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TN House GOP Urge Vanderbilt Hospital to Stop Transgender Surgeries on Minors

Tennessee House Republicans sent a letter Wednesday to Vanderbilt hospital urging it to immediately stop gender transitioning surgeries on minors.

Sixty-two members of the House Republican Caucus signed the request in the wake of social media videos purportedly showing a physician calling the surgeries a “huge money maker” because of the number of follow-up visits required. 

State Rep. Jason Zachary, a Knoxville Republican who wrote the letter, details “serious ethical concerns” about procedures Vanderbilt’s Pediatric Transgender Clinic is allegedly performing on minors, in addition to claims the hospital could be discriminating against employees who refuse to participate in the surgeries.

Zachary’s letter says he and his colleagues are “alarmed” by a Daily Wire report about “surgical mutilations” of minors and calls the clinic’s practices “nothing less than abuse.”

“While those 18-years and older are recognized as legal adults and free to make decisions in their best interests, it is an egregious error of judgment that an institution as highly respected as Vanderbilt would condone (and promote) harmful and irreversible procedures for minor children in the name of profit,” Zachary’s letter says.

The letter also requests Vanderbilt hospital, Vanderbilt University’s School of Medicine, School of Nursing and affiliates to “honor” conscientious objectors whose religious beliefs prohibit their participation in certain procedures.

The letter demands a response from the Vanderbilt University Medical Center Board of Directors within 10 days of receiving the letter and says that will determine what action the Legislature takes when it convenes in January.

Asked about the letter Wednesday, Vanderbilt University Medical Center referred questions to its statement after the Twitter videos were posted last week, saying the media posts “misrepresent facts” about the care it provides to transgender patients.

The hospital noted it provides care to all adolescents “in compliance with state law and in line with professional proactive standards and guidance established by medical specialty societies,” including requiring parental consent to treat minors for issues related to transgender care.

In the videos taken from 2018 and 2020, Vanderbilt physician Dr. Shayne Taylor calls gender transition surgery “a big money maker” but does not refer to children.

Another video shows a Vanderbilt plastic surgeon discussing guidelines doctors must follow before doing “top surgeries,” or double mastectomies, on transgender patients. Those include a letter documenting persistent gender dysphoria from a licensed mental health provider. Patients who are 16 and 17 who’ve been on testosterone and have parental permission can qualify, the doctor said.

A state law passed in 2021 prohibits hormone therapies – such as puberty blockers – for prepubescent patients, a practice physicians told lawmakers at the time was not part of their standard of care.

Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and Twitter.

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Politics Beat Blog

Two Bills Would Quash Legal Challenges to State Authority


The Republican campaign against the kind of expanded voting rights that produced Democratic victories in November has moved into overdrive in the Tennessee legislature, where two far-reaching bills are on the verge of passage.

One bill is SB915/HB1072 (Kelsey, Curcio), which would effectively immunize state government against legal actions by local jurisdictions — or at least establish a barrier prohibiting immediate injunctive relief for plaintiffs.

Another bill, SB868/HB1130 (Bell, Farmer) would create a statewide three-member super-Chancery Court charged with hearing any legal action questioning state actions, including statutes, executive orders, or administrative actions.

Both bills are avowedly aimed at results, both in court and at the polls, that are likely to have favored Democratic candidates and causes. Specifically cited as justification for the two measures is the decision by Nashville Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle, in June 2020, calling for extension of mail-in absentee voting in view of the raging coronavirus pandemic.

Lyle imposed an injunction on the state’s enforcement of more restrictive absentee-voting requirements, after which the Secretary of State’s office first delayed its response, then fought the injunction all the way to the state Supreme Court, which, in its ruling, offered some mitigations of the injunction’s effect. But considerable expansion of mail-in voting would still be the end product for the election of 2020.

Almost certainly, this is what Rep. Michael Curcio (R-Dickson), House sponsor of HB 1072, was referring to when, in committee deliberations,  he cited “recent political history” as a reason for passing his bill, which would, in the case of similar future challenges to state authority, mandate an automatic stay of any possible injunctive relief, pending ultimate resolution of the dispute on appeal.

In the case of the 2020 mail-in voting issue, such a law would, because of time restraints imposed by the election calendar, have prevented the possibility of expanding voters’ accessibility to absentee voting before all possible appeals by the state could be heard.

Though state Rep. John Ray Clemmons (D-Nashville) pointed out as much during debate in the House Civil Justice Committee, Republican votes carried the bill through both there and in the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the bill is scheduled for final votes on the floors of both the House and the Senate on Monday, April 26.

