Australia bans incandescent bulbs

Australia will be the world’s first country to ban incandescent lightbulbs in a bid to curb Greenhouse gas emissions, with the government saying on Tuesday they would be phased out within three years. Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull said yellow incandescent bulbs, which have been in use virtually unchanged for 125 years, would be replaced by more efficient compact fluorescent bulbs by 2009.

Price of War

Heartbreaking photo, from a World Press Photo first prize winner.

Fox 9 "error" links Obama and sex offender

On Saturday night Fox 9 KMSP gave some unexpected publicity for Democratic Senator Barack Obama: in a story about a convicted sex offender. About three seconds of video footage of Obama supporters accompanied a story read by anchor Tim Blotz about the conviction of school district worker Richard Rucker, who received a 24 year sentence for molesting two students.

KMSP's news director, Bill Dallman, told Obarama.org that the station would run an apology during tonight's newscast:

As News Director of KMSP, I can assure you this was an unfortunate error. We sincerely apologize. On Friday we changed to a new video server playback system and we encountered a few problems, however that is not an excuse. We are running a correction in our newscasts tonight, and apologizing once again to anyone who viewed this story. I would also add that FOX 9 did an entire reporter package on the "Run Obama" rally here in the Twin Cities this weekend. Clearly this was positive coverage of the groundswell of support for the Senator. I know readers will view this with skepticism, but that's truly what happened, and again, we are sincerely apologetic.

Such skepticism may be viewed in light of last week's presidential address: while NBC, ABC, and CBS framed the speech with the declarative caption "Presidential Address on Iraq," Fox 9's on-screen language read more like a White House-approved tagline: "Iraq: Moving Forward."

Watch the clip :

Ellison to be sworn in on Jefferson's Quran

From Robin at Minnesota Monitor:

Rep.-elect Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, found himself under attack last month when he announced he'd take his oath of office on the Koran -- especially from Virginia Rep. Virgil Goode, who called it a threat to American values.

Yet the holy book at tomorrow's ceremony has an unassailably all-American provenance. We've learned that the new congressman -- in a savvy bit of political symbolism -- will hold the personal copy once owned by Thomas Jefferson.

The Job-like Job of Mary Kiffmeyer

Hearing her tell it, Mary Kiffmeyer's eight years as Minnesota Secretary of State sounds a bit like the biblical story of Job. Hounded by "unrelenting attacks" by Democrats, linked by association to the questionable tactics of fellow Republican Secretaries of State in Florida and Ohio, and challenged with technological concerns like Y2K compliance, she oversaw a tenure she characterizes as “arguably the most successful in our state’s history."

Kiffmeyer's critics, of course, disagree, saying that she brought criticism upon herself, unlike the biblical struggler Job. Their litany of complaints include: her attempts to throw up voting barriers for native Americans, students, and the elderly; that infamous email in which she warned polling officials to keep watch for potential "homicide bombers" whose telltale identifiers included a "shaved heads (for purification purposes)"; and public endorsement as a "nonpartisan" officeholder of controversial proposals like a same-sex marriage ban. Two years ago, Hennepin County Commissioner Mike Opat famously said, "In less than six years, she has distinguished herself as probably the least competent person to hold this important office in Minnesota history."

Given such complaints, it's no surprise she'll be enlisting Capitol Security to do a walk-through of her office to “protect my record and my reputation” against “any potential false claim” before leaving today. Or, less convincingly, that she made the unprecedented move of asking partisan blogger (and Mark Kennedy payrollee) Michael Brodkorb, of Minnesota Democrats Exposed, to be her witness to the transition.

Nor should it be surprising that she asked her communications officer to monitor our late November interview in her St. Paul office. Our discussion ranged from her work putting the Secretary's office online to the way people of faith, like herself, are caricatured as "boogiemen" in our culture, and how the phrase attributed to her--that "separation of church and state" are "the most destructive" words today--was really a journalist's unethical fabrication.

As a bookend to my recent interview with Mark Ritchie, here's what she had to say. For clarity and brevity, this interview has been edited. Given Secretary Kiffmeyer's past accusations of journalistic impropriety, the full, unedited transcript of our interview, which was recorded, will be made available here soon.

Paul Schmelzer: Let’s start with the softball question: what was your greatest success?

Mary Kiffmeyer: I think the voter turnout during my time. We were tops in the country all four major elections. That was not the case; we were beginning to drift down—second and third… I think the other thing is the technology. When I took office, it was COBOL language mainframe. When I took office, it was antiquated, it was not Y2K compliant, and we were the only state agency that was in the critical red zone on Y2K compliance... COBOL language mainframe is the riskiest for Y2K. So I was really glad I came in with a technology background and had to convince governor Ventura, a new Republican-controlled majority, and the DFLers--I had three major parties to convince that I needed almost a million dollars to get the work done in 11 months….

PS: On to November 7: were you surprised by the results?

MK: Yes and no. You have to realize that I kind of saw when my opponent was endorsed by three national organizations, raising money for him and raising money in general---and I think they had raised specific money for each of the five states they had targeted for those candidates, and they were universally all Democrats... So I was targeted by three national 527s. One of them was the Secretary of State Project.

So, I think: yes and no. I think other people are more surprised. And then there was the extremely negative campaign that was based in a large part on fear, because obviously we have paper ballots. Obviously we have optical scan. We don’t have any of those electronic things, so fear-mongering [was] going on in regards to stirring people up as if there was a question or tying into Ohio or into Florida. We don’t have any chads. We don’t have any punchcards. We don’t have any of those kinds of things that were issues in those two states, but nonetheless linking it was an unfair characterization.

PS: And that was the 527s that did that?

MK: And my opponent as well. When we had the debates, he’d bring them up over and over and over again... And when you pour the amount of TV that was poured in against me in a negative way in the last four or five days, plus target mail of the same thing and then radio—hundreds of thousands of dollars were poured in in a negative way against me. And their aim was to get at the undecideds…

The other thing was, the word went out that it was to be a straight party-line vote for the Democrats. None of this liking somebody and then voting for them. I had lots and lots of Democrats who did vote for me and were going to vote for me, because they really liked what I’d done. I think it’s easy for people to forget what it was like before I came to office, because after eight years, [people felt] “Oh, hasn’t it always been this way?” No. No it hasn’t. I remember all the Ventura people wanting election information, election records, and election stuff, and it didn’t exist. There wasn’t a website to put it up on. There was none of that stuff.

