Author: Joe Conason

Recent expressions of political and religious prejudice against Mormons and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints have offered Mitt Romney a chance to play the bullied underdog — and to explain, as he did with clarity and dignity during the recent Las Vegas GOP debate, the meaning of the constitutional prohibition against any religious test for public office.

That won’t discourage Baptist conservatives or atheist entertainers like Bill Maher from making fun of Mormons and their faith, whose history and tenets certainly sound strange to outsiders.

But is there any real reason to be troubled by Romney’s religion? What does the career of the former Massachusetts governor tell us about the ideology of the LDS church — and what his personal beliefs may portend if he becomes the first Mormon in the Oval Office?

The complaint from the religious right — which has promiscuously allied itself with Mormon leaders to oppose reproductive and gay rights (and civil rights in an earlier era) — is that the LDS church does not conform to the tenets of Christianity as they see it. Pastor Robert Jeffress, the man whose anti-Mormon crusading has now taken him onto late-night television and the opinion pages of The Washington Post, says he prefers a “committed Christian” but doesn’t say why or what that precisely means.

Mormons may not share all of the tenets of Baptist or Methodist Christianity, but neither do Catholics or Episcopalians, yet fundamentalist evangelicals like Jeffress don’t seem to worry much about their role in public life. On issues that implicate morality, sexuality, and family, the Mormons are equally “conservative” and consider themselves to be Christians, too. They officially abandoned polygamy many years ago — and they seem to succeed more consistently in adhering to what they preach than many of their more orthodox brethren, if surveys of divorce, addiction, and teen pregnancy are accurate.

Those conservative principles, along with a history of extremist positions adopted by the Mormon hierarchy, have encouraged the perception of the LDS church as an ideological bulwark of the far right. Mormon leaders long encouraged associations with fringe elements in American politics, such as the John Birch Society, which still wields influence in the Tea Party movement today. And the ultra-craziness of Glenn Beck, himself a Mormon and a promoter of wacky LDS political theorists, has not improved the church’s political profile.

In practice, however, the Mormons welcome or at least permit a much broader spectrum of political and ideological affiliations within their ranks, even among the elected officials who share their faith. The highest-ranking Mormon in public office today, for instance, is Senate majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada, a liberal Democrat demonized by the Tea Party and the Republicans, who spent millions trying to defeat him last year.

The best example of Mormonism’s political flexibility, of course, is Romney’s own career (and that of his father, the late Michigan governor who was hardly a hardliner), which veered from the most liberal Republicanism to the harsh conservatism he currently espouses.

As an LDS bishop in Boston two decades ago, he staunchly opposed abortion; then a few years later, Romney became pro-choice when he ran for the Senate against Democrat Ted Kennedy; and then shifted again when he began to aspire to his party’s presidential nomination. Along the way, he designed and legislated a health-care program that ensures coverage to almost every citizen of Massachusetts and now repudiates that program (more or less) as an invention of Bay State Democrats.

The Romney family traces its lineage to the roots of the LDS movement, and today Mitt Romney stands at the pinnacle of wealth and influence in his church. His shape-shifting politics prove that however conservative most Mormons may be, they resemble most other American religious groups in tolerating a wide assortment of political views within their ranks — especially among politicians who succeed in achieving power. There are many reasons for concern about Romney’s character — including his hollow dissembling — but religion is not among them. Joe Conason is the editor in chief of NationalMemo.com.

Watching the Republican presidential candidates and their agitated Tea Party supporters at the CNN/Tea Party debate, an ordinary citizen might feel confused. Those people sound angry, but exactly what do they believe our government should (and shouldn’t) do on behalf of its citizens?

Ensuring affordable health care for everyone seemed to be on the forbidden list. Every one of the candidates vehemently insisted, to predictably enthusiastic applause, that President Obama’s health-care reform must go. And just as predictably, none of them suggested how to provide affordable health care to the roughly 50 million Americans who lack coverage — a number that reached a new record last month.

