J.D. Hayworth won't get rid of that shit-eating grin.  And he won't concede Arizona's Fifth Congressional District to Harry Mitchell, who still leads Hayworth by five percentage points. 

Before the Valley of the Sun's beautiful people elected Hayworth to Congress, he was an obtuse sportscaster on the Phoenix CBS (nox Fox) affiliate.  I remember he came to my school once to talk about the Great Rubber Duck Race - an annual non-event in Phoenix in which thousands of rubber ducks are dropped into the canal system of the Salt River, presumably to celebrate the miracle of bringing water to the desert for all those golf courses.   I remember that Hayworth was very, very fat.  And he had the personality of a lamppost.  Of course these attributes made him a natural for Congress.

And now, having lost his bid for re-election, he's like the rest of us.  What will he do, with no bully pulpit to espouse his anti-Semitic and anti-Mexican diatribes?  How will he launder dirty Abramoff money into the pockets of his wife?  Will Hannity and the other wingnuts really want a loser on their shows now?

He doesn't even have the class to bow out.  Step aside, fat man.  Your time has come.

Walter Payton would have been 52 years old today, but, alas, only the good die young.

It's popular for sports pundits to periodically proclaim their "greatest of all time" lists.  This endeavor is nothing more than a silly parlor game.  And so it's futile to designate Walter Payton's place among the all time greats in his sport.  Comparing players from disparate eras creates problems that even the greatest mathematicians cannot solve. 

Nevertheless, I can say without reservation that Walter Payton was the greatest running back and most complete football player I've ever seen.  He wasn't blessed with the power of Jim Brown, the speed of Barry Sanders, or the agility of the double murderer O.J. Simpson.  But he excelled at every facet of the game.  And he dominated the most physically demanding of sports for more than a decade, the brunt of his career spent playing for teams that were woefully undermanned.

In rushing the ball, Payton had few peers.  He shattered Jim Brown's NFL record for career rushing yards, and remains in second place all time.  But that was just one aspect of his prowess.  He was the best at catching passes out of the backfield.  He relished - and excelled at - blocking, an almost unprecedented skill for a halfback.  And nobody threw a better option pass.

If the NFL held punt, pass, and kick competitions for its players, Payton would have won every year. 

He missed just one game in his 13 year career, a feat that belied his style of running: He seemed to prefer running over tacklers rather than trying to elude them.  In a game on a rainy field in Tampa Bay, Payton knocked unconscious two Buccaneer defenders on the same play.

Although he never shied away from contact, he played shrewdly and efficiently.  He avoided at all costs being at the bottom of a pileup where dirty play by opponents could lead to injury.  And so rather than playing the game of possum Jim Brown would play after being tackled, Payton would typically bounce up quickly after being taken down by an opponent and return to the huddle.  His high-legged style of running also helped prevent him from buckling his knees when he'd make a cut or pivot, a method which may have spared fellow Chicago great Gale Sayers from an all too brief career.

He grew up in segregated Mississippi and became an icon in the Windy City.  He is sorely missed.    

This is called motive.

It will be the White Sox and Cardinals in the World Series - which will prove yet again that pitching, defense, and speed still matter in the steroids era.

Judith Miller, seen here with bloated and overrated defense attorney Bob Bennett (whose shameful handling of Bill Clinton's defense in the Paula Jones case led to the President's impeachment in the House - there's money well spent, Judy), is out of custody, and, evidently, she is now eager to sing for Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. 

Judith Miller's sloppy propagandizing, er, reporting helped make Bush's case for invading Iraq.  Then she used (presumably) the same unreliable sources - high-ranking political hacks of the Bush Administration - to disclose a covert CIA officer's identity.  And she did so having substantial reason to know that these sources were not whistleblowers exposing corruption while risking retaliation, but hacks hell bent on undermining a critic of Bush.  Then she decides to go to jail to protect the identity of these sources who fed her a steady diet of political hogwash poorly disguised but unquestionably accepted by Miller as "fact."  And now she's a rat.

Please, fellow bloggers.  Post your comments ridiculing this halfwit with a word processor.  Regardless of one's place on the political pendulum, I can't see how anyone could view Judith Miller without utter, nauseating contempt.

The last few years have been tough ones for the New York Times.

