(Filed: 22/03/2005)
The Daily Telegraph
I am, as Tony Blair might say, deeply passionately personally deeply personally opposed to abortion. But, unlike him, I think it ought to be an election issue.
Not because of my personal beliefs: I happen to believe a lot of what we call "late-term abortion" is in reality early-term infanticide, but, if you don't accept that that's a human life that's being destroyed, my deeply personal passionate beliefs aren't likely to sway you one way or another. That's where so-called progressive politicians such as Blair and John Kerry have it all backwards: the point about abortion is not that it's a "matter of conscience" for individuals to "wrestle with", but that it's a crucial part of the central political challenge of our time.
Almost every issue facing the EU - from immigration rates to crippling state pension liabilities - has at its heart the same glaringly plain root cause: a huge lack of babies. I could understand a disinclination by sunny politicians to peddle doom and gloom were it not for the fact that, in all other areas of public policy, our rulers embrace doomsday scenarios at the drop of a hat. Most 20-year projections - on global warming, fuel resources, etc - are almost laughably speculative. They fail to take into account the most important factor of all - human inventiveness: "We can't feed the world!" they shriek. But we develop more efficient farming methods with nary a thought. "The oil will run out by the year 2000!" But we develop new extraction methods and find we've got enough oil for as long as we'll need it.
But human inventiveness depends on humans - and that's the one thing we really are running out of. When it comes to forecasting the future, the birth rate is the nearest thing to hard numbers. If only a million babies are born in 2005, it's hard to have two million adults enter the workforce in 2025 (or 2033, or 2041, or whenever they get around to finishing their Anger Management, Systemic Racism and Gay Studies degrees). If that's not a political issue, what is? To cite only the most obviously affected corner of the realm, what's the long-term future of the Scottish National Party if there are no Scottish nationals?
When I've mentioned the birth dearth on previous occasions, pro-abortion correspondents have insisted it's due to other factors - the generally declining fertility rates that affect all materially prosperous societies, or the high taxes that make large families prohibitively expensive in materially prosperous societies. But this is a bit like arguing over which came first, the chicken or the egg - or, in this case, which came first, the lack of eggs or the scraggy old chicken-necked women desperate for one designer baby at the age of 48. How much of Europe's fertility woes derive from abortion is debatable. But what should be obvious is that the way the abortion issue is framed - as a Blairite issue of personal choice - is itself symptomatic of the broader crisis of the dying West.
Since 1945, a multiplicity of government interventions - state pensions, subsidised higher education, higher taxes to pay for everything - has so ruptured traditional patterns of inter-generational solidarity that in Europe a child is now an optional lifestyle accessory. By 2050, Estonia's population will have fallen by 52 per cent, Bulgaria's by 36 per cent, Italy's by 22 per cent. The hyper-rationalism of post-Christian Europe turns out to be wholly irrational: what's the point of creating a secular utopia if it's only for one generation?
Shortly after 9/11, I wrote in these pages about one of the most curious aspects of the new war - the assurance given to Islamist "martyrs" that 72 virgins were standing by to pleasure them for eternity. The notion that the after-life is a well-appointed brothel is a perplexing one to the Judaeo-Christian world, and I suggested that Americans would be sceptical if heaven were framed purely in terms of boundless earthly pleasures.
But, on reflection, if the Islamists are banal in portraying the next world purely in terms of sensual self-gratification, we're just as reductive in measuring this one the same way. America this Holy Week is following the frenzied efforts to halt the court-enforced starvation of a brain-damaged woman for no reason other than that her continued existence is an inconvenience to her husband. In Britain, two doctors escape prosecution for aborting an otherwise healthy baby with a treatable cleft palate because the authorities are satisfied they acted "in good faith". You can read similar stories in almost any corner of the developed world, except perhaps the Netherlands, where discretionary euthanasia is so advanced it's news if the kid makes it out of the maternity ward. As the New York Times reported the other day: "Babies born into what is certain to be a brief life of grievous suffering should have their lives ended by physicians under strict guidelines, according to two doctors in the Netherlands.
"The doctors, Eduard Verhagen and Pieter J. J. Sauer of the University Medical Center in Groningen, in an essay in today's New England Journal of Medicine, said they had developed guidelines, known as the Groningen protocol."
Ah, the protocols of the elders of science. Odd the way scientists have such little regard for scientific progress. It's highly likely that many birth defects - not just the bilateral cleft lips - will be treatable and correctible in the next decade or two. But once you start weighing the relative values of individual lives, there's no end to it. Much of that derives from the way abortion has redefined life - as a "choice", an option.
In practice, a culture that thinks Terri Schiavo's life in Florida or the cleft-lipped baby's in Herefordshire has no value winds up ascribing no value to life in general. Hence, the shrivelled fertility rates in Europe and in blue-state America: John Kerry won the 16 states with the lowest birth rates; George W Bush took 25 of the 26 states with the highest.
The 19th-century Shaker communities were forbidden from breeding and could increase their number only by conversion. The Euro-Canadian-Democratic Party welfare secularists seem to have chosen the same predicament voluntarily, and are likely to meet the same fate. The martyrdom culture of radical Islam is a literal dead end. But so is the slyer death culture of post-Christian radical narcissism. This is the political issue that will determine all the others: it's the demography, stupid.
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
James Robbins: Al Qaeda Plans New Attacks in U.S.
The Union of the Snake
Al Qaeda planning and possibilities.
http://www.nationalreview.com/
March 22, 2005, 7:49 a.m.
Recently several events have conspired to raise the question of whether the U.S. is due for another major domestic terror attack. A communiqué between Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenant Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi was intercepted in which bin Laden suggested that Zarqawi turn his attentions away from Iraq and towards hitting the United States. Meanwhile the Department of Homeland Security's "National Planning Scenarios" report was accidentally posted to the web, causing a minor stir. The report posits a variety of forbidding possibilities (such as spreading pneumonic plague in airport bathrooms) in order to aid in budgeting, planning preemptive measures, and responding to terrorist attack. The scenarios are graphic and frightening, but also hypothetical, not those necessarily thought most likely to happen, or even suggested by actual terrorists. Around the same time, a confidential FBI report cast doubt that AQ could undertake any large-scale attacks inside the US, given their lack of infrastructure and the heightened security climate. Yet information purportedly from a top Zarqawi aid indicated that he would not be looking to repeat something like 9/11 but would aim at softer targets, such as "movie theaters, restaurants and schools."
So will it happen? Apparently, they have been thinking about it for some time, and with a good degree of frustration. This same top aide said that Zarqawi fumed about the "lack of willing martyrs," of people willing to die in the process of hitting the U.S. homeland. This is a significant admission, since the popular belief is that the terrorists can draw from a bottomless well of volunteers to conduct their missions. You would think that if there were volunteers ready to do anything they would be most keen to take on the Great Satan. Hitting U.S. targets is their version of the major leagues. Any terrorist worth the label would consider striking at us the very definition of success in his profession. And it is a quick ticket to immortality. Everyone remembers Mohammed Atta; operations in Iraq just do not get the same kind of coverage. Even al Qaeda press releases are unsatisfying for the fame-seeking vest bomber. Note for example this one from a February suicide attack in Baquba:
On Monday, a martyr was wed to Paradise, and what a good martyr he was! ...One of the monotheism lions from the Martyrdom-seekers Brigade of Al-Qa'ida of Jihad Organization in the Land of the Two Rivers carried out a martyrdom attack against the infidels and the apostates in Ba'qubah, may God grant it and the rest of the country freedom from its bondage. Congratulations to you, brother in monotheism!
O.K., but what was his name? Can't his friends and family get bragging rights for all those innocent people he blew up? Zarqawi needs to rethink his incentivization program. The jihad is not all about him.
Zarqawi may gripe privately about the sorry condition of terrorist voluntarism, but he has no problem heaping blame on the Iraqi people for not supporting him as he seeks to liberate them from the "humiliation" of freedom and democracy. In the first edition of his new online magazine, Dhurwat al-Sanam [literally the highest point on the camel's hump — in this context, the highest obligation] he published an editorial explaining why al Qaeda has lately been targeting policemen, Iraqi army troops and "everyone whose soul is debased and who assists infidels in their war against Muslims in the territory of Iraq." He has been forced to do it for their own good. The Iraqis have not mobilized their human resources to supply him with the foot soldiers he needs. They have not "united under one banner of clear vision" (i.e., al Qaeda's) to bring the fight to the infidels. They have not prevented vice where they see it. Moreover, they have the nerve to condemn the actions of the "fraternal [foreign] Mujahedin" that have come to Iraq to do the job the Iraqis should be doing for themselves. The editorial is thick with frustration. You get the idea he does not think they are winning.
Measured by al Qaeda's own strategic goals they surely are not. Recall that according to a letter captured over a year ago, al Qaeda was seeking actively to promote what many feared was going to be the natural course of events in post-Saddam Iraq, a civil war between the Shias, Kurds, and Sunnis. Al Qaeda's purpose was to promote this brand of chaos and then exploit it. However, despite their best efforts, the expected civil war did not materialize. Indeed, the Iraqis have been much more willing to live and let live than anyone would have given them credit for. Yes, there is violence, but not the full-scale ethnic conflict that many even in this country had predicted. Rationality won out over the supposed hatreds that these groups were said to harbor against each other. Al Qaeda has not given up on the strategy — witness the March 10 bombing at a Shia mosque in Kurdish Mosul, while across town representatives of the Shia List and the Kurdish Alliance were busy negotiating the details of the new government. But the bombing failed to derail the negotiations; the two sides know who the real enemy is.
Bin Laden's sense of entitlement has angered many Iraqis — a wealthy Saudi hiding in Afghanistan appoints a Jordanian malcontent the Prince of Iraq, and they proceed to declare any Muslims who participate in free elections heretics worthy of death? How many ways can al Qaeda find to offend people? This is probably why bin Laden wants to shift gears and get back to trying to attack the US directly. Bin Laden and Zarqawi are reportedly mulling over new strategies, trying to reach some kind of consensus. The Washington Post reported that some analysts have concluded from this that Zarqawi is an independent operator — despite the pledge of abject fealty to Osama he issued last October, and the fact that he renamed his group "Al Qaeda of the Two Rivers." Saddam is out of the picture yet the monomania to de-link Iraq and al Qaeda continues. It just goes to show that the government is still rife with analysts who seek to draw complexity out of simplicity whenever possible. No wonder we have not caught bin Laden yet.
Al Qaeda wants to hit us again. They have been threatening it for years. The fact that they have not managed to do so yet is a measure both of our effectiveness in combating terrorism and their relative weakness and disorganization. This does not mean they cannot attack — the soft-target scenario is especially troubling — but even if they did, it would hardly change the course of a war that they are without doubt losing badly.
— James S. Robbins is senior fellow in national-security affairs at the American Foreign Policy Council and an NRO contributor.
Al Qaeda planning and possibilities.
http://www.nationalreview.com/
March 22, 2005, 7:49 a.m.
Recently several events have conspired to raise the question of whether the U.S. is due for another major domestic terror attack. A communiqué between Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenant Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi was intercepted in which bin Laden suggested that Zarqawi turn his attentions away from Iraq and towards hitting the United States. Meanwhile the Department of Homeland Security's "National Planning Scenarios" report was accidentally posted to the web, causing a minor stir. The report posits a variety of forbidding possibilities (such as spreading pneumonic plague in airport bathrooms) in order to aid in budgeting, planning preemptive measures, and responding to terrorist attack. The scenarios are graphic and frightening, but also hypothetical, not those necessarily thought most likely to happen, or even suggested by actual terrorists. Around the same time, a confidential FBI report cast doubt that AQ could undertake any large-scale attacks inside the US, given their lack of infrastructure and the heightened security climate. Yet information purportedly from a top Zarqawi aid indicated that he would not be looking to repeat something like 9/11 but would aim at softer targets, such as "movie theaters, restaurants and schools."
So will it happen? Apparently, they have been thinking about it for some time, and with a good degree of frustration. This same top aide said that Zarqawi fumed about the "lack of willing martyrs," of people willing to die in the process of hitting the U.S. homeland. This is a significant admission, since the popular belief is that the terrorists can draw from a bottomless well of volunteers to conduct their missions. You would think that if there were volunteers ready to do anything they would be most keen to take on the Great Satan. Hitting U.S. targets is their version of the major leagues. Any terrorist worth the label would consider striking at us the very definition of success in his profession. And it is a quick ticket to immortality. Everyone remembers Mohammed Atta; operations in Iraq just do not get the same kind of coverage. Even al Qaeda press releases are unsatisfying for the fame-seeking vest bomber. Note for example this one from a February suicide attack in Baquba:
On Monday, a martyr was wed to Paradise, and what a good martyr he was! ...One of the monotheism lions from the Martyrdom-seekers Brigade of Al-Qa'ida of Jihad Organization in the Land of the Two Rivers carried out a martyrdom attack against the infidels and the apostates in Ba'qubah, may God grant it and the rest of the country freedom from its bondage. Congratulations to you, brother in monotheism!
O.K., but what was his name? Can't his friends and family get bragging rights for all those innocent people he blew up? Zarqawi needs to rethink his incentivization program. The jihad is not all about him.
Zarqawi may gripe privately about the sorry condition of terrorist voluntarism, but he has no problem heaping blame on the Iraqi people for not supporting him as he seeks to liberate them from the "humiliation" of freedom and democracy. In the first edition of his new online magazine, Dhurwat al-Sanam [literally the highest point on the camel's hump — in this context, the highest obligation] he published an editorial explaining why al Qaeda has lately been targeting policemen, Iraqi army troops and "everyone whose soul is debased and who assists infidels in their war against Muslims in the territory of Iraq." He has been forced to do it for their own good. The Iraqis have not mobilized their human resources to supply him with the foot soldiers he needs. They have not "united under one banner of clear vision" (i.e., al Qaeda's) to bring the fight to the infidels. They have not prevented vice where they see it. Moreover, they have the nerve to condemn the actions of the "fraternal [foreign] Mujahedin" that have come to Iraq to do the job the Iraqis should be doing for themselves. The editorial is thick with frustration. You get the idea he does not think they are winning.
Measured by al Qaeda's own strategic goals they surely are not. Recall that according to a letter captured over a year ago, al Qaeda was seeking actively to promote what many feared was going to be the natural course of events in post-Saddam Iraq, a civil war between the Shias, Kurds, and Sunnis. Al Qaeda's purpose was to promote this brand of chaos and then exploit it. However, despite their best efforts, the expected civil war did not materialize. Indeed, the Iraqis have been much more willing to live and let live than anyone would have given them credit for. Yes, there is violence, but not the full-scale ethnic conflict that many even in this country had predicted. Rationality won out over the supposed hatreds that these groups were said to harbor against each other. Al Qaeda has not given up on the strategy — witness the March 10 bombing at a Shia mosque in Kurdish Mosul, while across town representatives of the Shia List and the Kurdish Alliance were busy negotiating the details of the new government. But the bombing failed to derail the negotiations; the two sides know who the real enemy is.
Bin Laden's sense of entitlement has angered many Iraqis — a wealthy Saudi hiding in Afghanistan appoints a Jordanian malcontent the Prince of Iraq, and they proceed to declare any Muslims who participate in free elections heretics worthy of death? How many ways can al Qaeda find to offend people? This is probably why bin Laden wants to shift gears and get back to trying to attack the US directly. Bin Laden and Zarqawi are reportedly mulling over new strategies, trying to reach some kind of consensus. The Washington Post reported that some analysts have concluded from this that Zarqawi is an independent operator — despite the pledge of abject fealty to Osama he issued last October, and the fact that he renamed his group "Al Qaeda of the Two Rivers." Saddam is out of the picture yet the monomania to de-link Iraq and al Qaeda continues. It just goes to show that the government is still rife with analysts who seek to draw complexity out of simplicity whenever possible. No wonder we have not caught bin Laden yet.
Al Qaeda wants to hit us again. They have been threatening it for years. The fact that they have not managed to do so yet is a measure both of our effectiveness in combating terrorism and their relative weakness and disorganization. This does not mean they cannot attack — the soft-target scenario is especially troubling — but even if they did, it would hardly change the course of a war that they are without doubt losing badly.
— James S. Robbins is senior fellow in national-security affairs at the American Foreign Policy Council and an NRO contributor.
Thomas Sowell: 'Cruel and Unusual'
Thomas Sowell (archive)
March 22, 2005
If the tragic case of Terri Schiavo shows nothing else, it shows how easily "the right to die" can become the right to kill. It is hard to believe that anyone, regardless of their position on euthanasia, would have chosen the agony of starvation and dehydration as the way to end someone's life.
A New York Times headline on March 20th tried to assure us: "Experts Say Ending Feeding Can Lead to a Gentle Death" but you can find experts to say anything. In a December 2, 2002 story in the same New York Times, people starving in India were reported as dying, "often clutching pained stomachs."
No murderer would be allowed to be killed this way, which would almost certainly be declared "cruel and unusual punishment," in violation of the Constitution, by virtually any court.
Terri Schiavo's only crime is that she has become an inconvenience -- and is caught in the merciless machinery of the law. Those who think law is the answer to our problems need to face the reality that law is a crude and blunt instrument.
Make no mistake about it, Terri Schiavo is being killed. She is not being "allowed to die."