Indeed, when CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer asked whether a young man lacking private health insurance should simply be allowed to die if he suddenly suffered an accident or illness, some audience members screamed, “Yes!” Many of the rest cheered, while the would-be presidents stood by woodenly, without the dignity of a demurral.

It was a revealing moment that may foretell a new and meaner Republican platform: If you lose your job and your health care, don’t expect any help, except perhaps from the church. And if your innocent kids get sick, too bad for them. Forget about Medicare, Medicaid, and any American who can’t afford private insurance. This is a free country — so don’t get sick.

“That’s what freedom is all about — taking your own risks,” said Ron Paul (a medical doctor who doesn’t apply the Hippocratic oath to his congressional service) in answering Blitzer. “This whole idea that you have to take care of everybody …,” he went on disdainfully, before the audience cut him off with shrieks and applause.

Yet during the same debate, Rick Perry, the GOP’s leading contender, justified his program to inoculate young schoolgirls against cervical cancer by explaining that he was putting life first as always — and then boasted about the millions of state dollars he has spent seeking a cure for cancer. While all the other candidates attacked the Texas governor for his Gardasil vaccination program, what bothered them more than the state funding was the alleged lack of parental consent. In principle, most of them seemed to think that state-funded protection for children against a deadly disease might even be acceptable.

Perry himself wasn’t exactly clear on this topic either, since he has denounced Medicare as unconstitutional. He took umbrage at Michele Bachmann’s suggestion that a $5,000 donation from the vaccine’s distributor had influenced his decision. But he actually took at least five times that amount, so perhaps Texas is just a place where legal bribes, like everything else, are bigger.

For anyone trying to understand what Republicans think about government’s role in health care, however, the debate displayed a puzzling level of incoherence. Is vaccinating schoolchildren a state function? Should taxpayers fund a cure for cancer? And why should government at the state or federal level assume responsibility for those needs while ignoring millions of families and individuals without health insurance?

These are not academic questions, even for right-wing ideologues. Within hours after the debate concluded, the Gawker website revisited the sad story of Kent Snyder, the late libertarian activist behind the Ron Paul presidential industry, who died three years ago from complications of pneumonia. Snyder died without insurance — which his sister said was unaffordable to him because of a pre-existing medical condition — and left $400,000 in hospital bills for his mother.

Lack of adequate insurance presents a daily concern for increasing numbers of Americans. According to the Census Bureau, the number has reached 49.9 million, the highest number since the advent of Medicare and Medicaid and the highest percentage of uninsured Americans since the recession of 1973-’75.

The consequences are tragic and go far beyond mere money. Being uninsured means foregoing necessary care, especially preventive care, which annually causes the premature deaths of at least 50,000 people.

The Republicans on that debate stage and the Tea Party claque don’t think this is their problem. They don’t care. They must be the only Christians in the world who would cheer wildly at the idea of someone dying from lack of health insurance. And they will nevertheless vote for the Texan who spent millions of state dollars vaccinating those little girls. Is it the fury and the bile that kills brain cells?

Joe Conason is the editor in chief of nationalmemo.com.

The more we learn about the BP oil-well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, the more we ought to question the basic assumptions that led us here. Like the explosion of the housing bubble that ruptured the world economy, this human and environmental tragedy resulted from a system that encourages reckless profiteering without effective regulation.

It is impossible to understand why an accident like the Deepwater Horizon disaster was inevitable without looking back on an era when the energy industry dominated government. The oil bidness, as it is known affectionately in Texas, could do no wrong under the Bush-Cheney administration, which was run by former oil executives and their lobbyists. Remember that among the top priorities of the secretive energy task force run by Vice President Dick Cheney was relief for Big Oil from “burdensome” environmental regulations.

Countries that impose strict oversight on their energy sectors are exemplary in protecting worker and environmental safety.