Hurricane Katrina's power not only destroyed an entire city, it caused a number of people to make absolutely moronic statements.  Take CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, whose on-the-air Jimmy the Greek moment thus far has been given a mysterious free pass by the media, the likes of which are usually reserved to the Bush Administration.  "You simply get chills every time you see these poor individuals, as Jack Cafferty just pointed out, so tragically, so many of these people, almost all of them that we see, are so poor and they are so black . . . ."

Blitzer's gaffe can be excused since he was forced to speak sans teleprompter, which is like permitting a blind man to fly a commerical jet.  But the following social commentary was posted by that self-absorbed, academe dufus Glenn Reynolds, who argued that every household should stockpile supplies in preparation for a disaster: 

Whenever I say this, I get responses along the lines of "poor people can't afford to stockpile food." But here's a family survival kit for $50 (link omitted) and it's pretty good. Most poor people in America can afford food (that's why so many poor people are fat). They do have other problems that make preparation less likely, though (if you're the kind of person who thinks ahead and prepares for emergencies, you're much less likely to be poor to begin with) and local authorities have to be ready . . . .

And this man is a law professor, teaching the impressionable (read gullible) minds at the University of Tennessee Law School in subjects such as Constitutional Law and the very practical Space Law.  Note: The survival kit Reynolds referred to included 12 cans of Dinty Moore beef stew.

To Professor Reynolds I pose the following in the Socratic method: Have you lost your fucking mind?

It took five years, but Thomas Friedman of the New York Times finally broke down and wrote an op-ed piece critical of the Bush Administration and its conservative agenda.  What he still doesn't get, however, is that Bush's 9-11 mandate was completely undeserving.  He writes that his "gut reaction" told him that Bush and Cheney were the "right guys to deal with Osama," but then he disparages the Bush Administration for using 9-11 to push through what he describes as a "radically uncompassionate conservative agenda."  But Friedman fails to mention the quagmire in Iraq, the failure in Afghanistan, and the fact that Bush and Cheney not only never dealt with Osama, they could care less about Osama.  He fails to admit his gut was wrong.

The Bush Administration's ineptitude in their tragic mishandling of Hurricane Katrina should not be surprising.  It's de rigeur.  Bush and Cheney were never the "right guys" to deal with Osama or anything else of importance.  When it comes to raising campaign funds, they're the "right guys."  When it comes to applying that ol' Texas saying of "dance with the one that brung you" to the world of politics, they're the "right guys."  When it comes to manipulating the likes of Thomas Friedman and others in the press with Orwelian tactics, they're the "right guys."

If Thomas Friedman still cannot come to this all too obvious conclusion following Hurricane Katrina, my God, what will it take?  What other calamity must our nation endure before he and the majority of Americans finally have an epiphany?

From today's New Orleans Times-Picayune:

Dear Mr. President:

          We heard you loud and clear Friday when you visited our

devastated city and the Gulf Coast and said, "What is not

working, we’re going to make it right."

          Please forgive us if we wait to see proof of your promise

before believing you. But we have good reason for our skepticism.

          Bienville built New Orleans where he built it for one

main reason: It’s accessible. The city between the Mississippi

River and Lake Pontchartrain was easy to reach in 1718.

How much easier it is to access in 2005 now that there are

interstates and bridges, airports and helipads, cruise ships,

barges, buses and diesel-powered trucks.

          Despite the city’s multiple points of entry, our nation’s

bureaucrats spent days after last week’s hurricane wringing

their hands, lamenting the fact that they could neither rescue

the city’s stranded victims nor bring them food, water and

medical supplies.

          Meanwhile there were journalists, including some who

work for The Times-Picayune, going in and out of the city

via the Crescent City Connection. On Thursday morning,

that crew saw a caravan of 13 Wal-Mart tractor trailers headed

into town to bring food, water and supplies to a dying city.

Television reporters were doing live reports from downtown

New Orleans streets. Harry Connick Jr. brought in some aid

Thursday, and his efforts were the focus of a "Today" show

story Friday morning.

          Yet, the people trained to protect our nation, the people

whose job it is to quickly bring in aid were absent. Those

who should have been deploying troops were singing a sad

song about how our city was impossible to reach.

          We’re angry, Mr. President, and we’ll be angry long after

our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been

pumped dry. Our people deserved rescuing. Many who

could have been were not. That’s to the government’s shame.

          Mayor Ray Nagin did the right thing Sunday when he

allowed those with no other alternative to seek shelter from

the storm inside the Louisiana Superdome. We still don’t

know what the death toll is, but one thing is certain: Had the

Superdome not been opened, the city’s death toll would have

been higher. The toll may even have been exponentially

higher.

