http://lnk.nu/mercurynews.com/6nw.htm

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Posted on Fri, Dec. 02, 2005

State Department using ideological litmus tests to screen speakers

BY WARREN P. STROBEL AND JONATHAN S. LANDAY

Knight Ridder Newspapers

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WASHINGTON - The State Department has been using political litmus tests to screen private American citizens before they can be sent overseas to represent the United States, weeding out critics of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, according to department officials and internal e-mails.

In one recent case, a leading expert on conflict resolution who's a former senior State Department adviser was scheduled to participate in a U.S. Embassy-sponsored videoconference in Jerusalem last month, but at the last minute he was told that his participation no longer was required.

State Department officials explained the cancellation as a scheduling matter. But internal department e-mails show that officials in Washington pressed to have other scholars replace the expert, David L. Phillips, who wrote a book, "Losing Iraq," that's critical of President Bush's handling of Iraqi reconstruction.

"I was told by a senior U.S. official that the State Department was conducting a screening process on intellectuals, and those who were against the Bush administration's Iraq policy were not welcomed to participate in U.S. government-sponsored programs," Phillips said.

"The ability of the United States to promote democracy effectively abroad is curtailed when we curtail free speech at home, which is essential to a free society," he said.

In another instance of apparent politicization, a request by the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia, to arrange a visit by Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., who lived in Indonesia when he was young, was delayed for seven months. The visit never occurred.

A prominent translator of Islamic poetry who toured Afghanistan to rave reviews last March fell out of favor when he later criticized the Iraq war in front of a department official, two U.S. officials said.

The practices appear to be the latest examples of the Bush administration's efforts to tightly control information, maintain "message discipline" and promote news about the United States and its policies.

Bush opponents have been excluded routinely from the president's domestic events and campaign rallies. This week, Knight Ridder and other news organizations reported that the Pentagon has paid Iraqi journalists and newspapers to publish positive stories about the U.S. reconstruction effort there.

Current and former officials involved with the State Department's overseas speakers program said potential candidates were vetted - via Internet searches, for example - for any comments or writings that criticized White House policy.

"There's definitely a political litmus test. You don't have to be a Republican, but you better not have said anything against them," one official said.

The official said he knew of no blacklist of banned scholars. "But there certainly is a `white list' of those who can go," he added.

He and others agreed to discuss the State Department practices only on condition of anonymity, saying they feared retaliation for exposing them.

Late this week, after Knight Ridder inquired about the litmus tests, Alexander Feldman, the head of the department's International Information Programs bureau, which runs the speakers program, sent a memo to his employees warning that "no one is to speak to the press without following the procedures" and getting approval. Knight Ridder obtained a copy of the memo.

Feldman, a political appointee and former media executive, was traveling and couldn't be reached for comment. Seven calls made to two of his press officers and to State Department spokesman Sean McCormack weren't returned by the end of the day Friday.

The effort, known as the "U.S. Speakers/Specialist Program," is part of a public diplomacy effort to change negative foreign opinions of the United States. It's overseen by Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes, although the questionable practices reportedly began before she took up her post in September.

Using political views to screen candidates appears to violate the speaker program's charter, which is to present a "range of responsible opinion" in the United States to overseas audiences, not to hawk a particular administration's policies.

The officials who were critical of current practices said the situation hadn't reached the level of the mid-1980s, when Reagan administration appointees at the now-defunct U.S. Information Agency compiled a blacklist of 95 people banned from the agency's overseas speaking program. On it were veteran TV anchor Walter Cronkite, Coretta Scott King and economist John Kenneth Galbraith.

"Every administration has made an effort to check the political correctness of speakers who go out," one State Department veteran said.

State Department e-mails obtained by Knight Ridder show that in October, the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel, and the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem asked for Phillips to participate in a Nov. 9 video teleconference discussion with American officials and Israeli and Palestinian conflict-resolution practitioners. The embassy's request cited Phillips' long experience in conflict resolution.