As The New York Times reported recently, the Washington zeal for deregulation let offshore oil drilling proceed virtually without interference from government, even though scientists and engineers repeatedly raised safety and environmental concerns over the past decade. Warned specifically that the blowout-prevention technology drillers were relying on to prevent an explosive spill was faulty as long ago as 2000, the oil industry did nothing except to drill deeper.

As for the Mines and Minerals Service, the Interior Department agency responsible for overseeing the drilling operations, it did nothing, either — except to reduce its inspections of safety equipment. Presumably, the MMS failed to act because it was infested with crooked officials who took drugs and engaged in sexual relationships with oil industry personnel — and accepted bribes from them, too. The oil industry was allowed to drill, baby, drill wherever it wanted, often without even paying royalties to the federal government.

But the culture of American government, from the executive branch to Congress and even the judiciary, has been infected with a disease deeper than corruption: an ideological deference to corporate power, in the name of “free markets” and efficiency, that enriches a wealthy few at the expense of the nation. While this pattern can be detected across many sectors of the economy, its effects are now felt most acutely in the financial and energy sectors, whose power over government is legendary.

Such an imbalanced system encourages financial firms to take enormous risks, pocket the profits, and let the taxpayers, workers, and communities suffer the consequences. And the same system encourages oil companies to take enormous risks of a different kind, resist strict environmental requirements, book huge profits — and then let the rest of us cope with the consequences of their devastating pollution (although we can hope that BP will pay for at least part of the Gulf cleanup).

Free-market ideologues and other corporate shills insist that this is the most efficient way to do business, which is true enough for a corporate manager or a stockholder. But it isn’t very efficient for the nation whose public wealth, natural resources, and future prosperity are depleted by these ruinous practices.

In America, we have been told for more than three decades that there is indeed no other way to run an economy — and certainly not if we wish to preserve our traditional freedoms. But looking around the world, it’s easy to see through those old platitudes. Countries that impose stronger regulation on their financial sectors did not endure the same kind of disruption we did and emerged more swiftly from the recession. Countries that impose strict oversight on their energy sectors, including offshore drilling, are exemplary in protecting worker and environmental safety.

The world’s best record on offshore oil is enjoyed by Norway, a free and democratic country where North Sea oil provides not only a major source of employment but the funding for universal health care, education, and a panoply of other important benefits. In Norway, oil drillers are expected to implement the most advanced systems of environmental protection. That’s because the Norwegian people own the oil, and the oil men answer to them.

Joe Conason writes for the New York Observer and Salon.com, where this column first appeared.

When the Department of Homeland Security released a cautiously worded report on the potential dangers of right-wing extremism last April, the talk-radio wingnuts and certain Republican lawmakers went into spasms of indignation. Clearly, that report — an innocuous nine-page document commissioned by the previous Republican administration — had been conjured up by White House Democrats to smear conservatives.

“There is not one instance they can cite as evidence where any of these right-wing groups have done anything,” Rush Limbaugh told his listeners.

A year later, we know that Limbaugh was wrong (again). Up in northern Michigan, the Hutaree militants were collecting weapons and ammunition and allegedly plotting the assassination of law enforcement officers with the same kind of roadside bombs and projectiles used by terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan. The difference is that those groups claim to be Muslim; the violent extremists over here prefer to be known as Christian.

We also know that the recent outbreak of window smashing against Democrats in the aftermath of the passage of health-care reform can be traced to a militia activist from Alabama. He justified urging those attacks on his website as a warning that America is on the brink of mass violence. It is a theme he has promoted for more than a decade, dating back to the militia movement of the Clinton years, when he authored a pamphlet titled “Strategy and Tactics for a Militia Civil War.”

Now, nobody is likely to apologize to Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano, the victim of a smear by those who claimed she was trying to intimidate those who call themselves conservative. But while the Hutaree conspiracy charges are very troubling, as was the window-smashing spree, there are still more disturbing signals coming from the far right.