The situation is less imminent with SB868/HB1072, which still must undergo some committee scrutiny. This bill would establish a three-member state Chancery Court, in effect, to hear all legal challenges to state authority. One member each would represent the state’s western middle, and eastern Grand Districts, but all three judges would be elected statewide.

If the bill passes, Governor Bill Lee, a Republican, would appoint the three initial judges, who would serve until the elections of 2022, which would establish eight-year terms.

As of now, such litigation is heard in Nashville Chancery Court because of that court’s proximity to state government. The proposed three-member state Chancery Court could hear cases in Knoxville, Nashville, or Jackson.

There is little mystery as to the GOP sponsors’ motives for the legislation. As Senate sponsor Mike Bell (R-Riceville) declared in committee deliberations, “Let me just tackle head on why we’re here with this issue. Why should judges who are elected by the most liberal district in the state….Why should they be the ones judging cases?” Bell, who had specifically cited last year’s mail-in ballot issue decided by Nashville Chancellor Lyle, continued that the voters of Davidson County ”in election after election choose members of one party.” There are, he said,  “only two [elected] Republicans  in Davidson County.”

Bell rounded to his point. “Don’t tell me politics don’t affect judicial issues. They do. I want judges who reflect the political makeup of the state…. I completely reject the idea that judges don’t reflect a political philosophy. I am no way rejecting the idea of partisanship in judicial matters. Partisanship should reflect the voters of the state.”

Senator Katrina Robinson (D-Memphis) would object to this logic in the senate Judiciary Committee, as Representative Antonio Parkinson (D-Memphis), among others, would in House Civil Justice Committee. But there you have it, presented in all candor and nakedness: The bill is designed to make sure that legal challenges to state authority are heard by a Republican-dominated tribunal — which is what the three-member state Chancery Court would almost inevitably be.

In tandem with the previously mentioned bill, SB915/HB1072, the bill would, if successful, present another barricade to the likelihood of success for progressive or local challenges to state authority. Ironically, given her status as a catalyst for the two measures, Chancellor Lyle of Nashville was originally appointed by Republican Governor Don Sundquist.

As indicated, SB915/HB1072, which guarantees automatic stays of litigation against the state, is due for floor action in both chambers on Monday night. The fate of SB868/HB1130, the Chancery Court legislation, still awaits action in the Finance committees of both chambers.

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News News Blog

Tennessee Senate Republicans Stand With Trump on Voting “Irregularities”

President Donald Trump poses with a can of beans and other Goya products.

No winner of 2020’s presidential election should be declared until voting “irregularities” have been investigated and court appeals have been exhausted, according to some of Tennessee’s top lawmakers.

Twenty-four members of the Tennessee Senate Republican Caucus members signed a letter issued Tuesday stating they stand “absolutely and unequivocally with President Donald J. Trump as he contests the unofficial results of the presidential election of 2020.” The letter was sent at least to members of the press but was not addressed to any entity or organization.
Tennessee Senate Republican Caucus

The ultimate result of the election, they said, remains “uncertain.” The lawmakers cited unsupported claims of voting “irregularities” in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Nevada.” An election winner should not be declared for any candidate, they said, ”until these irregularities have been thoroughly investigated and court appeals have been exhausted.”

They also believe the coronavirus pandemic led to “an extraordinary amount of absentee ballots and voting by mail. Thanks to this and “razor-thin margins,” a winner in the election should not yet be called.

Tennessee Senate Republican Caucus

“While this election may have been ’called’ by various media outlets, the election process is far from over,” reads the letter.

Tennessee Senate Republican Caucus

Like Al Gore in the 2000 election, Tennessee Senate Republicans said President Donald Trump has another month to contest the election through recounts and litigation.
[pullquote-1-center] ”This is an important election,” the Republicans said. “There is no reason to come to a premature conclusion with this many lingering questions. While the results of most presidential elections are clear on or around election day, the results become official only when the presidential electors vote in December.

“President Trump has a right to challenge the results of this election until at least that point. We support him in doing so and encourage all Tennesseans and Americans to be patient until the result of this election can be determined.” Tennessee Senate Republican Caucus

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Elective Affinities: Southern Hopefuls Huckabee and Thompson

CREDIT: jb

IN TRANSIT FROM DES MOINES TO MANCHESTER –On their last day of campaigning for the Iowa caucuses and with the New Hampshire and South Carolina tests looming, the
two bona fide Southern hopefuls in the Republican presidential field had
personas that meshed in important particulars and diverged in others.