On Oct. 26, an official in Washington wrote back: "We are currently researching alternate conflict resolution experts who would be better suited to address this topic and with whom IIP has a great deal of successful experience."

After a conversation with State Department headquarters that same day - the contents of which weren't disclosed - a U.S. diplomat in Jerusalem wrote Washington that she would "talk over the options" and "get right back to you with our ... preferred next step, okay?"

Officials in Washington proposed four other conflict-resolution experts, but the teleconference, already delayed, was canceled in the second half of November.

In the case of Obama, after the request from Jakarta came in Jan. 12, political appointees in the International Information Programs bureau argued in e-mails that a Republican senator should be sent as well.

That's standard State Department practice when individuals go out to discuss American party politics. But the Jakarta U.S. Embassy had asked for him to speak about diversity, not politics.

Approval for department officials to contact Obama was delayed until June 13.

The senator's office said it was unaware of the controversy.

State Department records show that administration critics occasionally have gone overseas on government-sponsored engagements.

Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies has gone to Iraq, Australia, Tanzania and elsewhere. He frequently has critiqued the U.S. anti-insurgency effort in Iraq.

Larry Diamond, a Stanford University authority on democratization, went to Ghana and Nigeria last February, although that was before his own critical account of the Iraq effort was published last summer.

But Temple University professor Mahmoud Ayoub, an expert on interreligious dialogue who went on a half-dozen State Department-sponsored trips after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, was turned down without explanation last summer for a grant to teach a course in Indonesia.

Ayoub said he wasn't accusing the department of a political vendetta and that he still participated in a program to host international visitors in this country.

"I would hope there is no political reason," he said. "It's a very sad thing when we don't have the freedom to express ourselves."

Coleman Barks, the translator of a 13th-century Persian poet from Islam's mystic Sufi tradition, was the first U.S.-sponsored speaker to go to Afghanistan in 25 years. But two officials said he angered Feldman by criticizing the Iraq war in a subsequent conversation with him.

Barks, who lives in Athens, Ga., said he didn't know if he'd been excluded from further tours.

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© 2005, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

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"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." -Theodore Roosevelt

http://abcnews.go.com/US/print?id=1368328

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U.S. Stands Alone in U.N. Budget Demand,
at Odds With Europe and Developing World

By EDITH M. LEDERER Associated Press Writer

The Associated Press

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UNITED NATIONS - The United States stood alone Friday in calling for an interim U.N. budget, at odds with Europe and the entire developing world, and Secretary-General Kofi Annan launched urgent talks to try to bridge the divide.

The fight over the U.N. budget, which runs out on Dec. 31, has become entwined with battle over implementing the broad reforms that world leaders agreed to at a U.N. summit in September.

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton wants reform to drive the budget process "not the other way around" and has called for the United Nations to approve a budget for three or four months rather than the usual two-year budget so the 191 U.N. member states would have time to consider management reforms expected early in the year.

"Our priority is we do not want to miss the opportunity for reform. We do not want to adopt a two-year budget that makes it, as a practical matter, impossible to implement reforms for another two years," Bolton said.

But the secretary-general, the European Union and developing countries who constitute the vast majority of U.N. members want a two-year budget adopted by the end of the year. Japan, the second largest contributor to the United Nations behind the United States, shares many U.S. concerns but hasn't taken a position on the length of the budget.

During an hour-long meeting with leaders of regional groups and key negotiators, Annan said he called for agreement by the end of the year on a Peacebuilding Commission to help countries emerging from conflict, progress on a new Human Rights Council, and support for management reforms he has proposed which will be discussed starting Tuesday.

"At the end, everyone agreed that ... we must have a budget, but at the same time we should find some means of maintaining the pressure for reform on," Annan said.

Algeria's U.N. Ambassador Abdallah Baali, a Security Council member, said "everybody wants a two-year budget" except for the United States and cited a U.N. Secretariat assessment that a three-month budget would create a financial crisis.

Britain's U.N. Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry, whose country holds the European Union presidency, said the EU opposes any "formal linkage" between reform and the budget. He said he was also convinced that a temporary solution would make it harder for "the U.N. to carry out essential functions."