One of the men arrested in the Hutaree group used the screen name “Pale Horse” when he posted material on militia websites. Having attached himself to the Hutaree and other militia outfits, he apparently was obsessed with gruesome child murders and serial killing. Under his pseudonym, Pale Horse circulated a YouTube video last year that advocated an armed militia march on Washington:

“A peaceful demonstration of at least a million — hey, if we can get 10 million, even better — but at least one million armed militia men marching on Washington. A peaceful demonstration. No shooting, no one gets hurt. Just a demonstration. The only difference from any typical demonstration is we will all be armed.”

Now it appears Pale Horse’s plan — or something very similar — may actually occur on April 19th, the anniversary of the first shots fired at Lexington and Concord and, perhaps not coincidentally, of the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building by Timothy McVeigh.

Militia websites are currently promoting a “restore the Constitution rally” at two locations in northern Virginia where the marchers can legally carry firearms. They plan to “muster” at Fort Hunt National Park, about 12 miles south of the nation’s capital, and then travel in “small convoys” to a park near Reagan National Airport, just over the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. This will let them “step up to the edge” with their weapons, as the organizers put it.

Although the militia marchers are acting within their rights, their intentions seem not terribly far from those of the window smashers. Among them, there may well be groups and lone nuts whose seditious plans resemble those of the Hutaree. As the militias enact Pale Horse’s fantasy, they appear determined to intimidate every American who disagrees with their interpretation of the Constitution and their rancorous hatred of the president and the Democratic Party.

So, perhaps Napolitano can take some satisfaction from the fresh evidence that her critics were wrong and that the report on right-wing extremism was, if anything, too mild. Neither she nor any other official in government should be deterred from exposing the extremists who threaten public security and constitutional democracy, regardless of ideology.

Joe Conason writes for The New York Observer.

The latest atrocity attempted by al-Qaeda seems to be yet another example of history reprising a great tragedy as farce. What makes the misadventure of the underpants bomber on Flight 253 seem darkly ridiculous, however, is not only his incompetence in setting himself on fire, but the hysteria and hypocrisy of the reactions set off on the right by his painful squib. Then again, the Republican exploitative response to terror is as predictable as al-Qaeda’s urge to kill.

That partisan reflex dates back to the original tragedy of 9/11, when Karl Rove, political boss of the Bush White House, decided that the remarkable bipartisan national unity of the months that followed the day of infamy should be torched to advance Republican midterm election prospects. His party commenced a scurrilous campaign that compared Democrats to Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, while somehow blaming the Clinton administration for the president’s failure to notice neon warnings of an imminent al-Qaeda attack. The Rove strategy was sinister and frankly cynical but highly effective — and permanently destructive.

Now, in the aftermath of the underpants bomber, we see the same right-wing political impulse acted out in a style that makes Rove seem sober-minded in retrospect.

In recent days, a conservative columnist has described Flight 253 as the contemporary Pearl Harbor. A claque of Republicans has expressed outrage that the slightly charred suspect, a wealthy young Nigerian, will be tried in a courthouse rather than a military tribunal — forgetting how many times the Bush administration treated terrorists precisely the same way. A chorus of Republican bloggers has linked the underpants bomber to terror masterminds supposedly released by President Obama from the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, repeating a false TV report (and ignoring the fact that President Bush released hundreds more Gitmo detainees).

And a host of cable and radio personalities have insisted, with deadpan sincerity that must be hard to fake, that this attack resulted directly from the “distraction” caused by health-care reform and other domestic initiatives. The Washington Times recently asked its readers in an online poll: “Has President Obama’s domestic agenda prevented him from properly addressing the terrorism threat against the United States?”

All this inane performance art is not without entertainment value, but it tends to dominate the discourse and severely retard any discussion of effective initiatives against al-Qaeda.

Indeed, right-wing exploitation of terrorism tends to serve the terrorists in several important ways: elevating them from a gang of fanatical criminals to the status of a sovereign power; echoing their worldview of a clash between Islam and modernity; and enhancing their prestige as a mortal threat to civilization.