Ditto with their destinies: Former Arkansas governor Mike
Huckabee famously finished first in GOP ranks, while ex-Tennessee senator Fred
Thompson managed a distant third. That’s the divergence; the mesh is that
neither is out of the woods, but both are still in the game.

No sooner had Huckabee finished off his up-from-nothing
miracle in Iowa than such bell cows of the Christian right as Richard Viguerie
were trying to disown him. Not for doctrinal heresies of the religious sort but
for deviation from the tax-cutting priorities of the Republican Party elite.
Viguerie, who a generation ago assisted greatly in fusing the social and
economic conservatisms of the Reagan era, essentially accused Huckabee – an
economic populist who dares to assail “Wall Street Republicans” — of sawing off
the economic leg of that coalition.

This refrain was promptly parroted by that cockatee of the
airwaves, Rush Limbaugh – prompting a brief back-and-forth between himself and
the candidate, who, unlike so many other name Republicans, doesn’t mind pulling
on such feathers.

Huckabee is a threat to an established order, and, just as
establishment Democrats, assisted by the establishment media, were able to kill
off Howard Dean’s hopes in 2004, so might the GOP hierarchy do likewise to those
of the Republican heresiarch – his first-place finish in Iowa notwithstanding.

As for Thompson, the line on him for several months has
been that the actor/politician from Tennessee had fallen way short of the
enormous ballyhoo of his advance billing and long ago flunked his audition.

Indeed, Thompson has played the role assigned him every way
but right. He has looked haggard, fumbled his lines, and done everything a
starring player shouldn’t. Coming from the same moderate tradition (and stable)
as fellow Tennessee Republicans Howard Baker and Lamar Alexander, he was billed
as a conservative’s conservative – the kind who could put to rest the fears of
Viguerie and Limbaugh and suchlike who see George W. Bush’s house of cards – and
thereby the party’s generational dominance of American affairs – hopelessly
aquiver.

However late in the day, Thompson has seemingly found his
motivation for such a role and learned to play it. That was the conclusion one
could draw from the barn-burner he delivered to a packed room at the West Des
Moines Marriott on Thursday morning, the day of the caucuses. So strong a
showing it was, so animated the reception from his audience that it seemed
obvious that Thompson, like one of those Miss America alternates, was a
potential standby in case of trouble with the GOP frontrunner.

Any frontrunner – be it Huckabee or the resurgent
John McCain or Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani or whoever. All he had to do was
survive by fnishing third in Iowa – which, by the skin of those thespian
pearly-whites, he did.

As if in recognition of their doppelganger status, both men
ended their appeals to voters in Iowa with overlapping thematics: “

Thompson: “This is a country where a country boy or
girl in Tennessee or Iowa or anywhere else can grow up and have a pretty good
chance at the American dream.

Huckabee: “If American can elect me as president, if
means that the dreams of this country can come true for anybody.

Thompson: “I’ve got a 100-percent pro-life voting
record. I’ve always been pro-life. That’s why so many right-to-life
organizations have endorsed me.

Huckabee: “I’m pro-life. It’s not a position that
the pollsters gave me last week. I’ve been saying this all my life. Check me
out. I’m not pro-life because I’m political. I’m political because I’m
pro-life.”

Thompson: “What you see is what you get I don’t
think I’ve ever been accused of flip-flopping or choosing my positions on issues
to win an election.”

Huckabee: “You need to believe that someone is
telling you the truth, who’ll be honest with you We need a president who
believes something and will do what he believes.”

Thompson: “Our best days are still before us.”

Huckabee: “I want the best generation to be then one
that hasn’t been born yet”

Thompson: “We need to unite as Republicans and reach
out and get some independents and Reagan Democrats.”

Huckabee: “We need to have [with us] not just a
Republican Party but we need a country.”

Thompson:Tonight is important…We’ve got to show them Let’s go out and shock
the world.

Huckabee: Tonight we can make a statement heard all
over the world. Your grandchildren will be saying, were you there that
night that guy nobody had ever heard of won the presidency?

And in fact: If Thompson recovers from his long limbo in
the presidential race and becomes his party’s candidate of last resort, he will
indeed shock the world. For that matter, if Huckabee can continue riding
his current star and build on his triumph in Iowa to be the nominee, that outcome,
too, will resound all over the world.