PS: Recently you said Joan Growe left you “absolutely nothing” when you transitioned into the job. Is this the kind of stuff you’re talking about?

MK: Oh no. You see this office as it is right now? There used to be beautiful historical piece of furniture here, that was here in the office for a long time: that was gone. There was this desk. And there were two chairs—those two chairs—they were horribly soiled, and it took me two years, to save up enough money and get them recovered... I would say let’s get that thing recovered. And the ends were all down to bare wood. Not being a good steward of that. So those two chairs and this desk... Otherwise there was nothing else.

PS: It sounds like you also didn’t get the moral support you wanted. You felt like they were uncooperative when you transitioned?

MK: Joan Growe gave me one hour. She sat at this side of the desk. She had one piece of paper in front of her. I sat over there with somebody else. Although we made numerous requests for organizational charts and that kind of stuff, we weren’t given anything. …She had one piece of paper in front of her, and I asked her for it when I left, and she wouldn’t give it to me…

PS: You recently said you’d involve the Capitol Security in overseeing Mark Ritchie’s transition. Are you expecting there to be complaints against you by the Secretary-elect?

MK: He complained all about me... In his acceptance speech, and even in things after that, he continues to take pokes. You know, you don’t need to do that anymore. It’s called graciousness. I appreciate the fact—I think that word was even used in regards to the transition article that was written. It’s because of how I do things and who I am.

PS: What about regrets? The National Day of Prayer thing, where you said probably the five most destructive words in America today are separation of church and state—

MK: Are you quoting from something written down there?

PS: I’m summarizing. But I can’t find the original passage uninterrupted—

MK: That’s because it never was.

PS: What’d you actually say?

MK: That was a cobbled together. When you think of journalism and writing, whenever you see something together with separate little quotes, it tells you right away: is that what I really said? What [the journalist] did was he took these five words and these words and these words and put them together to say something I didn’t say. What I routinely do when I talk to people is say, "The five words are not in the Constitution." ...What’s destructive is when you tell people they’re there and they’re not. And you tell them they’re there and they’re not with an intention to keep them away from being involved. That’s destructive. To say those five words aren’t in the Constitution with an intention to use that falsehood to say, “No, no, no, you guys can’t. You faith people--you have a faith, unless you’re something other than Christian--you people, because there’s a separation of Church and State, you have to stay out.” That’s destructive because, I feel anytime you try to keep anyone out from being involved in their government, but to misquote or to lie about what’s in the Constitution?

PS: Do you think the framers of the constitution intended for there to be that sort of firewall between the influence of religion on public policy?

MK: The quote from Thomas Jefferson, the firewall that was created was from the government intruding on religion. That was a quote taken out of his letter to the Baptist Society that said, don’t worry, the government won’t intrude on your religion, because there’s this wall of separation. It was a separation and a wall to keep the government from messing with religion. Obviously, how do you keep people of faith from never having an opinion from government? What segment of society are you going to say shouldn’t? Because I would say, other than the atheists—which, by the way, that’s a religious group, too—

PS: It is?

MK: Atheism is a belief that there is no god. So really, between atheists and Christians and all these others… how many people are left then to have an influence on government if it’s to go the other way? So the wall of separation was intended to say, “you can have freedom to flourish in your religion, OK, and the government won’t mess with your religion.”

You have the freedom. But there’s no such thing as an unlimited freedom. In other words you can’t cry "Fire!" in a theater. That’s the most common example... Slander is another one; there’s laws against free speech so you can’t slander. Except, by the way, for politicians. You can slander politicians with impunity. So you can slander us.

I think that the biggest thing for me was [...] about the 501c3 [the legal code that gives churches and nonprofit organizations tax-exempt status]. The ability to not be taxed is what gives you more restrictions on what you can do in your church, but you chose it because you applied for a 501c3. So, if you’re not a 501c3, and you pay your taxes, you revert back to only being under the constitution, which doesn’t take away your—you can endorse, you can do all kinds of things. The only thing that restricts you is the 501c3. That’s the kind of conversation which is based on giving the truth to people who’ve been lied to. So when they’ve been lied to, told this is in the constitution and it isn’t, and lied to in giving a sense that this is why, when in fact it’s the 501c3 that restrains you more than the constitution doesn’t at all.

PS: You’re a person of faith, and it hasn’t prevented you from having this job for eight years. Do you feel like your faith is evident? Would anyone coming in seeing you do your job notice that your faith is what guided you in it?

MK: I would say, not from the sense of the typical thing. Which is: you notice when you walk in, this is the way my office always is. Because I believe it’s an official office. Now inside my little personal bathroom right there, I can hang all the scripture versus I want?

PS (In jest): And are there a lot in there? It’s wallpapered? (Laughing)

MK: There isn’t anything in there. I’ll show it to you. Hey listen: the Star Tribune went into my basement in my first few months after I was elected. They did a story. You could tell, I could see they were kind of looking. It was insulting in a way. "I give you the courtesy of having you to my home, at least you could do the courtesy of not"—but I thought, for sure they’ve heard of these things… I took them down to the basement and showed them everything there as well.

People of faith and people not of faith have said, "How is your faith impacted here? How do you do that?" Often they have this garish notion. I think they really have this boogieman—whatever--type thing. And there’s always those out there, of course, but that’s not where 99.9% usually are. But anyways, in regards to: I said, with God, there is no respect of persons; whether you be male or female, Greek or Jew, slave or free, all are equal in God’s eyes. Many, many years ago, as I was reading those scripture verses--and I am a literalist. Francis Shaker wrote a book, How Then Shall we Live. How then shall we live? For me, if God is no respect of persons, I’m not either. So when you come to the counter [at the Secretary of State's office], no matter who asks an election question, they all get the same answer. They may not like it, but they will all get the same answer.… I spoke recently about what Martin Luther King means to me, and the one thing delightful in the African American community: you can quote scripture verses all you want and [there's] absolutely no [problem]. They’re like, “Amen, sister,” and they’re like right with you. But as I share that, that is why God is no respect or person… There was a gal who came up and her first words to me were, “I’m a Democrat.” And she started crying, and said, “After hearing you talk, I can sense that the honor and integrity that is in your heart, and sharing that is so strong within you.” And she started crying and saying, “I feel so much better.” I almost started crying because I was feeling so bad for her.