She is not like someone whose breathing, blood circulation, kidney function, or other vital work of the body is being performed by machines. What she is getting by machine is what all of us get otherwise every day -- food and water. Depriving any of us of food and water would kill us just as surely, and just as agonizingly, as it is killing Terri Schiavo.
Would I want to be kept alive in Terri Schiavo's condition? No. Would I want to be killed so slowly and painfully? No. Would anyone? I doubt it.
Every member of Terri Schiavo's family wants her kept alive -- except the one person who has a vested interest in her death, her husband. Her death will allow him to marry the woman he has been living with, and having children by, for years. Legally, he is Terri's guardian and that legal technicality is all that gives him the right to starve her to death. Courts cannot remove guardians without serious reasons. But neither should they refuse to remove guardians with a clear conflict of interest.
There are no good solutions to this wrenching situation. It is the tragedy of the human condition in its most stark form.
The extraordinary session of Congress, calling members back from around the country, with the President flying back from his home in Texas in order to be ready to sign legislation dealing with Terri Schiavo, are things that do us credit as a nation.
Even if critics who claim that this is being done for political or ideological reasons are partially or even wholly correct, they still miss the point. It is the public's sense of concern -- in some cases, outrage -- that is reflected by their elected representatives.
What can Congress do -- and what effect will it have? We do not know and Congress does not know. Those who are pushing for legislation to save Terri Schiavo are obviously trying to avoid setting a precedent or upsetting the Constitutional balance.
It is an old truism that hard cases make bad law. No one wants all such cases to end up in either Congress or the federal courts. But neither do decent people want an innocent woman killed because she was inconvenient and a court refused to recognize the conflict of interests in her legal guardian.
The fervor of those who want to save Terri Schiavo's life is understandable and should be respected, even by those who disagree. What is harder to understand is the fervor and even venom of those liberals who have gone ballistic -- ostensibly over state's rights, over the Constitutional separation of powers, and even over the sanctity of family decisions.
These are not things that liberals have any track record of caring about. Is what really bothers them the idea of the sanctity of life and what that implies for their abortion issue? Or do they hate any challenge to the supremacy of judges -- on which the whole liberal agenda depends -- a supremacy that the Constitution never gave the judiciary?
If nothing else comes out of all this, there needs to be a national discussion of some humane way to end life in those cases when it has to be ended -- and this may not be one of those cases.
©2005 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Contact Thomas Sowell Read Sowell's biography
March 22, 2005
If the tragic case of Terri Schiavo shows nothing else, it shows how easily "the right to die" can become the right to kill. It is hard to believe that anyone, regardless of their position on euthanasia, would have chosen the agony of starvation and dehydration as the way to end someone's life.
A New York Times headline on March 20th tried to assure us: "Experts Say Ending Feeding Can Lead to a Gentle Death" but you can find experts to say anything. In a December 2, 2002 story in the same New York Times, people starving in India were reported as dying, "often clutching pained stomachs."
No murderer would be allowed to be killed this way, which would almost certainly be declared "cruel and unusual punishment," in violation of the Constitution, by virtually any court.
Terri Schiavo's only crime is that she has become an inconvenience -- and is caught in the merciless machinery of the law. Those who think law is the answer to our problems need to face the reality that law is a crude and blunt instrument.
Make no mistake about it, Terri Schiavo is being killed. She is not being "allowed to die."
She is not like someone whose breathing, blood circulation, kidney function, or other vital work of the body is being performed by machines. What she is getting by machine is what all of us get otherwise every day -- food and water. Depriving any of us of food and water would kill us just as surely, and just as agonizingly, as it is killing Terri Schiavo.
Would I want to be kept alive in Terri Schiavo's condition? No. Would I want to be killed so slowly and painfully? No. Would anyone? I doubt it.
Every member of Terri Schiavo's family wants her kept alive -- except the one person who has a vested interest in her death, her husband. Her death will allow him to marry the woman he has been living with, and having children by, for years. Legally, he is Terri's guardian and that legal technicality is all that gives him the right to starve her to death. Courts cannot remove guardians without serious reasons. But neither should they refuse to remove guardians with a clear conflict of interest.
There are no good solutions to this wrenching situation. It is the tragedy of the human condition in its most stark form.
The extraordinary session of Congress, calling members back from around the country, with the President flying back from his home in Texas in order to be ready to sign legislation dealing with Terri Schiavo, are things that do us credit as a nation.
Even if critics who claim that this is being done for political or ideological reasons are partially or even wholly correct, they still miss the point. It is the public's sense of concern -- in some cases, outrage -- that is reflected by their elected representatives.
What can Congress do -- and what effect will it have? We do not know and Congress does not know. Those who are pushing for legislation to save Terri Schiavo are obviously trying to avoid setting a precedent or upsetting the Constitutional balance.
It is an old truism that hard cases make bad law. No one wants all such cases to end up in either Congress or the federal courts. But neither do decent people want an innocent woman killed because she was inconvenient and a court refused to recognize the conflict of interests in her legal guardian.
The fervor of those who want to save Terri Schiavo's life is understandable and should be respected, even by those who disagree. What is harder to understand is the fervor and even venom of those liberals who have gone ballistic -- ostensibly over state's rights, over the Constitutional separation of powers, and even over the sanctity of family decisions.
These are not things that liberals have any track record of caring about. Is what really bothers them the idea of the sanctity of life and what that implies for their abortion issue? Or do they hate any challenge to the supremacy of judges -- on which the whole liberal agenda depends -- a supremacy that the Constitution never gave the judiciary?
If nothing else comes out of all this, there needs to be a national discussion of some humane way to end life in those cases when it has to be ended -- and this may not be one of those cases.
©2005 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Contact Thomas Sowell Read Sowell's biography
Monday, March 21, 2005
Malkin on High School Anti-War Spectacle and Jessica Lunsford Murder
[Michelle Malkin comments on an anti-war assembly in a Seattle high school and the evil perpetrated by John Evander Couey against Jessica Lunsford in Florida.]
SEATTLE ANTI-WAR SCHOOL SPECTACLE UPDATE
By Michelle Malkin · March 21, 2005 04:32 PM
You remember the West Seattle High School anti-war student assembly we blogged about last week. Sound Politics has a follow-up, posting a firsthand account of the appalling event from Maj. Terry Thomas, USMC, who sent a letter to the Seattle School Board. Here's an excerpt:
Upon entering the theater at 12:30 PM, approximately 15 minutes prior to the event, I was taken aback by what I witnessed. As I stood there in my Marine Corps Dress Blue uniform, there before me stood numerous kids running around in sloppily dressed and ill-fitted helmets and military fatigues with utter disrespect for the symbols and uniforms of the U.S. military. The walls were covered in camouflaged netting and the stage was covered with approximately twenty white, life-sized cut-out patterns in the shape of dead women and children, all of which were splattered in red-paint to depict human blood. Onstage, children were kneeling and weeping while dressed in ill-fitted Arabic headdress with white-faced masks similarly covered in red paint to depict human blood. At a podium, children were reading a monologue of how U.S. troops were killing civilians and shooting at women and children. Moreover, several grown adults were standing on stage in bright orange jump-suits, with black bags on and off their heads, some bound and tied, and some banging symbols and gongs in a crude depiction of what I believe were their efforts to depict victims of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse episode.
Within the auditorium, numerous adults appeared to have been supervising this behavior and children were literally running amok. What is going on in your classrooms and auditoriums? Who supervised this program? Who are these grown adults dressed as prisoners and performing such the attics on the stage of our public schools? Since when has it become Seattle School Board policy to take an official anti-troops position and declare returning combat veterans from Iraq such as myself as killers of innocent women and children as if this war were some sick sport. As an Iraq war veteran I am outraged by what I witnessed going on at West Seattle High School!
Read the whole thing, and don't forget to use the e-mail addresses of the Seattle School Board members listed at the end of the letter.
TrackBack <3>
THE SICKOS IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD
By Michelle Malkin · March 21, 2005 11:33 AM
New, horrid details are being reported on the Jessica Lunsford kidnapping/murder.
Suspect John Evander Couey was a registered sex offender who lived across from Lunsford's home.
Here is an online guide that provides links to every available state sex offender registry. Use it.
***Update: Couple of readers and bloggers remind me that Couey was visiting his sister-in-law, whose home was not the registered address for Couey. Noted.
Also, the online guide I linked to does not have current info on California's new database. It's here. (Hat tip to reader Doug Mason.)
New Jersey's, also not listed, is here.
The South Carolina link is broken. Here's a good one.
Pennsylvania's is here.
More: Ohio, Missouri
Update II: Jason Smith of Generation Why dug up Couey's criminal history...
Apparently John Evander Couey is nowhere to be found on Florida's Sex Offender Registry website. A search of PublicData.com reveals his convictions and the address in Homosassa, FL (listed as Marie Dixon's address) where he was released as an "inactive offender" on May 6, 1997. Other tidbits from his rapsheet include:
* Burglary/Forced Entry - residence - July 30, 1977 - sentenced to 10 years
* Burglary/Forced Entry - residence - July 31, 1977 - adjudication withheld
* Burglary - February 28, 1981 - sentenced to 7 years
* Lewd/Lascivious conduct with child under 16 - April 8, 1991 - sentenced to 5 years
* Forgery - April 9, 1995 - adjudication withheld
* Hot checks - February 22, 2001 - sentence unknown
This says alot about our system. A man can harm a child in the most disgusting way and get a sentence less than he would if he broke into a house. It also shows a spotty history of parole/probation supervision:
Supervision start date: Supervision end date:
* December 7, 1977 - January 19, 1978
* July 22, 1980 - July 21, 1982 - during this time he committed his 3rd burglary
* July 16, 1993 - April 5, 1996 - during this time he committed forgery
* May 6, 1997 - December 7, 1998
* April 24, 2001 - April 23, 2003
Update III: Here's Couey's Florida sex offender registry entry. (via Jason Smith)
Others blogging...
Chris Short on a sex offender in his family's neighborhood.
Random Musings of a Mom asks: "Why does Martha Stewart have to wear a monitoring bracelet on her ankle and pond scum, human debris like John Evander Couey (the confessed child killer -- a convicted sex offender -- in Homosassa, Fla.) did NOT?"
The Palmetto Pundit says the story hit too close to home.
Lorie Byrd writes about the sicko in her neighborhood.
Urban Grounds wonders about the wealthy sickos in Austin, Tx.
Update IV: Couey charged with capital murder.
TrackBack <7>
SEATTLE ANTI-WAR SCHOOL SPECTACLE UPDATE
By Michelle Malkin · March 21, 2005 04:32 PM
You remember the West Seattle High School anti-war student assembly we blogged about last week. Sound Politics has a follow-up, posting a firsthand account of the appalling event from Maj. Terry Thomas, USMC, who sent a letter to the Seattle School Board. Here's an excerpt:
Upon entering the theater at 12:30 PM, approximately 15 minutes prior to the event, I was taken aback by what I witnessed. As I stood there in my Marine Corps Dress Blue uniform, there before me stood numerous kids running around in sloppily dressed and ill-fitted helmets and military fatigues with utter disrespect for the symbols and uniforms of the U.S. military. The walls were covered in camouflaged netting and the stage was covered with approximately twenty white, life-sized cut-out patterns in the shape of dead women and children, all of which were splattered in red-paint to depict human blood. Onstage, children were kneeling and weeping while dressed in ill-fitted Arabic headdress with white-faced masks similarly covered in red paint to depict human blood. At a podium, children were reading a monologue of how U.S. troops were killing civilians and shooting at women and children. Moreover, several grown adults were standing on stage in bright orange jump-suits, with black bags on and off their heads, some bound and tied, and some banging symbols and gongs in a crude depiction of what I believe were their efforts to depict victims of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse episode.
Within the auditorium, numerous adults appeared to have been supervising this behavior and children were literally running amok. What is going on in your classrooms and auditoriums? Who supervised this program? Who are these grown adults dressed as prisoners and performing such the attics on the stage of our public schools? Since when has it become Seattle School Board policy to take an official anti-troops position and declare returning combat veterans from Iraq such as myself as killers of innocent women and children as if this war were some sick sport. As an Iraq war veteran I am outraged by what I witnessed going on at West Seattle High School!
Read the whole thing, and don't forget to use the e-mail addresses of the Seattle School Board members listed at the end of the letter.
TrackBack <3>
THE SICKOS IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD
By Michelle Malkin · March 21, 2005 11:33 AM
New, horrid details are being reported on the Jessica Lunsford kidnapping/murder.
Suspect John Evander Couey was a registered sex offender who lived across from Lunsford's home.
Here is an online guide that provides links to every available state sex offender registry. Use it.
***Update: Couple of readers and bloggers remind me that Couey was visiting his sister-in-law, whose home was not the registered address for Couey. Noted.
Also, the online guide I linked to does not have current info on California's new database. It's here. (Hat tip to reader Doug Mason.)
New Jersey's, also not listed, is here.
The South Carolina link is broken. Here's a good one.
Pennsylvania's is here.
More: Ohio, Missouri
Update II: Jason Smith of Generation Why dug up Couey's criminal history...
Apparently John Evander Couey is nowhere to be found on Florida's Sex Offender Registry website. A search of PublicData.com reveals his convictions and the address in Homosassa, FL (listed as Marie Dixon's address) where he was released as an "inactive offender" on May 6, 1997. Other tidbits from his rapsheet include:
* Burglary/Forced Entry - residence - July 30, 1977 - sentenced to 10 years
* Burglary/Forced Entry - residence - July 31, 1977 - adjudication withheld
* Burglary - February 28, 1981 - sentenced to 7 years
* Lewd/Lascivious conduct with child under 16 - April 8, 1991 - sentenced to 5 years
* Forgery - April 9, 1995 - adjudication withheld
* Hot checks - February 22, 2001 - sentence unknown
This says alot about our system. A man can harm a child in the most disgusting way and get a sentence less than he would if he broke into a house. It also shows a spotty history of parole/probation supervision:
Supervision start date: Supervision end date:
* December 7, 1977 - January 19, 1978
* July 22, 1980 - July 21, 1982 - during this time he committed his 3rd burglary
* July 16, 1993 - April 5, 1996 - during this time he committed forgery
* May 6, 1997 - December 7, 1998
* April 24, 2001 - April 23, 2003
Update III: Here's Couey's Florida sex offender registry entry. (via Jason Smith)
Others blogging...
Chris Short on a sex offender in his family's neighborhood.
Random Musings of a Mom asks: "Why does Martha Stewart have to wear a monitoring bracelet on her ankle and pond scum, human debris like John Evander Couey (the confessed child killer -- a convicted sex offender -- in Homosassa, Fla.) did NOT?"
The Palmetto Pundit says the story hit too close to home.
Lorie Byrd writes about the sicko in her neighborhood.
Urban Grounds wonders about the wealthy sickos in Austin, Tx.
Update IV: Couey charged with capital murder.
TrackBack <7>
USA Today: Knight Mellows Out on Return to Sweet 16
Posted 3/20/2005 11:17 PM
By Greg Boeck, USA TODAY
TUCSON — Not long ago, Bob Knight was cast as the Scrooge of college basketball, the bah-humbug bad boy who threw chairs, bullied players, berated students and bashed the media. Once, he even insulted a country.
Times, and people, can change, as evidenced by Knight playfully whispering in one of his players ears for all to hear that he's "a lot like a latter-day Santa Claus" — and everybody, past media critics included, buying in with laughter.
This much is certain: Christmas came in March for Knight and his Texas Tech Red Raiders. Their surprising run as a No. 6 seed in the NCAA Tournament's Albuquerque Regional continues against West Virginia on Thursday, part of an improbable journey from zero tolerance to the Sweet 16 for Knight.
The onetime incorrigible coach appears to have come full cycle since last taking a team — Indiana — to the Sweet 16 in 1994. Then, he was a ticking time bomb six years from losing his job for violating a zero-tolerance policy imposed by the basketball-crazed school after repeated behavior issues.
Now, in a far-off football hotbed where he has enjoyed life under the radar the last four years, a more mellowed Knight returns to the Sweet 16, which launched three of his Indiana teams to the national championship.
Make no mistake. At 64, 26 wins shy of surpassing Dean Smith's Division I men's record of 879 victories, Knight still brings a sarcastic wit, tart tongue and fiery passion for winning to the sidelines. Asked about approaching Smith's record, he said, "I really haven't given it any thought. I've just been trying to figure out what flies I'm going to use next time I go fishing."
But bookend Sweet 16 to bookend Sweet 16, a different coach has evolved the last 11 years.
Ask his son, Pat Knight. He was on the bench as a player for that last Sweet 16 team. Saturday, as the Red Raiders (22-10) roared from 13 points behind to eliminate No. 3 seed Gonzaga 71-69, he was on the bench as his father's associate coach.
"He won't say it," the son said, "but he's a little more laid-back. Everybody thinks he chews everybody's (tail) out. But he doesn't. You're not going to turn on "SportsCenter" if he has his arm around some guy. He's his own worst enemy. They play all the bad stuff. But he doesn't get enough credit. He's really matured over the years. He's more mellow in a sense. It's an adjustment."
Life in Lubbock, said his son, has added years to his career.
"He would have already been retired" if he had stayed in Indiana, the younger Knight said. "We're kind of in the middle of nowhere. There's only one newspaper. You don't hear a lot about him. He likes it that way. People in town are great. It's not Mayberry, but no one bothers you."