The way forward, he said, is a two-year budget with "a clear statement in which we all commit ourselves to put in place a whole series of changes next year and a timetable for doing those and in the light of that, to actually then review the budget that we would by then have adopted."

Bolton said the United States is open to other suggestions.

"I haven't given up on the possibility that sweet reason will prevail," he said.

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Copyright 2005 The Associated Press.

Copyright © 2005 ABC News Internet Ventures

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"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein

http://lnk.nu/upi.com/6nj.php

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Sharon: Military option against Iran

By JOSHUA BRILLIANT
UPI Israel Correspondent

TEL AVIV, Israel, Dec. 1 (UPI) -- Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Thursday Israel and other countries couldn't accept an Iran with a nuclear bomb, adding Tehran's program could be stopped by military means.

Iran has been Israel's main foe since 1979, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini deposed the Shah. Iran has vowed to eradicate the Jewish state.

The nuclear issue came up Thursday at an annual meeting with the Israel Editors' Committee in Tel Aviv.

Sharon stressed Israel and other countries "cannot accept a situation in which Iran will have a nuclear weapon. That is clear to us, known to us and we are also making all the preparations necessary in order to be ready for such situations."

The meeting with the editors is an annual event held around the anniversary of the Nov. 29, 1947, United Nations decision to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. Shortly before the meeting, the Maariv newspaper ran a red banner headline quoting a "senior security source" as saying Israel by itself couldn't cope with Teheran.

"We shall have to put up with a nuclear Iran," the unnamed source said.

"I do not see any force in the world, today, that could reverse the situation -- namely Iran becoming nuclear ... and there will be no alternative but to put up with the emerging situation," he added.

Sharon suggested the editors be skeptical over reports by anonymous sources, though the context indicated the source was, indeed, high.

"Israel is not helpless and it is taking all the necessary steps," the prime minister asserted.

He did not go into detail, but in recent years Israel has acquired long-range F-15I aircraft, developed its Arrow anti ballistic missile system mainly to intercept missiles with nuclear warheads and has recently ordered two more Dolphin Class submarines from Germany. Foreign reports suggest the three German made submarines Israel already has give it a second-strike capability. That is, the ability to destroy the enemy even after absorbing his first strike. It launched spy satellites into space, indicating it has powerful missiles.

However, Sharon reiterated Israel's long-standing policy that stresses Israel is not at the forefront of the struggle with Iran.

"The danger is not only to Israel but to the Middle East and many other countries in the world," he said.

Israeli security sources have often noted that Iran is developing missiles that can reach Europe.

"That is why the effort underway today, with the U.S. leadership, is an effort that all the free states who understand the terrible danger (of a nuclear Iran) must share," Sharon said.

Israel is "in very close contact with other countries leading this struggle," he added.

Asked whether the international community has a military option, should all the diplomatic efforts fail to stop Iran, Sharon said: "Yes, definitely."

He said he was "sure that before anyone goes for such (military) steps, every effort would be made to pressure Iran to stop this activity."

In 1981 Israel destroyed Iraq's Osiraq reactor and thereby prevented Saddam Hussein from developing an Iraqi nuclear bomb, but Iran has learnt the lesson and reportedly dispersed and fortified its facilities.

Israel is particularly vulnerable to a nuclear attack because it is a small country (it is slightly smaller than New Jersey) and its population is concentrated in the center.

In a paper the Institute for Contemporary Affairs published in Jerusalem Thursday, professor Gerald Steinberg wrote, "There is no basis for accepting the Iranian claim that it is not seeking nuclear weapons or the assertion that a nuclear Iran is not dangerous."

Iran's leaders have repeatedly declared they aim to destroy Israel, he noted.

Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, publicly repeated that threat in October 2005. "A few weeks earlier, the streets of Teheran were filled by missiles on parade, decorated with posters declaring the intention to "wipe Israel off the map," Steinberg wrote.