          It was clear to us by late morning Monday that many people

inside the Superdome would not be returning home. It

should have been clear to our government, Mr. President. So

why weren’t they evacuated out of the city immediately? We

learned seven years ago, when Hurricane Georges threatened,

that the Dome isn’t suitable as a long-term shelter. So

what did state and national officials think would happen to

tens of thousands of people trapped inside with no air conditioning,

overflowing toilets and dwindling amounts of food,

water and other essentials?

          State Rep. Karen Carter was right Friday when she said

the city didn’t have but two urgent needs: "Buses! And gas!"

          Every official at the Federal Emergency Management

Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially.

In a nationally televised interview Thursday night, he said

his agency hadn’t known until that day that thousands of

storm victims were stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention

Center. He gave another nationally televised interview

the next morning and said, "We’ve provided food to the people

at the Convention Center so that they’ve gotten at least

one, if not two meals, every single day."

          Lies don’t get more bald-faced than that, Mr. President.

Yet, when you met with Mr. Brown Friday morning, you told

him, "You’re doing a heck of a job."

          That’s unbelievable.

          There were thousands of people at the Convention Center

because the riverfront is high ground. The fact that so many

people had reached there on foot is proof that rescue vehicles

could have gotten there, too.

          We, who are from New Orleans, are no less American

than those who live on the Great Plains or along the Atlantic

Seaboard. We’re no less important than those from the Pacific

Northwest or Appalachia. Our people deserved to be rescued.

No expense should have been spared. No excuses

should have been voiced. Especially not one as preposterous

as the claim that New Orleans couldn’t be reached.

          Mr. President, we sincerely hope you fulfill your promise

to make our beloved communities work right once again.

When you do, we will be the first to applaud.

President Bush met this morning with members of the Red Cross at its headquarters in Washington, D.C.  Coincidentally, news cameras were there.  Bush gave an "impromptu" speech.  In three minutes, Bush mentioned the words "Red Cross" no less than thirty times, and referred to its volunteers repeatedly as an "Army of compassion."  He then asked Americans to pony up "hard cash donations to the Red Cross" if they want to help out in the hurricane relief effort.

Aside from him confusing the Salvation Army with the Red Cross, Bush tipped his hand on how he will deflect criticism and deny any accountability for the government's pathetic and criminally negligent response to Hurricane Katrina.  His not so hidden message?  Don't blame the government; it's not the government's job to help people in need and provide emergency relief.  That's a job for the Red Cross.

Yes, we are 1 year old today.  With this post on August 26, 2004 we opened up the Iron Mouth for everything in the world.  This is post number 542.  Alas, the world as it is, politics has been our primary focus since then.  Don't worry culture hounds, we will satisfy your appetites as the situation permits. 

So what has been the best thing about the Iron Mouth?  The commenters, of course.  With a relatively low visit count, we have had lively threads, sometimes reaching over 70 comments for a single post.  Although we have a leftward tilt, we have attracted an intrepid band from other parts of the poltical landscape, people looking for more than validation of their own point of view.  These sorts are rare indeed, and we hope they continue to visit us.

Monday - What he really said:

"You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war, and I don't think any oil shipments will stop.  We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with."

Wednesday - What he claims he said:

"I didn't say 'assassination.' I said our special forces should 'take him out.' 'Take him out' could be a number of things including kidnapping."

Which brings to mind Charles Barkley's famous quip about some of the claims he made in his autobiography: "I was misquoted."

Only Pat Robertson doesn't have Barkley's jump shot.  Or personality.  Or wit.

Putting aside the issue of whether Pat Robertson "misquoted" himself, is it appropriate for a Christian evangelical preacher cum Republican party presidential candidate to endorse kidnapping?

WWJD, Pat?

From the state that brought us "Ruff's Liquor and Guns," an establishment that sells booze, guns, tobacco, and porn:

The Arizona Legislature has approved a bill that permits patrons to take guns into bars and restaurants that do not conspicuously post notices prohibiting firearms.  The bill (SB1363) provides that the rootin' tootin' gun-totin' customers can't drink alcohol - a compromise the State Senate reached.  So now bartenders across Arizona will have to ask their patrons, "What'll be, and are you packing heat?" 

Arizona law already permits its citizens to carry concealed firearms.