Having a blast in Lubbock
With Knight's return to the Sweet 16, there's no hiding anymore.
Knight still coaches with the driven demeanor of a man on a mission, but he appears at peace with himself, his surroundings and, mostly, his players. He has particularly taken to 6-2 guard Ronald Ross, the former walk-on who has emerged as the team leader as a senior.
"I'm not sure in my time of coaching there's been a better story than Ronald Ross," Knight said. "The kid has had such a tremendous determination to be a good player."
"He could have been bitching and whining that he didn't have a scholarship, but I never heard the kid complain about anything. I've never had a kid I have more admiration for, particularly when he hit that three" to help beat Gonzaga.
Knight smiled, an occurrence that comes easier these days.
He still challenges the media. Asked about reports he had been contacted about the Tennessee basketball vacancy, he said, "I read something at some time during the season where I was interested in coaching a job that would be one of the last jobs — I mean I'd quit before I'd have taken it. I've got a little bit tired of that over my time in coaching."
Pressed whether that was a yes or no, he answered, "If you can't get an answer from that, you ought to go back to school."
He still gets in his players faces, perhaps none more so than Ross, who will make a triumphant return to his home state of New Mexico (he's from Hobbs) as the leader of a team few expected to get this far.
In Saturday's win, Knight pulled Ross aside during a break and unceremoniously chewed him out. Ross, who scored 52 points in the first two rounds, embraced the lashing — and then nailed a three-pointer with 1:09 left to give Tech the lead for good.
"It's all learning, teaching," Ross said. "When he gets on me, I listen and observe."
Knight, his son said, picks his spots and his players these days. He doesn't treat everybody the same. "We have a couple players he puts his arm around. No one sees that."
The Red Raiders, to a player, talk in admiring, almost loving terms about their coach. Asked the biggest misconception of Knight, Ross said, "People stereotype him and his ambition to win by saying that he yells too much."
Added sophomore guard Jarrius Jackson, "A lot of people confuse his desire to win when he is just trying to be competitive. He wants to win every game, and he expects the exact same thing from his players."
The respect appears mutual. Knight is clearly fond of this bunch of overachievers and has bonded with them. His son echoed the sentiment of Knight's longtime friend, teaching guru and Hall of Fame coach Pete Newell, who said this is one of Knight's better coaching jobs.
Knight doesn't agree. "If Pete thinks that, I appreciate that," he said. "But it's not as good as 32-0," a reference to his undefeated 1976 NCAA championship team at Indiana.
Even that team, however, takes a back seat in enjoyment for Knight to this one, a season he said has been a "wonderful experience."
"It's as enjoyable a team to watch and to be around as any I've ever had."
Still has the fire but mellower
Knight is embracing the moment. The big smile, the heartfelt hug with his wife, Karen, after the win against Gonzaga and the laughter with his players during the postgame news conference all portray a more approachable Knight.
He even poked fun at himself after the victory.
Asked about bringing his wife, a former coach, on the court, where they embraced, Knight said, "My wife is a better coach than I am. I wanted to thank her for all the help she'd given me in preparing for this game and season. She deserved to be a real part of this because she doesn't always agree with the way I coach. She thinks I do a lousy job with our post players."
Few would challenge the job he has done since arriving in Lubbock, however. The Red Raiders, always second fiddle to the football team, reached the Sweet 16 in 1996 and had another winning season before four consecutive losing seasons.
Enter Knight for the 2001-02 season. With Texas Tech's little tradition and even less of a recruiting base to build on, he has produced four consecutive 20-plus win seasons, three trips to the NCAA Tournament and now a Sweet 16 appearance.
He has done it with a team short on talent but long on desire. The Red Raiders play hard for their coach.
Down the stretch Saturday, forward Devonne Giles saved the game by grabbing one rebound with his pants falling off and another falling out of bounds before he called timeout.
That's the moxie and heart Knight has infused in this team.
"We're a good family, and with Coach Knight there are no limits," Ross said. "He's been really relaxed, but at the same time he's let us know what to do.
"People always ask, "Has he mellowed out?' But I don't think his desire to win has come down any. People doubted us, but with Coach Knight, you can never doubt anybody."
Knight's son acknowledged that getting back to the Sweet 16 "meant everything" to his father, but Dad defiantly balked. It was time to defend himself against critics who pointed out he was 3-8 in the NCAA Tournament since 1994 coming into this season's first round.
"In the years we had difficult times getting anywhere in the NCAA, maybe, just maybe, it was a real positive that we'd gotten that far and maybe we'd just run out of gas," Knight said.
"I don't think we were ever seeded lower than eighth. I never felt any real remorse for not going any farther than we did."
He's feeling a lot different now, bah-humbug.
By Greg Boeck, USA TODAY
TUCSON — Not long ago, Bob Knight was cast as the Scrooge of college basketball, the bah-humbug bad boy who threw chairs, bullied players, berated students and bashed the media. Once, he even insulted a country.
Times, and people, can change, as evidenced by Knight playfully whispering in one of his players ears for all to hear that he's "a lot like a latter-day Santa Claus" — and everybody, past media critics included, buying in with laughter.
This much is certain: Christmas came in March for Knight and his Texas Tech Red Raiders. Their surprising run as a No. 6 seed in the NCAA Tournament's Albuquerque Regional continues against West Virginia on Thursday, part of an improbable journey from zero tolerance to the Sweet 16 for Knight.
The onetime incorrigible coach appears to have come full cycle since last taking a team — Indiana — to the Sweet 16 in 1994. Then, he was a ticking time bomb six years from losing his job for violating a zero-tolerance policy imposed by the basketball-crazed school after repeated behavior issues.
Now, in a far-off football hotbed where he has enjoyed life under the radar the last four years, a more mellowed Knight returns to the Sweet 16, which launched three of his Indiana teams to the national championship.
Make no mistake. At 64, 26 wins shy of surpassing Dean Smith's Division I men's record of 879 victories, Knight still brings a sarcastic wit, tart tongue and fiery passion for winning to the sidelines. Asked about approaching Smith's record, he said, "I really haven't given it any thought. I've just been trying to figure out what flies I'm going to use next time I go fishing."
But bookend Sweet 16 to bookend Sweet 16, a different coach has evolved the last 11 years.
Ask his son, Pat Knight. He was on the bench as a player for that last Sweet 16 team. Saturday, as the Red Raiders (22-10) roared from 13 points behind to eliminate No. 3 seed Gonzaga 71-69, he was on the bench as his father's associate coach.
"He won't say it," the son said, "but he's a little more laid-back. Everybody thinks he chews everybody's (tail) out. But he doesn't. You're not going to turn on "SportsCenter" if he has his arm around some guy. He's his own worst enemy. They play all the bad stuff. But he doesn't get enough credit. He's really matured over the years. He's more mellow in a sense. It's an adjustment."
Life in Lubbock, said his son, has added years to his career.
"He would have already been retired" if he had stayed in Indiana, the younger Knight said. "We're kind of in the middle of nowhere. There's only one newspaper. You don't hear a lot about him. He likes it that way. People in town are great. It's not Mayberry, but no one bothers you."
Having a blast in Lubbock
With Knight's return to the Sweet 16, there's no hiding anymore.
Knight still coaches with the driven demeanor of a man on a mission, but he appears at peace with himself, his surroundings and, mostly, his players. He has particularly taken to 6-2 guard Ronald Ross, the former walk-on who has emerged as the team leader as a senior.
"I'm not sure in my time of coaching there's been a better story than Ronald Ross," Knight said. "The kid has had such a tremendous determination to be a good player."
"He could have been bitching and whining that he didn't have a scholarship, but I never heard the kid complain about anything. I've never had a kid I have more admiration for, particularly when he hit that three" to help beat Gonzaga.
Knight smiled, an occurrence that comes easier these days.
He still challenges the media. Asked about reports he had been contacted about the Tennessee basketball vacancy, he said, "I read something at some time during the season where I was interested in coaching a job that would be one of the last jobs — I mean I'd quit before I'd have taken it. I've got a little bit tired of that over my time in coaching."
Pressed whether that was a yes or no, he answered, "If you can't get an answer from that, you ought to go back to school."
He still gets in his players faces, perhaps none more so than Ross, who will make a triumphant return to his home state of New Mexico (he's from Hobbs) as the leader of a team few expected to get this far.
In Saturday's win, Knight pulled Ross aside during a break and unceremoniously chewed him out. Ross, who scored 52 points in the first two rounds, embraced the lashing — and then nailed a three-pointer with 1:09 left to give Tech the lead for good.
"It's all learning, teaching," Ross said. "When he gets on me, I listen and observe."
Knight, his son said, picks his spots and his players these days. He doesn't treat everybody the same. "We have a couple players he puts his arm around. No one sees that."
The Red Raiders, to a player, talk in admiring, almost loving terms about their coach. Asked the biggest misconception of Knight, Ross said, "People stereotype him and his ambition to win by saying that he yells too much."
Added sophomore guard Jarrius Jackson, "A lot of people confuse his desire to win when he is just trying to be competitive. He wants to win every game, and he expects the exact same thing from his players."
The respect appears mutual. Knight is clearly fond of this bunch of overachievers and has bonded with them. His son echoed the sentiment of Knight's longtime friend, teaching guru and Hall of Fame coach Pete Newell, who said this is one of Knight's better coaching jobs.
Knight doesn't agree. "If Pete thinks that, I appreciate that," he said. "But it's not as good as 32-0," a reference to his undefeated 1976 NCAA championship team at Indiana.
Even that team, however, takes a back seat in enjoyment for Knight to this one, a season he said has been a "wonderful experience."
"It's as enjoyable a team to watch and to be around as any I've ever had."
Still has the fire but mellower
Knight is embracing the moment. The big smile, the heartfelt hug with his wife, Karen, after the win against Gonzaga and the laughter with his players during the postgame news conference all portray a more approachable Knight.
He even poked fun at himself after the victory.
Asked about bringing his wife, a former coach, on the court, where they embraced, Knight said, "My wife is a better coach than I am. I wanted to thank her for all the help she'd given me in preparing for this game and season. She deserved to be a real part of this because she doesn't always agree with the way I coach. She thinks I do a lousy job with our post players."
Few would challenge the job he has done since arriving in Lubbock, however. The Red Raiders, always second fiddle to the football team, reached the Sweet 16 in 1996 and had another winning season before four consecutive losing seasons.
Enter Knight for the 2001-02 season. With Texas Tech's little tradition and even less of a recruiting base to build on, he has produced four consecutive 20-plus win seasons, three trips to the NCAA Tournament and now a Sweet 16 appearance.
He has done it with a team short on talent but long on desire. The Red Raiders play hard for their coach.
Down the stretch Saturday, forward Devonne Giles saved the game by grabbing one rebound with his pants falling off and another falling out of bounds before he called timeout.
That's the moxie and heart Knight has infused in this team.
"We're a good family, and with Coach Knight there are no limits," Ross said. "He's been really relaxed, but at the same time he's let us know what to do.
"People always ask, "Has he mellowed out?' But I don't think his desire to win has come down any. People doubted us, but with Coach Knight, you can never doubt anybody."
Knight's son acknowledged that getting back to the Sweet 16 "meant everything" to his father, but Dad defiantly balked. It was time to defend himself against critics who pointed out he was 3-8 in the NCAA Tournament since 1994 coming into this season's first round.
"In the years we had difficult times getting anywhere in the NCAA, maybe, just maybe, it was a real positive that we'd gotten that far and maybe we'd just run out of gas," Knight said.
"I don't think we were ever seeded lower than eighth. I never felt any real remorse for not going any farther than we did."
He's feeling a lot different now, bah-humbug.
Byron York: Hillary's Election Scam Bill
By Byron York
The Hill
March 21, 2005
Let’s say it’s Election Day 2008. You really, really, really want to vote for the Democratic nominee for president, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), but you’re not registered to vote. You also don’t have a driver’s license or any sort of official photo identification that would tell the people down at the polling place who you are.You don’t even have anything to show that you’re an American citizen.But it’s Election Day, and you still want to vote for Clinton. What do you do?
Well, you go right down to that polling place, tell them you want to register, on the spot, and vote. And if anybody questions you, tell them you don’t need a prior registration, or a photo ID, proof of citizenship or anything else.
Clinton said so.
She really did — just a few weeks ago, in the form of her new bill, the Count Every Vote Act of 2005.
Although Clinton calls the measure “critical to restoring America’s faith in our voting system,” it might more accurately be described as the most wide-ranging assault ever on the idea that there should be minimum enforceable standards for voters. Just look at some of its provisions.
One section says, “Each state shall permit an individual on the day of a Federal election to register to vote in such election at the polling place ... [and] to cast a vote in such election and have that vote counted in the same manner as a vote cast by an eligible voter who properly registered during the regular registration period.”
Another provision says, “Each state and jurisdiction shall accept and process a voter registration application for an election for Federal office unless there is a material omission or information that specifically affects the eligibility of the voter. There shall be a presumption that persons who submit voter registration applications should be registered.”
And a third section adds, “The following shall not constitute a ‘material omission or information that specifically affects the eligibility of the voter’: (1) The failure to provide a Social Security number or driver’s license number. (2) The failure to provide information concerning citizenship or age in a manner other than” a simple statement that one is a citizen.
Put all those together and you have a recipe for chaos. Anyone can show up on Election Day, register and vote, and officials would have no way of knowing whether that person was eligible to vote or not. All Clinton would require is that the person “affirm” that he or she is eligible to vote.
And, as they say, that’s not all.
The Count Every Vote Act of 2005 would also require states to allow anyone to cast a provisional vote anywhere in a state, no questions asked. The number of provisional votes one might cast would be limited only by the number of polling places that could be visited in a day.
The bill would also allow felons to vote after they’ve done their time and are off probation (this is the provision that attracted a lot of criticism from conservatives, although it’s hardly the worst thing in the bill). And it would require that the federal government force states to ensure “an equal waiting time for all voters” at all polling places.Seriously. The bill actually directs the federal Election Assistance Commission to devise a formula for voting line length.
That formula would be based on “the voting age population; voter turnout in past elections; the number of voters registered; the number of voters who have registered since the most recent federal election; Census data for the population served by such voting site; the educational levels and socio-economic factors of the population served by such voting site; the needs and numbers of disabled voters and voters with limited English proficiency; [and] the type of voting systems used.”
And those are not even the most important parts of the bill, at least according to Clinton. The most crucial provision, she says, is the one requiring that voting machines produce an “individual voter-verifiable paper record” of each vote. That’s a nod to those Democrats who believe that Karl Rove somehow personally hacked the touch-screen voting machines in Ohio to deny Sen. John Kerry his rightful victory.
Making touch-screen machines produce a paper record turns out to be quite complicated, introducing new possibilities for error into the process. But what the hell? — Clinton’s entire bill introduces all sorts of new possibilities for error into the process.
In fact, the Count Every Vote Act of 2005 might be viewed as a massive, wholly intentional attempt to introduce new possibilities for error into the system, with the hope that most of the errors will benefit Democrats.
Clinton says her bill will “improve the franchise and truly improve our democracy.”
Even if she has to wreck the system to do it.
The Hill
March 21, 2005
Let’s say it’s Election Day 2008. You really, really, really want to vote for the Democratic nominee for president, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), but you’re not registered to vote. You also don’t have a driver’s license or any sort of official photo identification that would tell the people down at the polling place who you are.You don’t even have anything to show that you’re an American citizen.But it’s Election Day, and you still want to vote for Clinton. What do you do?
Well, you go right down to that polling place, tell them you want to register, on the spot, and vote. And if anybody questions you, tell them you don’t need a prior registration, or a photo ID, proof of citizenship or anything else.
Clinton said so.
She really did — just a few weeks ago, in the form of her new bill, the Count Every Vote Act of 2005.
Although Clinton calls the measure “critical to restoring America’s faith in our voting system,” it might more accurately be described as the most wide-ranging assault ever on the idea that there should be minimum enforceable standards for voters. Just look at some of its provisions.
One section says, “Each state shall permit an individual on the day of a Federal election to register to vote in such election at the polling place ... [and] to cast a vote in such election and have that vote counted in the same manner as a vote cast by an eligible voter who properly registered during the regular registration period.”
Another provision says, “Each state and jurisdiction shall accept and process a voter registration application for an election for Federal office unless there is a material omission or information that specifically affects the eligibility of the voter. There shall be a presumption that persons who submit voter registration applications should be registered.”
And a third section adds, “The following shall not constitute a ‘material omission or information that specifically affects the eligibility of the voter’: (1) The failure to provide a Social Security number or driver’s license number. (2) The failure to provide information concerning citizenship or age in a manner other than” a simple statement that one is a citizen.
Put all those together and you have a recipe for chaos. Anyone can show up on Election Day, register and vote, and officials would have no way of knowing whether that person was eligible to vote or not. All Clinton would require is that the person “affirm” that he or she is eligible to vote.
And, as they say, that’s not all.
The Count Every Vote Act of 2005 would also require states to allow anyone to cast a provisional vote anywhere in a state, no questions asked. The number of provisional votes one might cast would be limited only by the number of polling places that could be visited in a day.