To repeat: There are differences between the men and differences
between the candidacies. That is the very point. Only one of them could have said this on
Thursday: “The big-government, left-wing, high-taxes, weak-on-security
Democratic Party is just salivating about taking the reins and the power just so
they can kinda roll to a welfare state. And we’re not going to let that happen”

That was Thompson the D.A., of course, heaping on the red meat, knowing what
his role is now. Huckabee, the ex-preacher, is smoother, milder, in a curious way genuinely ecumencial. When he jammed with a local rock band in Hennick on his first
day in New Hampshire after the Iowa vote, he ended up playing bass with evident gusto on “Put a
Little Love in Your Heart” and even on the old to-the-barricades stomper from Creedence, “Fortunate Son.”
He, too, knows what his role is.

Watching what happens to either of them from now on is
going to be good theater.

(Flyer political editor Jackson Baker, having followed the presidential-campaign circus out of Iowa, continues his reporting from New Hampshire for the next few days.)

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Smashing Victories by “Unorthodox” Candidates Obama and Huckabee

CREDIT: jb

DES MOINES, IA –“They’re all a bunch of goops,” said the
check-out lady at QuikTrip [sic], the Interstate 80 truck stop that doubles as a
passing-good deli. Meaning politicians. And someone suggested to her that this
was exactly why Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mike Huckabee had just won
their party’s caucuses in Iowa so handily.

Neither is the same old goop. A mixed-marriage
son of Kenya and Kansas on the one hand. A Baptist preacher with a yen for
populist economics on the other. Each articulate to a preternatural degree.
Each appealing, both overtly and by their very beings, to the political
crossover vote. Each defeating his main opponent by the margin of 9 percent.

Each an example of the improbable proving
inevitable, in victor Obama’s phrase.

“We are one nation. We are one people. And our
time for change has come,” the Democratic victor said, in a speech that touched
so many bases and was said so well that it put to shame his 2004 convention
speech – the one that put the then new senator from Illinois on the map.

Yes, Obama won the “youth” vote
— .57 percent of the under-30’s – and Huckabee got the evangelicals – 45
percent of a base that, in Iowa, amounted to 60 percent of caucus-goers overall.
But both are – how to say it? – bigger than that. And each made a point of
talking up inclusiveness as the foundation of their Iowa victories and of the
election to come and the political era that comes after it.

To be sure, Hillary Clinton has
too deep a war chest and too deep a bench, organizationally, to bow out. One
remembers longtime Clinton retainer James Carville’s cry when the Monica
Lewinsky scandal threatened to overwhelm Bill Clinton’s presidency: “This is wah!”
he shouted out in full South Loos-iana Cajunese. Whereupon he – and the Clintons – fetched up the ordnance to win
that war.

Hillary will try again. But,
beyond the fact that she’s up against a man who could be a generational
phenomenon, she has also to contend with the second-place finisher in the
Democratic race, former senator John Edwards, who has so unabashedly talked about “corporate greed” and promised
what Republicans like to call “class war.”

“On to New Hampshire,” vowed
Edwards to a turnaway crowd at the Renaissance-Savery Hotel in downtown Des
Moines. And what that meant was spelled out afterward by the candidate’s chief
economic-policy advisor, Leo Hindery: “We beat the Clinton machine. And we’ll
beat it again,” he said. No mention of Obama.

And Huckabee had left no doubt in
the last few days of campaigning, nor in his speech to his throng Thursday
night, that his pending triumph over former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney
was a victory of ordinary folks over the elite, of truth over dissembling, and
of will over money. He never tired of pointing out that Romney out-spent him
“20-to-one,” and it was obviously his former fellow governor – and onetime
moderate turned conservative exemplar — that he meant when he used words like
“phony” and “pretender” on the stump.

Speaking of exemplars, the
apparent third-place finisher among Republicans, former Tennessee senator Fred
Thompson, materialized as something of a conservative firebrand Thursday
morning in a barn-burning speech to a packed room at a West Des Moines hotel.
For a change this campaign year, he was focused, intense, and capable of a sense
of humor (he was seen so frequently in the movies, he said, because “they
need[ed] somebody who was big and worked cheap”).

Both Thompson and his longtime
friend John McCain, the given-up-for-dead onetime frontrunner who has surged
again, finished in a virtual dead heat for third place in Iowa, and each has
thereby won a ticket to New Hampshire. McCain, a possible winner there, has
gotten most of the attention, but Thompson is a legitimate substitute either for
Huckabee, should he falter, or for McCain, if the Republican establishment
proves unreceptive to the maverick hero again, as it did in 2000.

“You have done what the cynics said we couldn’t
do. You have done what New Hampshire can do in five days,” said Obama Thursday
night, looking ahead. As for Huckabee, he’ll hope to score well in New
Hampshire, but it’s more likely that he’ll be looking at South Carolina later in
January, to finish off Romney – and whomever else is still out there, including
McCain, with whom he, too, like Thompson, still has a mutual-admiration-society
relationship.