Although the failure to stop the Flight 253 plot indicates some important shortcomings in our intelligence defenses, the episode also shows that al-Qaeda has deteriorated sharply from its pinnacle of potency in 2001. At first, this did not even appear to be an al-Qaeda attack because it did not involve multiple simultaneous bombings. Rather than the highly trained jihadis from Hamburg, this was carried out by a dim, poorly drilled, and ill-equipped college dropout. The poison ideology may still be spreading, but the tradecraft is in decline.

If we lived in a confident, politically mature society, we would be able to see that tabloid hysterics and direct-mail posturing will do nothing to defeat al-Qaeda. We would understand why President Obama prefers to engage Islam in dialogue rather than demonize a billion Muslims. We would realize that even as we endeavor to destroy a nihilistic enemy that perverts faith, we ought to maintain our composure, our values, and, at the very least, our capacity for honest debate.

But that would require an opposition loyal to something bigger than itself.

Within hours after the House of Representatives approved health-care
reform by a narrow margin, Republicans predicted retribution at the
polls next fall. They promised to make every Democrat regret that
historic vote as the first step toward the reversal of power in
Washington. And as the current debate has proved, they aren’t going to
let honesty become an obstacle.

For a preview of coming attractions, simply turn on Fox News or any
right-wing radio talker, where the falsehoods of the 2010 midterm
campaign are being field-tested today.

You can watch Dick Morris blather about the “death panels” that will
terminate your mother and father while illegal immigrants are provided
lavish care and about how you will be put in jail for failing to
purchase health insurance. You can hear Karl Rove complain that we will
“beggar ourselves” by adding more than $1.4 trillion to the federal
debt. You can listen to Frank Luntz claim that voters disdain reform
because of “the cost to the deficit.”

These gentlemen have little expertise in health or economics but
much experience in distracting, misinforming, and frightening the
public. Aside from talking on television, that is their job. How little
do they know — and how much do they simply fabricate?

It is safe to assume that Morris knows very well there are no death
panels in any of the health-reform bills; that those bills expressly
forbid coverage of illegal immigrants; and that none of them includes
any provision to incarcerate citizens who lack insurance coverage. It
is also reasonable to assume, based solely on the fiscal record of the
Bush administration in which he served, that Rove never worries about
budget deficits, government waste, or gross corruption unless Democrats
are in charge.

As for Luntz, he specializes in political prophecies that are
self-fulfilling. When he says voters are infuriated by the cost of
health-care reform, for instance, that merely indicates he is trying to
make them feel that way. He will succeed — all three will succeed
— only by drawing attention away from actual facts and
figures.

So perhaps voters ought to listen instead to the Congressional
Budget Office, which by contrast has earned a reputation for candor,
accuracy, and nonpartisan truthfulness. After painstaking analysis, the
CBO estimated that the House health-care reform bill, known as the
Affordable Health Care for America Act, would reduce the federal
deficit by about $109 billion during its first 10 years. To repeat: The
bill passed by the House Democrats on the evening of Saturday, November
7th, “would yield a net reduction in federal budget deficits of $109
billion over the 2010-2019 period.” The CBO experts also costed out the
Senate Finance Committee bill and found that it would cut the federal
deficit by more than $80 billion during that first decade.

Those reassuring conclusions derive from other basic facts about
reform that tend to be ignored or concealed. Reform will reduce
wasteful spending by hundreds of billions of dollars annually and will
depend for financing on excise taxes imposed on the wealthiest 1
percent of the population.

Much of the misinformation about the costs of reform comes from the
belief — fostered by conservatives — that the
government-run health plan known as the “public option” would impose a
huge burden on the federal budget. So says Joseph Lieberman, the
independent senator from Connecticut who has threatened to filibuster
the bill.