The diplomatic option is still a serious one largely because Iran "seeks to be part of the international community and not (be) a rogue state or a member of the 'axis of evil,'" he wrote.

International pressure has increased as India, whom Teheran considered a supporter, backed the International Atomic Energy Agency's decision in September, which said Iran has not complied with its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Russia and China, who had traditionally been Iran's allies, suddenly ceased to support it, Steinberg noted.

"The Iranian leadership has taken some measures and engaged in negotiations that only make sense when seen as efforts to avoid sanctions. It is also dependent to a degree on foreign technology for its nuclear weapons and missile development programs," Steinberg wrote.

Technically Iran's nuclear program includes developing a nuclear fuel cycle, and it seeks an ability to produce highly enriched uranium that is primarily useful for producing bombs, Steinberg wrote.

"In the Iranian case we have clear and detailed evidence of nuclear weapons efforts, not speculation or extrapolation. IAEA inspectors have samples of enriched uranium and other materials," Steinberg stressed.

"It could take two years, five years, or even 10," until Iran is seen as a de facto nuclear weapons state. It has reportedly been facing technical difficulties.

Nevertheless, Chief of Military Intelligence, Maj. Gen. Aharon Zeevi-Farkash, Wednesday reportedly told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that Iran has already produced 45 tons of gas needed to make enriched uranium. The time for diplomatic efforts to bloc Iran's nuclear program is running out. In his address to the Cabinet Sunday, he reportedly spoke of few months before Iran makes a critical decision on how to move on with its research and development program.

© Copyright 2005 United Press International, Inc.

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ALSO SEE:

Israel missile test 'successful'
http://lnk.nu/news.bbc.co.uk/6nl.stm

Iran buys Russian surface to air missiles
http://lnk.nu/today.reuters.com/6ni.aspx

With time short on Iran nukes,
AIPAC criticizes Bush approach
http://lnk.nu/jta.org/6nk.asp

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"The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country." - J. Robert Oppenheimer

http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=8204

(Supporting Links at Source URL)

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December 3, 2005

Neo-Crazies Already Planning Beyond Iran

by Gordon Prather

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Maybe you thought that when President Bush declared war on terror it was just a euphemism.

Wrong!

By that declaration, Bush made himself commander in chief of our armed forces, which he is – under the Constitution – only "in time of war."

Once proclaimed, our commander in chief immediately called to active duty the National Guard and sent them off to Afghanistan and Iraq to fight in a real war.

There are other steps Bush could take to prevail in the War on Terror he has declared, and neo-crazy Frank Gaffney has just published a book suggesting 10 of them.

And a gaggle of fellow neo-crazies at the American Enterprise Institute has just published an obbligato – entitled "Launch Regional Initiatives" – based upon a couple of them.

"There are a host of measures that can and must immediately be undertaken, literally all over the world, that do not require the use of American armed forces. In fact, if we wish to avoid calling on the U.S. military for further missions, these actions will be essential – in the Mideast (and its periphery) and in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Russia, and Europe."

Take Iran, for example.

The AEI neo-crazies think it's surprising that, even after four years of our War on Terror, you soccer moms still don't realize that Iran has been at "war" with us for almost three decades. According to the neo-crazies (truncated bullet points from throughout the text):

* "Prior to the attacks of September 11, 2001, Iran was responsible for the deaths of more than fifteen hundred Americans–more than any other state sponsor of terror or terrorist organization in history."

* "According to press accounts, a report by the Israeli secret service estimates that Iran has 'invested more than $10 million to encourage terrorist activity against Israel.'"

* "Iran is the patron of Hezbollah, its radical Shi'a terrorist proxy that seeks to deny freedom to the people of Lebanon and threatens American and Israeli interests and assets."

* "Despite differences on some religious points, Iran also directly supports the despotic regime in Syria, as well as such Palestinian terrorist groups as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah. Iran is dedicated to helping Hamas emerge as the dominant power in the Palestinian areas as an ally with the shared goal of destroying Israel."