One way in which pundits are still
underestimating Huckabee is in concentrating so totally on his evangelical
persuasion and skimming over, or ignoring altogether, his populism. “Republicans
have economic concerns,” Huckabee stressed Thursday night, and he didn’t mean
the high-bracket tax-cut crowd. He talked instead about working families
struggling to pay for gasoline at the pump.

As Obama said, “People are looking for someone
who is willing to say the unorthodox – and [for] authenticity.” Or, as a
still-game Edwards put it, “One thing is clear from the results tonight. The
status quo lost and change won.”

Indeed so. And there is more to come.

(Flyer political editor Jackson Baker will be
reporting regularly from Iowa and New Hampshire for the next few days.)

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

The Understudy

Earlier in the year, local Republicans, like their counterparts elsewhere in Tennessee, were jumping ship from other presidential campaigns to make known their allegiance to former Senator Fred Thompson. That was back when Law & Order star Thompson, presumably on the strength of his Nielsen ratings, was considered the answer to GOP prayers.

The lanky, rawboned actor/lawyer/lobbyist, a native of Lawrenceburg in Middle Tennessee and a University of Memphis graduate, had ample cachet. A protégé of former Senator Howard Baker, who in 1973 made him minority counsel for the Senate Watergate Committee, Thompson had by 2007 been in the public eye for a full generation.

His acting career in the movies as well as on TV, plus eight years in the Senate, had made him a figure familiar enough to be a formidable trump card. But when he got turned up on the table — or, more to the point, when he began standing side-by-side with his GOP rivals on the debate sage — something seemed to be missing.

Maybe it was age (some thought Thompson looked unexpectedly thin and ravaged), maybe it was conviction (what was his role supposed to be? moderate? arch-conservative? Bushite? critic?), or maybe it was the candidate’s well-known laissez-faire attitude toward exertion. Whatever the case, the Thompson boom went from bang to whimper in record time.

Meanwhile, another Mid-South candidate has been auditioning well on the road. That’s Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and, as has been pointed out ad infinitum, a native of Hope, hometown of two-term former Democratic president Bill Clinton, another up-from-nowhere sort.

By now, Huckabee has actually taken the lead among Republicans in Iowa, whose caucuses will be held in early January. His dramatic arrow up parallels Thompson’s going down. And, whereas Thompson had never quite defined his character in the ongoing campaign drama, the folksy but articulate Huckabee has his down pat: He’s an unabashed pro-life social conservative but also an economic populist who raised taxes for social programs as governor and who regularly denounces “Wall Street” in the manner of a latter-day FDR.

As such, Huckabee performs the improbable feat of yoking two points of view that have been politically sundered for well over a generation. In some ways, he’s a throwback to the old Southern Democratic model. He’s a former Baptist preacher who can also play a mean bass guitar on “Free Bird” — a feat he performed alongside current Shelby GOP chairman Bill Giannini’s lead guitar at the local Republican “Master Meal” last year.

Huckabee’s plain-spoken oratory was also a huge hit at that event, and there’s no doubt that the seeds for a mass following have been planted in these parts.

Tracy Dewitt of the Northeast Shelby Republican Club is a dedicated supporter, as is Paul Shanklin, the local businessman and successful impressionist who does all those politicians’ voices for Rush Limbaugh. The Arkansan’s national campaign manager, moreover, is Chip Saltzman, an ex-Memphian and a graduate of Christian Brothers University.

When the East Shelby Republican Club, one of the GOP’s local bedrocks, had an informal straw-vote poll at its regular monthly meeting last week, Thompson still had the residual strength to come out well ahead. Huckabee was down among such relative also-rans as New York’s Rudy Giuliani and Massachusetts’ Mitt Romney.

But that, as club president Bill Wood acknowledges, was then. Now is something else. “That was before Huckabee got a front-page article in USA Today and all this other recognition.” If the same straw vote were held today? “Oh he’d go up like a bullet. There were already a lot of people here who liked him. Now they’re starting to see how he’s doing in the rest of the nation.”

Indeed, it is probable that, if Huckabee should hold his present numbers and win Iowa, you couldn’t build a big enough bandwagon to accommodate his supporters locally.

One caveat: Thompson could still come back. There are many political observers who remember his lackadaisical start in 1994 against Democratic Senate opponent Jim Cooper, whom he trailed at one point by 20 points in the polls — the same number he would eventually win by against Cooper.