Earlier this month Loren Wade, a talented but troubled running back for the Arizona State University football team, was indicted for first degree murder for shooting to death a former teammate outside a nightclub.  The Legislature's response, of course, is to encourage more drunks to carry guns.  Lawmakers are concerned that gun owners heretofore have been forced to leave their weapons inside their cars.

As the self-proclaimed pro-gun member of the Iron Mouth editorial board, I have to applaud the Arizona Legislature for its wisdom.  At last I can sit down at a classy restaurant knowing that if they screw up my order, I can do more than leave a lousy tip.  There's nothing like a loaded Glock to cure a soggy chimichanga.

Update, 4/26/05 (RW): Governor Janet Napolitano vetoes the bill.

Move over Harry Potter.  Tyndale is at it again.  The highly profitable publisher of evangelical Christian vitriol and gore has just printed another installment of its "Left Behind: The Kids Series" propaganda novels.  Tyndale claims that they've sold more than 10 million copies of the books that are "great for kids 10-14."  One enthusiastic reader exclaims, "I absolutly [sic] love your books! These books are the best I've ever read, seriously. I've read all the kids books. The first time I picked up a Left Behind book I couldn't put it down. After reading those books I thought How can anyone read that and not believe in Jesus? Thanks for publishing these great books for everyone to read!"

The books depict the wacky adventures of a group of evangelical teenagers who join forces to convert Jews during Armageddon, lest they be annihilated and cast into hell for all eternity because they haven't embraced Jesus.  When they're not busy proselytizing, the kids are battling swarthy devils who hail from places like Romania.

Kudos to Tyndale for grabbing a hefty slice of the pie while competing with the steady stream of necrophiliac propaganda from Fox News and CNN.  The highly competitive market of calling evangelical Christians to arms against judges, abortion providers, evolution teachers, and Democratic politicians is saturated.  Yet Tyndale thrives.  Their Left Behind series of books has sold more 60 million copies, and two movies starring Kirk Cameron based on the novels are available on DVD at Amazon.  

Thank you, Tyndale.  With millions of youth being so indoctrinated, it won't be long before we return to the days of pogroms, autos da fe, Holocausts and Great Purges.

Terri Schiavo's death has spurred right-wing nuts to call for the murder (er, impeachment) of judges.  This is an excerpt from yesterday's Washington Post:

Conservative leaders meeting in Washington yesterday for a discussion of "Remedies to Judicial Tyranny" decided that Kennedy, a Ronald Reagan appointee, should be impeached, or worse.

Phyllis Schlafly, doyenne of American conservatism, said Kennedy's opinion forbidding capital punishment for juveniles "is a good ground of impeachment." To cheers and applause from those gathered at a downtown Marriott for a conference on "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith," Schlafly said that Kennedy had not met the "good behavior" requirement for office and that "Congress ought to talk about impeachment."

Next, Michael P. Farris, chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association, said Kennedy "should be the poster boy for impeachment" for citing international norms in his opinions. "If our congressmen and senators do not have the courage to impeach and remove from office Justice Kennedy, they ought to be impeached as well."

Not to be outdone, lawyer-author Edwin Vieira told the gathering that Kennedy should be impeached because his philosophy, evidenced in his opinion striking down an anti-sodomy statute, "upholds Marxist, Leninist, satanic principles drawn from foreign law."

Ominously, Vieira continued by saying his "bottom line" for dealing with the Supreme Court comes from Joseph Stalin. "He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: 'no man, no problem,' " Vieira said.

The full Stalin quote, for those who don't recognize it, is "Death solves all problems: no man, no problem." Presumably, Vieira had in mind something less extreme than Stalin did and was not actually advocating violence. But then, these are scary times for the judiciary. An anti-judge furor may help confirm President Bush's judicial nominees, but it also has the potential to turn ugly.

The column's author Dana Milbank perhaps was giving too much credit to Vieira.  Presumably, people who quote Stalin do not do so with the best of intentions.  And indeed, these are scary times for judges.  Milbank's column continues:

A judge in Atlanta and the husband and mother of a judge in Chicago were murdered in recent weeks. After federal courts spurned a request from Congress to revisit the Terri Schiavo case, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) said that "the time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior." Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) mused about how a perception that judges are making political decisions could lead people to "engage in violence."

"The people who have been speaking out on this, like Tom DeLay and Senator Cornyn, need to be backed up," Schlafly said to applause yesterday. One worker at the event wore a sticker declaring "Hooray for DeLay."