* "Iran directly supports most of the Shi'ite-based political movements in Iraq and their militias. Indeed, Iran largely created the revolt in Najaf fomented by the radical Shi'a cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. (Al-Sadr's troops were reportedly trained at camps inside Iran.)"

* "There are many indicators that Iran is actively supporting al-Qaeda's operations inside Iraq, led by the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The chief Iranian terrorist operative, Mugniyeh, has reportedly recommended coalescing the operational forces of al-Qaeda with other groups inside Iraq. The regime in Tehran is also providing safe haven to al-Qaeda members and leaders inside Iran."

* "Finally, there is the matter of Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles."

So what are we to do?

"The United States must wage total political war against the Islamofascists in Tehran, both inside Iran and from the outside. This war should be designed to keep the Iranian regime off balance (including, where necessary, through the use of covert means), with the ultimate goal of undermining its control. …

"Support resistance movements. An important part of such a proactive strategy must be an immediate commitment of significant financial resources to help prodemocracy groups in Iran. The Iran Freedom Support Act, introduced by U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum in February 2005, would authorize the president to spend $10 million to support the resistance. This is a good start – but something closer to $300 million will be needed. …

"We have for too long allowed Iran's nearly three-decade war against the United States to go unanswered. And, unless we deal with it effectively in the immediate future, we will be faced with a nuclear-armed terrorist regime that has shown no reluctance to attack American citizens and American interests throughout the world."

Of course, there are actions the AEI neo-crazies say we must take against countries other than Iran.

For example, they charge a "fascistic takeover" is under way in Turkey. Instead of being a democratic Muslim bulwark against Islamofascism, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is "systematically" turning his country into a state governed by a radical Islamic ideology hostile to Western values and freedoms.

What to do about Turkey?

Threaten to prevent their joining the European Union.

Otherwise, our commander in chief will have to call on the National Guard for further missions.

They don't call them "neo-crazies" for nuthin'.

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"Can we break the machine that is imposing right-wing radicalism on the United States? The scariest part is that the media is part of that machine." - Paul Krugman

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1202-23.htm

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Published on Friday, December 2, 2005
by the Boulder Daily Camera (Colorado)

Let God Speak for Himself

by Molly Ivins

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Austin, Texas -- The Lord Impersonator is back again. This fella reappears every couple of years and causes no end of trouble. The jokester goes around persuading feeble-minded persons he is the Lord Almighty and that they are to do or say some perfectly idiotic thing under his instructions.

One of the worst cases we've had in Texas was the time the Lord Impersonator convinced 20 people in Floydada to git nekkid, get into a GTO and drive to Vinton, La., where they ran into a tree. Seein' 20 nekkid people, including five children, come out of a GTO startled the Vinton cops. The nekkid citizens all said God told them to do it.

Quite a few people have been mishearing the Lord lately. The Rev. Pat Robertson thinks the Lord told the people of Dover, Pa., they shouldn't ask for His help anymore because they elected a school board Robertson doesn't like. And Rep. Richard Baker of Louisiana said right after Hurricane Katrina that "we finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did it."

I kind of doubt Katrina was designed by the Lord as a form of urban renewal. I think it's a big mistake for us to go around putting our own puny interpretations on stuff that happens and then claiming the Lord meant thus-and-such by it. It is my humble opinion that some folks should do a lot more listening to God and a lot less talking for Him.

In that category, I put a whole passel of politicians — including that God-fearing professional patriot Rep. "Duke" Cunningham, of San Diego. Cunningham resigned his office after pleading guilty to having accepted $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors. "Duke's" big cause in Congress was to get a constitutional amendment to ban flag-burning. Which do you think is more unpatriotic: burning a flag to indicate desperate dissent against American policy or getting elected to Congress and selling out for a Rolls-Royce and some antique commodes?

Rep. Tom DeLay, who is under indictment in Texas, is another fine parser of the Lord's intent. According to Mother Jones magazine, DeLay appeared at a prayer breakfast just after the tsunami that killed 240,000 people. "DeLay read a passage from Matthew about a nonbeliever: '... a fool who built his house on sand: the rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house, and it collapsed and was completely ruined.' Then, without comment, he righteously sat down."