But for the time being, the man from Hope has center stage.

Jackson Baker is a Flyer senior editor.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

CREDIT: AP Photo/Charles Dharapak

If anyone doubts that the

republic created by the U.S. Constitution

is dead, he or she only has to watch the Republican

presidential debates. Save for Ron Paul, all of the candidates believe a

president can take the country to war on his own, though most concede it might be a good idea to “consult” attorneys and even Congress.

The Constitution, written by men more intelligent and better educated than today’s crop of political duds, is quite clear. The president has no authority to take the country to war. The sole authority for declaring war rests 100 percent with Congress.

Naturally, if a shipload of pirates sailed up the Potomac and began shooting at the tourists, you wouldn’t need a declaration to authorize returning fire. American troops defending themselves while they are under attack is not the issue. The issue is that if a president wants to take the country to war against another country, he must, as Franklin Roosevelt did after Pearl Harbor, ask Congress to make that decision.

The founding fathers, having suffered under a monarch, deliberately created a weak president. His powers, as specified by the Constitution, are limited mainly to administering the laws passed by Congress, making appointments, negotiating treaties and being the official greeter when dealing with foreign powers. His role as commander in chief is limited to just what it says — the military. The president is not our commander in chief, as the current president seems to think.

Lest anyone be beguiled by the current politicians’ determination to create an emperor and an empire, even the president’s appointments and treaties have to be confirmed by the Senate. Congress has sole authority over taxation and spending. Appropriations for the military are limited by the Constitution to two years. Furthermore, Congress is elected independently of the president and is a separate branch of government. It is under no obligation whatsoever to do anything the president asks it to do, and the president has no authority whatsoever to do anything not authorized by Congress and the Constitution.

The Constitution, which apparently not many Americans have ever bothered to read, is the supreme law of the land. It does not make suggestions. It commands. It was written in clear English. It has provisions to amend it, but it should never be amended by interpretation. That is always a usurpation of power and should be grounds for impeachment.

There is only one way for the U.S. to be a real nation of laws. That way is for the people to demand that every single public official obey the laws as they are written and obey them to the letter. The current president seems to think he can alter laws with “signing statements” and legislate with executive orders. He should have been impeached a long time ago.

The kernel of the nut is this: In our constitutional republic, sovereignty rests in the people. If the people are too stupid or ignorant, too lazy or indifferent, to hold their public officials accountable for violating the laws and the Constitution, then of course they will deserve the tyranny they will surely get.

Self-government is tremendously more difficult and demanding than living under a dictatorship. In a dictatorship, all you have to do is obey. I fear that concept appeals to some Americans today. It’s understandable. Responsibility can be a heavy load to carry. It’s much easier to relegate all of that to the Great Leader and just do what we are told.

Anybody who’s ever been in the military or jail knows what I’m talking about. When you are deprived of the ability to make choices, you are simultaneously relieved of the responsibility for making them. Responsibility is the other side of the coin of freedom.

Charley Reese has been a journalist for 50 years.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

GADFLY: Why Are We Still in Vietnam…er, Iraq?!

Let’s proceed from the assumption that there are winners
and losers in wars (although a case can certainly be made that wars create
nothing but losers).

Let’s further proceed from the assumption that every war is
fought for a purpose. And, let’s further proceed from the assumption (and,
sadly, it’s a big one) that the purpose of fighting a war is not to enrich the
people who inevitably get rich from fighting wars (in the case of Iraq, the
Blackwaters, Halliburtons, General Dynamics and Exxon Mobils of the world).
For a somewhat more contrarian thesis, read my article entitled

“Support the Troops?”

Given these assumptions, it is reasonable to assess the
success of a war by measuring it against its stated objectives. In Iraq, the
objective (supposedly) is not only to provide security and a stable, democratic
government in Iraq, but to prevail in what this administration likes to call the
“war on terror.”

And, since Iraq has been characterized by this administration
as the “central front” in that war, and since one of the stated purposes of
fighting on that “central front” is to “fight them over there so we don’t have
to fight them over here,” it is certainly valid to measure the success of all
those purposes and objectives against the results that have been achieved. That
measurement, and those standards, are sometimes referred to as “metrics.”

There is little question that the war in Iraq has, at least
thus far, failed to achieve the objectives the administration has set out for
it. Remember that, as a condition for implementing the “surge,” there were
“benchmarks” that were supposed to be achieved. Well, in September, the General
Accountability Office issued

its report saying that the majority of the benchmarks had not been achieved.