Section 322 of the Affordable Health Care for America Act says
clearly and concisely that people insured under the public option will
pay premium rates “at a level sufficient to fully finance the costs of
health benefits provided by the public health insurance option; and
administrative costs related to operating the public health insurance
option.” In short, the public option will involve no new federal
expenditure.

Any bill that reaches the president’s desk will leave much to be
desired, especially with respect to cost containment, preventive care,
and new systems of compensation to encourage improved results. But it
should be judged according to real merits and defects — not the
delusions and distortions that now dominate the debate.

When Republican politicians and right-wing talking heads bemoan the
fictitious “death panels” that they claim would arise from health-care
reform, they are concealing a sinister reality from their followers.
The ugly fact is that, every year we fail to reform the existing
system, that failure condemns tens of thousands of people to die
— either because they have no insurance or because their
insurance companies deny coverage or benefits when they become ill.

The best estimate of the annual death toll among Americans of
working age due to lack of insurance or under-insurance is at least
20,000, according to studies conducted over the past decade by medical
researchers, and is almost certainly rising as more and more people
lose their coverage as costs continue to go up and unemployment
rises.

They die primarily because they didn’t have the coverage or the
money to pay doctors and thus delayed seeking treatment until it was
too late. They don’t get checkups, screenings, and other preventive
care. That is why uninsured adults are far more likely to be diagnosed
with a disease such as cancer or heart disease at an advanced stage,
which severely reduces their chances of survival.

This isn’t news. Seven years ago, the Institute of Medicine found
that approximately 18,000 Americans had died in 2000 because they had
no insurance. Using the same methodology combined with Census Bureau
estimates of health coverage, the Urban Institute concluded that the
incidence of death among the uninsured was enormous. Between 2000 and
2006, the last year of that study, the total number of dead was
estimated to have reached 137,000 — a body count more than double
the number of casualties in the Vietnam War.

The Institute of Medicine also found that uninsured adults are 25
percent more likely to die prematurely than adults with private health
insurance, and other studies have warned that uninsured adults between
the ages of 55 and 64 are even more prone to die prematurely. A lack of
health insurance is the third-leading cause of death for that age
cohort, following heart disease and cancer.

All those appalling figures, which are real rather than mythical, do
not include the casualties of insurance company profiteering —
namely, all the people, including small children, who perish because of
the anonymous “death panels” that deny or delay coverage to consumers.
Perhaps the most notorious case in recent years was that of Nataline
Sarkisyan, the 17-year-old leukemia patient whose liver transplant was
held up by insurance giant Cigna HealthCare. She died for no reason
except to protect Cigna’s profit margin, but her unnecessary and cruel
demise was hardly unique.

Research by the American Medical Association found that the nation’s
largest insurance companies deny somewhere between 2 and 5 percent of
all the claims submitted by doctors. That rough estimate is the best
available because private insurers are not required to reveal such
statistics (although they certainly maintain them) and the government
does not collect them. But in June, a House Energy and Commerce
Committee investigation found that three major insurance companies
— Golden Rule, Assurant, and WellPoint — rescinded the
coverage of at least 20,000 people between 2003 and 2007 for minor
errors, including typos, on their paperwork; a preexisting condition;
or a family member’s medical history.

“They try to find something — anything — so they can say
that this individual was not truthful,” said Representative Henry
Waxman, the California Democrat who oversaw the committee probe. He
warned that insurance companies launch these nitpicking inquisitions
whenever a policyholder becomes ill with a certain kind of condition
— usually a costly and deadly one such as ovarian cancer or
leukemia. The result is denial and loss of coverage — and we now
know that means increased mortality for innocent people.

So who are the members of the death panels? You can find them among
the corporate bureaucrats who concoct excuses to deny coverage and
throw the sick off their rolls. You can find them among the politicians
and lobbyists who have stalled reform for years while people died. You
can find them among the morons who show up to shout slogans at town
halls rather than seek solutions. And you can find them among the cable
and radio blabbers who invent scary stories about reform to conceal the
sickening truth.

