Circuit Writer

This is my most recent post for the Xenia Institute, now featured at Dialogic Magazine.  I encourage you to take your comments to the original article at the Dialogic website.

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War is brutal and impersonal … If we really saw war, what war does to young minds and bodies, it would be harder to embrace the myth of war.

- Chris Hedges, columnist at TruthDig

Frame grabs from a video posted on WikiLeaks.org, showing a U.S. Army Apache helicopter firing on a group of people in Baghdad on July 12, 2007. UPI/WikiLeaks.org Photo via Newscom Content © 2010 Newscom

The fog of war has cleared to reveal a storm of controversy raging around the publication of a classified video footage of an attack by U.S. Army Apache helicopters against Iraqis in 2007. The air strike resulted in the wounding of two children and the death of at least a dozen people, including two Reuters employees, Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh. In Dialogic’s News and Analysis section, we took a look at the discussion from around the blogosphere. However, the narrative begs further discussion as to what it says about our society and culture.

While the responses to the attack range from moral outrage to unqualified support, I want to highlight a middle voice. Anthony Martinez, writing at his personal blog, A Look Inside, gives us his response to continue reading…

This is my most recent post for the Xenia Institute, now featured at Dialogic Magazine.  I encourage you to take your comments to the original article at the Dialogic website.

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The announcement of Justice John Paul Stevens’ retirement has led to a flurry of media activity around the beltway. The news has been greeted with praise from his colleagues on the court along with nearly everyone else in the political establishment, including his ideological opponents. But perhaps the more important question left to us is: what will happen next? Tom Goldstein at SCOTUSblog thinks that it will be a “pretty efficient” process that will ultimately lead to the irony of a more conservative court under a Democratic president. Jack Balkin agrees that Obama’s first priority in will likely be to avoid expending too much political capital in a midterm election year; however, he goes on to offer what he views as a potential second priority:

Associate Justice John Paul Stevens posing for photographs at the Supreme Court, September 29, 2009. UPI/Gary Fabiano/POOL Photo via Newscom Content © 2010 Newscom

Second, and equally important, President Obama will nominate someone who is likely to sustain the President’s policies while he is in office, first, on the issues he cares about most at the time and, secondarily, the issues necessary to keep his political coalition together … [These might include] support for the constitutionality of the recently passed health care bill, preservation of Roe v. Wade (as modified by Casey), and support for robust (but not necessarily unilateral) Presidential power in surveillance, detention, military commission, rendition, and other war on terror issues.

This will present an interesting scenario according to Michael Kinsley at The Atlantic. He wonders if the Republican’s desire to expend political capital isn’t also at question. Noting their care to avoid the term “conservative” in the discussions surrounding Stevens’ replacement, he raises questions as to where their priorities might lie in the upcoming nomination process: continue reading…

Here’s a post written for the Xenia Institute, which will be posted following the roll out of our new website and online magazine of opinion, reflection, and dialogue.  I’ll post a link to the article as soon as its available at our new site.

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Senate Bill 1965 was born on February 1, 2010 in the Oklahoma State Senate to Senator Harry Coates.  It passed from this life around April 4, 2010 in the House Judiciary Committee with numerous family members by its side.

The Oklahoma State Senate in session. (Photo by Becky J. McCray/Flickr, used under Creative Commons 2.0)

Senate Bill “SB” 1965 entered the world as an Open Meetings and Records Act, filled with hope for providing transparency in government and the freeing of information.  Showing great potential, “SB” was quickly enrolled in the Senate Education Committee where it excelled in athletics, maturing into an “An Act relating to schools; creating the Task Force on the Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association.”  With a bright future before it, SB 1965 graduated, eagerly looking forward to life after education. continue reading…

This is a cross posting of my article for the Xenia Institute.  I encourage you to visit our site and ask that you please post any comments you might have on the original article here.

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Last week the Pentagon made a not entirely unexpected move to raise the standards for prosecution of military personnel under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Not surprisingly, voices within the military immediately began creating a stir about issues of conscience and freedom of religion, using the same tired logic surrounding hate crimes legislation here in Oklahoma. This was paralleled by the logistical argument enunciated by Air Force Gen. Norton A. Schwartz while testifying before Congress, in which he asked that legislators not “perturb the force” in time of war. While I have a difficult time understanding how the removal of over 13,000 service members under DADT since its inception doesn’t qualify as perturbing the force, especially considering that over 800 of those removed from service had critical skills such as Arabic, I find it even more frustrating that those opposed to removing this unjust policy continue to trot out the same collection of unfounded arguments. Ruth Marcus at TruthDig appears to share my frustrations:

WASHINGTON - MARCH 18: People sign their names during a rally in support of a repeal of the 'Don't Ask, Don t Tell' policy March 18, 2010 at the Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Perturb the force? Of course, the same arguments could be—in fact, they were—made about racial integration. It is particularly infuriating that the generals would invoke the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as an excuse for not lifting the ban. If anything, “don’t ask, don’t tell” has been an impediment to the military during these operations. In an era of stop-loss recalls because forces have been stretched so thin, thousands of service members have been discharged because of their sexuality. continue reading…