The bill would also allow felons to vote after they’ve done their time and are off probation (this is the provision that attracted a lot of criticism from conservatives, although it’s hardly the worst thing in the bill). And it would require that the federal government force states to ensure “an equal waiting time for all voters” at all polling places.Seriously. The bill actually directs the federal Election Assistance Commission to devise a formula for voting line length.
That formula would be based on “the voting age population; voter turnout in past elections; the number of voters registered; the number of voters who have registered since the most recent federal election; Census data for the population served by such voting site; the educational levels and socio-economic factors of the population served by such voting site; the needs and numbers of disabled voters and voters with limited English proficiency; [and] the type of voting systems used.”
And those are not even the most important parts of the bill, at least according to Clinton. The most crucial provision, she says, is the one requiring that voting machines produce an “individual voter-verifiable paper record” of each vote. That’s a nod to those Democrats who believe that Karl Rove somehow personally hacked the touch-screen voting machines in Ohio to deny Sen. John Kerry his rightful victory.
Making touch-screen machines produce a paper record turns out to be quite complicated, introducing new possibilities for error into the process. But what the hell? — Clinton’s entire bill introduces all sorts of new possibilities for error into the process.
In fact, the Count Every Vote Act of 2005 might be viewed as a massive, wholly intentional attempt to introduce new possibilities for error into the system, with the hope that most of the errors will benefit Democrats.
Clinton says her bill will “improve the franchise and truly improve our democracy.”
Even if she has to wreck the system to do it.
Peggy Noonan: 'Don't Kick It'
PEGGY NOONAN
If Terri Schiavo is killed, Republicans will pay a political price.
Friday, March 18, 2005 1:37 p.m. EST
The Wall Street Journal
It appears we've reached the pivotal moment in the Terri Schiavo case, and it also appears our politicians, our senators and congressmen, might benefit from some observations.
In America today all big stories have three dimensions: a legal angle, a public-relations angle and a political angle. In the Schiavo case some of our politicians seem not to be fully appreciating the second and third. This is odd.
Here's both a political and a public-relations reality: The Republican Party controls the Senate, the House and the White House. The Republicans are in charge. They have the power. If they can't save this woman's life, they will face a reckoning from a sizable portion of their own base.
And they will of course deserve it.
This should concentrate their minds.
So should this: America is watching. As the deadline for removal of Mrs. Schiavo's feeding tube approaches, the story has broken through as never before in the media.
*******************
There is a passionate, highly motivated and sincere group of voters and activists who care deeply about whether Terri Schiavo is allowed to live. Their reasoning, ultimately, is this: Be on the side of life. They remind me of what Winston Churchill said once when he became home secretary in charge of England's prisons. He was seated at dinner with a jabbery lady who said that if she were ever given a life sentence she'd rather die than serve it. He reared back. No, he said, always choose life! "Death's the only thing you can't get out of!"
Just so. Life is full of surprise and lightning-like lurches. The person in a coma today wakes up tomorrow and says, "Is that you, mom?" Life is unknowable. Always give it a chance to shake your soul and upend reality.
The supporters of Terri Schiavo's right to continue living have fought for her heroically, through the courts and through the legislatures. They're still fighting. They really mean it. And they have memories.
On the other side of this debate, one would assume there is an equally well organized and passionate group of organizations deeply committed to removing Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. But that's not true. There's just about no one on the other side. Or rather there is one person, a disaffected husband who insists Terri once told him she didn't want to be kept alive by extraordinary measures.
He has fought the battle to kill her with a determination that at this point seems not single-minded or passionate but strange. His former wife's parents and family are eager to care for her and do care for her, every day. He doesn't have to do a thing. His wife is not kept alive by extraordinary measures--she breathes on her own, is not on a respirator. All she needs to continue existing--and to continue being alive so that life can produce whatever miracle it may produce--is a feeding tube.
It doesn't seem a lot.
So politically this is a struggle between many serious people who really mean it and one, just one, strange-o. And the few bearded and depressed-looking academics he's drawn to his side.
It is not at all in the political interests of senators and congressmen to earn the wrath of the pro-Schiavo group and the gratitude of the anti-Schiavo husband, by doing nothing.
So let me write a sentence I never thought I'd write: Politicians, please, think of yourselves! Move to help Terri Schiavo, and no one will be mad at you, and you'll keep a human being alive. Do nothing and you reap bitterness and help someone die.
This isn't hard, is it?
At the heart of the case at this point is a question: Is Terri Schiavo brain-dead? That is, is remedy, healing, physiologically impossible?
No. Oddly enough anyone who sees the film and tape of her can see that her brain tells her lungs to breathe, that she can open her eyes, that she seems to respond at times and to some degree to her family. She can laugh. (I heard it this morning on the news. It's a childlike chuckle.) In the language of computers she appears not to be a broken hard drive but a computer in deep hibernation. She looks like one of those coma cases that wind up in the news because the patient, for no clear reason, snaps to and returns to life and says, "Is it 1983? Is there still McDonald's? Can I have a burger?"
Again, life is mysterious. Medicine is full of happenings and events that leave brilliant doctors scratching their heads.
But in the end, it comes down to this: Why kill her? What is gained? What is good about it? Ronald Reagan used to say, in the early days of the abortion debate, when people would argue that the fetus may not really be a person, he'd say, "Well, if you come across a paper bag in the gutter and it seems something's in it and you don't know if it's alive, you don't kick it, do you?"
No, you don't.
So Congress: don't kick it. Let her live. Hard cases make bad law, but let her live. Precedents can begin to cascade, special pleas can become a flood, but let her live. Because she's human, and you're human.
*******************
A final note to the Republican leadership in the House and Senate: You have to pull out all the stops. You have to run over your chairmen if they're being obstructionist for this niggling reason and that. Run over their egos, run past their fatigue. You have to win on this. If you don't, you can't imagine how much you're going to lose. And from people who have faith in you.
Bill Frist and Tom DeLay and Jim Sensenbrenner and Denny Hastert and all the rest would be better off risking looking ridiculous and flying down to Florida, standing outside Terri Schiavo's room and physically restraining the poor harassed staff who may be told soon to remove her feeding tube, than standing by in Washington, helpless and tied in legislative knots, and doing nothing.
Issue whatever subpoena, call whatever witnesses, pass whatever emergency bill, but don't let this woman die.
Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "A Heart, a Cross, and a Flag" (Wall Street Journal Books/Simon & Schuster), a collection of post-Sept. 11 columns, which you can buy from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Thursdays.
If Terri Schiavo is killed, Republicans will pay a political price.
Friday, March 18, 2005 1:37 p.m. EST
The Wall Street Journal
It appears we've reached the pivotal moment in the Terri Schiavo case, and it also appears our politicians, our senators and congressmen, might benefit from some observations.
In America today all big stories have three dimensions: a legal angle, a public-relations angle and a political angle. In the Schiavo case some of our politicians seem not to be fully appreciating the second and third. This is odd.
Here's both a political and a public-relations reality: The Republican Party controls the Senate, the House and the White House. The Republicans are in charge. They have the power. If they can't save this woman's life, they will face a reckoning from a sizable portion of their own base.
And they will of course deserve it.
This should concentrate their minds.
So should this: America is watching. As the deadline for removal of Mrs. Schiavo's feeding tube approaches, the story has broken through as never before in the media.
*******************
There is a passionate, highly motivated and sincere group of voters and activists who care deeply about whether Terri Schiavo is allowed to live. Their reasoning, ultimately, is this: Be on the side of life. They remind me of what Winston Churchill said once when he became home secretary in charge of England's prisons. He was seated at dinner with a jabbery lady who said that if she were ever given a life sentence she'd rather die than serve it. He reared back. No, he said, always choose life! "Death's the only thing you can't get out of!"
Just so. Life is full of surprise and lightning-like lurches. The person in a coma today wakes up tomorrow and says, "Is that you, mom?" Life is unknowable. Always give it a chance to shake your soul and upend reality.
The supporters of Terri Schiavo's right to continue living have fought for her heroically, through the courts and through the legislatures. They're still fighting. They really mean it. And they have memories.
On the other side of this debate, one would assume there is an equally well organized and passionate group of organizations deeply committed to removing Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. But that's not true. There's just about no one on the other side. Or rather there is one person, a disaffected husband who insists Terri once told him she didn't want to be kept alive by extraordinary measures.
He has fought the battle to kill her with a determination that at this point seems not single-minded or passionate but strange. His former wife's parents and family are eager to care for her and do care for her, every day. He doesn't have to do a thing. His wife is not kept alive by extraordinary measures--she breathes on her own, is not on a respirator. All she needs to continue existing--and to continue being alive so that life can produce whatever miracle it may produce--is a feeding tube.
It doesn't seem a lot.
So politically this is a struggle between many serious people who really mean it and one, just one, strange-o. And the few bearded and depressed-looking academics he's drawn to his side.
It is not at all in the political interests of senators and congressmen to earn the wrath of the pro-Schiavo group and the gratitude of the anti-Schiavo husband, by doing nothing.
So let me write a sentence I never thought I'd write: Politicians, please, think of yourselves! Move to help Terri Schiavo, and no one will be mad at you, and you'll keep a human being alive. Do nothing and you reap bitterness and help someone die.
This isn't hard, is it?
At the heart of the case at this point is a question: Is Terri Schiavo brain-dead? That is, is remedy, healing, physiologically impossible?
No. Oddly enough anyone who sees the film and tape of her can see that her brain tells her lungs to breathe, that she can open her eyes, that she seems to respond at times and to some degree to her family. She can laugh. (I heard it this morning on the news. It's a childlike chuckle.) In the language of computers she appears not to be a broken hard drive but a computer in deep hibernation. She looks like one of those coma cases that wind up in the news because the patient, for no clear reason, snaps to and returns to life and says, "Is it 1983? Is there still McDonald's? Can I have a burger?"
Again, life is mysterious. Medicine is full of happenings and events that leave brilliant doctors scratching their heads.
But in the end, it comes down to this: Why kill her? What is gained? What is good about it? Ronald Reagan used to say, in the early days of the abortion debate, when people would argue that the fetus may not really be a person, he'd say, "Well, if you come across a paper bag in the gutter and it seems something's in it and you don't know if it's alive, you don't kick it, do you?"
No, you don't.
So Congress: don't kick it. Let her live. Hard cases make bad law, but let her live. Precedents can begin to cascade, special pleas can become a flood, but let her live. Because she's human, and you're human.
*******************
A final note to the Republican leadership in the House and Senate: You have to pull out all the stops. You have to run over your chairmen if they're being obstructionist for this niggling reason and that. Run over their egos, run past their fatigue. You have to win on this. If you don't, you can't imagine how much you're going to lose. And from people who have faith in you.
Bill Frist and Tom DeLay and Jim Sensenbrenner and Denny Hastert and all the rest would be better off risking looking ridiculous and flying down to Florida, standing outside Terri Schiavo's room and physically restraining the poor harassed staff who may be told soon to remove her feeding tube, than standing by in Washington, helpless and tied in legislative knots, and doing nothing.
Issue whatever subpoena, call whatever witnesses, pass whatever emergency bill, but don't let this woman die.
Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "A Heart, a Cross, and a Flag" (Wall Street Journal Books/Simon & Schuster), a collection of post-Sept. 11 columns, which you can buy from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Thursdays.
Saturday, March 19, 2005
Touchstone Magazine's Blog Presents a Number of Articles on Terry Schiavo's Dire Situation
[The following appears on the blog of Touchstone Magazine- http://merecomments.typepad.com]
http://www.touchstonemag.com
March 18, 2005
A Must-Read Article on Terri Schiavo
I doubt that readers of Mere Comments need much persuading about the moral gravamen of the Terri Schiavo case. But many may not know the extent of the evils being perpetrated. I urge everyone to read this calm, powerful article, by a Roman Catholic priest from Michigan, which is the best summation of the situation that I've seen. In it, they will learn just how thoroughly even the most minimal and reasonable forms of medical diagnosis and care have been withheld from Terri, for more than a decade. (Her husband has, for example, never permitted an MRI or PET examination of Terri.) They will learn how aggressively the courts have sought to suppress complicating evidence and testimony. And they will learn that the chief medical authority for the diagnosis of Terri's condition as one of a Persistent Vegetative State is Dr. Ronald Cranford, one of the nation's leading exponents of "the right to die" and physician-assisted suicide, a man who has advocated the "humane" starvation of Alzheimer's patients. It is not only the depravity of Terri's husband, but the corruption of the courts and the medical profession, that are on view in this appalling business.
Posted by Wilfred McClay at 09:30 PM Permalink TrackBack (0)
-->
Noonan: “Don’t Let This Woman Die”
I hope for their sakes Republican politicians are reading and heading this no-nonsense plea from Peggy Noonan in today’s editions of the Wall Street Journal.
Posted by Kenneth Tanner at 03:13 PM Permalink TrackBack (0)
-->
Sanity in Maine
Michael Harmon writing for the Portland (Maine) Herald wonders if our nation would stand by as we starved to death an animal shelter full of dogs and cats in, or a prisoner of war at Quantanamo, or a death row inmate at San Quentin. We know the answer.
Posted by Kenneth Tanner at 12:18 PM Permalink TrackBack (0)
-->
The New Pantagruel on Terry Schiavo
The editors of the intelligent, unafraid, kaleidoscopic, and ever-fascinating web-only magazine, The New Pantagruel, have issued a brief, to-the-point statement on the pending murder of Terry Schiavo that can be read here. Many of our readers will be sympathetic with its moral posture.
Posted by Kenneth Tanner at 01:27 AM Permalink TrackBack (0)
http://www.touchstonemag.com
March 18, 2005
A Must-Read Article on Terri Schiavo
I doubt that readers of Mere Comments need much persuading about the moral gravamen of the Terri Schiavo case. But many may not know the extent of the evils being perpetrated. I urge everyone to read this calm, powerful article, by a Roman Catholic priest from Michigan, which is the best summation of the situation that I've seen. In it, they will learn just how thoroughly even the most minimal and reasonable forms of medical diagnosis and care have been withheld from Terri, for more than a decade. (Her husband has, for example, never permitted an MRI or PET examination of Terri.) They will learn how aggressively the courts have sought to suppress complicating evidence and testimony. And they will learn that the chief medical authority for the diagnosis of Terri's condition as one of a Persistent Vegetative State is Dr. Ronald Cranford, one of the nation's leading exponents of "the right to die" and physician-assisted suicide, a man who has advocated the "humane" starvation of Alzheimer's patients. It is not only the depravity of Terri's husband, but the corruption of the courts and the medical profession, that are on view in this appalling business.
Posted by Wilfred McClay at 09:30 PM Permalink TrackBack (0)
-->
Noonan: “Don’t Let This Woman Die”
I hope for their sakes Republican politicians are reading and heading this no-nonsense plea from Peggy Noonan in today’s editions of the Wall Street Journal.
Posted by Kenneth Tanner at 03:13 PM Permalink TrackBack (0)
-->
Sanity in Maine
Michael Harmon writing for the Portland (Maine) Herald wonders if our nation would stand by as we starved to death an animal shelter full of dogs and cats in, or a prisoner of war at Quantanamo, or a death row inmate at San Quentin. We know the answer.
Posted by Kenneth Tanner at 12:18 PM Permalink TrackBack (0)
-->
The New Pantagruel on Terry Schiavo
The editors of the intelligent, unafraid, kaleidoscopic, and ever-fascinating web-only magazine, The New Pantagruel, have issued a brief, to-the-point statement on the pending murder of Terry Schiavo that can be read here. Many of our readers will be sympathetic with its moral posture.
Posted by Kenneth Tanner at 01:27 AM Permalink TrackBack (0)
Tim Townsend: Abusive Priests Often End Up in St. Louis
By Tim Townsend
TheSt. Louis Post-Dispatch
Saturday, Mar. 19 2005
The Rev. James McGreal of Seattle has admitted to sexually abusing hundreds of children between the 1960s and 1980s. The Seattle archdiocese has so far agreed to pay almost $10 million to 26 of those victims, but because of Washington's statute of limitations, McGreal has never been convicted of a crime. Because McGreal can't be sent to jail and has never been laicized (or defrocked) he is the responsibility of Seattle's archbishops.
For the last 20 years McGreal, now 81, has been living at the Vianney Renewal Center, near Dittmer in Jefferson County. Vianney and a nearby facility called RECON are the only two places in the country where bishops can permanently send dangerous pedophile priests. "For those who need to be in a completely supervised environment there are two centers, which as providence would have it, are both in this archdiocese in the United States," said St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke in a recent interview.
Three years after the Roman Catholic clergy sexual abuse crisis broke in Boston, U.S. bishops are struggling to figure out what to do with priests who have been removed from ministry for sexual abuse of minors. "This is a significant issue," said Sheila Kelly, deputy executive director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops's Office of Child and Youth Protection. "The basic concern is - are these people living and working in circumstances where they cannot continue to abuse children?"
The church reports that about 300 priests have been temporarily removed from ministry; the number permanently removed is unknown. What is certain is that the number is far greater than the roughly 40 priests the two Missouri facilities can handle, so dioceses have to be creative. That might mean, as it does in St. Louis, housing a handful of pedophile priests in the local archdiocesan retirement home. Or, as in the Chicago archdiocese, designating a facility just for priests with sexual disorders - a model several dioceses might be looking to emulate. Still others, like the Belleville priests removed from ministry in that diocese's mid-1990s sexual abuse scandal, simply live on their own in private residences. "Probably there are a number of dioceses who have yet to find an appropriate way in which to take care of these individuals," said Kathleen McChesney who, last month, left her position as executive director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops's Office of Child and Youth Protection. "There isn't a lot of guidance, not a lot of good models yet, as the best way to do this."