Some Christians seem to me inclined to lose track of love, compassion and mercy. I don't think I have any special brief to go around judging them, but when the stink of hypocrisy becomes so foul in the nostrils it makes you start to puke it becomes necessary to point out there is one more good reason to observe the separation of church and state: If God keeps hanging out with politicians, it's gonna hurt his reputation.

I've always hoped that people like Tom DeLay and Duke Cunningham (and Reps. Bob Ney, Richard Pombo, Dana Rohrabacher, John Doolittle and William J. Jefferson, a Democrat; and Sens. Bill Frist and Conrad Burns) were really stonewall cynics at heart, secretly sneering at the rubes who buy into their holier-than-thou posturing. But I'm afraid they're not.

I'm afraid one actually has to allow for the denial and self-delusion that make it possible for people to be both self-righteous and sleazy at the same time. We are all capable of fooling ourselves in a grand variety of ways.

Another reason why religion and policy make such a bad mix is that religion brings the dread element of certitude into what needs to be a constant process of questioning. In the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh quotes a former Defense Department official who served in Bush's first term: "The president is more determined than ever to stay the course. He doesn't feel any pain. Bush is a believer in the adage, 'People may suffer and die, but the Church advances.'"

Look, certitude is the enemy of clear thinking. "Never be absolutely sure" is a useful motto, and sailing through our current policies in Iraq without a shadow of a doubt is both foolish and dangerous. I would be far more reassured if I thought the president were second-guessing every move we make than I am to find out he hasn't a shadow of a doubt. For one thing, it shuts him off from considering alternatives, and boy do we need some alternatives.

So here we sit, watching a great, stinking skein of corruption being fished to the surface of Washington, while the town is simultaneously filled with a great babble about God, prayer and morality. Corruption trails head off in all directions — lobbyists, wives, jobs, perverting intelligence, outing agents for petty revenge — all this and a prayer breakfast every day.

Molly Ivins is the former editor of the liberal monthly The Texas Observer. She is the bestselling author of several books including Who Let the Dogs In?

© 2005 The Daily Camera

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http://www.counterpunch.org/chestnut12022005.html

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December 2, 2005

Judge Roy Moore, Preachers and Dixie Hypocrisy

Alabama's Taliban

By J.L. CHESTNUT, Jr.

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Two "holier than thou" preachers, one back and one white, visited my office on different days last week but on the same mission. The men are riled up over words I wrote about Chief Justice Roy Moore running for Governor on a 5000-pound statute or monument promoting the Ten Commandments. The white preacher also was not pleased with some words I spoke about Condi Rice on this show. The two evangelical visitors are, to me, Alabamas equivalent of the intolerant Taliban in Afghanistan.

I said to both preachers that Californians are often No.1 in making fools of themselves but Moore seems to brook no competition in his making of Alabama appear the most backward state in the union. I also said Moore has a whole lot of help and mentioned an online Alabama news group that once put out a poster that read, "Increase Your Child's IQ by up to Eight Points" and followed that with a poster calling for public execution of school children who commit violent acts.

The white preacher wanted me to know that regardless of what I thought, said and tried to make fun of, Judge Moore will be the next governor of Alabama. I said that would not surprise me in the least. In fact, that would be par-for-the-course. I also said that state government in Alabama is located on a hill in Montgomery called "Goat Hill" and that is a perfect name and Moore is the latest justification for the name. The white preacher didn't seem to grasp that last point.

I explained that long before George "Schoolhouse Door" Wallace (and even before Jeff Davis and Nathan Bedford Forrest) politicians in Alabama made public Asses of themselves on "Goat Hill". They railed against niggers, high tariffs and Yankees and often in that order, while helping keep Alabama near last in every quality-of-life category. Believe it or not, the Alabama Legislature once passed a law making it a capital offense to put salt on a railroad track. That law was never repealed and remains the law in Alabama.