The conference was organized during the height of the Schiavo controversy by a new group, the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration. This was no collection of fringe characters. The two-day program listed two House members; aides to two senators; representatives from the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America; conservative activists Alan Keyes and Morton C. Blackwell; the lawyer for Terri Schiavo's parents; Alabama's "Ten Commandments" judge, Roy Moore; and DeLay, who canceled to attend the pope's funeral.

The Schlafly session's moderator, Richard Lessner of the American Conservative Union, opened the discussion by decrying a "radical secularist relativist judiciary." It turned more harsh from there.

Schlafly called for passage of a quartet of bills in Congress that would remove courts' power to review religious displays, the Pledge of Allegiance, same-sex marriage and the Boy Scouts. Her speech brought a subtle change in the argument against the courts from emphasizing "activist" judges -- it was, after all, inaction by federal judges that doomed Schiavo -- to "supremacist" judges. "The Constitution is not what the Supreme Court says it is," Schlafly asserted.

Former representative William Dannemeyer (R-Calif.) followed Schlafly, saying the country's "principal problem" is not Iraq or the federal budget but whether "we as a people acknowledge that God exists."

Farris then told the crowd he is "sick and tired of having to lobby people I helped get elected."

The last quote is vintage sour grapes.  When the evangelical Christian maniacs were anointed by the media for delivering the election to Bush, they naturally expected more in return than 30 pieces of silver.  Now they want blood.

This weekend the GOP-led Congress yet again revealed its duplicitous face by deciding to intervene in the tragic Terri Schiavo case.  Eager to jump on the "pro-life" bandwagon to throw some marrow to the religious right, GOP leaders are trying to slop together an ill-conceived bill that would give a federal judge - presumably one hand-picked by Congress - the authority to review a decision by a Florida judge to remove Schiavo's feeding tube.  This move by Congress is all the more alarming because a federal court has already ruled that the Schiavo case should be decided on state grounds. 

Thus, the GOP leaders have dumped their principles for the sake of political gain.  Longtime vigorous defenders of State's rights and the Separation of Powers have once again decided that "values" trump more trivial matters like the Constitution, particularly with the 2006 elections on their minds.  If all goes according to plan, Congress and President Bush will sign into law a bill that exists solely as a means for judicial activism - precisely what the same members of Congress fought so bitterly when so-called activist judges in Massachusetts, and more recently in California, gave homosexual couples the right to marry.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan defended this encroachment upon the Tenth Amendment - which, to conservatives, next to the right to bear arms is the most hallowed of all the Bill of Rights - by parroting Senator Bill Frist's hypocritical plea: "This is about defending life."

Regardless of how you feel about the issues underlying the Terri Schiavo case, you cannot support Congress' intervention.  For Congress to stick its nose in this case at this juncture after the Florida courts have been weighing the competing interests for seven years is nothing short of appalling.  It is political grandstanding at its worst.  The GOP's monumental hypocrisy mirrors that of Schiavo's home state: In a state that executes prisoners at the most rapid rate in the country, its license plates state "Choose Life."

For GOP politicians the vigor to defend life - like their party's core principles - is all in the timing.

The former Oakland A's star will join a number of other past and present MLB players before a congressional committee investigating steroids in baseball.  On Wednesday, Canseco's request for immunity from prosecution was denied.  According to a spokesman for committee chairman Tom Davis, no witnesses have been or will be granted immunity.

This statement from Congressman Davis' camp begs the question: Why bother to subpoena past and present MLB stars if they will predictably invoke their Fifth Amendment rights?  To what purpose does this serve?

The answer is simple.  Congress is not particularly interested in the juicy details of who injected whom with what; they can pick up a copy of Canseco's book for that information.  What Congress can accomplish today is to force multi-millionaire athletes to invoke their Fifth Amendment rights before the world and thus behave like common criminals.  Because no matter how much Americans claim they honor and revere the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the simple fact is that most people conclude that if a person invokes the Fifth Amendment, he must have something to hide.

If Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, Curt Schilling, and others refuse to answer any of the committee's questions, then Congress has won the first battle toward forcing Major League Baseball to adopt a drug testing policy with teeth.