McChesney said efforts to confront the problem "are under way" within the U.S. bishops' conference. Burke said he would welcome the idea of guidelines. But victims of clergy sexual abuse and those concerned about the welfare of children are not likely to have much patience with U.S. bishops.
They are asking plenty of questions now about who is ultimately responsible for these men when the state is not. How much responsibility does a pedophile priest's own bishop have for the protection of children thousands of miles away? Should Seattle's archbishop, Alexander J. Brunett, be responsible for keeping daily tabs on McGreal in Missouri, for instance? Are the religious orders or men who run the facilities responsible if one of the residents walks away?
Although the judicial system says such men are free, they are not innocent. "Thank God that a number of these men, notwithstanding the horrible crimes they've committed, have the virtue to know that they need this help and will remain in such an institution," said Burke. "But I don't know what we can do with those men who are refusing to be in a protective environment."
Bishops trying to take responsibility for their problem priests are left with few options, said Greg Magnoni, a spokesman for Seattle's archdiocese. More often than not, they turn to the Missouri facilities for help. "What would people suggest a diocese do with men who have admitted their offense and who want to be watched over and protected?" Magnoni asks.
Often judges, not bishops, make the decision to send pedophile priests to Missouri. In 1996 two priests, the Rev. Thomas S. Schaefer, now 79, and the Rev. Alphonsus Smith, now 80, were sentenced to 16-year prison terms in Maryland for abusing boys in the 1970s and 1980s. Four months later, Circuit Judge William B. Spellbring Jr. reduced their sentences to five years of supervised probation, and sent them to be treated in Missouri. They completed probation in 2001 at the Vianney Renewal Center in Dittmer, but remain at the facility. In a recent interview Spellbring said he decided to take the men out of jail because their crimes had taken place long ago. Spellbring said he was told the priests would not have access to children, but he must rely on others to enforce that. He said his decision to let the priests out of jail might be different today. "It was never my intent to let these men die in jail ... but I'm not sure I would have let them out so soon had I known (the clergy sexual abuse crisis) was going to explode the way it did," he said. "At that point you have to take a stand and let the victims know you are behind them."
Critics say judges around the country are asked by bishops to send pedophile priests here instead of to jail, arguing that private, church-run centers save tax dollars. But David Clohessy, executive director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said "recent history shows the church has failed at this duty. Priests don't reform other priests."
VIANNEY
A religious order called the Servants of the Paraclete runs the Vianney Renewal Center in Ditmer in Jefferson County and until recently a flagship retreat center in Jemez Springs, New Mexico. The order does not have a sterling record. In 2002 the order was forced to close the treatment wing of its New Mexico center. Troubled priests from other states were sent to the center in the 1960s and 1970s. After treatment, an unknown number of pedophiles were dispatched to serve in New Mexico parishes. The Archdiocese of Santa Fe was subsequently the target of 187 sexual abuse cases. Archbishop Michael J. Sheehan expelled 20 priests after he took over the archdiocese in 1993. Late that year, the Servants of the Paraclete agreed to pay $5.6 million to settle cases of childhood sexual abuse that occured after a priest had left their treatment center. When the entire center closed for good in May, five priests were moved to the order's Missouri facility in rural Jefferson County.
The Servants of the Paraclete are an order of priests founded in 1947 in New Mexico. According to its Web site the order is "dedicated to ministry to priests and brothers with personal difficulties." The Servants' treatment consists of "holistic therapeutic programs . . . (combining) the best in spirituality, psychiatry, psychology, theology, medicine, sexuality, social awareness and physiology." The order opened Vianney Renewal Center in 1990.
The Servants also run St. Michael's Community in Sunset Hills, which treats priests who suffer from depression, alcoholism or other ills but are considered likely to return to their duties. Last spring the Servants tried to expand their 10-acre Vianney facility to 226 acres off Wade Road in far northwestern Jefferson County. But county residents protested, and the priests scrapped the project. The Rev. Peter Lechner, a priest and clinical psychologist who runs Vianney and is the Servants' leader, has said that priests who live there can leave only with permission from Vianney officials and that if priests don't agree to the rules, they must leave.
At least seven of the priests who live in the two Missouri facilities are registered sex offenders, but most have never been convicted of a crime. Those who live at the facilities in lieu of jail are usually under stricter monitoring than those sent there by their bishop and who go voluntarily. But problems occur when a priest living at Vianney walks away. "One of the problems - and we have a couple of cases in this archdiocese - is that a priest can take off on you and there isn't anything you can do," said Burke. The church doesn't have a police force, he added.
One of those who left Vianney was the Rev. William Wiebler, 72, who admitted to sexually abusing boys in Davenport, Iowa. Last spring, Wiebler moved to an apartment in University City near an elementary school and preschool. Officials at Vianney informed the Davenport bishop immediately of Wiebler's flight, and the Davenport diocese's attorneys soon told St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch. McCulloch's office quickly told University City police, but the Davenport diocese did not tell Burke for at least four months, and only then after Post-Dispatch reported on Wiebler's whereabouts. In January, the Davenport diocese said 12 more people had come forward to accuse Wiebler of abuse. Burke said Davenport's bishop is "using every form of moral persuasion to get him to come back."
RECON
RECON, also called the Wounded Brothers Project, has been operating since 1993 on a 280-acre wooded tract between Robertsville and Dittmer in eastern Franklin County, about six miles from Vianney. It also has a mixed record. Last month, a Wisconsin priest, the Rev. David J. Malsch, 66, admitted sending and receiving child pornography from his residence at RECON. U.S. Attorney Jim Martin said the facility "failed at preventing this priest from committing crimes and deplorable conduct."
RECON is a private nonprofit facility run by a Franciscan priest and a social worker. Though the facility is not affiliated with the Franciscan religious order, another Franciscan priest, the Rev. Dismas Bonner, serves on RECON's board. Neither of the facility's directors, the Rev. Bertin Miller or Mark Matousek, returned a reporter's calls. But Bonner said the facility was not a treatment center. He described it as "a home that's a kind of safe haven for these people to protect both them and society." Bonner said about 20 men live at RECON, but not all of them are there for sexual disorders.
As a nonprofit, RECON is required to file tax documents with the Internal Revenue Service, and does so under three names: RECON, Evergreen Hills Homes Inc. and Il Ritiro (which means "little retreat" in Italian). The last time documents were filed for Il Ritiro was for the fiscal year 2003, but according to fiscal year 2004 tax documents, RECON and Evergreen Hills together had assets totaling over $3 million. Gross receipts for "services performed" at RECON jumped from $234,000 in 1999 to almost $600,000 in 2002, enabling Miller to nearly double his salary to $71,500 in 2003 from $36,000 in 2000. Matousek's salary jumped to $61,500 from $45,000 in the same period. Such increases reflect the severity of the clergy sexual abuse crisis in recent years, and the desperate need the Catholic church has for places like Vianney and RECON.
The Diocese of Jefferson City recently said one of its priests, the Rev. John Degnan, who lives at RECON, has at least 17 allegations of child sexual abuse against him. Sister Ethel-Marie Biri, the chancellor of the diocese, said Degnan was sent to RECON in 2002 "because we felt he needed to be supervised for a long time. ... Our plan is that that's where he's going to stay." She said that because Degnan has not been convicted of a crime, he is living at RECON voluntarily, and that the diocese pays his way. If he decides to walk away, "our only lever is financial," said Biri. That means that if the priest left RECON, the diocese would stop supporting him.
Experts in sexual disorders involving children say the only way to make sure an offender's behavior is not repeated is to keep him away from children. Bonner said the men at RECON are "supervised when they go out - if they go out shopping, they have people who drive them and stay with them all the time. They are not roaming around the countryside." But Brenda Pavlik said her brother-in-law, the Rev. James Pavlik, a St. Louis priest who was removed from ministry in November 2000 and lives at RECON, has plenty of access to children. "He has a car and goes to visit his mother twice a week alone," she said. "He goes to movies, out to dinner and lunch. He comes to family gatherings at Easter and Christmas and there are plenty of his nephews and nieces around."
Another RECON resident, the Rev. Mark Roberts, was sent by a judge to Missouri from Nevada, despite the judge's knowledge that one of Roberts' victims lives 20 minutes from the facility. Burke met with Miller and Matousek of RECON in February to discuss Roberts' case, but said last week that he did not ask them about the general security of the facility. He said he would not interfere with the way RECON is run. "That meeting was out of concern for a particular young man whose admitted or confessed abuser is at that facility, and I was meeting with them about that," said Burke. "I did not express to them concerns about their oversight or about their security. I feel badly about this. These people are carrying out a very difficult service and a very important one and I don't want to be taking whacks at them - that's just not my intention at all. It's not our facility."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Reporter Tim Townsend writes about religious issues for the Post-Dispatch.
Reporter Tim Townsend E-mail: ttownsend@post-dispatch.com Phone: 314-340-8221
TheSt. Louis Post-Dispatch
Saturday, Mar. 19 2005
The Rev. James McGreal of Seattle has admitted to sexually abusing hundreds of children between the 1960s and 1980s. The Seattle archdiocese has so far agreed to pay almost $10 million to 26 of those victims, but because of Washington's statute of limitations, McGreal has never been convicted of a crime. Because McGreal can't be sent to jail and has never been laicized (or defrocked) he is the responsibility of Seattle's archbishops.
For the last 20 years McGreal, now 81, has been living at the Vianney Renewal Center, near Dittmer in Jefferson County. Vianney and a nearby facility called RECON are the only two places in the country where bishops can permanently send dangerous pedophile priests. "For those who need to be in a completely supervised environment there are two centers, which as providence would have it, are both in this archdiocese in the United States," said St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke in a recent interview.
Three years after the Roman Catholic clergy sexual abuse crisis broke in Boston, U.S. bishops are struggling to figure out what to do with priests who have been removed from ministry for sexual abuse of minors. "This is a significant issue," said Sheila Kelly, deputy executive director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops's Office of Child and Youth Protection. "The basic concern is - are these people living and working in circumstances where they cannot continue to abuse children?"
The church reports that about 300 priests have been temporarily removed from ministry; the number permanently removed is unknown. What is certain is that the number is far greater than the roughly 40 priests the two Missouri facilities can handle, so dioceses have to be creative. That might mean, as it does in St. Louis, housing a handful of pedophile priests in the local archdiocesan retirement home. Or, as in the Chicago archdiocese, designating a facility just for priests with sexual disorders - a model several dioceses might be looking to emulate. Still others, like the Belleville priests removed from ministry in that diocese's mid-1990s sexual abuse scandal, simply live on their own in private residences. "Probably there are a number of dioceses who have yet to find an appropriate way in which to take care of these individuals," said Kathleen McChesney who, last month, left her position as executive director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops's Office of Child and Youth Protection. "There isn't a lot of guidance, not a lot of good models yet, as the best way to do this."
McChesney said efforts to confront the problem "are under way" within the U.S. bishops' conference. Burke said he would welcome the idea of guidelines. But victims of clergy sexual abuse and those concerned about the welfare of children are not likely to have much patience with U.S. bishops.
They are asking plenty of questions now about who is ultimately responsible for these men when the state is not. How much responsibility does a pedophile priest's own bishop have for the protection of children thousands of miles away? Should Seattle's archbishop, Alexander J. Brunett, be responsible for keeping daily tabs on McGreal in Missouri, for instance? Are the religious orders or men who run the facilities responsible if one of the residents walks away?
Although the judicial system says such men are free, they are not innocent. "Thank God that a number of these men, notwithstanding the horrible crimes they've committed, have the virtue to know that they need this help and will remain in such an institution," said Burke. "But I don't know what we can do with those men who are refusing to be in a protective environment."
Bishops trying to take responsibility for their problem priests are left with few options, said Greg Magnoni, a spokesman for Seattle's archdiocese. More often than not, they turn to the Missouri facilities for help. "What would people suggest a diocese do with men who have admitted their offense and who want to be watched over and protected?" Magnoni asks.
Often judges, not bishops, make the decision to send pedophile priests to Missouri. In 1996 two priests, the Rev. Thomas S. Schaefer, now 79, and the Rev. Alphonsus Smith, now 80, were sentenced to 16-year prison terms in Maryland for abusing boys in the 1970s and 1980s. Four months later, Circuit Judge William B. Spellbring Jr. reduced their sentences to five years of supervised probation, and sent them to be treated in Missouri. They completed probation in 2001 at the Vianney Renewal Center in Dittmer, but remain at the facility. In a recent interview Spellbring said he decided to take the men out of jail because their crimes had taken place long ago. Spellbring said he was told the priests would not have access to children, but he must rely on others to enforce that. He said his decision to let the priests out of jail might be different today. "It was never my intent to let these men die in jail ... but I'm not sure I would have let them out so soon had I known (the clergy sexual abuse crisis) was going to explode the way it did," he said. "At that point you have to take a stand and let the victims know you are behind them."
Critics say judges around the country are asked by bishops to send pedophile priests here instead of to jail, arguing that private, church-run centers save tax dollars. But David Clohessy, executive director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said "recent history shows the church has failed at this duty. Priests don't reform other priests."
VIANNEY
A religious order called the Servants of the Paraclete runs the Vianney Renewal Center in Ditmer in Jefferson County and until recently a flagship retreat center in Jemez Springs, New Mexico. The order does not have a sterling record. In 2002 the order was forced to close the treatment wing of its New Mexico center. Troubled priests from other states were sent to the center in the 1960s and 1970s. After treatment, an unknown number of pedophiles were dispatched to serve in New Mexico parishes. The Archdiocese of Santa Fe was subsequently the target of 187 sexual abuse cases. Archbishop Michael J. Sheehan expelled 20 priests after he took over the archdiocese in 1993. Late that year, the Servants of the Paraclete agreed to pay $5.6 million to settle cases of childhood sexual abuse that occured after a priest had left their treatment center. When the entire center closed for good in May, five priests were moved to the order's Missouri facility in rural Jefferson County.
The Servants of the Paraclete are an order of priests founded in 1947 in New Mexico. According to its Web site the order is "dedicated to ministry to priests and brothers with personal difficulties." The Servants' treatment consists of "holistic therapeutic programs . . . (combining) the best in spirituality, psychiatry, psychology, theology, medicine, sexuality, social awareness and physiology." The order opened Vianney Renewal Center in 1990.
The Servants also run St. Michael's Community in Sunset Hills, which treats priests who suffer from depression, alcoholism or other ills but are considered likely to return to their duties. Last spring the Servants tried to expand their 10-acre Vianney facility to 226 acres off Wade Road in far northwestern Jefferson County. But county residents protested, and the priests scrapped the project. The Rev. Peter Lechner, a priest and clinical psychologist who runs Vianney and is the Servants' leader, has said that priests who live there can leave only with permission from Vianney officials and that if priests don't agree to the rules, they must leave.
At least seven of the priests who live in the two Missouri facilities are registered sex offenders, but most have never been convicted of a crime. Those who live at the facilities in lieu of jail are usually under stricter monitoring than those sent there by their bishop and who go voluntarily. But problems occur when a priest living at Vianney walks away. "One of the problems - and we have a couple of cases in this archdiocese - is that a priest can take off on you and there isn't anything you can do," said Burke. The church doesn't have a police force, he added.
One of those who left Vianney was the Rev. William Wiebler, 72, who admitted to sexually abusing boys in Davenport, Iowa. Last spring, Wiebler moved to an apartment in University City near an elementary school and preschool. Officials at Vianney informed the Davenport bishop immediately of Wiebler's flight, and the Davenport diocese's attorneys soon told St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch. McCulloch's office quickly told University City police, but the Davenport diocese did not tell Burke for at least four months, and only then after Post-Dispatch reported on Wiebler's whereabouts. In January, the Davenport diocese said 12 more people had come forward to accuse Wiebler of abuse. Burke said Davenport's bishop is "using every form of moral persuasion to get him to come back."
RECON
RECON, also called the Wounded Brothers Project, has been operating since 1993 on a 280-acre wooded tract between Robertsville and Dittmer in eastern Franklin County, about six miles from Vianney. It also has a mixed record. Last month, a Wisconsin priest, the Rev. David J. Malsch, 66, admitted sending and receiving child pornography from his residence at RECON. U.S. Attorney Jim Martin said the facility "failed at preventing this priest from committing crimes and deplorable conduct."
RECON is a private nonprofit facility run by a Franciscan priest and a social worker. Though the facility is not affiliated with the Franciscan religious order, another Franciscan priest, the Rev. Dismas Bonner, serves on RECON's board. Neither of the facility's directors, the Rev. Bertin Miller or Mark Matousek, returned a reporter's calls. But Bonner said the facility was not a treatment center. He described it as "a home that's a kind of safe haven for these people to protect both them and society." Bonner said about 20 men live at RECON, but not all of them are there for sexual disorders.