Before Moore burst on the state scene, Alabama Lt. Governor, Steve Windom, while actually presiding over a session of the state senate urinated in a water-cooler jug under the podium. He didn't want to relinquish the presiding officer's chair during a filibuster. The urine jug was later dubbed the "Confederate Battle Jug." During another session of the legislature, Gov. "Fumbling Fob" James cursed on the floor of the House -- while seeking support for, of all things, public school prayer. James also said, "No one has a greater appreciation for a classical education than I do," then defiantly rejected a major tenet of a classical education --evolution -- by defiantly adding, "I didn't descend from an ape."

James statement reminds me of an unlearned campaign promise by Lester "Ax Handle" Maddox of Georgia who said, "If elected [governor] I will disintegrate the schools." This ignorant and racist nut invented a word--disintegrate--on the spot! There are many "Goat Hills" in Dixie. I think it goes with segregation, racism and self-righteousness.

The black preacher wanted me to know that Moore and Wallace are not comparable, politically or any other way. The preacher is only half right. Moore and Wallace are both similar and different. Each man qualified as an ambitious, self-styled states rights Alabama politician who defied federal law and led misguided populist revolts, but the similarities probably end there. Wallace founded a political party (the American Independent Party) and wanted to be president but Moore appears to aim no higher than the governors office and would turn Alabama into a quasi-Christian theocracy to get there.

Moores antics are hardly new in Alabama. Some years ago, poor white residents in a trailer camp (at Priceville) and a few homeowners all in a rural section of Madison County tried to carve a new town out of the trailer camp and rename it Brooksville. The only law would be the Ten Commandments. There would be a volunteer mayor but no other town official. Every adult citizen would have a gun or a pistol and they would protect each other. Of course that unconstitutional theocratic and religious idea never got off the ground. How could it?

There is really no distinction between a failed attempt to transform a trailer camp into a theocracy and Moore's theocratic designs for the whole state of Alabama. Religious dogmatists have been trying for years to take over mainstream institutions and government. If you get a big belly laugh out of religious fundamentalists trying to transform an Alabama trailer camp into a theocratic religious township, please consider that such people control school boards, regularly defeat and elect politicians of all kinds, including George W. Bush who placates them with words about "being born again." Being seen as standing up for the Ten Commandments is as politically potent in Alabama as hollering "nigger, nigger, nigger"!

The white preacher who visited with me accused me of having made up out of "thin air" that Condi Rice's family opposed the 1960s civil rights demonstrations in Birmingham. He had no facts to refute my charge but the man just couldnâot believe that blacks as prominent as the Rice family would have opposed a black civil rights movement. I explained that upper class, educated blacks had the most to lose from opposing the white establishment and most of them regularly denounced the black marchers and protesters. I also suggested that the preacher read the book, Race, Class and Power in the Alabama Coalfields, 1908-1921, by Professor Brian Kelly of Belfast, Ireland.

This book reaches back to the turn of the century in Birmingham when black and white coal miners tried to gain better wages and working conditions in the face of stiff employer opposition and Klan violence. In chapter three, Professor Kelly discusses in great detail the role played by members of Birminghams extremely conservative black middle class and the lengths these people went to distance themselves from a struggling black working class. The Rice family comes from that conservative black upper class and members hadn't changed all that much in the 1960s or now.

I love preachers, but some of them seem to have so much trouble with me.

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J.L. Chestnut, Jr. is a civil rights attorney in Selma, Alabama. He is the founder of Chestnut, Sanders and Sanders which is the largest black law firm in Alabama. Born in Selma and, after graduating from Howard University Law School, he began practicing law in Selma in 1958. He started as the only black lawyer in the town and has been challenging the establishment since then. His law firm now owns two radio stations in Selma and Mr. Chestnut hosts a radio talk show three days a week touted as the most popular radio show in south and central Alabama. He is the author of "Black in Selma" with Julia Cass (1989 Farrar, Straus and Giroux), and writes a weekly column called the "Hard Cold Truth".