PS [Joking]: Because she’s a Democrat, right?

MK: No. That she would feel so terrorized that way. What are people saying out there? What are people doing? For political purposes they are terrorizing these people and fearing them to death. That isn’t the reality. I think there’s political gain to create this fear situation for people. And the hard thing is a lot of people out there maybe don’t have recourse. As the opportunity that I had to talk with her and share with her… it radically changed her perceptions.

PS: Who’s terrorizing her? It sounds like perhaps you’re mischaracterizing the religious left though. My experience as a liberal Catholic is not that anyone is saying you can’t believe what you believe---

MK: Did I say anything about the religious left? I don’t see the correlation there.

PS: You were saying she didn’t feel free enough to express herself on her side?

MK: Who? I don’t recall saying that.

PS: Ok, maybe I misunderstood. Why did you feel bad for her? Because someone was politicizing—

MK: It had nothing to do with faith. What it had to do with the integrity of the electoral system.

PS: Uh, ok. As I’m running out of time here, I’m wondering if you could talk about the future and tell me if you’ll run for Mark Olson’s seat should he resign.

MK: I don’t know. It’s not an open seat right now.

PS: So you can’t say if you have an inkling or want to serve your district that way?

MK: You know, I’m one of those people that I love whatever I do, and I usually respond to a need. Is there a need? And when there’s a need, I love doing it. My mother, when I grew up, there was a lot of work. And I remember my mom saying, “You’ve got to learn to enjoy your work, because there’s more work in life than fun, and if you don’t learn to enjoy your work you’re going to be a miserable person.”

PS: I know everyone who interviews you probably mentions the same stories: the terror alert posters, the “five words,” maybe the lawsuit about tribal ID cards. But I don’t need to go into all that stuff. Suffice it to say, you’ve been kind of a lightning rod for criticism and dislike from a certain sector. Why do you think that is?

MK: Know what my mother said? "Consider the source."

PS: Who’s the source?

MK: Generally, the Democrats. Mary Lahammer [of Twin Cities Public Television] in March of 1999 said, “And once again, since the day she’s been elected, the Secretary of State has been attacked by the Democrats.” Three months after I got elected it was, “And, once again….” It’s been going on since the day I got elected. Just unrelenting attacks and just going after me all the time.

PS: So it’s definitely on their part and not about how you’ve administered the office?

MK: Well, take a look at it sometimes. Look at the quotes and clips. The other thing that was amazing to me is, when I traveled in 1998, I visited with all 87 county auditors...They complained about the computer system... I gave them this special toll-free number, and I did stuff and went to things and found that it is ever-unending. I can’t seem to get ahead… You meet this and it’s more. You meet this, and it’s more. It’s unending.

Raw transcript: Mary Kiffmeyer

Verbatim transcript, from digital recording, of a November 2006 interview with Minnesota's outgoing Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer. See corresponding story here and here.

PS: Let’s start with the softball question: what was your greatest success?

MK: I think the voter turnout during my time. We were tops in the country all four major elections. That was not the case; we were beginning to drift down—second and third… I think the other thing is the technology. When I took office, it was COBOL language mainframe. When I took office, it was antiquated. When I took office, it was not Y2K compliant. And we were the only state agency that was in the critical red zone on Y2K compliance and had the most riskiest--COBOL language mainframe is the riskiest for Y2K. So I was really glad I came in with a technology background and had to convince governor Ventura, a new Republican-controlled majority, and the DFLers--I had three major parties to convince that I needed almost a million dollars to get the work done in 11 months. When you think of it, convincing three major parties that a brand-new Secretary of State needs almost a million dollars to make the office Y2K compliant, that’s huge…. These were things that, through an awful lot of hard work, including the first year, digging ourselves out of a hole because of the Y2K—

PS: You inherited a hole? How did that relate to Y2K?

MK: Well, I had to go get a million dollars just to do Y2K, which should’ve been done before I came, or well on its way or certainly taken care of. The fact that it wasn’t meant I had to fill that hole—and take care of that, thank you very much, in the first year—to have to do that.

PS: On to November 7: were you surprised by the results?

MK: Yes and no. You have to realize that I kind of saw when my opponent was endorsed by three national organizations, raising money for him and raising money in general---and I think they had raised specific money for each of the five states they had targeted for those candidates, and they were universally all Democrats. They were all Democrats, they were raising money for them nationally, targeted nationally. So I was targeted by three national 527s.

PS: And which were they?

MK: One of them was the Secretary of State Project. I don’t remember the other two… So, I think: yes and no. I think other people are more surprised. And then when I was the extremely negative campaign that was based in a large part on fear, because obviously we have paper ballots, obviously we have optical scan. We don’t have any of those electronic things, so kind of a fear-mongering going on in regards to stirring people up as if there was a question or tying into Ohio or into Florida. We don’t have any chads, we don’t have any punchcards, we don’t have any of those kinds of things that were issues in those two states, but nonetheless linking it was an unfair characterization.

PS: And that was the 527s that did that?

MK: And my opponent as well. When we had the debates, he’d bring them up over and over and over again. So they were well repeated by him, and then they just took off on the same message. And so, when you pour the amount of TV that was poured in against me in a negative way in the last four or five days, plus target mail of the same thing and then radio—in the last week or so, hundreds of hundreds of thousands of dollars were poured in in a negative way against me. And their aim was to get at the undecideds… And the other thing was, the word went out that it was to be a straight party-line vote for the Democrats, none of this liking somebody and then voting for them. I had lots and lots of Democrats who did vote for me and were going to vote for me, because they really liked what I’d done. I think it’s easy for people to forget what it was like before I came to office, because after eight years, that feeling of “Oh, hasn’t it always been this way?” No. No it wasn’t. I remember all the Ventura people wanting election information, election records, and election stuff, and it didn’t exist. There wasn’t a website to put it up on. There was none of that stuff.