As a nonprofit, RECON is required to file tax documents with the Internal Revenue Service, and does so under three names: RECON, Evergreen Hills Homes Inc. and Il Ritiro (which means "little retreat" in Italian). The last time documents were filed for Il Ritiro was for the fiscal year 2003, but according to fiscal year 2004 tax documents, RECON and Evergreen Hills together had assets totaling over $3 million. Gross receipts for "services performed" at RECON jumped from $234,000 in 1999 to almost $600,000 in 2002, enabling Miller to nearly double his salary to $71,500 in 2003 from $36,000 in 2000. Matousek's salary jumped to $61,500 from $45,000 in the same period. Such increases reflect the severity of the clergy sexual abuse crisis in recent years, and the desperate need the Catholic church has for places like Vianney and RECON.
The Diocese of Jefferson City recently said one of its priests, the Rev. John Degnan, who lives at RECON, has at least 17 allegations of child sexual abuse against him. Sister Ethel-Marie Biri, the chancellor of the diocese, said Degnan was sent to RECON in 2002 "because we felt he needed to be supervised for a long time. ... Our plan is that that's where he's going to stay." She said that because Degnan has not been convicted of a crime, he is living at RECON voluntarily, and that the diocese pays his way. If he decides to walk away, "our only lever is financial," said Biri. That means that if the priest left RECON, the diocese would stop supporting him.
Experts in sexual disorders involving children say the only way to make sure an offender's behavior is not repeated is to keep him away from children. Bonner said the men at RECON are "supervised when they go out - if they go out shopping, they have people who drive them and stay with them all the time. They are not roaming around the countryside." But Brenda Pavlik said her brother-in-law, the Rev. James Pavlik, a St. Louis priest who was removed from ministry in November 2000 and lives at RECON, has plenty of access to children. "He has a car and goes to visit his mother twice a week alone," she said. "He goes to movies, out to dinner and lunch. He comes to family gatherings at Easter and Christmas and there are plenty of his nephews and nieces around."
Another RECON resident, the Rev. Mark Roberts, was sent by a judge to Missouri from Nevada, despite the judge's knowledge that one of Roberts' victims lives 20 minutes from the facility. Burke met with Miller and Matousek of RECON in February to discuss Roberts' case, but said last week that he did not ask them about the general security of the facility. He said he would not interfere with the way RECON is run. "That meeting was out of concern for a particular young man whose admitted or confessed abuser is at that facility, and I was meeting with them about that," said Burke. "I did not express to them concerns about their oversight or about their security. I feel badly about this. These people are carrying out a very difficult service and a very important one and I don't want to be taking whacks at them - that's just not my intention at all. It's not our facility."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Reporter Tim Townsend writes about religious issues for the Post-Dispatch.
Reporter Tim Townsend E-mail: ttownsend@post-dispatch.com Phone: 314-340-8221
Chuck Finder: Steroids Expert Laughs at Testimony
Saturday, March 19, 2005
By Chuck Finder, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/
One expert and experienced Capitol Hill witness watched the Congressional steroid hearing Thursday and couldn't help but laugh.
To him, the testimony of the five past and present major-leaguers was so thigh-slapping wacky that even abuser-turned-author Jose Canseco came off as the most credible witness, outside of the medical experts.
"The other baseball players, when they were doing their routines, it seemed like they were doing a 'Saturday Night Live' skit," said Chuck Yesalis, a Penn State professor, researcher and author in the field of performance-enhancing drugs. Boston's "Curt Schilling reminded me of Michael Corleone's uncle appearing before the Senate in 'Godfather 2.' When asked about the Cosa Nostra ... 'I never heard of it. I'm in the olive oil business.'
"I was laughing out loud, it was so funny.
Yesalis testified last week before a House Energy and Commerce Committee in a warm-up to the 11 1/2-hour session Thursday with the House Committee on Government Reform, and it "was far less comical than this hearing."
Some of the commentary was so absurd to Yesalis and his research findings of the past 27 years, that a friend and former steroid user kept telephoning his State College home during the breaks in testimony to chuckle over it: former Steelers lineman Steve Courson.
In their view, any discussion of performance-enhancing drugs must involve embracing two premises that this hearing proved no one inside Room 2154 of the Rayburn Building would accept:
All drug-testing is flawed to some degree.
You have to admit to a steroid problem before you can attempt to beat it -- something professional sports owners might not do, considering bigger and better athletes make money for the baseball, football or other teams that employ them.
Moreover, Yesalis said, speaking seriously of the gravity of any such discussion, "Far beyond drugs and sports, this is a major social issue here. Our kids are doing these drugs."
Medical experts and politicians alike quoted figures that showed about 500,000 American high school students have used performance-enhancing drugs at least once. Yesalis is the researcher who struck upon that figure in 1988, though he said it probably has doubled since.
He credited President Bush with igniting political interest in the subject, with the President mentioning it in his State of the Union address and with his administration placing a federal spotlight on the BALCO investigation in California.
But discussion has to be meaningful in order to make any advances, and what Yesalis heard from the televised hearings didn't satisfy that requirement.
For one, Schilling had been outspoken previously about the rampant use of steroids in baseball. In front of the TV cameras and many of the 39-member committee Thursday, he stated that he knew of only five to 10 teammates who used them over the past decade and a half. Meanwhile, Baltimore's Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro denied using steroids, and retired slugger Mark McGwire declined to speak on the matter despite admitting to using a steroid compound, androstenedione, then permissible in baseball while breaking the home run record in 1998.
"As Canseco said, we need to agree this is a problem," Yesalis said. "If you listen to these other guys, he was the only one to take steroids. That was laugh-out-loud funny."
He found himself agreeing with Canseco on the notion that self-correction won't happen under commissioner Bud Selig and Major League Baseball Players Association boss Donald Fehr.
"I don't think that's going to happen," Yesalis said. "It bothers me that government is sticking its nose into private business. It will argue, appropriately so, about the health and welfare of children."
And it also has baseball's antitrust powers in its hands, a tool that many members of Congress threatened to invoke if the game didn't clean up its perceived steroid problem and strengthen its new drug policy.
"The reason they're not listening is these drugs are helping their business, not hurting their business," Yesalis said.
He added he could make the argument that performance-enhancing drugs also helped to enhance bottom lines, turning owners' franchises into billion-dollar assets. He said as much in his March 10 introductory remarks on Capitol Hill.
Yesalis also maintains that drug-testing, especially the Olympic form that continuously was called "the gold standard" in these hearings, has loopholes through which he could drive an Abrams tank "and not scrape the body armor." He testified he could take a team of steroid cheats and pass the standard drug test every day, what with masking agents and expertise at the disposal of wealthy and insulated elite athletes. Such performance-enhancing drugs as human growth hormone, insulin and BALCO's infamous "cream" and "clear" still avoid detection in testing.
"There are a ton of people, including Congress in that room, who believe drug-testing will solve the issue," he said. "That's what causes my hair to hurt more than anything else."
Drug-testing is beneficial at the professional level as a public-relations tool and a way to ferret out the less-schooled cheats, he added. Major League Baseball would be wise to adopt the committee's suggestions, though.
"These guys are ticked off," Yesalis said. "You want to see tough guys? Mess with these national politicians."
(Chuck Finder can be reached at cfinder@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1724.)
By Chuck Finder, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.post-gazette.com/
One expert and experienced Capitol Hill witness watched the Congressional steroid hearing Thursday and couldn't help but laugh.
To him, the testimony of the five past and present major-leaguers was so thigh-slapping wacky that even abuser-turned-author Jose Canseco came off as the most credible witness, outside of the medical experts.
"The other baseball players, when they were doing their routines, it seemed like they were doing a 'Saturday Night Live' skit," said Chuck Yesalis, a Penn State professor, researcher and author in the field of performance-enhancing drugs. Boston's "Curt Schilling reminded me of Michael Corleone's uncle appearing before the Senate in 'Godfather 2.' When asked about the Cosa Nostra ... 'I never heard of it. I'm in the olive oil business.'"I was laughing out loud, it was so funny.
Yesalis testified last week before a House Energy and Commerce Committee in a warm-up to the 11 1/2-hour session Thursday with the House Committee on Government Reform, and it "was far less comical than this hearing."
Some of the commentary was so absurd to Yesalis and his research findings of the past 27 years, that a friend and former steroid user kept telephoning his State College home during the breaks in testimony to chuckle over it: former Steelers lineman Steve Courson.
In their view, any discussion of performance-enhancing drugs must involve embracing two premises that this hearing proved no one inside Room 2154 of the Rayburn Building would accept:
All drug-testing is flawed to some degree.
You have to admit to a steroid problem before you can attempt to beat it -- something professional sports owners might not do, considering bigger and better athletes make money for the baseball, football or other teams that employ them.
Moreover, Yesalis said, speaking seriously of the gravity of any such discussion, "Far beyond drugs and sports, this is a major social issue here. Our kids are doing these drugs."
Medical experts and politicians alike quoted figures that showed about 500,000 American high school students have used performance-enhancing drugs at least once. Yesalis is the researcher who struck upon that figure in 1988, though he said it probably has doubled since.
He credited President Bush with igniting political interest in the subject, with the President mentioning it in his State of the Union address and with his administration placing a federal spotlight on the BALCO investigation in California.
But discussion has to be meaningful in order to make any advances, and what Yesalis heard from the televised hearings didn't satisfy that requirement.
For one, Schilling had been outspoken previously about the rampant use of steroids in baseball. In front of the TV cameras and many of the 39-member committee Thursday, he stated that he knew of only five to 10 teammates who used them over the past decade and a half. Meanwhile, Baltimore's Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro denied using steroids, and retired slugger Mark McGwire declined to speak on the matter despite admitting to using a steroid compound, androstenedione, then permissible in baseball while breaking the home run record in 1998.
"As Canseco said, we need to agree this is a problem," Yesalis said. "If you listen to these other guys, he was the only one to take steroids. That was laugh-out-loud funny."
He found himself agreeing with Canseco on the notion that self-correction won't happen under commissioner Bud Selig and Major League Baseball Players Association boss Donald Fehr.
"I don't think that's going to happen," Yesalis said. "It bothers me that government is sticking its nose into private business. It will argue, appropriately so, about the health and welfare of children."
And it also has baseball's antitrust powers in its hands, a tool that many members of Congress threatened to invoke if the game didn't clean up its perceived steroid problem and strengthen its new drug policy.
"The reason they're not listening is these drugs are helping their business, not hurting their business," Yesalis said.
He added he could make the argument that performance-enhancing drugs also helped to enhance bottom lines, turning owners' franchises into billion-dollar assets. He said as much in his March 10 introductory remarks on Capitol Hill.
Yesalis also maintains that drug-testing, especially the Olympic form that continuously was called "the gold standard" in these hearings, has loopholes through which he could drive an Abrams tank "and not scrape the body armor." He testified he could take a team of steroid cheats and pass the standard drug test every day, what with masking agents and expertise at the disposal of wealthy and insulated elite athletes. Such performance-enhancing drugs as human growth hormone, insulin and BALCO's infamous "cream" and "clear" still avoid detection in testing.
"There are a ton of people, including Congress in that room, who believe drug-testing will solve the issue," he said. "That's what causes my hair to hurt more than anything else."
Drug-testing is beneficial at the professional level as a public-relations tool and a way to ferret out the less-schooled cheats, he added. Major League Baseball would be wise to adopt the committee's suggestions, though.
"These guys are ticked off," Yesalis said. "You want to see tough guys? Mess with these national politicians."
(Chuck Finder can be reached at cfinder@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1724.)
Friday, March 18, 2005
Jay Marriotti: Home-run Heroes Come Off as Zeros
Home-run heroes come off as zeros before Congress
March 18, 2005
BY JAY MARIOTTI
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
The man who once flaunted the biggest muscles in baseball, Mark McGwire, is now the smallest coward in Washington. Sammy Sosa, who contrived a b.s. story when his bat was corked, still comes off as a smiling sneak with "nothing to say'' because he's hiding behind a language barrier that doesn't exist.
And to think I wasted brain cells glorifying their home runs, their charm, their place in American lore. Shame on me for believing it, shame on baseball for selling it, shame on McGwire for playing the hero and then hiding behind the Fifth Amendment when under oath Thursday and facing the masses who adored him.
"I'm not here to discuss the past,'' he said, fighting back tears all afternoon. "I'm here to be positive, not negative.''
Big Fib, we'll call him. Never mind that McGwire was the one who turned a positive into a negative like no so-called sports icon of recent time. He's the positive one, the rest of us are negative nabobs. All I can say is, when his name appears on my Hall of Fame ballot in two years, I will not vote for him any more than I would for Pete Rose. As for Sosa, I'd love to believe his proclaimed innocence before the House Government Reform Committee -- "To be clear, I have never taken illegal performance-enhancing drugs,'' he said -- if an attorney hadn't read the statement for him and Sammy didn't repeatedly mumble, stare at the tabletop and either issue non-answers to important questions or agree with whatever Rafael Palmeiro or Curt Schilling said before him.
"I don't have much to tell you,'' said Sosa, mannequin-like.
Hearing all of this crud, I concur with Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.), a Hall of Famer who talked tough about baseball's crooked era. "If they started in 1992 or 1993 illegally using steroids, wipe all of their records out,'' Bunning said. "Take them away. They don't deserve them. Go ask Henry Aaron. Go ask the family of Roger Maris. Go ask all of the people that played without enhanced drugs if they would like their records compared with the current records.''
On the day when a flim-flam pastime was exposed as institutionally dishonest and chemically scummy, the day when kids of all ages realized they can't trust athletes as role models, a supposed benchmark year in our land's sacred sports history -- 1998 -- officially died. May we purge all those memories from our minds, like a lemon car or a cheating girlfriend, and pretend they never happened. Starting in midmorning and continuing long past dinner, the committee plowed through a trail of deceit and mismanagement in baseball's steroids crisis. Much of it surrounded the blindness of commissioner Bud Selig, who testified he knew little about steroids until waking up seven years ago and reading that androstenedione was found in McGwire's locker -- even though Selig was quoted in published stories about steroids as early as 1993. But we already knew Bud Light was a sham.
McGwire's reticence regrettable
McGwire's performance was utterly disgraceful. I've never felt more embarrassed for an athlete in a character-defining scene. Once called "a true American hero'' by then-President Clinton, Big Fib announced in his opening statement that he wouldn't discuss steroids directly and, true to his vow, refused to answer the committee's most probing questions. He would have been better off going incognito and relocating to Mexico, especially after the anguished statements of Donald Hooton, he of the famous baseball Hootons, who believes that his 17-year-old son, Taylor, hanged himself two years ago because of the psychological effects of steroid use.
"Players that are guilty of taking steroids are not only cheaters -- you are cowards,'' Hooton said in a charged voice. "You hide behind the skirts of your union, and with the help of management and your lawyers, you've made every effort to resist facing the public today.''
Minutes later, McGwire walked right into Hooton's description. Voice shaking, words quivering, he took a long gulp of water and said, "If a player answers, 'No,' he simply will not be believed. If he answers, 'Yes,' he risks public scorn and endless government investigations. My lawyers have advised me that I can't answer these questions without jeopardizing my family, my friends or myself.'' Public scorn? Last I looked, America was forgiving to those who fess up. What is wrong with government probes when Congress, as stated often, is making sure kids don't risk their lives using steroids because their heroes are using steroids? In one breath, Big Fib acknowledged there's "a problem with steroid use in baseball.'' But he added, "What I will not do is participate in naming names and implicating my friends and teammates.'' So he played with people who used steroids. There's a start.
But when the committee wanted to know more, McGwire clammed up. Should baseball have a zero-tolerance policy?
"I don't know. I'm a retired player,'' he said.
Does he consider steroid use to be cheating?
"That's not for me to determine,'' he said.
'Positive' spin backfires
Finally, after another "I'm here to be positive'' answer, Rep. Elijah Cummings laid into him. "I'm trying to be positive here, too,'' he challenged McGwire. "It's one thing for you to say you want to help, but it's a whole other thing when the parents [of Tyler Hooton] are sitting directly behind you, wondering if it's real.'' McGwire vowed to "redirect'' the aim of his foundation to steroids.
The committee wasn't impressed.
"Theater of the absurd,'' Rep. Tom Lantos said.
"If Enron people come in here and say, 'We don't want to talk about the past,' do you think Congress is going to let them get away with that?'' Rep. Mark Souder scolded. "If we don't talk about the past, how in the world are we supposed to pass legislation when you are a protected monopoly?''
But then, McGwire was following orders. So was Sosa, who opened the day by staring at an attorney who read the slugger's words: "Everything I have heard about steroids and human growth hormones is that they are very bad for you, even lethal. I would never put anything dangerous like that in my body.
"I am clean.''
So why am I off to take a long, hot, extra-strength-detergent bath?
Jay Mariotti is a regular on ''Around the Horn'' at 4 p.m. on ESPN. Send e-mail to inbox@suntimes.com with name, hometown and daytime phone number (letters run Sunday).
March 18, 2005
BY JAY MARIOTTI
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
The man who once flaunted the biggest muscles in baseball, Mark McGwire, is now the smallest coward in Washington. Sammy Sosa, who contrived a b.s. story when his bat was corked, still comes off as a smiling sneak with "nothing to say'' because he's hiding behind a language barrier that doesn't exist.