And it is generally acknowledged that the overarching objective of the war in
Iraq, namely political reconciliation, hasn’t been achieved, and, based on
statements made recently by Iraqi officials, isn’t likely to be achieved,

ever.

But there are other “metrics” by which the success of “war
on terror” may be measured. One of the standards by which that success must be
measured is the answer to the following question: is the U.S. being made safer
from terrorist attack by fighting in Iraq. If the “fight them there…fight them
here” slogan is to have any meaning, surely this is the first question that must
be answered.

Astonishingly, not even the folks who are in charge of
fighting the war, either on the battle front or on the intelligence front, can
answer that question. Who can forget General Petraeus’ startling admission,
during his

recent testimony before Congress, that he didn’t know whether the war was
making us safer.

Here is the man who is running this war, who is watching the
troops under his command be killed and maimed on a daily basis, and he can’t
even tell us whether their sacrifice is worth it. This is un-freaking
believable! Perhaps even more revealing was the recent interview conducted by
NBC’s Iraq correspondent, Richard Engel, with

the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Admiral Scott Redd.

This newly created agency is supposed to be, according to its mission statement,
leading the fight to “combat the terrorist threat to the U.S. and its interests”
When asked directly by Engel, “are we safer today,” and after a long,
uncomfortable pause (not unlike the one Petraeus exhibited in response to the
same question),

Redd replied: “tactically, probably not; strategically, we’ll wait and
see.”

What the hell does that mean? Wait for what, 3,800 more
American combat deaths? See what, al Quaeda continue to

use the war as a recruiting tool? Well, Admiral Redd won’t have to wait or
get to see anything (at least not at the NCTC): two days after he gave that
interview, he abruptly

announced his resignation from the NCTC.

Just another example of where
speaking truth to power gets you with this administration.

A

recent report issued by the American Security Project answers, with a resounding “no,” the question of whether we’re winning the war on terror. ASP is a
self-described “non-profit, bi-partisan public policy research and education
initiative dedicated to fostering knowledge and understanding of a range of
national security and foreign policy issues” (read: think tank) whose board of
directors includes Gary Hart (the former Senator), John Kerry (the former
presidential candidate), George Mitchell (also a former Senator) and General
Anthony Zinni (the former commander of CENTCOM, and long-time critic of the war
in Iraq).

It answers the question in cold, statistical fashion. Using ten
objective criteria for determining the results of the “war on terror,” the
report concludes, not surprisingly, that we are losing that war. From a
“massive and dramatic increase in Islamist terrorism since 2003” to “Al Qaeda’s
[expansion of] its reach globally,” to the increasing perception in the Muslim
world of the U.S. as an “aggressive, hostile and destabilizing force,” the
report paints a dismal picture of the effect of the war in Iraq on the “war on
terror.”

The report’s quantification of terrorist attacks is
startling. It finds that the number of such attacks, worldwide, has increased
exponentially. It does not suggest that just because the U.S. hasn’t been
attacked it is therefore safer, and therefore doesn’t need to worry about
terrorism elsewhere in the world, because those aren’t “American interests,” a
position espoused, either ignorantly or dishonestly (but most revealingly), by
the Vice President’s wife in a recent
interview with Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show.”

As the NCTC’s mission
statement acknowledges, even our intelligence community recognizes that our
“interests” go beyond our borders. And, of course, there is now the depressing
fact that the war in Iraq has resulted in the death of
more Americans than were killed on September 11th.

The mantra of the Vietnam era, equally applicable to the
current era, was most poignantly revealed in a song by the group known as
Country Joe and the Fish. The chorus of their song “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To
Die” included the question “And it’s one, two, three, what are we fighting
for…” My question is: Joe, where are you now that we need you?

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

MAD AS HELL: Bush Quacks On As Democrats Turn Tail

George Bush is no lame duck. You aren’t lame when you’re
getting your way on everything. At a press conference this week, instead of
quacking like a duck, he was strutting like a peacock, and warning the world
of how relevant he still is. The Decider Guy is dancing with the stars. A 24%
approval rating, a (still mostly) lapdog press and Orwellian delusions
continue to assure him that he can do as he damn well pleases. In other
words, he has another18 months to take this country farther down a rat hole.
And the one thing he knows for sure is the gutless opposition has no serious
plans to stop him.

Yesterday, the president and his party succeeded in
denying millions of poor American children healthcare by vetoing a bill to
expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Never mind that the
money spent on forty days in Iraq would have paid for at least ten million
poor kids to be insured for an entire year. We have the money for funding
perpetual wars, but not for our nation’s poor, sick children. This
administration, with the help of Congress, killed the bill.