Atrios reported today that a North Carolina Christian School is using a revisionist booklet on slavery in its curriculum.  The booklet, “Southern Salvery, As It Was,” was published in 1996 and authored by the Reverends Steven Wilkins and Douglas Wilson.  I’m familiar with the  Presbyterian dynamic duo’s work, and it is jaw-dropping to say the least.  Atrios highlighted some of the juicy excerpts:

• "Slavery as it existed in the South was not an adversarial relationship with pervasive racial animosity. Because of its dominantly patriarchal character, it was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence." (page 24) 

• "Slave life was to them a life of plenty, of simple pleasures, of food, clothes, and good medical care." (page 25)

• "But many Southern blacks supported the South because of long established bonds of affection and trust that had been forged over generations with their white masters and friends." (page 27)
  
• "Nearly every slave in the South enjoyed a higher standard of living than the poor whites of the South -- and had a much easier existence." (page 30)

Fellow Presbyterian Pastor Jack Davidson has written an excellent and scholarly critique of this racialist manifesto.  Reverend Davidson’s conclusion aptly sums up the revisionist tripe:  “Like the opinions of Jefferson Davis, Wilkins and Wilson's booklet provokes incredulity and withers when it is exposed to the broader reality of slavery in the South.”

More needs to be written about this pair. 

Let me begin with Reverend Wilkins of Monroe, Louisiana. 

He is the founder of the Southern Heritage Society and a member of the League of the South’s board of directors.  The names of these organizations send a shiver down my spine.  Say those names out loud and you can't help but hear a band playing “Dixie“ in the background.

The Southern Heritage Society appears to be a think-tank organization of sorts; its members recently met for their 14^th annual conference, which may or may not have included a good ol’ fashioned cross burnin’.  The agenda of their first conference reveals all you need to know about the Southern Heritage Society:

Held in 1991, our guest speaker this year was Dr. Terry Rude, professor of theology, Bob Jones University, Greenville, South Carolina. He spoke on the following topics:

• The Cause of the South
• The South Was Right
• Confederate Manhood

Confederate Manhood?  Sounds like a Dixieland gay porn magazine.

What is the League of the South, you might ask?  According to its president, Dr. Michael Hill, it is an organization founded in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, that “seeks to advance the cultural, social, economic, and political well-being and independence of the Southern people by all honorable means.”

Dr. Hill fails to define “honorable,” but his missive tips his hand  (Notice the doctor’s misspelling of the word recognizing: he uses the British form of the word.  Yet before you conclude that Dr. Hill was making an editorial statement about the damned Yankees forcing Webster’s spelling on the brave learned men of the South, notice that he uses several –ize suffixes with the proper American spelling.  Oops.).

“Recognising [sic] that cultural regeneration must precede political regeneration, our initial goal is to give form and direction to "The Community of the Southern People." Only when we begin to rediscover who we are as a people can we save our civilization. The people of the South must come to understand that they indeed are a "nation" in the organic, historical sense of the word. As individuals and communities, we must secede culturally from a world that is waging cultural genocide against our traditions, our heritage and our values. If we do this, and in the process revitalize our culture, then perhaps we will be able to successfully pursue a political course toward independence and freedom. Once The League of the South has made "The Community of the Southern People" a reality, then we can pursue our political objectives: a return to constitutional republicanism and true federalism, or if that should prove unattainable, secession.

Secession, or self-determination, is the ultimate right of free men; and in the spirit of our Founding and Confederate forefathers, we shall, if necessary, invoke that principle once again.”

Ah, Secession.  What a lovely thought.  Do these slack-jawed yokels really think we feel threatened by the prospect of Southern secession?  Get on with it, Bubba. 

Now lest I find Reverend Wilkins guilty by association, this comes straight from the horse’s mouth:

“We are all children today. Historian Barbara Tuchman made a most helpful observation concerning the relationship of a nation's history and its present direction. She said this: "A nation's history governs its present actions but only in terms of what its citizens believe their history to have been.

In other words, it's not so much what actually happened that influences the present course of a country, but what its citizens believe to have happened. A nation deceived about its past can easily be manipulated in the present.

For this reason, history is a powerful ally to revolutionaries. A nation deceived about its past can be easily manipulated in the present. Those who write the history books mold the thinking and set the agenda of the next generation (and sometimes a number of future generations). For this reason, one of the first things the communists seek to do is re-write history from their own perspective. To rob a nation of its history is to rob it of the strength and wisdom of the past. We have been robbed. And we are in grave danger as a consequence. Modern historians are, for the most part, revolutionaries. They have re-written history in order to discredit and defame Christianity and its influence in this nation. The battle for freedom and reformation is not going to be won apart from reclaiming our history. If we are deceived about our past, it will be a tremendous hindrance to reformation in the future.