PS: Recently you said Joan Growe left you “absolutely nothing” when you transitioned into the job. Is this the kind of stuff you’re talking about?

MK: Oh no. You see this office as it is right now? There used to be beautiful historical piece of furniture here, that was here in the office for a long time: that was gone. There was this desk. And there were two chairs—those two chairs—they were horribly soiled, and it took me two years, I saved up enough money and got them recovered. After all it’s the Secretary of States office, I wouldn’t have one of my employees---I would say let’s get that thing recovered. And the ends were all down to bare wood. Not being a good steward of that. So those two chairs and this desk. This desk had been, it’s a historic piece of furniture. Somewhere along the line, they had added some sort of file cabinet that wasn’t part of the original. So I had the Historical Society come over, and they analyzed this piece of furniture and gave me recommendations. They refinished it and refurbished and cleaned it and took care of a lot of things. Otherwise there was nothing else.

PS: It sounds like you also didn’t get the moral support you wanted. You felt like they were uncooperative when you transitioned?

MK: Joan Growe gave me one hour. She sat at this side of the desk. She had one piece of paper in front of her. I sat over there with somebody else. She gave me one hour of her time. Although we made numerous requests for organizational charts and that kind of stuff, we weren’t given anything. She had one piece of paper in front of her, and I asked her for it when I left, and she wouldn’t give it to me.

But when I took office I had no letterhead. When I took office I had to use Joan Growe’s stationery. I feel that is wrong because I think when you’re sworn into office, that day is the day you take it through. I’m seeing to it that all the stamps and all the seals and all the letterhead, that do the official business, that my whole office will be ready, Tuesday afternoon, to put the new name and all the letterhead will already be just carried over—quantity to be carried over—and then after that they can do what they want.

PS: You recently told the press you’d involve the Capitol Security in overseeing Mark Ritchie’s transition. Are you expecting there to be complaints against you by the Secretary Elect?

MK: He complained all about me. I ran the same kind of tight ship all along, but during the campaign he’d say things over and over again, but you don’t change because, well, now here you are. In his acceptance speech, and even in things after that, he continues to take pokes. You know, you don’t need to do that anymore. It’s called graciousness. I appreciate the fact—I think that word was even used in regards to the transition article that was written. It’s because of how I do things and who I am.

PS: What about regrets? The National Day of Prayer thing, where you said probably the five most destructive words in America today are separation of church and state—

MK: Are you quoting from something written down there?

PS: I’m summarizing what I have written down that I noted from somewhere else. But I can’t find the original passage uninterrupted—

MK: That’s because it never was.

PS: What’d you actually say?

MK: That was a cobbled together--- That is the most—When you think of journalism and writing, whenever you see something together with separate little quotes, it tells you right away: is that what I really said? What he did was he took these five words and these words and these words and put them together to say something I didn’t say. What I routinely do when I talk to people is say, the five words are not in the Constitution. When I read the article, the language that is actually there. So people just know the truth. What’s destructive is when you tell people they’re there and they’re not. And you tell them they’re there and they’re not with an intention to keep them away from being involved. That’s destructive. To say those five words aren’t in the Constitution with an intention to use that falsehood to say, “No, no, no, you guys can’t. You faith people--you have a faith, unless you’re something other than Christian--you people, because there’s a separation of Church and State, you have to stay out.” That’s destructive because, I feel anytime you try to keep anyone out from being involved in their government, but to misquote or to lie about what’s in the Constitution? That is usually how, when giving I’m giving a talk—so, there is no such thing, at all.

PS: Do you think the framers of the constitution intended for there to be that sort of firewall between the influence of religion on public policy?

MK: The quote from Thomas Jefferson, the firewall that was created was from the government intruding on religion. That is the quote from Thomas Jefferson, about that separation of church and state, that wall of separation, was a quote taken out of his letter to the Baptist Society that said, don’t worry, the government won’t intrude on your religion, because there’s this wall of separation. It was a separation and a wall to keep the government from messing with religion. Obviously, how do you keep people of faith from never having an opinion from government? What segment of society are you going to say shouldn’t? Because I would say, other than the atheists—which, by the way, that’s a religious group, too—

PS: It is?

MK: Atheism is a belief that there is no god. So really, between atheists and Christians and all these others… how many people are left then to have an influence on government if it’s to go the other way? So the wall of separation was intended to say, “you can have freedom to flourish in your religion, OK, and the government won’t mess with your religion.” You have the freedom. But there’s no such thing as an unlimited freedom. In other words you can’t cry fire in a theater. That’s the most common example; in other words, to holler fire when there is no fire, and you do things like that, you can—slander is another one, when there’s laws against free speech so you can’t slander. Except, by the way, for politicians. You can slander politicians with impunity… So you can slander us… I think that the biggest thing for me was, when I talk about those things, I talk about them more, and then I talk about the 501c3 and you take the ability to not be taxed is what gives you more restrictions on what you can do in your church, but you chose it because you applied for a 501c3. So, if you’re not a 501c3, and you pay your taxes, you revert back to only being under the constitution, which doesn’t take away your—you can endorse, you can do all kinds of things. The only thing that restricts you is the 501c3. That’s the kind of conversation which is based on giving the truth to people who’ve been lied to. So when they’ve been lied to, told this is in the constitution and it isn’t, and lied to in giving a sense that this is why, when in fact it’s the 501c3 that restrains you more than the constitution doesn’t at all.

PS: You’re a person of faith, and it hasn’t prevented you from having this job for eight years. Do you feel like your faith is evident? Would anyone coming in seeing you do your job notice that your faith is what guided you in it?

MK: I would say, not from the sense of the typical thing. Which is: you notice when you walk in, this is the way my office always is. Because I believe it’s an official office. Now inside my little personal bathroom right there, I can hang all the scripture versus I want?