And to think I wasted brain cells glorifying their home runs, their charm, their place in American lore. Shame on me for believing it, shame on baseball for selling it, shame on McGwire for playing the hero and then hiding behind the Fifth Amendment when under oath Thursday and facing the masses who adored him.
"I'm not here to discuss the past,'' he said, fighting back tears all afternoon. "I'm here to be positive, not negative.''
Big Fib, we'll call him. Never mind that McGwire was the one who turned a positive into a negative like no so-called sports icon of recent time. He's the positive one, the rest of us are negative nabobs. All I can say is, when his name appears on my Hall of Fame ballot in two years, I will not vote for him any more than I would for Pete Rose. As for Sosa, I'd love to believe his proclaimed innocence before the House Government Reform Committee -- "To be clear, I have never taken illegal performance-enhancing drugs,'' he said -- if an attorney hadn't read the statement for him and Sammy didn't repeatedly mumble, stare at the tabletop and either issue non-answers to important questions or agree with whatever Rafael Palmeiro or Curt Schilling said before him.
"I don't have much to tell you,'' said Sosa, mannequin-like.
Hearing all of this crud, I concur with Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.), a Hall of Famer who talked tough about baseball's crooked era. "If they started in 1992 or 1993 illegally using steroids, wipe all of their records out,'' Bunning said. "Take them away. They don't deserve them. Go ask Henry Aaron. Go ask the family of Roger Maris. Go ask all of the people that played without enhanced drugs if they would like their records compared with the current records.''
On the day when a flim-flam pastime was exposed as institutionally dishonest and chemically scummy, the day when kids of all ages realized they can't trust athletes as role models, a supposed benchmark year in our land's sacred sports history -- 1998 -- officially died. May we purge all those memories from our minds, like a lemon car or a cheating girlfriend, and pretend they never happened. Starting in midmorning and continuing long past dinner, the committee plowed through a trail of deceit and mismanagement in baseball's steroids crisis. Much of it surrounded the blindness of commissioner Bud Selig, who testified he knew little about steroids until waking up seven years ago and reading that androstenedione was found in McGwire's locker -- even though Selig was quoted in published stories about steroids as early as 1993. But we already knew Bud Light was a sham.
McGwire's reticence regrettable
McGwire's performance was utterly disgraceful. I've never felt more embarrassed for an athlete in a character-defining scene. Once called "a true American hero'' by then-President Clinton, Big Fib announced in his opening statement that he wouldn't discuss steroids directly and, true to his vow, refused to answer the committee's most probing questions. He would have been better off going incognito and relocating to Mexico, especially after the anguished statements of Donald Hooton, he of the famous baseball Hootons, who believes that his 17-year-old son, Taylor, hanged himself two years ago because of the psychological effects of steroid use.
"Players that are guilty of taking steroids are not only cheaters -- you are cowards,'' Hooton said in a charged voice. "You hide behind the skirts of your union, and with the help of management and your lawyers, you've made every effort to resist facing the public today.''
Minutes later, McGwire walked right into Hooton's description. Voice shaking, words quivering, he took a long gulp of water and said, "If a player answers, 'No,' he simply will not be believed. If he answers, 'Yes,' he risks public scorn and endless government investigations. My lawyers have advised me that I can't answer these questions without jeopardizing my family, my friends or myself.'' Public scorn? Last I looked, America was forgiving to those who fess up. What is wrong with government probes when Congress, as stated often, is making sure kids don't risk their lives using steroids because their heroes are using steroids? In one breath, Big Fib acknowledged there's "a problem with steroid use in baseball.'' But he added, "What I will not do is participate in naming names and implicating my friends and teammates.'' So he played with people who used steroids. There's a start.
But when the committee wanted to know more, McGwire clammed up. Should baseball have a zero-tolerance policy?
"I don't know. I'm a retired player,'' he said.
Does he consider steroid use to be cheating?
"That's not for me to determine,'' he said.
'Positive' spin backfires
Finally, after another "I'm here to be positive'' answer, Rep. Elijah Cummings laid into him. "I'm trying to be positive here, too,'' he challenged McGwire. "It's one thing for you to say you want to help, but it's a whole other thing when the parents [of Tyler Hooton] are sitting directly behind you, wondering if it's real.'' McGwire vowed to "redirect'' the aim of his foundation to steroids.
The committee wasn't impressed.
"Theater of the absurd,'' Rep. Tom Lantos said.
"If Enron people come in here and say, 'We don't want to talk about the past,' do you think Congress is going to let them get away with that?'' Rep. Mark Souder scolded. "If we don't talk about the past, how in the world are we supposed to pass legislation when you are a protected monopoly?''
But then, McGwire was following orders. So was Sosa, who opened the day by staring at an attorney who read the slugger's words: "Everything I have heard about steroids and human growth hormones is that they are very bad for you, even lethal. I would never put anything dangerous like that in my body.
"I am clean.''
So why am I off to take a long, hot, extra-strength-detergent bath?
Jay Mariotti is a regular on ''Around the Horn'' at 4 p.m. on ESPN. Send e-mail to inbox@suntimes.com with name, hometown and daytime phone number (letters run Sunday).
Springsteen Inducts U2 into R&R HOF
News updated March 16, 2005
http://www.backstreets.com/
"THROUGH THE DOOR WITH FISTS AND HEARTS FIRST"
U2 enters Rock & Roll Hall of Fame behind Bruce Springsteen's induction speech (3/14/05):
Uno, dos, tres, catorce. That translates as one, two, three, fourteen. That is the correct math for a rock and roll band. For in art and love and rock and roll, the whole had better equal much more than the sum of its parts, or else you're just rubbing two sticks together searching for fire. A great rock band searches for the same kind of combustible force that fueled the expansion of the universe after the big bang. You want the earth to shake and spit fire, you want the sky to split apart and for God to pour out. It’s embarrassing to want so much and to expect so much from music, except sometimes it happens: the Sun Sessions, Highway 61, Sgt. Peppers, the Band, Robert Johnson, Exile on Main Street, Born to Run... whoops, I meant to leave that one out... uh... the Sex Pistols, Aretha Franklin, the Clash, James Brown; the proud and public enemies it takes a nation of millions to hold back. This is music meant to take on not only the powers that be but on a good day, the universe and God himself, if he was listening. It's man's accountability, and U2 belongs on this list.
It was the early '80s. I went with Pete Townshend, who always wanted to catch the first whiff of those about to unseat us, to a club in London. There they were: a young Bono (single-handedly pioneering the Irish mullet), the Edge (what kind of name was that?), Adam and Larry -- I was listening to the last band of whom I would be able to name all of its members. They had an exciting show and a big, beautiful sound. They lifted the roof. We met afterwards and they were nice young men. They were Irish. Irish. Now, this would play an enormous part in their success in the States. For what the English occasionally have the refined sensibilities to overcome, we Irish and Italians have no such problem. We come through the door fists and hearts first. U2, with the dark, chiming sound of heaven at their command which, of course, is the sound of unrequited love and longing -- their greatest theme. Their search for God intact, this was a band that wanted to lay claim to not only this world but had their eyes on the next one, too. Now, they’re a real band; each member plays a vital part. I believe they actually practice some form of democracy -- toxic poison in a bands head. In Iraq, maybe. In rock, no. Yet, they survive. They have harnessed the time bomb that exists in the heart of every great rock and roll band that usually explodes, as we see regularly from this stage. But they seemed to have innately understood the primary rule of rock band job security: “Hey, asshole, the other guy is more important than you think he is!” They are both a step forward and direct descendants of the great bands who believed rock music could shake things up in the world, dared to have faith in their audience, who believed if they played their best it would bring out the best in you. They believed in pop stardom and the big time. Now this requires foolishness and a calculating mind. It also requires a deeply held faith in the work you're doing and in its powers to transform. U2 hungered for it all and built a sound, and they wrote the songs that demanded it. They’re keepers of some of the most beautiful sonic architecture in rock and roll.
The Edge, the Edge, the Edge, the Edge. He is a rare and true guitar original and one of the subtlest guitar heroes of all time. He's dedicated to ensemble playing and he subsumes his guitar ego in the group. But do not be fooled. Take Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Berry, Neil Young, Pete Townshend -- guitarists who defined the sound of their band and their times. If you play like them, you sound like them. If you are playing those rhythmic two-note sustained fourths, drenched in echo, you are going to sound like the Edge, my son. Go back to the drawing board and chances are you won’t have much luck. There are only a handful of guitar stylists who can create a world with their instruments, and he's one of them. The Edge's guitar playing creates enormous space and vast landscapes. It is a thrilling and a heartbreaking sound that hangs over you like the unsettled sky. In the turf it stakes out, it is inherently spiritual, it is grace and it is a gift.
Now, all of this has to be held down by something. The deep sureness of Adam Clayton's bass and the rhythms of Larry Mullen's elegant drumming hold the band down while propelling it forward. It's in U2's great rhythm section that the band finds its sexuality and its dangerousness. Listen to "Desire," she moves in "Mysterious Ways," the pulse of "With or Without You." Together Larry and Adam create the element that suggests the ecstatic possibilities of that other kingdom -- the one below the earth and below the belt -- that no great rock band can lay claim to the title without. Now, Adam always strikes me as the professorial one, the sophisticated member. He creates not only the musical but physical stability on his side of the stage. The tone and depth of his bass playing has allowed the band to move from rock to dance music and beyond. One of the first things I noticed about U2 was that underneath the guitar and the bass, they have these very modern rhythms going on. Rather than a straight 2 and 4, Larry often plays with a lot of syncopation, and that connects the band to modern dance textures. The drums often sounded high and tight and he was swinging down there, and this gave the band a unique profile and allowed their rock textures to soar above on a bed of his rhythm. Now Larry, of course, besides being an incredible drummer, bears the burden of being the band's requisite "good-looking member," something we somehow overlooked in the E Street Band. We have to settle for "charismatic." Girls love on Larry Mullen. I have a female assistant that would like to sit on Larry’s drum stool. A male one, too. We all have our crosses to bear.Bono, where do I begin? Jeans designer, soon-to-be World Bank operator, just plain operator, seller of the Brooklyn Bridge -- oh hold up, he played under the Brooklyn Bridge, that's right. Soon-to-be mastermind operator of the Bono Burger franchise, where more than one million stories will be told by a crazy Irishman. Now I realize that it’s a dirty job and somebody has to do it. But don't quit your day job yet, my friend, you're pretty good at it. And a sound this big needs somebody to ride herd over it, and ride herd over it he does. His voice, big-hearted and open, thoroughly decent no matter how hard he tries. Now he's a great frontman. Against the odds, he is not your mom's standard skinny, ex-junkie archetype. He has the physique of a rugby player... well, an ex-rugby player. Shamen, shyster, one of the greatest and most endearingly naked messianic complexes in rock and roll. God bless you, man! It takes one to know one, of course. You see, every good Irish and Italian-Irish front-man knows that before James Brown there was Jesus. So hold the McDonald arches on the stage set, boys, we are not ironists. We are creations of the heart and of the earth and of the stations of the cross. There's no getting out of it. He is gifted with an operatic voice and a beautiful falsetto rare among strong rock singers. But most important, his is a voice shot through with self-doubt. That's what makes that big sound work. It is this element of Bono's talent, along with his beautiful lyric writing, that gives the often-celestial music of U2 its fragility and its realness. It is the questioning, the constant questioning in Bono's voice, where the band stakes its claim to its humanity and declares its commonality with us. Now Bono’s voice often sounds like it's shouting not over top of the band but from deep within it: "Here we are, Lord, this mess, in your image." He delivers all of this with great drama and an occasional smirk that says, “Kiss me, I’m Irish.” He’s one of the great front-men of the past 20 years. He is also one of the only musicians to devote his personal faith and the ideals of his band into the real world in a way that remains true to rock's earliest implications of freedom and connection and the possibility of something better.
Now the band's beautiful songwriting -- "Pride (In The Name of Love)," "Sunday Bloody Sunday," "I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For," "One," "Where the Streets Have No Name," "Beautiful Day" -- reminds us of the stakes that the band always plays for. It's an incredible songbook. In their music, you hear the spirituality as home and as quest. How do you find God unless he's in your heart, in your desire, in your feet? I believe this is a big part of what's kept their band together all of these years. See, bands get formed by accident, but they don’t survive by accident. It takes will, intent, a sense of shared purpose and a tolerance for your friends' fallibilities and they of yours. And that only evens the odds. U2 has not only evened the odds but they've beaten them by continuing to do their finest work and remaining at the top of their game and the charts for 25 years. I feel a great affinity for these guys as people as well as musicians.
Well, there I was sitting down on the couch in my pajamas with my eldest son. He was watching TV. I was doing one of my favorite things: I was tallying up all the money I passed up in endorsements over the years and thinking of all the fun I could have had with it. Suddenly I hear "Uno, dos, tres, catorce!" I look up. But instead of the silhouettes of the hippie-wannabes bouncing around in the iPod commercial, I see my boys! Oh my God! They sold out! Now, what I know about the iPod is this: it is a device that plays music. Of course, their new song sounded great, my guys are doing great, but methinks I hear the footsteps of my old tape operator of Jimmy Iovine somewhere. Wily, smart. Now, personally, I live an insanely expensive lifestyle that my wife barely tolerates. I burn money, and that calls for huge amounts of cash flow. But, I also have a ludicrous image of myself that keeps me from truly cashing in. You can see my problem. Woe is me. So the next morning, I call up Jon Landau (or as I refer to him, "the American Paul McGuinness"), and I say, "Did you see that iPod thing?" and he says, "Yes." And he says, "And I hear they didn’t take any money." And I said, "They didn’t take any money?" and he says, "No." I said, "Smart, wily Irish guys. Anybody – anybody – can do an ad and take the money. But to do the ad and not take the money... that’s smart. That’s wily." I say, "Jon, I want you to call up Bill Gates or whoever is behind this thing and float this: a red, white and blue iPod signed by Bruce 'The Boss' Springsteen. Now remember, no matter how much money he offers, don’t take it!" At any rate, after that evening for the next month or so, I hear emanating from my lovely 14-year-old son's room, day after day, down the hall calling out in a voice that has recently dropped very low: uno, dos, tres, catorce. The correct math for rock and roll. Thank you, boys.
- Thanks to our good friends at U2log.com for the transcription.
March 16, 2005
Dan Shaughnessy: McGwire is a Bashed Brother
The Boston Globe
March 18, 2005
FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Say it ain't so, Mark. Or say it is so. Just answer the question. And don't consult with your lawyer before answering.
At the end of baseball's dark day on Capitol Hill yesterday, Mark McGwire was forever tarnished in the eyes of the nation. He would not answer questions about his alleged involvement with steroids. We'll never look at him the same way.
We live in a wonderful country governed by perhaps the most perfect document in the history of mankind. One of our constitutional laws allows an individual to refuse to answer questions on the grounds he may incriminate himself. Lawyers often advise clients to take the Fifth and doing so is not an admission of guilt.
But the court of public opinion is another matter and yesterday, on a day when Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, and Frank Thomas testified before Congress and emphatically denied using steriods, McGwire refused to answer the question.
In his opening statement, McGwire cried. He offered condolences to families who lost children to steroids. He offered to help the committee. He said he would dedicate himself to the problem. He said he would direct his foundation to educate children about the dangers of performance-enhancing drugs. He said all the right things and did what his lawyers wanted him to do.
He still looked dirty.
"My lawyers have advised me that I cannot answer any questions without jeopardizing my friends, my family, and myself," said McGwire. "I intend to follow their advice."
It sounded evasive. Transparently off topic. This wasn't about McGwire's friends, family, or teammates. It was about McGwire and his refusal to address the most fundamental question of the day -- Did you use steroids?
"Asking me or any other player to answer questions about who took steroids, in front of television cameras, will not solve the problem," McGwire said. "If a player answers `no,' he simply will not be believed. If he answers `yes,' he risks public scorn and endless government investigation."
Immediately after McGwire's opening statement, Palmeiro stared at the committee, pointed his finger, and said, "Let me start by telling you this: I have never used steroids. Period. I do not know how to say it any more clearly than that. Never."
The contrast was startling. And fair or unfair, many of us looked at the sequence and concluded, There you go. McGwire cheated. Palmeiro didn't.
Later, when committee members asked questions, McGwire evaded all direct queries with, "I'm here to talk about the positive and not the negative . . . I'm not here to talk about the past."
Wouldn't we all love that? . . . Bank robbers? . . . Enron executives? . . . Martha Stewart? Is McGwire going to want to talk about the past when he becomes eligible for the Hall of Fame? When we all talk about his 70-home run season in 1998? And why should young people listen to an ex-ballplayer who says he wants to help clean up baseball when that same ex-ballplayer won't answer questions about his involvement (or non-involvement) with steroids?
Sosa, like Palmeiro, flatly denied using steroids. Perhaps Sosa committed perjury and figures no one will ever be able to prove anything. Or maybe he's telling the truth. Either way, it doesn't help McGwire today. Seven years after their dramatic home run chase, Sosa and McGwire took their hits in the Rayburn Building. Sosa denied cheating. McGwire took the Fifth. You don't need to watch "Baseball Tonight" to conclude which slugger won yesterday's duel. Sosa, perhaps using the verbal equivalent of a corked bat, hit one out of the park. McGwire struck out.