It wasn’t surprising when, after seven months of legal wrangling,
the Minnesota Supreme Court declared that Al Franken had won the 2008
Senate race against incumbent Norm Coleman. Still less surprising
(although vastly more entertaining) was the simultaneous breakdown of
nearly all of Franken’s adversaries on the right, whose regurgitated
insults, whining complaints, and exploding noggins revealed nothing
about him or his victory — and everything about them.

Upon learning that Franken had prevailed, the usual suspects on Fox
News and in the Limbaugh wasteland of radio immediately threw up a
barrage of furious invective. Wasting no time on gracious concessions,
they concentrated on two themes.

First: Franken himself is wild, spiteful, menacing, bigoted, and,
most of all, deranged (as must be anyone who voted for him). Second:
Franken’s ascension to the Senate is tainted by the process, which his
opponent insisted on prolonging.

Sadly, the most notorious Franken antagonist, Bill O’Reilly, was
absent from the airwaves on the evening of Franken’s victory. Demure
guest host Monica Crowley seemed bemused by the Minnesota outcome. But
Glenn Beck, in his semiliterate way, heaped on enough abuse to keep
Billo’s fans satisfied for the moment. “It shows how crazy our country
has gone,” he began. “It shows that we’ve lost our minds. It’s like
we’ve slipped through a wormhole. It’s like, this look likes the
country I grew up in, but no — Al Franken would never be a
senator … . We have entered a place to where there isn’t
statesmanship anymore.”

The tenor of the Fox attacks grew more feverish with the ranting of
Brian Kilmeade, who judged Franken “barely sane if you read his books
and quite angry in every facet of his life.” Kilmeade went on to
describe the new senator as “hateful,” “evil,” bitter,” “maniacal,” and
again as “angry.” Sean Hannity echoed Fox’s other amateur shrinks,
saying, “This guy, Franken, he’s not all there.”

Then there was Limbaugh, the capo di tutti right-wing capi, who
warned with pithy brevity that the 60th Democratic vote in the Senate
is “a genuine lunatic.”

Calmer but no less nasty was the assessment of The Wall Street
Journal editorial page, which insisted that the Democrat had
somehow hijacked the Senate seat from the rightful Republican victor.
“Mr. Franken now goes to the Senate having effectively stolen an
election,” said the editorial, without deigning to mention that
Republicans in Minnesota, including the governor, had effectively
vetted the recount and canvassed from Election Day forward, up to the
final Supreme Court decision.

In fact, the most credible assessment of the “stolen election” comes
not from Democrats or liberals but from the Republican conservatives in
Minnesota. Foremost among them may be Sara Janacek, who told
Washington Post readers that those accusations are false. “The
state media — and a majority of the public — do think
Franken’s election was legitimate,” she said. “We had an open and very
public recount process.”

As always, the sneering critics of the comedian turned candidate
underestimated him. Anyone who knows Franken, as I do, sees little of
him in the caricatures that have dominated his coverage in the
conservative media and too often have shaped his image in the
mainstream media. He certainly isn’t crazy. He isn’t mean. He isn’t
frivolous. And he certainly didn’t cheat his way into the Senate.

In fact, Franken is considerably brighter and far more stable than
his enemies, a group whose public behavior and personal conduct are
replete with embarrassment, not to mention disgrace. Unlike many of
them, he has a solid marriage and has raised two outstanding children
who adore him — a personal accomplishment that belies the ugly
nonsense about his “anger” and “bitterness.” It is the Fox loudmouths
who are bitter, no doubt remembering the day their company’s stupid
lawsuit against Franken was laughed out of court (and made a lot of
money for him).

While all the wacky attacks emanate from discredited sources, there
are responsible and decent conservatives in America, as Franken would
be the first to say. He has made plenty of right-wing friends over the
years — including some of the other entertainers with whom he
traveled to Iraq and Afghanistan on USO tours while his blowhard
critics were sitting on their butts at home.