PS: And are there a lot in there? It’s wallpapered? (Laughing)

MIK: There isn’t anything in there. I’ll show it to you. Hey listen: the Star Tribune went into my basement in my first few months after I was elected, they did a story. You could tell, I could see they were kind of looking. It was insulting in a way. I give you the courtesy of having you to my home, at least you could do the courtesy of not—but I thought, for sure they’ve heard of these things… I took them down to the basement and showed them everything there as well.

People of faith and people not of faith have said, How is your faith impacted here? How do you do that? Often they have this garish notion. I think they really have this boogieman—whatever--type thing. And there’s always those out there, of course, but that’s not where 99.9% usually are. But anyways, in regards to: I said, God is no respect of persons, whether you be male or female, Greek or Jew, slave or free, all are equal in God’s eyes. Many, many years ago, as I was reading those scripture verses---and I am a literalist, so when I read something like that, in my own personal—before I was Secretary of State—studying this, saying---Francis Shaker wrote a book, How Then Shall we Live. How then shall we live? So for me, if God is no respect or persons, I’m not either. So when you come to the counter, no matter who asks an election question, they all get the same answer. They may not like it, but they will all get the same answer. The problem is, some don’t like it. And the problem is, when you don’t like the law, it’s not the fault of the person who upheld the law, because that’s my oath of office… When I spoke about what Martin Luther King means to me, and the one thing delightful in the African American community, you can quote scripture verses all you want and absolutely no—They’re like, “Amen, sister,” and they’re like right with you. But as I share that, that is why God is no respect or person… There was a gal who came up and her first words to me were, “I’m a democrat.” And she started crying, and said, “After hearing you talk, I can sense that the honor and integrity that is in your heart, and sharing that is so strong within you.” And she started crying and saying, “I feel so much better.” I almost started crying because I was feeling so bad for her.

PS [Joking]: Because she’s a Democrat, right?

MK: No. That she would feel so terrorized that way. What are people saying out there? What are people doing? For political purposes they are terrorizing these people and fearing them to death. That isn’t the reality. I think there’s political gain to create this fear situation for people. And the hard thing is a lot of people out there maybe don’t have recourse. As the opportunity that I had to talk with her and share with her… it radically changed her perceptions.

PS: Who’s terrorizing her? It sounds like perhaps you’re mischaracterizing the religious left though. My experience as a liberal Catholic is not that anyone is saying you can’t believe what you believe---

MK: Did I say anything about the religious left? I don’t see the correlation there.

PS: You were saying she didn’t feel free enough to express herself on her side?

MK: Who? I don’t recall saying that.

PS: Ok, maybe I misunderstood. Why did you feel bad for her? Because someone was politicizing—

MK: It had nothing to do with faith. What it had to do with the integrity of the electoral system.

PS: Uh, ok. As I’m running out of time here. I’m wondering if you could talk about the future and tell me if you’ll run for Mark Olson’s seat should he resign.

MK: I don’t know. It’s not an open seat right now.

PS: So you can’t say if you have an inkling or want to serve your district that way?

MK: You know, I’m one of those people that I love whatever I do, and I usually respond to a need. Is there a need? And when there’s a need, I love doing it. My mother, when I grew up, there was a lot of work. And I remember my mom saying, “You’ve got to learn to enjoy your work, because there’s more work in life than fun, and if you don’t learn to enjoy your work you’re going to be a miserable person.”[brief section not transcribed]

PS: I know everyone who comes in and interviews you probably mentions the same stories: the terror alert posters, the “five words,” maybe the lawsuit about tribal ID cards. But I don’t need to go into all that stuff. Suffice it to say, you’ve been kind of a lightning rod for criticism and dislike from a certain sector. Why do you think that is?

MK: Know what my mother said? Consider the source.

PS: Who’s the source?

MK: Generally the Democrats. Mary Lahamer in March of 1999 said, “And once again, since the day she’s been elected the secretary of state has been attacked by the Democrats.” Three months after I got elected it was, “And, once again….” It’s been going on since the day I got elected. Just unrelenting attacks and just going after me all the time.

PS: So it’s definitely on their part and not about how you’ve administered the office?

MK: Well take a look at it sometimes, if you look at the quotes and clips. The other thing that was amazing to me is, when I traveled in 1998, I visited with all 87 county auditors, personally with 86 of them (one of them, I got to office at 4:30 and the office was closed, but I was there! And I couldn’t get back to it because it was a far-flung county, but I called them up and had an individual chat with them. And they complained about the computer system. Kind of this thing, like: I came in with such---I gave them this special toll-free number and I did stuff and went to things and found that it is ever-unending. I can’t seem to get ahead of… You meet this and it’s more. You meet this, and it’s more. It’s unending.

Found

Toronto street art. "Bush = Hitler" is (still) a stretch, but...

NRA comic book...

While the NRA calls the comic book (below) a hoax, Raw Story says it's not. Meanwhile, Boingboing and the Raw Story offer the full deal as a pdf.

Sounds of the Season:

"No one is trying to raise a family on minimum wage, and if they are, they have no business having a family."

Dave Thompson of KSTP 1500
December 24, 2006
Via Minnesota Monitor.

The Decider.

Big changes in Iraq? (Via SpeakUp.)

Hope?

While NPR headlined a story today "No End in Sight to Darfur Conflict," the BBC quotes Kofi Annan, who's optimistic that the country will allow UN peacekeepers into Darfur after reading reports that "encourage me to think we may tomorrow (Saturday) receive a green light from [Sudan's] President Bashir." And, this paper says Khartoum already OK'd a "hybrid" peacekeeping force that'll replace the 7,000 African Union troops who've been patrolling the region.

Watch it: Via Coudal, here's the trailer for the Sundance Audience Award-winning documentary God Grew Tired of Us (image above), a true story of some of Sudan's "lost boys" who walked a thousand miles to escape the civil war and Khartoum's bombings raids during the country's civil war and ended up in the U.S.

Despite "despair," groups plan Darfur action for 2007

The situation in Darfur is grim.