Plenty of other things came out of yesterday's interminable proceeding. Curt Schilling delivered an impassioned opening statement that threatened to become the first fillibuster in the history of congressional hearings. Schilling became the go-to guy for the committee. Several congressmen noted Schilling was delivering answers that made him sound like a politician. Watching Schilling roll his eyes when Jose Canseco answered questions was also a treat. Schilling was particularly strong in his attack on Canseco. He referred to Canseco as a "so-called author," and a "disgrace." He called Canseco's book "an attempt to make money at the expense of others."
We could have done with a little less fawning by some committee members, who at times sounded like baseball groupies. They didn't get their claws out until Bud Selig, Donald Fehr, and friends answered questions as the hearing stretched past the dinner hour.
As expected, Canseco was predictably ridiculous. He said he hadn't slept in four days (though McGwire was the one who looked alarmingly sleepless). He said steroids were bad for young people. Attempting to appear thoughtful and sympathetic after his unconscionable literary effort, Canseco contradicted just about everything in his book. Kudos to South Boston Congressman Stephen Lynch (who sounds alarmingly like Al Pacino) for calling Canseco on his blatant hypocrisy. Canseco fell back on the old Rick Pitino "that's how I felt then" explanation.
But it was the lawyered-up McGwire who was the big loser yesterday. His resume is tarnished. His Hall of Fame candidacy is suddenly questionable. The 1998 home run chase has been reduced to some phony steel-cage match involving artificially inflated cartoon characters.
Feels like we were duped. Sure wish Barry Bonds had been up there with them.
Dan Shaughnessy is a Globe columnist. His e-mail address is dshaughnessy@globe.com.
March 18, 2005
FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Say it ain't so, Mark. Or say it is so. Just answer the question. And don't consult with your lawyer before answering.
At the end of baseball's dark day on Capitol Hill yesterday, Mark McGwire was forever tarnished in the eyes of the nation. He would not answer questions about his alleged involvement with steroids. We'll never look at him the same way.
We live in a wonderful country governed by perhaps the most perfect document in the history of mankind. One of our constitutional laws allows an individual to refuse to answer questions on the grounds he may incriminate himself. Lawyers often advise clients to take the Fifth and doing so is not an admission of guilt.
But the court of public opinion is another matter and yesterday, on a day when Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, and Frank Thomas testified before Congress and emphatically denied using steriods, McGwire refused to answer the question.
In his opening statement, McGwire cried. He offered condolences to families who lost children to steroids. He offered to help the committee. He said he would dedicate himself to the problem. He said he would direct his foundation to educate children about the dangers of performance-enhancing drugs. He said all the right things and did what his lawyers wanted him to do.
He still looked dirty.
"My lawyers have advised me that I cannot answer any questions without jeopardizing my friends, my family, and myself," said McGwire. "I intend to follow their advice."
It sounded evasive. Transparently off topic. This wasn't about McGwire's friends, family, or teammates. It was about McGwire and his refusal to address the most fundamental question of the day -- Did you use steroids?
"Asking me or any other player to answer questions about who took steroids, in front of television cameras, will not solve the problem," McGwire said. "If a player answers `no,' he simply will not be believed. If he answers `yes,' he risks public scorn and endless government investigation."
Immediately after McGwire's opening statement, Palmeiro stared at the committee, pointed his finger, and said, "Let me start by telling you this: I have never used steroids. Period. I do not know how to say it any more clearly than that. Never."
The contrast was startling. And fair or unfair, many of us looked at the sequence and concluded, There you go. McGwire cheated. Palmeiro didn't.
Later, when committee members asked questions, McGwire evaded all direct queries with, "I'm here to talk about the positive and not the negative . . . I'm not here to talk about the past."
Wouldn't we all love that? . . . Bank robbers? . . . Enron executives? . . . Martha Stewart? Is McGwire going to want to talk about the past when he becomes eligible for the Hall of Fame? When we all talk about his 70-home run season in 1998? And why should young people listen to an ex-ballplayer who says he wants to help clean up baseball when that same ex-ballplayer won't answer questions about his involvement (or non-involvement) with steroids?
Sosa, like Palmeiro, flatly denied using steroids. Perhaps Sosa committed perjury and figures no one will ever be able to prove anything. Or maybe he's telling the truth. Either way, it doesn't help McGwire today. Seven years after their dramatic home run chase, Sosa and McGwire took their hits in the Rayburn Building. Sosa denied cheating. McGwire took the Fifth. You don't need to watch "Baseball Tonight" to conclude which slugger won yesterday's duel. Sosa, perhaps using the verbal equivalent of a corked bat, hit one out of the park. McGwire struck out.
Plenty of other things came out of yesterday's interminable proceeding. Curt Schilling delivered an impassioned opening statement that threatened to become the first fillibuster in the history of congressional hearings. Schilling became the go-to guy for the committee. Several congressmen noted Schilling was delivering answers that made him sound like a politician. Watching Schilling roll his eyes when Jose Canseco answered questions was also a treat. Schilling was particularly strong in his attack on Canseco. He referred to Canseco as a "so-called author," and a "disgrace." He called Canseco's book "an attempt to make money at the expense of others."
We could have done with a little less fawning by some committee members, who at times sounded like baseball groupies. They didn't get their claws out until Bud Selig, Donald Fehr, and friends answered questions as the hearing stretched past the dinner hour.
As expected, Canseco was predictably ridiculous. He said he hadn't slept in four days (though McGwire was the one who looked alarmingly sleepless). He said steroids were bad for young people. Attempting to appear thoughtful and sympathetic after his unconscionable literary effort, Canseco contradicted just about everything in his book. Kudos to South Boston Congressman Stephen Lynch (who sounds alarmingly like Al Pacino) for calling Canseco on his blatant hypocrisy. Canseco fell back on the old Rick Pitino "that's how I felt then" explanation.
But it was the lawyered-up McGwire who was the big loser yesterday. His resume is tarnished. His Hall of Fame candidacy is suddenly questionable. The 1998 home run chase has been reduced to some phony steel-cage match involving artificially inflated cartoon characters.
Feels like we were duped. Sure wish Barry Bonds had been up there with them.
Dan Shaughnessy is a Globe columnist. His e-mail address is dshaughnessy@globe.com.
Thomas Boswell: Players of Stature, Feats of Clay
The Washington Post
Friday, March 18, 2005; Page D01
Just to get a sense of proportion concerning what happened in a hearing room on Capitol Hill yesterday, imagine that we could turn back time 70 years. Concoct a scene in the 1930s in which Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx and Mel Ott are subpoenaed to testify before Congress because all of them are suspected of or had admitted to massive cheating throughout their careers, which would call all their records and heroics into question.
To add diabolical spice, imagine that Ruth had confessed his sins and was accusing Gehrig of doing the fraud -- with the Babe as a witness. Or vice versa, that the Iron Horse was calling all the Babe's achievements a sham. After all, they were the Bash Brothers of the Roaring Twenties, winning pennants, greeting each other at home plate but barely maintaining civil relations.
Why, if such a thing had happened, especially if one of the four men had almost broken down, taken the equivalent of the Fifth Amendment more than a dozen times and left the hearing room with his reputation in tatters, we'd still be discussing it, churning out books and, probably, revising the history -- recasting the villains and heroes and scapegoats -- to this day.
When the indelible days and torturous portraits from baseball history are described and retold, the saga of Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, Sammy Sosa and the man who accused them all, Jose Canseco, will grow in significance, depth, sadness and moral complexity. Our first impressions will almost certainly be revised by time. It is even possible that, within a few years, depending upon how many revelations from the Steroid Age finally become public, we could even see one of these men charged with perjury or contempt of Congress.
The first image of this day will always be McGwire, the popular Big Mac who carried himself with perfect grace and generosity when he hit 70 home runs in '98, as he stammered, composed himself, then plowed forward, through a brief but tortuous prepared testimony. How could anyone avoid the thought that, perhaps, he behaved so deferentially toward Roger Maris's family because he knew that a darker truth lay behind his ability to erase Maris from the record book.
"Like any sport where there is pressure to perform at the highest level and there has been no testing to control performance-enhancing drugs, problems develop," McGwire said.
Let's deconstruct. Did McGwire feel pressure to perform at the highest level in a sport that did not test for steroids, virtually winked at the practice and, in particular, longed for McGwire to hit more than 61 home runs? After all, in the late 1990s baseball desperately hoped the long ball would reclaim fans alienated by the strike that erased the 1994 World Series.
"I will use whatever influence and popularity I have," said McGwire, his words slowing, "to discourage young athletes from taking any drug that is not recommended by a doctor. What I will not do, however, is participate in naming names and implicating my friends and teammates. . . . Nor do I intend to dignify Mr. Canseco's book. It should be enough to consider the source . . .
"Asking me, or any other player, to answer questions about who took steroids in front of television cameras will not solve this problem," said McGwire, the committee's thumbscrews all but showing. "If a player answers, 'No,' he simply will not be believed. If he answers, 'Yes,' he risks public scorn and endless government investigations."
If, somehow, McGwire's testimony is narrowly and literally true, then he is one of the most wronged men in the history of American sport and the House Government Reform Committee has indeed hunted for an innocent witch and burned her. The far more likely case is that the verdict in the bleachers from coast to coast will be the correct one: that McGwire gave a veiled confession in the tradition of Jason Giambi's endless apologies for doing something he never named.
While McGwire's day was pure theater, the drama between Canseco and Palmeiro lay just below the surface but will remain a debate for many a long night. Canseco wrote in his tell-all book that he had introduced Palmeiro to steroids, and during a "60 Minutes" interview Canseco said that he had injected Palmeiro when they were with the Rangers. No accusation can be more direct. And no denial could be more categorical than Palmeiro's repeated assertions that he had never taken steroids in any form anywhere at any time. "Period."
Either Canseco is the most vicious and deliberate slanderer in baseball history (name anything that would even come close) or Palmeiro has lied under oath to a congressional committee. There's no third choice. One is a villain. That's why it helps to have an excellent reputation and hurts to have an atrocious one. The committee, by its tone, clearly accepted Palmeiro's word and treated him as though he had conclusively cleared his name when, in fact, he'd merely pleaded innocence.
For the next two or three years, at the least, we can expect that the cockroaches of these steroid days will continue to scurry around baseball's kitchen, just as the criminal misdeeds of Wall Street and corporate America still fill our headlines years after the bankruptcies of Enron and WorldCom.
And what of Sosa? He spoke in a soft voice. He brought an interpreter and a lawyer who read his statement for him despite the fact that those of us who know him from the baseball beat realize that he is perfectly fluent in English. That Sosa statement was a 99.9 percent total denial of any use of steroids. However, cynics may parse his words in search of legal loopholes.
"To be clear, I have never taken illegal performance-enhancing drugs. I have never injected myself or had anyone inject me with anything. I've not broken the laws of the Unites States or the laws of the Dominican Republic," Sosa's statement read. "I have been tested as recently as 2004 and I am clean."
It is an awful world we live in. Within minutes of the statement's dissemination a veteran baseball writer said, "So, I guess that doesn't quite cover taking steroids orally if they were prescribed legally by a Dominican doctor."
Thanks to the devious tales from the world of BALCO, we've all learned to look for the weasel word, the phrase that doesn't quite mean what it says. Endemic bad behavior has this contaminating effect on the whole culture that it infects. Trust dies. Doubt flourishes. Lies grow strong legs.
And someone as discredited as Canseco can completely change his views on steroids in a blink. In his book, he champions steroids for 200 pages, even saying that they could help people live to be 120. Before Congress, he denounced them. Grilled on this preposterous flip-flop, Canseco meekly said, "I'm completely turned around." How convenient.
This day and all its twist of plot and character will not be forgotten in baseball for decades.
In fact, the cautionary scene of four of the game's greatest sluggers, all sitting at the same table with their legacy and their honor laid out before them, has barely begun to be digested.
Friday, March 18, 2005; Page D01
Just to get a sense of proportion concerning what happened in a hearing room on Capitol Hill yesterday, imagine that we could turn back time 70 years. Concoct a scene in the 1930s in which Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx and Mel Ott are subpoenaed to testify before Congress because all of them are suspected of or had admitted to massive cheating throughout their careers, which would call all their records and heroics into question.
To add diabolical spice, imagine that Ruth had confessed his sins and was accusing Gehrig of doing the fraud -- with the Babe as a witness. Or vice versa, that the Iron Horse was calling all the Babe's achievements a sham. After all, they were the Bash Brothers of the Roaring Twenties, winning pennants, greeting each other at home plate but barely maintaining civil relations.
Why, if such a thing had happened, especially if one of the four men had almost broken down, taken the equivalent of the Fifth Amendment more than a dozen times and left the hearing room with his reputation in tatters, we'd still be discussing it, churning out books and, probably, revising the history -- recasting the villains and heroes and scapegoats -- to this day.
When the indelible days and torturous portraits from baseball history are described and retold, the saga of Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, Sammy Sosa and the man who accused them all, Jose Canseco, will grow in significance, depth, sadness and moral complexity. Our first impressions will almost certainly be revised by time. It is even possible that, within a few years, depending upon how many revelations from the Steroid Age finally become public, we could even see one of these men charged with perjury or contempt of Congress.
The first image of this day will always be McGwire, the popular Big Mac who carried himself with perfect grace and generosity when he hit 70 home runs in '98, as he stammered, composed himself, then plowed forward, through a brief but tortuous prepared testimony. How could anyone avoid the thought that, perhaps, he behaved so deferentially toward Roger Maris's family because he knew that a darker truth lay behind his ability to erase Maris from the record book.
"Like any sport where there is pressure to perform at the highest level and there has been no testing to control performance-enhancing drugs, problems develop," McGwire said.
Let's deconstruct. Did McGwire feel pressure to perform at the highest level in a sport that did not test for steroids, virtually winked at the practice and, in particular, longed for McGwire to hit more than 61 home runs? After all, in the late 1990s baseball desperately hoped the long ball would reclaim fans alienated by the strike that erased the 1994 World Series.
"I will use whatever influence and popularity I have," said McGwire, his words slowing, "to discourage young athletes from taking any drug that is not recommended by a doctor. What I will not do, however, is participate in naming names and implicating my friends and teammates. . . . Nor do I intend to dignify Mr. Canseco's book. It should be enough to consider the source . . .
"Asking me, or any other player, to answer questions about who took steroids in front of television cameras will not solve this problem," said McGwire, the committee's thumbscrews all but showing. "If a player answers, 'No,' he simply will not be believed. If he answers, 'Yes,' he risks public scorn and endless government investigations."
If, somehow, McGwire's testimony is narrowly and literally true, then he is one of the most wronged men in the history of American sport and the House Government Reform Committee has indeed hunted for an innocent witch and burned her. The far more likely case is that the verdict in the bleachers from coast to coast will be the correct one: that McGwire gave a veiled confession in the tradition of Jason Giambi's endless apologies for doing something he never named.
While McGwire's day was pure theater, the drama between Canseco and Palmeiro lay just below the surface but will remain a debate for many a long night. Canseco wrote in his tell-all book that he had introduced Palmeiro to steroids, and during a "60 Minutes" interview Canseco said that he had injected Palmeiro when they were with the Rangers. No accusation can be more direct. And no denial could be more categorical than Palmeiro's repeated assertions that he had never taken steroids in any form anywhere at any time. "Period."
Either Canseco is the most vicious and deliberate slanderer in baseball history (name anything that would even come close) or Palmeiro has lied under oath to a congressional committee. There's no third choice. One is a villain. That's why it helps to have an excellent reputation and hurts to have an atrocious one. The committee, by its tone, clearly accepted Palmeiro's word and treated him as though he had conclusively cleared his name when, in fact, he'd merely pleaded innocence.
For the next two or three years, at the least, we can expect that the cockroaches of these steroid days will continue to scurry around baseball's kitchen, just as the criminal misdeeds of Wall Street and corporate America still fill our headlines years after the bankruptcies of Enron and WorldCom.
And what of Sosa? He spoke in a soft voice. He brought an interpreter and a lawyer who read his statement for him despite the fact that those of us who know him from the baseball beat realize that he is perfectly fluent in English. That Sosa statement was a 99.9 percent total denial of any use of steroids. However, cynics may parse his words in search of legal loopholes.
"To be clear, I have never taken illegal performance-enhancing drugs. I have never injected myself or had anyone inject me with anything. I've not broken the laws of the Unites States or the laws of the Dominican Republic," Sosa's statement read. "I have been tested as recently as 2004 and I am clean."
It is an awful world we live in. Within minutes of the statement's dissemination a veteran baseball writer said, "So, I guess that doesn't quite cover taking steroids orally if they were prescribed legally by a Dominican doctor."
Thanks to the devious tales from the world of BALCO, we've all learned to look for the weasel word, the phrase that doesn't quite mean what it says. Endemic bad behavior has this contaminating effect on the whole culture that it infects. Trust dies. Doubt flourishes. Lies grow strong legs.
And someone as discredited as Canseco can completely change his views on steroids in a blink. In his book, he champions steroids for 200 pages, even saying that they could help people live to be 120. Before Congress, he denounced them. Grilled on this preposterous flip-flop, Canseco meekly said, "I'm completely turned around." How convenient.
This day and all its twist of plot and character will not be forgotten in baseball for decades.
In fact, the cautionary scene of four of the game's greatest sluggers, all sitting at the same table with their legacy and their honor laid out before them, has barely begun to be digested.
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