In a previous post I covered SB 1965, a legislative effort by Senator Steve Russell (R – Oklahoma City) to effectively opt Oklahoma out of the recently adopted hate crime provisions of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009.  While I want to refrain from questioning the senator’s motivations, I have no problem questioning his intentions.  In a press release he spells out a clear opposition to the Shepard Act:

Oklahoma currently has tough, good laws that include hate crimes laws. Any murder or brutal assault is hateful. That is the problem with singling out something more with this federal law.  I believe this legislation far exceeds the powers of government over states as outlined in the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.  I am also very concerned that this loosely defined and ill-conceived legislation could be used to target people’s belief, freedom to associate in groups, right to assemble on issues, as well as target people’s right to free speech.

The Oklahoma State Capitol building. (Photo by Daniel Mayer, used under Creative Commons 3.0)

What Russell fails to mention is that Oklahoma’s current statute does not include a victim’s actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity as motivations for a hate crime.  In his rush to defend the privileges of the empowered, Senator Russell runs roughshod over the basic human rights of members of the LGBTQIA community.  As a commenter on my previous post pointed out, the failure to prosecute the perpetrators of hate crimes creates an continue reading…

The irony of the day is that as the debate rages over scrapping “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and allowing people of the LGBTQI community to serve openly in the armed forces, the Oklahoma legislature is actively working to prohibit state law enforcement agencies from cooperating in federal hate crime investigations. A bill sponsored by Senator Steve Russell (R – Oklahoma City) introduces changes to the state code designed to do exactly that. On its face, the most recent revision of the bill (Senate floor substitute) may sound innocuous:

WASHINGTON - APRIL 12 (2007): Judy Shepard, mother of hate crime victim Matthew Shepard, wipes away tears during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

An Act relating to criminal investigations … which relates to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation; limiting disclosure of certain investigative information; prohibiting state employees from assisting a federal agency under certain circumstances. continue reading…

If you’re like me, during this past Winter Olympics season you sat and watched your television in rapt fascination as various teams of women and men skated down a swath of ice, furiously sweeping a path in front of a gracefully gliding curling stone. Although this sport is the frosty cousin of shuffleboard, a game that has yet to really capture my imagination, I couldn’t peel my eyes away from the screen. Whether it was the grim looks of determination on the faces of those delivering the stone or the drama of those front end skaters rapidly sweeping their brooms before the stone, I managed to somehow forget my ambivalence toward shuffleboard-ish games and become genuinely engrossed in the competition. continue reading…

Bayh has always been shall we say a frustrating sort. Never a profile in courage.

This marks perhaps the kindest response from the liberal blogosphere to Evan Bayh’s decision to leave the Senate.  Michael Tomasky’s thoughts from across the pond (The Guardian is published in the United Kingdom) at least gives Bayh the benefit of the doubt as to his future.  Perhaps because there is talk that his hasty exit might open the way to a Republican takeover of his seat on November, the conservative blogs have been somewhat kinder.  John Stossel offers a positive view of the move based on Bayh’s remarks that he could create more jobs in private industry.  This drew a strong response from Matthew Yglesias: continue reading…

This post is the third in a series of blogs of I’ve written following the actions of the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) at their January meetings to approve revisions to the state’s K-12 social studies curriculum.  Known as TEKS, these standards will determine the learning goals for Texas students for the next decade and will also impact the publication of textbooks that will be used nationwide.  (I cover this more in the previous blogs, Hijacking History and Hijacking History, Part 2.)  This post will cover the final two days of the meeting where elected members of the SBOE went through the proposed curriculum revisions and voted on changes of their own.  Ultimately, the proceedings exhausted the time allotted for discussion and approval of the revisions, postponing the final vote to the May meeting of the SBOE.

The SBOE is composed of 15 members who are elected from districts based on equal population representation.  Elections to the board are conducted on a partisan basis, and the recent meetings demonstrated just how detrimental this can be to the educational process.  Brian Thevenot of the Texas Tribune has provided excellent coverage of these meetings, and his description of the approval process is no exception: continue reading…

Now that the metaphorical dust is settling on the disaster that has befallen Haiti, it is the time to begin remembering what we are already forgetting.  Distracted by the commentary and wrangling surrounding the State of the Union Address, we’ve lost track of the tragedy of an estimated 150,000 dead (the U.N. confirming 111,481 based on bodies recovered as of January 24).  While there is no doubt that we should acknowledge the economic problems here in our country, it would be a failure of nerve and moral courage to shift our focus inward upon ourselves on account of an arbitrary requirement that the President “shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union.”  (Article II, Section 3, U.S. Constitution)

I’ve previously written concerning the real nature of Haiti’s “curse” and Christian responsibility in the wake of this disaster, but it’s time for us to move beyond talk and take action.  For everyone who has already become involved, sending recovery kits and making financial contributions, I thank you and commend your actions.  However, as Richard Kim points out, our charity simply isn’t good enough: continue reading…