Former U.S. Senator Rudy Boschwitz (MN) laments that just 7,000 African Union troops are confronting the monumental task of averting genocide in a region of Sudan "about the size of Iraq... or Texas." Meeting with the Minnestoa Interfaith Darfur Coalition last week, the current UN Human Rights ambassador said, "We despair at what can be done."

Politicians across the political spectrum--from Sen. Sam Brownback to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and even George W. Bush--have called the systematic killing, rapes, and destruction in Darfur "genocide," a crime under international law that United Nations members have sworn to prevent.

So why, almost four years into the current conflict and 400,000 deaths later, are attacks backed by Sudan's government continuing in Darfur? And what can be done to stop them?

A deeper understanding of Darfur's precarious postion shows a complicated confluence of interests and histories--and underscores how elusive hope for stability in the near future is. But as members of the interfaith committee meeting weekly at Minneapolis' Temple Israel or activists at global organizations like the Genocide Intervention Network are finding, there are firm steps that can be taken in 2007. Whether they, if enacted, will make a difference is another matter.

Darfur 101

Darfur, a region on the westernmost edge of the north African country of Sudan, is wedged between conflicting factions--racial, religious, economic. The government, based in the north central city of Khartoum, is controlled by Arabs, who comprise around 40 percent of the population. Southern Sudan, home to most of the country's oil fields, is 60 percent African. Ever since Sudan gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1956, the south has sought greater autonomy and control of its resources and has mounted nearly continuous rebellions against the wealthy Khartoum government of the north.

A civil war, ended through pressure by the U.S. and U.N. in 2005, raged for 25 years over allocation of these oil resources, not to mention the tensions arising from nomadic north Sudanese whose camel-grazing needs bumped up against the established farms of the southern part of the country. Further, northern Sudanese are largely Muslim, while southern residents are predominantly Christians and animists.

To complicate matters further, says Dr. Ellen Kennedy, a sociologist and founder of the University of St. Thomas' chapter of the Genocide Intervention Network, an anticipated secession by the south in 2011 puts the Khartoum government on edge. “The north is trying to get as much money out of those oil wells when the getting-out of those oil wells is good,” she said.

As part of this bid for autonomy, rebel forces have launched attacks on government entities, and Khartoum forcibly rebuked them using government-backed militias called the Janjaweed (while its etymology is disputed, the word likely derives from the Persian term for "warrior": jangawee). Made up of nomadic camel-herders from the north, these militias, in helicopters and on horseback, have burned villages to the ground, raped women, and terrorized Darfur.
According to survivors' testimony, says Kennedy, "the Janjaweed are actually saying to the people as they are killing them or as they are raping the women over and over again: ‘You are African, you are African, and we are killing all the Africans.’ Ethnic cleansing is involved as well. There’s a lot of raping of the women. In this culture, to rape a woman is to stigmatize her for life: she will never get married, she will be an outcast from the community, and, of course, the child that she bears, then, will no longer be viewed as being an African child. This child, too, will be socially cast out from the community.”

And this is where genocide comes in. The term is defined by the U.N. as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group."

Outside influences

While a comprehensive peace agreement, signed in 2005 but not yet fully implemented, came about through the dogged efforts of the U.S. and European Union, the most dominant influences in Sudan are not American: China and many Arab states are there for the oil; Russia is doing a booming arms business.

Earlier this month, The Economist reported on Africa's largest commercial construction site, a 1500-acre, $4 billion development in Alsunut, being built as a campus for Sudan's oil interests, which are predominantly Chinese and Middle Eastern. The first structure going up is a dazzling sail-shaped building that will house the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company headquarters. China's insatiable economy requires more oil to grow it, and it takes advantage of weak infrastructures and less-than-ethical governments across Africa (see the New York Times recent coverage of China's development "adventure" in Angola) to secure this important resource. As a result, Sudan is prospering because of this demand: this year, the International Monetary Fund expects the country's Gross Domestic Product to grow by 13 percent. And the north is the largest beneficiary of this growth.

"Russia has all these weapons for sale since the end of the cold war," says Kennedy, and Sudan is a willing buyer. In 2004, Russia announced it was selling 12 MiG-29 Fulcrum fighter jets to Sudan, as well as Kalishnikov assault rifles and Antonov transport aircrafts. China, like Iran, have been selling arms to Khartoum as well. Amnesty International reports that since the 1990s China's sales to Sudan have included more than 40 Shenyang J-6 and J-7 jet fighters, F-7 supersonic fighters, a Russian MiG-21 Fishbed, 50 Z-6 helicopters; additionally Chinese companies have been contracted to repair Mi-8 helicopters for Sudan.

Witnesses to a raid in the northern Darfur village of Kornoy named these very crafts when they described what they saw:

Two Antonov airplanes, five helicopters and two MIGs attacked our village at around 6am. Five tanks came into town. The attack lasted until 7pm. The inhabitants fled from their homes but our brother-in-law was killed when running away. Eighteen men and two children from our family were killed when fleeing.

Given the extent of these sales, no wonder Russia, which has veto power as holder of one of five permanent seats on the U.N. Security Council (another is China), isn't prone to intervening in Darfur.

Finally, the United States' own relationship with Sudan makes intervention unlikely. Kennedy explains:

We need Sudanese help, presumably, in the "war on terror." For a number of years, the Sudanese government had been harboring Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. To alieniate the Sudanese government gets rid of sources of information for us regarding the "war on terror."

Complications of Intervention

So where are the most promising prospects for improving the situation for Darfur's civilians? There aren't many, according to Dr. Stephen Feinstein, director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Because there's little political will to intervene militarily in Darfur and that the U.N. has no military force of its own, he says there's "no possiblity of intervention":

Stopping genocide only becomes possible when it is in the national interest of the country identifying an event as genocide and having the will to intervene. Since the U.S. has a volunteer army that is overextended in Iraq, I don't see any way for the U.S to get involved--hence, one must suggest that a lot of people have been snookered into the belief that something can happen.

That said, he says getting medical and food aid to refugees is key, although it's difficult since "refugees are constantly on the move" and the conflict has become so unstable the U.N.'s World Food Program recently pulled its people from Darfur.

