats and Republicans in the state legislature in a desire to do the same thing--get rid of you.

'Twere best done quickly.

Spare us the crocodile tears, thanks

The Republican Party would like to have us believe that it only has the best interests of Illinois voters at heart. Hence, it would also like to have us believe, its interest in pressing for a special election to fill the Senate seat vacated by President-Elect Barack Obama. So great is the Republicans' interest in getting that message across, they've started taking out ads on Facebook to get the word out--much to my disgust, since they interfered with an otherwise satisfactory conclusion to a game of Scramble recently.

Not to put too fine a point on it, I'm calling bullshit. The Republican Party doesn't give a shit about the best interests of Illinois voters (or any other voters, for that matter). The Republican Party cares about one thing, and one thing only: the Republican Party. Specifically, maintaining its grip on as much power as it can legitimately (or by other means when necessary) hold on to. They would, I'm quite sure, just as soon not have people thinking about the fact that a special election to fill Obama's seat would give them about the only decent opportunity they have (and it isn't that much of one) to take over a Democratic Senate seat. Nor that it would, if they were to prove successful in the special election, give them one more seat to ward off a Democratic supermajority. Since the outcome of the Minnesota recount is still up for grabs (and since their guy Norm Coleman--who couldn't get it done against Al Franken in anything like a convincing fashion--is apparently also under federal investigation for political corruption and just hired a team of high-powered lawyers to fight off accusations), Obama's seat represents a very precious thing to the Republicans, one that they would very much like to get their hands on if at all possible.

Too bad for them that their bench is so thin in Illinois. I'm quite sure our not-so-happy, five-times-unlucky warrior Jim Oberweis would love to give it a whirl, though doing so would only likely siphon off another few million bucks from his dairy company's profit margin and hand him his sixth consecutive electoral loss in Illinois. A couple of members of Illinois' dwindling Republican congressional delegation have been bruited about as potential candidates, but I fail to see them getting it done in a statewide race where they don't have much name recognition outside of their home districts (and almost all of those whose names have been floated are from the Chicago area, which isn't exactly a plus with downstate voters). If they were smart, they wouldn't be pressing quite so hard for an election that it's not at all certain they'll even be able to compete in.

Oh, the things that I know!

It's been quite the day here in the Land of Lincoln. Early this morning, federal authorities arrested Gov. Rod Blagojevich in connection with a lengthy probe of alleged corruption. Apparently the U.S. Attorney's office decided to move today out of concern that the corruption might extend to various quid pro quo scenarios for the nomination to replace President-Elect Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate. (I hasten to point out that, the guff from the Republican National Committee notwithstanding, there does not appear to be any connection between Obama or his transition team and Blagojevich. Indeed, it would be surprising if there were any such connection, given that the two men have never been close. You have only to listen to the tapes of the conversations that Blagojevich was having over the last few weeks to find out what he thinks of our soon-to-be president.)

While I'm sorry that we now have our second consecutive governor under federal indictment for corruption, and also that this time it's a Democrat, I'm perfectly happy with the process and I'm looking forward to sweeping the state and its government clean of the Augean Stable-esque mess that has been Rod Blagojevich. It's possible that the only thing known to science bigger than the macro-cosmic universe is Rod Blagojevich's ego.

If even a tenth of the allegations contained in the 76-page indictment (PDF link) turn out to be substantially correct, our sitting governor was not only a crook and a monumental egotist, but galactically stupid--on a level that comes awfully close to Worst. President. Ever. territory. I mean, really: if you're going to attempt to extort someone for a favor, most people of normal intelligence would probably figure that anybody who works for a major newspaper (let alone a major newspaper that hates your breathing guts and everything that you stand for) should probably not be at the top of your "To Be Bribed Today" list. But not our Rod. No, siree. He offered to help the Tribune Company (which cooperated with the investigation) with the sale of Wrigley Field if the company would fire members of the Chicago Tribune's editorial board who had been critical of Blagojevich. Given that I think that set is probably identical to the set of members of the Trib's editorial board, that's a pretty big request to make.

I quite agree with U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's statement that Blagojevich's behavior would make Abraham Lincoln roll over in his Springfield grave--a location with which I'm sure Blagojevich is as unfamiliar as I am, given how little time he's spent in Springfield since being elected governor six years ago. (Despite living in Illinois for most of my life, I've never actually done more than drive past our state's capital city. One of these days, I've got to rectify that situation.) And I concur with Obama's statement that today's revelations are deeply saddening to any resident of Illinois.

However, despite the fact that this means yet another protracted court battle that will almost certainly end up with our second consecutive chief executive winning an all-expense-paid not-exactly vacation at federal expense in a nice medium-security prison, and the fact that there will be all manner of forgetting-the-planks-in-their-own-eye Schadenfreude from all manner of Republicans within and without our fair state, and the fact that Blagojevich is at least in theory a member of the Democratic Party, this was entirely the right thing to do and the right time to do it. Blagojevich may have ridden into office on a promise to clean up the scandals of the Ryan administration which preceded his, but it was apparent to most politically astute and observant folks that he was just as big a hack as his predecessor well before his first term came to a close. Long-term readers of this space will remember that I really wanted someone to put up a primary challenge to Blagojevich when he ran for re-election a couple of years ago. (I actually wrote in Pat Quinn's name for governor when that didn't happen, so maybe I'll finally get my wish.)

Forget his corruption (OK, "alleged corruption"). Forget his monumental ego and his equally monumental stupidity. Blagojevich has never been able to govern effectively, because it's always been his way or the highway. Meanwhile, we're stuck in a huge budget deficit and we still don't have an actual budget in place for the current fiscal year (which is half over), and our governor was apparently more interested in finding a way to duck out of his last two years in office here to actually carry out any of the functions of his office. I don't much care whom we get to replace this fatuous git, though I would like for it to be another Democrat, considering the Republicans in Illinois have been scraping the bottom of their barrel so long that it's worn through. But I absolutely insist on getting someone into the governor's mansion who will actually do the job s/he's getting paid to do.

Ironically, one of the first things Blagojevich did upon taking office was to mandate that every state employee, from himself on down to the temporary workers hired to clean snow during winter storms and the student workers in our state universities, had to take and pass an annual ethics test. We just completed our round for 2008 (for which, naturally, we get neither monetary nor personnel support from the state) six weeks ago. Judging from the complaints enumerated in the indictment against him, it seems fairly clear that Rod the Bod wasn't paying attention when he took his test this year. It would only be fair if, in addition to whatever other penalties he will have to accept, he also has to pony up the $5,000 fine for either failing to complete the test or doing so fraudulently.