What most Americans believe to have happened, never did, at least not in the way they think. We have been taught mythology for fact, fiction for truth. And one the keys in our present struggle for reformation is how well we are able to recapture the heritage which has been taken from us by unbelieving historians.“

This monologue is the perfect segue way to Wilkin’s vision of the Civil War.  Historians have duped Americans. 

“We must understand the epochal effects of the Northern victory in the War of 1861. The victory of the revolutionary party (the Republicans) spelled the doom of Constitution government in this country.”

The War of 1861?  Don’t you mean the Civil War?

“A more accurate term for the "Civil War" would be the War for Southern Independence. A Civil War is a war between two factions within the same nation; the War that took place in 1861 was a war between two nations - The USA and the CSA.”

Silly me.  But the Civil, er, War of 1861 was over slavery, right?

“Slavery was of course a factor in the War of 1861 (notice how diplomatic I am being here!), but I don't believe it was THE cause.

In 1861 President Lincoln made it clear that slavery was not really the main issue (at least in his view). The main concern for him was preserving the union and he didn't care how that happened (i.e. by freeing slaves or by allowing slavery to continue) - he was only concerned to preserve the union.

In January of 1863 he issued the Emancipation Proclamation which made the war more or less "officially" a war to free the slaves. Many northerners rebelled over the proclamation. Numerous northern soldiers threatened to return home and northern state legislatures passed resolutions denouncing it, but it accomplished its purpose (keeping any European nation, chiefly England) from entering the war on the side of the South.

The proclamation only applied to slaves held in Southern states and only in those Southern states which were NOT occupied by Federal troops (thus, Louisiana was excluded). It had no effect on those slaves held in northern states or in those areas of the South which were under Federal control. In other words, it was a purely symbolic action intended for propaganda purposes.”

I see.  And the Underground Railroad was simply a means of stealing the South’s labor base to bring about its economic ruin.

Wilkins is also an authority on the Salem Witch Trials, and is quick to defend the Puritans from that pesky Jewish playwright, Arthur Miller, who transmuted the good people from Massachusetts into monsters. 

“The entire Salem episode lasted less than a year (1692). There was no "witch-hunting frenzy" prior to 1692 (only 12 people were ever tried for witchcraft). By contrast, the witch hunting which occurred in Europe lasted over two hundred years.

The Salem "hysteria" of 1692 did not see hundreds burned at the stake as is often imagined. Only 23 people died as a direct result of the trials. . . . In all, only around 100 people were ever accused of witchcraft in Salem, of whom 50 (by some counts) confessed their guilt. Some of these confessions were coerced and others may have been motivated by self-interest, as confessors were not tried or executed. Still, the fact remains, that many were in fact guilty of occult practices.”

Come on people!  Only 23 people were executed!  Show some perspective!

Wilkins’ words eerily remind me of the vitriol spewed by racist “scholar” Revilo Oliver, the longtime University of Illinois professor with the palindrome appellation.  Unlike Wilkins, Oliver completely rejected Christianity, but he shared the Reverend Wilkins’ zeal for revisionist history and love for the white race.  Here is Professor Oliver's view on American historians: 

“[R]emember that for generations venal "American historians," most of them also Anglo-Saxons, have been as ready as the Fathers of the Church to lie and forge for sweet righteousness's sake, and "educators" have injected their lies into the minds of school children, who are told about our glorious "Civil War" and how noble it was to emancipate those darling savages by killing so many of the young men who included the best blood of our race and thus genetically impoverishing our nation and our race forever.

As a result of that great catastrophe, the level of intelligence in America sank so low that, instead of learning from the terrible Holy War against the South, hordes of nitwits rushed to Europe in 1917 and 1941 to fight more insane Holy Wars and destroy what was left of civilization.”

Now after you swallow a Pepcid, read Professor Oliver’s take on the Puritans and their link to the Civil, er, War of 1861.  Notice how he essentially skips discussion of the Salem Witch Trials.