The Minnesota Interfaith Darfur Coalition invited Sen. Boschwitz, the U.S. ambassador to the UN's Human Rights committee, to brainstorm ways American legislators can be persuaded to help in Darfur. Some of the committee's suggestions were problematic. The U.N. can't send in peacekeeping forces without Sudan's permission, and Khartoum says it won't comply. Thanks to Iraq, the U.S. has little appetite for foreign incursions, and even if they did, American troops on the ground would be perceived by Sudan and the Arab world as colonialist aggression. An investigation into war-crimes prosecution against Sudan's chief perpetrators of genocide launched by the International Criminal Court won't likely get any U.S. support, says Boschwitz, since "we're afraid our people will be hauled in front of it" for alleged crimes committed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

One area of promise might be enforcing a no-fly zone over Sudan, a tactic supported by George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The tactic was used in northern Iraq to protect the Kurds, Boschwitz recalled, and since the Janjaweed "inflict considerable damage using helicopters," it could prevent considerable bloodshed. The problem: the U.S. has no airbases in the area.

When pressed by the Darfur coalition, Boschwitz agreed that allies like France and the U.K. might agree to allow U.S. planes to refuel at their bases in Africa. While expressing little fondness for the French--"They're recalcitrant and difficult, but they're still a civilized nation"--Boschwitz conceded, "They may be our best option."

Other than that, a glimmer of hope rests in whether legislators, like newly elected Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Rep. Keith Ellison, along with longtime Darfur advocate Sen. Norm Coleman, could be convinced to create a Darfur caucus that could raise awareness in Congress about the genocide and encourage economic pressure on Sudan. Says Boschwitz, "Pressure does work. The Sudanese will need us for one thing or another at some point."

The other pressure point is China. While it is currently illegal for American companies to invest in Sudanese businesses, a movement is underway to expand divestment to firms investing in China. But given China's increasing dependence on Sudan's oil, little will dissuade them from continued involvement.

"The Chinese get eight percent of oil energy from the Sudanese," Boschwitz says. "They stepped in when we sanctioned the Sudanese. But short of going in with forces saying 'Stop this,' the options go downhill from there."

The Genocide Intervention Network's legislative agenda is far more concrete. Since Congress has little influence over mandating a no-fly zone or issuing war crimes indictments, its focus for 2007 will be in "hitting the Sudanese where it hurts: petroleum," says advocacy director Sam Bell. Its top priorities:

• Denying port entry for oil tankers docked in the port of Sudan (currently, this is a non-binding provision of the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act)
• Pursuing capital market sanctions against PetroChina, which, Bell says "means they would be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange")
• Authorizing state divestment from companies funding the genocide
• Pushing to make US support for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing contingent on China's cooperation on Darfur.
  

Further, getting more money to the African Union Mission in Darfur is key, so, Bell says, "it can be the backbone of an effective UN force."

In the new year, I will ask legislators to weigh in on these provisions, their ranking in the Darfur Scorecards, and ideas for, as Dr. Kennedy says, making sure that, when it comes to genocide in Darfur, "'never again' means 'never.'"

Part 1: "With Darfur in 'freefall,' can Congress transcend partisanship?"

[Map courtesy of PBS. Photos by Linsey Addario]

Goode question: Would immigration reform have kept out Muslim convert Ellison?

In a letter reportedly sent to hundreds of constituents, Virginia Republican Rep. Virgil Goode warned what will happen if America doesn't "adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration":

"[T]here will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran. We need to stop illegal immigration totally and reduce legal immigration and end the diversity visas policy pushed hard by President Clinton and allowing many persons from the Middle East to come to this country."

After specifically referencing "the Muslim Representative from Minnesota," Goode states, "We need to stop illegal immigration totally and reduce legal immigration and end the diversity visas policy pushed hard by President Clinton and allowing many persons from the Middle East to come to this country."

A problem with his logic: curtailing immigration wouldn't have prevented Keith Ellison from "demanding the use of the Koran."

A US citizen from birth, Ellison converted to Islam when he was 19.

Read the letter here.

Fox News, Keith Ellison, and the "Nazi bible"

Al-Jazeera's English broadcast puts Fox News' "fair and balanced" tagline to a smell test by looking at its December 1 coverage of Keith Ellison's request to be sworn in on the Quran. With Dennis Prager at center screen, host Sean Hannity compares Islam's nearly 1500-year-old scriptures with an autobiographical screed written in 1925 by a genocidal-maniac-to-be.


Hannity asked:

"On what grounds will those of you defending this congressman's decision in his right to chose his favorite book... Would you allow him to choose Hitler's Mein Kampf, which is the Nazi bible?"

While Hannity's innuendo--linking the Quran and Mein Kampf in the same breath--is troubling, it's his use of the term "Nazi bible" that's surprising, especially since he and Prager are so concerned that Ellison honor the book most often used in oaths.

The term "bible," while deriving from the Greek for book (biblia) according to Webster, predominantly refers to either the Christian or Jewish holy books, not to political tracts. A "Nazi bible"--as the first find in a Google search of the phrase yields--would suggest, well, Hitler's bible.

Like the one the Führer commissioned in 1939; in an attempt to "Nazify" the church, Hitler ordered hand-picked theologians to "cleanse church texts of all non-Aryan influences" and revise the 10 Commandments to include 12, deleting several and adding these:

Keep the blood pure and your honour holy! Maintain and multiply the heritage of your forefathers. Always be ready to help and to forgive. Honour your Fuehrer and master!

Perhaps these modifications indicate my issue with the Ellison/Quran flap: what is being sworn is of greater import than what it's being sworn on.

After all, in Mein Kampf Hitler wrote that "today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator.”

Hitler, like anyone, was judged by his actions, those of a homicidal racist, rather than by his statements of faith. (The quote above continues: "By defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.")

Congressman-elect Ellison will be rated--and berated--by the likes of Hannity and Prager, no doubt. But perhaps they could wait til after his first day in office to get started.

[A frequent rightwing commenter at Minnesota Monitor, where I crossposted his entry, seems to have a bigger problem with a mention of al-Jazeera than the utterings of Sean Hannity.]