Even more appalling, Bush and the Republicans fought to
get legal immunity for the telecommunications companies who helped this
government engage in spying and criminal phone tapping of innocent, private
citizens. Never mind that protecting the criminals who colluded with the
right-wingers will destroy the individual privacy and hitherto protected
freedoms of all Americans. So where did Congress line up on this despicable
piece of legislation? Right behind the Republicans, of course.

Most alarming, however, was another bizarre “Bring-It-On”
display when Bush seemed jacked up when alluding to a possible third world war
involving Iran. (Excuse me, “nukyuler armed Eye-ran.”) Jocularly chuckling at
questions regarding a potential engagement of war with another country in the
Middle East, he sounded more and more like a petulant, dangerous child.

While Bush was flipping off sick children, ripping up the
Constitution and rattling war sabers, where was the opposing party– the
majority party that was sent to Washington last year explicitly to stop Bush
from doing further damage? Pissing up the proverbial rope, as usual. Since
the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, declared impeachment of this president
to be off the table, it is the Democrats who are quickly making themselves
irrelevant. Bush and the Republicans control the agenda, determine the course
of action, and dictate the outcome. The Democrats continue to believe that
simply keeping their heads down will somehow propel them into an electoral
landslide in 2008! While Bush continues to gain relevancy by finding new and
novel ways to continue his campaign to expunge the planet of any life form
that disagrees with him, the congress merrily assumes the
earthworm-on-dry-pavement position.

In all this mess, it is the American people who seem to be
the least relevant to the politicians. Predictably, the president will continue
to carry on the Iraq war, but the one thing voters were counting on last year
when they elected a Democratic majority was having that majority use the
Constitutional powers available to them to stop the funding of the war.

And while Bush continues to destroy our Constitutional
freedoms, the Democrats astoundingly still cower in fear of being called
unpatriotic. This administration has flagrantly flouted the will of the people,
but the people figured out a long time ago not to expect anything different from
Bush. Congress, however, in its failure to confront the president, is also
ignoring the will of the people; so it is no surprise that they, not Bush, have
the lower approval rating.

-Make no mistake, Americans are sick and tired of Bush and
the Republicans, but they are more exasperated with and sickened by
Congressional Democrats who claim to be Bush’s adversaries, yet act like never
ending enablers. Like parents offering nothing more than repeated empty threats
to a destructive, out-of- control adolescent, the Democrats are the ones who are
becoming increasingly irrelevant and dare I say –lame? Perhaps they should heed
the words of the last Democratic President who said the American people would
rather support someone who is strong and wrong than someone who is right and
weak.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter from the Editor: It’s Time to Come Out

Idaho Republican senator Larry “Wide Stance” Craig is still trying to ride out the stormy aftermath of his arrest for soliciting sex in a Minneapolis airport men’s room last spring — much to the delight of Democrats and late-night comedians.

Not content with becoming merely a momentary national punchline, Craig seems determined to drag, er, stretch his notoriety into a long-running sitcom. He has continued his tireless efforts to wiggle out of his conviction for weeks. He held a press conference to deny he was gay and thanked all those attending who “came out” to support him. Oy.

This week, he began making the rounds of the national talk shows to plead his case, dragging his poor wife along behind him, keeping the story alive for yet another news-cycle. Republicans desperately wish he would just go away. Democrats hope he keeps, uh, stalling until the next erection, er, election.

And in a, um, stroke of serendipity straight out of La Cage aux Folles, Craig was inducted into the Idaho Hall of Fame (who knew they had one?) this week. I bet that ceremony wasn’t at all awkward.

Yes, it’s funny, but it’s also stupid — and oh so predictable. Another sexual hypocrite seems to pop up every week. On Monday, a Vatican official was suspended after being caught on a hidden camera making advances to a young man. The official said that he was only pretending to be gay as part of his work. He frequented online gay chat rooms and met with gay men in order to gather information about “those who damage the image of the church with homosexual activity.”

Oh, sweet Jesus, give me a break.

Last Thursday, October 11th, was the annual “National Coming Out Day,” sponsored by gay and lesbian groups across the country. The purpose of the event is to urge those folks who are in the closet to stop covering up their true sexuality and live openly gay lives. It’s a great idea.

Imagine our world if all the sexual hypocrisy were to go away. Sure, we’d learn we have lots of gay elected officials, but what’s wrong with that? They’re already gay, after all. Now they’d have to be honest too. And that’s never a bad thing.
Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com