“In the seventeenth Century a considerable number of Englishmen, who had read the Jew-book until their minds were so warped they couldn't get along with their neighbors in England, migrated to what is now New England. We have all heard about the "stern and rockbound coast" and the land they made "holy ground" by their determination to worship their god in their own way, and it is true that they bore many hardships bravely and that, although they wasted some time by preaching to Indians instead of killing them, they did acquire the territory they wanted. They are said to have shown a certain admirable commercial honesty, although it is not clear how that is to be reconciled to the reputation of Yankees as being second only to Jews in diddling unwary customers. The Puritans had an especially Judaic form of Christianity, but so long as they were content to harass only each other with their righteousness, we have no reason for censuring them. De gustibus and all that.

The Puritans, however, soon felt the religious itch to spread their holiness by meddling in other people's affairs, and they doubtless have some responsibility for accelerating the progress of the disease in this country and bringing it to the stage of high fever and delirium. When their malice and envy was excited by the prosperity and culture of the southern states and, no doubt, the contrast between the climate of the South and the harsh winters of the bleak land they had chosen for themselves, their Christian lust to destroy became acute, and from New England came the plague of Abolitionists, who hypocritically pretended love for niggers to cover their yearning to impoverish and ruin the South.

The hate-crazed fanatics were eventually able to instigate an armed invasion of the Southern states, with, of course, the clandestine but powerful help of the Jews, who know how to profit richly from every disaster to the nation in which they have lodged themselves. And they do so righteously, for, as all Christians know, old Yahweh promised (Exod. 23.27-30 et passim) to help his pet bandits destroy every people whose territory they infiltrate, and to do it by stages until the Jews have multiplied sufficiently to take the whole territory for themselves.“

Now as for Reverend Douglas Wilson: he is pastor of Christ Church in Moscow (of all places), Idaho, and teaches theology at New St. Andrews College.  To his chagrin, his namesake is a somewhat effete designer on TLC’s show Trading Spaces.  Aside from his revisionist booklet on slavery, I haven’t found as much evidence of racialism.  However, here is Reverend Wilson’s view on sexual mores and how parents should discuss sex with their teenage sons:

“My wife and I first encountered this when my son was a little boy and they were at the supermarket checkout counter. There was a magazine there with a woman almost wearing something and my wife was using her as a teaching opportunity.

She started to explain to my son that this was an awful, gross thing. I told my wife afterwards that a woman might look at that and see nothing but the grotesque nature of it, but for a guy there's all sorts of pleasant things that strike him initially. Even mothers need to say to their sons, "That looks good, doesn't it? The Bible says it looks good at the beginning, but at the end is death."

I’ve a feeling he’s the guy who keeps ratting out Howard Stern to the FCC.  I feel a bit sorry for the guy.  I mean, look at him.

He seems happy enough, but since his wife views the female body as an “awful, gross thing,“ things can't be too peachy in the Wilson bedroom.

So these are the people educating the young impressionable minds of Cary, North Carolina.  Thank you, Atrios, for reminding us all of these crusaders for hate.

Mel Gibson has bought himself a Pacific Island.  For the modest price of $15 million, Gibson has landed an “exclusive gateway for his friends and family” and a sanctuary from liberals and Jews.

On Wednesday in Kuwait, Spc. Thomas Wilson of the Tennessee Army National Guard posed this zinger to the Secretary of Defense:

“Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?“

To which the ever reassuring Rumsfeld replied: “You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have . . . . You can have all the armor in the world on a tank and a tank can be blown up.“

Today in India, the Secretary Don had this to say to reporters when he was asked about Spc. Wilson:

"I don't know what the facts are but somebody's certainly going to sit down with him and find out what he knows that they may not know, and make sure he knows what they know that he may not know, and that's a good thing.“

Translation: Somebody better silence that son of a bitch.

UPDATE: 9:34 PM: That damned liberal media.  There's one way to pierce the bubble.  Unfortunately, now the focus in the media will be on the ethics of reporters, rather than the plight of our soldiers.

Gerry Spence, the greatest living trial lawyer and champion of the underdog, has written an amusing, but quite convincing, first-person narrative about the 2004 election.  Keep in mind that Spence lives and practices law in Wyoming, a state redder than a Maraschino cherry, land of Matthew Shepard's murderers, where GOP politicians roam as freely as the buffalo, deer, and antelope.  The “voice” in his narrative is the type of person who has frequented Spence's juries for more than 50 years.  He knows folks like these well.  And I daresay he'd be the first to tell you that nobody can win over a person who carries these kinds of deep-rooted prejudice.

Democratic candidates for office take notice.  Forget about winning over these voters.  Do not compromise.  Appeal to the center and the left and take no prisoners.