And: The director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Dr. Stephen Feinstein, calls for the resignation of Dennis Prager from the US Holocaust Memorial Council for saying Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison shouldn't serve if he won't take his oath on the bible. Says Feinstein, "[E]veryone should see Prager's comments as bigotry enthroned... [H]is statements have single-handedly made it clear that one Jew does not understand the civic responsibilities of an organization whose board he represents."

Federal Judge: Lethal injections "unconstitutional"

Whoa.

Bush wants $100 billion more for wars

In addition to the $70 billion set aside for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this fiscal year, and the $475 billion the Pentagon recieved for military operations, George Bush wants an additional $100 billion for wars. Wouldn't this constitute gross mismanagement? Wisconsin Rep. Dave Obey nails it: "Republicans have spent years handing out billions upon billions of dollars in tax cuts to millionaires while shortchanging our national priorities."

The war, originally estimated by the administration to cost between $50 and $60 billion, has already cost Americans seven times that figure, and by the end of March 2007, the pricetag will have surpassed $378 billion.

Media Monitor: December 13

Media protest gets little media coverage: Monday's "nationwide day of action to call attention to cutbacks at newspapers across the country" drew 125 protesters from the Pioneer Press and Star Tribune newsrooms. No big surprise here: few mainstream media outlets gave the demonstrations any coverage.

MN connection to the "War on Terror": Great Britain has stopped using the phrase "War on Terror," according to the Christian Science Monitor. On this shift in political thinking--away from the US.--the paper quotes a Minnesota Daily editorial that posits that the UK's deteriorating "special relationship" with the US forces a decision: to "be at the helm of the European Union or risk being cut adrift."

Speaking of which: In an interview on Townhall.com with conservative columnist Cal Thomas, Donald Rumsfeld admits one regret: "I don't think I would have called it the war on terror... it is not a 'war on terror.' Terror is a weapon of choice for extremists who are trying to destabilize regimes and (through) a small group of clerics, impose their dark vision on all the people they can control. So 'war on terror' is a problem for me."

Comic kudos: The American Press Awards have just been announced: on the list is the Star Tribune's Steve Sack, named Berryman Cartoonist of the Year.

The elephant in the newsroom: Salt Lake City's Deseret Morning News has appointed a new editor and, apparently unconcerned about reader perceptions of political bias in the newsroom, he's former chair of the Utah Republican party Joseph Cannon. File under: What liberal media?

Homosexuality's milky origin revealed!

Soy Toys? Tofoofs? Edamame's Boys?

According to conservative news site WorldNetDaily, soy milk turns boys gay!

James Rutz of Megashift Ministries writes:

Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That's why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today's rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products.

I Swear: CO radio host challenges Ellison's ethics, morality

Colorado AM radio host Mike Rosen questions whether Keith Ellison can "ethically and morally hold office" if he wishes to have a private swearing-in using the Quran instead of the bible (he also calls Ellison "a follower of Louis Farrakhan," despite Ellison's repudiation of the Nation of Islam's "propagation of bigoted and anti-Semitic ideas and statements.")

During his December 8 broadcast, Rosen said:

One of the reasons that traditionally people have taken oaths -- either serving as witnesses in trials or defendants, or being sworn in with the oath of office as president or a member of Congress -- one of the reasons people have put their hands on a, on the Judeo-Christian Bible -- which includes the Old Testament and the New -- is that this is one of the foundations of Western civilization, and it's also one of the foundational sources of our law. Moses was known as the lawgiver. The Ten Commandments have -- have had a great deal of influence over the creation of law in Western society. So it's consistent with that part of our society that qualifies as Caesar's element -- render unto Caesar what is Caesar's -- for people who serve in law-making and governing capacities to take an oath consistent with our foundation. For those who really believe that the Constitution is blasphemy, at least in parts when it conflicts with Islam -- these people have a right to their religious beliefs and they can operate in our society. But the question is, can they ethically and morally hold office?

Rosen's mention of courtroom procedures, however, fails to recognize that the bible needn't be used to swear in witnesses in court proceedings. Last summer, when Muslims in North Carolina attempted to donate copies of the Quran for courtroom oaths (and were refused), the Christian Science Monitor wrote:

Already, witnesses in American courts do not have to take a religious oath and can instead simply testify on pain of perjury. It's up to judges to decide what passes for an oath.

Most have apparently given other oaths wide latitude. In a federal terrorism case in 1997 in Washington D.C., for instance, the judge allowed Muslim witnesses to swear to Allah. And the practice isn't new: Mochitura Hashimoto, the Japanese submarine commander who testified in the court martial of a US Navy captain in 1945, was allowed by a military tribunal to swear on his beliefs of Shinto, the ancient religion of Japan.

As to Rosen's mention of the Ten Commandments, a letter from Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper in 1814 casts doubt on this notion:

[I]n answer to Fortescue Aland's question why the ten commandments should not now be a part of the common law of England? we may say they are not because they never were made so by legislative authority, the document which has imposed that doubt on him being a manifest forgery.

Further, Jefferson writes, British common law--which the American legal system is largely based upon--was established in England before Christianity arrived there:

...Christianity was not introduced till the seventh century; the conversion of the first Christian king of the Heptarchy having taken place about the year 598, and that of the last about 686. Here, then, was a space of two hundred years, during which the common law was in existence, and Christianity no part of it...."

[Cross-posted at Minnesota Monitor.]

Quoting Kofi

Annan's speech yesterday:

[A]s Truman said, “If we should pay merely lip service to inspiring ideals, and later do violence to simple justice, we would draw down upon us the bitter wrath of generations yet unborn.” And when I look at the murder, rape and starvation to which the people of Darfur are being subjected, I fear that we have not got far beyond “lip service.” The lesson here is that high-sounding doctrines like the “responsibility to protect” will remain pure rhetoric unless and until those with the power to intervene effectively — by exerting political, economic or, in the last resort, military muscle — are prepared to take the lead.

And: as the UN Human Rights Councils holds a special session on Darfur today, the US General Accounting Office reveals that six of the State Department's Darfur death toll estimates had "methodological strengths and shortcomings" but "none appeared very accurate."